The Hare of Cloud

Author’s Note

If a reduced Dundee stood where Berwick stands and the Tweed there were half as wide again and the Border were twenty miles farther south than it is and the minor features of the landscape were all different—then there would be a place something like Cloudstone. If there were, there might be a “Youngest University in Scotland” on the south bank of the river; and if there were, it might admit characters and episodes such as those in my story.

Needless to say, in all these “if’s,” the fact is otherwise. Equally needless, I hope, to say that my people and events bear the same relation to the actual inhabitants of any Scottish University and their doings as my Cloud and Cloudstone bear to the Tweed, Berwick and Dundee.

H. B.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Part One: Opening Ceremony

1

As the express began its familiar lurch on to the upward curve, the young—or youngish—man in the window corner glanced up at his golf-clubs and suitcase in the rack as if to make sure that they had not been spirited away since he put them there some weary hours ago. He was a young man of pleasant and happy appearance; dressed in a sports-coat and grey flannels, a cobalt-coloured sleeveless pullover and a tie of a dark blue curiously ornamented with tiny silver hares. His very dark green hat, set jauntily, was tilted at the back, flattened into a round on the top—a fashion which does not suit everybody but became this particular young man very well. He looked conventionally correct if a little reminiscent of an outfitter’s advertisement. But he looked something better than correct, as the face he tilted upwards was something better than pleasant; he had sympathetic eyes of a blue-grey, a little fair moustache, a mouth that twitched with hesitant humour. Under the green hat, if you could have seen, was fair hair that curled crisply; under the cobalt pullover, if you could have seen, was a heart full of kindness and ambition. The young man’s name was Michael Hext; he was thirty years old, was lecturer in Humanity—that is to say, Latin—in the Youngest University in Scotland, and wrote—with considerable distinction—essays on such subjects as The Hendecasyllabic Metre and The Roman Lyricists’ Debt to Apollonius.

The train lurched; Michael Hext thought, “Now for the bridge; there in three minutes”; and wondered again at the way one grumbled at long railway journeys and yet was loath somehow to get up and end them when the time came.

Round swung the train, the proud locomotive panting and pulling; then suddenly its gasps were drowned in the familiar rumbling thunder of the long girder bridge over the Cloud. At that sound the young man sat forward eagerly, gazing from his window. He looked eastward and there it all was; there it all was again.

Seventy feet below ran the river, mud-coloured, swirling sleepily; swirling eastwards just now—seawards—for the tide was low. Behind him lay the South Bank and ahead of him the North; the South Bank and the North, those contrasted and opposing worlds. On the South Bank the bright October sunshine lit up a pleasaunce of gardens and big houses and neat residential streets, running eastwards along the Gledshaw Road to culminate in the colossal raw granite of the Youngest University. There it stood; and behind it, younger and rawer by nearly forty years, in fact quite new, Lord Abercloud’s biological laboratories. On the North Bank, fast approaching as the train swept over the bridge, was piled the city of Cloudstone—dour, dark, North-British; a sad-coloured heap of factories, shops, banks, offices, a great church with a hideously original steeple—all rising in steep tiers from that incongruous riverside Esplanade where Lord Abercloud—Lord Abercloud again—had cleared a slum. Eastward, down the river, both banks fused into a shimmer of winnowed light that mirrored in the vast flats of the sea; on the north of the estuary you could make out the projecting finger of the Pier at Cloudmouth, the Tripper’s Joy; and on the south, if you knew where to look, the rose-coloured ruins of Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey. The young man Michael Hext did know where to look and they were the first thing he looked for and he did see them; and at the sight, as always, something turned over in his heart; and, as always, he thought vaguely, “Beauty; beauty!”

At the opposite end of the compartment sat two much younger men. They were types; they wore type clothes and type shoes; they had enjoyed type hair-cuts; and all the types were cheap. North Bank quite evidently. They had got in at Norminster and had smoked incessantly, offering each other cigarettes from cheap paper packets. A little while ago, when the train, rolling northward, had passed the Border, they had nudged each other and one of them had said, “Sco’land!” and the other, “Sco’land!” Except for this exchange they had maintained a depressed silence; now as the train rumbled on to the bridge, one of them said with perhaps intentional loudness and with unmistakable bitterness:

“Yon’s their Varsity.”

His friend spat out a cigarette-end and crushed it with a yellow shoe.

“Some Varsity!”

“Huh!”

“Ay!”

“Bloddy waste o’ money.”

“Huh!”

“Settin’ theirsel’s up.” He brooded morosely and took a fresh cigarette. “And there’s two thousan’ unemployed in Cloudstone. . . . If the money that’s been spent on yon place had been spent on Cloudstone—”

Michael Hext looked across at them, smiling a little with his soft, humorous mouth. “They know I’m Varsity,” he thought. “They’re doing this on purpose. Yet that is how they think of it. That’s how they think of it and nothing I could say would alter it. So say nothing.” With a reverberating crash the train passed through the north terminal of the bridge and instantly Cloudstone—the North Bank—engulfed it. The sun was shut out by vast revetment walls from which advertisements shouted; “Gallacher’s Whiskey”; “Ginger Rogers”; “Tusso Will Cure That Cough.” Incongruously—or perhaps not—there followed a huge placard, “Prepare to Meet Thy God.” Sighing a little, Michael Hext got down his suitcase and golf-clubs; Gallacher’s Whiskey, Ginger Rogers, Tusso and then—Prepare to Meet Thy God. North-Bank life in epitome. Could you blame these poor devils if they thought the University was a bloddy waste o’ money, if they couldn’t see Beauty, if they preferred the Pier at Cloudmouth to Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey? Honestly, you couldn’t.

He descended on the grimy platform and instantly saw a number of people he knew; they emerged from the train like rabbits bolting from their burrows; they must have been hidden away in it all along. Everybody coming back for the opening to-morrow of another Martinmas Term, another University Session. Michael saw Professor Brewster looking Victorian; he saw Professor Winterbottom (whom the students called “Frosty”) looking Colonial, and Professor Small looking like Haile Selassie. He saw the great bulk of Peter Ruey, the Zoology Demonstrator, lugging a bulging suitcase out of a third-class smoker and lumbering off bull-like through the crowd; he saw the Warden of Gledshaw House, Miss Cadmore, and hung back till her direction was assured. He did not see his own principal in Humanity, Professor Fency, and thought, “I expect the old boy’s having a final afternoon with the Courvoisier; I wonder what that daughter of his is up to? Making mischief somewhere, no doubt.” . . . He saw a number of students—Brodie, the President of the Representative Council, with his pince-nez and his air of an anxious cherub; Gloag, Speed, Brett; the scornful pallor and slightly Maxtonian hair of that interesting rebel, Ivor Calder . . . All hurrying back, all eager—for what?

Michael had no time to answer his own question, for in the effort to avoid Miss Cadmore he ran into—was she perhaps in wait?—a young woman, fair, willowy, dressed in a brown suit and an unbecomingly ambitious hat. Raising his own, he said with a smile of great charm:

“Oh—-Miss Ballantyne!”

Miss Ballantyne gazed at him out of antelope’s eyes. She was beautiful but a little fantastic; those enormous irrelevant eyes, a tragic mouth, a fevered restlessness as if she wanted to run somewhere, hurting herself as much as possible in the process. She gave the impression of being delighted to see Michael—who did not want to see her in the least. A modest young man—over modest—he had been unable last session to blind himself to the fact that “the Ballantyne” had unquestionably pursued him. For many reasons—not least of which was her extreme attractiveness—he did not wish to be pursued by the Ballantyne any more; and among the more unpleasant questions his conscience asked him was, “Did you run away? If not, why not? If so, how fast?”

“Oh—Miss Ballantyne! Up again?”

The Ballantyne said out of a mouth made for the expression of lovely meanings:

“Oh, yes. And so thankful!”

“I think we all are, really. These Vacs are too long. And it’s going to be a good session.”

“Oh, it is. I feel it.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“It—it won’t be like last session, of course.”

“No?”

“No. It couldn’t. . . . Mr. Hext, I loved last session. I loved taking your class. I loved—”

“Give her another second,” thought Michael, “and she’ll say, ‘I loved—you.’” Hastily he said:

“Oh, come on. This one’ll be much better. There’s the Rectorial Address coming almost at once.”

“They say it’s been put off.”

“Oh . . . Well, it’ll come some time. It’ll be a grand session—I feel it.”

He raised his hat again and escaped. But sitting in the musty taxi, rattling through the drab streets of Cloudstone, he thought, “A grand session, eh? Will it?” For himself that would depend largely upon the amount of energy the Courvoisier would leave Professor Fency; would the old boy really, as he had promised, lecture to the Ordinary Class and turn over the Honours lot to his Assistant provided his Assistant corrected the Ordinary Proses? (Oh, lord, these Ordinary Proses!) Probably he would; anybody could lecture to the Ordinary Class; old Fency could do it with one half of his brain and think of something else with the other; he should be quite willing to surrender the Honours Class provided he were left in peace to write that book on Seneca and the Post-Augustan Philosophers with which Courvoisier and the Post-Napoleon brandy so seriously interfered. (Not that the old boy was ever in the least drunk; he just starved himself and lived on the 1875 and the Dialogues; he was just pickled and mellow and habitually in that mood in which thought was more attractive than action.) But supposing all this came off and the Assistant secured the Honours Class, would the Honours Class be worth a damn; would they be such people as he, Michael Hext, could invite to share with him the poetry of Catullus—“special book” this year—or Statius’s poem about Sleep? Doubtfully. The Youngest University had to be strong on the Classical side—that was the reason they kept Fency, a name as great in his own world as Courvoisier’s in his; Authority insisted on the Humanities being boomed and boosted; but it was for these damned Laboratories of Peter Ruey’s that Lord Abercloud had put down the money, and it was for these Laboratories and a “Science” degree that the alumni assembled. . . . And incidentally that was why, last session, Lord Abercloud had been elected Lord Rector. . . . “Beauty, beauty . . . bloddy waste o’ money. . . .” Sighing, Michael found himself on the South Bank, getting out at his rooms.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Sir Ludovic Inches, the Principal and Vice-Chancellor, looked round his vast library, looked down at the Provost of Cloudstone lost in an enormous arm-chair.

“You’ll take a glass of sherry, Sir Ewart?”

The Provost, Sir Ewart Kay, small, round, dressed in an absurd suit of plus-fours, beamed out of a red face networked with purple veins and said he would. Wheezing a little he added:

“So we start to-morrow, eh?”

Sir Ludovic approached him with his celebrated Roman-Emperor walk, pontifically carrying the sherry decanter. He was immensely tall, immensely handsome, his clean-shaven profile was a thing to dream of; many people did dream of it. At fifty-five he liked people to say he resembled the traditional Dante, and in a way he did; he had the imperial nose, the carven mouth, the ascetic detachment. Also he was lean and a bachelor.

“And a biscuit, Sir Ewart? . . . Yes, we start again to-morrow. The Opening Ceremony is at twelve.”

“A pity Abercloud isn’t back.” The Provost sniggered a little and explained this lapse apologetically. “Even yet I canna accustom myself to the ‘Abercloud.’ Cobby Rintoul then Sir Cobb Rintoul—then Lord Abercloud. Lord Abercloud; Lord Rector; what a ‘Lord’s’! . . . Well, here’s it!” He drank and smacked his lips. “Very nice; very nice. . . . How is Abercloud?”

“Better. But not well.”

“Still in the south of France?”

“Still in the south of France.” (“And there he will be,” thought Sir Ludovic, “till I’m ready.”)

“Isn’t that a pity now! If he could have come tomorrow it’d have been his first public appearance since they made him Rector.” The Provost sipped again. “Ye know, Sir Ludovic, ye would almost think there was something unlucky about yon election.” He looked up hastily at the imperial profile, fearing he would find it terrible; it was terrible. Gulping his sherry, he concluded feebly, “In a sort of a way—-just——”

Sir Ludovic held his own sherry up to the light and studied it; otherwise he took no notice. Only himself knew what a trial these—these North-Bankers—were to him. Excellent fellows, of course, shrewd, progressive, sound. They had wanted their University, they had got it, they had made it, they would keep on making it. But—sometimes they interfered. Sir Ludovic disliked people who interfered; to do him justice, he encountered few. . . . Very coldly he said:

“I can’t think that the election had any effect upon Lord Abercloud’s illness.”

“No, no. No, no. It was just an idea of mine.” (“Lord!” he thought, “why am I squirming and cringing like this; what is it about this chap that gets us all down?”) “No, no.” But the Provost plucked up heart. “Yet he was a bit vexed, ye know, that it wasn’t unanimous——”

“It was to all intents unanimous.”

“Oh, not so very. There was a very strong party for Raven——”

“Only young Calder and his associates.”

“There was a few of them, though; and what they lacked in numbers they made up in noise. Ay, they wanted Raven all right—and we heard about it.”

Sir Ludovic, tall and grim against the window-pane, considered again the impossibility of Raven as Lord Rector of his University—a matter on which he had never entertained any doubt. True, the man had a reputation—a European reputation; let us be generous and say an international reputation—as poet, visionary, genius; but he had also an international reputation as—well, let’s be blunt—homosexual. He had a further international reputation for being agin the Government—any Government. And Sir Ludovic had a conviction that he would have become violently anti-Inches; and what was anti-Inches was wrong and must not live. Whereas—Lord Abercloud was a local man, a North-Banker, a man who had made himself and his immense business, a man who might have been a Cabinet Minister but fortunately wasn’t; a man whom a grateful monarch had first knighted and then raised to the Peerage. A man, moreover, tireless in the University’s interest, tireless in giving—a Pavilion, a Union, those Biological Laboratories. But best of all, a man Sir Ludovic could manage, a man afraid of Sir Ludovic rather than otherwise. (Now Raven would have been unquestionably otherwise.) . . . Lord Abercloud, Lord Rector, the right man in the right place, obvious. When Sir Ludovic, working by roundabout channels, had inserted into the brains of Mr. Brodie and his Representative Council compeers the idea of electing Lord Abercloud as Rector, he had anticipated no breath of opposition. Then up had arisen this young madman Calder and his idiot band—the Harriers or whatever they called themselves—and had clamoured for Raven. They had lost, of course—but with a bad grace; and they weren’t done for yet. “I’ll send that young man down,” thought Sir Ludovic vindictively; but nobody had ever been sent down yet in the fifty years of the Youngest University’s history—not a good, thing to begin. . . . With a careful smile Sir Ludovic turned to the Provost.

“Our friend got in all right.”

“Oh, yes—he got in all right. Oh, yes. But he was a bit vexed. He’s done a lot for the Varsity——”

Sir Ludovic, wincing at that “Varsity”—a contraction he detested, said:

“I should know that.”

“Of course, of course . . . Well, it’s a pity about tomorrow. But he’ll have another chance in a few weeks’ time, I suppose. The Rectorial Address.”

Sir Ludovic looked away to the window.

“Not this term, I think. Next.”

“Eh?”

“For one thing I doubt if he’ll be fit enough. For another——”

“Trouble?”

Sir Ludovic gave the Provost his annihilating stare.

“No, no; not trouble. But I think things might lie for a little. Young men soon forget. I think, next term. We could combine it with Saint Gunegilde’s Day.”

“Eighteenth February?”

“Eighteenth February.”

“But maybe Cobby——”

“Lord Abercloud has already agreed.”

“Eh? Oh. Oh, I see.” The Provost swallowed the rest of his sherry and something else with it. He got up, a bouncing little figure in his plus-fours. “Well, it’s just as you think, of course.” And suddenly the sherry blazed warmly in his blood and he thought, “Yes, by God—that’s just what it always is; just as you think. Rector, Chancellor, University Court, Senatus Academicus, Deans of Faculty—it’s all the same story; just as you think. Heil Hitler! “That is what the Provost thought; but what he actually said was:

“Well, good-bye. We’ve had a nice talk. . . . I hope it keeps fine to-morrow. . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Michael Hext, having unpacked his luggage and answered his landlady’s questions about the Vacation and admired (secretly detesting it) her new wall-paper, was free to perform his first-night-of-the-term ritual—to walk down to Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey. Michael loved the Abbey with a passion that was almost crazy; it was his genius, his place, his confidant, his spouse. Its old stones embraced him, caressed him, whispered secrets to him, told him what to do. If he thought of beauty, salvation, hope, he thought of the Abbey; and one of the few things which could rouse him to serious rage was when someone miscalled it “Lovers’ Abbey.” The trippers called it that and the North-Bankers—after some lurid troubadourish lie, but it was Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey—Saint Gunegilde’s. . . . Emerging into a night of stars, Michael almost ran to meet it.

On the way he encountered two acquaintances. The first was Peter Ruey, the Zoology Demonstrator, whom he observed plunging out of his lodgings and surging off in the direction of the Cloud bridge. Off, thought Michael, to get tight on the North Bank, where he kept some curious company. A rough fellow Ruey—a pity he had got into a University so new that it had to mind its manners, too young for eccentrics. But Lord Abercloud had insisted; for once he had dug in his heels, defied Sir Ludovic, the Senatus, everybody; son of a childhood’s friend, the brilliant poor-boy, and so on and so on. So Peter, the great amiable bear, the great unbroken colt, held sway in the Abercloud Laboratories and Professor Halkin went about saying “that cad, my Demonstrator.” Well, you couldn’t expect too much from a fellow who spent his days cutting out frogs’ livers and artificially fertilising the eggs of starfish; yet, on the other hand, when Michael had once for some reason found himself in Peter’s rooms, the talk had unaccountably turned to Francis Thomson and Peter had leapt up and hurled himself upon a book-case and pulling out a thumbed volume had read solidly—and splendidly—for half an hour. “There is a peak on Himalay. And on the peak undeluged snow—There if your strong feet could go.” . . . But Peter’s strong feet could not go to the peaks of Himalay; instead they went to the North Bank and the Hare of Cloud Hotel—whence, men said, they took him home sometimes with Jessie the barmaid. Ah, well!

The second acquaintance passed Michael at the traffic lights at the south end of the Cloud bridge; either Michael was wool-gathering or she drove through a red stop light. (The latter, however, was as probable as the former.) She passed at speed in that nasty explosive little car both Banks knew so well—a really horrid little car. To Michael she was a flying scarf, sleek unwaving black hair, a chiselled unwaving profile, a red cigarette-end glowing; yet somehow, too, he saw those green eyes—-or knew they were there. Lee Fency—Prof. Fency’s daughter, so proud of her modernity; Lee Fency, whom Mrs. Brewster and others spoke of as “poor Lee,” or if they wished to be specially nasty as “poor motherless Lee.” Little she cared! So long as she could drink cocktails and drive her car fast and meddle in University affairs that weren’t her concern. She had been wildly pro-Raven; they said she had positively wept over Abercloud’s success. Excitable creature, explosive, like her car; likeable, dislikeable; but—only twenty-two and she had never had a mother and you could hardly say she had a father. . . . At the thought of her father Michael had a qualm of conscience; I ought to have gone round to see him, I ought to be seeing him now. But what good? The old boy would be thoroughly mellow and would only want to talk Seneca and to argue about whether humanity was depreciating diffusedly from an original perfection or ascending from primal mud towards angels. No doubt, thought Michael, we must be doing one or the other, but I really don’t think I could argue about it to-night. Let Lee go home and give him his dinner; they say she’s good at that.

The Gledshaw Road, always quiet, was now almost deserted; here at last appeared the long University buildings perched on vast banks of sloping turf. There they stood; they weren’t Oxford or St. Andrews, nothing of secular solemnity here, no dreaming spires. Yet they were more than Oxford or St. Andrews, as hope is more than fulfilment. The Youngest University in Scotland—not a bit of it fifty years old; a beginner. We admitted as much in our motto: Dominus favillam foveat ;God Fan the Spark (not a strictly classical use of “favilla” thought Michael, though you could justify it from Propertius 1.9.18, and of course the “fav-fov” alliteration was agreeable). God Fan the Spark; it was only a spark; surely he must fan it. . . . And there stood the Abercloud Laboratories—-our price, according to Ivor Calder and Lee Fency and the Ballantyne and their disgruntled kind, for a Lord Rector who had begun life in a Cloudstone wool mill and who could score at this day perhaps ten per cent, in a Matriculation paper. Well, Abercloud was Lord Rector, anyway, and there it should end. But would it?

With fellows like Ivor Calder, thought Michael, walking on past the University Hostels and the playing-fields that merged at last into the dunes and turf of the Gledshaw Golf Course—with fellows like Ivor Calder, you could never be sure. They felt so frightfully; and one had the unjustifiable conviction that people who felt so strongly must be right. Queer chap; a product of pos-tWar discontent, crazy to do something against somebody—he didn’t know what or who. Yet Ivor’s fractiousness was but a miniature, a reflection of that fiercer discontent that stalked the outer world. The North Bank knew it—with its closed factories, its apparently never-ending slump. Over there the Unemployed leant up day after day against the railings of the Gentlemen’s Lavatory in Powder Square and looked enviously at the Hare of Cloud Hotel and vacantly at the Cloud Castle cars. In their hearts did they never want to raid the Hare of Cloud and drink themselves silly, to bomb those sleek contemptuously-hooting machines? Perhaps, but fortunately they were not aware of it; they remained merely bewildered, dazed by a world which had gone back on them. Throw bombs? What at? what for? (But suppose one day someone came along and told them?) Beside these savage dangerous outside discontents, the discontents of Ivor Calder were but play; yet Ivor had the advantage of knowing where he wanted his bomb to land; he wanted it to land good and hearty on the little jaunty stomach of Lord Abercloud. And perhaps it would; he had a bomb in his hand, anyway.

But now in front of him Michael saw the broken gate and wall of the Abbey; he went straight in, knowing his way in the dark, and sat down on his favourite fallen stone; he knew exactly what stars he would see through the ruin of the east window, and he looked up and saw them and was comforted. Thank God for things that didn’t change, that post-War discontent couldn’t bomb away. Thank God for old places and old stories; for Saint Gunegilde and her Golden Mist; for the magic Hare of Cloud that so usefully spent its life in finding treasures for its masters, the roystering letterless loser-backing Earls. Such creatures, thought Michael, do not age; when God has Fanned our Spark into a beacon, Saint Gunegilde and the Hare will be no older than they are now. . . . Well, both of them owed a debt to the University; the University had brought Saint Gunegilde back to her own; there was a Saint Gunegilde Society, and Saint Gunegilde’s Day, the 18th of February, was growing yearly a more terrific celebration. As for the Hare of Cloud, so long as the University outfitters made ties it could not be forgotten.

The Hare of Cloud: long hidden, long disbelieved in, it remained a sort of tutelary genius of the place. Would it ever reappear? Well, it was in the darkest hours of its masters that it made its most rehabilitating entries; and this is a darkish hour, thought Michael, and it’s about due. It was due in the University where there was a difficult time ahead; it was due on the North Bank where any slight improvement in the unemployment figures hardly set off the long-drawn exhaustion, the frayed nerves, the weakening resistance. . . . And it’s due, thought Michael, with me, Michael Hext, Lecturer in Humanity. Three hundred a year I get; and if Prof. Fency ever dies I may succeed to the Chair or I may not; more probably they’ll bring in someone from Ottawa or Wakitipu; and in any case anyone so pickled in old brandy as Julius Livingstone Fency is unlikely to die for years. The betting is, I go on like this till I’m grey. If I didn’t have to send so much to mother; and if Doris wasn’t at Yeolands——

And suddenly at the name of “Doris,” at the word “Yeolands,” an old terror swooped down on Michael; he sat bolt upright on his stone, gripping its edge. I’ve got a mad sister, I’ve got a mad sister, I’ve got a sister who isn’t right in her head. For “Yeolands” was what is called for courtesy a Mental Home, and Doris Hext was a great big shapeless girl who talked gruff unintelligible nonsenses or sat staring, staring—at what? And if a man has a mad sister, then that man himself may For half a minute the old panic, the old misery swooped upon Michael; then the touch of the cold stone reassured him; his Abbey gathered itself round him; the stars through the east window said, “Do not be afraid.”

The black moment passed. But—Hares of Cloud? Tschah!

There were two bridges over the Cloud; one was very new—a vast span of white concrete and black shining roadway; a prince had opened it and, omitting to state that it was hideous, had commended its utility. A few hundred yards to the east stood the old bridge with notices at each end, “All Vehicular Traffic Prohibited”; a king had built this one in the days when the Hare of Cloud was something more than a myth. On this second bridge, while Michael Hext was communing with the Abbey, a young man stood and smoked his pipe and stared sullenly at the world as if he loathed it. Sometimes he thought he did loathe it and sometimes he thought he loved it; and if he could have been sure which he really thought, he would have been a happier young man. His name was Ivor Calder; he came from Ross-shire; and he was a third-year student in Arts.

A little while ago he had been talking to Lee Fency— about Raven and Abercloud and the defeat—and Lee, looking at him with a hard, hard face, had said, “So it’s all over.” And he had said, “It isn’t all over, Lee”; and she, “Yes it is, little man; all over. You’ll do nothing.” Then she had lit another cigarette and driven off in her Chinese-cracker car, and he had wandered down by himself to the Cloud bridge where he always came in his troubles. And there he stood, his arms on the parapet, staring east down the river and torturing himself terribly.

For I must do something, he thought; someone must try to stop this University from degenerating into a den of money-cadgers and parasites and advertisers, from degenerating into a—shop. “I want a Degree, please.” “Yes, sir (or madam); that will be one hundred pounds; thank you, sir (or madam).” Someone must put up a fight for the ideal that life—learning, scholarship, art, instruction—was an affair of seeing rather than of mere getting; someone must oppose this pandering to money, this beastly buy-and-sell. Someone must: I will. Oppose, oppose, oppose; fight, struggle, oppose!

Somewhere out there to the east was the sea—a great thing, a fine thing, vast under the dome of the sky. Somewhere ahead of Ivor was his achievement, the great fine right thing he wanted to happen; but—what was it? It was as vague, as unenvisaged as the sea in the dark night. Now and again one caught a glimpse of it, as now and then one saw a few feet farther into that eastward darkness; one caught an inkling of it now and again, as now and again, in a slant of wind, one caught the murmur of waves; but its shape eluded one, it would not declare itself. And the things one could do, the steps one could take towards that achievement, were so comically petty, so senseless, so inadequate. One strove for ideals of beauty and magnificence; and one involved oneself in a combat with poor little Cobby Abercloud. One buckled armour against God and fate; and one landed into a row with Ludovic. Oh, thwarted mocked and miserable man!

Still—there were things one could do.

And I will do these things, thought Ivor; I do not care what happens; I will do them.

2

“Tuesday, 6th October, 1936. Opening of the University. Martinmas Term begins in all Faculties.” So said the University Calendar; nobody had read it, but here they all were assembled in expectation. The future was become a clean slate on which to scribble; it had the allure of Mr. Roosevelt’s New Deal; failing humanity could start again. A new Session. What would happen? All sorts of things? Nothing?

At all events there would be the Opening Ceremony. Older Scottish Universities had given up their Opening Ceremony; the Youngest clung to it as it was obliged to cling to anything that made for tradition. It had no surplus of tradition yet. The academic world—the wives of Professors, their friends, those North-Bankers who took a proprietary interest in their “Varsity”—looked forward to it; it was a show and those amusing (abominable) students were often so funny (offensive). Sir Ewart Kay, the Provost of Cloudstone, was obliged to attend it by virtue of his membership of the University Court; he looked forward to it, but less happily to-day than usual because he had undertaken to escort Lady Abercloud. Abercloud was a level-headed fellow who could take a joke against himself, but his Lady was a touchy body, apt to be insulted. When the students had sung “Abercloud has a silver lining,” she hadn’t liked it. Still—characteristically—Sir Ewart hoped for the best.

The Deans of Faculty approached the day with resignation; they would pass it sitting in their rooms “advising” a stream of students who either would not take their advice or were so completely vague as to their own intentions that they could make no use of it. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Brewster, secretly enjoyed this programme; he had been an earnest student himself in the years just before the War and despite all the evidence of his senses he persisted in believing that the majority of young men and maidens he saw before him were earnest too. His labours were therefore painstaking and conscientious. His colleague in Science, Professor Halkin, had no such illusion; he had made up his mind to play golf that afternoon and play golf he would if a thousand eager disciples thronged his stairs. Lighting a cigar, he prepared to put up a record in disposals; allow them two minutes a head—say ninety seconds. . . .

Sir Ludovic Inches proposed in particular to look magnificent at the Opening Ceremony, and in general to get his way in all things—as usual. They called him “Emperor Ludovic,” did they? Let them.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Professor Stephen Brewster sat at his breakfast-table with Judith his wife. The Professor had recently taken to breakfasting on China tea and fruit; Judith was not sure that it suited him. The fad, she guessed, was imitative; Sir Ludovic went in for a fruit diet; so, it seemed, did Mussolini. And the King of the Cannibal Islands went in for a diet of yams and raw sucking-pig—which had really just as much bearing on what was suitable for Stephen. No doubt he would see as much in time. But only in time.

Meanwhile Judith studied him. They were a handsome pair—Stephen in the Victorian tradition of features and hair, Judith with a late Edwardian magnificence—an oval, distinguished pallor; lustrous eyes the colour of good mahogany. Physically she avoided the voluptuous—just—by dint of spending twice as much on foundations as she spent on frocks. A handsome pair; it was a thousand pities, as everyone said, that they had no children. Judith was even yet not without hope, but—well, Stephen was forty-three and she was thirty-five and twelve years of failure is twelve years. And there was a quality in Stephen which disturbed her—a dying down, a cessation; he wasn’t as much of a husband as he had been. Judith could remember an ardent Stephen; couldn’t he be ardent again? Their last vacation in Argyllshire had been as flat as church.

“Christmas,” thought Judith. “We must make more of Christmas—must, must, must.”

Sighing she poured herself coffee and looked at Stephen again. She saw a good-looking man who just failed of the handsomeness of a prince by reason of an omission in his face, a minus, a want. Just ever so faintly but ever so disastrously there intruded into those Victorian perfections the expression of a sheep. Long ago Judith, speculating on that slight sheepishness, had told herself, “It’ll go away when we’re engaged”; then, “it’ll go away when we’re married”; then, “it’ll go away some day.” But it hadn’t gone away.

Putting down the coffee-pot, Judith said, “Do you suppose this Ceremony to-day will be even more frightful than usual?”—Judith’s method of asserting that personally she supposed it would.

Stephen asked, why should it be?

“Well, they’ve had all the vacation to think things out. Nastiness.”

“Oh, come—they aren’t so bad. And there’s nothing to set them off to-day. It isn’t as if the Rector was coming.”

“He definitely isn’t?”

“He’s in France.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“I don’t know. And authority is reticent.”

“Authority! You mean Ludovic. But what about his Address?”

“It’s postponed.”

“Postponed? Oh, why?”

Stephen shrugged his shoulders and laid down his Scotsman. “Sic jubet Ludovicus. Ludovic doesn’t want it this term.”

“The funk!”

“Well, perhaps. But—discretion is the better part, you know.”

Judith frowned. It was one of Stephen’s irritating habits to indulge in truncated clichés; only the confident brightness with which he trotted them out—like that of a child trotting out a tiresome toy—prevented her from crushing them without mercy.

“There’s a point where discretion becomes the worst part of cowardice.”

“So there is.” Stephen selected a pear. “But I think Ludovic’s right this time. There was all that shindy over the election——”

“Only a few hooligans.”

“Unfortunately not. Some of the best men in the University. But what Ludo’s afraid of is a Town-and-Gown row. There nearly was one at the election time. They were insulted over there because we weren’t unanimous for their Cobby. If there was one——”

“It might be a very good thing.”

“Hardly, my dear. Because if there was one, it would be a bad one—it wouldn’t be just fun. It would mean a frightful uproar from the North-Bankers sendings-down—all sorts of horrors. No, let’s play for time.”

Judith scowled at her coffee-pot. “Ludovic’s becoming too absolute altogether. He——”

“Pride goeth before, my dear.”

“Perhaps. But I can’t see Ludovic falling. Not that he doesn’t ask for it “She was debating whether to add that Ludovic’s absolutism was merely the obverse of the sheepishness—yes, sheepishness—of such as Stephen, when the door opened and Guy Lessing came in. Guy was Judith’s half-brother; her father’s second marriage had produced him and his sister Freda, a pair completely unlike Judith—fair, fragile creatures, light in mind and body. As a natural result of his half-sister’s marriage, Guy had been condemned not only to studentship under Professor Brewster but to domicile in Professor Brewster’s house under Judith; and Guy was mortified. It seemed to Guy—-now in his third year, Ivor Calder’s year—that he could never get away from Judith; he envied desperately his sister Freda who lived in London and “wrote.” Guy too “wrote”; he was a poet; this, coupled with the fact that he was condemned to pass his days under the roof of a Professor of English Literature, made his life no sweeter. . . . He came loafing in now—a good-looking boy in a grey flannel suit; soft far hair; horizon-blue eyes: he slumped into a chair and said:

“I say, Judith, do you mind if I don’t have porridge this morning?”

Judith looked at him severely. “You were very late of coming in last night.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. And you made a great deal of noise.”

Guy said, wrinkling his nose, “I barged into the umbrella-stand. Sorry. I was perfectly all right.”

“I don’t say you weren’t. I say you made a great deal of noise. And it was inconsiderate. You knew Stephen had a hard day in front of him. You woke him up. . . . I suppose it was that silly Club again?”

“Well, it wasn’t. For God’s sake don’t cross-examine, Judy. As a matter of fact, I went for a drive in Lee Fency’s car.”

“That imbecile!”

Guy gave her that blue-eyed stare the dark can never counter. “I like Lee Fency. And I like Yoey Ballantyne. And I like Ivor Calder. For the nth time—they’re my friends.”

“I wish they weren’t.”

“I can’t help that; they are.” Swiftly he changed the subject. “I say, is Freda really coming to-day?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“She would. What time?”

Judith told him the four o’clock train.

“Is she staying long?”

“I don’t know. Quite a while, I hope. She’s let her flat for six months.”

“Silly ass!”

“I don’t see why. And now we’ve induced her to come at last, I want her to stay till Christmas, anyway.”

“Oh, god!”

“Guy! You know you like Freda.”

“Yes; but—till Christmas. You and she will have rows and she’s sure to start an affair. . . . Have I got to meet her this afternoon?”

“You haven’t got to do anything. If you care to take the car over to Cloudstone station it’ll save me trouble.”

“All right; I will.”

“And look here, Guy, about these Fencys and Calders and Ballantynes——”

But Guy had stretched out his hand for the marmalade and in that position it remained; for there had suddenly entered his head a line for his historical poem about Flodden. “A salient sunset clamoured in the west.” Good—oh, good! “Salient” was a hot-stuff word with “sunset”—never been done before. But—“clamoured?” We could improve upon that. “Lingered,” “blazoned,” “perished,” “tum-te?” He remained motionless, entranced, lost among the jewellery of words; and Judith rattled back her chair in a temper, for Stephen had gone back to his Scotsman and long experience told her that Guy was now inaccessible to wit, reproof or repartee.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Further along Gledshaw Road in a gloomy dining-room fortified with ponderous furniture and trappings Professor Fency was trying to eat his breakfast. Or rather he was trying not to, but not very successfully because his daughter Lee sat on the arm of his chair coaxing him on. She wore a white silk blouse—sleeveless—and a cherry-coloured skirt; she smelt of gardenia.

“Darling, you must eat an egg.”

“But I don’t want an egg, Lee.”

“But you need it, darling. Think of this beastly ceremony; walking in procession; all these horrid prayers.” She gazed anxiously into his face and saw it haggard above his rather straggly grey beard. She knew he had fallen asleep in his chair last night; she had gone down at two in the morning and found him cold and stiff and gurgling in his throat, and had hurried him off to bed. She thought, “One of these nights— . . . I don’t take enough care of him.”

“Eat your egg, Daddy. Or have I got to feed you?”

“Of course not.” He pulled himself together, took a yellow spoonful and dipped it in the salt. His daughter picked up the toast, looked at it and threw it in the fire.

“This muck of Jane’s isn’t fit to eat. I’ll make you some fresh.” With lightning rapidity she cut a slice from the loaf, impaled it on the bread-knife and in one swift feline movement was down on her knees by the fire. Chewing his egg—which indeed he did not want; he never wanted to eat anything—the Professor regarded her with a muzzy appreciation. “Pretty, graceful thing,” he thought, “did I really make her, is she really mine?” He took another spoonful of his egg, and panther-like she was back with the toast which smelt delicious; she spread the butter lightly, cut the slice into careful segments and set it before him.

“Come on, Daddy. Eat it up. I’ll peel you an orange.”

“I don’t want——” But he ate some of the toast, swallowed a cup of rather tepid coffee, got down the orange and felt better. He fumbled for his pipe; but she had taken it out of his pocket and filled it already. He said, a little peevishly:

“You hustle me, Lee; you do really.”

She struck a match. “How long do you think you’ve been at breakfast, Daddy?”

“About five minutes.”

“Say forty-five.” But she saw with relief that he looked less chilled, less tranced; a light began to grow in his eyes, a mind to move behind them, sending messages out.

“Think I’ve time to do a bit of writing, Lee?”

“Of course, Daddy.”

“You’ll call me in good time for the Ceremony? I can depend on you?”

“Absolutely. I won’t let you down. Go to it, darling.”

He went to it, blowing clouds of smoke and pulling some “notes” from his pocket. She thought, “The old dear! I don’t look after him half enough. If anything happened to him where should we be? I don’t suppose we’ve a bean and god knows when the bills were paid last. Oh, well!” She dropped into a leather arm-chair and threw her legs in their gun-metal stockings over the side; from force of habit she lit a cigarette and stuck it in her jaunty green holder. Forgetting that she herself had had no breakfast—or practically none—she lay staring at a coloured drawing of a Mycenaean dagger—little vigorous men with spears pursuing rubber-necked lions. The room—like the whole house—was full of such things; art treasures—pictures, fragments of statuary, coins, plaques, tiles, vases: god knew what her father had paid for them—indeed, god knew if he had paid for them. . . . But at least, she thought, Daddy does know about beauty; he knows the value of lovely things, lovely sights, lovely tastes; he knows how to drink old wine and old brandy; how to look at a Hermes; how to listen to Sibelius or Brahms or Liszt. Thank god he does! Thank god he isn’t like these dreadful people here who think only of money, money, trade, trade, getting on, getting on, getting on. A shop, as Ivor says. So long as Daddy is here, the place is better; it has a hope, a chance; I must keep him here a long, long time.

She sucked down the smoke of her cigarette and lit another from the stump; stroking her silk knees, she lay and stared at the Mycenaean dagger. Someone must strike for beauty, for the better; for the rose ruins of Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey, for the October light on the Cloud estuary, for the shape and bouquet of antiquity. Someone must. Ivor Calder said he would, Guy Lessing said he would and so did that nit-wit Ballantyne; but when the time came, would they? If I can make them, she thought, if I can ginger them up, they will. Oh, if I were only a student, if there were only anything I could do; instead of sitting here, sitting here, sitting here—just dying!

The door opened; a not unslovenly maid appeared.

“Please, Miss Lee, what about the dinner?”

Lee, taken unawares in her dreams and suddenly incompetent, said vaguely:

“I don’t know, Jane. What is there?”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The breakfast-table of Mr. Willie McKillop, the University Secretary, was encumbered. It was encumbered as to its surface by plates of porridge, jugs of milk, an “ashet” of bacon-and-eggs empty now save for congealing grease—five bobs’ worth of food, thought Willie, if a penny. It was encumbered as to its perimeter by Mrs. McKillop (who didn’t get any thinner) and their joint progeny—five children ranging from Donald, aged ten, downwards. The room was small and congested with overwhelming furniture; it was small because the house was small, and the house was small because Willie, devoured by domesticity, could afford no better. “It’s a mercy,” thought Willie, “I got this job when I did”; and he shuddered to think what would happen if he lost it.

Willie McKillop was small and sandy, with glasses and a sharply tilted nose. He looked as if he came from Glasgow—and he did in fact come from Glasgow where his father had been a ship-chandler’s clerk and his mother the daughter of a minor publican. Willie had come to Cloudstone as a “C.A.,” had picked up a trust managership, and then by some combination of luck and graft (it was pre-Ludovic) had advanced gloriously to the Secretaryship of what he always called the “Varsity.” But in the interval—early in the interval—he had met and married Miss Edna Niven who was the daughter of a Cloudstone railway Inspector. It was understood, therefore, that socially Willie wasn’t up to the job; but his work was impeccable. Ludovic said of Willie that he “didn’t carry nearly enough sail”; Judith Brewster said of Edna, “Poor dear!” Wilke was aware that both these things were said; and in the nights sometimes the knowledge of them kept him feverishly awake.

These considerations will explain why it was Willie’s object to draw a veil over all origins and histories; and why it was one of his grievances against his Edna that she would hark back. Mr. Secretary Willie was eager to identify himself with academic affairs, to become utterly South-Bank; but Edna, though proud enough of the University connection, resolutely refused to cut her North-Bank ties. These were not distinguished; her elder sister Madge had married a struggling stationer-tobacconist-newsagent in Cloudstone; her younger brother (called for obscure reasons “Spot”) was a reporter on the Cloud Valley Advertiser. It seemed to Willie that he had a sound case for secession, but Edna refused to see it; indeed, to Willie’s disgust, these connections made—and were encouraged to make—periodical invasions of the South Bank. Madge, who shared her sister’s fecundity, brought droves of offspring; Spot, who was still unmarried, savaged Willie’s “gaspers” and his bottled beer. Any attempt to convince Edna that her family were a misfit in University circles was met with a teasing tolerance, a serene disbelief, a stupendous miscomprehension that left Willie impotent.

“Och, Willie—you and your old Varsity——”

“But Edna, dearie——”

“Grand old Varsity!”

“But, dearie——”

“Don’t dearie me. Madgie’s coming over this afternoon, and you know you’ll really be quite pleased to see her, and if you aren’t you can go somewhere else. . . .”

Willie, tearing his hair, thought, “She thinks I’m joking.”

But apart from this firmness and a growing discontent with the “Varsity,” Edna was a gentle creature, a profound Christian, armed with that ascidian tranquillity with which nature saves oppressed women from madness. And Willie, strange as it might seem, was passionately in love with her still—too passionately, thought Edna sometimes, reflecting upon the habits of undersized men. Edna’s case was the converse of Judith Brewster’s which explained why Edna, despite everything, was happy, while Judith, despite everything, was not. In fact, that “poor dear”-ing might well have been the other way round.

Willie said, rustling his Glasgow Herald and peering over his sharp little nose:

“Is there not a kipper to-day, dearie? I like a kipper fine on Tuesdays.”

Some wives would have asked “Why Tuesdays?”; Edna merely told him that there wasn’t a kipper. “I thought the bacon would do us all to-day; I’ll get kippers on Friday.”

He said accommodatingly “Oh, well, then——”; so accommodatingly that Edna was emboldened.

“Willie?”

“Uh?”

“I thought I would take Donnie and Mary to the Opening to-day.”

“Well, why not? There’ll be plenty seats in the gallery.”

“Willie, do you think there’ll be any fun?”

“Depends what you call fun.”

“Well—rows.”

Willie assumed the “I’m-in-the-know” air he reserved for topics affecting the “Varsity.”

“Oh, the students’ll make a kick-up as usual. But nothing much. None of that ‘We Want Raven’ stuff we had last session. They will want him now”—he tittered at his feeble witticism—“and they know it.”

Edna, remembering, grew round-eyed.

“The cheek of them!”

“Ye may say it.”

“When Lord Abercloud is so kind to them and does so much.”

“Ay, well, ye see, that’s just it. Some of them think he does too much, that we shouldna take so much of his money.”

“But, Willie, that’s nonsense.”

“Of course it is. Take all ye can get in this world, dearie, and ye’ll not get very much. But there’s a few of these dafties—yon Calder, for instance—that canna see it.”

But Edna’s mind had wandered; she began to bite her thumb and to look at Willie over it sideways.

“Willie?”

“Uh?”

“I asked Madgie to come over for the Opening and to bring Davie and Chick.”

“Oh, ye did? Well, I wish ye hadn’t.”

“But, Willie, she asked to come.”

“What about it?”

“And Spot has to be there anyway for the Advertiser.”

“Spot, eh?” At the mention of this brigand Willie’s nose twitched with reminiscent indignation. “Well, then, don’t bring him here.”

Edna bridled a little. “If I can’t bring my own brother——”

“Oh, well, well—anything for peace. Bring Madgie and Davie and Chick and the whole blasted boiling. But mind ye here, Ed—if Spot does come, don’t give him any beer; and I’ve no cigarettes in the house—mind that. He had the last of them last time.”

His wife, having gained her point, said placidly, “All right, Willie.” And presently Willie went hurrying upstairs to change into his blue suit. As he switched his braces from one pair of trousers to the other he thought with a revulsion of feeling, “Ed’s right enough; damn the Varsity! They’re all snobs; they’re making me a snob. Not enough sail, eh? To hell with them and their sails!” But a moment later he was bawling over the stairs.

“Ed! Ed! Ye havena ironed my tie.”

Placidly her voice floated up from the turmoil below.

“I ironed the blue tie, dearie.”

“Ay, but my Varsity tie. I must wear my Varsity tie at the Opening!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The University boasted three Students’ Hostels. The oldest and the nearest in situation to itself was Saint Gunegilde’s, the repository of law, order and Felix Brodie, President of the S.R.C. Further east was Saint Crydlan’s, called after a quite inferior male saint of no interest; discontent hived here and Ivor Calder. A good deal farther east still, verging on the golf course, was Gledshaw House, a converted mansion donated by a magnate who had made a wool fortune during the War; here, in conventual seclusion, lived the women. The three were known for brevity as “Guney’s,” “Cryd’s” and “The House.”

At Saint Gunegilde’s, on the morning of the 6th of October, they sang their Latin grace, ate their breakfast, cursed at it (not wholly without excuse) and then hung about in little knots talking together. There was a great deal to talk about.

“There’ll be a row at the Opening this morning.”

“No, there won’t.”

“Yes, there will.”

“The Harriers won’t, anyway; Ivor’s called it off.”

“Who are these Harriers?”

“You’ll maybe find out, Fresher, sooner than you think.”

“It’s a set of swine in Cryd’s.”

“They’re Ivor Calder’s crowd.”

“They’re a lot of swelled-headed bastards.”

“They’re Fascisti. . . . Vigilantes. . . . Ku Klux Klan. . . .”

“Anyway, they don’t function to-day. Nothing doing at the Opening.”

“Who told you?”

“Oh—I heard.”

It was important to wander about talking like this; it was better anyway than work; better than pestering the Deans of Faculty with silly questions about the curriculum, the answers to which one knew already or didn’t want to know. To the Freshmen (the Youngest University had no special name for them) lurking in watchful groups, conscious of one another, their suits, their ties, their shoes, it seemed grand; they looked on with a sulky admiration. They knew Brodie by sight already and pointed him out to one another. Was he a great man, or did he only think he was?

At Saint Crydlan’s they sang a different grace (the Youngest University sang graces at all meals) ate their breakfast, cursed at it (with even more excuse) and paused irresolutely as if they waited for command. They too talked.

“Is it true about the Rectorial Address?”

“What about it?”

“It’s postponed till next term.”

“Whatho! Then they’ve funked our Mr. Calder.”

“Oh, I don’t know. They say old Thundercloud has a pain in his belly. He’s in France, somewhere.”

“Well, I hope he dies of it.”

“I don’t. I hope he comes back and gets what’s waiting for him. This term, next term, it’s all one.”

“Well, I’ll bet you we see some fun when he does.”

“You said it.”

Here too the Freshmen clustered nervously together and gaped in doubtful admiration, uncertain whether to frown or smile or assume a Chinese impassivity. Who was this Ivor Calder? Who were these Harriers? Were they connected with the Hare of Cloud? Or was it the birds of prey idea? Were they really frightful or were they just silly? Behind all the Freshmen there hid a little Hindu student, also a Freshman. His name was Rameswara Rao and he was a Telugu Brahman from Bezwada—a place of which nobody in Saint Crydlan’s, or for that matter in the University—had ever heard. His intelligent eyes moved darkly to and fro, taking in, noting. When addressed—which was seldom—he said, “Oh-thanks-so-much” or “Please-excuse” or “Oah, I didn’ know.” He was terrified, but gloriously terrified. Now he knew what the British were really like.

Ivor Calder sat upstairs in the room he shared with Speed. Speed was a massive imbecile, a Rugger forward; his father was in the Indian Police near Dacca and Speed had seen him twice in the last ten years. At any moment an adroit Bengali might hurl a bomb or loose off an automatic and Speed would never see his father again; he did not dwell upon this contingency, but it coloured his outlook more than he knew. Speed sat in a “Varsity” basket chair (MacVickar and Brass, Cloudstone) on one side of the meagre fire; Ivor sat in an identical chair on the other. Both stared at the fireplace, Speed stupidly, Ivor with aimless but concentrated hate.

Speed said, “What are you going to do about it?”

“About what?”

“About this Address postponement business.”

“Oh—wait and see.”

Silence.

“Shouldn’t the Harriers do something about it, Ivor?”

“No.”

Silence. Then Speed again:

“I see they’ve sent us a beastly Aryan Brother. Fresher. Madrassi.”

“Well, kick his bum.”

“Yur.”

Speed relit his pipe; he did not know that Ivor was thinking, “Why? Why should we kick the poor harmless devil’s bum? It sounds the right thing to do; perhaps it is the right thing to do; but why? I go about saying things like that, doing things like that, without ever knowing the reason. Pose? Swank? Or am I right?” Hating something terribly—but he didn’t know what— he stared at the feeble fire.

In Gledshaw House they had no Latin grace but they had a better breakfast. Here too they gathered in groups and twittered together—mostly about themselves and especially about Yoey Ballantyne. They did not, it seemed, like Yoey Ballantyne. Little need she care! Fair, fragile, with those great lamps of eyes and that tempestuous mouth, Yoey had them all beaten. She could never do better than a Second Rank in any of her classes, but she could inspire men. She could inspire the Harriers, anyway; she was a sort of vivandière to the Harriers.

“Have you seen the Ballantyne?”

“Oh, yes. The hair. The new hair!”

“And the two-piece.”

“Swish. But the same old Ballantyne. You should have heard her last night on Lord Abercloud.”

“I know. Da capo. The mercenariness of Ludovic. Our vile pandering to Mammon. We have ba-artered bah-yooty——”

“Cult-sher.”

“Well—I think she’s right in a way——”

“Oh, bunk. She only does it for advertisement.”

“And for Ivor.”

“Who can’t stand her really.”

“Micky can.”

“Oh, don’t be beastly. Just because they played one or two rounds of golf last summer——”

“Well, the Ballantyne’s heart’s shattered——”

“Who says so?”

“She does.”

“Then it isn’t. But Micky——”

“Micky’s sweet . . . I love Micky. . . . He’s a pet. . . . The Ballantyne mustn’t get him . . .”

“She won’t—if she looks like she did yesterday.”

“The Tyrolese hat. Oh, god!——”

“I don’t think Micky’s interesting. I think it would be much more fun if the Ballantyne got a pash on Peter Ruey——”

“Ugh! It wouldn’t.”

“Darling, in order to be indecent it is not necessary to be facetious——”

And so on; and so on; twittering, twittering, while the golden moments of youth—so few, so quick—sped by unseized.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Peter Ruey woke early that Opening morning with no very certain conviction as to his whereabouts. Clearly he was in bed; but was there anybody in bed with him? He pushed out a hand gingerly. Nobody. Well, where were we? He raised his head cautiously; in a female bedroom apparently; ay, but whose? The last question was solved as soon as asked; he heard light-hearted laughter; looking up again, he saw a presentable young woman, fully dressed, standing in the doorway.

“Y’re a nice one, Peter!”

“It’s you Jessie, is it?” said Peter, recognising now the barmaid from the Hare of Cloud. “And where are we?”

“Where wud we be? In my rooms of course. And now, up with ye like a good boy and get out of it or I’ll be for trouble.”

“What time is it, Jessie?”

“A quarter after seven.”

“Great god!” But with his marvellous gift for recovery on these occasions he threw back the bedclothes and was almost instantly himself. “I suppose I couldn’t get a bath, Jessie?”

“Ye jist could not. What d’ye think this is—a hotel?”

“Well, give me a cold sponge and I’ll go away.” Laughing, she brought a basin of cold water and a sponge; laughing, she “did his back” for him. There he stood like a great bull, handsome as a bull and formidable. His black thick curly hair glistened; his face and forearms were red-brown with sunburn, the rest of him was white and smooth as a girl. His great easy rippling muscles twitched under the cold water; his white teeth shone at Jessie.

“There ye are, Peter; now for any sake put on yer clothes and be decent.”

“What about a shave?”

“No. I’ve only got the one blade and I don’t want you blunting it. Anyway, I want ye out o’ this. Wait till ye get home.”

“All right, lambie.” He dressed carelessly, tugging on his clothes haphazard. Knotting his tie he grinned at her. As usual he felt perfectly recovered and well; heads, nausea, nerves, remorse—he didn’t have them.

“Well, here’s to our next merry meeting.”

“You and yer merry meetings! Ye’ll get the sack, Peter, if ye go on like this, one of these days.”

“When they can get somebody better. And that’ll not be for a whilie.”

“Well, behave yoursel’, ye great gowk! And come back to me soon, Peter.”

