But Yesterday—

To
Violet
From Her Loving Sister
Maud

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*  *  *

Author’s Note

I am proud to link any book of mine with the name of Dr. Stephen Paget and to acknowledge the debt I owe him for permission to use and work out the curious idea that forms the main theme of my story. All the characters concerned in it are purely imaginary.

Maud Diver.

*  *  *

When a Man Dies—

FATAL MOTOR ACCIDENT IN PICCADILLY.
SIR HENRY CLIVE ARDEN KILLED.
Tragic End to a Distinguished Career.

The posters shouted it. The early evening papers enlarged on it, spinning out scanty details to the limit—and beyond.

Jarvis McNeil, making his way through the week-end turmoil of Marylebone Station, had bought a paper automatically. Unfolding it, he stood stupefied, his stunned brain refusing to accept the evidence of his eyes; while hurrying passengers surged round him, as hurrying waters surge round a rock in mid-stream.

As his mind emerged painfully from stupor, he scanned the brief paragraph that recorded how Sir Henry had that morning visited the Prime Minister, in connection with his recent appointment, as Governor-General of Australia. Driving back at a crowded hour, his car had collided fatally with a bigger one, afterwards reported as exceeding speed limit. The smaller car had been overturned, both drivers injured, and Sir Henry Arden—a heavy man—killed on the spot.

Succeeding paragraphs superfluously informed him that Sir Henry’s appointment had been widely approved, that by his death the Conservative Party had lost an able supporter, and England a distinguished politician, a statesman in the grain. Followed the usual family details—the wife who had died eighteen months earlier—the two sons and a daughter, left to mourn him.

Like a cold salt wave the truth broke over McNeil; and viciously clenching the hated paper, he moved on again, an unconsidered unit in that welter of urban humanity, feeling dully enraged in the privacy of his phlegmatic middle-aged heart. He had come up to Town, from his small place near Beaconsfield, partly to have the pleasure of congratulating Henry in person. And Henry was gone; the close-linked friendship of a lifetime snapped in a moment, by that infernally careless driver, who deserved to be hanged.

A little matter of forty years—was it?—since that far-off October, when a pair of freshers, flung together by chance, had been drawn into friendship by the spell that Oxford cast upon both. And to-night they were to have dined at the Carlton, finishing up with a play. . . .

Good God! How could one face Arden’s poor old mother? She was hard as nails, and no one would believe her over eighty. But if anything could kill her, it would be this. With Henry’s son abroad, she would need all the help a clumsy man could give; and in any case, he must stay on in London for the present.

Hailing a taxi, he sank heavily into a corner and let his thoughts drift where they would, blindly seeking refuge from his half-stunned emotions. He would give the poor old lady a day’s respite. Monday would be soon enough to intrude upon her grief. And he cursed aloud at thought of the voluble Sunday papers, pouncing with avidity on the godsend of a Saturday sensation. Their ready-made estimates of the man and his work, their personal paragraphs—peculiarly distasteful to his dead friend—would all be whisked out of appropriate pigeonholes, with the very best intentions, to do him reverence.

And it was so.

In every paper McNeil opened next morning, Henry Arden’s name, the bald, hideous fact of Henry Arden’s death, sprang at him from the printed page. There they lay, sleekly folded on the Club table; and irresistibly he picked them up, from greatest to least; hating them, yet instinctively seeking to numb his open wound by blow on blow.

And while he read, the futile anguished thought would intrude—was Henry aware, and hating them also? Alive, he had been singularly skilful in avoiding the limelight; perfectly willing to be misunderstood, whether in private or public life, if only he could be let alone; unmoved alike by the blessings or the bludgeonings of the Press. Dead, he lay there helpless, at its mercy.

The horrid accident—so sudden and swiftly fatal—taxed all the practised verbosity of the “live-wire” reporter to multiply detail and prolong the agony. But there were leaders and personal appreciations. There were libellous reproductions of old photographs. Some zealous imp of the camera had caught Henry walking—as only the “snap-shotted” can walk—from his car to the Premier’s door: inset—a picture of his aged mother, a well-known, social and political hostess in her day. There was Mabel, his wife, not looking her best, and a few lines underneath intimating, with a discreet dash of sentiment, that Sir Henry Arden had been as fortunate in his marriage as in his career. And of course there was young Clive (the fellows seemed able to produce these things like rabbits out of a hat), “the gifted son of a gifted father, at present abroad in connection with his literary work.” There was even the façade of Sir Henry Arden’s house in Queen’s Gate, as if it were not a replica of all the hundred odd houses in that lordly thoroughfare.

Yet, to the eye of Jarvis McNeil, it was not precisely as all those others; and he sat staring at it a long while as at the face of a friend. Would Clive, with his literary bent and his after-war restlessness, ever settle down there and carry on the Arden tradition? The Grand Old Lady herself—one could not picture her prostrate even in the face of calamity—would she cut out and treasure every inch of these machine-made effusions? Or would she turn away her eyes from them in the pride and bitterness of her broken heart? For all their years of surface intimacy, he could not tell.

If he, himself, cut out neither articles nor paragraphs, he continued—as on that first Sunday—to read them all; and they were many. After an impressive public funeral, they began again; and with the blossoming of weekly papers, yet again. For a public man dies not once, but several times over. And to McNeil, stoically facing his loss, it seemed a cruel aggravation of bereavement—the echo of it flung back and back from the ends of the earth.

Hard upon these dying echoes, followed the quiet booming of the monthly reviews, more temperate, more measured in their estimate of the big man, humanly fallible, the product of an Age it was the fashion to discredit, though it had gone far to place England where she stood to-day; a man of letters, more statesman than politician, imbued with the spirit of leadership peculiarly needed in this fluid world of toppling Empires, of shaken standards in art and life. They faintly comforted McNeil, those sober articles, vividly recalling the true Henry Arden, difficult but dependable, the one man he had unswervingly loved. He read them sitting alone once more in his familiar study, growing dully accustomed to the sense of loss, taking comfort from his gardening and his golf; able to concentrate again on his elaborate Monograph of The Rose.

After that—silence, as when a stone drops into a quiet stream; and its waters, shivered for a moment, break into circles and more circles; then flow on again, as if the stone had never been.

But there remained a few who remembered—who would always remember.

Book One — His Life

Chapter One

We build with strength the deep tower wall
That shall be shattered thus and thus.
— Alice Meynell

“The table a little more this way, Bilson.”

Old Lady Arden, sitting very upright, in an arm-chair intended for lounging, critically scanned the silver tea-tray laid for two.

“That’ll do, thanks. You will remind Mrs. Tatten that Mr. McNeil is very particular about his buttered toast.”

“Quite so, my lady.” And Bilson, departing, closed the heavy door behind him without a sound.

Lady Arden, left alone again, continued to sit upright, ignoring twinges of lumbago and the mute invitation of two vast cushions at her back; a stately ample figure of a woman in her flowing black silk gown, relieved only by fine muslin bands at her throat and wrists, a gleaming diamond pendant, and her dead white hair, parted in the middle, under a Mary Stuart cap of old point lace.

Very still she sat, hands motionless in her lap, gazing intently at a photograph on the big writing-table—a photograph of her dead son, snatched out of life only six months ago, at the height of his political career. It was a three-quarter aspect, taken from the portrait painted by Orpen after the War. It showed clearly the fine structure of the head and the set of it on his shoulders that, combined with his height, had often made lesser men say of him, “Arden carries himself as if he owned the world.” It had pleased her that they should say it, though she knew there had been little of her own mental arrogance in him. Nevertheless—and that pleased her also—the likeness to herself was unmistakable, in the wide brow and level glance, the nose (a masculine edition of her own), its broad bridge slightly flattened, as if a sculptor had pressed it while the clay was wet. Without that odd effect, his nose would have been more shapely, but it heightened the general impression of power, and curiously matched the flattened end of his chin.

The photograph was a large one, framed in silver; and the artist’s rendering so full of life and vigour that she could still hardly bear to look at it. But to banish it outright were to own herself beaten; and deeply as she had loved her son, it was a matter of pride rather than sentiment—a weakness she had scorned all her days. For much the same reason she more often sat in the library, where his spirit seemed still to linger, than in the back drawing-room upstairs.

Here was an atmosphere of work and purpose and solid comfort that better suited her taste. A fine lofty room, it was, in one of the few old Queen’s Gate mansions not yet fallen upon evil days; still the stronghold of a dwindling family. Vividly she remembered coming to it as a bride, and the flutter of disapproval among the more crusted Ardens caused by William’s decision to desert the family home in Russell Square for a brand new house in “the wilds of Kensington.” No mushroom family, these Ardens. First in the older London, then in the new, some six generations of them had spent their youth, as was natural, in following the fashion of the day; their middle-age in shaking dubious heads over the new generation for doing much the same thing—with a difference; and their old age in lamenting that “Times were changed,” till Time engulfed them in the greatest Change of all.

And with the coming of these latest Ardens, she ruefully recognised that family dominion—its actual power, its unconscious influence—was probably nearing an end.

Clive had not yet returned from abroad to take over his heritage, and the library behind the dining-room was still very much as it had been in her own day; the long windows, looking on to open leads, where Henry fostered his favourite shrubs and flowers: the heavy purple curtains and warm-toned carpet, the green silk shade round the lamp above the writing-table, the book-lined wall beyond, and the tiled hearth, where no gas or electric usurper had ever been tolerated. Only in detail the place no longer bore the impress of her husband, but of her son. Its old solid comfort had taken on a tinge of Henry’s austerity. It was dark with his rare bronzes and etchings, on which he had been apt to spend more than he could rightly afford. In a dozen little ways it recalled him with a vividness scarcely endurable. Yet deliberately she endured it, like the obstinate old stoic she was.

Sounds in the hall, suggesting an arrival, diverted her attention from the photograph; but it was only Bilson with a telephone message from Jarvis, begging her not to wait. The Committee was sitting longer than he had anticipated. It might be another fifteen or twenty minutes before he could reach Queen’s Gate.

“And I’ll bring in the kettle, my lady?” Bilson concluded, a respectful hint of concern in his tone.

“Not till Mr. McNeil arrives, thank you.” She acknowledged the good intention with her tight-lipped smile. “Tell him I will wait. It is of no consequence.”

As the door closed on Bilson, she sighed and glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to five; and she was needing her tea. But her generation had not made a fetish of bodily needs, and the punctilious habits of a lifetime prevailed. What she would have done, in the last six months, without Jarvis and his kindly blundering ways, she did not care to speculate—she who had always been capable, till now, of standing alone. At least she could wait tea for him. And wait she did.

Still unconsciously ignoring those suppliant cushions, she drew a grey scroll of knitting from her black velvet bag, and set to work upon it with hands notably firm and capable for a woman of her years. She liked them to be firm and capable rather than elegant. Beauty, as an asset, she had always underrated. Personality she respected and understood, knowing it for the keystone of success. Her own had served her well in the days when she had set her seal on Henry and carved out his Parliamentary career. And even now, in spite of encroaching years, she still maintained a certain hold on his three children, though Clive was turned eight and twenty, Tony a well-mannered, if essentially irreverent subaltern in the Guards, and Stella, a lively young flit-about, difficult to keep in hand. It was Tony, with his irreverence, oddly enough, who most often succeeded in touching some uncongealed spot in her heart. Even if they did fancy none but themselves had ever been young, they neither patronised her, nor politely ignored her, as they had tended to ignore their less individual mother, till she faded inconspicuously out of their lives.

It was on account of Stella, when the crash came, that Lady Arden had let her high narrow house overlooking Green Park, and had taken charge of the old Queen’s Gate home, till it should please Clive to return and settle his future plans—if he could ever be coerced into settling anything, or settling anywhere. Not that she greatly cared in what particular fashion they muddled their lives, these three; but they were all that remained of Henry; and every ounce of her consuming ambition, her deep, narrow capacity for devotion had been centred in her son. That she had seen him, eventually as Prime Minister of England scarcely needs saying; and short of that, he had justified her proud belief in him.

More vivid than yesterday—than months of yesterdays, blurred with grief—glowed the memory of his early elevation to Cabinet rank, in those far-off years of security and plenty before the deluge. That welcome mark of recognition—admittedly no more than his due—did not blind her shrewd eyes to the fact that she had probably hastened it by skilfully manoeuvring him into the right marriage at the right moment. That stray girl in Scotland had very nearly wrecked everything; but her own insistence, coupled with Henry’s native common sense, had prevailed. If, later on, he had felt grateful for opposition he resented at the time, he had never—son-like—had the grace to tell her so. And, in the circumstances, she had accepted the masculine oversight as perfectly natural. For herself, it had been sufficient reward, year by year, to contemplate her handiwork and see that it was good. Mabel, with her sanity, her money and her distinguished connections, had been the very wife for a rising politician of outstanding promise. Foiled of success in public life, he would have been an embittered man.

So mothered, so mated and so gifted, he had gone from strength to strength. Throughout the lean years in opposition, he had done distinguished work for his party, for the Empire. Then—the War, with its trumpet-call for individual service: and Henry rising greatly to the Great Occasion—which was no more than she had expected of him. He had emerged from his war activities with a body unscathed, and a reputation enhanced. By way of recognition, he had been made a Member of the Privy Council; a distinction which had genuinely surprised him, while it barely satisfied her.

And after all that, when the Conservatives swept the country, he had quite unaccountably refused to join the Cabinet; nor could he be induced to explain, or to discuss the matter even with her. The War, that had lifted him almost to the pinnacle she craved, had, in some curious way, changed him; had undermined her influence of a lifetime. But the old habit of thinking and planning for him had remained unquenchable. Failing the Cabinet, there were other posts of honour for a man of his quality.

Nothing, she knew, would induce Mabel to live out of England; but, Mabel being gone, she had cast an ambitious eye on the Dominions. As a Governor-General, Henry would find practical scope for his administrative ability and his high Imperial aims. It would mean a lift to the peerage, and a G.C.M.G. So she had spoken of it, in confidence, to Lord Barfield, Mabel’s uncle and a member of the Cabinet. She had learnt, with secret elation, that Henry’s name had already been mentioned in connection with Australia. Lord Barfield had promised to back up the suggestion: and, in due time, the appointment had been privately offered to her son.

Great was her dismay when she discovered that again he actually contemplated refusal. Incredulous, and justly incensed, she had spoken her mind to such good purpose that he had at last agreed to think it over. He had gone off in the car for one of his lonely week-ends; and had returned looking quite another man—as if some secret elation glowed in him like a still flame. She could see him now, standing big and square before her, telling her simply, without explanation, that he had thought the matter over and had decided to accept. What had wrought the transformation—who had succeeded where she had failed—were questions that, for once in her life, she had not ventured to ask. The fact sufficed. Later on she could speak of her secret wish that he would consent to take her with him.

It was on the morning his appointment was announced, when all the newspapers were applauding him to the echo, that he had driven off to Downing Street for a long talk with the Prime Minister. In the exuberance of the moment, she had kissed him at parting. And two hours later, they had brought him home—dead.

Only six months ago? It seemed more like six years. The shock, that had not killed her, had smitten her to a deadly numbness; left her prostrate for a time. Then the ingrained habit of holding her own had dragged her back into a world emptied of Henry’s presence and Henry’s doings; her delight in the one, her overweening pride in the other—the bread and wine of her life.

It was then that her awakened brain perceived the one clear aim still left to live for—the written record of his achievements that were also, in a measure, her own. More truly than most mothers she could claim to have been the making of her son. For all his fine compound of character and ability, there had been an unaccountable streak in him (the Irish grandmother, for whom William was responsible) that might have fatally deflected him at the crucial moment had she not intervened. As in life, she had unceasingly promoted his interests, so now she would do him this crowning service: and for obvious reasons it must be soon.

Let her but live to read those two goodly volumes that should immortalise her first-born, and without a pang she could take leave of the world, whose values she half scorned, even while she courted its homage, and demanded the best it had to give. Were she but ten years younger, she would have braced all her dwindling forces and written the Life herself, with Jarvis for jackal to her lion. As it was, with bitter certainty, she realised that brain and nerve were unequal to the strain; realised, at last, that she had indeed grown old. As a formula she had admitted it, these many years. As a fact, she had never believed it—till now. So she, that knew him as none of those others could know him, must be content to watch and supervise, while they fumbled where her touch would have been sure.

Failing herself, the obvious alternative was Clive. A son’s portrait of his father: that would give an added touch of interest; and the boy had a genuine gift for writing, in the versatile modern fashion. He bad been away all these months in Palestine and Egypt, studying changed conditions over there and turning out clever articles for the Fortnightly, with a book in view. Perhaps in his superficial modern way, he did know something about those ancient and mysterious countries; but what did he know of his own father? What could he know, in a vital sense, about a man who belonged to an era sharply divided from his own by the chasm of the War? Henry, essentially an Oxford man, had all his life loved the grey city as he loved few places on earth. Clive, caught at eighteen in the War’s relentless machinery, had missed the vital three years that might have linked them in a closer bond of understanding. In his own way, no doubt, the boy was fond of his father; but they had no real family feeling, these young things. If she decided that he must write the Life, would he even see it as a privilege? Would he scamp the immense amount of work involved?

For Jarvis, of course, it would be a labour of love: but she feared he would be clumsy with his pen; and Henry, of all people, must not be enshrined in a lump of dough! Then there was Alison Owen—a family connection and a novelist of sorts. Novelists were all very well in their own line, which had never been hers. Let Alison stick to her last. Though there were plenty of competent outsiders, she would have no outsider meddling with her intimate family affairs. Henry, the most reticent man on earth, could not abide it. And there remained a more potent, personal reason for restricting her choice. She must be able to keep her own fingers on the strings. The Life must, in effect, be her conception of Henry, recorded by another: but the ageless spirit in her resented the background, the limitation. It irked her, cruelly it irked her, this incurable disease of growing old. . . .

Sounds again in the hall; unmistakable this time. With a sigh of relief she rolled up her knitting; and the tired look was dismissed from her face, as the big door swung open to admit Jarvis McNeil.

Chapter Two

I have lived
To see inherited my very wishes,
And the buildings of my fancy: only there
Is one thing wanting. . . .
— Shakespeare

The kettle and the silver muffin dish had duly appeared, and with them came Onyx the cat, Henry’s familiar spirit, a handsome half-Persian, velvet black, with a white star on his chest, one white-tipped ear and eyes of a light-filled green, like sea shallows. Unique in his master’s esteem, and doubtless in his own, he combined, with all the graces and mysterious aloofness of his tribe, the deep devotion of a dog. Walking delicately, bearing his tail like a banner, he kept insinuating his body against Bilson’s legs that strangely refused to remain still for his benefit; so he deserted them in favour of Lady Arden’s skirt, coiling himself up beautifully and elaborately, his warm body pressed against her ankle.

Since Henry’s death, as in his lifetime, the creature continued to haunt the library, raising an expectant head whenever a car stopped outside. McNeil under his clumsy exterior was a sensitive man; and it troubled him, that mute persistent expectation.

To Lady Arden it was merely a matter of personal discomfort that she could not for long keep the cat out of the room; for she rather disliked animals, especially cats. The feel of the warm body against her ankle affected her unpleasantly; and, as the door closed on Bilson, a jerk of her foot ousted the intruder. Yawning and stretching, he regarded her with bland disapproval, as of one egoist arraigning another; then strolling away, he sprang on to Henry’s swivel chair, and proceeded to arrange himself as beautifully and elaborately as before.

“Nothing will keep that animal out of this room,” Lady Arden remarked with a touch of irritation. “Dogs behave so; but it’s not normal in a cat. The way it looks and listens sometimes is almost uncanny.”

“Well, you see, Henry made a great pet of him,” McNeil tacitly reproached her. “And when cats happen to be affectionate, they are extremely so.”

“Extremes are always a nuisance.” She ignored his implication, and proceeded to pour out tea.

Helping herself to a strip of buttered toast, she left him to enjoy the rest before embarking on her main subject. She preferred to avoid disturbing topics at meals; and the last few years had dulled the edge of her hearing, which served as a convenient excuse for eating in peace.

So McNeil, who also liked eating in peace, discoursed intelligently on the best of all possible Governments and the worst of all possible climates, themes on which they two were in perfect accord. Loyalty to England did not, in their opinion, include loyalty to England’s weather, which happened, just then, to be distilling an early autumn magic—even over the prose of pavements and shop fronts—from the light air and misted silvery gold of these late September days.

McNeil himself knew precisely what it was leading up to, this ritual of platitudes and buttered toast. She was nerving herself to speak of the inevitable biography. That her heart was set on it he knew very well. Equally well he knew that Henry, for some reason of his own, had always disliked the idea. What he did not know—and desired to find out—was whether she realised that dislike. Also, if she persisted in spite of it (and one could believe it of her) would she be prepared to give him, Jarvis, a free hand?

She had emptied her cup, now, and turned to him, her resolute mouth softened to a half-smile.

“You know, of course, that I want to talk to you this afternoon about the Life—Henry’s Life?”

“I gathered as much,” he said, and paused on a private wonder whether he could risk the question hovering in his mind.

Puzzled at his silence, and entirely misreading it, she went on, “You agree with me—it should be done by Clive? And of course I’m counting on your help.”

“Clive won’t count on it,” he rejoined a shade stiffly. “He won’t want any old dug-out cramping his style. These young men are sublimely sure of themselves.”

“Oh, sublimely! But there are whole tracts of his father’s life that he knows nothing about.”

“Quite so. And exploring those tracts will be a liberal education for the boy.”

Again he hesitated; and again, with the peculiar blindness of the egoist, she misread him.

“Frankly, Jarvis, I don’t understand your attitude,” she challenged him, with the level, full-lidded gaze of his dead friend—so like, yet so vitally different. “You seem to take no real interest. I thought it was a matter that you would have deeply at heart.”

And he, discarding his stiffness, answered, “It is a matter I have deeply at heart. If you are sure . . . if it is to be?”

“If?” Anger flashed in her eyes. “Of course it’s to be. It’s our duty—and his right. Don’t you see it so?”

“Yes—I see it so.” The controlled emotion beneath her anger made it easier to add, “The point is, Lady Arden—forgive my asking, did Henry never speak to you on the subject, never express a wish that his life should not be written?”

At that she flinched—an instant only.

“Of course we spoke of it, but I really cannot recall that he ever expressed a wish. He certainly had decided ideas about biography. He didn’t like the old cumbersome records, preferred it treated as an art But I always said, if you want truth, better keep clear of art! I admit, it’s mainly doctored truth in a big man’s life. Those who know most, usually won’t tell it. I say—why should they? He said—either tell the truth, or let it alone. I think he felt that a man gives the best of himself in his work—books, pictures, or whatever—and the rest is his own affair.”

She stared hard at Henry’s photograph in an honest effort to recall those long-ago talks with her son.

“But he knew I didn’t agree with him. And I imagine he also knew that if I outlived him—which seemed unlikely—his life would be written.”

There was no countering the note of decision in those last three words. McNeil smothered a sigh, and set down his empty cup.

“That form of immortality has its terrors. I’ve heard Henry say so more than once.”

“Oh, he talked like that.” Her voice had its old note of asperity. This was not at all the turn she had intended their conversation to take. “You really needn’t worry, Jarvis. The Life will be written under my censorship. I will have no embroidery, such as he would detest; and I won’t have one of the new fancy biographies setting up a great figure as a cockshy for the wit of little men. I prefer the old style, a clean straightforward record of the facts—the uniformly creditable facts of my dear son’s life and work. I shall speak to Clive about it on Sunday. And I hope he will see it as a privilege to carry out my wish. But with these war-disillusioned young men the decent filial sense, one could reckon on in my day, is at a discount. I suppose they fancy themselves more original without it! Of course he may be interested. Or he may simply be bored. In which case, he won’t hesitate to say so. What’s that? A visitor?”

Jarvis reached for hat and stick, but she checked him with a gesture. And when Bilson announced, “Miss Owen to see you, my lady,” she added in a swift undertone, “Don’t run away.”

For Miss Owen was there, hovering behind the butler, confident of admission.

As Bilson stood aside she swept into the room with a waft of faint fragrance, lean and lithe in her straight green coat and her shabby furs that were unmistakably of good origin. Her close-fitting hat was green also, enlivened by a tight little nosegay of magenta and orange. Long jade earrings emerged from the tufts of red brown hair that hid her ears; and her open coat revealed a jade pendant, curiously carved, dangling from a rope of beads.

“My dear Cousin Caroline! Please don’t get up,” she cried, her hands flung out, her chin thrust forward, with a chronic air of eagerness, not unbecoming.

And Lady Arden, who had risen with ease and dignity, found her hand so warmly clasped that she feared a kiss was impending. She disliked the habit of promiscuous kissing among relations, but mercifully Alison Owen forbore.

“I just looked in on my way home, thinking you might be alone,” she flowed blandly on, with a side glance at McNeil, to whom she remarked rather pointedly, “I didn’t know you were in Town. Such a stimulating month, September! Every one flocking back from all the Other Ends of Nowhere. And the concerts and the pictures—but they don’t interest you! How’s the Monograph? Are you giving yourself a little breather? Staying in Town a few days? Clive will be delighted.”

McNeil, unable to cope with questions in bunches, nodded politely and said in his heart, “She fancies herself very subtle, but she’s telling me straight I haven’t a look-in.”

“No fresh tea for me,”—she checked his move towards the bell,—“I’ve had mine at the Quill Club. Quite a little gathering there.” Pulling off her gloves, she settled herself close to Lady Arden, and spoke in a carefully distinct voice. Nothing enraged the “Old Lady” more than being shouted at. “And quite a little flutter of curiosity as to the ‘how’ and the ‘when’ and the ‘who’ of Henry’s biography. I’m told, on good authority, that the great Ken Wigge is dying to take it on.”

Lady Arden nodded, well pleased.

“And I can tell you, on better authority, that he won’t get the chance.”

“Oh, I’m so glad.” She laid a long thin hand on her cousin’s knee. “I was afraid you might be tempted. For of course he’s a wit, and as clever as paint. And he makes his subjects live. Also, I suppose his name would help with the reviewers.”

“Henry’s name, I consider, will carry quite sufficient weight for all purposes,” Lady Arden decreed, in what Tony called her best Buckingham Palace manner.

Miss Owen’s sigh of relief was a shade more eloquent than she knew; and McNeil, with a shrewd eye on them, reflected, “If I did jolt the Old Lady a trifle, she’s thoroughly enjoying herself now. Likes to have us all fawning on her for a favour that’s in her gift.”

Miss Owen, having cleared the ground, played her next card with an assumption of innocence almost too good to be true.

“Of course every one thinks I’m bound to know. And the amusing thing is”—she brought it out with a deprecating laugh—“they all seem to take for granted that it must be me, and that I’m keeping it dark. Aren’t people too silly?”

Lady Arden seemed deliberately to let that ingenuous question dangle in mid-air before she remarked with her impersonal crispness, “That’s as may be. They are often clever enough at gauging how much other people will swallow.”

Miss Owen’s hand slipped casually from the old lady’s knee.

“Well, I couldn’t make them swallow my genuine statement that I know nothing at all about your plans.”

And with practised ease, she passed on to less personal themes.

McNeil, waiting for her to go, grew mildly bored, then mildly amused, when he realised that she was trying to sit him out. He would gladly have humoured her, seeing she had been dealt a shrewd hit, but he had his orders. So he consoled himself with a graciously permitted cigar; till Miss Owen discovered, to her immense surprise, that it was half-past six.

“Goodness! How I’ve been running on! All your fault, Cousin Caroline, you do draw one out so! But I must fly. Give my love to Clive; and tell him to ring me up, within a reasonable time after his arrival! Good night, Mr. McNeil. Don’t overdo on the Monograph!”

Though he opened the door for her, she did not offer him her hand; and returning to his seat, he remarked with blunt good humour, “Poor lady! She was dying to get rid of me. Is there anything particular—? Why did you insist?”

She met the question with her straight gaze, in which there lurked a gleam of humour.

“Because I prefer your company, Jarvis.” She paused to enjoy his polite incredulity. “And I’m not slow-witted, if I am turned eighty. I knew what she’d come for. And I didn’t feel equal to a frontal attack.”

“I was the buffer State, in fact!” he chuckled and sat down again. “Weren’t you—the least bit hard on her?”

“Oh, dear, no. She will have bounded up again before she reaches the Cromwell Road. As Henry used to say, she has a piece of Spanish cork in her body, like the ball in Hans Anderson’s story, you remember?” (He didn’t remember. Her faculty in that line was amazing.) “I know Alison. She’s thoroughly pleased with herself. Quite convinced she’s Henry’s heaven-sent biographer, on the strength of some hectic verses and three novels that no one seemed violently anxious to read. She was fond of him, of course, in her exaggerated way; and she scraped up a rather close friendship with him in the last ten years. Had his Life in the back of her mind, I shouldn’t wonder! In my opinion an important political biography is a man’s job—if there are any men’s jobs left, outside the Army and Navy. There won’t be in twenty years’ time, at the rate they are letting the reins slip out of their hands.”

This, from the woman who all her life had kept her own hands firmly on the ribbons, moved McNeil to an enigmatic smile. Then, having served her purpose, and failed of his own, he departed; his robust friendliness unaffected by the fact she had shelved his broad hint and dashed his confident hope of being asked to handle the Life—if written it must be.

He still obstinately believed it would come to that. Let him only bide his time. They would need him in the end.

And she, as the door closed behind him, remained sitting upright; her heavily ringed hands folded tightly one upon the other; her lips, dry and compressed with age, showing a line of strain. All that talk about Henry and his Life had shaken her, as it would not normally have done, had not Jarvis so tactlessly insisted on that which she knew to be the truth, though nothing would induce her to admit it.

Finished product, as she was, of a world that can look straight at awkward facts and flatly deny their existence, she could shut out of her mind at will, anything that threatened to make her uncomfortable, or thwart her settled purpose. Of course she knew all about her own son’s disinclination for a full dress biography; but, in her view, she owed it to the world, to herself and him.

There were moments when she privately wondered why a man so ambitious, so uniformly successful, should have set his face against the one form of immortality that counted in her eyes. Certainly there had been a few distinguished men so minded—for obvious reasons; but in Henry’s attitude she could see no reason, unless it sprang from that odd reluctance of his to look squarely at himself, which had certainly not been derived from her. After all, if she insisted, none could oppose her; and no qualms, her own or others, should deflect, by a hair’s breadth, her settled resolve.

Instinctively, her gaze sought the big photograph on the table, and the slow, painful tears of old age gathered in her eyes. Wherever he might be, surely he could not grudge her the consolation she had earned by a life’s devotion to his interests? Yet she would forego it all, could she but conjure him back again for even one more year of earthly life. Dim prospects of some disembodied reunion held little comfort for her make of mind. It was her actual son she wanted back again; here, in this very room, so redolent of the man he was.

Instead, she sat there alone with the sleeping cat and the whispering logs piled on her coal fire. Only her electric standard had been turned on for tea and talk. The rest of the room was light and dark in patches, that shifted with the play of flames in the open hearth. These over-lofty rooms were difficult to keep warm. Though the fire was banked high and radiator pipes ran under the low window ledge, she felt aware of an unpleasant chilliness on that side, as if a stealthy draught blew from somewhere.

She glanced reproachfully at the long purple curtains that muffled the window. It was only a few inches open at the top. No possible draught could intrude. And she had not felt chilly before. It was a sensation so curiously unnerving that a wave of loneliness swept over her. She wished she had pressed Jarvis to return for dinner. Stella would almost certainly be out.

As a rule she enjoyed her evenings alone. What had gone wrong to-night? It was all their talk about Henry. . . .

At that point she pulled herself up sharply; and with steady hands—if her breathing was a little uneven—opened the paper, which Bilson had laid at her elbow.

Recriminations in the House, a daring “hold-up” in open daylight, murder, divorce, great country houses “under the hammer”—all the stir and stimulant of civilisation at its zenith (or its turning point?) very soon crowded out unnerving sensations. She could not have felt chilly. The room was warmer than usual.

None the less she ordered a fire to be lit upstairs; and spent her solitary evening in the back drawing-room.

Chapter Three

Some starve all the years of their lives, yet there is none to pity them.
— Ladislas St. Reymont

Every alternate Saturday Alison Owen was “at home” to a select circle of friends, minor planets in the literary firmament of the nineteen-twenties, most of them alternately engaged either in writing their own books, or reviewing one another’s.

The Saturday circle was select, mainly because her modest income entailed a modest flat, run with an erratic outside “help” since the War; and to-day had been her first afternoon gathering for tea and talk in her fourth-floor room, whose pleasing proportions were discounted by the clash of crude colour and design run mad that had chanced to be in favour when her lean purse permitted the extravagance of renovations. The long low walls ran in uneven stripes of black and hot orange, broken by sinuous traceries of a green that never was on land or sea. There were but three pictures—bizarre cubic ecstasies, expressed in splashes and spasmodic angles, the whole illumined by an immense Chinese lantern of many colours.

In lucid moments, Alison Owen frankly despised herself for thus doing violence to her own saner standards, from sheer cowardly dread of being dubbed a “back number” and losing her desperate clutch upon the flying skirts of youth. Had she genuinely caught these measles and mumps of Progressive Art, it were another matter; but in secret she far preferred the mumps and measles of an earlier decade. She was fatally “pre-War”—forty-two last June; and she was doing her adaptable best to conceal the damning fact that she could not honestly appreciate these pictures without perspective, these verses without rhyme (and often without reason), this crazy punctuation and discarding of capitals that were the hall-marks of modern art. And to deny one’s personal values was to sin against the light.

The clever voluble young people, with cropped heads and jutting cigarettes—who flopped on her floor cushions and talked and talked and talked—did presumably believe in their false values, or no values at all. For them, only the new thing counted. With positive relish they spurned the past from which they had sprung, as if a flower should deny its roots. To-night there had been four twenties and three thirties and one other forty besides herself. From her winged chair, by the “Cinderella” gas fire, she had nominally presided over their orgy of talk; though more often it was a case of pursuing rather than presiding.

Collectively, perhaps, they were cleverer than the literary twenties of her own day; yet what children they seemed, for all that, living in their ring-fence côteries, fancying themselves judges of the whole earth, and chastising with epigrams more honest writers than themselves. Perhaps it was her lively imagination and her advancing age that saved her from abetting these juvenile asperities; perhaps it was the simple fact that she had always worked against odds; but she never could forget that those castigated outsiders were also human beings, artists up to their lights, hard put to it often to keep themselves, and possibly others, alive.

It was Adrian Tomlin, this afternoon, who had been brilliantly holding forth on the “falsification and inner corruption of the emotional life of to-day;” insisting that your truly intelligent “modern” has lost the faculty of genuine feeling or believing, and is only sincere when he confesses himself fundamentally insincere. There had been some lively argument, some genuine flashes of wit; but the bulk of it, to her incipient middle age, had seemed little more than clever juggling with words that could be made to prove anything—or nothing.

Headachy and bemused with smoke, she had felt thoroughly jarred and out of tune with them all. And she had so looked forward to this first autumn gathering; had pictured them clamouring for authentic information about the Life; had invented her neat little temporising phrases in advance. And none of them had said a word. They were glad enough to come here and gobble her dainty teas and smoke her cigarettes, but she didn’t believe they had ever taken her seriously as a writer; and she was determined that they should.

Injured vanity and irritation had subsided a little now they were gone; but never had she been so ungraciously glad to see them go, to hear the last of their sham dix-huitième sentiments and phrases. But not slang! Oh, no! Slang was dead—till the next revival! She even wished they could have taken away with them the restless wall-paper, the cubic ecstasies and the Chinese lantern. A sudden longing assailed her for the old serenity of her few Whistlers and Turners, banished to her bedroom—where she could still be as peacefully out-of-date as she pleased. If they guessed, how they would despise her! And, oh, how they did fill the place with smoke!

Flinging open the windows, she poured out a cup of strong tepid tea and collected the few remaining sandwiches. Talking was hungry work; and lunch had been rather a negligible meal. Her erratic help had failed her; and she hated cooking only a degree less than she hated cheap restaurants, sampled ad nauseam during the War. She had thought of going out this evening, but pennies were scarce, and a drizzle had set in at dusk. There was some cold tongue in the larder, also apples, if she could be bothered to bake them, and a “spot” of cream left over from the orgy. There was her deep arm-chair, with a book for company, and the glow of her “Cinderella” fire, which at least had the cheerful look of red-hot cinders with little blue flames quivering among them. The War had robbed her of her real fire—more truly companionable to a lone woman than any unresponsive cat; and, in these difficult after days, her bare two hundred a year, plus literary earnings, no longer seemed the modest competence it was of old.

Generous and impractical, she had no skill in organising her cramped resources. She could deny herself on the grand scale, but the tyranny of small economies pricked like thorns under the skin. Partly for distraction, partly from a genuine impulse to help and feel and know, she led a life of restless activity, full of talk and movement, coloured by fitful “inspirations” that might crystallise into a poem or a book. Yet there was curiously little to show for it all. There were even grey days when it all seemed simply a form of running away from the inner emptiness of her life, an emptiness with people all round it, and very few people in it; troops of so-called friends, yet none that ever warmed her heart with the wonder of spontaneous physical attraction.

She had dabbled hopefully in Theosophy and Astrology, without surrendering to either. Spiritualism tempted her, and the idea of possible communion with the dead. If some day she could get in touch with Henry—? That was her secret hope. But these things belonged to the lonely, hidden Alison, whom none apparently cared to know. The brisk outer Alison must at all costs keep abreast of the newest theories, the newest fashions, whether in creeds or in clothes; and of late years the clothes seemed the more stable of the two! Any fate were better than being left in the lurch—whatever the “lurch” might be! Except for the fact that you could be left in it, no one seemed to know!

So, faint yet pursuing, she valiantly and vaguely kept in step with the times; seeking some foothold, spiritual or emotional—and finding none; tempted almost to envy, in dejected moments, the noble army of contented and cow-like women, untroubled by vain desires, plodding serenely through deserts of dulness, taking things as they came. Too acutely she had always been aware of the way they did not come; never more so, perhaps, than now, in her early forties, the better half of life already behind her—and she, the opportunist, still vainly awaiting the supreme opportunity.

Even her genuine gift for writing, she had piled haphazard and with scant success, possibly because she had always written with one eye on the côterie whose good opinion she craved, for what it might be worth. Her two slender volumes of poems they had treated kindly on the whole, but the title of the second one—Divine Despair by A. O.—had been re-christened, by some bright spirit, “Deep Breathings from My Diaphragm” by “Heigh-ho.” And some other bright spirit, confiding in her sense of humour, had been moved to repeat the joke. In any other connection, she would thoroughly have enjoyed it. Applied to her cherished book, it had hurt her inexpressibly. Even now she could not recall that moment without going hot all over.

In her novels, written with facility and fervour, she had been fatally unable to control her weakness for the halo and the brand of sentiment they scorned. Critics had praised her with “faint damns.” Readers had not rushed to snatch her volumes from library shelves. Publishers had not pursued her with demands for more. Yet inevitably—fatally perhaps—there would be more. The reality having been denied her, she must express herself emotionally—or perish.

In spite of discouragement, she still cherished a secret belief in her gift. And here, at last, was the great theme—confidently awaited—almost within her grasp. Biography—since those “Eminent Victorians” put the breath of life into it—had become almost a new art. In that direction, perhaps, lay her real gift, while she had been fervently fumbling elsewhere. Her dwindling exchequer demanded another book; and she herself was feeling stale at the moment, sick to the soul of manufactured love stories that only filled her with futile and shameless envy of her own puppets. Vicarious romance had its charms, but it could not satisfy the soul of a lonely woman created for better things. . . .

The shrill sound of the telephone behind her startled her out of her reverie. Its irritable note of command had a way of jabbing her nerves just when she most wanted to be left in peace.

“Who is it? What?” she asked brusquely.

“That you, Alix? Clive speaking,” came the unexpected answer, in a disembodied voice so startlingly like Henry’s that it sent a small shiver down her spine. “If you aren’t engaged, can I float round after dinner? The poor Old Lady seems a trifle on edge. She says we must have a good talk to-morrow; but this evening I fancy she’d sooner be alone. And it would cheer me up to have a wrangle with you. Soon after eighty-thirty, eh?”

“Delighted. You’ll be a god-send. Welcome home!”

And she sat down to her slender repast still feeling unsteadied by the illusion of Henry’s voice.

She had slipped on a simple old yellow silk gown and her rope of Chinese amber, his last birthday present. Yellow suited her; and, without conscious ulterior motive, she wanted to look her best in the eyes of his son. If Caroline had said nothing about the Life, dared she seize this unsought opportunity of getting in the first word? Might she not, at least, let Clive realise the urgency of her own desire, of her actual need? She so seldom had the courage of her not very robust egotism, when one chance in a hundred had the kindness to come her way.

*  *  *

It was ten minutes to nine when Alison at last heard Clive on the landing; and she opened the door as his finger pressed the bell.

“There you are! Come along in, my dear,” she welcomed him fervently.

His half-amused smile reminded her that he rather discouraged fervour; but at such a moment, even to please him, she could not be other than herself.

He came along in; and there he was—the same Clive, yet subtly not the same, as no intelligent young man should be after nine months of vigorous living and learning, in whatever medium. Strong and straight, with the bearing of a soldier, he looked decidedly browner, manlier; certain lines in his face a shade too fine-drawn for eight and twenty, lines scored in hundreds of young faces by three or four years of War. Neither so tall nor so broad as his father, he was Henry’s self in the carriage of head and shoulders, in the contained manner and the glacier blue of his eyes—the way they could look at you, yet seem to be looking through you at something else beyond. But the mouth under his clipped moustache had its own odd mingling of softness and repression, with a satirical twist when he smiled. Still the same contradictory Clive under surface changes; at once hard and fine, frank and shy, oddly impervious to the ugliness of living, his young seriousness salted with humour.

So deeply moved she was, at sight of him, that before she quite realised her own intent, she had taken his hands in hers—and kissed him.

She felt him stiffen instinctively. Then he looked very straight at her and said, “Thank you,” as if he understood all that she had tried to express.

Next instant, his eyes were frankly appraising her yellow frock.

“Suits you,” he remarked, edging away from her emotion and his own.

“It’s only a réchauffé. I had it dyed to go with Henry’s beads.” She fingered them caressingly.

“Did he give you those?”

“Yes. My last birthday. Aren’t they beauties? He gave me lovely presents—always.”

Clive accepted all that without comment, which made her feel as if she had been guilty of boasting to serve her own ends.

A light veil of shyness still seemed to hang between them. Very leisurely he removed his overcoat and strolled across to the mantelpiece, holding out his hands over the fire, absently studying the Cubic atrocity that smote him between the eyes.

And she sat there, fearful of striking the wrong note, waiting for him to speak.

Presently he sighed and sat down in the winged chair.

“It’s pretty awful coming back to this,” he said, without looking at her. “The house—so dead empty; and the Old Lady keeping a stiff lip.” He checked himself and added more conversationally, “Beginning already to think about a biography. She would!”

“Beginning! She has been thinking of little else, I imagine, for the last few months.”

Clive sat silent a moment, considering.

“On the grand scale, I suppose? Got any of the big men in her eye?”

“No. She won’t have an outsider, if she can help it. I rather fancy she’s got you in her eye.”

“Me? Good Lord!” (Alison’s heart lifted at the note of surprise and dismay.) “But I’ve already a book on hand, and I’ve no special qualifications.”

(“Better and better,” cried Alison’s heart.) Modesty was the last thing she had expected; but a troublesome sense of duty goaded her to say, “You have the supreme qualification—in her eyes—of being your father’s son.”

Clive twitched his shoulders. “That’s a matter of opinion. Biography as an art, not as a mixture of whitewash and glorification, attracts me immensely. But—one’s own father? The thing is a transmission of personality—or it’s nothing. And I’m doubtful if a man’s nearest relatives or intimates can ever see him in his true proportions.”

That flash of sagacity surprised Alison hardly less than his modesty.

“I suppose,” she mused, “that we each saw a different Henry Arden. ‘Two soul-sides,’ as Browning has it. And the question is, which of us saw the real one? That’s the Henry we’ve got to fathom. And that’s the Henry I don’t believe any of us knew?”

Clive flung her an odd look, and she ventured boldly:

“You think you did?”

“I wish I did. That’s another story. I suppose I saw him very much as he intended us all to see him: a fine man on the big scale, travelling in a bee line to the goal he aimed at, never letting his heart try conclusions with his head. And it seems generally admitted there was a streak of genius—”

“More than a streak,” Alison unfailingly interrupted. “I suppose that’s what made him such a curiously separate person. The more one saw him in the thick of the world, the more one noticed it. At least, I did. Perhaps because I often feel more alone in the thick of the world than anywhere else. He seemed to live on himself, so to speak. He was an island. And there were no lines of communication.”

“My good Alix!” Clive chuckled at the extravagant simile; but, possessed by her idea, she lightly brushed him aside.

“Do you never think of people geographically? I often do. There are the peninsulars, jutting boldly out into life, but never quite burning their boats. And the continents, the big comprehensive minds that inherit the earth—Shakespeare for instance. And the islands—lonely and detached—sufficient unto themselves. I stick to it that the real hidden Henry was an island; whether by choice, or because he couldn’t help himself, I suppose none of us will ever discover. I should say not from choice. The better I knew him, the more he struck me as a man unsatisfied in his deeper needs. Of course he would never admit it; but true intimacy needs no admissions.”

Clive, staring pensively at the ingenious imitation of a fire, let her facile tongue rim on without troubling to be impressed by her delicate insistence on a privileged relation.

Then he struck in suddenly. “No lines of communication. . . . He did rather give one that impression. But after all—he married. Where d’you suppose Mother came in?”

And Alison said in a changed tone, “That’s what I’ve often wondered. She was a dear, good woman, but— How did it strike you?”

“Can’t say it ever did strike me—till this moment. I haven’t your taste for the emotionalities; and a fellow’s apt to take his parents for granted in that line. They seemed to hit it off pretty decently.”

“I’m sure they did. But that’s a far cry from the ‘marriage of true minds.’”

“Oh, miles away!” Clive’s smile had its satirical twist. “But I’d bet long odds ‘true minds’ don’t come down arm in arm from the altar more than once or twice in several blue moons!”

She gazed at him reproachfully.

“Clive—can’t you ever be serious?”

He flung her a straight look.

“My dear old thing—I was through the War. Besides . . . can’t you see . . .?”

There could be no mistaking his tone.

“Dear boy, of course I see—”

“Very well then—” He swerved away again from her too ready sympathy. “Let’s stick to our muttons. How about the Old Lady? I suppose you’ll allow that she knew her own son, rather more than less?”

“Rather less than more, I should say. In fact it’s my belief that she didn’t really know him at all; and I’m afraid that’s going to be the crux of this biography business.”

Clive bent upon her a frown, half puzzled, half amused.

“This comes of being a giddy novelist! You’re conjuring up a literary mystery, just for the excitement of solving it, and dragging in the psychological touch. This isn’t literature—it’s life.”

“It’s got to be literature, Clive, if it’s to be worthy of my friend and your father.”

“Yes—in the best sense—‘a marriage of life and Art.’ You can rest assured I shall do my best to make it so—if I decide to take it on. I’m up to my eyes, at present, with my ‘Emerging East’ book; and there are masses of letters to wade through. Seems the Dad was ‘some’ correspondent, even for a Victorian. Various people have been asked to send in all they can; but the Old Lady hasn’t felt up to dealing with anything yet, except the necessary papers. I confess I rather funk the whole thing.”

“Clive! You aren’t keen?” Her voice was carefully controlled.

“No. I’m not keen.”

At that she let herself go. “Good heavens! The irony of things! And I’d give years of my life—”

“You?”

“Why not? I’m a writer. I’m his cousin, once removed. I thought the world of him.”

“And you hoped I might shunt the arduous privilege—?”

“No, I didn’t dare to hope. I thought you’d be keen and cocksure.”

“Well, I’m neither. But if I am funking it—I’m not chucking it, Alix. Not yet anyhow. I shall make no decision till I’ve looked thoroughly into the whole thing.”

To Alison, that meant hope was not yet dead. And suddenly she thought of Jarvis McNeil.

“Clive”—she leaned forward, cloaking her eagerness—“there’s just one thing I would like to ask. If you do decide not to write this Life, will you put in a good word for me?”

He returned her look with his friendliest smile.

“I don’t want to damp your ardour, my dear, but you don’t know, any more than we do, the weight of your guns in that line. You’d get running away with yourself and your theme.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” The prick to her vanity passed almost unnoticed. “I’d rise to a real thing like that It would be the chance of my life. I can just bear losing it to you; but not—to any one else.”

“That’s jolly decent of you. All the same, I intend to do it, if I feel I can pull it off. But if there’s any cause or just impediment, I’ll put in a word for you—though I can’t vouch for the Old Lady! That’s a bargain, eh?”

He proffered his hand, and its firm grasp did sensibly allay disappointment and quicken hope. As their fingers fell apart, he said with a sudden uprush of feeling:

“Good Lord! How the dear old Dad would hate the notion of mere guinea-pigs, like you or me, messing about with his sacred papers and letters. It hurts a bit to think how utterly the dead are at the mercy of the living. Lucky for them they don’t know.”

“They do know. He knows,” Alison countered, with fuller conviction in her tone than in her heart.

“You believe that?” he asked simply.

“Of course I do. They want us to. They try to help us. I’m sure of it.”

His long look was disconcertingly direct.

“You don’t go dabbling in mediums and that sort of tosh?”

“Oh, no—not mediums,” she answered truthfully, relieved at the form his question had taken. “But it isn’t all tosh, Clive, as you’d see for yourself if you troubled to investigate.”

“’Fraid I haven’t the time or the taste for it. And perhaps it’s as well, for practical issues, that I am a bit of a sceptic. If I could really believe that he knows what we’re up to, I doubt if I’d dare lay a finger on his Life. So don’t get trying to convert me, my dear, to serve your own ends!”

“Oh, Clive! As if I would!”

“You never can tell—as the great Bernard Shaw has playfully reminded us! If we could really get a squint inside ourselves—good heavens, what a menagerie!”—He glanced at her, with his quizzical smile—“A woman of your trade ought to know all about that!”

Of course she knew; disastrously she knew—

*  *  *

It was near eleven when he left her feeling less lonely and more cheered, in spite of disappointment, than her afternoon guests had left her, for all their effervescence of brains and wit. It felt almost like being in touch with Henry again; a Henry individually other, yet in essence the same. The pain of it and the wonder of it clutched at her heart.

Desperately she needed some big demand to absorb her and exercise her various faculties. If only she dared suggest a collaboration—Clive and she! But the very courteousness of his almost certain refusal would hurt beyond bearing. So kind, so courteous, so curiously unapproachable—Henry all over! It was much to have secured his promise; though common sense and her own fatality assured her that the occasion would not arise.

Leaning back in her chair with closed eyes, to shut out her unrestful renovations, she let herself deliberately sink into the silence, as into soft cushions, resting her mind in it as the cushions rested her body; stilling all conscious thought—till certain familiar sensations impelled her to feel for the pencil and tablet on her elbow table, hoping, she hardly knew what.

Deeper and deeper she sank into the silence, but her hand remained motionless. No inner impulsion “troubled the still.” Only a queer sense of lightness pervaded her brain, as if the top of her head were dissolving in mist.

Faintly alarmed, she shook herself free of the horrid sensation—and the spell was broken.

The ensuing chill of disappointment was tempered with relief. Deliberately she had been hoping to “get in touch” with Henry; and recalling his dislike and distrust of all that, she felt distinctly alarmed. She would not dare to try again. Some quality in the man, even when dead, still had power to withhold her from any attempt at forcing the intimate note, or taking unwarrantable liberties with his ghost!

A small shiver ran through her, a sickening sense of failure all round; and turning out the fire she went ruefully to bed.

Chapter Four

There is a saying . . . that we touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human body. But we touch Heaven with far more audacity, when we lay our hands on a human life.
— Stephen Paget

Clive Arden, in common with most young men of the Great War period, had lived through many strange experiences between March, 1915, and November, 1918; but he was not soon to forget the so differently strange experiences of those Autumn weeks, when he surrendered himself to soaking in the Past, and making the belated acquaintance of his own father.

Whether or no he could do justice to his subject, he was acutely alive to the height and depth and breadth of the task assigned to him. Like many gifted young men of his day, he had already been looking towards biography as, in essence, a form of creative art. He had even, while in Egypt, been casting about in his mind for a victim on whom he might test his powers. And here was Fate, with a dramatic gesture, handing him the very victim with whom he felt least competent to deal.

Sitting day after day at the library table, confronting his own copy of the Orpen portrait, in its dark oak frame, he found himself wondering ruefully, was there one son in a hundred who had the luck to achieve intimate friendship with his father? For some mysterious reason—known only to Freud and his disciples—that supreme relation, so rich in shy and blundering impulses of affection, seemed fated to be one of the most difficult that human flesh is heir to. Youth might be spared so much of futile endeavour, age be so enriched by closer confidence; but always there was some slight change in the equation, always that perverse British disability to come within speaking range of things most deeply felt, most mutually understood.

No doubt nine fathers out of ten registered a vow that they, at least, would not be dumb as fishes about everything that mattered. They would win the confidence and friendship of their sons. Yet how many sons, looking backward, had any inkling of impulses so curiously barren of result? They could see nothing but their own genuine impulses chilled by parental insensibility. They made no allowance for the fact that fathers are also husbands and bread-winners, caught in the intricate machinery of life; hurried through the years that fly faster with every decade; awakening, often too late, to find their sons grown men, and the long road behind them strewn with neglected opportunities.

And Clive Arden, at eight and twenty, was no marked exception to the rule. Looking backward—trying to crystallise his own impressions before blurring them with those of others—he saw a father beloved and secretly admired, more or less affectionate and accessible in early days, slipping gradually out of reach, as year by year the veil of reserve grew denser between them; both respecting it too innately to discover that it would doubtless have dissolved at a touch—the right touch, at the right moment.

Nevertheless, both being human, there had been certain occasions, sharply bitten into Clive’s memory. . . .

Once, for some forgotten reason, in preparatory schooldays, when his father had undertaken the holiday ordeal of seeing him off, and his own misery had been sharpened by the strained silence between them, he had ventured, at last, to slip a hand through his father’s arm; and had been startled by the strong grip of masculine fingers on his own. To this day he could recall that sensation, and his exultant thought, “I’ve found Daddy now!”

With quite a new eagerness he had looked forward to the brief glimpse at half term: and behold, the Daddy miraculously found in the taxi, seemed not to be there at all. It had been puzzling and disappointing; and he had never so ventured again.

Another time, years later: his mother dangerously ill, and he just turned fifteen, sick with anxiety, had been haunted by the strangeness of his father’s face; as if he were racked by some inner conflict, yet steeled, as always, against the least finger-touch of sympathy. At last, one night, oppressed by the shared unspoken ache, he—Clive—had stumbled into broken speech, hardly knowing what he said: and again he had been surprised at the abrupt intensity of his father’s response, though that haunting impression of inner conflict remained.

Later still, they had come starkly face to face in the opening weeks of the Great War; lifted out of themselves by an emotion deeply personal, yet so far transcending the personal that they could speak of it together untroubled by any hampering constraint.

And Clive—leaving England with his draft, soon after the battle of Loos—had found himself thinking, “Now I’ve really got some grip on Dad, I shall be blown to bits, and no good come of it at all.”

He had not been blown to bits; but in three and a half years he had only achieved a few hurried glimpses of his father, caught in the wheels of administrative labours that engrossed him body and soul. Though their closer friendliness continued, it had curiously emphasised, for Clive, the older man’s essential aloofness, so ingrained by habit that he could not away with it, even if he would.

*  *  *

And now, here was he—the son who had so scrupulously respected his father’s reserves—taking all manner of liberties with his private papers and correspondence. By every instinct they shared in common—by his own British tendency to hide behind a mask, as little like himself as might be—he deplored this regrettable necessity for prying and peering. But without it there could be no Life; and on that Life his redoubtable grandmother had set her heart.

To conjure ordered sequence out of chaos, and make the dry bones live—it was a task for gods rather than men! Yet it was also going to involve a vast amount of drudgery that would probably smother any creative faculty he might possess. There were note-books and jottings and printed slips innumerable. There were proofs, manuscripts and half written essays. There were old friends, who wrote at great length; or invited Clive to dinner and talked at even greater length. There was his grandmother’s expanding file, packed with cuttings, and the flood of printed matter, poured forth after his father’s death.

At the time, Clive had done his best to avoid reading most of that stuff; partly because it hurt, partly because he felt impatient of the shallow journalistic judgments, the stale facile phrases, and political clichés of the hour. Possibly old Jarvis would help him to unearth a few fragments worth preserving; but his own immediate concern was with the younger Henry Arden, utterly unknown to him, yet so near akin. Astonishingly hard it was to focus that which had been, in one sense, so close—in another sense, so far removed. It took him most of his time and all his brains to absorb whatever came along, to arrange and interpret and sift the wheat from the chaff. Was there ever an adventure so full of pitfalls as this journey of discovery through another man’s life—and that man his own father!

Before he had been at work a week, he began to feel a new respect for even the most mediocre of all the biographers who cumbered the earth.

Night after night he sat up into the small hours; reading or making copious notes; and by day, he still pursued his journey of discovery, in the smoking-rooms of his father’s friends, political or literary; still found fresh matter for surprise and interest at every turn.

Not least among the surprises was a belated letter of condolence from a big man in the musical world, recently returned from abroad. Having heard that a Life was in progress, he wrote feelingly of his personal loss, of a close friendship based on mutual devotion to the greatest of all arts. There were letters he would gladly lend; and he pressed Clive to come and dine with him, that they might talk of Henry Arden.

Now though Clive had been aware that his father enjoyed good music, he had reckoned himself the keener musician of the two; and had sometimes wondered, in a desultory way, why they did not oftener enjoy it together. His father had a knack of slipping off by himself to a concert or an opera, indulging in a creditable taste almost as if it were a secret vice. And here was a noted conductor, like Alton Lane, writing of him as one whose feeling for music amounted to a passion.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Clive to himself.

And a few days later he dined alone with Alton Lane—a big fair man, with a clumsy body and fine expressive hands, whose frank enthusiasm for Henry Arden warmed the heart of his son. There had evidently been a close friendship, especially in younger days. More than once they had attended the great Bayreuth festival together. Yes—even after Arden’s marriage.

“He wrote some very clever papers on musical subjects, at that time,” Lane rambled on, while Clive smoked an expensive cigar scarcely noticing its flavour. Here was a whole facet of his father’s personality barely known to him; and he must be careful not to give himself away. “They were never published, I believe. I never saw them in print.”

“Nor I,” said Clive, wondering: “Why on earth haven’t I run across the manuscript?”

“You read them, eh?” (Mercifully the question amounted to a statement.) “There was good stuff in them. I remember once telling Arden he should have devoted a part of his great gifts to musical interpretation. And I can hear the quizzical note in his voice, as he answered, ‘Tell that to my mother!’”

Clive smiled pensively, knowing all about the Old Lady’s contempt for the arts in general, and music in particular. But he said nothing; and Lane pursued his theme.

“The essay ‘On Listening to the Violoncello’ (you remember?) was one of the best things of its kind I ever read.”

On that particular subject Clive could respond with unguarded ease and freedom; and the great man was delighted to find him so satisfactorily his father’s son.

“The ’cello is supreme for you also?” he asked, beaming approval upon this admirable young man.

It was true; but not till to-night had Clive known it for a case of “also”; and he had a moment of feeling, “Damn it, this is hardly fair!” However, putting aside his own sensations, he made the most of a congenial theme; and they talked ’cello—its composers and interpreters—till Big Ben boomed out stroke after stroke of his midnight orgy; and Clive reluctantly rose to take his leave.

“Come again, young Arden, when you’ve an hour to waste on an old ’un. Don’t know why we didn’t meet sooner,” the big man said at parting, and thrust an envelope into his hands. “Two tickets for the 20th—Astra’s ’cello Concerto in the programme. And I conduct. There’s a woman composer worthy of our noble instrument. She doesn’t, like some of her sort, mistake violence for strength. There’s a masculine sweep and breadth about her work. You admire it, as your father did, eh?”

“Yes, rather,” Clive answered with conviction. “It’ll be a double treat, with your conducting. Thanks very much.”

“You’ll find some interesting stuff in my little despatch case. Make any use of it you please.”

And Clive, handling his own small car, rolled homeward between ghostly houses and lamps strung along the streets like Shiraz pearls, feeling stimulated and intrigued by this fresh impetus to the absorbing game of hide-and-seek with his father’s complex personality.

Back in the familiar library, that seemed to emanate by now an almost personal welcome, he dumped down the precious case unopened, poured himself out a whisky and soda, and spent a couple of hours in searching systematically for the originals of those essays on musical themes, which he keenly wanted to read.

Not a trace of them could he find.

