THE BELFRY

by

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of the _Three Sisters_, etc. 

1916

BOOK I

MY BOOK

I

Of course this story can't be published as it stands just yet. Not--ifI'm to be decent--for another generation, because, thank Heaven, they'restill alive. (They've had me there, as they've always had me everywhere. )How they managed it I can't think. I don't mean merely at the end, thoughthat was stupendous, but how they ever managed it. It seems to me theymust have taken _all_ the risks, always. 

I suppose if you asked him he'd say, "That's how. " It was certainly theway they managed the business of living. Perhaps it's why they managed iton the whole so well. I remember how when I was shilly-shallying aboutthat last job of mine he said, "Take it. Take it. If you can risk livingat all, my dear fellow, you can risk that. "

And he added, "If I'd only _your_ luck!"

Well, that's exactly what he did have. He had my luck, I mean the luck Iought to have had, all the time, from the beginning to the very end. Butthere is one thing he can't take from me, and that is the telling of thisstory. He can hold it up as long as he lives--as long as _she_ lives--ashe has held up pretty nearly everything where I was concerned. But hecan't take it from me. He doesn't "want" it. Even he with his infernaltalent couldn't do anything with it. Unscrupulous as he was, and I assureyou he'd stick at nothing (he'd "take" his mother's last agony if he"wanted" it badly enough), indecent as he was, he'd stick at that. 

I don't mean he couldn't take his wife, part of her, anyhow, at a pinch. And I don't mean he couldn't take himself, his own emotions, his owneccentricities, if he happened to want them, and his own meannesses, ifnobody else's, so to speak, would do. But he couldn't and wouldn't takehis own big things, particularly not that last thing. 

When I say that I can't publish this story yet as it stands, I'm notforgetting that I _have_ published the end of it already. But only in theway of business; to publish that sort of thing was what I went out for;it was all part of my Special Correspondent's job. 

And when you think that it was just touch and go--Why, if I hadn't buckedup and taken that job when he told me to I might have missed him. Noamount of hearing about him would have been the same thing. I had to seehim. 

What I wrote then doesn't count. I had to tell what I saw just after Ihad seen it. I had to take it as I saw it, a fragment snapped off fromthe rest of him, and dated October 11th, 1914, as if it didn't belong tohim; as if he were only another splendid instance. And of course I hadto leave _her_ out. 

Told like that, it didn't amount to much. 

This is the real telling. 

I must get away from the end, right back to the beginning. 

I suppose, to be accurate, the very beginning was the day I first met himin nineteen-six--no, nineteen-five it must have been. It was atBlackheath Football Ground, the last match of the season, when WoolwichArsenal played East Kent and beat them by two goals and a try. He wasthere as a representative of the Press, "doing" the match for somesporting paper. 

He held me up at the barrier (yes, he held me up in the first moment ofour acquaintance) while he fumbled for his pass. He had given the word"Press" with an exaggerated aplomb that showed he was young to his job, and the gate-keeper challenged him. It was, in fact, the exquisiteself-consciousness of the little man that made me look at him. And hecaught me looking at him; he blushed, caught himself blushing and smiledto himself with the most delicious appreciation of his own absurdity. Andas he stood there fumbling, and holding me up while he argued with thegate-keeper, who didn't know him, I got his engaging twinkle. It was asif he looked at me and said, "See me swank just then? Funny, wasn't it?"

He hung about on the edge of the crowd for a while with his hands in hispockets, sucking his little blond moustache and looking dreamy and ratherincompetent. I was a full-blown journalist even then, and I rememberfeeling a sort of pity for his youth. He was so obviously on his maidentrip, and obviously, I fancied, doomed never to arrive in any port. 

Well--well; I came upon him afterwards at a crisis in the game. He wastaking notes in shorthand with a sort of savagery between his tense andconcentrated glares at the scrimmage that was then massed in the centreof the field. Woolwich Arsenal and East Kent, locked in each other'sbodies, now struggled and writhed and butted like two immense beastswelded together by the impact of their battle, now swayed and quiveredand snorted as one beast torn by a solitary and mysterious rage. 

Self-consciousness had vanished from my man. He stood, leaning forwardwith his legs a little apart. His boyish face was deeply flushed; he hadsucked and bitten his blond moustache into a wisp; he was breathingheavily, with his mouth ajar; his very large and conspicuous blue eyesglittered with a sort of passion. (He wore those eyes in his odd littleugly face like some inappropriate decoration. )

All these symptoms declared that he was "on. " They made up a look that Iwas soon to know him by. 

I remember marvelling at his excitement. 

I remember also discussing the match with him as we went back to town. Itmust have been then that he began to tell me about himself: that his namewas James Tasker Jevons; that he lived, or hoped to live, by going aboutthe country and reporting the big cricket and football matches. 

At least he called it reporting. I shouldn't think there has ever beenany reporting like it before or since. 

I told him I was out for my paper, the _Morning Standard_, too. Notexactly reporting, in _his_ sense (I little knew what _his_ sense waswhen I put it that way); and there left it. You see, I didn't want to rubit into the poor chap that the stranger he had been unfolding himself toso quaintly was a cut above his job. 

But he saw through it. I don't know how he managed to convey to me thatmy delicacy needn't suffer. Anyhow, he must have had some scruples of hisown, since he waited for another context before remarking quietly thatwhat I was doing now he would be doing in another six months. (And hewas. ) These things, he said, took time, and he gave himself six months. (Yes; in less than six months he was holding me up, again, in my ownpaper. I had to wait till he was "out" before I could get in. ) He didn'tseem to boast so much as to trace for my benefit the path of some naturalforce, some upward-tending, indestructible Energy that happened to behim. 

All this I remember. But I cannot remember by what stages we arrived atdining together, as we did that night in a little restaurant in Soho. Perhaps there were no stages; we may have simply leaped by one bound atthat consummation. He had swung himself into my compartment as the trainwas leaving the platform at Blackheath; so I suppose it was destiny. After that I was tempted to conceive that he fastened on me as onsomething that he had need of; but I think it was rather that I fell tohis mysterious attraction. 

While we dined he informed me further that he had been reporting footballmatches for six weeks. Before that he had been proof-reader for a firm ofprinters for about a year. Before that he had been a compositor. Andbefore that again he had worked in an office with his father, who wasRegistrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths for some parish down inHertfordshire. He chucked that because he found that the registration ofbirths, marriages and deaths was spoiling his handwriting quite as muchas his handwriting was spoiling the registration of births, marriages anddeaths. (He was, he said, cultivating a careless, scholarly hand. ) Heliked his present job, because it took him out pretty often into the openair. Also he liked looking on at football matches and prize fights. 

He said it made him feel manly. 

You should have seen him sitting there and telling me these things in agentle, throaty and rather thick voice with a cockney accent and a sortof tenor ring in it and a queer, humorous intonation that was like anaudible twinkle, as if he saw himself as he thought I must see him, mainly in the light of absurdity. You should have seen his face, its thincheeks, its vivid flush, its queer, inquisitive, contradictory nose thathad a slender, high bridge and a tilted, pointed end in profile andthree-quarters, and turned suddenly all broad and blunt in a full view;and his mouth that stood ajar with excitement, and even in moments ofquiescence failed to hide the tips of two rather prominent white teethpressed down on the lower lip. I don't say there was anything unmanlyabout Jevons's figure (he wasn't noticeably undersized), or about hismouth and jaw. I knew a great General with a mouth and jaw like that, andhe was one of the handsomest figures in the Service. I'm not hinting atanything like effeminacy in Jevons, only at a certain oddity that reallysaved him. If he'd been handsome he'd have been dreadful. His flush, hisdecorative eyes, his dark eyebrows and eyelashes, his sleek, light brownhair, would have made him vulgar. As it was, his queerness gave them asort of point. 

I dwell on these physical details because, afterwards, I found myselfcontinually looking at him as if to see where his charm lay. To see, Isuppose, what _she_ saw in him. 

If anybody had asked me that night what I saw in him myself beyond anordinary little journalist "on the make, " I don't suppose I could havetold them. But there's no doubt that I felt his charm, or that nightwould have been the end instead of the beginning. 

We sat in the restaurant when he had done telling me about himself; Iremember we sat quite a long time discussing an English writer--ourcontemporary--whom I rather considered I had discovered. In those days Iused to apply him as an infallible test. Jevons had read every word ofhim; it was he, in fact, who brought him into the conversation. Heconfessed afterwards that he had done it on purpose. He had been testing_me_. 

Even so our acquaintance might have lapsed but for the thing thathappened when the waiter came up with the bill. My share of it was threeand twopence, and I found myself with only ninepence in my pocket. I hadto borrow half a crown, from Jevons. You mayn't see anything verydreadful in that. I didn't at the time, and there wasn't. The dreadfulthing was that I forgot to pay him back. 

Yes. Something happened that put Jevons and his half-crown out of my headfor long enough. I forgot to pay him, and he had to go without his dinnerfor three nights in consequence. It was his last half-crown. 

He told me this as an immense joke, long afterwards. 

And Viola Thesiger cried. 

That crying of hers, that child-like softening and breaking down underhim, in itself so unexpected (I didn't know she could do it), thatsudden and innocent catastrophe, was the first sign to me that I was donefor--wiped out. There wasn't any violence or any hysteria about it, onlygrief, only pity. It was an entirely simple, gentle and beautifulperformance, and it took place in my rooms after Jevons had left us. But, as I say, this was long afterwards. The agony of my undoing was ahorribly protracted affair. 

I needn't say that what happened--I mean the thing that made me forgetall about Jevons and his half-crown--was Viola Thesiger. 

I had his address, but the next day--the day after the match--was Sunday, so I couldn't get the postal order I had meant to send him. And on Mondayshe walked into my rooms at ten in the morning. 

The appointment, I may remark, was for nine-thirty. I had fixed thatearly hour for it because I wanted to get it done with. I wasn't going tohave my morning murdered with violence when it was two hours old; neitherdid I intend it to be poisoned by the thought of this interview hangingover me at the end. 

I had just sent for Pavitt, my man, and told him that if Miss Thesigercalled he was on no account to let her in. He was to say that theappointment was for nine-thirty and that Mr. Furnival was now engaged. She would have to call again at three if she wished to see him. Whenengaging a typist it is as well to begin as you mean to go on, and I wasanxious to let Miss Thesiger know at once that I was not a man who wouldstand any nonsense. I was abominably busy that morning. 

And Pavitt let her in. (It was the first time he had failed in this way. )He never explained or apologized for it afterwards. He seemed to thinkthat when I had seen Miss Thesiger I would see, even more vividly than hedid, how impossible it was to do otherwise, unless he had relinquishedall claim to manhood and to chivalry. The look he sent me from thethreshold as he retreated backwards, drawing the door upon himself like ascreen and shutting me in alone with her, said very plainly, "You maycurse, sir, and you may swear; but if you think you'll get out of it anybetter than I have you're mistaken. "

Yes: it was something more than her appearance and her manner, thoughthey, in all conscience, were enough. 

I do not know what appearance and what manner, if any, are proper to ayoung woman calling on a young man at his rooms to seek employment. Themere situation may, for all I know, bristle with embarrassments. Anyhow, I can imagine that in some hands it might have moments, let us say, ofextreme difficulty on either side. Miss Thesiger's appearance and hermanner were perfect; but they didn't suggest by any sign or shade thatshe was a young woman seeking employment, that she was a young womanseeking anything; but rather that she was a young woman to whom allthings naturally came. 

She approached me very slowly. Her adorable little salutation, with allits maturity, its gravity, was somehow essentially young. She was rathertall, and her figure had the same serious maturity in youth. She carriedher small head high, and held her shoulders well back, so that she got asort of squareness into the divine slope of them (people hadn't begun toslouch forward from the hips in those days), a squareness that agreedsomehow with the character of her small face. I didn't know then whetherit was a pretty face or not. I daresay it was a bit too odd and squarefor prettiness, and, as for beauty, that had all gone into the lines ofher body (which _was_ beautiful, if you like). When you looked carefully, you got a little square, white forehead, and straight eyebrows of thesame darkness as her hair, and very distinct on the white, and eyes alsovery dark and distinct, and fairly crystalline with youth; and a littlewhite and very young nose that started straight and ended absurdly in alittle soft knob that had a sort of kink in it; and a mouth which wouldhave been too large for her face if it hadn't made room for itself bytilting up at the corners; and then a little square white chin and jaw;they were thrust forward, but so lightly and slenderly that it didn'tmatter. It doesn't sound--does it?--as if she could have been pretty, letalone beautiful; and yet--and yet she managed that little head of hersand that little odd face so as to give an impression of beauty or ofprettiness. It was partly the oddness of the face and head, coming on thetop of all that symmetry, that perfection, that made the total effect ofher so bewildering. I can't find words for the total effect (I don't knowthat you ever got it all at once, and I certainly didn't get it then), and if I were to tell you that what struck me first about her wassomething perverse and wilful and defiant, this would be misleading. 

She smiled in her mature, perfunctory manner as she took the chair I gaveher. She cast out her muff over my writing-table, and flung back the fursthat covered her breast and shoulders, as if she had come to stay, as ifit were four o'clock in the afternoon and I had asked her to tea for thefirst time. 

I remember saying, "That's right. I'm afraid this room is a bit warm, isn't it?"--as if she had done something uninvited and a littleunexpected, and I wished to reassure her. As if, too, I desired to assertmy position as the giver of assurances. 

(And it was I who needed them, not she. )

She hadn't been in that room five minutes before she had created asituation; a situation that bristled with difficulty and danger. 

To begin with, she was so young. She couldn't have been, then, a dayolder than one-and-twenty. My first instinct (at least, I suppose it wasmy first) was to send her away; to tell her that I was afraid shewouldn't do, that she was too unpunctual, and that I had found, betweennine-thirty and ten o'clock, somebody who would suit me rather better. Any lie I could think of, so long as I got out of it. So long as I gother out of it. 

I don't know how it was she so contrived to impress me as being in forsomething, some impetuous adventure, some enterprise of enormousuncertainty. It may have been because she looked so well-cared-for andexpensive. I do not understand these matters, but her furs, and hertailor-made suit of dark cloth, and the little black velvet hat with thefur tail in it were not the sort of clothes I had hitherto seen worn bytypists seeking for employment. So that I doubted whether financialnecessity could have driven her to my door. Or else I had a premonition. She herself had none. She was guileless and unaware of taking any risks. And that, I think, was what disturbed me. The situation bristled becauseshe so ignored all difficulty or danger. 

Please don't imagine that I regarded myself as dangerous or evendifficult, or her as being, in any vulgar sense, out for adventure, or asbalancing herself even for amusement on any perilous edge. It was notwhat she was _out_ for, it was, as I say, what she might possibly be infor; and what she would, in consequence, let me in for too. She made mefeel responsible. 

"Let me see, " I said; "it's typing, isn't it?"

I began raking through drawers and pigeon-holes, pretending to find herletter and the sample of her work that she had sent me, though I knew allthe time that they lay under my hand hidden by the blotter. I wanted togive myself time; I wanted to create the impression that I was old atthis game; that I had to do with scores and scores of young women seekingemployment; to make her realize the grim fact of competition; to saturateher with the idea that she was only one of scores and scores, alldocketed and pigeon-holed, any one of whom might have superior qualities;when it would be easy enough to say, "I'm sorry, but the fact is, Irather think I've engaged somebody already. "

"Yes, " she said, "it's typing. I can't do anything else. But if you wantshorthand, I could learn it. "

This gave me an opening. "Well--I'm sorry--but the fact is--"

"Did you like what I sent you?"

That staggered me. I hadn't allowed for her voice. For a moment Iwondered wildly what _had_ she sent me?

"Oh, yes. I liked it. But--" I began it again. 

She leaned forward this time, peering under my elbow (the minx! I'mconvinced she knew the infernal thing was there). 

"I see, " she said. "You've lost it. Don't bother. I can do another. Aslong as you liked it, that's all right. "

I remember thinking violently: "It isn't all right. It's all wrong. Andthe more I like it (if I _do_ like it) the worse it's going to be. " Butall I said was, "You wrote from Canterbury, didn't you?"

"Yes. "

It was as if she challenged me with: "Why not? Why shouldn't one writefrom Canterbury?" And she stuck out her little chin as her eyes openedfire on me at close range. 

"Do you live there?" I said. 

"Yes. " She corrected herself. "My people live there. "

"Oh! Because--in that case--I'm sorry--but--the fact is, I'm afraid--" Ifloundered, and she watched me floundering. Then I plunged. "I must havea typist who lives in London. " (And I might have added "a typist whowon't open fire on me at close range. ")

"But, " she said, "I do--at least, I'm going to to-morrow evening. "

I must have sat staring then quite a long time, not at her, but at one ofRoland Simpson's sketches on the wall in front of me. 

She followed, but not quite accurately, the direction of my thoughts. 

"If you want references, I can give you heaps. General Thesiger's myuncle. Why? Do you know him?"

I had ceased staring. He was not the General I knew, but she had spoken asufficiently distinguished name. I said as much. 

"Of course lots of people know him, " she went on with a sort of radiantrapidity. "And he knows lots of people. But I wouldn't write to him if Iwere you. He'll only be rude, and ask you who the devil _you_ are. There's my father, Canon Thesiger. It's no good writing to him, either. It'll worry him. And there's--no, you mustn't bother the Archbishop. Butthere's the Dean. You might write to _him_! And there's ColonelBraithwaite and Mrs. Braithwaite. They're all dears. You might write toany of them. Only I'd much rather you didn't. "

"Why?" I said. I thought I was entitled to ask why. 

"Because, " she said, "it'll only mean a lot more bother for me. "

I believe I meditated on this before I asked her, "Why should it?"

"Because it isn't easy to get away and earn your own living in thiscountry. And they'll try, poor dears, to stop me. And they can't. "

"If they don't, " I said, "are you sure it won't mean a lot of bother for_them_?"

"Not, " she said gravely, "if they're left alone and not worried. It will, of course, if you go and write and stir them all up again. "

"I see. For the moment, then, they are placated?"

"Rather. " (I wondered on what grounds. ) "We settled _that_ last night. "

"Then--" I said, "forgive my asking so many questions--your people knowyou had this appointment with me?"

Her eyebrows took a little tortured twist in her pity for my stupidity. 

"Oh no. That would have upset them all for nothing. It doesn't do toworry them with silly details. You see, they don't know anything aboutyou. "

It was exquisite, the innocence with which she brought it out. 

"But, " I insisted, "that's rather my point. _You_ don't know anythingabout me either, do you?"

"Yes, I do. I knew, " she said, "the minute I came into the room. If itcomes to that, you don't know anything about _me_. "

I said I did; I knew the minute _she_ came into the room. And she facedme with, "Well then, you see!" as if that settled it. 

I suppose it did settle it. I must have decided that since nobody couldstop her, and I wasn't, after all, a villain, if she insisted on beingsomebody's typist, she had very much better be mine. You see, she was soyoung. I wanted to protect her. Not that there was anything helpless andpathetic about her, anything, except her innocence, that appealed to mefor protection. On the contrary, she struck me as a creature of highcourage and defiance. That, of course, was what constituted the danger. She would insist on taking risks. Presently I heard myself saying, "Yes, the Close, Canterbury. I've got that. But where am I to find you here?"

She gave me an address that made me whistle. 

I asked her if she knew anything, anything whatever, about the people ofthe house?

She said she didn't. She had chosen it because it had a nice green door, and there was an Angora cat on the door-step. A large orange cat withgreen eyes. 

Had she actually taken rooms there?

No. But she had chosen them (I think she said because they had prettychintz curtains. ) She was going to take them _now_. 

She had her hand on the door. She was eager, like a child that has gotoff at last, after irritating delay. 

I closed the door against her precipitate flight. I said I thought wecould settle that here, over the telephone. 

And I settled it. 

Having settled it, I sent Pavitt, my man, to get rooms for her thatafternoon in Hampstead, with his sister-in-law, in a house overlookingthe Heath. I said I couldn't promise her chintz curtains and a green doorand an orange Angora cat with green eyes, but I thought she would befairly comfortable with Mrs. Pavitt. 

She was. 

She told me a week later that the Hampstead rooms _had_ chintz curtainsand there was a Persian kitten too. A blue Persian, with yellow eyes. 

There was. But I didn't tell her who put them there. 

The kitten alone (it was a pure-bred Persian) cost me three guineas; andto this day she thinks that Pavitt, who brought it to her, found it onthe Heath. 

Yet, with all my precautions, there was trouble when Canterbury heardabout my typist. (She had become my typist, though I had never said aword about engaging her. )

This, of course, was owing to the criminal secrecy with which Violaconducted her affairs. The Minor Canon wrote to me as if I had seduced, or was about to seduce, his daughter. (He had upset himself by rushing upto take her back to Canterbury, and finding that she wouldn't go withhim. ) I think, in his excitement, he ordered me to give her up. He was aguileless and indeed a holy man; and it's always the guileless and theholy people who raise the uncleanest scandals. And Mrs. Thesiger wrote, and the General and the Dean; and I've no doubt the Archbishop would havewritten too, if I hadn't unearthed _my_ General at his club, and askedhim if he knew the Thesigers, and found out that he did, and implored himto arrange the horrid business for me as best he could. I said he mighttell them that if the girl had been left to them to look after her, shewould have got into rooms in--I named the street, and testified to thesinister character of the house. And my General wrote and explained tothe other General and to the Minor Canon what a thoroughly nice chap Iwas, and how lamentably they had misunderstood what I believed he waspleased to call my relations with Miss Thesiger. I'm not at all sure thathe didn't even go farther and stick in a lot about my family, and suggestthat I was eligible to the extent that, though my fortunes were stillto make, I had (besides private means that enabled me to live in spite ofjournalism) considerable expectations (he knew an aunt of mine--better, it would seem, than I did). In short, that I was a thoroughly nice chap, and that the father of seven daughters (five unmarried) might do farworse than cultivate my acquaintance. He must have gone quite as far asthat, or farther, otherwise I couldn't account for the peculiarly tendernote that the Minor Canon put into the letter of apology that he wroteme, still less for the invitation I received by the same post from Mrs. Thesiger to spend Whitsuntide with them at Canterbury. (Viola had saidshe was going home for Whitsuntide. )

Dear lady, she was herself the daughter of a Canon, and she had lived allher life in a cathedral close, and the atmosphere of a cathedral closemay foster innocence, but I cannot think it could have been entirelyresponsible for the kind of indiscretion Mrs. Thesiger was guilty of. Neither do I think Mrs. Thesiger was entirely responsible herself. She isa nice woman, and I am sure she couldn't have written as she did unlessmy friend the General had led her to believe that there was some sort ofan understanding between me and Viola. But still, for all she knew aboutme, I might have been a villain. Not perhaps the gross villain the MinorCanon took me for, but a villain in some profound and subtle wayinappreciable to my friend the General. 

Well, of course I didn't spend Whitsuntide with the Thesigers atCanterbury. It would have been sheer waste of Viola. For the worst of allthis confounded rumpus was that it made me put off proposing to Violatill she had forgotten all about it. She would never have listened to mewhile the trail of the scandal still lingered. 

In fact, it was only the marked coldness of my manner to her just thenthat saved me. 

 * * * * *

It saved me to suffer. I didn't know it was possible to suffer as shemade me suffer--I mean as _they_ made me, between them. 

It didn't begin all at once. It didn't begin, really, for another threemonths, the end of those six months that Jevons had given himself. Noteven then. Not, you may say, for a whole year; because he gave himselfanother six months as soon as he saw her. He was always giving himselfthese periods of time, as if, with his mania for taking risks, he wasalways having some prodigious bet on himself. I never knew a man back hisown enterprises as he did. 

But until he turned up again I was happy. I say I, not we. I don't knowwhether Viola was happy or not, though she looked it. I had enough senseto see that her happiness, if she was happy, had nothing to do with meexcept in so far as I was the humble means, under Providence, of thedefinite escape from Canterbury. 

For I very soon saw what had been the matter with her. She was one ofnine, the youngest but one of seven daughters. The Minor Canon had onlybeen able to educate one of the seven properly, because he had had a sonat Sandhurst, and the other was still reading for the Bar, which ispretty expensive too if you're as amiably stupid as Bertie Thesiger. (Imention Bertie because, though he doesn't come into this story, hisstupidity and his amiability combined to tighten the situationconsiderably for Viola. ) And Mrs. Thesiger had only been able to marryoff two of her seven daughters. Of the others, one (the one who had beento Girton) was a High School teacher in Canterbury and she lived at home;one was a trained nurse and lived at home between cases; that left threegirls living continually at home and, as Viola put it, eating theirheads off. 

These were the circumstances which Viola (with some omissions) recited byway of justification for her revolt; the fact being that she would haverevolted anyway. She was, as I have said, a creature of high courage andvitality and she was tied up much too tight in that Cathedral Close, besides being much too well fed; and she longed to do things. To do themwith her hands and with her head. She was tired of playing tennis on thevelvet lawns of the Canons' gardens; she was tired of calling on theCanons' wives and talking to their daughters. I am aware that Canterburyis a garrison town and that other resources, and other prospects, Isuppose, were open to Viola. But Viola was tired of talking to thegarrison. I think she would have been tired in any case, even if thegarrison hadn't been bespoken, as it were, by her unmarried sisters. (Itis, humanly speaking, impossible that, even in a garrison town, sevensisters will _all_ marry into the Service, as I fatuously supposed Mrs. Thesiger must have realized when she asked me to Canterbury. ) It alwaysbored Viola to do what her family did, and what her family, just becausethey did it, expected her to do. And somehow, in the long hours spent inthe Cathedral Close, she had acquired a taste for what she called"literature, " what she innocently believed to be literature. She was ofan engaging innocence in this respect; so that typing authors'manuscripts appealed to her as a vocation that combined one of thehighest forms of cerebral activity with I don't know what glamour ofromantic adventure. 

Her enthusiasm, her veneration for the written word made her an admirabletypist. But not all at once. To say that she brought to her reallyhorrible task a respect, a meticulous devotion, would give you no idea ofthe child's attitude; it was a blind, savage superstition that would havebeen exasperating if it had not been so heart-rending. It clearedgradually until it became intelligent co-operation. 

I trained her for six months. 

I don't suppose I ever worked harder than I did in that first half yearof her. I mean my output was never greater. For every blessed thing Iwrote was an excuse for going to see her, or for her coming to see me. Itwas a perpetual journeying between my rooms in Brunswick Square, and herrooms in Hampstead overlooking the Heath. The more I wrote the more I sawof her. 

I trained her for six months--until Jevons was ready for her. 

When I tell you that she reverenced my performances you may imagine inwhat spirit she approached his. 

For their meeting, as for what happened afterwards, I alone amresponsible. I brought it on myself. By sheer quixotic fuss andinterference with what, after all, wasn't my affair. For little Jevonsmost decidedly was not. I might easily have let that sleeping dog lie. Hecertainly did sleep, in some obscure kennel of London; he had slept eversince I had left him at the door of that restaurant in Soho. He sleptalmost for the six months he had then given himself. 

And then, before (according to his own schedule) he was quite due, heappeared in the columns (in my columns) of the _Morning Standard_. I hadalmost forgotten his existence; but when I saw his name, James TaskerJevons, stick out familiarly under the big headlines, I remembered thatthat name, on a card with an address, had been lying in my left-handwriting-table drawer all this time; I remembered that it was therebecause he had lent me half a crown, and that I had never paid him. Then he came back to me--he lived again. 

I sent him a postal order and an apology. I referred, very handsomely asI thought, to his cuckoo's nesting in my paper. (I informed him, in fact, that he "did it" better than I did); and because I had worked myself upto a pitch of affability and generosity, I asked him to come and see meat such time as he should be free. And because, also, I was indifferentand lazy and didn't want to be seriously bothered with him, instead ofasking him to lunch or dine with me, I said I was generally free myselfbetween four and five. 

Between four and five was an hour when Viola was very apt to come in. 

In the instant that followed the posting of that letter I saw what I haddone. And I wrote to him the next day asking him to dinner, in order thathe should not come in between four and five. For some weeks, whenever Ifancied he was about due at four o'clock, I wrote and asked him todinner. That was how I fastened him to me. There wasn't any sense inwhich he fastened on me. I wasn't by any means his only hope. 

I may say at once I was prostrated as any slave before his conversation. 

I shall never forget the radiance of his twinkle when he told me he hadbeen sacked three weeks ago from the sporting paper that had provided himwith his sole visible means of subsistence. It was his blessed (only hedidn't call it blessed) style that had dished him: the suicidal _élan_that he brought to the business. He was warned, he said. He was awarethat his existence as a reporter hung by the bare thread of statement(wearing thinner and thinner) on which he weaved his fantastic web. Hiseditor told him he was engaged to report football, not to play it withthe paper. But he couldn't help it. He had got, he said, the ensanguinedhabit. Still, I was not to imagine that he bungled things. He jolly wellknew his way about. In his wildest flights there was a homing impulse; hewas preparing a place for himself all the time (that it happened to be_my_ place didn't seem to afflict him in the least). Like St. Paul, heknew how to abound and he knew how to abstain. His abstinence, in fact, gave the measure of his abundance. He held himself in for five perilousweeks; and when he let himself rip again it was with a burst that landedhim in the front page of the _Morning Standard_. 

What he sketched for me had no resemblance to the career of a peacefulman of letters. It was a hot race, a combat as bloody (his own word) asthose contests of which he was the delighted eye-witness. 

He had come thin and worn out of the struggle, but you gathered that hehad borne himself in it with coolness and deliberate caution. His phrasesproduced a false effect of vehemence and excitement. You saw that he hadsimply followed out a calculated scheme, not one step of which hadmiscarried. And you felt that his most passionate affairs would beconducted with the same formidable precision. 

I ought to have felt it. For we were precious soon in the thick of it--ofhis most passionate affair. 

I had dined him, I suppose, about three times, and I had lunched himtwice. And I had had tea with him once in his bedroom. He was living inone room in a street off the Euston Road, and he called it his bedroombecause it looked so much more that than anything else. I might have letit go at that. But I didn't. I had seen his bedroom. I took the libertyof inquiring into his finances. They were, he said, as yet undeveloped. He had a scheme of his own for improving them, but while it was maturinghe was, he certainly _was_ open to offers of work. I got him sometranslation. (He was a fairly good French scholar. )

Then--it was the fatality of the proceedings that impressed them on mymemory--then (I forgot to say that at that time I was reader to a firm ofpublishers; these things are in themselves so inessential to this story)I turned over to him any books that came more into his province thanmine. His province, I can tell you, was pretty extensive, too. 

He began by doing me the honour to consult me about any instances thatseemed doubtful. 

And so--you see how carefully I had prepared his path for him--oneafternoon he turned up at my rooms, uninvited, between four and five. Hesaid he remembered I had told him I should be free at that hour. 

He remembered. Yes; I don't think Tasker Jevons ever forgot anything, anything likely to be useful to him, in his life. 

And he hadn't been with me ten minutes before Viola Thesiger came in. 

He was saying, "Why the Heaven-afflicted idiot" (his author) "shouldthink it necessary--" when Viola came in. 

She came in, and suddenly I made up my mind that she was beautiful. Ihadn't seen it before. I don't know why I saw it now. It may have beensome turn of her small, squarish head that surprised me with subtletendernesses and curves; or more likely it may have been her effect onhim. I may have seen her with his eyes. I don't know--I don't know. Ihardly like to think he saw anything in her I hadn't seen first. 

He stopped talking. They looked at each other. I introduced him. Not tohave introduced him would have struck him as a slight. 

I ordered tea at once in the hope of hastening his departure. He had beencuriously silent since she had come in. 

But he didn't go. He just sat there, saying nothing, but looking at herfurtively now and again, and blinking, as if looking at her hurt him. Whenever she said anything he stared, with his mouth a little open, breathing heavily. 

She hadn't paid very much attention to him. Then, suddenly, as ifintrigued by his silence, she said:

"Who is the Heaven-afflicted idiot?"

I said, "Ask Mr. Jevons. "

She did. 

Jevons didn't answer her. He simply looked at her and blinked. Then helooked away again. 

"Come, " I said, "you might finish what you were going to say. "

"I don't know, " he muttered, "that I was going to say anything--Ohyes--that thing you sent me. Why the silly blighter should suppose it'snecessary to stick in a storm at sea when it's quite obvious he hasn'tseen one--he talks about a brig when he means a bark, and from the way henavigates her you'd say the wind blew all ways at once in the Atlantic. "

I said it might for all I knew; and I asked him if he'd ever seen a stormat sea himself. 

It seemed he had. He'd been ordered a sea-voyage for his health after hisspell of printing; and his uncle, who was a sea-captain, took him withhim to Hong-Kong in his ship. And he had been all through a cyclone inthe Pacific. 

I got him--with some difficulty, for he had become extremely shy--I gothim to tell us about it. 

He did. And by the time he had finished with us we had all been through acyclone in the Pacific. 

It was too much. The little beast could talk almost as well as he wrote. A fellow who can write like Tasker Jevons has no business to talk at all. 

Viola left soon after six. He had outstayed her. I went downstairs withher. When I came back to him he was still staring at the doorway she hadpassed through. 

"Who's that girl?" he said. 

I said she was my typist. 

He meditated, and brought out as the result: "Do you mind telling me howmuch she charges you?"

I told him. He looked dejected. 

"I can't afford her, " he said presently. "No. I can't possibly affordher. Not yet. " He paused. "Do you mind giving me her address?"

"I thought you said you couldn't afford her?"

"I can't. Not yet. But I _will_ afford her. I will. I give myselfanother--" He stopped. His mouth fell ajar, and I saw his lips moving ashe went through some inaudible calculation--"another six months. "

He hid his face in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. Then, as if he conceived himself to be unobserved behind this shelter, he let himself go; and I became the witness of an agony, a passion, aself-abandoned nakedness, to the utter shedding of all reticences anddecencies, with nothing but those thin hands and that hair betweenme and it. 

"I'll work, " he said. "I'll work like a hundred bloody niggers. Like tenhundred thousand million sweated tailors in a stinking cellar. I'llpinch. I'll skimp and save. I'll deny myself butter. I'll wear celluloidcollars and sell my dress-suit. My God! I'd sell the coat off my back andthe shoes off my feet; I'd sell my own mother's body off her death-bed, and go without my dinner for nine months to see her again for fiveminutes. Just to see her for five minutes. Five (unprintable) littleminutes that another man wouldn't know what to do with, wouldn't use fortying up a bootlace in. "

Pause. 

"I didn't know it hurt. I didn't know a girl's face could land you onelike this, and her eyes jab you, and her voice turn round and round inyour stomach like a circular saw. That's what it feels like. Exactly. 

"Dry up, you old Geyser, yourself. I'm getting it, not you. You'd spoutif you'd had to sit tight with all the gas in the shop blazing away underyou for the last hour. If you can turn it off at the meter, turn it. Ican't. No, I won't have another cup of tea. And I won't get up and clearout, I'm going to sit here another five minutes. I'm not well, I tellyou, and it relieves me to talk about it. I don't care if you don'tlisten. Or if you do. I'm past caring. 

"D'you notice that I didn't speak a word to her--not one blessed word thewhole time? I should have choked if I'd tried to. I didn't want to lookat her, to think of her. That's why I told that rotten story, just tokeep myself going. What a blethering idiot she must have thought me! Whata putrid ass! The sea--And _me_!

"And the way she looked at me--"

I said, "D'you mean to say, Jevons, it didn't happen?"

And he groaned. "Oh, it _happened_ all right. I can't invent things tosave my life. 

"God! It isn't even as if she was pretty. I could understand _that_. "

He grabbed his throat suddenly and began to cough. 

I tried to be kind to him. "Look here, " I said, "old chap. I'm awfullysorry if it takes you this way. But it's no good. "

He turned on me coughing and choking. I cannot remember all he said orhalf the things he called me, but it was something like this: "Yousnivelling defective. " (Cough) "You septic idiot. " (Cough) "You poisonousand polluted ass. " (Cough, cough, cough) "You scarlet imbecile. " (I haveto water down the increasing richness of his epithets. ) "You lastdiminutive purple embryo of an epileptic stock, do you suppose I don'tknow that? No good? Of course it's no good--yet. I got to wait foranother six months. And you can take it from me, if a fellow knows whathe wants, and doesn't try to get it--doesn't know how to get it--in sixmonths--and doesn't find out--_he_'s no good, if you like. "

These words didn't strike me at the time as having any personalapplication. He was to repeat them later on, however, in circumstanceswhich I defy anybody to have foreseen. 

 * * * * *

I cannot recall the precise phases of their remarkable friendship. Iwasn't present at its earliest stages. 

I had my first intimation of its existence one evening in the winter ofnineteen-five, when he dropped in on me to consult me, he said, about arather delicate matter, in which I gathered there lurked for hisinexperience the most frightful pitfalls of offence. That he should cometo me in this spirit was evidence that a certain chastening had beengoing on in him. 

The delicate matter was this. He had given Miss Thesiger a lot of work, the typing of a whole book, in fact. And--he had immense difficulty ingetting to this part of it--she had refused to take any payment. She hadgot it into her head that he was hard up. He had sent her a cheque threetimes, and three times she had returned it. She was as obstinate as amule about it. And now she was saying that she had never meant him to payher; she had done the whole thing out of friendship, which, of course, was very pretty of her, but it put him in a beastly position. He'd neverbeen precisely in that position before and he didn't know what to doabout it. He didn't want to offend her and yet he didn't see--did I?--howhe could let her do it. It was, he said, all the wrong way about, according to his notions. And for the life of him he didn't know what todo. It might seem to me incredible that such virgin innocence as hisshould exist in a world where the rules for most sorts of conduct werefairly settled. He had lived all his life in an atmosphere of births, marriages and deaths, and he knew all the rules for the registration ofthem. And that was about all he did know. And it was the most infernallyhard luck to be stumped like this at the very beginning, just when hewanted most awfully to do the right thing. 

Besides, it had knocked him all to bits--the sheer prettiness of it. 

He laid bare for me all the curious intricacies of a soul tortured by itsown delicacy. There was agony in his eyes. 

If he were to take this kindness from a lady--would it, in my opinion, orwould it not, be cricket?

I didn't like to tell him that he had brought his agony on himself by hisimprudence in employing a typist when he couldn't afford one. So I onlysaid that, if I knew the lady, he would find her uncommonly hard to move. 

He hadn't any hope, he said, of moving her; but did I think that if hemade her a present--say, the Collected Works of George Meredith, it wouldmeet the case?

I said it would meet the case all right, but that in my opinion it wouldspoil its prettiness. If Miss Thesiger didn't want to be paid in one way, she wouldn't at all care about being paid in another. Perhaps MissThesiger liked being pretty. Hadn't he better leave it at that, anyhow, for the present?

You see I looked on Viola and Viola's behaviour as infinitely more myconcern than his. I found myself replying for her as she would havewished me to reply, as if I could claim an intenser appreciation of hermotives than was his, as if she and I were agreed about this question ofhelping Tasker Jevons and I were the custodian of her generosity. 

He said he supposed it wouldn't hurt him to leave it at that. It wasn'tas if it wouldn't be all one in the long run. He gave himself threemonths. 

I supposed he meant to pay her in. 

Three weeks later I heard that Jevons was actually living up in Hampsteadin the same house as Viola. I didn't hear it from Viola, but from my man, Pavitt, who had it from his sister-in-law. And what Pavitt came to tellme was that Mr. Jevons had been ill. 

I went up to Hampstead that afternoon to see him. 

I found him in a back room, at the top of the house, sitting by the firein an easy-chair, wrapped in a blanket. He was as thin as a lath and hisface was a bright yellow. The very whites of his eyes were yellow. Iwould have said you never saw a more miserable object, but that Jevonswas not miserable. He was happy. And as far as his devastated conditionwould allow him, he looked happy. This face, yellow with jaundice, wasdoing its best to smile. The smile was a grimace, not an affair ofthe lips at all, but of the deep crescent lines drawn at right angles tothem. Still, he was smiling. In a sort of ecstasy. 

He was smiling at Viola, who sat in the chair facing him on the otherside of the hearth. She looked as if she had been there for ages. Also, as if she had been sitting up all night. 

She was smiling too, straight at Jevons. What I saw was the beatitude ofhis response. 

He tried to smile at me, too, as I came in, but the effort was a failure. He wasn't really a bit glad to see me. Viola got up and left me with him. I wasn't to stay with him for more than ten minutes, she said. It was thefirst day he had been allowed to sit up. 

I sat with him for fifteen minutes. 

He was lodged, as before, in one room; but its domestic character wasdisguised by many ingenious devices giving you the idea that it wasnothing but his study. 

Well, there he was, haggard and yellow with jaundice, utterly pitiable asto his appearance and surroundings; and yet he looked at me in, positively, a sort of triumph, as much as to say, "Yes. Here I am. Andyou, with all your superior resources, haven't managed half so well. "

And I thought that he (not knowing Viola so well as I did) was sufferingfrom a lamentable delusion. 

He said she had been awfully good to him. But it was rather hard luck onhim, wasn't it, that he should have gone and turned this beastly colour?

I said rather loftily I didn't suppose it mattered to Viola what colourhe turned. 

(What _could_ it matter to her?)

She came in presently and took me down to her sitting-room, and gave metea. She owned to having sat up three nights with Jevons. She couldn'thave believed it possible that anybody could be so ill. For three daysand three nights the poor thing hadn't been able to keep anythingdown--not even a drop of water. But to-day she had been feeding him onthe whites of eggs beaten up with brandy. 

She seemed to me to be obsessed with Jevons's illness, and I made hercome out with me for ten minutes for a blow on the Heath. I tried to leadher mind to other things, and she listened politely. Then there wassilence, and presently I felt her arm slide into mine (she had theseadorable impulses of confidence). 

"Furny, " she said, "what does jaundice come from?"

I said it generally came from chill. 

She frowned, as if she were not satisfied with that explanation. Andthere was another silence. Then she began again:

"Would being unhappy--very, _very_ unhappy--give it you?"

I thought I saw how her mind was working and I advised her to put thatidea out of her head. Happiness, I said, wouldn't be good for Jevons. 

She said, "Oh, _wouldn't_ it!" And, after prolonged meditation, "I wonderif he'll stay that funny yellow colour all his life. "

I found out from her that he had been living in that top room above hersfor three weeks--ever since he had finished his book. It looked as if hehad become frantic when he saw the end of his pretexts and occasions formeeting her, and had cast off all prudence and had followed her, determined to live under the same roof. 

I looked on it as a madness that possessed him. 

But that it should ever possess _her_--that was inconceivable. 

II

He recovered. 

The brilliant orange of his jaundice faded to lemon, and the lemon to asallow tint that cleared rapidly as it was flooded by his flush. 

I did not realize then what sources he was drawing on. Looking back on itall, I am amazed at my own stupidity. I was, of course, aware that Violawas sorry for him; but I might have known that a girl's pity was not astimulant that would keep a man like Jevons going for very long. I amsure he would never have lowered himself by any appeal to it. Why, thebare idea of pity would have been intolerable to him, bursting, as hewas, with vitality and invading with the courage and energy and genius ofa conqueror a world that was not his. 

He laid before me very soon what I can only call his plan of campaign. Journalism with him was a purely defensive operation; but the novel andthe short story were his attack. The work that Viola had typed for himwas his first novel. He had dug himself in very securely that winter, andeach paper that he had occupied and left behind him was a line oftrenches that shifted nearer and nearer towards the desired territory. Hedidn't begin his assault on the public before he had secured his retreat. 

I know I am writing about a man whom many people still consider a greatnovelist and a great playwright. God knows I don't want to disparage him. But to me what he has written matters so little; it has no interest forme except as his vehicle, the vehicle in which he arrived; which broughthim to his destination quicker perhaps than any other which he could havechosen. His talent was so adroit that he might have chosen almost anyother; chance and a happy knack and a habit of observation determined hisselection of the written word. Compared with the spectacle of hisarrival, what he has written is neither here nor there. What I havewritten myself is neither here nor there. For the purposes of thishistory it counts only as the means which enabled me to witness the lastact of his drama. 

That is why I say so much about his adventure, his campaign, hisbusiness, and so little about his books. In this I am adopting his ownvalues, almost his own phrases. He wanted most awfully to arrive. How farhe took himself seriously as a writer nobody will ever know. Viola wasconvinced, and always will be convinced, that he was a great genius. (There's no doubt he traded with her on her conviction. He wanted mostawfully to arrive, but more than anything he wanted Viola. ) Still, he wastoo clever, I think, ever to have quite convinced himself. 

His adventure, then, began with his reporting; his campaign with hisjournalism, and his earlier novels; his business was to follow later inthe long period of peace and prosperity he saw ahead of him. 

His first novel, he told me, was calculated, deliberately, to startle andarrest; to hit the public, rather unpleasantly, in the eye. _That_, hesaid, was the way to be remembered. It wouldn't sell. He didn't want itto sell. What he wanted first was to gain a position; then to consolidateit; then to build. He talked like the consummate architect of his ownfortunes. 

His second novel would be designed, deliberately, to counteract thedisagreeable effects of his first. 

"Why, " I asked, "counteract them?"

Because, he said, if he went on being disagreeable, he'd alienate thevery sections of the public he most wished to gain. His retirement wassimply the preparation for the Grand Attack. 

It was in his third novel that he meant, still deliberately, to come intohis kingdom and his power and his glory, for ever and ever, Amen. Histhird novel, he declared, would sell; and it would be his best. On thatutterly secure and yet elevated basis he could build afterwards prettymuch as he pleased. I asked him if it wasn't a mistake to put his best soearly in the series? Wouldn't it be more effective if he worked up to it?But he said No. He'd thought of that. There wasn't anything he hadn'tthought of. That third novel was to start his big sales. And the worst ofa big sale was this, that when you'd caught your public you were bound togo on giving them the sort of thing you'd caught them with, therefore, he'd be jolly careful to start 'em with the sort of thing he happened tolike himself, otherwise he'd have to spend the rest of his life knucklingunder to them. He could get a cheaper glory if he chose to try for it;but a cheaper glory wouldn't satisfy him. That was why he decided to makefor the highest point he could reach in the beginning, so that his veryfallings-off would be glorious and would pay him as no gradual working upand up could possibly be made to pay. Besides, he wanted his glory andhis pay quick. He couldn't afford to wait a month longer than his thirdnovel. As for the different quality in the glory it would be yearsbefore anybody but himself could tell the difference, and by the timethey spotted him he'd be at another game. A game in which he defiedanybody to catch him out. 

He'd be writing plays. 

All this he told me, sitting in an arm-chair in my rooms, with his feetup on another chair, and smiling, smiling with one side of his mouthwhile with the other he smoked innumerable cigarettes. I can see his blueeyes twinkle still, through the cigarette smoke that obscured him. Thatnight he had got down to solid business. 

It was quite clear that Jevons's business was the business of thespeculator who loves the excitement of the risks he takes. I rememberexhorting him to prudence. I said: "This isn't art, it's speculation. You're taking considerable risks, my friend. "

He took his cigarette out of his mouth, dispersed the smoke, and lookedat me very straight and without a twinkle. 

"I've got to make money, " he said, "and to make it soon. I should betaking worse risks if I didn't. "

It's marvellous how he has pulled it off. Just as he said, dates and all. For he named the dates for each stage of his advance. 

That was in March; about a week before Easter, nineteen-six. 

 * * * * *

The next day I went up to Hampstead towards teatime, to see how Viola wasgetting on. I didn't expect to see Jevons there, for he'd left. He toldme in a burst of confidence he'd had to. He couldn't stand it. It wasgetting too risky. He was living now in rooms in Bernard Street, not farfrom mine. 

At Hampstead I was told that Miss Thesiger was out. She had gone for awalk on the Heath with Mr. Jevons, but they were coming in at half-pastfour for tea. If I'd step upstairs into the sitting-room I'd find herbrother, Captain Thesiger, waiting there. 

I stepped upstairs and found Captain Thesiger. I was glad to find him, for I don't mind owning that by this time I was getting somewhat uneasyabout Viola. 

It was all very well for Viola to nurse Jevons through his jaundice, shemight have done that out of pure humanity; but she had no business to begoing for walks with the little bounder. Even the charm of hisconversation and his personality (and it _had_ a charm) couldn'tconceal the fact that he was a little bounder. Why, in moments ofexcitement he had gestures that must have made her shudder all down herspine, and more than once I have known his aitches become fugitive, though, on the whole, I must say he was pretty careful. And Viola wasletting herself in for him. In sheer innocence and recklessness she wasletting herself in. I felt that if ever it should come to getting her outI would be glad of an ally. Now that I saw what Viola was capable of, Ibegan to feel some sympathy with her people at Canterbury who had triedso ineffectually to hold her in. 

There was nothing ineffectual about Reggie Thesiger. I suppose he wouldhave been impressive anyway from the sheer height and breadth of him, hisvisible and palpable perfection; but what "had" me was not hisperfection, but the odd likeness to his sister which he combined, and insome mysterious way reconciled, with it. His face had taken over not onlythe dominant and defiant look of hers, exaggerated by his sheer virility;but it had the very tricks of her charm, even to the uptilted lines ofher mouth; his little black moustache followed and gave accent to them. Isaid to myself: "Here is a young man who will not stand any nonsense. "

He greeted me with a joy that I could not account for all at once in anentire stranger, and it was mixed with a childlike and candid surprise. Iwondered what I had done that he should be so glad to see me. 

His manner very soon left me in no doubt as to what I had done. I hadbrought the most intense relief to the Captain's innocent mind. I do notknow by what subtle shades he managed to convey to me that, compared withthe queer chap I so easily might have been, he found me distinctlyagreeable. It was obvious that I existed for him only as the chap, thestrange and legendary chap, that Viola had taken up with, and that inthis capacity he, to his own amazement, approved of me. I gathered that, knowing his sister, he had feared the worst, and that the blessed reliefof it was more than he could bear if he didn't let himself go a bit. 

He had quite evidently come, or had been sent, to see what Viola was upto. Possibly he may have had in his mind the extraordinary treatment Ihad received from his father, and he may have been anxious to atone. 

Any relief that I might have brought to Captain Thesiger was surpassed bythe reassurance that I took from my first sight of him. It was as if Ihad instantly argued to myself: "This is the sort of thing that hasproduced Viola. This is the sort of man she has been brought up with. When Viola thinks of men it is this sort of man she is thinking of. It istherefore inconceivable that Tasker Jevons should exist for her otherwisethan as a curious intellectual freak. Even _her_ perversity couldn't--no, it could not--fall so far from this familiar perfection. " Though CaptainThesiger's perfection might not help me personally, it did dispose oflittle Jevons. Looking at him, I felt as if my uneasiness, you may say myjealousy, of Jevons (it almost amounted to that) had been an abominableinsult to his sister. 

Reggie--he is my brother-in-law now, and I cannot go on calling himCaptain Thesiger--Reggie was good enough to say that he had heard of mefrom his sister. His voice conveyed, without any vulgar implication, anacknowledgment of my right to be heard of from her--but, of course, hewent on agreeably, he had heard of me in any case; he supposed everybodyhad. My celebrity was so immature that I should not have recognized thisallusion to it if Reggie had not gone on even more genially. He said heliked awfully the things I did in the _Morning Standard_. Most especiallyand enthusiastically he liked my account of the big boxing match atOlympia. You could see it was written by a chap who knew what he wastalking about. 

I had to confess that Tasker Jevons was the chap who wrote it. Reggie, quite prettily abashed, tried to recover himself and plunged further. Hebrought up from his memory one thing after another. And all hisreminiscences were of Jevons. He had mixed us up hopelessly, as peopledid in those days. They knew I was associated with the _MorningStandard_, and that was all they knew about me; if they wanted to recallanything striking I had done, it was always Jevons they remembered. PoorReggie was so inveterate in his blundering that after his fourthdesperate effort he gave it up. His memory, he said, was rotten. 

I said, on the contrary, his memory for Jevons was perfect, and he lookedat me charmingly and laughed. 

While he was laughing Viola came in. She had Jevons with her. 

It was evident that neither of them was prepared for Reggie Thesiger. They had let themselves in with a latch-key and come straight upstairswithout encountering Mrs. Pavitt. 

At the sight of her brother Viola betrayed a feeling I should not havebelieved possible to her. For the first and I may say the last, time inmy experience of her, I saw Viola show funk. 

It was the merest tremor of her tilted mouth, the flicker of an eyelash, an almost invisible veiling of her brilliant eyes; I do not think itwould have been perceptible to anybody who watched her with a less tenseanxiety than mine. But it was there, and it hurt me to see it. 

There was one person, only one person, in the world whom Viola wasafraid of, and that was her brother Reggie. She was afraid of him becauseshe loved him. He was the person in the world that she loved best, before--before the catastrophe. And this fear of hers that I alone saw(Reggie most certainly had not seen it) ought to have warned me ifnothing else had. 

It probably would have warned me but for what she did next; but for herwhole subsequent behaviour. 

She broke loose from Reggie, who had closed on her with a shout of"Hallo, Vee-Vee!" and an embrace; she broke loose from Reggie and turnedto me, all laughing and rosy from his impact, with an outstretched handand a voice that swept to me and rippled with a sort of nervous joy. Andshe said: "Oh, Wally, this _is_ nice of you! You'll stop for tea. "

Her mouth said that. But her eyes--they had grown suddenly pathetic--saida lot more. They said: "Don't go, Wally, _please_ don't go. Whatever youdo, don't leave me alone with him. " At least, I can see now that that'swhat they were saying. And even at the time I saw on her dear face thesame blessed relief (at finding me there) that I had seen on Reggie's. 

Neither Reggie nor I, mind you, had seen Jevons yet (I am speaking offractions of seconds of time); and he wasn't actually in the room; butViola and I were aware of him outside. If he had not paused on thelanding to dispose of his overcoat and his hat and his stick, theirentrance would have been simultaneous. 

That pause saved them. 

His stick slipped and tumbled down on the landing with a clatter. Weheard him prop it up again. Our eyes met. I'm afraid mine said: "What areyou going to do _now_?"

Then he came in and I saw the gallant Reggie take the shock of him. Idon't suppose he had ever before met anything like Jevons--I mean reallymet him, at close quarters--in his life. But he was gallant, and he hadhis face well under control. Only the remotest, vanishing quiver andtwinkle betrayed the extremity of his astonishment. 

Viola, with an admirable air of detachment from Jevons, introduced them. I don't know how she did it. It was as if, without any actualrepudiation, she declined to hold herself responsible for Jevons'appearance; for the extraordinary little bow he made; for his jerkyaplomb and for his "Glad to meet you, Captain. " And for the rest, shejust handed him over to her brother and trusted Reggie to be decent tohim. 

I had wondered: Are they going to let on that they've been out together?She cannot--she cannot own up to that. But how are they going to get outof it, and will he betray her?

I saw how they were going to get out of it. If they didn't say in as manywords that they'd met on the doorstep they implied it in everything theysaid. They asked each other polite questions, all to the tune of: "Whathave you been doing since I last saw you?"--to convey the impression thatthey had met thus casually after a long interval. Jevons played up to herwell, almost too well; so well, in fact, did he play, that not longafterwards I was to ask myself: Was this perfection the result ofcollusion? Had they anticipated just such a sudden, disconcertingencounter? Had they thought it all out and arranged with each otherbeforehand how they should behave? I don't know. I never cared to askher. 

The game lasted some little time. I didn't like to see her driven tothese shifts (I was afraid, in fact, they'd overdo it), and I came to herhelp by telling Jevons that Captain Thesiger was an enthusiastic admirerof his work; and Reggie burst in jubilantly--he was evidently glad tobe able to meet Jevons on this happy ground--with: "Are you the chap whowrote those things I've been reading? I say, Vee-Vee, you might have toldme. "

He fastened upon Jevons then and there. He started him off on the boxingmatch. There was very little about boxing that Reggie didn't know, but heappealed to Jevons with a charming deference as to an expert. The dearboy had a good deal of his sister's innocent veneration for the chaps whowrote the things they'd been reading, who could, that is to say, dosomething they couldn't do. 

