The Seven Ages of Woman

THE
SEVEN AGES
OF WOMAN

By COMPTON MACKENZIE

Author of "Carnival," "Sinister Street," etc.

TORONTO

McCLELLAND and STEWART, Limited

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1923, by

Martin Seckar

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Chapter One

THE INFANT

THE SEVEN AGES OF WOMAN

Chapter One: The Infant

On a June morning in the year 1859 Sir Richard Flower of Barton Flowers in the county of Southampton decided that the weather was propitious for his annual progress on horseback round the confines of his demesne. The order was given to saddle his gray gelding; Lady Flower was informed that her husband would dine two hours later than usual, and upon her expressing alarm at the prospect of so long a fast for him, she was reassured by a farther announcement that he would fortify himself against the strain of waiting until six o'clock for his dinner with light refreshment at one of the outlying farms. Lady Flower sent back word to say how much she regretted not having known of Sir Richard's expedition earlier in order that she might have made an effort to overcome her headache and bid him farewell in person. To this the baronet replied with a solemn admonition to her ladyship's maid that her ladyship must on no account do anything to make her headache worse. The exchange of courtesies being thus complete, Sir Richard mounted his gray gelding and set out, pausing for a moment at the top of the drive to look back at the Hall and respond with his crop to a handkerchief that fluttered from an upper window. In the manner of shaking his crop Sir Richard succeeded in conveying a reproof for the indiscretion of rising from bed, affection for his beloved wife, and gratification at the devotion displayed for himself. Then he turned his horse's head to the left and cantered down a grassy avenue between ancient oak trees.

Sir Richard was accustomed to give much thought to his position as holder of one of the oldest baronetcies in England, to the responsibilities that such a position laid upon himself, to the beauty and fertility of his demesne, to the timbered glories of his Hall, and to the honorable record of his family; but on the day annually devoted to riding round his ten thousand acres he never allowed himself to think about anything else. He even went so far, when in the depths of the wood neither squirrel moved nor bird chattered and there was none but the gray gelding to overhear him, as to cry aloud in exultation the motto of his house Floreant Flores. On this day dedicated to himself, his family, and his land, Sir Richard indulged in so many whimsicalities of behavior that an observer might have supposed him the prey of madness or the victim of degraded superstition. Thus at one point he dismounted from his horse and, kneeling in the middle of the ride, placed an outspread palm upon the cushions of moss and incorporated the thousands of green and golden stars within his allegiance. He went farther; he laid bare the earth beneath and commanded a congregation of disturbed millipedes to acknowledge him as master. He made with his hands a cup to contain the black earth, and let it trickle through his fingers as a miser might play with his gold. "Mine," he said aloud, and stood for a moment in amazement at one who owned not merely all the green world within sight, but four thousand miles of unimaginable territory beneath his feet. "Mine," he repeated, "and after me John, and after John another Richard. Praise God that I appreciate the state of life to which He has called me;" with this apostrophe the baronet swept off his high silk hat to salute his patron.

Sir Richard kept such extravagance of speech and gesture for the solitude of the woodland. No sooner had he emerged into one of the deep, hazel-bordered lanes that intersecting his demesne reminded him, deserted though they were, of the world beyond his boundaries, than he became the least fantastic inhabitant of that decorous countryside of well-tilled farms and preserved coverts. Sir Richard was close on sixty; but his slim figure, upright carriage, and clear-cut features enhanced by iron-gray whiskers, bushy enough to show that he was not afraid of the fashion and yet not so full as to mark him down the slave of that fashion, made him appear younger at a period when twenty-five looked middle-aged. Every good horseman gives the impression of being part of his steed, and Sir Richard on his gray gelding, with his gray whiskers and gray riding breeches and gray frieze tail-coat was as natural a centaur as Chiron himself.

"Good morning, Sir Richard."

The baronet pulled up to exchange a word with the first of his tenant farmers he was to meet that day, a bull-necked, stubby man who was leaning over a gate against a background of bright green barley.

"Good morning to you, Wilberforce. Your barley's looking uncommonly well."

"Beautiful, Sir Richard, beautiful. Some grumbles, but not me, Sir Richard, not me. May was bad for fruit with all that hail we had. But the crops didn't suffer. Will you be passing by the farm, Sir Richard?"

"Not this morning, Wilberforce. I'm taking my annual ride round the estate. You know my old custom."

"None better, Sir Richard. And what a one you be for keeping up old customs, if you'll permit the liberty of the observation, Sir Richard. And glad I am for one to have such a landlord in these days when Jack thinks himself so good as his master. And how's Mr. John, Sir Richard?"

"Mr. John is well, very well. He hopes to be quartered at Aldershot presently, when we may expect to see something of him."

"It'll be a grand day for Barton Flowers when the village turns out to see the conquering hero come. Mr. John must have been proud when Her Majesty pinned on the Victoria Cross with her own hands at Buckingham Palace the other day. But, as I said to all of 'em, Her Majesty must have been proud of Mr. John when she were a-pinning of it on."

"Yes, I believe he deserved his honor," said the father, trying to look unconcerned. "Of course you saw the little account of it in the newspaper?"

Farmer Wilberforce gave his landlord the pleasure of supposing that he had not yet read the account, whereupon Sir Richard took a cutting from his waistcoat pocket and read aloud as follows:

Lieutenant (now Captain) John Flower, Royal Artillery.

Date of act of bravery, 5th November, 1854.

For having at the Battle of Inkerman personally attacked three Russians, and, with the gunners of his Division of the battery, prevented the Russians from doing mischief to the guns which they had surrounded.

Part of a regiment of English infantry had previously retired through the battery in front of this body of Russians.

"He had to wait a long time for his deed to be recognized," said the father, replacing the slip of paper in his pocket with a sigh of satisfaction. "Good morning to you, Wilberforce. I mustn't stay gossiping here any longer. I've a good many miles in front of me, you know."

Sir Richard rode on, his mind full of his elder son's valor. He should be thinking about marriage, though. It was time to see a grandson at the Hall. One was apt to forget how fast the years were going by. How old was John now? Thirty. So he was, by gad, thirty. Yes, he must be getting married. Not much difficulty about that, the proud father laughed to himself. Handsome, brave, the heir to Barton Flowers! It was right that he should take his profession seriously, but after the Crimea and the Mutiny he could claim to have served his country well, could afford to sell out and prepare himself to administer the property he would one day inherit. One day ... but not just yet. "No, not just yet," Sir Richard murmured, gripping the flanks of the gray horse tightly in pride of his own strength. And perhaps at this moment when the electric telegram was almost daily bringing news of French victories in Italy, and when that rascal Napoleon might be forming who knows what schemes to invade England, yes, perhaps at this moment, Captain John Flower should stick to his guns. Still, he would talk to his wife about the boy's marriage. He hoped that when he arrived home again he should find that headache sufficiently improved to let her discuss the subject with keenness and intelligence. The right plan was to invite some eligible young women to visit the Hall during John's next furlough, and if luck should station him at Aldershot to take care that whenever he drove over to Barton he should find an attraction at home. Luckily there were plenty of eligible young women in the neighborhood. Sir Richard was enumerating the possible wives for his heir when the disquieting thought occurred to him that John, like his father before him, might look beyond Hampshire for a wife. Not that for a single moment he had regretted his own choice; but what might be done once with success might end in disaster if fortune were tempted again. Anybody who had been made aware of Sir Richard's thoughts at this moment might have been pardoned for supposing that he had found a wife of beauty, merit, and ability in a lower stratum of society. As a matter of fact, the present Lady Flower was the daughter of one of Wellington's most gallant officers and a French lady of rank whose father had taken refuge from the Terror in England, where he had preferred to remain during the Napoleonic tyranny. It was the French blood that made Sir Richard feel he was committing a breach of tradition in marrying Miss Helen Baxter. To have introduced French blood into the Flowers, notwithstanding the pride of the family in their Norman origin, still seemed to him an astonishing piece of audacity; and even now he could shudder to think what his father would have said, had his father been alive when he married. Yet his wedded life had been one of unbroken happiness, and Helen had not betrayed the least sign of her mixed origin unless perhaps in an incurable propensity to succumb to violent headaches, which she dignified, or as her husband preferred to think, Frenchified by calling migraines. The old family doctor attributed them to nerves, and nerves, Sir Richard felt, were French, not English, so that if Doctor Wilkinson was right, the headaches must have been inherited from her French mother. There was nothing of the Frenchman in the elder son John. He never had a headache in his life, and he had won the Victoria Cross. English to the backbone was John. But Edward...?

Sir Richard, who had been trotting gaily along his boundaries, pulled up his horse to a walk, because the personality and character of his younger son perplexed him. Edward had headaches, was prone to day-dreaming, and at twenty-eight showed no sign of making any progress at the Bar, to which without apparently the slightest taste for a legal career he had recently been called. Headaches, day-dreams, instability, these were not English qualities. What had Edward been doing down at home all the summer? How could he expect to be a successful barrister if he left his chambers in Pump Court to take care of themselves? If John had been a barrister, he would have made his mark by now. Yet Edward had been endowed with more brains than John. John was diligent, determined; but Edward had the brains. It had been the ancient custom of the Flowers to send the eldest son to Winchester, the others to Eton. Sir Richard, who was a Wykhamist, had broken the tradition by sending John to Eton and Edward to Winchester, partly because he thought that Winchester would eradicate more sternly any French symptoms that appeared in Edward, partly because he believed that what was known as cleverness in a boy would receive more encouragement at the older foundation. But Edward had been a disappointment. His career at Winchester had been undistinguished, and he had gone down from New College without taking a degree. That was the moment when his father should have been firm with him, when he should have insisted upon his making his own way in the world without parental assistance. But Helen had intervened, and she intervened so rarely that when she did her husband was always defeated. Edward had expressed a half-hearted desire to read for the Bar, and he had allowed himself to be persuaded into making the necessary allowance. What was the result? Edward at twenty-eight as little able to provide for himself as he was at eight! It had been all very well for his mother to plead for his company over long months at Barton to console her for the absence of her elder son first in the Crimea and then in India. But John had been back a year now, and Edward spent more time than ever at home. Confound it, the problem of Edward's future was spoiling the day, and in a burst of irritation the baronet spurred his horse to a canter.

