It Never Can Happen Again

CHAPTER XXIX

HOW CHALLIS MET LIZARANN IN SOCIETY. OF A LECTURE THE RECTOR READ CHALLIS, AND ITS EFFECT ON HIS IMAGE OF MARIANNE. HOW HE HADN'T BEEN TO ASHCROFT. IT WAS AN UNSATISFACTORY LETTER THAT!

The persistent self-absorption and stunning monotonous clatter of one's fellow-creatures, however execrable it may seem when one wants to predominate over them by the legitimate employment of one's superior gifts—without shouting, you know!—may be not unwelcome when one longs for an excuse for silence, as Challis did after that unsettling interview with Judith—silence, and a little time to think things over before any further speech with the source of his disquiet. The more row other people were making, the better! This feeling was quite consistent with susceptibility to a magnetism which needed some device to veil its nature. He would call it tea, for the nonce, anyhow. He made tea the pretext to escape from his position of arbiter without rights of speech, and left the disputants, promising to return forthwith, and meaning to break his promise.

He made the most of the hundred yards to the tea-camp, nodding remotely to casuals by the way. He looked for an excuse to avoid joining the group at headquarters, who appeared at his distance off to be discoursing brilliantly, interestedly, on absorbing topics, with smiles. He knew they were talking nonsense about nothing particular, and was glad to find his excuse in Athelstan Taylor and his sister-in-law, who had joined the party, bringing with them their own little girls and the small cockney waif in blue, whose aunt was Mrs. Steptoe. That was how our Lizarann presented herself to Mr. Challis.

"I like you better than your aunt," said that gentleman candidly, when Lizarann was introduced.

"So do I," replied Lizarann. But this answer, clear as its meaning was to all sympathetic souls, was taken exception to by the Rector's sister-in-law.

"What can the unintelligible child mean by that?" said she. "Because you are unintelligible, you know you are, Lizarann!"

"Yass, please!" said Lizarann. And then she felt when people laughed that she was being treated like a child, which at her age was absurd.

Miss Caldecott, the sister-in-law, was one of those tiresome people who are always forming grown-up Leagues against children, and making it distinctly understood that these leagues, though ready to stoop to the level of children's understanding, do so under protest, and with reservations as to their own superiority. Miss Caldecott paraded hers, greatly to Lizarann's umbrage, in the tone in which she said, "We do not yet know, my dear, that Mr. Challis has an aunt"; into which tone she contrived to infuse a suggestion of respect for Challis's family, even if the previous generations consisted only of the direct line.

Challis refused to be taken into the League. To avoid it he stated that he had more aunts than was really the case. He went further, and ascribed to one of them attributes that have surely never belonged to any person's aunt. She had, he said, a front, and lived on tea-leaves, which came out on her person as a kind of stiff black net which he had the impudence to say he believed was never removed at night.

Lizarann recalled a like experience which she thought would bear repetition.

"Bridgetticks," she said, in a loud, outspoken way that commanded an audience, "she's a hunkle comes out a Sundays and Schristmas Day, and gold trimmings to his coat, and brarse buttons, and Bridgetticks, she could count up eight and two behind."

"You must try to say 'uncle,' my dear, not 'hunkle,'" said Miss Caldecott, which Lizarann did, meekly, with an impression that perhaps she had claimed too much for Old Shakey, which was the old man's bye-name in Tallack Street, where he appeared at intervals. She had used the "h" to give an adventitious force of character to the tremulous relic of better days she was referring to. She wished him to be thought of as resolute, without presenting him in the aspect of a swashbuckler.

"What do you make of him, Rector?" asked Challis.

"I know all about him. At least, Gus knows." Athelstan Taylor had appropriated a camp stool, that he might accommodate Lizarann and his younger daughter on his knees. He looked round at his sister-in-law. "Don't you remember, my dear? Gus told us about him. A sort of old pensioner chap!"

Miss Caldecott remembered him, primly. "Not very sober, I fear!" said she.

Lizarann joined in the conversation. "Wunst you get him inside of the bust," she said, "the sconductor keeps his eye upon him. Yass!—All the way to Stockwell." Lizarann's confidence that her hearers knew the world had something very pretty and touching about it.

But Miss Caldecott, as the exponent of the League—which no one had asked her to form—checkmated Bridgetticks's relative. "We won't talk any more about him now, my dear," she said. The smallest shade passed over the Rector's face. However, it didn't matter for him. He could tickle Lizarann slightly, thanks to his position of vantage, and thus avoid being misunderstood.

With Challis it was otherwise. The effect upon his mind of the action of the League was that he now felt that Bridget's disreputable uncle was absolutely the only topic of conversation possible. He tried in vain to remember that anything else existed in the Universe.

"Mayn't we hear more about Miss Hicks's family?" said he, with some sense of proposing a compromise—not to run counter to the feeling of the League, as it were. Miss Caldecott said something confidentially to Space about not encouraging the child too much.

But she did not understand the earnestness and good faith of the said child. Lizarann had no suspicion that the gentleman's anxiety to know about her friend's connection was sheer affectation, and hastened to supply particulars. She proceeded to sketch the Hicks family, laying stress as much as possible on the excellence of its motives and the sobriety of its demeanour.

"Bridgetticks," she said, "she spinched her finger in the jam of the door, and felt it a week after in her shoulder-j'int. Yass—she did! And Mr. 'Icks, he don't take nothing till after gone twelve o'clock, and then mostly at meals. And Mrs. 'Icks, she never touches anything. Only then she never has scarcely no rheumatic pains to speak of."

"You see that point, Challis?" said the Rector parenthetically, in a quick undertone, over the heads of the two young ladies. "What Mr. 'Icks does touch is part of a course of treatment for rheumatism." Challis nodded the completeness of his understanding, and then the little girl Phœbe, who was listening with gravity, leaning on the shoulder of her father, said, "And then say why!"

Lizarann, prompted, continued, "Yass—she hasn't! Because of the nature of the suds. Because she's over her elbers all day, and can't roll nothin' up high enough, not to keep dry. And Dr. Ferris, he puts it down to the lump soda." An inquiring look of Challis's produced the additional information. "Yass!—you can buy it at the oilshop just acrost the road from the Robin Hood. Only it comes to less by the quarter-hundredweight." All this did the greatest credit to Lizarann's power of storing information.

