NOVELS BY HUGH WALPOLE

STUDIES IN PLACE

THE WOODEN HORSE

MARADICK AT FORTY

THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN

TWO PROLOGUES

THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE

FORTITUDE

THE RISING CITY

1. THE DUCHESS OF WREXE

2. THE GREEN MIRROR

(In preparation)

MARADICK

AT FORTY

A Transition

BY

HUGH WALPOLE

Author of the “Fortitude” “The Duchess of Wrexe” etc.

. . . . Bless us, all the while

How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

A second, and the angels alter that.

How it strikes a contemporary.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

TO THE

MARQUIS D’ALCEDO

CONTENTS

PART I

THE ROOM OF THE MINSTRELS

PART II

PUNCH

PART III

THE TOWER

PART I

THE ROOM OF THE MINSTRELS

CHAPTER I

THE PLACE

The grey twilight gives to the long, pale stretches of sand the sense of something strangely unreal. As far as the eye can reach, it curves out into the mist, the last vanishing garments, as it were, of some fleeing ghost. The sea comes, smoothly, quite silently, over the breast of it; there is a trembling whisper as it catches the highest stretch of sand and drags it for a moment down the slope, then, with a little sigh, creeps back again a defeated lover.

The sky is grey, with an orange light hovering on its outer edges, the last signal of the setting sun. A very faint mist is creeping gradually over the sea, so faint that the silver circle of the rising moon shines quite clearly through the shadows; but it changes the pale yellow of the ghostly sand into a dark grey land without form and void, seeming for a moment to be one with sea and sky, and then rising again, out of obscurity, into definite substance.

There is silence here in the creek, save for the rustling and whisper of the sea, but round the bend of the rocks the noises of the town come full upon the ear.

The town is built up from the sand on the side of the hill, and rises, tier upon tier, until it finds its pinnacle in the church tower and the roofs of the “Man at Arms.”

Now, in the dusk, the lights shine, row upon row, out over the sand. From the market comes the sound of a fair—harsh, discordant tunes softened by the distance.

The church clock strikes eight, and a bell rings stridently somewhere in the depths of the town.

There is a distant rumble, a roar, a flash of light, and a train glides into the station.

But the sea pays no heed, and, round the bend of the creek, the sand gleams white beneath the moon, and the mist rises from the heart of the waves.

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH OUR HERO AND THE PLACE MEET ONCE AGAIN

The Maradicks had reserved four seats by the 10.45, and so really there was no reason for arriving at Paddington a few minutes after ten. But, as it happened, it was quite fortunate, because there were so many people travelling that the porters seemed to have little scruple as to whether you’d reserved something or not, and just went about pulling pink labels off and sticking pink labels on in a way that was really grossly immoral. But Mrs. Maradick, having discovered that her own pink ticket was all right—“James Maradick, Esq.: Four seats by the 10.45. Travelling to Treliss”—could afford to be complacent about other people, and even a little triumphant over the quite amusing misfortunes of a party of six who seemed to have no chance whatever of securing a seat.

Mrs. Maradick always shut her mouth very tight indeed when going off for a holiday. She entered the station with the air of one who had a very sharp battle to fight and wasn’t going to be beaten under any circumstances. She selected a porter with the confidence of a very old general who could tell a man at a glance, and she marshalled him up and down the platform with a completeness and a magnificent strategy that left him at last breathless and confused, with scarcely energy enough to show indignation at the threepence with which she rewarded his services. But to-day things were finished sooner than usual, and by half-past ten, with a quarter of an hour to spare, she was able to pay attention to her friends.

Quite a number of them had come to see her off—Mrs. Martin Fraser, Louie Denis, Mrs. Mackintosh, Maggie Crowder, and those silly girls, the Dorringtons; and actually Tom Craddock—very short, very fat, very breathless—a little bit of a bounder, perhaps, but a man who served her husband with a quite pathetic devotion. Yes, of course, he’d come to say good-bye to James, so he didn’t count in quite the same way, but still it was nice of him.

“Oh! the papers! James, I must have papers! Oh! thank you, Mr. Craddock. What? Oh, I think, perhaps, the Lady’s Pictorial and the Queen—and oh! if you wouldn’t mind, the Daily Mail and the Mirror, and—oh! James has the Mail, so perhaps the Express would be better—and yes, just something for the girls—what do you say, Annie dear? The Girl’s Realm? Yes, please, the Girl’s Realm, Mr. Craddock, and the Girl’s Own Paper for Isabel. Rather a lot, isn’t it, Louie, but it’s such a long journey—hours and hours—and the girls get so restless.”

The ladies gathered in a little phalanx round the carriage window. They always felt this departure of Emmy Maradick’s; every year it was the same. Epsom wasn’t a bit the same place whilst she was away, and they really couldn’t see why she should go away at all. Epsom was at its very nicest in August, and that was the month of the year when she could be most useful. Everyone gave their tennis-parties then; and there were those charming little summer dances, and there was no garden in Epsom like the Maradicks’! Besides, they liked her for herself. Things always seemed to go so well when she was there, she had such a—what was the word?—a French phrase—savoire-vivre or savoir-faire—yes, it really was a pity.

“We shall miss you, dear.” This from Mrs. Mackintosh.

“That’s sweet of you, Katie darling. And I shall miss all of you, ever so much. And a hotel’s never the same thing, is it? And the garden’s just beginning to look lovely. You’ll go in, once or twice, won’t you, Louie, and see that things are all right? Of course they ought to be; but you never can tell, with quite a new gardener, too. I think he’s steady enough—at least, he had excellent testimonials, and James heard from Mr. Templeton, where he was before, you know, that he was quite a reliable man; but you know what it is when one’s away, how everything seems to go——Oh! no, it’s all right, Mr. Craddock, I don’t think it’s going just yet. Sit down, Annie dear, and don’t lean against the door.”

The ladies then passed before the door, one after another, delivered their little messages, and lined up on the other side. Thus Mrs. Mackintosh—

“Well, dear, I do hope you have the rippingest time. I’m sure you deserve it after that old bazaar—all the worry——”

And Mrs. Martin Fraser—

“Mind, a postcard, dear—when you get there—just a line. We shall all so want to know.”

And Louie Denis—

“Darling, don’t forget the sketch you promised. I shall have a frame all ready—waiting.”

And Maggie Crowder—

“I hope it will be fine, dear—such a nuisance if it’s wet; and then there’s our tennis dance next week, it won’t be a bit the same thing if——”

Lastly the Dorrington girls together—

“Dear Mrs. Maradick—good-bye—ripping—awfully sorry——” the rest lost in nervous laughter.

And then began that last dreadful minute when you do so wish in spite of yourself that the train would go. You have said your last words, you have given your last embrace, and you stare passionately down the platform hoping for that final whistle and the splendid waving of a green flag.

At last it came. The ladies surged forward in a body and waved their handkerchiefs. Mrs. Maradick leaned for a moment out of the window and waved hers. Tom Craddock shouted something hoarsely about James that no one could hear, and Epsom was finally bereft of its glory.

Mrs. Maradick collected her bags with her rugs, and then considered her girls. They were seated quietly, each in a corner, their faces bent studiously over their magazines. They were very much alike, with straight flaxen hair and pink and white complexions, light blue cotton frocks, and dark green waistbands.

Yes, they were nice girls—they were dear girls. Then she thought of her husband. James Maradick had stood in the background during the farewells. He had, indeed, been busy up to the very last moment, but he was a reserved and silent man, and he really hadn’t anything very much to say. He was well over six feet, and broad in proportion. He was clean shaven, with features very strongly marked, and a high forehead from which the hair, closely cut and a little grey at the temples, was brushed back and parted on the right side. His eyes were grey and, at times, wonderfully expressive. Epsom said that he was a dreadful man for looking you through. He wore a suit of dark brown excellently cut. He was sitting now opposite his wife and looking out of the window. He was thinking of Tom Craddock.

“James dear, where is my book? You know—that novel you gave me—‘Sir Somebody or other’s heir’ or something. I just like to know where everything is before I settle down. It was really awfully nice of Louie Denis coming all that way to say good-bye—and of the others too. I wonder Jack Hearne wasn’t there. He could have seen Louie back, and it would have been a good chance; but perhaps he didn’t know she was coming. It was nice of Mr. Craddock coming up, though of course he came to see you.”

She paused for a denial, but he didn’t say anything, so she went on—“But, poor fellow, he’s getting dreadfully fat. I wonder whether he couldn’t take something for it—baths or something—though of course exercise is the thing——”

Maradick looked up. “Yes, poor old Tom. He’s a good chap. But he’s getting on—we’re all getting on. I shall be stout soon—not as young as we were——”

“Nonsense, James. I’m sure you haven’t altered a bit since you were twenty. Mr. Craddock was always stout.”

She leaned back and put her hand to her forehead. “This train does shake most dreadfully. I’m going to have one of those horrible headaches again. I can feel it coming. Just look for my smelling-salts, will you? I think they are in that little black handbag.”

He, wise through much experience, soon found what she wanted, settled cushions at her back, drew the blind down the window to keep the sun from her eyes, and then sank back into his seat again and watched the country flash past.

How many holidays had there been before exactly like this one? He could not count them. There had always been people to see them off—people who had said the same things, made the same jokes, smiled and laughed in the same way. There had always been the same hurried breakfast, the agitated drive, the crowded station, the counting of boxes. There had not, of course, been always the girls; there had been a nurse, and they had travelled in another carriage because the noise troubled his wife. His wife! He looked at her now as she lay back against her cushions with her eyes closed. She had changed very little during all those married years; she was still the same dainty, pretty little woman—something delicate and fragile—whom he had loved so passionately fifteen years before. He thought of those years before he had met her. They had been exciting, adventurous years. Whenever he went out, were it only to pay a call, there had been always the thought that now, perhaps, at last, he was to meet that wonderful Fate that was waiting somewhere for him. He had often thought that he had met it. He remembered Miss Suckling, a pretty girl, a parson’s daughter, and then Lucy Armes with her wonderful dark hair and glorious eyes, and then little Rose Craven—yes, he had loved her pretty badly, only some one else had stepped in and carried her off.

And then at last his Fate had come; there had been a delirious courting, a glorious proposal, a rapturous engagement, and a wonderful wedding. It was all so swift and so exciting that he had not had time to think about it at all. The world had seemed a very wonderful, glowing place then, and he had wondered why people thought that rapture faded and gave place to other feelings—mistrust and criticism and then estrangement. He remembered the wonderful letters that he had written, and the sealing of them with great blots of red sealing-wax—every night he had written. On looking back, it seemed that he had done most of the wooing; she had been very charming and dainty and delightful, but she had taken things very quietly and soberly.

And now? He looked at her again, and then out of the window. Nothing had happened, of course. He could look to no definite act or event and point to it as the dividing line. He had discovered very quickly that she had nothing to give him, that there was no question, nor indeed could ever be, of partnership or companionship. That, of course, had been at first. He had put it down to his own stupidity, his ignorance, his blindness; but he had tried her on every side, he had yielded her every allowance, and there was nothing there, simply nothing at all.

Then he had discovered another thing. She had not married him for himself, nor indeed, to do her justice, for his position or anything material that he could give her, but simply that she might have children. He did not know how he had discovered this, but he had known it by the end of the first year of their life together, and then, as their girls had grown, he had seen it increasingly plainly. Any other man would have done equally well—some men might have done better—and so he had done his duty.

Then, when he saw what had happened and that there was an end to his dreams, he had set his teeth and given his soul for the making of money. Whether it had been a fair exchange he did not know, but he had succeeded. They had plenty—plenty for the present, plenty for the future. He need not do another day’s work all his life unless he wished, and he was only forty.

He smiled grimly as he looked out of the window. He did not whine or complain. There were doubtless thousands and thousands of other people in the same case—only, what a muddle! what a silly, hideous muddle.

He was forty, and in perfect health. He looked at his wife again. She was happy enough; she had her house and her friends and her girls! She did not want anything at all. And they would go on, of course, to the end of things like that. For years now it had been the same thing. He had played the game, and she had never guessed that he wanted anything; she had probably never thought about him at all.

He was forty, and life was over—its adventures, its emotions, its surprises, its vices, its great romance; he was a bird in a cage, and he had put himself inside and locked the door. He looked at his girls; they aroused no emotion whatever, he did not care for them at all. That was wrong, of course, but it was quite true; and then it was equally true that they didn’t care for him. His head began to nod, and at last he was asleep. He was dreaming of the station and poor Tom Craddock—he grew fatter and fatter—he filled the carriage—everyone had to squeeze against the wall to get out of his way—Tom, Tom—this won’t do, really—have some consideration. . . .

There was perfect silence in the carriage. The girls had not spoken a word since the journey began. The shining landscape flew past them; things darted up at the window; cows and trees and hedges and telegraph wires leapt wildly up and down for no apparent reason whatever. At last an official arrived and commanded them to take their places for lunch, and there was instant confusion. Mrs. Maradick sailed into the dining-car followed closely by her girls; Maradick brought up the rear.

Her sleep had refreshed her, and she was bright and amusing. “Now, James, look your brightest. Well, Annie darling, and was the Girl’s Realm amusing? Yes? I’m so glad, and what was the thing that you liked best?”

Annie spoke softly and deliberately. “There was a story, mother, about a girl’s adventures in America that I liked rather, also an article on ‘How to learn the Violin’ was very good.” She folded her hands on her lap and looked straight in front of her.

But Mrs. Maradick was deep in the menu. “It’s always roast mutton or boiled lamb,” she exclaimed; “I never knew anything so monotonous—and cheese or sweet”—she dived into her soup with relish.

“It’s really not so bad,” she cried a little later. “And they do have the things hot, which is so important. Think, girls, we’re half-way already. We’ll be in splendid time for dinner. I wonder who’ll be there this year. There were those nice Jacksons last year—you remember—that Miss Jackson with the fuzzy hair and the short skirt—quite nice people, they were. I don’t think you took to them much, James.”

“No, I didn’t care very much about them,” he replied grimly.

“No—such a pity. We so often like different people. And then there were the Dalrymples—quite nice—and Lucy Dalrymple was such a good friend for the girls; you remember Lucy, don’t you, dears?”

And so it was to be the same thing again—the same monotonous round that it had been before. He had liked Treliss at first. It had been quaint, romantic, interesting, and he had loved the sea. And then the hotel with its quaint name, “The Man at Arms,” and its picturesque Elizabethan architecture. If he could be there alone, just for a day!

They went back to their carriage, and found that the two extra seats, tenanted hitherto by a man and his wife who were negligible from every point of view, were now occupied by two very young people. A further glance classified them as “honeymooners,” and Mrs. Maradick found them no longer interesting. She sank into her novel, and there was absolute stillness save for the soft whirr of the wheels beneath them and the rush of the air outside the windows.

The couple opposite him were very quiet—sometimes there was a whisper or a laugh as their eyes met. He knew that look in the eyes and that clasp of the hand. He knew that they were, both of them, outside the train, flying through space, without thought of time or any confining boundaries. What fools they were; he would like to tell them so. He would like to show them that he had been like that once, fifteen years before. He had thought that there would never be an end to it, and it had lasted barely a year.

And so they passed into Cornwall. Every year at that moment there came the same strange thrill, the same emotion as of something ancient and immutable crossing the very modern and changing texture of his own life.

Mrs. Maradick put down her novel and looked about her.

“It will soon be Truro,” she said; “and then there’ll be all that troublesome changing at Trewth. It’s really too absurd that one should have that all the time. Dear Louie! I wonder what she’s doing now—gone to look at the garden, I expect, like the dear girl she is. I hope they will give us the same rooms again this year. You wrote for them, didn’t you?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Because you know last year they tried to put those stupid Jones’s in, and if I hadn’t made quite a row about it they’d have turned us into the east wing with that great dreary sweep of sea and not a glimpse of the town in front.”

He remembered that he had rather envied those rooms in front; there had been a magnificent view of the sea, and a little corner with an old greystone pier and red fishing-boats.

Mrs. Maradick turned her attention to the girls.

“Now, dears, come and talk.” They moved towards her, and sat one on each side, expectant. “I had your reports, dears, just before I left home, and they were both most satisfactory. Miss Maynard says about your French, Isabel, that you show some ability and great diligence. Which was Miss Maynard, dear, at the prize-giving? That nice-looking girl with that rather smart frock? I remember noticing her at the time.”

“No, mother, that was Miss Lane; Miss Maynard had pince-nez.”

“Oh, yes; and beat time to the songs, I remember. As for the arithmetic——”

He watched them, and knew that he had been forgotten altogether. Were other people’s children like that? He knew some little girls who climbed on to their father’s knee, and pulled his moustache and clutched his hand; but then, it must be largely his own fault, because he knew that if his girls had tried to do that he would have prevented them. He should not have known what to say!

There was a wonderful glow over the land as they came into Trewth. Already he felt the breath of the sea and the salt sting in the air; down the long platform the winds came laughing and screaming round the boxes and the bundles and the absurd mortals who clung to their hats and cloaks and neatly bound hair.

“Come, girls.” Mrs. Maradick collared her porter and shouted “Treliss!” into his ear. “Don’t forget anything, James. Have you my green bag and the little brown holdall? and—oh, yes—my black bag there on the seat.” She hurried down the platform.

It was always at this moment that a general review took place, and you discovered whether there was going to be anyone you knew at Treliss. Everyone was waiting for the other train to come in, so that you had a splendid time for inspection. Mrs. Maradick was an adept at the difficult art of knowing all about people in half a minute without looking anywhere near them.

“No, the Dalrymples aren’t there. I dare say they’ve come already. What a wind! Really, it’s most annoying having to wait. James, have you got all the boxes there? Twelve altogether, counting that portmanteau of yours——”

She was looking very pretty indeed, her colour heightened by the wind, her hair blowing in little golden whisps about her cheek, the light green of her dress, and the little jingle of gold bracelets, and the pearl necklace at her throat.

They walked up and down the platform silently until the train came in. They never talked when they were together because there was nothing to say. When other people were there they kept it up because they had to play a game, but when they were alone it really wasn’t worth while. He wondered sometimes whether she realised that he was there at all. He would have liked to make her angry; he had tried once, but it was no good, she only smiled and stared through him as though he had been a brick wall.

They got into the train and sped on that fairy-journey to Treliss. It was always the most magical thing in the world. The trains helped to add to the romance of it—strange lumbering, stumbling carriages with a ridiculous little engine that shrieked for no reason and puffed and snorted in order to increase its own importance. They often stopped suddenly while something was put right; and they would lie there, for several minutes, in the heart of the golden sand with the blue sea smiling below. He was often tempted to get out and strike across the green dunes, and so down into the heart of the little town with its red roofs and shining spires. He caught the gleam of the wet sand, and he saw the red-brown outline of the rocks as they rounded the curve.

That platform was crowded, and he had some difficulty in securing a cab; but they were settled at last, and turned the corner down the cobbled street.

Mrs. Maradick lay back quite exhausted. “We’d never have got that cab if I hadn’t held on to that man’s arm,” she said breathlessly. “It was positively the last, and we should have had to wait at that station hours before we got another. I call it regular bad management. It’s the most important train in the day and they ought to have had plenty of things to meet it.”

Treliss has not, as yet, been spoiled by the demands of modern civilisation. “Touristy” it is in August, and the “Man at Arms” is one of the most popular hotels in the West of England; but it has managed to keep undefiled its delightfully narrow streets, its splendidly insufficient shops, its defective lighting, and a quite triumphant lack of competition. Its main street runs steeply up the hill, having its origin in the wet, gleaming sands of the little bay and its triumphant conclusion in the splendid portals and shining terraces of the “Man at Arms.” The street is of cobbles, and the houses still hang over it with crooked doorposts and bending gables, so that the Middle Ages stalks by your side as you go, and you expect some darkly cloaked figure to point menacingly with bony fingers up the dark alleys and twisting corners. There are shops of a kind along the way, but no one has ever taken them seriously. “You can buy nothing in Treliss” is the constant cry of all visitors; and it is generally followed by the assertion that you have to pay double West End prices all the same.

The ancient four-wheeler containing the Maradicks bumped slowly up the hill, and at every moment it seemed as though the avalanche of boxes on the top must come down with a rush and a roar and scatter their contents over the cobbles.

Mrs. Maradick said nothing, her mind was fixed on the forthcoming interview with her hotel manager. She would have to fight for those rooms, she knew, but she would win her victory and give no quarter. The charm of the place had caught Maradick once more in its arms. In the dust and heat of the London year he had thought that he had lost it altogether; but now, with a glimpse of the curving bay and the cobbled street, with that scent of spray and onions and mignonette and fishing-nets (it was compounded of all those things) in his nostrils, his heart was beating excitedly, and he was humming a little tune that he had heard the year before. What was the tune? He had forgotten it; he had never thought of it in London, but now it was with him again. He had heard a sailor sing it in an inn on the quay. He had stood outside in the dusk and listened. He remembered the last line:—

And there’s gold in the creek and the sands of the sea,

So ho! for the smuggler’s cargo!

It meant nothing, of course—a kind of “Pirates of Penzance” absurdity—but the little tune was beating in his brain.

Half-way up the hill there is the market-place, standing on a raised plateau as it were, with the town-hall as its central glory.

They drove through with difficulty, because there was a fair that filled the market and overflowed into the crooked streets up and down the hill. They only caught a passing glimpse as they bumped and stumbled through: a merry-go-round and rows of booths and shouting crowds of men and girls, and a strange toothless old woman in a peaked hat seated on a barrel and selling sweets.

“How they can allow it I don’t know!” Mrs. Maradick leant back from the window. “One might as well—Whitechapel, you know, and all that sort of thing.”

The last turn of the road to the hotel was very steep indeed, and the weight of the boxes seemed to accumulate with every step; the horses strained and tugged, and for a moment they hesitated and half slid backward, then with a hoarse shout from the driver, a gigantic straining of limb and muscle, they were through the hotel gates. For the hotel stands in its own grounds, and, as you approach it up a drive of larch and birch, its privacy is startling and unusual.

One hundred years before it had been the manor of the estate, the feudal castle of a feudal town, ruling, like some Italian despot, the country at its feet. Then its masters had fallen at the feet of the Juggernaut of modern civilisation and improvement, and their tyranny had passed into the hands of others. For some years the house had lain desolate and threatened to fall into utter ruin and decay; its gardens had been transformed into a wilderness, and its rooms had gathered dust and mildew into their quarters. Then in 1850 or thereabouts young Mr. Bannister of Manchester had seen his chance. Treliss, at that time, was an obscure and minute village of no fame whatever; but it had fishing, colour and bathing, so Mr. Bannister seized his opportunity.

He had large resources at his back and a very original brain at his service, so he set to work and was immediately successful. He had no intention of turning it into a modern watering-place—there was enough of that (speaking now of 1860) to be done elsewhere—he had Pendragon and Port Looth in his mind. No, he would let it keep its character—indeed, he would force it to keep its character. For some years there were other things to do and his plans were still in embryo; then in 1870 (no longer young Mr. Bannister, but stout and prosperous Mr. Bannister) he took the house in hand.

He interfered in no way with its original character. There were a great many alterations, of course, but, through it all, it retained that seventeenth-century charm and spaciousness—that air of surprise and unexpected corners, the sudden visions of hidden gardens bordered by close-clipped box and the broad depths of wide stone staircases and dark oak panelling—a charm that was to be found in no other hotel in England, a delicious survival that gave you seventeenth-century England without any of its discomforts and drawbacks, sanitary or otherwise.

For now, in 1908, it had all the very latest improvements. There were lifts, and the very best methods of ventilation; the electric light was of a delicious softness, and carpets and chairs were so luxurious that it was difficult to force oneself outside. But then, when you were outside, you wondered how you could ever stay in; for there were lawns with the most wonderful views of the sea and tennis and croquet and badminton and—and now the Maradicks were at the door.

There were several people scattered about the grounds who watched them with curiosity; but it was nearly dressing-time, and already the shadows were lengthening over the lawns and the yews flung long fantastic shapes over the roses and pinks. There was a little breeze in the tops of the trees, and very faintly, like some distant solemn music, came the roll of the sea.

The doors closed on the Maradicks.

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH THE ADMONITUS LOCORUM BEGINS TO HAVE FUN

WITH TWO ENTIRELY RESPECTABLE MEMBERS OF

SOCIETY

The hall of the “Man at Arms” was ever a place of mystery. The high roof seemed to pass into infinite space, and on every side there appeared passages and dark oaken doors that led, one fancied, into the very heart of secrecy.

At the other end, opposite to the great doors, was the wide stone staircase leading to other floors, and down the passages to right and left deep-set windows let in shafts of light.

Mrs. Maradick greeted Mr. Bannister cordially, but with reserve. He was a little stout man like a top, scrupulously neat and always correct. He liked to convey to his guests the spirit of the place—that they were received from no mercenary point of view, but rather with the greeting of a friend. Of course, there would ultimately be a bill—it was only the horrid necessity of these, our grasping times—but let it be forgotten and put aside until the final leave-taking. He would have preferred, if possible, to send bills afterwards by post, directed by another hand; but that gave opportunity to unscrupulous adventurers. He would have liked to have entertained the whole world, at any rate the whole social world, free of charge; as it was—well, the bills were heavy. He was always disappointed when his guests failed to grasp this point of view; sometimes they were blustering and domineering, sometimes they were obsequious and timorous—either manner was disagreeable.

About Mrs. Maradick he was never quite sure. He was afraid that she scarcely grasped the whole situation; there was no doubt that she found it impossible to eliminate the bill altogether.

“And our rooms?”