At this point the boundary of Sir Richard's estate might have been the subject of litigation had there been enough people interested to litigate. It was the old dispute over common land which had been gradually enclosed by the lord of the manor. In this case the issue was complicated by the fact that the head of the Flowers was as such himself a commoner, and it was difficult to prove that a commoner had no right to plant beechwoods if he was so minded. This had been the Flower method of encroachment. At this date there were only three other families of commoners left, and inasmuch as these gained a miserable livelihood by poaching Sir Richard's coverts rather than by pasturing a few scrawny geese, there was no doubt that before long the landlord would succeed in fixing his boundary on the far side of the common. At present the common extended for a mile, a narrow strip of coarse grass land two hundred yards wide at its greatest breadth along the baronet's dark beechwoods. Beyond the common the railway cut its track through the meadows of another landowner, and Sir Richard laughed to think how twenty years ago he had refused to let the line run through his land.

"That's the way good estates are ruined," he thought complacently, urging his horse from a canter to a gallop.

The wild commoners came out from their hovels to stare at him as he flew past, and congratulated themselves that he had not noticed how much turf in excess of their allowance had recently been cut.

At the end of the gallop Sir Richard reined in his horse to a walk that he might move slowly and admiringly through a plantation of larches he had put in ten years ago, which now in its symmetry and silence impressed him as a painter might be impressed by the beauty of an early work he had forgotten. Sir Richard regretted that he had not made a similar plantation near the Hall, so that his wife might enjoy walking upon this pale grass where the sun shone with so dim and so diffused a light. He was convinced that the experience would appeal to that romantic side of her character which expressed itself in migraines. Yes, it was a pity he had not thought of planting another within access of the Hall. He was now in the most remote corner of his demesne, and it would be difficult to drive her to this place without considerable discomfort. This plantation must be making a fine screen for old Taylor's orchard by now, thought Sir Richard. The old man had grumbled when first his landlord had insisted upon afforesting that useless field, covered with thistles and ragwort; he would admit now that his landlord had been right. But the old man was always grumbling. No doubt if he met him to-day he would be full of woe over the thunder and hail of last month, vowing that none of his blossom had set and that the season would be a dead loss in consequence. How different from Wilberforce, who had recognized most sensibly the promise of the arable crops! The fact of it was, old Taylor was growing too old for the responsibility of a large farm. Of course he had not the slightest intention of turning him out, but he did wish that old Taylor showed more signs of appreciating his landlord's consideration. That was the trouble with people, Sir Richard sighed to himself, one did all that was possible for them and received nothing in return. If only some of the tenants who grumbled at the least delay in carrying out necessary repairs would try to understand the point of view of the landlord. Nowadays people only tried to understand their own point of view. Yes, the age was degenerating, humanity was not what it was.

The prey of these pessimistic reflections, Sir Richard had allowed the horse to take his own pace; the progress had been slow and silent; and when the long central aisle of the plantation made an abrupt curve at its conclusion Sir Richard found himself in old Taylor's orchard so suddenly that he had to dismount in a hurry to save his silk hat from being knocked off by the boughs of the apple trees. As his foot touched the ground, he saw in a sun-flecked space about eighty yards from where he was standing two figures disengage from a close embrace. Sir Richard recognized from the color of her auburn hair old Taylor's granddaughter, Elizabeth, and he was on the verge of a smile for youth and love in the summer time when he perceived that the man was his own son, Edward. He raised his riding-crop with a gesture of rage, while the lovers as if even a moment's separation were bitter as death clung together in a fresh embrace, standing heedless of all except their love, heedless of the young apples that fell from time to time from every tree, heedless of the noise Sir Richard's horse made in cropping the tender grass, heedless of Sir Richard's foot stamped upon the ground in anger, nor even looking round when he jerked his horse's bridle, remounted, and galloped back the way he had come down the long central aisle between the larches.

"The damned philandering puppy," he muttered to himself, as he came out from the plantation and set the gray to gallop more swiftly than before over the common land. He paid no attention to the wild commoners, who seeing the baronet return at this furious pace supposed that he had been made aware of their depredations upon the turf and ran to hide from his wrath in the dark bordering beeches. He paid no attention to the geese that flapped across his path except to give the gelding a cruel jab when he swerved in his stride. It was barely two o'clock when Sir Richard reached the Hall, having for the first time in thirty-five years failed at his yearly task of riding round the confines of his ten thousand acres. So deeply enraged was he with his son's conduct that he neither sent up to warn his wife of his early return nor even inquired after her headache. He shut himself in his big library, pacing up and down among the rows of books, the titles of which wrote themselves upon his mind more rapidly but perhaps not less intelligibly than they had written themselves on the minds of generations of Flowers. Sir Richard glared at the busts of poets, orators, and philosophers posed with such unconcern, with such coolness and such contempt above the cornice of the shelves. If Homer, Demosthenes and Plato had not been out of reach, the baronet would have swept them from their perch to the ground. Instead he pulled the bell rope violently.

"When Mr. Edward comes in," he told the butler, "I wish to see him at once."

"Very good, Sir Richard," said the butler apprehensively, and as the old man went out of the library Sir Richard wondered if his son's conduct was already a topic in the steward's room and servants' hall. In the middle of his rage there was a tap at the door, and his wife entered to a gruff summons. Lady Flower was a small, dainty woman whose smallness and daintiness was accentuated by the vast crinolines of the moment. Although she was almost fifty, her black hair lacked the faintest film of gray, her ivory skin showed few lines. To Sir Richard she seemed the same as when thirty-one years ago he had married her. She never came into a room but his mind went back to the first sight of her dressed in a short flounced skirt with her black hair tied high with roses and ribands; and it seemed not she but her clothes which had grown older and more stately with years.

"My dear, what is the matter?" she asked. "What has upset you?"

The distressed father poured out his tale.

"But aren't you taking it all too seriously?" his wife suggested. "Edward has only found a Graziella at Barton. Il y a toujours des petits amoureux...."

"For God's sake don't talk French!" Sir Richard burst in. "There's nothing like French for giving an unpleasant turn to the conversation."

"It was tactless of me," she apologized, seating herself in a high-backed chair where she looked as tranquil and as much assured as one of the classic busts eyeing infinity above the books. "But seriously the Taylor girl is a pretty little thing, and if Edward is not imprudent there is most surely no harm in a few kisses."

"Helen, your remarks border on cynicism," said Sir Richard. "I know that you have always maintained your right to discuss matters which in England I think we have reason in not encouraging women to discuss; but really when your advanced views are applied to your own children I think it is time for me to protest. After all, if you had a French mother, my dear, you are quite definitely and unmistakably English yourself. But please do not let us cover up Edward's behavior with side issues. You know how much I have deplored his laziness, how much I have objected to his spending most of his time here, and how necessary it is for him as a younger son to supplement with a profession any allowance I am able to give him in the future from my own savings. I repeat, you know all this, and yet when I discover that the reason for his continually living with his parents is not the pleasure of their society, but a low passion for the granddaughter of one of his father's tenants, it becomes obvious that Edward's behavior can no longer be tolerated. Of course he has headaches if he behaves like this," Sir Richard went on indignantly. "Of course he finds the air of Pump Court too stuffy in June. You must remember, my dear, that Edward is twenty-eight. We are not discussing the calf love of a schoolboy."

"Well, all I beg is that you will handle him tactfully," said Lady Flower. "Now, if I could only persuade you to let me talk to him...."

"Certainly not. On such a subject most certainly not," Sir Richard shouted.

"But if you jump down his throat and treat him like a schoolboy, he may do something really serious." She paused to sniff a silver vinaigrette, while the suggestion buried itself like an arrow in the heavy ground of her husband's mind.

"Really serious?" he echoed in a moment's perplexity. "Good God! you are not suggesting that he might want to marry her? That would indeed be the end of everything."

"That is precisely what I am trying to tell you," said his wife. "That is why I am trying to hint that you should not take too high a moral tone."

"Good heavens, my dear, what outrageous remarks you do make. And yet on this occasion I really believe you are justified in making them."

The baronet sank down into a chair opposite his wife and allowed her to lean over and pat his cheek as if he were a disconsolate boy.

"Don't you think it would be wiser for me to carry through this scene?" she pressed.

He waved the suggestion aside. "No, no, my dear. I appreciate your desire to spare me pain, but what I have to say to Edward must be said as from a man to a man. Hark! I hear his horse coming up the drive. Leave us together, my dear, leave us, I beg you...."

Lady Flower hesitated for one moment longer, but perceiving that her husband was not to be moved from his resolve, acquitted herself of all responsibility with a gesture of her white hands, and without a backward glance of entreaty floated from the room.

