The Confessions of a
Well-Meaning Woman

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): You have toiled all the way here again? Do you know, I feel I am only beginning to find out who are the true friends? I am much, much better... On Friday I am to be allowed on to the sofa and by the end of next week Dr. Richardson promises to let me go back to Mount Street. Of course I should have liked the operation to take place there—it is one's frame and setting, but, truly honestly, Arthur and I have not been in a position to have any painting or papering done for so long ... The surgeon insisted on a nursing-home. Apparatus and so on and so forth... Quite between ourselves, I fancy that they make a very good thing out of these homes; but I am so thankful to be well again that I would put up with almost any imposition...

Everything went off too wonderfully. Perhaps you have seen my brother Brackenbury? Or Ruth? Ah, I am sorry; I should have been vastly entertained to hear what they were saying, what they dared say. Ruth did indeed offer to pay the expenses of the operation—the belated prick of conscience!—; and it was on the tip of my tongue to say we are not yet dependent on her spasmodic charity. Also, that I can keep my lips closed about Brackenbury without expecting a—tip! But they know I can't afford to refuse £500... If they, if everybody would only leave one alone! Spied on, whispered about...

The papers made such an absurd stir! If you are known by name as occupying any little niche, the world waits gaping below. I suppose I ought to be flattered, but for days there were callers, letters, telephone-messages. Like Royalty in extremis... And I never pretended that the operation was in any sense critical...

Do you know, beyond saying that, I would much rather not talk about it? This very modern frankness... Not you, of course! But, when a man like my brother-in-law Spenworth strides in here a few hours before the anæsthetic is administered and says "What is the matter with you? Much ado about nothing, I call it..." That from Arthur's brother to Arthur's wife, when, for all he knew, he might never see her alive again... I prefer just to say that everything went off most satisfactorily and that I hope now to be better than I have been for years...

It was anxiety more than anything else. A prolonged strain always finds out the weak place: Arthur complaining that he had lost some of his directorships and that, with the war, he was being offered none to take their place; talk of selling the house in Mount Street, every corner filled with a wonderful memory of old happy days when the princess almost lived with me; sometimes no news from the front for weeks, and that could only mean that my boy Will was moving up with the staff. It was just when I was at my wits' end that he wrote to say that he must have five hundred pounds. He gave no reason, so I assumed that one of his friends must be in trouble; and I was not to tell Arthur... This last effort really exhausted me; and I knew that, if I was not to be a useless encumbrance to everybody, I must "go into dock," as Will would say, "for overhauling and repairs." Dr. Richardson really seemed reluctant to impose any further tax on my vitality at such a time, but I assured him that I was not afraid of the knife. So here you find me!

A little home-sick for Mount Street and my friends? Indeed, yes; though I have not been neglected. Are not those tulips too magnificent? Were, rather... The dear princess brought them a week ago, and I was so touched by her sweetness that I have not the heart to throw them away. If she, to whom I can be nothing but a dull old woman... I mean, it brings into relief the unkindness of others; and I do indeed find it hard to forgive the callousness of Spenworth and my brother Brackenbury. No, that—like the operation—I would rather not talk about. Their attitude was so—wicked...

You, of course, have been under an anæsthetic. I? Not since I was a child; and the only sensation I recall was a hammer, hammer, hammer just as I went off, which I believe is nothing but the beating of one's heart... But before the operation... You must not think that I am posing as a heroine; but accidents do happen, and for two days and two nights, entirely by myself... It was inevitable that one should take stock... My thoughts went back to old days at Brackenbury, spacious old days with my dear father when he was ambassador at Rome and Vienna (they were happy times, though the expense crippled him); old days when my brother was a funny, impetuous little boy—not hard, as he has since become... I am fourteen years his senior; and, from the time when our dear mother died to the time when I married Arthur, I was wife and mother and sister at the Hall. On me devolved what, in spite of the socialists, I venture to call the great tradition of English life...

Lying in bed here, one could not help saying "If anything goes amiss, am I leaving the world better than I found it?" Under my own vine and fig-tree I had been a good wife to Arthur and a good mother to Will; and, if there had not always been some one of good intentions to smoothe over difficulties with the family on both sides... Blessed are the peace-makers, though I have sometimes wondered whether I did right in even tolerating my brother-in-law Spenworth. It is probably no news to you that he very much wanted to marry me, but I always felt that even Cheniston, even the house in Grosvenor Square, even his immense income would not compensate me for a husband whom I could never trust out of my sight. Arthur may be only the younger brother, I very soon found that the old spacious days were over; but with him one does know where one is, and I have never grudged poor Kathleen Manorby my leavings. There indeed is a lesson for the worldly! She was in love with a poor decent young subaltern named Laughton, more suitable for her in every way; however, the lure of Cheniston and the opportunity of being Lady Spenworth! ... He transferred to an Indian regiment; and, if his heart was broken, so much the worse for him. I am not superstitious; but, when I remember that bit of treachery, when I think of Spenworth, unfaithful from the beginning, when I see those four dairymaid daughters and no heir... Might not some people call that a judgement? It makes no personal difference, for the ungodly will flourish throughout our time; and, though my boy Will must ultimately succeed, he can look for nothing from his uncle in the meantime. I have lost the thread...

Ah, yes! I have done my humble best to comfort poor Kathleen and to give her some idea how to bring up her girls if she does not want to see them going the same way as their unhappy father. One is not thanked for that sort of thing; Spenworth, who blusters but can never look me in the eyes, pretends that he has refused to have me inside Cheniston since I publicly rebuked him, though he well knows that I will not enter the house while the present licence prevails. But one would have thought that even he would have had serious moments, would have felt that his soul might be required of him at any hour... A sense of gratitude, if not verbal thanks, was what I expected...

Hoped for, rather than expected... You are quite right.

And I have tried to keep the peace on the other side, at Brackenbury. There, I am thankful to say, there is the appearance of harmony; but, goodness me, there is an appearance of harmony when you see pigs eating amicably out of the same trough... No, I ought not to have said that! And I would not say it to any one else; but, when I remember the distinction of the Hall in the old, spacious days... My poor sister-in-law Ruth—well, she knew no better; and Brackenbury, instead of absorbing her, has allowed her to absorb him. They seem to have no sense of their position; and in the upbringing of their children they either don't know or they don't care. When this war broke out, Culroyd ran away from Eton and enlisted. He is in the Coldstream now, and I expect the whole thing is forgotten, but Brackenbury had the utmost difficulty in getting him out. And my niece Phyllida instantly set herself to learn nursing—which, of course, in itself is altogether praiseworthy—, but she makes it an excuse for now living entirely unchecked and uncontrolled in London—the "bachelor-girl," I believe, is the phrase. I did indeed force my brother to make her come to Mount Street; but, if that preserves the convenances, it is the utmost that I have achieved. When the trouble breaks out, when we find her liée with some hopelessly unsuitable "temporary gentleman" ... I? In a rash moment I allowed Brackenbury to make some trifling contribution to the cost of the girl's bed and board: the result is that she treats me as a lodging-house-keeper...

It was not a cheerful retrospect; but I had done my best, I could only say "Let me be judged on my intentions." The future... That was what troubled me more. When Will resigns his commission, something must be done to establish him in life until he succeeds his uncle. He is nearly thirty and has never earned a penny beyond his present army pay; I cannot support him indefinitely; and these frantic appeals for a hundred pounds here and five hundred pounds there... I cannot meet them, unless I am to sell the house in Mount Street and give up any little niche that I may occupy. Frankly, I am not prepared to do that. One's frame and setting... If his uncles would make a proper settlement, there would be an end of all our troubles; failing that, I must find him a well-paid appointment. And, in another sense, I want to see him established. Exactly! That is just what I do mean. Thanks to the energy of a few pushful but not particularly well-connected people like my Lady Maitland, social distinctions have ceased to exist in London. I will be as democratic as you please: I swallowed the Americans, I swallowed the South Africans, I swallow the rastaquouères daily; I don't mind sitting between a stock-broker and an actor, but it is a different thing altogether when you come to marriage. My boy has to be protected from the ordinary dangers and temptations; and, though I would do nothing to influence him, it would be highly satisfactory if he met some nice girl with a little money of her own. Naturally one would like to see the choice falling on some one in his own immediate world; but times are changing, and it would be regarded as old-fashioned prejudice if one made too strong a stand against the people who really are the only people with money; or against a foreigner... But this is all rather like crossing the bridge before one comes to the stream...

Lying here, very much depressed, I wanted to make provision for the immediate future. Now, would you say I had taken leave of my senses if I suggested that I had some claim on Brackenbury and Spenworth? Does relationship count for nothing? Or gratitude? You shall hear! You remember that, when you left just before my operation, Brackenbury came in to see me. I had sent for him. I am not a nervous woman; but accidents do happen, and I wanted a last word with them all in case... just in case... Arthur never takes a thought for the future, and I told Brackenbury that, if anything did happen, he would be the real as well as the titular head of the family.

"It is not for me," I said, "to advise or interfere with you or Ruth or your children. If—as I pray—Culroyd comes through unscathed, he has all the world before him, and you have only to see that he does not marry below his station. With Phyllida you must be more careful. She is young, attractive, well-dowered and a little, just a little headstrong. The war has made our girls quite absurdly romantic; any one in uniform, especially if he has been wounded... And you, who are rich, perhaps hardly realize as well as do we, who are poor, the tricks and crimes that a man will commit to marry a fortune. I do not suggest that Phyllida should be withdrawn from her hospital—"

"Oh, she's signed on for the duration of the war," Brackenbury interrupted.

"But I do think," I resumed, "that you should keep an eye on her..."

Perhaps there was never anything in it; but one young man whom Phyllida brought to Mount Street, a Colonel Butler, one of her own patients... Oh, quite a presentable, manly young fellow, but hopelessly unsuitable for Phyllida! My boy Will first put me on my guard when he was last home on leave; not that he had any personal interest, for all her four thousand a year or whatever it is, but they have always been brought up like brother and sister... My last act before coming here was to make Colonel Butler promise not to see or communicate with Phyllida until he had spoken frankly to Brackenbury. I understand that he has been invited to the Hall "on approval", as Will would say; and then we shall see what we shall see. I fancy he will have the good sense to recognize that such an alliance would be out of the question: every one would say that he had married her for her money, and no man of any pride would tolerate that... Phyllida, robbed of her stolen joys, was of course furious with me for what she was courteous enough to call my "interference." ...

