Over Bemerton's

CHAPTER XVI

MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE MEETS MORE THAN HIS MATCH, AND FINDS A RESCUER

The breakfast table, which is the Wynnes' Upper House, setting the seal, or otherwise, upon schemes that have been comparatively idly adumbrated at other times and in other places, having decided that Grandmamma, who had leanings towards literary men, would like to meet an author, it was agreed that I should bring Mr. Dabney to dinner on Saturday.

"Can't we get any one better than that?" Lionel asked.

"Mr. Dabney is very nice," said Naomi.

"I daresay," said Lionel; "but he's not known. What's he written?"

"He's an editor," I explained. "His paper is The Balance, a very courageous influential organ. Frank writes for it."

"Oh yes," said Lionel, "but Grandmamma isn't going to get excited over that. What's an editor? The world's full of them. They've got one or two at Ludlow, I'll bet. What Grandmamma wants to meet is a fellow who writes books, novels. Can't you get hold of one of them? What about Jacobs? I shouldn't mind meeting him myself."

It was pointed out that we did not know Mr. Jacobs.

"Then we ought to," said Lionel. "What's the good of an editor anyway? Every paper seems to have a dozen of them. How would you like me to bring Plum Warner?—he's written loads of books."

Mr. Dabney, however, remained our only lion.

When the evening arrived, it looked as though Grandmamma and he were going to hit it off perfectly, and I began to feel quite happy about my introduction of this firebrand into the household.

"I hear that you are a writer," Grandmamma began, very graciously. "I always like literary company. Years ago I met both Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray."

I saw the lid of Lionel's left eye droop as he glanced at Naomi. Mrs. Wynne, I gathered, was employing a favourite opening.

Mr. Dabney expressed interest.

"There are no books like theirs now," Grandmamma continued. "I don't know what kind of books you write, but there are no books like those of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray."

Mr. Dabney began to say something.

"Personally," Grandmamma hurried on, "I prefer those of Mr. Dickens, but that perhaps is because me dear fawther used to read them to us aloud. He was a beautiful reader. There is no reading aloud to-day, Mr. Dabney; and, I fear, very little home life."

Here Grandmamma made a false move, and let her companion in, for he could never resist a comparison of the present and the past, to the detriment of the present.

"No," he said, "you are quite right." And such was the tension that Grandmamma's remarks had caused that the whole room was silent for him. "We are losing our hold on all that is most precious. Take London at this moment—look at the scores and scores of attractions to induce people to leave home in the evenings and break up the family circle—restaurants, concert rooms, entertainments, theatres. Look at the music halls. Do you know how many music halls there are in London and Greater London at this moment?"

"No," said Grandmamma sternly, "I have no notion. I have never entered one."

Lionel shot a glance at me which distinctly said, in his own deplorable idiom, "What price Alf Pinto?"

Mr. Dabney, I regret to say, intercepted the tail of it, and suddenly realised that he was straying from the wiser path of the passive listener. So he remarked, "Of course not," and brought the conversation back to Boz.

"Mr. Dickens," said Grandmamma, "did me the honour to converse with me in Manchester in the sixties. I was there with me dear husband on business, and we stayed in the same hotel as Mr. Dickens, and breakfasted at the same table. The toast was not good, and Mr. Dickens, I remember, compared it in his inimitable way to sawdust. It was a perfect simile. He was very droll. What particularly struck me about him was his eye—so bright and restless—and his quick ways. He seemed all nerves. In the course of our conversation I told him I had met Mr. Thackeray, but he was not interested. I remember another thing he said. In paying his bill he gave the waiter a very generous tip, which was the slang word with which me dear husband always used to describe a douceur. 'There,' Mr. Dickens said, as he gave it to the waiter, 'that's ——' How very stupid! I have forgotten what he said, but it was full of wit. 'There,' he said—— Dear me!"

"Never mind, Grandmamma," said Naomi, "you will think of it presently."

"But it was so droll and clever," said the old lady. "Surely, Alderley, dear, I have told you of it?"

"Oh yes, mother, many times," said Alderley; "but I can't for the life of me think of it at the moment. Strange, isn't it," he remarked to us all at large, "how often the loss of memory in one person seems to infect others—one forgets and all forget. We had a case in Chambers the other day."

Their father's stories having no particular sting in them, his children abandoned him to their mother, who listens devotedly, and we again fell into couples.

But it was useless to attempt disregard of old Mrs. Wynne. There was a feeling in the air that trouble lay ahead, and we all reserved one ear for her.

"And Mr. Thackeray?"—Mr. Dabney asked, with an appearance of the deepest interest.

"Mr. Thackeray," said Grandmamma, "I had met in London some years before. It was at a conversazione at the Royal Society's. Mr. Wynne and I were leaving at the same time as the great man,—and however you may consider his writings he was great physically,—and there was a little confusion about the cab. Mr. Thackeray thought it was his, and we thought it was ours. Me dear husband, who was the soul of courtesy, pressed him to take it; but Mr. Thackeray gave way, with the most charming bow to me. It was raining. A very tall man with a broad and kindly face—although capable of showing satire—and gold spectacles. He gave me a charming bow, and said, 'There will be another one for me directly.' I hope there was, for it was raining. Those were, however, his exact words: 'There will be another one for me directly.'"

Mr. Dabney expressed himself in suitable terms, and cast a swift glance at his hostess on his other side, as if seeking for relief. She was talking, as it happened, about a novel of the day in which little but the marital relation is discussed, and Mr. Dabney, on being drawn into the discussion, remarked sententiously, "The trouble with marriage is that while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor."

"What was that?" said Grandmamma, who is not really deaf, but when in a tight place likes to gain time by this harmless imposition. "What did Mr. Dabney say?" she repeated, appealing to Naomi.

Poor Mr. Dabney turned scarlet. To a mind of almost mischievous fearlessness is allied a shrinking sensitiveness and distaste for prominence of any kind, especially among people whom he does not know well.