Chapter Five

Whose is the word?
Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?
— Alice Meynell

More and more, as interest deepened with knowledge Clive found his own centre of interest deflected from trivial daily events to those long afternoons and evenings alone in the library, seated under the big lamp, which illumined only his papers and that arresting portrait of his father. Brightly lit, darkly framed, the stern face, with its brooding gaze, drew him like a magnet. Without that familiar presence, his lonely, industrious evenings would have been robbed of half their charm. It increased unmistakably the new feeling of fellowship and understanding, quickened at times to a deeper sense of identity, as if he had verily slipped inside his father’s skin—a sensation familiar, no doubt, to any creative novelist, and probably induced in himself by much the same process. Rapidly filling his note-books, sinking ever deeper into the past, he was not merely doing his work, he was living and being it: the supreme experience of the artist in any medium.

On the night after his dinner with Lane—when he had sat up till all hours over the contents of the despatch case—a haunting undersense of his father’s spiritual presence had so disturbingly beset him that he decided he had been overdoing the “small hours touch” and had better snatch a few nights of sound prosaic sleep; likewise a few days “off,” if the pull of the magnet would permit.

And there were family events at the moment, interesting enough to bring him—as Tony politely put it—“gasping to the surface!” Not least, the arrival of that irrepressible youngster himself—turned twenty-five and very much the man-about-Town—to spend his leave nominally at home. Actually, in return for a “bedder” and occasional meals, Clive would have the pleasure of his company when he was not urgently in demand elsewhere.

Clive had no quarrel with the arrangement, for he loved “the Youngster” with a more than brotherly love. In the days of school-room feuds, he had always been apt to stand by Tony rather than Stella—a rank little egoist, even then, with a shrewd eye to her own advantage, and a streak of the Old Lady in her make-up; which was probably why they had never hit it off. She was out of mourning already, running round again like a tee-to-tum, so restless all through that she could hardly sit still at anything—bar food or a play—for half an hour on end. And, except for Molly Mansergh, he was not partial to her friends of either sex. Already he felt himself slipping away from the twenties. Their outlook, even their language, were not those of the early twenties he had known in France.

But Tony was toute autre chose. He lit up the big, solemn house. He made the Old Lady laugh; and even “cheeked” her, as no one else in creation would dare to do. By her decree they were not entertaining, nor officially out of mourning, till after the New Year; but Tony engagingly insinuated that clearing out rugs in the drawing-room and a little impromptu dancing to a gramophone couldn’t be called entertaining—as he understood the word. To which specious argument Clive and his grandmother had finally succumbed—neither could have said why. One did succumb to Tony; and that was that.

As for Clive, he soon discovered that, having let in the world, the difficulty was to retreat and shut the door on it again. Had the word independence any real meaning, once you became entangled in the mechanism of life—its demands and desires and complicated claims—London life above all?

There was Lane’s concert—a rare treat; there was Alison badgering him to “grace” one of her precious Saturdays; and an urgent letter from his publishers about “The Emerging East,” due to appear in January, but no material yet received. There was a select dinner party at the House—mainly old friends of his father’s; and finally there was old McNeil butting in for a few days, very helpful over sorting papers and things.

And two days later there was Stella casually announcing her engagement to the Honourable Gerard Wingate, partner in a successful new publishing firm, run on up-to-date lines. Of course it was Clive’s job—Stella wouldn’t bother—to pacify his grandmother, who had never even met Mr. Wingate, and was rigidly old-fashioned in her attitude to “trade,” though in many ways she surprisingly kept pace with the times.

There had already been a sharp little skirmish between the two combatants; eighty-one very erect in her Chippendale chair; twenty-three negligently sprawling in a corner of the Chesterfield, with a provocative tilt of her shingled head, her flesh-coloured stockings exposed from the knee; a cigarette, used freely for punctuating remarks, and a small arrogant chin—also used for punctuating—flattened at the tip.

The indictment came from eighty-one.

“I hear we are to congratulate you, Stella. This is very sudden. I should like to be better informed.”

“We are rather sudden these days, Granny dear. The pace has quickened all round, as you may have perceived.”

“I perceive quite clearly that you are a headstrong, impudent minx. You might at least have introduced him to me. Wingate—? I don’t know the family. Some mushroom peer, I suppose?”

“Tinned soup, I believe,” Stella murmured placably.

“Tinned soup peerage. A complete stranger. And—in trade!”

Stella responded by flicking her cigarette ash on to the carpet—her grandmother’s particular abomination.

“We happen to be living in the twentieth century, thank Heaven. And Gerard isn’t a bookseller. You can’t call a publisher ‘trade.’”

“As to that—it all depends,” the Victorian Age grudgingly admitted. “There are the great houses, of course, aristocrats in their own line—”

“Well, Gerard’s an aristocrat in his own line. And he’s probably founding a great house for all you know. Even your mustiest old families had to begin somewhere.”

That palpable hit goaded Lady Arden into the doubtful assertion, “Well, I’m sure if your father was alive he wouldn’t hear of it.”

Stella’s unguarded rejoinder, “Then it’s just as well he won’t hear of it,” had precipitated what Tony called a “glacial epoch,” which endured for days, and troubled no one except Clive.

The thoughtlessly cruel little speech had hurt him also: and he had lately become aware of an unsuspected affection for his lonely and formidable grandmother, who seemed to require affection as little as she inspired it. Mainly on her account, he took some pains to dispel the glacial epoch. He also persuaded the girl to apologise for her egregious remark—which she obligingly did, with a private grimace and a very taking air of, “You see a humble penitent before you.”

To Clive himself, with those deserted ghosts in the library tugging at his heart, it all seemed curiously remote, even when Stella significantly informed him that Molly Mansergh was back in town, having spent the summer in Ireland with a brother.

“I suppose before very long,” she remarked to his silence, “you’ll be startling Gran with your little announcement?”

And Clive, retreating into his shell, answered coolly, “Not that I’m aware of. One newly engaged couple is quite sufficient ordeal for any family! And at present I’ve no spare time for love-making, which wouldn’t suit—the lady!”

Stella twinkled maliciously. “You needn’t climb on your high horse with me. It isn’t as if the lady was, so to speak, in the air.”

“She’s entirely in the air, so far as I’m concerned,” Clive retorted, in a tone that even Stella could not disregard.

Without some sharp check, he knew her capable of dragging in Molly Mansergh by name, which he would resent as much for the girl’s sake as his own. Molly was a thorough good sort, much too good for Stella and her set; a real person—genuine, ardent, finely tempered; a girl any man might feel proud to win. As Stella’s friend, he had seen a good deal of her, in the last two years, without much active seeking on his part. Her comradely naturalness made him feel more at ease with her than he could ever manage to feel with Stella’s devastating lip-stick and powder-puff charmers, who seemed to have little on but a frock and chemise, and not a great deal of either! Mercifully they didn’t devastate him. They only drove him several inches deeper into his shell.

Heartless he was not; but women, as such, did not count for a great deal in his scheme of things. And this after-war world was choc-a-bloc with them; so brisk and purposeful, so deadly sure of what they wanted, so deadly determined to have it, that at times they spurred all his masculinity to revolt. And very deep down they disturbed him; not with the normal thrill of attraction, but with an uncomfortable thrill of fear. Was this flood of breeched femininity let loose by the War, destined to swamp the world, unless men awoke to the danger in time? A good many masculine men, he suspected, were troubled by like sensations, though few cared to admit them. Perhaps they partly accounted for his own lack of susceptibility? Or perhaps it was the War—those few and tremendous years when women, except as episodes, were virtually out of the picture. Those years had not merely eaten up the time when he should have been qualifying for diplomacy or the Army. They had left him with a lurking distaste for both: a troublesome disinclination to throw down roots anywhere, to become rutted in a groove. Happily there was no immediate call for drastic decisions. Till the Life was written and revised and in the printers’ hands, he had his work cut out for him: work very well worth doing.

*  *  *

It was a positive relief to brush all the rest aside, to get back to his library and his letters. But even there he was pursued by the difficulty of keeping the good Old Lady tactfully at arm’s length, of edging away from her too keen interest in the progress he was not very visibly making. She would invite herself to tea in the library, and sit there burbling about old days, about “Henry’s” early sayings and doings, while he smoked and made surreptitious notes. Once installed, it was the world’s work to uproot her. Yet, in a sense, he liked having her there, even when she wandered hopelessly off the point (she was less given that way than most old people), even when he was frankly wishing her at Jericho.

And suddenly he would catch her gazing at him, her stern eyes softened to a brooding affection; and he would chide himself for an unfeeling beast.

One evening when tea had been removed, and he hung about near her chair—hoping she would take the hint and remove herself—she further surprised him by saying abruptly: “I can’t make it out, dear boy. Just lately you seem so much more like Father—his mannerisms, his voice, his way of moving. Sometimes . . . when you speak, it gives me quite a turn, as if Henry were in the room. Just an old woman’s fancy, perhaps,” she excused herself with a becoming touch of dignity. “Or perhaps, seeing more of you, I’ve noticed it as I didn’t before.”

“Yes. That’s quite probable,” he agreed, puzzled and interested none the less; and moved by an infrequent impulse, he put a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry if it upsets you, Gran.”

“It doesn’t always. Sometimes . . . I’m glad of it.”

She looked up at him—a long look, that gave Clive a strange sense of contact with the actual Caroline Arden of whom he knew nothing at all.

He was standing—though he could not guess it—in the same place, in the same attitude that his father had stood on the morning when he told her of his decision to accept the appointment he had so nearly refused. (And the thought flashed, “If he had refused it, he might be alive now.”) Touch and tone, the look in his eyes—it all rushed back upon her: an overwhelming flood of sensation; the blood drumming in her ears; a dizziness clouding her brain. . . .

Only the cast-iron habit of a lifetime saved her from some idiotic form of collapse. And as she rose unsteadily, Clive’s hand tightened on her elbow.

“Like me to give you an arm upstairs?” he asked, wondering what on earth could have shaken her so.

She drew herself up, with a pathetic attempt at her old independence—she who never lounged, like her grandchildren, and spurned the aid of a stick.

“I don’t need an arm, dear Boy. But I’d like it—if you can be bothered with your old grandmother!”

So he gave her an arm. He installed her in the back drawing-room, with her footstool and her evening paper; and again he hesitated beside her chair. Then, without a word, he stooped and kissed her cheek—soft and lined, and very cool to his lips.

“Good night, Gran,” he said hurriedly to cover that unexpected impulse. “I shan’t be seeing you again. I’m dining out.” (He was not dining out; but what the devil could he say? He must slip round for a snack at the Vandyke Hotel and slip in again undiscovered.)

She clung a moment to the hand that held hers.

“Good night—Henry,” she said, very low.

And only when Clive was on the landing, it struck him that she had used his father’s name. Did she realise? Was it accidental? Old people often did that sort of thing. But she was so habitually “on the spot,” he had never known her do it before. A queer little episode, all round; and an idiotic nuisance having to sneak out for dinner. If he asked Bilson to bring him a snack in the library, it would come out somehow. And he wouldn’t for the world have her know that he had lied on instinct to account for a friendly kiss. At any rate, she would not be left alone; for Tony was dining in—and Stella too, he suddenly remembered. There was to be quite a little party. They were going on to dance at Cito’s. Molly would be coming, as sure as Fate; and he not there—oh, damn! It hurt him seeming unfriendly to her. But he had clutched at the first plausible lie that came handy. And even a harmless lie was a two-edged weapon.

Back in the library, the freakish thought intruded—had his father often been moved to give her promiscuous kisses? Had he ever lied about it for the same idiotic reason? As likely as not—seeing the fools they both were in that line! Yet, in spite of his own bungling, Clive felt glad he had kissed the Old Lady, on an impulse of affection that seemed to go deeper than he had supposed, and sensibly increased that illusion of slipping into another’s man’s skin.

Chapter Six

These are the things that know not argument.
— John Drinkwater

First and last, it was the letters and the intermittent diaries—jottings of thought and opinion rather than facts—that most feelingly stirred Clive’s imagination and quickened the welcome sense of intimacy with a wide-ranging mind, resolutely directed to one end—the service of England and her Empire. For Henry Arden, like many reserved men, seemed able to express himself more freely in writing than face to face.

Already, Clive had run through the main bulk of the papers, skimming here, lingering there; had wrested from his mixed mass of material a clearer view of the emergent life and personality as a whole—a personality differing, in many ways, from the aloof, admired father of his actual recollection. Alison had not been so egregiously wide of the mark. It was puzzling. It was fascinating. But what would come out of it in the way of biography? If it were not the kind of Albert Memorial affair that his grandmother probably took for granted, there might be ructions, of which he had a cowardly horror. He could only go ahead, on his own lines, and take his chance. A few more nights of “soaking,” of blocking out opening chapters, and he would feel almost ready to begin—word of mingled delight and dread for the genuine artist, who fatally foreknows the dissonance between the thing conceived and the thing achieved.

To-night he had chosen, for closer reading, a selection of the purely personal letters between husband and wife, between mother and son—the last, more numerous, more revealing than the first. Sorted and dated, they all lay ready to his hand on the big writing-table, the earlier ones, yellowing a little with age, faintly chilling the quick life in his veins with their ghostly whisper, “Vanitas, vanitatum,” their mute insistence on the swift inexorable passing of days and dreams and desires.

Undetected, he had slipped out to his hotel dinner, and slipped in again—the younger ones being gone. He had nobbled whisky and a syphon from the dining-room, and settled himself at the big writing table for a clear four hours at least. The hearth fire had been generously banked with logs that fell in now and then with a soft crash. Onyx lay curled on his knees, purring like a kettle. He had grown extraordinarily fond of the creature in these few weeks; and he liked the feel of the warm sleeping body against his own, even if it sometimes hindered him from moving to stretch his legs.

Always there would be the same formula: Onyx politely hesitant, inwardly purposeful, the small questioning sound in his throat, the tentative paw; Onyx installed, the weird rhythmic clawing, the soft head insinuated under his hand, the leisurely coiling and uncoiling to ensure the maximum of comfort: finally, Onyx asleep, and Clive, who clearly existed for his benefit, permitted to carry on.

It was good to be back in his familiar corner, safe from interruptions; the quiet of the place deepened by fitful rumblings of traffic, as if London were a greater cat purring in its sleep; the warm air fragrant with the scent of old leather and of fresh-cut chrysanthemums, bronze and gold, in a slender vase; the circle of light falling only on his immediate books and papers, faintly irradiating the walls, dark with etchings, that climbed far beyond the picture line, to the dim ceiling.

Undisturbed he read on and on, absorbed in those young intimate screeds contributed by the Old Lady—who, for all her scorn of sentiment, seemed to have treasured every line he ever wrote her; living again through his father’s Eton and Oxford days.

The letters from Magdalen, with their Oxford flavour of idealism, their faith in logic to confound the illogical, made him feel at once very young and very old; remembering how, at that age, he had been flung, ill-prepared and scantly trained, into the thick of life at its most elemental, most terrifying and splendid. That, after all, had been a taste of naked reality, a man’s job, a tremendously actual and perilous adventure. If it had eaten up his youth, it had left him a few priceless friendships and certain imperishable memories—the possession of a single generation; unshared, uncomprehended by those who had not known.

And there was his father, at one and twenty, little more than a boy, reared on books and games: a gifted boy, bristling with ideas, soaking in philosophy and political economy, deeply determined to make a big thing of his life, and writing to the Old Lady such long intimate letters as he had never written to his own mother in all his days. If they were not precisely affectionate letters, there was the stuff of friendship in them. And, on her side, one could feel the stress of a potent enveloping influence, functioning partly through their fundamental likeness, and skilfully exercised, on occasion, in pursuit of her own ambitions.

Reading with deepened interest, losing himself in the writer’s personality, there returned to him the old thrilling under-sense of being alone, yet not altogether alone.

He had said to Alison, on that night of his arrival, “If I really believed he knew—?” Well, he did not really believe: and yet—his nerves (or was it his spirit) stirred in response to a mysterious something that warmed his heart, and quickened his fastidious sense of trespassing, as he unstrapped a far less bulky file containing the few, brief letters between man and wife.

These he had approached in a natural spirit of curiosity, remembering Alison’s cryptic remarks; and it had been disappointing to find them, as a whole, so unrevealing in respect of that eternally interesting, eternally baffling relation. Clearly they two had been very reticent with one another, and had not made a practice of keeping each other’s letters. One had to admit there was little worth preserving in these chance-kept specimens that revealed no obvious trace of deep affection or of mutual understanding. Between them, they set him thinking, “So this is marriage, seen from the inside. Is that how Molly and I would be writing to one another, in ten years’ time, if we pulled it off this winter?”

Yet his mother, if a shade too conventional, had been no fool. It was only that she could not put herself on paper, as Clive knew from his own experience: and those colourless wifely letters curiously saddened him, not on his father’s account alone. The inexpressive are not of necessity the unfeeling; and there were moving references to himself and Tony—especially Tony—that recalled the days before his own love for her had cooled, he could not have said why. Tony, more like her in essence, had remained always her favourite, her unswerving devotee; while he himself had never been able to love her as he loved his father. A dear good woman all the same. Alison’s phrase came back to him; and that odd remark of hers, “a man unsatisfied in his deeper needs.” Was that so? And if so, what the hell did she know about those deeper needs? Was it conceivable that Alix—?

Incredible—impossible! And yet—he recalled, with dismay, her flashes of understanding, her eagerness to handle the Life, her refusal to contribute his letters to herself, and that priceless rope of Chinese amber. All of which might mean anything—or nothing. She was a romantic, emotional creature. But his father—?

To that impermissible question no answer seemed forthcoming. On the emotional side of the man’s nature he was up against a locked door. No sign anywhere of frustration or unfulfilment, beyond a certain caustic turn of speech, and a prevailing impression that, in spite of worldly success, he seemed never really to have been a happy man. Did that mean—?

Oh, damn Alison! A crazy supposition. To entertain it seriously, for a moment, was to dishonour the dead, who had no defence against calumny but the loyalty of the living.

Dead—? To Clive, in his exalted mood, the bald statement clashed, like a false note in music. It called up a vivid memory of his father—the big, commanding frame, grown a little heavy of late years, the vigorous mind, the vital essence by virtue of which man is himself and no other. Was the sum total of these things, visible and invisible, resolved into earth, like last year’s leaves?

Heart and reason, alike, rejected the poignant thought. Yet, in these days, how many reason-ridden beings believed otherwise? He, himself, all these months, had blankly accepted the fact, taking for granted some undefined, indefinable form of survival: but to-night something more seemed required of him. To-night, in the utter quiet of the sleeping house, the very air felt astir with some unseen presence, with doubts that confounded reason, confounded scepticism itself. To a generation steeped in uncertainty, there are few more disconcerting questions than the simple, basic challenge—what do you believe? For belief, to be worth anything, must have the consent of the whole man behind it; must be as much a matter of vision, as of intellect and reason. Some horizon there must be, in the mystery of life, where these vital contradictions meet and dissolve in unison. But not yet had he come within miles of it; he, a baffled human being wedged between the cold fact of Death and his own whispered intimations.

Who was he, after all, to deny the appealing possibility that his absorption in the dead man’s life and personality might have drawn the freed spirit back into this most familiar room. As a corrective to that kind of thing reasoned argument carried no weight at all. There, in the island of light, dimming the rest of the room, was only himself and that speaking likeness, and the strange illusion that they two were fused in spirit as never in the flesh.

Planting his elbows on the table, chin in his hands, he gazed intently at the fine inscrutable face, with its impress of power in reserve; and so continued to gaze in a profound, receptive stillness of body and mind, till assurance of that unseen presence dawned on him clear and formless as light—a presence that seemed around him and within him; so that he could not say, “Lo here” or “Lo there.” He could only feel, inwardly certain, of a contact with Reality, in which was neither fear, nor doubt, but a vividly intensified state of consciousness, lifting him into some vaster region of Truth apprehended and accepted of beauty, austerity and peace. . . .

Something astir on his knees startled him out of his miraculous moment that left him strangely shaken, wondering dazedly— What was it? What had happened to him, Clive Arden, of all people on earth?

Onyx, the disturber, had sprung to the ground; stretching out one cramped hind leg and then the other. Purring aloud, his green eyes blandly at gaze, he prowled restlessly to and fro with his small throat sound of greeting, and an unmistakable movement of his body as if he were insinuating it against his master’s legs. What on earth . . .?

For the first time, creepiness invaded Clive. The chill of it trickled down his spine. For the first time he noticed, with a shiver of discomfort, the surrounding dimness, the pale walls climbing endlessly up and up. The fire, untended, had burnt very low. Two charred logs fell in with a whispering crash. Spellbound he sat there, unable or unwilling to stir, watching that ghostly interlude between Onyx and his unseen master; till a clear indefinable change in the creature told him that, whatever it had been mysteriously aware of, was no longer there.

The unearthly quiet, the sudden chill of being very completely alone, wrought upon his nerves. He was seized with an unseemly desire to laugh aloud, to sneeze, or make any idiotic noise to dispel the effect.

Pushing back his chair was futile; all sound being deadened by the thick carpet. But he made a vastly satisfactory noise shovelling on coal; Onyx—normal and sleepy again—regarding him with mute disapproval. After that he poured himself out some whisky; and the syphon, while sizzling, squawked dolefully, as if anxious to assist. It did assist. By touching up his sense of humour, it effectively restored his balance. No more work to-night, though, he decided; and having stowed away his letters in the tall old bureau, he unlocked the little central cupboard where he kept some papers of his own.

It was a capacious little cupboard as to depth: and at the far end was a small box containing his father’s watch and chain and other oddments, including a gold pencil he had reserved for Tony. The watch, a handsome repeater, he wore on a leather strap. Day after day he had kept forgetting to fish out that pencil: and to-night he suddenly remembered it.

As he felt for the box, his fingers encountered a ring handle. He pulled it: pulled it harder: no result.

Emptying the cupboard, he flashed his electric torch into its depths. Under the ring, set in a circle of brass, was a small lock. Another mystery hole! He had already come upon two secret drawers and a sliding panel. Nothing in them, of any moment. Secretive folk they were, in those days. Probably had to be, in a world not made safe for democracy! That lock would need a mite of a key to open it. There was nothing so small on his father’s ring, nor on his own.

He might have let the thing alone altogether, but some inner urge, stronger than mere curiosity, impelled him to try and force that secret door. Perhaps it had not been opened for a generation or two. Anything might emerge—jewels; spade guineas! He would see about it to-morrow. It was getting late, or rather early; all the clocks in the house solemnly and unevenly striking one. And those children not back yet. Tony would be pleased with the pencil. While collecting his papers, he had almost forgotten it again.

It was wrapped in chamois leather with the watch-chain, which came out first. And Clive stared at it, hardly believing his eyes. For there—on the same ring as the gold swastika he remembered—was the smallest key in creation! A key so precious that his father carried it on his person—what might that bode?

With a foolish flutter of his nerves—feeling rather like a villain in a magazine story—he unlocked the small door.

No sign of jewels or guineas; only more packets of letters. After his large dose of these, it was in the nature of anti-climax.

There were quite a number of packets; and the first one he took out had a slip inserted under the band, neatly inscribed in his father’s writing: “Anne: 1924-25.” The next one was again: “Anne: 1922-23.” Fourteen packets in all, covering a period of some twenty-four years: every one of them inscribed with the same woman’s name— “Anne”—tout court.

And who the devil was Anne? No Anne in the family, so far as he knew; nor had he ever heard the name on his father’s lips. But there lay those fourteen packets, on the table by the big armchair. And he, Clive, stood staring at them, feeling horridly jolted; torn between acute reluctance to trespass on any more intimacies, and a deep natural desire to know everything about the man he called father, the one man he had never associated with the common human frailties that masculine flesh is heir to.

Picking up a packet at random, he drew out a letter—three closely filled sheets; attractive handwriting, artistic, cultured, restrained.

It was written from “Blue Hills, Hindhead.” It began, “My Dearest” and ended, “Your devoted Anne.” Another one began, “My very Dearest” and ended, “Your deeply loving Anne.”

Twenty-four years! And all of them, it seemed, addressed to his father’s club. The obvious inference affected him like a blow. He, who had lately been reproaching himself for the disloyalty of supposing . . . stood there ironically confronted with the incontrovertible fact.

As the stunned feeling passed, he was shaken by an uprush of anger, swift and sudden, at thought of his mother. He had neither the right nor the wish to wade through all that; but, as his father’s biographer, he must find out enough to form some idea—

Ghostly tremors forgotten, and the lateness of the hour, he sat down in the big armchair, flung a fresh log on the fire, lit a cigarette to quiet his nerves, and began to read.

Chapter Seven

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
— Shakespeare

Since he was not to wade through everything, he drew out an envelope at random from the packet marked “1922.”

Part of him wanted to read a good deal of all that; part of him detested the necessity—the fastidious part, troubled with scruples and refinements and the clash of cross-lights, which complicated his vision of people and things. The first Clive, as before, argued plausibly that one was justified in reading a certain number of these amazing letters, in seeking for some light on the nature of this mysterious woman, who could inveigle a man like his father, and maintain her hold on him for over twenty years. The second Clive insisted that no plausibilities could justify deliberate violation of a woman’s secret shrine, no matter what manner of woman she might be.

But the first Clive gained the day; while the second one, at intervals, continued to protest.

The letter chosen at random was dated September, 1922.

“Beloved Man” (his inner protest, here, was not of the chivalrous order).

“All this week my spirits have been at a low ebb. Therefore I ought not to be inflicting them on you. Therefore (being only human) I have shamelessly settled into my verandah chair to do that very thing!

“Pupils have been stupid and uninspiring.” (A governess was she? Good Heavens!) “Books uncannily clever, but every whit as uninspiring. These moderns—at their most modern—leave one sick with distaste, almost disgust of life. One is reminded of Kipling and his Devil’s whisper, ‘It’s clever—but is it Art?’ If a mere semi-Victorian dare criticise those who are in the van! I’ve lately finished a brilliant specimen of what you call the mental babble school. Stimulating here and there, in its wild and whirling way; but oh—the deliberate cult of slipshod English, the tiresome straining after unsavoury similes! Such unhappy marriages of adjectives and nouns! Clever, of course—as the Devil admitted! One grows tired of the word. Cleverness is so fatally aware of itself, knows so exactly how its effects are made. That’s the root difference—isn’t it?—between cleverness and greatness.

“Sometimes I vow I won’t read them any more. And yet—one wants to keep abreast with things, to try and get at their point of view, which is the only road to understanding. Perhaps I’ve got it too successfully this time. Hence a gloomy conviction that my doll’s stuffed with sawdust, which some saner part of me quietly and persistently denies.

“Perhaps it isn’t the moderns. Perhaps it’s only September—saddest of months for me. And one’s sadness is sharpened by the beauty of it, in this almost Highland world of gorse and ling, that so vividly recalls the true Highlands—our world, for those few unforgettable weeks—

“Come behind me, Henry, and snatch away my pen. Scold me for vainly hurting myself and you. Could I have you beside me, only for an hour, I should be shamed and lifted into quite another state of being.

“Three months since your last week-end? It seems three years. It ought to be enough for me that you are there, that I have your wonderful letters, that I know— And when this graceless Anne Verity behaves herself, it is enough—very nearly. But again there are days when the mere fact that you are there, that I know, makes the decree of separation almost unbearable. This doesn’t mean I want you to come oftener. It is not right that you should. When longing makes a weakling of me, I stab myself with those blunt words, that wound as only blunt things can. I tell myself that if we were models of all the moralities you ought never to come at all.

“That’s enough of ME for one while. I’ll go and drown my dumps in the thunders of Beethoven or dissipate them by playing with Ariel, who is tearing round and round after his own tail, and has just toppled over the verandah’s edge—so startled and aggrieved, down there among the gorse prickles that he has reduced me to weak laughter.

“What a mercy it is being able to laugh, even in bad moments, when, otherwise, one might cry one’s self to death. I’ll avoid the last for your sake! So please forgive this ‘Funeral March of a Marionette,’ from your entirely loving

“Anne.

“P.S. How is the beautiful Onyx? Has he quite transferred his affection to you by now? I hope so. A. V.”

So Onyx was in it, too! Clive glanced reproachfully at the unconscious cat sprawling in his sleep. He had grown so fond of the creature. It wasn’t fair dragging him unbeknownst into any sort of connection with his father’s—?

The fastidious strain in him shied away from the word, from the whole situation. Neither seemed to fit the writer of that letter, with its strain of sadness that tugged unfairly at his sympathies. He confounded the woman for her natural ease of expression, her vivid pen that gave him so clearly the picture of her sitting lonely in the verandah, and that fool of a kitten toppling over backwards.

Impatiently he brushed aside the human picture that disarmed his attitude of young unsparing judgment, and pounced on the word Beethoven as a possible clue to his father’s odd inwardness about music. A music mistress, presumably—and his own father!

Clive was no snob, but his keen sense of caste had been fostered by Eton and the Queen’s Gate atmosphere. Undeniably, it jarred.

All the same, he wanted to read another letter, if only to confirm his suspicion about the concerts. There were three October postmarks and two in November. Ah, here was something like. Her impressions of an ultramodern concert, to which she had evidently been with him.

“But, Dearest, of course I enjoyed it. For me there is hardly a keener pleasure in life than listening to music with you—even music of the most ‘intellectual’ and the least melodious! One’s modernity was not offended by anything so banal as a bar or two of pure melody from start to finish! And I can’t shut my ears to all that, even when it scunners me. One wants to try and understand what these unmelodious people are after: as I said, a little while back, about the unmelodious books! But the music troubles me more, because it means more to me than words.

“It’s not that I’m a sheep, artistically or otherwise—am I, Henry? I welcome new composers, new forms of expressing the old. But there are limits which the true artist will not and should not overstep. There is an atmosphere in which art simply cannot breathe; the atmosphere, for instance, of negro music! Of course, one knows all the great masters had stones flung at them when they were new. Would you and I have flung stones at Beethoven? I have the audacity to think—not. We don’t spurn the new because it’s new; but we cherish certain standards that have their roots in Beauty. And when I hear (as I did yesterday) a conjunction of flute in C natural with oboe in C sharp, I suffer in more than my ears and nerves! I resent the name of music being taken in vain.

”You understand. In the realm of music we can be one—we are one. Neither Law, nor Church, nor Circumstance can alter that.

“In music and in love, I am irrevocably,

“Your Anne.”

That second letter Clive restored to its place feeling more interested, more acutely an intruder on sacred privacies than he had felt in reading the neatly written platitudes of his father’s lawful wife. Here was no sentimental love-letter, but a mind and heart unveiled for one other pair of eyes alone. Here was a personality, a woman of culture and character, with a feeling for music that might account for a good deal.

And suddenly he remembered those vanished essays. Had they been swallowed by this mysterious “Anne”? He was determined to find them, determined to know. He had asked Lane for the dates; and, thanks to his father’s methodical methods, even in love, he could lay his hand on the letters she had written him in that year—1904.

Rapidly he scanned several of them, trying not to read more than he must; and at last he found what he sought. Sure enough, she had them; not merely to read, but to keep. Had she captured him, body and soul, this egregiously illegitimate unknown?

“Henry my Dearest” (she wrote),—”I have got them. I have read every one. And all the while I have been blessing you—first for writing them; second for insisting that they shall be only mine, and not be published. It’s wicked. They ought to appear. They are unlike anything else you have written; finer, in thought and utterance. But your gesture of refusal, O King, is finer still. So unlike the normal Henry Arden—the side you ‘face the world with,’ the side that seeks and wins its prizes, that has always been my enemy. I know you—and love you—well enough to be quite frank on that score! I’m glad you let Lane see them. And I’m gladder still of his high opinion, which confirms my own.

“As for the Browning lines from ‘One Word More,’ that you have inscribed on the fly leaf—I can’t trust myself to write what I felt when I read them.

“‘On Listening to the Violoncello’ is, of course, for me, the very best. Am I really responsible for some of it? If so—in spite of all that has been and all that can never be—I was not born in vain. And in the Beethoven, you have nobly risen to your theme. You feel him as I feel him—not only the quality of his music, but the quality of his spirit, that could reach joy, and even rapture, in defiance of suffering. In my small way, I know something of that. I know that, even when life looks blackest, there is a spark hidden in us somewhere that can never be utterly put out. Beethoven did more than know it—he sang it and thundered it, in his incomparable music, for all who have ears to hear. You remember Edward Carpenter? Surely if ever man—after mortal strife and deafness and illness and loss of the beloved—attained to see the heavens open, to feel them open, in his heart—it was Beethoven. (I quote at random, from memory.) But I need not enlarge on that to you. I can only thank you—I who am eternally blessed by your love, eternally proud of being

“Your Anne.”

Clive—his scruples silenced—read that letter twice over. Then he sat quiet a long while, trying to picture the writer, wishing he could see his father’s share in that intimate correspondence, wondering would they have married, after a decent interval? His gaze was resting absently on the packet marked 1923—thicker than the earlier ones. It was in the late summer of ’twenty-three that his mother had died. There sprang the memory of her earlier critical illness, of his father’s face, and that haunting look of conflict. He understood it now. Her death, when it came, must have been almost a relief. Pained and angered, Clive pushed aside that particular packet as if it were an unclean thing. Yet a sharpened curiosity was urging him to read yet another of those letters, written by the woman who had imprinted a lasting stain on his father’s life, and defamed him in the eyes of his son.

How did she write to him, when she first knew of his wife’s death? It would be a sort of test letter. She was clearly not a shallow woman.

Already he was fingering that spurned packet, lifting the corner of each envelope to see the postmark, till he reached an approximate date—ten days after. Soon enough; yet not egregiously soon. Only this one he would read; and no more to-night—or rather this morning.

He drew out half a sheet, and read:

“Beloved,

“I have your letter. How can I manage to write of it? Yet—how can I not write, if only a few lines, in answer to yours that tells me at once so little and so much.

“All these years, I have envied, I have wondered, I have ached. But now—Death lays a commanding hand on one’s thoughts about the Dead. Some real loss there must be, to you, in the breaking of so close a human link—thirty years of it. And whatever you suffer of loss or pain, I suffer too.

“I can say no more. There is no more to be said. My thoughts—and how much more than my thoughts—are with you ceaselessly.

“Anne.”

That letter also he read twice over, and put away quickly because of an ache in his throat; a pang of pity for all three of them, for the tragic futility sterilising so many human loves and lives. One had to admit—she passed the test.

Evidently here was no common liaison. The quality of those three letters assured him of that. For which assurance God be thanked, if God had any concern with these entangling human passions implanted in man for his triumph or undoing. Yet, no less evidently, all these years, his father—high in the world’s esteem, doing great things for England—had been secretly living a double life. Clive himself—reared in the prevailing frankness towards sex and its complications—had few illusions as to the marital fidelity of the average man. But his father, so he had believed, was not as other men. Yet he found himself taking the worst for granted as between lovers of so long standing; found also, that lenience toward the frailties of one’s fellow-men did not involve a like lenience toward one’s own father. And such a father—!

Now he had the deplorable clue to those occasional week-end trips unaccompanied by his wife; to his predilection for lonely holidays, touring in the car. Was he always alone? Once, on a certain occasion (why did these cursed trifles stick in one’s mind?) he had been struck by a look in his father’s eyes as he sat in the car, grasping the wheel, appearing so uncommonly pleased to be going off alone for a whole month.

He had actually asked his mother, “Why don’t you sometimes go too?”

And she had answered in her placid fashion, “I do go sometimes, just to please him. But touring in a car tires me. And Father is an extraordinary self-sufficing man. I sometimes think there’s no company he relishes quite so much as his own!”

And Clive sat there wondering— Had she guessed, and was she loyally shielding him? Or had she never suspected where his heart and life were actually centred?

Thinking backward, with enlightened mind, he was pained and startled by a sharp revulsion of feeling—on his mother’s account—towards the father he had so blindly admired all the years of his life. It was as if something inside him turned completely over; and the sensation moved him to a sudden tenderness for the dear dead woman, a belated impulse of chivalry, of regret because he, too, had failed her, if in a less discreditable fashion. And yet—was it entirely their fault if she had been unable to hold either husband or son?

Absorbed in his own life, his own interests—like most normal young men—he had never felt so entangled in the complex warp and woof of human relations, so lost in that flux of mood and impulse and habit which passes for more or less consistent human character. He was not unfamiliar with the disintegrating researches of modern psychology, or the perverse genius of Pirandello. But—his own father . . . ! It kept on coming back to that. If ever man had seemed founded on a rock, upright mentally and morally—!

His gaze reverted to those disquieting letters. What matter if she were attractive and cultured, and no common charmer. The result was the same. She had fatally captured his father and probably wounded his mother. She had shaken his own firmest foundations of belief. And he hated her. He had a sudden furious impulse to pile all those precious packets on the dwindling fire—and watch them burn. It would do no good to any one, but it would satisfy some primitive instinct of retaliation.

He even laid a hand on the nearest packet—and there it remained, arrested by a counter-sensation that assailed him (he could swear to it) from without, not from within. Almost he could feel his father standing near his shoulder—potently present—restraining him from that which, in his eyes, would be an act of sacrilege.

Startled beyond measure, and already half ashamed of his impulse, Clive sat motionless, waiting . . . wondering . . . actually not daring to look round; nor removing his hand from the packet. Possessed by an idiotic conviction that he could not move it if he tried, he had simply not the courage to try.

And all the while there kept knocking at his heart a deeper, truer intimation of something which his father urgently wanted him to do, to know . . .

There are moments when inanimate things seem trying to convey some message or meaning, when the spirit—detached and hyper-sensitive—waits to be startled out of the commonplace by an immortal flash of loveliness or truth. To Clive, in that curious arrest of his normal self, the whole room felt alive with the impression of some presence, not inanimate, of something not clear that must be made dear.

Could it, conceivably, be his father trying to save those letters, to explain the shock of them—and failing, because his own sceptical mind blocked the channel of communication so incredibly opened between them?

As before, whatever it was, seemed both around him and within him; livingly present to the uncomprehended sense—of mind or soul—which transmutes apparent shadows into startling realities. Only to become articulate seemed beyond its power.

Perhaps if he could bring himself to speak? It seemed crazy; but no crazier than the whole situation.

“Dad!” he said, just above a whisper. “It’s all right. I’m trying to understand.”

And again he waited, scarcely drawing breath.

No sign; no sound. Only, as before, that sudden unpleasant sense of being very completely alone; and the curious numb feeling gone from his hand. He could move it now: and he moved it with alacrity; telling himself he could have done so, at any moment, if he hadn’t funked it. But, having funked it, he could never now be sure.

The whole vivid experience shook his scepticism without actually carrying conviction. His lightly swung nerves might play him tricks, on occasion; but he did not believe they would ever quite swing him beyond normal sensibilities. If you sat up till all hours and let your nerves rip—anything was possible in the way of unauthorised sensations.

He had better put away those precious letters, since they were not to be burned. As precious as all that, were they? Placing the packets meticulously one upon another, he fell to wondering again—exactly how long? How did it begin? And was she still living? If he set himself to read everything straight through, he might make several interesting discoveries; he might also, on the other hand, become fatally converted to that confounded unknown woman’s point of view. It would be risky to soak his mind in a one-sided correspondence, even if he could descend to such wholesale intrusion.

Right or wrong, this love of hers was sacred in her eyes. The episode, however regrettable, was ended. It concerned no one any more.

And thereupon, with a jarring shock, he realised how intimately and distractingly it concerned himself—and this immediate work. In the face of that horrid secret, there could be no question of writing the Life. It was one thing to uphold the sanctity of even a public man’s private affairs. It would be another matter to suppress an underlying fact, as vital to a true presentment of his father, as Lady Hamilton to the true Nelson, or Mrs. O’Shea to the true Parnell. Yet, emphatically, it could not be revealed.

And what of the Old Lady? Good God—if she were even to suspect—! Or had she guessed and shut her eyes to it, like the hardened old worldling she was? Knowing so much, if one could only know more.

And again he sat a long while, staring into the fire—driven to and fro between his father and the truth—wondering, cursing, and again wondering, at the ironic tragi-comedy of life. No one knew, no one ever would know, what the real man had been thinking and feeling, in all those thirty years, while he had been the husband of one woman and the secret lover of another. And he confounded that other afresh for robbing him of an achievement he had undertaken with reluctance, but now felt more than reluctant to forego.

Inevitably, the mere writer in him perceived the kind of smooth gentlemanly Life he could produce to satisfy his grandmother; a record mainly political, avoiding personalities, decently veiling the depths. But against that kid-glove compromise his intellectual conscience rebelled. It further insisted that, as things stood, the Life ought not to be written at all. Yet one could scarcely hope to either convince or coerce the Grand Old Lady, because the real reasons could never be told.

There remained his own fatal promise to Alison, given at a sympathetic moment, when he had no serious thought of letting her, or any one, usurp his right. Alison—of all people! She would fit his father with an outsize halo. She would lay on butter with a trowel; the very best brand of butter; but still—! And he, Clive, knowing everything, would be called upon to criticise and approve.

After all, in view of the staggering truth—what matter a halo more or less? The real man, whom he had set himself to portray, had practically disappeared. That was how he saw it in the bitterness of the moment. Since any portrait of him must be false in essence, poor old Alison’s haloed and buttered hero would do as well as another.

Would the Old Lady allow it? There was the rub. The shock of his own defection—on such flimsy grounds as he could put forward—would upset her considerably. And she had not seemed so well as usual this last week. She would probably be furious with him; and, apart from his dread of scenes, he hated disappointing her. It puzzled him still, that he had grown almost fond of her—dominating, selfish and jealous, though she was, especially where she loved. Probably her ambition and selfish devotion had done much to spoil his father’s life, in hidden ways, that would matter nothing to her so long as he secured, for both, the things that “took the eye and had the price.” All the same, he shirked hurting her; and he thanked heaven she need never hear the truth.

The tall clock in the corner struck half-past two in sepulchral tones. He rose and stretched himself, suddenly aware of an overwhelming weariness, more than ever dreading to-morrow’s upheaval.

What it really was that had come to him, in these strange small hours, he did not know, now, nor ever would. And he preferred it so. Not knowing—there lay the secret of unnumbered fascinations. Life without mystery, without the charm of the unseizable, would be like a flower without scent. Thank God, in spite of all the scientists and mechanists and what not, there would always remain mystery enough and to spare for lovers and poets and incurable wanderers like himself.

It was not the ghostly intimations, however perplexing, it was the horrid reality of those incredible letters that shook his nerve and sharply contracted his heart.

Chapter Eight

We live and breathe deceiving and deceived.
— Browning

For the past ten days, Caroline Arden had been doing her stoical best to ignore twinges of gout and lumbago. Now she became resentfully aware that her blood-pressure seemed to be “up,” that the first sharp spell of frost and fog was affecting her bronchial tubes. How inexorably life narrowed down, with age, to the body’s needs and the body’s waning power of resistance! It was more than irksome, it was ignominious, to a vigorous-minded woman, who had never allowed any minor disability to hamper her in the pursuit of social or political aims. And here was Dr. Barrett pressing her to spend the next two or three months in Bath, with her old friend Emily Farlow, whose best bedroom was always hers to command, whenever health or inclination moved her to leave Town. An inveterate Londoner, she clung more and more to the social and political atmosphere that was her breath of life: while more and more her bronchial tubes objected to the physical atmosphere of London fogs.

And, having at last succumbed to Dr. Barrett’s insistence, she found herself feeling oddly reluctant to part from Clive. Absorbed in the Life, he troubled himself about nobody: but she liked to know he was there, to see him at meals and invite herself to tea in the familiar sanctum.

Past and present became increasingly mingled in her mind, as often happens to the old. Virtually mistress of the house—Stella being of no account—she caught herself feeling, at times, as if she had Henry with her again, at that very age, just before his marriage: a dear illusion that set the clock back thirty years. It came oftenest in the library, when Clive sat in Henry’s swivel chair, flinging her an occasional question over his shoulder; and the strange sensation made her loth to break the spell. But Dr. Barrett insisted. So she wrote to Emily Farlow, explained matters to Clive, and invited herself to a farewell tea in the library.

He was looking rather worried and distrait; but her proposal effectually woke him up.

“Delighted. Must have been a brain wave! I was just going to ask you myself. I’m in difficulties—about the Life. We must talk it all over before you go.”

During tea, he let her do most of the talking, a delicate attention she always appreciated. It was easier to talk than to listen at a meal; though Clive’s voice never bothered her. Like his father’s, it was deep, but resonant; and he didn’t swallow half his words. But today his manner seemed curiously constrained; and a suspicion of something hovering in the background took half the pleasure out of her tea—a meal she particularly enjoyed.

As soon as it was ended, that hovering “something” stalked out into the light.

“I’m truly sorry, Gran,” he said, his manner no longer distrait, “to worry you, when you aren’t feeling fit. But I’m in a horrid fix. I’ve been through all the material. Put everything ship-shape. Only—the actual writing of the Life, I’m afraid, I must turn over to some one else.”

Pained, incredulous, amazed, she stared at him. It was a second or two before she could speak.

“I suppose—you find it too big a piece of work? You can’t . . . be bothered?” she queried in her most incisive tone, speaking slower than her wont, because the shock of surprise and anger made breathing difficult.

“Oh, if you start by misjudging me!” he exclaimed, bitterly hurt. “Because it’s a big piece of work, I hate chucking it. But please remember I didn’t promise to write the Life till I’d thoroughly gone into it all. Well, I have—thoroughly. And the net result is—I can’t do it, Gran. So that’s that.”

There could be no mistaking the pain in his tone, or the finality of it. For it was Henry’s voice she heard, Henry, who could be so courteous, so kind in a casual way; but as for moving him, when he did not choose to move—of later years, that had been admitted beyond her power.

“Perhaps one may be allowed to ask your reasons?” she queried in a friendlier tone, shelving her insistence for the moment. “If you say it’s modesty, I shall flatly disbelieve you. And if it’s not modesty—what is it, Clive?”

“Oh, call it incapacity,” he flung out desperately.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ve every capacity. You are your father’s son.”

“Precisely. I’m my father’s son.” He could not keep the bitterness out of his tone; and suddenly he saw his strongest line of argument. “To be frank—that’s where my disability comes in. I’m too close up to my subject to get the true perspective. Anyhow, I couldn’t honestly do it—the way you would want it done.”

“That’s the truth, is it?” Her friendliness evaporated. “You’d want to be setting yourself up to criticise your father, one of the really big men of his time.” Her hand closed on the arm of her chair, that he might not see it quiver. “I would certainly not countenance the cockshy type of biography, if that’s the form your incapacity takes—”

“It’s not. I hadn’t a thought of it. If I may say so—even those of us who have the misfortune to be under thirty, can’t fairly be judged in the lump like that. In my case—it’s unkind.”

“Well, my dear Boy, you bring it on yourself. I had great hopes of you. And now—when all’s settled, you upset everything, for no adequate reason that I can see.”

“I’m sorry, Gran. I’m awfully sorry.” His sincerity was as evident as his mistaken resolve. “But I’m afraid my reasons are my own affair. If they were not pretty cogent, I wouldn’t be upsetting you—and myself, like this. Do please accept the fact that I’m a wash. out We can do no earthly good by hurting each other.”

She stared hard at him; quite unconvinced, but more moved than she chose to let him see.

“You are very mysterious, Clive. I should have said it was a privilege that no right-minded son, who cared for his father, would willingly forego. I can’t pretend to understand either your defection or your refusal to explain.”

Understand? How could she? He stood up, in desperation at his cruelly false position. How could he, her grandson, bludgeon her with the bald fact? He could neither speak the truth, nor lie to her—let her think what she would of himself.

And he heard her asking, with contained politeness, “Have you any one else in your mind?”

There would be another tussle over Alison! Cowardly dread of it (or something deeper) prompted an even bolder venture.

“I suppose you wouldn’t be persuaded—to give up the idea of the Life?”

She straightened herself sharply. Anger glinted in her eye.

“No, I would not be persuaded—by you, or any one. . . .”

And then—

What ailed her, she never knew; but those defiant words sounded strangely remote, as if spoken by another self. It was Henry who stood there urging her—while she flung her refusal in his face: a sensation so unsteadying that it sent the blood surging into her head.

Before she could speak, Clive’s hand was on her shoulder, Henry’s voice was in her ears.

“Forgive me. I shouldn’t have said that—knowing how you feel, and what people will expect. If you’re ill—?”

“Never mind, Boy. I’m not ill.”

Shaken as she was, his swift penitence disarmed her. “I felt queer for a moment. . . . It will pass. It seems only to come in this room—”

“In this room?”

Clive’s startled tone made her feel a fool.

“Yes, naturally. For me—it’s full of memories. They crowd in on old people sometimes. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Yet how could he not worry, remembering last night? Just as well she was going away. Nothing could be said however; and her next remark swung them back to practical issues.

She sighed heavily. “I suppose if it can’t be you, it must be Jarvis. He’s capable, if a trifle solid.” It was a tacit admission of defeat. Having accepted the incomprehensible, she would not nag at him: for which he felt grateful. “Jarvis has wanted it all along.”

It was Clive’s turn to sigh. “I’m afraid,” he said, “I promised to suggest Alison, if I couldn’t manage it myself—”

“Harrison?”

“No. Alison Owen.”

“Good heavens!” Her hands went up in dismay.

“Yes, I know all that. But she has her points! She’ll probably do the actual writing better than I should. And she’s fearfully keen.”

“My dear Boy, she’s been counting on it for months. And she knew I wouldn’t have it. There’ll be no holding her.”

“I think we can manage that between us, you and I?”

The words and the friendly smile seemed to set them almost on a level. He had an air of being curiously older this afternoon.

“You forget I’m going to Bath. Dr. Barrett insists. But I should have to see all she writes. And I should expect you to assert yourself in my absence. It’s your doing. You shouldn’t have promised anything without asking me.”

“No—I shouldn’t,” he disarmingly confessed. “I did it on impulse, that first evening. She saw I rather funked it. And she took her chance.”

“Are you funking it now?” She looked hard at him, still puzzled and annoyed.

“No. Not now.” And, dreading further discussion, he added briskly, “If we keep an eye on her, she may play up surprisingly. Let me slip round and break the news, this evening. She’ll be all over herself.”

Again that heavy sigh, which moved him suddenly to stoop and kiss her cheek. This time he faked no excuse; rightly feeling that none was needed.

“I hate it, Gran, as much as you do,” was all he said.

Chapter Nine

Fear is man’s greatest enemy: fear of responsibility, fear of himself, of letting himself go.
— A. Tressidar Shephard

That November evening was one of Alison Owen’s few great moments—she that yearned for great moments, and so rarely came by them. Surprised and elated, she almost forgot to wonder why Clive should suddenly be willing to forego the great privilege, after weeks of industrious preparation; but Clive, knowing his Alison, deftly forestalled her unspoken question. His publishers, he told her, were urgent, his grandmother impatient of delay; and since he made a point of suppressing his own sensations, she exulted openly. Even the prospect of an official interview could not appreciably damp her down; so that Clive began to fear the shrewd Old Lady was right. Once she got the bit between her teeth, there might be no holding her.

Next morning he heard, with genuine relief, that Dr. Barrett had been coerced into letting his headstrong patient remain in Town another week or ten days. Clearly she desired to keep an eagle eye on Alison at the start. Though she never again referred to his defection, he knew she was still vexed in spirit, still blaming him, no doubt, when the whole thing had been her precious “Henry’s” doing—for all he was dead and gone. How misleading was that common phrase, when the dead could still seem so potently present, so closely woven into the life-patterns of those that remained.

For the space of a week and more, he was chiefly occupied in resenting his own loss of occupation and the intrusion of Alison into his sanctuary. She had begged leave to work there whenever it suited him; and his reluctance was a clear case of dog-in-the-manger, since he was in no mood just then to spend hours alone in that particular room. There she was surrounded with the necessary material, which neither he nor his grandmother would have allowed her to remove. There only she could indulge in her craze for “catching atmosphere. . . .”

“One gets the very feel of Henry here—if you know what I mean?” she superfluously rubbed it in. “And it’s so essential to catch that—isn’t it?—for a creative portrait.”

“Oh, indispensable,” Clive had agreed in his driest tone, sincerely hoping he would catch nothing worse.

Partly to please his grandmother, but chiefly to please himself, he had promised her such help as he could give in the matter of any further interviews that might be necessary. He had even, after an inner struggle, allowed her access to his own sacred note-books. But to collaborate with a woman of her emotional instability—no, thank you!

For all his reluctance to give up this first big bit of work, he had not foreseen precisely how desolate he would feel, how powerless to detach himself from the past in which he had become so deeply embedded. “The Emerging East” seemed, by comparison, lifeless stuff: yet he was thanklessly thankful for anything in the shape of immediate occupation.

And between whiles he found his thoughts reverting to Molly Mansergh, who had been away again in the country. She was as essentially a creature of clean air and open spaces, as her semi-invalid mother was a creature of the kerbstone and the London drawing-room. It would be refreshing to try and see more of her; and he had an idea that she was back by now; but, in view of Stella’s pointed remarks, he preferred to avoid direct questions.

Partly to serve his own ends, he captured Tony, who throve mainly on night clubs and musical comedies; stood him a dinner at the Savoy and a decent play, in the teeth of his plaintive protest that he would “sooner see an indecent one any day!”

To Clive’s retort, “Well, you can wallow in that sort of highbrow stuff with your lady friends,” the youngster replied demurely, “My best one unfortunately doesn’t share my taste for it!— Give you my word, it’s casting pearls before swine.”

“Not complimentary to the lady!”

And Tony, reduced to reddenings and chucklings, submitted to the decent play—incidentally telling Clive all he wanted to know.

Very well. Casually and unobtrusively he would reinstate himself with Molly—as dear and desirable a thing in girls as the most epigeant man could hope to encounter. It must not be a case of Sir Clive Arden in search of a wife, burdened with apologies and Serious Intentions. It must be a gay and careless adventure, such as the insane Imp, hidden under most men’s decent show of sanity, truly desires courtship to be. First he must disentangle his mind from his father’s encroaching personality; then he would bestir himself to discover whether he had quite killed his chances by cavalier behaviour; whether—in fine—they really were the two halves of a Truth divided by God in the beginning of time.

How many men, he wondered, set out upon the Supreme Adventure in much the same spirit? And, even with the best of luck, what issue? A winged moment of ecstasy, an abrupt descent to earth, a paragraph in the Morning Post, the cares of a householder—and babies!

That was the curse of imagination—seeing too far ahead. But after all, fear of spoiling things—the eternal fear of the fastidious—involved the bigger risk of losing them altogether. He would not be hag-ridden by fears, or by Serious Intentions. He would see more of Molly, with dim and delightful possibilities in view. Next Sunday, perhaps—?

*  *  *

But next Sunday, Alton Lane pressingly invited him to lunch; and on Tuesday there was Mrs. Hilton’s musical afternoon affair. She too had been rather pressing, having heard he was “up to the eyes” in some literary work. Both the ’cellist and the pianist, as he knew, were notables in their line; and he would hear some of Astra’s music superbly played—a bait he could not resist. For the ’cello drew him like nothing else on earth; and Astra’s music was music—never an elaborate orgy of discord.

So he looked forward to Tuesday; but the problem of Molly remained. It was not so simple, even in these casual days. To suggest dinner and a theatre together might seem something sudden by way of prelude. And he couldn’t be bothered with badminton. There remained dancing—appropriate and delightful; if he and Stella could only act in concert. But Stella would be downright and disillusioning. She would stab his not very robust Intentions with some neat little javelin of mockery. Besides she was already immersed in furniture and flats and mannequin parades; the harmless necessary Gerard trailing in her wake, shelling out for taxis and stray meals, and carrying a discreet parcel or two. How absurd they looked sometimes, from a detached angle, other people’s immensely serious affairs! And there seemed always something furtive, almost pathetic about a man in that condition. It was a state to which he could not see himself reduced by any woman living. Yet dared he marry without falling headlong into it?

His father—in a rare moment of expansion—had given him fair warning: the only intimate warning he ever uttered. And, by thunder, his father ought to know! Well, he would give the thing a chance. He would take drastic measures to rid himself of this inhuman reluctance. For he was not inhuman, though he could neither sentimentalise nor enthuse. Perhaps it was merely the Irish streak in him, lamented by his grandmother—that peculiar compound of celibacy and romance, that instinctive dread of domesticity, lest it kill the fragile, lovely thing which alone makes it endurable.

*  *  *

It was on Sunday morning, walking down Constitution Hill towards Westminster, that he so sagaciously reasoned with himself and the situation; a cobwebby morning of frost and pensive mist, blurring all things like breath on a mirror; transforming London’s incomparable vistas, her million beauties and uglinesses, into a brooding City of Dream.

For all the restless wave in his blood, Clive loved his London, devoutly if inexpressively; and to-day the grave misted beauty of it all stirred him the more consciously for his recent surfeit of unclouded skies, blinding light and ink blue shadows—the naked desert, the dust, the flies and the composite smells of the so-called mysterious East. It might not be the fashion to call London mysterious. Yet here was mystery, here was glamour—the lightly veiled distances, the lingering greenness and a ghostly disc of sun, where the haze thinned slowly; all the thronged hidden vastness that was London—never more withdrawn, more alluring, than on these still, frost-dimmed mornings of early winter.

It was the frost that had tempted Clive to walk; and he had set out early, so as to take his own time over it—a luxury in itself. Hag-ridden by the little car and the lust of getting there, walking threatened to become a lost art. So he walked, drawing the keen air into his lungs. And presently, on the right, rose Buckingham Palace, a wilderness of windows, out of which no one ever seemed to look; and there, on her pedestal, sat lonely Victoria, lording it above her symbols of Empire: old and new alike bathed in the pale incomparable London light that seems filtered through endless layers of “forgotten far-off things.” And about them and about flowed the tide of human restlessness, eternally changing, eternally the same. Taxis and private cars buzzed to and fro, like drowsy shuttles weaving intricate, invisible patterns on the ground they covered, and in the lives of men and women, hurried from boredom to boredom, from crisis to crisis, from unknown beginnings to unknown ends.

Crossing the Mall, Clive passed on into the comparative quiet of St. James’s Park—frosted grass and tranquil trees, bare boughs and twigs pencilled on ghostly houses or on blue-grey fields of air.

For by now the morning mist had dissolved into clouds lightly breathed on a toneless sky. Bathed in wintry sunshine, the whole scene had the faint clear charm of an old-fashioned water-colour; away, beyond the Park, massed buildings of Whitehall—pale against paler clouds; domes and aerials of the Admiralty; the uncompromising block of the Foreign Office, shamed by the older more gracious design of Whitehall. Beyond again, older and lovelier still, dream towers of Westminster and Big Ben.

Not for the first time Clive fell to wondering what is the inner secret that links beauty with barbarism and makes civilisation seem a relentless progress from ugliness to ugliness? Something vitally wrong somewhere. “Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” The familiar words drifted unbidden into his brain. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps old David—who danced before the Ark and stole his neighbour’s wife—came nearer to the secret than any of our enlightened moderns would care to admit.

Meantime, unconscious apostles of progress were content to enjoy the frosty air and the lawful idleness of Sunday morning. Children and dogs exulted vociferously. Girls, stepping briskly, beside the young man of the moment, presented the correct contrast of the moment—legs aping nudity, throats muffled in fur, hats jammed over their eyes. Round about the bridge couples and groups loitered, throwing bread for the seagulls—a flurry of grey and white wings, their clumsy bodies skidding ungracefully over thin ice.

Moved to loiter himself, Clive became aware of a couple standing very close together, their backs towards him—Tony and Molly Mansergh! A perfectly natural conjunction: they were very good friends. But to see them there alone, so absorbed in each other, seemed a curious comment on his own belated designs.

Was that how things had been shaping themselves while he explored the East and consorted with ghosts? Was that the key to Stella’s pertinent remarks? If that astute young lady had been putting out feelers for Tony’s benefit, he had done his brother a service unawares. Oh, damn the Youngster!—a much more “likely” man than himself: taller and well set up; good, straight features; a lighter, livelier make all round.

And there was she, perversely, looking even more attractive than he remembered her; cheeks glowing from the frosty air, the fine poise of her head, the generous mouth, that smiled so readily and looked so comely in repose. And the lines of her figure were comely also. She might be a big woman in the forties. He recalled how frankly she used to lament that she could not achieve the sexless, lamp-post silhouette. At least she could manage to follow fashion, while remaining individual—the supreme achievement. Her neat little golden brown hat was not bashed down too low; not too much sunburnt leg showing, and very shapely at that. The whole look of her moved him to approach the pair; see if she would accord him a friendlier welcome than he deserved?

As he neared them, unperceived, a big dog bounced against her; and he hit at the creature with his stick, not severely.

“Look out, you clumsy beast,” he said aloud: and, to his surprise, she turned on him, with the swift lighting up of her whole face which was its most signal charm.