"Her head is screwed on quite tight," said Brackenbury, "though I have no idea what you're insinuating."

"I am insinuating nothing," I said, "but do you want to see your only daughter married for her money by some penniless soldier—?"

"If she's in love with him, I don't care who she marries," said Brackenbury with a quite extraordinary callousness. "He must be a decent fellow, of course, who'll make her happy. I don't attach the importance to Debrett that you do, Ann, especially since the war."

As he had said it! I was mute... Every one is aware that poor Ruth was nobody—the rich daughter of a Hull shipping-magnate. I made him marry her because he had to marry some one with a little money—and much good it has been to anybody!,—but I hardly expected to hear him boasting or encouraging his children to pretend that there are no distinctions...

"Well, it's not my business, dear Brackenbury," I said. I was feeling too ill to wrangle... "When I asked you to come here, it was because—accidents do happen—I wanted to see you again, perhaps for the last time—"

"But aren't you frightening yourself unduly?," interrupted Brackenbury. "Arthur told me it was only—"

"Arthur knows nothing about it," I said. It is always so pleasant, when you are facing the possibility of death, to be told that it is all nothing... "I wanted to see you," I said, "about Will. You and I have to pull together for the sake of the family. If anything happens to me, I leave Will in your charge. His father will, of course, do what he can, but poor Arthur has nothing but his directorships; you must be our rock and anchor."

And then I plucked up courage to ask whether Brackenbury could not do something permanent for our boy. Even a thousand a year... It is not as though he couldn't afford it if Ruth shewed a little good-will, not as though either had done so extravagantly much for their own nephew. Brackenbury did indeed undertake to pay for him at Eton; but, as Will left before any of us expected, they were let off lightly...

Brackenbury would only talk of increasing expenses and the burden of taxation.

"I could face my operation with an easier mind," I said, "if I knew that Will would never want."

"Well, some one has always pulled him out hitherto," said Brackenbury. "I suppose some one always will." I had to rack my brains, but honestly truly the only occasion I could remember on which he had come to our assistance was when Will as a mere boy fell in with some men no better than common swindlers who prevailed on him to play cards for stakes which he could not afford... "He won't want," Brackenbury went on with the insolence of a man who has never done a hand's turn in his life, "if he'll only buckle down to it and work. Or he could spend less money."

This, I knew, was a "dig" at me. Before my boy had time to learn how very little distance his army pay would take him, I had asked my brother to tide him over a passing difficulty. Would you not have thought that any uncle would have welcomed the opportunity? I said nothing. And then Brackenbury had the assurance to criticize my way of life and to ask why I kept on the house in Mount Street if it always meant "pulling the devil by the tail," as he so elegantly expressed it. Why did I not take a less expensive house? And so on and so forth. I suppose he imagined that I could ask the princess to come to Bayswater...

"Do not," I said, "let us discuss the matter any more. It is unpleasant to be a pauper, but more unpleasant to be a beggar. If my boy wins through with his life—"

"Oh, you needn't worry about that," said Brackenbury. "They tell me he's on a staff which has never even heard a shot fired."

They tell me... Does not that phrase always put you on your guard, as it were? Of course he was quoting Culroyd, who is still young enough to imagine that whatever he does must be right and that every one must do as he does. Ever since Will was appointed to the staff ... I should have thought it stood to reason; you keep the brains of the army to direct the war, and the other people... I won't put it even as strongly as that, but there must be a division of labour. My Lord Culroyd seems to think that any one who has not run away from school and enlisted... Sometimes I have been hard put to it to keep the peace when they have been on leave at the same time. But I could not allow Brackenbury to make himself a ruler and a judge...

"Is it not enough," I said, "that you have refused the last request I may ever make? Is it necessary to add slander to ungraciousness?"

"Oh, keep cool, Ann, keep cool," said Brackenbury with his usual elegance. "From all accounts you ain't going to die yet awhile; and, if you do, Master Will won't be any worse off in pocket. He can earn his living as well as another. I'll promise you this, though; if he gets smashed up in the war, I'll see that he don't starve, but that's the limit of my responsibility. Now, does that set your mind at rest?"

I refused to continue the discussion and sank back on my pillows.

"What," I said, "what have I done to deserve this?"...

And it was I who found Ruth for him...

Do you know, after that, it was on the tip of my tongue to say I could not see Spenworth? He had made such a pother about coming up from Cheniston... If your brother-in-law were faced with an operation and begged to have what would perhaps be his last word with you ... and if, through no fault of yours, there had been unhappy differences in the past... The nurse came in to say that he had arrived, and I felt that I must make an effort, whatever it cost me. He was worse than Brackenbury! What they said to each other outside I do not profess to know; but Spenworth came in, bawling in that hunting-field voice of his... Ah, of course, you do not know him! I assure you, it goes through and through one's head... I begged him to spare me; and, when I had quieted him, I referred very briefly to our estrangement, which, I told him, was occasioned solely by my efforts to do what in me lay to promote peace in the family. Poor Kathleen ... betrayed and neglected; the licentiousness of life at Cheniston—eating, drinking, smoking, gambling, racing; those four unhappy girls... A pagan household...

"But," I said, "I do not want to disinter old controversies. If I have failed in achievement, you must judge me on my intentions. Lying here, though I am not a nervous woman, I have been compelled to think of the uncertainty of life. Let us, Spenworth," I said, "bury the hatchet. If anything happens to me, you must be our rock and anchor. You are the head of the family; Arthur is your brother; Will is your nephew—"

"No fault of mine," growled Spenworth in a way that set everything trembling. He is obsessed by the idea that rudeness is the same thing as humour. "What's he been up to now?"

"He has been 'up to' nothing, as you call it," I said. "But I should face my operation with an easier mind if I knew that Will's future was assured. When the war is over and if he is spared, it is essential that he should have independent means of some kind. It is pitiable that a man in his position... Do you not feel it—your own nephew? With the present prices, a thousand a year is little enough; but Arthur can do nothing to increase his directorships; and if my poor guidance and support are withdrawn—'

"What is supposed to be the matter with you?" Spenworth interrupted.

"I can hardly discuss that with you," I said.

"Well, Brackenbury told me—and Arthur told Brackenbury—," he began.

"Arthur and Brackenbury know nothing about it," I said. "For some time I have not been well, and it seemed worth the unavoidable risk of an operation if I might hope for greater strength and comfort. But I could not go under the anæsthetic with an easy mind if I felt that I had in any way omitted to put my house in order. Between us," I said, "bygones will be bygones. Will you not give me the satisfaction of knowing that, if we do not meet again, I am safe in leaving Arthur and my boy to your care? You are the head of the family. Can my boy's future not be permanently assured—here and now?"

I was not bargaining or haggling; it was a direct appeal to his generosity... Spenworth hummed and hawed for a while; then he said:

"I don't feel very much disposed to do anything more for that young man."

"More?," I echoed.

"Well, I paid up once," he said. "Arthur never told you, I suppose? Well, it was hardly a woman's province. I was acting then as head of the family ... about the time when you thought fit to criticize me very frankly..."

I had no more idea what he was talking about than the man in the moon!

"Spenworth! I must beg for enlightenment," I said.

"Oh, we'll let bygones be bygones," he answered. "The case was never brought to trial. But, as long as I'm likely to be called on to wipe up little messes of that kind, I'd sooner make a sinking-fund, to provide against emergencies, than pay Will money to get into more mischief and then have to stump up again."

More explicit than that he declined to be....

"Then," I said, "you repudiate all responsibility to your own flesh and blood? Whether I live or die, this is a request I shall never repeat."

"Oh, we'll see how things go," he answered. "You may not be as bad as you think. If I find Will starving at the end of the war, I'd undertake to pay his passage to Australia and give him a hundred a year to stay there..."

Until you know my brother-in-law, you cannot appreciate the refinement of his humour....

"Let us," I said, "discuss this no further."

You have probably observed that a man is never content with being thoroughly ungenerous; he must always try to justify himself.

"You know," he began, very importantly, "you wouldn't have half so much trouble with that fellow, if you'd licked him a bit more when he was younger..."

This from Spenworth!

"Who," I asked, "who made thee a ruler and a judge?"

And then, truly honestly, I had to beg him to leave me in order that I might compose myself....

Compose myself!

To shew you how unnerved I had become, I wrote down something which I had never breathed to Arthur or Will. We have always been so poor that I had dreaded an emergency, a sudden illness, for which I should be unable to provide. In Mount Street we are positive Spartans! Well, from the day of Will's birth I have pinched and scraped, scraped and pinched, trying to put something by... A little nest-egg... Thirty years—nearly. I have never dared invest it, in case something happened. It lies at the bank—in a separate account—ready at a moment's notice. When I was so ill four years ago, did I touch it? But before my operation—in case anything happened—I told Will the amount and how I had arranged for him to be able to draw on it. What I tell you is told to the grave; I have torn up the letter; they still do not know; but, when I saw the amount, I was truly tempted to say "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" ... I have lost the thread....

Ah, yes! I was saying that my nerve had entirely gone... I was so much exhausted that I fell into some kind of trance. Goodness knows the thousand and one things that go to make up a dream... Opposites... All that sort of thing... I dreamt most wonderfully about Will and—I wonder if you can guess? Phyllida! They have been brought up together—cousins! She is young, high-spirited, very, very attractive; and, thanks to Brackenbury's marriage, she is well-dowered... I said to myself in the dream "If she could marry happily some one in her own station..." And then I seemed to see her with Will... It was but a phantasy. I should do nothing to encourage it, I am not at all sure that I even approve...

Alas for reality! Phyllida came and bullied me for my "interference." ... But I told you about that. And, the day before the operation, Arthur asked whether I really thought it was necessary. Like that! At the eleventh hour!

"I don't trust these surgeons," he said. "They make operations."

At first I was touched...

"Dear Arthur," I said, "I am not doing this for my amusement."

"Oh, of course not!," he answered. "All the same, I wish it could be avoided. And, if it can't be avoided, I wish you'd kept more quiet about it. I don't know what you said to Spenworth and Brackenbury, but they're making the deuce's own tale of it."

I begged him to enlighten me.

"Well," said Arthur, "Spenworth says that you pretended to be at death's door in order to force him to make a settlement on Will and that he might have consented if he hadn't happened to know that you'd said the same thing to Brackenbury five minutes before. About being the head of the family and all that sort of thing. You know, Ann, it does make us look just a little bit ridiculous."

