 CHAPTER VIII William Froyle, Osler at the Queen's Arms at Mawthorne, took the letter, and with a curt nod which stifled the lequacity of the village postman, went at once from the yard into the coach-house. He had recognised the handwriting on the envelope, and the recognition of it gave form and quick life to all the vague suspicions that had troubled him some months before, and again during the last few days. He felt suddenly the near approach of a frightful calamity which had long been stealing towards him. A wire sheathed lantern set on a rough-oaken table cast a wavering light round the coach-house, and dimly showed the inner stable. Within the letter could just be distinguished the mottled grey flanks of a fat cob, which dragged its chain occasionally, making the large, slow movements of a horse comfortably lodged in its stall. The pleasant odour of animals and hay filled the wide spaces of the shed, and through the half-open door came a fresh, thin mist rising from the rain-soaked yard in the November evening. Froyal sat down on the oaken table, his legs dangling, and looked again at the envelope before opening it. He was a man about thirty years of age with a serious and thoughtful rather heavy countenance. He had a long, light moustache, and his skin was a fresh rosy salmon-colour. His straw-tinted hair was cut very short except over the forehead, where it grew full and bushy. Dressed in his rough, stable corduroy's, his forearms bare and white, he had all the appearance of the sturdy Englishman, the sort of Englishman that crosses the world in order to find vent for his taciturn energy on virgin soils. From the whole village he commanded and received respect. He was known for scholar, and it was his scholarship which had obtained for him the proud position of secretary to the Providence Society-styled the Queen's Arms Slate Club. His respectability and his learning combined had enabled him to win with dignity the hand of Susie Trimmer, the grocer's daughter, to whom he had been engaged about a year. The village could not make up its mind concerning that match. Without doubt it was a social victory for Froyal, but everyone wondered that so sedate and sagacious a man should have seen in Susie a suitable mate. He tore open the envelope with his huge forefinger, and bending down towards the lantern began to read the letter. It ran, Old Castle Street, Bursley, Dear Will. I asked Father to tell you, but he would not. He said, I must write. Dear Will, I hope you will never see me again. As you will see by the above address, I am now at Aunt Penrose's at Bursley. She is awful angry, but I was obliged to leave the village because of my shame. I have been a wicked girl. It was in July. You know the man, because you asked me about him one Sunday night. He is no good, he's a villain. Please forget all about me. I want to go to London. So many people know me here, and what with people coming in from the village too. Please forgive me. S. Trimmer. After reading the letter a second time, Froyal folded it up and put it in his pocket. Beyond a slight, unaccustomed pallor of the red cheeks, he showed no sign of emotion. Before the arrival of the postman, he had been cleaning his master's bicycle which stood against the table. After this, he returned. Kneeling down in some fresh straw, he used his dusters slowly and patiently, rubbing then stopping to examine the result, and then rubbing again. When the machine was polished to his satisfaction, he wheeled it carefully into the stable, where it occupied a stall next to that of the cob. As he passed back again, the animal leisurely turned its head and gazed at Froyal with its large, liquid eyes. He slapped the immense flank. Content the animal returned to its feed, and the weighted chain ran down with a rattle. The fortnightly meeting of the Slate Club was to take place at eight o'clock that evening. Froyal had employed part of the afternoon in making ready his books for the event, to him always so solemn and ceremonious, and the affairs of the club were now prominent in his mind. He was sorry that it would be impossible for him to attend the meeting. Fortunately, all the usual preliminaries were complete. He took a piece of note paper from a little hanging cupboard, and sprawling across the table began to write under the lantern. The pencil seemed a tiny toy in his thick, roughened fingers. To Mr. Andrew McCall, Chairman, Queen's Arms Slate Club, dear sir, I regret to inform you that I shall not be at the meeting tonight. You will find the books in order. Here he stopped, biting the end of the pencil in thought. He put down the pencil and stepped hastily out of the stable, across the yard and into the hotel. In the larger room, the room where cyclists sometimes took tea and cold meat during the summer season, the long deal table and the double line of oak and chairs stood ready for the meeting. The fire burnt warmly in the big grate, and the hanging lamp had been lighted. On the wall was a large card containing the rules of the club, which had been written out in a fair hand by the schoolmaster. It was to this card that Froyle went. Passing his thumb down the card, he paused at Rule Seven. Each member, shall, on the death of another member, pay one shilling for benefit of widow or nominee of deceased, sane to be paid within one month after notice given. Or nominee, nominee, he murmured reflectively, staring at the card. He mechanically noticed what he had noticed often before with disdain, that the chairman had signed the rules without the use of capitals. He went back to the dusk of the coach-house to finish his letter, still murmuring the word nominee, of whose meaning he was not quite sure. I request that the money due to me from the slate club on my death shall be paid to my nominee, Miss Susan Trimmer, now staying with her aunt, Mrs. Penrose, at Bursley. Yours respectfully, William Froyle. After further consideration he added, P.S. My annual salary of six months per member would be due at the end of December. If so be the members would pay that, or part of it, should they consider the same due to Susan Trimmer as well, I should be thankful. Yours resp, W.F. He put the letter in an envelope and, taking it to the large room, laid it carefully at the end of the table opposite the chairman's seat. Once more he returned to the coach-house. From the hanging cupboard he now produced a piece of rope. Standing on the table he could just reach, by leaning forward, a hook in the ceiling that was sometimes used for the slinging of bicycles. With difficulty he made the rope fast to the hook. Using a noose on the other end he tightened it round his neck. He looked up at the ceiling and down at the floor in order to judge whether the rope was short enough. Goodbye Susan and everyone, he whispered, and then stepped off the table. The tense rope swung him by his neck half way across the coach-house. He swung twice, two and fro, but as he passed under the hook for the fifth time his toes touched the floor. The rope had stretched. In another second he was standing firm on the floor, purple and panting, but ignominiously alive. Good evening to you, Mr. Froyle. Be you committing suicide? The tones were drawing, uncertain, mildly astonished. He turned round hastily his hands busy with the rope, and saw in the doorway the figure of daft Jimmy the morthorn idiot. He hesitated before speaking, but he was not confused. No one could have been confused before daft Jimmy. Neither man nor woman in the village considered his presence more than that of a cat. Yes, I am, he said. The middle-aged idiot regarded him with a vague, interested smile, and came into the coach-house. Youn got on the rope too long, Mr. Froyle. Let me help you. Froyle calmly assented. He stood on the table, and the two rearranged the noose and made it secure. As they did so, the idiot gossiped. I was going to Bursley to-night to buy me a pair of boots, and when I was at top of the hill I remembered as I'd forgotten the measure of my feet. So I ran back again for it. Then I saw the light in here, and I stepped up to bid ye good evening. Someone had told him the ancient story of the fool and his boots, and with the pride of an idiot in his idiocy he had determined that it should be related of himself. Froyle was silent. The idiot laughed with a dry cackle. Now you go, said Froyle, when the rope was fixed. Let me see you do it, the idiot pleaded with pathetic eyes. No, out you get. Protesting the idiot went forth, and his irregular, clumsy footsteps sounded on the pebble-paved yard. When the noise of them ceased in the soft roadway, Froyle jumped off the table again. Gradually his body, like a stopping pendulum, came to rest under the hook, and hung twitching with strange, disconnected movements. The horse in the stable, hearing unaccustomed noises, rattled his chain and stamped about in the straw of his box. Fertive steps came down the yard again, and Daft Jimmy peeped into the coach-house. He'd done it, he'd done it, the idiot cried gleefully. Down to Fiasna. He slapped his leg, and almost danced. The body still twitched occasionally. He'd done it. Done what, Daft Jimmy? You're making a fine noise there. Done what? The idiot ran out of the stable. At the side entrance to the hotel stood the barmaid. The outline of her fine figure distinct against the light from within. The idiot continued to laugh. Done what? The girl repeated, calling out across the dark yard in clear, pleasant tones of amused inquiry. Done what? What's that to you, Miss Tucker? Now, none of your source, Daft Jimmy, is Willie Froyle in there? The idiot roared with laughter. Yes, he is, Miss. Well, tell him his master wants him. I don't want to cross this mucky messy yard. Yes, Miss. The girl closed the door. The idiot went into the coach-house, and slapping William's body in a friendly way, so that it trembled on the rope. He spluttered out between his laughs. Master wants you, Mr. Froyle. Then he walked out into the village street, and stood looking up the muddy road, still laughing quietly. It was quite dark, but the moon aloft in the clear sky showed the highway, with its shining ruts leading in a straight line over the hill to Bursley. Them shoes, the idiot ejaculated suddenly. Well, I'll be an idiot, and that's true. They can take the measure from my feet, and I never thought on it till this minute. Being again, he set off at a run up the hill. After a honeymoon of five weeks in the shining cities of the Mediterranean and in Paris, they re-entered the British Empire by the August portals of the Chatham and Dover Railway. They stood impatiently waiting part of a well-dressed, quarrelous crowd, while few officials performed their daily task of improvising a custom house for registered luggage on a narrow platform of Victoria Station. John, Mr. Norris's man, who had met them, attended behind. Everybody with a characteristic movement the husband lifted his head and then looked down at his wife. I say, may—well—she knew that he was about to propose some swift alteration of their plans, but she smiled upwards out of her furs at his grave-face, and the tone of her voice granted all requests in advance. I think I'd better go to the office, he said. Now she smiled again, inviting him to do exactly what he chose. She was already familiar with his restiveness under enforced delays and inaction, and his unfortunate capacity for being actively bored by trifles which did not interest him aroused in her a sort of maternal sympathy. Yes, he answered, I can be there and back in an hour or less. You titivate yourself, and we'll dine at the Savoy, or anywhere you please. We'll keep the ball rolling to-night. Yes, he repeated, as if to convince himself that he was not a deserter. I really must call in at the office. You and John can see to the luggage, can't you? Of course, she replied, with calm, good nature, and also with perfect self-confidence. But give me the keys of the trunks, and don't be late, Ted. Oh, I shan't be late, he said. Their fingers touched as she took the keys. He went away and raptured anew by