BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NOVELS

• A Little More
• For Better, for Worse
• Glamour
• The Mirror and the Lamp
• The Devil’s Garden
• General Mallock’s Shadow
• In Cotton Wool
• Mrs. Thompson
• The Rest Cure
• Seymour Charlton
• Hill Rise
• The Guarded Flame
• Vivien
• The Ragged Messenger
• The Countess of Maybury

SHORT STORIES

• Life Can Never be the Same
• Odd Lengths
• Fabulous Fancies

SPINSTER
OF THIS PARISH

BY W. B. MAXWELL

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, INC.

THE PLIMPTON PRESS · NORWOOD · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SPINSTER OF THIS PARISH

TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Neither the characters nor the incidents of this story are in any way drawn from persons or events of real life; and in passages where the names of the living or the dead have been mentioned, they thus appear merely because the omission of them seemed impossible (in such a context) by reason of the world-wide fame of their holders.

SPINSTER OF THIS
PARISH

CHAPTER I

IT had been an odd impulse that made little Mildred Parker seek counsel and advice, or at least sympathy, from Miss Verinder in the first great crisis of her young life. The imperious necessity of opening her heart to somebody had of course lain behind the impulse, and Miss Verinder, although really only an acquaintance of Mildred’s parents, had been unusually kind and friendly to Mildred herself; but now, sitting in the drawing-room of Miss Verinder’s flat, listening to Miss Verinder’s pleasant emotionless voice, watching Miss Verinder with methodic care put away small odds and ends in an antique bureau, she felt the huge incongruity that there would be in speaking of love to an old maid of fifty.

“I won’t be a minute,” said Miss Verinder.

“I am not in the least hurry,” said Mildred quite untruthfully.

Waiting and watching, she thought that fifty years of age is nothing nowadays—if you are not an old maid, and if you decorate yourself properly. Some women of fifty are still dangerously attractive—they act leading parts on the stage, they appear in divorce cases, they marry their third husbands. But when once you have allowed old maidishness to take possession of you!

“A place for everything and everything in its place,” said Miss Verinder, closing a drawer and speaking as if to herself rather than to a visitor. “That is a good motto, isn’t it?” And she began to flick a silk handkerchief. “These are souvenirs—with only a sentimental value.”

Mildred glanced round the room. At the far end there were windows, through which one saw the shredded stem and drooping branches of a large plane tree, all transparent green and fiery orange now in the sunlight of a September afternoon; near the window at the other end there was a cage with a somnolent grey parrot; a singularly clean white cat lay stretching itself lazily on the seat of a chintz-covered chair; and everywhere there showed the neatness and order as well as the prettiness and taste that are only possible in rooms altogether free from the disturbing presence of clumsy man. Mildred, feeling more and more enervated, spoke admiringly but abruptly.

“I do like your flat, Miss Verinder.”

“It is convenient, isn’t it?” said Miss Verinder. “So close to the Brompton Road, so near everything. Strictly speaking,” she added with gentle precision, “it is not a flat at all, but what they call a maisonette. That straight staircase—almost like a ladder, isn’t it?—has been as it were stolen from the auctioneer’s offices on the ground floor; and it forms quite a private entrance. I prefer that. It gives a feeling,”—and she made a graceful vague gesture. “I think Oratory Gardens is the only place where you find flats constructed on this principle. I considered myself lucky in securing the lease—many years ago, you know. I wanted to be just here, because I have so many associations with this neighbourhood—the whole neighbourhood—as far as Kensington Gore and Knightsbridge, but not south or west, you know. I like the sight of the tree too.”

For a few moments she ceased dusting the small objects on the flap of the bureau and stood at the window, looking out; a tall thin dark figure with the sunlight behind her.

“It sometimes makes me feel as if I were miles away from Kensington”; and she gently nodded her head and half closed her eyes. “Far in the country. On the other side of the world, even.”

She was really a very charming, well-bred, elegant woman; and once upon a time, a long while ago, when those eyes of hers were full of brightness and lustre, when her sensitive lips were redder, when her pale unwrinkled cheeks had permanent colour instead of the fitful pinkness that now came and went so delicately, she must have been quite good-looking. Possibly she might then have been fascinating also. Her hair was really good, dark and strong, rolled in bulky waves about her forehead and in a lump at the back of her neck.

It was the demureness, the air of patience, endurance, and submissiveness proper to her age and condition, that spoilt her general effect and made her just a little dowdy, although always beautifully dressed. Even in the moment of recognising a certain natural feminine charm one sought for and found the stigmata of spinsterhood. She had no mannerisms, affectations, or silly tricks; and nevertheless.—But there is the bother of it. How and why do we judge people or form any opinion concerning them? As soon as you think you know what a woman is you begin to think she looks like what you have decided her to be. Perhaps one merely imagined and did not really see that outward suggestion of untilled fields, autumn leaves, and faded flowers, which has come to symbolise a particular combination of loneliness and neglect.

Essentially, she appeared to be spinsterhood personified. She stood so very much alone. Although, as was known, she had relatives, she did not appear to preserve any close intercourse with them. One never met robust full-blooded nieces putting up at the flat with “darling Aunt Emmeline” for a night or two; she showed you no portraits of middle-aged brothers and sisters, or snap-shots of children in embroidered aprons and sailor hats, the representatives of a budding generation; there was not even a ne’er-do-well nephew in the background, emerging into the foreground from time to time and extracting financial assistance as he passed through London on the way from Harrow to Sandhurst and from Sandhurst to his regiment.

Thus it seemed that the attitude of uninvolved spectator or disinterested critic of all that matters in life had been irrevocably forced upon her, and that, as in all such typical cases, she had taken up feeble little secondary interests to fill the vast blank spaces that should have been occupied by prime ones. She attended concerts, lectures, classes; played bridge for mild points; drank weak tea and nibbled dry biscuits at afternoon parties. Sometimes, abruptly going away by herself, she was absent for long periods; and one imagined her, charmingly and suitably dressed as usual, say in the solitude of Dartmoor, translating its purple heather and golden skies into the wishy-washy tints of her sketch-book; or gathering a sprig of fern near the Castle of Chillon in order to place it later between the pages of Byron’s poem—in a word, one imagined her travelling as old maids with ample means have always done, changing the outward scene but never the mental atmosphere. Occasionally, too, she shut herself in the flat, for weeks at a time, refusing to see anybody; and then one surmised that she was passing through those phases of nervous distress or semi-hysteria from the experience of which old maids can scarcely hope to escape altogether.

Naturally she offered a strong contrast to the very modern young lady of twenty sitting on one of the sofas, playing with her gauntlet gloves, and brimming over with youthfulness and ardent irrepressible life.

Mildred looked very pretty in her scant frock, low bodice, and short sleeves; after the manner of modern girls seeming, perhaps, a little commonplace or ordinary because so like so many others of her class and years, at once doll-like and self-possessed, shrewd and yet innocent. She was, or at least believed herself to be, entirely modern; although at the moment occupied with elemental things.

“Now,” said Miss Verinder, “I am all attention,” and she came from the bureau and drew a chair to the sofa.

“I’m so glad I’ve caught you alone,” said Mildred feebly.

“Well, my dear Mildred,” said Miss Verinder, “I am purposely alone, because, when I received your little note saying you wished to see me—I don’t know why—but somehow I had the suspicion that there was something you wanted to tell me, or to talk about.”

“Oh, Miss Verinder! How kind—how very kind!” said Mildred in a gush of gratitude.

Indeed this divination seemed to her a most striking proof of Miss Verinder’s power of sympathy; her own instinct had been correct; she was glad she had come here. She went on impulsively and confidently; telling Miss Verinder how she had half mooted the subject of her troubles to two comfortable matrons, but in each case she had felt rebuffed and had immediately “curled up,” feeling certain that neither would give her any help, but rather take the side of her family against her. Then she had made up her mind to tell Miss Verinder all about it.

“I knew you’d help me if you could, dear Miss Verinder. You have been so nice to me ever since we first met—and, I know it sounds conceited, but I felt you did really like me.”

“I do like you very much,” said Miss Verinder simply and affectionately; and she stretched out her hand and gave a little squeeze to one of Mildred’s soft warm paws. Then she folded her hands on her lap again.

“Thank you so much. I think you’re just an angel, Miss Verinder.”

“Why always Miss Verinder? Why don’t you call me Emmeline?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” said Mildred, flattered but overwhelmed by this surprising invitation. “It would seem such awful cheek.”

“Am I so venerable and forbidding?” asked Miss Verinder, with mild reproach.

