A Lady and Her Husband

By

Amber Reeves

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1914

Copyright, 1914
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER [I]
CHAPTER [II]
CHAPTER [III]
CHAPTER [IV]
CHAPTER [V]
CHAPTER [VI]
CHAPTER [VII]
CHAPTER [VIII]
CHAPTER [IX]
CHAPTER [X]
CHAPTER [XI]
CHAPTER [XII]
CHAPTER [XIII]
CHAPTER [XIV]
CHAPTER [XV]
CHAPTER [XVI]
CHAPTER [XVII]
CHAPTER [XVIII]

A LADY AND HER HUSBAND

[CHAPTER I]

ROSEMARY looked round her mother's drawing-room. It was a charming room, she thought, of its conventional kind, gay and luxurious, anxious to please, like some soft, pretty woman. She had never considered its origin before, but now she felt sure that her father must have planned it. It revealed his mind—large, cheerful, excellent—and showed the thorough competence of his taste.

She had chosen this room deliberately for an interview with her mother. She was going to tell her mother that she was in love, and she had found herself shy, afraid of the poor lady's emotion. In the publicity of the spacious room, where anyone might interrupt them, a display of feeling would be difficult.

She made sure, once more, of this train of thought. Then she looked anxiously at Mrs. Heyham. Mary was sitting in her usual place by the side of the hearth, and, for the moment, behind the glittering, fire-flushed tea-things, she seemed curiously unreal. She was wearing a chain that her husband had given her, set with pearls and crystals—that caught the light, and so did a brooch that was a present from Trent, her son. Behind these witnesses of masculine esteem there was the vagueness of grey stuff, of lace, of pale brown hair, and a face where the play of lights and shadows blotted out expression. Rosemary, seeking for some promise of immediate, cheerful sympathy, could see nothing but her mother's evident dignity and grace. On the point of speaking, she hesitated. She had not the least idea, after all, how her mother would respond to her.

At that moment Mrs. Heyham looked up and met her daughter's eyes. "Yes," she said, "I like your new way of doing your hair, my dear, it suits you, it gives you height. And I like your funny green frock." She smiled a little shyly. She could not tell the child how lovely she found her.

But the tenderness in her voice reached Rosemary, making her feel suddenly affectionate and ashamed.

"Mother, dear," she cried, "how selfish I am!—Am I very horrid to you?"

She had forgotten the ungenerous detachment which she had planned, and as she spoke she crossed the floor to the rug by her mother's knee. She had been fussing all day about her own feelings, she told herself, and she had hardly given a thought to her mother's!

Mrs. Heyham paused before she answered. It was her custom to consider what she said, with a view to her children's welfare, and her replies, in consequence, were sometimes evasive. Horrid to her? What had made Rosemary, she wondered, worry about such a thing? "I hope you don't think so, my dear," passed this scrutiny, but did not satisfy her daughter.

"You don't say I'm not," she insisted.

Her mother reassured her. "Of course you're not."

Rosemary sighed. "I don't think many mothers are like you!" she admitted, and for a moment her warmth made Mrs. Heyham anxious. These expansions from the children were apt to be connected with remorse. Well, whatever it was, she would hear it now—she put out her hand to smooth the soft hair pressed against her knee. But Rosemary, turning quickly, caught the wandering fingers. To Mary it looked almost as though she had taken fright. Her eyes were wide open and she was trembling a little. "Mother," she said, "I've something to tell you! I've promised—I'm going to marry Anthony."

Before she could stop herself Mrs. Heyham had pulled her hand away. Rosemary promised to marry! At eighteen! Rosemary who had been so careless of love! The girl, anxiously listening, could read nothing but disappointment into her "My darling!"

For a moment they looked at each other. Then came the amends, that Mary was never slow to make. This time she took her daughter's hand in hers. "You know how fond I am of Anthony—it isn't that. But you—you're so young—how can you know—how can you possibly know?"

Rosemary found no words that would convince her. Instead she turned away from her mother's eyes and stared into the fire. It was not a thing one could talk about, how one knew.

Mary looked down at her bright young head. She loved it too dearly, she thought, she could not lose it! "Won't you wait—" she began, but then she checked herself. It was passion, not happiness, that she had wanted to keep from the child for a little longer.

But Rosemary had heard her cry and was answering it. "We have waited ever since the summer. I didn't want to hurt you, mother, but I couldn't bear that anyone should know. Tony wanted to tell you at once, but I wouldn't let him."

Mary did her best to smile. She could not speak—she was humiliated. She had never intruded herself on her children or forced the delicate privacies of their minds, but she had stood apart only, she thought, to watch and direct them better because they were not conscious of her attention. And now, for months, Rosemary had known these new intimacies of love while she had seen no further—that was what it amounted to—than her charming manners!

Rosemary, from the tight grasp of her hands, guessed at Mrs. Heyham's suffering. "Mother, dear, don't mind!" she begged her. "Why should you mind so much?"

Why should she mind?—For a moment Mary struggled with tears. Then she turned resolutely from her painful thoughts. "My darling," she said, "I'm selfish, thoroughly selfish! You mustn't let me spoil your happiness. It's nothing, my dear—only a foolish instinct. You see, I feel that as each of you goes it closes one of the windows of my life!"

Rosemary sighed a little with relief. Here was the matter on reasonable grounds where one could argue about it! She rather enjoyed discussing feelings, though she was shy of showing them. She relaxed her attitude, which had been a little strained, and started to make her point.

"But you haven't lost us, mother. We're still there, it's only that we're grown up. After all, having children is an experience, and you've got it there, so much to the good!"

Mrs. Heyham shook her head. She had not the habit of considering her life in terms of experience. Her mind had darkened again over Rosemary's words. Experience—that must be an idea of Anthony's—it was a wonder the child had not said "mental capital." She would never be rid of Anthony now—whenever she talked to Rosemary, Anthony would be behind her!

"And of course I'm not going to marry yet."—Rosemary reproached herself with not having made this clear. Her mother must think her callous. "I should feel sorry enough if I were really going away! You do know how much I love you, don't you, mother darling?"

She started to rise, so that she might reach her mother to kiss her, but Mary rose too. For a moment they clung together, trying each of them, to think of nothing but their mutual love. Then Mary made the need of wiping her eyes an excuse for freeing herself. "I'm going upstairs," she said, "and when I come down I shall be a much nicer, more satisfactory mother, and very glad that you have chosen such a dear boy. I'm delighted that it's Anthony, dear, you must tell him so from me. And now if I were you, I would go and see your father—he's in the library. You will be glad to get it all over." She smiled, pressed Rosemary's hand again, and turned towards the door.

Rosemary, left alone, did not go to her father at once. She was angry with herself. "I didn't do it right," she thought, "I hurt her. I don't see why she should have been hurt, but she was." For a moment, though she sought, she found no explanation; then she decided, "It is father, I suppose, he has kept her so wrapped up. And now, when she has to face a fact, she is not accustomed to it. But all the same I do wish I hadn't hurt her."

She sat down again in her comfortable chair and recalled the conversation. It had been self-conscious, she felt, and artificial, they had not really been open with one another. And yet she did not know what was wrong—it was very difficult.

But she could not keep her mind fixed for long on this distasteful subject. The fire-light and the solitude were pleasant, and her thoughts went back to Anthony and the summer. It was in the early summer at King's Leigh that she had first loved Anthony, though she had not known it. It gave her pleasure to remember the day. She had been bathing with Laura in the stream at the bottom of the garden, and on their way back they had met Anthony coming down the path with towels under his arm. It was blowing, and the wind blew back the folds of his thin shirt. He had asked them whether the river was clear again after the storm, and she had told him yes,—the water was still brown, but you could see the white stones on the bottom. Then absurdly, like a child, she had flushed with shame. Laura and she had been pretending that they were water nymphs, and she had twisted leaves into her hair. Anthony was looking at the green crown. It had seemed unbearable that he might think she was foolish—laugh at her—without waiting for Laura she had walked away. She had gone quickly through the rose-garden because she did not want Laura to follow her, and along the old stone wall. There was no one under the beeches at the end and she had stopped there, telling herself that it was beautiful. The lilies and the blue larkspurs shone in the sun, there was no wind tinder the trees and the still air felt warm. She had looked up to see the light coming down through the young leaves—it was bright and it glowed, like light in the trumpet of a daffodil. And then, as she stood, a little dazed by the shining leaves and the heat, something that hurt her seemed to stir in her heart—she had thrown herself down beside the trunk of the tree because she had found that she was crying.

She had only been a child then, afraid of love, afraid and exalted beyond any need of Anthony. She had been in love with the summer days, with poetry, with warmth and colour, and flowers. The world had become a place of caressing, delicate contacts, even the air seemed kind to her as she moved through it. Under her happy senses her spirit had quickened. Here, she had thought, was worship—if she could worship—here, in this awe and delight, this conviction that she was one with the flowering earth, with its light, its heat, its joy. Here was the new birth—she had lost her old self, her old hopes and desires, and had become instead a vessel filled with the wonder and the beauty of life.

This ecstasy had not stayed. It had been banished by something more personal, less diffused, by a return of her mind upon itself. It was a new troubling thing—she could remember the first surprise of its insurgence. It had been a hot afternoon and she had been walking by the river, slowly, without any thought of where she was going. A willow bush grew in the long grass by the edge of the water, and beside it she had seen Anthony's blazer lying on the ground. Anthony was playing tennis with Trent; he must have forgotten it. It was a pleasant, secluded place, and the patch of colour on the grass seemed to make a reason why she should stop. She had sat down in what shade the bush afforded—presently she would carry the blazer back to the house.

The light flickered on the water; Rosemary sat lazily inert watching the willow leaves as they stirred a little, and the pointed shadows that changed their shape as they moved over the uneven grass. A white butterfly was circling above her, and while she looked he fluttered down on to the blazer's tempting brightness. The surface did not please him—his eager trunk found no honey—Rosemary, her face held low, saw the under surfaces of his wings gleam blue as he rose from the deceptive cloth. She put out her hand to it, idly, where it lay warm in the sun, but when her fingers met the soft stuff she paused. In the short space of her movement the action had become intimate, had assumed significance. She felt that Anthony must know that she wanted to touch his coat. Then she took courage. Her doubt, her hesitation, were nothing to Anthony. His coat was thrown down, forgotten, disregarded. She might touch it or not, no sense of his could be fine enough to betray her. She had pulled it towards her and buried her face in the limp, kindly cloth before she realised, trembling, what she had done.

Now, remembering it, she moved in the big chair and sighed. She almost regretted that moment of sharp feeling. She was happy now, but even the first secret delight of her happiness was at its end. She had told her mother; she had still to tell her father, and Laura, and Trent. And they would all discuss it and fuss about it. Trent would think it his duty to express his opinions. She had been foolish, really, not to choose a time when Trent was away.

She felt restless—she pushed back her chair and went over to one of the tall windows. Outside a spring gale was flinging drops of water from the plane trees in the London square. The rain had stopped, there was blue in the sky, and an old man who sold primroses had left his shelter and was carrying his basket down the empty street. It was a day for a long walk over the Downs with the dogs.

She was watching the yellow gleams of light that lay on the pavement and its iron railings, when her attention was caught by a cry from the old man. Hope had entered his heart when he saw her and his features were now bent to an encouraging smile. "Here y'are lidy," he called, and held up the basket.

Rosemary shook her head, and then, to end the matter, walked away from the window. Her mother was right, she thought, she might as well get it over. Slowly and reluctantly she went downstairs.

Meanwhile Mrs. Heyham had gone to her sitting-room. She shut its door behind her with relief. Here, alone, there was no need to think of Rosemary's feelings. She could give way now, a little, to her jealousy and her regret, to the fierce dislike that she had felt when she thought of Anthony touching her daughter's hair—turning up her face to enjoy its loveliness.

They had loved one another for months, and she had never known! To her neglectful eyes the child had seemed unchanged. It had been a joy to her that Rosemary, fastidious and a little reserved, had never been swayed or excited by the people who moved her sister. She had believed that this younger favourite daughter possessed some quick instinct of her own, some power of direction that was enough for her. Mary had been able to stand by and see her avail herself of the widest freedom in the confidence that it was Rosemary with whom she had to deal, not some friend or some enthusiasm of the moment. And now men had come into her life, and love, and approaching marriage. To her mother it seemed that they must spoil it. Rosemary's liberty of mind was gone, she must respond to a man's clumsy, imperative emotions, tune her mind to his, find her growth and her insight checked by insistent personal ties.... That was all very well, later on, but Rosemary was only a child.

She turned her mind, with an effort, from this unbearable thought. It was her duty, she reminded herself, not to be miserable, but to be honest. Being honest now, as generally, meant to Mrs. Heyham discovering a way to accept any blame that remained when she had made excuses for everybody else. On this occasion she found it as easy as usual to persuade herself that she was behaving badly. She was doing, she must admit it, just what she had despised in other mothers. She was regarding her children as mere objects for her own affections. She had not grudged Laura, because she had felt that she herself was giving the brilliant creature to Harry, because in Laura she had wanted to live through again her own early wifehood and motherhood. Now she was hurt and bitter because Rosemary had put her aside, had claimed a right to her own youth and her own beauty. She could only feel that Rosemary did not know what a priceless gift they were.

Since Laura had married she had been hoping, as silly old women hope, to fill a greater place in Rosemary's life. She had felt that this was the time for which she had waited ever since Rosemary had learned to walk. She had stood then, a mere mother, outside the excitements and mysteries of nursery life. All through the children's youth she had waited, greedy for their love. Now, it seemed to her, her chance was gone.

