 CHAPTER XI It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it ain't the organist. It is the choir. There's more in music than just catching a tune and seeing it fought here and piano there. Good Lord! Miss, what do the pews and the free seats knows of the dangers? When the vicar gives them a verse to sing by themselves, it do make me swallow with embarrassment of ear and bella. They know it's nothing, and they fear it's nothing. Mrs. Nichols On this particular evening Annette was the first to take her seat in the chancel beyond of the screen, where the choir practices always took place. Mrs. Nichols presently joined her there with her battered part-book, and she and Annette went over the opening bars of the new anthem, which like the riff Bull was awkward in paties. Mr. Black was liking the candles on long, arned sticks, while Miss Black adjusted herself to the harmonium, which did the organ's drudgery for it, and then settled herself notebook in hand to watch which of the choir made an attendance. Miss Black was constantly urging her brother to do away with a mixed choir and have a surplaced one. She became even more urgent on that head after Annette had joined it. Mr. Black was nothing loathe, but his bishop, who had recently instituted him, had implored him not to make a clean sweep of every arrangement of his predecessor, Mr. Jones, that ardent reformer, whose principal reforms now needed reforming. So with laudable obedience and zeal, Mr. Black possessed his soul in patience, and sought to instill new life into the mixed choir. Annette was part of that new life, and her presence helped to reconcile him to its continued existence, and to increase Miss Black's desire for its extinction. Miss Black was older than her brother, and had already acquired that a serve of precision which lies in wait with such frequent success for middle-aged spinsters and bachelors. She somehow gave the comfortless impression of being ready-made and greatly reduced, as if there were quantities more exactly like her put away somewhere, the supply having hopelessly exceeded the demand. She looked as if she herself, as well as her fatigued, elaborate clothes, had been picked up half price but somewhat crumbled in the sales. She glanced with disapproval that Annette whispering amicably with Mrs. Nichols, and Annette desisted instantly. The five little boys shuffled in in a bunch, as if roped together, and slipped into their seats under Mr. Black's eye. The chips, the grocer and principal base, followed, bringing with him an aroma of cheese. The two altos, Miss Pontifex and Miss Spriggs, from the infant's school, were already in position. A few lake-cubbers seemed to have dropped noiselessly into their seats from the roof, and have come visible by clearing of throats. Mr. Black, who was chagrined by the very frigid reception and of the stale tea which his sister had accorded to Annette, said with his accustomary dignity, Are we all here? I think we may as well begin. Miss Black remarked that the choirmaster, Mr. Spilcock, was late again, just as that gentleman was seen advancing like a ramrod up the aisle. A certain mystery enveloped Mr. Spilcock. He was not a rift man, nor did he hear from noise, or heak, or swale, or even ravenbridge. What had brought him to live at ravenbridge no one rightly knew, not even Mrs. Nichols. It was whispered that he had bugled before royalty in outlandish parts, and when foreign missions were being practised he had been understood to aver that the lines, where Afrik's sunny fountains roll down their golden sand, put him forcibly in mind of the scenes of his earlier life. Whether he had really served in the army or not never transpired, but his grey mustache was twirled with military ferocity, and effected the bearing and manner of a retired army man. It was also whispered that Mrs. Spilcock, a somewhat colourless, depressed mate for so vivid a personality, was preyed upon in her mind, because another lady had a prior or church claim to the title of Mrs. Spilcock. As a child I always expected the real Mrs. Spilcock to appear, but she never did. Good evening all! said Mr. Spilcock verbatimly, and without waiting for any remarks on the relatedness of the hour he seized out of his waistcoat pocket a tuning-ford. We begin, I presume, with the anthem now haunt to him. Troubles take a dough. Dough may sold dough, dough! Mr. Spilcock turned towards the troubles with open mouth, uttering a prolonged falsetto, dooo, and showing all his molars on the left side where apparently he held a dough in reserve. And it guided Mrs. Nichols and Mrs. Cox and the timid under-house made from the Dough-house, from circling round the note to the note itself. Dough! sang out all the troubles with sweetness and decision. Now then, boys, why don't you fall in, said Mrs. Spilcock, looking with unconcealed animosity at the line of little boys whom he ought not to have disliked, as they never made any sound in the church, reserving their voices for shouting on their homeward way in the dark. Now then, boys, look alive! Take up your dough from the ladies! A faint, buzzing echo, like the sound in an un-musical shell, could be detected by the optimists nearest to the boys. It would have been possible to know they were in tune only by holding their bodies to your ear. They've got it, said Mr. Black valiantly. Mr. Spilcock looked at them with cold contempt. Altos, me, he said more gently. He was gallant to the fair sex, and especially to Miss Pontifex and Miss Spriggs, one dark and one fair, and both in the dew of their cultured youth. Altos, take your me. The two Altos, their lips ready licked, burst into a plaintive bleat, which if it was not me, was certainly nothing else. The miller, the principal tenor, took his soul, supported at once by the young chap from the man for arms, who echoed it manfully directly at a ben unearthed, and by his nephew from Lirstoft, who did not belong to the choir, and could not sing, but who was on a holiday, and who always came to choir practice with his uncle, because he was courting either Miss Pontifex or Miss Spriggs, possibly both. I have a hazy recollection of hearing the years later that he had married them both, not at the same time, but one shortly after the other, and that Miss Spriggs made a wonderful mother to Miss Pontifex's baby, or vice versa. Anyhow they were both in love with him, and I know it ended happily for every one, and was considered in rift to be a great example to Mr. Chips of Portley Years, who'd been engaged for about twenty years, as you might say, off and on, to Mrs. Cox's sister, who was cook at the D'Arhouse, but who, whenever the question of marriage was introduced, opined that he felt no call to change his state. Mr. Black made several ineffectual attempts to introduce the bases to take their lower. No! But Mr. Chips, though he generally succumbed into singing an octave below the trebles, had conscientious scruples about starting on the downward path, even if his path demanded it, and could not be persuaded to make any sound except a dignified neutral rumbling. The other bases naturally were not to be drawn onto dangerous ground, while their leader held aloof. We shall drop into it later on, said Mr. Black, hopefully, who sat with them. Are we a better start? Pomp! Pomp! Pomp! Pomp! Said Mr. Spilcock, going slowly down the cord, and waving a little stick at trebles, autos, tenors, and bases in turn at each pomp. Everyone made a note of sorts, with such pleasing results, something so fast it appeared to anything that sweet apple-tree could produce, that it was felt to be unshiverous on the part of Mr. Spilcock to beat his stick on the form, and say sternly, Altos it high, not high flat. Pomp! In piercing falsetto. The altos took up their note again, caught it, as it were, with the pincers from Mr. Spilcock's back molars. Righto, said Mr. Spilcock, altos, if you find yourselves going down, keep yourselves up. Now, unto him, and the serious business of the practice, began. CHAPTER XII. Not even in a dream has Thou known compassion. Thou knowest not even the phantom of pity, but the silver hair will remind thee of all this, by and by. Calimacus. The Dower High stands so near to the church, that Janey Mamvers, sitting by her bedroom window in the dusk, could hear fragments of the choir practice over the low, ivyed wall, which separates the churchyard from the garden. She could detect Annette's voice, taking the same passage over and over again, trying to lead the troubles astumbly after her. Presently there was a silence, and then her voice rose sweet and clear by itself. There shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sunlight of them nor any heat. The other voices surged up, and Janey heard no more. Was it possible there really was a place somewhere where there was no more hunger and thirst, and beating, blinding heat, or were they only pretty words to comfort where no comfort was? Janey looked out where one soft star hung low in the dusk over the winding river and its poplars. It seemed to her that night as if she had reached the end of her strength. For years, since her father died, she had nursed and sustained her mother, the invalid in the next room, through what's endless terrible days and nights, through what's scenes of anger and business and despair. Janey had been loyal to one who had never been loyal to her, considerate to one who had ridden rough shot over her, tender to one who was harsh to her who had always been harsh. But now her mother, not content with eating up the best years of her daughter's life, had laid her cold hand upon the future, and had urged Janey to promise that after her death she would always keep Harry, her half-witted younger brother, in the same house with her, and protect him from the world on one side and a lunatic asylum on the other. Something desperate had surged up in Janey's heart, and she had refused to give the promise. She could still see her mother's look of impotent anger as she turned her face to the wall, could hear still her hysterical sobbing. She had not dared to remain with her, and Anne, the old housemaid, was sitting with her till the trained nurse returned from Ipswich, a clever resourceful woman who made herself indispensable to Lady Louisa and had taken Harry to the dentist. Always here to fore a matter difficult of accomplishment. Janey realized with sickening shame this evening that she unconsciously looked forward to her mother's death as a time when release would come from this intolerable burden which she'd endured for the last seven years. Her poor mother would die some day, and her home would be fine for Harry, who never missed anyone if he was a day away from them. And she would marry Roger, dear, kind Roger, whom she'd loved since she was a small child, and he was a big boy. That had been her life, in a prison whose one window looked on a green tree. Her poor, manacled Janey had strained towards it as a plant strained to the light. Something fierce had stirred within her when she saw her mother's hand trying to block the window. That at a real rate must not be touched. She could not endure it. She knew that if she married Roger he would never consent that Harry and his attendants should live in the house with them. What man would! She felt sure that her mother had realized that contingency and the certainty of Roger's refusal, and hence her determination to rest a promise from Janey. She was waiting for her cousin, Roger, now. He had not said whether he would die nor come in after dinner. He depended on whether he caught the Five O'Clock Express from Liverpool Street. But in any case he would come in some time this evening to tell her the result of his mission to Paris. Roger lived within a hundred yards in the pink cottage with the twirly barge boarding almost facing the church, close by the village's stocks. Janey had put on what she believed to be a pretty gown on his account. It was, at any rate, a much-streamed one, and had recoiled her soft brown hair. The solitude and the darkness had relieved somewhat the strain upon her nerves. Perhaps Roger might after all have accomplished his mission and her mother might be pacified. Sometimes there had been quiet intervals after these violent outbreaks which