You assure me you have seen neither Brackenbury nor Ruth? I just wondered who was privileged to hear this "deuce's own tale" ... I can hardly ask you to believe it; but I do assure you that this is the solemn truth; those two men were seeking to convince themselves that I was pretending to be ill in order to work on their susceptible emotions! They seem to have had the good taste to keep their little joke for home consumption, but you may be sure they made merry with Ruth and Kathleen about me... Too merry, perhaps; I can only think it was conscience that made Ruth offer to pay for the operation. Or perhaps it was curiosity... I wonder what their feelings would have been if anything had gone amiss...

No, I am thankful to say there was no hitch of any kind. The anæsthetic was administered, I heard that hammer, hammer, hammer—and then voices very far away. It was all over! That was the preliminary examination. Then I was subjected to that too wonderful X-ray light and saw myself as a black skeleton with a misty-grey covering of flesh, one's wedding-ring standing out like a black bar round one's finger. Too marvellous. I do believe in this science...

But not so marvellous as what followed. Dr. Richardson congratulated me, and I had to beg for enlightenment.

"It will not be necessary," he said, "to operate after all. The symptoms are exactly as you described them, but a little treatment, principally massage..."

And that is why I am still here, though I hope to be allowed up on Friday. But lying in bed makes one so absurdly weak! What I have told you is for your ears alone. It would be altogether too much of a triumph for Spenworth. Instead of feeling any thankfulness that I had been spared the knife, he would only say... Well, you can imagine it even from the very imperfect sketch that I have given you. No, I am assured that massage makes the operation wholly unnecessary; and I am already feeling much, much better. If I have not taken the whole world into my confidence, it is partly because I detest this modern practice of discussing one's inside ("wearing one's stomach on one's sleeve," as Will rather naughtily describes it) and partly because I am altogether too humble-minded to fancy that the entire world is interested in my private affairs. When the princess asked "How did the operation go off?," I said "Excellently, thank you, ma'am." And that was what all the papers published. It was not worth while telling her that the operation was found to be unnecessary. I am not of those who feel obliged to trumpet forth that Mrs. Tom Noddy has left Gloucester Place for Eastbourne or Eastbourne for Gloucester Place. As Tennyson says, "Again—who wonders and who cares?"

At the same time—I loathe Americanisms and I do conscientiously try to express myself in what I may call the English of educated society; we do not seem to have any literary equivalent for "mentality," so I must ask you to pardon the neologism—will you, to oblige me, try to imagine the "mentality" of Spenworth and Brackenbury? The sister-in-law of one, the sister of the other; casting about in her resourceful mind to discover any means of softening their hard hearts; clapping hand to forehead; exclaiming "I have it!"; retiring to bed; summoning the relations; making frantic appeal; exacting death-bed promises...

Truly honestly, I don't think we have come to that yet...

And those two men have an hereditary right... Thank goodness, neither of them knows where the House of Lords is! There are moments when I feel very nearly a radical...

But you agree that they are hardly the people I should wish to discuss my operation with. And whatever I have said to you has of course been said in confidence.

II
LADY ANN SPENWORTH REPUDIATES ALL RESPONSIBILITY

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): But this is as delightful as it is unexpected! If we only have the carriage to ourselves... I often say that a first-class ticket is the merest snare and delusion; during the war it has exposed one to a new order—I've no doubt they are very brave and so forth and so on, but that sort of thing ought to be kept for the trenches. One doesn't want to travel with it, one certainly doesn't want to live with it...

At least I don't. There's no accounting for tastes, as my poor niece Phyllida has been shewing. You are going to Brackenbury, of course? Every one does by this train. In the old days my father enjoyed the privilege of being able to stop every train that ran through Brackenbury station; he held property on both sides of the line and was a director for very many years. One said a word to the guard—they were a very civil lot of men—, and that was literally all. My brother has allowed that to lapse, like everything else; and you now have to come by the four-twenty or not at all.

I should have thought the Brackenbury parties were difficult enough without giving everybody a gratuitous two hours in the train to grow tired of everybody else. My sister-in-law Ruth has other qualities, no doubt, but she will not go down to history as one of the great English hostesses... It's not surprising, perhaps; but, if you're not born to that sort of thing, wouldn't you make an effort to acquire it? There must be brains of some kind in the family, or the father could never have made all that money. I always felt a certain responsibility about Ruth; Brackenbury had to marry some one with a little money, and, knowing the sort of girl he'd fancy if I gave him half a chance... I was fourteen years older and knew something of poor Brackenbury's limitations; when I met Ruth Philpot and found that the money did come from quite a respectable shipping firm in Hull, I said: "Marry her, my dear boy, before you have a chance of making a greater fool of yourself." And I told him I'd do what I could for her; little hints, you understand... I'm afraid poor Ruth was not a very apt pupil; and Brackenbury, who never had any sense of his position, was a mere broken reed. "Assert yourself!," I used to say. "If you don't absorb her, she'll absorb you." That is the only occasion on which I have ever interfered in matters of the heart, either to guide or check; I look at Ruth Brackenbury and say to myself: "Ann Spenworth, you have your lesson ever before you." I would not urge or hinder now, even with my own son. Phyllida may try to fix responsibility on me, but I repudiate it—entirely. In the present instance I feel that it is, once again, the sins of the parents... As I felt it my duty to tell them, there wouldn't have been a moment's trouble with Phyllida, if she had been brought up differently...

I? Goodness me, no! Many, many things will have to be unsaid before Brackenbury induces me to set foot in his house again. You know whether I am the woman to stand on my dignity, but, when one's niece writes one letters in the third person... Indeed I know what I am talking about! "Lady Phyllida Lyster presents her compliments to Lady Ann Spenworth and is not interested in any explanation that Lady Ann may think fit to put forward." These are the manners of the war. From the very first I urged Brackenbury not to let her work in that hospital; some one had to go, of course; I'm not so foolish as to think that a hospital would run itself without hands, but why Phyllida? And, goodness me, if they couldn't stop her, they might have made a few enquiries, exercised some little control... Christine Malleson is very energetic and capable, no doubt, but you would hardly look for standards or traditions in her; however, she and my Lady Maitland and the rest seem able to carry people off their feet by sheer violence. Now Ruth and Brackenbury are paying for it. And, of course, poor Aunt Ann is to blame for everything. For the present I think it's best to leave them severely alone. One tries to do what seems to be one's duty; one puts up with a great many rebuffs; but in the end people must be left, in the homely old phrase, to stew in their own juice...

I'm really not sure how much is supposed to be known. Phyllida will no doubt tell you her side, simply as a means of attacking me. She works herself into such a state! I told Brackenbury that he ought to send her away for a complete change... I'm sick and tired of the whole thing; I'm sure it contributed to my illness; but, if it is going to be discussed, you'd better hear the truth. The whole time she was working at the hospital, Phyllida did me the honour to make my house her own; and, if I questioned my own wisdom, it was because of Will. He would be home on leave from time to time; and, perhaps on account of a curious dream which I had about them at the time of my operation, I was not at all sure that I wanted to see the intimacy increasing; when he marries, it will have to be some one with a little money, but I do not want to lose him yet and I cannot feel that Phyllida is very suitable... You can imagine, therefore, whether I should be likely to scheme or contrive to throw them into each other's arms; to intrigue to get rivals out of the way... I have lost the thread.

Ah, yes! Phyllida! Now, I chose my words carefully: "making my house her own," not "staying in my charge." When I went into the nursing-home, I tackled Brackenbury...

"Please understand," I said, "that I accept no responsibility. The child goes to and from the hospital when she likes, how she likes. I know nothing of the people with whom she associates there; and, if you like the idea of her coming in at all hours from theatres and dances, I suppose it's all right. But I can't stop her," I said; "I feel it my duty to tell you I can't stop her."

Brackenbury made some foolish rejoinder about Phyllida's head being screwed on tight or her heart being in the right place. (In that family they express themselves so uncouthly. Goodness me, one need not be a blue-stocking to realize that English has a certain dignity.) She was only doing what every other girl did, he said... I'm as democratic as any one, but I wondered what our father would have said to the doctrine that his daughter might do a thing simply because everybody else was doing it...

You know this Colonel Butler, perhaps? (It's only brevet-rank; if he stays on in the army, he reverts to full lieutenant only.) I'll confess at once that I liked him. When he was convalescent, Phyllida brought him to luncheon one day in Mount Street, and I thought him a decent, manly young fellow. I understand he comes from the west of England; and that, perhaps, accounts for the accent which I thought I detected; or, of course, he may simply have been not altogether at ease. (When I commented on it afterwards to Phyllida, she insisted that he was very badly shaken by his wound and the three operations... I think that was the first time I suspected anything; she championed him so very warmly.) I liked him—frankly. Some one quite early in the war said something about "temporary officers" and "temporary gentlemen"—it was very naughty, but so true!—; I said to my boy Will, when Colonel Butler was gone:

"If they were all like him, the army might be proud of them."

"All I've met are like him," said Phyllida, "only of course not so much so."

I was struggling to find a meaning—Phyllida expresses herself almost as carelessly as her poor mother, but with hardly her mother's excuse—, when she began to pour out a catalogue of his virtues: he had won a Military Cross and a Distinguished Service Order with a bar, he was the youngest colonel in the army, I don't know what else.

"Who are his people?," I asked.

A name like Butler is so very misleading; it may be all right—or it may not.

"I really don't know," said Phyllida, "and, what's more, I don't care..."

She was prattling away, but I thought it time to make one or two enquiries. I remember saying to poor Ruth—I forget in what connection; life is one long succession of these needless, irritating little encounters—I remember saying that Phyllida was in the position of a girl with no mother. It's not that Ruth and Brackenbury aren't fond of her, but they take no trouble... I asked what our young paragon's regiment was, and you'll hardly believe me if I tell you that it was one I had never heard of. Will knew, of course, but then, on the staff, these things are brought to your notice...

"And what is he in civil life?," I asked.

Phyllida didn't know. His father, I think she told me, was a surveyor, and she presumed that he intended to be a surveyor too. And an excellent profession, I should imagine, with the big estates being broken up and the properties changing hands everywhere. Brackenbury had an offer for the Hall—some wealthy contractor... I couldn't help smiling to think how our father would have dealt with him. Brackenbury let him off far too lightly, I thought, and tried to justify himself to me by saying that it was a very tempting offer... As if they needed money...