Now she was middle-aged, and her life was failing her. With the children went its purpose and its meaning. She had worked hard to be the sort of mother they liked, to make her home a congenial background for their activities. She had not oppressed them with her own needs, or forced their affection from them. And now they were going, going to other homes where she would be only a visitor who rang their door-bells and asked their servants whether they were in. She could no more share them with their husbands than she had shared them with one another when they were babies. She could not even arrange the world for them as she had then. They had grown up, as modern girls do, in touch with an intricate life that meant nothing to her. She had given them her ignorant sympathy, her facile interest, her approval, where she could, but if they had valued these it was because they loved her. And it would not matter to them any more what she and their father felt. They would wait on someone else's ideas and someone else's moods. She had tried her utmost to be just to them, to hold herself in check—it only made her feel the more for them now the slowness and the egotism of men. They were happy—she wondered how much their happiness had cost of the freedom she had so painfully given them.

She rose from the chair where she had been sitting to walk up and down the room. She was stung again by the knowledge that Rosemary was gone, that she looked to other loves, to a new life, to another loyalty. She tried in vain to change her thoughts by centring them on her own foolishness. "I've been dreadful," she told herself, "ugly, grasping, blind! She has a right to choose her happiness." That was bald—bald enough to shock anyone into common-sense. But she could not quite believe it. Why—why had the child not waited!

One thing she could at least do, she told herself. She could use self-control, and refrain from causing discomfort to others by her selfish pain. She had failed already quite sufficiently that afternoon.

The clear discernment of a duty was always a relief to Mrs. Heyham, a stimulus to which she could respond mechanically. She now turned her mind, after an effort, to considering the matter from Rosemary's point of view, to any thoughts, indeed, that would keep her mind from its ungenerous fretting. And Rosemary's interview with her father, she supposed, was now taking place. It would not be terrible. James's children, like everyone else, found him a sympathetic and delightful man. But Trent was another matter. It was a pity that neither his sisters nor she could really get on with Trent. She had never felt for him the passionate love a mother sometimes feels for her only son. She had hoped to, she had tried to, but Trent had baffled her. It was wrong of her, for poor Trent was loyal and affectionate. It was a pity, perhaps, that they had sent him to Harrow, where his family could not follow him. That was perhaps why they could not follow now his perfectly correct and manly view of life. She was struggling with a sense of fatigue and incoherence among these familiar reflections when the door opened to admit her husband.

James seldom forgot to kiss his wife when he found her alone, not only because he was a methodical man, but because he seldom forgot that he was fond of her. To-day he kept his arm around her shoulders and looked down at her tenderly. "Poor little mother," he said, "to have nobody left but me!"

She let him draw her head against his shoulder where it was easier to cry. He used to call her "little mother" long ago, when the children were babies and belonged to her.

After a little he thought that she had cried enough and ought to be cheered up now; he made her sit in a comfortable chair while he went over to the fireplace.

"Of course Rosemary is much too young for this sort of thing," he said, believing that the only permanent cheering up is obtained by facing facts, "but we must admit that she's done very well for herself, better than poor Laura."

This was the first time anybody had thought of calling Laura "poor," and Mrs. Heyham looked up for explanations.

"Hastings," her husband went on, "is a thoroughly decent fellow, he's a cut above most of the young men the children have in the house. And since Laura isn't here, I don't mind saying that Moorhouse is a bit of a fool. I fancy he came the man of the world over Laura!"

"He makes her very happy,"—Mrs. Heyham's voice was a little doubtful—"and he's an excellent man of business."

"It's quite possible she'll soon have as many cares as you, my dear, but, as you know, I've always declared that since my girls would have enough to live on anyhow I did not mean to make money the most important thing. I don't object to it, of course, but I don't see why I should let it sway my judgment. Laura's man is not good enough for her, and I shall be disappointed if Hastings doesn't turn out a son-in-law to be proud of." He smiled at Mary, and stroked his trim little pointed beard.

Mrs. Heyham did not answer, but she realised, as she looked up, how proud she was of James. He was a hard-working business man himself, and after thirty years of it he might have been forgiven if he had been a little obsessed by ordinary business standards. Most men in his position wouldn't have looked at a penniless boy whatever they thought of his intellect and character. But James did not keep his principles for nothing. She could almost wish for once, that he had been a more conventional father, and she felt a moment's anxiety as she wondered how far his complaisance had extended.

"You told her—of course—that they'd have to wait?" she asked.

"There was no need, the child showed very proper feeling, but I did say that I didn't suppose you would consent to her setting out on married life at eighteen. In any case, it appears that the young man wants to be earning enough to pay for his own share of the ménage."

James was evidently pleased with the interview that had just taken place. "She's a dear child," he went on after a minute; "you're to be congratulated on both of them, Mary, though I admit that as a wife I prefer their mother. The women of your day had more character, though nobody made a fuss about their brains. Nowadays young people treat each other as if they were all friends of the same sex; it may suit them, but I know I shouldn't have liked it."

Mrs. Heyham did not move, and he wondered whether his talk was having the desired effect. He felt very sorry for her—when he thought about it he often felt sorry for women. Good women had such a hard time of it, they suffered so inevitably as life went on. It was rough on them losing their looks, it was rough on them when their boys went to school, and many of them had a bad time with their husbands. Men wouldn't have stood it, but women—thank God for it!—were like that. Men were not grateful enough, but he had done his best to make life smooth for Mary and the girls.... Poor Mary, he was glad she had cried on his shoulder. She was a dignified little thing, it was not always easy to tell what she was thinking.

He went over to her and stroked her hair. That, to his mind, was the use of her hair, and to please him she dressed it in a way that was not easily disarranged.

She looked up at him, and he saw at once that she was still a little excited. "James," she said, and then paused. He sat down on the arm of her chair so that he might give her better attention. When she spoke it was in the slow thoughtful way he deplored. It meant that she was taking things too hard.

"What do other women do when the children go?" she asked him. "How do they fill up their days?"

"I should say a good many of them were glad of a rest," he told her reassuringly. "It's not such easy work bringing up children. Haven't you noticed a friend whose grey hairs have gone brown since her daughters married? We shall have you a gay young thing again in no time. Or you could take up politics and make Trent stand for Parliament—the old lady would look fine as candidate's mother!"

She shook her head. "You forget the candidate's wife. I don't think I want to play second fiddle to Trent's Lady Hester. But I suppose that is about what they do. Either they knit boots for their grandchildren, or they go on committees."

The mention of Lady Hester had ruffled James's good humour. "If Trent waits for her, he'll wait some time," he said. He shrugged his shoulders and then they both smiled. "Trent's good at waiting," he admitted.

Mary jumped up from her chair and took his hands. "James," she whispered, "I sometimes wish there were something Trent wasn't good at!"

James kissed her. That was all right! Here was the old lady quite cheerful again. They must all be very kind to her for a day or two, and when she realised that Rosemary wasn't leaving her yet and got used to Anthony's new status she would see that there was nothing to be unhappy about for a long time. And when the disaster came she would be busy waging war on Laura's nurses.

"I told Rosemary she could have her young man to dinner, my dear," he said, apprehensive, but feeling that on the whole it was better to get it over. "It seemed the only decent thing to do."

His wife appeared to have accepted the worst. Her "I'm glad, I forgot to tell her," was serene. "Laura's been here to say that she and Harry aren't coming. That's just as well, Trent will be quite enough for them in one evening."

[CHAPTER II]

BUT Mrs. Heyham, though she did her best, could not settle down as she ought to have done. James watched her carefully, and though she was charming about it he felt that the engagement still distressed her. She was a little pale, he thought, and detached and indifferent to carefully planned amusements. Something more radical would have to be done. He would have liked to take her abroad, but he had business matters in hand which he could not trust to Trent. Nevertheless things must not remain as they were. He took his problem to Rosemary, whose own conscience was not untroubled. "We've got to think of some way," he told her, "of interesting your mother."

Rosemary agreed with him. Now that she turned her mind to it she could see that her mother's life needed interests. For what, when she came to express her sense of it, had Mary's life been? She expended some little ingenuity in pointing and amplifying her own conception of such an existence before, in her turn, she consulted Anthony.

Her mother, that was the gist of it, had not lived. Here, in this great world of speed and steel and electricity, this world of banks and syndicates and organised labour, Mrs. Heyham had kept her house and nursed her babies as she might have done a hundred, five hundred, years ago. She used the clothes and the food and the furniture of the twentieth century because they were there, at her hand. She knew nothing of how they were made or of what brought them to her. She lived like an insect in a coral reef, ignorant of the laws by which she was governed. Mathematics, the triumph of man's intellect, meant some x's and y's, some circles and triangles in children's school-books. Philosophy meant that a great many cultivated people do not believe in God. Biology meant that in some indiscreet manner we are descended from monkeys; economics that the Conservatives think a lot can be done with Tariff Reform, and the Liberals have been left to make the best of Free Trade. Industry was represented in her mind by the shops where she bought her clothes and ordered her provisions, by factories, heard of but never seen, by a bank with large stone pillars that sent her cheque-books, by so much money from her husband every week. When she tried to escape from it all, at least to vary it, she travelled on padded seats of first-class carriages, she slept in hotels where she was carried to her room in a lift, she stared at views whose last details of excellence had been dissected in guide books. Public opinion, since she was a rich woman, did not allow Mr. Heyham to beat her or to take her money, and she could walk alone in the street without being insulted. She could read novels about other women's love-affairs, she could turn up the light in her house by putting her finger on a knob. Yet she had no clue to the meaning of her life or of the lives of the people who served her and worked for her. She knew as little of the city she lived in as she knew of the fields where primitive women toiled. She was shut off—like all of us, Rosemary thought—from the wild things of the earth, from its oceans, its forests, its snows. She was denied man's heritage of knowledge, the rewards of his search for truth. She was sheltered from the need of working with her hands. She had lost the keenness of her savage senses and the strength of her savage impulses. She had lost her bodily hardness, her mental vigour and curiosity. Even her love of luxury had gone—she did not care, as some women do, to scent herself and hang herself with jewels, to wrap herself in soft furs and in supple bright-coloured stuffs. All these desires had withered to a mere dislike of dirt and disorder, a vague positive aspiration that things should be nice. Mrs. Heyham was a graceful woman, good, simple, sensitive. She respected herself and she was respected by others. That was her spiritual share of the loot of the centuries!

They were walking through the park to Hampton Court when Rosemary tried to impose this view of the matter on Anthony. He listened to it with interest but without excitement. He was a fair-haired, sunny-tempered youth, a little lazy about giving rein to his own enthusiasm but tolerant of Rosemary's, for he admired her wits. It was a fine afternoon. He turned appreciative eyes to the long lines of trees changing from green to grey in the slight pleasant haze. Then he looked back at Rosemary. "Well," he asked her, "granting all that—and you've put it very nicely—what is your solution?"

Rosemary had thought of a solution and a very good solution too, suitable, revolutionary, and high-minded. She was not deterred from explaining it by Tony's indolent tone. Rosemary was herself a Socialist and she could not help feeling that if her mother were to take up some sort of work among her father's employees the results must be thoroughly satisfactory to all right-thinking people. Her father was a good employer—neither she nor Anthony doubted it—but it is admitted that only a woman can understand a woman's difficulties. If you thought of the matter with an open mind, some such devotion of herself seemed only Mrs. Heyham's duty. There could be no doubt that she ate and wore the profits of the business.

"Delightful for the girls, but what is your mother going to get out of it?" Anthony asked. He thought of his own mother, a strong-minded lady who made a great point of remembering that she was only a woman. No child of hers would willingly have extended the sphere of her influence, but then she lacked essential human kindness. Mrs. Heyham, on the other hand, was the kindest woman he knew, she was kinder than Rosemary. He wouldn't, personally, have considered that her life or her personality needed any addition. They seemed to him gracious, complete, and satisfying, and he did not think that she herself would wish to tamper with them.

But Rosemary was answering him. Why—she told him, looking round in her turn at the still trees and the sunny grass—here would be her mother's chance. She could leave her artificial, opulent home and go out into the world, the man's world, that she had never seen. She would touch it, study it, find out her own place and her value from it. She could live again, not only with her charm and her sympathy and her admirable legitimate affections but with her mind, with her soul—Tony might jeer at the word as much as he liked, but it was exactly her soul that Rosemary meant. She would learn that out in the world justice and mercy and pity are not easy, natural things. They must be found—fought for, insisted on. "Mother," she finished, "has never fought for anything in her life."

"On the contrary," Anthony told her, "you know nothing about it. A woman like your mother—I speak with the authority of all the ages—finds her life and her adventures in herself. She doesn't need to be stirred by your gross realities, your sordid politics, your miserable clamour for things to eat and a hole to go to sleep in. She lives, so to speak, in the depths of the sea, dark-green and heavy, far away down, while you, my dear Rosemary, are running about in a bright red bathing-dress and splashing in the little waves on the beach." He smiled at her all the same as if he approved her choice of occupation.

"And the air," Rosemary reminded him, "and the sky, and the sun! But seriously, Tony, isn't that all drivel? There may be a mystical life that can do without experience, but most women haven't got it—mother hasn't. Taking things as they are, what can you find to criticise in my plan?"

Tony turned to look at her and met her earnest eyes. She was a beautiful creature, he thought, and he liked her gallant tilting at destiny. It was rather jolly of her to marry him. When he spoke, his voice expressed an easy-going affection. "If I were your mother," he informed her, "I wouldn't stir a finger to touch what you call life. However, from your point of view, your plan is all right—if you can persuade your father."

Rosemary had no doubts upon that score. She could easily manage father, and her mother would simply have to be persuaded. Really it was a masterly idea—it would be thrilling, most thrilling, to see what she made of it all.