But the League had been tolerating this sort of thing too long, and its Secretary or Solicitor—whichever Miss Caldecott was—struck in with, "Perhaps we've talked qui-ite enough now about Bridget Hicks and her family, my dear! We mustn't trespass too much on Mr. Challis's good-nature." Suspicion of the sinister intentions of the League gleamed in Lizarann's eye; for she disbelieved in its representative, while admitting her goodness. She might have ignored her intrusion if it had not been that the extraordinary sensitiveness of childhood to impressions that never penetrate the thick hide of manhood made her detect in Challis's disclaimer an understanding between himself and the League—one that civility had dictated reference to on his part, but that he would have preferred to conceal. Now Lizarann might have fallen back disconcerted on silence, even on tears, had it not been for Athelstan Taylor's keen understanding of children, and the supreme necessity for not letting them know allowances are being made for them. He said, with great presence of mind and an appearance of absolute sincerity: "Old Mrs. Fox sells it—where your Daddy lives, Lizarann. She'll let you have twopenny-worth if you say it's for me. So mind you bring it on with you when you come home." For Lizarann was to call on her Daddy on her way back from this visit. The Rector added that he should like old Christopher to try it, and this confirmed Lizarann's belief in his bona fides. She would not have believed his sister-in-law, who, with the best intentions, had been unfortunate enough to incur unpopularity by throwing doubt on the Flying Dutchman. This was her chief offence; but she had also questioned the accuracy of the surgical reports of the boy Frederick Hawkins, and other minor matters. So that Lizarann, while she acknowledged her kindness, took a low view—but secretly—of her intelligence.

When the children had gone away dutifully to play, discussing by the way such things as might be played at with advantage, the Rev. Athelstan said, "Now I must be getting home, or I shall be late for Mrs. Silverton." Said Mr. Challis: "Then I'll walk with you, Rector; I don't want any tea." Said the Rector: "Then I'll wait till you've had it," and waited. Presently they were walking through the long grass, overfield, having said little till the Rector spoke, as one who resumes conversation in earnest:

"What was all the interesting discussion about?"

"As far as I could gather—because they all spoke at once—they agreed in condemning the measure now before the House. But that may have been merely the common form of political discussion. There must be agreement about something to establish cordiality."

"Didn't they agree about anything else?"

"I think not—as far as I recollect. But really, in listening to discussions of this sort, I find myself handicapped by not understanding any of the terms in use. I am convinced I shall die in ignorance of what Secondary Education is, and though I talk confidently of University Extension, I am painfully conscious that the meaning I attach to it is founded, not on information of any sort, but on a washy inference that it can't mean anything else. So it's quite possible our friends were agreeing about something, and I didn't catch them at it."

"What had the M.P. to say?" asked the Rector.

"What M.P.'s generally do say. Things lay in nutshells, and called aloud for decisive handling, which there was but little reason to anticipate from a venal Press and an apathetic electorate. He would not presume to arraign the judgment of any fellow-mortal, but he would venture to call our attention to several things, and to lay before us a great variety of alternatives with which it would, sooner or later, be our bounden duty to grapple. He dwelt once more, at the risk of wearying his hearers, on the necessity for dealing with each political problem, as it arose, in a truly Imperial Spirit. I believe he did touch upon some aspects of the question of religious education, but then he also said he would not dwell upon them, and proceeded to consider everything else. I have a very vague idea of his views, but I understand they were luminous."

Athelstan Taylor thought he could detect in his friend to-day rather more than usual of his spirit of careless perversity. Something was the matter. But he made no attempt to find out what, and pursued the conversation.

"It would be interesting to know what he thought."

"It would—in view of the difficulty of inferring it from what he says. Mr. Brownrigg was more intelligible."

"What did he say?"

"Brownrigg pointed out. Of course! He pointed out that the subject had been exhaustively dealt with by Graubosch in his twenty-ninth volume. The forty-eighth chapter of that volume—one of its most brilliant passages—indicates the means by which all the objects of moral and religious education can be attained, without involving the instructor of youth in the solution of a single difficult problem. Strictly speaking, all such problems will at once disappear with the abolition of Morality, Religion, and Education—changes which form a fundamental feature of the scheme of Graubosch. But each of these will be more than replaced. The Great Doctrine of Retributive Inconvenience will result, as an inevitable consequence, in the Theory of the Avoidance of Retributive Inconvenience, which will attain all the ends Morality proposes to itself, but falls very short of. Religion will cease to be a necessity to a race of beings to whom it has been pointed out in their babyhood that they will do well to comply with the Apparent Aims of the Metaphysical Check, who will supply more fully the place the human imagination has hitherto supplied with Deities so unsatisfactorily that even now monotheism is not quite agreed about their number...."

"Never mind me!" said the Rector, who thought Challis hesitated. "Go ahead!"

"Well—it was Brownrigg, you know; it wasn't me."

"It's all quite right, my dear fellow! I want to know now about the Education. Suppose a member of the human race refuses to pay any attention to the Apparent Aims of the Metaphysical Check...."

"He will come into collision, clearly, with the Doctrine of Retributive Inconvenience. In the case of young persons, on whom a certain amount of Inconvenience can be inflicted without overtaxing the Salaried Suggesters who will take the place of the so-called Educational Classes, an exact system might be formulated. Brownrigg gave as an example the case of a child refusing to comply with the System of Hypothetical Notification, under which it would be required to address propitiatory sentiments, or requests for personal benefit, to an unseen Metaphysical Check, whose hearing of the Application the Salaried Suggester might hold himself at liberty to guarantee. He might also—this was Brownrigg's point—endorse his suggestion, in the case of a child refusing to Notify, by the infliction of a certain amount of Inconvenience, tending to produce, if not an actual belief in the existence of the Metaphysical Check, at any rate a readiness to confess it, which would be for working purposes exactly the same."

The Rector shook his head doubtfully. "At present," said he, "the practice in this village is to threaten rebellious youth with the wicked fire. Would Brownrigg's substitute be as effectual?"

"You remember what he said in September—that Graubosch meant to retain the Personal Devil until the new System had had time to settle down? Just as people keep the gas on till the electric light is a certainty!"

The Rector laughed. "You'll make me as bad as yourself, Challis, before you've done." Then he became more serious. "I would give a good deal," said he, "to know what you really think on matters of this sort."

