Adrian Savage: A Novel

CHAPTER VI

RECORDING THE VIGIL OF A SCARLET HOMUNCULUS AND
ARISTIDES THE JUST

The gray lemur sat before the fire in a baby's scarlet-painted cane chair. He kept his knees well apart, so that the comfortable warmth, given off by the burning logs and bed of glowing ashes, might reach his furry concave stomach and the inside of his furry thighs. His long, ringed tail, slipped neatly under the arm of the little scarlet chair, lay, like a thick gray note of interrogation, upon the surface of the black Aubusson carpet. Now and again he leaned his slender, small-waisted body forward, grasping the chair-arms with his two hands—which resembled a baby's leather gloves with fur backs to them—and advanced a sensitive, inquisitive, pointed muzzle toward the blaze, his nose being cold. His movements were attractive in their composure and restraint. For this quadrumanous exile from sub-tropic Madagascan forests was a dignified little personage, not in the least addicted, as the vulgar phrase has it, to giving himself away.

At first sight the lemur, sitting thus before the fire, appeared to be the sole inhabitant of the bare white-walled studio. Then, as the eye became accustomed to the dusky light, shed by hanging electric lamps with dark smoked-glass shades to them, other queer living creatures disclosed their presence.

At the end of the great room farthest from the door, where it narrowed in two oblique angles under high, shelving skylights, in a glass tank—some five feet by three and about two feet deep—set on a square of mosaic pavement, goldfish swam lazily to and fro. In the center of the tank, about the rockwork built up around the jet of a little tinkling fountain, small, dull-hued tortoises with skinny necks and slimy carapaces and black-blotched, orange-bellied, crested tritons crawled. While all round the room, forming a sort of dado to the height of above five feet, ran an arabesque of scenes and figures, some life-size, some even colossal, some minute and exquisitely finished, some blurred and half obliterated, in places superimposed, sketched one over the other to the production of madly nightmarish effects of heads, limbs, trunks, and features attached, divided, flung broadcast, heaped together in horrible promiscuosity. All were drawn boldly, showing an astonishing vivacity of line and mastery of attitude and expression, in charcoal or red and black chalk, or were washed in with the brush in Indian ink and light red. In the dusky lamplight and scintillating firelight this amazing decoration seemed endowed with life and movement, so that shamelessly, in unholy mirth, hideousness, and depravity it stalked and pranced, beckoned, squirmed, and flaunted upon those austerely snow-white walls.

For the rest, chairs, tables, easels, even the model's movable platform, were, like the carpet, dead black. Two low, wide divans upholstered in black brocade stood on either side of the deep outstanding chimney-breast; and upon the farther one, masked by a red-lacquer folding screen, amid a huddle of soft, black pillows, flat on its back, a human form reposed—but whether of living man or of cleverly disposed lay figure remained debatable, since it was shrouded from head to heel in a black silk resai, even the face being covered, and its immobility complete.

On taking leave of Anastasia Beauchamp, Adrian Savage had found himself in no humor either for work or for sleep. His search for the further reason had led him a longer journey than he anticipated. And in some of its stages that journey offered disquieting episodes. He admitted he was still puzzled, still anxious; more than ever determined as to the final result, yet hardly more clear as to how the result in question might be obtained. There were points which needed thinking out, but to think them out profitably he must regain his normal attitude of mind and self-possession. So, reckoning it useless to go home to his well-found bachelor apartments in the rue de l'Université, he decided to walk till such time as physical exercise had regulated both his bodily and mental circulation.

It happened to be the moment of the turn-out of theaters and other places of entertainment, and, as the young man made his way down toward the Place de l'Opéra, the aspect of the town struck him as conspicuously animated and brilliant. His eyes, still focused to the quiet English atmosphere and landscape, were quick to note the contrast to these presented by his existing surroundings. He invited impressions, looking at the scene sympathetically, yet idly, as at the pages of a picture-book. Strong effects of light and color held the ground plan, above which the tall, many-windowed houses rose as some pale striated cliff-face toward the strip of infinitely remote, star-pierced sky. It was sharply cold, and through the exciting tumult of the streets he could detect a shrill singing of wind in telegraph and telephone wires and amid the branches of the leafless trees. In like manner, passing from the material to the moral plane, through the accentuated vivacity of the amusement-seeking crowd, he seemed to detect, as so often in Paris—is not that, indeed, half the secret of her magic and her charm?—a certain instability and menace, a shrill singing of possible social upheaval, of Revolution always there close at hand awaiting her surely recurrent hour of opportunity.

To Adrian, after precedent-ridden, firmly planted, middle-class England and the English, that effect of instability, that shrill singing of social upheaval, proved stimulating. He breathed it in with conscious enjoyment while negotiating thickly peopled pavements or madly tram- and- motor-rushed crossings. For these dear Parisians, as he told himself, alike in mind and in appearance, are both individual and individualists with a positive vengeance, possessing not only the courage of their physical types—and making, for beauty or the reverse, the very most of them—and the courage of their convictions; but the courage of their emotions likewise. And how refreshingly many are those emotions, how variegated, how incalculable, how explosive! How articulate, too, ready at a moment's notice to justify their existence by the discharge of salvos of impassioned rhetoric! If the English might fairly be called a nation of pedants, these might, with at least equal fairness, be called a nation of comedians; not in the sense of pretending, of intentionally playing a part—to that affectation the English were far more addicted—but in the sense of regarding themselves and life from a permanently dramatic standpoint. Wasn't it worth while to have been away for a time, since absence had so heightened his appreciation of racial contrasts and power of recognizing them?

And there he paused in his pæan. For on second thoughts, were these psychologic determinations so well worth the practical cost of them? Is gain of the abstract ever worth loss in the concrete? His thought turned with impatience to Stourmouth, to the Tower House and its inhabitants, and to the loss of precious time which devotion to their affairs had, in point of fact, caused him. Resultant appreciation of psychologic phenomena seemed but a meager recompense for such expenditure. For this absence had made him lose ground in relation to Madame St. Leger. Miss Beauchamp intimated as much; intimated, too, that while he lost ground others had gained it, had done their best to jump his claim, so to speak, and had, in a measure at least, succeeded—take Mademoiselle Zélie de Gand, for example.

Whereupon Adrian ceased to take any interest, philosophic or otherwise, in the wonderful midnight streets and midnight people; becoming himself actively, even aggressively, individualist, as he brushed his way through the throng, his expression the reverse of urbane and his pace almost headlong.

