LIFE, THE INTERPRETER

“But the extraordinary thing is that it has happened!” The lady who seemed a victim of this surprise lay back in her luxurious chair and exhibited a small foot on the fender.

“Black velvet slippers,” said her companion critically, “on a brass fender are really, my dear, a poem. Where do you learn these things? Poor Muriel, her feet were always rather large!”

“She had everything in her favor,” said Mrs. le Mentier, the first speaker. “Money, position, a face and figure one could do a good deal with. She was simply ruined by her earnestness. I have often said to her, ‘Well, Muriel, why don’t you take up the Church?’ But she never did; she said it was too comfortable and that it would crush her. I’m sure she’s not too comfortable now!”

Mrs. Huntly rose and went to the window. It was raining dismally, with a constant reiterated drip, drip on the tiles. She turned back, shivering a little, to the cosey boudoir of her friend with whom she had just been lunching.

“I often wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if it wasn’t Jack Hurstly after all. You know I had them last summer with me; and though poor Muriel always managed things very well, there were times—— And then he went off suddenly, you know; and she said she couldn’t imagine what I could see in him, though I know for certain she bore with that brutal bull-terrier of his, and pretended to like it, while all the time she loathed animals—dogs especially.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. le Mentier; “and she’s really dropped out—one can’t do anything! All the time when she isn’t actually at that tiresome Stepney club of hers she’s contriving things for it—positively it amounts to a terror! She asked me last week to sing at a smoking concert for some factory hands. I told her I thought smoking concerts for those kind of people were simply immoral, and she actually flamed up and cried, ‘You sing for Captain Hurstly and his do-nothing friends, who can afford to amuse themselves, and you won’t sing for men whose daily life is a hell, and whose only amusements are unspeakably degrading!’ Of course I stopped her at once. I told her she should give them Bible lessons. She saw how silly she had been then, and laughed in that dear old way of hers, and said, ‘You always had such a lot of common sense, Edith!’ But you see she must be dropped. She’ll begin to talk about her soul next!” Her friend yawned.

“Well, my dear,” she said, “don’t you get earnest too. That wretched Madame Veune is coming to fit me at three o’clock, so I must be off. Oh, by-the-bye, if Muriel should turn up to-morrow you might ask her to come and see me—I don’t know her slum address—one must do what one can, you know. Good-bye, dear.” And the two affectionately kissed and parted.

Mrs. Huntly frowned as she drove home. Muriel Dallerton had been an old friend of hers, and she really meant to do what she could for her.

Muriel Dallerton knelt on the floor of a small lodging-house room by the fire. It was with evident difficulty that she could make it burn at all, for the soot kept rolling down and the chimney threatened to smoke. She had not yet accustomed herself to black hands every time she touched the shovel.

The worst of it was she expected her uncle and guardian to tea, and she had to confess to herself that the prospect was not pleasing.

She had lived with her uncle ever since she had been an orphan at six years of age, and she had been sent to an expensive boarding-school and been finished in Paris. After three triumphant London seasons, every moment of which she had lived through with the same earnest delight that was one of her most striking characteristics, she had come to the conclusion that in some way or other she was wasting her life.

She had for a whole year tried every way of doing good that was compatible with a house full of servants, a stable full of horses, and a social position. But at every turn she met with opposition—this, that, the other was “not nice”—not “the proper thing”—the horses couldn’t go out—what would the servants think—she was upsetting the whole house—people would begin to talk. She confessed herself lamentably deficient in the sense of what was the proper thing, and on her own side she felt she could no longer bear the strain of the double life.

She was needed all day at the club. She had organized games, classes, recitations, employments and entertainments for men, women and children, and all needed her personal supervision.

It was not that she was not fond of pleasure—she had immense capacities for enjoyment. She was known by all her acquaintances as that “radiant Miss Dallerton”—only to live for pleasure that was different, and little by little she found herself “dropped out.”

Society is very exacting: it demands the whole heart and constant attendance at its haunts, so that when Muriel Dallerton finally announced her intention of going to live in a model tenement next to her club, society was careful to make plain to her that reluctantly, and with all due respect for her ten thousand a year, until she returned to her senses and her west-end house, society must pass her by on the other side. Her uncle, Sir Arthur Dallerton, felt deeply what was generally termed her “extraordinary attitude”—it cast a reflection upon him. He missed her gracious household ways, the little attentions with which she had surrounded him. He had, it is true, neglected her atrociously; but up till now she had always, as he framed it, “done her duty by him.” Her living away from him was a positive slur.

Sir Arthur Dallerton was coming this afternoon to shake her resolution, and he had no doubt whatever of his success.

