 CHAPTER VI PART I Pleasure with dry lips and pain that walks by night, all the sting and all the stain of long delight. These were the things she knew not of, that knew not of her. When she played at half a love and half a lover. Change Love. A. C. Swinburne. Rehearsal had been called for eleven o'clock in the theatre royal, Bricsome Heath, and to reach the outer ward of the suburbs, Alma had to start at half past nine, and after a short experience of the Underground Railway, to change to an omnibus, then to a tram car, and then to walk for ten minutes to save another penny, which she added mentally to her lunch. She arrived at the theatre rather before most of the company, but that she did not mind as she had met none of them before, and was curious to see what they were like. The piece was a new venture, a comic opera, to be run in the provinces before it came to London, where it had only been put on at a matinee, and the forty odd souls who comprised the company would be her intimate and only associates for the space of nine months, if the tour remained as at present announced. A doorkeeper led Alma into the theatre, and after a stare into her face told her to go down a dark passage and turn to her right. Here I'll show you, he said, to do which he put his arm familiarly round her waist under the excusing darkness, and leisurely proceeded in the direction he had given. Alma had been blinded by the light morning outside in the darkness beyond the stage door, or she would not have hesitated. As it was she made a little rush forward to extricate herself, and nearly tumbled up the steps on to the stage, with a mental note to avoid the doorkeeper during the time that the company occupied the theatre-royal. By the time she left the town Alma had generally a black mark of avoidance against the names of half the staff, and hovered between the anxiety of giving offense to officials who could resent it on her in a hundred petty ways, and the desire to keep clear of the license allowed even to subordinates. On the stage she found two other girls and a man, the latter humming over the music from the disreputable script in his hand, the girls sitting close together, on two chairs near the footlights, and talking in low whispers to each other. One gas-lamp made the gaunt stage and back-cloths a place of uncertain objects and wavering shadows, while the gulf of the house beyond was a yawning pit-mouth. It was indescribably forlorn, and did he give you any presence, dear? said one raised girl voice, the common accent matching the pretty ill-bred face. Chorus commented Alma with a shudder. The most revolting detail of her profession to her was the tradition amongst the ranks of the company that a girl should get all she could out of any man who paid her attention from the front of the house. The actors themselves were too certainly impecunious to be of any use. Alma, in her impulsive generosity, described the ladies of the chorus as quite nice girls in themselves, and chafed because she could not alter their proclivities to accept gifts from the nearest stranger. Nothing but sweets. Well, I do call that mean. He ought at least to have given you a bracelet. The young man with the script broke into a lilt of pure music, revealing a tenor voice of power and sweetness enough to make the angels weep, in spite of an unshaven face and a soiled collar. Molly was a milkmaid, hi-ho, hi-ho. The two chorus girls looked up and giggled. The tenor, nothing embarrassed, informed the empty house that pretty little pink toes always go in silk hoes, and Alma sat down and waited. By and by more of the chorus appeared than the stage manager who swore because everyone was not up to time, then the conductor who was going to run the company through the music. But the principals were late, with the two chorus girls were late, with a due sense of their own importance in keeping everyone waiting until tired and fagged. Who are we that we should have any lunch today? said a girl sitting next to Alma with the irony of experience. Do you know Mr. Cox? No, I was never with this crowd before, said Alma briefly. He is our first comedian and very clever. He always keeps us waiting half an hour at least. It is twenty to twelve now. Oh, we are going to begin at last, as if we could not have sung the choruses at least. Got your score? Mr. Manners has just handed me a few rags, said Alma, with dry distaste, looking at the filthy music lying on her knee, which she forebore to touch. It's all bits and pieces and things, said the other girl carelessly. So is the crowd. Do you sing chorus? In the first act. I am playing Mrs. Hottentot in the second. I signed for chorus and a small part. Oh, I am understudying lead and singing chorus, too. I hope we shall dress together. Some of the girls are awfully common. What is your name? Alma Craig, said Alma, suddenly conscious of the meaning of the words, for her father had been a colonel of foot and had named her after the first battle in which he, as an ensign, had taken part. Alma Craig, the daughter of a forgotten worthy, with nothing but his plucked and fighting powers for her inheritance. She was likely to prove them that morning, for the rehearsal was a bad specimen of its class. The principles were not all present until twelve, and the chorus was kept waiting about to practice those portions of the music, where they sang two lines in the midst to barissa to teave by the hero or heroine. The morning dragged itself out in the dusty, stuffy place, which was yet full of drafts, and the girls, who had worked really hard at their task, were jaded and hungry by two o'clock, before which there had been no cessation of business. Well, I'm going out to get some lunch, Mr. Manners, said the leading lady, slapping her music together, and rising determinately from her chair. It seems as if we should still be here at six tonight, and I can't sing on nothing. But Miss Lacroix, we must rub it into something like shape as soon as possible, protested the conductor, angry and tired, and resenting the lady's selfishness, because of his own conscientiousness in sticking to his duty. The chorus listened in hungry silence, longing with what felt like empty bodices, for a release in which to fill them up with indigestible buns, or anything that would relieve the faint feeling in their ill-nourished frames. Alma, who had had an early breakfast, was beginning to see the ghost-like empty seats in the house, through a dizzy haze, and under her big eyes were two dark lines like bruises. Those of the chorus who knew Mr. Manners had brought their refreshments with them, very well said the conductor savagely, because the leading lady dragged her soiled silk skirts across the dirty stage. Then we must simply take the chorus alone until you come back. Ladies Act III Opening Chorus The daughter of Colonel Craig turned the page with a shaking hand, squared her shoulders, and forced her voice to the renewed effort. She would go down with her back to the wall, if only she did not feel so sick. It was three o'clock before the girls were grudgingly released, and starved and faint, trooped out to the nearest confectioners in that dubious neighborhood. Alma's little worn purse held exactly ten pence half-penny, six pence of which it cost her to get back to her room in No Man's Street, Victoria. She looked with anxious eyes round the uninviting shop which she had entered, and wondered what would go farthest. But she was so giddy with tire that she hardly cared, a half-penny bun, a glass of milk, and a tupny ham sandwich. That was her selection for four hours of hard work, and another hour-and-a-half's journey. She was not at best a strong girl, though the Craig pluck and endurance took her through where sounder constitutions wavered. Furthermore she had had a bad experience of late, on which to rest a strain, for she had only been home from a tour in South America and Canada for a month, when she got what is technically called a shop, and began this rehearsing for comic opera. Alma counted herself as lucky, for the foreign tour had not left her with as much money in hand as she had hoped, and she was for the moment anxious. She could no more save than her father before her, and every spendthrift tale of less strupulous members of a company worked upon her pity and charity as a sick cat did on flair cul-de-cots. Alma had never been on tour yet, that someone in the crowd did not sponge upon her, from making demands upon the small salaries which would hardly feed herself, to borrowing her clothes, that most necessary item of an actress's stock in trade, which they frequently ill-treated, or did not return. A girl like Alma is bound to be imposed upon by the motley classes which rub shoulders in the theatrical profession, but it is possible that the wide, sweet-hearted nature gained more than it lost, even by the privations its generosity incurred. There were some who were shamed into loving Alma Craig, and who converted to partisans, fought other mere sharks fiercely on her behalf, with a coarser strength than was possible to Alma for herself. The girl who had set next to her at rehearsal was a case in point. She followed Alma to the same confectioners and sat at the same table, complaining that she could not afford a proper lunch. Alma would have shared the bun and the sandwiches with her, having already started each chorus for her with a truer ear, and lent her half her cloak as a shield to one of the theater drafts. The girl, who is only worth calling Molly, looked at Alma's feverish white face, and had the grace to decline a share. We are about as badly off one as another, she said. What was your last show? Canada, said Alma, wearily, putting her thin hand over her great bright eyes. We had an awful time. How was that? We did one night towns, with long distances in between. It meant that you got no sleep. We were not in bed till one, and then we had to get up at five to catch the train. Traveled most of the day, and you can't rest. Got into another town at noon, and then rehearsed. The girls used to fall asleep on their dress baskets at the stations. We never could play decently. We hadn't the heart. We were so tired. Of course we had to pack up every night, too, both at the theater and the hotel. There was no rest anywhere. No wonder you looked played out, said the other girl, in suddenly shocked tones. This is a bad crowd for you after that sort of thing. Manners spares no one, and you ought to have had three months rest at least. Yes, but I can't. I should starve, said Alma briefly, pushing the empty milk glass aside. She still felt dead tired, but not so faint. I think I will get home and go to bed, she said vaguely. I feel