 4. The Unobtrusive Parting. Part 2, Sub-Chapter 7. We'll call the principal witness, said Mrs. Bowles at last, warming to the business. Dick! Dick! Dick! The professor got up and strolled round behind the caravan. Then he returned. No boy there. He heard, said Mrs. Bowles, in a large whisper and making round wonder eyes. She says, said Douglas, that the chances are he's got into the secret passages. The professor strolled out to the road and looked up it and then down upon the roofs of Winthorpe Sutbury. No, he said, he's mizzled. He's only gone away for a bit, said Mrs. Geach. He does sometimes after lunch. He'll come back to wash up. He's probably taking the snooze among the you-bushes before facing the labours of washing up, said Mrs. Bowles. He can't have mizzled. You see, in there, he can't by any chance have taken his luggage. She got up and clambered, with a little difficulty because of its piled up position into the caravan. It's all right, she called out of the door. His little parcival is still here. Her head disappeared again. I don't think he'd go away like this, said Madeleine. After all, what is there for him to go to, even if he is Lady Laxton's missing boy? I don't believe he heard a word of it, said Mrs. Geach. Mrs. Bowles reappeared, with a curious-looking brown paper parcel in her hand. She descended carefully. She sat down by the fire and held the parcel on her knees. She regarded it and her companions waggishly, and lit a fresh cigarette. Our link with Dick, she said, with the cigarette in her mouth. She felt the parcel. She poised the parcel. She looked at it more and more waggishly. I wonder, she said. Her expression became so waggish that her husband knew she was committed to behavior of the utmost un-gentlemenliness. He had long ceased to attempt restraint in these moods. She put her head on one side and tore open the corner of the parcel just a little way. A tin can, she said in a stage whisper. She enlarged the opening. Blades of grass, she said. The professor tried to regard it humorously. Even if you have ceased to be decent, you can still be frank. I think now, my dear, you might just straightforwardly undo the parcel. She did. Twelve unsympathetic eyes surveyed the evidences of Bilby's utter poverty. He's coming! cried Madeline suddenly. Judy repacked hastily, but it was a false alarm. I said he'd mizzled, said the professor. And without washing up, wailed Madeline. I couldn't have thought it of him. But Bilby had not mizzled, although he was conspicuously not in evidence about the camp. There was neither sight nor sound of him, for all the time they said about the vestiges of their meal. They talked of him and of topics arising out of him, and whether the captain should telegraph to Lady Laxton. Boy practically found. I'd rather just find him, said the captain, and anyhow until we get hold of him we don't know it's her particular boy. Then they talked of washing up and how detestable it was. And suddenly the two husbands, seeing their advantage, renewed their proposals that the caravaners should put up at the Gulflynx Hotel and have baths and the comforts of civilization for a night or so, and anyhow walk thither for tea. And as William had now returned, he was sitting on the turf of far off, smoking a nasty looking short clay pipe. They rose up and departed. But Captain Douglas and Miss Phillips, for some reason, did not go off exactly with the others, but strayed apart, straying away more and more into a kind of solitude. First the four married people, and then the two lovers disappeared over the crest of the downs. sub-chapter nine For a time, except for its distant sentinel, the caravan seemed absolutely deserted. And then a clump of bramble against the wall of the old chalk pit became agitated, and a small, rueful, disillusioned, white sneered little bilby crept back into the visible universe again. His heart was very heavy. The time had come to go. And he did not want to go. He had loved the caravan. He had adored Madeleine. He would go, but he would go beautifully, touchingly. He would wash up before he went. He would make everything tidy. He would leave behind him a sense of irreparable loss. With a mournful precision, he said about this undertaking. If Murgleson could have seen, Murgleson would have been amazed. He made everything look wonderfully tidy. Then, in the place where she had sat, lying on her rug, he found her favorite book, a small volume of Swinburne's poems, very beautifully bound. Captain Douglas had given it to her. Bilby handled it with a kind of reverence. So luxurious it was, so unlike the books in Bilby's world, so altogether of her quality. Strange forces prompted him. For a time he hesitated. Then decision came with a rush. He selected a page, drew the stump of a pencil from his pocket, wetted it very wet and breathing hard, began to write that traditional message. Farewell. Remember Art Bilby. To this he made an original edition. I washed up before I went. Then he remembered that so far as this caravan went, he was not Art Bilby at all. He renewed the wetness of his pencil and drew black lines a thwart the name of Art Bilby until it was quite unreadable. Then, across this again and pressing still deeper, so that the subsequent pages re-echoed it, he wrote these singular words, Ed, rightful Earl Shantz. Then he was ashamed and largely obliterated this by still more forcible strokes. Finally above it, plainly and nakedly, he wrote Dick Maltravers. He put down the book with a sigh and stood up. Everything was beautifully in order, but could he not do something yet? There came to him the idea of re-thing the entire camping place with boughs of you. It would look lovely and significant. He set to work. At first he toiled zealously, but you is tough to get, and soon his hands were painful. He cast about for some easier way, and saw beneath the hind wheels of the caravan great green bows, one particularly a splendid long branch. It seemed to him that it would be possible to withdraw this branch from the great heap of sticks and stones that stayed up the hind wheels of the caravan. It seemed to him that that was so. He was mistaken, but that was his idea. He set to work to do it. It was rather more difficult to manage than he had supposed. There were unexpected ramifications, wider resistances. Indeed, the things seemed rooted. Bilby was a resolute youngster at bottom. He warmed to his task. He tugged harder and harder. 