“Of course not,” said Mildred eagerly. “No, I shall be delighted, if you’ll really let me. I think it’s absolutely sweet of you—Emmeline. Well now, Emmeline,”—and Mildred repeated the name firmly, as if feeling great satisfaction in using this unceremonious form of address;—“The fact is, Emmeline—”

And with a voluble flood she narrated how she had fallen deeply and perhaps even foolishly in love with a young man; how Mr. and Mrs. Parker had made a monstrous absurd fuss about it; and how, because of it, the once comfortable home in Ennismore Gardens was swept with tempest, wrath, and pain.

“You understand, Emmeline? I mean to say, they really are behaving like people who have been bitten by a mad dog. In one way, I mean to say—you know—it’s all too ridiculous for words. The things they say! The things, don’t you know, they threaten to do. Well, I mean to say—”

Mildred’s eyes were flashing, she pulled her gloves from hand to hand, and, prattling on, became so involved with mean-to-says and don’t-you-knows that she floundered suddenly to silence.

“Emmeline,” and she changed her position on the sofa, “I think I’d better start at the very beginning.”

“That is always a good place to start at,” said Miss Verinder, smiling sympathetically.

“Then what I want you to understand is that I’m very much in earnest. It’s no silliness—or infatuation, as mother says—or any rot of that sort. It’s the real thing.” As she said this Mildred’s pretty commonplace little face became all soft and tender, her lips quivered, and in spite of her modernity she had the aspect of a quite small child who will burst into tears if you speak harshly to it. “You must understand,” and she suddenly turned her head away, “I wasn’t even thinking of love—much less hunting for it. It came upon me like a thunderclap.”

“Like a thunderclap!” Miss Verinder echoed the words, and drew in her breath, making the sound of a faint sigh. “Go on, Mildred dear.”

“Well then,” and Mildred looked round again, with a child-like air of triumph. “I would have you to know also that the man I’ve fallen in love with is very famous.”

Miss Verinder started and looked at her intently.

“But it’s nothing to do with his fame that has made me love him.”

Again Miss Verinder started, slightly.

“Of course I don’t mean to say that I wasn’t influenced by all that. You know what I mean? Seeing his photographs in the papers! Hearing what other girls said about him. And I own that I admired him before I knew him, but it was for himself and nothing else that I fell in love with him directly I did get to know him. The fact that he was celebrated and a favourite of the public was nothing then.”

And, now fairly started, Mildred opened her heart as she had never done before. She told Miss Verinder all she felt of the torturing bliss and exquisite pain that honest straightforward young girls suffer when this most potent of fevers catches them without warning, like a thunderclap. The tale of Mildred’s frenzied longings and cravings and hopes and fears brought faint old-maidish blushes to the smooth ivory of Miss Verinder’s cheeks. It was as though Mildred, like a small house on fire, had lit up a faint reflection in the far distance of a tranquil evening sky.

“There,” said Mildred, ceasing to flash and becoming quite calm. “Oh, Emmeline, that has done me good—even if you can’t help me. You know what I mean? Just to get it off one’s chest for once.” And then she laughed in a deprecating manner. “But I’m afraid I’m shocking you most frightfully.”

“No, my dear,” said Miss Verinder, “you are not shocking me in the least.”

“You are so kind. Well then, now you do see I’m in earnest, and how ridiculous it is for one’s people—”

“Yes. But who is he, Mildred? You haven’t told me yet.”

“Alwyn Beckett,” said Mildred looking confident and triumphant.

But great as was Miss Verinder’s sympathy, she could not make her face show any signs of intelligent recognition. She reminded Mildred that she lived very much out of the world. It would naturally appear ignorant and stupid, but she felt forced again to ask the question: Who is he?

“The actor,” said Mildred.

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Verinder. “You must not be surprised if I don’t know him by reputation, because I never go to the play, and am quite out of touch with theatrical people”; and she paused, smiling as if involuntarily amused by some secret thought. “The utmost I do in that direction is occasionally to go to one of these cinema theatres.”

“Oh, but he is on the films too,” said Mildred proudly.

“In what piece is he acting at the present time?”

“He is understudying the two big parts in Five Old Men and a Dog.”

“Ah, yes?”

Then Mildred burst forth about her family. “Of course I know they can’t keep us apart. Of course they’ve no right to interfere with me. But it isn’t exactly that. Good gracious, no, this is 1920, not 1820. Of course they can do what they’re doing now—I mean to say, just making hell for me at home. It’s irritating, but I must put up with it. Only I simply can’t stand their attitude to Alwyn”; and Mildred grew warm. “What are they, I’d like to know—to look down upon the stage!”

Miss Verinder said that the notion of treating the stage with contempt did certainly sound rather old-fashioned nowadays.

“Old-fashioned! I should think so. Even if they were anybody—which they aren’t. Do you know what my grandfather was? No. Well, I don’t myself. Father’s been jolly careful to prevent us knowing; but I know this—he wasn’t a gentleman. I mean, he hadn’t the smallest pretensions to being one. It was up in the north, and I believe he was just a person in a shop; you know, not owning the shop, but serving behind the counter—and he married grannie for her money. She wasn’t anything either. The elderly ugly daughter of some manufacturing people. But by a fluke of luck her share in the business somehow turned up trumps, so that while father was still a boy they were rich, and able to send him to Rugby and Cambridge. Then, when grandfather died, he and mother came to London, and bought the house in Ennismore Gardens.” Saying this, Mildred laughed scornfully. “Yes, and amused themselves by pretending that they’ve lived in it for ten generations.”

“They could hardly have done that,” said Miss Verinder, smiling; “because Ennismore Gardens have not been built long enough.”

“No, exactly. But you know what I mean”; and Mildred spoke with almost tragic force. “Father’s just a snob, and mother’s every bit as bad.”

Miss Verinder reproved her for speaking disrespectfully of her parents.

“I know, I know, Emmeline;” and Mildred hastened to assure her that till now she had always been fond of her parents—“poor dears.” She had been loyal too, entering into their little foolishnesses, never giving the show away; and she could feel fond of them again, if only they would behave decently.

Miss Verinder asked, “Do they really base their objections to—Forgive me, dear. What is his name again? Mr. Beckett. Yes, of course. Well, do they only base their objection on the fact that he is an actor?”

A crimson wave of indignation flowed upward from Mildred’s neck to her forehead, while she explained how they had the effrontery to say their real objection was—not so much that he was an actor, as that he was a bad actor.

“Who are they to judge?” said Mildred hotly; and for a space she held forth concerning the young man’s brilliant talent.

Miss Verinder asking how matters stood at the moment, Mildred told her that the outrageous Mr. Parker had simply forbidden them to meet. “But we do meet of course.” And with a few words she conjured up a picture of their clandestine meetings late at night in Ennismore Gardens itself—he driving as fast as taxi-cab would bring him from the theatre, she slipping out of the house to wait for him, and the two of them pacing slowly through that columned entrance by the mews and along the passage by the churchyard, in the warm darkness beneath the trees; peered at curiously by soft-footed policemen; encountering, as it seemed, all the servant-maids of the neighbourhood similarly engaged with their sweethearts. “Isn’t it degrading, Emmeline, to be forced to do such a thing?”

And again she spoke of love and its invincible claims. She knew, she said, that her destiny was all in her own hands. If she lost Alwyn, she would have herself to thank, and it would be no use to put the blame on anybody else. It was this thought that sometimes made her feel desperate—and Alwyn too. Her parents could not of course really come between them. But then there is the money question. What they can do is just to cut her off without a penny; and really, seeing them behave like such pigs, one could believe them capable of doing it. Well, that is not fair. That is tommy rot. Suppose, after all, darling Alwyn should prove, not a bad actor, but hardly quite the tremendous one that she hopes he is; then, in that case, if they had a proper settlement—“the usual thing,” with parents as well-off as hers—she could take him off the stage. There were heaps of things she could do with him. Or if—as is far more probable—he makes a colossal success, money will be useful to set him up in management. You must look ahead; although, when you are madly in love, it is difficult to do so.

Miss Verinder, watching her thoughtfully, inquired if all these ideas had been prompted by Alwyn himself; and Mildred said no, he was a thousand miles above such considerations. He cared for nothing but her.

“Emmeline—as I say, you’re so awfully kind, and I do feel that I need a word of advice from someone older than myself.” At this point of the interview, it was curious to observe in Mildred that mixture of shrewdness and innocence which makes the typical modern girl seem at once so shallow and so baffling. She still playfully tormented the yellow gauntlet gloves; her eyes shone with childish candour; but there was something a little hard and business-like about the red lips that only a moment ago had been pouting petulantly. “My own inclination is to chuck over everything and do something desperate—you know, just to run off with him.”

“And marry him without your parents’ consent?”

“Or not marry him,” said Mildred, pulling at her gloves.