But Challis was persuading a pipe to light inside his hat, and no immediate answer came. One vesta had perished in the attempt. The second made a lurid flash on his face, in the shadow of the protecting hat, his invariable grey felt. As Athelstan Taylor looked at him, he saw again, more clearly than before, that the face was inconsistent with its owner's levity of tone two minutes since. He negatived his own impulse to ask questions, and waited. Perhaps it was part of a growing interest in his companion that made him mix with this curiosity, about what was going on inside that head, a wish to see the hat back on it. For the sun was still fierce at the end of a hot June day, and the soft brown hair the wind blew about so easily seemed to have little shelter in it for the somewhat delicate skin the blue veins made so much show on below, on the forehead.

"You would give a good deal," said Challis, when the pipe was well alight, "to know what I think about the religious education of children? So would I!" It was a disappointing ending. His hearer had expected something better.

"What have you done about your own boy?" said he, with a kind of magnanimous impatience. "Come! That's the point."

"Nothing. At least, I have sent him to Rugby, where he will be brought up a member of the Church of England."

"But before?"

"I left him to his mother—at least, his aunt.... I told you...."

"I know."

"So you observe that with respect to Master Bob I have pursued a policy of well-considered devolution of responsibility. Perhaps I should say of evasion. However, I think I may lay claim to having given my son every reasonable opportunity of believing the creeds that will best advance his interests in the world. He has had the advantage of imbibing them from a lady who enjoys the privilege of being able to believe what she chooses, and has inherited or selected the tenets of the well-to-do. He has been till lately at a preparatory Academy, where every one of the masters is in orders, and every other boy the son of a Bishop. And now he's gone to Rugby! What can a human father do more, in the name of respectability?"

"My dear Challis, if you want to make your son's education a text for a sermon against worldliness and hypocrisy, do so by all means. We have weak joints enough in our armour, God knows, for you to shoot your arrows into. But let me finish finding fault with you first."

Challis slipped his arm into the Rector's. "Go on finding fault," he said. "Don't finish too soon."

"I won't. It seems to me, my dear friend, that under cover of a complete confession you have contrived to raise issues which have nothing to do with the question before the House, which I take to be—what is a father's conscientious duty towards the child for whose existence he is partly responsible? I want to keep you to the point."

"I'm a slippery customer, I know. Go on."

"Do you, or do you not, think a parent is bound to supply a child with a religious faith? Failing the parent, is it the duty of the guardian—of the State? That seems to me to lie at the root of all questions of religious education. But our question is about the parent's duty when one exists. Exempli gratiâ, yourself and Master Bob! It seems to me that your policy was one of evasion, and that the devolution of responsibility upon your wife was a rather cowardly evasion. Especially as her responsibility could only be for her own children!"

Challis's hand pressed the arm he held a little more warmly. There was certainly no offence. "You are perfectly right, Rector," said he. "I took a mean advantage of a little local patch of obscurantism to get my boy inoculated in his youth with a popular form of Christianity, in order that his father's heretical ideas should not stand in the way of his advancement. But I lay this unction to my soul; that if ever he sees his way to a bishopric, nothing I have ever said to him need stand in his way.... Oh no!—there is no idea at present of his entering the Church. The Army is engaging his attention at this moment—and phonographs.... But go on pitching into me about cowardly evasions."

"I am afraid you are incorrigible, Challis. I can't help laughing sometimes. But for all that, I think you were wrong. You were wrong towards your wife, because, instead of helping her, you made her task difficult. What can be harder than to turn a child's mind into any channel with a strong counter-influence, as a father's must needs be, constantly at work against one's efforts?"

Challis smiled in his turn. "It was Marianne, you see," he said. "I can't express it. The position was harder to deal with than you think." He then went on to tell one or two incidents connected with Bob's early indoctrinations of the Scriptures. How, for instance, when Marianne once crushed him under, "You know perfectly well, Titus, what the words of Our Lord were," and followed it up with a quotation, he had remarked in the presence of Master Bob that at any rate Jesus Christ didn't speak English; and then she had flounced out of the room white with anger, and not spoken to him for two days; and when she did at last, it was to declare that if there was to be any more blasphemy and impiety before the boy, she should go straight away to Tulse Hill, and not come back. Also, when he once innocently remarked that he believed there was now a tram-line from Joppa to Jerusalem, she had become very violent, and accused him of speaking of Jerusalem as if it was a place in Bradshaw.

The Rector considered, and then said: "I was just going to say Mrs. Challis must be unusually ill-informed, when I happened to recollect what a number of very good people are exactly like her. In fact, a very dear old friend of mine"—he was thinking of the Rev. Mr. Fossett—"is rather shocked when he hears Our Lord spoken of as a real person; and with him it isn't exactly ignorance, because he's a priest in orders. It's a phase of mind that seems to have its source in a belief that nothing can be both Good and Actual." He stopped abruptly, as one who changes a subject. "By-the-bye, should you have said the little person looked delicate—that little Lizarann, I mean?"

Challis had stopped to think. "N-no!" he said. "On the contrary, I thought she had such a good colour." On which the Rector said, "Ah—well!" and then more cheerfully, "Well—well!—I suppose it's all right. However, we must keep our eyes open."

"Isn't the child strong? She's a funny little party."

"Why, no!—they say she isn't. Isn't strong, I mean. Never mind! What were we talking about?"

"People and Scripture, don't you know. Things being actual...."

"I know. I was just going to tell you what dear old Gus—my friend—won't forgive me for. I'll risk it. Only don't you make copy of it.... Very well!—mind you don't.... It was this. Some years ago I was urging him to marry, and he pleaded in extenuation of his celibacy that he wished to model his life on Our Lord's in every point within his power. 'It's all very fine,' I said. 'But why do you suppose the Apostles did not model their lives on Our Lord's? Do you mean that they all led celibate lives?' Gus said this was almost an insinuation that Our Lord was or had been married. I'm sorry to say I couldn't help saying, 'Can you produce a single particle of direct evidence that Our Lord was not a widower when John baptized Him?' Gus hardly spoke to me all that day. But what hurt him was the realism of the expression 'widower.' The case was exactly on all fours with your wife's."