10. How various is the quality of humanity? About Bilby there was ever an imaginative touch. He was capable of romance, of gallantries, of devotion. William was of a grosser clay, slave of his appetites, a materialist. Such men as William drive one to believe in born inferiors, in the existence of a lower sort, in the natural inequality of men. While Bilby was busy at his little gentle task of reparation, a task foolish perhaps, and not too ably conceived, but at any rate morally gracious, William had no thought in the world but the satisfaction of those appetites that the consensus of all mankind has definitely relegated to the lower category. And which heaven has relegated to the lower regions of our frame? He came now slinking towards the vestiges of the caravaners' picnic, and no one skilled in the interpretation of the human physiognomy could have failed to read the significance of the tongue tip that drifted over his thin oblique lips. He came so softly towards the encampment that Bilby did not note him. Partly William thought of remnants of food, but chiefly he was intent to drain the bottles. Bilby had stuck them all neatly in a row a little way up the hill. There was a cider bottle with some heel taps of cider. William drank that. Then there was nearly half a bottle of hawk, and William drank that. Then there were the drainings of the burgundy and a pollinaris. It was all drank to William. And after he had drained each bottle, William winked at the watching angels and licked his lips and patted the lower centers of his being with a shameless base approval. Then, fired by alcohol, robbed of his last vestiges of self-control, his thoughts turned to the delicious chocolates that were stored in a daintily-be-ribboned box in the little drawers beneath the sleeping bunk of Miss Phillips. There was a new brightness in his eye, a spot of pink in either cheek. With an expression of the lowest cunning, he reconnoitred Bilby. Bilby was busy about something at the back end of the caravan tugging at something. With swift, stealthy movements of an entirely graceless sort, William got up into the front of the caravan. Just for a moment he hesitated before going in. He craned his neck to look round the side at the unconscious Bilby, wrinkled the vast nose into an unpleasant grimace, and then, a crouching figure of appetite, he crept inside. Here they were. He laid his hand in the drawer, halted, listening. What was that? Suddenly the caravan swayed. He stumbled and fear crept into his craven soul. The caravan lurched. It was moving. Its hind wheels came to the ground with a crash. He took a step doorward, and was pitched sideways and thrown upon his knees. Then he was hurled against the dresser and hit by a falling plate. A cup fell and smashed, and the caravan seemed to leap and bound. Through the little window he had a glimpse of you bushes hurrying upward. The caravan was going downhill. Lummi, said William, clutching at the bunks to hold himself upright. Can't be that drink, said William, a spread and a gasp. He attempted the door. Crikey! Here! Hold in! My shin! What is that brassed ball of a boy? said William. Sub Chapter 11 The caravan party soon came to its decision. They would stay the night in the hotel, and so as soon as they had had some tea they decided to go back and make William bring the caravan and all the ladies things round to the hotel. With characteristic eagerness, Professor Bowles led the way. And so it was Professor Bowles who first saw the release of the caravan. He barked. One short, sharp bark. Whop! he cried in very quickly. What's the boy doing? Then quite a different style of noise. With the mouth open. Wahoop! Then he set off running very fast down towards the caravan, waving his arms and shouting as he ran. Yaps! You idiot! Yaps! The others were less promptly active. Down the slope they saw Bilby, a little struggling active Bilby, tugging away at a U-branch until the caravan swayed with his efforts, and then there was a movement as though the thing tossed its head and reared, and a smash as the heap of stuff that stayed up its hind wheels collapsed. It plunged like a horse with a dog at its heels. It lurched sideways, and then with an air of quiet deliberation started down the grass slope to the road and Winthorpe Sutbury. Professor Bowles sped in pursuit like the wind, and Mrs. Bowles, after a gasping moment, set off after her lord, her face round and resolute. Mr. Gage followed at a more dignified pace, making the only really sound suggestion that was offered on the occasion. Hugh, stop it! cried Mr. Gage, for all the world like his great prototype at the Balkan Conference. And then, like a large languid pair of scissors, he began to run. Mrs. Gage, after some indefinite moments, decided to see the humor of it all, and followed after her lord in a fluttering rush, emitting careful little musical giggles as she ran, giggles that she had learnt long ago from a beloved school fellow. Captain Douglas and Miss Phillips were some way behind the others, and the situation had already developed considerably before they grasped what was happening. Then obeying the instincts of a soldier, the captain came charging to support the others, and Miss Madeline Phillips, after some wasted gestures, realized that nobody was looking at her, and sat down quietly on the turf, until this paralyzing state of affairs should cease. The caravan remained the center of interest. Without either indecent haste or any complete pause, it pursued its way down the road towards the tranquil village below. Except for the rumbling of its wheels, and an occasional concussion it made very little sound. Once or twice there was a faint sound of breaking crockery from its interior, and once the phantom of an angry yell, but that was all. There was an effect of discovered personality about the thing. This vehicle, which had hitherto been content to play a background part, a yellow patch amidst the scenery, was now revealing an individuality. It was purposeful and touched with a suggestion of playfulness, at once kindly and human. It had its thoughtful instance, its phases of quick decision, yet never once did it altogether lose a certain mellow dignity. There was nothing servile about it. Never for a moment, for example, did it betray its blind obedience to gravitation. It was rather as if it and gravitation were going hand in hand. It came out into the road, butted into the bank, swept round, meditated for a full second, and then shafts foremost headed downhill, going quietly faster and faster, and swaying from bank to bank. The shafts went before it like arms held out. It had a quality as if it were a favorite elephant running to a beloved master from whom it had been overlong separated, or a slightly intoxicated and altogether happy yellow guinea pig making for some coveted food. At a considerable distance followed Professor Bowles, a miracle of compact energy running so fast that he seemed only to touch the ground at very rare intervals, and then dispersedly in their order and according to their natures, the others. There was fortunately very little on the road. There was a perambulator containing twins whose little girl guardian was so fortunate as to be high up on the bank gathering black berries, a ditcher ditching, a hawker lost in thought, his cart drawn by a poor little black screw of a pony and loaded with the cheap flawed crockery that is so popular among the poor. A dog asleep in the middle of the village street, amidst this choice of objects, the caravan displayed a whimsical humanity. It reduced the children in the perambulator to tears but past. It might have reduced them to a sort of red current jelly. It lurched heavily towards the ditcher and spared him. It chased the hawker up the bank. It whipped off a wheel from the cart of crockery, which after an interval of astonishment fell like a vast objurgation. And then it directed its course with a grim intentness toward the dog. It just missed the dog. He woke up not a moment too soon. He