nearly always followed opposition of any kind. Perhaps tomorrow's life might seem more possible, not such a nightmare. Tomorrow she would walk up to Red Riff and see Annette, lovely, kind Annette, the wonderful new friend who had come into her life. Roger ought to be here if he was coming to dinner. The choir was leaving the church. Choir practice was never over till after eight. The steps and voices subsided. She did a match and held it to the clock on the dressing-table. Quarter past eight. Then Roger was certainly not coming. She went downstairs and ordered dinner to be served. It was a rift that for once Harry was not present that she could eat her dinner without answering the futile questions which were his staple of conversation, without hearing the vacant laugh which heralded every remark. She heard the carriage rumble out of the courtyard to meet him. His teeth must have taken longer than usual. Perhaps even nurse, who had him so entirely under her thumb as a rule, had found him recalcitrant. As she was peeling her peach, the door opened and Roger came in. If there had been anyone to notice it, but no one ever noticed anything about Janey, they might have seen that as she perceived him, she became a pretty woman. Her soft red mounted to her cheek, her tired eyes shone, her small, erect figure became alert. She had not dined after all. She sent for the earlier dishes, a money yet refrained from asking him any questions. "'You do not look as tired as I expected,' she said. Roger replied that he was not in the least tired. There was in his bearing some of the alertness of hers, and he noticed it with a sudden secret uprush of joy in her heart. Surely it was the same for both of them. To be together was all they needed. But I know how she needed that, how far greater her need was than his. They might have been taken for brother and sister as they sat together in the dining-room in the light of the four wax candles. They were what the village people called real manvases, both of them, sturdy, well-near, erect, with short, straight noses and grey, direct, wide-open eyes, and brown complexions and crisp, brown hair. Each was good-looking in a way. Janey had the advantage of youth, but her life had been more burdened than Roger's, and at five and thirty he did not look much older than she did at five and twenty, except that he showed a tendency to be square-set, and his hair was thinning a little at the top of his honest, well-shaped head. He was, as Mrs. Nichols often dream out, the very statue of the old squire, his uncle and Janey's father. They don't hurry, Roger, there's plenty of time. I'm not hurrying, old girl, with another gulp. It was a secret infinitesimal grief to Janey that Roger called her old girl. A hundred little traits showed that she'd seen almost nothing of the world, but he, in spite of public school and college, gave the impression of having seen even less. There were a few small tarsomenesses about Roger to which even Janey's faithful adoration could not quite shut its eyes. But they were, after all, in the external foibles, such as calling her old girl, tricks of manner, small ghostries and gruntings and lapses into inattention, the result of living too much alone, which wise Janey knew were of no real account. The things that really mattered about Roger were his kind heart and his good business head and his uprightness. Never seen Paris before, and I don't care if I never see it again." He bowed safe to between enormous mouthfuls. He never listened, at least not to Janey, and his conversation consisted largely of disjointed remarks thrown out at intervals. Very much as unprofitable or waste material is chucked over a wall, without reference to the person whom it may strike on the other side. I should like to see Paris myself. Very informed of the reprehensible and entirely un-British manner in which luggage was arranged for at that metropolis, and of the price of the cabs, and the system of pour-bois, and how the housemate of the hotel had been a man. Some of these details of intimate Parisian life had already reached even Janey, but she listened to them with unflagging interest. Do not antiquaries tell us that the extra rib out of which Eve was fashioned was in shape not unlike an ear-trumpet? Janey was a daughter of Eve. She listened. Present did the servants withdrew, and he leaned back in his chair, and looked at her. It was no go, he said. He meant Dick was worse. Yes, no, I don't know how he was. He looked to me just the same, staring straight in front of him with his gogly eyes. Lady Jane said he knew me, but I didn't say that he did. I said, Hello, Eddick, and he just gaped. She said he knew quite well all about the business, and that she had explained it to him. The doctor was there, willing to witness anything. Awful, dapper little chap, called me Cher Monsieur, and held me by the arm, and tried to persuade me that— Roger shook his head and thrust out his underlip. You were right, Roger, said Janey sadly, but poor mother will be dreadfully angry. And how are you to go on without the power of attorney if he's not in a fit state to grant it? But Roger was not listening. I often used to wonder how Aunt Louisa got Dick to sign before about the sale of the salt-parties, that time when she went to Paris herself on purpose. But he became darkly red. Hang it all, Janey. I see now how it was done. She shouldn't have sent me, he said, getting up abruptly. Not the time for the job. I suppose I'd better go up and see her. Expect I shall catch it. CHAPTER XIII. This man smells not of books. J. S. Blackie. Lady Louisa Mamvers was waiting for her nephew, propped up in bed, clutching the bed-clothes with leaden, corp-spale hands. She was evidently at the last stage of some long and terrific illness. To her hold on life seemed as parlous and as convulsive as that of her hands upon the quilt. She felt that she was slipping into the grave. She the one energetic and far-seeing member of the family, and that on her exhausted shoulders lay the burden of arranging everything for the good of her children, for they were totally incapable of doing anything for themselves. In the long nights of unrest and weariness unspeakable, her mind, accustomed to undisputed dominion, revolved perpetually round the future of her children, and the means by which, in her handicapped condition, she could still bring about what would be best for them, or was essential for their well-being, especially Harry's. And all the while her authority was slipping from her, in spite of her desperate grasp upon it. The whole world and her stubborn children themselves were in league against her, and the least opposition on their part arised in her a paroxysm of anger and despair. Why did every one make her heavy task heavier? Why was she tacitly disobeyed when a swift and absolute obedience was imperative? Why did they try to soothe her and speak smooth for things to her, when they were virtually opposing her all the time? She, a paralysed old woman, only longing for rest, was forced to fight them all single-handed for their sakes. Tonight, as she lay waiting for her nephew, she touched a lower level of despair than even she had yet reached. She suspected that Roger would fail her. Janie had for the first time turned against her. Even Janie, who had always yielded to her, always, always, even when she deposed her, had actually refused to make the promise which was essential to the welfare of poor Harry after she herself was gone. And she felt that she was going, that she was being pushed daily and hourly nearer to the negation of all things, the silence, the impotence of the grave. She determined to act with strength while part of act still remained. Roger's reluctant step came up the oak staircase and his tap on the door. May I come in? Come in. He came in and stood as if he were stuffed in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed on the cornice. I hope you are feeling better, aren't Louisa? I am still alive, as you see. Deep-rooted jealousy of Roger dwelt in her, had dwelt in her ever since the early days when her husband had adopted him against her wish when he had been left an orphan. She had not wanted him in her nursery. Her husband had always been fond of him, and later in life had leaned upon him. In the depths of her bitter heart Lady Louisa believed he had preferred his nephew to the two sons she had given him, Dick the near too well, and Harry the latecomer, the fool. Roger moved his eyes slowly round the room, looking always away from the bed, till he fell upon the cat curled up in the armchair. Hello, Pussy, said, caught a mouse lately. Did you get the power of a tourney? came the voice from the bed. No, aren't Louisa? The bed-clothes trembled. I told you not to come back without it. Roger was silent. Had not Jane arranged everything? Everything. And the doctor, wasn't he there, ready to witness it? Oh, Lord, yes, he was there. And I failed to understand why you came back without it. Dick wasn't fit to sign, said Roger doggedly. Didn't I warn you before you went that he had repeatedly told Jane that he could not attend to business, and that was why it was so important you should be empowered to act for him? And the power of a tourney was his particular wish. Yes, you did. But I didn't know he'd be like that. He didn't know a thing, seem as if he could have had a particular wish one way or the other. Aren't Louisa? He wasn't fit. And so you set up your judgment against mind and his own doctors? I told you before you went what you knew already that he was not capable of transacting business, and that you must have the power. And you said you understood. And then you come back here and inform me that he was not fit, which you knew before you started. No, no, you're wrong there. You're like he was to a dead husband, as he said that. And how she hated him for the likeness. Don't contradict me. You were asked to act in Dick's own interest and in the interests of the property, and you promised to do it, and you haven't done it. But aren't Louisa? He wasn't in a state to sign anything. He's not alive. He's just breathing, that's all. Doesn't know anybody or take any notice. If you'd seen him, you'd have known you couldn't get his signature. I did get it about the marshlands. I went to Paris on purpose last November, when I was too ill to travel. I only sent you this time because I could not leave my bed. Roger paused, and then his honest face became plum-colour, and he blurted out, they were actually going to guide his hand. Lady Louisa's cold eyes met his. Well, and if they were? Roger lost his embarrassment. His face became as pale as it had been red. He came up to the bed and looked the sick woman straight in the eyes. I was not the right man for the job, he said. You should have sent somebody else. I stopped it. I hope, when you are dying, Roger, that your son will carry out your last wishes more effectively than my nephew has carried out mine. But aren't Louisa? Upon my honour, he wasn't good-night. Asked Janey to send up nurse to me as soon as she returns. Roger left the room clumsily, but yet with a certain dignity. His upright soul was shocked to the very core. He marched heavily downstairs to the library, where Janey was keeping his coffee hot for him over a little spirit-lamp. There was indignation in his clear grey eyes, and over his coffee and his cigarette he recounted to her exactly how everything had been, and how Dick wasn't fit, he really wasn't. And Janey thought, when he had finished, she would tell him of the pressure her mother was bringing to bear on her to promise to make a home for Harry after her death. But when at last Roger got off the subject, and his cigarette had soothed him, he went on to tell Janey about a man he had met on the boat, who oddly enough turned out to be a cousin of a land agent he knew in Kent. This surprising incident took so long, the approaches having been both gradual and circuitous, and primarily connected with the profit of a paper, that when it also had been adequately dealt with and disposed of, it was getting late. I must be off," he said, rising. Good night, Janey. Keep a brave heart, old girl." He nodded slightly to the room above, which was his arms. Rough on you sometimes, I'm