For who, in the devil's name, had dared give that much-discussed, plausible, very astute and clever, also very much discredited arrivist and novelist—Zélie de Gand—an introduction to Madame St. Leger? Miss Beauchamp owned to a suspicion. And then, yes, of course he remembered last year meeting the great Zélie at René Dax's studio! Remembered, too, how René had pressed a short story of hers upon him for publication in the Review; and had sulked for a week afterward when—not without laughter—he had pronounced the said story quite clearly unprintable. Did René, after all, represent the further reason, not as aspirant to la belle Gabrielle's thrice-sacred hand indeed; but as her mental director, inciting her to throw in her lot with agitators and extremists, Feminists, Futurists, and such-like pestilent persons—enemies of marriage and of the family, of moral and spiritual authority, of all sane canons of art, music and literature, reckless anarchists in thought and purpose if not, through defective courage, in actual deed? Was this what Anastasia Beauchamp hinted at? Was it against risk of such abominable stabling of swine in his own particular Holy of Holies—for the young man's anger and alarm, now thoroughly aroused, tended to express themselves in no measured language—she did her best to warn him?

Again, as earlier that day, a necessity for immediate and practical action laid hold on him. Delay became not only intolerable, but unpardonable. He must know, and he must also prevent this campaign of defilement and outrage going further. Wherefore he bolted into the first empty cab, had himself whirled to the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and projected himself, bomb-like, bursting with protest and indignation, into René Dax's great, dusky, white-walled studio; to find, in the stillness, nothing more pertinent to the matter in hand than the gentle, gray lemur sitting in its scarlet-painted baby's chair before the fire, the orange-and-black blotched newts and small ancient tortoises crawling upon the rock-work of the little fountain, while in the glass tank the gleaming fishes swam lazily to and fro. Of the owner of this quaint menagerie no signs were visible.

But neither René's absence nor the presence of his queer associates held Adrian's attention more than a few seconds; for, upon an easel facing him as he entered, placed where the light of the hanging lamps fell strongest, was a drawing in red chalk, which at once fed his anger by its subject and commanded his unqualified admiration by its consummate beauty and art.

Nearly half life-size, the figure poised, the head slightly inclined, proudly yet lovingly, toward the delicious child she carried on her arm, Gabrielle St. Leger stepped toward him, as on air, from off the tall panel of ivory-tinted cartridge paper. The attitude was precisely that in which he had seen her this afternoon, when she told René Dax the "door should remain open since little Bette wished it." The two figures were rendered with a suavity, yet precision, of treatment, a noble assurance of line and faithfulness of detail, little short of miraculous considering the time in which the drawing must have been executed.—Yes, it was la belle Gabrielle to the life; and alive—how wonderfully alive! The tears came into the young man's eyes, so deeply did this counterfeit presentment of her move him, and so very deeply did he love her. He noted, in growing amazement, little details, even little blemishes, dear to his heart as a lover, since these differentiated her beauty from that of other beautiful women, giving the original, the intimate and finely personal note.

And then anger shook him more sharply than ever, for how dare any man, save himself, note these infinitely precious, because exclusively personal, touches? How dare René observe, still more how dare he record them? His offense was rank; since to do so constituted an unpardonable liberty, a gross intrusion upon her individuality. René knew too much, quite too much, and, for the moment, Adrian was assailed by a very simple and comprehensive desire to kill him.

But now a wave of humiliation, salt and bitter, submerged this unhappy lover. For not only was that little devil of a Tadpole's drawing a masterpiece in its realization of the outward aspect of Gabrielle St. Leger, but of insight into the present workings of her mind and heart. Had not he apprehended and set forth here, with the clarity and force of undeniable genius, just all that which Anastasia Beauchamp had tried to tell him—Adrian Savage—about her? What he, Adrian, notwithstanding the greatness of his devotion, fumbled over and misinterpreted, René grasped unaided, and thus superbly chronicled! For, here indeed, to quote Anastasia, Gabrielle's eyes were turned toward the future and the strange unrestful wind—the wind of Modernity—which blows from out the future, was upon her face; with the result that her expression and bearing were exalted, a noble going forth to meet fate in them, she herself as one consecrated, at once the embodiment and exponent of some compelling idea, the leader of some momentous movement, the elect spokeswoman of a new and tremendous age.

Beholding all which, poor Adrian's spirits descended with most disintegrating velocity into his boots, and miserably camped at that abject level. For though he might declare, and very honestly believe, the idea in question, the movement in question, to be so much moonshine, and the Spirit of the Age a rank impostor, how did he propose to convince Madame St. Leger of that? The inquiry brought him up as against a brick wall. Yes, Miss Beauchamp had been rather cruelly right when she told him his work was cut out for him and would prove a mighty tough job. For what, calmly considered, had he, after all, to offer as against those alluring and immense perspectives?—Really, when he came to ask himself, it made him blush.—Only an agreeable, fairly talented and well-conditioned young man—that was all; and marriage—marriage, an old story to Gabrielle, a commonplace affair about which she already knew everything that there is to know. Of course she didn't know everything about it, he went on, plucking up a little spirit again. Hers had been a marriage of convenience; a marriage of reason. Poor Horace was by a whole generation her senior. Whereas, in the present case, it all would be so different—a great and exclusive passion, et cetera, et cetera. He would have liked to wax eloquent, descanting upon that difference and its resultant illuminating values. But his eloquence stuck in his throat somehow. Himself as a husband—humor compelled him to own, with a pretty sharp stab of mortification, this a rather stale and meager programme as alternative to cloudy splendors of self-consecration to the mighty purposes of Modernity and the Spirit of the Age.

"She is very beautiful, is she not, my Madonna of the Future?"

René Dax asked the question in soft, confidential accents. He stood at Adrian's elbow, clothed in a scarlet Japanese silk smoking-suit. Upon his neat bare feet he wore a pair of black Afghan sandals. Uttering little loving, crooning cries, the gray lemur balanced itself upon his shoulders, clasping his great domed head with thin furry arms and furry-backed, black-palmed hands, the finger-tips of which just met upon the center of his forehead.

