Desolate splendour

DID Viola herself believe in the sweet altruism of her filial duty? She talked of saving Charles from his own restless self; was it an impulse of pure rectitude that inspired her? Women reclaim a man but rarely—seek to reclaim him still more rarely—save from a longing to dispose of him (once reclaimed) as in their gentle wisdom they think fit. Had Viola disposal in her mind? Daniel had looked his mistress’ fervour in the eyes and doubted it, fearing that it betokened more than moral warmth of gratitude. But then he loved her, and lovers have eyes that pierce a cloud of fantasy. How right was he to fear! How wrong to doubt his Viola! For she at least was innocent of guile. As yet, though she had peered and screwed her eyes and sought to penetrate the mystery, she knew so little of love’s features that she mistook his distant gesturing for her own virtue in commotion. Evil attended one she liked; instinctively she sought to combat it. Wherefore she lived no falsehood during those Roman days that followed the encounter with Charles’ earlier love. Artlessly, maybe, but without conscious fraud, she told herself that this her guardian was a man whose upright mind might bend to meet the baseness of chance intimacy, might from perpetual stooping lose its power for probity, yet still was upright. Shyly, but with the brave determination of compassion undismayed, she set herself to save him for integrity. She had not scrupled so to study her own loveliness as to learn why and how it might assist her. When he had blundered on her privacy, her modesty had broken into frightened wailing; but the next day she had found teaching in the very violence of the shock endured, had come a little nearer to an understanding of the power of beauty over the medley of strength and weakness that is man.

After her lunch with Daniel, she asked herself hourly what was unselfish in her crusading zeal and what acquisitive. Hourly the answer changed. Until perforce she braved the truth that her own heart told her. She read the wording of her purpose written by deep conviction on her brain—read to within glancing distance of the end—and stopped. “I must win Charles,” she read, “because—— These women must be driven from his life,” she read, “because——”

With something of a shiver she fixed the day for her return. The infidel must be outfought at Morvane. To Morvane—a little trembling, a deal excited—she must go.

“I’ll leave to-morrow, then, if you’ll forgive my hurrying away,” she said to Rosalind. “Charles will be wanting me at home.”

At home! The word was torture to the hostess. Already it was home to this outsider, the Morvane that by all laws of justice should be her son’s inheritance! She turned her face to hide the baleful anger of her eyes.

“You must please yourself, of course,” she said coldly.

Joyful, the girl went gaily to her packing. That Rosalind should like her, or mislike, was not a problem worthy her attention on this blissful day. She was for home, for Morvane, for Charles. She sang her cheerfulness about the house. From where she sorted ribbons and letters in her bedroom the music of her happiness came faintly to the ears of those below. Rosalind Plethern frowned exasperation:

“Shameless little beast!” she thought. “Shouting her triumph in my very ears!”

§ 2

How lovely was homecoming! How lovely even to think of it as homecoming! Past fields and coppices and farms she recognized, the trainlet from the junction jolted Viola. Spring trembled on the edge of its revealing; hedgerows were red with swollen buds; the woods dusted with a film of leaves so pale that they seemed silver-powdered. Landmarks came thickly and more thickly; the desultory train rumbled along the cutting, where in summer traveller’s joy webbed the steep banks with labyrinthine stalks; crawled past the level crossing; jerked to a stop at the platform of the tiny station. See!—the dogcart in the station yard! See!—the solitary official taking tickets, cap-touching, smiling in friendly omnicompetence! Mind the high step, miss! Luggage in behind? Off and away! Now along country roads, between sweet English fields; now through the tall gates and across the sweep of park; now at the door and up the steps and in the hall....

“Hallo!”—Charles Plethern’s friendly voice—“Had a good journey?”

They walked together in the afternoon, she and Charles and dogs, over the tussocky grass, between the Morvane beeches to the lonely grille. She leant her forehead against its rusty bars.

“Rockarvon!” she murmured.

He smiled.

“I must rebuild these walls. The gates are ludicrous.”

“Do you know?” she said suddenly. “I went down there with Captain Clavering.”

“Did you? I hadn’t understood. It’s years since I was there. I haven’t dared....”