And Jevons, once started on the boxing match, fairly let himself go. Hecareered over the field of sport, interrupting his own seriousprofessional _élan_ with all sorts of childlike and spontaneous gambols. In some of his turns he was entirely lovable. It was clear that Reggieloved him as you love a strange little animal at play, or any vitalobject that diverts you. From his manner I gathered that, provided hewere not committed to closer acquaintance with Jevons, he was willingenough to snatch the passing joy of him. 

I do not know by what transitions they slid together on to the Boer War. The Boer War happened to be Reggie's own ground. He had served in it. Youwould have said that Jevons had served in it too, to hear him. He tracedthe course of the entire campaign for Reggie's benefit. He showed him bywhat error each regrettable incident (as they called them then) hadoccurred, and by what strategy it might have been prevented. 

And Reggie--who had been there--listened respectfully to Jevons. 

Viola had lured me into a corner where only scraps of their conversationreached us from time to time. So I do not know whether it was inconnection with the Boer War that Jevons began telling Reggie thatjournalism was a rotten game; that from birth he had been baulked of hisambition. He had wanted to be tall and handsome. He had wanted to bevalorous and athletic. And here he was sent into the world undersized andnot even passably good-looking. And what--he asked Reggie--_could_ he dowith a physique like his?

I remember Reggie telling Jevons his physique didn't matter a hang. Hecould be a war correspondent in the next war. I remember Jevons saying inan awful voice: That was just it. He couldn't be anything in the nextwar--and, by God, there was a big war coming--he gave it eight years--buthe couldn't be in it. He was an arrant coward. 

That, he said, was his tragedy. His cowardice--his distaste fordanger--his certainty that if any danger were ever to come near him hewould funk. 

And I remember Reggie saying, "My dear fellow, if you've the courage tosay so--" and Jevons beating off this consolation with a funny gesture ofdespair. And then his silence. 

It was as if suddenly, in the midst of his gambolling, little Jevons hadfallen into an abyss. He sat there, at the bottom of the pit, staring atus in the misery of the damned. 

I looked at Viola. Her eyelids drooped; her head drooped. Her whole bodydrooped under the affliction of his stare, and she would not look at me. 

Reggie (he really _was_ decent) tried to turn it off. "I wouldn't worry, if I were you, " he said. "Wait till the war comes. "

"Oh, it's coming all right, " said little Jevons. "No fear. "

And as if he could no longer bear to contemplate his cowardice, he saidgood-bye to us and left. Reggie's eyes followed his dejected, retreatingfigure. 

"How quaint!" he said. "But he's a smart chap, anyway. And, mind you, he's right about that war. "

I said (Heaven knows why, except that I think I must have wanted Reggie'sopinion of Jevons): "D'you think he's right about his own cowardice?"

Reggie said, "Ask me another. You can't tell. I only know I've seen menlook like that and talk like that before an engagement. "

Viola raised her head. Her voice came with the clear tremor of a bell:"And did they funk?"

"They didn't run away, if that's what you mean. I daresay they felt likeJevons. I've felt like Jevons myself. "

Of course, knowing Jevons as I do now, I have sometimes fancied his talkabout cowardice may have been mere bravado, the risk he took with Reggie. But here again I am not quite sure. I don't really know. 

I am, however, entirely enlightened as to the game Viola played with methat night. 

Jevons had stayed till half-past six. He had talked for two hours and ahalf. When I got up to go, Reggie suggested that his sister should comeand dine with him somewhere in town and do a play afterwards. 

She said, All right. She was on. And Furny would come too. 

He said, of course I was coming too. That was what he had meant (itwasn't). 

And in the end I went. I say in the end--for of course I protested. Itwas his one evening with his sister. But Viola's poor eyes signalled tome and implored me: "Don't leave me alone with him, whatever you do. " Shewanted to put off the dreadful moment that must come when he would askher: "Where on earth did you pick up that shocking little bounder?"

But the question never came. To begin with, Reggie was so enthralled bythe funny play we went to that he forgot all about Jevons. And thenViola's game, that started in the restaurant and went on all throughdinner, began again and continued in the taxi after the play. And thoughReggie was discretion itself, you could see that he had taken it forgranted--and no wonder--that she and I were, well, on the brink of anengagement if we hadn't fallen in. As for Jevons, he simply couldn'thave conceived him in that connection. To Reggie, Jevons was simply anamusing little scallywag who could write. That Viola should have takenJevons seriously surpassed his imagination of the possible. So that shenever was in any danger of discovery, and there was no need for hermanoeuvres. He couldn't have so much as found out that she had gone for awalk with Jevons, because it wouldn't have entered his head that youcould go for a walk with him. People didn't do these things. 

Besides, he never was alone with her that evening. She took good care ofthat. She insisted on dropping him at his hotel, which we passed on ourway northwards. She actually said to him, "You must get out here. Furny'll see me home. I want to talk to him. "

And instead of talking to me, she sat leaning forward with her back halfturned to me, staring through the window at nothing at all. 

That was how I came to propose to Viola in the taxi. I had been afraid todo it before. I wasn't going to do it at all unless I was sure of her. But it seemed to me that she had been trying all afternoon and allevening to tell me that I might be sure. 

 * * * * *

Well--she wouldn't have me. She was most decided about it. I had no hopeand no defence and no appeal from her decision. Unless I was prepared tobe a bounder--and a fatuous bounder at that--I couldn't tell her thatshe had given me encouragement that almost amounted to invitation. To doher justice, until the dreadful moment in the taxi she hadn't known thatshe had given me anything. She confessed that she had been trying toconvey to Reggie the impression that if her affections were engaged inany quarter it was in mine. She had been so absorbed in calculating theeffect on Reggie that she had never considered the effect on me. She saidshe thought I knew what she was up to and that I was simply seeing herthrough. She spoke of Jevons as if he was a joke--a joke that might bedisastrous if her family took it seriously. It might end in her recallfrom town. She intimated that there were limits even to Reggie'senjoyment of the absurd; she owned quite frankly that she was afraid ofReggie--afraid of what he might think of her and say to her; because, shesaid, she was so awfully fond of him. As for me, and what _I_ mightthink, it was open to me to regard her solitary stroll with Jevons as afunny escapade. 

I do not believe the poor child was trying to throw dust in my eyes. Itwas her own eyes she was throwing dust in. She didn't want to think ofherself what she was afraid of Reggie thinking. 

As to the grounds of my rejection (I was determined to know them), shewas clear enough in her own little mind. She liked me; she liked meimmensely; she liked me better than anybody in the world but Reggie. Sheadmired me; she admired everything I did; she thought me handsome; I wasthe nicest-looking man she knew, next to Reggie. But she didn't love me. 

"What's more, Furny, " she said, "I can't think why I don't love you. "

I couldn't see her clearly and continuously in the taxi. The lamp-postswe passed on the way to Hampstead lit her up at short, regular intervals, and at short, regular intervals she faded and was withdrawn from me. Andin the same intermittent way, her soul, as she was trying to show it tome, was illuminated and withdrawn. 

"I ought to love you, " she went on. "I know I ought. It would be the verybest thing I could do. "

The folly in me clutched at that admission and gave tongue. "If that'sso, " I said, "don't you think you could try to do what you ought?"

The lamp-light fell on her then. She was smiling a little sad, wise smile. "No, " she said. "No. I think that's _why_ I can't loveyou--because I ought. "

And then she went on to explain that what she had against me was myfrightful rectitude. 

"You're too nice for me, Furny, much too nice. And ever so much too good. I simply couldn't live with integrity like yours. " She paused and thenturned to me full as we passed a lamp-post. 

"I suppose you know my people would like me to marry you?"

I said a little irritably that I had no reason to suppose anything of thesort. 

"They would, " she said. "Why, bless you, that's what they asked you downat Whitsuntide for! I don't mean that they said to each other: Let's askhim down and then he'll marry Viola. They wouldn't even think it--they'remuch too nice. Poor dears--they'd be horrified if they knew I knew it!But it was underneath their minds, you know, pushing them on all thetime. I believe they sent Reggie up to have a look at you, though theydon't know that either. They think they sent him to see what I was up to. You see, Furny dear, from their point of view you _are_ so eligible. Andreally, do you know, I think that's what's dished you--what's dished usboth, if you like to put it that way. I'm sure you may. "

I said it didn't matter much what dished me or how I put it, provided I_was_ dished. But--was I?

Oh yes! She left me in no doubt that I was dished. And I saw--I stillsee, and if anything more clearly--why. 

I was everything that Canterbury approved of. And Viola, in her youngrevolt, was up against everything of which Canterbury approved. Herpeople were dear people; they were charming people, well-bred people;they had unbroken traditions of beautiful behaviour. And they had tiedher up too tight in their traditions; that was all. Viola would nevermarry anybody on whom Canterbury had set its seal. 

And seeing all that, I saw that I had missed her by a mere accident. Itwas my friend the General who had dished me when he testified to myentire eligibility. That's to say, it was my own fault. If I had let wellalone; if I hadn't turned the General on to them, _I_ should have beenin the highest degree ineligible; _I_ should have been a person of whomCanterbury most severely disapproved; when I've no doubt that Viola, outof sheer perversity, would have insisted on marrying me. 

She said as much. So far she saw into herself and no farther. 

The Northern Heights were favourable to this interview, for the taxibroke down in an attempt to scale East Heath Road, so that we walked thelast few hundred yards together to her door. 

It was while we were walking that--stung by a sudden fear, a reminiscenceof the afternoon--I asked her: Was there anybody else?

No, she said, there wasn't. How could there be? Hadn't she told me sheliked me better than anybody else, next to Reggie?

"Are you sure?" I said. "Are you quite sure?"

She stopped in the middle of the road and looked at me. 

"Of course, " she said. "There _isn't_ anybody. Except poor, funny littleJevons. And you couldn't mean him. "

That was as near as we got to him then. 

But a week later--the week before Easter--he came to us suddenly in myrooms where Viola was correcting proofs for me. 

He had come to tell us of his good luck. His novel had been accepted. 

I was glad, of course. But Viola was more than glad. She was excited, agitated. She jumped up and said: "Oh, Jimmy!" (She called him Jimmy, andher voice told me that it was not for the first time. ) "Jimmy! Howsimply spiffing!"

And I saw him look at her with a grave and tender assurance, as a manlooks at the woman he loves when he knows that the hour of his triumph isher hour. 

And I thought even then: It's nothing. It's only that she's glad the poorchap has pulled it off. 

Then she said: "Let's all go and dine somewhere together. You don't mind, Furny dear, do you? I'll take it home and sit up with it. "

Oh, I didn't mind. We all went somewhere and dined together. We went, forthe sheer appropriateness of it, to that restaurant in Soho where I haddined with Jevons for the first time. That was how it happened--what didhappen, I mean, afterwards, in my rooms where Jevons had left us. 

We had gone back there for coffee and cigarettes. (Canterbury wouldn'thave approved of this. )

He had said good night to us when he turned on the threshold with hisreminiscence. The restaurant in Soho had aroused it. 

"I say, Furnival, do you remember that half-crown you borrowed from me?"

I said I did. And that to remind me of it now was a joke in veryquestionable taste. 

He said, "You never really knew the joke. I kept it from you mostcarefully. That little orgy of ours had just about cleared me out and thehalf-crown was my last half-crown. I had to go without any dinner forthree days. "

I mumbled something about his not meaning it. 

He said, "Of course I meant it. Why, my dear chap, that's the joke!"

He stood there in the doorway, rocking with laughter. Then he saw ourfaces. 

"I say, I wouldn't have told you if I'd thought it would harrow you likethat. Thought you'd think it funny. It _is_ funny. "

I said, "No, my dear fellow, it's just missed being funny. "

I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him from the room. (I had seenViola's face and I didn't want him to see it. ) I led him gentlydownstairs with a hand still on his shoulder. He was a little grieved atgiving pain when he had hoped to give pleasure. 

At the bottom of the stairs he turned and looked at me with hisungovernable twinkle. "It _was_ funny, " he said. "But it wasn't half sofunny, Furnival, as your face. "

I found Viola sitting at my writing-table, with her arms flung out overit and her head bowed on them. And she was crying--crying with littlesoft sobs. I've said that I didn't think she could do it. And I didn't. She wasn't the sort that cries. I'm convinced she hadn't cried like thisfor years, perhaps never since she was a child. 

I put my arms round her as if she had been a child; I held her soft, warm, quivering body close to mine; I wiped her tears away with herpocket-handkerchief. And like a child she abandoned herself to my--to myrectitude. She trusted in it utterly. I might have been her brotherReggie. 

I said: "You mustn't mind. He was only rotting us. " And she said: "Hewasn't. It was true. He told me that six months ago he was starving. "

I said: "Vee-Vee, if he _was_, you mustn't think about him. You mustn't, really. "

Then she drew away from me and dried her eyes herself, carefully andefficiently, and said in a calm and measured voice: "I'm not thinkingabout him. "

I went on as if I hadn't heard her: "You mustn't be sorry for him. Jevonsis quite clever enough to take care of himself. He isn't a bit pathetic. You mustn't let him get at you that way. "

She raised her head with her old, high defiance. "He isn't trying to getat me. I'm not sorry for him--any more than he's sorry for himself. "

I said, "You don't know. You're just a dear little ostrich hiding itshead in the sand. "

"No, " she said. "No. I'm not a fool, Furny. Even an ostrich isn't such afool as it looks. It doesn't imagine for a moment that it isn't seen. Ithides its head because it knows it's going to be caught, anyway, and it'safraid of seeing what's going to catch it. "

I asked her then, Was _she_ afraid?

She was standing beside me now, leaning back against my writing-table. Her two hands clutched the edge of it. Her eyes had a far-seeing, candidgaze. 

"I'm not afraid, " she said, "of anything outside me. Only of thingsinside me--sometimes. "

"What sort of things?"

She smiled, the queerest little, far-off smile. 

"Oh, funny things--things you wouldn't understand, Furny. "

To that I said, "I wish you'd marry me, Viola. "

She shrugged her shoulders and said, so did she, and it was much worsefor her than it was for me. And then: "Do you know, Reggie liked youimmensely. He told me so. "

I said it would be more to the point if _she_ did. But since she didn't, since she couldn't marry me, I wished--"I wish, " I said, "you'd go backto Canterbury and marry some nice man like Reggie. "

"Can't you see, " she cried, "that I shall never marry a nice man likeReggie?"

III

The next thing that happened was that she went off with Jevons. 

At least, to all appearances she went off with him. They were in Belgium, at Bruges and Antwerp and Ghent and Bruges again together. I found themat Bruges after having tracked them through all the other places. 

It was Captain Thesiger who started me. Reggie (whose family seemed toemploy him chiefly to find out what Viola was up to) had called at myrooms after Easter to ask me if I could give him his sister's address. He said they hadn't got it at Hampstead, where he had been to see her, and they didn't know where she was staying. They thought it was in thecountry somewhere, and that she wouldn't be very long away, as she toldthem not to forward any letters. He thought I might possibly have heraddress. 

I told him that I hadn't, and that I didn't know how to get it, either. 

He said, "It's a rotten habit she's got of sloping off like this withouttelling you. " It wouldn't matter, only his regiment was ordered off toIndia. He was sailing next week. She was to have come down to Canterburyfor Easter and she hadn't. If he only knew the people she was stoppingwith--if he'd any idea of the town or the village or the county, he'd tryand find her. But she might be in the Hebrides for all he knew. 

I said I was sorry I couldn't help. All I knew was she had gone into thecountry (I didn't know it, but I assumed the knowledge for herprotection). She had told me she might be going (she had), and I didn'tthink she'd be away for more than a day or two. I was pretty sure she'dbe back before he sailed. 

I'd no reason, you see, to suppose she wouldn't be. Anyhow, I satisfiedhim. 

I marvel now at the ease with which I did it. But he was used to Viola'scasual behaviour; and the monstrous improbability of the thing she haddone this time was her cover. Who in the world would have dreamed thatshe would go off with Jevons? I don't really know that I dreamed itmyself at the moment. I may be mixing up with my first vague dread thecertainty that came later. But sometimes I wonder why Reggie didn'tsuspect _me_. I suppose my rectitude that had dished me with Viola savedme with her brother. 

He took me to lunch with him at his club, and went off quite happilyafterwards to the Army and Navy Stores to see about his kit. 

I went straight to Jevons's rooms in Bernard Street. Jevons was away. Hadbeen away since Easter. His landlady couldn't give me his address. Hehadn't told them where he was going to, and they rather thought he wasabroad. His letters were all forwarded to his publishers. _They_ mightgive me his address. 

I went to his publishers. They wouldn't give me his address. They weren'tallowed to give addresses, but they would forward any letters to Mr. Jevons. I said I was a friend of Mr. Jevons's. Could they at least tellme whether he was or was not in England? They said that when they hadlast heard from him he was not. 

Then I went down to Fleet Street, to his editor, my editor. He couldn'tgive me Jevons's address because he hadn't got it. He rang up the office. In the office they rather thought Jevons was in Belgium. They'd had amanuscript from him posted at Ostend. They looked up the date. It wasthree days ago. 

I sailed that night for Ostend. 

Of course I had no business to follow Jevons. He had a perfect right totravel--to travel anywhere he liked, without interference from anybody. And in fixing on a time to travel in, nothing was more likely than withhis mania upon him he would choose a time that had become valueless tohim--a time that he had no other use for, the time when Viola Thesigerwas away. The poverty of his resources was such that he couldn't affordto waste any opportunity of seeing her. So that I really could not havegiven any satisfactory answer if I had been asked why I had jumped to thepreposterous conclusion that, because they were away at the same time, they were away together. It ought to have been as inconceivable to me asit was to Reggie. I can only say that in following him I acted on anintimation that amounted to certainty, founded on I know not whatunderground flashes of illumination and secret fear. 

I must have trusted to more flashes in pursing his trail. For when Ireached Folkestone there wasn't any trail at all. My only clue was thatthree days ago Jevona had posted a manuscript at Ostend. He might not bein Belgium at all. He might be in Holland or in France or Germany by thistime. 

When we got to Ostend I made systematic inquiries at the Post Office andat all probable hotels. At the eleventh hotel (a very humble one) I heardthat a "Mr. Chevons" had stayed there one night, three nights ago. No, hehad nobody with him. He had left no address. They didn't know where hewas going on to. I found out under another rubric that Englishmen nevercame to this hotel. There was no point in making a separate search forViola; if my intuition held good, all I had to do was to find out whereJevons was. 

I went on to Bruges. Why, I cannot tell you. I had never heard eitherViola or Jevons say they would like to see Bruges. But Bruges was thesort of place that people did like to see. 

No trace of Jevons or of Viola in Bruges. 

I went on to Antwerp (it was another of the likely places), and then, insheer desperation, to Ghent. 

And in Ghent, in a certain hotel in the _Place d'Armes_, I ran up againstBurton Withers, the man who used to be on the old _Dispatch_, and thevery last person I could have wished to see. I didn't ask him if he'dseen Jevons; I didn't mention Jevons; but before we'd parted he had toldme that, by the way, he'd come across Jevons in Bruges. He was goingabout with my typist, Miss Thesiger. They were staying in the same hotel. 

I tried to say as casually as I could that Miss Thesiger had wired to methat she was staying in that hotel with her people. 

The little bounder then intimated that when he saw Miss Thesiger herpeople were less conspicuous than Jevons. 

I replied that that was probably the reason why they'd asked me to jointhem when I'd seen Ghent. 

Withers advised me to go on seeing Ghent if I wanted to be popular. They--Jevons and Miss Thesiger--didn't look at all as if they wanted tobe seen, much less joined. 

He had the air of knowing a good deal more than he cared to tell me; butthen he always had that air; you may say he lived on it. 

I asked him presently (in a suitable context) whether he was going backsoon; and to my relief I learned that he had only just come out--for hispaper--and was going on into Germany through Brussels. He wouldn't beback in England for another three weeks or more. 

He wouldn't be back, I reflected, to tell what he knew or what he didn'tknow, till Reggie Thesiger had sailed. 

I got rid of the little beast on the first likely pretext, having dealtwith him so urbanely that he couldn't possibly think he had told meanything I saw reason to believe and therefore to resent. 

Then I went back to Bruges. 

This time my quest was fairly easy. I didn't know what hotel Jevonswas staying in; but I did know the sort of hotel that Withers stayedin when he was travelling for his paper. My errand was narrowed down tothree or four (good, but not too good), and the first I struck in theMarket-Place was Withers's hotel. It was one of those that three days agohad known nothing of Jevons. 

I inquired this time for Withers and was told that he had left thatmorning. I engaged a room and strolled out into the Market-Place. Ivisited the Cathedral, the Belfry, and the Béguinage, in the hope ofcoming suddenly across Viola and Jevons. 

I did not come across them in any of those places; but I was not veryearnest about the search. I was so sure that if Withers had not lied tome they would presently come across me at their hotel. I meant that itshould be that way, if possible: that they should come across me in aplace where they could not evade me. God only knows what I meant to sayto them when they had found me. 

As I entered the hotel again I saw the proprietor's wife make a sign toher husband. They conferred together, and sent the _concierge_ upstairsafter me. He wanted to know if I was the gentleman who had inquired theother day for Mr. Chevons, because, if I was, Mr. Chevons had arrived theday before yesterday and was staying in the hotel. 

There was no doubt about it; his name, James Tasker Jevons, was in thevisitors' list. 

Viola's was not. 

From the enthusiasm of the fat proprietor and his wife you would havesupposed that Jevons and I had roamed the habitable globe for months insearch of one another; and that Jevons, at any rate, would be overpoweredwith joy when he found that I was here. They said nothing about Viola. 

And before I could ask myself what earthly motive Withers could have hadfor lying to me, I concluded that he _had_ lied. 

Or perhaps--it was more than likely--he had been mistaken. 

Jevons, I said to myself, was bound to turn up at dinner. If Viola was inBruges, Viola would probably be with him. I chose a table by the doorbehind a screen, where I could see everybody as they came in withoutbeing seen first of all by anybody. 

Jevons didn't turn up for dinner. 

I found him later on in the evening, on the bridge outside the easterngate of the city. He stood motionless and alone, leaning over the parapetand looking into the water. Away beyond the Canal a long dyke of mistdammed back the flooding moonlight, and the things around Jevons--thetrees, the water, the bridge, the gate and its twin turrets--wereindistinct. But the man was so poured out and emptied into his posturethat I could see his dejection, his despair. The posture ought to havedisarmed me, but it didn't. 

He moved away as he saw me coming, then, recognizing me, he stood hisground. It was as if almost he were relieved to see me. 

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said. 

I asked him who he thought it was, and he said he thought it was thatlittle beast Withers. 

I said, "I daresay you did. I saw Withers this morning. "

He said quite calmly he supposed that was why I was here. 

I said I had been here before I had seen Withers. 

"I see, " he said. "He's told you. "

I said Withers had told me nothing I didn't know. 

"You didn't know anything, " he said. "You simply came here to find out. "

I said: Yes, that was what I had come for. 

"Well, " he went on; "there isn't much to find out. She's here. And I'mhere. And Withers saw us yesterday. As he told you. "

He spoke in the tired, toneless voice of a man stating for thethirty-first time an obvious and uninteresting fact. He knew that Ihad tracked him down, but he didn't resent it. I felt more than ever thatthis encounter was in some way a relief to him; things, he almostintimated, might have been so much worse. I didn't know then that hiscalmness was the measure of his trust in me. 

"The really beastly thing, " he said, "was Withers seeing us. "

I answered that the really beastly thing was his being there; his havingbrought her there; and that it would give me pleasure to pitch him overthe canal bridge, only that the canal water was too clean for him. 

He said, "The canal water is filthy. But it isn't filthier than--it isn'thalf so filthy as your imagination. Your imagination, Furnival, is likethe main sewer of this city. "

He said it without any sort of passion, in his voice of utter weariness, as if he was worn-out with struggling against imaginations such as mine. 

"But, " he went on, "even your imagination isn't as obscene as Withers's. You may as well tell me what he said to you about Miss Thesiger. "

"He said that she--that you were staying together in the same hotel. "

"Why shouldn't we? It's a pretty big hotel. Do you mind my going back toit?"

I said grimly that I was going back to it myself. I wasn't going to letJevons out of my sight. I felt as if I had taken him into custody. 

We went back. 

We didn't speak till we came into the Market-Place. Then Jevons saidquietly:

"As it happens, we aren't staying together in that damned hotel. I'mstaying in it by myself. We were dining there and having breakfast whenWithers spotted us. You don't suppose she'd let me take her to the samehotel, do you? I got a room for her in a boarding-house. Kept by someladies. "

"What do you mean by bringing her here at all? If, " I said, "you _did_bring her. "

He meditated as if he too wondered what he had meant by it. 

"I brought her all right. That's to say, I made her come. "

"You mean you didn't bring her? She followed you?"

(I _had_ to know what they had done, how they had arranged it. )

We stood for a moment in the middle of the vast foreign Market-Place, talking in voices whose softness veiled our hostility. 

He answered with a little spurt of anger. "You can't call it following. She came. "

"Don't prevaricate, " I said. "She came because you made her come. I'm notgoing to ask you why you made her. It's obvious. "

"Is it?" he said. "I wish I knew why. I wish to God I knew. "

"Don't talk rot, " I said. "You knew all right. And she didn't. "

He looked at me. Standing there in the lighted Marketplace, under theshadow of the monument, he looked at me with shining, tragic eyes. 

"No, Furnival, " he said. "Before God I didn't know. Neither of us knew. But I know now. And I'm going to-morrow. "

 * * * * *

He stuck to it that he was going. He seemed to think that his going wouldmake it all right. He had just realized--he had only just, after six daysof it, mind you, realized--that he had compromised her. I said I supposedhe realized it after Withers had seen them?

He said, No, it had come over him before that. Neither of them reallycared a damn about Withers. Who was going to care what a beast likeWithers thought or said? It had come over him that he oughtn't to havebrought her here. He wished he'd hung himself before he'd thoughtof it, but the fact was that he didn't think. He just felt when he gotout here himself that it would be a jolly thing for her to come too; itwould do her good to cut everything--all the mimsy tosh she'd beenbrought up in and hated--to get out of it all--just to do one splendidbunk. That, he said, was all it amounted to. 

We talked it over, sitting up in his little bedroom under the roof, thecheapest room in the hotel. You may wonder how I could have endured totalk to him instead of wringing his horrid little neck for him; but therewasn't anything else to be done. After all, it wouldn't have done Violaor me any good if I had wrung his neck. It was, in fact, to saveprecisely that sort of violent scandal that I had come out here. I hadrealized so well what wringing Jevons's neck would mean to Viola that Iwas determined to get at him before Reggie Thesiger could. 

Besides I doubt very much if you could have wrung the neck of anybody soabjectly penitent as Jevons was that evening. I felt as if I were shut upwith a criminal in the condemned cell, and Jevons no doubt felt as ifhe had murdered Viola. 

And yet, sitting there on his bed, leaning forward with his head in hishands and his eyes staring, staring at the horror he had raised roundher, he asserted persistently his innocence. 

"Practically, " he said, "I brought her out to look at Bruges--theBelfry. "

I said: "Good God! Couldn't she look at the Belfry without _you_?"

He shook his head and replied very gravely: "Not in the same way, Furnival. Not in the same way. It wouldn't have been the same thing atall. "

"You mean it wouldn't have been the same for you, you little bounder. "

"It wouldn't have been the same thing for _her_. I wasn't thinking onlyof myself. Who does?"

It was as if he had said: "Who that loves as I love thinks only ofhimself?" But I missed that. I was too angry. 

At least I suppose I was too angry. I must have been. Jevons's offencewas unspeakable, or seemed so. He had outraged all decencies. He had done_me_ about the worst injury that one man can do to another--at any rate, I wasn't sure that he hadn't. How could I have been sure! Everyappearance was against him. Even his funny candour left me with a ghastlydoubt. It was preposterous, his candour. His innocence was preposterous. But it is impossible to write about this singular adventure as it musthave appeared to me at the time. I am saturated with Jevons's point ofview. I have had to live so long with his innocence and I have forgivenhim so thoroughly any wrong he ever did to me. All this is bound tocolour my record and confuse me. I have impression upon impression ofJevons piled in my memory; I cannot dig down deep enough to recover theoriginal; I cannot get back to that anger of mine, that passion ofviolent integrity, that simple abhorrence of Jevons that I must havefelt. 

He didn't care a rap about me and my abhorrence. He asked me what Ithought I was doing when I came out here? He simply smiled when I toldhim I'd come out to send Viola back to her people before Reggie Thesigergot hold of him and thrashed him within an inch of his life, not becauseI in the least objected to his being thrashed within an inch of hislife--far from it--but because advertisement in these affairs wasundesirable. I didn't want Viola's family or anybody else to know aboutthis instance. It was to be hushed up on her account and on their accountalone. 

He replied pensively (almost too pensively) that he had supposed that wasthe line I would take. It was his little meditative pose that made mecall him a thundering scallywag and accuse him of having calculated onthe line that would be taken. 

He said quietly, "The word thundering is singularly inappropriate. There's nothing thundering about me. I haven't calculated anything. Asfor hushing it up, I'm hushing it up myself, thank you. Haven't I toldyou I'm going to-morrow? Can't you see that I'm packing?"

He had evidently been trying to pack. 

"And what, " I asked, "is Miss Thesiger doing?"

"She's staying on here by herself a bit. In the _pension_. As if she'dcome by herself. "

He seemed entirely satisfied with his plan. 

I said, "Look here, Jevons, that won't do. It's no good _your_ going. You've been seen here. You're supposed to be staying in this hoteltogether. If you go and she stays--in that _pension_--you've desertedher. You've seduced her. You're tired of her--in five days--and you'veleft her. "

"You don't suppose I have _really_?" said Jevons. 

"I don't suppose anything. I don't know what you've done. I don't thinkI want to know. That's what it'll look like. Do, for God's sake, rememberyou've been _seen_. "

He gathered a portion of his cheek into his mouth and sucked it. 

"I suppose, " he said, "it _would_ look like that. "

I said of course it would. And he asked me then, quite humbly, what Ithought he'd better do. 

I said I thought he'd better do exactly what I told him. He was to stayhere till Captain Thesiger had sailed for India (I wasn't going to lethim get back to England till Reggie was out of it). Miss Thesiger was togo back to her people to-morrow, and he was not to see her or write toher before she went. 

He asked me was I thinking of taking her back myself?

I said I wasn't. Miss Thesiger had behaved as if she had disappeared. There was no good in my behaving as if she had disappeared with _me_. 

That seemed to pacify him. 

I said I should take her to Ostend to-morrow and put her on board theboat. I could see that he didn't at all care about this part of theprogramme, but his intelligence accepted the whole as the best thing thatcould be done in the circumstances. 

Then I left him to his misery and went round to the _pension_ to seeViola. 

All my instincts revolted against what I had to do. 

 * * * * *

She has since told me that I did it beautifully. I don't, of course, believe her, and it doesn't matter. The wonder is how I did it at all. 

To begin with I was afraid of seeing her, because I conceived that shewould be afraid of seeing me. I felt as if I had hunted her down andcaught her in a trap. I didn't want the bright, defiant creature tocrouch and flinch before me in her corner. And, as I tried to realizeour encounter, that was how I saw her--crouching and flinching in acorner. It wouldn't have been quite so awful if the man had been anyother man but Jevons. I could not imagine a worse position for a girllike Viola Thesiger than to be caught running off to Belgium, oranywhere, with Jevons, and told to leave him and go home. Put brutally, that was what I had to tell her. 

The only way to do it was to ignore the unspeakable element in theaffair--to ignore Jevons. To behave as if I'd never heard of him; as ifshe were just travelling in Belgium on her own account and staying inBruges alone. 

And that--if she had only let me--was what I tried to do. 

I remember vividly everything that passed in that interview, but I do notknow how to reproduce it, how to give anything like an impression of themarvellous thing it was, or that it turned into under her hands. Itought, you see, to have been so ugly, so humiliating, so absolutelyintolerable for both of us. And it wasn't. She took it from me, at theend, and held it up, as it were a little way out of my grasp; and beforeI knew where I was, with some sudden twist or turn she had brought beautyout of it. Clear and exquisite beauty. 

I found her in her room at the _pension_. It was at the back, on theground floor; and had long windows opening into a little high-walledgarden. The room, I remember, was rather dingy and stuffed up withfurniture. Large Flemish pieces, bureaus, chests and cabinets stoodagainst the walls. There was a bed behind the door; she had put hertravelling-rug over it. And there was a washstand in an alcove with acurtain hung across it; and some of her coats and gowns hung behindanother curtain in a corner, and some were on hooks on the door. And herlittle trunk was on the floor by the foot of the bed. And her shoes stoodby the stove. 

Somehow, when I saw these things--especially the shoes--my heart meltedinside me with a tenderness that was infinitely more painful than therather austere disapproval of her which I had relied on for support. 

I was prepared, as I said, for a cowed and frightened Viola, or for Violain a mood at least in keeping with the poignant and somewhat humblingpathos of her surroundings; but not for the Viola I found. 

The _garçon_ of the _pension_ closed the door of this room in my face ashe went in with my card to inquire whether she would receive me. Ithought, "If she refuses I shall have to insist; and that will beunpleasant. "

But she didn't refuse. On the other side of the door I heard a subdued, but curiously reassuring cry. 

She had been sitting outside the open window. Her chair was on theflagged path of the garden. As I came in she had risen and was standingin the window, with the intense blue darkness of the garden behind herand the light of the room on her face. She was smiling in a serene andcandid joy. For one second I imagined that she had not read the name onthe card and that she thought I was Jevons. And then I must have lookedaway quite steadily so as not to see her shock of recognition; for hervoice recalled me. 

"Wally--how ripping! However _did_ you get here?"

I don't know what I said. I probably didn't say anything. The sheersurprise of it so staggered me that I must have muttered or grunted orchoked instead. But I know I took her hand and did my best to smile backat her with the stiff mouth she noticed later. 

She went on: "I _am_ glad to see you. Have you had any dinner?"

I said I had. 

"Then, " she said, "let's sit in the garden. "

I took her hat off a chair and stuck it on a bust on the bureau (Violalaughed). I set the chair on the flagged path of the garden. 

"Have you had coffee?" she said then. 

I had. 

"So have I. But I haven't had it in the garden. We'll have some more. "

I rang for coffee. 

We sat down and faced each other. She was smiling again as if the delightof seeing me fairly bubbled out of her. One thing struck me then, that atthis rate it would be easy enough to ignore Jevons. In fact, if Jevonshadn't given Viola away just now I should have thought that she _was_travelling in Belgium on her own account and that his being here in thesame town with her was a coincidence, an accident. I could have got overWithers and his story. 

Then she said, "Have you come across Mr. Jevons yet? He's here. "

I answered, with what I knew to be a very stiff mouth, "We're staying inthe same hotel. "

"You might have brought him along with you, " she said. 

I said I didn't want to bring him along with me. 

She raised her eyebrows in delicate reproof of my rudeness and said, "Whynot?"

"Because, " I said, "I want to talk to you. "

"Oh--" I don't think I imagined the faint embarrassment in her tone. Butit was very faint. 

"_And_" I went on, "I don't want to talk about Jevons. "

She looked at me then steadily. The look held me, then defied me to passbeyond a certain limit. I understood now the terms of our encounter. Aslong as I met her on the ground of a friendship that recognized andincluded Jevons she was glad to treat with me; but any attitude thatrepudiated Jevons, or merely ignored him, was a hostile attitude that shewas prepared to resent. 

"What has he done?" she said. 

"I don't know what he's done. " I paused. "Why drag in Jevons?"

"Because, " she said, "it's his last night. He's going to-morrow. "

I said, "And it's my first night. And as it happens he isn't goingto-morrow. He's arranged to stay here another fortnight. "

Her face softened. "Then it's all right, " she said. 

I had to dash her down from _that_ ground and I did it at once. 

I said, "I saw your brother the other day. "

I could see her face darken then with a flush of pain. We were sittingclose to the window, and the light from the room inside showed me all thechanges of her face. 

She asked, "What day?"

"Let me see. This is Friday. It must have been Monday. I came over thatnight, as soon as I'd seen him. "

"What did you go and see him for?"

"I didn't go. He came to see me. "

She looked at me again, if possible, more steadily than before, butwithout defiance. It was as if she were measuring the extent of myloyalty before she committed herself again to speech. 

"Why did he come?" she asked presently. 

"He wanted to know if I knew where you were. "

"You didn't know, " she said. 

"I didn't or I wouldn't have lost three days in looking for you. But Imade a good shot, anyhow, when I came to Bruges. "

Even in her anguish--for she was in anguish--she smiled at the wonder ofmy shot. 

"What made you think of Bruges?"

"I don't know. "

I couldn't tell her what had made me think of it. I couldn't tell herthat I had tracked her down through Jevons. I was going to keep him outof it, if she would only let me. But she wouldn't. 

"I suppose, " she meditated gently, "he must have told you. "

I answered quite sternly this time, to impress on her the propriety ofkeeping Jevons out of it:

"He didn't tell me anything. "

"Then"--she was still puzzled--"what made you come?"

"You. "

"Me?"

"Your brother, if you like. "

"He should have come himself. "

"That, " I said, "is what I'm trying to prevent. He doesn't knowyou're here. I want to get you back to England before he does know. Besides--he's sailing for India next week. "

Then she broke down; that's to say, she lowered her flags. Her head sankto her breast; her eyes stared at the stone path; their lids reddened andswelled with the springing of tears that would not fall. 

"Didn't you know?" I said. 

"I suppose I must have known--once. "

Up till this moment she had not said one word, she had not made one sign, that had really given her away. And nothing could have given her awaymore completely than the thing she had said now. She had confessed to apassion so dominating and so blind as to be unaware of anything butitself. It was not so much that it had swept before it all the codes andtraditions she had been brought up in--codes and traditions might wellhave been nothing to Viola--it had struck at her strongest affection andher memory. She adored her brother. He was sailing for India next week;she must have known it; and she had forgotten it. 

Her confession was not made to me (she had forgotten _my_ existenceutterly); it was made to herself--the old self that had adored Reggie;that at this evocation of him arose and sat in judgment on the strange, perverted, monstrous self that could forget him. I've called it aconfession; but it wasn't a confession. It was a cry, a muttering, rather, of secret, agonized discovery. 

"He wants to see you before he goes, " I said. 

Her eyelids spilled their tears at that; but only those they hadgathered; no more came. Her self-control was admirable. 

"It's all right, " I said. "You've heaps of time. I'm going to take you toOstend in the morning. You'll be in Canterbury to-morrow night. "

"Is that what you came for?"

"Yes. "

"It was awfully nice of you. "

"There was nothing else, " I said, "to do. "

"You're coming with me to Canterbury. " She stated it. 

"No, my dear child, " I said, "I am not. You don't want them to think youwent to Bruges with _me_. "

This was by implication a reference to Jevons. It was as near as I hadlet myself get to him. 

She said, "What are you going to do, then?"

"I'm going to put you on the boat at Ostend, and then I'm coming backhere. "

It must have been at this point that the _garçon_ brought the coffee. ForI remember our sitting out there and drinking it amicably until the aromaof it gave Viola an idea. 

"What time shall we have to start to-morrow?"

I said, "First thing in the morning. "

"Then, " she said, "it does seem a pity not to send for Jimmy. "

I could see now that there was some deadly purpose in her persistence. But this time I couldn't bear it, and I lost my temper. 

I said, "Send for him. Send for him, if you can't live ten minuteswithout him. "

I was sorry even at the time; I have been ashamed since. For, so far fromresenting my abominable rudeness--as, under any conclusion, she had aperfect right to--she merely said, "I'm only thinking that if I've got togo so soon to-morrow it'll be horribly lonely for him over there. "

"He doesn't expect to see you. We arranged all that. "

She pondered it, still with that curious absence of resentment. It was asif, recognizing the danger of the situation, she submitted to any steps, however disagreeable, that were necessary for her safety. It was clearthat she trusted me; less clear that she trusted Jevons. 

One thing remained mysterious to her. 

"What are you coming back here for?" she asked. 

I let her have it straight: "To look after Jevons. "

"What do you suppose he'd do?"

"He might get into England before your brother got out of it. "

She smiled. _"What do you suppose, then, Reggie'd do?"_

I said I knew what I'd do if I were Reggie. 

She smiled again. "I see. You're saving him from Reggie. "

"I'm not thinking of him, I can assure you. "

At that she said, "Dear Wally, so you think you're saving me. "

"I'm trying to, " I said. "As far as your people are concerned. You don'twant them to know you've been here. If you'll only leave it to me, theywon't know. "

"I'm not going to lie about it. I shall tell them if they ask me. "

"Not Reggie, " I said. 

"Yes, Reggie. If he asks me. Reggie's the very last person I should thinkof lying to. "

It was this attitude of hers that first shook me in my conclusions. ForI'm afraid I'd come to certain very definite conclusions. 

Why, I asked her, hadn't she told them before she came?

"Because, " she said, "there's no use worrying them. They'd have tried tostop me. You can't imagine what an awful fuss they'd have made. I daresayI might never have got off at all. "

What I couldn't understand was her attitude. I mean I couldn't reconcilethe secrecy she had practised with her amazing frankness now. 

Her manner was supremely assured. 

It wasn't, mind you, the brazen assurance of a woman who has been foundout and flings up the game; it was a curiously tranquil and patientcandour, with something mysterious about it, as if she had knowledge thatI couldn't have, and bore with me through all my ignorance andblundering. In fact, from beginning to end, except for the one momentwhen I upset her by telling her about Reggie's sailing, she showed anextraordinary tranquillity. 

But as I couldn't understand her I simply said, "I wish you hadn't gotoff. "

She said in that same quiet way, "I had to. "

"Because, " I said, "he made you. "

Since she had dragged Jevons in she should have him in. I wasn't going tokeep him out now to spare her. I had a right to know the truth. She hadshaken my conclusions. She had left me in a doubt more unbearable thanany certainty, and I considered that I had a right to know. I wasdetermined to know now and end it. That shows that I must have trustedher; that I knew she wouldn't lie to me. 

"But, " she said, with the least perceptible surprise, "he didn't makeme. "

"He told me he did. "

"He told you?--What did he say exactly?"

"He said--if you must know--that he hadn't brought you, but that he hadmade you come. "

"He didn't. He didn't really. But supposing he had--what then?"

"You _want_ me to tell you what I think of it?"

"Yes. "

"I think it was a beastly thing to make you do. He couldn't have doneit--you _know_ he couldn't have done it--if he hadn't been a bit of ablackguard. "

I was going to say, "as well as a bounder"; but I didn't want to rub thatin. I judged that when the poor child came to her senses her cup would befull enough without my pouring. 

"But, you see, " she said, still peaceably, "he didn't do it. He only_said_ he did. That was his niceness. He wanted to save me. "

"My dear child, if it's saving you to bring you out here without yourpeople knowing anything about it, and to let you be seen with himeverywhere--"

"He didn't bring me. He said he wished I could come with him. And I saidI wished I could. I almost asked him to take me; and he said he couldn't. Then he went off by himself. He was all right till he got to Bruges. Thenhe wrote and said that the beauty of it hurt him, that it was awful beinghere without me, and that he was coming back at the end of the weekwithout seeing any more of it, because he couldn't bear to know what Iwas missing. He was going to keep the other places till we could see themtogether. So I wired to say I was coming, and I came. "

"What did you do it for, Viola?"

"Wally, I asked myself that as soon as I got into the train. And itwasn't till I was half across the Channel that I knew why. "

She stopped and stared as if at the wonder of herself explained. 

"I did it to burn my boats. "

I suppose _I_ stared at that. For she expounded:

"To make it impossible to go back. "

I said, "My dear child, that was very reckless of you. "

She said she wanted to be reckless. I asked her if it didn't occur to herthat some day she might want her boats?

She said: No. It was just her boats that she was afraid of. She didn'treally want them. She didn't want--really--to go back. 

Then she looked at me and said, "You know Jimmy wants to marry me. " Andthen, "Did you know?"

I said I was not in Jevons's confidence, but I had guessed as much. Isaid, "Do you want to marry him?"

She said, "Yes. I want to marry him more than anything. I don't want tomarry anybody else. I never shall marry anybody else. Most of me wants tomarry Jimmy. But there's a little bit of me that doesn't. It's mean andsnobbish--and dreadful, and it's afraid to marry him. And, you see, if Iwere to go to my people and say, 'I'm not going to marry Mr. Furnival;I'm going to marry Mr. Jevons, ' and I were to show Jimmy to them, they'dall get up and side with that horrid and shameful little bit of me. Reggie would, too. It wouldn't be in the least horrid or snobbish ofthem, you know, because they wouldn't know what Jimmy's really like. They're just very fastidious and correct. But it's simply awful of me, because I do know. "

"It isn't awful. It simply means that he isn't your sort. _You_'refastidious and correct. You _can't_ marry him, and you know it. You won'tbe able to bear it. He'll make you shudder all down your spine. "

"All that doesn't prevent my caring for him. I care for him more than foranything on earth, even Reggie. That's why I've burned my boats. So thatI may have what I care for without their tearing me to pieces over it. "

So far was I from understanding her that it struck me that what she wastelling me was as ugly a thing as could be told in words; that she wasconfessing that, being too weak to stand up against her family, she haddeliberately compromised herself with Jevons so that she might marry himwithout their opposition; just as I was sure that Jevons had compromisedher so that he could marry her without opposition from herself. 

"But--what you are saying is horrible, " I said. "I don't believe you knowhow horrible it is. "

So far was she from understanding _me_ that she answered: "Yes, it ishorrible. But it was only a little bit of me. And it's all over. Burnedaway, Wally. I burned it when I burned my boats. Don't think of me as ifI were really like that. "

You see? We had been talking about different things. My mind had beenfastened on an external incident, ugly in itself, ugly in its apparentpurpose, ugly in its consequences, ugly every way you looked at it. Hershad been concentrated on the event that had happened in her soul, anevent to her altogether beautiful--the destruction of the cowardice thatwould have brought her back, that shrank from taking the risk that hersoul dared. 

This, she seemed to say, is how I deal with cowardice. 

That she had compromised herself by dealing with it in this way hadsimply never occurred to her. It couldn't. She didn't know and wouldn'thave believed it possible that people did these things. 

What had frightened her, she said, was Jimmy's saying that about keepingthe other places till they could see them together. He meant, you see, till they were married. It brought it so home to her. And it brought hometo her what it meant to him. Because he couldn't afford to marry yet forages. 

If she'd gone back, she said, it would have been so cruel to him. And itwould have been so cruel to herself, too. 

Then she told me what they had done together. Heavens! How she must havetrusted him. She joined him here in Bruges. And they'd gone to Antwerp, then to Ghent, then back to Bruges. (I had followed close on theirtraces, a day behind them at each city. )

And it had all been so beautiful. She simply couldn't tell me howbeautiful it had been. It was as if she had never seen anything properlybefore. 

Jimmy had made her see things. "I can understand, " she said, "what hemeant when he said that the beauty of this place hurt him. It hurts_me_. "

I reminded her that Jimmy had said it hurt him because she wasn't there. 

She looked up and smiled. "He isn't here _now_, Furny. "

I took her to Ostend first thing in the morning and saw her on to theboat. I advised her to remove the foreign labels from her trunk at Dover, and to contrive so that she shouldn't be seen arriving by the up platformat Canterbury. 

"Oh, " she said. "You have to take _some_ risk!"

We were on the gangway, saying good-bye. And from the boat's gunwale sheflung me buoyantly, "If I'm caught I'll say it was _you_ I went off with. They won't mind that half so much. "

I went back to Bruges the same day and found Jevons disconsolate where Ihad left him in his hotel. I took him to Brussels in the hope of findingWithers there and confusing him in his ideas. We didn't find him. He hadgone on into Germany, carrying with him his impression of Viola andJevons staying together at Bruges in the same hotel. 

It was at Bruges that I said to Jevons, "By the way, Miss Thesiger saysyou _didn't_ make her come. She proposed coming herself. "

He flushed furiously and denied it. "Of course I made her come. It wasn'tlikely she'd propose a thing like that. "

His chivalry was up in arms to defend her. But I could see also that hisvanity wasn't going to relinquish the manly role of having made her cometo him. 

Well, I suppose in a sense he _had_ made her. 

IV

We didn't stay in Brussels more than a day or two. Jevons didn't like it. He had become sentimentally attached to Bruges, and he wasn't happy tillI took him back there. I can't say he was exactly happy then except in sofar as he may have enjoyed his own suicidal gloom. I wasn't very happyeither. All my recollections of Bruges are poisoned by Jevons's gloom andby my own miserable business of looking after him and seeing that hedidn't walk gloomily into any of the canals. As for seeing Bruges, Idon't know to this day whether the Belfry is beautiful or not. I onlyknow that it stood there in the grey sky like an immense monument to themelancholy of Jevons. He made me horribly uneasy. I thought every daythat if he didn't walk into a canal he'd have another fit of jaundice. 

He seemed to be suffering chiefly from remorse, and oddly enough it wasthis remorse of his that gave me the measure of his essential innocence, as if Viola hadn't given it me already. 

It was in his dejection that he showed his tact. He had, for ourremarkable circumstances, the right manner. If Jevons had been jaunty; ifhe had tried to brazen it out, I should have hated him. As it was, hismisery might be poisonous, but it was most disarming. So was his trustin me. He realized that he had got Viola into the devil of a mess, and helooked, intelligently, to me to get her out of it. And with the sameconfiding simplicity he put himself into my hands now. The adventure hadshaken his nerve and he was afraid of himself, afraid of doing somesupremely foolish thing like following Viola to Canterbury. I believe hewould have consented to stay in Bruges long after the term I had imposedif I had told him it was necessary. 

I said I took him to Brussels and brought him back to Bruges. Hesubmitted to be brought and taken; to be banged about in trains andomnibuses, to be fetched and carried like a parcel. He let me feel in themost touching manner that my presence was a comfort to him, while herecognized that his might be anything but a comfort to me. I know I hadnothing to do with Jevons's melancholy. The fat proprietor and his wife(who smiled at us by way of encouragement in our passages to and frobefore their bureau), these thralls of Jevons's odd fascination, hadconfided to me that he had been much worse the day before I came. Thepoor gentleman could neither eat nor sleep; other guests in the hotel hadcome upon him wandering by himself at strange hours on the quays. (Therewere a good many English in Bruges that spring. )

I was greatly relieved by these disclosures; they testified to the factthat Jevons, at any rate on Viola's last day, had been seen very much byhimself. 

We had not spoken of Viola since the day when I had come back from Ostendafter seeing her off. I can't recall much of what we did talk about, butI remember that Jevons's remarks were always interesting, and that in hislucid intervals he laid himself out to be amusing. In one respect only hehad deteriorated. Jevons's strong language was no longer strong. It came, if it came at all, in brief spurts, never with the passionate rush, thegorgeous colour, the sustained crescendo of his first runnings. It was athing of feeble _clichés_ that might have passed in any drawing-room. 

We didn't, then, talk about Viola. But I know that he heard from her andthat I didn't. 

The first week of Jevons's fortnight was up when I got a wire fromCanterbury. It said: "Reggie sailed yesterday. Trouble. Can you comeCanterbury at once. Viola. "

Of course the word that stuck out of it was "Trouble. " For the rest itwas ambiguous. I couldn't tell, neither could Jevons, whether the troublewas connected somehow with Reggie's sailing, or whether in announcing hisdeparture she meant to intimate that Jevons might now return to England;the coast was clear. Jevons, I may say, took this view of it and I didnot. It was I and not Jevons who was asked to come at once. Jevons, forViola's present purposes, was ignored. 

With his usual intelligence he saw my point. We made out that the messagesuggested trouble with Viola's family, and he agreed heartily that he wasnot precisely the person to deal with that. 

Oh yes, he trusted me. He gave me his word of honour that he would stayin Bruges until I either sent for him or came back to fetch him. 

Before I left I had a straight talk with him. 

I pointed out to him (what he said he knew as well as I did) that on themost lenient view of his case he had compromised Miss Thesiger veryseriously. But, I said, he would have had to have compromised her moreseriously still before her people would consent to her marrying him. Hemust see that, with what he had done, by stopping short of what hemight have done, he had made himself, if anything, more unacceptablethan he was to begin with. She might--she probably would in her presentmood--insist on marrying him without their consent. On the other hand, she just mightn't. And it wasn't as if he could afford to marry her atonce, while her present mood was on. 

He said, No. But in six months he could afford it. He gave himself sixmonths. 

I said, Anything might happen in six months. Miss Thesiger's present mood(which, I put it to him, was very much made up of old Flemish glamour)might change. And if it did, it was just conceivable that she might marry_me_. He was determined to marry Miss Thesiger if he got the chance. _I_was determined to marry Miss Thesiger if _I_ got the chance. At thepresent most of the chances, I owned, were in his favour. But there wasjust the off-chance in mine. 

And that off-chance, I told him plainly, I meant to make the most of. Iwouldn't be human if I didn't. I wasn't taking any unfair advantage ofhim, considering the tremendous innings he had had in Flanders, with theFlemish atmosphere to help him. If I could make any running inCanterbury, with the Canterbury atmosphere to help _me_ (he owned veryhandsomely that it would help me, that I'd be "in it" quite beautifully)why, I'd make it. 

Had he anything to say?

He looked at me very straight, with just the least perceptible twinkle, and he said, "All right, old man, cut in, and take your chance. I'll riskit. "

I got to Canterbury in the early evening and went straight from myFifteenth Century hotel to the Thesigers' house in the Close. I spottedit at once. It was all old red brick and grey stone like the Tudor housesin John's and Margaret's Quad. 

I asked for Miss Viola Thesiger and was shown into the Canon's library. To my great relief the Canon wasn't in his library. It looked out on to aperfect garden with a thick green lawn, and an old red-brick wall, veryhigh, all round it, and tall elms topping the wall, and long beds ofwallflowers and tulips blazing away underneath it. I said to myself, "IfI want atmosphere I've got it. Bruges is nothing to the Thesigers' gardenin Canterbury Close. " I'd time to take it all in, for Viola kept mewaiting. 

I was glad of the peace of the garden, for I'd taken in more atmospherethan I wanted already as I came through the house. You went upstairs tothe Canon's library, and along a narrow black-oak corridor. And inpassing I was aware of a peculiar quietness everywhere. It wasn't simplythe quietness and laziness of the Cathedral Close. It was something inthe house. I felt it as I crossed the threshold and the hall. It was thesum of slight but definite impressions: the sudden silence of voicesthat were talking somewhere when I came in; the shutting of a door thatstood ajar; the withdrawal of footsteps approaching on the landing. 

It was as if there had been a death in the house; as if its people shrankand hid themselves in their bereavement. I might have been the undertakercalled in to help them to bury their dead. 

The trouble was strictly confined to the Thesigers' house. From thetennis-lawns under the high walls of other gardens there came shouts ofgirls and of young men at play. 

Presently Viola came to me. She held her head if anything higher thanusual, and the expression of her face was out of keeping with the troublein the air. But as she came nearer I saw that this gay face was white, its tissue had a sort of sick smoothness, and there were dark smearsunder her eyes. 

The poor child had paid her tribute to the Trouble. 

She said, "It _is_ good of you to come. Did you mind awfully?"

I said, of course I didn't. She smiled again, the little white, blanksmile she had for me in those days, and I asked her what had happened. 