her delightful acquiescences, her unique smile, her common sense, her mature charm, and the astonishing elegance of her person. The honeymoon was over, and with what finished discretion, combining the innocent girl with the woman of the world, she had lived through the honeymoon. Another life, more delicious, was commencing. What a wife, he thought triumphantly, she does understand a man, and fancy leaving an ordinary bride to look after luggage. Nevertheless, once in his offices at Winchester House, he managed to forget her, and to forget time for nearly an hour and a half. When at last he came to himself, from the enchantment of affairs, he jumped into a handsome and told the driver to drive fast to Knightsbridge. He was ardent to see her again. In the dark seclusion of the cab, he speculated upon her toilette, the colour of her shoes. He thought of the last five weeks of the next five years. Dwelling on their mutual love and esteem, their health, their self-knowledge, and experience and cheerfulness, her sense and grace, his talent for getting money first and keeping it afterwards. He foresaw nothing but happiness for them, children, possibly. At Piccadilly Circus it began to rain, cold, heavy, March rain. Window down, sir, asked the voice of the cabin. Yes, he ordered sonically better be suffocated than drowned. Your right, sir, said the voice. Soon through the streaming glass, which made every gas-jet into a shooting pillar of flame, Norris discerned vaguely the vast bulk of Hyde Park mansions. Good, he muttered. And at that very moment he was shot through the window into the thin, light-reflecting mire of the street. Enormous and strange beasts menaced him with pitiless hooves. Millions of people crowded about him. In response to a question that seemed to float slowly towards him he tried to give his address. He realised by a considerable feat of intellect that the horse must have fallen down. And then, with a dim notion that nothing mattered, he went to sleep. In the boudoir of the magnificent flat on the first floor, shielded from the noise and the inclemency of the world by four silk-hung walls and a double window, and surrounded by all the multitudinous and costly luxury that a stockbroker with brains and taste can obtain for the wife of his love, May was leisurely finishing her toilette. And every detail in the long, elaborate process was accomplished with a passionate intention to bewitch the man at Winchester House. These two had first met seven years before, when May, the daughter of a successful wholesale draper at Hanbridge in the Five Towns District of Staffordshire, was aged twenty-two. Mr. Scarrett went to Manchester each Tuesday to buy, and about once a month he took May with him. One day, when they were lunching at the exchange restaurant, a young man came up whom her father introduced as Mr. Edward Norris, his stockbroker. Mr. Norris, whose years were thirty, glanced keenly at May and accepted Mr. Scarrett's invitation to join them. Ever afterwards May vividly remembered the wonderful sensation, joyous yet disconcerting which she then experienced, the sensation of having captivated her father's handsome and correct stockbroker. The three taught horses with a certain freedom, and since May was accustomed to drive the Scarrett dog-cart so famous in the Five Towns, she could bring her due share to the conversation. The meal over Mr. Norris discussed business matters with his client, and then sedately departed, but not without the obviously sincere expression of a desire to meet Miss Scarrett again. The wholesale draper praised Edward's financial qualities behind his back, and wondered that a man of such aptitude should remain in Manchester while London existed. As for May, she decided that she would have a new frock before she came to Manchester in the following month. She had a new frock, but not of the colour intended. By the following month her father was enclosed in a coffin, and it happened to his estate as to the estates of many successful men who employ stockbrokers, that the liabilities far more than covered the assets. May and her mother were left without a penny. The mother did the right thing, and died. It was best. May went direct to Brunt's, the largest draper in the Five Towns, and asked for a place under Madame in the dress-making department. Brunt's daughter, who was about to be married, gave her the place instantly. Three years later, when Madame returned to Paris, May stepped into the French woman's shoes. On Sundays and on Thursday afternoons, and sometimes but not too often, at the theatre, May was the finest walking advertisement that Brunt's ever had. Old Brunt would have proposed to her it was rumoured had he not been scared by her elegance. Sundry's sons of prosperous manufacturers, unabashed by this elegance, did in fact secretly propose, but with what result was known only to themselves. Later as May waxed in importance at Brunt's, she was sent to Manchester to buy. She lunched at the exchange-restaurant. The world and Manchester are very small. The first man she set eyes on was Edward Norris. Another week Norris said to her with a thrill, and he would have been gone for ever to London. Chance is not to be flouted. The sequel was inevitable. They loved, and all the select private bars in Handbridge tinkled to the news that May's scarlet had been unhooked to stockbroker. When the toilette was done and the maid gone, she wound a thin black scarf round her olive neck and shoulders, and sat down negligently on a Chippendale settee in the attitude of a portrait by Baldini. Her little feet were tucked up sideways on the settee. The perforated lace ends of the scarf fell over her low corsage to the level of the seat, and she waited, still the bride. He was late, but she knew he would be late. Sure in the conviction that he was a strong man, a man of the imagination and of deeds, she could easily excuse this failing in him, as she did that other habit of impulsive action in trifles. Nay more she found keen pleasure in excusing it. The thing she reflected, he forgets so. Therefore she waited, content in enjoying the image in the glass of her dark face, her small plump person and her Paris gown, that dream. She thought with assuaged grief of her father's tragedy, she would have liked him to see her now, the jewel in the case her father and she had understood each other. All around and above and below she felt, without hearing it, the activity of the opulent, complex life of the mansions. Her mind dwelt with satisfaction on long, carpeted corridors, noiselessly paraded by flunkies. Mahogany lifts continually ascending and descending like the angels of the ladder, the great entrance hall, with its fire always burning, and its doors always swinging, the salamange sewn with rose-shaded candles, and all the splendid privaces rising stage upon stage to the atyx, where the flunkies philosophize together. She confessed the beauty and distinction achieved by this extravagant organization for gratifying earthly desires. Often in the pinching days of her servitude she had murmured against the injustice of things, and had called wealth a crime while poverty starved. But now she perceived that society was what it was inevitably and could not be altered. She accepted it in profound peace of mind, gaily fraternal towards the fortunate, compassionate towards those in adversity. In the next flat someone began to play very brilliantly a Hungarian rhapsody of lists, and even the faint sound of that riotous torrent of melody so arrogantly gorgeous intoxicated her soul. She shivered under the sudden vision of the splendid joy of being alive, and how she envied the player. She had learnt from Madame, but she had no skill on the piano. It was her one regret. She touched the bell. Has your master come in yet, she inquired of the maid? No, Madame, not yet. She knew he had not come in, but she could not resist the impulse to ask. Ten minutes later, when the piano had ceased, she jumped up and creeping to the front door of the flat, gazed foolishly across the corridor at the grill of the lift. She heard the lift in travail. It appeared and passed out of sight above. No, he had not come. Glancing aside, she saw the tall, slender figure of a girl in a green teagow, and a mere girl. It was the player of the Hungarian rhapsody. And this girl, too, she thought, was expectant and disappointed. They shut their doors simultaneously, she and May, who also had her girlish moments. Then the rhapsody recommenced. Oh, Madame! screamed the maid, almost tumbling into the boudoir. What is it, maid demanded, with false calm. The maid lifted the corner of her black apron to her eyes, as though she had been a stage-soubrette in trouble. The master, Madame, he fell out of his cab, just in front of the mansions, and they're bringing him in. Such blood I never did see. The maid finished with hysterics. Part three. And them, just off their honeymoon. The inconsolable tones of the lady's maid came from the kitchen to the open door of the bedroom, where May was giving instructions to the elderly cook. Send that girl out of the flat this moment, May said. Yes, ma'am. Make the beef tea in case it's wanted, and let me have some more warm water. There's John and the doctor. She started at a knock. No, it's only the postman, ma'am. Some letters danced on the hall floor and on her nerves. Oh, dear, May whispered. I thought it was the doctor at last. John's bound to be back with one in a minute, ma'am. Do bear up, urged the cook, hurrying to the kitchen. She could have destroyed the woman for those last words. With the proud certainty of being equal to the dreadful crisis, she turned abruptly into the bedroom, where her husband lay insensible on one of the new beds. Assisted by the policeman and the cook, she had done everything that could be done. Cut away the coats and the waistcoat, removed the boots, straightened the limbs, washed the face and neck, especially the neck, which had to be sponged continually, and scattered messengers, including John, over the vicinity in search of medical aid. And now the policeman had gone. The general emotion on the staircase had subsided. The front door of the flat was shut. The great ocean of life of the mansions had closed smoothly upon her little episode. She was alone with the shattered organism. She bent fondly over the bed, and her Paris frock and the black scarf which she had not removed touched its ruinous burden. Her right hand directed the sponge with ineffable tenderness, and then the long, thin fingers tightened to a frenzied clutch to squeeze it over the basin. The whole of her being was absorbed in a deep passion of pity and an intolerable hunger for the doctor. Through the wall came once more the faint sound of the Hungarian rhapsody, astonishingly rapid and brilliant. She set her teeth to endure its unconscious message of the vast indifference of life to death. The organism stirred, and May watched the deathly face for a sign. The eyes opened and stared at her in agonized bewilderment. The lips tried to speak, and failed. It's all right, darling, she said softly. You're in your own bed. The doctor will be here directly. Drink this. She gave him some brandy and water, and they looked at each other. He was no longer Edward Norris, the finely regulated intelligence, the masterful volition, the conqueror of the world and of a woman, but merely the embodiment of a frightened, despairing, flickering hysterical will to live, which glanced in terror at the corners of the room as though it saw fate there. And beneath her intense solicitude was the instinctive feeling, which hurt her but which she could not dismiss, of her measureless, dominating superiority. With what glad relief would she have changed places with him? I'm dying, May, he murmured at length with a sigh. Why doesn't the doctor come? He is coming, she replied soothingly. You'll be better soon. But his effort in speaking obliged her to use the sponge again, and he saw it and drew another sigh, more mortal than the first. Oh, I'm dying, he repeated. Not you, Ted. And her smile