fled with a yelp of dismay. And then the caravan, careered on a dozen yards further, lost energy and the only really undignified thing in its whole career stood on its head in a wide wet ditch. It did this with just the slightest lapse into emphasis. There. It was as if it gave a grunt and perhaps there was the faintest suggestion of William in that grunt. And then it became quite still. For a time the caravan seemed finished and done. Its steps hung from its upper end like the tongue of a tired dog. Except for a few minute noises as though it was scratching itself inside. It was as inanimate as death itself. But up the hill road the twins were weeping. The hawker and the ditcher were saying raucous things. The hawker's pony had backed into the ditch and was taking ill-advised steps for which it was afterwards to be sorry amidst his stock and trade. And Professor Bowles, Mrs. Bowles, Mr. Gege, Captain Douglas and Mrs. Gege were running, running. One heard the various patter of their feet. And then came signs of life at the upward door of the caravan, a hand, an arm, an active investigating leg seeking a hold, a large nose, a small intent vicious eye. In fact, William. William maddened. Professor Bowles had reached the caravan with a startling agility. He clambered up by the wheels and stepped and confronted the unfortunate driver. It was an occasion for mutual sympathy rather than anger. But the professor was hasty, efficient and unsympathetic with the lower classes. And Williams was an ill-regulated temperament. You consummate ass, began Professor Bowles. When William heard Professor Bowles say this, incontinently he smote him in the face. And when Professor Bowles was smitten in the face, he grappled instantly and very bravely and resolutely with William. For a moment they struggled fearfully. They seemed to be endowed instantaneously with innumerable legs. And then suddenly they fell through the door of the caravan into the interior. Their limbs seemed to whirl for a wonderful instant and then they were summoned up. The smash was tremendous. You would not have thought there was nearly so much in the caravan still left to get broken. A healing silence. At length smothered noises of still inadequate adjustment within. The village population in a state of scared delight appeared at a score of points and converged upon the catastrophe. Sounds of renewed dissension between William and the professor inside the rearing yellow bulk promised further interest and added an element of mystery to this manifest disaster. 12. As Bilby, still grasping his great branch of view, watched these events a sense of human futility invaded his youthful mind. For the first time he realized the gulf between intention and result. He had meant so well. He perceived it would be impossible to explain. The thought of even attempting to explain things to Professor Bowles was repellent to him. He looked about him with round despairful eyes. He selected a direction which seemed to promise the maximum of concealment with the minimum of conversational possibility. And in that direction and without needless delay he set off, eager to turn over an entirely fresh page in his destiny as soon as possible. To get away the idea possessed all his being. From the crest of the downs a sweet voice floated after his retreating form and never overtook him. Sub Chapter 13. Then presently Miss Phillips arose to her feet, gathered her skirts in her hand and with her delicious chin raised and an expression of countenance that was almost businesslike, descended towards the gathering audience below. She wore wide flowing skirts and came down the hill in Artemisian strides. It was high time that somebody looked at her. End of Chapter 4 Part 2 Chapter 5 Bielby A Holiday This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rita Butros Bielby A Holiday by H. G. Wells Chapter 5 The Seeking of Bielby Part 1 Sub Chapter 1 On the same Monday evening that witnessed Bielby's first experience of the theatre, Mr. Merkelson, the house steward of Schantz, walked slowly and thoughtfully across the corner of the park between the laundry and the gardens. His face was much recovered from the accidents of his collision with the Lord Chancellor. Resort to raw meat in the kitchen had checked the development of his injuries and only a few contusions in the side of his face were more than faintly traceable. And suffering had on the whole rather ennobled than depressed his bearing. He had a black eye, but it was not he felt a common black eye. It came from high quarters and through no fault of Mr. Merkelson's own. He carried it well. It was a fruit of duty rather than the outcome of wanton pleasure seeking or misdirected passion. He found Mr. Darling in profound meditation over some peach trees against the wall. They were not doing so well as they ought to do, and Mr. Darling was engaged in wondering why. Good evening, Mr. Darling, said Mr. Merkelson. Mr. Darling seized rather slowly to wonder and turned to his friend. Good evening, Mr. Merkelson, he said. I don't quite like the look of these here peaches. Blow to f I do. Mr. Merkelson glanced at the peaches and then came to the matter that was nearest to his heart. You haven't, I suppose, seen anything of your steps on these last two days, Mr. Darling? Naturally not, said Mr. Darling, putting his head on one side and regarding his interlocutor. Naturally not, I've left that to you, Mr. Merkelson. Well, that's what's awkward, said Mr. Merkelson, and then with a forced easiness. You see, I ain't seen him either. No. No, I lost sight of him. Mr. Merkelson appeared to reflect. Late on Saturday night. How's that, Mr. Merkelson? Mr. Merkelson considered the difficulties of lucid explanation. We missed him, said Mr. Merkelson simply, regarding the well-weeded garden path with a calculating expression, and then lifting his eyes to Mr. Darling's with an air of great candor. And we continued to miss him. Well, said Mr. Darling, that's rum. Yes, said Mr. Merkelson. It's decidedly rum, said Mr. Darling. We thought he might be idling from his work or cut off home. You didn't send down to ask. We was too busy with the weekend people. On the all we thought if he had cut home, on the all, it wasn't a very serious loss. He got in the way at times, and there was one or two things happened. Now that they're all gone and he hasn't turned up, well, I came down, Mr. Darling, to ask you, where is he gone? He ain't come here, said Mr. Darling, surveying the garden. I are expected he might, and I are expected he mightn't, said Mr. Merkelson, with the air of one who had anticipated Mr. Darling's answer, but hesitated to admit as much. The two gentlemen paused for some seconds, and regarded each other searchingly. Where's he got to? said Mr. Darling. Well, said Mr. Merkelson, putting his hands where the tails of his short jacket would have been, if it hadn't been short, and looking extraordinarily like a parrot in its more thoughtful moods. To tell you the truth, Mr. Darling, I've had a dream about him, and it worries me. I got a sort of idea of him, as being in one of them secret passages. I didn't weigh. There was a guest, well, I say it with all respect, but anyone might have hid from him. This morning, soon