“Mildred!” said Miss Verinder, with a little cry. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what I mean,” said Mildred, “is that if they’re so damned old-fashioned, I don’t see why they shouldn’t stew in their own gravy—at least for a bit. Don’t you see? When they find I’m gone, in that way, if they’re really genuine in their feelings, it will be the regular Mid-Victorian business. The lost child—our daughter gone to perdition. Get her married now to the scoundrel that has lured her away. Make her an honest woman at any price—and, by Jove,” said Mildred, with a little ripple of innocent laughter, “I’ll jolly well make them pay the price. You know, no more than is right—the usual. I don’t mean blackmailing them or anything like that.”

“Mildred,” said Miss Verinder, with an unexpectedly firm tone of voice, “you and I must talk very seriously. And you must listen to me, dear, and not be impatient if what I urge—Ah, yes.”

Interrupted by the opening of the door, she checked herself.

It was the faithful maid Louisa—a grey-haired woman older than Miss Verinder, neat yet stately in her black dress and black silk apron; just such an efficient long-tried maid-housekeeper as one would expect such a mistress to have. Louisa was bringing them tea. At sight of her the white cat dropped heavily from its easy chair, stalked forward, and rubbed itself against Miss Verinder’s ankles; while the grey parrot as promptly awoke, flapped its wings, and screamed. Tea meant something to these two dependents.

“Look sharp, Louisa,” said the parrot, expressing the wish of both in a gruff monotone. “Look sharp, Louisa. Louisa. Louisa.”

Louisa, bringing a collapsible table from the wall, smiled sedately.

“He always says that,” Miss Verinder explained. “It was taught to him a long time ago—and with great difficulty. Only as a joke,” she added. “For Louisa is always up to time—very much on the spot, as you young people say.”

Louisa opened the table in front of her mistress, brought the tea tray with kettle and tea-pot; went out again and returned with trays carrying cakes, bread and butter, and so forth, which she placed on smaller tables; finally brought a silver tea-caddy, and lit the lamp under the kettle.

“It is just on the boil, miss.”

“Thank you, Louisa.”

Then Miss Verinder made the tea. Mildred watched her, fascinated although preoccupied; it was all so neat and careful and methodic. “One spoonful for you and one for me.” After warming the tea-pot with a very little hot water, Miss Verinder was using not a spoon but a queer little silver shovel to put in the tea. “One for the pot—and one for luck! Now, dear, you see that bolt beneath the kettle? Pull it out for me, will you? That’s it.” And for a moment she was almost invisible as the steam rose. “Louisa never fails me. She knows the proverb that ‘If the water not boiling be, filling the tea-pot spoils the tea.’ One lump or two?”

In spite of emotion, or because of it, Mildred was hungry; and she ate freely of the thin bread and butter and the sugar-covered cake, till gradually these dainties seemed to turn to dust and ashes in her mouth while she listened to Miss Verinder’s advice.

Miss Verinder indeed displayed an astoundingly accurate comprehension of her young friend’s state of mind; but truly every word she said might have been heard with cordial approval by Mr. and Mrs. Parker themselves had they been present.

Mildred must not be silly; Mildred must be a sensible girl; Mildred must summon patience to her aid, consider other people’s feelings as well as her own, allow time to work on her behalf.

Mildred put down her tea-cup with a nervous jerk; she was bitterly disappointed; and yet what different sort of advice could she have expected from the owner of this room, with its caged bird, its cat of dubious gender, its chintzes, water colour drawings, and embroidered footstool—this room used only by elderly women, in which the sound of a real man’s voice had never once been heard? Clergymen came here no doubt for subscriptions; and faded old bachelors, like old maids themselves, to gossip amiably—of books, china, pictures, or anything else without any real life in it. Completely enervated, Mildred felt again that sense of fantastic incongruity between the subject of her late discourse and its auditor. As well might she have gone to the nuns at Roehampton and told her tale there.

Moreover, while talking, Miss Verinder performed certain little actions which, as Mildred guessed, had become purely automatic from long habit—such as pouring out milk and tea in a saucer and placing it on the floor for the cat, going across the room and inserting morsels of the sugary cake between the cage bars for the parrot. Nevertheless, although thus to be interpreted, they added to the girl’s distress.

Miss Verinder went on talking with earnestness and affection. She would help, to the best of her ability, she would take the first chance of a chat with Mrs. Parker. But really and truly it is all nonsense to speak of kicking over the traces, outraging propriety or convention, and that sort of thing. Mildred must wait. At any rate, one must not give way to one’s passions.

Then Mildred blurted it out; clothed her thought in very plain words. “But, dear Miss Verinder, perhaps you don’t know what the passions are.”

“Why should you assume that?” said Miss Verinder gently.

Mildred apologised for a stupid phrase or explained it away. Unconsciously she had ceased to address Miss Verinder by her Christian name, and she pleaded with great strength for her own point of view. It was the fiery cry of youth. Whatever else you can do when you are young—so she said in effect—there is one thing you cannot do, and that is, wait.

“Miss Verinder, I feel that I want us to be bound together—now—and forever. Suppose we put it off, who can say what would happen? Accidents—anything—He might grow tired of waiting—or—or change his mind.”

“Oh, no, dear. If there is any chance of that, it is all the more reason for not being in a hurry.”

“Miss Verinder, I believe you think I’m horrid about it; but on my honour I’m not. My love for Alwyn and his for me is a nice love. Really and truly it is.”

“I’m quite sure yours is.”

“His too.” Suddenly and unexpectedly Mildred began to cry. She did not gasp or sob; her lips trembled, her eyes filled with tears, overflowed, and in a moment her whole face was wet, looking like the face of a child of six who has been caught in an April shower. She dabbed it with a totally inadequate handkerchief to prevent the drops from falling on her pretty frock, and continued talking. She herself looked prettier now than at any time during the visit; that touch of calculating sagacity, with all other attributes of modernness, had gone; only the natural innocence and simplicity remained. “When we have been together for hours and hours—alone together—up the river—anywhere—sometimes he hasn’t even once kissed me. And at the time I haven’t even noticed it. I’ve only thought of it afterwards, you know. We have been just perfectly happy being together—not wanting anything else on earth. Miss Verinder, you see what I mean? I only tell you to make you see what our love is. It’s because of it that I’m sure of myself—yes, Miss Verinder, I am really.”

And dabbing her eyes with vigour, she emphasised the argument that in linking yourself to anyone of the other sex you are quite safe when you find the desired companion as well as the lover. Companionship with Alwyn was the essential thing for which she longed. It would be too dreadful to lose it—to risk losing it. Suppose she let the chance slip, suppose she allowed Fate acting under the more usual title of Accident to rob her of this felicity, it was probable that she would never meet anybody else for whom she could care in the same way, or even so much as “the snuff of a candle.” She would be spiritually alone forever. Under such conditions she felt that she simply could not face her life; and, carried away with emotion and momentarily forgetful of the personage she addressed, she sketched vividly the situation of a middle-aged, soon-to-be old spinster—alone, with nothing to hope for.

“But one always goes on hoping,” said Miss Verinder firmly.

She said the words indeed with such quiet strength that Mildred, startled and surprised, asked her what she meant.

Miss Verinder did not answer explicitly. She came and sat beside Mildred on the sofa, put her arm round the girl’s slim waist, and began to repeat or sum up the counsel that she had already given.

Mildred for a minute was quite unable to listen; she sat looking at her wondering. One always goes on hoping! What an extraordinary queer thing to say. Could it be possible that Miss Verinder still tried to brighten the cold monotony of life with sentimental or romantic dreams—did she at her age still cherish the idea that a knight would one day come to smash the prison bars of solitude, break the chains of habit, and lead her out into freedom and light—did she, poor dear kind soul, still really hope there was somewhere on this broad strange earth a man stout enough and bold enough to save her from dying as an old maid? These questioning thoughts touched little Mildred’s heart with something far removed from mirth, rather a pitying pain. They drove away her self-absorbed emotion; they steadied her.

“Yes, Miss Verinder, I am really giving weight to everything you say.”

Miss Verinder was gently yet firmly summing up. Mildred must promise not to act rashly. In time—the young man proving patient and worthy—her parents may agree to an engagement. In time—they shewing themselves obdurate and unreasonable—one can begin to think of marriage without their consent. But this suggestion of an unsanctified bolt, an irregular union, entered into for whatever aim or purpose—oh, no, never.

“Believe me, Mildred dear, it is only the very strongest characters that can brave public opinion—and you must remember, public opinion is represented by your father and mother. Yes, I am sure—to go right through with anything of that kind, immense self-control, really almost an iron nerve is required. That is, if it is to be done successfully.

“And, Mildred,” said Miss Verinder, with an affectionate pressure of the surrounding arm, “You mustn’t think I don’t know what I am talking about. I don’t want you to dismiss me as antiquated and squeamish.”