"Oh, it was nothing, nothing," he said. "Merely a chance remark."

"I don't agree with you," replied Grandmamma severely, thus giving away her little ruse. "There is no trouble with marriage. It is very distressing to me to find this new attitude with regard to that state. When I was a girl we neither talked about incompatibility and temperament and all the rest of it, nor thought about them. We married. I have had to give up my library subscription entirely because they send me nothing nowadays but nauseous novels about husbands and wives who cannot get on together. I hope," she added, turning swiftly to Mr. Dabney, "that those are not the kind of books that you write."

"Oh no," said Mr. Dabney, "I don't write books at all."

"Not write books at all?" said Grandmamma. "I understood you were an author."

"No, dear," said Naomi, "not an author. Mr. Dabney is an editor. He edits a very interesting weekly paper, The Balance. He stimulates others to write."

"I never heard of the paper," said Grandmamma, who is too old to have any pity.

"I must show it to you," said Naomi. "Frank writes for it."

"Very well," said Grandmamma. "But I am disappointed. I thought that Mr. Dabney wrote books. The papers are growing steadily worse, and more and more unfit for general reading, especially in August. I hope," she said, turning to Mr. Dabney again, "you don't write any of those terrible letters about home life in August?"

Mr. Dabney said that he didn't, and Grandmamma began to soften down. "I am very fond of literary society," she said. "It is one of my great griefs that there is so little literary society in Ludlow. You are too young, of course, Mr. Dabney, but I am sure it will interest you to know that I knew personally both Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray."

Here a shudder ran round the table, and Lionel practically disappeared into his plate. I stole a glance at Mr. Dabney's face. Drops of perspiration were beginning to break out on his forehead.

"Mr. Dickens," the old lady continued remorselessly and all unconscious of the devastation she was causing, even at the sideboard, usually a stronghold of discreet impassivity, "Mr. Dickens I met at a hotel in Manchester in the sixties. I was there with me dear husband on business, and we breakfasted at the same table. Mr. Dickens was all nerves and fun. The toast was not good, and I remember he compared it in his inimitable way to sawdust."

Mr. Dabney ate feverishly.

"I remember also that he made a capital joke as he was giving the waiter a tip, as me dear husband always used to call a douceur. 'There,' he said——"

Mr. Dabney twisted a silver fork into the shape of a hair-pin.

It was, of course, Naomi who came to the rescue. "Grandmamma," she said, "we have a great surprise for you—the first dish of strawberries."

"So early!" said the old lady. "How very extravagant of you, but how very pleasant." She took one, and ate it slowly, while Mr. Dabney laid the ruined fork aside and assumed the expression of a reprieved assassin.

"'Doubtless,'" Grandmamma quoted, "'God could have made a better berry, but doubtless He never did.' Do you know," she asked Mr. Dabney, "who said that? It was a favourite quotation of me fawther's."

"Oh yes," said Mr. Dabney, who had been cutting it out of articles every June for years, "it was Bishop Berkeley."

The situation was saved, for Grandmamma talked exclusively of fruit for the rest of the meal. Ludlow, it seems, has some very beautiful gardens, especially Dr. Sworder's, which is famous for its figs. A southern aspect.

At one moment, however, we all went cold again, for Lionel, who is merciless, suddenly asked in a silence, "Didn't you once meet Thackeray, Grandmamma?"

Naomi, however, was too quick for him, and before the old lady could begin she had signalled to her mother to lead the way to the drawing-room.

By the time the evening ended, Mr. Dabney had quite recovered, and he was ready enough on the way home to laugh at his adventure. We talked Dickens long into the night; and there is no better subject. Mr. Dabney said one very interesting thing. "What I always wonder about Dickens," he said, "is how on earth did the man correct his proofs?" Because, as he went on to point out, between the time of writing and the time of correcting he must have thought of so many new descriptive touches, so many new creatures to add, so many new and adorable fantastic comments on life. How could he deny himself the joy of putting these in?—for there can be no pleasure like that of creation.

I went to bed still laughing—but I should not have laughed had I known what possible danger for me lay ahead, the product of that comic dinner conversation. Strange at what light and unconsidered moments the strongest mesh of the web of life may be spinning! We never know. Had Mr. Dabney not needed rescuing, and had Naomi not come to his rescue.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH, AFTER EXCEEDINGLY TEDIOUS TALK ABOUT THE WISE EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH, AN IDLER IS SET TO WORK

"Riches," said Miss Gold, "are a great responsibility. I want to be altruistic, but I want to be sure—or as sure as possible—of the money going in the right way."

Trist, who had come down to Esher with me, smiled cynically.

"There are hospitals and so forth, I know," Miss Gold continued, "but this mere writing of cheques seems to me such a cowardly thing. I feel that one ought to think so hard before every gift. I not only feel that, but I must confess to wanting a little fun for my money too. The solving of the problem how to spend it wisely is indeed my chief hobby."

"A very fascinating one," I said.

"Yes," she replied, "so fascinating that when people calling here say, 'Oh, Miss Gold, how kind and charitable you are!' I blush, because I know that although it may look like kindness and charity it is really nothing whatever but self-indulgence."

"My dear Miss Gold," said Trist, "my dear Miss Gold, may I implore you not to begin that. Between us three, let it be understood from the outset that there is no such thing as unselfishness."

She laughed. "Very well," she said, "but, none the less, the thought is with me continually. I take it for granted one minute, and the next I am up in arms against it."

"If you are at all troubled about small benefactions," I said, "I must bring Miss Wynne to see you. She could help in the little ways so very sensibly."

"I should love to see her," said Miss Gold. "Every one whom one can trust to do a few little things is so valuable; but it is the large sums that are the hardest nuts to crack. I have so much, you know, and I can spend so little. This house costs practically nothing; I want no clothes; the doctor is almost my heaviest expense, and really I could do without him, because whether he comes or whether he doesn't this thing has got to go on getting worse. That is fixed."