To her father next day she presented the plan as if it meant nothing more than a trifling charity, and Mr. Heyham, after careful thought, saw no objection to it. He was not aware of any deficiencies in his system, but he was a broad-minded man and could very well believe that there were a lot of little things that might be done for the girls as long as they were done in a proper way. He had always deplored the spirit which makes so many employers regard their business contract as the only link between master and men. He had given his support to Progressive legislation when his party introduced it, and when he went into one of his restaurants he liked to see the waitresses looking cheerful and well-fed. He knew that he was popular, and the thought of Mary among the work-people, doing good to them and adored by them, was pleasant. Also, and this was the chief consideration, it was just the thing for Mary. Her own children were leaving her and what she wanted was somebody to mother. He thought well of Rosemary for her idea; he told himself that there is a good deal to be said for these modern young women.

Laura, whose own struggles with housekeeping had given her a new respect for Mrs. Heyham, showed the easy enthusiasm of the irresponsible. It would be splendid for mother to have this fresh outlet for her powers, and it would be so nice for them all to feel that everything was being looked after from a woman's point of view. Perhaps later on, if mother organised clubs or anything that might help her—after all, they all shared in the profits of the business and in a sort of way they were responsible. She also felt that it was so splendid of father to want to let mother in, not like most men who are so vulgar about their wives. And—this when she had been told of the young man's attitude—it was just like Trent to make a fuss about what everybody else wanted.

Rosemary, though she was glad of this warm reception, did not feel that it took her very much further as to Trent. If Mrs. Heyham chose to see a difficulty in his beastly mulishness she was not likely to be moved by Laura. After all Trent worked very hard at the business and, in a way, he had plenty of brains. You could not disregard him as if he were a boy or a fool.

"Why not, when he behaves like one?" Laura had only looked in for a few minutes and as she was in a hurry she was inclined to take a lofty way with obstacles.

Rosemary did not agree. "It's very tiresome of him, but what is the use of owning a business if you can't be tiresome and obstinate about it? That's what employers mean when they write to the papers and say that they must be allowed to manage their own affairs in their own way!" In her heart Rosemary was not sorry to see Trent embodying her notion of the grasping capitalist. She was fond of her brother, but she preferred a dramatic interest.

Laura refused to see matters in this light. If they wanted to win, the point to be stressed was not Trent's rights but his ungraciousness. "But, my dear Rosemary," she said, "he can't have any serious objection! Isn't it obvious that he's merely trying to be disagreeable? Unless of course—" this struck her as a good idea—"he thinks his Iredales won't consider it the thing!" She had a train to catch and as she spoke she moved towards the door.

Rosemary shook her head. She didn't believe that Lord Iredale's objection to Trent as a cousin would be affected by any charitable enterprises that Mrs. Heyham might undertake. Trent's reasons, whatever they were, were clearly not of a kind that he could make public.

This, as Trent himself felt, was the weakness of his position. He was not a man who could make a show with sentimental values and this was a matter of sentiment. Trent liked little soft childish women. He liked, in a quiet way, to be made a fuss of; he did not long to be understood, but only to be prettily admired. Women who sat on committees and superintended movements were apt to cultivate an impersonal manner which he found chilling. He had not much leisure for ladies' society, but when he did adorn it he expected to be received with womanly charm. And his grievance now was that Rosemary, with her confounded ideas, was getting hold of, was doing her best to spoil, his charming mother.

However you looked at it, it was a horrible plan. Mrs. Heyham, as Trent saw her, was the last person to throw among waitresses and factory girls. Their girls were no worse than the rest, in fact the firm made distinct efforts towards moral tone, but he could not believe in his heart that they were better. And Trent was afraid of waitresses. At Oxford there had been a rather large waitress who made advances to him. She was a moist lady with bright yellow hair, and Trent still shivered with disgust when he thought of her dirty fingers on the edge of his plate.... That was the sort of person Rosemary wanted to bring into contact with his mother! He pictured Mrs. Heyham being imposed on, made use of, duped and talked over by malcontents and agitators. Sooner or later there was bound to be trouble and once she was there they would have to stand by her. On the other hand the prospect of his mother hardened, his mother become managing and suspicious, his mother under the influence of inspectors and Trade Union officials and Socialists of all kinds, filled him with a mild anguish.

Trent did not realise that Mrs. Heyham, who was now forty-five, had a character of her own. She had been almost his ideal of a mother, receptive and sympathetic, and he could not think of her now as anything but immature and easily swayed. A wave of protective feeling rose in his heart. It was particularly shocking that her own husband should expose her to this danger!

But though these considerations glared broadly before his eyes he could not state them directly. Trent had, of a formal kind, an immense respect for his mother, and he accepted the fact that it was as impossible for her husband to discuss her with her son as it was for her son to discuss her with anyone else. It was unfortunate, he thought, that the serious approach had come from his sister and that when James had mentioned the plan to him he had done so in a casual manner, alluding to it as Rosemary's newest idea. Trent had hoped to avoid offence by laughing too, saying that Rosemary's imagination was given to running away with her, and promising that he would think it over as fully as it deserved. Thinking it over had only produced reasons to fortify his impulsive aversion, and if he did not mention it again it was because he hoped that Mr. Heyham might have seen fit, on reflection, to drop it. Trent never made it harder for people to do right by enlisting their pride against him.

But James, who had learned from Rosemary of Trent's real attitude, had as a matter of fact been waiting, not to retreat from his position, but for some sign of an apology from his son. In business matters Trent might stand up to him if he could. Young brains were sometimes a match for experience, and in any case they could only develop by making a fight for it. But where his own wife—where Trent's mother—was concerned, Mr. Heyham was still the head of his family, and he was hurt that Trent should lack the good taste that would have taken this for granted. He had never exacted a show of respect from his son, and he had perhaps assumed too easily that the young man had understood his attitude. He ought to have understood it; if he hadn't he showed a mental coarseness which his father did not find easy to forgive.

Mr. Heyham had always stuck up for Trent, if only because he was a boy and the girls were down on him, but it seemed to him quite possible now that he had been wrong. The possibility was not pleasant, and James, when business allowed it, preferred his thoughts to have a mellow savour. He therefore decided, when two days had passed and Trent had said nothing, to finish the matter out in the library after dinner.

He waited until Trent had left the hearth-rug and settled himself in a chair. James himself remained standing, it was always, he felt, annoying to have your adversary leaning over you. Trent was looking particularly thoughtful, for he was trying a new kind of cigar.

James opened briskly. "Rosemary and I are anxious to know, Trent, when we may mention this plan of ours to your mother?"

Trent was deeply disappointed. He had hoped, at the least, for a reasonable openness of mind, and he was met with what looked painfully like a display of temper. It was clear that argument was no use, there was nothing for it but to be firm.

"As soon as you like, sir," he said in a tone which he hoped would express the sentiments desirable to a man in his position, "as long as my mother understands that it has nothing to do with me."

"As long as we tell her that you wash your hands of her!"

This was unfair, and Trent hated unfairness. He stared hard at the cigar for a moment while he tried to master his irritation, telling himself that thirty years of business make a man quick to put others in the wrong. His father, watching him, was struck by the attitude. "Good lord," he thought, "he might be a curate! Well, well...." Meanwhile Trent was answering. "My dear father, once we're committed to this plan it won't be possible to wash our hands of it. But I don't want my mother to think I approve of it."

"It would be interesting," said James, who was accustomed to come off best in verbal disputes, "exceedingly interesting to know why!"

Trent picked his way as well as he could, among his reasons. "Well, in the first place, I'm convinced that it will make difficulties. Perhaps I see more of the girls than you do, and they're as discontented as they can be. Especially the waitresses. We simply can't afford to have them upset." He hesitated.

"And what in the second place?"

"In the second place, then, I must say that I don't think it's suitable for my mother. Our girls are not like villagers, they're not accustomed to ladies. And mother has never had any experience of this sort of thing."

By this time James was angry too. Trent had as good as said that he didn't take proper care of his own wife. That wasn't an arguable matter, so he let it rankle a little and turned to the other point. "I really can't congratulate you on your apparent experience," he said. "Our waitresses are a perfectly respectable lot of girls; I shouldn't in the least mind my daughters going amongst them. In any case I can't see why you should think that your mother is likely to corrupt them!"

Here was more unfairness! "I didn't say corrupt. I said upset. Anything they are not accustomed to upsets them. Look at the trouble we had over stopping their tips, though they must have seen that it's a far better plan to have a regular bonus! What I feel is that the person at the back of this is Rosemary, and frankly I'm not prepared to be responsible for Rosemary's ideas."

Rosemary's ideas received no defence from her father. He had thought of a new weapon. "My dear fellow," he retorted, "suppose we look at this from your mother's point of view for a moment. It may not occur to her that her influence is likely to be disastrous and upsetting. She may even feel that she has some rights in the matter, seeing that half the business is hers! You forget that it was your mother's money that bought out old Clarkson!"

Trent had forgotten it, indeed it was not often remembered by anyone but Mary's unsatisfactory brother. When Trent heard it mentioned now he knew that he had lost; money is money, even when it belongs to a woman. But he was too much annoyed to admit defeat. "I wasn't disputing my mother's rights, sir; if it were even her own wish it would be different. But, as I understand it, she is to be persuaded into a rôle of interference that is the last thing she would have thought of for herself!"

His father laughed. "In fact there's a general conspiracy in the family against the dignity and peace of mind of Trent Heyham, Esq.!"

Trent, he flattered himself, could be a gentleman even in an argument. Such cheap sneers were unworthy of his father. They were not argument. He did not answer them.

James, too, felt that almost enough had been said. Trent hadn't a chance, and there was no need to press the boy.

"Look here," he said, quite agreeably, "I'm not prepared to discuss your mother with you. You can take it from me that nobody is going to persuade her against her wishes"—Trent grunted, he knew Rosemary's powers—"and I'm not going to discuss the whole position of women with you either, though I don't mind telling you that you know nothing about it. But before we close the subject you must understand that I really can't undertake to explain your views to your mother. They're beyond me. But of course I shall be delighted if you can make her see why she is going to do all this harm. Only you'll have to put it off until to-morrow because I mean to speak to her myself first." Victory had made him energetic, and he felt this was a good moment for explaining the matter to Mary. He stood up, paused for a minute as if he were waiting for Trent's answer, and then walked briskly, almost gaily, out of the room. He knew that he had left Trent nursing a grievance. He knew that Trent did not mean to speak to his mother, and that he felt insulted by the accusation. He did not care whether the poor young man felt insulted or not. For the moment Trent was merely a defeated adversary.

Moreover he was a nuisance. Mr. Heyham had never felt certain that Mary would take to the plan, and now it had become necessary that she should receive it with enthusiasm. He was not going to overpersuade her, he had said so, and, besides, it is of no use forcing a person to do a thing for her own amusement. But Trent had certainly made it difficult for him to give way on the matter. Trent was a self-righteous young fool. Damn him!

Mary was alone in the drawing-room, for Rosemary had gone to a theatre with Anthony. James became more impressed by the beneficence of his scheme when he noticed that Mary was doing nothing. But she took up some knitting and pretended to be busy directly she saw him—brave little woman!

He hovered over her rather awkwardly for a moment. Twenty years ago, if he had wanted to persuade her, he would have sat down on the footstool at her feet, and some unreasonable impulse was urging him now that the footstool would be appropriate. He made no conscious decision, habit settled him in his usual chair, but for once he went doubtfully. He remembered the time when their house had seemed to him merely an opportunity for being alone with Mary, when his heart had beat with a little feeling of triumph as he closed the street door. Then the children had come, with their right to interrupt, to burst joyfully into rooms, and now that the children were going he had discovered a sense of what was due to the servants. It would be ridiculous now to jump up because the moment had come for some of the servants' confounded fidgetings. He told himself that there was nothing to regret. He and Mary were beyond the old constant need of these little symbols and affirmations. It would be absurd if they weren't, after twenty-six years together. Such things had to give way to the other pressures and interests of life, but that didn't mean that love had given way!

He looked fondly across at Mary, satisfaction completely restored. It was a commonplace that there are not many wives like Mary, and a matter for congratulation that he had, on the whole, been able to make her a very decent husband. At any rate, she thought so, bless her, and he was perfectly willing to admit his debt to her belief. If James had really believed in a God he would frequently have thanked Him for His forethought in creating good women.

As it was, the force of Mr. Heyham's gratitude went to increase his determination. "I suppose Rosemary has been telling you of the great things you are to do?" he began lightly, wasting no more time.

"Well, she hasn't said anything, but she has been looking at me with an appraising eye. And she has lent me one or two books to read." It was plain to Mary that James wanted her to be pleased about Rosemary's scheme, so she prepared herself to receive it. "Dear James! Dear children! How sweet of them to think of me!" she told herself hurriedly.

James seemed amused. "I saw she was trying to make Trent read somebody's Principles of Economics the other day."

"I don't think these were economics. I'm afraid I haven't looked at them yet, though I meant to begin one this evening. She said they were books that would give me an insight into the lives of the poor."

James was touched by the thought of little mother bent over Rosemary's books. "Tyrannous young bluestocking!" he said, "I don't think we need bother our old lady with books! It's just where books fail that we want her to come in. The fact is, mother—I don't know whether you will forgive us—but your family have been hatching a plot. Rosemary is concerned about the workgirls ground down under the masculine heels of Trent and her father, and I am very much concerned about the old lady. I don't think she's as happy as she ought to be. She's an active old thing, and it's no use her pretending that she can settle down to knitting. I believe if she looks she'll find the sock she's got there has two heels to it. So we thought that if she were to give some of her time to combating the firm's ruthless oppression it would be a new interest for her, besides putting an end to one of the worst excesses of the capitalistic régime!"

Mary was startled into opposition. "But, my dear, what could I do? I'm certain I shouldn't suit Rosemary at all—I should probably be on the side of the tyrants! And I know nothing about it!" She smiled at him to hide a sudden feeling of fear.