“Oh, no, Miss Verinder.”

“As you said, this is 1920; and people are always saying how tremendously the world has changed; but I often think the changes are not as big as people pretend—I think they are most of them on the surface, as it were, and not going deep. Of course, when I was young, girls had much less freedom. Oh, yes, much less—and people will tell you that girls now can do what they like, and do do it.” Saying this, Miss Verinder had a demure little smile. “So to speak, girls are allowed to govern almost everything—but then they must never omit to govern themselves. Oh, no, Mildred,” and she shook her head. “In that, public opinion is quite unchanged. I mean for people of our class, Mildred. For those above us and below us it may be quite different. I can’t say. But you’re not a barmaid or a duchess either—are you?”

“No, Miss Verinder,” said Mildred meekly.

“And you have to think of your Alwyn and the effect it might produce on him. There is the danger that he might fail you in a way you haven’t considered. No, no—I don’t for a moment mean play you false. Oh, no. But, perhaps, it is only the very finest natures that can—accept—ah—this particular kind of surrender or self-sacrifice from a woman and still hold her quite as high in their minds as they did before—ah—the surrender occurred.

“There, Mildred dear. I am going to help you for all I am worth, and you are going to be wise. And don’t—I beg you—forget this. I have my reasons for all I have said.”

Mildred, nipping through the traffic of the Brompton Road with the composure and agility of up-to-date girls, and then making her way thoughtfully past the Oratory and into Ennismore Gardens, was wondering what were Miss Verinder’s reasons.

CHAPTER II

MISS VERINDER’S reasons were as follows: In the year 1895, when Queen Victoria still reigned upon the throne, when people still talked of the London season and described it as being good or bad, a brilliant season or a dull season, Emmeline Verinder was living very comfortably with her parents in one of the largest houses of Prince’s Gate. Then, unexpectedly and for the first time, she and love bowed, touched hands, and made acquaintance. The thing came upon her like a thunder-clap.

It began on a June evening just before midnight; and Mr. Verinder, her father, thinking afterwards of that summer night, used to feel a kind of warm prickly irritation, as though one of Destiny’s invisible imps was teasing the back of his stout neck with stinging nettles. It might have happened anyhow, but he could not banish the annoying recollection that he himself had assisted in getting it started. When his wife placidly asked whether the effort was worth while, it was he who had decided that, having accepted the invitation, they must certainly go to Mrs. Clutton’s musical party.

And he had said so not truly because he desired to go, but because of vague, almost organic sensations which told him that if you are a well-preserved man of sixty who is also a personage of a certain importance, who lives in Prince’s Gate, with plenty of money, horses, carriages, an ample ornate wife, one charming beautifully dressed single daughter, and another daughter, married, but now staying on a visit under your roof—when you find yourself so situated and so surrounded, there is something inadequate and unimpressive if you go to bed at eleven o’clock in the height of the London season.

They went, then, the four of them; he, Mrs. Verinder, Emmeline, and Margaret Pratt, her married sister—down the newly-named Exhibition Road, round the corner to one of the largest houses in the Cromwell Road. There would have been space in the closed landau for Eustace, the son and brother; he could have sat between Emmeline and Margaret; but he was attending a banquet as the guest of a city company.

There had been a dinner-party at Mrs. Clutton’s and the Verinders with many others were asked for the music. The concluding strains of Tosti’s Good-Bye floated down the staircase to meet them as they entered the inner hall, through which Mr. Verinder’s ladies swept onward to some library or boudoir at the back of the building, now organised as a place for depositing velvet coats and feathered wraps. Mr. Verinder, having been relieved of his coat and opera hat, stood waiting for them—large, grey-headed, dignified, and yet urbane, exchanging suave civilities with other prosperous ladies and gentlemen, who had arrived just before him. It was a typical evening party of the period—awning, drugget, and linkmen outside; inside, a full pressure on the electric light; large palms, together with masses of flowers brought in for the occasion; extraneous help also in the dining-room, now set as a brilliant supper scene; the servants of the house obliterated, or, at least, standing back behind the numerous grave hirelings in white waistcoats, who, but for their solemnity, might so easily have been mistaken for some of Mrs. Clutton’s visitors.

It should be noted that at this period the neighbourhood still had a distinct society of its own; not, of course, because the antiquated country custom of calling on one another merely as neighbours was practised by its residents, but because this modern spacious end of the town, with no traditions earlier than the Prince Consort, seemed to have been planned and constructed for a particular class of which the members were likely to foregather—fairly rich prosperous people, eminently respectable if somewhat colourless people; merchants, bankers, judges of the High Court, Queen’s counsel of the Parliamentary bar, heads of departments in the civil service; here and there a doctor who had been made a baronet, a successful recently knighted architect, a chartered accountant doing government work, and so on. These and their families meddled not at all, in the year 1895, with fashion and aristocracy; punctual in the regulation attendance at drawing-rooms and levées, but bringing no influence to bear in order to secure command for state concerts and balls; prompt with bouquet or curtsey when a princess opened one of their bazaars, but never fawning on the lady-in-waiting with hints that it would be a pleasure as well as an honour if her Royal Highness would come to luncheon one day, at number so-and-so Prince’s Gardens; they felt and were sufficient for themselves. Untempted by the lure of a vanishing Bohemia, they did not traffic either with artistic circles; they bought pictures and read books without desiring to know the creators of such amenities; they enjoyed the play, but thought a row of footlights a very sensible, useful barrier between comedians of both sexes and the rest of the world.

Thus Mr. Verinder found himself immediately among his friends, and soon learned of something a little unusual about to-night’s assembly. Anthony Dyke, the famous explorer, was here. He had dined here, and was now upstairs listening to the music.

“Oh, that fellow,” said Mr. Verinder. “What a fuss they’re making about him. You see his name everywhere. By the way, I rather thought he was booked to dine with the Salmon-Curers’ Company this evening. My son went there, quite expecting to have a peep at him.”

But old Sir Timothy Smith, given a knighthood last Christmas for designing the market-hall of a northern city, assured Mr. Verinder that the great man had dined with Mrs. Clutton and no one else.

“Refresh my memory about him,” said Mr. Verinder. “I remember the Antarctic voyages. But what’s his latest?”

“Well, nothing since that astounding performance in the Andes.”

“Some of that has been questioned, hasn’t it? Travellers’ tales, what!” said Mr. Verinder, with a large tolerant smile. “Ah, there you are, my dear.”

Mrs. Verinder, sailing forth splendidly from the cloak-room, was at his elbow.

“Dyke, the explorer, is here,” she said.

“Yes, so Sir Timothy was telling me. Lead on, my dear.”

And Mrs. Verinder led on, broad but splendid still in the back-view, carrying her train with a stout round forearm, followed by the grand young married lady and the slim demurely graceful girl, and lastly by Mr. Verinder. As they went upstairs, the music took a classical turn—a turn for the worse, Mr. Verinder considered.

After an ill-timed stentorian announcement, they were received in the midst of a few hushes, with silent cordiality by Mrs. Clutton. She was amiable and friendly as ever, leading Mrs. Verinder to a seat when the music stopped, but a little nervous or self-conscious by reason of the presence of the lion of the season.

“Yes, the big man leaning against the wall.”

It would have been impossible to make any mistake. You could not see him without recognising him—since his portrait had become so familiar in the illustrated newspapers, as well as on the cover of that remarkable book of his. And seeing him you could scarcely help struggling hard to form a clear conception of what the man really might be.

In size he was very big, but looking still bigger than the true iron frame of him because of his loose garments—and one thought at once that of course he hated all confinements and restrictions, even those entailed by well-cut neatly-fitting clothes; with dark hair, blue eyes, a reddish beard, and shoulders that seemed too heavy; of enormous energy, the fire or lust for effort that seems incomprehensibly to renew itself in the grossest excesses of gratification; explosive and uncontrollable, as men like him must always be, but with that curious streak of softness, even of sentimentality, which goes sometimes with such characters. Just as he looked bigger than his size, he looked older than his years; but this impression may have been derived less from the marks and tints left upon him by tempest and strife than from the known record of his achievements. It was difficult to believe that he had done so much and yet was only thirty-seven. Above all else, unavoidably confusing judgment and driving one back to intuitions, there was a glamour cast about him by the deeply proved quality of courage—a glamour, it should be remembered, very much more rare and therefore very much more potent and alluring then than now.

“Did you hear him laugh?”

Everybody was whispering about him, thinking of him, ostentatiously taking no notice of him—except the privileged few who from time to time were being presented to him.