cost her an awful pang. I am, I know it. This time he spoke with sad resignation. He must face it, and listen. What, dear? A physical sensation of sickness came over her. She could not disguise from herself the fact that he was dying. The warped and pallid face, the panic struck eyes, the sweat, the wound in the neck, the damp hands nervously pulling at the hem of the sheet. These indications were not to be gained, said. The truth was too horrible to grasp. She wanted to put it away from her. This calamity cannot happen to me, she thought urgently. But all the while she knew that it was happening to her. He collected the feeble remnant of his powers by an immense effort, and began to speak, slowly and fragmentarily, and with such weakness that she could only catch his words by putting her ear to his mouth. The restless hands dropped the sheet and took the end of the black scarf. You'll be comfortable for money, he said. Will made it, it's not that, it's—I must tell you it's—yes, she encouraged him—tell me I can hear. It's about your father. I didn't treat him quite right, once. Week after I first met you, may—no, not quite right. He was holding Hull and Barnsley shares, you know, railway, great gambling stock then, Hull and Barnsley, holding them on cover for the rise. They dropped too much, dropped to twenty-three. He couldn't hold any longer. He had to meet a sell and cut the loss. Understand? Yes, she said trembling, I quite understand. Well, I wired back, sold at twenty-three, but some mistake, shares not sold, Clark's mistake, Clark didn't sell. Next day Rise began. I didn't wire him shares not sold. Somehow I couldn't, put it off, Rise went on. I took over shares myself, you see, myself, he'd nearly five thousand clear. I wanted money then, I think I would have told him, perhaps later, made it right. But he died. Suddenly I wasn't going to let his creditors have that five thousand. No, he'd meant to sell, and look here, may, if those shares had dropped lower, instead of rising, I should have had to stand the racket. With your father, for my Clark's mistake, see, he'd meant to sell, hard lines on him, but he'd meant to sell, he'd meant, don't say any more, dear. Must explain this, may, why didn't I give the money to you when he was dead, because I knew you'd only give it to creditors, I knew you that straight, I've told you now. He lost consciousness again, but for an instant may did not notice it. She was crying, and her tears fell on his face. Then came a doctor, a little dark man, who explained with calm politeness that he had been out when the messenger first arrived. He took off his coat, hung it up, opened his bag, and proceeded to a minute examination of the patient. His movements were so methodical, and he gave orders to may in a tone so quiet, casual and ordinary, that she almost lost a sense of the reality of the scene. Yes, yes, he said, from time to time, as if to himself, nothing else, not a single enlightening word to may. I'm dying, moaned Edward, opening his eyes. The doctor glanced round at may and winked. That wink, deliberate and humorous, was like an electric shock to her. She could actually feel her heart leap in her breast. If she had not been afraid of the doctor, she would have fainted. You all think you're dying, the doctor remarked in a low amused tone to the ceiling, as he wiped a pair of scissors, when you've been knocked silly, especially if there's a lot of blood about. The door opened. Here's John Mam, said the cook, with two more doctors. What am I to do? May involuntarily turn towards the door. Don't you go, Mrs. Norris, the little dark man commanded. I want you. Then he carelessly scrutinized the elderly servant. Tell him they're too late, he said. It's generally like that, when there's an accident, he continued after the housekeeper had gone. First you can't get a doctor anywhere, and then in half an hour or so we come in crowds. I've known seven doctors turn up one after another, but in that affair the man happened to have been killed outright. He smiled grimly. In a little while he was snapping his bag. I'll come in the morning, of course, he said, as he wrote on a piece of paper. Have this made up, and give it him in the night, if he is grateful. Keep him warm. You might put a couple of hot water bags, one on either side of him. You've got beef tea made, you say? That's right. Let him have as much as he wants. Mr. Norris, you'll sleep like a top. But doctor may inquire the next morning in the hall, after Edward had smiled at a joke, and been informed that he must run down to Bourne within a week. Have we nothing to fear? I think not, was the measured answer. These affairs nearly always seem much worse than they are. Of course the immediate upset is tremendous, the disorganisation, and all that sort of thing, but nature's pretty wonderful. You'll find your husband will soon get over it. I should say he had a good constitution. And there will be no permanent effects? Yes, said the doctor, with genial cynicism, there'll be one permanent effect. Nobody will ever persuade him to ride in a handsome again. If he can't find a four-wheeler, he'll walk in future. She returned to the bedroom. The man on the bed was Edward Norris once more, in control of himself, risen out of his humiliation. A feeling of thankfulness overwhelmed her for a moment, and she sat down. Well, may he murmur, well, dear. They both realised that what they had been through was a common, daily street accident. The smile of each was self-conscious, apprehensive, insincere. Quite a concept going on next door, he said, with an affectation of lightness. It was the Hungarian rhapsody, impetuous and brilliant as ever. How she hated it now, this symbol of the hurried, unheeding, relentless, hollow gaiety of the world. Yet she longed for the magic fingers of the player that she too might smother grief in such glittering veils. The marriage, which had begun so dramatically, fell into placid routine. Edward fulfilled the prophecy of the doctor. In a week they were able to go to Bournemouth for a few days, and in less than a fortnight he was at the office, the strong man again, confident and ambitious. After days devoted to finance he came home in the evenings, high-spirited and determined to enjoy himself. His voice was firm and his eyes steady when he spoke to his wife. There was no trace of self-consciousness in his demeanour. She admired the masculinity of the brain that could forget by an effort of will. She felt that he trusted her to forget also, that he relied on her common sense, her characteristic sagacity, to extinguish forever the memory of an awkward incident. He loved her, he was intensely proud of her, he treated her with every sort of generosity. And in return he expected her to behave like a man. She loved him, she esteemed him as a wife should. She made a profession of wifehood. He gave his days to finance and his nights to diversion. But her vocation was always with her. She was never of duty. She aimed to please him to the uttermost in everything, to be in all respects the ideal helpmate of a husband who was at once strenuous, fastidious and wealthy. Quaintance and suavity were a religion with her. She was the delight of the eye and of the ear. The soother of groans, the refuge of distress, the uplifter of the heart. She made new acquaintances for him and cemented old friendships. Her manner towards his old friends enchanted him. But when they were gone she had a way of making him feel that she was only his. She thought that she was succeeding in her aim. She thought that all these sweet, endless labours of traffic with dressmakers, milleners, coiffers, maids, cooks and furnishes, of paying and receiving calls, of delicious surprise journeys to the city to bring home the breadwinner, of giving and accepting dinners, of sitting alert and appreciative in theatres and music halls, of supping in golden restaurants, of being serious, cautionary, submissive and subductive, of smiles, laughter and kisses, and of continuous sympathetic responsiveness she thought that all these labours had attained their object, Edward's complete serenity and satisfaction. She imagined that love and duty had combined successfully to deceive him on one solitary point. She was sure that he was deceived. But she was wrong. One evening they were at the theatre alone together. It was a musical comedy, and they had a large stage box. May sat a little behind. After having been darkened for a scenic conjuring trick, the stage was very suddenly thrown into brilliant light. Edward turned with equal suddenness to share his appreciation of the effect with his wife, and the light and his eye caught her unawares. She smiled instantly, but too late. He had seen the expression of her features. For a second she felt as if the whole fabric which she had been building for the last six months had crumbled. But this disturbing idea passed as she recovered herself. Let's go home, eh? He said, at the end of the first act. Yes, she agreed it would be nice to be in early, wouldn't it? In the broom they exchanged the amiable banalities of people who were thoroughly intimate. When they reached the flat she poured out his whisky and pot-ass, and sat on the arm of his particular armchair while he sipped it. Then she whispered that she was going to bed. Wait a bit, he said. I want to talk to you seriously. Dear thing, she murmured, stroking his coat. She had not the slightest notion of his purpose. You've tried your best, May, he said bluntly, but you've failed. I've suspected it for a long time. She flushed and retired to a sofa away from the orange electric lamp. What do you mean, Edward, she asked. You know very well what I mean, my dear, he replied. What I told you that night. You've tried to forget it. You've tried to look at me as though you had forgotten it. But you can't do it. It's on your mind. I've noticed it again and again. I noticed it at the theatre's night. So I said to myself, I'll have it out with her. And I am having it out. My dear Ted, I assure you, no you don't, he stopped her. I wish you did. Now you must just listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night, as well as you do. But I couldn't help it. I was a fool to tell you, still, I thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that. You thought I was dying too, didn't you? Yes, she said quietly, for a minute or two. It was that minute or two that did it. Well, I let it out, the rotten little secret. I admit it wasn't on the square that bit of business, but on the other hand it wasn't anything really bad, like cruelty to animals or ruining a girl. Of course the chap was your father, but look here, May, you ought to be able to see that I was exactly the same man after I told you as I was before. You ought to be able to see that. My character wasn't wrecked because I happened to split on myself like an ass about the affair. Mind you, I don't blame you. You can't help your feelings. But do you suppose there's a single man on this blessed earth without a secret? I'm not going to grovel before gods or men. I'm not going to pretend I'm so frightfully sorry. I'm sorry in a way, but can't you see? Don't say any more, Ted, she begged him fingering her sash. I know all that, I know it all, and everything else you can say. Oh, my darling boy, do you think I would look down on you ever so little because of what you told me? Who am I? I wouldn't care toughens even if. But it's between us all the same, he broke in. You can't get over it. Get over it, she repeated lamely. Can you have you? He pinned her to a direct answer. She did not flinch. No, she said. I thought you would have done, he remarked, half to himself. I thought you would. I thought you were enough a woman of the world for that, May. It isn't as if the confounded thing had made any real difference to your father. The old man died, and. Ted, she exclaimed, I shall have to tell you after all, it killed him. What killed him? He died of gastritis. He was ill with gastritis, but he died of suicide. It's easy for a gastritis patient to commit suicide, and