 29 There is no smoke in the chimney, and the rain beats on the floor. There is no glass in the window. There is no wood in the door. The heather grows behind the house and the sand lies before. No hand hath trained the ivy. The walls are gray and bare. The boats upon the sea sail by, nor ever tarry there. No beast of the field comes nigh nor any bird of the air. Mary Coleridge It was black dark inside the house, instead of the white darkness outside. Knocking Annette carefully against pieces of furniture, Roger guided her down a narrow passage into what felt like a room. Near the ceiling were two bars of white where the fog looked in over the tops of the shutters. He struck another match, and a little chamber revealed itself with faded carpet and a long mirror. But no sooner was it seen than it was gone. "'Did you see that chair near you?' said Roger. "'I haven't many matches left.' "'There's a candle on the mantelpiece,' she said. Roger was amazed at Annette's cleverness. He had not seen it himself, but she had. He exalted in the thought. He lit it, and the poor little tall drawing-room came reluctantly into view, with its tarnished mirror from which the quicksilver had ebbed, and its flowered wallpaper over which the damp had scrawled its own irregular patterns. The furniture was of the kind that expresses only one idea, and that a bad one. The foolish sofa, with a walnut backbone showing through a slit in its chint's cover, had a humped excrescence at one end like an uneasy chair, and the other four chairs had civilly imitated this hump and sunk their individuality, if they ever had any, to be a walnut-sweet. At last frontage Chiffonnier had done its horrid best to be in keeping with the sweet. On the walls were a few prints of race-horses stretched out towards a winning-post, and steel engravings of the Emperor of the French in an order, and the Empress Eugénie, all smiles and ringlets served as pendants to two engravings of stags by Lancia. Annette took off Roger's coat and laid it on a chair. "'Someone has been very unhappy here,' she said, below her breath. Roger did not hear her. He was drawing together the litter of waste paper in the grate, and then, careful man, having ascertained with the poker that the register was open, he set a light to it. The dancing, garish, fire-light made the sense of desolation acute. "'Who lived here?' said Annette. Roger hesitated a moment and then said, "'A Mrs. Dean. Was she very old?' "'Not very, not more than twenty-seven. And is she dead?' Roger put some more paper on the fire and held it down with the poker. "'No, she's left her child died here a month ago.' "'Poor soul. Her only child?' "'Yes. And her husband, is he dead too?' Roger thought for a moment and then said slowly, "'As good as dead.'" He looked round the room and added, "'Dick Manvers lent her the house. It used to be the agents, but no one has lived in it since I can remember. It has always been to let furnished, but no one ever took it. People seem to think it is rather out of the way. The rollicking, busy flame died down and left them in the candle-light once more. But after a few moments the ghostly pallor above the shutters deepened. Roger went to them and opened them. They fell back creaking, revealing a tall French window. The fog was eddying past, showing the tops of the lumps of furs, and then hiding them anew. He gazed intently at the drifting waves of mist. "'The wind is shifting,' he said. "'It will blow from the land directly, and then the roguer will go. I shall run down to the farm and bring the dog-cart up here.' After all, he should have to propose in the dog-cart. Men must have proposed and been accepted in dog-carts before now. Anyhow, he could not say anything in this house when he remembered who had lived here, and the recent tragedy enacted within its walls. "'You must put on your coat again,' she said, bringing it to him. "'And main time come with you. Wouldn't that be better than bringing the cart up here?' "'Oh, Mary-nose can see anywhere. Besides, there's the Ford. I doubt you could get over it dry shot, and I shall have to go a couple of miles round. And you've had walking enough. I shan't be gone more than half an hour. I dare say by then the sun will be full out.' "'I would rather come with you.' "'You're not afraid to stay here, are you? There's nothing to hurt you in that candle or last an hour. I don't believe there's even a live mouse in the place.' "'I'm sure there isn't. Everything here is dead and broken-hearted. I'd rather go with you.' Roger's face became the face of a husband, obscenously personified. She did not realise that there had been in danger, that he'd felt anxiety for her, and that he had no intention of being so acutely uncomfortable again if he could help it. "'You'll stay quietly here,' he said doggedly. This is the most comfortable chair.' She sat down meekly in it at once, and smiled at him, not displeased at being ragooned. He smiled back, and was gone. She heard him go cautiously along the passage, and open and shut the front door. The light was increasing steadily, and a few minutes after he had left the house the sun came paddedly out, and a faint breeze stirred the tops of the fir trees. Perhaps this was the land breeze of which she had spoken. A sense of irksomeness and restlessness laid hold on her. She turned from the window and wandered into the little entrance hall, and unbarred a shutter to see if Roger were coming back. But no one was in sight on the long, straight, moss-rutted road that led to the house. She peered into the empty kitchen, and then seeing a band of sunlight on the staircase went up it. Perhaps she could see Roger from one of the upper windows. But there were no shutters on them. She glanced into one after another of that little cluster of dishevelled bedrooms, with crumpled newspapers left over from a hurried packing still strewing the floors. The furniture was massive, early Victorian, not uncomfortable, but daftly ugly. There was one fair-sized south bedroom, and on the windowsill was a young starling with outspread grimy wings. Annette ran to open the window. But as she did so, she saw that it was dead. She had died beating against the glass, trying to get out into the sunshine, after making black smurches on the walls and ceiling. Everything in this one room was gay and pretty. The curtains and bed hangings were of rosebud chints. Perhaps the same hand that had made them had collected from the other rooms the old swinging mirror with brass rosettes, and the chest of drawers with drop handles, and the quaint painted chairs. Annette saw the crib in the corner. This room had been the nursery. It was here, no doubt, that Mrs. Dean had watched her child die. Some of the anguish of the mother seemed to linger in the sunny room with its rose-colored curtains, and something, alas, more terrible than grief, had left its traces there. A devastating hand, a fierce, destructive anger, had been at work. Little pictures had evidently been torn down from the wall and flung into the far. The far place was choked high with half-burned debris, small shoes, pinafores, and toys. A bit of a child's linen picture book had declined to burn, and hung four-laundry through the bars, showing a comic picture of Mrs. Pig driving home from market. A green wheel had become unfastened, and had rolled into the middle of the room when the wooden horse and cart were thrusted to the far. She must have cried all the time, said Annette to herself, and she shivered. She remembered her own mad impulse of destruction. It's no use being angry, she whispered to the empty walls. No use, no use. The photograph frames had evidently been swept into the far too, all but one, for there was broken glass in the fender and on the floor. But one framed photograph stood on the mantelpiece, the man in it, smiling and debonair, looking gaily out at Annette and the world in general. Under it was written in a large, clear hand, Daddy. It was Dick Leggett. But younger and handsomer than Annette had ever known him. She looked along at it, slowly realising that this, then, had been the home of Dick's mistress, the Mary of whom he had spoken, and her child, to whom he had done a tardy justice in his will, the will she had helped him to make. The child, Dick's child, was dead. It empty crib was in the corner. Its memorials are perished with it. All that was left now of that little home was Dick's faded photograph, smiling in its frame, purposely vindictively left, when all the others had been destroyed. Mary Dean had not cared to take it with her when she cut herself a drift from her past. She had not had the clemency to destroy it with the rest. She left it to smile mockingly across the ruins of the deserted nursery. While Annette stood motionless, the fierce despair of the mother became almost visible to her. The last wild look round the room and at the empty crib. The eyes averted from the smiling face on the mantelpiece, and then the closed door and the lagging, hurrying footfall on the stairs. It's no use being angry, she whispered again. Even Dick knew that. No use, no use. And with pitying hands she took Dick's photograph out of the frame and tore it up small and thrust the pieces among the charred remains of his child's toys. It was all she could do for him. However she had but known Mary Dean, if she could have come to her and put her arms round her and told her that Dick had not been as heartless as she thought, that he had remembered her at the last, and as far as he could had made a later mens for all the evil he had done her. But the child was dead, and Mary Dean herself was gone. Gone with her. She had flung away in anger and despair, as she, Annette, had once flung away. Perhaps there had been no Mrs. Doddart to care for Mary and her hour of need. Annette's heart sank as if a cold hand had been laid upon it. The peaceful radiant faith and joy of a few hours ago—where were they now? In their place, into this close, desolate room with a dead bird on the sill, came an overwhelming fear. Men were cruel, ruthless creatures who did dreadful things to women under the name of love. As at a great distance, far, far away in the depths of childhood, she heard her mother sobbing in the dark. Almost her only recollection of her mother was being waked in the night by that passionate sobbing. The remembrance of her father came next, sordid, good-humoured, mercenary, and she shuddered. No wonder her mother had cried so bitterly. Most behind it followed the sensitive, sensual face of the musician who had offered to train her, and then, sudden and overwhelming, blotting out everything else, came the beautiful young lover whom she cast forth from her heart with passion a year ago. All the agony and despair which she had undergone, then surged back upon her, seemed to rush past her to join forces with the cold desolation lingering in the empty room. Annette hit her face in her hands. She put it all behind her. She had outlived it. But the sudden remembrance of it shook her like a leaf. In that grim procession Dick came last, poor, poor Dick. He had not been wicked, but he had done wicked things. He betrayed and broken faith. He had made as much desolation and anguish as if he had been hard-hearted. Oh, why did women love men? Why did they trust them? Annette stood a long time with her face in her hands. Then she went out and closed the door behind her. The sun was shining bravely, and she longed to get out of this death-shadowed house into the warm, living sunshine. She went back to the drawing-room, her quiet step echoing loudly down the passage, and looked out of the long window. But the outlook was not calculated to lessen her oppression. Close at hand, as she knew, were gracious expanses of sea and sky and gleaming river. But a stone wall surrounded the house, and on the top of it a tall wooden fence had been erected so high that from the ground floor you could not look over it. This wooden fence came up close to the house on every side, so close that there was only just room for the thin furs and a walnut tree to grow within the narrow enclosure, their branches touching the windows. Annette did not know that the wall and the fence and the trees were there to protect the house from the east wind, which in winter swept with arctic ferocity from the sea. In the narrow strip between the fenced wall and the house, Mary Dean had tried to make a little garden. Fane effort. The walnut tree and the furs took all sun from the strip of flower bed against the wall of the house, where a few micromus daisies and snap-dragons hung their heads. She'd trained a rose against the wall, but it clung more dead than alive, its weak shoots slipping down from its careful supports. She made a gravel path beside it and a paced up and down it. A warn and sunk that path was. There was not room for two to go breast in it. One footfall had worn that narrow groove, narrow almost as a sheep-track in the marsh. And now the path was barely visible for the dead leaves of the walnut, falling untimely, which had drifted across it, and had made an eddy over the