I had made up my mind at the outset to do nothing precipitate. The war has made girls quite dangerously romantic, and any opposition might have created—artificially—a most undesirable attachment. I knew that Phyllida had these young officers through her hands in dozens; and, though I was naturally anxious, I knew that in a few weeks or months our paragon would be back in Flanders or Devonshire—out of Christine Malleson's hospital, at all events. I commended my spirit, so to say...

He came to call—Colonel Butler did. I so little expected him—or any one else, for that matter; the war has done that for us—that I'd given no orders, and he was shewn up. Norden—you remember him? They took him for the army, though I wrote a personal letter to the War Office... A man with varicose veins and three small children... Norden would have known better, but I'd no one but maids, who don't know and don't care... Colonel Butler was shewn up, still not quite at ease, and I made myself as gracious as possible. D'you know, I thought it quite dear of him? His mother had told him that he must always call at any house where he'd had a meal—even luncheon, apparently, in war-time; as Will said, when I told him, I'm glad there aren't many wild mothers like that, roaming at large... He sat and talked—quite intelligently; I want to give him his due—; I rang for tea... He hadn't learned the art of going... We got on famously until he began speaking of Phyllida; the first time it was "your niece," then almost at once "Phyllida." I said "Lady Phyllida"—I must have said it three times, but he was quite impervious. Then Phyllida came in and openly called him "Hilary." ... They were dining together, it seemed, and going to a play. I try to conceal my palæolithic remains in dealing with Phyllida, but I did say "By yourselves?" Oh, yes, the most natural thing in the world... I reminded her that Will was home on leave, but the hint was not taken. Off they went...

If I were not very fond of Phyllida, I shouldn't take so much trouble about her... And I always have to remember that Ruth is too busy painting and powdering ever to think of her own daughter. I suppose she feels that her looks are the only thing that keeps Brackenbury enslaved... What was I saying? Oh, about poor Phyllida. It is to my credit that I insisted on a proper settlement when Brackenbury was mooning about like a love-sick boy; she has four thousand when she's of age and she'll have another three when the parents die—enough, you will agree, to tempt some men. I happened to mention at dinner that this Colonel Butler had called, and Will became greatly concerned. It was quite disinterested, because I have always felt that, if he ever dropped the handkerchief, I could make a good guess who would pick it up. Will quite clearly thought, with me, that Colonel Butler was in earnest and that poor Phyllida was slipping into his toils...

An opportunity came to me two or three days before my operation. Phyllida—she was quite brazen about it—admitted that she had dined with her hero four times in one week. That was on a Saturday; I'm glad to say that she hasn't become democratic enough to go to these picture-houses, and there was nothing to do on Sunday. I told her she might ask Colonel Butler to dine with us. And, when he came, I took occasion to speak rather freely to him.

"I can't help seeing," I said, "that you are very intimate with my niece."

"Oh, I'm devoted to Phyllida," he answered.

"Then," I said, "you'd cut your hand off before you did anything to make people talk about her."

And then I rehearsed these dinners and plays...

"It's not my business," I said. "Phyllida regards me as a lodging-house keeper, but, if your intentions are honourable, I think you should make them known to my brother, Lord Brackenbury." ..

Well, then he became nervous and sentimental. He wouldn't compromise Phyllida for the world; he'd every intention of speaking to Brackenbury when the time came, but as long as he was living on his pay and the war went on... You can imagine it. He was quite sincere. I told you I liked him; the only thing was that I didn't think him quite suitable for Phyllida. Upbringing, milieu... He was no fool; I felt he'd see it for himself before he'd been at the Hall half an hour...

To cut a long story short, I made him promise to hold no more communication with the child until he'd seen Brackenbury; and I told my brother to invite him there for a weekend. I didn't see very much of what happened, as I left the young people to themselves; but Will entirely bore out the vague, intangible feeling... Poor Colonel Butler wasn't at home; he made my boy's life a burden for days beforehand, asking what clothes he should take, and, when they were there, it was "I've been away so much that I don't know what the tariff is since the war: if I give ten shillings to the man who looks after me, how much ought I to give the butler?" ... Things I should have thought a man knew without asking. Will was really rather naughty about it...

Brackenbury didn't see anything amiss. One's standard changes when one has done that sort of thing oneself. As I always said, "If you don't absorb her, she'll absorb you." And so it's proved. Ruth, of course, saw only the romance of it all. Goodness me, unless we're all twins, some one has to be the youngest colonel in the army... I don't know what people mean nowadays, when they talk about "romance." .. Brackenbury and the whole family made the absurdest fuss—well, I won't say that, because I liked young Butler; they made a great fuss. Even my nephew Culroyd, who's in the Coldstream, was quite affable; "eating out of his hand" was Will's phrase. So descriptive, I thought; Will has an extraordinary knack of hitting people off...

None of them seemed to think of the money side at all. Brackenbury was always improvident as a boy; but, until you've felt the pinch as Will and I have done, you don't learn anything about values. Four thousand a year sounds very pleasant, but if it's now only equal to two... And Phyllida has always lived up to anything she's had. "I want it, therefore I must have it" has been her rule. Clothes, trinkets, little treats... She has four horses, eating their heads off, while my poor Will says he stands hat in hand before any one who'll mount him. And her own little car... I know a brick wall when I see one; it was no use asking Phyllida whether she thought she could afford a husband as well as everything else. And a family; one has to look ahead... Colonel Butler wouldn't be earning anything for years.

He told me so. I liked him more and more, because he was so simple and straightforward. After luncheon on the Saturday, we had a long talk together. I think I said I'd shew him the house. As you know, I yield to no one in my love for the dear old Hall, but Colonel Butler was like a child. You'd have said he'd never been inside a big house before; I don't believe he ever had... I took him everywhere, even Phyllida's rooms; it was well for him to see, I felt...

I remember he thanked me for having him invited to the Hall; from his tone you'd have said I was playing fairy god-mother, and he credited me with the very friendly reception that every one had given him. If the truth must be known—I wasn't taking sides; you must understand that!—I wanted them to see and I wanted him to see... As Will once said, "Half the world doesn't know how the other half lives." I felt that, when Colonel Butler stood there, everything sinking in. A man, I suppose, always is rather bewildered at the number of things a girl requires—frocks, gloves, hats, shoes, stockings... You mustn't think that I shewed him Phyllida's wardrobe! Goodness me, no! But her maid was in the room, getting things ready for the child's return from hunting. It was almost pathetic; one could fancy the poor young man counting on his fingers and saying: "She must have as good a room as this, she'll want to keep on her present maid, I don't suppose she can even prepare a bath for herself or fasten her dress or brush her hair..." But it's better for that kind of thing to sink in at the beginning... Wherever I took him, he seemed to be saying: "You can't do this sort of thing without so many servants, so much a year." .. Will told me that the first night at dinner... But I'm afraid Will's naughty sometimes...

He thanked me—Colonel Butler did—in a way that suggested I hadn't shewn him only the house.

"But I've enjoyed it," I said. "I'm only sorry you weren't able to go out with the rest."

He told me he didn't hunt, he'd never had any opportunity. There was quite a list of things he didn't do, but he was very simple and straightforward about them. Don't you dislike that aggressive spirit which compels people to tell you how many they slept in one room and the night-schools they attended and so forth and so on? It makes me quite hot. I believe that's why they do it... There was nothing of that about Colonel Butler, though the army had made him a little borné. When I took him to see the stables, he shewed a certain sentimental interest in Phyllida's horses; but his only comment was: "I wish we were given beasts like that in the army." And it was the army in everything that he ate or read. Phyllida, as you know, has travelled more than most girls of her age; she wouldn't like to drop that altogether on marrying; but, if you said "Egypt" to Colonel Butler, it was simply a place where he'd been invalided the first time he was wounded at Gallipoli. The war seems to make some men curiously material... You understand I'm not criticizing him as a soldier; I'm sure he did excellent and useful work, but the war is only an episode in our lives...

At tea he was so silent that I felt it was all sinking in very deep. At the end he said:

"Lady Ann, may I ask your advice? You are a woman of the world——"

"Goodness me, no!," I said. "Thirty years ago I may have counted for something there; but now I live under my own little vine and fig-tree; I see no one; I'm out of touch; you'd find me very old-fashioned, I fear."

"You've been very kind to me," he said, "and I want you to add to your kindness. I'm in love with Phyllida, as you know; and she—I think she quite likes me. Lord Brackenbury and every one here have been simply ripping. Please tell me what you think about it."

"Do you mean, will she marry you?," I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Oh, I should think it very likely," I told him; "I wondered whether you meant, would you make her happy?"

"I should certainly hope to do that," he answered.

"We all hope," I said...

My responsibility is confined to giving him a moment's pause for thought. Phyllida will tell you that I set him against her, poisoned his mind, I shouldn't wonder... It's most charitable to recognize that she really did not know what she was saying. I didn't talk about him at all; I talked about Will, about my nephew Culroyd, their friends, their lives... Any deductions were of his drawing; and, goodness me, one need not be branded a snob for seeing that they had been born and bred in different worlds. He seemed to think that love would overcome everything.

"If you're in love," he kept saying, "these things don't matter, do they?"

What made him uncomfortable was the money question—the thought that he would be bringing literally nothing. I was most careful not to say anything, but every child knows that if you divide a sum of money by two... He would be living on Phyllida; and, if he loved her as much as he pretended, he would always be feeling: "It's a frock for her or a suit of clothes for me." A very humiliating position for any man... I know it's the modern fashion to pretend that it doesn't matter; Phyllida says in so many words that the advantage of money to a girl is that she can marry where her heart leads her. A snare and a delusion, unless you mean that a woman with money and nothing else can occasionally buy herself position... I'm sure she picked that up from her poor mother. But, if Brackenbury married on his debts, he did bring something; I know we all had to work very hard for Ruth—"doing propaganda," as my boy Will says—to shew people that the marriage was all right... And it will be the same with Will, if he ever marries... Whoever he marries... He does bring something...

Colonel Butler asked if people would think Phyllida had thrown herself away on him. What could I say? ... But for the war, he told me, he would be earning his own living; and, do you know?, that was the only time the cloven hoof appeared.

"We've all of us had to make sacrifices," I answered, "and the war ought not to be made either an excuse or—an opportunity."