Muriel tussled with the fire, which finally consented to burn, then she rose to her feet, brought out some tea-things, and began to toast a muffin.

A bunch of daffodils in a cracked vase did much to improve the appearance of the room; a touch here, and there finished it; and she had scarcely taken off her outdoor things and washed her hands (very unused to the work they had been put to) when a dismal slavey announced, “A genelman to see yer, miss,” and backed almost on to the gentleman in question, who with an exclamation of disgust pushed past her into the room.

“My dear Muriel,” he said, “this is disgraceful!” He paused as she ran forward to meet and relieve him of his hat and umbrella. She looked up at him, her face beaming with smiles.

“Dear,” she laughed, “did the blackbeetle quite crush you? How horrid! But now you’ll sit down here and have some tea. You needn’t insult that chair by doubting it. It will bear anything I know—I saw the landlady sit on it, and nothing happened!”

Her uncle sat down gingerly. “Were those people,” he said coldly, “down in what I can only call a yard—a yard, Muriel!—the people you imagine you have a mission amongst?”

Muriel poured out the tea. “They look as if they needed it, don’t they, dear?” she said, handing him a cup. “There, you’ve got a whole handle, and only two chips round the rim! Yes, those were some of my people. I hope they weren’t in your way?”

“They are extremely in my way, Muriel—extremely; I may say I am greatly inconvenienced by them. I suppose you realize that I am alone in the world; and yet you seem to imagine that your duty is to be among these unpleasant characters in filthy slums instead of at home looking after my comfort.”

Muriel smiled a little to herself as she thought of the array of servants the great house held, of the friends and cronies at the club, where he spent the greater part of his time. “His comfort!”—surely there were enough people in the world already looking after that.

“Uncle Arthur,” she said, “we’ve talked all this out before, haven’t we? We don’t see it quite in the same light. I am very sorry you are not comfortable. If the servants——”

“Muriel,” he interrupted in a raised voice, “how dare you mention servants to me! Do you imagine that when I refer to comfort I mean personal attendance? You have never had any heart! Mine has always been an essentially affectionate nature. It is domestic companionship that I desire; and now that you are of an age to be of some comfort to me, you fly off to—Heaven knows where!—and throw me back on the servants!”

Muriel sighed gently and laid her hand on his. “Dear uncle, you have always been so good to me. But you see you weren’t always at home, and a girl nowadays isn’t satisfied simply in being domestic.”

“I should scarcely have imagined you, my niece Muriel, accusing me of neglect! You invariably lose your temper upon these subjects, which proves that you feel yourself to be in the wrong. You know perfectly well that you can have any woman you want to live with you as lady companion, but you’re so independent and obstinate——”

“That no one would live with me if you asked them,” she finished merrily. “Ah!—but please don’t talk about this any more,” she pleaded as he strove to begin again. “We shall never agree! I must have my work to do. I cannot be happy without it, and I cannot do it at home. But I only ask for nine months of it. It is April now, and in July you shall have me back for three whole months, and do just what you like, dear. Isn’t that a splendid bargain?”

The tea was very nice, and the buttered muffins especially were done to a turn.

Sir Arthur Dallerton crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair (forgetful of its former occupant). “My dear,” he said mildly, “what will people say? Have you ever thought of that?”

“Yes, dear uncle,” said Muriel, smiling; “I have thought of it, and I have come to the conclusion that I had better not think about it any more. Won’t you have some more muffin?”

Sir Arthur Dallerton graciously accepted another piece. It did not occur to him that Muriel had eaten nothing—those sort of things never did occur to him. If it had done so he would have put it down to hysteria—the one great refuge for the selfish.

“Mrs. le Mentier,” he pursued, “who is a very sensible woman, told me what people were saying, and I think you ought to know of it too.”

Muriel rose and looked out of the window. It was still raining heavily.

“Well?” she said a little wearily.

“They say this is a mere whim of yours to bring Jack Hurstly to book.”

The girl by the window stood quite still. She did not see the children in the yard below playing cheerfully in the gutter; she did not even notice one of her most hopeful cases reel across the court in a condition which would have filled her soul with pity and disgust two minutes before. Her uncle thought her cold and indifferent, or possibly sullen.

“Yes!” he said bitterly, “that is the sort of thing, Muriel, that your conduct forces me to put up with.” Muriel faced him suddenly.

“Mrs. le Mentier,” she said quietly, “is——” she paused, “is very much mistaken if she thinks such absurd rumors have power to affect me; and I do not think you need be put out by what she says, for nobody who knows either Captain Hurstly or myself would believe her.” Her uncle rose to his feet.