After twenty minutes or so Mrs. Clutton introduced Mr. Verinder to him, and they seemed to get on well together. Mr. Verinder, pleased to show that he knew a good deal of geography, asked intelligent questions, and felt flattered by the adventurer’s eager expansive manner of giving full details in reply. Though he made you feel small physically, he did not make you feel small mentally. He said it was pleasant to be back in the old country, and agreed with Mr. Verinder that—all said and done—there was no place like London. Asked how long he intended to honour the metropolis with his presence, he laughed, and said it depended on circumstances, but he certainly should not stay more than a month or two. He was “taking the hat round,” as he explained with a laugh, trying to raise funds towards another Antarctic expedition. “The fact is, Mr. Verinder”—and Mr. Verinder was not ill-pleased to observe that his name had been picked up so quickly and correctly—“in my trade, capital is very necessary. The most successful ventures are those that are best fitted out. The more money you have behind you, the further you go.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Verinder, laughing in his turn, “that that may be said of all other trades, Mr. Dyke, as well as yours; but I quite understand what you mean. Equipment. Equipment. And no doubt many risks could be minimized by foresight and wise outlay.”

Dyke became quite exuberant at finding Mr. Verinder so intelligent and sympathetic; his loud open-air voice could be heard throughout the length of Mrs. Clutton’s double drawing-room. He was giving Mr. Verinder more and more details, with a child-like enthusiasm, and he would not stop when the music began again. No one dared say hush to him, but the decorum of Mr. Verinder’s manner gradually restrained him. In regard to such interruptions, he pleased Mr. Verinder most of all by declaring that this music was incomprehensible to him—over his head; and at once concurring in Mr. Verinder’s opinion that a ballad concert at the Albert Hall was the real stuff, and laughing most heartily when Mr. Verinder said that a just finished arrangement of Bach for the violin and piano might, in the popular phrase, have been the tune the old cow died of. Then, their relations having reached this very cordial stage, Anthony Dyke said abruptly—“I’m a fish out of water here. I wonder if by chance you could tell me the name of that girl over there.”

“Which one?” asked Mr. Verinder.

“That one,” said Dyke, not of course pointing with his hand in an uncouth manner, but only making slight yet significant signs with his dark eyebrows and blue eyes. “Now—the one using her fan. I’d like to get somebody to introduce me to her.”

“I can supply the information, and gratify your wish,” said Mr. Verinder, in a tone so urbane that it was robbed of any pompousness. “She is my daughter.”

“Oh, really!” said Dyke, suddenly staring at him as if he didn’t believe it. Then he laughed once more, but not loudly, shyly. “I hope it didn’t sound odd my saying that. From living alone so much, I bang out whatever comes into my mind. You must look on me as the untutored savage and make excuses for me.”

“None are necessary,” said Mr. Verinder.

Emmeline, on the other side of the room, was engaged in conversation with their friend Mrs. Bell, whose house was one of the biggest in Queen’s Gate. Her father beckoned her; and as she did not observe the signal, went across to fetch her, bringing her back with him and feeling proud of her as something that belonged to him and did him credit. Indeed, the circumstance that in a room full of other well-dressed women she had drawn the attention of this simple middle-aged wanderer, seemed a compliment to the whole family.

He thought that she looked very nice as she stood there smiling, after Mr. Dyke shook hands; so modest and quiet, so essentially ladylike, so completely everything he would have wished; her eyes shining, and a little colour in her usually rather pale cheeks, brought there from the excitement caused by meeting a really celebrated person; but with no shyness or awkwardness perceptible in voice or manner—just a raising of the arched eyebrows above the straight well-cut nose and that frank smile about the sweetly gentle mouth in order to show courteous interest in everything that was being said. The cream satin dress, too, with the silver and pearl ornamentation straight across the bodice, the shoulder puffs, the long white gloves, and the enormous fan, were all exactly the right thing, all very becoming. Mr. Verinder liked also, now that he considered the matter, this method of arranging the dark hair—quite low on the forehead and ascending beneath bands of gold ribbon to a high crest, brushed up from the back of her neck, as you saw when she turned round, and secured by a broad jewelled comb. This, the very latest mode, suited Emmeline. She had plenty of hair. Her father felt well satisfied with Emmeline’s appearance.

They all three remained talking together, and Dyke would not relinquish the father and daughter when his hostess came and made further introductions. He drew the new people into the talk or let them slide altogether, but he hung on to the other two, moving with them if they moved. Mr. Verinder had a good-humoured gratified feeling that the lion had taken to him, and natural fierceness had disappeared in impulsive affection; it was, so to speak, a tame lion following him about, ready to eat out of his hand. But lionising, like everything else in a well-regulated world, must have its limits; you cannot neglect your duties at an evening party to gratify a stranger’s hunger for your society, however famous that stranger may be. Mr. Verinder wished to rejoin his wife, and, using tact, he extricated himself. Yet his tact was not sufficient to extricate Emmeline as well.

One saw them standing together on the staircase, and later they were sitting together in a remote corner of the supper-room; he still telling her wonderful things, so that one heard the boom of his eager tones and the sound of her pretty girlish voice chiming in—a flute helping, not interrupting the ’cello or the bigger reeds. “Oh, but how exciting that must have been! Did you really, Mr. Dyke? What presence of mind.”

When Mrs. Verinder with Margaret broke up the chat and said it was time to go, Emmeline gave a little start and looked at her as if for the moment she did not recognize her; then, as if remembering, she made the traveller known to her.

In the carriage, going up Exhibition Road, Mr. Verinder praised him. He said that he was a breezy, open hearted, engaging creature, and he would like to ask him to dinner. Get a few friends to meet him, what?

Mrs. Verinder said, “He has asked Margaret and Emmeline to tea to-morrow at Hurlingham. They could give him a message.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Verinder, “has he asked you two girls out for a little treat? Well, that’s very kind and friendly of him.”

At this date the dinner-party was still an unshaken British institution, a stately serious affair in any circumstances, like matrimony, not to be entered into lightly, and when conducted on the grand scale habitual to Prince’s Gate, all preliminaries needed thoughtful care. For the minute of time before the horses pulled up, Mr. and Mrs. Verinder were both turning things over in their minds.

To all of them, as they entered the hall, there came that vague and usually unanalysed sensation which most people experience on returning home from a party; it is a faint shock of surprise caused by the silence and tranquillity after the noise and commotion; as if, because you have been hearing music, chattering, drinking wine, getting warm in a crowd, you expect your house to show that it has also passed through slight agitation and excitement. For a moment you are consciously or unconsciously displeased that it should have been quite unconcerned in anything that concerned you so much; then the solidness of the fact seems to steady your nerves and bring you comfort. Home again!

In the wisely restricted lamp-light turned on for them by the butler, one saw pallid marble nymphs and gods with black caves of shadow behind them, the squat richly carved legs of heavy tables whose further ends were lost in gloom, the gilt balustrade of the staircase glittering, and the stairs themselves rising sharply and as sharply turning till they grew dim and faded out on a level with the first floor. Above that all was dark, and one had an impression of the house stretching upward in the darkness to a fantastic height. The butler moving ahead gave them of a sudden a doorway of yellow flames, so dazzling did it seem as he switched and switched, flooding a large inner room with vivid light. They went in after him.

This room had never been properly named; it was spoken of indifferently as the boudoir, the morning-room, and mother’s room—although Mrs. Verinder herself did not put forward any claim to proprietorial rights. Probably her title to it merely rested upon the circumstance that the portrait of her by Millais had been hung above its marble chimney-piece. Like every other room in the house, it displayed evidences of moderate wealth, painstaking care, and a docile adhesion to the prevailing standards of good taste. The walls were cream-coloured, with panels of red satin—two large patches of the satin being hidden by the Millais picture and another picture of similar size but strangely different subject by Leighton. There were more of those massive heavily carved tables, some big chairs with golden legs and tapestry backs, and here and there on the parquetry floor had been placed firmly secured mounds of velvet and brocade cushions, forming the easy backless seats then known as “poufs.” These poufs had been chosen by Mrs. Verinder, and, sinking voluminously upon one of them, she gave a sign of fatigue, and stared at Millais’ notion of her as she was once. A smaller pouf would have fitted her in that first year of her married life.

Margaret, fairer, shorter, plumper, altogether more bustling than her sister, went to one of the tables, where a silver tray with cut-glass bottles and tumblers waited for them, and poured out soda-water. Mr. Verinder at another table busied himself with the bed-rock detail of his dinner-party, consulting a gold-framed calendar and jotting down names on an ivory tablet. “The Cluttons,” he murmured, “and old Sir Timothy—and the Everard-Browns.”

“Don’t forget some young men for Emmeline,” said Mrs. Pratt gaily.