afraid. You always cheer me up," she said, with perfect truthfulness. He had cheered her. It would be a sad world for most of us if it were by our conversational talents that we could comfort those we loved. But Roger believed it was so, in his case, and complacently felt that he abroached a number of interesting Parisian subjects, and had refreshed Janey, whom Lady Louisa led a dog's life a known mistake. He was fond of her, and sorry for her beyond measure, and his voice and eyes were very kindly as he bade her good night. She went to the door with him, and they stood a moment together in the moonlight under the clustering stars of the Plemethys. He took his hat and stick, and repeated his words. Keep a brave heart. She said in a voice which she tried and failed to make us tranquil as usual. I've been so afraid you weren't coming that you'd missed your train. Oh, no, I didn't miss it. But just as I got to the gate at eight o'clock, I met Miss George's coming out of the churchyard, and it was pretty dark. Moon wasn't up, and I thought I ought to see her home first. That was why I was late. Janey made him good night again, and slipped in doors. The moonlight and the Plemethys, which were meant before, had been so full of mysterious meaning, were suddenly emptied of all significance. CHAPTER XIV Oh, life how naked and how hard when known! Life said, as thou hast carved me, such am I. George Meredith. Janey lit her bedroom candle with a hand that trembled a little, and in her turn went slowly upstairs. She could hear the clatter of knives and forks in the dining-room, and Harry's vacant laugh and nurse's sharp voice. They'd come back then. She went with an effort into her mother's room, and sat down in her accustomed chair by the bed. It's ten o'clock. Shall I read, mother? Certainly. It was the first time they'd spoken since she'd been ordered out of the room earlier in the day. Janey opened the prayer-book on the table by the bedside, and read a psalm and a chapter from the gospel. Come unto me, all ye that labour and a heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Janey closed the book, and said timidly, "'May I stay until nurse comes up?' Pray do exactly what you like." She did not move. "'I am heavy laden,' said her mother. I don't suppose you have ever given it one moment's thought what it must be like to lie like a log as I do?' Her daughter dared not answer. How many months have I lain in this room?' Eight months. Ever since I went to Paris last October I was too ill to go, but I went. Silence. "'I am heavy laden, but it seems I must not look to you for help, Janey.' Janey's heart sickened within her. When had her mother ever relinquished anything if once her indomitable will was set upon it?' She felt within herself no force to withstand a second attack. The nurse came in at that moment, a tall, shrewd, capable woman of five and thirty, with a certain remnant of haggard good looks. "'May Mr. Harry come in to say good-night, my lady?' "'Yes.' She went to the door and admitted a young man. Harry came and stood beside the bed, looking sheepishly at his mother. If his face had not been slightly vacant, the mouth ajar, he would have been beautiful. As it was, people turned in the street to see him pass. He was tall, fair, well-grown, with a delightful smile. He smiled now at his mother, and she tried hard to smile back at him, her rigid face twitching a little. "'Well, my son, have you had a nice day, Nipswitch?' "'Yes, mamma.' "'And I hope you were brave of the dentist, and that it did not hurt you much.' "'Oh, no, mamma, he did not hurt me at all.' "'Not at all,' said his mother, surprised. The nurse stepped forward at once. "'Mr. Harry did not have his tooth out, my lady?' "'No,' said Harry slowly, looking at the nurse as if he were repeating a lesson. The tooth was not taken out. It was not.' "'Mr. Milston, being called away,' continued the nurse, libly. "'Called away,' echoed Harry. "'Then the expedition was all for nothing,' said Lady Louisa wearily. "'Oh, no, mamma.' The nurse intervened once more, and recounted how she had taken Harry to have his haircut, and to buy some gloves, and to an entertainment of performing dogs, and to tea at Frobisher's. They could have been home earlier, but she knew the carriage was ordered to meet the later train. Harry began to imitate the tricks which the dogs had done, but the nurse peremptorily interrupted him. Her ladyship is tired, and it's past ten o'clock. He must tell her about the dogs to-morrow. "'Yes, to-morrow,' echoed Harry, and he kissed his mother and shuffled towards the door. Janey slipped out with him. Lady Louisa did not speak again while the nurse made the arrangements for the night. She was incensed with her. She had been too peremptory with Harry. It was not for her to ought him about in that way. Lady Louisa was beginning to distrust this capable, indefatigable woman, on whom she had become absolutely dependent. And when the nurse had left her for the night, and was asleep in the next room, with the door open between, she began to turn over in her mind, not for the first time, the idea of parting with her, and letting Janey nurse her entirely once more, as she had done at first. Janey, with Anne the housemaid to help her, could manage perfectly well whatever the doctor might say. It was not as if she wanted anything doing for her, lying still as she did, day after day. She should never have had a trained nurse, if her own wishes had been consulted. But when were they ever consulted? The doctor, who understood nothing about her illness, had insisted, and Janey had not resisted the idea as she ought to have done. But the whole house-home could not be run to suit Janey's convenience. She had told her so already, more than once. She should tell her so again. Even worms will turn. There were others to be considered besides Janey, who only considered herself. Lady Louise's mind left her daughter, and went back, as if it had received some subtle warning, to the subject of the nurse. She was convinced by the woman's manner of intervening when she had been questioning Harry that something had been concealed from her about the expedition to Ipswich. She constantly suspected that there was a cabal against her. She was determined to find out what it was which she could easily do from Harry. And if nurse had really disobeyed her and had taken him on the water, which always excited him, or to a theatre which was strictly forbidden, then she would make use of that act of disobedience as a pretext for dismissing her, and she would certainly not consent to have anyone else in her place. Having settled this point, she closed her eyes and tried to settle herself to sleep. But sleep would not come. The diligent little clock, with its face turned to the strip of light shared by the shaded night-light, recorded in a soft chime half-hour after half-hour. With full-on anger, she reflected that every creature in the house was sleeping. She could hear nurses even breathing close at hand. Everyone except herself, who needed sleep more than anyone, to enable her to get through the coming day. It did not strike her that possibly Janey also might be lying open-eyed through the long hours. Lady Louise's mind wandered like a sullen, miserable tramp over her past life. She told herself that all had gone wrong with her, all had cheated her from first to last. It seems to be the doom of the egoists to crave for things for which she has no real value, on which when acquired he can only trample. Lady Louise had acquired a great deal, and had trampled heavily on her acquisitions, especially on her kindly, easy tempered husband, who had loved her. And how throughout her whole life she had longed to be loved. To thirst voraciously to be loved. To have sufficient acumen to perceive love to be the only real bulwark as it is against the blows of fate. The only real refuge as it is from grief. The one sure consolation as it is in the recurring anguished ache of existence. To perceive that life is not life without it, and then to find that love when appropriated and torn out of its shrine is no talisman, but only a wearisome, prosaic, clog quickly defaced by being dragged in the dust up the thorny path of our egotism. Is there any disappointment so bitter, so devastating as that? Lady Louise, poor soul, had endured it. She glanced for a moment at the photograph of her husband on the mantelpiece, with his hair brushed forward over his ears. His death had not assraged her longstanding grievance against him. Why had he always secretly preferred his nephew Roger to his own sons? Why did he die just after the eldest son Dick came of age? And why had he not left her half for her life, instead of taking for granted that she would prefer to go back to her own house, noise-court, a few miles off? She had told him so, but he might have known she had never meant it. She had not wanted to go back to it. She had not gone back, though all her friends and Janey had especially wished it. She had hastily let it to Mr. Sterling, the novelist, to show that she could do exactly as she liked, and have made one of those temporary arrangements that with the Earl are always for life. She moved into the dire house for a year, and had been in it seven years. Her heart swelled with anger as she thought of the conduct of her eldest son after his father's death. And yet could anyone have been a brighter, more delightful child than Dicky? But Dicky had been a source of constant anxiety to her, from the day when he was nearly drowned in the mill-race at Riff, to the present hour, when he was lying dying by inches of spinal paralysis at his aunt's house in Paris, as a result of a racing accident. What a heartbreaking record his life had been of one folly, one insane extravagance after another. And shame had not been wanting. He not even made a foolish marriage, and left a son whom she and Janey could have taken from its mother and educated. But there was an illegitimate child, a girl, whom Roger had told her about, by a village schoolmistress, an honest woman whom Dick had seduced, under promise of marriage. Perhaps after all Lady Louisa had some grounds for feeling that everything had gone against her. Dick was dying, and her second son Harry, what of him? She was doggedly convinced that Harry was not wanting, that he could help it if he liked. In that case, all that could be said was that he did not like. She stuck to it that his was a case of arrested development, in strenuous opposition to her husband, who had held that Harry's brain was not normal from the awful day when as a baby they first noticed that he always stared at the ceiling. Lady Louisa had fiercely convinced herself, but no one else, that it was the glitter of the old cut glass chandelier that attracted him. But after a time even she had to own to herself, though never to others, that he had a trick of staring upwards where no chandelier was. Even now at two and twenty Harry furtively gazed upon the sky, and perhaps vaguely wondered why he could only do so by stealth. Why that was one of the innumerable forbidden things among which he had to pick his way, and for which he was sharply reprimanded by that dread personage his mother. Mr. Manvers on his death-bed had said to Dick in Lady Louisa's presence, Remember, if you don't have a son, Roger ought to have Halver. Harry is not fit. She had never forgiven her husband for trying to denude Harry of his birthright, and tonight she felt a faint gleam of consolation in the surrounding dreariness in the thought that he had not been successful. When Dick died Harry would certainly come in. On her last visits to Paris she had ransacked Dick's rooms at his training-stable. She had gone through all his papers. She visited his lawyers. She had set aside of herself that he had not made a will. It was all the more important, as Harry would be very rich, that Janey should take entire and personal charge of him, lest she should fall into the hands of some designing woman. That pretty French adventurous Miss Georges, who had come to live at Riff and whom Janey had made such friends with, was just the kind of person who might entangle him into marrying her. And then, if Roger and Janey should eventually marry, Harry could perfectly