“You seem to be in a very bad temper, Muriel,” he said. “I knew what would be the result of your taking up this work. But it’s very depressing to me. I shall go home—when you come to a proper frame of mind, let me know.” She ran forward and kissed him.

“But you do love me, don’t you?” she whispered.

“Of course, Muriel, if you would only give up your absurd whim.” She drew back a little.

“Mind the stairs,” she laughed; “and oh, whatever you do, don’t tread on the blackbeetle.” She watched him cross the yard, and bowl off in a hansom. Somehow she felt very forlorn and lonely all by herself. She was startled to feel a tear-drop on her hand. “Nonsense!” she said; “it’s time for the girls’ cooking class!” She gave herself a little shake and put on her things.

She found herself saying as she left the room, “If Jack thinks so I’ll never, never speak to him again.” She was a little impatient at the cooking class.

“You are quite right in thinking I care for her, Mrs. Huntly, and have done ever since I knew her,” said Jack Hurstly, looking hard at an inoffensive poker. “But there’s no doing anything with her. I am not earnest enough, it seems. She objects to my club, my sport, and all my set. I believe she even objects to my regiment. At any rate she thinks I am wasting my time here in England, and ought to be sweating in some beastly tropics—Heaven knows why!”

“So you ought, Jack, so you ought,” said Mrs. Huntly soothingly. “Muriel is quite right. It’s positively shameful the lives our society young men lead. A horse, a gun, a club and a dress-suit, what a catalogue of occupations! Can you increase it?”

“Oh, well,” said her companion rather sheepishly, “I’m no worse than the other fellows, am I, Mrs. Huntly?”

“My dear Jack, she’s not going to marry the ‘other fellows,’ is she? You had better leave them out of the question; and if your ambition is to be no worse than they are you had better dispense with Muriel. Go off and hunt somewhere, and then come back and marry a girl of your own sort.”

The door opened. “Miss Dallerton” the butler announced. Muriel came forward into the middle of the room. There was such a warm, gracious dignity about her that people who had little to recommend them but the external felt thin in her presence. Mrs. Huntly greeted her warmly. Jack said very little, but as his eyes rested on her Mrs. Huntly thought that the hunting expedition, if it ever came off, must be a long one.

“I’m so glad, so glad to see you both,” cried Muriel joyously, “particularly as you are neither of you going to ask me for soup tickets! Dearest Mary, are you really well? And what a comfort it is to see a pretty dress! And won’t you please both tell me all about everybody, and who has married who, though they ought to have done better? I feel so ignorant.” She sat down by Mary Huntly, caressing her hand, and looking with glad eyes from one to the other like a child out for a holiday.

“Oh, my dear girl,” cried Mrs. Huntly mournfully, “to think that you are out of it all! It almost breaks my heart!”

“Mary, how dare you! I came to be pacified, and if I’m reproached I shall simply turn tail and run away! You don’t reproach me, do you, Captain Hurstly?”

“Perhaps I should like to, if you gave me time,” he said, smiling.

“Oh, but I won’t, not for any such purpose—you shan’t have a moment of it. But who is this?” A young girl had entered the room; she was dangerously pretty (it is the only adjective one can use), and she was perfectly self-possessed. Mrs. Huntly introduced her to them. She was a young cousin of hers, Gladys Travers.

Imperceptibly the atmosphere changed. Mrs. Huntly and Muriel drew apart from the other two, and Muriel could not help noticing how perfectly satisfied Captain Hurstly seemed with his companion, and how well they got on together.

When she rose to go Gladys crossed over to her. “May I come to see you, Miss Dallerton?” she asked. “I want so much to know about your work, and I—I like you so much! Don’t think me frightful. I have lived in the States, you know, and people say all Americans are forgiven everything! I do really want so much to know you.” She spoke in quick, low tones, the expression changing as the shadows on a pool change under a light wind. She was very appealing.

“Oh, but it’s dear of you to like me,” said Muriel, smiling. “Please come really, will you? You will always find me somewhere about the club—Mary has the address.”

She turned to Captain Hurstly.

“I am coming with you, if I may,” he said. The two descended to the street in silence.

“You’re looking awfully dragged and thin, Miss Muriel,” he said at last.

“You always were so hopelessly rude,” she laughed.

“You know what I think about the whole thing?” he said gravely.

“Ah, it’s that which makes me tired!” she sighed. “All my friends say just the same. They won’t think how—how hard they make it for me—no—not even you.”

“Even me?” he asked quietly. She bit her lips; she was losing her head it seemed; she must not do that.