Edward Flower resembled his mother in features and complexion, but in figure he was tall and slim like his father. He seemed to divine that the interview to which he had been summoned was likely to be disagreeable, for he waited by the door of the library when he had closed it behind him as if he hoped that he had made a mistake in thus intruding.

"Bates told me you wished to speak to me, sir."

"I did. I do. Don't let us beat about the bush. And come into the room! I can't shout what I have to say."

However discreetly hushed the baronet's voice was going to be when he attacked his son upon the situation in Taylor's orchard, it was loud enough at present.

"I am at your service, sir," said Edward quietly, taking the chair in which a few minutes ago his mother had been sitting.

"I started out this morning to ride round the estate," Sir Richard began. "On my way I passed by Taylor's orchard." He paused with a stern glance at his son. "Well, sir?" he demanded.

"And I'm glad you did, papa," said Edward eagerly. The character of this interview drove him back unconsciously to childhood's manner of address.

"You're glad I did?" the baronet echoed. "By gad, sir, you're a cooler hand at this game than I gave you credit for. I'm thankful I did not allow your mother to speak to you on this subject."

"Did my mother wish to speak to me?" Edward broke in. "Ah, she would understand, and I fear that you, sir, may be prejudiced by the humble station of the dear girl I am going to marry."

"Marry!" the baronet shouted. "This is not a moment for levity, sir. I sent for you to say that I won't have you philandering with the females on my estate. You know I disapprove of the manner you idle away your time here when you should be working at your profession. But if you do stay here, by God you shall stay here like a gentleman and a Flower, with respect for the domestic happiness of your father's tenants. We've never yet had a scandal of that kind in our family, and if my son brings such a scandal about I'll disown him."

"I have already told you, sir, that the young woman will shortly become my wife. There is no question of scandal. I love her passionately, devotedly. She gives me all and more in return. She is a modest and beautiful girl. I am old enough to know my own mind. I am sorry to seem disrespectful, sir, but nothing that you can say will alter my resolve."

"I'll disinherit you."

"I must put up with that."

"I'll disown you. You shall never cross the threshold of this house again."

"I must put up even with that," said Edward sadly.

"Thank God I have another son who would never disgrace his father and his father's name thus."

"I know that I have been a disappointment to you, sir; but this is not the moment to make excuses for my carelessness in the past nor to try your patience with promises of reform in the future. I firmly believe that marriage with Elizabeth Taylor will give me that very stability and perseverance in which I have hitherto shown myself so lacking. If you had evinced less anger at my decision, I should have enlarged upon this benefit to my character; but in your present mood I am conscious that anything I say will only serve to enrage you against me more than ever. Luckily I am not your heir, and my brother, as you justly observe, will know better than I how to uphold the honor of your house—since you have disowned me, I hesitate to say our house. Believe me, my dear, dear father, when I say that only the assurance of my whole life's happiness depending upon my marriage with Elizabeth keeps me from obeying your wishes. There is nothing to add except my deep regret for the secrecy I have maintained throughout. I can assure you that in acting in what may seem to you an underhand manner I was endeavoring to spare you pain, so that when the secret had to come out, which would have been to-morrow, for it is to-morrow that we are to be married, you would have been spared the annoyance of contesting a situation which was a fait accompli."

"Damn it, don't talk French, and get out of my sight," Sir Richard shouted, louder than he had shouted yet, for his son's long speech had given his rage time to seethe in his breast, and it now burst forth with double volume.

Edward bowed his head and rising from his chair went gloomily from the room. He found his mother standing in the corridor outside, and at a signal he followed her upstairs to her boudoir.

Edward contrasted his mother's calm with his father's fury, and yet when she sat upright on a wide stool, composing her full skirts of amber sarsanet with hands that seemed incredibly small against the vast pendulous sleeves from which they emerged, Edward was more uneasy in presence of that calm than when he was being buffeted by his father's storms. There was an ivory polish, an ivory hardness, an ivory resilience about his mother that made his heart beat with a dread of this delicate creature who within his earliest memories had always come to the help of his ineffectiveness, but who now sat regarding him from eyes that seemed as hard as agates.

"Listen, Edward," she said quickly. "I overheard what your father said, and I understand that you have announced your resolve to marry this ..." Lady Flower paused for a second as if she were pondering the effect upon her son of describing the young woman too brutally ... "this pretty country girl," she continued, sure now of the key in which her persuasion should be played, a key of light irony, of compassionate ridicule which must bring the sensitive Edward to a perception of the impossibility of what he was proposing. "I think I have seen her once or twice hanging out the clothes or feeding her grandfather's chickens. She has red hair, has she not? And is she not much freckled?"

"She has glorious hair," Edward avowed. "And her complexion is perfect."

"Red-headed women usually freckle somewhat easily," said his mother indifferently. "But let that pass, we will admit her beauty. Personally I distrust red-haired women. There is something of the fox...."

Lady Flower broke off to shrug her shoulders in distaste.

"I should hardly describe her hair as red myself," Edward said. "It has reddish tints, but...."

"My dear boy, you are not proposing to paint this young woman; you are proposing to marry her. When your father came home furious because he had seen you kissing her on a garden-seat or some such romantic spot, I took your part. Indeed, your father was shocked at my inability to see much harm in kissing a pretty village maiden. But marriage, ah, par example, mais ça c'est un peu fort, tu sais. Have you really considered what it will mean in a few years' time when your Graziella coarsens? You will have to earn your own living, for I know your father well enough to be sure that if you do marry this girl he will keep his word and cut you off. That means that you will not have the leisure to educate her, that you will be dragged down to her level, that you will...."

"Please, mamma, please I beg you not to say any more. My mind is made up, and if I have to renounce my family I want to leave you without the least bitterness. I will not hear a word against Elizabeth. I adore her."

"And where will you live?" his mother inquired, biting her lips.

"I am going to ask her grandfather if he will take me on at his farm."

"You are going to live within a few miles of us as a farm hand?"

"I shall be happy," said Edward, miserably aware of his mother's contempt.

"I have always defended you until now. But such ... such.... Oh, I have no word for such a despicable suggestion. I have finished with you, Edward. I almost wish I could shout as loudly as your father to tell you how completely I despise you. Go to that minx, who in a year will despise you as much as I do, and who will play you false with the first handsome plowboy she meets. And you'll deserve it, you weakling!"

Edward rushed from his mother's room, and when he had packed his possessions went to Bates, the old butler, and asked him for the servants' cart to take his luggage to Long Orchard Farm. His mother's last speech had made much easier the task of cutting himself off from his family, and when he set out down the drive he had not one regret for what he was losing. Edward depended much on other people, and now that one of those on whom he had most securely depended had let him fall, he clung more closely to the other. Elizabeth had long lamented the worry she was likely to prove to him when his family was informed of the marriage, and he was glad now to be able to meet her before the day with the news that he owned no family except hers. How surprised she would be to see him again so soon, for they had just lived through that passionate farewell until they should meet to-morrow morning at the door of the church. A misgiving came over Edward. What if Elizabeth should be so much distressed by the news of the breach that she should not keep her word? Was it wise in any case to upset her on the eve of the wedding? Let her sleep to-night, or if she lay awake on this vigil let her thoughts be serene as the summer night and radiant as the summer dawn. He would beg a night's lodging from the Vicar, who was already so deep in Sir Richard's bad graces that one more act of defiance could not add to his offense.

Edward found his friend the Vicar, an old Tractarian who had somehow eluded Sir Richard's Protestant zeal and been presented to the living of Barton Flowers, sympathetic and encouraging. The old man sat in his dusty room amid a chaos of theological tomes and held forth upon the sacramental wonder of marriage, reaching from time to time for a book from his shelves, usually the work of some Anglo-Catholic divine of the seventeenth century, in whose sonorous periods human love was exalted and sanctified and whose dying cadences showed forth mortality in the image of Almighty God.

"Marriage is too sacred a rite to be regulated by worldly considerations," the priest said. "You are justified by your singleness of purpose. You have acted loyally to the woman of your choice. You have nothing to reproach yourself for."

Edward had been glad to avail himself of the Vicar's help to assure Elizabeth that she was not outraging decency by marrying him; but he had never occupied his mind with the demands of religion, and only now for the first time he was deeply impressed by a sudden consciousness of what a weight of moral and spiritual support stood behind him in what he was about to do. From that moment he looked at religion with new eyes, apprehending in it the possibility of so crystallizing his indeterminate aspirations as even at this late hour of youth to do something and be somebody. He went up to bed in a glow of ambition that lighted his spirit, even as the candle lighted the dark corridors and stairways of the Vicarage.

Edward slept tranquilly, and in the morning at eight o'clock he was married to Elizabeth Taylor, with nobody except her grandfather and a couple of farm hands to hear their whispers of eternal fidelity, their murmured promises to have and to hold and to cherish until death. There was no shouting when they came out arm-in-arm from the church; there was nothing except the peace of a mid-summer morning, the fragrance of long grass in the churchyard, the hum of bees in the limes, and in the distance a sound of lowing cattle.

The bride and bridegroom had not planned to spend their honeymoon elsewhere; indeed, they had both been so much preoccupied with the complications arising out of their simple action that they had thought of nothing beyond the achievement of the wedding. When old James Taylor asked them where they intended to pass the night, neither of them could reply for the moment. At length Edward spoke:

"I have to explain, Mr. Taylor, that yesterday I had a very unpleasant scene with Sir Richard, who ordered me out of his house forever."