“I never do,” said Mr. Verinder. And that was true. Before his time in that respect, he liked to see a few fresh young faces even at his most ceremonious feasts; moreover, as the father of daughters, he knew that one must not think only of oneself. It was at a big dinner that Lionel Pratt first betrayed his inclination towards Margaret. “I am thinking now more of the day than the company,” he continued; and he ran his pencil down the calendar. “Seventeen days will bring us to the twelfth, and that’s a Thursday. At this time of year you can’t expect people to be free unless you give them adequate notice.”

“Emmeline,” said Mrs. Verinder, yawning, “would you like young What’s-his-name—that friend of Mrs. Pryce-Jones—Gerald Something—to be asked?”

Emmeline did not answer. She was standing at the corner of the chimney-piece, one arm stretched along the marble, her cloak thrown open. Her eyes seemed queerly large and black, her cheeks white, her breathing wearily rapid; so that she had the aspect worn by her when, in the maternal phrase, she had been “overdoing it”—playing too many sets at lawn tennis, riding too long in the Row, going to too many theatres in the same week.

“There’s no occasion for you to stay up,” said Mrs. Verinder, observing this look on her daughter’s face. “You go to bed, dear”; and she added the farewell words that she had first begun to utter when Emmeline was a child of fourteen. “Don’t read in bed.”

“No, I don’t want to read to-night,” said Emmeline, going out of the room.

No, she did not want to read: she wanted to think.

CHAPTER III

ON the morning after the day on which the two girls watched the polo and drank tea with Mr. Dyke, Margaret went back to her kind husband and two sweet little children at Hindhead, where they lived in a red-brick catastrophe of the largest size that Pratt had brought about among the beeches and pines only a few years previously. On the afternoon of that day Mr. Dyke called in Prince’s Gate for the purpose of offering thanks by word of mouth for the invitation which he had already accepted with pen and ink. Mrs. Verinder said that he was amiable but untidy, and a sticker. She thought he would never go.

At dinner a night later—when only Eustace had been claimed by society and the other three remained at home—Mr. Verinder talked again of Anthony Dyke.

It appeared, said Mr. Verinder, that Dyke began his career as a hunter of big game in Africa, where, together with his companion, the eccentric Duke of Ravenna, he had been badly mauled by lions.

“The other night, while we were talking, I noticed some disfiguring marks on both cheekbones, and I should not be surprised if they were the signs of the clawing to which I allude. Whatever they were, he will carry them to his grave.” And Mr. Verinder went on to say that Dyke’s next scene of operations was Australia, where he had penetrated the unknown desert country in all directions.

Then he told them some more. He did not, of course, know that one of his hearers could have told it to him, had she been willing to display her knowledge.

The fact was that Mr. Verinder, desirous of being well posted by the twelfth of next month, when the man would be here as his guest for dinner, had searched tables and shelves at the Reform Club in order to put things together. That most useful of all volumes, Who’s Who, did not as yet exist, but a sort of popular dictionary of biography gave Mr. Verinder all that he wanted, and very much in the modern style. In this compendium he gleaned such essential details as: “Emerged at Shark Bay on the northern coast, sole survivor of the party; Thanked by the Government of Queensland, 1885; Thanked by Governments of South Australia and New South Wales, gold medal of Royal Geographical Society, 1886; First Antarctic cruise, resulting in discovery of the island since named Anthony Dyke Land, and charting of coast-line for five hundred miles, 1888; Establishing Furthest South record”—and so on.

Also Mr. Verinder had been to Mudie’s Library and borrowed that book, A Walk in the Andes. He read it after dinner.

They sat upstairs in what they called the music-room—the room that comprised the full width of the house, the largest and best room, with the pictures by Long, Poynter, and Alma Tadema. The Leaders were in the room behind; you reached it through those folding doors, now of course closed. Naturally all the light was not turned on, but there was full and sufficient radiance throughout the little camp that the diminished family formed on the stretching desert of parquetry.

Mrs. Verinder, wearing mauve brocade, occupied a sofa and dozed over the newspaper; Mr. Verinder had taken the very easiest chair and settled himself in it with many changes of position, as if determined to perform the impossible task of making it still easier; Emmeline sat upon a lowish stool, her pretty hair darkly lustrous in the soft orange glow of the lamps as she bent her head over a piece of embroidery and made minute stitches slowly and very neatly. From time to time she raised her eyes to glance at the book in her father’s hands, noticing how old and shabby it looked with the edge of the cloth binding broken and the librarian’s ugly label loose at one corner. She had a lovely clean new copy upstairs in her room—with the portrait-cover intact, and her own name and the author’s compliments written in a slap-dash hand on the title page.

“They told me at the club,” said Mr. Verinder, half closing his book, “that there’s a strong touch of Baron Munchausen about this.”

“Did you speak?” said Mrs. Verinder, raising herself and stooping to pick up the newspaper.

Mr. Verinder repeated his words.

“Munchausen,” murmured Mrs. Verinder drowsily.

He went on reading and Emmeline watched him while he read.

As she knew or had learned involuntarily, it was not great literature, a modest affair compared with the works of Thackeray, Carlyle, or Ruskin—but why bother about style when you have such a tale to tell? The matter not the manner grips. Was it gripping father? He had assumed a dogged, almost aggressive air, he frowned; but this did not really indicate that he was quarrelling with the book, it only meant that as he was very little used to book-reading as a pastime, he felt that a superior concentration of the intellect was necessary.

Watching him, she had again that odd sense of strangeness; as though he had not been really her father, but somebody that she scarcely knew and did not in the least care for. How strange! Certainly she had never seen him or understood him as now, suddenly, unexpectedly.

She observed his bushy yet straggling grey eyebrows, his inch of close-cropt whisker, his bald head with long strands of hair idiotically plastered across it from the fat neck, his leathery complexion, the creases and furrows of his chin and cheeks. He was well dressed, in a suitable manner—but suitable to what? The well-starched shirt, the black satin tie, the glossy dinner jacket gave him no true dignity, concealed not one of his defects. He was a ruin, a man run to seed; large without being strong, too stout about the middle, too slack about the knees, no steel and whipcord anywhere about this sprawling unimpressive bulk. No force of any sort behind that stupid frown! But he was kindly by nature, well-intentioned, thoroughly good according to his lights; only stupid—stupid, stupid as the Albert Hall is round, as Exhibition Road is wide, as Queen’s Gate straight and Kensington Gore flat.

Then she thought how cruel it was that she should thus judge him instead of pitying him—she, with this immense gladness in her heart.

She glanced at her mother, from whose relaxed grasp the newspaper was again slipping, and a yearning compassion for both parents came in response to the call. Poor dears.

The book had gripped father; he read on resolutely, but as yet of course he was only at the beginning, still in Patagonia. Stitching very slowly she thought about it. It was so simple, yet so wonderful, so very wonderful.

He had been “messing about” among the gold-diggings of Cape Horn. “The Gold-diggings of Cape Horn”—inaudibly she re-articulated the words to herself, just to feel them again on her vocal cords. Like all other words that concerned him, they had magic in them. For instance, Tierra del Fuego—the Land of Fire—Tierra del Fuego. And beyond all else, the Andes. The Andes—it seemed to her that the very first time she heard that word when she was a child, she should have thrilled through and through. The word should have taken possession of her by reason of its mystery and might.

Well then, he was moving northward among those islands, trying his luck at the gold-digging, and doing no good. “I don’t think I am a lucky man, Miss Verinder. No, I have never been very lucky. How I go on warning you against myself, don’t I? But, just as I have been frank to you about important matters, I won’t deceive you about small ones. Never mind. Hang it, the luck turns. I shall get my luck one day.” Well then—while her father read the book she talked to herself about it: Since he was at a loose end, no big thing on hand, the idea had come to him to land on the mainland, and go along the gigantic spine of the Andes in its entire length from south to north, say four thousand miles. And he had achieved his purpose, alone and on foot—seeing marvellous things, doing marvellous things all the way.

She thought of the lure that danger exercises over the bravest hearts. It is the same to-day as it was hundreds of years ago. It was that—the lure—which drew the brave hearts over the bars of Devon rivers in Elizabeth’s time; out, out to the Spanish main. Not the glitter of the gold, but the danger behind the flash and glow—the danger. She quite understood.

The newspaper had fallen with a gentle rustle upon the parquetry. Mrs. Verinder leaned further back, opened her mouth, and, after it had been open for a little while, made the faint sound of a snore. The snoring of Mrs. Verinder was like a terrible family secret, never to be spoken of or even hinted at in any manner to anybody—least of all, to Mrs. Verinder herself. This evening, however, it did not distressfully afflict either her husband or her daughter.

Emmeline ceased to stitch, folded her hands on her lap with a gesture that had become habitual to her even at this distant date, and her eyes grew soft and dreamy. Large as the room was, it was too small for her; with a few dreamlike thoughts she broke the westward wall of it, swept it clean away—the five windows, the rich curtains, the gilded, moulded panels, and all the rest of it—and passed out through the gap, merely leaving behind the graceful external shape of herself to keep her parents company and answer questions, if necessary, during her absence. She went a long way; westward, half across the world. Then she came back again, and was once more in the neighbourhood, although not yet in the house itself. She was walking under the trees, not far from sunlit water, listening to a voice.