solitary clump of yellow snap-dragon. Annette drew back the bolt of the window and stepped out. The air, chill with the mist which had silvered everything, was warm compared to the atmosphere of the house. She drew a long breath, and her mind, never accustomed to dwell long upon herself, was instantly absorbed in freeing the snap-dragon from the dead leaves which had invaded it. Two birds were bathing themselves seduously in the only sunny corner at the end of the garden. Annette saw that their bath also was choked with leaves, and when she had released the snap-dragon, she applied her energies to the bird's bath. But she had hardly removed a few leaves from it when she stopped short. It was a day of revelations. The bird's bath was really a lake, a miniature lake with rocks in it, and three tin fishes, rather too large it must be owned to be quite probable, and a tin frog spread out in a swimming attitude, and four ducks all jostling each other in its small expanse. It was a well-stocked lake. Tears rose in Annette's eyes as she explored till farther, lifting the drifted leaves gently, one by one. They covered a doll's garden about a yard square. Someone, not a child, had loved that garden, and have made it for a beloved child. The enclosure with its two-inch fence had no grass in it, but it had winding walks marked with sand and tiny white stones, and it had a little avenue of French lavender which was actually growing, and which led to the stone steps on the top of which the house stood, flanked by shells. It was a wooden house, perhaps originally a box, a rather debased architecture it must be conceded, but it had windows and a green door painted on it and a chimney. On the terrace were two garden seats evidently made out of matchboxes, and outside the fence was a realistic pig-sty with two China pigs in it, and a water-butt, and a real haystack. Close at hand there speckled China cow, and near it was two seated crinkly white lambs. Annette, kneeling by the lake, crying silently, was so absorbed in tentally clearing the dead leaves from the work of art and in setting the cow in its legs again, that she did not hear a step on the path behind her. Roger had come back and was watching her. When she discovered the two lambs sitting facing each other, she seized them up and kissed them sobbing violently. Something in Annette's action vaguely repelled him as he watched her. It was what he would have disfined as French. And though he had swallowed down the French father, he hated all symptoms of him in Annette. He was alien to him to kiss little China lambs. Janey would never have done that. And Janey was the test, the touchstone of all that was becoming in woman. And then all in a moment the tiny wave of repulsion was submerged in the strong current of his whole being towards her, as if some dormant generous emotion had been roused and angered by his petty pinprick opposition to put out its whole strength and brush it away. Don't cry, said Roger Gruffley. But there were tears in his small round eyes as well as in hers. Oh, Roger! said Annette, speaking to him for the first time by his Christian name. Have you seen it, the fishes and the ducks and the pigsty and the little lambs and everything? Roger nodded. He watched that property in course of construction. He might have added that he had provided most of the animals for it. But if he had added that, he would not have been Roger. And she's burnt everything in the nursery, continued Annette, rising and going to him, the tears running down her face, the toys and everything. And she's torn down the little pictures on the wall and broken them and thrown them on the fire. And I think she only left the garden because, poor thing, because she forgot it. Roger did not answer. He took her in his arms and said with gruff tenderness, as if to a child. Don't cry. She leaned against him, and let his arms fold her to him. And as they stood together in silence, their hearts went out to each other, and awe fell upon them. All about them seemed to shake, the silvered furs, the pale sunshine, the melancholy house, the solid earth beneath their feet. You will marry me, won't you, Annette? He said hoarsely. Remembrance rushed back upon her. She drew away from him and looked earnestly at him with tear-dimmed, wistful eyes. The poor woman who had lived here who had worn the little path on which they were standing had loved Dick, but he had not married her. She herself, for one brief hour, had loved someone, but he had noted no thought of marrying her. Was Roger, after all, like other men, would he also cast her aside when he knew all, weigh her in the balance, and find her not good enough to be his wife? There was a loud knocking at the door, and the bell pealed. It echoed through the empty house. Roger started violently. Annette did not move. So absorbed was she that she heard nothing, and continued gazing at him with unfathomable eyes. After one bewildered glance at her, he hurried into the house, and she followed him half dazed. In the hall she found him reading a telegram, while a dismounted groom held a smoking horse at the door. At the gate the dog-cart was waiting, tied to the gate-post. Roger crushed the telegram in his hand and stared out of the window for a long moment. Then he said to Annette, Do you only accept me on this telegram to say her brother Dick is dead? It has been following me about for hours. I must go at once. He turned to the groom. I will take your horse, and you will drive Miss George's back to noise in the dog-cart. The man held the stirrup, and Roger mounted, raised his cap gravely to Annette, turned his horse carefully in the narrow path, and was gone. End of Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Even the longest lane has a turning, though the path trodden by some people is so long and so straight that it seems less like a lane than a permanent way. Time moves imperceptibly at Riff, as imperceptibly as the ribbon among its reeds. To Janie it seemed as if life stood stock still. Nevertheless the slow wheel of the year was turning. The hay was long since in, standing in high ricks in the farmyards, or built up into stacks in lonely fields with a hurl round them to keep off the cattle. The wheat and the clover had been reaped and carried. The fields were bare, waiting for the plough. It was the time of the harvest thanksgiving. Janie had been at work ever since breakfast helping to decorate the church, together with Harry and Miss Black, and her deaf friend Miss Condor, the secretary of the Plain Needlework Guild. Miss Condor's secretarial duties apparently left her wide margins of leisure, which were always at the disposal of Miss Black. Except for the somewhat uninspiring presence of Miss Black and Miss Condor and her ear trumpet, it had all been exactly as it had been ever since Janie could remember. As she stood by the ringer's arch it seemed to her as she'd seen it all a hundred times before. The children coming crowding round her, flexing and ruddy with the hot little poses tied with grass, the boys made as pretty poses as the girls, and Hesketh, chrome from the cradle, limping up the hour with his little thatched stack under his arm, and sailor with his loaf, and the farmer's wives bringing in their heavy baskets of apples and vegetables. Sometimes there is great joy in coming home after long absence and finding all exactly as we left it and as we have pictured it in memory. We resent the displacement of a chair, all the lopping of one of the cedars' bows, and we note the new toolshed with an alien eye. But it is not always joyful. Nay, it can have an element of despair in it to stay at home and never go away, and see the wheel of life slowly turn and turn and return and yet again return, always the same, yet taking every year part of our youth from us. The years must come which will strip from us what we have. Yes, we know that, but life should surely give us something first before it begins to take away. Janie was only five and twenty, and it seemed to her that already the plundering years had come. What little she had was being rested from her, and an immense distaste of fatigue of life invaded her as she made her lily and maiden hair-cross for the font. How often did she made it, as she was making it now? Should she go on forever till she was sixty, making crosses for the font at harvest homes, and putting holly in the windows at Christmas, and doing the reading-desk with prim-roses at Easter? Harry, working beside her, concocting little sheaves out of the great bundle of barley which Roger had sent in the night before, was blissfully happy. He held up each sheaf in turn, and she nodded surprise and approbation. It seemed to her that after all Harry had the best of the bargain, the hard bargain which life drives with some of us. It was all as it had always been. Soon after eleven Miss Amy Blinkett, a little fluttered and self-conscious, appeared as usual, followed up the aisle by a wheel-barrow, in which reposed an enormous vegetable-marrow with, trust in the Lord, blazoned on it in red flannel letters. These maritexes, as the villagers called them, were in great request, not only in riff, but in the adjoining parishes. And it was not an uncommon thing for Miss Amy's Marra to be bespoken after it had served at riff, for succeeding harvest-homes in the neighbourhood. It had been evolved out of her inner consciousness in her romantic youth. Another course of thirty years it had grown from a dazzling novelty to an important asset, and was now an institution. Even the lamentable Mr. Jones, who had set himself against so many riff customs, had never set himself against Miss Amy's Marra. And an Amarin crowd always gathered round it after service to view it reclining on a bed of moss beneath the pulpit. By common consent Miss Amy had always been presented with the largest vegetable-marrow that riff could produce. But this year none adequate for the purpose could be found, and considerable anxiety had been felt on the subject. Mrs. Nichols, who sent in the finest, had to own that even hers was only about fourteen inches long. No bigger nor your foot, as she expressed it to Janey. Fortunately at the last moment Roger obtained one from Sweet Appletree, about the size of a baby, larger than any which had been produced in riff for many years past. That Sweet Appletree could have had one of such majestic proportions when the riff marriage had failed was not a source of unmixed congratulation to riff. It was feared that the Sweet Applers might get cocked up. The suspense had in the meanwhile given Miss Amy a sharp attack of neuralgia, and the fact that the marrow really came up at a time in the wheel-barrow was the result of dauntless and heroic efforts on her part. This splendid contribution was wheeled up the aisle, having paused near the front to receive Janey's tribute of admiration, and then, a few minutes later, to her amazement, she saw it being wheeled down again, Miss Amy walking very erect in dignified distress beside it. With cold asperity, and without according to her second glance, Miss Black had relegated it, actually relegated Miss Amy's marrow to the ringer's arch. The other helpers stopped in their work and gazed at Miss Black, who, unconscious of the doubts of her sanity which had arisen in their minds, continued rearing white flowers against the east window, regardless of the fact that nothing but their black silhouettes were visible to the congregation. At this moment Mr. Black came into the church, so urbane and so determined to show that he was the kind of man who appreciated the spirit in which the humblest offerings were made, that it was some time before Janey could make him aware of the indignity to which Miss Amy's unique work of art had been subjected. But it's a great test, this will not be so obvious at the ringer's arch, he said. It's impossible, of course, but it has been a labour of love, I can see that, and I should be the last man in the world to laugh at it. He had to work through so many sentiments which did him credit, that Janey dispaired of making him understand, of ever getting him to listen to her. Miss Blinkett's marrow is always under the pulpit, she repeated anxiously. No, the ringer's arch is not considered such an important place as the pulpit, the people simply love it, and will be disappointed if they don't see it there as usual. And Miss Blinkett will be deeply hurt. She's hurt now, though she does not share it. At last her words took effect, and Mr. Black was guided to becoming the last man to wound the feelings of one of his parishioners. Greatly to Janey's relief, the marrow was presently seen once more to ascend the aisle, was assisted out of its wheel-barrow by Mr. Black himself, and installed on a bed of moss at the pulpit foot. Miss Black standing coldly aloof during the transaction, while Miss Condor, short-sighted and heavy-footed, walked backward into an arrangement of tomatoes and dahlias in course of construction round the reading-desk. Mr. Black and his sister had had an amicable discussion the evening before, as to the decoration of the