Mrs. Maradick looked up at him. She was smiling, but it was a smile that threatened to disappear.

“I think you will be completely satisfied, Mrs. Maradick. A most delightful suite on the second floor with a view of the sea——”

“Ah—but our rooms. My husband wrote, I think. We had the same last year—I——”

“I’m afraid that there’s been a little difficulty. We had had previous orders. I would have written to explain had I not been sure that the rooms that we had allotted you would be completely satisfactory.”

“Now, Mr. Bannister, that is too bad of you.” The smile had gone and her eyes flashed. There was to be a battle as she had foreseen. “We had the same trouble last year, I think——”

“I am extremely sorry, Mrs. Maradick.” He watched her a little anxiously. This was one of the occasions on which he was not certain of her. Would she remember the true ethics of the situation? He hoped for her sake that she would. “I am really very sorry, but I am afraid in this case that there is nothing to be done. Sir Richard and Lady Gale ordered the rooms so long ago as last Christmas. It is of some importance to him, I believe, owing to reasons of health. They laid some stress on it.”

“Lady Gale?”

“Yes.” Mr. Bannister smiled again. “Really, Mrs. Maradick, I think that you would be perfectly satisfied with your rooms if you would come up for a moment.”

“Is Lady Gale here?” Mrs. Maradick was considering.

“Yes. They arrived last night.”

“Well,” this slowly and with hesitation, “let us go and see them, James. One never knows, after all.”

Maradick was relieved. He always waited in the background during these interviews—there were many throughout the year. But this was delightfully over. Had it been the Jones’s! Well, he had no doubt that it would have been a prolonged struggle; after all, there was a difference.

Mrs. Maradick hurried to the lift, her girls in close attendance, and Mr. Bannister at her side. Maradick was about to follow, when he felt a touch on his elbow and turned round. At his side stood a young man with dark curly hair and a snub nose; not snub enough to mind, but just enough to give you the impression that “everything turned up”—the corners of his mouth and the tips of his ears.

He seemed very young indeed, and had that very clean, clear skin that is the best thing in a decent young man; at least, that is more or less how Maradick summed him up. He was in evening dress, and it suited him.

“I say, I’m most awfully sorry.”

He was smiling, so Maradick smiled too.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

“About the rooms, you know. It is my people—my name is Gale—who have them. I’m afraid it was most annoying, and I’m sure my mother will be extremely sorry.” He blushed and stammered.

“Oh, please——” Maradick felt quite embarrassed. “It really doesn’t matter at all. My wife liked those rooms—we were there last year—and she’s naturally asked about them; but these others will suit us splendidly.”

“No, but your being there last year seems almost as though you had a right, doesn’t it? It is true about my father, it makes rather a difference to him, and they are ripping rooms.”

“Yes, of course,” Maradick laughed again, “we shall be perfectly comfortable.”

There was a moment’s pause. There was nothing more to say: then suddenly, simultaneously—“It’s very decent . . .” and at that they laughed again. Then Maradick hurried up the stairs.

The boy stayed where he was, the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth. Although it was half-past seven the daylight streamed into the hall. People were passing to and fro, and every now and again glanced at him and caught his infectious smile.

“By Jove, a pretty woman, but a bit of a Tartar,” he said, thinking of Mrs. Maradick; then he turned round and walked up the stairs, down a passage to the right, and in a moment young Gale had opened their sitting-room door. The rooms under discussion were certainly very delightful and the view was charming, down over the town and out to the sea beyond. There were glimpses of the crooked streets and twisted gables, and, at last, the little stone pier and a crowd of herring-boats sheltering under its protection.

In the sitting-room was Lady Gale, waiting to go down to dinner. At this time she was about fifty years of age, but she was straight and tall as she had been at twenty. In her young days as Miss Laurence, daughter of Sir Douglas Laurence, the famous Egyptologist, she had been a beauty, and she was magnificent now with a mass of snow-white hair that, piled high on her head, seemed a crown worthily bestowed on her as one of the best and gentlest women of her generation; but perhaps it was her eyes that made you conscious at once of being in the presence of some one whose judgment was unswerving with a tenderness of compassion that made her the confidante of all the failures and wastrels of her day. “Lady Gale will tell you that you are wrong,” some one once said of her; “but she will tell you so that her condemnation is better than another person’s praise.”

At her side stood a man of about thirty, strikingly resembling her in many ways, but lacking in animation and intelligence. You felt that his carefully controlled moustache was the most precious thing about him, and that the cut of his clothes was of more importance than the cut of his character.

“Well, Tony?” Lady Gale greeted him as he closed the door behind him. “Getting impatient? Father isn’t ready. I told him that we’d wait for him; and Alice hasn’t appeared——”

“No, not a bit.” He came over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not hungry, as a matter of fact, too big a tea. Besides, where’s Alice?”

“Coming. She told us not to wait, but I suppose we’d better.”

“Oh, I say! Mother! I’ve discovered the most awfully decent fellow downstairs, really; I hope that we shall get to know him. He looks a most thundering good sort.”

The red light from the setting sun had caught the church spire and the roofs of the market-place; the town seemed on fire; the noise of the fair came discordantly up to them.

“Another of your awfully decent chaps!” This from his brother. “My dear Tony, you discover a new one every week. Only I wish you wouldn’t thrust them on to us. What about the charming painter who borrowed your links and never returned them, and that delightful author-fellow who was so beastly clever that he had to fly the country——?”

“Oh, chuck it, Rupert. Of course one makes mistakes. I learnt a lot from Allison, and I know he always meant to send the links back and forgot; anyhow he’s quite welcome to them. But this chap’s all right—he is really—he looks jolly decent——”

“Yes; but, Tony,” said his mother, laughing, “I agree with Rupert there. Make your odd acquaintances if you like, but don’t bring them down on to us; for instance, that horrid little fat man you liked so much at one time, the poet——”

“Oh, Trelawny. He’s all right now. He’s going to do great things one day.”

“And meanwhile borrows money that he never intends to repay. No, Tony, these sudden acquaintances are generally a mistake, take my word for it. How long have you known this man downstairs?”

“Only a minute. He’s just arrived with his wife and two little girls.”

“And you know him already?”

“Well, you see his wife wanted these rooms—said she ordered them or something—and then went for old Bannister about it, and he, naturally enough, said that we’d got them; and then he stuck it on about their rooms and said that they were much the nicest rooms in the place, and then she went off fairly quiet.”

“Well, where did the man come in?”

“He didn’t at all, and, from the look of her, I shouldn’t think that he ever does. But I went up and said I was jolly sorry, and all that sort of thing——”

“Well, I’m——!” from Rupert. “Really, Tony! And what on earth was there to apologise for! If we are going to start saying pretty things to everyone in the hotel who wants these rooms we’ve got our work cut out.”

“Oh! I didn’t say pretty things; I don’t know why I really said anything at all. The spirit moved me, I suppose. I’m going to be friends with that man. I shall like him.”

“How do you know?”

“By three infallible signs. He looks you straight in the eyes, he’s got a first-class laugh, and he doesn’t say much.”

“Characteristics of most of the scoundrels in the kingdom,” Rupert said, yawning. “By Jove! I wish father and Alice would hurry up.”

A girl came in at that moment; Tony danced round her and then caught her hand and led her to his mother.

“Your Majesty! I have the honour of presenting her Grace the Duchess of——”

But the girl broke from him. “Don’t, Tony, please, you’re upsetting things. Please, Lady Gale, can’t we go down? I’m so hungry that no ordinary dinner will ever satisfy me.”

“Don’t you pretend, Alice,” cried Tony, laughing. “It’s the dress, the whole dress, and nothing but the dress. That we may astonish this our town of Treliss is our earnest and most humble desire.” He stopped. “It is high time, you know, mother; nearly half-past eight.”

“I know, but it’s your father. You might go and see if he’s nearly ready, Tony.”

As he moved across the room her eyes followed him with a devotion that was the most beautiful thing in the world. Then she turned to the girl.

Miss Alice Du Cane was looking very lovely indeed. Her dress was something wonderful in pink, and that was all that the ordinary observer would have discovered about it; very beautiful and soft, tumbling into all manner of lines and curves and shades as she walked. Quite one of the beauties of the season, Miss Alice Du Cane, and one of the loveliest visions that your dining-halls are likely to behold, Mr. Bannister! She was dark and tall and her smile was delightful—just a little too obviously considered, perhaps, but nevertheless delightful!

“Yes, dear, you look very nice.” Lady Gale smiled at her. “I only wish that all young ladies nowadays would be content to dress as simply; but, of course, they haven’t all got your natural advantages!”

Then the door opened once more and Sir Richard Gale appeared, followed closely by Tony. He was a man of magnificent presence and wonderful preservation, and he was probably the most completely selfish egoist in the kingdom; on these two facts he had built his reputation. The first gave him many admirers and the second gave him many enemies, and a splendid social distinction was the result.

He was remarkably handsome, in a military-cum-Embassy manner; that is, his moustache, his walk, and the swing of his shoulders were all that they should be. He walked across the room most beautifully, but, perhaps, just a little too carefully, so that he gave the onlooker the impression of something rather precariously kept together—it was the only clue to his age.

He spent his life in devising means of enabling his wife to give sign and evidence to the world of her affection. He was entirely capricious and unreliable, and took violent dislikes to very many different kinds of people. He had always been a very silent man, and now his conversation was limited to monosyllables; he disliked garrulous persons, but expected conversation to be maintained.

The only thing that he said now was “Dinner!” but everyone knew what he meant, and an advance was made: Lady Gale and her husband, Miss Du Cane between Rupert and Tony, accompanied by laughter and a good deal of wild jesting on the part of the last named.

The going in to dinner at home was always a most solemn affair, even when no one save the family were present. Sir Richard was seen at his best in the minutes during which the procession lasted, and it symbolised the dignity and solemnity befitting his place and family. The Gales go in to dinner! and then, Sir Richard Gale goes in to dinner!—it was the moment of the day.

And now how greatly was the symbolism increased. Here we are in the heart of the democracy, sitting down with our fellow-creatures, some of whom are most certainly commoners, sitting down without even a raised platform; not at the same table, it is true, but nevertheless on the same floor, beneath the same ceiling! It was indeed a wonderful and truly British ceremony.

He generally contrived to be a little late, but to-day they were very late indeed, and his shoulders were raised just a little higher and his head was just a little loftier than usual.

The room was full, and many heads were raised as they entered. They were a fine family, no doubt—Sir Richard, Lady Gale, Rupert—all distinguished and people at whom one looked twice, and then Alice was lovely. It was only Tony, perhaps, who might have been anybody; just a nice clean-looking boy people were inclined to call him, but they always liked him. Their table was at the other end of the room, and the procession was slow. Tony always hated it—“making a beastly monkey-show of oneself and the family”—but his father took his time.

The room was charming, with just a little touch of something unusual. Mr. Bannister liked flowers, but he was wise in his use of them; and every table had just that hint of colour, red and blue and gold, that was needed, without any unnecessary profusion.

There were a great many people—the season was at its height—and the Maradicks, although late, were fortunate to have secured a table by the windows. The girls were tired and were going to have supper in bed—a little fish, some chicken and some shape—Mrs. Maradick had given careful directions.

Through the windows came the scents of the garden and a tiny breeze that smelt of the sea. There were wonderful colours on the lawn outside. The moon was rising, a full moon like a stiff plate of old gold, and its light flung shadows and strange twisted shapes over the grass. The trees stood, tall and dark, a mysterious barrier that fluttered and trembled in the little wind and was filled with the whispers of a thousand voices. Beyond that again was the light pale quivering blue of the night-sky, in which flashed and wheeled and sparkled the stars.

Mr. and Mrs. Maradick were playing the game very thoroughly to-night; you could not have found a more devoted couple in the room. She looked charming in her fragile, kittenish manner, something fluffy and white and apparently simple, with a slender chain of gold at her throat and a small spray of diamonds in her hair. She was excited, too, by the place and the people and the whole change. This was, oh! most certainly! better than Epsom, and Mrs. Martin Fraser and Louie had faded into a very distant past. This was her métier!—this, with its lights and its fashion! Why didn’t they live in London, really in London? She must persuade James next year. It would be better for the girls, too, now that they were growing up; and they might even find somewhere with a garden. She chattered continuously and watched for the effect on her neighbours. She had noticed one man whisper, and several people had looked across.

“It is so wonderful that I’m not more tired after all that bolting and jolting, and you know I felt that headache coming all the time. . . only just kept it at bay. But really, now, I’m quite hungry; it’s strange. I never could eat anything in Epsom. What is there?”

The waiter handed her the card. She looked up at him with a smile. “Oh! no consommé! thank you. Yes, Filet de sole and Poularde braisée—oh! and Grouse à la broche—of course—just in time, James, to-day’s only the fifteenth. Cerises Beatrice—Friandises—oh! delightful! the very thing.”

“Bannister knows what to give us,” he said, turning to her.

She settled back in her seat with a little purr of pleasure. “I hope the girls had what they wanted. Little dears! I’m afraid they were dreadfully tired.”

He watched her curiously. There had been so many evenings like this—evenings when those around him would have counted him a lucky fellow; and yet he knew that he might have been a brick wall and she would have talked in the same way. He judged her by her eyes—eyes that looked through him, past him, quite coldly, with no expression and no emotion. She simply did not realise that he was there, and he suddenly felt cold and miserable and very lonely. Oh! if only these people round him knew, if they could only see as he saw. But perhaps they were, many of them, in the same position. He watched them curiously. Men and women laughing and chatting with that intimate note that seemed to mean so much and might, as he knew well, mean so little. Everybody seemed very happy; perhaps they were. Oh! he was an old, middle-aged marplot, a kill-joy, a skeleton at the feast.

“Isn’t it jolly, dear?” he said, laughing across the table; “this grouse is perfection.”

“Tell me,” she said, with that little wave of her wrist towards him that he knew so well—“tell me where the Gales are. I don’t suppose you know, though, but we might guess.”

“I do know,” he answered, laughing; “young Gale came and spoke to me just before I came up to dress. He seemed a nice young fellow. He came up and said something about the rooms—he had heard you speaking to Bannister. They came in just now; a fine-looking elderly man, a lady with beautiful white hair, a pretty girl in pink.”

“Oh! of course! I noticed them! Oh, yes! one could tell they were somebody.” She glanced round the room. “Yes, there they are, by the wall at the back; quite a lovely girl!” She looked at them curiously. “Oh, you spoke to young Gale, did you? He looks quite a nice boy. I hope they have liked the rooms, and, after all, ours aren’t bad, are they? Really, I’m not sure that in some ways——”

She rattled on, praising the grouse, the bread sauce, the vegetables. She speculated on people and made little jokes about them, and he threw the ball back again, gaily, merrily, light-heartedly.

“You know I don’t think Louie really cares about him. I often hoped for her sake, poor girl, that she did, because there’s no denying that she’s getting on; and it isn’t as if she’s got looks or money, and it’s a wonder that he’s stuck to her as he has. I’ve always said that Louie was a marrying woman and she’d make him a good wife, there’s no doubt of that.”

Her little eyes were glittering like diamonds and her cheeks were hot. People were arriving at the fruit stage, and conversation, which had murmured over the soup and hummed over the meat, seemed to Maradick to shriek over the grapes and pears. How absurd it all was, and what was the matter with him? His head was aching, and the silver and flowers danced before his eyes. The great lines of the silver birch were purple over the lawn and the full moon was level with the windows. It must have been the journey, and he had certainly worked very hard these last months in town; but he had never known his nerves like they were to-night, indeed he had often wondered whether he had any nerves at all. Now they were all on the jump; just as though, you know, you were on one of those roundabouts, the horses jumping up and down and round, and the lights and the other people jumping too. There was a ridiculous man at a table close to them with a bald head, and the electric light caught it and turned it into a fiery ball. Such a bald head! It shone like the sun, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from it: and still his wife went on talking, talking, talking—that same little laugh, that gesticulating with the fingers, that glance round to see whether people had noticed. In some of those first years he had tried to make her angry, had contradicted and laughed derisively, but it had had no effect. She simply hadn’t considered him. But she must consider him! It was absurd; they were husband and wife. He had said—what had he said that first day in church? He couldn’t remember, but he knew that she ought to consider him, that she oughtn’t to look past him like that just as though he wasn’t there. He pulled himself together with a great effort and finished the champagne in his glass: the waiter filled it again; then he leant back in his chair and began to peel an apple, but his fingers were trembling.

“That woman over there,” said Mrs. Maradick, addressing a table to her right and then glancing quickly to her left, “is awfully like Mrs. Newton Bassett—the same sort of hair, and she’s got the eyes. Captain Bassett’s coming home in the autumn, I believe, which will be rather a blow for Muriel Bassett if all they say is true. He’s been out in Central Africa or somewhere, hasn’t he? Years older than her, they say, and as ugly as—Oh, well! people do talk, but young Forrest has been in there an awful lot lately, and he’s as nice a young fellow as you’d want to meet.”

He couldn’t stand it much longer, so he put the apple down on his plate and finished the champagne.

“If I went out to Central Africa,” he said slowly, “I wonder whether——”

“These pears are delicious,” she answered, still looking at the table to her left.

“If I went out to Central Africa——” he said again.

She leant forward and played with the silver in front of her.

“Look here, I want you to listen.” He leant forward towards her so that he might escape the man with the bald head. “If I went out to Central Africa, you—well, you wouldn’t much mind, would you? Things would be very much the same. It’s rather comforting to think that you wouldn’t very much mind.”

Maradick’s hands were shaking, but he spoke quite calmly, and he did not raise his voice because he did not want the man with the bald head to hear.

“You wouldn’t mind, would you? Why don’t you say?” Then suddenly something seemed to turn in his brain, like a little wheel, and it hurt. “It’s been going on like this for years, and how long do you think I’m going to stand it? You don’t care at all. I’m just like a chair, a table, anything. I say it’s got to change—I’ll turn you out—won’t have anything more to do with you—you’re not a wife at all—a man expects——” He did not know what he was saying, and he did not really very much care. He could not be eloquent or dramatic about it like people were in books, because he wasn’t much of a talker, and there was that little wheel in his head, and all these people talking. It had all happened in the very briefest of moments. He hardly realised at the time at all, but afterwards the impression that he had of it was of his fingers grating on the table-cloth; they dug into the wood of the table.

For only a moment his fingers seemed, of their own accord, to rise from the table and stretch out towards her throat. Sheer animal passion held him, passion born of her placidity and indifference. Then suddenly he caught her eyes; she was looking at him, staring at him, her face was very white, and he had never seen anyone look so frightened. And then all his rage left him and he sat back in his chair again, shaking from head to foot. There were all those years between them and he had never said a word until now! Then he felt horribly ashamed of himself; he had been intolerably rude, to a lady. He wasn’t quite certain of what he had said.

“I beg your pardon,” he said slowly, “I have been very rude. I didn’t quite know what I was saying.”

For a moment they were silent. The chatter went on, and the waiter was standing a little way away; he had not heard anything.

“I am rather tired,” said Mrs. Maradick; “I think I’ll go up, if you don’t mind.”

He rose and offered her his arm, and they went out together. She did not look at him, and neither of them spoke.

Tony Gale was absurdly excited that evening, and even his father’s presence scarcely restrained him. Sir Richard never said very much, but he generally looked a great deal; to-night he enjoyed his dinner. Lady Gale watched Tony a little anxiously. She had always been the wisest of mothers in that she had never spoken before her time; the whole duty of parents lies in the inviting of their children’s confidence by never asking for it, and she had never asked. Then she had met Miss Alice Du Cane and had liked her, and it had struck her that here was the very girl for Tony. Tony liked her and she liked Tony. In every way it seemed a thing to be desired, and this invitation to accompany them to Cornwall was a natural move in the right direction. They were both, of course, very young; but then people did begin very young nowadays, and Tony had been “down” from Oxford a year and ought to know what he was about. Alice was a charming girl, and the possessor of much sound common-sense; indeed, there was just the question whether she hadn’t got a little too much. The Du Canes were excellently connected; on the mother’s side there were the Forestiers of Portland Hall down in Devon, and the Craddocks of Newton Chase—oh! that was all right. And then Tony had a fortune of his own, so that he was altogether independent, and one couldn’t be quite sure of what he would do, so that it was a satisfaction to think that he really cared for somebody that so excellently did! It promised to be a satisfactory affair all round, and even Sir Richard, a past master in the art of finding intricate objections to desirable plans, had nothing to say. Of course, it was a matter that needed looking at from every point of view. Of the Du Canes, there were not many. Colonel Du Cane had died some years before, and Lady Du Cane, a melancholy, faded lady who passed her time in such wildly exciting health-resorts as Baden-Baden and Marienbad, had left her daughter to the care of her aunt, Miss Perryn. There were other Du Canes, a brother at Eton and a sister in France, but they were too young to matter; and then there was lots of money, so really Alice had nothing to complain of.

But Lady Gale was still old-fashioned enough to mind a little about mutual affection. Did they really care for each other? Of course it was so difficult to tell about Tony because he cared about everyone, and was perpetually enthusiastic about the most absurdly ordinary people. His geese were all swans, there was no question; but then, as he always retorted, that was better than thinking that your swans, when you did meet them, were all geese. Still, it did make it difficult to tell. When, for instance, he rated a man he had met in the hall of the hotel for the first time, and for one minute precisely, on exactly the same scale as he rated friends of a lifetime, what were you to think? Then Alice, too, was difficult.

She was completely self-possessed and never at a loss, and Lady Gale liked people who made mistakes. You always knew exactly what Alice would say or think about any subject under discussion. She had the absolutely sane and level-headed point of view that is so annoying to persons of impulsive judgment. Not that Lady Gale was impulsive; but she was wise enough to know that some of the best people were, and she distrusted old heads on young shoulders. Miss Du Cane had read enough to comment sensibly and with authority on the literature of the day. She let you express your opinion and then agreed or differed with the hinting of standards long ago formed and unflinchingly sustained, and some laughing assertion of her own ignorance that left you convinced of her wisdom. She always asserted that she was shallow, and shallowness was therefore the last fault of which she was ever accused.

She cared for Tony, there was no doubt of that; but then, so did everybody. Lady Gale’s only doubt was lest she was a little too matter-of-fact about it all; but, after all, girls were very different nowadays, and the display of any emotion was the unpardonable sin.

“Grouse! Hurray!” Tony displayed the menu. “The first of the year. I’m jolly glad I didn’t go up with Menzies to Scotland; it’s much better here, and I’m off shooting this year——”

“That’s only because you always like the place you’re in better than any other possible place, Tony,” said Alice. “And I wish I had the virtue. Oh! those dreary months with mother at Baden! They’re hanging over me still.”

“Well, I expect they gave your mother a great deal of pleasure, my dear,” said Lady Gale, “and that after all is something, even nowadays.”

“No, they didn’t, that’s the worst of it. She didn’t want me a bit. There was old Lady Pomfret and Mrs. Rainer, and oh! lots of others; bridge, morning, noon, and night, and I used to wander about and mope.”

“You ought to have been writing letters to Tony and me all the time,” said Rupert, laughing. “You’ll never get such a chance again.”

“Well, I did, didn’t I, Tony? Speak up for me, there’s a brick!”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Tony. “They were jolly short, and there didn’t seem to be much moping about it.”

“That was to cheer you up. You didn’t want me to make you think that I was depressed, did you?”

Sir Richard had finished his grouse and could turn his attention to other things. He complained of the brilliancy of the lights, and some of them were turned out.

“Where’s your man, Tony?” said Rupert. “Let’s see him.”

“Over there by the window—a man and a woman at a table by themselves—a big man, clean shaven. There, you can see him now, behind that long waiter—a pretty woman in white, laughing.”

“Oh, well! He’s better than some,” Rupert grudgingly admitted. “Not so bad—strong, muscular, silent hero type—it’s a pretty woman.” He fastened his eye-glass, an attention that he always paid to anyone who really deserved it.

“Yes, I like him,” said Lady Gale; “what did you say his name was?”

“I didn’t quite catch it; Marabin, or Mara—no, I don’t know—Mara—something. But I say, what are we going to do to-night? We must do something. I was never so excited in my life, and I don’t a bit know why.”

“Oh, that will pass,” said Rupert; “we know your moods, Tony. You must take him out into the garden, Alice, and quiet him down. Oh! look, they’re going, those Marabins or whatever their names are. She carries herself well, that woman.”

Dinner always lasted a long time, because Sir Richard enjoyed his food and had got a theory about biting each mouthful to which he entirely attributed his healthy old age; it entailed lengthy meals.

They were almost the last people in the room when at length they rose to go, and it was growing late.

“It’s so sensible of them not to pull blinds down,” said Tony, “the moon helps digestion.” Sir Richard, as was his custom, went slowly and majestically up to his room, the others into the garden.

“Take Alice to see the view from the terraces, Rupert,” said Lady Gale. “Tony and I will walk about here a little.”

She put her arm through her son’s, and they passed up and down the walks in front of the hotel. The vision of the town in the distance was black, the gardens were cold and white under the moon.

“Oh! it is beautiful.” Lady Gale drew a deep breath. “And when I’m in a place like this, and it’s England, I’m perpetually wondering why so many people hurry away abroad somewhere as soon as they’ve a minute to spare. Why, there’s nothing as lovely as this anywhere!”

Tony laughed. “There’s magic in it,” he said. “I hadn’t set foot in the place for quarter of an hour before I knew that it was quite different from all the other places I’d ever been in. I wasn’t joking just now at dinner. I meant it quite seriously. I feel as if I were just in for some enormous adventure—as if something important were most certainly going to happen.”