My poor Agnes.

"I have had the most fantastic ideas," she hurried on. "I'll tell you of one of them. You know Burns's lines about resisting temptation? They're in that green book on the second shelf, there; the fourth from the end. It is Cunningham's edition, and came from your shop. The book-mark is in the place."

I found them.

"Read them aloud," Miss Gold commanded.

I did so—

"Then gently scan your brother Man,
    Still gentlier sister Woman;
Tho' they may gang a kennin' wrang,
    To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark,
    The moving Why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
    How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
    Decidedly can try us,
He knows each chord, its various tone,
    Each spring, its various bias:
Then at the balance let's be mute,
    We never can adjust it;
What's done we partly may compute,
    But know not what's resisted."

"Well," she said, "what do you think I did? I wrote to a thousand clergymen, chosen at random from the directory, and asked if I might be allowed to defray the cost of having these lines suitably illuminated in gold in some part of their church. Many did not answer at all; others refused straightforwardly on their own responsibility; many said that they themselves would like to give permission, but their bishops would not approve. One only asked me to do it, and I did it; but I have a notion, from the report of a spy that I sent down, that a hatchment has since been hung over it."

"You might," said Trist, "have offered to strike a bargain with them. In place, for example, of the tenth commandment, which was devised for the well-being of an Eastern tribe in camp, and has no bearing whatever at the present day in a civilisation that demands Sunday labour of most kinds, from cooking to shunting, and is broken perhaps most flagrantly by the clergymen who enunciate it at so much a year (yes, and call it work too, holding their poor foreheads as they tell you of their weary life)—you might have offered Burns's lines in place of that. Burns at any rate touches real life, whereas the presence of that law on the walls of the chancel has merely an archæological value."

"Yes," said Miss Gold, "but we must not look for logic."

"Nor," said Trist, "in a social society like the Church for courage."

"I don't blame the clergymen," I said. "They have to live. Better, they very properly thought, go on with elemental condemnations than let in the thin end of such a dangerous wedge as imaginative understanding."

"The New Testament," said Trist, "will never catch up with the Old in this country. The Old is certainly the best from the point of view of men who have to bring up families. Trade unionism must be very wary, and look ahead."

"Why didn't you go on to offer the verses to the Nonconformists?" I asked.

"I was discouraged," she said. "That is one of the temptations to which I most easily fall a prey—discouragement. I felt I could not reopen the project."

"You might have given it a turn," I said. "For example, in my Chinese book it is written of Wang Kung-i, of the seventh century A.D., that on being asked by the Emperor Kao Tsung to explain the secret of the harmony in which three generations of his family had lived, he wrote the single word 'Forbearance' many times. You might have offered them that anecdote, and entitled it 'A Lesson from a Heathen Land,' and therefore, even if apposite, negligible here. Every one, then, would be pleased."

"Of course," said Miss Gold, "money is really the last instrument with which benevolence, charity, altruism, whatever you call it, works; but most of us, being in a hurry, put it first. The first really is thought. I will give you an example of what I call the truest thought for others, and one which to my mind, if not to the Rontgen-rayed eye of a cynical bachelor, really involves self-sacrifice. I have a friend who spends a great deal of her time—how do you think? In writing letters to prisoners in the gaols. They are pious letters, full of appeals to the better nature and reminders of Christ's loving-kindness and the chance that remains to every one. They must, to a large extent, merely reproduce the ordinary solace that is offered by the chaplains and visitors; but this lady writes them herself, very carefully and legibly, and she employs several of her nieces to paint flowers on the top of each piece of note-paper. She is a wealthy and an intellectual woman, and might be much more congenially employed: but she does this because she wants to do something to alleviate the lot of the outcast. It seems to me a very beautiful deed."

"How I envy her!" I said.

"Envy?"

"Yes, her singleness of mind. I could not do it; not only because I should not dare to offer such solace, but also because my sympathy would be too much with them. I should feel, in the case of so many, that their imprisonment was the real offence rather than the so-called crime that took them there, and that would stay my hand. The letter that I should write would be a letter that would never pass the governor's office. Take, for example, a starving man who stole bread, and is in prison for that. It would be too cruel a mockery to comfort him with evangelical maxims. Hunger comes before conduct and far before religion. Another man might be there for debt, which is quite as often the result of accident as turpitude. Another might have merely killed the middle-aged seducer of a child of tender years. It is too difficult. I am too uncertain."

"Yes," said Miss Gold. "I am a little like that too; we are too complex for charity, you and I. In all probability we are merely meddling busy-bodies, groping towards what we hope is light, but doing harm by the way."

"I agree with you entirely," said Trist, who had been silent for some time. "My suspicion is that no one can do anything for any one; and my belief is that certain persons with soft hearts are doomed to ruin where they would assist. Most of the charitable are wreckers—certainly the cheque-writers are, and certainly I am. I have proved it again and again; but I shall probably go on, since resistance is so difficult and one is usually so much wiser than one's deeds. I will give you an example. I once did such an apparently harmless thing as to give a tailor's assistant a season ticket for Earl's Court. It admitted one only and he could not afford a shilling a night for his wife; he went every night alone; their home life was interrupted and then destroyed, and they have never been happy since. That, of course, was an error on my part. Had I thought a little longer I should have realised that the ticket was putting him, as the saying is, above himself, and have held my hand.

"That is one example. I could give you many others," Trist continued, "all of which convince me that I am a danger to society and ought to be locked up for giving money away as surely as any of your kind friend's prisoners are locked up for abstracting it."

"This is very terrible," said Miss Gold.

"Well, I believe it to be true of myself," Trist said; "others may have better fortune; but for the most part the feckless should be left alone. It sounds brutal, but after my experience you will acquit me of wishing to speak brutally. England, as I said before, is an Old Testament country, and had better be left to it. Christianity meddles."

"That means," I said, "not the cessation of charity but the materialisation of it. Manna and quails once more. And a very good thing too."