church and especially of the pulpit, for this their first harvest thanksgiving at Riff. They both agreed, with the cordiality which had too often been lacking in their conversations of late, that they would make an effort to raise the decoration to a higher artistic level than in the other churches in the neighbourhood, some of which had already celebrated their harvest thanksgivings. Miss Black had held up to scorn the naive attempts of hike and drum, of which her brother had preached the sermon, and he had smiled indulgently, and had agreed with her. But Riff was his first country post, and he had not been aware until he stepped into it of the network of custom which surrounded harvest decoration, typified by Miss Blinkett's vegetable marrow. With admirable good sense he adjusted himself to the occasion, and, shutting his ears to the hissing whispers of his sister, who for the hundredth time begged him not to be weak, gave himself up to helping his parishioners in their own way. This way he soon found closely resembled the way of hike and drum, and presently he was assisting Mrs. Nichols to do, thy will be done, in her own potatoes, backed by white paper roses round the base of the majestic monument of the Wellishams of Swell, with its two ebony elephants, of which Harry always looked with awe and admiration. As he and Janey were tying their bunches of barley to its high-arm railings, a telegram was brought to her. Telegrams were not so common twenty years ago as they are now, and Janey's heart beat. Her mind flew to Roger had he had some accident. She knew he'd gone to noise about the bridge. She opened it and read it, and then looked fixedly at Harry, stretching his hand through the raiding to stroke the elephants and whisper gently to them. She almost hated him at that moment. She folded up the telegram, and sought out Mr. Black, who, hot and tired, and with an ear-week exploring down his neck, was now making a cardboard deus for Sayre's loaf of bread. My brother Dick is dead, she said. I must go home at once. Harry can stay and finish the railings. He knows exactly how to do them, and he's been looking forward to helping for days. Harry looked towards her for approval, and her heart smote her. It was not his fault if his shadowy existence was the occasion of a great injustice. She went up to him and patted his cheek and said, Capital! Capital! What should we do without you, Harry? I'm taking my place, aren't I?" he said, delighted. That's what nurse is always saying. I must assert myself and take my place. End of Chapter 30 Chapter 31 of Not Withstanding by Mary Chumley This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Simon Evers Chapter 31 Remember, Lord, thou didst not make me good, or if thou didst, it was so long ago I have forgotten, and never understood, I humbly think. George MacDonald On a sunny September day Dick, the absentee, was gathered to his father's at Riff. Is there any church in the world as beautiful as the old church of Riff where he was buried? With its wonderful flint-paneled porch, with the charriss, host, and crown carved in stone on each side of the arched doorway as you go in. Beautiful still, in spite of the heavy hand of Cromwell's men, who tore all the dear little saints out of their niches in the great wooden font cover, which mounts richly carved and dimly painted like a spar, made of a hundred tiny, fretted spars to the very roof of the nave, almost touching the figures of the angels leaning without stretch wings from their carved and painted hammer-beams. In spite of all the sacrilege at which it has been the victim, the old font cover with the coloured sunshine falling a slant upon it through the narrow-pitched windows remains a tangle of worn, mysterious splendour. And the same, haggard, full-on beauty rests on the remains of the carved screen with its company of female saints painted one in each panel. Poor saints, savagely obliterated by the same protestant zeal, said that now you can barely spell out their names in semicircle round their heads. Saint Cecilia, Saint Agatha, Saint Osseith. But no desegrating hand was laid on the old oaken benches with their carved finials. Quaint intricate carvings of kings and queens and coft ladies kneeling on tasseled cushions and dogs licking their own backs, outlandish dogs with curly mains and shaved bodies and resetted tails, and hearts crowned and belted with branching antlers larger than their bodies, and knights in armour, and trees with acorns on them so big that each tree had only room for two or three, and the ragged star for the earls of Warwick with the bear. All these were spared seeing they dealt with man and beast and not with god and saint. And by mistake Saint Catherine at her wheel and Saint Margaret and her dragon were overlooked and left intact. Perhaps because the wheel and the dragon were so small that the destroyers did not recognise that the quaint little ladies with their parted hair were saints at all. And there they all are to this day, broken some of them alas, one of them surreptitiously mutilated by Dick as a small boy, but many intact still, worn to a deep black polish by the hands of generation after generation of the sturdy people of Riff taking hold of them as they go into their places. The manvers' monuments and hatchments jostle each other all along the yellow plastered walls, from the mass-relief kneeling figure of the first Roger Manvers, Burgess of Dunwich, to the last owner, John Manvers, the husband of Lady Louisa Manvers. But their predecessors, the Derbens and the D'uffords, had fared ill at the hands of Dowsing and his men, who tore up their brasses with orate pro anima on them, and hacked their popish monuments to pieces, barely leaving the fingers of Afia de Ufford, noses from Fingolas, beside her lord, Nicholas Derban of Valenne. One Elizabethan brass memorial of John de Lapole, drowned at Walberswick, was spared, representing a skeleton, unkindly telling others that as he is we soon shall be, which acid inscription no doubt preserved him. But you must look up to the hammer-beams if you care to see all that is left of the memorials of the Derbens and de Lapole and the D'uffords, where their shields still hang among the carved angels. Dick had not been worthy of his forebears, and it is doubtful whether if he had had any voice in the matter he would have wished to be buried with them. But Roger bought his coffin back to Riff as a matter of course. His death had caused genuine regret among the village people, if to no one else. They had all known him from a boy. There had been a reckless bonhomie about him which had endeared him to his people in a way that Roger, who had to do all the disagreeable things, could not expect. In time past Dick had fought and ferreted and shared the same hunk of cake and drunk out of the same mug with half the village lads of Riff. They had all liked him. And later on in life, if he would not or could not attend to their grievances or spend money on repairs, he always put his hand in his pocket very freely whenever he came across them. Even the local policeman and the bearers decorously waiting at the litch-gate had sown their few boyish wild oats in Dick's delightful company. He was indissolubly associated with that short heyday of delirious joy. He had given them their one gulp from the cup of adventure and escapade. They remembered the taste of it as the hearse with its four plumed black horses came in sight between the poplars along the winding roads from Reubenbridge. Dick had died tragically at thirty-three, and the kindly people of Riff were sorry. Janey and Roger were the only chief mourners, for of the last moment Harry had been alarmed by the black horses and had been left behind under the nurse's charge. They followed the coffin up the aisle and sat together in the squire's seats below the step. Placed behind them, pale and impassive, sitting alone, was Jones, the valet, perhaps the only person who really mourned for Dick. And behind him again was a crowd of neighbours and family friends, and the serried ranks of the farmers and tenants. In the chancel was the choir, every member present except Mrs. Nickles, Dick's foster mother, who was among the tenetry. So the seat next to a net was empty, and a Mr. Sterling down by the font it seemed as if a net were sitting alone near the coffin. Janey sat, unstood, and knelt, very pale behind her long veil, her black-gloved hands pinching tightly at a little prayer-book. She was not thinking of Dick. She'd been momentarily sorry. It is sad to die at thirty-three. It was Roger, she thought of. For already she knew that no will could be found. Roger had told us on his return from Paris two days ago. A sinister suspicion was gradually taking form in her mind that her mother, on our last visit to Dick in Paris, had perhaps obtained possession of his will and had destroyed it in the determination that Harry should succeed. Janey reproached herself for her assumption of her mother's treachery, but the suspicion lurked nevertheless like a shadow at the back of her mind. Was poor Roger to be done out of his inheritance? For by every moral right Halver ought to be his. Was treachery at work on every side of him? Janey looked fixedly at a net. Was she not deceiving him, too? How calm she looked, how pure and how beautiful! Yet she had been the mistress of the man lying in his coffin between them. Janey's brain seemed to shake. It could not be, but so it was. She shut her eyes and prayed for Roger and Dick and a net. It was all she could do. Roger, beside her, kept his eyes fixed on a carved knob in front of him. He knew he must not look round, though he was anxious to know whether Cox and a sailor had seated the people properly. His mind was as full of detail as a hive is full of bees. He was tarred out, and he had earache, but he hardly noticed it. He had laboured unremittingly at the funeral. It was the last thing he could do for Dick, whom he had once been fond of, whom he had known better than anyone, for whom he had worked so ruthfully and faithfully, who had caused him so many hours of exasperation, and who had failed and frustrated him at every turn in his work for the estate. He had arranged everything himself, the distant tenants' meals, the putting up of their horses. He had chosen the bearers and had seen the gloves and hat-bands distributed, and the church hung with black. His mind travelled over all the arrangements, and he did not think anything had been forgotten. And all the time at the back of his mind also was the thought that no will was forthcoming, even when he followed the service. Dick might have left half of it to me. We bought nothing into the world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Poor old Dick! I daresay he meant to, but he was too casual, and had a bee in his bonnet. But if he had done nothing else, he ought to have made some provision for Mary Dean and his child. He could not tell Molly would die before him. For a thousand years in my sight are butters yesterday. Seeing Harry is what he is, and Jane is to have noise. Dick might have remembered me. I would have to work the estate for Harry now, I suppose. Doesn't seem quite fair, does it? O, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Never heard black read the service better. He'll be a bishop some day. And now that Dick has forgotten me, how on earth am I ever to marry? Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. That's the truest text of the whole lot. Roger looked at Annette, and then fixed his eyes once more on the carved finial of the old oaken bench on which he was sitting, where his uncle had sat before him, and where he could just remember seeing his grandfather sit in a blue frock coat thirty years ago. He looked for the hundredth time at the ragged star for the warrics carved above the bear, the poor bear which had lost its ears, if ever it had any. His hand, in its split glove, closed convulsively on the bear's head. How was he going to marry Annette? Annette's eyes rested on the flower-covered coffin in front of her, but she did not see it. She was back in the past. She was kneeling by Dick's bed with her cheek against the pillow, on his broken voice whispered, The wind is coming again, and I am going with it. The kind wind had taken the poor leaf at last, the drifting shredded leaf. And then she felt Roger look at her, and other thoughts suddenly surged up. Was it possible? Was it possible that Dick might part her and Roger? Their eyes met for an instant across the coffin. Already Roger looked remote, as if, like Dick, he was sinking into the past. She felt a light touch on her hand. The choir had risen for the anthem. Chapter 32 Of Not Withstanding by Mary Chumley This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Simon Evers. C'est possible, Rumaillard, viens de la ville. The sound of the anthem came faint and sweet over the ivyed wall into the garden of the dire house, where Harry was standing alone under the cedar in his black clothes, his hands behind his back, mournfully contemplating the little mud hut which he and Tommy had made for the hedgehog which lived in the garden. His ally, Tommy, who was a member of the choir, was absent. So was the hedgehog. It was not sitting in its own house looking out of the door, as it ought to have been, and as Tommy had said it would. Harry had shed tears because the hedgehog did not appreciate its house. That prickly recluse had shown such unwillingness to intrude, to force his society on the other possible inmates, indeed, although conscious of Teddy Freshman from behind, had offered such determined a bull-like resistance at the front door that a large crack had appeared in the wall. Harry heaved a deep sigh, and then slowly got out his marbles. Marbles remain when hedgehogs pass away. Presently the nurse, who had been watching him from the window, came swiftly from the house and sat down near him, on the round a seat under the cedar. Must I stop? he said, docilely at once, smiling at her. No, no, she said, trying to smile back at him. Go on, but don't make a noise. He gravely resumed his game, and she gazed at him intently, as if she had never seen him before, looking herself how worn and haggard in the soft September sunshine. It was one of those gracious days when the world seemed steeped in peace, when bitterness and unrest and self-seeking fold their tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away. No breath stirred. High in the windless spaces above the elms the rooks were circling and coying. The unwispering trees laid cool, transparent shadows across the lawns. All was still. So still that even the hedgehog, that reluctant householder, came slowly out of a clump of dailies, and hunched himself on the sun-warmed grass. The woman on the bench saw him, but she did not point him out to Harry. Why should not the hedgehog also have his hour of peace? And presently, very pure and clear, came Annette's voice. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun lighten them, nor any heat. The rift choir knew only two anthems. The nurse leaned her tired head in its speckless little cap against the trunk of the cedar, and the tears welled up into her eyes. She was tired. Oh, so tired of hungering and thirsting and the sun and the dust. So tired of the trampling struggle and turmoil of life have been pushed from pillar to post, from patient to patient. For seventeen grinding years she had earned her bread in the House of Strangers, and she was sick to death of it. And she had been handsome once, gay and self-confident once, innocent once. But she had been determined that her mother should never know want. And she had never known it. Never known either the straits to which her daughter had been reduced to keep that tiny home together. That was all over now. Her mother was dead. And her lover, if so he could be called, had passed out of her life. And as she sat on the bench she told herself for the hundredth time that there was no one to fight for her but herself. She fell old and worn out and ashamed. And the tears fell. She had not been like this, cunning and self-seeking to start with. Life had made her so. She shut her eyes so that she might not see that graceful, pathetic creature with its beautiful eyes fixed on the marbles of whom she dared to make her cat's paw. But presently she felt a soft cheek pressed to hers and an arm round her neck. Don't cry, nursey, Harry said gently. Brother Dick has gone to heaven. And he kissed her as a child might kiss its mother. She winced at his touch and then pushed back her hair, still thick and wavy, with the gray just beginning to show in it, and returned his kiss. And as he stood before her she took his hands and held them tightly, her miserable eyes fixed on him. A silent sob shook her, and then she said, You know where God lives, Harry? Harry disengaged one hand and pointed to the sky above him. He was not often sure of giving the right answer, but he had a happy confidence that this was correct. Yes, she went on, God lives in the sky and looks down on us. He's looking at us now. Harry glanced politely up at the heavens and then back at his companion. He's looking at us now. He hears what I say. I'm not one that believes much in promises nobody's ever kept any to me. But I call him to witness that what I have taken upon myself I will perform, that I will do my duty by you, and I will be good to you always and be your best friend whatever may happen. So help me, God. CHAPTER XXXIII But I wait in a horror of strangeness, a tool on his workshop floor, Wanted the butt and banished his hand for evermore. W. E. Henley In the sick room all was still. Lady Louisa lay with her eyes open, fixed. Blended with the coring of the rooks came the tolling of the bell for her son's funeral. Jenny had told her of Dick's death, had repeated it gently several times, had recounted every detail of the funeral arrangements, and how her sister, Lady Jane, was not well enough to come to England for it. How the service was taking place this afternoon, and she must go to it, but she should not be away long. Nurse would sit with her while she was away. How Harry was not to be present, as he had been frightened at the sight of the plumed horses. It was more than doubtful whether her mother understood anything at all of what she told her, whether she even heard a voice speaking. But Jenny mercifully told her everything on the chance, big things and small. Dick's death and the loss of Harry's Bantam cock, the harvest thanksgiving vegetable marrow, and the engagement of the Miss Blinkett's niece to a rising surgeon, and their disappointment that instead of giving her a ring, his only presence to her had been a snapshot of himself performing an operation. Scores of little things she'd leaned together and told her, so that if by any hundredth part of a chance she could indeed still hear and understand, she might not feel entirely cut off from the land of the living. Her mother heard and understood everything. But to her it was as if her present was at such an immense distance that communication was impossible. Jenny's voice, tender and a patient, reached down to her as in some deep grave. She could hear and understand and remember, but she could make no sign. Ah! much, she remembered, as the bell told for Dick's last homecoming. Her thoughts went back to that grey morning three and thirty years ago when she'd seen his face for the first time, the little pink pocket face which had had no hint in it of all the misery he was to cause her. And she recorded, as she had seen it last, nearly a year ago, hardly human, already dead, save for a fluctuating animal life. And she remembered her strenuous search for a will, and how Dick's valley had told her that his master had been impressed by the narrowness of his escape when he injured his head, and had actually gone out on purpose to make his will the day he went to Fontainebleau, but had been waylaid by some woman. She'd found the name and address of his man of business, and had been to see him, but could extract nothing from him except the missile a gay had not called on him on the day in question, had not made any will as far as his knowledge went, and that he had ceased to employ him her owing to a quarrel. Dick's business relations with everyone except Roger always ended in a quarrel sooner or later, generally sooner. She made up her mind that Dick must die without leaving a will. It was necessary for the sake of others. But she had not told herself what she should do with a will if his if she could get hold of it. But she had not been able to discover one. The whole situation rose before her, and she, the only person who had an inkling of it, the only person who could deal with it, was powerless. She had accumulated proofs, Drs. Evidence, that Harry's was only a case of arrested development that he was quite capable of taking his part in life. She had read all these papers to the nurse when first she came to Riff, and had shown herself sympathetic about Harry, which Janey had never been. Janey had always, like her father, thought that if Dick died Chandler's, Halva ought to go to Roger. Had not been dislodged from that position, even by her mother's thrust, that she said that because she was in love with him. Nurse, in those first days of her ministry, had warmly, and without Arié Ponce, encouraged Lady Louisa in her contention that Harry was only backward, and to prove that she was partly right by the great progress he had made under her authority. She had been inter-fictigable in training him, drawing out his atrophied faculties. The papers which Lady Louisa had said laboriously collected were in the drawer of the secretaire, near the far. The key was on her watch chain, and her watch and chain were on the dressing-table. Nurse had got them out and put them back at her request several times. She knew where they were. And now that Dick was dead, Nurse would certainly use them on Harry's behalf exactly as she herself had intended to use them. Unscrupulous wanton woman! Her paroxysm of rage momentarily blinded her. But after a time the familiar room came creeping stealthily back out of the darkness, to close in on her once more. She had schemed and plotted. She had made use of the shrewd, capable woman at her bedside. But the shrewd, capable woman had schemed and plotted too, and had made use of her son, the poor, half-witted Harry. For now, at last, now that power had been rested out of our own safe hands into the clutch of this designing woman, Lady Louisa owned to herself that Harry was half-witted. She did attended him, her favorite child, to have everything, and Jania Roger to be his protective satellites. She had perfect confidence in Roger. But now this accursed, self-seeking woman who had made a cat's paw off Harry, had ruined everything. She, not Roger, would now have control of the property. She would be supreme. Harry would be wax in her hands. Her word would be law. She could turn her out of the dow-house if she wished to. Everything, even the man-vers-darmons in the safe downstairs, which she had worn all her life, belonged to her now. Everything, except in name, was hers already. If Dick had died in test-date. And no doubt he had so died. How she had hoped and prayed he would do as he had done. How could she have guessed that his doing so would prove the worst, immeasurably the worst calamity of all? Lady Louisa was appalled. She felt sick unto death. She had laboured for her children's welfare to the last, and now she had been struck down as on a battlefield, and the feet of the enemy were trampling her in the dust. The door opened, and the adversary came in. She and her patient eyed each other steadily. Then the nurse went to the dressing-table and took the watch with its chain and pendant-key, and opened the drawer in the secretare. Lady Louisa watched her take out a bundle of papers and put them in her pocket. Then she locked the drawer and replaced the watch and returned to the bedside. She wiped away the beads of sweat which stood on Lady Louisa's forehead, touched her brow and nostrils with odour alone, and sat down in her accustomed place. Lady Louisa saw that her eyes were red. If looks could kill, yours would kill me, my lady, she said. It's been hard on you to have me to tend you. But that's all over now. Then she fret about it any more. I shall go away to-morrow, and I don't suppose you'll ever be troubled by the sight of me in this world again. Presently Janey came in, and the nurse at once withdrew. She took off her gloves and put back her heavy veil. It is all over, she said, with the familiar gesture of stroking her mother's hand. Such a sunny, quiet day for Dick's homecoming. We ought all to be thankful that his long imprisonment is over, that his release has come. The other prisoner heard from the depths of her forlorn cell. And I ought to tell you, mother, that there is no will. Aunt Jane and Roger have looked everywhere and made inquiries. I'm afraid there is no longer any doubt that Dick has died without making one. So you will have your wish. The gentle voice had a tinge of bitterness. Everything will go to Harry. When Janey came downstairs again she found Roger sitting in the library with a hand on each knee. He looked, worn out. She made fresh tea for him, and he drank it in silence while she mended his split love. Well, it's over, he said at last. All the arrangements were so carefully made, she said softly, putting her little thumb into the big thumb of his glove, and finding where the mischief had started. He watched her without seeing her. I think everything went right, he said. I hope it did, and Black did his part. I never heard him read so well. I thought the same. Roger was so accustomed to hear this expression from Janey whenever he made a statement, that he had long since ceased to listen to it. I'm thankful there was no hitch. I couldn't sleep last night, earache or something, and I had an uneasy feeling, very silly of me, but I couldn't get it out of my head, that one of those women would turn up and make a scene. From what you've told me, Mary Dean would never have done a thing like that. No, she was too proud. But there