“Something important’s always happening, especially at your time of life; which reminds me, Tony dear, that I want to talk to you seriously.”

He looked up in her face. “What’s up, mother?”

“Nothing’s up, and perhaps you will think me a silly interfering old woman; but you know mothers are queer things, Tony, and you can’t say that I’ve bothered you very much in days past.”

“No.” He suddenly put his arm round her neck, pulled her head towards his and kissed her. “It’s all right. There’s nobody here to see, and it wouldn’t matter a bit if there were. No, you’re the very sweetest and best mother that mortal man ever had, and you’re cursed with an ungrateful, undutiful scapegrace of a son, more’s the pity.”

“Ah,” she said, shaking her head, “that’s just what I mean. Your mother is a beautiful and delightful joke like everything and everybody else. It’s time, Tony, that you were developing. You’re twenty-four, and you seem to me to be exactly where you were at eighteen. Now I don’t want to hurry or worry you, but the perpetual joke won’t do any longer. It isn’t that I myself want you to be anything different, because I don’t. I only want you to be happy; but life’s hard, and I don’t think you can meet it by playing with it.”

He said nothing, but he gave her arm a little squeeze.

“Then you know,” she went on, “you have absolutely no sense of proportion. Everybody and everything are on exactly the same scale. You don’t seem to me to have any standard by which you estimate things. Everybody is nice and delightful. I don’t believe you ever disliked anybody, and it has always been a wonder to all of us that you haven’t lost more from suffering so many fools gladly. I always used to think that as soon as you fell in love with somebody—really and properly fell in love with some nice girl—that that seriousness would come, and so I didn’t mind. I don’t want to hurry you in that direction, dear, but I would like to see you settled. Really, Tony, you know, you haven’t changed at all, you’re exactly the same; so much the same that I’ve wondered a little once or twice whether you really care for anybody.”

“Poor old mother, and my flightiness has worried you, has it? I am most awfully sorry. But God made the fools as well as the wits, and He didn’t ask the fools which lot they wanted to belong to.”

“No, but, Tony, you aren’t a fool, that’s just it. You’ve got the brain of the family somewhere, only you seem to be ashamed of it and afraid that people should know you’d got it, and your mother would rather they did know. And then, dear, there is such a thing as family pride. It isn’t snobbery, although it looks like it; it only means, don’t be too indiscriminate. Don’t have just anybody for a friend. It doesn’t matter about their birth, but it does matter about their opinions and surroundings. Some of them have been—well, scarcely clean, dear. I’m sure that Mr. Templar wasn’t a nice man, although I dare say he was very clever; and that man to-night, for instance: I dare say he’s an excellent man in every way, but you owe it to the family to find out just a little about him first; you can’t tell just in a minute——”

He stopped her for a minute and looked up at her quite seriously. “I’ll be difficult to change, mother, I’m afraid. How you and father ever produced such a vagabond I don’t know, but vagabond I am, and vagabond I’ll remain in spite of Oxford and the Bond Street tailor. But never you grieve, mother dear, I’ll promise to tell you everything—don’t you worry.”

“Yes. But what about settling?”

“Oh, settling!” he answered gravely. “Vagabonds oughtn’t to marry at all.”

“But you’re happy about everything? You’re satisfied with things as they are?”

“Of course!” he cried. “Just think what kind of a beast I’d be if I wasn’t. Of course, it’s splendid. And now, mother, the jaw’s over and I’m the very best of sons, and it’s a glorious night, and we’ll be as happy as the day is long.”

They knelt on the seat at the south end and looked down into the crooked streets; the moon had found its way there now, and they could almost read the names on the shops.

Suddenly Lady Gale put her hand against his cheek. “Tony, dear, I care for you more than anything in the world. You know it. And, Tony, always do what you feel is the straight thing and I shall know it is right for you, and I shall trust you; but, Tony, don’t marry anybody unless you are quite certain that it is the only person. Don’t let anything else influence you. Marriage with the wrong person is——” Her voice shook for a moment. “Promise me, Tony.”

“I promise,” he answered solemnly, and she took his arm and they walked back down the path.

Rupert and Alice were waiting for them and they all went in together. Lady Gale and Rupert said good night. Rupert was always tired very early in the evening unless there was bridge or a dance, but Alice and Tony sat in the sitting-room by the open window watching the moonlight on the sea and listening to the muffled thunder of the waves. Far out into the darkness flashed the Porth Allen Lighthouse.

For a little while they were silent, then Tony suddenly said:

“I say, am I awfully young?”

She looked up. “Young?”

“Yes. The mater has been talking to me to-night. She says that it is time that I grew up, that I haven’t grown a bit since I was eighteen, and that it must be very annoying for everybody. Have you felt it, too?”

“Well, of course I know what she means. It’s absurd, but I always feel years older than you, although by age I’m younger. But oh! it’s difficult to explain; one always wants to rag with you. I’m always at my silliest when you’re there, and I hate being at my silliest.”

“I know you do, that’s your worst fault. But really, this is rather dreadful. I must proceed to grow up. But tell me honestly, am I a fool?”

“No, of course you’re not, you’re awfully clever. But that’s what we all think about you—you could do so many things and you’re not doing anything.”

He sat on the window-sill, swinging his legs.

“There was once,” he began, “the King of Fools, and he had a most splendid and widely attended Court; and one day the Wisest Man in Christendom came to see and be seen, and he talked all the wisest things that he had ever learnt, and the fools listened with all their ears and thought that they had never heard such folly, and after a time they shouted derisively, not knowing that he was the Wisest Man, ‘Why, he is the biggest fool of them all!’”

“The moral being?”

“Behold, the Wisest Man!” cried Tony, pointing dramatically at his breast. “There, my dear Alice, you have the matter in a nutshell.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” said Alice, laughing, “only it is scarcely convincing. Seriously, Tony, Lady Gale is right. Don’t be one of the rotters like young Seins or Rocky Culler or Dick Staines, who spend their whole day in walking Bond Street and letting their heads wag. Not, of course, that you’d ever be that sort, but it would be rather decent if you did something.”

“Well, I do,” he cried.

“What?” she said.

“I can shoot a gun, I can ride a horse, I can serve corkers from the back line at tennis, and score thirty at moderate cricket; I can read French, German, Italian. I can play bridge—well, fairly—I can speak the truth, eat meringues all day with no evil consequences, stick to a pal, and walk for ever and ever, Amen. Oh, but you make me vain!”

She laughed. “None of those things are enough,” she said. “You know quite well what I mean. You must take a profession; why not Parliament, the Bar, writing?—you could write beautifully if you wanted to. Oh, Tony!”

“I have one,” he said.

“Now! What?”

“The finest profession in the world—Odysseus, Jason, Cœur-de-Lion, St. Francis of Assisi, Wilhelm Meister, Lavengro. By the beard of Ahasuerus I am a wanderer!”

He struck an attitude and laughed, but there was a light in his eyes and his cheeks were flushed.

Then he added:

“Oh! what rot! There’s nobody so boring as somebody on his hobby. I’m sorry, Alice, but you led me on; it’s your own fault.”

“Do you know,” she said, “that is the first time, Tony, that I’ve ever heard you speak seriously about anything, and really you don’t do it half badly. But, at the same time, are you quite sure that you’re right . . . now? What I mean is that things have changed so. I’ve heard people talk like that before, but it has generally meant that they were unemployed or something and ended up by asking for sixpence. It seems to me that there’s such a lot to be done now, and such a little time to do it in, that we haven’t time to go round looking for adventure; it isn’t quite right that we should if we’re able-bodied and can work.”

“Why, how serious we are all of a sudden,” he cried. “One would think you ran a girls club.”

“I do go down to Southwark a lot,” she answered. “And we’re badly in need of subscriptions. I’d meant to ask you before.”

“Who’s the unemployed now?” he said, laughing. “I thought it would end in that.”

“Well, I must go to bed,” she said, getting up from the window-sill. “It’s late and cold, and I’m sure we’ve had a most inspiring talk on both sides. Good night, old boy.”

“Ta-ta,” said Tony.

But after she had gone he sat by the window, thinking. Was it true that he was a bit of a loafer? Had he really been taking things too easily? Until these last two days he had never considered himself or his position at all. He had always been radiantly happy; self-questioning had been morbid and unnecessary. It was all very well for pessimists and people who wrote to the Times, but, with Pope, he hummed, “Whatever is, is best,” and thought no more about it.

But this place seemed to have changed all that. What was there about the place, he wondered? He had felt curiously excited from the first moment of his coming there, but he could give no reason for it. It was a sleepy little place, pretty and charming, of course, but that was all. But he had known no rest or peace; something must be going to happen. And then, too, there was Alice. He knew perfectly well why she had been asked to join them, and he knew that she knew. Before they had come down he had liked the idea. She was one of the best and true as steel. He had almost decided, after all, it was time that they settled down. And then, on coming here, everything had been different. Alice, his father, his mother, Rupert had changed; something was wrong. He did not, could not worry it out, only it was terribly hot, it was a beautiful night outside, and he wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours.

He passed quietly down the stairs and out into the garden. He walked down to the south end. It was most wonderful—the moon, the stars, the whirling light at sea, and, quite plainly, the noise of the fair.

He leant over the wall and looked down. He was suddenly conscious that some one else was there; a big man, in evening dress, smoking a cigar. Something about him, the enormous arms or the close-cropped hair, was familiar.

“Good evening,” said Tony.

It was Maradick. He looked up, and Tony at once wished that he hadn’t said anything. It was the face of a man who had been deep in his own thoughts and had been brought back with a shock, but he smiled.

“Good evening. It’s wonderfully beautiful, isn’t it?”

“I’m Gale,” said Tony apologetically, “I’m sorry if I interrupted you.”

“Oh no,” Maradick answered. “One can think at any time, and I wanted company. I suppose the rest of the hotel is in bed—rather a crime on a night like this.” Then he suddenly held up a warning finger. “Listen!” he said.

Quite distinctly, and high above the noise of the fair, came the voice of a man singing in the streets below. He sang two verses, and then it died away.

“It was a tune I heard last year,” Maradick said apologetically. “I liked it and had connected it with this place. I——” Then suddenly they heard it again.

They were both silent and listened together.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH THE AFORESAID ADMONITUS LEADS THE AFORESAID

MEMBERS OF SOCIETY A DANCE

The two men stood there silently for some minutes; the voice died away and the noise of the fair was softer and less discordant; past them fluttered two white moths, the whirr of their wings, the heavy, clumsy blundering against Tony’s coat, and then again the silence.

“I heard it last year, that song,” Maradick repeated; he puffed at his cigar, and it gleamed for a moment as some great red star flung into the sky a rival to the myriads above and around it. “It’s funny how things like that stick in your brain—they are more important in a way than the bigger things.”

“Perhaps they are the bigger things,” said Tony.

“Perhaps,” said Maradick.

He fell into silence again. He did not really want to talk, and he wondered why this young fellow was so persistent. He was never a talking man at any time, and to-night at any rate he would prefer to be left alone. But after all, the young fellow couldn’t know that, and he had offered to go. He could not think connectedly about anything; he could only remember that he had been rude to his wife at dinner. No gentleman would have said the things that he had said. He did not remember what he had said, but it had been very rude; it was as though he had struck his wife in the face.

“I say,” he said, “it’s time chaps of your age were in bed. Don’t believe in staying up late.” He spoke gruffly, and looked over the wall on to the whirling lights of the merry-go-round in the market-place.

“You said, you know,” said Tony, “that you wanted company; but, of course——” He moved from the wall.

“Oh! stay if you like. Young chaps never will go to bed. If they only knew what they were laying in store for themselves they’d be a bit more careful. When you get to be an old buffer as I am——”

“Old!” Tony laughed. “Why, you’re not old.”

“Aren’t I? Turned forty, anyhow.”

“Why, you’re one of the strongest-looking men I’ve ever seen.” Tony’s voice was a note of intense admiration.

Maradick laughed grimly. “It isn’t your physical strength that counts, it’s the point of view—the way you look at things and the way people look at you.”

The desire to talk grew with him; he didn’t want to think, he couldn’t sleep—why not talk?

“But forty anyhow,” said Tony, “isn’t old. Nobody thinks you’re old at forty.”

“Oh, don’t they? Wait till you are, you’ll know.”

“Well, Balzac——”

“Oh, damn your books! what do they know about it? Everyone takes things from books nowadays instead of getting it first hand. People stick themselves indoors and read a novel or two and think they know life—such rot!”

Tony laughed. “I say,” he said, “you don’t think like that always, I know—it’s only just for an argument.”

Maradick suddenly twisted round and faced Tony. He put his hand on his shoulder.

“I say, kid,” he said, “go to bed. It doesn’t do a chap of your age any good to talk to a pessimistic old buffer like myself. I’ll only growl and you won’t be the better for it. Go to bed!”

Tony looked up at him without moving.

“I think I’ll stay. I expect you’ve got the pip, and it always does a chap good, if he’s got the pip, to talk to somebody.”

“Have you been here before?” asked Tony.

“Oh yes! last year. I shan’t come again.”

“Why not?”

“It unsettles you. It doesn’t do to be unsettled when you get to my time of life.”

“How do you mean—unsettles?”

Maradick considered. How exactly did he mean—unsettles? There was no doubt that it did, though.

“Oh, I’m not much good at explaining, but when you’ve lived a certain time you’ve got into a sort of groove—bound to, I suppose. I’ve got my work, just like another man. Every morning breakfast the same time, same rush to the station, same train, same morning paper, same office, same office-boy, same people; back in the evening, same people again, same little dinner, same little nap—oh, it’s like anyone else. One gets into the way of thinking that that’s life, bounded by the Epsom golf course and the office in town. All the rest one has put aside, and after a time one thinks that it isn’t there. And then a man comes down here and, I don’t know what it is, the place or having nothing to do upsets you and things are all different.” Then, after a moment, “I suppose that’s what a holiday’s meant for.”

He had been trying to put his feelings into words, but he knew that he had not said at all what he had really felt. It was not the change of life, the lazy hours and the pleasant people; besides, as far as that went, he might at any moment, if he pleased, change things permanently. He had made enough, he need not go back to the City at all; but he knew it was not that. It was something that he had felt in the train, then in the sight of the town, some vague discontent leading to that outbreak at dinner. He was not a reading man or he might have considered the Admonitus Locorum. He had never read of it nor had he knowledge of such a spirit; but it was, it must be, the place.

“Yes,” said Tony, “of course I’ve never settled down to anything, yet, you know; and so I can’t quite see as you do about the monotony. My people have been very decent; I’ve been able to wander about and do as I liked, and last year I was in Germany and had a splendid time. Simply had a rucksack and walked. And I can’t imagine settling down anywhere; and even if I had somewhere—Epsom or anywhere—there would be the same looking for adventure, looking out for things, you know.”

“Adventures in Epsom!”

“Why not? I expect it’s full of it.”

“Ah, that’s because you’re young! I was like that once, peering round and calling five o’clock tea a romance. I’ve learnt better.”

Tony turned round. “It’s so absurd of you, you know, to talk as if you were eighty. You speak as if everything was over, and you’re only beginning.”

Maradick laughed. “Well, that’s pretty good cheek from a fellow half your age! Why, what do you know about life, I’d like to know?”

“Oh, not much. As a matter of fact, it’s rather funny your talking like that, because my people have been talking to me to-night about that very thing—settling down, I mean. They say that my roving has lasted long enough, and that I shall soon be turning into a waster if I don’t do something. Also that it’s about time that I began to grow up. I don’t know,” he added apologetically, “why I’m telling you this, it can’t interest you, but they want me to do just the thing that you’ve been complaining about.”

“Oh no, I haven’t been complaining,” said Maradick hastily. “All I’m saying is, if you do get settled down don’t go anywhere or do anything that will unsettle you again. It’s so damned hard getting back. But what’s the use of my giving you advice and talking, you young chaps never listen!”

“They sound as if they were enjoying themselves down there,” said Tony a little wistfully. The excitement was still in his blood and a wild idea flew into his brain. Why not? But no, it was absurd, he had only known the man quarter of an hour. The lights of the merry-go-round tossed like a thing possessed; whirl and flash, then motionless, and silence again. The murmured hum of voices came to their ears. After all, why not?

“I say,” Tony touched Maradick’s arm, “why shouldn’t we stroll down there, down to the town? It might be amusing. It would be a splendid night for a walk, and it’s only twenty to eleven. We’d be back by twelve.”

“Down there? Now!” Maradick laughed. But he had a strange yearning for company. He couldn’t go back into the hotel, not yet, and he would only lose himself in his own thoughts that led him nowhere if he stayed here alone. A few days ago he would have mocked at the idea of wandering down with a boy he didn’t know to see a round-about and some drunken villagers; but things were different, some new impulse was at work within him. Besides, he rather liked the boy. It was a long while since anyone had claimed his companionship like that; indeed a few days ago he would have repelled anyone who attempted it with no uncertain hand.

Maradick considered it.

“Oh, I say, do!” said Tony, his hand still on Maradick’s arm, and delighted to find that his proposal was being seriously considered. “After all, it’s only a stroll, and we’ll come back as soon as you wish. We can get coats from the hotel; it might be rather amusing, you know.”

He was feeling better already. It was, of course, absurd that he should go out on a mad game like that at such an hour, but—why not be absurd? He hadn’t done anything ridiculous for fifteen years, nothing at all, so it was high time he began.

“It will be a rag!” said Tony.

They went in to get their coats. Two dark conspirators, they plunged down the little crooked path that was the quickest way to the town. On every side of them pressed the smell of the flowers, stronger and sweeter than in the daylight, and their very vagueness of outline gave them mystery and charm. The high peaks of the trees, outlined against the sky, assumed strange and eerie shapes—the masts of a ship, the high pinnacle of some cathedral, scythes and swords cutting the air; and above them that wonderful night sky of the summer, something that had in its light of the palest saffron promise of an early dawn, a wonderful suggestion of myriad colours seen dimly through the curtain of dark blue.

“By night we lingered on the lawn,

For underfoot the herb was dry;

And genial warmth, and o’er the sky

The silvery haze of summer drawn:

“And bats went round in fragrant skies,

And wheeled or lit the filmy shapes

That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes:”

quoted Tony. “Tennyson, and jolly good at that.”

“Don’t know it,” said Maradick rather gruffly. “Bad for your business. Besides, what do those chaps know about life? Shut themselves up in their rooms and made rhymes over the fire. What could they know?”

“Oh, some of them,” said Tony, “knew a good bit. But I’m sorry I quoted. It’s a shocking habit, and generally indulged in to show superiority to your friends. But the sky is just like that to-night. Drawn lightly across as though it hid all sorts of things on the other side.”

Maradick made no answer, and they walked on in silence. They reached the end of the hotel garden, and passed through the little white gate into a narrow path that skirted the town wall and brought you abruptly out into the market-place by the church. It passed along a high bank that towered over the river Ess on its way to the sea. It was rather a proud little river as little rivers go, babbling and chattering in its early, higher reaches, with the young gaiety suited to country vicarages and the paper ships of village children; and then, solemn and tranquil, and even, perhaps, a little important, as it neared the town and gave shelter to brown-sailed herring-boats, and then, finally, agitated, excited, tumultuous as it tumbled into its guardian, the sea.

To-night it passed contentedly under the walls of the town, singing a very sleepy little song on its way, and playing games with the moonlight and the stars. Here the noise of the fair was hidden and everything was very still and peaceful. The footsteps of the two men were loud and clear. The night air had straightened Maradick’s brain and he was more at peace with the world, but there was, nevertheless, a certain feeling of uneasiness, natural and indeed inevitable in a man who, after an ordered and regulated existence of many years, does something that is unusual and a little ridiculous. He had arrived, as was, indeed, the case with so many persons of middle age, at that deliberate exclusion of three sides of life in order to grasp fully the fourth side. By persistent practice he had taught himself to believe that the other three sides did not exist. He told himself that he was not adaptable, that he had made his bed and must lie on it, that the moon was for dreamers; and now suddenly, in the space of a day, the blind was drawn from the window before which he had sat for fifteen years, and behold! there were the stars!

Then Tony began again. It had been said of him that his worst fault was his readiness to respond, that he did not know what it was to be on his guard, and he treated Maradick now with a confidence and frankness that was curiously intimate considering the length of their acquaintance. At length he spoke of Alice Du Cane. “I know my people want it, and she’s an awful good sort, really sporting, and the kind of girl you’d trust to the end of your days. A girl you’d be absolutely safe with.”

“Do you care about her?” said Maradick.

“Of course. We’ve known each other for years. We’re not very sentimental about it, but then for my part I distrust all that profoundly. It isn’t what you want nowadays; good solid esteem is the only thing to build on.”

Tony spoke with an air of deep experience. Maradick, with the thought of his own failure in his mind, wondered whether, after all, that were not the right way of looking at it. It had not been his way, fifteen years before; he had been the true impetuous lover, and now he reaped his harvest. Oh! these considering and careful young men and girls of the new generation were learning their lesson, and yet, in spite of it all, marriage turned out as many failures as ever. But this remark of the boy’s had been little in agreement with the rest of him; he had been romantic, impetuous, and very, very young, and this serious and rather cynical doctrine of “good solid esteem” was out of keeping with the rest of him.

“I wonder if you mean that,” he said, looking sharply at Tony.

“Of course. I’ve thought a great deal about marriage, in our set especially. One sees fellows marrying every day, either because they’re told to, or because they’re told not to, and both ways are bad. Of course I’ve fancied I was in love once or twice, but it’s always passed off. Supposing I’d married one of those girls, what would have come of it? Disaster, naturally. So now I’m wiser.”

“Don’t you be too sure. It’s that wisdom that’s so dangerous. The Fates, or whatever they are, always choose the cocksure moment for upsetting the certainty. I shouldn’t wonder if you change your views before you’re much older. You’re not the sort of chap, if you’ll pardon my saying so, to do those things so philosophically. And then, there’s something in the air of this place——”

Tony didn’t reply. He was wondering whether, after all, he was quite so cocksure. He had been telling himself for the last month that it was best, from every point of view, that he should marry Miss Du Cane; his people, his future, his certainty of the safety of it, all urged him, and yet—and yet . . . His mother’s words came back to him. “Tony, don’t marry anybody unless you are quite certain that it is the only person. Don’t let anything else influence you. Marriage with the wrong person is . . .”

And then, in a moment, the fair was upon them. It had just struck eleven and the excitement seemed at its height. The market-place was very French in its neatness, and a certain gathering together of all the life, spiritual and corporate, of the town; the church, Norman, and of some historical interest, filled the right side of the square. Close at its side, and squeezed between its grey walls and the solemn dignity of the Town Hall, was a tall rectangular tower crowded with little slits of windows and curious iron bars that jutted out into the air like pointing fingers.

There was something rather pathetically dignified about it; it protested against its modern neglect and desertion. You felt that it had, in an earlier day, known brave times. Now the ground floor was used by a fruiterer; apples and plums, cherries and pears were bought and sold, and the Count’s Tower was Harding’s shop.

There were several other houses in the Square that told the same tale, houses with fantastic bow-windows and little pepper-pot doors, tiny balconies and quaintly carved figures that stared at you from hidden corners; houses that were once the height of fashion now hid themselves timidly from the real magnificence of the Town Hall. Their day was over, and perhaps their very life was threatened. The Town Hall, with its dinners and its balls and its speeches, need fear no rivalry.

But to-night the Town Hall was pushed aside and counted for nothing at all. It was the one occasion of the year on which it was of no importance, and the old, despised tower was far more in keeping with the hour and the scene.

Down the centre of the Square were rows of booths lighted by gas-jets that flamed and flared in the night-air with the hiss of many serpents. These filled the middle line of the market. To the right was the round-about; its circle of lights wheeling madly round and round gave it the vitality of a living thing—some huge Leviathan on wheels bawling discordantly the latest triumph of the Halls, and then, excited by its voice, whirling ever swifter and swifter as though it would hurl itself into the air and go rioting gaily through the market, and then suddenly dropping, dead, exhausted, melancholy at the ceasing of its song:—

Put me amongst the—girls!

Those wi-th the curly curls!

and then a sudden vision of dark figures leaping up and down into the light and out of it again, the wild waving of an arm, and the red, green and yellow of the horses as they swirled up and down and round to the tune.

In another corner, standing on a plank laid upon two barrels, his arms raised fantastically above his head, was a preacher. Around him was gathered a small circle of persons with books, and faintly, through the noise of the merry-go-round and the cries of those that bought and sold, came the shrill, wavering scream of a hymn:—

So like little candles

We shall shine,

You in your small corner

And I in mine.

Down the central alley passed crowds of men and women, sailors and their sweethearts, for the most part; and strangely foreign looking a great many of them were—brown and swarthy, with black curling hair and dark, flashing eyes.

There were many country people wearing their Sunday clothes with an uneasiness that had also something of admitted virtue and pride about it. Their ill-fitting and absurdly self-conscious garments hung about them and confined their movements; they watched the scene around them almost furtively, and with a certain subdued terror. It was the day, the night of the year to them; it had been looked forward to and counted and solemnised with the dignity of a much-be-thumbed calendar, and through the long dreary days of winter, when snow and the blinding mist hemmed in solitary farms with desolation, it had been anticipated and foreseen with eager intensity. Now that it was here and was so soon to stand, a lonely pillar in the utterly uneventful waste-land of the year, they looked at it timorously, fearfully, and yet with eager excitement. These lights, this noise, this crowd, how wonderful to look back upon it all afterwards, and how perilous it all was! They moved carefully through the line of booths, wondering at the splendour and magnificence of them, buying a little once or twice, and then repenting of what they had done. Another hour and it would be over; already they shuddered at the blackness of to-morrow.