"I have been watching, from behind the screen, the effect she produced on you. I have given up going to bed, you see. I wrap myself in blankets and quilts and sleep here—when I do sleep—upon one of the divans. It is more artistic. It is simpler. The bed, when you come to consider it, is, like the umbrella, the mark of the bourgeois, of the bourgeoise and of all their infected progeny. It represents, as you may say, the battle-cry of middle-class civilization. The domestic hearth? No, no. The domestic bed. How far more scientific and philosophic a definition! Therefore I abjure it.—So I was lying there on the divan in meditation. I am preparing illustrations for an édition de luxe of Les Contes Drolatiques. It is not designed for family reading. It will probably be printed in Belgium and sold at Port Said. I lie on my back. I cover my face, thus isolating myself from contemplation of surrounding objects, so that my imagination may play freely around those agreeable tales. In the midst of my meditation I heard you burst in. At first I felt annoyed. Then I arose silently and watched the effect this portrait produced on you. I was rewarded; for it knocked the bluster pretty effectually out of you, eh, mon vieux? I saw you droop, grow dejected, pull your beard, wipe your eyes, eh? And you deserved all that, for your manner was offensive this afternoon. You treated me disrespectfully. Have you now come to apologize? It would be only decent you should do so. But I do not press the point. I can afford to be magnanimous, since, in any case, I am even with you. My Madonna is my revenge."

"I did not come to apologize, but to demand explanation," Adrian began, hotly. Then his tone changed. Truly he was very unhappy, very heavy of heart. "You are right," he added. "This drawing is your revenge."

"You do not like my drawing."

"On the contrary, I find it glorious, wonderful."

"And it hurts you?"

"Yes, it hurts me," he answered hoarsely, backing away. "I hate it."

"I am so glad," René said, sweetly. He put his hand behind his scarlet back, and tweaked the tip of the lemur's long furry tail affectionately.

"You hear, you rejoice with me, oh, venerable Aristides!" he murmured.

To which the little creature replied by clasping his head more tightly and making strange, coaxing noises.

"But there,—for the moment my Madonna has done precisely what I asked of her, so now let us talk about something else, mon vieux, something less controversial. Why not? For here, after all, she is fixed, my Madonna. She can't run away, happily. We can always return and, though she is mine, I will permit you to take another look at her. So—well—do you remark how I have changed my decorative scheme since you last visited me? Is it original, startling, eh? That is what I intended. Again I felt the need to simplify. I called for plasterers, painters, upholsterers. When they will be paid I haven't a conception; but that is a contemptible detail. I rushed them. I harried them. I drove them before me like a flock of geese, a troop of asses. 'Work,' I screamed, 'work. Delay is suffocation to my imagination. This transformation must be effected instantly.' For suddenly color sickened me. I comprehended what a fraud, what a subterfuge and inanity it is. Form alone matters, alone is permanent and essential. Color bears to form the same relation which emotion bears to reason, which sensation bears to intellect. It represents an attitude rather than an entity. I recognized it as adventitious, accidental, unscientific, hysterical. So I had them all washed out, ripped off, obliterated, my tender, tearful blues and greens, my caressing pinks, my luscious mauves and purples, my rapturously bilious, sugar-sweet yellows, all my adorably morbid florescence of putrifaction in neutral-tinted semi-tones, and limited my scheme to this harshly symbolic triad. See everywhere, everywhere, black, white, red—these three always and only—beating upon my brain, feeding my eyes with thoughts of darkness, night, death, the bottomless pit, despair, iniquity; of light, day, snow, the colorless ether, virtue, the child's blank soul, immaculate sterility. And then red—red, the horrid whipper-in and huntsman of us all, meaning life, fire, lust, pain, carnage, sex, revolution and war, scarlet-lipped scorn and mockery—the raw, gaping, ever-bleeding, ever-breeding wound, in short, upon the body of the Cosmos which we call Humanity."

The young man's affectation of imperturbability for once deserted him. He was shaken by the force of his own speech. His voice rose, vibrating with passion, taking on, indeed, an almost maniacal quality, highly distressing to Adrian and altogether terrifying to the lemur, which moaned audibly and shivered as it clutched at his forehead.

"Get down, Aristides," he cried with sudden childish petulance. "Unclasp your hands. You scratch. You hurt me. Go back to your little chair. I am tired. I have worked too hard. The back of my head stabs with pain. I suffer, I suffer so badly."

He came close to Adrian, who, his nerves too very much on edge, still stood before the noble drawing of Gabrielle St. Leger.

"I am not well," he said, plaintively. "Certainly I have overworked, and it is all your fault. Yet listen, mon vieux. Your affection is necessary to me. Therefore do not let us quarrel. I own you enraged me this afternoon. I did not want you just then."

"Nor I you," Adrian returned, with some asperity.

"And your manner was at once insufferably brusque and insufferably possessive. I could not let it pass. I felt it incumbent upon me to administer correction. But I would not descend to anything commonplace in the way of chastisement. I would lay an ingenious trap for you. I came straight home. I seated myself here. I set up this panel, and I drew, and drew, and drew, without pause, without food, in a tense frenzy of concentration, of recollection, till I had completed this portrait. I was possessed, inspired. Never have I worked with such fury, such torment and ecstasy. For I had, at once, to assure myself of your sentiments toward the subject of that picture, and to read you a lesson. I had to prove to you that I, too, amount to something which has to be reckoned with; that I, too, have power."

"You have commanding power," Adrian answered, bitterly. "The power of genius."

"Then, then," René Dax cried, "since you acknowledge my power, will you consent to leave my Madonna alone? Will you consent not to make any further attempt to interfere between her and me, to pay court to and marry her?"

The attack in its directness proved, for the moment, staggering. Adrian stood, his eyes staring, his mouth half open, actually recovering his breath, which seemed fairly knocked out of him by the amazing impudence of this proposition. Yet wasn't it perfectly in the part? Wasn't it just exactly the egregious Tadpole all over? His mind swung back instinctively to scenes of years ago in play-ground, class-room, dormitory, when—while though himself exasperated—he had intervened to protect René, a boy brilliant as he was infuriating, from the consequences of some colossal impertinence in word or deed. And that swing back to recollection of their school-days produced in Adrian a salutary lessening of nervous excitement, restoring his self-confidence, focusing his outlook, both on events and persons to a normal perspective.

"So that I may leave the stage conveniently clear for you, mon petit?" he inquired, quite good-temperedly. "No, I am sorry, but I'm afraid I cannot consent to do anything of the kind."

And then he moved away across the studio, leaving the egregious Tadpole to digest his refusal. For he did not want to quarrel, either. Far from it. That instinctive throw-back into their school-boy friendship brought home to him how very much attached to this wayward being he actually was. So that, of all things, he wanted to avoid a quarrel, if such avoidance were consonant with restraint of René's influence in a certain dear direction and development of his own.