James was very soothing and very affectionate. She needn't be afraid that she would have to participate in crimes—things weren't as bad as that, in spite of Rosemary's friends. And she mustn't fear either that she was going to be asked to move mountains or change human nature. It was really the mere fact of her interest that was important. The girls would feel that someone cared about them, someone who needn't have cared; they wouldn't suspect her motives as they always suspected the motives of their employers. And her presence would help them in other ways. A word or two would encourage the lady managers to treat their staffs more kindly—though James could assure her that they were a kind set of women, wonderfully kind when you thought how heavy their responsibilities were—yet Mary's example would perhaps infuse a new courtesy into their intercourse with the girls. And perhaps Mary's quick eye would see little things that might with advantage be altered—it was very difficult for a busy man to realise where rules pressed perhaps a little more hardly than they were meant to, and the lady managers hadn't always the fine sense that could be trusted only to complain about the right things. It is difficult to explain the necessities of the case to people of no education without appearing brutal, or even to concede a reform without appearing weak. On the whole they had had to discourage complaints. But a private word to him from Mary would stand in a entirely different category. It would be like giving him double time, two pairs of ears, two pairs of eyes.

He didn't for a moment propose that she should make a burden for herself, or tie herself down to stated hours and times. She was to take them as lightly as she chose, and they would know how to be grateful.

Mary submitted to the flood of these persuasions in helpless silence. James did not like being checked in the middle of his explanations. Moreover, taking his argument point by point, she could not answer it. James was so just and so reasonable—everything he said was sure to be true. Her only defence was that she didn't like the idea—that she was afraid of it. She did not want to be mixed up in James's business. She had been perfectly content to trust him where she could not follow him. His work, to her, seemed vast, complicated, laborious, and she credited him with a display of qualities in relation to it which matched the candour, the courage, the generosity she so counted upon at home. She knew that he shone at business as he shone everywhere else, but for her it was different. How would she fare in this world where men made the rules, with its stalwart virtues and strange stumbling-blocks? How could she know that she wouldn't give offence, be weak, or foolish, make James look down on her? "It would be all very well for Rosemary," she told herself, "but I can't—no, I can't—it's too much for me!"

"Well, what are you hiding in that wise little head of yours?" her husband was saying.

She could not find words. Her opening "James" remained unsupported. She would have liked, instead of answering, to cry.

"Is it as dreadful as all that? Are we bullying our little mother?" James had crossed over to her and taken both her hands, and made her stand up in front of him by the fireplace. "She must have a little more courage—oh, yes, I can see she is afraid, afraid of making a mess of things and not coming up to expectations. But she must pull herself together and remember that I've just been telling Trent, that in a way she owns a good deal of this terrifying business, and in a way she is responsible for it. Trent and I have done our best to administer it for her, but as Rosemary thinks, though she's too polite to say so, we are dull masculine creatures at best, and the place needs its mistress's eye."

If James spoke like that it meant that his mind was made up. There was no real use in disputing and making matters more hard, more definite. Nevertheless, she spoke. "But, James, supposing we don't agree?"

James accepted the admission with a smile. "My dear, are we in the habit of quarrelling? And do we always agree? Well, then! When we don't agree we shall talk things over."

"And I shall give way!" Of course she would give way, it was simple enough.

James shook his head. "I'm not so sure about that! I know somebody who can be as obstinate as a tiger with a bone! I'd sooner move mountains than move her from off one of her scruples! She's a dreadful little person to tackle when her mind is made up!" Mary's obstinacy had been agreed upon between them since she had successfully refused to have footmen in her household, or even a boy and a butler.

Mary reassured him. "But in this case you'll have the making of it up!"

James thought it probable he would. "Well, there's no need to sigh like that!" he told her. "In six months, ridiculous one, we shall have you thanking us for a new lease of life!"

Mrs. Heyham smiled faintly, and let him swing her hands in and out. "You said you had to remind Trent," she asked presently. "Does that mean that he doesn't agree with you?"

James let go her hands that he might clasp his own behind his back. "I rather gather that Mr. Trent believes in women leading a sheltered life. Dew-sprinkled flowers and bloomy grapes and that sort of thing. He was distressed at the idea of your going among the girls, who don't meet his ideas of nice people. And on the other hand he seemed to fear that you would prove a channel for Rosemary's revolutionary doctrines—want to hand over the business to the London County Council, or whatever the theory of the moment is."

Mary could laugh. "Dear Trent—to tell you the truth, though I wouldn't care to admit it to Rosemary, I've only the dimmest notion of her theories! It's a subject on which I've felt too ignorant for discussion. But, seriously, James, how can I undertake the work you suggest if one of the directors objects?" For a moment she felt grateful to Trent.

"I don't think we shall hear much more of Trent's objection, my dear, and even if his manners were worse than I think them, it's of no consequence. I made him a director because I thought it more fair to him, but until I retire I, and not Trent, am at the head of the firm." He spoke in his business voice.

There was nothing very hopeful in that, and Mary felt weakly inclined for a compromise. "You'll give me a night to think it over, won't you, James?" she asked. "It's just possible I might discover an argument that would send you and your old plan packing."

James laughed and kissed her. "Oh, I'm quite ready to allow Rosemary her share in the glory of convincing you. I'm sure that not even Anthony could have lured her out if she had known that the assault was to be made to-night. Think it over as much as you like, but I don't expect you'll find your argument!"

There was nothing more to say, the matter was settled for the evening, and James became aware of the fact that it was ten o'clock. Moreover, he was in the drawing-room, whereas at ten o'clock, if they were alone, he was accustomed to be in his study. Mary did not want him, she had turned back to her knitting, and she would soon be going to bed. He waited a moment, to be sure that she did not want him, but when it came she seemed quite to expect his good-night.

Nevertheless, Mary did not go to bed. She lay back in her chair and tried, in the interval that he had left her, to bring some pertinent order into her thoughts. She had not only to decide what she should do, but, equally difficult, how she should put the thing to James. She knew that she was not good at sustaining an argument even when she had thought it out carefully beforehand.

She tried to state the case very plainly to herself, James's side and the other side. After all, that was the important thing, it did not matter so much that he should be pleased with the answer he got from her. Just now she had been cowardly; it was only fair to him that he should know what was really in her mind. She had slid too much into the habit of answering James's mood and not his arguments.

As she thought it seemed to her the case against her going was, in substance, Trent's case. He, silly boy, tried to make it a shackle to hold all women. She did not believe in these lofty generalisations, but she doubted, all the same, whether she might not be wise to respect the prohibition for herself. She was not one of the women who were fitted, either by training or by an adventurous disposition to work with men, at men's affairs, on a neutral footing. Men, for her, had been creatures to be pleased and to be cared for, and men had loved her and been good to her precisely because of this attitude of hers. To do what James asked would be to approach them on a different basis, and she felt it was hard she should be asked to risk what she had been so proud of—her successful relations with her husband and her son.

She could see, as she thought it over, that all her life had been passed in this cherishing of individuals. She had learned to study them, to respond to them, to guide herself and them through intricate problems of character and conduct. It had not been easy, she could remember times when she had lost her way. But it had always been this person and that, people she knew, people whose lives she understood. She had never been called upon to deal with them in numbers, as classes, to rule them with rough and ready decisions. Moreover, though there had been limits to her time, her strength, her money, and even, she felt remorsefully, to her good-will, she had at any rate been sure of the principles on which she based her decisions. She had known what she wanted for them all, for James, for the children, for the servants. These waitresses and factory girls were beyond her ken. How was she to know what she wanted for them or what she ought to want? If she found out how could she then count the forces available to help her or discover what barriers stood in her way? If it had been simple to arrange proper conditions it would not have been left all this time for her to do.

She was returning to her old feeling of timidity and aversion when she pulled herself up. She was not, she told herself, looking at the thing squarely; she was arguing as if James had advanced his plan out of sheer wantonness. He had started, and she must start, too, from the fact of her narrowing life. She mustn't pretend that the alternative to agreement was her old round of interests and activities. It was something less and less important than that. Soon she would be an old woman whose empty house waited for the children to open its doors. James was right, she couldn't condemn herself to that. And if she went forward, if she saved her life from this dreariness, then, James's plan or another, she must take a risk.

She tried now to reassure herself. She knew that she was not a fool; and these terrifying waitresses were, after all, human beings like other people. Their needs were ordinary human needs for health and happiness. It would probably amuse them, poor things, if they knew that their employer's wife was frightened of them!

These painstaking reflections were suddenly scattered. Mrs. Heyham's conscience, always partial to conviction of sin, had flashed upon her a charge of unkindness to James. James's kindness and forethought, his sympathy for her loneliness, the trouble he had taken, the trouble he was prepared to take over her stumblings in the future, all were arrayed against the wife who had never thanked him or shown that she recognised them. It was perfectly true, he had been a dear about it, and she had thought of nobody but herself!

Mary could not have slept with this upon her mind. Two minutes later James, looking up from an article on the latest naval scare, saw her crossing the floor of his study.

"James," she said softly, bending over him, "you must have been thinking what a selfish creature I am! I never thanked you at all, and it was so kind of you, my dear!"

James made her sit on the arm of his chair. "The absurd old lady!" he scolded. "A moment ago she was worrying because she wasn't clever enough, and now, Heavens above us, she's selfish! She will positively be smothered with gratitude from all sorts of poor creatures presently, and then will be time enough to hand on a little of it to me. Now, are there any more deadly sins to be explained away?"

Mary bent over him until her cheek touched his head. "I want you to promise," she said a little shyly, "promise that however silly I am you won't think the worse of me for it. Please!"

James laughed. "Solemnly, on my honour, you funny old darling! May I die in my shoes if I doubt that whatever you do is the most admirable thing in the world! There, will that suit you?"

Mary kissed him, slipped from his arm and went to the door. "Sometimes," she told him, looking round before her final disappearance, "I'm rather fond of you, James!" The door shut.

James found his place in the article with a smiling face. Germany or no Germany, he felt that this is not a bad world. He liked to see Mary scrupulous in matters of emotion; sometimes it was a little tiresome, but it gave him a feeling that she was dependable. "That's the best of her," he told himself, "she likes to think things out for herself, but she always sees one's point of view in the end." He plunged into statistics. He did not believe in this invasion, but to read of it reminded him that he was doing his duty. He had said that if any of his men cared to join the Territorials he would arrange about their holidays. It was inconvenient, of course, having them all go together, but he had done it. In this way, as he had pointed out, even the senior men, whose holidays now had to wait, contributed their little sacrifice to England's greatness. We cannot all die for our country, but dear me, that's no reason for not doing something!

James slept well that night.

[CHAPTER III]

DURING the next fortnight Mrs. Heyham's sitting-room took on a business-like air. A desk appeared in it, a typewriter, and finally a lady called Miss Percival. She was Rosemary's idea, and the theory of her was that one cannot be certain of doing good, even to waitresses, unless one knows something about them before one begins. Miss Percival, who had been secretary to a philanthropic member of Parliament, was to help her employer acquire this necessary knowledge, and then act, so to speak, as a reservoir of information whose tap would be turned if Mrs. Heyham showed signs of forgetfulness or of letting her feelings run away with her.

There could be no doubt of the lady's fitness for this task, for away in her past behind the conscientious member lay services to every progressive society in London that wanted investigation done for nothing. And if testimonials can be trusted each of these bodies had relinquished Miss Percival with passionate regret.

Mary waited for such efficiency with certain misgivings. Her kind heart had prompted her to buy a fumed oak desk instead of the elegant sycamore she would have liked, in order that her secretary might feel at home. Anything so ugly must, Mary thought, be excessively practical. But when Miss Percival arrived she did not look like a person who would be affected by the material of her desk. She was short, dark, unexpectedly young, and quite kind to every one. She even informed Mrs. Heyham that this was the sort of work she had been hoping to get. The only other thing one noticed about her, at first, was that she would not speak, if she could help it, in front of James or Trent. Mary, when she saw that this was so, felt sorry for her, and almost suspected sad experiences. The M. P. was out of the question—Mary had once sat next to him at dinner—but she had no such guarantee about all the queer people there must have been in the societies. But kindness might be trusted to remove any doubts that lingered in Miss Percival's mind, and in the meantime the important thing was that she seemed to have a clear notion of what she meant to do. This was a relief to Mary, who could organise very well when she must, but took no delight in thinking out a plan for its own sake.

The first thing, according to the expert's scheme, was to ask Mr. Heyham to give them an account of the business. This he willingly did, at ease in his arm-chair, while Mary looked at him with quiet appreciation. Miss Percival was not present. James, when he told a story, liked to tell it in his own way, and in this case Mary's dead father and mother were involved, besides James's own father, who was intensely alive and sinful in South America. Mary could repeat the important facts to Miss Percival afterwards, and then Miss Percival could make a note of them.

The business came into the family in the middle-age of James's father, who in those days was a plausible, restless fellow, continually initiating enterprises and continually throwing them up. At this period in his career he was associated with a dubiously virtuous old man called Matthew Clarkson, and Clarkson persuaded his ally to invest some money they had recently acquired in a mineral water factory in East London. It was called the "'Rule Britannia' Aerated Water Co.," and that, as its vendor pointed out, was a very good name to start from. The factory, as they found it, was small and exceedingly dirty, and perhaps for these reasons congenial to Matthew, who developed a habit of visiting the place very morning in order that he might irritate the foreman, and conduct experiments in an unpleasant cupboard that he called his laboratory. Meanwhile Mr. Henry Heyham was making the most of this brief life, spending a good deal of mysterious money, moving into a larger house, giving his sons a passable education, and looking about him for a suitable match for his daughter Edith. Even her brothers thought Edith a handsome girl, and in particular she was attractively plump. Henry found it possible before his own financial needs became too glaring to marry her to a wealthy gentleman interested in meat. And thank heaven this is a Christian country where marriage is still held sacred.