“Clive!” Her pleasure was unmistakable. And, he, himself, put into his vigorous hand-shake a good deal that could not be otherwise expressed.

“We ought to have met sooner, but I’ve been rather taken up one way and another,” was all he managed to say.

“Rather?” She challenged him with her frankly smiling gaze. “I was given to understand (a side glance at Tony very busy with the gulls) that you were buried alive under stacks of old manuscripts; invisible to mere mortals for a good six months at least!”

“Well, you really ought to know, by now, that some people’s statements require to be taken with a grain of salt!—Have I been so conspicuously invisible, Antonio?”

“I certainly did seem to see you at breakfast this morning. Also yesterday,” Tony admitted, trying to look sulky; but his whole make-up was against it.

“‘While you live, tell truth and shame the devil!’ But you don’t know who said that!”

“Solomon, of course. And he was a liar.”

Tony dismissed it as obvious; and Clive’s chuckle of amusement cleared the air.

To Molly he casually remarked, “I happen to be rather more free just now than at any time since I got home.”

“Free enough for a little dance at Olga Blake’s, tomorrow? I’m allowed to ask a friend or two; and I know she wants to meet Sir Clive Arden!”

Their eyes met smilingly; and Clive fished out a superfluous note-book, though he had intended to put off that sort of thing till after the New Year.

“Nothing against Monday evening,” he reported. “Very charming of you—and Mrs. Blake. ’Fraid I can’t promise to contribute a lady.”

“That won’t worry Olga. She disapproves of the Noah’s Ark fashion. So please—?”

“Delighted. I don’t need pressing,” he truthfully admitted: and excusing himself on the score of his engagement, he passed on.

Molly was “friends” all right; and it wouldn’t be the straight game to interrupt Tony’s innings any longer. It occurred to him, in passing, that he might not be quite so scrupulous to-morrow night. Molly was a jewel. It would be a treat to dance with her again.

Chapter Ten

Might I not then say, “Now I love you best!”
When I was certain o’er incertainty?
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest.
— Shakespeare

Olga Blake, a small and lively lady, possessed a natural gift for entertaining casually and yet perfectly, which is apt to indicate some Irish strain in the blood. People came when they pleased, did what they pleased, within reason (she discouraged pyjama dances and the wilder Chelsea eccentricities), stayed till all hours, and verily believed that the spirit of impromptu—imparted by her—resided in themselves. It is a gift that has the quality of genius—born, not made.

Clive Arden, who did not easily assimilate with strangers, soon found himself at home in Mrs. Blake’s “little crowd”; found also an even keener pleasure than he had foreseen in circling and sliding, to the minor cadences of the newest thing in dance music, with Molly held lightly in the crook of his arm. It was the first time he had danced since his return; and if months of abstinence quickened his natural enjoyment, Molly herself added the finishing touch.

This was their third dance together; and decidedly he felt glad he had come. She was looking more alive and more Molly-ish than usual in an orange-yellow frock that particularly pleased his eye in conjunction with her tawny brown hair, shorn of its one time glory. The harmony was doubtless accidental, or the suggestion of a friend. She had little in her of artistry or self-consciousness; but to-night, whether by chance or design, she had unmistakably hit the mark. Radiant was the word for her. She was so frankly glad to be alive, she made him feel glad of it too. The breeziness of her blew away cobwebs of the past that clung about his mind. Leisurely circling with her, he felt more like eight and twenty again; which awoke him to the curious fact that, in the past few weeks, he seemed to have slipped farther away from here and now, than in nearly nine months of wandering in the ancient East. He had taken that affair of the Life a shade too seriously, had let it upset the balance of things. Molly was real: refreshingly real . . .

When the music ceased, with a discordant crash, he asked her for the next. And she did not refuse. Tony, dancing with Mrs. Blake, was clearly keeping an eye on them. It looked as if Molly’s champagne quality had seriously gone to his head. But she had been frankly his own special friend before he went abroad; and if they picked up the dropped threads again, Tony must accept the inevitable.

Bad luck to it! There was Alison on the arm of Ken Wigge—a fellow biographer!—talking as industriously and dancing as inaccurately as usual. She must have come late—also as usual. And he would have to dance with her, to endure her confidential outpourings over the “great work.” The Old Lady, he gathered, had spoken her mind on the subject with a force and precision that had set Alison enthusing over restraint and detachment as fatally as she had originally enthused over atmosphere and the personal touch—

At that moment Molly seemed to stumble and slip half out of his arm. He tightened it sharply, to keep her up; and held her so a second longer than was necessary, feeling vexed at his own carelessness—and something more.

“Well saved!” she laughed with a warmth in her cheek that might or might not be a blush.

“My fault,” he answered, “for cutting a corner. That big fellow steers so badly. But I wouldn’t let you down.”

Their eyes encountered in a friendly smile; and there passed between them one of those flashes of heightened emotion, so significant in a relation still happily undefined.

When the music ceased, Clive dropped his arm with a pang of reluctance that moved him—almost—to headlong speech. But the essential Clive was not the man to stake his whole future on a mood; and by the time they had settled into secluded chairs, he felt more immediately concerned to tell her, as best he could, about his father’s Life.

“Are you taking a breather from your big book?” she asked, unaware of his perilous impulse; unconsciously giving him a lead.

“Rather more than that, I’m sorry to say. After industriously preparing the ground, I find I can’t go through with it. So I’ve passed all my stuff on to Alison, who is lapping it up with avidity—as you can imagine!”

“Miss Owen! But why?” The note of dismay pleased him considerably; and his rather lame explanation, clearly failed to convince.

“But you should have stuck it out. I don’t believe in your disabilities. If I’d been your ‘Old Lady’ I’d have bitten your head off! Miss Owen writes cleverly—in patches; but she’s not nearly big enough.”

“No, she’s not, strictly between ourselves. But then— I doubt if I am, either.”

“Oh, you!” She looked him up and down as if gauging his proportions; a look that seemed to add a cubit to his stature. If he could only tell her the truth! But the sane, sweet creature, with never a nerve out of gear, might take him for a budding lunatic, which would not do at all, with delightful possibilities in view. So instead he talked intelligently of Egypt and Arabia, their ancient splendours, their modern atrocities, their deadly influence of politics on the brain. And she listened well. Her humorous shrewdness, her light Irish touch on serious things, drew him out as unfailingly as Alison’s indiscriminate fervours would have bottled him up.

“And you were more than half sorry to come away from it all?” she frankly challenged him.

“Rather less than half!” he admitted, returning her smile.

“But you are glad to be back again in noisy, dirty, adorable London?”

“I am!” He underlined the simple statement by letting his eyes rest steadily on hers. “London, England—‘this other Eden, demi-paradise’ and all that: after a spell of absence, it fairly goes to one’s head. Kipling’s old tag, ‘What can they know of England?’ is quite as true as Shakespeare’s rhapsody, or it wouldn’t have become a tag. I’ve learnt about England from Egypt and Arabia, more than you’d believe—unless you can be bothered, later on, to read my travel book, which is trying to be something different from the usual stale thing.”

“Of course I’ll be bothered. I’m longing to.”

“The purest proof of friendship! I shall punctually send you a copy; and punctually keep on asking how far you have got! Then I shall be off again somewhere else, to learn some more about England. I suppose it’s the salt wave of the sea in my blood: and mercifully books can be written in any old corner of the earth.”

“Will it always be—books?”

Something in her tone made him glance at her in quite another fashion.

“Will it? I wonder. I’d sooner write music; but that’s past praying for. I’m quite aware it almost amounts to a crime these days—adding to the flood of ‘words, words, words.’ (Pinch me if I show signs of quoting again!) And whether I can justify my superfluous intrusion remains for others to decide. That precious biography might have settled the question.”

“Can’t you change round and take it up again?” she almost pleaded.

“No, I can’t” he answered bluntly, unable to keep the pain out of his tone. “Or I would never have let Alix get her teeth into it. There’s more behind, Molly, that I’m not able to tell you. I wish I could!”

“Oh, I’m sorry—I’m sorry,” she lamented softly, as if to herself rather than to him. And he thought, “It’s very dear of her to mind so much and to understand.”

“Mightn’t it ever be Parliament?”

“It might—I’m afraid. Though I don’t exactly fancy myself as a conscientious back bencher, cadging for the democratic vote.”

“Back bencher? Sir Henry Arden’s son!”

“Just so. Sir Henry’s son. The grand old man would stand for ever in the light. Call it vanity if you like— I’d sooner strike out a line of my own.”

“I call it an independent spirit.”

“That’s very nice of you.” He sketched a salute. “It sounds much more imposing! A holy horror of a rut might be nearer the truth. Perhaps seeing my father so successfully rutted and grooved sent me a bit too far the other way. There seems to be a natural rhythm in family life, as in everything else. The good example theory doesn’t work. It’s not the virtues of our elders that we emulate. It’s their vices that show us a more excellent way. Now isn’t it? I’m not rotting. It amounts to a moral problem. Consider the children of a thoroughly selfish mother; often so much more admirable than the unselfish one’s pampered darlings?”

His misguided theory so aptly fitted her own case that she smiled and nodded.

“There’s something in it—if you distinguish between a sane unselfishness and mere softness of heart. But don’t let the rhythm make you a rolling stone sort of man, Clive. And don’t get ruts on the brain. Try calling them roots! There’s life in roots, if they do hold you down. There’s more than half the secret of England’s greatness in them. And now they’re being pulled up everywhere, because people (like you!) think they get more out of life by running round. Perhaps it’s being a country creature, in my bones, that makes it feel sad to me.”

“No, it’s being a very wise creature in your bones, Molly,” he said, moved to seriousness by her concern. “Perhaps I have got ruts on the brain—not from a spirit of independence, but from a natural bump of selfishness, extra well developed in the Arden family! Try calling them roots! That’s worth thinking about.”

“Do more than think about it,” she urged—and rose briskly, for the music had begun again.

Returning to the ballroom, she walked a little ahead of him; and as they halted in the doorway, he said on impulse, “Are you dancing this?”

She smiled at him with a trick of half-closed eyes that he loved.

“Yes. I am.”

“Bad luck! Later on, then?”

He said it with a lightness he was far from feeling. Had she given him the dance, in his then mood—anything might have happened. Later on—nothing might happen. Was this love, then—this romantic emotion so curiously slow to stir in his veins—more or less an affair of the mood, of the moment? Or was his heart genuinely, if unhurriedly, moving her way—irrevocable as death? “If it be not now it is to come. The readiness is all.” Passion he knew and had mastered, more or less, in those difficult years of War. It was love, colouring the whole of life, involving ruts and roots (had she that in her mind when she pleaded for them?) that so strangely evaded him? Or again was he—with his bump of selfishness—instinctively evading it? He shook himself mentally. This was no ballroom mood. A duty dose of Alison was the right specific for his complaint.

She accepted him with alacrity; and she spared him the infliction he had dreaded. In these surroundings she was not Alison Owen, the authoress. She was Alison the pleasure-seeker, with ten years whisked off her age, keen on the very newest dance steps, assuring him that his own were at least six months out of date.

While his feet followed her bewildering instructions, his eyes followed Molly circling with Tony, who had promptly taken possession of her, and held the field for three dances on end. Half amused, half troubled, he noted the Youngster’s unconscious air of possession. They might claim her, for the moment, any of them; while she, giving them her eyes, her smiles, her flattering attention, remained serenely unpossessed.

Not till the pause before supper did he see another chance for himself.

There she was, actually alone, not looking out for the next man, or fooling with a powder puff; simply waiting—for anything or nothing—with her air of having a happy secret up her sleeve. If he secured her for supper, he might hold his own for a dance or two, in spite of Tony. Already couples were drifting off; and with a rapid sliding movement he crossed the polished floor, watching for her face to light up, as it unfailingly did.

“What price supper?” was his unromantic greeting.

“Any price you please! I’m rather hungry. Tony did suggest it, but as he’s not turned up, let’s—”

“Yes, let’s!— There he is, by Jove! Come on!”

But it was Tony who came on, a fighting light in his eyes.

“No, you don’t, Clive. Supper’s my show. Molly—you promised.”

“Tony! You’re romancing!” she retorted lightly: and Tony—a straight youth by nature and training—reddened to his ears.

“But, Molly, I said—”

“Yes . . . But I didn’t. There was certainly no promise. And as Clive came first—”

“First come, first served!” Clive thrust in. “Chuck it, Antonio!”

“Shan’t. If it was not a fixture, it was a moral obligation.”

“It wasn’t. I won’t have Molly badgered.”

In Clive’s tone there lurked a note of command that his family had already learnt to respect. But Tony was reckless; and their eyes met in a clash of antagonism almost amounting to rivalry confessed.

It was Molly, knowing her Ardens, who saved them from themselves.

“Pax, you two! I won’t be squabbled over! We never stand on formalities here; and I want my supper. You two can stay and fight it out, or come along with me—either or neither, or both. Just as you please!”

Her smile and tone had the mother-quality that is woman’s eternal advantage, if she has the wit to use it. By treating their clash as a squabble, she succeeded in making them feel like a pair of chidden boys. And as she went forward they accompanied her, one on either side, each elaborately ignoring the presence of the other.

At the supper-room door she paused, and it was Tony who received her kindest smile.

“You weren’t exactly up to time, you know! And you’ll feel good all over when you’ve eaten half a plateful of Olga’s pet sandwiches. They’re simply devastating! “

“You are,” Tony retorted under his breath.

Clive just caught the words; and even those devastating sandwiches failed to make him feel “good all over.” If he wanted a couple of dances with Molly after supper he would have them, Tony or no. He did not believe she would refuse. But, for all the strain of family selfishness, the fact remained that he could not seriously hurt the Youngster without, in a measure, hurting himself. A damned awkward discovery; but there it was.

He did secure those two dances, nevertheless: and nothing happened. Their talk was in an altogether lighter vein. A proposal on impulse would be no true compliment. Ten to one she would refuse him; and their renewed friendliness would be nipped in the bud. So, when the second dance was over, he bade her good night.

“Going home so early?” she remarked.

Did he detect or imagine a faint note of regret?

“Yes. Nothing like knowing when to stop! I’ve had all I came for.” He stated the fact, simply, without a shade of sentiment in his tone. “Thanks so much for asking me. Now go and pacify the Youngster. No doubt he was hoping to swallow your programme whole!”

“I gave him no reason to hope so. He dances beautifully, but he has no right of monopoly that I know of!”

Like himself she merely stated the fact for his enlightenment. Incapable of coquetry, she knew how to put a value on her favours. Precisely what value she put upon him and Tony he could not estimate, as yet; but again he noticed the shy air of possession with which Tony sauntered up to her before he had reached the door.

Skilfully steering wide of Alison—whom he could almost feel expecting him to ask her again—he escaped, and found his little car that carried him home like a bird.

Mingled with that graceless feeling of escape was a happier feeling of youth renewed, of delightful possibilities not quite so dim as they had been when he awoke that morning. More deeply stirred than he had allowed himself to realise, at close quarters, he had still no wish to be precipitate. Yet the situation seemed vexatiously to demand either a prompt pressing forward or a virtual decision to hang back and let Tony try his luck. If the boy were dead smitten, it seemed hardly fair to cut in and queer his pitch—which was not (he admitted) the right frame of mind for a lover confessed. None the less, he had monopolised her at supper. He had snatched those two dances without a twinge of compunction. And no doubt, on provocation, he would do the same again.

Meantime, it was good to feel suddenly years younger, disentangled from ghostly meshes of the past. If a lurking sense of desertion still faintly tugged at him, he would not heed. To-night, unmistakably, he was his own man again.

Book Two — Hidden Issues

Chapter Eleven

A tarn, and we stand in the heart of things . . .
— Browning

In music, at its best, Clive Arden found the true stimulant of all his most secret and cherished aspirations—of those “desires which create all values and that profounder urge which is satisfied with none.”

He had grown to manhood in a decade of wide-spread disillusion, of shaken faith seeking new footholds, new mental and spiritual adjustments; and to him it seemed that, for perfect adjustment, for heights and depths of human experience becoming knowledge, becoming life, one could look to music alone. It spoke the word and the heavens opened—even in a glorified railway station, like the Queen’s Hall.

Listening to real music—and there was a good deal of it in Mrs. Hilton’s programme—Clive was wrapt away from any other distraction of the senses; vaguely yet pleasantly aware that the pale lofty room, with its exquisite fragments of old furniture, did perceptibly heighten the effect of that familiar miracle.

At the moment, Astra’s “Tragic Poem” for the ’cello and piano, held him enthralled. Though less striking than some of her earlier achievements, it was at once simpler, stronger and more profound. It had the blossoming quality that belongs to genius; the lovely main theme unfolding like a flower; no strife in the ’cello’s organ notes, yet nothing so colourless as resignation. In the grave slow movement one heard the plaint of a soul counting the cost of pain that must pass, yet cannot die, rising on tremulous wings out of the dark into fathomless light.

Then the finale—the piano breaking in with an agitated phrase, re-asserting the stir and tumult of life, while the ’cello crept down and down by semi-tones, with a strange mesmeric effect . . .

It was in the moment of release from tension—of the world, as it were, breaking in—that Clive’s eyes strayed from the darkened window to the profile of a woman sitting at the end of the irregular row nearest the players; listening with critical intentness, rather than the vague absorption of enjoyment.

And as the finale recaptured him, some detached part of his mind registered the impression of a face delicately but decisively modelled, framed in a soft grey hat and the raised collar of a squirrel coat, where a button-hole of real violets nestled. The sloping brows were drawn together in a deeply scored line of thought, the long sensitive mouth a shade too compressed. A hanging lamp threw the eyes into shadow, while it pencilled with light the lines of her nose and cheek. It was a face charming enough to intrude on his absorption in the music; and it seemed vaguely familiar, though he had certainly not met it before. One wouldn’t forget a face like that. He would ask Mrs. Hilton if he might be introduced. . . .

When the movement ended, in a buzz of applause, he became aware that the woman in grey had risen, that she was shaking hands with the ’cellist, speaking to him in a low tone, with her back to the rest. He also became aware that the seat next to him was occupied by his host, Professor Hilton, a large vague man with pale eyes and an abstracted air, as if he had lost something and could not remember what it was: no musician, but a philosopher of distinction, and a good deal cleverer than he looked.

“You enjoyed that, Sir Clive?” he asked with superfluous concern.

“Oh, immensely,” was all Clive found to say. He could not very well confess that music of a certain quality translated him out of his wits; and he happened to be watching the woman in grey, wondering if she, too, had been translated, and had the courage to say so.

“Who is the lady speaking to Romzky?” he asked under cover of conversation renewed.

“That? Oh, it’s Astra, the composer. My wife persuaded her to come.”

Clive drew a deep breath. “What an event! I thought she never appeared anywhere.”

“She doesn’t as a rule. But, as I said, Elinor contrived it somehow. You know her little weakness for celebrities! I believe Astra wanted to hear the Romzky fellow play that piece of hers. And I think Elinor said—if I remember right—she also rather wanted to see you.”

“To see me?” Clive echoed in amaze. And to cover the stir of something more than flattered vanity, he asked lightly, “What have I been guilty of unawares?”

His host, who joked with difficulty, looked more than ever vague and lost.

“I—really—” he began, but his pale eyes lit up as his wife came floating past to congratulate and monopolise her celebrity.

“Elinor, my dear—” Catching nervously at a stray tassel, he asked in a dramatic whisper, “What is it Sir Clive has been guilty of in connection with our distinguished guest?”

The whisper reached a plump man in the next chair and set him shaking with laughter; while Clive, feigning deafness, tried hard to keep a straight face.

It was a relief to catch Mrs. Hilton’s answering whisper,

“James, you’re impossible! Go and talk philosophy to Mrs. Bailey. I’ll explain to Sir Clive.”

“I’m so sorry,” she began. “My husband didn’t mean—”

“Of course he didn’t!” Clive reassured her with a twinkle. “My fault for playing the fool. But why didn’t you tell me the treat you had in store?”

“She didn’t want people told. And I wasn’t sure if she would come. She so seldom does, you know.”

The pride of one who has netted a “lioness” sounded in her carefully lowered tone: but Clive was entirely concerned with his own curiosity.

“Is it true she wanted to see me?”

“Perfectly true.”

“But why? What have I been guilty of—if I dare repeat the idiotic question.”

“Nothing more épatant than being your father’s son! She knew him very well, I believe.”

She knew his father. Again he felt defrauded; and there flashed a staggering possibility—the music—the nom-de-plume . . .?

“Is one permitted,” he ventured, “to ask her real name? Or is she Astra, even when one meets her?”

“To most people, yes. But not to us. And not to you, I am certain. Her name is Anne Verity. I’m surprised you haven’t met her. Your father—”

“Oh, he came up against a lot of musical people whom we never knew,” Clive romanced in sheer desperation. “And, as you say, she seems unusually keen on hiding her light under a bushel. Did she ask you . . . to introduce me?”

“No. She only said she would so much like to see Sir Henry Arden’s son. But I’m sure she would be delighted. Shall I—? We’re having a little pause for tea now.”

“I . . . oh, thanks very much,” Clive stumblingly assented, his wits scattered by the shock of discovery, the prospect of imminent encounter. And she left him feeling puzzled and strung-up; the honour he had coveted thrust on him, in the form of an unspeakable embarrassment. But his curiosity—human and literary—was piqued. He would need all his wits about him.

He was still collecting them when Mrs. Hilton returned: and there, before him, stood the woman whose most intimate love-letters he had shamelessly read.

Their hostess, genially unaware, piled awkwardness on awkwardness.

“Really you two ought to know each other! Miss Verity, this is Sir Clive Arden—a sincere admirer.”

That careless linking of their names so startlingly affected him that he only became aware of her half extended hand just a second too late to respond.

Tingling with discomfort, he followed Mrs. Hilton and her lioness to a couple of chairs sufficiently detached to be convenient without being conspicuous.

“It’s a great pleasure meeting you,” Miss Verity said as they sat down.

And Clive could at least answer with truth, “Oh, but the real event is—that I should be meeting you! It’s true—I am a sincere admirer. I hardly ever miss a chance of hearing your music.”

“That’s very nice of you. And you really did like that last thing?” The shy simplicity of it seemed as genuine as it was surprising from a composer of European reputation. “The slow movement—not too sombre?”

“Not for my taste.” He hesitated, shyly anxious to atone for his wretched oversight. “If I dare say so, I think it touched high-water mark. It’s a thing of haunting beauty. I long to hear it again.”

No mistaking the pleasure that gave her; and instinctively he thought, “She values my opinion because I’m his son. What would she think if she knew I had been trespassing on her sacred privacies?”

But side issues must be ignored if he were to do himself credit in these staggering circumstances. Having pleased her, he found courage to venture on a more detailed appreciation of her work, and so to slip gradually into talk less hampered by the difficulty of remembering that she was Astra, while feeling more intimately concerned with the fact of her being Anne Verity. Here were two people completely apart in his consciousness suddenly, incredibly, fused into one: Astra whom he profoundly admired, Anne Verity whom he profoundly deplored, who had given him the shock of his life and prevented him from handling his father’s biography.

One had to admit she was attractive in the flesh, as in her letters: one had also to admit noticeable eyes—clear grey-violet darkly rimmed, with an orange fleck or two—lit from within, and lighting the whole face, as eyes so curiously seldom do. Clever of her to wear violets so close to them. Was it chance—that grey and mauve—or half mourning? On a casual survey she looked surprisingly young. Twenty-four years—impossible!

For all their impersonal talk, she seemed, by some inner alchemy, to convert their encounter (for him it was no less) into a possible friendly relation. Now and again he could feel her cautiously taking stock of him. And he found himself wondering—would she have the boldness to suggest that he should come and see her? Would he go, if she did? The possibility so intrigued him that he was almost disappointed when Mrs. Hilton returned to claim her, and she drifted away with a friendly nod and smile: not a word about seeing him again. Instinctively he had pictured it the other way round: her invitation; his own non-committal attitude.

A piano item of Scriabin—finely rendered, but little to his taste—formed a restless background to his quickened curiosity. Surreptitiously his eyes kept reverting to that graceful, perplexing creature in grey, welcomed by Mrs. Hilton and her guests almost as a being descended from Olympus—an Olympus where, for years, she had been living what many of them would still call “an irregular life” with his own distinguished father. And all the while he was aware of a growing conviction that—having so encountered her, in spite of himself—he could not let her slip altogether out of reach. If only on his father’s account, and on account of her music, he must know more of her. But either vanity, or some deeper undivined motive, made him wish that the first move should come from her.

Not till the party was breaking up did any fresh opportunity arise. While leave-takings multiplied, he deferred his own: tacitly giving her a chance, ignoring one or two that came his way.

At last—! She was coming to say good-bye; and on this occasion he promptly held out his hand.

“It’s very nice to have seen you,” she said in her low full-toned voice. “I feel grateful to Mrs. Hilton for having persuaded me.”

“So do I,” he capped her compliment—and waited.

The pause seemed ageless; and her next remark, when it came showed where her thoughts had travelled.

“Wasn’t the Beethoven a treat? How he stands out, even in a fine programme, like a mountain among hillocks! And the Waldstein especially has the mountain range effect when it’s so truthfully rendered. In that long mesmeric passage (did you notice?) she made no futile attempt to introduce light and shade where Beethoven intended none.” Her sigh expressed pure enjoyment. “Something to carry away with one.”

And Clive, whose enjoyment was mixed with baser metal, could only jerk out: “Are you going all the way back to Hindhead this evening?”

“Yes. There’s a good quick train.” (Somehow he had fancied her rolling home in her own car.) “I don’t much like London—for long.”

“Don’t you? I love it.”

Her brief look told him plainly he had reminded her of his father.

“Well, I mustn’t be beguiled into missing this precious train!” was all she said, in a manner more like her letters than she had spoken yet.

She was going—without a word. And he found himself saying desperately, on impulse, “As we have met, may I . . . will you let me run down in my car one day, and call on you? It’s no distance.”

She smiled at him charmingly with her eyes. “Would you care to—really? The days are so short now. Of course I should be delighted. ‘Blue Hills’ is my address. Only a glorified cottage.”

Mr. Hilton loomed, large and vague.

“Your taxi, Miss Verity. Allow me—”

She allowed him. Nodding to Clive, and leaving his friendly suggestion in mid-air—she was escorted away.

*  *  *

After all that, it was inevitable that he should feel tempted to trespass again on the letters he had not been allowed to destroy; no less inevitable perhaps that, given the opportunity, he should succumb.

Alison was dining out, the library at his disposal. With a curious inner flutter—a sense of repeating some half-forgotten action in another life—he shut himself into that room of strange memories, pulled down the flap of the tall bureau and unlocked the little secret cupboard. Of all that his father had left him, here, wholly unintended, was the one personal legacy that eclipsed the rest in the eyes of this particular son: a legacy of the stark truth, revealing him as no mere impressive public figure, but as a human and fallible man. Now there had been further revealings in respect of the secret woman.

A curiously haunting impression she had left upon his mind; partly due, no doubt, to his own hidden knowledge and the inverted form of his approach to acquaintance—a stranger, yet not all a stranger: and she entirely unaware!

She had not quite fitted his mental picture. He had seen her as altogether lighter and livelier, more frankly unconventional; a woman in the middle fifties, very much all there. But she looked barely forty. It was puzzling; and there could be no blinking the fact that it laid upon his father a heavier share of blame. In his search for the stark truth, could he hope even for indirect help from her? That remained to be seen. A good deal remained to be seen.

Opening the little cupboard, he took out three packets at random, and sat down in the big armchair.

Onyx, who had been wandering restlessly, sprang uninvited on to his knees, insinuating a soft head, purring out his conviction, “This is how things should be. You and I in our very own sanctuary.” And Clive, sharing the conviction, stirred a finger gently behind his ear.

Then the letters claimed him. No plausible excuse this time—and none needed; so urgent was his natural desire to know more of this woman, and—through her—of his own father.

The packet he took up was marked 1905-6. Without compunction he drew out letter after letter; and found himself as before yielding to their individual charm: the thoughtfulness, under her lightness of touch; and the clear sense of values—even in youth—that foreshadowed the true artist she was to become. A woman of that quality, who could make a fine art of love, as of music, might well tempt even so unlikely a subject as his father from the straight path of fidelity in marriage.

Browsing among those earlier letters, lingering here and there, over some humanly arresting passage, he found one of the saddest written from Scotland: and again the date was September. Evidently something wrong with September.

“It has brought everything back to me, Henry,” she wrote, “with a vividness that has been making me feel I can hardly forgive myself—or you. Of course I was a mere girl, ignorant of life’s passionate possibilities; but you had waked me into a woman; and I ought to have realised all that would count for afterwards. If only you—

“But when it comes to looking backward, there is no virtue in ‘if.’ There is much torment. I’ve had my fill of it to-day; but I love you too well to inflict it on you. ‘Things without remedy, should be without regard.’ Did Macbeth, I wonder, live up to his brave dictum? So easy to be a philosopher on paper! So difficult in life! Thank God, I have the unfailing refuge and solace of my art. And you are obviously on the high road to ambitions fulfilled—ambitions that count for England, as well as for your reputation. I console myself with that when the black spirit comes upon me.

“I ought to tear this up and write quite another kind of letter in a livelier vein. But liveliness is far from me to-night. And outside it is raining and raining and raining, as if it had never done anything else since Scotland was made! You say you prefer me to write just as I am feeling. Well, I’ve done it—and I’m ashamed of it. But I haven’t the spirit to write otherwise. So I’ll dash out and post this—and I can safely leave the tearing up to you!

“Next time you shall have another kind of letter from your demoralised and unreasonable, but deeply loving,

“Anne.”

She could safely leave the tearing up to him. And here it was, nearly twenty years after—still not torn up. And here he sat reading it, perhaps in the very armchair where the old man had read it first. Decidedly things had gone very wrong in September; but her cryptic broken allusions left him still completely unenlightened.

In the postscript, surprisingly, he came on his own name.

“P.S. You don’t know how I long sometimes just to see your small Clive. And yet—could I bear it?”

Well, to-day—belatedly—her wish had been fulfilled; and he sincerely hoped she might feel able to bear seeing him again.

He knocked out his extinct pipe, and lit a cigarette, before he began exploring the other chance packet—1915-16. And here he came upon an allusion to the Old Lady that switched his curiosity into a fresh channel.

“You want me more actively to hate these deplorable Germans? You think I haven’t quite enough capacity in that line—impugning by inference, my full capacity for love, which is hardly fair, coming from you—whom I have loved better even than my own private code of right and wrong.

“But there are things, Henry, that I do hate heartily. I hate worldly values, because they thrust themselves between you and me. I also hate emotional dishonesty. To be inconsistent is human; but ‘truth in the inward parts—’ isn’t that the keystone of art as well as life?

“And there’s the hard streak in me that can never forgive your Mother. I’ve honestly tried to—because she is your Mother. But I can’t—I can’t. And after all, it doesn’t hurt her. Sometimes I wickedly wish it did! But they have an unfair advantage, those eminently practical people. They are so full of themselves, so sure of themselves; while we unpracticals can’t help getting side glimpses through other people’s eyes. I can sometimes even see all this through a German’s! And I’m sure I know how a burglar feels when he perceives the pure justice of helping himself to the jewels and plate of the unseemingly rich!

“Laugh at me if you like! I find lots to laugh at in you—the Henry I know, not the public man I read about in the papers. Surely all real devotion must be tempered with laughter, however much there may be to admire.

“I seem to have wandered rather off my point—the very blunt point of practical people, like your Mother versus the unpractical like your Anne, and the ethics of making allowances—quite fatal, of course, from the rigid black and white point of view, which is hers.

“Are we very black, Henry? Surely it depends—? But we won’t begin making excuses, at this time of day. It’s such a poor cringing attitude, I almost prefer the obstinacy of Pilate, ‘What I have written, I have written.’ In any case one pays, I am sure of it, for all that one has made others suffer. And she must have paid over and over, on your account—never realising. Would it punish her too hardly if she did? I’m even beginning to slip into her mind, you see!

“So enough, for this one while,

“From your

“Anne.”

Having replaced that deeply moving letter, Clive sat a long while, absently caressing Onyx, wondering where on earth the Old Lady came into this mysterious affair? Wheels within wheels! And only this Astra-Anne woman could make things clear. Only she, it seemed, knew the real Henry Arden, the man she had captured and transformed for herself alone; and one could not expect her to unlock her holies of holies for another woman’s son.

If they had lived wrongly, those two, it had been no complacent sinning. One caught the under-note of tragedy that lifted it out of the rut. Here, it seemed, was the “marriage of true minds,” which Alix had failed to discern between his father and mother; the kind of love one read of and could scarcely credit in the ordinary way of life; for “few there be that find it.” Certainly none, who had fancied that they knew Henry Arden, would have credited him with so unlikely a discovery.

Rising to put away those letters—which he had no business to have read—he felt himself becoming ensnared again in the ghostly web of the past; and instinctively he glanced at his father’s photograph, realising—

But he very soon looked away, fearing the effect of a prolonged gaze. He wanted no eerie intrusions to-night. It was eerie enough, in all conscience, to find himself so mysteriously entangled with a dead man’s personality. It almost amounted to that. Why else should this unknown woman so swiftly enter in and dominate his mind?

Having been at special pains to meet him, surely, in a day or two, she would make some sign. He had taken the initiative against his will and decision. It was for her to make the next move.

Chapter Twelve

The hand on the rudder is not I.
— Donn Byrne

But as day followed day, and there came no word from “Blue Hills,” the unflattering delay made Clive feel irritable, a sensation he heartily despised. And irritation revived a measure of his earlier resentment; the more so, because Miss Verity’s silence stirred and intrigued him as no frank attempt at friendliness could have done. What business had any woman—were she fifty Astras?—so to affect him after one brief talk? Was she still a past mistress in that skilful and delicate art of drawing a man on—using indifference as a magnet? In that case, she was welcome to use it till all was blue.

So absorbed he became in that subconscious expectation, and in working out the final chapters of his book, that he almost forgot about seeing more of Molly; and in her case the next move was clearly up to him. His feeling about her that night had been obviously genuine. She was more vital to his own future than any attractive musical genius of doubtful reputation. Yet the fact remained that, in some way, the past seemed to be ensnaring him again; so that he could not fully recapture that earlier sensation. All the better for poor old Tony, who had tried hard to be rather frigid with him after their clash at the dance. For himself, he was not such a conceited ass as to suppose that Molly could be seriously caring for him at this juncture; though a fair share of masculine vanity persuaded him that he could make her so care, if he chose.

At this point Stella, unconsciously helped him by demanding a select little dance at home, the Old Lady and her objections being safely out of the way. Clive, glad of the distraction, let his own objections go by the board. Molly was asked, as a matter of course; and, when the evening came, he did his loyal best to carry on with her from the point where they had left off. Ghosts or no ghosts, her natural radiance affected him like sunshine; and he basked in it gratefully; but the queer, remote feeling was on him again. Even with his arm round her, his mind was otherwhere, which annoyed him acutely, especially when some trivial slip gave him away.

But she simply laughed at him for an absent-minded author; said it would do him good to take an afternoon off; and how about a matinée?

He accepted with alacrity; adding, on his own account, an invitation to lunch at the Ritz. And by the evening’s end he had said in his heart that no mere intriguing friendship with Astra-plus-Anne Verity could be allowed to thwart his chance of winning her.

Yet, when next morning brought no letter from Hindhead, he sat down—in spite of himself—and wrote Miss Verity a brief note, reminding her that she had given him leave to drive down and call on her; asking if, by any chance, she had a free afternoon next week.

She answered by return of post; a formal but friendly note, inviting him to lunch; naming Wednesday as her only available afternoon at present. She sounded very much booked up for a country recluse; but he had got what he wanted. And he waited for Wednesday with an under-sense of impatience, which he sternly ignored.

*  *  *

It was a keen, still November morning, mistily clear in Town. Giving promise of better things ten or twelve miles out, where die breeze freshened and the sun triumphed in a sky of dappled cloud. Between Milford and Hindhead all Surrey unrolled its varied loveliness, in green and madder and pure cobalt and flashes of dying splendour.

Mounting steadily up and up—the little car throbbing under him, like a live thing—Clive was seized with that mysterious yet familiar illusion of having done it all before. The road itself, though not well known to him, had so sharp an air of familiarity in detail that it set him thinking—how many scores of times must his father have driven along it, with sensations such as he, Clive, could scarcely credit in the Henry Arden he had known.

The heights at last! A spin along the Portsmouth road skirting the Devil’s Punch Bowl, its slopes warm-toned with dead bracken and heather; then the great southward sweep of country toward the Downs and the sea. A swerve to the left, before reaching the old Punch Bowl Inn, and the residentialities so entirely out of tune with these undulating wilds.

She had given him clear directions for finding her glorified cottage; and at sight of the little lonely house, near a coppice of birch and pine, eight hundred feet up, he had the strangest conviction that he could have found it and recognised it by instinct, directions or no. Was he becoming, in some mysterious fashion, identified with his father? Or was this fusion of past and present idiotically muddling his brain? That would never do. No fantasy could be allowed to undermine the true reason for his coming.

A deep weathered roof and inset beams, a porch entangled in Virginia creeper, flaunting patches of blood-red leaves, a corner view of the verandah facing a vision of those Blue Hills, the scarp of Blackdown blotted darkly on interlacing curves, that faded into a long dim line—the actual Downs, Grey Men of the South, with their suggestion of open spaces and the sea—

He had arrived.

Close to the verandah corner, a beautiful smoke-blue Persian cat sat erect in the curl of its own tail, blinking amber eyes at the winter sunshine: Ariel, no doubt.

An elderly woman in grey alpaca showed him into an empty drawing-room; and Ariel, trotting beside him, rubbed lightly against his legs; mistaking him, possibly, for the man he should have been—and was not. Or was he? The whole episode had a dream quality at once exciting and disturbing.

Miss Verity, his guide informed him, would be with him in a few minutes. He was glad of those few minutes to collect himself and repress fantastic sensations. But the room had its own ghostly secrets to whisper of all it had signified for those two, and all it might possibly signify for him, if a genuine friendship blossomed from this tentative beginning.

A long low room, it was, with roof beams and a western window, besides two French windows that gave access to the verandah of her letter. And here was Ariel himself, clearly expecting attentions.

Lifting the creature into his arms he thought, “She knows how to whet the edge of a man’s anticipation!” His eye approved a golden glass bowl full of ling, a vase of brown and orange chrysanthemums, on a table in the curve of the small grand piano. There was the bulky ’cello case, with its stand, in one corner; there were many books and few pictures; an air of natural simplicity and rightness in those minor details that reveal personality. No wonder his father had found in this atmosphere a relief from the strain of political life, not to mention the sharper strain of separation from the woman who was “eternally blest by his love.”

As the door opened, he sharply reminded himself that homage paid to Astra must not wean him from disapproval of Anne. And it might not be too easy holding one’s own against her, he admitted, as she came towards him, smilingly unaware.

Her straight-cut grey dress, shot with mauve, her black ribbon belt, low down, and a crystal ball on a long silver chain, gave the same impression of half-mourning: not accidental, he decided at a glance. No colour anywhere, except in a superb sapphire ring set in brilliants on the third finger of her left hand. (A tall price the old man must have paid for that.) Divested of the squirrel coat and becoming hat she looked younger still. Her dark hair, a warm tone of brown, was closely moulded to her head: only near her temples a few threads of grey. Anything less like the guilty party in a clandestine affair one could not well imagine; which only confirmed the good old aphorism that “you never can tell.” The most rakish looking women may be the most devastatingly domestic, and peck their husbands, with awful regularity, at breakfast every morning! He had come to disapprove; and he was not going to be lured, by any assumption of simplicity, from that sustaining frame of mind.

She was shaking hands now, and saying, “How charming of you to come all this way! You seem to have made friends with Ariel, who usually spurns strangers.”

And while he replied in passable platitudes, his detached self was noticing a look of strain about the sensitive lips; wondering if he had been selfish and inconsiderate, so to thrust himself on her, under cover of an admiration for her music that was genuine enough.

The goodness was hers, for allowing him to come, he told her—trying to think of her only as Astra and put the rest behind him.

“Mrs. Hilton said you rather discouraged intrusions of stray admirers.”

“Yes, I do. I’ve never been able to see myself in that role; and most of them make me feel so uncomfortable. But you aren’t a stray admirer.” Her eyes dwelt on him, as she added with unmistakable shyness: “You are—Sir Henry Arden’s son.”

The quiet directness of it took away his breath: and she went on at once, as if to spare him the need of answering, “Shall we sit a little in the verandah and encourage the sun? Or would you prefer the fire?”

He preferred the verandah. She fetched a long grey coat. Chairs were produced; and Ariel deserted him for his mistress, who made love to him, while Clive—silenced by her simple statement—waited for a lead. The venturesome part of him hoped she might say more. And she did.

“I imagine Mrs. Hilton must have told you that I knew your father?”

He admitted as much. He also decided on a further bold line that might ultimately ease things for them both. “I felt envious! But he, no doubt, was one of the privileged few?”

“Yes.”

That unadorned syllable, and all it implied, seemed quietly to rebuke his boldness. Was she going to prove less interesting at close quarters, than in her very individual letters?

As Ariel seemed to have abstracted her, he forced himself to add: “I so often wondered about you—and your real name; but I suppose my Father felt you wouldn’t want to be bothered with the prostrations of an entire family!”

Her smile, at that, had a touch of wistfulness that moved him to keep it up as best he could.

“I think he knew all that I felt about your music. But we were rather an odd pair—not so very odd, in these islands, perhaps! A good many tastes in common, yet never really in close contact. Partly my own fault, perhaps; but he never seemed to need close contact—with any of us.”

She looked straight at him, then, with those softly luminous eyes of hers.

“You think not? I think . . . I used to feel . . . he did need it; only he seemed unable to let other people realise. But naturally—you would know best.”

“I’m not so sure of that.” (Her words recalled Alison’s island simile. This woman understood.) “I think very few fathers and sons really know each other. I certainly wouldn’t presume to say I knew mine.”

“That sounds strange and sad—for both of you,” she said softly.

“It feels very sad; especially now—he’s gone.”

Another of her difficult pauses that so unwittingly gave her away. In a sense, he liked her the better for them, but they did make conversation rather up-hill work.

Fearing she might slip away from the subject, he went on: “It sounds even more strange, but it’s a fact, that I seem to know him better since he’s gone. Soaking in his note-books and stacks of letters—”

It was his turn to pause on a sudden masculine impulse to brush aside all this polite fiction that put them both in a false position. Before he accepted her hospitality—eat her salt, in fine—she ought surely to know that he knew. But stronger than his atavistic instinct was the pull of temperament and training against headlong speech and action. Even polite fictions might be less disastrous than a clumsy confession. Let him at least give her the chance—

Apparently unaware of that crucial pause, she was pensively tracing an invisible pattern on Ariel’s fur.

“I’m not surprised you feel like that. He wrote wonderful letters. And as to—being gone, can one ever really say that of the dead?”

The poignant question brought her many degrees nearer; and he answered in all frankness, “I confess I believed one could, a little while back. Now—I’m not so sure.”

“And I am very sure—one can’t.”

Suddenly she faced him again, with a complete change of manner. “You are writing his Life?”

“No. My second cousin, Miss Owen, is writing it.” (This was worse. It might lead into any quagmire.)

“Oh, but I understood from Alton Lane . . . It ought to be you.”

“Yes. It ought.” Irresistibly he echoed the emphasis. “It was to have been: but—there were difficulties.” A glance at her profile emboldened him afresh. “My belief is—he didn’t want one written. I may be wrong. Did you—did he ever say anything that gave you the same impression?”

“Yes—he did.”

To that third unadorned statement Clive mentally added, “And he didn’t need to tell you why!” Aloud he said politely, “Thank you for confirming me!”

And she, after one of her pauses, “But if you feel that—and I can confirm it, why let any one else?”

“It isn’t in my hands. My Grandmother has set her heart on it.”

“Oh—your Grandmother—!” Her bitter emphasis was a revelation. How she hated the Old Lady! He could feel her holding herself in, forcing herself to add, “I suppose that’s natural. And there would be the reflected glory. She seems a very remarkable woman.”

“Yes. And a very determined one.”

“All of you under her dominion? I thought the day of commanding grandmothers was over?”

“It is—more or less. But, I suppose, the day of commanding personalities will never be over.”

She sighed. “So the Life HAS to be written?”

“I’m afraid so. One can only try and make it as complete and truthful as may be. It’s interesting—and difficult beyond belief.”

“He himself was interesting—and difficult. Did your cousin know him well?”

“She thinks she did.”

“O-oh!” Amusement flickered in her smile. “That sounds rather more unpromising, as a qualification, than your own frank confession just now! It’s so fatally easy (isn’t it?) to produce a convincing lay figure of—a great man that has very little relation to the being he really was.”

There spoke the writer of those letters: and it was vexatious to hear the blurred murmur of a gong, just when they seemed to be getting past her unexpected shyness and his own reserve.

Privately damning lunch (no doubt a scratch feminine meal), he followed her into the small dining-room. Here all was old oak and primrose yellow—the curtains, the mats on the polished table, the three big chrysanthemum heads floating in a deeper yellow bowl. Her eye for colour evidently matched her ear for harmony in sound. And he no longer damned lunch when he found himself eating gnocchi flavoured and fried to perfection, suggesting a Swiss chef behind the elderly “chaperon” in alpaca. A simple meal exquisitely served—and sound wine to boot. Clearly she knew how to feed a man. His father had a fastidious palate. He should have remembered. How much of all this—he wondered in passing—had the old man been responsible for?

There was no elaborate waiting. They were left mainly to themselves; but the personal element seemed to have been tacitly put aside. They discussed music and books and political affairs—that revealed a fresh facet of her brain—with ease and fluency. Impersonal talk revealed her more clearly as the writer of those letters; and oddly enough, it brought them nearer together. She seemed one of those rare women who can hold decided opinions without asserting them: but, under that still surface, he guessed at preferences, hidden yet intense, at certain definite exclusions and shrinkings, a very personal view of the right, and a clear, if unconventional, code of private honour. Her delicately decisive personality gave him the feeling of a pencil sketch; the lines few and significant; the shading lightly touched in, with here and there a patch of deep shadow intensifying the whole effect.

But the more he felt the artist in him ensnared by her charm, the more deliberately—as Henry Arden’s son—he steeled himself against it; and the clash of that surface attraction with his inner antagonism made this first contact with her a peculiarly difficult, if interesting, affair.

Only once, while she was making coffee, his father’s name cropped up in connection with one of his books: and Clive did not let slip the chance he sought.

“The first time I saw Lane,” he said, fumbling with the catch of his cigarette case, “he mentioned some essays on musical themes that my Father wrote, about twenty years ago, and actually never published. I can find no trace of them. And it occurred to me—on account of their musical interest—that he might also have shown them to you? Perhaps you know . . . what became of them?”

“Yes. I do know.” Her low-pitched voice was steady, but a faint colour stirred under her skin, and she continued rather unnecessarily to tap her cigarette on the back of her hand. “They were privately printed. I have a copy that he gave me. I said he ought to publish them. I think Lane pressed him also. But—well, you know, when he made up his mind about anything, one couldn’t—”

“No, one couldn’t!” Clive eased it for her; but he intended to see those essays. She would find that, in his case, one also couldn’t—

“I’m so glad you’ve got them. You will let me see them?”

Her slow blush was unmistakable now; but she faced him straightly, handing him his cup.

“I think—I have a spare copy I could give you.”

“That’s better still! It would be very kind.”

“Oh, dear no!” She smiled with recovered composure. “You ought to have one.”

“Yes, I think I ought. Best thanks all the same, if you can find it—?”

When they had finished their coffee, she found it—a thickish pamphlet affair, bound in limp blue cloth. Sitting at her small bureau, she wrote his full name in it— “Clive Henry Arden, from—”

She glanced up at him, her pen poised. “Astra?” she asked.

“No. Anne Verity.”

The boldness of it surprised him; and the sight of their names coupled on the open page gave him the same tingling shock of pleasure as when Mrs. Hilton had coupled them more than a week ago. “I shall have a rare treat,” he said, “sitting up with those to-night.”

About three o’clock he felt bound to make a move.

“Must you really go now? Is it urgent?” she so charmingly asked that he did not trouble to conceal his pleasure.

“Not that I know of. But I hadn’t the face to suppose you could squander the whole afternoon on a mere caller.”

“Oh, if you’re a ‘mere caller,’ you have leave to depart!”

Her look and smile held a hint of personal intimacy that prompted him to answer: “In that case, you can dismiss the ‘mere caller.’ I remain.”

“Very nice of you! I kept it clear, on the chance. If it’s really not too dull—a young man of your age and a woman of mine?”

“You can’t talk about age,” he lightly retorted.

“No.” (Her sigh made him fear an indiscretion.) “I’ve turned the awkward corner when one doesn’t talk or think of it more than need be. If I dismiss the caller, and you dismiss the elderly composer, we shall do very well! But you’ll have a dark drive back.”

“That won’t worry me.”

They walked along the ridge before tea, and returned with the glow of a fiery sunset full in their faces; Clive himself aware of an inner glow that was not entirely due either to walking or to the wonder of these moorland heights—the sun slowly consuming its life away behind a group of pines, darkly fretted against the brightness like the carving of a rood screen.

The fantastic sense of familiarity was on him again; as if he had known this woman for years, had walked with her scores of times along that darkening ridge between the unseen Devil’s Punch Bowl and the far-seen blues and indigoes of Surrey hills. If it was puzzling, it was also distinctly pleasant to have stepped without effort into this natural ease of intercourse, this strange obliteration of the dividing years. But what the devil had become of his own critical attitude earlier in the day?

Back in the cottage, drinking tea with her by the fire, he recaptured himself, so to speak; while she weaned Ariel back to vanished kittenhood with a reel dangling from a yellow ribbon. And Clive—having almost forgotten she was Astra—begged that she would play to him.

“Can you do both?” he asked. “’Cello and piano?”

“Yes—both, more or less. But not this evening, if you’ll forgive the refusal.”

“Next time, then?” She was watching his hands. He had caught her at it more than once—and he knew why.

“Will there really be a next time?” she asked without looking up.

“I’m afraid there may be several—if permitted. You’ve brought it on yourself, you know! And I’m fearfully keen to hear you play.”

“Well, if you’d really care to come one day next week? I may have to go away for a few days the week after.”

“I should love it,” he answered, feeling gratified that at last she had taken the initiative. “Sunday or Monday would suit me best, if that’s not too soon.”

“Not a bit!” she confirmed it with a friendly smile. “Sunday, by all means.”

“Thanks very much. Only, look here, you mustn’t bother about lunch. I can have it early, or get a snack en route.”

“If you do that, I shall be seriously offended!”

Her eyes and voice so strangely stirred him that he retorted with deliberate lightness. “I wouldn’t offend you for the world!”

She smiled pensively at that.

“Nor I you—if I can help it. But when you know me better, you may change your mind.”

“Not I!” he boldly committed himself—and left her to make what she chose of that.

*  *  *

What he was to make of those intermittent sensations—that seemed his own, yet not his own—was a more serious consideration. The thrill at the sight of their coupled names, his exalted mood out there on the ridge, his sense of familiarity—what could they be but ghostly echoes of emotions felt, sometime or other, by his vanished father: some insidious form of haunting undreamed of in his philosophy? One might smile at the fantastic supposition, but the sensations were curiously actual; and he rather resented being made the vehicle of another man’s feelings. He had quite sufficient trouble to deal with his own.

Certainly this Astra-Anne woman was charming enough for two; and as to the rest—? If no tricks of the practised siren spoilt her distinctive charm, he had felt unmistakably the pull of an inner magnetism against the stronger pull of his filial determination to disapprove. Out here he could maintain the judicial attitude. In there it had been undermined by the impression she gave of a suffering rather than a sinning woman. Was she the more subtly demoralising because wrong seemed somehow less wrong in her charmed vicinity?

Right or wrong—and in spite of looming difficulties—he wanted very much to see her again next Sunday; wanted still more to hear her play some of her own music. Not yet could he fuse into one the writer of that music and the woman who had demoralised his father: a mystery she alone could unravel—if she chose.

Chapter Thirteen

Go lull yourself with what you can understand;
For I lull no one; and you will never understand me.
— Walt Whitman

While Clive—recaptured by the past—was discovering the true Henry Arden, through the one living being who had intimately known him, Alison Owen was hopefully pursuing, through a maze of letters and papers, the Henry Arden of her own imagination—the man she had been more than half in love with, yet had never known.

Here was a task that made demands on all her faculties and stirred her deepest emotions; an opportunity to show every one that she, and she only, could depict a vital portrait of Henry, erect in splendid isolation, giving no sign of those unsatisfied needs that she dared to believe she could have satisfied—had the chance been allowed her. She would prove to them all, in spite of their secret scepticism, how deeply she understood.

Throughout the process of getting to grips, she was in her element; alone in the lofty library, with its masculine scent of leather and tobacco; sitting up till all hours, devouring the mass of material placed at her command.

First the letters; because the personal note must prevail. In the bulk of them it disappointingly did not prevail; so skilfully he seemed to hide the self she pursued behind his sheer power of handling words.

“And door succeeds door, I try the fresh fortune—” Her mood recalled Browning’s “Love in a Life”: sense of pursuit and frustration, that she would not have confessed to a living soul. He was there none the less, she felt sure of it, that lone Henry, marooned on the island of his implacable individuality; the Henry who would go a mile out of his way to do a kind or generous action, and go several more miles in order to keep it hid; the Henry who had counselled her so wisely when she rushed headlong at doubtful investments, in the hope of banishing, by some miracle of luck, the bogey of a dreary old age, in polite penury, that haunted her when health and hope were at a low ebb.

Disappointed, yet unquenched, her eager brain bubbling over, she found relief in flinging off her five or six pages daily, of the rough outline that her impatience had embarked on (once Caroline’s back was turned) before she had given herself time to marshal her facts or get her proportions clear.

On the whole, she preferred to work at night; and Clive proved charmingly amenable to her wishes. So nice of him letting her keep his photograph of Henry on the table. If he himself would only take a more personal interest, her cup of content would be full. She had begged him to sit there whenever he pleased; but no—he would not disturb her for the world. If he would only realise—! But, in that case, he would not be Clive.

Later on, when the early chapters were written, she would invite him to a critical sitting; show a more generous spirit of sharing than he had done while in possession.

Meantime there was the “feel” of Henry to be cultivated, the clear and inspiring sense of his presence. And deeper down, lurked the secret craving for some form of spirit manifestation. To find her hand, mysteriously “controlled,” writing his words, not her own, would be crowning proof, to her romantically tinctured soul, that he was glad the great work had been entrusted to her.

So far, by no stretch of her elastic fancy, could she detect any feeling of the kind. But then, so far, even her impatience had not carried her beyond notes and rough outlines. How if she launched upon an actual chapter or two? One ought to wait, no doubt, for a firmer grasp of the whole. But the whole was so vast; and Clive had gleaned from Caroline some delightful notes about Henry’s early years, needing only the novelist’s creative touch to make them live.

On the first night of experiment, all went swimmingly. From ten o’clock, till one in the morning, her facile pen covered page after page with hardly a check. It was a propitious start. To-morrow night she would do better still.

But to-morrow night is no mortal’s to command. Eager and expectant, she settled in earlier than usual; and had scarcely written a page when she became aware of some inner check. Her sentences refused to march. No trace of last night’s exhilaration. What could have gone wrong? She had put on her amber beads for luck. She had been careful to avoid seeing the new moon through her bedroom window. She had taken a long rest that afternoon, to be fresh for Henry’s possible co-operation.

And now, in place of that hoped-for miracle, she was invaded by a dismaying shiver of discomfort; a mysterious sense of presence quite other than she had anticipated; an almost inimical atmosphere. It was too idiotic. Having worked herself up, she was at the mercy of her nerves.

Aided by voluminous notes, she made a valiant attempt to carry on. But the Thing—whether in the air or in her brain—proved stronger than her subtly undermined power of resistance. Crazily, and most unpleasantly, it made her feel as futile and intrusive as if he were actually sitting in the chair behind her, resenting her invasion, wanting the place to himself, which he would naturally do if—if he were sitting there now—?

Was he sitting there—? Dared she look over her shoulder and confirm, or confound, her foolish sensations?

With a pang of self-scorn, she discovered that she simply did not dare. He was present. She felt it in her bones. She had no kinship with Thomas, who must see and touch in order to believe.

He was there—the man she craved to see; and, in some mysterious way, he was imposing his mind on hers, paralysing her by that inimical feeling; as if the caustic, critical side of him had returned to unsteady her in the very hour of achievement—till confusion came upon her, and a misery of shaken confidence in her capacity for the big task so eagerly taken in hand.

Pained and alarmed, she found herself hurriedly collecting her latest batch of papers and notes, thrusting the rest out of sight, moving to the door without once looking round—literally, ignominiously, driven from the room.

Not till she was safe in the hall, did she slip a hand through the half-closed door, and switch off the light over the table. And so vivid was her sense of having left him sitting there, that the crazy question flashed, Would he turn it on again the moment she was gone?

Chilled and shaken, she slipped into her old fur coat, recklessly summoned a taxi, and fled back to her cubic ecstasies, her “Cinderella” fire, and all her familiar securities with positive relief.

It was cruel, just when all had seemed so propitious; and she—after years of climbing up the climbing wave—on the crest of it at last. Because of her belief in that mysterious Other Side and its possibilities, she could not dismiss her horrid sensations as mere fantasy. That Henry’s deeply desired presence should be capable of inducing them was the real puzzle—the unkindest cut of all.

There must have been something wrong with the conditions, the vibrations, she sagaciously decided, not knowing very much about psychic technicalities, except that these little affairs did not always work out according to plan. She had heard of disconcerting experiences. Had she only been brave enough to look round! At least she would be brave enough to try again. She was not to be daunted out of her prospective achievement.

One night at home, she must have, to steady her nerves. Luckily she had brought away her actual chapters, and a mass of outline; had snatched them up instinctively, as if fearing he might read them! Never had she been more acutely alive to the critical side of his nature than last night: and even next day, the chilling effect of it blighted her industrious afternoon and evening.

Feverishly she wrestled with that wretched first chapter—which had flowed from her with such satisfying ease—pruning here, altering there, till her beautiful facile pages, gilded with eulogy, were disfigured by a mass of corrections that only seemed to make matters worse. Nothing for it, but to scrap the whole thing and start afresh.

Profoundly dejected, she owned herself beaten—for the moment; and went early to bed.

*  *  *

It was an understood thing, since Caroline departed, that she could dine at Queen’s Gate whenever it might suit her. Clive was very thoughtful, in those ways, for a young man. And after all—perhaps he liked having her there? She had not seen him for nearly a week. It would cheer her up. Also she keenly appreciated a good dinner, a glass of wine and superlative coffee (one of Henry’s little weaknesses) as a prelude to a long evening’s work.

The dinner proved to be an early affair, a tête-à-tête with Clive, who was rushing off to some concert, and looking so pleased with life in general that she felt faintly aggrieved. He rallied her in his friendliest fashion; enquired how many reams she had flung off, and when the first-fruits would be despatched to Bath?

It was all so kindly meant and so rasping to her peculiar sensitiveness—which of course he could not know. It would have been a relief to speak frankly of her strange experience, to hear him make light of it: but he might think her crazy, press her to give it up. Anything rather than that.

Reinforced physically, if not spiritually, she settled down opposite Henry’s picture, with her extra size cup of black coffee, pressed upon her by Clive as “a libation to the Muse!” To-night surely she could work. Clive’s mild chaffing had stiffened her resolve. Even if strange sensations assailed her, she would not be afraid. She would welcome them as proof of some spiritual link with him who was gone.

Might she not, in the desperate circumstances, take the initiative herself? If he could so miraculously force his way back into her consciousness, might not she also succeed in forcing her spirit a little way towards his? Once or twice, already, she had tried to achieve automatic writing, without notable results. But under Henry’s control, it could not fail.

“I would dare all, I would yield unreservedly to the higher guiding influence,” she murmured half aloud, in a fervour of self-obliterating zeal—and waited . . .

But her ecstasy of surrender fell on dead silence: no sound, except the throb of a passing taxi.

A stealthy chill invaded her; and to escape the ignominy of it, she plunged again into her rough outline, seeking impetus for a fresh start.

It was good. She had struck the right note. And yet—reading on, she found herself insidiously invaded, as before, by that paralysing misery of shaken self-confidence. Her conception of him had neither strength nor unity. It was hopelessly biassed, clotted with personal sentiment, which he could not abide. By some unearthly power, he seemed actually to be thinking through her brain, forcing her to see it all through his eyes. And the worst of it was that some unfamiliar part of her dimly understood.

Now she could almost feel him there, reading over her shoulder, girding at her for a romantic, sentimental fool. Helpless she sat there under the spell of it—not exactly afraid; balanced on a knife edge of inward excitement, waiting for what would happen next. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, she felt acutely certain that she was not alone, that whatever came to her must be the climax of the very experience she had craved. If he so disliked her unaided work, let him guide her pen and write. . . .

