 Story four of The Thirteen Travelers by Hugh Walpole This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Story four, Miss Morgan Hurst It may be that in future years, when critics and commentators look back upon the European war, one of the aspects of it that will seem to them strangest will be the attitude of a complete indifference that certain people assume during the course of it. Indifference, that is an inefficient word. It is not too strong to say that hundreds of men and women in London during those horrible years were completely unconscious, save on the rare occasion when rationing or air raids forced them to attend, that there was any war at all. There were men and clubs and women in drawing rooms, old maids and old bachelors, old maids like Miss Morgan Hurst. How old Miss Morgan Hurst really was, for how long she had been raising her loin yet to gaze scornfully at society, for how many years now she had been sitting down to bridge in fine sunny afternoons with women like Anne Cartledge and Mrs. Mallish and Mrs. Porter. For how many more years she had lived in number 30 flat at Hortons, she alone had the secret even Agatha, our sour and confidential maid, could not tell. No one knew whence she came. Years ago some young wag had christened her, the morgue, led to that diminutive by the strange pallor of her cheeks, the queer bone-cracking little body she had, and her fashion of dressing herself up in jewellery and bright colors that gave her a certain sort of ghastliness. She had been for years an intimate of all sorts of sets in London, no one could call her a snob, she went just everywhere, and knew just every one. She was after two things in life, scandal and bridge, and whether it were the old Duchess of Rex's drawing room, without the Duchess of course, or the cheapest sort of provincial tea party, she was equally at home and satisfied. She was like a ferret with her beady eyes, a dressed up ferret, yes, and like the morgue too, a sniff of corruption about her somewhere. People had said for many years that she was the best bridge-player in London, and that she lived by her winnings. That was, I daresay, true enough. Her pale face looked as though it fed on artificial light, and her over-decorated back was always bent a little, as though she were forever stooping over a table. I've seen her play-bridge, and it's not a sight once likely to forget, bent almost double, her hooky fingers of a dull yellow loaded with rings pointing toward some card, and her eyes literally flashing fire. Lord, how these women played! Life and death to them truly, no gentle card game for them. She was a woman who hated sentiment, her voice was hard and dry, with a rasp in it like the movement of an ill-fitting gate. She boasted that she cared for no human being alive. She did not believe in human affection. Her maid, Agatha, she said, would cut her throat for tuppence, but expecting to be left something in the will, stayed on savagely hoping. It is hard, however, for even the driest of human souls to be attached to nothing. Miss Morganhurst had her attachment to a canine fragment of skin and bone known as tiny tea. Tiny tea was so small that it could not have been said to exist, had not its perpetual misery given it a kind of spasmodic loveliness. It is the nature of these dogs to shiver and shake and tremble, but nothing ever lived up to its nature more thoroughly than tiny tea. Miss Morganhurst, in her own fierce rasping way, adored this creature. It never left her and sat on her lap during bridge, shuddering and shivering amidst a multitude of little gold chains and keys and purses that jangled and rattled with every shiver. Then came the war and it shook the world to pieces. It did not shake Miss Morganhurst. For one bad moment, she fancied that bridge would be difficult and that it might not be easy to provide tiny tea with her proper biscuits. She consulted with Mrs. Malish and Mrs. Porter, and after looking at the thing from every side, they were of the opinion that it would be possible still to find a four. She further summoned up Mr. Nix from the vasty deeps of the chambers and endeavored to probe his mind. This she did easily and Mr. Nix became quite confidential. He thoroughly approved of Miss Morganhurst partly because she knew such very grand people which was good for his chambers and partly because Miss Morganhurst had no kind of morals and you could say anything you liked. Mr. Nix was a kindly little man and a diplomatic, and he suited himself to his company, but he did like sometimes to be quite unbuttoned and not to have to think of every word. With Miss Morganhurst you needn't think of anything. She found his love of gossip very agreeable indeed. She approved two of his honorable code. You were safe with him, not a thing would he ever give away about any other inhabitant of Hortons. She asked him about the food for tiny tea, and he assured her that he would do his best, and the little dinners for four. She need not be anxious. After which she dismissed the war altogether from her mind. It would, of course, emphasize its more unagreeable features in the paper. That was unfortunate, but very soon the press cleverly discovered a kind of camouflage of phrase which covered up reality completely. The honorable gentleman, speaking at Newcastle last night, said that we would not sheave the sword until, over the top those were the words for which our brave lads are waiting. Our offensive in these areas inflicted very heavy losses on the Germans and resulted in the capture of important positions by the Allied troops. It seemed that Miss Morganhurst read these phrases for a week or two, and easily persuaded herself that the war was non-existent. She was happy that it was so. It appeared incredible that anyone could have dismissed the war so easily, but then Miss Morganhurst was surely impenetrable. I have heard different explanations given by people who knew her well of Miss Morganhurst's impenetrability. Some said that it was a mask assumed to cover and defeat feelings that were dangerous to liberate. Others that she was so selfish and egoistic that she really did not care about anybody. This was the interesting point about Miss Morganhurst. Did she banish the war entirely from her consciousness and to give it no further consideration? Or was she in truth desperately and with ever-increasing terror aware of it and unable to resist it? She gave no sign until the very end, but the nature of that end leads me to believe that the first of the two theories is the correct one. People who knew her have said that her devotion to that wretched little canine remnant proves that she had no heart but only a fluent sentimentality. I believe it to have proved exactly the opposite. I believe her to have been the cynic she was because she had, at some time or other, been deeply disappointed. She had, I imagine, no illusions about herself and saw that the only thing to be, if she were to fight at all, was ruthless, harsh, money-grubbing, and above all to bury herself in other people's scandal. She was, I rather fancy, one of those women for whom life would have been completely changed had she been given beauty or even moderate good looks. As life had not given her that, she would pay it back, and after all life was stronger than she knew. She did not refuse to discuss the war, but she spoke of it as of something remotely distant, playing itself out in the sands of the Sahara, for example. Nothing stirred her cynical humor more deeply than the heroics on both sides. When politicians or kings or generals got up and said before all the world how just their cause was and how keen they were about honor and truth and self-sacrifice, and how certain they were after all to win, Miss Morgan Hurst gave her sinister villainous chuckle. She became something of a power during the bad years when the air raids came and the casualties mounted higher and higher, and Romania came in only to break, and the Russian Revolution led to the sinister ghoulishness of Brest-la-Tox. People sought her company. We'll go and see the morgue, they said. She never mentions the war. She never did. She refused absolutely to consider it. She would not even discuss prices and raids and ration books. Private history was what she cared for, and that generally on the scabious side. If possible, what she liked to know was who was sick of her, why so and so had left such and such a place, whether X was really drinking and YZ had taken to cocaine. Her bridge got better and better, and it used to be a real trial of strength to go and play with her in the untidy, overfull, overgarish, little flat. The arrival of the armistice was, I believe now, her first dangerous moment. She was suddenly forced to pause and consider. It was not so easy to shut her eyes and ears as it had been, and the things that she had against her will, seen and heard, were now in the new silence insistent. She suddenly, as I remember noticing about this time, got to look incredibly old. Her nose seemed longer, her chin hookier, her hands boneier, and little brown spots like sickly freckles appeared on her forehead. Her dress got brighter and brighter. She especially affected a kind of purple silk, I remember. The armistice seemed to disappoint her. It would have done us people a lot of good to get a thorough trouncing, I remember her saying. What would have happened to herself and her bridge had we had that trouncing? I don't think she reflected. So far as one could see, she regarded herself as an inevitable permanency. I wonder whether she really did. She developed to, just about this time, an increased passion for her wretched little dog. It was as though, now that the war was really nearing its close, she was twice as frightened about the animal safety as she had been before. Of what was she afraid? Was it some ghostly warning? Was it some sense that she had, that fate was surely going to get her somewhere, and that now that it had missed her through air-rays it must try other means? Or was it simply that she had more time now to spend over the animal's wants and desires? In any case, she would not let the dog out of her sight unless on some most imperative occasion. She trusted Agatha, but no one would take so much care as one would oneself. The dog itself seemed now to be restless and alarmed as though it smelled already its approaching doom. It got, so far as one could see, no pleasure from anything. There were no signs that it loved its mistress, only it did perhaps have a sense that she could protect it from outside disaster. Every step, every word, every breath of wind seemed to drive its little soul to the very edge of extinction. Then, with shutterings and shiverings and tremblings, back it came again. They were a grim pair, those two. Christmas came and passed, and the world began to shake itself together again. That same shaking was a difficult business, attended with strikes and revolutions and murder and despair. But out of the chaos, profits might discern a form slowly rising, a shape that would stand for a new world, for a better world, a kindlier, a cleaner, honester. But Miss Morgan Hurst was no prophet. Her sallow eyes were intent on her bridge cards, so at least they appeared to be. After the catastrophe, I talked with only one person who seemed to have expected what actually occurred. This was a funny old thing called Miss Williams, one of Miss Morgan Hurst's more