as if what I wanted was to sleep and sleep and sleep. Flair Caldecott's ideal. Molly looked her sharply in the face and rose also. I'll come with you part of the way, she said, and to her credit she did so, putting Alma almost tenderly into her last train, and telling her to take it easy tomorrow. The chorus never troubled to be punctual, knowing the proclivities of the principles. But there was no working tomorrow for Alma. She let herself into her rooms, feeling oddly lightheaded, and trying to decide what she could do if she were ill. That nightmare that haunts Newsotra. She was living alone just now, in a bed-sitting room, which cost her twelve shillings a week, everything but food included. It was impossible to communicate with her friends, and the only thing distinct to her mind was that she must go to rehearsal tomorrow. Somehow, for one thing she could not afford to pay a fine, for another the thought of perhaps losing her engagement filled her with unprecedented terror in her present overwrought state. She had five pounds in the post office. That was all, five pounds between her and the streets. She pulled the pins out of her thick hair in a kind of frenzy, hoping to still the pain in her head once the weight of it were free, and shaking it about her shoulders, she took off her clothes with trembling fingers, and crept in between the cool, kind sheets. It was by that time, five o'clock in the afternoon, the landlady did not take up Alma's tea, her lodger having an oil stove, and preferring to make it herself. But she usually carried a tray with a cold supper to her room between seven and eight, and she leisurely proceeded to do so this evening, not being at all disturbed at hearing nothing of Miss Craig all day, for she knew that the little actress was rehearsing. She almost started back with astonishment on entering the room to see Alma's tossed dark head resting on the pillow, and her unconscious space with its closed eyes. Poor thing, she's tired out, and won't need no food tonight, she said, peering a little curiously at the exhausted white face. But I'll leave the supper. She put the tray on the table, and went away, Alma moaning a little in her sleep, even as she did so. Nor did anyone come into the room again until ten the next morning, for Alma did not rise early unless she gave her landlady notice that she had to rehearse, and should want breakfast before her usual hour. Alma was still lying in bed when the woman entered the room, in much the same attitude as the night before. But she was muttering, scraps of comic operas and plays, though the landlady did not know it. And as if the opening of the door caught her attention, she half set up in bed, fixing her feverish eyes on the intruder. I must go to rehearsal, I shall lose my engagement, and the advance agent has never gone on with the plots, she said pitifully. You know he hasn't, and that is why there are no props. What am I to do for a broken mirror in the last act? She broke into a line of shrill sweet music that had haunted her brain since yesterday, though she had not known it. Pretty little pink toes always go in silk hoes. My sakes, miss, you're sick, said the landlady in dismay, staring at the delirious eyes, following her about the room. And I'm sure I don't know what to do. She hasn't a friend in the world as I know of. She muttered, turning to the door. And as to rehearsal, it would mean death to her. She went out of the room, locking the door firmly behind her, as if Alma's recovery depended solely upon being kept in one room. Then she sent round a note to the nearest doctor by one of the children, who stopped to play in the gutter. And then she set to her household tasks, securing the fact that the patient could not get out, and that she had done her best for her in her own opinion. At four o'clock that afternoon it chanced that Winnie Dare, on her way home to West Kensington, and a dreary boarding house, turned out of her direct road to seek comfort of a friend. She had got off work early and hated the idea of the sorted room at the boarding house, wherein everyone ate stale bread and butter or cheap cake, and one or two young men home from the city ventured to chaff her as the only pretty girl in the house. Winnie called them Brown, Jones, and Robinson, and made merry over them to Nuzotra. But in her soul she contrasted them with the man whom she called somebody when speaking of him to flair. I will go and borrow a cup of tea from Alma, said Winnie, and turned into No Man's Street. The house was only a few yards down, and at the door she was met by the landlady, with a face which looked even longer, than a protruding upper lip had made it. Miss Craig, Miss? Yes, she's in, and I'm very glad you've come to her. Poor thing, she said severely, as if Winnie's appearance were only a poor apology for neglect. Why? What is the matter? the girl asked, startled. She's very sick, Miss. I've sent for the doctor, but he ain't come. I suppose poor folks can't be attended to at once like the rich, though it's never so pressing, said the woman with a sanctimonious sniff, for Tommy had not told of his loitering on the way, or the fascination of gutters, and the note should have been delivered hours ago. Miss Craig ill? What is it, Winnie asked sharply. I'm sure I don't know, Miss, but I hope it's nothing catching, and if it is, she must go to the hospital. Sorry as I shall be to turn her out, and me with a house full of small children and lodgers, and wanting to get up and go to rehearsal, which would have been her death. And, of course, I stopped that, Miss, and locked her in. She ended with indignant virtue. Oh, poor Alma, said Winnie under her breath. She almost pushed the large, slovenly woman out of the way, and ran upstairs, unlocking the door and entering the cheerless, hopeless sick room. Alma had got back into bed, and was lying shivering under the bedclothes, and muttering piteously of past experiences, long weary waits and miserable journeys, hardships on the road, and shameful dangers behind the scenes that turned Winnie sick. In one of the burning phases of the fever, she had evidently risen and flung open the window, and had then probably wandered about the room and taken a fresh chill. At any rate, it was evident that she was very, very ill, and she had been there, locked into the room, without nursing or attendance, for twenty-four mortal hours. The untidy, comfortless surroundings seemed to mock her pain and helplessness. It was illness without the grace of care or tenderness, illness in all its most sordid ugliness, the hard outcome of having been flung on a loveless world. Winnie's hazel eyes blazed with furious resentment against the destiny, which seemed to have been thrust upon Nuzotra, and then burned with scalding tears. Poor Alma, poor little Alma, she said brokenly, straightening the clothes and touching the hot forehead. That Alma had fever of some kind was certain, but she was quite fearless. She laid all the clothes and wraps that she could find on the bed, to force the burning heat to a perspiration if she could, by such simple means. Soothing Alma with her voice and touch meanwhile, then she straightened a room, almost throwing last night's suppertree out of it in her indignation at the landlady's indifference, and sponged the patient's lips. When she could do no more for Alma for the minute, she glanced anxiously at her watch. I must go round to flair. She is the only one of us who can come, she said half-allowed. I must be in business tomorrow, and I dare not sleep here if it is something catching, nor must Magda, or Beatrice, and Hilda lives too far off. Flair is the nearest, and she has no office work. She glanced reluctantly at Alma, but there was nothing for it but to leave her. So turning the key in the lock again, she went downstairs and gave her brief orders to the landlady. I am going to send somebody to stay the night with Miss Craig until we can make other arrangements, she said. And if the doctor comes in the meantime, please let him see her and tell us all that he says. I have locked the door again, but I shan't be gone long. Winnie's stormy eyes and upright slender figure impressed the landlady. The girl swayed like a young beech-tree moved by the wind in her anger, and towered above the fat woman as she swept out of the house. Winnie's impulses were generous either for good or for bad, and in the cause of friendship she spared neither her money or herself. It was unheard of extravagance to take a handsome, unless it were one's birthday, or some surprising luck had befallen. But Winnie did not hesitate. She hailed the first cab she saw, thankful that her week's salary held out to pay for it so near Saturday, and drove straight to Charing Cross. Flair was sitting in the deck chair as Winnie came in, in her own room, for its comfortable easy length, mated her most cherished possession, and she carried it down or upstairs for the society's meetings and her own use. Winnie was breathless from climbing up many flights of stairs, but she had hardly got out her message before Flair was on her feet, and looking round to collect what goods and chattels she must take with her. I suppose it is too late to get things in tonight, she said. I will take my own bovril. Ten chances to one the cupboard will be empty. Can you go then, Flair? Go, of course I can go. Someone must, that is evident. Has Alma a spirit stove, do you remember? She has a Beatrice. That won't do. There may be no oil. Pack that methylated spirit in the small stove, Winnie. While I go and look out some clothes, there's the key of the cupboard. Put up what you think I shall need. Remember, I must eat if I am to nurse, she added, walking off into the next room. In five minutes she was back with a handbag ready, and Winnie had made a bundle of the portable food she found. There was no brandy, but Winnie offered to go round home by way of No Man's Street and order in anything that could be got, while Flair went straight to Alma. A wine merchant is more likely to send than a grocer, she said. Get me some ice if you can, Winnie. I wonder, a sudden shade of anxiety made her face pathetic. Winnie caught it and thought it was for Alma. What is it, dear? she said tenderly. Nothing, said Flair, swallowing breathlessly. She could not explain that she was suffering a pang, not on Alma's but on RL's account. Every time she left her rooms for a holiday, it was becoming more of an effort to Flair to leave him behind. For a cat of RL Stevenson's dimensions is not property easily disposed of or conveyed to other lodgings, and so she had the gnawing anxiety of having to leave him to Mrs. Bonnet's own tender mercies, and to know that