was the other one, the Fontainebleau one. I had a sort of an idea she might have been in the church. Fair things happened now and then. I didn't like to look round. I mustn't be looking about at a funeral. I suppose you didn't see anyone that might have been her. Janey laid down the glove. I didn't look round either, she said. End of Chapter 33 Others besides Moses who have struggled up the mountain, only to be shown the promised land, and to hear the words, Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not pass over. The following morning saw Janey and Roger sitting opposite each other once more, but this time in his office-room, staring blankly at each other. In spite of her invariably quiet demeanour, she was trembling a little. I'm afraid you must believe it, Roger. Good Lord! was all Roger could say, evidently not, for the first time. There was a long silence. When did she tell you? This morning, after breakfast, she and Harry came in together when I was writing letters, hand in hand, as if they were in a novel, and she said they'd been married three months. Three months? Yes. Well, they must have been married in June. Yes. Good Lord! Janey told him how they had been married at Ipswich at a registry office. Her brother, who is a solicitor, was one of the witnesses. She showed me a copy of the certificate. She seemed to have been very methodical. It weren't held, poor Harry, as a loony. I hinted that, but she only smiled. I think she must have gone thoroughly into that before she took any step. And then she looked at him, and he said, like a parrot, that it was time he took his proper place in the world and managed his own affairs. I never in my life heard such cheek. After a bit, I sent Harry away. He looked at her first before he obeyed, and she signed it to him to go. She's got absolute control over him. And I tried to talk to her. She was very hard and bitter at first, and tweeted me with having to put up with her as a sister-in-law. But I could not help being sorry for her. She was ashamed, I'm sure, of what she'd done, though she tried to carry it off with a high hand. She's not altogether a bad woman. Isn't she? Well, she's near enough to satisfy me. I don't know what you'd call bad if kidnapping that poor softie, isn't? But the marriage can't hold. It's ridiculous. She says it will, and I think she'll prove it to be right. She's a shrewd woman, and after all, Harry is twenty-three. Besides, Mother's always stuck to it that he was only backward, and she got together medical ovens to attest her view. Mother was always wanted to guard against Harry being passed over. Dick could leave the property to anyone he liked. It wasn't entailed. He was perfectly free to leave it to Jones, if he wanted to. Poor Jones. He's done with go-to-the-lan. He won't get a shilling. Yes, but Mother foresaw that Dick might never get a will-made. He never could get anything done. And I'm afraid, Roger, that if he had made a will, Mother would have got hold of it, if she could. Janey! said Roger, deeply shocked. You don't know what you're saying. Oh, yes I do. I feel sure, if poor Dick had made a will, Aunt Jane and Mother between them would have—would have what? Would have destroyed it. You simply don't know what you're saying. No one destroys a will. It's a very serious crime, punishable by law. And you're accusing your own Mother of it. Mother has done some strange things in her time, said Janey firmly. It's no good talking about it or thinking about it, but Jones told me that when she went to Paris last autumn, she looked through all Dick's papers and went to see his lawyer. I went to see him too, and he told me she'd been, but be very insistent that Dick had made a will and left it in his charge, and said that he wanted to make some alteration in it. Last autumn, but Dick was not capable then of wishing anything. Last autumn, I'd tell you, since his illness. They both looked at each other. Well, it's no use thinking of that at this moment, said Janey. The question is, what has to be done about Nurse? Pay her up and pack her off at once. She's gone already. She said it was best that she should go. I've telegraphed for another, but she'll come back as Harry's legal wife, Roger, I do believe. This medical evidence in Harry's favour, where does Aunt Louisa keep it? In her secretare. She may be getting out and reading to her since her last visits to Paris. I could not bear to look at it. It was all so false. And I know she showed it to Nurse. It was after that Nurse worked so hard to make Harry more amenable, more like other people. She's slave with him. I believe she was quite disinterested at first. Hmm, she's certainly done him a lot of good. And he's fond of her. He's frightened of her, but he likes her better than anyone. Much better than me. Before she left, she told every servant in the house and the men in the garden. At least she took Harry around with her and made him say to each one of them, This is my wife. The whole village knows by now. And she's taken the medical evidence about him. She made no secret of it. She showed she sent it yesterday to her brother. She stole it, in fact. She said that as his wife she thought she ought to put it in safekeeping. I told her she need not have been afraid that we would destroy it. She said she knew that, but that those who deceived others never could trust anyone else. Roger, she's done a very wicked and shameless thing for the sake of a livelihood, but I think she is suffering for it. And I believe, in spite of herself, she had a kind of devotion for mother. She'd done so much for her. She never spared herself. She felt leaving her. Did she ask about the will? No, I think there was a general feeling of surprise that the will was not read after the funeral. Oh, my good girl, how could we when we couldn't find one? I know, I know. But what I mean is it must soon be known that no will is forthcoming. Of course it is bound to come out before long. Have you asked Pike and Ditton, Dicks London men? Yes, I wrote to them days ago. They know of nothing. There is no will, Janie. We've got to make up our minds to it. Pritchard is coming over this morning about the probate, and I shall have to tell him. Something fierce crept into Janie's gentle face. Oh, Roger, it is such a shame, she stammered. If ever any man deserves Halver, it is you. Dick once said so. Said Roger. Last time he was here, two years ago. That time he never came to the Dowerhouse that I begged him to, and I went round the park with him and showed him where I had cut down the oak avenue, the old drive. He went to my heart to do it, but he'd left me no choice, insisted on it. And when he saw the old trees all down, he was quite taken aback, and he said, Roger, it is you who ought to have had Halver. You'd have kept it together, while I'm just pulling it to pieces, stick by stick. I must reform and come and settle down here and marry, marry. By God, I must. That was the last time he was here, just before he sold the Liverpool property. Everything seems to be taken from you, Roger, said Janie passionately, and to think that this unscrupulous woman will have absolute power over everything. She will be able to turn me off, said Roger. She'll get another agent, put on her brother, I should think. I always disliked her, and she knew it. Now she will be able to pay off old scores. Roger looked out of the window, and his patient stubborn face quivered ever so slightly. He would have been a comfort to Janie to think that she should one day inherit noise if there had been any question of his sharing it with her. But the long cherished hope that they might someday share a home together had died. It had died hard. It had taken a grievous time to die, but it was dead at last. And Janie had buried it, delved a deep grave for it in the live rock of her heart. I don't see I am ever to marry now, he said hoarsely. I can't count on the two hundred a year from the agency in this cottage. Even that may go to-morrow. It wasn't much, wasn't enough to set up house on, but even that is as good as gone. I had thought lately that you had it in your mind to marry. A small tear suddenly jumped out of Roger's eye and got held up in his rough cheek. I want to marry Annette, he said. Yes, my dear, I guessed it. Drenfully. You don't know Janie. Drenfully. I know, my poor boy, she said. I know all about it. And he came and stood by him and patted his hand. For a moment Roger sobbed violently and silently against her shoulder. Then he drew himself away and rummaged for his pocket-hanker-chief. You are a brick, Janie, he said, gruffly. CHAPTER XXV The thing on the blind side of the heart, on the wrong side of the door, the green plant-growth menacing, almighty lovers in the spring. There is always a forgotten thing, and love is not secure. G. K. Chesterton. The news of Harry's marriage, which was convulsing Riff, had actually failed to reach Red Riff farm by tea-time. The Miss Blinkets, on the contrary, less aristocratically remote than the Miss Nevels, had heard it at midday when the Dowerhouse Gardener went past the hermitage to his dinner. And they were aware by two o'clock that Janie had had a consultation with Roger in his office, and that the bride had left Riff by the midday express from Riban Bridge. It was a general opinion in Riff that she'd repent every hair of her head for enticing Mr. Harry. In total ignorance of this stupendous event, Aunt Harriet was discussing the probable condition of the soul after death over her afternoon tea, in spite of several attempts on the part of a net, to change the subject. Personally I feel sure I shall not even lose consciousness. She said with dignity. With some of us the partition between this world and the next is hardly more than a veil. But we must not shout out our eyes to the fact that a person like Miss Lergette is almost certainly suffering for his culpability in impoverishing this state, and if what I reluctantly hear is true is to other matters still more reprehensible. We know very little about purgatory, after all, interrupted Aunt Maria wearily. Some of us who suffer have our purgatory here, said her sister, helping herself to an apricot. I hardly think when we crossed the river that— the door opened and Roger was announced. He'd screwed himself up to walk over and ask for Annette, and it was a shock to him to find her exactly as he might have guessed she would be found, sitting at tea with her aunts. He'd counted on seeing her alone. He looked haggard and aged, and his black clothes became him ill. He accepted tea from Annette without looking at her. He was daunted by the little family party, and made short replies to the polite inquiries of the Miss Neville's as to the health of Janie and Lady Louisa. He was wondering how he could attain an interview with Annette, and half angry with her beforehand for fear she should not come to his assistance. He was very sore. Life was going ill with him, and he was learning what sleeplessness means. He would never lane awake in his life. The door opened again, and contrary to all precedent, the Miss Blinkets were announced. The Miss Blinkets never came to tea except when invited, and it is sad to have to record the fact that the Miss Neville's hardly ever invited them. They felt, however, on this occasion, that they were the bearers of such important tidings that their advent could not fail to be welcome, if not to the celebrated authoris at any rate to Miss Harriet, who was not absorbed in ethical problems like her gifted sister, and whose mind was, so she often said, at leisure from itself to soothe and sympathise. But the Miss Blinkets were quite taken aback by the sight of Roger, in whose presence the burning topic could not be mentioned, and who had no doubt come to recount the disaster himself, a course which they could not have foreseen as he was much too busy to pay calls as a rule. They were momentarily nonplussed, and they received no assistance in regaining their equanimity from the lofty remoteness of the Miss Neville's reception. A paralysing ten minutes followed, while Annette, who usually came to the rescue, made no attempt to alleviate. She busied herself with the tea almost in silence. Roger got up stiffly to go. I wonder, Mr. Manvers, as you are here, said Aunt Maria, rising as he did, whether he would kindly look at the dairy-roof. The rain comes in still, in spite of the new timing. Annette will show it to you. And without further demure, she left the room, followed by Annette and Roger. I am afraid, said the authoris archly, with her hand on the door of her study, that I had recourse to a sub-diffusion order to escape. Those amiable ladies who find time hank so heavily on their hands have no idea how much I value mine, nor how short I find the day for all I have to do in it. My sister will enjoy entertaining them. Annette, I must get back to my proofs. I will let you, my dear, show Mr. Manvers the dairy. Roger followed Annette down the long-bricked passage to the late three. They entered it, and his professional eye turned to the white-wash ceiling, and marked almost unconsciously