"Nothing will turn me from my purpose, mon petit," he said, gently, even gaily, over his shoulder. "Nothing—make sure of that—nothing, nobody, past, present, or to come."

He proceeded, with slightly ostentatious composure, to study the dado of pictured figures rioting along the surface of the white distempered walls. He had delivered his ultimatum. Very soon he meant to depart, for it was no use attempting to hold further intercourse with René to-night. Once you brought him up short, like this, for a greater or lesser period he was certain to sulk. It was wisest to let him have his sulk out. And—his eyes growing accustomed to the dusky light—good heavens, how superbly clever, how grossly humorous those pictured figures were! Was there any draftsman living who could compare with René Dax? No, decidedly he didn't want to quarrel with the creature. He only wanted to prevent his confusing certain issues and doing harm. Yet, as he passed from group to group, from one outrageous witticism to another, the difficulty of maintaining an equable attitude increased upon him. For it was hateful to remember that the same hand and brain which had projected that heroic portrait of Madame St. Leger was responsible for these indecencies as well. Looking at some of these, thinking of that, he could have found it in his heart, he feared, to take Master René by the throat and put an end to his drawing for ever, so atrocious a profanity did such coexistence, such, in a sense, correlation appear.

And then, moving on again, he started and drew back in absolute consternation. For there, right in front of him, covering the wall for a space of two yards or more, he came on a series of sketches—some dashed in in charcoal, some carefully finished in red and black chalk—of Joanna Smyrthwaite.—Joanna, arrayed in man's clothing, a slovenly, ragged jacket suit, sagging from her thin limbs and angular shoulders; she bareheaded, moreover, her hair cropped, her face telling of drink and dissipation, loose-lipped, repulsive to the point of disgust in its weakness and profligate misery, her attitudes degraded, almost bestial as she cringed on all fours or lay heaped together like so much shot rubbish.

Adrian put his hands over his eyes. Looked again. Turned indignantly to demand an answer to this hideous riddle. But his host had disappeared. Only the gray lemur sat in its scarlet-painted baby's chair before the fire; and from off the tall white panel Gabrielle St. Leger, carrying her child on her arm, stepped forth to meet the Future, while the unrestful wind which blows from out the Future—the fateful wind of Modernity—played upon her beloved face.

III

THE OTHER SIDE

CHAPTER I

RECORDING A BRAVE MAN'S EFFORT TO CULTIVATE HIS
PRIVATE GARDEN

Joseph Challoner telephoned up to Heatherleigh from his office in Stourmouth that, being detained by business, he should dine in town to-night. This seemed to him the safest way to manage it, since you never could be quite sure how far your servants didn't shadow you.

He had put off dealing with the matter in question from day to day, and week to week, because, in plain English, he funked it. True, this was not his first experience of the kind; but, looking back upon other—never mind about the exact number of them—other experiences of like nature, this struck him as very much the most unpleasant of the lot. His own moral and social standpoint had changed; there perhaps—he hoped so—was the reason. In more senses than one he had "come up higher," so that anything even distantly approaching scandal was actively alarming to him, giving him—as he expressed it—"the goose-skin all over." Yet, funk or no funk, the thing had to be seen to. Further shilly-shallying was not permissible. The by-election for the Baughurst Park Ward, vacant through the impending retirement of Mr. Pottinger, was imminent. Challoner had offered himself as a candidate. The seat was well worth gaining, since the Baughurst Park Ward was the richest and, in many respects, most influential in the borough. To represent it was, with a little adroit manipulation, to control a very large amount of capital available for public purposes. Moreover, in a year or so it must inevitably lead to the mayoralty; and Joseph Challoner fully intended one of these days to be Mayor of Stourmouth. Not only did the mayoralty, in itself, confer much authority and local distinction, but it offered collateral opportunities of self-advancement. Upon these Challoner had long fixed his thoughts, so that already he had fully considered what course of action, in the present, promised the most profitable line of investment in view of that coveted future.

Should he push the construction of the new under-cliff drive, for instance? But, as he argued, at most you could invite a Duke or Field-Marshal to perform the opening ceremony—the latter for choice, since it gives legitimate excuse for the military display, always productive of enthusiasm in a conspicuously non-combatant population such as that of Stourmouth. Unfortunately Dukes and Field-Marshals, though very useful when, socially speaking, you could not get anything better, were not altogether up to Challoner's requirements. He aspired, he in fact languished, to entertain Royalty. But under-cliff drives were no use in that connection, only justifying a little patriotic beating of drums to the tune of coast defense, and incidental trotting-out of the hard-worked German invasion bogey. The first came too near party politics, the second too near family relationships, to be acceptable to the highest in the land. No, as he very well saw, you must sail on some other tack, cloaking your designs with the much-covering mantle of charity if you proposed successfully to exploit princes.

And, after all, what simpler? Was not Stourmouth renowned as a health resort, and are not hospitals the accredited highroad to royal favor? A hospital, evidently; and, since it is always safest to specialize—that enables you to make play with scare-inducing statistics and impressive scientific formulæ, flavoring them here and there with the sentimental anecdotal note—clearly a hospital for the cure of tuberculosis—nothing just now more fashionable, nothing more popular! Really, it suited him to a tee, for had not his own poor little wife fallen a victim to the fell disease in question? And had not he—here Challoner just managed not to put his tongue in his cheek—had not he remained, through all these long, long years, affectingly faithful to her memory? Therefore, not only upon the platform, but during the private pocket-pickings he projected among the wealthy residents of the Baughurst Park Ward, he could give a personal turn to his appeal by alluding feelingly to the cutting short of his own early married happiness, to the pathetic wreck of "love's young dream" all through the operation of that terrible scourge, consumption. Yes, quite undoubtedly, tuberculosis was, as he put it, "the ticket."

He remembered, with a movement of active gratitude toward his Maker—or was it perhaps toward that quite other deity, the God of Chance, so ardently worshiped by all arrivists?—the big stretch of common, Wytch Heath, just beyond the new West Stourmouth Cemetery, recently thrown on the market and certain to go at a low figure. Lying so high and dry, the air up there must be remarkably bracing—fit to cut you in two, indeed, when the wind was northerly. Clearly it was a crying shame to waste so much salubrity upon the dead! True, Stourmouth already bristled with sanatoria of sorts. But these were, for the most part, defective in construction or obsolete in equipment; whereas his, Challoner's, new Royal Hospital should be absolutely up to date, furnished, regardless of expense, in accordance with the latest costly fad of the latest pathological faddist. No extravagance should be debarred, while, incidentally, handsome measure of commissions and perquisites should be winked at so as to keep the staff, both above and below stairs, in good humor. Salaries must be on the same extensive scale as the rest. Later, when a certain personal end had been gained, it would be plenty time enough to placate protesting subscribers by discovering reprehensible waste, and preaching reform and retrenchment.