With the townspeople, the fishermen and sailors from Penzance, it was an old affair; something amusing and calculated to improve materially matters financial and matters amatory, but by no means a thing to wonder at. The last night of the three days fair was, however, of real importance. According to ancient superstition, a procession was formed by all the citizens of the town, and this marched, headed by flaming torches and an ancient drum, round the walls. This had been done, so went the legend, ever since the days of the Celts, when naked invaders had marched with wild cries and derisive gestures round and round the town, concluding with a general massacre and a laying low of the walls. The town had soon sprung to life again, and the ceremony had become an anniversary and the anniversary a fair. The last dying screams of those ancient peoples were turned, now, into the shrieking of a merry-go-round and the sale of toffy and the chattering of many old women; and there were but few in the place who remembered what those origins had been.

Excitement was in the air, and the Square seemed to grow more crowded at every moment. The flaring of the gas flung gigantic shadows on the walls, and the light was on the town so that its sides shone as though with fire. The noise was deafening—the screaming of the roundabout, the shouts of the riders, the cries and laughter of the crowd made a confused babel of sound, and in the distance could be heard the beating of the drum. It was the hour of the final ceremony.

“I wonder,” said Maradick, “what the people in those houses think of it. Sleep must be a difficulty under the circumstances.”

“I should think,” said Tony, laughing, “that they are all out here. I expect that most of the town is here by this time.” And, indeed, there was an enormous crowd. The preacher was in danger of being pushed off his plank; the people surged round dancing, singing, shouting, and his little circle had been caught in the multitude and had been swallowed up. Very few of the people seemed to be listening to him; but he talked on, waving the book in his hand, standing out sharply against the shining tower at his back.

Words came to them: “To-morrow it will be too late. I tell you, my friends, that it is now and now only that . . . And the door was shut . . . We cannot choose . . .”

But the drum was in the Square. Standing on the steps of the Town Hall, clothed in his official red, the Town Clerk, a short, pompous man, saluted the fair. No words could penetrate the confusion, but people began to gather round him shouting and singing. The buying and selling entered into the last frenzied five minutes before finally ceasing altogether. Prices suddenly fell to nothing at all, and wise and cautious spirits who had been waiting for this moment throughout the day crowded round and swept up the most wonderful bargains.

The preacher saw the crowd had no ears for him now, and so, with a last little despairing shake of the arm, he closed his book and jumped off his plank. The round-about gave a last shriek of enthusiasm and then dropped exhausted, with the happy sense that it had added to the gaiety of the nations and had brought many coppers into the pockets of its master.

The crowd surged towards the little red beadle with the drum, and Maradick and Tony surged with it. It was beyond question a very lively crowd, and it threatened to be livelier with every beat of the drum. The sound was intoxicating beyond a doubt, and when you had already paid a visit to the “Red Lion” and enjoyed a merry glass with your best friend, of course you entered into the spirit of things more heartily than ever.

And then, too, this dance round the town was the moment of the year. It was the one occasion on which no questions were asked and no surprise ever shown. Decorum and propriety, both excellent things, were for once flung aside; for unless they were discarded the spirit of the dance was not enjoyed. It was deeply symbolic; a glorious quarter of an hour into which you might fling all the inaction of the year—disappointment, revenge, jealousy, hate went, like soiled and useless rags, into the seething pot, and were danced away for ever. You expressed, too, all your joy and gratitude for a delightful year and a most merry fair, and you drank in, as it were wine, encouragement and hope for the year to come. There had been bad seasons and disappointing friends, and the sad knowledge that you weren’t as strong as you had once been; but into the pot with it all! Dance it away into limbo! and, on the back of that merry drum, sits a spirit that will put new heart into you and will send your toes twinkling down the street.

And then, best of all, it was a Dance of Hearts. It was the great moment at which certainty came to you, and, as you followed that drum down the curving street, you knew that the most wonderful thing in the world had come to you, and that you would never be quite the same person again; perhaps she had danced with you down the street, perhaps she had watched you and listened to the drum and known that there was no question any more. I do not know how many marriages in Treliss that drum had been answerable for, but it knew its business.

The crowd began to form into some kind of order with a great deal of pushing and laughter and noise. There were whistles and little flags and tin horns. It was considered to bring good luck in the succeeding year, and so every kind of person was struggling for a place. If you had not danced then your prospects for the next twelve months were poor indeed, and your neighbours marked you down as some one doomed to misfortune. Very old women were there, their skirts gathered tightly about them, their mouths firm set and their eyes on the drum. Old men were pushed aside by younger ones and took it quietly and with submission, contenting themselves with the thought of the years when they had done their share of the fighting and had had a place with the best. Towards the front most of the young men were gathered. The crowd wound round the market, serpent-wise, coiling round and over the booths and stalls, twisting past the grey tower, and down finally into grey depths where the pepper-pot houses bent and twisted under the red flare of the lights.

Maradick and Tony were wedged tightly between flank and rear; as things were it was difficult enough to keep one’s feet. At Maradick’s side was an old woman, stout, with her bonnet whisked distractingly back from her forehead, her grey hairs waving behind her, her hands pressed tightly over a basket that she clasped to her waist.

“Eh sirs . . . eh sirs!” pantingly, breathlessly she gasped forth, and then her hand was hurriedly pressed to her forehead; with that up flew the lid of the basket and the scraggy lean neck of a hen poked miserably into the air and screeched frantically. “Down, Janet; but the likes of this . . . never did I see.” But nevertheless something triumphant in it all; at least she kept her place.

Already feet were beating to the tune of the drum; a measured stamp, stamp on the cobbles spoke of an itching to be off, a longing for the great moment. Waves of excitement surged through the crowd. For a moment it seemed as though everyone would be carried away, feet would lose their hold of the pavement and the multitude would tumble furiously down the hill; but no, the wave surged to the little red drum and then surged back again. The drum was not ready; everyone was not there. “Patience”—you could hear it speak, stolidly, resolutely, in its beats—“Patience, the time is coming if you will only be patient. You must trust me for the great moment.”

Maradick was crushed against the old lady with the basket; for an instant, a movement in the crowd flung him forward and he caught at the basket to steady himself. Really, it was too ridiculous! His hat had fallen to the back of his head, he was hot and perspiring, and he wanted to fling off his overcoat, but his hands were pressed to his sides. Mechanically his feet were keeping time with the drum, and suddenly he laughed. An old man in front of him was crushed sideways between two stalwart youths, and every now and again he struggled to escape, making pathetic little movements with his hands and then sinking back again, resigned. His old, wrinkled face, with a crooked nose and an expression of timid anxiety, seemed to Maradick infinitely diverting. “By Jove,” he cried, “look at that fellow!” But Tony was excited beyond measure.

He was crushed against Maradick, his cap balancing ridiculously on the back of his head; his mouth was smiling and his feet were beating time. “Isn’t it a rag? I say, isn’t it? Such fun! Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m afraid that I stepped on you. But there is a crowd, isn’t there? It’s really awfully hard to help it. Oh! let me pick it up for you—a cucumber, you said? Oh, there it is, rolled right away under that man there.” “Oh thank you, if you wouldn’t mind!” “No, it’s none the worse, missis. I say, Maradick, aren’t they decent; the people, I mean?”

And then suddenly they were off. The red coat of the town-crier waved in the wind and the drum moved.

For a moment a curious silence fell on the crowd. Before, there had been Babel—a very ocean of voices mingled with cries and horns and the blaring of penny whistles—you could scarcely hear yourself speak. But now there was silence. The drum beat came clearly through the air—one, two, one, two—and then, with a shout the silence was broken and the procession moved.

There was a sudden linking of arms down the line and Tony put his through Maradick’s. With feet in line they passed down the square, bending forward, then back; at one moment the old woman’s basket jumped suddenly into Maradick’s stomach, then he was pushed from behind. He felt that his cap was wobbling and he took it off, and, holding it tightly to his chest, passed on bareheaded.

At the turning of the corner the pace became faster. The beat of the drum, heard faintly through the noise of the crowd, was now “two, three, two, three.” “Come along, come along, it’s time to move, I’m tired of standing still!”

A delirium seemed to seize the front lines, and it passed like a flame down the ranks. Faster, faster. For heaven’s sake, faster! People were singing, a strange tune that seemed to have no words but only a crescendo of sound, a murmur that rose to a hum and then to a scream, and then sank again back into the wind and the beat of the drum.

They had left the market-place and were struggling, pressing, down the narrow street that led to the bay. Some one in front broke into a kind of dance-step. One, two, three, then forward bending almost double, your head down, then one, two, three, and your body back again, a leg in air, your head flung behind. It was the dance, the dance!

The spirit was upon them, the drum had given the word, and the whole company danced down the hill, over the cobbles. One, two, three, bend, one, two, three, back, leg in air! “Oh, but I can’t!” Maradick was panting. He could not stop, for they were pressing close behind him. The old woman had lost all sense of decorum. She waved her basket in the air, and from its depths came the scream of the hen. Tony’s arm was tight through his, and Tony was dancing. One, two, three, and everyone bent together. One, two, three, legs were in the air. Faces were flushed with excitement, hands were clenched, and the tune rose and fell. For an instant Maradick resisted. He must get out of it; he tried to draw his arm away. It was held in a vice and Tony was too excited to listen, and then propriety, years, tradition went hustling to the winds and he was dancing as the others. He shouted wildly, he waved his cap in the air; then he caught the tune and shouted it with the others.

A strange hallucination came upon him that he was some one else, that he, as Maradick, did not exist. Epsom was a lie and the office in town a delusion. The years seemed to step off his back, like Pilgrim’s pack, and so, shouting and singing, he danced down the street.

They reached the bottom of the hill and turned the corner along the path that led by the bay. The sea lay motionless at their feet, the path of the moon stretching to the horizon.

The tune was wilder and wilder; the dance had done its work, and enough marriages were in the making to fill the church for a year of Sundays. There was no surprise at the presence of Tony and Maradick. This was an occasion in which no one was responsible for their actions, and if gentlemen chose to join, well, there was nothing very much to wonder at.

To Tony it seemed the moment of his life. This was what he had been born to do, to dance madly round the town. It seemed to signify comradeship, good fellowship, the true equality. It was the old Greek spirit come to life again; that spirit of which he had spoken to Alice—something that Homer had known and something that Whitman had preached. And so up the hill! madly capering, gesticulating, shouting. Some one is down, but no one stops. He is left to pick himself up and come limping after. Mr. Trefusis the butcher had been for a twelvemonth at war with Mr. Curtis the stationer, now they are arm in arm, both absurdly stout; the collar of Mr. Curtis is burst at the neck, but they are friends once more. Mrs. Graham, laundress, had insulted Miss Penny, dressmaker, four months ago, and they had not spoken since; now, with bonnets awry and buttons bursting down the back, it is a case of “Mary” and “Agnes” once again.

Oh! the drum knew its work.

And then it was suddenly over. The top of the hill completed the circle and the market was reached again. The drum beat a frantic tattoo on the steps of the Town Hall, the crowd surged madly round the square, and then suddenly the screams died away, a last feeble beat was heard, and there was silence. People leaned breathlessly against any support that might be there and thought suddenly of the disorder of their dress. Everyone was perhaps a little sheepish, and some had the air of those who had suddenly awaked from sleep.

Maradick came speedily to his senses. He did not know what he had been doing, but it had all been very foolish. He straightened his tie, put on his cap, wiped his forehead, and drew his arm from Tony’s. He was very thankful that there was no one there who knew him. What would his clerks have said had they seen him? Fancy the office-boy! And then the Epsom people. Just fancy! Louie, Mrs. Martin Fraser, old Tom Craddock. Maradick, James Maradick dancing wildly down the street with an old woman. It was incredible!

But there was still that strange, half-conscious feeling that it had not been Maradick at all, or, at any rate, some strange, curious Maradick whose existence until to-night had never been expected. It was not the Maradick of Epsom and the City. And then the Admonitus Locorum, perched gaily on his shoulder, laughed hilariously and winked at the Tower.

Tony was excited as he had never been before, and was talking eagerly to an old deaf man who had managed to keep up with the company but was sadly exhausted by the doing of it.

“My last,” sighed the old man between gasps for breath. “Don’t ’ee tell me, young feller, I shan’t see another.”

“Nonsense,” Tony waved his arms in the air, “why, you’re quite young still. You’re a fisherman, aren’t you? How splendid. I’d give anything to be a fisherman. I’ll come down and watch you sometimes and you must come up and have tea.”

At this point Maradick intervened.

“I say, let’s get out of this, it’s so hot. Come away from the crowd.” He pulled Tony by the arm.

“All right.” Tony shook the old man by the hand. “Good-bye, I’ll come and watch you fish one morning. By Jove, it is hot! but what fun! Where shall we go?”

“I propose bed,” said Maradick, rather grimly. He felt suddenly out of sympathy with the whole thing. It was as though some outside power had slipped the real Maradick, the Maradick of business and disillusioned forty, back into his proper place again. The crowd became something common and even disgusting. He glanced round to assure himself that no one who mattered had been witness of his antics as he called them; he felt a little annoyed with Tony for leading him into it. It all arose, after all, from that first indiscreet departure from the hotel. He now felt that an immediate return to his rooms was the only secure method of retreat. The dance stood before him as some horrible indiscretion indulged in by some irresponsible and unauthorised part of him. How could he! The ludicrous skinny neck of the shrieking hen pointed the moral of the whole affair. He felt that he had, most horribly, let himself down.

“Yes, bed,” he said. “We’ve fooled enough.” But for Tony the evening was by no means over. The dance had been merely the symbol of a new order of things. It was the physical expression of something that he had been feeling so strangely, so beautifully, during these last few days. He had called it by so many names—Sincerity, Simplicity, Beauty, the Classical Spirit, the Heroic Age—but none of these names had served, for it was made up of all these things, and, nevertheless, was none of them alone. He had wondered at this new impulse, almost, indeed, new knowledge; and yet scarcely new, because he felt as if he had known it all, the impulse and the vitality and the simplicity of it, some long time before.

And now that dance had made things clearer for him. It was something that he had done in other places, with other persons, many hundreds, nay, thousands of years ago; he had found his place in the golden chain that encircled the world. And so, of course, he did not wish to go back. He would never go back; he would never go to sleep again, and so he told Maradick.

“Well, I shall go,” said Maradick, and he led the way out of the crowd. Then Tony felt that he had been rude. After all, he had persuaded Maradick to come, and it was rather discourteous now to allow him to return alone.

“Perhaps,” he said regretfully, “it would be better. But it is such a splendid night, and one doesn’t get the chance of a game like that very often.”

“No,” said Maradick, “perhaps it’s as well. I don’t know what led me; and now I’m hot, dusty, beastly!”

“I say a drink,” said Tony. They had passed out of the market-place and were turning up the corner of the crooked street to their right. A little inn, the “Red Guard,” still showed light in its windows. The door flung open and two men came out, and, with them, the noise of other voices. Late though the hour was, trade was still being driven; it was the night of the year and all rules might be broken with impunity.

Maradick and Tony entered.

The doorway was low and the passage through which they passed thick with smoke and heavy with the smell of beer. The floor was rough and uneven, and the hissing gas, mistily hanging in obscure distance, was utterly insufficient. They groped their way, and at last, guided by voices, found the door of the taproom. This was very full indeed, and the air might have been cut with a knife. Somewhere in the smoky haze there was a song that gained, now and again, at chorus point, a ready assistance from the room at large.

Tony was delighted. “Why, it’s Shelley’s Inn!” he cried. “Oh! you know! where he had the bacon,” and he quoted: “‘. . . A Windsor chair, at a small round beechen table in a little dark room with a well-sanded floor.’ It’s just as though I’d been here before. What ripping chaps!”

There was a small table in a corner by the door, and they sat down and called for beer. The smoke was so thick that it was almost as though they had the room to themselves. Heads and boots and long sinewy arms appeared through the clouds and vanished again. Every now and again the opening of the door would send the smoke in whirling eddies down the room and the horizon would clear; then, in a moment, there was mist again.

“‘What would Miss Warne say?’” quoted Tony. “You know, it’s what Elizabeth Westbrook was always saying, the sister of Harriet; but poets bore you, don’t they? Only it’s a Shelley night somehow. He would have danced like anything. Isn’t this beer splendid? We must come here again.”

But Maradick was ill at ease. His great overwhelming desire was to get back, speedily, secretly, securely. He hated this smelly, smoky tavern. He had never been to such a place in his life, and he didn’t know why he had ever suffered Tony to lead him there. He was rather annoyed with Tony, to tell the truth. His perpetual enthusiasm was a trifle wearisome and he had advanced in his acquaintanceship with a rapidity that Maradick’s caution somewhat resented. And then there was a lack of scale that was a little humiliating. Maradick had started that evening with the air of one who confers a favour; now he felt that he was flung, in Tony’s brain, into the same basket with the old fisherman, the landlord of the “Red Guard,” and the other jovial fellows in the room. They were all “delightful,” “charming,” “the best company”; there was, he felt resentfully, no discrimination. The whole evening had been, perhaps, a mistake, and for the future he would be more careful.

And then suddenly he noticed that some one was sitting at their little table. It was strange that he had not seen him before, for the table was small and they were near the door. But he had been absorbed in his thoughts and his eyes had been turned away. A little man in brown sat at his side, quite silently, his eyes fixed on the window; he did not seem to have noticed their presence. His age might have been anything between forty and fifty, but he had a prosperous air as of one who had found life a pleasant affair and anything but a problem; a gentleman, Maradick concluded.

And then he suddenly looked up and caught Maradick’s gaze. He smiled. It was the most charming smile that Maradick had ever seen, something that lightened not only the face but the whole room, and something incredibly young and engaging. Tony caught the infection of it and smiled too. Maradick had no idea at the time that this meeting was, in any way, to be of importance to him; but he remembered afterwards every detail of it, and especially that beautiful sudden smile, the youth and frankness in it. In other days, when the moment had assumed an almost tragic importance in the light of after events, the picture was, perhaps, the most prominent background that he possessed; the misted, entangled light struck the little dark black table, the sanded floor, the highraftered ceiling: then there were the dark spaces beyond peopled with mysterious shapes and tumultuous with a hundred voices. And finally the quiet little man in brown.

“You have been watching the festival?” he said. There was something a little foreign in the poise and balance of the sentence; the English pronunciation was perfect? but the words were a little too distinct.

Maradick looked at him again. There was, perhaps, something foreign about his face—rather sallow, and his hair was of a raven blackness.

“Yes,” said Maradick. “It was most interesting. I have never seen anything quite like it before.”

“You followed it?” he asked.

“Yes.” Maradick hesitated a little.

“Rather!” Tony broke in; “we danced as well. I never had such fun. We’re up at the hotel there; we saw the lights and were tempted to come down, but we never expected anything like that. I wish there was another night of it.”

He was leaning back in his chair, his greatcoat flung open and his cap tilted at the back of his head. The stranger looked at him with appreciation.

“I’m glad you liked it. It’s the night for our little town, but it’s been kept more or less to ourselves. People don’t know about it, which is a good thing. You needn’t tell them or it will be ruined.”

“Our town.” Then the man belonged to the place. And yet he was surely not indigenous.

“It’s not new to you?” said Maradick tentatively.

“New! Oh! dear me, no!” the man laughed. “I belong here and have for many years past. At least it has been my background, as it were. You would be surprised at the amount that the place contains.”

“Oh, one can see that,” said Tony. “It has atmosphere more than any place I ever knew—medieval, and not ashamed of it, which is unusual for England.”

“We have been almost untouched,” said the other, “by all this modernising that is ruining England. We are exactly as we were five hundred years ago, in spite of the hotel. For the rest, Cornwall is being ruined. Look at Pendragon, Conister, and hundreds of places. But here we have our fair and our dance and our crooked houses, and are not ashamed.”

But Maradick had no desire to continue the conversation. He suddenly realised that he was very tired, sleepy—bed was the place, and this place with its chorus of sailors and smoke. . . . He finished his beer and rose.

“I’m afraid that we must be getting back,” he said. “It’s very late. I had no intention really of remaining as late.” He suddenly felt foolish, as though the other two were laughing at him. He felt strangely irritated.

“Of course,” he said to Tony, “it’s only myself. Don’t you hurry; but old bones, you know——” He tried to carry it off with a laugh.

“Oh! I’m coming,” said Tony. “We said we’d be back by twelve, and we’ve got five minutes. So we’ll say good night, sir.”

He held out his hand to the man in brown. The stranger took out a card-case and handed his card.

“In case you would care to see round the place—there’s a good deal that I could show you. I should be very pleased at any time if you are making a lengthy stay; I shall be here for some months now, and am entirely at your service.”

He looked at Maradick as he spoke and smiled, but it was obviously Tony for whom the invitation was meant. Maradick felt absurdly out of it.

“Oh, thank you,” said Tony, “I should be awfully glad. I think that we shall be here some time; I will certainly come if I may.”

They smiled at each other, the stranger bowed, and they were once more in the cooler air.

Under the light of the lamp Tony read the card:—

“Mr. Andreas Morelli,

19 Trevenna Street, Treliss.”

“Ah! a foreigner, as I thought,” said Tony. “What an awfully nice man. Did you ever see such a smile?”

“Rather a short acquaintance!” said Maradick. “We only spoke to him for a minute, and then he offered his card. One has to be a little careful.”

“Oh! you could tell he was all right,” said Tony; “look at his eyes. But what fun it’s all been. Aren’t you glad you came down?”

Maradick couldn’t honestly say that he was, but he answered in the affirmative. “Only, you know,” he said, laughing, “it’s an unusual evening for a man like myself. We run along on wheels and prefer sticking to the rails.”

They were climbing the hill. “Why, this is Trevenna Street!” cried Tony, catching sight of the name on one of the houses. “The man lives here.”

The street was quaint and picturesque, and on some of the walls there was ancient carving; heads leered at them from over the doors and window-ledges. Then it struck twelve from somewhere in the town, and immediately all the lights went out; the street was in darkness, for, at the moment, the clouds were over the moon.

“We’re in the provinces,” said Tony, laughing. “We ought to have link-boys.”

Suddenly above their heads there was a light. A window was flung up and some one was standing there with a candle. It was a girl; in the candle-light she stood out brilliantly against the black background. She leaned out of the window.

“Is that you, father?” she called.

Then some one spoke from inside the room. There was a petulant “Oh bother! Miss Minns!” and then the window closed.

Maradick had scarcely noticed the affair. He was hurrying up the hill, eager to reach the hotel.

But Tony stood where he was. “By Jove!” he cried. “Did you see her eyes? Wonderful! Why, you never in all your life——!”

“Candle-light is deceptive,” said Maradick.

“She was wonderful! Glorious! Just for a moment like that out of the darkness! But this is indeed a city of miracles!” He looked back; the house was in absolute darkness.

“She doesn’t like Miss Minns,” he added, “I expect Miss Minns is a beast; I, too, hate Miss Minns.”

At last, in the dark, mysterious hall they parted. “Oh! for bed!” said Maradick.

“But what a night!” cried Tony. “By heaven! what a night!”

And the Admonitus Locorum smiled, very knowingly, from the head of the stairs.

CHAPTER V

MARADICK MAKES A PROMISE AND MEETS AN

ITINERANT OPTIMIST

The house was the cleverest in the world. There was nothing in Europe of its kind, and that was because its cleverness lay in the fact that you never thought it clever at all. It could, most amazingly, disappear so utterly and entirely that you never had any thoughts about it at all, and merely accepted it without discussion as a perfect background. And then, suddenly, on a morning or an evening, it would leap out at you and catch you by the throat; and the traveller wondered and was aghast at its most splendid adaptability.

It was, indeed, all things to all men; but it nevertheless managed to bring out the best parts of them. All those strange people that it had seen—painters and musicians, the aristocracy and old maids, millionaires and the tumbled wastrels cast out from a thousand cities—it gathered them all, and they left it, even though they had passed but a night in its company, altered a little. And it achieved this by its adaptability. In its rooms and passages, its gardens and sudden corners, its grey lights and green lawns, there was that same secret waiting for an immediate revelation. Some thought the house a tyranny, and others called it a surprise, and a few felt that it was an impossibility, but no one disregarded it.

For Maradick, in these strange new days into which he was entering, its charm lay in its age. That first view with the dark, widening staircase that passed into hidden lights and mysteries overhead and turned so nobly towards you the rich gleam of its dark brown oak, the hall with its wide fireplace and passages that shone, as all true passages should, like little cups of light and shadow, grey and blue and gold, before vanishing into darkness—this first glimpse had delighted him; it was a hall that was a perfect test of the arriving visitor, and Maradick had felt that he himself had been scarcely quite the right thing. It was almost as though he ought to have apologised for the colourless money-making existence that had hitherto been his; he had felt this vaguely and had been a little uncomfortable. But there were things higher up that were better still. There were rooms that had, most wisely, been untouched, and their dark, mysterious panelling, the wistful scent of dried flowers and the wax of dying candles; the suggestion—so that he held his breath sometimes to listen whether it were really so—of rustling brocades and the tiny click of shining heels on the polished floor, was of a quite unequalled magic for him. Of course there was imagination in it, and in the last few days these things had grown and extended their influence over him, but there must have been something there before, he argued, to impress so matter-of-fact and solid a gentleman.