as the weekend had cleared up and gone home, me and Thomas went through them passages as well as we could. Not a trace of him, but I still got that idea. It was a regular and climate enterprise and sort of boy. I've checked him for it once or twice, said Mr. Darling, with the red light of fierce memories gleaming for a moment in his eyes. He might even, said Mr. Merkelson. Well, very likely, I've got himself jammed in one of them secret passages. Jammed, repeated Mr. Darling. Well, got himself somewhere where it can't get out. I have heard tell there's walled up dungeons. They say, said Mr. Darling, there's underground passages to the Abbey Ruins three good miles away. Awkward, said Mr. Merkelson. Drudges eyes, said Mr. Darling, scratching, and said, What does he mean by it? We can't leave him there, said Mr. Merkelson. I know the young devil once would crawl up a culvert, said Mr. Darling. His father had to dig him out like a fox. Lord, how he walloped him for it. Mistake to have a boy in so young, said Mr. Merkelson. It's all very awkward, said Mr. Darling, surveying every aspect of the case. You see, his mother sets a most extraordinary value on him, most extraordinary. I don't know whether she oughtn't to be told, said Mr. Merkelson. I was thinking of that. Mr. Darling was not the sort of man to meet trouble halfway. He shook his head at that. Not yet, Mr. Merkelson. I don't think yet. Not until everything's been tried. I don't think there's any need to give her a needless distress. None-whatever. If you don't mind, I think I'll come up to-night, nine-ish say, and have a talk to you and Thomas about it. A quiet talk. Best to begin with a quiet talk. It's a dashed rum-go, and me and you we got to think it out a bit. That's what I think, said Mr. Merkelson, with unconcealed relief at Mr. Darling's friendliness. That's exactly the light, Mr. Darling, in which it appears to me. Because, you see, if he's all right and in the house, why doesn't he come for his vitals? Sub-Chapter 2 In the pantry that evening, the question of telling someone was discussed further. It was discussed over a number of glasses of Mr. Merkelson's beer. For following a sound tradition, Mr. Merkelson brewed at chance, and sometimes he brewed well, and sometimes he brewed ill, and sometimes he brewed weak, and sometimes he brewed strong, and there was no monotony in the cups at chance. This was sturdy stuff and suited Mr. Darling's mood, and ever and again with an author's natural weakness and an affectation of abstraction, Mr. Merkelson took the jug out empty and brought it back foaming. Henry, the second footman, was disposed to a forced hopefulness, so as not to spoil the evening, but Thomas was sympathetic and distressed. The red-haired youth made cigarettes with a little machine, licked them, and offered them to the others, saying little as became him. Etiquette deprived him of an uninvited beer, and Mr. Merkelson's inattention completed what Etiquette began. I can't bear to think of the poor little beggar, stuck head foremost into some cobwebby cranny, load if I can, said Thomas, getting help from the jug. He was an interesting kid, said Thomas, in a tone that was frankly obituary. He didn't like his work, one could see that, but he was lively, and I tried to help him along all I could, when I wasn't too busy myself. There was something sensitive about him, said Thomas. Mr. Merkelson sat with his arms loosely thrown out over the table. What we got to do is tell someone, he said. I don't see how I can put off telling her ladyship, after tomorrow morning, and then, Evan, help us? Of course I got to tell my missus, said Mr. Darling, and poured in a preoccupied way, some running over. We'll go through them passages again now, before we go to bed, said Mr. Merkelson, far as we can, but there is oils and chinks only a boy could get through. I got to tell the missus, said Mr. Darling, that's what's worrying me. As the evening wore on, there was a tendency on the part of Mr. Darling to make this the refrain of his discourse. He sought advice. I would you tell the missus, he asked Mr. Merkelson, and emptied a glass to control his impatience before Mr. Merkelson replied. I shall tell her ladyship just simply the fact. I shall say, your ladyship, here's my boy gone, and we don't know where. And as she asked me questions, so shall I give particulars? Mr. Darling reflected and then shook his head slowly. I would you tell the missus, he asked Thomas. Glad I haven't got to, said Thomas, poor little beggar. Yes, but I would you tell her, Mr. Darling said, varying the accent very carefully. I'd go to her and I'd pat her back and I'd say, bear up, see. And when she asked what for, I'd just tell her what for, gradual like. You don't know the missus, said Mr. Darling. Henry, I would you tell her. Let her find out, said Henry. Women do. Mr. Darling reflected and decided that too was unworkable. Out you, he asked, with an air of desperation of the red-haired youth. The red-haired youth remained for a moment with his tongue extended, licking the gum of a cigarette paper and his eyes on Mr. Darling. Then he finished the cigarette slowly, giving his mind very carefully to the question he had been honored with. I think he said, in a low serious voice, I should say just simply Mary or Susan or whatever her name is. Tilda, supplied Mr. Darling. Tilda, I should say, the Lord gave and the Lord have taken away. Tilda is gone. Something like that. The red-haired boy cleared his throat. He was rather touched by his own simple eloquence. Mr. Darling reflected on this with profound satisfaction for some moments. Then he broke out almost quarrellessly. Yes, but breast him, where's he gone? Anyhow, said Mr. Darling, I ain't going to tell her not till the morning. I ain't going to lose my night's rest if I have lost my stepson. Know how? Mr. Mergelsen, I must say, I don't think I ever have tasted better beer, never. It's—it's famous beer. He had some more. On his way back through the moonlight to the gardens, Mr. Darling was still unsettled as to the exact way of breaking things to his wife. He had come out from the house a little ruffled, because of Mr. Mergelsen's opposition to a rather good idea of his, that he should go about the house and all her for him a bit. He'd know my voice, you see. Latership wouldn't mind. Very likely sleep by now. But the moonlight dispelled his irritation. How was he to tell his wife? He tried various methods to the listening moon. There was, for example, the off-hand newsy way. You know that boy yours? Then a pause for the reply. Then he's totally disappeared. Only there were difficulties about the word totally. Or the distressed, impersonal manner. Dreffel-thing happened. Dreffel-thing. That poor little chap, Artie, totally disappeared. Totally again. Or the personal intimate note. Don't know what you'll say to me, Tilda, when I tell you what to got to say. Thoroughly bad news. Seems they lost our Artie up there. Clean lost him. Can't find him nowhere tall. Or the authoritative kindly. Tilda, you go control yourself. Go show what you're made of. Our boy, he's lost. Then he addressed the park at large with a sudden despair. Don't care what I say. She'll blame it on to me. I know