well live with them. He must be guarded at all costs. Lady Louisa sighed. That seemed on the whole the best plan. She had looked at it all round. But Janey was frustrating it by refusing to do her part. She must fall into line. Tomorrow she would send for her lawyer and alter her will once more, leaving noise to Harry instead of Janey, as she had done by a promise to her husband. Janey had no one but herself to thank for such a decision. She had forced it on her mother by her obscenity and her colossal selfishness. What had she done that she, of all women, should have such selfish children? Then Janey would have nothing of her own at all, and then she would be so dependent on Harry that she would have no alternative but to do her duty by him. Lady Louisa sighed again. Her mind was made up. Janey must give way, and the nurse must be got rid of. Those were the next two things to be achieved. Then perhaps she would be suffered to rest in peace. CHAPTER 15 The death stopped knitting at the muffling band. The shroud is done, he muttered, toe to chin. He snapped the end, and tucked his needles in. John Masefield After a sleepless night, and after the protracted toilet of the old and feeble, Lady Louisa tackled her task with unabated determination. She dictated a telegram to her lawyer, sent out to the nurse for a walk, and desired Janey to bring Harry to her. Harry, who was toiling over his arithmetic under the cedar with the help of a tutor from Riban Bridge and a box of counters, obeyed with alacrity. He looked to a very beaming creature with fresh morning face as he came into his mother's room. Good morning, mama! Good morning, my son! The terrible ruler looked benign. She nodded and smiled at him. He did not feel as cowed as usual. You can go away, Janey, and you needn't come back till I ring. "'And now tell me all about the performing dogs,' said the terrible ruler in the bed, when Janey had left the room. Harry saw that she was really interested, and he gave her an exact account, interrupted by the bubbling up of his own laughter, of a dog which had been dressed up as a man in a red coat with a cocked hat and a gun. He could hardly tell her for laughing. The dreaded personage laughed, too, and said, "'Capital! Capital!' And he showed her one of the tricks, which consisted of sitting up on your hind legs with a pipe in your mouth. He imitated exactly how the dog had sat, which on a man was perhaps not quite so mirth-provoking as in a dog. Nevertheless, the dreaded personage laughed again. It promised to be an agreeable morning. He hoped it would be a long time before she remembered his arithmetic and sent him back to it that hopeless guesswork which he sometimes bribed Tommy the gardener's boy to do for him in the toolshed. "'And then you've got your gloves,' said the dreaded personage, suddenly. "'How many pairs was it?' Harry was bewildered and stared blankly at her. "'You must remember how many pairs it was.' Harry knit his poor brow, rallied his faculties, and said it was two pairs. "'And now,' said the dreaded loser, "'you may have a chocolate out of my silver box, and let me hear all about—'You know what!' And she nodded confidentially at him. But he only gaped at her, half frightened. She smiled reassuringly at him. "'Nurse, tell me all about it,' she said encouragingly. "'That was why you weren't to tell me. She wanted it to be a great surprise to me.' "'I wasn't to say a word,' said Harry doubtfully. "'Not a word about that.' "'No, that was just what Nurse said to me. You weren't to say a single word last night until she had told me. But now I know all about it, so we can talk. Was it great fun?' "'I don't know. It was great fun when I did it. How I laughed.' "'I didn't laugh,' she told me not to. "'Well, no, not at first. She was quite right. And what did her brother say? Nurse said he went with you.' "'Yes, we called for him, and he went with us with a flower and his buttonhole. A rose it was. He gave me one, too.' Harry looked at his buttonhole as if expecting to see the rose still in it. But that sign of merry-making was absent. Lady Louisa had on a previous occasion severely reprimanded Nurse for taking Harry to tea at her brother's house, a solicitor's clerk in Ipswich. Her spirits rose. She detected her in an act of flagrant disobedience, and as likely as not, they had all gone to a play together. "'Capital,' she said swavly, he was just the right person to go with. That's what I said to Nurse. And what did he talk about?' He said, mums the word, keep it all quiet till the old cat dies. And he slapped me on the back and said, mind that, brother-in-law. He was very nice indeed. Her purple mark, like a bruise, came to Lady Louisa's clay-coloured cheeks. There was a long pause before she spoke again. "'And did you write your name nicely, like Janey taught you?' She spoke with long-drawn gasps, each word articulated with difficulty. "'Yes,' said Harry anxiously, awed by the fixity of her eyes upon him. "'I did indeed, Mama. I was very particular.' "'Your full name?' "'Yes,' the man said, my full name, Henry Dillapole Manvers. "'That was the man at the registry office?' "'Yes.' "'And?' The voice laboured heavily and was barely audible. "'Did Nurse write her name nicely, too?' "'Yes, and our brother and the man. We all wrote them, and then we all had tea at Frowbitch's, and it wasn't tea. A nurse's brother ordered a bottle of champagne. The nurse didn't want him to, but he said people didn't get married every day. And he drank our health, and I drank a little tiny sip, and it made me sneeze.' Lady Louisa lay quite motionless, the sweat upon her forehead, looking at her son, who smiled terrifically back at her. And so Nurse had actually thought she could outwit her, had pitted herself against her. She would shortly learn a thing or two on that head. Quite cold was invading her, and as she looked at Harry it was as if some key, some master key, were suddenly and noiselessly turned in the lock. Without moving her eyes she saw beyond him the door, expecting to see the handle turn a nurse or journey to come in. But the door remained motionless. Nevertheless a key somewhere had turned. Everything was locked tight, the room, the walls, the bed, herself in it, as in a vice. Go back to your lessons," she said to Harry, and send Janey to me. She felt a sudden imperative need of Janey. But Harry, so docile, so schooled to obedience, made no motion to obey her. He only looked vacantly, expectantly at her. She spoke again, but he paid no heed. She spoke yet again with anger, but this time he was fidgeting with the watch on her table and did not even look up. She saw him as if through a glass screen. A wave of anger shook her. Leave the room this moment and do as I tell you," she said, with her whole strength. Had he suddenly become deaf, or had she—or she—a great fear took her. He put back the watch on its stand and touched the silver box in which the chocolates were kept. May I have another? Just one other," he said, opening it, his voice barely audible through the glass screen. And then, glancing it up for permission, he was seized with helpless laughter. Oh, Mama, you do look so funny with your mouth all on one side—funnier than the dog in the hat! His words and his laughter reached her, faint yet distinct, and she understood what had befallen her. Two large tears gathered in her anguished eyes and then slowly ran down her distorted face. Something else remained fixed, as in a vice, save Harry, rocking himself to and fro, and snapping his fingers with delight. CHAPTER XVI After all I think there are only two kinds of people in the world—lovers and egotists. I fear that lovers must smile when they see me making myself comfortable, collecting refined luxuries and a pleasant society round myself, protecting myself from an uneasy conscience by measured ornamental acts of kindness and duty, mounting guard over my health and my seclusion and my liberty. Yes, I have seen them smile. M.N. The vial of dusk was deepening and the dew was falling as a net crossed the garden under the apple trees on her return from the choir practice. There was a light in Aunt Maria's window which showed that she was evidently grappling with the smoking in Broglio which was racking two young hearts. Even a footfall on the passage was apt to scare that shy bird Aunt Maria's genius, so a net stole on tiptoe to the parlour. Aunt Harriet, extended on a sofa near a shaded lamp, looked up from her cushions with a bright smile of welcome and held out both her hands. Aunt Harriet was the youngest of three sisters, but she had not realised that that fact may in time cease to mean much. It was obvious that she had not yet kissed the rod of middle age. She had been moderately good-looking twenty years ago, and still possessed a willowy figure and a slender hand, and a fair amount of ash-coloured hair, which she wore in imitation of the then Princess of Wales, tilted forward in a dome of innumerable little curls over a longish pinkish face, leaving the thin flat back of her head amitigated by a coil. Aunt Harriet gave the impression of being of bas-relief, especially on the few occasions on which she stood up, when it seemed as if part of her had become momentarily unglued from the sofa, leaving her spinal column and the back of her head behind. She had had an unhappy and misunderstood—I mean, too accurately understood—existence, during the early years when her elder sister Maria ruthlessly exorted her to exert herself, and continually frustrated her mild, inveterate termination to have everything done for her. But a temporary ailment long since cured and a sympathetic doctor had enabled her to circumvent Maria, and to establish herself for good on her sofa with the soft-hearted Catherine in attendance. Her unlined face showed that she had found her niche in this uneasy world, and was no longer, as in all her earlier years, a drifter through life, terrified by the possibility of fatiguing herself. Greatly to her credit, and possibly owing to Catherine's mediation, Aunt Maria accepted the situation, and never sought to undermine the castle—not in Spain, but on a sofa—which her sister had erected, and in which she had found the somewhat colourless happiness of her life. "'Come in, my love, come in,' said Aunt Harriet, with playful goatee, "'come in and sit by me.'" Her love came in and sat down immediately on the low stool by her aunt's couch—that stool to which she was so frequently beckoned, on which it was her lot to hear so much advice on the subject of the housekeeping and the management of the servants. "'I think Aunt Harriet ought to speak to Hodgkins about the Albert biscuits. I know I left six in the tin yesterday, and there were only four to-day. I went directly up his town to count them. It's not good for her to take the dining-room, Albert, and then to deny it, as she did the other day. So I think it would be best if I don't move in the matter, and if you mentioned it, as if you had noticed it yourself. Or, there was a cobweb on my glass yesterday. I think, dearest, you must not overlook that. Servants become very slack unless they are kept up to their work. Aunt Harriet was an enemy of all slackness, idleness, want of energy, shirking in all its branches. She had taken to reading Emerson of late, and often quoted his words that, the only way of escaping all the worlds of God was performance. Annette would never have kept a servant if she had listened to her aunt's endless promptings. But she did not listen to them. Her placid, rather happy-go-lucky temperament, made her forget them at once. "'Have you had supper, dear child? Not yet, I'll go now. And did you remember to take a loz inch as you left the church? I'm afraid I forgot. Oh, my dear, it's a good thing you have someone to look after you and mother you. It's not too late to take one now. I should like to go and have supper now. I'm very hungry. I rejoice to hear it. It is wonderful to me how you can do without a regular meal on qua-nights. If it had been me, I should have fainted. But sit down again for one moment. I have something to tell you. You will never guess who me have had here. I'm sure I never shall. You know how much Maria thinks of literary people. Yes. I don't care for them quite as