There was one room that drew him with especial force, so that sometimes, before going to bed, he would enter with his candle raised high above his head, and watch the shadow on the floor and the high gloom of the carved ceiling. It contained a little minstrels gallery supported on massive pillars of gleaming oak, and round the bottom of the platform were carved the heads of grinning lions, reminding one of that famous Cremona violin of Herr Prespil’s. In the centre of the room was an old table with a green baize cloth, and against the wall, stiffly ranged and dusty from disuse, high-backed quaintly carved chairs, but for the rest no carpet and no pictures on the dark, thick walls.

It was sometimes used for dancing, and at times for a meeting or a sale of work; or perchance, if there were gentlemen musically inclined, for chamber music. But it was empty during half the year, and no one disturbed its dust; it reminded Maradick of that tower in the market-place. They were, both of them, melancholy survivals, but he applauded their bravery in surviving at all, and he had almost a personal feeling for them in that he would have liked them to know that there was, at least, one onlooker who appreciated their being there.

There were rooms and passages in the upper part of the house that were equally delightful and equally solitary. He himself had in his former year at Treliss thought them melancholy and dusty; there had been no charm. But now the room of the minstrels had drawn him frequently to its doors, partly by reason of its power of suggestion—the valuation, for him, of light and sound and colour, in their true and most permanent qualities—partly by the amazing view that its deep-set windows provided. It hung forward, as it were, over the hill, so that the intervening space of garden and tower and wood was lost and there was only the sea. It seemed to creep to the very foot of the walls, and the horizon of it was so distant that it swept into infinite space, meeting the sky without break or any division. The height of the room gave the view colour, so that there were deeper blues and greens in the sea, and in the sky the greys and whites were shot with other colours that the mists of the intervening air had given them.

In these last few days Maradick had watched the view with ever-increasing wonder. The sea had been to him before something that existed for the convenience of human beings—a means of transit, a pleasant place to bathe, sands for the children, and the pier for an amusing walk. Now he felt that these things were an impertinence. It seemed to him that the sea permitted them against its will, and would, one day, burst its restraint and pour in overwhelming fury on to that crowd of nurses and nigger-minstrels and parasols; he almost hoped that it would.

Loneliness was, however, largely responsible for this change of view. There had been no one this time at the hotel to whom he had exactly taken. There had been men last year whom he had liked, excellent fellows. They had come there for the golf and he had seen a good deal of them. There might be some of the same kind now, but for some reason, unanalysed and very mistily grasped, he did not feel drawn towards them.

The Saturday of the end of that week was a terribly hot day, and after lunch he had gone to his room, pulled down his blinds, and slumbered over a novel. The novel was by a man called Lester; he had made his name several years before with “The Seven Travellers,” a work that had succeeded in pleasing both critics and public. It was now in its tenth edition. Maradick had been bored by “The Seven Travellers”; it had seemed effete and indefinite. They were, he had thought, always travelling and never getting there, and he had put it down unfinished. The man knew nothing of life at first hand, and the characters were too obviously concerned in their own emotions to arouse any very acute ones in the reader. But this one, “To Paradise,” was better. If the afternoon had not been so very hot it might even have kept him awake. The characters were still effete and indefinite, motives were still crudely handled and things were vague and obscure, but there was something in its very formlessness that was singularly pleasing. And it was beautiful, there was no doubt about that; little descriptions of places and people that were charming not only for themselves but also for the suggestions that they raised.

When he woke it was nearly four o’clock. He remembered that he had promised his wife to come down to tea. She had met the Gales the day before and they were coming to tea, and he had to be useful. There were a good many little drawing-rooms in the hotel, so that you could ask more people to tea than your own room would conveniently hold, and nevertheless be, to all intents and purposes, private.

He yawned, stretched his arms above his head, and left his room. Then he remembered that he had left a book in the room with the minstrels gallery that morning. He went upstairs to fetch it. The room itself lay in shadow, but outside, beyond the uncurtained windows, the light was so fierce that it hurt his eyes.

He had never seen anything to approach the colour. Sea and sky were a burning blue, and they were seen through a golden mist that seemed to move like some fluttering, mysterious curtain between earth and heaven. There was perfect stillness. Three little fishing-boats with brown sails, through which the sun glowed with the red light of a ruby, stood out against the staring, dazzling white of the distant cliffs.

He found his book, and stood there for a moment wondering why he liked the place so much. He had never been a man of any imagination, but now, vaguely, he filled the space around him with figures. He could not analyse his thoughts at all, but he knew that it all meant something to him now, something that had not been there a week ago.

He went down to tea.

The drawing-room was lying in shadow; the light and heat were shut out by heavy curtains. His wife was making tea, and as he came in at the door he realised her daintiness and charm very vividly. The shining silver and delicate china suited her, and there were little touches of very light blue about her white dress that were vague enough to seem accidental; you wondered why they had happened to be so exactly in precisely the right places. There were also there Lady and Sir Richard Gale, Alice Du Cane, Mrs. Lawrence, and in the background with a diminutive kitten, Tony.

“Something to eat, Miss Du Cane? What, nothing, really?” He sat down beside her and Tony. She interested him, partly because she was so beautiful and partly because she was perhaps going to marry Tony. She looked very cool now; a little too cool, he thought.

“Well? Do you like this place?” he said.

“I? Oh yes! It’s lovely, of course. But I think it would be better if one had a cottage here, quite quietly. Of course the hotel’s beautiful and most awfully comfortable, but it’s the kind of place where one oughtn’t to have to think of more than the place; it’s worth it. All the other things—dressing and thinking what you look like, and table d’hôte—they all come in between somehow like a wall. One doesn’t want anything but the place.”

That, he suddenly discovered, was why he liked the little room upstairs, because it was, so simply and clearly, the place. He looked at her gratefully.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s just what I’ve been feeling. I missed it last year somehow. It didn’t seem fine in quite the same way.”

But he saw that she was not really interested. She thought of him, of course, as a kind of middle-aged banker. He expected that she would soon try to talk to him about self and the table d’hôte and bridge. He was seriously anxious to show her that there were other things that he cared for.

“You’ve changed a lot since the other day, Alice,” said Tony suddenly. “You told me you didn’t like Treliss a bit, and now you think it’s lovely.”

“I do really,” said Alice, laughing. “That was only a mood. How could one help caring? All the same you know I don’t think it’s altogether good for one, it’s too complete a holiday.”

“That’s very strenuous, Miss Du Cane,” said Maradick. “Why shouldn’t we have holidays? It helps.”

“Ah, yes,” said Alice. “But then you work. Here am I doing nothing all the year round but enjoy myself; frankly, I’m getting tired of it. I shall buy a typewriter or something. Oh! if I were only a man!”

She looked at Tony. He laughed.

“She’s always doing that, Maradick—pitching into me because I don’t do anything; but that’s only because she doesn’t know in the least what I’m really doing. She doesn’t know——”

“Please, Mr. Maradick,” she said, turning round to him, “make him start something seriously. Take him into your office. He can add, I expect, or be useful in some way. He’s getting as old as Methuselah, and he’s never done a day’s work in his life.”

Although she spoke lightly, he could see that she meant it very seriously. He wondered what it was that she wanted him to do, and also why people seemed to take it for granted that he had influence over Tony; it was as if Fate were driving him into a responsibility that he would much rather avoid. But the difficulty of it all was that he was so much in the dark. These people had not let him into things, and yet they all of them demanded that he should do something. He would have liked to have asked her to tell him frankly what it was that she wanted him to do, and, indeed, why she had appealed to him at all; but there was no opportunity then. At any rate he felt that some of her indifference was gone; she had let him see that there were difficulties somewhere, and that at least was partial confidence.

Mrs. Maradick interrupted: “Miss Du Cane, I wonder if you would come and make a four at bridge. It’s too hot to go out, and Sir Richard would like a game. It would be most awfully good of you.”

Alice moved over to the card-table. Sir Richard played continually but never improved. He sat down now with the air of one who condescended; he covered his mistakes with the assurance that it was his partner who was playing abominably, and he explained carefully and politely at the end of the game the things that she ought to have done. Mrs. Maradick and Mrs. Lawrence played with a seriousness and compressed irritation that was worthy of a greater cause.

Tony had slipped out of the room, and Lady Gale crossed over to Maradick by the window.

“How quickly,” she said, “we get to know each other in a place like this. We have only been here a week and I am going to be quite confidential already.”

“Confidential?” said Maradick.

“Yes, and I hope you won’t mind. You mustn’t mind, because it’s my way. It always has been. If one is going to know people properly then I resent all the wasted time that comes first. Besides, preliminaries aren’t necessary with people as old as you and I. We ought to understand by this time. Then we really can’t wait.”

He looked into her face, and knew that here at least there would be absolute honesty and an explanation of some kind.

“Forgive me, Lady Gale,” he said, “but I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’ve been in the dark and perhaps you’ll explain. Before I came down here I’d been living to myself almost entirely—a man of my age and occupations generally does—and now suddenly I’m caught into other people’s affairs, and it’s bewildering.”

“Well, it’s all very simple,” she answered. “Of course it’s about Tony. Everyone’s interested in Tony. He’s just at the interesting age, and he’s quite exciting enough to make his people wonder what he’ll turn into. It’s the chrysalis into the—well, that just depends. And then, of course, I care a great deal more than the rest. Tony has been different to me from the rest. I suppose every mother’s like that, but I don’t think most of them have been such chums with their sons as I’ve been with Tony. We were alone in the country together for a long time and there was nobody else. And then the time came that I had prepared for and knew that I must face, the time when he had things that he didn’t tell me. Every boy’s like that, but I trusted him enough not to want to know, and he often told me just because I didn’t ask. Then he cared for all the right things and always ran straight; he never bent his brain to proving that black’s white and indeed rather whiter than most whites are, as so many people do. But just lately I’ve been a little anxious—we have all been—all of us who’re watching him. He ought to have settled down to something or some one by this time and one doesn’t quite know why he hasn’t; and he hasn’t been himself for the last six months. Things ought to have come to a head here. I don’t know what he’s been up to this week, but none of us have seen anything of him, and I can see that his thoughts are elsewhere all the time. It isn’t in the least that I doubt him or am unhappy, it is only that I would like some one to be there to give him a hand if he wants one. A woman wouldn’t do; it must be a man, and——”

“You think I’m the person,” said Maradick.

“Well, he likes you. He’s taken to you enormously. That’s always been a difficulty, because he takes to people so quickly and doesn’t seem to mind very much whom it is; but you are exactly the right man, the man I have wanted him to care for. You would help him, you could help him, and I think you will.”

Maradick was silent.

“You mustn’t, please, think that I mean you to spy in any way,” she continued. “I don’t want you to tell me anything. I shall never ask you, and you need never say anything to me about it. It is only that I shall know that there is some one there if he gets into a mess and I shall know that he’s all right.” She paused again, and then went on gently—

“You mustn’t think it funny of me to speak to you like this when I know you so slightly. At my age one judges people quickly, and I don’t want to waste time. I’m asking a good deal of you, perhaps; I don’t know, but I think it would have happened in any case whether I had spoken or no. And then you will gain something, you know. No one can be with Tony—get to know him and be a friend of his—without gaining. He’s a very magical person.”

Maradick looked down on the ground. He knew quite well that he would have done whatever Lady Gale had asked him to do. She had seemed to him since he had first seen her something very beautiful and even wonderful, and he felt proud and grateful that she had trusted him like that.

“It’s very good of you, Lady Gale,” he said; “I will certainly be a friend of Tony’s, if that is what you want me to do. He is a delightful fellow, much too delightful, I am afraid, to have anything much to do with a dull, middle-aged duffer like myself. I must wake up and shake some of the dust off.”

She smiled. “Thank you; you don’t know how grateful I am to you for taking an interest in him. I shall feel ever so much safer.”

And then the door opened and Tony came in. He crossed over to her and said eagerly, “Mother, the Lesters are here. Came this afternoon. They’re coming up in a minute; isn’t it splendid!”

“Oh, I am glad—not too loud, Tony, you’ll disturb the bridge. How splendid they’re coming; Mildred said something in town about possibly coming down in the car.”

“He’s the author-fellow, you know,” said Tony, turning round to Maradick. “You were reading ‘To Paradise’ yesterday; I saw you with it. His books are better than himself. But she’s simply ripping; the best fun you ever saw in your life.”

That Maradick should feel any interest in meeting a novelist was a new experience. He had formerly considered them, as a class, untidy both in morals and dress, and had decidedly preferred City men. But he liked the book.

“Yes. I was reading ‘To Paradise this afternoon,’ he said. “It’s very good. I don’t read novels much, and it’s very seldom that I read a new one, but there was something unusual——”

Then the door opened and the Lesters came in. She was not pretty exactly, but striking—even, perhaps, he thought afterwards, exciting. He often tried on later days to call back the first impression that he had had of her, but he knew that it had not been indifference. In the shaded half-lights of the room, the grey blue shadows that the curtains flung on to the dark green carpet made her dress of light yellow stand out vividly; it had the color of primroses against the soft, uncertain outlines of the walls and hidden corners. There was a large black hat that hid her face and forehead, but beneath it there shone and sparkled two dark eyes that flung the heightened colour of her cheeks into relief. But the impression that he had was something most brilliantly alive; not alive in quite Tony’s way—that was a vitality as natural as the force of streams and torrents and infinite seas; this had something of opposition in it, as though some battle had created it. Her husband, a dark, plain man, a little tired and perhaps a little indifferent, was in the background. He did not seem to count at the moment.

“Oh, Mildred, how delightful!” Lady Gale went forward to her. “Tony’s just told me. I had really no idea that you were coming; of course with a car one can do anything and get anywhere, but I thought it would have been abroad!”

“So it ought to have been,” said Mrs. Lester. “Fred couldn’t get on with the new book, and suddenly at breakfast, in the way he does, you know, said that we must be in Timbuctoo that evening. So we packed. Then we wondered who it was that we wanted to see, and of course it was you; and then we wondered where we wanted to go, and of course it was Treliss, and then when we found that you and Treliss were together of course the thing was done. So here we are, and it’s horribly hot. I only looked in to see you for a second because I’m going to have a bath immediately and change my things.”

She crossed for a moment to the card-table and spoke to Sir Richard. “No, don’t get up, Sir Richard, I wouldn’t stop the bridge for the world. Just a shake of the fingers and I’m off. How are you? Fit? I’m as right as a trivet, thanks. Hullo, Alice! I heard you were here! Splendid! I’ll be down later.”

Her husband had shaken hands with Lady Gale and talked to her for a moment, then they were gone.

“That’s just like Mildred,” said Lady Gale, laughing. “In for a moment and out again, never still. When she and Tony are together things move, I can tell you. Well, I must go up to my room, any amount of letters to write before dinner. Good-bye, Mr. Maradick, for the moment. Thank you for the chat.”

When they were left alone Tony said, “Come out. It’s much cooler now. It will be ripping by the sea. You’ve been in all the afternoon.”

“Yes,” said Maradick, “I’ll come.”

He realised, as he left the room, that he and his wife had scarcely met since that first evening. There had always been other people, at meals, outside, after dinner; he knew that he had not been thinking of her very much, but he suddenly wondered whether she had not been a little lonely. These people had not accepted her in quite the same way that they had accepted him, and that was rather surprising, because at Epsom and in town it had always been the other way about. He had been the one whom people had thought a bore; everyone knew that she was delightful. Of course the explanation was that Tony had, as it were, taken him up. All these people were interested in Tony, and had, therefore, included Maradick. He could help a little in the interpretation or rather the development of Tony, and therefore he was of some importance. For a moment there was a feeling of irritation at the position, and then he remembered that it was scarcely likely that anyone was going to be interested in him for himself, and the next best thing was to be liked because of Tony. But it must, of course, be a puzzle to his wife. He had caught, once or twice, a look, something that showed that she was wondering, and that, too, was new; until now she had never thought about him at all.

Tony chattered all the way down to the hall.

“The Lesters are ripping. We’ve known Milly Lester ever since the beginning of time. She’s not much older than me, you know, and we lived next door to each other in Carrington Gardens. Our prams always went out and round the Square together, and we used to say goo-goo to each other. Then later on I used to make up stories for her. She was always awfully keen on stories and I was rather a nailer at them; then we used to fight, and I slapped her face and she pinched me. Then we went to the panto together, and used to dance with each other at Christmas parties. I was never in love with her, you know: she was just a jolly good sort whom I liked to be with. She’s always up to a rag; he thinks it’s a little too often. He’s a solemn sort of beggar and jolly serious, lives more in his books than out of them, which doesn’t make for sociability. Rather hard luck on her.”

“What was his attraction for her?” asked Maradick.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tony; “she admired his books awfully and made the mistake of thinking that the man was like them. So he is, in a way; it’s as if you’d married the books, you know, and there wasn’t anything else there except the leather.”

They were silent for a little time, and then Tony said, “On a day like this one’s afraid—‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,’ you know—it’s all too beautiful and wonderful and makes such a splendid background for the adventure that we’re on the edge of.”

“Adventure?” said Maradick.

“Yes; you haven’t forgotten the other night, have you? I’ve been waiting for you to speak to me about it. And then this afternoon I saw it was all right. My asking you to come out was a kind of test, only I knew you’d say yes. I knew that mother had been talking to you about it. About me and whether you’d help me? Wasn’t it?”

“That’s between your mother and myself,” said Maradick.

“Well, it was, all the same. And you said yes. And it’s ripping, it’s just what I so especially wanted. They’ve all been wondering what I’m up to. Of course they could see that something was up; and they’re simply longing to know all about it, the others out of curiosity and mother because she cares. It isn’t a bit curiosity with her, you know, it’s only that she wants to know that I’m safe, and now that she’s stuck you, whom she so obviously trusts, as a kind of bodyguard over me she’ll be comfortable and won’t worry any more. It’s simply splendid—that she won’t worry and that you said yes.”

He paused and stood in the path, looking at Maradick.

“Because, you know,” he went on, with that charming, rather crooked little smile that he had, “I do most awfully want you for a friend quite apart from its making mother comfortable. You’re just the chap to carry it through; I’m right about it’s being settled, aren’t I?”

Maradick held out his hand.

“I expect I’m a fool,” he said, “at my age to meddle in things that don’t concern me, but anyhow, there’s my hand on it. I like you. I want waking up a bit and turning round, and you’ll do it. So it’s a bargain.”

They shook hands very solemnly and walked on silently down the path. They struck off to the right instead of turning to the left through the town. They crossed a stile, and were soon threading a narrow, tumbling little path between two walls of waving corn. In between the stems poppies were hiding and overhead a lark was singing. For a moment he came down towards them and his song filled their ears, then he circled up and far above their heads until he hung, a tiny speck, against a sky of marble blue.

“You might tell me.” said Maradick, “what the adventure really is. I myself, you know, have quite the vaguest idea, and as I’m so immediately concerned I think I ought to know something about it.”

“Why? I told you the other night,” said Tony; “and things really haven’t gone very much further. I haven’t seen her again, nor has Punch, and he has been about the beach such a lot that he’d have been sure to if she’d been down there. But the next step has to be taken with you.”

“What is it?” said Maradick a little apprehensively.

“To call on that man who gave us his card the other night. He’s got a lot to do with her, I know, and it’s the very best of luck that we should have met him as we did.”

“I must say I didn’t like him for some quite unexplained reason. But why not go and call without me? He doesn’t want to see me; it was you he gave the card to.”

“No, you must come. I should be afraid to go alone. Besides, he might show you things in Treliss that you’d like to see, although I suppose you’ve explored it pretty well for yourself by this time. But, by the way, wherever have you been this week? I’ve never seen you about the place or with people.”

“No,” said Maradick. “I discovered rather a jolly room up in the top of the house somewhere, a little, old, deserted place with an old-fashioned gallery and a gorgeous view. I grew rather fond of the place and have been there a good deal.”

“You must show it me. We ought to have struck the place by now. Oh, there it is, to the right.”

They had arrived at the edge of the cliff, and were looking for a path that would take them down to the beach. Below them was a little beach shut in on three sides by cliff. Its sand was very smooth and very golden, and the sea came with the very tiniest ripple to the edge of it and passed away again with a little sigh. Everything was perfectly still. Then suddenly there was a bark of a dog and a man appeared on the lower rocks, sharply outlined against the sky.

“What luck!” cried Tony. “It’s Punch. I wanted you to meet him, and he may have a message for me.”

The man saw them and stepped down from the rocks on to the beach and came towards them, the dog after him. A little crooked path brought them to him, and Maradick was introduced. It was hard not to smile. The man was small and square; his legs were very short, but his chest was enormous, and his arms and shoulders looked as though they ought to have belonged to a much bigger man. His mouth and ears were very large, his nose and eyes small; he was wearing a peaked velvet cap, a velveteen jacket and velveteen knickerbockers. Maradick, thinking of him afterwards, said of him that he “twinkled;” that was the first impression of him. His legs, his eyes, his nose, his mouth stretched in an enormous smile, had that “dancing” effect; they said, “We are here now and we are jolly pleased to see you, but oh! my word! we may be off at any minute, you know!”

The dog, a white-haired mongrel, somewhat of the pug order, was a little like its master; its face was curiously similar, with a little nose and tiny eyes and an enormous mouth.

“Let me introduce you,” said Tony. “Punch, this is a friend of mine, Mr. Maradick. Maradick, this is my friend and counsellor, Punch; and, oh, yes, there’s Toby. Let me introduce you, Toby. Mr. Maradick—Toby. Toby—Mr. Maradick!”

The little man held out an enormous hand, the dog gravely extended a paw. Maradick shook both.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said. “Tony has told me about you.”

“Thank you, sir, I’m sure,” the man answered; “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir.”

There was a pause, and they sat down on the sand with their backs against the rocks.

“Well, Punch,” said Tony, “how’s the show? I haven’t seen you since Thursday.”

“Oh, the show’s all right,” he answered. “There’s never no fear about that. My public’s safe enough as long as there’s children and babies, which, nature being what it is, there’ll always be. It’s a mighty pleasant thing having a public that’s always going on, and it ain’t as if there was any chance of their tastes changing either. Puppies and babies and kittens like the same things year in and year out, bless their little hearts.”

“You have a Punch and Judy show, haven’t you?” said Maradick a little stiffly. He was disgusted at his stiffness, but he felt awkward and shy. This wasn’t the kind of fellow that he’d ever had anything to do with before; he could have put his hand into his pocket and given him a shilling and been pleasant enough about it, but this equality was embarrassing. Tony obviously didn’t feel it like that, but then Tony was young.

“Yes, sir; Punch and Judy shows are getting scarce, what with yer cinematographs and pierrots and things. But there’s always customers for ’em and always will be. And it’s more than babies like ’em really. Many’s the time I’ve seen old gentlemen and fine ladies stop and watch when they think no one’s lookin’ at ’em, and the light comes into their eyes and the colour into their cheeks, and then they think that some one sees ’em and they creep away. It’s natural to like Punch; it’s the banging, knock-me-down kind of humour that’s the only genuine sort. And then the moral’s tip-top. He’s always up again, Punch is, never knows when he’s beat, and always smiling.”

“Yes,” said Maradick, but he knew that he would have been one of those people who would have crept away.

“And there’s another thing,” said the man; “the babies know right away that it’s the thing they want. It’s my belief that they’re told before they come here that there’s Punch waiting for them, otherwise they’d never come at all. If you gave ’em Punch right away there wouldn’t be any howling at all; a Punch in every nursery, I say. You’d be surprised, sir, to see the knowin’ looks the first time they see Punch, you’d think they’d seen it all their lives. There’s nothing new about it; some babies are quite blasé over it.”

“And then there are the nursemaids,” said Tony.

“Yes,” said Punch, “they’re an easy-goin’ class, nursemaids. Give them a Punch and Judy or the military and there’s nothing they wouldn’t do for you. I’ve a pretty complete knowledge of nursemaids.”

“I suppose you travel about?” said Maradick; “or do you stay more or less in one part of the country?”

“Stay! Lord bless you, sir! I never stay anywhere; I’m up and down all the time. It’s easy enough to travel. The show packs up small, and then there’s just me and Toby. Winter time I’m in London a good bit. Christmas and a bit after. London loves Punch and always will. You’d think that these music-halls and pantomimes would knock it out, but not a bit of it. They’ve a real warm feeling for it in London. And they aren’t the sort of crowd who stand and watch it and laugh and smack their thighs, and then when the cap comes round start slipping off and pretendin’ they’ve business to get to, not a bit of it. They’d be ashamed not to pay their little bit.”

“And then in the summer?” said Maradick.

“Oh! Cumberland for a bit and then Yorkshire, and then down here in Cornwall. All round, you know. There are babies everywhere, and some are better than others. Now the Cumberland babies beat all the rest. Give me a Cumberland baby for a real laugh. They’re right enough down here, but they’re a bit on their dignity and afraid of doing the wrong thing. But I’ve got good and bad babies all over the place. I reckon I know more about babies than anyone in the land. And you see I always see them at their best—smiling and crowing—which is good for a man’s ’ealth.”

The sun was sinking towards the sea, and there was perfect silence save for the very gentle ripple of the waves. It was so still that a small and slightly ruffled sparrow hopped down to the edge of the water and looked about it. Toby saw him, but only lazily flapped an ear. The sparrow watched the dog for a moment apprehensively, then decided that there was no possible danger and resumed its contemplation of the sea.

The waves were so lazy that they could barely drag their way up the sand. They clung to the tiny yellow grains as though they would like to stay and never go back again; then they fell back reluctantly with a little song about their sorrow at having to go.

A great peace was in Maradick’s heart. This was the world at its most absolute best. When things were like this there were no problems nor questions at all; Epsom was an impossible myth and money-making game for fools.

Tony broke the silence:

“I say, Punch, have you any message for me?”