They were just in sight of the Rectory, and Challis had to get back in time for dinner. So he shook hands with his friend, remarking: "You will go on blowing me up another time." Athelstan Taylor replied with a cordial handshake. "You deserve it, you know!" and pulled out his watch. "I shall be in time for Mrs. Silverton," said he. But who and what that lady was this story knoweth not, neither whence she came nor whither she went. But she occurs in the text for all that.

Challis wandered back, having intentionally allowed himself time to do so, keeping out of the direct path to avoid meeting people. He liked his own company best.

His talk with Athelstan Taylor, which else could claim little place in the story, had had a curious effect on him. It had brought back vividly his early days with his wife. As he sauntered on with his eyes on the ground, choosing rather destructively special whitey-green heads of new young fern to crush down, or cutting here and there an inoffensive flower with his stick, his ears heard nothing of the wind-music in the trees, his eyes saw nothing of the evening rabbits, popping away and vanishing one by one—for which of them could say he had no gun, off hand?—as he approached. The small village maiden who stopped and stood still through a blank bar, and dropped a semiquaver curtsey in the middle and then went on andante capriccioso, might almost as well not have been there for any notice Challis took of her. His thoughts were back in Great Coram Street, in the dingy London home this Marianne—yes! this very Marianne—made cheerful, more than cheerful, to the industrious accountant of ten years since; who parted from her each morning looking forward to the return each evening brought to the grubby domicile he associated with so many blackbeetles in the impenetrable basement, such smells of mice in spite of such much stronger smells of cats, and the wails and choral conclusions of these last in the backyard they held against all comers, in the small hours of so many foggy mornings.

How many escapes from the fog without to the firelight within could he recall, in those days when he rose from his office-desk without a dream of what he could have used his brain for, instead of those interminable figures! How many a shock of trivial disappointment to find that Missis wasn't home yet!—how many an insignificant reviving thrill of contentment when Missis's knock followed near upon his own arrival and his thwarted expectation! For now and again it must happen to a man that some woman he has no passionate love for, pedantically speaking, shall grow round his heart and make the comfort of his life. That was the sort of thing that had come to pass in the case of Marianne and Alfred Challis. And now, as he—the flattered guest of folk he then had never thought to sit at meat with—passed up the great beech-avenue to the house, respectfully saluted by a great game-keeper, a Being who, in those older years, would simply have spurned him, his thoughts had all gone back to the rosy, if rather short-tempered girl who then seemed plenty for his life, and might surely have remained so, only ... only Challis couldn't finish the sentence. Now, why was he, in his own mind, commenting a moment after on the inappropriateness of two lines of Browning that had come into it:

He resented their intrusion. Who would dare to say his affection for Marianne was not what it had always been? It was—he would swear it!—and that in spite of the fact that Marianne, look you, was not now what she was in those days.

How and when had the change come over things? He was on the alert to keep Judith out of the answer to this question. He must see to that, or Unfairness, that was in the air, would twist awry the admiration of her beauty that was all mankind's—womankind's, for that matter, jealousy apart!—and put a misconstruction on his simplest actions, his most obvious feelings. He could have held his head up better, true enough, over this passage of his analytical self-torment, if only it had not been for that unhappy revelation of unspoken suspicion, by the river there, not two hours since. But be fair!—be fair! It was unspoken, at least! Who had said anything? As he asked the question of himself, Challis wiped from his brow perspiration he ascribed to the weather!

Did he not know of old how often he had deceived himself? Might not all this be self-delusion, too? At least, he had as good a vantage-ground as the man to whom some woman may often say, truly: "You have looked love, and there has been love in the pressure of your hand, in the tone of your voice. But I cannot indite you. Live safe behind your equivocations." Nay, he was safer than such a one! For in his case the more he could ignore love, the better he would discharge his duty to Judith. The other man would be the greater sneak, the more he did so.

But the question—the question! It was still unanswered. When did the change come over Marianne? Oh, he knew perfectly well! It was from the day when he began, to all seeming at her request, to go out into this accursed Society without her. Very well, then!—it was all mere glamour, the whole thing. Let him do now what he should have done at first—insist on her being his companion, among his kind as well as in his home. Then would the old Marianne come back, and all would be well.

So by the time he was two-thirds through the avenue, his thoughts had worked back into his old existence, and taken him with them. If only his knowledge of his surroundings in his daily life at home would bear him out, and help him to keep at bay this image of Judith that forced itself upon him now—this image of her as she stood in the sunset light last September, just on this very spot!

What he recognized at once as the nose of a large grey boarhound touched him gently, and he turned. There stood Saladin, satisfied to all seeming that what he had smelt was in order, but content to take no further steps. Challis glanced round, expecting to see the dog's mistress; in a sense rather afraid to do so. She was near at hand, a few paces from the pathway, and her perfect self-possession reassured him.

"I never told Saladin to disturb your reverie, Mr. Challis," she said, quite easily, and with deliberation. "The darling acted on his own responsibility." Saladin, hearing his own name, seemed to think he had leave to go, and trotted on, giving attention to tree-trunks and the like. Challis had to say something.

"Are we not late for dinner?" was what it came to.

"I believe we are, but it never matters. Did you get your letter?"

"No—I got no letter. What letter?"

"Haven't you been up at the house? It was there when I went back. I thought it looked like your wife's handwriting. I hope it's to say we shall see her on Saturday."

"I hope so, too." But Challis wasn't sanguine.

No pretence that no embarrassment exists between two people, however determined, can do more than encourage a hope that a modus vivendi may be found. These two persevered in theirs, because each hoped for a working pretext that would carry Challis's visit through, without further useless complications, and this one of Marianne was a good one to make a parade of their detachment about. See how anxious we both are to emphasize the perfect self-possession a friendship like ours allows!—was what it seemed to say. Each knew it was a pretext, but each was loyally ready to accept the other's belief in it as a reality.

So when Judith said those last words of hers, Challis went so cordially through the form of believing her in earnest that he powerfully helped the image he had set his mind to construct of a Marianne based on his impressions—illusions, if you must have it so!—of ten years past. Conversation that followed on the way to the house, artificial though it might be, all tended towards a cheap local apotheosis of Marianne, with a beneficial side-influence on her husband's disposition to idealize her. Thus Judith: "Of course, a change would do her so much good. Housekeeping is tiresome work."

"Yes," said Challis. "It's wearing! And if you understand what I mean, it makes her unlike herself."

"Oh, I understand so exactly. Everyone would—every woman, I mean. It has nothing to do with ill-temper."