much as she does. I'm more drawn to those who have suffered, whose lives have been shattered like glass as my own life has been, and who gather up the fragments with the remain and weave a beautiful embroidery out of them." Annette knew that her aunt wanted her to say, as you do her yourself. She considered a moment and then said, "'You're thinking of Aunt Catherine.'" Aunt Harriet was entirely nonplussed. She felt unable to own that she had no such thought. She sighed deeply and said after a pause, "'I don't want to repeat it, Annette. I learned long ago that it is my first duty to keep my troubles to myself, to consume my own smoke. But my circulation has never been normal since the day Aunt Cathy died.' And after a moment she added, with sudden brightness, as one who relumes the torch on which a whole household depends. But you have not guessed who our visitor was, and what a drone of venture it all turned out. How I did laugh when it was all over and he was safely out of hearing. Maria said there was nothing to laugh at, but then she never sees the comic side of things as I do. I begin to think it must have been Cannon Weatherby, the clergyman who told you that story about the parrot who said, damn, at prayers, and made Aunt Maria promise not to put it in one of her books. "'She will, all the same. It's too good to be lost. No, it was not Cannon Weatherby. But you will never guess. I've never known you guess anything, Annette. You are totally devoid of imagination, and are how much happier your life will be in consequence.' I shall have to tell you. It was Mr. Reginald Sterling.' The novelist. Yes, and you know Maria was beginning to feel a little hurt because he hadn't called, as they are both writers. There is a sort of freemasonry in these things, and, of course, in a neighbourhood like this we naturally miss very much the extremely interesting literary society to which we were accustomed in London, and which Maria especially shone. But anyhow he came at last, and he was quite delightful. Not much to look at, not Mr. Harvey's presence, but most agreeable. And he seemed to know all about us. He said he went to Riff Church sometimes, and had seen our youngest sister in the choir. I laughed after he was gone. I often wished the comic sides did not appear to be quite so forcibly. To think of poor me who have not been to church for years, boldly holding forth in the choir. Or Maria, dear Maria, who only knows God saved the Queen because everyone gets up. As Colonel Weatherby said in his funny way, does not know Pop goes the weasel from God saved the weasel. Maria said afterwards that probably he thought you were our younger sister. And that sent me off into Fitts again. I certainly sit in the choir. He was much interested in the house, too, and said it was full of old world memories. Did he really say that? Annette's face fell. No, now I come to think of it. I said that, and he agreed. And his visit and his conversation about Mrs. Humphrey Ward, comparing David Grieve and Robert Ellesmere, quite pure, dear Maria's headache. And we agree that neither of us would tell you about it in the absence of the other so that we might make you guess. So remember Annette, when Maria comes in, you don't know a word, a single word of what I've told you. Aunt Maria came in at that moment, and sat down on the other side of the farm. Aunt Maria was a short, sack-like woman between fifty and sixty, who'd long since given up any pretensions to middle age, and who wore her grey hair parted under a little cap. Many antagonistic qualities struggle for precedence in Aunt Maria's stout, uneasy face, benevolence and irritability, self-consciousness and absent-mindedness, a suspicious pride, and the self-deprecation which so often dogs it, and the fatigue of one who daily and hourly is trying to be an influence for good, with little or no help from temperament. Annette developed a compassionate affection for both her aunts, now that they were under her protection. But the greater degree of compassion was for Aunt Maria. Aunt Harriet would have told you who has been to see us, she said, as a matter of course. Aunt Harriet fixed an imploring glance on Annette, who explained that she'd seen a dog-cart in the courtyard, and how later she'd seen Mr. Sterling driving in it. I wished Harriet, said Aunt Maria, without looking at her sister, that you had not asked him if he had read my books. But he had, Maria! He was only down for the first minute till I told him some of the names, and then the poor man purged it himself. And I thought that was so true, how he said to you, You and I, Miss Neville, have no time in our hard-worked lives to read even the best modern fiction. I found time to read the magnet, said Aunt Maria, in a hollow voice. At this moment the door opened, and Hodgkin's the parlor made advance into the room bearing a tray, which he put down in an aggressive manner on a small table beside Annette. I'm certain Hodgkin's is vexed about something, said Aunt Harriet solemnly when the functionery had withdrawn. I am as sensitive as a mental thermometer to what others are feeling, and I saw by the way she set the tray down that she was angry. She must have guessed that I found out about the albots. Perhaps she guessed that Annette was starving, said Aunt Maria. CHAPTER XVII Life is like a nest in the winter. The heart of man is always cold therein. Romanian folk-song. The lawyer, who was to have altered Lady Louise's will, was sent away as soon as he arrived. No one knew why she had telegraphed for him. She'd had a second stroke, and with it the last vestige of power dropped from her numb hands. She was unable to speak, unable to move, unable even to die. Janey sat by her for days together in a great compassion, not un-mixed with shame. Everyone, Roger included, thought she was overwhelmed by the catastrophe which had befallen her mother, and he made shy, clumsy attempts at consolation, little pattings on the back, invitations to come out and have a look at the hay-harvest. But Janey was stunned by the thought that she was in danger of losing not her mother, but her Roger. Her perhaps already lost him, and that her one friend, Annette, was unconsciously taking him from her. Her mother's bedside had become a refuge for the first time. As she sat hour after hour with Lady Louise's cold hand in hers, it was in vain that she told herself that it was foolish, ridiculous, to attach importance to such a trivial instant as the fact that when Roger was actually at her door he should have made himself late by walking home with Annette. But she realized now that she'd been vaguely anxious before that happened, that it had been a formless dread at the back of her mind which had nothing to do with her mother, which had made her feel that night of the choir practice as if she had reached the end of her strength. Is there any exhaustion like that which guards the steep, endless steps up to the shrine of love? Which of us has struggled as far as the altar and laid our offering upon it? Which of us faint-hearted pilgrims has not given up the attempt halfway? But Janey was not one of these, not even to be daunted by a fear that he had taken shape at last. We all know that jealousy fabricates its own confirmation strong as proofs of holy writ. But with Janey it was not so much suspicion as observation. That close observation born of love, which if it is once dislinked from love, not even so Galahad could endure scatheless. With steady eyes she dumbly watched her happiness grow dim and dimmer. Roger was her all, and he was leaving her. His very kindness might have warned her as to his real feeling for her, and it seemed to Janey as if for months she had been shutting her eyes forcibly against the truth. There is a great deal of talk nowadays about losing the one we love, and that attractive personality generally turns out to be some sagacious stranger who has the agility to elude us in the crowd. But Roger was as much an integral part of Janey's life as Halver was part of his. Janey's life had grown round Rogers. Rogers had grown round Halver. Small incidents spread over the last two months since Annette had come to Riff rose to her memory. Things too small to count by themselves hook themselves like links one after another into a chain. For instance, the Ipswich Agricultural Show. Janey had always gone to that annual event with Roger and Harry, and since the blacks had come to Riff they had accompanied them. It seemed pleasant to Janey to go in a little bunch together, and Mr. Black was good-natured to Harry and took him to the sideshows, and Janey always had a new gown for the occasion. She had a new one this year, a pink one, and a white straw hat covered with pink roses. And Roger had said approvingly, My word, Janey, you have done it this time. They had taken Annette with them in a flowing, pale, amber muslin which made her hair and eyes seem darker than ever, and which Miss Black in her navy blue silk pronounced at once and allowed her side to be theatrical. When they all arrived they divided. Annette, only she did not like the pigs and sheep. Janey at once said she preferred them because she knew Roger did. If there was one thing more than another that Roger loved, it was to stand among the cattle-pens with his hat a little at the back of his head, exchanging irracula remarks with other agents and stock-breeders who gathered with gratify and respect the pearls of wisdom which he let drop. For there was no sounder opinion in locia on a brewed mare or a two-year-old vanner than Roger. It was always stiflingly hot among the cattle-pens, and the pigs in their domestic life had no bouquet more penetrating than that which they brought with them to these public functions. Janey did not love that animal, of which it might with truth be said that it's best is yet to be. But she always accompanied Roger on these occasions, standing beside him, a neat dainty little figure, by the hour together, giving her full attention to the various points of the animals as he indicated them to her. They did the same again this year. Roger said, Come on, Janey, as usual, and hurried in the direction of the cattle-pens, while Annette and Harry and Mr. Black wandered towards the flower-tents. But when they reached the pandemonium of the livestock, Roger appeared dissatisfied. The animals, it seemed, were a poor lot this year. The flower of the locia land-agentry was absent. He didn't see Smith anywhere. And Blower was not about. He expressed the opinion frequently that they must be getting on, and they were soon getting on to such an extent that they got past the reaping machines and even the dog-carts and were back near the bandstand. Roger continually wondering what had become of the others. Janey, suddenly hot and tired, suggested that they should look for them. And they set out immediately, and elbowed their way through the crowded flower-tents and passed side-shows innumerable, till they finally came upon Mr. Black and Annette and Harry at an Aunt Sally. Harry, in a seventh heaven of enjoyment, Mr. Black blissfully content, and Annette under her lace parasol as cool as a water lily. Janey never forgot the throb of envy and despair to which the sudden sight of Annette gave rise, and she smiled at her and made room for her on the bench beside her, while Roger, suddenly peaceful and inclined to giggle, tried his luck at the Aunt Sally. They all stayed together in a tight bunch for the remainder of the day, the endless, weary day which everyone seemed to enjoy except herself. And at tea-time they were joined by Miss Black and her friend and entirely deaf Miss Condor, secretary of the Losia Plain Needlework Guild, who had adhered to Miss Black since morning greetings had been exchanged at the station, and who, at this, the first opportunity deserted her for Janey. And when they all came back late in the evening, Roger had driven Annette home in his dog-cart, while she and the Blacks and Harry, who could hardly be kept awake, squeezed into the wagonette. And when Janey got home she tore off the pink gown and the gay hat and wondered why she was tarred out. She knew now, but she had not realized it at the time. She had somehow got it into her head, and if Janey once got an idea into her little