“Well, sir, not exactly a message, but I’ve found out something. Not from the young lady herself, you understand. She hasn’t been down again—not when I’ve been there. But I’ve found out about her father.”

“Her father?” said Tony excitedly; and Toby also sat up at attention as though he were interested.

“Yes; he’s the little man in brown you spoke of. Well known about here, it seems. They say he’s been here as long as anyone can remember, and always the same. No one knows him—keeps ’imself to ’imself; a bit lonely for the girl.”

“That man!” cried Tony. “And he’s asked me to call! Why, it’s fate!”

He grasped Maradick’s arm excitedly.

“He’s her father! her father!” he cried. “And he’s asked us to call! Her father, and we’re to call!”

“You’re to call!” corrected Maradick. “He never said anything about me; he doesn’t want me.”

“Oh, of course you’re to come. ’Pon my word, Punch, you’re a brick. Is there anything else?”

“Well, yes,” said Punch slowly. “He came and spoke to me yesterday after the show. Said he liked it and was very pleasant. But I don’t like ’im all the same. I agree with that gentleman; there’s something queer there, and everyone says so.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tony. “Never mind about the man. He’s her father, that’s the point. My word, what luck!”

But Punch shook his head dubiously.

“What do they say against him, then?” said Tony. “What reasons have they?”

“Ah! that’s just it,” said Punch; “they haven’t got no reasons. The man ’asn’t a ’istory at all, which is always an un’ealthy sign. Nobody knows where ’e comes from nor what ’e’s doing ’ere. ’E isn’t Cornish, that’s certain. ’E’s got sharp lips and pointed ears. I don’t like ’im and Toby doesn’t either, and ’e’s a knowing dog if ever there was one.”

“Well, I’m not to be daunted,” said Tony; “the thing’s plainly arranged by Providence.”

But Maradick, looking at Punch, thought that he knew more than he confessed to. There was silence again, and they watched a gossamer mist, pearl-grey with the blue of the sea and sky shining through, come stealing towards them. The sky-line was red with the light of the sinking sun, and a very faint rose colour touched with gold skimmed the crests of tiny waves that a little breeze had wakened.

The ripples that ran up the beach broke into white foam as they rose.

“Well, I must be getting on, Mr. Tony,” said Punch, rising. “I am at Mother Shipton’s to-night. Good-bye, sir,” he shook hands with Maradick, “I am pleased to ’ave met you.”

Tony walked a little way down the beach with him, arm in arm. They stopped, and Punch put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said something that Maradick did not catch; but he was speaking very seriously. Then, with the dog at his heels, he disappeared over the bend of the rocks.

“We’d better be getting along too,” said Tony. “Let’s go back to the beach. There’ll be a glorious view!”

“He seems a nice fellow,” said Maradick.

“Oh, Punch! He’s simply ripping! He’s one of the people whose simplicity seems so easy until you try it, and then it’s the hardest thing in the world. I met him in town last winter giving a show somewhere round Leicester Square way, and he was pretty upset because Toby the dog was ill. I don’t know what he’d do if that dog were to die. He hasn’t got anyone else properly attached to him. Of course, there are lots of people all over the country who are very fond of him, and babies, simply any amount, and children and dogs—anything young—but they don’t really belong to him.”

But Maradick felt that, honestly, he wasn’t very attracted. The man was a vagabond, after all, and would be much better earning his living at some decent trade; a strong, healthy man like that ought to be keeping a wife and family and doing his country some service instead of wandering about the land with a dog; it was picturesque, but improper. But he didn’t say anything to Tony about his opinions—also he knew that the man didn’t annoy him as he would have done a week ago.

As they turned the bend of the cliffs the tower suddenly rose in front of them like a dark cloud. It stood out sharply, rising to a peak biting into the pale blue sky, and vaguely hinting at buildings and gabled roofs; before it the sand stretched, pale gold.

Tony put his arm through Maradick’s.

At first they were not sure; it might be imagination. In the misty and uncertain light figures seemed to rise out of the pale yellow sands and to vanish into the dusky blue of the sea. But at the same moment they realised that there was some one there and that he was waiting for them; they recognised the brown jacket, the cloth cap, the square, prosperous figure. The really curious thing was that Maradick had had his eyes fixed on the sand in front of him, but he had seen no one coming. The figure had suddenly materialised, as it were, out of the yellow evening dusk. It was beyond doubt Mr. Andreas Morelli.

He was the same as he had been a week ago. There was no reason why he should have changed, but Maradick felt as though he had been always, from the beginning, the same. It was not strange that he had not changed since last week, but it was strange that he had not changed, as Maradick felt to be the case, since the very beginning of time; he had always been like that.

He greeted Tony now with that beautiful smile that Maradick had noticed before; it had in it something curiously intimate, as though he were referring to things that they both had known and perhaps done. Tony’s greeting was eager and, as usual with him, enthusiastic.

Morelli turned to Maradick and gravely shook hands. “I am very pleased to see you again, sir,” he said. “It is a most wonderful evening to be taking a stroll. It has been a wonderful day.”

“It has been too good to be true,” said Tony; “I don’t think one ought ever to go indoors when the weather is like this. Are you coming back to the town, Mr. Morelli, or were you going farther along the beach?”

“I should be very glad to turn back with you, if I may,” he said. “I promised to be back by half-past seven and it is nearly that now. You have never fulfilled your promise of coming to see me,” he said reproachfully.

“Well,” said Tony, “to tell you the truth I was a little shy; so many people are so kind and invite one to come, but it is rather another thing, taking them at their word and invading their houses, you know.”

“I can assure you I meant it,” said Morelli gravely. “There are various things that would interest you. I have quite a good collection of old armour and a good many odds and ends picked up at different times.” Then he added, “There’s no time like the present; why not come back and have supper with us now? That is if you don’t mind taking pot-luck.”

Tony flushed with pleasure. “I think we should be delighted, shouldn’t we, Maradick? They’re quite used to our not coming back at the hotel.”

“Thank you very much,” said Maradick. “It’s certainly good of you.”

He noticed that what Punch had said was true; the ears were pointed and the lips sharp and thin.

The dusk had swept down on them. The lights of the town rose in glittering lines one above the other in front of them; it was early dusk for an August evening, but the dark came quickly at Treliss.

The sea was a trembling shadow lit now and again with the white gleam of a crested wave. On the horizon there still lingered the last pale rose of the setting sun and across the sky trembling bars of faint gold were swiftly vanishing before the oncoming stars.

Morelli talked delightfully. He had been everywhere, it appeared, and spoke intimately of little obscure places in Germany and Italy that Tony had discovered in earlier years. Maradick was silent; they seemed to have forgotten him.

They entered the town and passed through the market-place. Maradick looked for a moment at the old tower, standing out black and desolate and very lonely.

In the hotel the dusk would be creeping into the little room of the minstrels. There would be no lights there, only the dust and the old chairs and the green table; from the open window you would see the last light of the setting sun, and there would be a scent of flowers, roses and pinks, from the garden below.

They had stopped outside the old dark house with the curious carving. Morelli felt for the key.

“I don’t know what my daughter will have prepared,” he said apologetically, “I gave her no warning.”

CHAPTER VI

SUPPER WITH JANET MORELLI

The little hall was lit by a single lamp that glimmered redly in the background. Small though the hall was, its darkness gave it space and depth. It appeared to be hung with many strange and curious objects—weapons of various kinds, stuffed heads of wild animals, coloured silks and cloths of foreign countries and peoples. The walls themselves were of oak, and from this dark background these things gleamed and shone and twisted under the red light of the lamp in an alarming manner. An old grandfather clock tick-tocked solemnly in the darkness.

Morelli led them up the stairs, with a pause every now and again to point out things of interest.

“The house is, you know,” he said almost apologetically, “something of a museum. I have collected a good deal one way and another. Everything has its story.”

Maradick thought, as his host said this, that he must know a great many stories, some of them perhaps scarcely creditable ones. The things that he saw had in his eyes a sinister effect. There could be nothing very pleasant about those leering animals and rustling, whispering skins; it gave the house, too, a stuffy, choked-up air, something a little too full, and full, too, of not quite the pleasantest things.

The staircase was charming. A broad window with diamond-shaped panes faced them as they turned the stair and gave a pleasant, cheerful light to the walls and roof. A silver crescent moon with glittering stars attending it shone at the window against an evening sky of the faintest blue; a glow that belonged to the vanished sun, and was so intangible that it had no definite form of colour, hung in the air and passed through the window down the stairs into the dark recesses of the hall. The walls were painted a dark red that had something very cheerful and homely about it.

Suddenly from the landing above them came voices.

“No, Miss Minns, I’m going to wait. I don’t care; father said he’d be back. Oh! I hear him.”

A figure came to the head of the stairs.

“Father, do hurry up; Miss Minns is so impatient at having to wait, and I said I wouldn’t begin till you came, and the potatoes are black, black, black.”

Maradick looked up and saw a girl standing at the head of the stairs. In her hand she held a small silver lamp that flung a pale circle of yellow behind and around her; she held it a little above her head in order that she might see who it was that mounted the stairs.

He thought she was the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen; her face was that of a child, and there was still in it a faint look of wonderment and surprise, as though she had very recently broken from some other golden dream and discovered, with a cry, the world.

Her mouth was small, and curved delicately like the petals of a very young rose that turn and open at the first touch of the sun’s glow. Her eyes were so blue that there seemed no end at all to the depth, and one gazed into them as into a well on a night of stars; there were signs and visions in them of so many things that a man might gaze for a year of days and still find secrets hidden there. Her hair was dark gold and was piled high in a great crown, and not so tightly that a few curls did not escape and toss about her ears and over her eyes. She wore a gown of very pale blue that fell in a single piece from her shoulders to her feet; her arms to the elbow and her neck were bare, and her dress was bound at the waist by a broad piece of old gold embroidered cloth.

Her colouring was so perfect that it might have seemed insipid were it not for the character in her mouth and eyes and brow. She was smiling now, but in a moment her face could change, the mouth would grow stiff, her eyes would flash; there was character in every part of her.

She was tall and very straight, and her head was poised perfectly. There was dignity and pride there, but humour and tenderness in the eyes and mouth; above all, she was very, very young. That look of surprise, and a little perhaps of one on her guard against a world that she did not quite understand, showed that. There was no fear there, but something a little wild and undisciplined, as though she would fight to the very last for her perfect, unfettered liberty: this was Janet Morelli.

She had thought that her father was alone, but now she realised that some one was with him.

She stepped back and blushed.

“I beg your pardon. I didn’t know——”

“Let me introduce you,” said Morelli. “Janet, this is Mr. Maradick and this Mr. Gale. They have come to have supper with us.”

She put the lamp down on the little round table behind her and shook hands with them. “How do you do?” she said. “I hope you’re not in the least bit hungry, because there’s nothing whatever to eat except black potatoes, and they’re not nice at all.”

She was quite without embarrassment and smiled at Maradick. She put her arm on her father’s shoulder for a moment by way of greeting, and then they walked into the room opposite the staircase. This was in strong contrast to the hall, being wide and spacious, with but little furniture. At one end was a bow-window with old-fashioned lozenge-shaped panes; in this a table laid for three had been placed. The walls were painted a very pale blue, and half-way up, all the way round, ran a narrow oaken shelf on which were ranged large blue and white plates of old china, whereon there ran riot a fantastic multitude of mandarins, curiously twisted castles, and trembling bridges spanning furious torrents. There were no pictures, but an open blue-tiled fireplace, the mantelpiece of which was of dark oak most curiously carved. There were some chairs, two little round tables, and a sofa piled high with blue cushions. There were lamps on the tables, but they were dim and the curtains were not drawn, so that through the misty panes the lights of the town were twinkling in furious rivalry with the lights of the dancing stars.

By the table was waiting a little woman in a stiff black dress. There was nothing whatever remarkable about her. There was a little pretentiousness, a little pathos, a little beauty even; it was the figure of some one who had been left a very long time ago, and was at last growing accustomed to the truth of it—there was no longer very much hope or expectation of anything, but simply a kind of fairy-tale wonder as to the possibility of the pumpkin’s being after all a golden coach and the rats some most elegant coachmen.

“Miss Minns,” said Morelli, “let me introduce you. These are two gentlemen who will have supper with us. Mr. Maradick and Mr. Gale.”

“I am very pleased to meet you,” said Miss Minns a little gloomily.

There was a servant of the name of Lucy, who laid two more places clumsily and with some noise. Janet had disappeared into the kitchen and Morelli maintained the conversation.

There was, however, a feeling of constraint. Maradick had never known Tony so silent. He stood by the fireplace, awkwardly shifting from one leg to the other, and looking continually at the door. He was evidently in a state of the greatest excitement, and he seemed to pay no attention to anyone in the room. Miss Minns was perfectly silent, and stood there gravely waiting. Morelli talked courteously and intelligently, but Maradick felt that he himself was being used merely as a background to the rest of the play. His first feeling on seeing Janet had been that Tony was indeed justified in all his enthusiasm; his second, that he himself was in for rather a terrible time.

He had not in the least expected her to be so amazingly young. He had, quite without reason or justification, expected her to be older, a great deal older, than Tony, and that chiefly, perhaps, because he couldn’t, by any stretch of imagination, believe her to be younger. Tony was so young in every way—in his credibility, his enthusiasm, his impatience, his quite startling simplicity. With this in front of him, Maradick had looked to the lady as an accomplice; she would help, he had thought, to teach Tony discretion.

And now, with that vision of her on the stairs, he saw that she was, so to speak, “younger than ever,” as young as anyone possibly could be. That seemed to give the whole business a new turn altogether; it suddenly placed him, James Maradick, a person of unimaginative and sober middle age, in a romantic and difficult position of guardian to a couple of babies, and, moreover, babies charged to the full with excitement and love of hurried adventure. Why, he thought desperately, as he listened politely to Morelli’s conversation, had he been made the centre of all this business? What did he or could he know of young people and their love affairs?

“I am afraid,” he said politely, “I know nothing whatever about swords.”

“Ah,” said Morelli heartily, “I must show you some after supper.”

Janet entered with chops and potatoes, followed by Lucy with the coffee. Tony went forward to help her. “No, thank you,” she said, laughing. “You shan’t carry the potatoes because then you’ll see how black they are. I hope you don’t mind coffee at the beginning like this; and there’s only brown bread.” She placed the things on the table and helped the chops. Tony looked at his plate and was silent.

It was, at first, a difficult meal, and everyone was very subdued; then suddenly the ice was broken. Maradick had said that he lived in London. Miss Minns sat up a little straighter in her chair, smoothed her cuffs nervously, and said with a good deal of excitement—

“I lived a year in London with my brother Charles. We lived in Little Worsted Street, No. 95, near the Aquarium: a little house with green blinds; perhaps, sir, you know it. I believe it is still standing; I loved London. Charles was a curate at St. Michael’s, the grey church at the corner of Merritt Street; Mr. Roper was rector at the time. I remember seeing our late beloved Queen pass in her carriage. I have a distinct recollection of her black bonnet and gracious bow. I was very much moved.”

Maradick had, very fortunately, touched on the only topic that could possibly be said to make Miss Minns loquacious. Everyone became interested and animated.

“Oh! I should so love London!” Janet said, looking through the window at the stars outside. “People! Processions! Omnibuses! Father has told me about it sometimes—Dick Whittington, you know, and the cat. I suppose you’re not called Dick?” she said, looking anxiously at Tony.

“No,” said Tony, “I’m afraid I’m not. But I will be if you like.”

“It is scarcely polite, Janet,” said Morelli, “to ask a gentleman his name when you’ve only known him five minutes.”

“I wasn’t,” she answered. “Only I do want to know a Dick so very badly, and there aren’t any down here; but I expect London’s full of them.”

“It’s full of everything,” said Tony, “and that’s why I like this place so awfully. London chokes you, there’s such a lot going on; you have to stop, you know. Here you can go full tilt. May I have another chop, please? They’re most awfully good.”

Tony was rapidly becoming his usual self. He was still a little nervous, but he was talking nonsense as fluently as ever.

“You really must come up to London though, Miss Morelli. There are pantomimes and circuses and policemen and lots of funny things. And you can do just what you like because there’s no one to see.”

“Oh! theatres!” She clapped her hands. “I should simply love a theatre. Father took me once here; it was called ‘The Murdered Heir,’ and it was most frightfully exciting; but that’s the only one I’ve ever seen, and I don’t suppose there’ll be another here for ages. They have them in Truro, but I’ve never been to Truro. I’m glad you like the chops, I was afraid they were rather dry.”

“They are,” said Morelli. “It’s only Mr. Gale’s politeness that makes him say they’re all right. They’re dreadfully dry.”

“Well, you were late,” she answered; “it was your fault.”

She was excited. Her eyes were shining, her hands trembled a little, and her cheeks were flushed. Maradick fancied that there was surprise in her glance at her father. Miss Minns also was a little astonished at something. It was possibly unusual for Morelli to invite anyone into the house, and they were wondering why he had done it.

Morelli was a great puzzle. He seemed changed since they had sat down at the table. He seemed, for one thing, considerably younger. Outside the house he had been middle-aged; now the lines in his forehead seemed to disappear, the wrinkles under his eyes were no longer there. He laughed continually.

It was, in fact, becoming very rapidly a merry meal. The chops had vanished and there was cheese and fruit. They were all rather excited, and a wave of what Maradick was inclined to call “spirited childishness” swept over the party. He himself and Miss Minns were most decidedly out of it.

It was significant of the change that Morelli now paid much more attention to Tony. The three of them burst into roars of laughter about nothing; Tony imitated various animals, the drawing of a cork, and a motor-omnibus running into a policeman, with enormous success. Miss Minns made no attempt to join in the merriment; but sat in the shadow gravely silent. Maradick tried and was for a time a miserable failure, but afterwards he too was influenced. Morelli told a story that seemed to him extraordinarily funny. It was about an old bachelor who always lived alone, and some one climbed up a chimney and stuck there. He could not afterwards remember the point of the story, but he knew that it seemed delightfully amusing to him at the time. He began to laugh and then lost all control of himself; he laughed and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. He stopped for a moment and then started again; he grew red in the face and purple—he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “Oh, dear!” he said, gasping, “that’s a funny story. I don’t know when I’ve laughed like that before. It’s awfully funny.” He still shook at the thought of it. It was a very gay meal indeed.

“You have been at the University, I suppose, Mr. Gale?” said Morelli.

“Yes, Oxford,” said Tony. “But please don’t call me Mr.; nobody calls me Mr., you know. You have to have a house, a wife and a profession if you’re Mr. anybody, and I haven’t got anything—nothing whatever.”

“Oh, I wonder,” said Janet, “if you’d mind opening the door for me. We’ll clear the table and get it out of the way. Saturday is Lucy’s night out, so I’m going to do it.”

“Oh, let me help,” said Tony, jumping up and nearly knocking the table over in his eagerness. “I’m awfully good at washing things up.”

“You won’t have to wash anything up,” she answered. “We’ll leave that for Lucy when she comes back; but if you wouldn’t mind helping me to carry the plates and things into the other room I’d be very grateful.”

She looked very charming, Maradick thought, as she stood piling the plates on top of one another with most anxious care lest they should break. Several curls had escaped and were falling over her eyes and she raised her hand to push them back; the plates nearly slipped. Maradick, watching her, caught suddenly something that seemed very like terror in her eyes; she was looking across the table at her father. He followed her glance, but Morelli did not seem to have noticed anything. Maradick forgot the incident at the time, but afterwards he wondered whether it had been imagination.

“Do be careful and not drop things,” she said, laughing gaily, to Tony. “You seem to have got a great many there; there’s plenty of time, you know.”

She was delightful to watch, she was so entirely unconscious of any pose or affectation. She passed into the kitchen singing and Tony followed her laden with plates.

“Do you smoke, Mr. Maradick?” said Morelli. “Cigar? Cigarette? Pipe?—Pipe! Good! much the best thing. Come and sit over here.”

They drew up their chairs by the window and watched the stars; Miss Minns sat under the lamp sewing.

Maradick was a little ashamed of his merriment at dinner; he really didn’t know the man well enough, and a little of his first impression of cautious dislike returned. But Morelli was very entertaining and an excellent talker, and Maradick reproached himself for being unnecessarily suspicious.

“You know,” said Morelli, “it’s a great thing to have a home like this. I’ve been a wanderer all my days—been everywhere, you might say—but now I’ve always got this to come back to, and it’s a great thing to feel that it’s there. I’m Italian, you know, on my father’s side, and hence my name; and so it seems a bit funny, perhaps, settling down here. But one country’s the same to me as another, and my wife was English.”

He paused for a moment and looked out of the window; then he went on—

“We don’t see many people here; when you’ve got a girl to bring up you’ve got to be careful, and they don’t like me here, that’s the truth.”

He paused again, as though he expected Maradick to deny it. He had spoken it almost as an interrogation, as though he wanted to know whether Maradick had heard anything, but Maradick was silent. He felt strongly again, as he had felt at the time of their first meeting, that they were hostile to one another. Polite though Morelli was, Maradick knew that it was because of Tony, and not in the least because of himself. Morelli probably felt that he was an unnecessary bore, and resented his being there. It was Tony that he cared about.

“That is a very delightful boy,” Morelli said, nodding in the direction of the kitchen. “Have you known him a long while? Quite one of the most delightful people——”

“Oh, no,” said Maradick a little stiffly. “We are quite new acquaintances. We have only known each other about a week. Yes, he is an enormously popular person. Everyone seems to like him wherever he goes. He wakes people up.”

Morelli laughed.

“Yes, there’s wonderful vitality there. I hope he’ll keep it. I hope that I shall see something of him while he is here. There isn’t much that we can offer you, but you will be doing both my daughter and myself a very real kindness if you will come and see us sometimes.”

“Thank you,” said Maradick.

“Oh! I promised to show you those swords of mine. Come and see them now. I think there are really some that may interest you.”

They got up and left the room. In a moment the door was opened again and Janet and Tony returned.

“Let’s sit in front of the window,” Janet said, “and talk. Father’s showing your friend his swords and things, I expect, and he always takes an enormous time over that, and I want to talk most frightfully.”

She sat forward with her hands round her knees and her eyes gazing out of the window at the stars. Tony will always remember her like that; and as he sat and watched her he had to grip the side of his chair to prevent his leaning forward and touching her dress.

“I want to talk too,” he answered; “it’s an ‘experience’ evening, you know, one of those times when you suddenly want to exchange confidences with some one, find out what they’ve been doing and thinking all the time.”

“Oh! I know that feeling,” she answered eagerly, “but I’ve never had anyone to exchange them with. Sometimes I’ve felt it so that I haven’t known what to do; but it’s been no good, there’s been nobody except father and Miss Minns. It’s very funny, isn’t it? but you’re the first person of my own age I’ve ever met. Of course you’re older really, but you’re near enough, and I expect we think some of the same things; and oh! it’s so exciting!”

She said “person” like a creature of fifty, and he smiled, but then her “exciting” brought his heart to his mouth. She was obviously so delighted to have him, she accepted him so readily without any restrictions at all, and it was wonderful to him. Every girl that he had ever met had played a game either of defence or provocation, but there was perfect simplicity here.

“Let’s begin,” he said, “and find out whether we’ve had the same things. But first I must tell you something. This isn’t the only time that I’ve seen you.”

“It’s not!” she cried.

“No; there was the other day on the beach; you were with your father. I looked at you from behind a rock and then ran away. And the other time was one night about a week ago, quite late, and you leaned out of a window and said something to Miss Minns. There was a lamp, and I saw your face.”

“Oh! which night?” she said quite eagerly.

“Well, let me see, I think it was a Thursday night—no, I can’t remember—but there was a fair in the town; they danced round the streets. We had been, Maradick and I, and were coming back.”

“Oh! I remember perfectly,” she said, turning round and looking at him. “But, do you know, that’s most curious! I was tremendously excited that night, I don’t quite know why. There was no real reason. But I kept saying to Miss Minns that I knew something would happen, and she laughed at me and said, ‘What could?’ or something, and then I suddenly opened the window and two people were coming up the street. It was quite dark. There was only the lamp!”

She spoke quite dramatically, as though it was something of great importance.

“And fancy, it was you!” she added.

“But, please,” she said, “let’s begin confidences. They’ll be back, and we’ll have to stop.”

“Oh! mine are ordinary enough,” he said, “just like anybody else’s. I was born in the country; one of those old rambling country houses with dark passages and little stairs leading to nowhere, and thick walls with a wonderful old garden. Such a garden, with terraces and enormous old trees, and a fountain, and a sun-dial, and peacocks. But I was quite a kid when we left that and came to town. It is funny, though, the early years seem to remain with one after the other things have gone. It has always been a background for me, that high old house with the cooing of pigeons on a hot summer’s afternoon, and the cold running of some stream at the bottom of the lawn!”

“Oh! how beautiful,” she said. “I have never known anything like that. Father has talked of Italy; a little town, Montiviero, where we once lived, and an old grey tower, and a long, hard white road with trees like pillars. I have often seen it in my dreams. But I myself have never known anything but this. Father has stayed here, partly, I think, because the old grey tower in the market-place here is like the tower at Montiviero. But tell me about London,” she went on. “What is it like? What people are there?”

“London,” he said, “has grown for me as I have grown to know it. We have always lived in the same house. I was six when I first went there, an old dark place with large solemn rooms and high stone fireplaces. It was in a square, and we used to be taken out on to the grass in the morning to play with other children. London was at first only the square—the dark rooms, my nurse, my father and mother, some other children, and the grass that we played upon. Then suddenly one day the streets sprang upon me—the shops, the carriages, some soldiers. Then it grew rapidly; there were the parks, the lake, the Tower, and, most magical of all, the river. When I was quite a small boy the river fascinated me, and I would escape there when I could; and now, if I lived alone in London, I would take some old dark rooms down in Chelsea and watch the river all day.”