And this time, it seemed, he accepted her challenge.

Without volition, her hand began to move rapidly, spontaneously, over the new blank page, hopefully headed “Chapter One.” It had come at last, the guiding influence, the crowning proof . . .

Faster and faster her pen moved over the paper, as if it were running away with her. Not a word, not a sentence flitted through her brain. And she let her hand run on, exulting in its independence—till the impetus slackened; and it came to a dead stop.

Elation evaporated. She felt shiveringly alone.

Holding her breath, she looked to see what Henry had written. And behold, the entire page was covered with wild, meaningless scrawls. No consecutive sentence could she discover in that wilderness of nonsense. Had he been simply making a fool of her? Worse still, had she been making a fool of herself?

Reaction was so poignant that tears sprang to her eyes. No more work to-night. That ghostly slap in the face had toppled her headlong into the abyss of self-scorn, which gapes for the imaginative.

With a petulant gesture, she tore across and across the hateful sheet of paper that had betrayed her, and drank up the remains of her cold coffee at a gulp. She would go straight home to bed—the only fit place for a deluded owl of a woman.

*  *  *

But even sleep evaded her; and, when at last it came, she was still pursued, in broken dreams, by that nightmare of vain striving. She—the dream-Alison—seemed lost in a maze of pathless undulating hills. Gentle green slopes tempted her first up one, then up another, because only over the rim could she escape into the open and find the real Alison, who appeared to be missing. But always before she reached the rim, she would lose her foothold on the slippery turf, and down she would slide with the swift dream motion of flying—very pleasant in itself; but not so pleasant when she found that the ascent was all to do over again, while one maddening line beat upon her brain, “forever climbing up the climbing wave.”

Over again; and over and over; and she powerless to wrench herself free from the curse of repetition; though she could occasionally, in dreams, elude the foreseen nightmare moment, and change the course of events.

This time the change, that came startlingly, was none of her devising.

An interminable climb, grass slipping under her feet, a wild downward rush—and there in the hollow stood Henry, big and broad with his thatch of thick grey hair and glacier blue eyes, startlingly vivid to her senses and her heart. The fact of his being there, alive, did not surprise her in the least. It was the manner of his greeting that baffled and hurt; no friendly look or word, but a half smile in his eyes as of thinly veiled contempt.

“Not the least use, Alison,” he said, before she could speak. “Let the thing alone. You can’t do it.”

“I can do it—and I will,” she retorted, amazed at her own vehemence. Why should it be so important to scale those waves of grass?

And as she spoke, to her immense relief, they were no longer there. She was sitting in the library, all her papers round her, tossed untidily like leaves in a wind.

And there beside her stood Henry, in his most formidable mood.

Instantly she knew that they had both been speaking, not of those green ridges, but of the Life.

“Henry, I can—and I will,” she repeated, but the resolute note was gone from her voice.

“I tell you, I won’t have it,” came the shattering answer; and with a sudden gesture of impatience he swept her scattered papers from the table on to the floor. “A caricature, a plaster saint—that’s your vaunted biography—”

And in a voice of deadly quietness he tore her precious outline to ribbons—her similes, her estimate of himself and his work. Not once, in her bewildered misery, did she wonder at the fact that he seemed to have read every word.

“I will have no written Life,” he went on in the same hard tone. “None of you really knew me. There is only one person on earth—”

For the first time emotion invaded his voice—and it ceased abruptly.

“Who is it, Henry—who?” She pressed him more boldly than she could have believed.

But the living semblance of him was no longer there. It was at a figure of stone that she hurled her question, with such desperate determination to force an answer from him, that she shattered her dream—and woke, with the tremor of nightmare on her; the sense of having been in actual contact with him terribly real.

Motionless, she lay staring at darkness and the grey patch of her uncurtained window, her heart jerking nervously, her feet cold, the dead weight of her whole body so overpowering that it seemed impossible to lift a hand, to switch on the friendly light.

What did it all mean? Was it simply disordered nerves? Or did Henry intend to harass her like this if she persevered with the Life? In the face of ghostly opposition, dared she persevere?

On that unanswered question—wearied out and shaken all through—she presently fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Fourteen

Words are sometimes given us to defeat our purpose.
— H. H. Munro

Even the stark prose of breakfast next morning failed to readjust her disastrously shaken nerves. Not yet had she squarely faced the detestable necessity of admitting defeat; but very deep down she knew that nothing would induce her to try again. She, who had seen herself as Henry’s heaven-sent biographer, to be scared out of her achievement by an unproven ghost, which she had not even been bold enough to confront! Worse still, she did not dare invite another to present itself and convict her of cowardice afresh.

Bluntly put, that meant—she was beaten. She must give up the most coveted chance of her life.

By that time it was after breakfast, the moment of all others for facing practical issues; and it confronted her now with the question—what sort of line did she intend to take with Clive? Fairy tales about ghosts and dreams would probably cut no ice at all. Yet she was not prepared to say tamely that the thing was too big for her—a statement Clive and Caroline would swallow with avidity. No: she would take quite another line of argument. The Life ought not to be written at all. Henry did not wish it. He had said so in plain terms. And she would tell Clive, while conviction was still fresh upon her; tell him so convincingly that he must be persuaded to believe. She would reveal her own privileged intimacy with the dead, such as none of them could experience, by reason of their unbelief; and so convert her bitter confession of failure into a triumphant fulfilling of Henry’s wish.

Already she was easing her wounded vanity. That bright idea of a privileged intimacy (though she desired no more of it!) had its compensating glory; and she needed every ounce of compensation available. She would go round early this afternoon to tidy up her papers, which she foolishly pictured strewn about the floor, as Henry had strewn them with that scornful sweep of his hand. She would exert all her skill to convince Clive. And this time she would not fail.

Bilson informed her that Sir Clive had gone out early in the small car; and had said he might be back about five for tea. So she ordered it in the library; and clinched matters by adding that she particularly wished to see him when he arrived.

Listlessly she set about her tidying and tearing up, her mind still running on the curiously real finale of her dream. Who was the one privileged being? And why would he not have the Life? The masculine perversity of it, when she and his mother had set their hearts on immortalising him!

From a pile of books, taken out for reference, she was automatically removing and crumpling up the slips she used as markers, already rehearsing her scene with Clive, converting her failure into triumph, of a sort—not in the family circle only. It was of the first importance to tell her own little world that, owing to a wonderful psychic communication from her cousin—who did not wish his Life to be written—she had persuaded the family to give up the idea.

Lost in her imaginary conversations, she was dismantling a volume of Monypenny’s “Beaconsfield,” that fairly bristled with slips. Henry had been a sincere disciple of that great and strange man; and she had planned a special chapter on their points of political affinity. Absently turning the last page of the book, she sat transfixed, staring at a sheet of paper in Henry’s handwriting: a letter just begun and slipped in here—forgotten . . .?

“Beloved—” Not Mabel: the date was this year, the very morning of his death. And she scanned the few lines almost at a glance.

“Beloved,—

“It’s done! Everything settled. My mother a shade puzzled, but very pleased at the success of her private wire-pulling, which she doesn’t dream that I suspect! Still less does she dream how she has indirectly helped me towards the more coveted honour of claiming you openly as my promised wife. An ironic touch—isn’t it? What she will think, when I tell her, God alone knows. She won’t dare to say much. And she will get no more than the bare fact from me.

“I’m off to Downing Street now. To-morrow I will come to you, my Darling, and then—”

Swept clean out of her own dilemma, Alison sat gazing at that unsent fragment—thrilled, pained, in a complex fashion, and confounded utterly. No name; no clue. It was distracting. Had Clive stumbled on anything of the kind? Was that why he had given it up? Curiosity, while faintly easing her pain, quickened her impatience for his return. Armed with her ghostly message—and this, she would surely draw out of him all he knew.

But, as five o’clock brought no sign of him, she fled from that haunted room and her distracted thoughts, leaving word that she would be back before dinner time. And when she did return there he was, at last—tall and friendly and smiling; the mere look of him shrivelling up her hectic announcements before they were out.

It seemed he had spent the whole day in the country, an unusual diversion for the time of year. Her pointed remark to that effect did not move him to be more explicit—aggravating and lovable being that he was!

“I thought you were never coming home,” she flung out; and only realised how odd it must sound when she saw the amusement in his eyes.

“Very complimentary! Were you aching to see me? Or have you been tying yourself into knots?” He glanced at the table. “Looks unusually tidy!”

“Yes. I’ve been clearing up.”

“Done-finish?” he asked purely in fun.

“Done-finish!” she echoed with impressive emphasis, almost relishing the dramatic stroke and his complete surprise. “That’s why I wanted to see you. Clive, I’ve had the most strange and wonderful experience these last two nights. I don’t think even you can dismiss it as fanciful nonsense. Certainly I can’t ignore a direct communication—from the dead.”

“What?”

He was all attention now, bending upon her a concentrated frown that made him simply a juvenile edition of his father. “I’m afraid ghost stories are wasted on me.”

“But, Clive, this is terribly convincing. You must listen!”

“Oh, I’m quite game to listen.” He glanced at the clock. “Won’t you stay for dinner? I seem to be solus this evening.”

“Thank you. I’d like to stay. But I must tell you first—about Henry. And if we’re to be alone, you needn’t change.”

“Fire away, then.” He sank into the big chair, lit a cigarette, and held out his case. “Have one?”

“No, thanks. I couldn’t—just now. You don’t know what it feels like, Clive. I tell you, I’ve seen Henry. I’ve felt his living presence, as close to me as you are—”

“In this room?” he asked sharply.

“Yes; in this room. Two nights—he came to me. And on the second night he said, ‘I will have no written Life.’ In the teeth of that, how dare one go on?”

“You’re chucking it?” His eyebrows went up. “Jove! This is serious.”

“Of course it’s serious.” She could have hit him. Yet, at the moment, she was loving him more than ever. What would he say to the discovery she was holding in reserve, to spring on him at the most telling moment? But he seemed to be following his own line of thought.

“Oh, Lord, it’ll have to be old Jarvis,” he murmured—and she pounced like a terrier on a rat.

“My dear Clive! The Life must not be written by any one. Don’t you feel that, after what I’ve told you?”

He emerged from his abstraction with a half smile, more like himself.

“What you or I may happen to feel, Alix, is neither here nor there. We’re pawns in this game, to the Old Lady’s Red Queen.”

“But we’ve got to make her believe.”

“Well, if you succeed, you’re a living marble—as old Nanna used to say. I can’t make even myself believe a thing because I want to, let alone anyone else. We’re more fearfully and wonderfully made than that amounts to.”

“But, Clive—you do believe the dead still exist?”

He raised an appealing hand. “For God’s sake, don’t worry round after my beliefs, old thing. They’re not hardy enough to stand it. The point is, she’ll never believe a word of your tale.”

Alison’s sigh had a touch of exasperation. “What can one do with people who won’t accept the simple truth?”

“That’s been the standing difficulty, I gather, all down the ages. The only answer to it is Pilate’s famous question, ‘What is truth?’ Isn’t it simply recognising one’s own ignorance, as a spur to further questioning? And as I do recognise mine, you can’t expect me to swallow yours unchallenged. Excuse me, if I’m talking gibberish, but we’re both a bit out of our depth. So far, you’ve only flung me a bare statement. Let’s hear some more—if there’s any more to tell.”

“There’s a great deal more to tell.”

She had been working it all up at the back of her brain, while sketchily preparing the ground. Now it flowed from her—an effective bowdlerised edition; no mention of a dream, lest it might spoil the effect of that strange finale—so real, that she now genuinely believed it had been more than a mere dream. On the first night the “feel” of his inimical presence, fairly driving her from the room; on the second night—himself, standing at her elbow, sternly telling her, “I will have no written Life. None of you really knew me. There is only one person on earth—”

At that point she noticed a change in Clive’s quietly attentive attitude; and she repeated the sentence with dramatic emphasis.

“Only one person—I was so taken aback, that I boldly asked him ‘Who?’ But he turned to stone before my eyes. And then—he was gone. All my papers brushed off, by his hand, on to the floor, his voice still sounding in my ears.”

Something in Clive’s fixed look checked her impulse to ask outright, “I suppose you don’t know—who?”

He would not tell her, if he did. So she hurried on to her dramatic climax.

“The queerest thing is that just now, while tidying up, I came on something that amounts to an answer.”

She fumbled in her bag; heard him draw a long breath; then, with a sweep of her arm, she held out the half-written sheet.

“Tucked away in a ‘Beaconsfield’ volume—I found that. He was interrupted, I suppose; and it was never finished. But who—?”

Clive was not attending, did not even seem to be hearing. He must have read those few lines three times over, with no sign of disturbance except the indrawn lower lip.

He was folding the sheet and slipping it into his letter case, when she irresistibly exclaimed, “Clive! You know about it? You aren’t the least surprised.”

“This doesn’t amount to an answer,” was all he said; but she could feel how he was holding himself in.

“Well, it’s a clue. And doesn’t it suggest—something behind that might make him prefer no written Life?”

“Quite likely,” he agreed, pocketing his case. “You said yourself none of us knew him. Seems—you were right.”

“Is that all you have to say?” she flung out, maddened by his coolness, convinced that, in his case also, there was something behind. “I thought you cared for him—that you would take it to heart.”

“Well, if I do,” he said with an odd smile, “that’s my affair.”

It was useless to press him; and she had matter more urgent on hand.

“Oh, you may be as cool as you please about it, but you’ve got to stop Caroline, somehow, from insisting on the Life.”

“I’ve got to?” That waked him up. “No, thanks. I’ve had my innings. And I don’t advise you to try it on.”

“But if you won’t, I must!” she cried, despair welling up in her. “Some one’s got to consider your Father. He’s at our mercy. Think of it! That he should make the great effort—and it is an effort (she gravely assured him), to get through to me, depending on my loyal cooperation, and that I should ignore his expressed wish—is out of the question. I suppose I must go down to Bath myself. But, oh—” Prosaic facts brutally tripped her up. “I should have to stay a night. And I can’t afford . . . Clive, if you won’t help me, you might at least drive me down.”

“Sorry, Alix,” his tone was more sympathetic now. “It’s simple madness. And I’ve engagements on. But if you persist, I’ll let Froom drive you down in the four-seater.”

“Oh, thank you. I’ve got to persist. It’s a sacred charge laid upon me. And if his very words don’t move her, surely that letter—”

“That letter?” He rose and stood facing her with a hardness in his eyes, in his tone, that recalled the voice of her dream. For the first time in her life she felt nervous of him; but she was keyed up to concert pitch.

“Yes, of course, you’ll let me have it.”

“I shall not let you have it. What’s more, you’ll give me your word not to mention it to Gran—or I don’t lend you my car for your wild-goose chase.”

“But, Clive—?”

“Listen to me.” The unaccustomed note of authority silenced her. “Those few lines tell us nothing, except that he intended—to marry again. He clearly did not intend Gran to know till it was all settled. Therefore she hasn’t the right to know; and those allusions to herself would only hurt her, to no purpose.”

“I don’t care,” Alison muttered rebelliously.

“Well, I do. And can’t you see you’d be going dead against his actual human wishes—you who are so keen on obeying fantastic ghostly commands. What’s more—I’m his son. And I won’t have it. That’s final.”

Never had Clive spoken to her on a personal matter so feelingly, so decisively: and she knew herself beaten; her trump card snatched ruthlessly out of her hand. This was an altogether new Clive, only to be accounted for by her favourite formula “something behind.” But without his help she could not stir. There was nothing for it but surrender all along the line; and the line of surrender had a way of seeming longer than any arbitrary line had a right to be.

“Well, you needn’t turn so severe about it,” she murmured placably. “If that’s how you feel . . . of course I see your point of view—”

“Oh, no, you don’t, Alix!” It was his normal lighter tone. “You only see your own point of view from a slightly different angle, which isn’t quite the same thing! Anyway, you give me your word—”

“Oh, of course I will,” she agreed wearily. “Only, if Caroline won’t believe the other thing—?”

“If—? She’ll snap your head off. But as you seem keen on summary execution—”

“Clive—don’t be unkind. It’s bad enough . . .”

Tears started. She tried vainly to gulp them back: and at once he was himself again, his hand on her shoulder.

“Poor old Alix. It’s hard luck, after the way you’ve sweated at it. I know how it feels. But Gran’s as stiff as a five-barred gate: and you’re riding for a fall.”

Her attempt at a reply was not very coherent; for his sympathetic tone awoke a crazy desire to feel his arms around her, to be comforted by the warmth of human, masculine contact after the chill of ghostly repudiation.

“You want to go, to-morrow?” he asked, tactfully ignoring her tears.

She nodded, fumbling for a handkerchief; and, with a friendly smile, he proffered his own.

“It’s only adorned my pocket,” he remarked. “And look here, don’t jump it on her. Send her a line to-night. It’ll reach her before you do.”

“Yes. It might be better,” she agreed, thinking more of herself than of Caroline, who never struck one as needing the consideration due to the sensitive. And, on that, she retreated in fairly good order.

So two notes sped to Bath by the midnight post; and one of them ran as follows:

“My Dear Gran,

“Alison has been rather bothered over the Life. She’s bearing down on you to-morrow (Thursday) with a weird tale in which she firmly believes. Don’t let her rattle you needlessly. She not only feels she must give it up (which I daresay you won’t regret) but she’s against the whole thing. And I’m with her up to a point, as you know. I’m sorry you should have another upset over it. Please don’t be too down on poor old Alix. It’s upset her too. Hope the change and the treatment are working wonders.

“Always your affecate. grandson,

“Clive Arden.”

To Alison, that endless drive, on a cloudy day of bitter cold, was a memory scarcely less painful than the after-scene with her formidable cousin.

Anticipation (the curse of the imaginative) forestalled, with very fair accuracy, the sort of reception Caroline would accord to her “direct communication” and her “sacred charge.” If the thought of Jarvis as her successor made that charge seem still more sacred, she was not consciously aware of the fact. The nearer she drew to the city of Bob Acres’ immortal exploits, the more keenly she sympathised with his awkward discovery that “valour will come and go”—especially go.

Confronted, at last, with Caroline in her public monument attitude—the impertinence, of course, was Tony’s—she felt more than ever how unfair it was of Clive to have abstracted her trump card. Yet he did not want the Life written. He had been very odd about that letter.

But with Caroline there before her, “wanting to know,” Clive’s oddness was a secondary affair.

“What’s the matter, Alison, that you come rushing down here, when you know I ought not to be worried? I thought it was all going like a rick on fire.”

“So it was,” Alison admitted, “till a few nights back. Then something happened—something very serious, or I wouldn’t have come. While I sat there writing in the library—Henry’s—Henry appeared—”

“Henry’s beard? My good girl! He never had one.” Alison smothered her unseemly amusement in a cough.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, what did you say? Do speak distinctly, and don’t shout. My ears are as sensitive as yours.”

“I said,” she spoke slowly and with emphasis, “that the other night, while I was at work in the library, Henry appeared. I saw him, Caroline. I heard him speak—”

A large heavily ringed hand checked her with a gesture she dared not disobey.

“Appeared? Are you trying to palm off a ghost story on me, at my time of life?”

“I’m not palming off anything. I’m trying to tell you what really happened—if you’ll only listen.”

“I have no desire to listen. You’re a radically unbalanced woman. I told Clive you were quite unfit to be handling the Life. And now you come rushing down here, expecting me to swallow your sacrilegious nonsense about my dear dead son. Charlatanry, I call it. You’ll find it so—if you don’t take care. And even if the spirits of those who are gone were permitted to return, Henry would never trouble about appearing to you.”

“He would—and he did!” That second unkind hit was too much for Alison. In the face of opposition so harsh and unreasoning, her courage rose, her determination to deliver Henry’s message, let his mother believe it or no. “He said he would have no written Life, that there was only one person who really knew him—”

“One person?” She listened now. “I need no ghost to tell me that. And she’s too old to undertake the great task. As for you—”

“I’m not undertaking it. That’s what I came to tell you,” Alison flashed out, seeing her resignation in danger of being forestalled by this most arrogant, egotistical and unreasonable of women. (“One person,” indeed! If she could only see that letter!) “I also came to say that, in view of his express wish, his Life ought not to be written by any one. If you persist, you will be wrongfully troubling his spirit, to satisfy your own personal pride. And—you will regret it.”

For one breathless moment she believed she had carried her point. Never had she seen her unimpressionable cousin look so startled and strange. But it passed almost before one could believe in the miracle.

It was the normal Caroline, in her stiffest manner, who answered, “I must ask you, Alison, not to talk that kind of blasphemous nonsense in my hearing. If you want to back out of the work you were so desperately anxious to undertake, well and good. Your reasons don’t concern me. I shall write to Jarvis: and you will hand over all Henry’s papers, in proper order, to Clive. It was like your foolishness, rushing down all this way to no purpose. Waste of petrol—and waste of time.”

“I did it for Henry’s sake. And I repeat, if you persist, you will regret it,” was all that Alison could find to say. Three immovable Ardens in succession—Henry and his son and his redoubtable mother—had flattened her out completely, for the time being. Later on, she would revive: and then—

They parted with frigid politeness on both sides. Alison was not asked to dinner; nor did she attempt to see Caroline again. She left Bath early on Friday morning, devoutly wishing (though she would never tell him so) that she had followed Clive’s advice. Both he and Henry—alike in so many ways—had the annoying, if invaluable, habit of too frequently being in the right.

Chapter Fifteen

Something stronger than ourselves
Moving in the dust of us . . .
— A. E. Macintosh

If Alison felt dismayed at her failure to storm the Arden stronghold of scepticism and egotism, Clive himself had suffered secret qualms at finding his own curious experience repeated in an intensified form. Even if one discounted Alison’s passion for italics, it was clear that nothing less than a good rousing scare would have driven her to back out, and to confront the Old Lady with a tale of ghostly inhibition which would cut no ice at all.

He, Clive, sitting alone in the library, saw himself more formidably confronted with the riddle of these repeated intrusions that conspired to assail his guarded, sceptical attitude. To Alison’s point-blank question, “You do believe the dead exist?” he could still only answer, in his heart, that he hoped rather than believed. But—that his own dead father knew what they were about, that he could return, in the spirit, to this particular room, and impose his will on any one who tried to thwart it . . .?

Vulgarly speaking, it seemed a bit thick.

He was far enough from his own sensations, on that strangest night of his life, to take a cooler view of them; but the impression of vivid reality remained. And now, here was poor old Alison scared into surrender. The repetition worried him to an extent that he would never dare let her suspect.

And what of his own intermittent sensations—as if he were himself, yet not altogether himself? While he was soaking in the past, it had seemed natural to suppose that he might have become almost identified with his father’s personality; but of late he had been troubled by a secret whisper— How if his father’s earth-bound spirit had, in some unimaginable fashion, invaded him? A much more startling—if more incredible complication. There was the increased affection for his grandmother; and again, his flare up, when Alison proposed to use that letter for her own ends, was not entirely due to filial concern. It was an emotion more violent, more personal, connected with Miss Verity herself.

Longing to give her that letter, while dreading his own most difficult confession, he more than ever felt impatient for the coming of Sunday, though he had secured Molly for Saturday; and they had discarded the matinée plan in favour of skating, if the frost held, before their lunch at the Ritz.

A mysterious state of affairs—when one gave it a thought—all this smooth-seeming surface of Life, these natural daily pleasantnesses running on rubber tyres; and hidden away inside, that detached inscrutable “I,” who used these things and enjoyed them, yet had vitally neither part nor lot with them; the “I” who perceived too clearly for comfort the illusion of so-called facts, the reality of unseen elements confidently dismissed as illusion.

Fortunately perhaps (or was it unfortunately?) trivial daily urgencies had a way of breaking in, and claiming one’s attention, in defiance of mystical-philosophical doubts as to their essential unreality! And on that particular Saturday they claimed him right and left.

The first post brought a brief note from Alison.

“Dear Clive,—

“I have come back. It was useless—as you said. It was like trying to make an impression on granite. She is the most obstinate, and in some ways the most unfeeling person I know. She is writing to Mr. McNeil. If it suits, I will come and hand over to you—on Monday afternoon. She is doing a wrong thing. And she will regret it—I told her so.

“Always your affectionate and grateful,

“Alison Owen.”

Poor dear! She must have been rather badly trampled on; but she had dashed into it with her eyes open.

Then there was Molly and skating—pure exhilaration, both, topped by a superlative lunch at the Ritz. Cooking of that quality was a sufficiently real sensation—while it lasted! And, at parting, he had secured her again for next week. It was all done lightly and naturally in the modern manner; but the underlying significance was clear—to himself, at least.

Returning home, with that champagne sparkle in his veins, he had found the inevitable letter from the Old Lady.

“My Dearest Boy,—

“Why on earth did you assist that unbalanced creature to come rushing down here with her blasphemous talk about dear Henry’s ghost? And it was all to no purpose, as you must have foreknown. I have written to Jarvis, explaining that the Alison fiasco was none of my doing, and asking him to get in touch with you as soon as possible. Too much precious time has already been wasted. Jarvis is bound to be a slow worker. And as I do not grow younger, I am naturally impatient of needless delays. I wish you had come instead of Alison. It would have been a pleasure to see you.

“Always, dear boy, your affecate. grandmother,

“Caroline Arden.”

He put aside that characteristic letter with a pang of self-reproach. He and Alison, between them, had accounted for many weeks of delay; and under her impatience he divined the natural dread that she might not live till the book came out. Jarvis would be as slow and as pulverising as a steam roller; but he would go through with it, happen what might. For himself, he looked more and more to the living woman for deeper intimacy with the dead man. And of all he might learn from her, little or nothing could be told. So much for the vaunted truths of biography!

*  *  *

Sunday morning dawned keen and still; roofs and chimney-pots outside Clive’s window were thickly powdered with fine dry snow that had fallen steadily all night. It was freezing harder than ever; and normally he would have gone off skating again. Oddly enough the other Clive—who seemed to be in charge—did not even regret the deprivation, once the nose of his car was set towards Hindhead and the siren of “Blue Hills.” For a siren she undoubtedly was, under her quakerish air. She radiated some subtle magnetism, not of the physical order. Clearly she wished to be friends, and she knew how to make him wish it also, whether he fundamentally disapproved of her, or no. He very much wanted a talk about those essays; such strikingly distinguished work that they ought to be published, even now, with a preface by Alton Lane. But—would she agree?

And—how about the Old Lady? He began to feel himself quaintly placed between those two—bitter antagonists, mutual devotees!

On and out he drove through a world transformed, as only snow can transform all things, with its extra-terrestrial touch, the lovely austerity of its monochrome effects. It was not ideal for driving, but that scarcely worried him, so long as there was no serious risk of finding Hindhead snowed up.

On and out, through the yellowish veil of incipient fog, into clear sunlight and spacious open country radiantly mantled in new-fallen snow; bare trees etched on its glittering white, pure cobalt in its shadows; pines and gorse bushes powdered with dust of diamonds.

On the heights, when he reached them, the air had a keener quality, the sky a vaster sweep over the several counties that lay all around and below him. Space enough for one’s thoughts to spread themselves, unhindered, between miles of England and miles of sky. In Town, one mainly observed. Here one could think, without stumbling incessantly against a shop or a hotel or a solid mass of congested traffic that was doing its hideous best to make the London he loved unendurable.

And there, at last, was the lonely cottage, more than ever like a thing in a fairy tale, with its snow-covered roof and garden and its dark attendant pines.

Within—the long low drawing-room; and Miss Verity’s welcoming smile was worth any minor vagaries of the road. She was wearing mauve to-day, with strips of pale grey fur. There was a warmth in her cheeks that beautified her and gave him a sudden thrill of pleasure.

“I felt half afraid,” she said, “the snow might prevent you.”

And he answered, almost before he was aware, “It would take more snow than this to prevent me!”

The words gave him a faint shock, and he discounted them with a laugh. What must she think of him? And what the devil did he mean by it? If she wondered also, she gave no sign.

It was near lunch time: and throughout the meal they talked fluently, chaffing one another like old friends. No doubt it was the sense of background, half known, half unknown, which partly accounted for that unusual feeling of intimacy and enhanced her surface charm. More than once, some turn in their talk brought sharply home to him the curious fact that, however little he knew the visible woman beside him, the invisible woman was no stranger to him at all.

Later on, sipping black coffee by the drawing-room fire of logs and cones, he was prosaically haunted by the irksome question—how and when could he tell her? Would she have the mercy to give him some sort of a lead?

Putting aside her coffee cup, she said suddenly, “If you haven’t had an overdose of frosty air, would you feel like walking along to the Gibbet Hill? We’ve been muffled in mist and snowflakes for nearly a week; and it all feels so spacious now. Will you come?”

“I’d love it of all things,” he answered truthfully—and knew, in a flash, that he was to be given a lead.

Without a word, she rose, as if obeying some inner urge; and he, as a matter of course, followed suit.

“Sir Clive—” she turned to him with an arresting change of maimer, “if you are coming here often . . . if we are really to be friends, I feel bound to tell you how much more intimately I knew your Father than I have been allowing you to suppose. If I didn’t say so at once, it was because I naturally wanted to feel more at ease with you, to get some idea of what you were like. It’s difficult to speak of. But—I feel you have the right to know.”

Pained inexpressibly, longing to ease her embarrassment, Clive stood there tongue-tied—because he did know.

And she, holding the edge of the mantelpiece with one hand, said simply: “I loved your Father. I have loved him all my life. And he—loved me.”

The quiet dignity of it curiously hurt, in view of all that the confession presumably implied. And, before he could speak, she added: “Once, a long, long while ago—we were engaged to be married.”

“Engaged—?”

The strong wind of that surprising statement blew all else out of his mind.

“But—but I’m eight and twenty! You couldn’t—?”

“I assure you I could! What age are you supposing me?”

“Well—about forty.”

She shook her head with a small sad smile. “It’s nearer—fifty. It will be, next year. But that’s beside the point. I naturally thought it would come as a great shock to you—the fact itself, not my mere age.”

Her tacit rebuke thrust upon him the detestable necessity of at once administering his own counter-shock.

“Miss Verity . . . forgive me if I seem clumsy, but I hardly know how to say it. The real shock . . . about my Father, is not news to me.”

“He told you!”

There was more than amazement, there was anger in her low tone.

“Never—” (The single explosive word was a positive relief.) “Damn it, I have been clumsy. I mean . . . since I came home, of course—I had to go through everything. And, at the very last, I came on a small secret cupboard in his old bureau. I found the key on his watch-chain. And there, inside, were packets and packets of letters locked away—”

“And you—read them?” she murmured, in a kind of stunned acquiescence.

“Not more than a dozen or so,” he hurriedly assured her. “You see—writing his Life, I was bound to look into everything. He was my Father. I had to know.”

“Yes—you had to. That was my own feeling. And, in spite of knowing, you could still seek me out, in this friendly way?”

“I didn’t seek—I found you, thanks to Mrs. Hilton. I also discovered you were Astra. Rather a complicated shock all round.”

“My dear boy!”

The note of distress in her low tone moved him to add, “I’ve since discovered that, apart from all that, you are you. I don’t know how many more people you may happen to be!”

At his valiant attempt to ease their mutual awkwardness, she smiled—the saddest smile.

“I’m your friend—for a fourth—if you can possibly forgive me? I suppose it was . . . my letters that made you give up the Life?”

“Yes . . . and something else. A strange experience, that I can hardly expect you to believe.”

“Oh, I’m capable,” she said, “of believing almost anything. One can’t do imaginative work without becoming aware that there is no definite border line between illusion and reality. Tell me—please.”

Very briefly but vividly, he told her—his personal experience only; and she listened, looking down into the fire, gripping the mantel shelf so hard, now and then, that her knuckles whitened.

When he paused, she only said, without looking up, “How wonderful! But it would have been better—to burn them.”

“He wouldn’t have it, you see. And I couldn’t . . . after that. It felt too real.”

She deftly righted a fallen log with the toe of her shoe.

“I wonder—you don’t hate me.”

“I did—at first. You see, we all had a fairly exalted idea of my Father. And it smashed things up rather badly. Besides . . . my Mother—it didn’t seem fair.”

Her sensitive lips were compressed to a thin line.

“It was a bitterly sad tangle, all round. But I’ve every reason to believe—she never knew. It was he . . . who suffered most.”

“Yes. I see that now. At first I was simply angry,. But if he cared . . . if you were actually engaged, how . . . why?”

“That,” she said, “is my story. A long one. And rather a sad one. I want to try and tell you—on his account—as much as I can. I felt it might be easier out of doors—away from all this, from possible interruptions.”

And suddenly he remembered Alison’s find.

“Miss Verity, before we go, there’s something else—a letter that my cousin has just found between the pages of a book. A letter from him, written that very morning—”

He had put it in an envelope; and, as he handed it to her, the light in her eyes, her “Oh, thank you”—a mere indrawn breath—almost unnerved him.

Impossible to stand there while she read it. So he said hurriedly, “I’ll be getting on my coat;” and went out, leaving her there, alone with his dead Father.

His own intimate connection with the whole thing was painful enough; but it seemed of no account, just then, beside the pain for her; the tragic fact that, in the very moment when the years of separation were to be ended, Fate had brutally snatched him out of her life.

Chapter Sixteen

There are few who love thus. The many love too well the near securities.
— Fiona McLeod

When he returned to her, she had put on her squirrel coat and a close-fitting grey hat, with a small iridescent feather. Either the softness and simplicity of it, or her manner of wearing it, seemed to take years off her age. But although she smiled easily and naturally, he noticed, with a pang, the faint flush that rimmed her eyelids.

They walked a fair distance along the ridge without exchanging a word—the scrunch of frozen snow underfoot; the stainless sweep of it, near and far, giving out a light of its own. He felt tongue-tied till she had spoken: and she seemed stricken with the same disability.

It was awkward and uncomfortable; yet he felt curiously content to walk beside her thus, till it pleased her to speak. The astonishing fact of her engagement to his father, though it could not justify all the rest of it, prepared him, at least, to hear her story with a mind less wedded to disapproval—an attitude distinctly foreign to his temperament.

Nearly half way across the ridge, she turned and smiled at him.

“It was one August in Scotland it all began—just thirty years and three months ago. He was just about your age. That’s one reason why I so wanted to see you. I knew, from a photograph, that there was a likeness—quite unusual between father and son. And when I did see you, I found it so strong that it gave me a shock; things that didn’t appear in the photograph—the voice, the hands . . . Well, he was up in Scotland, on the lovely west coast, fishing with his friend, Mr. McNeil—”

“McNeil? Did you meet him?”

“Yes, a good many times.”

(And Clive thought, “How much does the dear old buffer know about all this?”) But he said nothing; and she went on with her story.

“I was staying there, then, with my Mother, in a village on Loch Etive. My Father had been dead two years. He was a Major in the Royal Engineers; a reserved, difficult man, but good all through. And—I adored him. It was from him I got my music. He took me to concerts, and gave me lessons, which Mother regarded as sinful waste of money and waste of time. All the same, she was glad of it—afterwards. Besides her pension, she had only a little money of her own. So we were not well off. But my Father left me a small legacy, which I persuaded her to let me spend on a thorough musical training. I was absorbed in it then; not composing, only playing; hoping to study abroad and take it up as a profession. My Mother disliked the idea, but she was beginning to realise it might mean money. And she never disliked that! Then one day, by chance (if one can believe in chance), I met . . . Henry and his friend. I can’t call him anything else,” she shyly excused herself.

“Of course not,” he said, so quietly that she did not seem to hear.

She spoke, looking straight before her, almost as if she were thinking aloud, and he not there.

“It came very suddenly upon us both. We did literally fall into love, with the swiftness and fatality that one had read of and could hardly believe in. I was not an emotional girl. So, to me, it was a revelation. And it remains—a possession. It is something, in this tangled world, to have had even seven weeks of happiness unalloyed—as perhaps it only can be at nineteen.

“He had known me just three weeks when he asked me to marry him. But part of that time we had been meeting nearly every day; and we did, in some sort, know each other’s essential selves. Only about on-the-ground details—so trivial, yet so deadly important—we knew almost nothing. And so long as we did not know, we were happy. There’s much virtue in not knowing. Naturally, he loved my music. I think it was partly that which helped to make the whole thing so swift, so magical. But he disliked the idea of my taking it up professionally. He and my Mother had the old-fashioned feeling against it, especially for a woman. She was quite annoyed with me for telling him we had even thought of such a thing! She always said I had no worldly sense, like my Father. It almost amounted to a grievance! But I was proud to be like him—grievance and all!

“Henry’s worldly sense, I suppose, was ‘asleep or on a journey’ for those few golden weeks. Yet, bit by bit, I was perceiving that this man—this utter stranger I had promised to marry—was rooted in a social and political milieu of which I knew less than nothing; already distinguishing himself in Parliament; quietly tenacious, determined to make a big thing of his life. Also bit by bit (not realising) he was building up in my mind a picture of his Mother—a strong, ambitious woman, wrapped up in his success, rather than in him, so it seemed to me; a picture that filled me with secret alarm. It would be social duties, social and political functions all along the line. Henry seemed serenely sure I should very soon adapt myself to it all: and somehow, that very serene certainty waked in me a sudden terror that I might find myself unable to do any such thing. I was not a pliable creature, even at nineteen; and my troublesome imagination foresaw too clearly how disastrous my failure might be—for him.

“By some unkind fatality, that chilling vision assailed me during our last long outing on the Loch—a September day of unforgettable loveliness. And the terror of it drove me to ask (how foolishly!) did he feel utterly sure I was the right kind of wife for a rising politician? His natural answer was, ‘I feel utterly sure you are the right wife for me’—which wasn’t quite the same thing.

“More foolishly still, I persisted, ‘But will your Mother think so, Henry? I shall feel very uncertain of myself. Will she welcome me? Will she love me?’ And again his answer seemed to slip round my actual question. ‘Don’t worry your dear head about that. It is me you are marrying. And of course she will welcome my wife.’ He did not say, ‘She will love you’; and the omission was like a little cold wind on my heart. It confirmed my horrid certainty that she would neither love me, nor I her; and that she would be no cypher in our lives. I could hardly forgive myself, afterwards, for having pressed that foolish question, and spoilt the end of our last wonderful day together.”

She paused. Even after so many years, speech seemed difficult; and Clive, venturing a glance at her profile, dared not attempt any comment on all that.

In the windless quiet, the scrunch of frozen snow under their feet sounded like soft explosions. Except for two other figures on a distant part of the hill, and a small dog frisking in the snow, they might have been miles away from anywhere.

Presently she drew a difficult breath, and began to speak again, in that quiet manner of hers, at once guarded and serene.

“That evening, Henry had a long talk alone with my Mother. I never knew what they said, but some instinct told me he had realised her for the first time—realised that she, too, would be no cypher in our lives. We were hopeless incompatibles—she and I; but she clung to me tenaciously after my Father’s death. And I knew she would go on clinging to the very end. Henry said nothing about their talk; and I was too shy, too sensitive to ask. But those secret shivers of doubt sharpened the pang of our parting—almost as if I had foreseen . . . how it would be.”

“Are you trying to tell me that, after all that, he let you down?” Clive demanded, smothered anger in his tone.

Her smile was a shade unsteady. “You sound so like him! It might be Henry arraigning himself! But it wasn’t quite . . . so blunt as that. It was partly my own doing. I wonder if I can make a young man of your generation understand?

“I hoped his first letter would dispel my fears; but, although it was full of feeling for me, it seemed only to make me see clearer than ever that his London world—its ways and his Mother (whom we scarcely mentioned) were all hopelessly outside my ken. I wasn’t afraid for myself. Please understand that. I was afraid—for him. If it had been a case of going to the ends of the earth, I would gladly and proudly have ridden over the ‘last lost edge of the world’ with him. But it was nothing so simple, or so romantic as that. I was very young, remember, very ignorant, desperately afraid of hampering him, or embittering our beautiful relation, if matters went wrong. I had horrid visions of our two mothers in perpetual clash; spoiling things for us, as only mothers can spoil things for the creatures they love best on earth. Never, for a moment, did I doubt his love; but my fatal intuition told me that his ambition, his country and his career would always come first with him. He had mentioned that the Ardens were not moneyed people, for their position; and I began to see, with deadly certainty, that he really ought to marry some woman of his own world with money and influence and all the social code at her finger tips. If he couldn’t or wouldn’t recognise it now, he surely would . . . afterwards. And the fear of that was more than I could face. I saw him, proudly, as a man made for great things. And . . . I wasn’t far wrong. It was the romance of a few unbelievable weeks—against all that. And the pull of it was too strong for me.

“So—after a wracking struggle—I felt driven to write, and put my aching conviction into words, as best I could. In fact”—she broke off to steady her voice—“I definitely released him from our engagement. I knew it must hurt, for a time; but I believed he would thank me in the end. And I begged him not to regret anything—on my account, because I could never regret the two most wonderful months of my life. I said—I would never marry (How easily one makes the great renunciation at nineteen!), that I would devote my life to my art. And directly I had posted that incredible letter, I would have given worlds to snatch it back. Yet, deep in my young, romantic heart, I believed he would only love me the more—and refuse to set me free. Later on, when I told Mother what I had done, she was furious. She never really forgave me for being such an unmitigated fool.

“And he—he wrote me a beautiful letter that nearly broke my heart—if hearts could break. He seemed quite taken aback by my clear-sightedness. He still insisted that I was the right wife for him; but confessed that he had had a battle royal with his Mother, who, of course, had other plans. For some time she had been throwing him constantly with the girl of her choice, the daughter of a very influential man in the Cabinet—your Mother. She insisted that his coming engagement to her was confidently expected in their circle, that his attentions had compromised her, that he could not honourably withdraw—and so on. He admitted he was fond of the girl, up to a point; and back again, under the spell of his Mother’s powerful influence, of all his own life-long values, he did feel afraid (he has told me so) that I should never harmonise with his world, or it with me. So my clear recognition of it, cruelly confirming him, seemed the finishing touch.

“Altogether, you see, it was a conjunction of many conflicting things; but mainly—it was his mother. Not only the living woman, but the dominant streak of her in him; the touch of hardness that I suppose a man must have, if he can subordinate everything—even his own strongest emotions—to his ambition, his career. At all events—there it was. He blessed me, he implored me to forgive him. He was obviously happy; but—in the distracting circumstances—he felt bound to accept my decision. Sometimes I wondered . . . if I had written again—?”

“You should have written again,” Clive insisted, not venturing to discompose her with a look.

Her sigh sounded almost like a sob.

“Oh, don’t! He said that himself, not so very long ago. It’s easy being wise—afterwards. And looking back on it all—one does feel something of a fool. I suppose very few sensible modern girls would commit that sort of folly. But in those days it seemed more simple and natural to stand aside for the good of a man . . . one deeply loved. And as I said, if it hadn’t been for my letter I’m sure he would never . . . In fact, I know it. But between that and the other complication—he succumbed. I felt I couldn’t write again. And that was the end—or so it seemed at the time.”

They had reached the plateau known as the Gibbet Hill. Its snow-flecked monument, bitten out of the sky, marked the spot where an actual gibbet had once been reared for the hanging of three foot-pads who had brutally murdered and robbed a home-coming sailor on the Portsmouth road. Far below them on all sides of the plateau, England’s Home Counties went billowing away to the horizon; a monochrome etched in Indian ink. Blue sky and blue shadows in the deeper snow of the summit; a hint of indigo in the massed clouds behind them: no other colour at all. But Clive, gazing at that famous view, in its most unusual aspect, was thinking chiefly of one suffering woman and her all—too-human story.

“There’s a bench near here,” she said, after a brief silence. “And it’s so still, that I would like to sit a little, before walking back, to imbibe all this—if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Rather not. It’s superb.”

They found the low deep bench of logs; and as he brushed away the snow, she smiled at him.

“Thank you so much. My fur coat won’t mind!”

“Nor my leather one!” He kept it up, not daring to ask if he was to hear any more.

“I haven’t seen it like this,” she said, “since 1916. And you—I suppose—were in France?”

“Yes. A terrible year.”

Again there fell a silence. Her story seemed to stir some unknown part of himself, so that he almost knew what was coming. He simply could not talk of ordinary things. Neither, it appeared, could she.

“There’s not a great deal more—that I am able to tell,” she said suddenly. “There are things that cut too deep. But you will want to know how . . . we came to meet again?”

“I do,” he admitted. “If it doesn’t hurt—too much.” She shook her head and smiled at him.

“You’re very charming and considerate, my dear Boy. If it didn’t feel so strangely familiar, being here with you, I couldn’t speak of it at all.”

When she called him her “dear Boy” in that caressing voice, he almost loved her; and her confession so smote him that he said on impulse, “Strangely familiar—? That’s how I’m feeling too.”

“Perhaps,” she said, very low, “he is with us here. He wanted us to meet. He wanted you to know—everything. He was going to tell you—”

Another pause. She was bracing herself—he knew it. But when she spoke, her voice had the same detached calm.

“It was five years—five lifetimes—before we met again, by chance, at Antibes, that lovely cape beyond Cannes. Again he was on a holiday, but alone. He had been overworking. They had sent him away for a complete rest from strain and worry. And he found—me. I was alone, too. My Mother died that spring. I had lately completed my training in France and Germany. And I had just sent away a good man—a fine man, whom I could hardly bear to refuse. I wanted him so, as a friend. The difficulty was that Henry—present or absent—seemed to dominate one’s whole being, even when one’s sanity rebelled against the loss that such futile faithfulness involved. Then—one miraculous afternoon—there he stood before my unbelieving eyes. And, in the very moment of meeting, I knew—we both knew—that nothing was radically changed between us. Again there was the swiftness, the fatality of an enchantment; almost a sense of crashing together.”

She had a difficult pause; how difficult he could dimly realise. Then, “I’m not trying to gloss things over,” she said, “to make the eternal excuse, ‘plus fort que lui.’ I’m only trying to convey what actually happened. Of course, after that beautiful, shattering discovery, two right-minded people would have separated again, for always. I did, in fact, take that for granted. But—he would not have it. And in the end, I could not completely hold out against him.”

Clive continued to look straight before him. What precisely did she mean by that? With her generation—so shy of fundamental facts—you never quite knew where you were: and her pause, at that point, had an element of awkwardness; not true silence, but imprisoned speech.

Mercifully it was brief.

“I should be wronging him,” she said, “if I gave you the impression that—there was no conflict. That week was the most wracking strain I have ever been through. As you perhaps know, he was a man who lived on austere terms with himself; but, in the face of our uncalculated meeting, he could not—would not—quite let go of me again. So it ended, as I said, in a measure of capitulation, which I’m not attempting to justify—or explain. Was there ever an explanation that explained anything?” She faced him with a brave attempt at lightness. “And after all—you are a man. You understand—?”

“Yes—I understand,” he confirmed her in a low tone, unable to say more, because he so deeply, so personally understood.

She accepted his statement without comment, and went on: “It was then I discovered how largely it was due to his Mother that he had sinned against the light. It was that he always saw as the unforgivable thing; and he never quite understood how I came to forgive it. But that’s my own affair. At all events, we decided that we could not drift apart again, as if nothing had happened. We were not to meet often; but we were to correspond—not quite lose touch. It was, of course, a more fatal concession than I realised at the time. I don’t think I realised anything very clearly then, except the dazzling fact that we had found each other again. We couldn’t, you see, meet as normal friends in his world. We were not normal friends—the sort of thing people are horribly quick to detect. And his Mother knew about me, if she did not know me. She would never have believed in friendship between us. And she would have been right. Sometimes I wished she could know everything; she that knew almost nothing of him—nothing: while hugging her proud belief that it was she who had made him the remarkable man he was.”

The words came from her low and vehemently. There was an explosive element in her that only the Old Lady seemed able to arouse. With a shiver she drew her coat together. A wind was blowing now from those indigo clouds in the North.

“One daren’t sit long.” She rose and faced him smiling. “We must walk briskly home. There’s more snow coming. You ought not to be too late starting back.”

“Snow or no snow, I don’t start back till I’ve heard you play. You promised!”

He hoped she would respect the resolute note in his voice. And she did.

“I’m not backing out! I’m only preaching Wisdom that has cried in the streets unheeded since Solomon’s day! After tea, I’ll do the best I can for you. Much nicer than playing to pupils.”

“You ought not to fray your nerves and waste yourself on mere pupils,” he said so decisively that she glanced at him with a faint lift of her eyebrows.

“You call it waste—passing on the miracle of music to others? I’ve never seen it so, and I really can’t let you scorn ‘mere pupils’ like that. They’ve brought a deal of happiness into my life, some of them. And I hope I’ve brought a little beauty into theirs, the kind that is not ‘a vain and doubtful good.’ You see it’s not merely a case of teaching finger-work and harmonics, but of trying to make Beauty a real element in their lives, to give them an intrinsic standard of values, very badly needed to-day.—There’s a sermon for you! But you asked for it!”

“And I’m glad I got it! Your pupils are lucky beggars. I wish you’d take me on.”

“Perhaps I will!”

Without seeming to resent his intrusion, she had quietly emphasised the unbelievable fact of her age, which annoyed him very much, for no sane reason that he could see. More: in this brief walk, she had completely undermined his young assured attitude of judgment, the stern disapproval, and all that, of a bare four days ago. It was not merely her heart-breaking story—which did extenuate, if it could not exonerate either of them. It was something in herself.

The whispered hint that it might also be something in himself he simply refused to consider.

Chapter Seventeen

We are the music makers.
We are the dreamers of dreams;
⁎  ⁎  ⁎  ⁎
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world, for ever, it seems.
— O’Shaunessy

Before they had finished tea, it was snowing steadily; but threat of an avalanche would not have removed Clive till he had heard Anne Verity play.

“At a pinch, I can send ’em a wire and sleep at the good old Beacon Hotel,” he said—and was promptly aware of having again stirred up the past. “I’m rooted here till I’ve had some music.”

With the smile of a mother, humouring a spoilt child, she went over to the piano. And he thought, watching her, “Saves a lot of nervous energy sometimes—being an Arden!”

“Which of them does your Highness want to hear?” she asked with her meekest air.

“Both, please. The ’cello first. Something of your own.That Barcarolle thing, ‘Night in a Gondola.’”

Obediently she took out the big instrument, waving aside proffered help, dusting it with a light touch that was almost caress. To the peculiar thrill of the tuning up process, he leaned back in the big chair—obviously his father’s—and closed his eyes.

The low, swinging melody—piano, pianissimo—stole into his consciousness, like the breath of night stealing across quiet waters; drowning thought, as dusk was drowned in darkness; all the armoury of custom and the world’s wisdom laid aside with the garments of the day. No mere descriptive programme stuff, but the very spirit of night, distilled in sound.

And the complex harmony of the second theme, more passionate, more urgent, awoke in him that secret stir of the soul wrought only by music at its loveliest. Louder, more urgent, it swelled to a deep-toned tormented fortissimo, in which the emotional storm reached its climax, subsiding again through a long rallentando, to the low swinging melody, with its simple re-statement of the night’s enfolding beauty—a beauty lifted beyond joy or sorrow, sufficient unto itself: the final note so soft, so long-drawn out, that it melted into silence as smoke films melt into air.

Reluctantly Clive opened his eyes—not upon starlit waters, but upon the long room lit only by the tall standard near the piano. Speech seemed mere impertinence; and when he looked round, she was sitting there, lost to her listener, drawing her bow almost soundlessly across the strings.

“Am I allowed to have another, please?” he asked; and she looked up, as if some part of her had been very far away.

“D’you know the ‘Fantasy’? If you like contrasts?”

“I do. Though it seems almost a shame to dispel that last impression.”

She smiled her acknowledgment of a compliment in the right vein.

“You shall have quite another one now.” And she lifted her bow for the attack.

He had only heard her “Fantasy” once. And it was well named—a brief, swift thing of queer cadences and unusual intervals. Its arpeggio effects, weird and menacing—with their suggestion of flight and pursuit—called up a vision of Tam o’ Shanter riding for dear life, with the fiends of Hell in full cry; and it culminated in an abrupt, discordant crash—a miracle of rightness, following on all that had gone before.

This time he could not choose but speak. In the nobler, quieter theme the music itself had eclipsed the player. Now it was the execution that amazed him.

“You can play like that!” he exclaimed, “and you’ve never let the world hear you. I call it a sin. It should have been you the other day, not Romzky.”

She shook her head, and seemed very much occupied in returning the ’cello to its case. He had no earthly right to question her; only an imperative need to know.

“Are you as good as that on the piano?”

“I used to be rather better,” she modestly replied, “though I’ve done more ’cello work of late years.”

“But why on earth didn’t you cut in long ago and knock spots out of some of the others?”

Her smile hovered between sadness and amusement. “I was on the point of ‘cutting in’—as you say—when I met your Father again.” She hesitated, moving one finger along the polished surface of the piano. “I’ve told you so much, I suppose I must tell you more—if you can stand it!”

“I want it.”

“You remember I wouldn’t play to you that first day? I felt it was impossible—until I could explain. It was to be my profession, as you know; and I did do a little abroad. But your Father . . . Henry couldn’t bear the publicity, the nervous strain for me and . . . the kind of life. So in the end—I gave it up.”

“You gave it up—for him, after all that? Your livelihood?”

Again there was smothered anger in Clive’s tone.

“It certainly does sound rather idiotic of me,” she murmured with her quaint air of detachment.

“It sounds to me something much bigger.”

“Oh, no. Don’t exaggerate it.”

“I’m not given that way. But—good Lord! it’s a bit thick!”

She smiled approval. “That’s much better. Perhaps it was a bit thick! But I myself, you know, rather dreaded the publicity part of it, the struggle with agents and contracts (I should have been cheated right and left), the incessant repetitions, taking the bloom off the things one loved best. Also, I had already begun composing, which meant far more to me; and he—Henry—saw great promise in my early stuff. Of course the other would have been more profitable, but that didn’t count much with me at the time. All that counted was . . . not to spoil things—having found each other again—for any aspiration of my own.”

“Oh, you—I understand. But he—the selfishness of it!”

“Yes. In many ways he was selfish,” she surprisingly agreed: “Not so fundamentally as he seemed, if one did not deeply know him. I think a man often gives the effect of being selfish, in his human relations, when he happens to be emotionally sincere. For myself, I can put up with that form of it. And you’re rather like him in both respects! Think a moment and see if that isn’t true?”

“Oh, it’s stark true! Only in such a case . . . I can’t imagine—”

“Can one ever—till it comes to the actual test?” she challenged him, an amused light in her eyes. “Besides— Henry’s dominating ego was part and parcel of so much that made him the outstanding figure he was to become. And at that time one more readily accepted the woman’s rôle of not over insisting on one’s own personality. Nous avons changé tout cela! I should have found it less natural and easy at forty than at twenty-four.”

“But you said you had to earn your living?”

“Yes. Butter for my bread. The bare bread I had left me by my Mother. And afterwards, there was the composing; there were pupils; there was—this cottage.” (“I thought so,” was Clive’s inner comment on that.) “I always felt it was partly to salve his conscience over the music veto that he bought this charming little place; never telling me a word, till all was complete. Then he insisted on giving it to me . . . as a birthday present. So like him! His way of tacitly admitting that perhaps he had been in the wrong. He would never admit it in so many words! That was one of his little weaknesses, wasn’t it?”

Clive nodded. “I fancy he got it from the Old Lady?”

“Oh, she was responsible for most of his faults. And also most of his—unhappiness. I’m afraid I often wished she could know— But don’t let’s talk of her. After all, she’s your grandmother.”

With a commanding gesture she dismissed the Old Lady, and indicated the piano.

“Do you really want more? It’s snowing very hard. You ought to be starting back.”

“I’m not starting back—till to-morrow,” he coolly informed her. “I’m wiring home and telephoning to the Beacon—presently. But first I want to hear you play Beethoven.”

Her sigh told him she was pleased: and as he lifted the top of the piano for her she asked, “You don’t mind the noise?”

“Not when it’s Beethoven’s noise. May I have the Appassionata?”

As she hesitated a moment, he added promptly, “Unless—you aren’t in the mood.”

“Oh, I’m very much in the mood,” she said, an odd vibration in her voice, as if she were fighting down some inner obstruction. “Is it a special favourite of yours, too?”

“Yes—rather.”

Returning to the chair, he closed his eyes again—and waited, while she let her fingers drift lovingly over the keys: soft arpeggio chords, in diminished sevenths, as if she were skilfully preparing a Beethoven atmosphere.

A pause. Then the quiet opening phrases dropping like a plummet, note by note; the tentative ascent, as of a whispered query, in the same minor key. And, for answer—after plaintive repetition—one of Beethoven’s most tremendous outbursts; chord against chord, baffling the ear; up and up “in one great roar outside of Time and the proprieties.”

After that impressive prelude, the main movement took possession of the whole keyboard; highest flights of the treble, deepest shudderings and rumblings of the bass; a surge and flux of emotion, sublime and profound beyond most music of that day—possibly of any day.

“If I go into heaven, Thou art there. If I go down into Hell, Thou art there also,” has been suggested as the core idea of that superb commotion—whether Beethoven’s idea, or another’s, what matter, after all? From major to minor, and back again, the great theme swayed in tumultuous waves of sound, melting at last into the calm of the Adagio, as a ship glides into an enchanted lagoon after breasting a gale.

But Beethoven was in no mood for idyllic enchantments when he conceived the aptly named Appassionata. A breathing space only, of the loveliest, and his ruthless spirit was astir again, caught in the swirl of the wild, fantastic Allegro; chords and single notes rushing upward, like great waves breaking in spray: not the elemental roarings of a Wagner, but “thunder on the left” more moving—more profound.

“There’s something beyond music in all that,” thought Clive, listening in a trance-like abstraction, letting Beethoven’s tormented yet triumphant genius carry him whither it would. One could believe in the man when he thundered out his splendours, because he had been more profoundly disillusioned than any intellectual modern of them all—with entirely different results. He knew, from experience, that not all things rare and precious are to be found upon the heights. He had descended into Hell, without the assistance of a Great War or a chaotic peace: and his music, that came out of deafness and darkness, gave light to the world. . . .

At last the final cascade of single notes, the three crisp chords—and silence.

It was several seconds before Clive could bring himself to stir: and when, at last, he looked round, she was sitting there before the piano, her face hidden in her hands—supple, long-fingered hands which had wrought that miracle of sound. Hardly daring to breathe, he looked away and closed his eyes again, for a few seconds longer, giving her time.

When he opened them, she was standing near him, one foot on the fender, warming her hands.

“I haven’t played the Appassionata since I last played it—to him,” she said so simply that his shyness evaporated.

“And I’ve never heard it played . . . like that, in all my days.”

“Oh, I’m glad. I very nearly refused. But as I sat there, hardly knowing how to begin . . . something came to me, a wonderful sense of power—”

“Perhaps it came . . . from him?”

Clive hardly grasped the boldness of that till it was out. Then he held his breath with a sharp sense of edge. One false step might spoil his delicate and perilous adventure.

“From him?” she echoed—not offended, simply astonished; and their eyes met in a moment of intimacy, brief as the brush of a passing wing. “I forgot—you’ve felt it too.”

“Only that once, to swear by. But I’ve also had an even more incredible sensation: times when he seems almost to be a part of me.”

“O-oh!” she drew a deep breath, but her words when they came hardly accounted for the exclamation. “Do you believe in all that? Did you . . . when you felt it?”

“Yes—when I felt it. But in a general way—” (Uncertainty seemed ignominious, and very poor comfort: but only the truth would serve.) “Honestly, I can say neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no.’ Three months ago, I should have dismissed it all as moonshine. But you can’t dismiss a vivid, actual experience. I wouldn’t dare burn those letters of yours—now, if you ordered me to! What’s more—I was shy of telling you then— Alison Owen was scared by something of the same kind. She swears he appeared to her and told her he would not have a written Life: so thoroughly frightened her, in fact, that she’s given it up, and insists that it ought not to be. I suppose the truth is—if we admit this mysterious intervention—that he naturally would not want his story told without a hint of the big part . . . you’ve played in it all through.”

She sighed.

“It all sounds so . . . possible, so reasonable. If one could only know—? But we do know he didn’t wish it. And it ought not to be.” Her low voice had a note of passionate protest. “Did Miss Owen tell Lady Arden?”

“Yes—and was dismissed with scorn. It has been entrusted to McNeil. No ghostly inhibitions likely to disturb the labours of that robust old sceptic.”

“I wonder—?” she mused in a changed tone. “They were great friends; but not intimately so, I think. Men are like that, aren’t they? It will be interesting to see. But nothing would stop that woman—so set upon her own glorification—except telling her all that can never be told—”

She checked herself sharply, and glanced at the clock.

“How about your wire and the telephone message? Elsa’s in. She would do both for you, if you wrote them down.”