He said “Ay, ay!” absently and went lightly and noiselessly down the narrow stairs. Up these stairs he must have come—somehow—last night, but all that was a blank. Well, who cared? It was fun. But out in the drab Cloudstone street, in the cold twilight of the October morning, his elation ebbed away. He wished he had brought an overcoat, and tucked the ends of his woolly “Varsity” muffler well under his waistcoat. His hands thrust into his pockets, he trudged away towards Powder Square, the Bridgegate, the Cloud Bridge, the South Bank. But the devil went out of him; he thought, “I’m a nice one to be wearing a University muffler, amn’t I? And Jessie’s right; it’s a good thing I can do my job or it would be the sack pretty quick for Peter.”

Tramp, tramp, tramp; how one’s feet resounded in empty streets! Through Powder Square, past the shuttered Hare of Cloud Hotel (“Had I some kind of a row there last night or hadn’t I?”) down the long gut of the Bridgegate, on to the bridge. A blue fog lay along the river; one or two of the lights on Lord Abercloud’s esplanade had failed to go out and twinkled through it yellow and debauched; a red pole-flattened orange of a sun was hoisting up to seaward. “Earth has not anything to show. . . . The city now doth like a garment wear . . .” On another bridge, on another morning, a poet had stood and thought these words; but he didn’t see things, thought Peter, any more clearly than I do. Maybe less clearly, for he only saw one side of them. But queer that a man should be a beast and a god, should grovel and soar, should start into rapture impartially at the touch of Jessie Lindsay and at the sight of the Cloud at morning. If only one could combine the best of both sides; if only one could discover a Jessie Lindsay who included the Cloud morning or a Cloud morning that didn’t spit out Jessie. But such things didn’t exist; not in this life anyway. . . . Life! A film of microscopic scum on a grain of dust, a disease of worn-out ash, a lusus naturae of atoms containing a certain arbitrary number of electrons. Look at the life-history of trematodes; just daft. And man’s little better. . . . And then poets went and wrote stuff that caught you in a net; and who was daft then?

Oh, well—to hell with all that. A shave, breakfast, the Opening Ceremony. Peter Ruey, Demonstrator in Zoo, marching up the Macmurtrie Hall in solemn procession beside Micky Hext, Lecturer in Humanity. Black sheep and white sheep; good boy, bad boy. Dominus favillam foveat. God Fan the Spark. God damn the spark!

Hunching his shoulders, he plunged up the hill from the bridge-end, thinking, “Peter Ruey, B.Sc. with Hons.; Demonstrator in Zoology. And a bloody fine Demonstrator too!”

3

At half-past eleven the Macmurtrie Hall—the gift of yet another North-bank Mammonite—was noisy; at a quarter to twelve it was very noisy indeed; at five minutes to twelve it was a raging pandemonium. The students occupied the floor of the Hall; the men sat on one side and the women on the other and the men were making a hideous and pointless din. They sang choruses, they shouted, they bellowed unheard witticisms, they knocked each other about. From the galleries above, the elite of University circles and the curious (and invited) from the North Bank looked down on these antics, beaming or scowling according to their natures; and thinking—again according to their natures—either how nice it was to see the young fellows enjoying themselves or else what a nasty noisy gang of hobbledehoys they seemed.

At thirty seconds before twelve the side doors of the Hall were flung open and the illustrious and traditional procession began to emerge. An ill-assorted company, of all shapes and sizes and ages, slouching, stalking, shambling, tittuping, they headed for the dais. They were led by Houston, the University janitor carrying the University mace over his shoulder as if it were a dead fish; he was much given to drink and ill-usage of his wife, but he was a popular figure and his appearance was greeted with a roar of pungent and well-tried witticisms. Under this barrage his immediate followers—the Bursar, the Wardens of the Hostels and Willie McKillop in his Varsity tie—got through without special notice. But the next figure to emerge was Michael Hext with his agreeably surprised, diffidently humorous smile; instantly falsetto shrieks of “Micky!” shrill mouse-calls, an uproar of cats and dogs, burst forth from all quarters. To Michael’s mortification he felt himself growing red—as he always did on this occasion, try as he liked, resolve as he liked to avoid it; nor was he greatly benefited by a stentorian voice which yelled at close quarters, “Micky, your ears are pink! His welcome—for it was a welcome after all—crystallised into song—

The Ballantyne, sitting in obscurity, clasped her hands and looked round her; but nobody was thinking of her at all—it was merely the only song they knew that contained the magic word “Micky.” And then, in any case, Micky was eclipsed, for the great black bulk of Peter Ruey came surging forward, encountering a double roar of genuine applause. They liked Micky but they loved Peter. “Who were you with last night?” they sang in thunderous unison, “Who were you with last night? It wasn’t your sister——” Peter lurched onward, looking neither to the right nor the left, turning not a hair; “little bastards!” he thought—but they had sung that song at him for three years now and he was used to it. And before the song could reach its conclusion they had turned to somebody else.

Lecturer on Lecturer, Professor on Professor, the hosts of learning advanced; all out of step, all anyhow; patently wincing or preternaturally calm under the stereotyped fusillade of insults, jests, affection. . . . And last came Ludovic, the Emperor, dwarfing them all to runts and nonentities; somebody, really somebody; cold, difficult and aloof as Everest. Instantly the miscellaneous uproar coalesced into his ritual; “Lu-do-vic Inches! LU-DO-VIC INCHes!” Three very long notes, two very short ones. And then with the feet; left, right, left, right-left; Lu-do-vic Inches! Like Dante striding through Malebolge, above the howling lunacy of the damned, the Emperor strode up the Macmurtrie Hall; you saw a carven face, whitely contemptuous above a gorgeous blue silk collar lavish with ermine. “Lu-do-vic Inches!” . . . Emperor . . . God.

And then, just as the Emperor set foot on the bottom step of the dais, a new thing happened. A new note cut through the tumult, a deep note—low, concerted, formidable. “We want Raven. WE want Raven. WE WANT RAVEN.” Instantly the newest Lecturer’s wife in the gallery, the most uninitiate North-Banker, knew that here was something different; having nothing in common with the good-natured badinage of Micky Mice and Who-were-you-with-last-night; out of key, real, dangerous. For perhaps thirty seconds it ran its course, stilling the genial uproar as a hawk stills the clamour of the hedgerow; not loud but so tremendously determined; a dark thing, a ghost, a cloud, a threat to the bright happy morning. “We want Raven. We want Raven.” Then Brodie and his legions came to their senses and drowned it in a yell of execration, a cannonade of stamping feet. Or perhaps it stopped of itself.

On the dais Professor Small advanced to read the ceremonial prayer, a duty he detested. At the sight the Hall, recovering, banded itself again in unison in the established Small-motif.

But this could not go on very long; if the original inventor of the ingenious parody had ever devised full words for it, nobody now remembered them and such as they did remember could not very well be sung in public. The chorus fizzled into muttering; Professor Small stood fiddling patiently with his beard, thinking “In god’s appointed time this pantomime will end and I will get back to those notes on Hesiod—the incredible fatuity of that textual emendation of Rothenstein’s. . . .” He came to himself with a start; the Hall was almost silent; Ludovic was giving him a nasty look. He began falteringly, “D-dominus——” and instantly there arose from the back the magnificently realistic bleating of a goat. It was done by a man called Ingram; it was his sole claim to distinction and he had done it at every public function for the last three years.

The Hall laughed heartily with happy relief. It was all right after all; it was all over. That nasty thundery moment had come to nothing; the black cloud that had hovered for thirty seconds had launched no bolt.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Presently the Macmurtrie Hall spewed forth its throng; they gathered on the turf banks above the Gledshaw Road, on the steps, outside class-rooms—anywhere so long as they could gather for talk and postpone action. At the foot of the long slopes Lee Fency sat in her horrid little car and Ivor Calder stood beside her. It was as if she lay in a bath, he thought, and he stood gazing down; but the thought gave him no feeling of superiority, nor—curiously enough—did he feel any desire to see her in a bath. He drew inspiration sometimes from Lee; but physically he disliked her rather than otherwise.

Lee said, “Well, little man; make a nice noise in there?”

Ivor said, “Much as usual.”

“You’re all good at that.”

“Well—what else is there?”

“Try doing something.”

“Such as?” He thought how extraordinarily green her eyes were under those black swathes of hair—like emeralds against black velvet; but then, as usual, she had spoilt it with her lipstick. Too red; too much.

“Take these sheep”—she waved the long cigarette-holder to show him—“Drill them a bit. Put some ideas into their fat heads. Or would that be too difficult?”

“Difficult. But we’re going to do it.”

“Oh, going to—going to; you’re always going to. But it doesn’t happen.”

“I can’t do much with a fellow who hides himself away in the south of France.”

“You really think he’s hiding?”

“Yes.”

“You poor mutt! He’s not afraid of you. He’s as tough as be-damned. He’ll come back all right. And you’ll all run along pulling his carriage and cheering.”

He took the cigarette-holder out of her mouth, drew at it and put it back.

“You’re in a nice friendly mood this morning, Lee.”

She laughed at last.

“I want a drink, blast you!”

“Well, that’s not my fault.” He stared at her with his brooding eyes in his long north-of-Scotland face; said, “Well—damnation to Abercloud!” put a hand on her shoulder and left her.

Lee lay for a minute smoking and dreaming. A little distance away she saw Guy Lessing talking to Yoey Ballantyne; the Ballantyne was clearly in form; her lovely head was back—to the full advantage of her white columnar throat; her eyes held Guy prisoner; her exquisite mouth was pouring out intensities. “And yet,” thought Lee, “she’s probably only telling him about her new classes; how I dislike that creature. Half-baked; but what can you expect from a grown woman who calls herself Yoey because as a child she couldn’t say Josephine?” Perversely, she willed Guy to look round and he did look round, and instantly his fine communion with the Ballantyne was broken. He began to fidget, to move his feet, to edge away. “Oh, curse!” she thought. “Now he’ll come here and talk about ‘Flodden.’ I don’t want ‘Flodden’ to-day. Why didn’t I leave him alone?” A dark shadow fell athwart the car; she stretched out a hand and said, “Peter!”

“Lee?” He had a rough deep voice; Scots, of course, but a Hebridean, ocean-echoing Scots.

“You don’t look too well this morning, Peter.”

“Don’t I?”

“Not too well. Who were you with last night?” He frowned abruptly. “Oh, come on, Peter, you know I don’t care what you do——”

Peter regarded her steadily. “So I supposed. But ye seem wonderfully interested all the same.”

She returned his stare. “The great brute,” she thought, “he’s the only man who can make me feel soft. He does need something so dreadfully. I wonder if he knows what it is.” Reminded of her own needs, she said, “Peter, I want a drink.”

“I could do with one myself.”

“Then get into the car and we’ll drive down to the Golf Club and I’ll give you one there. And hurry, because Guy Lessing’s coming.”

“There’s no room for me.”

“There is—if you squeeze. Come on, man, get in!” The nasty little car awoke to life, sputtered, exploded, banged away with a rasp of flying gravel. Lee said, “I’m going to drive fast; I want that drink,” but Peter only nodded, saying nothing and looking about him comfortably; his crisp black hair stirred in the wind of the car’s progress but was no more disarranged than hers. Conversation was impossible; the Gledshaw Road was so thronged with students returning to Saint Gunegilde’s and Saint Crydlan’s and the House that Lee was obliged to keep her horn continuously sounding; they shot through the wandering groups like threading a succession of needles. Stealing a glance at Peter, she saw he was completely at ease; “and yet,” she thought, “we must be a sight, bucketing along in this filthy little ashtray, jammed like sardines and the horn going and all. How they’ll gape; but he doesn’t seem to mind. I like him for that.” Peter thought, so far as he thought at all, “What a daft mouthpiece that is. And her green eyes and all the rest of it. And yet there’s a kind of dauntlessness——” They shot past the entrance to Gledshaw House and the road became suddenly deserted; Lee put down her foot; screaming in torture, the red car goaded herself up to seventy. Peter sat smiling; Lee could feel the muscles of his great hard thigh braced against her little soft one; it was nice, it was grand. . . . They did a racing turn through the Golf Club gates; they were in the Car Park; they were in the Mixed Bar, sitting at a table; here we are!

Peter said unexpectedly, “‘We have marched from the Indus to Spain, And by god, we will go there again.’”

Lee said, “By god we will. . . . Two dry Martinis, please, Joe. . . . You know, Peter, I could like you. . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In that side-chamber of the Macmurtrie Hall whence the procession of learning had emerged and whither it in due course returned, there had been, as was Ludovic’s custom, sherry. Ludovic stood his Staff sherry after the Opening Ceremony not because he liked them but because it was the imperial thing to do; there was a Government House touch about it which pleased him. He circulated- happily, unbending and playing the host. “Try this, Small”; “Winterbottom, another glass? A biscuit, then?” Graciousness, good-fellowship, but no equality, no equality. How could there be?

When the procession had returned to the side-room Ludovic had taken a good quick glass of sherry himself before anyone. For he had just had a nasty fright. He had been walking up the Hall as usual, listening to the banalities and the cat-calls and the not disagreeable thunder of “Lu-do-vic Inches” and wishing that Small, who preceded him, would brush the dandruff off the hood of his gown, when suddenly there had broken out that “We want Raven” he remembered so well and had hoped never to hear again. Keeping the Dante profile intact, he had felt within him a surge of furious hate, a positive blizzard of rage; “My god, let me destroy them; my god, let me tear them in bits!” And in that ungoverned moment the secret had struck. Just for as long as it took him to raise his foot to the first step of the dais and put it down there and draw the other one after it, he was smitten cold and dead and deaf; his heart stuttered, a band constricted on his forehead, his fingers twittered on the silk of his gown, he went far, far away. But indomitably he put the first foot forward again and his courage was rewarded; the trouble lifted from him like a mist and the first thing he heard from the returning world was that deep, sinister, concerted “We want Raven” still going on. Then the hullaballoo of the counter-blast and then ten thousand sounds as usual. His blood moved again; he mounted the dais.

But it had been a fright, because the secret had nearly been out. If he had gone down in a faint at the foot of those infernal steps, they would have had it. For the Emperor’s secret was simply this—that three years ago a London specialist had told him he had functional disease in his heart. “You should avoid excitement, Sir Ludovic; could you perhaps retire?” Retire! Sir Ludovic had smiled and paid his guineas and gone on with his exciting life. Nobody in Cloudstone or near it knew anything about this. In Cloudstone they said, “The man hasn’t a heart.” Grimly Sir Ludovic knew that he had.

At the sherry party he was entirely recovered; he went about as usual pressing this and that on his guests; on Small with his dandruff and his beard like a wisp of hay—sunk already in Hesiod; on Fency who did at least know he was drinking Manzanilla and not Oloroso—a gentleman, thank God; on Brewster—disappointing fellow somehow; on that excellent young man Hext who might get the Humanity Chair if Fency became impossible; on that appalling outsider Peter Ruey—Abercloud’s mistake. They all lapped it up and came back for more; Halkin—pompous ass and rather slack lately—was having a third sherry and a tenth—or twentieth—biscuit. He said to Sir Ludovic:

“Too much noise again. And some of these remarks—too thick.”

Sir Ludovic considered him. “Safety-valve, Halkin, safety-valve?”

“M’m. Why keep up such a head of steam?”

“Youth. Too much energy. But so long as it comes out at the safety-valve——”

“It’s still noisy.”

“Yes; but——” Halkin received that Ludovic smile which was almost equivalent to being called a damned fool in public—“I don’t think it really means anything. They go so far, you know, and no farther. So far and no farther.”

Peter Ruey was putting down an empty glass, not knowing that in a few minutes’ time he was to march from the Indus to Spain. He overheard, and he thought—and for two pins he would have said:

“You bloody old Canute!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Spot Niven, Edna McKillop’s brother, looked hungrily round his sister’s crowded dining-room. He was a foxy-faced, foxy-haired young man in a lean belted rain-coat and yellow-brown shoes; not so clever as he thought he was. “Madgie” had decently taken her offspring home after the Ceremony; Spot, true to tradition, had pursued.

“Got any cigarettes, Ed?”

Faithful to Willie’s instructions, his sister informed him that there were none in the house. Relenting, however, she pulled a battered white-metal case from her own capacious hand-bag. “There’s maybe some here.”

There was one; Spot took it and lit it. Blowing smoke, he said:

“Yon was a poor show.”

Edna regarded him sullenly. She envied him his reddish hair; Madgie had it too and Madgie’s even waved a little—and without mechanical aids. She saw in one of the spotted mirrors that embarrassed her walls her own hair—black as ink and straight as a pencil. The young woman in the hairdresser’s had said that a “page’s bell” would become her; she saw now that it didn’t—never would. But more than their hair she envied her brother and sister their comfortable bourgeois North-Bankery; they at least were free of false gods and the necessity—knowing them false—of defending them. Nevertheless she retorted:

“A poor show? What were you expecting?”

“I expected a Heligolander of a row. That’s what I came for. That’s what the Advertiser wanted to hear.”

“But, Spot, it’s a solemn ceremony.”

“Solemn my elbow! If singing Sam Hall and Micky Mouse is a solemn ceremony. It’s like everything else on the South Bank—it’s a sham!”

Edna tried dignity. “If that’s your opinion——”

“Ach, ye needna come the grand over me, Ed. I know too much. Why didn’t that Hielant fellow—what’s-his-name——”

“Calder?”

“Ay, Calder. Why didn’t he get going? We heard in Cloudstone that he and his boys were out to burst up the show. Why didn’t they?”

“Because they’ve more sense.”

“They’ve as much sense as a fried-fish shop. No, no, Ed, they funked it. They know what’s comin’ to them.”

“And what’s that, Spot?”

“Aha! Ye’d like to know that, wouldn’t ye! . . . I suppose ye havena another cigarette? No? Ah, well. . . . Would it surprise ye to know, Mrs. McKillop, that there was a hundred fellows over in Cloudstone sitting waiting a ’phone-call to come across and beat Mr. Calder up?”

It was not strictly true; it was not even nearly true; but there were circumstances in which it might have been true and Spot thought that good enough. Edna was impressed, a little frightened.

“Town versus Gown. Oh, Spot!——”

“Town versus Gown, my lass. You said it. Well, it’s bound to come. And the Advertiser hoped it would come to-day.”

“But why? What good——”

“Because a row’s news and peace is nothing. And if there’s no news Spottie can’t live. And ye wouldn’t like that, would ye?”

Edna felt that she could at least endure some less drastic sequel in which the dearth of news in Cloudstone drove Spot away to some more fecund locality—say, London. Distant, anyway. She said, however:

“No. But I don’t understand. What would the row be about?”

Spot squared his none-too-massive shoulders.

“It’s like this, Ed. There’s a few of them over on the North Bank has had quite enough of your old Varsity and all these airs and graces ye put on over here. Dammit, they made the place, didn’t they? And when it comes to setting up impudence to a man like Lord Abercloud——”

“But who’s setting up impudence?”

“Ye heard it to-day. All that ‘we-want-Raven’ stuff. Well, over on the North Bank Lord Abercloud’s Bonnie Prince Charlie plus Kemal Ataturk plus the Pope o’ Rome, and if Calder and these smart lads of yours set up against him—as we hear they’re going to do—well, they’re playing with fire and God help them, that’s all.”

His vehemence terrified Edna; she said, to reassure herself, “Ach, it’ll not happen.”

“Maybe ay an’ maybe no—as the girl told the sojer. God help your rotten old Varsity if it does.”

Affronted at last, Edna drew herself up.

“You’ve no call to speak like that of the Varsity, Spot——”

“Ach, Varsity! Don’t Varsity me. . . . Look here, Eddie, lend us half a crown.”

Sighing, she found him a shilling because he had once been a red-haired little boy. But when he had gone she sat thinking. “‘There’s a few of them over on the North Bank has had quite enough of your old Varsity.’ Yes,” thought Edna McKillop, “and there’s one over here has had pretty nearly enough of it too!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The Provost of Cloudstone drove home from the Ceremony with Lady Abercloud. They had known one another from infancy—in fact, they were cousins. It was an uncomfortable drive but not worse than Sir Ewart had expected. He said from time to time:

“Ach, Chattie, they’re just laddies.”

“But, Ewart, the cheek of them.”

“Tchah!”

“So rude and ill-mannered. Singing and shouting all these rude things to the poor Professors——”

Sir Ewart said again, “Just laddies”; but he knew it was not the rude things sung and shouted to the poor Professors that really rankled. And presently his companion came to it.

“And they would dare to mention the name of that—that horrible man.”

“Raven?”

“Yes, Raven. I thought we had heard the last of him, anyway.”

“So we have.”

“Ewart, are you sure?”

“Sure? I’m dead certain. As sure as we’re riding in this car.”

“Well, it’s more than I am. I think we’ll hear more yet—if not in one way, then in another. And anyway—and anyway”—the real bitterness, the real rankle burst out of her at last—“couldn’t some of the other great sumphs have shouted back, ‘We want Abercloud’?” . . .

4

It was one of Michael Hext’s infirmities that if he took alcohol at lunch-time it deranged his afternoon; he despised himself for it, but he could no more help it than he could help reddening when they sang Micky Mouse songs at him in public. Even his two glasses of Ludovic’s Manzanilla left in him a stirring spirit of adventure that made it impossible to sit still. A wet afternoon developed, rendering a walk—the natural catharsis—out of the question; at tea-time Micky thought he would go over to Cloudstone and see if Fleming’s had got that book he had ordered. It was called Less Usual Rhythms in Post-Augustan Prosody, and Micky was anxious to see if it contained any Rhythms so Less Usual that he had not already encountered them. Conjointly with Probyn, the Lecturer in Physics, he owned an Austin Seven, kept for just such emergencies; having ascertained by telephone that Probyn was not using this vehicle and did not intend to, Micky unearthed it from its shed and drove himself across the Cloud Bridge.

The arrival or non-arrival of Less Usual Rhythms remained unsolved, for when Micky was still some distance from Fleming’s shop he saw a minor commotion in the street in front of him. A saloon car appeared to be involved in it and a hawker’s barrow; the usual gapers lined the kerb. Micky was about to draw out and pass the obstacle with that “could-never-happen-to-me” expression affected by motorists on such occasions when he was loudly hailed by the voice of Guy Lessing.

“I say! Hold hard. Hold hard a minute!”

Obligingly Micky pulled up and enquired what had happened.

“I bumped into this filthy fruit-barrow.” Guy was hatless and flushed; quite clearly he was a little elevated.

“I was going to the station to meet my sister. He’s making a song and dance——”

“I see. Are you—are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. I’m not tight if that’s what you mean. But we were playing pills in the Union—filthy wet afternoon; I forgot all about this rotten train. I was hurrying——”

Tacitly admitting his error, Micky asked if he could help in any way.

“You just can. If you’d like to be awfully kind, you can go on and meet my sister and take her to the Brewsters’. I’ll have to cope with this hell-hound.”

“But can you?”

“Oh, yes. He’ll fizzle out. There’s no damage done really——” He glanced in some embarrassment at his watch. “As a matter of fact the train was due three minutes ago——”

Micky said, “Then I’d better be going, hadn’t I? How am I to know your sister?”

“Oh, you’ll know her all right. Tallish. Bit like me, but older. Probably wearing green. Probably blue luggage.”

“Well—” Micky engaged his gear.

As he moved off Guy bawled after him, “Her name’s Freda.” Afterwards Micky liked to remember it was the first time he heard it.

At the station there was no difficulty at all. Its gloomy cobbled yard was entirely deserted save for two somnolent taxis and the figure of a girl standing on the kerb outside the main entrance. A blue suit-case and a blue hat-box reposed beside her, but as to dress she was not conspicuously green; most of her indeed was covered by a slate-coloured waterproof and for the rest she had brown shoes and a brown hat. Nor, thought Micky, driving up with a flourish, was she specially like Guy except that she was fair with those horizon-blue eyes the colour of a French uniform; her nose was straight like Guy’s, but not—like his—-too long; her mouth was big rather than small, but not—like his—too loose. In fact she was nowhere “too” anything; on the contrary she was astonishingly attractive—so slim, so patient, so forlorn like that railway poster of the dog they didn’t take. She was more than attractive; she was—she was Micky disengaged himself from the Austin—never an easy or a graceful accomplishment for one of his length—and said, “Are you Miss Lessing?”

She admitted it, smiling a little coldly.

“My name’s Hext. I’m doing duty for Guy. He’s had a bit of trouble with the car——”

She accepted him. “I suppose he ran into something?”

“Well, in a small way—yes.”

“He generally does. Well, I’m glad you’ve come. I was beginning to feel rather unwanted.”

Staring at her, he thought wildly, “How in God’s name—how in any conceivable place or at any conceivable time—could you ever be that? You must always be wanted everywhere.” And he saw that her hair came out in a little curl under her hat and above her ear; a curious shape, a new shape, a shape that stirred him . . . She put up a hand to it and said:

“Is there anything the matter with me?”

He flushed guiltily—caught staring?—muttered something about a resemblance to Guy and plunged for her suit-cases. He said, “I’m afraid this is a very small car”—(a fact he was generally prepared to deny with acrimony)—but she got in without comment, merely smiling. Merely, but how beautifully! They drove off in style, but as they started the off back door burst open—a trick it had—and her umbrella fell out into the yard. Micky thought, “Oh, curse this rotten car!”; but she was out after it in a trice—neatly and easily. He said, “Give it a good bang,” and she banged the door and came back to his side without contortions or awkwardness, tucking herself in competently. He said with idiotic heartiness, “Now we’re off!”—and they were; and immediately his tongue became paralysed, he could think of nothing to say. Desperately he sought for one of those magic short-cut phrases that project speaker and hearer at once into warm friendship, but nothing would occur to him and she didn’t help—simply sat looking about her interestedly and drumming her fingers on her knee. She had an emerald ring on her right hand—the stone small but fine, a flawless dark green. . . . He said, despising himself:

“I don’t think you’ve been here before?”

“I haven’t. I’ve been coming every year for years. But never came. . . . Is it all like this?”

They were passing through the Tradesmarket, an ancient square, cobbled and ugly; on one side of it stood the Labour Exchange, on the other a Board School; in the middle the sooty statue of the sixteenth—and last—Earl of Cloud. Against the walls of the Labour Exchange and on the convenient flat steps of the statue lounged and sat the unemployed of Cloudstone—men of all ages in sad-coloured suits, some with collars and ties, some without. Most of these men had once known work but there was a large percentage who had never seen a pay envelope, who had lived on the Dole since they came to working years. There they sat and stared; and nothing happened. They made remarks to one another which must have been made a thousand times already; and nothing happened. One felt they would welcome anything—war, accident, an air raid, revolution, death—but nothing happened. . . . Thinking, “It’s like driving through a native village; like foreigners,” Micky brought himself back to his passenger’s question.

“Like this? Good Lord, no.” (But a good deal of Cloudstone was.) “This is the North Bank. We’re on the South—other side of the Cloud. It’s quite different over there—it’s really rather fine. You must go to see Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey.”

“Saint who?”

“Saint Gunegilde.”

“I never heard of her.”

You wouldn’t. I don’t think she’s known except round hereabouts. But we think a lot of her.”

“Why? Did she do anything wonderful?”

“Yes. She had the Golden Mist.”

“The Golden Mist?”

“Yes. You see, there was a King of the Picts who said he’d embrace Christianity if Saint Gunegilde would let him and his retinue see her without any clothes on. So she——” He hesitated.

“Well, of course, she had to. Go on.”

“Well, she threw off her cloak or whatever it was—I suppose it was pretty easy undressing in those days—-and there she stood. And instantly the King of the Picts was struck blind and his retinue couldn’t see a thing because a miraculous Golden Mist surrounded the Saint. They could only see her head and her feet and—well, the Mist.”

“I see. And did the King of the Picts embrace Christianity?”

“Naturally he did.”

“I don’t think it was naturally at all. I think it was pretty sporting of him. He didn’t get his money’s worth, did he?”

“No, but he got a first-class miracle.”

“I’d rather have kept my sight. No, I think the poor King was done. Didn’t she then miraculously cure him?”

“It doesn’t say so.”

“She should have . . . What’s this place?”

They were in Powder Square, the hub of Cloudstone. In the middle of it stood the Toll Tower on the worn and ancient Plainstones, now adorned with Public Lavatories for either sex, suitably apart. Round the stairhead of the Gentlemen’s crowded more unemployed in their tweed caps and mufflers, their blue or brown shabby suits. Some of them laughed and talked or scanned the racing news in a communal paper; but the majority again just stared. Their stare was neither hostile nor friendly, neither curious nor interested; it was the stare of cows in a field, the patient stare of those who have long despaired of anything worth staring at, yet cannot, from force of habit, close their eyes. There was nothing to do but stare, watch, see; they were permanent spectators; even to descend into the Gentlemen’s Lavatory for a few minutes was at least something to do—which was perhaps why they clustered so faithfully round its doorway. They watched Michael Hext and Freda Lessing driving past as they would have watched anything else.

He began to tell her about Powder Square, but almost immediately she interrupted him.

“What an extraordinary name that Hotel has!”

He saw she was looking at the Hare of Cloud; its Bars, Public and Saloon, were shut at that hour of the day, but Micky had the curious thought, “How awful it would be if the doors suddenly burst open and Peter Ruey came shooting out and I had to say, ‘That’s our Zoology Demonstrator.’” But the doors did not burst open any more than the unemployed burst into bomb-hurling activity, and Micky said only:

“Oh, the Hare of Cloud? That’s another of our notables.”

“Did he—it—embrace Christianity too?”

“No; it did something more useful. It was a magic sort of Hare and it kept on finding treasures for the Earls of Cloud who lived at Cloud Castle. It always turned up when things were specially bad. It found the money to build Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey; it found the Cloud diamonds when they were lost—oh, all sorts of things.”

“The nice creature! What became of it?”

“The last Earl’s father—who was a most awful ass—mistook it one day for a real hare and shot it. Then, of course, everything stopped and the family came to an end and so on.”

“A pity.”

“Yes . . . The Hare’s a sort of mascot hereabouts; you give it to anyone you specially like. You see it all over the place. This is it on my tie.”

“Oh, now I see. I thought they were little flowers. And speaking of that, I suppose you’re one of Guy’s friends. Are you a student?”

A thrill of idiotic pleasure shot through Micky: “Anyway,” it said, “she can’t think you look hopelessly old.” He beamed.

“No, I’m not a student. Except in the sense that we all are. I’m a lecturer really. Human—er, Latin.”

She turned and gave him a full smile, so sweet, so kind that he almost let go the wheel.

“Oh, what a brick to drop! I am sorry . . . Then it must have been frightful cheek of Guy to ask you to meet me. And it was all the kinder of you to come.”

Mortified, Micky felt himself getting red again; yet what could a man say to such things? He muttered some intolerable paraphrase of “Not at all” and said quickly, “Here comes the Cloud Bridge. The Prince of Wales—I mean the King—opened it.”

She said, “It’s ugly. I don’t think I like Cloudstone.”

“Wait till you see the South Bank.” But when at last the South Bank did appear it seemed unaccountably drab and dull. The University was merely a large building—terribly new in parts; Professor Brewster’s house—which presented itself far too soon—was no more than a desirable residence. And Judith, standing in the doorway, was anything but desirable; she was a figure of doom, an Atropos, a thread-slashing Fate saying, “Now this delicious interlude must end; now I must take her away; back, You, to your notes for to-morrow’s lecture and the Less Usual Rhythms of Post-Augustan Prosody.” But before she could say anything of the kind, Micky, slowing to a crawl, blurted out his heart.

“I say!”

“Yes?”

“Will you promise me something?”

“Well—that depends a bit, doesn’t it?” But she smiled with her firm mouth, her horizon-blue eyes; she was encouraging.

“It’s nothing very dreadful. Only this; I don’t want you to see Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey till I can take you there and show it to you. It’s—it’s rather a place of mine.”

Smiling still, she said, “That’s not very difficult.”

“Then you’ll promise me?”

“I promise you.” And oh! thought Micky, what three lovely, what three perfect words! But in an instant there was Atropos-Judith, abhorred shears in hand.

“Upon my word, Mr. Hext; I don’t know what to say. Most kind of you. Really, Freda——”

“It wasn’t my fault, Judy.”

“I know, I know. But really there are times when I think Guy ought to be certified.”

“He’s got back then?”

“No; he rang up from Neill’s Garage; it seems he dinted the mudguard—they’re hammering it out. He’s just an affliction. I suppose he was thinking of a rhyme to something——” But her eyes began to play over Micky and Freda; quite clearly behind this barrage of speech she was thinking, “I ought to ask him in; I don’t want to ask him in just now.” Quite clearly Micky saw it. Banalities, hesitations, confusions began to cloud the air—the rarefied air of this wonderful afternoon that must not at all be clouded. He said suddenly and firmly, “I’ll write about the Abbey, then?”; and she nodded; and away he drove.

But he drove in a fog, in a mist, perhaps in the Golden Mist of Saint Gunegilde. As the Golden Mist of old had hidden the Saint from the peering Picts, so this Golden Mist hid Michael Hext from himself. It completely obscured the fact that he was a Lecturer in Humanity on a miserably inadequate salary. It completely obscured the facts that within the hour he would have to call on Professor Fency and have it out with him over the question of those Ordinary Proses; that his notes for an introductory lecture on the Latin Lyricists were confused, incomplete and illegible; that he did not know yet whether the Honours Humanity Class would be worth a damn; that he was still unpossessed of the Less Usual Rhythms. Worse still, it completely effaced from his memory his obligation to send a large proportion of his salary to his mother in Gloucestershire; and with it the consciousness of that other place in Gloucestershire which they called for courtesy a “Mental Home.” For the time being he had no mother, no sister who wasn’t right in her head, no self. And completely, blastingly and irrevocably it wiped out the Ballantyne; there was no Ballantyne. Not even her head and her feet were to be seen; only the Golden Mist.

And out of the Mist a voice said, “I promise you.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Part Two: Martinmas

1

Edna McKillop’s favourite day was Sunday. She was a good woman and therefore her cardinal emotion was fear—fear of herself, fear of her neighbour, fear of a curious ill-defined abstraction she called “God.” On Sundays this oppression was at its lightest. She was less afraid of herself because there was little to do and consequently fewer mistakes she could make; she was less afraid of her neighbour because she had on her best clothes; and she was less afraid of “God” because she spent a considerable portion of the day in placating and propitiating him. She took the elder children to the University Chapel and “taught” thereafter in a Cloudstone Sunday School; only her own shy conscientious well-meaning soul knew the agony this last involved. The Sunday School children were stupid or mischievous or aggravating; and just because it was Sunday School it had to be love, love, love all the time—never a good hearty soul-relieving slap. They pulled her leg frightfully, the little beasts; and sometimes it was only long afterwards, in bed at night, that she realised it had been pulled. But Willie always realised it and explained to her, fully if kindly, just how.

Edna and Willie differed on only two subjects, but these were subjects of some magnitude—“God” and the North Bank. Before their marriage she had promised herself she would reclaim Willie for the church (she had even promised “God” this if he would give her Willie) and she had signally and completely failed. She could not even keep her end up with him in argument. Willie was an “atheist”; and had therefore the advantage of being able to argue from a single clear-cut negative; whereas the more Edna tried to elucidate her “God,” the more confused his image became. Willie, firing from an impregnable position—or so it seemed to Edna—shot him to ribbons. She stuck to her guns (as she did in the case of Madgie and Spot); she told her children “God is always watching you” (an idea that did not strike her as either absurd or intolerable); but sometimes she had the feeling, hastily suppressed, that “God” did not back her up as he might have done. Just as sometimes, in her very heart of hearts, she felt that Madgie and Spot and the other North-Bank friends did, just the least thing, let her down.

At all events Sunday was her favourite day; and on fine Sunday afternoons she always went for a walk with Willie—a walk tending yearly to grow shorter with Edna’s supply of breath and energy. On the second Sunday of this Martinmas Term she said to Willie:

“Let’s go to Lovers’ Abbey.”

Willie was snappish. As usual he had eaten too much too quickly; as usual he was aggrieved because he had been obliged to sit through a Chapel service. Why? Because Ludovic “liked it.” Fulminating about “fetishes” and “medicine-men,” Willie had to attend; and it rankled. He said, testily:

“Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey. How many times am I to tell ye?”

Edna said placidly, “I like Lovers’ Abbey better.”

“Ye would. Well, anyway, Lovers’ Abbey or Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey, come on.”

They made their way along the broad Gledshaw Road, past Guney’s and Gryds and The House, Edna regaling her spouse with gentle gossip and wondering, in the searching late-October sunlight, whether she would not have been wiser to have gone in for a rather deeper shade of blue. But there was something on her mind and suddenly she said:

“Willie!”

“M’m?”

“Mrs. Small’s asked us to a whist drive.”

He said absently, “That’s fine.” But apparently it wasn’t fine.

“I don’t know . . . Willie, I don’t want to go.”

“And why not, Ed?”

“Well, she never asked us to tea or lunch or anything. None of the Prof’s wives ever ask me to tea. Now she asks us to a whist drive. With just everybody.”

“Ach, well, what about it? It’ll be fun.”

“It won’t. Nobody plays whist nowadays except—except people like us.”

“Who’s ‘people like us,’ dearie?”

“Och, you know fine what I mean. . . . Willie, don’t be angry; I’ve refused.”

“Oh? And what did ye say?”

“I just said, ‘Mr. and Mrs. McKillop regret their inability.’ Quite correct and all that. But I don’t regret our inability. I’m not going to be treated like this——”

Willie said, “Hoots!”

“It’s not ‘Hoots.’” But she was relieved to see that he wasn’t angry after all. “We’ve got to stand up for ourselves——”

Absently, Willie agreed. He had a sudden vision of the Emperor being gracious with his Manzanilla, being even complimentary, asking after Edna and the children—and thinking all the time, “Low people—not our class.” Not enough sail, eh? He said:

“Well, all right. It’ll maybe do them good to see the worm turning.”

“I’m not a worm, Willie.”

“Are ye not, Ed?” But he put his arm affectionately through hers. “Ye’re a nice wee worm, anyway.”

She said ruefully, “I’m certainly not wee either.” But the pressure of his arm made her happy, the awful thing was off her mind and—Willie wasn’t angry, she had done the right thing after all. Relieved, she dismissed the current materialisation of fear; relieved, she turned to another.

“Willie, is it true there was an awful row at the football match yesterday?”

“What football match?”

“The Soccer match with the Town.”

“I don’t know; I wasn’t there; I went to the Rugger.” Willie, who had never played Rugby in his life and understood it very little, followed it as the more aristocratic game; the “Soccer crowd” were “rather ticks”—these, he thought, were the correct phrases. “But I believe there was a kind of unpleasantness. Not a row. Not an awful row, anyway. Just barracking.”

“What’s barracking, Willie?”

“Oh—picking on the players and making nasty remarks. There was a crowd of chaps came over from Cloudstone, organised-like. When the second half began they started barracking and naturally the students gave them a bit of it back. I believe it wasn’t too nice. But I wasna there.”

“But why, Willie?”

“God knows—it’s never happened before. Things aren’t just very comfortable just now, dearie; I don’t know what it is. If ye ask me, there’ll be a hell of a row one day yet.”

“Ach, who wants rows?”

“Some do, dearie. There’s always somebody that wants a fight; that’s why we have wars.”

Edna thought of Spot and his “a row’s news and peace is nothing”; yes, there were people who wanted rows. Fear in a new form assailed her.

“You don’t think anything will happen, Willie?”

“I’ve just told ye I do. The air’s getting thick; we want a spot o’ thunder. There’s a gang of daft idiots in this Varsity that’s getting out of hand—these Harriers as they call themselves. They’re up against the Town and they’re up against Abercloud and they’re up against Ludovic.”

“The cheek of them!”

Willie gave her a sly look. “I suppose you would say it was tempting God?”

“I would certainly never say any such thing.”

“Well, it would be more sensible-like than some things ye do say. It would be true, anyway. And when your old God’s tempted he sometimes falls just like you and me and then he hits back, and by gosh he hits hard!”

Edna, thinking in her heart it was a pity these Harriers could not hear him, said primly that he shouldn’t blaspheme.

“I’m not blaspheming . . . But yon Ballantyne and the rest, they’re all thrilled, as they call it, about what’s going to happen. Maybe they’ll get more thrills than they bargain for.”

“Maybe so will Sir Ludovic.”

“Ay . . . But Ludovic’s been asking for it. All this ‘just because I say so.’ Ye canna manage lads of spirit like that. Ludovic’s a grand man, but he’s got as much tact as my foot. He’s a schoolmaster, that’s what Ludovic is.”

“He’s a slave-driver.” Silently she hated Sir Ludovic.

“He slave-drives you.”

“No, he doesna, then. I do my job and Ludovic canna make me do more and he canna make me do less.”

Edna brooded, trudging along, staring ahead of her.

“Willie, this job’s not worth it.”

“Not worth what?”

“Not worth all the trouble. You working and working and trying to keep upsides with folk that don’t like you. Me always sticking up for the Varsity to Madgie and Spot, pretending to think it grand. . . . And then we get asked to a whist drive!”

“Well? We’re not going.”

“No. But I’m getting tired of your old Varsity, Willie, that’s what I am.”

Willie said “Ach!” and wondered what to say next; but fortunately at that moment they reached the Abbey. With suspicious gratefulness Edna plumped down on the stone bench just inside the gate.

“I’m not coming a step farther.”

“Ach, come on round.”

“No. You smoke a cigarette and then we’ll go back to our tea.”

Willie lit his cigarette; its blue smoke rose spinning in the unagitated air. Edna surreptitiously slipped off her shoes and wished she could do the same with her corsets; dismally she thought, “I can’t reduce; if I starve I only get wind.” Dotingly she glanced at Willie; he looked peaky, fatigued—he worked too hard, victim of the slave-driver. But in some marvellous way he went on loving her and for that glory to God . . . Suddenly she saw his face light up with keenness; he leaned forward and following his gaze, she saw that a man and a woman had come round the corner of the Abbey buildings. They were walking slowly, looking downward; the man wore a sports jacket and flannels; the woman—who was tall and tantalisingly slim—had a light-green coat with a fur-edged collar. With the eager curiosity of their kind, Willie and Edna were instantly alert and staring.

“Who’s yon, Ed?”

Edna peered, rocking herself slightly to improve the angles.

“It’s Mr. Hext.”

“Ach, Edna! Do I not know Micky Hext? I mean, who’s the woman?”

“I don’t know . . . Yes, I do, Willie. It’s that half-sister of Mrs. Brewster’s. I saw her in Chapel this morning. . . . He’ll be showing her the Abbey.”

Willie’s little eyes peered lasciviously. “She’ll be showing him something too maybe. She’s a bonny thing. What’s her name?”

“Lessing. She has a brother at the Varsity.”

“Yon looney.”

“If you call him a looney.”

“I do. I call any chap a looney who comes up to the Varsity and spends his time drinking whiskey and writing poems and chasing yon Ballantyne . . . And speaking o’ the Ballantyne, Ed, I thought Hext——”

Edna shook her head. “She just ran after him.”

“Ay, well, maybe. But I think he was a wee bit taken up with her too. Anyway, he’s well out of it. Another looney. . . . And I think Hext must be a looney himself, wandering round here without his coat on. It’s cold. Come on, Ed. Me for the tea.”

Obediently Edna stuffed her poor feet back into their prisons and rose—rather creakingly—to do his bidding. The other two came slowly half-way to the gate and then as if by mutual consent wheeled and went away back behind the east window. They were still looking at the ground much more than at the ruins of Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey.

There had indeed been a “kind of unpleasantness” at the football match and the awful row was at one time not very far distant; there was at any rate sufficient noise to attract spectators from the neighbouring Rugger pitch where an exciting game was going on. The Soccer match with Cloudstone Town was never exciting; it was more in the nature of a traditional function like the Opening Ceremony; it was understood that on the second Saturday of the Martinmas Term the Varsity played the Town, but not even the Captains of either side cared who won. There was tea afterwards—sometimes there were more potent drinks than tea, sometimes a good deal of them; there was a certain amount of “fraternising.” It was a useful institution, it fulfilled a purpose, Ludovic encouraged it.

This year all was different. Normally no one from Cloudstone dreamt of attending the match; this year the visiting team brought several bus-loads of supporters. Perhaps three hundred strong—now, who paid for all that?—these banded themselves into a group near the north-west corner flag. They were the same sort of beings—but young men mostly—as those derelict spectators in Powder Square and the Tradesmarket; and they made no bones about their attitude or intentions. They booed and jeered; they barracked with increasing bitterness; when a Varsity forward fell and was hurt, they yelled like hyaenas; you heard hate in it. By the second half they were the undoubted centre of attraction on the University Fields that afternoon.

Perhaps only the complete unexpectedness of the trouble—and it was completely unexpected—prevented a free fight from breaking out; perhaps if the game had gone on another ten minutes it would have broken out. As it was, the contest closed in a pandemonium of yells and counter-yells, insults and counter-insults. The Cloudstone team then created history by refusing tea, refusing everything, departing in their buses with their mob. Their Captain was shiftily apologetic and convinced nobody.

Spot Niven, who had a good reporter’s nose, was leaving the field with a well-filled notebook when he encountered Ivor Calder. Spot and Ivor had clashed before, but Spot, feeling one up on the day, said civilly that it was a fine afternoon. Ivor, in a cold hate, looked him up and down.

“Grand. Carrion plentiful?”

“Eh?”

“I said, is carrion plentiful? Finding plenty garbage?”

Spot flushed and forgot his amiability. “I earn my living, anyway. I’m doing a job of work and that’s better than sitting on my bum doing nothing like some I could mention. If I’d been sent to a Varsity——”

“Ah, if!”

“—I’d have tried to get some good out of it instead of kicking up trouble. And you’ll maybe not be there so very long yourself, Mister Calder.”

“Oh?”

“No. Your Principal knows how to deal with the likes of you. I’d go back and learn my books for a bit if I were you, sonny.”

The “sonny” irritated Ivor; that and the knowledge that he was making an unnecessary cad of himself. He said:

“Pity you can’t. . . . Who paid for those buses?”

“I don’t know.” But Spot did know.

“Somebody did. This was a put-up show.”

“You’re telling me,” said Spot, and departed not unsatisfied.

Ivor, moving towards the gate and thinking, “Why do I go on like that?” was hailed by Speed. Speed said explosively:

“By God, that was a bit thick!”

Ivor agreed.

“Those swine!” said Speed, blowing. “Why didn’t we scrum them off the ground? Oh, I know what you’ll say—not time yet and so on——”

“Well, neither it is. Wait a bit.”

“We ought to have socked them.”

“No, we oughtn’t. They wanted a row; that was what they came for.”

“Well, they should have got it . . . And look here, Ivor, there’s another thing that’s a bit too thick. See that?”

In a remote corner of the field, dim already in the falling October haze, stood two small figures, male and female. The male figure wore a very heavy and very ill-fitting overcoat; the female over-topped him by half a head. Ivor, staring, said:

“It’s that Indian fresher. Rameswara Rao.”

“Yes.”

“And the Tasker.”

“Yes. I know what you’re thinking, Ivor; I know she’s god-awful. But after all, she’s Varsity. And she’s white. . . . They’ve been there the whole ruddy afternoon.”

Ivor stood staring into the mist, rent by contraries. Half of him wanted to say, “For God’s sake stop being such a Pukka Sahib or else go and live in Kentucky or somewhere where they worry about these things.” The other half shouted, “Damnable, damnable; deal with it!” As he said in fact nothing at all, Speed went plunging on.

“It isn’t good enough, that sort of thing. I wish we had my old man here; he’d say a few well-chosen words.”

Ivor was still silent, still disrupted. That first part of him said, tacitly, “Then your old man must be as great an ass as you are”; that second part, “Beat him up, beat him up.” But if a poor little devil from faraway Madras found a woman to talk to him ; and if that godforsaken object found a man, why worry? Yet he knew that “Beat him up” or its equivalent was what he would end by saying. Why? Ah, if one knew that— Looking into Speed’s anxious face, he said at last:

“What do you propose to do about it?”

“We ought to stop it.”

“Who ought?”

“Well—the Harriers.”

“It isn’t the Harriers’ job.”

“It’s the sort of thing the Harriers were founded for; you know it is.”

Ivor couldn’t deny it; vigilance had been among the Founders’ official objects—the unofficial being to drink a good deal and pose as anti-Town and sing bawdy songs about Saint Gunegilde. The unofficial objects had survived the better.

“Well, you can bring it up at the meeting next week.”

“O.K. I will.” Speed drew a breath of relief; admiring Ivor devotedly, he had been of late a little doubtful of what he would have called his guts. And he wasn’t the only one either; there was a sort of anti-Ivor feeling. . . . He said stoutly, “We’ll give him castor-oil.” And he persuaded himself that Ivor nodded.

They wandered away together. And the little man Rameswara Rao from Bezwada stood on in the gathering mist, oblivious to the chilling cold, oblivious to everything, pouring out his poor little heart. At last he had got a woman, an English woman, a Varsity woman, to talk to; and he was telling her and telling her about India and the temples and the paddy-fields and the pilgrims bathing in the Kistna and the Dipavali lamps they would be lighting just now at home. He was telling her and telling her and telling her. He did not know that she was plain-looking and stupid; he did not know that the Varsity said “Oh, my God!” at mention of her name. He only knew she would listen to him as he poured out his pent-up memories, as he strewed before her those treasures he longed to look at but so rarely dared to uncover . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

As Micky and Freda turned into the Brewsters’ gate, the University Chapel bell began to ring; it was answered by a remoter dissonance from the North Bank; from steeple after steeple Edna McKillop’s “God” began to demand the presence of his faithful. Gasping a little, as if he came up out of deep water, Micky said:

“I’d no idea it was so late.”

It was dark, but he thought she smiled. Unmistakably she said:

“I had, I’m afraid. But I wasn’t caring; I was enjoying myself.”

“I’m so glad . . . Well, you’ve seen Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey.”

“And I’m freed of my promise?”

“Promise?”

“You don’t mind my going back there by myself now?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“I mean I want to go back.”

“But not necessarily by yourself.”

“Well—no. No. Of course not.”

“I thought perhaps—I thought perhaps—you’d let me take you again another day. There’s still a lot to show you. And I feel—I sort of feel—it belongs to us now.”

“It did seem to welcome us, didn’t it?”

“It liked us. It liked you. I knew it would.”

“Well—we’ll go back someday soon. It won’t run away.”

“No; but what about you?”

“Oh, I’ll be here. If I don’t have a row with Judith I’ll be here till Christmas, anyway.”

“Then for heaven’s sake don’t have a row.”

“All right. I won’t.”

There was a minute’s silence; in the cold still October evening the church bells rattled and jangled, the hurrying feet of the devout tap-tapped the pavements. But nobody could invade the Brewsters’ front garden; there one could tarry alone with wonder; there the church bells were the chime of angels and the tapping feet a dance of fairies. There Freda said, unguardedly:

“I have had a lovely afternoon.”

Even in the dark her eyes fell before his eagerness.

“I’m so glad. Because so have I.”

“Perfect. You’ve been terribly kind.”

“Of course I haven’t . . . . Isn’t it funny how some days are just different. I mean, nothing happens, nothing exciting, nothing wonderful; you don’t go anywhere special or do anything much——”

“I know. Nothing wonderful——”

“No. And yet the days stand out. They’re different.”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t they!”

2

Once started, the Martinmas Term advanced on the established lines of all Martinmas Terms which had preceded it: presented with their clean slate, all concerned set themselves to reinscribe thereon as close a copy as possible of the previous images. The students attended their classes or didn’t, played games or slacked, held meetings; Alma, the fortnightly University Magazine, made its staid appearance neither brighter nor more boring than usual. Professor Brewster delivered his stock lectures on the Restoration Dramatists, punctuating them with the stock salacious—and slightly sheepish—witticisms. Professor Small was lost in Pindar, his class floundering hopelessly behind him. Professor Fency drew the attention of the Ordinary Humanity to the stylistic contrast between Cicero and Tacitus—as he had done for twenty years; and wondered—as he had done for twenty years—whether any member of the class would ever have the brains—or was it the heart?—to appreciate the essence of antiquity—the tradition, gift, achievement that transcended Cicero and Tacitus and all other components. . . . Peter Ruey with large deft hands that never shook even after the wildest North Bank night made astonishingly perfect displays of the vesicles of the earth-worm and the reproductive ducts of Helix. . . . Only to Micky Hext, lecturing to his captured Honours Humanity on Catullus—their “special book”—only to Micky Hext was there really a clean slate, really a new term. Expounding a brilliant textual emendation of Munro’s or Ellis’s, he would look from his window and see, fluttering outside, a green coat with a fur-edged collar; and instantly Munro, Ellis, Rossbach, Conington, Behrens’ Analecta, Catullus himself and all his commentators crashed into non-importance. “Amor sinistra dextram sternuit approbationem”; “Love, standing on the left, sneezed towards the right his blessing.” He did; indeed he did. . . . In the October breezes the Golden Mist swayed this way and that; sometimes—and in these times Micky was happy—it was dense, impenetrable; at others—and in these times Micky was wretched—the breeze blew it to shreds and he saw through it, saw through himself, saw through the falsity of promise and hope. (“I’ve got a mad sister; I’ve got a mad sister; what have I to do with any other woman?”) But mostly, blind as the Pictish King, he went headlong on from day to day.