"A' look now, that's Sir Richard sure enough," the old man nodded. "The most unreasonable man that ever owned an acre. Well, I suppose you'd better bide here."

Edward explained his project to stay on and help with the farm work, at which the old man chuckled.

"You can stay so long as you will, but I don't reckon you'll be much use on the farm. What's Lizzie say to it?"

Elizabeth had no words to say, but worlds to look, and since all her worlds were entirely populated by Edwards, she showed plainly that she approved of anything Edward proposed to do.

"'Tis no use at all to look for help from a maid, once she be tied up," the old man chuckled. "I suppose I might soberly consider myself a fool to give her to you. But give her I have. You see, Mr. Edward, you was all her fancy, and ever since my boy died, her fancy has always been mine. He was a good lad. I miss him sorely now, especially come seed-time. And couldn't he broadcast a field of oats! Oh dear, oh dear, none like him! Foxtail oats was his favorites, and wouldn't they come up thick from his sowing! But, darn'ee, do you think the young chaps can sow like that now? They cannot!"

"I'm going to have a good try," Edward vowed.

"A' look now, that's the way to talk, I'm bothered if it isn't," the old man exclaimed, pretending to be much impressed, while his blue eyes twinkled like the sea on a fine morning.

They had reached the farmhouse by now, and when old James had hung his big beaver hat on a peg they sat down to the wedding breakfast, at which the presence of the Vicar compelled a demeanor that might otherwise have been wanting, because old James on such occasions was apt to indulge in bucolic freedom of speech.

"But when parson's there," he said afterwards, "I always sits so dumb as a rook in a pie. It comes over me to say summat, and then I catches parson's eye and back the wicked words go into my mouth like rabbits. He's a good man is parson, but he surely lays on me like snow in a ditch. Well, now, go out into the fields and lanes and enjoy this fine summer-time, you two. We can talk about Sir Richard and such sober topics to-morrow. Come, give I a kiss, my maid. You're looking sweet as laylock in a garden."

Edward would not let Elizabeth torment herself about the future, and she, so deep in love, could not fret for long with Edward hers now whatever happened ... hers ... ah, could he but know how completely hers....

"Edward, my own, are you sure you love me as much, now that we are husband and wife?"

She clung to him in a self-inflicted agony of doubt, knowing full well that in a moment it would be turned to the warmth of a delicious security.

"My foolish Lizzie," he murmured, "I love you a thousand times more."

"But you seem sad sometimes, as if you half regretted what you had done."

"I am not sad, my dearest. If I seem serious, it is because I am awed by the knowledge that you are mine."

"Oh, and I am yours, I am indeed yours."

Edward looked into her burning brown eyes that were unlike any other brown eyes he had ever seen, because they caught somehow the hues and shadows of her deep auburn hair, as a woodland pool appears stained with autumn like the trees above.

"Your eyes," he murmured, and he felt a longing to drown within their deeps.

"Do you like my eyes?"

"Elizabeth! You vain, vain Elizabeth!"

They kissed, while a summer wind sang its small song, its intimate and idle song among the grasses at their feet.

"Hark to the little wind," said Edward. "Of what does it remind you?"

"Only of summer," she whispered.

"Don't you think it is like a child singing to herself while she plays alone with her toys?"

"What funny fancies you have, Edward."

A sudden comprehension of what might be seized him in a rapture, and he clasped his Elizabeth closer.

"Can you not tell me of what I am thinking?" he whispered.

She raised her eyes slowly, divined the thought that was beating from his heart into hers, blushed as red as her own red heart which now beat as fast as his, buried her face for a moment in his breast, then looked up quickly and for answer gave him her lips.

The moths were dancing over the petunias, when the lovers came home to the farm.

"But you'll never have such another day," said old James. "And if you've missed your tea, you can make up for it with supper. But as for me, I'm going to bed."

He lighted his candle and stumped upstairs, chuckling to himself. On the landing he paused and leaning over the balustrade called down:

"And if you miss your breakfast, you can make up for it with dinner."

They could hear him still chuckling to himself long after he had closed his bedroom door.

"You know," said Elizabeth, "if anybody didn't know it was grandfather laughing to himself, they'd surely think it was owls in the roof."

They sat for a while talking about foolish things like that, and then they too went upstairs. Through the open lattices of their room the perfume of the night-scented stocks came up from the garden. Edward saw with amazement that Elizabeth's hair reached almost to her feet, and he thought of his mother's remark yesterday. "That little red-haired girl!" Why, there never was such hair before. Too soon the moment came to put out the candle and lose those glinting locks. While the odor of the wick slowly faded upon the cool fragrance blown in upon them by the night, Edward lay with the last vision of Elizabeth upon his inner eye. Then turning he clasped her in his arms, and she with all her being leapt to his as a wave to the shore.

There was no moon that night, but in every lattice a star or two twinkled, and in the starshine Elizabeth lay beside him like a warm shadow.

"Are you happy, my darling?"

"Very, very happy."

Edward could not sleep. He did not want to sleep. He wished to stay forever like this, with her hair about his face. Dawn was on the panes, and the sparrows were stirring in the eaves. How still she lay, how fast she slept! He bent over to kiss her eyelids. She stirred slightly and put out her hand, clasping his and murmuring a faint endearment, an echo from her dreams. The first rays of the sun shone through upon the bed. Her lips in sleep were very crimson, and she woke up when he kissed them.

"Are you happy, my darling?"

"Very, very happy."

They lay for a long while in each other's arms while the sun climbed higher, the bland five o'clock sun of June.

"I must start farming to-day," Edward declared. "They'll be cutting the hay, I fancy."

"While the sun shines," she whispered, smiling.

"My lovely one, my lovely one," he breathed.

Edward was not given much time to test his willingness or ability as a farmer, because as soon as the hay had been carried old James Taylor was given notice by Sir Richard Flower to quit the farm at Ladyday. He went up to the Hall to try to see his father and find out if the notice would be rescinded should he himself give an undertaking to leave the neighborhood. Sir Richard, however, declined to see his son, and that evening he sent him his allowance for the next quarter with the intimation that this was the last money he would ever receive from his father. When the rent of his chambers and some outstanding debts in London had been paid and his few possessions sold, Edward found himself with not much more than one hundred and fifty pounds and without any prospect of earning a living. It had never occurred to him that his father would take what he thought so mean a revenge on his wife's grandfather, and he could not help feeling that at the back of Sir Richard's action was a desire to get rid of the old man who, as Edward knew, he considered an unprofitable tenant. James accepted his notice with admirable calm and dignity. He had not a word of reproach for Edward or Elizabeth, and upon his landlord's behavior his only comment was:

"It was always in my mind that he would give me notice one day. Ever since I argued the point with him over that larch plantation which I said was spoiling good grazing he had it in his heart to get rid of I. He were ashamed for a long time. And I held the farm for thirty years, and my father before me twenty-five years, and his father before that thirty-two years."

Edward was in despair; but neither old James nor Elizabeth would hear of his reproaching himself.

"You came like an honest man," said James, "not gallivanting round as one of the gentry might. That's good enough for I, and that's good enough for she. Come Lammas I shall be seventy, which is a late age for making a long journey unless it be that powerful long journey out of this world into the next. My brother Henry set out forty-three years ago for Australia, and I've only heard from him once, and that was Christmas two years ago. I put off answering the letter, for I write a very crooked hand and was never one for letters. Get the ink-horn, Lizzie. By God A'mighty, I'll write him now and say we'll pay him a visit in the spring of the year. I still have a pretty hand wi' sheep, and I reckon Henry will find us all a job."

"Why, that's the very thing," cried Edward. "Emigration! What a fool I was not to have thought of it myself."

Old James wrote a letter to his brother, who was evidently a squatter of considerable affluence and who, judging by the cordial tone of the only letter he had written, would be glad in his old age, being a childless widower, to welcome his kinsfolk from England. It was decided to give up the farm at Christmas and to sail as early as possible in the New Year. Fortune was kind up to the point of granting old James a good harvest that season, and although the new tenant, Farmer Wilberforce, did not pay as he ought to have paid for the live and dead stock, James scraped together enough to enable the three of them to equip themselves for a long journey and avoid the steerage. It became important to start as early as possible in the New Year, because Elizabeth was with child, and it was hoped to leave England in time to avoid childbirth on the high seas. Edward was painfully conscious of being able to do very little to help old James, and he tried to console himself with the belief that once ashore in Australia he would by his energy make amends for his present helplessness. Places were secured in the second class of the Mariana, a ship of 1,374 tons, which was due to sail from Liverpool in the first week of January; but on the night before her departure, when all on board were making merry to the strains of an emigrant fiddler and an emigrant piper, an alarm of fire was raised. There was plenty of help at hand from the crowded shipping of the Mersey; the passengers with their luggage were taken off by steam-tugs and boats; and the vessel was run ashore, where when the tide left her high and dry she was gutted by the flames.

Elizabeth bore the terrifying experience with fortitude, and when the shipping agents in Liverpool told them of a ship sailing from London within a few days she was not backward in urging her husband and grandfather to make every effort to obtain a passage. Nevertheless, the nervous tension to which she had been exposed proved too much for her, and even before the train journey was accomplished her travail began prematurely. There was no time to search for comfortable lodgings. The first rooms they found in Pomona Terrace, a dreary by-street off the Euston Road, had to serve their need, and while the landlady, a good-natured, grubby Irishwoman, helped Elizabeth to bed, Edward rushed out into the wet foggy night to summon a doctor.