the stain of damp upon it. Cracked tile, he said mechanically, too, I'll see to it. And then, across the bowls of milk and a leg of mutton sitting in a little wire house, his eyes looked in a dumb agony at Annette. What is it? What is it? she gasped. And as she said the words, the cook entered slowly, bearing a yellow mould and some stewed fruit upon a tray. Roger repeated the words, cracked tiles, and presently they were in the hall again. I must speak to you alone, he said desperately. I came on purpose. She considered a moment. She had no refuge of her own except her bedroom, that agreeable attic with the extended view which had been apportioned to Art Catherine, and which she had inhabited for so short a time. The little hall where they were standing was the passage-room of the house. She took up a garden hat, and they went into the garden to the round seat under the apple-tree, now ruddy with little contorted red apples. The gardener was scything the grass between the trees, whistling softly to himself. Roger looked at him vindictively. I will walk part of the way home with you, said Annette, her voice shaking a little in spite of herself. If you are going through the park? Yes, I have the keys. He's found out about Dick and me, she said to herself, and is going to ask me if it is true. They walked in silence across the empty cornfield, and Roger unlocked the little door in the high park wall. Once there had been a broad drive to the house where that door stood, and you could still see where it had lain between an avenue of old oaks. But the oaks had all been swept away. The ranks of gigantic bowls showed the glory that had been. Uncle John was so fond of the oak avenue, said Roger. He used to walk in it every day. There wasn't its eagle in locia. And a lapole planted it. I never thought Dick would have touched it. And in the devastated avenue, the scene of Dick's recklessness, Roger told Annette of the catastrophe of Harry's marriage with the nurse, and how he had already seen a lawyer about it. And the lawyer was of opinion that it would almost certainly be legal. That means, said Roger, standing still in the mossy track, that now Dick's gone, Harry, or rather his wife, for he is entirely under her thumb, will have possession of everything. Wormsley, and Swell, and Bulcham. Not that Bulcham is worth much now that Dick has put a second mortgage on it, and Scorby, and Halver. He pointed with his stick at the old house, with its twisted chimneys partly visible through the trees, the only home that he'd ever known, and his set mouth trembled a little. And that woman can turn me out to-morrow, he said. And she will. She's always disliked me. I shan't even have the agency. It was a bare living, but I shan't even have that. I shall only have noise. I've always done noise for eighty pounds a year, because Aunt Louisa wouldn't give more, and she can't now, even if she was willing. And I'm not one of your new fangle agents, being through Sirencester or anything like that, educated up to it, scientific, and all that sort of thing. Uncle John was his own agent, and I picked it up from him. When I lose this, I don't suppose I should get another job. With a sinking heart, and yet with a sense of relief, Annette realized that Roger had heard nothing against her, and that she was reprieved for the moment. It was about all she did realize. He saw the bewilderment in her face, and stuck his stick into the ground. He must speak more plainly. This all means, he said, becoming first darkly red and then ashen-colour, that I am not in a position to marry Annette. I ought not to have said anything about it. I can't think how I could have forgotten as I did, but—but he could say no more. I'm glad you love me, said Annette faintly. I'm glad you said something about it. But we can't marry, said Roger harshly. What's the good if we can't be married? He made several attempts to speak, and then went on. I suppose the truth is I counted on Dick doing something for me. He always said he would, and he was very generous. He's often said I'd done a lot for him. Perhaps I have, and perhaps I haven't. Perhaps I did it for the sake of the people and the place. How was more to me than most things? But he told me over and over again he wouldn't forget me. Poor old Dick. After all, he couldn't tell me he was going to fall on his head. There is no will, Annette. That's the long and the short of it. And so, of course, nearly everything goes to Harry. No will, said Annette, drawing in a deep breath. Dick hasn't left a will, said Roger, and there was a subdued bitterness in his voice. He has forgotten everybody who had a claim on him—a woman whom he ought to have provided for before everyone else in the world, and Jones—Jones who stuck to him through thick and thin and nursed him so faithfully, and me. It doesn't do to depend on people like Dick, who won't take any trouble about anything. The words seemed to sink into the silence of the September evening. A dim river mist faintly flushed by the low sun, was creeping among the farther trees. But he did take trouble. There is a will, she said. A voice was so low that he did not hear what she said. Dick made a will, she said again. This time he heard. He'd been doing steadfast at the old house among the trees, and there were tears in his eyes as he slowly turned to blink through the matter. How can you tell? he said apathetically. And as he looked dullly at her, the colour ebbed away from her face, leaving it whiter than he'd ever seen a living face. Because I was in the room when he made it, at Fontainebleau. Roger's face became overcast, perplexed. When he was ill there? Yes. Dead silence. How did you come to be with Dick? It was plain that there he was perplexed. The sinister presumption implied by her presence there had not yet struck him. Roger, I was staying with Dick at Fontainebleau. I nursed him, Mrs. Toddart and I, together. She made me promise never to speak of it to anyone. Mrs. Toddart made you promise? What was the sense of that? You were travelling with her, I suppose? No. I'd never seen her till the morning I called her in when Dick fell ill. Then that Mrs. Toddart I met at Noyes was the older woman whom Lady Jane found looking after him when she and Jones came down. Yes. Silence again. He frowned and looked apprehensively at her as if he were warding something off. And I was the younger woman, said Annette, who left before Lady Jane arrived. The colour rushed to his face. No, he said with sudden violence. Not you. I always knew there was another woman, a young one, but it wasn't you, Annette. She was silent. It couldn't be you. It was me. His brown hands trembled as he leaned heavily upon his stick. I was not Dick's mistress, Roger. Were you his wife then? No. Then how did you come to— But I don't want to hear. I have no right to ask. I've heard enough. He made as if to go. Annette turned upon him in the dusk with a fierce white face and gripped his shoulder with a hand of steel. You have not heard enough till you have heard everything, she said. And, holding him forcibly, she told him of our life in Paris with her father, and of her disastrous love affair, and her determination to drown herself and her meeting with Dick, and her reckless apathetic despair. Did he understand? He made no sign. After a time her hand fell from his shoulder. He made no attempt to move. The merciful mist enclosed them and dimmed them from each other. Low in the east, entangled in a clump of hawthorn, a thin moon hung blurred, as if seen through tears. I did not care what I did, she said brokenly. I did not care for Dick, and I did not care for myself. I care for nothing. I was desperate. Dick did not try to trap me or be wicked to me. He asked me to go with him, and I went of my own accord. But he was sorry afterwards, Roger. He said so when he was ill. He wanted to keep me from the river. He could not bear the thought of my drowning myself. Often, often when he was delirious, he spoke of it and tried to help me back. And you said he wouldn't take any trouble. But he did. He did, Roger. He made his will at the last when it was all he could do. And he remembered about Halva. I know he said you ought to have it, and that he must provide for Mary and the child. His last strength went in making his will, Roger. His last thought was for you and that poor Mary and the child. Already, she had forgotten herself and was pleading earnestly for the man who had brought her to this pass. Roger stood silent, safe for his hard breathing. Did he understand? We all know that to endure and to pardon is the wisdom of life. But if we are called on to pardon just to the moment we are called on to endure, what then? Have we ever the strength to do both at the same moment? He did not speak. The twilight deepened. The moon drew clear of the Hawthorne. You must go to Fontainebleau, she went on, and find the doctor. I don't know his name, but it will be easy to find him. And he will remember. He was so interested in poor Dick. And he brought the notary. He would tell you as the will. I remember now I was one of the witnesses. You witnessed it? said Roger, astounded. His stick fell from his hands. He looked at it on the ground, but made no motion to pick it up. Yes, I witnessed it. Dick asked me to. Everything will come right now. He wanted dreadfully to make it right. But you must forget about me, Roger. I've been here under false pretenses. I should go away. I ought never to have come. But I didn't know you and Janey were Dick's people. He was always called Dick Leggett. When I came to be friends with you both, I often wished to tell you even before I knew you were his relations. But I promised Mrs. Doddart not to speak of it to anyone except— Except who? said Roger. Except the man I was to marry. That was the mistake. I ought never to have promised to keep silence. But I did because she made a point of it. And she'd been so kind to me when I was ill. But I ought not to have agreed to it. One ought never to try to cover up anything one has done wrong. And I had a chance of telling you, and I didn't take it. That afternoon we drove to Halleywater. Mrs. Doddart had given me back my promise. I know, Roger, I meant to tell you. But you were so nice I forgot everything else. And then, later on, when we were in the deserted garden and I saw the little lambs and the fishes, I was so dreadfully sorry that everything else went out of my head. I feel I have deceived you and Janey, and it is often weighed upon me. But I never meant to deceive you. And I'm glad you know now. And I should like her to know, too. Her tremendous voice ceased. She stood looking at him with a great wistfulness. But he made no sign. She waited, but he did not speak. Then she went swiftly from him in the dusk, and the mist wrapped her in its gray folds. Roger stood motionless and rigid where she had left him. After a moment he made a mechanical movement as if to walk on. Then he flung himself down upon his face on the white-ning grass. And the merciful mist wrapped him also in its gray folds. Low in the east the thin moon climbed blurred and dim as if seen through tears. Roger lay on his face with his mouth on the back of his hand. Years and years ago, twenty long years ago, he had once laid on his face as he was doing now. He and Dick had been out shooting with the old keeper, and Dick had shot Roger's dog by mistake. He had taken the catastrophe with a stolid stereosism and a bitten lip. But later in the day he had crept away and had sobbed for hours, lying on his face under a tree. The remembrance came back to him now. Never since then, never in all those twenty years, had he felt again that same paroxysm of despair. And now again Dick had inadvertently wounded him. Dick, who never meant any harm, had pierced his heart. The wound bled, and Roger bit his hand. Time passed. He did not want to get up any more. If he could have died at that moment, he would have died. He did not want to have anything more to do with this monstrous cheat called life. He did not want ever to see any one again. He felt broken. The thought that he should presently get to his feet and stump home through the dusk to his empty rooms, as he had done a hundred times, filled him with a nausea and rage unspeakable. The mere notion of the passage and the clothes-peg on the umbrella-stand annihilated him. He had reached a place in life where he felt he could not go on. Far in the distance, carried to his ear by the ground, came the muffled thud and beat of a train passing beyond the village, on the other side of the Ribon. He wished to dally that he could have put his head on the rails. And the voice to which, from a little lad, he had never shut his ears. The humdrum prosaic voice which had bidden him take thought for Mary Dean and her child, and Janie, and Betty Hesketh, and all who were desolate and oppressed. That same small voice, never ignored, never silenced, spoke in Rodger's aching, unimaginative heart. The train passed, and as the sound throbbed away into silence, Rodger longed a game with passion that it had taken his life with it. And