father did. Why? Oh, ruin, despair, he'd been in difficulties for a long time. He said that selling those shares just one day too soon was the end of it. When he saw them going up day after day, it got on his mind. He said he knew he would never, never have any luck, and then, you kept it quiet, he was walking about the room. Yes, that was pretty easy. And did your mother know? He turned and looked at her. Yes, mother knew, it finished her. Oh, Ted, she burst out. If you'd only telegraphed to him the next morning that the shares weren't sold, things might have been quite different. You mean I killed your father and your mother? No, I don't, she cried passionately. I tell you I don't, you didn't know. But I think of it all, sometimes. And that's why, that's why she sat down again. By God, May, he swore, I'm frightfully sorry. I never meant to tell you, she said, composing herself. But there, things slip out. Good night. She was gone, but in passing him she had timidly caressed his shoulder. It's all up, he said to himself, this will always be between us, no one could expect her to forget it. Part five. Gradually her characteristic habits deserted her. She seemed to lose energy and a part of her interest in those things which had occupied her most. She changed her dress less frequently, ignoring dress-makers, and she showed no longer the ravishing elegance of the bride. She often lay in bed till noon, she who had always entered the dining room at nine o'clock precisely, to dispense his coffee and listen to his remarks on the contents of the newspaper. She said, as you please, to the cook, and the meals began to lose their pecancy. She paid no calls, but some of her women friends continued nevertheless to visit her. Lastly, she took to sewing. The little dark doctor who had become an acquaintance smiled at her and told her to do no more than she felt disposed to do. She reclined on sofas in shaded rooms and appeared to meditate. She was not depressed, but thoughtful. It was as though she had much to settle in her own mind. At intervals the faint sound of the Hungarian rhapsody mingled with her reveries. As for Edward, his behaviour was immaculate. During the day he made money furiously. In the evening he sat with his wife. They did not talk much, and he never questioned her. She developed a certain curious whimsicality now and then, but for him she could do no wrong. The past was not mentioned. They both looked apprehensively towards the future, towards a crisis which they knew was inexorably approaching. They were afraid, while pretending to have no fear. And, one afternoon, precipitately, surprisingly, the crisis came. You are the father of a son, a very noisy son, said the doctor, coming into the drawing-room where Edward had sat in torture for three hours. And may, oh, never fear she's doing excellently. Can I go and see her? He asked, like a humble petitioner. Well, yes, said the doctor, for one minute, not more. So he went into the bedroom as into a church, feeling a fool. The nurse, miraculously white and starched, stood like a sentinel at the foot of the bed of mystery. All serene may, he questioned, if he had attempted to say another word he would have cried. The pale mother nodded with a fatigued smile, and, by a scarcely perceptible gesture, drew his attention to a bundle. From the next flat came a faint, familiar sound, insolently joyous. Yes, he thought. But if they'd both been lying dead here, that tune would have been the same. Two months later, he left the office early, telling his secretary that he had a headache. It was a mere fibbing excuse. He suffered from sudden fits of anxiety about his wife and child. When he reached the flat, he found no one at home but the cook. Where's your mistress, he demanded. She's out in the park with baby and nurse, sir. But it's going to rain, he cried angrily. It is raining, they'll get wet through. He rushed into the corridor and met the procession. May, the perambulator, and the nurse made. Only fancy-tared, May exclaimed, the perambulator will go into the lift after all, aren't you glad? Yes, he said, but you're wet, surely. Not a drop, we just got in in time. Sure, quite. The tableau of May, elegant as ever, but her eyes, brighter and her body more leniently curved, of the hooded perambulator, and of the fluffy white nurse made behind, it was too much for him. Touching clumsily the apron of the perambulator, the stockbroker turned into his doorway. Just then, the girl from the next flat came out into the corridor, dressed for social rites of the afternoon. The perambulator was her excuse for stopping. What a pretty boy, she exclaimed in ecstasy, trying to squeeze her picture-hat under the hood of the perambulator. Do you really think so, said the mother, enchanted? Oh, of course, the darling, how I envy you! May wanted to reciprocate this politeness. I can't tell you, she said, how I envy you, your piano playing. There's one piece— Envy me? Why, it's only a piano-la we've got. Isn't he the picture of his grandad, said May to Edward, when they bent over the cot that night, before retiring? And as she said it, there was such candour in her voice, such content in her smiling and courageous eyes, that Edward could not fail to comprehend her message to him. Down in some very secret part of his soul, he felt, for the first time, the real force of the great explanatory truth, that one generation succeeds another. End of chapter 9 When I had finished my daily personal examination of the ropes and trapezes, I hesitated a moment, and then climbed up again to the roof, where the red and the blue long ropes were fastened. I took my sharp scissors from my chattelain, and gently fretted the blue rope with one blade of the scissors, until only a single strand was left intact. I gazed down at the vast floor a hundred feet below. The afternoon varieties were over, and a phrenologist was talking to a small crowd of gapers in a corner. The rest of the floor was pretty empty, safe for the chairs and the fancy stalls, and the fatigued stall girls in their black dresses. I, too, had once almost been a stall girl at the aquarium. I descended. Few observed me in my severe street address. Our secretary, Charles, attended me on the stage. Everything right, Miss Perquita, he said, handed me my hat and gloves, which I had given him to hold. I nodded. I could see that he thought I was in one of my stern, far-away moods. Miss Marrakeeter is waiting for you in the carriage, he said. We drove away in silence. I, with my inborn melancholy too sad, sally Marrakeeter too happy to speak. This daily afternoon drive was really part of our turn. A team of four mules driven by a negro will make a sensation even in Regent Street. All London looked at us, and contrasted our impassive beauty, mine mature, too mature and dark, sally's so blonde and youthful, our simple costumes, and the fact that we stayed at an exclusive Mayfair hotel, with the stupendous flourish of our turn at. The renowned sisters' quita, Paquita and Marrakeeter quita, and the renowned mules of the sisters' quita. Two hundred pounds a week at the aquarium, twenty-five thousand francs for one month at the Casino de Paris, twelve thousand five hundred dollars for a tour of fifty performances in the States. Fifteen hundred pesos a night in a special train, deluxe in Argentina and Brazil. I could see the loungers and the drivers talking and pointing as you usual. The gilded loungers in Verre's café got up and watched us through the windows as we passed. This was fame. For nearly twenty years I had been intimate with fame, and with the envy of women and the foolish homage of men. We saw dozens of omnibuses bearing the legend quita. Then we met one which said, Empire Theatre Valdez, the matchless juggler, and sally smiled with pleasure. He's coming to see our turn tonight after his, she remarked, blushing. Valdez, why, I asked, without turning my head. He wants us to sup with him to celebrate our engagement. When do you mean to get married, I asked her shortly. I felt quite calm. I guess you're a tata today, said the pretty thing with a touch of her American sourciness. We haven't studied it out yet. It was only yesterday afternoon. He kissed me for the first time. Then she bent towards me with her characteristic, plaintive, wistful appeal. Say, you aren't vexed, Selena, are you, because of this? Of course he wants me to tour with him after we're married and do a double act. He's got lots of dandy ideas for a double act. But I won't, I won't, Selena, unless you say the word. Now, don't you go and be cross, Selena? I let myself expand generously. My darling girl, I said, glancing at her kindly. You ought to know me better. Of course I'm not cross, and of course you must tour with Valdez. I shall be all right. How do you suppose I managed before I invented you? I smiled like an indulgent mother. Oh, I didn't mean that, she said. I know you're frightfully clever. I'm nothing. I hope you'll be awfully happy. I whispered, squeezing her hand. And don't forget that I introduced him to you. I knew him years before you did. I'm the cause of this bliss. Do you remember that cold morning in Berlin? Oh, well, I should say she exclaimed in ecstasy. When we reached our rooms in the hotel I kissed her warmly. Women do that sort of thing. Then a card was brought to me. George Capy, it said, and in pencil, of the five towns. I shrugged my shoulders. Sally had gone to scribble a note to her Valdez. Show Mr. Capy in, I said, and a natty young man entered half nervousness, half audacity. How did you know I come from the five towns, I questioned him. I am on the evening mail, he said, where they know everything, madame. I was annoyed. Then they know, on the evening mail, that Paquita Quita has never been interviewed and never will be, I said. Besides, he went on, I come from the five towns myself. Bursley, I asked mechanically. Bursley, he ejaculated, then added, you haven't been near old Bosley since—it was true. No, I said hastily, it's many years since I've been in England even. Do they know down there who Quita is? Not they, he replied. I grew reflective. Stars, such as I, have no place of origin. We shoot up out of a void and sink back into a void. I had forgotten Bursley and Bursley folk. Recollections rushed in upon me. I felt beautifully sad. I drew off my gloves and flung my hat on a chair with a movement that would have bewitched a man of the world, but Mr George Capy was unimpressed. I laughed. What's the joke, he inquired? I adored him for his Bursliness. I was just thinking of fat Mrs Cartledge, who used to keep that Fishmonger shop in Old Castle Street opposite Bates. I wonder if she's still there. She is, he said, and fatter than ever. She's getting on in years now. I broke the rule of a lifetime and let him interview me. Tell them I'm thirty-seven. I said, yes, I mean it. Tell them. And then, for another tit-bit, I explained to him how I had discovered Sally at Costrom Beals in New York five years ago, and made her my sister for stage purposes, because I was lonely and liked her American simplicity and twang. He departed full of tea and satisfaction. It was our last night at the Aquarium. The place was crowned. The houses where I performed were always crowned. Our turn was in three parts and lasted half an hour. The first part was a skirt dance in full afternoon dress. Donce de moderne idée, I called it. The second was a double horizontal bar act. The third was the famous act of the red and blue ropes in full evening dress. It was ten forty-five when we climbed the silk ladders for the third part. High up in the roof separated from each other by nearly the length of the great hall, Sally and I stood on two little platforms. I held the ends of the red and the blue ropes. I had to let the blue ropes swing across the hall to her. She would seize it and, clutching its swoop like the ball of an enormous pendulum, from her platform to mine. But would she? I should then swing on the red rope to the platform she had left. Then the band would stop for the thrilling moment and the lights would be