In a crescent of decaying houses he soon perceived like rubies on the murky air the lamps of two doctors adjacent. Had his need been less urgent, such a juxtaposition would have presented an insoluble problem to Edward whose attitude to life was one long hesitation between his right and his left. As it was, he hurried up the first pair of steps and was on the point of pulling the bell, when through a broken slat of the Venetian blinds he saw the occupant of the room thus revealed pour himself out a very generous allowance of whisky or brandy from a dusty decanter unsteadily held in a dirty hand. He paused with his fingers on the knob of the bell while the occupant of the gas-lit room held the decanter in mid-air, listening. The face with its expression of interrupted desire and expectant cunning was so repulsive that Edward was horrified at the idea of such a creature's attending upon his beloved Elizabeth, and in a moment he had put his leg over the low stone parapet that divided the steps of one doctor from the steps of the other.

"Yes," the maid told him, "Dr. Harrison is in."

Edward explained the case to the doctor, while the latter packed his bag with various instruments, and so much excited was he that he could hardly refrain from plucking at the doctor's sleeve when they were hurrying back through the fog to the lodgings in Pomona Terrace. Dr. Harrison was a young man, scarcely more than thirty, whose manner carried such assurance that Edward was able to feel that his choice had been the right one. When they reached the house the doctor was at once taken upstairs, while Edward, on the suggestion of Mrs. Gallagher, accommodated himself in the kitchen. Here he found old James Taylor on one side of the range talking of agriculture to Mr. Gallagher, a workman in the employ of one of the great railway companies, who was displaying his agreement or disagreement with, his interest in or boredom at the farmer's observations only by the way he sucked at his clay pipe. For an Irishman he was strangely taciturn. From time to time slatternly young women passed through; but whether they were the daughters or servants of the Gallaghers or lodgers in the house, there was no telling. Though Edward took a chair next old Taylor, his thoughts were upstairs, and the old man's lecture on clovers meant as little to him as the chirping of the crickets in the walls of the house. His anxiety over Elizabeth was so sharp that the incongruity of his surroundings never struck him. His whole being was too much involved with his wife's for what is called reality to affect him more nearly than might the incidents of a dream. That he should share a bedroom with old Taylor, that he should find himself deferring to a Gallagher, that he should be expected to take his place at an ill-laid table and eat the malodorous mess there set down by a slut with grimy hands made no impression upon Edward. Had his mother floated into this squalid kitchen and pointed a delicate finger in scorn at his surroundings, he would not have listened one whit less intensely for the slightest sound from above. Whatever disgusted him in Pomona Terrace took its place in the general purgatory of deprivation of the sight of Elizabeth, and the farthest that his mind wandered from that room upstairs was to that broken slat in the Venetian blinds through which he had seen that drunken doctor's face. Thank God he had! Thank God!

A long time passed. Mr. Gallagher had fallen asleep and was snoring loudly. Old Taylor was asleep too, his jaw dropped upon his chest, his whole aspect senility incarnate. The restless slatterns no longer moved in and out with unwashed dishes and bawdy gigglings.

Now the crickets were silent in the glooms; Gallagher had ceased to snore; there was no sound except an occasional cough from the subsiding fire. So silent was it that Edward could hear his watch ticking with what seemed a terrible rapidity in the pocket of his waistcoat. At last the doctor put his head round the door and beckoned. Edward was beside him in a moment, gasping forth his alarms.

"She's not dead? Why didn't you call me sooner?"

The doctor gripped Edward's forearm and bade him pull himself together. That grip in conjunction with the cold air of the passage kept Edward from breaking down. He compelled himself to follow what the doctor with a good deal of technical detail was telling him about Elizabeth's condition. "And so it may be impossible to save the lives of both," the doctor was murmuring. "However, as I was saying, there is no need to decide yet, and I am expecting a new instrument to-morrow, which may do away with the necessity of such a painful decision. I have sent word to have any parcel which arrives for me brought here immediately."

"Decision?" Edward repeated. "What decision do you mean?"

"Whether we save the life of the mother or the child."

"Are you drunk or mad?" Edward shouted. "Why, rather than she should suffer an instant's pain I would have the child cut to pieces. Decision! I believe you're as drunk as that other fellow next door."

The young doctor gazed at Edward in astonishment, for he had heard nothing of the reason for choosing him in preference to his neighbor.

"I was bound to give you the opportunity of deciding," he explained. "Naturally I did not for a moment expect you to give any other answer but the one you have given. I'm sorry to have upset you like this. If I may offer you some sound advice, I should recommend your staying quietly in the kitchen. It would be better, of course, if you could manage to lie down and sleep for a while; but I can understand that you are too anxious for that. You must not work yourself up into a state of mind. There is no immediate cause for anxiety. No, certainly no immediate cause."

Edward allowed the doctor to steer him back into the kitchen where their entrance roused old James Taylor and Mr. Gallagher, both of whom with loud yawns declared their intention of going to bed. Soon Edward was left alone, for Dr. Harrison went back to his patient, and he settled himself down to solitary meditation by what was left of the dead fire in the still fairly warm grate.

It was easy, thought Edward, very easy for that young doctor to talk about childbirth as if it were nothing more than buying a doll in a shop. Doctors soon began to lose their sense of the soul in their familiarity with the body. What did a man like that know about the great mystery of human love? Edward's mind went back to his talk with the Vicar of Barton Flowers on the vigil of his wedding; and now thinking over his brief married life with Elizabeth he apprehended all the truth of what the parson had said. He remembered how much the conversation had elated him at the time and how he had felt an impulse to submit himself to the promptings of what the Vicar had called the Grace of the Holy Spirit. That impulse like so many of them, alas, had gone the way of the rest, had been allowed to expire when the enthusiasm of thought demanded the breath of action to endure. Edward vowed that this time if Elizabeth's life should be granted to him he really would ... what? "I really will grapple with life," he promised to that nebulous emanation of celestial magic which the ordinary man calls God. "Before the sun rises to-morrow morning I may be a father. I shall owe a duty to a human soul which I have brought into the world." Edward discovered with shame that this child, which might even at this moment be uttering its first cry to the darkness of the unimaginable universe around it, had not until this moment presented itself to him as a fact. He regretted now the way he had answered the doctor's question a short while ago. He had been sneering to himself at the doctor's point of view about childbirth; but he should rather have sneered at himself for what he was, a weak and self-indulgent and careless egoist that without foresight and without responsibility might become the parent of a human being from whom in days to come he should expect gratitude, affection, and obedience.

Edward made new vows to that dim God beyond the stars that if he were granted not only the life of his Elizabeth, but also the life of their child, he would devote his future to a worthy fatherhood, that even if himself should fail in his contest with life he would ... what? Edward's mind wandered already to the agony of his adored wife, and he could not bear to contemplate any future at all until he knew that she was safe.

Safe! The word wrote itself in the cracks of the dingy ceiling, in the pattern of the grimy wall-paper, in the ashes of the dead fire, in the scrolls of iron-work upon the range, in the patchwork hearthrug, in the knots and lines of the kitchen table. Safe! The word acquired such a force and power of its own that Edward almost worshiped it by repeating aloud the mere sound of it in apostrophe after apostrophe of awful contemplation. Safe! He clutched at the S as he would have clutched at a rope to drag himself up from the abyss below. He climbed up the A, up the F, up the E to stand on the high ground above with Elizabeth clasped in his arms ... with her ... with his darling ... safe....

Edward fell asleep. At four o'clock Mrs. Gallagher came down to tell him that things were going on as well as could be expected upstairs, recommending him to be off and lie down on his bed like a Christian. The only place where Edward wanted to lie down was on the landing outside the door of Elizabeth's room; but there was still enough left of the younger son of Sir Richard Flower to keep him from making such a proposal to the landlady.

It was like Edward to insist on staying in the kitchen. There was about it the kind of ineffective Quixotry to which he had been addicted all his life. At seven Dr. Harrison came in and made him comparatively happy by asking him to go round to his house, wait for the postal delivery, and bring back any package that might by good luck be left. The doctor wanted to add that Edward would do well to ask his servant to give him some breakfast, there being little likelihood of his eating any breakfast in Pomona Terrace. On second thoughts, he did not think the suggestion worth making. He felt too much fatigued by his own all-night vigil to argue with an unbalanced fool like this husband. Such was the young doctor's mood on this drear January morning. Edward hurried through the wet twilight, pale, unshaven, his hair and whiskers unkempt, his collar dirty, his clothes frowsy from the kitchen where he had spent the night. At such an hour Manning Crescent looked more dilapidated than on the night before, and the broken slat in the Venetian blinds of the drunken doctor next door gave the last touch of raffish squalor to the row of houses.

No sooner was Edward seated in the doctor's neat consulting-room than he fell into a despair, because he had not seen Elizabeth before he came out. Suppose she were dead when he arrived back? He could hardly stay in the room; the smell of disinfectants here was stifling him with an aroma of death. It was only by clutching the arms of the chair covered with red rep and dinning into his brain the need to wait for that blessed instrument which was so anxiously awaited by the doctor that he was able not to desert his post. He rang for the maid to ask when the parcel delivery might be expected, and upon her telling him "ten o'clock at the earliest" he groaned aloud.

It was actually eleven o'clock when Edward, after spending hours of uncertainty, ran back to Pomona Terrace with a parcel for Dr. Harrison.

"It has arrived at the very moment I required it," said the doctor, hurrying upstairs without waiting to give Edward a word of hope about his wife's condition beyond his satisfied comment on the arrival of the new instrument.