instead of her regular feeding he might often go hungry. It seemed a dreadful thing to Flair that he must think himself suddenly deserted, and that she could not explain to him that her heart was torn between him and Alma's greater necessity. Alma can't help herself just now, thought Flair desperately. And RL can go out and steal, poor dear. I hope he will, only someone might hurt him. There were tears not far off her eyes, as in her too vivid imagination. She saw the cat butting vainly at her doors, in his usual manner, and unable to get in. If she had been able to fasten them open safely, Flair would have risked all her belongings and left the rooms, at least at his disposal. But the fear of some mishap taking place, of RL getting locked in and starved, Mrs. Bonnet would never trouble over his non-appearance, was so frightful that she carefully locked them both before leaving the house with Winnie. She saw Mrs. Bonnet on her way out and explained the situation to her, asking her in a rather shaky little voice to remember to feed RL, who happened for once to be asleep in the kitchen. Oh, he'll be all right, Miss, said Mrs. Bonnet consolingly. He's fat enough to do without a few dinners. Flair stooped down and kissed the flat, soft head in silence. She was suffering quite out of all proportion in this sacrifice of one thing that she loved to another, partly on account of the vivid imagination which had she lived would probably have brought her notoriety, if not fame. Flair was never quite normal in her experiences, her agony of tenderness over the brute creation, her exquisite enjoyment of certain brief pleasures which left her unable to express it, her equally intense pain over failure, moral or mental, all may have been the heritage of the artist, but they were very uncomfortable emotions to Flair. Fortunately her hands were too full once she arrived at Noamon Street, to allow her much time to think of RL going supperless to no particular bed. The doctor came almost as soon as she had settled herself and her belongings, and being a young man in a hurry, hardly waited to be shown up but took the stairs to at a time and knocked at Alma's door, while the landlady still panted in the rear. This the room? Fever you think? Then you had better stay outside, he said curtly. I'll see to it. I only had your note a few. Ah, the door had been opened to him by a small woman with a tired face and the most horrible eyes he had ever seen, as a psychological study he never forgot Flair Caldecott, but he did not care to remember her. She stood out in his mind as a face with brows too broad for its lower half, and babyish rings of flossy hair pushed away from the startling forehead, beneath which those eyes were even more startling to his analytical mind. Where is my patient, he said, putting Flair gently on one side and going straight to the bed. Flair followed him by no means repelled by his rather abrupt manner or careless dress, for if she had undue sympathy with animals she seemed also to share their instinct. The doctor laid a large kind hand on Alma's forehead and made his examination briefly. Then he turned to Flair. Are you nursing her, he said? Yes. The fear in her made Flair gulp. Ah, you will need all your wits about you. You massive nerves, he added inwardly. If you think it necessary, will you please send me a trained nurse, said Flair steadily? I am going to send someone to help you tomorrow, said the doctor decidedly. This is a bad case. I ought to have been here before. Flair did not answer. All that she thought was in her eyes just then, and the doctor read them, reluctantly. I will come early tomorrow, he said, and gave Flair his instructions carefully. She was not a bad nurse while her strength should last. But worry always played havoc with Flair's digestion, and after a few days she knew she might break down for lack of nourishment. At present, however, she went about her tasks deftly and almost mechanically, knowing that she could trust herself to wake at any hour she wished to give Alma medicine and confident that she could do all that must be done. For the night at least. It was a rather warm evening in May, and the window was thrown wide open. Flair never lost the impression of one moment of Alma's illness after she entered the house. But at the time she was outwardly unaffected as if numb. She made a light supper, and gave Alma her medicine again. And then she arranged the mattress and bed clothes for herself, which she had laid on the floor, as the landlady either could not or would not make her any other bed. It was only eight o'clock even then, and the lengthened day seemed as if it would never grow dark. Flair, set by the bedside, with her hands clasped round her knees and watched Alma for half an hour, during which the restless talking and repeating portions of plays never ceased. Flair had not realized before what sort of life Alma had led, or how cheerfully she had faced hardships that would have made her friend shrink. It was a revelation of appalling things, things that were not tolerable, and yet were endured every day. Alma Craig was what was called an experienced actress in the profession, which meant that at twenty-eight she had played nearly every line of her art that exists. She had been the heroine in comedy and the villainess in tragedy. For one desperate winter she had nearly killed herself over pantomime work, and before that had second-lead in rough drama, or mellow drama. But her best parts were old women and boys, character parts, scraps of which she repeated over and over again to Flair's unwilling ears. Her work so far had ended in the tour abroad in Comic Opera, which had laid the foundations of her illness, and she pleaded piteously over and over again for one good night's rest, or sometimes seemed to feel herself obliged to clean her own room in an uninhabitable hotel before she could go into it. Flair could peace in her experiences from what she already knew, and her lips set as she followed it all with her fatal gift of fancy. Not infrequently she was aware the women of the company had arrived at some place dead tired and had had to sit, faint and weary, on their own luggage until their rooms were apportioned. And then might come this necessity of cleaning them before they could even wash or rest themselves. There were hideous spells of being carted like cattle, in trapped steamers, too, where the food was unfit to eat, even for those who were good sailors, and where the one steward could not attend to everybody, and so the girls must either wait on themselves, or if too ill, endure all the horrors of seasickness without the decencies of ordinary service. For the life led by a theatrical company on a foreign tour is by no means the brilliant round of fun and travel and attention that some, even in the profession, still imagine. It can be a very grim trial of health and nerve indeed, and Alma had found it so. Colonel Craig had never roughed it in campaign, according to their relative strength, as his daughter had to gain that experience, to which Flair Caldecott set and listened, while she wondered less and less that her friend might be dying. It seemed enough to have killed any woman outright. Please, Aunt Fanny, said Alma suddenly, I must go. I'm tired of this life. It is stifling me, and I want to earn my own living. She had leapt back another ten years. She was once more the penniless orphaned niece in the uncomfortable bourgeois household, where she had played Cinderella to her elder cousins, since the first years of her life that she could remember. Alma had no recollection of being sent home from India at three years old, but she did remember her aunt's environment, as it slowly unfolded itself to her young eyes. Her childhood's experience had been a thing which she never would forget, and had made even the drawbacks of stage life peer more bearable, by contrast, to its sordid, loveless monotony. Anyone less gifted with vitality than Alma would have been worn down to a dreary, hopeless drudge, but the instinct of self-preservation had forced her to fight fate and her spirited resistance had resulted in her having her way, and coming to London to try the verge of starvation for six months before she got her first opening to walk on at a pound a week. How cold that winter had been! Once during the delirious night she fancied herself going through it again in the bare London room where she could not afford a fire, and so had put on her outside things and walked the streets to warm herself. Colonel Craig's daughter, with her big asking eyes and anxious face, Flair listened to that part of the story with white lips. Sometimes Alma chattered of being asked out to supper by passing acquaintances known through a twisted note sent to the stage door. There is a regular code from the stage to the stalls for those who care to make acquaintance across the footlights. She had never availed herself of it, but she spoke of a big man who recurred at intervals all through her delirium, a man whose masculine strength and protection seemed to have been good to lean upon, though he were nothing more than such a vague support to this wave of an irregular social order. Flair had an impression of him waiting at the stage door to take Alma home, but strangely enough it did not alarm her or even make her sad. At all events, she said, in the face of her principles, the big man must have looked after her and and not let her be tired and hungry. I am quite sure he would do that. I think he would be sorry if he could see her now. The vigil by the bedside became intolerable during that first half hour. Flair rose and went to the open window, looking down at the noisy living street where the trams rolled by, and people bought and sold. Even as Magda had looked down on a quieter scene at a crisis in her life, perhaps Alma would never need to buy or sell again. Flair's eyes, full of blank despair, followed the moving, drifting crowd, while she tried to think if it would not perhaps be a good thing for Alma to die and get out of this life that lay before them all. She felt as if she had reached the end of fear and endurance, and as if there were no going on, and yet she knew that she would go on, still the weary round, still the dread of looking forward for herself and others, for when the real girls can do no more, they have come to an end of things and stop, but News Ultra know that they must still go on, whether they can or know. I hope Alma will die, said Flair in her extremity, and then the impossibility of facing her own loss made the selfishness of the wish of red-hot pain in her heart. I couldn't bear it, she said blindly, staring out at the steady flow of life