The Term went on too. Soon it would be the eleventh of November—Martinmas Day, Armistice Day; no classes; a Chapel service (but you needn’t go); an O.T.C. Church Parade. Martinmas; Armistice; then it would be only a month to Christmas. . . . The Term went on. Ivor Calder planned and tortured himself and peered into the fog ahead striving to make that ideal destiny take shape; but it didn’t—he only felt himself dragged from trifle to trifle, from absurdity to absurdity, quite likely from mistake to mistake, as if a hand pulled him along. . . . Guy Lessing racketed about, amiably light-headed; he tired of his Salient Sunset in the West and started a new poem about the Earl of Moray—the Bonnie one not the Good, Huntly’s victim, not Hamilton’s . . . The Ballantyne, more tragically beautiful than ever, saw Micky and Freda and the Golden Mist quite clearly; she continued to drink cocktails, to inspire the Harriers, to neglect her classes—all with the extra savour of despair. (“I am the vivandière, the hetaira; I am heartbroken, of course, I have lost everything, but don’t tell anybody; laugh, Clown, laugh!”) . . . And the great body of the students went—as they had always gone—their adolescent ways; worked a little, played a little, looked askance at Ivor and the Ballantyne, laughed at Guy, ignored Micky and did not know Freda by sight.

And over on the North Bank the unemployed—to whom all Days and all Terms were alike—sat in the Tradesmarket and in Powder Square, took root round the Cloud statue and the Gentlemen’s Lavatory. There they were—always; a dark shadow, a background, an unsolved factor, a possibility.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In his vast library, warmly lit and curtained, Sir Ludovic sat worrying and feeling, now and then, that stammer of his heart. He had heard from the Lord Rector from Cannes—or somewhere thereabouts—and not too satisfactorily. “I haven’t the least doubt you are right,” wrote Lord Abercloud, thereby enunciating that he was certain Ludovic was wrong, “but personally I don’t see the point of putting off the Address. I’m well enough as far as that goes. I would like fine to see the students again and I daresay some of them would like fine to see me. But, of course, it’s as you say.” Damn the fellow! “Thy will be done, O Lord”; that, of course, was the right note to finish on; but what was the use of finishing on the right note when the tune had been played all wrong? However, there it was—settled; the Rectorial Address would be delivered on Saint Gunegilde’s Day, on Wednesday the 18th of February, 1937. And time enough too . . . The Emperor stirred uneasily in his chair; he rose and took a turn up and down the room. It was settled, it was settled; yet the air was full of unease. There had been that unpleasantness at the football match (who sent these buses?); those pestilent Harriers were said to have held a particularly violent meeting at the close of which a Freshman—and an Indian student at that, our only Indian student—had been seriously maltreated (what on earth was the Warden of Crydlan’s doing?) There were firebrands at large; that inflated Celt Calder; worse than Calder—for women firebrands were always worse—that hysterical Ballantyne girl and that crazed daughter of poor old Fency’s, who had really no concern with University affairs at all. But did that stop her meddling in them? No; no indeed . . .

To Sir Ludovic, pacing his library with the authentic Dante stride, the world seemed such a simple affair. Certain people—few but sufficient—were born with a gift for knowing what was right and the determination to carry their knowledge into effect. The strong-willed, the clear-sighted could rule and should rule; they were entitled to dominance as lesser men were entitled to nourishment. Dictatorship was the greatest good of the greatest number. But when the muddle-witted, the purblind, the idealists, the illusionists came blundering in the way . . .

The Emperor thought, “I’ll have a word with Mr. Calder. The Ballantyne girl can be frightened out of her senses. As to Fency’s daughter, she’ll hang herself. As to the North Bank; ah, well, as to the North Bank——”

Sir Ludovic’s heart stammered a little.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Long before Martinmas Day Freda found it necessary to develop the technique of going to bed early with a book. Judith was kind; she was honestly proud of Freda and Guy and ambitious for both of them; but she was terribly dominating. As Guy said, “She’s lived poor old Stephen’s life for him for twelve years and she wants to live ours too; well, she isn’t going to.” Judith had defined reticences, fettering inhibitions herself; but she desired complete information about others; she controlled and probed. Guy sought refuge in lies or in savage rudeness; Freda, anxious to stave off at least these perhaps ultimately unavoidable alternatives resorted to reading in bed. She knew herself involved in the Golden Mist as deeply and hopelessly as was Micky; she knew herself drifting away into some precious region whose incidents were too frail, too Golden-Misty for the analysis of speech; she could not formulate them in words to herself, much less frame answers to the keen sisterly interrogatories of Judith. . . . And Micky had lent her a most interesting book on the Antiquities of Cloudstone . . .

On a wet November night she lay luxuriously in bed reading in this book about the Hare of Cloud. She had skipped the Saint Gunegilde part somewhat perfunctorily; her sympathies still lingered with the Pictish King who, undoubtedly swindled, had played up like a gentleman; and after all, these strippings and nudities—Godiva and the rest of them—over which the Middle and earlier Ages made such a fuss were rather tame nowadays when everybody stripped everywhere. But the Hare of Cloud had been such a sweet animal, nobody could help liking it. “The Hare of Cloud,” thought Freda mistily, “is mine. No, ours.” His story was not perhaps very original; pursued one day by the Cloud Hunt, headed by the Wicked Earl himself, he had suddenly spoken up and begged for mercy. Not unnaturally, he obtained it; and his subsequent gratitude had been almost embarrassing. On a black morning—after Flodden, say, or Langside or on one of the many other occasions on which the Earls of Cloud had backed the loser—the Hare would appear bounding gleefully on the Castle lawn and, followed, would straightway lead the current Earl to fresh and reviving treasure. “How nice it would be,” thought Freda sleepily, “if it could still appear and lead me . . . and lead me and Micky . . .”

A surreptitious tapping at her door aroused her; Judith? No, Guy. Guy was flushed of face; he had evidently been going about in the rain without a hat, for his hair was very wet; he was still more evidently elated and talkative. With bitter vexation Freda said:

“Oh, Guy, you’re tight!”

He sat down crossly on her bed. “I’m not in the least tight. I’ve—I’ve been walking about. I’ve been thinking out my poem about Moray. You know, Da, it’s an extraordinary lucky thing the way the rhymes work out in that poem—Donibristle and thistle and Huntly and the sword struck bluntly and—and so on.”

Disappointedly she placed the book-mark in the Antiquities of Cloudstone beside the darling Hare.

“You’ve had drinks, anyway. You needn’t deny it.”

Guy didn’t deny it; he said airily that they all had.

“You should see Yoey.”

“Yoey?”

“Yoey Ballantyne.”

“Oh, yes, the fair girl. Pretty.”

“She’s not fair. And she’s certainly not ‘pretty.’ Upon my word, Freda—”

“Sorry. I thought she was.”

Guy said very solemnly, “She has a lovely throat. You know, Freda, it’s astonishing—when you’re in love with a girl you don’t think of her eyes or her mouth or any of the ordinary things. You think of some odd bit of her like her wrists or the back of her head. With Yoey it’s her throat.”

“And you’re in love with Yoey, Guy?”

“Yes, but don’t shout about it.”

“Oh, I won’t. But, Guy, if you’re in love with her I don’t see why you want to go and make her tight——”

“Who says I made her tight? I didn’t make her tight. She would drink whiskey on the top of cocktails. Anyway, she wasn’t that bad.”

“I see.” There was a pause; Freda said hopefully, “How about bed?” But Guy was off again.

“I say, Da, who do you think was in the Lounge of The Hare to-night?”

“Was that where you were?” (“The Hare! The Hare!”) “How do I know?”

“Peter Ruey and Lee. They were knocking down whiskies and smoking into each other’s faces. You know, Freda, I believe that’s a case.”

Freda yawned; so long as he didn’t see another “case” that was just under his eyes. She said:

“Does it matter?”

“Oh, well, if you don’t take any interest in people I suppose it doesn’t. But I think Peter and Lee are damned interesting. Though I’m sorry for any girl that gets mixed up with Peter. I can’t think why Lee wants him.”

Freda thought she knew; but her interest in Lee and Peter was transitory. Guy, however, was in that glorious state when everything interests, everything is interminably discussable.

“I expect she wants to reform him or something.”

“Quite likely.”

“If so—what a hope!”

Freda thought desperately, “I’m getting sleepy. I won’t be able to finish about the Hare. I wish he’d go.” But Guy had only reached, by circuitous routes, the item that had brought him there. He sprawled more comfortably on the quilt.

“I say, Da?”

“Well?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“You ought to know. I’ve kept a few of yours. A lot better than you have.”

“Well, look here; you know the Harriers?”

She knew very little about them but said hastily, “Yes, of course.” Anything to save time.

“Well, we had a very important meeting to-night. About Guney’s Day. And after it we beat up that little Indian blighter——”

Freda said doubtfully, “That doesn’t seem anything to be proud of.”

“I’m not saying we are proud of it. It was just a thing that had to be done and we just did it, that’s all I’m telling you. He just had to be dealt with.”

“Oh, poor little man!”

“Poor little man my elbow. He’d been taking up with a woman student. We don’t want that sort of thing starting here. Mis—miscegenation.”

“Is that how you pronounce it?”

“I believe so. Anyway, what the hell— Thing is to prevent it.”

“I see. So a lot of you went and beat up this poor little Indian.”

He shuffled uneasily. “Well, we didn’t so much beat him up. We gave him castor oil.”

“A la Fascisti. Whose bright idea was that?”

“Well, I think it was Speed’s really. But Ivor passed it. Damn sound chap, Ivor. Damn sound chap.”

Freda said, “I see,” and she did see; she saw now what it was that had driven Guy first to drink and then, boastful and garrulous, into the middle of her Antiquities; it was nothing more nor less than a nasty memory he wanted to get rid of, talk out, extinguish. Well the less need to be kind to him, thank god. She said:

“Well, I think it was a rotten thing to do. . . . Anyway, Guy, get out now and go to bed. I want to read.”

Guy was offended, but his offence was counteracted by his still unslaked thirst for conversation. He picked up the Antiquities.

“What’s the book? Antiquities of Cloudstone, eh? I bet it’s all about Saint Gunegilde. We could tell you something about old Guney. Wait till her Day comes round—you’ll see some fun.” But he broke off short, his face became solemn and fell; Freda saw he was really a little frightened. Thinking, “What can they be up to?” she said:

“I can’t wait till Guney’s Day. I won’t be here.”

“Neither you will.” Guy began to yawn at last. “It’s a pity; there’ll be doings.” . . . He opened the Antiquities and glanced at the fly-leaf. “‘Ex libris Michael Hext,’” he read. “So that’s where you got it?”

“And if I did?”

“Oh, O.K.; O.K. Good chap, Micky. Pity old Fency doesn’t die; he might get the chair. He used to be a bit soft on Yoey——”

She took the book from him. “Please, Guy——”

“And the worst of it is, you know, I believe Yoey’s still——”

“Guy, for god’s sake go to bed!”

“Oh, all right; all right.” Morosely he stared at her, lost in his Yoey; that poor unhappy Yoey who couldn’t have Micky. “D’you know, Freda,” he said, “I believe you’re a bit soft on Micky Mouse yourself.” She said nothing, controlling herself desperately. He wandered over to her dressing-table, fiddled with a nail-file, said absently, “Damn good show the Harriers,” yawned abysmally and at long last went.

Instantly Freda threw herself back on her pillow; instantly her face broke into a smile nobody had ever seen there. “Soft on Micky Mouse.” Deliciously infantile, deliciously enticing words; so soft, so silly—just as she felt herself. Her face crumbled into mist, it rounded, it blossomed, it collapsed into surrender. With her white hand lying on the Antiquities of Cloudstone—ex libris Michael Hext—she lay smiling at the Hare of Cloud.

3

Martinmas Day came, the 11th of November, Armistice Day. In the University Chapel the seats allotted to the staff were crammed; Peter Ruey, that dependable cad, was perhaps the only absentee. Willie McKillop had again swallowed his atheistical principles and compromised with expediency; again because “Ludovic liked it.” The Officers Training Corps had achieved a Church Parade without disgracing themselves; on the Chapel steps their buglers, reinforced by a couple of snub-nosed regulars from the First-Second Cheviots, stood waiting nervously to sound the Last Post. Within the Chapel, in the students’ seats, Brett was exercising himself about a spot of oil on his O.T.C. tunic; Langlands was thinking what he would say at the Students Christian Movement that evening; Brodie was staring at a girl; Ivor Calder wasn’t there; Rameswara Rao was gaping eagerly at something he could really understand at last. Presently all would sing, “Oh, God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come”; and then the buglers, licking their lips nervously, would tackle the Last Post. Few of those present seriously believed that God had helped them in ages past or was likely to do so in years to come; and if Sir Ewart Kay and his Councillors could see War prices again for wool contracts, you might blow all the Last Posts in Christendom. Yet the magic worked; by some process of self-deception or some resurrection in them of the better above the worse, everyone felt—a little shamefacedly—ennobled.

The Two Minutes Silence fell. There were people who regularly, year after year, thought of the same thing during the Silence, of the same person; an equal number allowed their minds to wander, Judith Brewster had had an elder brother killed at Ypres, but she did not think of her brother; she thought instead of herself and Stephen; the necessity for reviving, for re-vitalising their joint life, for making a song of it instead of a drone. “Soon,” she thought, “we must do something definite about it; before this time next year—long before it. I must call him ‘boy’ again; I haven’t called him ‘boy’ for years. Christmas!” she thought with a sudden flash of resolution. “We’ll get right away somewhere for Christmas—right away; somewhere new; our two selves.” . . . Edna McKillop, looking a caricature of Judith but quite unaware of it, felt herself wandering into amateur metaphysics. If God had helped us in Ages Past to Win the War, then surely he must have helped the Germans to lose it. And if the Germans were Christians too and had prayed to Him for victory? Puzzling—as “God” always was; no wonder the Israelites enlisted him under the symbol of a cloud by day. . . . Professor Fency thought, “If we had only a Mediterranean climate we could make something very fine of this.” . . . And Sir Ludovic thought of gallantry and death, of young lives squandered, of cannon-fodder; and he prayed a little; “not in our time, O Lord!”

And Micky Hext, standing with bowed head and looking down at his feet, thought, “Freda, Freda, Freda, Freda, Freda. I must tell her about Doris. I can’t. I must. Freda, Freda, Freda!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Ivor Calder did not attend the Armistice Service; if asked why, he could have given no very satisfactory answer. It was, of course, a defiance of the expressed wishes of the Emperor; but it was something much more than that, something much more than a schoolboy cheeking the Head. It was the expression—or the attempt at expression—-of a fundamental contempt; it was one of those things—like kicking the bums of Freshmen or opposing Lord Abercloud—towards which he was impelled for reasons far from clear to himself. At the time these egregious actions seemed correct—why, he did not know. One did not really hate Freshmen, one did not despise the Armistice service—far, far from it. Yet in Freshmen, in the herd-like rush to the Armistice Service, there lurked elements, emissaries of that vast undesirable one did most heartily detest. What was it? Ivor didn’t know; but he cut the service and went for a long walk down the coast.

Ivor had much to think of—so much that he did not notice the darkening seas to eastward, the promise of rain in the over-bright November morning. At their last—and so far most important—meeting he had lashed the Harriers to enthusiasm; forgetting for once to be cold and aloof and enigmatic, he had tried to speak of that other indefinable that worked within him—the thing which could only be defined as the opposite of the other, the counter to the element of contempt and hate. He had found this task impossibly difficult; for again, feeling the thing acutely, he did not know what it was. It was not beauty, it was not antiquity, it was not pride, hope, quest, sacrifice, ideal—though all these items were at odd times, or at one and the same time, its manifestations. Whenever you tried to speak of it, you landed in claptrap, bombast—all sorts of undesirables. . . . Quite naturally the Harriers—not all of them strictly sober—had completely failed to understand him; so ineffective had he been that they had grasped only the old catchwords, the old trumpet-calls—“Down with Abercloud!” “We want Raven!” Guy Lessing, whom Ivor thought alternately a genius and an ass, had followed with an irrelevant diatribe against the magazine Alma—not wholly, Ivor knew, unconnected with the Editor’s rejection of some of Guy’s wilder contributions. Thereafter someone—Brett, perhaps—had got up and cried, “Why shouldn’t we have a magazine of our own?” and this proposal had been immediately carried amid the acclamation of those who intended to contribute nothing. Now the magazine must be got out; it must be got out before Christmas and it must be absolutely first-class; it must slash, illuminate, consume, scarify. It must never, never fizzle. . . . And I, thought Ivor, have to do it.

But Ivor, trudging along the coast road on Armistice morning, was unable to think clearly about the magazine because of a picture that kept presenting itself before his eyes. Its central figure was the little man Rameswara Rao with his large beautiful frightened eyes and the adam’s apple running up and down in his long thin neck. It was a talking picture, for in it Speed said, “It’s no use your kicking up a fuss; we’ll only make a mess of your room”: and the little man made no reply but looked round from one tormentor to another, his eyes rolling. Amongst others, those eyes met this same Ivor Calder, standing poised in the fireplace, looking no doubt stony and black with hate. And at that instant Ivor had felt “I am disgraced by this; we are all disgraced; this is foul, vile—caddery.” But he had said nothing, staring the Indian down, and Speed had seized Rameswara Rao by the collar and shaken him about and said, “Now, then, you little bastard, you know why you’re getting this.” “And the real answer to that,” Ivor had thought, “is ‘Because Speed’s father is in a funk of being shot.’ “But nobody supplied this answer and the little man said only—and with so pleasant a smile—“Please excuse.” And then someone had come with the castor-oil and Speed had been unnecessarily rough and Rameswara Rao—who probably didn’t mind a dose of castor-oil; the stuff grew half-wild in his village after all—was jerked about so that he spluttered and sicked up some of it—which gave Speed the excuse to be rougher still. A big spoonful and another; and then Speed had said, “One more for luck”; but that at least Ivor had stopped. And finally some nit-witted hooligan had knocked over the Indian’s table and thrown all his note-books into the coal-scuttle, and the Harriers had departed in righteousness. Ivor, lingering, had seen the Indian fiddling with his broken collar and looking ruefully at the mess of oil and ink upon his carpet. . . . Well, was that a pleasant scene to remember or was it not? Suppose Rameswara Rao and the Tasker creature had gone to extremes and had produced bastard Eurasian triplets, would it have been worth a scene like that? It wouldn’t.

Well, then, why did you do it?

“Because,” thought Ivor tramping along, “you want to be a sort of god, you want to make things happen; and even a god requires instruments. You want to make these Harriers an instrument; you need them, such as they are, and therefore from time to time you must see things as they see them, do things as they would do them.” . . . And suddenly memory presented him with a scene he thought he had forgotten—a cold day about this time in his first year, a cold day up on the Butes, the hilly ground to the south of Cloudstone. The Cloud Hunt had been out that day and they had chased a young fox and it had hidden itself in a drain under the moorland road; and when Ivor came on the scene there were four huge horses blowing and snorting and a dozen hounds with their tongues out and four great fat men, red-faced and wheezing, and a terrier screaming on its lead; and the men had spades and they were digging and grubbing and poking; and just now and then, above the blowing of the horses and the wheezing of the men and the yelps of the terrier, you heard, deep in the drain, a poor little frightened whimpering. And Ivor had said to one of the fat men, “Must you do this? Can’t you let the poor little brute get away now?” And the red-faced man had explained—rather decently when you came to think of it, for he might well have told Ivor to go to hell—had explained that they couldn’t because it wouldn’t do to disappoint the hounds or the hounds wouldn’t hunt again. . . . “They and their hounds,” thought Ivor now, “me and my Harriers. And if God was looking at me in Rameswara Rao’s room, he must have seen me just exactly as I saw these gentlemen of the Cloud Hunt. Oh, hell!”

Raising his eyes from reverie, Ivor saw that he had come several miles down the coast and was outside the little inn at Spettle. At its door stood an object which at once attracted and repelled him—that small scarlet motor-car known and execrated all over Cloudstone. Gazing at it, he thought, “Blast the girl—she’s ubiquitous!” but all the same he pushed open the door and entered the inn. He was not surprised to find that Lee was not alone; Peter Ruey was there too; they were eating biscuits and cheese and Peter was flanked by a mahogany, Lee by a lemon-coloured whiskey-and-soda. They greeted Ivor effusively and Lee offered him some lunch.

Ivor declined. “I don’t want any lunch.”

“Well, have a drink then.”

“I’ll have a whiskey-and-soda.”

It came and Lee flourished her pale gold drink. “Well, here’s damnation to Abercloud!”

Ivor concurred; but Peter, sipping his mahogany with his white-toothed grin, asked:

“What the hell do you want to drink that for?”

“Because all right-thinking people do.”

“It is more bloody,” said Peter solemnly, “to receive than to give. Is that it?”

“That’s it. In a way.”

“Well, it’s a silly way.’

Ivor’s brow grew dark; Lee said soothingly, “Peter, dear, you’re not yourself.” To Ivor she said, “How are the Harriers? I hear you’ve taken to lynching. Was that wise?”

Ivor scowled. “Never mind that. But look here—” he sat up suddenly—“I’ve got to get a magazine out before Christmas. It’s got to be a scorcher. A hundred per cent. hell. Give me a hand with it.”

“What’s it to be called?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Lee and Peter were delighted; for ten minutes they bombarded him with titles. “Call it Truth.” “Call it Hells Bells.” “Call it The Golden Mist—it’s sure to be pretty thick.” “Call it Thundercloud—The Harrier——Saint Gonegay—Nevermore (quoth the Raven, you know)—Call it Crash.”

Ivor sat up. “Crash? I like that, Lee.”

“Well, call it Crash! With an exclamation mark. Now how many pages? What about some cartoons? Caricatures? Oh, come on, Peter, wake up!”

Peter said, “I’ll draw you some caricatures if that’s what you want. I’ve got some rare models down in the Lab. There’s a South American monkey preserved in formalin——”

Ivor said, “Grand! Thank god I met you. What about another drink?”

Peter accepted but Lee refused. “I know my limits; besides, I’ve got to drive.”

Ivor said, “If you can call it driving. . . . Come on now, you two—I’ll go home with the thing drafted. Crash! Lee, you thought of that; one up to Lee. Now, then, Peter . . .”

They sat till tea-time while the day thickened into a cold drizzle that blew unheeded round the desolate inn. And as Crash! took shape, the rafters of that dismal bar-parlour rocked with laughter—with the deep-ocean bellows of Peter, with the triumphant hillside shouts of Ivor, with the tormenting cadences of Lee.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

After tea Ivor walked away home again; he had had just the right quantity to drink and felt splendid. His pockets were bulging with sketches, drafts, half-completed lampoons, a Saint Gunegilde “Miracle Play” that would have to be cut or edited or—most probably—excised. He was happy and thought it was because of Crash! but really it was because he had forgotten at last about Rameswara Rao.

When he had gone, Lee stretched herself like a panther and curled into the musty arm-chair nearest the fire.

“Well, Peter, what were we talking about before he came?”

“Let’s have another drink and I’ll tell ye.”

“Do you think we should?”

“I’m certain.”

“I’m not so cer-r-r-tain. You’re beginning to roll your ‘r’s,’ my sweet. Bad sign.”

He said surprisingly and as if he meant it, “Nobody’s going to drink too much when he’s got you to talk to, Lee.”

She flushed; it was unexpected—and delightful.

“Thank you, Peter. I hope you’re right. Well, let’s have an A.B. Final . . . And what were we talking about?”

“Oh, men and women, Lee—men and women.”

“We weren’t. Never mind—we will now. . . . Oh, woman, in our hours of ease . . . Did you see how Ivor brightened up because I was here?”

“I thought it was the whiskey.”

“No, my lamb—me. It’s funny, Peter, but all men like a bitch.”

“A what?”

“Bitch, Peter—female of the species. All men like them; all men need one. One good woman, one bitch—-happiness; one good woman, no bitch—hell. One bitch, no good woman—damnation.”

“Am I to understand that ye’re classing yourself——”

“Don’t be ponderous, darling. You wouldn’t call me a good woman, would you now?”

“I wouldn’t like to call you the other thing, either.”

“Well—you ought to know.”

Peter stared. “As how?”

“Well—how long is it since you went home with Jessie?”

“Suppose I said last night?”

“I’d say ‘Liar!’”

“Well, maybe aye and maybe no. . . . But that’s no reason to call yourself—what you said.”

“Isn’t it? Why haven’t you been home with Jessie? Or somebody like her?”

Peter stared at her in silence; in the dance of the firelight her green eyes sparkled like gems.

“Well, Peter; amn’t I—what I said?”

“You can play at being one all right——”

“I am one, Peter, I am one!”

Peter’s stare reddened for a moment; then he leant heavily forward, took the absurd green holder from her mouth and kissed her—for the very first time.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Instead of going to the Armistice Service with Judith, Freda took the car and drove herself into Cloudstone. She wanted something and she knew where to get it—at Fleming’s, the stationers. In the summer months Cloudstone teemed with the Cloudmouth trippers; for their benefit Flemings presented Saint Gunegildes and Hares of Cloud in every conceivable form—paper-weights, ash-trays, mugs, book-ends, mascots. Freda, looking happy and young in her fur collar and a green three-cornered hat, poked about amongst the selection for some twenty minutes; in the end she picked out an upstanding paper-weight Hare in silver bronze in what was certainly the nicer—though the less ancient and authentic—of the two designs.

“I’d like this one, please. How much? . . . And will you please send it to Mr. Michael Hext, University Road, South Bank? . . . Oh, and could I write a little note to go with it?”

Of course she could; would she please sit here.

Freda sat and bit the end of her fountain-pen. “I can’t write ‘Micky’; I never thought of him as ‘Michael’; I won’t put ‘Mr. Hext.’ Well, I needn’t put anything. . . .” Without preamble she scribbled hurriedly:

“I owe you something for the Abbey and all your kindness. Here is the Hare and I hope he may find you all sorts of treasures.—Freda L.” Not brilliant, but who wanted brilliance?

“You’ll send this to-day, please?”

“At once, miss.”

Going out of the shop, Freda saw herself in a panelled mirror. She thought, “I really think I am rather a nice sort of girl. I do hope so, anyway.”

Flemings were as good as their word. When Micky came in after a wet wandering afternoon in which the “I can’t” and the “I must” of his thoughts rang horrible jangles, he found the parcel waiting for him on his table. He tore off the wrappings and there stood the Hare laughing at him, dancing at him, inviting. It was the fifth Hare Micky had possessed, but from the way he stared at it it might have been the first he had ever seen.

. . . “and I hope he may find you all sorts of treasures . . .”

4

From Martinmas Day the Term went marching on again; but now it was settled into its stride, it was old, declared, foreseen, finished, it could spring no happy surprise. All the bright eagerness of the Opening Ceremony was dispelled; it was quite clear now that the Term was just an ordinary Term like many other Terms; one gave up hope of it. Instead, one began to look forward, to talk of next Term, Candlemas. Ah! that would be a Term worth living through. Saint Gunegilde’s Day; the Rectorial Address; ah! There would be fun, brilliance, excitement, novelty, event. . . . Yet underneath all this anticipation there ran—no one could say why—a dismal little undercurrent. Too much excitement, perhaps? Not so much fun after all?

Guy sat with Yoey Ballantyne in the Lounge of the Hare of Cloud, in the Cloudstone Gaumont, on the Gledshaw Golf Course. He sat in places with Yoey more and more, he worked less and less, he wrote fewer and fewer verses. The Bonnie Earl of Moray had progressed little further than his preliminary entanglements with Queen Anne from Denmark (Guy was quite sure about these); his author had then tired of him and had taken to shorter themes, lyric themes, Yoey themes. Even these he had now abandoned to concentrate on the mordant satires of Crash! Sitting in the Lounge of the Hare of Cloud—a clever piece of Ye Olde—he said to Yoey:

“Yoey, I wish you weren’t so unhappy.”

Yoey was delighted; of course she was unhappy; Micky Hext never spoke to her now, he never would again. Of course she was unhappy; the difficulty was to make people recognise it. Smiling brilliantly she said non-committally:

“Dear Guy!”

“I wish you weren’t, Yoey.”

“Perhaps I’m not.”

“Oh, yes—you are. Why?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” And the so-brilliant smile again.

“It matters to me.”

“Then don’t let it. I’m not worth bothering about, Guy.”

“Oh, rot. It does matter; and you are . . . Have another cocktail.”

They had another cocktail. Guy said:

“Yoey, do you think there’s a god?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“Well . . . It makes it easier, Guy, doesn’t it?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, if there isn’t a god, it doesn’t much matter what we do. I mean, if we just sort of—well, fizzle out, it doesn’t matter because there’d be nobody to answer to. I mean, we can just run away——”

“I wish you could run away with me.”

“Darling Guy! It would be lovely.” But impossible, her eyes said and the droop of her mouth, impossible, impossible—like everything else.

Guy said morosely, “You don’t want to run away, really. You’re looking forward to next term and der Tag and all that. You know you are.”

“Well, one has to try, god or no god. Aren’t you?”

“I was. I’m not now. I don’t know why.” He gloomed at his dwindling cocktail. “Yoey, I’ve got a sort of hunch that something rotten’s going to happen next term, something really bad. Perhaps a lot of things.”

“Oh, Guy! What sort of things?”

“I don’t know. But—Ludovic on one side, Ivor on the other; between them they’ll land us in hell. There’s a sort of a black cloud knocking about——”

“Oh, Guy!”

“You don’t care.”

“N-no. But, you see, I don’t care very much about anything.”

“You don’t care about me, anyway.”

“Guy! I wish I could.”

“Hell! . . . Have another cocktail . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Collett, the Warden of Cryd’s, was a man who neglected his work; he was on the look-out for another and a better appointment—and had hopes of getting it in the near future. He knew little of what went on in Cryd’s, he thought the Harriers were a harmless symposium of sots, he never heard of the castor-oiling of Rameswara Rao. That is to say, he never heard of it till he heard of it from the Emperor, who commanded him at the same time to interview Mr. Calder. Collett did interview Mr. Calder—without satisfactory result. Collett was bored, nervous, out of touch; he kept on repeating, “I can’t think why you want to do that sort of thing”; naturally, he was unable to read in Ivor’s blankly hostile stare the rejoinder in Ivor’s mind—“You B.F., neither can I!” It was a stupid interview; Collett knew himself helpless, wasting his words and time; and Ivor stood thinking, “If only you were a person from whom I could seek advice, whom I could look up to, whom I could ask, ‘What am I to do next?’ Damn you, you ought to be!” The encounter fizzled out in a bleating Collett decrescendo; “Sir Ludovic is exceedingly vexed and annoyed . . . you take a great risk . . . sending down . . . Sir Ludovic . . . I cannot think why . . .”

“You wait,” thought Ivor, “till Crash! comes out.”

In the matter of Rameswara Rao University opinion was—not for the first time—against Ivor. A great many men—and of course all the women who heard of it—thought it was a horrible thing to have done, caddish, rotten; nobody thought it necessary; those few who supposed it might have been a dubious sort of lark, couldn’t—like Collett—think why Ivor had done it. Brodie, cherubic behind his glasses, said, “Ivor, you must be going cracked; what on earth——” Gloag, the President of the Saint Gunegilde Society, said, “The Tasker? Who the hell cares about the Tasker? If the Tasker wants to have a nigger baby——” The Harriers were still righteous and pleased with themselves; they went about in the garb of benefactors misunderstood. Ivor almost hated them. Because Brodie was a good chap and so was Gloag; and it was impossible to narrate to them that scene on the Butes with the fox whimpering in the drain and the red-faced man explaining about his beastly hounds. It was equally impossible to say, “It wasn’t my idea; I never meant it to go so far,” because at all costs one must take responsibility. (You didn’t blame the dogs, did you, that day on the Butes?) It was possible to go into Rameswara Rao’s room and say, “Look here, I’m sorry we knocked you about so much the other night; forget it, please.” That was possible and Ivor did it; but the only result was that Rameswara Rao, writhing with embarrassment at the time, thought a little less of Ivor ever afterwards . . . Brodie was a good chap and so was Gloag and so were a hundred others who disliked the Harriers and all their works; “and if you hate me over this,” thought Ivor, “you’ll hate me a lot more before the finish.” The finish—where was it?

Because, thought Ivor, I must go on as I’ve planned; I must. I must take power and use it; I must strike and fight and oppose; somehow or other I must make that picture of beauty and—and rightness come to life. And then perhaps I shall be able to see it myself. But wandering on the Old Cloud Bridge—as much his haunt and his genius as the Abbey was Micky Hext’s—he saw instead the little Indian sicking castor-oil down his waistcoat; and Speed with the spoon, so very like a red-faced man with a spade; and Finlater and Brett like hounds with their tongues lolling; and Guy yapping like the terrier: and he thought, “My god, is that the sort of thing I let us in for? Is that the sort of thing?”

Ivor was to ask himself that question again, but not till later—a good deal later. Not, in fact, till Saint Gunegilde’s Day.

5

On that Sunday which the Calendars called the Twenty-fourth after Trinity—a day bleakly November yet made interesting by a stolen light from off the sea—Edna McKillop went for her usual walk with Willie and Lee Fency went for an unusual walk with Peter. Edna and Willie returned to their domestic tea and a wrangle over evening church; but Lee went back to Peter’s untidy rooms. She was at home there now; she sprawled in one basket chair with her feet on another while Peter read poetry to her, striding about the room, flitting to his shelves, picking out this and that. He read, as Micky Hext had once discovered, disconcertingly well; Peter reading poetry should have been ridiculous but was in fact venerable. Lee, pleasantly tired, made no attempt to follow the sense—if any—of what he read, but allowed the words to flow over her in a ceaseless delivery of agreeable sound. It was the next best thing to having a warm bath. But at last—by way of The Santa-Fe Trail and Gerald Gould’s sonnet about sinning—he came to a long poem about a nun and a cat and a sparrow called Philip which demanded her attention. Said Peter sonorously,

Lee said, “You should read Ivor that, Peter. It’s Ivorish . . . Hate . . .”

“Ivor’s daft.”

“M’m? I like it too.”

Peter closed the book on the wild wolf Lycaon. “So ye like hate, do ye, Lee?”

“I like any strong feeling.”

“Thou shalt not be genteel, eh?”

“No, nor prudent; nor considerate; nor careful. ‘For God’s sake if you sin, take pleasure in it. . . . Say, here’s a sin; I’ll sin it!’ Which bit was that, Peter?”

“Gerald Gould.”

“Well, it was right.”

“Maybe.” He went back to his shelves. “Here’s another hate poem, Lee. Listen—

“Peter! I don’t——’

“Never heed. Listen—

“Ye see, Lee, there’s a Scotch superstition that a corpse won’t lie straight——”

“I don’t care a damn about Scotch superstitions . . . But—it is lockit, Peter. Why?”

“What is?”

“Your heart.”

“Is it then?”

“Yes. Let’s have a look at it.”

Peter took a cigarette from the tin. “There was a chap called Bluebeard once; he kept a locked room. And his wife was aye pestering to get into it. When she did——”

“She didn’t like it. Lamb, I have heard about Bluebeard. But it wouldn’t be like that with Peter’s heart.”

“Oh. It wouldn’t?”

“No. No murdered wives—no women at all. Only an empty room with a little boy crying in a corner.”

He stared at her. “Ye’re a queer girl, Lee.”

“You only think that because I can understand you. I can see through you. You’re not accustomed to that. You’ve got a great hairy hide——”

“How do ye know that?”

“I can guess, precious. Anyway, you’ve got one and that was all the other women were ever able to see. I’m not saying they didn’t like it. But the kind of women you’ve known——”

“What kind was that?”

“The Greeks had a word for it. Do you really want me to remind you? Well, that kind of woman naturally found you a bit—er—lockit. And of course that excites women frightfully—any kind of woman. But you’re not lockit to me, Peter, not at all.”

“So ye’re not excited.”

“No.”

“Which is why ye’re sitting here now, I suppose.”

“Not altogether. I’m sitting here because I know what’s good for you.”

“Oh?”

“And I know what you want. You want a mistress, Peter; that’s what you want.”

He gazed at her with his usual quizzical admiration.

“Well, now! Well, now! And I would have said——”

“You’d had hundreds. But you haven’t had even one really. You’d be a much cleverer man if you had; you’d be much cleverer with me. Every man needs a mistress; they’re most educative things.”

“Last time it was a bitch.”

“Well—same thing up to a point. Anyway, that’s what you want, my Peter. I thought so the first time I really saw you and now I know. You want someone who’d be—well, who’d be a woman to you and who’d also understand what you’re talking about. Tell me, did you ever read poetry to that barmaid girl, what’s-her-name, Jessie?”

“No.” But his face darkened. “We’d something better to do.”

“Don’t be coarse, Peter. And anyway, that wasn’t the reason you didn’t read to her. As you know very well. I don’t see you marrying——”

“I don’t see it myself. I never did.”

“No. Well, then, it has to be the other ‘m,’ Peter—mistress. Intelligent mistress. The Greeks had a word for that too; the Viennese have one still. You get everything both ways, Peter. And you’d never need to get tight then——”

He got up suddenly; half-scared, half-delighted, she saw he was blackly angry. Entirely to her delight she knew why; it wasn’t that he was shocked or chagrined, it was because he was afraid of her, because he saw his fate, because he knew what he wanted.

“Look here, Lee! I’ve stood a good deal. I’ve stood things from you I wouldn’t have stood from anybody else. But if you think ye can just sit there and say any mortal thing that comes into your head—— If ye think ye can sit there and—and tempt me, damn your little green eyes——”

“You don’t like it, Peter. But you’ll have to come to it. You don’t like the truth. But there it is.”

“And there’s the door!” He roared at her; he was really and truly furious; it was splendid! “There’s the door and out ye get! I’m tired of it.”

Lee got up, laughing.

“All right, my lamb.”

“It’s not all right. Ye laugh and ye laugh and ye sit there and—and—ye say every crossed thing that comes into your head and—and I’m done with it! Out ye go!”

“All right, Peter, all right. I’ll go . . . ‘Thraw on, my lad!’ Is that right?”

“Get out with ye. Get away.”

“I’ll get out with me. I’ll come back when you ask me, darling.”

“Ay—when.”

“You will, Peter, quite soon.” At the door she turned to smile at him standing there among his debris like a great black bull. “You’ll come to it, you know, Peter; you’ll have to. You’ll come to—me.”

“Like hell I will!”

“Like hell!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

At Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey that stolen sealight lingered, chilled now with starshine. There, in the shadow behind the east window, Freda said to Micky:

“Darling, when did you know?”

“I always knew. Always.” But she couldn’t see his face, which was twisted and unhappy.

“You couldn’t always have known. You’ve only known me a couple of months. Only since that day you met me at the station. And I thought you were a student.”

“All the same I knew. I always knew there would be somebody like you. I always knew that if there ever was anybody, she would be like you.”

“Darling!”

“Oh, Freda, Freda!”

Her hands in their little fur gloves took the lapels of his coat.

“I hope I won’t disappoint you, Micky.”

He almost cried out; the mixture of pain and ecstasy, of happiness and terror, was so terrible.

“You won’t disappoint me. It’ll be the other way round. It’s I who must disappoint you.”

“Now you’re just being silly.”

“I wish to god I were! . . . Freda, darling, I ought to ask you to marry me. I—I can’t.”

Her laugh was cool, confident, assured.

“Micky! What does that matter? I know you can’t. I know you haven’t any money. But what does money matter? What does marriage matter? Don’t think about it, Micky.”

“But I must think about it. There’s something I must tell you, Freda——”

A glove came over his mouth; he smelt russia leather, fur, a subtle scent.

“Don’t tell me anything to-night. I don’t want to hear it. Or rather, tell me one thing. Tell me you like me a little.”

It burst out of him. “I love you, love you, love you!”

“Then what does anything else matter? What do I care about anything else?” Sighing happily, she relaxed forward, resting against him, her eyes closed, scarcely breathing. She smelt of violets and face-powder and hair-lotion and leather and tweed and dentifrice and cigarette. Never, never in all the long world, was there such an adorable, such an intoxicating mixture! The stars cascaded; the Abbey went up and down; all resolutions, good and otherwise, went sailing out to sea. . . . She said, almost inaudibly:

“You know, Micky, I think we’re really rather nice people. I really think we are . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lee walked home briskly, wondering “Was that a quarrel or not?” In the hall of her father’s house, stuffy with its eternal smell of book-bindings, stale tobacco and unbeaten carpet, the slatternly maid came forward to meet her. The maid wore glasses, her black skirt hung down at the back, she sniffed; she was everything that Lee was not, but by a merciful dispensation of Providence she regarded this with satisfaction rather than otherwise.

“The master’s no’ been well.”

Lee went white. “My father? What happened?”

“He had a sort o’ a turn.”

“What sort of turn?”

“He was sick-like after his lunch.”

Lee flung down her hat and coat and rushed upstairs. Of course he was sick-like after his lunch; it had been a beastly lunch; everything in this shoddy house was beastly—and it’s all my fault, thought Lee, all my fault. I go out and leave him, I don’t look after things, I’m an incompetent fool. She burst into the library and was relieved to see her father sitting in his chair by the fire.

“Darling, what happened?”

“Happened, Lee? Nothing happened.”

“But Jane says you were taken ill.”

“I had a little faint attack after lunch. It wasn’t anything.”

“Did you have the doctor?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you will now.” He waved his hand in protest, but she went unheeding to the telephone. Presently she came back and knelt beside him on the rug.

“He’ll come soon. Now tell me all about it? Do you think it was something you ate?”

Fency looked down at her over his beard, smiling at her anxious concerned eyes; he saw a Lee that Cloudstone—Ivor, Judith Brewster, Peter, the University—would hardly have recognised—a soft, ruffled Lee, gentle, afraid. He thought, “She’s not just putting it on; she really does like me; that’s something to be thankful for; I am thankful.” He said:

“I don’t think it was anything I ate. Perhaps I worked rather fast this morning.”

“But, Daddy——” (“I shouldn’t have left him alone so long. If anything happens to him what shall I do? I’m a wicked selfish beast.”) “Daddy, I’m going to make you some tea.”

He shuddered at the thought of tea but sought to avoid ungraciousness. “Could I have some coffee instead, my dear?”

“Of course. But I’ll have to make it myself. Jane makes muck. I’ll get the cona and make it in here. That be nice?”

“Very nice . . . You’re very good to me, Lee.”

But her green eyes brimmed suddenly with tears and she said, “Not half good enough,” and went out.

Presently she came back with the cona. He studied her while she knelt beside it, looking up to watch it at work. Pretty, dark thing; when you saw her in profile like that she reminded you of that head of Nefertiti they made such a fuss about—and not unjustly—about ten years ago. Very like it if you allowed for the sleek black hair in the place of that fantastic head-dress. Nothing classical about the face, except perhaps when you caught it sideways; then you saw the really exquisite chiselling of her lips and her short straight nose; when she tilted her chin you saw it was cut as from fine marble. Finished, polished, exquisite thing—what went on inside her? He didn’t know—never would; he’d let her slip, lost her. He thought, “Did her mother look like that? I hardly remember. So long dead, she has ceased to be even a ghost; she wouldn’t know me if she saw me.” . . . He said suddenly, but not as if it mattered very much:

“Where have you been, Lee?”

She started as from reverie. (“Have I quarrelled with Peter; did I go too far?”) “Oh, just walking about.”

“But it must have been cold.”

“Not very.”

He lost interest in her. But he drank his coffee and a glass of Courvoisier—rare, golden stuff; man’s art had never made anything better. He felt improved and sat stroking Lee’s hair, but absently as if she were the cat. The doctor came in fussily, saying, “Well, well; well, well.” Afterwards he laughed at Lee a good deal.

“He—he isn’t going to be ill, Doctor?”

“I can’t see anything much the matter with him.”

“Then you can see—something?”

“He’s not young. He doesn’t eat enough. He lives on himself. That’s all.”

“You don’t think he’ll—he’ll go off in a faint some day or something?”

“I don’t see why he should.” But he thought to himself, “Too much burgundy and brandy; too little sensible food; too much sitting up half the night; too much brain, too little body. I wouldn’t give much for him, really.”

Lee helped him on with his coat and he asked her what she had been doing lately.

“Oh, like Satan—going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it.”

He laughed. “And like Satan—making mischief in it too, I’ll bet.” He went out thinking, “Queer girl; queer mixture”: and added, as most people added when they thought of Lee, “Thank God she isn’t mine.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Micky Hext, emerging slowly from the Golden Mist, let himself into his lodgings and switched on the light in his sitting-room; by its warm rose-shaded glow he saw the familiar surroundings as in a glass darkly. He saw with a shudder a vast pile of ordinary proses brought round by Fency’s factotum; by now he knew almost to a nicety what he would find therein. There would be Sandiland’s, full of brilliance—and the most hideous examiner-maddening grammatical errors; and Miss Robson’s, like a railway train in which the carriages were solid blocks of Cicero and only the couplings were Miss Robson—and Lord! how the train jolted and creaked. A nice job wading through that lot. . . . He saw his notes for the morrow’s lecture on Catullus. “Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum.” Atrocious stuff, the quintessence of lovers’ folly. (Lovers’ folly? You didn’t have to go back to Catullus for that!) “Super alta vectus Attis celeri rate maria”; this is the Galliambic metre; Hephaestion calls it Ionic Tetrameter Catalectic . . . Ionic a minore . . . anaclasis . . . (Galliambic grandmother; here sat another Attis whose swift ship—too swift—had carried him into—not over—some very deep seas indeed!) . . . He looked farther and saw the Hare of Cloud—Freda’s darling Hare of Cloud; it was doing its duty by sitting on the weekly letter from Micky’s mother. He had read that letter twice already, but he reached out, displaced the Hare and opened it once again.

“. . . It was so good, of you to send me the money. I don’t know where I would be without you, or rather, I do know—I would be in the almshouse.” Quaint little mother; though he sent her money with absolute regularity once a fortnight she always wrote as if it had fallen providential and unexpected from the gods. “You are very good to me, Mike, and I know you will be rewarded for it some day.” “Mike?” Nobody ever called him “Mike” now,* or had done since he left school; he hadn’t liked the contraction and had discouraged it. He was “Michael” now or “Micky.” He had liked “Micky” even less—especially since the invention of this cursed Mouse; but now Freda called him “Micky” and that made things quite different. Freda! . . . He read on, though he knew what he would see.

My dear, you will be sorry to hear that the news about poor Doris is not so good. I had a letter from the Matron at Yeolands—such a kind letter, but saying they might be obliged to put her under rather closer restraint. The old symptoms. I am so very disappointed about this and I know you will be too, for we were both hoping so much when you were here last that she was really a little better . . .

The letter fell from Micky’s hand; it fell upon the Hare of Cloud and balanced on it like a grotesque umbrella. Micky looked at his white face in the overmantel mirror and thought, “I’ve let Freda fall in love with me. I’ve let her tell me she’s in love with me. And all the time I’ve got a mad sister who’s getting worse, who has to have ‘closer restraint’ because she’s dangerous. Suppose I became— . . . And I haven’t told Freda, and how in God’s name can I? . . . I can’t tell her . . . I must . . .”

He said to the harmless and pleasant face—a little too pleasant, a little too harmless—that stared back at him from the mirror:

“You damned, unspeakable, utterly god-forsaken swine!”

6

Crash! made its appearance on the 5th of December, a Saturday only ten days before the end of Term. In actual University circles its explosion was disappointing; regretfully Ivor realised that he had left it too late—all these swots and saps were mugging up now for their term-end examinations and the only crashes in which they took any interest were those they were striving to stave off from themselves. And yet what better could he have done? The magazine had to be perfect; Peter had been insufferably lazy over these caricatures; the printers had taken their time over the blocks. It hadn’t been possible, really, to get the thing out a day earlier. Now that it was out, it was at any rate a masterpiece; it stung and bit and lacerated; it was the harrow for every toad on both Banks. The caricatures especially. Yet to Ivor’s mortification the University would hardly look at it.

He would have been much better pleased if he could have seen its effects upon the North Bank. He would have enjoyed, for instance, the reactions in the Advertiser office where King, the Editor, read his copy first with idle tolerance (a students’ frolic, eh?), then with a frowning irritation, finally with white-faced fury. Hurling Crash! upon the floor he banged his bell.

“Who’s in the office?”

There was nobody, it appeared, except Spot Niven.

“Well, ask Mr. Niven to come through.”

Spot came in jauntily, his foxy face shining; his quick eyes caught sight of the relic on the floor; it had fallen open at Peter’s picture of the North Bank in which—seeing it as a great gloomy yard of monumental steeples and chimneys—he had drawn it as a cemetery. His tombstone inscriptions were pungent.

“Look at this thing, Niven!”

But Spot with his good reporter’s nose had ferreted a copy hours ago; he said so. “And what’s more, I know all about it; I know who wrote every damned thing in it; I know who drew these pictures.”

“Then take it,” said King, “and deal with it. Knock hell out of it, tramp on it, jump on it, murder it. I don’t stand for this sort of thing.”

Spot said, “O.K., Chief!” and went off gloating. Carrion, eh? Garbage, eh?” Ah, if!” We’ll see about that now, Mister Calder, we’ll see about that.

But the prime North-Bank mover in the Crash! affair was a gentleman known as Big Bill Benzie. He was a garage proprietor in Cloudstone, a Town Councillor, a Labourite, a Red, a political boss, an effective nuisance. For obscure—or perhaps obvious—reasons he was imbued by a bitter hatred of the “Varsity” and all the South Bank; he had proposed to send some of his “boys” to the Opening Ceremony; he had actually sent some more of them in six buses to the Town football match. Rough, violent, a “plain workin’ man” (till his enemies called him one), he lived to torment, thwart and undermine the Provost, Sir Ewart Kay. He was powerful; he nursed the unemployed; Lord Abercloud was his god. . . . On the Saturday of Crash!’s appearance he came marching in upon Sir Ewart, his bowler-hat on the back of his head, a “gasper” drooping under his untrimmed moustache.

“See here, Mister Provost! Have ye seen this?”

Sir Ewart had seen it; it was marvellous how Crash! had got round.

“Well, an’ what are ye goin’ t’ do about it?”

Sir Ewart thought, “Now you’re asking,” for he didn’t know. He longed to say “Nothing,” but dared not; something would have to be done, for the North Bank, as he knew from bitter experience, had no sense of humour and—by corollary—a magnificent gift for umbrage. He temporised.

“What would ye do about it, Bailie?”

“Do? Raise hell!”

“Ay, but how? . . . Sit down, Bailie, sit down.”

Mr. Benzie shifted his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other with the eye-dazzling flicker of a lizard’s tongue, but he did not sit down. He said:

“I’ll tell ye how—plain and simple. I wud take this bit o’ dirt straight over t’ their Principal an’ I wud say, ‘Ye’ll find out who wrote this an’ ye’ll send him down instanter. In-stanter. Otherwise——’”

“That’s just the bit, Bailie. Otherwise?”

“If ye canna fill in that, Provost, yon Sir Luddivic can. Man, the damned settit-up place lives on us, lives on us. Supposin’ Abercloud cancels his legacies; supposin’ the rest of us withdraws our subscriptions——”

Sir Ewart thought, “They wouldn’t miss your subscription very much,” but he had more sense than to say so. Instead he improvised on the “Just laddies” line he had adopted with Lady Abercloud.

“It’s only a kind of a joke, Bailie—just a students’ rag.” Mr. Benzie affected such astonishment that the cigarette fell from his mouth; he took the opportunity of trampling it into Sir Ewart’s carpet.

“If that’s the way ye take it! . . . I can only say I’m very much surprised. Very much surprised. And it only shows—what some of us have been thinkin’ for a while—how out o’ touch ye are with the town’s feelings, Mister Provost. I tell ye the town’s fair seethin’ with it.”

Sir Ewart doubted it, but he did not say so.

“I tell ye this, Kay, as man t’ man—if ye don’t do something about it there’ll be a riot.”

The Provost sat staring at his unpleasant visitor; he was “Sir Ewart” after all and had earned the right to be called so; that “Kay” was deliberate. Still—what to do? An evil ghost climbed up behind his desk and whispered in his ear, “Elections next year—elections.” It frightened him; he wanted to be Lord Provost again and again, he did not want to see the Provost’s Lamps in front of the house of Big Bill Benzie. But there were many who did; many who did. He fiddled with his silver pencil, shooting it in and out.

“It comes to the bit, Provost; will see this Sir Luddivic or will I?”

Sir Ewart sighed; the threat was not an idle one; Big Bill Benzie, if he thought fit, would force himself upon the Almighty. And the result of a conversation between Big Bill Benzie and the Emperor could be one thing only—disaster.

“I tell ye as man t’ man, Provost •”

Sir Ewart was tired of being told things as man t’ man; he threw down his pencil.

“Very well; I’ll go. I’ll see the Principal.”

His adversary swelled and deflated. “An’ mind ye pitch it good an’ hot, Provost. No half-measures. If ye were in touch wi’ public feeling——”

“I am in touch with it.”

“Oh, ye are? Then ye’ll ken that most of us has had a belly-full of their damned Varsity an’ their airs an’ graces an’ their North-Bank-Savages and so on——”

“Oh, come, Bailie. I’m sure we’re all proud of our Varsity——”

“Maybe. But we’ll keep it in its place. An’ its place is under our hand an’ it’ll sing small when we say so. Bid Sir Luddivic pit that in his pipe an’ smoke it . . . Straight talk, Provost, plain speakin’ an’ no mincin’ words . . . An’ we’ll hear yer report at the next meetin’.”