She gripped the uprights of the grille.

“If——” she began. Then: “Is it the only thing you ever wanted—really wanted?”

He nodded slowly.

“I think so,” he said simply. “The only thing——”

As they walked away, threading a path between the trees that fringed the park, she felt a lump rising in her throat. Strange, that pity for another’s disappointment should take her thus tearfully.... She thought of Daniel, scrupulously correct, making a dozen pretexts for a sight of her in London. Dear Daniel! She was fond of him and pitied him; she read his anxious patience in his eyes. Poor, disappointed Daniel! But no sob made to choke her. Strange, that the faithfulness of a handsome lover should leave her dry-eyed, level-throated; she who, like other golden women, could weep and melt so generously....

For more than a mile they wandered along the park’s edge, keeping on their right over the low wall the rutted lane between Morvane and Rockarvon. At the point where the lane joined a more ambitious road, a knoll within the Morvane boundary gave an extended view. She climbed the knoll and stood, a windblown loveliness, scanning the distance.

“There’s some one coming along the road,” she shouted.

He was throwing sticks for the dogs and only waved in answer. The moment she had spoken she knew the purpose of her speech; the moment that he waved, she knew that she had wanted him to wave. She watched him, absorbed in his dogs, slight and nonchalant and English. Then she turned toward the road again. A figure on horseback was approaching and she recognized it for Walter Gray. Down from the knoll she ran.

“It’s Mr. Gray, Charles. Come and speak to him.”

The dogs saw their entertainment fade and vanish. Philosophically, they bounded at their master’s heels; then ran to right and left, intent on some erratic business of their own.

Gray saw Charles Plethern and Viola, and wondered dully whether to stop or ride unseeing on his way. The old fiasco of the party mocked his shyness; still the girl’s rudeness tortured him. Then, however, he remembered that his sister, a while ago, had spoken of a letter she had received from Lady Grieve. Walter recalled Lady Grieve and her kindness at Morvane. She had, it appeared, written to Madeleine asking her friendship for Miss Marvell. Walter had scoffed gruffly when first his sister told him of the good lady’s letter; now, however, her request came once more to mind and, after the manner of his kind, dutifully he prepared to honour it.

Returning his neighbours’ salutations, he walked his horse on to the grass margin of the road and stood by the park wall. A little to his surprise, the girl addressed him:

“What a fine horse, Mr. Gray! Is he new? I don’t remember him last summer.”

Subtle! So subtle that only instinct could have guided her! If Walter had any vanity at all, it was a vanity of horses. He flushed with pleasure, muttered the history of the animal’s acquisition. She listened with frank interest and, when he paused, turned easily to her guardian.

“Isn’t he a beauty, Charles? We can’t produce a horse like that. Do you ride a lot, Mr. Gray?”

“All day, Miss Marvell, when I am not working with my hands.”

“Hunt?”

“A little. But it is too expensive for me as a regular thing.”

Charles took his share.

“How are your sisters, Gray? I’m afraid,” with a pleasant smile, “I don’t know how many you have, nor which of them are at home!”

Walter took the personality in good part.

“We are a large family and they come and go. At present only Madeleine of my actual sisters is at Clonsall—the permanent garrison, Madeleine!—but a sister-in-law and her children and some odd cousins are about the place.”

“What fun to have an elastic house like that!” cried Viola. “I suppose you are so kind to every one that they just come and stay when they like?”

“They certainly come!” laughed Walter. “But I take no credit for it.”

“May I come over and see Miss Gray?” the girl asked.

“Of course,” he replied. “Madeleine will be delighted. But you will find a queer, untidy household. Elasticity has its drawbacks, you know.”

“I have learnt to love a lot of things during the last half-year, Mr. Gray, that I was too stupid to love before.”

She said it so simply, and yet with a timidity so entrancing, that he felt his old prejudice turning to fondness. Outwardly this was the impudent beauty of the tennis-party, but that girl could not have spoken as this girl had done. He looked from Viola to Charles.

“You have been abroad, Plethern?”