On the husband left standing in the dim passage of the Gallaghers' lodging-house dawned the apprehension of God's mercy to him in directing his footsteps yesterday evening to where lived probably the only doctor in the neighborhood who would have a chance of saving that beloved woman's life. He fell upon his knees where he stood and prayed that God's mercy should be extended to the fulfillment of all he hoped. Then he went back to the kitchen. At last Mrs. Gallagher entered all smiles.

"You may come up now," she told him. "All's well, praise be to the Holy Mother of God, and you've a girleen."

"A what?" shouted old James Taylor from his chair by the fire.

"'Tis you that's a great-grandfather, Mr. Taylor," she told the old man.

"A' look now," chuckled old James. "They ought to put I in a show. 'Tis a state of life you can see in rams and bulls when you've a mind, but darn'ee, a real great-grandfather is summat to stare at even in London."

Edward was kneeling beside Elizabeth before the old man had finished his sentence. The doctor left them together.

"You haven't asked to look at baby," Elizabeth murmured reproachfully. She lifted the bedclothes for a moment, while Edward looked.

"Yours," he murmured.

"Ours," she corrected. "Ours, my dearest."

"But it was you that suffered everything!"

"But you were anxious about me, weren't you, my darling?" she tenderly asked.

"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!" he cried.

She knew how much he too had suffered, and because he did not speak of his emotions she was moved with an immense desire not to let her baby make her careless of her husband. She put out her hand to stroke his head.

"I thought about you all the time," she whispered. "When the pain was worst I kept saying, 'Edward! Edward!' Nothing else. Only that, my darling."

He drew her hands to his lips.

"And what shall she be christened?" the mother asked. "I'd like her to be called Mary," she went on breathlessly. "You wouldn't think that a common name, would you? 'Mary Flower,' I think that's a pretty name."

The doctor came in at this moment to suggest that Edward had stayed long enough for the present. The father leant over to kiss the eyes of that pale mother.

"Well, have 'ee seen her?" demanded the great-grandfather when Edward came downstairs. "I suppose it is a girl all right?"

"Mary," said Edward.

"Oh, Mary, is it to be? Well, that's a good down-right honest style of name for a girl. Yes, 'tis a name I like very well. And don't you be discouraged, Mr. Edward, if she don't look beautiful all at once. A calf's different. A new-born calf is a pretty sight for any man. So's a chicken fresh from the egg. But a baby is so ugly as a young rook. Oh dear, oh dear, there's few more ugly sights for man to look upon than a new-born baby. Yet I suppose this time come three months we shall all be looking at kangaroos and wobblies, and they're worse by what one reads of 'em."

Old James had got hold of one or two volumes of Antipodean travel, from dipping into which behind a pair of large horn spectacles he had formed a picture of Australia as zoölogically rich as a medieval illuminator's conception of Eden.

Now that Elizabeth's child was safely born, it was imperative to leave England before the money gave out, and berths were secured in the Wizard Queen, a 1,000-ton steamer lying in the East India Docks, which was due to sail on February 18th for the port of Sydney. They went on board the preceding afternoon; but remembering their last experience in the Mariana and with a desire to avert ill-luck they kept themselves out of sight of the other emigrants who, like those on the Mersey, were drowning the sorrow of departure in music and song. As a matter of fact, old James could not resist going up on deck to have a bit of fun, as he called it; but Edward and Elizabeth remained close in their cabin, and did not even emerge for supper.

After supper the strains of music that floated down below became more melancholy, so that Elizabeth shivered. Edward, always solicitous, begged her to tell him what was the matter. Did she feel nervous after that alarming night on the Mersey? Did she regret that she had married him? Was not the baby Mary sleeping soundly in her canvas cot, and was she not so wonderful a being that sighs should be forgotten in the contemplation of the future they two would sacrifice all to achieve for her?

"I was thinking of you, Edward," she said. "I was wondering if I had done wrong in marrying you, so that you have had to leave your family and your country for my sake."

"It is not your fault," Edward exclaimed, "that we are all going to Australia. If my father had not shown himself so bitter against me, if my mother had not lost all affection for me, we should still be in Long Orchard Farm. I beg you, my dearest, not to distress yourself with regrets. Besides, look at her." He pointed to the sleeping infant. "What do we matter now? We have given her to the world. There never was such a baby girl. Just think, my Elizabeth, what you endured, what even I endured? And now look at her. Remember how fortune was on her side. I was never a religious man, but since that night in January I have been made conscious of a divine power that directs the universe. In the miracle of that small but perfect being born to you and me I have understood the great miracle of creation."

Elizabeth regarded her husband with admiration and awe.

"You have such noble thoughts," she flattered him. "But I cannot think like you. I can only remember the meadows where I played as a child and the clematis over the door and the cocks crowing on fine mornings in the summer-time. And now I'm leaving all that. And grandfather is leaving it. And you, my Edward, are being taken far over the sea to another country, and all because I selfishly loved you and selfishly let you love me."

The notes of a melody more sad than any which had yet been played drifted below from the deck. Elizabeth's tears fell fast like raindrops upon the petals of a rose. Nor could Edward's most tender words console her grief, nor could they mitigate her apprehensiveness nor lighten the gloom in which for her the future was enveloped. It was not until her grandfather came tapping at their cabin door, in which a moment later he stood framed with his ruddy and jocund countenance, that she smiled.

"I've enjoyed myself rarely," he announced. "There's been singing up there as would put the heart in any man. There was never better fiddling in Barton Flowers, not when I was a nipper. I'm bothered if I han't enjoyed myself. Sleep like a top, the saying is. Bothered if I shan't sleep like a humming-top to-night."

He wished them well and stumped off to his berth.

"You see how happy the old man is!" Edward exclaimed.

And Elizabeth, now that the music had ceased to play upon her emotion, forgot her fears. In the morning when they went on deck London was sailing past them on either side of the ship, and a sharp wind from the northwest made the voyagers long for warm and sunny lands.

Among the emigrants was a middle-aged couple called Fawcus, both of whom showed themselves most friendly to the Flowers, and both of whom much admired the good behavior of the baby girl. Mr. Fawcus was a large, smooth-faced man of fifty, definitely parsonic in the general impression he gave with his suit of black broadcloth, a primness of manner that was noticeable in so large a man, and an inclination to discourse in rotund sentences. His wife was in every way a contrast to her husband, being small, restless, and quick-eyed, a woman obviously belonging to an inferior class, but who in spite of her Cockney accent and vulgarity was obviously the leader and looked after her husband as sharply as a capable and well-trained nurse.

"I hope Mr. Micawber will still be alive when we reach Australia," said Edward. "Nobody else could keep pace with our friend."

"You haven't spoken of Mr. Micawber before, dear," said Elizabeth reproachfully. "I didn't know you had any friends in Australia."

"Mr. Micawber is a character in one of Mr. Charles Dickens' novels," he explained.

"Mr. Dickens who wrote the Christmas Carol?" Elizabeth asked.

"The same."

"He must be a very nice gentleman," was her murmured comment.

Edward laughed.

Mr. Fawcus according to himself had been reduced to emigration by the devotion of his energy, his talents, and his money to the great cause of popular education.

"My survey of history," he told Edward, "taught me that all the greatest human beings have been teachers. I determined, however humbly, to follow in their footsteps."

According to Mrs. Fawcus her husband's mistake had been first in wasting money on derelict schools, and secondly in destroying whatever chance such schools had of recovery by preaching in the open air of the locality on Sundays.

"People couldn't a-bear to send their children to Mr. Fawcus's school when they saw him preaching in the market-place like any heathen missionary. It gave them the idea he was funny, and so the scholars'ud leave until there wasn't one left, and then Mr. Fawcus had to move to another town and start over again with another school. Besides, I was always a hindrance to him."

"You were never a hindrance, my love."

"Oh, yes, I was, Mr. Fawcus, and well you know it. The truth is parents don't want a homely woman like me for a teacher. They look for something quite different in a school-mistress, something tall and starchy."

"And what are you going to do in Australia?" Edward asked.

"In Australia, my dear sir," Mr. Fawcus boomed, "in Australia I am going to educate the aborigines, who I understand from the reports of travelers are considered the most degraded race of human beings on this earth. Should that prove truer than the majority of travelers' tales there must be room for education. After my experience with the children of...."

"Hush!" his wife interjected. "Hush, Mr. Fawcus!"

"After my experience with the last school I founded in England the aborigines of Australia will be easy to manage. Their women, I believe, are known as ginns. A most unbecoming designation. I shall try to persuade them to abolish that name. The sea is rising, I observe with regret. We are liable to pass a rough night, I fear. And I am usually right. In fact, my intimates often nickname me Mr. Forecast. My own name, by the way, is remarkable, don't you think? I have been tempted to speculate upon its origin, and I have sometimes fancied that it might be found among the senatus populusque Romanus. I was informed the other day, however, by a gentleman of curious etymological knowledge that it is probably a local variant of Fawkes. You of course remember Guy of that ilk? Yes, the sky is looking very dirty indeed."

A steely dusk of northwest weather lay chill upon the Wizard Queen when she was tossing in the Downs, and by night the wind was blowing with hurricane fury from the Kentish coast. The music and motion of the storm kept all on board awake, and when about three o'clock there was a crash followed by a dreadful sound of grinding timbers, the faces of the terrified passengers immediately appeared from every cabin.