head it was apt to remain there some time, that Annette and Mr. Black were attracted to each other. In these days, as she sat by her mother, Janey saw that that idea had led her astray. Mr. Black's hapless condition was sufficiently obvious. But perhaps Annette did not care for Mr. Black. Perhaps she preferred Roger. And if she did, the read on which Janey's maimed life had leaned showed for the first time that heartbreaking tendency inherent in every read to pierce the hand of the leaner. Strange how slow we are to learn that everything in this pretty world is fragile as spun glass, and nothing in it is strong enough to bear our weight, least of all that read shaken in the wind, human love. We may draw near, we may harken to its ghostly music, we may worship, but we must not lean. Janey was not a leaner by nature, which was one on whom others leaned. Nevertheless, she had counted on Roger. CHAPTER XVIII. So fast does a little leaven spread within us. So incalculable is the effect of one personality on another. George Elliot. Janey's set face distressed Roger. Presently he had a brilliant idea. Ms. George's was the person to cheer her to tempt her out of her mother's sikram. So the next time he was going to red-riff to inspect some repairs in the roof—the next time was the same afternoon—he expanded this view a considerable length to a net, whom he found thinning the annules in a lilac, pinafore, and sun-monet in the walled garden. She sat down on the circular bench round the apple-tree while he talked, and as he sat by her it seemed to him, not for the first time, that in some mysterious way it was a very particular occasion. There was a delightful tremor in the air. It suggested the remark which she had once made that it was a remarkably fine afternoon. And it agreed, rather too fine for thinning annules, though just the weather for her aunts to drive over to noise to call on Mr. Sterling. Now that Roger came to look at a net, he perceived that she herself was part of the delicious trouble in the air. It lurked in her hair, and the pure oval of her cheek and her eyes, most of all in her eyes. He was so taken aback by this discovery that he could only stare at the sky. And yet if the silly man had been able to put two and two together, if he had known as much about human nature as he did about reaping machines, he would not have been in the dark as to why he was sitting under the apple-tree at this moment, why he had ordered those new riding-britches, why he had them on at this instant, why he had begun to dislike Mr. Black, and why he had been so expeditious in retiling the latterly after the tree fell on it. If he had had a grain of self-knowledge, he would have realized that there must indeed be a grave reason for these prompt repairs which the misnevals had taken as a matter of course. For in the ordinary course of things tires could hardly be rested out of Roger, and drain-pipes and sections of leg-guttering were at his life-blood never to be parted with except as a last resort after a desperate struggle. His state was understaffed, under-financed, and the repairs were always in arrears. Even the estate bricklayer ruthlessly torn from a neighbouring farm to spread himself on the misnevals' roof, opined to his nephew with the hod, the Mr. Roger must be uncommon-sweet on Miss George's to be in such a mortal hurry with them tiles. And its voice recalled Roger from the contemplation of the heavens. I would go down to-day after tea, as he was saying, and I would would say Janey to come and sit in the hay-field. It is such a pretty thing, a hay-field. I've never seen hay in—in what you call it? In cock. Yes, such a funny word. I've never seen hay in cock before. Roger smiled undoubtedly. And its gross ignorance of country life did not pain him. It seemed as much part of her as a certain little curl on that white nape of her neck. Down the lane a child's voice came singing. If I could have the one I love, how happy I should be! That's Charlie Nokes, said Roger, feeling he ought to go, and singularly disinclined to move, and casting about for a little small talk to keep him under this comfortable apple-tree. His father used to sing that song at Harvest Homes before he took to the drink. Jesse knows he's dead now. He and my cousin Dick, the present squire, used to get into all kinds of scrapes together when they were boys. I've seen them climb up that vine and hide behind the chimney-stack when Uncle John was looking for them with his whip. They might have broken their necks, but they never thought of that. Poor Jesse, he's dead, and Dick's dying. It was the first time that Roger had ever spoken to her over the present owner of Halver, the black sheep of the family, of whose recklessness and folly she had heard many stories from his foster mother, Mrs. Nichols. Jenny, in spite of their intimacy, never mentioned him. And partly because he wanted to remain under the apple-tree, and partly because he was fond of Jenny, and partly because a change of listeners is grateful to the masculine mind. Roger talked long about his two cousins, Jenny and Dick Manvers, of her courage and unselfishness, and what a pity it was that she had not been the eldest son of the house. And then he told her a little of the havoc Dick was making of his inheritance, and of the grief he had caused his mother, and what, according to Roger, mattered still more to Jenny. Jenny loved Dick, he said, and I was fond of him myself. Everybody was fond of him. You couldn't help liking Dick. There was something very taking about him. I can't say what it was, but one felt it. But it seems as if those taking people sometimes wear out all their takingness before they die, spend it all like money, so that at last there is nothing left for the silly people that have been so fond of them and stuck so long to them. Dick's like that. He's worn us all out, every one, even Jenny. And now he's dying. I'm afraid there's no one left to care much, except, of course. He stopped short. I've just been to see him in Paris, he went on. Didn't you live in Paris at one time? I wonder if you ever came across him? And it shook her head. I never met a Mr. Manvers that I know of. But he dropped the Manvers when he started his racing tables. He had the decency to do that. He always went by his second name, Legais. Legais? Yes, Dick Legais. Lady Louisa's mother was a Legais of noise, you know, the last of the line. She married Lord Starr as his second wife and had no son. So her daughter, Lady Louisa, inherited noise. Dick Legais? Yes. Did you ever meet him? I don't suppose you did. Dick never went among those kind of people you would be likely to associate with. Annette was silent for a moment and then said, Yes, I've met him. I used to see him sometimes at my father's cabaret. She saw he did not know what a cabaret was, and she added, My father keeps a public house in the Rue de Bac. Rotter was so astonished, they did not perceive that Annette had experienced a shock. Your father a publican, he said. He was a courier first, she said, speaking with difficulty, like one stunned but forcing herself to have tended to some trivial matter. That was how my mother met him. And after her death he set up a little drinking shop and married again, a woman in his own class of life. I lived with him for a year till last September. Good Lord, said Roger, and he said no more. He could only look at Annette in sheer astonishment. The daughter of a publican! He was deeply perturbed. The apple-tree had quite ceased to be comfortable. He got slated to his feet and said he must be going. She made him goodbye, absently, and he walked away, thinking that no other woman in Lausia would have let him go after four o'clock without offering him a cup of tea. Just when he thought he was really gone, he found he had come back and was standing before her. Mr. George's, he began awkwardly enough. I daresay I have no business to offer advice, but you don't seem to know country life very well. Never seen hay and cock before, I think you mentioned. So perhaps you would not think it cheeked me if I said anything. About the hay? No, no, about what you've just told me. About my father keeping a public house? Yes, none of my business. He'd become plum-collar, but she looked blankly at him. She felt unable to give him sufficient attention to help him out. He had to flounder on without assistance. If you mentioned that fact to any one like Miss Black, it would go round the parish in no time. With that matter? Roger was non-plus for a moment. Her ignorance was colossal. Some things are better not talked about, he said. I've been telling you of poor Dick, but there were things in his life that were better not talked about, so I did not mention them. His words transfixed her. Was it possible that he was warning her that he was aware of her adventure with Dick? At any rate, she gave him her full attention now. She raised her eyes to his and looked searchingly at him, and she saw with a certainty that nothing could shake, that he knew nothing, that he was only trying to save her from a petty annoyance. The Miss Neville's has always been very close about your father, he added. You can ask him, but I think he would find they wouldn't be much pleased if his profession was known down here. It might vex the so many vexatious things in this world that can't be helped, aren't there? And are there any that can, so much the better? That was all I came back to say. I should not volunteer it, if I were you. It seemed to drop out so naturally that I thought you might have said the same to Miss Black. Certainly I might. I do hate concealments of any kind. And it spoke with conviction. Oh, oh, so do I! said Roger wholeheartedly. I've hushed up too many scrawls not to hate them. But this isn't a concealment. It's—it's— You see, Miss Black does run round with her tongue out, and no mistake, and Uncle John's advice when I settled down here, as his agent was, never say any more than you must. So I just pass it on to you, now that you've settled down at Riff, too. And Roger departed for the second time. She watched him go, and a minute later hurt him right out of the courtyard. She sat quite still where he had left her, gazing in front of her, so motionless that the birds, disturbed by Roger's exodus, resumed possession of the grass-plot at once. The plebeian sparrows came hopping clumsily, as if they were made of wood, propped up by their stiff tails. A bulging thrush with wide-speckled waistcoat, hastened up and down, throwing out his wing each time he darted forward. A thin water-wagtail came walking with quick steps, and exquisite tiny movements of head and neck, and long, balancing tail. A baby-wagtail, brown and plump and voracious, bustled after it, shouting, More, more! the instant, after its overworked, partially bald parent had stuffed a billful down its yellow throat. Annette looked with wide eyes at the old dim house with its lattice windows and the vine across it, the vine which Dick had climbed as a lad. Dick was Mr. Manvers of Halver. The baby-wagtail bolted several meals, fluttering its greeted little wings, while Annette said to herself over and over again, half stupefied. Dick is Mr. Manvers. Dick is Jane's brother. She was not apprehensive by nature, but gradually a vague alarm invaded her. She must tell Mrs. Stoddart at once. What would Mrs. Stoddart say? What would she do? With a slow sinking of her heart Annette realized that that practical and cautious woman would probably insist on her leaving riff. Tears came to her eyes at the thought. Was it then unalloyed bliss to live with the Miss Neville's? Or was there some other subtle influence at work which made the thought of leaving riff intolerable? Annette did not ask herself that question. She remembered with a pang her two friends, Janey and Roger, and the Miss Blinkids and Mrs. Nichols, and her Sunday school class and the Croix. And she looked at the mignonnette she had sewn, and the unfinished annules, and the sweet peas she had raised in the frame, and was due to be out in another fortnight. She turned and put her arms round the little old apple-tree, and pressed her face against the bark. I'm happy here, she said. I've never been so happy before. I don't want to go. CHAPTER XIX In the