She said, "Everything's happened. It's been awful. "

Her smile took on significance--the whole wild irony of disaster. Thenshe said, "They know. "

"All of them? Your brother?"

"No. Not Reggie. He got away in time. They won't tell him. They won'teven tell Bertie. They'll never talk about it. But they know. "

I said, "Supposing they _do_ know--as long as other people don't--"

"But, Wally, that's just it. Everybody does know. "

I couldn't take her quite seriously yet. I asked her: Was it the labels?and she said, No, she'd picked all the foreign ones off at Dover, and shegot the Dover ones off in the cab coming home, and she'd had Heaven's ownluck at the station, nobody'd seen her on the up platform, and her peoplethought she'd come from London. Of course they all asked her where she'dbeen, and she told them she wasn't going to let on just yet, that itwasn't good for them to know too much, and that if they behavedthemselves they'd know some day. She meant to tell them as soon as everReggie'd gone. "Really and truly, Wally, I meant to tell them. "

"And do you know, " she said, "they thought I was rotting them, that I'dbeen in some stuffy place in the country all the time. "

"Then how on earth, " I said, "did they find out?"

"They didn't. They never do find out things. They heard--last night. Somebody saw us. "

"Withers?" I said. I'd thought of Withers at once. But he didn't seemlikely. He wasn't back yet. 

"No. Not Withers. Some women who knew my uncle, General Thesiger. Theywere in your hotel in Bruges, and they knew some other women staying inthe _pension_. They saw my name in the visitors' book and it excitedthem. It all comes, you see, of my uncle being so beastly distinguished, so that they _had_ to say they knew him. And then of course the otherpeople chipped in and told them all they knew about _me_. Can't you seethem doing it?"

I could indeed. 

"I never thought the _pension_ was a good scheme, " she said; "but poorJimmy _would_ make me go to it. He said it was safe. You see how safe itwas. "

I wasn't quite clear yet as to where Jevons came in. 

"You say these people saw you. You mean they saw you and Jevons?"

She smiled more than ever. "No, Wally. It was _you_ they saw. "

I don't know whether I was glad or sorry. I believe I was both. I wasglad that Jevons--the ugly element--was disposed of. I was sorry--sorry, indeed, is hardly the word for what I felt--when I thought of theimpression Viola's family had of me _now_; of the terms on which I shouldbe received into it if I were received into it at all. I couldn't clearmyself entirely, you see, without dragging in Jevons, and for Viola'ssake Jevons had at any cost to be suppressed. 

"What on earth, " I said, "must your people think of me?"

She said surprisingly, "They think you a perfect dear. "

"What, for carrying you off to Belgium? That's what I seem to have done. I don't quite see how I'm to get out of it unless we can persuade themthat we met by accident. "

"Oh, " she said, "_I_ got you out of it all right. "

I asked her, "How?"

She said, "I told them the truth. I said it wasn't you; it was Jimmy. "

"What did you do that for?"

"Because it _was_ Jimmy I went off with. You're all right. They _know_it's Jimmy. "

I groaned. "That's precisely what I've been trying to prevent themknowing. "

"They know that, _too_. I told them that you came out to look forme--like a lamb, to save me--and that you made me come back. Theythink that was dear of you. "

She paused on it with a tenderness that touched me. 

"You see, " she said, "I've saved you. "

I could only say, "My dear child--have you saved _yourself_?"

She was visibly troubled. 

"I think--I _think_ they believe me. They say they do. But they don'tunderstand. That's why I sent for you. I want you to make them see. "

"Make them see what?" I said. (It was clumsy of me. )

"What it really was, " she said. 

I asked her if they knew I was there. She said, Yes, they were coming into see me. 

"They want to see you. They want to know. "

I saw then what my work was to be. I was not only to witness to herinnocence and Jevons's--if they doubted it; I was to show them what shehad shown me in the garden at Bruges, the beauty of the whole thing as itappeared to her. I was to show them Jevons's beauty. 

Well, I thought, it'll take some showing. 

"Do they, " I asked her, "at all realize Jevons?"

"Yes. They asked me if he was the man Reggie met at my rooms. Of course Ihad to say he was. It's almost a pity Reggie met him. That's what'sfrightened them. You see, he only saw the funny part of him. "

(I could imagine what Reggie's description of the funny part of Jevonshad been. )

I said she was asking me to do a rather difficult thing. 

She said, "Yes. And I've made it worse by telling them I'm going to marryJimmy. "

"And I'm to persuade them that that's the best thing you can do, am I?"

She said, Yes--if I could do that--

I said I couldn't. I couldn't persuade myself. How could I, when I wasconvinced that the best thing she could do was to marry _me_?

She said she'd forgotten that and that I could leave the marrying part ofit to her. "It's about Bruges, " she said, "that I want you to tell them. "

"I can't very well if they don't ask me, " I expounded. 

"Oh, but, " she said, "they _will_ ask you. At least Daddy will. "

 * * * * *

It was at this point (when, I must say, we had thrashed it out prettythoroughly) that Mrs. Thesiger came in. Viola left me to her. 

I noticed that, except for the moment of Viola's formal introduction ofme, neither of them spoke to or looked at the other. 

I have said that Mrs. Thesiger was a charming woman. I may have saidother things that imply she was not so charming; those things, if Ireally said them, I take back, now that I have come to my first meetingwith her. When I recall that ten minutes--it didn't last longer--I cannotthink of her as otherwise than perfect. It took perfection, of a sort, todeal creditably with the situation. Nothing could well have been morepainful for Mrs. Thesiger. I, an utter stranger, was supposed to know allabout her daughter, to know more than she or any of them knew. I held thesecret of those dubious seven days in Belgium. That the days would bedubious I must have known when I set out to bring Viola back fromBelgium. I must, the poor lady probably said to herself, have knownViola. And my knowledge of her, so dreadful and so intimate, was a thingshe was afraid of; she didn't want to come too near it. But it was also athing that must be exceedingly painful to me. She conceived that I woulddread her approach every bit as much as she dreaded mine. 

And so--and so Mrs. Thesiger ignored my knowledge; she ignored thesituation. Beautifully and consistently, from the beginning to the end ofmy stay in Canterbury, she ignored it. 

She had come in now to bring me her invitation, and her husband'sinvitation, to stay. Her husband, she said, expected me. He was out; hehad had to go to a Diocesan Meeting--but it would be over by now, thetiresome meeting, and he would be here in a few minutes. 

I protested. I had taken rooms at my Fifteenth Century hotel. 

She insisted. They could make that all right. They knew the hotel-keeper. He was used to having people taken from him at the last minute. Theywould send round for my things. My room was waiting for me. 

I said, Really?--But they were too kind--

She said, No. It was the least they could do. 

This, with its faint suggestion of indebtedness, was as near as she gotto the situation. 

She must have sighted it in the distance, for she slanted away from itwith a perilous and graceful sweep. She had heard so much about me fromher daughter. She had wanted to make my acquaintance. She was glad ofthis opportunity--

(We smiled at each other to show that there was nothing to wince at inher phrase. )

I said I was glad of it too, and what a charming garden they had. 

Wasn't it? And did I know Canterbury? I wished I did. Well--I would knowit now. And if I didn't mind ringing the bell the butler would fetch mythings over from the "Tabard. " And so on, charmingly, till the Canon camein and relieved her. 

She had done very well. 

He, dear, charming man, did the same thing, and did it even better. That's to say, he had a beautiful voice and he was happier in hisphrases. He could ignore with the greater ease because he wouldn't haveto keep it up so long. 

He kept it up till dinner-time. Only now and then his kind, keen look atme told me that he was going to have it out with me, and that he wasmeasuring the man with whom he would have to do. 

But before dinner they had taken me to my room. They hoped I wouldn'tmind having Bertie's room. The house was full; all the girls were athome, so they had had to give me Bertie's room. 

As I dressed in Bertie's room (the drawback of it was that it looked bangout on to the Cathedral Tower and was fairly raked by the chimes), withthe Cathedral Tower before my eyes and the Cathedral chimes in my ears, and Canon Thesiger's beautiful voice and Mrs. Thesiger's beautiful faceand the beautiful manners of both of them in my memory, it came over mewith renewed conviction that Jevons was impossible; that Viola's peopleknew and felt he was impossible; that Viola knew and felt he wasimpossible herself; and that in the face of all this impossibility I hada chance. Bruges might back Jevons, but Canterbury would never back him;whereas it was quite evident that Canterbury was backing me. 

I was in the drawing-room ten minutes before dinner-time. They wereall there: the Canon and Mrs. Thesiger and their five unmarrieddaughters--Victoria, the eldest, Millicent, the High School teacher, Mildred, the nurse, Viola, the youngest but one, and Norah, the youngest. 

They were all there, the whole seven of them. And they were all silentuntil I appeared. As I went down the stairs and through the hall Inoticed that the door was open and that no sounds came through it. Icaught sight of Viola standing by the window with her back to her family;the others sat or stood in attitudes averted from her and from eachother. 

When they heard me they all stirred and began talking. And as I came intothe room I found the girls drawn together (even Viola had turned from herwindow). 

I see them now: Canon Thesiger standing on the hearthrug, lookinghandsome; and Mrs. Thesiger beside him, looking handsome, too, in greysilk and a little flushed. I hadn't realized in our first meeting _how_handsome they both were, and how brilliantly unlike. He was well-built, slender, aquiline, clean-cut and clean-shaven; he had thin, beautifullips that he held in stiffly; he had dark eyes like his son Reggie's, anddark hair parted correctly in the middle, hair that waved. He had triedto depress and subdue it by hard brushing with a wet brush, but itcontinued to wave in spite of him, and the crests of the waves weresilver, which accentuated them. 

Mrs. Thesiger was tall and at the same time plump. She was fair andblue-eyed and still delicately florid; she had perfect little features, with mutinous upward curves in the plumpness. I say mutinous, becauseMrs. Thesiger's way of being handsome was in revolt against herhusband's. Her light-brown hair waved, too, and to a discreet extent sheencouraged its waving. This sounds as if Mrs. Thesiger's appearance wasfrivolous. But it was not. All these florid plumpnesses and the upwardcurves were held in tight, like Canon Thesiger's mouth. Their intentionswere denied and frustrated, the original design was altered to harmonizewith his. Herein you saw the superior restraint, the superior plasticity, the superior _art_ of Mrs. Thesiger. 

It was all very well for him to be correct when his features were formedthat way, but this was the very triumph of correctness. 

And she was, if anything, braver than her husband. He could only justsmile with his stiff lip; she could laugh over the business of presentingme to the four unmarried daughters whom (she emphasized it) I _didn't_know. 

And they--the four daughters--I'm not sure that they weren't the mostgallant of this gallant family. 

I suppose that it was the violent dissimilarity in their parents' beautythat had produced the engaging irregularity of their features. Not one ofthose five little faces was correct. Victoria's had tried hard forcorrectness in her father's manner, but her mother's irrepressibleplumpness had made her miss it, poor girl, just as (I was soon to learn)she had missed everything. 

Millicent's face, the face of the one who had been at Girton, hadn'ttried for it; it had achieved a plainness I admired because it was oddlylike Viola's face, only that Millicent was sallow and thin and dry andwore pince-nez. 

Mildred, the nurse, was frankly plump and fair and florid like hermother; her face would have been pretty if her father's nose hadn'tstepped in and struggled with her mother's and so spoilt it for her. 

Norah, the youngest, was pretty--and odd. She was Viola all over again, but more slender and coloured differently, coloured all wrong. I didn'ttake to Norah all at once. I wasn't prepared for a Viola with blue eyesand pink cheeks and light hair, and the figure of a young foal. Besides, her hair was outrageous; it waved too much; it was all crinkles, and shehadn't found out yet how to keep it tidy. 

She told me afterwards it was "up" that evening for the first time. Whenit came to her turn, she said: "There are such a dreadful lot of us, aren't there?"

There certainly was. And as I looked at them I thought: Viola has done anirreparable injury to her family, to all these charming people. She hashurt her father and mother in their beauty and their dignity and theirhonour. As for her sisters, she has ruined what they are much toowell-bred to call their "chances. " The story of the going off to Belgiumwith Jevons is spreading through the Close, and through the High Schoolwhere Millicent teaches, and through the garrison. They will try to hushit up, but they won't be able to; it will reach Chatham and Dover. Ifthey go up to town it will follow them there. Wherever they go it willultimately follow them. She has struck at the solidarity of the family. To be sure, it was the solidarity of the family that drove her to strikeat it. But if you were to tell Canon and Mrs. Thesiger that they haddriven her, that they had tied her up too tight, they wouldn't see it. They would say: "We never stopped her going off to London. But thatwasn't enough for her. She must go off to Belgium with that man Jevons. She must ruin us. "

And Viola knew that she had ruined them. 

And there they were, all holding themselves well, and all welldressed--the two youngest in white, the elders in light colours on ascale that deepened to Victoria's old rose. I remember them, even to whatthey wore and the pathos of their wearing it; they stood out so againstthe black panelling of the old room. It was full of oak chests andbureaus and Chinese cabinets, and Madonnas in Italian frames, and red andwhite ivory chessmen, and little bookcases with books in white vellumwith scarlet title-pieces, and family portraits, and saints in triptychson golden backgrounds, and murderous assegais and the skins and horns ofanimals. And the leaves of the old elms stuffed up the low, mullionedwindows looking on the garden. 

And somehow you were aware of great streams of empire and of race, streams of august tradition; of sanctity and heroism and honour, andbeautiful looks and gentle ways and breeding, all meeting there. 

I looked at the Thesigers and I looked at all these things, and I thoughtagain of Jevons--of Jevons as absolutely impossible. You may say it waspure snobbishness to think of him in that way, and I daresay it was; butthere wasn't any other way. 

It wasn't their tradition, you see, that appealed to me so much as theirbehaviour. I don't think I ever met people who knew so well how tobehave. 

They kept it up. All evening they behaved like people under some heavycalamity which they ignored for the comfort of their guest and for theirown dignity. And yet, even if I hadn't known of their calamity, I musthave felt it in the air. They knew that I knew it; but that was all themore reason why they should ignore it; they wanted to remove from me theoppression of my knowledge. 

During dinner, perhaps, you felt the tension of the catastrophe; anyguest who knew as much as I did was bound to be aware of it. It was inlittle sudden, momentary silences, in the hushed voices and half-scaredmovements of the butler and the parlourmaid, in the stiffness of theCanon's lip, and in some shade of the elder girls' manner to Viola. 

I remember how, in one of those silences, Norah, who sat facing me, leaned forward and addressed me. She said, "Mr. Furnival, you've comefrom Belgium, haven't you? Do tell me about it! I can't get a word out ofViola. "

I supposed they hadn't told Norah. They had spared the youngest. She wasonly seventeen. 

The butler and the parlourmaid, standing rigid by the sideboard, lookedat each other in their fright. Mrs. Thesiger saw them and flushed. ButCanon Thesiger, who had his back to them, observed that Belgium was alarge order, and that Mr. Furnival would have to tell her about itafterwards. 

But there was never any afterwards for Norah. She said, "I believethere's a joke about Belgium, and that Mr. Furnival's in it. "

Viola laughed. It was, on the whole, the best thing she could do. If I'dgiggled, too, it might have helped, but I didn't dare to, sitting therebeside Mrs. Thesiger. 

The Canon pushed a dish of chocolates in front of his youngest daughterto keep her quiet, and then plunged like a hero into the tendencies ofmodern music, which he deplored. He asked my opinion of Richard Strauss, a composer of whom he was profoundly ignorant. Scarlatti and Corellitided us over dessert, and Purcell floated us tenderly into thedrawing-room and coffee. After coffee the Canon took me into the library(he said) for a smoke. 

I could see by the fuss he made about his cigarettes that he was nervous, staving off the moment. 

It came with the silence of the first cigarette. There were notransitions. He simply settled himself a little deeper into his chair andsaid, "I'm a little anxious about that girl of mine. "

I said, "_Are_ you, sir?" as if I were surprised. 

"Well"--he was evidently trying to steer between his decision to ignoreand his desire for knowledge--"you see, she's rather reckless andimpulsive. "

I agreed. She was--a little. 

"More than a little, I'm afraid. Do you know anything of this man Jevonsshe talks about?"

That was masterly of the Canon, the subtle suggestion that Viola did nomore than talk about Jevons, the still more subtle implication that ifshe _could_ talk about him all was well. 

I said that Jevons was a very decent fellow, and added that CaptainThesiger had met him. 

It was mean of me to shovel the responsibility on to Reggie, but I wantedto gain time, too. 

The Canon remembered that Reggie had said something. And then suddenly hediscarded subtlety and told me straight out that Reggie had said Jevonswas a bit of a bounder, and he supposed he was. 

I could see him watching me, trying to break down my defences. 

I dodged him with "These things are comparative, " and he floored me witha sudden thrust:

"No, my dear boy, they are _not_. "

He meditated. "What sort of age is he?"

I told him, "About thirty-one or two. "

"Ah!"

And then: Did I know anything about the young man's morals?

I assured him I had never heard a word against them. 

He looked at me keenly and I remembered the words of Withers which I_had_ heard. Still, I knew nothing against Jevons's morals, and I saidthey were all right for all I knew. 

"Never mind what you _know_, " he answered. "What do you think?"

I said I thought that Jevons had as clean a record as any man I knew. 

"You mean, " he said, "these things are comparative?"

I said I meant I only wished my morals were as clean. (I went as far asthat for Viola--to save her. Besides, there was Jevons to be thought of. I was there to take a fair advantage of him, not an unfair one. )

He took another look at me that seemed to satisfy him, for he said:"Thank you. That's all I want to know. "

We smoked in silence. Presently we went into the drawing-room "for alittle music. " Victoria played. The Canon and Mildred and Norah sang. Millicent went upstairs to prepare a lecture. 

When the music was over Viola and Mildred and Norah and I went into thegarden, and very soon Mildred and Norah drifted back into the house againand left me with Viola. 

She began at once, "Well--did you make him understand?"

I said I hadn't had much opportunity. 

Did he ask me about Bruges? No, but he had asked me about Jevons. I toldher more or less how I had answered, and she said it was dear of me. 

"But it's no use telling them anything about _me_, Wally. "

I asked her, Had they said much?

She said, "No. It's what they think. Or rather, what they don't think. They'll never think the same of me again. And they'll never trust me. "

I said, Come, it wasn't so bad as all that. 

But she stuck to it. 

"There!" she said. "Didn't I tell you?"

Mrs. Thesiger from the drawing-room window was calling to us to come in. The grass was damp. 

"They won't trust me even with you. "

I thought: "Poor little Viola--she's burned her boats with a vengeance. "

Presently it was Bertie's room again, and moonlight, and the Cathedralchimes. They kept me awake all night. 

 * * * * *

Of course I hadn't made them understand. How could I? The peculiarawfulness of their calamity was that they knew so little about it. Theydidn't know, after all, what had happened at Bruges; they didn't knowwhat lengths Viola had gone to. And though they evidently thought that Iknew, that wasn't any good to them. They couldn't ask me what hadhappened at Bruges. They couldn't cross-question me about Viola's"lengths. " I couldn't tell them that, according to my lights, nothing_had_ happened, that Viola's lengths were not likely to be very long. Besides, even if I had come with the proofs of her innocence in myhands, and removed their private sorrow, that wouldn't have repairedtheir public wrong. Nobody was going to believe in Viola's innocence. Appearances were dead against her. 

It was awful for them every way they looked at it; awful if she marriedJevons just because she had to; awful even if she hadn't to, so long aspeople thought she had; awful if she married him for any reason; moreawful if she didn't marry him at all. And supposing she married him. Theymight go on ignoring for ever and ever, but who else would, with thatmarriage staring them in the face and perpetuating the disgracefulmemory?

It struck me that Viola herself must see that there was only one way inwhich I could make them understand, only one thing that I could do forher, and that I had come to do it. 

The next morning I asked Canon Thesiger if he could give me half an hour. He gave it with a sort of sad alacrity. I didn't anticipate the smallestdifficulty with him or with any of Viola's family. They seemed to belooking to me pathetically to save them. I had every reason to know thatmy one chance was good, and that poor Jevons, with all his chances, wasn't anywhere. In fact, I found in that half-hour with the Canon thatmy very fairness to Jevons had worked against him to abase him, while itraised me several points in the Canon's estimation. He had seen what Ihad been driving at. The cleaner I made out Jevons's record to be, thebetter I succeeded in shielding Viola. He expressed in the most movingterms his admiration of my moral beauty. 

And yet (I suppose I must have overdone it) it was my moral beauty thatdished me with the Canon. I had reckoned, you see, without his, withoutMrs. Thesiger's. 

I told him straight out that if he and Mrs. Thesiger would allow me, Imeant to ask Viola to marry me. His lip stiffened. 

I said I hoped it wouldn't be a violent shock to them--they must have hadsome idea of what I had come for. 

He said, Yes. They had been afraid I had come for that. 

And then--oh, it was a terrible half-hour!

They had been afraid, and they had talked it over. He didn't tell me allthey'd said, but I could imagine most of it: how they had seen that mymarrying Viola was the one way out for them, the one way out for her, andhow it had occurred to them that perhaps I didn't know what I was doing, and how they had decided--dear, simple, honourable people--that it wouldbe very wrong to deceive me, and that in any case they had no right toaccept so great a sacrifice, even if it _was_ the one way out. I daresaythey said to each other that they couldn't put such a burden on aninnocent young man; it was their child's doing and they must bear thewhole ghastly ruin and shame of it themselves. They even went further. What Jevons had done to Viola (they'd made up their minds about him) wasdevil's work. What Viola had done to them was in some way theexpression--the very singular and unintelligible and bizarreexpression--of God's will. It was the cross they had to bear. God, Isuppose, knew the kind of cross that would hurt them most. 

A great deal of this he did say to me. He said it very simply, withoutphrases. 

Nothing, he said, would have pleased them better than that I should marryViola. But--he didn't think that he could let me do it. If I had onlycome to him three weeks ago--

He hadn't been able--naturally--to talk about it last night. He had hopedhe wouldn't have to say anything about it at all, but I had forced him. 

It couldn't have been worse if I'd seen him about to put a knife into hisbreast. I tried to stop him, but he would do it, he _would_ put the knifein. 

"We don't know, " he said, "what may have occurred at Bruges. "

"Nothing occurred, " I said, "nothing that you need mind. "

He said, "That's what the child tells me. "

And I, "Surely, sir, you believe her word?"

Of course--of course he believed her word. Viola, he said, might keep thetruth from them if (he smiled in spite of himself) if she thought itwould not be good for them to know it. But she had never told them anuntruth. Never. She was--essentially--truthful. 

"Only, " he said, "we don't know what she may have been driven to. She mayhave been trying to shield that man Jevons. "

I said I was convinced that, technically, Jevons was innocent. It lookedas if he had been criminally reckless and inconsiderate; but he seemed tohave honestly thought that there was no harm in Viola's joining him inBruges. 

But the Canon didn't want to know what Jevons had thought, honestly orotherwise. Or what Viola had thought. "It's what they've done, " he said. "You can't get over it. "

I said what they'd done didn't amount to more than, looking at theBelfry. I could very easily get over that. 

He said that I was an Israelite indeed. But the world wasn't allBelfries, and we must look at it like men of the world. 

"They travelled together, Furnival. They travelled together. "

I said, "Yes. And it wasn't till they'd got to Bruges the second timethat Jevons realized that they never ought to. As soon as he did realizeit, he cleared out. "

He did that too late, the Canon insisted. It was no good my trying toshield Jevons. It wasn't easy to believe that Jevons was as innocent asViola, and, as nobody was going to believe it, the injury the brute haddone her was irreparable. 

"Not, " I said, "if she marries me. "

He said, "My dear boy, supposing--supposing it isn't all as innocent asyou think? You can't marry her. "

I said that made no difference. It was all the more reason. 

All the more reason, he insisted, for her marrying Jevons. 

That, he said, was what they'd have to go into. 

But there I took a high stand. I said it was for me to go into it, and ifI didn't, why should they? If I believed in Viola, surely they might? IfI knew that she could do nothing and feel nothing that was not beautiful, wasn't my knowledge good enough for them? I said, "I shall go to her atonce and ask her to marry me. "

He got up and laid his hand on my arm. "No, " he said. "Not at once. Wait. Far better wait. "

I asked him, "How long?"

He said, "Till she's had time to get over him. "

Mrs. Thesiger (I had half an hour with her, too) said the same thing. "Wait, " she said, "at any rate, another week. "

She had given her, as Jevons would have said, a week. 

 * * * * *

I waited. 

I stayed with the Thesigers a week. In fact, I stayed ten days. I gotused to the chimes and slept through them. I played chess with Mrs. Thesiger; I played golf and tennis with the girls and the youngsubalterns of the garrison; I played violent hockey with Mildred andNorah; I walked with Viola and Victoria; I tried to talk to Millicent(Millicent, I must own, was a bit beyond me); I played tennis again(singles) against Norah, who was bent on beating me. We all went forpicnics with the subalterns into Romney Marshes and visited Winchelseaand Rye. And in between I was taken by Canon and Mrs. Thesiger to lunchor dinner or tea in the other Canons' houses, and was introduced to theDean and the Archbishop. I attended the Cathedral services to an extentthat provoked Viola to denounce me as a humbug. 

I told her I did it in order to look at the finest spectacle of defianceI had ever seen--the Canon in his stall in the chancel singing the soloin the anthem with his beautiful voice, in the very teeth of disaster, asif nothing had happened. 

She said, "Daddy is beautiful, isn't he? He had a sore throat for afortnight after Aunt Vicky died. And he thinks this is far worse, but hewon't go back on me. So he sings. "

I was sitting with her in the garden on the Sunday evening. I said toher, "Viola, you were caught with the beauty of Bruges. Why can't you seethe beauty of all this?"

She looked at me with her great dark eyes (they were very young andbrilliant), and she answered, "Dear Walter, I've been seeing the beautyof it all my life. "

I was seeing it for the first time. 

I made the most of it, of the Canterbury atmosphere. I sank into it andfelt it sinking into me. I was, as Jevons had said I should be, "in it. "

And, as I made my running, I thought with some remorse of thatunfortunate one, languishing in Bruges on his parole. But Canterburywould have been no use to Jevons if he had been there. 

There's no doubt that I did something for the Thesigers in those tendays. I had effaced Jevons's legend. I had even effaced my own legend(for the scandal, if you remember, had begun with me). And the Thesigerswere tackling their catastrophe with dignity and courage and, I think, considerable success. By having me there, by being charming to me, bypresenting me openly and honourably to all their friends, they gaveslander the most effective answer. People asked each other: Was it likelythat the Thesigers would receive young Furnival with open arms if youngFurnival had been the man they'd heard about?

At the end of my week the whole seven of them were almost merry. (I maysay Norah, the youngest, had been merry all the time. ) My visit lappedover into another week. 

At the end of ten days my relations with Canon and Mrs. Thesiger becameso intimate that we could discuss the situation. They could even smilewhen I reminded them that there was one good thing about it--Canterburydidn't, and _couldn't_, realize Jevons. 

They hoped devoutly that it never would. 

And they thought it wouldn't. By this time, poor darlings, they believedthat I had saved them; that Jevons was an illness and that Viola had gotover him; that I had cured Viola of Jevons. 

I believed it myself. She had avoided me most of the time; she had leftme to her sisters, particularly the youngest, Norah. And when I was alonewith her she was silent and embarrassed. I thought: "She is beginning tobe afraid of me. And that is an excellent sign. "

The night before I left Canterbury I asked her, for the third time, tomarry me. 

She said, "I know why you're asking me, and it's dear of you. But it's nogood. It can't be done. Not even that way. "

V

The next day I went back to Bruges to release Jevons from his parole. 

I found him sitting tight in his hotel in the Market-Place, waiting myreturn with composure. 

He had recovered in my absence and had been making the best of hisinternment. He had written a series of articles on "The Old Cities ofFlanders. " He worked them up afterwards into that little masterpiece ofhis, "My Flemish Journal, " which gave him his European celebrity (it musthave made delightful reading for the Thesigers). There was no delay, noreverse, no calamity that Jevons couldn't turn into use and profit as itcame. Yes, I know, and into charm and beauty. Viola Thesiger lives in his"Flemish Journal" with an enduring beauty and charm. 

I said I was sorry for keeping him shut up in Bruges so long. He said itdidn't matter a bit. He had been very busy. 

I thought it was his articles and his book (he had been dreaming of it)that had made Jevons so happy. But I was mistaken. 

We spent half the night in talking, sitting up in my big room on thefirst floor for the sake of space and air. 

Jevons went straight to the point by asking me how I had got on atCanterbury. 

I felt that I owed him a perfect frankness in return for the liberties Ihad taken with him, so I told him how I had got on. 

He said, "I'm not going to pretend to be astonished. But you can't say Ididn't play fair. I gave you your innings, didn't I?"

I said I'd had them, anyhow. We'd leave it at that. 

He said, No. We couldn't leave it at that. He'd _given_ me my innings. Hecould have stopped my having them any minute, but he'd made up his mind Ishould have them. So that nobody should say afterwards he hadn't playedfair. 

I remember perfectly everything that Jevons said to me that night. I amputting it all down so that it may be clear that what the Thesigerscalled the beauty of my behaviour was nothing to the beauty of his. Thinkof him, shut up there in his hotel in Bruges, giving me my innings, whenhe could have struck in and won the game without waiting those horribleten days. 

Well, I suppose he knew that he had it in his hands all the time. 

"You see, " he went on, "I knew you'd got one chance, and I meant you tohave it. I meant you to make the most of it. There are things, Furnival, I haven't got the hang of--yet--little, little things like breeding andgood looks, where you might get the pull of me still if you had a freehand. 

"Well, I gave you a free hand. 

"You needn't thank me. I wasn't thinking of you so much. I was thinkingof Viola. I wanted to be perfectly fair to _her_. If there _was_ a chanceof her liking you better than she liked me, and being happier with you, Iwanted her to have her chance. I wanted, you see, to be rather more thanfair. If I was going to win this game I was going to win it hands over, not just to sneak in on a doubtful point. I wanted Viola to know what shewas doing. I wanted her to see exactly what she was giving up if shemarried me--to go home and see it all over again in case she hadforgotten. 

"And of course I was thinking of myself too. I'm an egoist. For my ownsake I wanted her to be quite sure she hadn't any sort of hankering afteryou. "

I said if it was any comfort to him he could be. Viola hadn't anyhankering after me at all. This--if he cared to know it--was the thirdtime that I had proposed to her and been turned down. 

He said he _did_ care to know it, very much. It was most important. 

"I, " he said, "have never proposed to her at all. 

"That, " he went on, "is just the one risk I wouldn't take. 

"And there, " he explained, "is where I've scored. I knew that Viola isobstinate, and that if she starts by turning you down she'll keep it upout of sheer cussedness. 

"So I never let her start. Women, " he generalized, "admire success. If Iwere to give you your innings all over again, Furnival--and I will if youlike--you couldn't make anything of them with those three howlers to youraccount. There isn't any record of failure against _me_. Good God! D'yousuppose _I_'d be such a damn fool as to muff it three times with the samewoman? Not me!"

I said he needn't rub it in. 

He said he was rubbing it in for my good, so that I shouldn't go and dothe same thing next time. 

"Because--_now_ we're coming to the point--there will be a next time foryou, Furnival. That's why I don't even pretend to be sorry for you. There'll be other women. But there aren't any next times for me, andthere aren't any other women. This--I mean _she_--was my one chance. Itwas pretty jumpy work, I can tell you, sitting tight and gambling with itfor ten blasted days. Any other man would have gone clean off his chumpwith worrying over it. There've been times when I've felt like it myself. It was infernal--when you think what I stood to lose. "

I said that was all rot. It was his beastly egoism. He didn't stand tolose more than I did. 

He said it wasn't a question of more or less. And it wasn't his egoism. It was his sweetness and his heart-rending humility. He'd stood to loseeverything. He'd be done for if Viola wouldn't have him. He couldn't lookat any other woman after her. And he put it to me: What other woman wouldlook at him? Whereas my resources were practically inexhaustible. Almostany nice woman would know that I would give her what she wanted. Andalmost any nice woman would give me what I wanted, too. When I insistedthat I didn't see it, he said I'd see it shortly. He gave me six months. 

Viola, he declared, would never have given me what I wanted. I couldnever give her what she wanted. And he could. 

He said he admitted that it was odd that he should be able to succeedwhere I failed; but so it was, and he went on to expound to me all thereasons for my failure. 

"To begin with, you're not her sort; or, rather, you're too much hersort. You with your integrity are one of the beautiful works of God, andshe's been used to that sort of beauty all her life and she's tired ofit. But she isn't used to me. She never will be. She's never seenanything in the least like me before, and she never will see anythingquite like me again as long as she lives. I'm the queer, unexpected thingshe wants and always will want. 

"But let that pass. 

"You couldn't get her because you didn't give your mind to it. You didn'tknow how to get her and you didn't try to find out. You set about it thewrong way. I told you ages ago that a man's a fool if he wants a thingand doesn't find out how to get it. You should have begun by trying tofind out something about _her_. But you didn't try. With all youropportunities you haven't found out anything. You don't know the leastthing about her. You don't know what she wants, you don't know what she'sthinking, or what she's feeling, or what she'll do--how she'll behave ifyou propose to her three times running. She's told you things and youhaven't understood them or tried to understand. Because the whole blessedtime you were thinking about yourself, or what she was thinking aboutyou, or was going to think. Whereas I haven't been thinking aboutanything but her--I've been studying her straight on end for ten monthsand I've found out a little bit about her. At any rate, I jolly well knowwhat she wants and I jolly well know how to give it her. 

"You see, I was determined to get her, and I left no stone unturned. Itook trouble. "

I suggested that _I_'d taken trouble enough in all conscience. Helaughed. 

"_You_ only took trouble to get her away, old man, when she wanted to behere with me. What do you suppose I brought her here for? Would _you_have ever thought of letting her come with you? Of giving her what shewanted to that extent? Not you! You'd only have thought of shutting herup and protecting her for your own wretched sake--which was the lastthing she wanted. She'd had about enough of that. "

I replied that certainly I should have thought of protecting a young girlbefore everything else; that it never would have occurred to me tocompromise her in order to marry her--even if I did find I couldn't marryher in any other way. 

I had hit him there. He was quiet for a little while after it. I didn'tlook at him--I didn't want to look at him--but I could feel him there, breathing hard from the shock of it, with his mouth a little open. 

Presently he took the thing up again. He went on, placably, quietlyexplaining. "I thought of protecting her too. Only I wasn't such an idiotas to think of it before everything else. "

"No. You were clever enough to think of it afterwards--when you'd gotwhat you wanted. When you had compromised her. "

"I suppose you mean there was only one thing I wanted? There, Furnival, you lie. "

I said I only meant that she _was_ compromised. At any rate, that waswhat it looked like to her people and to everybody to whom it mattered. 

"If you will persist in taking the ugliest view of it, of course it'lllook like that. I can't help how it looks to a set of old ladies andclergymen in Canterbury. Come to that, it matters a damned sight more to_me_ than it can to any of you people. "

I said he wouldn't say so if he knew how he had made them suffer. 

He laughed out at that. 

"Suffer? They haven't suffered a quarter as much as I have. Not ahundredth part as much. They've suffered thinking of themselves--of theirprecious respectability. I've suffered thinking of _her_. 

"Suffer? I've been through all _that_. It wasn't right, Furnival, itwasn't right for anybody to have to go through what I did. But I've comeout of it. You've been pretty hard on me with your infernal virtue; butif you think you can make me suffer more, you can't. I'm past it. "

I said I was sorry if I seemed too hard on him. But it would be well ifhe tried to look at his really very outrageous behaviour as it was boundto appear to other people. 

"You admit, then, " he said, "that it appears more outrageous than it is?"

I said, "You see, my dear fellow, I don't yet know what it is. "

He asked me if I'd like to know what it was? And I told him that, certainly, some sort of an account was owing and that he'd better perhapsmake a clean breast of it while he was about it. 

Well--he made his clean breast. 

He confessed that the sting of a great deal that I had said to him was inits truth. I needn't be frightened. Nothing had happened. Nothing beyondwhat I knew. But--there was a point, he said, when everything might have. When he had meant that it should happen. 

He hadn't meant it at first. Nothing had been further from him when helet her come to Bruges. He had meant nothing--nothing beyond looking atthe Belfry. He had thought--as she did--that it would be quite possibleto be content with looking at the Belfry. That was where the damned follyof the thing had come in. They began to be aware of the folly when theyfound themselves going together to Antwerp. He wasn't aware even then ofwhat he meant. But he knew what he meant when he left Antwerp and tookher to Ghent. 

Because he _did_ take her there. He meant--_then_--exactly what Viola'sfather and her brother and her uncles and her male cousins would mean ifthey took a woman to Ghent. 

"I meant, " he said, "to compromise her. But--here's where you wentwrong--I didn't mean to compromise her in order to marry her. I didn'tmean to marry her at all. There was a moment when I thought that marryingme--tying herself up to me for ever--was a risk I ought not to let hertake. I thought--I thought I could make her happy without all that awfulrisk. It seemed to me that after the risk we _had_ taken we had a rightto happiness. Certainly _she_ had. And I thought she thought the same. 

"So I took her to Ghent. 

"I say I thought she knew what I meant when I took her. 

"I ought to tell you that we _did_ have rooms in the same hotel inAntwerp and Ghent. There weren't any English there that mattered--nobodythat either of us knew. 

"But when I'd got her to Ghent I couldn't--I don't know how it was--butit came over me that I couldn't--I hadn't the courage. I think I foundout that she was afraid or something. We'd taken rooms in that hotelyou were in in the _Place d'Armes_. We were sitting together in thelounge--you know that big lounge on the first floor with the glasspartition in it along the staircase--you can see people through it goingup and down stairs. She'd got up suddenly and stuck out her hand and saidgood night. And there was a look in her eyes--Fright, a sort of fright. 

"I saw her through the glass going up the stair. When she got to thelanding I saw her turn her head over her shoulder and look down into thelounge, to make sure I was still there. 

"She looked so helpless somehow--and so pretty--that for the life of me Icouldn't. 

"No. 

"I took her back to Bruges the next morning and put her in the _pension_with those women. "

I thought of the irony of it. 

If Jevons had really been the blackguard he seemed we could have hushedit up. If he hadn't repented, if he hadn't taken her back to Bruges andput her in the _pension_ with those women, ten to one Withers wouldn'thave seen them and General Thesiger's friends wouldn't have heard ofthem. I should have got her quietly away from Ghent without Canterburybeing a bit the wiser. 

But I didn't tell Jevons that. I hadn't the heart to. 

We stayed three days longer in Bruges. There were still some odd cornersof the city that he hadn't had time to look up. 

Jevons was very kind to me all those three days. 

After we got back to England Jevons's affairs picked up and went forwardwith a rush. His novel came out at the end of May. In June he was madesub-editor of _Sport_, and thus acquired a settled income. And onemorning in July I got a letter from Viola written at Quimpol in Brittany:

"MY DEAR WALTER:

"I married Jimmy five days ago. Nobody but Norah knew anything about ittill it was all over. But I wrote and told Daddy before we left England. I'm afraid he's had a sore throat ever since. I wish you'd go down toCanterbury and tell them that it's all right and that I'm ever so happy. There really isn't any reason why Daddy shouldn't sing. 

"As Norah says: 'It's his not singing that gives the show away. ' Yoursever, "V. J. "

BOOK II

HER BOOK

VI

I did not go down to Canterbury all at once. I was vowed, of course, toMrs. Jevons's everlasting service (I think I've succeeded in making_that_ clear), but I could not--under the whacking blow of her marriage Icould _not_ do as she asked me then and there. The reminiscences ofCanterbury were poignant. I had to have a little time to recover in. Andin those first terrible weeks I didn't see why Jevons should have all theamusement and I all the hard work and the suffering. I knew that Jevonshad suffered, too--quite horribly--but his anguish, after all, was athing of the past; while mine, in full career, devastated the present andthe future. I had done my best for them, and I could not share Viola'sview that it was my business to go on whitewashing Jevons for ever. Therewas a limit, at any rate, to the number of coats I could contract to puton him. 

So I waited. I waited till they came back from their half honeymoon inBrittany (a fortnight was all the editor of _Sport_ could spare to hissubordinate). Then at her invitation I went up to Hampstead to see them. 

They had found an old four-roomed cottage that had once been alabourer's. It was whitewashed (Viola was fond of whitewash), and all thewood-work was painted green, and there was a strip of green garden infront with a green paling round it. 

A furniture van that you could have packed the house in stood in theGrove outside it, and big, burly men in white aprons were takingfurniture out of the van and dumping it down in the garden. Some of itwouldn't go in at the gate and had to be lifted over the palings. 

Jevons in an old Norfolk suit and with his hair rumpled was standing on aten-foot plot of grass contemplating a bed-tester and four bed-posts thatleaned up against the palings in the embrace of a bedstead turned uponits side, and Viola in the upper window was contemplating Jevons. 

He called to her, "Have you measured?" And she answered, "Yes. He says itcan't be done. Oh, there's Furny!"

Jevons turned to me with a smile addressed to the bed-tester rather thanto me. Viola came down to us followed by a tall stout carpenter, visiblyher slave. 

The carpenter was saying: "That there room is out by a good fourinches--by a good four inches 'tis. An' the way you've got to look atit is this, m'm. Not as this 'ere tester is too 'igh fer that ceilin', but how as that there ceilin' is too low fer this tester. "

"Quite so, " said Jevons. "And in that case you've got to raise theceiling four inches. "

"No, sir, " said the carpenter (he spoke severely to Jevons). "You 'ave_not_. If I take you off a two inch from each leg of that there bedstead, and a two inch from each of them there postsis, it'll be the same as ifthe builder 'e raised you the ceilin' a four inch. "

"By Jove, " said Jevons. "So it will. "

"Ay, and it'll corst you somethin' like four shillin', instead of p'rapsa matter of forty pound. W'en it comes to tamperin' with ceilin's, younever know where you are. "

"I don't know where I am now, " said Jevons, "but it might be better toleave the ceiling alone. They haven't started tampering, have they?"

"No, sir. They have not. "

Viola ordered the carpenter to go into the study again and measure forthose bookshelves. He was her slave and he went. 

"Jimmy's been going on like that all day, " she said. "He's taken up hoursof that man's time. We shall never get him out of the house. "

"I don't want to get him out of the house, " said Jevons. "I'm awfullyhappy with him. "

He was happy (like a child) with everything, with his house and hisgarden and his furniture, his oak chests and the dresser and the bureau, above all he was happy with his bed-tester. He said be had never sleptunder a bed-tester in his life, and he was dying to know what it would belike--to lie there with hundreds of dear little, shy little chintzrosebuds squinting down at you. 

"You'll not lay under them rosebuds, not for a twenty-four hour--"

The carpenter had come back to us. He treated Jevons exactly like achild. 

"That tester can't be set up to-night. Not unless, as I say, you squeegesof it jam tight between the ceilin' and the floor. An' _then_ you'll 'aveto prise the ceilin' up every time you moves of it, else you'll startthem postsis all a twistin' and a rockin', an' 'ow'll you feel then?"

Jevons said he felt frightened to death as it was, and the carpentercould have it his own way provided he didn't hurt the little rosebuds orfrighten _them_; and the carpenter sighed and said that the study was tenby thirteen and would take a hundred and sixteen feet of bookshelves. 

"Let's go and look at the study, " said Viola. And we went and looked atit. And the carpenter came up and looked at _us_. And the foreman and theother men came in with furniture and things out of the garden, and _they_looked at us. There wasn't one really large and heavy piece of furnitureexcept the four-post bed and the tester, and they treated the whole thingas a joke, as a funny game they were helping two small children to playat. And when Viola and Jevons ought to have been telling the men whatthings were to go into which room and where, they ran back into thegarden to see what flowers they would plant in it and where. 

Then they took me to look all over the house. It was an absurd house. Ofits four rooms there was one in front that served as a dining-room and adrawing-room and a boudoir for Viola, and there was a kitchen at theback, and a bedroom over the front room, and Jevons's study was over thekitchen. Viola said there were six rooms if you counted the pantry andthe bathroom, and they were going to put a settee in Jimmy's study thatwould turn into a bed when anybody came to stay. And Mrs. Pavitt knewa nice woman who would come in and scrub for them, and sleep in thekitchen when they weren't there. 

They showed me the little bits of furniture they'd got. Jevons had apassion for beautiful old things, for old rosewood bureaus and chests ofdrawers with brass handles. She pointed out the brass handles. 

I felt that the poor child was showing me her absurd house and telling meall these things because there wasn't and there hadn't been, and perhapsthere never would be anybody else to tell them to. I thought of themother and the four sisters down at Canterbury and of the other two whowere married, who had been married so differently. There was somethingqueer, something wrong about it all. I believe the very workmen felt thatit was so and were sorry for her. 

When they had all gone away at six o'clock Jevons and I took our coatsoff and settled down for three solid hours to the serious work of movingfurniture, while Viola tried to find the china, to wash it, and sortedall the linen and the blankets. And at nine o'clock we dined on baconthat Jevons fried over the gas-stove in the kitchen and cocoa that Violaand I made in a white-and-pink jug we found in the bath; it was a buxom, wide-pouting jug with an expression that Jevons said reminded him of hismother's sister who had brought him up. He said that jug was all thatViola would be allowed to see of his relations. 

I was left with Viola in the kitchen to wash up while Jevons finishedwhat he called his man's job upstairs. 

She took advantage of his absence to implore me to go down to Canterburyand make it right for her with her people. She said they'd believeanything I told them and there wasn't anything they wouldn't do for me. 

"Tell them, " she said, "that Jimmy's going to be so horribly celebratedthat they'll look perfect asses if they don't acknowledge him. "

I owned there was something in it. She said there was everything in it. And I promised her I'd go and do what I could. 

Then I went upstairs to help Jevons to finish his man's job. I found himin the bedroom, making up a bed on the floor. The carpenter had takenaway the bedstead and the posts and left him nothing but the mattress andthe tester with its roof of rosebud chintz. He had propped the tester upagainst the wall where he said he could see it last thing before he wentto sleep and first thing when he woke up. 

The room was very hot, for he'd lit the gas fire to air the sheets andthings. He had thought of everything. He had even thought of hangingViola's nightgown over the back of a chair before the fire, and settingher slippers ready for her feet. He had laid her brush and comb on thelittle rosewood chest of drawers with brass handles, in the recess. Hehad unpacked her little trunk and put her things away all folded in thebig rosewood chest of drawers with brass handles. He had hung the rosebudchintz curtains at the window and fitted its rosebud chintz cover onthe low chair by the fire. And now he was kneeling on the floor, tuckingin the blankets and smoothing the pillow for her head. His mouth was justa little open. And he was smiling. 

You couldn't hate him. 

He said he'd come and see me off at the Tube Station. But he didn'tstart. He began walking about, opening drawers and looking at things. 

Presently he gave a cry of joy. He had found what he was looking for, arosebud chintz coverlet. He spread it on the bed and said, "There!" Hebrought in an old Persian rug (small but very beautiful) from the landingand spread it on the floor by the mattress and said, "That's a bit of allright. " And he told me he was going to beeswax the floor to-morrow. Therewas nothing to beat oak-stain and beeswax for a floor. 

He stood there gazing. He was so pleased with his work that he couldn'ttear himself away. 

He said, "The joke is that she thinks she's going to find this roomlooking like a Jew pawnbroker's shop when, she turns in, and that she'llhave the time of her life putting it straight for _me_. "

Then he took my arm and led me away, shutting the door carefully, so thatnothing, he said, should break the shock of her surprise. 

But there was one drop of bitterness in his cup--"If only I could haveset up that tester!"

I said he'd had quite enough excitement for one day and that he reallymust leave something for to-morrow. 

On our way to the Tube Station I told him that I was going down toCanterbury in a day or two. I told him what I was going for. He had beenso happy thinking about his house and his furniture and Viola that Idon't believe he'd ever thought about the Thesigers. At the word"Canterbury" he thrust out his lower jaw so that the tips of his littlewhite teeth were covered (they always disappeared when he was angry). 

He said: "Tell that old sinner I don't care a copper damn whether herecognizes _me_ or not. What I can't stand and won't stand is the slurhe's putting on my wife. "

 * * * * *

And that is more or less what I did tell him. 

I wired to the Canon to let him know I was coming, and he replied byasking me to stay for the week-end. 

I found the family diminished. Mildred had gone to a case; Millicent wasaway for her Midsummer holiday; only Canon and Mrs. Thesiger and Norahand Victoria were left. They had the air of survivors of an appallingdisaster. The Canon and Mrs. Thesiger were aged by about ten years; poorVictoria looked tired and haggard; even Norah was depressed. You feltthat the trouble in the house was irreparable this time. They had heldtheir heads up against the scandal that was supposed to have occurred inBelgium; they couldn't realize it; it was the sort of thing that occurredto other people, not to them. And, after all, they didn't _know_ that ithad occurred. But the scandal of a _mésalliance_ which really hadoccurred in England three weeks ago was well within their range, andit had crushed them. It wasn't, as Jevons cynically maintained, that theyobjected to a _mésalliance_--any _mésalliance_--more than to the otherthing; I think they had never really believed in the other thing, andthis marriage, so far from effacing it, had rubbed it in, had made itappear publicly as if, after all, it might have been so. It was not onlyexcessively disagreeable to them in itself, but it left them in thatghastly doubt. 

And this time they couldn't look to me to save them. 

Still it was evident that they looked to me for something. I was tackledby each one of them in turn. The Canon wanted to know if I had anythingto tell him. Mrs. Thesiger wondered whether Viola would have enough tolive on. Victoria, in the absence of her parents, took me into a cornerto inquire under her breath, "Is he really very awful?" Norah--she hadknown all about it; they hadn't spared her, they hadn't kept it from her;you couldn't keep anything from Norah; she had got it all out of Violathe day before I came down the first time--Norah told me I'd have to makeher father ask them down. She took Jevons's view that it was the Canonwho was causing all the scandal now (only she called it fuss). Therenever would have been any if Mummy and Daddy had had the sense to take itproperly and treat it as a joke. Nobody who knew Viola could take it asanything else. 

"But, " she said, "if Daddy goes about pulling a long face and keeping uphis sore throat over it, everybody'll think there must be something init. I could have got it all right for them in a jiffy if they'd left itto me. "

"What would you have done, then?" I was really anxious to know. 

"Oh, I'd have run round telling everybody about it--as a joke. Athundering good joke. If they'd turned me on to it in time I could haveeasily overtaken those shocking old cats who got in first. As it is, " shesaid, "I've stopped a lot of it--though Daddy doesn't know it--just thatway. You should have seen me with the Colonel and the Dean! But ifsomebody doesn't stop Daddy he'll go and mess it all up again. Don't youremember how he dished my game at dinner the first night you were here?"

Yes. I remembered. It came back to me, that startling indiscretion atthe dinner-table which was, after all, so deliciously discreet. KnowingNorah as I know her now, I wouldn't mind betting that Jevons owes hisposition, in Canterbury (and he has one) to-day far more to his youngestsister-in-law's manoeuvres with the Dean and Chapter than to my handlingof his case--No; I'm forgetting what he does owe that to. Let's say, then, his position in Canterbury yesterday--a year ago. 

Well, I had an hour's talk with the Canon. 

There was some awkwardness in having to point out to a man of his beautyand dignity that his duty lay in any other direction than the one he wasso plainly heading for. I put it on the grounds of pity. I pleaded forViola, I said she was unhappy. 

He replied that that was not the account she had given of herself. 

I said, Perhaps not. But if she wasn't unhappy now she very soon would beif he persisted in refusing to acknowledge them. 

But his lip went stiffer and stiffer. He was too unhappy himself to begot at that way. So I took him on the ground of expediency. I said afterall Jevons was his son-in-law. He couldn't go on ignoring Jevons. I usedViola's argument. He wasn't dealing with an ordinary man. In a few years'time Tasker Jevons would be so celebrated that it would be absurd topretend to ignore him. 

The Canon stuck to it that he didn't care how celebrated the fellow was. 

I said, "You can't keep it up for ever. You'll have to recognize him inthe end. You don't want to cut the poor chap while he's struggling andaccept him when he rolls, as he probably will roll. "

The Canon said he wasn't going to accept him at all. He said that Jevonsrolling would he if anything more odious than Jevons as he was. Hecouldn't forget what had happened. And that was the end of it. 

I told him that it hadn't happened; but that to repudiate Jevons was theway to make everybody think it had. And whether it had happened or not, he must surely want other people to forget it. And once start theabominable impression, Jevons's celebrity would cause it to be rememberedfor ever, or at any rate for this generation. Whereas he could put a stopto the whole thing at once by behaving as if nothing had happened. He hadonly got to ask them down next week. 

"Does _he_ want to be asked down?"

I said, No, he didn't. I told him what Jevons had said--that he didn'tcare whether he was recognized or not, but that he "couldn't stand theslur that was being put upon his wife. "

I saw him wince at that. 

"That's how it strikes him?" he said. 

I answered that that was how it would strike most people. 

"_I'm_ putting the slur on my daughter, am I?"

I was pitiless. I said, Certainly he was. If he persisted. 

Then, after telling me that I had hit him hard, he fell back on anotherline of defence. He owed it to his priesthood not to condone hisdaughter's conduct. 

"All the more--all the more, Furnival, if she _is_ my daughter. "

I said he owed it to his priesthood to stand up for an innocent girl, even if she _was_ his daughter. I couldn't see anything in it but herinnocence--her amazing innocence. I only wished I had his chance ofproving it. 

He shook his head. "That's it, my dear fellow. We can't prove it. "

I said at least we could believe in it and act on our belief. 

He said it was all very well for me. I was prejudiced. 

"My sort of prejudice, " I said, "might work the other way. "

"You must have been afraid, or you wouldn't have gone out to bring herback. "

"Jevons was afraid himself, for that matter. When things got dangerous hetook her back to Bruges and put her in a _pension_ to be safe from him. "

He looked up sharply. 

"She never told me that--that he took her there to be safe from him. "

"I don't suppose she knew. She was as innocent as all that. "

"And how do _you_ know?"

"Because he told me so. "

I gave him something of what Jevons had told me, but not all. 

"That, " said the Canon, "seems to make him more credible. "

I pictured for him the night of Jevons's remorse. 

He said, "That's the best thing I've heard about him yet. You believehim?"

I said, "Yes. The man is extremely sensitive and almost insanely frank. "

I let it sink in. Presently he owned that it was the platonic version ofthe affair that--as a man of the world--he had found it so hard toswallow--"All that nonsense, you know, about the Belfry. "

He meditated a while. Then he began to ask questions:

"Where does he come from? Who are his people? What do they do?"

I said his father was a Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths in avillage somewhere in Hertfordshire. 

And then: "Is he--is he _very_ impossible?"

I said, No. Only from their point of view a little improbable. 

He didn't press it. 

"Well, " he said, "it looks as if he was inevitable. I suppose we've gotto make the best of him. What do you want me to do?"

I said I wanted him to ask them down. Very soon. 

He said, "All right, Furnival. I'll ask them down next week. But if I doyou must stop on and see me through. I won't be left alone with him. "

I stopped on, playing chess with the Canon and lawn tennis with Norah, who was more than ever determined to beat me. 

And on Tuesday of the next week they came down. 

 * * * * *

The whitewashing of Jevons had not been an easy matter. It took such alot of coats to make a satisfactory job of him. And it was not a job Iwould have chosen. But I was serving Mrs. Jevons, and if my service haddemanded miracles I should have had to have worked them somewhere, thatwas all. And perhaps it was a miracle to have turned Jevons out as amorally presentable person according to the requirements of a CathedralClose. 