“I take the ’bus at this corner,” she said.

“I think we’ll go by hansom,” said her escort. She smiled.

“You always will contradict me, Captain Hurstly.”

“You will not contradict me if I remind you that you used to call me—Jack?” he ventured.

The hansom drove up, and Muriel put out her hand to him. She unmistakably intended to go alone, even though she had let him choose her vehicle.

“I may come and see you?” he asked. She frowned a little.

“I’m very busy, you know,” she said.

“Does that mean I’m not to come?”

“You might come,” she suggested suddenly, “and bring Mary’s little cousin; she can’t come alone.”

“I can though,” he persisted. She shook her head and laughed merrily.

“Mary’s little cousin,” she said as she drove off, “or not at all!” And he never went.

The club room, large and bare, with a bench or two and one long table, was full of girls, though at first glance you might not have been inclined to call them so. They were all so inexpressibly old. As they stood talking in groups, large and broad, with their frowsy hair and draggle-tailed dresses, lifting loud, rough voices and breaking from time to time into hoarse roars of laughter, they could scarcely be called prepossessing. These were the girls who had warned a simple-minded lady Bible-reader that “if she didn’t tyke ’erself orf they’d strip her”—and they would have done it.

As Muriel Dallerton entered the room the whole gang swarmed towards her in greeting. They loved her. “She ’adn’t got no nonsense about ’er,” “She was a real good sort, and no mistake,” and they showed their appreciation of her by rushing from their ten hours’ work into the club and paying with treasured pennies the tiny entrance fees she exacted for the classes.

To-day was cooking class, and from a great cupboard were drawn two dozen aprons, which they themselves had helped to buy and make.

Muriel knew just what wages they had, and never denied them the dignity of giving a little, if they had that little to give.

Two long hours’ class followed. To the girls who were accustomed to factory work it was mere play, and the pleasure and excitement of seeing how Mary Ann’s scones or Minnie Newlove’s pie turned out was inexhaustible.

It was not until it was over and the cooking boards and utensils put away that Muriel missed one of the number. Lizzie Belk was a girl who attended most regularly, and Muriel walked over to her mate to inquire after her.

“Mary Ann, where is Lizzie this afternoon?” she asked. There was a titter of laughter from the group of girls with her.

“Ye will! will ye!” shrieked Mary Ann in a sudden fury. “I’ll bash yer ’ead in for ye, Florrie Stevens!” she cried to a girl whose laughter was the loudest. “What right ’ave ye to pass it on my mate? I’ll tell ye, miss.” She appealed to Muriel. “Florrie’s none so straight as she can blacken poor Liz.” Muriel leaned against the table, feeling sick.

“Hush, Mary, you must not talk like that,” she said at last. “What is the matter with Lizzie?” There was an uneasy silence. “The rest of you can go,” said Muriel. “Good-night, girls, go out quietly, please.” And the girls nodding to her in rough good-nature went out leaving her alone with Lizzie’s mate.

Muriel crossed to her side and took her hand gently. “Poor Lizzie!” she said softly. “Poor, poor Lizzie!” Mary burst into tears.

“ ’E ’adn’t ought to er done it, miss, ’e really ’adn’t!” she sobbed. “She was alwers a straight ’un, was Liz, an’ ’e promised ’er the lines an’ all, an’ now——”

“Where is she, Mary?” said Muriel quietly.

“She ain’t got nowheres to go to ’cept the ’orspital. They turned ’er off to-day at the factory; an’ ’er father’s beat ’er somethink hawful, miss, the blasted, drunken sot!” Muriel still held her hand.

“I think we had better go and find her,” she said.

“Ye won’t ’ave nought to do with the likes o’ ’er, will ye?” asked the girl in blank astonishment.

“Yes, Mary; don’t you think Lizzie needs help?”

“She needs it bad, miss.”

“Then that’s what we’re going to give her,” said Muriel firmly. Mary still stood where she was.

“Ye—ye won’t be rough on her, miss?” she begged in shamefaced tones. “ ’E treated ’er cruel bad.”

“No, Mary, I won’t be rough on her. I’m not angry at all, only so very, very sorry. It’s such a dreadful thing, isn’t it? Poor Lizzie, we must do all we can for her.” Mary’s big hand tightened over the slender fingers of their “wonderful lady,” who seemed to understand without being told, and never said more than she meant to do.

They went out into the streets together. Lizzie was not hard to find. She was in a deserted yard near the factory, among heaps of refuse and mouldered iron. She had cried till she could cry no more, and lay in a sort of hopeless apathy, with wide, dull eyes staring straight in front of her. Muriel knelt down by her side, and Mary, with the unobtrusive delicacy many of the poorest have, turned away for a little.