Finally, Royalty should be humbly prayed to declare the record-breaking institution open, during his, Challoner's, tenure of office. He licked his lips, not figuratively but literally, thinking of it. "Our public-spirited and philanthropic Mayor, to whose generous expenditure of both time and money, combined with his untiring zeal in the service of his suffering fellow-creatures, we are mainly indebted for the inception and completion of this truly magnificent charity," et cetera, et cetera. Let them pile on the butter, bless them—he could put up with any amount of that kind of basting—until Royalty, impressed alike by the magnitude of his altruistic labors and touched by the tragedy of his early sorrow—for the sentimental personal chord should here be struck again softly—would feel constrained to bestow honors on so deeply tried and meritorious a subject. "Sir Joseph Challoner."—He turned the delicious phrase over in his mouth, as a small boy turns a succulent lollipop, to get the full value and sweetness out of it. He amplified the luscious morsel, almost blushingly. "Sir Joseph and Lady Challoner"—not the poor little first wife, well understood, with the fatal stamp of disease and still more fatal stamp of her father's shop upon her, reminiscences of whose premature demise had contributed so tactfully to the realization of his present splendor; but the second, the coming wife, in the serious courting of whom he thirsted to embark immediately, since she offered such conspicuous contrast to the said poor little first one both in solid fortune and social opportunity.

Only, unluckily, before these bright unworldly dreams could even approximately be translated into fact, there was a nasty awkward bit of rooting up and clearing out to be done in, so to speak, Challoner's own private back garden. And it was with a view to effecting such clearance, quietly, unobserved and undisturbed, that he elected to-night to eat a third-rate dinner at an obscure commercial tavern in Stourmouth, where recognition was improbable, rather than a first-rate one in his own comfortable dining-room at Heatherleigh.

After the consummation of that unattractive meal, he took a tram up from The Square to the top of Hill Street, where this joins the Barryport Road about three-quarters of a mile short of Baughurst Park and the County Gates. Here, alighting, he turned into the maze of roads, bordered by villas and small lodging-houses interspersed with undeveloped plots of building land, which extends from the left of the Barryport Road to the edge of the West Cliff. The late March evening was fine and keen, and Challoner, whose large frame cried out for exercise after a long day of sedentary employment, would have relished the walk in the moist salt air had it not been for that disagreeable bit of back-garden clearing work looming up as the ultimate purpose of it.

In the recesses of his mind, moreover, lurked an uneasy suspicion that he would really be very much less of a cur if he felt a good deal more of one. This made him savage, since it appeared a reflection upon the purity of his motives and the solid worth of his character. He stated the case to himself, as he had stated it any number of times already, and found it a convincingly clear one. Still that irritating suspicion of insufficient self-disgust continued to haunt him. He ran through the well-worn arguments again, pleading the justice of his own cause to his own conscience. For, when all is said and done, how can any man possessing an average allowance of susceptibility resist a pretty, showy woman if she throws herself at his head? And Mrs. Gwynnie had very much thrown herself at his head, pertinaciously coaxed, admired and flattered him. Whatever had taken place was more than half her doing—before God it was. He might have been weak, might have been a confounded fool even; but then, hadn't every man, worth the name, a soft side to him? Take all your famous heroes of history—weren't there funny little tales about every one of them, from the Royal Psalmist downward? If he, Challoner, had been a fool, he could quote plenty of examples of that particular style of folly among the most aristocratic company. And, looking at the actual facts, wasn't the woman most to blame? Hadn't she run after him just all she knew how? Hadn't she subjected him to a veritable persecution?

But now Challoner found himself at the turn into Silver Chine Road, the long, yellow-gray web of which meandered away through the twilight, small detached houses set in little gardens ranged on either side of it shoulder to shoulder, the walls of them shrouded by creepers, and their lower windows—where lights glowed faintly through muslin curtains and drawn blinds—masked by luxuriant growth of arbutus, escallonia, euonymus, myrtle and bay. Now and again a solitary Scotch fir, relic of the former moorland, raised its dense crown, velvet black, against the sulphur-stained crystal of the western sky. Stourmouth is nothing if not well-groomed and neat, so that roads, fences, lawns and houses looked brushed up, polished and dusted as some show-case exhibit. Only a misanthropic imagination could suppose questionable doings or primitive passions sheltering behind those tidy, clean-pinafored, self-respecting gray and red house-fronts, in their setting of trim turf, beds of just-opening snowdrops and crocuses, and fragrant glossy-leaved shrubs.

Joseph Challoner drew up and stood, in large vexation and worry, contemplating the pleasant, well-to-do prospect. The alert calm of an early spring evening held the whole scene. Faintly, in the distance, he could hear a long-drawn murmur of wind in the Baughurst woods and the rhythmic plunge of the sea. And he was aware that—still to employ his own not very graceful vernacular—he funked the business in hand, consciously and very thoroughly funked it. He had all the mind in the world to retrace his steps, board the tram again and get home to Heatherleigh. He took off his hat, hoping the chill, moist air might cool his tall brick-dust-red face and bare head, while he fenced thus grimly with indecision. For it had come to that—he had grown so ignominiously chicken-livered—had he the pluck to go on or should he throw up the game? Let the whole show slide, in short—Baughurst Park Ward, record-breaking hospital, probable mayoralty, possible knighthood, wealthy second wife, whose standing and ample fortune would lift him to the top of the best society Stourmouth could offer—and all for the very inadequate reason that a flimsy, flirtatious, impecunious little Anglo-Indian widow had elected to throw her bonnet over the windmills for his sake? To Challoner it seemed hard, beastly hard, he should be placed in such a fix. How could he be certain, moreover, that it was for his sake, and not mainly for her own, she had sent that precious bit of millinery flying? What assurance had he that it wasn't a put-up job to entangle and land him, not for love of him himself, of what he was, but for love of what he'd got?

Challoner dragged his handkerchief out of his shirt-cuff and wiped his forehead. Of all his amatory experiences this one did, without question, "take the cake" for all-round inconvenience and exasperation!