her. After that the enormous pathos of the situation got hold of him. Poor little chap, he said. Poor little fell. And shed a few natural tears. Loved him just as me on sun. As the circumambient night made no reply, he repeated the remark in a louder, almost domineering tone. He spent some time trying to climb the garden wall, because the door did not seem to be in the usual place. Have to inquire about that in the morning. Difficult to see everything is all right when one is so bereaved. But finally he came on the door round a corner. He told his wife merely that he intended to have a peaceful night and took off his boots in a defiant and intermittent manner. The morning would be soon enough. She looked at him pretty hard, and he looked at her ever and again, but she never made a guess at it. Bed Sub Chapter 3 So soon as the weekenders had dispersed and Sir Peter had gone off to London to attend to various matters affecting the peptonizing of milk and the distribution of baby soothers about the habitable globe, Lady Laxton went back to bed and remained in bed until midday on Tuesday. Nothing short of complete rest and the utmost kindness from her maid would, she felt, save her from a nervous breakdown of the most serious description. The festival had been stormy to the end. Sir Peter's ill-advised attempts to deprive Lord Margaret of alcohol had led to a painful struggle at lunch, and this had been followed by a still more unpleasant scene between host and guest in the afternoon. This is an occasion for tact, Sir Peter had said, and had gone off to tackle the Lord Chancellor, leaving his wife to the direst, best-founded apprehensions. For Sir Peter's tact was a thing by itself, a mixture of misconception, reclamation, and familiarity that was rarely well received. She had had to explain to the Sunday dinner party that his lordship had been called away suddenly. Something connected with the great seal, Lady Laxton had whispered, in a discreet, mysterious whisper. One or two simple hearers were left with the persuasion that the great seal had been taken suddenly unwell, and probably in a slightly indelicate manner. Thomas had to paint Mergelsen's eye with grease paint left over from some private theatricals. It had been a patched up affair altogether, and before she retired to bed that night, Lady Laxton had given way to her accumulated tensions and wept. There was no reason, whatever, why, to wind up the day Sir Peter should have stayed in her room for an hour, saying what he thought of Lord Margaret. She felt she knew quite well enough what he thought of Lord Margaret, and on these occasions he always used a number of words that she did her best to believe, as a delicately brought up woman, were unfamiliar to her ears. So on Monday, as soon as the guests had gone, she went to bed again and stayed there, trying, as a good woman should, to prevent herself thinking of what the neighbors could be thinking and saying of the whole affair, by studying a new and very circumstantial pamphlet by Bishop Fowle on social evils, turning over the moving illustrations of some recent anti-vivisection literature, and rereading the accounts in the morning papers of a colliery disaster in the north of England. To such women as Lady Laxton, brought up in an atmosphere of refinement that is almost colorless, and living a life troubled only by small social conflicts and the minor violence of Sir Peter, blameless to the point of complete uneventfulness, and secure and comfortable to the point of tedium, there is something amounting to fascination in the wickedness and sufferings of more normally situated people. There is a real attraction and solace in the thought of pain and stress, and as her access to any other accounts of vice and suffering was restricted, she kept herself closely in touch with the more explicit literature of the various movements for human moralization that distinguish our age, and responded eagerly and generously to such painful catastrophes as enliven it. The counter foils of her checkbook witnessed to her gratitude for these vicarious sensations. She figured herself to herself in her daydreams as a calm and white and shining intervention checking and reproving amusements of an undesirable nature, and earning the tearful blessings of the mangled byproducts of industrial enterprise. There is a curious craving for entire reality in the feminine composition, and there were times when, in spite of these feasts of particulars, she wished she could come just a little nearer to the heady dreadfulnesses of life than simply writing a check against it. She would have liked to have actually seen the votaries of evil blench and repent before her contributions, to have herself unstrapped and revived and pitied some doomed and chloroformed victim of the so-called scientist, to have herself participated in the stretcher and the hospital and humanity made marvelous by enlistment under the Red Cross badge. But Sir Peter's ideals of womanhood were higher than his language, and he would not let her soil her refinement with any vision of the pain and evil in the world. Sort of woman they want up there is a trained nurse, he used to say, when she broached the possibility of going to some famine or disaster. You don't want to go prying, old girl. She suffered, she felt, from repressed heroism. If ever she was to shine in disaster, that disaster, she felt, must come to her. She must not go to meet it, and so you realize how deeply it stirred her, how it brightened her, and uplifted her to learn from Mr. Merkelson's halting statements that perhaps, that probably, that almost certainly, a painful and tragical thing was happening, even now, within the walls of chance, that there was urgent necessity for action, if anguish was to be witnessed before it had ended, and life saved. She clasped her hands, she surveyed her large servitor with agonized green-gray eyes. Something must be done at once, she said. Everything possible must be done, poor little mite. Of course, my lady, may have run away. Oh, no, she cried. He hasn't run away. He hasn't run away. How can you be so wicked, Merkelson? Of course he hasn't run away. He's there now, and it's too dreadful. She became suddenly very firm and masterful. The morning's colliery tragedy inspired her imagination. We must get pickaxes, she said. We must organize search parties Not a moment is to be lost, Merkelson. Not a moment. Get the men in off the roads. Get everyone you can. And not a moment was lost. The road men were actually at work in chance before their proper dinner hour was over. They did quite a lot of things that afternoon. Every passage attainable from the dining room opening was explored. And where these passages gave off chinks and crannies, they were opened up with a vigor, which Lady Laxton had greatly stimulated by an encouraging presence and liberal doses of whiskey. Through their efforts a fine new opening was made into the library from the wall near the window, a hole big enough for a man to fall through because one did, and a great piece of stonework was thrown down from the Queen Elizabeth Tower, exposing the upper portion of the secret passage to the light of day. Lady Laxton herself and the head-housemaid went round