He wrote both brief messages with a feeling of deep satisfaction, a sense of having made headway with her beyond his most sanguine hopes.

And as he handed her the paper, she said: “If you’d care to stay for supper—a very simple meal . . .?”

“I’d love to, but I’m going to do no such thing,” he answered as one might who had known her intimately for years. “You’ve criminally exhausted yourself already, for my benefit.”

“Not only for your benefit! But I am rather tired.” For the first time he noticed lines in her face that revealed she was past the meridian. “It was a short walk—but we travelled a long way.”

“And your music illumined everything.”

“I hoped it would.”

“Was my Father,” he suddenly asked, “responsible also for the nom de plume?”

“Yes. He preferred it so.”

“Talk of hiding a light under a bushel!”

“Hush!” she said gently. “It was my light. And if I didn’t mind, what matter?”

So difficult he found it to leave her, that he stayed on, unaware, till very near supper time; but his virtuous resolve held good. He was to look in next morning before driving home.

Human intimacy is an affair as much “outside of Time and the proprieties” as Beethoven’s superhuman roarings. They had indeed travelled a long way, both of them, that afternoon: but it was not the inspired tumult of the Appassionata, it was the still small voice of Astra’s “Gondola” melody that haunted his brain as he fell asleep.

Chapter Eighteen

He that will not, when he may . . .
— Shakespeare

Vital turning points, in life, are seldom recognised as such till they have long been passed. So Clive Arden only perceived by degrees how insidiously the colour and emphasis of his own normal life had been altered by that brief beguiling sojourn on Hindhead.

For, he had done rather more than look in at “Blue Hills” before returning home; he had spent most of the day there; not actually invited, but happy in the knowledge that he was welcome, and in the conviction that the more one knew of Miss Verity, the more one would find to know in her.

While she squandered an hour on a pupil, he had stretched his legs in Long Down Valley, turning over in his mind an essay on the unfamiliar aspect of familiar things. He had returned to find her in dismay at having lost her purse, with five pounds in it—all her own incurable carelessness. Though it must have happened several days ago, she had only just discovered the fact. And there was Elsa reproachfully convicting her of having paid a bill twice over. She was a hopeless duffer over money. She admitted it without shame; admitted that she had been tearing her hair over income tax returns. His father, it seemed, had taken all that off her hands; and he, himself, had actually ventured to offer his own services.

“It would be a privilege,” he urged, demolishing her faint reluctance, “if you would only let me.”

“You’re too kind—and it’s ignominious!” she answered, laughing. “But I’d almost let the Devil himself take the horrid thing off my hands!”

“Well, you needn’t be reduced to the Devil while I’m around!”

His services being accepted, he had boldly begged for a music lesson; and had spent a blissful hour accompanying some of her slighter compositions for ’cello and piano. He read fluently at sight; and, as the pleasure seemed to be mutual, he secured a sonata and some Russian things for practising at home to play with her next time.

The music interlude had moved him to attempt one more protest against the hiding of her light.

“More than ever, I feel it’s a shame. And really it’s not too late,” he had pressed her. “Couldn’t you? . . . Even now?”

“It is too late,” was all he got for his pains. “Besides . . . Henry didn’t wish it. Nothing would induce me.”

And already he knew that her refusals were not of the kind that tacitly invite further pressing.

He had fared no better when he urged the belated publishing of those musical essays that had filled him with admiration and revealed his father in quite a new aspect: not the statesman and man of letters, but the devout lover of music and of Anne Verity, in the guise of Astra—a star whose flashes of genius could not be hid. Her actual name had been leaking out, of late years, she admitted, in musical circles, where it was known that she particularly wished her secret kept.

In the essays she appeared simply as Astra; and so fine a tribute to her, Clive insisted, ought on every count, to be more widely known.

But again there was no moving her. Whether she even desired it, he could not tell.

“When Henry was alive he wouldn’t have it,” she said simply. “And I’m quite sure, even now, he would prefer not.”

That, it seemed, was her guiding principle, whether his father were alive or dead: and the wifely note struck him as more than a little pathetic in a woman of her independent mind and spirit.

“Well, if it seemed a sin in his case, bottling them up, it’s a worse sin in yours!” he had told her flatly: and that was all the satisfaction he got out of the encounter.

It was not till after tea, when he was beginning to think about a move on, that she said with a touch of her earlier shyness, “As you are so rightly concerned about those essays, I feel perhaps I ought to show you the lines he wrote in my copy. They may help you to understand.”

“Oh—if you would!” he murmured.

So she fetched the pamphlet; and, placing it on his knee, she moved restlessly about the room—she, who was never restless. By that sign alone he guessed what it must have cost her to let him share this glimpse into the deep places of his father’s heart.

On the fly-leaf, in the strong compressed handwriting he knew so well, it was written:

“To you, and for you only—these.

“Henry.”

“I shall never, in the years remaining
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all express me . . .
Other heights in other lives, God willing:
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love . . .

“Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears; belief and disbelieving.
I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s. . . .
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides; one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.”

Reading and re-reading those lines, something stirred in him like a ghostly echo of the emotion enshrined in them. Not knowing how to speak, he looked up at her, as she came towards him, with a secret pang of envy for two human beings, right or wrong, who could mean so much to one another.

“You see?” she said, with her sad half smile.

“Yes. And I don’t know how to thank you—for letting me see.”

“I thought it might help you not to think me merely unreasonable—idiotic. He didn’t want to ‘face the world’ with that side. It wouldn’t be fair, now he’s gone. Besides—that mother of his would never understand where they had sprung from, nor how he came to write such ‘stuff.’”

If “that mother of his” could have heard her! And Clive, who had clean forgotten the Old Lady, had to admit that settled it, even if the inscription had not done so already.

At that inopportune moment, Elsa announced a caller, a genial man of early middle age, whom Clive unreasonably resented, as a rank intruder, and who seemed disposed (less unreasonably perhaps) to return the compliment. The undesired intrusion had at least precipitated the move he ought to have made more than an hour earlier. He would repeat the infliction in a few days—he told her at parting—when he had mastered that Sonata.

And, of course, he “romped in” late for dinner—to discover that Molly was dining there, at his express invitation; that they were all going on to dance at the Embassy, a diversion for which he felt lamentably disinclined. His impromptu excuses—the snow and an imaginary puncture—sounded credible enough, he hoped, to disguise the fact that he had forgotten the whole arrangement.

Stella twitted him, of course, in her most impish manner; and he could feel Tony eyeing him with hopeful curiosity. As for Molly—?

She was looking a perfect peach in her orange-yellow frock; and her natural sweetness was unimpaired; but she seemed a shade distant with him during the evening. Her friendliest smiles and most of her dances were monopolised by Tony; and Clive had the grace to admit it was no more than he deserved. He realised also, with a secret pang, that it did not hurt quite so acutely as it would have done two weeks ago. Yet it waked a spark of jealousy in a nature inherently possessive. He would suggest another play; and it should be a dinner this time; the very best he could run to. Tony need not fancy he was booked for a walk over.

Returning home, he found among his letters a line from Jarvis McNeil—his deep satisfaction decently veiled, regretting that he could not take the matter up for a week or ten days. After that he would devote himself to it altogether. Lady Arden had kindly suggested that he should stay at Queen’s Gate whenever it was convenient.

And Clive—wishing Jarvis and the Old Lady at Jericho—was sharply reminded that his flagrant lapse had included forgetting poor old Alix and her handing over! He could only make amends by ringing her up next morning and inviting her to tea in the library. With all her little foibles, she was a good sort; she would take his plausible excuses on trust. The which she did; and gratefully accepted his invitation.

At tea-time she appeared, resolutely cheerful, but looking so strained and dark under the eyes that he felt genuinely distressed and half responsible for it all. She was taking it too hard, as she took everything. But his concern so unsteadied her, and her effusive response so fatally chilled him, that, as usual, his natural impulse of sympathy faded away. He insisted, however, in common fairness, that some sort of compensation was due to her, that his father would most certainly have wished it; and he succeeded at last in persuading her to accept a cheque (lightly dismissed as “consolation stakes”) that would give her three weeks on the Riviera, or in Italy, if she could find a congenial friend.

“Quite a good chance to imbibe impressions for another novel!” he urged, skilfully undermining her reluctant refusal. “Why not have a shot at the new ultra subjective kind of thing?”

“Oh, no, I detest it. I’m sick of novels,” she wailed. “I shall never write another.”

And she probably believed it at the moment.

“Oh, yes, you will. Anyhow, don’t go breaking your heart over this affair, old thing, whatever else you do.”

“That’s easily said. But I’m furious with Caroline. And what can I tell people? They all know. They’re expecting—”

“Tell ’em your nerves gave out, and the Old Lady was in a mortal hurry. She is, you know. And if you whisk off abroad, they’ll forget the whole thing before you come back. People forget like winking what doesn’t concern themselves. Anyway, you swallow my cheque. No more fuss about it.”

Seeing he would take no refusal, she swallowed it, with so tearful a gratitude that again he had tactfully to evade the disastrous effect of his own generosity. In his clear-eyed way, he knew it sprang mainly from an ingrained sense of fairness, and a desire to get her out of Town, where she would run round making a song about it to all her confidential friends, if only to save her face. Underneath all that, he was genuinely sorry for her; genuinely glad that she had sense enough to take the money and follow his advice.

Alison disposed of, he turned his attention in earnest to the more vital and complex problem of trying to recover the ground he seemed to be losing with Molly, owing to that unpardonable slip of memory, which she had evidently recognised as such. To feel uncertain of her, almost shy of her, at this juncture, was intolerable. And, worst of all, he had only himself to blame—if That Other were indeed himself, who had sought out Anne Verity at the obvious risk of losing Molly Mansergh. Considered dispassionately, it was a knotty point in the insoluble riddle of personality. But Molly could not be considered dispassionately by any man even remotely worthy to possess her.

He knew very well, by now, he did not want to lose her; yet, here was this Astra-Anne episode ensnaring him afresh in the ghostly web of the past. That faint suggestion of a glacial epoch must be dispelled before it had time to crystallise. Short of proposing to her outright—which would be madness in her present mood—he could only hold out an olive branch in the hope of re-establishing their happy relation of two weeks ago.

So he wrote to her briefly, suggesting Friday, begging her not to disappoint him, and signing himself hers, most sincerely, “Clive.”

He received by return a note briefer than his own.

“Dear Clive,—

“It’s very nice of you, and of course I would love it. But I’m booked up on Friday and Mother is whisking me off to Canford Cliffs on Monday in pursuit of that southern sunshine we see so much of on railway hoardings! We shall be away for two weeks, perhaps three. It depends on the quality of the sunshine and its effect on Mother’s nerves! Anyway, I hope we’ll be back for Christmas.

“Yours very sincerely,

“Molly Mansergh.

And what, in thunder, was he to make of that? Was it genuinely her mother’s nerves? Or was she side-stepping out of the toils? If not, she might, in the barest friendliness, have invited him to tea. That note, as an answer to his own, looked like a polite, unmistakable slap in the face. And perhaps he looked like deserving it, to one who did not know all the hidden elements of the situation.

It hurt and angered him none the less for that. And it spurred him to make one more effort at seeing her before she faded away, on a pretext in which he could not bring himself to believe. Writing was useless. He must go in person, unheralded—and take his chance.

Wednesday not being available, he drove on Thursday afternoon to Mrs. Mansergh’s small, elegant house on Campden Hill. Elegance was the word for that placidly self-centred lady and all her belongings—elegance with a subdued under-note of delicate health. While Molly did her dutiful best to treat the ailment of the moment with proper respect, Mrs. Mansergh, to Clive’s knowledge, was shrewd enough to suspect and resent flashes of “unfilial clear sightedness”—a standing grievance that almost amounted to an ailment! Possibly by way of retaliation, she worried Molly as only your self-centred, nerve-ridden invalid can worry a warm-hearted girl of normal sympathies and normal health. There were times when it made Clive feel vicious. A dose of Stella, for a solid year, would do her all the good in life! Why couldn’t jolly old Colonel Mansergh have lived on instead? Why couldn’t the dear old Dad have outlived his Mother? These women! Their capacity for survival was positively terrifying! How about the male population, as to quantity and quality—say, in twenty-five years’ time? A vain speculation! Molly was a good deal more to the point. And he fervently desired that she should survive.

Not wishing to look as if he had come for tea, he timed his arrival for three-thirty, hoping Mrs. Mansergh might still be out in her draught-proof electric brougham, or resting unseen, to strength her digestion for tea.

On arrival, the luck seemed to favour him. Molly was not out. And she was actually alone. But he found the elegant drawing-room in tea-party trim; and Molly herself becomingly arrayed in an attractive shade of green.

Her blank surprise at sight of him, and the touch of constraint in her friendly greeting, did not make for a propitious start.

“Hope I’m not thrusting myself unbidden into a gathering,” he apologised, glancing round the room. “If it’s imminent, I can withdraw.”

“It’s not so very imminent! Four o’clock, to be precise.” Her smiling politeness seemed to place a certain distance between them; and she went on adjusting five shaggy chrysanthemums in a tall vase; as it were making him at home, with one hand, and thrusting aside with the other. “It’s one of Mother’s parties. Only a sprinkling—of us. And, of course, you’ll be welcome . . . if you care to stay?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, thanks very much.” Two could play at politeness, if it came to that. “As you’re being whisked off on Monday, and you won’t come to-morrow, I thought I’d look in on the chance of seeing you.—Is it an impromptu move?”

“Yes—the actual decision. Mother’s been hankering for it in a vague, plaintive way, this week or two. And I suddenly thought—better get it over before Christmas. I can’t bear Christmas in a hotel.”

She spoke and smiled more naturally now: but they remained standing awkwardly near the table that held her vase. It didn’t seem to strike her that things might be easier if they sat down. Perhaps she had no wish to make things easier—for him? The mere possibility touched up his temper and his pride. He was not used to that kind of thing.

“Look here, Molly,” he boldly tackled her, “can’t you manage Saturday? It would suit me just as well.”

She smiled her acknowledgment of that “Very tempting! But I’m afraid I can’t do Saturday either.”

Her coolness angered him. “Quite sure it isn’t a case of ‘won’t’?”

“Of course, if you choose to take it so—” She treated him to one of her clear looks. “I’m not in the habit of telling lies for convenience’ sake.”

“Sorry.” He was only half convinced all the same. “And I’m not in a habit of making a bid for the snub direct. If you—”

Some one was at the door. The maid opened it and announced: “Mr. Arden to see you, Miss.” At sight of Tony, looking his sprucest and handsomest, Clive caught his breath: and the warmth of Molly’s greeting threw into strong relief her constraint of a few minutes earlier.

Tony’s confident, “Hope I don’t intrude,” won him prompt absolution. “You’re a little bit previous, that’s all!” she said, in the manner of one who rather appreciates the compliment.

“Well, I found I was ready,” he lied engagingly, “and it seemed rotten hanging round till the stroke of four, when I might get a look in before the rabble swallowed you up! Of course I couldn’t be supposed to know that you’d a special assignation on with Clive.”

“As it happens, the ignorance was mutual,” Clive informed him with an unsuccessful attempt at his lighter manner.

And almost in the same breath, Molly asserted briskly, “I’d no assignation on with Clive.”

Something in her tone, and in the Youngster’s exaggerated surprise, goaded him to take a line quite other than he had contemplated on leaving home.

“Not being honoured with invitations, and being engaged over the week-end, I merely called in to say goodbye,” he informed them both, a touch of hardness in his manner effectually hiding the inner hurt. “And, as I seem to be superfluous, I’d better say it—and get a move on.”

“What rot!”

Tony sounded cheerfully magnanimous: but Clive had held out his hand; and Molly—looking faintly reproachful—followed suit.

“It’s true—I am engaged on Saturday,” she said in a low voice, more like her friendly self.

“Of course you are. I apologise for the implication,” he answered in the same tone. “My luck seems to be out all round. Good-bye!”

“Au revoir, I hope!” she corrected him smiling: and he must have wrung her hand harder than he knew, for he saw her wince. “Au revoir,” he accepted the correction; and took leave of her without a glance at the offending Youngster, who had crashed in and tilted the scales that hung so delicately in the balance.

No denying his own share of the damage; but most girls fibbed on instinct. Oh, damn Tony! Given ten minutes alone with her, he might have settled matters—one way or the other. Now he literally did not know how he stood with her—a distracting state of affairs. The whole vexatious episode left him feeling thoroughly unsettled; more angry, perhaps, than hurt.

When she so gently reproached him—looking, at last, more like the Molly he had come to seek—he had been seized with a sudden desire to kiss her; a desire more urgent than any she had yet roused in him. Sheer human perversity, he told himself, because she seemed to be slipping out of reach; but he knew very well (being Molly) it went deeper than that.

She and the Youngster seemed on very close terms; and if she seriously contemplated succumbing to Tony, it would be the very devil. But either his vanity, or his instinctive faith in her, refused to entertain the idea. Better, perhaps, let Tony find that out, on his own. Then there would be no ill-feeling. He himself had no taste—as he told her—for courting the snub direct: and in her present mood, obviously, pursuit was vain.

Chapter Nineteen

There are women who are for all your “times of life.” They are the most wonderful sort.
— Henry James

So Molly faded away uncaptured; though not—Clive still believed—seriously estranged.

Their friendship had always been implicitly a prelude to something more passionate and permanent—slow mover though he was in that regard. If she felt bored down there, at times, and if Tony left her alone, she might fling him an occasional thought and return in a more coming on disposition.

At present there seemed nothing for it but to sit severely down on his emotions and shift his variously interested mind elsewhere. Happily there was a good deal of work on hand; proofs pouring in; a set of essays promised to one of the foremost weeklies; also a coveted chance of some musical criticism, which he owed to Alton Lane.

And, on off evenings, he was re-reading many of his father’s letters and diaries, from quite a new angle of vision, before handing the helpless victim over to Jarvis McNeil for re-interment in a couple of ponderous sarcophagi labelled The Life of Sir Henry Arden, Bart. K.C.M.G. Life, indeed! The more he read, the less he relished the prospect. Now that he was really beginning to know, as man, the being he had so scantly known, as father, it seemed like sacrilege, leaving the record of his life to another. With Anne Verity for secret collaborator, what a living portrait they might achieve, though the inner vitalising truth could not be told. Unhappily there could be no going back on his tracks. He could only feel thankful for the chance discovery of those letters, and his own irresistible impulse to seek out Anne Verity herself.

That she saw his father so much more clearly, while she loved him more deeply and comprehendingly than any of them had done, was the most arresting impression left on him by their intimate talk that Sunday evening. So simply and sincerely she had told their difficult story, that all the revulsion of feeling, produced by the first shock of discovery, had been charmed away. She had given him back—in a measure—the father of his young admiration, tempered with understanding mature enough to recognise that one could not hope entirely to understand, unless, or until, one had been tested in the same kind of furnace. He could no longer judge. He could only, in the process of re-reading, see the whole man with enlightened eyes and quickened imagination—till again he became aware of that hidden sense of identity stirring in his veins.

As for Miss Verity herself, in his changed attitude towards her, there was nothing so juvenile or priggish as disapproval any more. He saw her no longer as the cultured siren, using her art for a lure, but as a gifted and gallant being, tragically wronged by the Old Lady’s fatal dominion over her son; stronger, in essence, than his father, by virtue of some spiritual quality that she distilled from her music—or something even deeper that brought her music into being: a fine, supple nature grounded on bed-rock sincerity and a deep, natural pride that must have suffered acutely in the course of all those years.

Added to that intriguing blend of past and present, there was his own increased preoccupation with music—the critical work, the practising of her piano scores—that deepened his interest in her, simply as Astra. He caught himself, insisting on that side of her, as if by way of excuse for his increasing delight in her society, his readiness to accept any reasonable pretext for the now familiar drive to Hindhead.

At the moment, everything conspired, as will sometimes happen, to assist the pull of the magnet—the empty house on Campden Hill; the renewed feeling, for, and with, his father.

So it was Tony—not himself—who mooned about, looking as glum as his natural cheerfulness would allow, who muttered darkly about being “fed up” with fogs and night clubs and hinted at the possibility of dashing off into the country for a few days, presumably in pursuit of golf, and clean air. Not a word as to his destination; and Clive—who wanted no words about his own flittings—forbore to ask.

It was Stella who crisply remarked that a taste for dashing out into the country seemed to be infectious; but she didn’t propose to catch the disease herself—at the wrong time of year! It was by no means her first intimation that Clive’s vagaries had not escaped her notice; and by way of keeping her quiet, he handed out a few facts—true enough, so far as they went.

“I happen to be doing a good deal of musical criticism,” he stated, with a touch of loftiness only assumed in dealing with his irrepressible sister. “And it has brought me into touch with Astra, the famous composer, who lives out of Town. That’s all there is to it—if you’re keen to know.”

She was not really keen to know. Being Stella, she probably got more fun out of launching her small arrows on the off chance of making him jump. Luckily neither Astra nor music interested her in the least; or she would have floored him by trying to ferret out the composer’s real name. It struck him, at times, as sinful waste of a lovely relation to possess a sister for whom one could feel no more than a lukewarm brotherly affection, and not always that. Neither sister nor mother had ever given him the remotest sense of companionship—a genuine need of his nature. One had it with men; but that was quite another story. Likewise one had it with Anne Verity, for all those unbelievable years between.

Irresistibly, naming her Astra, he was responding to her tacitly proffered friendship, to the delight of effortless intercourse with a woman-artist who had never muddled her values, nor blunted the fine edge of her mind by trivial insincerities. Contact with her, whether grave or gay, was always a real thing. Husks of the superficial seemed naturally to fall away, which could not often be said of London intercourse, even at its best. One met the right people and talked—rather more: one met the wrong people and talked—rather less: and so on, ad infinitum, for no particular reason, except that the wheels of life must at all costs be kept turning. As a natural result, there were whirling periods when he felt as if his own head were turning, when nothing seemed true or of any moment at all. It was the penalty, no doubt, of mass living and mass thinking; the urban disease of rushing round to see and tell some new thing.

At “Blue Hills” he found the very antithesis of this aimless commotion. Here was companionship, that rare and lovely thing, rarest and loveliest when one is man and the other woman. Here was a charm, an inside beauty, quietly stealing on sense and spirit as only inside beauty can. Passing through the familiar porch, into the long, low drawing-room, gave one almost a sense of passing into another world: a changed atmosphere, a changed tempo; a feeling of stability and simplification, at once restful and stimulating.

Most of the women he casually knew seemed used up by the small round of things, by their interminable traffic of this and that to be done, these and those to be avoided or pursued. This gifted yet secluded Anne Verity seemed to have lived in the essence of life, at the core of it rather than at the circumference. If the wings of her spirit had been dipped in bitter waters, they had not been draggled in the dust of the market place. Probably it would not do for too many people to live like that, withdrawn from the ugly rough and tumble of the average human scene; but that there should always be a few so placed—especially if they chanced to be creative artists—must surely be a boon for the rest of the dustily draggled world.

Not yet had he ventured to say as much to her; but no doubt he presently would. She had a way of getting at one’s real thoughts, of drawing out even those dangerous and incorrect things that most of us think, at times, and few of us ever say.

Yet there remained the puzzle that, behind the rare and distinguished creature she seemed to be, lurked the virtual certainty that had brought him to “Blue Hills” armed with stern disapproval: an attitude he had failed to maintain, less through weakness of moral fibre than through the artist’s all-to-human capacity for understanding, that makes it seem “strange not to forgive.” “Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone,” had been said in a less sophisticated age by the greatest Teacher of all time: and throwing stones, in any case, was not his metier.

In this case—?

While his acute sense of character argued, “It can’t have been so,” his knowledge of masculine human nature retorted, “It must have been so.” And he supposed he would never know whether his instinct or his knowledge had hit the mark. His twentieth-century young manhood queried—what did it matter, after all, at this time of day? But something deeper in him knew that it did matter greatly—not on her account alone. It subtly affected the quality of a friendship as unusual as it was satisfying to some hitherto unsatisfied part of his being.

In addition to that under-current of personal interest, there was the learning of her piano scores and the peculiar pleasure of accompanying the ’cello, of all instruments on earth. She was composing again now—an Andante Capriccioso, for ’cello and piano; and she would sometimes play him phrases that were bothering her, would even ask his opinion on the different renderings. That it was so simply and charmingly done made it none the less flattering to the natural vanity even of a normally modest young man.

As to her being fully twenty years ahead of him—that was all moonshine, he told himself, only half in joke, by way of upholding his own private belief that one could make no intimate friendships outside one’s own decade. The thirties were so apt to lose touch with the twenties; while the forties were too often afflicted with inklings of a superior wisdom that fatally foreshadowed the slippered mental ease of middle age. After forty, with differences less acute, the decade barrier faded away. Such was his neat little theory; but Nature being unconcerned with neat little theories, his friendly link with Miss Verity remained an exquisite, if unaccountable, fact: and he saw no reason to conceal his pleasure in it either from himself or her.

*  *  *

It was ten days after his snow-bound Sunday that he calmly announced his intention of spending the weekend at the Beacon Hotel; and she could not altogether hide the clash of pain and pleasure in her at so sharp a reminder of vanished days. She had completed her Andante Capriccioso. He had carefully studied the piano score. The time was ripe for practising it together: and he was quick to pounce on that plausible excuse for a treat he had been promising himself on the first opportunity.

Their afternoon together—one of the friendliest yet—had drawn them a good deal nearer to each other. The light breeze of an argument, on the European impasse, had led her to speak more freely and intimately of his father than she had done since that Sunday of luminous revealing. She had even read him extracts from some of the letters; necessarily, not the passages he most wished to hear; but it was a privilege to hear anything at all, to catch even a glimpse of Henry Arden at his best.

In writing to her he loved, whether music or people or politics were his theme, one could feel his pleasure in sharing it all. Here was the personal, intimate note that one had missed in the bulk of his correspondence. Above all, it was interesting and surprising, to find that a man of his outstanding ability and judgment, had seemingly brought to this secluded artist-woman every crux of his varied and active life, had relied on her opinion, and even submitted his speeches to her for criticism.

“Sometimes,” she said, “he would speak them to me; striding up and down the room, inviting me to pick holes (if I could find them!) in his weightiest arguments.” Her eyes lightened as if, in fancy, she saw him there. “It made one feel very proud, of course; yet that social-political world of his seemed antagonistic to me always. It stood for his Mother’s values. She—and it—damped down the real Henry, the Henry who refused to join the Cabinet, after the War, because he would not leave me desolate—for that. He had done it once. He would not do it again. You see, his . . . friendship with me involved him in a kind of double life; and his feeling about it was that if he hadn’t the strength of mind to give me up, he wasn’t justified in accepting a position of authority over his fellow-men. He had not felt that so strongly in earlier days. But the War cut very deep; and everything seemed to go deeper with him afterwards.”

Clive nodded. “Yes, I noticed that, in lots of little ways.”

“I wonder if it ever occurred to Lady Arden. His refusal was a great blow to her; and of course she never knew why. She never understood. If she had known, she would still not have understood. After those tremendous years, he was more . . . my Henry . . .”

She caught her breath, as if suddenly awakened to the strangeness of such confidences, so given.

“It seems incredible—wrong, perhaps—that I should be talking to you like this,” she said, in quite another tone. “But you bring back, so amazingly, his very atmosphere. And I know you do like to hear—”

“Of course I tremendously like to hear every mortal thing you will condescend to tell me.”

He did not attempt to repress the natural fervour of his tone; and she thanked him with her eyes.

“You have the knack of putting things very charmingly, Sir Clive—and of making one feel they are genuine.”

“Oh, they are! I’m useless at the other sort,” he assured her; and found courage to add, with a becoming touch of shyness, “I genuinely wish you’d drop the ‘Sir’ and call me Clive. You speak of him as ‘Henry.’ It seems incongruous. Please?”

She gazed at him a moment with shining eyes.

“My dear Boy—you are too good to me. I always think of you as—Clive.”

“Well, that simplifies it! And dare I ask for an equal privilege? If it’s to be ‘Clive,’ may it be—’Anne’?”

He spoke more lightly than he felt; but there were tears in her eyes; and, for an answer, she could only fling out her left hand. His own closed on it hard. And his fingers tightened on hers, it was as if some electric current passed between them. He had a moment’s crazy feeling that he could not bear to let them go.

The sensation brought him to himself. Without a word, he released her hand.

Then, because both were shy of their emotions, they fell to talking simply and naturally of other things.

Chapter Twenty

Such are the things remain,
Quietly and for ever in the brain;
And the things they choose for history-making, pass.
— John Drinkwater

After that oddly significant little episode, Clive more than ever looked forward to his coveted week-end. At moments, the sensation intruded between him and his work, which was manifestly out of order. Anne Verity was sincerely his friend; emotional aberrations were not in the bond. A young man of his age, and a woman of hers, however gifted, however charming—it remained an anomaly, from his sane, worldly point of view. But for Clive Arden, the musician, there were other points of view.

Music—that was the rainbow bridge, spanning the gulf of the years. That, and their mutual tendency to see life from the angle of the artist, accounted for much; but the hidden link with his father accounted for more. What incalculable forces or impulsions that illusion of identity might conceivably set astir in him, was a problem too fantastic for serious consideration.

In any case, Molly being gone, he asked nothing better than to see more of Anne, and to play her wonderful music with her as often as she would allow. That his friendly companionship eased her loneliness, after the blank months since his father’s death, he had every reason to believe; and it was distinctly sustaining to feel that, in following the line of his own urgent impulse of the moment, he was also helping to cheer and comfort her, as his father would unquestionably have wished him to do. Strangers though they had been to one another a month ago, the link between them was a very real one. In some fashion of her own she did seem to have need of him; and he, in his different fashion, certainly had need of her. A perfectly normal and satisfying state of affairs. Let that suffice.

*  *  *

By Saturday morning all trace of frost and snow had disappeared. England was her soft blustering self again. He drove out of Town under a sullen sky, and a half-hearted drizzle of rain. He found the heights shrouded in tearful mist, that added a keener relish to the welcome awaiting him—the friendly log fire, the illusion of stepping into a world entirely their own.

To-day, for the first time, he had thought of bringing her flowers; and had discovered, with a faint prick of resentment, that he knew nothing of her taste in that line. Yet his hesitation had been brief; in a sudden flash of certainty he had chosen lilies of the valley—a costly lavish bouquet, that lay beside him, filling the air with fragrance. His own choice would have been roses; but, for her, he had felt constrained to buy the lilies, convinced they would hit the mark.

And the moment she set eyes on them, he knew.

“Lilies! How wonderful!” she murmured, burying her face in them; and those two words told him why that other Clive had unerringly chosen them for this particular woman.

“Better than roses?” he asked, just to confirm that curious certainty.

“Yes—coming from you.”

“That’s odd. Normally I should have bought the roses.” His look told her the rest; but he said no more, knowing she would prefer it so.

“Now,” he announced, in quite another tone, “we’re really going to enjoy ourselves.”

“I know I am,” she promptly followed his lead. “Before the terrible finished feeling lays me low.”

“Quite finished, is it?”

“As far as I can tell, till we’ve tried over some passages I’m not quite happy about. I must scratch at it a little more to-night, for a dress rehearsal to-morrow. We’ll tackle just the doubtful fragments this afternoon, if it won’t bore you?”

“Bore me?” He went over to the fire, rubbing his hands, partly to warm them, partly to work off, a little, the exhilaration that tingled in his veins, the crazy impulse to take her in his arms—so lovely she looked to-day, lit up by the elation of achievement. “It wouldn’t bore me if you sat me down to tootle scales for the whole afternoon.”

“Clive! You’re running away with yourself,” she warned him with a lifted finger.

It was lightly spoken, but it so nearly expressed sensations of which she could not possibly be aware that the hint of reproof affected him almost as if she had laid a restraining hand on his arm. Since he had not the face to admit that something seemed to be running away with him, he could only answer in the same vein: “Not likely! I wouldn’t do anything so dull.”

And in a second or two the rush of heightened feeling had gone from him. He was himself again.

After lunch the mist lifted, and the sun triumphed in a final blaze, luring them out for a tramp across the ridge. And when tea was over they tackled those doubtful passages for a couple of hours that seemed like no time at all.

The evening was devoted to a critical reading of his two last essays; and at ten o’clock she dismissed him, that she might put in an hour’s work scratching at her score, in view of their dress rehearsal.

*  *  *

True to the country adage, that sunset flare ushered in a morning of clear pale sunshine. The blustering winds were still; the distances—that are Hindhead’s peculiar glory—veiled in films of mist; ridges and wooded hillocks emerging like islands, from a ghostly sea—a morning that suggested October rather than December.

“This is just how it should be,” thought Clive, as he pressed the button that waked his little car to life. Some remnant of childhood or paganism, doubtless, that ridiculous sense of being personally favoured by Nature’s cooperation in one’s holiday mood.

Determined to make the most of it, he insisted on a spin down to Frensham, and lunch at the Pond Hotel. Anne had sat up too late over her corrections. Her eyes had a tired look that contracted his heart; but the breeze of their going set them alight again and brought a delicate flush to her cheeks.

Before returning, she demanded a “walk without end” such as she used to take with his father, who had never succumbed to the golf epidemic. On and on they tramped across the rich winter dark of the moor; treeless in this valley region; yet, even in mid-winter, not devoid of colour: a wonderful walk, in a seemingly uninhabited world of their own.

And fitfully she talked of his father, in the simple, unembarrassed manner she had fallen into of late; till he felt himself becoming—how strangely, yet how naturally!—a part of it all; becoming as it were, one in spirit with the man he had too scantily known in the flesh.

And so, home again, to tea and muffins by the hearth fire in her friendly room; to their evening of music—for both, the crown of the day.

“You’ve refreshed me more than I can hope to make your enviable youth and vigour understand,” she told him as she settled herself with the big clumsy instrument against her knee, and began softly testing the strings. “I was afraid, this morning, that I shouldn’t feel up to it.”

Turning on the music stool, he looked her full in the eyes; and a sense of actual contact thrilled through him.

“Quite sure you do feel up to it?”

“Quite sure. Thanks to you. Listen—and judge for yourself!”

The Andante opened with a long and splendid solo, all entirely new to Clive; the piano contributing, at intervals, a shuddering sequence of octaves, or a crashing group of chords. The utter rightness of these intrusions on that profoundly moving soliloquy, smote him each time as with the excitement of a spontaneous collaboration.

More than anything he had yet heard, the Andante seemed to express that fusion of sadness and serenity and strength, that was the essence of her personality. Her lovely gift of humour was coming in the Capriccioso, as he knew from his own share in that sharply contrasting movement. Here was every varying phase of her, captured and revealed, as only music can reveal the inarticulate and unfathomable. And she had probably no idea of all she was telling him; all that the musician in him heard and understood. Her music was simply a part of her, the rhythm of her pulses, the flow of life in her veins.

At the prospect of his own solo, a nervous dread beset him lest he spoil the lovely thing by a wrong rendering, a clumsy touch. Practising stray passages had been quite another affair. But he had hardly played a dozen bars, before her low-toned “Good—good. Don’t be afraid to let go,” blessedly released that cramping inner tension. Note-perfect as he was, by now, he could “let go,” as she bade him, with an ecstatic sense of freedom that springs only from hours of disciplined, unemotional toil.

That his solo went brilliantly he knew from her audible sigh of satisfaction. And, as she lifted her bow, to come crashing in with a triumphant fortissimo, some power, not himself, invaded him even to the finger tips. It was the nearest approach to inspiration he had ever known—that indescribable ecstasy of playing together; two minds and two instruments in perfect accord; and the consciousness of something in each of them that only music could release and fuse into one.

Then the pace quickened to the stretto of the swift and vigorous finale: a cascade of arpeggios for the piano; the ’cello booming in on its deepest notes: the last long-drawn minor chord, in unison—and silence, that still seemed charged with their vanished melodies.

Now that it was over, Clive’s critical brain realised how good it had been. Reluctant to shift his hands from the keyboard, he turned to the woman whose brain and heart and spirit had evolved it all; and they smiled at one another, the spell of their playing still upon them.

“Well done, indeed!” she said, barely above her breath.

He saw that her fingers shook a little as she propped the ’cello against the wall; and he thought, “She was playing to him.”

Then she turned with a dazed look, as of one who still feels lost in a world of tables and chairs, crushing her hands together, as she moved towards the fire.

“Cold—are you?” he asked, chiefly for something to say.

“Only nerves. My hands and feet get chilled through when a new thing goes—like that.”

“Sit here, and get warm.”

He proffered the big chair.

“No. It’s yours. I prefer my little one.”

Sinking into it, she leaned back, staring pensively at the flames; still under the spell. As usual, after music, their only light was the electric standard near the piano; and there fell between them one of those companionable silences that affirm intimacy, and deepen it, between understanding minds.

Suddenly she turned to him with a welcoming smile, as if she had found her way back, at last, into “Blue Hills” drawing-room.

“I wish I had words to tell you,” she said with a kind of still intensity, “what it feels like . . . playing my own music with one who seems to grasp the inner meaning of it, as you do.”

And Clive, warmed through by that fine compliment, answered truthfully, “I didn’t know I could play like that. I was horribly nervous—till you spoke. Then you . . . and the ’cello took possession of me; and the thing seemed to play itself. Music is a marvel and an utter mystery to me. Though Lane was good enough to put me on to that critical work, I really haven’t the knowledge, the intellectual grasp of it that my Father evidently possessed.”

She had one of her pauses, that came more rarely now.

“No amount of knowledge could make you play like that. You feel the marvel and the mystery. That’s why you understand music. More than any other art it speaks straight to that unsolved mystery we carry about inside us—and call our souls. Like them, it can never reveal its ultimate secret. ‘Ecstasy clothing Himself in a thousand forms:’ one can’t better that lovely phrase.”

“Whose is it?”

“I should guess—Tagore. It’s the only sentence I know that comes within miles of expressing what music is.”

She fell silent; and Clive let the silence remain unbroken. When it pleased her to talk like that, he could only listen. She leaned forward now, an elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand; and Clive—watching the restless play of firelight on her still face—thought he had never seen so much grace in a woman’s whole aspect; something less obvious than beauty; some effect of radiance from within, due perhaps to those illumined eyes of hers.

And, as he said nothing, she spoke again.

“When I was much younger, it used to make me so angry—the old-fashioned distrust of music; a fatal heritage from the Puritan distrust of all beauty and emotion; a refusal to see that all art involves self-discipline. Of course one knows there are certain dangers for those who become steeped in music’s unseizable influence; but the fact remains that, for some of us, it can and does, in a measure, sublimate our insurgent emotions . . . lift them to a plain beyond that craving for finality, which so often destroys what it most longs to possess.”

Her voice had dropped a tone, almost as if she were thinking aloud; addressing the little lambent flames among the pine logs rather than the silent attentive man at her side.

“I can’t truthfully say it stills the craving. One’s heart may continue to rebel. But there is a power . . . a strange exaltation . . . I speak of what I know—so far as it is possible to speak of such intimate things. Perhaps if one had . . . given all and taken all, in those critical early days . . .”

“If . . .?” he echoed in so strange a tone that she turned and looked full at him: and he could have bitten his tongue for that egregious slip—more than ever unpardonable at this moment of shy, exquisite intimacy.

For one startled instant her eyes met the dawning amazement in his. Then, swiftly, she looked away again; a slow unaccustomed blush surging up to the hollows of her temples.

Hating himself beyond words, what could he say?

No chance was given him. She rose abruptly.

“That you could coolly believe it of me—Henry’s boy!” Her low voice had its explosive note of anger: and, turning from him, she went straight out of the room.

Instinctively, he had half risen to his feet. Now he sat down again, as sharply smitten as if she had lashed him across the face: and the deadly quiet that followed her exit seemed still to vibrate with her pain and his own. The shock of it—after their unison in a finer element, and her shy endearing move towards a closer intimacy—made him almost wish he had erred on the side of the pedestal and found her fallible: so hateful was the inverted position to his fastidiousness, his honest admiration for herself and her art. But the pedestal was out of vogue, and fallibility very much the fashion.

Besides—the horrid thing was done. And what could he say to her when she returned?

As the leaden minutes crawled past, a worse dread invaded him—did she not intend to return? Had he so sharply wounded her, that she would refuse to see him again? The impact of that crazy possibility on his quickened sense of chivalry, and vain longing to atone, stirred in him a suspicion so incredible that he could not look it squarely in the face. It amounted to an assault on his emotions; and he was little used to letting them slip out of hand.

Impatiently he stood up, and began restlessly pacing the room. What on earth did he and his rotten feelings matter after all? He could think of nothing but her. Surely her pain and anger would presently subside. She must be aware that the world’s inference, in such a case, was more often right than wrong: though of course it was his personal inference that pained her—so cruelly revealed at that inopportune moment . . .

Half an hour had loitered by—so the clock assured him: and still not a sign, not a sound. Had he been virtually dismissed—he that was to have stayed for supper? It would be no more than he deserved. And supposing she did come down again, their evening would be a travesty of those that had gone before.

Another blank five minutes proved to him that waiting was both useless and undignified. Nothing for it but to accept his dismissal, and leave her alone. Luckily Elsa was at church. He could depart unnoticed—and unmissed.

Dispirited utterly, he slipped on his coat and went out. If she did not relent in the morning, and send him round a note—what then?

Chapter Twenty-One

Now the wonder seems
That I could wrong myself by such a doubt.
— E. B. Browning

Morning brought no word from her, no sign of relenting. But Clive—after sound sleep and a good breakfast—felt in no mood for despair. His very real dejection was tinged with a lurking sense of annoyance. She was being vexatiously Victorian—so unlike her—knowing him and his generation. He could not exactly tell her so; but if she imagined he was going back to Town without attempting to see her again, she had profoundly mistaken her man.

He was, in point of fact, already out on the open heath of Beacon Hill, swinging round to the right along the path that skirted the Devil’s Punch Bowl; a cup-shaped valley, brimful of nothing more intoxicating than early winter sunshine. A soft blustering wind stirred the pines on either hand; and the thin light peered through, making shadow patterns on the narrow track. Such a morning! Such a day of keen pleasure ahead of him, had he not so clumsily hurt her by echoing, involuntarily, that one small significant word.

And yet he had wanted to know the truth. He was glad to know it, even while he wished it had come about otherwise. . . . What he would have to say for himself, if his bold move took effect, he had not the remotest idea. Sustained by ten-in-the-morning courage, he only knew that he did not intend to leave Hindhead without a decisive attempt to see her, to make her understand that most vital of all human elements, the point of view. And presumably, if he brought it off, the right words could be trusted to come of themselves.

Arrived at the little white gate, a cold fit of caution set him considering ways and means. If he rang the bell and summoned Elsa, he might be flatly told she was not at home. Emboldened by that dire possibility, he decided to creep round the verandah corner—and trust to the luck he could hardly be said to deserve.

No sounds of a music lesson in progress; but she must surely be within. Let her only see him—and she could not, in common decency, turn him away. Whether he himself, in common decency, ought so to thrust himself upon her, after yesterday’s crash, he did not choose to consider. This was not the shaken and dispirited Clive who had crept out of her house last night, almost believing himself banished for good.

Hearing footsteps in the verandah, he moved cautiously down the path, not wishing to be discovered; though she would never credit him with so brazen a flank attack. From the porch the ground sloped steeply enough to bring the verandah flooring more than half-way up his body. Above the railing, with its evergreen tangle of Alberic Barbier, only his head could be seen.

Where the wall ended and the verandah began, he paused again. Unmistakably she was there. She was coming towards the railing. Had she heard . . .?

But only her hand appeared, holding her golden glass bowl; and next moment a dash of ice-cold water drenched his face and neck.

“Damn!” he broke out with considerable vigour; and she herself appeared, leaning round the corner, looking whimsically distressed.

“I beg your pardon . . .”

At sight of him, she stared in blank amazement.

“Oh, it’s you—Henry!”

That slip startled him nearly as much as his cold douche; and she actually seemed unaware of it. Realising his plight, amazement dissolved in laughter.

“Too idiotic! But really . . . it was your own fault; creeping round like that.”

Fresh mirth convulsed her—unfeeling, but irresistible; and in spite of discomfiture, he found himself laughing too.

“It’s all very well. You wouldn’t think it any fun.” And coming boldly round the corner, he pulled off his drenched scarf, hung it over the railing and put his cap beside it, saying in effect, “No retreat!”

“I’m so sorry,” she apologised without contrition. But it is rather ludicrous. And I do think you deserved it!” She subsided into her cane chair, the little bowl in her lap, tears of laughter in her eyes. “Why didn’t you arrive in the usual way?”

“I . . . oh, I simply had to see you. And I was afraid—you wouldn’t . . .”

“Well, if you thought that, I call it very impertinent!” She tried to sound severe. “And you did deserve your cold douche. But, oh—your collar, your shirt . . .”

In an impulse of womanly concern, she half rose; and her forgotten treasure slid off her knees on to the verandah door.

“My Venice bowl!” she cried—and hid her eyes with one hand.

Instantly he was on his knees beside her.

“Anne—my dear, I’ll give you another.”

“But that one—” she murmured, her eyes still hidden. And he understood.

“I can have it mended—only three pieces. It’s all my fault . . . the whole upset. I’m abjectly sorry. Please forgive me—everything.”

He could not know that he was pleading with the very voice, shyly touching her with the hand of the man she loved; and when she uncovered her eyes they were filled with tears.

“Oh, I know it was stupid of me not to realise—but we won’t talk about that.”

“Anne—please—just this once. I’ve got to make you understand—”

She sighed. “Perhaps I do understand. But if it would ease your mind, I’ll—listen. You young people can talk about anything.” (That hurt him—the unwitting injustice of it. For he could never quite emulate the frankness of Tony and Stella.) “But do come in, first, and let me see to you. Are you drenched?”

“Not quite. You considerately arranged that my head and face should get most of it! Really—it was as if you knew!”

“Oh, but I didn’t dream . . .” She was smiling again irresistibly. “And we were both so tragic, so desperately in earnest. But anything ludicrous afflicts me like an illness! One of my small pupils has discovered that; and I can’t be properly stern with her any more.”

“Well then—you can’t be stern with me any more!”

“Oh—you!”

Something in her voice, in her softly shining eyes, so profoundly stirred him that he could only look at her and love her and find nothing to say that would be at all to the point.

Stooping, she picked up the gleaming fragments, holding them as she might have held a wounded bird.

“What will Elsa say? I never let her touch it; and I believe she regards it as some sort of heirloom.”

“Do let me take it back with me,” he begged. “I’ll have it done by a special process. You’ll hardly see the joins.”

“Oh, thank you,” she murmured, replacing her murdered treasure on the table, where it had lived for ten years and more.

Then she indicated his chair by the fire.

“Sit down there! I’m going to fetch a towel,” she prosaically announced. But first she rescued his scarf and cap, setting them on the fender stool to dry. Then, producing her towel, she flung it over him, and began vigorously rubbing his thick damp hair. The familiar sensation made him feel absurdly as if he were a small boy again, having his head dried after a tub; also absurdly it soothed and pleased him. He felt almost sorry when it was over.

“There! That’s better. And it’s rather becoming!” she critically surveyed her handiwork. “But your shirt must be damp; and one side of your collar’s all crumpling.”

“That’s no matter.” The surviving boy in him waved away her motherly concern, while the man liked it better than he cared to admit. “I’ve got a fresh collar over there, if you don’t mind a limp one, for the moment.”

“Oh, I don’t mind anything. It’s such a relief—”

And subsiding into her small chair she held out her hands to the fire.

The repressed fervour of that broken sentence revived the troubled stir in his veins, and moved him to penitent, impulsive speech.

“It was hateful of me. I would never . . . it slipped out unawares.”

“Much better so—since you were thinking it.”

“Yes—but that doesn’t excuse me. May I . . . please, say a little more now, to make things clearer?”

She hesitated, pressing her hands tightly together. Then, “You may say anything, Clive, because—you are Henry’s boy. I suppose it was that, and your charming friendliness, that made me so stupidly blind to the natural man’s assumption. I’ve not been blind to it all these years.”

“But it’s not the assumption, it’s my attitude. I want you to understand. There’s a difference, nowadays, in the point of view . . .”

“My dear Boy, I do understand,” she said simply, lifting Ariel into her lap and holding the creature close against her, as a mother might hold a child. “And I want you to realise . . . to know—if one must speak of these things—that he never once spent a night at ‘Blue Hills.’”

There was unconscious tragedy in the simple statement; and the sharpness in his protest carried conviction.

“Oh, I don’t need telling—now.”

“I suppose my fierce outburst last night was proof enough even for a young sceptic! But as we are to be frank about it, Clive, please understand that I make no plea for the right or wrong of what there actually was between us. We were lovers—as we had been, in our secret unchanged hearts, all the time.”

Clive pondered that honest statement a second or two: then, “It was hardly fair—was it?—his marrying . . . my Mother.”

“No. How unfair it was to her—and me, I am sure he did not see till long afterwards. But since he had married her . . . of course I ought not to have let him meet me and . . . make love to me, ever, after Antibes. But, if that was wrong . . . the other, for me, was unthinkable. A Puritan streak in me, perhaps. He used to say so, when he wanted to annoy me, because he knew I didn’t love Puritans! Partly, I suppose, it was temperament, partly the difference—a big one—between the ideas of then, and now. Not mere sentimental hair-splitting, but an instinctive fear of spoiling something beautiful, which hardly seems to survive these days.”

Clive could not let that indictment pass unchallenged.

“It does still survive—in some of us. We have our standards, of sorts, even if we dislike shouting about them!”

“And rightly so!” She smiled at him, with candid affection in her eyes. “Perhaps those late-lamented Victorians did protest too much, in the wrong tone of voice. But I think a good many of them lived up to their convictions, and even ‘resisted unto blood.’ Now—inevitably, I suppose—we have the other extreme. All the veils of reticence torn down. They will lose no shred of emotional experience—these unshackled, experimental young women of to-day. It amounts to a revolution—the most deeply significant one of our time. And they know it won’t damage their chances of marrying . .

“There are still men here and there, for whom it might,” Clive stated, thinking of Molly; no experimentalist, he could swear to it.

“And you are one of them?”

“Yes—if it doesn’t sound priggish.”

“To me it sounds refreshing. But then I’m old-fashioned enough to feel that a woman’s honour is a tremendously important matter—for the race. That’s one of the big differences one is aware of, in looking back. Nothing seems felt to be tremendously important now.”

“Nothing—?” Clive queried, half reproachful, half amused.

“Oh, I know I’m generalising fatally! Of course there’s making money and the League of Nations and the noble art of publicity—urgent trifles like that! But you must admit . . .”

“I admit the wheels are rather running away with the coach; old faiths and old standards tumbling out behind. All partly due to the War, don’t you think? It did play old Harry with our scale of values.”

“Oh, it did. It lifted us up, and it cast us down. And this, I suppose, is the aftermath; snatching—and not paying.”

“A certain Old Lady we know of was—and is—a bit of a snatcher,” Clive gently reminded her.

“Oh, yes, there have always been snatchers—always will be. It’s rather more shameless just now, or more honest—whichever you will! They’re very frank with me, the young things I teach, or meet here and there, perhaps because I neither look nor feel sententious. And sometimes—hearing their talk, reading their outspoken books—one is tempted, almost, to ask, was there no merit in the old-time idea of trying to uphold certain standards of conduct . . . even at a price? Is everything merely a matter of public opinion? I can’t see it so. If you throw away certain standards, you lose not only relative decency, but dignity; and surely, without dignity, even freedom itself is worthless—”

She had spoken rather rapidly, her low tone charged with feeling; and now she turned to him with a lovely smile, one hand laid lightly on his knee.

“My dearest Boy, am I talking like a copy-book? I never meant to hold forth like that. Your fault again! And now we more or less understand one another—I’m almost glad you made that painful slip, and had the impertinence (shall we say, the courage?) to come round this morning.”

“I’m glad too . . . though it’s more than I deserve,” he stumbled out, overwhelmed by the graciousness of her whole gesture—after last night.

He was looking intently at her hand, the strength and fineness of it. Moved by a sudden irresistible impulse, he lifted it up—and shyly, awkwardly, kissed it.

*  *  *

Driving back to Town that afternoon, with the splendours of a smoky sunset behind him, and a serene full moon bright above the dark of the moor, varying visions of her haunted his imagination; her looks and tones, the things she had said, the flashlights thrown on deeper things, necessarily left unsaid. More and more he came to understand how she had held his father thirty years in thrall, by her very human love, by the unstained bravery of her spirit, and the silken thread of incomplete possession. Men were so made; and the withholding of an Anne Verity could never be mistaken, by any man, for an inverted form of lure. It was a matter of temperament. Partly, perhaps, it was the unseizable influence of music, as she had said.

Looking back at their lovely, shattered moment by the fire, he tingled with shame and distress at having so upset her, even for a few hours, after all she must have endured. Yet good had come out of evil—as it had morally no business to do. There was a Hindu legend he had read, while in Egypt, of Hari Das, who committed evil; “and evil in turn became his wing for flight.” Very wise people spiritually, the Hindus, perhaps owing to the vast perspective of their genuine belief in many worlds and many lives. It was true, for instance, that his father had done wrong. It was equally true that the love of Anne Verity had been to him “a wing for flight.” It could not fail to be that, for any man—with or without benefit of clergy—was his own not precisely unbiassed conclusion.

Yet—for all his reluctance to leave her, his eagerness to return—he had already decided that he must wait till next week-end (leagues away) before allowing himself the dear delight again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Here,” cries Nature, in her deepest diapason, “here are my bread and wine.” But her children, conscious of lowly birth, can rise to denials of which her easy old breast never dreamed.
— Christopher Morley

Anne Verity, returning to her empty drawing-room, sank into Henry’s big chair, breathing in the faint aroma of tobacco that clung to it, feeling on a sudden more acutely alone than she had felt for many weeks.

Last night, her volcanic emotions had left no room for a loneliness that implied, as now, a longing for the boy’s presence. Last night, smarting under the irony of his natural supposition, she had seen him as a man, with a man’s instinct to believe the worst, even of his own father. It was the kind of misconstruction she had faced, and accepted, years and years ago, as a part of all the rest. Yet, fool that she was, it had actually not occurred to her that Henry’s own son could so readily have accepted her friendship, while coolly supposing . . .

And her tormented heart had cried out, “This is more than I can bear!” So she had hardened herself against him—last night.

To-night, she saw him simply as a boy, who had been friendly—even affectionate—in spite of believing the worst, and whose clumsy slip had distressed him almost as much as it hurt her. To-night she sat there, desolate indeed, yet convinced that Fate—or was it Henry himself?—would not allow her to banish this boy (this man, rather) who had so strangely linked his life with hers, at almost the same age as his father before him. His very youth, his vital likeness to the Henry of her brief passionate love-time, revived the troubled stir in her veins, the unavailing protest against all she had lost. Never a son of her own! Yet—how that other woman’s son tugged at her heart!

Drawn to him irresistibly, at their first meeting—yet pierced by the thought, “This should have been mine”—she had found herself unable either to hate him squarely, for being the son of his unoffending mother, or to love him generously, as all that remained to her of his father; and after months of living down her anguish, she had resented the renewed assault upon her numbed emotions. So, in spite of seeming ungraciousness, she had decided to make no further move; fondly imagining that the boy might hesitate to propose himself, or might come on the chance—and find her “not at home.” She should have known better—seeing whose son he was! That unswerving persistence in pursuit of what he wanted waked a hundred dear and poignant memories.

And this morning again—that ludicrous encounter, dissolving in laughter all her drastic resolves. No resisting him, when he knelt there pleading in his father’s voice, that shook her heart with the longing to push away Clive and have Henry remain, while distractingly unable to separate the two. And she, graciously forgiving him, secretly grateful to him, because now she felt secure of him for always. Now she could love him generously, unmothered as he was, with no clash of resentment or bitterness any more.

Towards this solace, undreamed-of, she had been stumbling blindfold, ever since the day when that hideous, bold announcement in her evening paper had left her stunned—yet mercilessly alive.

Looking back into that gulf of black misery, imperceptibly shading to grey, she marvelled how the body could go stubbornly on, while the spirit swooned under a blow that had crushed all significance out of life. At times she had almost hated herself for being able to live at all, without that dear intermittent companionship and the deep satisfaction of being not merely loved, but truthfully understood, in a world where so much genuine love was utterly devoid of understanding. Scarcely, even now, could she bear to dwell upon the sharpened bliss of that one year free from haunting thoughts of the unknown wife, who had possessed what she craved, yet lacked what she possessed. And the awful, senseless crash that ended all—!

Now, thanks to the simple fact that Henry’s love had moved him to keep her letters—she had partly recaptured that lost companionship on a different plane of years; yet like enough, in essence, to seem at times almost as if Henry had won his way back to her through the medium of his son, who should also have been her own. It might be a mere fantasy of her too lively imagination: and yet, given a belief in some personal form of going on and still to be; it seemed not quite outside reason to suppose that the process of detachment from earth, and the loves of earth, should be swifter for some, slower for others—say, for a man like Henry, cut off on the eve of fulfilment unfulfilled, his whole being charged with a sublimated love, a veritable “marriage of true minds.”

And there was Clive—his natural affinity with his father intensified by soaking in all those letters and diaries. . . .

The strange and stirring idea seemed not wildly inconceivable, and the wonder of it lifted her heart. But it was the kind of alluring fancy she would not allow herself to dwell upon. For it had not needed the coming of Clive—nor the tale of those strange experiences—to confirm her unassailable conviction that “spirit with spirit can meet.” Not once, but many times, Henry had indeed been nearer than breathing to her inmost self—the Self that is deeper than consciousness, that will ultimately know, even as it is known. Sustained by that secret link, she could never feel utterly alone: yet there was very human comfort in the boy’s nearness and dearness. How deep-rooted was her need of it, only yesterday’s threat of severance had revealed.

So empty and desolate the house felt without him, that she fled from her friendly fireside into the open, where the vast emptiness of moor and sky dwarfed the more poignant emptiness within doors. Again and again the moor had been her solace in the long summer evenings of this longest, loneliest summer of her life. And to-night it was darkly aglow with the splendours of that smoky sunset; her little wood of larch and pine conjured into a magnified burning bush, “afire with God.”

On and on she walked, the beauty of the heavens, the rhythmic movement of her body and the short, resilient heather underfoot gradually restoring her normal poise; so that she fell to marvelling, for the hundredth time, how things without life could at once so livingly hurt and so livingly console.

And as the flames of sunset faded, the full moon came slowly up over the dusky roughened curve of the moor. Tawny-golden, immense, she hovered, like a risen soul, among dissolving wraiths of cloud, her light just strong enough to intensify the long dark sweep of the ridge, the clean curves of the eastward hills; and, black upon her brightening disc, one small lonely pine etched with delicate precision. Not a sound, far or near, but an occasional ghostly whisper astir in the mummied heath bells.

A nip of frost in the still air quickened her pace, and the moon’s unearthly glamour lured her on. Such clean lavish light, disguising more than it revealed, saturating the senses, awakening hidden memories and desires . . .

It was no poet’s fantasy—the moon’s enchantment. It could be very real and potent, as she had reason to know. It had gone near to drowning every scruple, every sane conviction, to which she had so desperately clung, on that critical night with Henry, at Antibes, when all normal barriers of reserve had been demolished by his anguish of self-reproach, his passionate assurance that if she would but take him—even at this late hour—he would put behind him every ambition, every other consideration, and devote his life to her, whatever the issue.

There, by the wide balustrade—above moon-splashed rocks and sea—he had loomed, big and broad, his head bowed, his hands closed fast on her own; had told her, in blunt fervent phrases, how he had realised, too late, the madness of supposing he could put her out of his heart by taking another woman to wife; that he was still hers—every bit of him—to take or to refuse.

And she—believing in him, loving him to distraction—had felt afraid rather than glad of so complete a surrender, from him of all men.

In that perilous hour, while her senses ached to have done with striving, something stronger than herself had given her courage to say: “Henry, if I did say ‘yes’ tonight—how would you feel to-morrow? And there would be all the other to-morrows, tempting you to draw back, when ugly facts would be pelting us like stones. Beloved, your life is no longer yours to offer, or mine to take. I care—too much. It would be simple desecration.”

How did one ever manage to say things like that? Looking back across the years it seemed incredible that she, Anne, had spoken those very words, while her heart and the Mediterranean moonlight and the man himself cried out to her, in effect, “We are too strong for you. Give way—give way!”

Not all at once had her flash of sanity convinced him: but some quality in his parting kiss had told her the worst of the struggle was over. And for one frantic moment—though it was her own doing—the knowledge had been almost more than she could bear.

Afterwards he had blamed himself severely, had blessed her for a love—“not blind, but full of god-like eyes”—that knew him even better than he knew himself. That he, the worldling, should have needed the reminder from her was proof, at least, of her entire dominion over him—if further proof were needed, after that incredible moment of greeting, two days earlier, on the lonely strip of shore: the desperate note in his momentous question, “You aren’t married?” The unfeigned fervour of his “Thank God!”