shabby friends, a gossip and a sentimentalist, the last person in the world, as I would have supposed, to see anything interesting. However, this old lady insisted that she had perceived, during this period, that Miss Morgan Hurst was keeping something back. Keeping what back, I ask, a guilty secret? Oh, not at all, said Miss Williams. Dear me, no. Dahlia wouldn't have minded anything of that kind. No, it's my belief she was affected by the war long before any of us supposed it, and that she wouldn't think of it, or look at it, because she knew what would happen if she did. She knew too that she was being haunted by it all the time, and that it was all piling up, ready, waiting for the moment. I do hope you don't think me fantastical. I didn't think her fantastical at all, but I must confess that when I look back I can see in Miss Morgan Hurst of these months nothing but a colossal egotism and greed. However, I must not be cruel. It was towards the end of April that fate, suddenly tired of waiting, took her in hand, and finished her off. One afternoon, when arrayed in a bright pink tea-gown, she was lying on her sofa, taking some rest before dressing for dinner, Agatha came in and said that her brother was there and would like to see her. Now, Miss Morgan Hurst had a very surprising brother. Surprising, that is, for her. He was a clergyman who had been, for very many years, the rector of a small parish in Wiltshire. So little a parish was it that it gave him little work and less pay, with the result that he was at his advanced age, shabby and moth-eaten and dim, like a poor old bird shut up for many months in a blinded cage, and let suddenly into the light. I don't know what Miss Morgan Hurst's dealing with her brother had been, whether she had been kind to him or unkind, selfish or unselfish, but I suspect that she had not seen very much of him. Their ways had been too different, their ambitions too separate. The old man had had one passion in his life, his son, and the boy had died in a German prison in the summer of 1918. He had been, it was gathered, in one of the more unpleasant German prisons. Mr. Morgan Hurst was a widower, and this blow had simply finished him. The thread that connected him with coherent life snapped, and he lived in a world of dim visions and incoherent dreams. He was not, in fact, quite right in his head. Agatha must have thought the couple a strange and depressing pair, as they stood together in that be-colored and be-crowded room, if that is to say she ever thought of anything but herself. Poor old Morgan Hurst was wearing an overcoat really green with age, and his squashy black hat was dusty and unbrushed. He wore large spectacles, and his chin was of the kind that seems always to have two days growth upon it. The bottoms of his trousers were muddy, although it was a dry day. He stood there uneasily twisting his hat round and round in his fingers, and blinking at his sister. Sit down, Frederick, said his sister, what can I do for you? It seemed that he had come simply to talk to her. He was going down to Little Rosemary that evening, but he had an hour to spare. The fact was that he was besieged, invaded, devastated by horrors of which he could not rid himself. If he gave them to someone else, might they not leave him? At any rate, he would share them. He would share them with his sister. It appeared that an officer liberated from Germany after the armistice had sought him out and given him some last details about his son's death. These details were not nice. There are, as we all know, German prisons and German prisons. Young Morganhurst seemed to have been sent to one of the poorer sort. He had been rebellious and had been punished. He had been starved, shut up for days in solitary darkness. At the end he had found a knife somewhere, and had killed himself. The old man's mind was like a haystack, and many details lost their way in the general confusion. He told what he could to his sister. It must have been a strange meeting, the shabby old man sitting in one of those gaudy chairs, trying to rid himself of his horror and terror, and above all of his loneliness. Here was the only relation, the only link, the only hope of something human to comfort him in his darkness. And he did not know her, could not see how to appeal to her or to touch her. She was as strange to him as a bird of paradise. She, on her side, as I now can see, had her own horror to fight. Here at last was the thing that throughout the war she had struggled to keep away from her. She knew, and she alone, how susceptible she was. But she could not turn him away. He was her brother, and she hated him for coming, shabby old man, but she must hear him out. She sat there, the dog clutched shivering to her skinny breast. I don't suppose that she said very much, but she listened. Against her will she listened, and it must have been with her, as it is with some traveler, when, in the distance, he hears the rushing of the avalanche that threatens to overwhelm him. But she did not close her ears. From what she said afterwards, one knows that she must have heard everything that he said. He, very quickly, I expect, forgot that he had an audience, at all. The words poured out. There was some German officer who had been described to him, and he had grown in his mind to be the very devil himself. He was a brute, I dare say, but there are brutes in every country. He had done simply nothing, just spoke him back when they insulted him. They took his clothes off him, everything. He was quite naked, and they mocked him like that, pricking him with their swords. They put him into darkness, a filthy place, no sanitation, nothing. They twisted his arms. They made him imagine things, horrible things. When he had dysentery, they just left him. They made him drink, forced it down his throat. How much of it was true? Very little, I dare say, even as the old man told it, details gathered and piled up. He had always been such a good boy, very gentle and quiet, never any trouble at school. I was hoping that he would be ordained, as you know, Talia. He always loved life, one of the happiest boys. What did they do it for? He hadn't done them any harm. They must have made him very angry for him to say what he did, and he didn't say very much. And he was all alone. He hadn't any of his friends with him, and they kept his parcels and letters from him. I just sent him one or two little things, this more than anything else distress the old man, that they kept the letters from the boy. It was the loneliness that seemed to him the most horrible of all. He had always hated to be alone, even as a very little boy he didn't like to be left in the dark. He used to beg us, nightlights, we always left nightlights in his room. But what had he done? Nothing. He had never been a bad boy. There was nothing to punish him for. The old man didn't cry. He sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and once he brought out a dirty handkerchief. The thing that he couldn't understand was why this had happened to the boy at all. Also he was persecuted by the thought that there was something still that he could do. He didn't know what it might be, but there must be something. He had no vindictiveness. He didn't want revenge. He didn't blame the Germans. He didn't blame anybody. He only felt that he should make it up to his boy somehow. You know, Dahlia, he said, there were times when one was irritated by the boy. I haven't a very equitable temper. No, I never had. I used to have my headaches, and he was noisy sometimes. And I'm afraid I spoke sharply. I'm sorry enough for it now. Indeed, I am. Oh, yes. But of course one didn't know at the time. Then he went back to the horrors. They would not leave him. They buzzed about his brain like flies. The darkness, the smell, the smell, the filth, the darkness, and then the end. He could not forget that. What the boy must have suffered to come to that. Such a happy boy! Why had it happened, and what was to be done now? He stopped at last and said that he must go and catch his train. He was glad to have talked about it. It had done him good. It was kindly of Dahlia to listen to him. He hoped that Dahlia would come down one day and see him at Little Rosemary. It wasn't much that he could offer her. It was a quiet little place, and he was alone, but he would be glad to see her. He kissed her, gave her a dim bewildered smile, and went. Soon after his departure Mrs. Melish arrived. It is significant of Mrs. Melish's general egotism and ignorance that she perceived nothing odd in Miss Morganhurst. Just the same as she always was. They talked to Bridge the next afternoon. Bridge? Four women. What about Nora Pope? Poor player. That's the worst of it. Doesn't see properly and won't wear glasses. Simply conceit. But still, who else is there? Tomorrow afternoon. Very difficult. Mrs. Melish admits that on that particular day she was preoccupied about a dress that she couldn't get back from the dressmakers. These days what has come to the working classes? They don't care. They don't care. Money simply of no importance to them. That's the strange thing. In the old days you could have done simply everything by offering them a little more. But not now. Oh dear no. She admits that she was preoccupied about the dress and wasn't noticing Talia Morganhurst as she might have done. She saw nothing odd. It's my belief that she'll see nothing odd at the last drop. She went away. Agatha is the other witness. After Mrs. Melish's departure she came into her mistress. The only thing that she remarked about her was that she was very quiet. Tired, I suppose, after talking to that Mrs. Melish and then her old brother and all, enough to upset anyone. Mrs. Morganhurst sat on the edge of her gaudy sofa, looking in front of her. When Agatha came in, as she said that she would not dress just yet, Agatha had better take the dog out for a quarter of an hour. The maid wondered at that because that was a thing that she was never allowed to do. She hated the animal. However, she pushed its monstrous little head inside its absurd little muzzle, put on her hat, and went out. I don't know what Mrs. Morganhurst thought about during that quarter of an hour, but when at the end of that time Agatha returned, scared out of her life with the dog dead in her arms, the old lady was sitting in the same spot as before. She can't have moved. She must have been fighting, I fancy, against the last barrier, the last barrier that kept all the wild beasts back from leaping on her imagination. Well, that slaughtered morsel of skin and bone finished it. The slaughtering had been the most natural thing in the world. Agatha had put the creature on the pavement for a moment and turned to look in a shop window. Some dog from the other side of the street had enticed the trembling object. It had started tottering across, uttering tiny snorts of sensual excitement behind its absurd muzzle. A Rolls-Royce had done the rest. It had suffered very little damage, and laid out on Mrs. Morganhurst's red lacquer table. It really looked finer than it had ever done. Agatha, of course, was terrified. She knew better than anyone how deeply her mistress had loved the poor, trembling image. Sobbing, she explained, she was really touched, I think, quite truly touched, for half a minute. Then, when she saw how quietly Miss Morganhurst took it, she regained her courage. Miss Morganhurst said