below. Dear God, is it never going to stop this dreadful thing that we call life, and that becomes most intolerable when we dare to love each other? I will never care for anyone again, said Flair Caldecott, solemnly allowed. I am afraid of the pain. of her fever the next day, but the real danger did not lie there. Flair had nursed R. L. in distemper and had pulled him through, and to anyone who had seen that heartbreaking disease in its worst form, the care and breathless attention required to save a patient who cannot even express his sufferings, makes the nursing of a human being light in comparison. She was not likely to fail in faithfulness, but the battle did not really lie in her hands. When the trained nurse arrived, she proved to be a pleasant practical young woman who was sufficiently matter of fact to be deceived by Flair's apparent stoicism, and did not soften the facts of the case to her inconsequence. We shall pull her through the fever all right, she said confidentially as they stood over the patient. The question is whether she has the recuperative power to struggle back to life again. They generally die of a relapse in these cases. You see, she has no reserve strength, and the cough exhausts her terribly. Of course, if she had not taken a chill on the fever, she would have had a better chance. She was all alone, Flair said, but the difficulty the nurse did not grasp. There was no one with her when she was first taken ill, and she must have got out of bed in the delirium and walked about. There was no one here, she repeated blankly. Ah, that was just it, you see. The doctor tells me that had it been a case of simple fever, we might have called it influenza, and there would have been no anxiety. As it is, she shrugged square practical shoulders that seemed to nudge Flair's raw nerves with the movement. She ought to be got out of London as soon as she can travel, and have perfect rest at the seaside. For how long, said Flair hopelessly, fingering her post office book in her own mind, and seeing its dwindling figures. Oh, if only she had not been so self-indulgent this past year as to draw any of the money she had so painfully put by. A certain blue-surge gown assumed the proportions of a monstrous crime, though it had only cost two pounds making an all. The ghost of the cheap Claret, too, rose up as if suddenly proving its indigestible qualities, and morally choked her. Well, a fortnight might set her up, if she rested a bit after coming back to town, said the nurse critically, looking down at the white face from which Flair had platted back the thick hair, to avoid cutting it if possible. On the stage, isn't she? She won't act for a month or so after this. Flair did not answer. She was wondering what parish Alma was in, and whether she would get outdoor relief if she asked for it. Flair had always thought herself rather sinfully proud until that moment, and she was very shy of clergymen, because she was an occasional contributor to the agnostic journal, and felt it written large all over her in their presence. Her religion lay too deep down for discussion, and a sudden reference to any person of the trinity affected her with a sense of blasphemy that made her hot for the speaker. But she had a desperate idea that one always appealed to the clergy of the parish in an urgent case, and this matter was imperative. She would in preference have borrowed from the doctor, but his frayed shirt cuffs and frankness on the subject of mutual poverty he did it to make Flair feel herself in equal, and unintentionally set up a barrier to confidences, made her sensitive of even mentioning money difficulties to him. Indeed his bill was one of the nightmares that haunted her mattress on the floor, and she reduced future expenditure rigidly in order to pay it. It chanced that the nurse took her time off in the afternoon a few days later, and went out to get some fresh air in preference to sleeping. Flair left the night work to her now, and only sat with Alma in the day, for the work was slacker, the patient having pulled through the fever as the nurse had prognosticated, and only failing to regain strength. Flair sat by the bedside, watching her, scribbling verses as a recreation, and talking a little while Alma was awake. She slept a great deal, and it was hardly possible to gauge how much better or worse she was, as it would have been with a more selfish patient, because with her return to consciousness the old bright cheerfulness came back also, and she never complained. Flair saw the nurse's final departure before her in a day or so, for she dared not keep her longer, then was strictly necessary, and then came the moment when she ought to take Alma away. I shall begin putting your things to rights, and packing up for you as soon as I have arranged where we will go," she said, with a confidence she did not feel in her despairing heart. Which dress basket would you like to have emptied of its store of rubbish, Alma? Alma laughed weakly and coughed in consequence. The smallest, I think, she said. It is at the end of the bed. There are only some bits and pieces and things in it. Oh! said Flair dryly. Well, I will ask Winnie if she knows a ragman who will take them away. No, don't. I play old housekeepers in that black stuffed skirt. It's a splendid prop. When can I see Winnie or the others? I'm rather expecting Frank round to-night, and Hilda left those grapes this morning, when you were asleep. Come in. It was the shapeless landlady puffing with a message, and as usually vaguely incoherent. There's a clergyman downstairs who wants to see you, Miss. Flair's heart leapt as to an answered prayer. What a lucky thing that this good man had chance to call on the humblest of his parishioners. She could leave Alma for a few minutes. The nurse would be in soon, hardly waiting to smooth her curly hair. She ran downstairs to the empty front room where the landlady had shown the visitor, with a due sense of his importance, and entered without waiting to think that she was nervous. But a sudden chill fell on her the instant she crossed the threshold, either the dreary aspect of the unused room with its shiny leather furniture and closed windows shutting out God's fresh air, or the aspect of the good man who awaited her, and whom she had somehow pictured differently, drove her back into her self-consciousness. He was no doubt an excellent man according to his lights, and he was undoubtedly a good parish priest, to have sought out Alma's case and to have heard of her illness. But it was written in the Book of Fate that he should quench the smoking flax and break a bruised reed, and he was one of those who give the unbeliever bitter occasion to scoff. In appearance he was rather like a goat, from his thin bony forehead to his straggling gray beard, a goat with the burning eyes of the fanatic, and a loud, irresistible voice that beat itself in at Flair's ears, and never paused for answers. Perhaps he had grown so certain of being heard that, to question it, would have appeared to him a waste of time, and he regarded his message as one which required no comment, only reverent acceptance. I am sorry to hear of our dear sister's danger he began in that loud voice. Flair stood still under the shock of it, just inside the door where she had entered, and looked at him, seeing in her own mind the white, cool bed upstairs and the rough and dark head and big eyes that represented Alma to her. It is terribly sad when the young are cut down like this, but in the midst of life we are in death, and we must all bow to his will. The resonant words clanged like doom in Flair's ears as she faced this dreadful man who was calmly consigning Alma to the grave, and ignoring any piteous effort to save her. No doubt he had heard a very grave account from the doctor, but the result was one his informant never foresaw, and culminated in his next words. Is she a communicant? Would she like to see me? Certainly not. The hard challenge of the clear voice did not seem to belong to Flair. She heard it herself with surprise, and a feeling that had it been flung at her it would have driven her back upon herself, as it certainly did the clergyman. He was nonplussed, but only for the moment. Not today? Then we will just pray to God for her. He knelt down without any sense of inappropriateness to one of the horrible black leather chairs, and in the same loud voice absolved and buried Alma it seemed to Flair, without any allowance for hope. She stood as if petrified in the same position inside the door, glaring at the clergyman, with the worst of all her expressions, and without attempting to kneel also. Perhaps her stiff-necked lack of assent embarrassed him a little, or perhaps even his fanaticism did not blind him sufficiently to attack her further. With that look in her savage white face, he rose when the prayer was ended and took up his hat, making a stereotyped remark to the effect that he was glad to have seen her. Miss Craig was her sister, he supposed. Goodbye. Flair looked at his outstretched hand and slowly raised her eyes to his face. Her courtesy did not fail her. She touched his fingers with one hand, while she opened the door with the other and bowed him out, not following him into the narrow hall, however, as the front door was just before him. The clergyman, like the doctor, carried away a vivid impression of Flair's personality. He thought she had the ugliest woman's face he had ever looked upon. Had he known that he had filled her with raging hate and scorn for his order, he would have been genuinely shocked and grieved. But the Church of England is a powerful body, though it has unwise ministers, and Flair's animosity was not likely to do it any harm. When she heard the front door shut her visitor out, the girl was still standing in the same position she had kept throughout the prayer. Suddenly a grim amusement seemed to strike her. She thought of the goat-like head and the priest's absurd posture before the absurd chair, and she glanced instinctively out of the closed window at a small lossage of sky, which she could see between the roofs across the way, almost as if asking someone to share the joke. Flair's god was a gentleman with a sense of humor. There was no visible disturbance of her tranquility when she returned to Alma, whom she found awake and inclined for milk in conversation. Alma took most of her nourishment as milk and Flair as she fed her, looked with a kind of wicked defiance at her thin face and hollow eyes. The clergyman's complacence over her friend's possible death had aroused her to contradiction. Why should Alma be calmly shifted out of life like that? Flair said the object of her thoughts abruptly. Did