“Yes. We’ve been in Rome—the child and I. Now I have brought her to be bored at Morvane. I shall be as grateful as she can be herself for anything you and Miss Gray can do to make her happy.”

Viola laughed gaily.

“You talk as though I had a secret sorrow, Charles! Poor Mr. Gray will think I’m a mental case!”

“I can guarantee Clonsall as a cure for melancholia, at any rate,” said Gray. “If, however, you are ordered quiet——!” The neighbours took friendly leave.

“He’s brighter than usual,” said Charles, as he and Viola walked home to tea.

“I think he’s very nice,” she answered staunchly, “and his horse is beautiful!”

§ 3

Walter was right to give the girl credit for her brave apology. It had needed courage, under her guardian’s eye, thus to ask pardon for the bad manners of six months before. And yet, when she was standing on the steps of Clonsall, hearing the old bell sound rustily in the distance, waiting to plunge into the dual embarrassment of fresh apology and a crowd of strangers, Viola felt that there was worse to come. Madeleine had written a kind note of invitation and now the lonely Viola was in the hall, hearing behind the closed door of some nearby room shrill sounds of talk, sounds of unruly childhood tapping spoons, deep notes of adult admonition. Then a door opened; the racket swelled to raucousness; dulled again; Madeleine crossed the hall to greet her guest. They shook hands, mutually at a loss. The effort of rescue was Viola’s. Jerking her head toward the noise of choral infancy, she asked: “What’s happening?”

Madeleine looked puzzled. Then her face cleared.

“Oh, that’s tea! I forgot you came from a quiet house. One gets used to it here. Will you come in or do they frighten you?”

For a moment Viola suspected sarcasm, but a glance at the other’s wide-set, honest eyes reassured her.

“I’ll risk it,” she said, smiling.

Down the long dining-room a long table stretched, dotted with bread and butter, scones and cake. Several persons and three small children were seated at this table, and, as Viola entered, the entire assembly fell into sudden silence. Eyes seized and held the stranger fast. A grey-haired man rose from an armchair at the table head.

“Miss Marvell, dad—from Morvane,” explained Madeleine.

The squire shook hands impressively.

“We are glad to see you, Miss Marvell. You must excuse a nursery tea.”

“I’ve warned her,” laughed his daughter. “Come and sit here, Miss Marvell, next to me. Then you’ll be out of reach of jammy fingers. Babies—this is Miss Marvell. Say ‘How do you do’ nicely.”

“How—d’you—do!” shouted three piercing voices, and three spoons banged ruthlessly upon the table-cloth.

“Barbara! I’ve just told you not to bang with your spoon! And you too, Toppety. I won’t have it!”

“That’s their mother,” said Viola’s hostess in an undertone. Then, encouragingly to her sister-in-law: “They won’t hurt the spoons, Nina.”

The mother, still glaring at her disobedient young, ignored the comment.

“Now for goodness’ sake try and eat nicely. Try and show Miss Marvell that you aren’t little pigs.”

Loud grunts from the far end of the table threw the children into ecstasies of delight. Nina turned impatiently to the squire:

“Dad, can you explain to Phil that if he won’t behave, he can’t expect small children to?”

“I was only clearing my throat, Nina,” said the offender plaintively. “Mayn’t I clear my throat? Must I smother in the cause of education?”

Madeleine interposed.

“We’ll get Uncle Walter to put Uncle Phil in the big sty with the pigs, shall we, Podge? Then he can clear his horrid throat all day. Freda, Miss Marvell wants one of those cakes. Pass them along, please.”

Viola had hardly taken a cake between her fingers when a loud wail from Toppety attracted general notice.

“What in the world——!” began Madeleine.

“Toppety! What is it, ducky?”

“Collywobbles, probably,” observed an unsympathetic uncle. “I don’t wonder, after all those caramels.”

Gradually the grievance was explained. Toppety, between her sobs, accused ‘Miss Marble’ of taking the only bun with a cherry on it. There was general laughter. Viola walked round the table to the disgruntled gourmet.

“There,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Put it on the edge of the plate and eat it last of all. They taste twice as nice at the end.”