nothing but yes. Agatha regained with her courage her volubility. Words poured forth. She could, needs tell Madam how deeply, deeply she regretted her carelessness. She would kill herself for her carelessness, if Madam preferred that. How she could, Madam might do with her what she wished. But all that Miss Morganhurst said was yes. Miss Morganhurst went into her bedroom to dress for dinner, and tiny tea was left, at full length, in all her glory, trembling no longer upon the red lacquer table. Agatha went downstairs for something, spoke to Fanny the Portress, and returned. Outside the bedroom door, which was a jar, she heard a strange sound, like someone cracking nuts. She described it afterwards. She went in. Miss Morganhurst, her thin gray hair about her neck, clad only in her chemise, was sitting on her bed, swinging her bare legs. Outside of Agatha, she screeched like a parrot. As Agatha approached, she sprang off the bed and advanced at her. Her back bent, her fingers bent talon-wise. A stream of words poured from her lips. Every horror, every indecency, every violation of truth and honour that the war had revealed through the press, through books, through letters, seemed to have lodged in that brain. Every murder, every rape, every slaughter of innocent children, every violation of girls and old women, they were all there. She stopped close to Agatha, and the words streamed out. At the end of every sentence, with a little sigh, she whispered, I was there, I was there, I've seen it. Agatha, frozen with horror, remained. Then, action coming back to her, she fled. Miss Morganhurst pursued her, her bare feet, pattering on the carpet. She called Agatha by the name of some obscure German captain. Agatha found a doctor. When they returned, Miss Morganhurst was lying on her face on the floor in the darkness, hiding from what she saw. I was there, you know. She whispered to the doctor, as he put her to bed. She died next day. Perhaps, after all, many people have felt the war more than one has supposed. End of Story 4 Story 5 of The Thirteen Travellers by Hugh Walpole. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Story 5. Peter Wescott Wescott's astonishment when Edmund Robesard, offered to lend his chambers rent-free for two months, was only equaled by his amazement when he discovered himself accepting that offer. Had you told him a week before, that within seven days he would be sleeping in Robesard's sumptuous bed, closed in by the rich sanctities of Robesard's sumptuous flat, he would have looked at you with that cool contempt that was one of Wescott's worst features. For Wescott in those days was an arrogant man, arrogant through disgust of himself and disgust of the world, two very poor reasons for arrogance. This was the way of his accepting Robesard's offer. He had been demobilized at the beginning of March and had realized, with a sudden surprise that seemed only to confirm his arrogance, that he had no one to go and see, no work to do, no place that needed him, no place that he needed. He took a bedroom in a dirty little street off the Strand. He knew that there were two men whom he should look up, Meredith and Galleon. He swore to himself that he would die before he saw either of them. Then in the Strand he met Lester, a man whom he had known in his old literary days before the war. Twenty years ago Lester had been a man of much promise and his novel, Two Paradise, had been read by everyone who wanted a short road to culture. Now the war had definitely dated him and he seemed to belong to the yellow book and the bodily head and all those days when names were so much more important than performance and a cover with a beardsly drawing on it hid a multitude of amateurs. Wescott did not mind whether or no Lester were dated. He was, for the matter of that, himself dated. It was long indeed since anyone had mentioned Ruben Halyard or the Vines Stone House. It seemed many ages since he himself had thought of them. He liked Lester and, being a man who, in spite of his loneliness and arrogance, responded at once to kindness, he accepted Lester's invitation to dinner. He dug up an old dinner jacket that was tight and unduly stretched across his broad shoulders and went to dinner in the Cromwell Road. Days of failure and disappointment had not suited Mrs. Lester, who had always lived for excitement and good society and found neither in the Cromwell Road. There was only one other guest besides Wescott and that was Edmund Robesart, the most successful of all modern novelists. For many years Robesart's name had been a synonym for success. It must be, thought Wescott, looking at the man's red face and superb chest and portly stomach, at least 30 years since you published The Prime Minister's Daughter and hit the nail at the very first time. What a loathsome fellow you are, what harm you've done to literature and what a gorgeous time you must have had. And the very first thing that Robesart said was, you don't mean to tell me that you're Wescott, the author of Reuben Halliard. Now, you're a fool to be touched by that, Wescott said to himself, but he was astonished nevertheless. Touched, it seemed, not so much for himself, as in a kind of protective way for that poor little firstling who had been both begotten and produced in a London boarding-house and had held in his little hands so much promise, so many hopes, so much pride and ambition. Wescott was touched. He did not resent Robesart's fatherly patronizing air, as of one who held always in his chubby, gouty fist the golden keys to paradise. He drank Lester's wine and laughed at Robesart's anecdotes and was sympathetic to Mrs. Lester's complaints. He, Peter Wescott, who throughout the war had been held to be cold, conceited, overbearing the most unpopular officer in his regiment. At the end of the evening, Robesart asked him to come to lunch. I live in Duke Street, Hortons. Everyone knows Hortons. He gave him his number. Tuesday, 130. Glad to see you. Robesart cursed himself for a fool when he went back to his strand lodging. What did he want with men of Robesart's kidney? Had he not been laughing and mocking at Robesart for years? Had he not taken Robesart's success as a sign of the contemptible character of the British public, when men like Galleon and Lester had been barely able to live by their pens, and Robesart rolled in money. Rolled in money earned by tawdry, fustian sentimentality, like the kings of the earth and love laughs at locksmiths. Nevertheless, he went and brushed his old blue suit and rolled up to Duke Street, looking, as he always did, like an able-bodied seamen on lead. Robesart's flat was very much what he had expected it to be, quite sumptuous and quite lifeless. There was a little dining-room off what Robesart called the library. This little dining-room had nothing in it save a round, shining, gate-legged table with a glass top to it, a red Persian rug that must have been priceless, a rodin bust of an evil-looking old woman who stuck her tongue out, and a go-gang that looked to us get like a red apple and a banana, but was in reality a native woman by the seashore. In the library there were wonderful books, the walls being completely covered by them. Most of them, first or rare editions, said Robesart carelessly, behind glass near the window were the books that he had himself written, all the different editions, the translations, the cheap shillings and two shillings, the strange Swedish and Norwegian and Russian copies, with their paperbacks, the row of talcanits, and then all the American editions, with their solemn, heavy bindings. Then there were the manuscripts of the novels, all bound beautifully in red Morocco, and in the bottom shelf, the books with all the newspaper cuttings, dating, as Wescott to his amazement saw, from 1884, thirty-five years, and all this sumptuousness as a result. Nevertheless, the books round the room looked dead, dead, dead. Never touched, thought Peter, except to show them to poor humble failures like himself. Half an hour's conversation was quite enough to strip Peter of any illusions he may have had about Robesart's natural simplicity of heart. He had invited Wescott there because he wanted a little praise from the younger generation. Needed, rather than wanted, was perhaps the right word. Wescott was hardly the ideal victim, because he was over forty, and an undoubted failure. Nevertheless, at Lester's he had appeared amiable and kindly, a little encouragement, and he would say something pleasant. Then Robesart would have soothed that tiresome, biting, bitter irritation, that had beset him of late, born he knew not where, a suggestion carried on the wind that he was behind the times, that his books no longer sold, that no young man or woman thought of him with anything but contempt. These things had not been said directly to him. He had not even read them in the papers. There were certain critical journals that had, of course, since the beginning of his career, given him nothing but abuse, if they noticed him at all. They now treated him to silence. He did not expect them to alter. But his sales were falling. Even the critics, who had supported him through all weathers, were complaining a little now of monotony of subject, of repetition of idea. Damn it all! What can you do but repeat after thirty books? Sometimes he wondered whether he would not stop and rest on his laurels. But that meant a diminution of income. He had always lived well and spent every penny as it came along. Moreover, now was the worst moment to choose with the income tax at what it was, and food, and clothes, and everything else, at double its natural price. As a matter of truth, he had been looking forward during the last two years to after the war. That was the time when he was going to start again. Get this war behind one and he would break out in an entirely new place. Begin all over again. Show all those young fellows that all their so-called modernity was nothing but a new trick or two for covering up the same old thing. He could do it as well as they. Write in suspensive dots and dashes. Mention all the parts of the human body in full. Count every tick of the clock and call your book Desintegration or Dead Moons or Green Queens. Robesart liked himself in these moods and during lunch and he amably wandered along in this direction, plucking the flowers of his wit as he went and flinging them into Wesket's lap. Peter grew ever more and more silent. He hated Robesart that ghastly preoccupation with his own affairs, the self-patting and self-applause over the little successes that he had won, above all that blending of all the horror and tragedy of that great nightmare of a war to fit into the pattern of that mean, self-gratifying little life. These things were horrible, but strangely with the ever-growing disgust of Robesart and his slightly disturbed self-complacency came an evil longing in Peter's breast for some of the comfort and luxury that Robesart's life represented. Ever since that day, now so many years ago, when his wife had run away with his best friend, he had known it seemed no peace, no quiet, no tranquility. It was not security that he needed, but rather a pause in the battle of the spiritual elements that seemed to be forever beating at his ears and driving him staggering from post to post. Had it not been for the war, he had often thought he must have succumbed before now. Final defeat at any rate