the still small voice said, that is how I net felt a year ago. He got up and pushed back the damp hair from his forehead. That was how I net had felt a year ago. Paul, unwise, cruelly treated a net. Even now, though he had heard her story from her own lips, he could not believe it, could not believe that her life had ever had in it any instant beyond tending her old aunts and watering her flowers and singing in the choir. That was how he had always imagined her, with perhaps a tame canary thrown in, which had sugar from her lips. If he had watched her with such a small pet, he would have felt it singularly appropriate, a sort of topknot to his ideal of her. If he had seen her alarmed by her squirrel, he would have felt indulgent. If fond of children, tender. If jealous of other women, he should not have been surprised. He had made up a little insipid picture of a net picking flowers by day, and wrapped in maiden slumber in a white room at night. The picture was exactly as he wished it to be, and as her beautiful exterior had assured him she was. For a net's sweet face told half the men she met that she was their ideal. In nearly every case so far that ideal had been a masterpiece of common place. Though if prizes had been offered for them, Roger would have won easily. Her mind, her character, her individuality had no place in that ideal. That she should have been pushed close up against vice. That she, a net, who sang, Son of my soul so beautifully, should have wandered alone in the wicked streets of Paris in the dawn, after escaping out of a home wickeder still. That she should have known treachery, despair. That she should have been stared at as the chance mistress of a disreputable man, a net. It was incredible. And he had been so careful, at the expense of his love of truth, when they took refuge in Mary Dean's house, that a net should believe Mary Dean was a married woman and her child born in wedlock. And she, whose ears must not even hear that Mary had been Dick's mistress, she, a net, had been Dick's mistress too, if not in reality, at any rate in appearance. Roger's brain reeled. He had forgotten the will. His mind could grasp nothing except the gusted discrepancy between the smug picture of a net which he had gradually evolved, and this tragic figure, sinned against, passionate, desperate, dragging its betrayal from one man to another. Had she been Dick's mistress? Was it really possible that she had not? Who could touch pitch and not be defiled? Women always denied their shame. How hotly Mary Dean had denied hers, only a few months before the birth of her child. Roger readen that the thought that he was classing a net, his beautiful lady, with Mary. Oh, where was the real truth? Who could tell him? Whom could he trust? Janey. He said the word aloud with a cry, and Janey's small brown face rose before him, as he had known it all his life, since they had been children together, she, the little adoring girl, and he, the big condescending schoolboy. Janey's crystal truthfulness, her faithfulness, her lifelong devotion to him, became evident to him. He had always taken them for granted, known where to put his hand on them, used them without seeing them, like his old waterproof which he could lay hold of on its peg in the dark. She had always been in the background of his life, like the ribbon and the low hill behind it against the grey sky, which he did not notice when they were there, but from which he could not long absent himself without a sense of loss. And Janey had no past. He knew everything about her. He must go to her now, at once. He did not know exactly what he wanted to say to her, but he groped for his stick, found it, noticed that the dew was heavy, and that there would be no rain after all, and set off down the invisible track in the direction of the village, winking its low lights among the trees. CHAPTER XXXVII Happiness is inextricably interwoven with loyalty, love, unselfishness—the charity that never fails. In early life we believe that it is just these qualities in those we love that make our happiness, just the lack of them that entail our misery. But later on we find that this is not so. Later on we find that it is our own loyalty, our own love and charity in which our happiness abides, as the soul abides in the body. So we discover at last that happiness is within the reach of all of us, the inalienable birthright of all of us, and that if by misadventure we have mislaid it in our youth, we know where to seek it in after years. For happiness is mislaid, but never lost. M. N. Janey had the doubtful advantage over other women that men—by men I mean Roger—always knew where to find her. She was as immovable as the church or the ribbon. It was absolutely certain that unless Lady Louisa was worse, Janey would come down to the library at nine o'clock, and work there beside the lamp for an hour before going to bed. The element of surprise or uncertainty did not exist as far as Janey was concerned. And perhaps those who are always accessible, tranquil, disengaged, ready to lend a patient and sympathetic ear know instinctively that they will be sought out in sorrow and anxiety rather than in joy. We do not engage a trained nurse for picnic parties, or ask her to grace the box seat when we are driving our foreign hands. And it is singled out at once as appropriate to these festifications. If any one thought of Janey in connection with them, it was only to remark that she would not care about them. How many innocent pleasures she had silently wished for in her time when she had been informed by her mother, by Dick, even by Roger, were not in her line. Tonight Janey deviated by a hair-breath from her usual routine. She came down, seated herself, and instead of her work took up a book with the marker halfway through it, and was at once absorbed in it. She was reading The Magnet for the second time. Since her conversation with Mr. Sterling in the Halver Garden, Janey had read The Magnet, and her indifference had been replaced by a riveted attention. She saw now what other people saw in his work, and it seemed to her, as indeed it seemed to all Mr. Sterling's readers, that his books were addressed to her and her alone. It did not occur to her that he had lived for several years in her neighbourhood without her detecting or even attempting to discern what he was. It did not occur to her that he might have been a great asset in her narrow life. She was quite content with being slightly acquainted with everyone except Roger, and her new friend Annette. She tacitly distrusted Intipacy, as did Roger, and though circumstances had brought about a certain Intipacy with Annette, the only girl within five miles, she had always mental reservations even with her, boundaries which were not to be passed. Janey had been inclined to take shelter behind these mental reservations, to raise till higher the boundary walls between them, since she had known what she called the truth about Annette. She had shrunk from further intercourse with her, but Annette had sought her out deliberately, persistently, with an unshaken confidence in Janey's affection, which the latter had not the heart to repel. And in the end Janey had reached a kind of full-on gratitude towards Annette. Her life had become absolutely empty. The future stretched in front of her like some flat, dusty high road, along which she must toil with aching feet till she dropped. She instinctively turned to Annette, and then shrank from her. She would have shrunk from her altogether, if she had known that it was by Roger's suggestion that Annette made so little opportunities of meeting. Annette had been to see her the day before she went to noise, and had found her reading the magnet, and then had a long conversation about it. And now, in Janey's second reading, not skipping one word, and going over the more difficult passages twice, she came again upon the sentence which they had discussed. She read it slowly. The publican and the harlot will go into the kingdom before us, because it is easier for them to flee with loathing from the sings of the flesh, and to press through the straight gate of humility, than it is for us to loat and flee the sins of the spirit, egotism, pride, resentment, cruelty, insincerity. Janey laid down the book. When Annette had read that sentence aloud to her, Janey had said, I don't understand that, I think he's wrong. Pride and the other things and insincerity aren't nearly as bad as immorality. He doesn't say one is worse than the others, Annette had replied, and her quiet eyes have met Janey's bent searchingly upon her. He only says egotism and the other things make it harder to squeeze through the little gate. You see, they make it impossible for us even to see it, the straight gate. He writes as if egotism were worse than immorality, as if immorality didn't matter, said Janey stubbornly. How could Annette speak so coolly, so impersonally, as if she had never deviated from the rigid code of morals in which Janey had been brought up? She felt impelled to show her that she at any rate held stern of use. Annette cogitated. Perhaps Janey, he's learnt that nothing makes getting near the gate so difficult as egotism. He says somewhere else that egotism makes false, mean, dreadful things ready to pounce on us. He's right in the order he puts them in, isn't he? Selfishness first, and then pride. Our pride gets wounded and then resentment follows, and resentment always wants to inflict pain. That is why he puts cruelty next. How do you know all this? said Janey incredulously. I know about pride and resentment, said Annette, because I gave way to them once. I think I shall never again. I don't see why he puts insincerity last. Perhaps he thinks that it is the worst thing that can happen to us. To be insincere, said Janey, amaze. Yes, I certainly never have met a selfish person who is sincere, have you? They have to be given noble reasons for their selfish actions, so as to keep their self-respect and make us think well of them. I knew a man once, he was a great musician, who was like that. He wanted aberration dreadfully, he craved for it, yet he didn't want to take any trouble to be the things that made one of our people. He'd ended in—what did he end in? Where insincere people always do end, I think, in a kind of treachery. Perhaps that is why Mr. Sterling puts insincerity last, because insincere people do such dreadful things without knowing they are dreadful. Now the harlots and the publicans do know. They have the pull of us there. Janey's clear, retentive mind recalled every word of that conversation, the last she had had with Annette, which had left an impression on her mind that Annette had belittled the frailties of the flesh. Why had she done that? Because she had not been guiltless of them herself. In such manner do some of us reason and find confirmation of that which we suspect. Not that Janey suspected her of stepping our side. She was convinced that she had done so. The evidence had been conclusive. At least she did not doubt it when Annette was absent. When she was present with her, she knew not how to believe it. It was incredible. Yet it was so. She always came back to that. But why did she and Mr. Sterling both put insincerity as the worst of the spiritual sins? Janey was an inexorable reader, now that she had begun. She ruminated with her small hands folded on the open page, and her honest mind showed her that once, not long ago, she had nearly been insincere herself, when she had told herself with vehemence that it was her bound and duty to Roger to warn him against Annette. What an ugly act of treachery she had almost committed, would have committed if Mr. Sterling had not come to her aid. She shuddered. Yes, he was right. Insincerity was the place where all meannesses and disloyalties and treacheries lurked, and had their dens, like evil beasts, ready to pounce out and destroy the wayfaring spirit wandering on forbidden ground. And she thought of nurse's treachery for the sake of a livelihood with a new compassion. It was less culpable than that what she had nearly been guilty of herself. And she thought yet again of Annette. She might have done wrong, but you could not look at her and think she could be mean, take refuge in subterfuge or diffcite. She would never lie about it to herself or others, Janey said to herself, and she who had lied to herself, though near for a moment, was humbled. She was half expecting Roger, in spite of that conference of this morning, for she knew that he was to see the lawyer about probate that afternoon, and the lawyer might have given an opinion as to the legality of Harry's marriage. Presently she heard his step in the hall, and he came in. She had known Roger all her life, but his whole aspect was unfamiliar to her. As she looked at him bewildered, she realized that she had never seen him strongly moved before, never in all these years until now. There was something almost terrifying in the emotion of unemotional people. The momentary confidence of the morning, the one tear rung out of him by perceiving his hope of marriage