Toppety gazed solemnly at her benefactor.

“How will I know it tastes nicer if I don’t have another one now?”

“How will you know? Well, when you’ve eaten this one—at the end—you’ll tell me how nice it was and then I’ll tell you how less nice it would have been, if you’d eaten it sooner. Then you’ll know, won’t you?”

The small girl nodded gravely. Clearly the arrangement satisfied her. She built a small ring of crumbs and placed the cherry in the middle.

“Look!” she cried loudly. “Moses in the burning bush!”.

Again the table laughed.

“Really, Nina!” said Madeleine. “Your theology—!”

“Bulrushes, darling,” maternally corrective.

Toppety gave her mother a questioning glance. Then she shook her head emphatically.

“These aren’t bulrushes,” she said. “They’re burning bushes. Aren’t they, Bar?”

The elder sister studied the crumbs thoughtfully.

“I think there’s a bulrush or two among them,” she ventured.

“So’s mine,” shouted Podge suddenly. “Mine’s all bulrushes!”

For a few minutes longer tea went its disjointed way. Then Madeleine turned to Viola.

“Shall we get out of this?” she asked.

“Aunty Mad! You’re to play General Post after tea! You promised to! You promised to be a parcel from Tring to Timbuctoo!”

“I’ll come, sweetheart. I’ll come. You finish your tea and in a quarter of an hour I’ll be a lovely parcel. Will that do?”

She ushered Viola from the room, then led the way upstairs. In a small, untidy sitting-room they settled before a brightly-burning fire.

“What jolly kids,” said Viola.

She was feeling friendly and at home. It had needed determination to leave her chair and to cope with Toppety over the solitary cherry, but once she had plunged, the task had proved easy and strangely pleasant.

“Rather pickles,” replied Madeleine. “But there’s nothing to spoil here. We always have kids of some kind, rioting about. These are one of my brothers’ children. He’s not here.”

“I thought the one who grunted was the father!” cried Viola.

“Phil! Oh, dear no! He’s not at that stage yet. He’s only engaged. To Freda, the girl with the dimple.”

Viola, while she talked easily with her new acquaintance, allowed her imagination to contrast this shabby, chaotic household with the spaced splendours of Morvane. Even during the September parties, when every room was full, when meals were festive banquets and conversation crowded laughter, there had been lacking the good temper and contentment of the one untidy, normal tea-hour she had experienced at Clonsall. And yet, even at the height of her satisfaction with this new domesticity, she told herself that it lacked something, a something of sensibility, a something of significance.

“May I come and see you again?” she asked suddenly. Madeleine turned with a ready smile.

“As often as ever you like. We are always here.”

“Is Mr. Gray out all day?”

“Walter, you mean? No, not usually. He’s in and out. He has a lot to do. A keen farmer, you see, for good money reasons. Though it’s not farming as Mr. Plethern would understand it—that sort needs more capital than we can manage.”

Viola sighed.

“I wish Charles cared enough to take it up,” she said. On an impulse to confidence she went farther: “He gets so bored being here, and it’s my fault.”

“Hardly a fault, surely?”

Viola did not reply. She had gone questing along another trail.

“Why, if you are so fond of children, aren’t you married? There must have been heaps of opportunities.”

Madeleine shook her head.

“Not what you’d call opportunities, my dear. Besides, I have to keep things going in the house. I couldn’t leave Walter in the lurch.” After a pause, she added: “But I’d love babies of my own. Wouldn’t you?”

Viola stared gravely into the fire.

“I haven’t got so far,” she said. “At present I’m too interested in their preliminaries.”

“Oh——!” The voice was unsteady with shocked astonishment.

Viola shook her head and smiled into the glowing coals.

“Sorry, but I meant something less piquant. I meant that I’m still so puzzled over men and—and all this love business.”

“You queer girl!” cried Madeleine. “Did you never have dolls and play at house? The usual procedure surely? Men come into it last of all.”