But up to that Tuesday afternoon in August my private grievance againstJevons remained what it had been. In his absence--even while Iwhitewashed him--I could not extend a Christian forgiveness andforbearance to Jevons, any more than Mrs. Thesiger could. I think I hatedJevons. I ought to have hated him--by every glorious and manly code, pagan or barbarous, I ought to have hated him. And I did--every minutethat he wasn't there. He had made me a figure of preposterous suffering. Because of him I trailed a fatuous tragedy through the Thesigers' houseand over the green lawns of the Close, under the eyes of the youngsubalterns and of Victoria and Norah. (Canon and Mrs. Thesiger I didn'tmind so much. ) It mattered nothing that they were all extremely kind tome, since my suffering was responsible for their kindness and Jevons wasresponsible for my suffering. 

Well, on that Tuesday he arrived. He was asked for a week and he stayedthree days; and in those three days I had forgiven him everything for thesake of his performance. 

He arrived in the middle of a tennis-party. 

The Thesigers hadn't meant to have a party. The subalterns must haveknown that he was coming and turned up simply to look at him. (I wonderedafterwards whether Norah could have told them. She was dangerously demurethat afternoon. )

I ought to have said that for the last two days the Canon had beenpreparing himself for Jevons by reading him. He had ordered--in defianceof his political principles--the _Morning Standard_, and I had found himreading Jevons's novel and surrounded by numbers of the _Blue Review_, which, if you remember, published the best of Jevons's earlier work. Hehad no difficulty in getting hold of them; his youngest daughter had beenable to supply him with more Jevons than he wanted. In fact, in the studyof Tasker Jevons the Canon was weeks behind the rest of his acquaintance. There was hardly a family in Canterbury of any education in which TaskerJevons was not by this time a household word. The garrison club libraryhad bought him in quantities. The bookseller in the precincts did notstock him (he was not allowed to); but he could order him for you, anddid. And the book-sellers in the High Street displayed him in theirwindows by the half-dozen. 

I have forgotten, in the blaze of his later fame, that (apart from thispurely local reputation) he passed in the provinces as a fair-sizedcelebrity even then. Only, as Jevons judged himself at every stage withaccuracy, he hadn't begun to take himself at all seriously yet. 

So he arrived in a perfect simplicity, without any of that rather dubiousaplomb with which he tried to carry off his celebrity when it reallycame. 

It was very nasty for him. 

He had to come out of the house, following Viola and her mother allthe way to the far end of the lawn, where the Canon was ready for himwith a face which, try as he would--and he tried his hardest--he couldnot unstiffen. It must be said of the Canon that he nothing commondid or mean upon that memorable scene; but he had--as Jevons saidafterwards--rather too much the air of walking up to the gun's mouth andcalling on us to observe how beautifully a Christian could die. 

And there was Victoria standing beside the Canon and holding herselfwell, and Colonel and Mrs. Braithwaite beside Victoria, trying to look asif there was nothing unusual about Jevons or the situation. There wasNorah at the tennis-net quivering with excitement, and (by the timeJevons had caught up with his convoy) there was Mrs. Thesiger alongsidethe others, turned round to present him, and watching him as he came on. Viola had turned and was looking at him too. And there were thesubalterns at the tennis-net with Norah, doing unnecessary things to thenet and trying _not_ to look at him. 

I wondered: How on earth will he carry it off? How is he going to getacross that tennis-ground?

He was getting across it somehow, holding himself not quite so well asVictoria or the subalterns, but still holding himself, coming on, alittle flushed and twinkling and self-conscious, but coming. 

The situation was, for him, most horrible; but it was worse for Viola. Iwondered: Is she shivering all down her spine? Is she going to flinch?Why _will_ she _look_ at the poor chap?

And then I saw. She was looking at him with a little tender smile, asmile that helped him across, that said: "Come on. Come on. It'sdifficult, I know, but you're doing it beautifully. "

Well, so he was. He was doing it more beautifully than the Canon or anyof them. For that group on the lawn were like a rather eager rescueparty, holding out hands to a struggling swimmer in the social surf. Theyexpected him to struggle and he didn't. He landed himself in the middleof them with an adroitness that put them in the wrong. What's more, heheld his own when he got there. He looked about as different from any ofthe men on that tennis-ground as a man well could look. He looked odd;and that saved him. They with their distinction had not achieved absolutedifference from each other. His difference from all of them was soabsolute that it was a sort of distinction in itself. 

As soon as he got there Norah came up with the subalterns in tow. Shemade a little friendly rush at him. She said, "I'm Norah, the youngest. Iexpect Viola's told you about me. She's told me lots about _you_. "

She meant well, dear child. But she overdid it. She hadn't allowed--noneof us except Viola had allowed--for his appalling sensitiveness. The poorchap told me afterwards that he could bear up against the Canon's stiffface and what he called Mrs. Thesiger's ladylike refinements ofrepudiation, and the poker that Victoria had swallowed, but that thatkid's kindness, coming on the top of it all, floored him. He took herhand (I think he squeezed it), and his mouth opened, but he couldn'tspeak; he just breathed hard and flushed furiously; and his eyes lookedas if he were going to cry. But of course he didn't cry. He was, he said, far too much afraid of the subalterns. 

It was a good thing, perhaps, after all, that it took him that way. Hisemotion made him quiet and subdued; it toned him down, so that he startedwell from the very beginning. 

After tea he recovered and talked to the Colonel and the subalterns whilethe rest of us listened. He said, I remember, that the building ofDreadnoughts was of more importance to the country than Disestablishment. And even more important than the building of Dreadnoughts was thebuilding of submarines. The submarine was the ship of the future. Thereshould be, he said, at least fifty submarines for every Dreadnoughtturned out. 

That made them all sit up. (It was not a platitude in nineteen-six, but aprophecy. ) The Colonel and the subalterns hung on his words; and when theCanon saw them hanging, his mouth began to relax a little of its ownaccord. In his first hour Jevons had scored, notably. 

It was as if he had said to himself, "I'll bring these people round, seeif I don't. I give myself an hour. "

Dinner passed without any misadventure, but you could see that he wascareful. Also you could see by his twinkle that he was amusing himself byhis own precautions, as if, again, he had said to himself, "They're allexpecting me to make noises over my soup, and they'll be disappointed. Ijust won't make any. "

We had coffee in the garden afterwards. And it was then that the Canonasked him what his politics were?

Jevons said he had no politics. Or rather, he had a great many politics. He was a sort of Socialist in time of peace and a red-hot Imperialist intime of war, and a Tory for purposes of Tariff Reform, and a Liberal whenit came to Home Rule. 

And when the Canon objected that you couldn't run a Government on thoselines, little Jevons told him that that was precisely how Governmentswere run. It was a fallacy to suppose that Oppositions didn't rule. 

And again he scored. He did it all with a twinkling, dimpling urbanityand deprecation, as if the Canon had been a beautiful lady he was payingcourt to, as if he thought it was rather a pity that beauty should loweritself to talk politics; but since he insisted on politics, he shouldhave them; as if, in short, he loved the Canon, but didn't take him veryseriously. 

Yes; he certainly scored. He gave Viola no cause to flinch. 

That evening comes back to me by bits. It must have been that eveningthat the Canon walked round the garden with me. I see him walking roundand round, with Norah hanging on to his arm, teasing him and chattering. I hear her crying out suddenly with no relevance, "Hasn't he got stunningeyes, Daddy?" and the Canon saying that Jevons's eyes would look betterin a pair of earrings than in Jevons's head, and her answering, "Wouldn'tI like to wear them!" I see his little mock shiver (as if he felt that itwas those great chunks of unsuitable sapphire that had charmed Violaacross the Channel), and Norah's funny face as she said, "Oh, come, heisn't half bad. "

That night he called me into the library when they had all gone to bed. Clearly he wanted to know how it had gone off--how he, in particular, hadbehaved. I assured him that his behaviour had been perfect. And I askedhim what he thought of Jevons?

He said, "Well--he might be worse. He might be much, much worse. He's aclever chap. Where does he get it all from?"

But I noticed that the next day he shut himself up in his libraryall morning, was silent at lunch, and never emerged properly tilldinner-time. Mrs. Thesiger also fought shy of her son-in-law. 

Norah and Victoria took him by turns that day. I noticed that he got onvery well with Norah. She knocked balls over the net for him all morning. (He couldn't play, but professed a great eagerness to learn. ) In theafternoon Victoria took him to look at the Cathedral and the old quartersof the town. In the evening, after dinner, we all sat out in the garden. Canon and Mrs. Thesiger soon left us; Victoria followed them; and Violaand Norah and Jevons and I sat on till long after dark. 

Viola and Norah, I remember, sat close together on the long seat underthe elm tree. Jevons was on the other side of Viola. I sat on a cushionat her feet. 

The night had a rhythm in it. Stillness and peace. The Cathedral chimes. Stillness and peace again. And there was a smell of cut lawn grass withdew on it from the ground, and of roses from the borders, and of lichenand moss and crumbling mortar from the walls. Sometimes these smellspierced the peace like sound; and sometimes they gathered close andwrapped us like warmth. 

Then Jevons spoke. 

"All this, " he said, "is very beautiful. Very beautiful indeed. "

And Viola sighed. 

"Yes, Yes, " she said. "I suppose it _is_ beautiful. "

"You _know_ it is, " he said. 

"I know all right. But I don't think I can see it as you do. I've beenshut up in it so long. It's all this that you've taken me out of. "

"It's all this, " he said, "that's made you what you are. "

"It isn't. This isn't really me. It's just Them. I'm what I've mademyself. I'm what you've made me. I'm uglier than they are. I'm uglierthan anything here, but I'm much, much more alive. "

"You surely don't suggest, " said Jevons, "that I've made you uglier?"

"You've made me stronger and cleverer and bigger--ever so much biggerthan I was. "

"Much better in every way, " I said, "than your youngest sister here, hasn't he?"

"Poor little Norah! I didn't mean that--you beast--Furny!--Of course Ididn't. Jimmy--what _did_ I mean?"

He said nothing. But I heard an inarticulate murmur, and I saw that inthe darkness his arm went round her and drew her closer. 

And that, God forgive him, was his heaviest score up till now. 

In two days he had absorbed the Canterbury atmosphere. He was in it. Init as I wasn't and couldn't be. 

And the next day Canon and Mrs. Thesiger took him in hand by turns. TheCanon showed him the town all over again all morning. And in theafternoon Mrs. Thesiger showed him the Cathedral all over again; and tookhim with her to the service. And all dinner-time Jevons was very pensiveand subdued. 

After dinner the Canon talked to Jevons about his novel. (He had retiredinto his library all afternoon in order to finish it. ) He asked him whyhe had chosen an ugly subject when he might have found a beautiful one?

And Jevons was more pensive than ever. He said, "Well--that's aquestion--"

He couldn't tell the Canon why he'd chosen it. He couldn't disclose tohim his plan of campaign. 

"You see, sir, I haven't seen many beautiful things. "

He still pondered. Then he said, very slowly, as if he dragged itout of himself with difficulty, "That book was written--written in myhead--before I knew my wife. "

You could literally see his score running up. By nine o'clock the Canonand Mrs. Thesiger had roped him into their game of whist. 

I sat out with Viola and Norah in the garden, when Norah told us that shethought Jimmy was a dear. She was the only one of them that called himJimmy. 

About ten o'clock next morning Viola came to me and asked me to go up toJimmy, in his room. He wanted to speak to me. 

I found him packing, packing with a sort of precise and concentratedfury. 

He was going. Going up to town. He had torn through Canterbury, eaten hisway through Canterbury, through the beauty and peace of it; he hadabsorbed and assimilated it in three days. And he had had enough. If hestayed in it another hour the beauty and the peace of it would kill him. The Canon's beauty was, he said, adorable; so was Mrs. Thesiger's. 

"But if I stay here I shall ruin it. I can't, " he said, "go on givingthat dear old clergyman clergyman's sore throat. I frighten him so thathe can't sing. He doesn't know what to do with me, or say to me. Hedoesn't know what to call me. He can't call me Jevons, and he won'tcall me Jimmy, and he knows it would be ridiculous to call me James. Besides, he agitates me and makes me drop my aitches. 

"So I've had a wire. You'll explain to him the sort of wire I've had. "

"And Viola?" I said. "Is she going too?"

"No. Viola's going to stay till our week's up. By that time she'll bebored stiff and longing to get back to me. "

 * * * * *

He went, and I'm not at all sure that he didn't score by going. 

And that night and the next and the next I thought of little Jevons alonein his little house in Hampstead, lying all by himself in his four-postbed between his rosebud chintz curtains and under his rosebud chintztester, and saying to himself that he had scored. 

VII

The Thesigers lived to be grateful to me for reconciling them to Jevons, if it was I who reconciled them. I don't think Mrs. Thesiger ever reallyforgave him, ever really liked him till the end; but the Canon very soonowned to a surreptitious regard for him. Luckily he acquired it whileJevons was still struggling, otherwise I do not think I could have savedtheir faces. 

In the first year of his marriage Jevons made them see how right I waswhen I told them it would be impossible to ignore him. In the second yearthey saw that he had only just given them time to come round before itwas too late. The minute he became prosperous it would have been toolate, much too late for their dignity and beauty. And yet they couldn'tvery well have gone on repudiating Viola for ever. A year would have seenthem through that attitude. And Jevons's great _coup_ had come off inthe year he "gave" it; so that if they had been left to themselves theirrevulsion of tenderness must have coincided with his prosperity. Theywould have had every appearance of having surrendered to his income. 

And they would have missed the spectacle of his struggle. 

I believe it was his struggle, the doggedness, the heroism, the wildhumour that he put into it that brought them round. They didn't like hisearly celebrity and they deplored the cause of it--his first novel. 

That book justified everything that Jevons had said of it. It didstartle. It did arrest. It _was_ unpleasant. So vividly and powerfullyunpleasant that it nailed your eyes to it and kept them there. It made abreak and a stain in your memory. 

When I say it was unpleasant I mean, and he meant, not that it wasunclean, but that it was brutal. I shall have written this tale to verylittle purpose if it isn't transparent that Jevons's mind, Jevons's wholenature was scrupulously clean. Even his brutality was not spontaneous. He broke his neck to get it. You could see him putting his tongue out ashe laboured the brutality. You could see him sweating as he went over itagain, removing all the marks of labour, making for his effect ofsincerity and gorgeous simplicity and ease. 

I've said it's doubtful how far Jevons took himself seriously. Hecertainly had no illusions as to the nature of his success. But wheneverI come to this side of him I feel myself untrustworthy. I cannot see himproperly. I am prejudiced by knowing him so well. I daresay if I hadn'tknown him, if he hadn't been so frank in his disclosures, if he hadn'texplained so many times the deliberate calculations of his method, Ishould think him a great novelist. I daresay to a generation that knowsnothing about him or his disclosures or his method he will seem a greatnovelist again. I daresay he _is_ a great novelist. I don't know. 

Anyhow there were three great stages in his career: the Slow Advance; theGrand Attack; and Victory. (He had been advancing slowly ever since theday I met him on the football-ground at Blackheath). 

All these stages are marked for me by the increasing size and splendourof the houses that he occupied in turn; the four-roomed cottage atHampstead; the little house in Edwardes Square; the large house inMayfair; the still larger country house he acquired last of all. And theJevons I like to think of is the Jevons of the little whitewashedcottage, of the whitewashed rooms, the one sitting-room where we dined;the kitchen at the back where we cooked and washed up; the absurd littlebedroom in the front where the four-post bed was set up like a tent withits curtains and its tester; the study at the back where Jevons workedand Norah Thesiger slept when she came to stay. I remember Jevons dartingfrom the kitchen and the dining-room with steaming dishes in his hands;Jevons with a pipe in his mouth and his feet on the chimney-piece, talking, talking, talking about anything--Dreadnoughts, submarines, theWar (he had given it nine years now)--from nine till eleven, and thenflinging himself out of his chair to turn the settee into a bed for theKiddy. Whatever he was saying or doing, in the middle of a calculation, he would break off at eleven and drag sheets and blankets out of acoffin-like box under the settee and make up the Kiddy's little bed forher, because Kiddies must on no account be allowed to sit up late atnight. I remember Viola and Norah coming in to help and Jevons shooingthem away. And Norah would come back again and put her head round thedoor and look at him where he knelt on the floor absurdly, tucking inblankets and breathing hard as he tucked. And she would say, "Look athim. Isn't he sweet?" as if Jevons had been a rabbit or a guinea-pig, andgo away again. 

Somehow I always see him like that, making beds, stooping over something, doing something for one of them or for me. 

Sometimes they would burst in on him suddenly in his bedmaking and throwpillows at him, or it might be sponges, and there would be madness: twogirls running amok and little Jevons flying before them through thehouse and squealing in his excitement. Once he went out to post a letterin the Grove before midnight and they locked him out and looked at himfrom the window of the front bedroom and defied him to enter, and heskipped round to the back and climbed up by the water-butt on to thedrainpipe of the bathroom, and from the drainpipe, perilously, in throughthe window of his study, where they found him putting hair-brushes inNorah's bed. 

After the drainpipe adventure (when they saw how game he was) theysobered down. I think it was that night that Norah said, "We mustn't_kill_ Jimmy. That would never do. "

And there would be theatre-parties when Jimmy had tickets given him, andeighteenpenny dinners at the "Petit Riche, " going and returning by theHampstead Tube. 

It seems to me that Norah must have stayed a great deal with them atHampstead, and yet she couldn't have; they were only two years in thelittle four-roomed house. Anyhow, we were all immensely happy in thosetwo years; even I was happy. Jevons I know was--and Viola. Viola hadnever been so happy in her life. She cooked: she washed up with Jimmy tohelp her; she mended his clothes and made her own; she did histypewriting; she took down his articles in shorthand and typed them; andthrough all his funny little social lapses she adored him. 

When you think of it, poverty and close quarters for two years, and themenace of some of those lapses hanging over her all the time--it was apretty severe test. You would have said that if she could stand that shecould stand anything, and she certainly stood it. 

But Jimmy hadn't begun yet to unbend. He was still on the defensive, holding himself in, every nerve strung up to the Grand Attack. Thistension affected his behaviour. He knew his danger. He knew there werecertain gestures that he must restrain, and he restrained them; therewere certain things he did with spoons and forks and table napkins thatwould wreck him if he were caught doing them, and in those two years hekept a very sharp look-out. You would have thought that this life, on theedge of an abyss, with full knowledge of his danger, would have made himnervous and produced the very disaster that he dreaded. But no. Jevonswas a fighting man, and he rose to these crises and prevailed. You feltthat for him the real test would come when he was prosperous, when thestrain was taken off him and he let himself go. 

Meanwhile it was terrifying to see him balancing himself on the edge. 

 * * * * *

They moved into the Edwardes Square house in the September quarterof nineteen-eight. This was the year of the weeks of consolidation, his second novel and his "Journal, " that were to precede the GrandAttack. The novel did exactly what he said it would. It did counteractthe effect its predecessor; and the "Journal" gave him a place in_Belles-Lettres_ where he was safe from the legend of his own brutality. 

But it strained his relations with the Thesigers for the time being. TheRosalind of the "Journal" is so obviously Viola, and though he is carefulto refer to her as his wife, the book reminded people that they were saidto have travelled together before they were married. Her figure movesthrough the grey Flemish cities and the grey Flemish landscape with anadorable innocence and naïveté, a trifle slenderer and tenderer than theViola I remember, who always had for me an air of energy and obstinacyand defiance, but for Jevons, perhaps, not more slender or more tenderthan the Viola he knew. You couldn't say she wasn't charming. The Canoncouldn't say it; what he did say was that Jevons should have kept her outof it. Jevons's defence was that if he had kept her out of it therewouldn't have been any book. 

But he never did it again. Having once for all drawn her portrait as ayoung girl, he left it, as if he would have kept her youth immortal. Youwill not find any woman of his novels who suggests even a fugitivelikeness to the Viola he married. 

The house in Edwardes Square stands for the second period: the period ofsober energy that led up to the Grand Attack. It was also the period ofdeliberate yet vehement refinement. Jevons was determined at all cost tobe refined. And at considerable cost, with white-painted panellingthroughout, with blue-and-white Chinese vases here and there, and moreand more Bokhara rugs everywhere, and tussore silk curtains in thewindows and every stick of furniture chosen for its premeditatedchastity, the little brown house was made to serve him as a holystandard. He said he had only got to live up to it and he would be allright. 

And so, in the quest of purging and salvation through the beauty of hissurroundings, he had made his place perfect inside and out, from thediminutive flagged court in the front (with one brilliant mat of flowerslaid down in the middle) to the last lovely border of the grass-garden atthe back. I wondered, I have never ceased to wonder, knowing hisbeginnings, how he did it so well. Of course he gave Viola a free hand, he let her have what she wanted; but when I complimented her on anyresult she let me know at once that it was Jimmy's doing. She waspathetically anxious that I should see that he knew how. She let me know, too, the secret of his passionate absorption in gardens and interiors, lest I should think it argued any unmanliness in him. 

I remember so well her showing me that house in Edwardes Square. I hadcalled one afternoon when I had known that Jevons wasn't there. I hadleft him at his club in Dover Street. (He had a club in Dover Street now;it was my club; I had put him up for it. He enjoyed his club as heenjoyed everything else that he had acquired by conquest; his membershipmarked another step in his advance, another strip of alien territorygained. And he had chosen this club, he said, because most of the membershad retired, to cultivate adipose tissue on pensions, and they made himfeel adolescent and slender and energetic. ) I had left him in the librarywriting letters (he said he found a voluptuous pleasure in writingletters on the club paper under that irreproachable address), and Irushed off in a taxi to Viola in Edwardes Square. 

She was very glad to see me, and she gave me tea, poured out of anearly eighteenth-century silver teapot, in beautiful old blue-and-whiteChinese teacups. She wore one of those absurd narrow coats with tailsthat made women look like long, slender birds that year, and she had donesomething unexpected with her hair; it was curls, curls, curls all over, the way they did it then, and she sat on a wine-coloured sofa with awine-coloured rug at her feet. 

She began straight away by talking about Jimmy's last book, the"Journal. "

"Don't you see _now_, " she said, "why I went out to him, and howbeautiful it all was?"

I asked her did she think I'd ever doubted? She said: "No. But Daddyhates the book. So does Mummy. They all hate it except Norah and me. I'mglad he wrote it. I'm glad he put me into it. I never knew I was so nice, did you?"

"Oh, come, " I said, "surely I always knew?"

But she didn't pay any attention to me. She didn't care to know what Ithought or what I knew. She wasn't thinking of me or of herself. She wasdefending Jimmy with little jerky, stabbing thrusts of defiance. Youcould see that the smallest criticism of him made her suffer; that shewas capable of infinite suffering where Jimmy was concerned. Also you sawthat she would have to suffer, and that she knew it, and that it was thissuffering that she repulsed and thrust from her with her stabs. He wasmaking a tender place in her mind that might some day become a wound. 

"You know I did, " I insisted--I think, to turn her mind from him. 

She looked at me gravely before she smiled. 

"Nobody but Jimmy really thinks me nice. Nobody but Jimmy knows how niceI _am_. "

And then she showed me the house. 

I praised some detail that Jevons had devised (not that there was muchdetail; it was all extremely simple). And I believe she saw criticism ofJimmy in that. 

"I know it looks as if he cared a lot about this sort of thing. And Idaresay you think it's silly of him. But he doesn't really care. "

"It certainly looks, " I said, "as if he cared about something. "

"It's me he cares about, " she said. 

"And do you care about--this sort of thing, Viola?"

"I care about his caring. But I was every bit as happy in that littlefour-roomed house, if that's what you mean. "

"Aren't you glad to have more room to move about in?"

"I'm glad to have room for Daddy and Mummy when they come to stay. "

It was as if she had said, "If you think I'm glad to have room to getaway from him you're mistaken. "

And there was another impression that she gave me. It was also as if shewanted to warn me not to form the habit of coming to see her when she wasalone. I should gain nothing by it. If I insisted on seeing her alone Ishould get Jimmy, Jimmy, all the time. 

I didn't try to see her again alone. 

But I saw her often. Jevons was always asking me there. He made a pointof it whenever they had what Viola called "anybody interesting. " By thisshe meant somebody belonging to the confraternity of letters. Jevons hada sort of idea that I liked meeting these people and that it did me good. The house in Edwardes Square might have become a haunt of Jimmy's_confréres_ if Jimmy had had time to attend to them and if he hadn't beenso deliberately exclusive. He was trying for the best--not for the greatnames so much as for the great achievements, and they were few. And therewere one or two of them who rejected Jevons. 

And then you had to reckon with Mrs. Jevons's rejections. She was asfastidious in her way as he was in his; and besides, she guarded him, sothat the circle around him was rather tight and small. 

Oh, he was faithful; he kept me in it; he gave me of his best; and if hecould have made me shine I should have blazed among them all. 

It doesn't matter now which of them I met there. Jevons was charming tothem all. He set them blazing. I don't think he cared much whether _he_blazed or not, but if he felt like it he could make a bigger blaze thanany of them. He enjoyed them; he enjoyed them vastly, violently. Havingonce acquired the taste, he couldn't have lived without the intellectualexcitement they gave him. But except for that, for the stimulus, therelease of energy, it's surprising how little they really counted forhim. 

And so it's not those evenings and that brilliance that I remember. 

In the house in Edwardes Square I seem to have been always meeting NorahThesiger. Now that they had a room to put her in, she would be there formonths at a time. And whenever she was there they would be sure to askme. If Jevons didn't, Viola did. 

There was that summer, too, when Norah and Mildred came together withCharlie Thesiger, their cousin, who was engaged to Mildred. Charlie wasthen a lieutenant in the South Kent Hussars. He was a large young man, correct, handsome, rather supercilious and rather stupid. He seemed tofill the house in Edwardes Square when he was in it. 

He doesn't matter. At least, he didn't matter then. God knows he neverreally mattered, poor boy, at any time. But he is important. He fixesthings for me. He brings me to the incident of June, nineteen-nine. 

It was a very slight incident. It wouldn't be worth recording except thatit stood for others like itself, a whole crowd. And it was of such slightthings that Viola's torments were to be made. 

We were at dinner in the little dining-room looking on the flagged court, a party of six: Viola at the head of the round table, with her back tothe light; Jevons at the foot, facing her, with the light full on him;Charlie Thesiger was on Viola's right, I was on her left, facing him. Norah sat next to me on Jevons's right, and Mildred sat next to Charlieon Jevons's left, facing Norah. We were all so close together that itwould be difficult for one of us to have missed anything that happened orwas said. And Viola, with the light behind her, commanded us all. 

She had been very gay. I don't suppose Charlie felt anything strainedabout her gaiety--he was not observant--but I did, and I put it down toCharlie's presence, to the rather flat correctness that made Jevons standout. Another thing I noticed was that, in labouring for refinement in hissurroundings, Jevons hadn't allowed for the effect of contrast. It hadn'toccurred to him that an interior that harmonized with Viola would bedamaging to him. And it was. Just how damaging I hadn't realized untilto-night (which shows how careful he must have been at Canterbury). Hedidn't stand out. He burst out. He never sank into his background for asingle minute. You had to be aware of him all the time. 

And yet in a party of the confraternity you were not aware of him likethis. For then he blazed; and in the flare he made you didn't noticewhether he tilted his soup-plate the right way or not, or care if hecouldn't use his table napkin or his pocket-handkerchief and look yousquare in the face at the same time. Neither did you notice these thingsif you were alone with him or if only Norah and Viola were there. He washappy with us, and happiness was becoming to him, and he had all sorts ofendearing ways that would have disarmed us. And then there's no doubtthat Viola protected him. She watched over him; she smoothed his socialpath for him; she removed his worst pitfalls; she ran, as it were, topick him up before he fell. He didn't know she was watching him; neither, I think, did she. It was a blind instinct with her to help him. And Norahand I helped him too. And as he wasn't nervous with us everything wentwell. But when strangers got into our party it was different. Violacouldn't attend to him properly; and if the stranger happened to berather stupid, like Charlie Thesiger, Jevons didn't blaze and so coverhimself; he got bored; and when he was bored he got jumpy; and it waswhen he got jumpy that he did things. 

And Charlie was getting on his nerves. 

Still, everything went well until the table was cleared for dessert; andthere was no reason why everything shouldn't have gone well even then. Viola had guarded against his most inveterate failing--a habit ofstretching for things across the table--by putting everything he wantedwithin his reach. Within Jevons's reach to-night was a little dishcontaining among other things chocolate nougat. And he was fond ofnougat. He was fond also of chaffing Norah. And he was not prepared toforego one amusement for the other. And Norah had taken a mean advantageof him. She had timed a provocation at the moment when for any other manretort would have been impossible; and she hadn't reckoned with Jevons'singenuity of resource. 

I am not going to say what he did. It wouldn't be fair to him. It was alittle thing, but you couldn't pretend for one moment that you hadn'tseen it, any more than Jevons could do anything to cover the fantastichorror of it. We simply sat and stiffened; all but Norah, who burst outlaughing in Jimmy's face. 

Mildred, trying to help him, made matters worse by asking for a peachwhen she had got a large one on her plate. Charlie Thesiger looked downhis nose. I don't know where I looked, but I know that I was consciousof Viola's face and of the flush that darkened it to the tip of her chinand the roots of her hair. And I could feel the shudder down her backpassing into mine. 

After all, Viola did cover it. She lit a little Roman lamp they had andsent it travelling down the table with the cigarette-box. Then she got upand went to Jevons and stooped over his shoulder and took the little dishfrom him. 

"If anybody wants any more chocolates, " she said, "they must comeupstairs for them. "

"She won't trust me with them, " said Jevons. (He _had_ a nerve. )

Viola trailed off upstairs with her dish, and Mildred and Charliefollowed her. 

Norah and I held watch with Jevons, who leaned back in his chair andsmoked and rubbed the forefinger of his right hand--the innocentinstrument (may I say it?) of his crime--with his table napkin, andcontemplated Norah in a drowsy imperturbability. 

"Did I do anything?" he said presently. 

Norah put her hand on his arm and stroked it. 

"No, Jimmy dear, " she said, "of course you didn't. "

It was then that I was aware for the first time of the beauty of Norah'sface. Norah's, not Viola's. Up till then I could never see anything butViola's face in it, coloured wrong, so that it rather worried me to lookat it, I resented the everlasting reminder of that likeness under thatperverse and disconcerting difference. If her eyes hadn't been so blueand her cheeks so pink; if only her hair had been a little darker and ifit hadn't crinkled--

Now, as I looked at her, I wondered how anybody could think she waslike Viola. There was only her forehead and the odd turn of her jaw andnose--her profile, if you like, was Viola's--but (when she wasn'tlaughing) Norah's full face had something that Viola's hadn't and neverwould have. I had caught it now and then and couldn't make up my mindwhat it was. Now I saw that it was a sort of wisdom, a look of sobernessand goodness that I couldn't quite account for. 

Then Jevons explained it for me. 

"The Kiddy's growing up, " he said (he said it to himself). "She'll betwenty to-morrow. She won't throw wet sponges at me any more. "

That was it. Norah was growing up. Her soft face was setting and theexpression I had noticed had come to stay. 

Presently Jevons got up. He said he had work to do. 

"The Grand Attack, Furnival, the Grand Attack!"

And he left us together. 

Norah looked after him. 

"Poor little Jimmy, " she said. "I don't think he ever did a _bad_ thingin his life. "

And then, with what seemed a daring irrelevance, "I wish Charlie wasn'there. I can't think why Viola ever asked him. "

"Why shouldn't she?"

"Because he's bad for Jimmy. He puts him in the wrong. "

I'm afraid I laughed a little brutally at the extravagance of this. 

"Well, " she said. "I can't bear him to suffer. "

"You've got a very tender little heart, haven't you?" I said. 

"It isn't half as tender as Viola's. But I've got more common sense. "

"Then why, " I said, "did you laugh at Jimmy just now?"

"That's why. Because it was the best thing you could do. He doesn't mindit half so much when you laugh at him. It's people looking down theirnoses, like Charlie, that he minds. It must be awful for the poor littlechap, when you come to think of it, living on the edge, never knowingwhen he's going to do something that'll make Viola's blood run cold. "

"It must be still more awful for Viola. "

To that she said, "It isn't. You don't know how Viola feels about Jimmy. None of my people do. They simply don't understand it. "

"Oh, come, " I said, "they've accepted it, haven't they?"

"They've accepted it _because_ they don't understand her. They say theynever know what she'll do next, and Jimmy's come as a sort of relief tothem. They thought she might do something much worse. You see, she isn'ta bit like any of us. If she wants to do a thing she'll do it, no matterwhat it is. She wanted to go to Bruges with Jimmy and look at the Belfry, and she did it like a shot. What they can't see is that she'll never_want_ to do anything wrong, so she'll never do it. They can't see thatthere was just as much Belfry as Jimmy in it. There always will be aBelfry in Viola's life, and when she hears the bells going she'll run offto see. And Jimmy's the only man who'll ever take her to a Belfry. 

"She's all right. Because she knows that Jimmy's really ten times morerefined than any of us. His little soul's all made of beautiful cleanwhite silk. But Viola can't go on telling people how beautiful he is. They've got to see it for themselves. 

"I wish _you_ could see it as she does. I wish you could see how shefeels about it--"

"My dear Norah, " I said, "I've been trying for three years to see asViola sees, and feel as Viola feels. But how can I? I'm not Viola. "

"But, " she said, "you _do_ understand her. If I thought you didn't--if Ithought that you could go back on her--and if you go back on Jimmy you goback on _her_--"

"Well?"

"Well, I don't think I could ever speak to you again. "

"My dear child, " I said, "you're absurd. I haven't gone back on either ofthem. Won't it do if I see Jimmy as _you_ see him?"

"Ye-es, " she said. "But--I wonder if you do. "

"Norah, " I said then, "I wonder if Viola's as sorry for him as you are. Ihope she isn't. "

"She isn't, then. She isn't sorry for him a bit. No more am I. You'llmake me sorry for _you_ if you don't take care. "

When we went to say good night to Jevons we found Viola sitting on thearm of his chair with the little dish in her hand, feeding him withchocolate nougat. Her posture was one of supple contrition, and we heardher say:

"Cheer up, Jimmy. It doesn't really matter what you do. Nobody would evertake you for more than four years old. "

Yes. Norah, the youngest, was the one who had grown up. 

VIII

Norah has often told me that I exaggerated the importance of the NougatIncident; that my weakness is a tendency to dwell with a morbidconcentration on small, inessential details. When I tell her that if Isucceed in surviving Jimmy I shall write his biography, she tilts herchin and says I'm the last person who should attempt it. 

"Between us, " she says, "we might manage it. But if you're left toyourself you'll make him _all_ nougat. "

When I retort that if _she_ were left to _her_self she'd eliminate thevery things that make him the engaging animal he is, and remind her thata straw will show the way the wind's blowing, she asks me, "Did any bigwind ever blow a straw before it all the way?"

Well, perhaps I _am_ the very last person--he made me the last person bywhat he did to me--but when it comes to exaggeration I haven't attachedmore importance to the Nougat Incident than Jevons did himself. Why, whenhe shut himself up in his study that night, instead of hurling himselfforward in the Grand Attack, he must have sat with his head in his handsbrooding over it and wondering what he'd done; he must have gone straightupstairs to ask Viola what he'd done, or there'd have been no earthlysense in what we heard her saying. The detail may have been small, but itwas not inessential when it could turn Tasker Jevons from the GrandAttack as he was turned that night. 

I tell you, and Jevons would tell you, it is of such small things thattragedies are made--the bitterest, the most insidious. 

And when Jevons did finally hurl himself, when he shut himself up, morning after morning and night after night, to labour violently on hisgreatest work, though (for just as long as he was actually engaged) hemight be staving off his tragedy, he was nevertheless precipitating theevent. You may say that when you get him there in his study on hisbattlefield you are among the big forces at once; but the interestingthing is that those big forces by their very expenditure released a wholecrowd of little, infinitely little ones that, in their turn, in theirminiature explosion, worked for his destruction. Jevons, struggling withhis social disabilities, was like a giant devoured by microscopicallyminute organisms over whose generation he had no control. 

And the greater the man, mind you, the greater the tragedy. 

Still, for those two years in Edwardes Square, he staved it off. It wasthe very violence of his labour, the prodigious front of the battle hedelivered, that saved him. Then there was his victory, his Third Novel, that for the time threw all minor happenings into the background. 

He was right again in his forecast. It _was_ his best work, and (I usehis own phrase) it did the trick. 

When it came, the Grand Attack (which was bolder even than his firstassault) carried, you may say, the whole position, after demolishing atone stroke the enemy's defences. For he had enemies. He was the sort ofman who does have them. He didn't _make_ them, at least, notdeliberately, he couldn't have been bothered to make them; but he drewthem; they seemed to rise out of the ground after every one of hisappearances. 

Well, they couldn't say he hadn't done it this time. 

_Done_ it. There's no good trying to express such a phenomenon as Jevonsin terms of literature. You can only think about him in terms of action, every book of his being an onslaught by which he laid his public low. 

And this time he had conquered America. 

Don't ask me how many thousands he made by it. I've forgotten. They'vemelted into the tens of thousands that he made before he had finished. Even in the years of the Grand Attack he was making his old father anallowance and investing large sums in case of accidents. (He had beenputting by even in the Hampstead days. ) How he did it I can't think, though he has tried to explain it to me more than once. The whole thingfor him was as obvious as any business transaction (he had the sort ofmind for which business transactions _are_ obvious). He had studiedthe public he set out to capture. He presented the life it knew--themoving, changing, fantastically adventurous life of the middle classes. Until Jevons rushed on them and forced their eyes open, you may say atthe point of the bayonet, the middle classes didn't know they were movingand changing and being adventurous. Nobody knew. It was Jevons'sdiscovery. 

Then, as he pointed out, there were innumerable discretions in hisvalour. He knew to a hairbreadth how far he might go, and he went nofarther. He respected existing prejudices because they existed. He didn'task awkward questions; he didn't raise problems; he had the Britishcapacity for doing serious things with an air of not taking himselfseriously and frivolous things with an astounding gravity. 

"You can do anything, Furnival, " he said, "if you're only funny enough. "

Norah tells me that that really _is_ his secret. 

But, he said, the whole thing was as calculable as any successful deal onthe Stock Exchange. When you asked him: "Then why can't other people doit?" he said: "God knows why. They must be precious fools if they want todo it and don't find out how. _I_'ve had to find out. "

For one year--the last year in Edwardes Square--he enjoyed pure fame. Andhe _did_ enjoy it--I think he enjoyed everything--like a child with amechanical toy, or a girl with a new gown, playing with it and trying iton by snatches when he could spare half an hour from his appalling toil. 

Heavens, how he worked that year! With a hard, punctual passion, amultiplied energy, like five financiers engaged on five separatetransactions. After victory in the campaign he had settled down tobusiness and the works of peace. There was the business of the shortstory; the business of the monograph; the business of the magazinearticle and the newspaper column, and the speculations that developedinto the immense business of his plays. (I've forgotten how much henetted by his first curtain-raiser. ) That's five. 

As I look back on him he seems to have torn through his stages at anincredible pace. There are several that I haven't counted, so suddenlydid he leave them behind him: the stage when he was literary adviser to afirm of publishers, who wouldn't believe him when he said the thing wascalculable; the stage when he ceased to be sub-editor of _Sport_ andbecame editor, an appointment so lucrative that you may judge the risk hetook when he abandoned it. And in between there was his stage of cruelty, when he did reviewing. It was a brief stage, but he contrived to strewthe field with the reputations he had slaughtered (Viola used to pleadwith him for certain authors, like Queen Philippa for the burghers ofCalais), until his job was taken from him in the interests of humanity. 

Now--I am speaking in the light of my later knowledge--the first effectof these prodigious and passionate labours was beneficent, and Ishouldn't wonder if Jevons, who had calculated everything to a nicety, hadn't allowed for this too. To say nothing of the peculiar purity of hisearlier fame, which set him in a place apart and assured beyond allpossible depreciation, so long as he elected to stay there, the veryconditions of his business saved him. He enjoyed in those two desperateyears the immunities of a recluse. The results were prominently beforethe public, but Jimmy wasn't. His study was literally his sanctuary. Sitting there nearly all day and half the night, he was removed from theworld's observation at the precise moment when it became inimical. Idon't mean the observation of the confraternity of letters, which was andalways had been kindly to his personality, and had taken little or nonotice of his disabilities; I mean the observation of the world hemarried into, for which disabilities like Jimmy's count. 

He was also removed from Viola's observation at a time when I think, almost unconsciously, she was beginning to criticize him. When he came toher out of his sanctuary he came with its consecration on him. And thenthere was the appeal he made to her tenderness. If the shudders down herback began they were checked by the spectacle of his exhaustion. Shecouldn't shudder at the tired conqueror when he flung himself on thefloor beside her and laid his head in her lap. 

I've seen her with him like that--once, one evening when Norah waswith them, and I had turned in after dinner; it was upstairs in thatdrawing-room in Edwardes Square that they had made, back and front, in anL. Norah and I were in the long, narrow part at the back; you know howthose little town rooms go when they're knocked into one--the fireplacesin the same wall and windows opposite each other, so that the back rakesthe fireplace end of the front part. 

Viola and Jevons were by the fireplace in the front, she in her low chairand he stretched out on the rug at her feet. And we raked them. 

They didn't know they were observed. I think they'd made up their mindsthat when Norah and I were together we couldn't hear or see anythingexcept ourselves. 

And so we heard Viola saying, "What do you do it for?"

And Jimmy, "Oh, for the fun of the thing, I suppose. What does one dothings for?"

And she, "It'll be fine fun for me, won't it, when you've killedyourself? When you've burst the top of your head off like the kitchenboiler?"

"I should have to run dry first, " said Jevons. 

"Well, you will, boiling away seven--eight--nine hours a day for weeks onend. Nobody else does it. "

"Nobody else _can_ do it, " said Jimmy arrogantly. 

"It's all very well; but if you don't burst your head open you'll getneuritis, or cramp. Look at that hand. "

"Which hand?"

"Your right hand, silly. " She took it and poised it from the wrist. "Lookhow it wobbles. "

He looked. 

"It does wobble a bit. Like a drunkard's. And I don't drink. "

He was interested in his hand. 

"You goose, where's the fun of letting your right hand go to pieces?"

"Easy on. They won't amputate it, " said Jimmy. 

That was in nineteen-nine. This is nineteen-fifteen. And only yesterdayNorah asked me if I remembered what Jimmy said about his hand the nightwe were engaged. 

 * * * * *

Yes, that night I was engaged to Norah Thesiger. 

I suppose it was our silence that made Viola and Jimmy aware of us atlast, for presently I saw Jimmy sit up on the floor and take Viola's handand squeeze it, and then they got up and very quietly and furtively theyleft the room. 

And the minute I found myself alone with Norah I proposed to her. 

I don't know if even then I should have had the courage to do it if Ihadn't been driven to it by sheer terror. I forgot to say that I was inEdwardes Square for the weekend and that Norah was not staying with hersister this time, but with her uncle, General Thesiger, at LancasterGate. And for three days, ever since her arrival at Lancaster Gate, I hadseen the possibility of losing her. 

Otherwise you would have said that if ever there was a spontaneous andunexpected performance, it was my proposal to Norah Thesiger. 

But no; it seemed that it had been arranged for me by Jevons, plannedwith his customary deliberation and calculation long ago. This may havebeen the reason why Norah said she wouldn't tell Viola and Jimmy about itherself; she'd rather I did. 

I thought: I shan't have to tell them till to-morrow. I had to take Norahto Lancaster Gate in a taxi, and I walked back across the Serpentinebetween Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, spinning out the time so thatViola and Jimmy might be in bed when I got to Edwardes Square. 

I found them sitting up for me in Jimmy's study. 

I dreaded telling them more than I can say. I don't know with whatcountenance a man can come and tell the woman he has loved (and proposedto three times running) that he has consoled himself with her youngersister. I wanted to avoid every appearance of a fatuous triumph in mysuccess with Norah. And after sticking for four years to my vow ofeverlasting devotion to Mrs. Jevons I shrank from the confession of a newallegiance. On the other hand, I owed it to Norah to declare myselfhappy without any airs of deprecation and contrition. And I had certainobligations to the Truth. Why I should have supposed that the Truthshould have been disagreeable to Mrs. Jevons Heaven only knows. I supposethese scruples are the last illusions of our egoism. Still, I think thatonly an impudent egoist like Jevons could have carried off such anembarrassment with any brilliance. 

As it happened it was taken out of my hands. Jimmy, who had foreseen thething itself, foresaw also my predicament and provided for it. As I cameinto the room he said, "It's all right, old man. You haven't got to tellus. We know all about it. "

I looked at Viola. She was sitting on part of Jimmy's chair, with her armround his shoulder. 

"Did Norah tell you, after all?" I said. 

Viola pushed out her chin at me and shook her head. 

"No, Furny dear, she didn't tell me a thing. It was your face. "

"Don't you believe her, " Jimmy said. "Your face hasn't anything to dowith it. Your face is a tomb of secrets--a beautiful, white tomb. And_you_ are all rectitude and discretion. We knew it ages ago. "

"How could you possibly know it, when I didn't?"

"Because it's one of those things" (he twinkled) "that other peoplealways do know. "

"Were we as obvious as all that?"

"I didn't say _you_ were obvious. I said _It_ was. "

I sat down facing them, and I suppose I must have looked supremelyfoolish, for Viola began to laugh and Jevons went on twinkling, not inthe least as if he saw a joke, but with a thoughtful and complacent air, as if he were turning over the result of some private speculation thathad come off entirely to his satisfaction. 

Then she took pity on me. 

"He means it was bound to happen. It was the heaven-appointed thing. Thefirst minute I saw you, Wally, I thought, 'What an adorable husband he'dmake for Norah!' And Jimmy's trying to tell you that we've been hoping itwould come and wanting it to come and waiting for it to come for the lastyear. "

"I'm trying to tell him, " said Jimmy, "that we've been meaning it tocome, and trying to make it come, and seeing it come for the last threeyears. "

This was a blow at the attitude of romantic devotion, and I had to defendit. 

"Do you believe that, Viola?" I said. 

"Of course I believe it if Jimmy says so. "

I sent her a look that was meant to say, "You ought to know better;" butit missed fire somehow. She went on swinging her feet and laughing softlyat me over Jimmy's shoulder. She seemed, like Jimmy, to be contemplatingsome exquisite knowledge that she had. And at last she said:

"Aren't you glad now that you didn't marry me?"

I said, "What am I to say to that?"

Jimmy got up and clapped me on the shoulder. "Never mind her, " he said. "Tell the truth and shame the devil. Tell her you're thundering glad. "

At that she slid down from her perch and came round to me and patted mevery gently on the head. 

"_I_ am, Wally. Jimmy, you're a beast. "

And she went out of the room. Jimmy said that nothing she had contributedto the discussion became her like her leaving it. 

She had left it to him. 

He got into his chair again and sat down to it. 

"Now, perhaps, " he said, "you see how right I was. "

"When?"

"The first time we ever spoke about it. "

"My dear Jimmy, I haven't spoken to anybody about it till to-night. "

"We spoke about it years ago, " he said. 

"We couldn't possibly have spoken about it years ago. "

"At Bruges. Perhaps it was I who spoke. I tell you I saw it coming. Don'tyou remember I gave you six months?"

"You were out there, anyhow. It's taken three and a half years. "

"Because you were such a duffer. You behaved as if you expected the poorchild to propose to you herself. I've been trying to make you see it forthe last three and a half years, and you wouldn't. There never was sucha chap for not seeing what's under his nose. "

"Norah isn't under my nose; she's miles above it, and if it comes tothat, I've _seen_ it for the last three years. "

He had tripped me up by the heels. 

"There you are--that brings it to the six months I gave you. "

"I didn't mean I was thinking of it then. How could I be?"

"Of course you weren't thinking of it. But _she_ was. "

"Norah? Not she! A child of seventeen!"

"I don't mean Norah. I mean Viola. "

"Viola?"

"Yes. You didn't see what the unscrupulous minx was after. She wasplotting it and planning it the first time you were at Canterbury. I gota letter from her at Bruges--I can't show it you--telling me not to worryabout you--I _was_ worrying about you, though you were such a damn fool, if you don't mind my saying so. She said you'd got over it all right. Shewouldn't be surprised if some day you married Norah. 

"So you see, " he said, "you needn't bother about Viola. She knew youcouldn't keep it up for ever. "

"Keep what up?"

(I knew; but something in his tone or in his twinkle made me pretend Ididn't. )

"Your wonderful attitude, " he said. "She meant you to marry Norah. "

"Why--on earth--should she have wanted that?"

"Well--because I worried about you, and she wanted me to be happy. Andbecause she worried about you, and wanted you to be happy. And becauseshe worried about the Kid, and wanted her to be happy. And because shewanted the rest of them to be happy too. "

I said I didn't know what I'd done to be so happy. 

"You've done nothing. You don't owe it to yourself that you're happy. Mydear fellow, you've been watched, and looked after, and protected forthree and a half years with an incessant care. If you'd been left toyourself you'd have bungled the whole business. Either you wouldn't haveproposed to her at all, or you'd have proposed three times running whenit was too late. "

I pointed out to him that I hadn't proposed three times running, neitherwas I too late. 

"All the same, " he said, "you wouldn't have thought of it if she hadn'tgone to the Thesigers. And she wouldn't have gone to the Thesigers ifViola hadn't got the Thesigers to ask her. It was a put-up job. I tellyou, my son, you've been guided and guarded. Why, you didn't even seethat the child was grown up till I drew your attention to it. "

There was no use pretending I liked it. I didn't. 

I said, "Thank you. If a thing comes off it's your doing, and if itdoesn't it's mine. "

He said it looked like that. 

When I saw Norah in the morning she asked me whether Jimmy had said heknew it was coming?

I said he had. 

"And I suppose he thinks he made it come?"

That, I said, was Jimmy's attitude. 

"Well, then, " she said, "he didn't. You don't believe him, do you?"

Did I? Not perhaps at the moment, and never at any time as Jimmy believedit himself. But I do think he meant it to happen. It was one of the movesin his difficult game. He couldn't afford to neglect any means ofstrengthening his position in his wife's family. When it came toacknowledging Jimmy his wife's family was divided. Portions of it, strange cousins whom I never met till after my marriage, refused toacknowledge him at all. At Lancaster Gate he was received coldly inaccordance with the discreet policy by which the Thesigers had avoidedthe appearances of scandal. Down at Canterbury there were degrees andshades of recognition. Norah openly loved him. The Canon had what hecalled "a morbid liking for the fellow. " Mildred and Victoria toleratedhim. Millicent endured him as an infliction. Mrs. Thesiger concealedunder the most beautiful manners and the most Christian charity aninveterate repugnance. 

I have forgotten Bertie. Bertie, who could generally be found atLancaster Gate when he wasn't in his chambers in the Temple, wasapathetic and amiably evasive. He took the line that Lancaster Gate tookwhen he referred to his brother-in-law as a clever little beast. 

And to all these shades Jevons was acutely sensitive. 

I have known men (they were of the confraternity of letters) who declaredthat they could not understand why a man like Jevons, in Jevons'sposition, should have bothered his head for two minutes about his wife'sfamily. They considered that Jevons's marriage was a disaster, not forthe Thesigers, but for Jevons, and that his only safe and proper coursewas to leave the Thesigers alone. But it wasn't so easy to leave themalone when he had married into them; and to have left them would havebeen for Jevons a confession of failure. He might just as well have laiddown his arms or pulled down the shutters of his shop. From the verybeginning, ever since the day when he had met Reggie Thesiger, heconceived that the whole world of Thesigers had challenged him to holdhis own in it, and he was too stubborn a fighter to retire on achallenge. Besides, he couldn't have retracted without taking Viola withhim. 

And you must remember that he was thirty-two when he married her, andthat he had behind him an unknown history of struggle and humiliation anddefeat. The Thesigers stood for the whole world of things that he hadmissed, the world of admired refinements and beautiful amenities, that, without abating one atom of its refinement and amenity, had persistentlykicked him out. Besides--and this was the pathetic part of it--he had anirrepressible affection for the Canterbury Thesigers, and it hungered andthirsted for recognition. It nourished itself in secret on any scrapsthat came its way. He met tolerance with grace, and any sort of kindnesswith passionate gratitude. I think he would have broken his neck to giveNorah or the Canon or even Mrs. Thesiger anything they wanted. And theCanon and Mrs. Thesiger wanted Norah to marry me. It wouldn't become meto say what Norah wanted. 

Viola, in a serious moment, threw a light on it. (I had been dining inEdwardes Square on the evening of the day I came back from Canterburyafter taking Norah down there. )

"I suppose you don't know, " she said, "that Mummy and Daddy fell in lovewith you first? Well, they did. They wanted you to marry me to keep meout of mischief, but more than anything they wanted you to marry Norah. You see, she's their favourite. "

And it seemed there was even more in it than that. They wanted to keepNorah out of mischief too. "Not, " she said, "that Norah would ever haverun off to Belgium, even with you. " But that little adventure of Viola'shad made them nervous. Norah was inclined to look down on the garrison;like Viola, she had declared in the most decided manner that she meant tostrike out a line for herself; she wasn't going to follow Dorothy's andGwinny's lead (did I say that the two married sisters lived abroad attheir husbands' stations--Gwinny at Gibraltar, and Dorothy at Simla?), and that for lack of originality Mildred's engagement to Charlie Thesigerwas "the limit. "

"It's a good thing, Wally, " she said. "It'll knit us all tightertogether. That's partly why we've wanted it so awfully. Do you know thatif it hadn't been for you Norah wouldn't have been allowed to come andstay with us?"

I said I was sure she was mistaken. Canon Thesiger--

"Oh, " she said, "it wasn't Daddy. He wouldn't have minded. It was Mummy. She never _could_ bear poor Jimmy. "

"But, " she went on, "you're his friend. And he worked it for you. Theycan't get over those two things. "

I remember wondering whether deep down in her heart she meant that mymarriage would knit her and Jimmy closer?

I wondered whether Jimmy, in his wisdom, had calculated on that, too?

 * * * * *

At that time I didn't realize the innocence that went with Jimmy'swisdom. I think I credited him with insight that I know now he never had. I know now that, even afterwards--at the very worst--he had nomisgivings. All the Hampstead time, all through the Edwardes Square timehe was happy. And afterwards--well--happiness wasn't the word for it; helived in a sort of ecstasy. Which shows how little in those days she hadlet him see. 

It was in nineteen-ten, their last year in Edwardes Square, that thetension began. Norah and I were married in the autumn of nineteen-nine, and we were living in my flat in Brunswick Square. In what I made outduring this period I had Norah to help me, and she had wonderful lights. 

I never could keep track of Jimmy's accelerating material progress, butthe Year-Books tell me that his fourth novel came out in the spring ofnineteen-nine, and his first successful play was produced in the summerof that year, and ran for the whole season and on through the winter, andI remember that in nineteen-ten he was attacking another novel andanother play, which--But it's the attack that is the important thing, thething that fixes nineteen-ten for me. 