"Certainly," said Miss Gold.

"Those stanzas of yours," I went on, "might have a serious undermining influence on the single-minded. Is it worth while to interfere with such an accepted beatitude as 'Blessed are the untempted, for they shall be accounted the best men?'"

"Yes," said Trist, "but that expresses only part of the case. The real wording should be, 'Blessed are those who escape the prohibited temptations, for they shall be reputed the best men.' Avarice, for example, which the author of the beatitudes loathed with all his magnificent loathing, has become a very popular and highly esteemed temptation. A man indeed practically writes himself down both fool and failure if he does not succumb to it.

"Meekness also has gone out, although my own private opinion is that when Christ extolled the meek and promised them their inheritance, he was speaking ironically (as he often must have been), and the earth they were to inherit was a piece six feet by two."

Miss Gold liked that. "You should write a commentary," she said. "We want every point of view to be expressed, whether it's right or wrong; and I imagine," she added, "that no honest point of view can possibly be wholly wrong."

"As to temptation," I said, "take my own case. In the ordinary usage of the word, I am from temptation almost wholly free. I have the good or ill fortune to possess a mind that can occupy itself happily almost without a break, like a bee in that herbaceous border out there. Vice does not beckon me with any alluring finger; I am ill at once if I over-eat; I am ill the next day if I drink too much; and I care more for health than for the immediate pleasure of such excesses. I have a sufficient income; I do not desire more. I have no tendency to be a scandal-monger. The result is, that I am accounted a good man; the nice gentleman over Bemerton's, they probably call me in the neighbourhood; very likely mothers point me out as a model. But I am not deceived. I know perfectly well that the certificate is based not as it should be on what I do but on what I do not do. It is a negative honour that I enjoy or endure. Every time a wretched, besotted tippler tramples down the craving to have another drink, and thus saves twopence for his wife, he is a better man than I, who have no craving to conquer—except the craving (if I can apply to it so strong a word) not to have any craving; and that I submit to. Do you remember, Trist, that we were discussing this very question some years ago at Bentley's, and I claimed to have no temptations, when a shrewd being who knew me well remarked, 'Oh yes, you have, Falconer; your temptation is to be tolerant; you can find little twopenny-halfpenny faults with things, but you can't condemn.' Do you remember that? It was true then, and it is even more true now, when I am many years older. If a man can't condemn at twenty-five, he certainly will not at fifty, when he knows so much more of life and more than ever is conscious of the other side. Angels have their advocate as well as the devil, and both perhaps are unfair. The superficial may call me good, but before God I am only amiable."

"And yet," said Trist, "there was a fallacy in the criticism, for to be tolerant or intolerant is not a matter of will. When the drunkard tightens his fist on his twopence, and walks resolutely away from the public-house, he is deliberately resisting temptation at the command of his own will. Similarly, when a reviewer refrains from saying too hard a thing, for justice, about a book by a man whom he dislikes, or too kind a thing, for justice, about a book by a man whom he likes, he is deliberately resisting temptation at the command of his own will. But it is not a matter of will with you to be tolerant. It is temperament. And you are tolerant because you never made up your mind as to right and wrong."

"And never shall," I said. "As a child I had no doubts; but now? Take, for instance, telling the truth. I was brought up to believe that one should do that, and I knew a lie a mile off. But now I see that mendacity, or at any rate the suppression of one's real feelings and opinions, is the cement that binds society together."

"And yet truth," said Miss Gold, "is the only really interesting thing. But I have had enough ethics for one day, particularly as everything that Mr. Trist says is directed against the usefulness of the only hobby I possess. Tell me, Mr. Trist," she went on, "would you think this a dangerous scheme?—to hang one good picture, not an original, of course, but a really fine reproduction, in every common room of every workhouse in England."

"No," he said, "not even with a microscope could I find peril in that."

"Well," she said, "if I give you carte blanche, will you do that for me and so get back a little belief as to your usefulness? Will you find the pictures and arrange for their framing? I will communicate with the Guardians, because I know you could never bring yourself to do that. But will you help me over the pictures?"

And Trist said he would.

"I shall have a little work for you very soon, Kent," Miss Gold said to me as we left "It is time you did something."

CHAPTER XVIII

WE ASSIST AT A FUNCTION IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD, BUT NOT QUITE TO THE DEATH

"Do come at once. Drusilla has been arrested."

So ran the frenzied pencil note in Naomi's hand, on the fly-leaf of a new novel, which was brought to me one morning by the boot and knife boy at Queen Anne's Gate.

I went immediately, accompanied by the boy, who evidently knew what was wrong.

"Miss Drusilla and the other Sufferagettes," he said, "have been having another turn-up with the Prime Minister. They keep the pot boiling, don't they, sir?"

"Do you think women ought to have the vote?" I asked him.

"My mother says," he replied, "that all the clever women have it already."

"Has she got it?" I asked.

He grinned. "I should rather say she had," he answered.

Drusilla's mother was in a state of profound dejection and semi-collapse. "I don't know what Alderley will say," was the burden of her lament.

I told her it was very fortunate he was away. He would have time to think it over and take a kindly view.

"A daughter of mine in prison," said my sister. "The shame of it."

"Oh no," I said, "not at all. There is no shame in political offence. The fight for freedom, you know. Think of Joan of Arc. Think of—of—Jael and Sisera. Some one must always suffer before justice is done."

This cheered the poor mother a little, but all my good efforts were undone by Lionel, who rushed in at this moment, pale with fury. Neither Naomi nor I could check his ravings for some minutes, and his mother accepted them as a true picture of the case. Naturally. Was he not her son, while I was only her step-brother twice his age?