“Do they? How they’d hate to think it! Perhaps, then, I’m a hideous freak; but honestly that’s how I feel. You see I’ve been alone with men so much. First with my father, after mother—died. Then over here with Charles. In Canada I never thought much either way. I just read and learnt things in a stupid bookish way, without understanding an atom of them really. But over here—well, I rather butted my head against it and saw stars. I’m still uncertain which are stars and which are—oh, sunspots....”

Madeleine watched her guest with lightly contemptuous perplexity. Viola’s problem meant little to her who had grown up in a large English family, unquestioning, placid-minded, trained to accept love and its complications as things she would encounter when she must, as things, till then, that no nice girl thought or spoke about. She was unpuzzled, because she never thought of puzzlement; incurious, because in her simple, busy mind she had nor power nor inclination to ponder her own complexities and those of others.

“I shouldn’t worry my head about things of that kind,” she advised briskly. “Life isn’t long enough. When you get to know people round about and are interested in gardening or dog-breeding or whatever it may be, you’ll find that sort of tiresome nonsense will be crowded out.”

Viola felt a sudden irritation. She was disappointed. The girl was going to fail her after all. The charm, the gaiety, the friendliness meant little enough if all they covered was this bustling obtuseness. “Tiresome nonsense!” Was it a woman’s part to live for jollity and competence and, when a good God sent them, babies? Was it a woman’s pride glibly to brush aside as nonsense all the sweet dizziness of love that had made words and music of the ages? Daniel, hot-eyed beneath a harvest moon; Charles, hot-eyed against the darkness of a Roman corridor, loomed hauntingly across her brain. Sex conflict—the phrase recurred from books read but not a quarter understood. Where was the conflict with such a girl as Madeleine? Where was the struggle when one wrestler stood aloof, efficient in the daily round, indifferent to life’s crowning victory? ‘If I’m a freak,’ she proudly thought, ‘thank God I am! At least I’m not afraid to be alive!’

The door burst open.

“Aunty Mad! The game! The game!”

In a huge, barren room that had been nursery, schoolroom, den, and now was nursery once again, Viola joined in the sport of General Post. Later they turned the trencher. Later still they did charades. She grew hot and tousled, but forgot her problems and her hostess’ density in the absorbing joy of making children squeal and laugh and jump for glee. At last:

“Time I was off,” said Viola to Madeleine.

“Come again soon,” smiled Madeleine from the open door.

Viola nodded and waved. The cart swung down the dark drive.

“It’s cold, Tom,” she said, snuggling into her furs.

“Bit sharp, miss,” replied the groom.

The cob’s hoofs beat crisply on the road. As they left Clonsall behind and went tapping through the chilly darkness toward Morvane, the heedless merriment of the last hour of romp died gradually away. The old questioning began to rise and torture her. Her indignation against Madeleine smouldered angrily. “At least I’m not afraid to be alive!” Yet she had been afraid hitherto—afraid in the library, afraid before Daniel’s pleading urgency, afraid before Charles Plethern’s hungry face. She tossed her little head, sitting at the elbow of the unconscious groom. ‘I was a coward!’ she told herself. ‘I’ll be braver next time—braver and more generous.’ On the night wind to her burning ears came faintly from the past the words of old Mrs. Plethern, words spoken at that first tea-party in the campanile—“It is a mistake to give, without taking first.” No! No! A lie! Mean greed or meaner cowardice. ‘Oh the beauty of giving!’ she thought in rhapsody—‘of giving without thought of gain or pledge of safety! Women who give for things material, women who give under the bland sanction of a wedding ring——!’ Imagination mounted. She was in love with love; almost in thought she outlawed modesty. The wraith of her foolish, erring mother floated before her. “Poor little mother!” murmured Viola. “Poor little mother!”

§ 4

Passed then the weeks as a slow-flowing stream, about whose placid surface small eddies here and there tell of cross-currents or of sudden deeps or of stones lumpishly scattered on the river-bed. If there is a weir and waterfall ahead, such accidents are round the next bend or the next; low reedy banks and scattered willows make a monotony of this quiet reach.