meant rest. He had not succumbed. These years and Gallipoli and France had saved him, but he, in those desolate, death-ridden places, had again and again said to himself, even as Robesart, safe in Hortense, had said, after the war, after the war. After the war Peter would build up his life again, but first, even a month's rest, somewhere that was not dirty and cheap and ill-smelling, somewhere with good food and kind looks, then he smiled as he thought of Meredith and Galeon, his two friends, who could both give him those things. No, he wanted also freedom. Thus, to his amazement at the end of luncheon, when he was feeling as though he could not bear the sound of Robesart's rich, self-satisfied voice a moment longer, the man made his proposal. He was going to Scotland for two months. Would Westcott like to take the flat free of rent? Of course. It was at his disposal. He need not have meals there unless he wished. Something in Westcott's spirit had attracted Robesart. Westcott had not given him the praise he had needed, but now he seemed to have forgotten that. The man who sat opposite to him with the thin face, the black, closely cropped hair, thin above his forehead, gray above the temples, with the broad shoulders, the hard, thick-set figure, the gray eyes, the nervous, restless fingers, the man who, in spite of his forty years, seemed still in some strange way a boy. That man had been through fire and tribulation, such as Robesart would never know. Robesart was not a bad man, nor an unkindly. Success had been the worst thing that could have happened to his soul. He put his hand on Westcott's shoulder. You stay here and have a rest for a bit. Do just as you like. Chuck, my things about, smashed the Rodin that pleases you. Peter accepted. When he moved, with his few possessions into the grand place, he found it less alarming than he had expected. Hortons itself was anything but alarming. In the first place there was the nicest girl in the world, Fanny, who was porterous downstairs. She made one happy at once. Then the ballad, Albert, or Albert Edward, as he seemed to prefer to be called, was the kind of man understood in a moment by Peter. They were friends in three minutes. Albert Edward had his eye on Fanny when it's going to propose one of these days. Wouldn't they make a jolly bear? Once or twice the great Mr. Nix himself, the manager of the flats, came in to see how Peter was faring. He seemed to have an exalted idea of Peter because he was Robesart's friend. Robesart was a very great man in Mr. Nix's eyes. But I'm not his friend, Peter said. Well, you must have been, Mr. Nix said, for him to let you have his flat like that. I've never known him to do that before. In three days Peter was happy. In another three days he began to be strangled. There were too many things in the flat, beautiful things, costly things, little golden trifles, precious china, pictures worth a fortune, first editions scattered about as though they were nothing. Too full, too full, too full. Peter couldn't sleep. He pushed on all the lights and pushed them off again. He got up and in his old shabby patched pajamas walked the length of the flat up and down, up and down. The brahman gods in the Gold Temple stared at him impassively. The Rodin old woman leered. Another two days, and I'm done with this place, he thought. Then Murdoch Temple came to see him. Wescott had known Temple before the war. He had not seen him for five years. Temple had not altered. There was the same slight, delicate body, pale, discontented face, jet-black hair, long nervous and conceited hands, shabby clothes, too tight for the body, and most characteristic of all, a melancholy and supercilious curl to his upper lip. Temple was supercilious by nature and melancholy by profession. From the very beginning it had seemed that he was destined to be a genius, and although after fifteen years of anticipation the fulfillment of that destiny was still postponed, no one could doubt, at least of all Temple himself, that the day of recognition was approaching. At Oxford it had seemed that there was nothing that he could not do. In actual fact he had since then read much French and some Russian, in translation of course, edited two little papers strangled by an unsympathetic public almost at birth, produced a novel, a poem, and a book of criticism. An unhappy chill had hung over all these things. The war, in whose progress poor health had forbidden him to take a very active part, had made of him a pessimist and pacifist, but even here a certain temperamental weakness had forbidden him to be too ardent. He was peevish rather than indignant, petulant rather than angry, unkind rather than cruel, malicious rather than unjust, and undoubtedly a little sycophantic. He had a brain, but he had always used it for the fostering of discontent. He did care with more warmth than one would have supposed possible for literature, but everything in it must be new and strange and unsuccessful. Success was to him the most terrible of all things unless he himself were to attain it. That, as things now went, seemed unlikely. During the last two years he and his friends had been anticipating all that they were going to do after the war. There was to be a new literature, a new poetry, a new novel, a new criticism, and all these were to be built up by temple and company. Thank God the war saved us from the old mess we were in. No more robesarts and manabes for us, now we can see. Peter had heard vague rumors of the things these young men were going to do. He had not been greatly interested, he was outside their generation, and his own ambitions were long deadened by his own self-contempt. Nevertheless, on this particular morning he was glad to see temple. There was no question but that he made as effective a contrast with robesart as one could find. Temple was extremely cordial. At the same time he was frankly surprised to find Peter there. How did you track me? asked Peter. Robesart told Meredith and Edinburgh, Meredith was writing to me. How are you after all this time? All right, said Peter, smiling. The conversation then was literary, and temple explained how things were. Things were very bad. He used the glories of Robesart's rooms as an illustration of his purpose. He waved his hands about. Look at these things, he seemed to say, at these temples of gold, this china of great price, these pictures, and then look at me. Here is the contrast between true and false art. We want to get rid, he explained to Peter, of all these false valuations. This wretched war has shown us at least one thing, the difference between the true and the false. The world is in pieces, it is for us to build it up again. And how are you going to do it? asked Peter. Well, it seemed that that temple's prospects were especially bright just then. It happened that Mr. Dibdon, the original inventor of Dibdon's blue pills, was anxious to dabble in art. He was ready to put quite a little of his blue pill money behind a new critical paper, and the editor of this paper was to be temple. Of course, said temple, I'm not going to agree to it unless he guarantees us at least five years run. A paper of the sort that I have in mind always takes some time to make its impression. In five years, the world at least will be able to see what we are made of. I've no fears. Peter, who was more ingenuous than he knew, was caught by the rather wistful eagerness in temple's voice. This fellow really cares, he thought. We want you to come in with us, said temple. Of course, we shall have nothing to do with fellows like D and W and M, men who simply made successes by rotten work. No, but I flatter myself that there will be no one of our generation of any merit who won't join us. You must be one. I'm too old, said Peter, for your young lot. Too old, cried temple, rot. Of course, it's a long time since the video, but all the better. You'll be the fresher for the pause. Not like M and W, who turn out novels twice a year as though they were sausages. Besides, you've been in the war. You've seen at first hand what it is. None of these ghastly high spirits about you. You'll have the right pessimistic outlook. I don't know that I shall, said Peter, laughing. Oh yes, you will, said temple confidently. I'm delighted you'll join us, and I'll be able to pay well too. Old dib-dins ready to stump up any amount. That's a good thing, said Peter. He remembered that temple had not, with the best wish in the world, been always able in the past to fulfill all his promises. In short, Peter was touched and even excited. It was so long since anyone had come to him or wanted him. Then temple had caught him at the right moment. He was out of a job, wrote Zart's flat, was suffocating him. He himself was feeling something of this new air that was blowing through the world. He wondered whether, after all, it might not be that temple and his friends would be given the power. They had youth, energy, of freedom from tradition. He promised temple that he would come to tea next day and see some of his friends. The papers to be called, The Blue Moon, said temple, to-morrow then, at five. Peter found himself at five next day in a small room off Chancery Lane. Temple met him at the door, greeted him with that rather eager and timid air that was especially his, introduced him to a young man on a green sofa, and left him. Peter was rather amused at his own excitement. He looked about him with eagerness. Here, at any rate, was a fine contrast to Ropesart. No gold gods and precious rodents in this place. The room was bare to shabbiness. The only picture on the ugly wallpaper was a copy of some post-impressionist picture stuck on to the paper with a pen. It was a warm spring day, and the room was very close. Some half a dozen men and two girls were present. Very much bad tobacco was being smoked. Somewhere near the untidy fireplace was a table with tea on it. Perhaps, thought Peter, these are the men who will make the new world. At any rate, no false prosperity here. These men mean what they say. Looking about him, the first thing that he discovered was a strange family likeness that there seemed to be amongst the men. They all wore old shabby, ill-fitting clothes. No hair was brushed. No collars were clean. All boots were dusty. That's all right, thought Peter. There's no time to waste thinking about clothes these days. All the same he did, like cleanliness, and what distressed him, was that all the young men looked unwell. One of them, indeed, was fat. But it was an unhealthy stoutness. Pale, lachy, pimpled. Complexions were sallow. Bodies undeveloped and uncared for. It was not that they looked ill-fed. Simply that they seemed to have been living in close atmospheres and taking no exercise. Listening then to the talk, he discovered that the tone of the voices was strangely the same. It was as though one man were speaking, as though the different bodies were vehicles for the same voice. The high, quarrelous, faint, scornful voice ran on. It seemed as though, did it cease, the room might cease with it. The room, the sofa, the wallpaper, the tea-table, cease with it and vanish. One of the pale young men was on the sofa stroking a tiny ragged moustache with his rather dirty fingers. He raised sad, heavy eyes to Peter's face. Then, with a kind of spiritual shudder, as though he did not like what he had seen there, dropped them. It's rather close in here, isn't it? said