The entrance of butler and footmen with the silver tray and the cut glass brought her right home, and she resumed her stitching.

Quite late the book wrung a chuckle and an expostulation from Mr. Verinder. “Oh, I say. Really—upon my word;” and he stood up. “If Dyke actually means what I think! And I don’t see what else he can mean. Listen to this. I want to read it to you.”

Mrs. Verinder, in the absurd sprightly tone of a person whom sleep has intoxicated, begged him to give them the passage; and Mr. Verinder, standing close to a tall standard lamp, with all available light on the page, read it, after first explaining the context.

Dyke, he said, had accepted a night’s hospitality from three savages, who at first appeared friendly, but soon aroused his suspicion. Acting a naïve admiration of the weapon, they had withdrawn his rifle before he lay down to sleep; and now the three of them sat at the fire with their heads close together, planning mischief, as he surmised. At their feet was a great stone axe, and not far from him a horse-hair lasso. “Dyke says that while still pretending to sleep, he moved inch by inch towards the lasso, till he got it and opened the noose. Ah, here we are. Now listen.” And Mr. Verinder read slowly, amazedly, fearfully. “‘By good fortune I noosed them all three, so that their greased and painted faces crashed together with a nasty bang. Borrowing the stone axe, I used it freely. Then I lay down and slept comfortably, feeling confident that my late hosts would never plot against a visitor again.’ He means—doesn’t he?—that he killed them. He says his late hosts. What! He can’t mean anything else?”

“No,” said Mrs. Verinder, successfully shaking off the dregs of torpor; “that’s what he means, of course.”

Mr. Verinder chuckled feebly. “But, upon my word If you think of it, wasn’t it—”

“It was in self-defence,” said Mrs. Verinder tolerantly.

“Yes, I suppose it was. But doesn’t it show—”

Of a truth he scarcely knew what it showed. Unless the obvious fact that there are wide expanses of land and water on this big planet where life does not run as smoothly as it does in Prince’s Gate; that when once you go outside the boundaries of civilization, when once you begin to disregard the rules that bind society together—He stood there in the strong lamp-light, with the reluctant confused facial expression of a comfort-loving, peaceable, sheltered person who is confronted with ferocity—legitimate ferocity, perhaps; as when, standing in an hotel balcony during a riot, one sees limbs broken by a baton charge of mounted police. However much one dislikes it, one cannot hinder or interfere. One can do nothing—except to make light of the incident afterwards, and, so to speak, laugh it off.

Mr. Verinder laughed and closed the book. “That’s enough for to-night,” he said, putting the book down, and feeling the back of his neck.

After this the name of Anthony Dyke faded out of the family conversation, and for a few days at least was mentioned no more. Then Miss Marchant came and made a communication to Mrs. Verinder, saying that she had been sent to do it by Mrs. Pryce-Jones.

Mrs. Jones lived in the large stone house at the western end of Kensington Gore, and Miss Marchant lived with her as a kind of lady companion, assisting her with household management.

Mrs. Jones thought that Mrs. Verinder ought to be told that Miss Marchant, happening to be in Kensington Gardens not long before dinner time, had seen Miss Verinder walking alone with a man there. They were quite alone, without the shadow of a chaperon. Just together—like that. They never saw Miss Marchant, who had observed them until obliged herself to leave the gardens. As Mrs. Verinder knew, they dined rather early at the stone house. As Mrs. Verinder knew also, Mrs. Jones was very fond of Miss Emmeline, and she felt it only right to send Miss Marchant; bearing in mind that the very nicest girls do need a little looking after.

Mrs. Verinder did not at all relish this turn of phrase, and she allowed Miss Marchant to perceive her distaste for it; but Miss Marchant, continuing the narrative after an apology, threw Mrs. Verinder into a state of flabby perturbation which she could ill conceal, by saying that the impression made by Miss Emmeline’s male companion had been so very unfavourable. He had seemed altogether a most undesirable person—objectionable even. One did read such dreadful things in the newspapers nowadays—about slight indiscretions of young ladies leading to painful entanglements. Indeed, as she confessed, she had been haunted by the idea of blackmailers—the sort of ruffians who possess themselves of a perhaps quite innocent secret, then distort it and make you pay them to hide it. In these circumstances Mrs. Pryce-Jones and Miss Marchant had both felt that it would be really wicked not to speak about it to Mrs. Verinder.

“Do you imply,” asked Mrs. Verinder breathlessly, “that it was a common ragged sort of person?”

Oh, no. The person was adequately, if queerly dressed; a great big tall man, wearing a grey suit and a slouch hat. It was rather his commanding air, the way he brandished his arms, and so on, that had displeased and frightened Miss Marchant.

Then—what was exceedingly rare with her—Mrs. Verinder had an inspiration, or an intuition.

“A bearded man?”

“Yes.”

“A man with a red beard, and rather high cheekbones—a great big man?”

“Yes, yes.”

It was that Dyke—the explorer. Although no worse, Mrs. Verinder was, of course, very much upset by it; but she displayed a satisfaction that she was very far from feeling.

“Oh, really!” she said, tittering effectively. “You may be quite at ease, Miss Marchant. It is quite all right, thank you. He is a valued friend of the family. No more a friend of Emmeline’s than the rest of us. But I don’t think I shall tell you his name,” she added, acting playful reproachfulness. “I don’t think you deserve it—No, I am not in the least offended. I’ll at least tell you this—” and for a moment hesitating whether to cloak herself with cold dignity or put on a mask of cordialness, she chose the smiles—“he is dining with us on the twelfth, and although unfortunately, our table is made up, so that I cannot ask you to meet him at dinner, I shall be very glad indeed if you and Mrs. Jones will look in afterwards. That is, if you have nothing better to do.”

Miss Marchant withdrew, puzzled and crestfallen.

Immediately Mrs. Verinder despatched a message upstairs requesting Miss Emmeline to come down to the morning-room. She had determined to talk to her daughter without delay, but quite lightly, with a simulation of unconcern. It is always wisest with young people not to show them that you have been fluttered by any act of theirs.

Afternoon tea was done, and trays of cut flowers, the contents of a hamper sent by Margaret from Hindhead, had been brought into the room for Mrs. Verinder to arrange in glass vases and dishes. It was a little task that she liked to do herself—perhaps because she did it with so extraordinary a clumsiness and ineptitude. She seized upon these flowers now—lovely long-stalked roses, pink and red—feeling that they would aid her and keep her in countenance; and as she moved about, dabbing the delicious blooms into obviously improper receptacles, breaking a stalk here or there, and slopping a little water on the choice furniture, she looked like a large over-blown actress playing a part in a highly artificial comedy.

“Ah, Emmeline, is that you?” she cried, with a tone so jarringly spurious that Emmeline stopped short on the threshold and understood at once that the trouble was beginning.

“Shut the door, dear. What was I going to say?” And Mrs. Verinder caused a slop-over and a shower of petals with the same brisk movement of her dimpled hand. “Oh, yes. I could not tell you why, but our friend Mr. Anthony Dyke came into my mind just now; and thinking about him, I thought I’d give you a little hint.”

“Yes, mother?”

“To begin with, we scarcely know him.”

“We have not known him very long,” said Emmeline, gently.

“I say, we don’t really know him at all”; and Mrs. Verinder gave a harshly nervous laugh as she mutilated some maidenhair fern. “I mean, nothing about him—who he is, or what he is, himself, outside his notoriety. Then the point is this. Because—I don’t say so, but I thought it might be—because he may have interested you as rather striking, a bizarre figure, and so forth—” Watching Emmeline’s face, she rapidly abandoned a difficult rôle and became more like herself. “I don’t want you to indulge in any silliness about him.”

“What do you mean by silliness?” said Emmeline quietly.

“Well, I don’t want you to fall in love with him.”

“I’m afraid I’ve done that already,” said Emmeline, still more quietly.

Her mother flung down a bunch of wet La Frances on the satin seat of the nearest chair, and became entirely natural.

“Oh, what nonsense—what utter nonsense! Emmeline, how can you talk such rubbish? Really—upon my word. A total stranger—and a man old enough to be your father.”

“Oh, no. He is considerably under forty.”