suddenly wiped out, was of nothing to this. He sat down opposite to her with chalk-white face and reddened, unseeing eyes, and without any preamble recounted to her the story that Annette had told him a few hours before. She wished you to know it, he said. An immense thankfulness flooded Janey's heart as she listened. It was as if some tense nerve in her brain relaxed. He did know at last, and she, Janey, had not told him. He had heard no word from her. Annette had confessed to him herself, as Mr. Sterling had said she would. She had done what was right, right, but how difficult! A secret grudge against Annette, which had long lurked at the back of Janey's mind, was exercised, and she gave a sigh of relief. At last he was silent. I have known for a long time that Annette was the woman who was with Dick at Fontainebleau. She said her hand still folded on the open book. You might have told me, Janey. I thought it ought to come from her. You might have told me when you saw, Janey, you must have seen for some time past how it was with me. I did see, but I hoped against hope that she would tell you herself, as she has done. And if she hadn't, would you have let me marry her, not knowing? Janey reflected. I am not sure, she said composably, what I should have done, but you see it did not happen so. She has told you. I am thankful she has, Roger. There must have been harm for her. It is the only thing I have ever kept back from you. It is a great weight off my mind that you know. Only I am ashamed now that I ever doubted her. I did doubt her. I begun to think she would never say. She is the last person in the world, the very last that I should have thought possible. He could not finish his sentence, and Janey and he looked fixedly at each other. Yes, she said slowly. She is. I never get any nearer understanding how anyone like Annette could have done it. Roger, in his haste with his story, had omitted the evil prologue which had led to the disaster. She wished you to know everything, he said, and he told her of Annette's treacherous lover and her father's infamy, and her flight from his house in the dawn. She was driven to desperation, said Janey. When she met Dick, she was in despair. I see it all now. She did not know what she was doing, Roger. Annette has been sinned against. I should like to ring that man's neck who bought her and her father's who sold her. So, Roger, his haggard eyes smouldering. There was a long silence. But I don't feel that I can marry her, he said with a groan. Dick and her, it sticks in my throat. The very thought seems to choke me. I don't feel that I could marry her, even if she would still have me. She said I must forget her and put her out of my life. She feels everything is over between us. It's all very well savagely to talk of forgetting anyone like Annette. He beat his foot against the floor. Janey looked at him in a great compassion. He will come back to me, she said to herself, not for a long time, but he will come back, broken and disillusioned and aged and with only a bit of a heart to give me. He will never care much about me. But I shall be all he has left in the world, and I will take him whatever he is. She put out her hand for her work and visit herself with it, knowing instinctively that the occupation of her hands and eyes upon it would fret him less than if she had sat idle and looked at him. She had nothing to learn about how to deal with Roger. She worked for some time in silence, and hope, dead and buried, rose out of his deep grave in her heart, and came towards her once more. Was it indeed hope that stirred in his grave this padded figure with the shroud still unfolding it, or was it but its ghost? She knew not. At last Roger raised a tortured face out of his hands. Of course she says she is innocent, he said, looking hopelessly at Janey. Janey started violently. Her work fell from her hands. And it says she is innocent. She repeated after him, a flame of colour rushing to her face. Yes, Mary Dean said the same, they always say it. Janey shook as in an egg you. She saw suddenly in front of her a gulf of infamy unspeakable, ready to swallow her if she agreed with him. She who always agreed with him. He would implicitly believe her. The little gleam of hope which had fallen on her aching mutilated life went out. She was alone in the dark. For a moment she could neither see nor hear. If Annette says she is innocent, it's true, she said hoarsely, putting her hand to her throat. The room on the lamp became visible again, and Roger's eyes fixed on her, like the eyes of a drowning man, wide, dilated, seen through deep water. If Annette says so, it's true, she repeated. She may have done wrong. She says she has, but she does not tell lies. You know that. She says Dick did not try to trap her that she went with him of her own accord. But don't you see that Dick did take advantage of her, all the same, a mean advantage when she was stunned by despair? I don't suppose you have ever known what it is to feel despair, Roger. But I know what it is. I know what Annette felt when her lover failed her. She told me she meant to drown herself. She said she did not care what became of her. You don't know what it means to feel like that. Roger heard again the thud and beat of the distant train and the sod against his ear. Yes, I do, he said, looking at her under his heavy brows. I don't believe you. If you had, you would understand Annette's momentary madness. She did not have told you that. She did not have blackened herself in your eyes, but she did. Can't you see, Roger, when you never, never understand that you've had the whole truth from Annette? The most difficult truth in the world to tell. And why do you need me to hammer it into you that she was speaking the truth to you? Can't you see for yourself that Annette is upright as upright as you yourself? What is the good of you if you can't even see that? What is the good of loving her, if you do love her, if you can't see that she doesn't tell lies? I'm not in love with her. There have been times when I've come very near to hating her, and I had reason to believe she had done a wicked action. But I knew one thing, and that was that she would never lie about it. She's not that kind. And if she told you that in a moment of despair she had agreed to do it, but that she had not done it, then she spoke the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Roger could only stare at Janey, dumbfounded. She, who in his long experience of her had always listened, had spoken so little beyond comment or agreement, now thrusted him with a sword of determined, sharp-edged speech. The only two women he thought he knew were becoming absolute strangers to him. If I had been in Annette's place I would have died sooner than own that I agreed to do wrong. I should have put the blame on Dick. But Annette is humler than I am, more loyal than I am, more compassionate. She took the blame on herself which belongs to Dick. She would not speak ill of him. If I had been in her place I should have hesitated a long time before I told you about the will. It will ruin her good name. I should have thought of that. But she didn't. She thought only of you, only of getting your inheritance for you. Just as when Dick was ill she only thought of helping him. Go and get your inheritance, Roger. It's yours, and I'm glad it is. You deserve it. But there's one thing you don't deserve, and that is to marry Annette. You're not good enough for her. Janey had risen to her feet. She stood before him, a small terrible creature with blazing eyes, and she passed him and left the room, astounded Roger gaping after her. He waited a long time for her to return, but she did not come back. End of Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Of Not Withstanding by Mary Chumley This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Simon Evers Chapter 38 Wherever we go, said Aunt Harriet complacently from her sofa that evening, weddings are short of follow. I've noticed it again and again. Do you remember, Maria, how when we spent the summer at Nairn our landlady's son at those nice lodgings married the innkeeper's daughter? And it was very soon after our visit to Riverview that Mary Gray was engaged to the curate. Which reminds me that I am afraid they are very badly off, for I heard from him not long ago that he had resigned his curacy, and that as his entire trust was in the Almighty, the smallest contribution would be most acceptable. But I did not send anything, because I always thought Mary ought not to have married him. And now we've been here barely fifteen months, and here is Harry Manvers marrying the nurse. The Miss Blinkies tell me that she is at least fifteen years older than him. Not that that matters at all, if there is spiritual affinity. But in this case—really, Annette, I think your wits must be wool-gathering. You've put sugar in my coffee, and you know as well as possible that I only have a tiny lump not in the cup but in the spoon. Annette expressed her contrition and poured out another cup. Did Roger Manvers say anything to you about Harry's marriage, Annette? said Aunt Maria. I thought possibly he had come to consult us about it. But of course he said nothing before the Miss Blinkies. They drove him away. I shall tell Hodgkins we are not at home to them in the future. He just mentioned the marriage and that he had been seeing a lawyer about it. If every one was as laconic as you are, my love, said Aunt Harriet, with some asperity, conversation would cease to exist. And as to saying not at home to the Miss Blinkies in future, Maria, you would, of course, do exactly as you please. But I must own that I think it is a mistake to cut ourselves entirely adrift from the life of the neighbourhood at a crisis like this. Will the marriage be recognised? Or do we descend a present? Shall we be expected to call on her? We shall have to arrive at some decision on these projects, I presume, and how are we to do so if we close our ears to all sources of information. I'm sure I don't know. Main to be have another chapter of The Silver Cross, said Annette, in the somewhat strained silence that followed. Aunt Maria was correcting her proof-sheets, and was on the habit of reading them aloud in the evenings. Yes, do read, Maria, said Aunt Harriet, who, however trying her other characteristics might be, possessed a perennial thund of enthusiastic admiration for her sister's novels. I could hardly sleep last night for thinking of Blanche's estrangement from Frederick, and of her folly unallying herself to be drawn into Lord Sproffley Gate's supper-party by that foolish Lady Bonner. Frederick would be sure to hear of it. I'm afraid, said Aunt Maria, with conscious pride, that the next chapter is hardly one for Annette. It deals not without a touch of realism, with subjects which, as a delineator of life, I cannot ignore, but which, thank God, have no place in a young girl's existence. Aunt Maria, how I disagree with you, it opposed Aunt Harriet before Annette could speak. If only I had been warned when I was a young, innocent, high-spirited creature. If only I had been aware of the pitfalls, the snares, spread like nets round the feet of the young and attractive. I should have been spared some terrible disillusionments. I'm afraid I am far too modern to wish to keep girls of the total ignorance in which our dear mother brought us up. We must march with the times. There is nothing that you, being what you are, Maria, nothing that you, with your high ideals, could write which, however painful, it could harm Annette to hear. This was perhaps even truer than the enunciator was aware. She must some time learn that evil exists, that sin and suffering are all part of life. Annette looked from the excited figure on the sofa to the dignified personage in the armchair, and her heart was rung for them both. Oh, poor dears! Poor dears! Living in this shadowy world of their own in which reality never set foot, this tiny world of which Aunt Harriet spoke so glibly, which Aunt Maria described with such touching confidence, was she going to shatter it for them, she whom they were doing their best to guide into it, to make like themselves? I'm rather tired, she said, folding up her work. I think I will go to bed, and then you can read the chapter together, and decide whether I can hear it later on. It is very careful to treat it very lightly, I may say, skillfully touched, said Aunt Maria obeyingly, whose previous remark had been entirely conventional, and who had no intention of losing half our audience. I think on the whole I will risk it. Sit down again, Annette. Let me see how old are you? Twenty-three. Many women at that age are wives and mothers. I agree with you, Harriet. The danger we elders fall into is the want of realization that the younger generation are grown up. We must not make this mistake with you, Annette, or treat you as a child any longer, but as one of ourselves. It is better that you should be made aware of the existence of the seamy side of life, so that later on, if you come in contact with it, your mind may be prepared.