Life seemed monotonous enough and quiet enough at Morvane, but brought little of contentment to the three that lived it. Viola, striving by a close interest in local things to hold her guardian to his home and to herself, felt she was dragging a dead weight along interminable roads. Charles was still under the influence of his rough violation of her privacy; he felt amends were due but, beyond amiability and efforts to forestall her wishes, knew not what amends to make. She sang to him at nights, but he had neither the taste for music nor the sentimental ignorance that often serves for taste to wish the ceremonies longer than they were. If, for this reason, romantic or classic melody could not hold him, there was another check to his appreciation of her lighter naughtier numbers. She tried him with the French song that had so fluttered the leaves at Lavenham; but it brought back too vividly the past he wanted to forget, and she soon knew herself to have blundered, noting his quick movements up and down the room, the wistful sparkle of his eyes. The map and all it stood for fared no better. They talked it over, canvassed its prospects. But Rockarvon unsubdued grinned across the centre of it and Rockarvon, like so many subjects, was taboo. She noticed Clonsall, asked him to indicate the area of the Gray property. When he had done so, in a queer moment of perception, pityingly but with astonishment, she guessed last summer’s scheme. Poor silly, old thing! She laughed suddenly.

“You are a funny, old stupid, Charles,” she said affectionately.

“Why? All at once like that....”

“Oh, nothing. Just you are.”

And she gurgled uncontrollably, thinking of Walter’s canvas boots and all the pother of the garden party.

Afterward, the discovery seemed less comical, for she realized of its implications those not instantly apparent. ‘He wanted to join Clonsall to Morvane,’ she told herself. ‘Then he must have meant Morvane for me!’ It was the first time that questions of inheritance had occurred to her, for when her guardian had explained Rockarvon’s insult, her mind had been full of other, emotional aspects of the strange adventure, and she had not thought to dwell upon the mechanics of the undesired alliance. Now that she understood his purpose, at least during the hatching of his absurd Clonsall plot, she began to understand other things as well. She remembered the old lady saying that Christopher was his uncle’s heir. When the remark was made she had hardly noted it, so obvious had the statement seemed to be. But Charles found it less obvious. Did Mrs. Plethern suspect as much? Then why speak of Christopher to her? She puzzled frowningly over this latest complication of her life, and the more she puzzled the more serious it appeared to be. All kinds of half-appreciated tendencies returned with a new clarity to her intelligence. Mrs. Plethern was for ever praising James and Christopher. Now the girl thought of it, she could detect coldness in the old woman’s attitude to Charles. Now the girl thought of them again, she could read a fresh meaning into words spoken by Mrs. Plethern, here and there, during their conversations of the past year.

‘I have done more than spoil his life,’ she reflected bitterly. ‘I have made enemies for him of his family!’ She shivered a little as she thought how James and Mrs. Plethern must detest her. It was not fear for herself that shook her, but sorrow for Charles; sorrow to have brought this new hostility to burden his indolent ease. ‘And if I work to win him to the kind of life that’s worthy of him, they’ll say I’m fortune-hunting!’ She shook herself with all the irritation of despair. There seemed no escape. Be with him, help him, try in small measure to repay his kindness—and the world would curse her for an intriguing hussy, would mock him for a doting fool. Leave him alone to go his way—What then? The answer terrified; she dared not even think of it. Only could she rock herself to and fro in dry-eyed misery, knowing that if he went his way he would escape for ever, that she would lose him and that, if she lost him, all was lost.

Day after day she wrestled with her dreadful problem, growing tired-eyed and pale and wanly tempersome. Charles watched her anxiously. Manlike he thought of doctors and of those vague, feminine disorders known as nerves. Would she care for a week in town? She shook her head.

“You go,” she said.

“Try Lavenham,” he suggested.

She thought a moment. Then, with a vague idea of telling her troubles to Belinda Grieve, assented.

“I’d like to go for a bit, if they’d have me.”

But she had not been two days in Buckinghamshire, when her hostess, reading a letter after tea, gave a short exclamation of surprise.

“What is it?” asked Viola.

Lady Grieve looked at the girl over her spectacles.

“You’ll have to stay on with us,” was all she said.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Charles has to go a voyage,” replied the lady and threw half the letter into Viola’s lap.

“May I read the rest?”

Lady Grieve shook her head.