“Lizzie,” said Muriel, as if she were speaking to a little child, “Lizzie, I want you to come with me.”

“Oh, my God!” said the girl. “Oh, my God!”

“You will come, won’t you, Lizzie?” She put out her hand.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” wailed the girl. “Who brought ye ’ere? Ye don’t know what I am. Oh, my God! my God!”

“I know all about it, Lizzie, and you must get up now and come with me.”

“They shan’t tyke me to the ’orspital, I tell yer—no, nor hanywheres. ’Ome? I daren’t show my fice there! D’ye see my harm an’ my ’ead? Father did that, an’ ’e said ’e’d kill me if I was to come back! Oh, let me alone! Why don’t ye let me alone?”

“Get up, Lizzie,” said Muriel, rising briskly to her feet. “Get up at once. I am not going to take you either home or to the hospital. You are coming back with Mary and me to the club, and I shall find a room for you in my lodgings.”

“Oh, now, Liz, do come, lovey, do come!” Mary urged. Lizzie rose dizzily to her feet, and between the two they got her back somehow—first to the club, and when they had fed her they took her to a room next Muriel’s.

The landlady did not say much. “If the young lydy choose to look hafter the likes o’ ’er, well an’ good, if not she could not stiy, of course.” But the young lady did choose to look after her, and to pay double for the room as well, so there was no more to be said.

It was a terrible night. Muriel never forgot it. She sat there holding the girl’s hand and hearing the whole story—the old, old story, told in all its crude, black reality between gasping sobs.

“ ’E said as ’ow I should ’ave my lines,” she groaned; “an’ now ’e says we’d starve. But I shouldn’t care for that, miss—no, I shouldn’t, if honly they couldn’t call me——”

“No, dear, no! they shan’t call you that,” Muriel murmured. “What is his name, Lizzie?”

“Oh, ’e ’adn’t er ought to a treated me so—Gawd knows ’ow I loves ’im! No!—I can’t tell ye ’is name, dear miss—don’t hask it!”

“But you must tell me, Lizzie.”

“Not if I was to die for it, miss!”

“If you tell me I can help you, Lizzie, perhaps to—to get your lines.”

“Oh, miss, ’e’d never forgive me!”

“Then I can do nothing, Lizzie.”

The girl sobbed afresh. Muriel rose and went to the window. Out of the dark clouds the stars peeped timorously, as if afraid to look down on the sad, sordid world beneath. A church clock chimed the hour—twelve o’clock—and from the public-house across the way a burst of brawling voices broke. It was illegal she thought to close so late.

The candle on the washstand flickered miserably. She went back to the bedside, and with careful, tender hands put back the heavy hair and sponged away the tears.

“Lizzie,” she said, and it seemed to her as if the whole of London stood still to listen, “there is some one I love with all my heart—I—I think I could forgive him anything.” She drew in her breath with a long gasp. “Now—won’t you tell me his name, Lizzie?” she pleaded. The two women looked at each other. The girl raised herself on her elbow and stared as if she were weighing the soul of the other woman (she had forgotten she was a lady). At last she sank back satisfied. “If she had a man,” Lizzie thought, “she might understand.”

“It’s—it’s Hobbs—Dick Hobbs,” she said. “Ye won’t be ’ard on ’im, miss. They can’t ’elp it, can they? Not as I knows on—an’ hanyway ’twere all my fault, I think.”

“I—I won’t be hard on him, Lizzie.” The tears were rolling down her cheeks. “And now I’ll put out this light, and you’ll go to sleep, won’t you? And to-morrow I’ll see Dick and get a license, and—and everything.”

“Oh, miss!” cried the girl—“not my lines?”

“Yes, Lizzie! If you’re a good girl and go to sleep you shall have your lines to show.” Muriel left her. When she came back a few minutes later she found the exhausted girl fast asleep; her face was red and swollen still with crying, but there was a happy smile on her lips. She was only seventeen.

“And there are thousands like this—thousands,” thought Muriel. “God forgive us our blindness and their pain.”

Suddenly she felt very faint and dizzy. She remembered she had had nothing to eat since her tea with Mary Huntly. She covered her face with her hands, for she realized more overwhelmingly than ever that she could never marry Jack Hurstly. But though she had cried for the other girl, no tears came now.