lowered. Each lighting and holding a powerful electric hand light, one red, one blue. We should signal the drummer and plunge simultaneously into space, flash past each other in mid-flight, exchanging the lights as we passed. This was the trick and saw two opposite platforms again, amid frenzied applause. There were no nets. That was what ought to occur. I stood bowing to the floor of tiny upturned heads, and jerking the ropes a little. Then I let Sally's rope go with a push, and it dropped away from me, and in a few seconds she had it safe in her strong hand. She was taller than me, with a fuller figure, yet she looked quite small on her distant platform. All the evening I had been thinking of fat old Mrs. Cartledge, messing and slopping among cod and halibut on white tiles. I could not get Bursley and my silly infancy out of my head. I followed my feverish career from the age of fifteen, when that strange something in me which makes an artist had first driven me forth to conquer two continents. I thought of all the golden loves I had scorned, and my own love which had been ignored, unnoticed, but which still obstinately burned. I glanced downwards and described Valdez precisely where Sally had said he would be. Valdez, what a fool you were, and I hated a fool. I am one of those who can love and hate, who can love and despise, who can love and loathe the same object in the same moment. Then I signalled to Sally to plunge, and my eyes filled with tears, for you see, somehow in some senseless, sentimental way, the thought of fat Mrs. Cartledge and my silly infancy had forced me to send Sally the red rope, not the blue one. We exchanged ropes on alternate nights, but this was her night for the blue one. She swung over a lighting accurately at my side with that exquisite outward curve of the spine which had originally attracted me to her. You sent me the red one, she said to me, after she had acknowledged the applause. Yes, I said, never mind, stick to it, now you've got it. Here's the red light. Have you seen Valdez? She nodded. I took the blue light and clutched the blue rope. Instead of murder, suicide, since it must be one or the other. And why not? Indeed, I censured myself in that second for having meant to kill Sally. Not because I was ashamed of the sin, but because the revenge would have been so pitiful and weak. If Valdez the matchless was capable of passing me over and kneeling to the pretty thing, I stood ready. The world was to lose that fineness, that distinction, that originality, that disturbing subtlety which constituted paquita-quita. I plunged. I was on the other platform. The rope had held. Then I remembered nothing of the flight except that I had passed near the upturned, pleasant face of Valdez. The band stopped. The lights of the hall were lowered. All was dark. I switched on my dazzling blue light. Sally switched on her red one. I stood ready. The rope could not possibly endure a second strain. I waved to Sally and signalled to the conductor. The world was to lose paquita. The drum began its formidable roll. Wur! I plunged and saw the red star rushing towards me. I snatched it and soared upwards. The blue rope seemed to tremble. As I came near the platform at decreasing speed, it seemed to stretch like elastic. It broke. The platform jumped up suddenly over my head, but I caught at the silk ladder. I was saved. There was a fearful silence, and then the appalling shock of hysterical applause from seven thousand throats. I slid down the ladder, ran across the stage into my dressing room for a cloak, out again, into the street. In two days I was in Budapest. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of Tales of the Five Towns This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Clifton. Tales of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett. Chapter 11 Nocturne at the Majestic Chapter 1 In the daily strenuous life of a great hotel, there are periods during which its bewildering activity is slackened, and the vast organism seems to be under the influence of an opiate. Such period recurs after dinner when the guests are preoccupied by the mysterious process of digestion in the drawing rooms or smoking rooms or in the stalls of a theatre. On the evening of this nocturne, the well-known circular entrance hall of the Majestic, with its tessellated pavement, its malachite pillars, its Persian rugs, its lounges, and its renowned stuffed bears at the foot of the grand stairway, was for the moment deserted, saved by the head hall porter and the head night porter and the girl in the bureau. It was a quarter to nine, and the head hall porter was abdicating his begoda to the head night porter and telling him the necessary secrets of the day. These two lords, before whom the motley panorama of human existence was continually being enrolled, held a portentous confabulation night and morning. They had no illusions, they knew life. Shakespeare himself might have listened to them with advantage. The girl in the bureau, like a beautiful and languishing animal in its cage, leaned against her window and looked between two pillars at the magnificent lords. She was too far off to catch their talk, and indeed she watched them absently in a reverie induced by the sweet melancholy of the summer twilight, like the torpedo of the hour and by the prospect of the next day which was her day off. The livered functionaries ignored her, probably scorned her as a mere pretty little morsel. Nevertheless she was the centre of energy, not they. If money were payable, she was the person to receive it. If a customer wanted a room, she would choose it, and the lords had to call her miss. The immense and splendid hotel pulsed round this simple heart, hidden under white blouse. Especially in summer, her presence and the presence of her companions in the bureau, but tonight she was alone, ministered to the satisfaction of male guests, whose cruel but profoundly human instincts found pleasure in the fact that, no matter when they came in from their wanderings, the pretty captives were always there in the bureau, smiling welcome, puzzling stupid little brains and puckering pale brows over enormous ledgers, twittering borrowed for ceaselessness from rosy mouths, and smoothing out seductive toilettes with long, thin hands that were made for ring and bracelet and rudder lines, and not a bit for the pen and the ruler. The pretty little thing despised of the functionaries corresponded almost exactly in appearance to the typical bureau girl. She was moderately tall, she had a good, slim figure, all pleasant curves, flaxen hair and plenty of it, and a dainty, rather expressionless face. The ears and mouth were very small, the eyes large and blue, the nose so-so, the cheeks and forehead of an equal ivory pallor, the chin trifling with a crease under the lower lip, and rich convexities springing out from below the crease. The extremities of the full lips were nearly always drawn up in a smile, mechanical but infallibly attractive. The hair was of an orthodox frizziness. You would have said she was a nice, kind, good-natured girl, flirtatious but correct, well adapted to adorn a dog cart on Sundays. This was Nina, foolish Nina, age twenty-one. In her reverie the entire hotel majestic weighed on her. She had a more than adequate sense of her own solitary importance in the bureau, and stirring obscurely beneath that consciousness were the deep, ineradicable longings of a poor, pretty girl for heaps of money, endless luxury of finery and chocolates, and sentimental silken dalliance. Suddenly a stranger entered the hall. His advent seemed to wake the place out of the trance into which it had fallen. The nocturne had begun. Nina straightened herself and intensified her eternal smile. The two porters became military, and smiled with a special and peculiar urbanity. Several lesser, but still lordly, functionaries appeared among the pillars. A page boy emerged by magic from the region of the chimney-piece, like Mephistopheles in Faust's study, and some guests of both sexes strolled, chattering across the tessellated pavement as they passed from one wing of the hotel to the other. I do, Tom, said the stranger, grasping the hand of the head-hall porter, and nodding to the head-night porter. His voice showed that he was an American, and his demeanour that he was one of those experienced, wealthy and kindly travellers who know the Christian names of all the hall porters in the world, and have the trick of securing their intimacy and fealty. He wore a blue suit and a light grey wide-awake, and his fine moustache was grizzled. In his left hand he carried a brown bag. Nicely, thank you, sir, Tom replied. How are you, sir? Oh, about six and six. Whereupon both porters laughed heartily. Tom escorted him to the bureau, and tried to relieve him of his bag. Inferior lords escorted Tom. I guess I'll keep the grip, said the stranger. Mr. Pank will be around with some more baggage pretty soon. We've expressed the rest onto the steamer. Well, my dear, he went on, turning to Nina. You're a fresh face here. He looked her steadily in the eyes. Yes, I am, she said, conquered instantly. Radiant and triumphant the man brought good humour into every face, like some wonderful combination of the sun and the sea breeze. Give me two bedrooms and a parlour, please, he commanded. First floor, asked Nina prettily. First floor, well, I should say. And on the strand, my dear. She bent over her ledgers, blushing. Send someone to the phone, Tom, and let them put me onto the regency, will you, said the stranger. Yes, sir, Samuels, go and ring up the regency theatre. Quick! Swift departure of a lord. And ask Alphonse to come up to my bedroom in ten minutes from now, the stranger proceeded to Tom. I shall want a dandy supper for fourteen at a quarter after eleven. Yes, sir, no dinner, sir. No, we dined on the pullman. Well, my dear, figured it out yet. Numbers 102, 120, and 107, said Nina. Keys 102, 120, and 107, said Tom. Swift departure of another lord to the pagoda. How much? demanded the stranger. The bedrooms are twenty-five shillings, and the sitting room two guineas. I guess Mr. Pank won't mind that. Hello, Pank, you're here. I'm through. Your numbers 102 or 120, which you fancy. Just go into the phone a minute, and then I'll join you upstairs. Mr. Pank was a younger man, possessing a thin, astute, intellectual face. He walked into the hall with noticeable deliberation. His travelling costume was faultless, but from beneath his straw hat, his black hair sprouted in a somewhat peculiar fashion over his broad forehead. He smiled lazily and shrewdly, and without a word, disappeared into a lift. Two large portmantos accompanied him. Presently, the elder stranger could be heard battling with the obstinate, idiosyncrasies of a London telephone. You haven't registered, Nina called to him in her tremulous, delicate, captivating voice as he came out of the telephone box. He advanced to sign, and, taking a pen and leaning on the front of the bureau, wrote in the visitor's book in a careful, legible hand, Lionel Belmont, New York. Having thus written and still resting on the right elbow, he raised his right hand a little and waved the pen like a delicious menace at Nina. Mr. Pank hasn't registered either, he said slowly, with a charming affectation of solemnity, as though accusing him of being a man. Nina laughed timidly as she pushed his room ticket across the page of the big book. She thought that Mr. Lionel Belmont was perfectly delightful. No, he hasn't, she said, trying also to be arch, but he must. At that moment she happened to glance at the right hand of Mr. Belmont. In the brilliance of the electric light she could see the fair skin of the wrist and forearm within the whiteness of his shirt's sleeve. She stared at what she saw, every muscle tense. I guess you can round up Mr. Pank yourself, my dear, later on, said Lionel Belmont, and turned quickly away, intent on the next thing. He did not notice that her large eyes had grown larger and her pale face paler. In another moment the hall was deserted