Peter at last. Maybe, said the young man. One of the young women, directed apparently by Temple, came over to Peter. She sat down on the sofa and began eagerly to talk to him. She said how glad she was that he was going to join them. Although she spoke eagerly, her voice was tired with a kind of angry, defiant ring to it. She spoke so rapidly that Peter had difficulty in following her. He asked her who the men in the room were. Well, that's Summers, she said, pointing to the Stout Man. Hackett Summers. Of course, you know his work. I've got his new poem here. Like to see it? We shall have it in the first number of the Blue Moon. She handed Peter a page of typed manuscript. He read it eagerly. Here, then, was the new literature. It was apparently a poem. It was headed Wild West Remittance Man. The first three verses were as follows. Shalameel, a no-mother, weep fordoomed for a certain time. Rai-whisky, a fungus, works into each face, line. The Bond Street exterior tears at his vitals. Gravely the whisker droops his eyes, are cold, immaculate meteor inside a thick icoside. A thick ether quenched the bright music. Peter read these three verses, then a second time, then a third. The young woman was talking fiercely as he read. She turned to him. Aren't they splendid? She said. Hackett at his best. I was a little doubtful of him, but now there's no question. Frankly, said Peter, I don't understand them. It's about a drunkard, isn't it? I see that. But don't understand it, cried the young woman. What don't you understand? Well, for instance, said Peter, immaculate meteor. Is that the world or Bond Street or the whisky? He felt her contempt. She laughed. Well, of course, Hackett's poems aren't for everybody, she said. She got up then and left him. He knew the report that she would make of him to Temple. He sat there bewildered. He began to feel lonely and a little angry. After all, it was not his fault that he had not understood the poem. Or was it the heat of the room? He wished that someone would offer him some tea, but everyone was talking, talking, talking. He sat back and listened. The talk eddied about him, daising him, retreating, rolling back again. He listened. Every kind of topic was there. Men, women, the war, Germany, poetry, homosexuality, divorce, adultery, Walt Whitman, Sappho, names, strange names, American names, French names, Russian names, condemning him, condemning her, condemning it, the war, man, woman. Once and again he caught popular names, how they were condemned, the scorn, the languid insolent scorn, then pacifism. He gathered that two of the men in the room had been forced to take potatoes for the government because they didn't believe in war. Patriotism, the room quivered with scorn. Patriots, it was as though you had said murderers or adulterers. His anger grew. Robesart was better than this, far, far better. At least Robesart tried to make something out of life. He was not ashamed to be happy. He did not condemn. He was doubtful about himself, too. He would not have asked Peter to lunch had he not been doubtful. And the arrogance here, the room was thick with it, the self applause mounted higher and higher, the fat man read one of his poems, only a few words reached Peter, buttock, blood, cobra, loins, mud, shrill, bovine. Suddenly he felt as though in another moment he would rush into their midst, striking them apart, crying out against them as condemnatory, as arrogant as they. He got from his sofa and crept from the room. No one noticed him. In the street the beautiful cool evening air could not comfort him. He was wretched, lonely, angry, above all most bitterly disappointed. It seemed to him, as he walked along slowly up Fleet Street, that life was really hopeless and useless. On the one side Robesart, on the other these arrogant fools, and in the middle himself, no better than they, worse indeed, for they at least stood for something, and he for nothing, absolutely nothing. That absurd poem had at any rate, effort behind it, striving, ambition, hope. He had cared all his life for intellectual things, had longed to achieve some form of beauty, however tiny, however insignificant. He had achieved nothing. Well, that knowledge would not have beaten him down, had he felt the true spirit of greatness in these others. He realized now how deeply he had hoped from that meeting. He had believed in the new world of which they were all talking. He had believed that its creation would be brought about by the forces of art, of brotherhood, of kindness, and charity, and nobility, and then to go and listen to a meeting like temples. But what right had he to judge them, or Robesart, or anyone? Only too ready to believe himself a failure, it seemed now that the world too was a failure, that the worst things that the pessimist had said during the war were now justified. Above all he detested his own arrogance in judging these other men. He had come by now to Piccadilly Circus. He was held by the crowd for a moment on the curb outside Swann and Edgars. The circus was wrapped in a pale, honey-colored evening glow. The stir of the movement of the traffic was dimmed, as though it came through a half-open door. Peter felt calm, touch his bitter unhappiness as he stood there. He stayed as though someone had a hand on his shoulder and was holding him there. He was conscious for the second time that day of anticipation. Now, having been cheated once, he tried to drive it away, but it would not leave him, and he waited almost as though he were expecting some procession to pass. The shops were closing, and many people were going home. As he stood there, Big Ben struck six o'clock and was echoed from St. James's and St. Martin's. People were coming in, prepared for an evening's amusement. The last shoppers were waiting for the omnibuses to take them up Regent Street. Opposite Peter there were the Criterion posters, our Mr. Hepowite, and opposite Mr. Hepowite, Mademoiselle D'Elysia, was swinging her name in mid-air to entice the world into the Pavilion. Every kind of shop crowded there around the circus, barbers and watchmakers and bagmakers and hosiers and jewelers, and tobacconists and restaurants and tea shops. There they all were, and the omnibuses, like lumbering mastodons or ichthyosauri, came tottering and tumbling into the centre, finding their heavy, thick-headed way out again as though they were blinded by this dazzling, lighted world. He was struck, as he watched, by the caution, the hesitation, the apparent helplessness of all the world. Londoners had always been represented as so self-confident, self-assured, but if you watched tonight it seemed that everyone hesitated. Young men with their girls, women with babies, men, boys, again and again Peter saw in faces that same half-timid, half-friendly glance, felt on every side of him a kindness that was born of a little terror, a little dread. There was some parallel to the scene in his mind. He could not catch it, his mind strove back. Suddenly, with the big form of a policeman who stepped in front of him to control the traffic, he knew of what it was that he was thinking. Years ago, when he had first come up to London, he had lived in a boarding house, and there had been there a large family of children with whom he had been very friendly. The parents of the children had been poor, but their single living room had been a nursery of a happy, discordant kind. Every sort of toy had found its way in there, and Peter could see the half-dozen children now trembling, now fighting, laughing, crying, the mother watching them and guarding them. The circus was a nursery. The blue evening sky was closed down, a radiant roof. Everywhere were the toys. Now it seemed that balls were danced in the air. Now that someone sang or rang bells. Now that some new game was suddenly proposed and greeted with a shout of joy. The children filled the circus. The policemen were toy policemen, the omnibuses, toy omnibuses, the theatres, toy theatres. On every side of him Peter felt the kindness, the helplessness, the pathos of his vision. They were children. He was a child. The world was only a nursery, after all. The sense of his earlier indignation had left him. It seemed now that anger and condemnation, whether of Robesart or Temple and his friends, or of himself, were absurd. They were all children together, children in their ignorance, their helplessness, children in their love for one another, their generosity, and their hope. For the first time in his life that sense of disappointment that had been for so long, a stumbling block to all his effort, left him. He felt as though, like Pilgrim, he had suddenly dropped his back. Children in the nursery, the lot of them, no place in this world for high indignation, for bitterness, for denunciation. The injustice, the ill-humour, the passion of life were like the quarrels and children's play. The wisest man alive knew just as much as his nursery walls could show him. He laughed and turned homewards. The new world? Perhaps. The progress of the world? Perhaps. Meanwhile there were nursery tea, a game of pirates, and a fairy tale by the fire. And after it all, that sound, dreamless sleep that only children know. Would one wake in the morning and find that one was leaving the nursery for school? Who could tell? No one returned with any story. Meanwhile, there was enough to do to help in keeping the nursery in order, in seeing that the weaker babies were not trodden upon, in making sure that no one cried himself to sleep. Anger and condemnation would never be possible again. No, nor would he expect the millennium. And a story five. Story six of The Thirteen Travelers by Hugh Walpole This Liberbox recording is in the public domain. Story six, Lucy Moon. Lucy Moon was the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Moon, rector of Little Hawksworth in North Yorkshire. She was twenty-one years of age and pretty. She was so pretty, indeed, that she reminded one young man in Hawksworth of a cornfield under a red moon. And the Reverend Simon Wadd, to whom she was engaged, thought of her privately as his golden goddess, from which it will be seen that she had yellow hair and a peach-like complexion. She had lived always a very quiet and retired life, the nearest to adventure, being two or three expeditions to Scarborough. She did not know, however, that her life was retired. She was never dull. She had two younger brothers and was devoted to her father and mother. She never questioned their authority. She read the books that they advised and wished to read no others. The life that ebbed and flowed around the rectory seemed to her a very exciting one. And it was not until the Reverend Simon Wadd, rector of a neighbouring parish, proposed to her, and she found that she accepted him, although she did not love him, that she began to wonder a little uncertainly with a little bewilderment about herself. She had accepted him because everyone had agreed that it was so obviously the right thing for her to do. She had known him ever since she could remember. He was older than she and kindly, although he had asthma and his knees cracked, he had been rector of his parish for twenty years, and everyone said that he was a very good man indeed. He had a sense of humour, too, and his penny readings were the best in all North Yorkshire. It was not until Simon had kissed her that Lucy wondered whether she were doing right. She did not like