“Not necessary, my dear. It’s all settled. You stay here.”

“But I must see him before he goes!”

Viola had jumped to her feet and Lady Grieve noticed with surprise her pale excitement.

“Perhaps he’ll come here for a night,” she suggested soothingly.

“No, no! I must go to Morvane! I must go at once! To-morrow! Dear Lady Grieve, let me go to-morrow! I’ll come back. It’s sweet of you to want me. I’ll come back—in a little while. But I must go home to-morrow!”

In the train she sat motionless, thinking, thinking. He was leaving her for months. During those months she could decide how best to serve him. It was a fortunate chance that took him from her now. And yet, during those months she would lose him. Back to the past of men friends and of wandering pleasure he would surely drift. Also the parting! Her heart stood still. She pictured his going, his trunks and bags packed and labelled, the last meal at Morvane, the drive to the station, the hotel in London (of course she would see him off), the leaving of the coast-bound train, the lonely journey home to a lonely house. She had to clench her hands to keep them quietly at her side. ‘I must not whisper loneliness,’ she enjoined herself. She greeted him at Morvane with composure and with smiles.

But the composure yielded and the smiles gave place to tears when nightly, in the solitude of her room, she allowed herself to think that yet another day had slipped away. One by one they passed. She kept beside him hour after hour, helping his last arrangements, talking cheerfully of the pleasures of the voyage, watching with a pain she scrupulously concealed his evident excitement and chafing to be gone.

“I wish you could come too,” he said once. “If there’d been a ghost of a chance, I’d have suggested it. But there are three men only going and it’s a business trip—”

“Please no!” she cried. “I’m a dreadful sailor. Send me a postcard now and then. Where do you touch first?”

“We have to go via Teneriffe. The trail starts there for some curious reason. I’ll send you a pipe of canary wine.”

“By post,” she added gaily, “with stamps stuck lightly, so that I can get them off for the kids at Clonsall. Then I shall soak, brutishly, in my bedroom. You’ll come back to find me a confirmed drunkard!”

Pitiful, tortured gaiety of suffering unavowed! Pitiful brightness in eyes that cannot smile, pitiful pain in twisted lips that desperately laugh! The last darkness of Charles’ last week at Morvane shut down on Viola in her locked and curtained room. Now that he was so nearly gone, she threw all comfort from her for the specious drug it was. She wanted no months in which to think; she cared no atom for the world’s ill-nature; only let her be near him, serve and cherish him, and the world—for all she cared—might talk itself to lunacy. Once, in the library, he had laid hands upon her. Blissful hour, that in her childish folly she had drowned in angry fear! Once, by a freak of chance, he had set eyes upon her loveliness; once what she had of beauty had been his to see and covet. Proud flash of time, that by its very suddenness had dazzled and affrighted her! He never touched her now; subjects in talk that might recall her Roman nakedness by him were edged discomfortably away. Yet in the library his hands were tender; yet from her bedroom door his eyes had hotly gleamed.... A moment’s madness seized her. What if this night she tempted him; what if this night she lured him from his voyage, bound him to stay with her, held him by all she knew of woman’s wiles for a few glorious, drunken days?... The madness passed; she was hysterical and an idiot; he would reject her angrily, and not for that moment only but for always. Men have desires for what they wish to take; for what is offered they have none or, at the best, a tired complaisance. Let him go voyaging. When he returned she would appear the rarer for her strangeness. Already she would withdraw herself; the hours to his departure should be hours of cool normality. She would dismiss her fevers and her rhetorics. Away with them! Away with them!

But in the very moment of her resolutions her tears welled up and blinded her. Prone on her bed, her dress dishevelled, her golden hair awry, she cried and cried....

§ 5

It happened that old Mrs. Plethern had become aware of her son’s imminent departure for a prolonged sea voyage before the letter with the news reached Lavenham, for he had written it from Morvane and, after sealing it, had crossed the dark garden to his mother’s tower. As he entered her room, the old lady made neither sign nor gesture of welcome. She sat in her wide, flounced chair at a small card-table upon which were piled newspapers and catalogues. Her great scrap-book of notes, drawings and reproductions of playing cards was propped on a chair at her side. She leaned back as her son appeared, taking off her round, horn spectacles, passing a large, pale hand across her eyes.