You cannot go on attacking, for years on end, with concentrated andincreasing violence, and not suffer for it. The first effects of Jimmy'sappalling travail may have been beneficent, but its later workings weremalign. There's no other word for it. In nineteen-ten Jimmy was beginningto show signs of exhaustion. Not of his creative energy or anythingbelonging to it, though he prophesied a falling off after Novel Three, and declared that he could detect it. Nobody else could have detected it. The exhaustion was in Jimmy himself, and more especially and fatally inthe Jimmy who struggled against what he called "the damnable tendency todo the sort of thing your father does. "

He couldn't keep it up. He couldn't stand for ever the double strain ofattacking and defending himself against his tendency. There's no doubtthat when he was tired he got careless. I have known him come upstairsafter dinner, entirely sober, but looking rather drunk, with his haircurling over his forehead and his tie crooked and the buttons of hisirreproachable little waistcoat all undone. I have known him do theoddest things with chairs and get into postures inconceivable to ordinarymen. I have known him drop his aitches for a whole evening because he wastoo dead beat to hang on to them. And Norah, going home with me, wouldsay, "Poor Jimmy--he does get it very badly when he's tired. "

And I have had to see Viola's face while these things were happening. Sometimes, when he was too outrageous, she would look up and smile withthe queerest little half-frightened wonder, and I would be reminded ofthe time when Jimmy had jaundice and she asked me if I thought he wouldstay that funny yellow colour all his life? It was as if she were askingme, Did I think he would keep on all his life doing these rather alarmingthings? Sometimes he would catch himself doing them and say, "See me dothat? That's because I'm agitated. " Or, "There's another aitch gone. Collar it, somebody. " Or, "I suppose that's what Norah would call one ofmy sillysosms. " Sometimes Viola would catch him at it and reprove him. And then he would simply throw the responsibility on the poor oldRegistrar down in Hertfordshire. 

I have heard him say to her with extreme sweetness and docility: "My dearchild, if I'd had a father and mother like yours I shouldn't do thesethings. " And I have heard him say almost with bitterness: "Does _that_shock you? Good Heavens, you should see my father!"

But he took good care she shouldn't see him. I used to think this wasn'tvery nice of him. But what can a man do in a case so desperate? Therewere risks that even Jevons couldn't take. I used to think that he salvedhis conscience by making the Registrar an allowance that increased inproportion to his income and by going down into Hertfordshire regularlyevery three months to see him himself. I used to think that Jimmy'sfather must have admirable tact, because he never seemed to have inquiredwhy Jimmy always came alone. But Jimmy said it wasn't tact. It was purehaughtiness. The old bird, he said, was as proud as a peacock with histail up. I used to think it wasn't very nice of him to talk like thatabout his father. And I used to think it wasn't very nice of Viola neverto go with Jimmy on his pilgrimages. 

I was with them once when she was seeing him off at Euston, and I said toher, "Do you never go with him to see the poor old man?"

She turned to me. (I hadn't seen her look stern and fiery before. )

"Wally, " she said, "I suppose it's because you're so good that you alwaysthink other people aren't. That _poor old man_ was a perfect devil toJimmy. I don't say that Jimmy always was an angel to him, but he's beenpretty decent, considering. He's told me things I couldn't tell you; andthere were things he couldn't tell me. He says he didn't believe in Godthe Father when he was little, just because he wanted to believe in God. He thought God couldn't be anything so frightful as a father. 

"That's why he's so awfully fond of Daddy. "

 * * * * *

And so it went on. She swung between slight shocks and passionaterecoveries. One minute Jimmy's manners made her shudder all down herspine, and the next he would do some adorable thing that brought her tohis feet. Half the time she pretended that things hadn't happened whenthey had. And when her flesh crept she had memories that lashed it. 

I used to wonder whether this oscillation would slacken or increase withtime. Would she swing on a longer and more dangerous rhythm? Would she beflung backwards and forwards between fascination and repulsion?

And I would catch myself up and answer my own words, "Of course not. Thepoor chap isn't as bad as all that. "

Then early in nineteen-ten Reggie Thesiger came home on leave from India. 

Looking back on it all now, I seem to see that until he came everythingwas going well. The oscillations, even if I didn't exaggerate them, couldn't have counted. Her heart was steady, and in her heart she adoredher husband. There could be no doubt about it, she adored him. It wasbecause she adored him that she suffered. Nobody can stand imperfectionin their god. 

But then she adored Reggie too. 

She hadn't a misgiving. When Norah rushed to her with the news thatReggie had got his leave, she went wild and nearly strangled poor littleJimmy in her joy. She counted the weeks, the days, the hours till helanded. She argued with Norah as to which of them should have him firstand longest when he came to town. Norah told me she didn't think he wouldstop long with _us_ if he could go to Viola. Viola was his favouritesister. 

Well, he didn't go to Viola at all. He went first to the Thesigers atLancaster Gate. Then he came on to us. 

That was all right. We had to arrange our dates to suit the General. 

On the Sunday we dined at Lancaster Gate; Viola and Jevons were notthere. Reggie had come up on the Friday for ten days, and he stayed withthe General for the weekend. 

He said he could stay with us for the whole week if we could have him. 

We were out in the hall saying good-bye, and he was getting Norah's cloakfor her. The hall was full of Thesigers and guests. I remember Norahsaying, "We'd love to have you. But--we promised Vee-Vee to divide youwith her. "

And I remember seeing Reggie's face stiffen over the collar of the cloakas he held it. He said he didn't want to be divided. 

It was so startling, she told me afterwards, that she lost her head. Shesaid out loud, so that everybody heard her, "Not with Vee-Vee?" Andeverybody heard his answer:

"Not with Jevons. "

Then he laughed. 

In spite of the laugh Norah was quite frightened. She asked me, goinghome in the taxi, what I thought it meant. I said I thought it meant thatReggie didn't particularly care about meeting Jimmy. She said, "Well, he'll have to meet him to-morrow night. I'm jolly glad we've asked them. "

She added pensively, "Reggie's quite changed. I suppose it's India. "

I knew she didn't suppose anything of the sort. She thought the Generalhad been telling him things; and I must confess I thought so too. Here, Imay say at once, we did that kindly and honourable gentleman a wrong. 

He came to us in great distress the next morning. He said Viola andJevons were to have dined with them last night, only Reggie had declaredhe wouldn't have anything to do with Jevons. He didn't want to meet himif he could help it. He said, Couldn't they ask Viola without him? Andthey _had_ asked Viola without him, and Viola had refused to come. 

"And do you know" (he stared at us in a sort of helpless horror) "hehasn't been to see her yet. "

The poor General went away quite depressed. He lingered with me on thedoorstep a moment. "I'm afraid, Furnival, " he said, "Reggie's going tomake it very awkward for us. "

He did make it awkward. 

It might have been discreet to have put off our dinner. But I knew thatNorah wouldn't hear of it; all the more if Reggie was going to make itawkward. You don't suppose one Thesiger was going to knuckle under toanother. It wasn't their way. They were loyal to the last degree, butloyalty was another matter. And if it came to that she was loyal to hersister. 

I shall never forget that dinner. I shall never forget Viola's coming inwith Jevons behind her. 

She was, as I think I've said, a beautifully-made woman, with long limbsand superb shoulders, and a way of holding her small head high. Well, shecame in (they were a little late) with her head higher than ever, andwith a sweep of her limbs, as if her crushed draperies (she was all inwhite) were blown backward by a wind; her gauze scarf billowed behind heras if it were wings or sails and the wind filled it. She was like theVictory of Samothrace; she was like a guardian and avenging angel; shewas like a ship in full sail breasting a sea. Up to her eyes she waseverything that was ever splendid and courageous and defiant. 

But her eyes--there was a sort of scared grief in them. 

I had seen fright in her face once before, the day when she came into theroom at Hampstead with Jevons behind her and saw Reggie there. I said tomyself, "She always was afraid of Reggie. " But that, for the second thatit lasted, was sheer fright. This was different. There was anguish in it;and it was only in her eyes. 

And Jevons's entry, this time, was simultaneous. Little Jimmy came behindher, holding himself rather absurdly straight and breathing hard. 

And there was Reggie Thesiger waiting for them, standing by the hearthbetween Norah and me. 

Oh yes, India had changed him. Surely, I thought, it must be India thathad made him so lean and stiff and hard. But he was handsomer even thanhe had been five years ago, and he looked taller, he was so formidablyupright and well-built. (As a competitive exhibition Jimmy's straightnesswas pitiful. And yet, if his antagonist had been anybody but Reggie, itmight have had a certain dignity. )

I wondered, "_How_ is she going to greet him? Will she lower her flag andkiss him, or what?"

She sailed up to Norah first and kissed her. She shook hands with me. Shesmiled at me (I don't know how she managed it). Then she turned toReggie. 

She didn't lower her flag. She said, "Well, Reggie, " as if they had metyesterday. There was no kissing or any anticipation of a kiss; they shookhands, not at arm's length, not in the least as if they had had aquarrel, but like well-bred people in the house of strangers. It was allbeautifully done. 

Then it was Jimmy's turn. Reggie looked at him as if he wasn't there. 

If I could have run away with any decency I'd have run rather than facewhat came then. But the women--Heavens, how they stood to their guns!

Norah said, "Reggie, I think you know your brother-in-law?" with an airof stating a platitude rather than of recalling him to a courtesy he hadforgotten. 

"I don't think so, " said Reggie. 

But he bowed. And Jimmy bowed. There was no handshaking, at arm's lengthor otherwise. 

Viola said, "You _do_ know him. You met him four years ago in my rooms atHampstead. "

"Did I? I'm afraid I've forgotten. "

"You did meet, didn't you, Jimmy?"

"I believe so, " said Jimmy, with a quite admirable indifference. 

"Anyhow, " said Norah sweetly, "you can't say you haven't _heard_ of him. "

She meant well, poor darling, but it was a bad shot. It missed its markcompletely, and it drew down the enemy's fire. 

"I _have_ heard of Mr. Jevons, " said Reggie, and he looked at Jimmy as ifhe realized for the first time that he was there, and resented it. 

Norah turned positively white. It was Viola who saved us. 

"Please don't, Norah. It's really awful for poor Jimmy now he's on allthe buses and in the Tube?"

She referred to the monstrous posters that advertised his play in blackletters eighteen inches high on a scarlet ground. 

"How do you feel when you're in the Tube?" said Norah. 

"You feel, " said Jimmy--he was sitting in one of his worst attitudes, with his legs stretched straight out before him and his feet tilted toesupwards. I noticed that Reggie couldn't bear to look at him--"you feelfirst of all as if everybody was looking at you; you feel a silly ass;then you feel as if everybody was looking at the posters; then you knowthey aren't looking at them. Then you leave off looking at them yourself. And if one does hit you in the eye you feel as if it referred to somebodyelse, and after that you don't feel anything more. "

It wasn't brilliant, but the wonder was he found anything to say at all. 

I was thankful when Pavitt came in to tell us that dinner was served. Itdelivered us from Jimmy's attitudes. 

When it came to dining at our small round table we saw how badly we haderred in not asking anybody else but Viola and Jimmy. A sixth, a woman(almost any woman would have done in the circumstances), a woman to talkto Reggie might have pulled us through. But with Reggie sitting besideViola, with Jimmy opposite them by himself between me and Norah (the onlypossible arrangement) it was terrible. 

Reggie persisted in talking to Viola like a well-bred stranger. Hepersisted in ignoring Jevons. 

And Jimmy retaliated by ignoring _him_. There was nothing else for himto do. Only it wasn't one of the things he did well. Beside Reggie'saccomplishment he looked mean and pitiful and a little vulgar. Godforgive me for putting it down, but that is how he looked. 

And once or twice, under the strain of it, he dropped an aitch with themost disconcerting effect. 

I often wonder what Pavitt thought of that family party. He certainlyserved Viola as if he loved her, and Jimmy as if he was sorry for him, calling his attention to a dish or a wine which, he seemed to say, itwould be a pity for him to miss--it might prove a consolation to him. 

Our agony became so unbearable that the women ended it when they could byleaving us at the stage of coffee and cigarettes. Then, with us three menthe position became untenable, and Reggie found that he'd have to go outat nine; he had an appointment with a fellow. And at nine he went. 

Viola and Jimmy left us very soon after. 

She said, "It was dear of you to have us, " not in the least humbly, butas if they had enjoyed it. 

Up to the very last she was magnificent, and even Jimmy played up well. In fact, when Reggie's perfection was no longer there to damage him hewas rather fine. 

It was poor little Norah who broke down. I found her crying all byherself on the couch in my study when they'd gone. 

She said, "Wally, this is awful. It's _the_ most awful thing that couldhave happened. "

I said, "Oh, come--" and she persisted. "But it _is_. She adored Reggie. He used to adore her--and--you've seen him, how he was to-night. It'llkill her if he keeps it up. "

I said, "He won't keep it up. "

"Oh, won't he! You don't know Reggie. "

I said, "It's odd. He didn't seem to mind Jimmy so much the first day hemet him. "

"Oh, my dear--he didn't mind, because he never could have dreamed she'dmarry him. "

"He'll come round all right when he knows him, " I said. 

She shook her head and made little dabs at her face with herpocket-handkerchief. 

"That's just it. He thinks he does know him. I mean he thinks he knowssomething. I'm sure he thinks it. "

"My dear child, however could he? He couldn't even have heard. If youmean that Belgian business, it was all over and done with four years ago. Have we any of us thought of it since?"

"No--but I think he had an idea then. He guessed that there must besomething. You see--we never told Vee-Vee, but--he thought it was awfullyqueer of her to go off--anywhere--just when he was sailing. "

"Well, " I said, "it _was_ a bit odd. She must have been awfully gone onJimmy. "

"She was. "

"Poor dear. She said she meant to burn her boats. "

"Don't you see--that was part of the burning. She had to break the holdthat Reggie had on her. You don't know what it was like, Wally. She hadto break it or she could never have married Jimmy at all. It was atoss-up between them; and Jimmy won. "

"Is it going to be a toss-up between them all over again, d'you think?" Isaid. 

"No. It's going to be war to the knife. They won't either of them give inas long as Reggie's got that idea in his head. "

"We must get it out of his head. Surely, " I said, "we can do something. "

"No, we can't. There's no way of getting it out. It's no good trying tomake a joke of it. You can't joke with Reggie past a certain point. Andit's not as if you could give him a hint. You can't hint at thesethings. "

"What do you think he'll do?"

"He won't do anything. He won't say anything. He'll just go on like thisall the time, and she won't be able to bear it. It'll break her heart. "

Well, though I agreed with her, I still thought that something could bedone. I tried to do it when Reggie got back that night after Norah hadgone to bed. I couldn't of course assume that he had his idea. My planwas to present Jevons to him in a light that was incompatible with hisidea. It was easy enough to say that Jevons might be rather startling, but that he was awfully decent and the soul of honour. The soul of honourcovered it--absolutely ruled out his idea. 

He didn't contradict me. He just sat there smoking amicably, just sayingevery now and then that he couldn't stand him; he was sorry--I might beperfectly right and Jevons might be everything I said--only he couldn'tstand him; and he wasn't going to. Nothing would induce him to stop withJevons. He didn't want to have anything to do with the little beast. 

When I said, "I assure you, my dear fellow, it's all right, " he onlythrew the onus of suspicion on me by replying suavely, "My dear fellow, Iassure you I never said it wasn't. "

It was as if he really knew it wasn't, knew something that we didn'tknow, and was determined to keep his knowledge to himself. 

And when I'd finished he said, "The whole thing's a mystery to _me_. Ithought she was going to marry you. " And then--"How she can stick him Ican't think. D'you mind, old man, if I go to bed? No, I don't want anywhisky and soda, thanks. "

It was Pavitt, of all people, who threw a light on it when he brought thewhisky. 

"Beg your pardon, sir, " said Pavitt, "but I believe I never told you thatthe Captain called here one day when you was in Belgium. "

"Are you quite sure, Pavitt? He called the day I left. "

"Yes, sir, I remember his calling the day you left. It's only just comeback to me that he called again, three days after, I think it was. Itold him you was gone to Belgium, and he said that was all he wanted. Hedidn't leave no message, else I should have remembered. It was the younggentleman's likeness to Mrs. Jevons, sir, what fixed him in my mind. "

I told Reggie this the next day as an instance of Pavitt's wonderfulmemory. "Only, " I said, "he forgot to tell me that you called. "

He smiled rather bitterly as if he remembered the incident well. 

"Oh, I called all right, " he said. "I wanted to know where you were. "

After that Norah and I made it out between us. Not all at once, but bitby bit, as things occurred to us or as he suggested them. 

He must have begun to suspect something when the time went on and Violadidn't turn up. Only he thought it was I who was at the bottom of it. Perhaps, so long as he thought it was I, he had made up his mind thatthere could be no great harm in it. He had been all right with her downat Canterbury those last few days. Anyhow, he hadn't said anything. 

Then--when he heard that she had married Jevons--he had his idea. Itwasn't necessary for him to have heard anything else. And then, even ifhe hadn't guessed it, there was Jimmy's book, the "Flemish Journal, " totell him she had been in Belgium with him. And he knew she didn't marryhim till afterwards. 

And so, he thought things. If he didn't think them of Viola he thoughtthem of Jevons. (Even on the most charitable assumption he would considerhis sister's passion for Jimmy a piece of morbid perversity. ) And anyhow, he was left with an appalling doubt. 

And he wasn't going to forgive either of them, ever. 

IX

That we had made out something very like the truth of it I realized whenI met Burton Withers. For eventually I did meet him. It was at the end ofJune, nineteen-ten, in the green room of the Crown Theatre on thehundredth night of Jimmy's play. That is what I remember it by. 

Norah and I were with Viola and Jimmy. Withers had come in with a friend, an important member of the cast, who was evidently under the impressionthat we had never met before, for he introduced him to us all round. Withers showed tact in not recognizing Viola or claiming the acquaintancehe certainly had with Jevons. He had, in fact, a most reassuring air ofstarting again with a clean slate and no reminiscences. This was in theinterval between the First and Second Acts. When the curtain rose on ActTwo, I was alone in Jimmy's box. (Jimmy and Viola and Norah were tryingthe effect of the play from the stalls. ) And at the next interval Witherscame to me there. It was funny, he said, the way little Jevons had comeon. He didn't suppose any of us had thought of _this_ four years ago whenwe had all met together in Bruges. 

I said, "Did we all meet together in Bruges?"

"Well, if it wasn't in Ghent. Oh--of course it was at Ghent you and Imet. You hadn't joined the others then. "

At first I was hopelessly mystified by these allusions. I couldn't thinkwhat point he was making for or where he would come out. He seemed to betrying uneasily to get somewhere. Then I saw that he had had it on hismind that when we had last met he had made a defamatory statement to meabout the lady who had become my sister-in-law, and about a man who hadbecome a celebrity (I knew Withers's little weakness for celebrities). And he was scared. 

I must have seemed a bit lost among his allusions, for he blurted it out. 

"D'you know, I've been most awfully sorry for chaffing you in thatidiotic way--about--your sister-in-law. Silly sort of thing one says, youknow. But of course you knew I was pulling your leg. "

I said, "My dear Withers, of course I knew you were. "

Of course I knew he was doing nothing of the sort, for Withers slanderedright and left when it wasn't worth his while to grovel, and I had nodoubt now that he believed his own dirty tale when he told it; but he hadbeen impressed and thoroughly frightened, even at the time, by thecalmness of my bluff, and the little beast was far more afraid of us thanwe ever could have been of him now. We could henceforth dismiss Withersfrom our minds. He was a "social climber" of the sort that would eat hisown words if he thought they would do the smallest damage to hisclimbing. 

As for the ladies, General Thesiger's friends, I rather think the Generalhad settled with them at the time. 

You might say we had nothing to fear from Reggie, if Reggie'ssilence--and his deafness--hadn't been more terrible than anythinghe could have heard or said. 

I suppose nineteen-ten ought to stand as the year of Tasker Jevons'sgreat Play, the play that ran for a whole year after the hundredth night, that ran on and on as if it would never stop, that, when it was taken offthe Crown stage to make room for its successor, still careered throughthe provinces and the United States. It seemed the year of Jimmy's utmostaffluence. If he kept it up, we said, he'd be a millionaire before hedied of it. But it wasn't conceivable that he could keep it up for long. We thought he'd never write another play like this one. There never wouldbe another year like nineteen-ten. 

I believe that even Jimmy thought there'd never be another year like it, so far had he surpassed his own calculations, as it was. 

But for me nineteen-ten is the year of other things, the things thathappened in the family, the year of Reggie's return and all the miserythat came from it, the year of Viola's struggle--the agony of which we, Norah and I, were the helpless spectators. _She_ never said a word to us. It was Norah who conveyed to me the secret, intimate shock of it. 

That year Jimmy rained boxes and stalls and theatre-parties for his playon all the Thesigers (except Reggie) and on all their friends, and onDorothy and Gwinny and their husbands when they came back from Simla andGibraltar (it was the year of their return too); but we stood behind thescenes of a tragedy that mercifully was hidden from Jimmy's eyes. It wasthe year when Mildred broke off her engagement to Charlie Thesiger. Itwas the year when our little girl, Viola, was born; the year when wemoved from our Bloomsbury flat into the little house in Edwardes Square, taking over the end of the lease and all the fixtures and some of thefurniture from Jimmy. Jimmy hadn't a child, and he had sworn that henever would have one; he was so afraid (and this fear was the only thingthat disturbed his optimism), so horribly afraid that Viola might die. But he had outgrown the house in Edwardes Square. It was the year of hisfirst really startling expansion. 

It was the year when he moved into the house in Mayfair. 

Why Mayfair we really couldn't think. He said he liked the sound ofit; it made him feel as if he was in the country when he wasn't, and asif it was the month of May, when there never was any month of May inEngland; as if there were a maypole where the fountain is in Park Lane;and as if processions, and processions of horses, splendid stallions andbrood-mares and thoroughbreds and hacks and great Suffolk punches withtheir manes and tails tied up with ribbons were coming past his house tothe fair. 

He may have felt like that about it. I put no limits to Jimmy'simagination; but I suspected him of throwing out these airy fancies as aveil to cover the preposterous nature of his ambition. 

It was also the year when he began to talk about motor-cars and thinkabout motor-cars and dream about motor-cars at night. 

And it was the year in which he and Viola went to the Riviera while theplumbers and painters were at work on the house in Green Street, Mayfair. They stayed away all autumn, and at the end of November they settled in. And at Christmas they gave their house-warming. 

It wasn't a large party--only a few friends of Viola's, and Jimmy'slawyer and his doctor and his agent, and a few picked members of theconfraternity; the rest were Thesigers. If Jimmy had meant to give ademonstration proving that he could gather the whole of his wife's familyround him at a pinch, he had all but succeeded. I suppose every availablemember had turned up that night, except Reggie. The General and his wifeand daughters were there; and Charlie Thesiger and Bertie; and Canon andMrs. Thesiger (they had come up from Canterbury on purpose, and werestaying with the General); and Dorothy and Gwinny and their husbands; andVictoria and Mildred, who stayed with Viola; and Millicent, who came tous; and a whole crowd of miscellaneous aunts and cousins; perhaps sixtyaltogether, counting outsiders. 

Norah and I had been away for weeks in the country and had only got backthat afternoon, so we had not seen the house in Green Street since it hadbeen furnished. It burst, it literally burst, on us, without the smallestwarning or preparation. 

Like Jimmy's first novel, it was designed to startle and arrest, hittingyou in the eye as you came in. The actual reception was held in the largehall, which had been formed by turning what had once been the dining-roomloose into the passage and the stair-place. 

So far the architect had done his work well. After that he had been leftto struggle with and interpret as he best could the baronial idea thathad been imposed on him. The hall was panelled half-way in dark oak, andabove the oak the walls were hung with a rough papering of old gold. Butwhat hit you in the eye as you came in was the oak staircase that went uproyally along the bottom wall. It had scarlet-and-gold Tudor roses on theflank of the balustrade, and at every third banister there was a shieldpicked out in scarlet and gold. And at the bottom of the balustrade andat the turn a little oak lion sat on his haunches and held up yet anothershield (picked out in scarlet and gold) in his fore-paws. The bare oakplanks of the upper floor made the ceiling, and there was an enormousTudor rose in the middle of it, where other people might have had achandelier, and little Tudor roses blazed at intervals all along thecornice. And there was a great stone hearth and chimney-piece, a Tudorchimney-piece, mullioned, with a shield carved in the centre and themotto: "_Dominus Defensor Domi_, " and on either side the rose and thegrill, the rose and the grill, alternately. There were andirons on thehearth and an immense log burning, and swords and daggers and suits ofarmour hung on the gold walls above the panelling. 

And I swear to you that the curtains and upholstery were in tapestrycloth, the lilies of France in gold on a crimson ground. It was as ifJimmy had wanted to say to the Thesigers that if it came to being Tudor, he could be as Tudor as any of them, and more so. Thus deeply had heabsorbed the Canterbury atmosphere. 

When she saw the suits of armour Norah squeezed my arm and breathed"Oh--my _darling_ Wally!"--in an ecstasy that was anguish. Poor Mildred'splump face turned as scarlet as the Tudor roses with an emotion that wecould not fathom, but judged to be painful. 

We had come early with the idea of making ourselves useful, if necessary;but there was hardly anybody there yet, only two or three guests drinkingcoffee or champagne-cup at the long table under the windows, and Jimmy, who stood in the middle of his Tudor hall, talking to one of theconfraternity, and rocking himself gently from his toes to his heels andfrom his heels to his toes again, as a sign that he was not in the leastelated, but only at his ease. 

He was delighted to see us, and for quite three seconds he ceased hisrocking and began to twinkle in a most natural and reassuring manner. Then I remember him scuttling away to greet another guest, and the_confrère_ gazing after him with affection and turning to us in a sortof grave enjoyment of the scene. I remember Viola coming up to us and herlittle baffling smile and her look--the look she was to have for longenough--of detachment from Jimmy and his Tudor hall. I remember the darkblue, half-transparent gown she wore that was certainly not Tudor, andher general air of being an uninvited and inappropriate guest, and howshe conveyed us to the table to get drinks "all comfy" before the otherscame. And when Viola had drifted away, I remember Charlie Thesigerstrolling up to us. The supercilious youth had been, getting a drink "allcomfy" on his own account, and his little stiff moustache was still wetwith Jimmy's champagne-cup above the atrocious smile he met us with. 

He asked us if we'd seen the drawing-room. 

We said we hadn't, and he advised us to go up and look at it at once, before anybody else did. "You can't see it properly, " he said, "unlessyou're alone with it. "

I suppose we ought to have been grateful to Charlie for not letting usmiss it, and it was perfectly true that the way to see it was to be alonewith it; there would, indeed, have been a positive indecency in seeing itin any other way. He had spared our decency. And yet I think we hated himfor having sent us there. It was as if he had sent us to look atsomething horrible, at an outrage, at violence done to shrinking, delicate things. 

We looked at it, and we looked at each other. We didn't speak, and Idon't think either of us smiled. I remember Norah going behind me andclosing the door swiftly, as she might have closed it on some horror thatshe and I had to deal with alone. I remember her saying then, "This is_too_ awful!" not in the least as if she meant what we were looking at, but as if she saw something invisible that lurked and loomed behind it, so that I asked her what she thought it meant. 

"It means, " she said, "that Jimmy's done it all himself. He's had to doit all himself. She hasn't _cared_. "

I said, it looked as if _he_ hadn't cared. 

She moaned, "Oh, but he did--he did. He's cared so awfully. That's thedreadful part of it. You can see he has. Just look at those vases andthose cabinets and things. And think of the money the poor thing musthave spent on it!"

"But, " I said, "it's so unlike him. His taste for furniture's impeccable. The old house was perfect. So, in its way, was the cottage. "

"I'm afraid that wasn't Jimmy's taste--it was Vee-Vee's. She dideverything. "

"She told us _he_ did. "

"Poor darling--she wanted us to think he did. "

"He appreciated it, anyhow. "

"He'd appreciate anything if she did it. "

"Then, " I said, "why should he break loose like this now?"

"Because she hasn't cared. She hasn't cared a hang. She's left everythingto him. And you can see, poor dear, how he's spread himself. "

Oh, yes, you could see. It was as if he had never had scope before, andnow, with no limit to his opportunity, he had simply run amok. It wasn'tthat the things he had gathered round him in his orgy were not finethings. It was the awful way he'd mixed them, yielding incontinently toeach solicitation as it came along. Dealers had been on the look-out forJimmy to exploit his fury. 

In his Tudor hall he had been constrained to unity by a great idea. Butnot here. And reminiscences of the Canterbury drawing-room had suggestedto him that you _could_ mix things. So, using a satinwood suite withtinted marqueterie and old rose upholsterings (he had succumbed to it inthe first freshness of his innocence) as a base, he had added Boulecabinets and modern Indian tables in carved open-work to Adams cabinetsand Renaissance tables in ebony inlaid with engraved ivory, andeighteenth-century gilded bergère chairs to old oak and Chippendale. Cloisonné and Sèvres stood side by side on the same shelf. He had anAubusson carpet in the middle of the floor, and his Bokhara rugs atintervals down the sides. Norah was sitting on the emerald-green brocadeof an Empire sofa, clutching the gilt sphinx head of the arm-end. It wasa double room, and emerald-green curtains hung at the tall windows in thefront and at the large stained-glass window at the back, and at the widearchway between. And an Algerian lamp swung from the back ceiling, and anEarly Victorian glass chandelier from the front. 

"And the awfullest thing of all is, " Norah was saying, "that he's done itto please her. "

"Don't believe her. That's the beautiful part of it. "

Viola had come in by the door of the back room and she was smiling at us. 

Yet, even as she smiled, she had that look of being detached, of notcaring. 

We couldn't say anything--we were too miserable. She looked round thedreadful rooms as if she were trying to see them for the first time, asif some reverberation of the horror we had felt did penetrate to her inher remoteness. She smiled faintly. 

"What _does_ it matter, " she said, "so long as it makes him happy? Itwould be sweet if you'd come down and help us now. "

We went down, and the house-warming began. 

It was Jimmy who told us what our business was. We were to stand byvisitors, he said, as they came in and break the shock (he had observedit) of the Tudor hall. If we couldn't break it we must do what we couldto help recovery. He had seen desperate cases yield to champagne-cupadministered during the first paroxysm. 

We had a little trouble with some of the minor confraternity--theiremotions were facile and champagne intensified them. They would ask wherethe throne-room was and when our host was going to be measured for hissuit of armour, and what did we think he'd done with the familyportraits?

But the Thesigers (all except Charlie--and Charlie, Norah said, had noheart), the Thesigers offered an example of the most beautiful manners. I shall never forget the General's face as the suits of armour struckhim--his sudden spasm of joy and the austere heroism that suppressed it. And the Canon--

The Canon rose to even greater heights. We were a bit afraid that hewould overdo it and look as if he were trying to show us how a Christiangentleman could bear such things as Jimmy's furnishings. But no. Hebehaved as though he saw nothing in the least unusual in his furnishings, as though Jimmy's Tudor hall and miscellaneous drawing-room were hisnatural background. 

But for sheer pluck and presence of mind not one of them could touchJevons. He rose, he soared, he poised himself, he turned and swept abovethem; you could feel the tense vibration that kept him there, in hisatmosphere of deadly peril. He volplaned, he looped the loop. _His_behaviour was unsurpassable. For _his_ case, if you like, was desperate. I tell you he had seen the effect of his Tudor hall and drawing-room. He had been watching; and nothing, not a murmur, or a furtive snigger, not the quiver of an eyelash, had escaped him. And consider what itmeant to him. In a furious climax of expenditure he had achieved thearresting spectacle of his house in Mayfair, and his first night, hishouse-warming, was turning under his eyes into a triumph for theThesigers' manners and a failure for him. He had no illusions. Unless hedid something to stop it, the whole thing would be one enormous andlamentable and expensive failure. 

He had to do something. And he did it. He left off his uneasy swagger andhis rocking. He met the heroic and beautiful faces of the Thesigers withhis engaging twinkle. He sought out and ministered to two young girls whohad been brought there by the minor confraternity and were hiding in acorner on the point of hysteria. We heard him telling them that thethrone-room was being built out over the scullery leads (he must haveknown what the minor confraternity had been up to), that in the greatfireplace in his kitchen you could roast three journalists whole, andthat the question of the family portraits was receiving his attention. Hehad a deal on with the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery for thepurchase of the Holbein Henry the Eighth. By the time he had finished itwas open to us to suppose that the house in Mayfair was his joke and notours, that he had furnished it in this preposterous manner in order to bereally and truly funny, and to keep himself and Viola in perfect andperpetual gaiety. It was as if he were trying to say to us, "None of youpeople--least of all the confraternity--knows how to live. Life isn't acalamity; it's a joke; and to live properly you should meet life in itsown spirit; you should do exuberant and gay and gorgeous things, likeme. "

And then when we had all come round, he rearranged all the furniture inhis drawing-room for charades (showing no respect whatever for hissatinwood suite); and after the charades he rolled up his Aubusson carpetand cleared the place for a dance that was ruin to his parquet floor. And we had supper; and then more dancing till four o'clock in themorning. 

Of the dancing I remember nothing but Viola whirling round and round, asit were for ever, in Charlie Thesiger's arms, and her dead-white facelooking over his shoulder, as if she saw nothing, nothing whatever; as ifshe were detached even from the arms that held her. 

My last recollection is of Jimmy's face when Norah said to him, "Oh, Jimmy, I _love_ your dear little lions!"--and Jimmy's answer:

"Little lions--yes--they make me feel tall and majestic. "

"He _is_ going it, isn't he?" said Charlie Thesiger. 

 * * * * *

At this point, when I look back over what I've written, it seems to methat I've done nothing but record changes so many and so marked thattheir history has no sort of continuity. But in reality it was not so. Upto December, nineteen-ten, there was no break, not even a dividing line. Compared with what happened then I am compelled to think of Viola'smarriage, not as a risky experiment that had so far defeated prophecy, but as an entirely serene and happy thing. Between the moment when theyset up that four-post bed in that absurd little house in Hampstead andthe day of their leaving Edwardes Square behind them I cannot point toany time and say, "That was the beginning of it, " or put my finger on anevent and show the difference there. 

Unless it was Reggie's coming back. 

But the results of that didn't appear till later. 

Any difference I may have noted previously was an affair of shades, ofdelicate oscillations. There was no lapse without a recovery, nodeparture without a return. 

And here, at the end of nineteen-ten, I got a line drawn sharply oneither side of a break I cannot bridge. The minute Jimmy moved into thathouse in Mayfair things began to go wrong. 

It was as if Jimmy, in his love of doing risky things, had cast, thistime, a dreadful die. 

From that evening onward I watched them with anxiety. I do not know howfar Jevons was aware that the house in Mayfair was a blunder; I think hewouldn't have acknowledged that it was a blunder at all. His own attitudeto it was not in the least disturbed by his humorous perception of otherpeople's. With his dexterity in adjustments he was quite capable ofreconciling them, quite capable of enjoying the effect it had on nervousorganisms while he himself took it seriously. It was, after all, his ownachievement, and a very astonishing achievement too. He continued torespect it as the immense sign of his material prosperity, theadvertisement, you may say, of his arrival. His business instinct wouldnever have allowed him to repent of an advertisement. 

There _was_ this gross element in his enjoyment. 

And there was also the pure and charming happiness of a child thatsuddenly finds itself left, with boundless opportunity, to its owngorgeous caprice. You could no more blame Jevons for the bad taste of hisdrawing-room and his Tudor hall than you could blame a child for itsjoy in a treasure of tinsel and coloured glass. 

But when we asked ourselves where, in this outbreak of Jimmy's fantasy, did Viola come in, we had to own that she came in nowhere. Not only hadshe stood by without lifting a finger to interfere with its tempestuouscourse; not only had she submitted without a protest; she seemed to showno adequate sense of what had happened. Her detachment was the unnaturaland dreadful thing. 

And this happiness of his was at Viola's mercy. It would last just solong as she could keep him from knowing that he had outraged the beauty, the fitness and the simplicity she loved. I thought how he had onceboasted that he knew what she wanted, that he knew what she was thinkingand feeling all the time. How could he have imagined that she wanted_this_? What was his knowledge worth if he didn't know what she wouldthink and feel about it?

Unless, indeed, she had lied to him. Lied from first to last, deliberately and consummately, over each separate thing and over all thepretentious silliness and waste of it. Norah declared that it was so, andit looked like it. And more than anything it showed where my poor Violahad got to. It was so unlike her to lie, so unlike her to stand aside, where you would have thought she would have most wanted to plunge in; thecalculation and the indifference both were so beyond her that you couldonly think one thing: she hated it; she hated the new turn his prosperityhad taken; she almost hated him because of it; and her heart was brokenbecause of Reggie, and it was hardening where it broke; she hated Reggieat moments; and she had moments of hating Jevons because he had comebetween them; and she was compounding with her conscience, punishingherself for all these hatreds and for a thousand secret criticisms anddisloyalties and repugnances; avenging, as it were beforehand, allhatreds and criticisms, disloyalties and repugnances to come. For she sawit all now--how it was going to be. And she was trying to make up for itby giving Jimmy his own way in the things that, as she had said, "didn'tmatter. "

And if Jimmy's way was to surround her with pretentious silliness insteadof beautiful simplicity, then she must rise above her surroundings. Herspirit, at any rate, must refuse to be surrounded. 

Her attitude was more lofty than you can imagine. As Norah had said, there would always be a Belfry--something high and unusual--in Viola'slife. Well, she was going to live in the Belfry, that was all. And if shewas to be perfectly safe in her Belfry, and Jimmy perfectly happy in hisTudor hall, he mustn't know that she was there. 

I don't know how she really put it to herself; I don't suppose she "put"it any way; but subconsciously, as they say, it must have been like that. Anyhow, her behaviour amounted to an evasion of Jimmy, and thisparticular evasion was sad enough when you consider that in the beginningit had been Jimmy who had taken her to look at the Belfry--who was theone man who could be trusted to take her, and that she would never havedreamed of setting off on such an adventure by herself, and that shewasn't fitted for it. In fact, I can't think of anybody less fit. 

It showed more than anything how the glamour must have worn off him. 

It had worn off even for us to whom he came each time with a comparativefreshness. And if it hadn't worn off for his public and for theconfraternity, it was simply because as an engineer of literature he wasinexhaustible. He had so perfected his machinery that the turning outof novels and of plays had become with him a sort of automatic habit, andif there was any falling off in his quality he was right when he saidthat nobody but himself would find it out. He had got an infinitecapacity for plagiarizing himself; and in his worst things he imitatedhis best so closely that he might well defy you to tell the difference. 

But you cannot work as he had worked for five years at a stretch and notsuffer for it. And you cannot aim at material success as he had aimed, deliberately and continuously, for five years without becoming yourself abit material. And you cannot be immersed and wallow in it as he wallowedwithout corruption. 

There's no doubt that for the next, two--three--four years he wallowed. He was so deep in that, even after Viola's illness that came innineteen-thirteen and purged him somewhat, he continued to wallow. And wehad to stand by while he was doing it and pretend that we weren'tshocked. There was no good trying to give him a hand to help him out, hewas so happy wallowing. 

I am far from blaming him. Personally, if it hadn't been for Viola, Ishould have liked to think that he was able to get all that ecstasy outof his sordid triumph. For it _was_ sordid. If it wasn't for Viola youcould tick off each year with a note of his preposterously increasingincome, and say that was all there was in it. 

I muddle up the first years of it. I know that in nineteen-eleven hebrought out his fifth novel and his third play and that the run andthe returns of both were astounding, even for him. I know that innineteen-twelve he brought out two novels and two new plays that ran atthe same time, and that he roped in Europe and the Colonies; and that hisincome rose into five figures. He couldn't help it. His business was athing that had passed beyond his control. With infinite exertions he hadset it spinning, and now it looked as if he had only to touch it now andthen with his finger to keep it going. And if he did get a bit excited isit any wonder? There was the dreadful fascination of the thing thatcompelled him to watch it till its perpetual gyrations went to his headand made it reel. 

His figure seems to me to reel slightly as it moves through those roomsin the house in Green Street, and before the footlights as he answeredcalls, and across the banquet-halls of the "Ritz" or the "Criterion" orthe "Savoy, " when--about three times a year--he celebrated his triumphs. I see those years as a succession of banquets running indistinguishablyinto each other. I see him buying more and more furniture andsuperintending its disposal with excitement. He seems to me to have beenalways buying things. I've forgotten most of them except the things hebought for Viola--the jewellery that frightened her, the opera cloak thatmade her hysterical, the furs that had to be sent back again (you'd havethought he couldn't have gone wrong with furs, but he did), and the hatsthat even Jimmy owned it was impossible to wear. I can see his facesaddened by these failures and a little puzzled, as if he couldn'tconceive how his star should have gone back on him like that. I can seehim, and I can see Viola, kneeling on the floor in his study and packingsome beastly thing up in paper, tenderly, as if it had been the corpse ofa beloved hope; and I can hear him saying (it was after the opera cloakand the hysterics), "Walter, you can monkey with a woman's 'eart, and youcan ruin her immortal soul, but if you meddle with her clothes it's hellfor both of you. Don't you do it, my boy. "

I remember scores of little things like that, things done and things saidwith an incorruptible sweetness and affection, but things accentuatedwith lapsed aitches and with gestures that only Jimmy was unaware of. Those years are marked for me more than anything by the awful increasein his solecisms. Their number, their enormity and frequency rose withhis income, and for the best of reasons. It was as if, his object beinggained, he could afford them. He was no longer on his guard. He had nolonger any need to be. The strain was over--he relaxed, and in relaxationhe fell back into his old habits. 

All those years we seem to have been looking on at the slow, slow processof his vulgarization. By nineteen-twelve the confraternity had begun toregard Tasker Jevons as an outrageous joke. And in nineteen-thirteen, when both his plays were still running, even his father-in-law said thathe was a disgusting spectacle. And Reggie (he was Major Thesiger now, with a garrison appointment at Woolwich) Reggie kept as far away from himas ever. 

Sometimes I have thought that Viola's detachment helped his undoing. Shewasn't there to pull him up or to cover his disasters; she had more andmore the look of not being there at all. 

And Charlie Thesiger was always there. There with a most decided look ofbeing up to something. 

Jevons didn't seem to mind him. You might have said that Charlie wasanother of the risks he took. 

X

In nineteen-thirteen Jimmy bought a motor-car. 

He was more excited about his motor-car than he had been about hishouse--any of his houses. Even Viola was interested and came rushing downfrom her Belfry when it arrived. 

He bought it at the end of January. A good, useful car that would shut oropen and serve for town or country. But it was no good to them tillApril. 

For all February and March Viola was ill. She had been running downgradually for about two years, getting a little whiter and a littleslenderer every month, and in the first week of February she gotinfluenza and ignored it, and went out for a drive in the motor-car witha temperature of a hundred and four. 

Nineteen-thirteen stands out for me as the year of Viola's illness. 

It turned to pneumonia and she was dangerously ill for three weeks, infact, she nearly died of it; and for more weeks than I can remember shelay about on sofas to which Jimmy and the nurse or one of us carried herfrom her bed. And in all that time Jimmy nursed and waited on her and satup with her at night. If he slept it was with one eye and both ears open. And I never saw anybody as gentle as he was and as skilful with his handsand quiet. He didn't even breathe hard. And when she was convalescent anda little fretful and troublesome there wasn't anybody else who couldmanage her. The nurses would call him to feed her and give her hermedicine and lift her. She couldn't bear anybody else to touch her. 

I remember one day when she had been moved from her bed to the couch forthe first time and she was so weak, poor darling, that she cried. Iremember her saying, "Jimmy, if you'll only put your hands on my foreheadand keep them there. "

I think he must have sat for hours with his hands on her forehead. 

I doubt if he was ever away from her for more than a few minutes exceptwhen one of us came and dragged him out for a walk in the Park againsthis will. It was always for a walk in the Park--the same walk, throughStanhope Gate to the end of the Serpentine and back again, so that hecould time it to a minute. He wouldn't look at his motor-car. I think hehated it. Anyhow, I know he lent it to us until she was well enough to goout in it again. 

She wasn't well enough till April. She never would have been well enough, she never would have been with us at all, the doctors and the nursessaid, if it hadn't been for Jimmy. He swore that they were fools whenthey gave her up and said she couldn't live. He said he'd _make_ herlive. And I believe he made her. 

He gave her till April to get well in; and when April came she did getwell. And he took her away to the South of France, and to Switzerlandwhen the months grew warmer (the doctor told him it was a risk, but hesaid he'd take it); he took her in the motor-car, and he brought her backin June, still slender but recovered. 

That illness of hers saved them for the time. It reinstated him. Itimproved him. He couldn't, you see, be devoted and vulgar at the sametime. All lighter agitations and excitements might be dangerous toJevons, but passion and great grief and grave anxiety ennobled him. Hecame back from Switzerland chastened and purified of all offence. EvenReggie couldn't have found a flaw in him. 

That had always been Jevons's way. Just when you had made up your mindthat you couldn't bear him he would go and do something so beautiful thatit made your heart ache. From the very fact that he was intolerableto-day you might be sure he'd be adorable to-morrow. 

And when we saw him the night he brought Viola home, moving quietly aboutthe house, giving orders in that gentle voice that he had in reserve, wethought, Really, it will be all right now. Viola's passion for him hadbeen near death so many times, and each time he had saved it. 

We hadn't allowed for the reaction--he was bound to feel it after threemonths' unnatural repression; we hadn't allowed for the reaction thatViola was bound to feel after three years' unnatural detachment; wehadn't allowed for the state of her nerves after her illness; there wereall sorts of things we hadn't allowed for, and they all came at once;they burst out from under their covers one evening in June when Norah andI were dining in Green Street. 

It was one of Jimmy's gestures that began it. Viola had never been ableto control his gestures; she had never been able to get used to them; andthere were two in particular that made her wince still as she had wincedin the beginning. She had contracted the habit of wincing in response tothem. Whenever Jimmy jerked his thumb over his shoulder you saw herblink; and whenever he cracked his knuckles she shrank back. The blinkfollowed the jerk, and the shrinking followed the cracking as the flashfollows the snap of the trigger. 

I have never known Jimmy jerk as he jerked that evening. When Norah hadno salad, when my glass was empty, when Viola wanted more potatoes, whenhe wanted more potatoes himself, Jimmy jerked his thumb. The butlerseemed to have made it a point of honour to acknowledge no other signal. And every time it happened I noticed the increasing violence of Viola'sreaction. What had once been a gentle flicker of the eyelashes was now asuccession of spasms that left her eyebrows twisted. 

And at the fifth jerk she covered her eyes with her hands and cried out, "Jimmy, if you do that _once_ more I shall scream. "

Poor Jimmy asked innocently, "What did I do?"

"You jerked your thumb. You jerked it five times, and I simply cannotbear it. "

"All right--_all_ right, " said Jimmy. "I needn't jerk it again. It'squite easy not to. "

"I was afraid it wasn't, " she sighed. 

I was thinking, "Whatever will she do if he cracks his knuckles?" andthat very minute he cracked them. The butler, demoralized by Jimmy'smethods, had gone out of the room just when he was wanted. That annoyedJimmy. I have never known him produce such a detonation. 

Viola started as if he had hit her. But she said nothing this time. 

Jimmy didn't see her. He was looking over his shoulder to see whether thebutler was or was not answering his summons. And then--I think that atone period of his life he must have been a little proud of hisaccomplishment--he did it again. He did it _crescendo, fortissimo, prestissimo, strabato and con molto expressione_; he played on hisknuckles with a virtuosity of which I have never seen the like. 

The sheer technique of the performance ought to have disarmed her. (Itenchanted Norah. But then Norah hadn't had an illness. ) She flung a wildlook round the room as if she called on treacherous heavenly powers tosave her, then rose and very slowly, in silence and a matchless dignity, she walked out, past me, past Jimmy, past the returning butler, and downthe passage and into the Tudor hall. 

"Well--I _am_ blowed, " said Jevons. 

Norah put her hand on his arm. 

"You were wonderful, Jimmy dear, " she said. "I could have listened to youfor ever. So could Walter. But then, we haven't any nerves. "

"After all, " said Jimmy, "what _did_ I do?"

I said, "You made a most infernal noise, old chap, you know. "

"I say! _Come_--"

We had heard the andirons go down with a clatter. 

That was how we knew she was in the Tudor hall. 

He found her there when he trotted out and took her some wine and apeach. He came back almost instantly. 

"It's all right, " he said. "She's eating it. "

But it was very far from all right. 

All the prisoned storms and the secret agonies of years were loose thatnight, and they had their way with her. 

We found her dreadfully calm when we got back to her. She had peeled herpeach and eaten it, and she had drunk her wine, and she was sitting bythe great hearth where she had kicked down the andirons; she was sitting, I remember, on one of the Tudor chairs with the carved backs and thetapestry--the lilies of France in gold on a crimson ground--sitting veryupright, in her beautiful trailing gown that curled round her feet; andshe was a little flushed (but that may have been the wine). 

Jimmy went and stood next her in front of his hearth, with his hands inhis trouser pockets--I mean with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, where he seemed to have put them to keep them out of mischief; and hetwinkled as if he were still thinking of the andirons. And every now andthen he glanced at his wife sideways out of his brilliant sapphire eyes, without moving his head a hair's-breadth. 

And none of us said anything. 

Then Jimmy rang for coffee, and that started her. 

She said, "Are you going to do any work to-night?"

"No, " said Jimmy, "I don't think so. Why?"

"Because, if you don't want your study I'll sit in it. "

"All right. " He said it vaguely. But he must have suspected something wasup, for he turned his head round and looked at her straight; and again hesaid, "Why?"

"Because, " she said, "it's the only tolerable room in the house. "

He flushed faintly at this. "You mean, " he said, "it's the only one Ididn't bother about?"

"I _said_ it was the only tolerable one. "

"I see. " His flush went deep, and his mouth closed over his teeth. 

There was no doubt he saw. 

She had hurt him badly. It was quite a minute before he spoke again, and when he did speak you felt that he had yielded, in spite ofhimself, to an overpowering curiosity. He must--he seemed to be saying tohimself--sift this mystery to the bottom. 

"D'you mean, " he said, "that _this_ room doesn't--er--appeal to you?What's wrong with it?"

"There's nothing wrong with it, " she said, "if you like it. "

"Never mind whether I like it or not. It's detestable. _And_ thedrawing-room?"

She did not answer. I think she was ashamed of herself. 

"Even more so, I suppose. And--your boudoir?"

(I've forgotten the boudoir. She hardly ever let any of us go into it. Itwas pretty awful. )

"I do wish, " she said, "you'd leave me alone. What _does_ it matter?"

"Your boudoir, " he went on, as if she hadn't said anything, "is, ifpossible, more detestable than the drawing-room. "

"I never said so. "

"Precisely. That's my grievance. Why, in Heaven's name, didn't you sayso? Why did you tell me that you _liked_ all these abominations?"

"Because they didn't matter. "

"Why lie about them if they didn't matter?"

"I mean they didn't matter to me. They don't. "

"My dear child, what on earth do you suppose they matter to me? What madeyou think they mattered?"

"The way you went on about them. "

"Oh--the way I go on--Well, if _that_ matters--"

She rose. I think she had heard the tinkle of the coffee-cups in thecorridor and wanted to put an end to what in any hands but Jimmy's wouldhave been an unseemly altercation. 

"Will it matter if we go upstairs?"

"No. Not a bit. " He snapped and twinkled at the same time. 

She went, and Norah followed her. 

Jevons settled himself in an armchair. I saw how unperturbed anddeliberate he was as he took his coffee from the tray, and with what anincorrigible air he jerked his thumb towards the staircase. I can stillhear him call up the staircase in a magisterial voice, "The ladies arein the study, Parker. " When we were alone he fell into meditation. 

It was apparently as the result of meditation that he said, "I suppose itis a bit crude, if you come to think of it. Only why couldn't she say soat the time?"

I said I supposed she was afraid of hurting his feelings. 

"My feelings? How could I have any feelings about a blankettydrawing-room suite? Does she really think I'm such a fool that I can'tlive without lions on my staircase? I stuck the beastly things therebecause I thought she'd like 'em. If I thought she'd like a tamerhinoceros in her boudoir I'd have got her one, if I'd 'ad to go out andcatch 'im and train 'im myself. If I thought _now_ that the only way topreserve her affection was to wear that suit of armour every night atdinner I'd wear it and glory in wearing it. There isn't any damned sillything I wouldn't do and glory in. "

And then--"Her nerves must be in an awful state. "

He meditated again. 

"Tell you what--I'll get rid of this place. I'll let it go furnished forwhat it'll fetch. I'll only keep the things we had before--the things sheliked. They _are_ prettier. "

He looked round him with his disenchanted eyes. 

"I can see it's all wrong, this sort of thing. It's in bad taste. Rottenbad taste. I suppose I must have been a bit excited about it at thetime--I must have thought it was all right or I couldn't have stood it. 

"It's a phase I've gone through. 

"I can understand perfectly well how she feels about it. 

"Fact is, I hate the place myself--the whole beastly house I hate. I'vehated it ever since she was ill in it. I can't get away from her illness. I shall always see her ill. She'll be ill again if we go on living in it. 

"I'm tired of the whole business--I'll let it to-morrow and take a housein the country. 

"You might go upstairs, old man, and see what she's doing. "

I went upstairs. 

She was sitting in one corner of the study with a book in her handpretending to read. Norah was sitting in another corner with a book inher hand, pretending to read. I gathered that Norah had been talking toher sister. I took up a book and pretended to read too. 

Presently, when she thought we were absorbed, Viola got up and left us. Norah waited till the door had closed on her. Then she spoke. 

"Wally--it's more awful than we've ever imagined. I don't think she'll beable to stand it much longer. "

"Well, " I said, "she won't have to stand it much longer. He's going tochuck the place. It's got on _his_ nerves, too. He understands exactlyhow she feels about it. "

"Let's hope he doesn't understand how she feels about--It isn't theplace, Wally. "

"What is it, then?"

"I'm most awfully afraid it's Jimmy. "

"Jimmy? You don't mean she doesn't care about him?"

"Oh, no, she cares about him, and it's because she cares so that shecan't stand him. "

"Well, " I said, "whether she cares or not, it's rough on Jimmy. "

"It's rough on her. It's rough on both of them. It's getting rougher androugher, and it's wearing her out. "

"Won't it wear him out too?"

"N-no. Nothing will wear Jimmy out. He's indestructible. He'll wear herout. "

"He says he's going to take a house in the country. How do you thinkthat'll answer?"

She shook her head. 

"I don't know, Walter. I don't really know. It sounds risky. "

"The whole thing, " I said, "was risky from the start. "

"There are two things, " she said, "that would save them--if Reggie wereto come round. Or if Jimmy were to have an illness; and neither of themis in the least likely to happen. "

"There's a third thing, " I said--"if Viola were to have a baby. "

"That isn't likely either. He'd never let her. He says it would kill her. It's pitiful, it's pitiful. Can't you see, " she said, "that he adoresher?"

I said I didn't see what we were there for, and that it was time for usto go. 

As I followed her down the stairs that led to the Tudor hall she pausedsuddenly on the landing where a second lion marked the turn. She had herfinger to her lip. We drew back. But not before I had looked down overthe balustrade into the hall and seen Jimmy sitting on one of the throneswith the lilies of France, and Viola crouching beside him on the rug withher head hidden on his knee. 

He had his hands on her forehead and was saying, "It's all right. Do yousuppose I don't understand?"

XI

It was late in August before Jevons found a country house large enough, yet not too large, and old enough, yet not too old--he would have nothingthat even remotely suggested the Tudor period. And in the intervals oflooking for his house he wrote another novel and two more plays. Therewas a decided falling-off in all of them, and I think Jevons himself wasa little nervous. He said he'd have to be careful next time or they'dfind him out. Once he had settled the affair of the house he would set towork and strengthen the position which, after all, he hadn't lost. 

He had gained, if anything. Nineteen-thirteen stands as his year ofmaximum prosperity. Even the house in Mayfair justified itself when helet it, with all its principal rooms furnished, to an American railwaymagnate at a rent that enabled him to indulge the passion he hadconceived for Amershott Old Grange. 