He surged out of the room with the effect of one who spat upon the floor.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lee bought Crash! eagerly, hurried home with it eagerly, began to read it eagerly and then suddenly tired of it. Throwing it down, she thought, “What’s come over me? A couple of months ago I was as keen on all this as Ivor; I was keener than Ivor.” And then she thought, “Of course; it’s Peter. Since I’ve been—going about with Peter, most other things have seemed pretty flat. I can’t take the same interest in all this Raven-Abercloud, Save-the-Varsity business; I can’t feel about it.” A bore, a bore, the whole thing was a bore; everything was a bore except Peter. And Peter had not spoken to her since that Sunday night when he had told her to get out and go away.

“I’ve half a mind,” thought Lee, “to go round this minute and have it out with him. But I ought to have some excuse for going, I ought to have some reason. If only there was anything I wanted. . . . Oh, well, let’s wait; after all, I can always get him if I really want to.”

Half-way through the tedious afternoon the telephone rang; it was Guy Lessing, very excited.

“Lee, come round to the Hare this evening. We’re going to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“Crash! of course.”

Lee felt she couldn’t bear it; she said yawnily: “Who’s we?”

“Oh, Ivor; self; the usual crowd; Yoey.”

“Not Peter,” thought Lee; “at least, I hope not.” She said, “No, Guy, no.”

“Oh, Lee! You must.”

Lee thought, “There’s something engaging about Guy; he does make you feel wanted.” But she remained firm.

“No, Guy; nothing doing.”

“Oh, Lee!”

“No.” She put down the receiver and instantly was rather sorry; I might have gone—better than sitting here doing nothing. And if Peter does go——

Dinner-time came at last; she persuaded her father to eat some pheasant. It was a small skinny pheasant, not too well cooked, but he ate a slice of the breast to please her. She thought him old, thin-looking, hollow, fallen. Had that doctor been right; or had he just been casually reassuring? You could never be sure with doctors. . . . After dinner her father went off to Seneca and the Courvoisier. “And that,” she thought, “is the end of him for to-day, and if I weren’t here in the morning I don’t believe he’d miss me. Or would he? . . . Oh, if Peter had a lot of money and Daddy had a lot of money and mother was alive and I was a jeune fille, how nice and easy it would all be. And how dull; how I’d hate it.” . . . She went back to her arm-chair and read Philip Guedalla’s Hundred Years till ten struck, when she remembered that her car was still standing outside the house; thinking, “I must pass another hour somehow,” she got into it and drove away down to the Links.

There it was terrifyingly vast; remote blazing stars and the continuous crash of the sea. Smoking and smoking, Lee thought, “What am I to do about Peter? I must bring him to it somehow; I must stop his being frightened for me. If I were any ordinary woman he wanted, he would just put out his hand and grab—as he’s always done; but it’s me and he’s afraid. Well, he mustn’t be afraid any more. . . .”

At eleven she started thankfully homewards; the dreary day was finished; bed now and to-morrow would be Sunday. But as she neared Gledshaw House a figure leapt out into the glare of her headlights, waving and gesticulating. Pulling up with a screech of brakes she saw that it was Guy; he had the appearance of one who had been convivial but had been sobered by calamity. He said, as she stopped:

“Lee, for Christ’s sake! You’ve got to help me. It’s Yoey.”

“Yoey?”

“Yes. I’ve got her here in the hedge. She’s—she’s tanked.”

“Bad?”

“Pretty.”

“Blotto?”

“Well—yes.”

Lee said, “My god, Guy, you are an ass. What do you expect me to do?”

“I don’t know. I thought perhaps you might help me to get her into the House. It’s—it’s arranged; the music-room window’s open. But there’s a hell of a drop inside; I can’t manage her single-handed.”

“Can’t she walk?”

“She can’t even—well, see for yourself.”

Lee took her torch from the car and saw. In the shelter of the hedge, wrapped in her own coat and Guy’s, Yoey slept peacefully. Her face was ivory, her bright hair was a halo; she looked infinitely angelic, infinitely fragile. Lee said:

“Oh, Guy, you fool! Why didn’t you look after her?”

He said miserably, “I—I meant to. What else do you suppose I went for? I was looking forward to this. But she got frightfully excited; she would drink those beastly cocktails of Brett’s—you know, the ones with absinthe in them. And then I was away for a bit—as a matter of fact I was having a row with Brett about these foul cocktails—and when I got back——”

“Too late, too late? And so they all left you to it?”

“Well, somehow they all seemed to have gone away—I don’t quite know how it was; I suppose I lost count of time, somehow. Well, Ivor was still there; he helped me downstairs with her but he wouldn’t come any farther. He’s peeved about Crash! I got a taxi but the bloody man wouldn’t come nearer the House than a hundred yards—said he’d got into trouble last time, whatever that may have been. I tried to hump her along from there but she conked out on me altogether. Lee, you’ll have to help; you’ll have to.”

Lee bit her thumb; she said irresolutely, “I suppose we could manage——” Then suddenly her tone changed; she said, “I know. Wait here, Guy.”

He cried out in alarm. “Oh, dammit, Lee, you’ll come back? You can’t desert us. She’ll get pneumonia; she’ll die.”

Lee said, “You should worry. Sit tight; I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour.” The nasty little car leapt forward again, tore along the Gledshaw Road, turned off it, stopped outside Peter’s rooms. Praise heaven, the window was alight; he hadn’t gone to bed; now was he, was he? Because if he’s tight, thought Lee, I’m done—every way. She sounded her horn, sounded it again—louder; the window opened; Peter looked out.

“Peter! I want you.”

He said viciously—but, thank heaven! soberly “Then ye can want.”

“No, Peter. Really want. You’ve got to come. It’s desperate.”

“What for?”

“I’ll tell you as we go along. Hurry, please, Peter. I want you. Really.”

He hesitated an instant, then shut down the window; she heard him coming downstairs; in another minute he was beside her in the car again, his great body crushing against hers. He said, “If this is a ramp, Lee——”; but she began to explain Yoey’s plight and he subsided into mutterings. Guy, crouching under the hedge in an agony of terror—terror of discovery, terror lest Yoey be chilled to death—heard their voices wrangling above the roar of the car. He rushed out into the headlights again.

“Peter! My god, Peter, you are a brick!”

Peter said savagely, “Damn and blast your bricks. Where is the little bitch?” And before Guy could remonstrate, he picked Yoey up and threw her over his shoulder like a sack. Guy thought, “She’ll be sick for a certainty”; but miraculously she wasn’t; her hat fell off into the road and Lee picked it up and stuffed it away inside her coat. Peter, cursing and muttering, vanished with his burden into the blackness of the Gledshaw House gate.

Lee stood aimlessly polishing the lamps of her car; for want of anything better to do, Guy—who was feeling garrulous again—joined her. She seemed undisposed to talk, so he said tentatively:

“If you ask me, Peter’s done something like this before.”

Lee said, polishing, “You never know.”

“Decent of him, anyway.”

“He is decent.” (“And decenter than you think.”) “Damn decent.”

“We wouldn’t have got far without him, Guy.”

“No . . . You were a bit lucky to get him, though.” Lee stopped polishing. “Why?”

“Well, Saturday night and so on. Peter’s usually——”

“Not nowadays. Not this term.” He thought there was a subtle change in her voice; it sang a little. “You don’t keep up with the times, little man.”

“Don’t I? I thought when he wouldn’t come to the binge to-night——”

“Did you ask him?”

“Of course.”

“And what did he say?”

“He just said, ‘Go to hell.’ I thought it was a bit odd at the time. . . . Do you know, Lee, I believe Peter’s actually reforming for some reason——”

Lee finished her polishing. “Guy!”

“Yes?”

“What about beating it now?”

“Beating it? Who? Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Oh, Lee! It’s a frightful way to walk. I thought——”

“Can’t help that. You’ve got to walk it. What about starting?”

“But—Peter?”

“I’ll see to Peter.” She went forward and put her hands on his shoulders; there was something engaging about Guy—he was such a charming idiot. “Come on, Guy; beat it like a good boy.”

He began aggrievedly, “Well, I think it’s pretty thick——” and then suddenly recollected his gratitude. “Oh, well, O.K. It’s as you say. I’m nothing but grateful, Lee, nothing but grateful.” He went off—not too steadily—in the direction of home. Lee thought, “Poor Guy; that magazine-story nit-wit; oh, well, it won’t last. Meantime—Peter.” As if the thought had conjured him into being, he came creeping from the shadows.

“O.K., Peter?”

“Kind of. I had to go right in with her. But she’s on the sofa now—sleeping.”

“Well, then, let’s forget her and hope for the best. She’ll wake up with the cold before morning, or if she doesn’t, let’s hope it’s a friendly servant and not Cadmore.”

“I don’t care a curse who it is.”

“Well, then, neither do I. . . . Peter, would you like a drive?”

“Drive! It’s midnight.”

“What about it? You can’t be sleepy after all that. Come on, Peter!”

At a crawl and in silence they drove down to the Links, turned at the Club-house and in silence began to crawl back again. Not till they were half-way to the House did Lee say:

“It was pretty good of you, Peter.”

“Huh?”

“Everyone wouldn’t have done it.”

“I wouldn’t have done it for everyone.” . . . He melted suddenly. “Lee!”

“Darling?”

“I’m sorry I was rough the other night.”

“Were you rough, precious?”

“Roughish, wasn’t I? I told ye to clear out and not come back. And I meant it, too.”

“Still mean it, Peter?”

“No.”

“Then I’m glad I didn’t take any notice.”

“Ye see, Lee—ye see, Lee—it was true what ye said——”

“What did I say, then?”

“About the—the mistress. It is what I want.” Suddenly, as if a dam burst, it all came pouring out of him; suddenly and disconcertingly, he was completely humble. “I’m a rough devil, Lee; I’m not the sort of man who could ever think of marrying. Even if I’d the money—which I never will—there’s the drink, and—and——”

“You like a change sometimes, Peter?”

“I know I couldn’t stick to anybody if that’s what you mean. It just isn’t in me. I couldn’t marry, Lee.”

“No, my sweet. Who said you could?”

“But—but I’ve often thought if I could just get a woman with a brain who’d be kind of fond of me and—and love me a bit and—and——”

He should have been ridiculous; somehow he wasn’t. Lee said very gently:

“I know, Peter. I know all you mean. Don’t haver. . . . And you never thought it was possible——”

“I never thought it was possible——”

“Till you met me, Peter.”

He sprang away from her as far as the cramped little car would allow. “For God’s sake, Lee!”

“Why? You could, you know. We could.”

“Lee! Not you. Not a girl.”

“And if I said I—wasn’t a girl, Peter?”

There was a dead silence; Lee thought, “I’ve done it.” Under the first of the extinguished street-lamps the car crawled along; it passed the second before Peter said, hoarse and a little breathless:

“Lee, is that true?”

“If it were, Peter, would it make any difference?”

“I don’t know, Lee; I don’t know.” But she saw that it would. They turned into Peter’s road, saw the light still burning in his window. She thought, “So that’s all I have to do; that’s the lie I have to tell.” . . . She said:

“If that’s all, Peter darling, you’ve nothing to worry about. Nothing.”

The car stopped; he got out; he loomed over it enormously, staring down at her.

“Lee?”

“Yes, Peter. Yes.”

7

On the following Wednesday Sir Ludovic did an unusual thing; he drank a glass of port after lunch and had himself driven down to Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey and walked for half an hour among the ruins. It was a frosty day after gales, clear but drooping towards an early evening; the Emperor wore his ulster and the smoke of his cigar went spiralling up turquoise-blue against the rose-pink stonework. Sir Ludovic had no special feeling for the Abbey and no great sympathy with the Saint Gunegilde cult which struck him as a sham. As a goddess Sir Ludovic thought no more of Saint Gunegilde than he thought of the Eleusinian mysteries or the Mamaloi or the Thousand-Breasted Diana; though as a power he was obliged to respect her. Saint Gunegilde had shown fine stamina; she had survived a complicated succession of ages, and now with her Society and her Day and her Song—she was on the up-grade and stronger than ever. Yet the fact remained—she wasn’t true, she was a sham. And all that her votaries made out of her—from “Lovers’ Abbey” to the anti-Abercloud movement—was sham by consequence.

Sir Ludovic, smoking and rambling and poking old stones with his stick, enjoyed his quiet half-hour, which was his reward for two very annoying interviews. First the Provost, Sir Ewart Kay; Sir Ludovic re-defined Sir Ewart as a man whose stupidity was so outstanding that he had been singled out by his fellows for honour. Following the Provost, that young mountebank Calder; a different kind of fool—the Celt this time, the up-in-the-air romantic. . . . Well, one fool helped another; Sir Ewart had done Mr. Calder a service. Up to the hour of Sir Ewart’s visit the Emperor had been minded to dispense with Mr. Calder; but Mr. Calder remained in residence. The Provost, after some travail, had succeeded in getting out the words “send down”; Sir Ludovic had met them with one of his coldest silences and by the time of Ivor’s interview they had become very distasteful indeed.

For Sir Ewart had come bouncing in, full of a “now, then, what about this?” aggressiveness; the Emperor had reduced that by simply sitting and looking at him. Wonderful weapon, silence—and so few could use it. Sir Ewart had begun by flourishing a copy of Crash! with variations on the theme “I don’t think we can pass this, Sir Ludovic, I really don’t think we can.” Sir Ludovic had listened to him—and stared. Sir Ewart began to repeat himself; he began to feel a fool; inside him there began to surge a furious hatred of Big Bill Benzie. As if he perceived this—as perhaps he did, for he was a very clever man—Sir Ludovic rose and produced his sherry.

“I quite understand, Sir Ewart, that this is in no way personal.”

Sir Ewart jumped; of course it wasn’t personal; he said so hastily.

“I quite understand that in the interests of the—er—townspeople——” If the Emperor had said “the rabble, the scum, the Gadarene swine,” the effect would have been the same. And pitiably Sir Ewart had grasped at it.

“Of course, Sir Ludovic, you and me—we’re men of the world, we can take a dispassionate view of a thing like this——”

He gulped his sherry, failing to meet Sir Ludovic’s acid smile.

. . . “But the fact is, Sir Ludovic, there’s a lot of folk in Cloudstone who—well, they haven’t had our advantages—they don’t see things in proportion——”

“Quite.”

“They take it seriously——”

“Quite. . . . I think, Sir Ewart, we both realise how much the salvation of the University depends on good relations with our friends on the North Bank . . .”

Sir Ewart, swept at a stroke into the exalted company of the South Bank as he had swept himself into that of the dispassionate and cultured, forgot his resolution, his pugilism, his intended plain speaking: instead, he drank some more sherry and entered into a phase of warm comfortable agreement, general sentiments and peace.

The young mountebank Calder, who should have been much easier to deal with than the Lord Provost of Cloudstone, had proved himself in fact much more difficult. For he had matched the Emperor silence for staring silence; to what seemed to Sir Ludovic fatherly, almost genial, advances, he had responded—nothing.

“You are a youngish man, Mr. Calder; I am an oldish one. I am better qualified to judge what is for the general good than you are. You do not agree at the moment; but when you are sixty and your grandson, shall we say, is sixteen, you will see that it is so.”

Fatherly? Inviting? But a dour “Yes, sir!”—an answer that was no answer. Sighing, Sir Ludovic had picked up Crash!

“A very creditable production, Mr. Calder, though I could wish you had eschewed certain vulgarities.” Ah! that had gone home; didn’t think he was vulgar, did he, the young idiot! Curious how mankind—and especially youthful mankind—will stand up smiling to almost any accusation except lack of taste . . . “But on the whole a very clever production. Remarkably so for a student who, I understand, has taken a very low place in his classes this term. . . . Your parents, Mr. Calder?”

The young man had muttered something about independence, about thinking for oneself. Independence! Tschah! He thought his parents would wish him to follow his own bent. His parents! Damned Highland Radicals, no doubt; the party between stools; discontent that doesn’t know why; what could you do with such? Sighing again, Sir Ludovic had thrown Crash! into the waste-paper basket. “A joke not in the best of taste. A pity.” He had extracted from the young man a promise that Crash! would not reappear—a promise the young man, curiously enough, had given quite readily. And now to close it.

“And now, Mr. Calder, what I must speak to you about very seriously is this general attitude of opposition. At the time of the Rectorial Election you led a most absurd campaign against Lord Abercloud . . . University’s benefactor . . . very fine man; an example . . . Of course, completely ineffective . . . childish . . . undignified . . . kindly contempt . . .” A little laceration on the failure of that campaign; do him good, the conceited puppy; let him see that instead of being a god and a Führer, he was merely a public nuisance . . . “And your unfortunate followers, Mr. Calder; a responsibility to them. When they fail in their examinations, when they are sent down. . . . Young Lessing; Professor Brewster worried to death . . .”

The young mountebank (stirring, however, in his chair; touché again?) could only mutter more nonsense about independence of thought. Sir Ludovic had scotched that.

“Any criminal defying the law can plead independence of thought. The phrase has no meaning. . . . Now, Mr. Calder,” (time to apply the closure to all this) “Now, Mr. Calder, this attitude of opposition must cease . . . warn you . . . imperilling your career . . . sent down . . . And I hold the cards, Mr. Calder; I hold the cards . . .”

The young mountebank Calder had said “Yes, sir!” once more and had gone. . . .

In the Abbey, Sir Ludovic ground out his cigar against a sixteenth-century skull-and-crossbones, sighed yet again, buttoned up his overcoat and went back to his car. He was thinking, “Discontent that doesn’t know why. ‘Agin the Government’ just for opposition’s sake. Born to it, bred to it. Hopeless!”

On the way home he passed the Humanity Lecturer, Mr. Hext, and thought he looked worried and distracted and ill. Probably he was over-working; old Fency did nothing but sniff brandy and ruminate upon Seneca; poor Hext shouldered practically the entire Humanity School; it was hardly fair. Nice fellow, too—gentleman. He didn’t look well, anyway. . . .

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Sir Ewart had left the Emperor’s palace saying to himself, “Damn that Benzie—why am I to be rushed by him?” He was half-way home before he altered it to “Damn that Ludovic; he’s got over me once again!” and by that time it was too late to be of any practical service to Sir Ewart. He would have been interested to know, however, that his host’s thoughts, as he put away the sherry decanter, were running on very similar lines—“Why the devil should I be stampeded by this grocer?” So Sir Ludovic was not stampeded by the grocer and Ivor Calder was not sent down at Christmas; and Sir Ewart, had he known, might have consoled himself with the reflection that his visit had changed the course of Cloudstone history . . . if only for the worse.

At the hour when Sir Ludovic was poking the stones of Guney’s Abbey—or a little later, for the sunset was just breaking through in the west and sending long stabbing spears down the dusky river—Ivor, far more furious than Sir Ewart, was at his favourite pitch on the Old Cloud Bridge. Deliberately turning his back on that concrete utility of which an Exalted Personage had spoken so highly, he laid his elbows on the rough-and-smooth stone and gazed towards the sea. The river-bed was full of blue-brown smoke; its banks were sable; but away to the east the late sun’s lances struck on the rose of the Abbey and the shining gold of sand. It caught Ivor’s breath—for no reason except that it was a moment of beauty and he saw it; it was an inexplicable fragment of the Aim, an indeterminable step in the Attempt. He thought, “I was right; I was right; I’ll go on.”

For in the cold sunset Ivor was hot and raging with a mixture of feelings. Part of him was exultant; he had stuck it out and he had survived; he lived to fight another day. A part—a larger part—was bitterly disappointed; worried and muddled and doubtful, he had hoped—in secret even from himself—that something might come of this interview, that the Emperor might just conceivably help, might throw a beam of light into a dark place. He could have said—couldn’t he?—“Now, Mr. Calder, what are you after with all this? It must be something. Tell me.” And then one could have tried to tell him and one would have tried to tell him; and in the telling—who knows?—perhaps the dark inscrutable might have become clear even to oneself. . . . And what, in actual fact, had the old image really done? Jawed, prosed, lectured, shown off, frothed out fine phrases, purred like a cat and petted—like a cat—with a hand that scratched like sin. The bloody jawbationing old usher! “If he’d shown one spark of humanity,” thought Ivor, fingering the age-worn stone, “one gleam of insight, one single effort to see my point of view. As it is—Christ!”

“There must be no repetition of this magazine, Mr. Calder.” No repetition of Crash! How could there be? How could you repeat perfection? Did you ask Praxiteles not to repeat his Hermes, Shakespeare not to write a second Lear? . . . And he had said, he had dared to say, that Crash! was vulgar. Vulgar!

“I am an oldish man, Mr. Calder; I am better qualified . . .” Then, damn it, you might have given me a hand. You might have seen, you oldish stuffed Mandarin, that I’m at my wits’ end. That I don’t know what to do except go on. Where to? Ah, now you’re asking . . . “Any criminal defying the law can plead independence of thought.” Yes, but the law can’t stop a criminal who’s prepared to take punishment; you can’t beat a murderer who’s ready to be hanged. . . . “And I hold all the cards, Mr. Calder.” Not quite all, old boy, not quite all. I have a stout heart of my own; I have friends who believe in me; I have a plan of what I mean to do; and you don’t know what it is.

I’m going on . . . Send me down, then. . . . Blast you!

8

Well might Micky Hext look ill when he passed Sir Ludovic, well might he look distracted and worried; for he was coming away from one of the most horrible passages in his life. When Sir Ludovic saw him, he was walking rapidly in the direction of the Abbey, but he did not really know where he was going; he did not see Sir Ludovic’s car; he saw nothing but his own despair.

For Micky had done it at last; he had told Freda; he had finished with Freda.

The act had been unstaged, unrehearsed and so far as the actual moment went, unpremeditated. One of Judith Brewster’s Wednesday lunches; four or five students from the English Literature class and Probyn, with whom Micky shared the Austin Seven. Micky sat next Freda. Judith had talked about the current unrest in the University, pooh-poohing it rather; the five students had been non-commital, Stephen cautiously acquiescent. Then Judith had said brightly:

“It’s a good thing Christmas is coming soon—we all want a change. . . . We’re going—” she shot a glance at Stephen—“we’re going to get right away. We’re going to the South of France.”

Probyn had enquired politely, “Oh? What part?” and Judith had told him, “Aravis. On the Little Riviera. Our very own discovery.” And had glanced again at Stephen as if they shared some precious secret, and Stephen had returned the glance as if he certainly shared a secret but was not quite sure what it was. Probyn had said, “Then you’ll be able to look up Lord Abercloud”; and Judith, with much less enthusiasm, had agreed that they could. And Micky had leaned closer to Freda and had half-whispered:

“Are you going?”

In a half-whisper she had answered, “Not if you want me here.” And he had said, “If I want you!” And then immediately had come the knife-like stab of realisation; you must put an end to this instanter, you must finish it now, to-day, before you leave this house. And Micky, going rather white, had eaten very little more lunch.

The actual deed had been done in a little cretonne-and-bookshelf room Micky had never seen before but saw ever after. He had lingered after lunch, watching the students depart and Probyn; he had said to Freda, “Can I speak to you somewhere?” and she had said, “Come in here; it’s Judy’s writing-room but she won’t be using it.” And they had gone into the cretonne-and-bookshelf room and there Micky had drawn his sword and slashed.

“Freda, I’ve got to tell you something. You’ve got to listen.”

“Oh, Micky! Are you certain—sure?”

“Too sure. I wish I wasn’t. But you wouldn’t let me tell you last time——”

“Micky, it’s about marriage!”

“Yes; in a way.”

“Then don’t, don’t. Why bother? What does all that matter so long as we can go on being happy?”

“We can’t go on being happy. That’s just it.”

“But, Micky, I know all about it. I know you haven’t any money. I know you have your mother to look after. We must just wait. What——”

Whitening, he said, “It isn’t that.”

She whitened too. “Well—what? . . . Oh, Micky, you’re not married already to somebody else?”

“Good God, no!”

“Well, you might have been. Young men—— Then—what?”

“I can’t marry anyone. I can’t think of marrying at all. I can’t have anything to do with any girl.”

She came and sat on the arm of his chair, put a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Tell, darling. I see it’s something bad. Tell. I’ll try to understand.”

“It’s—it’s—there’s something queer about my family, Freda——” Haltingly, hunting for phrases, he began to try to tell her about Doris. Three years younger than himself; he could remember her first when he was about six—a fat child, she had been, with a big, flattened, misshapen head that wobbled; didn’t speak much, liked bright colours, stared at them for hours. He couldn’t get her to play; for some reason in these days he had been passionately attached to her, but she wouldn’t respond. He had asked his mother, “Why won’t she play with me?” and his mother had replied—he remembered the words so clearly—“You mustn’t trouble Doris, dear; she isn’t just like others.” Not just like others? How? Why? . . . Gradually he had become a little frightened for her; she didn’t speak—at least you couldn’t understand what she said, but there came a time—perhaps it lasted for years, perhaps months, perhaps only weeks—when she took screaming fits in the nights; and during that time Micky would lie in his little bed with his hands pressed into his ears, praying wildly, “Oh, God, help Doris; Oh, God, save Doris.” But God hadn’t attended . . . Doris became troublesome. Terrible days stood out in memory—the day when she had come creeping up behind him and hit him a frightful blow on the head with a toy pistol; he could see yet the blood dripping on to his hands from the cut, could remember yet the bewildered, incredulous feeling—far more awful than the blood—“Doris did this!” . . . The day Doris had, quite suddenly, flown shrieking at their nurse; the day he had heard the cat screaming and had run down the garden to the tool-shed and had found Doris— . . . Then Doris had been taken away and he had not seen her for a long time and one day his mother had explained to him the truth he had been afraid to guess—that his sister was “not quite right in her head.” He shook even yet with the horror of that recollection; madness, the sinister, gruesome, heart-stopping abomination! . . . The arm round his shoulder tightened.

“But, Micky——”

“Let me finish, Freda.” . . . He had not seen Doris again for a long time; then after his father’s death his Aunt Isabel, his father’s sister, had taken him one holiday to a great house among grounds with people walking about in them—people who were rather terrible because they were just like ordinary people and at the same time just weren’t. And in a room there he had seen Doris—a big girl now, very big and strong, but lumpy, puffy, non-alive; and Doris could only make sounds. But they were sounds of pleasure and for some reason that meeting brought back the old attachment, killed the supervening fear. He had seen Doris often after that—as often as possible, because, they said, he was “good with her” . . . “I’m fond of her, Freda; that must sound incredible to you, but in some extraordinary way I am.” . . . Oddly enough, he was much better with her than her mother; she didn’t like her mother, had once even attacked her and struck her . . . “though why, Freda, God only knows, for mother simply slaved herself, she’d have done anything——” . . . Sometimes Doris was better or much better; sometimes she was worse. But there it was—insanity, madness, my own sister. . . . “So you see, Freda——”

“But, darling”—and the arm still on his shoulder—-“I don’t see. I mean, your father wasn’t mad or your mother?”

“No, no. Of course not. But there must have been somebody far back.”

“Do you know of anybody else, now?”

“Well, there is hardly anybody. My mother was an only child. My father’s sister, my Aunt Isabel in London——”

Is she——?”

“No, she’s not; not the least; she’s most sensible. But——”

“Then, darling, aren’t you worrying yourself unnecessarily? I mean, poor Doris must be mad just by accident. Perhaps they hurt her when she was being born. Perhaps—oh, anything.”

“I can’t be sure. And even so——”

“But it doesn’t matter to you, Micky. It can’t make any difference to you. Think, darling, if you’d been in a motor accident together and Doris had lost one of her legs, you wouldn’t be one-legged, would you? It’s nonsense, Micky dear.”

“It may be, it may not. I can’t risk it. Anyway, I can’t think of marrying.”

Freda got up and walked over to the window.

“I do wish you’d stop talking about marrying. I wish you’d stop thinking about it. I don’t—believe me, I don’t.” Her voice changed suddenly, collapsed. “I—I only love you, Micky. I only want you to be happy.”

“God knows, so do I. I mean, I only want you to be.”

“Then, couldn’t we both be, Micky? Together?”

“No . . . You’ve—you’ve got to forget me, Freda—to go away and forget me altogether.”

“So easy, Micky?”

“No. But—oh, darling, darling, it’s got to be done.”

“You mean this to be good-bye, Micky?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not to see you again?”

“No.”

She began to cry.

“I—I meant to stay here with you at Christmas. I—I thought we’d go to the Abbey . . . all to ourselves.”

“I know, I know. But we can’t, can’t, can’t.”

She took out her handkerchief and stood crumpling it, recovering.

“All right. You’d better go now, Micky . . . I suppose I can go to France with Judith . . . I needn’t come back . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

After tea Sir Ludovic read the Advertiser; Wednesday was its day. Of Spot Niven’s masterly dissection of Crash! he thought little—vulgar stuff, striving after a cheap wise-crack cleverness, reeling drunkenly between the stools of facetiousness and venom, throughout incomparably poorer than its original. But the half-leader King had devoted to the subject was a more serious matter.

“In another column we deal with the latest ebullition of University humour. We have no objection to humour; students’ ‘rags,’ whether for charity or otherwise, have found many a sympathetic supporter in Cloudstone. But a deliberate attack on our town, our citizens and on men of whom we have every reason to be proud is another thing. Doubtless the University authorities and leaders—who have themselves been severely castigated in this precious publication—will have their own methods of dealing with those responsible. Their action will be awaited with interest. For the meantime we content ourselves with the remark that, in Cloudstone, Town and Gown are mutually interdependent, and a cordial relationship between them is essential to the well-being of us all. We are sure the University authorities will remain alive to the cardinal importance of this entente and will neither by omission nor by commission imperil its continuance.”

Sir Ludovic put down the Advertiser and stared into the fire; well done, that—sweetly reasonable and patient, but the iron fist showing through the velvet glove very cleverly. “Doubtless” . . . “action will be awaited” . . .”for the meantime” . . . “imperil its continuance”. . . all very neat and unobtrusive ways of saying, “You haven’t heard the last of this, my boys.” Sir Ludovic, staring at the fire, was aware that he was suddenly very tired—shivery, a touch of nausea. He got up and looked at himself in the overmantel mirror; yes, his lips were blue. . . . He took a tablet from a locked drawer in his desk, poured himself a little more tea and swallowed it.

And at that moment, in the Bar of the Bridge Hotel, Big Bill Benzie—swallowing something stronger than tea—was saying to a group of his friends:

“Kay? Kay’s a wash-out. Kay’s done nothing. And what cud ye expect from a whinin’, cringin’, bum-lickin’——”

Someone said, “Then are we t’ lie doon under it, Bailie?”

“Lie doon my! There’ll be nae lyin’ doon here.”

He leaned confidentially forward, breathing ambrosia. “This time—maybe. But the next time—the ver-ry next time—there’s onything o’ this, we tak’ the law intil our own hands. An’ I’ve the lads ready that’ll do it!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Interlude: Christmas

1

The trains, noisy and crowded, drew out of the gloomy cave of Cloudstone Station; they went rumbling south over the high Cloud Bridge or staggering north up heavy gradients into the moorland hills. Four hundred and seventy-five students—three hundred and five men and one hundred and seventy women—were dissipated to the counties of Britain for the duration of the Christmas Vac. Some fell from high importance to suburban obscurity; others rose from the status of an obnoxious object to that of rustic hero. In remote hamlets of Scotland and the north of England strange young men appeared; in blue plus-fours and purple stockings they swaggered down the village street. A few hours ago they had been in the wormish condition of freshmen at Guney’s or Cryd’s; now they were as gods; they were “young-so-and-so-doon-from-the-Coaledge.” It was hinted that they had tremendous brains; perhaps some of them had. At all events they were scattered, squandered, gone; in Cloudstone only a few ghosts, chained there by circumstance, remained. On the North Bank rose the crescendo of Christmas shopping, Christmas treats; on the South rested a desert tranquillity. There the year, poised on its shortest day, slept like a spinning-top.

Among the derelict ghosts was Micky; he could not afford to go home—Gloucestershire was too far away for three weeks—nor was it suitable that he should. For Doris was at home just now; she had taken a sudden brighter and better turn—so bright and reassuring that Yeolands had sent her for a change to her mother. With two nurses, of course—great husky women with soothing voices and hands like traps; but still, the advance had been made and it was two or three years since any such attempt had been thinkable. Micky wasn’t altogether sure about it; he doubted if Doris were as happy at home as they thought; but it meant the world and all to his mother—especially at Christmas. It meant also, however, that the little house in Gloucestershire was full, that Micky’s mother had more than enough on her hands. So Micky would have been a nuisance there; and in any case he fought shy of that household of crackling uniforms and watching eyes and these big trained hands, idle but ready . . . Yet Cloudstone was torture too; everywhere Hares of Cloud danced and grinned and mocked at him—on calendars and Christmas cards, pin-cushions, chocolate boxes and bric-a-brac. And all Micky could think now when he saw them was, “I am the idiot Earl; I have shot my Hare of Cloud.”

Also among the ghosts was Yoey Ballantyne wandering about, a little desperate because nobody would realise her desperation. With the talent of the expensively educated for coming home sick, her two younger sisters had arrived from school with measles; Yoey was stuck at Gledshaw House with a Czecho-Slovakian, a Spaniard, a Parsee and the Warden, Miss Cadmore. It was impossible, in such company, to be either a vivandière or a hetaira; and an attempted heart-to-heart rapprochement with the Warden had ended in dismal failure. The Warden had said briskly—oh, so briskly:

“You can get some work done, anyway.”

“Oh, but Warden——”

“You did precious little last term. At this rate——”

“I couldn’t work last term, Warden. How could I? You know how worried I was——”

Cadmore had been through all this before and had no intention of going through it again; she knew what was coming—“so-o worried . . . he never spoke to me after the first day of the term . . . what can I do? . . .” The Warden knew that “he” was Micky Hext; the Ballantyne had a pash on Micky; thus they expressed it in the House Common Room—and it was a pretty accurate statement of the case. If there was one thing the Warden disliked more than the Ballantyne, it was a pash. She put down a heavy foot.

“I think you’re working up a pose. And I think you know it. Pose or no pose, the best cure for that sort of thing’s work. Read your History . . .”

Misunderstood and miserable, Yoey sighed and gave the Warden up with the Czecho-Slovakian, the Spaniard and the Parsee. She did go so far as to write to Micky proposing a round of golf, but Micky replied—very politely and wishing her a Merry Christmas—that he had a crocked wrist. Yoey tore up his Merry Christmas with fury; to be struck in the face was bearable, but to be fobbed off with a puerile lie! Thenceforward she drifted from bank to bank more ghost-like than ever, or listened to the wireless that pandered to her with endless maundering dance-tunes about farewells and partings and romances broken and lovers lost. “Noh re-grets,” bawled the crooners, “although our love-affair has gone astray.” . . . No regrets! The fool—what else had the discarded to cherish and cling to? . . . But in the end she had almost too much of it; it was a relief one afternoon, in Ferrier’s Cafe in the Bridgegate, to see Lee Fency sitting at a table, the green cigarette-holder jutting insolently above her tea-cup. Without hesitation Yoey plumped herself down in the vacant chair.

“Oh, Lee; I’m so glad to see you!”

Lee blew a cumulus of cigarette smoke into Yoey’s face and said, “Yeah. . . . How are you getting on?”

“Rottenly. I’m worried all to blazes.”

Lee had more sense than to ask what about; instead, she said sanely:

“I expect we’re all a bit strung up.”

“I know! Things have been a bit too exciting lately, haven’t they? Oh, Lee, won’t next term be marvellous?”

“M’m.”

“Lee, what do you think will happen?”

Lee said disconcertingly, “I’ll tell you one thing that’ll happen; some of you people will get into a number one size row.”

Yoey tossed back her lovely head; Guy’s adored throat shone rosy in the electric light.

“Who cares?”

“So long as you don’t——”

“I don’t, Lee, I don’t. I don’t care what happens to me.—If I can help even the tiniest bit——”

“Still—no sense in rows.”

“Oh—rows; what do rows matter? . . .” But Lee had not made the required response—she must be helped towards it. “I think I do help them a bit, you know, Lee.”

“Oh, rather.”

“Well, then! Besides, anyway,”—she strove to look as desperate as the rose-shaded lights would allow—“I’m so worried and wretched I don’t care what happens. In some ways I’d welcome a row. I’d welcome anything. I wouldn’t care if I died. . . . Lee, I’d like to!”

“Well, you will. One day.”

Yoey sighed; it was a delightful game but it required two, and nobody, it seemed, would play it with her. She came reluctantly back to earth.

“Yes, I suppose so. . . . How’s your father?”

“He’s in bed. He’s got a cold.”

“Oh, bad luck. I do hope he’ll be all right by the beginning of term.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right.” But Yoey, who was in some ways no fool, saw that Lee set her teeth a little as she said it.

2

At Aravis, on the little Riviera, things were not too good either. At times Judith felt nearly as desperate as Yoey.

For, from the moment of leaving Cloudstone, Stephen had been increasingly unsatisfactory; fussy in London, sickish on the Channel, ill-tempered in the wagon-lit, he had finally surveyed the Hôtel du Golf at Aravis—Judith’s “discovery”—with captious disappointment.

“It doesn’t look much.”

“It isn’t the Ritz, my dear.” Judith had been tired too. “But you can’t go wrong in France. You’re always certain”—she clung to this myth with the persistence of the untravelled—“of a first-class omelette and a bottle of real wine, anyway.”

Stephen said, “Hum! . . . I think we should have gone to Hyeres.” And almost immediately he asked the fatal question every visitor to Aravis asked sooner or later.

“Where’s the golf course?”

The hotel manager, an ingratiating Arlesien, returned his equally invariable answer.

“Ah—zee goff cours; ’e is not yet feeneesh.” He refrained from adding that “’e” was not yet begun either.

“Then why the devil do you call this the Hôtel du Golf?”

“Bot zere is goff. Monsieur can play at Costebelle, Hyeres, Beauvallon——”

“But all that’s twenty miles away. Is there a bus?”

“Ah, non!”

In their bedroom Stephen commented sourly to Judith on the persistence and delight with which the French repeated the syllables, “Ah, non.” Judith said, suddenly weary:

“It’s only ten days—Boy. Can’t you endure without golf for that time?”

“Freda might like to play.”

“Damn Freda!”

Compassion for her tired travel-stained face suddenly smote Stephen; he felt as little equipped for consolation as for the dish of bouillabaisse he feared he must presently face at dinner; nevertheless he said:

“Oh—well . . . I’m sure it’ll be very nice.”

He kissed the nape of Judith’s neck; and nothing—nothing on earth—could have been less promising than the way he did it.

And it was not very nice; as the second day developed and the third, Judith was obliged to tell herself that her plan wasn’t working. Stephen had taken an initial dislike to the Hôtel du Golf; he harped on about the golf course swindle, which he took as a personal affront; he said—with truth—that the “plage” was just Mediterranean litter; he complained of the roughness, steepness and shortness of the sentiers that wound about among the pine-clad limestone promontories and landed one always in somebody’s back-yard. On the third day he said at déjeuner that French vegetables were all mussed up with butter and he couldn’t eat them and as for that rosé, you might as well drink cascara. Alarmed, Judith realised that the situation was serious—so serious that in the evening she left Stephen to write letters and went out along the dark deserted promenade to think things out. And tramping along, stumbling and cold and vexed, Judith told herself, “It’s Freda who’s spoilt it—Freda.”

And yet—at least to any woman so mercilessly just as Judith—it was impossible to find any definite fault with Freda; as impossible as it had been to refuse her when she had come red-eyed and sniffly and had said, “Judy, c-could you take me to A-Aravis with you; I promise not to be a nuisance.” And then she had blurted out some misery about her M-Micky not wanting her any m-more. Great baby; but rather a darling, too! . . . Well, she had promised not to be a nuisance and she had in fact been so little of a nuisance that you could hardly say she had even existed; on the train, on the boat, at Aravis, she was there only if you looked for her. If she had guessed Judith’s ambition for the adventure—“And perhaps,” thought Judith with a sudden stab of anger, “perhaps she has, and how I should hate that!”—she could not have left them more severely alone. She hardly spoke; if it was fine, she took out her sketching things and drew lines on her block and rubbed them out again or took paint on her brushes and let it dry there; if it was wet, she took her typewriter and “wrote” in some hidden corner of the hotel; at nights she read a solid-looking book called The Post-War World or she went to bed—or at least sat in her room . . . No, you couldn’t specifically blame Freda . . .

“And yet,” thought Judith, “there’s a difference between a person who’s practically non-existent and a person who’s physically a thousand miles away. And with a man like Stephen that difference is intensified.” Freda was there; you couldn’t get away from it; anyway, Stephen couldn’t get away from it. The third person—at meals, in the offing, in the next bedroom but one—produced in Stephen just that touch of shyness, that touch of sheepishness, which spelt disaster to Judith’s hopes. Freda was there, hide how she liked; and as long as Freda was there, Stephen couldn’t get going. There it was. “Quite certainly,” thought Judith, tramping the weary promenade, “I must get Stephen away somewhere else. Where? God knows—but we’ll find a place. Freda must stay where she is; she’s a grown woman; there are heaps of English in Aravis; the hotel’s a civilised place; nothing can happen to her. Really—if you look at it squarely—she’ll be better off without us.”

Her walk did Judith good; she came home with her plan and her resolution formed. And in their room that night she said to Stephen:

“Boy!”—(She had clung to the “Boy” since Dover but without much visible effect so far)—“Boy! what about that call we were going to pay on Lord Abercloud?”

He wasn’t enthusiastic. (“And neither would I be,” thought Judith, “but we must have some excuse to get away.”)

“Let’s take the hotel car, Boy, and make a round trip of it. Let’s make it a day or two.”

“There are plenty of trains.”

“I know; but stuffy. And it’s all tunnels—you see nothing. No, Boy, let’s take the car. We can stay a night in one place, a night in another and so on. We might even”—she watched his face—“find some place we liked better than this; and shift camp there.”

He brightened. “Yes—we might do that.” Then came the objection for which she waited. “But what about Freda?”

Earnestly Judith began to explain to him why Freda would be much better where she was.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Freda herself sat in the next bedroom but one; she sat by the window on a rush-bottomed, fake-Provençal chair and stared out at the points of light that lay between her and the sea. It was cold, and she wore the green coat with the fur-edged collar; her hands lay in her lap and she fiddled with the expanding bracelet of her wrist-watch, pulling it out and in. The Post-War World sprawled face down on the bed; her portable typewriter was pushed away into a corner behind the tin bidet. She knew herself a nuisance to Judith; yet what could she have done? She couldn’t have stayed in Cloudstone—never again Cloudstone, never; her flat was let for six months, her aunt’s house in London was full. So here she sat in a place she hated, being a nuisance to others. . . .

She thought, “How can I possibly go on? I’ve tried, I’ve tried; I can’t keep it up. I can’t paint, I can’t write, I can’t read, I can’t do a single thing but sit and think about Micky, think about Micky.”

Her fair head bowed, drooped, sank to her arms; she sobbed into the soft fur at her wrists.

“Oh, Micky, Micky; why did you run away from me!”

3

Willie McKillop detested Christmas on closer and more personal grounds than the mere superciliousness of atheism. If the Christians liked to make a fuss at this time of year, well—let them; Willie was tolerant enough—or uninterested enough—to condone their seasonal fervours. But Christmas as applied to his own home he hated. This was strange, for Willie was an essentially kind-hearted little man, easy-going, jocular, sociable, a “comic”; on Christmas Day he should have been in his element. His reasons for loathing it instead were connected—literally connected—with Edna. For to-day was the feast of Gander and of Niven; this day was Family Day. On alternate Christmases the McKillops dined with the Ganders in Cloudstone and vice versa; and Willie could never determine which method of assemblage he disliked the more. This year the Christmas dinner—midday dinner because of the (numerous) children involved—was staged at Willie’s and for that reason he was temporarily of opinion that this was the more intolerable ordeal of the two. As he said, “Ye can always rise and come away; ye canna turn visitors out.” . . . Shaving himself and at intervals throughout the morning, he hummed to himself, “Christmas Day in the workhouse; The bloodiest day of the year.”

Edna, penetrating at times in her understanding of Willie, failed habitually to realise how genuinely he hated her relatives. She sometimes told an affronted Madgie that Willie “put it on a lot,” and this was what she solemnly believed. His fulminations against the tribes of Niven and Gander passed harmlessly over her head; secure in her conviction that Willie was a good sort and that Gander the newsagent was “decent” and Spot “a cure” and Madgie, her sister, “sweet,” she took very little notice of Willie at all. He was “putting it on.” It would have needed a very violent concussion to alter these beliefs. . . . But that concussion was coming.

In its early stages this particular Christmas Day ran true to type. As usual there was initial hilarity at breakfast—the unwrapping of presents, uproar, too much uproar, a row, an outbreak, tears. After breakfast there was the usual church—and a minor row over that; last-minute hurry-scurrying, Edna hot and panting and struggling with new shoes. Followed the customary race for home and the arrival of the North-Bank contingent all too early for Edna’s dinner, all too soon for Willie’s solitary bottle of five-shilling sherry. Next, the traditional stodge; soup, turkey, the traditional blazing pudding that traditionally went out too soon; nuts, almonds, Guinness, Worthington, crackers. . . . All these agenda repeated themselves this day once again without hint of impending catastrophe; Madgie read out “mottoes” from the crackers; Gander, who had a real if latent wit, invented slightly Rabelaisian parodies of them which drew from the ladies that sort of laughter only describable as “skellochs”; the children screeched in uncomprehending ecstasy; Willie was a “comic” with success; Spot Niven bared his teeth and snatched another of his host’s—sixpenny—cigars. All as usual; and then, just at the dangerous moment of repletion and satiety, that moment when a doubt, a distemper, steals through the best of us, Willie—all unwittingly—fired the fuse.

“And what,” he asked genially, “are we going to do now?”

Spot sang in a facetiously extravagant tenor, “Sing me to slee-eep”; but Madgie, looking round beamingly under her fiery head, said:

“I thought it was all settled. Are we not all going to the Drumhead Service?”

Willie’s jaw dropped. “Drumhead Service?”

“Yes, dearie,” said Edna soothingly. “In the Bowater Park.”

Willie said, “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.” Spot, catching the sudden sharpness in his tone, looked up watchfully.

Edna said in a puzzled way, “Maybe it was while you were getting out the sherry.” She thought, in self-elucidation, “I’m sure I told him; but perhaps, with so much to do——” Madgie, observing her sister’s timid confusion, cut in with sudden truculence:

“Anyway, that’s where we’re all going.”’

Willie spat out a fragment of sixpenny cigar.

“What—all? The children as well?”

“Of course the children as well. They’ll like to see the soldiers. Will ye not like to see the soldiers, dearies?”

Amid the chorus of somewhat torpid acquiescence, Willie snapped:

“Soldiers be sugared! It’s only the Salvation Army.”

As if in sympathy with the rising tones of his voice Madgie’s temperature leapt from watchfulness to belligerence.

“That shows all you know about it, Willie McKillop.” (If there was one thing that lacerated Wilke more than another it was when his sister-in-law addressed him as “Willie McKillop.”) “There just is going to be soldiers. The Cheviots is to be there from the barracks and the band too. And that chap they call the Golden Bugler, but he plays the drums as well. And McWhirter’s to speak. So ye see”—she caught his eye and added venomously—“Willie McKillop!”

“I see,” said Wilke with dangerous calm; and then, with a moment’s relapse into pure Kelvinside, “Hehl!”

Perhaps Wilke saw, perhaps Gander saw—as Spot certainly did by now—and Madgie. But Edna, serene in her beliefs in Christmas Day and human goodness, saw nothing. She rose from her chair comfortably but with an unmistakable creak of stays.

“Well, maybe we’d better be getting ready. It’ll take us twenty minutes to get to the Bowater Park——”

“It’ll not take me twenty minutes to get to the Bowater Park,” said her husband. “Nor twenty hours, either.”

“Meaning,” said Spot, gracefully flicking his ash, “that Mr. McKillop isn’t going to play.”

Edna stared round her; with the exception of Willie’s, she saw only laughing jovial faces; convinced that there must be some joke, some misunderstanding, she said the fatal thing.

“Och, Willie’s coming all right—never fear. He’s just putting it on.”

She waddled upstairs to her room a little breathlessly—and became more breathless when the door flew open and an almost unrecognisable Willie, his hair positively on end with fury, came bouncing in.

“Ehd! Ehd!”—Kelvinside had captured him once again—“Are ye daft?”

Edna was in the somewhat ungraceful position of having one foot over the other knee; her round face gazed up at him, red, contorted and slightly damp.

“Daft, Willie? How?”

“Is it your solemn intention”—he ran a hand over his hair—“that you an’ me an’ Donald an’ Mary are going to stand about in the Bowater Park with—with that lot?”

“But, dearie——”

“Dinna ‘dearie’ me! I think ye’ve taken leave of yer senses. Me, the Secretary of the Varsity, hanging about at a drumhead service—a drumhead service—with Gander the newsagent and——”

“But, Willie, they’re here. It’s Christmas Day!”

“Christmas Day? I don’t care a damn if it’s Judgment Day. And if it was and I had to rise from the dead with that lot I’d rather lie in my grave. And I’d rather get into it now than go to the Bowater Park——”

Edna’s face flushed crimson at last; she withdrew her foot from her knee to the floor and sat open-legged in an even more ungraceful attitude than before—only she was not aware of it and neither was Willie. They were aware of nothing but rising temperatures, a surging fury compounded partly of indigestion but more of longstanding grievances boiling up at last.

“So that’s what you think of them!”

“That’s what I think of them. And I’ll tell you what I think of you for letting me in for any such thing——”

“Oh. I see.” It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, but how many straws does it take to reach the last? Probably it varies with the camel. At all events it was in this moment of misfunctioning organs and over-worked digestions that Edna collapsed under hers. She made a curious choking sound and threw her new shoes into the corner.

“Very well; we don’t go.”

“No; we don’t.”

“No . . . I was looking forward to it, too . . . But come downstairs with me and I’ll tell them just what you’ve said——”

Fury in Willie gave place to a sudden fear; he had never seen Edna like this. He said:

“Steady, Ed!”

“I will not steady. Your guests are to hear what you really think of them. Come you down with me.”

Sudden compassion for her back view on the stairs smote Willie; he thought, “Dammit all, I needn’t have made such a song. It’s Christmas Day—she sets store by that. Poor old Eddie!” He said in a hoarse reconciliatory whisper, “Half a minute, Ed, half a minute.”

Ordinarily these words in that tone would have halted Edna like a gunshot; to-day they made no impression. She thumped her way downstairs into the over-heated, food-smelling dining-room. Willie, coming a little cringingly at her heels, heard her announcement.

“Willie says we’re not to go.”

Quite evidently the guests had been discussing their absent host and hostess; the clans of Niven and Gander were lined for battle. Madgie, placed sturdily in front of the fire, demanded:

“Says who’s not to go?”

“Us two. Him and me. . . . And of course, Donnie and Mary.”

There was a constrained and awkward silence; Gander said uneasily, “Man, Willie——” Spot, taking the opportunity to light his third cigar, put in with blandly evil intent, “But—why?”

Poor Edna stood in the midst of her desecrated hospitality; her bosom went up and down; tears rose in her voice.

“I’ll tell you why, Spot; it’s because——”

But her sister forestalled her; under hair that had become somehow snaky, her flushed face suddenly darkened.

“Ye don’t need to tell us that. I know why. I know fine. It’s because Mister McKillop doesna like to be seen yonder with the like of us. And if I’m wrong, Willie McKillop, stand forward and say so.” As Willie said nothing at all, she towered a little and caught her husband’s eye. “Siddy! Ye heard that? Come on, then; we’ll go by ourselves. We know fine when we’re not wanted.”

Gander, acutely uncomfortable, scratched his head and began again, “Man, Willie——” It was futile; his wife said dangerously, “Sid-dy!” and he collapsed. A juvenile Gander—Davie or Chick or Tessie—burst into sudden wails; whether from alarm or disappointment or internal discomfort nobody had time to ascertain. Madgie, red as fire and breathing it, swept them all to the door. There she said, “Good-bye, Mister McKillop; and thank ye for a ver-ry pleasant dinner. . . . Ed, my sympathies!” She went out shepherding her brood. Spot blew a cloud of cigar smoke into Willie’s face, said bitterly, “Peace-on-earth-goodwill-towards-men,” wondered if he could pocket yet another cigar, decided that even he couldn’t do it, and followed the retreat.

Edna said to her children, “Run upstairs, sweeties!”; they ran without further exhortation. “And now,” thought Willie, “it comes.” But it didn’t. For Edna, swelling and swelling towards unbridled speech, collapsed midway and burst instead into a blizzard of tears. She threw herself into the armchair and cried—loudly, howlingly, like a child.

Willie stood biting his thumb; he said, “Ed!” “Ehd!” and “Ach, Ehd!” but without effect. At her own time and not till then did his wife raise a swamped and streaky face.

“Don’t talk to me of your Varsity again.”

“Ach, Ed——”

“I never want to hear about it again. I hate the thing, I hate it, I hate it.”

“Ach, come on, Ed——”

“And I tell you this, Willie; I tell you this. If ever I get the chance to harm your Varsity, harm it I will.”

He thought—because, poor mortal, he could not see into the future—“that’s no’ very likely; let her!” But her tears burst forth again, uncontrollable, gigantic; he couldn’t bear it. Forlornly he picked up what Spot had left of his cigars and carried the box into the other room. Edna, clutching a sodden handkerchief and subsiding through sobs towards snuffles, heard him humming morosely, “Christmas Day in the Workhouse; The bloodiest——” . . .