“Charles? You are a rare visitor. I suppose our dear child has gone to Lady Grieve?”

He smiled amiably and walked to the small fire that, in tribute to a chilly evening, flickered in the grate.

“Don’t let me disturb you, mother. Go ahead with your researches. Working up the collection, I suppose?”

She nodded heavily.

“Always working, Charles. Always working. They pity old people who have only posterity to work for, but I find the duty a pleasant one. It is nice to think of leaving a mark upon the future, to think that some day some one will say: ‘Had old Rowena Plethern not done so-and-so, then so-and-so had never happened.’ Perhaps you do not feel that way yet, Charles? You are young and, perhaps, still ambitious?”

He laughed.

“Ambitious? Good gracious, no! Not ambitious, mother. A drone in the hive. Jolly life, droning.”

“Well, temperaments differ,” she commented huskily. “Maybe fortunately.”

Bending over her table she shuffled papers stealthily between her fingers. Charles feigned an interest in a page of photographs.

“What are those, mother? They look like miniatures.”

“In a sense they are; they are from a French pack of the seventeenth century. It is in a collection at Angers. I saw it once, when I was younger and could travel about. Very beautiful. But then so many are beautiful. I think the sociology of playing cards is even more remarkable than their beauty.”

“Yes, I suppose they are tell-tale little beggars,” said Charles vaguely. “‘By their pips ye shall know them.’ That’s the idea, eh?”

“The spirit of peoples,” replied Mrs. Plethern—and, as always when on the subject of her hobby, she spoke rather to herself than to her hearer—“has ever been shown more clearly in their amusements than in their laws or in their art. We know more of imperial Rome from records of the arena or from Petronius than from any gallery of sculpture, any street of buildings, or any legal code. I could tell strange things of manners and morals in many countries at many times, and from cards alone. Very strange things——” she chuckled softly. “——Indeed, not so long ago I acquired some cards that told facts about Italy in the age of the Grand Dukes that no historian has made clear. Unfortunately these facts, like so many other that I could tabulate, would be denied and disbelieved, because they would clash with polite falsities of history and conventional adorations of the past. For example, at Versailles under the Roi Soleil——”

Her heavy voice tolled monotonously in the stagnant air. Charles lounged against the mantelpiece waiting for silence. His mother bored him in her Delphic moods, but he knew better than to force a change of subject.

When finally, like the last note of a windless organ, her voice rumbled into quietness, he jerked himself upright and stood, hands in pockets, before the fire.

“I have to go off again, mother,” he said abruptly. “In a few days. It is awkward, the claim on me coming just now, but I can’t help myself. Viola will spend much of the time at Lavenham, I expect, but while she is here I want you to watch that she keeps amused and happy, and let me know if there is anything I can do. Will you see to it?”

“You will be away for long?”

“I can’t say for how long. Probably for three or four months.”

He summarized the nature and purpose of his journey.

“I will look after her, Charles,” said the old lady softly, “You can be quite easy about her. I dare say I can devise some little distractions....”

“Good!” He nodded approvingly. “I leave her in your hands. Good night.”

She heard him pause on the landing. Another moment and he put his head round the door.

“This lift of yours is a bit dangerous, mother. The rope is badly worn. You ought to have it seen to.”

“I had noticed it, my son. It has been like that a long while and will probably last my time. But I will attend to it, as you wish me to.”

Mrs. Plethern listened to his footsteps as they tapped down the stairs, then crossed her hands and sank into deep thought. Once she glanced at the calendar that stood on her desk, made a rapid calculation, jotted some figures on a scrap of paper. Again she pondered, motionless, impassive. Before going to bed she wrote a letter to James Plethern, informing him that she would spend the night at his house in a week’s time. She wrote another letter to Lord Rockarvon in the Rue des Montagnards, asking whether he could conveniently leave Paris and come to London ten days from the date of writing, also whether he could remain, perhaps a week, perhaps three weeks, in England.