I talk a great deal of nonsense when I was ill? A great deal replied Flair composedly. In particular you were always assuring me that. Pretty little pink toes always go in silk hose. I don't know what it meant, and I greatly question its veracity, but I am sure it is part of a good and great poem. Do you happen to know any more? No, did I? Alma was stimulated by amusement and her face gained a faint color. It is part of Molly was a milkmaid, which is the tenor solo in the piece I was in. I suppose I have lost my shop, Flair. A girl came here two days after you were taken ill, with a message from your manager, said Flair briefly. Fortunately the doctor was here at the time, and she saw him. I have had no more trouble. Well, I am glad I am not going to be had up for breach of contract, said Alma, with her unflagging gift of regarding trouble from the point of view of a worse one that might have been. Who was the girl who came? Molly, something. I forget. I didn't go to the theatre, because the last time I came behind to see you, a scene shifter asked me to sit on his knee, or some little compliment of that kind. And I—I'm not used to it. The stage is a great leveler. It always makes me feel that I must have a proud stomach, not to be able to digest its equalities. I know it's awful. Alma's lips set, and she thought of the doorkeeper. I think Panto is the worst experience you can have. I heard one girl cheek a man who was doing a special turn once. She was a little fool, for we all knew that he was a ruffian and a music hall artist. But he made a rush at her and got her down. Before the company, Claire turned round really breathless. Oh yes, there were a lot of people about. So she was safe enough, but it wasn't a nice situation for her. I made a rush, too, and twisted my hands in his collar until he let go. He was nearly choked, said Alma thoughtfully, looking at her weak fingers. Did you ever have trouble yourself? Not unless the men drank, because I was always on my guard. But one night a man I had never even spoken to before found me waiting behind the back cloth and asked me some question. I answered it as I should any once, and he said, Come and talk to me, and picked me up and carried me into his dressing room. It's a lawless world behind the footlights, said Claire thoughtfully. I should not keep an engagement a week. I know I should tell the manager himself what I thought of him. What did you do on the occasion of playing a Sabine woman? When that man used brute force, he was too strong for me to get away on the instant. But I fought like a tiger cat, and when he put me down I bolted. I think I should have killed him if he had touched me again. I wonder why, thought Claire, looking at the distended pupils of her friend's eyes. Her Alma was generally rather reckless in anything like an adventure. Perhaps the big man was waiting at the stage door that night. Magda turned up in the course of the same evening, full of plans and practical common sense. She had heard of a kind of convalescent home in the Isle of Wight, where certain certificates from a doctor would admit patients and their friends for a nominal sum. She gave Claire the address and advised her to write to her doctor that night and to the railway company's propasses. You must write up the place. Tell them what you are on, she said shrewdly. I always do when I go for my holiday. I choose a place on some line that will listen to my plea and work in return for my railway ticket. That is only fair. Besides, they will probably give you second class, and that is easier for Alma than going third. I haven't done much of this kind of thing, said Claire, knitting her brows. Most of my work is fiction, you see. Never mind, I can article as well as anything else. I say Magda. She hesitated and spoke slowly. Suppose after all, we cannot go to this place at all events. Never mind, said Magda callously. Even if the passes were wasted, it wouldn't hurt the company. And you can read up the place and write the article anyhow, if your honesty is troubled. Claire wrote her letters and made her preparations, even wallowing in shabby clothes and theatrical odds and ends in Alma's dress basket, over which she groaned, but her mind was at stretch, all the time to think how she must earn or borrow even the small sum that would cover their holiday. Alma could not go alone, which would have reduced expenses, and her own small resources were strained to meet the immediate necessities of the illness, for she was expecting a big check, and her present money had nearly run out. Most of Claire's income was earned in freelance journalism, which meant gnawing anxiety between periods of comparative safety. If she could see her way three months ahead, she did not trouble much. But she was obliged to depend on certain manuscripts being accepted, which were almost a certainty, but not quite, and in the meantime eke out what money she actually had. There are certain fiction publishing firms which accept manuscripts at once and pay on production, though that may be eighteen months hence, others whose system flare liked better, which keep the author waiting six months for a decision, but pay at once when they have accepted work. She was waiting for one of these acceptances now, and had not much doubt about it, but in the meantime she wanted five pounds. If she got the railway passes, she calculated that five pounds would cover hers and Alma's board, and lodging and all minor expenses for the fortnight, but she had almost come to the desperate expedient of getting the sum made up among Nuzotra, a strain she knew she ought not to lay on already over burdened shoulders. She was still awaiting an answer from the railway companies, when an unexpected angel met her in the byways of life so closely disguised that had he not been the undoubted bringer of relief, she would have denied his claim to be a messenger of heaven, though God chooses strange almaners for his charities. From the very first his appearance in such a character appeared so doubtful that Flair almost declined to see him, for his advent was announced to her by the landlady, almost in the same words that had preceded the ghastly interview with the clergymen. There's a gentleman downstairs wants to see you, miss. Who is it? said Flair sharply, under her breath, for Alma was asleep. I'm sure I don't know, miss. He didn't give no name, said the landlady with an indignant sniff. It was clear that she disdained any agency in the situation, for she began to descend the stairs heavily, one flat foot placed over another to mark her disappearance. Flair watched the shapeless body out of sight with a rye smile. Then she glanced at Alma, sleeping peacefully on her pillows with the happy ease of a child, and with war in her heart and bland expectancy on her lips. Flair shut the door softly and went down to the front room of the last memorable visit. There was no one visible for the first moment of her entrance, and she was some way into the room before she discovered the unexpected vision of a big man in a big overcoat, for the evening was chilly, with a big personality that checked her. She had come swiftly, meaning to dismiss her visitor with scant ceremony after her last experience. But as he turned she hesitated, waiting to be sure of her ground before making her attack. The big man put down a hat and stick on the center table, amongst the worsted mats and guilt prize books with which it was decorated, and came straight across the room to Flair. I hear Miss Craig is ill, he said, coming to the point in a voice that matched his person. It was so good to listen to, in its chest notes that Flair's animal instincts made her draw a shade nearer, instead of standing aloof. Are you a friend of hers? Yes, I am helping to nurse her. Is she very ill? There was no hesitation from knowing what he had come to learn, but Flair looked up quickly and reassuringly. Not now, she said. She is through the fever, not unless she has a relapse. I want to get her away. The words came with a breathless rush, and her strained face waited to see what would happen. She had not got so far as this even with the doctor. Can I do anything? said the big man simply. Could you lend me five pounds, said Flair, looking at him through the dusk? He seemed very big, and she knew that he would not hurt two weaker things, even mentally. His size seemed to make it easy to speak straight out for some intangible reason. Yes, I can, he said rather abruptly. It is probable that he also was feeling the strain, and is difficult for a man to explain to any woman how much he wants to help without blundering, even to so impersonal and unfeminine a creature as Flair appeared. I brought some with me in case. He felt in a big pocket and brought out a pocketbook, from whose depths he took a banknote, which he put silently into her hand. She was still looking up at him, and there was nothing horrible at all in her eyes. They were only flooded with kindness, and as gentle as they were for R.L. or Alma in her illness. She moved a step nearer without touching him at all, and her voice made him wince as tears would not have done. Thank you very much. I'll give it you back, you know. Don't hurry over that, he said huskily, and look here, that address will find me. Let me know if you want any more. We shan't, said Flair courageously. This will do for the fortnight. It would go farther, but, you see, there are two of us, and I can't let her go alone. I see. He spoke as if only half listening, and glad to get away now that his errand was done. Flair followed him out of the room and opened the front door for him, hovering at heel like a little dog. Good night, he said, lifting his hat in the dark chilly street. Then he looked at the clever, unhealthy face, framed in the open doorway, and paused. I forgot to ask your name. Goodbye, said Flair, with a prophecy. I am Flair Caldecott. She began to write verses even as she re-ascended the stairs, a sure sign with her that some stimulant had made the thin blood run redder in her veins. When Alma awoke, Flair was busily clearing out the bottom of the dress-basket, and doing up the motley contents into bundles, preparatory to packing Alma's clothes. What on earth are you doing? said Alma sleepily. It seems to be the middle of the night. I am finding revelations of your character in the rubbish that you collect, said Flair, with an unusual bubble of enjoyment in her tone. All my respect for you has suddenly ceased, since I found you the unhappy possessor of nine pairs of disgraceful gloves, five dirty old neckties, and one white pill. I don't know what any of these things appertain to, any more than I do the countless drugs which