He bore up until the honeymoon was over, for he always liked to do things decently, but two days after Edith's return he summoned his second son James, fresh from a London school, and told him, with an almost tearful impressiveness, that he, Henry, was for the moment done for. Honourably done for, mind you, not through his own fault but through the fault of those he had trusted. Not that he regretted having trusted them, he would rather have a mind full of faith and confidence in his fellows even if he had to pay for it than pass through the world crammed with ugly suspicions and for ever taking precautions against his neighbour.

Even without the old man's deprecating look, James would have understood that this was Henry's way for apologising for some gross and culminating piece of carelessness.

But that was not all he had to say. Many fathers, if not most fathers, when they had reached the age of having grown-up sons who had been treated with every kindness, supplied with every luxury, and equipped with an unsurpassed education, would consider—and in his opinion they wouldn't go beyond their rights if they did—that the time had come when the said sons were in duty bound to turn to and support the authors of their being. But he, Henry, was not that sort of man. He would never be a burden on any child of his. On the contrary it had been the object of his steadfast endeavour to provide a safe start in life for his boys, no matter what might happen to their old father. Edith couldn't have been better disposed of, Timothy was doing well with the smartest, most up-to-date solicitors in London, and he now proposed to complete the beneficent work by giving James an opportunity that most young fellows would cut off their ears to get, an opportunity so resplendent, if he only liked to use it, that ten years might see him a rich man, and twenty find him a captain of industry—and this in an age when to be a captain of industry, honest British industry, was the goal of every decent man's ambition. There was much that might be said upon this subject, upon the essential meanness and hollowness of politics, art, literature, the Church, the services, science, medicine, and teaching, regarded as careers. But time pressed. He would put what he wanted to say briefly, simply, without trimmings, as befitted a business man. He proposed to make over to his dear son James his share in the thriving mineral water business known as the Rule Britannia Aerated Water Co. And to whatever quarter of the globe fortune might drive him, to whatever depths of squalor she might plunge him, he would never forget to pray for the immediate, the triumphant, the cataclysmic success of his dear son, his old friend, and the Rule Britannia.

James had not known that there was such happiness. He could not speak. His eyes were dazzled by a vision of shining bottles, thousands of smooth glass bottles, crystal clear, through which gleamed splendidly the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, of their appetising contents. Above waved the flag of the greatest of nations, and the distant voices singing a glorious song broke off to acclaim him a captain of industry. His heart was full; for a moment he forgot his anxiety concerning the fate of a parent.

Old Henry, who had only paused for dramatic effect, felt no pain at this lack of piety. Let James rejoice, he went on, and not sadden his days by thinking about him. He had knocked about the world before now, and if a peaceful old age was denied him he would submit anew to the scourgings of fate. As a matter of fact—here his eye brightened—he had heard of a little affair in South America. There might be something in it or there might not. In any case no good would be served by talking about it now. If matters went well his boys would hear from him. If not—he hoped they would keep a warm corner in their hearts for the memory of their poor old father. And now James had better come along and see to the necessary papers, as he was sailing for Montevideo in a couple of days.

When next his boys did hear of him, two years later, he was lodged in a South American prison. James, who had long feared something of the sort, could only be thankful that it had happened in a romantic continent. None of Henry's family doubted that when Henry returned—if he ever did return—he would have some explanation compatible with the greatest physical courage and the loftiest qualities of heart and head. As a matter of fact when a letter arrived it contained the tale of a maiden in distress so beautiful, so tender, so virtuous, that only a scoundrel could have turned away from her piteous appeals.

Meanwhile James worked hard, for the captain of industry still dominated his dreams. But it was some time before he began to make more than a bare living. Even when he had to a certain extent surmounted his own inexperience he was faced by his partner's refusal to spend a penny on making the factory even decently clean, by the impossibility of keeping a good class of work-girl owing to the same old gentleman's roving eye, and by Clarkson's Ginger Cordial. This was the result of years of patient and muddled investigation on Matthew's part. He was not satisfied with it yet, he said, and meanwhile he was offended if he was not allowed to call the whole staff away from their work in order that they might conduct experiments with him. This was particularly troublesome because the coadjutor he most favoured was the forewoman, the only person in the place whose tongue was sharp enough to keep the girls in order. It was useless for James to explain that no business carried on in this way could have any chance of succeeding. Clarkson replied that it didn't matter a damn whether it succeeded or not until the Ginger Cordial was ready for the market. After that event it wouldn't be able to help succeeding. And further, he wasn't going to be preached at in his own factory by—young puppies.

That seemed an impregnable position, but Matthew's defences had one weak spot. The passing of the Employers' Liability Act revealed the fact that the senior partner was terrified of inspectors and of the fiendish things inspectors might do to him. He had no knowledge of the law, and only a vivid something in his past seemed adequate to account for his fear of it. Happily in this country we have, besides the clumsy and public efforts of our legislators, the subtle and intricate machinery of Home Office orders. One Julius Trent, a friend of James's, persuaded him to spend a few pounds at a costumier's and a few shillings at a printer's. After that one of Her Majesty's Factory Inspectors, in an imposing blue uniform, visited Mr. Clarkson several times a week. The old man withstood this onslaught for some time, but when the inspector arrived one day with a printed document which set forth that owing to information and complaints recently received regulations had been issued to the effect that those who were guilty of any breaches of the rules laid down for the safety and good government of the English people, and in particular of obstructing or using obscene or filthy language to Her Majesty's Factory Inspectors in the course of their duty, should in future be liable to imprisonment with hard labour without the option of a fine, the old man's courage failed. He undertook to allow the necessary cleaning, he promised to respect a salutary rule just made by the Home Secretary that no forewoman was on any account whatever to enter her employer's private room, he even gave up his laboratory because the same authority had found it inexpedient to permit experimental research into the composition of cordials to be carried on under one roof with the manufacture of mineral waters between the hours of 6 A.M. and 10 P.M. He retired routed to a shed at the bottom of his garden with no revenge but his votes, and the next thing to do was to buy him out before he discovered what had happened.

That took some time, partly because every penny James could spare was needed for repairs and improvements, partly because Mr. Clarkson, as soon as he found that James wished it, showed an obstinate reluctance to being bought out. The Home Secretary could not exclude him from his own premises altogether, and he still enjoyed an occasional ramble round. Finally James, who was growing more masterful, dismissed the forewoman. That was a blow, for her successor and her successor's underlings did not appreciate Mr. Clarkson's practised smiles. James found him one day examining himself rather sadly in a looking-glass.

The sight of James's reflected face suddenly mingled with an already unpleasing picture roused Mr. Clarkson. Hitherto, he said, he had borne with young Heyham's goings-on in a Christian spirit, but this was spying. Heyham seemed to think that he was cock of the walk, that he'd only got to say the word and every one would lick his boots; well, they wouldn't. And when he, Matt Clarkson, liked to be nasty he could be nasty. And no mistake about it.

Being nasty meant abusing James in front of the hands, jeering at him, or, what was worse, assuming in public that nothing delighted him more than to hear one of Mr. Clarkson's appalling anecdotes. Even the Home Secretary cannot forbid a Briton to make the jokes that please him. Nevertheless in his heart the old man was afraid. He did not attempt to control the business, and when he had made his partner really angry, he would say that he didn't mean anything by it, it was just his way.

Meanwhile James had arrived at a time of his life that he could discuss more fittingly with a wife on the sofa beside him than with a wife on a separate chair. Julius Trent, afterwards such a nuisance, then so charming, introduced his friend James to his parents, and old Mr. Trent took a fancy to the young man. Old Mr. Trent approved of young men who worked very hard and showed every intention of succeeding, and he had been amused by Julius's account of Mr. Clarkson and the factory inspector. He also enjoyed discussing books with James, for in those days James took an interest in political theory. He hadn't much time to think of these things himself, but there were plenty of men who had, and surely some day one of them would produce the simple, gentlemanly, inexpensive solution of social problems that would relieve an overworked business man of further anxiety.

Old Mr. Trent, like many people who have few chances of talking over the subjects that interest them, had invented two or three systems that would abolish bad times and make England prosperous for evermore. The trouble with most of them was that they involved a good deal of compulsion at the outset—before people had learned to appreciate their excellence—and Mr. Trent was against compulsion in any form. It was this that had made him give up his great Malthusian scheme of grading workmen according to their capacity and regulating their families in a corresponding manner. He still hoped that a more enlightened generation might adopt it of their own free will, and to this end he subscribed considerable sums to a Neo-Malthusian journal. But the plan to which he had finally devoted his declining years might perfectly well, if only the Government would leave off wasting their time, be put into effect at once. It consisted in taking a tenth of the capital of anybody who had got a sufficient quantity, buying gold with it, and depositing the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England. It would not be at all an oppressive measure, for the resulting prosperity and expansion of credit would far more than compensate everybody concerned. After only two or three years he was sure that no more compulsion would be necessary, for here you would be dealing, not with uneducated workmen, blind to their own interests, but with astute financiers and men of business. The only difficulty would be that other countries might get hold of the idea and refuse to sell gold. But let his hearers take heart, recent discoveries all went to show that there was a far greater quantity of gold in various parts of the planet—mostly, by the direct favour of God, British possessions—than one was apt to imagine. If James would glance at these geological maps....

James was not always allured by these problems, but he appreciated Mr. Trent's library and the comfortable, sufficiently cultured air of Mr. Trent's house. The manners that prevailed in it seemed to James very gracious and elegant—they were in any case a pleasant change from the manners of Mr. Clarkson. He also grew fond of Mrs. Trent, who was kind to him, and he fell in love with whatever her mother and her governess allowed him to see of Mary. She was sixteen when he saw her first, very pretty, very quiet, very easily made to blush. She would laugh delightfully, as if she could not help it, at the clever, witty things James said, and then stop suddenly, and droop her head over her embroidery, until James surpassed himself to make her look up again. They were engaged when she was eighteen, and at the end of another year he felt that he was in a position to marry her. Mr. and Mrs. Trent believed in girls marrying young, while they would still view facts in a romantic light and before they had become unable to adapt their dispositions to those of their husbands. James's only regret was that he could not present himself as the sole owner of his growing business, but old Clarkson persistently demanded not only three thousand pounds for what had only cost him fifteen hundred but an extra five hundred for the formula of his Ginger Cordial. Nobody wanted his cordial, but he would not sell one without the other. That he would sell at all was due to the fact that James was still bent on developing the business instead of considering all the returns as profit.

Neither James nor Mary was ever sure of the motives that led Mr. Trent to make his daughter part owner of the "Rule Britannia." But they believed that the idea must have occurred to him first on the day when he met Mr. Clarkson in James's office. The senior partner's clothes were particular greasy that day, he had been drinking a good deal of Ginger Cordial with a little rum in it to make it more satisfying, and he insisted on showing the visitor some picture postcards that he considered truly comic. Mr. Trent was a fastidious little man, and as an estate agent he had come into contact with some very good people. He asked James at the time whether he ever saw Mr. Clarkson outside the factory, and James's reply of "Not if I can help it!" may not have seemed sufficiently reassuring. At any rate when James came to sign his marriage settlements he found that Mr. Clarkson had sold his share in the firm and his rights over Clarkson's Ginger Cordial for £3,500, the said rights to revert to him if the said cordial were ever sold under any other name, and that Mrs. James Heyham would in future be entitled to half the profits of the business.

After his marriage James worked harder than ever. Old Mr. Trent made an excellent father-in-law; he never interfered but he was always ready to lend James a hundred or so when mineral-water provided some sudden opportunity for a rich man to become a little richer. James found considerable moral satisfaction in repaying these loans. Mrs. Trent was sympathetic, helpful when Trent and Laura were born, and an unfailing example to Mary of how a wife should cherish and revere a husband. The Heyhams lived frugally, for the firm was still absorbing every penny that could be spared. Bread companies and milk companies were beginning to make fortunes out of shops for the sale of tea and light refreshments. James did not see why a similar venture should not succeed with mineral water for its basis. The "Rule Britannia" was turned into a private company under the name of "Imperial Refreshments Limited." Mr. Trent lent James the necessary capital and three tea-shops were established.

The tea-shops flourished and their numbers grew. Before long they were the most important part of the business. They did not provide the market for mineral waters that James had expected, but, though it seemed a little perverse of them, they were steady customers for the Ginger Cordial. This proved to be a heartening mixture, unnecessarily complicated perhaps, but undoubtedly with an interest of its own. In summer it imparted life to our Imperial Fresh Fruit Drinks, in winter, hot, it made clients feel brisk but not aggressive. James hated the sight of it, and its smell gave him a headache.

Now he still worked, still looked for opportunities, still kept an open mind. But it was with the ease and amplitude of recognised success. Worries came and went, weather and government interfered with prices, this man or that turned out bad, neighbourhoods altered, and rivals had bright ideas. But at the bottom the Imperial was sound and everybody knew it. Its methods and its machinery alike were the most up-to-date in the trade. Its premises were spotless, the materials it put into its products were absolutely the best that could be done for the money. And James took trouble to please his customers' minds as well as their bodies. The tea-shops had begun in a somewhat gloomy fashion; the glass doors between their windows had been darkened with large bills of fare, the upper panes of the windows themselves had been pasted over with labels, and below a Japanese tea-set on one side and some fruit and a boiled ham on the other had been thrown into relief by red plush curtains. Inside there had been bamboo furniture, black screens with gold birds on them, and an occasional artificial palm. But as James rose in the world his taste improved. With the changes in Mary's furniture at home the decorative scheme of the tea-shops changed too, until now they were models of charm and sanitation. Their walls were white and their paint was black. Customers' hats and coats were massed in places where they did not destroy the effect. The tables had tops that were excellent imitations of green marble and as light as wood to shift—heavy wood. There were casement windows, and in winter the curtains and the crockery were cherry-coloured, in summer they were white with a border of green leaves. Trent thought this extravagant, but James preferred to consider the beneficial effect on the æsthetic natures of his customers. Besides it pays in the long run to be distinctive. Even the company's monogram had been carefully designed to add to the beauty of these favoured places. In short, they looked like shops where you might well have paid sixpence for your cup of tea, and they, were shops, as the posters by real artists reminded you, where you could get a superlative cup for twopence.