Edward bade his wife wrap up the baby while he found out what had happened, and with only an overcoat over his nightshirt he forced his way on deck. From the darkness on the port side a shape seemed to carve itself to the fleeting likeness of another vessel, but it vanished so quickly that Edward fancied the vision to be a chimera of the night.

"All hands to lower the boats," a voice cried from forward in the murk of the night. Figures in dripping oilskins, like monsters risen from the sea, pushed Edward aside to get at their business; but he managed to make his way back aft to where from the orange mist above the saloon-companion a stream of disheveled passengers belched forth like smoke waving in the blast. As he fought his way down to find Elizabeth and the old man, he heard another shout for'ard.

"The port lifeboat was smashed in the collision."

The saloon was empty when Edward reached it, and he was on the point of turning back to begin a distracted search on deck when Elizabeth came out of her cabin carrying the baby, her hair all about her shoulders, her aspect serene. She looked fragile, ethereal indeed, but amid all that confusion of human terror into which she must shortly be plunged she moved forward with the resolution of an angel. Behind her came the old man wrapped in a plaid shawl above his nightshirt, his face ruddy as ever, but his old legs appearing thin as twigs beneath, so that it seemed as if he must be blown away into the night when he should face the storm.

The crew was lowering the jolly-boat full of passengers when they reached the deck. Notwithstanding the peril, for the ship would not float another ten minutes it was being shouted, two of the sailors were arguing angrily about the rig of the craft that struck the Wizard Queen. One declared with an oath that it was a schooner; the other affirmed with equal vigor that it had been a barquantine. A ship's officer hurrying by fell to cursing them for rascals that they should stand there arguing when the starboard lifeboat must be launched.

"Women and children first," the captain thundered.

A fiercer squall drummed overhead, and the emigrants that still remained in the ship huddled together in fear of that dreadful brew of waters upon which they were soon to float away. Somebody urged Elizabeth toward the lifeboat; but she drew back.

"Let somebody go instead of me. I'll wait for my husband," she said.

But it happened that she was the last woman left and that there was still room for Edward and old James, so that presently all three climbed into the lifeboat.

"Lower away!"

The lifeboat rocked for a moment in the davits; and then just as she reached the sea, being full in the weather, she was driven with great force against the ship's side and stove in. She seemed to be brimming over, but nevertheless the crew managed to shove her off, although by this time she was so deep in the water that the wretched passengers sitting on the thwarts were submerged from the waist downwards. It was only the cork in her compartments that kept her barely afloat. There were many faces still looking down from the steamer, and all on board probably went down with her, or if the cutter was launched she must have been swamped immediately, for a minute or two later the Wizard Queen rose forward in the air and sank stern first. Now one by one, as the icy waves broke over them, the women and men in the lifeboat dropped from exhaustion into the sea. Old James Taylor was among the first to go, falling backward without a cry, without a word of reproach, as silently as one of his own red apples might fall at home in the first October gale.

"Did the Captain say where we was?" asked the man at the tiller.

"Abreast of Beachy Head," one shouted in reply, and as he spoke a wave swept him and a woman and a child into the darkness.

"O God! he's dead. He's lying dead in my arms!" cried a miserable father who was holding in his arms a little boy of five or six.

"Drop the body overboard," the man at the tiller shouted. "Every pound tells. Lighten the boat," he roared angrily. "Lighten the boat!"

The wretched father, clasping his dead child more closely, turned away in indignation at the brutal order; but as he turned a wave swept him and the body overboard, and the boat was lightened a little more.

All this time Elizabeth said nothing; but she clung to her place with one hand and with the other held the baby to her breast beneath her cloak. All this time Edward said nothing; but he had somehow managed to wedge his legs round a support, so that whenever Elizabeth trembled in her seat he could put out two arms to save her from peril. Two women died of exhaustion from the wash of the sea and the freezing wind, and their bodies were at once flung overboard. On the other side of Elizabeth, Mrs. Fawcus, who alone of the women appeared to be completely dressed, was trying to get off her cloak to throw it round the mother, and simultaneously making an effort to listen to the plans of Mr. Fawcus for the future, should the lifeboat ever reach a harbor.

"I have given up my plan of educating the aborigines of Australia," he bellowed above the gale, making a megaphone with his hands.

"Yes, dear, I'm sure I agree with you. Drat this hook! It's so bent I can't get it out of the eye. And don't put up your hands and shout at me, Mr. Fawcus. You'll be swept over if you do."

"What has occurred once," Mr. Fawcus bellowed, "may easily occur again. I shall inquire for a suitable post in London. I always did execrate the sea, as you know, my dear."

Mrs. Fawcus nodded.

"And I was right," he shouted. "I usually am." But his wife could not applaud his wisdom, for at that moment Elizabeth, reeling, cried:

"Take my baby. Edward! My darling, my darling, I ought not to have married you. It's all my fault."

As Mrs. Fawcus took the baby, Elizabeth fell, and Edward, throwing himself backward in a last effort to save his wife, fell with her into the sea.

At dawn a small steamer sighted the wreck of the lifeboat and launched a boat to rescue the four who had survived that night. One was the man at the tiller; the other three were Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus with Mary Flower.

Chapter Two

THE GIRL

Chapter Two: The Girl

Mary Flower passed the first ten years of her life in the basement of a publisher's office in Paternoster Row, where every floor as high as the roof was loaded with the stock of years, so that the earliest defined fear of her childhood was lest the old house should collapse one night and bury herself and her uncle and aunt beneath a mountain of books. This was the result of reading the story of an earthquake in Jamaica; and the habit thus engendered of brooding upon seismic catastrophes led Mary soon afterward to prefigure the vaster ruin of St. Paul's Cathedral, the bulk of which obscured so much of the sky from her childish vision.

"You've no right to fill her head with such notions, Uncle William," said Mrs. Fawcus sharply. "Why, there was no more than a tiny little crack in the ceiling over her bed, and I'm sure the child regular worried the life out of me about that blessed crack."

"That's where you're wrong, Aunt Lucy," replied Mr. Fawcus. "When a child's interest is aroused in any natural phenomenon it is the duty of the parent or of the guardian who stands in loco parentis to cultivate that interest by every means in his power. It is one of the rudimentary principles of education. Fate directed her to the narrative of an earthquake in the West Indies, rousing in her breast an ambition to know more about terrestrial convulsions, to learn about such facts as their comparative frequency and their geographical distribution. What has our little Mary learned? She has learned that nothing more than slight shocks may be expected in the heart of London and that ..."

"Oh, how you do carry on, Uncle William! The poor child's learned nothing of the kind. She goes to bed shaking in her shoes every night."

However, Mary soon forgot all about earthquakes, because a dancing bear broke loose in St. Paul's Churchyard and created such a panic that for several weeks she saw bears at the back of every cupboard, and Mrs. Fawcus had to hide her favorite copy of Red Riding Hood on account of the tremors set up by the vivid illustrations. It must not be supposed that she was a very nervous child or that her existence was unusually spoilt by the incidental alarms of childhood. On the contrary, the world beheld in the basement of that tall Georgian warehouse was a placid and cozy world, her place in which she owed to the couple whom she knew as Uncle William and Aunt Lucy.

When Mr. Fawcus walked down the gangway of the steamer that rescued him from the wreck of that lifeboat and felt the terra-firma, as he called it, of Dover Quay beneath his feet, he knelt down just outside the Lord Warden Hotel and vowed that he would never attempt to leave his native land again.

"I've been teaching all my life," he told Mrs. Fawcus. "But I can still learn a lesson myself."

The problem of the future was a difficult one, and it was not simplified by the responsibility of the baby.

"Though, mark you," said Mr. Fawcus gravely, "I consider that the education of one English girl is of more importance than the education of a thousand Australian aborigines. Unfortunately I have come to the end of my capital, and in order to educate her it will be necessary for me to find some kind of moderately remunerative employment."

"I'm glad to hear you speak so sensible, Mr. Fawcus," said his wife.

"Bly, my dear, bly. Sensi-bly. Don't let a shipwreck destroy in one moment what I have spent years in teaching you: the distinction between an adjective and an adverb."

During their short intercourse with the Flowers Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, or to be accurate Mrs. Fawcus, had elicited an account of the circumstances which had led up to their emigrating; when it began to look as if Mr. Fawcus was never going to find a suitable job, his wife argued that they ought to communicate with the baby's grandfather.

"If we were going to say anything at all," Mr. Fawcus objected, "we ought to have written the moment we found ourselves safe on shore. Having left it so long, we may appear to the eyes of Sir Richard Flower like kidnappers. She is such a good baby that I hate to give her up, and besides I did want to try my hand at an education completely independent of those obstinate and conservative creatures which we know generically as 'parents.'"

Nevertheless, Mr. Fawcus, in dread of the uncertain future, was at last driven by his wife's entreaties into communication with the grandfather of the baby whose guardianship he had assumed in the presence of death.

101 Floral Street,
Near Covent Garden,
March 3rd, 1860.
Honored Sir,

You have no doubt read with a father's grief, in which I beg leave most respectfully to share, the melancholy news of the loss of the emigrant ship, Wizard Queen, by collision off Beachy Head at 3 a.m. on the morning of the 18th ult., and by this time you have no doubt abandoned all hope of hearing that your son, Mr. Edward Flower, was saved. I do not write to raise false hopes in your breast. Alas! I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in the lifeboat to which we both clung (rather than in which we both sat) swept overboard in a vain attempt to save his wife from a similar fate. It may, however, be some mitigation of your sorrow to learn that he left behind him in the care of myself and wife a baby girl, who is at present sharing our humble room at the above address. We should deeply feel parting with the engaging infant; but we respectfully recognize the superior claims of her grandparents. I have the honor to await your instructions with regard to her disposal. Will you send a suitable nurse to convey the infant to your Seat? Or shall my good wife take upon herself the responsibility of personally delivering the infant at Barton Hall?