"Nothing whatever!" Challis made the most of this. "There isn't a better-tempered creature in the world than Polly Anne." He called her a creature, though, to keep the position properly qualified. "And one knows what children are."

"They are darling little people." Judith yawned slightly. "But they are nicest when you know them as acquaintances. Too much intimacy palls. Unless they are very nice children. I am sure yours are. But all the same, Marianne would be the better for a change." And so on. But there was very little life in this talk.

None the less, Challis was feeling good about his wife, when he reached the house looking forward to finding Marianne's letter awaiting him, and carried it up into his room to read it. He was more curious to read it than to wait for the arrival of the motor, whose hoot had just become audible from somewhere near the park-gate, a mile off. Saladin immediately started at a gallop either to sanction or condemn it, and Judith lingered, awaiting its arrival.

"I see Mr. Challis didn't go to Ashcroft," is what Sibyl says first to her sister. It refers to a projected excursion a full day long, which had been cancelled after the departure of the motor in the morning.

Judith looks ostentatiously indifferent. "No one went," she says. "It was given up. But how came you to know?"

"That Mr. Challis didn't go? We saw you from the Links, walking together in the avenue."

Judith turns with handsome languor to Lord Felixthorpe, the other occupant of the motor. "Did she?" she says. "Did you? I mean." Sibyl says: "Thank you for doubting my word! The avenue is visible from the Links."

His lordship is deliberate, as usual. The answer to Judith's first question is, he says, in the affirmative; to the second, in the negative. Identification, even of eminent authors, at a distance in an evening light, is difficult when a time-limit is fixed by the rapid locomotion of the observer. Sibyl's comment, in an undertone, Judith understands to be a caution against prosiness. But a respectful reference by Elphinstone to the many minutes ago that the first gong sounded causes a hurried flight to dress.

Challis felt good about his wife as he opened her letter; and the feeling grew rather than lessened when he saw how short it was. She must be coming, that was clear! But the satisfaction in his face died out as his eye caught the "Yr: aff: wife" at its conclusion. He read the two ill-covered pages twice and again before he threw it down with an angry "Humph!" and set himself to make up for lost time with his toilet.

He only just succeeded in scrambling into his coat in time for the second, or heart-whole, dinner-bell. All right!—he would run, directly. But it would only make him a minute late to glance once more at that letter. Besides, he could do it as he went downstairs. He did so, and ended by pocketing it just in time to appear last in the drawing-room, apologetic.

CHAPTER XXX

HOW CHALLIS HAD A NEW NEIGHBOUR AT DINNER AND METAPHYSICS AFTER. HOW HE WAS GUILTY OF EAVESDROPPING, AND MET MISS ARKROYD AFTER IN A LITTLE GARDEN CALLED TOPHET. A FOOL'S PASSION. WHAT ABOUT BOB?

That was a very fortunate interview in the park-avenue between Challis and Miss Arkroyd. If their sequel to that half-hour before they joined the tea-party, when they stood hand-in-hand on the edge of a volcano, had been a stiff meeting in society, the position would have become a rigid one; its joints would have ossified. Some may hold that it would have been best that they should do so, and that the lubrication of this interview was really unfortunate. It depends on how one looks at it. Efficacious it certainly was.

So efficacious that Challis almost felt at liberty to be sorry that Judith was moved to the far end of the long table at dinner, beyond his range of communication. He grudged the geometrical distance between them, while he acknowledged their moral or spiritual éloignement. He had to confess to his regret when a fresh dress she had on that evening rustled and glittered—it was all sparks and flashes—past the place she occupied the evening before. "We move up, like the Hatter and the Dormouse," said she to her partner.

The house-party had become enormous; indeed, some of it had oozed out into an adjoining apartment, and had a little round table all to itself—which it may be said to have forgotten, for it made a great noise.

Challis's own flank-destinies for this dinner were an elderly young lady with a bridge to her nose—a county family in herself—whom he had protected through the dangerous passage from the drawing-room; and the extraneous chit, Lady Henrietta Mounttullibardine. The latter had been provided with a counter-chit, who was always spoken of as Arthur, and seemed to be many people's cousin. The former had a powerful pair of eyeglasses on a yard-arm, or sprit, workable from below; these, Challis noticed, were manœuvred so as to leave the bridge free. He imputed powder, or something that might come off, to its owner. She seemed to have been very carefully prepared to go into Society, and to look down on it now that she had arrived. But she had to be talked to about something within its confines, and Challis had to find out what.

"I wonder what the brilliant stuff is called," said he, therefore. Judith's dress was the stuff.

"Sequin net is the name, I believe." This suggested somehow that the stuff's sphere was one grade below the speaker's.

"How much is a sequin?" asked Challis.

"It is not an expensive material," said the lady.

"I don't want a dress for myself," said Challis.

"Oh, indeed!" said the lady. Settlements ensued. And then Challis's other neighbour addressed him.

"They are in the other room this evening," said the chit. Her remark related to a mutual confidence between herself and Challis, begun on the lawn on the day of his arrival. They never spoke of anything else.

"I can hear them," said he. "They're making noise enough. But I thought they had quarrelled this morning?"

"This morning—oh yes!" This was very empressé. "But they made that up long ago!"

"When do they?... when are they?... when will it?... Clear, please! Oh no!—that'll do beautifully. I meant thick." This was to the servant, respecting soup.

"I'm so afraid it never will! Do you know, I really am!"

"Instances are not wanting of young ladies and gentlemen who haven't got married.... Hock, thank you!"

"Of course! But they always do, if they can. Don't they now, Mr. Challis?"

"I admit it. Unless they meet with someone they like better. Of course, that does happen."

"Oh yes—of course! But then it only matters when it isn't both." Challis, on the watch for copy, noticed that whenever this chit italicized a word—which was frequently—she opened her large blue eyes as far as possible.

"You express it to perfection. When it's both, it doesn't matter the least. But this time it's neither, so far!"

"Oh no!—they can't look at anyone else."

"Nothing can be more satisfactory. But why shouldn't it?... why shouldn't they?..."

"Oh dear! I'm so afraid they never will. Because he has only his pay, and she has—nothing!" Human eyes have only limited powers of opening, and the speaker's had done all they could.