I have packed into the empty tin boxes you seem to collect as a connoisseur. Where it was possible I have done the things up in bundles to await your decision, through a vicious desire that you yourself should deal with them. I couldn't get that pill into the tin boxes, by the way. It lived in a house so much too large for it that I was obliged to pack it separately. So it remains a dingy monument to some former disease of yours of which I know nothing. I think what I resented most was finding one of my own photos amongst a pile of undarned stockings. Alma lay in bed and laughed feebly till the tears stood in her eyes, after which Flair abandoned her packing and gave over the room to the nurse, who came in to take up her duty. At the door she turned and looked back at Alma as if casually, we are going to the isle of white next week Alma, she said, please get over all your milk drinking and sleeping before we start, as I declined to have a holiday with either a calf or a sluggard. Good night, I'm going to bed, but she did not go to bed. She sat down in the further room, which the landlady had grudgingly led to her, to finish the verses, the rage of composition being upon her, and when she had finished, she still sat there a few minutes and instead of reading or correcting her work as was her want, she thought of the big man and was comforted. I wonder, said Flair, to an inscrutable world, how it is that Alma can do that sort of thing and be none the worse for it. If Winnie attempted it, she would go farther and fare worse, perhaps, or if I, God forbid, but I could not have accepted the money in any case but Alma's. It was very still and warm and green upon the cliffs, and there was a smell of honeysuckle and hay there, together with the breath of the sea that crawled lazily over the rocks, some thirty feet below. Alma lay on her side in a shelving nook with a vile Panama hat tilted over one eye, absorbing a little more sunshine into her being, and with all the isle of white for a background. Flair was smoking in direct defiance of Ruskin, and as usual making verses, it was like the land of Bula, a breathing space in the pilgrimage. Flair, said Alma sleepily, I will write in for the cowboy. It's going on tour in September. I found quite exciting things in the era this morning. Did you? said Flair absently. The last line did not scan, and she hunted for a shorter word to carry her meaning. Yes, do you think I shall be able to starve on until then? I had a check for fifty pounds this morning. Flair roused herself to explain, you can have half, that's twenty-five each. No, it's only twenty-two ten, because I owe five pounds, she added thoughtfully. I can't live on you, said Alma quickly. I must get special weeks. You will do nothing of the sort, said Flair composably, even if I have to rake out your Aunt Fanny and appeal to her, or go to the actor's benevolent fund. Look at my verses, Alma, and see what you think of them. She leaned forward and put a sheet of blotted writing into Alma's hand. Flair hated showing her verses, but it was necessary to create a diversion. The battle of the New Age, read Alma. The men came down from the mountains, and the women came up from the plains. The path through the crags was level, and the valley was heavy with rains. There was neither justice nor pity. For wherever the foe might lurk, the men had a great tradition, and the women were new to the work. Yet they struck far into the future, and shut their ears to the past, and the pain and the wound of the present were nothing but blood at the last. The men had the city to squander, the joy of the field and the tent, and nobody knew but the women what the battle really meant. God stayed his laws for the contest, while the angels held their breath, and the red tide rose to the armpits, and the struggle to live was death. And the battle peeled to the mountains, while day stood stark in the sky, and the men looked on to the triumph, and the women looked on to die. They fought for the sake of the others. They struck for an unknown end, where every face was a lover's, and every foe was a friend. They fought both swordless and hopeless. They saw where the death must strike, and nobody knew but the women what dying for nothing was like. God said, they have wiped out Eden, I have nothing left to forgive, and when the battle was over, the women had died to live. What does it mean, Alma asked slowly? Is it Nuzotra? Yes, I began it when you were ill. A kind of rage came over me when I thought what a fight we had, and how everything is made easy for men, and then they run us down for even trying to make our own living. I like them, said Alma simply, referring to the verses. Where every face was a lover's, and every foe was a friend, they will never get into print, said Flair. And I tried to console myself for failures by saying that verse doesn't pay after all. On the few occasions when I have published any, I have generally been sent a check for about seven and six. Why don't you write a play, said Alma, to whom all things were theatrical? She loved the profession which had nearly killed her with the infatuation of all its victims, so that its very drawbacks became advantages compared with any other to her mind. Alma chafed when she was out for long, not only on account of money, but through being actually homesick for the sounds and sights of a theater. She heartily enjoyed the fortnight in the island for she was only convalescent, and the joy of coming back to life was a natural and healthy instinct in her happy nature. But she fretted over the idle time in London that followed, and snatched at the first opportunity of work, so that in August she took the special week she had talked of, and played in an old favorite on the south side of London to a roaring audience. It was a wet, stormy evening on which she went back into business, but the outside world seemed to lie miles and miles away from the footlights, and was forgotten in the hot, crowded house. Alma almost pranced when she found herself back in the dressing room again, with the familiar whitewashed walls, the pegs for the dresses, and the theatrical sheet covering them, the grease paints on the long line of tables, the slovenly dresser, the chatter of the other girls as they made up. She was playing a boy's part, and all the madness of her excitement had scoped to work itself out in the play. New business came to her like an inspiration, and she got laugh after laugh for her unexpected pranks and sallies. Such a night as this was worth all the illness and the waiting and the anxiety, if only for the coming back to life and the reaction of variety and movement after monotony, she felt intoxicated with her own vitality, and yet stepped aside, even in the midst of it all, to help a fellow worker, and so won herself a blessing to crown her happiness. One of the actresses who was playing a subordinate role was a married woman, with a child five years old, who poor might was allowed to come on in one scene as an extra attraction to the gallery, who wept over her as the representation of childhood, but were by no means so sentimental over the fact that she was being kept up night after night, and losing her health and the sleep her poor little body needed. The mother was ailing and had tried to get excused from appearing in the last act amongst a crowd of supers, which was all that she had to do, but a brutal stage manager declined to have her released for the sake of a private grudge. The baby who was shrewd beyond her years confided the whole matter to Miss Craig, and Alma must as needs turn champion as draw her breath. She had played her own part so well that the manager himself sauntered into the dressing room to congratulate her. He did so with the familiarity of tradition, and Alma passed the intrusion because she had a boon to ask. Mr. Lee, can Mrs. Benson go home after the second act, she demanded. Her cough is frightful, and she has only to walk on with a crowd in the bridal scene. I suppose so, said the manager carelessly. That's a good makeup of yours, dear. Yes, said Alma hastily, shrinking slightly from the hand on her shoulder, and wondering whether she would be wise to excuse herself and run. But Mr. Prentice won't excuse her, Mr. Lee. Can't you speak to him? What a little partisan you are, said the manager, with a good humored laugh, but he was pleased with Alma and could afford to extend his favor further. He sent Mrs. Benson a glass of port wine with her permission to leave, and settled the stage manager, and Mrs. Benson, seeking for the cause of her salvation, traced it to Alma Craig. Alma had particular reason for hurrying away from the theater that night, and scrambled from her successful makeup and her boy's dress into Mufti. As soon as she got her final execute, she was running down the passage to the stage door when Mrs. Benson, breathless, stopped her. Oh, Mrs. Craig, I want to thank you. I hear it was you who got me let off. I'm going home now, and God bless you, dear, she added, unsteadily. That's all right, Mrs. Benson. I just had a chance to speak to Mr. Lee, said Alma brightly. Good night. Good night, Nellie, she added to the child, and catching up her skirts, prepared to leave the lights and the noise of the theater. For the dripping side street, there was no need for her to put up an umbrella, however. For outside on the pavement was the figure of a big man with a large one already up, who offered his arm to her in silence. Oh, said Alma, slipping her small hand into it, and seeming to be swallowed up from that moment in the big man's masculine strength and protection. The little child had followed Alma to the doorway, and now stood on the threshold, waving a tiny hand and imitating her mother's farewell in her own baby fashion. Doot night, Miss Cake. God bless you. Alma turned her face quickly, with a radiance on it, warmer than a smile to catch the blessing, even as the big man led her safely away. And so she went out into the darkness and the rain. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Pathway of the Pioneer This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Pathway of the Pioneer by Dolf Willard. Chapter 7. Perplexed in faith but pure in deeds, at last we beat our music out. There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. We fought our doubts and gathered strength. We would not make our music blind. We faced the specters of the mine, and laid them, thus we come at length. Alfred Tennyson It being Sunday evening, Nuzltra assembled early, for one may be late on Saturday night if one's landlady is good-natured. Breakfast in bed on Sunday morning, following as a matter of course. But it is well to go to bed early on Sunday, and to begin the hateful Monday morning, which leads the week's work with all the strength that rest can give. The girls began to arrive after tea, and by seven they were all assembled. Hilda Romain was the last to come. She had been to visit old friends that afternoon, in order to escape the discomforts of her home, for she was the only one of Nuzltra, who had hardly a corner to call her own. Sometimes she had the small room apportioned to her in her father's house to herself. But more often one of the children, who were her step-sisters, shared it, and Hilda went broad to seek peace and quietness. As she had said, she was very strong, otherwise the strain, both abroad and at home, would have broken her down long since. Even as it was, it had added a kind of tragic patience to her beauty, that lay like a shadow on her, and detracted from her youth. Service was beginning at some of the churches, as she made her way strandwards towards Flair's rooms. By the time Hilda passed St. Stephen's with the sword, the congregation had reached the first hymn, and were pouring a full volume of sound out into the quiet street. She paused a minute and listened wistfully, for it had been a hard day, a day of fret and jar, and the misery of little things that go to make life intolerable. Some comfort might lie in the hymn whose tune is familiar to thousands, but to poor Hilda, pausing on the road of fate, it came with dreadful meaning. Mid-toil and tribulation and tumult of her war. She did not hear the congregation reach the next line. She turned with the words dinned into her ears and swung along as to the rhythm of her own despair. Mid-toil and tribulation and tumult of her war. A man stared in her face in passing, and half turned to follow her. The girl lifted her head fiercely, and a storm of passion flushed her from brow to chin, colouring the mask of the Apollo Belvedere like an angry sunset. If he had spoken to her she felt as if she would have struck him, and she was thankful that in front of her was the little passage leading nowhere but to Flair's door and a few others, up which she turned and lost her follower. Hilda cried over her temper in secret and prayed against it openly. She thought it her gravest fault. R.L. was sitting on the doorstep as she came in, having been for a stroll, and seeming rather annoyed that he should have to wait at his own house to be admitted. Hilda leaned down to stroke him with a sudden sense of comfort in the warm, friendly thing, and he rose on his hind feet and lifted his ringed paws to the handle of the door. He could rattle the door handles of the inner rooms and make Flair open to him at any time, even in the middle of a manuscript, and this was his way of adjuring Hilda to make haste. I can't, old boy. We must both wait for Mrs. Bonnet, she explained, they were still talking when the landlady admitted them. I will take R.L. in with me. Thanks, Mrs. Bonnet, Hilda said. I expect Miss Caldecott is looking for him. She always do be, said the landlady, in a tone resigned to Flair's lunacy. He's an handsome cat, I must say, she added, with the faint pride of distant ownership. Though why you all calls him Arald, Miss, I can't think. It's an odd name for a cat. We call him R.L., Mrs. Bonnet. Arald, did you say Miss? Well, that's odd or still. Lore. Arald is a name, and the other ain't. But I always think you says Arald. R.L., with an appearance of faint disgust, cut short the discussion on his name by trotting down the passage to the packing case room. There he pushed the door open with his head, which was his strongest point. His paws were rather small and weak for his size, so that he hesitated to trust his heavy body to them when he jumped, and never used them to paw a door open like most of his kind. But his head and shoulders were massive and seemed hard as well. He fought with his head, butting his adversary over, and then he sat down on the poor thing and trusted to wait to knock the breath out of it. Most of the cats in the neighborhood, being strays and consequently thin, R.L. had pretty well fought and conquered for many housetops round. Flare was lying in the long deck chair with her feet up, for no claim of being more tired than her friends. But because she was naturally lymphatic for reasons of physique, and they one and all indulged her, she really had a weaker constitution than any of them, for she took her health as a grim inheritance from a worn-out stock, and tendencies from hardships or excesses, begun in the crusades, handicapped poor Flare for the perpetual effort which she found life. Everything was an effort, from getting up in the morning to taking off her clothes at night, and unfortunately it was a conscious one. But the reward to Flare was the stretching of her small, soft body on the hard mattress, and the delicious sense of going to sleep. It was no wonder that she thought of heaven as nothing but the end of a long day. And if she could have afforded such a holiday, she would have had a debauch of sleep rather than any dissipation awake. She saw the cat as he came in, but characteristically sat still and called to him, instead of getting up to greet Hilda. Hello, R.L., been killing any more cats. What a row you were making on the leads this morning. I know it was you. I recognized the stifled scream of the victim, sing unto R.L., for he hath bruised the tail of his enemies. He was sitting quite peaceably on the doorstep when I came up, said Hilda, tossing her hat into the further room, without troubling to go in. And Mrs. Bondet asked me why we all call him Arald, how lovely murmured Beatrice, with a flash of laughter that lightened her gloomy eyes. Arald, poor old R.L., how insulted he looks. It is as bad as mistaking Amont Morancy for Amoris. What made you late, Hilda? Frank said affectionately, looking at the unusual gravity in Hilda's face. Frank observed through sympathy, where all Magda's and Flair's journalistic training failed them. We thought you had gone to church. I don't go to church very often, do I? said Hilda, with unusual curtness. In her memory a hidden congregation was singing as if in hideous mockery, mid-toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war. None of us go to church, dear. We are all heathens, Nuzotra. Winnie's laugh was the daintiest scoff. We rise late and mend our stockings and break the Sabbath in every way. No wonder Flair gets letters from unknown correspondence, warning her of things to come. No, did she? asked Alma with interest. Tell me, I suppose I was on tour. It was last autumn, Frank said laughing. You were in South America, I think, Alma. Flair had been writing for some magazine or other, which offered a prize and printed her name and address. She got the prize for her story, but the consequence was that somebody sent her a religious paper with copious notes in the margin, pointing out how it applied. What was that about the Ark, Beatrice? Oh, one paragraph implored the reader to take refuge in the Ark, and used other biblical similes about the wrath to come. But what we liked was that the lady evidently thought that Flair was not among the saved, for she added in a footnote, those who stay outside will be swept away by the deluge. We have all been expecting to find Flair and R.L. swimming for their lives ever since, commented Magda. The Ark was a happy simile, though, in connection with Flair. I believe that she would cheerfully sail with Noah for the sake of having a zoological gardens on board. It was suit me, too, said Alma placidly. Flair and I both loved beasts. Pass the sigs, tricks. Not until you have afforded them their last two syllables, Beatrice said sternly. Alma's economy and words threatening to become a mania, and causing the rest of Nuzotra to groan. If left to herself, her speech would soon have been a language of its own, and even as it was, it was hard to prevent her saying, Cirques for circumstances, Prav providence, prop her property, etc., while of such excursions into originalities as dotnetudes, by which she meant silliness, i.e. dotty, and if-baffs, to express small things of no importance. It was hopeless to try to cure her. Alma was the sort of girl who has a pet name for her umbrella, and keeps her bicycle's birthday. Well, people may call us heathens, said Beatrice almost defiantly, but we have a religion. If it is only to stick to each other, a chuckle came from the deck chair. Beatrice's definition seems the religion of lumps of toffee, said Flair. Look here, Solomon. Don't lie there and listen. And then, jeer, said Frank indignantly. Get up and preach as a sermon. It's Sunday evening. Here, somebody, heaver out of that deck chair. Yes, do something for your living, said Magda, coolly reaching over and taking possession of Flair's claret, which she held out of reach. Flair made a grab, but the pretty white hand held it firmly above her ruffled head, and a general chorus demanded ransom of her. They dragged her out of her chair, and she went, good-humoredly enough, and stood behind it, her arms resting on the back, her masculine eyes looking at no one in particular, until the group had settled down. Magda with a perverse smile on her lips, Frank listening with kindly attention, Winnie drawing the cigarette smoke luxuriously through her fine nostrils. Beatrice curled up on the ground at Alma's feet, Hilda sitting alone near the window, her eyes still straying to the outside world, her thoughts half distracted by the line of a hymn tune, mid-toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war. So Flair stood up and preached. There are only two sermons really worth listening to, and they are the Sermon on the Mount and the Christmas Sermon, and I am neither Jesus Christ nor Robert Louis Stevenson. I cut rather a sorry figure, stood up here to speak to you, and to be laughed at. I have no text because I don't believe that a text ever appealed to more than a handful of people, and one may not get the handful together. The only subjects on which one can speak are the generality's incident to that sphere of life in which God help us, we find ourselves, and they are artificial, with artificial laws to which we have all tacitly subscribed, by belonging to the community, and depending on the police. And therefore it is these generality's that must matter to us all, whatever our temperaments, and don't you forget it. It is the fashion nowadays to sneer at respectability. I don't know why I am sure, unless it is because so few people are respectable. Dullness and doubtiness are two reproaches generally hurled at it. But what it really means is endurance and restraint. Do you remember the older phrase which was superseded