Goodness me, you don't suppose my boy Will enjoyed the fatigues, the dangers... The general was utterly callous towards his staff; but Will "stuck it out", as he would say. It was the soldier's part, and Colonel Butler knew as well as I did that it was only the war and the accident of being wounded that had thrown him across Phyllida's path.

"What do you mean by 'opportunity', Lady Ann?," he asked.

It was not easy to put into words... I sometimes feel that romance has gone to the head of some of our girls; first of all, a man had only to be in uniform, then he had only to be wounded... I liked Colonel Butler, but in the old days Phyllida would not have looked at him... And, goodness me, if you go back a generation, you can imagine what my father would have said if a man, however pleasant, with nothing but his pay and the clothes he stood up in... A soldier only by the accident of war... And in a regiment one had truly honestly never heard of...

"I don't feel I can help you," I said. "Times have changed, and my ideas are out of date. My brother may be different; have you spoken to him?" ...

As a matter of fact any woman could have seen that it wasn't necessary to speak; Brackenbury, all of them were throwing themselves at the young man's head. That's why I felt that, if I didn't—give him a pause for reflection, no one would. No, he hadn't said anything yet; it seemed such presumption that, though every one was gracious to him and Phyllida more than gracious, he wanted an outside opinion from some one whom he was good enough to call "a woman of the world." Was he justified in saying anything while his financial prospects were so uncertain? Was it fair to ask Phyllida to give up so much of the life she was accustomed to? Would people think he was trying to marry her for her money? Was he entitled to ask her to wait?

I said... Phyllida was not present, you understand, so anything she tells you can only be the fruit of a disordered imagination. If Brackenbury sent her right away, the whole thing would be forgotten in two months... I really forget what I did say...

At dinner I could see that Colonel Butler was pondering my advice. At least, when I say "advice", the limit of my responsibility is that perhaps the effect of our little talk was to check his natural impetuosity. Things were sinking in; his own good sense, more than anything I should have dared to say... Phyllida came down arrayed with quite unnecessary splendour—we were only the family and Colonel Butler. "Poor child," I thought to myself, "you fancy you're attracting him when you're only frightening the shy bird away; you imagine he's admiring your frock when he's only wondering how much it cost." It was sinking in... If poor Ruth wanted her to throw herself away on a penniless surveyor, she might have told her that simplicity was the note to strike. Phyllida won't think for herself, and Ruth is incapable of thinking for her. Good gracious! at dinner the child sat between Colonel Butler and my boy Will; I don't encourage any girl to become a minx, but no man thinks the better of you for throwing yourself at his head. A little distance, a little indifference; until a man's jealous, he doesn't know he's in love. She proved my point that night, both my points; Will was furious—and with reason—at being so uncivilly neglected; and the young paragon ... he was simply sated. When the telegram arrived...

But I thought Phyllida would have told you about that; she has been so—immodestly candid. He returned to London next day, saying he'd received a wire overnight. I met him the following week, and he told me. Simple and straightforward as ever... He wanted to know how Phyllida was; had Lady Brackenbury thought him very rude? It was one thing or the other, he said: he could ask Phyllida to marry him or he could go right away and forget about her ... until he had something more to offer, I think he said... You and I know what that means. He was greatly upset and begged me to write occasionally when he was back at the front, just to tell him how Phyllida was; he wouldn't write to her himself, he said, because he wanted to leave her unembarrassed and it would be too painful for him.

"If she's still unmarried when I've made good," he said, "it will be time to begin writing then."

I suppose it was because Phyllida had never been in love before... I was ready to make allowances, but I was not prepared for the outburst, the extravagance, the self-indulgence of grief.

"Come, come, my dear!," I said, "it would have been a very unsuitable match; and, if you haven't the sense to realize it, he has."

She turned on me like a fury... I don't know what was in his letter of good-bye; but I suppose it was the usual romantic promise that he'd go away and make his fortune and then come back to claim her. (Good riddance, too, I thought; though I liked him.) Phyllida evidently treated it quite seriously...

"If he'd been mine for a week or a day..." she kept sobbing. "I know he'll be killed." ..

Well, he wasn't the only man in the world, but nothing that I could say was right...

"I think he behaved very properly," I said. "He did me the honour to ask my advice; and, if I see him again, I shall tell him so."

Then the flood-gates were opened. I—tell—you—as I tried to tell her, but she wouldn't let me speak—that I gave no advice; I wanted him to proceed with caution, but I never even told him to wait and think... He did it entirely on his own initiative. What he quite rightly saw was that he could not take advantage of a young girl's infatuation to marry her for her money. Phyllida really shocked me with the things she said, but I'm old enough to have learnt patience; it will not be very long before she begs my pardon and admits that perhaps a certain measure of wisdom may be conceded to age... In the meantime I prefer not to mix myself up in the broils and wrangles that seem a daily feature of life at the Hall. One makes a certain effort; and, after that, one has to leave people, in the homely old phrase, to stew in their own juice... I need hardly tell you that Brackenbury took her side. And poor Ruth, though I've learnt not to expect too much of Ruth after all these years. If, for curiosity's sake, you ask them what I am supposed to have done, I should be deeply interested to know what they say. I have nothing but praise for the young man. When you are in the army, one private is as good as another; in hospital, you are a name, a bed, a case. That is so fine, I always think; it makes this truly a people's war. Colonel Butler would have gone to the Hall sooner or later without any prompting from me; and, once there, it was impossible for a man of any intelligence to pretend that there were no differences... It is so hard for me to put it into words without seeming a snob, but you understand what I mean...

You will find my boy Will there. He never seems to come home without picking up a cold, and the doctor has very sensibly recommended that he should be given an extension of leave. I was not very much set on his going, I admit. Goodness me, any silly little ill-bred things that Phyllida may pick up from her poor mother are forgotten as soon as they are said; I have no need to stand on my dignity. The sins of the fathers... Brackenbury never checks her... But you know what a girl is when she has had a disappointment, we must both of us have seen it a dozen times ... some sort of natural recoil. If she throws herself at Will's head... With her money they'd have enough to live on, of course, and young people ought to be very comfortable on four thousand a year. (It will be seven, when the parents die.) One need not look ahead to a family; but the grandfather, Ruth's father, would not be illiberal. But, though dear Will must marry some day, I dread the time when I must lose him...

III
LADY ANN SPENWORTH TOUCHES RELUCTANTLY ON DIVORCE

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): I have been brought up in a different school, that's all. "Whom God hath joined..." I don't ask any one to share my feelings and I'm not so foolish as to say I won't receive people who have taken a step which is at least legal, however much one may deplore the present ease of divorce. I do indeed try to differentiate in my attitude towards the guilty party, but in this I am more than ever "ploughing a lonely furrow," as my boy Will rather picturesquely expresses it...

Nowadays it is unfashionable to heed the teachings of religion; but I should have thought that the least consideration for patriotism, stability... My father's maxim was that family life is the basis of the state and that, when once you sanction the principle of divorce, you are undermining the foundations of the commonwealth. So I have at least been consistent...

That is perhaps more important than you think. The cynic cannot see that one's principles are independent of personal considerations. If they ever have the ill fortune to coincide even in appearance... Indeed yes! I happen to know what I am talking about... Forgive me if I spoke sharply; but one's nerves are not of iron, and it is not pleasant to be charged with conspiracy by the members of one's own family. Oh, not Spenworth! We have hardly met for years, I am thankful to say, though my husband has more than once tried to bring about a reconciliation. I have no personal animus; but, if the head of an honoured family chooses to drag his name in the mire, he shall at least not say that he has had countenance or support from even so humble a person as his sister-in-law. I was referring to the other side, my own people; I have an unforgiving little enemy, I fear, in my niece Phyllida; I should mind that less if Brackenbury and his poor wife did not seem to aid and abet her. Loyalty to the family, I should have thought... But, once again, I was brought up in a different school. I have told my brother, until I am tired, he ought to send her right away. It was a disappointment... Goodness me, it is a disappointment when one cries for the moon; and, though I thought this Colonel Butler a decent, manly fellow, he was really nobody. He saw, without my telling him, that every one would say he was marrying her for her money... I won't call it an escape for Phyllida, because that always sounds so spiteful. But I will allow no one to say I made him throw her over so that I might keep her for my own boy!

I want you to tell me frankly how much you have heard. Literally nothing? Then you will—the very next time you go to the Hall. Not satisfied with inventing this abominable story, Phyllida feels it her duty to inflict it upon any one who will listen. But you must have seen about the divorce? Not even that? Well, you are wise; these things are unsavoury reading. The case was tried in the summer—"Spenworth's washing-day", as my boy called it—, and the decree will be made absolute in a few weeks' time.

It is the fashion to say that my brother-in-law was more sinned against than sinning. Does not that formula always put you on your guard, so to say? He was a mere boy when he succeeded to the title; an immense estate like Cheniston offered too many temptations; his good looks made him a prey for all the harpies; he was too kindly ever to say "no" even to the most dissolute of his associates. And so forth and so on... Goodness me! Arthur—my husband—was two years younger; and, if his old father's iniquitous will did not leave him enough money to tempt the hangers-on, at least he did not play ducks and drakes with what he had. It is more a question of character than of income. And Arthur had his share of good looks, as you can see from Will. No! Whatever Spenworth did, he could always buy indulgence. Establish for yourself the reputation of "a good fellow"—whatever that may mean—; and you will walk on roses all your life...

One must assume that he thought the marriage would be a success, but I am sure no one else did. I knew Spenworth, you see. It is ancient history now, but it was only when I destroyed his last hope by marrying Arthur that he turned in desperation to Kathleen Manorby ... after remaining disconsolate for nearly ten years. For her and her like my Will coined the description "chocolate-box beauty." She is still attractive after twenty years... I tried to warn her, so far as one could without having one's motives misconstrued; but she was glamoured by the money and the title. She had several offers, I believe, from men rather more in her own milieu, but it was a case of not being able to afford the luxury of marrying a poor man. Otherwise her first love, young Laughton, who broke his heart over her and transferred to the Indian Army... I warned her that Spenworth would be unfaithful before they had been married a year, but she was too sure of her own charm and power.