him to kiss her. His nose seemed so large when near to her, and his lips tried to catch hers and hold them with a kind of sucking motion that was quite distressing to her. She looked ridiculously young when Mr. Lord proposed to her with her fair gold hair piled up in coils on top of her head, her cheeks crimsonned with her natural agitation, and her young childish body, like a boy's, slender and strong under her pink cotton gown. My little girl, Mr. Lord said and kissed her again. She went up to her room and cried for quite a long time. Then, when she saw how happy her mother was, she was happy, too. Perhaps he would not want to kiss her after they were married. Then came the marvellous event. Her Aunt Harriet, Mrs. Comstock, her mother's sister, and a rich widow, asked her to come and stay with her for a month in London. Mrs. Comstock was a good-natured, chattering widow, fond of food and bright attire. Mrs. Moon hesitated about committing Lucy to her care, but she felt perhaps it would do the child no harm to give her a peep at worldly ways before the long black arms of Simon Lord closed her in forever. Lucy was terrified and delighted both at once. It meant that she would see London where she had never in all her life been. Even the war had not altered her. She had worked in the village institute, knitted and sewed, helped in the village concerts. The war had seemed very remote to her. She had lost no one whom she loved. She was vaguely distressed by it, as she might have been by the news of an earthquake at Naples. The Moon household believed in tranquility. Mr. Moon was engaged in a series of village addresses on the nativity. The war, after all, he felt, is probably a blessing in disguise. So Lucy saw it. I think, as the day of her departure drew near, that she had some slight premonition of future events. The village, the fields, the lanes, the church were touched suddenly by some new and pathetic splendor. The spring came late to Yorkshire that year, and the lanes were coloured with a faint shadow of purple behind the green, so light and shining that it seemed to be glass in its texture. The bright spaces of the Moon were uncertain in their dim shadows, and there were soft spongy marshes where the frost had released the underground streams, and long stretches of upland grass gray-white beneath the pale spring skies. Space was infinite. The village, tucked under the rim of the Moor, with its gray church, its wild, shaggy, tiny graveyard, its spreading village street, was like a rough Yorkshire child huddling for protection beneath its father's shoulders. This had pathos and an appeal for love and a cry of motherhood. The clouds, carried by the fresh spring wind, raced above the church steeple, swinging the young birds in their flight, throwing joyfully, contemptuously, shadows across the long street, shadows coloured and trembling like banners. Lucy had known these beauties all her life. Now they appealed to her with a new urgency. When you come back, they seemed to say to her, we shall not be the same. Now you are free as we. When you come back, you will be a prisoner. It was strange to her, and horrible, that the thought of her approaching marriage should haunt her as it did. There were things about it that she had not realized. She had not understood that her parents, the village, her relations would all make so momentous and affair of it. When Mr. Lord had proposed to her, and she had accepted him, it had seemed to her a matter simply between themselves. Now everyone had a concern in it. Everyone accepted it, as so absolutely settled. Did Lucy, for a single instant, contemplate the breaking of an engagement she saw with an almost agonized terror, the whole village tumbling upon her head? The very church steeple would fall down and crush her. She was beginning too to see her father and mother now in a new light. They had always been very sweet to her, and she had loved them dearly. But they had been sweet to her, she could not help but see, very largely because she had shown so absolute an obedience. Her mind now would persistently return to certain occasions in her young history when she had hinted, ever so slightly, at having an opinion of her own. Had that opinion been given a moment's opportunity? Never, never once. Of her two parents, her father was perhaps the more resolute. His mild, determined surprise at the expression of an individual opinion was a terrible thing to witness. He did wish not to be dogmatic with her, but after all, things were as they were. How could bad be good or good bad? There you were. A thing was either right or it wasn't. There you were. And so around Lucy and her Simon a huge temple was erected by the willing hands of her parents, relations and friends. There she was right inside with the doors locked and the windows closed, and Simon with his long black arms, his large nose, and his damp red mouth waiting for her. It was her own fault, there was nothing to be done. It must not be supposed, however, that she was unhappy when she set off on her London visit. She was entirely resigned to the future. She loved her mother and father and the village and Mr. Laud had been assigned to her by God. She would enjoy her month and then make the best of it. After all, he would not want always to kiss her. She knew enough about married life to be sure of that. She went up to London with a neat black trunk, a new hat with roses on it, and a little umbrella, green and white, that her mother gave her. Mrs. Comstock had a flat at Horton's in Duke Street. To Lucy, Duke Street meant nothing. German Street meant nothing. Even Piccadilly did not mean very much. St. James's Palace, however, did mean a good deal, and the first sight of that pearl-grey dignity and beauty with the round friendly clock little clouds like white pillows in the blue sky above, the sentry in his box, the grace and courtesy of them all, these brought a sob into her throat and made her eyes dry and hot. That sight of the palace gave her the setting for the rest of the wonderful new world. Had Mrs. Comstock allowed her, she would have spent the whole of her time in those fascinating streets. Piccadilly frightened her a little. The motor omnibuses and cars rushed so fiercely along, like pirates on a buccaneering expedition, and everyone was so haughty and the shops so grand. But it never ceased to be marvelously romantic to her that you could so swiftly slip through an alley and be hushed at once with a lovely tranquility, no sound reaching you but the cry of the flowermen, the distant honk of a taxicab, the bells of St. James's Church, the distant boom of Westminster. All the shops in these streets round Hortons seemed to her romantic fancy to be colored a rich old walnut, and against this background there was every kind of treasure. Prints of coaches stuck deep in snowdrifts, of huntsmen leaping over hedges, of fishermen waiting deep in tranquil rivers, of Oxford colleges and Westminster Abbey. All these printed in deep old rich colors, blue and red and orange, colors so deep and rich that they seemed to sink far down into the page. There were also the jewels and china and boxes, old tobey jugs and delicate cups and saucers, and amber bead necklaces and Chinese gods, and cabinets of rich red lacquer. She had a permanent picture of these treasures in the old dark shops, and from the houses, bachelors, young and old, plain and handsome, but all beautifully dressed, stepping in and out, going, she supposed, to their clubs and dinners and games, carrying with them everywhere that atmosphere of expensive cigars and perfectly pressed clothes and innumerable baths. She gathered all this in the first day or two of her stay, and it was as delightful and personal to her as though she herself had been God, and had created it all. Hortons, in its own turn, was delighted with her. It had never seen anything so fresh and charming in all its long life. It had often received beautiful women into its capacious heart, and it had known some very handsome men, but Lucy was lovely. Mr. Nix, who could be on occasion a poet, said of her that she made him think of strawberries and junket and his own self at twenty. He did not say this to Mrs. Nix. To Lucy the only thing that was wrong with Hortons was her aunt. She disliked Mrs. Comstock from the very first moment. She did not like the way that she was overdressed, the way that she talked without looking at you, the way that she spoke so crossly to her maid, the way that she loved her food, the way that she at once implied that it was wonderfully fortunate for Lucy to have her to come to. She discovered at once that her aunt was on the side of her parents with regard to Mr. Simon Lodd. Mrs. Comstock's opinion was that Lucy might consider herself very fortunate to have been selected by so good a man, that she must do her best to deserve her good fortune, because girls nowadays don't find it easy to pick up men. Men know too much. To pick up men, what a horrible phrase. And Lucy had not picked up Simon Lodd. She had been picked up, really against her will. Lucy then discovered that her aunt Harriet, that is Mrs. Comstock, had invited her to London for this month in order to have a companion. She had a paid companion, Miss Flagstaff, but that unfortunate woman had at last been allowed a holiday. Here was a whole month then at what was for Mrs. Comstock to do. Why, of course, there was that niece up in Yorkshire, the very thing she would do admirably. Lucy found that her first duty was to read every morning the society papers. There was the tatler with Eve's letter. There was the queen and the ladies pictorial, and several other smaller ones. These papers appeared once a week, and it was Lucy's duty to see that they stretched out two hours every morning from Saturday to Saturday. Aunt Harriet had society at her fingers' ends, and the swiftly succeeding marriages of Miss Elizabeth Asquith, Miss Abyle Keppel, and Lady Diana Manners, just about this time, gave her a great deal to do. She had a scrapbook into which she pasted photographs and society clippings. She labelled this, our leaders, and Lucy's morning labours were firmly linked to this scrapbook. Once she pasted an impressionist portrait of Miss Keppel upside down into the book, and saw for a full five minutes what Aunt Harriet was like when she was really angry. I'd better go back to Hawksworth. Lucy cried, more defiant than she would ever have suspected she could be. However, this was not at all what Aunt Harriet wanted. Lucy was making herself extremely useful. Lucy did not want it either, so peace was made. One result of this snipping out of society was that Lucy began to be strangely conscious of the world that was beating up around her. A strange, queer, confused, dramatic world. For positively the first time she was aware of some of the things that the war had done of what it had meant to many people, of the chasms that it had made in relationships, the ruins and homes, and also of the heroism that it had emphasised. And beyond all these individual things, she had the sense of a new world rising painfully and slowly from the chaos of the old. But rising. Yes, even through these ridiculous papers of her aunts, she could feel the first stirrings, the first trumpeting to battle, voices sounding only a little distance from her, wonderful new messages of hope and ambition. This affected her. She began to wonder how she