“Chelsea!” she said. “I like the sound of that. Is there a very wonderful river, then, where London is?”

“Yes,” he answered, “it is dirty and foggy, and the buildings along the banks of it are sometimes old and in pieces. But everyone that has known it will tell you the same. Then I went to a pantomime with my nurse.”

“Oh! I know what a pantomime is,” she said. “Miss Minns once saw one, but there was a man with a red nose and she didn’t like it. Only there were fairies as well, and if I’d been there I should only have seen the fairies.”

“Well, this was ‘Dick Whittington.’ There was a glorious cat. I don’t remember about the rest; but I went home in a golden dream and for the next month I thought of nothing else. London became for me a dark place with one glorious circle of light in the midst of it!”

“Oh! It must have been beautiful!” she sighed.

“Then,” he went on, “it spread from that, you know, to other things, and I went to school. For a time everything was swallowed up in that, beating other people, coming out top, and getting licked for slacking. London was fun for the holidays, but it wasn’t a bit the important thing. I was like that until I was seventeen.”

“You were very lucky,” Janet said, “to go to school. I asked father once, but he was very angry; and, you know, he is away for months and months sometimes, and then it is most dreadfully lonely. I have never had anyone at all to talk to until you came, and now they’ll take you away in a moment, so do hurry up. There simply isn’t a minute!”

Miss Minns was heard to say:

“Aren’t you cold by the window, Janet? I think you’d better come nearer the table.”

“Oh! please don’t interrupt, Miss Minns!” She waved her hand. “It’s as warm as toast, really. Now please go on, it’s a most terribly exciting adventure.”

“Well,” he said, sinking his voice and speaking in a dramatic whisper, “the next part of the tremendous adventure was books and things. I suddenly, you know, discovered what they were. I’d read things before, of course, but it had always been to fill in time while I was waiting for something else, and now I suddenly saw them differently, in rows and rows and rows, each with a secret in it like a nut, and I cracked them and ate them and had the greatest fun. Then I began to think that I was awfully clever and that I would write great books myself, and I was very solemn and serious. I expect I was simply hateful.”

“And did you write anything?” she said in an awed voice.

“Yes,” he answered solemnly, “a very long story with heaps of people and lots of chapters. I have it at home. They liked it down in the kitchen, but it never had an end.”

“Why not?” Janet asked.

“Because, like the Old Woman in the Shoe, I had so many children that I didn’t know what to do. I had so many people that I simply didn’t know what to do with them all. And then I grew out of that. I went to Oxford, and then came the last part of the adventure.”

“Where is Oxford?” she asked him.

“Oh! It’s a university. Men go there after leaving school. It’s a place where a man learns a good many useless habits and one or two beautiful ones. Only the beautiful ones want looking for. The thing I found was walking.”

He looked at her and laughed for the very joy of being so near to her. In the half light that the lamp flung upon them the gold of her hair was caught and fell like a cloud about her face, the light blue of her dress was the night sky, and her eyes were the stars. Oh! it was a fine adventure, this love! There had been no key to the world before this came, and now the casket was opened and stuffs of great price, jewels and the gold-embroidered cloths of God’s workshop were spread before him. And then a great awe fell upon him. She was so young and so pure that he felt suddenly that all the coarse thoughts and deeds of the world rose in a dark mist between them, and sent him, as the angel with the flaming sword sent Adam, out of so white a country.

But she suddenly leant over and touched his arm. “Oh! do look at Miss Minns!” she said. Miss Minns was falling asleep and struggling valiantly against the temptation. Her hands mechanically clicked the needles and clutched the piece of cloth at which she was working, but her head nodded violently at the table as though it was telling a story and furiously emphasising facts. The shadow on the wall was gigantic, a huge fantastic Miss Minns swinging from side to side on the ceiling and swelling and subsiding like a curtain in the wind. The struggle lasted for a very short time. Soon the clicking of the needles ceased, there was a furious attempt to hold the cloth, and at last it fell with a soft noise to the ground. Miss Minns, with her head on her breast, slept.

“That’s better,” said Janet, settling herself back in her chair. “Now about the walking!”

“Ah! you’re fond of it too,” he said. “I can see that. And it’s the only thing, you know. It’s the only thing that doesn’t change and grow monotonous. You get close right down to earth. They talk about their nature and culture and the rest, but they haven’t known what life is until they’ve felt the back of a high brown hill and the breast of a hard white road. That saved me! I was muddled before. I didn’t know what things stood for, and I was unhappy. My own set weren’t any use at all, they were aiming at nothing. Not that I felt superior, but it was simply that that sort of thing wasn’t any good for me. You couldn’t see things clearly for the dust that everybody made. So I left the dust and now I’m here.”

“And that’s all?” she said.

“Absolutely all,” he answered. “I’m afraid it’s disappointing in incident, but it is at any rate truthful.”

“Oh, but it’s adventurous,” she said, “beside mine. There’s nothing for me to tell at all. I’ve simply lived here with father always. There have been no books, no children, nothing at all except father.”

She paused then in rather a curious way. He looked up at her.

“Well?” he said.

“Oh! father’s so different—you never know. Sometimes he’s just as I am, plays and sings and tells stories. And then, oh! he’s such fun. There never was anybody like him. And sometimes he’s very quiet and won’t say anything, and then he always goes away, perhaps it’s only a day or two, and then it’s a week or a month even. And sometimes,” she paused again for a moment, “he’s angry, terribly angry, so that I am awfully frightened.”

“What! with you?” Tony asked indignantly.

“No; with no one exactly, but it’s dreadful. I go and hide.” And then she burst out laughing. “Oh, and once he caught Miss Minns like that, and he pulled her hair and it fell all over her shoulders. Oh! it was so funny. And a lot of it came out altogether; it was false, you know. I think that father is just like a child. He’s ever so much younger than I am really. I’m getting dreadfully old, and he’s as young as can be. He tells stories—beautiful stories! and then he’s cross and he sulks, and sometimes he’s out of doors for days together, and all the animals simply love him.”

All these facts she brought out, as it were, in a bunch, without any very evident connexion, but he felt that the cord that bound them was there and that he could find it one day. But what surprised him most was her curious aloofness from it all, as if he were a friend, perhaps a chum, sometimes a bother and sometimes a danger, but never a father.

“But tell me about yourself,” he said, “what you like and what you do.”

“No, there’s really nothing. I’ve just lived here always, that’s all. You’re the first man I’ve talked to, except father, and you’re fun. I hope that we shall see you sometimes whilst you are staying here,” she added, quite frankly.

“Somebody told you to say that,” he said, laughing.

“Yes, it’s Miss Minns. She teaches me sometimes about what you ought to say, and I’m dreadfully stupid. There are so many of them. There’s ‘at a wedding’ and ‘at a funeral’ and there’s ‘the dinner party,’ a nice one and a dull one and a funny one, and there’s ‘at the theatre,’ and lots more. Sometimes I remember, but I’ve never had anyone to practise them on. You’re quite the first, so I think I ought to give you them all.”

The door opened and Maradick and Morelli came in. The pair at the window did not see them and the two men stood for a moment at the door. Morelli smiled, and Maradick at once felt again that curious unfounded sensation of distrust. The man amazed him. He had talked about his “things,” his armour, some tapestry, some pictures, with a knowledge and enthusiasm that made him fascinating. He seemed to have the widest possible grip on every subject; there was nothing that he did not know. And there had been, too, a lightness of touch, a humorous philosophy of men and things for which he had been quite unprepared.

And then again, there would be suddenly that strange distrust; a swift glance from under his eyelids, a suspicious lifting of the voice, as though he were on his guard against some expected discovery. And then, most puzzling of all, there was suddenly a simplicity, a naïveté, that belonged to childhood, some anger or pleasure that only a child could feel. Oh! he was a puzzle.

At the sight of those two in the window he felt suddenly a sharp, poignant regret! What an old fool he was to meddle with something that he had passed long, long before. You could not be adaptable at forty, and he would only spoil their game. A death’s head at the feast indeed, with his own happy home to think of, his own testimony to fling before them. But the regret was there all the same; regret that he had not known for ever so many years, and a feeling of loneliness that was something altogether new.

He knew now that, during these last few days, Tony had filled his picture, some one that would take him out of himself and make him a little less selfish and even, perhaps, a little younger; but now, what did Tony—Tony in love, Tony with a new heaven and a new earth—want with a stout cynic of forty! It would have been better, after all, if they had never met.

Suddenly Miss Minns awoke, and was extremely upset. Some half-remembered story of gentlemen winning a pair of gloves under some such circumstances flew to her mind; at any rate it was undignified with two new persons in the room.

“I really——” she said. “You were quite a long time. I have been sewing.”

At the sound of her voice Tony turned back from the window. He was so happy that he would have clasped Miss Minns round the neck and kissed her, if there had been any provocation. The lamp flung a half-circle of light, leaving the corners in perfect darkness, so that the room was curved like a shell; the shining tiles of the fireplace sparkled under the leaping flame of the fire.

“You have been a very long time,” said Janet.

“That’s scarcely a compliment to Mr. Gale,” said Morelli.

“Oh, but I haven’t found it so,” she answered quickly. “It has been enormously interesting. We have been discovering things. And now, father, play. Mr. Gale loves music, I know.”

That Morelli played was a little surprising. There was no piano in the room, and Maradick wondered what the instrument would be. They all sat down in a circle round the fireplace, and behind them, in the dusk of the room, Morelli produced a flute from his pocket. He had said nothing, and they were all of them suddenly silent.

The incident seemed to Maradick a key—a key to the house, to the man, and, above all, to the situation. This was not a feeling that he could in the least understand. It was only afterwards that he saw that his instinct had been a right one.

But the idea that he had of their all being children together—Tony, Janet, Morelli—was exactly represented by the flute. There was something absolutely irresponsible in the gay little tune piped mysteriously in the darkness, a little tune that had nothing in it at all except a pressing invitation to dance, and Maradick could see Tony’s feet going on the floor. It would not be at all impossible, he felt, for them suddenly to form a ring and dance riotously round the room; it was in the air.

He was a person of very slight imagination, but the tune gave him the long hillside, the white sails of the flying clouds, the shrill whistle of wind through a tossing forest of pines, white breakers against a black cliff, anything open and unfettered; and again he came back to that same word—irresponsible. The little tune was repeated again and again, with other little tunes that crept shyly into it for a moment and then out and away. The spell increased as the tune continued.

For Tony it was magical beyond all words. Nothing could have put so wonderful a seal on that wonderful evening as that music. His pulse was beating furiously and his cheeks were burning; he wanted now to fling himself on his knees, there on the floor, and say to her, “I love you! I love you!” like any foolish hero in a play. He moved his chair ever so slightly so that it should be nearer hers, and then suddenly, amazed at his daring, his heart stopped beating; she must have noticed. But she gazed in front of her, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes gravely bent towards the floor.

And this melancholy little tune, coming mysteriously from some unknown distance, seemed to give him permission to do what he would. “Yes, love,” it commanded. “Do what is natural. Come out on to the plain where all freedom is and there are winds and the clear sky and everything that is young and alive.”

He could almost fancy that Morelli himself was giving him permission, but at a thought so wild he pulled himself up. Of course Morelli didn’t know; he was going too fast.

Maradick began to be vaguely irritated and at last annoyed. There was something unpleasant in that monotonous little tune coming out of the darkness from nowhere at all; its note of freedom seemed to become rapidly something lawless and undisciplined. Had he put it into pictures, he would have said that the open plain that he had seen before became suddenly darkened, and, through the gloom, strange animals passed and wild, savage faces menaced him. Afterwards, in the full light of day, such thoughts would seem folly, but now, in the darkened room, anything was possible. He did not believe in apparitions—ghosts were unknown in Epsom—but he was suddenly unpleasantly aware that he would give anything to be able to fling a glance back over his shoulder.

Then suddenly the spell was broken. The tune died away, revived for an instant, and then came to an abrupt end.

Morelli joined the circle.

“Thank you so very much,” said Maradick. “That was delightful.” But he was aware that, although the little tune had been played again and again, it had already completely passed from his memory. He could not recall it.

“What was the name of it?” he asked.

“It has no name,” Morelli answered, smiling. “It’s an old tune that has been passed down from one to another. There is something rather quaint in it, and it has many centuries behind it.”

Then Tony got up, and to Maradick’s intense astonishment said: “I say, Maradick, it’s time we were going, it’s getting awfully late.”

He had been willing to give the boy as long a rope as he pleased, and now—but then he understood. It was the perfect moment that must not be spoiled by any extension. If they waited something might happen. He understood the boy as far as that, at any rate.

Morelli pressed them to stay, but Tony was firm. He went forward and said good night to Miss Minns, then he turned to Janet.

“Good night, Miss Morelli,” he said.

“Good night,” she answered, smiling. “Please come again and tell me more.”

“I will,” he said.

Morelli’s good-bye was very cordial. “Whenever you like,” he said, “drop in at any time, we shall be delighted.”

They walked back to the hotel in absolute silence. Tony’s eyes were fixed on the hill in front of him.

As they passed under the dark line of trees that led to the hotel he gripped Maradick’s hand very hard.

“I say,” he said, “help me!”

CHAPTER VII

MARADICK LEARNS THAT “GETTING A VIEW” MAY HAVE ITS

DANGERS AS WELL AS ITS REWARDS

Two days after the arrival of the Lesters Lady Gale arranged a picnic; a comprehensive, democratic picnic that was to include everybody. Her motives may be put down, if you will, to sociability, even, and you involve a larger horizon, to philanthropy. “Everybody,” of course, was in reality only a few, but it included the Lesters, the Maradicks, and Mrs. Lawrence. It was to be a delightful picnic; they were to drive to the top of Pender Callon, where there was a wonderful view, then they were to have tea, and then drive back in the moonlight.

Dear Mrs. Maradick (the letter went)—

It would give me such pleasure if you and your husband could come with us for a little Picnic at Pender Callon to-morrow afternoon, weather permitting, of course. The wagonette will come round about two-thirty.

I do hope you will be able to come.

Yours sincerely,

Beatrice Gale.

Mrs. Maradick considered it a little haughtily. She was sitting in the garden. Suddenly, as she turned the invitation over in her mind, she saw her husband coming towards her.

“Oh!” she said, as he came up to her, “I wanted to talk to you.”

He was looking as he always did—big, strong, red and brown. Oh! so healthy and stupid!

She did feel a new interest in him this morning, certainly. His avoiding her so consistently during the week was unlike him, was unusually strong. She even felt suddenly that she would like him to be rude and violent to her again, as he had been that other evening. Great creature! it was certainly his métier to be rude and violent. Perhaps he would be.

She held Lady Gale’s invitation towards him.

“A picnic.” she said coldly. “To-morrow; do you care to go?”

“Are you going?” he said, looking at her.

“I should think that scarcely matters,” she answered scornfully, “judging by the amount of interest you’ve taken in me and my doings during the last week.”

“I know,” he said, and he looked down at the ground, “I have been a brute, a cad, all these days, treating you like that. I have come to apologise.”

Oh! the fool! She could have struck him with her hand! It was to be the same thing after all, then. The monotonous crawling back to her feet, the old routine of love and submission, the momentary hope of strength and contradiction strangled as soon as born.

She laughed a little. “Oh, you needn’t apologise,” she said, “and, in any case, it’s a little late, isn’t it? Not that you need mind about me. I’ve had a very pleasant week, and so have the girls, even though their father hasn’t been near them.”

But he broke in upon her rapidly. “Oh! I’m ashamed of myself,” he said, “you don’t know how ashamed. I think the place had something to do with it, and then one was tired and nervy a bit, I suppose; not,” he hastily added, “that I want to make excuses, for there really aren’t any. I just leave it with you. I was a beast. I promise never to break out again.”

How could a man! she thought, looking at him, and then, how blind men were. Why couldn’t they see that it wasn’t the sugar and honey that women were continually wanting, or, at any rate, the right sort of woman!

She glanced at him angrily. “We’d better leave the thing there,” she said. “For heaven’s sake spare us any more scenes. You were rude—abominably—I’m glad you’ve had the grace at last to come and tell me so.”

She moved as though she would get up, but he put out his hand and stopped her.

“No, Emmy, please,” he said, “let’s talk for a moment. I’ve got things I want to say.” He cleared his throat, and stared down the white shining path. Mrs. Lawrence appeared coming towards them, then she saw them together and turned hurriedly back. “I’ve been thinking, all these days, about the muddle that we’ve made. My fault very largely, I know, but I have so awfully wanted to put it right again. And I thought if we talked——”

“What’s the use of talking?” she broke in hastily; “there’s nothing to say; it’s all as stale as anything could be. You’re so extraordinarily dull when you’re in the ‘picking up the pieces’ mood; not content with behaving like a second-rate bricklayer and then sulking for a week you add to it by a long recital, ‘the virtues of an obedient wife’—a little tiresome, don’t you think?”

Her nerves were all to pieces, she really wasn’t well, and the heat was terrible; the sight of him sitting there with that pathetic, ill-used look on his face, drove her nearly to madness. To think that she was tied for life to so feeble a creature.

“No, please,” he said, “I know that I’m tiresome and stupid. But really I’ve been seeing things differently these last few days. We might get along better. I’ll try; I know it’s been largely my fault, not seeing things and not trying——”

“Oh!” she broke in furiously, “for God’s sake stop it. Isn’t it bad enough and tiresome enough for me already without all this stuff! I’m sick of it, sick of it, I tell you. Sick of the whole thing. You spoke your mind the other night, I’ll speak mine now. You can take it or leave it.” She rose from her chair and stood looking out to sea, her hands clenched at her sides. “Oh! these years! these years! Always the same thing. You’ve never stuck up to anything, never fought anything, and it’s all been so tame. And now you want us to go over the same old ground again, to patch it up and go on as if we hadn’t had twenty long dreary years of it and would give a good deal not to have another.” She stopped and looked at him, smiling curiously. “Oh! James! My poor dear, you’re such a bore. Try not to be so painfully good; you might even be a little amusing!”

She walked slowly away towards the girls. She passed, with them, down the path.

He picked up the broken pieces of his thoughts and tried to put them slowly together. His first thought of her and of the whole situation was that it was hopeless, perfectly hopeless. He had fancied, stupidly, blindly, that his having moved included her moving too, quite without reason, as he now thoroughly saw. She was just where they had both been a week ago, she was even, from his neglect of her during these last days, a little farther back; it was harder than ever for her to see in line. His discovery of this affected him very little. He was very slightly wounded by the things that she had said to him, and her rejection of his advances so finally and completely distressed him scarcely at all. As he sat and watched the colours steal mistily across the sea he knew that he was too happy at all the discoveries that he was making to mind anything else. He was setting out on an adventure, and if she would not come too it could simply not be helped; it did not in the least alter the adventure’s excitement.

It was even with a new sense of freedom that he went off, late that afternoon, to the town; he was like a boy just out of school. He had no very vivid intention of going anywhere; but lately the town had grown before him so that he loved to stand and watch it, its life and movement, its colour and romance.

He loved, above all, the market-place with its cobbled stones over which rattled innumerable little carts, its booths, its quaint and delightful chatter, its old grey tower. It was one of the great features of his new view that places mattered, that, indeed, they were symbols of a great and visible importance; stocks and stones seemed to him now to be possessed of such vitality that they almost frightened him, they knew so much and had lived so long a time.

The evening light was over the market-place; the sun, peering through a pillar of cloudless blue, cut sharply between the straight walls of the Town Hall and a neighbouring chimney, flung itself full upon the tower.

It caught the stones and shot them with myriad lights; it played with the fruit on the stall at the tower’s foot until the apples were red as rubies and the oranges shone like gold. It bathed it, caressed it, enfolded it, and showed the modern things on every side that old friends were, after all, the best, and that fine feathers did not always make the finest birds.

The rest of the market-place was in shadow, purple in the corners and crevices, the faintest blue in the higher air, a haze of golden-grey in the central square. It was full of people standing, for the most part, discussing the events of the day; in the corner by the tower there was a Punch and Judy show, and Maradick could hear the shrill cries of Mr. Punch rising above the general chatter. Over everything there was a delicious scent of all the best things in the world—ripe orchards, flowering lanes, and the sharp pungent breath of the sea; in the golden haze of the evening everything seemed to be waiting, breathlessly, in spite of the noise of voices, for some great moment.

Maradick had never felt so perfectly in tune with the world.

He passed across to the Punch and Judy show, and stood in a corner by the fruit stall under the tower and watched Mr. Punch. That gentleman was in a very bad temper to-night, and he banged with his stick at everything that he could see; poor Judy was in for a bad time, and sank repeatedly beneath the blows which should have slain an ox. Toby looked on very indifferently until it was his turn, when he bit furiously at Mr. Punch’s trousers and showed his teeth, and choked in his frill and behaved like a most ferocious animal. Then there came the policeman, and Mr. Punch was carried, swearing and cursing, off to prison, but in a moment he was back again, as perky as before, and committing murders at the rate of two a minute.

There was a fat baby, held aloft in its mother’s arms, who watched the proceedings with the closest attention; it was intensely serious, its thumb in its mouth, its double chin wrinkling with excitement. Then a smile crept out of its ears and across its cheeks; its mouth opened, and suddenly there came a gurgle of laughter. It crowed with delight, its head fell back on its nurse’s shoulder and its eyes closed with ecstasy; then, with the coming of Jack Ketch and his horrible gallows, it was solemn once more, and it watched the villain’s miserable end with stern approval. There were other babies in the crowd, and bottles had to be swiftly produced in order to stay the cries that came from so sudden an ending. The dying sun danced on Punch’s execution; he dangled frantically in mid-air, Toby barked furiously, and down came the curtain.

The old lady at the fruit stall had watched the performance with great excitement. She was remarkable to look at, and had been in the same place behind the same stall for so many years that people had grown to take her as part of the tower. She wore a red peaked hat, a red skirt, a man’s coat of black velvet, and black mittens; her enormous chin pointed towards her nose, which was hooked like an eagle; nose and chin so nearly met that it was a miracle how she ever opened her mouth at all. She nodded at Maradick and smiled, whilst her hands clicked her needles together, and a bit of grey stocking grew visibly before his eyes.

“It’s a fine show,” she said, “a fine show, and very true to human nature.” Then suddenly looking past him, she screamed in a voice like the whistle of a train: “A-pples and O-ranges—fine ripe grapes!”

Her voice was so close to his ear that it startled him, but he answered her.

“It is good for the children,” he said, shadowing his eyes with his hand, for the sun was beating in his face.

She leaned towards him and waved a skinny finger. “I ought to know,” she said, “I’ve buried ten, but they always loved the Punch . . . and that’s many a year back.”

How old was she, he wondered? He seemed, in this town, to be continually meeting people who had this quality of youth; Tony, Morelli, Punch, this old woman, they gave one the impression that they would gaily go on for ever.

“People live to a good old age here,” he said.

“Ah! it’s a wonderful town,” she said. “There’s nothing like it. . . . Many’s the things I’ve seen, the tower and I.”

“The tower!” said Maradick, looking up at its grey solemnity now flushing with the red light of the sun.

“I’ve been near it since I was a bit of a child,” she said, leaning towards him so that her beak of a nose nearly touched his cheek and her red hat towered over him. “We lived by it once, and then I moved under it. We’ve been friends, good friends, but it wants some considering.”

“What wants considering mother?” said a voice, and Maradick turned round; Punch was at his elbow. His show was packed up and leant against the wall; by his side was Toby, evidently pleased with the world in general, for every part of his body was wagging.

“Good evening, sir,” said Punch, smiling from ear to ear. “It’s a beautiful evening—the sea’s like a pome—what wants considering mother? and I think I’ll have an apple, if you don’t mind—one of your rosiest.”

She chose for him an enormous red one, which with one squeeze of the hand he broke into half. Toby cocked an ear and raised his eyes; he was soon munching for his life. “What wants considering mother?” he said again.

“Many things,” she answered him shortly, “and it’ll be tuppence, please.” Her voice rose into a shrill scream—“A-pples and O-ranges and fine ripe grapes.” She sat back in her chair and bent over her knitting, she had nothing more to say.

“I’ve been watching your show,” Maradick said, “and enjoyed it more than many a play I’ve seen in town.”

“Yes, it went well to-night,” Punch said, “and there was a new baby. It’s surprisin’ what difference a new baby makes, even Toby notices it.”

“A new baby?” asked Maradick.

“Yes. A baby, you know, that ’asn’t seen the show before, leastways in this world. You can always tell by the way they take it.” Then he added politely, “And I hope you like this town, sir.”

“Enormously,” Maradick answered. “I think it has some quality, something that makes it utterly different from anywhere else that I know. There is a feeling——”

He looked across the market-place, and, through the cleft between the ebony black of the towering walls, there shone the bluest of evening skies, and across the space floated a pink cushion of a cloud; towards the bend of the green hill on the horizon the sky where the sun was setting was a bed of primroses. “It is a wonderful place.”

“Ah, I tell you sir,” said Punch, stroking one of Toby’s ears, “there’s no place like it. . . . I’ve been in every town in this kingdom, and some of them are good enough. But this!”

He looked at Maradick a moment and then he said, “Forgive my mentioning it, sir, but you’ve got the feeling of the place; you’ve caught the spirit, as one might say. We watch, folks down here, you strangers up there at the ‘Man at Arms.’ For the most part they miss it altogether. They come for the summer with their boxes and their bags, they bathe in the sea, they drive on the hill, and they’re gone. Lord love you, why they might have been sleepin’.” He spat contemptuously.