Within a year! Within three months... Kathleen is a fool, but one may feel for any woman who has had to put up with so many sordid humiliations. If she had borne him a son, it might have been different, but one girl after another... Four of them, and no heir to Cheniston. Superstitious people would tell you that it was a judgement on Spenworth for his past life and on her for her treatment of poor young Laughton... And, little by little, Spenworth seemed to lose all regard for human decency, until one was tempted to forget poor Kathleen's disappointment and to feel that Providence had decided that no son of his should ever reign in his stead. I am utterly free from superstition myself; but it did seem curious... He, I fancy, never quite gave up hope; as I felt it my duty to tell him, he was on such good terms with this world that he could not imagine another world in which his behaviour might be less leniently regarded. When the fourth girl was born and we realized that Will must ultimately succeed, I suggested that something might now be done to enable our boy to live in a manner befitting the heir to an historic title. Spenworth gave one of his great laughs and begged me to wait until he was dead before I cast lots for his raiment, adding that he had no intention of dying yet awhile. The usual blend of arrogance and blasphemy...

Yes, my husband is the only brother. It is a matter of rather less than no interest to either of us, for Spenworth will last our time. His constitution is proof against even his own assaults on it. Besides, one would hate the idea of waiting to step into a dead man's shoes... So really the heir is Will, but he is in no hurry; Cheniston is a night-mare to him, he does not desire the place. Perhaps he dreads having to cleanse the Augean stable. You have never stayed there, of course; I can say without unkindness that, wherever a naked savage could have made one error in taste, poor Kathleen has made three...

It was Will who brought the news that a divorce was pending. One guessed that Spenworth and Kathleen were living apart, but she had let slip so many opportunities... One asked oneself what new provocation could have roused her.

"Oh, it's a put-up job," said Will. "As Aunt Kathleen hasn't produced a son, Spenworth wants to get free of her and marry some one else. A man at the club told me that he was allowing her twenty thousand a year for his liberty."

Really and truly, the interest that total strangers take in other people's affairs the moment that sinister word "divorce" is pronounced... Within two days the story was on every one's lips: Spenworth was the one topic of conversation, and everything was known. I think it is called a petition for restitution. Alas! for twenty years it would always have been easy to produce evidence of Spenworth's vagaries; now, I gathered, he was to "desert" Kathleen and then refuse to obey some order to come back. I don't profess to understand the subject; it is wholly distasteful to me...

"And what then?," I asked.

"A decree nisi," Will told me. "I gather my next aunt has been chosen already."

I will not mention her name. She who marries a man that has been put away... Perhaps I take too lofty a view of human nature, knowing my brother-in-law as I do; but, until he actually marries her, I shall continue to look for a sign of grace.

"And now perhaps Cheniston is going to have an heir after all," said Will.

I confess that I was thinking not at all of Cheniston at this season, though a second marriage may revolutionize everything. The shame of seeing my husband's elder brother, the head of an historic family, in the Divorce Court... And already thinking of another union with goodness knows who; and, once he begins, there is no reason why he should ever stop. I am told that there are more than two thousand cases waiting to be tried. The war! I always felt that you could not have an upheaval on that scale without paying for it afterwards. There are moments when I feel glad that my dear father did not live to see this bouleversement... Mere beasts of the field...

"I cannot discuss this," I told Will.

My husband had heard the story too and was so much shocked that I dared not allude to it. We could do nothing...

I did make one effort. I tried to persuade my brother to reason with her. The opinion of an outsider—and Brackenbury has the reputation, not perhaps very well-founded, if you consider his own life, of being a man of the world... He would only say that, though "dear old Spenworth" was "no end of a good fellow", he was also "no end of a bad husband" and that, if Kathleen had had sense or spirit, she'd have divorced him a dozen years ago. Then, against my own inclinations, I went to see Kathleen and literally begged her to reconsider her decision before it was too late. One might as profitably have spoken to the dead...

She was not antagonistic in any way. Indeed, our meeting would have been profoundly interesting, if it had not been so painful. She was still in love with Spenworth. Men like that, dissolute and unfaithful, seem to have an animal magnetism which holds certain women in complete subjection. Kathleen was miserable at the thought of parting from her scamp of a husband.

"I couldn't do it if I didn't love him," she cried.

And, if you please, I was left to understand that she was effacing herself, giving him up and making way for another woman simply because she fancied that he would be happier. I confess I should have had little patience with her, if she had not been so pitiable. Life was a blank without Spenworth.

"Then why," I asked, "do you cut your own throat and drag the name of the family through the mire? Have you no sense of your position after all these years, no feeling for the rest of us?"

"It's for him," she said.

And I verily believe that, if he had told her literally to cut her throat, she would have done it...

I have never been greatly attached to Kathleen. These backboneless, emotional women... But I felt that somebody must do something for her. She came to Mount Street, and I reasoned with her again; at Cheniston I may be less than the dust, but under my own vine and fig-tree... In London I have a certain niche and I was bound to warn her that a divorced woman is mal vue in certain circles and among certain persons who sometimes do me the honour to dine at my house. There would be occasions on which I should be unable to invite her. You would have said that she didn't care... She was staying with us when the case was tried; she stayed all through the summer, four months. No, you mustn't give me credit to which I'm not entitled. I felt very little sympathy when she proved obdurate; but, if one could do anything to brighten her lot... I gave one or two little parties... Trying to take her out of herself. To some extent I succeeded. Kathleen has still the remains of good looks, though that fair fluffiness is not a type that I admire. When I refused to let her sit and mope in her room, she made an effort and assumed quite an attractive appearance. Several men were impressed...

There was one in particular. I won't give you his name... And yet I don't know why I shouldn't; if Phyllida persuades you to listen to her story, I am sure she will spare you nothing. He was introduced to me as Captain Laughton; and the name conveyed nothing to me until some one reminded me of the old boy-and-girl attachment before Kathleen married Spenworth, when this man Laughton pretended to be heart-broken and disappeared to Central India. They had not met for twenty years, but, when he read of the divorce proceedings, I can only assume that he sought her out. Will met him at his club, I think, and the man virtually invited himself to come and dine. I was not greatly enchanted by him at our first meeting, but he was a new interest to Kathleen (I knew nothing until days afterwards when I tackled her about her really unaccountable behaviour with him)... And I must confess that there were moments when poor Kathleen was a grave trial and I repented my impetuosity in asking her to stay with us. Captain Laughton came a second time and a third. By the end of a month he had really done us the honour to make our house his own...

There are things I can say to you that I would never breathe to a man. I, personally, never make a mystery of my age; you will find it in all the books, every one knows I am six years older than Arthur, four years older than Spenworth—why conceal it? I wished Kathleen could have been equally frank, could have seen herself as I saw her. She is within a few months of thirty-nine, with four strapping girls; one does expect a certain dignity and restraint at that age. I know what you are going to say! We of the older generation usually expect more than we receive. I have learnt that lesson, thank you! Kathleen seemed to fancy that she was back in the period of this boy-and-girl attachment to which I have alluded. She and Captain Laughton were inseparable. He took her to dances ... as if she were eighteen! Indecent, I considered it. And I wondered what her girls thought of their mother,—if they're capable of thinking at all. I don't associate brains with that chocolate-box beauty... Dances, dinners, little expeditions. Every one was beginning to smile...

"If she's not careful," Will said to me one day, "she'll cook her own goose as well as Spenworth's."

I had to ask him to express his fears in simpler language.

"There is such a person as a King's Proctor," he said, "though they don't seem aware of it. If she plays the fool with Laughton, the decree won't be made absolute; and she and Spenworth will be tied to each other for the rest of their lives. That would hardly suit their book."

Do you ever feel that you have strayed into a new world? The fact of divorce... And then this light-hearted pairing off: Spenworth with some woman who had been setting her cap at him for years, Kathleen with the love of her youth. They had lost all reverence for marriage, the family; it was a game, a dance—like that figure in the lancers, where you offer your right hand first and then your left... I made Will explain the whole position to me again and again until I had it quite clear in my mind. The King's Proctor, as he described him—rather naughtily—, was "a licensed spoil-sport", who intervened in cases where the divorce was being arranged by collusion or where both parties had sinned.

"The office seems a sinecure," I commented.

Those two thousand petitions... They stick in my throat.

"As a rule people don't take risks," Will explained. "And it's not often to the advantage of an outsider to come in and upset the apple-cart. You or the guv'nor or I," he said, "could do a lot of mischief, if we liked; but we're interested parties, and it wouldn't look well."

I confess that I did not share his tenderness towards what is nothing but a life of premeditated sin... Yes, I know it's legal, but Parliament can make a thing legal without making it right. The whole subject, however, was very distasteful, and I did not pursue it. That night I let fall a hint to Arthur, but he was not disposed to take any action.

"She's a bigger fool than I took her for," was all he would say. "She's endangering her own future and Spenworth's and playing into our hands if we chose to take advantage of our opportunity."

Whether Arthur spoke to her or not, I cannot say; but I know that she received a very frank warning from her own solicitors. Spenworth, too, did us the honour to write and say: "For heaven's sake keep that—" I forget the actual phrasing—"keep that man away from Katie, or he'll do us in." Spenworth was always noted for his elegance of diction... If a pawn could speak, I'm sure its feelings would be very much what mine were: pushed hither and thither in a game that I did not begin to understand. I had never asked Captain Laughton to the house; he invited himself, and by the same token I knew that it was no good telling him to stay away. My house was not my own, my soul was not my own. And I had that hopeless sense that, whatever I did, I should be wrong...

It was a trying season... Their behaviour was so extraordinary! I pinched myself and said: "This is the woman who cried to you because she was losing Spenworth, because the light was being taken out of her life. She was sacrificing herself to make Spenworth happy!" I admit that I was taken in. She may have been sincere at the time, but that is only the more discreditable. To cry for Spenworth one day and for her Captain Laughton the next... I use the word literally; if a single day passed without her seeing him, she moped—for all the world like a love-sick girl who thinks her sweetheart is tiring of her. And when they met...

I have told you that people were beginning to smile, and that should have been humiliating enough to a woman who has achieved at least a dignity of position; one said that there was nothing in it, but that had no effect. Anything connected with divorce seems to breed a morbid curiosity; they were being spied on, whispered about; people who did not wait to consider that Kathleen was nearly forty assumed that she would inevitably marry again and decided no less obstinately that she would marry Laughton. Then the tittle-tattle press laid hold of her. I am told that certain women, probably known to both of us, earn a livelihood by collecting gossip at one's dinner-table and selling it at so much a scandal to these wretched papers. One is quite defenceless... I noticed for myself—and others were indefatigable in shewing me—little snippets saying that Lady Spenworth and Captain Laughton had been seen at this or that garish new restaurant. I believe that Kathleen's solicitors wrote to her a second time...