At the moment, all her emotions in a whirl, she had seen and felt nothing—beyond the miracle revealed in those two words. The frank selfishness of them had only come home to her long afterwards. And longer afterwards, again, she saw how that hard refusal had held him; whereas, by yielding, she might ultimately have lost his love and her own self-respect.

From that week of mingled ecstasy and anguish, she had returned home to face the eternal clash between life as dreamed and life as encountered; unable to see a step of the way; secure only in the knowledge that Henry had accepted the conditions of their strange re-union, that—having failed her once—he would never wittingly fail her again. If he chafed at times, when the demon of jealousy was upon him, his penitence would show itself in ways peculiarly dear to her, because peculiarly his own. Above all, he understood that her individual code of right—“to thine own Self be true”—held neither reference nor deference to outside opinion.

Clear-eyed, in all human relations, she had very soon recognised that those who suspected anything, in regard to their friendship, would suspect everything as a matter of course. And the knowledge—combined with Henry’s insistence on a nom de plume—had more or less circumscribed her whole life. A natural gift for friendship includes a natural demand to be rightly understood: and, in certain cases, she had felt it keenly. Alton Lane, for instance—devoted to them both—what had he thought of it all? Knowing him unusually intimate with Henry, she had wondered often, with a secret pang. Yet she had never felt able to say a word. There were depths of shyness in her that only a lover, who was also a husband, could have fathomed. Perhaps that very shyness had helped to keep the bloom on their difficult relation, to save them from the roughening effect of unrestrained intercourse between two souls in an uncomfortable state of exposure.

Such friendships as she afterwards allowed herself had been mainly with men, who more readily respected one’s reserves; and these again had been restricted by Henry’s jealous dread of the inevitable Other Man, against whom he would have no shadow of a right to protest.

That several men, who began as friends, had ended in proposing marriage, she could not deny. Presumably because of her very disability and emotional detachment, men seemed to have a fatal habit of falling in love with her. And Henry, with a lover’s sixth sense, had often been the first to discover that it was so. Her own temptation—twice in the course of twenty-five years—to accept marriage and the hope of motherhood remained a secret securely hidden, even from his discerning eyes. She could not have found happiness so: and she knew it. Present or absent, he dominated her life. To be loved, as Henry knew how to love—for all the streak of base metal in him—had been, in itself, a career of the most inspiring, the most absorbing. And, if at times, it had made heavy demands on her, she had paid them gladly.

And through it all, a living thread of light, ran her abiding joy in her art—that mysterious working partnership between the Self and the Not-Self. The pleasures and pains of it she had accepted with equal thanks: the blight of over-civilisation, and complacent cleverness; the craving for lost simplicity, that could never be regained by taking thought; the mists of self-doubt, dispelled by flashes of vision that lifted the heart, “like clear shining after rain.” In the teeth of all that life might inflict, it remained a secure and lovely refuge, a well-spring that had never failed to slake her most importunate thirst.

But to-night, in the magical stillness of frost and moonshine, it was Henry and that dear Clive of his—the nearest thing to a son that could ever be hers—who haunted her thoughts and quickened the stir of lost youth in her veins; till she fled at last, from the too searching reality of the moon’s enchantment back to her solitary meal, to the scent of burning pine logs and the sense of companionship and loneliness that can come to the imaginative by a wood fire on winter evenings.

In some indefinable way, at this hour—in this corner, sacred to a thousand memories—Henry was with her still. And to-night, for the first time since his death, she drew out of a secret pocket the one letter she allowed herself to carry about with her always, as a girl carries her first love-letter.

And this—though written barely two years ago—was, in Anne’s eyes, her first authentic love-letter. The actual first one—that had chilled her trembling hope of clear assurance—had been ruthlessly destroyed: and all the rest had been shadowed by the inescapable fact of Clive’s mother. For this first unshadowed one she had waited three endless months, upheld by the clear certainty ahead of her—like walking through a long straight tunnel with a splash of daylight visible at the end.

Certainty? The mocking word chilled her as she sat there alone—she that, by now, should have been, unbelievably, his wife. There was no certainty in life—but death.

Occasionally, however, one was overlooked. She had reached that particular splash of daylight: and that first unshadowed letter had lived, ever since, in her secret pocket. What would happen if she lost it—incurably careless as she was—her foolish heart refused to consider. Middle-aged, romantic nonsense? She was not concerned with definitions. It might be the fashion to deride sentiment—or rather, “not to make a song about it,” as Clive would say; but one could not dismiss a genuine emotional fact simply by labelling it sentimental.

Drawing out her letter, she opened it—and sudden uncontrollable tears filled her eyes. It was too stupid. She had never been given that way. But nothing more sharply seizes the heart than the handwriting of the dead.

Briskly she tidied away her tears, pulled herself together—and read:

“‘Woman, much missed, how you call to me, call to me—’

“I could not write sooner. I cannot refrain from writing now. And I know you will be longing for a word. Presently I will come to you; and then— Though one can’t wipe out the past, I will do all in my power to atone, in the brief time left to us.

“Having at last the right to look forward, I find myself looking back—a painful, if salutary proceeding; marvelling what I have done, as a mere man, to deserve the loyal affection of that dear dead woman, the infinite patience of your unfailing love.

“Dearest and Best, we alone know where I might have been to-day—I and all the rest of us—but that you had the courage to say, ‘No,’ and to stand by it, at the most critical moment of our lives; the wisdom to understand me better than I understood myself, in the overwhelming sensation of finding you again.

“God knows how you have managed to endure the strain of the whole equivocal situation these many, many years. Forgive me, Beloved, that I so often made a hard thing harder for you by my insane fits of jealousy, that would have driven most women to break with me long ago. I can only suppose that you amazing creatures put up with that form of masculine selfishness on account of the emotional factor underlying it. Only remember this, by way of excuse. Since I couldn’t lawfully possess you, I naturally saw every man you called friend as a possible enemy. I knew the potent charm of your artistry, your vitality and essential innocence; and deeper down I knew that I deserved to lose you so.

“Though you did, so courageously, take the initiative, though my Mother did skilfully entangle me, no lover worth his salt would have let you go. I had been reared intensively along certain lines, remember; and habit is apt to be the deciding factor at critical moments. But knowing all that, there still remained the inner conviction that I deserved no better fate than to lose you again.

“Is it early familiarity with Scripture and Greek tragedy that breeds in us the haunting sense of relentless pursuit and punishment? I could never speak of it; and I can only write of it now because the Pursuer seems to have relented and forgiven—as one could expect only you to forgive. The miracle of your forgiveness, and your abiding love is like the familiar miracle of dawn. One does not exclaim about it, because one could not picture life without it.

“Here is a fragment I ran across while browsing on Tchekov’s ‘Note Books’—which you must emphatically read. It expresses what I would say as only genius can express the inexpressible.

“‘Essentially all this [life, I presume?] is crude and meaningless, and romantic love appears as meaningless as an avalanche that rolls down a mountain and overwhelms people. But when one listens to music . . . the avalanche is no longer meaningless, since everything in Nature has a meaning. And everything is forgiven; and it would be strange not to forgive.’

“Strange, indeed, if there were more of you and your like, my Anne, in this muddled, muddied world.

“An end of this. Only, when the time comes to speak of our future, remember what I have written—what I could never write till now. Don’t punish me and yourself, Beloved, by saying ‘At this late hour, it cannot be.’ It can be—and it shall be, within a reasonable time.

“And don’t forget that I adore you more humbly and devoutly than that wrong-headed young man of thirty years ago knew how to do. This may not be news to you, but you may care to hear it once again!

“Always your devoted lover,

“Henry Arden.”

And she would never hear it again—

That lighter touch, at the last, pierced her heart with too keen a pang. The hand that held her treasure dropped limply into her lap. With the other she covered her eyes, fighting back tears that sprang from deeper sources than those she had so briskly tidied away.

She had believed that, now, she could bear it. And she could not bear it, after all. His “Don’t punish yourself and me,” reminded her, too sharply, how—even at the last—she had tormented herself and him by a fastidious shrinking lest it might seem too soon. So long she had stood back from the complex actualities of life that, at the moment, she had felt shaken rather than elated; ignominiously unsure of herself; fearful, on his account, of all that his mother would inevitably take for granted. And how could a woman like that be persuaded to believe the simple truth?

First and last, the evil genius of their love, she shadowed—even at that late hour—“their one life’s time.” Yet, in the end (could irony go further?) she had unwittingly helped to make everything simple and possible—too late.

In that proffered appointment, Anne had seen the heaven-sent opportunity of beginning their real life together in new surroundings, hundreds of miles away from every one and everything connected with the past. On the strength of it she had agreed, with rapture, to an immediate announcement, a quiet wedding before he sailed. In five years’ time she could return and face it all.

In five years’ time . . . !

Chapter Twenty-Three

So unruly, so assertive is this thing called Life, ever rising to harass and defeat any one who would interpret, crystallise, or devitalise it.
— A. L.

Clive, himself, reached home that evening in a state of mind and heart that gave him furiously to think. What was it that had befallen him? Had he actually been bewitched by that adorable woman, twenty years older than himself, and unswervingly devoted to his father—alive or dead?

Emphatically—it could not be.

The normal Sir Clive Arden, of Queen’s Gate, was in love with Molly Mansergh. If the Fates favoured him, he hoped to pull it off before Christmas. So that was that.

Very well, then—during the long drive home had he been thinking and dreaming of Molly, counting the days to her return? Not he. The Clive of “Blue Hills” had been completely in command of affairs.

Heart, brain and imagination had been saturated by Anne—the varied tones of her voice, the eloquence of her eyes, the sad lines of her face in repose, that made the careless unproven beauty of youth seem a trivial thing. For the first time in his life the spell of another human being held him captive, whether he would or no. Call it losing his heart, call it losing his head—labels never yet accounted for a mystery, or made it less mysterious. To him it seemed a sensation more profound, more discomposing than the normal emotion that leads to marriage; and it was shot through with hints of some other state of being in which he had known and felt it all far more strongly than now. His natural instinct was to shy away from it, to preserve intact that inner lordship over himself, which the whole woman relation seemed subtly to undermine. Moreover, in this case, emphatically—it could not be. If he kept on repeating that prosaic statement with sufficient conviction, he might hammer himself—by a kind of Coué process—into a saner, more single frame of mind.

For all that, he was fundamentally aware that no amount of hammering could dispel the living fact of Anne, whose hand he had kissed, whose shyest sensibilities he had wounded, whose music had on him a magical effect there was no resisting, nor any desire to resist.

That being so—what then? But he refused, in the thick of his dilemma, to look at “What then?”

And here he was back at the old Queen’s Gate house, faced with all the practical demands of the practical world that had no concern whatever with the fairy tale of “Blue Hills.”

In the hall, a fat envelope of proofs—positively the last; and Stella—scooting up to dress for dinner, vouchsafing him a sisterly peck and a sisterly greeting.

“Crashed to earth again? I hope it was a gay little lark, your old week-end?”

“Oh, rather—a gay little lark,” he mechanically echoed.

She flung him a wicked look. “Canford Cliffs wouldn’t be gay enough, I suppose?”

“Not having sampled it, can’t say.”

If he refused to be drawn, she refused to be quenched.

“‘But he was very stiff and proud.
He said, ‘You needn’t shout so loud,’”

she mocked him, mounting another step of the stairs to reduce the advantage of his height. “Quite confidentially, ducky, I couldn’t help thinking what fun it would be if you and Tony had rushed, unbeknownst, at the same spot on the map and your two heads had crashed together with a bang.”

“Yes—you would think it fun. Molly wouldn’t. There’s the difference between you.”

“Oh, Molly’s becoming too good to live! But she doesn’t seem to gain much by the difference!”

“That’s not your affair.”

“Well, a little while ago I certainly thought it was your affair—or as near as damn it. My mistake!”

At that he laid a firm hand on the bannisters.

“Time we were dressing for dinner. Perhaps you’ll let me pass?”

She glanced at him shrewdly, and startled him by saying, “Cheer up, old thing. I don’t believe it was such a gay little lark after all.”

“It was anything on earth you choose to call it,” he retorted, deftly slipping past her up the stairs. “Any one dining?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Twelve of us. You’ll find some of them quite good sport.”

He did find some of them good sport, and he was glad of the diversion: the men not too juvenile, the girls a lively lot: necks and arms and legs very much in evidence, easy talk and easy laughter, and Tony looking cheerful enough to stir a faint prick of apprehension. Only one sober elderly, holding his own with fair success—Jarvis McNeil, firmly settled in at last; suggesting to Clive’s ribald fancy, a good-humoured Atlas, with a full-dress biography sitting on his chest, and a world of readers and reviewers on his solid shoulders. In his plodding conscientious fashion, he was probably preparing a monograph of Sir Henry Arden, K.C.M.G., as lifeless and boring as his interminable old “Monograph of the Rose!” The prospect distressed Clive exactly as he felt sure it would distress his father if he knew. And the dear old chap hadn’t a glimmering notion . . . or had he?

But the general talk and laughter was too noisy for abstruse speculations. A man could hardly hear himself think.

Stella, at the moment, was scintillating with a bright idea. If only they could invent a new dance between them, call it the Tomsky-Trotsky, and float it in some popular picture paper, they might take the town by storm; find themselves famous! Clive applauded the name; even old McNeil contributed a chuckle; and suggestions, with interludes of lively illustrations, kept them all in a bubble of talk and laughter throughout the meal.

Then there was a general move for coffee up-stairs, an unheeded remark from McNeil about a long evening’s work; and while Clive was debating whether to join the old man for half an hour, he caught Tony’s eye signalling, “Wait a bit!”

His instant thought was—“Molly!”

That shut him up like an oyster; and assuming a careful mask of indifference, he coolly confronted this intrusive younger brother, with whom he never could manage to feel annoyed.

“What’s in the wind, Antonio?” he enquired, as Tony closed the door on their guests. “Anything serious?”

“Depends how you take it.” Tony helped himself to another cigarette. “Gran would sputter. It’s old Alix—”

“Alix—?” Clive promptly discarded his futile mask. “She’s off to the South of France.”

“Is she? More than she deserves! Seems she’s been handing round some wild tale about the Dad’s Life.”

“What kind of a tale?”

“Oh, if you want ghastly details you must ask the lady! We’d a little dinner on yesterday at the ‘Cri,’ and Jim Gordon started twitting me about a ghost in our family. Swore he’d heard, on good authority, that my father’s spirit was ‘walking,’ trying to scare us off writing the Life—or some such bally rot. He mentioned old Alison; so I gave him the tip that she couldn’t safely be taken neat. Thought I’d better pass it on to you for further investigation.”

“Thanks, very much. I’ll investigate—if she’s still in Town.”

“Has she gone in off the deep end?” Tony enquired, mildly concerned.

“Well—we call it nerves. Same thing to you, no doubt, you cheerful post-war product! But if any one else bleats about a family ghost, you can tell ’em—on the very best authority—that we don’t deal in ghosts, and some one’s been romancing.”

Tony nodded sagaciously.

“’Course I knew it was all bunkum. But there it was. First you backing out, then Alison. So I got thinking p’raps there might be some sort of just impediment behind.”

Clive eyed him with affectionate amusement. It would never do for Tony to get thinking.

“There’s the Old Lady behind—as you might have guessed, if you’d thought hard enough! No joke collaborating with her. And it almost amounts to that. But I’ll extinguish Alison on the nail.”

His forward move was checked by a different Tony, in a different voice.

“I say, Clive, between ourselves, I’d be awfully glad to know if you’re by way of backing out, or coming on . . . where Molly’s concerned?”

And Clive, neatly caught, had no time to slip on his mask again.

“I—? Good Lord! You’ve no right to shoot me sitting like that.”

But beneath his protective touch of stiffness, he recognised that his own vexation sprang from a sudden and startling inability to give Tony a straight answer.

“I’ve the right of being ready to go all out for her, myself,” Tony retorted with a vigour and seriousness that became him remarkably well. “And you—well, you don’t look much like it to the naked eye. First you whisk off abroad. Then you cut in and queer my pitch. Then you suddenly seem to be cooling off. It’s damned unfair all round. I only want to know where you stand.”

“So do I, for that matter,” Clive confessed on a desperate impulse. “Personally I’m beginning to doubt if she has any permanent use . . . for either of us. But, in view of recent developments, I should say your chances were the rosier of the two.”

“You think that—and you can take it smiling?” Tony’s gaze was blankly incredulous. “Damned if I can make you out, these days.”

And again Clive treated him to the simple truth—the thing one’s fellows are least ready to believe.

“Damned if I can quite make myself out either. So don’t mind me. Run along and play.—Thanks about Alix. I’ll put the extinguisher on.”

“You aren’t coming up?”

“Later on, perhaps. I’m having a jaw with old McNeil.”

“Tell him about the family ghost?”

“I think not.”

As the door closed on Tony, Clive remained staring at it for several seconds, uncomfortably aware of an acute inner clash at the thought of the Youngster going all out for Molly.

But the crux of the moment was Alix. He wouldn’t have believed it of her—after swallowing the lordly cheque that was supposed to whisk her off the scene. One would never get out of her precisely what she had said, or was saying. Her foggy make of brain had too many cross-lights in it for the straight truth or the straight lie. But, to the best of her ability, she must stand and deliver. Goodness knew what the Old Lady would say, if any garbled version reached her ears. Alison was a double-distilled owl to have risked it—considerations of decency apart.

And there, on the hall table, when he went out, lay a large wallet-shaped envelope, addressed to himself—from Bath! Picking it up, with a turned-over feeling, he went back to the dining-room armchair—and read:

“My dearest Boy,—

“I am so exceedingly angry that I don’t know how to write becomingly of Alison’s most unbecoming behaviour. I don’t know whether you have heard anything; but I received a letter from Emily Farlow—who is in Town for a week—and this is what she says—

“‘I hear your cousin, Miss Owen, is passing round a strange communication she claims to have had from your son to the effect that he had particular reasons for not wishing his Life to be written; that she has informed you of the facts and has refused, in consequence, to carry on the great work. She seems to feel convinced that harm will come of it to all concerned, if you persist in your sceptical attitude and your determination to write the Life in defiance of his expressed wish. Goodness knows why she can’t keep her conviction to herself. People, of course, are pricking up their ears. They swallow that kind of thing now-a-days as they would never have done twenty years ago. So I thought it best to let you know, in case you feel like launching some kind of counter-blast.’

“What I feel like doing, as you may guess—cannot very well be put on paper. The insolence of the woman! I ought to have trounced her more unmercifully when she came tearing down here with her crazy inventions, determined to prevent Jarvis from taking her place. Then she wouldn’t have dared to breathe another word.

“Now, my dear Boy, as I can’t launch thunderbolts or counter-blasts through the post (and am not physically fit for either) I must ask you to take the matter up instead. As your Father’s son, it touches you nearly also. Tell that woman from me—in the strongest language at your command—that if she doesn’t at once run round contradicting circumstantially all her mad lies, I shan’t hesitate to sue her for libel and make her look the unvarnished fool she is, in the eyes of her precious set. Tell her I will have no mercy on any one who takes my dear son’s name in vain.

“I feel too shaken and angry to write with coherence and restraint. But I can trust you, Clive (though I wouldn’t have felt so sure a few months ago), to take up the cudgels vigorously, both for the sake of your dead Father and

“Your affectionate old Grandmother,

“Caroline Arden.”

And Clive, crushing the letter in his hand, sat there enraged—not on account of his father, or his grandmother, but entirely on account of Anne. There must be some people who knew and others who might suppose . . .? Any whisper getting about that there were “reasons” would be intolerable.

That he was feeling it as if he were verily his father, he amazingly, profoundly knew, as he sat in the familiar chair, staring at the familiar portrait of Henry Arden in the middle thirties—as it were himself regarding himself: his own forehead, his own eyes, his own hands. To the one, as to the other, all that mattered, first and last—was Anne.

Yet this strange new ferment could not quite extinguish the normal Clive’s normal desire for Molly Mansergh: hence his jealous antagonism to the idea of Tony “going all out” for her. The normal Clive was in love with Molly. He was not in love with Anne. The mere thought of it was madness; and to her it would seem sacrilege. Yet, unmistakably, his natural love and admiration for her included a feeling stronger than mere fascination; and in the face of this troubled craving, that could have no practical issue, it would be an insult to approach Molly, even were it the remotest use. Small wonder if she were swerving towards Tony, who—in his singleness of devotion—was clearly the better man.

For himself, nothing could avail but to drop Anne clean out of his life—at least for a time: and instantly he knew—with a certainty that had its thrill of fear—that was what the other Clive (who was “Henry”) would never permit. In any case, it was probably too late; nor could he very well explain his dilemma. And without explanation, the unkindness to her would be unthinkable. In some queer way, he felt responsible for her; as his father must have felt: and faced with this vexatious affair, he knew himself verily, stirringly one with the dead.

He needed no grandmotherly urging to tackle Alix in the strongest language at his command! And, on the chance of catching her to-night, he decided to ring her up before looking in on McNeil.

The Exchange reported, “No answer.” She was out—naturally later; very busy putting it across! He would try again later; get it over, while his heart felt hardened against her trick of enlisting his sympathies. Then, slipping on a mask of casual interest, he entered the library.

“Hope I don’t interrupt? If you’re desperately busy, kick me out!” he accosted the solid form of Henry Arden’s third biographer—seated, not at the writing-table, but in the big chair by the fire.

He spoke as he entered: and at the sound of his voice, he could have sworn that McNeil jumped.

Next instant, he knew he was not mistaken.

“You gave me a start, young man!” McNeil frankly informed him. “You speak so like your father. I was reading him up in Hansard and his voice was in my brain. Come along in . . . You’re welcome.”

He closed, with a thud of satisfaction, the heavy volume on his elbow-table.

“Reams these fellows turn out! If speeches in Parliament—most of them—were anything more than pious resolutions, or party missiles, this sober old England of ours would be no place at all for the average comfort-loving man!”

And Clive—smiling at that characteristic touch—responded in the same vein: “As it is, the comfort-loving man romps in an easy first! And England considers the world well lost for her green lanes and her cricket fields and her slow-moving countryside. She probably isn’t far out, either. If only she’d hold her own a bit more against American influences and the super-publicity touch.”

McNeil twitched an eyebrow.

“I thought you young fellows devoutly believed in all that.”

“Some do—some don’t! That’s about the most you can say, with truth, about any group of humans—if they are humans!”

McNeil twinkled.

“You’re a very sagacious young man! Have a smoke?”

He held out his case; and Clive thought, “I’m highly favoured. He seems rather to appreciate the interruption.”

Was it possible—? Instinctively Clive glanced round the room, wondering . . .?

Onyx, awakened by his coming, was on the prowl in a restless purposeful fashion, reminding him suddenly of that other occasion when things had decidedly gone too far. And McNeil, eyeing him suspiciously, muttered, “That cat! Rather uncanny beast,” in a tone that made Clive put aside his unlighted cigarette and lift Onyx in his arms. Fondling the soft head, that moved rhythmically under his chin, he felt transported, for a bewildering moment, to “Blue Hills”: and the sense of that atmosphere—in this room, was so curiously unsteadying that he very nearly set the creature down.

“Been in here long enough. I should put him out,” McNeil’s practical voice dispelled the illusion: and Onyx, purring loudly, snuggled closer, seeming almost to understand.

“Does he bother you?” Clive asked. “We can’t cure him of sticking to this room.”

“It’s his room, not mine!” the other answered with a quaint touch of courtesy. “Your Father had a peculiar affection for him. And I like to have him here, when he doesn’t do—that.”

“Not very often, eh?” Clive stood up for his favourite.

“Well—no. I always put him out.”

“Poor old Onyx! He hates the leads. I’ll take him over this evening, if he’ll condescend to stay in my cubbyhole.”

“Look here, you know,” McNeil’s voice sounded positively eager. “It’s a shame keeping you out of your own library like this. I wish you’d come and sit in here with me, whenever you feel inclined. If you aren’t doing anything this evening—?”

“Thanks very much.” (Was it fancy? Or was there a hint of urgency under the friendly invitation?) “I thought you’d rather feel sure of being undisturbed.”

“Yes—yes, of course. I wouldn’t want any one here—except yourself.”

“That’s awfully nice of you! And very pleasant for me. I think they’ll be dancing upstairs to-night. And I may have to run round to Alison’s flat on business; but some other evening I’ll be delighted. And if I can be of any use, in a small way, command me. Are you still mainly digesting material? It’s a stiff job.”

“It is a stiff job,” McNeil agreed with so frank an emphasis that Clive thought, “Hullo! Up against it already?”

He said nothing, however, and McNeil went on, “No easy matter for a plain fellow, like myself, to get an all-round grasp of a many-sided man like your father. I fancy I knew him as well as most; but I chiefly knew the politician and the Arden of my younger days. And there was a good deal more of him than that. A big man, in every sense: only he shut himself in so of late years.”

Clive nodded feelingly. “It’s a queer admission, perhaps, but I hardly knew him at all. To me it was a kind of exploration going through all those letters and things.”

It struck him, while speaking, that he had never before discussed his father with Jarvis McNeil; but the old chap seemed to be talking chiefly in order to have him stay there, and the subject increasingly attracted him these days.

“Exploration—that’s the word for it,” McNeil surprisingly agreed. “Living so near Town, I had very little correspondence with my old friend; and it feels strange only discovering now that he wrote more intimately than he talked. Yet he was a fine speaker—on impersonal themes. And his voice—even reading this printed stuff, one seems to hear it. That’s why you gave me a start just now.”

There was a gruffness in his own voice that made Clive feel friendlier to him than ever yet. To cover a mutual moment of shyness, he stooped and flung a log on to the red-hot mass of coal, setting it all ablaze. And McNeil, who had finished filling his pipe, went on:

“Of course old Lady Arden has set her heart on the Life; and his own world—political and literary—will expect it. But I’d feel more satisfaction in wrestling with all this if I wasn’t bothered by the knowledge that he didn’t want it done.”

“He said so—to you?” Clive asked with quickened interest.

“He did—in a casual way. And I could swear he must also have said it to her. In fact, I asked her straight; but she couldn’t recall he had ever expressed a wish!”

McNeil’s lurking twinkle emboldened Clive to smile outright.

“She wouldn’t!”

And suddenly he realised that they were both speaking in subdued tones, as if they fancied they might be overheard; though there was none to overhear except Onyx, who had fallen asleep again.

What the devil could it be, that shiver along his nerves? Something uneasy in the atmosphere of this warm, comfortable room—the most comfortable in the house: something vague, yet unmistakable to his sharpened sensibilities. The odd thing was that he could swear McNeil felt it also in his bones—that remark about Onyx, the urgent invitation. Yet, for the honour of their British sanity and sanctities, neither would dream of admitting as much in so many words. They had matter more practical on hand.

Clive felt the older man’s eyes on his face, possibly hoping for a clue to his own defection. But, unable to speak of his strange experience, or of Anne, he could say nothing: and it was McNeil who spoke.

“He cared very little if he was misunderstood, so long as he could be let alone. I remember telling him once, that attitude was all very well for nameless beggars like myself; but if he insisted on reaching the top of the ladder, he must pay the penalty. And he made a wry face over that. (“No wonder,” thought Clive. “It was a shrewd hit.”) When one recalls those things, it doesn’t seem the act of a friend . . . Well, well! It’s a case of obeying orders. And his Mother’s wishes carried more weight with Henry than a mother’s wishes are apt to do with grown men.” He resumed his pipe and sighed solidly. “Did you come to know about your Father’s wish, Clive? Was that why you backed out?”

Clive hesitated. “I came to feel . . . a strong conviction—” was all he felt able to say.

“And you couldn’t carry on against it?”

“No, I couldn’t. But, look here, you know—” he shook off that insidious atmosphere of quiet. “ You* mustn’t get backing out—or there’ll be the devil to pay.”

McNeil sighed solidly. “So I understand! Your Grandmother rubbed it in. She can’t bear the idea of a stranger.”

And Clive, remembering Alix, took his departure, carrying Onyx with him; his mind preoccupied with old Jarvis to an extent he would scarcely have thought possible when he sat down to dinner. One knew he was a good chap. One labelled him, mentally, “solid intelligence, no imagination.” But human beings have a way of eluding labels. The McNeil he had been talking to was not the sturdily self-assured compiler of monographs—human or vegetable—but a middle-aged man shaken out of his middle-aged rut by the discovery of unsuspected heights and depths in his dead friend’s character, possibly by a dawning suspicion of things hidden and mysterious, not dreamed of in his philosophy. He, Clive, might be mistaken or over-fanciful; but recalling Anne’s softly speculative, “I wonder . . .?” he wondered also.

Meanwhile—he must bring his wits to bear on Alison. Damn it all! Why couldn’t she have had the common decency to hold her tongue?

Chapter Twenty-Four

No sooner the old hope goes to ground,
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark . . .
I shape me,
Ever
Removed!
— Robert Browning

He went straight to the telephone; and this time he caught her. She had been dining out early with friends, who had to go on elsewhere. Her voice sounded a shade flustered when he asked leave to run round for half an hour, with no hint of his reason; a request so unusual that it had only occurred once since the evening that had been responsible for all this.

“I’d love to see you, of course. But I’m fearfully taken up just now.”

“A new book spinning along already?”

“No!” (vehemently).

“Well, it’s not a crime! Have mercy on my ear. Why aren’t you already half way across France?”

“Oh, I’m going quite soon, I hope.” (Again she sounded flustered.) “There were complications. I’ll explain. Can’t you come to-morrow instead?”

“Imposs: I’m sorry. It’s rather important. I’ll be round in a jiffy.”

He found Alison looking her best in an autumn-tinted tea-gown affair, the wonderful rope of Chinese amber hanging to her waist.

“This is very mysterious!” she lightly greeted him, but her eyes told him she guessed his errand.

“You’ve brought it on yourself, Alix,” he said, taking her knowledge for granted. Angry as he was, he hated going for her as sincerely as the Old Lady would have enjoyed it.

“D’you mean . . . does Caroline know what I’ve been saying . . . about the Life?”

“Of course she does. That kind of thing always gets round to those most concerned. She’s furiously angry; and she’s commissioned me to tell you so in the strongest language at my command!”

“Oh, Clive, how awful!” She clutched her beads as if they could afford her some sort of protection. “Won’t you sit down?”

Her nervousness disarmed him.

“I don’t know. It’s easier to be brutal standing.”

“But you can’t be brutal to me—in my own flat.”

“That’s a drawback, I admit!” He kept up his discomposing air. It was less undignified than losing his temper with a woman. “I’m not highly skilled at the brutal touch—here, there, or anywhere. But doesn’t it hit you in the eye, Alix—(Do sit down yourself.” She thankfully obeyed) “that it’s playing rather low down to go flinging mud at my Father—by implication, after accepting that cheque and giving me to understand—”

“Flinging mud at Henry!” she interrupted, blankly dismayed. “What have they been saying?”

“It’s you that have been saying, I gather, that he had reasons for not wishing his Life to be written—though you know nothing about them, or his wishes. And it’s obvious they wouldn’t be creditable reasons, would they?”

“Oh, but how dreadful! I never thought—” She cried, in genuine distress. Clearly she never had thought, she had seen nothing but her one objective—myopic creature that she was! “I was furious with Caroline. And I had to explain things. But Henry—! Of course they would think . . . it would seem . . . How unpardonable of me! And you’ve been so generous! I’m afraid I was only thinking of her.”

“I’m afraid you were,” he answered, not visibly relenting. “But in this connection, my Grandmother and I are one.”

“I won’t take your money. I’ve no right to it. I won’t go to France,” she vehemently protested, undermining his annoyance as usual, by enlisting his sympathies.

“Drop it, Alix. I’m not going back on that transaction. The sooner you’re off to France the better. But the point is—you’ve got to bestir yourself and inform your very particular friends, at once, that you’ve realised your precious psychic experience didn’t amount to anything. Simply overstrained nerves; and you’ve been ordered to France for restoration and repairs!”

“Clive—how can I?” Her dismay had another quality now, a flavour of injured vanity that stiffened his determination to safe-guard Anne.

“Strikes me it’s the least you can do, if you care a brass button for my Father’s reputation.”

“You know I care.” Her shaken voice told him that was the screw to turn.

“I shall know it, if you do what I ask. How many of your specials have you treated, in confidence, to this wild tale they are busy distributing—with embellishments, no doubt?”

She wrinkled her brow distressfully.

“My dear Boy, how can I know—to a fraction? One talks here and there—”

“And everywhere! That’s the curse of Town. But a thing like that—don’t try and wriggle out of it, Alix. You know perfectly well.”

Her worried frown admitted as much: but she wriggled instinctively like a fish on a line.

“Truly, Clive, I’m up to the eyes. And I shan’t be seeing any of them. Our seats are booked for Wednesday—”

“Glad to hear it!” He smiled inwardly at the thought of her sweeping renunciation of a few minutes ago. “And if you’re up to the eyes, well . . . there’s your writing-table. Sit you down, and get it all off your chest. One good convincing note, begging the dear thing to pass it along the line—and you need only repeat it six or seven times, with variations. I’ll post ’em for you on my way home.”

“It’s degrading! It’s a shame!”

“It’s all that. I’m awfully sorry. But—you’ve spilt the milk. Like me to do it for you? It might be more effective, though it wouldn’t look so well!”

That brought her to her feet.

“You don’t trust me!” she flamed, in sudden wrath.

“My dear, I trust you all right. But I know how unpleasant things get shelved. And please remember this isn’t my show. It’s Gran’s. I warn you she’s in a high state of fury. She’ll take action—she says so—unless I can give her straight proof that something definite has been done. After all, you know, in plain terms, it amounts to saving your own face at my Father’s expense. That’s how she sees it, anyway.”

“Oh, I hate her! I hate her! She always gets the best of it.”

“Yes, she’s that make. Not the remotest use standing up to a steam roller, as you ought to have known.”

While he spoke, she had settled down at her flat-topped writing-table, switched on the small standard and begun to scribble at a great rate.

“Marvellously fluent creature!” he reflected watching her from the winged chair. What was she saying? He could never quite bring himself to trust her, for all her good intentions; and he would have dearly liked to see the specimen note. But, in common decency, he could not shame her so. He could only rely on her feeling for his father. And when he caught her surreptitiously whisking away tears, he felt a proper brute to be sitting there at all.

By way of mild distraction he picked up a very new, very slim book of poems by one of the brightest lights in her coterie. A quaint production he found it: more paper than print, more manner than matter; a general impression of self-conscious striving to be exotic at any price. Poetry! God save the mark!

It was a relief when she rose and laid six stamped envelopes at his elbow. Her very compliance took the wind out of one’s sails. Not many women would have done it so obediently to order; but then—not many women would have tied themselves into this kind of knot.

“I hope that’ll satisfy Caroline. It’s simply spoilt everything,” she said, crouching to warm her hands. “And I was coming to see you, to tell you I’ve got an idea—for a play.”

“A play?” he echoed, hoping she would not detect the blank note in his voice.

“Yes. I’m sick of books. And I’ve always had a feeling ‘the play’s the thing.’”

“The manager’s the thing—and the producer,” he sagely reflected, “in these days of monopolies and combines.”

“Oh, I know all that. I couldn’t attempt it on my own. But Arthur Wynne may collaborate. Peggy Burden introduced us and we took to one another at sight. He’s fearfully keen. That was the reason for my delay. Wish me luck, Clive. I was feeling so elated and inspired before you rang up.”

“Sorry, old thing. Of course I wish you luck. I suppose Wynne knows the ropes. If you pull it off between you, this biography disappointment will seem a mere scratch. By the way, if you’ve written those notes on the lines I suggested, I hope you give me leave to contradict, on the same lines, any undesirable talk that comes my way.”

“Oh, yes—I give you leave.” She reverted automatically to her chastened air of martyrdom. “And I’m honestly sorry, Clive . . . on your account and on Henry’s, but not on hers. I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t think—and I still can’t bear the idea of Mr. McNeil stuffing Henry with sawdust and calling it a Life.”

“He’s not finding it all beer and skittles, if that’s any consolation to you. At the rate he’s likely to work, you’ll be the first in the limelight, I shouldn’t wonder.”

She stood up with a small shiver that was genuine for all its air of being overdone.

“Oh, don’t! I daren’t think of it”

“Well, you’ve got to think of it for all you’re worth, if you intend to pull it off. Send me a line from the over-rated Côte d’Azur to say how you’re getting on.”

And so he took leave of her—gifted, ineffectual, irritating; yet in her straightest moments, a not unloveable woman. And uncrushable à faire peur. The stage—of all impossible ambitions! In effect, she was standing up to the steam roller again. A humane impulse to catch her by the skirts—save her in spite of herself—had been dismissed as futile. After all, it was her funeral. If one could only hope, by any miracle, it might be her wedding! If this Wynne fellow might eventually be bold enough to collaborate with her for purposes of life, not art, she might yet be saved, in spite of herself.

He dropped the six envelopes, one by one, into a Queen’s Gate pillar-box, his sense of satisfaction tinged with a lurking doubt as to how far one could overtake that kind of talk and give it the lie. At least, he had done what he could—for Anne.

Barely seven hours since he left her; yet he was aching to see her again. That would never do. It stiffened his resolve to make no move in that direction till next weekend. Of course, if she particularly wanted him—?

But the supposition was pure conceit on his part; and she was little given to making moves.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things,
The giddy line midway.
— Browning

To decide that she never made a move seemed tantamount to a challenge; a common experience, in life. Friday morning brought a letter from “Blue Hills.” She was actually coming up to Town.

“My very dear Clive,” (she wrote),

“I have news that will please you and a request to make—that perhaps will also please you! I’m coming up on Saturday morning to spend three nights with Alton Lane and his sister Doris—a great friend of mine. He has arranged a private musical matinée, with our Andante Capriccioso for the main attraction! It will be played by Romzky and Yvette—you remember?—who so finely rendered the Tragic Poem.

“It’s a stirring and rather terrifying sensation hearing a brand new thing played for the first time—to the elect. And I want you to share it with me, as Henry always did. It’s not even in print, as you know! But I posted off both MS. scores to Alton on Sunday. He’s my only private critic—now. He likes it immensely, and he got hold of those two at once, begged them to practise for all they were worth—and play it on Saturday to a select musical few, including the composer! Romzky (who regards himself as my heaven-sent interpreter) cancelled a provincial engagement, to the fury of his agent—and swore it should be done.

“They were here yesterday, at it all the afternoon; both charmingly amenable to criticism and suggestions. Such genuine understanding! And yet—at heart, I was wishing that Astra could commandeer Anne Verity and Clive Arden to play it instead!

“And that brings me to my request. I’ve told Alton of our friendship, and of your playing. I also mentioned our success with the Andante. And he begged me to find out if you would dine with them on the Sunday, just the four of us, so that we may play it to him and Doris. They would so like to hear our rendering! Do say ‘Yes’ to this, if you can face it, dear Boy. I owe Alton more than I can say; and any little pleasure I can give him is a very great pleasure to me. You haven’t met Doris; but she hopes you will waive formality and accept for Sunday as well as for the matinée. Don’t disappoint me, if you can help it.

“What have you been doing all this week? I’ve been longing to know.

“Yours most sincerely,

“Anne Verity.”

She had missed him; she had wanted him; she had made this exciting, utterly unexpected move! In the face of all that, how was a bewitched man to keep his feelings in subjection and his feet on the ground? Since Monday he had only written a short line, briefly recounting Alison’s latest gaffe, promising to tell her more when they met, but not suggesting a day. Now he sat down straightway—and let himself go. He fell in with her entire programme (mentally discarding an unimportant dinner on Sunday) and begging her to honour him on Saturday—their only chance—if the Lanes could possibly be persuaded to spare her; dinner at the Ritz and a theatre to follow . . .

At that point, there flashed the now familiar sense of having done it all before; quite another form of it this time; more immediate, more disturbing—Molly. Only two weeks ago he had been pressing her to honour him in the same way. Less than a month ago he had danced with her at Olga Blake’s, had brushed away cobwebs of the past—had come within an ace of asking her to marry him.

The very next afternoon he had encountered Anne. And almost from the hour of their meeting, till now, he had acted—in respect of her—like a man under a spell; an invasion, rather (it almost amounted to that) by the personality of his redoubtable father, who seemed more intimately entangled with him in death than in life. And the sudden intrusion of Molly set him wondering—how would it be when he saw her again? They were returning before Christmas; and part of him desired, while part of him dreaded, the critical encounter that might come almost any day now.

Meanwhile, there was this wholly unexpected coming of Anne—

After dinner, he rang her up and secured her for Saturday, but refrained from adding that he intended to meet her train. She might spoil it all by flatly forbidding him. And he did not choose to greet her in a room full of strangers, where she would not be Anne, but Astra—a denizen of another world.

On Saturday morning, sheer restlessness landed him in Waterloo Station far too soon, cherishing a buttonhole of lilies for her coat collar. Of course her train was late: but when at last it condescended to arrive, he had the luck to find her just as she alighted on the platform; to enjoy her frank surprise.

“My dear boy! How bad of you!” she ungratefully greeted him. (“How good of you!” sounded in her voice, beamed in her eyes.) And he could only look at her, standing there, in the becoming London hat and the squirrel coat, with the nestling violets, precisely as he had seen her less than two months ago. It smote him sharply—the contrast between then and now.

While the porter shouldered her suitcase, he proffered his lilies, with so unusual a touch of shyness that she smiled at him, tenderly amused.

“How delicious! My violets must make way for them.”

And, as she unfastened her brooch, he said on impulse, “Let me have the violets. You can’t throw them away.”

“No. I couldn’t throw away living flowers. I should have offered them to the porter.”

“Porter, indeed!” And fixing them in his buttonhole, he walked briskly beside her, talking in his most practical voice, of the small box he had secured at the Haymarket, of the special table reserved for them at the Ritz—of anything on earth, except his feelings at the moment.

To Anne (had he but known it) came the poignant sensation that it might almost be his father, at some such rare moment of meeting in public. This first dress rehearsal affair, without him, was proving more difficult to face than she had allowed herself to realise in advance: and here was Clive giving her the very illusion of that other presence she craved—lifting her heart, yet piercing it with a sharpened pang.

Arrived at the Lanes’, he was for leaving her, but she pressed him to come in. “Just for ten minutes, so that Doris won’t be quite a stranger this afternoon. I imagine you aren’t at your brightest and best with strangers!”

“I’m not,” he squarely admitted. Was she recalling Mrs. Hilton’s show?

“Well, it won’t be a crowd; only ten or twelve, besides the four of us—Alton’s particular friends in his musical set. And remember . . . I’m Astra with all of them, even the few that know who I am.—Are you coming in?”

To please her, and to defer the moment of parting, he came in, and found himself mercifully at ease with Doris Lane; a large woman, with a full deep voice, steadfast eyes and a manifest affection for Anne that instantly placed her high in his esteem.

There he left her, promising a punctual return.

*  *  *

Delayed, at the last moment, by a long-winded telephone message from the Onlooker, he arrived to find seven of the elect, with the Lanes and the two players, already assembled in the big drawing-room, furnished mainly for purposes of music, with a grand piano, a few small tables and comfortable chairs; no heavy curtains, no carpet. But there were richly coloured rugs on the parquet flooring, some fine pictures and pots of shaggy chrysanthemums of a clear golden yellow.

And there, over by the piano, stood Anne, translated into Astra—very gracious and graceful, in some silvery grey stuff, deeply fringed; his lilies fastened with a bar of diamonds; and an old paste pendant, delicately wrought, hanging from an almost invisible chain. The strong light showed threads of grey in her dark hair; the faint flush in her cheeks told him she was feeling the strain more than the pleasure of this great occasion; and a sudden possessive longing seized him to shield her from her own sensations, to snatch her away from them all—the kind of thing his father must often have felt when he saw her thus.

While the vision and the impulse flashed, he had shaken hands with Miss Lane, who was saying pleasant things about his musical criticism. Then—Anne had seen him; her eyes were greeting him across the room; but she was deep in talk with the two players, while Miss Lane was introducing him to a newcomer.

“Sir Clive Arden—son of our old friend Sir Henry. This is Mr. Arnold Erskine, lately back from America, where he has been lecturing on ‘Music, the Art of the Age.’”

And Clive discovered, with a start, that he was facing the genial middle-aged intruder of “Blue Hills”—the distinguished features, the fair clipped beard, the lively unembarrassed blue eye, that seemed to say, “You here, young man!”

But his lips said, with a touch of cultured precision, “Not our first encounter, is it? I was puzzled to think who it was you recalled to my mind—till Astra told me.”

“You knew my Father?” Clive asked, stiffening inside, he could hardly have said why.

“In a sense—who didn’t know Sir Henry Arden? But it would be conceit on my part to imply that we were personal friends.”

His faint stress on the last word flashed a message to Clive’s brain. With luminous certainty, he knew that his father must have been jealous of this man. The possible link between that certainty and his own instinctive antagonism, startled him a trifle; but the genial one was asking with interest, “You also are a devotee of music—and of Astra?”

“I am,” Clive handed out the unadorned statement; but there seemed no choking him off.

“You play yourself?”

“Not worth mentioning. I occasionally criticise other people’s playing—for the Onlooker.”

“Ah—a distinguished paper. I’ve noticed some good work in the music section. But no Press here, I understood?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I am here as a friend,” Clive informed him; foolishly resenting the not unnatural inference, wishing it were possible to add that he had already played the new thing with Astra herself. But the fellow’s attention had wandered to the piano. He had probably not even heard that last remark.

Passing on to the other group, he greeted Lane with his confounded geniality, and bowed so deeply over Astra’s hand, that Clive, in a spasm of anger thought, “Is the blighter going to kiss it?”

Mercifully the “blighter” refrained. But he established himself beside Astra, with a possessive air that convinced Clive he had guessed right about his father. Of course men must have gone about falling in love with her. And it must have been trying for the poor old Dad, even if he did feel morally sure of her.

Listening, with polite attention, to the talk of a distinguished composer—there were three of them present—his mind was centred on the group near the piano. That genial blighter, with his air of possession, was spoiling the whole show; making him feel—God knew why—a mere juvenile, insignificant outsider. And the jarring questions would intrude. Had she given the man any shadow of right to assume those airs at a semi-public function? Did she see much of him down there? It seemed odd—and rather discomposing—that she had never mentioned his name.

Suddenly he felt as if a chasm had opened between them. That gracious, smiling woman, allowing Erskine to monopolise her, while Romzky waited like a dog for crumbs from her table, was no longer Anne, but Astra, the famous composer, with a Continental reputation. This was her world; and she—so aptly named—the central point of light round which they all revolved: a world that regarded him merely as an interested outsider. And what did he actually know about her, after all? Only such fragments of her past life as she had seen fit to tell him; and the tremendous fact that his father had loved her devoutly for thirty years.

He was thankful when the music began, and she sat a little apart in a deep brocaded chair—with Lane, not Erskine, nearest her—resting her chin on her hand, oblivious of all but the favoured pair, who were holding the room spellbound with her Andante Capriccioso.

The sweeping splendour of the solo carried him back to “Blue Hills” and that unforgettable Sunday evening—and half closing his eyes, he yielded utterly to the familiar spell . . .

It was over. She was shaking hands with Romzky; and the fifteen listeners were applauding vigorously enough for fifty. Now she was beckoning him with her eyes, drawing him personally into her triumph, introducing him to the players. After that, there was more music, and he no longer felt out in the cold; but his deep distrust of the genial blighter even she could not dispel. It was an immense relief when he faded away, after taking leave at considerable length. And Clive hoped fervently he would never set eyes on him again.

His own parting was a brief affair. He had the grace to thank the Lanes for sparing her: and his return on this occasion was not unpunctual.

*  *  *

Their table at the Ritz was tucked into a mirrored corner, giving them a certain air of detachment from other early diners; and Clive—half amused at his own foolishness—enhanced the effect by sitting with his back to the room.

It was pure joy, after a week of absence, to get her even approximately to himself. And they had much to say—of music, of London, of the “elect.” She was frankly uplifted by the great conductor’s estimate of her new work. The Andante he had praised without reservation; but he had suggested certain alterations in the quick movement, which she proposed to consider before “rushing into print.”

“Consider! I wouldn’t change a bar of it,” he stoutly protested.

“No—you wouldn’t! But I probably shall. You see, I know what Alton’s criticism is worth. I know how nearly he missed being a composer. But there seemed always some quality lacking, Henry said; and no one saw that more clearly than himself, poor man. So he took to conducting other people’s music instead. What a mystery it is—this thing we glibly call inspiration. And how fatally one is at its mercy. What do they really know about it—even those who think in polysyllables? It does seem more than a little sad to know so unerringly how a thing should be done, yet never be able to do it. But that, I suppose, is what gives us the oxygen of fine criticism, without which art could not long survive.”

They discussed the parlous state of criticism, and its effect on modern art; and all the while Clive knew he was waiting for her to mention the blighter.

They had arrived at roast ptarmigan—and never a word. So he boldly decided to take the initiative: see what he could glean from that.

“I had a few minutes’ talk with that lecturer chap, Erskine,” he volunteered as the ptarmigan was removed.

“So I saw!” Her amused smile had its guarded quality. “You didn’t look very responsive.”

“Can’t say I felt it. D’you like him? D’you know him well?”

“Yes—I like him. I’ve known him a good many years. He’s very clever; though, with strangers, he sometimes gives the effect of being superficial.”

“He did—to me. And he seemed patronising, a bit. Said he knew my Father.”

She made no comment on that: and something in her silence impelled him to ask, “Did the Dad like him too?”

“No.”

Her unadorned negative struck him silent, but he had his answer to his own instinctive antipathy. It was strange. He hoped she wasn’t thinking him a blighter; but he simply had to know.

There was a movement of earlier diners at the table behind him; and Anne remarked, “Such an attractive face you’ve been missing all this time.”

Clive, who appreciated an attractive face, glanced at the strip of mirror opposite—and found himself looking straight into Molly’s eyes.

“Good Lord!” he said involuntarily, returning her small polite smile. No swift lighting up of her face on this occasion.

“What’s the matter?” Anne asked as he pushed back his chair.

“Oh, she’s a friend of my sister’s,” he muttered hurriedly. “Didn’t know she was back in town.”

He turned to greet her; and something in her answering smile checked the natural impulse to hold out his hand.

“You’re back again?” he lightly reproached her, “and you never let us know.”

“I’m not quite back again. Some cousins going through to India” (they were moving down the room) “begged me to come up and say good-bye. So Mother spared me for two nights. I’m returning to-morrow. Did Tony not mention it? He’s hoping to drive me down.”

“Tony? Well!” He stood confounded.

“Yes. Very nice of him, isn’t it? But it’s not quite settled. He’s going to ring me up.” She seemed as entirely at ease as he felt flustered. The lift of her head, that so became her, more pronounced than usual; a distracting half smile in her eyes, as she glanced significantly at Anne—looking years and years less than her age in the subdued light.

“Don’t let me keep you. Our show begins at eight. I must fly. Good night.”

He could only echo “Good night.” Not a word about seeing her again. It would sound perfunctory; and a man must be genuine with Molly, or hold his peace. That demon Tony—going it for all he was worth. Whose two-seater did he contemplate pinching for his young Lochinvar stunt?

He turned away from her, feeling ignominiously wrenched out of gear; irritated with himself and Molly and the whole maddening situation.

“What a charming girl!” Anne remarked as he sat down.

“Yes. Miss Mansergh. We’ve known her some time. One of the very best.”

It was all he felt able to say; and she seemed to understand. If she would not discuss her blighter with him, neither could he discuss Molly with her; a turn of the screw too painful for self-infliction.

But it was not, he found, so simple a matter to prevent Molly from intruding on the domain of Anne. At intervals throughout the evening, when he fancied himself intent on the play, her face would slip unbidden into his mind; her clear eyes when they encountered his in the mirror; her smile, so frank and friendly, yet not the true smile of the Molly he used to know; the after-chill of their brief encounter, taking the glow out of these few coveted hours with Anne. Damn it all—it was not to be harassed in this manner that he had paid a long price for a box, in which they two could be themselves to themselves all the evening.

And she—Anne—sat there, half turned from him, absorbed in the play, serenely unaware. Distracted to the point of vexation, he felt almost angry with her for luring him—in all innocence—away from his normal allegiance; caught himself almost wishing he had never found those letters of hers. Then he might have gone peacefully on with the Life, and his incipient courtship of Molly into the bargain. Come to think of it, she had a good deal to answer for . . .

Suddenly she turned to him, her illumined eyes full of laughter at some point he had clean missed—and the magic was on him again. Vexation evaporated. The Clive, who was Henry, would sooner be here beside her than anywhere else on earth.

*  *  *

It was after twelve when he let himself into the hall, and turned on the light with a sense of dropping to earth after untrammelled flights in the upper air; content with life again; that troublesome sense of dislocation charmed away.

Sounds of music from the drawing-room told him that Tony and Stella were in full swing, making the most of their chances, while “the cat” was away. He didn’t feel the least like going up to join them; but it would be a friendly act to look in on old McNeil. He had said something at lunch about a long evening’s work; and Clive found himself peculiarly inclined to think and talk of his father when he had been a good deal with Anne. So it was more than consideration for McNeil that sent him straight to the library door.

Darkness greeted him, and a strong smell of tobacco. The light revealed whisky and a syphon on the table near the big armchair, where Onyx lay coiled in his own superb tail, sound asleep. On the writing-table, McNeil had left a volume of Hansard lying open and his papers all anyhow, as if he had gone out for five minutes, meaning to return; but the untended fire vetoed that probability. It looked as if he had gone off to bed rather hurriedly, without even closing his book or tidying his papers—he who was the soul of neatness and precision.

Clive—staring at that obviously deserted table—pondered involuntarily what—who?—had driven McNeil away? The question sent an uncomfortable shiver down his spine; a shiver that was not fear. And yet—?

Switching off the light, he retreated into the hall a shade too briskly for his own self-respect.

On the drawing-room landing, he was confronted by Tony, who had just closed the door behind him.

“Thought I heard you come in,” he said cheerfully.

But Clive, reminded of Molly, said in quite another tone, “Well? What’s up? I’m not coming in to dance, if that’s your stunt.”

“Rather not! We’re just breaking up. I only want to ask if you’ll be a sport and let me have the two-seater to-morrow—or the other one? I’d be frightfully grateful.”

“Would you now!” It was annoying to detect the forced note in his own voice. “Where are you heading for in my car—eh?”

Tony’s touch of awkwardness was vexatiously disarming.

“Well . . . I want to drive Molly back to Canford Cliffs. She’s been up this week-end.”

“So I’ve just been informed. Met her at the Ritz with some cousins on the bust. She mentioned your bright idea. And I wondered whose car you were pinching for the occasion.”

“It would be awfully decent of you to let us have it,” Tony stuck firmly to essentials. “And you can dun me for the petrol. The weather’s ripping. She doesn’t often get the chance of a long drive. And she loves them.”

That “us” spurred Clive almost, to ask outright, “Does she also love her charioteer?” Instead he answered brusquely, “Of course you can have the car, petrol and all, and be damned to you.”

He turned in speaking, to mount the stairs; but Tony could not leave it at that.

“I say, Clive—not if it riles you.”

“’Course not. You’re very welcome—both of you.”

Clive flung the assurance over his shoulder and went on upstairs, his content with life considerably dashed by the presumption of that young villain, Tony, coolly demanding his car for purposes of proposing or love-making, whichever stage they happened to have arrived at by now. Their engagement, he supposed, would be the next item of family news: and he positively hated the idea.

Slipping quickly into bed, he lay there wide awake, his mind perversely haunted by that on which it had least desire to dwell.

The memory of Molly’s face, of Molly’s carefully modulated manner, hurt him inexpressibly. To some part of him her sanity and sweetness fundamentally belonged. Yet it was he himself who had dished his own chances; a form of consolation warranted not to console. And conviction that hope was extinct waked a spirit of recklessness that refused to recognise a hidden danger in seeing too much of Anne. One might agree with Meredith that “the sex is not the sex antidote,” but that did not apply to Astra, who held him by the golden thread of music, by her link with his father, and by the mystery of that inner impulsion which was not altogether his own.

He would see her to-morrow and Monday. He would drive down there during the week-end. Though Molly’s image remained steadfast within him, he would do his best not to be aware of all that . . .

And as the veil of sleep descended, there slipped into his mind a vision of the deserted library, a dim, disturbing wonder— How about old McNeil?

Chapter Twenty-Six

I have tempted no magical happenings,
By forsaking the clear noons of thought
For the wizardries, that the credulous take
To be golden roads to revelation . . .
And yet—I was afraid.
— John Drinkwater

Jarvis McNeil, as it happened, was also lying awake in the next room, very much exercised in his mind by an even more disturbing wonder—on his own account. Certain unaccustomed sensations, down there in the library, had made him feel so ill-at-ease that he had abruptly deserted his work, and gone off to spend a sociable hour or so at his Club—splashing three shillings on a taxi, though he was a careful man, and his easy means had been pared down to a close fit since the War.

At the Club he had done no more than exchange passing remarks with one old habitué and another; but he had sat there, enjoying his pipe and his papers, feeling sociable and comfortable in the draught-proof atmosphere he loved.

Returning to Queen’s Gate, a little before midnight, he had decided that it was too late for any chance of that casual beggar Clive dropping in. Absorbed in his own amusements, he didn’t often trouble; or perhaps he simply forgot. A nice boy, all the same. His top-layer of brains and sense, with an under-layer of good feeling, pleasantly recalled the Henry of his own early days. He would have enjoyed half an hour’s talk; but he was not going to sit up on the chance—in that room!

So he had gone straight upstairs, casually avoiding the library; though already he was feeling half ashamed of all the fanciful nonsense and the goose-flesh feeling that had played old Harry with his evening’s work. A touch of indigestion, as likely as not. He shouldn’t have been tempted by that cheese savoury on the top of a good dinner. But Henry’s first-rate cook demoralised a fellow of simple habits like himself. If a man over sixty wanted to sit up and work half the night, he must treat his digestion with respect: no fancy savouries or dessert; black coffee, for the finishing touch, with a dash of Henry’s sixty-year-old brandy, soft as milk. To-morrow he would make a definite beginning on an outline scheme, very helpfully suggested by Clive. Must have something on paper for the Old Lady to squint at when she returned from Bath . . .

*  *  *

At dinner, next evening, he stoically cut out the savoury and a creamy-looking sweet dish; confining himself to nuts and light port and the black coffee with the dash of old brandy.

He found himself wondering whether the boy could be persuaded to part with a bottle or two, at a reasonable price, while he sat at the big desk table, fondly supposing that his mind was intent on the pages that were passing under his eye. Curious, the way one’s thoughts would go slipping off on some journey of their own, when one had fancied them nailed securely to the matter in hand.

Dead stuff, these reams of notes, when you came to look through them. No easy business to tighten them up and pan them out in chapters, as Clive had suggested, knowing the ropes better than himself. It was an admission he would not so readily have made two weeks ago, when he had settled down, in a sober, methodical spirit, to carry out his fixed idea of all that a public man’s biography should be. No glorifying, no sentimentalising, or forcing the personal note, which Henry could never abide.

So far, he had mainly been occupied in amassing, with conscientious unselective zeal, a formidable array of facts and family details, minutes of meetings and public speeches, a rough treatise on Arden’s Imperial policy, his big emigration scheme and his distinguished war work; dates and titles of the few notable books he had published; and so on, ad infinitum. The individual man seemed in danger of being buried alive under the solid record of all he had said and done in his public, rather than his human, capacity.

Old Lady Arden would expect something rather more vital; lighter characteristic touches here and there; the sort of thing young Clive could probably sprinkle in, as easy as winking. But he had no idea of confessing his private dilemma. Having let himself in for this difficult job, he must run it in his own way—the way of a solidly intelligent, if not highly cultured, retired business man. He would make a good thing of it, once he got into his stride; but it jerked him out of his comfortable grooves of life and thought, as he had not been jerked since his dear wife’s death fifteen years ago.

Since then, he had fallen into a clock-work, homely round of life. The fashionable mania for the South of France had never afflicted his sturdy British soul. Scotland and salmon fishing were good enough for him. He had sold out of McNeil’s and Poynter’s at fifty-five, the better to keep up his country pursuits and his hobby of rose-growing—the main function of the modest estate he had cannily purchased, on a falling market, in the favourite Buckinghamshire region—”Metro-land” they called it on these modern talkative railway posters. Downright insulting to a man’s intelligence—their chatterbox method of advertising. It was just as bad in the papers. Slabs of childish jargon hitting you in the eye. Henry couldn’t abide it either. That was a personal touch one might bring out: his disbelief in the garrulous form of publicity as applied to the British make of mind.

Confound it! There was his own mind off again on a side track, miles away from the main issue!