winter, when all the flowers are dead, the experienced beekeeper places before his hive a saucer of beer and treacle to sustain the inmates during the frost. And some of the less active bees, who have not used their wings but have heard about honey, taste the compound, and finding it wonderfully sustaining and exactly suited to their aspirations, they religiously store it, dark and sticky, in wax and cells, as if it were what they genuinely believed it to be, the purest honey. But the other, surly unsympathetic bees with worn-out wings, contend that honey has not come by as eased as that. The two must fly far and work hard and penetrate many flower-cups to acquire it. This naturally arises the indignation of the beer and treacle-gatherers. And the beekeeper, as he passes his hive, hears his little people buzzing within, and smiles. M. N. And now, said Aunt Harriet, the same evening, now that we have made Mr. Sterling's acquaintance and been to tea with him, and may expect to see him frequently, I think we ought to take a little course of his books. What do you say, Maria? Eh, Annette? You seem strangely apathetic and inert this evening, my dear. So different from me at your age. I was gaity and energy itself until my health failed. You might read aloud some extracts from The Magnet, instead of The Times. It is a book which none of us can afford to disregard. How I cried over it when it came out, I wrote to him after I finished it, even though I did not know him. Authors like it, don't they, Maria? I felt very audacious, but I am a child of impulse. I've never been able to buy myself down with conventional ideas, as I see others do. I felt I simply must tell him what that book had been to me, what it had done for me, coming like a ray of light into a darkened room. Mrs. Dodd-Arter read aloud The Magnet to Annette at Tenerife, and it was intimately associated with her slow, weird waking to life. It had had a part, and not a small part, in sending her back humbled and contrite to her aunts. But she felt a deep repugnance to the thought of hearing their comments upon it. She took the offer book reluctantly, but Aunt Harriet's long, thin finger was already pointing to a paragraph. Begin it, How We Followed Self At First, the top of the page, she said, and she leaned back among her cushions. Aunt Maria took up her knitting, and Annette began to read, How We Followed Self At First, how long we follow her, how pallid, how ephemeral is all else beside that one bewitching form? We call her by many beautiful names, our career, our religion, our work for others. The face of self is veiled, but we follow that mysterious rainbow-tinted figure as some men follow art, as some men follow Christ, leaving all else behind. We follow her across the rivers. If the stepping-stones are alive and grown beneath our feet, what of that? We follow her across the hills. Love weeps and falls behind, but what of that? The love which will not climb the hills with us is not the love we need. Our friends appeal to us, and one by one fall behind. False friends, let them go. Our ideals are broken and left behind. Miserable impediments and hindrances, let them go too. For some of us self-fits veiled to the last, and we trudge to our graves, looking ever and only at her across the brink. But sometimes she takes pity on us, sometimes she turns and confronts us in a narrow place, and lifts her veil. We are alone at last with her in love. The leprous face, the chasms where the eyes should be, the awful discoloured hand are revealed to us. The crawling horror of every fold of that alluring drapery. Here is the bride, take her. And we turn, sick unto death and free for our lives. After that day certain easy self-deprecations we say never again while we have speech. After that day our cheap admission of our egotism freezes on our lips. For we have seen, we know. We have seen, we know, repeated Aunt Harriet solemnly. That last bit simply changed my life. If I had a talent for writing like you, Maria, which of course I have not, that is just the kind of thing I should have said myself to help other sufferers. Unsuffishness, that must be the key note of our lives. If the stepping-stones are alive and groan beneath our feet, what of that? Half-knife said those words to myself when the feet of the world has gone over me, poor stepping-stone, trying hard, trying so hard not to groan. And if I am to be perfectly honest just for once, you know, dear Maria, you and Annette do trample somewhat heavily at times. Of course, you're absorbed in your work, Annette is young, and you don't either of you mean it. I know that, and I make alliances for you both. I'm making alliances all the time. But I sometimes wish you could remember that the poor stepping-stone is alive. There was a moment's silence. Annette got up and gently replaced the couvre-repier which had slipped from the stepping-stone's smart high-heeled shoes. Aunt Harriet wiped away a delicious tear. Our ideals are broken and left behind, she went on. Only the invalid knows how true that is. Dear me, when I think of all the high ideals I had when I was your agent, who don't seem to have any, perhaps it is happier for you that you haven't. Though Mr. Stirling looks so strong, I feel sure that he must at one time have known us so for life. Or perhaps he loved someone like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was a greater prisoner to her coach as I am. He seemed to couldn't have written those lines otherwise. I often think, as I lie here in solitude, hour after hour, how different my life might have been if anyone like Browning had sought me out, but it is no use repining. All these things are ordered for the best. Go on, my dear, go on. When the reading was over, and Aunt Harriet, still emotional, had gone to bed, after embracing them both with unusual fervour. I know to open the window, as her custom was, and let in the soft night air. Aunt Harriet was a lifelong foe to fresh air. Aunt Maria gave a sigh of relief. She was stout and felt the heat. The earth was resting. The white pinks below the window gave forth their scent. The low moon had laid a slanting black shadow of the dear old house and its tall chimney stacks upon the silvered grass. And its heart throbbed. Must she leave it all? She longed to go to her own room and think over what had happened, but she had an intuitive feeling that Aunt Maria had been in some mysterious way depressed by the reading aloud, and was in need of consolation. I think, said Aunt Maria after a time, that Mr. Sterling rather exaggerates, don't you, that he is yielded to the temptation of picturesque overstatement in that bit about following self. It seems to me just right. You don't feel he is writing for the sake of effect? No, oh no. I am afraid I do a little, but then the picture is so very highly coloured, and personally I don't care much for garish colouring. Annette did not answer. I should like to know what you think about it, Annette. Whenever Aunt Maria used that phrase she wanted confirmation of her own opinion. Annette considered a moment. I think he has really seen it exactly as he says. I think perhaps he was selfish once, and had a shock. He is quite right to write from his experience, continued Aunt Maria. I have drawn largely from mine in my books, and I am thankful I have had such a deep and rich experience to draw from. Experience, of course, must vary with each one of us. But I can't say I have ever felt what he describes. Have you? Yes. The veiled figure meeting you in a narrow place and raising its veil. Yes. Aunt Maria was momentarily taken aback. When our opinions do not receive confirmation from others, we generally feel impelled to restate them at length. I have never looked at selfishness like that, she said, at something which we idealise. I have always held that egotism is the thing of all others which we ought to guard against. And egotism seems to me ugly, not beautiful, or rainbow-titted at all. I tried to show in crooks and corollettes what an obstacle it is to our spiritual development, and how happiness is to be found in little deeds of kindness, small sacrifices for the sake of others, rather than in always considering ourselves. Annette did not answer. She knew her aunt's faith in spiritual homeopathy. I have had hundreds of letters, continued the homeopath uneasily, from my readers, many of them perfect strangers, thanking me for pointing out the danger of egotism so fearlessly, and telling me how much happier they have been since they followed the example of Angela Towers in crooks and corollettes, in doing a little act of kindness every day. If Aunt Maria were alive now, she would have been thrilled by the knowledge that twenty years after she preached it, the Boy Scouts made that precept their own. Perhaps the man who was following the veiled figure did little kindnesses too, in order to feel comfortable, said Annette, after herself. Fortunately, her aunt did not hear her. I yield to no one in my admiration of Mr. Sterling, continued Miss Neville, but he suggests no remedy for the selfishness he describes. He just says people flee for their lives. Now, my experience is that they don't flee, that they don't see how selfish they are, and need helpful suggestions to overcome it. That is just what I have tried to do in my books. Which I gather he has never opened. There was a subdued bitterness in her aunt's voice which made Annette leave her seat by the window and sit down beside her. You have plenty of readers without Mr. Sterling, she said soothingly. It was true. Miss Neville had a large public. She had never lived, she had never come in close contact with the lives of others, she had no perception of character, and she was devoid of humour. She had a meagre, inflexible vocabulary, no real education, no delicacy of description, no sense of language, no love of nature. But she possessed the art of sentimental, facile narration, coupled with a great desire to preach, and a genuine and quencherous passion for the obvious. And the long succession of her popular novels, each exactly like the last, met what a large circle of readers believed to be its spiritual needs. She appealed to the vast society of those who have never thought, and who crave to be edified without mental effort on their part. Her books had demanded no mental effort from their author, and were models of unconscious tact in demanding numb from their readers. And herein, together with their evident sincerity, had lain part of the secret of their success. Also, partly because her gentle people, and her books dealt mainly with them, were not quite so unlike gentle people as in the majority of novels. If she did not call a spade a spade, neither did she call an earl an earl. Old ladies adored her novels. The Miss Blinkets preferred them to Shakespeare. Canon Weatherby dipped into them in his rare moments of leisure. Cottage Hospitals laid them on the beds of their convalescence. clergymen presented them as prizes. If the great Miss Neville had had a different temperament, she might have been as happy as she was a successful woman. For she represented culture to the semi-cultivated, and to succeed in doing that, results in a large income and streams of flattering letters. But it does not result in recognition as a thinker, and that was precisely what she hankered after. She craved to be regarded as a thinker without having thought. It chagrined her that her books were not read by what she called the right people. That, as she frequently commented, her work was not recognized. In reality, it was recognized at first sight. The opening chapter, as Mr. Sterling had found that morning, was enough. The Graver reviews never noticed her. No word of praise ever reached her from the masters of the craft. She had to the fool the adulation of her readers, but she wanted adulation, alas, from the educated, from men like Mr. Sterling rather than Cannon Witherby. Mr. Sterling had not said a word about her work this afternoon, though he had had time to refresh his memory of it, and she had alluded to it herself more than once. For the hundredth time Aunt Maria felt vaguely disturbed and depressed. The reading aloud of The Magnet had only accentuated that depression, and its hand felt very soft and