A broad-built, hulking fellow with a coarse, brutal face shouldered his way towards Muriel. It was one of the men’s evenings, and she had dropped in a moment to speak to the superintendent, and to give one of the men something to take home to his sick wife. When the man reached her she led him to a quiet corner of the room. She had never felt afraid yet, nor did she feel so now; only as she looked at the flushed, scowling face she felt a little hopeless.

“They said as ’ow you wanted to speak to me, miss.”

“Yes, Dick, I do.” She paused, wondering how best to make her appeal to him—where in fact was that spark of the Divine she so passionately believed in, so seldom touched, yet trusted that she touched more often than she knew. “Lizzie is with me, Dick,” she said at last. “Do you think that you have treated her quite fairly?” The scowl changed to a senseless, meaning smile. Muriel felt her eyes flash, but she had herself well in hand. “Do you think it is quite a brave, manly thing to do,” she asked with slow, quiet intensity, “to ruin a girl’s life—a girl you pretend to care for—who has trusted in you? Would you not be ashamed of breaking your word to another man? Yet you seem to think it no great harm to betray a woman! A woman like Lizzie too, who is only a child after all, and who kept so straight. She is very ill indeed, Dick, and when—when the child is born I think she will die. Wouldn’t you call a man who had behaved so to your sister a—a murderer?” The man’s sullen eyes were fixed on the floor; he shifted awkwardly from one leg to the other.

“I don’t see has ye ’ave hany call to speak to me like that, miss. I ain’t no worse than the other chaps I knows on. I’d like to do fair by Liz, but I ain’t earning enough to keep a wife.”

“You should have thought of that before you made Lizzie a mother,” said Muriel sternly. “And now you will leave her alone to starve,” she added with quiet scorn, “after having taken away her only chance of earning her living, and—and having done the very worst you could.”

The man said nothing; his face was heavy with inarticulate rage; she felt that he wanted intensely to knock her down. One of his mates remarked to a group of men that “ ’Obbs looked horful hugly.” It did not occur to him though to walk away. Suddenly her voice softened.

“Dick,” she said, “you’re not that sort of man at all—you know you are not. You hadn’t thought of it before—that was all, wasn’t it? You didn’t mean to harm poor Lizzie so. And she loves you, Dick—she wasn’t a bit angry with you—she doesn’t blame you at all.” (It had not exactly occurred to the man that she did. It was a new idea to him that she had a right to.)

“And—and so I can tell her that you want to marry her—will marry her at once, Dick, won’t you, before—before it’s too late? You will let me tell her that, won’t you?” Still no answer. “I trust you,” she said softly; “I feel so sure that you have the makings of a good man.”

His eyes were glued on the floor. He felt more bewildered than angry, and still obstinately clung to silence, which could not, as he phrased it, “let him in for anything.”

Muriel took a rose she was wearing. With a sudden impulse she held it out to him. “I gave Lizzie one,” she said gently, “one like this. Would you like to wear it?” It seemed easier to take it than to speak, but somehow he was impelled to look at her. Her eyes were fastened on him with a look he never forgot—grave, earnest, truthful—as if she had weighed his soul and was simply waiting for the proof of her judgment.

A voice he scarcely recognized for his own growled, “Well, then, what if I does?”

“Thank God!” she murmured softly. “Thank God!” He waited for his answer. She smiled at him so wonderfully that he felt the tears rise to his eyes. Her own eyes swam in them. “I will help you all I can,” she said. “Now come with me to Lizzie.” He followed unwillingly.

The men by the door shouted something after him as he passed. He did not hear. He followed her clumsily with creaking boots into a room that resembled nothing he had ever seen before, though it was simply furnished; and sitting in a large chair by the fire was Lizzie. Her eyes were fastened on the door with a dumb, questioning look. She moved her lips as if they were dry. Then she saw him.

“Oh, my man! my man!” she cried. Muriel shut the door quietly, and left them alone together. She felt suddenly as if she could never feel hopeless again.

Jack Hurstly read the note, written on rich, heavy cream, a tiny, definite hand between large margins. It all seemed very familiar to him. Three years ago there used to be a drawer full of them, though he had burned them of course, he remembered, after the scene in the garden. It had all been very graceful and harmless, and he had immensely admired and pitied her with her dense husband, who shattered her dainty little subtleties with a heavy word or two, and “called things,” as she plaintively remarked to Jack, “by their proper names, as if things,” she had added, “should ever be called by names at all, and least of all by their right ones.”

Then he had met Muriel. He thought of that first evening, and of her frank, disarming look, and of how she not only did not say things she did not mean, but actually went so far as to say the things she did.

It was a change from a little winding stream now here, now there, to a free, open lake with its clear reflection from the sky.