Lionel, I need hardly say, disregarded the seriousness of the cause of female enfranchisement. His principal concern was the name of Wynne, and L. Wynne in particular, and the effect of Drusilla's martyrdom upon it. How could he walk to the wicket, in the Middlesex and Surrey match to-morrow, with the knowledge of this outrage not only in his own mind but only too evidently in that of every spectator at the Oval? How could he do himself justice as a bat under such a humiliation? And think of the report the next day—"Wynne, the brother of the notorious Suffragette, secured a well-merited duck," or, "To be 'caught out' seems just now to run in the Wynne family." Lionel's fancy played with the theme like a comic journalist in an evening paper. He covered himself with gratuitous ridicule.

"My dear boy," I said at last, "how extraordinarily out of date you are. You are making two of the least pardonable mistakes of your age—you are taking something seriously and you are disregarding the benefits of advertisement."

He turned on me like a tiger. "Oh yes," he said, "you never find fault with anything. You just smile and enjoy it."

"I can't find much fault with Drusilla," I said humbly, "because she is sincere. There is no harm in wanting to be considered more important than you are: it is not wrong to want to vote. Personally I hope I shall never vote again, but that is not virtue in me—it is deplorable, unpatriotic weakness. Drusilla takes a passionate interest in public affairs and wants to be allowed to participate in them, and considers it an injustice that she should not be allowed to because she is a woman and not a man. In her excitement for this cause she and her friends seem to have gone a little too far and have come into collision with a law and the police. That is all. There is no disgrace; on the contrary, it is a merit in any one to-day to be ready to suffer for any cause."

Seeing that I might as well be talking to a pillar box, I stopped there, although it also occurred to me to say that I could imagine an intelligent Japanese looking with more admiration upon sisters who wanted votes than brothers who struck and pursued a ball all day.

I did, however, add, "Instead of ranting about your own reputation as a cricketer, you ought to be hurrying as fast as you can to the police court, to bail her out—if she will let you, which I doubt—and be rather proud to think that you have so determined and plucky a sister. I will come with you if you like."

Lionel, I regret to say, replied briefly that he would be damned if he did anything of the kind, and so I went alone, as Naomi could not leave her mother.

What nice people the police are! To the well-to-do and law-abiding they have a quiet, gentle, paternal way that soothes and reassures. They write things in books like recording angels. They hold out hope.

"Miss Drusilla Wynne? Oh yes," said the officer in charge. "Taken into custody for creating a disturbance in Downing Street with other females. The magistrate will hear the case in about half an hour. A special sitting."

Yes, he added, I might see her; but they were all very excited, and had been singing their war-song.

A policeman led me to Drusilla's cell and told me the story on the way. It seemed that the Prime Minister had made an announcement unpalatable to the sisterhood, whose knife, the officer added, had been in him for some time, and certain picked heroines among them had paid him a call of protest.

"No harm in that," said A-27, "but they wouldn't go away when told, and created a disturbance, so we had to bring them to the station. Very voilent they were, too, some of them; but not your young lady, I hope. Let me see, what did you say her name was?"

I told him.

"Oh yes. Wynne," he said (and my thoughts flew instantly to poor Wragg in Arnold's preface), "Wynne. No, she was all right—went like a lamb. In point of fact, I apprehended her myself. A pretty little piece in green and terra-cotta. Seemed to me she was doing what she was told, more than what she wanted to."

Poor Drusilla—if she could have heard that! Nothing so enrages as truth.

I was allowed to talk to her in the presence of the constable, who, with his helmet off, had quite the air of a man and a brother—a far more sympathetic brother than Lionel, indeed.

"I'm very sorry," she said, "but I can't pay the fine. None of the others will, and I'm not going to desert them."

"Does that mean Holloway?" I asked the policeman.

"That's right," he said: "Holloway."

"In Black Maria?" I asked.

"That's right: Black Maria," he said.

"How long do you think it will be?" I asked.

"A week or ten days for the first offenders," he said; "a fortnight for the old parliamentary hands."

I told Drusilla about her mother; but it did not move her. "It is mother's battle we are fighting as well as our own," she replied. "Women should hang together."

"Not hang," I said: "it's not as bad as that."

A-27 laughed, and Drusilla turned on him furiously.

"Why should policemen be men?" she cried. "That's another injustice. If women have to be arrested, they ought to be arrested by their own sex."

"I quite agree with you, miss," said the constable. "And so would all my mates, very heartily. Yes, and all our missuses too. It's no bean-feast taking a woman to the station, I can tell you. The police have their feelings as well as any one else, and they never feel so little like men as they do when they're apprehending a female offender. Now you, miss, as I was telling this gentleman here, came along quiet and peaceable; but do you think I was proud of having my hand on you? Not a bit of it. I could have sunk into the earth for shame. Votes for women I don't believe in, and never shall; but policewomen for women I would plump for."

At this moment a messenger came to say that the magistrate was ready, and I had to leave Drusilla and enter the court. The hearing took only a short time. There were several offenders, some of whom had been in similar mêlées before. They all refused to pay the fine and received varying sentences, as A-27 had foretold.

Drusilla, however, was discharged with a caution, a result due partly to her pacific behaviour with her constable, and partly, I have no doubt, to her father's standing at the Bar; for although there may not be (as some aver) one law for the rich and one for the poor, there is certainly one law for a colleague and one for a stranger, and so there always will be. As Trist says, the human organism presents few attractions as a resting-place to the bacillus of impartiality.

In discharging her (to her very obvious distress), the magistrate made some kind if antiquated remarks. He pointed out that there were other rights to be considered as well as the right to vote. There were, for example, the parents' right to be free from anxiety as to what their daughters were doing; the right to be exempted from such annoyance and grief as the imprisonment of their daughters would bring; and so forth. He meant well, but Drusilla was white with disagreement and indignation.

"If every one thought about others like that," she said, on the way home, "there would be no progress whatever. Progress is based on disregard of old-fashioned feelings." (Where did she get that?)

"True enough," I agreed. "But progress also comes from independence. I take it for granted that all those other brave ladies who have refused to pay their fines, and have gone to Holloway, have their own homes and incomes. They are in a position to defy the law. But where is your income? where is your home?"