He used to say he would never have been happy again if he couldn't havehad Amershott Old Grange. Everything about it seemed propitious. They hadfound it by a happy accident when they weren't looking for it, weren'tthinking of it, when they were trying to get out of Sussex and back toLondon after a long day's motoring in search of houses. Nothing thatEssex or Kent or Buckinghamshire (Hertfordshire was ruled out by thepresence in it of the Registrar) or Surrey or Hampshire or Sussex, sofar, could do had satisfied them, and Jevons was beginning to talk ratherwildly about Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire and Wilts, and even Devonand Cornwall, when they lost their way in the cross-country roads betweenMidhurst and Petworth and so came upon Amershott Old Grange. It washidden behind an old rose-red brick wall in a lane, and it was only bystanding up in the motorcar that they caught sight of its long line ofred-tiled dormer windows. The very notice-board was hidden, staggeringback in an ivy bush that topped the wall. 

"I won't have a house, " said Jimmy, "that's a day older than Queen Anne. "No more would Viola. 

And the Old Grange was not a day older than Queen Anne or a day younger. It was the most perfect specimen of a Queen Anne house you could havewished to see--the long, straight front, the slender door, the twostoreys with their rows of straight, flat windows and the steep brows ofthe dormers over them. It was all rose-red brick and rose-red tiles, withroses and clematis bursting out in crimson and purple all over the front. It stood at right angles to the wall and to the lane, and there was along grass-garden in front of it, with walls all round and herbaceousborders under the walls; and from the high postern door in the outer wallopening to the lane a wide flagged path went all the way in front of thehouse to the door in the inner wall that led into the kitchen garden andthe orchard. Further down the lane were the doors of the courtyard at theback of the house where the outhouses and the stables and the dovecotwere; and beyond the courtyard there was a paddock, and you would havethought that was enough. But, besides his Queen Anne house and hisgardens and his orchard and his courtyard and his dovecot and hispaddock, Jimmy had acquired ten acres of moorland, to say nothing of abelt of pinewood that ran the whole length of his estate behind thekitchen garden and the paddock and the moor. And the whole business ofacquiring this property went without a hitch. He took it on the longtail-end of a lease from an impecunious landlord who couldn't afford tokeep it up. 

He obtained possession by September and in the early spring ofnineteen-fourteen he was settled in Amershott Old Grange. 

They furnished it as they had furnished the house in Edwardes Square, with the most complete return to beautiful simplicity. 

Jimmy polished off a short novel and a play between October and June, andkept himself going on the proceeds of his old novels, his old plays, andhis old short stories collected in a volume. Then I think he must havesat down to wait events. 

For when we went down to stay with them we found him waiting. He wasentirely prepared for certain contingencies. If anybody knew anythingabout English social conditions it was Tasker Jevons. He had calculatedall the chances and provided for the ostracism that attends the inexpertinvader of the country-side. He was aware that there were powers in andaround Amershott that were not to be conciliated. The very fact thattheir territory lay so near the frontier (Amershott is only sixty-sevenmiles from London) kept them on their guard. To any good old countyfamily, Tasker Jevons's celebrity was nothing, if it was not an addedoffence, and his opulence was less than nothing. In settling among themhe ran the risk of being ignored. But when it came to ignoring, Jimmyconsidered that success lay with the party who got in first. So before hesettled he took care to diffuse a sort of impression that the TaskerJevonses were never at home to anybody, that it was not to be expectedthat a great novelist and playwright would have time for calling andbeing called on, even if he had the absurd inclination. He had onesolitary introduction in the neighbourhood, and he worked it veryadroitly, not to obtain other introductions, but to spread the rumour ofretirement and exclusiveness. 

His arrival, preceded by this attractive legend, became an event. Youcouldn't even affect to overlook it. And if it was not possible for Jimmyto subdue his features to an expression of complete ignoring, he had gotin so promptly with his attitude that it took the wind out of the sailsof any people who were merely proposing to ignore. 

Then, having come amongst them as a shy recluse, Jimmy began instantly tofocus attention on himself. He hadn't been six weeks in the county beforehe had become the most conspicuous object in it. 

I don't know how he did it; you never really caught him at it; and yet, when you came down to stay with him, you felt all the time that he wasdoing it; you felt a sort of shame (a shame that he couldn't feel) inseeing that he did it so perpetually and so well. He had a way of makinghis privacy a public thing. There was something positively indecent inhis detachment; it advertised him as no possible immersion could havedone. I've seen him lying out on his moor basking all by himself in thesun; I've seen him meditating all by himself in his pinewood; I've seenhim sitting in his walled garden, with the apparatus of his business allabout him, when you would have said that if ever a man's life was hiddenand withdrawn it was Tasker Jevons's. And yet it wasn't. You knew itwasn't; and he knew that you knew. He knew that his gardener and hischauffeur and his butler and his cook and his housemaid and hisparlourmaid knew that he was sitting in his garden writing, or meditatingin his pinewood or basking on his moor in the sun, and that theirknowledge penetrated to every house in the village, to every house in thecounty within a radius of twenty miles. And when he was not doing any ofthese prominently tranquil things he was tearing about the country in hismotor-car. 

I have never seen anything like Jevons's motoring. It was in this newaspect of his that he was, I think, most remarkable. I say he made hisprivacy a public thing; but in the furious publicity of his motoring itwas the other way round. He turned the public roads into a private trackthrough paradise. I do not mean that he was a road-hog; far from it. Hehad the most exquisite manners of the road, He would slow down for a henin the distance and upset himself into the ditch to avoid a rabbit. Ihave known him (with his first car) give a lift to any filthy trampbetween Midhurst and Portsmouth. I mean that the act of motoringtransported him; and he did these things instinctively, mechanically, without interruption to his rapture. Speed and the wind of speed, the airrushing by like a water-race as he ripped through it, the streaming pasthim of trees and hedges, the humming and throbbing of his engines, wereecstasy to Jimmy. He had learned to drive the thing, and his sense ofpower over it gave him the physical exaltation that he craved for. Ibelieve that when he sat in his motor-car, driving it, he was filled, intoxicated, with the pride and splendour of life. He had power overeverybody and everything that lay in his track, except other motor-cars;and he exulted in his knowledge that he could annihilate them and didn't. He enjoyed (voluptuously) his own mercy that spared them. Through hismotor-car he attained such an extension of his personality that he becameintolerable to other people and unrecognizable to himself. 

And yet I do not think that even at the height of his ecstasy he everreally forgot that he was Tasker Jevons, the great novelist andplaywright, in his motor-car. When he drove you through Portsmouth orChichester, or even through little Midhurst, you felt that he thrilledfrom head to foot with self-consciousness. He knew and had acute pleasurein knowing that people noticed him as he went by; that the tradesmenturned out of their shops to stare after him; and that everybody said, "See that chap? That's Tasker Jevons. He always drives his own car. "

He owned that he enjoyed it. I remember the first time we went down tostay with them (it was in May of nineteen-fourteen), when he was drivingus through Midhurst from the station, how he said to us, "I'm glad Ithought of living in the country. It makes me feel celebrated. "

We asked him if he hadn't ever felt it before; and he answered solemnly, "Never for a minute. Never, I mean, like I do down here. In London, ifyou do gather a crowd round you, you're swallowed up in it. Besides, youcan't always gather a crowd. D'you suppose, if I were to drive downPiccadilly in this car--short of standing on my head--I could attract theattention I've attracted to-day? You saw those fellows come out and lookat me? Well--they do that pretty nearly every time, Furnival. 

"No. London's no good. Too many houses--too many people--too manymotor-cars. You can't stand out. What a man wants to set him off islandscape, Furny, landscape. You should see me on the goose-green atAmershott towards post-time. "

Well, I did see him on the goose-green towards post-time, and I saw whathe meant. It was really as if I'd never seen him before properly. 

Heavens, how he stood out! It was as if a stage had been cleared for him, and for the figure he cut. He was quite right. You couldn't have done itin Piccadilly, or even in the suburbs. And he wasn't in his motor-car, mind you, then; he was simply strolling over from his house to post aletter in the village on the green, and I do not know how he contrived toinfuse into so simple an act that subtle taint of advertisement. Therewas no necessity for him to post his own letters, he could easily havesent a servant. But I do believe he couldn't bear to miss the opportunityof being seen. When he passed the Vicarage, the Vicar and his wife anddaughters were generally in their garden, and they turned to look at hispassing, and he was exquisitely conscious of them. The villagers came outon to their doorsteps to look at him, and he was conscious of thevillagers. The geese followed him in a long line across the common andstretched out their necks after him, and he was conscious of the geese. He enjoyed the publicity they gave him, and he said so. 

And I began to wonder whether the funny frankness that had so disarmed uswas really as funny as it looked (the idea of disarmament, you see, wasserious), whether he didn't say these things because he knew we saw himas he really was; because he saw himself as he really was, and couldn'tbear it; because there was no escape for him unless he could make believethat he was in fun when he really wasn't. 

I do believe there was a time (any time before his Tudor period) when he_was_ in fun, pure fun; and even through the Tudor period his enjoymentof himself was innocent. But as I walked home with him across his moorthat evening it was borne in upon me that Jimmy's innocence was gone. Living in the country had killed it. I had never perceived so definite ataint of vulgarity in him before. 

You would have thought it would have been all the other way, that livingin the country would have made altogether for simplicity and purity. Ibelieve that quite honestly he had thought it would, that he had comeinto the country to be purified and simplified, and to put himself rightwith Viola for ever. And the horrid irony of it was that the countrydidn't do any of these things to him; it complicated him, it saturatedhim with that taint I've mentioned, and instead of putting him right itshowed him up. Quite horribly and cruelly it showed him up. I do notthink there was a single weakness or a single secret meanness that he hadthat didn't suddenly rise up and stand out on the background ofAmershott. 

All through that summer there, quite frankly, I detested Jevons. Ibelieve that Norah came near detesting him, that she felt something verylike contempt for him. 

And if Norah felt it you may imagine what Viola would feel. 

She was with us one evening (it was June, I think, and our second visit), when Jimmy showed most unmistakably the cloven hoof. We had come in froma long motor drive, and he had made at once, as he always did, for thesilver plate in the hall where cards left by callers were put, if anycallers came. I can see him now, breathing hard. I can see the glance hecast at the cards, and the little jerky curb he put on his excitement--hehad the grace to be ashamed of it. And then I see him holding four cardsin his hand, sober and quiet and flushed like a man who has triumphedsolemnly. And I hear him read out the names: "Lord Amerley, Lady Amerley, Lady Octavia Amerley, the Honourable Frances Amerley. _That's_ all right. I gave them three months. "

And I see Viola look at him, taking in his figure in its motor-dress, andhis face, with the foolish, weak elation he couldn't for the life of himkeep out of it. 

Again I see him, with his little dreadful air of fervid solemnity--and Idon't know whether I dreamed it or whether it was really there--veryspruce and strutting about the lawns of Amerley Park at that garden-partythey took us to. 

And later on--in the very beginning of July it must have been--I see himon his own lawn at his own garden-party, and--I didn't dream it thistime--he was really dreadful. Instead of carrying it off with the levitythat had so often saved him from perdition, there was that revoltingtriumph about him and an uneasy eagerness, as if he knew that his triumphwasn't quite complete. But the garden-party was, as he would have said, all right. They were all there, those people he had given three monthsto. He had pulled it off precisely as he had schemed and calculated. Those legends of his detachment and his hermit habits had been worked soas to excite a supreme curiosity--and it was being satisfied. 

And I cannot tell you whether he was really altered, or whether he hadbeen like that all the time before Amershott had shown him up, and noneof us had seen it except Viola. 

Oh no--it's impossible. He had altered. If he had been like this we musthave seen it. What Viola had seen--if she had seen anything--was only theforeshadowing, the bare possibility of this. 

Charlie Thesiger was at that garden-party (he had retired from theservice with the rank of Captain). 

And it was at the garden-party that I first noticed a change in hismanner to his cousin's husband. He used to treat Jevons with a certainsuperciliousness, and with as much amusement, as much perception of hisabsurdity, as was possible for Charlie, who perceived so few things. NowI was struck with the correct young man's deference to his host. It wasreally as if it had at last dawned on Charlie that Jevons _was_ his host, and that he had other claims to distinction as well. The more dreadfulJimmy was, the more courteous Charlie showed himself to Jimmy. And thisin spite of the fact that Jevons had a way of treating Charlie as if hedidn't matter, as if for all recognizable purposes he wasn't there. 

When I spoke of this to Norah, she said that Viola had told him that ifhe couldn't be decent to Jimmy she wouldn't have him there. 

Well, there he was, hanging about Viola from morning till night; he hadany amount of time on his hands now, and he spent most of it atAmershott. He was there when we weren't sometimes, so that we couldn'tkeep track of him. But his purposes ought to have been apparent to us. Ithink it was partly because he was aware of them himself that he went outof his way to be decent to Jimmy, almost as if he were sorry for himbeforehand. 

For it was evident enough that Viola liked his being there, and liked tohave him hanging round her. There was nothing about him that shocked orgrated. I've no doubt he made himself entirely charming. His mannerscould be as beautiful as any of the Thesigers' when he chose, and theysoothed her. I think she had ceased to feel them as a reproach to Jimmy. She had given up _his_ manners, poor dear, long ago, as a bad job. It wasas if she had slaked her thirst for the unusual. Some secret and strongrevulsion had thrown her back on the people and the things that she hadbeen brought up amongst and that she had run away from. When Jimmy jarredon her she turned to Charlie for relief. And, after all, as Norah said, he was her cousin. 

I don't think we either of us saw anything more in it than that. Withoutsome such reaction she must have surrendered to Amershott. She couldn'tdefend Jevons against that showing up. She couldn't defend herselfagainst those revelations, she could only stand by and look on at hisenormity and shudder. Unless she had put her dear eyes out she must haveseen that in the country he was not only a bounder but a snob. And shemust have writhed in feeling that to see him that way was to be a bit ofa snob herself. She had accused herself of snobbishness long ago, beforeshe married him, when, in order to marry him, she had burned her boats. 

What could she do? She couldn't put her eyes out. But I believe she wouldhave been grateful to anybody who would have put them out for her. 

I can't tell whether she was always unhappy. I rather think she had likedAmershott, the house and the garden and the pinewood and the bit of moor, and I am certain that she liked motoring almost as much as Jimmy did atfirst. She could even take pleasure in Jimmy's power over the car whenthey were alone with it in the open country, when his pleasure had notaint in it. I've heard her say, when he wanted to run down to Chichesteror Portsmouth, "Oh, for Heaven's sake, let's go somewhere where nobodycan look at us!"

She must have regarded the open country as the last refuge of hisinnocence. For her, more than for any of us, he had lost it. 

 * * * * *

How far he really lost it we shall never know. Even now, with all mylights, with that intense country light fairly beating on him, I canwonder: Am I saying these things because I think them? Or because Ibelieve I must have thought them then? And I cannot answer my own wonder. I remember how at Amershott, when I sat beside him in that car of his andwatched his ecstasy, I used to pull myself up and say to myself, "You_know_ he isn't like that. Look at him--what woolly lamb could be moresimple and innocent than he is now?" And if anybody had come to me andasked me if I didn't think that Jevons _was_ a little awful I should havesaid that if you were a little awful yourself you might think so, but nototherwise. My conscience has told me that as he became more successful Ibecame more critical; it has even suggested that I may have been jealousof his success. 

 * * * * *

But that was in the days (they were comparatively innocent) of his firstmotor-car. Round that car there really is a light of romance and ofadventure, a glamour that isn't at all the glamour of his opulence. Inthose days he did look upon a motor-car mainly as an instrument ofpleasure, and not as a vulgar advertisement of his income. In June, atany rate, he was still the master of his car and not--as we saw him lateron--its servant. There never was anything like that first fury of hismotoring. 

It couldn't last. He was wearing himself out. Those early excessesexhausted his capacity for pleasure, and when we came to stay with him inthe last two weeks of July we found him apathetic about motoring. 

But not about motor-cars. As far as the cars went he had developed intoan incurable motor-maniac. He was never tired of talking aboutcarburetters, and tyres, and petrol, and garages and gear. He dreamed ofthese things at night. Every day he invented some extraordinarycontrivance for increasing speed and lessening friction. He knew all thatwas to be known about the different kinds of cars; and he would rolltheir names on his tongue--Panhard and Fiat and Daimler and Mercédès andRolls-Royce, as if the sound of them caressed him like music. 

And the first car which he had mastered--it was a comparatively cheapone, but it wouldn't be fair to say what kind it was, for the poor thinghad gone to pieces under his hand in six months; he had served her, hischauffeur said, something cruel--that first car had been sold for ahundred and fifty pounds, and Viola was mourning for it when we came downin July. 

We couldn't think why she mourned, for he had bought another. We supposedthat the new car had broken down, for we were met at Midhurst station bythe local cab proprietor. But we were very soon to know that nothinghad happened to the new car, and that something very serious indeed hadhappened to Jimmy. 

He had gone mad--you can only call it mad--over his new car. 

As soon as we had tea we were taken to see it where it stood in thecoach-house that served as a garage. 

It was a magpie car--the first, Jimmy told me, that had appeared down inthat part of the country--white, with black bonnet and blacksplashboards, and black leather hood and cushions; so black that itsbody, in the matchless purity of its whiteness, staggered you. Anybody, Jevons said, could have an all-white car, and it wouldn't be noticed anymore than a common taxi-cab. But one magpie in a countless crowd of carsannihilated all the rest. Lemon colour was good and so was scarlet; butfor effect--for sheer destruction to other automobilists--there wasnothing like a white car with black points. It was, Jimmy said andKendal, the chauffeur, said, a perfect car. From their tone you wonderedwhat you had ever done that you should be allowed to approach and see itwhere it stood. 

Where it stood, I say. You couldn't see that car doing anything else. Itstood like an immense idol in a temple; and it looked as if all its lifeit never had done anything else but stand in its perfection to be staredat. And by its air of self-consciousness, of majesty, of arrogant powerin repose, you gathered that it knew it was there to be stared at. Thething was drawn up at the far end of the garage, where no breath couldblow on it, over an open pit. You knew that Kendal, the chauffeur, wentdown on a ladder into the pit to examine the secret being of the car; youknew it and yet it was incredible. You refused to believe that an outrageto which common cars were subject ever had been or would be perpetratedon this holy one. You would have said that no spot of mud or dust or rainhad ever lighted on it; it might have descended into the garage out ofheaven for any sign of travel that it showed. It was surrounded by Iknow not what atmosphere of consecration and immunity. 

So that Norah's first question sounded like a profanity. 

"What speed is it?" she said. 

It might have been fancy, but I thought that Jevons's face underwent achange. I certainly saw Kendal the chauffeur looking at it. 

"Speed?" he said. "Speed? Well--you _can_ speed her up to sixty miles anhour if you want to. " (He seemed to say, "If she ever is speeded up, " or"You jolly well may want. ")

He ran his hand lovingly along the car's white flank as if it were aliveand could respond to the caress. 

"She's a beauty, " he said. 

The chauffeur looked at him again. 

"You won't want to knock her about like you did the last one, Mr. Jevons, " he said. 

And Jimmy's face expressed a sort of horror. 

The chauffeur looked at us then, and, if you can wink without any motionof the eyelids, he winked. He saw, and he was trying to indicate to us, the state that Jevons had fallen into. 

It was infatuation; it was idolatry; it was the most extraordinarypassion I have ever known a man otherwise sane to be possessed by. Youwould have said that that creature with the black-and-white body and theterrific bowels of machinery had some sinister and magic power over him. He loved it; he worshipped it; he was afraid of it. And when you think ofhow, as the chauffeur said, he had "served" the other car--

Knock her about, indeed! He daren't take her out of the garage for afifteen-mile run without agonies of apprehension. He never took her outat all unless he was certain that it wouldn't rain and that therewouldn't be any mud or any dust or any wind (I don't know what harm hethought the wind would do her). Instead of taking her out he would spendhours in the garage standing still and looking at her, stooping sometimesto examine her for a spot or a crack on her enamel, but always withreverence. I believe he never touched her without washing his handsfirst. 

We had been at Amershott a week and we hadn't been out in that car threetimes, though the weather was perfect. Jimmy never could see that it wasperfect enough. If it hadn't rained for two days he was afraid of dust;if it did rain he was afraid of mud; what he wanted was one light showerto lay the dust; and when he got it he was afraid of another showercoming. And on hot days he was afraid the sun might do something. And hewas afraid of _us_ all the time lest we should ask him to take the carout on a day that wouldn't do. 

I do not know how or why he had come to look on that car as his god. Itwasn't, I do believe that it wasn't, because the thing was valuable, because he had sunk so much capital in that body and those engines (hehad bought the most expensive kind of car you could buy). There was asort of romance, a purity in his passion that redeemed it from the taintof grossness. It was the car's own purity, her unique and staggeringbeauty that had captivated him. And mixed with his passion there was theremorse and terror caused by the memory of his first car, the victim ofhis intemperance in motoring. He had evidently said to himself:"Motor-cars are perishable things. I did for my first beloved by myexcesses. Rather than knock this divinity about I will abstain frommotoring. " And the cab-proprietor of Midhurst must have made a fortuneout of Jimmy's abstinence. 

The odd thing was that Charlie Thesiger respected it. (He too had comedown for the last fortnight in July. ) He was the only one of us whodidn't protest, didn't clamour, didn't try to reason or to laugh Jimmyout of his insanity. And he went further. He refused to enter the car, tobe taken in it on the few suitable days when Jimmy allowed it to go out. It was as if he were dominated by some scruple as morbid as his host'spassion. We couldn't account for it at the time, for he liked motoringexcessively, and he couldn't afford it. 

I've wondered since whether this wasn't the way Charlie settled withhis conscience, his own sacrifice to decency. He could eat Jimmy's breadand drink his wine and stay for weeks under his roof, since hisnecessity--the necessity of seeing Viola--compelled him, but to profit byhim to that extent, to make use of Jimmy's opulence, was beyond him. Hisconscience may have even said to him, "If he loves his motor-car, forGod's sake let him have _that_, at any rate, to himself. "

And Viola seemed to share Charlie's scruple. She, too, shrank from usingthe new car. And I remember her saying to me one day as we crossed thecourtyard and saw Jimmy, as usual, in the garage, worshipping his car, "I'm so glad he's got it. I think it makes him happier. " As if she hadconfessed that it was all he _had_ got; that she was not able to make himhappy any more; and as if, in some day of unhappiness that she sawcoming, it would be a consolation to the poor chap. At any rate, as ifshe were not in the least jealous of the power it had over him. 

So, that July, Norah and I drove with Jimmy when the car, so to speak, let him drive it; and Viola walked through the woods and over the downswith Charlie Thesiger. 

We often wondered what they found to talk about. 

That wonder, of what Viola could see in Charlie, and how she could endurefor so many hours the burden of his society, was all that Norah hadallowed herself, so far, to express. If she felt any uneasiness she hadnot yet confided it to me. As for Jevons, he tolerated him as you onlytolerate a thing that doesn't matter. I think honestly that to both ofthem, Charlie, in any serious connection with Viola, was as impossible asJevons himself had been to her brother Reggie. 

So little did he take him seriously that at the very end of July he wentup to London for the inside of the week (he went by train so as to savethe car) while Charlie was still at the Old Grange. 

 * * * * *

It was the week of the international crisis, and European mobilizationwas occupying Jimmy's mind to the exclusion of other matters. Still, youcould hardly suppose that it was the crisis that was taking him up toLondon. I remember thinking he had run away from Charlie Thesiger, because he bored him. 

He left on Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, and he was to be back on Friday, the thirty-first, and Charlie was to leave with Norah and me and ournurse and Baby on the Monday following, when our fortnight was up. 

So on Friday afternoon I was a little astonished to find mysister-in-law, dressed in her town suit of white cloth, drinking tea atthree o'clock before going up to London. She simply stated the fact thatshe was going up. Norah had said she might stay in our house and shehoped I wouldn't mind. 

When I suggested that it would surely be nicer for us all to go uptogether on Monday she looked at me with a certain long-sufferingexpression that she had for me at times, and said that wouldn't suit her, since she had got to go to-day. She was of course awfully sorry to leaveus, but Norah understood, and Jimmy would look after us very well. 

No. She wasn't going up by Midhurst. She was going by Selham. 

She rose. I noticed the impatient energy of her little hands as theyknotted her veil under her chin. I looked up her trains and found thatthere was none from Selham till four forty-five. I pointed out to herthat there was no hurry; she had missed the two fifty-five, which hadleft Selham fifteen minutes ago, and she had an hour to spare even if thecar took half an hour getting to the station. (The day was fine and therewas no dust. Even Jimmy couldn't have objected to her taking the car. )

But she said she hadn't missed the two fifty-five; she wasn't trying forit; and she wasn't going in the car; it would be wanted to meet Jimmy atMidhurst Station; and no--no--_no_--she didn't want a cab from Midhurst. She was going to walk. 

I said it was absurd for her to walk four miles on a hot day like this, and she replied that the day would be cool enough if only I'd keep quiet. (She was still long-suffering. )

Then of course I said I'd walk with her. 

But that was too much for her, and she stamped her foot and said I'd donothing of the kind. She didn't want anybody to walk with her. 

And when I inquired about her luggage--But I can't repeat what she saidabout her luggage!

Then she softened suddenly, as her way was, and kissed Norah, and said Iwas a dear, and she was sorry for snapping my head off, but it was allright. Norah knew all about it. She'd explain. 

I can see her standing in the postern doorway and saying these things andthen giving me her hand and holding mine tight, while she shook her headat me and smiled that little baffling smile that seemed to come upflickering from her depths of wisdom on purpose to put me in the wrong. 

"The trouble with you, Furny, " she said, "is that you're much too good. "

She went; and we saw her tall, lithe figure swinging up the lane, pastthe courtyard and the paddock and the moor. 

Then Norah plucked me in by the coat-sleeve as if she thought we oughtn'tto be looking at her. We shut the door on her flight and turned to eachother where we stood on the flagged path before the house. 

"What does it mean?" I said. 

"It means that she's at the end of her tether. "

"The end--?" I think I must have gasped. 

"The very end. She can't stand it any longer. "

"But, " I said, "she--she's got to stand it. After all--"

"There's no good talking that way. She _can't_, and that settles it. Iknew she couldn't, once she got beyond a certain point. "

"Do you mean to say, " I said, "that she's going to leave him?"

"I--don't--know. I believe--she's going to think about it. "

"But--it's out of the question. She mustn't think about it. "

"You can't stop her thinking, Wally. She's gone away to think about itsanely. It's the best thing she can do. "

"And you're helping her to get away?"

She was silent for a moment. 

"I'm only helping her to think, " she said. 

I was stern with her. "You're not. You're just helping her to bolt, " Isaid. "You're conniving at her bolting. You've lent her our house. "

"Isn't it better she should come to us?"

"No, it isn't better. I don't like it. And I won't have it. I won't haveyou mixed up in it. Do you understand?"

"Dear Wally--there isn't anything to be mixed up in. We'll be back onMonday; then she'll only be staying with us. "

"And till then--?"

"Till then--for Heaven's sake let the poor thing have peace for threedays to think in. "

"That's all very well, " I said, "but what are we to say to Jimmy when hecomes back this afternoon?"

"You say--you say she's tired of--of Amershott and wants three days inLondon to herself. --No, you don't. You don't say anything. You leave itto me. Vee-Vee said it was to be left to me. "

"And _I_ say I won't have you dragged into it. Good Heavens, have you anyidea what you may be let in for, supposing--?"

"Supposing what?"

I couldn't say what. But I don't think I really had supposedanything--then. 

"You needn't suppose things, " she said. "Vee-Vee would never let us in. Look here, Wally--you've got to trust me this time. I'm going to seeVee-Vee through, and I'm going to see Jimmy through; but I can't do it ifyou don't trust me. I can't do it if you interfere. "

I said I did trust her, and that God knew I didn't want to interfere, butwas she quite sure she was doing a wise thing?

She said, "Quite sure. Let's go and lie down in the pine-wood tilltea-time. I wonder if Jimmy would mind us going into Midhurst with thecar. We shouldn't hurt it, sitting in it. "

We lay out in the pine-wood till we heard the bell for tea, which wehad ordered a little before four, in case Jevons should wire for thecar to meet him by the early afternoon train that got to Midhurst atfour-sixteen. 

The table was set as usual in the garden on the lawn in front of thehouse. 

By four o'clock no wire had come from Jevons; so we knew we needn'texpect him till a later train. He nearly always came by Waterloo andPetersfield and was met at Midhurst, which gave him his public. But hemight come, as Viola had gone, by Victoria and Horsham and be metat Selham. 

I remember saying, in a startling manner as the idea struck me, "Supposing he comes by Victoria?"

And Norah said, "What if he does?"

And I, "They might meet at Horsham. "

"Why shouldn't they?" she said. "You don't suppose he'll eat her forrunning up to town?"

"He might, " I said, "think it odd of her. "

"Not he. The beauty of Jimmy is that odd things don't seem odd to him. Doyou know where Charlie is?"

I didn't. We had finished tea before either of us had thought of him. Weshouted to him through the open windows of the house, for Charlie had ahabit of mooning about indoors till Viola was ready to walk with him. 

No answer came to our summons, but it brought Parker, the butler, out onto the lawn. He had a slightly surprised and slightly embarrassed look onhis respectable and respectful face, no longer demoralized by Jimmy. 

"Were you looking for the Captain, sir?" he said. 

I said we were. 

Something grave and a little sorrowful came into Parker's embarrassedlook. 

"Didn't you know he'd gone, sir?"

I said I didn't even know he was going; and then I saw Norah looking atme. 

Parker was trying not to look at Norah. He began gathering up thetea-things as if to justify his presence and explain it. 

"When did he go?" I said as casually as I could. 

"Well, sir--the cab was ordered to catch the four thirty-five fromMidhurst. "

Now the four thirty-five from Midhurst is the four forty-five fromSelham, the train that Viola had gone by. We knew this; and Parker knewthat we knew it. That was why, instead of stating outright that CaptainThesiger had gone by that train, he tried to soften the blow to us bysaying that the cab had been ordered to catch it, and leaving it open tous to suppose that perhaps, after all, it might have missed it. 

"Did he say when he was coming back?" I asked, again casually. 

"He isn't coming back, sir, " said Parker. "He's took his luggage with himand all. "

"Of course, " said Norah. "He's gone to see what they're doing at the WarOffice. He said he would. "

But I knew and she knew and Parker knew he hadn't--or, if he had, it wasonly one of the things he had gone for. Because, if the War Office hadbeen all that he had in his mind he would have told us, and Viola wouldhave told us, and they would have gone openly together, instead ofdodging about like two clumsy criminals, one at Midhurst and the other atSelham. 

When Parker had left (he did it very quickly) Norah got on her feet. 

She said, "Go and find Kendal and tell him to bring the car around atonce. "

I asked her what she was going to do?

"Do?" she flashed at me. She had changed all in a moment into a womanwhom I did not know. 

"I'm going to fetch her back, " she said. She had wriggled into her coat. "We'll overtake her before she gets to Selham, if you're quick. "

I looked at my watch. It was barely half-past four. Yes, if we werequick, if we started at once, if we let the new car rip we shouldovertake her on the road, or at the station before she could get intothat train with Charlie Thesiger in it. I meant, and Norah's eyes meant, that we would stop her going with him, if we had to drag her from theplatform. 

We ran to the garage to find Kendal. The new car, the superb black andwhite creature, stood in the middle of the courtyard, ready to start whenJimmy's wire came. So far it was all right. 

But we had reckoned without Kendal, the chauffeur. 

Kendal, absolved from the four-sixteen train at Midhurst, was at his teain the servants' hall, and at my summons he came out slowly, munching ashe came. He was visibly outraged at our intrusion on his sacred leisure. And when he was ordered to start at once for Selham, he refused. Therewas no train from Victoria, he said, between the four-four that Mr. Jevons hadn't come by and the five fifty-two. _If_, Kendal said, he didcome by Victoria, and he always came by Waterloo. 

What was the sense, said Kendal, with his mouth full, of going to Selhamwhen we hadn't got a wire?

The sense of it, Norah told him, was that we had a message--an importantmessage--for Mrs. Jevons, which she _must_ get before she started. 

At this Kendal left off munching and looked at my wife. Even in myeagerness I was struck by the singular intelligence of that look. Therewas nothing covert in it. On the contrary it was a most straightforwardand transparent look. Kendal's knowledge--which might have sought coverif you had hunted it--had come out to meet ours on equal terms. 

It only lasted for the fraction of a second. Kendal repeated firmly, butthis time respectfully, that she was Mr. Jevons's car and he couldn'ttake her out without Mr. Jevons's orders, for if he did Mr. Jevons wouldgive him the sack. 

To which Norah replied that Mr. Jevons would give him the sack if hedidn't, or if he made us miss that train by arguing. I told him sternlyto look sharp. He looked it and we got off. I had begun to crank up thecar myself while I spoke. 

But he had wasted three minutes of our valuable fifteen. Though on theopen road we speeded up the car to her sixty miles an hour, we had toslow down in the narrow lanes. Once we were held up by a country cart, and once by cows in our track, and Norah was beside herself at each halt. 

As we careened into the station yard I thought that my wife would havehurled herself out of the car. 

The station-master stood by the booking-office door. He had an ominousair of leisure. And when he saw us coming he looked at his watch. 

He told us that we had missed the train by three minutes (the threeminutes that Kendal had wasted). 

I had jumped out of the car and was telling Kendal that it was all hisfault, and that if he'd done what he was told we should have caught thetrain, when he turned on me as only a chauffeur convicted of folly canturn. 

"Stand away from the car, sir, " he shouted. He jerked her nose round withthe savage energy of a chauffeur in the wrong; he seemed to impart hisown fury to the car. She snorted and screamed as he backed her and droveher forward and backed her again. 

And again he shouted to me. "You get in, sir, if you don't want to beleft be'ind. "

As he seemed to be animated chiefly by the fear of Jevons (whom, by theway, he adored), we could only suppose that his idea was to fly back toAmershott in time for Jimmy's wire. 

On the high road past the station he took the wrong turn. 

_I_ shouted then, "What do you think you're doing, you confounded fool?"

"Ketch the London train at 'Orsham, sir, " said Kendal. And he grinned. 

"You can't do it, " we said. 

"I'll 'ave a try, " said Kendal. 

His honour as a chauffeur was at stake. His blood was up. His knowledgehad begun to work in him and he adored his master. He knew what he wastrying to do. 

We could do it if we kept our heads; if we exceeded the speed limit; ifwe had luck; if we didn't break down; if neither the county constabularynor the country traffic held us up. 

Kendal declared we could do it easily and allow for accidents. At HorshamJunction you have nearly half an hour to wait between the arrival of theMidhurst and Selham train and the departure of the London express. Andthe local trains take more than half an hour to get from Selham toHorsham. At a pinch you could speed the car up to the limit of the localtrain. And, as we had to allow for accidents, we did speed her upwhenever we saw a clean track before us. 

The run to Selham was nothing to it. It was as if we were racing thetrain with its three minutes start, as if, positively, we might overtakeit at any of the intermediate stations, as if it were in this hope thatwe dashed up the long white slope to Petworth. 

The heat of the day gathered over our heads and smouldered in the east. 

And as we ran I realized at last why we were running and what the racewas and the hunt, and what our quarry. I remembered that other slowerchase that was yet so keen and so agonizing; that hunting down of thesame tender flesh and blood, over the Channel and across a foreigncountry. That was bad enough; but it was not like this. For then I wasalone in my hunting of Viola; there was nobody but me, who loved her, tosee her run to earth and caught crouching in her corner. That she wouldcrouch, this time, and hide herself, I had no doubt. This hunt that Ishared with her sister and her servant was abominable to me and shameful. And between the shame of that flight of hers and this flight there was nocomparison. You don't go looking at belfries with Charlie Thesiger. Icould not reconcile that enchanting and enchanted Viola of the garden ofBruges with this dreadful flying figure. 

I hated myself; I hated Kendal, the chauffeur, as I sat behind his tight, efficient body that quivered with the fury of the hunt. (To think that_his_ blood should be up and against Viola!) I hated the car that seemedmore than ever a living thing, that breathed and snorted and vibratedwith the same passion, and was endowed with this incredible speed andthis superhuman power. With its black nose and white flanks, and itsblack hood and the black wings of its splash-boards, it was some terribleand sinister and malignant monster of prey hunting down Viola. Its bodyhad been built, its engines had been forged, to hunt down Viola. Theinfernal thing had been invented to hunt down Viola. 

Somewhere between Petworth and Fittleworth Kendal stopped to water hisengine. It was then that we noticed how the gathering heat was piled intoa bank of cloud over the east. At the back of our necks we could feel alittle hot puff of wind that came up from the west. 

"Shouldn't wonder if there was a storm, " said Kendal. He added, with theghost of a grin, "If Mr. Jevons sees that cloud, sir, he'll not wire tobe met at Midhurst. He'd crawl home on his 'ands and knees first. "

He slipped into his seat and we dashed on. 

At Fittleworth, within a stone's-throw of the railway and the road, thereis a patch of moor where the ground rises in a hillock. In July andAugust when the heather's out this hillock is a crimson landmark abovethe water meadows. 

When we came within sight of it Kendal suddenly slowed down, then jammedhis brakes hard, and with an awful grinding and snorting the car came toa stand-still. 

Kendal stood up. He muttered something about being blowed. Then heturned. 

"Got the glasses there, sir?"

I found the glasses, but I didn't give them to Kendal. I stood up too andlooked through them. 

I couldn't see anything at first. 

"There, sir, " said Kendal, pointing. "No. You're looking too much to theleft. You got to get right o' thet sandy patch--against thet there clumpof heather. Now d'you see, sir?"

I did. 

Kendal had made out with the naked eye a figure, the figure of a woman, seated on the hillside, a white figure that showed plainly against thered background of the heather. 

"It's Mrs. Jevons, sir, " he stated. 

It was. 

I could see her quite distinctly through the field-glasses. She wassitting on the clump of heather to the right of the sandy patch, settledand motionless, in the attitude of one who waited at her ease, with hoursbefore her. And she was alone. 

We went on as far as we could towards the moor. Norah and I left the carand struck across the moor by the sandy track that led to the bare patchand the clump of heather. 

The seated figure must have been aware of us from the first moment of ourapproach. You couldn't miss that black and white car as it charged alongthe highway, or as it stood now, with its engines still humming, by theroadside. But the figure remained seated in its attitude of waiting. Itwaited while we crossed the moor; and as we climbed the hillock we becameintensely aware of it and of its immobility. 

We saw its face fixed on us with an expression of tranquil patience andexpectation. I may say that I felt an intolerable embarrassment beforethis quietness of the hunted thing that we had run to earth; especiallyas it was on me, and not Norah, that Viola's face was fixed as we camenearer. 

Then she smiled at me; there was neither conciliation nor defiancein her smile, but a sort of serene assurance and--yes, it wasunmistakable--contempt. 

She said, "Whatever do you think you're doing _now_?"

I said we might not know what we were doing, but we knew what we weregoing to do. We were going to take her back with us in the car. 

At that she asked us (but without any sign of perturbation) if we had gotJimmy there?

Norah said No, our idea was to run back to Amershott before Jimmy gotthere. 

"Where were you running to when you saw me sitting up here?" she said. 

I said we'd meant to catch her at Selham but we missed the train and weretrying to get to Horsham before the London train started. 

She was looking at me now with a sort of compassion, the tenderness ofher contempt. 

"I see, " she said. "You _were_ clever, weren't you?"

She looked at her watch. "Well, as you _are_ here, " she said, "I'd letyou run me down to Horsham, if you want a run, only I can't very well useJimmy's car. "

I think it was Norah who asked her what on earth she was doing atFittleworth. 

"Can't you see, " she said, "that I'm waiting for the next train?"

"Did you walk here from Amershott, or what?" I said. 

She said, "Rather not. I was in the train. "

Then Norah said, "What happened?"

It had dawned on us both how odd it was that Viola should be here, apparently alone, at Fittleworth. It was also odd how we were allignoring Charlie. I believe I had a sort of idea that she had got himhidden somewhere in the landscape. 

Viola smiled a reminiscent smile. "If you _must_ know, " she said, "whathappened was that Charlie was in that train, too--he came bursting out onto the platform at Selham, awfully pleased with himself, because he'dpicked my luggage up at Midhurst and bagged a corner seat for me, andmade faces at people to keep them out. "

"Did you know he was going up to town?" I said. 

"No, of course I didn't. He didn't know it himself. There was no reasonwhy he shouldn't go. And you'd have thought there was no reason why weshouldn't go together. He was all right till we got to Petworth. Butafter that he lost his head and made such an ass of himself that I had toget out here and make him go on by himself. Silly idiot!"

We were sitting in the heather, one on each side of her, and I saw mywife slip her arm into hers and hug it to her. 

"Did _you_ know, " she said, "that Charlie'd gone?"

We didn't answer. We simply couldn't. 

And then Viola said, "Poor little Norah!"

And she told her to run away for ten minutes while she talked to me. 

"Why poor little Norah?" I asked when we were alone. 

"Because, " she said, "you frightened her. "

"I? Frightened her?"

"Yes, " she said. "You made her think I was going to run away withCharlie. There's no good trying to look as if you didn't. You're quiteawful, Furny, in the things you think. You can't help it, I know. You'reso good, so shockingly good, and you can't bear other people to benaughty. You thought I'd run away to Belgium with Jimmy and you camerushing after me and fetched me back. You thought I'd run away withCharlie and you came rushing--in your dreadful rectitude, and in Jimmy'smotor-car that he won't let anybody look at. You'll have an awful timewith Jimmy when you get back. It's going to rain, and there'll be mud onthe car, and he'll dance with rage when he sees it. And he won't thinkit's any excuse if you tell him you thought I was running away withCharlie, and you took the car to fetch me back; he'll say you'd nobusiness to think it and in any case you'd no business to take the carout. And poor Kendal will be sacked. 

"That's all you've done, " she said, "by your fussy interference. "

She went on. "It wouldn't matter what you think about me--but it wasbeastly of you to go and make Norah think it. "

I said I didn't suppose either of us thought anything, except that sinceshe was going up to town with the idea of leaving her husband, it was notdesirable that she should go up with Charlie Thesiger. 

"Who could possibly have supposed, " she said, "that Charlie would be suchan ass?"

I said I for one could. 

"Oh, you--haven't I told you you're always supposing things?"

"Surely?" I said, "you must have seen--yourself--"

She smiled. "My dear--I couldn't see anything but poor Jimmy. "

"And yet, " I said, "you could think of leaving him?"

She moaned. "You fool--you fool--that's _why_ I'm thinking of it. "

She pressed her hands to her eyes as if she shut back the sight of him. 

"You aren't thinking of it, " I said. "You haven't left him. You've onlybeen for a good long walk to Fittleworth, and we've come to fetch youback in the car. "

"Haven't I told you that I can't and won't use Jimmy's car?"

"You can't use it to run away from him in; but you can very well use itto go back to him. "

"I'm not going back to him, " she said. "Can't you see that I've burnt myboats?"

"You may have burnt the old ones, Viola, " I said. "But you can buildnew. "

"You must give me time, Wally. It'll take a long time. And you don'tunderstand me. I _want_ to get away from Jimmy. That's why I'm going awaynow, while he isn't there. That's what I mean by burning my boats. If I go back to him--if I see him--I shall never get away. I shan't havethe courage. I shall just crumple up with the first sight of him--withthe first word he says--"

"Why not, " I said, "crumple up?"

She lifted her head as I had seen her lift it before. 

"Because, " she said, "I wish to be straight. "

I asked her if running away behind Jimmy's back was her idea ofstraightness? To which she replied that _my_ rectitude was excruciatingand that I'd twist anything to a moral purpose, but it was twisting allthe same. Couldn't I see that _the_ awful thing would be to come sneakingback and pretend to Jimmy that she hadn't run away from him?--If that wasmy idea of straightness she was sorry for me. 

I said, "My dear child, you must see that running away by yourself is onething, and running away with Charlie Thesiger is another. It would be allvery well if Charlie hadn't got into that train. "

She wanted to know what that mattered when she had got out of the train?I suggested that the people who saw Charlie get in hadn't seen her getout, and that she must look at the thing as it appeared to other people. 

"Look, " I said, "at the facts. Mrs. Jevons walks to Selham Station forthe London train. Captain Thesiger joins her there, presumably bypre-arrangement, leaving by Midhurst station so that they may not be seengoing away together. She is, however, seen entering his compartment atSelham. At Fittleworth she is seized with prudence and with panic. She isseen getting out on to the platform. And she is seen two hours laterfollowing the Captain up to London by the next train. "

She seemed to be considering it. 

"How many people, " she said, "know that Charlie was in that train? Peoplethat matter--I don't mean you and Norah. "

"Your butler, your parlourmaid, your housemaid, your cook, yourgardener--by this time--and Baby's nurse--"

("And Baby, " she interrupted. )

"--The guard of the train, the booking clerks and porters at Midhurst andSelham, and the station-masters at Midhurst and Selham and Petworth(probably) and Fittleworth. Quite a number of important people, to saynothing of Kendal, who is perhaps the most important of them all. "

"And who was it who brought Kendal into it?"

I was silent. 

"Nobody but you, Furny, or a born fool, would have dreamed of bringingKendal in. "

I said that a little reflection would show her that it was impossible tokeep him out. To this she said, "Please go and find Norah. I want her. "

I found Norah. I warned her that Viola was going to be extremelydifficult. She said it would be all right if I left Viola to her. 

As we approached, Viola turned to her sister with an air of outraged andlong-suffering dignity. 

"Norah, " she said. "I do wish you would make Wally see what an ass he'smaking of himself. "

My wife said, in her admirable, judicial way, "How an ass?"

"Well--trying to make me go back and bringing Kendal out here to fetchme. He doesn't seem to see that if I do go back with him it'll be as goodas proclaiming to everybody that I ran away with Charlie and was foundout by my clever brother-in-law who tracked me down in my husband'smotor-car and brought me back in it. Whereas, if I go quietly on toLondon, as I meant to and as everybody knows I meant to, it'll be allright. "

"It won't, " I said, "as long as Charlie's there. It will be if you comehome with us in the car now, and go up to town with Norah and me onMonday. "

"I've told you, " she said wearily, "that I can't go back because I shallnever get away if I do. And I _must_--I must--and I will. "

"Yes, dear, and you shall, " my wife said, as if she were humouringsomebody who was mad. 

But for a mad woman Viola, I must say, was extraordinarily lucid. 

"What excuse did you give to Kendal for following me in this way?"

"We told him we had an important message to give you before you started. "

"Important message! That was pretty thin. I'd have thought of somethingcleverer than that if I'd been you. You _are_ a precious pair ofconspirators. Can't you see that it's you--with your ridiculoussuspicions--that have given me away?"

Norah answered her. 

"Oh, Vee-Vee, " she said, "we hadn't any suspicions. The message was totell you that Charlie was in the train. We knew you didn't know it. "

To this Viola said coldly, "Walter didn't. "

I tried to reassure her, but she waved me away with her hands andimplored me to "let her think. "

"Well, " she said presently, "it isn't as bad as you've tried to make it, even with Kendal thrown in. You came rushing after me to give me amessage, and you _have_ given me a message, and now you'll go and tellKendal that it's all right, and thank him nicely for catching me up, and_you_ rush home again, and I go on quietly to London by the next train. "

"Yes, dear, " said Norah. "And I'm going up with you while Wally rusheshome and follows with Nurse and Baby and the luggage by the morningtrain. "

"That's all very well, " said Viola, "but who explains to Jimmy?"

"Oh, " said my wife, "Wally does that. You can trust him. Besides youhaven't got to explain things to Jimmy. "

Well, we settled it that way. It was the only possible solution. The moreshe thought of it, Viola said, the more she liked it. And she rubbed itinto me that it was Norah's solution, and not mine. 

Her last words to me as I saw them off at Fittleworth Station were that Ineedn't worry. It was going to rain. And when poor Jimmy saw his car comein all splashed with rain and covered with mud--"It won't be me, " shesaid, "you'll have to explain about. "

And it wasn't. 

The storm came down just as we were leaving Fittleworth, and we broughtthat car back in an awful state. You wouldn't have known it had ever beena black-and-white car. And Jevons (in a mackintosh) was waiting for me inthe lane by the courtyard gates. He had caught the early train, but hehad seen the storm coming and had walked up from Midhurst, and, as I say, he was waiting for us. 

Well--neither Viola nor Norah was with us, and the language, that Jimmypoured out over me and Kendal recalled all the freshness and the vigourof his earliest inspirations; it was steeped, you might say, in all thecolours of the sunset; it had flashes of tropic splendour; it was such agorgeous specimen of an art in which Kendal dabbled, as he said modestly, a little himself, that it "fair took the shine out of him. " The chauffeurwas prostrated with admiration. 

"When Mr. Jevons lays himself out to express himself, sir, " he saidto me as we retreated, "he pulls it off what you may call a bleedin'masterpiece. "

I tried to explain about Viola an hour later. But he wouldn't listen tome. That was all right, he said. He was going to ask us to take her for amonth or so anyhow. It was getting a bit stuffy for her down here. 

Then he fixed me with "Did Thesiger go up with her?"

There was no good trying to lie to Jevons, so I said that had beenThesiger's idea, but Viola hadn't cared much about having him, for shehad got out at Fittleworth and taken Norah on with her. 

"I suppose the young ass tried to make love to her. He's fool enough foranything, " said Jimmy. But he reverted. "I still can't see why you tookthe car out. Anybody but an idiot would have known it was going to rain. "

BOOK III

HIS BOOK

XII

At this period, and even now when I go back to it, I am completelypuzzled by Jevons. Here was a man who professed to understand his wife, to know what she was feeling and thinking in every moment of herexistence; he would tell you that a man was a fool if he couldn't get thewoman he wanted; and yet, having got her, he didn't seem to know in themost elementary way how to keep her. He didn't seem to care. He adoredher, and yet he didn't seem to care. I believe he knew that she wasleaving him, that she had left him; and yet, here he was, treating herdeparture as if it didn't matter, as if it were the most natural andreasonable thing in the world, and lashing himself into a fury about hiswretched motor-car. And he was treating the dangerous element in thecase, Charlie Thesiger, as if it didn't matter either; as if it didn'texist. He must have known we'd taken his car out to bring his wifeback--he knew we wouldn't have touched the beastly thing for anythingshort of saving her life or his honour; and yet he had flown into apassion and sworn at his chauffeur because we'd taken it. He adored hiswife and yet he behaved as if she were of no importance compared with thegod he'd made of his motor-car. 

All that evening, I remember, he was absorbed in the solitary problem ofhow he could save his god from further outrages. He settled it towardsmidnight by saying that he'd buy another car that we could do what wedamn-pleased with--a car that wouldn't matter--that you could take out inall weathers. 

"I'll not have that black-and-white car used as it was used thisafternoon, " he said. And after lashing himself up again he ended quitesweetly by saying, "It's my fault, Furny. I ought to have had two carsall along. "

I said it _would_ be a good plan, if a black-and-white car was only to belooked at. 

He admitted (with a recrudescence of his old childlike innocence) that heliked looking at it. I've no doubt he said it made him feel something, but I forget what. 

But when the morning came he wouldn't hear of my going. I was to stay outmy fortnight. It was a fine day and the dust was laid; perhaps he couldtake me for a spin across the Downs to the coast or somewhere. He'd sendParker up to town to look after Nurse and Baby and the luggage. He didn'twant, he said, to be left alone. 

Oh yes, it was plain to me that he didn't want to be left--that hecouldn't bear it. He was trying to lure me to stay with him by holdingout this prospect of a spin. I have since believed that he would haveagreed to take his car out in almost any weather, if that had been theonly way to keep me. He clung to me desperately, pathetically, as he hadclung nine years ago at Bruges when Viola had left him there. He might, possibly, this time, have clung to anybody; he was so afraid of beingleft alone. I think he felt that loneliness here, in the vast, unfamiliarlandscape that he had invaded, would be as bad as loneliness in Bruges. He would be abandoned, as he had been then, in a foreign country. 

So till Sunday morning I stayed with him. 

It was on my last evening, the evening of Saturday, August the first, that he spoke of Viola. 

He asked me if I thought that Norah and I could keep her with us, ifnecessary, for--he hesitated--for six months? (It was as if he had givenher six months. ) It would, he said, be better. 

I said that Norah would be delighted to keep her for any number ofmonths. But did he think she'd stay?

He said why shouldn't she stay? Of course she'd stay. She was awfullyfond of us and it was the best thing she could do. And it would make itso much easier for him. He'd feel more comfortable as long as he knew shewas with us. 

He spoke as if it were he and not Viola who was leaving. 

I said then that though we were glad to have her we couldn't, of course, accept any responsibility--

He smiled slightly and asked, "For what?"

I said, "Well--" And he answered his own question in the pause I made. 

"I suppose you mean for anything she may take it into her head to do?"

I put it to him that Viola's movements were not always exactlycalculable. She might take it into her head to do anything. I reallycouldn't answer for her. 

"_You_ can't, " he said. "But _I_ can. She may go off and look at a belfryor two. " (I should have said that "looking at the belfry" was a phrasethe family had adopted for any queer thing that any of us might do. ) "Ifthere's a belfry anywhere to be seen you may depend upon it she'd want tolook at it. "

"Whether, " I said, "it's in a dangerous place or not?"

"Whether it's in a dangerous place or not. But I'll trust you to keep herout of dangerous places. That's rather what I wanted to talk to youabout. "

I protested. "There's no good talking about it. I've told you that's justprecisely the responsibility I won't take. And I won't let Norah take it. If you think there's going to be any danger you must look after your ownwife yourself. "

"My dear fellow, how can I look after her if I'm not here?"

"You're as much here as I am, " I said. "More so. And she's your wife, notmine. "

I can say now--there's no reason why I shouldn't; it would only amuseJimmy if he were to see it written--I can say now that for one awfulmoment I suspected Jimmy of meditating an infidelity. Perhaps he was; butnot as we count infidelity. 

He ignored what I took to be the essence of the thing. 

"We don't know, " he said, "where any of us are going to be for the nextfour months--or the next four years. I know that _I_ jolly well shan't behere. What I want to propose is this: that you'll look after Viola andlet her have your house when she wants to be in town; and that you havethis house for yourself and Norah and Baby when you want to be in thecountry--just as if it was your own. There'll be that other motor-car youcan have--as if it was your own. You can run up to town in it. And you'llprobably find that the country will be the best place for you. It'll bemuch the best place for _them_, and the safest--if you aren't here. "

I couldn't see it even then. I said, "My dear chap, why shouldn't I behere? I certainly mean to be here. "

And he considered it and said, "I don't see why not. It's different foryou. You've got a child and I haven't. "

I said I couldn't see what Baby had to do with it. 

And he replied that a young child was an infernal complication, and thathe was jolly glad he hadn't got one. What Baby had to do with it was tokeep me out of it. 

Then I asked him what on earth he was talking about. 

He said, "_I'm_ talking about the European conflagration. What are you?"

He had been talking about it all the time, he had been thinking ofnothing but the European conflagration for the last four days. It was thething, he said, that he had prophesied nine years ago--didn't I remember?(Oh yes, I remembered; but then, he was always prophesying something. )Well then, here it was. And it had come, by God, at the very date he hadgiven it. 

I can see him sitting there in his study at Amershott Old Grange. He wasdeadly quiet. Not a gesture came to disturb my sense of his tranquiltriumph in the fulfilment of his prophecy. To say that he enjoyed theEuropean conflagration because it had proved him so abundantly rightwould give a false impression of an extraordinary and complicated stateof mind. There _was_ a sort of exaltation about him (his face positivelyshone, as if the European conflagration illuminated it from afar); but itwas a holy and a sacred exaltation, pure from egoism, except that he sawhimself--there's no doubt that already he did see himself--figuring. 