It was natural that after this should come the scene in the garden; what he could not understand was this little dinner three years afterwards.

Curiosity and Muriel’s wilful remoteness prompted him to accept the invitation; but he did so formally.

Edith, when she read his letter, broke into a little laugh.

“A joke, my dear?” her husband asked, looking over his newspaper across the breakfast table.

“Certainly not, Ted,” said Edith; “I should never dream of laughing at a joke at breakfast time!” Her husband returned to his sporting notes—they seemed to him so much easier to understand.

Mrs. le Mentier prepared to meet her guests by dressing in Jack Hurstly’s favorite color. It happened to be the one which suited her; but it is possible she would have worn it if it had not. It takes a woman longer than three years to forget a man’s favorite colors, and longer still not to wear them when she remembers.

Gladys Travers was the first to arrive, with Mary Huntly’s brother, a deeply earnest young clergyman with thoughtful eyes. “Cyril had to bring me,” she said, smiling, “because Mary had a headache, one of those horrid dark-room ones, you know, with tea and toast. I don’t believe he quite approves though of dinner parties, do you, Cyril?” Mrs. le Mentier shook hands with him sympathetically.

“I know quite well what you feel,” she said in her slow, gentle voice. “It’s the herding together of rich people to eat brilliantly, while all the great half of the world have no brilliance and no dinner, and I think it is so good of you to come. I’ve only just really one or two to-night, so I hope you won’t find us very worldly.”

Cyril Johnstone had blushed at his cousin’s speech, but now that his hostess paused he said gently, “Mary was so very sorry she could not come.”

“Dear Mary,” Edith murmured as she glided across the room to welcome two men who had entered at the same time—Jack Hurstly and a young doctor, a man of good family and even better brains. “How good of you to come, doctor!” said she, her eyes sparkling their most vivid welcome. “One feels,” she said, turning to the young clergyman, “with busy men like you what a debt of gratitude one owes. Now you, Captain Hurstly,” she added (for the first time addressing Jack), “had, I am sure, nothing to give up?”

“Everything to attract, certainly,” said Jack with a smile at Gladys, who was glancing with laughing, observant eyes from one to the other.

Dinner was announced, and Edith, taking the young priest’s arm, followed the rest of the party. She was thinking it extremely stupid of dear Mary to have a dark-room headache, and she was talking to Mr. Johnstone on the marvellous utility of Bands of Hope.

“Yes,” she said, glancing over the flower-decked table, “it’s the name itself. Hope! What a lot it calls up, doesn’t it? Spring mornings, one imagines, and skies too blue to deny one anything. There’s something in the word which makes one think of waves.”

“Because they break themselves on the rocks?” suggested Gladys, “or cover quicksands?”

“It’s a word,” said the doctor, smiling, “with a very expansive meaning, and a use even more expanded than its meaning.”

Mr. Johnstone looked across to Mrs. le Mentier. “It’s one of the cardinal virtues,” he said gently.

“And they,” said his cousin, looking at Jack, “always close a conversation, because you see it’s so inconvenient to have to take off one’s shoes.”

Mr. Johnstone looked shocked, and Edith started another subject.

“My husband,” she said, “is away—fishing, I think it is. He has, poor man, a deadly feud against all animal nature, and he spends his time trying to exterminate it. I must confess it seems to me rather a hopeless quest.”

“Don’t you English say,” asked Gladys of the doctor, “that it’s strengthening to the character?”

The doctor smiled. “More to the muscles than to the character, I should fancy,” he said.

“But isn’t it one of your tests of a character,” she persisted, “in England that it should have fine muscles?” The conversation became international. Edith watched, but took no part; she was listening to Jack, who was not talking to her.

He was instead appealing to Cyril Johnstone. “Are you at all interested,” he asked, “in those slum clubs?” The priest’s face brightened.

“Immensely,” he said. “My work is there, you know, and so I have seen a good deal of them. But of course you refer to those under parochial guidance?”

“Captain Hurstly,” Mrs. le Mentier broke in, “is referring, I feel sure, to the sweetest free-lance in the world, a dear friend of ours who has thought it her duty to disassociate herself from her home, and even to a certain extent from the Church, because she thinks she can, as the phrase goes, ‘reach nearer to the people’s hearts’ that way. You’ll admit it’s heroically brave of her. People’s hearts give one such shocks when one does get near them.”

“A case of hysteria,” murmured the doctor under his breath, “in its most patent modern form.”

Gladys glanced lightly at Jack Hurstly; then she said in a sweet, penetrating voice, “There you are wrong, doctor. Muriel is the most healthy-minded girl I know.”