by the term a respectable woman, an honest woman? You will hear the poor use it today. I am an honest woman. For the more bourgeois I am a respectable, and generally added, married woman. But it means the same thing, honest, the woman who pays her rent, which means that she denies herself to keep a roof over her head, and not live in the streets. The woman who does not drink, or take drugs, or fall into any self-indulgence, for all the despair that sweeps over her, in this hard life of ours, the woman who does not cheat, even to take advantage of her neighbor, for all the temptation of excuse that she owns. That is being honest or respectable. Just which you will. Of course the more recognized application of the word lies in the curse of sex which pursues us all. Every man jack of us. Death waits at all the street corners, one may say. And you never know when your time may come, if you allow yourself to think about it. Just so. Also sex pursues news-otra, and dogs are footsteps in the filthiest forms if we look to the right hand or the left. Well the respectable woman is the woman who respects herself, and the woman who does that never need fear anything beyond the most elementary of street insults, which is hardly to be noticed, and is easily kicked into the gutter from which it came. On an average we are too intent on our own purposes, as we go about the streets, to even hear if a man speaks to us, and the woman who is obviously going somewhere on her own business, is as safe in all but neighborhoods proclaimed as murderous, as if she drove in a carriage with an escort of the life-guards. Whoever loiters on the roads of life will be accosted by every idler bent on mischief. To be busy is to be armed at all points, and indeed there is no safeguard like conventionality, no path so comfortable for a woman as the sure safe one of respectability. That it is deadly dull carries the consolation with it of having endured, and that it is dowdy as no reproach in this age of cheap finery. Believe me, it is only the people who have not been bohemians by necessity who look upon Bohemia as an enchanted land. It means not having enough to eat, and having to trudge foot-sore as seeing your own face in the glass grow haggard and ugly, doesn't it, girls? Besides the liberty of which people who don't know speak so enviously, besides what advantage is it to me, though I can go out now and walk the streets till midnight if I choose, and accept any invitation anywhere that is offered to me, the consequences would probably be duly unpleasant, and I would far rather that my brother, if I had one, were with me to knock anyone down who became a nuisance. No, there is a lot of nonsense talked about independence. Who wants to be independent? We would much rather that our fathers had made our living for us, and left us independent of the world through being dependent on them, but since they haven't done it, we must make the best of our own heads and hands. Only it is rather hard that we should be envied, Nuzotra, rather than pitied as we deserve. Respectability, conventionality, it is easy to have a fling at such outward signs of keeping the law by those who want to indulge themselves and break it. I never hear a man's cheaps near against a woman's love of conventionality, but I know that he is smarting under a sense of defeat. Somebody or other has proved honest enough to refuse to help him to evade his own obligations, and he who openly proclaims himself a rebel under the law. It sounds rather a fine thing when self-described, as not accepted by society, is simply offering an excuse for his own weakness and dissipation. Social laws were found to be, and made, as a necessary restraint in a state of civilized society. Unless you are ready to face the disadvantage of savagery, why should you hark back to its questionable freedom, and why should you be privileged rather than another? For the greatest libertine considers the decalogue necessary to keep the majority in order. It is only his noble self that he accepts. One of the greatest pitfalls in following an example, or a recognized though unwritten law, is our very human tendency to contrast downwards and not upwards. I know no more subtle temptation than that excuse of being no worse than one's neighbor, but everybody does that now, and no one thinks anything of it. One hears the protest on every side, and unfortunately it is true. Though why on earth we should regard that as any reason for doing a thing that has to bear such an excuse, I can't say. Personally I am too conceited if only I take time to think about it. For the fact that another fellow is, in my eyes, a cad, generally causes me to put my nose in the air and say, Then I thank my God I'm a gentleman, and I'm not capable of doing likewise, which may be pride, but it's a damned useful quality. I beg your pardon, Hilda, and yours, Magda. The others won't mind. There I've done, and the best of a layman's preaching is that any of you can get up and contradict me. I know no more irritating thing than having to sit under a pulpit, with a priest uttering doctrinal platitudes which he takes it for granted, that you take for granted, and you can't get up and say, Well, I don't believe that to begin with, because, and state your honest reasons. You can't even get up and walk out, because it isn't courteous, and the clergy always seem to start with a conviction that no one in the congregation has either read or thought anything at all on the subjects on which they consider themselves authorities, whereas most of us, I hope, have honored our religion by giving it more of our earnest consideration than other subjects, which is one reason why I never go to church, for if a man thinks that I am a fool without finding out, I am pretty sure that he is one. And Flair sat down and put her feet up in the deck chair again as coolly as she had risen, where at Nuzotra laughed good-humoredly and clapped her, which is a better reception than that given to many sermons. For she was honest, if not eloquent, and she tried to live up to her convictions. When she was settled she took a long draft of the claret and soda, returned to her by Magda, who patted the curly head at the same time. Very good, little girl, she said patronizingly. Now you have earned it. You may have your intoxicating liquor. You would have to drink about a bottle before it went to your head, said Wendy scornfully. There is no harm in Flair's claret. Did you dine out last night? Alma leaned forward to ask in a low tone. Yes. Champagne or hawk? Champagne and liqueur. Do you really think forms and ceremonies a good thing, Flair? said Hilda, turning from the window to the girl in the deck chair. The poor little body and the face with the horrible eyes that looked as if they remembered all the sins they had seen in former generations. I think them an excellent barrier for us, said Flair, beginning a last cigarette. Do you think they would exist if they had not been ordained for some excellent reason? I hate barriers. I hate forms and ceremonies. Winnie sprang to her feet as if suddenly inspired. I am tired of being bound down and set to labor like oxen. Let us have liberty at all events. We have got little else. Hear me proclaim myself emancipated, a rebel to law and order, if you like. Have a care, dearie, Frank said gently. Her Alma's eyes had caught fire, and Beatrice was looking up with parted lips. We have two dangerous fire-brands there. Don't preach her reticle doctrines, Winnie. I don't care, but her impetuously raised hands fell to her sides, and she laughed a little hysterically. Yes, I do. I care for all of you far more than for myself. It's getting late. Who goes home? The parliamentary cry met with a swift laughing echo. Who goes home? Who goes home? And girl after girl rose until Flair was the only one still seated, lazily, in her deck chair. Going to sit up, Flair, said Frank, stooping to kiss her. Flair was almost as indifferent as R. L. to Caresses. Don't be late, old lady. I shan't. It's clean sheets night, said Flair, with a long breath of anticipated pleasure. Mrs. Bonnet only allows me them once a fortnight, and then it's generally three weeks. I love clean sheets more than any other luxury. I suppose the king has them every night. It's the only thing I really envy him. She caught Frank round the neck with unexpected responsiveness and whispered, Go part of the way home with Winnie, Frank. Why, dearie, there's somebody waiting, if you don't. Frank had to linger for several minutes to do as she was asked. For the other girls were trying to do a new coon step that Alma was learning and consequently teaching to them all in turn. They came back through the larger room, laughing, playing as boisterously, as if life were jest rather than grim earnest. Alma herself, setting the time to a ditty, just then in vogue, which begins with an emphasis on the first note. Won't you tell your lady love when she'll be a bride? Sure, oh sure, oh. Now we're all on sure, oh. No one intruded Sunday evening on their attention. Flair lay in the deck chair and laughed, while the chorus stamped itself even down the passage in wild rhythm. She could afford to be satisfied, for she had noticed that Frank had slipped her arm through Winnie's. Fainter in the distance came the closing bars, rowing down to Texan City, going with the tide. Won't you come ashore, oh? Sure, oh. And so that's all right for the time being, said Flair, called a cot, idly reaching for a half sheet of note paper, lying on the mantelpiece. On it were a few long lines, some half erased, and all nearly illegible. She read what she had written, and unsheathing her fountain pen, which was only second to R. L. in her most intimate life. She scribbled a little more of Kurdistan and how he loved the beasts, God's helpless whom he places on the earth, and says to man, through those dumb mouths, be kind. They tell it in Farisha till this day, for Kurdistan was Lord of Kanrahar. Suddenly the pen stopped. A troubled uncertainty seemed to fall upon the tired, contented figure, and Flair turned her head, as one called to attention. There was absolutely no sound, save the very faintest hum of the ever-live strand, borne in through the partly open window. So faint a hum that it was merely a sense of unsleeping life, but in the girl's face, and quite obviously in the haunted eyes, was the perception of the shadow. She sat for a minute quite still, her hand crushing the manuscript. Then she abruptly scrambled out of the deck chair, and stood on her feet. Her body tightly strung up, not only listening but looking, something to judge from her attitude of tortured resistance, should have been facing her in the room.