the paneling with a hammer and a chisel and called out, Are you there? and attempted an opening wherever it sounded hollow. The sweep was sent for to go up the old chimneys outside the present flues. Meanwhile Mr. Darling had been sent with several of his men to dig for, discover, pick up, and lay open the underground passage or disused drain, whichever it was, that was known to run from the corner of the laundry towards the old ice-house and that was supposed to reach to the Abbey ruins. After some bold exploratory excavations this channel was located and a report sent at once to Lady Laxton. It was this and the new and alarming scar on the Queen Elizabeth Tower that brought Mr. Bolu Plummer post-haste from the estate office up to the house. Mr. Bolu Plummer was the Marquis of Cranberry's estate agent, a man of great natural tact and charged among other duties with the task of seeing that the Laxtons did not make away with chance during the period of their tenancy. He was a sound compact little man, rarely out of the extreme riding breaches and gaiters, and he wore glasses that now glittered with astonishment as he approached Lady Laxton and her band of spade workers. At his approach Mr. Darling attempted to become invisible, but he was unable to do so. Lady Laxton, Mr. Bolu Plummer appealed, may I ask? Oh, Mr. Bolu Plummer, I'm so glad you've come! A little boy, suffocating, I can hardly bear it! Suffocating, cried Mr. Bolu Plummer, where, and was in a confused manner, told. He asked a number of questions that Lady Laxton found very tiresome. But how did she know the boy was in the secret passage? Of course she knew. Was it likely she would do all this if she didn't know? But mightn't he have run away? How could he when he was in the secret passages? But why not first scour the countryside? By which time he would be smothered and starved and dead? They parted with a mutual loss of esteem, and Mr. Bolu Plummer, looking very serious indeed, ran as fast as he could straight to the village telegraph office. Or to be more exact, he walked until he thought himself out of sight of Lady Laxton, and then he took to his heels and ran. He sat for some time in the parlor post office, spoiling telegraph forms and composing telegrams to Sir Peter Laxton and Lord Cranberry. He got these off at last, and then, drawn by an irresistible fascination, went back to the park and watched from afar the signs of fresh activities on the part of Lady Laxton. He saw men coming from the direction of the stables with large rakes. With these they dragged the ornamental waters. Then a man with a pickaxe appeared against the skyline, and crossed the roof in the direction of the clock tower, bound upon some unknown but probably highly destructive mission. Then he saw Lady Laxton going off to the gardens. She was going to console Mrs. Darling in her trouble. This she did through nearly an hour and a half, and on the whole it seemed well to Mr. Bolu Plummer that so she should be occupied. It was striking five when a telegraph boy on a bicycle came up from the village with a telegram from Sir Peter Laxton. Stop all proceedings absolutely it said, until I get to you. Lady Laxton's lips tightened at the message. She was back from much weeping with Mrs. Darling, and altogether finally strung. Here she felt was one of those supreme occasions when a woman must assert herself. A matter of life or death she wired in reply, and to show herself how completely she overrode such dictation as this she sent Mr. Merkelson down to the village public house with orders to engage anyone he could find there for an evening's work on an extraordinarily liberal overtime scale. After taking this step the spirit of Lady Laxton quailed. She went and sat in her own room and quivered. She quivered but she clenched her delicate fist. She would go through with it, come what might, she would go on with the excavation all night if necessary. But at the same time she began a little to regret that she had not taken earlier steps to demonstrate the improbability of Bealby having simply run away. She set to work to repair this omission. She wrote off to the superintendent of police in the neighboring town to the nearest police magistrate and then on the off chance to various of her weekend guests including Captain Douglas. If it was true that he had organized the annoyance of the Lord Chancellor and though she still rejected that view she did now begin to regard it as a permissible hypothesis then he might also know something about the mystery of this boy's disappearance. Each letter she wrote, she wrote with greater fatigue and haste than its predecessor and more illegibly. Sir Peter arrived long after dark. He cut across the corner of the park to save time and fell into one of the trenches that Mr. Darling had opened. This added greatly to the eclat with which he came into the hall. Lady Laxton withstood him for five minutes and then returned abruptly to her bedroom and locked herself in leaving the control of the operations in his hands. If he's not in the house said Sir Peter all this is thundering fullery and if he's in the house he's dead. If he's dead he'll smell in a bit and then it'll be the time to look for him. Something to go upon instead of all this blind hacking the place about. No wonder they're threatening proceedings. Sub Chapter 4 Upon Captain Douglas Lady Laxton's letter was destined to have a very distracting effect because as he came to think it over, as he came to put her partly illegible illusions to secret passages and a missing boy side by side with his memories of Lord Margaret's accusations and the general mystery of his expulsion from Shantz, it became more and more evident to him that he had here something remarkably like a clue, something that might serve to lift the black suspicion of irreverence and levity from his military reputation. And he had already got to the point of suggesting to Miss Phillips that he ought to follow up and secure Bilby forthwith before ever they came over the hill crest to witness the disaster to the caravan. Captain Douglas, it must be understood, was a young man at war within himself. He had been very nicely brought up, firstly in a charming English home, then in a preparatory school for selected young gentlemen, then in a good set at Eaton, then at Sandhurst, where the internal trouble had begun to manifest itself. Afterwards the Bistershurs. There were three main strands in the composition of Captain Douglas. In the first place, and what was peculiarly his own quality, was the keenest interest in the why of things and the how of things, and the general mechanism of things. He was fond of clocks, curious about engines, eager for science. He had a quick brain and nimble hands. He read Jules Verne and liked to think about going to the stars and making flying machines and submarines. In those days when everybody knew quite certainly that such things were impossible. His brain teamed with larval ideas that only needed air and light to become active, full-fledged ideas. There he excelled most of us. In the next place, but this second strand, was just a strand that most young men have. He had a natural keen interest in the other half of humanity. He thought them