could, through all these four years of war, have stayed so quietly in her remote Hawksworth. She began to despise herself because she had stayed. This excitement developed quickly into the same kind of premonition that she had had before leaving Hawksworth. Something was about to happen to her. What would it be? She awoke every morning with a strange burning excitement in her throat, a confused, thick beating of the heart. Meanwhile her month was drawing to its close the days speeding on through a glittering pageant of wonderful May weather when the town sparkled and quivered like a heap of quartz. Simon Lodd wrote that he was coming up to London to fetch her, to take her back with him to Hawksworth that he could not wait any longer without seeing his pet. When Lucy read those words, she was strangely tranquilised. She did not know what it was that during these days she had been wanting, what so strangely had she been expecting? Whom? Her inexperience cried out to Simon Lodd to come and defend her. She had a time of true terror, frightened by Aunt Harriet, by London, by strikes and wars and turbulences, above all by her own self and by the discontents and longings and desires to which some influence seemed to be urging her. She wrote her first loving letter to Simon. She told him that she hoped that they would be married very soon, and that indeed he was to come and fetch her. It would be lovely to go back to Hawksworth with him, and when she had posted her letter she sat on her bed in her little room in Hortons with her face in her hands and cried bitterly, desperately, why she did not know. Mrs. Comstock saw that she had been crying and was moved by the childlike simplicity and innocence of a poor, stupid Lucy as she called her to herself. She was moved to unusual generosity and suggested that they should go that night to a symphony concert at the Queen's Hall, although they are going to play Brahms, which I can't say that I approve of, because he was surely a German, if anyone ever was, and haven't we got plenty of good music of our own, I wonder. Anyway, you needn't listen to the Brahms, Lucy, if you don't want to. You won't understand him anyway. I expect he's one of the most difficult of the composers, although he is dead. Lucy paid small attention. She had been out only twice with her aunt in the evening during her London stay, once to a lecture on YMCA work at the front, and once to a musical play, Monsieur Bocaire. She had liked the lecture, but she had adored Bocaire, and she thought that perhaps the Queen's Hall would be something of the same kind. She had never in all her life been to a symphony concert. Aunt Harriet, armor-plated with jewellery, made an exciting contrast with Lucy, whose blazing red gold hair, large rather puzzled eyes, and plain white dress, needed exotic surroundings to emphasize their true color. You look very pretty, dear, said Aunt Harriet, who had made that evening a little money on the stock market, and was happy, accordingly, and quite excited, just as though you were expecting to see your Simon. I wish he could have arrived to-night instead of to-morrow, said Lucy, but did she? As they drove through the streets, scattered with star dust, watched by a crimson moon, she sighed with that strange confusion of happiness and unhappiness that seemed always to be hers now. What was going to happen? Who was coming? Only Simon. She felt a return of her earlier breathless excitement as they pushed their way through the crowd to the lobby. Stalls this way, downstairs to the stalls, to your right, madam, and second on your right, tickets, please, tickets, please. Mrs. Comstock was a redoubtable general on these occasions, and pushed people aside with her sharp elbows and flashed indignant glances with her fine eyes and spread back her shoulders and sparkled her rings. Lucy wished that her aunt would not figure so prominently. She had perhaps never before disliked her so thoroughly as she did tonight. Then out of the confusion and noise there came peace. They were settling down into their seats, and on every side of them were space and light and color, and a whispering murmur like the distant echo of the sea on Scarborough Beach. Lucy was suddenly happy. Her eyes sparkled, her heart beat high. She looked about her, and was pleasantly stirred by the size of the building. Not so large as the Albert Hall, she had heard someone say. Why, then, how truly enormous the Albert Hall must be! And she thought suddenly, with a little kindly contempt of Simon, and how very small he would seem, placed in the middle of the stalls all by himself. The musicians began to file into their seats. The lights turned up. The strangest discordances, like the voices of spirits in a lost world, filled the air. Everywhere clumps of empty seats vanished. People, people from the ceiling to the floor. A little man stepped forward, stood upon his platform, bowed to the applause, held with uplifted baton, a moment's silence, then released upon the air the accustomed harmonies of Rue Blas. To Lucy, who knew so little of life, that flooding melody of sound was the loveliest discovery. She sat back, very straight, eyes staring, drinking it in, forgetting at once the lighted hall, her aunt, everything. Only Simon Lod persisted with her. It seemed as though tonight his figure refused to leave her. He did not, oh how instantly she knew it, fit in at all with the music. It was as though he were trying to draw her away from it, trying to persuade her that she did not really like it. He was interfering with her happiness, buzzing at her ear like an insect. She shook her head as though to drive this something away, and even as she did so, she was aware that something else was happening to her. Someone was looking at her. She felt a truly desperate impatience at this second interruption. Someone was trying to force her to turn her head, yes, to the right. She was looking straight in front of her, down to where the hard thick back of the little conductor seemed to centralize into itself, and began to distribute all the separate streams of the music. Lucy was staring at that back as though her maintaining her connection with it was her only link with the music. How tiresome that she should not be allowed to concentrate on her happiness. She violently dismissed the shadowy Simon, but he was there, just behind her left shoulder. Then, with another effort of will, she forced away from her that attraction on the right. She would not look. In all probability, it was imagination. She had known at Hawksworth, in church, at the penny readings, that sensation that people were staring at her, simply her self-consciousness. She drove it off. It came closer to her. It was as though a voice were saying in her ear, you shall look to the right, you shall look to the right. I won't, I won't, she replied, setting her tea. Then, to her own pain and distress, she began to blush. She had always detested her inevitable blushing, despised herself for her weakness. She could not fight it. It was stronger than she. Surely all the hall was looking at her. She felt as though soon she would be forced to run away and hide in the comforting darkness of the street. The music ceased. The little man was bowing. The tension was lifted. Everywhere a buzz of talk arose, as though everyone, for the last ten minutes, had been hidden beneath a glass cover that was suddenly raised. Latecomers, with anxious glances, appeared about for their seats. Lucy turned around. She saw at once that indeed it was true that someone had been staring at her. Someone was staring at her now. She stared in return. She knew that she should not. Her mother had always taught her that to stare at a stranger was almost the worst thing that you could do. Nevertheless, Lucy glanced. She could not help herself. He was looking at her as though he knew her. When she looked in her turn, the start that he gave, the way that I have smile hovered about his lips, was almost an acknowledgement of recognition. And had she not known him before, he seemed so familiar to her. And yet, of course, he could not be. The conviction that she had been staring suddenly overwhelmed her with shame, and she turned away. But now he was impressed upon her brain as though she were looking at a picture of him, his large, rather ugly, but extremely good-humored face, his fair, rather untidy hair, his fair eyebrows, his short, closely clipped mustache, his black dinner jacket, and black bow tie. Above all, that charming, doubtful, half-questioning smile. But why, if they had never met before, did he stare like that? Why did the applause had broken out again? A tall man holding a violin was bowing. The Brahms violin concerto began. She sat there in a puzzled and bewildered state. What had happened to her? Who had come to her? Lifting her, it seemed, out of her own body, transforming her into some other creature. Was she feeling this merely because a man had stared at her? She felt, as she sat there, the blush still tingling on her cheeks, as though some precious part of her that had left her many years ago had now suddenly returned to her. She was Lucy Moon, the whole complete Lucy Moon, for the first time. The first movement of the symphony ended. She looked at once to her right. His eyes were resting on her. She smiled. How could she? Did she not know, had she not been told ever since she could remember, that the most terrible thing that a girl could do was to smile at a stranger? But he was not a stranger. She knew everything about him. She knew, although she had never heard him speak, just what the tone of his voice would be. Rough, a little scotch, and North Country mixed, not many words, he would be shy and would stammer a little. At the end of the second movement she smiled again. He smiled back and raised his eyebrows in a laughing question. At the end of the symphony the air crackled with applause. The violinist returned again and again, bowing. He seemed so small, and his magnificent evening dress did not suit him. Evening dress did not suit Simon, either. The applause died away. The orchestra disappeared through the back of the hall. So hot, said Aunt Comstock, whom until now Lucy had utterly forgotten, a breath of air outside. They went into the passage. People were walking up and down. They halted beside a swaying door. Mrs. Comstock stood there, her purple bosom heaving up and down. No air! Can't think why they don't. Her fine eyes flashed. She had seen Mrs. Norris. Are not those things arranged by God? Mrs. Norris, whom she had not seen for so many months. Are not these things arranged by God? Lucy's friend was at her elbow. He was, as she had known, that he would be kind-eyed, clumsy perhaps, his voice rough and hesitating. He was alone. He stood, turned a little away from her, and she, as though she had been practicing these arts all her life, looked at the pea-green Mrs. Norris and the pearls that danced on her bony neck. The voices crept towards one another. No one would have known that Lucy's mouth moved at all. Can't we get away somewhere? I'm with my aunt. I must see you. Yes. I must. I'm with my—I know. Perhaps at the end—no, give me somewhere to write to. It's— Aunt Comstock's voice came sailing like a pirate ship. Amy, this is my niece Lucy. How do you do? Are you enjoying London, dear? He was gone. Oh, he was gone! And no address. She could have slain those two women, one so fat and one so