The Imperial manufactured their own china, under another name, and held the patent rights of the marble substitute. In the newer shops they were paving the floors with it, green and white. The fact that several other restaurants and tea-shops came innocently to him for their cups and saucers gave James a good deal of quiet pleasure, though he didn't attend to that side of the business himself. Nor, as the china factory was naturally not in London, would Mary be likely to have dealings with it, though they employed a good many girls. But he could assure her that go where she would, at any time, whether she was expected or not expected, she wouldn't find a corner of the Imperial's premises that she would be ashamed to see in her own house. James knew all about dirt, and he didn't believe in it.

[CHAPTER IV]

THE next thing to do, clearly, was to visit the tea-shops. James took Mary to the Oxford Circus depot himself. He was particularly proud of the Oxford Circus depot, because the girls wore frilled aprons and green dresses, and the washing-up was done by machines. Their gay attire was a recognition of the girls' good looks—they had been chosen by a manager who was a real lady and had an eye for a pretty face. She explained the thing to Mary:—At Oxford Circus their clientele was superior to most, and the girls came to them not so much to get married, as they came to shops where the customers were chiefly clerks, but because they liked the feeling of being in fashionable life. So they naturally appreciated the chance of looking more elegant than black woollen dresses permit. Only last year one of them had left to be a mannequin at Ormesby's. A gentleman from Ormesby's had been lunching at the depot and noticed her figure. And of course that had made the others more anxious than ever to be smart. It was very natural, and one couldn't be hard on them, especially as the ladies liked it so—they felt more as if they were in Bond Street, though the prices were the Imperial's usual prices—but she did have to say a word sometimes about high heels. Mrs. Heyham could see for herself that it wasn't safe carrying trays up and down those marble stairs with high heels. And then there was the tap, tap, tapping. Besides, high heels give so much trouble with feet, and they had to think of that, if Mrs. Heyham would forgive her seeming vulgar.

James nodded hastily at this, and changed the subject. He liked to think that the manager looked after the girls' health, but really their feet were not things that he cared to discuss. He preferred to contemplate their trim waists and the clever manipulation of their hair. That was another point in which they differed from the attendants in less stylish places, and Mrs. Creemer, her voice dropped in a manner suited to James's modesty, did not fail to mention it. It appeared that she had said only yesterday, "Miss Perkins, my dear, off with them pads! A simple side parting and a wave over the ear is what you want. Just a touch of black velvet, perhaps, as you're fair, but nothing showy!" She did her best to take only superior young ladies, but you couldn't expect them all to have taste like your own.

Mary would have felt a little overwhelmed by Mrs. Creemer if James had not taken her so coolly. James, of course, met women like this every day. He was their employer, he had business dealings with them, though she had never realised it. There was nothing about James to make her realise it. He lived in this atmosphere, but it did not touch him. Mary looked quickly, almost shyly, at her admirable husband; then she brought her thoughts back to the matter in hand. After all, the woman might be vulgar, but she was also praiseworthy; she seemed to have both a kind heart and sound common-sense. That was a great deal, and meanwhile Mary could sincerely praise the Oxford Circus tea and smile at the Miss Somerville who brought it.

This visit was a social affair, a mere introduction and Miss Percival had not come. James, naturally, did not always care to have Miss Percival about. But next day investigation began in earnest. Mary chose, this time, a branch in Chelsea, and in the early afternoon she drove there with James's order, Miss Percival and Miss Percival's list of questions. It was a long list and Mary did not feel sure that all the questions were necessary. But she said nothing, for she respected experience and certified ability.

The manager of depot C.L. was a harassed looking lady who received them with an air almost of helplessness. Certainly let them come in, and she would do what she could to tell them anything they wanted to know. Perhaps—brightening—they would sit down and let her give them a cup of tea!

Mary praised the tea as she had already praised it, and as she would continue, steadily, to praise it during the next six months. Then she asked the waitress, a pretty girl of about eighteen, what her name was and whether she was happy.

The girl said that her name was Florrie Wilson. She did not seem to know whether she was happy or not. Pressed, she said yes, that she was a lucky one, she had been taken on straight in Coronation year, when there were the Colonial troops in Chelsea and people coming to see them, so she hadn't had to do her year's washing-up. And then Miss Sower getting ill and leaving she was kept on. She liked Chelsea, she thought it was gayer than Maida Hill where she lived.

She worked from eight in the morning to nine at night, with the intervals that the law prescribes, and she came and went very comfortably in the blue motor-bus that runs from the World's End. Florrie's mother hadn't at first quite approved of Florrie's going about so much alone in motor-buses, but then Florrie's mother was a real lady, only her health had failed because she was left a widow. And Florrie had come to work in the depot not because she needed work, but because she liked her independence and a bit of fun. She left home at seven sharp, and she got back about ten. She had Sundays off, and alternate Bank Holidays.

At this point Mrs. Black, the manager, intervened and sent Florrie off to a customer. The manager was of opinion, she said, that Florrie was a talker. She preferred, it was clear, that their information should come reliably from her rather than erratically from Miss Florrie Wilson.

Mary, left to herself, would not have submitted Mrs. Black to any very fierce ordeal. She was feeling pleased, pleased with Florrie for looking so pretty and speaking so nicely, and with herself for obtaining so much information in so pleasant a way. She was glad that she had resolved to make this inquiry, it was interesting, more than interesting, fascinating, and it would not be impossible to make a success of it. But there, at her elbow, was Miss Percival, and on the table before Miss Percival was the list. Mary was reminded that they were there to be thorough and scientific and with the smile of one who does her duty she intimated that Miss Percival's moment had come.

The inquisition began happily. Yes, it was perfectly true that the company only took girls who were not dependent on their wages for their living. Not that they gave bad wages, but you couldn't live as a young lady ought to live on eleven shillings a week, bonus instead of tips, making it up to twelve. The manager thought that was good money, she herself had begun—in another company—as kitchen help at seven shillings, and kitchen work was man's work, not girl's work at all.

Mary thought that sounded satisfactory. If the girls' parents supported them you could set that off against their board and lodging, and that left them with what any of her younger servants would have considered excellent wages. She was surprised when she saw the expression with which Mrs. Black received the next question. Mary had hardly noticed it on the list, but Mrs. Black seemed to think that it was deliberately and pointedly offensive. How did she find out whether the girls were being supported at home or not? She went round to take their characters, just as any lady would, as Mrs. Heyham would herself. And she could assure Mrs. Heyham's secretary that she was just as particular as any lady. How did she know by that that they were being supported?—Well, she used her common-sense. It might be friends of the girls having her on, of course, but she didn't think so. She couldn't be hard on them, of course, she wasn't that sort of woman. In fact, she was only a plain woman not accustomed to answering questions. All the same she knew, though she mightn't be able to explain exactly how, that there wasn't one girl in the place who wasn't living in a comfortable respectable home. She had worked for the Imperial fourteen years, and Mrs. Heyham might take it from her that she knew the difference between a young lady and a low common girl.

Miss Percival took this down without any change of expression and Mary said kindly that the girls looked very happy and contented. Mrs. Black propitiated, replied she did her best for them, and Miss Percival proceeded to the matter of aprons.

Aprons, it appeared, were a burning subject. Opinions differed as to who ought to supply the aprons, who ought to pay for them, who ought to pay for washing them, and how many aprons one ought to be called upon to wear in one week, supposing one were unlucky with splashing urns and dirty tables. Mrs. Black, apparently, was all for peace. She couldn't allow herself to be trampled on, but she didn't go looking for trouble. Some managers made the girls change if they got so much as a little water or milk down them that took the gloss off, but in her opinion, in Chelsea, there was no need except for real stains. And she must say she did not think that could be called unreasonable. For the other rules she was not responsible, they were the firm's regulations.

Mary was accustomed to regard difficulties like this from the employer's point of view, and she did not think the matter of great importance. Miss Percival passed on to the subject of fines for being late.

Here again it was admitted that some managers were tartars. In some tea-shops—not necessarily the Imperial's—the girls were treated really hard. But as long as the work did not suffer and the Inspector was pleased with her returns Mrs. Black did feel that five minutes sometimes in the morning might be passed over. She knew that she was giving herself away to Mrs. Heyham in saying so, but when a lady asked her a question no one should say that she didn't speak the truth. It occurred to her as an afterthought that there weren't any fines, of course, only part of the eleven shillings took the form of a bonus at the end of the weds if the girls had been punctual.

Mary thought that sounded very fair, Miss Percival nodded, and took it down. Among her other accomplishments was that of taking shorthand notes.

When all the questions had been answered, Mary, whose smile was becoming a little mechanical, rose to go. After all she had come to the tea-rooms in order to make life easier for the girls, not to ruffle the feelings of the managers. Miss Percival rose too, but instead of standing back while Mary said good-bye she turned to her employer with the suggestion that they should now see the washing-up.

Mary had forgotten the washing-up and she accepted the reminder as meekly as if it had been a rebuke. "Oh, yes, please, the washing-up!" she agreed.

Mrs. Black assented with a "Certainly if you would care to, Mrs. Heyham," that, together with the sweep of her skirt as she turned, demonstrated sufficiently that she took her orders from the lady and from the lady alone. She led them downstairs, past the kitchens, and Mary reproached herself for feeling glad that the kitchens were served by men and laid her under no obligation to enter them.

As they went the manager explained that it wasn't every company did things like the Imperial. Raised boards for the girls to stand on, and as much clean water as you liked, and a good big room with varnished walls. The manager, before she rose to that dignity, had washed up in places where you stood in a swamp and rats ran between your feet, and the water was more grease than water and as black as ink.

Mary shuddered, then she felt proud of James. They were downstairs now and the manager opened the door of the washing-up room. For a basement it was clean and light, but it was as damp as a bath-room after a hot bath. And it smelled, of stale food, of dirty water, of washing-powder, of well-worn clothes. Steam rose from the sinks, water dripped from the racks of clean china fixed to the walls, the floor was wet, and the paint on the woodwork glistened. There were six girls at work, two scouring saucepans and kitchen utensils, four handling the cherry-coloured china that looked so pretty against the white walls. Their faces were flushed and their hair hung limp over their foreheads.

"They come to this first," the manager was explaining, "and go upstairs afterwards."

The girls washed thoroughly and methodically. Mary felt certain that when the plates and cups left their hands, they were clean.

"That's what I call good conscientious work," she told Mrs. Black.

That lady brightened. "I do my best, Mrs. Heyham," she replied. "You'll not find a smear of mustard on a plate upstairs once in six months. And so it should be, with the beautiful water we get. And the linen the same, as much water as you like, and open-air drying. Customers say that what they get at home don't touch it."

At that moment Miss Percival, who had been watching one of the girls cleaning saucepans, intervened. "Do you have much fainting?" she asked.

"Never had such a thing!" Mrs. Black stared straight in front of her as if Miss Percival were disembodied. "At least," she added, with the air of one who was anxious to be absurdly truthful, "there was a young girl here who fainted once. I put it down to them silly corsets myself." She turned to Mary, as if to invite her sympathy.

The girl with the saucepans straightened herself and tried to appear thoroughly well. Mary, noticing her, looked round for a chair, but discovered that there was none.

"Oughtn't she to sit down for a minute?" she suggested. She felt sorry for the girl, who looked delicate.

"There again!" Mrs. Black's voice suggested that she was put out—"there's two chairs provided for this room, and if you'll believe me they puts them into the passage! Says they get in the way!"

Here one of the girls turned round. "'Tisn't us that puts them into the passage, Mrs. Black! It's the kitchen as takes them, as you know!"

"And what's the kitchen doing in here?" retorted Mrs. Black. "Anyway, you go along and get one for the lady!"

The girl protested. "It's as much as my life is worth to put my head inside the door!"

Her superior looked at her with that fine irony which only the powerful can afford. "I suppose you expect me to do your fetching and carrying," she was beginning, when a voice from the corner made her turn. By this time the girl with the saucepans had succeeded in making the sink and the wooden racks stand still instead of swooping and whirling round her. "Don't get no chair for me, Mrs. Black!" she urged. "I don't want to sit down. It was only a feeling of giddiness like, and if we gets a chair we'll have them fellows in here after it again!"

This seemed the general opinion of the room and Mrs. Black endorsed it.

"You might have the politeness to thank Mrs. Heyham!" she told the sufferer, and then turning to Mary, "What we have to put up with from that kitchen you'd never believe! Why, the girls don't dare go into the pantry to eat their dinner for fear of their impertinence! And good room as this is, it isn't a place for eating, with all the steam and the dirty plates. It puts you off!"

"But they oughtn't to eat in here!" Mary looked round with dismay.

It appeared that the washing-up girls were not supposed, strictly, to take their meals in the building at all, they were supposed to go home. But some of them lived far away, so Mrs. Black, if it hadn't been for the kitchen, would have let them have a bit of dinner in the pantry. The company allowed their employees to have food at half price. The waitresses ate their meals in the serving-room, or they could use the cloak-room, but they didn't care to have the washing-up girls about. They felt that what they had been through others could go through. Not that they were unkind girls, but that was how they saw it.