A man at such a season does occasionally contrive to keep his head, but Captain Laughton was no less blind and uncontrolled than Kathleen. Will and I had arranged to go away for a few days' motoring at the end of the summer. A car and unlimited petrol—for the first time since the war—; Sussex; the New Forest; perhaps a day in Dorset to take luncheon with the Spokeleighs; Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and up into Hereford. Delightful... We had planned it months ahead—before this unhappy divorce. The problem of Kathleen called for solution; we could not conveniently take her in the car, and, if I left her in Mount Street, I did want to be assured that there would be no unpleasantness...

"Captain Laughton," I said one night, when he had telephoned to know whether he might dine. It was on the tip of my tongue to say: "My good man, don't ask me! Refer your invitations to my cook..." He was such a boy that I never spoke to him as I truly honestly think he deserved... "Captain Laughton," I said, "will you promise that, while I'm away, you won't come here or try to see Lady Spenworth? She is in a position," I said, "where you can easily compromise her; a severer critic might say that you had compromised her already. If you have her interests at heart, you have a chance of proving your friendship to her..."

Am I unduly idealizing the past if I say that in my youth it would have been unnecessary to speak like that to any man? Captain Laughton was no longer a boy... Assuredly, in the school in which I was brought up, if one had spoken, one's word would have been law...

"Oh, Lady Ann, I've been talking to Kitty about that," he answered. I think "jaunty" is the word to describe his manner; great assurance, good humour, no thought that any one would even dream of giving him a rebuff. "We were thinking," he continued, "that it would be such fun if we could come too. I have a car, we wouldn't get in your way; but we can hardly go off unattended, and I quite agree with what you say about not compromising Kitty in London."

He took my breath away. We this, we that. Perhaps I shall take away yours if I tell you that I acquiesced in his really impudent proposal. Not without a struggle, you may be sure; and not without declaring my own terms. If there were any unpleasantness, I should be held responsible. I ordained that, if I had to play the dragon, I would be a dragon in earnest; Kathleen should come in my car, while my Will went with Captain Laughton. Can't you picture how the other arrangement would have worked out? The two of them mooning like rustic lovers, forgetful of time and everything else, the car breaking down to prolong their stolen joy... My dear, you could see it in their faces when I launched my ultimatum...

And you could see it a hundred times a day when our tour began. Any excuse to slip away and be together. When I suggested a détour to call on Sir Charles Spokeleigh, I was told at once that Captain Laughton did not know him and that Kathleen disliked his wife—or had a head-ache, I forget which. Kathleen always had a head-ache if one suggested a little constitutional before dinner. And Captain Laughton insisted on staying behind with her. There was no great harm, perhaps, in an out-of-the-way village which had escaped the contamination of the London press, but in places like Dorchester, Gloucester, Hereford... One was known; the papers would announce us among the new arrivals: "Lady Spenworth, Lady Ann Spenworth, Captain Laughton..." and so on and so forth. They could not afford to take the slightest risk. If I had yielded to their entreaties and then the car had broken down... The King's Proctor or whoever he is would never believe that it was an accident and that they were truly innocent. There would be the record in the register of the hotel...

I am thankful to say that we were spared all catastrophes; and I frankly enjoyed the tour, though it was impossible to escape a feeling of conspiracy. The only hitch occurred at the end as we came within thirty miles of Brackenbury. The roads there are not all that could be desired, and I should not have contemplated for a moment the cross-country journey, were it not that I saw an opportunity of healing the unhappy breach with my niece Phyllida. At present she is so terribly and unjustly bitter that there is nothing she will not believe and say. It occurred to me that, if I, the older woman, made the first advance... A gracious phrase or two, telling her that I could not pass her home—my old home—with the feeling that any rancour remained... You understand. It is always worth a little inconvenience to be gracious... And she had been speaking quite wickedly about me...

We lunched that day at Norton and had arranged to sleep at Rugely. I need hardly say that, when I suggested a détour to Brackenbury—an extra forty miles at most—, Kathleen discovered that she was tired out and Captain Laughton trumped up his usual excuse that he didn't know my brother and disliked "butting in" on strangers... Ridiculous! I've never met a man more completely self-possessed... For once I broke my rule and said that they might go on by themselves and order rooms for us in Rugely. They would leave a note for us at the General Post Office to say where we should meet them.

"Drive carefully!," Captain Laughton called out, as we started from Norton. "It will be the devil and all, if anything happens to you."

I did not understand this new-born solicitude until my boy Will undertook to enlighten me. And then I saw that perhaps I had been really imprudent. After a fortnight of heart-breaking discretion, I had allowed these two feather-brained creatures to drive off alone... If they failed to secure rooms and could not communicate with us in time... If for any reason we did not meet at the rendez-vous... I can assure you that I gave myself a headache, just thinking of one possible disaster after another. It would not have passed unnoticed; we had received ample evidence of that. Most dreadful misconstructions would be placed on their conduct—and on mine. The King's Proctor—really, the name is so absurd; one makes a mental picture of some strange court functionary taken straight from the pages of that delightful Lewis Carroll book—I became haunted by visions of the King's Proctor intervening to stay the divorce proceedings. And then, as Will said so lucidly, Spenworth and Kathleen would be tied to each other for the rest of their lives; gone would be her St. Martin's summer of romance, gone would be—no, romance is always to me a singularly beautiful word; I decline to associate it with what my boy calls Spenworth's latest shuffle of the matrimonial pack. The worst thing of all was that we should be held responsible.

"I wonder what Spenworth would do if the positions were reversed," said Will. "If the guv'nor were elder brother and wanted an heir, if he had the chance of stopping it and keeping the inheritance for himself... I wonder if he'd be able to resist."

"Temptation only seems strong to those who do not wish to withstand it," I said.

Our arrival at the Hall was hardly auspicious, as my head-ache had been growing so steadily worse that I had to ask my sister-in-law Ruth to let me lie down if there was to be any question of my driving on to Rugely. And, though I felt better after a cup of tea, the pain returned when I was left for a moment with Phyllida. I sought an opportunity for my little speech. Phyllida... It would be absurd to feel resentment against a mere child whose nerves were obviously unstrung, but I wondered then and I wonder now what my dear mother would have said if I had spoken, looked, behaved in such a way to any older woman. When she had slammed her way out of the room, I sank into a chair, trembling. You know whether I am a limp, nervous woman; when Ruth came in to ask—without a spice of welcome—whether we would not stay to dinner, I was too much upset to speak; I just nodded... If I had been stronger, I would not have remained another moment in the house; but Will had disappeared, and I was unequal to returning alone.

Brackenbury had the consideration to ask if I would not stay the night. I explained the very delicate position in which we had left Kathleen and Captain Laughton.

"Well, go if you feel up to it," said Brackenbury in what I thought was an off-hand manner to adopt to his sister. "Or send Will, if anybody can find what's happened to him. So long as they've some one to chaperon them, they're all right."

I would have stayed if Will could have stayed with me. I would have gone if that had been the only means of keeping by his side. Do you know, I had the feeling that in the length and breadth of that house he was the only one who cared whether I was well or ill, whether I lived or died ... almost...

"I'm not sure that I care to leave my mother while she's like this," said my boy rather timidly, when he was fetched in to join the council. It is unfashionable, I believe, for the modern son to shew his mother any overt tenderness...

"Well, some one's got to go," said Brackenbury with unnecessary impatience. "It's all up, if you leave those two without any one to keep them in countenance."

"We will both go," I said.

When the car was ordered, we went into the hall and waited... After about twenty minutes Brackenbury rang to find out the reason for the delay. The servant came back to say that part of what I think is called the magneto was missing. I chose my word carefully: not "injured" or "worn-out," but "missing"—as though some one had invaded the garage and removed the requisite part...

Brackenbury seemed to lose his head altogether.

"It's ten o'clock," he roared. "If you don't get to Hugely by mid-night, can't you see that you'll be too late to stop a scandal? If you want to stay the divorce, say so at once, say that you're scheming to tie up Spenworth in your own interests; and, by God, if it comes off, I'll say it until every decent man and woman will walk out of a room when any of your gang come into it... Phyllida," he shouted. "Order your car! Will can drive it..."

"Aren't you afraid he may lose his way?," asked Phyllida.

I don't attempt to reproduce her voice... It was silky ... oh, and wicked! I tell myself not to mind, I try to remember that she was overwrought and that her father was a criminal not to insist on her going away. Phyllida was deliberately charging us with a conspiracy to interrupt the divorce proceedings so that in time—goodness me, when Arthur and I are dead and buried!—our boy Will might succeed. Cheniston is a noble seat; the Spenworth title is old and was once honoured; but neither for my husband nor my son do I want them—at that cost.

I said nothing... I believe I murmured to myself: "You wicked child"; but, literally, I couldn't speak. I couldn't see ... or hear. Brackenbury was making furious arrangements. As in a dream I saw Ruth being wrapped in a fur-coat... A car came to the door and drove away... I asked my boy to ascertain which was my room and to lend me the support of his arm up the stairs...

Ruth telegraphed next day from Rugely—just two words—"All well." ...

Will and I returned to London by train. Phyllida was in the hall, reading the telegram, as I appeared.

"It nearly came off," she said. "I'm sorry—for your sake—that you've had a disappointment. Time, you will find, works wonders; and some day, perhaps, you will be more grateful than I can expect to find you now. If I were you, I would go right away..."

What she intended to convey I have no more idea than the man in the moon... The night before, her meaning was never in doubt; and I am waiting for her to put it into words, to charge Will or me or both of us with deliberately damaging our car...

But you will see that anything she says in her present state, poor child, must be accepted with charitable reserve.

IV
LADY ANN SPENWORTH IS CONTENT WITH A LITTLE MUSIC

Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): I am easily satisfied, I ask for nothing better than a little music after dinner. If only the rising generation were rather less self-conscious... When I was a girl, it was a law of the Medes and Persians that, if any one asked us to play or sing, we at once complied. None of this modern absurdity of not playing in public, insisting on the hush of the grave, looking round the room first to see if by chance there is some great maestro present... When I tell you that I once sang before Jenny Lind, being too young and ignorant to know who she was... And no one could have been sweeter...