I remember saying, as lots of people were saying then, that I didn'tsuppose for a moment we should be dragged into it. 

"Dragged?" he said. "Dragged? We shall be in it without dragging--in thevery thick. "

From the instant the Germans broke into Luxembourg--and he gave themtwenty-four hours--we should be in it. We couldn't keep out with a rag ofhonour to our names. France, he declared, would be in to-day. He gave us, I _think_--but I do not like to say positively that he gave us--threedays; he couldn't have been as dead right as all that. 

What struck me then as so extravagantly odd was, not that he hadforeseen the war, and England's part in it, but that he should haveseen himself there, in the thick--blazing away in the very middle of theconflagration. What on earth Jimmy conceived that _he_ should have todo with it I couldn't think. And all of a sudden I had a reminiscence ofJevons as I had seen him nine years ago, talking to Reggie Thesiger inViola's rooms at Hampstead, prophesying war, and lamenting that hewouldn't be in it because he was an arrant coward. 

And as I looked at him again I saw that what made his face shine likethat was the sweat that had broken out on it. 

Then he made a remark about Charlie Thesiger. Thesiger, he said, knew allabout it. He had gone up--he supposed I knew that?--to offer his servicesto the War Office in the event of England's coming in. 

That Charlie had used the opportunity of going to make love to Jimmy'swife didn't seem to bother Jimmy in the least. 

Sunday, I remember, was a fine day, with all the dust laid, and Jimmymade himself lovable by running me up to London in his sacred car. Hestill clung--I could see that he clung--to the superstition of itssanctity. 

He left me at my door in Edwardes Square, which he refused to enter. Ithink he was afraid of seeing Viola. I thought at the time that this wasbecause he was aware of her attitude; that he knew she was at the end ofher tether, and that he wanted to be righteously fair, to give her timeto think about leaving him, if she wanted to leave him; that he wasbehaving now as he had behaved at Bruges when he stood back and let mehave my innings, and gave her her chance to free herself. And yet I waspuzzled. Even he could hardly stand back to give Thesiger an innings. He_may_ have had an inkling. There may have been something of his queer, scrupulous tenderness in this avoidance of her; there may have been hisreckless propensity to take the risk; but I am convinced that even thenhis main object was--like Viola--to burn his boats. He was afraid that ifhe were to see Viola again he wouldn't be able to go through with it. Hemay even have been glad that she had left him, because it had made hisway easier. 

And so, when he had landed me at my door, he turned the black nose of hiscar round and ran out of Edwardes Square faster than he had run in; as ifhe were afraid that the place would catch and keep him. 

He didn't go back to Amershott. He stayed in London in one of his clubs(he had several now, besides the club in Dover Street), and I saw himsometimes. I didn't say anything to Viola about him. I didn't tell her hewas in town. It was as if there had been some tacit understanding amongthe three of us; there must have been some tacit agreement between himand me. 

Sunday passed, and Monday somehow; and on Tuesday, the fourth, we wereall holding our breaths under the tension of the Ultimatum. 

I have no doubt that in those three days I had some opinion of my ownabout the European conflagration, that I must have stared with my owneyes sometimes at the fate of Europe and the fate of England, that I musthave felt _some_ horror and anxiety and excitement that was my own. Butas I look back on it all I am aware chiefly of Jevons, of _his_ opinions, _his_ vision, _his_ horror and excitement. I seem to have spent thegreater part of those three days with Jevons, and there are moments, inlooking back, when he fills the scene. He is the largest and mostprominent figure in the crowd that walked the streets with me on theevening of the Ultimatum, that waited with me outside Buckingham Palace, when London let itself loose in madness; he seems the only sane figure inthat crowd or in the processions that moved for hours on end up and downParliament Street, between Trafalgar Square and Palace Yard. It is as ifI had stood alone with Jevons before the Mansion House at midnight whenthe Ultimatum was declared. 

And when I say that it was his horror and anxiety and excitement--and hisdefiance and exaltation, if you like--that I felt, I do not mean thatJevons talked about it. He was, for those three days, mostly silent. Itis that I saw him consumed and burned up by the fever of patriotism andwar, and that beside his passion any emotion I may have felt hardlycounted. 

And every minute we expected to hear him say that he _liked_ the Warbecause it made him feel manly. Norah and I pretended to each other thathe would say it--it was our idea of a joke, God forgive us. 

It was on Wednesday, the fifth, very early in the morning, that he begantrying to enlist. It was the first thing he did; and we thought _that_funny. 

We thought it so funny that even if he hadn't told us not to tell Violawe wouldn't have told her; we felt that it wouldn't have been quite fairto either of them. 

And none of the Thesigers, or anybody connected with the Thesigers, couldtake Jimmy seriously for one moment. With General Thesiger waiting to besent to the Front, and Reggie Thesiger preparing to go, and CharlieThesiger who might be called on any day, with Bertie and all his malecousins enlisting and pulling all the ropes they could lay their hands onto get their commissions, they hadn't time for Jimmy and his importunity. He _was_ importunate; and I'm afraid that in those weeks Jimmy didn'texist for them or any of us, except as a jest that lightened our laboursnow and then. They were so busy getting their kits that they couldn'teven think of the fate of Europe. 

And Viola--what she was thinking and feeling God (or Jevons) only knew. She didn't tell us. But I was pretty sure that with Reggie starting forthe front in two weeks it wasn't Jevons she was thinking of. I suspectedthat she wasn't far from feeling that secret hatred of Jimmy that hadcome to her once or twice before, when she had thought of Reggie. Remember that all this time, even after that illness of hers last year, when she and Reggie met they met as well-bred strangers. She had neverlowered her flag or made one sign. She had just suffered in secret withthe thought of Reggie biting deeper and deeper into her mind, till, wherever the memory of Reggie was there was a wound. And she had been illof her wounds and had nearly died of them. 

And in those two weeks she had begun to look as if she were going to beill again. It was bad enough for Norah and for all of them, but conceivewhat it must have been for her!

And so we came to Reggie's last day and the night when he came to us tosay good-bye. 

I think she must have written to him or made some sign. But I'm not sure. I only know that he was prepared for her; and that when she came into theroom at the last minute, as he turned from Norah's arms, he closed onher, and that they held each other an instant--tight, like lovers--andthat neither of them said a word. 

 * * * * *

After that the War must have seemed to her, as it seemed to all of us, tohave wiped Jimmy out. 

Just at first we thought that this was the secret of Jimmy's agony, ofhis rushings round and round, and of his ceaseless manoeuvring. He knewthat the War was going to wipe him out; he knew that the world had no usefor his sort, the men who only wrote things. There was an end of hiswriting, of his novels and his short stories and his plays, and if hedidn't look out and do something there would be an end of _him_. And hecouldn't bear it. He couldn't bear to be reduced to inactivity andinsignificance--to be wiped out. He wasn't going to be made an end of ifhe could help it. These were the things we said about him. What we saw, or thought we saw, was the revolt of his egoism. It didn't look quitesane. 

He was furious when he found out that, even if he enlisted, he couldn'tbuy a commission. He didn't seem to realize that there were things hecouldn't buy. He was still more furious when he found that the Thesigerswouldn't help him. They _could_ help him, he declared, if they liked. Commissions were being given every day to the wrong people, by influence. 

Up till now, with his talk about commissions, he had been purely funny, and we had laughed at him. But when he found that he couldn't enlist, that they wouldn't have him, that he wasn't strong enough--they'ddiscovered a leaky valve in his heart or something--and that in any casehe was too old, when he broke down as he tried to tell me this, he wasn'tfunny at all. He'd been to every recruiting station in London and his owncounty, and they all said the same thing. He was too old. 

This, he said, was where his beastly celebrity had gone back on him. Hecould very easily have lied about his age (he didn't look it), in fact, he _had_ lied about it freely, to every one of them; but his age wasrecorded against him in the Year-Books of his craft. And he couldn't lieabout his heart, he didn't know it had a valve that leaked. He didn'tbelieve it. He had given the man who examined it the lie; and he had goneto a heart-specialist to get the report (which he regarded as a libel)contradicted, and the heart-specialist had confirmed it, and told him hewasn't the first man who had come to him to get an opinion overruled. Hesaid he was to keep quiet and avoid excitement. He mustn't dream of goingto the front. I think the specialist must have been sorry for Jevons, forhe went on to tell him that there were other ways in which he could servehis country. He seems to have talked a lot of rot about the pen beingmightier than the sword, and to have advised Jimmy to "use his wonderfulpen. " And at that Jimmy seems to have broken from him in a passion. 

And here he was, in a passion still, ramping up and down that privateroom he had at his club, and saying, "Damn my powerful pen, Furny! Damnmy powerful pen!" The whole system, he said, was rotten. He'd a good mindto expose it. He'd expose it in the papers. _That_ was the use he'd makeof his powerful pen. See how they'd like _that_. 

I remember it because it was then that I laid before him my own problem. The _Daily Post_ had asked me if I'd go out as its War-Correspondent. Iwas to wire "Yes" or "No" in the next half-hour, and if I went I shouldhave to start to-night. 

I said I didn't know what to do about it. 

He stared. "You don't know what to _do_?"

I said: No. It wasn't so simple when you had a wife and child dependenton you. I didn't know whether I ought to take the risk. 

And then he said his memorable thing: "If you can take the risk ofliving--My God, " he said, "if I only had your luck!"

_His_ luck, I told him, was a dead certainty. There wasn't a paper thatwould refuse Tasker Jevons as War-Correspondent. He'd only got tovolunteer. Why on earth, I asked him, didn't he?

He became very grave. He seemed to be considering it. 

"No, " he said, "no. That isn't quite good enough for me. I don't want togo out to the war to write about it. I want to do things. 

"Perhaps--if there's no other way--I may be driven to it. "

For a moment, then, I suspected him. I doubted his sincerity. He wasmaking all this fuss about enlisting to cover up his cowardice. He musthave known all the time they wouldn't take him. He was safe. But putbefore him a thing he could do--do better than anybody else--a thing thatwould take him into the thick and keep him there, if he wasn't killed, and he said, No, thank you. That wasn't quite good enough for him. 

I didn't believe in his "Perhaps--if there was no other way--he might bedriven to it. " I saw him driven to do anything he didn't mean to do!

Meanwhile he drove _me_. Before I had seen him I hadn't really meant totake that job. He did something to me that changed my mind. 

That was how I went out to Belgium as a War-Correspondent. 

 * * * * *

I was out for a month. Then--I was in Ghent at the same old hotel in thePlace d'Armes--I got a touch of malaria and had to come home, and the_Daily Post_ sent another man out instead of me. 

That was how I managed to see Jevons in what Norah called his secondwar-phase. He had been trying hard to get out with the Red Crossvolunteers, and it had been even funnier, she said, and more pathetic, than his enlisting. I don't know what Viola thought of his war-phases;to Norah they were just that--funny and pathetic. To the other Thesigershe was purely offensive. They resented Jevons's trying to have anythingto do with the war, as if it had been some sort of impertinentinterference with their prerogative. His mother-in-law, I know, had nopatience with him. His frantic efforts to get to the front were nothing, she declared, but a form of war-panic. It took some people like that. Shesaid the only really cruel thing I had ever heard her say of him. Shesaid he _looked_ panic-stricken. (He was lean and haggard by this time, and had a haunted look which may have been what she meant. ) And well--ifit wasn't panic that was the matter with him it was self-advertisement, and if I'd any regard for him or any influence with him I'd stop it. Thelittle man was simply making himself ridiculous. 

I was staying in Canterbury with Norah for the weekend, and I heard allabout it. He did seem to have been rather funny. He had begun with ascheme for taking out a Red Cross Motor Field Ambulance which he proposedto command in person. He had offered himself with his convoy first to theWar Office, then to the Admiralty, then to the War Office again, and theWar Office and the Admiralty kicked him out. Then he had gone round toeach of the Red Cross Societies in turn, the American included. And theyhad all got their own schemes for Motor Field Ambulances, and didn't wanthis. What they _did_ want was his subscriptions and his powerful pen tosupport their schemes. And Jevons had said, "Damn my powerful pen!" toevery one of them. As for subscriptions, he subscribed enormously to hisown Motor Ambulance Corps. He had actually raised his unit, found hisvolunteers, his surgeons, his chauffeurs and his stretcher-bearers, hehad bought and equipped a Motor Ambulance car, the one he had proposed togo with himself. And they took his subscriptions and his Ambulance Carand his volunteers; but they wouldn't take him; no, not at any price. They put one of his surgeons at the head of the thing instead of him andsent it out without him, and Jimmy had to see it go. But when theyproposed that Jimmy should use his powerful pen to maintain it in thefield, he swore that he would use it to expose the whole system. And whenhe found that the responsibility for rejecting his services rested withthe War Office, he went down to the War Office and complained, and to theAdmiralty and complained, and to the Home Office and complained. Afterthat he seems to have visited all the Embassies in turn--the American, the French, the Belgian, and I suppose the Russian and the Japanese. 

When I asked the Thesigers what he was doing now they said they didn'tknow. They hadn't heard of him and his activities for quite a fortnight, and they didn't bother about him. They were too much wrapped up inBertie and in Reggie, even if they hadn't been too busy--every one ofthem up to their necks in work for the Army or the hospitals. Theyadmitted that he had sent them large subscriptions. 

It seemed to me, as far as I could make out, that Viola hadn't seen orheard of him since she had left Amershott. She was too busy and too muchwrapped in Reggie to bother about him either; at least, it looked likeit. She seems to have known in a vague way that he had talked about goingto the front, but I didn't believe she thought he would ever get there. 

And he had lain low for a fortnight. 

When we had got back to London at noon on Tuesday, which was the end ofJimmy's fortnight, I found a wire from Amershott waiting for me. It hadbeen sent that morning. It said: "Leaving to-morrow. Must see you urgentbusiness. Can you come down this evening. JEVONS. "

I knew that he wouldn't send a wire like that without good reason; so Iwent. 

 * * * * *

A light rain was falling when I reached Midhurst. A hired dog-cart met meat the station, so I gathered that Jimmy's mad passion for his motor-carhad survived the war. 

And at Amershott everything seemed to have survived. If it had not beenfor troops on the high road, and for the stillness of the coverts, andfor the recruiting posters stuck everywhere on the barn-doors, and forthe strange figure of old Perrott driving the mail-cart from Midhurst toAmershott instead of his son, you wouldn't have known that the war hadanything to do with England. And I expected to find Jimmy in his oldNorfolk suit standing in the garage and looking with adoration at hismotor-car. 

As I thought all this I smiled when Parker told me that Mr. Jevons was inthe garage. Parker, I noticed, didn't smile. 

And in another minute it was Jevons who did all the smiling. 

I found him in the garage--no, I can't say I found him, for I didn'trecognize him, but I heard his voice assuring me that it was he. He wasin khaki; from head to foot, from his peaked military cap to his putteeshe was in faultless, well-fitting khaki; even his shirt and his neck-tiewere khaki. Jimmy's colours showed up wonderfully out of all thatbrownish, greyish, yellowish green. His flush fairly flamed, and hiseyes, his eyes looked enormous and very bright--great chunks of darksapphire his eyes were. They were twinkling at me. 

"It's me all right, old man, " he said, and turned from me in his deeppreoccupation. And as he turned I saw that he wore round his right arm awhite brassard with a red cross on it. 

At the far end of the coach-house where the great black and white idolused to stand there was a khaki car with a huge red cross on a whitesquare on its flank and on its khaki canvas hood. This was what his eyesturned to. 

"But--where's the black-and-white god?" I asked. 

"There she is, " he said, "you're looking at her. "

"You haven't--"

"Yes, I have. She's had her new coat on for the last three weeks. Youcouldn't take her out as she was, all black and white. She'd have beenknocked to bits before we'd begun our job. So I had her painted. She's agood enough target for shell-fire as she is. "

"You don't mean, " I said, "that you're going out?"

"What else have I been meaning ever since there was a war?"

"But--where are you going _to_?"

"Belgium, " he said. He added that it was the only blessed place he_could_ get to. 

"And what are you going to do when you get there?"

He said he was going to scout for wounded, of course. 

And as he saw me still incredulous he told me how he'd managed it. He hadgone every day for three weeks to the Belgian Legation and worried theBelgian Minister into a state of nervous prostration. And when theMinister was at his worst and was obliged to leave things a bit to hissecretaries, he'd gone to the secretaries and worried _them_ till theFirst Secretary had given him his passport and a letter of introductionto the President of the Belgian Red Cross Society at Ghent. And he hadgone to Ghent--went there last week--and he had seen the President andtalked to him. He had talked for ten minutes before his services had beenaccepted by the Belgian Red Cross. 

And he was going out to-morrow. 

"It's just taken me six weeks to do it. I gave myself six weeks. "

Of course I congratulated him. But I couldn't realize it. The whole thingseemed incredible. Jevons in his khaki was incredible. The transformedmotor-car was incredible, as a thing that Jevons was concerned with. Above all, it was incredible that he should have sacrificed his god. 

I couldn't believe it until Kendal, the chauffeur, turned up, also inkhaki and with a Red Cross brassard on his right arm. Kendal was credibleenough; he looked as if he had been going to the war all his life. It wasevident that he was keen on the adventure. It was also evident that headored Jevons more than ever. By watching Kendal in the act of adorationand keeping my eyes fixed on him I was able to take it in, and to assentto the statement that Jevons was going to the war. 

He was of course if Kendal said so. 

Kendal was asking me what I thought of the car. 

"She's not the beauty she was, sir, " said Kendal. "I don't suppose Mr. Jevons will care much how he knocks her about now. And they do say theBelgium roads is fair destruction to cars. "

I said they were. I'd motored on them. Kendal looked at me as he mighthave looked at the survivor of a shattering experience. Then he looked athis car. He seemed to be seeing all the roads in Belgium in a hideousvision. 

Then he spoke. "Well, they may be bad roads, but Mr. Jevons isn't goingto be done. He'll take out ten cars before 'e turns back. Ten cars, hewill. "

Yes, yes, I might have known it. Was there ever anything Jevons had madeup his mind to do and didn't? Had I ever known him turn back from anyadventure that he had set out on? If he said he was going to the war, why couldn't I have known that he would go? The more incredible the thingwas, the more likely he was to do it. 

When I said so he shook his head and said it wasn't really as likely asit looked. 

We were sitting together after dinner in his garden. Though it was thethird week in September the nights were still warm. Without Viola, thestillness of the place was strange to me, almost uncanny, as if Violawere dead and had come back and was listening to us somewhere. I had justtold him it was splendid of him going out like this, and he had smiledback at me and asked, "Like what?" And then I had said I might have knownit; it was the sort of thing he would do. 

No, he went on, it wasn't likely. It had been touch and go, he had onlyjust pulled it off by the skin of his teeth. It had given him moretrouble than anything he'd ever tried for. It had bothered him more. Ithad bothered him most damnably. 

I thought he was referring to his struggles with the recruiting depotsand the War Office and the Home Office and the Embassies and all the restof it. And I said it _was_ pretty hard luck his own Ambulance Corps beingsent out without him. But he said, No; it wasn't. He hadn't been verykeen on the Ambulance Corps. He hadn't really wanted to go out with allthat beastly crowd. This quick scouting game--by himself--was more in hisline. All he regretted was the time he'd lost. 

Well, I said, anyhow he was a lucky beggar to have got what he wantedafter six weeks. 

At that he looked at me suddenly and his face went all sharp and thin. Orelse I hadn't noticed till then how sharp and thin it was. His flush hadseemed to flood it and fill it out somehow, and his eyes struck yourattention like two great flashes of energy. The flash had gone out now ashe looked at me. 

I reminded him: "Haven't you always said you could get what you wanted?"

"Oh yes, I've _said_ it, and I've done it. That's nothing. Any fool cando that. The great thing is to make yourself get what you don't want. Ididn't _want_ to do this. I had to. "

"No. You wanted to enlist. But I'm not sure that from your point of viewthis isn't better. "

"Jolly lot you know, " he said, "about my point of view. "

"Your idea, " I explained, "of doing things on your own. Isn't that whatyou wanted?"

He answered very slowly: "I don't think--it matters--what I wanted--orwhat I didn't want. It's enough--isn't it?--if I want to _now_--if I wantit more than anything else?"

I said, No, I didn't think it did matter. 

But I hadn't a notion what he meant. I didn't know that he was on theedge of a confession. I couldn't see that he was trying to tell mesomething about himself, and that I had started him off by telling him hewas splendid. It was as if--then--he too had felt that Viola was thereand listening to us, as if he were speaking to her and not to me. 

For the next thing he said was, "I want you to tell Viola about it. Tellher it's all right. Tell her I'm all right. See?"

"But shan't you, " I said, "be seeing her? Isn't she going to see you offor something?"

He said, "No. Much better not. She wouldn't be content with seeing meoff. She'd try to come out with me. She'd worry me to take her. AndI'm not going to take her. She isn't to know I'm going till I've gone. And she isn't to know where I've gone to. I won't have her coming outto me. _You've_ got to see to that, Furny. You've got to stop her ifshe tries to get out. They're _all_ trying. You should just see thebitches--tumbling, and wriggling and scrabbling with their claws andcrawling on their stomachs to get to the front--tearing each other's eyesout to get there first. And there are fellows that'll take them. They'lleven take their wives. 

"Not me. Not much. I wouldn't let Viola cross in the same boat with thatlot. 

"It ought to be put a stop to. 

"The place I'm going to--the things I'm going to see--and to do--aren'tfit for women--aren't fit for women to come within ten miles of. Whateveryou do, Furny--and I don't care what you do--you're not to let her getout. "

I suppose--I suppose I made him some sort of promise. He says I did. Idon't remember. 

I _do_ remember telling him I thought it was a pity--if he meant to goout--that he hadn't seen Viola all this time. 

And I remember his answer. "I haven't seen her--all this time--_because_I meant to go out. I meant that nothing on this earth should stop me. "

"How do you know, " I said, "that she'd have stopped you?"

"How do I know? How do I know anything?--It's you who don't know. Youdon't know anything at all. "

 * * * * *

Well, he went--like that--without telling any of them. 

I ran down on the car with him to Folkestone and saw him off on the boatto Ostend, he and Kendal, his chauffeur--he, as he pointed out to me, superior to Kendal only in the perfect fitting of his khaki. "Otherwisethere isn't a pin to choose between us. Except, " he said, "that Kendaldoesn't funk it and I do. "

And with Kendal grinning from ear to ear over Mr. Jevons's deliciousjoke, and Jimmy waving his khaki cap in a final valediction, and Kendal'sgrin dying abruptly as he achieved the military salute he judgedappropriate, we parted. 

Jimmy's last words to me, thrown over the gunwale, were, "Don't run afterme, Furny. You won't catch me _this_ time. "

XIII

Then I went back and told Viola about it. I took her into my library thathad once been Jevons's study, where he had delivered the Grand Attack. Igave her a letter that Jevons had scribbled before lunch in the hotel atFolkestone. I suppose he had explained things in it. 

But as for me, or any power I had to break it to her, I might just aswell have told her that he was dead. 

Except that perhaps then she wouldn't have turned on me. 

"You _knew_ this, " she said, "you knew he was going and you never toldme?"

I said I had only known it last night--how could I have told her?

She persisted. "You _knew_--at what time last night?"

I hesitated and she drove it home. 

"You might have wired. It wasn't too late. "

I said it was, and that I didn't know that she didn't know till it wastoo late to wire. 

"Do you suppose, " she said, "--if I'd known--that I should be _here_?"

I couldn't tell her--she was so white under her wound and the shock ofit--I couldn't tell her that she had given me no reason to suppose thatshe would be with him. 

And she went on. "Why couldn't you have wired in the morning, then? Icould have caught that boat. "

"Because, my dear girl, he doesn't want you to go out. "

"It doesn't matter what he wants--or thinks he wants--I'm going. 

"And what's more, " she said, "you've got to take me. That's all you'vegained by trying to stop me. "

I replied that nothing would induce me to take her out, that I'd promisedJimmy she shouldn't go. 

She said that didn't matter. Jimmy'd know I couldn't keep a silly promiselike that, and if I wouldn't take her she'd simply go by herself. 

I tried to explain to her very gently that her going--at all--was out ofthe question. She would do no good to anybody by going; she would annoyJimmy most frightfully; untrained women were not wanted at the front. 

Untrained? She had got her certificate three days ago. What did I supposeshe had wanted it for--if it wasn't to go out with Jimmy if he went?

"You knew he was going, then?" I said. 

"I knew he wanted to go. But I didn't think he'd go so soon. I didn'treally think he'd go at all. They told me I needn't worry, that he hadn'ta chance. "

"Who told you?"

"Oh, everybody. The General and Colonel Braithwaite and Charlie, andBertie, and Reggie--at least he told Norah--and the people at the WarOffice and the Admiralty and the Embassies. "

"You _went_ to them? You went to the War Office?"

"I went everywhere where he did, or as near as I could get. And they alltold me the same thing--he hadn't a chance. Not the ghost of a chance. Ireally thought he hadn't. When you think of the men--men who can dothings, who are dying to go and are being kept back--"

"You were helping him to go?" I said. I saw a vision, or I tried to seeit, a pathetic vision of Viola following poor Jimmy in his pursuit ofsecretaries and ambassadors, doing insane, impossible things to help him. 

And then I saw Viola herself. She was looking at me, with all herfeatures tilted in that funny way she had. 

"Well--no, " she said; "I wasn't exactly _helping_. "

"What _were_ you doing, then?"

"I'm afraid I was trying to stop him. "

The sheer folly of it took my breath away. 

"Surely, " I said, "if he hadn't the ghost of a chance, it wasn'tnecessary?"

"Well--it _was_ necessary, you see. He's so awfully clever. He was verynearly off once or twice. Only we just managed to get in in time. "

"Who got in in time?"

"Oh, it wasn't only me, Furny, it was all of us. We were all out tryingto stop him--Charlie and Reggie and Uncle Billy--_he_ pulled all theropes--we couldn't do much. "

"But what--what did General Thesiger do?"

"He didn't 'do' anything. He hadn't got to. He just said things. Toldthem _about_ Jimmy. "

I don't know whether my face expressed horror or admiration. It must havebeen a sort of horror, for she began to excuse herself. 

"Why not? Why should poor little Jimmy go?"

"Because he wants to. You'd no business to stop him when he wanted togo. "

"But--that was it. He didn't want to go. He only thought he _ought_ togo. "

"How, " I said sternly, "do you know what he wanted?"

"Because, " she said, "he told Uncle Billy. He kept on saying he ought togo. And we told him he oughtn't. What earthly good can Jimmy do outthere, with his poor little heart all dicky? He'll simply die of it. Youdon't suppose I'd have stopped him if I'd thought it was good for him togo? Or if I'd thought he really wanted to? We told him all that--UncleBilly and I did--we told him straight that if he tried to get out we'dtry and stop him. "

"Oh, " I said, "you _told_ him. That's a different thing. "

"Things, Furny, always are different to what you think them. At leastthey're never half so nasty. Of course we told him. And of course helaughed in our faces. We thought we _had_ stopped him. But--he's slippedthrough our fingers. 

"We might, " she said, "have known. "

I heard her say all that, though I wasn't listening. It comes back to methat she said it. It was dawning on me that in this queer business therewere details, quite important details, that had escaped me. The war hadtaken up my attention to the exclusion of Viola's affairs. But it wasevident that things had happened while I was away. I was thinking ofsomething that she let out. 

"Look here, " I said, "when you say you told him, do you mean that you andhe have been seeing each other?"

"Of course we've been seeing each other. Until he stopped it. He said hecouldn't stand the strain. "

"And you?" I said. "Did you stand it?"

She looked at me straight and hard. 

"You've no right to ask me that, " she said. 

 * * * * *

Well, perhaps I hadn't. And if I had owned frankly that I hadn't allmight have been well. But, as it was, before I knew where we both were, we had quarrelled. 

Yes. I quarrelled with Viola; or she quarrelled with me; it reallydoesn't matter how you put it; and it shows the awful tension we musthave been living in. 

When I heard her say that I had no right to ask her that question Ianswered that I thought I had. 

She said, "What right?"

And I said if she would think a little she would see what right. 

And at that she fired up and the blaze was awful. We two were up therealone and she had me at her mercy. She held me in the blaze. 

"I suppose, " she said, "I'm to think of your everlasting meddling with myaffairs?"

I pointed out that a charge of meddling came rather oddly from a lady whohonoured me by staying in my house because she preferred it to herhusband's. 

"You know perfectly well why I'm staying in your house; and if you don't, Norah does. I could have stayed with my father, for that matter. "

I said I thought that that was extremely doubtful--in the circumstances. 

I had her there, and she knew it, for she retired in bad order on anirrelevant point. She said I was no judge of the circumstances. 

I said peaceably that perhaps I wasn't, but that she must own that I hadbehaved as if I were. At any rate I'd given her the benefit of the doubt. 

She said, "You talk as if I'd been through the Divorce Court. Perhapsthat's where you think I ought to be. The benefit of the doubt! Youcertainly _have_ given it me. It's been nothing but doubt with you, Walter, ever since I knew you. You always thought awful things about me. I know you have. I could _see_ you thinking them. You thought vile thingsabout me, and vile things about Jimmy. You came rushing out to Belgiumbecause you thought them. And the other day you thought the same thing ofme and Charlie Thesiger, and you came rushing after me again and givingme away, and behaving so that everybody else would think me awful too. "

"My dear child, you owned yourself that Charlie--"

"Oh--Charlie! As if he mattered! He was only being an ass--the war upsethim, or something. I don't care what you think about Charlie--he doesn'teither--but why you should go out of your way to think _me_ awful--"

I said I thought we'd done with that. 

"No, " she said, "we haven't done with it. I want to get to the bottom ofit. What _makes_ you do these things? I believe you _want_ to make outthat I'm horrid, just as you wanted to make out that poor little Jimmywas, when I went to him in Bruges. "

She went on. "I can understand _that_, because I did go to him, and I--Icared for him and you didn't like it. I can even understand your wanting_me_ to be horrid then, because it made it easier for you. I had thesense to see that that was all that was the matter with you _then_, so Ididn't mind. But why on earth you should keep it up like this! What canit matter to you _now_ whether I'm nice or horrid?"

She had rushed on, carried away by her own passion, without seeing whereshe was going. I don't think she had seen, any more than I had, that fornine years I had been living behind a screen. A screen that had hidden mefrom myself. I don't think she saw even now when she came crashing intoit. 

It was I who saw. 

The thing was down about my ears; and it wasn't the violence of its fallthat terrified me; it was my own nakedness. I wasn't prepared to findmyself morally undressed. 

I turned away from her. I began fiddling with my pens and papers. Itrailed long slip-proofs under her eyes, pretending that I had work todo. But she saw through my pretences and her voice followed me. 

It was softer, though. It seemed to be pleading, as if she knew nothingabout me and my screen. 

"What harm did I ever do you? Or poor Jimmy either? I didn't let youmarry me. You ought to be grateful to Jimmy. At least he saved you fromthat. "

I said I thought we needn't drag her husband into it, and I haven't anotion what I meant. I had to say something, and if it soundeddisagreeable, so much the better. 

And she said there I was again--thinking that I had to remind her thatJimmy _was_ her husband. 

"You certainly seem to have forgotten it, " I said. 

"_He_ knows how much I've forgotten. "

With that last word she left me. 

I tried hard to shake the horror of it off. I remember I sat down to myproofs, and I suppose I tried to correct them. But all the time I heardViola's voice saying, "I can understand your wanting me to be horrid_then_, because it made it easier for you.... But why on earth you shouldkeep it up like this! What can it matter to you _now_ whether I'm nice orhorrid?"

It went on in my head till the words ceased to have any meaning. I hadonly a dreadful sense that I should remember them to-morrow, and thatperhaps when to-morrow came I should know what they meant. 

 * * * * *

And when to-morrow came the war took up my attention again, so that Iactually forgot that Viola had said she was going out to it. 

She had let the subject drop abruptly. She didn't even refer to it whenmy friend the editor of the _Morning Standard_ rang me up the next day toask me if I'd go out to Belgium as their Special Correspondent. 

He was charmingly frank about it. He told me that it was Tasker Jevons hewanted, and Tasker Jevons he had asked to go, but since he couldn't gethim (and his powerful pen) why then, he'd had to fall back on me. Jevons, he said, had let him down pretty badly; he'd understood from Jevons thathe was prepared to go for them at twelve hours' notice. And he'd givenhim twenty-four hours; and he'd found that he'd gone out there two daysago. Chucked them, my friend the editor supposed, for another paper. Could I, at twenty-three hours' notice, take his place?

I said I could and I would, and I put him right about Jevons. 

And then I went to see about my motor-car. 

It was when Viola began to bother me about her passport that the fightbegan. 

First of all, she asked me what I was doing about a motor-car? I told hershe needn't worry herself about my motor-car. It wasn't any concern ofhers. She grinned at that and said, All right. What she really wanted wasto consult me about her passport. 

And when I refused to be consulted about her passport, to hear a wordabout her passport or about her going, she walked straight out of thehouse into a passing taxi that took her to the Belgian Legation, whereshe saw that weak-minded secretary that Jevons had handled; and she cameback in time for tea, very cheerful and dressed in a sort of khakiuniform she had ordered, with a tunic and knee-breeches and puttees and aRed Cross brassard on her right arm. 

She said it had been a very tight squeeze, but she'd worked it, downto her uniform, and it was all right, and if I'd had any difficulty withmy motor people (I had had awful difficulty, but how she knew it Ihaven't to this day found out. Sometimes I think she'd worked that too;she knew the firm, and she wasn't Mrs. Tasker Jevons for nothing)--ifI'd had any difficulty she could put that straight for me. She'd got_her_ car--Jimmy'd ordered it for Amershott and forgotten about it--andher chauffeur, and I could go in it with her if I liked. 

It was a better car than the one I'd had in Belgium before or, she saidsignificantly, than the one I was going to take out with me. It was truethat I didn't know anything about cars. 

Then Norah, my wife, stood up beside her sister, flagrantly partisan, andsaid, Couldn't I see it wasn't any use trying to stop her? She had me atevery point. If I wouldn't take her she'd go by herself with thechauffeur. 

And when I said, How about my promises--my word of honour? Viola laughed. 

"Your honour's all right, Wally, " she said. "You're not taking me out;I'm taking you. "

And very early in the morning we motored down to Folkestone to catch themidday boat for Ostend. And Norah came with us to see us off. If I'dgiven her the smallest encouragement she'd have come too. I _might_ takeher, she said; it was beastly being left behind. 

I said, like a savage, that Belgium was no place for women. I'd take mysister-in-law there, but not my wife. 

I suppose the dressing-down I'd got from Viola two nights before hadrankled. I must have felt that I was getting my own back that time, whenI threw it up to her that she wasn't my wife. 

Norah, I said, had too much sense to want to go where she wasn't wanted. 

But Viola only laughed again and said, "Please remember that I'm takingyou, not you me. And Norah wants to go as much as I do, and it isn'taltogether on your account. You needn't think it. As for keeping herback, you couldn't do it if she meant to go. It's Baby that's keepingher, not you. "

And then she thanked God she hadn't got a child. 

And so, sparring and chaffing by turns, half in play and half inearnest--for a secret subterranean anger smouldered still in both ofus--we got off. I remember at the last moment Norah--dear littleNorah--telling her that she was not to bully me. She was to let me sitin the motor-car as much as I liked; and she was to see that I didn'tget into any danger. 

Danger? Danger? As the great fans of the screws churned the harbour waterinto foam that the waves thinned and flattened out again till the greenlane broadened between our track and the pier head where Norah stood, andthe little, slender, dark blue figure became a dot on the pier and lostitself in the crowd of dots and disappeared, then, for the first time, itstruck me that to be going off like this, alone, with Viola, was dangerin itself. 

Because, the other night she had made me see myself as I really was--aman, not of an irreproachable rectitude, an immaculate purity (had Iever, had anybody ever really supposed that I was such a man?) but quitedeplorably human, and blind--yes, my dear Viola, blind as any bat--andvulnerable, so vulnerable that I think you might have spared me, youmight have had some pity. 

I found myself addressing her like that, in my heart, as I walked up anddown, up and down the deck, not looking at her, but acutely aware of her, where she sat in her deck-chair, bundled up in her great khaki motor-coatand in the rugs I had wrapped round her. 

I resented the power she had over me to make me aware of her--at such atime, or at any time, for that matter. Here was I, a SpecialCorrespondent, going out to the war; and there, on the other side of theChannel, _was_ the war; in the fields of France and of Flanders men werefighting, men were slaughtering each other every day by thousands. I wasa man and I should have been thinking of those men; and here I was, compelled against my conscience and my will to think of this woman. Shehad come out with me against my conscience and my will, and against myjudgment and my good taste and my honour and my common sense, againsteverything in me that I set most store by. I hadn't meant to take herwith me, and she had made me take her. 

And when my common sense told me that she hadn't; that I wasn't takingher, and that she had as much right to be on the Ostend boat as I had, Istill resented her being there. I still raged as I realized the power shehad over me. She had always had it. She had had it the first day I eversaw her, when she had walked into my rooms against my orders, half anhour behind the time I had appointed, and had made herself my secretaryagainst my will. She had had it when she used me as a stalking-horseto draw her brother's suspicions away from her and Jevons; she had had itwhen she drew me after her to Belgium, and when I followed her fromBruges to Canterbury at her bidding; she had had it when I married Norah(hadn't she told me, in the insolence of it, that she had meant that Ishould marry Norah?). She had had it, this malign power over me, theother night, and she had it now. She always would have it. 

It wasn't my fault, I told myself, if she compelled me to look at her, this time, as I passed her deck-chair. 

I looked at her, and she sent me a little sad interrogative smile thatasked me why I walked the decks thus savagely and alone? And I paid noattention to her or to her smile. In the very arrogance of isolation Icontinued to walk the decks. I meant her to see that I _could_ be aloneand savage if I liked. 

And when I looked at her again (she couldn't have _made_ me this time, for she was unaware of me, lost in some profound meditation of her own), when I looked at her again my anger and my resentment died with a sort ofstruggle and a pang. 

She had, after all, the grace of her ignorance and innocence. If she hadhad no pity on me, it was because she was as blind as she had said I was. She didn't, she couldn't see me as she had made me see myself. She didn'tknow that she had any power over me, or else she wouldn't have used herpower; she was too honourable for that, too chivalrous. You could trusther to play the game until she threw it up and left it. 

And I passed again in my sullen tramping, and I looked at her for thethird time, urged by the remorse that stung me. And this time she drew meso that I went over to her and sat by her. I looked at my watch, we hadbeen two hours on board. 

I had left her two hours alone; and in those two hours she had suffered. Her face was set now in a sort of brooding fear and anguish; herbreathing had a tremor in it, as if her heart dragged at her side. It wasbetter, far better, that we should quarrel than she should suffer and sitquivering in silence and see frightful things. 

But I saw that she wasn't going to quarrel, she wasn't going to pitchinto me; she wasn't going to assert herself and domineer over me justnow. This agony of hers had made her gentle, so that she spoke to me asif she were sorry for me after all. 

"Are you tired, " she said, "of tramping up and down?"

"Horribly tired. "

"Put my rug round you if you're going to sit still. Norah wouldn't letyou sit still without a rug. "

"Norah wouldn't let me do anything I shouldn't do. "

She smiled down at me, still sad, but with the least little flicker ofirony on the top of her sadness. "Norah's job isn't very hard. You don'tever _want_ to do anything you shouldn't. "

"Oh--don't I?"

"No, never. That's the pull you have over naughty people like me. You'reso good. "

"It wasn't my goodness you were rubbing into me the other night. "

"Never mind the other night. It doesn't matter what I said the othernight. Only what I'm saying now this minute has any importance. But itwas your goodness, if it comes to that. "

"Queer sort of goodness. " I was still, you see, a little stung. 

"All goodness, " she said, "is queer, carried to that pitch. But you're adear in spite of it. I won't bully you. "

We made the last part of the crossing on the highway of the sunset. Thepropeller lashed through crimson and fiery copper, and the white waketossed on to the highway turned to rose and gold and its edges to purple. 

I had left her again and I called to her to look at this wonder of thesky and sea; but she shook her head at me. There was no need to call her. She had looked. I could see by her eyes that the intolerable beauty hadbrought Jevons back to her. He was there for her in all beauty and in allwonder. 

Then she called to _me_. "Wally, come here. I want to speak to you. "

I came. 

"You thought I was going to leave Jimmy. But I wasn't. _He_ knew Iwasn't. Why, the first night I knew how impossible it was. "

I said, Yes. Of course it was impossible. And of course he knew. 

"I shan't mind if only we can get to him before anything happens. "

I said nothing would happen, and of course we should get to him. 

She was silent so long that I was startled when she said, "Wally--yournervous aren't _you_, are they?"

I said, No. No. Of course they weren't. 

I knew what she was thinking. Out of the intolerable beauty she had seenJimmy rise with all his gestures. She heard the cracking of his knucklesand saw the jerking of his thumb. And these things became tender andpathetic and dear to her as if he were dead. 

And she had seen herself shudder at them as if it had been another womanwho shuddered, a strange and pitiless woman whom she hated. 

"It wouldn't matter so much if he had wanted to go, " she said. 

"Why do you keep on saying that he didn't want to go?"

"Because he said so. He said he was only going because he couldn't go. "

"I think you're doing him a great injustice. He told me he wanted to go;I've no doubt he did want to go--just like any other man. "

"Yes. To be just like any other man--_that's_ what he wanted. But hecouldn't be. He isn't like any other man. And so it's worse for him. Can't you see that it's worse for him? It'll hurt him more. "

I said I didn't see it, and that she was absurd and morbid and utterlyunreasonable, and that she was making Jimmy out unreasonable and morbidand absurd. 

She told me then I didn't understand either of them; and we were silent, as if we had quarrelled again, until we came in sight of the Flemishcoast. 

We sailed into Ostend on the tail-end of the sunset. What was left of itwas enough to keep up for us the intense moment of transfiguration, sothat we didn't miss it. The long white Digue, the towers, the domes ofthe casinos and hotels, the high, flat fronts of the houses showedsoaked in light, quivering with light. Ostend might have been someenchanted Eastern city. It was as if the heroic land faced us with theillusion of enchantment, to cover the desolation that lay beyond herdykes. 

And we who looked at it were still silent, not now as if we hadquarrelled, but as if this beauty had made peace between us. 

Viola's face had changed. It reminded me in the oddest way of her brotherReggie's. I think that for the moment, while it lasted, she had forgottenJimmy, she had forgotten her brother Reggie; she had touched the fringeof the immensity that had drawn them from her and swallowed them up. Andin forgetting them she had forgotten her unhappy self. 

In Ostend, at any rate, I was to have no more of her brooding. We had nosooner landed than she became the adorable creature who had run away withJevons nine years ago and led me that dance through the cities ofFlanders. She showed the same wholehearted devotion to the adventure, thesame innocence, the same tact in ignoring my state of mind. She seemed tobe making terms with me as she had made them then, suggesting that if _I_would ignore a few things I should find her the most delightful companionin my travels. We must, she seemed to say, of course forget everythingthat she had said to me the other night or that I had said to her beforeor since; and, as she swung beside me in her khaki, her freedom and herfreshness declared how admirably _she_ had forgotten. It wasn't as if wedidn't know what we were really out for. 

Except that she was a maturer person--thirty-one and not twenty-two--Imight have mistaken her for Viola Thesiger, my secretary, setting out, indefiance of all conventions, with little Jevons, to look for Belfries inBelgium, and taking the war, since there _was_ a war on, in her stride. 

And as I walked with her through the same streets where nine years ago Ihad hunted for her and Jevons, it struck me as a strange, unsettlingthing that I should be taking her out to look for Jevons and at the sametime playing precisely Jevons's part in the adventure. She too must havebeen aware of this oddness--for she stopped suddenly to say to me, "Doyou remember when I ran away with Jimmy? Isn't it funny that I should berunning away with you?"

I said it was. Very funny indeed. And I wondered why she had drawn myattention to it just now? Did she want to make me judge by thetransparent innocence of this running the not quite so transparentinnocence of that? I think so. Remember, it was Reggie Thesiger'sapparent doubt as to her innocence that had been at the bottom of all thetrouble of the last five years. It accounted for her attack on me theother night. It was as if she had turned to say to me triumphantly, "Now, perhaps, when I'm running away with _your_ precious perfection, at lastyou understand?"

We had some difficulty in finding quarters and Viola insisted on ourstaying in the Station Hotel, which had been bombarded by an aeroplanethe night before. She pointed out that it was almost entirely empty. "Andso, " she said, "there won't be anybody to see us. "

It was as if she wished to remind me by how thin a thread _my_ reputationhung. 

The business of our passports kept us in Ostend the next morning. I hadmade up my mind there would be difficulty about Viola's military pass, Iwas even contemplating the possibility of her being sent back to Englandby the next boat; but no; she had forestalled obstruction, and the pocketof her khaki coat was stuffed with letters from the War Office, theBritish Red Cross, and the French and Belgian Embassies. In fact, therewas one horrid moment at the depot when it looked as if the SpecialCorrespondent would be smuggled through under Viola's protection. 

"You see, Furny, " she said, "nobody's going to stop me. Nobody wants tostop me. "

At last we got off, and early in the afternoon we were in Bruges. 

We had run into the Market-Place before we knew where we were; and yonderin the street at the back of it was Viola's _pension_, and here on ourright hand was Jimmy's hotel, and there, towering before us, was theBelfry. We looked at each other. And through the war and across nineyears, it all came back to us. 

"The Belfry's still there, " I said. 

"It always was. " She said it a little sternly. But she had smiled at theallusion, all the same--the smile that had never been denied to it. 

We stayed an hour in Bruges and lunched there in Jimmy's hotel. The fatproprietor and his wife were still there and they remembered us. Theyremembered Jimmy. And they had seen him three days ago. Mr. Chevons hadpassed through Bruges in his Red Cross motor-car. They seemed uncertainwhether Viola was Mrs. Chevons or Mrs. Furnival, and they addressed herindifferently as either. An awful indifference had come to them. Of thewar they said, _"C'est triste, nest-ce pas?"_ We left them, sittingpallid and depressed behind the barricade of their bureau, gazing afterus with the saddest of smiles. 

That hour in Bruges was a mistake; so was our lunching at Jimmy's hotel. It was too much for Viola. It brought Jimmy so horribly near to her. Idon't know what she was thinking, but I am convinced that from the momentof our entering Bruges the poor child had made up her mind that Jimmy hadbeen killed. The smile she had given to the Belfry was the last flickerof her self-control, and halfway through lunch the grey melancholy thatBruges had absorbed from Jimmy nine years ago came down on her, as nineyears ago it had come down on me, and it swallowed her up. By the timethe waiter brought the coffee she was done for. Her eyes stared, hard andhot, over the cup she tried to drink from. She couldn't drink because ofthe spasm in her throat. 

"Come, " I said, "we must clear out of this. "

We cleared out. 

I too was invaded by the grey melancholy as we came to the bridge by theeastern gate where I had found Jevons that night leaning over and lookinginto the Canal. It was the sentry's sudden springing up to challenge usthat saved me. I hoped that it would save Viola. She enjoyed thesentries. 

But not this time. Her nerves were all on edge and she showed someirritation at the delay. I felt then that I had to take her in hand. 

"My dear child, " I said (we were running out on the road to Ghent now), "do you realize that there's a war?"

She answered, "Yes, Wally, yes, I know there is. "

"Do you know that Antwerp's over there, a little way to the north? Andthat they've dragged up the big guns from Namur for the siege ofAntwerp?"

"Oh, Wally--_have_ they?"

She turned her face to the north as if she thought she could see or hearthe siege-guns. 

"But you _said_ Jimmy was in Ghent. "

"Jimmy, " I said, "is probably in Ghent. If he isn't, he's in Antwerp. Doyou know that the battlefields are down there--no--there--to the south, where I'm pointing? There's fighting going on there _now_. "

She said, "Yes, dear, I know, I know, " very gently; and she put her handon my knee, as if she recognized the war as my private tragedy and wassorry for me. Then she fell back to her brooding. 

Somewhere on the great flagged road between Bruges and Ecloo we met astraggling train of refugees--old men and women and children, bent doubleunder their enormous bundles, making for Bruges and Ostend. They stared, not at us, but at the road in front of them, with a dreadful apathy, aswe passed. 

"This, " I said, "is what finishes _me_--every time I see it. "

She said nothing. 

"Do you realize, " I said, "that those women and those little children areflying for their lives? That they've come, doubled up like that, formiles--from Termonde or Alost? That they've lost everything they everhad?" (I can hear my own voice beating out the horror of it in hard, cruel jerks. ) "That their homes--their _homes_--are burned to ashessomewhere down there?"

At my last jerk she turned. 

"No, " she said. "I'm cold and hard and stupid, and I do _not_ realize it. Neither do you. If either of us realized it for two seconds we should beeither cutting our throats in that ditch or going back to Ostend now witha load of those women and children, instead of tearing past them likedevils in this damned car. 

"I can't realize anything till I know whether Jimmy's all right or not. Ican't see anything, or feel anything, or think of anything but Jimmy. Bruges is Jimmy and Belgium is Jimmy and the whole war is Jimmy--to me. I don't care if you _are_ horrified. I can't help it if I _am_ callous. It is so. And you can't make it different. "

I remember saying quite abjectly that I was sorry--that I was only tryingto turn her mind to other things as a relief. 

"I'm to turn my mind to _that_--as a relief!"

She showed me a woman I was trying not to see, a woman who carried thebedding of her household on her back and dragged a four-year-old child bythe hand. The child slipped to its knees at every other yard, and atevery other yard was pulled up whimpering and dragged again--not withanger or any emotion whatever, but with a sickening repetition, as if itsmother's arm was a mechanism set going to pull and drag. 

If ever there was a weathercock it was my sister-in-law. Without evenpretending to consult me, she made Colville, the chauffeur, turn the carround. (He was _her_ chauffeur, after all, she said. )

"I don't know, " she said, "whether I realize that woman or not, orwhether you do. But I'm going to take her into Bruges. "

And we took her. (Viola nursed the four-year-old child all the way. ) Wealso took an old man and a young woman with a baby at her breast, and twosmall children. It was the only thing to be done, Viola said. 

It was nearly half-past five when we left Bruges the second time. 

"God only knows, " I groaned, "what time we'll get to Ghent!"

"He does, " she said. "He knows perfectly well we shall get there byhalf-past seven. "

And we did. 

It was dark when we turned into the Place d'Armes and drew up before thelong, grey Hôtel de la Poste. I jumped out and stood by the kerb to giveViola my hand. 

"But--" she said, "I _know_ this place. "

"You ought to. "

I don't know where she expected us to go. She still sat in the car as ifheld there by the shock of recognition. She ignored my outstretched hand. 

"You'd better take your things, " she said at last, "if you want to getout here. I'm going on to look for Jimmy. "

I had then my first full sense of what I was in for. I saw that she wasperfectly prepared to throw me over, to dump me down here or anywhereelse and go on by herself with the car and the chauffeur that were, orought to have been, mine. 

She didn't care if I was Special Correspondent to the _Morning Standard_, and she had that beastly chauffeur in her pocket all the time. (Idiscovered afterwards that she'd laid in food for him and hidden it inthe locker under the front seat, so that they might be ready for anysort of adventure. ) And yet in the very moment that I realized herdisastrous obstinacy I found her intolerably pathetic. 

"If you want to look for Jimmy, " I said, "you'd better get out too. He'llbe here if he's anywhere in Ghent. "

But she was already on the kerb, brushing me aside. She had seen behindmy back the approach of the concierge and she made for him. 

"Is Mr. Jevons in this hotel--Mr. Tasker Jevons?"

Yes, Mr. Chevons was in the hotel. Madame would find him in the lounge. 

She had swept past him to the stair of the lounge, and I was followingher discreetly when the proprietor dashed out of his bureau to interceptus. The lounge, he said, was reserved from seven till nine o'clock forthe officers of the General Staff. 

Viola had paid no attention to the proprietor and was sweeping up thestair. I gave Jevons's name and explained that the lady was Mrs. Jevons. 

The proprietor, a portly and pompous Belgian, positively dissolved insmiles and bows and apologetic gestures. _Mille pardons, monsieur, millepardons. _ It would be _all_ right. Monsieur Chevons was dining with theofficers of the General Staff. 

He did not know that Madame was expected. He was to reserve a room forMonsieur?

I told him to reserve rooms for me and the chauffeur, and to consult Mr. Jevons about Madame. And I hurried up the stair after Viola. 

She was waiting for me at the turn, on the landing, by the wide archwayof the lounge, where the great glass screen began that shut off thestaircase. She stood back from the entrance, looking in, and smiling atwhat she saw. It was clear by her attitude and her absorption thatsomething was happening in there. 

As I approached she made a sign to me and withdrew farther back and upthe stair. 

"He's there, " she whispered. "Over there. In that corner. "

For a moment we stood together on the stair, looking down through theglass screen into the lounge. 

The far end of the lounge had been turned into a dining-place for theofficers of the Belgian General Staff. Most of the tables were clearednow and deserted. But from our place on the stair we had a clear viewslantwise of one small table in the corner. And we saw Jimmy seated atthat table. 

At least we made him out. 

All but Jimmy's head was hidden by the figures of a Belgian General andtwo Colonels. They had closed in on him (they were evidently all four atthe end of their dinner); they had closed in on him in an access ofemotion and enthusiasm. The General (the one who sat beside him) had hisarm round Jimmy's shoulder; the two who sat facing him leaned towardsJimmy over half the table, and one grasped Jimmy's right hand in his; theother was making some sort of competitive demonstration. The disengagedarms of the three held up the glasses in which they were about to pledgehim. And at the other end of the room a scattered group of soldiers roseto their feet and looked on smiling and signalling applause. 

What was happening down there was public homage to Jimmy. 

And in between the two dark Belgian uniforms that obscured him you couldjust see a bit of Jimmy's khaki, and from among the white and grizzledheads that pressed on him you saw Jimmy's face and Jimmy's flush andJimmy's twinkle; his incredible, irrepressible twinkle. You could evensee the tips of Jimmy's little front teeth trying to bite down his lipinto some sort of composure. You could see that he was very shy and verymodest; you could see that in spite of his shyness and his modesty hewas frightfully pleased; but more than anything you could see that he wasamused. 

Positively, positively, he had the air of not taking his Belgian officersvery seriously. 

"We mustn't go down yet, " said Viola, "or we'll spoil it. "

So we waited, looking at Jimmy through the screen, while the officersclinked their glasses and drank to him and called his name; and the groupthat looked on echoed it; and the waiters who had come in to see what washappening, repeated it among themselves. 

"_Vive l'Angleterre! Vive les Anglais! Vive Chevons! Chevons! Chevons!_"

"I wonder, " said Viola, "what Jimmy has been up to? You can take me tohim. "

When we got to the table we found Jimmy trying to explain to the Generaland the two Colonels in execrable French that he didn't know what it wasall about. _He_ hadn't done anything. 

Then he saw Viola. 

For one second, while he stared at her across the room, he appeared to besuffering from a violent shock. He was so visibly hit that the two menwho had their backs to us turned round to see what it was that hadaffected him. His flush had gone suddenly and he was breathing hard, withhis mouth a little open. 

I heard him saying something in French about his wife. 

He recovered, however, in a second, and disentangled himself from theGeneral and the Colonels and from the dinner-table, and came forward. 

And as he came, I noticed something odd about him. He limped slightly. His khaki had a battered look; it was soiled and torn in places, and theRed Cross brassard on his sleeve was simply filthy. 