again. Mr. Belmont had ascended in the lift, Tom had gone to his rest, and the head night-porta was concealed in the pagoda. Nina sank down limply on her stool, her nostrils twitching. She feared she was about to faint, but this final calamity did not occur. She had, nevertheless, experienced the greatest shock of her brief life, and the way of it was thus. Part 2 Nina Malpass was born amid the embers of one of those fiery conjugal dramas which occur with romantic frequency in the provincial towns of the northern Midlands, where industrial conditions are such as to foster an independent spirit among women of the lower class generally, and where by long tradition character is allowed to exploit itself more freely than in the southern parts of our island. Lemuel Malpass was a dashing young commercial traveller with what is known as an agreeable address in Bursley, one of the five towns, Staffordshire. On the strength of his dash he wooed and married the daughter of an hotel keeper in the neighbouring town of Hanbridge. Six months after the wedding, in other words, at the most dangerous period of the cannubial career, Mrs. Malpass father died, and Mrs. Malpass became the absolute mistress of £8,000. Lemuel had carefully foreseen this windfall, and wished to use the money in enterprises of the earthenware trade. Mrs. Malpass, pretty and vivacious, with a self-conceit hardened by the adulation of saloon bars, very decidedly thought otherwise. Her motto was, What's yours is mine, but what's mine's my own? The difference was accentuated. Long mutual resistances were followed by reconciliations, which grew more and more transitory, and at length both recognised that the union, not founded on genuine affection, had been a mistake. Keep your damped brass Lemuel exclaimed one morning, and he went off on a journey and forgot to come back. A curious letter dated from Liverpool, wished his wife happiness, and informed of that, since she was well provided for, he had no scruples about leaving her. Mrs. Malpass was startled at first, but she soon perceived that what Lemuel had done was exactly what the brilliant and enterprising Lemuel might have been expected to do. She jerked up her doll's head and ejaculated, so much the better. A few weeks later she sold the furniture and took rooms in Scarborough, where, amid pleasurable surroundings, she determined to lead the joyous life of a grass widow free of all cares. Then, to her astonishment and disgust, Nina was born. She had not bargained for Nina. She found herself in the tiresome position of a mother whose explanations of her child lacked plausibility. One lodging-housekeeper, to whom she hazarded the statement that Lemuel was in Australia, had sourcely replied, I thought maybe it was the North Pole he was gone to. This decided Mrs. Malpass. She returned suddenly to the five towns, where at least her reputation was secure. Only a week previously Lemuel had learned indirectly that she had left their native district. He determined thence forward to forget her completeness. Mrs. Malpass' prettiness was of the fleeting sort. After Nina's birth she began to get stout and coarse, and the nostalgia of the saloon bar, the coffee room, and the sanded portico overtook her. The tiger at Bursley was, for sale, a respectable commercial hotel, the best in town. She purchased it, wines, omnibus connection and all, and developed into the typical landlady in black silk and gold rings. In the tiger Nina was brought up. She was a pretty child from her earliest years, and received the caresses of all as a matter of course. She went to a good school, studied the piano and learned dancing, and at sixteen did her hair up. She did, as she was told, without fuss, being apparently of a lethargic temperament. She had all the money and all the clothes that her heart could desire. She was happy and, in a quiet way, she deemed herself a rather considerable item in the world. When she was eighteen her mother died miserably of cancer, and it was discovered that the liabilities of Mrs. Malpass' estate exceeded its assets, and the tiger mortgaged up to its value. The creditors were not angry. They attributed the state of affairs to illness and the absence of male control, and good-humidly accepted what they could get. Nonetheless Nina, the child of luxury and sloth, had to start life with several hundreds of pounds less than nothing. Of her father, all trace had been long since lost. A place was found for her, and for over two years she saw the world from the office of a famous hotel in Doncaster. Her lethargy, and an invaluable gift of adapting herself to circumstances, saved her from any acute unhappiness in the Yorkshire town. Instinctively she ceased to remember the tiger and past splendours. Equally if she had married a Duke instead of becoming a bookkeeper, she would have ceased to remember the tiger and past humility. Then, by good or ill fortune, she had the offer of a situation at the Hotel Majestic, Strand, London. The Majestic and the sights thereof woke up the sleeping soul. Before her death Mrs. Malpass had told Nina many things about the vanished Lemuel. Among others the curious detail that he had two small moulds, one hairless the other her suit, close together on the underside of his right wrist. Nina had seen precisely such marks of identification on the right wrist of Mr. Lionel Belmont. She was convinced that Lionel Belmont was her father. There could not be two men in the world so stamped by nature. She perceived that in changing his name he had chosen Lionel because of its similarity to Lemuel. She felt certain too that she had noticed vestiges of the five town's accent beneath his Americanisms. But apart from these reasons she knew by a super-rational instinct that Lionel Belmont was her father. It was not the call of blood, but the positiveness of a woman asserting that a thing is so because she is sure it is so. Part 3 Nina was not of an imaginative disposition. The romance of this extraordinary encounter made no appeal to her. She was a sort of girl that constantly reads novelettes, and yet always with fatigued scorn refers to them as silly. Stupid little Nina was intensely practical at heart. And it was the practical side of her father's reappearance that engaged her bird-like mind. She did not stop to reflect that truth is stranger than fiction. Her tiny heart was not agitated by any ecstatic ponderings upon the wonder and mystery of fate. She did not feel strangely drawn towards Lionel Belmont, nor did she feel that he supplied her something which had always been wanting to her. On the other hand, her pride and Nina was very proud, found much satisfaction in the fact that her father, having turned up, was so fine, handsome, dashing, good-humoured, and wealthy. It was well and excellently well and delicious to have a father like that. The possession of such a father opened up vistas of a future so enticing and glorious that her present career became instantly loathsome to her. It suddenly seemed impossible that she could have tolerated the existence of a hotel clerk for a single week. Her eyes were opened, and she saw, as many women have seen, that luxury was an absolute necessity to her. All her ideas soared with the magic swiftness of the beanstalk. And at the same time she was terribly afraid, unaccountably afraid, to confront Mr. Belmont, and tell him that she was his Nina. He was entirely unaware that he had a Nina. I'm your daughter. I know by your moles. She whispered the words in her tiny heart and felt sure that she could never find courage to say them aloud to that great and important man. The announcement would be too monstrous, incredible, and absurd. People would laugh. He would laugh. And Nina could stand anything better than being laughed at. Even supposing she proved to him his paternity, she thought of the horridness of going to lawyers' offices, he might decline to recognise her. Or he might throw her fifty pounds a year as one throws sixpence to an impotent crossing-sweeper to be rid of her. The United States existed in her mind chiefly as a country of highly remarkable divorce laws. And she thought that Mr. Belmont might have married again. A fashionable and arrogant Mrs. Belmont and a dazzling Miss Belmont, aged possibly eighteen, might arrive, both of them steeped in all conceivable luxury, at any moment. Where would Nina be then with her two-and-eleven Pennsylvania blouse from glaives? Mr. Belmont, accompanied by Alphonse, the head waiter in the Salamange, descended in the lift and crossed the hall to the Portico, where he stood talking for a few seconds. Mr. Belmont turned and, as he conversed with Alphonse, gazed absently in the direction of the bureau. He looked straight through the pretty captive. After all, despite his superficial heartiness, she could be nothing to him, so rich, assertive, and truly important. A handsome was called for him, and he departed. She observed that he was in evening dress now. No, her cause was just, but it was too startling. That was what was the matter with it. Then she told herself she would write to Lionel Belmont. She would write a letter that night. At nine-thirty she was off duty. She went upstairs to her perch in the roof, and sat on her bed for over two hours. Then she came down again to the bureau with some bluish note-paper and envelopes in her hand, and in response to the surprised question of the pink-frocked colleague who had taken her place, she explained that she wanted to write a letter. You do look that bad, Ms. Malpass, said the other girl, who made a speciality of compassion. Do I, said Nina? Yes, you do. What have you got on now, my poor dear? What's that to you? I'll thank you to mind your own business, Ms. Bella Perkins. Usually Nina was not soon ruffled, but that night all her nerves were exasperated and exceedingly sensitive. Oh, said the girl, what price the Duchess of Doncaster, and I was just going to wish you a nice day tomorrow for your holiday, too. Nina seated herself at the table to write the letter. An electric light burned directly over her frizzy head. She wrote a weak but legible and regular backhand. She hated writing letters, partly because she was dubious about her spelling, and partly because of an obscure but irrepressible suspicion that her letters were of necessity silly. She pondered for a long time and then wrote, Dear Mr. Belmont, I venture. She made a new start. Dear sir, I hope you will not think me. And a third attempt. My dear father. No, it was preposterous. It could no more be written than it could be said. The situation was too much for simple Nina. Suddenly the grand circular hall of the majestic was filled with a clamour at once charming and fantastic. There was chattering of musical gay American voices, pattering of elegant feet on the tessellated pavement, the unique, incomparable sound of the froo-froo of many frocks, and, above all, this the rich tones of Mr. Lionel Belmont. Nina looked up and saw her radiant father, the centre of a group of girls, all young, all beautiful, all stylish, all with picture-hats, all self-possessed, all sparkling, doubtless the recipients of their dandy supper. Oh, how insignificant and homicidal Nina felt! Thirteen of you exclaimed Lionel Belmont, pulling his superb moustache. Two to a handsome, I guess I want six-and-a-half Hanson's boy. There was an explosion of delicious laughter, and the page-boy grinned, ran off, and began whistling in the portico like a vexed locomotive. The thirteen fair, shepherded by Lionel Belmont, passed out into the murmurous summer night of the Strand. Cab after cab drove up, and Nina saw that her father, after filling each cab, paid each cabman. In three minutes the dream-like scene was over. Mr. Belmont re-entered the hotel, winked humorously at the occupant of the pagoda, ignored the bureau, and departed to his rooms. Nina ripped her Incoate letters into small pieces, and, with a tart good-night to Miss Bella Perkins, who was closing her ledgers, the hour being close upon twelve-thirty, she passed sedately, stiffly, as though in performance of some of Vestal's