lovely, interesting, wonderful, and they filled him with warm curiosities and set his imagination cutting the prettiest capers. And in the third place, and there again, he was ordinarily human. He wanted to be liked, admired, approved, well thought of. And so constituted he had passed through the educational influence of that English home, that preparatory school, the good set at Eaton, the Santhurst Discipline, the Bistrocher Mess. Now the educational influence of the English home, the preparatory school, the good set at Eaton and Santhurst in those days, though Santhurst has altered a little since, was all to develop that third chief strand of his being to the complete suppression of the others, to make him look well and unobtrusive, dress well and unobtrusively, behave well and unobtrusively, carry himself well, play games reasonably well, do nothing else well, and in the best possible form. And the two brothers Douglas, who were really very much alike, did honestly do their best to be such plain and simple gentlemen as our country demands, taking pretentious, established things seriously, and not being odd or intelligent in spite of those insurgent strands. But the strands were in them, below the surface, the disturbing impulses worked, and at last forced their way out. In one Captain Douglas, as Mrs. Rampound-Pilby told the Lord Chancellor, the suppressed ingenuity broke out in disconcerting mystifications and practical jokes that led to a severance from Portsmouth. In the other, the pent-up passions came out before the other ingredients in an uncontrollable devotion to the obvious and challenging femininity of Miss Madeleine Phillips. His training had made him proof against ordinary women, deaf as it were, to their charms, but she, she had penetrated, and impulsive forces that have been pent up go with a bang when they go. The first strand in the composition of Captain Douglas has still to be accounted for, the sinister strain of intelligence and inventiveness and lively curiosity. On that he had kept a wearier hold. So far that had not been noted against him. He had his motor-bicycle, it is true, at a time when motor-bicycles were on the verge of the catish. To what extent a watchful eye might have found him suspicious? That was all that showed. I wish I could add it was all that there was, but other things, other things were going on. Nobody knew about them, but they were going on more and more. He read books, not decent fiction, not official biographies about other fellow's fathers and all the old anecdotes brought up to date and so on, but books with ideas, you know, philosophy, social philosophy, scientific stuff, all that rot, the sort of stuff they read in mechanics institutes. He thought. He could have controlled it, but he did not attempt to control it. He tried to think. He knew perfectly well that it wasn't good form, but a vicious attraction drew him on. He used to sit in his bedroom study at Sandhurst with the door locked and write down on a bit of paper what he really believed and why. He would cut all sorts of things to do this. He would question things no properly trained English gentleman ever questions, and he experimented. This, you know, was long before the French and American aviators. It was long before the coming of that emphatic lead from abroad without which no well-bred English mind permits itself to stir. In the darkest secrecy, he used to make little models of cane and paper and elastic in the hope that somehow he would find out something about flying, flying that dream. He used to go off by himself to lonely places and climb up as high as he could and send these things fluttering earthward. He used to moon over them and muse about them. If anyone came upon him suddenly while he was doing these things, he would sit on his model or pretend it didn't belong to him or clap it into his pocket, whichever was most convenient, and assume the vacuous expression of a well-bred gentleman at leisure. And so far nobody had caught him, but it was a dangerous practice. And finally, and this now is the worst and last thing to tell of his eccentricities, he was keenly interested in the science of his profession and intensely ambitious. He thought, though it wasn't his business to think, the business of a junior officer is to obey and look a credit to his regiment that the military science of the British army was not nearly so bright as it ought to be, and that if big trouble came there might be considerable scope for an inventive man who had done what he could to keep abreast with foreign work, and a considerable weeding out of generals whose promotion had been determined entirely by their seniority, amiability, and unruffled, connubial felicity. He thought that the field artillery would be found out. There was no good in making a fuss about it beforehand. That no end of neglected dodges would have to be picked up from the enemy, that the transport was feeble, and a health service other than surgery and ambulance. An unknown idea, but he saw no remedy but experience. So he worked hard and secret. He worked almost as hard as some confounded foreigner might have done, in the belief that after the first hard smash-up there might be a chance to do things. Outwardly, of course, he was sedulously all right, but he could not quite hide the stir in his mind. It broke out upon his surface in a chattering activity of incompleted sentences which he tried to keep as decently silly as he could. He had done his utmost hitherto to escape the observation of the powers that were. His infatuation for Madeline Phillips had at any rate distracted sensorious attention from these deeper infamies. And now here was a crisis in his life. Through some idiotic entanglement manifestly connected with this missing boy, he had got tarred by his brother's brush and was under grave suspicion for liveliness and disrespect. The thing might be his professional ruin, and he loved the suppressed possibilities of his work beyond measure. It was a thing to make him absent-minded, even in the company of Madeline. Not only were the first and second strands in the composition of Captain Douglas in conflict with all his appearances and pretensions, but they were also in conflict with one another. He was full of that concealed resolve to do and serve and accomplish great things in the world. That was surely purpose enough to hide behind an easygoing, unpretending gentlemanliness. But he was also tremendously attracted by Madeline Phillips, more particularly when she was not there. A beautiful woman may be the inspiration of a great career. This, however, he was beginning to find was not the case with himself. He had believed it at first and written as much and said as much, and said it very variously and gracefully. But becoming more and more distinctly clear to his intelligence was the fact that the very reverse was the case. Miss Madeline Phillips was making it very manifest to Captain Douglas that she herself was a career that a lover with any other career in view need not, as the advertisements say, apply. And the time she took up, the distress of being with her, and the distress of not being with her. She was such a proud and lovely and entrancing and distressing being to remember, and such