This hit Drusilla rather hard. "If it came to that," she said, "I would leave home at once and earn my own living."

"But you have not done so," I said, "and one cannot have it both ways. One cannot enjoy both the sheltered advantages of the dependent and the fierce joys of the independent. You have been a gambler this morning. You were playing a game which might cost you money you did not possess and would have to be paid by some one who disapproved of the whole thing."

"But I was prepared to go to prison," said Drusilla.

"Quite true," I said. "But what about your time there? It does not belong to you. Your father paid for you to be at the Slade. No," I said, "you are a dependent and must behave accordingly. But when you earn your own living, there is nothing you cannot do. If you still want the vote, and there is no other way of getting it but by encamping on the Prime Minister's doorstep, why, you must encamp there and I will help you. But so long as you are taking your father's money, and living under his roof, I fancy you must behave."

And so I restored her to her mother.

My next step was to return swiftly to the police court to try a little corruption and bribery; but I am not good at this, and my suggestion that Wing was the correct spelling of Drusilla's surname (I had not only her father's comfort but her grandmother's in mind) failed dismally. In this world, although deceptions are welcomed everywhere, it is only on certain conditions, one of which is that they must be carried through with a high hand. I did not comply with this rule; and when I began to fumble for a sovereign, the inspector's cold eye paralysed my fingers. So Wynne it remained—Drusilla Wynne, aged twenty-two.

Alderley, as it happened, said nothing, but he acted promptly. He told Drusilla very kindly but decisively that he did not want her to go to the Slade any more. He would find her private instruction, he said, or perhaps she might join a class in a studio, but he wanted the Slade lessons to cease. This was very hard, and I sympathised with her; but, as I pointed out, and I am sure Naomi did too, her father had the right to dictate, and one cannot expect to be a revolutionary on plum cake, so to speak.

So Drusilla fared to Gower Street no more; and as for the little bearded men with the blue shirts, they gradually disappeared and no doubt found other comrades, as artists and socialists quickly do.

The chief cause of anxiety at Queen Anne's Gate that then remained was old Mrs. Wynne. Could the news be kept from her? We wondered for a few days, and then at last her daughter-in-law knew the worst, for a letter from Ludlow arrived with reference to the matter.

"How strange," the old lady wrote, "that there should be two girls of the same age named Drusilla Wynne, for Drusilla is by no means a common name, and there has been a Drusilla Wynne in our family for generations. My eye caught it in a report of the deplorable incident proceeding from this new outcry. Another strange thing is that this other Drusilla Wynne is described as the daughter of a well-known barrister; but life is full of coincidences. You must remind me, when I see you next, to tell you of a very remarkable one which has just happened to me in connection with a knitting-needle and dear Canon Hoadley."

"So that's all right," said Drusilla's mother.

"Yes, and jolly lucky," said Lionel.

"I think," said Drusilla, "it's all wrong. You talk as if I were ashamed of it as well as all the rest of you, but I'm not, and I think it's horrible to deceive Grandmamma like that. In fact I shall blame myself as long as I live for letting Kent interfere at all."

"You couldn't help it," I said meekly.

"If you hadn't gone to the court," said Drusilla, "to see the police and talk the magistrate over" (the woman's view of the English law!) "I should have gone to prison, and then Grandmamma would certainly have known. I wish I had stopped you. The next time I shall go through with it, I promise you, so you'd better all look out. Meanwhile, I shall write to Grandmamma and tell her everything."

"Don't be such an ass," said Lionel.

"My dear child," said her mother, "do you really think that is necessary?"

"Really," replied Drusilla firmly.

"Oh, Kent," said her mother to me, "do convince her how unnecessary that is. Poor Grandmamma—at her age too! Surely there is no need. I don't want ever to interfere in a case of conscience, but surely there are times ... Truth.... Surely now and then silence ... and it's too difficult. Kent, you know what I mean, do tell her."

"I'm awfully sorry," I said, "but I'm afraid Drusilla is right. There was not, as you say, the slightest need to inform old Mrs. Wynne off her own bat; but I don't see how she can let the present misunderstanding continue and retain that admiration of herself which is needful for us all to get through life decently."

I did not mean this to be cruel, but Lionel, who cannot forgive his sister for entertaining views so uncomfortable to himself at his club (and who is, moreover, a Turk at heart, like most Englishmen) added the poison.

"No," he said, "martyrs must advertise or they won't keep going. It is by letting every one know about their courage that they get it and keep it."

Poor Drusilla! this is the hardest cut of all, for there was just enough truth to sting—her revolt being largely imitative. She flung out of the room in a rage.

Naomi, who had taken no part in the discussion except to try to stop Lionel, followed her.

Alderley, when told about it, took, I think, a wise course. "Certainly she must unburden, if she wishes to," he said; "but she must go to Ludlow and tell the story in person. I won't have it done by letter."

And so Drusilla, very unwillingly, when the time came (our moral duty being often a confoundedly uncomfortable thing, which it is far simpler to neglect) was packed off to Ludlow with her poor little history of revolt, which (as her father had foreseen) was becoming a good deal of a bore.

The old lady, like her son, took it very well, Drusilla's honesty in the matter pleasing her far more than the unwomanliness of the conduct displeased her. Moreover, very old people rather like a little dare-devil in the young. But Drusilla had her punishment too.

"Well, well," Grandmamma said, "we won't say any more about it. What we must do for you now, my dear, is to find you a nice husband;" the result being a series of garden-parties and picnics at which curates and youthful squires were shamelessly paraded before our little firebrand, almost as if she had been a marriageable South Sea islander, as indeed she practically was. When it comes to marriage we are all savages.

Drusilla, however, to use a phrase of Lionel's, was not taking any. She frightened the squires with her politics, and the curates with her theology, or the want of it.

"My dear Grandmamma," she said, "I don't want to marry."

"Nonsense, child," said the old lady; "of course you want to marry. All women do. What you mean is, you don't want to marry any one that you don't want to marry."