But the Golden Bugler had blown for War.

4

Lee knocked at her father’s bedroom door and hearing something that might have been a favourable response, went in carrying her tray.

“Here’s your Christmas dinner, darling. Put down the book and eat it up.”

Professor Fency laid aside his reading; it was a Dutch edition of the De Clementia and already it had exhibited two coruscating blunders. He wished he had the strength to get up and write to the Classical Society’s Journal exposing them; but just at the moment he lacked it. He seemed very short of strength these days; once or twice he felt himself go right away; a queer feeling that was both sinking and soaring—not so bad as a faint, worse than a faint. Sighing, he lay back on his bed; like all men with beards he looked incongruous there and absurd, but Lee did not see that. Instead she saw that against the white of the sheet the veins in his thin hands showed up an almost cobalt blue.

“Soup, darling. Nice. Can you manage it or would you like me to feed you?”

“I’ll manage it. Of course I’ll manage it.” But in the end she fed him most of it, using a table-spoon and wiping his beard after each mouthful. She gazed anxiously into his eyes; were they a little duller than yesterday or did she just think so?

“Now a little bit of turkey.”

“I don’t want any turkey, Lee.”

“But you must have some turkey, Daddy. It’s Christmas Day. I’ll cut it up very small.”

He watched her as she bent over the plate, carving and mincing the fragment of white flesh with the most intense concentration. Her profile was against the light; again he saw its shining clarity, its seriousness, its fearlessness. He said with a half-laugh that made him cough:

“You ought to have a baby to look after, Lee.”

“So I will some day, precious. But they’re not very fashionable just now.”

“No?”

“Not if you haven’t any money.”

“But we’ve got plenty of money, Lee.”

“We’ve got some.” (But she had seen a bookseller’s bill the other day—one hundred and fifteen pounds. A hundred and fifteen pounds just for books; and she knew there was a frightful overdraft.) “Never mind money just now, darling. Eat this up instead.”

“All right; all right!” She fed him with minced turkey in the same spoon—because she had forgotten to bring another; he ate it, he got it down; but she saw with a little pang that he wasn’t really enjoying it. Yet the wretched bird had cost fifteen shillings—paid for, too. Could they afford it? God—and her father’s Bankers—knew.

“Now I’ll read to you a little. What would you like?”

“Is the Gilbert Murray handy?”

“It’s here.”

“Then perhaps——”

Lee knew the Gilbert Murray almost by heart, knew all his favourite pieces. She opened the Bacchae—

Lee hated reading aloud but she did it well; all the hardness, all the damn-your-eyes she conscientiously put into her talking voice went completely out of it; it deepened to an Irish softness. He thought, “What damned nonsense these people talk about her . . . Judith Brewster . . . coming and telling me this and that . . . she’s a good girl . . . any fool could see it . . .” He lay back happy and drowsy. “Will they come to me ever again, The long long dances?” No, they wouldn’t; but who wanted them to? You had your innings—lucky, if you got a good one. Nobody wanted a repeat . . . cauld kail het again . . . et haec olim . . . He fell rather noisily asleep.

Lee read on for a few more lines, then closed the book, slipped off her shoes and went downstairs to enjoy the cigarette her body had been demanding for some time past. It was a muzzy day outside—foggy and soft; real Christmas weather as we got it nowadays. There was no view from the window, hardly anybody passing—all stodging, no doubt, within doors and pulling crackers and being “merry.” Saturnalia! She slumped into the arm-chair—noting as usual that it wanted re-covering—hoisted her legs over the arm and fell to stroking her knees. The slop people spilt over Christmas and Hogmanay, the hysterics they threw about; if a Saviour actually had been born to them that very minute, if the coming First of January really meant a new start for everybody, they could hardly work themselves up to a higher delirium. “Christmas comes but once a year,” they sang, “And when it comes it brings good cheer.” The first statement was—mercifully—true; the second, so far at least as this house was concerned, was an unmitigated lie. Christmas brought nothing here but bills, outstretched paws grubby and otherwise, and—this year—the extraordinary blank of having no Peter to turn to for company.

She lit another cigarette. If Peter would write sometimes it would be splendid; but then, being Peter, of course he never would. He was remotely away from Cloudstone—in some fearful Hebridean region, Ullapool or Scourie or it might be an actual island. At this moment, thought Lee, he will be listening to the wireless—which he detests—because his old parents will want it. With some doleful idea of getting nearer to Peter she switched on her own set; but only the hundredth repetition of Good King Wenceslas came blasting through; she switched off again hurriedly. Good King Fiddlestick! Yet at the thought of Peter’s suppressed blasphemies as he sat in some Highland shieling listening to that seasonal ditty she broke into secret laughter. Peter and she would laugh at that together—when he came back. They laughed at everything—the only sane thing to do.

When he came back! . . . “There’s some will say,” thought Lee, “I set out to reform Peter; there’s some will say I set out to seduce him; in point of fact I seem to be succeeding in both but I didn’t set out to do either. I just took things as they came—again the only sane thing to do. It’s amazing,” she thought, “how things work out if you just let them alone. The first thing that comes is always the right thing: grab it and you’re safe.”

She yawned, thought of going for a walk, abandoned the idea. Car doubtless jammed away in Simson’s Garage . . . roads jammed with fat citizens, jammed in turn with Christmas dinner. “Lord!” thought Lee, “how I wish it was term-time again. Term-time here is bad and bad enough, God knows, but these Vacs are infinitely worse. However, live long enough and it’ll all pass.” . . . What had that imbecile Yoey said?—‘Won’t next term be marvellous!’ . . . Well, taking one thing with another, it should be.

5

Judith and Stephen unearthed—eventually—Lord Abercloud at a place called L’Hêrou. It had been understood in Cloudstone that this was near Cannes, and as compared with the distance between Cloudstone and Cannes perhaps it was—but the expression “near” proved purely relative. L’Hêrou was a long way from Cannes and skilfully hidden in the hinterland; and the stupidity (abysmal) of the Hôtel du Golf’s chauffeur was complicated by his refusal for a long time to admit that he had never heard of L’Hêrou in his life. “C’est par ici, Madame, c’est par ici; je le connais bien.” But it wasn’t and he didn’t. When found, however, it showed itself a very pleasant place, with lawns and rock-gardens and the Riviera delights of stone-pine and cactus; and Lord Abercloud was almost embarrassingly glad to see them. Lord Abercloud, who was supposed to be dying, looked singularly vigorous and well—“Much better,” thought Judith angrily, “than Stephen does.” He was the caricaturist’s joy; a minute mannikin with thick grey hair en brosse, a wrinkled pug-dog face, protruding teeth and vast bushy eyebrows. Draw that face on the body of any keen, perky, scurrying, acquisitive animal and it fitted. He was volubly talkative to the Brewsters and insisted on their staying to lunch. Judith had not included this in her plan, but was resigned to it by the imperial room, with bathroom and all attached, into which an agreeable maid showed her. Lady Abercloud, it appeared, was in Scotland again for Christmas.

At lunch the Lord Rector continued to be talkative and as he had a trick of saying almost everything twice over, he was rarely silent. Towards the end of the meal he barked out suddenly:

“And now, what’s all this, what’s all this about the Varsity?”

Stephen hummed and hawed—sheepishly; yes, sheepishly. But Judith told his Lordship there was nothing wrong with the University.

“Then why on earth, why on earth does that chap Ludovic keep putting me off, putting me off?”

Judith set out to explain. A silly cabal among the students—nobody of any consequence, just some riff-raff. (She saw Stephen raise his eyebrows, but went plunging on.) Sir Ludovic thought it wisest to let them simmer down, cool off, forget; and anyway, your health, Lord Abercloud——

The Lord Rector said testily, “My health’s fine. But I don’t want any scenes; I don’t want any scenes. No.”

Judith assured him there would be none.

“But what ails them at me? What’s it all about? What have I done? What ails them at me?”

Judith essayed the impossible task of telling him; but naturally she was not very successful. It proved impossible to persuade “Cobby” that the feeling against him—which his sound instincts persisted in regarding as serious despite all Judith’s pooh-poohing—was not based on something personal; he could not realise that he was objected to on grounds outside himself altogether. That a Lord Rector might be unacceptable because of general and aesthetic principles was beyond his comprehension. Political principles—ah, yes; but general and aesthetic—no. He repeated rather pitiably, “But I must have done something, I must have done something.” Most certainly, Judith assured him, not. “Then I must have left something undone.” That, still less. He ended by saying several times, “I canna understand it; I canna understand it at all.” And the only answer to that, of course, was “Neither can anybody else.”

They stayed to tea at L’Hêrou and had some difficulty in escaping at all; indeed, Judith had a sneaking suspicion that Stephen would fain have pitched camp and abandoned the sprightly holiday until further notice. When their host urged them kindly, “Why not stay the night? Why not stay two or three nights? I like ye here. I never see a soul, I never see a soul”—she caught a very fishy turn-tail look in Stephen’s eyes. But she held that look with her own and slaughtered it; she dragooned Stephen away from temptation and back into the Hôtel du Golf’s Chenard-Walcker. An act which she had subsequent cause to regret.

For with L’Hêrou behind them the question naturally arose—where next? It was too late to go back to Aravis; both Judith and Stephen were hopelessly lost; and their Pneu Michelin map was on too large a scale to be of much use. The chauffeur, consulted in a moment of rashness, said there was an admirable little hotel at Plage-Oex—“pas grand luxe, bien entendu, mais tous les conforts.” Judith thought she remembered a roadside sign—“Hôtel Mimosas, Plage-Oex; Son restaurant; Ses sapins; Tous les Fruits de la Mer.” She said, “Well—allons.”

The Hôtel Mimosas was reached sooner than they had expected—the chauffeur had had enough driving for one day—and was manifestly “pas grand luxe”; the assemblage of all the comforts was less obvious. However, Judith was able to fire off once more her “you-can-always-depend-on-a-first-class-omelette”; in any case she was too tired to wrestle further and clearly a wrestle would be involved before the chauffeur would re-start his engine. She said weakly, “Ça va assez bien”—again an act which she had subsequent cause to regret.

For at dinner Stephen was unusually hungry with an appetite which Judith, recollecting Lord Abercloud’s lavish déjeuner, thought must be dyspeptic. He asked for the specialité de la maison and on being told Homard Ponsardin, ordered it nobly. Judith said warningly, “Stephen, you know shell-fish——” but he snapped back at her, “That’s only oysters,” and went on undissuaded to deal heartily with the homard and with tous les fruits de la mer which garnished it and presumably made up the Ponsardin. . . And in the middle of the night Stephen, after sleeping heavily but uneasily for a couple of hours, became acutely ill.

It is customary to regard the penance of those who eat unwisely as a species of joke; so Judith regarded it for a time with Stephen. But presently it ceased to be a joke; it became first disturbing, then alarming, then thoroughly frightening until at last the Terror stepped into that nasty little bedroom with its bare-board floor and its hideous decorations. Going steadily crazier with fear, Judith sent for doctor after doctor; the first Frenchman who responded was completely incomprehensible and the second tried to make love to Judith in the bathroom. At her wits’ end, Judith rang up first Freda and then Lord Abercloud; Lord Abercloud sent his own doctor over in a Delage with instructions to stay till Stephen was better, and Judith knew herself Lord Abercloud’s from that day onwards.

Freda, arriving at Plage-Oex as fast as the Sud France could carry her, was a little surprised at Judith’s welcome. For Judith threw her arms round her half-sister and said, weeping on her shoulder:

“Oh, Freda, Freda, I’m so disappointed!”

“‘Disappointed?’” thought Freda. “Was that quite the word?”

Stephen lay four days at the Hôtel Mimosas; he was then removed in the Delage to L’Hêrou where he—and Judith and Freda—remained till the last days of the Christmas Vacation. There was no further search for that dream country where second honeymoons begin, no further adventure or experiment. There was instead a drab succession of exquisite meals washed down with exquisite bottles, of smoothly competent service, of utterly unromantic luxury. There was interminable talk of Cloudstone—Cloudstone, that dull real-life humdrummery. And the worst of it was that Stephen quite manifestly liked it—quite certainly he was well content. Once or twice he said, with complacent cheerfulness, “Well, it’s an ill wind”; and of all his truncated clichés none had ever come so near driving Judith to violence. When he said it for the fifth time, she could have struck him; instead, she went and wept in her imperial room where a buhl clock, chiming with pert melodiousness, seemed to say, “Thou shalt not put me back.”

On the last day at L’Hêrou Freda came to Judith. Stephen was now as robust and rosy as Lord Abercloud himself; Judith had recovered from the horrors of Plage-Oex; but Freda remained white and flattened, listless, lifeless. Judith looked at her with some anxiety; she ought to be getting over her wretched Mr. Hext by now.

“Judy, I want to ask you something.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Could I stay on here for a bit?”

“Here? At L’Hêrou?”

“No, no; the other place; Aravis.”

“At Aravis? All by yourself? How could you?”

“How couldn’t I? I’m twenty-five after all. I can look after myself.”

“Yes, but——”

“And where else am I to go? I can’t come back to Cloudstone.”

“Can’t you?”

“Oh, no! Never that; never. . . . And the flat’s let, so if I go to London it would have to be Aunt May——”

Judith considered, pinching her round chin. Freda was looking awful; London fogs— And Aunt May was worse than any London fog.

“Let me stay here, Judy. I suppose my dividends could be sent on, couldn’t they?”

“Oh, yes; yes, of course. . . . But I don’t like the idea of your being alone in that hotel——”

“Perhaps I won’t stay in the hotel. There’s a chalet——”

Something in the pitiable way she said “There’s a chalet” smote Judith to her not inaccessible marrow; it was like a child saying, “There’s a toy-shop.” She looked into Freda’s horizon-blue eyes and suddenly her heart melted. She said—brusquely because she wanted to cry:

“Well—all right. . . . But, Freda darling, you must pull up a bit. You mustn’t just sit here and brood. Promise me you won’t.”

“I won’t brood, Judy. I’ll remember. But I’ll like remembering.”

Judy stood pinching her chin.

“If Mr. Hext—if Micky—asks where you are, shall I tell him?”

Freda went whiter than ever.

“Oh, no, Judy, no! Please, no.”

“All right. But he might want to write you, silly?”

“He won’t. You see—you see, Judy——” For the first time Freda began to put into words the conclusions of those long night watches by her window while The Post-War World and the typewriter lay jointly neglected—“You see, Judy, he didn’t really like me——”

“Child! What nonsense!”

“I thought so. But he didn’t. You see, he told me lies——”

“Lies, darling?”

“Well, he gave me reasons and I daresay they weren’t really lies but they weren’t really reasons, either. If you see what I mean . . .”

Judith didn’t; she said, “Tell, my dear.”

“I will—some day. Anyway, it’s finished, finished, finished. I don’t want ever to see Micky again. And he’s not to write. Not to!”

Judith said doubtfully:

“Well——”

6

Miss Cadmore, the Warden of Gledshaw House, had to tea her old friend Miss Crowe of the Battlecliff Girls’ School at Cloudmouth. They had been at Oxford together (some time ago) and spoke a strange jargon, calling each other “Crowe” and “Cadmore.” They had not cared for each other greatly in these earlier days, but were united by them now in exile.

Cadmore said in answer to a question of Crowe’s:

“Oh, it was a quiet term. They say there’ll be ructions next term over this Rectorial Address. But I don’t think so. Wind mostly. If our worthy Principal goes and bursts the balloon there’ll be a bang; otherwise——”

She made a disagreeable noise imitative of a collapsing “squeaker.” In the grounds they saw a lone figure prowling abstractedly.

“I’m not quite happy about that one, Crowe.”

Crowe peered; she was short-sighted. “The Ballantyne?”

“The Ballantyne. She’s working herself up. She thinks she had a love-affair that went wrong.”

“And had she?”

“No. But she thinks she had; and the more she thinks it the surer she becomes. Anyway, she’s dramatising herself now on the nothing-matters lines, nothing-left-to-live-for——”

“I know. Do you remember that frightful idiot——”

“Cranmer? Yes. But Cranmer was a stodge; this girl’s a natural actress. You know the type; dramatises everything with herself in the spot-light.”

“Poseuse?”

“Ye-es. But she’s one of those dangerous poseuses who get to the point where they make it come real. That’s what I don’t like. Part of this life’s-all-ended pose sends her off to take up with a lot of inflated malcontents on the men’s side—the Harriers they call themselves——”

“I know; beer and Saint Gunegilde.”

“Beer and Saint Gunegilde . . . She was brought in blotto one night last term—she thinks I don’t know that, but I do, and what’s more, I know who brought her. And she’ll go on doing it till I simply have to know about it official-like, which’ll be a bore. . . . And then, you see, she’s the Daughter of the Regiment and the Darling of the Guard and all that, and her place is in the firing-line and so on. . . . Do you remember, Crowe, those fearful young women in the War who attached themselves to some unfortunate unit or other and called themselves the Regimental Flapper?”

“Their place wasn’t in the firing-line.”

“No; but given better opportunity and a less—-er—bloody firing-fine, they’d have had a try.”

“And so will the Ballantyne?”

“If she doesn’t make herself ill first. It’s all real to her, you see. Like a naughty child who plays at being out of control and then suddenly lo and behold! it is out of control. The dividing-line’s so narrow . . . That’s why I’m not quite happy about the Ballantyne.”

Crowe yawned. “Perhaps she’ll start a more satisfactory love-affair.”

“Let’s hope so; and let’s hope it isn’t too late. . . . Now, Crowe, have some more tea and for God’s sake tell me some scandal . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Part Three: Candlemas

1

The trains rolled back into Cloudstone, slithering through the sooty cuttings past Tusso and Gallacher’s Whiskey and Ginger Rogers (but it was Merle Oberon now) and Prepare to Meet Thy God. Back came the slaves to their treadmill, the automata to their round. “Yon Taggart” was no longer the village hero of Lost-in-the-Moor; he became again simply Mr. Taggart who might or might not achieve a second rank in Physics. Yoey was no longer a lone ghost palely loitering; she was once more “the Ballantyne” who, unless she mended her ways, was unlikely to get any rank in anything. However, there was another new deal; the best and the worst of us had yet another chance. True, the slate was not quite so clean as it had been; a sentence had been half-written there and it could only be finished now in certain restricted ways. On the other hand, if you looked at things broadly from the Calendar Year point of view—and why not?—the slate was much cleaner than it had been last October. A New Year; every nation in the world felt the need of a New Year sometime. “Cloudstone, 5th January, 1937”; wonderful figures that nobody had ever written before. Come on, now, 1937; come on!

Guy, aching a little from winter sports, saw a clean slate and so did Yoey; so did Speed and Brett and others of the Harriers; though Rameswara Rao could have told them that no slate is ever clean—all is nurta mida vrasina vrata prakaram, according to the Writing on the Forehead. . . . And Ivor saw a slate very terribly obscured, a sentence very nearly complete. He had hated his Vacation, which he had spent at home near Dingwall; on long solitary trudging walks he had asked himself the old endless questions—right or wrong, good or bad; am I a hero or am I a public pest? They remained unanswered; but it was a relief to get back to Cloudstone, to see again the handsome 1890 façade of Cryd’s, the Cloud Bridge, Brodie the anxious cherub, Speed bullocking about. These objects were as anchors; they confirmed. “You have gone too far to go back,” they said; “you must carry it through now.” Carry what through? The incredible programme, the monstrously daring plan—the destruction of Abercloud. At times it seemed unbelievable that anything so fantastically bold could possibly be done; but Ivor’s heart told him that it would be. It must be now unless he stopped it; it had sufficient momentum—just sufficient—to go through of itself. And it would be a Step towards Achievement, a big Step, a hell of a Step. Or would it? Would it not rather be just another hell of a Mistake?

At L’Hêrou Lord Abercloud was preparing to return to Cloudstone. But not just yet, not just for a week or two. He loved Cloudstone and its people; ex hypothesi he loved them. The students were his own dear laddies; the University was his toy and his hope and his tabernacle. But at times like the present—the blue, Mediterranean, untrammelled L’Hêrou present—he did sometimes find it in his heart to wish they were all in hell.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

It was not difficult for Lee to meet Peter on his arrival; and if it had been, she would still have managed it. He must come by train; she met all possible trains one after another. Late but eventually he came.

“Oh, Peter! I came to meet you. What was the Vac like?”

“Bloody.”

“Wasn’t it? Did you think of me? Did you listen to the Christmas Day broadcast.”

“Bits of it.”

“So did I—and thought of you. Where were you?”

“In the hotel at Poolewe.”

“Getting tight?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Peter! Why?”

“Because I was bored silly.”

“My lamb! That’s not a good reason for getting tight; it’s one of the few bad ones. Were you tight on what-is-it—-Hogmanay—too?”

“No. I was out in a snowstorm helping a chap to find his sheep.”

“And did you find them?”

“Some of them.”

“Oh, Peter! And me just sitting here counting minutes. Never mind. . . . We’re going to do things this term, Peter.”

“We are, are we?”

“Yes. March from the Indus to Spain—really march, really Spain.”

“Oh? And where’s Spain?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll know when the time comes. You’ll like it. And we’ll unlock that heart of yours and let out that poor little boy and stop his crying.”

“Sez you!”

“Sez I!”

2

Micky Hext, on the opening day of the term, saw a slate densely covered with indelible writing; he read it again and again and made no more of it. Have I been a wise man or have I been a fool? A wise man, of course . . . a fool, of course. Mr. Hext, you are a hero of renunciation; Mr. Hext, you are the idiot Earl—you have shot your magic Hare. Fool, wise man; wise man, fool. . . . The slate was full of minute writing that ran all over Cloudstone also, all over Micky’s heart, all over every day, all over the Ordinary Proses and the Coma Berenices and the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis; but in the very bottom corner of the slate was a tiny blank space that remained to be filled. Or rather, it was filled, but with maddeningly contradictory alternatives; it read “Freda [ came back | did not come back ] to Cloudstone. Strike out the words not required. But which were the words not required? “I must know that,” thought Micky, “or I’ll go out of my mind.” And at the words “out of my mind” he thought as usual of Doris. . . . Oh, wise man; wise man certainly. . . . No; fool. . . .

Meanwhile here was old Fency confined to the house with a cold and the whole of the work falling on Micky; and the Ordinary Lectures to be tackled as well as their infernal Proses, and the hours to be readjusted and God knew all what. Fency said he would be back to work in a day or two, and Lee insisted, “Of course you will, darling.” But he looked uncommonly shaky—uncommonly shaky; a dropped sort of look as if a light had gone out or was going out inside him. Cracked pitcher; and proverbially these went on for ever; it looks, thought Micky, as if I’d be doing double work the whole of the Candlemas Term; pickled in Courvoisier—he won’t shake off this “cold” very quickly, but he won’t collapse either. Oh, well—work was the panacea or so they said; the more the merrier. . . . You fool, you fool! . . . No, no—wise, sensible, sound. . . . But I must know about Freda.

The necessity to know about Freda became so intolerable that on the second day of the term Micky went round to the Brewsters’ about tea-time. He told himself that everybody would be out—-just his luck; but only Stephen was out, which was excellent. Judith was in and delighted to see him; she was feeling so utterly flat that she would have been delighted to see Peter Ruey himself; a visit from Micky was equally unexpected and in the circumstances much more thrilling. Micky would stay to tea, of course? He would. But before Judith could pour him a cup he blurted it out.

“Has—has Freda come back?”

Judith gave him a level look, not too gentle.

“No.”

Instantly Micky knew that at all costs he wished she had; he knew it with every fibre of his being, every muscle, every nerve.

“She—she’s gone back to London, I suppose?”

“No. She stayed in France.”

“In France?”

“Yes. We were all in France, you know.”

“Of course.” But he thought, “France! Miles away, days away. Oh, God!” Feebly he asked if Freda liked it there.

“Very much indeed.” Judith spoke in her briskest no-nonsense voice—the voice Guy (and Stephen) knew so well. Briskly she poured out the tea and handed Micky a dish of hot scones; briskly she said:

“My dear Mr. Hext, what did you do to Freda?”

Micky was taken aback; he dropped his scone; the cursed buttery floury thing went rolling across the hearth-rug. Scrabbling after it, he came up red-faced and just avoided spilling his tea. But Judith was smiling rather kindly—she was kind.

“You can’t eat that one; have another.”

Micky, still red-faced, said, “Oh, thanks.” The smile remained kind, broadening a little—for all women like childishness in all men except their husbands. “Your question,” said Micky, “I think you’ve a right to ask it.”

“I’m sure I have.”

“I—I ought to try to answer it.”

“I’m sure you ought.”

“I don’t want you to think worse of me than need be. I’m terribly to blame—terribly. But——” He looked up and met Judith’s eyes; they were deep, kind, understanding, helpful; he thought (as many people thought about Judith), “I’ve misjudged her.” Gulping, he began:

“I must tell you something I don’t usually tell—it’s about my sister.” . . . Slowly, much in the words he had used to Freda but with infinitely more difficulty, he launched into the grim tale. Doris . . . the fat silent infant who wouldn’t play . . . “you mustn’t trouble Doris, dear” . . . those screaming nights . . . the pistol incident and blood trickling; stupefaction . . . that cat in the tool-shed . . . the big, solid, stuffed-looking girl who couldn’t say words . . . Yeolands in Gloucestershire. Quite early in the recital Micky became aware, though she said nothing, that Judith’s attitude was going to be the contrary of Freda’s; he saw horror come into her eyes, her smile fade and die, her face whiten. Once she said, “Oh!” as if she couldn’t bear it. But he toiled on to the end; Doris better just at the moment, Doris at home for a week or two; but—oh, of course, it isn’t any good . . . He forgot his tea; Judith forgot hers.

“So you see how it was.” All the nightmares, all the indecisions, broke out of him suddenly. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. For heaven’s sake give me your advice. Tell me frankly, what do you think? What do you think I should have done?”

Judith always knew what people should have done in any set of circumstances; she knew it now. She said, a little shakily:

“I had no idea. Of course, not the slightest idea. My dear Mr. Hext, I think you did absolutely and perfectly right.”

Micky slumped back into his chair; he said, “Thank God you think so!” But a perverse voice leapt up deep inside him shouting, “Oh, curse you for thinking so! Oh, why didn’t you say I did absolutely and perfectly wrong!”

“If only you’d done it a little sooner. Why didn’t you?”

Micky stared wretchedly at his cup. Why hadn’t he? Because there are some things that are absolutely superhuman, there are some things you really mustn’t expect of anyone. He said:

“I don’t know. It—it all just happened. It was all so heavenly——”

Tears stood in Judith’s eyes, astonishing tears. She said (“Oh, how I’ve misjudged this woman!”), “I know, I know; one doesn’t get much time . . . It must have been terribly difficult for you.”

“It was terrible for Freda too. The cad I felt! The cad I was!”

Judith shook herself; ’ware hypersympathy! He hadn’t been a cad, perhaps, but he had been a terrible ass, a terrible nuisance. If Freda’s coming to Aravis hadn’t demonstrably annihilated Judith’s dream, Judith’s hope, Judith’s honeymoon, it most certainly hadn’t helped. And there sat the cause of it all, calling himself a cad. She returned to briskness; cad—no; but he had been a curse; don’t sympathise too much.

“I shouldn’t say ‘cad.’ I think you were slack, undecided. But then, who isn’t? Anyway, you did the right thing in the end.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Good gracious! Positive. What else could you——”

“I don’t know.” (Dammit, it wasn’t so obvious as all that; it wasn’t!) “I sometimes think——”

“Well, don’t think. It’s done now. The thing is not to worry about it too much. Freda will get over it. So will you. It’s wonderful how tragedies pass away——”

She began to talk about Time. And Micky, picking up his congealing scone and his abandoned teacup, thought furiously, “Time be damned; time be damned! And she mustn’t ‘get over it’—she mustn’t. Never, never, never!”

3

In the lounge of the Hare of Cloud there were reunions, some joyful, some otherwise, but all noisy. Guy, bringing in Yoey for a quick one on the way to the Cloudstone Gaumont, met so many friends that they gave up the idea of the Gaumont altogether. Ivor was not there (someone said, “You never see Ivor nowadays—don’t know what’s the matter with the man”), nor Peter, nor Lee (someone else said, “You’ll find them on the Gledshaw Road, cuddling in Lee’s car”), but the Harriers were well represented. Yoey was in her element—vivandière, mascot, Regimental Flapper. Her tragic mouth twisted itself into witch’s laughter; her eyes blazed maenad and wild; beneath her tossed-back head her throat—Guy’s throat—was like a column of solidified milk. She screeched and postured in character; laugh, Clown, laugh! . . . Bravo, bravo, Punchinello! . . . Dancing with Tears in My Eyes . . . “Damnation to Abercloud!” she yelled, “Damnation to Abercloud”—so loud you could have heard her in the street.

Someone said to Guy, “Yoey’s getting tight.” But Guy had had enough of that; he wanted no repetition of those cold hours on the road by Gledshaw House; besides, there might be no Peter this time; besides, he wanted other things. He took her by the arm and said, “Home, Yoey!” and presently—after a little argument and some farewells and one-for-the-road—they were in the Bridgegate, her arm through his, her heels tap-tapping the pavement, her breath making puffs of smoke in front of her in the frosty air. Guy was happy; this was better than the Gaumont; the Gaumont was all right on these occasions if you could run to a box, but to-night—there being no Freda to borrow from—Guy had been obliged to contemplate the second-cheapest seats. You couldn’t put an arm round Yoey and play with her throat among all the canaille of the North Bank; at least you could, but there was no delight in it. Better the long walk home—dark at the end, anyway, and lonely. He said:

“You know, Yoey, you ought to be a bit careful.”

“Careful, Guy? Oh, no!”

“Yes, you ought. All that damnation-to-Aberclouding. It’s all very right and proper, but suppose somebody heard——”

“I don’t care who hears. I want them to hear. Then something might happen.”

“Nothing would happen—except that you’d get a jawing from Cadmore. What’s the good of that? I mean, death and martyrdom’s all very well but there isn’t much kick in a jawing from Cadmore.”

It was bitterly true. “I wonder,” thought Yoey, “if there was ever a girl who had so many friends with a passion for disappointing truth.” She walked on with her head in the air, her heels tapping. Guy said suddenly:

“Yoey, I wish you’d love me a little.”

“I do love you, Guy.”

“You don’t. Not more than you love Ivor.”

“I love you all.”

“The hell with that! I want you to love me. You know, Yoey, I love you most terribly and I don’t love anybody else at all and I don’t want to. Can’t it be like that with you?”

“No, Guy. You see—you see it was like that with me once——”

“Huh!” Guy thrust his hands into his pockets; she put it across very well, but he had heard it before and he didn’t believe it. Because who with? Ivor? No; Ivor, lucky devil, cut out women. Brett? There had been a kind of a, sort of a—— No; not that either. That ghastly Bavarian last session? No; nobody could really have cared for him. Then who? Sighing gloomily, he said:

“We don’t seem to be very fortunate about love in my family. My sister’s crashed too.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah—the girl who was staying with us last term. You met her.”

“I know.”

“She got all worked up over Micky Hext and I don’t know what happened, but——”

Yoey stopped dead in the middle of the Bridgegate; she threw out her arms with the gesture of a Bernhardt.

“Oh, Guy! Oh, Guy! Must you? Must you be such an imbecile?”

He stammered, “What—how?”

“Haven’t you any eyes? Or is it just that you’re cruel?”

He said bewildered, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Her eyes filled with crystal tears; in the middle of the Bridgegate, too.

“You must know. Everybody knows. Everybody stares and points at me and jeers and——”

A vague suspicion, entertained last term but forgotten, broke upon Guy like sudden light.

“You mean—you mean you—it was Micky?”

“Yes, yes, yes! And now for God’s sake have mercy!”

She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes; passers-by stared at them; scandalised, Guy said, hastily:

“All right, all right; wash it out.”

“Well, come over to this window. I must see my face. You’ve made me cry.”

He said with grim sarcasm, “I’d noticed it”; but he allowed her to draw him across the pavement to the nearest shop-window. It chanced to be a gunsmith’s window, subduedly lit to display its wares to such as passed in the night. In its reflected glow Yoey pulled out her flapjack and solemnly attended to her cheeks while Guy gazed morosely at a stuffed pheasant, a brace of stuffed grouse and a rank of sporting guns sheenily blue and bronze. He thought, “I get no further with this girl; I never will,” and the opening lines of a poem began to filter pleasantly into his mind. “Up to a point” it would be called and that, of course, would be the concluding line of each verse; and it could begin, “Up to a point, God’s angel, you are kind.” . . . “Thou art” for “you are”? No, because later on it would necessitate that impossible word “lovedst,” and anyway, second person singulars were demodé these days. If only we used the Continental “she.” . . . He was brought back from his reverie by Yoey saying:

“I’m going to buy myself one of these things, Guy.”

He started guiltily. “What things?” Not a 12-bore surely? Then he saw that she was pointing to a row of little deadly automatic pistols ranged in descending order of sizes from a real Wild-Wester to an infant that would go into a hand-bag. At the moment Guy felt no alarm—merely surprise.

“What on earth do you want with a thing like that?”

She turned a carefully tragic mask upon him; in the upward-striking light from the window it was more tragic even than she intended. It was the mask of a young woman looking shockingly ill.

“I think it’s a thing one ought to have.”

“What for?”

“Oh—you never know.”

Guy took fright. She was in a queer state; excited, miserable. She’d gone all to hell in her classes; she’d be spun in her degree if she didn’t buck up; there was all this stuff about Micky Hext . . .

“Yoey. You don’t mean—you don’t mean——”

Delighted, Yoey laughed warmly; the mother’s laugh, reassuring her child. (But the mother knows; oh, yes, she knows; but don’t frighten the child.) It was very well done indeed.

“Of course I don’t mean. But you never know . . . I tell you I think it’s a good thing to have handy.”

“Oh, bunk, Yoey. You won’t get one really. You wouldn’t get a licence——”

“I’ve got a licence. And I’ll get the other thing to-morrow.”

“Oh, don’t be an egg!” He pulled her roughly away from the too-alluring window and in a minute they were on the Cloud Bridge. It was cold there and the wide pavements were fairly empty; Guy turned up his collar and put an arm round Yoey. But it wasn’t comfortable; they didn’t keep step; they never could. And Guy’s mind didn’t keep step either; he trudged in silence, thinking, “I don’t believe it about Micky Hext; it’s all a make-up; there wasn’t anything with Micky Hext; I’ll swear there wasn’t. Bunk!”

In the Gledshaw Road he stopped and put his arms about her.

“Yoey, you’re the loveliest thing in the world.”

“Am I, Guy?” (“I know I am, but tell me it again and again and again.”)

“Yes. Your throat——” He buried his face in it; from far down below, from that maddening little hollow under her blouse, a warm, scented gust came shooting up into his face. Paradise! “Up to a point, God’s angel” . . . But had Micky Hext? . . . He pulled her closer, running his lips up and down her throat as if it were a flute. Micky Hext? What tripe!

4

Professor Fency came back to work on the 15th of January—a week earlier than Micky, in his most optimistic moments, had expected. Micky was surprised; but so was Professor Fency, who was himself puzzled by his own eagerness. On all previous occasions that he could remember—and they were not few—when illness or idleness or the desire to go and confer with Rothenstein at Amsterdam or Ljung at Upsala had obliged him for a time to delegate his regular duties, he had shown the utmost reluctance to resume them and he had not in fact resumed them till the very last possible moment. He could easily have sneaked another week—perhaps a fortnight—out of this “cold”; young Hext was amiable and obliging and if he had been the opposite it would have made no difference; yet here he was hounding himself back long before he was fit—all to explain to a casual assortment of mediocrities that Plautus really was a humorous and Tibullus a lyric writer. Why this urge? Did it mean—the horrid suspicion fumbled about in his heart—did it mean that this time he was afraid he might never really be able to go back? As he felt now and then that he must walk to the station carrying his suitcase—just to show he could still do it? The sort of thing you never dream of doing so long as it is quite certain that you can. Standing up to tell the Ordinary Humanity about the Rudens, he felt appallingly shaky; “I’m overdrawn at the bank,” he thought—“a clear thousand, anyway; I’m overdrawn in my body too. I can’t break down; I daren’t.”

But Lee was delighted; she said to Micky:

“He has picked up, hasn’t he?”

Micky replied—but rather doubtfully—that he had.

“You don’t seem too sure about it.”

“Yes, yes—I am. I think he’s wonderful.”

“Yes. He’ll be all right now.”

“Oh, rather!” But the devils that were tormenting and torturing and cross-sectioning him could not be restrained; he could survey anything—-Lee, Professor Fency, Catullus, God—from one point of view only, the point of view of Freda, how they affected Freda, how they affected Freda-and-Micky. The devils burst out of him; he said:

“Lee, I want you to tell me something quite honestly. How bad has he really been?”

She flushed; setting her teeth a little again, she said:

“Oh, it was nothing really. Just a bad cold. He likes to make a fuss. I like to make a fuss over him. Why?”

“Because, if you think he’s really fit again——”

“Of course he’s fit again. You can see that for yourself.”

“Well, if you think he’s really going to be all right, I—I rather wanted to get away myself for a day or two.”

Lee said with violent heartiness and conviction, “Oh, he’s all right.”

Micky—only too gladly—took it at face value. “Then I think I’ll try to get off. Not just at once. Maybe about the end of the month.” (“It can’t be just at once,” he thought. “I’ll have to find out where she is first. See her I must. But—France!”)

Lee inspected him kindly. She said:

“You look as if you wanted it. You’re looking pretty low.”

He brightened mechanically. “Oh, I’m all right. But I’ve some things to do.”

Lee nodded. It was common knowledge—to Gledshaw House it was a large part of the fascination of Micky—that there lurked behind his pleasant exterior some secret tragedy. Nobody knew what it was, but many people made the most astonishing assertions. His father wasn’t really dead but was in jail for embezzling church funds; his mother had a lover; he was an illegitimate child; he had an illegitimate child. Seu quid ineptius. Lee said:

“Well, go to it. Don’t worry about father. He owes you a day or two, anyway.”

Micky thanked her and said good-bye and went wandering towards his rooms. He thought, “The first step, I’ve taken the first step. ‘If you take the first step you will take the last.’ ‘Ce n’est que le premier pas——’ If what I did. before was right, I’m being insane now; if it was wrong, then I’m putting it right. I wish I knew. Oh, God, I’ll go off my head. . . . Off my head. . . . Doris . . .”

Suddenly he saw beside him the house of Professor Brewster, magnificently stable, magnificently (as he thought) untormented. He stood looking at it for a minute, remembering a Sunday evening in the Golden Mist with the church bells ringing and the feet of churchgoers tripping the pavements; remembering a little cretonne-and-bookshelf room. . . . “If you take the first step you will take the last.” . . . You will take the second, anyway. Micky went in and rang the bell and asked for Judith.

The Hare of Cloud stood by him again; Judith was in. He was shown in upon her in that very same cretonne-and-bookshelf room where she sat writing letters. She wrote a great many letters, nowadays; was taking office on Committees, Clubs, Societies. She held out a beautiful smooth hand with rings.

“I hope you don’t mind coming in here, Mr. Hext. I’m struggling with correspondence——”

“Polite hint,” thought Micky; but he snatched at the useful word “correspondence.” Sitting on the edge of an uncomfortable chair and feeling that quasi-sexual awkwardness which the milky perfections of Judith always engendered, he said:

“So am I. Curiously enough, it was just about correspondence that I came to see you.” He strove to make his tone light and easy; became conscious that his voice was quavering despite himself, his infernal ears reddening. (“Micky, your ears are pink!”) “Could you—could you possibly——” (“Now don’t stammer, you fool, don’t habber!”) “Could you give me Freda’s address?”

Judith’s fine eyebrows went up. “But, my dear Mr. Hext——”

“Yes, I know.”

“But surely——”

“Yes. I know all we said. It was all quite true. But still, I want it.”

Judith put down her pen, which—continuing the polite hint—she had so far retained. Her brows drew together into a frown.

“Well, I can’t.”

There was a silence; it was Judith who broke it.

“I don’t think I would if I could. So I’m rather glad that—for reasons—I can’t.”

Micky said, studying his knuckles, “You mean she told you not to.”

“Yes. She did. Not in any circumstances. And really, you know, Mr. Hext, I think she was quite right.”

Micky got up. “In a way she was. . . . Yet I don’t know. . . .” He swallowed the last of his pride. (“I must see her, I must put it right.”) “You don’t think you could possibly——”

“I’m certain I couldn’t. I can’t understand why you should want it.”

“No; I know,” said Micky very feebly. “I can’t quite understand it myself. . . . Well, thanks; that’s all I——”

Judith stared at him, biting her under-lip. . . . He had nothing to live on, he had a dependant mother, a mad sister. Yet still— What was the right thing to do? He looked awful; probably Freda at this moment was looking worse. Most unsuitable; but—happiness with the bold unsuitable; misery with the wise expedient? . . . They needn’t have children . . . Micky was shuffling to the door; now or never; shall I call him back? . . . But her eyes fell on her half-finished letter, on a pile of other letters waiting to be answered; there was a lunch-party to-day . . . oh, bother him, let him go.

Micky went, shufflingly, rather as he might go thirty years hence. But the Hare of Cloud disposed of Judith. For while Micky sat in the cretonne-and-bookshelf room, the post had come and gone; and as Micky went out he saw a letter lying on the hall table. He couldn’t not see it; if the bright unfamiliar French stamps had not caught his eye, the handwriting must have—that handwriting which had once hoped He would Find You All Sorts of Treasures. There it lay, shouting at him, singing to him. And across the top of the flimsy foreign envelope was printed in a hideous but arresting blue, “Hôtel du Golf, Aravis.” And the letter was fresh, new, unwearied; it had been in Aravis the day before yesterday.

Micky said “Thank you” to Judith’s parlour-maid and went staggering out into the Gledshaw Road. She’s there; she’s still there; I’ve found her. But she mayn’t be there much longer. Action—and quick! “Go to it,” said Lee. Yes, by God—go to it!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Peter’s Zoology class dissolved just as the Ordinary Humanity went in; Lee always found him at this hour if she wanted to. If the day was fine, he walked along the Gledshaw Road till she caught him up in her car and they went to the Golf Club. If the day was wet, he crossed the Cloud Bridge till she caught him up in her car and they went to the Hare of Cloud. This day was wet; but the talk with Micky had delayed her; Peter was in the Bridgegate, just opposite Yoey’s gunsmith’s, before she saw his vast shoulders surging along, his hatless head lifting like a tower above lesser creatures. Thence to the lounge of the Hare was but a matter of minutes. They ordered sherry and sat in front of the electric fire skilfully designed to counterfeit Ye Olde English logs. The lounge was empty save for an aproned boy polishing ash-trays. Lee thought, “I’m getting tired of these pubs and clubs; so’s Peter.” Like Micky she thought, “Action!”

Peter said, “Here’s to the seven deadly sins. . . . I hear there’s to be hell on Guney’s Day.”

“Who says?”

“The bir-r-rds o’ the air.”

“Well, they’re often wrong. What kind of hell?”

“The Procession’s to be ragged.”

“Who by?”

“Ivor and Co. And they’ve some game on over the Rectorial Address. I don’t know what it is. But hell, anyway.”

Lee yawned and threw her legs over the arm of her chair; Peter bent forward to stroke them; she took his hand.

“Sounds most frightfully exciting. . . . Darling, I don’t know what’s come over me; I expect I’m getting old or something; but, you know, Saint Gunegilde bores me.”

“And the Lord Rector?”

“And the Lord Rector. Even more so.”

“He wouldn’t if ye lived on him—like I do. And like these B.F’s of students ought to do. If ye don’t like a person in this world, make all ye can out of him. Isn’t that sense?”

She said absently, “Yes, darling . . . Peter, do stop prosing. We’ve got to do something.”

“And what would we do, Lee?”

“Spain, Peter . . . You say what.”

Peter lit a cigarette with his huge steady hands.

“Funny, that; I was just going to.”

Lee took his cigarette, drew at it and gave it back.

“Such as?”

“I’ve got to go to London, Lee. About the end of the month. Conference. Old Halkin’s too damned lazy.”

“Well?”

“Well, what about it?”

“What about what?”

“What about coming?”

“As Mrs.-Peter-without-benefit-of-clergy?”

“What else?”

To his surprise she hesitated; she said nothing at all. Lee was surprised herself. She thought, “What queer devils women are! I thought I’d jump at this; yet now he’s said it, here I am, blushing inside if not outside and backing and feeling, all girly-girly. What do I want?” Well, after all, it was a big thing. Virginity. “We’ve only one virginity to lose. And where we lost it there our heart will be.” If the second part of that was not perhaps of exactly universal application, the first part of it was rock-bottom truth. Virginity was like life itself; it was easily taken away, thrown away; but you couldn’t put it back. You spoke lightly about it, joked about it, told smutty stories about it; but by gosh! when it came to the point . . . Then suddenly her mind cleared; she saw Peter staring at her through the haze of her doubts and his own cigarette-smoke. Of course, she thought, Peter doesn’t know—and he mustn’t know—about the virginity part; he’s believed what I told him and he must go on believing it—or he’ll fly away to Ullapool or Scourie or the hotel at Poolewe or Jessie Lindsay; and I couldn’t bear that now, I couldn’t bear it. And neither could he. . . . Smiling at last, she said:

“What else, Peter? You said the end of the month?” He gave a huge sigh of relief. “Thereabouts.”

“Well, if father keeps on all right—and I’m sure he will” (“Oh, yes, I’m sure he will, because he must!”) . . . “Have you any money, darling? Because I haven’t.”

He scowled at her, the black scowl that always seemed to run up and down her back like fingers.

“Who’s asking ye? I’ll have money when the time comes. We won’t stay in the Savoy, if that’s what ye mean——”

“No. But don’t make it the Euston Road either, Peter. There’s such things as settings, you know. Silly women set store by them.”

Peter looked quickly and cautiously round the room. The aproned boy had gone away, the lounge was empty. “Settings!” he cried. “Settings!” And crashed down upon her a kiss of almost murderous violence.

5

“There will be an extraordinary general meeting of the Saint Gunegilde Society at 2.30 to concert measures for the proper celebration of Saint Gunegilde’s Day 1937” Gloag, the President of the Society, had posted that notice only after very careful preparation of the ground; he had gone round and round with his agreeable smile and his persuasive manner. “You’ll turn up at the meeting, won’t you? . . . And you? . . . And you?”—“Must I?”—“Yes, you must.”—-“But why?”—“Because those swine in Cryd’s have some game on. I don’t know what it is, but anyway, I want you. . . . And you. . . . And you.”

Now, at 2.35, he stood on the platform and addressed a hall well packed with his supporters. No risks taken. And just as well, too; for at the back of the hall, in a solid phalanx, sat the Harriers. They had come in late in a body with a concerted surging effect that had stilled tongues and turned heads in their direction; there they were, a shadow, a cloud, a menace. Like that dark moment at the Opening Ceremony when their “We Want Raven” had burst so suddenly into the happy tumult. But “Menace?” thought Gloag, taking courage, “I should worry. We have them beat.” He cleared his throat and began.

Ivor sat among the Harriers, his long legs thrust out in front of him, his hands in his pockets; a stray wisp of black hair fell over his forehead. He was far less satisfied than Gloag: he thought, “Here I am again—trying for something big, something important; let in for antics and idiocy. I set out towards a serious end and what must we all do first? Rag Guney’s blasted procession.” . . . Ivor had done his best to wean the Harriers from this cherished project—with the more difficulty because he had once thought it rather a good idea himself; now it seemed futility’s limit. But Speed, Brett, Finlater—they thought it a good idea still. Ivor had said, “Let’s drop it; what’s the good of playing the fool when we’ve something real to do that day? Let’s boycott the show and leave it at that.” But no! “Oh, damn it, Ivor——”—“Oh, I say, Ivor”—“So here we sit,” thought Ivor, “in this fatuous meeting where anything we say is bound to be thrown out, with another good old farce to be gone through. Oh, God, what a fool life makes of one!”

Gloag was into his stride now, holding the lapels of his gown in either hand, thoroughly pleased with himself. “The proposal of the Committee is that the Day be celebrated this year in special style and that the procession be a specially fine one. We shall have to cut out the usual torch-light and bonfire because, as the Rectorial Address is to be in the afternoon, the Procession will have to be in the morning. That’s all the more reason why it should be an altogether exceptional show. We want to make this the most memorable Guney’s Day in history.” (He was to be granted that wish, though not just in the ways of his choosing.) “Before I go into the details of the Committee’s proposals, I should like to be assured that that is the sense of the meeting.” He sat down, thinking, “Now, my beauties, let’s hear from you.”

Ivor got up at once. “Mr. President and gentlemen, I rise to propose that there be no Procession and no celebration this year at all. You will think this is an extraordinary proposition to come from a Vice-President of the Society, and so it is, but the circumstances are extraordinary. To begin with, the Day has been ruined in advance because the Rectorial Address has been crammed into it. We can’t have the torchlight, we can’t have the bonfire; what kind of a Day is that going to be?” A great many people, Ivor knew, were agreed about this; so far he was on safe ground, but now for it. “Besides all that, I demand that this Society, which is the premier Society of the University, take this action as a protest against the imposition upon us of a Lord Rector we don’t want.”

There was immediate uproar; Gloag, noting its volume, said complacently, “Order, order; Mr. Calder has the floor.”

Ivor, white-faced and uncompromising, waited for the noise to subside; it did subside. “I say that the present Lord Rector was forced upon the University; I say that his appointment was a shocking mistake; that the tone and the status of the University have been lowered thereby; and that a slight of this sort demands the most emphatic protest we can make. I am going to propose in another time and place that the Rectorial Address be boycotted, but that has nothing to do with us to-day. This is a meeting of the Saint Gunegilde’s Society to arrange for the celebration of Saint Gunegilde’s Day; and I propose—” he began to shout a little above the renewing din—“I propose that there be no Day at all. No Day at all.” He sat down.

Gloag banged his presidential mallet on the table in front of him. “Order, order; does anyone second the motion?”

Speed got up, said “I second,” attempted to speak, was howled down and gave it up.

Gloag banged his mallet more vigorously; his courage had come back; he saw he would get through this all right—he was through it now. “Order, order. Order, order. . . . The question is that the celebration of Saint Gunegilde’s Day this year be abandoned. Those in favour please rise in your places.” The Harriers got up in a solid body; rather to Ivor’s surprise they were joined by half a score others—wobblers, though, who would wobble back again long before the Day. “Those against.” There was a devastating crash of feet. Gloag’s eye met Ivor’s. (“You see,” it said, “you silly B.!”) “I declare the motion lost.” Speed, imbecile to the last, demanded a count; he got it; it was over three to one against Ivor. . . . The Harriers solemnly walked out.

Gloag, smiling, stroked his stomach and threw out his chest. “And now, gentlemen, now that that little pantomime is over, I will read you the detailed proposals of your Committee.” . . . He began to read them at great length and they were very magnificent indeed.

Outside, the Harriers dissipated into little knots. Ivor stood by himself, scowling, his hands in his pockets, his head thrust forward; study of discontent. Behind him his henchmen chattered and discussed—far from unanimously.

“What was the sense of all that? I don’t see——”

“Foregone conclusion . . . asses of ourselves. . . .”

“Oh, constitutional methods. When you’re going to raise hell always start with constitutional methods.”

“Blast constitutional methods! There’ll be a Procession——”

“Of course.”

“Then what are we to do with the bloody thing—boycott it?”

“No, you ass—burst it up.”

“Oh! Now you’re talking.”

“Sort of rehearsal like.”

“Rehearsal?”

“Yes. For the other thing.”

“Ah! The other thing.” . . .

But Ivor, standing by himself, was seeing again a red-faced man explaining patiently just what his dogs would and would not do.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The proceedings of the Saint Gunegilde’s Society were not reported in the Press; but that evening two men from Cryd’s, buying cigarettes in Gander’s shop, discussed them with one another. Gander, serving them in his honest shirt-sleeves, listened attentively; and later on, in his honest bed, he told Madgie all about it. Madgie, pushing her red hair into the pillow, said, “I’m goin’ to tell Spot this”; and in the morning, when Spot called for his packet of Gold Flake—which he was nominally going to pay for some day—tell him she did. Spot’s impulse as he lit the first of his loot at the tiny gas-flame that burned on Gander’s counter was to rush off at once to Big Bill Benzie, but he realised with chagrin that he lacked the material. The intelligence of Gander moved slowly; he had gathered only that there had been a meeting about the Saint Thingummy’s Day, that some had been against it, that it had something to do with Abercloud being Rector; but he didn’t even know if the “anti’s” had won or lost. Spot said vexedly, spitting tobacco fragments:

“Could the great dummy not have asked a few questions?”

But Madgie fired up in defence of her husband. “An’ lose our trade? Our business is to sell folk cigarettes, not t’ interrupt their conversations.”

“Ye’re good enough at interrupting yer ain folks’ conversations . . . I wish I could find out more about it.”

“Try Ed.”

“Ed’ll never tell me anything.”

“Ye havena tried her for a while. . . . If she meant what she said on Christmas Day, maybe she will.”