"Couldn't a rich aunt settle something on them, or someone place a fund at their disposal? Or something of that sort?... What a shindy they are making!... Not before Christmas." This was because his left-hand neighbour had said sternly: "When is your next book coming out, Mr. Challis?"

But the chit had a secret knowledge of the vera causa of the riot in the next room, when three chits and as many counter-chits, uncontrolled, had the small round table to themselves. She knew exactly what they were doing—trying to pick up tumblers upside down, like this!—"this" being the thumb on one side, and one finger only on the top.

"I have forgotten when your last book came out, Mr. Challis." This left-hand neighbour seemed reproachful. But Challis couldn't help it. "Just eight weeks ago," said he.

A lull came in the next room, with the young soldier's voice audible in it, "Now all together, or it doesn't count!" Some sort of wager was being put to the test. Challis's chit murmured in the moments of suspense that followed, "They broke several yesterday in the billiard-room." Challis, amused, waited for the inevitable smash.

It came, and was a grand one. And the chorus of contrition and apology from the culprits was only equalled by their indignation at the way the Laws of Nature had proved broken reeds. If there was one thing more than another that the student of dynamics could not have credited, it was that under the circumstances a single tumbler should have been broken. Challis perceived that Lady Arkroyd spoke sotto voce to Mr. Elphinstone, who, he thought, replied, "Plenty, your ladyship. They came this morning." Then followed a fine exhibition of dexterity in the rapid collection and removal of broken glass. Challis thought to himself, but did not say so, that it reminded one of being on board ship.

The chit had done her duty by Mr. Challis, and now deserted him. Arthur had done his by Mrs. Ramsey Tomes, on his other flank, who had told him she wasn't quite sure if Mr. Tomes approved of football. She was almost certain he thought young men gave up too much time to rowing, and cricket, and lawn-tennis, and cycling, and everything else, and perfectly certain he didn't disapprove of anti-vivisection or anti-vaccination, but she wasn't quite sure which. She was not a gifted person, and was quite unable to keep pace with her husband's powerful mind. She had been freely spoken of before now, by heedless linguists, as a Juggins. Arthur deserted her with a sense of duty done, and passed the remainder of the banquet in exchanging wireless undertones with his other neighbour. It was wonderful how much communication they seemed to get through, considering how little noise they made. It seemed to be done with eyebrows, slight facial adaptations, new ways of keeping lips closed, but rarely completed speech.

Challis was conscious that each of these young people would be the other's menu for the rest of the banquet, so he surrendered himself to a portentous catechism from the lady with the eyeglass touching his habits.

"Where do you write, Mr. Challis?"

"At home—when I'm at home. Or wherever I happen to be at the time." When he had said this, he wondered whether he was going idiotic. It was like saying a mother was always present at the birth of her child.

"But upstairs or down? And is the room at the back of the house?" He gave close particulars of all the rooms at the Hermitage. A capital way of making conversation! But in the end it ran dry.

"I like writing in bed," said he, for variety. "Rabelais wrote in bed." He wasn't sure of this at all. But it didn't matter.

"Oh, indeed!" said the lady. She was an Honourable Miss Something, and not nearly dissolute enough to know anything about authors who write in bed; and, besides, she had her doubts about Rabelais. She changed the conversation delicately. Did Mr. Challis use a Fountain Pen? No, he didn't. Because he thought for a quarter of an hour at every third word, and that was time enough for an active person under fifty to dip his pen in the ink. Pressmen had to write straight on without stopping. The lady took this seriously, and said, "Dear me!"

What followed was very like the sample. Challis could make talk and think of something else quite well. So he thought how different his right-hand neighbour was from Charlotte Eldridge. And that set him a-thinking again about his wife. But there were unnavigable straits in that sea. His thoughts got into shoal-water, and his neighbour pursued a topic unaccompanied until she found she had left him behind. Then indignation kindled, but subject to good-breeding. She would put a test question, though, to see how much attention this gentleman had been paying.

"How many words are there in a book?" The question came with sudden severity, and Challis had to pull himself together to reply.

"Of course," he said, "there's not always exactly the same number. But a hundred thousand, more or less." It was a good answer, and embodied a feeling current in the book-trade. And the conversation, thus re-established, developed on the same lines until the vanishing-point of the army of womankind. Challis fancied he saw commiseration on Judith's face as she brought up the rear. He certainly had seldom in his life passed a duller hour.

He knew what it was going to be next. Dreary politics, wearisome ethics, maudlin philosophy, execrable—thrice execrable!—Social Problems which it was every man's duty to confront, and every other man's duty to hear him elucidate. Yes!—there was Mr. Ramsey Tomes at it already! He had got a good new word to talk with—"noumenal"—and was brandishing it over his hearers' heads....

Oh dear!—metaphysics! Not even free treatment of what Challis's mind classed as Charlottology! That always appealed to our common something or other. Now what he could catch at first hearing seemed bare, cold, cruel Metaphysics. Never an indiscreet lady nor an unprincipled gentleman, nor even a New Morality, of any sort! No fun at all!

But stop a bit! Was there none? Challis listened, and perceived, before coffee-time, that the changed guest of last September, who had become a Complete Christian Scientist, had denied the existence of matter. He took a chair nearer to the discussion, not to seem out of it, and so attracted to himself the attention of Mr. Ramsey Tomes, whose lung-power had taken possession of the rostrum.

"I appeal," said that gentleman, "to Mr. Challis." He went on with a testimonial or appreciation beginning with "than whom I will venture to say," and elucidating Challis's great accomplishments and intellectual powers, Challis seized the opportunity of a coffee-deal to ask what he was being appealed to about. A mixed response informed him on this point. A definition of Matter had been called for, and the Confirmed Christian Scientist had demurred to giving any such definition. "No one," said he, "can be logically called on to define a thing he denies the existence of. The burden of definition manifestly lies with those who affirm it."

"Personally," said Challis, "I prefer—but I admit it may be only idiosyncrasy on my part—to know, when I deny the existence of anything, what the thing is that I am denying the existence of. Perhaps I should say, rather, what it would be if it existed. If I knew, I think I should always communicate my knowledge, both from civility and as a politic act. For how the dickens anyone else would know what I was denying the existence of if I didn't tell him, I'll be hanged if I know!"

An indignant murmur was perceptible round the table. It gathered force, and became a protest against this treatment of the subject. Everybody, it said, knew perfectly well what matter was. All that was wanted was a Definition of it.