Of course, he went on again, picking up the thread of the argument, if he could be convinced, could believe in the sincerity of her affection, be certain it was he, himself, whom she really loved and wanted, not just Heatherleigh and a decent income, that would make just all the difference, put matters on an absolutely different footing and radically alter his feeling toward her.

And then, with a horse-laugh, he spat on the ground, regardless of the Stourmouth Borough Council's by-law prohibiting "expectoration in a public place under penalty of a fine not exceeding twenty shillings." The lie was so transparent, the hypocrisy so glaring, that, although no stickler for truth where the truth told against him, he was obliged to rid himself of this particular violation of it in some open and practical manner. For he knew perfectly well that her love, whether for the man or merely for his possessions, in no appreciable degree affected the question. Not doubt as to the quality or object of Mrs. Gwynnie's affections, but rank personal cowardice in face of the situation, kept him standing here in this contemptible attitude of indecision amid the chill sweetness of the spring dusk.

Yet that coarse outward repudiation of inward deceit, if failing to make him a better man morally, had emotionally, and even physically, a beneficial effect. It braced him somehow, so that he squared his shoulders, while his native bullying pluck, his capacity of cynically measuring himself against fact and taking the risks of the duel, revived in him.

For this shilly-shallying didn't pay. And it wasn't like him. Every man has a soft side to him—granted; but he'd be hung if he was going to let himself turn a softie all over! The smart of his own gibes stimulated him wonderfully, so that in the pride of his recovered strength of mind, and consciousness of his brawny strength of body, he found himself growing almost sentimentally sorry for the fate of his puny adversary. Poor little soul, perhaps she really was in love with him!—Challoner wiped his face again with a flourish. Well, plenty of people did call him "a splendid-looking man"! All the same, she'd got to go under. She must be rooted up and cleared out. He was sorry, for it's always a nasty thing for a woman to be made to understand she is only a side-show in a man's life. Only if he meant to stand for the Baughurst Park Ward—and unquestionably he did now mean to do so—his address to the electors must be printed and distributed and his canvass started within the week. Yes, no doubt very, very sorry for her, still he was bound to make short work with this rooting up and clearing out of poor Mrs. Gwynnie.

Nor did his election supply the only reason against further shilly-shally. Here Challoner cleared his throat, while the brick-dust of his complexion deepened to crimson. It was funny how shy the thought of Margaret Smyrthwaite always turned him! But when once the winding up of old Montagu Smyrthwaite's estate was completed, he would no longer have a legitimate excuse for dropping in at the Tower House at odd hours, indulging in nice confidential little chats with Margaret in the blue sitting-room or taking a tête-à-tête stroll with her around the gardens and through the conservatories. Miss Joanna did not like him, he was sure of that. She certainly wouldn't give him encouragement. So time pressed, for the completion of the winding up of the estate could not be delayed much longer. Montagu Smyrthwaite had left his affairs in quite vexatiously good order, from Challoner's point of view, thereby obliging the latter to expend much ingenuity in the invention of obstacles to the completion of business. His object was to keep Adrian Savage out of England and away from his cousins as long as possible. But the young man—with how much heartiness Challoner consigned him and all his works and ways to regions infernal!—might grow suspicious and run over from Paris just to hasten matters. That would not suit Challoner's little game in the least. He must make certain of his standing with Margaret before that most unwelcome descent of the enemy.

For the whole matter of Adrian Savage had become to him as the proverbial red rag to a bull. By its irritating associations it acted very sensibly upon him now, causing him to charge down the road headlong, with his heavy, lunging tread. Had Adrian proved a bad man of business, ignorant, careless, or bungling, Challoner felt his superiority in other departments might have been more easily stomached. But to find this highly polished man of the world as smart a business man as his somewhat unpolished and provincial self rubbed him very shrewdly on the raw. When, with an eye to a not impossible future, he essayed so to jockey affairs as to secure some advantage to Margaret Smyrthwaite, in the disposition of her father's property, Adrian invariably detected the attempted small swindle and promptly, though politely, checkmated it.

Such encounters had occurred more than once; and both his own failure and Adrian's adroitness in disposing of them rankled so much still that Challoner walked nearly half the length of Silver Chine Road absorbed in disagreeable remembrance. Then the name on a gate-post, which happened to catch his eye, acquainted him with the hardly less disagreeable fact that he neared the end of his journey.

Ferndale—and he went on repeating the names of the houses as he passed them, mostly by rote, occasionally refreshing his memory where the light permitted by a glance at gate or gate-post. Ferndale, then Ambleside, The Hollies, St. Miguel, Killarney, followed by Castlebar, The Moorings, Peshawar, Mon Repos, Clovelly. And next, after crossing the end of St. Cuthbert's Road, Leicester Lodge, Fairlawn, Chatsworth, Ben Nevis, Santander. Less than a year ago these same names had been to him as mile-stones on love's pilgrimage, each one of which brought him a few steps nearer to a hotly coveted goal. Now he waxed sarcastic at the expense of their far-fetched, high-flown titles. Take Chatsworth, for instance—a forty-five-pound-a-year house, rates and taxes included, with, at the outside, an eighth of an acre of garden to it—could snobbish silliness go much farther?

But here was Robin's Rest, capping the climax, in respect of its title, by vulgar folly.

Challoner's large, stiff-jointed hands came down roughly on the top bar of the little white gate. He waited a few seconds, breathing rather stertorously.

"Robin's Rest—why not Joseph's Coat?" he snarled, "a coat of many colors. Convenient, that, when you happen to want to turn it, perhaps! Now, no more squish-squash. Straight ahead—go in and win, and my best wishes to you, Sir Joseph Turncoat."

With that he swung the gate open and tramped up the path to the front door, a certain bullying swagger in the carriage of his big person and tall, upright head.

CHAPTER II

A STRATEGIC MOVEMENT WHICH SECURES VICTORY
WHILE SIMULATING RETREAT

Mrs. Spencer, the train of her mauve, cotton-back satin tea-gown thrown negligently over her arm, held aside the strings of the beaded chick, letting her guest pass into the inner hall. As she moved across to the open door of the much be-frilled and be-palmed little drawing-room, they rippled back into place behind her with a rattle of cane and tinkle of glass. The familiar sound gave Challoner, who, heavily deliberate, deposited gloves and hat on the hall table, a catch in his throat. He found the first sight of Mrs. Gwynnie in her flimsy satin, cream lace, and rather tired turquoise-blue ribbons, upsetting. She was a straw-colored, insignificant-featured, fairly tall, fairly plump, fairly graceful, uncomfortably small-waisted woman; looking, at a distance, five-and-twenty, at close quarters, nearer five-and-thirty, cheaply pretty and effective, though slightly washed out. And this latter quality, or absence of quality, in her appearance took hold of Challoner now with an appeal of pathos which he resented and made an effort to ignore. It did not tend to the improvement of his manners or of his temper.