ritual, up the Grand Staircase. Turning to the right at the first landing, she traversed a long corridor, which was no part of the route to her cubicle on the ninth floor. This corridor was lighted by glowing sparks, which hung on yellow cords from the central line of the ceiling. Underfoot was a heavy but narrow crimson-patterned carpet, with a strip of polished oak parquet on either side of it. Exactly along the central line of the carpet, Nina tripped, languorously, like an automaton, and, exactly over her head, glittered the line of electric sparks. The corridor and the journey seemed to be interminable, and Nina on some inscrutable and mystic errand. At length, she moved aside from the religious line, went into a service-cabinet, and emerged with a small bunch of pass-keys. Number 107 was Lionel Belmont's sitting-room, number 102 his bedroom was opposite to 107, number 108 another sitting-room was, as Nina knew, unoccupied. She noiselessly let herself in to number 108, closed the door, and stood still. After a minute she switched on the light. These two rooms, numbers 108 and 107, had once communicated, but as space grew precious with the growing success of the majestic, they had been finally separated, and the door between them locked and masked by furniture. By reason of the door Nina could hear Lionel Belmont moving to and fro in number 107. She listened a long time. Then involuntarily she yawned with fatigue. How silly of me to be here, she thought, what good will this do me? She extinguished the light and opened the door to leave. At the same instant the door of number 107, three feet off, opened. She drew back with a start of horror, suppose she had collided with her father on the landing. Timorously she peeped out and saw Lionel Belmont in his shirt sleeves disappear round the corner. He is going to talk with his friend, Mr. Pank, Nina thought, knowing that number 120 lay at some little distance round the corner. Mr. Belmont had left the door of number 107 slightly ajar. An unseen and terrifying force compelled Nina to venture into the corridor, a man to push the door of number 107 wide open. The same force, not at all herself, quite beyond herself, seemed to impel her by the shoulders into the room. As she stood unmistakably within her father's private sitting room, scared, breathing rapidly, inquisitive, she said to herself, I shall hear him coming back and I can run out before he turns the corner of the corridor. And she kept her little pink ears alert. She looked about the softly brilliant room. Such an extravagant triumph of luxurious comfort as 20 years ago would have aroused comment even in Mayfair, but there were scores of similar rooms in the majestic. No one thought twice of them. Her father's dresscoat was thrown arrogantly over a Louis-Cator's chair, and this careless flinging of the expensive shining coat across the gilded chair somehow gave Nina a more intimate appreciation of her father's grandeur and of the great and glorious life he led. She longed to recline indolently in a priceless teagun on the couch by the fireplace and issue orders. She approached the writing table littered with papers, documents, and scores and hundreds. To the left was the brown bag. It was locked and very heavy, she thought. To the right was a pile of telegrams. She picked up one and read, Pank, Grand Hotel Birmingham. Why not Bergle Hotel, simplest, most effective plan and solves all difficulties. Belmont. She read it twice, crunched it in her left hand and picked up another one. Pank, Adelphi Hotel Liverpool. Your objection absurd. See Safe in Bureau majestic. Quite easy, seen with girls second evening. Belmont. The thing flashed blindingly upon her. Her father and Mr. Pank belonged to the swell mob of which she had heard and seen so much at Doncaster. She at once became the excessively knowing and suspicious hotel employee to whom every stranger is a rogue until he has proved the contrary. Had she lived through three St. Ledger weeks for nothing? At the hotel at Doncaster what they didn't know about thieves and sharpers was not knowledge. The landlord kept a loaded revolver in his desk there during the week, and she herself had been provided with a whistle which she was to blow at the slightest sign of her row. She had blown it once and seven policemen had appeared within 30 seconds. The landlord used to tell tales of masterly and huge scandalism that would make Charles peace turn in his grave. And the landlord had ever insisted that no one, no one at all, could always distinguish with certainty between a real gent and a swell mobsman. So her father and Mr. Pank had deceived everyone in the hotel except herself, and they meant to rob the safe in the bureau tomorrow night. Of course Mr. Lionel Belmont was a villain, or he would not have deserted her poor dear mother. It was annoying but indubitable. Even now he was maturing his plans round the corner with that Mr. Pank. Burglars always went about in shirt sleeves. The brown bag contained the tools. The shock was frightful, disastrous, tragic, but it had solved the situation by destroying it. Practically Nina no longer had a father. He had existed for about four hours as a magnificent reality full of possibilities. He now ceased to be recognizable. She was about to pick up a third telegram when a slight noise caused her to turn swiftly. She had forgotten to keep her little pink ears alert. Her father stood in the doorway. He was certainly the victim of some extraordinary emotion. His face worked. He seemed at a loss what to do or say. He seemed pained, confused, even astounded. Simple foolish Nina had upset the balance of his equations. Then he resumed his self-control and came forward into the room with a smile intended to be airy. Meanwhile Nina had not moved. One is inclined to pity the artless and defenseless girl in this midnight jewel of wits with a shrewd, resourceful and unscrupulous man of the world, but one's pity should not be lavished on an undeserving object. Though Nina trembled, she was mistress of herself. She knew just where she was and just how to behave. She was as impregnable as Gibraltar. Well, said Mr. Lionel Belmont, genially gazing at her pose, you do put a snap into it anyway. Into what she was about to inquire, but prudently she held her tongue. Drawing herself up with the gesture of an offended and unapproachable queen, the little thing sailed past him, close past her own father, and so out of the room. Say, she heard him remark, let's straighten this thing out, eh? But she heroically ignored him, thinking the while that, with all his sins, he was attractive enough, she still held the first telegram in her long, thin fingers. So ended the nocturne. Part 4 At five o'clock the next morning, Nina's trifling nose was pressed against the window-pane of her cubicle. In the enormous slate roof of the majestic are three rows of round windows, like portholes. Out of the highest one at the extremity of the left wing, Nina looked. From thence she could see five other vast hotels, and the yard of Charing Cross Station, with three night cabs drawn up to the curb, and a red van of W. H. Smith and son disappearing into the station. The strand was quite empty. It was a strange world of sleep and greyness and disillusion. Within a couple of hundred yards or so of her, thousands of people lay asleep, and they would all soon wake into the disillusion. And the strand would wake, and the first omnibus of all the omnibuses would come along. Never had simple Nina felt so sad and weary. She was determined to give up her father. She was bound to tell the manager of her discovery, for Nina was an honest servant, and she was peaked in her honesty. No one should know that Lionel Belmont was her father. She saw before her the task of forgetting him, and forgetting the rich dreams of which he had been the origin. She was once more a bookkeeper with no prospects. At eight she saw the manager in the managerial room. Mr. Rubin was a young Jew, aged about 34, with a cold but indestructibly polite manner. He was a great man, and he knew it. He had almost invented the majestic. She told him her news. It was impossible for foolish Nina to conceal her righteousness and her sense of her importance. Whom did you say, Miss Malpass? asked Mr. Rubin. Mr. Lionel Belmont, at least that's what he calls himself. Calls himself Miss Malpass? Here's one of the telegrams. Mr. Rubin read it. Looked at little Nina, and smiled. He never laughed. Is it possible, Miss Malpass, said he, that you don't know who Mr. Belmont and Mr. Pank are? And then, as she shook her head, he continued in his impassive, precise way. Mr. Belmont is one of the principal theatrical managers in the United States. Mr. Pank is one of the principal playwrights in the United States. Mr. Pank's melodrama, Nebraska, is now being played at the Regency by Mr. Belmont's own American company. Another of Mr. Belmont's companies starts shortly for a tour in the provinces with the musical comedy The Dolmenico Doll. I believe that Mr. Pank and Mr. Belmont are now writing a new melodrama. And as they have both been travelling, but not together, I expect that these telegrams relate to that melodrama. Did you suppose that safe burglars wire their plans to each other like this? He waved the telegram with a gesture of fatigue. Silly, ruined Nina, made no answer. Do you ever read the papers, the telegraph or the mail, Ms. Malpass? No, sir. You ought to, then you wouldn't be so ignorant and silly. A hotel clerk can't know too much. And, by the way, what were you doing in Mr. Belmont's room last night when you found these wonderful telegrams? I went there to... Don't cry, please. It won't help you. Don't cry, please. It won't help you. You must leave here today. You've been here three weeks, I think. I'll tell Mr. Smith to pay you your month's wages. You don't know enough for the majestic Ms. Malpass, or perhaps you know too much. I'm sorry, I had thought you would suit us. Keep straight, that's all I have to say to you. Go back to Doncaster or wherever it is you came from. Leave before five o'clock. That'll do. With a godlike air Mr. Ruben swung round his office chair and faced his desk. He tried not to perceive that there was a mysterious quality about this case which he had not quite understood. Nina tripped piteously out. In the whole of London Nina had one acquaintance. And an hour or so later after drinking some tea she set forth to visit this acquaintance. The weight of her own foolishness, fatuity, silliness, and ignorance was heavy upon her. And moreover she had been told that Mr. Lionel Belmont had already departed back to America, his luggage being marked for the American transport line. She was primly walking the superlative of the miserable past the facade of the hotel when someone sprang out of a cab and spoke to her. And it was Mr. Lionel Belmont. Get right into this handsome man's room. Get into this handsome Miss Malpass, he said kindly, and I guess we'll talk it out. Talk what out, she thought, but she got in. Marble arch and go up Regent Street and don't hurry, said Mr. Belmont to the cab man. How did he know my name, she asked herself. A handsome's the most private place in London, he said, after a pause. It certainly did seem to her very cosy and private, and her nearness to one of the principal theatrical managers in America was almost startling. Her white frock with the black velvet decorations touched his gray suit. Now, he said, I do wish you'd tell me why you were in my parlor last night, honest. What for, she parroted to gain time. Should she begin to disclose her identity? Because—well, because—oh, look here, my girl, I want to be on very peculiar terms with you. I want to straighten out everything. You'll be sort of struck, but I'll be bound to tell you I'm your father. Now, don't faint or anything. Oh, I knew that, she gasped. I saw the moles on your wrist when you were registering. Mother told me about them. Oh, if I had only known you knew. They looked at one another. It was only the day before yesterday I found out I possessed such a thing