"What is Matter?" said Challis. But he had some difficulty in hearing all the answers to this question. However, he caught the following:

"Obviously, there is no such distinct thing as Matter. What we call matter—stuff, substance, body, or what not—is really only a manifestation of energy."

"Obviously, Matter is a phenomenon."

"Obviously, Matter is the negation of mind."

"Obviously, Matter is the antithesis of spirit."

"Obviously, Matter is the reciprocal interdependent externalization of what used at one time to be called Forces, but which are now almost universally recognized to be merely modes of motion."

"Something you can prod." This last piece of crudity came from the young man Arthur, and attracted no attention.

Now, when several persons shout simultaneously a profound and intuitive judgment apiece, each naturally pauses to hear what effect his own has had upon the Universe. An opening for speech is then given to anyone who has the presence of mind to abstain from wasting time over the detection of a stray meaning anywhere. In this case, Mr. Ramsey Tomes saw his opportunity, and seized it.

"Am I mistaken," said he, "in supposing that at least one suggestion has been made that the Universe, as at present formulated, has but two constituents—namely, the subject under discussion, Matter, on the one hand; and on the other what has been variously called Mind or Spirit. Shall I presume too far on the attention the Philosophical Mind is prepared to vouchsafe to the voice of a mere sciolist in Metaphysical profundity if I indicate the existence of yet a third constituent of what has been not inaptly called the Universal Whole? I refer to what I may term the Unknown."

The speaker felt that this was so admirably expressed that he rashly paused to lick his lips over it. This gave Challis, who was in a malicious or impish mood, time to interject a remark. Its effect was that, for the purpose of discussing the Existence of Matter, no definition of it would be of any use to us, unless we provided ourselves also with an accurate definition of Existence. Agreement on these two points would enable us to approfondir the question of the entity or nonentity of the appreciable Universe.

There seemed to be no serious difficulty, unless it were the selection of the required definitions from an embarras de richesses. Among those which survived the tumult of many confident voices, Challis distinguished the following:

"The relation a thing has to itself."

"The condition precedent of the concept 'nothing,' which is itself a fundamental condition of thought."

"A quality thought imputes to the external cause of every phenomenon."

"The recognition by the Ego of the reality of its environments."

"When you've nothing particular to do." This one was Arthur, who, however, was heard a moment after to say, "All right; I'll come!" in response to a summons, and thereafter went, carrying away his unfinished cigar. Challis heard his voice afar very soon, probably in the garden in the moonlight, where chits and counterchits were in council on the lawn. He wanted to go out in that garden himself, but—he supposed—he recognized the reality of his environments, like the Ego, and felt that such conduct would be rude. Besides, he was rather amused, too. What was that Mr. Brownrigg was saying?

He was pointing out, of course. Nay, more!—he was pointing out that Graubosch had already pointed out, in his Appendix B, that we had no direct evidence of any existence whatever independently of a percipient. The Confirmed Christian Scientist applauded this audibly, but remarked that that was merely Immanuel Kant, after all! On the other hand, Mr. Brownrigg continued, we have not a particle of evidence that any percipient could exist as such, independent of a percipiendum. We could not collect his evidence, clearly, without exposing ourselves to his untried observation, and thereby upsetting the conditions of the problem.

The Confirmed Christian Scientist's face fell, and he asked dejectedly, What conclusion did Graubosch draw? Mr. Brownrigg replied that Graubosch considered the problem afforded a fine instance of Metaphysical Equilibrium, which would under that name continue to engage the attention of thinkers long after the Insolubility of Problems had ceased to be admitted as a Scientific possibility. The final solution of all questions could not be regarded with complacency by a thoughtful world; and the recognition of Metaphysical Equilibrium, in questions which the Primitives of Philosophy had condemned as unanswerable, was a welcome addition to the resources of Modern Thought, for which the world had to thank its originator and greatest exponent, Graubosch, et cetera.

Challis began to think he must really make an effort, and go. He would watch for an opportunity. It came.

The advocates of the Existence of Matter were disposed to make a stand in favour of Human Reason; in fact, they were inclined to claim for Man, before the dawn of sight, hearing, or feeling, the position of a Unit charged with Syllogism, ready to make short work of any Phenomenon that might present itself. But, then, how about anthropoid apes? Didn't Sally count up to five? Well, then—Reason be blowed! Make it perception, and include all forms of Life.

This brought up Mr. Ramsey Tomes in great force. We were now landed, he said, in a crux on the axis of which this most interesting group of problems might be said to rotate. Let the many-headed activities of Ratiocinative Speculation agree on a Definition of Life, and he would venture to say without fear of contradiction that a keynote would have been struck that would resound through the proper quarters. Challis missed their description, owing to Mr. Brownrigg's voice intercepting it resolutely.

"Surely," said he, "we need go no further than the one supplied by Herbert Spencer." Everyone listened with roused attention, and Mr. Brownrigg continued. "You will all recall it at once! 'The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.' It is among the few decisions of modern thought which Graubosch has been able to accept intact; and the translation he himself made of it into German surpasses, if anything, its English original in force and lucidity."

Challis thought he might go. No need to stay for the German translation. On the way from the entrance-hall into the garden, he nearly collided with the largest possible white shirt-front associated with the smallest possible black waistcoat. The owner, Arthur, the universal cousin, begged his pardon. He begged it awfully, it seemed; but why? What he added, before going away up the broad staircase four steps at a time, was enigmatical: "No gloves—only I can lend Jack a pair." Challis left the meaning of this in a state of Metaphysical Equilibrium, till the sound of music under moonlit cedars on the lawn explained it. A chit-extemporized dance was afoot on the close-cropped turf. Challis remembered this young subaltern's definition of Existence, and felt he knew what sort of definition of Life his would be.

He himself would not mix with it, under the cedars there, but would finish his cigar with his arms crossed on this ledge of clean stone balustrade, all silvery with lichens in the moonlight, where he would see and not be seen. Perhaps he would remember the name of the little creeping flowers that last September were climbing all over the shrub that half hid him; that were only pledges as yet, but that he knew the morning sun would soon make rubies of. Cockney that he was, he had had to ask the little flower's name of Judith, as she stood on that gravel path below, near ten months back. What a short time it seemed! Petroleum?—No!—Protæolum, was it?—No!—that wasn't it exactly. But near enough!...