“But you think that I have it?” said Maradick.

“You’ve got it right enough,” said Punch. “But then you’re a friend of young Mr. Gale’s, and so you couldn’t help having it; ’e’s got it more than anyone I ever knew.”

“And what exactly is—It?” asked Maradick.

“Well, sir,” said Punch, “it’s not exactly easy to put it into words, me bein’ no scholar.” He looked at the old woman, but she was intent over her knitting. The light of the sun had faded from the tower and left it cold and grey against the primrose sky. “It’s a kind of Youth; seeing things, you know, all freshly and with a new colour, always caring about things as if you’d met ’em for the first time. It doesn’t come of the asking, and there are places as well as people that ’ave got it. But when a place or a person’s got it, it’s like a match that they go round lighting other people’s candles with.” He waved his arm in a comprehensive sweep. “It’s all here, you know, sir, and Mr. Gale’s got it like that . . . ’e’s lit your candle, so to speak, sir, if it isn’t familiar, and now you’ve got to take the consequences.”

“The consequences?” said Maradick.

“Oh, it’s got its dangers,” said Punch, “specially when you take it suddenly; it’s like a fever, you know. And when it comes to a gentleman of your age of life and settled habits, well, it needs watchin’. Oh, there’s the bad and good of it.”

Maradick stared in front of him.

“Well, sir, I must be going,” said Punch. “Excuse me, but I always must be talking. Good night, sir.”

“Good night,” said Maradick. He watched the square, stumpy figure pass, followed by the dog, across the misty twilight of the market-place. Violet shadows lingered and swept like mysterious creeping figures over the square. He said good night to the old woman and struck up the hill to the hotel.

“Consequence? Good and bad of it?” Anyhow, the man hadn’t expressed it badly. That was his new view, that strange new lightness of vision as though his pack had suddenly been rolled from off his back. He was suddenly enjoying every minute of his life, his candle had been lighted. For a moment there floated across his mind his talk with his wife that afternoon. Well, it could not be helped. If she would not join him he must have his fun alone.

At the top of the hill he met Mrs. Lester. He had seen something of her during the last two days and liked her. She was amusing and vivacious; she had something of Tony’s quality.

“Hullo, Mr. Maradick,” she cried, “hurrying back like me to dinner? Isn’t it wicked the way that we leave the most beautiful anything for our food?”

“Well, I must confess,” he answered, laughing, “that I never thought of dinner at all. I just turned back because things had, as it were, come to an end. The sun set, you know.”

“I heard it strike seven,” she answered him, “and I said Dinner. Although I was down on the beach watching the most wonderful sea you ever saw, nothing could stop me, and so back I came.”

“Have you been down here before?” he asked her. “To stay, I mean.”

“Oh yes. Fred likes it as well as anywhere else, and I like it a good deal better than most. He doesn’t mind so very much, you know, where he is. He’s always living in his books, and so real places don’t count.” She gave a little sigh. “But they do count with me.”

“I’m enjoying it enormously,” he said, “it’s flinging the years off from me.”

“Oh, I know,” she answered, “but I’m almost afraid of it for that very reason. It’s so very—what shall I say—champagney, that one doesn’t know what one will do next. Sometimes one’s spirits are so high that one positively longs to be depressed. Why, you’d be amazed at some of the things people, quite ordinary respectable people, do when they are down here.”

As they turned in at the gate she stopped and laughed.

“Take care, Mr. Maradick,” she said, “I can see that you are caught in the toils; it’s very dangerous for us, you know, at our time of life.”

And she left him, laughing.

CHAPTER VIII

THEY ALL EAT CHICKEN IN THE GORSE AND

FLY BEFORE THE STORM

“It’s the most ripping rag,” said Tony, as he watched people climb into the wagonette. “Things,” he added, “will probably happen.” Lady Gale herself, as she watched them arrange themselves, had her doubts; she knew, as very few women in England knew, how to make things go, and no situation had ever been too much for her, but the day was dreadfully hot and there were, as she vaguely put it to herself, “things in the air.” What these things were, she could not, as yet, decide; but she hoped that the afternoon would reveal them to her, that it would, indeed, show a good deal that this last week had caused her to wonder about.

The chief reasons for alarm were the Maradicks and Mrs. Lawrence, without them it would have been quite a family party; Alice, Rupert, Tony, and herself. She wondered a little why she had asked the others. She had wanted to invite Maradick, partly because she liked the man for himself and partly for Tony’s sake; then, too, he held the key to Tony now. He knew better than any of the others what the boy was doing; he was standing guard.

And so then, of course, she had to ask Mrs. Maradick. She didn’t like the little woman, there was no question about that, but you couldn’t ask one without the other. And then she had to give her some one with whom to pair off, and so she had asked Mrs. Lawrence; and there you were.

But it wasn’t only because of the Maradicks that the air was thundery; the Lesters had quarrelled again. He sat in the wagonette with his lips tightly closed and his eyes staring straight in front of him right through Mrs. Maradick as though she were non-existent. And Mrs. Lester was holding her head very high and her cheeks were flushed. Oh! they would both be difficult.

She relied, in the main, on Tony to pull things through. She had never yet known a party hang fire when he was there; one simply couldn’t lose one’s temper and sulk with Tony about the place, but then he too had been different during this last week, and for the first time in his life she was not sure of him. And then, again, there was Alice. That was really worrying her very badly. She had come down with them quite obviously to marry Tony; everyone had understood that, including Tony himself. And yet ever since the first evening of arrival things had changed, very subtly, almost imperceptibly, so that it had been very difficult to realise that it was only by looking back that she could see how great the difference had been. It was not only, she could see, that he had altered in himself, but that he had altered also with regard to Alice. He struck her as being even on his guard, as though he were afraid, poor boy, that they would drive him into a position that he could not honourably sustain. Of this she was quite sure, that whereas on his coming down to Treliss he had fully intended to propose to Alice within the fortnight, now, in less than a week after his arrival, he did not intend to propose at all, was determined, indeed, to wriggle as speedily as might be out of the whole situation. Now there could be only one possible explanation of such a change: that he had, namely, found some one else. Who was it? When was it? Maradick knew and she would trust him.

And what surprised her most in the whole affair was her feeling about it all, that she rather liked it. That was most astonishing, because, of course, Tony’s marriage with Alice was from every point of view a most suitable and admirable business; it was the very thing. But she had looked on it, in spite of herself, as a kind of chest into which Tony’s youth and vitality were inevitably going; a splendid chest with beautiful carving and studded with golden nails, but nevertheless a chest. Alice was so perfectly right for anybody that she was perfectly wrong for Tony; Lady Gale before the world must approve and even further the affair, but Lady Gale the mother of Tony had had her doubts, and perhaps this new something, whatever it might be, was romantic, exciting, young and adventurous. Mr. Maradick knew.

But it is Mrs. Maradick’s view of the drive that must be recorded, because it was, in fact, round her that everything revolved. The reason for her prominence was Rupert, and it was he who, quite unconsciously and with no after knowledge of having done anything at all, saved the afternoon.

He was looking very cool and rather handsome; so was Mrs. Maradick. She was indeed by far the coolest of them all in very pale mauve and a bunch of carnations at her breast and a broad grey hat that shaded her eyes. He had admired her from the first, and to-day everyone else seemed hot and flustered in comparison. Neither Alice nor Mrs. Lester were at their best, and Mrs. Lawrence was obviously ill at ease, but Mrs. Maradick leaned back against the cushions and talked to him with the most charming little smile and eyes of the deepest blue. He had expected to find the afternoon boring in the extreme, but now it promised to be amusing, very amusing.

Mrs. Maradick had come out in the spirit of conquest. She would show these people, all of them, what they had missed during these last two weeks. They should compare her husband and herself, and she had no fear of the result; this was her chance, and she meant to seize it. She never looked at him, and they had not, as yet, spoken, but she was acutely conscious of his presence. He was sitting in a grey flannel suit, rather red and hot, next to Mrs. Lester. He would probably try and use the afternoon as the means for another abject apology.

She was irritated, nevertheless, with herself for thinking about him at all; she had never considered him before. Why should she do so now? She glanced quickly across for a moment at him. How she hated that Mrs. Lester! There was a cat for you, if ever there was one!

They had climbed the hill, and now a breeze danced about them; and there were trees, tall and shining birch, above their heads. On their right lay the sea, so intensely blue that it flung into the air a scent as of a wilderness of blue flowers, a scent of all the blue things that the world has ever known. No breeze ruffled it, no sails crossed its surface; it was so motionless that one would have expected, had one flung a pebble, to have seen it crack like ice. Behind them ran the road, a white, twisting serpent, down to the town.

The town itself shone like a jewel in a golden ring of corn; its towers and walls gleamed and flashed and sparkled. The world lay breathless, with the hard glazed appearance that it wears when the sun is very hot. The colour was so intense that the eye rested with relief on a black clump of firs clustered against the horizon. Nothing moved save the carriage; the horses crawled over the brow of the hill.

“Well, that’s awfully funny,” said Mrs. Maradick, leaning over and smiling at Rupert. “Because I feel just as you do about it. We can’t often come up, of course, and the last train to Epsom’s so dreadfully late that unless it’s something really good, you know——”

“It’s dreadfully boring anyhow,” said Rupert, “turning out at night and all that sort of rot, and generally the same old play, you know. . . . Give me musical comedy—dancing and stuff.”

“Oh! you young men!” said Mrs. Maradick, “we know you’re all the same. And I must say I enjoyed ‘The Girl and the Cheese’ the other day, positively the only thing I’ve seen for ages.”

From the other side Mrs. Lawrence could be heard making attack on Mr. Lester. “It was really too awfully sweet of you to put it that way, Mr. Lester. It was just what I’d been feeling, but couldn’t put into words; and when I came across it in your book I said to myself, ‘There, that’s just what I’ve been feeling all along.’ I simply love your book, Mr. Lester. I feel as if it had been written specially for me, you know.”

Mr. Lester flushed with annoyance. He hated, beyond everything, that people should talk to him about his books, and now this silly woman! It was such a hot day, and he had quarrelled with his wife.

“But what I’ve really always so often wanted to ask you,” pursued Mrs. Lawrence, “is whether you took Mrs. Abbey in ‘To Paradise’ from anyone? I think you must have done; and I know some one so exactly like her that I couldn’t help wondering—Mrs. Roland Temmett—she lives in Hankin Street, No. 3 I think it is. Do you know her? If you don’t you must meet her, because she’s the very image, exactly like. You know in that chapter when she goes down to poor Mr. Elliot——”

But this was too much for Mr. Lester.

“I have never met her,” he said brusquely, and his lips closed as though he never meant to open them again. Mrs. Lester watched them and was amused. She knew how her husband hated it; she could even sympathise with him, but it would punish him for having been so horrid to her.

She herself was rapidly recovering her temper. It was such a lovely day that it was impossible to be cross for long, and then her husband had often been cross and disagreeable before, it wasn’t as though it were anything new. What a dreadful woman that Mrs. Maradick was! Why had Lady Gale invited her? Poor Mr. Maradick! She rather liked him, his size and strength and stolidity, but how dreadful to be tied to such a woman for life! Even worse, she reflected, than to be tied for life to a man such as her own special treasure! Oh! our marriage system.

She turned round to Maradick.

“It’s better, thank you,” she said.

“What is?” he asked her.

“My temper,” she answered. “It was just the Devil when we started. I was positively fuming. You must have noticed——”

“You have been perfectly charming,” he said.

“Well, it’s very nice of you to say so, but I assure you it was through my clenched teeth. My hubby and I had a tiff before we started, and it was hot, and my maid did everything wrong. Oh! little things! but all enough to upset me. But it’s simply impossible to stay cross with a view and a day like this. I don’t suppose you know,” she said, looking up at him, “what it is to be bad-tempered.”

“I?” He laughed. “Don’t I? I’m always in a bad temper all the year round. One has to be in business, it impresses people; it’s the only kind of authority that the office-boy understands.”

“Don’t you get awfully tired of it all?” she asked him. “Blotting-paper, I mean, and pens and sealing-wax?”

“No. I never used to think about it. One lived by rule so. There were regular hours at which one did things and always every day the same regular things to do. But now, after this fortnight, it will, I think, be hard. I shall remember things and places, and it will be difficult to settle down.”

She looked at him critically. “Yes, you’re not the sort of man to whom business would be enough. Some men can go on and never want anything else at all. I know plenty of men like that, but you’re not one of them.” She paused for a moment and then said suddenly, “But oh, Mr. Maradick, why did you come to Treliss?”

“Why?” he said, vaguely echoing her.

“Yes, of all places in the world. There never was a place more unsettling; whatever you’ve been before Treliss will make you something different now, and if anything’s ever going to happen to you it will happen here. However, have your holiday, Mr. Maradick, have it to the full. I’m going to have mine.”

They had arrived. The wagonette had drawn up in front of a little wayside inn, “The Hearty Cow,” having for its background a sweeping moor of golden gorse; the little brown house stood like a humble penitent on the outskirts of some royal crowd.

Everyone got down and shovelled rugs and baskets and kettles; everyone protested and laughed and ran back to see if there was anything left behind, and ran on in front to look at the view. At the turn of the brow of the hill Maradick drew a deep breath. He did not think he had ever seen anything so lovely before. On both sides and behind him the gorse flamed; in front of him was the sea stretching, a burning blue, for miles; against the black cliffs in the distance it broke in little waves of hard curling white. They had brought with them a tent that was now spread over their heads to keep off the sun, they crowded round the unpacking of the baskets. Conversation was general.

“Oh, paté de foie gras, chicken, lobster salad, that’s right. No, Tony, wait a moment. Don’t open them yet, they’re jam and things. Oh! there’s the champagne. Please, Mr. Lester, would you mind?”

“So I said to him that if he couldn’t behave at a dance he’d better not come at all—yes, look at the view, isn’t it lovely?—better not come at all; don’t you think I was perfectly right, Mr. Gale? Too atrocious, you know, to speak——”

“The bounder! Can’t stand fellows that are too familiar, Mrs. Maradick. I knew a chap once——”

“Oh Lord! Look out! It’s coming! My word, Lester, you nearly let us have it. It’s all right, mother, the situation’s saved, but it was a touch and go. I say, what stuff! Look out, Milly, you’ll stick your boot into the pie. No, it’s all right. It was only my consideration for your dress, Milly, not a bit for the pie; only don’t put your foot into it. Hullo, Alice, old girl, where have you been all this time?”

This last was Tony, his face red with his exertions, his collar off and his shirt open at the neck. When he saw Alice, however, he stopped unpacking the baskets and came over to her. “I say,” he said, bending down to her, “come for a little stroll while they’re unpacking the flesh-pots. There’s a view just round the corner that will fairly make you open your eyes.”

They went out together. He put his arm through hers. “What is the matter, Miss Alice Du Cane?” he said. Then as she gave no answer, he said, “What’s up, old girl?”

“Oh! nothing’s up,” she said, looking down and digging her parasol into the ground. “Only it’s hot and, well, I suppose I’m not quite the thing. I don’t think Treliss suits me.”

“Oh! I say, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’d noticed these last few days that you were a bit off colour. I’d been wondering about it.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, driving her parasol into the path still more furiously. “Only—I hate Treliss. I hate it. You’re all awfully good to me, of course, but I think I’d better go.”

“Go?” he said blankly.

“Yes, up to Scotland or somewhere. I’m not fit company for anyone as I am.”

“Oh! I say, I’m sorry.” He looked at her in dismay. “You said something before about it, but I thought it was only for the moment. I’ve been so jolly myself that I’ve not thought about other people. But why don’t you like the place?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. I know it’s awfully ungrateful of me to complain when Lady Gale has given me such a good time. . . . I’ve no explanation at all. . . . It's silly of me."

She stared out to sea, and she knew quite well that the explanation was of the simplest, she was in love with Tony.

When it had come upon her she did not know. She had certainly not been in love with him when she had first come down to Treliss. The idea of marrying him had been entertained agreeably, and had seemed as pleasant a way of settling as any other. One had to be fixed and placed some time, and Tony was a very safe and honourable person to be placed with. There were things that she would have altered, of course; his very vitality led him into a kind of indiscriminate appreciation of men and things that meant change and an inability to stick to things, but she had faced the whole prospect quite readily and with a good deal of tolerance.

Then, within the week, everything had changed. She wondered, hating herself for the thought, whether it had been because he had shown himself less keen; he hadn’t sought her out in quite the way that he had once done, he had left her alone for days together. But that could not have been all; there was something else responsible. There was some further change in him, something quite apart from his relation to her, that she had been among the first to recognise. He had always had a delightful youth and vitality that people had been charmed by, but now, during the last week, there had been something more. It was as though he had at last found the thing for which he had so long been looking. There had been something or some one outside all of them, their set, that he had been seeing and watching all the time; she had seen his eyes sparkle and his mouth smile at some thought or vision that they most certainly had not given him. And this new discovery gave him a strength that he had lacked before; he seemed to have in her eyes a new grandeur, and perhaps it was this that made her love him. But no, it was something more, something that she could only very vaguely and mistily put down to the place. It was in the air, and she felt that if she could only get away from Treliss, with its sea and its view and its crooked town, she would get straight again and be rid of all this contemptible emotion.

She had always prided herself on her reserve, on the control of her emotions, on her contempt for animal passion, and now she could have flung her arms round Tony’s neck and kissed his eyes, his hair, his mouth. She watched him, his round curly head, his brown neck, the swing of his shoulders, his splendid stride.

“Let’s sit down here,” he said; “they can’t see us now. I’m not going to help ’em any more. They’ll call us when they’re ready.”

She sat down on a rock and faced the sweep of the sea, curved like a purple bow in the hands of some mighty archer. He flung himself down on to his chest and looked up at her, his face propped on his hands.

“I say, Alice, old girl,” he said, “this is the first decent talk we’ve had for days. I suppose it’s been my fault. I’m awfully sorry, and I really don’t know how the time’s gone; there’s been a lot to do, somehow, and yet it’s hard to say exactly what one’s done.”

“You’ve been with Mr. Maradick,” she said almost fiercely.

He looked up at her, surprised at her tone. “Why, yes, I suppose I have. He’s a good chap, Maradick. I have been about with him a good bit.”

“I can’t quite see,” she said slowly, looking down at the ground, “what the attraction is. He’s nice enough, of course; a nice old man, but rather dull.”

“Oh, I don’t know about old, Alice. He’s much younger than you’d think, and he’s anything but dull. That’s only because you don’t know him. He is quiet when other people are there; but he’s awfully true and straight. And you know as one gets older, without being priggish about it, one chooses one’s friends for that sort of thing, not for superficial things a bit. I used to think it mattered whether they cared about the same ideas and were—well, artistic, you know. But that’s all rot; what really matters is whether they’ll stick to you and last.”

“One thing I always said about you, Tony,” she answered, “is that you don’t, as you say, stick. It’s better, you know, to be off with the old friends before you are on with the new.”

“Oh! I say!” He could scarcely speak for astonishment. “Alice! what’s the matter? Why, you don’t think I’ve changed about you, do you? I know—these past few days——”

“Oh, please don’t apologise, Tony,” she said, speaking very quickly. “I’m not making complaints. If you would rather be with Mr. Maradick, do. Make what friends you like; only when one comes down to stay, one expects to see something of you, just at meals, you know.”

He had never seen her like this before. Alice, the most self-contained of girls, reserving her emotions for large and abstract causes and movements, and never for a moment revealing any hint of personal likes or dislikes, never, so far as he had seen, showing any pleasure at his presence or complaining of his absence; and now, this!

“Oh! I say!” he cried again, “I’m most awfully sorry. It’s only been a few days—I know it was jolly rude. But the place has been so ripping, so beautiful, that I suppose I didn’t think about people much. I’ve been awfully happy, and that makes one selfish, I suppose. But I say,” he put a hand on her dress, “please don’t be angry with me, Alice, old girl. We’ve been chums for ages now, and when one’s known some one a jolly long time it isn’t kind of necessary to go on seeing them every day, one goes on without that, takes it on trust, you know. I knew that you were there and that I was there and that nothing makes any difference.”

The touch of his hand made her cheeks flame. “I’m sorry,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I don’t know why I spoke like that; of course we’re chums, only I’ve been a bit lonely; rotten these last few days, I’m sure I don’t know why.” She paused for a moment and then went on: “What it really is, is having to change suddenly. Oh, Tony, I’m such a rotter! You know how I talked about what I’d do if I were a man and the way I could help and the way you ought to help, and all the rest of it; well; that’s all gone suddenly—I don’t know why or when—and there’s simply nothing else there. You won’t leave me quite alone the rest of the time, Tony, please? It isn’t that I want you so awfully much, you know, but there isn’t anyone else.”

“Oh! we’ll have a splendid time,” he said. “You must get to know Maradick, Alice. He’s splendid. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s so awfully genuine.”

She got up. “You don’t describe him very well, Tony; all the same, genuine people are the most awful bores, you never know where you are. Well, forgive my little bit of temper. We ought to get back. They’ll be wondering where we are.”

But as they strolled back she was very quiet. She had found out what she wanted to know. There was some one else. She had watched his face as he looked at the sea; of course that accounted for the change. Who was she? Some fisher-girl in the town, perhaps some girl at a shop. Well, she would be no rival to anyone. She wouldn’t fight over Tony’s body; she had her pride. It was going to be a hard time for her; it would be better for her to go away, but that would be difficult. People would talk; she had better see it out.

“It’s simply too dreadfully hot in the sun,” Tony was conscious of Mrs. Lawrence saying as he joined them. He took it as a metaphor that she was sitting with her back to the sea and her eyes fixed upon the chicken. He wanted to scream, “Look at the gorse, you fool!” but instead he took a plate and flung himself down beside Mrs. Maradick.

She nodded at him gaily. “You naughty boy! You left us to unpack; you don’t deserve to have anything.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Maradick, I stayed until I was in the way. Too many cooks, you know.”

He watched everyone, and detected an air of cheerfulness that had certainly not been there before. Perhaps it was the lunch; at any rate he was hungry.

He talked, waving a piece of bread and butter. “You people don’t deserve anything. You ought to go and see a view before eating; grace before meat. Alice and I have done our duty and shall now proceed to enjoy our food twice as much as the rest of you.”

“Well, I think it’s too bad, that gorse,” said Mrs. Maradick, with a little pout and a flash of the eye towards Rupert Gale. “It puts all one’s colours out.” She gave her mauve a self-satisfied pat.

“Oh! Emmy dear! You look perfectly sweet!” ecstatically from Mrs. Lawrence.

Suddenly Mr. Lester spoke, leaning forward and looking at Mrs. Maradick very seriously. “Have you thought, Mrs. Maradick, whether perhaps you don’t put the gorse out?”

“Oh! Mr. Lester! How cruel! Poor little me! Now, Mr. Gale, do stand up for me.”

Rupert looked at the gorse with a languid air. “It simply don’t stand a chance,” he said.

“Talking about gorse,” began Mrs. Lawrence. She was always telling long stories about whose success she was in great doubt. This doubt she imparted to her audience, with the result that her stories always failed.

This one failed completely, but nobody seemed to mind. The highest spirits prevailed, and everyone was on the best of terms with everyone else. Lady Gale was delighted. She had thought that it would go off all right, but not quite so well as this.

Of course it was largely due to Tony. She watched him as he gathered people in, made them laugh, and brought the best out of them. It was a kind of “Open Sesame” that he whispered to everyone, a secret that he shared with them.

But what Lady Gale didn’t recognise was that it was all very much on the surface; nobody really had changed at all. She might have discovered that fact from her own experience had she thought about it. For instance, she didn’t care for Mrs. Maradick any more than before; she liked her, indeed, rather less, but she smiled and laughed and said “Dear Mrs. Maradick.” Everyone felt the same. They would have embraced their dearest enemies; it was in the air.

Mrs. Lester even addressed her husband—

“No, Ted dear, no more meringues. You know it’s bad for you, and you’ll be sorry to-night.”

He looked at her rather gloomily, and then turned and watched the gorse. Maradick suddenly leaned over and spoke to his wife.

“Emmy dear, do you remember that day at Cragholt? It was just like this.”

“Of course I do,” she said, nodding gaily back at him. “There was that funny Captain Bassett. . . . Such a nice man, dear Lady Gale. I wonder if you know him. Captain Godfrey Bassett. . . . Such fun.”

“I wonder,” said Lady Gale, “if that is one of the Bassetts of Hindhurst. There was a Captain Bassett——”

Maradick watched the golden curtain of gorse. The scent came to him; bees hummed in the air.

“Well, I like being by the sea, you know. But to be on it; I’ve crossed the Atlantic seven times and been ill every time. There is a stuff called—Oh! I forget—Yansfs. Yes, you can’t pronounce it—You-are-now-secure-from-sea-sickness—it wasn’t any good as far as I was concerned, but then I think you ought to take it before——”

This was his wife.

Mrs. Lester suddenly spoke to him. “You are very silent, Mr. Maradick. Take me for a stroll some time, won’t you? No, not now. I’m lazy, but later.”

She turned away from him before he could reply, and leaned over to her husband. Then he saw that Tony was at his elbow.

“Come down and bathe,” the boy said, “now. No, it isn’t bad for you, really. That’s all tommy-rot. Besides, we mayn’t be able to get away later.” They left the tent together.

“Is it champagne?” he asked.

“What?” asked Tony.

“All this amiability. I was as gruff as a—as my ordinary self—coming, and then suddenly I could have played a penny whistle; why?”