Under his hand there lay a vast, blank foolscap sheet headed Chapter One; and beside it a neatly written skeleton record of the Arden family and its achievements, dating back to the Restoration. He could have sworn he had been reading it all attentively. By what devious route had his mind wandered round to posters and modern advertising? At home, working at his monograph, or occasional articles for the Field, he could concentrate, with trivial lapses, as well as any man ten years his junior. Yet here, in this comfortable room, full of pleasant memories, he felt hindered and vexatiously haunted by the hampering thought that Henry did not wish him—or any one—to do anything of this kind.

To-night, when he had definitely determined to start on that precious outline, the feeling of inner hindrance was on him again worse than ever, though the back of his mind was filled with Henry to the point of obsession: not the distinguished dead man, but the close friend of forty years’ standing, whose counsel had never failed him, who had come to seem a part of the natural order of things, till the depth of his own sober attachment had been revealed by the shock of sudden loss. The necessary prelude of soaking in his letters and private jottings had revived painful feelings and quickened old memories. Perhaps that accounted for all this unpleasantness.

There it was again—that goose-flesh feeling, like a stealthy draught (though He had fastened the window himself) and a soft scratching sound behind him . . .

“That cat!”

The flash of annoyance came as a positive relief. He jerked his swivel seat round to find Onyx on his hind legs clawing at the big armchair, purring like a kettle, spoiling that good leather with his claws. Time to put him outside again. Yet he himself felt absurdly reluctant to get up and remove the creature from Henry’s chair.

He compromised by leaning forward with an ingratiating movement of his thumb and finger. “Puss, Puss. Good Pussy!” he coaxed where he would have simply commanded a dog. And where a dog would have ruefully obeyed, the cat regarded him with blank indifference; still purring, moving to and fro near the leg of the chair—

What craziness had overtaken him? Something uncanny about cats—

And of course the moment he had left off coaxing the creature, it sauntered towards the table bearing its tail like a banner. For reward, it was seized, not ungently, and thrust through a gingerly opened window on to damp ice-cold leads. A skilful attempt to slip in again was thwarted by McNeil’s boot, as he firmly pressed down the big window, and stood there—remorseful yet relieved—staring at a dusky patch of sky thickly sown with stars.

A world of suns— A world of worlds—?

It unsteadied a man’s brain to dwell on such things. It stirred the disconcerting thought, “Where is Henry now? Is there any vital element in a man that can survive disintegration of the visible human envelope?”

Profoundly troubled, he turned away, and passed back through the curtains into the warm brightness of the room.

All the years of his life—though less often during the last two decades—he had devoutly murmured on Sundays the familiar, yet tremendous, phrases of the Apostles’ Creed. Nevertheless when his wife died, when his oldest friend died, had any one asked him to stand and deliver his honest belief he would have begged to be excused. To cherish a private faith, however dim, may be a simple and comforting state of affairs. To make an attempt at stating it, in plain terms, is to risk finding neither simplicity nor comfort in it any more. And Jarvis McNeil, being frankly a comfort-loving man, refused to fuddle his brain with insoluble mysteries. He preferred to cherish his private dim belief in an undefined heaven for departed souls. The theory of wholesale extinction did not square with his sturdier belief in a Beneficent First Cause. So presumably the Essence of all that had been Henry—call it his spirit—must still be alive, somewhere, in some form.

That it could possibly be present, in this room—unseen, yet intimately near—no comfort-loving man would care to believe. Yet that was the feeling—undefined, unconfessed—that had come over him, when he saw Onyx clawing at the leather chair, the feeling that hindered him now from sitting down in that chair, though he would rather do so than return to the writing-table, and the large blank sheet that seemed to jeer at him because he could not even make a rough beginning.

Some sort of start must be made, however, if only in view of Clive’s friendly interest: and sitting down again, he explored his formidable pile of notes, in a curiously disgruntled mood. They seemed heavily over-loaded with trivial external details, the personal note too successfully repressed. He could imagine Henry’s caustic comments on it all.

“Cut out my ancestors. Cut out my birthplace. Start with me . . .”

What was that—?

The goose-flesh feeling again, and Henry’s voice, as clear as though his old friend stood at his elbow, spurning those sheets of unselective detail.

“Scrap all that padding. I don’t need stuffing with sawdust. If you must make an exhibition of me, exhibit me as I was—faults and all; a human being, not a public institution. But you ought to know how I hate the whole thing . . .”

McNeil sat chilled and rigid; his nerves vibrating, as if he had touched an electric wire.

What next—?

Blank silence—and a tingling sensation on the top of his head. Small wonder! The voice in his own brain (it could be nothing else) had actually seemed to be sounding in his ears. And if a man started hearing voices, he might be on the road to lunacy!

Cautiously, he looked over his shoulder . . .

Nothing there, of course, but the empty room and the flickering firelight—and an uncanny feeling as if some one had just quietly closed the door.

Staring at it reproachfully, as though it had conspired to make a fool of him, he saw the handle turned without a sound, the door itself pushed open—

His mouth went dry, his pen slipped from his fingers and rolled off the table.

A pause—that seemed an eternity—set pulses throbbing in unexpected places.

Then, as the door began to move again, he heard his own voice say hoarsely: “Good God! Henry—?”

“What’s that? Did you speak?”

Henry’s voice, unmistakably. But the intruder, who followed it, was Clive.

With a nervous jerk, McNeil recovered himself.

“Oh, well— I—naturally wondered who it was . . . coming in like that, at this hour.”

Clive flung him a quick look.

“Sorry if I gave you a turn. I was looking back into the hall. Thought I heard Onyx somewhere about.” He glanced at the hearthrug. “Not in here?”

“No. Not in here. I put him out a little while ago. A man can’t concentrate, with a cat sniffing round.”

“No: but there’s a cold rain. Poor beastie. I’ll take him along when I go up.” And he closed the door in the same deliberate manner as McNeil could have sworn it had been closed, by his father, a few seconds earlier.

“I’ve been to a rotten show. Staggers one sometimes what London will swallow,” Clive went on, picking up McNeil’s fountain pen and laying it beside the blotter. “I cut the last half; and thought I’d look in here, as you asked me to. See if you’d earned a lawful pause for refreshment!”

“Lawful or no, I’d be extremely glad of it.”

“Whisky? Right you are.”

The older man’s sigh of relief at that good familiar word came from the depths of his normal being: and he thought, as Clive went out, “The boy must have heard my fool exclamation. Carried it off very neatly; but what the deuce can he think of me?”

Before Clive reappeared, he had seen the only possible line to take: a touch of liver, too little exercise. He would treat himself to a few days in the country.

Peacefully smoking and drinking, Clive very soon gave him the opening he sought. His eye wandered expectantly to the fatal blank sheet on the writing-table, headed Chapter One.

“You’ve not been slogging away at that rough skeleton to-night?” he asked with polite interest. “Kind of stuck feeling, eh? I know. It’s rotten.”

“It is that,” McNeil agreed gratefully, his own sensations having been of quite another order. “The fact is, my dear boy, I’ve not been up to the scratch these last few days. Town life doesn’t suit me as it did; and these east winds have touched up my liver. Think I’ll take three days off at home. A few rounds of golf would work wonders.”

It was sustaining to find that Clive thoroughly agreed with him.

“You won’t do any good if you’re feeling stale,” he said. “But I regret to report that the Old Lady seems to be progressing better than you are! She hopes they’ll let her come home before the end of next week; and expects to find things spinning along at last.”

“That’s damned awkward. Thought she was safely tied there till Christmas, or after,” McNeil muttered, dashed by so inopportune a piece of news. “I’m afraid it won’t seem to her that I’ve done anything. But you can’t run up a big biography like a ready-made suit. I’ve slaved like a Trojan over that mass of notes. And half of them’ll have to be scrapped, I shouldn’t wonder. See here, Clive—” a happy inspiration smote him—“if you could find time to run through them, blue pencil ’em freely, you’d be doing me—and your Father—a real service. I haven’t the selective touch.”

A week ago he could not have pictured himself making that direct appeal to the boy; but now, shaken by the prospect of Lady Arden’s immediate return, he felt positively grateful when Clive agreed, without a flicker of surprise, to do the best he could in that line. He further volunteered to block out a rough sequence of the early chapters for McNeil’s consideration. He was very modest over it all, very knowledgeable, very much—in fact—his father’s son. And Jarvis McNeil had no higher tribute at his command.

*  *  *

Relieved—yet not altogether reassured—he left London, on Wednesday morning, draped in a thin yellow fog; and on Wednesday afternoon he pursued a lively golf ball round the familiar links with his familiar enemy. Returning home, pleasantly tired, he almost found it in his heart to wonder whether Clive could not be persuaded to carry on, in spite of that well-founded conviction. It could scarcely be more hampering than his own horrid sense of obstruction that seemed to come from without, rather than within. That was the deuce of it. Pure hallucination of course. Such vagaries would never be permitted by a Beneficent First Cause. There it was though—whatever it was: and he began reluctantly to see an intrinsic difference between discrediting unearthly tales related by others and denying the validity of personal experiences—irrational or no. Ruefully he also began to recognise the limit set to a make of brain that had always moved more or less along lines of least resistance.

Back in his comfortable corner, he quailed at the prospect of tackling that stiff job for months on end—it might be a year or more—with old Lady Arden standing over him, whip in hand. And before his three days were up, he had done a good deal more than wonder about Clive.

He would have another try at it, on Saturday afternoon and evening. Then, if things went no better, he would tell the boy frankly about his queer sensations—and chance the result; even if it involved standing up to old Lady Arden, which would be the very devil.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

There is more than knowledge, there is more than truth; there is life. — T. Bowhay

There are times when the normal pace of life seems suddenly to quicken, as if in obedience to ghostly rappings from the baton of some Unseen Conductor; times when the inner self feels and acts at quite another tempo than the arbitrary common time of hours and days. So it was with Clive, from the night of his conviction that Molly’s engagement to Tony was virtually an accomplished fact, and his own reckless resolve to heed no fanciful danger signals in respect of Anne.

And now—since one ferment begets another—here he was confronted with the Old Lady’s imminent return and the obvious fact that something must have shaken up old McNeil. For he had distinctly heard that astonishing exclamation, when he paused to listen for Onyx; had seen, with mingled dismay and fellow feeling, a faint gleam of moisture on McNeil’s forehead. All that barrage about his health and his liver, had seemed like a prelude to some sort of confidence. And it had only been a prelude to retreat. If, by any wild chance, he really contemplated backing out, there would indeed be the devil and all to pay. He didn’t envy McNeil standing up to the Old Lady in the rôle of Delinquent Number Three!

Meantime, he would do his best to sift the unwieldy mass of notes, and map out a skeleton sequence of chapters and contents. No wonder it made the poor old chap feel “lost—stolen—or strayed”! It wasn’t his line of country at all. Very plucky of him taking it on. But then, he clearly hadn’t realised—

That business, however, must wait till Thursday.

On Wednesday he was booked for Hindhead. He spent most of the day at “Blue Hills” with the Anne he had seemed to lose, for a disconcerting moment, in Town; playing with her, walking and talking with her, in deep content. He further invited himself to run down again on Sunday—she being vexatiously engaged on Saturday. Some one was coming for the afternoon; and he dared not ask if it happened to be the blighter, who had the presumption to live at Churt.

Sunday was good enough, however; and he had succeeded in persuading her—if the clear weather held—to let him take her for a whole day’s outing on Monday, to the New Forest and back. She had seemed a shade reluctant over it—an unusual symptom that puzzled him; for she loved long drives and trees in “their figures”; and she very specially loved the New Forest. But in the end, he had gained his point; inwardly exultant, outwardly contained.

Later on, however—speeding back to Town through the keen, misty air—a stealthy fear invaded him as to how much longer he would be able to go on like this, without being resistlessly impelled (such was the feel of it) to let That Other have his will; though for himself it would spell disaster. Having lost the substance, that was Molly, he would stand to lose also the lovely unseizable shadow, that was Anne. In his present mood, the fear angered rather than daunted him. It wrought him to a painful feeling of antagonism against his father, which the strong sense of identity translated into a mysterious inner conflict—himself against himself. In the teeth of it he would go straight ahead, keep a firm hand on the reins, and not let the hidden sense duality prey upon his mind. That way madness lay: and of all secret fears there is none deadlier than the remotest threat to a man’s sanity.

Thursday and Friday he devoted to burying himself alive under a pile of dry bones, and digging himself out again, for the benefit of old McNeil, who returned on Saturday morning with the heartening effects of golf and gardening written all over him. Grateful exceedingly for the spade work done in his absence, he put in a couple of hours’ work that afternoon; and, dinner over, he returned to the library for a solid evening’s work. It began to look as if his jumps and his compunctions really had been nothing more serious than a touch of liver after all. Just as well; since the Old Lady had now fixed her return for Tuesday or Wednesday.

And that, said Clive, was that!

Next morning, at breakfast, however, he clearly perceived it was nothing of the kind.

McNeil spoke little, and disappeared behind his paper with a worried air. When he discovered that Tony had gone out of Town and Stella—who had been dancing late—was taking her ease upstairs, he abandoned the paper, and said bluntly:

“I’m sorry to bother you, Clive. I think you spoke of going off somewhere this morning?”

“Yes, I’m going out of Town,” Clive answered with decision. Neither McNeil nor ghosts, nor irate Old Ladies should hinder him from going to Hindhead.

“Well, I’d be glad if you’d spare me half an hour in the library. The truth is . . . I can’t carry on with your father’s Life, to please Lady Arden—or any one. I haven’t the necessary qualifications. And anyhow, after last night—well, it’s my firm belief that she ought not to go on with this affair, clean against the will of her own dead son.”

And Clive—remembering Alix—exclaimed, “My dear sir, who’s going to tell her that?”

McNeil stood up, automatically folding and re-folding his paper.

“Well, it’s got to be done. And I want to talk it all over with you. We’ll be undisturbed in the library—eh?”

“Absolutely. I needn’t start till eleven.”

Following McNeil into that room of sober aspect and mysterious intimations, he thought: “It’s coming now. All three of us! What is one to make of that? Perhaps I’d better tell him everything. We’ll see.”

After five minutes of reluctant straight speaking from McNeil, he saw—too clearly for common human comfort. Here was matter more serious than poor old Alison’s incoherences and italics. Yet it strangely confirmed them—this repeated impression of an unseen irresistible Something, hardly less potent, in its ghostly persistence, than the Old Lady herself.

“I came back yesterday convinced the whole thing was due to indigestion or liver,” McNeil shook his head reproachfully at the bowl of his pipe. “And yesterday afternoon, going through your excellent stuff, things seemed fairly normal. But after dinner, when I tried to make a start, it—whatever it may be—came over me again . . . a sort of stealthy breeze from nowhere in particular. You can’t describe a thing like that. And my brain wouldn’t move . . . I . . . Henry . . .” He stopped to clear his throat and muttered resentfully, “I hate having to talk like this. You’ll be thinking I’ve got a tile loose.”

And Clive—hating it no less—saw that his own turn had come.

“My dear sir, if it’s a case of tiles loose—I’m in the same dilemma. So’s Alison Owen—”

“What?”

The mingled alarm and relief compressed into that single word moved Clive to a carefully contained smile.

“Fact,” he said gravely, wishing to heaven that he need not say any more. For he also resented having to tell fairy tales in broad daylight—even thin, foggy London daylight—trying to find some credible basis for their three-fold affliction. But since it must be done, he followed up Alison’s hectic story with a sober testimony to his own clear sense of presence on that unforgettable night of October. Not a word of Anne—unless needs must.

And McNeil sat frowning hard at the fire, his lower lip thrust out, forgetting even to take a pull at his pipe.

“What, in God’s name,” he said at last, with heavy deliberation, “is one to make of all that?”

And Clive answered simply, “I wish I could tell you. All I know is, that I wouldn’t act against it—him, after this, for any bribe going. And Alison, in her own way, felt much the same, without knowing of my experience. When it comes to all three of us . . .?”

“Exactly. But how about Lady Arden? This kind of thing I take it—as a just impediment—will carry no weight with her?”

“Rather not. Poor old Alix tried it on, with disastrous results.”

“It does seem strange,” McNeil seemed to be following his own line of thought, “that Henry should feel so strongly against it. Men don’t as a rule. If we had only come upon some solid, earthly reason . . . I had rather counted on that.”

And Clive saw there was nothing for it, but to speak the truth. After all, this man was his father’s oldest friend. He had actually known Anne.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, looking straight before him, “I did come upon a reason—the reason I should imagine—”

He paused.

It was hideously difficult.

To his surprise, and immense relief, McNeil asked gently, “A woman?”

“Yes. A woman. But not . . . not the usual thing.”

He couldn’t bear that McNeil should think it, even of an imaginary Anne; and he could feel the older man’s eyes fixed on his face.

“You know a good deal about it—eh? And you wanted to keep it dark? Very natural. It’s the last sort of thing his Mother would dream of. But I happen to know—with all due respect to your Mother, Clive—that your father married where he should, rather than where he would. There was a brief engagement.”

Clive nodded. “That was it.”

“What? Miss Verity?” McNeil’s awakened face and the tone of his voice made Clive feel a dawning affection for the “dear old buffer.” “I thought he was hard hit at the time. But he told me nothing, except that it was ‘off.’ She was a charming creature.”

“She’s all that still.”

McNeil’s eyebrows twitched; and Clive realised he must step warily.

“You know her yourself? She must be near fifty.”

“Yes. I know her—rather well. She looks nearer forty.” Clive’s tone was carefully contained. “As a matter of fact, she’s a distinguished composer. Writes under another name.”

“Ah—! Henry and his music. And I never put two and two together. Well, well! How little a man knows even of his oldest friend! May I ask how you came upon all this?”

And Clive—foreseeing that question—did his inadequate best to explain. He hated saying more than he must about Anne; yet he found he had to say a good deal; and McNeil’s manner of listening drew him on to say more than he had thought possible. It brought them round again to the Old Lady, who was rather like the Looking Glass house. Whatever path you started on, you were sure to find yourself, presently, walking in again at the same door!

“Of course anything of that kind,” McNeil remarked reflectively, “might make her pause and consider, if she could bring herself to credit a whole tract of Henry’s life about which she knew nothing. But Miss Verity—it wouldn’t do at all.”

“No. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“My dear boy, of course not,” McNeil agreed soothingly. “Very good of you to tell me. It explains—a lot. But the question remains—how the deuce am I going to wriggle out of it, Clive? If I boldly insist that the whole thing ought to be shelved, are you prepared to back me up?”

Clive made a wry face. “I’d do my best. Seems hard lines though—the minute she gets home.”

“Yes. But she’ll be full of it—wanting to know.” Again he sighed heavily. “I suppose we must build up the best case we can out of all this—damned if I know what to call it. As you say, when it comes to the three of us . . . and the knowledge that your Father’s will is at the back of it. What do you make of it yourself, Clive? You’re an intelligent young man. You’ve had time to take a cooler view, turn it over in your mind.”

“I’ve done plenty of that, without getting much forrarder. Of course a good deal depends on how far— you believe in personal survival?”

He paused for enlightenment.

“Oh, well, I suppose the wish is father to the belief. One more or less takes it for granted,” McNeil muttered awkwardly. To his British sense of decency, this was even worse than telling fairy tales at ten in the morning.

“One does,” Clive agreed, with greater coolness, though with hardly less reluctance. “It’s simpler than trying to think out a mystery that’s beyond the reach of thought. I have done a trifle of loose thinking all the same, since Alison’s sensations confirmed my own. I’m afraid it doesn’t amount to much.”

He paused—hating it; but the older man’s look of interested expectancy was irresistible.

“Well—for argument’s sake, suppose the personal—even the individual—spirit does carry on, in some etherealised form, one might reasonably infer that it would not become detached all at once from the loves and concerns of this life. I came across a rather disturbing book on those lines the other day, that gave me to think. I’m not susceptible to that kind of jargon. And instinctively one hangs on to the safeguard of scepticism. But in these days—with the Incredible becoming the Actual at every turn—it seems simply unintelligent to sneer at possibilities, or to say flatly of anything, ‘It can’t be.’ Seems more reasonable, on the face of it, to believe our life here is a phase, than to believe it’s all we’re ever to experience. That’s about as far as I’ve got along a very foggy road. It doesn’t account for our queer dilemma;—but well . . . suppose the dear old Dad isn’t snuffed out? Suppose he still exists, in some rarefied form, and he’s trying to make each of us understand he doesn’t want this wretched Life written at all; won’t have it, in fact. It seems a damn shame to dismiss him as a shiftless ghost, because our highly unreliable senses can only function within certain limits.”

He let out his breath in amazement at his own unaccustomed flow of words; and McNeil sat gazing at him, lost in attentive wonder.

“There’s a good bit of sense in that; but I doubt we’ll be able to make her see it.”

“We might have a shot at it,” Clive mused hopefully. He almost believed himself capable, for the moment, of making any one see anything; so dazzled he had felt—while saying all that—by a luminous certainty that his father was alive, was impelling him, in some way, to speak as he could never normally have spoken, on so serious a theme, to any one but Anne. “We’ve got to rub it in that we all know my Father was dead against a written Life; that we’ve each in turn been unmistakably held up by a will that is greater than our own—greater than her own if it comes to that. The less definite we are about it all, the better chance we have of making her feel thoroughly uncomfortable, frightening her off it in fact. It’s a chance in a hundred; but it’s all we can do.”

Glancing at the clock, he remembered Anne.

“Gracious! I must be off.” He stood up and squarely regarded this new McNeil, with whom he had become so oddly intimate of a sudden. “’Fraid I’ve been jawing rather, without getting things much forrarder.”

And McNeil, rising also, laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You’ve talked some sound sense, Clive, and you’ve given me the wee bit stiffening I wanted. Suppose, now, that I follow up your frontal attack with a flank movement suggesting that you edit a volume of letters with biographical notes, we really might pull it through.”

“We’ve got to pull it through,” Clive stated simply, in the very tone and manner of his father. “We stand for his will—against hers. Not the first time they have been in conflict I should imagine.”

“They didn’t quarrel much though,” murmured McNeil. “She’s a damn clever woman. Never knows when she’s beaten either.”

“Well, she’ll be home on Wednesday. Then—we’ll see. I shan’t be back till Tuesday myself. So long.”

And suddenly, in McNeil’s eyes, he caught a flicker of curiosity.

“Where are you off to, young ’un, in such a particular hurry?”

“Hindhead—to see a friend,” Clive lied, truthfully enough: and not desiring any more of that, he took himself off.

Speeding out of veiled London into unveiled Surrey, a silvery sun peering through ragged fleeces, he found himself reviewing all the unusual things they had said—he and the man he had hardly known till to-day; and he also found himself half regretting the need of that truthful lie. The old chap would have been interested—perhaps a shade too interested. That was the trouble with one’s fellow beings. Open a chink of your private door—and you were done.

It might be a remnant of animal instinct—the way of a dog with his bone—that natural impulse to hide a cherished possession from prying eyes. It might spring from the simple fact of being an Englishman, for whom the thing hidden has an absolute value—especially if it concerns the emotions or the finer sensibilities. There remained the fact, that to Clive it mattered immensely—perhaps ridiculously—that not a soul in his own world suspected his surrender to the touch of an infinitely powerful magic, pervasive enough to alter every value of his being. The very fact that (because of his grandmother) he could not, if he would, draw Anne into his ordinary round of life, undeniably enhanced the charm, while it quickened the strange secret sense of seeming to be his father over again—the dangerous thrill of feeling his normal mind blown from its holdings.

And there was charm, spiced with danger, in the very fact of being so curiously insulated, they two, in a world of their own, as if a magical bell-net had been dropped over them.

What would—or could—come out of it, heaven only knew! He rather relished that shiver of uncertainty, that spice of danger: for the essential Clive preferred incipient peril to a tame security, preferred the divinely disturbing thrill of beauty to mere comfort.

A stirring sense of these Anne gave him, with that hidden intensity of hers—as of passion not extinguished, but transcended—that gave depth and power to her art, depth and permanence to the love she had inspired in a man so essentially masculine as his own father.

For himself, in his present reckless mood, he felt excited rather than alarmed by that intermittent sensation as if the reins were slipping out of his hands.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lonny. This life is a mysterious game; and we play only half our game ourselves.
Melloney.—But surely we live our own lives?
Lonny. I’m not so sure.
— John Masefield

From Monday morning onward, Clive’s fanciful conceit of a quickened tempo was sensibly increased, as though the Unseen Conductor were hurrying him toward some inevitable climax—would he or no.

Under a misted blue sky, through a fairy region of white frost, he drove from the Beacon Hotel to the familiar gate in a glow of happy expectation.

And there Anne stood awaiting him—she, the unpunctual!—in the long squirrel coat (the raised collar framing her face) and the soft hat, with its iridescent feather, that took years off her age; the spirit of youth in her clear eyes blinding his to the tell-tale lines scored by the stress of life, of deep emotions deeply felt.

While he settled her into the car, tucking his fur rug closely round her, he had a sharpened sense of pure happiness, looking neither before nor after; taking toll from the immediate moment of the best it can give.

It was a little past ten; a silvery sun slowly gaining power, the air unbelievably still, the face of the moor transfigured; branching ling, gorse clumps and bracken fronds still shaggy with that miracle of frozen mist called white frost. Delicate drooping birch boughs hung motionless like plumes of blown spray, bewitched as they fell. And all the lowlands were shrouded in pale mist, making their hill-top appear an isolated world afloat in space; other isolated worlds seen dimly here and there.

“If one could only put the feel of all this into music,” Anne said suddenly, as they spun along the road to Petersfield, villas and desirable residences trailing behind them. “Something so light and delicate that it could only be rendered by a fairy violin!”

“Perhaps you will—afterwards.”

She smiled indulgently at his extravagance; but for Clive, in that exalted moment, one marvel seemed no greater than another. Contact with her produced an effect of high tide in him, a quickening of his whole being: so that he could now understand very well how she had become a vital need to his father—emotionalities apart: a kind of secret orchard. And he himself, thrice privileged, already had the best of her hidden riches—her thoughts, her dreams, her music, warmed and coloured by her genuine affection. Nothing could spoil these except himself—or That Other, who, being man, would probably not rest until he had spoilt them.

Meanwhile, she sat beside him absorbing it all; her eyes shining, her spirit withdrawn, so that he longed to recall her, with a touch, to the actuality of his presence—but did not dare. It was good enough to be virtually in possession of her for a clear twelve hours, to be spinning along through a transfigured Surrey into a radiant Hampshire—the mist thinning to smoke films, the fairy traceries of white frost slowly dissolving, as the sun triumphed.

After leagues of russet bracken and heather, came the clean lines of the noble down country above Winchester, the dip into the grey old town, with its God-be-got House, its leisured atmosphere of College and Cathedral—and, at last, the confines of the New Forest.

“Slower now, please,” she said. “I like to saunter through this kind of loveliness.”

So they “sauntered” through the spacious and varied scene, the sun striking warmly between bare branches that wove intricate patterns on the blue; ancient oaks, all elbows, their immense boughs defying gravitation; the sculptured grace and majesty of beeches, revealed in fulness of beauty, creating where they congregate an effect of sanctuary—as in a cathedral.

Anne, who had been quieter than usual since they entered the Forest, said suddenly, “Clive, let’s walk a little here before driving on for lunch. I want to carry home a few bare beech boughs, with those bunches of obstinately clinging leaves. You know the Roumanian Ballad?

“‘And all the winter these poor leaves remember
That they must have the pain
Of falling when sweet spring is in the sky’

The ones I carry home will be spared that pain! Come!”

So they walked on sun-dappled beech-mast and moss, and could scarce believe it was December; Christmas little more than a week away. In a very hidden corner of his mind, Clive was aware that the charm of it all, the isolation, had a lurking element of danger; that she herself seemed, in some way, more apart, more inclined to impersonal themes, as if she felt it in the air.

Felt—what? A passing sensation that vibrated through him—and was gone.

“Did you often come here with the Dad?” he asked abruptly; and she looked at him in faint surprise.

“Yes, in all seasons. He loved it. What made you ask?”

“I don’t know,” he answered with perfect truth. “The feel of him seemed to come over me just now. And I wondered.”

“I was thinking of him,” she said under her breath.

He made no comment on her simple statement. But the mention of his father reminded him that he had said nothing yet about McNeil; and she might be able to contribute valuable suggestions.

“Oh, I never told you,” he began, when he had secured her coveted boughs. “Old McNeil is up against it now. Nothing will induce him to carry on. And the Old Lady will be home Tuesday or Wednesday morning, expecting results. It amounts to a first-class crisis.”

She listened with suspended breath, her eyes on his face.

“I thought it would come. I’ve been wondering . . . Tell me, please.”

And he told her, unreservedly, all he knew of McNeil’s discomfiture, of his own desperate plan for trying to coerce the most headstrong woman alive.

“Frankly, I funk it,” he admitted to her, as he would not do to McNeil. “She’s not the frozen obstinate kind. She has a temper and a tongue. Less selfishly, I funk it for her. She’s a marvel of vitality and vigour, but she’s old. She’s got this Life fastened like a barnacle on her brain; and the odd thing is, she’s taken a sort of fancy to me lately—”

“Very odd!” Anne surveyed him with her smile of amused affection.

“Yes it is,” he insisted, smiling back at her. “You’d see it—if you knew the Old Lady. And if I stand up to her, in flat opposition, I feel it may hit her hard. But what else can I do? I’m honestly beginning to feel he is somehow imposing his will on us all. And it’s as if, in this matter, I stand for him. It’s his will against hers. And if I take that line with her, I may pull it off. I can’t think of anything else that would have the remotest effect.”

Anne did not answer at once. They were passing under a noble group of beeches. She was looking up, as though absorbed in the loveliness of their cleanly moulded limbs.

Suddenly she halted, confronting him.

“Clive—I hardly like suggesting it, but . . . would it be any use if she were told the truth about us . . . about me—?”

“The truth?” He stood before her utterly confounded, utterly loving her, balanced between the equal danger of silence and speech. “Anne! You angelic . . . you amazing woman! Who the devil is going to tell her that? Not I.”

“My dear, of course not. It would have to come—from me.”

“You—?” He gazed at her, taking in slowly the courage of it, the devotion, the utter impossibility. And she looked back at him, cool and composed, as if she had suggested paying an afternoon call on the woman who had been largely responsible for the tragedy of her life.

“I could write,” she said, to relieve the tension of his silence. “Quite briefly and plainly I could state the facts. It would show her why he wanted no Life. And you say she’s known that all along. Only . . . I’m afraid it would be a great shock—to her.”

“Of course it would. But I’m thinking of you.”

“Oh, I should hate it; but on the chance of helping to enforce Henry’s wish, I would . . . I could—”

“Well, I neither would nor could let you put yourself in such an intolerable position. D’you suppose, for a moment, she’d believe—the truth?” (In a flash he saw the awful, impossible motives she would ascribe to that noble act of courage.) “You don’t know her, Anne. There’s nothing she isn’t capable of thinking—or saying—once her temper’s up. You don’t realise the sort of things—”

“I assure you, my dear, I do realise. If I don’t know her. I know her type.”

“Well, anyway this is my affair. And I won’t hear of it.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “Naturally, I would far rather make no move. But for Henry’s sake . . . for your sake, I would be willing to do anything.”

“You’ve proved that up to the hilt. But I’m quite certain Dad would hate the idea—as I do. It was like you even to think of it I can only thank you tremendously—in his name and my own. And they happen to be the same!”

He steadied himself with the lighter touch; but irresistibly he flung out his hands. To his immense surprise she gave him the one that was not holding her cherished boughs.

His own hands closed on it tenderly; then more firmly; for her eyes, that looked straight into his, were shining: and, as before, some electric current seemed to pass between them. For sheer emotional intensity, he had known nothing like it.

“Anne!” he said, with a just perceptible pull.

And in a moment her hand was gone from him. She was saying in her normal voice: “Dearest boy, don’t make too much of my natural impulse to help. It’s all so difficult for you. But I believe you are right. I believe . . . he would hate it. Your own idea is best.—Now, it’s time we raided that hotel. I want my lunch! And we must start in good time. It will be colder driving home.”

Lightly and deftly, though she dropped him back to earth, he resented the jar of it, after her fine gesture and that electrical moment. Her lunch, indeed! Was she imposing safeguards on him? The bare possibility that she might think it necessary almost angered him—

At the Crown Hotel they were regaled with solid Sunday fare—soup and sirloin and mince pies; followed by coffee and cigarettes in a lounge pleasantly empty of “guests.” Clive, having pulled himself together, talked easily and naturally: and soon after their early lunch they were on the road again.

It was distinctly colder driving back, gauzy films of cloud veiling the sun, a nip of returning frost in the air. But some quality of pure exhilaration had gone out of the day; gone out of himself; and it affected his spirits as the thin film over the sun affected the landscape. That lurking sense of danger, felt in the Forest, was present with him still; and even to suspect that he might be capable of sudden undesigned words or acts was disturbing, not to say distasteful, to his British traditions of self-control.

The sun was setting as they sped through Grayshott, and on towards the Royal Huts’ Hotel. On the long level road, almost empty of traffic, a big saloon car dashed past them at a reckless rate.

“Ought to be had up for dangerous driving,” Clive remarked. “And he was over the line—”

“Look! What’s that?” Anne exclaimed, not heeding him.

“That” was an unmistakable mass of shadow by the road side, a little way ahead.

“Some one’s crashed,” he answered briefly, putting on speed.

Any sort of motor accident upset him painfully, since his father’s death.

The shadow resolved itself into a damaged side car; the tall figure of a man, erect one moment, then stooping over something . . . someone?

Clive had pulled up and was out of his seat.

“Any serious damage? Can I help?” he asked politely concerned.

The stooping figure straightened itself with a startled, “Good God! You here!”

It was Tony. And the dark form at the road’s edge—?

Something turned over in him, as he thrust the Youngster aside, and knelt down by the unnatural semblance of Molly in her long pony coat, her soft hat pushed back, blood on her forehead, her face white and still.

Be slipped an arm under her shoulders, and wiped away the blood—feeling, in that flash of time, transported to some dark, chill roadside in France. To his practised eye, the cut seemed neither deep nor dangerous; but her aspect of death so shook his heart that anger flared in him.

“Damn you, Tony! You’re the limit!” he broke out. But Tony—entirely concerned with his own sensations—cut him short.

“I say—is it serious?” he asked. And his shaken voice moved Clive to answer in another tone, “I don’t think so. But you’re not to be trusted with a girl. Dashing her around in a rotten side car.”

“It wasn’t the car. And it wasn’t my fault. That blighter was exceeding speed. I had to swerve—”

“You might have killed her between you.” His own voice sounded queer. “I want brandy and disinfectant—Oh, Lord!”

For there, beside Tony, stood Anne—of all staggering conjunctions.

“It’s my brother—Miss Verity,” he perfunctorily introduced them. “Molly’s unconscious. Cut her head. Not serious, I think.”

She came closer to see for herself: and with Anne leaning over one shoulder, while Molly’s dear damaged head lay limply against the other, the clash of sensation in him was the strangest thing he had ever known. But his personal feelings were of no account. He was only concerned to get Molly away, to staunch the wound that was bleeding less freely now.

Anne was saying, “It’s no distance to the cottage. If you can get her into your car, we can stop at the Huts for some brandy.”

“Right—if you don’t mind the dickey.” Clive was his practical self again. “Look sharp, Tony. Open it up. A man from the Huts can help salvage your wreck.”

Tony, sullen but obedient, went over to the car, just as Molly stirred, sighed deeply—and opened her eyes.

Straight at one another they looked for one amazing moment—Molly still half dazed, Clive aware of a stow warmth and tingling as of life creeping back into a numbed limb.

Then he saw that Molly knew him. A smile crept into her eyes.

“Clive!” she breathed; and her face lit up in the old welcoming way.

Instinctively his arm tightened round her; and at the touch of it he felt her stiffen—then slacken. Her lids fell; she was gone again: and he—scarcely crediting that brief contact between the other Molly and the true Clive—was settling her, with Tony’s help, in the seat that belonged exclusively to Anne.

Supporting her with one arm, and managing the wheel single-handed, he drove on again, leaving the favoured Tony to follow, as directed, to “Blue Hills.”

During that brief drive, with Molly’s head leaning against him and Anne perched lonely in the back seat, he suffered a sharp recurrence of the clash that had assailed him on the roadside before Molly opened her eyes—the Molly who would never now be his.

Clearly Tony had won her—and deserved to win her: while he, bewitched by the lovely unseizable shadow, had lost the substance in very deed. But if they were engaged, why the devil wasn’t he informed? Nothing would induce him to ask.

The truth could hardly have been hammered home at a more distracting moment; all his submerged love for Molly quickened by her aspect of death, by the feel of her against his arm, sharply recalling that night when he had danced with her at Mrs. Blake’s, when all had seemed clear between them, and he completely his own man again.

Not the remotest use regretting, at this time of day, the chance he had let slip that evening; and some vital part of him could not regret it if he would. Pride and sanity bade him damp down all that, harden himself to accept the inevitable, and look for solace and inspiration, to Anne. Easily said; not so easily done, with his heart in revolt, and his nerves at strain, and Molly lying like a child in the curve of his arm . . .

Here they were at the Huts; and Anne springing out for the brandy. Molly swallowed some of it, stirred faintly, and with a tired sigh, relapsed against him.

“She’s conscious, I think,” Anne assured him in a low tone. “Just dizzy and shaken.”

“Thank God,” he muttered—and drove swiftly on.

It probably wasn’t serious, but it might have been. That casual beggar Tony couldn’t safely be trusted with anything so precious. If she were fit to stand the long drive to Town, he himself would hire a closed car, and see her safely home—Tony or no. . . .

Between them they helped her out and settled her on the wide cushioned divan. While Anne hurried off to fetch peroxide and order warm milk, Clive carefully removed her hat and his handkerchief that had served for bandage.

The pain and the warmth revived her; and, when Anne appeared with sponge and steaming bowl, she once more opened her eyes.

No radiant recognition in them now; no welcoming smile. She gazed vaguely round the room. (“Looking for Tony,” was Clive’s instant thought.) Seeing Anne, she glanced away, with a faint contraction of her brows.

“What’s this place? Why am I here?” she murmured, with a kind of puzzled resentment. “Where’s Tony?”

“He’s coming along all right,” Clive soothed her. “You crashed. It was a near thing. We picked you up.”

Anne gently set him aside. “I’m going to bathe your head,” she informed Molly. “It will hurt a little, but I must clean it thoroughly; and you mustn’t try to talk!”

Again that faint contraction of her brows, as she closed her eyes. The bathing hurt more than a little; and it hurt Clive nearly as much to see how pluckily she stood it. He did not seem to have noticed so particularly before how beautiful her mouth was in repose.

Hardly able to bear the sight of them together, he retired to hurry Elsa over the warm milk, laced it well with brandy, and held it to Molly’s lips. She swallowed it all; submitted to a skilfully folded bandage; and when Anne asked: “Is that better?” she achieved a smile that was grateful and polite, if nothing more.

But when Anne said, “I don’t think I can let you go home to-night,” she cautiously shook her head.

“You’re very kind. But I needn’t trouble you. I must get home. My Mother will be anxious as it is.”

“Well, we can wire or telephone. Really it would be wiser to stay here; and no trouble at all.”

Anne’s tone, Clive fancied, was a shade more formal.

“I’d rather get home—please,” Molly insisted, gently obdurate. “My Mother’s not strong. She worries easily. And I’m only shaken up. I shall be quite fit for the drive after some tea.”

“Well, if you are fit for it,” Clive struck in, vexed at her unresponsive attitude, “I shall order a closed car and see you home myself. Tony’s too harum-scarum.”

“He’s not harum-scarum.” No mistaking her resentment at that. “I’ll be quite safe with him, thank you. The accident wasn’t any fault of his. If he hadn’t been very much all there—it would have been a smash.”

The door opened, and Elsa announced, “Mr. Arden, madam.”

Tony entered, looking shy, but as pleasing as usual. He shook hands with Anne, whose name Clive did not trouble to repeat; half hoping—in that painful confusion—he might not have heard.

“Awfully good of you. Thanks very much,” he said, not looking at Clive. He had eyes only for Molly, whose answering smile this time was the real thing.

“It’s hurting rather,” she answered his unspoken query, “but I’m not a hospital case!”

“Thank God for that.”

Tony was clearly in no mood for chaff. It was Clive who kept it up, because he began to find the situation excruciating.

“And you’re absolved from all blame—as I daresay you heard when you came in just now!”

“Clive is very kind—” Molly also addressed Tony. “He says he’ll order a closed car for us to go back in luxury.”

Was it fancy, or fact, the faint stress on that “us”? It seemed to him she was taking a mean advantage; and the less civilised part of him wanted to shake her.

“Well played, Clive. That’ll be topping!”

Tony, at least, was genuine. So was Anne.

“You must let me contribute cushions,” she said sweetly. “Jopling knows me. He’ll bring them safe back.”

“Thank you. I would love the cushions,” Molly smiled languidly, but gratefully. “And may Tony have a message put through—just to ease my Mother’s mind?”

Tony was provided with a telephone tablet; and Elsa had orders to put the message through when she had brought in the tea—their fireside tea, to which Clive had so looked forward in the car.

And he sat there thinking, “What a world! No doubt they’re taking stock of her as some elegant charmer who has roped me in. Not a notion that they’re being entertained unawares by a famous composer, who knew and loved the Dad all her life.”

It was a delirious tea; Anne—in her soft hat, her colour brightened by the keen air—dispensing it as simply and naturally as if she had known those two for years. There would be no holding Tony after this.

For himself, it was the most uncomfortable meal he had ever sat through. Though their surface civilities and laughter rippled easily enough, it was obvious that Molly—installed with cushions in his special chair—could only be just polite to Anne, while Anne was being charming to her. As for himself, though she contrived to have an air of being very friendly, it was her far-away kind of friendliness. Clive knew the difference too well for his own comfort.

In the course of their talk, it came out that Friday’s return had been postponed, at Molly’s insistence, owing to the spell of clear frosty weather, which would certainly mean fog in Town. That explained Tony’s prolonged disappearance. Between them they had persuaded Mrs. Mansergh to countenance the side-car adventure. Molly could usually get her own way when she chose to make the effort; and Tony had ridden the side-car down on Thursday in the hope of a joint return. Mrs. Mansergh, with a widowed sister and an indispensable maid, had travelled back by train; and according to plan, the young ones should have been home for tea. But the wonderful white frost effects had tempted them to linger by the way; and Molly was clearly expecting a “warm welcome,” of the wrong order, when she turned up late with a bandaged head and the story of their accident.

The big car, Tony explained, had swung round too sharply out of a branch road, and was on the wrong side of the line. He admitted that he had just not turned on his lights; but it wasn’t dark. The fellow was a “road hog” driving like mad. Molly, meanwhile, insisted that only Tony’s presence of mind, in swerving sharply, had saved them from ignominious extinction. As it was, the car grazed theirs in passing, and overturned it—taking them, so to speak, in its stride!

Anne listened to it all with unaffected interest and concern; but to Clive it was an immense relief when Jopling arrived to take them away.

Though Molly still seemed dizzy and shaken, she would accept no proffered assistance from himself or Tony: clearly desiring to prove that she was fit for her drive. She shook hands warmly with Anne; and her “Thank you very, very much for being so kind to us,” was nearer the true Molly than anything she had said yet

To Clive she did not offer her hand—and he was glad. She smiled at him, merely, with a cautious movement of her head. “Good-night, Clive. We’re so grateful for the car.”

And, at last, the disturbing, wholly undesired interlude was over.

They were gone, those two, leaving an aftermath sufficiently disturbing, of suppressed and thwarted emotion that seemed subtly to quicken the danger he had been aware of all day in respect of Anne. Yet, in his overwrought mood, her peaceful fireside seemed more than ever a sanctuary; and she herself a solace, an inspiration, never more desperately needed than now.

The brief pause that fell between them cloaked a touch of awkwardness alien to their silences. While she poured herself out half a cup of milk, dashed with tea, he remained standing, mechanically lighting another cigarette that he felt no particular desire to smoke.

And, inevitably, her first words were of Molly.

“I shall feel anxious to hear how that girl gets home, and if she’s none the worse. I couldn’t ask her to let me know. So I must rely on you.”

“Oh, yes. I’ll let you know. I expect she’ll be all right in a day or two.”

“I hope so. Such an attractive girl,” Anne mused, sipping her favourite “last drop”; unaware, it seemed, of the constraint in his voice. “A lot of character there. I admired her that night at the Ritz. But I admired her more this afternoon—all round.”

And Clive, not wishing to talk of Molly, could only say with an effort: “Yes, she has no end of grit. But I thought . . . you were so good to her—she might have been a shade more gracious.”

“Oh, well!” Her smile implied some sort of feminine understanding. Then—puzzled by his lack of response—she looked up at him.

“Clive,” she said, in quite another tone, “something else struck me that night. And now, seeing her again, I feel emboldened to ask—isn’t there any chance of her becoming . . . the next Lady Arden?”

Clive, nonplussed, could only look at her, hard and long; feeling stupidly shaken, almost angry, at being hurled into so critical a moment—utterly unprepared. The state of affairs between those two was obvious. Surely she might have seen . . .? Never in his life had he felt so ignominiously afraid to speak—so uncertain of what he might say in his clumsy masculine effort to explain.

“Doesn’t look much like it—does it?” he said, sitting down rather abruptly. “Two months ago, there might have been a chance. I hope so anyway. But now . . . Tony’s made the running. And I . . . Anne!”

He heard the changed note in his own voice, saw the startled light in her eyes; and hurried on—anxious to reassure her, yet forced to speak the truth, as he saw it, felt it, at that moment.

“How can there be a next Lady Arden—even if she were available—while I’m simply bewitched . . . crazed with wanting to see you, to be near you and . . .”

The fatal word was almost on his lips—but he still had enough control of affairs to check it in time.

He saw her recoil instinctively; saw the rush of colour to her cheeks as she hid her face in her hands.

“Oh, not that!” Her low voice had a mingled note of pleading and command.

“No. Not that.”

It was the true Clive speaking now—denying to himself, as much as to her, the sudden gust of emotion outside his immediate control.

Could he obey his natural impulse, he would be on his knees beside her, asking forgiveness for the word unspoken, yet implied; but, in that whirling moment, the other Clive did not dare to lessen the space between them.

Flinging his unwanted cigarette into the fire, he leaned forward, trying stumblingly to explain that which he himself could barely understand.

“Anne, for God’s sake, don’t think I’m mad enough . . . !” Checked along that line, he began again: “I don’t want to behave like this. I never meant to. But when you asked outright, I couldn’t lie to you. And now—I positively don’t know how to make things clear without hurting you again . . . or disgracing myself. I can only repeat—it’s not that. Damned if I know what it is: but to-day it won’t let me alone. Does that sound—quite crazy?”

She uncovered her face at last; all the lovely look of youth gone from it; and the change caught at his heart.

“It sounds—rather crazy,” she said; and the sadness of her smile pulled him together.

“Don’t look at me like that. And don’t shrink from me, Anne. It’s no fault of yours, or of mine either . . . I hope.” He was on his knees beside her now; not daring to touch her; his hands grasping the arm of her low chair. “Am I being quite unspeakable? Are you hating me?”

“My dear—how could I?”

Taking his head lightly between her hands, she looked deep into his eyes, finding the real man there; all the mother in her yearning over his distraction and his pain.

“You are the dearest thing left on earth to me, Clive. With all that remains here of my heart . . . I love you. Don’t ever doubt that.”

He could find no words in which to answer that profoundly moving assurance. And she, letting her hands fall into her lap, went on: “I was startled and unsteadied for the moment, because I have noticed . . . I have been half afraid—though it seemed a raving impossibility. That sort of thing is almost a fatality with me. But now . . . I’m thankful you recognise it’s not that. At least . . . it’s not you,” she added almost under her breath. “I feel as if it’s some sort of—of obsession . . . invasion—”

“Anne! How horrible!” He spoke in the same low tone, as if they were discussing a third person, present, yet unseen.

“No! It needn’t be horrible. It’s . . . in spite of you.”

“Yes. And yet—it partly is me.”

Her smile approved his honesty. “It’s complicated—naturally, with a good deal that is very genuine, and very dear to me. Now—if you’ll sit in your chair again, we’ll try to talk reason.”

Looking steadfastly into her eyes, he felt vaguely disturbed again, wanting neither his own chair, nor reason; but, for all her gentleness, she had command of him utterly.

“We must be quite frank about all this, Clive, if it isn’t to spoil everything for us—and for others.” And dismissing for the moment her own secret conviction, she led him along more normal lines to the same conclusion. “From the first, you must admit, this affair has been strangely swift and headlong. Even when you were prejudiced, when you believed the worst, you still felt driven to seek me out—?”

“Yes—driven,” he said in a low tone. “That’s precisely how I felt.”

“Though you were actually, I gather, in love with that dear girl—or near enough, to be thinking of marriage?”

“Yes. And rather shirking . . . all it involved.” He could not lie about it, but he would not admit more than he must. “You see. I got completely swamped in the Life.”

“That’s my point. You were soaking in your Father’s letters and papers, unconsciously drawing to the surface everything in yourself that was most like him. And there’s a great deal of it, Clive. (Henry also shirked marriage!) You had even read some of my letters. And after all that—you found me. There was—I felt it—an immediate something between us; some kind of inner recognition. I held back—for reasons of my own. You would not have it . . . being Henry’s son! And then—that Sunday evening, which nearly upset everything, seemed to intensify our relation. Perhaps it might have been better—?”

“No—no!”

He would not have that at any price; neither, it seemed, would she.

“You’re right. I wasn’t meant to lose you so. I don’t think I am meant . . . to lose you now, if sanity can save us. All that was Henry in you—how naturally!—could not choose but love me. Nor could I choose but love . . . all that in you. Yet—how could one suppose . . .? And I needed you so desperately. I saw you as a living legacy from him. I felt I could come to love you almost as if you were my very own— It means a great deal, Clive, for a woman to feel that. Remember, I am just old enough to have been . . . your mother.”

“Oh, Lord,” he pleaded, “don’t rub it in.”

“Dear, it needs rubbing in. Face that! See me as that. It’s your best chance. Even so it’s quite clear to me that I must go away, for a time—”

“You mustn’t. You won’t!” He flung out between pain and anger. His resistance was almost automatic, an impulse of revolt, which his saner self knew to be unreasoning, indefensible—and unavailing.

“I must—and I will. You can’t prevent me.”

Her tone was as gentle as his had been vehement: yet she was immovable—and he knew it.

“Listen,” she went on, checking his move with a lifted hand. “I must leave you free to regain command of things. We recognise all this as something outside yourself. But it might become a real danger. In a sense, it is so already. It’s a case for discretion rather than valour. ‘No mortal creature ought to be so presumptuous as to stand the encounter.’ Do you know your Cervantes? And as you can’t run away, I must—for your sake.”

“No,” he protested again, more quietly.

“Yes,” she insisted, with her smile. “Don’t be unreasonable! It’s not like you. And once you are clear of your complications with Lady Arden, I want you to damp down all this intensified interest in your Father. Keep clear even of music for the present.”

His dumb protest at that went to her heart.

“Yes, I know I’m asking a good deal of you; but I can’t bear to feel responsible for any sort of damage to you. Take up your young normal interests again. Pull yourself together, for my sake . . . and hers.”

“Hers—?” he echoed, a jarring bitterness in his tone. “We can leave her out of it. She obviously is out of it. You don’t know all there is behind. It’s my belief she’s engaged to Tony—or as near as damn it.”

“Well—if she is, she ought not to be. She is not in love with him. But you’ll find all that out for yourself, when you really give your mind to it—and your heart.”

Something in her look, her tone, unsteadied him again.

“Anne—you lovely thing! You mustn’t leave me,” was his shattering answer to all that.

“My dear Boy! After what I’ve said?”

If her voice had a touch of exasperation, her eyes were loving him, for an obstinacy no woman could seriously resent.

“Oh, well,”—he gazed at her, swiftly penitent. “It seems a shame—on my account. If I mustn’t see you, I’ll keep away. I’ll do any mortal thing you want, sooner than turn you out of your home.”

She sat there, with lips compressed; not trusting herself to speak. The strain of opposing him, while desperately needing him, had been sharper than she could have believed. Her profounder knowledge told her he would never succeed in keeping away while she remained within reach; but if he insisted on making the effort, who was she to strike at his faith in himself?

So in the end he prevailed on her not to go away—not at present; and he, in Cervantes’ fine phrase, would not be “so presumptuous as to stand the encounter.” By way of proof, he accepted her decree that he should return to Town instead of staying at the Beacon, as arranged. And he came creditably even through the wrench of parting—by virtue, perhaps, of being sheerly unable to believe that it might be months before they met again.

Standing on the hearth-rug, holding her two hands in his own, he said, in a carefully contained voice, “Anne, I’m doing this—because you insist. Promise you won’t go away.”

She tried to smile at that. “Not at present. But I’m a free woman, Clive. I can’t promise anything.”

“You mustn’t go—you mustn’t,” he insisted, bitterly aware that he was powerless either to command or to persuade. “Anyhow—it’s not good-bye.”

“No, it’s not good-bye.” Her voice was steady, her eyes suspiciously bright. “‘Partir, c’est mourir un peu.’ But I’m certain you will be able to come back—some time.”

Certain of nothing at the moment, but his own pain—and hers—he could only kiss her hands, straighten himself and stumble blindly out of the room.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Great Love survives the night and climbs the stars,
And lives the Immortal Hour.
— Fiona McLeod

Anne left alone again—more utterly alone than she had ever felt since that delightful Sunday of Clive’s first coming—sank into the chair that had been his (that had been Henry’s) letting her tears rain, unheeded and unchecked. Schooled in the natural rhythm of grief, she knew the healing value of this merciful reaction from the strain of resisting Clive for his own good.

It had all seemed so natural, so delightful—the renewed companionship, the bond of music; and, in her heart, shy secret stirrings—as it were a belated motherhood of the spirit. And now—!

No escape from her fatality. Even in this strange fashion it pursued her. She had said to Clive: “It is not you!” And so she firmly believed. But there was an element of danger in it, none the less, for him and for their whole relation. So—unless he could free himself from all that and fall naturally in love again with his Molly, she must lose him also.

How long—? she wondered; her forward-looking imagination, tormenting her with a foretaste of loneliness unbearable. But the last she knew for a figure of speech—the natural human trick of exaggeration. Life could be almost unbearable—never quite. In the blackest depths there lurked a few hidden grains of happiness; or one would cease to be. As before, so now, she would right herself—Clive or no Clive—and carry on.

To him—in that most difficult moment—she had spoken her true thought, if not her whole thought; and all she had said might account for much, as regards himself. It scarcely accounted for the effect on her of certain notes in his voice; the response that thrilled through her, at times, under the touch of his hand—as if Henry’s inextinguishable love were, in some sort, mysteriously reaching her through the medium and the likeness of his son.

“There is something in all this more than mortal”—the familiar phrase came to her mind charged with a new significance; recalling that Sunday evening on the moor, when she had seen only the wonder, not the danger, of that mysterious intrusion either for herself or Clive. Instinctively she had refused to dwell upon it, having schooled herself, long since, against vague emotional indulgence, that healed no wounds, and merely slackened the fibre of one’s being. Now, bereft, she drew it out into the light for cooler inspection. The attempt at clear thinking might dry her foolish tears.

Inevitably, during those first dark months of bereavement, she had read hungrily and thought deeply on the theme of all others nearest her heart; a theme more frankly discussed since the Great War had left millions of men and women in a like case. She knew far more than even her closest friends would have supposed about problems of personality, the laws of vibration and atmospheric magnetism. She had been intrigued, if not convinced, by the fruits of that curious faculty, automatic writing, with its dangers, its futilities, its flashes of the unexplained and unexplainable: and lately, Doris Lane had roused her interest in the more convincing and immediate phenomena of direct, independent spirit voices. So far, however, she had not succumbed to any temptations of the kind.

“Sorrowing, not without hope.” She had her own deep and secret sources of solace; her exquisite, if rare, intimations of Henry’s presence, more especially when playing or composing. And if Henry still lived, he still loved: for him, as for her, the words were virtually one. And it would be so like him, she mused, with a quaint flicker of humour—so like her dear, actual, human Henry—to be trying to reach her in this fashion, even at a possible risk for Clive.

Again, as before, she strove to put it from her; honestly admitting the possible significance of Clive’s vital likeness to his father—not in mere feature, but in the eyes, the voice, the very atmosphere of personality—and the swift, mutual attraction between them. The wonder of it all—in any case—had been inexpressible, unforgettable. But, at Clive’s expense, she would not have it any more: and without her implicit assent, it clearly could not be.

In these few weeks of swiftly ripened intimacy, she had come to love Henry’s boy for his own sake: and, if she banished him now for a time, he might return and be as a son to her; only so could he remove, in part, the ache of loneliness from her life.

With that dim hope for a pillow, she slept sound—the deep, absolute sleep of nervous exhaustion.

*  *  *

She woke late—to no radiance of white frost, but to grey, clinging mists, a frequent infliction on these heights that she loved. And this morning, for once, she welcomed them. A repetition of yesterday would have been intolerable.

She glanced at her bedside clock. Nearly nine. Wicked of Elsa! She never could be induced to “call” one, except under compulsion. Dumbly devoted—awed by the marvel of a mistress who could “bring music out of her head”—the dear good woman insisted that, when she was “taken that way,” she must be allowed to “have her sleep out,” at no matter what inconvenience to others! Fortunately Anne was an early waker, not often taken that way; so she submitted to a form of tyranny that Henry himself had stoutly approved.

She even submitted to the inviting breakfast tray that presently appeared, to the implicit reproach disguised as concern, “I expect you done too much yesterday. Running half over England. Them young gentlemen don’t always consider.”

“Oh, yes, they do!” Anne smiled indulgently at Clive’s detractor. “It did me a world of good.”

“That’s as may be!” Elsa’s private opinion remained unshaken. “It’ll do you a lot more good, in my thinking, if you’ll take things easy to-day.”

There seemed, alas, no other way to take them. No Clive, no lovely melodies beginning to haunt her brain, no letters of interest, no music lessons—for the Christmas holidays had begun.

As the fog oppressed her without, so the general emptiness oppressed her within; and the near prospect of her first desolate Christmas—no word or gift from Henry—reduced her to the dreary expedient of running up some new curtains that had been lying by for weeks, awaiting the virtuous impulse that so rarely visited her.

And while the wheel of her machine spun round, she could not for long keep her thoughts away from Clive. She had jarred him purposely with the word obsession, to pull him up at an over-emotional moment; and it had taken effect. Yet invasion was, perhaps, the truer word: the invasion of a personality as strong, it seemed, in death as in life. For that very reason, in spite of what they had settled—she believed him almost capable of turning up again, breaking his compulsory agreement, just to make sure that she was not breaking hers! Seeing that he had not actually promised to refrain, and she had refused to bind herself, she could picture too vividly his distress of mind. He ought not to come. Honestly, she hoped he would not come. And yet—how the mere sight of him would gladden her heart! She had not fully known how dear he had become to her till she had felt driven to banish him thus for his own good, for his all-important chance of marriage. Naturally she missed him . . . and she missed something else as well. . . .

As the first small curtain was released and laid aside, a sudden conviction smote her that she could not go on like this, day after day, that she must get away at any price from the workless weeks of the Christmas holidays. Up in Town, Doris had been pressing her to think of Switzerland—some not too congested spot. She had been thinking of it, hoping that Clive might join them for a fortnight. And now—there could be no Clive; yet go she must and would.

A creature of swift decisions, she went straight to the telephone, secured Doris, reasonably soon, and begged her to make any arrangements she pleased without delay.

“In fact,” she boldly added, “I’d be glad to get away at once. It’s misty-moisty here, to a degree, and my inner barometer stands at ‘Change’! Can I make a lightning descent upon you without both maids giving notice?”

Doris was enchanted. She was one of the few admirable women who never ask to know more than they are told. Perhaps that was partly why, for twenty years, she had remained Anne’s closest friend.

“Can you come along to-morrow?” was all she asked. “Though we don’t go abroad for Christmas, we’ll give you of our best at home.”

Anne—too profoundly grateful for superlatives—believed she could manage to-morrow. She would ring up again in the morning.

As for Elsa, she looked aghast at this curious fashion of “taking things easy”—first hemming curtains, then dragging out boxes and making elaborate lists that were invariably lost!

“Dearie, dear, this is very sudden,” she protested, not venturing to ask why; and addressed herself to packing with a will.

No sign of Clive by lunch time, which set Anne’s mind more at ease on that score. But shortly after three o’clock—while she was collecting a few books and treasures from the drawing-room—she came to a dead stop near the mantelpiece, her breath suspended, as if it were Henry himself.

Clive—of course! Then he was in the room, crushing her hands in his, the pain and strain on his young face sharply contracting her heart.