Footsteps were coming along the pathway now. Was it honourable to overhear what those two girls were discussing in the moonlight? Pooh!—stuff and nonsense! These chits—the idea! What could those children have to say that they could mind his hearing? Besides, they would never know; and he could cough at a moment's notice.

"You could have lawts of awfers, if you liked, Flawcey. I know a girl that's had eleven awfers. I've had three awfers. I suppose now it is Jack I shan't have any maw awfers." The sweet drawler, who is of course the speaker, has rather a rueful sound over this.

"I could have been engaged twice," says the other; "only one was forty-five, and the other was a Hungarian."

They do not interest the drawler. She ripples on musically: "Of cawce, I shall have Cerberus, because he belawngs to Jack. Oh, he is a dahling!" Then the two go out of hearing; but the drawl is there, in the distance still. Challis notes afar, under the cedar-trees, how Chinese lanterns are coming to birth in the twilight. There will only be real darkness quite late to-night.

Two other voices are audible near for a few seconds, with a roused interest for Challis, whose sense of eavesdropping increases. Before he can decide on stopping his ears, he has heard Sibyl say: "I have eased my conscience, and you can't blame me, whatever happens!" She is speaking as one who has the Universe on her shoulders. Judith's answer is lost, rather to his relief, all but the timbre of its resentment.

Here come the chits back! They don't matter. What's the story now?

"Oh, it was hawrible! If only it had been an awdinary eyeglass, with a string!"

"But then it would have had to be fished up, you know!"

"Of cawce it would. I didn't think of that. Perhaps it's just as well it wawse a lens.... No, it was quite easy how it happened, if you think!"

"But whatever did you do?"

"Of course, d'ya, we both pretended it had rolled on the floor, and kneeled down to look for it. But we both knew quite well where it was, and I could feel it cold all down my back. Oh, it was hawrible!" The speaker added thoughtfully after a pause: "I am so glad it's Jack now, and not Sholto. He did look such a fool, and such strong cigars!"

Challis was able, being a dramatist, to put an intelligible construction on this little dramatic experience of the young lady and her previous admirer. We need not probe into its obscurity, as its only interest in this story is that it reminded him of an incident of his own bygone youth—the disappearance of a pearl from a ring of his first wife's, and its resurrection from the inside of his own stocking after setting him limping, inexplicably, all the way home to his rooms from her mother's house. Oh, the ridiculous trifles of life!—nothing at the time, but all-powerful for sadness in the days to come.

So powerful, in this case, that he was less than ever ready for the sphere of pink and green illumination and dance-music, just becoming self-assertive. Of course!—those young monkeys were hanging about in the suburbs merely in order to be fetched. They knew their value, bless you! So Challis thought to himself as he lit another cigar, sauntering among the cut yew-hedges of a side-garden. A wing of the house was between him and the dancers, and their sounds were dim. But from a back-window of the room he had left a quarter of an hour since still came such noise as is inevitable when a number of close reasoners with strong lungs go seriously to work on the Nature of Things, and point out each other's fallacies. "Word-changers in the Temple of the Inscrutable," thought Challis to himself, as he turned to seek congenial silence farther afield.

He would find it, he knew, if it were nowhere else in the world, in the sweet little rose-garden called, for no sane reason, "Tophet."

He and Judith had walked there more than once on his previous visit, and he had surmised that its most inapt name might be connectable with the now common word toff, meaning a person of birth and position—a descendant of ancestors. Judith had asked why, and he had told her she would never be an etymologist at that rate. Bother why!

It was a very exclusive little garden certainly—if that would make a reason—with four high stone walls and a very small door with a very large key. Perhaps this was locked. It was sometimes. But no one had ever confessed to having locked it. And the large key always hung on a hook almost in the lock's pocket, so to speak. A very old gardener had told Challis it was done on the understanding it might be used. "I see," said Challis. "'Locke on the Understanding.'" And the old gardener had said "Ah!" with perfect unsuspicion.

This night it seemed that someone had taken advantage of the understanding, for the key was in the lock, and the door stood partly open. Someone must be inside. There was an unaccountable little grating in the door one could look through. Challis did so, and saw who it was—the woman in the moonlight.

It was strange how his relations with this woman had changed since their walk by the river two days since; when, mind you!—not a word had been spoken to which either ascribed a meaning that could have changed them. A few days ago theirs was a normal friendship enough, bearing in mind difference of age and social standards; always factors in human problems all the world over, shut our eyes to them as we may! Now, the weft of his consciousness at least was hot with a new disturbing tint. Why, in Heaven's name, else, need his first instinct be to turn and run? And all because, forsooth, he had come on Judith Arkroyd walking in a garden! Surely all the circumstances were vociferous enough of detachment and independence, for both, to make a start and a quickened pulse enormously illogical. Why will emotions never be logical?

One thing is certain, that he did all but turn and slip quietly away. He accounted to the upper stratum of his consciousness for this by referring it to a strong desire to be alone and "think over things." But he had to ignore a mind-flash that had crossed its lower stratum—one the story should almost apologize for recording, as too improbable—a sudden image of his odious neighbour, John Eldridge; which he knew, without hearing anything, had said: "You can't stand that, Master Titus—never do!—never do at all!" Again, this story is compelled to disclaim all responsibility for Challis's mental oddities. But they have to be recorded, for all that.

Perhaps that speech of Sibyl's, in the garden just now, had something to answer for. What had she been protesting against? Not the stage; that was all over and done with. Challis never detected his own absurdity in jumping to the conclusion that the protest must have related to himself! What right had he to infer, from a tone of Judith's voice, that she spoke about him?

He did not run, though he went near it. Self-contempt stepped in. What imbecile cowardice! What a miserable fear that he would lose the whip-hand of a fool's passion he was not even prepared to admit the existence of! He—Alfred Challis—who but half-an-hour ago had been moved to a puny heartache over that memory of the pearl and its wanderings and recovery! And then, to stagger in a fraction of time all sane contemplation of past and present, came the clash between that memory and his moment of shame, a short while since, that "poor Kate's" place in his heart had so soon been filled by poor slow Marianne. His wife now!—how his brain reeled to think of it all! There was that home of his, and the children, and Bob; the thought of the boy as good as stung him. What should he—what could he—say to Bob hereafter, if...?