"Since when have you taken to answering the front door yourself?" he inquired, in tones of heavy banter. "Been having the periodic rumpus with the maids again?"

"Oh no; the maids are quite good, thank you," she answered, punctuating her speech with a little meaningless, neighing laugh habitual to her. "I'm on excellent terms with both of them, for a wonder. But it's the cook's evening out, and I gave Esther leave to go with her. I didn't think we should have any particular use for them." Again she laughed. "But didn't you get my note?"

"Yes, I got it right enough," Challoner said. He had followed her into the drawing-room and stood with his hands behind him and his back to the hissing gas-fire, looking down at his seal-brown frieze trousers. The suit was almost new, yet the knees showed signs of bagging already. This vexed him. "That is why I am here. You said you wanted to see me. So I stayed and dined in town to save time, and came on just as I was."

"So I perceive," she put in with meaning.

Challoner continued to contemplate the knees of his trousers. Yet he was well aware that her eyes were fixed on another item of his costume—namely, his waistcoat, crocheted in red and white quarter-inch squares, and finished with a gray cloth border and flat white horn buttons. Mrs. Spencer had worked it for him last year as a Christmas present. He wished to goodness he had not happened to be wearing it to-night!

"Yes," he repeated, without looking up, "I got your note right enough. But, do you know, I begin to think I get rather too many of those notes. You've fallen into the habit of writing too frequently. Between ourselves, it worries me a lot."

"Why?" she asked.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Why? Because I have some regard for your reputation, I imagine. I don't care a twopenny damn on my own account, of course. My back's broad enough to bear the consequences of my own actions, even if they are disagreeable. But it is quite another matter for you; and I must say you're getting very reckless. That's not fair by me. I've been awfully careful from the first. But where's the use of my taking extensive precautions to shield you if you go and invite gossip like this?"

"Don't be cross and scold me," Mrs. Spencer said, archly.

She had placed herself on the sofa at right angles to the fireplace, drawing the train of her tea-gown aside so as to leave room for a second occupant of this, the most solid seat in the room. The rest of the furniture ran to wicker chairs, colored Madras muslin veiling their original cretonne coverings, and tables, whatnots, cabinets, and flower-pot stands with mottled brown-and-biscuit bamboo frames and plaited straw tops, brackets, and shelves to them.

"I won't write so often if you really think it is dangerous," she added.

"It is dangerous," Challoner asserted, ignoring the invitation to share the sofa. "Think for yourself. At Heatherleigh there are my servants. At the office there are my clerks. Do you suppose they haven't tongues in their mouths or eyes in their heads? If that does not constitute danger, I'll thank you to tell me what does."

"But you forbid me to telephone, so how am I to communicate with you unless I write? You call so seldom. I hardly ever see you now."

"Oh! come," he remonstrated, "I was here Sunday week."

"But that's Beattie's afternoon at home. You know I always give it up to her friends. And a whole crowd of them was here Sunday week—Fred Lawley, and the Busbridge boys, and Marion Chase. I didn't get three words with you."

Challoner glanced at her in sharp anxiety.

"Fred Lawley come up to the scratch yet?" he asked.

"If you mean has he proposed, I am sure I can't tell you. I don't know myself. I suppose if he had, Bee would have told me. He seems tremendously gone on her. But you never can be sure of a man till your engagement has been publicly announced."

It was Challoner who laughed a little this time.

"Not quite invariably even then," he said.

His chin settled into the V of the turned-back corners of his high shirt-collar, while his eyes returned to contemplation of those vexatiously baggy trousers. Mrs. Spencer began to speak, but he hulled down her voice by asking, rather loudly:

"By the way, where is Miss Beattie?"

"Oh, she's gone over to Marychurch to the Quartermains. They asked her to stop the night because the Progressive Whist Club meets at their house. I think those club parties awfully slow, but Bee wouldn't miss one on any account. They don't play for money, only prizes."

"China lucky pigs or a black velvet cat, home-made, with a pink ribbon around its neck—I know the style," Challoner returned. "Fred Lawley's the attraction, I imagine, rather than those high-class works of art."

"I don't think he'll be there. Bee said something about his having gone to Southampton to join his ship. You seem very interested in Fred Lawley. But I told you in my note Bee was away to-night?"

"Very likely you did—I really don't remember," he replied, hastily.

For he detected, or fancied he detected, a suggestion in her tone and words eminently unwelcome and embarrassing. He felt the brick-dust red of his face and neck deepening to crimson; and this both angered and alarmed him. Notwithstanding repudiation of sentiment, was the soft side still uppermost? That would not do. He must buckram himself more resolutely against poor Mrs. Gwynnie's fascinations, and bring matters to a head at once.

"But that reminds me—speaking of Beattie, I mean—what do you want done about the lease of this house? It will be up at the end of the half quarter."

So far Mrs. Spencer had lolled in attitudes of studied ease upon the sofa. Now she sat bolt upright, clasping her small waist with both hands and advancing her bust. The little neighing laugh preceded, instead of punctuating, her speech. Challoner observed a nervous ring in the quality of it.

"Oh! well that rests more with you than with me, doesn't it? Of course I hadn't forgotten the lease is nearly up. It was partly—partly"—with emphasis—"about the house I wanted to see you to-night, and I think it awfully sweet of you to ask what I want done—"

She paused, while her auditor, in growing uneasiness, again shifted his weight, dancing-bear fashion, from one to the other foot.

"Yes, it's awfully sweet of you to put it that way," she repeated. "And I quite know I ought to make up my mind. I suppose, on the whole, I had better ask you to renew the lease for a year, or six months, unless—unless—"

"Unless what?" Challoner snapped.