So standing, they seemed to drink from one another some invigorating draught—as if they had been weeks apart, and the fact of being together again sufficed. And for her that strange blending of past and present was the most profoundly moving sensation she had ever known. Then he caught sight of her collected treasures—and understood.

“Anne. You’re going—? You didn’t mean to tell me. And you said you would stay.”

“Yes. But I didn’t bind myself. I knew—it might not be possible.”

If his tone sounded hard and hers cool, it was purely a protective instinct.

“Doris Lane has been wanting me to go abroad for the holidays,” she went on, trying not to hurt him more than she must. “And this morning I decided that I had better go; that it might be less difficult, for us both, if I were not within easy reach.”

Her sad smile brought the prick of tears to his eyes.

“But you love this place. And you hate hotels. It’s a shame—upsetting you like this. So I really came to tell you—I shall go off somewhere myself, once I’m through with this crisis—”

“But, Clive, you can’t go. That’s the whole point. Have you seen her—and him?”

“No. I’ve seen no one. I haven’t been home.”

“My dear Boy! What have you been doing?”

“Oh, I’d a bed at the Club. But I was knocking round half the night. And this morning—a pea soup fog, fit to choke you. I had to get out of it.” He could only look at her. “You know how I feel . . . sort of driven,” he said low and fiercely.

“Yes. I know . . . we both know,” she softly assured him. “That’s why I felt afraid, if I remained here. . . . But once I’m gone, you’ll get back your normal balance. You’re such a sane person, Clive.”

“I don’t feel within miles of it at present—which is my only excuse for behaving like this, when you’ve been so angelically good to me.”

She waved aside all that. “One isn’t good to those one loves— Now, if you can sit down and be reasonable for half an hour, I’ll give you an early cup of tea before driving you away again. Where did you lunch?”

“Guildford. The mist was as bad as fog coming up the hill. I thought I should never get here.” He glanced again resentfully at her pile of books and small treasures. “When d’you go?”

“Probably to-morrow.”

“Where?”

“Clive, you’re impossible! I shall not tell you.”

He let out a sigh of exasperation. “Oh, damn! Of course not.”

And she, turning away, rang the bell for tea.

Unobtrusively, she allowed their half hour to slip into an hour; dreading the inevitable moment almost as much for herself as for him . . .

At last she stood up and they faced one another, realising that this was an end of their strange and beautiful adventure.

“You ought not to have come,” she said, “but—I can’t pretend I’m sorry. You must go now, my dear. Delaying only makes things harder. And remember—it’s not for always.”

“No. Not for always—”

He came a step nearer, and before she had guessed his intent, his two hands closed firmly on her upper arms near the shoulder.

“Anne—I am going,” he said in a repressed voice. “And I won’t rest till I’ve put all this strangeness—this wonder, behind me . . . if that’s humanly possible. But just now—something came over me . . . Anne!” His face seemed transfigured— “Anything might happen. In mercy, let me kiss you—this once.”

If he scarcely knew himself in that bold request—in that overwhelming impulse, there was no resisting—she knew, in every quivering nerve. The deep note in his voice, the demand in his eyes swept her back to Antibes—and farther back still . . .

Fearful, uplifted—but not yet overcome—she held her own against the onrush of vanished years, the rising tide of emotion.

“Clive—it would only make things harder for you.” To steady herself she laid stress on his name.

“It wouldn’t,” he lied stoutly. “I would go—content. I promise. Anne, for God’s sake— If you wouldn’t hate it—”

“Hate it—?”

The strangeness of that question shivered all through her. For it was Henry’s voice that pleaded, Henry’s hands that held her, precisely as they had held her there by the balustrade, in the Mediterranean moonlight. Now, as then, some sane wise part of her, not quite submerged, knew she ought to withstand him. But the very sensations of that unforgotten, unforgettable hour were surging back into her heart, into her veins—

To shut her eyes, to lose herself for one enraptured moment, in the dear illusion of having Henry back again— Henry, in his virile ardent manhood—!

Shaken, yet strangely exalted, she looked deep into his beseeching eyes—and closed her own. . . .

It was upon her—the miracle. Youth resurgent caught her up on strong wings into an ecstasy of oblivion. It was Henry who held her, whose lips claimed hers: one long kiss merging into another, and they two adrift in space, east of the sun, west of the moon. . . .

Then, through the blur of overwhelming sensation, his voice deep and urgent, his lips close to her hair: “Beloved, after that—?”

And her own voice, shaken yet clear . . . “Henry—darling, I could never . . .”

Sharply, for an instant, his arms were tightened. Then—the slackening of their hold seemed to drain all strength from her, all illusion of youth and ecstasy. . . .

And she found herself—unaware of the transition—lying limply in the big chair, Clive kneeling beside her. Yes, it was Clive now; and she no longer twenty-four, but forty-nine.

He was begging her forgiveness in broken words of endearment—forgiveness for that miracle of youth recaptured at a price?

Reluctantly she opened her eyes.

“Did I faint?” she asked, still dizzy and shaken.

“Yes, for a few seconds. I was terrified. I had no right—forgive me.”

“Dear, it was my fault,” she murmured, “I ought not to have let you. Never again.”

“No. Never again—that way. But you seemed—and he . . . It was a madness that came upon me. I’ll tell you afterwards,” he said, desperately shy of his own emotional stress: and bowing his head, he pressed his forehead against the arm of her chair.

Steadied and comforted by the feel of her fingers on his hair, he could not yet admit his own irresistible response to her amazing surrender, promptly extinguished by her words that told him it was his father, to whom she clung with such utterly unexpected fervour; that his instinctive attempt to renew her youth, had so startlingly revived it as to sweep him clean out of the picture.

“Dear—is it easier to go now?” she asked at last.

Then he raised his head; and they smiled at one another with new depths of understanding.

“Easier—and harder,” he answered truthfully. “I can’t bear leaving you all upset.”

“I’m not upset, Clive. It was only”—she caught her breath recalling her brief, timeless ecstasy—“only for a moment. If it’s well with you, it’s utterly well with me.”

She closed her eyes again; troubled still by the fact that it was not Henry who knelt there—but Clive. Then she felt his lips on her hand, assuring her it was well with him; and the deep human love with which she loved him came surging back to her heart, comforting her with the knowledge that she was sure of him now, for always.

Opening her eyes again, and looking into his, she saw that it was so, that they were one in understanding—the supreme need of the artist.

“It won’t hurt any more, ever,” was all she said.

“No. It’s got beyond all that.” And no answer could more completely have satisfied her. “It’s as if something— Some one—had suddenly let go of me.”

“Yes—yes.” (Amazingly she understood.) “I knew. And—I was afraid for you, Clive. But I’m not afraid any more. We were meant to find one another, to belong to one another. For myself I ask nothing better; so long as it’s quite safe—for you. But I could never have it—that way.”

And Clive, bending down, pressed his forehead on the back of her hand.

“You shall have it any mortal way you want it—Anne.”

This time it was her lips that touched his hair.

For a little while they were silent, profoundly at peace: then it was Anne who spoke.

“Dearest Boy, you’ve given me what I wanted. When is that noble girl going to get what she wants—and deeply deserves?”

At that, Clive straightened himself and regarded her with a hovering shadow in his eyes. Not so promptly could he swerve towards Molly, and all that thoughts of Molly involved. Here was sanctuary; a brief respite from the buffetings of emotion; a breathing space of true happiness, with no thought of before or after to trouble the exquisite, immediate Now. But not long can before or after be kept at bay.

“As to her,” he said reluctantly, “I’m convinced, as you know, that she has got what she wants—and deserves, though you may think otherwise.”

“Dear Stupid, I know otherwise!” (It was good to see the imp of humour in her eyes again.) “Remember, I was standing by you when she recognised you and spoke your name.”

“Oh, that—” He flushed, remembering his own sensations. “I don’t think she was really quite herself then.”

“And—I think she was more herself, then, than all the rest of the time. In fact—” she paused—“It doesn’t seem fair, giving her away; but just to convince you, Clive—I feel fairly certain she never quite lost consciousness again.”

“You mean . . . in the car . . . lying against my arm . . .?”

“Yes. I mean all that. And I don’t blame her.”

“Good heavens—Molly!”

There was a note in his voice that it gladdened her to hear.

“Oh, I know it’s saying a good deal of a girl like that. And it proves a good deal—doesn’t it? That’s the point.”

Clive said nothing. He was staring hard into the fire—recalling how, once or twice, she had seemed to stir in the car, after the brandy. It troubled his stilled pulses; and set him marvelling at the swift mysterious readjustment of his whole being—as when one awakens from a vividly actual dream. But a man could not speak of that.

“But, Anne,” he said at last, “how d’you explain Tony?”

“Dear man, don’t ask me! Ask her. And ask her soon. And don’t go worrying about your own deserts. Love—if it’s worth anything, is not a question of deserts! ‘Nor alters when it alteration finds,’—if Shakespeare knew anything about it! I’m afraid I shall need more explaining away than—your Tony. The poor dear may be thinking—all kinds of impossible things.”

“And how is one going to convince her?”

“By telling her the truth.”

Her faint stress on that supreme word made Clive turn and look at her wondering—what next?

“You mean . . .?”

“I mean that I give you leave, provided I’m the only difficulty, to tell her the whole story of Henry and me . . . and yourself. If she’s going to be your wife, I should wish her to know. I should wish—to love her. And she can’t imagine any kind of nonsense about a woman who loved your own Father—and loves him still.”

Again Clive sat silent, taking it all in—the generosity and the wisdom and the wonder of it.

“You are . . . the very blessedest woman,” he said at last, under his breath.

She put out a hand and lightly caressed his hair. “We needn’t enlarge on that! To me it only seems the least I can do for you. And Henry would wish it. I know he would.”

“Henry would wish it.” Clive smiled to himself. That was her guiding principle, first and last That it would ever be Molly’s he did not anticipate, even if Anne’s conclusions had hit the mark.

*  *  *

Presently it occurred to them that it might be as well if he reached Town in time for dinner. Not that he’d any intention of dining with Tony and Stella, and possibly the Old Lady—after all this; but that errant resolve he kept to himself.

“You’ve devoured my afternoon,” she reproached him, without severity. “And I still have to finish my packing.”

“Packing? But you needn’t run away now?”

“No. I needn’t.” Her sigh came from the depths. “But I’m not disappointing my dear Doris, because things have gone well with me beyond belief. Also I should prefer . . . this Christmas, not to be alone.”

And Clive, remembering, said impulsively, “If only you could come to us!”

“Never—while she’s alive. But I treasure the invitation. I shall be happier with the Lanes than anywhere; and I shall hope to see something of Sir Clive Arden!”

“Not a doubt of that—wherever you are!”

His lightness matched hers; but under it lurked a hint of fervour that warned her he had better be gone.

And when at last he was gone, she still neglected her little waiting pile of books and treasures.

Sitting in the chair—where she had lain half fainting from Henry’s kiss, she covered her eyes with one hand, and so remained a long while, quiet tears of happiness stealing through her fingers.

She was praying, as she rarely prayed. For to-day had been given her, at last, the dear semblance of a son for which she craved; to-day Henry, her lover, had won nearer to her, in very deed, than ever he had been since their hour of parting. And her heart within her felt glad with the still gladness of a mountain pool that mirrors the sunrise.

Chapter Thirty

Now I have learnt love, as love is.
— John Drinkwater

Clive, back in London, dined alone at his own favourite restaurant, where a certain friendly waiter—who had known him many years—served him with recherché dishes that did not appear in the menu of the day.

He had a sudden great need on him for the normal distractions of the normal young Londoner; and an almost equal need to be free from the distraction, in another sense, of having to make talk. One never “made talk” with Anne. One talked—or one refrained from talking; and in either case all was well. To go and dine at home, to be asked, however harmlessly, what he had been doing with himself these days, or to see a foreshadowing of their imminent crisis in the Old Lady’s eyes, would have been unendurable. Even a congenial friend, talking London, would be one too many. This excellent meal, and snatches of casual conversation, with his friend the waiter, precisely suited his mood.

Dinner ended, part of him felt strongly moved, on the strength of Anne’s conviction, to seek out Molly; to storm the fortress—if might be—then and there; while the fastidious Clive of “Blue Hills,” haunted by the atmosphere of Anne, still shrank with distaste from the too abrupt transition; still felt the need, after his staggering experiences—earthly or otherwise—for an emotional truce. One might do worse than spend the next two hours sitting through a decent play. She had bidden him avoid music for the present—and she was right.

A few minutes at the telephone secured him a stall for a clever comedy, neither lively enough, nor equivocal enough to be besieged by after-dinner London. As an effortless form of distraction, it served him well; though he could not afterwards have passed a test examination on its merits and its theme. Words and faces and gestures flitted across the surface of his brain; but for whole tracts of time the real Clive was otherwhere, living over again the events of the last two days—and the amazing culmination of his desperate dash to “Blue Hills.”

He supposed he would never come to know what secret impulse had moved her to grant his over-bold request. He—the true Clive—had expected refusal, gentle but definite; nor, in any case, would he have dared to claim her lips. But that gust of over-mastering emotion had left no room in him for reasoned thought or resistance. And she had said not a word. She had simply closed her eyes—

All that had taken place in him during those few tremendous moments, that lifted him up and cast him down, he would never fully be able to understand or explain, even to his inmost self. For a miraculous moment he had been swept from his moorings: he had felt, he had known. He would not attempt to fathom the mystery—the complete change, as when one turns a kaleidoscope, and all the little fragments of glass are shaken into a new pattern. For him it should suffice that something within him had incredibly righted itself when her startling words quelled the incipient lover in him—but not the love. That remained—and would remain, a possession for ever. The strain and stress—not inherently his own—had been transmuted to a depth and persistence of far other longings.

As for her, the fervour of that astonishing kiss—a fervour he had scarcely suspected under her surface serenity—had been, as it were, an unconscious self-revealing of her utter absorption in his father, living or dead, of romantic love as the greater novelists and poets conceived it—the love that “climbs the stars and lives the Immortal Hour.” To have so encountered it once, to have looked into the deep heart of it, was a privilege worth any minor pangs he had suffered in the process.

By that moment of yielding, and all that sprang from it, she—Anne—had given him back himself enlarged and enriched with fuller understanding: a self perhaps a shade worthier of Molly than the unawakened, untormented Clive, who had dreamed of marrying her, while half shirking the fulness of giving that a fulness of taking should involve. Now it was otherwise—thanks to Anne. The part of him she had illumined—one might almost say created—would be hers always, without a shadow of disloyalty to that dearest person, whom he had, paradoxically, never more sincerely, more unreservedly desired than now.

And marriage—the “rutted groove” . . .? Yes, marriage itself assumed a more desirable aspect to his regenerate mind and heart; something solid and absolute in a world of flux.

If rambling round the earth tended to disintegrate a good many of one’s old certainties and prejudices, it threw into strong relief the higher value of certain essential fixities—“the removing of those things that are shaken, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.”

“Don’t let it make you into a rolling stone kind of man,” Molly’s words that evening—how long ago?—came vividly back to his mind. “Try calling them roots . . .”

He had said he would think of it. Well—he was thinking of it now, to some purpose. More: he was prepared to act on it if she would but say the word. . . .

Hullo! Thunders of applause; and the curtain descending on a climax he had presumably seen and heard, without any clear idea as to what it was all about. Yet he had certainly not wasted his precious twelve and six. Thanks to the fact that he had come alone and could be as inattentive as he pleased, he had spent a most profitable evening.

Outside he plunged into keen air and a kaleidoscope of moving taxis; a restless jumble of men and women, walled in by immense buildings, blotted darkly upon a sky powdered with stars, like dew of light.

He decided to walk home. He also decided, with true brotherly consideration, to make a raid on the Youngster—if at home, and not too sound asleep—to glean from him how the land lay. Though he himself had seen that look in Molly’s eyes, had heard the note in her voice that told him—a great deal more than he deserved, he wanted concrete assurance; and he might not succeed in seeing her till Thursday, with McNeil and the Old Lady on his hands.

Quickening his pace, he passed from the after-theatre stir of the Haymarket into the quieter region of Whitehall and St. James’s Park, where the spirit of night seemed to hold in solution every answer to every aching question, to hover always on the verge of some dear revealing that can never to mortal senses be revealed. Pure and unpurposeful gleamed the lights above and the lights below. Familiar trees and water, all moon-silvered, had a dream aspect as if withdrawn from man’s blundering comedies and ironic tragedies. Sound, exhausted with the day’s unceasing traffic, had subsided to a blurred booming, like waves on some hidden shore.

To the Londoner, for whom London is life and noise and ceaseless movement, there is an impressive unreality about the great City near the middle hour of night, something of the changed aspect that comes over a human face in sleep. The beauty and aloofness of it all wakened in Clive the poet that lives under the prose in many Englishmen, though most of them will indulge in strange shifts to keep it hid.

To himself Clive could admit—as he turned the latchkey in his own front door—that it had been a magical walk. It had left upon his heart an impress of security as rare as it is welcome in a world fundamentally insecure.

In the familiar hall, with the door fast closed against night and its mysteries, things practical and immediate took command again.

First, a long drink; then the Youngster—if available.

Cautiously opening Tony’s door he found the room fully lighted, a gas fire gently roaring, and Tony himself in blue silk pyjamas, seated on the side of his bed; his fair hair shining like polished metal, his Arden build showing to full advantage in a minimum of civilised covering.

As Clive entered, he was applying a match to his cigarette.

“Hullo! Where’ve you tumbled from?” he greeted the unusual apparition of his brother at midnight in a morning suit.

“From a stall at a rattling good play,” Clive coolly accounted for himself, ignoring the trivial gap of more than twenty-four hours.

But Tony was not in the mood to humour Clive’s tacit ignorings.

“So you didn’t roll back from Hindhead on Monday evening?”

“I did,” Clive answered flatly; adding without further explanation, “sorry I let fly at you over that smash— But you can drop all the rest.”

“Oh, can I? Thanks for the permission.”

Tony looked sulky and reverted to his cigarette.

Clive began lighting one also, chiefly from habit and for something to do. He felt rubbed by Tony’s allusion to “Blue Hills,” and ridiculously shy of coming to the main issue.

“Cheer up, Antonio,” he said, pulling himself together. “You aren’t looking your brightest and best.”

“I’m not feeling it, thanks very much.”

The tone of that admission brought Clive straight to the point.

“See here, Youngster. I didn’t honour you with a call at midnight just to exchange complimentary remarks. I want to know . . . about Molly. I suppose you’ve been there to-day?”

“No—but I rang up.”

“How’s her head?”

“Oh, her head’s getting on all right!” No mistaking the implication; and he added, with an obvious effort, “If you’re so concerned, why not run round and enquire yourself?”

For a second that threw Clive out of step.

“Of course I will. But to tell you the truth, I gathered on Monday—sooner in fact—that everything was pretty well fixed up between you two.”

“Oh, it is,” Tony stated with melancholy emphasis. “She won’t look at me—in that line. Told me so that day, driving down to Canford Cliffs. But I couldn’t knock under to it all at once. And she was game to be friends, so long as I understood there wasn’t a hope in hell—rather more politely put!”

“Poor old Tony!”

The sympathy in Clive’s tone rang so true that Tony gave him a grateful look.

“Oh, I’ll pull through, I suppose. Scores of men have to.”

“Which doesn’t make it any easier,” Clive put in feelingly. He had faced the prospect himself. “And it didn’t strike either of you that you might be giving a wrong impression—to me, for instance?”

“It didn’t occur to either of us that you had an eye out for impressions, the way you’ve been skidding round. And on Monday . . . it was a bit too thick; Molly, so to speak, flung into the lady’s arms—”

“Not my doing. And I told you to drop all that.”

Clive’s decisive tone belied his inner perplexity. To explain Anne, without explaining her, demanded a gift of verbal dexterity that comes to fullest flower only in the diplomatic service. An appeal to Tony’s inherent straightness would be simpler and more congenial to the same strain in himself.

“Look here, Tony man,” he said frankly. “The lady—a distinguished composer—doesn’t happen to be . . . the sort of complication you seem to be taking for granted. We are very great friends. That’s all I intend to say about her at present. And I hope you’ll be decent enough to take my word for it—as I should certainly take yours.”

Tony, nursing a slippered ankle, gazed pensively at a photograph of his mother on the mantelpiece.

“Of course, old thing, if you put it that way, I’d much sooner believe you than not. Are you going to ask Molly to take it so? Are you going to ask her—anything else?”

“If you want it straight, I’m for asking her to marry me as soon as I can persuade her to see me. For the last three weeks, and more, I’ve been supposing that I was out of the picture.”

Which was a shade disingenuous, if strictly true.

“You can’t say that was my fault.” Tony heaved a portentous sigh and dropped his cigarette on to the carpet. “To me—and to her, I fancy—it looked the other way about.” He recovered his cigarette with a lithe movement: “But, of course, if you’ve come to your senses . . . ?”

“That’s one way of putting it! “

“That’s the only way of putting it. Provided you can explain your mysterious lady, you’ll pull it off, all right. And it’s more than you deserve—if you ask me.”

“I don’t need to ask you, or any one,” Clive retorted feelingly. “I thought she was coming to see, right enough—that you are the better man.”

“Bally rot! Don’t talk to me through your hat.”

“I’m not being that kind of ass. And I’m honestly surprised that you seem so cocksure about my chances. Have you any definite reason to think—?”

“I’ve got miles beyond thinking . . . And you’d know why, if you’d been about with her as much as I have lately. Molly’s well found in pride and pluck, but she can’t hide her real feelings one little bit.”

“She’s apparently done it, with fair success, the last few times I’ve seen her.”

“Oh, she can play-act for an occasion, right enough—the way she did on Monday; but I knew—though she didn’t guess it—how broke she was going back in the car. Didn’t dare say a word about the lady, for fear of giving herself away. She’s the most genuine thing God ever made.”

“Oh, she’s all that—and a great deal more.”

The note of repressed fervour made Tony jerk his eyebrows.

“Good old Clive! You seem to have rather suddenly recovered your allegiance!”

“Not at all. It has only been—submerged. That’s the best account I can give of it to you.”

“Hope you’ve something more lucid up your sleeve—for her. Take it from me, if you go straight ahead, you’ll get there. And I’m damn glad my leave’s nearly up.”

“Tony, you’re a brick,” Clive mentioned casually, but with feeling.

“Thanks very much. I feel rather like a cartload of bricks.” He yawned extensively. “Now, perhaps, you’ll allow me to turn in?”

And Clive, admiring the Youngster’s spirit, wished he could venture on something more adequate in the way of sympathy.

At parting he suddenly remembered to ask: “By the way, did the Old Lady arrive this evening in high fettle?”

Tony nodded portentously. “She did. But high dudgeon would be nearer the mark, because you weren’t around to fall on her neck. And old McNeil also was conspicuously absent. Some engagement at his Club.”

“‘Some’ engagement!” Clive winked. “But we must both face the music to-morrow. It’s going to be the devil and all over Dad’s Life. McNeil can’t carry on.”

“That so? Then I bet the ghost is walking. I didn’t half believe your disclaimer.”

“You’re too clever to live, Antonio. That’s what’s the matter with you! There’s no ghost, in the sense you take it. But I don’t believe that Life will ever be written—let the Old Lady do her damnedest.”

Tony yawned again. He was more interested in life, than in lives; and life, at the moment, was playing him a low-down game.

“Poor old Dad! He’s got safe away from all this. Why can’t they let him alone?”

“He probably won’t let them alone till they do,” Clive darkly prophesied. “So long, Tony. You’re standing up to it like a Briton. Better luck next time!”

Passing the bed, he affectionately rumpled Tony’s hair (a trick of schoolroom days), and was cursed, in good set terms, for the attention.

“Let brotherly love continue!” he retorted, neatly dodging a felt shoe, as he slipped through the door—and descended, pensively, to his bedroom on the next landing.

With his hand on the knob, an inspiration came to him. Why not write at once to Molly—tell her the truth, beg her to let him come and see her on Thursday. He felt too uncertain about the immediate crisis and its issue, to suggest Wednesday. Also he must be at hand, if the Old Lady wanted him, after disappointing her last night. His odd, half-reluctant affection for her increased his masculine dread of a scene—more especially, a scene with that stalwart of an older generation, who shrank from nothing, perhaps because there was almost nothing that she intimately or sensitively understood.

But that was to-morrow. To-night, his immediate concern was—Molly.

Downstairs, at the library table, he sat pen in hand—perplexed. Tell her straightly that he loved her . . .? Would she believe it—sprung upon her thus, in the face of Monday’s collision? A proposal by letter, in any case, seemed a bloodless affair; but he could not—would not—wait till Thursday for that concrete assurance, which his heart impatiently desired.

No pause, now, for the writer’s instinctive trick of phrase-making.

“Molly, my Dear,” he wrote simply, as if he were addressing her in person, “I’ve just come down from a midnight confab with Tony, who has at last told me exactly how matters stand between you two. I have been imagining something entirely different—as you may have guessed. And I can’t sleep to-night without sending you a word from me, however inadequate, to say how thankful I am (selfishly speaking) to find I was mistaken. Because I love you, Molly, deeply and truly, though you may find that difficult to believe in the face of my recent behaviour. And I want to come and tell you so in person—provided you are willing to give me the answer I’m longing for. I don’t deserve it—but that’s another story. If you’ll only be angelic enough to let me come, I can make everything clear Monday—and all.

“Do say ‘Yes,’ and give me a fair hearing.

“I’m afraid it can’t be to-morrow (Wednesday), as my Grandmother has come back again unexpectedly, and we’re in the thick of a crisis here over my father’s Life. But any time Thursday—the earlier the better! Do ring me up when you get this, and let me have a word to ease my suspense.

“All my love

“Yours ever (if you will have him?)

“Clive.”

It was the best be could achieve on paper; and poor at that. But what matter—so it served his purpose? It would go by the first post. It ought to reach her before eleven: an age away. Meantime there remained Anne’s intuitions and Tony’s staggering certainties. She had been caring it seemed all the while: and he—?

But not even the pangs of self-reproach could induce him to regret—Anne.

Chapter Thirty-One

Each one has his own Reality to be respected before God, even when it is harmful to one’s very self.
— Pirandello

To Caroline Arden, seated once again in the familiar library, confronted by the big familiar photograph on the writing-table, it seemed an age since she had sat thus on that afternoon of late September when she first spoke to Jarvis of the subject nearest her heart. Now, as then, she wore her black silk gown and point lace cap, but the pendant was reserved for afternoon wear. In its place, on a fine gold chain, hung a locket containing a miniature of Henry, at three years old, and a curl of his hair.

A thick yellow fog converted everything into a melancholy twilight; and she had turned on her small standard lamp in order to read the paper.

But all the while her mind was running on the wretched unaccountable delay in starting Henry’s Life. Christmas in less than a week’s time—and how much progress had been made? Material piled on material—they could not plead any lack of that; her own urgent insistence and interest to stimulate them: yet what was there to show for it all?

No prepared sequence of chapters seemed to be forthcoming; and none of them had written even a few pages of the book. For all her distrust of modern youth, she had pinned her faith on Clive: and he had been the first to fail her. If she had not expected great things of Jarvis, she had counted on his steadiness and loyalty to go through with a task that she would not willingly have entrusted to him, had she not been determined to keep her own fingers on the strings.

And now—neither Jarvis nor Clive at home to welcome her; a form of discourtesy that annoyed her keenly. In Clive’s case, it hurt; though she would not let him know that. Jarvis, she had only seen for half an hour last night. His manner had been almost apologetic. He had nothing, it seemed, for her to read; and that table looked suspiciously tidy, as if no one had worked there for days.

Tired after her journey, she had breakfasted in bed; and Clive had come up to see her. He had been very penitent, very charming. Her world revolved so entirely round herself, that she was apt to forget they had their own affairs, these young men. He had told her they wanted to talk things over with her—he and Jarvis. She had said she would be ready for them in the library at eleven. What could there be to talk over at this time of day? More excuses, no doubt, for these incessant delays: and Jarvis getting Clive to back him up.

It was past eleven now— Ah, there they were!

Jarvis entered first, very friendly and deferential. Twisting the swivel chair, he sat down with heavy deliberation, while she smiled up at Clive, who remained standing near the mantelpiece, with an air of being available, if required.

“Well—now we’re in Committee, what have you got to say for yourself?” she addressed Jarvis, seasoning her dictatorial tone with a touch of lightness, since he looked so obviously uncomfortable. “You’ve not found any serious difficulty, I hope, in getting under way? Such a lot of good spade work done for you already, by Clive.”

“Oh, Clive has been invaluable.” Jarvis looked gratefully up at Henry’s boy. “I’ve had my share of spade work all the same. And as to difficulty—” he paused, pulling himself together—”to be frank with you, my dear lady, there are unforeseen difficulties, that make me . . . that make the whole thing, in fact . . . impossible to carry on.”

“Impossible?” She stared hard at him—all consideration for him swept away by his damning admission. “That’s a form of speech I don’t recognise, Jarvis. What are these mysterious difficulties? If you would kindly be more explicit . . .?”

Jarvis cleared his throat and one hand closed on the arm of his chair.

“Mysterious is the word, Lady Arden,” he said stiffly, not hiding the fact that he was wounded by her tone. “Clive can confirm me. Isn’t that so?”

Clive, who was staying himself with a cigarette, assented briefly, not venturing a look at his grandmother; but she turned her guns on him forthwith.

“What’s all this, my dear Boy? Are you involved in these so-called mysteries?”

Her tone, if less harsh, was no less imperative; and all that was his father in Clive rose to meet the challenge.

“I’m awfully sorry, Gran,”—his manner was cool, though friendly—“that we should be compelled to behave like this. A rotten welcome home. But we’ve both had strange experiences, in this very room. And there was Alison, you remember—”

“That crazy woman!”

“Oh, I daresay. But when it amounts to three of us, independently . . .”

Lady Arden raised her hand with a startled gesture, as if warding off a blow.

“Clive! What has come over you? If you two sane men think to impress me with that kind of blasphemy, you’re very much mistaken. I will not hear you.”

“Gran—please, you must hear me,” Clive insisted, a note of command in his level tone. “It’s not blasphemy to speak frankly of things outside our common knowledge. And there’s one point at least—the main point—within our common knowledge. We know—and you know, my Father did not want his Life written, for reasons of his own. We have each in turn had a shot at it. And, each in turn, we have been strangely, but unmistakably, made to feel that we dare not act dead against his will in this matter—even to please you—”

“To please me? Is that all the importance you attach to the duty of publishing your Father’s Life? I’m amazed at your assurance.”

She had, in fact, only heard him out so far because, for those few bewildering moments, she was looking straight into Henry’s eyes; was shaken—as once before in this very room—by that startling sensation; though she would not let either of them suspect . . .

“You have the boldness to imply”—she pulled herself together—“that I am acting against my dead son’s wishes? You back up Jarvis in his fanciful notion—”

“Lady Arden—forgive the interruption—” It was Jarvis himself, no longer hesitant. “I can’t permit you to blame Clive, who most kindly and reluctantly agreed to support me in this difficult business. It’s no fanciful notion, my knowledge of Henry’s personal feelings. I mentioned the fact originally, you may remember?”

“Of course I remember. My memory is a good deal more accurate than some people’s! And I still think you exaggerate opinions he may have expressed—”

“I am not speaking of opinions; and exaggeration has never been one of my failings,” Jarvis protested with perfect truth. And because she knew it was the truth, she almost hated him.

“As I am not extensively acquainted with your failings, I suggest that we stick to the point. All this preamble, I take it, merely means that you are not a big enough man for the job. Am I to understand that you refuse to go on with it—if you can be said to have begun at all?”

It was a wounding speech—intentionally so; and she saw that it took effect.

“I emphatically refuse,” Jarvis retorted with a sigh of undisguised relief. “As Clive says, we have all in turn experienced things we don’t pretend to understand. Henry will not have it, Lady Arden. And I can only say you’ll be a wise woman if you exchange the Life for two volumes of Letters. Clive could link them up with brief biographical notes.”

“Could he? Very accommodating of Clive. He can wait till he is asked.”

Sitting up straighter than ever, she drew a long slow breath. Her temper was rising, as it invariably did in the face of opposition; and she knew the danger—the futility—of losing self-control. But to find these two amenable men completely out of hand, to feel the secret stir of a sensation other than anger in her veins . . .

Turning from Jarvis, who was negligible, she addressed herself to Clive; her voice deliberately hardened, because his defection hurt her to the quick.

“You ask me to believe that Henry knows about all this—that the dead can impose their will on the living—?”

“I don’t ask you to believe anything. Beliefs aren’t made that way,” he retorted, stung by her tone. “Even if the dead can’t impose their will on us, isn’t that all the more reason we should respect it? And, in this case, we know—” He paused, regarding her straightly with his father’s glacier-blue eyes— “You do believe, I suppose, that the Dad is alive now—somewhere—in some fashion?”

“I believe—? The directness of that simple question confounded her. People of her world, of her time, observed a decent reticence in such matters. And because she could not answer truthfully, she answered angrily, fighting down physical sensations that were in the nature of a warning. “My beliefs, Clive, are a matter entirely between myself and my Maker. In my day, no young man would have had the insolence to infer—to imply—” The right words would not come; but she pulled herself together. “If Henry lives, he certainly knows—that this thing ought to be—and must be. There are bigger interests at stake. And my living will counts for more than his—”

“Oh, if you would only—if I could make you understand,” Clive broke in with an urgency so surprising that it startled her—only for a moment. The red mist of anger was clouding her brain, the blood buzzing in her ears.

“I understand quite clearly that I need not look for any more help from either of you. That settles matters. I go my own way.” She emphasised the fact, as if asserting herself against an insistent opposition that had nothing to do with Jarvis or Clive. “Henry’s Life shall be written. And it shall be written by his mother. I may be an old woman, but thank God, I still have all my faculties. I am tougher at eighty-one than either of you will be.”

Again she drew a hard breath, determined to get it all out; though her throat ached with the stress of rising emotion that must be sternly ignored.

“I am fitter than either of you to handle a life, a character I have known intimately from the inside—a life saturated with politics, which I have also known from the inside, for more than fifty years. I . . . I . . .”

It was useless. Beset by some power stronger than her self, she could only grip the arms of her chair, and brace her indomitable spirit against the startling sense of impotence, that must presently pass.

“I . . . I . . .” she repeated vainly: and tears of mortification blinded her eyes. Through the blur of them she seemed to see Henry himself confronting her: and, summoning all her baffled resolution, she flung out her hands to him, felt his actual hands close upon them hard.

“Henry . . . my dear . . . I couldn’t—” she amazedly heard herself say; felt his grasp tighten . . .

Then:

“Gran, I’m awfully sorry. Forgive me for upsetting you like this.”

With a shock, as of cold water flung in her face, she knew—it was not Henry.

It was Clive. She saw him clearly now; for those ignominious tears had escaped and rolled down her cheeks. Yet, unmistakably, Henry had been there. One’s own son: who else could produce the same sensation—? Though reason insisted it was no more than a trick of likeness between the two, in her heart the stirring sense of contact remained.

Shaken—yet undefeated—she cleared her throat and pulled away her hands. They should not be allowed to fancy her tears betokened surrender; and she spurned surface sympathy that implied no practical change of front.

“Leave me alone,” she commanded—mistress of herself once more. “If you really don’t want to upset me, you ought not to be thwarting my wishes on purely fantastic grounds. But you need not fancy you have thwarted my purpose—”

“Gran—you won’t attempt it yourself . . .?” Clive, knowing his privilege, had the hardihood to insist.

“I shall not attempt it, I shall achieve it—perhaps in conjunction with Lord Barfield. And when it is complete . . . I shall be ready to go. I am sorry to inconvenience you, but I shall occupy this room. And that cat must be kept out of it. Or I shall have the creature put away. Now—go,” she insisted in her more normal tone. “No one is to come in or to disturb me in any way. If I need anything, the bell is within reach.”

“Do be careful, Gran,” Clive pleaded, not daring to risk further argument.

And they went reluctantly out, leaving her alone in the familiar room, with her unfamiliar sensations, with the memory of those strange things that Clive had said, that she had firmly—and rightly—refused to believe.

Leaning back against cushions habitually scorned, her hands close locked, so that the knuckles stood out, she gazed a long while at the big photograph on the writing-table; her heart within her saying, in effect, “I know you did not wish it. But I owe it to the world, to myself, and to those who will come after. Surely, wherever you are now, you must understand—?”

She was not aware of saying all that mentally. She was only aware, with a shiver of discomfort, that the two luckless men she had routed and defied, had spoken the truth, in one respect at least; that if she persisted in her unshaken resolve, she would be defying her own inner knowledge, defying Henry himself. . . .

Was there any shred of truth in the other crazy things they had said? Was it conceivable that the de-materialised Henry—so hard to believe in—had actually been near her just now, not only in the person of his son, trying to protest?

Her sturdy materialism rejected the fantasy of it, while a part of her shrewd old brain suspected that materialism was not the last word in life, or in human knowledge of life. Obstinately she clung to it; because, in the region of the material lay all her power; and power, ever since she could remember—first in small things, afterwards in great things—had been her breath of life. Henry himself had rarely, if ever, gainsaid it, living. Certainly he could not gainsay it now. If they had thought to scare her, those two—they were mightily mistaken.

All her fighting spirit rose with her quickened resolve. She would show them what could yet be done by a stalwart of a greater generation than theirs. Her mental grasp, her driving energy, were only a trifle impaired. She could count on her old friend Lord Barfield. He would be flattered by the request: and he knew the real Henry—though they had never been intimates—better than most men had known him. With his help—so long as she conserved her energies and took things quietly—she might very well pull it through.

She would have this big comfortable chair put up to the writing-table, or the table drawn nearer to the fire. She would banish the swivel chair and all Clive’s belongings. She would make this room—linked with memories of a lifetime—entirely her own. And here, for months, she would live her life over again—the old, spacious London life before the deluge, the social and political world of her own great days, in which they had played dominant parts—she and her distinguished son. Through his diaries, through his letters, she would revive the old intimacy with him that had waned in the last fifteen years. . . .

And perhaps, when Clive saw that her resolve had been no mere vain boasting, he would get over his fanciful scruples, and be willing to help her yet.

Sitting there alone, in the discordant mingling of lamplight and pallid fog, she fought squarely against the whispered dread of frustration, against a nameless Something—in the very air of the room—that shook her nerve, but not her resolve. . . .

Summoning all her waning forces, she saw herself, in fancy, surmounting every obstacle. She enjoyed her foretaste of triumph. Each in turn they had had their chance. Each in turn they had failed. For her—no failure, no retreat—

Chapter Thirty-Two

“You did what seemèd right.” “Aye, ‘tis a ‘seeming’ world.” — Adelaide Eden Philpotts

“Heavens above! She’s an amazing woman. But the thing’s blankly impossible. The strain of it may kill her.”

Thus McNeil—the spurned and defeated—sitting disconsolate in Clive’s study, at the far end of the passage, beyond the library. It was a smaller room, less austerely masculine than the older man’s sanctum. There were good water-colours, some rare ivories, books in abundance and an upright piano. A French window, with long gold curtains, opened on to the leads—or rather, just then, on to a blanket of fog.

Clive, at the writing-table, sat facing McNeil, with that intent gaze of his, that seemed to look through and beyond the speaker; feeling more shaken and distressed by the whole scene than he had allowed himself to realise till it was over.

At the time, his faculties and will had been centred on carrying his point: so convinced he had felt, by his own clear sense of identity with his father, that he must succeed. His utter failure had not merely alarmed him on her account; it had shaken, for a moment, his own slowly acquired faith in the Unseen Element underlying all the mysterious intimations and impulsions of the past two months—that had, in no fanciful sense, made a new man of him. By all he had felt, by all he had so perilously won through, his father’s will, enforced by his own, should rightly have prevailed in this vital matter of the Life, which appeared to be troubling his earth-bound spirit for reasons that Clive could deeply and personally understand.

Yet, although she had triumphed, there remained with him still the peculiar stir in his veins, when she flung him her flat defiance—“Henry’s Life shall be written.” And because his own anxiety went deeper than McNeil’s, it was harder to express.

“It’s not the work I’m worried about,” he said at last. “It’s—the Other Thing.”

“Oh—that?” McNeil’s tone tacitly dismissed “that,” but McNeil’s eyes gave him away. “Really, Clive, I don’t think it need worry you. She’s such a rank old materialist, I don’t believe her nerves would respond to anything so . . . so imponderable, so damned uncomfortable.”

Clive, who would have said the same of McNeil’s nerves, could make no comment on that. And the other’s secret fear peeped out in his next remark:

“All the same, if . . . if any harm comes to her, and she crocks up, I shall feel responsible.”

“You—oh, no! If it comes to responsibility, I’m the original sinner.”

“Nonsense, my dear boy. You couldn’t have acted otherwise. And I don’t doubt we’re both worrying more than we’ve any call to do. When she tries to go ahead, the job itself will confound her more than all our protests.”

But the fear that troubled Clive was not of a kind to be dispelled by comfortable arguments. It haunted him, the thought of the resolute old woman, shut up alone in that room where three of them, in turn, had been so arrestingly foiled in the very task to which she had arrogantly set her hand.

“I can’t think of anything else, or do anything else,” he confessed, without shame, to this man who no longer seemed a mere “elderly,” but a companion in perplexity, almost a friend. Silent or speaking, his ears were strained to catch any sound of movement in the library—its long windows set at right angles to his own.

“What’s that?” he said, low and sharply.

“That” was some one—presumably Bilson—entering her room. And they waited—listening. Clive, with one elbow planted on the table, and a hand over his eyes, found his detached brain asking why such acute anxiety on account of one whom he could not pretend to have loved overmuch? There it was again—the Unseen Element, at the back of his love for Anne, and his personal ache of concern for that headstrong old woman, whom he had not been allowed to save from herself. . . .

And suddenly the waiting stillness was shattered—by the peremptory summons of the telephone bell. With a distracting sensation of anticlimax, he uncovered his eyes.

“Damn that telephone! Always butting in at impossible moments—”

“I’ll answer it for you, old boy,” McNeil soothed him with a touch of affectionate concern.

But, in a flash, Clive was himself again. He had remembered—Molly.

“It’s all right. No trouble. Thanks very much!” he excused himself, blessing the intrusion that jerked him into another world.

And the hint of a tremor in her disembodied voice stirred him like music.

“Is that Clive? Molly speaking—”

“Yes, it’s Clive. May I really come to-morrow?”

“Do come. Any time you please.”

He wanted to say “God bless you,” but remembered old McNeil just in time.

“Good. Eleven be too early?”

“I think I can manage to be up by then!”

“I suppose it couldn’t be this afternoon?—It’s just possible—”

“Oh, I’m sorry—I’m engaged.”

“Bad luck! Eleven sharp, then. And—it is ‘Yes’?”

(McNeil was discarded.) He heard her soft laugh; and before he could say another word, a faint click told him she was gone.

But to-morrow—!

He turned to find Bilson at the half-open door, looking rather sheepishly at the swivel chair he had dumped down just outside—by order.

“Lady Arden don’t want this in the library, sir. Would it suit you to have it in here?”

“No—it wouldn’t suit me,” Clive answered, jolted out of his anxiety by these aggressive tactics, and unable to repress a smile. “All the same—” (a sudden reminder whose chair it was, changed his tone). “There’s room for it there, by the piano, till Lady Arden wants it back.”

It was installed by the piano, with casual assistance from Clive. And Bilson, looking rather more sheepish, produced a pile of note-books and others, a pipe-rack, a favourite elephant tusk paper knife.

“Her Ladyship’s orders, sir, I was to hand them things over to you.”

And Clive, glancing at Jarvis, permitted “them things” to be dumped on a small table near the French window; his superfluous concern giving place to a dull anger. If she must be gratuitously ungracious, she might have had the decency to send for him, instead of the butler. There was an iron-hard strain in her; less of it in his father; and a good deal less in himself. Was the race becoming steadily softer at that pace?

Bilson’s voice again interrupted his thoughts.

“Her Ladyship,” it further appeared, had given orders that her lunch should be brought on a tray to the library. She did not wish to be disturbed, unless she rang for him. No orders as to dinner, when she would, presumably, deign to reappear.

And Clive, who had meant to be very friendly at lunch—had even contemplated joining her for tea and putting his note-books at her service—felt himself freezing up under that chill reiteration of her dismissal, delivered by poor old Bilson, who clearly didn’t quite know what to make of it all.

He left behind him an awkward silence. Clive, in his mixed frame of mind, felt too thoroughly uncomfortable for casual talk; and old McNeil appeared to understand. Very busy filling his pipe, he did not even look up; and Clive, thinking of Molly again, sat drawing elaborate diagrams on a blank sheet of paper.

Suddenly McNeil said: “Come out and have lunch with me, Clive—if it won’t bore you?”

“Rather not. I’ll come with pleasure. I’m not keen to lunch at home.”

“Exactly. No use worrying, old boy. We’ve done every mortal thing we can.”

“That’s so,” Clive briefly agreed. He was feeling grateful to McNeil, vexed at his British inability to say so. There were depths of good feeling and sensitiveness in this old friend of his father’s, who had so far been virtually a stranger to him. He had wondered, at times, about that persistent friendship. He did not wonder now: so curiously had his dead father seemed to link him up with all those nearest to him, with this old friend, with his Mother, with Anne herself. It was a mystery there could be no unravelling. One must simply accept it as such. “So unruly, so assertive is this thing called life;” so infinitely more interesting because it can never be weighed or measured or expressed in terms of mathematics.

If it seemed rather odd to be lunching out with old Jarvis, it certainly did not bore him at all, as it might have done a month ago. Once he found himself wishing it were Tony, wondering what the Youngster was up to. Nothing had been said about the day’s doings, at breakfast; and he himself had been immersed in his prospective “scene.” Had Tony, by any chance, secured Molly for this afternoon—getting one more look in before “the deluge”? Sincerely he hoped so, if the dear fellow could squeeze an ounce of bitter-sweet satisfaction out of it. Fond as he had always been of Tony, the feeling struck deeper now. Everything seemed to strike deeper now—because of Anne, to whom he owed the experience of a purifying emotion, of that inner lightning-flash which reveals a man to himself. . . .

At that point he emerged from private absorptions to appreciate an excellent lunch and cheer up old McNeil, who seemed to be worrying underneath, for all his philosophic conclusions.

After lunch, they drifted into a cinema—the ever-open door that gapes for the unemployed. Tacitly they hung together like a pair of schoolboys in disgrace, tacitly they deferred returning to the discomfortable sense of being cast out from the room that each in turn had made his own. The quaintness of it struck Clive, if it did not strike McNeil; and that difficult day of shared obloquy marked a change in their relation that would endure.

*&ems; *  *

When at last Clive turned his latch-key in the lock of his own door, the dressing-gong was booming out its reminder to the unpunctual. And the moment he stepped into the hall, the nameless fear that had driven him away, sprang at him, like a wild beast that had crouched there, awaiting his return.

“Mr. Anthony dining at home?” he asked coolly, as Bilson straightened his lean body.

“No, sir. Nor yet Miss Stella. Dinner’s laid for three.”

Clive sighed. Those two—neither knowing nor caring—might have eased things a good deal. Irresistibly he glanced at the library door.

“Has Lady Arden gone upstairs?”

“No, sir. I took in the tea and the evening paper at four-fifteen. She looked tired, sir—flushed in the face, if I may say so. She hasn’t rung since.”

McNeil, rid of his hat and coat, was going on upstairs. He liked to take his time over everything. And Clive stood there alone, hoping she might come out; give him the chance to say a friendly word, or to offer her an arm upstairs. One could not for long feel hardened against the very old.

But she did not come; and the deadly silence wrought on his nerves. Tired! flushed in the face—? Poor old dear, would she never know when she was beaten? Probably, unknown to Bilson, she had gone up long ago: and to be unpunctual would mean spoiling his chances of a friendly meal.

He dressed all in a rush, holding thought at bay. Hurrying down, he saw her bedroom door half-open; but in the drawing-room he found only McNeil awaiting him, while the final gong went booming through the house.

“Come on down,” he said breathlessly. “She must be in there still. Orders or no—I must go to her.”

And they went down together without exchanging a word.

McNeil passed on into the dining-room; and Clive, outside the familiar door, braced himself against the suffocating fear that constricted his throat and fluttered his heart.

Then he turned the handle, and went in—

There, in the big chair by the writing-table, sat Caroline Arden—dead.

Huddled a little—as never in life—her head fallen against the winged leather back, her hands clutching the arms, her sightless eyes seemed gazing blankly towards the curtained window—at what . . . at whom?

What had she seen—what had she heard, in that room charged with a mysterious Something that she had flatly denied and flatly defied?

The bright light from above shone pitilessly on every wrinkle, every line of the hard old face—harder than ever in its frozen aspect of death.

Since midday, he had been in the grip of this very fear. Yet he stood there, stunned by the shock. Every spark of that unquenchable life and energy—suddenly extinct. One could not all at once take it in. And she, that never knew when she was beaten, sat there—defeated at last, by her own obstinacy, or by the greater will that in turns had foiled them all?

She could never tell them. They would never know.

Sharply switching off the light, he hurried back to McNeil, who had remained standing—tense, expectant.

“McNeil—she’s dead,” he stated simply.

And McNeil stared in blank dismay.

“I knew it,” he said. “We’ve killed her.”

Clive merely inclined his head. To that terrible indictment he could make no reply.

Chapter Thirty-Three

There’s neither victory, nor defeat—
But aspiration, conflict, death—and then,
A new beginning.
— Adelaide Eden Philpotts

Dr. Barrett had arrived, prompt to their summons, and between them they had carried all that remained of Caroline Arden up to her room—an ordeal that Clive would not forget. They had been told that her death was due to a stroke, evidently caused by severe excitation or shock.

In reply to the doctor’s close questioning, they had given him, between them, the clearest account they could achieve of their difficulties over the Life, and the Old Lady’s obstinate insistence; leaving out all that, in their view, was the core of the matter. Dr. Barrett would never swallow that, nor forgive them, probably, for having thrust it upon her. They could not forgive themselves; nor could they win any comfort appreciable from a lurking conviction that the true responsibility lay elsewhere.

When all was over—all that could be said or done in a practical sense—a dismal blank fell upon them; the blank of nothingness, after hours of crisis and strain, when it seems impossible to believe in all that has gone before. Ordinary life reasserted itself. Trivial details resumed their old comforting importance. Between them, they had made the library itself again, as if that terrible intrusion had never been. And when that was done, they stood about aimlessly; Clive pretending to glance through the evening paper, McNeil absorbed in filling his pipe.

Looking up suddenly, he caught Clive watching him, muttered something about the necessary announcement for The Times—and hesitated.

Clive could feel the secret pull of the Club—his private cathedral—the comfort of its familiar solidities, tugging at the back of his brain. And the next moment out it came.

“The fact is, old boy . . . if you really wouldn’t mind, I’d be glad of a quiet hour at the Club—after all this. But I don’t half like leaving you alone.”

And Clive himself didn’t much like the idea of being left alone: yet it might be less of a strain; and old McNeil had stood by him manfully all day.

“No need to worry about that,” he said, in a tone that carried conviction; and the settled gloom of McNeil’s face lifted visibly.

With a trifle more of tactful persuasion, he was successfully manoeuvred into his great-coat, and out of the hall door.

As it closed with a dull thud, Clive forced himself to return briskly to the library, because of a lurking fear that, if he hesitated, he would find himself ignominiously unable to face that room—and the Thing his eyes still beheld in the big empty chair.

Closing the door noiselessly, he walked straight to the fireplace, and stood there warming his hands, while the silence seemed to creep along his nerves: a silence heavy with that haunting question— What had she seen or heard—here, where her indomitable spirit had suffered defeat, at last? Did she know, now? Did she understand?

Not yet could he realise that her potent presence had vanished forever out of his house, out of his life. Too dominant and egotistical to be deeply mourned, her passing would yet leave a very real blank; a sense of loss deeper than he could have believed; intensified by the fret of feeling more than half responsible for it all. Had they not so upset her, between them, she might have lived for years. Nevertheless, at heart, he knew that he could not have acted otherwise, impelled as he was by the conviction of a potent Reality that, for her, was no reality at all. That was the crux of the whole affair—the crux of life itself. To every man his own reality: in the last resort, the thing that his vision brings him to believe. Moreover, he had felt convinced that, so prompted, he must succeed. . . .

To dispel vain brooding, he moved restlessly about, putting things straight, superfluously banking up the fire. Near the big table he paused, and thought vaguely of writing to Alix. She, of course, would be convinced that his father had appeared to the Old Lady, and the shock had killed her—which was more than he could bring himself to believe.

But they might all fancy what they pleased. They would never know. There was something daunting about that unassailable question mark. It had secured the last word.

Alix must wait. He could not write of all that—yet; though he was feeling dismally unoccupied, achingly alone.

At that moment, like a gleam of daylight in a dark place, there slipped into his mind the thought of Anne—actually within reach, within call. It was the first consoling sensation he had experienced, since Molly’s voice greeted him over the telephone. The relief it would be to have her with him for an hour! After the stress and strain of these last few days, there was balm in this new sense of turning to her for comfort, almost as if she were indeed his mother. When all was over, he would be free to ask her here; and the relation that would have been theirs, had his father lived, might still be more deeply and intimately theirs, after all. . . .

The voice of the telephone, sudden and shrill, startled him out of his musings; and his instant thought was— Molly. He could not go round there, this evening, with the dark shadow still brooding on his spirit and his heart; but he welcomed the simple human happiness of hearing her voice, if no more.

“Who is it?” he asked. “Clive Arden speaking.”

And it was Anne’s voice that answered him, low and clear.

“Clive, is it? Forgive me for bothering you. But I have been feeling so uncomfortable all the afternoon. And this evening it’s worse. I seemed to feel . . . you were needing me. Has anything gone wrong? Molly?”

“No, thank God. You were right about her. But we have had a horrid shock here—my Grandmother. She died this afternoon—a stroke.”

“Dear Boy—how awful! Is Mr. McNeil with you?”

“He has been, all day. We had a painful scene, this morning. It thoroughly upset her, as I feared. When we can meet—I’ll tell you everything.”

There was a pause. She couldn’t break off like that. Dared he ask if die could possibly come to him—?

And while he hesitated, she spoke again.

“Clive, are you alone?”

“Yes. McNeil has been splendid. But we’ve had a trying day; and he wanted a quiet time at the Club. The young ones are out dancing somewhere. They don’t even know.”

Again she paused. “Would it be any comfort if I came round to you for an hour?”

“You?— It would be awfully kind. But I don’t like dragging you out on a cold night.”

“Nonsense—if you want me . . . if it wouldn’t seem . . .?”

“Of course not” He understood her hesitation; but his immediate need of her over-ruled all that. “Of course I want you. May I come and fetch you?”

“No, you mayn’t. Alton will send me in his car.”

“Well, I shall drive you home. It’s too good of you. I was feeling desolate.”

“I knew you were. And I couldn’t understand. I’ll be with you as quickly as ever the car can bring me.”

She was gone: and he returned to the fire, surprisingly comforted by that mysterious transit of thought and feeling, by the mother-impulse, matching his own new demand on her, surmounting all lesser, natural hesitations. It needed an actual effort to sit down in the big chair; yet he forced himself to sit there, picked up a book at random, and pretended to read.

But all the while he was listening for the sound of that car in the quiet street; listening to the silence, while the minutes slipped soundlessly away like sand through an hourglass. Here in the library, the warm, transient silence of life; upstairs, the chill enigmatical silence of death; outside, beyond the dark of the winter heavens, the unfathomable silence of Eternity. . . .

What was the ultimate meaning of it all? “Canst thou by searching find out God? . . . Where is the way where light dwelleth?” Had the modern, hyper-educated mind come much nearer to probing these eternal mysteries than Job had done more than three thousand years ago? In every direction the unassailable question mark secured the last word. . . .

Suddenly his brain became alive to a sentence on the page he had fondly imagined he was reading. “To hold the great opposites together in our minds and in our souls . . . to stand fast by our knowledge, however contradictory it may seem—is the real road to victory.”

He read the words twice over with the welcome relief of treading firm ground after quicksands; and the instinctive thought sprang, “I must show that to Anne.”

He glanced at the page heading—“The Unknown God”—and smiled to himself. It was she who had given him the book. . . .

*  *  *

Sounds at last, unmistakable. Then Bison’s voice announcing, “Miss Verity, to see you, sir.”

He was on his feet as the door closed behind her.

“Oh, my dear . . . !” she began; but her voice broke, and she remained standing there, as if unable to move.

Her eyes, deserting his face, travelled round the room with a seeking, strained eagerness. And, all in a moment, he realised what that unexpected coming into this house, into this room (saturated with his father’s personality) must mean—for her. Absorbed in his own trouble, it had simply not occurred to him.

From picture to picture, from bookcase to writing-table, her gaze travelled slowly—as if it were confirming some mental vision. It lingered on the big photograph brightly illumined; and he saw tears gather in her eyes. Carried out of himself by her emotion—so natural, so profound—be neither spoke nor moved, giving her time . . .

At last, smiling uncertainly, she came forward. She had seen Onyx asleep on the tiger skin; and kneeling down she gathered up the creature in the tender fashion that she sometimes gathered up Ariel, holding it to her heart, trying to hide, to master, her tears.

And Clive, wishing he could obliterate himself, could only stand there, loving her, with a devout tenderness, and thinking—were she his very mother crouching there, he would kneel beside her and comfort her; not that he could remember ever having comforted his own mother, or having seen her overcome with emotion, except on the day he left for France.

His hesitation was a matter of seconds. He was kneeling beside her, an arm round her shoulders; and Onyx, who disliked damp drops on his head, was shaking it vigorously, twitching his ears, in a fashion that made her laugh softly—a low shaken laugh.

“He’s telling me not to be a fool!” she said.

And Clive, very gently, kissed an ivory cool corner of her forehead. “It was thoughtless of me letting you come here like this, all in a rush.”

“It was most dear and natural of you.”

She stood up and smiled at him, brushing away her tears. “Of course it unsteadied me, for a moment, seeing it all—at last.”

Now she was looking at the tall old bureau.

“Yes,” he said, “your letters are there. Ought I to have given them back to you, long ago?”

She shook her head. “Where he left them, let them bide. If you gave them to me, I should destroy them.”

“I wouldn’t risk that for anything,” he said with the old ghost of a shiver along his nerves.

To dispel it he lightly secured her arm. “Sit down there, please, and charm away—the sight that haunts me when I look at it now.”

She obeyed, smiling up at him with clouded eyes.

“My poor dear! You’ve had no breathing space these few days. Have you seen—your Molly?”

“Not yet. But I’ve heard her!” He paused on a deep-drawn breath. “You were utterly right—you and Tony. She’ll see me to-morrow, at eleven. And I’m going—in spite of . . . all this.”

“Yes. That is—life,” she confirmed him softly. “And life is bound to go on, in spite of all this. It must have been a hideous shock . . . very terrible,” she added in a changed tone. “Do you feel able to speak of it?”

“Yes—to you. It would be a comfort—a relief.”

“Tell me.”

He settled himself beside her on the long cane fender stool to be nearer the fire, for the bitter cold outside seemed stealthily to penetrate even into this haven of warmth and light. Her “Tell me”—words apt to freeze that human impulse at its source—was, for him, like some key unlocking all his secret doors. Briefly but vividly he recorded every detail of that strange day—its sharp incongruities of light and shadow.

“Take it all round,” he concluded, staring into a red-hot cave of coal, “the whole affair staggers credulity. And we feel hideously responsible, McNeil and I.”

“My dearest Boy, don’t get that on your nerves.” She laid a quietly commanding hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done your utmost, both of you, in a desperately difficult situation. It’s over—I’m convinced it’s over. To-night is an end—and a beginning. Marry your Molly, as soon as ever you may. And isn’t there some big bit of work you could fling your energies into?”

He looked at her very straight with his father’s brooding gaze. “Well, there is—if you agree?”

“If I agree?”

“Yes. I’ve been thinking, we might edit two volumes of his letters, with notes—you and I.”

“Clive!” She flushed with pleasure. “How dear of you! It would be a wonderful experience. And it ought to be done. Though he was a fine speaker and a man of action, in his letters one gets the very essence of Henry. And in their letters, at least, the dead are alive for evermore.”

“Alive for evermore,” he echoed, in an awed under tone. “We use staggering phrases like that—yet the meaning of them is utterly beyond our grasp.”

“The meaning of all that is most vital and beautiful in Life is beyond our grasp,” she gently reminded him. “You’ll feel that, to the full, when your great moment comes—to-morrow.”

“To-morrow—!”

He let out a deep breath, and fell silent, lost in the forward-looking visions of youth.

And she sat silent also, content to absorb the atmosphere of this room—saturated, still, with the thoughts and strivings, the perpetual pressing forward of the man who, in one woman’s heart—as in his letters—was alive for evermore.

The End