I am not a musician in any sense of the word. (I am almost tempted to add: "Thank goodness!") When one sees and hears the devotees at Covent Garden, talking a language of their own which I am quite sure half of them don't understand, ready to set one right in a moment if one presumes to offer an opinion... If any one said to me: "I want to be a social success and I don't know how to begin," I should answer: "Learn the musical jargon and use it rudely, especially to people who for one reason or another have not had to fight their way into any little niche that they may occupy." I won't mention names... But I see you have guessed! And do you not agree? That man, for all his millions, would be received nowhere but for his alleged love of music; but take a double box at the opera, go every night, allow yourself to be seen at all the concerts, give immense parties of your own, support and bring out three new geniuses a month—everything is forgiven you!

I did not know him before the war ... when, by the way, I understand he passed by the name of Sir Adolf Erckmann. One saw, indeed, his not very prepossessing beard and bald head protruding from his box—a red, anxious face and single eye-glass, positively scattering bows right and left at the people he had succeeded in getting to know in his upward progress. Originally, I believe, a German-Jewish banker, with immense interests of all kinds in every part of the world and a very unsavoury domestic reputation. He was nothing to me, nor I to him; and it would have been no true kindness for me to "take him up," as Connie Maitland was always urging me to do. No doubt we should have been surfeited with invitations to Westbourne Terrace and Rock Hill; but we are not yet reduced to scouring London for free meals, like some people we could think of, and, without being cynical, I always felt that the Erckmanns would try to use us as a means of getting to know Spenworth and Brackenbury so that in time their triumphal progress might carry them to Cheniston and the Hall. If I could have done any good, it would have been a different matter; but you remember the Erckmanns were a test-case before the war, in the days when the energy of Christine Malleson and my Lady Maitland and the rest had broken down so many barriers which hitherto had been at least a convenience. Not only Spenworth and Brackenbury, but a dozen more as good as said that they could not continue to know me if I consented to know Erckmann...

When the war came, things materially altered. The Erckmanns vanished—in every sense of the word. The old friends, who had plagued me to receive him, now denied with cursing and swearing, as it were, saying: "I know not the man." One or two of the radical papers made a bitter personal attack on him because harmless German hair-dressers and waiters were being interned while this wealthy international financier, who was in a position to collect information and influence opinion, was left at large, thanks to highly-placed friends and a title. They said that some of the Cabinet were absolutely dependent on him... Though I saw nothing of the man, I could not help hearing of him, for the mob broke his windows in Westbourne Terrace whenever there was an air-raid; they said he was shewing lights to guide the Zeppelins to Paddington. Whether there was a word of truth in it I can't say... And, when he erected an enormous hospital at Rock Hill, even this was not accounted to him for righteousness: the men there held him to ransom, his own patients. Some one would whisper that he had a secret wireless apparatus on his roof; and immediately Sir Adolf would build another ward or a recreation-room or a picture theatre...

And in another sense they disappeared: as Will said, "Plant an Erckmann in England, and up comes an Erskine." Poor souls, if they had changed their names before the war and if some one could have performed an operation to rid Sir Adolphus of that appalling guttural accent... I really began to feel sorry for them when all their friends—led, if you please, by my Lady Maitland—turned the cold shoulder. "Satisfy me," I said to Arthur, "that he is a truly loyal subject, and I should like to see if I could not shew him a little kindness."

"He's a noxious creature," said Arthur with his usual intolerance, "but all these stories of spying and of blackmailing ministers are sheer flumdiddle. It isn't worth his while. Whoever wins, Erskine will make money. He's technically loyal; but he's a man without patriotism, because the whole world is his country. For the Lord's sake, don't throw your mantle over him; as long as there are national distinctions, I object to the way these international Jew financiers settle in England for their own convenience."

"I am not," I said, "concerned with that. You may be right. Perhaps we should all of us have done better to hold aloof and offer him no welcome at the outset. But, do you know, I feel a certain responsibility? Having been received here, having poured money like water into the pockets of his so-called friends, will he not form a low view of our sincerity and goodwill if every one abandons him at a time like this? I am disinterested: we have accepted nothing from him, we can look to him for nothing; but there is a reproach which I feel it my duty to remove."

I could not make Arthur see that people like Connie Maitland, liée with the poor man one moment and throwing him to the wolves the next... We are not all of us like that in England.

"Well, for Heaven's sake, don't ask him when I'm here," was the utmost encouragement I got from my husband.

Truly honestly, I think this stubborn opposition drove me perhaps farther than I had first intended to go. A day or two later I found myself in the same house as Sir Adolphus and I spoke to him...

"You," I said, "do not know me; and I only know you by sight, though I have long been acquainted with your record of generous support to the cause of music. Will you allow a total stranger to tell you her disgust with the venomous attacks which have been made on you since the beginning of the war?"

Little enough, you may think; but I believe those were the first kind words that he had heard for three or four years. The man is not prepossessing, but we formed quite a friendship...

"Will not you and Lady Erskine," I said, "come and dine with me some night? I am not in a position to entertain in any sense of the word; my boy is at the front, my husband is away on business; but perhaps, if a family party would not bore you..."

Though I called myself a total stranger, he knew very well who I was; indeed he told me that he had always wanted to meet Brackenbury and Spenworth (the Cheniston Romneys were, of course, his excuse)... We arranged a night ... though, when the time came, there was not more than the three of us. My relations with Spenworth are not so cordial that I derive the least pleasure from seeing him at my table; and one truly honestly never knows how he is going to behave. Brackenbury... If you do not want to accept an invitation, it is surely possible to decline it civilly...

"That fellow!," cried Brackenbury. "He ought to be interned."

"You really must not talk such nonsense," I said. "He is as loyal as you are."

"I wouldn't touch him with a pole before the war," said Brackenbury with his wonted elegance. "But now, when even his best friends refuse to meet him—"

"Exactly," I interrupted. "You would like him to feel that that is our standard of sincerity and good-will."

"But how is it your concern?," he asked. "You've kept clear of that gang in the past, so why dirty your hands with it now? If you fancy you're going to get money out of him, or a job for Will, I warn you that you're no match for him. He'll use you readily enough, but he never does anything for anybody without looking for a return. We don't want these gentry in England."

"I met him," I answered. "I liked him, I was sorry for him. And, if I try to shew him a little kindness, I really cannot allow you, Brackenbury, to make yourself a ruler and a judge. Do I gather that you and Ruth would prefer not to dine?"

"If it's money you want, I'd almost pay you not to meet him. That's how I feel about it."

All this, you understand, about a man he hardly knew by sight! ... I found it in my heart to wish that Brackenbury had been present when the Erskines dined. Nothing could have been more charming. He talked too wonderfully about music; I asked him a little about himself, he asked me about myself—that delightful first exchange when you are laying the foundations of friendship. Having no children himself, he was of course most anxious to hear about Will—what he had done before the war, where he was in France at present, what he proposed to do when the war was over... As he had introduced the subject, I told him frankly that I found great difficulty in making up my mind and should be truly grateful if he would tell me, from his very wide experience, what he considered most hopeful. He promised to let me know; and, a few days later, when I was dining with him, he asked whether I expected Will home any time soon on leave, as he always had a certain number of openings in his own various businesses. This from the man who never did anything for anybody unless he expected a rich return, the man who used people but never allowed any one to use him... I had asked for nothing; in my haste I had told Arthur that we could look to him for nothing. And if you knew; the long agony of anxiety that I have endured... I may say, ever since we took Will away from Eton. I have seen my darling home in Mount Street threatened... The war was a god-send: something to keep him occupied, a little pocket-money; and, so long as he was not in danger, I prayed for it to go on...

"My dear Sir Adolphus," I said, "the first time he comes home you shall meet him."

That was in October. Suddenly, lo and behold! the armistice was upon us, and the whole world was looking out for jobs. I laboured and strove to bring Will home; and, the moment he arrived, I invited Sir Adolphus to dine. He telegraphed that he was at Rock Hill, but could we not spend a few days with him there? My maid was out. I began to pack with trembling fingers...

Is it not curious that difficulties always seem to come from the least expected quarter? Here was Will's whole future secured; he had woken up, as it were, with a golden spoon in his mouth. My dear, I had the utmost difficulty in persuading him to come at all. What he wanted was a holiday, he said; after all he had gone through, he was entitled to a good time. And, though he had never met the Erskines, he had formed an unreasoning prejudice against them which was incomprehensible in any one of his breadth of mind... I do assure you that we reached a deadlock.

"Will," I said very firmly, "I ask you to come."

"And I refuse point-blank," he answered.

"You will be sorry for it later," I warned him, "when the opportunity has slipped beyond recall."

"Something will turn up," he predicted. Then, perhaps, he saw how his refusal was paining me, for he added: "I've fixed up with some fellows weeks ago that we'd all meet and see life." ...

I had already begun a letter to Lady Erskine, asking if we might postpone our visit for a day or two, when Will came in—very much upset—to say that his friends had broken faith with him; one had already gone to the country, the other two were busy presenting letters of introduction and arranging interviews... As if I had not known all along that, the moment war was over, the whole world would begin looking for jobs...

"Now," I said, "you can have no objection to accepting the Erskines' invitation."

"Barring that I don't want to go," Will rejoined. "I draw the line at Jews at all times and I don't in the least want to start work till I've had a holiday."

"But others are already in the field," I urged. Lady Maitland shewed the sublime assurance to reestablish communications and to ask Sir Adolphus, in the name of their old friendship, to find an opening for her second boy! "You can have all the holidays you want later."

To my delight I saw Will weakening.

"What's the management like?," he asked.

"Oh, my dear, everything is incredibly perfect. The house, the food, the music—"

The confessions of a well-meaning woman

The Confessions of aWell-Meaning Woman

ILADY ANN SPENWORTH PREFERS NOT TO DISCUSS HER OPERATION

IILADY ANN SPENWORTH REPUDIATES ALL RESPONSIBILITY

IIILADY ANN SPENWORTH TOUCHES RELUCTANTLY ON DIVORCE

IVLADY ANN SPENWORTH IS CONTENT WITH A LITTLE MUSIC

The Confessions of a
Well-Meaning Woman

I
LADY ANN SPENWORTH PREFERS NOT TO DISCUSS HER OPERATION

II
LADY ANN SPENWORTH REPUDIATES ALL RESPONSIBILITY

III
LADY ANN SPENWORTH TOUCHES RELUCTANTLY ON DIVORCE

IV
LADY ANN SPENWORTH IS CONTENT WITH A LITTLE MUSIC