comforting in hers. The troubled author has turned instinctively towards possible consolation nearer at hand. I will own, she said tentatively, that when I see you, my dear Annette, so different from what you were when you left us two years ago, so helpful and so patient with poor Harriet, who is trying beyond words, so considerate and so thoughtful for others, I will own that I have sometimes hoped that the change might have been partly I don't say entirely, but partly brought about by crooks and coronets, which I sent to you at Tenerife, and to which I had poured all that was best in me. When you rejoined us here, it seemed as if you had laid its precepts to heart. Aunt Maria looked at her niece almost imploringly. Annette was not one of those who adhered to a strict truthfulness on all occasions. She stroked her aunt's hand. It was borning on me at Tenerife after I was ill there. How selfish I had been, she said, and her voice trembled. I ought never to have left you all. If only I had not left you all, then I should not be. I shouldn't have, but I was selfish to the core, and my eyes were only opened too late. No, my dear, not too late. Just in the nick of time, at the very moment we needed you most, after dear Cathy's death, you don't know what a comfort you've been to us. Too late for Aunt Cathy, said Annette Horsley. Poor, kind, tired Aunt Cathy, who came to me in my room the last night and asked me not to leave her, told me she needed my help. But my mind was absolutely set on going. I cried, and told her that later on I would come back and take care of her, but that I must go. Self in her rainbow veil beckoned, and I followed her. If Aunt Cathy was the stepping-stone which groaned beneath my feet, what of that? What did I care? I passed over it, I trampled on it without a thought. The subdued passion in Annette's voice stirred anew the vague trouble in Aunt Maria's mind. For a moment her own view of life, even her heroine's puny and universally admired repentance, tottered, dwindled. For a brief moment she saw that the writer of the magnet made a great demand on his reader, and that Annette had passionately responded to it. For a moment Mr. Sterling's gentle, ruthless voice seemed to overthrow her whole position to show her to herself as petty and trivial. For a moment she even doubted whether crooks and coronets had really affected the great change she perceived in Annette, and the doubt disheartened her still more. She withdrew resolutely into the stronghold of her success, and rose slowly to her feet. Well, she said, it's time to go to bed. Close the shutters, Annette. It is very natural you should be impressed by the magnet. I should have been at your age. Young people are always attracted by eloquence. But as one gets older I find one instinctively prefers plainer language, as one prefers plainer clothes, less word-painting, and more spiritual teaching. It was already late, but Annette sat up still later, writing a long letter to Mrs. Doddard. I have often envied a sergeant's strategy in which he makes the diable transport his patron to a high point in the city, and then obliged to remove roof after roof from the houses spread out beneath his eyes, revealing with a sublime disregard for edification what is going on in each of them in turn. That is just what I should like to do with you, reader. Transport you to the top of, shall we say, the low church tower of Riff, and take off one red roof after another of the clustering houses beneath us. But I should not choose midnight, as Lassage did, but tea-time for my visitation, and then, if you were paid aboard, I would quickly whisk off another roof. We might look in at Roger's cottage near the church, first of all, and see what he is doing. On this particular afternoon, some three weeks after his conversation with Annette under the apple tree, I am sorry to record that he was doing nothing. That was a pity, for there was a great deal waiting to be done. July and a new quarter were at hand. Several new leases had to be looked over. The death of one of his farmers had brought up the old hateful business of right of Heriot. The accounts of the Alderberg house property were in at last and must be checked. There was plenty to do, but nevertheless Roger was sitting in his office room with his elbow on his last labour-sheet and his chin in his hand. He, usually so careful, had actually blotted the names of half a dozen labourers. His housekeeper, the stoutest woman in Riff, sister to the late Mr. Nichols, had put his tea near him half an hour before. Mr. Nichols' spinster sister was always called Mrs. Nichols. But it was the wedded Mrs. Nichols who had obtained the situation of Roger's housekeeper by sheer determination for the unwedded lady of the same name, and when Roger had faintly demurred at the size of his housekeeper-designate, had informed him sternly that she was stout only in appearance. It was a pity he had let his tea grow cold and had left his plate a thick rectangular bread and butter untouched. Roger was a person who hated thought, and he was thinking, and the process was fatiguing to him. He had for years hustled along like a sturdy pony on the rounds of his monotonous life, and had been fairly well satisfied with it till now. But lately the thoughts which would have been invading a more imaginative man for a long time past had at last reached him and filtered down through the stiff clay of the upper crust of his mind. Was he going on forever keeping another man's property assiduously together, doing two men's work for one man's pay? When his uncle made him his agent, he lived in the house at Halver, and his horses were kept for him, and the two hundred a year was a generous allowance. But Dick had not increased it when he succeeded. He had given him the cottage, which was in use as an estate office, rent-free, but nothing else. Roger had not liked to say anything at first, even when his work increased, and later on Dick had not been to be got at. And the years were passing, and Roger was thirty-five. He ought to be marrying if he was ever going to marry at all. Of course, if Dick were in a state of health to be appealed to at close quarters, he never answered letters. He would probably act generously. He had always been open-handed. But Dick, poor beggar, was dead already as far as any use he could be to himself or others. Roger shuddered at the recollection of the shapeless, prostrate figure with the stout vacant face and the fat hand that had once been so delicate and supple, which they wanted to guide to do its new-not-what. Roger could not see that he had any future, but then he had not had any for years past, so why was he thinking about that now? Annette was the reason. Till Annette came to Riff, he had always vaguely supposed that he and Janey would make a match of it some day. Janey was the only person he really knew. I do not mean to imply for a moment that Roger, in his pink coat of the lochia hunt ball, was not a popular partner. He was. And in times past he had been shyly and faintly attracted by more than one of his pretty neighbours. But he was fond of Janey. And now that his uncle was dead, Janey was perhaps the only person left for whom he had a rooted attachment. But it seemed that there were disturbing women who could inspire feelings quite different from the affection and compassion he felt for his cousin. Annette was one of them. Roger resented the difference and then dwelt upon it. He distrusted Annette's parentage. Take a bird out of a good nest. That was his idea of a suitable marriage. Never in his wildest moments would he have thought of marrying a woman whose father was a Frenchman, much less a Frenchman who kept a public house. He wasn't thinking of such a thing now. At least he told himself he wasn't. But he had been deeply chagrined at Annette's mention of her father all the same, so deeply that he not repeated the odious fact even to Janey, the recipient of all the loose matter in his mind. How kind Annette had been to pour Janey during these last weeks. Janey had unaccountably and dumbly hung back at first, but Annette was not to be denied. Roger, with his elbow on his labour-sheet, saw that whatever her father might be, the least he could do would be to ride up to Riff at an early date and thank her. It is only a step from Roger's cottage to the Dar House. All was silent there. Janey and Harry had gone up to Halver to sail his boat after tea, and the house was deserted. Tommy, the gardener's boy, the only person to whom Harry had confided his marriage, was clipping the edges of the newly-mown grass beneath Lady Louisa's window. And Lady Louisa herself? She lay motionless with fixed eyes, Mother Norris, her daughter-in-law, read a novel near the open window. She knew what had happened. She remembered everything. Her hearing and sight were as clear as ever. But she could make no sign of understanding or recognition. A low, guttural sound she could sometimes make, but not always, and the effort was so enormous that she could hardly induce herself to make it. At first she had talked unceasingly, unable to remember that the words which were so clear to herself had no sound for those bending over her, trying to understand what she wished. Janey and the doctor had encouraged her, had comforted her, had made countless experiments in order to establish means of communication with her, but without a veil. Would you like me to read, Mother? See, I am holding your hand. Press it ever so little, and I shall know you would like a little reading. No, faintest pressure. Don't trouble to answer, Mother, but if you would like to see Roger for a few minutes, shut your eyes. The eyes remained open, fixed. Lady Louisa tried to shot them, but she could not. Now I am going to hold up these large letters one after another. If there is something you wish me to do, spend it to me. Make a sound when I reach the right letter. I begin with A. Now I come to B. Here is C. But after many fruitless attempts, Janey gave up the letters. I am other-growned at intervals, but when the letters were written down, they did not make sense. No bridge could span the gulf. At last the doctor advised Janey to give up trying to span it. Leave her in peace, he said, in Lady Louisa's hearing, that acute hearing which was intact as her eyesight. So Lady Louisa was left in peace. She saw the reins and whip which she had held so tightly, slip out of her hands. She who had imposed her will on others all her life could impose it no longer. She was tended by a traitor whom she hated, yet she was unable to denounce her, to rid herself of her daily, hourly presence. A wood-pigeon cooed tranquilly in the cedar, and Lady Louisa groaned. The nurse put down her book and came and stood beside the bed. The two enemies looked at each other, the younger woman boldly meeting the impotent hatred of her patient's eyes. It never used me, Lady, she said, replacing her little cushion under her elbow. You're down, and I'm up, and you've got to make up your mind to it. Harry told me you got it out of him. Are you any the happier for knowing I'm your daughter-in-law? I meant to spare you that. It was that, as brought on the stroke. Very clever you were to weed it out of Harry, but it didn't do you much good. You'd turn me out without a character if you could, wouldn't you? But you can't. And listen to me. You won't ever be any better, or I shouldn't talk like this. I daresay I'm pretty bad, but I'd never say there wasn't a chance while there was the least little scrap of one left. But there isn't, not one scrap. It's all over with your high and mighty ways, riding roughshod over everybody and poor mismanvers. It's no use crying. You've made others cry often enough. Now it's your turn. And don't go and think I'm going to be cruel to you because you've been cruel to others. I'm not. I'm sorry enough for you, lying there like a log eating your heart out. I'm going to make you as comfortable as ever I can, and to do my duty by you. And when you've gone I'm going to make Harry happier than he's ever been under your thumb. So now you understand, Lady Louisa understood. Her eyes, terrible, fierce as a wounded panther, filled with tears. She made no other sign. The nurse wiped them away. End of Chapter 20