I must apologize for the delay in notifying you of your granddaughter's fortunate survival; but I have recently been much occupied in trying to recover for myself the small niche in England which I so rashly abandoned in my ambition to put the glories of education within reach of the aborigines of Australia. In expectation of shortly hearing from you, I have the honor, Sir, to subscribe myself

Your most obedient humble servant,
William Axworthy Fawcus.

P. S.—I should add that I was formerly a schoolmaster, having been the proud possessor of several private schools in turn. Now for various reasons I find myself unable to devote myself any longer to the education of the young idea, and I have this morning entered into a contract with Messrs. Holland and Brown, the publishers of Paternoster Row, to invigilate their stock.

W.A. F.

To this the baronet replied as follows:

Barton Hall,
Barton Flowers, Hants,
March 8, '60.
Sir,

I have no interest in my son's daughter. At the same time, I am not anxious to be under an obligation to strangers for her maintenance. If you insist on giving up your care of the baby, I must find some other worthy couple to look after her. If, on the other hand, you are willing to accept that responsibility and will let me hear that you are prepared to do so, I will instruct my lawyers, Messrs. Hepper and Philcox, to remit you the sum of £100 a year in quarterly instalments payable in advance until she reaches the age of ten years, when I shall communicate fresh proposals.

Yours truly,
Richard Flower.

Thus it befell that Mary continued to live with Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus, calling them Uncle William and Aunt Lucy, and indirectly being the cause of Mrs. Fawcus's getting nearer to an intimate mode of addressing her husband than she had ever reached before. The contract into which Mr. Fawcus had entered with Messrs. Holland and Brown might have been less grandly described as an engagement to be caretaker of their premises, for which he was paid the sum of eighteen shillings a week and allotted the basement of kitchen, scullery, two rooms, a cellar, and a backyard.

"The task is in some respects a menial task," he told his wife. "But it is redeemed by the fact that I am a warden of books. Had I been invited to guard bales of dry goods, I should have declined the offer. I am ready in the cause of literature and learning to sacrifice what remains to me of scholastic dignity by exposing myself in the toga virilis of service, in other words, a green baize apron, punctually at 6.30 a.m. to the public eye, and if the public eye chooses to regard my daily renovation of the brass, my quotidian lustration of the steps, as menial, I merely say with what's his nomen 'per aspera ad astra.'"

"Well, all I beg is, Mr. Fawcus"—he had not become Uncle William yet—"all I beg is," said his wife, "you won't go preaching about St. Paul's Churchyard of a Sunday morning."

"In, my love, not about. On, my dear, not of. Your allusion was to the locality and date, not the subject of my discourse."

"Don't be so pernickety, Mr. Fawcus. You know quite well what I meant to say."

"The Queen's English, my dear, should share with the Queen's Person the privilege of inviolability. But set your mind at rest. Preserve the mens sana in corpore sano. Now that we have been intrusted with the nonage of that cherub," he pointed to Mary asleep in her cot, "I do not intend to jeopardize the material comforts of this basement. Tu Marcellus eris! In other words, I intend to devote all my persuasive energy to Mary."

Mr. Fawcus kept his word. To be sure, he might say to his wife:

"Holland and Brown are going too far. They are impinging upon my pride. I felt very much inclined last night to utter a stern noli me tangere. But I thought of Mary, and I refrained. Yes, I thought of our Mary and I agreed to give the disposal of the day's waste-paper, the disjecta membra of their correspondence, my personal supervision."

Mr. Fawcus might complain of the advantage his employers took of his reduced circumstances; but he never did fail to remember what was owed to Mary. She was indeed the pivot of that basement in Paternoster Row, a little household goddess to whom the two old people accorded divine honors and through whom, brought close together by their common worship, they grew closer and closer to each other as the years went by. She was not a spoilt child, or at least she was not spoilt by anything except such humble treats and toys as her guardians could afford. Mrs. Fawcus was not a woman to give way out of laziness or weakness or fond affection to the exactions of childhood. She treated Mary in the same fashion as she had always treated her husband, that is to say, she loved and admired her as a superior being to herself, but she never allowed her to suppose that her behavior could not be criticized and corrected.

Mary herself at ten years old was a beautiful child, so beautiful that the degraded clothes of the period were incapable of concealing her beauty. From her mother she had inherited that auburn hair with all its texture of silk and all its abundance, but instead of brown eyes hers were deep blue, pellucid and round as speedwells. Sir Richard had such eyes once; and the painter who came to Barton Hall in the summer of 1810, without being afraid of the comparison, had painted him with a posy of cornflowers, his eyes following the flight of blue butterflies. Old James Taylor had such eyes to the end; but he was never painted in tight pantaloons and a frilled collar. If a little girl has auburn hair, and big deep blue eyes, and a complexion like a malmaison, she has no need to bother about her features. Actually Mary showed promise of fine features emerging one day from her dimples, and her hands were as fine and delicate as her grandmother's.

From being without the companionship of other children, Mary had acquired what were called old-fashioned ways, which meant that she would always join in the conversation of her uncle and aunt, pay much attention to the deportment of her dolls, and spend a great deal of time reading fairy tales by the kitchen fire. The basement of a city warehouse may seem a dreary place for a little girl to spend most of her time; but Mary found it as full of romance as one of her own picture books, and apart from such fleeting alarms as the threat of earthquakes or the dread of sudden and violent robbery, echoes of which occasionally reached her when Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus discussed events that near bedtime little girls ought not to overhear, Mary found her home safe and cosy. The small yard at the back was not so much overshadowed by the tall houses round as to keep the sun from shining down upon it in summer; here Mary had several green boxes in which she grew pansies and creeping jenny, mignonette and red and white double daisies. Here too in a wicker cage outside the kitchen door lived Mary's thrush, who sang his country song while Mary sat gazing up at the golden cross on the dome of St. Paul's and wondering if the thrush would like to be sitting there and if it would be kinder to set him free. It was a very small yard; yet it seemed illimitable to Mary, and every brick in the wall was to her as large and interesting as a field.

But if the yard seemed vast, how much vaster appeared the upper portions of the house! Sometimes when work was over Mr. Fawcus would let Mary accompany him on his tour of inspection round the deserted premises. She was allowed to climb up ladders and read the names of books stacked away on the highest shelves, dusty books with titles that sounded most uninteresting, although the recitation of them evidently gave great pleasure to Uncle William. And then one day in an attic she discovered hundreds of picture books, nearly all fairy stories. When she announced her discovery, Uncle William shook his head and muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!"

"But, Uncle William, they're not old. They're quite new. Really they are—quite bright and not a bit torn. I found The Three Bears and a story about a mother pig who frightened away a wolf when he came to gobble up her little pigs. And how do you think she did it? You'll never guess, Uncle William. Why, she rolled down the hill in a churn. What is a churn, Uncle William?"

This was exactly the kind of question dear to the heart of Mr. Fawcus, and before Mary went to bed that night she had been given an exhaustive discourse on dairy-farming, so that if she had listened as attentively as her aunt kept bidding her listen, she would have learned the difference between curds and whey, and all about rennet, and all about Stilton cheeses and Devonshire cream, and why butter won't come sometimes ... but alas! Mary did not listen, because her mind was far away upstairs in that attic.

It happened that the very next day she was sent on a message to one of the offices and that the gentleman to whom she gave the message, a dried-up gentleman with bright shining spectacles, asked her if she would like a penny to buy some lollipops.

"No, thank you, sir," said Mary, curtseying. "I'd like to go upstairs and look at those picture books at the top of the house."

Whereupon the dried-up gentleman mysteriously muttered, "Old stock! Old stock!" just like Uncle William yesterday.

"Why, you may go there whenever you like, my little maid," he told her.

"Fancy that!" exclaimed Mrs. Fawcus when she was informed of this by Mary. "Well, did you ever? I'm sure I never did. I never did know such an old-fashioned child in my life, Uncle William. Never! Fancy her asking such a thing of Mr. Bristowe."

"It's old stock," said Mr. Fawcus.

And Mary when she had been given leave by her uncle and aunt to avail herself of Mr. Bristowe's kind offer whispered "old stock" when she opened the door of that dusty attic, for she felt that it was an enchanted phrase like Open Sesame. The attic window looked down into the backyard of the basement, and Mary could not resist opening the window, for although she felt sure that she ought not to lean out of a window, inasmuch as she lived in a basement she had never actually been forbidden to lean out of windows. Yes, there were her flowers, such tiny specks of color, down below, and there was the dustbin looking more than ever like a knight in armor, and there was her thrush's cage. Hark! he was singing. She could hear his song above the thunder of the London streets. The attic window had a window-seat where Mary spent long lovely mornings in April reading those dusty picture books one after another, face to face with the clouds while the golden cross upon the dome of St. Paul's glittered in the sun. On the sill were the remains of a battered window-box still half full of earth. In this Mary sowed nasturtium seeds which grew miraculously, so that soon when Mary was in the yard she could look up and see the orange and yellow flowers waving in the wind against the dingy bricks of the warehouse.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," she called. "Let down your golden hair."

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Fawcus exclaimed.