Again Mary felt very glad that she had come. She did not like annoying people and seeming inquisitive, but she was prepared to put up with anything that would really lead to good. And it was clear to her that there was a great deal that a tactful woman could do here. Some place must be managed where these poor girls could eat their dinner in peace, and they ought to sit at their work. She would tell Miss Percival to note those two points.

As they passed through the restaurant on the way out, Mary saw Florrie standing by one of the tables. Florrie smiled—she had an attractive smile—and Mary nodded and smiled back. She told herself that she would remember Florrie's name.

Mrs. Black took them to the door and said good-bye to them with a wonderful brightening and softening of manner. The gratitude which she expressed with great fervour was clearly not feigned, merely diverted from the providence which had brought her so creditably through a trying time. It would have been easier if she had known what Mrs. Heyham was after. Inspectors she could manage, none better, whether they were enemies from outside or so-called friends from headquarters, but Mary had puzzled her. She oughtn't perhaps to have let on about the girls' dinner, but she hadn't been able to resist the chance of a possible score off the kitchen. Mrs. Heyham herself was all right, she felt sure, but she didn't trust that secretary person. However, it was no use worrying—she banished any remaining uneasiness, when the visitors had gone, by telling Florrie to change her apron at once and never let Mrs. Black see her in such a rag again.

Mary settled herself comfortably in the car. "Of course this has been the most interesting day," she said. "It won't be so amusing when we've been to a dozen of them. I suppose they are all very much alike."

Miss Percival seemed to hesitate for a moment, then she spoke. "It depends a good deal on the manager I think. And in the B depots the wages and hours are different."

"What are the B depots?" Mary was alert to increase her knowledge.

"They're in poor neighbourhoods and open for supper as well. The girls work short hours one day and long the next and have lower wages, 10s. instead of 11s. They get off at five on short days but the work's harder."

Mary smiled at Miss Percival. "You must have studied the subject!" She was pleased to recognise such zeal and initiative.

Miss Percival looked at the note-book that she held in her lap. "Yes," she said, "I was investigating it some time ago—I've worked in two or three tea-shops myself. It's the only way of telling what the life is really like."

Mary looked at her. This was most interesting! "But how useful—" she began, then she checked herself. It would be better, perhaps, if she did not, at any rate for the present, accept information from Miss Percival. A friend of Rosemary's, she was certain to have theories about what she had seen. And James would rather, Mary felt sure, that his wife formed her own ideas from her own experience. She had better not even ask the secretary whether one of the shops she had worked in had been the Imperial's. Then she herself could not be biassed by Miss Percival's chance remarks. "It must have been very exciting," she finished kindly.

Miss Percival did not seem stirred by the memories of its excitements. "It was interesting," she said, and they talked of indifferent subjects for the rest of the drive.

When Mrs. Heyham, hearing voices, looked into the drawing-room on her way upstairs, she found Laura and Rosemary sitting over the fire. They jumped up. "Here she is!" Laura called to her. "Well, mother darling, I should love to think that you've unearthed a perfect hive of scandals! But I don't really believe that your mind is suspicious enough!"

Mary stood by the door for a moment smiling at them. "I am so glad you've come, my dear," she said; "I have some letters to write that will take a quarter of an hour, but if you can wait, Laura, I will come down and have another tea."

"But that's what I'm here for, darling, tea with you!" Laura blew a kiss to her mother before the door shut behind her. Then the two girls went back to their chairs. "She isn't suspicious enough—if there's anything to find out!" Laura added.

Rosemary laughed. "Miss Percival will do the suspicion. But it isn't a matter of finding out—it's merely seeing."

They were silent for a few minutes. Their minds were full of something else, of the delightful topic that they had been discussing—Anthony's career and Rosemary's future. Presently Laura leaned forward. "Rosemary," she said, "are you simply happy and nothing more, or do you find it all rather queer as well?"

Her shy tone made Rosemary feel a little shy. "How do you mean, queer?" she asked, avoiding Laura's eyes. Laura hesitated. "I think it's the way being in love makes you look at things that is so odd—as if nothing mattered but yourself and one other person and a bundle of feelings—what they feel and what you feel and what they feel about what you feel. It is queer—it's the right word—to find these extraordinary new emotions running all over your life. There doesn't seem anything for them to have come out of. I don't feel in the least, sometimes, as if they belonged to me—they've just appeared." She hesitated, and then frowned. It was not easy to find words for her meaning. "And yet because of them," she went on, as Rosemary did not speak, "the whole of the rest of the world seems insignificant and far away, and you've become in a sort of way unresponsive, unexpectant to it—it doesn't really matter. Not like the mornings when one used to wake up and think that anything—the most heavenly adventure—might happen that very day! One doesn't even want the adventures—it's like losing a whole lot of tiny delicate feelers, and getting instead of them a sort of anguished sensitiveness to one set of impressions."

She finished on a questioning note, but Rosemary did not look up. This was a discussion that she ought in theory to have welcomed eagerly. Laura was offering her a new outlook, fresh experience—she had always deplored the fact that women find it hard to be open or even candid with one another about their fundamental emotions. And now that this chance had come for a frank conversation with her sister she was embarrassed. She hoped that Laura would say more—she was ready to listen, with all the sympathy that she could command, to anything that Laura wished to say. But she could not join in, she could not apply Laura's wisdom to herself. She did not want to know, from Laura, what she was feeling or what she was going to feel. That belonged to no one but her and Anthony. Even remotely, Laura must not influence it. She had rather run blind and unwarned into the future than lose the privacy and mystery of her thoughts. Laura, after all, was her elder sister, capable of discussing her with their mother. She ignored her question. "You mean," she said, "that you leave off being interested in outside things."

Laura shook her head. "No, not exactly. You don't lose your interest, if it's really the things you were keen about and not the romance and excitement of being keen, but I think perhaps you grow more selfish towards them." She looked thoughtfully into the fire.

"I don't see why!" Rosemary was not of an age to be skilful at understanding other people's half-expressed subtleties.

Laura became conscious of her sister's reluctance. Rosemary must think, she told herself, that she was complaining! "I suppose," she said quickly, "that it's a phase women tend to go through. A phase of being absorbed in subjective emotional things rather than in objective intellectual ones. What made me think of it is that mother, thanks to your idea, may be going to come out of it. We shall be able to see at last what is really mother and what is only the attitude belonging to what she has been taught. The more I think of it the more splendid I think it will be for her."

Rosemary caught at this. "I am so glad! Only, Laura, did you notice what she said just now? I don't believe she's going to let us see anything at all!"

Laura laughed. "That's her darling conscience. It's father's business, and its black secrets are father's secrets. She won't tell us anything, but the point is that she will change. We have only to wait."

This was not enough for Rosemary. She had been hoping to hear exactly and in detail what Mary thought of the tea-shops and their implications. She had been hoping too, to slip into such talks a few incontrovertible general principles. She was not sure that without some such help Mary might not be carried away by her husband's point of view. "I hate waiting," she said, "it's dull. Trent waits."

Laura laughed.

[CHAPTER V]

IT was not until Mary, with her Miss Percival, had visited all the depots that she thought the moment had come for a conversation with James. Up to this time she had scarcely mentioned her activities to him. She did not wish to seem precipitate and she had felt, too, that constant references might worry him. But there was no reason now for putting it off any longer and every reason why the little reforms she had thought of should be carried through at once. She was planning, as well as these, a sort of convalescent home, a cottage by the sea where the palest, weakest girls might be given holidays. And she hoped, too, some day to suggest a system by which the girls should take turns to rest during the slack hours of the day. But she did not mean to say anything about that yet. Time enough when she had seen how James accepted the home and her other suggestions. She meant to ask him now for a better meal in the middle of the day, a nice room to eat it in, and proper regulation shoes. Also, though that might be impossible, where there were long flights of stairs there ought to be lifts for the trays. The matter of wages, in spite of Miss Percival's hints, she did not think important, as all the girls were being kept in their comfortable decent homes. Their wages, therefore, were merely pocket-money and it could not matter much that they had to pay for their fares to and from work and for the cuffs, caps, collars, and aprons supplied to them with the stuff for their black dresses, by the firm. They paid, too, for any food which they ate on the premises; the managers charged them half price for goods which, though not exactly stale, had lost that first exquisite freshness demanded by customers. They paid fines for breaking the rules, and an insurance of sixpence a week against breakages. The firm, its inspectors told Mary, lost heavily over this, but then it was composed of kind-hearted men, and not of ogres.

Mary's investigation was not yet complete for both she and Miss Percival thought that they ought to see something of the girls' home lives. Miss Percival, whom Mary saw to be a suspicious person, did not seem to attach much importance to the manager's declarations that the girls all came from happy, well-to-do homes. But then Miss Percival had seen such terrible things and read so many books upon Socialism that she probably confused the Imperial with less conscientious firms. Mary, on James's advice, had read no books on the subject. James had said that what he wanted were the little mother's own wise little thoughts, not a hash-up of other people's opinions. And Mary had not formed the habit of going to books for information.

Now that the moment had come for a conversation she found herself shrinking a little from the criticism not only of James but of Trent. Trent had regarded her during these months with a disapproving air. He was suffering, Mary thought, from Lady Hester's mother, who, though she sometimes permitted his presence, had a way of successfully repressing his suit. And Trent's fondness for Lady Hester was based on just those qualities in her which would prevent her from rising to the vulgar heights of a row with her mother. Mary fancied that this source of irritation was blackening Trent's view of her own behaviour. If so, she did not see that she was bound to run the risk of annoying him further. To have Trent sitting there annoyed from the beginning would make her too nervous to do herself justice with James. She finally chose, therefore, a time when Trent was out. It was an evening when James had said that he had no work to do, and after dinner she collected Miss Percival's careful notes and went down into the study. The study was a more business-like room than her own or the drawing-room, and one less associated with moments of sentiment. She did not want James to be sentimental that night, she wanted him to be earnestly reasonable, to listen to her as if she were a man. She knew exactly what she meant to say, but she was afraid of being turned aside and only remembering her best points afterwards.

James was detached and good-humoured, perfectly ready to talk things over with her. He seemed to think that it was really very creditable that she should have stuck to the thing like this, and taken such an interest in it. One gets rather too much into the habit of assuming that women do not care about serious things. Well then, to what revolutionary courses did she—dear little person that she was—wish to commit her wretched husband and his old-fashioned business?

She told him that she thought it was a wonderful business—she did. It had touched her imagination, it had filled her with respect for men. This was what men could do when they bent their brains to women's work. Mary remembered her own early struggles with cook-generals on the battle-ground of tea-trays, the drillings, the chivyings, the exhortations, her triumph on days when the silver was clean and the cloth smooth and the bread and butter nicely cut. The making of the tea itself had been her own charge, that pouring of boiling water onto measured leaves was too delicate, too sacred, for the hired and casual fingers of a servant. But let a man turn his attention to the matter and straightway, at Chiswick, in the Strand, at Islington, he could command ten thousand tea-trays each with its pretty plate bearing three impeccable slices of brown bread and butter and three of white, with its six gay pastries elegantly set out, with its unvarying, unsurpassable cup of tea. Woman fussed and there was a table, more or less adequately equipped; man considered and he found a formula and a tradition to which tables conformed in their pleasant hospitality, here or a hundred miles away, yesterday or ten years hence. It seemed to Mary that few tasks could be more noble, more satisfying, than thus to provide a sovereign democracy with dainty and nourishing food. Now that she had seen his great work she could share in the pride that exalted James when he spoke of the bad old times when a single beefy beery meal cost more than you would spend nowadays on a week's supply of stimulating coffee and poached eggs on toast. It was no small thing, and she felt it, to be the wife of a man like James.

James accepted her admiration. It is pleasant, when you show your manhood's work to your wife, to find that she appreciates its greatness. "Found it clean, eh?" he asked her, in a tone that anticipated her reply.

She had not the heart to tell him that perfect cleanliness is inhuman; she relinquished too, her protest against the dubious eggs that made such light sponge-cakes. She must be a woman of business, the kitchens were not within the range of her inquiry. She must not depart from her proper sphere merely because she had seen a kitchen boy sticking his fingers into some dough and licking them clean. That might happen anywhere; it was one of the things that civilised people agree to ignore. So she told James that his business had given her quite new ideas of discipline and method. After all, practically everybody makes their sponge-cakes with eggs that you wouldn't use for boiling. James couldn't be expected to be quite different from anybody else. We all eat game.

James took that easily. "And now what is it we've got to do if we're not to forfeit the old lady's good opinion?" he asked.

She had made a list on a sheet of paper, and she told him. She began with the little home at the seaside—she knew he couldn't object to that. The only thing he had to do was to promise to keep the places of the girls who were there open for them. She would pay for it—it would be a real pleasure to her—and she would undertake the whole responsibility.

She watched him anxiously while she spoke, but he was not looking at her. He was looking at the fire.

In the next place, the girls oughtn't to stand so much. Let him ask a doctor, or even the managers—anyone who understood the work and its effect on women—it really was harmful to them, and they ought also to wear proper shoes.

His face changed a little. It would be perfectly easy to make them wear regulation shoes.

The next point was the dinner—and the room where they could sit comfortably. She seemed to see, suddenly, that it was no use mentioning the lifts. That was all, she said.

James sat forward and looked at her. She saw at once that he was not laughing or feeling unduly affectionate. In fact his voice sounded a little sharp.

"My dear little girl," he laid it down, "we can't make a house have a room that it hasn't got, can we?"

Mary looked back at him courageously. "I thought that perhaps you could take a room outside, or perhaps partition off part of one of the tea-rooms. Some of them are very large."

James chose to answer the last part of this remark.

"And that's why the customers come to them, my dear," he told her more urbanely, but not, she suspected, in a really pleasant spirit. "People hate small, hot, stuffy rooms. Imagine yourself passing by the door of two shops and looking in—wouldn't you choose the one that seemed wide and airy and high rather than the one that was poky?"