Drusilla did not acquiesce, but the chorus of Alf Pinto's latest song, as repeated far too often by Dollie Heathcote and Lionel, ran through her head—

"Mr. Right! Mr. Right!
    He may not have knocked just yet;
But cheer up, girls, he is putting on his boots,
    And he'll soon be here, you bet."

Mr. Right! Mr. Right! Was there a Mr. Right for every one? she wondered; for obviously the music-hall philosophy was a little too general. Statistics alone proved that.

As it turned out—but we shall see.

CHAPTER XIX

SOME MODERN CHILDREN ARE PROVIDED WITH SOME VERY CONGENIAL MATERIAL FOR LAUGHTER

On a fine Sunday afternoon Naomi and I walked through three parks and Kensington Gardens to have tea with the Estabrooks. On Sunday they have a sit-down tea round the schoolroom table: a meal notable for cake and noise.

I put into my pocket a recent discovery at Bemerton's—a little manual for children belonging to the early eighteenth century, entitled The Polite Academy, or School of Behaviour for Young Gentlemen and Ladies, intended as a foundation for good manners and polite address in Masters and Misses.

"Do you want to hear me read something?" I asked after tea, and in response to a by no means frenzied appeal (for reading aloud is not the joy it was in my childhood) I began, after first explaining the purpose of the book.

I wish the original authors could have been present, not for their happiness, I fear, but for their amazement at the change that has come over children and parents; for I have no doubt they wrote it quite earnestly and believed in its rightness, and to hear Kenneth's comments alone would have startled them more than it would startle that modern boy if the family Aberdeen terrier stood up and publicly said grace in a loud voice.

The perfect child, as formed by this book, would be unbearable, and probably never existed; but we must suppose that such works had their place, and not so long ago either, although it is difficult to project the imagination to that period, certain lines of thought having so completely gone out. For example, what point is there now in such a counsel as this:—

"Be not proud because you are above the vulgar, for there are others above you."

It is probable that not even the poor put the case so baldly any more, while as for what are called the middle-classes (if such exist, but one can never find any one to admit belonging to them), they certainly do not agree that they owe homage to any one, whatever they may do in the presence of the titled.

The fact probably is that there is no longer any accessible aristocracy. The old nobility is in hiding, while the new increases so swiftly and apparently so capriciously that the ordinary citizen no longer accepts it with the uncritical reverence as of old, but looks the gift horse, so to speak, in the mouth. A lord is no longer, as he used to be, a lord: he is a law-lord, or a life-peer, or an ennobled brewer; something devilish like ourselves—we know his woof and texture.

Again, with money now able to do so much more than blood, aristocrats lose in that way too, to say nothing of their loss through blood doing as much to get money as it has sometimes had to do.

England is still largely feudal, but it no longer includes among its instructions to the young a section entitled, "Of Behaviour to Superiors."

"Take off your hat when any great person passes by, though you do not know him; it is a respect due to his rank."

That is meaningless to-day, and very happily so, I think; but I would rather see it restored to the curriculum than such a disgusting counsel as the following:—

"Be always pliable and obliging; for obstinacy is a fault of vulgar children."

The next section treats of "Behaviour to Equals"—who again are no longer mentioned among English people and cannot easily be found. It is an odd position to recognise neither superiors nor equals; but we can, most of us, fill it with distinction.

"Love all your equals and they will all love you."

"Always speak to them with respect, that they may treat you with respect again."

"If any of them are cross, be you civil nevertheless: his churlishness will disgrace him, while your good nature will gain you love and esteem."

The section, "Of Behaviour at School," made Kenneth and Christopher, the two Westminsters, very merry:—

"Behave to your teachers with humility and to your schoolfellows with respect."

"Make your bow or courtesy when you enter, and walk straight to your seat."

"Never quarrel at school, for it shows idleness and bad temper."

"When the master speaks to you, rise up to hear him, and look him in the face as he speaks, with modesty and attention. Begin not to answer him before he has done speaking, then bow to him with respect and answer him with humility."

"If you have occasion to complain of a school-fellow, first speak to him softly and desire him to desist. If he will not, then rise up and wait an opportunity; and when the master's or usher's eye is upon you bow and say softly, and in a few words, what your complaint is."

This was too much.

"Did they really ever behave like that?" Kenneth asked.

"I suppose so," I said. "This is a book that seems to have been popular, for it has gone into many editions."

Kenneth stated himself to be jiggered.

I went on:—

"If you see your play-fellows do anything wrong, tell them of it."

"Return a jest with another, but always with good manners."

"Never call anyone by a reproachful name."

It is odd to think that anybody at any period could seriously have set down such mandates; but there they are in black and white—a kind of Sermon on the Mount by a dancing-master. It is when one reads counsels of something more than perfection—counsels of pedantic priggishness, shall we say—to natural, healthy children, that one realises how necessary compromise is to daily life and how far removed perfection is from the natural human being.

This little book may of course have been, even in its own day, excessively proper and inhuman: but I have seen others hardly less so. We have to remember that children, as creatures of delight, are of comparatively recent discovery. They were for many years merely the young of man, to be broken in like dogs. Not even the men of imagination knew any better. No child was, as far as I have read, thought a fit subject for introduction into a novel until Henry Brooke's Fool of Quality, and even there, although there are the high spirits of the two schoolboys, there are no infant-like tendernesses and natural gaiety. A few poets had praised the young very gaily—Prior and Ambrose Phillips, for example—but rather as courtiers than human beings: it was left for Blake first to see that the child was not merely the young of man but a separate creature, filled with fugitive and exquisite charm.

To-day, of course, we are overdoing the discovery. The child is set in the midst, and we sit around worshipping and applauding and vying with each other in detecting and celebrating darlingnesses.

I went on to the section on "Behaviour to Parents and the Family ":—

"As soon as you come into the room to your parents and relatives, bow, and stand near the door till you are told when to sit."