And he had only been out three days, mind you. He was only three daysahead of us. But he had lost no time. 

As they strolled up to each other and met midway in the big public room, in the fraction of time that passed before their hands touched I heardhim draw a hard, quivering breath and let it out in a long sigh. Thatbreath was a suppressed cry of trouble and of acquiescence. 

Then (I could have blessed him for it) he twinkled. 

Viola said, "What _have_ you been up to?"

And Jimmy, "I say, I like that! What are _you_ doing here? Have you cometo look at the Belfry?"

"No. I've come to look at _you_!" She put her hand on his shoulder. 

He said, "That's a jolly rig-out you've got, " and that was all. 

The General and the two Colonels came forward and were presented to Mrs. Jevons; and Mr. Walter Furnival ("one of our war-correspondents") waspresented to the General and the two Colonels. They saluted Madame; theybegged Madame to accept their profoundest congratulations; they regrettedthat Madame had not been present just now when they were drinking herhusband's health. 

And the old General (the one with the white hair and imperial) informedher that Monsieur her husband had a very poor opinion of the BelgianArmy. 

"He has saved the lives of three Belgian officers and I do not know _how_many Belgian soldiers--and he says that it is nothing!"

And the stout, florid Colonel, who had been trying to look young andrakish ever since he had turned and caught sight of Viola, suggested that"Perhaps, if he had saved your British, he would not have said that itwas nothing. "

And the lean, iron-grey Colonel with the ferocious moustache remarked inan austere, guttural voice, "_Il est impayable--lui!_"

Jimmy had been offering cigarettes to them as if he thought that was theonly thing that would stop them. Then the old white-haired General satbetween Viola and him with his arm round Jimmy's shoulder and beganagain, so loudly that everybody in the room could hear him. 

"Your husband, Madame, is a man who does not know what fear is--whodoes not care what death is. For two nights and three days, Madame, he has been down there--at Alost and Termonde--under shell-fire. _Mais--un enfer, Madame!_ You would have thought he had been born underfire, your husband. _Ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un salamandre_. Bullets--mitrailleuse--shrapnel--it is no more to him than to go out in ashower of rain. When our men were scuttling, and shouted to him to getunder shelter, what do you think he said?--'_Ouvrir une parapluie--ça nevaut pas la peine_. "

There was a shout of laughter. 

"That, " said Viola, "is the sort of thing he _would_ say. And please, Iwant to know what's the matter with his leg. "

I can see her now, sitting on that crimson velvet seat in the lounge andlooking past the gesticulations of the General to Jevons, who was shakinghis head at her as much as to say, "Don't you believe the old boy, he's ashocking story-teller. "

The old General seemed aware of her preoccupation, for he rose, murmuringaffectionately, "_Mon petit Chevons_. I will not praise him to you, Madame. No doubt you know what he is. "

I can see her standing up there and giving her hand to the old Generaland trying to stiffen her face to say, "I know. "

Evidently she thought General Roubaix was too voluble to be entirelytrustworthy, for, when he left us and Jimmy had gone out to see about ourdinner, she addressed herself to the two Colonels. 

"Please tell me what my husband _really_ did. "

Both the Colonels tried to tell her; but it was the younger one with themoustache (the one who had said that Jimmy was _"impayable"_) whosatisfied her. 

It was true, every bit of it. Jevons, it seemed, had been in the thick ofthe bombardment of Alost and in the fighting for the bridge at Termonde. His practice was to leave Kendal and the motor-car behind him in someplace of shelter while he walked into the fire. Sometimes he took hisBelgian stretcher-bearers with him, sometimes, when they didn't like thelook of it, he went by himself. He didn't care, the Colonel said, _where_he went or how. If it was through rifle-fire or mitrailleuse he went onhis hands and knees--he wriggled on his stomach. If it was shrapnel hetook his chance. He had saved one of his three officers by carrying himstraight out of his own battery, when the German guns had found itsrange; and he had driven his car, by himself, across a five-mile-longfield, under a hailstorm of shrapnel, to get the other two. 

"You see, " the Colonel expounded, "your husband has chosen the mostdangerous of all field ambulance work. Those high-speed scouting cars, running low on the ground, can go where a big ambulance cannot. It ismagnificent what he has done. "

When Jevons came back they could still hardly keep their eyes off him;they could hardly tear themselves away. It was "_À demain, Monsieur_, "and "_À demain, Colonel_" as if they had arranged another deadly tryst. 

"Well, " said Jimmy, "how do you like them?"

"Oh--they're dears, " said Viola, "especially the one with the moustache. Do you know, they've told me everything except what's the matter withleg. "

"My leg?" said Jimmy. "A bit of shell barked it. I'm jolly glad it's myleg and not my hand. "

I was a little frightened when Viola left us alone after dinner. Ithought he would pitch into me for bringing her. But he only said sadly, "You oughtn't to have brought her, Furny. But I suppose you couldn't stopher. "

I said, No, I couldn't stop her. But I hadn't brought her. She hadbrought me. 

We sat on till the lounge was open to the guests of the hotel. And whenthe war-correspondents began to drop in I saw that Jevons was uneasy. 

"D'you mind if I turn in, old man?" he said. 

I asked him if his wound was hurting him. 

He stooped and caressed it pensively. 

"No, " he said. "Not a bit. I like my wound. It--it makes me feel manly. "

Presently he said good night and left me. 

I thought--yes, I certainly thought--that he exaggerated his limp alittle as he crossed the room, and for a moment I wondered, "Is heplaying up to the correspondents?"

Then I saw that Viola stood in the doorway waiting for him and that shegave him her arm. 

And then through the glass screen I saw them going together up the stair. And I remembered the tale that he had told me nine years ago, how he hadseen her standing there and looking down at him--half frightened--throughthe glass screen, and how he had said to me, "I couldn't. She was sohelpless somehow--and so pretty--that for the life of me I couldn't. "

It was the same room and the same glass screen and the same stair. And itwas the same man. I knew him. I knew him. I had always known him. (Wasthere ever any risk he hadn't taken?) I had never, really, for onemoment misunderstood. 

I certainly knew why he "liked" his wound. 

XIV

We had breakfast very early the next morning, for Jevons was under ordersto start at eight o'clock for Termonde. We had a table reserved for us ina corner of the restaurant. The hotel was full of Belgian officers, andI found I was infinitely better off in attaching myself to Jevons than ifI had joined the war-correspondents. 

Viola (I may say that her rig-out which Jevons had admired so much, thekhaki tunic and breeches, made us terribly conspicuous) had come down ina contrite mood. I heard her telling Jevons that he must be kind to me, for I had had an awful time with her and I had been an angel. 

Well, I had had an awful time; I don't think I remember ever having had aworse time than the hours I had spent in her company since she had laidinto me on Tuesday evening. 

But I had not been an angel; far from it. Looking back on those hours, Ican see that I behaved to her like a perfect brute. 

She had her revenge. One of those revenges that are the moretriumphant because they are unpremeditated. She had dished me as awar-correspondent. 

For I declare that from the moment when we found Jevons and his Generalin the hotel I became the victim of her miserable point of view. I couldonly see the war through Jevons, and as a part of Jevons; I might havesaid, like Viola, that to me Ghent was Jevons, and Belgium was Jevons, and the war was Jevons. I suppose I saw as much of the War from first tolast as any Special Correspondent at the front, and I know, that, barringthe Siege of Antwerp, the three weeks when Jimmy was in it were by nomeans the most important or the most thrilling weeks in the war; and ofthe one event, the Siege of Antwerp, I didn't see as much as I ought tohave seen, being most terribly handicapped by Viola. And yet--perhapsa little because of Viola, but infinitely more because of Jevons--thosethree weeks stand out in my memory before the battles of the Aisne andMarne and the long fight for Calais. Because of Jevons I have made themfigure, in the columns of the _Morning Standard_ and elsewhere, with asuperior vividness; even now when I recall them I seem to have lived withJevons in Flanders through long periods of time. 

I have the proof of my obsession before me in a letter from the editor ofthe _Morning Standard_, dated October the twelfth. He says, "We areinterested, of course, in anything relating to Mr. Tasker Jevons, and hisperformances seem to have been remarkable. You have written a very fineaccount of Melle, which I understand is a small village four and a-halfmiles from Ghent. But there are other events--the Fall of Antwerp, forinstance. "

Well, we got the story of the Fall of Antwerp all right. But Jimmy wroteit for me. It was the last thing he did write. 

Yes: he had only three weeks of it, all told. He went out on Tuesday, September the twenty-second, and he came back on Tuesday, October thethirteenth. It was his infernal luck that he should have had no more ofit. 

And yet, I don't know. I don't see how he could have held out much longerat his pitch of intensity. Three weeks would have been nothing to anyother man. But Jevons could do more with three weeks than another mancould do with a three years' campaign, and he contrived to crowd into histerm the maximum of glory and of risk. And when it was all over it wasless as if Fate had foiled him than as if he had "given" himself threeweeks. 

But Jimmy was discontented, and every morning at breakfast we listened tothe most extraordinary lamentations. His job, he said, wasn't at all thejolly thing it looked. For he was under orders the whole blessed time. He'd no more freedom, hadn't Jimmy, than that poor devil of a waiter. He'd got to go or to stay where a fussy old ram of a Colonel sent him. Sohere he was in Ghent, an open city, when he wanted to be in Antwerp. Hehadn't been anywhere--anywhere at all. As for what he'd done, he couldn'tsee what the fuss was all about. He hadn't done anything. He'd seen alittle fight in a turnip-field, and a little squabble for a bridge youcould blow up to-day and build again to-morrow, and a little tin-pot townpeppered. And look at the war! Just look at the war!

And when we tried to cheer him up with the prospect of a second Waterloo, the Waterloo that all the war-correspondents said was coming off nextweek, he refused to listen to what he called our putrid gabble. Therewouldn't be any Waterloo next week or the week after, he said. "Therewon't be any Waterloo for another two years, if then. "

He wasn't always lugubrious. It was only when he thought that he wasmissing the Siege of Antwerp that his happiness was incomplete. 

It was on our third morning, when he rushed off joyously (to Quatrecht, Ithink), that I said to Viola, "You thought it would hurt him more thanother people. You needn't have come out after him. You see how much it'shurting him. "

"I'm glad I came, " she said. "I don't mind as long as I can see. "

"Do you remember him telling Reggie that he wouldn't be in the warbecause he was a coward? Don't you wish Reggie could see him now?"

She didn't answer, and I saw that there was still a sting for her inReggie's name. The war might have made her forgive him, but there werethings that the war couldn't wipe out from her memory. And there was herown rather appalling injustice to Jimmy. I wondered whether she wasthinking of how she had tried to stop his going to the front, and how shehad said he didn't want to go. 

But I had to own that she had done the best thing for her peace of mindby coming out. 

_My_ peace of mind, I was told quite frankly, didn't matter. Jevons, though he admitted that I couldn't have stopped her coming out, made meresponsible for her presence at the seat of war. The trouble was that sheinsisted on following him wherever he went. And as it wasn't to beexpected that he would take her with him into the tight places that hemanaged to get into in his own car, I had to have her in mine. Not thatViola consented to my putting it that way. It was clear that she madeherself mistress of the situation when she obtained possession of thatcar and manoeuvred (as I am convinced she did manoeuvre) for my ownfailure with the firm that supplied it. On our first morning in Ghent wecame to what she called an understanding, when she rubbed it well into methat it was her own car and her own chauffeur that she had brought out, and that the man was under her orders, not mine. If I liked to come withher, why, of course I could. Otherwise, I could go halves with one of theother correspondents in one of their cars. But she pointed out that Icould hardly do better than come with her, for by simply following JimmyI should get nearer to the firing-line than anybody else. (She hadassumed that the firing-line was the goal of every war-correspondent'sambition. ) I would find, she said, that it would work quite well. 

It did. It worked better than if I had gone halves with the othercorrespondents. For at this time war-correspondents were not greatlyloved by the military authorities, and they were having considerabledifficulty in getting near anything, and the time, Jimmy said, wascoming when they would be cleared neck and crop out of Belgium. My astutesister-in-law had calculated on all this and on her own part in it. 

"If you'll only trust me, Wally, " she said the first day we started, whenall the correspondents in the hotel had turned out to see us off, "you'llfind that I'm your Providence and not your curse. I can get you throughwhere you'd never get yourself. Just look at those men how sick theyare. "

I said I thought it would be only decent to take two or three of themwith us. We had room. 

But Viola was firm. She said it would be most indecent. We should wantall the room we had for our wounded. 

"Do you suppose I'm going to chivy Jimmy about without doing anything tohelp him? As for you, you've only to sit tight and do what you're told. You'll be all right as long as we follow Jimmy. "

And so we followed him. My God, what a chase! But Viola's littlechauffeur was game and we followed. Though Jimmy had made elaboratearrangements for stopping his wife's progress at least two miles outsidethe danger-zone she always managed to get through. Sentries, colonels, army medical officers--she twisted them into coils round her littlefinger, and cast them from her and got through. And once through, we werereally quite useful in transporting wounded. Jevons and I between usmanaged to keep her out of the actual firing-line by telling her she wasin all of it there was; and when we were loaded up with wounded there wasno difficulty in getting her away. 

And certainly it served my turn well enough. Though I was compelled tosee the war through Jimmy, I saw the war. 

By the end of our first week Jimmy seemed to get used to being followedas a matter of course. We had followed him to Alost and Termonde andQuatrecht and Zele. When we weren't following him we were near himsomewhere, working at the dressing-stations or among the refugees. 

Then he did a mean thing. He managed to get himself sent to Antwerp forthree days. He sneaked off there by himself on the Sunday, and when wetried to follow him we were turned back at Saint Nicolas, just too lateto see the British go through. He had worked it this time. 

When he got back from Antwerp at the end of his three days we knew thatsomething had happened, something that he was keeping from us. It wasn'tonly the fate of Antwerp that was hanging over him, as it hung over allof us in that awful second week. It was as if he had seen somethingintimate and terrible that he couldn't talk about. 

That night after Viola had gone to her room he told me what had happened. He had seen Charlie Thesiger's regiment at Saint Nicolas on Sunday. Andto-day--which was Tuesday--he had seen Charlie Thesiger. He had found himlying dangerously wounded in the British Hospital at Antwerp. That, hesaid, was what had kept him there. And he had brought him back with himto Ghent. He was in the Couvent de Saint Pierre. 

He thought, perhaps, it would be better not to tell Viola just yet. Charlie didn't know, he said, that she was here. 

The war was beginning to close round us. 

 * * * * *

The next day (Wednesday) he announced that he was going to Zele; but hedidn't, he really didn't want me to take Viola there. I could go bymyself, of course, if I liked, though he didn't care about her beingleft. 

But we did go. Viola's blood was up, after what she called Jimmy'smeanness, and there was no keeping her back. 

We were a little uncertain of our way, for following Jimmy as we did, orrather, following the direction Colville swore he had seen him start in, took us much too far to the north. We found ourselves on the Antwerproad, jammed in the traffic, and caught by a stream of refugees. We wereobliged to turn back to Ghent to get our bearings, but the business oftransporting women and children kept us on the Antwerp road all morning, and it was past two o'clock before we started for Zele. 

I remember this particular chase after Jimmy for many reasons. First, welost our way and never got to Zele at all. 

Down in the south-east on the sky-line we saw a fleet of little cloudsthat seemed to be anchored to the earth, and every cloud of the fleet wasthe smoke from a burning village. West of the fleet was an enormous cloudblown by the wind across miles of sky. 

Viola was certain that the big cloud was Zele being burned to the ground, and that Jimmy would be burned with it. 

When I told her that it wasn't likely that Jimmy would stay in Zele whenit was burning she said that I didn't know Jimmy, and anyhow it was therethat she was going. 

Suddenly Viola sat up very straight. 

"Furny, is that guns I hear, or thunder?"

I said it was guns. A deep and solemn booming came from before and behindus and on either side, east and west. We had rushed bang between theFrench and German batteries. 

The big cloud turned out to be smoke from a factory that the Belgians hadset fire to themselves, and in following it we had gone miles from Zele. Now we followed the guns. 

We turned east and struck off south and found ourselves in the village ofBaerlere. The lines of fire seemed suddenly to narrow in on us here. 

There was a clean path down the centre of the street, for men and horsesstood back close under the housewalls on each side. The place was full ofsoldiers. One of them told us that we could get to Zele by going eastthrough the village, but as the road was being shelled, he didn't adviseus to try. 

We went down that clean middle of the street. We were safe enough as longas we ran between the houses; but the village very soon came to an end, and then, in the open road, we were in for it. 

The fields dropped away from us on each side, leaving us as naked to theGerman batteries as if we were running on a raised causeway. At thebottom of the fields to our right there was a line of willows, beyond thewillows there was the river, and behind the river bank, on the furtherside, were the German lines. 

The grey smoke of their fire was still tangled in the willow-tops. 

Colville drew up under the lee of the last house in the village. Hedidn't like the look of that open road. Neither did I. 

"Go on, " said Viola. "What are you stopping for?"

The guns ceased firing for a moment and we rushed it. 

"I do wish, " said Viola, "you'd tuck your arm in, Furny. It's your rightarm and you're on the wrong side of the car. "

I asked her what made her think of my right arm just then. 

"Because it's the only part of himself that Jimmy ever thinks of, " shesaid. 

There was about three-quarters of a mile of causeway and it ended in alittle hamlet. And the hamlet--it had been knocked to bits before we gotinto it--the hamlet ended in a hillock of bricks and mortar. 

The road to Zele was completely blocked. 

"Well--" said Colville, "I _am_ blowed. "

"You've got to take it, " said Viola. 

"Sorry, m'm. It can't be done. You want a motor traction with caterpillarwheels for this business. "

He was backing the car when a shell burst and buried itself in the placewhere we had stood. 

To my horror I saw that Viola had opened the door of the car and wasgetting out. 

"What on earth are you doing?" I said. 

"I'm going to walk to Zele. "

I pulled her back and held her down in her seat by main force. She washorribly strong. And as she struggled with me she said quietly, "It's allright. You two _must_ go back and I must go to Jimmy. "

I shouted to Colville, "Turn her round, can't you, and get out of this. "

He turned her. He drew up deftly under the shelter of a barn that stillstood intact. Then he spoke. 

"Are you quite sure, sir, that Mr. Jevons is in that place? Because, sir, I heard Kendal say something this morning about their going to Antwerp. "

"Then why the devil didn't you say so?"

"I didn't think of it, sir, until I saw Mrs. Jevons getting out. "

He added by way of afterthought, "Besides, I promised Kendal. You andMrs. Jevons wasn't to know he was going on to Antwerp. "

Viola and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. 

Somewhere behind us from beyond the river a gun boomed and we took nonotice of it. We went on laughing. 

"He's had us again, " she said. 

"Yes. We've been done this time. Well--we'd better scoot. "

We made a rush for it between guns and got to Baerlere. Once we were outof the village and heading for the Ghent road we were safe. 

We were hardly out of sound of the guns when I heard Viola saying, "Youknow it really _was_ funny of Jimmy. "

I said, "He won't think it quite so funny when he hears what we've done. "

He didn't think it funny at all. He was furious when he heard what we'ddone. He forbade Viola to follow him again. He threatened to sackColville. He said he'd have me sent home to-morrow and kept there, andViola should go with me. 

And when he'd finished he told us that Antwerp had fallen. 

That was how Jevons came to write the story of the Fall of Antwerpinstead of me. 

Well, he didn't sack Colville; and he didn't get me packed off with theother war-correspondents who left Ghent in a body the next day. And hesaid nothing about sending Viola away. He did better than that. He toldher he had brought Charlie Thesiger from Antwerp yesterday, and that hercousin was dying in the Couvent de Saint Pierre, and that perhaps itwould be a bit easier for him if she were with him. 

We took her to the convent that morning. On the way there she asked Jimmywhy he hadn't told her about Charlie yesterday. He said that up tillmidnight we weren't absolutely certain that Charlie wouldn't recover, andthat she was safer with us in the hotel than she would be away from us inthe convent. 

"My safety is to be considered before everything?" she said. 

He answered that it was surely enough for her if he risked it now. 

I can't think why she didn't see through him. I and Kendal and Colvilleknew perfectly well that he was taking her to the convent to be safe. Ithink he argued that if she had poor Charlie to look after it would keepher quiet, and she would be out of mischief till it was time for theGermans to march into Ghent. 

So we took her to him. 

We found him in a little whitewashed cell that one of the sisters hadgiven up to him. He lay under a crucifix on the nun's narrow bed, whichwas too short for him, so that his naked feet showed through the blanketsat the bottom. The naked feet of the Christ pointed downwards to hishead. 

He had been shot through the lungs and was dying of pneumonia, sendingout his breath in fierce, rapid jerks. 

He lay on his side with his back towards us, and his face was hidden fromus as we came in. 

The sister who sat with him made a sign that said, "Oh yes, you can comein, all of you; it will make no difference. "

The cell was so small that Jevons and I had to draw back and let Viola goin by herself. We two stood in the doorway and looked in. After the firstglance at the bed--it was enough for me--I looked, I couldn't helplooking, at Viola, (Jevons, I noticed, kept his eyes fixed on the body ofthe dying man. ) I heard her catch her breath in a sob before she couldhave seen him. 

He had slipped his blankets from his shoulder, and it was the sight ofhis back--under the half-open hospital shirt which showed the bandagesand dressings of his wound--that upset her; his back that might have beenany man's back, the innocent back that she had no memory of, thatdisguised and hid him from her and made him strange to her and utterlypathetic. And then, there was the back of his head, sunk like lead intohis pillow. The cropped hair had begun to grow. You could see a littlegreyish tuft. You wouldn't have known that it was Charlie's head. 

She went slowly round the bed, taking care not to graze the feet thatwere stretched out to her. And then she saw him. 

She saw a deep purplish flush and glazed eyes that couldn't see her, anda greyish beard pointing on an unshaved jaw; and a mouth half open, jerking out its breath. She laid her left hand on his shoulder and withher right she held the limp hand that hung over the mattress. 

I heard her say in French, "If only he knew me--"

And the nun, "Perhaps--at the end--he will know you. "

And we left her there with his hand in her right hand and her left handon his shoulder. She was on her honour to stay with him till the end; buther eyes were fixed on Jevons, and they followed him as he went throughthe doorway of the cell. 

 * * * * *

The very minute he had left her Jimmy made his bolt for Lokeren. He saidhe didn't want me; but I had seen Viola's eyes, and I said it would besafer. If I took Viola's car and Colville, she couldn't follow us. 

"She won't follow us, " he said. "She can't leave him. "

We made the first bolt into Lokeren together; and we got out, each with aload of wounded, just as the Germans were coming in. He made his secondbolt by himself and secretly, while Colville and I were lunching. Wefollowed, and were stopped in a village two miles from Lokeren. 

A Belgian Red Cross man met us here and told us that Jevons had gotthrough in spite of them, and they didn't in the least expect him to comeback again. He shrugged his shoulders and seemed to be disgusted andannoyed with Jimmy rather than to admire him. 

We hung about in that village an interminable time. I do not remember itsname, if I ever knew it; but I know and remember every house in it andevery tree in the avenue at the turn of the grey road that led toLokeren, and even now, in my worst dreams, I find myself in the littleplantation at the end of the village on the left where the railway sidingis, and where the trains came in loaded with wounded. I am always waitingfor Jimmy and looking for Jimmy and not finding him. And at one point Ialways stumble over Viola's body. I find her lying wounded in a ditchthat runs through the plantation. And when I find her I know that Jimmyis dead. And that frightens me--Jimmy's death, I mean, not Viola's body. I take Viola's body as a matter of course. 

It is an abominable dream. 

But even that dream is not more astonishing, and it is far lessimprobable than what I was to see. We were at the end of the village. Colville had drawn our car up in the middle of the street, and I wasstanding by him, when two Belgian soldiers rushed up to us, pointing upthe road, and shouting to Colville to clear out of the way. 

I turned. Round the bend of the road where the avenue of trees was I sawa train of horses and gun-carriages careening with the curve, and abattery of Belgian artillery came charging down in full retreat. And nowin the middle of the battery as if he were part of it and informed itwith his energy and speed, and now in front of it as if he led it, andjoyous as if he had turned its retreat into a victory, came Jimmy drivinghis car. 

The inside of the car was packed with wounded men; and, wedged up againstJimmy, and standing on the steps, and sitting on the bonnet, and hangingon wherever they could find a foothold and hang, were seven officers andsoldiers of the Belgian Army. 

Kendal--bleeding profusely from a flesh wound on his forehead, butotherwise unhurt--sat inside among the wounded. 

It _had_ been a victory for Jimmy. He had advanced within fifty yards ofthe German lines, he had picked up two of his wounded from under theirsentry's fire, and the rest of the men and the officers he had gatheredon his way. 

We sent them all to Ghent with Colville. 

Before he left, Kendal implored us just to look at Mr. Jevons's car. 

Mr. Jevons's car was worth looking at. It had a hole in the back of itwhere a bullet had gone clean through and buried itself in the cushions. There were five bullet-holes in its hood. Its flank was scraped by aflying fragment of shell, the same that had tilted its right rearsplash-board. Inside, its canvas covers and its rubber mat were stainedwith blood. 

Drawn up motionless in that village street and stared at, Jimmy's car hadsomething of its old self-conscious air. It looked pleased, and at thesame time surprised at itself. 

And while Jevons was dressing and bandaging his flesh-wound for him anidea struck Kendal and he grinned. 

"D'you remember the time, sir, when you wouldn't let her out if there wasa spot of rain?"

"I do, " said Jevons. 

"And look at her now--not three weeks. What a life she's 'ad!"

And when Kendal (he was as pleased as Punch with his bandage) when Kendalhad climbed into Colville's car, Jimmy turned his round again; though theofficers implored him to come on, for the Germans were on our backs. ButJimmy only jerked his thumb in the direction of Lokeren and made histhird bolt. I scrambled in beside him as he started. 

I don't mind saying that I hated this adventure. It was one thing to gointo Antwerp when the Germans were so busy storming it that they couldn'tattend to you, and quite another thing to be alone with Jimmy on thathorrid grey road with the Germans coming every minute round the turn ofit. 

Jimmy explained that there was a wounded man hiding in a ditch about amile from Lokeren, and he'd got to fetch him. 

We fetched him and another car-load without any misadventure. 

When we got back to our village we found a Field Ambulance there. Jimmysaid, "I believe that's _my_ Field Ambulance. " Presently he gave a startthat made the car swerve as if he had run over a dog. 

"Well, I'm damned if there isn't Viola. "

Yes, there she was. She had come out with the Field Ambulance. And it_was_ Jimmy's Field Ambulance, the one that had been sent out withouthim. It had come on into Ghent from Antwerp yesterday, and Viola hadfound it. 

"This is too bad, " said Jevons. "You ought to be looking after Charlie. Why _aren't_ you looking after him?"

"Charlie, " she said, "died three hours ago--at twelve o'clock. "

It wasn't five hours since we had left her with him in the nun's cellunder the crucifix. I don't think I had realized it before, but now itcame over me as a new and strange thing, how little he had mattered. Thenit struck me that Jevons must have known it all the time. 

"I've done everything, " she said, "that had to be done. And I've writtento Aunt Matty and Uncle George--and Mildred. "

"Mildred?" I wondered. 

"Well--_yes_. "

Jevons and I had forgotten Mildred. We had forgotten her engagement toCharlie, though I suppose nobody knew better than we did why it had beenbroken off. 

To his father and mother and Mildred he _did_ matter. 

And perhaps he mattered to Viola, in a way; for she said she would havegiven anything to have saved him. He must have mattered to Jevons when hebrought him from Antwerp and when we buried him in Ghent. 

And the cross on his grave reproves me, reminding me that to his countryhe mattered supremely, after all. 

 * * * * *

After Lokeren Jevons and I tried to come to terms with Viola. 

The conference took place upstairs in their bedroom, where we hadwithdrawn for greater privacy. Viola sat on the one chair and Jimmy andI on the bed. Jimmy did most of the talking. 

He said, "Look here, my dear child, if there wasn't a war on, I wouldn'tstand in the way of your amusement for the world. And there's a greatdeal to be said for you. _I_ think you adorable in a tunic and breeches, and General Roubaix agrees with me, if Furny doesn't. We all think youheroic, and you are sometimes useful. But there isn't a thing you've doneyet that a man can't do better--except getting Furny through the lines, and nobody wants Furny _in_ the lines. And when _you're_ in them you've amoral effect equal to about ten seventeen-inch guns. If the men see youhovering round their trenches they're so jumpy they can hardly hold theirrifles. If Kendal sees you he's so jumpy he can hardly steer. Colvillesays he'd rather hang himself than go through another day like Baerlere. Furny all but lost his job on the _Morning Standard_ because he was toldoff to look after you when he ought to have gone to Antwerp--he _would_have lost it if I hadn't done his work for him. And you don't make thingseasier for _me_. Good God!--sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. 

"It isn't fair on us. It isn't fair. "

"It isn't fair on _me_, " she said. "_I_'m jumpy when I'm kept back. Youdon't know what it's like, Jimmy. _Don't_ turn me back. "

And the poor child began to talk about her duty to the wounded, and thatmade him burst out again. 

"The wounded? If you think you're any more comfort to the wounded thanyou are to Furny and me I can tell you you're mistaken. There was a poordevil at Lokeren the other day with a bullet in his stomach who told mehe didn't mind his wounds and he didn't mind the Germans; what worriedhim was the lady being there when he wasn't able to defend her. "

She tilted her chin at that and said she didn't want anybody to defendher. 

"Perhaps you don't, but what would you think of a man who didn't want todefend you? What would you think of Furny and me if we wanted you to behere?"

"I should like you to want me, " she said. 

"No, my dear child, you wouldn't. You don't know what you're saying. "

And then he said, "I know better than you do what you want. Men aren'tmade like that--if they _are_ men. You can't have it both ways. " And hesaid something about chivalry that drove her back in sheer self-defenceon a Feminist line. She said that nowadays women had chivalry too. 

"And _our_ chivalry is to go down before yours?"

"Can't you have both?"

"Not in war-time. _Your_ chivalry is to keep back and not make yourself adanger and a nuisance. "

"Come, " she said, "what about Joan of Arc?" And that was too much forJimmy. He jumped up off the bed and walked away from her and sat on thetable as if it gave him some advantage. 

"No, no, " he said. "I can't stand that rot. When you're a saint--or I'm asaint--you can talk about Joan of Arc. If you want to be Joan of Arc goand be it with some man who isn't your husband--who isn't in love withyou. Perhaps _he_ won't mind. Go with Furny if you like, though it'srather hard on him. "

I said I thought he was rather hard on Viola--if he'd seen the poor childat Baerlere, flinging herself out of the car and proposing to climb overthe ruins of several houses and walk by herself--under shell-fire--toZele, because she thought he was there--

Jimmy looked at her; and he did what he had done that night when hesaw her coming towards him in the lounge. He sighed a long sigh ofcomplicated anguish and satisfaction. 

She heard it and she understood it, and she said, "I can't help it if Iam like that. You'll have to take the risk of me. Please go away, Furny. "

And I went. 

 * * * * *

Norah has been reading what I've just written, and she tells me thatthere's a great deal about Jimmy's "joy" and his "adventure" and allthat; and not one word about his duty and devotion and self-sacrifice. She says I don't give a serious impression of him. He might have goneout to the war just for fun, and that it isn't fair to him. 

I don't know whether it's fair or not. I write as he compels me to write. I find that I cannot separate his joy and his adventure from his duty anddevotion and self-sacrifice; he didn't separate them himself. I don'teven know that self-sacrifice is really the word for it; and theimpression he gave me is just that--of going out for fun. It was the wildhumour of his devotion that made it the spectacle it was. 

(She has told me that it's all right, so long as I recognize that it_was_ devotion. )

After Lokeren I had no desire to go through the rest of the war withJimmy. To be with Jimmy was destruction to your sense of values. I havegot it firmly fixed in my head that the taking of Lokeren was animportant affair. 

As for what Jimmy called the "tinpot bombardment of Melle" (there wasnothing wrong with _his_ sense of values), I shall see it insanely, forever and ever, as _the_ event of the war. 

And there is this to be said, that Lokeren filled the last gap in theline closing round Ghent, north, south and east, and drew it tighter. AndMelle (only four and a-half miles away) was the last point in the Germanadvance on Ghent. The taking of Melle would be a sign to us that the gamewas up. 

For three days Jimmy operated joyously in the village and over theleagues of turnip-fields that lay outside it. 

Of the first two days I remember an endless tramping over endless furrowsthat were ditches for the dead; an endless staggering under stretchersthat dripped blood; an endless struggling with Viola to keep her undershelter of the walls; each of those acts seemed to be endless, though onegave place to the other, and it was only the firing that went on all thetime, till even Jimmy complained once or twice that he was fed up withit. 

I remember that Jimmy's Field Ambulance played a great part in theseadventures. I remember feeling a malicious satisfaction in the thoughtthat at the same time it was compelled to witness _his_ performances. Itcouldn't miss him. 

I remember all these things; but of Melle itself I remember nothing butthe Town Hall, with its double flight of steps up to its door, and thetwo tall stone pillars, one on each side of the door, and the Greekpediment above it; that and the little old Flemish house that stood backby itself on the other side of the road, and its white walls and itsred-tiled roof, and the two green poplars in its garden, mounting guard. The house and its garden and its poplars are always vivid and still; theyalways appear to me as charged with mystery and significance and asconnected in some secret way with Jimmy's fate. 

In the pauses of our movements the Field Ambulance and Jimmy's car andViola's were always drawn up before the Town Hall, facing the littlehouse. 

Then came Sunday, the eleventh, the third day of Melle, when Viola wasleft behind at Ghent. 

Jimmy had made her promise on her honour to be brave, _this_ time, andstay in the hotel and wait for orders. 

Colville stayed with her. They were to pack our things and be ready toleave at a minute's notice. Colville had secret orders that, if we werenot back by midnight, he was to take Viola on to Bruges in his car, andwait for us there. 

For we knew now that we were in for it. 

And we knew that the war, which was coming closer and closer to thecity, was coming closer to us. It had been Charlie Thesiger first, now it might be Reggie. At least, we knew that Reggie's regiment, theThird ----shires, had come up from Ostend the day before, that it wasquartered somewhere between Ghent and Melle, and that it had been engagedat Quatrecht. 

Our own orders were to stick to Melle. 

I suppose from the way the ambulances were massed there that the endhad been foreseen. That afternoon the battle began to sweep round fromQuatrecht to Melle; and on our third journey out a rumour reached usat the barrier where the sentry stood guard. It was one of thosepreposterous rumours that run before disaster and are started God knowshow when a retreat begins. I think it was the Belgian Red Cross men whospread it, for I heard the guide who went with Jimmy's Field Ambulanceassuring him seriously that seven thousand British had been surroundedand cut to pieces on the road between Quatrecht and Melle. To be sure thenumber diminished with each repetition of the tale, dropping from seventhousand to seven hundred and from seven hundred to seventy. But inanother hour we were bringing in the men of the ----shires. 

And towards the end of the day the real bombardment of Melle began, andon our last journey out we and Jimmy's Field Ambulance were in the thickof it. 

I can remember nothing of that bombardment but the three shells. 

The first ripped open the roof of the Town Hall and set fire to it. 

The second struck the Greek pediment and brought the whole front topplinginto the street. 

Then, about five minutes after, there was the third shell. 

The light was going out of the sky, so that we saw the first shell like asheet of curved lightning making for the village as we approached fromthe Ghent side. There was a deadly attraction about the thing that madeyou feel that it and you were the only objects in God's universe, andthat you were about to be merged in each other. It looked as if it wererushing out of heaven straight for us, so that we were surprised when itapparently swerved aside and hit the Town Hall instead. 

(Jimmy and I were in the front of the car. Kendal, whose flesh wound wasbeginning to worry him, sat behind. )

A battery of artillery charged past us, followed by the remnants of aFrench regiment on the run. Jimmy put more speed on. By the time we gotinto the village the Town Hall was spouting flame. 

Jimmy drew up his car about fifty yards away from it. The Field Ambulancehad turned, and took its stand a little further away behind us, under thecover of the opposite walls. Its men began dragging out their stretchers. Kendal and I made ready with ours. The wounded were being brought out ofevery house they were in. 

A Belgian Colonel rode past us, trying to look unaware that he wasretreating. He shouted to us to clear out of it. This was the only signof interest that he showed. 

Somebody else came up to Jevons and told him that there were three orfour wounded men somewhere inside the Town Hall, but that the place wason fire and it was absolutely impossible to get them out. He advised usto pick up the men who were lying in the street, and clear out. 

I saw Jevons nod his head as if he agreed and consented. I saw him getout of the car. And then I heard Kendal say, "Give us a hand, sir, " and Iturned to my stretchers. 

When I looked round again Jevons was running towards the Town Hall. Theman who had told us to pick up our wounded and clear out was lookingafter him with a face of the most perfect horror. 

Kendal and I followed with the stretchers, and we saw Jevons run up thesteps of the Town Hall. He turned at the top of the steps and waved to usto keep back. 

Then he went through the big doors between the pillars. 

There was a crash and a roar as if the whole building had fallen in. Itwas the top story plunging to the second floor. The upper half of theTown Hall was like a crate filled with blazing straw. The Greek pedimentwas the only solid thing that subsisted in that fire. 

Then the first floor was caught. It burned more slowly. 

Kendal and I and the ambulance men ran forward with the stretchers. AndJimmy came through the doors carrying a wounded Frenchman. He went inagain and came out with another Frenchman. 

(The ground floor had begun to burn behind him. )

He went in a third time and came out with Reggie Thesiger. 

He must have had to go further into the hall to find him, for it was amuch longer business. We, Kendal and I, were down the street by theambulance when they came out, and I didn't see that it was Reggie till Iheard Kendal say, "Sir, that's Major Thesiger he's got!"

Reggie's arm was round Jimmy's shoulder and Jimmy's arm was roundReggie's waist. He half carried, half supported him. He came out in themiddle of a cloud of smoke that hid him. The smoke was followed by aburst of fire and another crash and roar as the ceiling of the firststory plunged to the ground floor. 

With all this going on behind him Jevons paused on the top of the stepsto readjust his burden to the descent. We heard afterwards that Reggiehad said, "You'd better leave me, old man, and scoot. You can't do it. "

It didn't look as if he could. But as we went back to them we saw thatJevons had heaved Reggie over his shoulder and was carrying him down thesteps. He came very carefully and slowly, so that we had reached the TownHall before he had staggered to the last step. 

As we pressed closer to help him he told us to get back if we didn't wantthe whole damned place down on the top of us. 

We gave back and he followed us. I don't know how we got Reggie on to thestretcher--he had a piece of shell somewhere in his thigh--but we did itand ran with him to the ambulance. We had about a minute to do it in andno more. 

And then the second shell came. 

It hit the Greek pediment from behind, and we saw the two tall pillarsthat supported it stagger, snap like two sticks, and bend forwards, looking suddenly queer and corpulent in their fore-shortening; then theyparted and fell, bringing down the whole front of the Town Hall. 

The Town Hall was spreading itself over the street, with a noise like aship's coal going down the shute in a thunderstorm, as Reggie's stretcherslid home along its grooves in the ambulance. Kendal and I were insidefor a second or two doing things for Reggie. The engine throbbed. Thewhole ambulance shook with its throbbing. 

In that second Jevons had run back to fetch his car, calling out to us tocut and he would overtake us. He had cranked up his engines and jumped inbefore Kendal could get down and go to his help. When we saw him start westarted. There wasn't any time to lose. 

Kendal and I were sitting on the back steps of the ambulance, so that wekept him in sight. It was quite certain that he would overtake us. 

 * * * * *

He was running straight down the middle of the road when the third shellcame. 

It burst on the ground behind him, on his right, a little to one side. Some of it must have struck the steering gear. 

The car plunged to the left. It climbed reeling to the top of a bank andpaused there, then fell, front over back, into the ditch and lay there, belly uppermost, and its wheels whirling in the air. 

Jevons lay on his face, half in, half out of the ditch. 

He lay for about three seconds; then, as we ran to him, we saw him raisehimself on his left arm and crawl out of the ditch; and when we reachedhim he was trying to stand. 

And he tried to smile at us. "You needn't look like that, " he said. "I'mas right as rain. " And then he tried to raise his right arm. 

You saw a khaki cuff, horribly stained. A red rag hung from it, a fringethat dripped. 

 * * * * *

Reggie opened his eyes and turned his face towards the stretcher thatslid into its grooves beside him. 

"That isn't--Jimmy--is it?" he said. 

I saw him move his left hand to find Jimmy's right. And I heard Jimmysaying again (in a weak voice this time) that he was as right as rain. 

We had got out of the range of the guns and the surgeons had done theirbusiness with bandages and splints. They had taken Reggie first, thenJimmy. 

And so, lying beside Reggie, on his own stretcher and in his ownambulance, he was brought back to Ghent. 

The military hospitals were full, so we took them to the Convent de SaintPierre. And I went over to the Hôtel de la Poste to fetch Viola. 

I don't know what I said to her. I think I must have done what Jimmy toldme and said they were all right. _She_ never said a word till we got tothe Convent. (She told me afterwards that when she saw me coming in aloneshe had been sure that Jimmy was killed. She didn't know about Reggieyet, you see. )

This part of it is all confused and horrible. 

We had to wait before we could see our surgeons at the Convent. The nunstook us into a little parlour and left us there. 

And I told her then what had happened. I can see her sitting in the nuns'parlour, looking out of the window as I told her; looking as if shewasn't listening. And I can hear my own voice. It sounded strange andaffected, as if I had made it all up and didn't believe what I wastelling her. 

"He saved Reggie's life--do you see? at the risk of his own. 

"At--the risk--of his own. "

And still she looked as if she wasn't listening. It didn't sound as if ithad really happened. 

And I feel--now--as if I had taken hours to tell her. 

Then one of our men came to us. He drew back when he saw Mrs. Jevons, andI followed him to the doorway. He said they were busy with MajorThesiger. They hadn't started yet with Mr. Jevons. 

And then--ages afterwards--one of the surgeons came and called me out ofthe room. He said the Major would be all right. They'd got the bit ofshell out. But--there was Jevons's hand. They'd have to take it off. They couldn't possibly save it. And it was going to be a beastlybusiness. They'd run out of anaesthetics. Thesiger had had the lastthey'd got. 

Yes, of course it would have been better. But Jevons wouldn't hear of it. _He_ knew they were short and Thesiger didn't, and he'd insisted on theirdoing Thesiger first. 

It was an awful mistake, he said, because it would hurt Jevons ten timesmore than it would hurt anybody else. He thought that I had better getMrs. Jevons out of that room; the ward where they were operating was nextto it. 

I couldn't get her out of it. 

There were five minutes when I sat there and Viola crouched on the floorbeside me with her face hidden on my knees and her hands grabbing metighter and tighter. 

And the door opened and I saw two nuns looking in. I heard one say toanother, "_C'est sa pauvre femme qui devient folle_. " And the door closedon us. 

 * * * * *

"All that fuss about a hand!" Jimmy had come out of his faint and wastrying to restore Viola to a sense of proportion. If all the rest of himhad been blown away, he said, by that confounded shell, and only his handhad been left, she might have had something to cry for. 

And yet she cried inconsolably for Jimmy's hand. 

God knows what memories came to her when she thought of it. I don't thinkshe thought of it as the hand that had written masterpieces and flungthem aside, that could steer a car straight through hell-fire, and thatcould nurse, and bind up wounds. I know I thought of all these obviousthings. But she must have thought of the hand that she knew like her ownhand, the hand with the firm, nervous fingers, and the three strong linesin the pinkish palm, the hand she adored and had shrunk from, whosegesture had been torture to her and whose touch was ecstasy, the handthat the surgeons had cut off and tossed into a basket to be cast outwith the refuse of the wards. 

Not that either of us had much time for thinking of anything but how wecould get out of Ghent before the Germans got into it. Viola said itwould be quite easy. There was the ambulance, and there was _her_ car andthere was Jimmy's car. 

I told her that Jimmy's god-like car was lying bottom upwards in a ditchbetween Ghent and Melle, an object half piteous, half obscene. She saidit was a jolly good thing then that she'd brought hers. Perhaps it was. 

We had just got Jimmy and Reggie into their first sleep at six o'clock inthe morning when the orders came for us to clear out. 

We cleared out in Viola's car, with Reggie on his stretcher and Jimmy(propped up with pillows) at his head, and Viola at his feet, and twowounded men in front with Colville, and Kendal and me standing one oneach step. (Most of our luggage was on the Boulevard in front of theConvent where we had left it. )

We went, as we had come, through Bruges. We drew up to rest in the MarketPlace under the Belfry. 

"You'd better look at it while you can, Viola, " said Jevons. "You maynever see it again. "

"I? I shall never see anything else, " she said. 

We looked at the Belfry. It was as if, under that menace of destruction, we saw it for the first time. 

We _might_ have enjoyed that run back, Viola said; only somehow wedidn't. Reggie was ill from his anesthetic all the way, and Jimmy'stemperature went up with every mile, and we missed the boat at Ostend, and had to stay there all night; and Jimmy became delirious in the nightand thought that he had left Viola behind in the Town Hall at Melle. Andthere was no room on the morning boat; and when we did get on board theNaval Transport at Dunkirk, Kendal took it into his head to be seasicktill he nearly died. 

We had no peace till seven o'clock on Tuesday, when we got to Canterbury. 

XV

I think I have said that Jevons made me suffer. He did. I can say thatbefore those three weeks of his all my contacts with him were infected bythe poison of my suffering. But all that was nothing to what he made mesuffer since, what I suffer now when I remember the things I have said ofhim, the things I have thought and felt--my furtive belittling of him, myunwilling admiration, the doubt that I encouraged in the mean hope thatit would become a certainty. 

I would give anything to be like the Canon or my wife, the only two of uswhose conscience doesn't reproach them when they see Jimmy's rightsleeve. 

I remember Norah saying to me once, "I shall be sorry for _you_ if youdon't take care. " Well, I am sorry for myself. 

But I am still sorrier for Mrs. Thesiger. 

I know there's a great deal to be said for her. I had wired to them fromDunkirk to tell them that Reggie was slightly wounded but recovering, andthat the four of us would be in Canterbury that evening. It wasn't myfault if Reggie, being a British officer, was taken from us at Dover, andsent to a military hospital; but I admit I ought to have wired again tothe Thesigers to inform them of the fact. I ought to have remembered thatReggie was more important to Mrs. Thesiger than Jevons, even if Jevonshad done what Mrs. Thesiger didn't yet know he'd done. 

The maternal passion is a terrible thing. It has made women commitcrimes. It made my mother-in-law push Viola from her on her threshold andturn on me as I was helping Jimmy out of the car. It made her say, "You've brought my son-in-law. What have you done with my son?"

(To do her justice, she hadn't seen what had happened to Jimmy. Though hewas tired and weak, he could still stand up and stagger along if you heldhim tight. )

And the maternal passion is not more terrible than the passion that Violahad for Jevons. It made her say to her mother as the Canon and I broughtJimmy in (the dear old man had seen in an instant why he wore his coatslung loose over his right shoulder), "You can see what we're doing withmy husband. "

And when we were all in the drawing-room and I was explaining gently thatReggie was all right, but that we'd _had_ to send him to the militaryhospital, it made her say, "If it wasn't for your son-in-law your sonwouldn't be alive. "

God knows what thirst she satisfied, what bitterness she exhausted, whatsecret anguish she avenged. 

They were all there, the Thesiger women--they had come, you see, to meetReggie--Victoria and Millicent and Mildred; and they heard her. But itwas Mildred who _saw_. She spoke to her mother. 

"Can't you _see_?" she said. 

Viola was kneeling by the sofa where her father had made Jimmy lie, andshe had unbuttoned and taken from him his heavy coat. She looked at meand said, "Please take them away somewhere and tell them. Jimmy _is_ sotired. "

I know that must seem awful. It _was_ awful to come back from thebattlefields of Flanders, from sieges and sackings and slaughter, and seethe women flashing fire at each other. And they were mother and daughter. But, you see, they were women. I know that the war should have purgedthem of their passions (perhaps it did purge them); but your lover isyour lover and your son your son for all that. 

And it wasn't easy for Mrs. Thesiger to see how her son-in-law couldhave saved her son. I am not sure that she wouldn't have thought itpresumption in Jevons to suppose that he could save anybody, let aloneher son. There were people like the Thesigers from whom heroism wasexpected as a matter of course; and there were people like Jevons. Youknow what she said about his going to the front. 

When I had finished the tale--and I let her have the whole of it, fromthe first shell that hit the Town Hall to the bit of the third shellthat hit Jimmy--she said, "You mean that if he hadn't gone back for hiscar--" She had broken down and was sobbing quietly, but you could see howher mind worked. 

I said, "I mean that if he hadn't gone back to the Town Hall to look forReggie he wouldn't have been hit. "

Then I told her how they took Jimmy's hand off. 

I heard the Canon groan. Millicent and Victoria began to sob as theirmother had sobbed. Mildred set her teeth firmly; and Mrs. Thesiger turnedto me a queer, disordered face, and spoke. 

"They--they gave the anaesthetic to--Reggie?"

"They did, " I said. "Because Jimmy made them. "

Yes. I am very sorry for Mrs. Thesiger. 

She cried, softly, and with a great recovery of beauty and dignity, forabout fifteen seconds (the Canon had gone back to Jevons); then she roseand addressed her daughter. 

"Mildred dear, I think Jimmy had better have Reggie's room. "

Then she went to him; and I am told that she kissed him for the firsttime. She kissed him as if he had been her son. (Poor Jimmy, I may say, was so tired that he didn't want to be kissed by anybody. )

 * * * * *

He still had Reggie's room six weeks later when I came back from Francefor a week-end. Reggie had recovered, and was with them for a fortnight'sleave before he went out again. 

Norah and I went down on Saturday to see him. (His leave was up on Sundaynight. )

Without Reggie I don't think I should have realized Jevons in his finalphase. 

He had been happy, I know, at Hampstead in the first two years of hismarriage; he had been happy most of the time in Edwardes Square; even inMayfair he had had moments; and Amershott had been, on the whole, animprovement on Mayfair. And he had lived through his three weeks in Ghentin a sort of ecstasy. And before that, all the time, there had been hiswork, which I am always forgetting, and his fame, when he didn't forgetit. 

But there had always been something. 

At first it had been the Thesigers. As long as Mrs. Thesiger--as longas _one_ Thesiger--held out against him he had felt defeat. And thenthere had been Reggie's return and his appalling doubt. He had pretendednot to see his doubt and not to mind it. And he had seen it, as he saweverything, and he had minded awfully. Then came Viola's illness, whichyou could put down to Reggie's doubt. And after that it had been Violapretty nearly all the time. And even at Ghent, by the tortures of anxietyshe had caused him, you may say that she had spoiled his ecstasy. 

And now, without any effort, or any calculation or foresight, by astupendous accident, he had found happiness and peace and certainty. Thething was so consummately done, and so timed to the minute, that when yousaw him there enjoying it, you could have sworn that he had played for itand pulled it off. It was as if he had said to himself, "Give me time, and I'll bring all these people round, even Mrs. Thesiger, even Reggie. I'll _make_ them love me. Wait, and you'll just see how I shall score. "

And there he was scoring. 

And it was as if he had said to himself long ago, "As for Viola, I knowall about it. I know I do things that make the poor child shudder; but Ican put that all right. I can make her forget it. I give myself threeweeks. " As if he said, "She thought she was going to leave me. I knewthat, too, and I didn't care. She might have left me a thousand times andI should have brought her back. "

I used to think it pathetic that Jevons should have wanted Mrs. Thesigerto love him--that he should have wanted Reggie to. But I must say hispathos was avenged. _They_ were pathetic now. That big, hulking Majorwasn't happy unless he was writing Jimmy's letters, or cutting up Jimmy'smeat for him, or helping him in and out of his clothes. Mrs. Thesigerwasn't happy unless she was doing things for him. The Canon wasn't happy(though, like Norah, he had nothing on his conscience) and Mildred andMillicent and Victoria weren't happy, nor the Thesiger's friends in theCathedral Close. 

And then--after they had made a hero of him for six weeks--on thatSaturday night when we were all together in the Canon's library, Jevonsmade his confession. 

We had been, exchanging reminiscences. Something had made Viola think ofJimmy's General and the two Colonels at Ghent. She began telling theCanon how we had watched them through the glass screen, and how funnyGeneral Roubaix had looked with his arm round Jimmy's neck, and how hehad said that Jimmy was a salamander, and that he didn't know what fearis. 

"Oh, _don't_ I!" said Jimmy. 

And that sent Reggie back to the day when he had first seen Jimmy. 

"Look here, old man, what made you say you were an arrant coward?"

"Because, " said Jimmy simply, "I am one. Dear old Roubaix was talkingthrough his hat. 

"Not know what fear is! I know a good many things, but I don't knowanything better than that. You can't tell me anything about fear I don'tknow. 

"You've no idea how I funked going out to the war. Yes--_funked_. 

"It wasn't any ordinary funk, mind you, the little, creepy feeling inyour waist, and your tummy tumbling down, and your heart sort offluttering over the place where it used to be. I believe you can get over_that_. And I never had that--ever, except once when I saw Viola in aplace where she'd no business to be. It was something much worse. It--itwas in my head--in my brain. A sort of madness. And it never let mealone. It was worse at night, and after I got up and began to go about inthe morning--when my brain woke and remembered, but it was there all thetime. 

"I saw things--horrors. And I heard them. I saw and heard the wholewar. All the blessed time--all those infernal five weeks before I gotout to it, I kept seeing horrors and hearing them. There was a lot ofdetail--realism wasn't in it--and it was all correct; because I verifiedit afterwards. Things _were_ just like that. Every morning when I got upI said to myself I'm going out to that damned war, but I wish to Godsomebody'd come and chloroform me before I get there. There were momentswhen I could have chloroformed myself. I felt as if it was the utterinjustice of God that I--_I_--had to be mixed up in it. 

"Not know what fear is!

"Just conceive, " said Jimmy, "a man living like that, in abject, abominable terror, in black funk--keeping it up, all day and half thenight, for five solid weeks--before he got there. "

"And when you did get there, " said Reggie, "were you in a funk?"

"Oh, well, you see, by the time I'd got there it had pretty well wornitself out. There wasn't any funk left to _be_ in. "

And when I saw Reggie look at him I knew he had scored again. 

Still, I wondered how it really stood with them; and whether Reggiehad settled with his doubt, or whether sometimes, when you caught himlooking at Jimmy, it had come over him again. The kind of virtue hisbrother-in-law had displayed in Flanders wouldn't help him, you see, tothat particular solution. And with the Thesigers--when they took aftertheir mother--things died hard. 

He must have felt that he had to settle it before he went. 

Viola told us what happened. 

It was his last evening, and the three were together in that room ofReggie's. He had just said that Viola wouldn't care how many Town Hallshe was buried under, as long as Jimmy didn't go and dig him out. Andthen, suddenly, he went straight for it. 

"Jimmy, " he said, "did you run away with my sister, or didn't you? Idon't care whether you did or not, but--did you?"

"No, I didn't, " said Jimmy. 

"Then what the dickens, " Reggie said, "were you doing together inBruges?"

"We were looking at the Belfry, " said Jimmy. 

And Reggie shook his head. "That's beyond me, " he said. 

"Yes, " said Viola. "But it wasn't beyond Jimmy. "

That's the real story of Tasker Jevons and his wife. 

Don't ask me what would have happened to them if there hadn't been a war. 

I've tried to show you the sort of man he was. He knew his hour evenbefore it found him. And you cannot separate him from his hour.