He could have bitten his tongue out immediately after, perceiving how woefully he had blundered. For, although he carefully abstained from looking at her, he knew that the light leaped into Mrs. Spencer's eyes and the pink into her cheek, while even her straw-colored hair, through the intricate convolutions of which a wisp of turquoise chiffon was twisted, took on a livelier tint. She blossomed, in short; her faded, crumpled, played-out prettiness of person and manner transformed into the younger, smarter, more convinced, and consequently more convincing, prettiness which had raised an evil spirit of covetousness in him when he first met her, and continued to provoke that covetousness until—well, until something very much more profitable, socially and financially, in the shape of possibly obtainable womanhood had risen above his horizon. The moment was a very nasty one for Joseph Challoner; since it could not but occur to him that, while responsible for much existing damage, he was about to render himself liable for far heavier damages in the near future. This taxed his courage. Again, consciously, he "funked it"; so that for some few seconds Gwynneth Spencer's fate hung in the balance. But only for a few seconds did her fate so hang. Ambition, and a brute obstinacy in face of attempted coercion, a certain animal necessity to prove to himself the fact of his own strength, carried the day. Challoner turned his coat once and for all, in as far as poor light-weight Gwynnie Spencer was concerned, letting the underlying element of cruelty and cunning in his nature have free play.

"Unless what?" she echoed, laughing thinly. "Why, unless you have any other plan to propose, Joe; any arrangement which you'd like better and which I should like better than just sticking on here indefinitely at Robin's Rest."

Challoner had moved away to a rickety little bamboo table, set out with cheap flower-vases and knick-knacks. Absently he picked up a photograph, in dilapidated silver frame, from among these treasures and stood fingering it. The coat of many colors was fairly turned; yet at the sound of his pet name Challoner started, letting the object he held fall to the ground, where, to his relief, silver, leather, glass, cardboard and portrait incontinently parted company.

"I need not put it more plainly, need I?" she quavered, an upward break in her voice. "But, of course, if you have any other plan to propose there would be no occasion to bother about the renewal of the lease."

Challoner knelt on one knee, his large hands groping over the carpet as he gathered up the débris.

"Bless me!" he said, "the wretched thing's smashed. What a nuisance! I hope you haven't any special affection for it. I am awfully sorry. Can't imagine how I came to drop it! Stupid of me, wasn't it? I must get you a new one. I saw some uncommonly tasty silver frames in a shop in the Marychurch Road to-day. I'll go in and buy you one the first time I pass. Tell your girl to be careful when she sweeps in the morning, though, for the glass has splintered all over the place."

He rose ponderously to his feet, and for the first time since his arrival looked full at her.

"Peuh!" he went on, blowing out his breath and laying one hand across the small of his back. "It strikes me I'm growing confoundedly stiff. Old age comes on apace, eh, Mrs. Gwynnie? Not in your case, I don't mean. You are one of the sort that wears well. I haven't seen you in better looks for months. Some other plan to propose, did you say? Yes, I have, otherwise I mightn't have been quite so ready to eat a beastly bad dinner down-town, so as to be free to come on here early to see you."

His manner had become almost boisterously jocose. Casting out the last remnant of pity, he cast out the last remnant of fear of her even in her present heightened prettiness. He came round behind the sofa and perched himself on the back of it, sitting sideways, looking down at her flushed, expectant, unimportant little face, and quite jauntily swinging his leg.

"You'll not forget to tell them about the broken glass?" he queried, parenthetically, "or you'll have somebody getting badly cut. As to my alternative plan now, Mrs. Gwynnie, I have been thinking things over too; and I feel, like you, they can't very well continue as they are. This Robin's Rest arrangement, which served its purpose well enough at first, is pretty thoroughly played out. We may regret that, but it is. And, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Gwyn, I have been troubled by some little qualms of conscience lately. Beattie's affairs have been on my mind a lot."

"Beattie, Beattie?" she broke in, shrilly. "What on earth has Bee to do with it?"

"The question is not so much what Beattie has to do with it"—laying stress on the last word—"as what it has to do with Beattie," Challoner returned, in a benevolent, heavy-father tone. "In my opinion she has been a mighty good little sister to you, and she must be mortally tired of keeping her eyes shut and playing gooseberry by this time. I see no reason why her prospects should be sacrificed. She's a perfect right to a look in of her own, poor girl."

The answer to the above might appear obvious. But Challoner gauged the mental caliber of the person he dealt with. Mrs. Spencer's shallow, trivial, fair-weather nature was ill-adapted to meet any great crisis. Her small brain worked slowly, and with a permanent inclination toward the irrelevant and indirect. He counted upon these defects of perception and logic, and he was not disappointed.

"But—but, when I marry," she said, essaying not very successfully to practise her little laugh, "I always meant to make it a condition that Bee should share my home."

"Very nice and thoughtful. Quite right of you," Challoner replied, still benevolently jocose. "Only I was talking about Beattie's matrimonial projects just now, not about yours, you see. And you are to blame, Mrs. Gwyn. You have been careless. I don't want to pile on the agony, but you have been most awfully careless. There is ever so much gossip going round. I am afraid people are beginning to look just a little askance. And what reflects on you reflects on your sister. I have taken the trouble to make inquiries, and, from all I hear, Fred Lawley is a very decent young fellow and will come into some money when his grandfather dies. He is second officer now, and stands well for promotion. The pay is above the average, too, on that Cape line. His people are in a good position; quite gentlefolk, a solid old clerical family—one of his uncles a canon of some cathedral or other, I forget which. It would be a first-class marriage for Beattie. But you cannot expect people like that to be best pleased at his taking up with a girl out of such a queer stable as—well, as this one, Mrs. Gwyn. Therefore I do not think I should be acting in your sister's interests if I renewed the lease of this house for you."

"I see that," she said, her aspect brightening. "I see what you are coming round to. How you have thought it all out! I see—of course—go on."

"I shall not renew the lease of this house," he repeated, slowly, "but I propose you and Miss Beattie shall move, bag and baggage, to Marychurch, where—"

"Marychurch? Why? I thought you meant Heatherleigh! Why? Do you want to get rid of us? Oh!" she gasped, "oh!"

"Yes," Challoner said, jocosity waning somewhat. "Exactly, Mrs. Gwynnie. How quick you are! I do want to get rid of you, for your own good, and my good, and Beattie's good as well—principally for hers. This gossip must be stopped. I cannot have it. It is unpleasant for me, but for you it is disastrous. At Marychurch Beattie has the Quartermains and plenty of other friends. It will be handy for her young man, too, when his vessel is at Southampton. You would see ever so much more society there than you do here. And I can give you an uncommonly nice house, very superior in every respect to this one—Sunnyside, the white house with a veranda, opposite the new Borough Recreation Ground in Wilmer Road. Nominally it belongs to old Manby, but actually it belongs to me. It has been standing empty since Christmas, and Manby will think himself only too lucky to let it to any client of mine at a low rent—which I pay, of course. No one need know anything about that."