Ed had meant what she said on Christmas Day—as poor Willie was finding out. The cursed affair of the Golden Bugler and the Bowater Park seemed to have supplied Edna with a mortal affront; she had taken what Willie called a “strum” and out of it she would not emerge. If he asked her—nay, implored her—to invite Madgie and Davie and Chick and the entire brood of Gander to spend a day, she replied punctiliously, “No, thenk you.” If he began to tell her of this and that, she said frigidly, “I don’t take any interest in University affairs.” She had refused two invitations from Professors’ wives—those invitations she had once sought so hungrily. To the natural discomforts of a small house cluttered up with children and furniture were now added those of a wife in a permanent “strum”; conventional at board and cold in bed. It was hellish—in fact, hehlish.

Willie might have been to some extent comforted to know (as he did not know, because Spot chose an hour when Willie was certain to be out) that his brigand brother-in-law got no more out of Edna than he did. Spot, calling one evening, found Willie’s dining-room (which served also as living-room, writing-room, children’s room and music-room) a picture of domesticity. Edna was sitting with her slippers off and her skirt rolled up, toasting her knees and reading a novel by Miss Ruby M. Ayres; little Donald was at the table struggling with elementary mathematics. Spot’s predatory eye roved round the room, but there was nothing drinkable or smokable in view; there was, however, a banana. Faute de mieux he seized it, peeled it and threw the skin at the fire—missing it.

“Ed! What’s all this about Saint Guney’s Day?”

His sister, waking from a trance, pushed down her skirt.

“I don’t know.”

“But ye must know, Ed.”

“I don’t. And I don’t want to know.”

“But doesn’t Willie——”

“Willie tells me nothing now about the University.”

“But what for no’?”

“Because I don’t want to hear. I take no——”

“But, Ed, that’s daft. The Varsity——” But he saw that his sister’s bosom was beginning to heave. “Hold hard!” he thought, “we’ll get something yet.” And so he might have but for a sudden outbreak of wailing in some upper region. The wail became a roar, the roar a scream; a second infant voice joined in. Sighing, Edna put Miss Ayres face downwards on the table and went ponderously out of the room.

It was not in Spot’s nature to let anybody alone; chewing the last of his banana, he went and peered over Donald’s shoulder. “If x = 4 and y = 3 and z = 2, find the value of x² − xz − xy + z².” He saw that Donald was making a botch of it; kindly—for he was “good with children”—he said:

“Ye’ve got it wrong, man. It washes out, don’t ye see? It’s minus xy, ye silly.”

Donald gratefully made the requisite corrections and looked up with an endearing smile. “Do this next one for me, Uncle Spot.” Spot did it. He said—because he could never keep quiet—

“Do ye like maths, Donnie?”

“No.”

“Same here. They’re rotten things, right enough. . . . I expect ye like sweeties better.”

Boredly the child agreed. “But mother doesn’t give me any sweeties.”

“What way’s that?”

“Because they’re not good for the health. Ye shouldn’t eat sweeties.”

Spot stood smiling down at him. “Solemn little owl,” he thought, “just like his father.” He said idly, “Ye’ll have to grow up to be a man, Donnie boy, and then ye can buy anything ye like.” And suddenly, as he stood smiling, an idea half-mischievous, half-practical came into his mind. He said, grinning: “Donnie, would ye like to earn a sixpence sometimes to buy sweeties?”

Donnie would.

“Well, see here; do ye sometimes hear your daddy and mammy talking about things?”

“What things?”

“Oh, anything—the Varsity, the Professors, folks they know.”

The small boy nodded. “Whiles, if they talk loud in their room, I can hear them in mine.”

“That’s grand! Now look here, if ever ye hear them saying anything interesting-like and ye come and tell me, I’ll give ye a penny, and if it’s very interesting I’ll give ye a sixpence. Are ye on?”

Donnie’s eyes shone; he nodded vigorously; quite clearly he was “on.”

“Then that’s fine. Come and tell me any time on your way in to the school. But mind, now, Donnie——”

“Yes, Uncle Spot?”

“—this is between you an’ me; it’s a secret like. Ye’ll not tell anybody? Not a soul?”

“No fear.”

“Cross-my-heart-an’-cut-my-throat?”

“Cross-my-heart-an’-cut-my-throat.”

“Fine!”They shook hands solemnly as man to man; and Edna came bustling in—just too late to alter destiny.

“Come on now, Spot—it’s time you were off home. Donnie’s got his work to do and so have I. And you’ll not hear anything in this house.”

Spot said he was just going; thought, “Won’t I?”; winked at Donald; and went.

6

At Aravis the days went on—a trailing procession of days. It was a fortnight since Judith and Stephen had left, it was three weeks. The weather was spasmodically fine; there were radiant intervals; but in general, Freda thought, it was not much better than Cloudstone. Riviera sunshine and warmth appeared to be two more of these illusions in which the world dealt so freely; they joined poor Judith’s perfect omelette and excellent bottle; they joined the Hare of Cloud. . . . In the middle of January it rained solidly for three days and a cold lashing wind raked the shuttered Aux Dames de France and La Rotonde and Fifi’s Bar and the other tinsel appurtenances of the plage. Then Aravis assumed the air of a girl in a bathing-dress sitting at the North Pole, the melancholy of a Casino under shell-fire, of a toy left out in the wet. Then Freda thought, “I shall go mad.”

She had told Judith she was moving into the chalet, but she never did move into it—it was all too difficult. The woman who owned the chalet lived in Toulon; but when you got to Toulon it was hard to find her; when at last you found her, it was nearly impossible to understand her; when at last you understood her, you understood also that you were being scandalously done. The problem of a maid was equally insoluble; the choice was restricted to a grumbling crone with a moustache or a bouncing young slattern who appeared to wear nothing whatever under her skirt except stockings that were always coming down. (The chic French maid; another illusion?) The furniture in the chalet was horrible, and through the crevices of its ill-fitting or non-fitting doors and windows draughts sang like an orchestra. In the end Freda gave it up and stayed on listlessly at the Hôtel du Golf, to the delight of the ingratiating Arlesien. He said, “Eet is always so; zey com for one week, zey stay one year. Ha-ha!” Freda said, “I may even stay long enough to see the golf course completed.” But he was not very bright about that, saying vaguely, “Ah, oui!” He had forgotten the golf course.

From time to time Freda thought, “I must get out of this; I must do something; I must salvage my reason somehow.” But the days drifted; nothing was done. She lay in bed till nearly lunch-time, reading; after lunch she went for uninteresting walks through country which seemed to consist mostly of cabbage-fields—and smelt accordingly; had coffee somewhere—or not; came home; dined. Then began the long, long business of thinking about Micky; if it was fine enough she wandered along the deserted Promenade; if not, she stared into the fire. But fine or otherwise, the thoughts were always the same; she knew all about Micky now—absolutely all, absolutely clearly; it was as if she lifted a lid off his mind and saw the thoughts walking about in it. . . . “You see, he didn’t really like me, he didn’t want me after all. Because it wasn’t true about Doris. At least, I mean, no doubt Doris existed, but it wasn’t true that that was his reason for running away. It couldn’t have been. Nobody could have been so silly. Because Doris is—-queer, it doesn’t mean that Micky is queer; if Micky and I had a baby it wouldn’t be queer either. I told him all that; he couldn’t deny it. . . . No, Doris was just an excuse; I suppose I ran him off his feet, I suppose I made myself cheap, I suppose I led him on. (Did I? Oh, horrible!) He got rushed into it and then he panicked and just thought of the first excuse to get out of it again. . . . He didn’t seem to be like that? No, I know; but he must have been like that. Because I can’t believe all that about Doris; I can’t and I don’t and I won’t. Nobody could have been so silly. He just didn’t want me. . . . You know he did want you? Well, he seemed to; but evidently he didn’t really or why did he back out and run away? . . . Oh, Micky, why did you? When it was all so lovely, so lovely, so lovely . . .”

The sparse lights on the Promenade—or as the case might be, the roasting fire of the Hôtel du Golf—would blur at this point; and Freda, having got so far once again on her eternal wheel, would pull herself together, dismiss Micky, powder her face and become resolutely intelligent over her third book on Mussolini. She was beginning to know quite a lot about Mussolini; once he made milk chocolate; and he suffered from a prison complex—he wouldn’t go into the Blue Grotto at Capri . . .

On one of the latter days of this most interminable of all Januarys, the ingratiating Arlesien was overcome by the spectacle of a Delage drawing up to his door. Out of it stepped Lord Abercloud—though the Arlesian saw only an English, nervous as the English usually were for all their bluff and therefore apt to be cross. The English wished to see Mees Lessing, ha-ha! Freda had just finished dressing herself in a completely casual and uninterested fashion; she thought, “I look a fright; never mind—he’s kind.” Lord Abercloud was wearing a fur coat with a hairy sort of collar, and for the sight of his face emerging therefrom any caricaturist would have given a five-pound note. He said to Freda:

“I’m going back to-morrow, back to-morrow. To Cloudstone.”

Freda said, “Oh? How nice,” and invited him to déjeuner. Surprisingly—yet not altogether, for it was certainly lunch-time—he accepted. He said:

“So ye think it’s nice? Nice, eh?”

“Yes. I’d love to be going with you.” (“I can say that because nothing—nothing on earth—would induce me to see Cloudstone again.”)

“Well, why not come? Why not come along, eh? Plenty of sleepers.”

She shook her head, smiling; yet there was something cheering in the absurd suggestion; here was a man who was going to Cloudstone; you could go to Cloudstone; people did it; they didn’t just age and die in Aravis. She gave Lord Abercloud some vermouth and presently took him in to lunch under the stares of the Hôtel du Golf’s ill-assorted company. (The Arlesien had discovered that he had indeed a Lord under his roof and he was in the kitchen—for once—with his coat off; specialtés de la maison were springing to birth under his hands.) For the first ten minutes Freda was puzzled as to the reason for this unexpected visit; at first she thought Judith must have sent “Cobby” to spy, but presently this fear dissolved—whatever had been his reason, the act was his own, spontaneous. Then, as the meal went on, she guessed it; he was detesting the idea of going back to Cloudstone; he was funking it; and he wanted someone with whom he could discuss these inhibitions. And he was acutely nervous about his Rectorial Address; this she discovered when she asked what was to be its subject and he said frankly:

“I’m damned if I know. I’ve been thinking for weeks, thinking for weeks. But I haven’t got it yet, I haven’t got it. No; I haven’t.”

Freda told him he would think of something when he got there, and thought, “Or somebody will think of it for you. I wonder, who? Ludovic?” As if he read her thoughts, he said suddenly:

“I’ll tell ye one thing, I’ll tell ye one thing. I won’t be dictated to by that Principal. He writes me letters, he writes me letters, suggesting this and that. I don’t want his suggestions, I don’t want them.”

Freda said, “Of course you don’t. Just wait till the very last moment and then just say what you feel.”

He looked at her sharply with his keen terrier eyes. “By God, I will! That’s right. That’s just what I’ll do. That’s right.”

They had coffee—of sorts—after lunch and Lord Abercloud smoked an enormous Havana. The Arlesien came cringing to hope that everything had been satisfactory, and Lord Abercloud ravished him by telling him it was the best lunch he had eaten on the Riviera. “It must have been easily the worst,” thought Freda, remembering those Lucullus meals at L’Hêrou, “yet he said it as if it came from his very heart. I see now how he’s got on. If he lies, he does lie; not like—not like Micky.” Lord Abercloud lingered; several times he said, “Well, I must be moving, I must be moving,” but he remained where he was; the Arlesien desisted from hovering and departed to polish off the remnants of his specialités; even Miss Rutford, the English spinster, gave up watching them from behind a pillar and went away to have an ondulation. Subjects became exhausted; silences lengthened; yet neither Freda nor Cobby was anxious to apply the closure. In some curious way they were doing each other good; she was soothing his nervous alarm about Cloudstone; he was telling her subconsciously that life wasn’t all Aravis, all misery; one could escape, and some day one would. At last he got up, shaking himself like a dog.

“Well, where’s my coat, where’s my coat?” Obsequious hands packed him into it and there he was again—the perky, gnawing, worrying little animal, rodent yet canine.

“Ye won’t come along, eh? Ye won’t come along? Well, come to the Address, anyway. I’d like that fine; like it fine.”

She said, smiling, “I’ll try my very best”; and thought, “I hope that sounded like what he said about the lunch. . . . And not—and not—like what Micky said about Doris. . . .”

But the atmosphere of Aravis that evening was less leaden with despair. That night, although it was fine, Freda did not go out; instead, she went to her room early and read for a while about Mussolini and the sleeping-car March on Rome; and then she put on her green coat with the fur collar and cuffs and sat for a long time at her open window with her elbows on the sill and her head propped on her hands. So she had sat when Stephen and Judith had been in the next room but one, and had thought not that Micky was a cheat and a fraud and an inventor of false excuses, but simply that he had once been Freda’s darling and that she had loved him with all her heart. And as she had thought then, so now she thought again—and for the first time for weeks—“Oh, Micky, Micky, why did you run away from me!”

And at that moment, if she could only have known it, Micky was hurtling southward across France in a second-class of the Blue Train, with a ticket in his pocket he could ill afford and heading for a destination he could certainly afford still less.

7

Peter Ruey had never been in London in his life: Lee had been there but once—and that was fifteen years ago as a child of seven. All she could clearly remember of the visit was that as she and her father were walking out of Whiteley’s, her little frilly drawers had come down—hopelessly down, right round her feet. She had been clutching in both hands a huge cardboard box containing a doll’s tea-service; she could do nothing whatever about it. And her father, absorbed perhaps even then in Seneca, had gone stalking on; he would not see what had happened. She had been frightfully mortified. . . . What rubbish one remembered!

Well, Whiteley’s was still there, no doubt. And if the girl had outgrown dolls’ tea-sets, there were other toys to be grasped—and quickly, before they too ran away on the wings of time.

The actual escape from Cloudstone presented no difficulty at all. From time to time Lee went to stay with “friends”; sometimes she actually went, sometimes she just wandered about alone in her car. Her father never asked any questions, never made any objection—never cared. Saying good-bye to him on this bitter 29th of January—a cold fog hanging over the Cloud Valley and occasional pouring showers—Lee had a little pang—not of remorse for her deception, but of regret for a relationship that had never existed, could never exist now. “I do wish,” she thought, “I meant something to him. If I said I was going away for a month, for a year, for ever, he’d say, ‘Very well, Lee’—just the same and thinking of something else all the time. I wish he’d liked me a lot. . . . Oh, well, you can’t have it both ways.” She dressed herself carefully in a light-grey coat and skirt—really well cut they were—tan stockings, dark grey suede shoes, a flat dark-blue hat with a jockey’s peak to it. Surveying herself anxiously, she thought, “I hope I look nice; I think I do.”

She had her ticket; a taxi took her to the station with only her blue suitcase. (Peter was the sort of man who would wish his women to travel light; quite likely he would turn up himself with nothing but his pyjamas and a razor and a tooth-brush.) At the station she was careful to see nobody; when the train came in she climbed ostentatiously into a third-class carriage at the rear end. But when it started, she took her suitcase and walked along the swaying corridor and presently there was Peter sitting in the corner of an empty first-class smoker, his big hands hanging between his knees, staring out towards Gledshaw. She dragged back the sliding door and stood smiling.

“Well, darling; here we are!”

Peter looked up as if he saw heaven.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Presently they went to lunch in the rocking diner, facing each other at a little table on the narrow side of the gangway. Taking off her blue gloves, Lee thought, “We might have been doing this all our lives; I do like Peter.” They drank mild whiskey-and-sodas; Lee said that railway dining-cars were the only place where you could ever get really good roasted potatoes; Peter said, yes—and there was a kind of red cheese you never saw anywhere else. Lee thought, “Peter’s at ease, he’s coming out well; he’s like me; he takes things as they come; I’m so thankful. How awful it must be to run away with a man who turns out to be sheepish or nervy or sentimental in the dining-car or careful before waiters. Still, we’ve got a long way to go yet, a long way to go.” But Peter kept on being splendid—cool, unconcerned, natural; just as he had sat unruffled and contemplative by her side on the occasion of that first wild drive to the Gledshaw Golf Club. At the memory she smiled at him across the narrow table.

“Indus to Spain, Peter?”

His white teeth flashed back at her.

“We’ve crossed the Indus all right.”

“Or is it the Rubicon?”

“Whatever ye like, Lee. We’ve crossed it, anyway.”

But after lunch, when they went back to their first-class smoker—which still remained empty—her mood changed. She took off her hat and put her feet up on the seat and fell into a reverie. The train roared on; it was not one of the Company’s fastest, for these did not stop at Cloudstone; but it was plunging south at a terrible rate for all that. Already it was definitely in a foreign country—in England; vast fields spread away to grey horizons; the unmistakable English church-and-rectory assemblages approached and fled as village after village swung dizzily away towards the north. For once speed depressed Lee instead of exciting her; she thought, “Misgivings? Misgivings? Too many roast potatoes at lunch?” The furious formidable beat of the engine vibrated through the whole train, through Lee herself; “In for it,” it said, “In for it, in for it, in for it.” The Spanish frontier was drawing near. She thought, “I do hope Peter will keep it up; I do hope London won’t overawe him; it might.” She stole a glance at him as he sat gazing at England. “Not our class”; no, of course not; his father had been a gamekeeper, his mother had been in “good” service; retired, they kept a little fishing inn in some vaguely Hebridean wilderness. He was rough, wild, earthy—and he looked it. But there was nothing common there, nothing cheap. She liked his new suit (it was like Peter to have a new suit for the occasion)—a herring-bone grey tweed, solid-looking, the cloth better than the cut; his shirt was blue with a semi-stiff collar; in his dark blue tie little Hares of Cloud winked in silver. She admired again his crisp, black, strongly springing hair, the white teeth that ground backwards and forwards on the mouthpiece of his pipe. . . . She thought, “How awful it would be to run away with a man whose hair got dank and disarranged; how utterly awful if he took his teeth out at night. . . . Well, I wouldn’t be doing it. But I am running away with Peter; in a few hours now——”

Her heart missed a beat. “In for it, in for it, in for it.” She fell into an uneasy doze from which she was roused by the steward’s enquiry about tea.

And presently here was London—enormous, noisy, dirty, ugly, enchanting, irresistible a hell of coloured lights blazing in a thunderous fog. But it did not, she saw, daunt Peter; not in the least. In the taxi he asked, “Is this Oxford Street?” and she said, “No, darling, I think it’s the Euston Road.” . . . Now they were going through Bloomsbury towards the Strand. . . . And here was Glade Street and here was the Glade Hôtel—called after the street which was called after the Duke. Bigger than she had expected; grander. Now, Peter!

Peter remained splendid; he marched up to the window marked “Office” and demanded a double room as if he had been doing nothing else for years. The lackadaisical-consumptive young woman said, “Seventy-faw. Will-you-register-please.” Peter took a pen and wrote down “Mr. and Mrs. Paul Raglan” as if that were indeed their name. The girl yawned and said, “George!” A porter appeared and took their suitcases—Lee’s blue one, Peter’s brown; away they went together, into the lift, up to the fourth floor. They were in a room with a blue-and-red carpet, blue wall-paper with buds, hot and cold running water, a fumed oak suite, two beds with blue silk quilts. Like a thousand other rooms; like no other room on earth. The porter dumped their suitcases on a stand; Peter gave him a shilling; he said, “Thank you very much, sir,” and went out and closed the door. And there they were.

Lee stood smiling at Peter.

“Spain, Peter?”

“Spain, Lee.”

“Like it?”

“It’s a good country.”

He came and kissed her—a quick, light, old-married-couple sort of kiss; then he heaved his suitcase on to the bed and began to unpack. A green sponge-bag came out; brown slippers; black-backed hair-brushes; he threw a pair of new pyjamas—bought for the occasion too?—on to the pillow with the utmost nonchalance. “He’s completely at home,” Lee thought vexedly, “completely self-possessed; it’s I who’m all of a dither. Oh, curse it, this won’t do! “Resolutely she unlocked her suitcase, drew out a silk nightdress and thought, “I’m as bad as Peter; I bought this for the occasion too.” She hated nightdresses but had known by instinct how Peter would dislike a girl in pyjamas. A sponge-bag came next, then a silk dressing-gown; but somehow items emerged more and more slowly; it was like drawing teeth. She thought, “This is going to be a bore; I never anticipated this; we should have had single rooms; I do want to change into a frock—and other things. Why didn’t I think about this beforehand? We can’t start with domesticity.” Peter had finished his unpacking and was straightening his tie at the mirror above the wash-hand basin. She said in rather a small voice:

“Peter!”

He turned swiftly. “Eh?”

“Peter, lamb, would you frightfully mind going down and smoking a pipe somewhere for a bit? I do want to change and——”

Peter rose to it. He said at once:

“Of course. Of course ye don’t want me in here just now. I was just going. How long do ye want?”

Instantly she loved him; it’s going to be all right; I’m safe with a man like this—safe, safe, splendid. She said:

“Give me twenty minutes.”

He looked at his battered watch. “I’ll give ye half an hour; then I want the room for a bit. That do?”

She said, enraptured, “O.K. . . . Peter, you’re even nicer than I thought!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

They dined at the Trocadero Grill; the Trocadero because it was the only restaurant whose name Lee could remember, and the Grill because the upstairs room looked too much like evening dress. Peter had a blue suit now—not so new; and Lee had a dark-red utility frock; and neither of them felt quite equal to the Trocadero’s upstairs. So they descended into the Grill and sat near the band which was masterly but a little deafening. It dashed through a Scots medley; Peter and Lee, not knowing that it played this medley almost every other night, thought it must be turned on for their special benefit—as did every other visitor from Scotland that evening. They applauded and the pale, beautiful, indiarubber conductor bowed to them and smiled; he played a violin solo ecstatically, wandering in and out among the tables, and then the orchestra nearly blew them into Shaftesbury Avenue with Tannhāuser. “The Venusberg screaming down the good Pilgrims,” thought Lee; “how singularly appropriate!” She noticed that Peter was hardly drinking anything; she thought, “I believe it is boredom with him really; well, that’s something I’ve done if I never do anything else.” She raised her glass of Liebfraumilch.

“This is the life, Peter.”

“This is it, Lee.”

“Pity it costs such a lot . . . Peter, think of Cloudstone. Poor little Cloudstone . . . Think of all that fuss and worry over Abercloud; think of Crash!; doesn’t it all seem silly from here?”

“It always was silly.”

“Of course it was. What the hell does it matter?” What the hell did anything matter? The past; the future? A back-number and a non-existent. The present was the thing, the present. Grab it, grab it, while it went coruscating by.

After dinner they went to a News Theatre and sat the programme round. They had two good reasons for this choice—it didn’t last very long and it only cost a shilling. Leaving the hotel, Lee had given Peter her note-case. “There’s ten pounds, darling; it’s all I’ve got and I don’t want to see any of it again. But don’t lose it.” He had said, grinning, “We’ve got our return tickets, anyway”; and Lee, “Somebody once said that only cowards take return tickets and only optimists don’t; oh, well!” She didn’t want to think about the return ticket; she didn’t want to think of Cloudstone. It’ll end, it’ll end; we’ll have to go back. But if this is a success, we can do it again. “By God we will go there again!” Of course, of course. . . . But in the News Theatre she snuggled against Peter; other girls were doing it and it was getting late and she wanted to and why not? . . . On the screen—strange how news is invariably the same, in all countries, at all seasons—Royalties walked up steps and along mean streets soldiers marched; a statesman roared at them about finance; launch of the So-and-so. In between, there was a coloured film of Bermuda—endless floating islands; Peter said, “A man once told me that there’s a golf club in Bermuda that costs two thousand quid entrance fee and seven hundred a year subscription.” More news—the same news again; a motor race in America; Rugby football; some Germans; some French: and then a wonderful film of spiders in the Arizona desert, creeping in and out of holes and scuttling in the sand like hairy crabs. . . . But on the top of this came a most dreary American picture that seemed unable to make up its mind whether it was comic or musical and ended by being neither. Lee disliked it more and more, because it had a funny professor in it who was absent-minded and who didn’t realise that his daughter—who for some reason played the saxophone—was carrying on with the crooner. “Oh, damn!” thought Lee. “Oh, God, why must you? I did not want to think about father to-night and now I can’t help it. Has Jane given him his dinner all right; did she burn the mutton? I’ll bet she did—but he likes it well done, and anyway, he’ll be reading a book all the time and he won’t know if he’s eating mutton or baked halibut. And he won’t know if I’m there or not. Thank God for that!” . . . The screen professor grew progressively witless and tiresome; she felt Peter’s great hand closing round her knee; she said, “This is a bore, Peter. Home?” He said, “Home it is,” and they got up and went out. But—home! What a word for it!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

With the dark-red utility hanging up in the fumed-oak wardrobe, Lee turned suddenly to Peter. He was sitting on one of the beds; imperturbable to the last, he had taken off his shoes and his coat and his waistcoat and his collar and tie; he was unbuttoning the blue shirt. He looked so handsome that her heart jumped; but did nothing shake him, nothing rattle him? . . . She caught sight of herself in the wardrobe glass and thought, “Oh, God, what a sight!” Yet she was neat and straight and shapely—yes, shapely; he ought to like it. But—but—— A sudden sword of terror struck through her; I’ve lied to him, I’ve tricked him, I’ve got him here under false pretences; suppose he goes into a black rage and puts on his coat and walks out of the hotel? And never speaks to me again? . . . She ran swiftly to Peter’s side and put her long white arms round his neck.

“Peter darling, it wasn’t true . . . It is the first time. I told you a story . . . You’ll have to try to like it like that, Peter . . . Oh, Peter, say you like it like that; say you’re glad . . .”

For a full minute Peter held her there, his great arms slackening, tightening. The red light jumped up in his eyes, the scowl gathered thunderously on his forehead. Then suddenly—stop! go!—the light changed to green, the scowl uncreased itself. Suddenly he saw he liked it like that; suddenly he was glad.

8

At a very early hour of the morning—at least, what the patrons of the Hôtel du Golf called a very early hour, for they were all at petit déjeuner in their bedrooms, the English among them trying to pretend that they liked chicory and that the iron-crusted, doughy-centred French bread was the “delicious rolls” of the Riviera novelists—at this very early hour the ingratiating Arlesien beheld arriving on foot a client of the type he most ardently cherished. To begin with, he was labelled all over “English”; not perhaps rich, but so pleasant-looking that he could be handsomely cheated, which came to much the same thing. Further, he was manifestly au bout de ses forces; he was lost, bewildered, dropping with fatigue; he carried that “anything-for-a-bath” expression which was worth an extra ten francs a day on the terms. A victim fallen from God. The Arlesien advanced—ingratiatingly.

Micky Hext said, setting down his suitcase and drawing a hand across his forehead:

“Er—est-ce que vous avez ici une demoiselle Anglaise nominée Lessing?”

The Arlesien purred. Mademoiselle Lessing, hein? Encore Mademoiselle Lessing. Was this another lord? Hardly; for lords, even in these days, did not arrive dead-beat and carrying their own suitcases. He replied in French—for he observed that Micky was of the type which desires to be addressed in French even at the risk of miscomprehensions—that but certainly Miss Lessing was in the hotel; but at that moment still à la chambre; “forcément, M’sieu, a huit heures du matin, ha-ha!”

Micky set down his suitcase and gave a kind of groan—whether of relief or of pure fatigue he could not himself have told. She’s here, she’s here; but what do I do now? He had economised, the previous evening, by cutting out dinner altogether and he had had nothing since yesterday’s lunch except a cup of coffee at Marseilles St. Charles. He was really feeling half-dead; confronted with a problem, his mind refused to function. It had not even reminded him that at the ghastly hour of eight-thirty no resident of a French hotel was likely to be visible; he had pictured insanely—though of course he knew better—an English breakfast-table, everybody coming down bright and vigorous, Freda in a green frock sitting by herself at a little table, himself sitting down firmly beside her, getting on with it somehow. His failure to realise this quite absurd expectation threw him all out of gear; he couldn’t for the life of him think what to do next. Meantime this brute of a manager stood waiting for him to say something. Yes, but what?

The Arlesien knew. He said pleasantly:

“Monsieur désire une chambre?”

Micky thought, “Do I? I suppose I shouldn’t stay in the same hotel with Freda; I suppose I must change my collar somewhere; I suppose I must have a wash, anyway. If I could only have seen Freda first, seen how she’s going to take it——” And at that moment, as if

conjured by his desire, appeared the very vision of his dreams—Freda in a green linen frock coming down the stairs, Freda looking pale and dejected and tired, Freda seeing him and starting and flushing warmly and halting in her tracks as if she had been shot. There they stood gazing at each other.

And at that sight Micky’s brain froze to solidified jelly. He could think of nothing to say; or rather, he could think of a dozen things all equally impossible. “Well, here I am.” “You didn’t expect to see me.” “Freda darling; darling Freda.” All hopeless or worse. And while his mind revolved these ineptitudes, Freda’s flush died slowly to a consumptive pallor; and her hand that had gone white with tension on the stair-rail relaxed; and a sort of shudder went through her body. And at the shudder she found her tongue.

“Oh, Micky. Oh, Micky. . . . You b-beast!”

In a flutter of skirts she turned and fled like lightning up the stairs; a door slammed crashingly.

The Arlesien thought, “Tiens, tiens, tiens!” But he knew better than to say so. To all outward seeming he had observed nothing; that astonishing vision on the stairs might never have fallen from heaven, never have whisked itself so rapidly away. He repeated patiently:

“Monsieur désire une chambre?”

“S-s’il vous plait,” said Micky, surrendering in pitiable despair.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

But of course it could not go on like that. About two hours later when Micky, having washed and shaved for the second time and invested himself in clean flannels, was sitting dejectedly in a room whose price the Arlesien had expertly raised by four francs fifty, the chambermaid came tapping at the door. He thought she wished to do the room and responded, “Entrez, entrez! Je vais descendre tout de suite”; but she babbled something about not deranging himself and then said, carefully and proudly:

“Meez Lezzing zee yo in ze salon.”

Micky’s immediate response was another groan, for he still did not know what he was going to say. However, he would soon find out—must soon find out—now. He went slowly downstairs, an exceedingly pleasant-looking if somewhat serious young Englishman. If only the salon was empty! It was empty. (If the spinster Miss Rutford had had any inkling, it would not have been; but Miss Rutford had been wrestling with French bread and chicory at eight-thirty and so had missed that intriguing overture to excitement. Like her luck!) The salon was empty; except for Freda, in the green dress of Micky’s dreams, sitting on a sofa. She at least had her gambit ready; at any rate she got it in first.

“Micky, how could you!”

He stared at her. “How could I what?”

“Come down on me like this. Without any warning. How could you think of coming at all?”

“I had to come, Freda.”

“You hadn’t. It was cruel. I was just getting over it a little——”

At the frightful words “getting over it a little” Micky found his tongue at last.

“I don’t want you to get over it. . . . Freda dear, I just had to come because I just couldn’t go on without you. I simply couldn’t go on living.”

No woman born of woman can hear these statements without softening a little. Freda said, first eagerly, “Then why”; and then, coldly, “That’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t know if it’s ridiculous.” Micky sat down on an uncomfortable chair. “It’s the truth.”

She switched to practicalities. “How did you get away?”

“I got away all right. Professor Fency’s better; he came back to work——”

“I didn’t know he was ill.”

“Well, he was—bad cold all the Christmas Vac. But he’s all right again. And—and I had to see you.”

“How did you find out I was here? I suppose that beast Judith——”

“No, no! I just found out. . . . Freda, I’ve got a week’s holiday——”

She thought with mingled dismay and relief, “Only a week—and two days of it gone already. Then I can stick it out. Because of course that’s what I’ve got to do—stick it out and send him back. I’ll do it.” She said lightly:

“I thought you must have thrown up your job.”

But at that he hardened unexpectedly.

“So I will—if necessary.”

“Micky! What can you mean?”

Micky drew himself together for his great utterance, the speech he had rehearsed through a night of roaring tunnels and syncopating railway points.

“I’ve come to take you back to Cloudstone, Freda. And you’ve got to come with me; you’ve got to . . .” He elaborated it on the rehearsed lines; it was a strong speech—compelling, commanding. But alas! Micky, with that diffident, hesitatingly humorous face, was not made for strong speeches; he broke down in the middle of it. “I know; I know; I know all you’re going to say. It’s all quite sensible; but it’s all nonsense as well. You’ve got to come back, Freda, because I just can’t get along without you. I just can’t manage it at all.”

She softened, hardened, softened again; a part of her wanted above all things to throw her arms about him, to say, “Oh, Micky, Micky, I can’t get along without you either,” and to weep on his shoulder those happy tears that had dimmed her eyes for weeks. But a stronger part said, “He backed out once, he’ll back out again. He doesn’t know his own mind; know yours.” In the end she repeated with Judithine brusquerie:

“But that’s ridiculous.”

He could only repeat himself also. “Maybe. But it’s true.”

“But—Doris? All you told me——”

“I can’t help Doris. I don’t care about Doris. . . . If you don’t.”

She thought, “If only you could have said that six weeks ago!” Lashing herself a little, she said, “But I do; of course I do.” (“Of course you do, because you’re a sensible girl; and you’re getting over it, you’re getting over it—you’ve got over it.”) “And I think it’s dreadful of you coming here like this. Unkind. It’s—it’s shameful.”

“I had to come, Freda.”

“You hadn’t at all.”

“Yes, I had. And—listen, Freda—you’ve got to come back with me. You’ve got to.”

There are men who might have brought it off; poor Micky was not one of them. For it was not as yet in Micky to command. He saw her stiffening before his eyes.

“You know quite well I can’t.”

“Freda!”

“No!”

He grew white-faced, a little breathless.

“Then I won’t go back until you do.”

She was satisfactorily aghast; he looked as if he meant it.

“But—your work!”

“Damn my work.”

“But—you said Professor Fency was ill——”

“I can’t help that.”

Temper got the better of Freda; she flew up in a fury.

“It isn’t fair of you!” And really, you know, it wasn’t. “You come rushing in here like this without warning. What are people going to think? You—you can’t stay here.”

“Convention!” thought Micky; “what a cursed thing it is. But it’s true that I can’t.” He said, boldly:

“There’s another hotel in the place; I saw it on my way from the station.” And my God! what a hole it had looked.

“Well, go there if you must be so silly. But I won’t see you.”

A gleam of humour came to Micky’s rescue. “Freda, it’s a frightful hotel.”

“I can’t help that. I’m not asking you to stay there. I’m—I’m angry with you, Micky, angry. Take the train back to Cloudstone and get on with your work and—and—” to her fury she felt herself softening again, felt the tears springing up behind her eyes—“and forget me, Micky.”

He shook his head. “I’ll stay here till you come with me; I mean it.”

“Then you’ll stay a long time.” She got up and stepped carefully past him. “I’m going to my room now. When I come back I hope you’ll be gone.”

She went sweeping upstairs; he heard a door slam, a bolt shoot home. Convention! cursed thing, it must defeat him again. Because he couldn’t follow her; and there he stood helpless with the maddening knowledge that she had fled really because she had been on the point of surrender. She wouldn’t get as near it again. Oh, damn and damn!

Well, if you issued ultimata you had to live up to them. Micky ascended to his room, packed and rang for the chambermaid. “Voulez-vous dire a Mademoiselle Lessing qu’elle me trouvera chez l’Hôtel de la Poste.” Savagely he picked up his suitcase—and it had become no lighter—and strode out into a mistral day.

The Arlesien was dumbfounded. “Fou comme un Anglais”; yes, yes, bien entendu. But even so . . . The Hôtel de la Poste! . . . Sapristi!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

But of course it could not go on even like that. The conventions that fought against Micky fought against Freda too; she was terrified for Miss Rutford, for Miss Rutford’s poking questions, Miss Rutford’s tattling tongue. Some sort of appearances must be kept up. . . . In the late afternoon, notes passed between the hotels; after dinner Micky called for Freda and they went for a walk along the Promenade. Freda thought, “I am walking along this Promenade with Micky; along the Promenade at Aravis with Micky; where I have walked a thousand miles, a thousand years, thinking of him. And now he is here, I wish he would go away. Yes, I do; yes, I do.” And for the time being, really she did.

For Freda, as she explained to Micky through their most miserable walk, had thought it all out. She saw just how it all was; anything more sweetly reasonable than Freda had never walked the shores of the Mediterranean; the fact that she was really in a mental fog compared with which the darkness of the drizzly night was lucid did not interfere with her determination to explain everything to Micky once and for all. “Let’s go back to fundamentals, Micky”—he had been right about Doris, absolutely and perfectly right. (Just in time—or was it unfortunately?—Micky stopped himself from telling her, “That’s just what Judith said”; but he did stop himself and she went on with her reasoned case. On and on and on.) “You were right about Doris, Micky; it wouldn’t have done. It hurt me a little at the time, but I see it all now. You were right . . . Now, listen, my dear. In a little while I’ll come back to Cloudstone” (“Oh, you liar! but never mind; the thing is to get him away from here”): “in a little while I’ll come back to Cloudstone and then we’ll meet again and be good friends.” (Oh, what good friends we would be; she pushed the glowing picture against his face in her eagerness that he should see it.) “We’ll see each other often and be friends, friends, friends. But we must have a little time—to recover. You see, Micky, we were—we were fond of each other; why pretend we weren’t—I don’t want to; we were terribly fond of each other; and it takes time for these things to readjust themselves. I want you to know that I don’t blame you in any way.” (“But you ran away once; you’d do it again.”) “Not our faults. It just happened. I had a nurse who used to say, ‘It happens, it happens’; well, it just did. But it’ll un-happen in time, Micky. In time, in a little time. . . . Now you go back to Cloudstone and write to me—oh, yes, often write to me; and one day you’ll get a letter saying meet such-and-such a train and there I’ll be again; and think what fun that’ll be. Think what fun! Time . . . friends.” . . . Fog, mental fog, thick as soup, with contradictories cannoning about in it like fog-bound pedestrians on a pavement. But on and on and on—so reasonable, so cool, so sure . . . “Work . . . Professor Fency . . . you might get the Chair any day, Micky; you must think of that . . . a little time . . . letters, lots of letters . . . one day, the train coming in; there I’ll be . . . the fun of that, the fun! . . .” Her brave eager little voice faltered and failed at last; the splatter of the inadequate Mediterranean waves drowned it, the mistral wind whipped it away into the pine-clad lulls. They had come to the end of the Promenade, anyway; they were back where they started.

They were back where they started. For Micky, standing under a feeble street lamp, his face damp with the sea-fog and white with weariness, said, his teeth set:

“I don’t leave here till you come with me.”

Momentarily Freda was defeated; momentarily she hated Micky, hated him. All that miserable unendurable walk, all those hideously unmistakable words, all that maniac reasonableness and idiot sense—all gone for nothing. There he stood, grim as a ghost and as accessible, saying, “I don’t leave here till you come with me.” Wailingly she burst out again with the words of her first astounded greeting—

“Oh, Micky! You b-beast!”

She slapped his face and ran.

9

It was Candlemas Day—Tuesday the 2nd of February. At Cloudstone amateur meteorologists went about quoting—or misquoting—the prophetic rune—

But at Cloudstone the day was really indeterminate; like most days in the British Islands, it was bits of one thing and bits of another—a possibility perhaps contemplated by the oracles when they framed their metrical prophecy. As far as the weather went, you could read the rune either way; but economically, morally, politically, socially, the Cloudstone atmosphere was unmistakably “dark and foul.” On the Plainstones and around the Earl of Cloud’s statue the collarless men loafed and spat; waiting, waiting—but a little less patiently, a little more wearily, as nerves wore out and the winter months wore on. Sir Ewart Kay knew that Big Bill Benzie was working with increased success in his underground galleries; Sir Ludovic knew that Saint Gunegilde’s Day as he had planned it would not go through now without a struggle—there would be unpleasantness of some sort, uncertain only as to degree. Over the town there hung not only the usual pall of February gloom but an evil darkness of the heart; if out of that cloud there came a flash, it would be lightning not sunshine. Slowly, slowly some brew was boiling up, boiling over; the smoky air said to the muddy river, “Something; coming.” . . . Spot Niven knew it; the police knew it; just of late there had been a devil abroad—demonstrations, malicious mischiefs, indecent assaults—all signs, one way or another, of strained and tautened nerves. Spot Niven’s nose said to him, “Look out!”

Important people came back to Cloudstone on Candlemas Day. First came Lord Abercloud—by way of a sleeper on the Night Scot to Groyle and thence by his own Rolls Royce. He did not pass directly through Cloudstone, but he had a glimpse of it from the high ridge where his road crossed the Butes. There it lay in its trough—sullen and smoky, restless under its blanket of river-fog; almost the only bright spot on either Bank was his own Laboratory. Lord Abercloud had a sudden vision of bees sprawling and jostling on the frame of a hive when the top is lifted; all right so long as they stuck to their work, but if they suddenly went up—zoom! He thought to himself, “Yon Ludovic’s dead wrong; it’s a mistake to have the Rectorial and the Procession on the same day. Making one holiday instead of two. The laddies winna like it.” He shivered a little, though his car was closed and warmed; like Spot, he drew warning from the air.

The second important person to arrive was Peter Ruey, sent on in advance by Lee; he got out of the three-o’clock train lugging his suitcase. Peter’s mind was in a state of confused readjustment; he had been in London attending a Biological Conference—that was it, a Biological Conference. And he had attended the Conference faithfully—or at any rate faithfully enough; he had said his own say and he had said Halkin’s say and if the two says were diametrically opposed, that was a problem for those whose business it was to interpret the views of the Cloudstone representative. God help them. “And God help me,” thought Peter, “if Halkin wants a lot of details as to what else happened at the Conference, for I’ve only a very vague idea.” There was a fellow from Ireland who had extraordinary notions about Gasteropods, and a fellow from Glasgow who told a grand new story about a honeymoon couple on the Queen Mary; but neither of these had been on the Conference’s Agenda. What had been? Peter could scarcely remember; all he could remember was Lee talking about castles in Spain, Lee laughing, Lee being kind to him, Lee’s cameo profile in restaurants, in taxi-cabs, in St. James’s Park. And Lee’s face one morning asleep on the pillow—a face he had never seen before, an amazing surprise, a discovered treasure.

It was that face that haunted him now. Tramping down the Bridgegate, humping his suitcase along—because he had arrived back in Cloudstone with exactly one-and-tenpence—Peter saw that face dancing in front of him. It was not Lee’s face as he knew it; yet he would never see Lee’s face again except through a dissolving film of this one. Soft, young, sunk in the profoundest peace, released from effort, free, unworldly, immeasurably away; a fairy face like those men saw—or said they saw—in the mists and waters of Skye. But he had seen it; it seemed now to Peter that he would never again see anything else.

The week-end had been an experience transcending experience; only now, within sight of the Hare of Cloud Lounge where it had begun, did he realise how immensely it had surpassed his expectations. These after all had not amounted to very much; Lee had told him what he wanted, what he would get, but he had been sceptical; he had looked for fun, an adventure, differing from other adventures only in degree. One would enjoy, one would weary. But this had differed from all adventures fundamentally and in essence. “By this,” thought Peter, “I must henceforward gauge everything called ‘pleasure.’” There was no weariness—far, far otherwise. It had been like home-coming, like finding at the close of search, like the peace of God that passeth all understanding . . .

But there was another side to it, thought Peter, tramping now over the Cloud Bridge; there was responsibility. I have taken a virgin; I have unmade that which was made and cannot be remade. For the first time in his life a sense of iniquity oppressed poor Peter, a conviction of meanness. I have taken; I must give in return; I have been unfair, I have taken an advantage, I have cheated . . . Repay?

Sighing, Peter set his suitcase down for a moment on the parapet of the Cloud Bridge and stared seawards. Trance, stillness—motionless fog in the air, unmoving water in the river; a queer boding kind of day that might turn to anything . . . Last night, in the Glade Hotel, obsessed by that payment-and-cheating idea, he had said to Lee—clumsily and haltingly; he couldn’t remember the exact words now but doubtless they were stupid—he had said that they ought to be married. Lee had laughed at him—how she had laughed; sitting there on that blue-quilted bed with next to nothing on, shaking up and down with laughter.

“My lamb!”

“I mean it, Lee.”

“Of course you mean it, darling. Nobody could think anything so preposterous and not mean it.”

“It’s preposterous, is it?”

“Utterly.”

“But, why, Lee—why?”

“Oh, a thousand becauses. Three principally—You, Me, Money.”

“The third maybe——”

“The third is the smallest of them . . . Peter, my lamb, you mustn’t talk like that or I’ll think you haven’t enjoyed it.” (But she thought in her heart, “At least he hasn’t tired of me; thank God for that!”)

“I’ve more than enjoyed it. That’s why I want——”

“Silly, that’s why you don’t want. This is Spain, Peter, our castle in Spain. Spain is like heaven—there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. It’s an enchanted country, Peter——”

She had taken his hand and led him away into the enchanted country; away they had gone together. . . .

With another sigh Peter picked up his suitcase and plodded forward. Getting without paying for it—that wasn’t in nature. “‘Take your pick,’ said God, ‘and pay for it’” That was a real Spanish proverb and it was the honest-to-god truth. “Say; ‘Here’s a sin—I’ll sin it; and there’s the price of sinning—and I’ll pay.’” . . . “But I haven’t paid,” thought Peter; “it’s wrong. There’s a catch somewhere.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

The third important arrival in Cloudstone that Candlemas Day was Lee herself; she disembarked, very tired and dispirited, from the ten-o’clock train that night. In a sudden access of caution she had decided that she and Peter must return by separate trains; as there were only two expresses which stopped at Cloudstone—one leaving London at eight-thirty and one at four—Peter had taken the first and Lee the second. Peter had grumbled.

“What the hell does it matter if they do see us?”

“It matters, Peter. Because I want this again if you don’t.”

“If I don’t! Ye little devil.”

“Yes,” thought Lee, staring at the gloomy English landscape, mile after mile of it all exactly alike—“I do want it again. And I want it again soon, but I’m afraid that’s going to be difficult. This cost me ten pounds; I don’t know what it cost Peter; we’ll have to save and save and save. Meanwhile things will be blanker than ever.” She shivered a little in her grey coat and skirt and thin under-things. “I’ve caught a cold, I expect; damn.” Perhaps it was the cold, perhaps it was some other physical reaction, but a horrid voice began to speak to her, muttering away out of the rumble of the train and the chatter of her companions in the carriage. “You won’t get it again,” it said, “these things don’t happen twice. You’ve had a little slice of perfection; very lucky people are allowed that—once.” . . . The day, never alight, descended to total darkness; Lee smoked her last cigarette, tried tea and an egg (knowing she had no money for dinner), read Britannia and Eve. There was fog in the Midlands; the train was checked again and again; in the wilds of north England something broke down in the engine; they were over half an hour late. Exhausted, empty and feeling slightly sick, Lee was almost asleep when the lurch of the curve and the clamorous roar of the bridge announced that Cloudstone was at last a matter of minutes. Into the dismal cavern of the station the train rolled to a standstill; the engine stared at her, saying, “You see, I get there—in time”; weary and weak in the knees Lee got out.

She would have liked a taxi, but you could not take a taxi to the South Bank for sevenpence—which was the sum of her remaining funds; she got instead into a clanging tram that careered away down into the town. She thought, “How is Daddy?” and instantly she had the conviction that he wasn’t very well. And that wretched Micky Hext had gone off pursuing his troubles, whatever they were. Oh, well, we all had our troubles. Cling to the past, to achievement; we’ve proved it can be done, Peter; we’ve proved that we can like it; what man has done man can do again. ‘By God, we will go there again’; again; again. . . . She leaned her head back against the glass of the tram, closing her eyes. “Oh, god, I’m tired; and this cursed thing will only take me as far as the Cloud Bridge.”

The Cloud Bridge was swept by a cold wind charged with sea drizzle; it pushed against her, saying, “Get out of this; God’s angry with you; get away back to London and your horrible amours.” She fought against it, open umbrella in one hand, suitcase in the other. I’ve never been so tired in my life; and I feel frightened, queer. ‘God’s angry with you?’ He can’t be . . . Oh, don’t be silly, Lee. The interminable bridge ended; in the shelter of the South Bank buildings it was a little more comfortable. The Brewsters seemed to be having a party . . . There were two lights in her own house; one was high up—that was Jane, the little slut, going to bed; the other was in Daddy’s study. “Comforting sight. Oh, comforting; because I was afraid he might be ill again; I was afraid that was how God was going to punish me; and if it had been so I would never have forgiven myself. Never.”

She let herself in with her latch-key and smelt at once the familiar blend of book-bindings and cigars and furniture polish; she closed the door behind her and switched on the light. The house was immensely still save for the clack-clack of the grandfather clock that had belonged to some forgotten Fency: suddenly, furiously, it struck eleven at her. The strokes seemed to fall like blows descending mercilessly on a bared back; thud! thud! thud! Again she felt that frightened anticipation. Oh, God, don’t punish me; I do so want it again . . . Oh, don’t be silly, Lee! She put down her suitcase and ran to the stairs. Let’s see Daddy at once . . .

The room reeked of brandy—reeked of it as an operating-chamber reeks of ether. Why? What? Then she saw; the bottle of Courvoisier on the little table beside her father’s arm-chair had fallen over on to its side and poured its contents on to the carpet. He must have fallen asleep and knocked it over. But in that case, why had the cork been out? That wasn’t like Daddy. He couldn’t have just dropped it? He couldn’t have been trying to pour it out and just dropped it? No; because he was asleep; she saw a corner of his white head round one of the immense wings of his old-fashioned chair. Only his reading-lamp behind the chair was lit; the room was a cell of darkness packed round this little nucleus of brilliance. It was frightfully quiet and the smell of the brandy was choking; he’d be angry when he found out what he had done; thirty shillings a bottle that brandy cost . . . He was asleep, wasn’t he? She made a couple of steps forward. “Daddy!” she said, “Daddy!”

He wasn’t asleep.

10

Micky Hext came running, white-faced and hatless, up the steep hill to the Hôtel du Golf; he carried in his hand the curious bluish-white paper the French call a telegram. He said—or shouted—

“Miss Lessing! I must see Miss Lessing.”

The Arlesien came as near to a stare as he ever came in his life. “Mon dieu!” he thought, “qu’il est drôle, cet Anglais! One day he must not see her, the next day he must, must, must. Toujours l’impératif!” He said, however, “Je vais chercher”; but at that moment Micky saw Freda for himself, coming down the stairs just as she had come on that morning of his first arrival. He rushed at her, thrusting the telegram in front of him like a spear.

“Read that. Read that!”

Freda read, “Fency died suddenly last night. Please return immediately.”—“Fency died—oh, Micky, does that mean that you’ve got the Chair?”

Micky clutched his head. “Oh, the Chair—the Chair!” He was distracted. “Of course it doesn’t mean I’ve got the Chair. But it does mean that I must do one thing or another.”

“One thing or another?”

“Yes. Either I must wire and say I’m coming or else I must wire and say I’m not.”

“But, Micky, of course you’ll say you are.”

“There’s no of course about it. . . . Look here, Freda, we can’t talk on these stairs. Come in here.” He dragged her into the salon; it was empty except for old Madame de Fourmet, who was deaf and didn’t understand any English. But Micky was in such a state that it is doubtful whether, even if Miss Rutford had been there with all her ears, it would have made any difference to him. It is doubtful if he saw Madame de Fourmet or knew where he was. He said—or shouted—

“Now, Freda, you’ll have to make up your mind.”

“I?”

“Yes, you. Are you coming back with me or not?” Freda flushed scarlet; really, it was insufferable.

“I thought we had been through all that. I’ve told you a hundred times, I—-am—not.”

“Very well, then,” said Micky, “I stay here.”

Even Freda was taken aback. She said, with much less conviction:

“Micky, you’re mad.”

“Quite likely. Anyway, that’s how it is. I don’t go unless you do.”

“But, Micky, it may mean the Chair for you——”

“It may; it mayn’t.”

“It does mean the Chair for you——”

“Well, what about it?”

“If you don’t go, it’ll mean the sack instead. You couldn’t be so foolish. What earthly reason could you give?”

“I wouldn’t give any reason. Just say, ‘Regret cannot return.’”

“But—the Chair. You’d lose it.”

“Then I’d lose it. . . . I’ve found you again, Freda;

I’m not going to lose you.”

Freda flushed crimson with fury; he comes and holds a pistol at my head; and of course this must happen—just when I was managing him so well. I’d have got rid of him; I’d have got over it. Now he’s got his weapon; this Chair, this Chair—oh, damn! She said, flaming:

“You’ve put me in an impossible position.”

“Well, you can easily come out of it.”

“You don’t mean it; you can’t.”

“I do. . . . Are you coming?”

“No!“

“Very well, then! “He leaned back against the wall of the salon, exhausted by his own excitement; Madame de Fourmet, peering over her glasses, thought he looked uncommonly attractive. “Il demande quelquechose. Si c’etait moi——” Unfortunately for her determination, Freda thought so too. She repeated with the increasing emphasis of weakness:

“You must go. Of course you must.”

“I won’t. Not without you.”

Something new crept into Freda’s feeling for Micky, something she had never felt before. Successfully at last, he stepped forward in the role of commander. In the Golden Mist Micky had been a darling—but a young darling, a little boy, a playmate, what you will. Now, deep inside Freda, something said, “Bow down to this man; obey him; your proper response to this man is ‘Yes, yes, yes.’” In the salon of the Hôtel du Golf a slow minute rolled its course; Madame de Fourmet advanced but a single stitch in her crochet, but Micky advanced long leagues in the eyes of Freda. He who had been but a darling became suddenly a man. “Because,” she thought, “he means what he says.” It is difficult for any woman to believe this of any man, but once she has done it she has taken a fair step towards enslavement.