a vain and difficult thing to be with. She knew clearly that she was made for love, for she had made herself for love, and she went through life like its Empress with all mankind and numerous women at her feet. And she had an ideal of the lover who should win her, which was like an oleographic copy of a Laszlo portrait of Douglas greatly magnified. He was to rise rapidly to great things. He was to be a conqueror and administrator while attending exclusively to her. And, incidentally, she would gather desperate homage from all other men of Mark, and these attentions would be an added glory to her love for him. At first Captain Douglas had been quite prepared to satisfy all these requirements. He had met her at Shorncliffe, for her people were quite good military people, and he had worshipped his way straight to her feet. He had made the most delightfully simple and delicate love to her. He had given up his secret vice of thinking for the writing of quite surprisingly clever love letters. And the little white paper models had ceased for a time to flutter in lonely places. And then the thought of his career returned to him from a new aspect as something he might lay at her feet, and once it had returned to him it remained with him. Some day, he said, and it may not be so very long, some of those scientific chaps will invent flying, then the army will have to take it up, you know. I should love, she said, to soar through the air. He talked one day of going on active service. How would it affect them if he had to do so? It was a necessary part of a soldier's lot. But I should come too, she said, I should come with you. It might not be altogether convenient, he said, for already he had learnt that Madeleine Phillips usually travelled with quite a large number of trunks and considerable impressiveness. Of course, she said, it would be splendid. How could I let you go alone? You would be the great general, and I should be with you always. Not always very comfortable, he suggested. Silly boy, I shouldn't mind that. How little you know me, any hardship. A woman, if she isn't a nurse, I should come dressed as a man. I would be your groom. He tried to think of her dressed as a man, but nothing on earth could get his imagination any further than a vision of her dressed as a principal boy. She was so delightfully and valiantly not virile, her hair would have flowed, her body would have moved, a richly fluent femininity, visible through any disguise. Sub Chapter 6 That was in the opening stage of the controversy between their careers. In those days they were both acutely in love with each other. Their friends thought the spectacle quite beautiful, they went together so well. Admirers fluttered with the pride of participation, asked them for weekends together, those theatrical weekends that begin on Sunday morning and end on Monday afternoon. She confided widely. And when at last there was something like a rupture, it became the concern of a large circle of friends. The particulars of the breach were differently stated. It would seem that looking ahead, he had announced his intention of seeing the French army maneuvers, just when it seemed probable that she would be out of an engagement. But I ought to see what they are doing, he said, they're going to try those new dirigibles. Then should she come? He wanted to whisk about. It wouldn't be any fun for her. They might get landed at nightfall in any old hole, and besides people would talk, especially as it was in France. One could do unconventional things in England, one couldn't do in France. Atmosphere was different. For a time after that halting explanation, she maintained a silence. Then she spoke in a voice of deep feeling. She perceived, she said, that he wanted his freedom. She would be the last person to hold a reluctant lover to her side. He might go to any maneuvers. He might go if he wished round the world. He might go away from her forever. She would not detain him, cripple him, hamper a career she had once been assured she inspired. The unfortunate man, torn between his love and his profession, protested that he hadn't meant that. Then what had he meant? He realized he had meant something remarkably like it, and he found great difficulty in expressing these fine distinctions. She banished him from her presence for a month, said he might go to his maneuvers with her blessing. As for herself, that was her own affair. Someday, perhaps, he might know more of the heart of a woman. She choked back tears, very beautifully, and military science suddenly became a trivial matter. But she was firm. He wanted to go, he must go, for a month anyhow. He went, sadly. Into this opening breach rushed friends. It was the inestimable triumph of Judy Bowles to get there first. To begin with, Madeleine confided in her, and then, availing herself of the privilege of a distant cousinship, she commanded Douglas to tea in her Night's Bridge flat and had a good straight talk with him. She liked good straight talks with honest young men about their love affairs. It was almost the only form of flirtation that the professor, who was a fierce, tough, undiscriminating man upon the essentials of matrimony, permitted her. And there was something peculiarly gratifying about Douglas's complexion. Under her guidance, he was induced to declare that he could not live without Madeleine, that her love was the heart of his life. Without it he was nothing, and with it he would conquer the world. Judy permitted herself great protestations on behalf of Madeleine, and Douglas was worked up to the pitch of kissing her intervening hand. He had little silvery hairs, she saw, all over his temples, and he was such a simple, perplexed deer. It was a rich, deep, beautiful afternoon for Judy. And then, in a very obvious way, Judy, who was already deeply in love with the idea of a caravan tour, and the wind on the heath, and the gypsy life, and the open road, and all the rest of it, worked this charming little love difficulty into her scheme, utilized her reluctant husband to arrange for the coming of Douglas, confided in Mrs. Gage. And Douglas went off with his perplexities. He gave up all thought of France, weak-ended at Chaunce instead to his own grave injury, returned to London unexpectedly by a Sunday train, packed for France, and started. He reached Rhymes on Monday afternoon, and then the image of Madeleine, which always became more beautiful and mysterious and commanding with every mile he put between them, would not let him go on. He made unconvincing excuses to the daily excess military expert with whom he was to have seen things. There's a woman in it, my boy, and you're a fool to go, said the daily excess man. But of course you'll go, and I for one don't blame you. He hurried back to London, and was at Judy's twisting place, even as Judy had anticipated. And when he saw Madeleine standing in the sunlight, pleased and proud and glorious, with a smile in her eyes and trembling on her lips, with a strand or so of her beautiful hair, and a streamer or so of delightful blue fluttering in the wind about her gracious form, it seemed to him for the moment that leaving the maneuvers and coming back to England was quite a right and almost a magnificent thing to do.