“Then he doesn’t look it. And such an untidy creature.” Ruffled, bothered, angry, Mrs. Verinder was speaking without plan, uttering scattered thoughts as they presented themselves, and she continued volubly to do so. “I never saw such an untidy man. That night at Mrs. Clutton’s. His crumpled shirt—and he kept running his hands through his hair till it was all anywhere.” Emmeline was gently shaking her head, as though to imply that she did not mind, that she rather liked the untidy appearance. “You of all people, too—you who’ve always had such a sense of fitness and niceness. How can you for a moment harbour such silliness? Besides, the time! There’s been no time for it. What night was it, that night at Mrs. Clutton’s? Surely not a week ago!” And Mrs. Verinder steadied herself, speaking slower and with weight. “Emmeline, tell me the truth. How many times have you actually seen him?”

“Let me think,” said Emmeline, with dreamy introspective eyes, deeply interested by the question and vibrating with anxious care as she answered it. How many times, how few times? Of course, it was so immeasurably more wonderful to her than it could be to her mother. “At Mrs. Clutton’s,” she said gravely. “At Hurlingham next day. Next morning at Waterloo.”

“At Waterloo?” ejaculated Mrs. Verinder loudly. “What’s that? Waterloo!”

“When Margaret was going home. He came to see her off.”

“See her off! How did he know her train?”

“She told him—or I did. I don’t remember.”

“More fools, the pair of you.”

Emmeline made a deprecating gesture, as of one who pleads not to be interrupted in a difficult mental effort, and for a moment or so looked about her vaguely.

“Then of course he came here that same afternoon,” she said, with a brightening face. “And the next afternoon he came again.”

“Not two afternoons!” cried Mrs. Verinder. “Not again, behind my back, without my seeing him. Oh, but, Emmeline, that is shameful; that is underhand.”

“He is not underhand. How could you see him? You were out.”

“Then he oughtn’t to have come in. Besides, why didn’t he leave his cards? There were no cards on the table. I looked.”

“He left cards the day before.”

“He should have left them again,” said Mrs. Verinder, not really meaning it, only feeling muddled and angry.

Emmeline made another gesture.

“That brings us to Thursday. And the three times in Kensington Gardens. I have met him there, mother, by appointment. That’s seven times, isn’t it? No, eight—eight!” Her voice faded away as she said the number, as though she was lost in the wonder of it. Could it be possible? Only eight times—all told!

“Well. Well,” said Mrs. Verinder, pulling herself together. In the midst of her irritation she could not avoid a feeling of pride because of the silly child’s absolute truthfulness and candour. “Of course you understand that there must be no more of such meetings.”

Emmeline let that remark go, as if it had been a ball at tennis that was not worth moving to—so obviously out of court.

“And your father must be told about it.”

“Yes, I suppose he had better know,” said Emmeline dreamily.

Left alone, Mrs. Verinder polished off the flowers in a very rough and ready fashion, thinking the while. If Emmeline insisted on making an imprudent marriage, it was doubtful if one could prevent her. No, why not be honest about it? One couldn’t prevent her. The only way you can keep grown-up girls in check is by holding their purse-strings—and Emmeline had her own money. And she thought that, nice as it is to belong to the third or even fourth generation of families enriched by the highest form of trade, it is perhaps a pity that grandfathers should leave money to female grandchildren—absolutely, on their attaining the age of twenty-one. Wiser and better to leave it in the control of parents—or make the age thirty—or forty. Margaret had gone off so easily and pleasantly with Lionel Pratt. A nice well-dressed rich young fellow, able to build quite a palace for his wife, and send flowers to his mother-in-law.

Leaving out maternal feeling altogether, she could not bear this idea of a quite attractive if rather reserved girl marrying an uncouth stranger—a man who had come from the ends of the earth and would probably want to go back there. Of course if it must be, it must be. “But, oh,” she said to herself with a sigh, “it is all too weird; for I don’t understand what she has seen in him to captivate her.”

She determined that she would talk to her husband about it directly after dinner, not before dinner. It was now half-past six o’clock; and, while giving her very last dabs to the flowers, she fancied that she heard the front door open and shut. Going out to the hall presently and seeing one of the footmen, she inquired if it had been Mr. Verinder coming in.

“No, ma’am, it was Miss Verinder going out.”

“Oh, yes, quite so.”

Mrs. Verinder went slowly up the stairs, feeling seriously perturbed. In spite of all that had been said just now, had Emmeline gone out to meet that man? But Mrs. Verinder held to her determination of postponing her chat with Mr. Verinder till after dinner. If you cannot avoid worry, it is better to take it on a full stomach.

Emmeline gave one glance back at the house, noticed that it too had changed, and hurried on.

Open carriages with a footman as well as a coachman on each box seat were streaming up the road. Quite young ladies in the carriages wore bonnets with strings tied under their chins, daintily small bonnets of delicate colours, primrose, heliotrope, and peach; those that wore hats had them perched in the queerest manner, on the back of the head, sideways, at angles; all of them held up flounced or laced parasols of rich dark tints, and their great sleeves ballooned so widely as almost to conceal gentlemen who were accompanying them—elderly gentlemen, these, like father, in top hats and open frock coats; or comparatively youthful gentlemen, like our brother Eustace, in top hats and buttoned frock coats. A horn sounded joyously, and round the corner from Prince’s Gardens there came a four-in-hand—four beautiful grey horses prancing, the whole coach shining in the sunlight, a bevy of ladies, a flower-bed of female elegance, on top; and the two grooms, one standing up to blow the horn and the other sitting down with folded arms. There was another, a plain-clothes groom, concealed within the shuttered doors, but ready to pop out should the gentleman driving meet any difficulties. “So-ho, there. Steady.”

The top hat of the gentleman driving shone prodigiously; he wore a button-hole of gardenias and had a light holland cloth round his middle dividing the frock coat from the shepherd’s plaid trousers; although his face was red and anxious, he looked very grand. The whole prosperous essentially respectable neighbourhood was rolling through the slanted sunbeams to enjoy its drive of ceremony in Hyde Park.

At Alexandra Gate a mounted policeman held up his white hand and stopped the traffic of the main road, in order to allow all these equipages to roll flashing past unimpeded. The stout plebeian horses of two omnibuses had to be pulled up short with a jerk, the ponies in several tradesmen’s carts skidded a little on the macadam; a small squad of lads riding on those new safety bicycles—not the ugly high ones—jumped from the pedals and held their machines sloping to the pavement. Within the rails of the semi-private sanctuary of Hyde Park, Mayfair and Belgravia on wheels at once mingled with and absorbed Kensington on wheels. It was a gay and enchantingly polite spectacle.

But Emmeline turned her back on it and walked swiftly into the cool shadow cast by Albert Hall Mansions—the only edifice in the locality of which Mr. Verinder did not approve. Then, before she reached the Albert Hall, her heart leaped. A tall, excitable man was coming towards her, waving a slouch hat. They should have met on the Broad Walk; she had told him to wait there; but he was not able to wait.

How had he captivated her? She did not know. Was it only because he was the incarnate antithesis of Kensington; because he was individual, unlike the things on each side of him, not arranged on any pattern, not dull, monotonous, or flat; a thing alive in a place where all else was sleeping or dead? Neither then nor at any future time did she attempt mentally to differentiate between the impression he had made upon her as himself all complete, with the dark hair, the penetrating but impenetrable eyes, the record, the fame, and the impression she might have received if any of these attributes had been taken away from him. Say, if he had been an unknown Mr. Tomkins instead of a known Mr. Dyke. Absurd. The man and the name were one. So very much so indeed that yesterday morning when, at the museum, she had asked for a new map of the Antarctic, and was poring over it in order to feast herself with a sight of those magic words Anthony Dyke Land, it was not only that the little black letters of which the names was composed shone like rubies and burned like fire, she felt distinctly the man’s hand on her shoulder and heard his voice at her ear, although at this moment he was miles away. He was Anthony Dyke. He was her lord, her prince, her lover.

Yet hitherto she had not been a romantic girl. She had felt nothing irksome in her surroundings, had been content with these broad streets and platitudinous façades; her pulses had not stirred at contact with masculinity; life with the family had seemed pleasant, and the prospect of ultimate union with some good-natured nonentity like Pratt, a well-managed nursery, some humdrum babies, had not appeared repellent. She was not irregular either in thought or conduct. Indeed, she had inherited a fair portion of her father’s love of order; showing this characteristic in many ways, keeping her room very neat and tidy, liking, even when she was quite small, to have boxes and convenient places in which to keep her belongings, not leaving books on sofas or dropping her handkerchief on the stairs. Beyond the sensation of possessing latent powers and capabilities upon which there had been no call, there had not come to her herself the slightest indication of the likelihood of what was happening now. It was unexpected, miraculous. As though that Virginia creeper which was so neatly bound upon its wires from the wide area to the top of the ground floor windows of their house had been metamorphosed into an overwhelming growth, with tendrils strong enough to bind a man’s limbs, huge pulp-laden leaves, and blazing red tropical passion flowers.