It was Freda who broke the silence; and then by saying something she had not at all intended.

“I—I couldn’t come back to Cloudstone along with you. What on earth would people say?”

“We can think of that as we go along.”

“We aren’t going along.”

“Yes, we are. Or I stay here.”

“Oh, Micky, be sensible.”

“I am being sensible.”

“You’re not . . . Micky, you go back to Cloudstone; go quick and see what happens. Make sure of the Chair. I’ll come along soon. As I said last night; as I’ve always said.”

Reasonable; oh, surely? But he simply shook his head.

“I won’t stir from this infernal place without you. You can come as far as London, anyway. Then you can come on north afterwards.”

Madame de Fourmet thought, peering, “They weaken; this will end in arranging itself. Hélas! “She saw that Freda’s foot had begun to tap the floor; Freda was biting her finger; bad signs—signs of eventual surrender. “Ah, ciel!” thought Madame de Fourmet, “he will have her. Ah, ciel!” . . . Freda was thinking desperately, “What am I to do; what am I to do? If I don’t go I shall lose him the Chair.” (For she fully believed that the Humanity Chair of the Youngest University hung on just this moment.) “I loathe and detest this place and every stone in it; I’d leave it with delight. . . . I daresay we could fix up something . . . The Chair . . . He means it . . . Oh, what am I to do? “Quite suddenly, she capitulated.

“Micky, I won’t forgive you for this. I withdraw all I said about friendship——”

The new Micky said:

“We’ll see about that. So long as you come.”

“Not Cloudstone.”

“Very well; not Cloudstone just yet.” (Ah, compromise, sweet compromise, where would be our affairs without you?) “But Cloudstone too—soon. And anyway, out of this to-night.”

“To-night!”

“Yes.”

“Micky!”

“Yes.”

“Well—all right.” (“I’m not going to haggle over hours.”) “As far as London.” (“That should save the Chair, anyhow, and there’s always Aunt May.”) “But if you think——”

“As far as London now. And Cloudstone soon.”

“Soon?”

“A week.”

“No.”

“A fortnight, then.”

“Well—all right; a fortnight.”

At last: at last! . . . With the gasp of one emerging from deep, deep waters, Micky fell back against the friendly wall; he realised quite suddenly that he was in an ugly French drawing-room; that he was clutching in his hand a hard little paper ball that had been a telegram; that there was cold sweat on his forehead; and that an elderly French lady was regarding him over her crochet with a curiously complicated expression. . . .

11

At Cloudstone, in her gloomy house, Lee sat white-faced, staring, smoking. She had forgotten her makeup, she had pulled on any old clothes; her face was frozen. She was frozen altogether. In front of her hung the Mycenaean-dagger picture, the indiarubber lions twisting their necks at the little sturdy mannikins who romped after them; she thought, “A week ago I looked at that and it said, ‘You and Peter are going to London.’ Did we go? Were there any such people?” Now another girl sat in that Lee’s chair; God had become angry with that Lee and had smitten her to dust. In an hour—-in a matter of minutes, seconds—Peter’s Lee had vanished out of the world, killed. This girl who sat here now, smoking such bitter thoughts, such bitter self-accusings, had never been to London, had never known Peter. The Indus? Spain? No such places.

The slattern maid pushed open the door, thrust her tousled hair and spectacles round its edge.

“Mr. Ruey’s back. He’s askin’ for ye again.”

“Tell him I can’t see him.”

The maid hesitated in a cloud of compassion, curiosity, embarrassment.

“Will I tell him that, Miss Lee? Again?”

“Just that.”

The maid went out. There was a little pause; there seemed to be a sort of argument. But in the end Peter went away. The front door shut. It shut.

Peter, tramping the Cloud Bridge, need not have exercised himself about not paying. He would pay all right.

12

At Victoria Station Freda and Micky faced one another amid the roar of steam, the clatter of barrows, the hooting of a hundred taxis. An unexpectedly protracted battle with the Customs had set the seal on a journey that for never-ending weariness had excelled anything in their joint memory. Crowded wagon-lit, rough Channel, soaking, pouring, South-Coast February day; now these Customs. They were so tired, so muddled, so cross with each other that they could hardly talk sense. But Freda said:

“I’m going now. Good-bye.”

Micky said, “Where?”

“To my aunt’s. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

“Yes, but where’s that?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Oh, Freda!”

Freda glared at him; she was very near the end of her tether.

“Now, look here, Micky. Either you trust me or you don’t. I’ve promised to come to Cloudstone, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but——”

“Well, till then you’ll just have to trust me. And till then you’ll just have to leave me alone. I’m tired of all this; I can’t do it any longer.”

Blue suitcase in hand, she leapt into a taxi—lightly, neatly, as once into an Austin Seven. It was impossible to stop her, impossible to roar at the cabman, “You shall not take this woman from me!” She slammed the door, said to the driver, “Thomas Cook’s, please,” smiled suddenly and was gone.

And then to Micky, stranded and forlorn as ever was any Earl, there appeared the Hare of Cloud, gambolling on the drab platforms of Victoria. Or if he did not actually see it there grinning and bounding and beckoning, he heard it saying in his ear again and again, “Aunt! Aunt! Aunt! Aunt!” He thought, knowing nothing of the Hare, “Aunt? Why shouldn’t I look up my own aunt? Train to Cloudstone; four o’clock; I must do something to fill in the time; yes, Aunt Isabel.” Dumping his suitcase in the cloakroom, he went out and boarded a bus; but he had no idea that it was the Hare leading him to treasure.

Micky’s Aunt Isabel, his father’s sister, was a little old lady of two-and-seventy who lived in rooms near Hyde Park Terrace; there she had lived since the memory of man and might live, it seemed, for ever. Micky had once told Freda that she was most sensible, but that was an absurd understatement of her unchanging wisdom and calm. She never altered, and nothing—nothing on earth could upset her. At the sudden incursion of Micky into her sitting-room she turned not a hair; he might have been returning from an afternoon’s stroll; she said merely:

“Dear me, Mike. Come away and sit down.”

He came away, muttering something about passing through Town. But she had put on her glasses and was staring at him.

“Mike, you look shocking. What’s the matter with you?”

And then, somehow, a thing happened which Micky had never intended when he left Victoria; slowly and gradually, distilling itself drop by drop from memory, the whole story emerged. Freda’s entry into life; the Difference that made; Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey; a cretonne-and-bookshelf room; Doris; Judith who thought Micky was right, Micky who was certain Micky was wrong; ghosts at Christmas, after Christmas; Judith who thought Micky was wrong, Micky who was certain Micky was right; Aravis; argument; more argument; partial success at least. Slowly, taking perhaps half an hour, it all came drifting out of Micky’s pent-up misery. And at the end, his Aunt Isabel, who had never interrupted once, said:

“Have you told your mother all this?”

“No. How could I?”

“Are you going to?”

“No.”

“I think you should, Mike.”

“I couldn’t, Auntie; I just couldn’t.”

“I wish you could. I want you to.”

Micky raised his head suddenly.

“Why? Is there any special reason?”

“Yes, there is. If you told her all you’ve told me, I think she would have to tell you something.”

Micky raised his head still farther.

“Tell you something she ought to have told you long ago. So I think. I always said so. But she wouldn’t; it’s understandable——”

Micky said, gaspingly, “Tell me—what?”

“Simply that Doris was her fault. That’s all.”

“That Doris was—For the Lord’s sake, Auntie!”

“No, Mike, for yours. . . . Mike, you great booby, you didn’t go about thinking we were a mad family, did you?”

He muttered that of course not; but there were cases in all sorts of families; one never knew . . .

“One knows perfectly well,” said his Aunt Isabel quite sharply. “Do you think I’m mad? Do you think your father was mad? Or your mother? Or any of the rest of us?”

“No, of course not. But——”

“Then why should Doris be?”

Micky said almost inaudibly, “I always thought she just was.”

“She was; but she needn’t have been. Or let me say she mightn’t have been . . . You see, my dear Mike—I don’t quite know how an old woman can express it to a young man—but your mother didn’t want Doris.”

“Didn’t want her?”

“No . . . Think for yourself. Poor as church mice; your father a parson, full of ‘the Lord will provide’; you there already; Doris insisting on coming . . . Use your imagination.”

Micky said, “I—I see. She tried to stop her.”

“She tried to stop her. And you mustn’t think hardly of her, Mike; hundreds of thousands of women did it—even in those days. Only they succeeded and your mother didn’t.”

“But, Auntie—what did she do?”

“I don’t know, my dear; how should I? How should I know what women do at such times? Inever married, thank goodness. If I did know, I couldn’t tell you. But I daresay she did everything she could. And that’s why, that’s why—well, Doris.”

Micky said, “My God!” And then there was a very long silence. Micky thought, “My mother did that; her fault; oh, poor mother! . . . Doris: my mother . . . But—Freda.” At the thought of Freda he found speech again.

“And she never told me a word about it.”

“No. She was terrified to tell you. Terrified it would turn you against her.”

“It wouldn’t have.” And it wouldn’t; he saw that. But in the whirlpool of his mind a strange idea came eddying up.

“Auntie, do you think that could possibly be why Doris— She never seemed to take to mother, you know, do what mother would. I often wondered . . . Do you think it’s possible . . . subconsciously . . .”

“My dear boy, you mustn’t ask me clever things like that. But everything’s possible, goodness knows. It’s true she doesn’t seem to like your mother——”

But Micky’s mind had wandered again—to Freda, to Micky-and-Freda.

“Poor mother! . . . Auntie, do you think she ever would have told me?”

“I don’t know, my dear. She might—now. If you had told her all you’ve told me. But I’m not sure about it. And that’s why I’m telling you now.”

Micky took her hand and said, “Thank God you did.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

He was half-way to the taxi-rank, rushing to Freda, before he remembered that he didn’t even know where Freda was. The recollection halted him in his tracks so sharply that a man with an umbrella crashed into him from behind and he had to apologise; for a moment it seemed annihilation and despair. Then he thought, “Oh, well—Cloudstone; a fortnight: I have her promise.” . . . And at the word “Cloudstone” he looked at his watch and thought of the four-o’clock train and ran for the taxi-rank faster than ever.

The Hare, laughing at him, gambolled away into Hyde Park.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Part Four: Saint Gunegilde’s Day

1

Some fishermen saw the dawn of Saint Gunegilde’s Day. They were on a Groyle steam-drifter called the Mary’s Hope bearing the number GRL 246; they were bucketing along through steep choppy seas making homewards for Groyle as hard as they could go, for they had a good catch aboard. The Skipper of the Mary’s Hope, a plain bleary old man in whom expectation of anything was pretty nearly dead, stood on the little rocking bridge and smoked an ancient pipe, bowl downwards. He was musing dimly on the strange ways of herring; cod functioned according to known laws, haddock you could count upon, but herring were unpredictable. Luck? God? . . . Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the dawn of Saint Gunegilde’s Day. It was—or would be—red.

The Engineer came scrambling up for a breath of air; poking his head out through the narrow doorway, he too gazed at the east. In the square-yard at the head of the engine-room ladder a hand was frying sausages. He said to the Engineer, “Ay, man, Sandy!” The Engineer, untying the sweat-rag from round his neck and mechanically squeezing it, said absently, “Ay!” He was thinking—if at all—about Football Pools. The cook said, “It’s blowin’ clear,” and the Engineer replied darkly, “The noo.” He stared at the eastern horizon which resembled a distant conflagration seen through smoked glass; there was a long sullen line of reddish glare, and above it clouds fumed and boiled, jostling eagerly upwards towards the zenith. It was dismal, menacing, ordinary; much what he expected to see. He said to the cook, “It’s gaunna blow like hell . . . Ay; an’ hell o’ a clash o’ rain at the back o’t. Ye’ll see.”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Ivor Calder very nearly saw that dawn. If he had lain awake just a little longer or got up just a little sooner, he would have accomplished it. On the previous evening, he had held a final council of war with Speed, Brett and one or two others; so far as you could depend on such people they seemed to know their parts and to be prepared to carry out loyally what was from first to last Ivor’s own scheme. Provided, of course, they had their fun with the Procession first. And now, had said Ivor, for a good stiff drink and a good night’s sleep. The first—despite St. Crydlan’s regulations to the contrary—was easy; the second had proved unattainable. Ivor had rolled himself into bed, felt for a brief and blissful moment, “I’m dropping off splendidly,” and had then shuddered into hopeless wakefulness. Speed snored in his twin bed like the great buffalo he was; a chorus of clocks at varying ranges struck hour after hour; they were wildly apart—between the first and the last the hours took a full minute to announce themselves. What a fuss, what a competition—all to tell a poor devil he was in too much of a funk to sleep. “For that’s what it is,” thought Ivor, “funk, hysteria, weakness; not of stuff like this are real leaders made. On the eve of a revolution its leader, if he’s worth anything, should sleep like a little child; here am I—dithering.” He got up and took an aspirin, which produced no effect whatever; Speed snored; Ivor thought, “It’s Guney’s Day at last; it’s, two hours old—three, four, five.” Then for an hour, just about dawn, he slept; only to wake again, finally, at seven-fifteen. Furious with himself, he pulled on some clothes and went out into a raw gusty morning and walked down to Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey.

A rough wind out of the sea resisted his progress all down the Gledshaw Road; but once in the Abbey he found tranquillity in the lee of an old wall. Lighting a pipe, he smoked solemnly and wondered, “This time to-morrow; what’ll have happened by then?” Probably he would be in a police cell; certainly he would be headed for major trouble. “There’s not a chance,” he thought, “but that Ludovic will send me down: well, I can get a job; degrees don’t get you jobs, nowadays; what’s an ordinary M.A., anyway?” But again the old doubt raised its head: “Am I doing right or am I an ass?” “You are doing this,” the doubt told him, “merely because you said you would, merely because you have created a bogy sort of figure called Ivor Calder the Revolutionary who talks big and has to act up to it. You are doing it,” the old doubt said, “because it is too late to turn back . . .” Too late to turn back; well, anyway, thank God, it was that now. Eight o’clock on Saint Gunegilde’s Day—a third of the Day gone. All ready; press the button; up goes the mine; fire!

“Now is that all understood? First of all the Procession. They know we’re going to rag the Procession—they’ve a pretty good idea, anyhow; what they don’t know is, where. They’ll expect us somewhere about Cryd’s. They won’t expect us at the House. Now remember, everybody has to be down in the Gledshaw House shrubberies not later than ten-thirty. I don’t care if it’s snowing. You’ve got to get there one by one and you must not be seen. They won’t be expecting us by the time they get that far; they’ll be thinking it’s just boycott and nothing else. They’ll be easy money.”

(“Oh, damn and blast your silly Procession! It’s the other thing I’m thinking of.”)

The Other Thing! That was what kept one awake in the windy night, that was what sent one wandering out into this filthy cold morning to commune with the stones of Guney’s Abbey. The Procession rag was nothing—couldn’t even succeed beyond a point. The Harriers would be hopelessly outnumbered; Gloag and Co. were far from unprepared; a short-lived scuffle, a rapid defeat was all that could be expected. Still—the hounds wanted it; you had to humour your hounds. And, fatuous in itself, it compensatingly involved no very serious penalty; Ludovic could make nothing much out of it; it was a rag and there it ended . . . Ragging old Guney’s Procession was harmless; kidnapping the Lord Rector on his way to his Address was quite another story. But Lord Abercloud was to be kidnapped; that, neither more nor less, was what was to be done. There would be no Address—not this time, anyway. And next time somebody else could see to it. “Because,” thought Ivor, “I shan’t be here. Sent down—that’s what I’ll be.”

“Now, once more, everyone, it’s quite simple. The Address is at three. Everybody will be sitting in the Macmurtrie Hall like good boys and girls waiting for the nice Rector. We’re at the south end of the Cloud Bridge. Two-forty-five. We see old Thundercloud’s car coming. All into the road. Stop it—it must stop, he won’t run us down. Out the shover and into the Club room with him. Out Lady Thundercloud and into the other car with her and home, James, and don’t spare the horses. Off with old Thundercloud in his own car to the Reiver’s Moss. Dump him there. In an hour’s time ring the police and tell them where to find him. All clear?”

It seemed to be all clear.

“Its got to be quick and its got to be sudden. The crux of the whole thing’s surprise. Sixty seconds from start to finish. Does everybody know exactly what they have to do?”

Everybody seemed to know.

“Well, once more. Speed’s party to scrag the shover—hands up. . . . O.K. Finlater’s party to deal with the old girl—and for God’s sake treat her like dynamite. Hands up. . . . O.K. Bing drives Thundercloud’s car; Guy drives our car with Lady A. . . . O.K. I ring the police. . . . O.K.”

O.K.? It seemed to be; it couldn’t fail; and nobody—not even the shover unless he played the fool—could get hurt. There would be drinks and shelter for old Thundercloud up on the Reiver’s Moss; he’d be quite happy till the police came for him. It couldn’t fail. And it would be rather a scoop really. All the good little boys and girls in the Macmurtrie Hall thinking, “The poor old Harriers—that was a feeble show they put up this morning; now they’re boycotting the Address—silly babies.” . . . Then the pause, the hitch; old Stick-in-the-Mud’s late, isn’t he? Why doesn’t old Thundercloud turn up? . . . Then the glorious news filtering in slowly; received at first with incredulity, then with consternation, then with fury. “I’d give a lot,” thought Ivor, “to see Ludovic’s face . . . Well, I’ll see it soon enough.”

Deep within Ivor an accusation said, “You inadequate fool! You fumbler! Is this what you aimed at—this comedy, this crudity, this slapstick rough-and-tumble?” But despite the accusation, despite that weary soul-destroying night with the Cloudstone clocks and Speed’s reverberations, he felt his pulse begin to beat. By God, it will be something to have done, anyway; people won’t forget it in a hurry. It’ll date things in the Varsity: “That was the year they kidnapped Abercloud, you know.”—“What? Kidnapped Abercloud? Kidnapped the Lord Rector?”—“Yes, they did; there was a fellow Calder——” Fame, fame. “And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by”—“And gentlemen in England now abed——” how did the thing go? Not Crispin’s Day—Guney’s; the most memorable Guney’s Day that ever happened. . . . Call that nothing?

Ivor looked at his watch; eight-thirty-five; the very earliest of the assassins should already be sneaking round by back ways to the Gledshaw House shrubberies; they would have a long, cold wait—and serve them right, the babies. Gift of God, those shrubberies; you could creep into them unobserved and a couple of hundred could lie hid in them indefinitely. If only we had as good a place for the Other Thing . . . “They’ve been a good lot, the Harriers,” thought Ivor, “a damned good lot; I hope they don’t get hell over this. But they won’t; I’ll pay the score; that’s as it should be.” . . . He knocked out his pipe and stood surveying the red ruins that crouched under the flying smoky scud. The wind sang in the towers, the clouds poured overhead laden with rain but travelling too fast to drop it. “If it’s raining at three,” thought Ivor, “all the better—there’ll be the fewer people about. Well—moriturus te saluto.” . . . He put his pipe in his pocket and trudged away towards Cryd’s.

Half-way there, he saw a solitary figure approaching him—a figure in flannels and a Shetland pullover walking with fierce resolution against the wind. “Damn!” thought Ivor, “Hext. He’ll want to talk.” But Micky apparently did not want to talk; he said gruffly, “Morning, Ivor,” and shot past like a grey ghost. Ivor thought, “Stuffy? I suppose he’s fed up at not getting the Latin Chair. . . . Well, we’re all fed up about something . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Micky was more than fed up; he was disgusted with this idiotic penance of before-breakfast walks he had imposed upon himself; he hated before-breakfast walks and was aware that they tired him for his morning classes, but there was an Ivorish strain in him that kept him at anything, however stupid, he had once undertaken. Among Micky’s few memories of his father was one of himself in a temper and his father saying, “Walk it off, my boy, walk it off”: the catharsis of walking had since become an integral part of Micky’s therapy. But, like all purges, it made one weary.

There was at the moment a lot to walk off. Imprimis, the crushing disappointment about the Chair; he hadn’t got it after all; and it was no use telling himself that of course he had never expected to get it because the bitterness of his chagrin proclaimed just how hopeful he had been. “Too young,” they had said, and had cabled to a professor in South Africa—just as he had always known they would. A disagreeable man with a craze—-the incredible craze of a pervert—for the works of Lucan. Well, there it was; he hadn’t got the Chair; and nobody cared a damn.

But that was a minor trouble, relatively speaking. There was Freda.

For Freda had broken her word. The fortnight was up and more than up and she hadn’t returned to Cloudstone; and she hadn’t written; and he still didn’t know where she was. Good God! she might be ill; good God! she might be dead. But Micky did not think either of these alternatives very probable; more likely she was lying low with the hidden Aunt May—if indeed there was an Aunt May. Or she might have gone back to Aravis; or America; or Antananarivo . . . At this time of all times, when he had such wonderful news for her, he didn’t know where she was and she wouldn’t tell him and she wouldn’t come to him and she had broken her promise and the world, the universe, the solar and Galactic systems were awry . . . She’ll come, he told himself, she’ll come; but would she? She wouldn’t; she had cheated him, sold him, she had never meant to keep that promise; he would never be able to tell her the wonderful news, never feel her soft arms round his neck while her soft voice said, “Never mind about the horrible Chair.” . . . Common sense said, “Go to Judith, tell her what you know now, tell her what a fool you’ve been and ask for Freda’s address. She couldn’t refuse it—not now.” But one shrank from going back to Judith and sitting again like a small boy under those Madonna perfections; not a third time—at least, not except as a very last resort. Give Freda time; she’ll come . . . “But, oh Lord,” thought Micky, “what a muddle of everything I’ve made. What a hare-brained idiot I have been.”

At the word “hare” he thought of the Hare of Cloud, sitting on his mantelpiece beside the tobacco-jar and the invitation cards. “I hope he will find you all sorts of treasures . . .” Precious fine treasures the brute had found him! “I expect,” thought Micky, “I’m one of those people for whom lucky things are unlucky and vice versa; I thrive on thirteens and broken mirrors, but Hares of Cloud ruin me.” He thought this quite seriously for thirty seconds and then called himself crazy . . . And at the word “crazy” up came the picture of Doris—the big heavy girl, so absurdly unfeminine, so incalculable. Her visit to Micky’s mother was coming to an end; as usual she was not quite so well again; she was going back to Yeolands this very day, or was it to-morrow, or was it early next week? Almost at once, anyway. Micky’s mother wrote, “I wish you were here, Mike; you were always so good with Doris; I can never get any further with her.”—“No,” thought Micky, “no. You can’t.” And he thought, “I wonder if my father knew about mother and Doris? I hope to God he didn’t.”

Raising his head, he found he had reached the Abbey; there it lay like a ship at anchor beneath the scudding wrack. Well, at least the walk had been accomplished; now he could go home again—though whether anything had been “walked off” was a different question. Furious as Ivor with discontent, Micky stared resentfully at the Abbey which had once been so loved, which had taken on for a time the garment of perfection, which had hidden itself for an interlude in the Golden Mist. “Odi et amo,” thought Micky, “Odi et amo . . . I wish I knew what Freda’s doing.”

2

In the Hostels—Saint Gunegilde’s, Saint Crydlan’s, Gledshaw House—-nobody saw that dawn or anything near it. Sensibly, they rose late; Guney’s Day—no classes, thank God for that. Yet except among those who were utterly given over to Ludovic—and to Ludovic’s credit be it said that these were numerous—there was an uneasy feeling that this was to be too much of a day altogether. We should have had a day off for the Rectorial Address and a day off for Guney; now we’re having them both crammed into one; it won’t work; we’re being done. The forenoon of Saint Gunegilde’s Day had always been a pleasant interval of chattering and wandering and preparing—of convivial symposia and getting into form; then you had the Procession—leisurely—in the afternoon, and at dark the torchlight and the bonfire, licence and general revelry. To-day everything was thrown out of gear. The bonfire and the revelry would be reached—eventually; but in between was sandwiched the Rectorial Address, an affair of very different quality. It would make a fatal break in the spirit of the Day which might not be recovered. You can’t revel to order, dammit, can you?

Especially was this felt among those whose preparations for the Procession were long and arduous. The unfortunate freshman called Lickey, on whom had fallen the honour of portraying the Saint herself, was obliged to abandon his breakfast and get down to the task of making himself up. Gloag, who was to represent the Pictish King, was in even worse plight; he was a conscientious fellow and had rejected the simple solution of a false beard with wires over his ears in favour of an elaborate hairiness applied piece by piece with gum. He was at it from eight o’clock onwards—cursing and grumbling. The Hare of Cloud—played by one Mitchell, an agile gymnastic little man—made the mistake of getting ready too early; demonstrating what he could do, to pass the time, he split himself up the back and had to be rushed to a tailor at the eleventh hour. Gloag, Lickey and Mitchell considered that the Day had been spoilt.

Even in Gledshaw House there was a certain discontent. It was ordained by tradition that no woman could take part in Guney’s Procession; the role of Gledshaw House was the unsatisfactorily passive one of awaiting the Procession’s arrival, being serenaded by it and watching it depart. When this took place in the afternoon, if not—for the Procession was invariably late—in the dusk or dark, sidelines opened from which amusement might be extracted; many members of the Procession had by that hour of the day stimulated themselves somewhat freely; there was fun. But what sort of kick, said Gledshaw House, can you get out of a lot of stone-sober mountebanks playing the goat at eleven in the forenoon? None, obviously; none.

So already and thus early in the Day there was a feeling that the celebration might not be so successful as it ought to be. Only Yoey Ballantyne, flitting restlessly about like an erratic moth, seemed to think it would be a Day of Days. For Yoey, of course, was in the know; Ivor had told her something, Brett some more, Guy more still. Yoey knew that whatever happened to the Procession, it was not by its Procession that this Day would be remembered. And she felt already that unless the Day progressed more rapidly to its catastrophe, she would die, explode, dissolve, go off into the overcharged air. . . .

Gadmore, who considered Saint Gunegilde and all her works a most crashing bore, had been watching the Ballantyne narrowly since the first day of the term. She hadn’t liked what she had seen—a Yoey growing daily thinner and whiter, more lavishly and clumsily made-up, larger-eyed, larger-mouthed, more ethereal, more—cracked. “The wretched girl,” thought Cadmore, “is striving to pick up in her classes and at the same time to be more the Cocktail Queen than ever and at the same time to be dying of a lost passion. She’s quite definitely overworking this term; she could stand that if she’d cut out the other things, but when she will try to overwork with a cocktail liver, all the time reminding herself that she Doesn’t Care What Happens Now—well, it’s heading for disaster. Overwork, over-excitement, over-introversion; I don’t like the look of her at all. I wish that infernal shipbuilder”—Yoey’s father owned extensive yards in Groyle—“had never sent her here at all; there can have been no need for it.” . . . One day Cadmore had broken the tradition of a lifetime and had poked into Yoey’s room and had found, hidden behind a calendar on the mantelpiece, a very nasty little bottle of tablets. Cadmore thought nothing of aspirin; she was used to the type of young woman who proudly told her friends at examination-time that she was “living on aspirin, my dear, living on it.” But this wasn’t aspirin. Cadmore thought, “Blast the girl!” and noted that the bottle was half empty.

She would have been more horrified still if she could have unlocked Yoey’s trunk. For at the bottom of the trunk, incongruously wrapped in a pair of Yoey’s evening knickers, lay a little automatic pistol; and with it a box of twenty-five cartridges. But Cadmore did not get so far as that.

She saw Yoey, however, on the morning of Saint Gunegilde’s Day, and thought her looking worse than ever. Her eyes were enormous and electric; her mouth twitched incessantly; a maenad, thought Cadmore, a maenad—a brainstorm’s coming. Yoey, posturing and wringing her hands, said she didn’t know what to do first.

“If I were you, I’d spend the day in bed. Do you good.”

“Oh, Warden, I can’t!”

“Why not?”

“How could I—this day of all days? As a matter of fact I’m rushing over to Cloudstone this very minute.” She showed all her pretty teeth in the rictus of a horrible smile.

Cadmore said, “Well, rush slowly then.” But she went away thinking, “I’ll write to that damned shipbuilder, I will. This is getting beyond a joke—the girl’s going out of her mind.” But like many other people, Cadmore was too late.

Yoey rushed in the direction of Cloudstone but not very far, because outside Cryd’s she met Guy Lessing and walked back with him. Guy was the antithesis of Yoey’s tête-montée hilarity; he was gloomy and practical; when the vivandière rallied him he would not respond. The vivandière tried coldness, sarcasm; but Guy the revolutionary, Guy the bard of Crash! was in hopeless abeyance. Thinking to himself, “Yoey looks awful; her nose is getting bigger or something,” Guy the bewildered lover said:

“Yoey, do something for me. Keep out of this show. Keep right out of it. In fact, go to bed and stay there . . .” Yoey laughed at him. “I can’t keep right out of it. I’m in it already. But of course I won’t butt in. Ivor would kill me. Not that I’d mind that——”

“You would . . . Like hell.”

“I wouldn’t. Not if it was to do the slightest good to anybody——”

“Well, it wouldn’t.”

Yoey sighed; they would not play. She said:

“I—I suppose not. . . . Guy, I must see it, anyway.”

“You can’t.”

“But I will.”

“You can’t. You don’t know where it’s to be.”

“I can find out, Guy.” Electric eyes, rictus-smile. Guy took fright; she could find out—and make the most frightful mess of everything; and get herself hurt.

“Look here, Yoey, if I tell you where it’s to be, will you swear to keep right out of it?”

Yoey promised eagerly, intending to keep her word; or perhaps not; we’d see.

“Well, you know the Fortune of War? The little pub at the south end of the Cloud Bridge where the Harriers always meet? Well, we’re to be there. When old Thundercloud’s car comes across the bridge we jump out. See?”

Yoey clasped her hands. “Oh, Guy, how splendid!” She considered briefly. “Then I know what I’ll do; I’ll hide in that tiny little room at the top of the Zoo Lab. I can see over the houses from there; I can see the end of the bridge. Like being in a box at a theatre. Oh, Guy, you darling for telling me!”

Guy muttered, “Some theatre!” But he was relieved; she would be safely out of the way up there; it might have been worse. He said again, “Well, keep out of it, anyway.” But staring at him, blazing at him, she said:

“Guy! I got one of those things.”

“What things?”

“The little pistols. Don’t you remember; I told you——”

“Well, what’s that got to do with it?”

“Only that I’ll have it, Guy; I’ll have it with me.” Again Guy took fright—worse fright than ever.

“For God’s sake, Yoey! You won’t——”

“No, no. But just to feel it, just to have it with me. It’ll make it fun.”

Guy stared at her. “Fun! It won’t be much fun . . . Keep out of it, Yoey. You’re not looking at all well; I don’t like it.”

She said—with brilliant pleasure but oh! what eyes—

“I amn’t well, Guy. . . . Now I must fly.”

“Where to?”

Yoey didn’t really know where to; but she flew from him, waving, smiling, blowing him a fantastic kiss. Guy thrust his hands into his pockets and continued his strategic movement towards the Gledshaw House shrubberies, hoping he had done the right thing. But he felt obsessed by unutterable doom. About Yoey he thought—like Gadmore—“This girl’s getting beyond me.”

3

Sir Ludovic always made a point of being present at the start of Saint Gunegilde’s Procession. He disliked Saint Gunegilde as a piece of mediaeval nincompoopery; but in the Youngest University we had so little ritual, so little tradition, that we must needs make the most of any available material. Watching the Procession start from the high steps in front of the mathematics classroom, the Emperor had the usual difficulty in deciding whether he was assisting at a children’s party or at a serious symbolical rite. Was Gloag as the Pictish King a little boy dressed up for Hallowe’en, or was he something out of the Golden Bough? Was the whole thing on a par with the Cloudmouth Carnival (complete with Queen), or was it a consecrated survival from some ancient sexual mysticism? Was Saint Gunegilde a translated Astarte, or was she simply Miss Cloudmouth 1937? Was Miss Cloudmouth Astarte? Difficult to say.

The Procession had lost all sense of historical accuracy; it had become a sort of Pageant of Cloudmouth, embracing characters completely dissociated from the Gunegilde myth. Mitchell, prancing about as the Hare of Cloud, had nothing to do with it; Boyle as the fatuous Earl, complete with gun, had even less. There were Cloudstone “characters,” a Roman proconsul, monks, legionaries and alas! nuns. Ludovic scowled at the nuns, who had been known in the past to develop their roles on the well-established lines of pantomime-damery. “Curious,” thought Sir Ludovic, elevating the Dante nose, “how the not-quite can get away with almost anything till he tries to be funny; then it’s fatal . . .” The Procession, headed by two mounted nondescripts with post-horns, circled the University lawn and went off in the direction of Gledshaw. Sir Ludovic turned his practised smile upon Professors Halkin and Winterbottom who supported him.

“What children they are!”

Professors Halkin and Winterbottom nominally agreed; but Halkin thought, “They’re not all children—that’s where Ludo makes his mistake”; and Winterbottom thought, “The Emperor’s looking a bit peaky this morning; he’ll be glad when this day’s over. We all will, if it comes to that.” For despite the assurances of reason, despite the apparent serenity of the hour, there was an extraordinary feeling of uneasiness about—almost, you would have said, of fear . . .

The Procession marched to Saint Gunegilde’s where it received a hilarious welcome; the traditional cups of “heather ale” were brought forth. Up above the clouds scudded, driven by that relentless wind; the rain held off, but it was bitter cold; the “heather ale” went down well. Brodie, attired as a monk, his nose chilled pink, his cherub face more anxious than usual, said to Gloag, “Look out for yourselves at Gryd’s.” Gloag said, “Gryd’s? What’s going to happen there?” Brodie said, “These swine are up to something; I feel it in my bones.” Gloag said contemptuously, “Them!” The Procession moved on.

Gryd’s was indeed a fizzle. The doorway was hung on either side with immense curtains of crêpe—a thing which Collett the Warden should have prevented but which he had been, as usual, too indolent to deal with; a group of freshmen—not at all relishing their task—stood on the steps waving black flags and chanting, “Go back, Guney; go home, Guney.” This was Speed’s contribution, following the best traditions of Indian Nationalism; “It’s what they did, where my father was, when the Simon Commission came.” It was singularly ineffective. The Simon Commission had been precluded from returning the Indian Nationalists more than a rather forced smile; the Saint Gunegilde Society laboured under no such limitation. A combined rush of monks and Roman legionaries tore down the crêpe, rolled the freshmen into a heap and belaboured them with their own flags. An anti-boycott party, so far in hiding, emerged with “heather ale”; the Guney Song was sung with exceptional vigour; with some delay and difficulty the Procession was marshalled away. It wound down the drive and out of Cryd’s waving streamers of crêpe.

But with Cryd’s overcome, the air lightened; the Procession became for the first time like the Processions of happier years; it was a holiday after all. Cryd’s was passed and nothing had happened except all that silly black stuff—and we dealt with that, didn’t we? By gosh, we did! Individual humorists began to play their parts, to rehearse those side-splitting antics with which the House was presently to be delighted. The Procession quickened its pace; it surged along jovially, a little disorderly. Gloag took time to press home his bristles and tufts; Lickey pulled out a mirror and powder-puff and attended to his face—for precedent insisted that Guney herself should be beautiful, not comic; Mitchell wondered if the stitches in his back would stand a turn of Catherine wheels along the Gledshaw House lawn. There was a general inattention and slackness when, just as the Procession came abreast of the House shrubberies, a whistle blew and what seemed an army leapt the walls and fell solidly upon the nuns.

The generalship—Brett’s contribution this time—was sound. The nuns were in the exact middle of the column and they were hopelessly hampered by their robes and veils—the more so when these were bundled over their heads and they were tripped up and pushed in blind confusion into the hedge. In thirty seconds the Procession was neatly cut in two; Guney and the Pictish King in front were completely severed from the Hare and the legionaries in the rear. The mounted leaders found themselves in the road; Brodie received a side-stroke that broke his glasses and left him groping; the proconsul’s cardboard helmet crashed down over his nose, cutting its handsome bridge; the idiot Earl felt his comic weapon wrenched from his hands. The Pictish King yelled with genuine agony as someone strove to tear off his whiskers; the Saint herself bolted for the House gate, tripped over her robe and fell, felt robe and hood torn off and ran for the shrubberies in what covering remained. Someone said, “Damned realistic!” . . . The rout was for the moment complete; in ninety seconds the Procession had been wrecked.

Then, of course, the tide turned. The attackers were outnumbered by at least four to one; the surprise once over, they had no hope. The halves of the Procession were driven perhaps a hundred yards apart; the untenanted gap between the two widened. Into it surged the recovered nuns; the attackers found themselves between two fires. It could not last; it had been glorious, but it could not last. Brett, cool and capable to the finish, blew his whistle; his men, throwing down whatever they had in hand, scattered into the fields. Carrying items of loot—the proconsul’s helmet, the Earl’s gun—they ran in all possible directions; they went off on the wings of that sullen wind that still roared in from sea.

The Procession slowly closed together. Brodie was asking if anybody had seen his glasses, the nuns were endeavouring to restore themselves to decency, the Hare was looking at a cut on his knuckles—somebody had felt that one, anyway. Lickey’s voice was heard from the shrubbery wailing for his clothes. But the actual damage done was slight; the Saint’s robe and hood still lay on the Gledshaw House lawn; the legionaries and monks were intact; the horses had been caught and remounted; the missing gun and helmet were not essential. Gloag surveyed the scene for a moment, realising slowly that his teeth were chattering with rage and mortification; he was battered a little but not fatally; that gum had held—my God, how it had held! Somebody picked up the Saint’s muddied robe; the shivering Lickey covered his confusion once more. The Procession, crowding forward on to the Gledshaw House lawn, began to restore itself. Presently the Guney Song rose again—a little raggedly, a little waveringly, but gathering in strength. The Gledshaw House women were extraordinarily decent; they weren’t going to laugh; Gadmore was extraordinarily decent; it wasn’t so bad after all. All over; and a fizzle at that, blast them, a fizzle.

Brodie said to Gloag, “I wouldn’t mind if the sods hadn’t smashed my glasses.” Gloag said, his teeth still chattering, his lips still out of control, “Mind! I’m going to make a hell of a row about this—a hell of a row. Just as soon as the Address is over.” . . . But by the time the Address was over Gloag and everybody else concerned had forgotten to make a row. For by that time the Procession affair had been eclipsed. Totally.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

At Cryd’s the re-united Harriers chattered triumphantly.

“Good show.”

“Grand.”

“I’ll say it was. Oh, Christ, Ivor—Lickey!”

“Yes . . . But remember it was only a rehearsal.”

“Oh, of course; but still——”

“Damned good show!”

“Yes; but don’t forget the real thing’s still to come.”

“Ivor, we ought to celebrate.”

“Wait till the evening.”

“Oh, I know. But——”

“If we can do as well again this afternoon . . . The Other Thing . . .”

. . . You have tasted blood, my hounds; now—tally-ho!

4

Peter Ruey woke on the morning of Saint Gunegilde’s Day as he had wakened on the morning of the Opening Ceremony—with a taste in his mouth and a recollection so confused as to be negligible. He only knew with certainty that he had been back last night on the old round—the Bridge Hotel, the Hare of Cloud, the Royal; the one drink more that begets carelessness, the one still more that begets oblivion. Back to the old round. But this morning there was no Jessie Lindsay; here he lay in his own bed, in his own South Bank rooms, not quite undressed but tolerably near it, considering all things. How had he got home? God knew. Walked? A vision came to him, faint as a fading dream, of toiling over an endless Cloud Bridge with two helpful strangers—young men. One was a hat and one an epicene voice which had annoyed him by saying at intervals—no doubt with reason—“Upsy-daisy!” Was there a girl with them? Or was that earlier in the evening? What did it matter?

What did it matter; what did anything matter? For now Peter’s mind, resuming activity, resumed also its reiteration of certain words—again and again, like a gramophone record where the needle slips.

“It’s no good, Peter.”

“Lee, its got to be.”

“I tell you—no. Oh, Peter, do try to understand. It’s finished.”

“It’s not finished.”

“It is, it is. I’m finished. I’m changed.”

“People can’t change in a fortnight.”

“They can change in five minutes. I did. I changed that night in five seconds when I saw him in his chair——”

“Then change back again.”

“Oh, Peter, don’t I wish I could! Don’t you suppose I’d like to be the girl who went to Spain with you again? Don’t you suppose I would if I could?”

“It was bad, Lee. But don’t make too much of it.”

“I could never make too much of it. I hate myself, I’ll never forgive myself. I’m finished.”

Round and round and round; again and again and again.

“I don’t even like you very much now, Peter. In fact, I almost hate you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. It was because of you that I went away and left him. It wasn’t your fault, I mean, but if you hadn’t existed I let him down, Peter; I let him down. I knew he was ill; I knew, I knew, I knew. But I wanted to go with you—little beast!——”

“Lee, that’s just damned nonsense.” Keep your temper, strive, reason, argue; perhaps God will give you the right word to say. “He was well when we left; we hadn’t the slightest reason——”

“He’d been ill; he still was; I should never have left him. He was dead when I came back. I couldn’t be the same again. Not ever. The girl you liked isn’t here. The girl who liked you isn’t here.”

“For God’s sake, Lee——”

“Oh, do see it, Peter.”

“I will not see it.”

On and on, backwards and forwards.

“I don’t want to see you any more, Peter.”

“That’s not true, Lee.”

“It is. I should hate you if I did . . . I let him down. Or God let us all down. It’s a way he has. It was good while it lasted, Peter; think of it like that.”

“I won’t. We’ll have it again.”

“Peter, we can’t. Oh, do see it, my poor dear, for God’s sake. Do believe me. I’m changed inside-out. It’s over. I’m tragically sorry, but it’s over.”

On and on; walking up and down that cursed stretch of the Gledshaw Road from Fency’s house to Cryd’s and back again.

“. . . Well, leave that alone for a bit. Lee, what about money?”

“I don’t know yet, Peter—except that it’s pretty bad. We owed a lot. He was overdrawn—a thousand pounds.”

“Can ye pay the bills?”

“I suppose so. Most of them, anyway. The rest in time.”

“And what about you?”

“Me? I’m going away in a few days. I can’t stay here without any money. There are cousins of sorts. In London. I’ll get a job.”

“What sort of job?”

“Oh, secretary, companion, manageress—some sort of thing. I’ll live all right. I’m no fool, you know, Peter.”

“I should know it. . . . Lee!”

“Yes?”

“That’s all B.F’ery. Listen, Lee, let’s get married and——”

“Oh, Peter, Peter! “And then the tears at last; all the dauntlessness, all the damn-your-eyes knocked out of her; just an ordinary girl at last, broken down and crying . . . Hope in that? . . . No.

“Oh, Peter, for God’s sake realise. Your Lee’s dead. She won’t come back. And I shan’t see you again. I don’t want to. I don’t want to . . .”

He had to realise it.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Peter rolled in his bed, got up, stretched himself and as was his wont, felt immediately better. Last night and its experiences went marching away to join the other slices—the many other slices—that had been similarly cut out of memory. Oblivions; blanks; neither loss nor gain . . . He thought, “It’s Saint Gunegilde’s Day; another of these blasted holidays; nothing to do from morning till night.” He poured cold water into his basin and dipped his great round head in it; his black hair came up dripping, shiny as tar. He thought, “I’ll go up to the Lab and finish those tapeworm slides; may as well. I won’t go to the Address. Blast this Varsity and everybody in it: including me.” He looked at himself in his wardrobe mirror; there he stood as usual staring like a black bull; a great black, battering, blundering bull. “Peter Ruey,” he thought, “Peter Ruey, B.Sc. Demonstrator in Zoology. Jesus Christ!”

5

A secret is a secret so long as it remains the chattel of a single mind; once it leaves that sanctuary, it moves without destination or limit. The Harriers were no more optimistic and no less cautious than other conspirators, yet somehow their secret would not lie hid. Not the details—these remained the locked possession of the chosen few—but rather the broad idea. Nobody blabbed; nobody made any definite statement; nobody even hinted; yet the whole South Bank was astir with unease. Perhaps the trees, lashing in the cold wind, spoke of plots and treason, and the particles of the air murmured conspiracies from ear to ear. How else to account for the presentiment, settling to conviction, that there would be trouble over the Rectorial Address; for the fact that even freshmen, even Rameswara Raos, even women at Gledshaw House went about telling each other, “The Harriers have some game on with Abercloud.” Whisper, whisper, whisper it went: “They have some game on with Abercloud.”

And amongst others the whisper—no more than a whisper—came to Willie McKillop and Willie’s sharp little nose cocked itself and sniffed. He put two and two together; he multiplied the result by ten; and then—unfortunately, disastrously—he told Edna. He had always told Edna everything, and of late he had taken to multiplying by ten or even more in the hope of producing a news-item so sensational that it would burst that heart-breaking barrier of “I take no interest——”

This time his fare was so exciting that he shouted a little for extra emphasis, forgetting that his bedroom wall was thin and that Donald, his son, slept—or did not sleep—next door. Donnie was in fact awake and heard; it seemed to be pretty boring stuff and his mother, to judge from the tone of her inaudible replies, seemed to find it so; but he listened because he was a conscientious little boy and also, like a good McKillop, anxious to earn an honest penny. He had not forgotten his Uncle Spot; and this was the first real chance.

For Donnie Saint Gunegilde’s Day normally meant an unofficial holiday; at breakfast in the morning, he said cheerfully:

“Mummy, no school to-day. The Percession.”

To his surprise—yet not altogether, after last night—Edna had turned suddenly cross.

“You’re not to go to the Procession to-day.”

“Oh, Mummy! Why not?”

“Because it won’t be nice to-day. There’s to be rough bad men there to-day. You might get hurt.”

Donnie speculated. “Well, but there’s the afternoon. The Address. Are we not to go to that?”

“No. We are not. None of us is going.”

“Oh, Mummy; is there to be bad men there too?” Edna hesitated; she wanted an excuse to keep her son away from the University and anything connected therewith, because since the baleful day of the Golden Bugler she had hated the University. She didn’t know that there were to be rough bad men at the Address; indeed, it was inconceivable to her how there could be. Who could desire any hurt to poor kind Lord Abercloud; and if any maniac did entertain so insane an ambition, what, after all, could he do? Yet Willie had havered something; “those what-ye-may-call-them Harriers are up to some game; there’ll be trouble of some sort; ye’ll see, Ed, ye’ll see.” At the same time Edna had supposed that Willie had got hold of the wrong end of the stick—he often did; pursuing the policy of “I take no interest——” she had snubbed his confidences. So she didn’t know anything; still, she had enough to go on. She said resolutely:

“Yes; bad men there too.”

Donnie was thrilled; then he hadn’t been mistaken in the night—it was important.

“Oh, Mummy! What are they going to do?”

For the last time the Almighty—“God” himself—placed destiny in the round hands of Edna McKillop; for the last time Fate hung in the balance. She had only to say “Nothing” and the course of history would have been altered. Last term—in those bright days before the Golden Bugler blew for war—she would have said, “Nothing but make a lot of silly noise.” She almost said it now, because—Willie or no Willie—that was what she believed. But the Bugler had sounded, the affront of the Bowater Park had been issued; events must go marching on accordingly. Conspuez the Varsity! She did not, of course, realise that “God,” smiling, was holding out the lots towards her; but as she grabbed one and drew, she thought, “My children weren’t to go to the Drumhead Service; my children won’t go to his old Rectorial Address!” Still resolutely, she said:

“What are they going to do? I don’t know. But maybe they’ll do something to Lord Abercloud.”

“Oh, Mummy!” (“I was right; I was right. Uncle Spot!”)

“I say maybe. Anyway, you and I’ll keep away from it . . . Now off to school with you and mind you don’t be hanging about on the way home.”

Donnie finished his porridge without further speech and went pattering across the Cloud Bridge, a prey to grim temptations. He thought for a moment of “playing skip” from school and halted on the bridge to look down at the wind-tormented river and play with this terrifying idea. But poltroonery won; he daren’t; even if it meant missing everything, he daren’t do that. No, no—see Uncle Spot and then get into school and then home and be safe from this ominous day, those evil men who were going to do “something”—something that grew as he thought about it, something bad, something absolutely terrible—to Lord Abercloud. Shuddering, he ran from his temptations. School—home—mother. But Uncle Spot first . . . Sixpence!

He found Spot in the Advertiser office, enveloped in a reek of cigarette smoke and playing himself with scissors and a paste-pot and long strips of paper; another man sat at the table opposite him doing the same mysterious things. Spot, who had almost forgotten his impromptu bargain, looked up in surprise.

“Hallo, wee Donnie! Nobody ill, is there?”

“No . . . Uncle Spot”—he glanced anxiously at Spot’s colleague—“could I speak to you secret?”

Spot laughed. “This is a newspaper office, my mannie; there’s only the one place where ye can be secret-like here.” He led his nephew along the passage to the lavatory. “Now, my son, spit it out!”

“Uncle Spot, you know what you said about telling you things. Well, I’ve heard something. . . . Uncle Spot, there’s to be an awful row this afternoon.”

It had grown already—Willie’s “game” to Edna’s “rough bad men”; Edna’s “rough bad men” to Donnie’s “awful row.” But the reception was flattering; Spot dropped his banter at once.

“An awful row? What row? Where?”

“I don’t know where. But it’s about the Rectorial.”

Spot’s grip on his shoulder tightened. He said in a new voice:

“Just tell me what ye heard, Donnie boy.”

That was difficult; what Donnie had actually heard was inadequate—too poor a banquet altogether to offer this eager-eyed expectant. He said, thinking as he went along:

“I heard Daddy say last night that the students was going to make trouble. He said they had some game on. And Mummy said this morning that there was to be a lot of rough bad men and I wasn’t to go to the Address. . . . I think there’s to be a fight. I—I think the students are going to stop Lord Abercloud speaking. I think they’re going to do something to Lord Abercloud . . . I think—” a sudden magnificent inspiration leapt up in his brain—“I think maybe they’re going to kill Lord Abercloud.”

Spot’s brain was trained to work quickly; his agile imagination carried him like a galloping horse. He thought in one flashing stream of insight, “Kill Lord Abercloud . . . titts, bairn! . . . but—stop Lord Abercloud from speaking . . . stop . . . kidnap . . . kidnap Lord Abercloud . . . by God, I believe I have it!” In ten seconds he was convinced that he had it indeed; he took Donnie by the shoulders and ran him along the dingy passage.

“Donnie, ye’re a grand chap! This is most important. Now, trot along to your school; Uncle Spottie must get t’ work.”

Donnie was a McKillop. “Ye said sixpence, Uncle Spot.”

Spot fished in his trousers pocket. “I said sixpence and here’s a bob. See what ye get for being a clever boy.”

Donnie was staggered. “Oh, Uncle Spot—was it worth it?”

“Worth it? Ye’ll never know how much it was worth it. Now fly with ye! Ye’ll be late.”

As Donnie flew in one direction, a little terrified by his adventure and glad that it was over, Spot flew as rapidly in the other. He almost ran down the Bridgegate, jostling, shoving, swerving, skipping off the kerb and on to it again. In the yard of his Garage Big Bill Benzie was standing, a bowler hat on the back of his head, a vast gold chain across his vast waistcoat; he was picking his teeth and giving directions to a mechanic, but at the sight of Spot’s face, he put away his tooth-pick and stared. “Well,” he said, “what all is’t?”

Spot posed dramatically and took a long breath.

“I’ll tell ye what it is, Bailie; I’ll tell ye what it is. These Varsity bastards are out t’kidnap Abercloud! . . .”

6

Between twelve and one on Saint Gunegilde’s Day Lord Abercloud was in his library rehearsing his Address with Chattie, his Lady. He had somewhat surprisingly chosen as his subject “Beauty,” and his text was a phrase which had emerged from his conversation a few nights ago at dinner. “There’s a lot o’ hum-tag talked about Beauty,” had said His Lordship. “A lot o’ hum-tag.” The Address, though it pretended to regard Beauty from a variety of angles, was really an elaboration of this not very original sentiment. The padding was easily filled in from Popular Quotations in Prose and Verse by the simple method of setting up a Quotation and then knocking it down. “A thing of Beauty is a joy for ever.” Not necessarily; there were fifteenth-century vennels in Cloudstone which had once been things of beauty and were now a damned disgrace to the town. “Beauty is truth, truth Beauty.” Nothing of the kind; the world was congested with truths you could only describe as hideous. A lot of hum-bug. But “Beauty,” said Lord Abercloud in effect, “is a good job well done.” And every time he came to this bit, Chattie said, “I don’t like the word ‘job,’ Cobby”; and Cobby said “Ach!” and read on.

Sir Ludovic had raised his eyebrows when he heard his Lord Rector’s choice of a subject; in view of University history during the past months, it seemed a tactless demand for trouble. But Cobby had taken Freda’s advice—he had waited till the last moment and then said just what he felt like saying. And Chattie had approved of his choice; it was counter-attack, it was hitting back, it was nerve. She liked that. And the Address, which was perhaps in fact rather a laboured composition, seemed to her a masterpiece. She congratulated him warmly upon it, beaming at his little red terrier face.

“Ye think it’ll do, Chattie, ye think it’ll do?”

“I think it’s just grand.”