“Her hysteria may be confined to one form,” he ventured.

“Ah, but you should see her!” said Gladys. Here the voice of Cyril Johnstone broke in.

“It seems to me,” he exclaimed, “the saddest thing in the world and the most useless. There has been too much talk about the people’s hearts, too many missions of sentimental women. What can they give the people? Their need, their crying need, is for the cultivation of the soul, and it is we—set apart as God’s ministers—who are called upon, and to whom alone rightly belongs the unspeakable privilege and duty of serving the poor!”

Mrs. le Mentier looked gravely devotional and stifled a yawn.

Jack Hurstly looked at Gladys, who again meeting his look broke out into a defence.

“And while the Low and the High, the Broad and the Long (if there are any long, or if they aren’t all long), quarrel as to who shall help the poor, and how they shall be dressed to do it, what are the poor going to do? And why shouldn’t a woman, or even a man for that matter, go down among them and teach them how to live? What kind of souls are you going to teach in wretchedly uncultivated bodies, cousin Cyril? And if you believe in clubs, why aren’t you thankful for their work, even if the clergy are not asked to take Bible classes in them? As for Muriel and her poor, she’s taught them how to smile, and I actually heard one of them say ‘Thank you’ the other day. I don’t believe an archbishop could do as much even with his robes on.”

Mr. Johnstone opened his mouth to answer her tirade; but Jack Hurstly, who had been listening delightedly, clapped his hands and laughed, and he felt that it was impossible to argue against a joke. Mrs. le Mentier rose to her feet smiling. She felt that her dinner had not helped her much; and she did not love Gladys.

“Let us leave the gentlemen alone, dear,” she said, “to discuss our short-comings and their dominion. It’s an entrancing subject, I believe—when you can have it all your own way.”

The two women floated gracefully out of the room. They were rejoined very shortly by the men, whom it is presumed found their points of view on “the entrancing subject” too different for prolonged discussion. Gladys and the doctor stood out on the balcony.

The balmy June evening filled with the noises of the streets below seemed very soothing to them, and their talk interested both immensely, so much so that they did not hear Mrs. le Mentier preparing to sing, and only ceased when her low, sweet voice rang out, “Life and the world and mine ownself are changed for a dream’s sake—for a dream’s sake.”

It was a simple song, but she sung it with a quiet passion and intensity that entirely captivated her audience. When the song was over they were not ready with their applause, and even the doctor looked as if he had met an ideal. Edith sang again, and they went home, all but Jack Hurstly. “I must speak to you a minute, Jack,” his hostess had murmured as he turned over the leaves of her music, and for the song’s sake he stayed.

She stood in the middle of the room, her hands held loosely in front of her, like a child’s. “Haven’t you punished me long enough—Jack?” she asked.

“My dear Mrs. le Mentier,” he began.

“Ah!” she murmured, “Mrs. le Mentier! Mrs.—le Mentier—Jack!”

He had before wished that he had never come; there seemed now nothing else to do but to wish it more strongly. She looked so young and piteous, and her eyes were full of a real emotion. The only ways left were to be weak or brutal. The last alternative would end the scene quicker.

“It doesn’t seem much good, does it,” he finally said, “to go over all this again?”

She smiled wistfully. “Is it all over then for you?” she asked. “Do you know, it was silly of me, wasn’t it? I somehow thought you might still be the same, and the three years’ penance enough for the past mistake?” She spoke with a kind of strained slowness very pitiful to hear.

“Things have changed so!” he muttered.

“Things?” she laughed. “How a man falls back on the inanimate! Things don’t change, my dear Jack, but women grow older and men grow wiser—that’s all. Let me congratulate you then on your increase of wisdom, and you will be a little sorry—for my increasing age?” He frowned and looked at the door; she winced as if he had struck her. “You want to go?” she said. “Well, there’s one thing, my dear Jack, for you to remember. If you should get tired of your sweet firebrand in the slums, ‘things have not changed,’ you will remember, won’t you? And women don’t—so the way is still open.”

He stepped past her to the door, but he turned back to look at her (he often turned back). She was twisting her fan in her hands and trying to smile.

“You can always come back,” she said.

“Oh! I’m not such a brute as that!” exclaimed the man at the door.

“Oh, aren’t you?” she laughed. “You have your limits, then? I’m so glad! And you had better go now, for I have mine too.”

When the door closed firmly after him limits seemed to dissolve. She put the fan down carefully on the table, and she looked at her miserable face in the glass with a vague, ulterior satisfaction, for even if one’s heart was broken it was something of a comfort that one looked distinctly pretty in tears.