Mary stuck to her point. "Then the room outside?"

This time he was frankly irritable. "If you knew a little more of business conditions you would understand that what you are asking is impossible. In business parts of London there aren't 'rooms outside' waiting to be rented next to each of our shops. They're not to be had. Space is gold. We have to wait years sometimes before we can get the sites we want for the depots themselves. Do you think we had only to ask to get a frontage on Oxford Circus?"

When Mary had come into the room she had come humbly. She had been prepared to be told that her demands were out of the question and she had not intended to be obstinate or wrangle about them. Now she did feel obstinate, and she felt too, that she had not been fairly met.

"Of course I can quite understand that it isn't easy to arrange," she admitted, "but I think that girls working as hard as that ought to have some little corner where they can be private and comfortable."

James found himself irritated as he was seldom irritated—even by Trent, or even by the damned fools who wanted him to allow his people to form Trade Unions. "Good Heavens!" he said, "do you imagine I pay them to be private and comfortable! I pay them to do my work! When they go home they can be as comfortable as they please. As long as they are on my premises they ought either to be working or waiting their turn to work—and I'll see that they are!" He almost glared at her.

Mary said nothing. She was astonished.

After a moment James was astonished too. He could never remember speaking to her like this before. It cost him very little effort to admit that he had been hasty. "What a shame," he said, "to fall on the old lady like that because she isn't very experienced in business ways! We asked her for her advice, and now we rate her because some of it isn't quite practicable. I was very bad-tempered, my dear, and I hope you will forgive me. Suppose we talk about one of your other points—you said something about shoes—and sitting down."

Mary did not want to leave the matter of rooms. By this time it seemed to her horrible that when the girls found time for a meal they should have to eat it in a cupboard that served for a cloak-room, at a table in the china room, or standing in the passage. Other firms provided dining-rooms. But when James was looking kindly at her, frankly and generously apologising, offering peace, she could not refuse it because she, being a woman, wanted to worry her point—to "nag."

She told him with a smile as generous as his, that she would discuss standing, or shoes, or anything else that he wanted.

Here James was at his best, quick, attentive, sympathetic. He praised her womanly insight and expressed his gratitude for the trouble she had taken. He understood at once that the girls' feet ought to be looked after, even on the low ground of self-interest, and he told her that he would fix up with a firm that supplied ward shoes to nurses and see that the girls each bought a pair. As for the standing, she laid great stress on it, so he would stretch a point and give way to her. He didn't believe the girls came to any harm by it and it was a fact that customers didn't like the look of girls in uniform lolling on the chairs doing nothing. If Mary ever noticed, no big shop ever allowed its girls to be idle. A customer who came in when the shop was empty would always find the assistants busy at something, in spite of the Shop Acts. But still one wanted to keep them fresh for the busy times—he'd have a circular drafted, and if Mary liked to look at it before it went out to the managers, she could. After all, he'd heard that they were doing great things in America by studying the workers.

Mary thanked him, and then, as if his amiability were still a little stretched, he suggested that they should defer the consideration of her other proposals, as he had one or two things to see to. So would she, dear old thing that she was, let him kiss her, and then leave him.

She went to him for her kiss, and discovered that he was more upset than she had imagined. His hand trembled as he smoothed back her hair, and he murmured over her head that he was a brute, a savage, a horror to bully the most precious thing in his life. As a rule this emotion of his would have melted her; she would have remembered, with a rush of feeling, that after all a man is only a great child, something very simple and clumsy and pathetic, but to-day she stood apart from his remorse and she found herself laughing lightly, telling him that he was a funny sensitive old thing, and that, if he would only think of what he had promised, he would see that she had every reason to be pleased with herself.

Then she left him, still a little absurdly unassured, and went upstairs to her own room. It was only a quarter of an hour since she had gone downstairs to James's study. Then she had thought of James as the beneficent, all-wise authority from whose words there was no appeal; now she was puzzled about him, thinking him over. Why had he been angry with her—what had made him angry? It wasn't that she had chosen a bad moment, she couldn't believe that it was her manner, for that never annoyed him; why was he angry because she had wanted the girls to have a proper room where they might go? She could understand his rejecting her plan, but not his being angry about it. It was not like him; it did not agree with her conception of him as a man who was not only generous but singularly patient and just. After all these years she couldn't be wrong about that—it was absurd to suggest, merely because he had shown momentary irritation, that he had an unknown side that his work called out, but that she, so far, had never seen. She pulled herself up. It was not loyal of her to hunt after this fashion for faults in James. He had been a little sharp—for a minute—and it was her duty, as it ought to have been her natural instinct, to forget a trifling occurrence which had pained him already far more than was necessary.

The only serious thing about the whole incident was that she was afraid that now she would not get her room. It was a great pity; she still felt that the girls ought to have it, but she must, she really must, remember that James knew best. There was no other basis on which her enterprise could possibly be successful.

Nevertheless she could not force her thoughts away from the picture of James's frowning peremptory face, and as she considered it, the whole interview took on, more and more, a flavour of oddness, of unreason. She had lived in complete intimacy with James for more than twenty years, and yet she was left to infer his real thoughts, in a moment of significant emotion, from the twitch of his mouth, the key of his voice, the physical symbols by which his body betrayed him hardly more successfully, on this occasion, to her than to a stranger. It was strange that she should have no more direct access to him than this method of inference, of guesswork, this clumsy process whereby a thought before it can reach another mind must first translate itself into terms of sense. She had read poems that told of lovers whose spirits flamed so brightly that these dark barriers became translucent, shot through with the soul's light, a medium to its ardour. Those beings had known one another as poets know nature, as mystics know God. But such ecstasies were foreign to her, she felt herself to be too prim, too frail, too anxious, for the great fires of the spirit. Her experience had been—would always be—the common experience of common folk. Her wisdom consisted in the building and maintaining of barriers between herself and the sordid, the vicious, the vulgar. She had built barriers round her love, she had kept it fine and pure, untroubled by anything but its own tenderness. She had not asked for ecstasy, she had not asked for knowledge, she had been content to trust. She must continue to trust, she must realise that she did not know her husband, she must let her affection bridge the gaps in her understanding. That was the way of life she had made for herself.

Then from the deep place in her mind where she had thrust it, her uneasiness returned. Why had he been angry? She stirred in her chair, and the movement made her realise that she was still holding her forlorn little bundle of notes. She rose and put them back into their pigeon-hole with a slight feeling of discomfort. To-morrow was one of Miss Percival's days, and she would have to make her admission of defeat. Miss Percival never said much, but Mary's impression was that she cared a good deal about the room.

The proper thing to do now would have been to turn her mind to something else. Unfortunately Mary's knitting did not hold her attention and she did not get as far as finding her place in the novel which succeeded it. Why had James been unreasonable? Why hadn't he met her calmly with his excellent and conclusive arguments? Must she be prepared for a similar reception when she spoke to him about the girls' dinner? She could not banish her troubled sense of his hostility.

While she was wondering, one of the maids brought her a letter. It was a letter in a mauve envelope, unstamped, and the maid said that it had been delivered by a little boy who wanted to give it to the lady himself. But it being late in the evening the maid had sent him away. The marks left by the little boy's finger and thumb on the paper gave some colour of prudence to her decision.

The sheet of paper inside the mauve envelope was white, and the writing was in pencil. It was not very easy to read.

100, EXE ST.,

Maida Hill.

DEAR AND HONOURED MADAM:

I venture to write to you and Mrs. Black the manager at our place you know was kindly give me your address. Or I should not have known how to find you. Honoured madam might I venture to ask you to grant me an interview? I do not want to Take advantage of your kindness only there is no one I can turn to except Mrs. Black and she must think of her place so will you please forgive me troubling you and don't deny me this.

Your obedient servant in great distress,

FLORRIE WILSON.

It was too late to do anything that night—and there might not be anything serious to do. Mary told the maid that she could go. She remembered Florrie; she was the child with the nice smile and the pretty flower-like face whom she had seen in the Chelsea depot six months ago. When Miss Percival came next day they would go to Exe Street together. The only thing to be decided now was whether she should show the letter to James. She decided, after slight hesitation, that she would not.

[CHAPTER VI]

MARY woke next morning to a feeling of uneasiness, so that she knew, before she could remember why, that she must brace herself to meet a disagreeable day. Then the sight of her maid, trim and composed, looping back her window curtains, reminded her of Florrie's letter. That was bad enough, but she soon realised that she could only turn from it to other anxieties. What had happened to the poor pretty child, what was James thinking, and what was Mary herself going to say to Miss Percival?

She tried to dismiss this last annoyance by telling herself that she was a coward. Miss Percival, as a secretary, could not seem curious about what her employers, in their Olympian privacy, had said to one another, and she must necessarily put the best face on what she was told. But this was small relief to Mary, who had so little need to dread harsh words that she had trained herself to reckon with thoughts. She now felt the weight of Miss Percival's private disappointment more severely than that lady seemed likely to feel it for herself. But after all, this was nothing compared to her disloyalty to James. She had pretended that she did not hear James when he opened her door last night, and he had gone away, believing that she was asleep. She dressed quickly now, to avoid meeting James in her own room. In the dining-room she would be better able to persuade herself that she hadn't, practically, deceived him. Keeping back Florrie's letter she did not consider deceit; she was accustomed to use her judgment in the matter of shielding James from worry, but the other affected their emotional relations.

In the dining-room she found Rosemary, unexpectedly in time for breakfast. It was one of Rosemary's charming gifts that she could saunter downstairs at noon with the air of dewy freshness proper to an Arcadian milkmaid. Trent was there too, for Trent counterbalanced his sister's masculine carelessness of time by a beautiful punctuality. Their presence shielded Mary from the affection which James, had they been by themselves, would certainly have shown. After her first relief it seemed terrible to Mary that she should be thus welcoming obstacles between herself and the display of James's love. She tried in vain to assure herself that she didn't feel guilty, that her heart beat faster not for James, but for poor little Florrie, that if it cost her an effort to look up from her coffee pot it was merely because she did not wish to trouble her daughter with the anxieties that destroyed her own appetite. She knew all the same that somewhere, in her thoughts, in her actions, she had overstepped an ancient boundary; if she was not yet disloyal she was running the risk of disloyalty. At any rate she was allowing herself, unknown to James, a new attitude of mind which, when he came to realise it, he might not share.

In a moment James would be there! Mary forced her mind back to the table in front of her, poured herself out some coffee, put in two lumps of the sugar she detested, drank it, and then blushed crimson at the proof she found of her own preoccupation. She looked up, instinctively, but no one had noticed her. Rosemary was eating bacon; Trent was reading the Times with an air of kindly tolerance. Trent would dearly have loved to be a Unionist, for the Unionist assumptions soothed his gentlemanly instincts, but he could not see his way to anything but loss from a protective tariff. Trent dealt in luxuries; if he charged more for his cakes his customers would eat fewer. He could picture them, in all their plebeian meanness, eyeing the dish and stilling their appetites with the saw that too many sweet things are bad for the teeth. But the article he was reading did not allude to this cause of stumbling, and his complacent smile turned Mary's uneasiness to a wave of irritation. Why, she asked herself, had she a fool for a son? What was there wrong with him, or with his surroundings, that after twenty-six years of life, with health, with plenty of money, his mind should have acquired nothing from experience but the simple cunning of an animal? She seemed, for the moment, to detach herself from Trent, to see him as coolly as though she were not his mother, pledged to admire him. His fault, poor youth, was that of being slow to receive impressions. He had will and capacity and application, good qualities that came from within, but the walls of his mind had no windows. His dogmas, his attitudes, he took from the children with whom he had been at school; when Trent was an old man his spirit would still be that of a little boy in a lower form. Other women congratulated her upon having a son so handsome, with such good brains, who would deign to become his father's right hand and live quietly at home. Other women's sons went into the army, at best, or they brushed their hair back from their foreheads and spent money in ways their mothers couldn't approve, or, having brains, they caused great anxiety by thinking with them.... Mary had always pitied the mothers of these young men, but now, with a pang, she realised that beneath their smoothness they might have pitied her, have thanked heaven that their boys weren't sticks like poor Mrs. Heyham's.

At this point Trent put down his Times and asked her pleasantly for some more coffee. Mary, as she took his cup, felt a wave of self-reproach. What had happened that she should be bitter like this? He was a good boy, a dear boy, as handsome as possible, and as fond of her, and for his affection she had given him secret contempt. She was, as a matter of fact, the luckiest woman she knew. She looked across at Rosemary, to fortify this feeling, and was rewarded by a pleasant picture. The blue dress the child wore showed the clear tones of her skin and the long lines of her chin and throat. Mary loved Rosemary's chin; there was a soft place underneath it where she had always kissed her when she was a baby. The engagement ring Mary hated was out of sight. That was a pretty thing to have at one's breakfast table—Mary felt that she must talk and be cheerful instead of letting the meal pass in silence. "Have either of you seen your father?" she said, to this end.

Rosemary looked up. "He's gone. He had something to see to down at the works. He had breakfast at eight. And he wants your car at twelve as Trent is using his to-day."

To Mary this came as a fresh proof of her own unkindness. Poor James, away working for them all before she was down, gone without a kiss or a good-bye because he was considerate of her sleep! Gone without a suspicion that his wife had been criticising him and practically lying to him! Mary's impulse to talk passed. She was humbled; she hardly felt relieved when she realised that she would not have to face him until a day lay between her and her deceit.

Meanwhile Rosemary had come to the end of the table and was bending down to kiss her mother. "Good-bye, darling!" she was saying, "I'll be back to dinner on Monday. I'm going for a walk in the Mendips with Margaret, you know. I've never seen them; they ought to be lovely in this weather."