Lord Abercloud thought it was indeed pretty fair; but as he gave it its last rehearsal between twelve and one on Saint Gunegilde’s Day, doubts—the doubts of the artist—assailed him. “Do I really believe in all this, or is it just propaganda? I am saying that Beauty is to be sought and found in any work, however humble, that is honest and complete and significant. Am I? Or am I saying just the very thing these damned young smatchets impute to me—that Beauty is no more than success, no more than a stunt pulled off? Am I saying, in a word, ‘Beauty’s Me!’?” Confused in his mind, he found Ivor’s relief in the thought, “Well, anyway, it’s too late to alter the damned thing now.” . . . “‘Beauty is a good job well done.’” “I don’t like the word ‘job,’ Cobby.” “Ach!”

The telephone in the library rang suddenly; with some exasperation Lord Abercloud laid down his typescript and picked up the receiver. An unfamiliar Scots voice—rough, hoarse and a little breathless—struck on his ear.

“Is that Lorrd Abercloud?”

Lord Abercloud admitted it.

“Then this is a warrnin’.”

“A warning?”

“Ay. Bide in yer hoose the day, Lorrd Abercloud, till ye get the ‘all clear.’ There’s dirrty work aboot.”

“And who the devil are you?”

“I canna tell ye. But bide in yer hoose——”

The Lord Rector slammed down the receiver and turned on Chattie a face scarlet with fury. To her natural enquiry he stuttered something about pulling his leg. Then the explosion burst from him.

“I’m about sick o’ these bluidy students, Chattie; I’m just about sick o’ them!”

Her Ladyship said, aghast:

“Cobby!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lord Abercloud’s lunch was spoilt by his discarded “warrnin’”; Sir Ludovic’s by the news—which reached him tardily—of the Procession riot. It made him intensely angry—so angry that his heart began to jump, his lips went blue again and he was obliged to resort to his tablets. God knew the Gunegilde Procession was a piece of tedious mountebankery, it was a waste of time, it offended in places against good taste, it was almost as nauseating as the Gloudmouth Carnival. But—it represented authority. Public opinion decreed that such a Procession should be; the Staff and the Senate smiled upon it; he, Ludovicus Imperator, gave it his blessing. After that, it was simply the most damnable impudence of anyone on earth to oppose it, to ridicule it, above all to assault it. The most damnable impudence! Sir Ludovic’s heart misfired again with a little stab of pain; he told himself, “Steady, steady!”—“But when this long day, this infernal day, is through,” he thought, “I shall stand this nonsense no more. I’ll send down half a dozen of them—as I should have done long ago. Calder, of course, for one; and that hobbledehoy Speed; and Brett—though I shall be sorry to lose Brett; yes, and young Lessing—Brewster or no Brewster. Not, of course, ostensibly for the Procession affair; but I have enough to go on without that—all that Raven business and that atrocious magazine and that castor-oiling incident. Oh, I have enough and more than enough. And besides that, they are certain to add fuel to the fire this very afternoon; one word from them at the Address—if they even boycott the Address—and I shall have them. Down they shall go—as they should have gone last term.”

As if to make it doubly certain—and in the hope that it might still the sickening evolutions of his heart—Sir Ludovic took a slip of paper and wrote on it in his neat hand, “Calder, Speed, Brett, Lessing.” Then he tried—not very successfully—to go on with his lunch.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

While Lord Abercloud was reading his Lady his Address and Sir Ludovic was coping with his heart, Spot Niven, in his lean mackintosh and his rakish hat, was running round and round Cloudstone. He was at the Labour Exchange in the Tradesmarket, he was at that less official exchange by the Gentlemen in Powder Square, he was—as soon as they opened—in one pub after another. In the pockets of his mackintosh he had a store of small silver—Bill Benzie’s silver—which dwindled as he made his excited rounds; his voice became hoarse, his face grew red and damp, his vivid hair shone in the grey day like a veritable Fiery Cross. He sought this one and that—in public bars, in the vennels, in the new “Council” houses, on the steps of the Earl of Cloud’s statue. Collarless unshaven men, with vacant eyes and hungry mouths, took life at his coming and swore and spat and moved. Never had Spot enjoyed a morning so much.

Spot’s idea at first had been single and unobscured: “A bodyguard, Bailie—that’s all we want; a bodyguard.” But Big Bill had presented practical difficulties.

“Ay, but where? We canna have a bodyguard runnin’ after his car all the way from Invercloud House t’ the Varsity.”

“No. But see here, Bailie, think a minute. Where can they be? Not so many places. Not between Invercloud House and the Town—too far away for them. Not in the Town—obviously. Well, then it must be between the Town and the Varsity, eh? He’s got t’ cross the Cloud Bridge, eh, Bailie?”

The Bailie granted it.

“Well, then, d’ye see, if our chaps is at the south end o’ the Cloud Bridge; it’s just a stone’s-throw from there; the dirty devils’ll never get near him . . . I believe I know the very place where they’ll be. Ye know that wee pub on the South Bank just near the bridge-end—the Fortune o’ War they call it——”

The Bailie knew every pub within the ten-mile radius.

“Well, I believe that’s where they’ll be; they’ve a daft-like Club that meets there. Ay, that’ll be it, Bailie! He has t’ pass it; they’ll be there; it’s a certainty . . . So if our chaps is at the south end of the Bridge . . . Get the lorries, Bailie, get the lorries! . . .”

So far Spot had been clear in his mind; “they” were planning a dirty trick on Lord Abercloud; “we” were to prevent it. But presently, as he ran round and round Cloudstone, Spot too became confused as to his motives. He had felt most bitterly—the more so because he would not allow himself to show anything but scorn—the mortal affront of the Golden Bugler; nor had he ever forgotten Ivor’s disagreeable remarks about garbage. These things came back to him now, heated with his own heat, inflamed by his own inflammation. If he had possessed the leisure or the desire for introspection, he might have asked himself, “Am I doing this because I love old Abercloud or because I hate the Varsity? Is this a Fiery Cross to raise a bodyguard for Cobby or is it a Fiery Cross for a South Bank raid? Where do I want this to end—with the Rector escorted triumphantly and safely into the Macmurtrie Hall; or with their god-damned Varsity going up in flames and half of them inside it?” Spot did not ask himself these questions because he was too busy; but as he ran round and round Cloudstone, jingling Bill Benzie’s shillings and hunting the items on Bill Benzie’s list, he became more and more a messenger of doom.

Nobody—least of all Spot—thought of telling Sir Ludovic; they would as soon have thought of telling the Police.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Among all these muddle-minded—Ivor, Cobby, Spot—one man saw clear. Big Bill Benzie suffered from no confusion; he at least knew quite definitely what he wanted. His desires were two—a blow struck at the Varsity, any kind of blow that would make the damned settit-up, over-eddicated snob-factory sing small; and a blow struck at Sir Ewart Kay, a blow that would make the citizens ask one another, “What kind o’ a Provost’s yon?” It was true that Sir Ewart had no direct part in these events, but Mr. Benzie knew human nature; strike at the Varsity, raise a first-class riot and the Provost must come in for trouble. Mr. Benzie thought he saw both blows landing home. As the one single-objectived and clear-minded participant in the struggle, it would have been strange if he had missed his aim.

His lorries rattled hither and thither—at first empty but gradually loading themselves with men. Some of these men were sullen and savage; some were inclined to laugh and sing; not a few had restored the Spot-Benzie silver—with interest—to the publicans of Cloudstone. They had drunk little for many a long day; a “nip-an’-a-chaser” worked in their starved internals like hashish. And something else worked in them that was more deadly than hashish—the hope of action, any action, after all these months and years of sitting and staring at the Cloudstone traffic. What are we here for? God knows; who cares? An insult is offered to your town, to one of your leading citizens, to your own personal benefactor. Yes, yes; but who cares a damn what it is, so long as something happens, so long as we act at last and sit as spectators no longer. So long as, for an interval however brief and at the cost of consequences however appalling, we are let loose to do something; to shout and strike and riot and smash and get a bit of our own back at last. And get a bit of our own back . . . For that’s what we’re out for to-day, my boys, that’s what we’re out for to-day! . . .

One way and another, Edna McKillop had a lot to answer for.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Peter Ruey did not succeed in reaching the Zoological Laboratories that forenoon after all. He breakfasted—coffee, two kippers, some toast with Gentlemen’s Relish—then smoked for a time, then for a longer time fell to remembering that Conversation. “The girl you liked isn’t here; the girl who liked you isn’t here . . . It’s over . . . I shan’t see you again . . . Do, do realise it, Peter . . .” He realised it so splendidly that he remembered there was a drop of whiskey in his bedroom cupboard. There proved in fact to be about a third of a bottle, and till lunch-time Peter slowly discussed it—all of it. Then, without lunch, he trudged away round to the Abercloud Laboratories to tackle these tapeworm slides. Few men would find the third of a bottle of whiskey the best preparation for the cutting of microtome sections, but Peter’s hands on these occasions seemed to belong to another being; they worked independently. The whiskey, on top of last night’s suffusion, sang in his head and glowed comfortably through his vast frame; but it had soothed the interminable activity of his mind. Contentedly smoking his pipe, he sat working the blade of his microtome across and across the block of paraffin wax wherein a mauve-stained segment of tapeworm lay solidified. Delicately he picked up the shavings and transferred them to the waiting slides. His immediate neighbourhood stank pleasantly of cloves and xylol and cedarwood-oil. For the time being he was happy.

The building was intensely quiet save for the muffled drums of the wind that besieged its roof or tattooed in its corridors. The clouds, heavier and darker now than in the morning, still raced overhead; now and then a flicker of spray-like rain dimmed the window-panes, but the storm still fled too fast for serious downpour. The clock of the University tower struck two, a thicker wash of cloud rolled over; it became so dark that Peter moved to the door to switch on the electric light. But he paused with his hand on the switch because out of the silence a new sound had suddenly emerged—the quick rattle of high heels running lightly up the stone stairs.

Peter waited behind the door-post, his hand poised inactive. The tripping steps came upward; in another moment the unmistakable figure of the Ballantyne flitted past. She was wearing her celebrated three-cornered hat and a long coat slashily cut with deep pockets; her hands were thrust into the pockets as if perhaps she clutched some treasure there. As she came round the corner of the stair, the light from the end window fell upon her face; Peter saw with something of a start its ghostly pallor, the eyes wide and startled, the lips drawn back in the caricature of a grin; he saw that rare sight—Yoey as she faced herself in her morning mirror. She looked queer, unearthly, daft. He thought of calling out to her, then decided otherwise; after all, if the Ballantyne chose to run up and down the stairs of the Abercloud Laboratories on Guney’s Day, why shouldn’t she? There was a nest of nondescript rooms at the top of the building; quite probably an impatient admirer lurked there waiting for her. It had been known to happen before . . . Well, let them get on with it. Yoey’s heels went tapping up the next flight of stairs and out of his ken; Peter switched on his light, went back to his slides and forgot her.

Yoey had not seen Peter; before he switched on his light she had gained the sanctuary of her little gable room and shut herself into it. She was in a state of deadly excitement, now hot, now cold; as she closed the door behind her, the little room went dark and unstable; her heart pounded and she felt nauseatedly sick. She thought, “I shouldn’t have run up all these stairs”; but to-day how could she have done anything slowly? Gradually the room cleared again; it was a dark little den at best, its only window high in the gable wall. But under the window stood a chest of drawers full of old zoological wall-charts; scrambling on to the top of this, Yoey could kneel and command her view. The position was uncomfortable but the view was superb.

For there, immediately below her, were the back purlieu’s of Professor Halkin’s house—at so steep an angle that if Professor Halkin had been in his bath Yoey could have looked down and seen him through the upper unfrosted portion of his bathroom window. But Professor Halkin was not in his bath, and if he had been, Yoey would not have looked at him; her eyes travelled right over Halkin’s roof and there, like a stage seen over an auditorium, was the wide cross-roads at the south end of the Cloud Bridge. She saw it diagonally, looking from south-east to north-west; thus the Fortune of War at the south-west angle of the Bridge was directly in her line of vision, but of the bridge itself and the main road crossing it she could only see some hundred and fifty yards. Still, that was enough; along that hundred yards Lord Abercloud and his car must come; from the Fortune of War the flying sortie must be made; there it all was—or would be—before her. If only passing traffic at the last moment did not obscure and blanket the events; but there was very little traffic on the Bridge that afternoon.

Yoey’s heart began to beat again; again she felt giddy; she thought, “I shall be downright sick with excitement in a minute.” Once as a very small girl she had been physically sick at a party—all over her new frock; just from excitement, like this. “If only,” thought Yoey, “I was in it; if only I had something to do. If only something would happen to bring me into it . . . Oh, God, make something happen . . . Oh, God, don’t keep me waiting too long.” Her fingers, groping in her coat-pocket, closed on the butt of her automatic pistol; quite silly to bring it, of course, quite pointless; but—it was loaded and it did give one such a feeling. If only I had something to do with it—but that’s impossible . . . Oh, God, let things happen quick; don’t keep me shivering here till I’m sick altogether. . . . Is there something moving at the Fortune of War? Is there? Yes! Oh, my God, yes!

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Garden, the landlord of the Fortune of War, picked up his telephone receiver; he recognised the voice of his colleague and friend, Yule of the Bridge Hotel.

“Is that you, Garden?”

“Ay.”

“Well, see here. Is there any o’ the Varsity laddies in wi’ you the noo?”

“There’s a wheen o’ them in the upstairs room. Yon Club o’ theirs——”

“Aweel, get them out o’t quick. Get them out o’t an’ awa’ hame.”

“Hame? Whit wey?”

“Because Benzie’s boys is after them.”

“Benzie’s boys? They canna get in here.”

“Ay, will they; and it’s no’ you that’ll stop them. They’re out for blood this time an’ the half o’ them’s fou. If ye dinna want bloodshed——”

“Ach, Chairlie——”

“Please yersel’. I’ve warned ye.”

Garden put down the receiver and clattered upstairs to the big room—the old coaching coffee-room—where the Harriers held their head-quarters. The Harriers, as he knew, were there now—and in force; but he didn’t know why, except that it was Guney’s Day as they called it. He had nothing against the Harriers; they were his best clients; on the other hand Charlie Yule was a level-headed chap, nothing of a panicker. . . . He made up his mind suddenly and thumped on the coffee-room door.

Speed, lounging by the window and peering behind the red window-curtains, had just said, “There’s a couple of lorries coming over the Bridge—no, three. Looks like a bean-feast of the unemployed . . . They’re stopping . . .” Then the door burst open and Garden burst in. He had seen something too.

“Out ye get, lads! Out o’ here.”

Ivor—and several others—said, “Why?”

“Because I dinna want my hoose wreckit—that’s why. Half the roughs o’ Cloudstone’s comin’ ower here after ye. Come on, chaps, for God’s sake get out an’ run for ’t. If ye scatter——”

Ivor said, “I’m damned if we do. Why should we?”

Garden’s dark face became suddenly savage.

“Out ye get, damn ye! Or I ring the Poalis.”

Ivor said through his teeth, “Ring them, then.” But Speed said, from the window, “There’s a fourth lorry. . . . They’re all getting out . . . I believe he’s right, Ivor. . . . Ivor, I think we’d better go down.” . . .

Yoey, sick and shivering on her aching knees by her high gable window, saw to her amazement, the Harriers coming out of the Fortune of War. She saw Ivor, Speed, Guy, Finlater, Brett—all those who should not have been seen anywhere for another half-hour to come. And then at once events became so rapid and confused that there was no time for amazement or sickness or anything but a staring trance.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Benzie’s boys descended from their lorries wondering, “What next?” The Harriers emerged from the Fortune of War wondering, “What next?” Instantly they saw one another and instantly—as two dogs that see one another in the street—they wondered no more. They knew what next. Instantly, like two dogs in the street, they flew on one another.

The Harriers were not outnumbered, they were not seriously outweighted, but they were hopelessly outarmed. They had nothing but their bare hands, whereas it seemed that there was not one of their opponents who was without a stick or a belt or a spanner. Their black-browed handsome formidable leader swung a length of lead piping; he smashed down with it on Speed’s guarding arm and Speed’s arm dropped to his side, broken at the wrist. The black-browed Adonis leapt forward, mouthing curses and striking out again. Ivor got home a couple of blows and was met by a terrific hit in the face; he fell into the gutter, and as he went down, Brett tumbled backwards over him and the blood from Brett’s gaping lip dripped over Ivor. Finlater, rushing forward head down, was struck on the back of the neck; he spread-eagled on his face and Ivor, still lying half-senseless in the gutter, saw him crawling away on all fours like a wounded beast. Guy, with more presence of mind than most, snatched up a bottle from the Fortune of War and threw it; it smashed on a head and cut it, but the next moment Guy was flung down in the road and three or four of Benzie’s boys were kicking him, beating him, jumping on him; he shrieked out horribly and lay still. Ivor, struggling half-way to his feet, was struck down again—a blow as if a house had fallen on him, a blow such as he had never felt in his life. And with that second blow came panic; this was no fight, no scrap, no rough-and-tumble Town-and-Gown; this was serious; the utter seriousness of it chilled his heart. “My God,” he thought, “they’ll kill some of us. They mean it!” They did mean it. Surging forward, cursing and spitting, in a reek of whiskey and bad breath and stale clothing, they struck again and again; they struck to hurt, to kill—they didn’t care what they did. Ivor saw Brett reeling blindly about, his hands over his face and blood forcing through his fingers; he saw Finlater still moving away with that broken-animal crawl; as he went, a collarless man in a cap and muffler kicked him hard in the ribs; Ivor heard the thud of it, heard Finlater’s animal cry . . . The Harriers—those who could—were legging it, bolting this way and that, their arms held up to shield their heads; you couldn’t blame them—-they hadn’t a chance; it was massacre. Faces; broken teeth; foul breath; the oaths of the gutter; Brett running blindly into a wall and falling and getting up again; Finlater upright at last and staggering away with somebody helping him; blow thudding on blow; iron, wood, leather; it was no fight; it was death and murder; it was a tiger turning on a terrier. . . . Then for a little, Ivor must have been out altogether; for suddenly the street in front of him was miraculously clear; as miraculously he was on his feet, bending over Guy who lay in the roadway where they had downed him. He was saying, “Guy! Guy, old boy, are you hurt?” And as he said it, a numbing stone struck him on the shoulder like the kick of a horse; but that was not so bad as the sight of Guy’s face . . . He was aware of Garden in his shirt-sleeves, tugging at him and shouting in his ear.

“Come in. Come in, ye bloody little fool. Come in an’ let me get the door shut.”

Ivor heard himself saying, “I can’t leave Guy”: and Garden bellowing, “Ye’ll have to. Come in quick for God’s sake. Do ye no’ ken murder when ye see ’t?” Another stone whistled past. Ivor, feeling blood in his mouth, said, “Help me with him, you coward.” Garden, in his shirt-sleeves, helped; they picked up Guy’s limp body and bundled it somehow into the Fortune of War; Garden slammed the front door and threw over the iron bolt. He stood back, wiping his brow.

“My Christ! Did ever ye see the like!”

Ivor, steadying himself against the hall table, said:

“Where have they all gone?”

“They’re away up t’ the Varsity . . . Help me Christ, there’ll be murder done yet. I’m goin’t’ ring the Poalis.”

Ivor was bending over Guy again. Guy’s face was blue;, he vomited and a trickle of blood ran with it out of the corner of his mouth; he was unconscious. Ivor said over his shoulder:

“Ring up a doctor while you’re at it. My friend’s hurt.”

He heard Garden’s voice from the bar-parlour. “Give me thrree-thrree. Give me thrree-thrree, quick! Is that the Poalis? For God’s sake “He looked at Guy again, and for the second time he was afraid. For in the space of ten minutes the day had changed its nature; it was no longer Guney’s Day, a students’ day, a day for what were after all rags and larks and comedies; it had become a day given over to wild beasts, to blows and wounds—real wounds, to the shadow of death.

And—what next?

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

From her gable window Yoey, clasping and unclasping her hysterical hands, saw it all; she saw it far better than any of the combatants, far better than any of the scattered passers-by who were running towards the Bridge, towards Gledshaw—anywhere to get away from it. She saw the Harriers—Ivor, Brett, Speed, Finlater, Guy—knocked this way and that; she could almost hear, she could almost feel, the merciless blows that struck them down. At once she knew it was no ordinary fight; it was murder and hate, it was hell let loose, it was a giant beating a child to death. She saw the Harriers scatter and vanish; she saw Ivor and Garden carrying Guy—but she did not know it was Guy—into the Fortune of War; she saw the shower of stones go smashing through the fanlight above the Fortune of War’s door; she saw them strike the closed oak panels and bound back into the street . . . For the moment there was a lull. Benzie’s boys gathered back into a knot round the lorries; then, as if by a concerted movement, they suddenly shifted forward towards her; they disappeared behind Professor Halkin’s house.

For by now Benzie’s boys had forgotten Benzie (who at the moment was sleeping off a heavy lunch); they had forgotten Spot Niven (who was hopping about, crazy with excitement, on the rearmost lorry); they had forgotten everything but the unleashed desire to wreck, slaughter, destroy. They had struck down their foes; now to storm and loot their fortress. Perhaps at some word of command, perhaps only under a common instinct, they came plunging along the Gledshaw Road. The first building there was Halkin’s house; if they had known it to be a Professor’s house, they would have attacked that, but they did not know and they passed it by. But right in front of them—tall, white, tempting, unmistakably Varsity—stood the Biological Laboratories. The Laboratories were Lord Abercloud’s pride and they were Lord Abercloud’s bodyguard, but that made no difference; they flew at the Laboratories as illogically as Catholic revolutionaries fly at nuns or Indian strikers at tramcars. There stood the big white buildings with their vast inviting plate-glass windows, with rows upon rows of glass bottles and jars to be seen within. A magnificent place to smash. Come on, boys: down it! With a roar they poured in at the gate and up the gravelled drive.

Peter Ruey had been half asleep for the last half-hour over his tapeworm slides. The room was stuffy with a blend of methylated spirit, pure alcohol and cloves; the central heating in the Lab was over-stoked and that third of a bottle inside him was slowly making him drowsy. But no anaesthetic could drown the roar of Benzie’s boys charging up the drive or the sudden splitting crash of shattered plate-glass as a dozen sticks and stones went through the big lecture-room window. Thinking vaguely, “What in the name o’ God——” Peter pushed aside his microtome, raced down the stone stairs and appeared at the head of the outer steps just as Benzie’s boys appeared at the foot. He said loudly but quite naturally, “And what do you want?”

His sudden appearance checked them for the minute. Peter was a character in Cloudstone and not a few of them knew him by sight. Not a few of them had enjoyed drinks with him—for Peter in his cups was never particular; among them the black-browed Adonis who still led the van. Said the latter breathlessly:

“Stand clear, Mr. Ruey. Beat it.”

Peter, still bewildered, said, “It’s you, Macnally? What are ye after?”

Macnally might have explained, but a stone, flying from the rear, did it better. There was a terrific crash of glass and a yell of foul-mouthed delight.

“We’re goin’ t’ knock hell out o’ this . . . Stand clear, ye muckle . . . Oot o’ this, ye——”

Macnally, looking rather like Lucifer, said hissingly, “Beat it, Mr. Ruey; let us by. Ye’ll get hurt.”

Peter said, “Beat it yourselves; ye don’t come in here.”

“We don’t?”

“No.”

He might conceivably have cowed them; but on the word “No” a steel spanner came whizzing; it struck Peter full on the forehead and a red overflowing zigzag leapt out to mark the place. At the sight of fresh blood, Benzie’s boys crowded up the steps. “Kick him! Finish him! Let the —— hae ’t.” Macnally jumped up another step, his lead pipe swinging. “Ye’re for it, Mr. Ruey!” Peter thought, “By God, I am!” And then, dazed and bewildered, he saw, or thought he saw, a female figure by his side. Crazily he thought, “Lee!” and then, with returning sense, “By God, the Ballantyne!” And as he thought “the Ballantyne,” loud over the roar of the mob and the sweep of the wind, bang! bang! bang! three shots went off in his ear. Literally in his ear, for he smelt the acrid tang of the powder. And Macnally, two yards away from him, opened his mouth like a codfish and made the funniest face, and the lead piping flew out of his hand, and he went rolling backwards down the steps, with his left hand clutched into his right armpit. Down he went like a falling boulder, carrying Benzie’s boys back and down with him.

Peter thought—so far as he had time to think anything, “That’s done it; we’re as good as dead.” He turned and saw Yoey, her mouth as wide open as Macnally’s, her face a blue-white vacancy, the automatic swinging in her hand. He snatched her up bodily, oblivious to the fact that the blood from his forehead was slopping all over her beautiful coat, and ran with her somehow into old Halkin’s private room. He slammed the door, but needless to say, there was no bolt and no key. It could only be a matter of minutes. Peter turned on Yoey where he had thrown her into Halkin’s leather armchair.

“You little fool; you little B.F.! You’ve done it this time.”

And at that precise moment of time the clash o’ rain foretold at dawn by the Engineer of the Mary’s Hope arrived. It arrived with the force of a hurricane; laced with sleet and barbed with hail, it drove like a barrage against the Abercloud Laboratories. Flesh and blood could not stand against it; for a vital two minutes Benzie’s boys cowered, beaten and blinded, under its onslaught. Two or three of them picked up Macnally and tried to carry him away; the rest stood irresolute, while in a matter of seconds their clothes changed from grey or blue to a drenched and sodden black. They were numbed and lashed and soaked; flesh and blood could not stand it. But they rallied; a new leader sprang to the front: “By God, boys, let’s get him!” They rallied, they poured up the steps like wolves; but as they reached the top a white-faced lout came pelting in from the Gledshaw Road. “The Poalis, lads, the Poalis!” A great car swung suddenly in at the gate and another behind it; in an instant, as it seemed, the front drive of the Laboratories was full of uniforms. Batons cracked and thudded; police voices roared and shouted; the clash o’ rain made one last furious drive. Benzie’s boys had the madness still upon them; they fought a round or two, they threw some half-hearted stones. But presently they bolted.

The Inspector met Peter emerging from Halkin’s room—and a sorry sight he was. His face was a mask of blood, and an automatic pistol dangled from his right hand; he smelt rather strongly of whiskey. The Inspector, jumping to conclusions, said gravely:

“There’s been a man shot, Mr. Ruey. This won’t do you any good, you know.”

Peter said, “I don’t suppose it will.” And from Halkin’s room the Ballantyne began to shriek and then to cry and then to laugh and laugh and laugh. And above this dismal uproar—so flyingly from first to last had the whole episode gone through—the University clock chimed solemnly a quarter to three.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Lord Abercloud met the Engineer’s clash o’ rain just outside Cloudstone; he drove across the Cloud Bridge in one of the heaviest downpours of his recollection. At the south end of the bridge the elements seemed to have cleared the roads; there was no traffic either vehicular or pedestrian, but only, Lord Abercloud thought, an unusual and excessive number of police on traffic duty. He was very much surprised when his car was stopped and the red dripping face of a police sergeant appeared in the inch or two of window he lowered.

“Jist t’ warn ye, my Lord——”

At the word “warn” Lord Abercloud bristled; clearly, however, this was no leg-pull. He said:

“Warn me; warn me; what about?”

“There’s been a bit o’ a disturbance round here——”

“Disturbance? To-day?”

“Ay—a kin’ o’ a Town-an’-Gown——”

Lord Abercloud flamed. “These god-damned students. I’m sick of them, I’m sick of them. Drive on and be damned to their disturbances!” The Sergeant stepped back saluting, but he whispered to the chauffeur, “Jist ca’ canny, Jim; there micht be a stane or two.”

But there were no stones; only the rain and the Macmurtrie Hall and the sound of the Guney Song coming swellingly from its interior. And Sir Ludovic welcoming the Lord Rector with his Dante smile; and some compliments; and some fussing about with robes and collars; and then the entry—and such a bellowing blast of applause as caused the Lord Rector to halt in his tracks. (“Now remember,” had said Brodie and Gloag and all their lieutenants and sub-lieutenants, “when old Thundercloud comes in, let it go; and if one of these Harrier swine lets out a grunt, on to the floor with him.” But no Harrier swine grunted; most of them indeed were otherwise employed; there was only that staggering unanimous roar.) And then old Small shambling forward to the lectern, saying, “D-dominus——”; and Ingram from the back of the hall, “Ba-a-a-a!”; and the usual great gale of easy laughter. And under cover of it Lord Abercloud whispered to the Dante profile, “I dinna think we’ll hear anything of Raven to-day.”

“Beauty,” said Lord Abercloud presently, “is a good job well done.” Her Ladyship winced and Ludovic twiddled his thumbs; but if the Lord Rector had enunciated an undiscovered truth in language of hitherto unimagined splendour, it could not have been greeted by a more thunderous tempest of acclamation. Brodie, gazing cherubically through his spare glasses, thought, “They’re playing up well”; but he whispered to Gloag, “It’s funny that Ivor’s lot have lain so choop—it isn’t like them. Sulks?” To which Gloag, his face still red and shiny from the removal of the Pictish King’s appendages, replied in the best Hollywood tradition, “Aw, what the hell!”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

In the bar-parlour of the Fortune of War, darkened by that blasting hurricane of rain, the doctor poor Lee had once summoned for her father bent over Guy. Ivor, his head roughly bandaged, leaned wearily against the door-post; Garden hovered in the background.

“There’s a rib or two gone . . . He’s been terribly knocked about——”

Ivor, gulping, said, “Spine?”

“No, I don’t think so. But inside . . . I’m afraid——”

Ivor said, under his splitting head, “I did this.”

The doctor looked up. “Did you? . . . You don’t look up to much yourself. Get to bed . . . Mr. Garden, could you ring the ambulance——”

Garden could; once again Ivor heard him calling the Emergency Number. “Thrree-thrree, please; thrree-thrree.” Guy opened his eyes a little and groaned; and Ivor stood staring down at him and thinking, “He’s been done in; he’s been killed; and all through me. Speed; Brett; Finlater; all through me. This is the sort of thing I bring about . . .” Guy was sick again and cried out like an animal with the pain of it; blood ran sluggishly out of the corner of his mouth and on to his shirt and his Hare of Cloud tie; his white face under his tousled fair hair looked like death. “This is what happens,” thought Ivor. “This is what I do . . . Playing with fire . . . I didn’t know what we were up against . . . like a terrier cheeking a tiger . . . Oh, my God!” . . .

Doctors were in demand in Cloudstone that evening. At the Burgh Hospital the House Surgeon was extracting a bullet from Mr. Macnally’s right shoulder-blade after bandaging up the searing rent a second bullet had made in the flesh of Mr. Macnally’s right flank. “An inch farther in!” he said grimly. Presently Mr. Macnally’s relatives would be told that he was “pretty comfortable”—a statement Mr. Macnally himself would have strenuously denied. . . . And from Gledshaw House Cadmore was telephoning for yet another doctor to come and deal with the Ballantyne who was running round and round her room, shrieking that she was a murderess; having this time, Cadmore thought, posed herself fairly into reality altogether.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Saint Gunegilde’s Day was nearly over, but not quite; the ill-omened thing had still a shot in its locker, still an unpleasantness to loose off before it could depart. In its later hours it dealt with Sir Ludovic.

Sir Ludovic had been summoned home from the Address to find the police Inspector waiting for him. Even the police were afraid of Sir Ludovic—who hated them; it was the more pleasing to be able to inform him that his University had harboured a dangerous gang whose activities had that day provoked the most serious riot in the history of Cloudstone, as a result of which a number of persons were more or less seriously injured; further that a member of his staff—Peter had not bothered to contradict this—had unwarrantably fired upon the mob, as a result of which one Daniel Macnally was now in the Burgh Hospital with bullet wounds; further, that the said member of the staff appeared at the time to be not strictly sober . . . You see, sir, it would appear that these lads had formed some foolish scheme of kidnapping His Lordship——

But at the word “kidnapping” Sir Ludovic sat up.

“Kidnapping Lord Abercloud? Kidnapping the Lord Rector?”

Yes, it seemed.

“Students? Students of this University?”

Yes, again. And for a moment Sir Ludovic had thought he would fall prone at the Inspector’s feet. Pain, giddiness, pain, and the fury mounting within him, mounting, mounting. His control and his fury ran a race; if the fury won, he would crash down on that hearth-rug. But the control won; Ludovic made himself say through his teeth:

“Can you give me any names?”

The Inspector could give him all possible names; he had a list as long as the Cloud Bridge. Ivor Calder, Sidney Speed, Guy Lessing—“That one’s bad, Sir Ludovic, he’s in the hospital”—John Finlater, Alastair Brett; and so on and so on. And in the other affair there was a lady student involved (Sir Ludovic’s tortured lips soundlessly framed the correction “Woman student”), a Miss Ballantyne. And, of course, Mr. Ruey . . . Of course.

And in the middle of the Inspector’s visit Sir Ewart Kay rang up and asked if Sir Ludovic could see him. Sir Ludovic, gripping himself, mastering himself, holding himself in, told him—in half an hour.

But when the Inspector had gone and with the prospect of that numskull Sir Ewart imminent, Sir Ludovic felt his anger beginning to boil in him again. And this time he knew he could not hold it. It came in great jets or gusts, starting somewhere in his belly and shooting up through his neck till it burst on the inside of his skull. Surge! it came and surge! and slap! on the ceiling of his brain. Hot jets, gusts laden with fire. He strove to calm himself, he made an endeavour to read, but it was useless; flesh and blood could not stand against these hose-discharges, these Roman candles of fury. They rent him like explosions. He threw his book into a chair and began to pace his hearth-rug up and down between his writing-desk and the fireplace; up and down, up and down . . . That they would dare, that they would dare such a thing! And it was bad enough as things were, but merciful heaven! supposing that their scheme had succeeded—as it might have succeeded; and supposing they had carried off the Rector while he, Ludovic, and his Senate and his Staff and his students all sat looking fools in the Macmurtrie Hall till someone burst in with the news? Supposing that had happened—as it might have as it might have . . . “And from that I am delivered” thought Sir Ludovic, “by whom? By the rabble and scum of the North Bank, by the unemployed and the unemployable, by the creatures of this Benzie—oh, unforgiving God! . . . And in a few minutes that inflation Kay will be here asking me what I mean to do about it. What I mean to do about it? Aha! Aha! I know the answer to that; indeed and indeed I do. Every one of them shall go down; every male student who can be shown to have been a member of that Club; and the woman too; and Ruey—that sot, that drunkard, that pot-swilling Ossian! Out they shall every one go!” . . . He began to shiver and shake; he thought, “This is madness; I must sit down, I must compose myself, I must collect myself to meet Kay. Fool as he is, I must prepare for him.” But his Ego clamoured at him and there was a luxury in letting it go at last, a luxury so ecstatic that it hurt like knives. So the Emperor gave way and loosed it, for the luxury was too delightful to be foregone.

And Sir Ludovic’s Ego, unleashed at last like the unemployed of Cloudstone, knew not what it did, knew only that it must destroy. For it tore itself out of his body and it danced beside him there on the hearth-rug; and it mocked him and it threatened him and presently it flew at him, as the unemployed of Cloudstone had flown at the Harriers. And it thrust its fierce arms round Sir Ludovic and it compressed him and choked him; and it laid its hot hands on his throat and it shook him and shook him and shook him; and it whirled him this way and that and it dashed him finally on the hearthrug at its feet. And then Sir Ludovic’s Ego was finished with Sir Ludovic . . .

The butler opened the door of the library and said, “Sir Ewart Kay.” Sir Ewart, extraordinarily red-faced and compressed in a too-tight dinner-jacket, came bouncing in; but at first the room seemed to be empty. “Where——” he began; and then he saw Sir Ludovic’s feet, stiffly upturned like a dead bird’s, projecting from behind the writing-table. . . .

7

Saint Gunegilde’s Day sank at last into the west; away it went, behind the Butes, into the record-room, into history. The new day that came up, pursuing it, out of the North Sea was not unnaturally one of multiple excitements and was variously employed by those variously interested. Judith Brewster passed a large part of it alternating between the depressing waiting-room of the Burgh Hospital and the still more depressing private ward where Guy lay crushed and quiet. She had been there twice in the night and once earlier that morning; she had had no sleep and her eyes were swollen and red; yet somehow she remained the controlled impeccable Judith. From the moment when someone had tapped her on the shoulder in the middle of the Rector’s Address and had said, “You’re wanted on the ’phone, Mrs. Brewster,” she had endured nightmares. She had rushed to the Hospital and there had been Guy—cleaned-up now, less superficially terrifying, but so drained that he looked dead already. And the doctor, piling terror on terror, had said, with that sideways look, “He hasn’t any parents, has he?” And Judith, “No; only us.” And then she had remembered Freda; Freda was never to return to Cloudstone—but of course this made everything different. “But he has a sister. Should I—do you think I should—wire for her?” And the doctor had nodded bleakly. And Judith, quaking, had gone out and wired to Freda in London, and had then gone home to give Stephen his dinner; and in the middle of dinner they had rung up to tell Stephen what Sir Ewart Kay had found in the Emperor’s library . . .

But so far as Guy was concerned, it seemed as if that black moment about the parents and wiring for Freda had touched bottom level. He had a much easier night than anyone expected; the X-rays were much better than anyone expected; the specialist who came hurrying to see him in the early forenoon was much better than anyone expected. And now, just before lunch-time, he opened his eyes and recognised Judith. He was in pain and drowsed with morphia, but he said, intelligibly,

“Iv-or?”

Judith nodded brightly. “All right.”

“Yo-ey?”

“All right.”

He sighed and relapsed whimpering into a narcotic doze while Judith sat wondering if she had said the right things. Of Ivor she knew nothing and cared nothing; as to Yoey, it was said that the shipbuilder from Groyle had arrived last night by a late train and taken her away to the Royal Hotel at Cloudmouth. Further they couldn’t go because of the Police and that shooting business; bail perhaps; Judith didn’t know much about it. The truth about the actual shooting was now universal knowledge and Judith had acknowledged it a with a pang of regret; that first story—the abominable Mr. Ruey blind drunk and discharging pistols at the mob—had been so lusciously acceptable. Sighing, Judith thought, “Poor Sir Ludovic would have preferred that version too.” But now the Emperor, more superficially Dante than ever, was beyond being disgusted—or delighted—by Mr. Ruey . . .

The door of the ward opened and Stephen came cautiously in. Judith, looking at him through eyes made merciless by fatigue, saw him handsome and—sheepish; and saw that he would never be anything else. “Aravis!” she thought, “what a fool I was! For the rest of time, Stephen will lecture on English Literature and advise students who don’t want his advice; and I will work on committees and write letters and interest myself in the things women of my age do interest themselves in. There’s nothing else in it; there never was. Oh, well!” . . . She thought all this instantaneously, as Stephen was closing the door; hardly aware that she had thought it at all, she said:

“Did Freda come?”

Stephen nodded. “Yes. She’s at the house now. She wanted to come straight here but I said she must rest a bit first. She’s blind with sleep, poor thing . . . How’s Guy?”

“It hardly seems credible but I think he’s better. He’s not worse, anyhow.”

“Then he is better.” He smiled. “They’re tough, you know, the young.” But as he said “the young,” the smile dropped from his face and he went on, as if remembering, “Another thing’s happened.”

“To us, Stephen?”

“No, not to us. It’s Hext this time. Poor Hext has had bad news—very bad, my dear——”

Looking into his face, Judith saw that it was much worse than very bad. She said, “What?” and Stephen began to tell her. And as she listened, Judith’s face whitened and sank. Once she put out her hand—as she had put it out on another occasion, listening to Micky himself—and said “Oh!” as if she could bear no more; and at the end, “Oh, Stephen! . . . Freda! “For she had suddenly remembered Freda, no longer safely in London but here, in Cloudstone, on the South Bank; and her thought was, “Freda! Somebody will have to tell Freda. I’11 have to tell Freda . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

There must have been something indeed evil about Saint Gunegilde’s Day, something primally dark and cursed. For on that day, far away from Cloudstone—in fact, as far away as Gloucestershire—a black thing happened.

On the afternoon of Saint Gunegilde’s Day, Micky Hext’s mother was baking a cake in her kitchen. She had baked so many cakes that she did it more or less unconsciously, so that she was able all the time to think of her Mike and her Doris. Mike was far away; but Doris was in the next room—with her nurse. Mrs. Hext, busy with her ingredients, thought of Mike’s disappointment in regard to the Chair at Cloudstone—which, of course, he should have had. And she thought of her own disappointment—her worse than disappointment—with Doris. However many years went by, whatever they said at Yeolands, Mrs. Hext still clung to the belief that one day Doris would be really better, that a light would spring up behind those smouldering non-human eyes, that the occasional snatches of connected speech would become habitual and those dreadful sing-song murmurings would be heard no more. Surely, surely, one day God would relent, would remit His sentence, would visit no more in quite this frightful form the sins of the mothers on the children. Of late she had clung to this hope more tenaciously than ever, because Doris had been, for that month or so since Christmas, better than for a very long time past. Had been—-alas! for there lay the present disappointment; Doris was relapsing again. For the last few days her symptoms had been not so good; her nurses had not liked the look of her; they had told Mrs. Hext that for the time being the change had done all the good it was likely to do. Reluctantly, disappointedly, Mrs. Hext had agreed that at the beginning of next week Doris should go back to Yeolands.

In the next room Doris was playing with some plasticine. She was a huge shapeless strongly-built girl and it seemed to give her endless pleasure to twist the soft stuff in her big pale hands. It kept her contented for hours. The nurse, watching her from a rocking-chair, suddenly felt the necessity to go away for a few minutes; after all, as she said afterwards, one was human flesh-and-blood and not a cast-iron machine. She laid down her novelette, studied Doris more intently for some seconds, wondered, “Should I call her mother?” and decided to chance it. (The other nurse was out taking exercise.) “I shan’t be a minute,” she thought; said something bright and pleasant to Doris and went out of the room.

In the strange country where Doris’s mind sojourned, what events took place, what thoughts—if thoughts they could be called—formed themselves? What sort of picture had she of her nurse, her mother, her mother’s house? All impossible to say; as impossible as to say why, when the nurse left the room, she suddenly put down her plasticine and raised her head, listening. She did not listen intelligently; yet there was a kind of meaning in the poise of her head, a travesty of purpose. She heard—or did she?—the door upstairs shut, the bolt click; then sidling, crabwise, she moved along the wall of the room; out into the passage; through into the kitchen . . . When Mrs. Hext, rousing from her reverie, turned suddenly round, she saw Doris standing in the doorway, looking at her, staring at her, with the kitchen chopper in her hand. .

Mrs. Hext was a little frightened; but she concentrated on lightness, sanity, the word of command. She said,

“Put down that silly thing, my dear.” Smiling, she said, “Come and see the cake I’m making.” But Doris did not put the thing down, nor did she come to see the cake. Instead, the slyness in her eyes deepened to something obscene and nameless; she crouched. Mrs. Hext went cold from neck to ankles; she said again sharply, “Put it down!” But Doris did not put it down; staring and staring—at what?—she crouched lower still. Mrs. Hext lost her nerve at last; in a cry that was nearly a scream she called, “Nurse! Nurse!” And at that Doris screamed too—and rushed. Micky’s mother had just time to see a face she had never seen before and would never see again. She had just time for a sort of prayer. But not much.

8

In the University Hostels they chattered endlessly; there was nothing else to do and if there had been, it must have given place to the delight of discussing unparalleled marvels.

At Saint Gunegilde’s——

“Pretty grim?”

“My God, Ludovic—poor old Emperor.”

“. . . funeral? . . .”

“Oh lord, yes. My God, what a session! I always knew it would be. I said——”

“Guy Lessing’s dying.”

“No, he’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Prof. Brewster. I asked him.”

“What’d he say?”

“Said he was going to be O.K. They got a specialist up from somewhere; I believe he was fairly cheerful——”

“Well, that’s something . . . I say, I wish I’d seen Peter Ruey blind tight and blazing off revolvers!”

“You B.F., it wasn’t Peter Ruey at all. It was the Ballantyne.”

“The Ballantyne?”

“Yes. She——”

“Well, I think it serves these Harrier swine dam well right.”

“Bit off more than they could chew, eh?”

“I’ll say they did.”

“Oh, well, they’ve got it in the neck, poor devils——”

And at Saint Crydlan’s—

“How many of us d’you think’ll get sent down over this?”

“All the Harriers.”

“Nobody.”

“Ivor, anyway.”

“Ivor won’t. Ivor’s going down. But only for next term. Then he’s coming up again.”

“Who says?”

“Ivor himself . . . My gosh, he’s hipped about this! I thought he’d weep. He says the Club’s to break up——”

“It is broken up. Dam well broken up!”

“Oh, don’t be funny; I mean really—dissolved.”

“Ivor won’t go down; he’ll be sent down. And he won’t be the only one.”

“My good ass, use your brain. Everyone’s far too busy to think of sending-down’s just now. And before they’ve got any spare time it’ll all be blown over.”

“Don’t you be too sure. If old Ludovic hadn’t passed out——”

“Ah, if!. Ah, then!”

And at Gledshaw House—

“The Ballantyne!”

“Well, after all, she did save the Labs, didn’t she?”

“Oh, bunk! The Police were just coming. She only made things worse.”

“I don’t see that.”

“Well, suppose that man had died——”

“Maybe he will.”

“Oh, no, he won’t. She jolly nearly missed him altogether.”

“I would have. I can’t think how she did it. . . .

I think Yoey was pretty good. I admire——”

“I say, will she have to be tried?”

“Of course.”

“Will they put her in Quod?”

“Yes . . . No . . . She’ll get off with a fine . . . She’ll get three years, anyway.”

“Can’t they plead insanity or something?”

“Oh, don’t be silly.”

“Well, I think she did save the jolly old Labs. You can say what you like. I think——”

And then, as the day grew and fresh news circulated, in a whispering terrified murmur:

“Micky! . . . Have you heard about Micky? . . . Oh, it can’t be true . . . But it is . . .”

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

But it was; and Micky Hext sat in his little sitting-room with Catullus and with the Hare of Cloud and with the Furies. He had been shocked into bewilderment, almost into insensibility; life had become a crescendo of impossibles with which he was unfitted to cope and with which he had in fact coped unsuccessfully. Crescendo. The Golden Mist of Martinmas; the incredible Aravis interlude; Fency dead in his library; the hope of the Chair, the disappointment. And then, crescendissimo—if one could coin such a word—Guney’s Day and Ludovic’s heart failure (and nobody had ever guessed) and now this. This quite unspeakable, quite unthinkable, quite unimaginable, absolutely real and actual thing. All in less than six months—less than five if you came to that. As in another world, Micky saw himself conversing with the Ballantyne at Cloudstone station and himself saying it was to be a good session and the Ballantyne agreeing . . . Well, they had both been mistaken.

In the next room, on the bed, lay Micky’s suitcase packed and locked; for he was starting for Gloucestershire in two hours time. Meantime, he sat at his table, his chair pushed back, his hands in his pockets, staring. There were books in front of him, there were even some Ordinary Proses he had been trying to do last night; but he did not see these. He could not see his books or his work or even the Hare of Cloud; he could only see, dead in front of him, that interminable railway journey. Like an endless snake—a particularly horrible snake—the metals along which his train must carry him extended away south and south. “I have to go through with this,” he thought, “go through with it. And all by myself.” At the end of that long snake of a journey he must come to the head of the snake and look into its eyes and see most horrible things. Most horrible things; and all by himself.

Telegrams! One last night asking him to ring up Yeolands at a certain hour; and he had rung up, and—oh, my God! One this morning to say that Doris had died in the night—unconscious. It was like the close of a Shakespearian play; Fency, Ludovic, his own mother, his own sister. Crescendo! Crescendissimo! . . . So Doris, whom he had thought of so much and in these last weeks so specially, was to be thought of no more; something in her had broken, escaped, exploded, and she had died in the coma in which she had fallen down on the kitchen floor after—that. . . . “A good thing; a mercy.” That, of course, was the only way to look at it; but how could one say such words? And—why? And—if?

Micky looked at his watch—two hours and seven minutes till train-time.

⁎  ⁎  ⁎

Afterwards Micky was never sure of how or at what moment Freda came into the room. In a sense, of course, she was never away from it; but at some given moment she must have grown out of his thoughts, out of the Golden Mist and into corporeal presence. She must have rung the bell, spoken to the landlady, knocked at his door. But he knew nothing of all that; he only knew that he looked up suddenly from the snake and there she was, standing by his side and saying, a little uncertainly,

“Micky?”

He made a sound that was meant to be “Freda.”

“Micky, I—I heard.”

He said, “Yes.”

“I couldn’t leave you alone with this, Micky. I’m here. Don’t send me away.”

He pushed the second telegram towards her; she read it and glanced at him. “Oh, Micky darling!” And as if the glance drew her closer, she knelt suddenly by his chair; her arms came round his shoulders.

“I’m here, Micky. I’m here as long as you want me. I’m beside you.”

He put an arm round her and made another sound that had no special meaning. Then, as reason began to struggle through, he said:

“Why—how—why did you come?”

“They wired for me about Guy . . . What do ‘how’s’ matter? I’m here; I’m not going away. Is that any good to you, darling?”

He said, strangled, “Any good! Any good!”

“I didn’t mean to come back—never. But now . . . This has happened to you, my precious. I’m not going to leave you alone with it. I’m not ever going to leave you again, Micky. Unless you tell me to. Not even then . . .”

Micky put his face against her hair; somehow it stayed there. He said wearily, “No, don’t ever leave me again, Freda.” For an interval there he sat, his arm round her again, taking her in, content. Then suddenly reason made another stride; he remembered; he sat up.

“Freda, I’d something to tell you. It’s about Doris.”

She put a hand to his mouth—as once before.

“Micky, Doris doesn’t matter. She doesn’t.”

“Freda, she does! Listen.”

He began, with very great difficulty, to tell her. “I found out something . . . my mother—don’t think hardly of her, darling; anyway, not now . . . I don’t know what she did . . . my Aunt Isabel . . . So that was what . . . that was why Doris . . .” Freda’s arm on his shoulder tightened, slackened, tightened; but he felt somehow that she did not think the wonderful story nearly so important as he did. At the end she almost said so; she said:

“Micky, I’m so thankful. But it wouldn’t have made any difference to me; you know it wouldn’t. Believe that, Micky dear.” He looked at her; and he believed it. He said suddenly:

“But if I hadn’t gone to see my aunt that day—just by chance . . . And if Guy hadn’t got damaged in that row . . .”

She smiled for the first time. “It must have been the Hare, Micky.” And there he sat on the mantelpiece, grinning at them.

But outside the University clock struck heavy as a minute-bell; Micky grabbed at his watch in a panic.

“Freda! That was half-past three. And my train’s at four-twenty. And I’ve got to go. I must catch it.”

She jumped up. “Then let’s be sensible.” But she wasn’t sensible—she was crying. “Darling, you’ve got to go through this. If it wasn’t for Guy and Judy I’d come with you. As it is, I can’t. But I’ll be here thinking of you—always, every minute; and you can write to me every day and I’ll write to you every day and when you come back I’ll be here waiting for you—oh, so gladly. Waiting to do anything on earth that you like . . . Micky! . . . Micky! . . .”

The snake was a shorter snake already, less cruelly coloured; perhaps it was one of those non-poisonous snakes after all, that live on rats, not people. Its head would still be ugly; and its eyes that must be looked into. But there was something now beyond the head, something that shone; was it perhaps a diamond? . . . “And I hope he will find you all sorts of treasures.” . . . Could one really believe in a Hare of Cloud, coming in at the darkest moment, leaping about, grinning, capering, beckoning?

9

The guard blew his shrill whistle, the engine threw its energy forward, the platform receded; another vast train moved southwards out of Cloudstone Station, past Gallacher’s Whiskey, past Tusso, past Prepare to Meet Thy God. Children sat on the top of the sooty retaining-wall and waved handkerchiefs almost as black; some of their fathers were in jail for rioting but they did not understand about that—and a train was a train, anyway. At the Cloudstone Gaumont this week it was Clark Gable; Ginger Rogers and Merle Oberon had passed and gone. If Lee, sitting in her window corner, had been inclined to moralise, she might have drawn a parallel from the Gaumont’s posters: “as other people have passed,” she might have thought, “as all sorts of things have passed.” Continuous Change of Programme. But Lee was not even conscious of the advertisements; if she saw anything at all, it was an old man with a beard, cold and stiff in his chair, in a room that reeked of spilt brandy . . .

Lee wore a black coat and skirt, very smartly cut; the last time she had sat in a south-bound train the same garments had been light-grey. Now she had an old black hat instead of the blue and new black stockings instead of the tan. But she did not think about the coat and skirt or the last time; if she thought of her clothes at all it was to wish she had been able to buy fresh mourning. But there simply had not been the money; the bills had been endless, the debts unspeakable. One simply went to the dyers and did one’s best.

Crash! went the train through the ornamental north terminal of the bridge; rumble-boom-rumble, it crawled across the girders. Lee fished out her cigarette-case; there had been enough money—just enough, thank God—for a packet of gaspers at the station. They could take the place of lunch; and let us pray that these measly cousins come down to meet me at King’s Cross. She lit up; the celebrated green holder seemed to project like a spear half-way across the compartment. . . . Rumbleboom-rumble! The invitation was to look down—at the Cloud, at the South Bank, at the Abercloud Laboratories, at Saint Gunegilde’s Abbey. But Lee did not look down; she was looking ahead. Continuous Change of Programme. Ahead lay London; ahead lay adventure. Her profile hardened to a cameo; Peter would have admired it.

She wasn’t frightened. At least, not very.

The End