as a daughter. I had a kind of fancy to go round to the old spot. This notion of me having a daughter struck me considerable, and I concluded to Tracer and size her up at once. Nina was bound to smile. So your poor mother's been dead three years. Yes, said Nina. Ah, don't let us talk about that. I feel I can't say just the right thing. And so you knew me by those pips? He pulled up his right sleeve. Was that why you came up to my parlor? Nina nodded, and Lionel Belmont sighed with relief. Why didn't you tell me at once, my dear, who you were? I didn't dare, she smiled. I was afraid I thought you wouldn't. Listen, he said, I've wanted someone like you for years, years, and years. I've got no one to look after. Then why didn't you tell me at once who you were? She questioned with adorable pertness. Oh, he laughed. How could I plump like that when I saw you first in the bureau the stricken image of your mother at your age? I was nearly down. But I came up all right, didn't I, my dear? I acted it out well, didn't I? The handsome was rolling through Hyde Park, and the sunshiney hour was 11th in June. Nina looked forth on the gay and brilliant scene. Rhododendrons, duchesses, horses, dandies, the incomparable wealth and splendour of the capital. She took a long breath, and began to be happy for the rest of her life. She felt that despite her plain frock she was in this picture. Her father had told her that his income was rising on a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and he would thank her to spend it. Her father had told her, when she had confessed the scene with Mr. Reuben and what led to it, that she had grit, and that the mistake was excusable, and that a girl as pretty as she was didn't want to be as fly as Mr. Reuben has said. Her father had told her that he was proud of her, and he had not been so rude as to laugh at her blunder. She felt that she was about to enter upon the true and only vocation of a dainty little morsel, namely to spend money earned by other people. She thought less homicidally now of the thirteen chorus girls of the previous night. Say, said her father, I sail this afternoon for New York, Nina. They said you'd gone at the hotel. Only my baggage, the Mini Ha Ha clears at five, I guess I want you to come along too. On the voyage we'll get acquainted and tell each other things. Suppose I say I won't. She spoke despotically as the pampered darling should. Then I'll wait for the next boat, but it'll be awkward. Then I'll come, but I've got no things. He pushed up the trap door. Driver, Bond Street, and get on to yourself, for goodness sake, hurry. You told me not to hurry, grumbled the cabbie. And now I tell you to hustle, see. Shall you want me to call myself Belmont? Nina asked. I chose it because it was a fine ten-horsepower name twenty years ago, said her father. And she murmured that she liked the name very much. As Lionel Belmont the Magnificent paid the cabman, and Nina walked across the pavement into one of the most famous repositories of expensive frippery in the world, she thrilled with the profoundest pleasure her tiny soul was capable of. Foolish, simple Nina had achieved the Naples Ultra of her languorous dreams. Part 1 What did you say your name was? asked Otto, the famous concert manager. Clara Toft That won't do, he said, roughly. My real proper name is Clarice, she added, blushing, but that's better, that's better. His large, dark face smiled carelessly. Clarice, and stick an E onto Toft. Clarice Toft Looks like either French or German then. I'll send you the date, it'll be the second week in September. And you can come round to the theatre and try the piano. Bekstein And what do you think I'd better play, Mr Otto? You must play what you have just played, of course. Tchaikovsky's all the rage just now. Your left hand's very weak, especially in the last movement. You've got to make more noise at my concerts. And see here, Miss Toft, don't you go and make a fool of me. I believe you have a great future, and I'm backing my opinion. Don't you go and make a fool of me. I shall play my very best, she smiled nervously. I'm awfully obliged to you, Mr Otto. Well, he said, you ought to be. At the age of fifteen, her father, an earthenware manufacturer, and the flamboyant alderman of Turnhill in the Five Towns, had let her depart to London to the Royal College of Music. Thence, at nineteen, she had proceeded to the Concertatoire of Liège. At twenty-two, she could play the great Concertpieces, Lists, Rhapsodies, Engroirs, Chopin's Balade, Opus 47, Beethoven's Opus 111, etc., in concert style, and she was the wonder of the Five Towns when she visited Turnhill. But in London she had obtained neither engagements nor pupils. She had never believed in herself. She knew of dozens of pianists whom she deemed more brilliant than little pretty modest Clara Taft. And after her father's death, and the not surprising revelation of his true financial condition, she settled with her faded, captures mother in Turnhill as a teacher of the Piano Forte, and did nicely. Then, when she was twenty-six, and content in provincialism, she had met, during an August holiday, and did know, her old fellow pupil, Albert Barbellion, who was conducting the Pia Concerts. Barbellion had asked her to play at a soiree musicale, which she gave one night in the ballroom of his hotel, and she had performed Tchaikovtka's immense and lurid Slavonic sonata. And the unparalleled Otto, renowned throughout the British Empire for Otto's Bohemian Autumn Nightly Concerts at Covent Garden Theatre, had happened to hear her, and that seldom played sonata for the first time. It was a wondrous chance, Otto's large, picturesque, extemporary way of inviting her to appear at his promenade concerts reminded her of her father. Part 2 In the bleak three-cornered artist's room, she could faintly hear the descending impetuous velocities of the ride of the Valkyries. She was waiting in her new yellow dress, waiting painfully. Otto rushed in a glass in his hand. You all right, he questioned sharply? Oh yes, she said, getting up from the cane chair. Let me see you stand on one leg, he said, and then, because she hesitated, go on, quick, stand on one leg, it's a good test. So she stood on one leg, foolishly smiling. Here, drink this, he ordered. And she had to drink brandy and soda out of the glass. You're better now, he remarked. And, decidedly, though her throat tingled and she coughed, she felt equal to anything at that moment. A stout, middle-aged woman in a rather shabby opera cloak entered the room. Ah, Cornelia exclaimed Otto grandly. My dear Otto, the woman responded, wrinkling her wonderfully enameled cheeks. Miss Toft, let me introduce you to Madame Lopez. He turned to the newcomer. Keep her calm for me, bright star, will you? Then Otto went and Clarice was left alone with the world-famous operatic soprano, who was advertised to sing that night the shadow song from Dianora. Where did he pick you up, my dear? The decayed diva inquired maternally. Clarice briefly explained. You aren't paying him anything, are you? Oh no, said Clarice, shocked. But I get no fee this time. Of course not, my dear. The Lopez cut her short. It's all right so long as you aren't paying him anything to let you go on. Now run along. Clarice's heart stopped. The call-boy with his cockney twang had pronounced her name. She moved forward and, by dint of following the call-boy, at length reached the stage. Applause, good-natured applause, seemed to roll towards her from the uttermost parts of the vast auditorium. She realized with a start that this applause was exclusively for her. She sat down to the piano, and there ensued a death-like silence, a silence broken only by the striking of matches and the tinkle of the imboured fountain in front of the stage. She had a consciousness, rather than a vision, of a floor of thousands of upturned faces below her, and tear upon tear of faces rising above her and receding to the illimitable dark distances of the gallery. She heard a door bang, and perceived that some members of the orchestra were creeping quietly out at the back. Then she plunged dizzy into the sonata, as into a heaving and profound sea. The huge concert piano resounded under the onslaught of her broad hands. When she had played ten bars, she knew with an absolute conviction that she would do justice to her talent. She could see, as it were, the entire sonata stretched out in detail before her, like a road over which she had to travel. At the end of the first movement, the clapping in heartened her. She smiled confidently at the conductor, who, unemployed during her number, sat on a chair and his desk. Before recommencing, she gazed boldly at the house, and certain placards, smoking-permitted, emergency exit, ices and fancy dress balls, were fixed forever on the retina of her eye. At the end of the second movement, there were more applause, and the conductor tapped appreciation with his stick against the pillar of his desk. The leader of the listless orchestra also tapped with his fiddle-bow and nodded. It seemed to her now that she more and more dominated the piano, and that she rendered the great finale with masterful and fierce assurance. She was pleased with herself as she banged the last massive chord. And the applause, the clapping, the hammering of sticks astounded her, staggered her. She might have died of happiness while she bowed and bowed again. She ran off the stage triumphant, and the applause seemed to assail her little figure from all quarters and overwhelm it. As she stood waiting, concealed, behind a group of palms, it suddenly occurred to her that, after all, she had underestimated herself. She saw her rosy future as the spoiled darling of continental capitals. The hail of clapping persisted, and the apparition of Otto violently waved her to return to the stage. She returned, bowed her passionate exaltation with burning face and trembling knees, and retired. The clapping continued. Yes, she would be compelled to grant an encore, to grant one. She would grant it like a honeyed but imperious queen. Suddenly she heard the warning tap of the conductor's baton. The applause was hushed as though by a charm, and the orchestra broke into the overture to zamper. She could not understand. She could not think. As she tripped tragically to the artist's room in her new yellow dress, she said to herself that the conductor must have made some mistake, and that — Very nice my dear, said the Lopes, kindly to her. You've got quite a call. Quite a call. She waited for Otto to come and talk to her. At length the Lopez was summoned, and Clarice followed to listen to her. And when the Lopez had soared with strong practice flight through the brilliant intricacy of the Chateau Song, Clarice became aware what real applause sounded like from the stage. It shook the stage as the old favorite of two generations, wearing her set smile, waddled back to the debutante. Horses of voices hoarsely shouted, Encore! and Last Rose of Summer! And with a proud sigh the Lopez went on again, bowing. Clarice saw nothing more of Otto, who doubtless had other birds to snare. The next day only three daily papers mentioned the concert at all, in fact Otto expected press notices but once a week. All three papers praised the matchless Lopez in her Chateau Song. One referred to Clarice as talented, another called her well-intentioned, the third merely said that she had played. The short dream of artistic ascendancy lay in fragments around her. She was a sensible girl, and stamped those iridescent fragments into dust. Part 3 The Staffordshire signal contained the following advertisement. Miss Clara Toft, solo pianist of the Autumn Concerts London, will resume lessons on the first Proximo at List House Turnhill, Terms on Application. At 30, Clarice married James Silito, the piano forte dealer in Market Square, Turnhill, and captures old Mrs Toft, formed part of the new household. At 34, Clarice possessed a little girl and two little boys, twins. Silito was a money-maker, and she no longer gave lessons. Happy? Perhaps not unhappy.