thin, willingly stabbed them. Perhaps she would lose him now. They returned. Something of biseis. He was French Lucy, French or a Spaniard. Fancy Amy Norris lost her looks, for dear. Ah, I shall like this, better than that German. Lucy heard no more music. Her heart beat in her throat, choking it. Life had rushed towards her and filled her. Or was it that she had entered into life? She did not know. She only felt intensely proud, like a queen entering her capital for the first time. The concert was over. Her aunt was a long time putting on her cloak. People stood in their way, stupid, heavy, idiotic people. When they came into the hall, he was not there. Yes, he was close to them. For a moment in the thick crowd he caught her hand. At the touch of his fingers, rough and strong upon hers, she seemed to soar above the crowd, and to look down upon them all with scornful happiness. He said it's something that she could not catch, and then Aunt Constock had hatefully enveloped her. They were in a taxi, and all the world that had been roaring about her was suddenly hushed. They reached Hortons. Lucy drank her hot milk. Her aunt said, I do hope you enjoyed your concert, darling. The Bézé was best. She had undressed and was lying on her bed, flat on her back, staring up at the white ceiling, upon whose surface circles flung from the lights beyond the window, ran and quivered. She watched the circles, but she was not thinking at all. She seemed to be lapped about by a sea of warm happiness. She floated on this. She neither slept, nor thought. Early in the morning she sank into greenless slumber. She came down to breakfast, tired, with happy weariness. She found Simon Lord waiting for her. She stared at him at first, as though she had never seen him before. He was not looking his best. He explained that he had caught the night train at York. He was afraid that he had not shaved nor washed. But that Mrs. Tomstuck had kindly said, Have your breakfast first with us. Lucy has just been longing for you. Lucy took all this in at last. She saw the bright little room with the sun pouring in, the breakfast things with the silver teapot and the porridge, and Atcom's stock in her pink teagound. She saw these things, and then Simon Lord took a step towards her. Dear Lucy, he said. That step showed her that there was no time to be lost. Simon Lord must never touch her again. Never. Simon, I wasn't expecting you. But it's just as well, really. It will get it over more quickly. I must tell you at once that I cannot marry you. Her first feeling after her little speech, which seemed in a strange way not to have been made by herself at all, was that it was a great shame to say such a thing to him when he was looking so dirty and so unwashed. She broke out with a little cry. Oh, Simon, I'm sorry. Lucy, she heard Aunt Tomstuck exclaim. Mr. Lord had no words. He looked truly pitiful, as his long, rather dirty fingers sought the tablecloth. Then he laughed. Why, Lucy, dear, he said, what do you mean? I mean just what I've said, she answered. We mustn't marry. It would be wicked, because I don't love you. I knew from the first that I didn't, but I had no experience. I thought you must all know better. I don't love you, and I never, never will. Lucy, Aunt Tomstuck, had risen. Lucy had the odd feeling that her aunt had known that this moment would come, and had been waiting with eager anticipation for it. Do you know what you said? But you can't know. You're out of your mind, you wicked girl. Here's Mr. Lord come all the way from Yorkshire by night, too, just to be with you for a day or two, and you receive him like this. Why, it was only last night that you told me that you wished he would come, and now you must be out of your mind. I'm not out of my mind, said Lucy, and I'm sure Simon wouldn't wish me to marry him if I didn't love him. Did she really say that last night, Mrs. Tomstuck, said Mr. Lord? Indeed she did. Only last night? Only last night. Ah, well then, he decided to leave. It's all right. I surprised her this morning. I was too sudden. I frightened you, Lucy Darling. Have some breakfast, and you'll feel quite differently. She'd better feel differently, said Mrs. Tomstuck, now trembling with happy temper. I don't know what she said this mad thing for, I'm sure, Mr. Lord, considering how she's been talking about you and wanting you all this month. But a little consideration will soon teach her. Do you know, Lucy, what they say of girls who try to behave as you're behaving? Do you know the name the world has for what you're doing? Have you thought for a moment of your father and mother and what they'll say? No, I haven't, said Lucy, but no thinking will make any difference. Nothing will. Nevertheless, there did flash through her mind then a picture of what would happen at Hawksworth. She had not thought of Hawksworth. She saw now the straggling street, the church, the high downs. She saw the people who had known her since she was a baby. She saw her parents and relations. Yes, there would be a bad time to go through. And for what? Because for a moment a man whom she did not know, a man whom she would never see again, had taken her hand in his. Perhaps she was mad. She did not know. She only knew that she would never marry Simon Lord. Oh, Simon, I'm so sorry. I know I'm behaving very badly, but it's better to behave like that now than for us to be unhappy always. He smiled at her with confidence. It's quite all right, Lucy, dear. I understand perfectly. You'll feel quite differently very soon. I surprised you. I shouldn't have done it, but I was so anxious to see you, a lover's privilege. Now, he ended with that happy optimistic air that he had developed so happily in the pulpit, let us all have breakfast, shall we? Lucy shook her head and then turned and went back to her room. A strange day followed. She sat there until luncheon, alone, hearing the soft buzz of the traffic below her window, interrupted once by the maid, who after her permission had been given, moved softly about the room, setting it to right. It was not quite true that she was thinking during that time. It could scarcely be cold thought. It was rather that a succession of pictures passed before her brain. Her parents, in every attitude of alarm and remonstrance and command, the village and its gossips, long, long imprisonment beneath those eye-downs, and finally her parents again. How strange it was that last night's little incident should have illuminated everything in her life, and nothing more surely than her father and mother. How queer that a strange young man, with whom, in all her life, she had exchanged only one word or two, should have told her more of her own people than all her living with them good. She phased her people for the first time. She knew them to be hard, narrow, provincial, selfish, intolerant. She loved them, just as she had done before, because with those other qualities they were also tender, compassionate, loving, unselfish. But she saw now quite clearly what living with them would be. She intended to ruin the peace and prosperity of her future life because she had met a stranger, for a second, whom she would never see again. That was the truth. She accepted it without a tremor. It was also true that that stranger, by meeting her, had made her live for the first time. Better live uncomfortably than merely pretend to live, or to think you loved when you did not. Why, now she thought of it, nearly everyone in the world was dead. She was summoned to lunch, and it amused, and at the same time touched her, to see how Aunt Comstock and Simon covered up the morning's mistake with a cheerful pretense that it had never occurred. Luncheon was all chatter, musical chatter, clerical chatter, party laughter. Lucy submitted to everything. She submitted to an afternoon drive. It was during the drive that she learned that on the very next morning by the 10-15 train, Simon would lead her back to Hawksworth. When she heard that, her heart gave a wild leap of rebellion. She looked desperately about her. Could she not escape from the carriage, run and run, until the distant streets hid her? She had no money. She had nothing. If only she could remain a few days longer in London, she felt that she would be sure to meet her friend again. Maddening to be so near, and then to miss. She thought of bursting out into some wild protest. One glance at their faces showed her how hopeless that would be. Hawksworth. Prison. Then she felt her new life and vitality glow and sparkle in her veins. After all, Hawksworth was not the end, the end. No, the beginning. That night they were, oh, so kind to her, laughing, granting her anything that she might ask. Oh, so tactful. Poor Lucy, she could hear them say. She had a fit of hysteria this morning. This London has been bad for her. She mustn't come here again. Never again. In the morning, the taxi was there. The bags were packed. In the pretty green and white hall with the grandfather's clock, when Lucy tipped Fanny the Portress, she whispered to her, I'm coming back. They don't think I am, but I know I am. And if anyone, anyone should ask for me, describe me, you know, so that you are sure it's me, right to me at this address. Fanny smiled and nodded. Now, Lucy dear, cried out, calm stuck, the cab's waiting. She was sitting in it opposite to Simon, who looked clean, but ridiculous on one of these uncomfortable third-party seats. They started up Duke Street and it turned into Piccadilly. I do hope you'll have a nice journey, Lucy. It's a fine day and I've got some chocolate. Are not these things arranged by God? The cab was stopped by traffic just close to St. James's church. Lucy, truly captured now, like a mouse in a trap, glanced with a last wild look through the windows. A moment later, she had tumbled over Simon's knees and burst open the door. She was in the street. As she ran, she was conscious of whistle-sounding, boys calling, the green trees of St. James's blowing. She had touched him on the arm. I saw you. I couldn't help it. I had to speak. She was out of breath. When he turned and the light of recognition flamed into his eyes, she could have died with happiness. He caught her hand. He stammered with joy. Everywhere he said, I've been looking, hoping. I've walked about. I've never thought of anything else. Quick, she said. I've no time. They're in the cab there. It's our last chance. Can you remember this without writing it down? Yes. Well, Lucy Moon, the rectorie, Hawksworth, North Yorkshire. KES. Yes, write it once. Even in her agitation, as she noticed the strength and confidence of his smile. I'll write today, he assured her. You're not married? No, it's miss. I'm not either. He caught her hand. I'll find you before the week's out. She fled. She was in the cab. Aunt Comstock and Simon regarded her with terrified eyes. Lucy, dear, how could you? What were you about? The train? Oh, it was a friend. I had to say goodbye. He didn't know. I was going so soon. She felt that her happiness would stifle her. She flung open the other window. She looked at them both and felt the tenderest pity, because they seemed so old, so cross, so dead. She bent over and kissed her aunt. Here we are, said that lady, with an air of intense relief. Now, you'll be all right, Lucy, darling. You'll just have Mr. Law to look after you. Yes, cried Lucy. Now I'm all right. Come along, Simon, or we'll miss the train. End of story six.