"Never sit down till you are desired, and then not till you have bowed, and answered what was asked of you."

"When in the room with your parents and relatives, never slip out privately, for that is mean and unhandsome."

"If you have sisters or brothers it is your duty to love them: they will love you for it and it will be pleasing to your parents and pleasure to yourselves."

"Be ready to give them anything they like, and they will give you what you desire."

"Will they?" said Norah, with bitter sarcasm; for Norah, as I have said, is the nursery drudge.

"If you think they are cross to you, be silent and gentle: and if that does not make them kind, complain to your father, mother, and relatives."

"Never revenge yourself, for that is wicked; your relatives will always take your part, when you behave with quietness."

If the child has been allowed to become human and individual, it is no less true that the parents and relatives have lost their godhead too. At the time of this book, parents could make no mistake, and every child had to be like every other child. No wonder that anthropomorphism crept in: it began with the first child; it began with Cain. Ever since then, God has been merely a larger man and a father.

But as fathers, under the new régime, become more companionable (as I see them becoming every day), this old ideal must weaken, for God will smile again—or rather will begin to smile.

The contrast between the unimaginative joylessness of these counsels of perfection and the laughter with which they were received brought home to one with curious vividness the difference, not only between the children of a hundred and fifty years ago and to-day, but between the parents too. Where the old parent admonished, the modern parent jokes. A kind of light banter has become the language of fathers and children in place of the ancient minatory formality.

Next came "Behaviour at Meals":—

"Nothing shows the difference between a young gentleman and a vulgar boy so much as their behaviour in eating."

"Sit patiently till the company are helped, and you will not be forgotten."

"Do not ask till you see the company are all helped: then if it happens you have been forgot, you will be served."

"Whatever is given you, be satisfied it is good, and desire no other."

"In eating fruit, do not swallow the stones, but lay them and the stalks on one side of your plate, laying one of the leaves that came with the fruit over them."

"Mightn't they see who they were going to marry?" Winifred asked.

"Never regard what another has on his plate: it looks as if you wanted it."

"When you drink, bow to some one of the company and say Sir or Madam."

This set them all shouting.

"Chew your meat well before you swallow it; but do this decently, without making faces."

"One for you, Sam," said Winifred.

The next section took us into the street:—

"When the school hours are over go out, as you came in, quietly, softly, and decently."

"When you come near a mob, walk to the other side of the street, and never concern yourself what's the matter."

"Oh, I like that!" said Kenneth. "What about a horse down?"

"I saw a chap being run in the other day," said Christopher.

"Never whistle or sing as you walk alone; for these are marks of clownishness and folly."

My own childhood is not so very remote, but it is far enough away for vast changes to have occurred in the relations of parents and children. We were all happy and familiar enough, but there was none of the freedom of speech between young and old that is now encouraged. Dignity and age are equally out of fashion. We are all young to-day and almost more terrified of being out of things than of being accused of a want of humour. The last thing to go is juvenility.

Afterwards, I told the children a little about the Chinese pride in their parents and the high honour in which good sons are held in China. Not the least entertaining part of my Chinese book deals with filial piety, of which that people have Twenty-four Examples for the edification of youth. I told them about Lao Lai Tzŭ, of the sixth century B.C., who "at seventy was still accustomed"—"still" is good—"to divert his aged parents by dressing himself up and cutting capers before them."

Christopher at once said that they did that very often, but he had to admit that the prime object was to divert themselves.

Huang Hsiang, another of the Twenty-four Examples, who died A.D. 122, greatly delighted their sense of the ridiculous, for he "used to fan his parents' pillow in summer to make it cool, and get into their bed in winter to take the chill off."

Other examples I kept to myself, such as Tsing Tsan of the fifth century B.C., who maintained that one should remain single, since "with the possession of wife and children, the earnestness of a pious son would be likely to wane." None the less he married, but regained consistency by divorcing his wife "for serving up to his mother-in-law some badly-stewed pears." This would have been beyond them; but I sent Kenneth into roars of laughter by the story of the youthful Emperor who amused himself by shooting blunted arrows at the stomach of the sleeping Regent—an indiscretion which led to a speedy succession.

There was a beautiful evening light when Naomi and I walked back: the light that always makes me sad, and I was sad too to think of the contrast between that noisy, happy home, so very full of life and high spirits, and my own solitary silent rooms; yes, and Naomi's too. There is something wrong in a civilisation which makes it so easily possible for so sweetly maternal a woman never to have children of her own.

I slipped my arm through hers and we walked without speaking.

CHAPTER XX

AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE LEADS TO PLANS OF TRAVEL, AND NAOMI AND I ACCEPT A RESPONSIBILITY

"I don't suppose you've heard the news," I said, as we settled down to our soup.

"Do you mean about the Traffic Bill?" said Alderley.

"Or Notts and Yorkshire?" said Lionel.

"Or the Queen of Spain?" said my sister.

"Or John's portrait of Mrs. Grundy?" said Drusilla.

"Or Mr. Bemerton's latest find?" said Naomi.

"No," I said, "none of these. You couldn't really have guessed if you had gone on all night. The news is, that I am going to take you on the Continent for a month—as many of you as want to go."

Naomi spoke first. "But, Kent," she said, "how——?"

"Hush!" I said. Then I took my pocketbook out of my pocket, opened it, extracted a slip of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on the table before her. "There," I said, "is a cheque for £483 10s. 3d. It came to me this morning all unexpectedly, being the payment of a debt which I had long since given up hope of ever receiving. In other words, it is sheer profit, like all repaid loans.

"If we can all go to the Continent for a month on that amount," I continued, "let us do so. If not, let us go for three weeks or a fortnight. But I intend to take some of you, if not all.

"The question is," I went on, "where shall we go? We must debate the point with great care, and the majority will decide. I, I may say at once, have no preference. All I want to do is go to the Continent for a month and pay everything, provided of course that some one else will carry the purse. That I could never do."

"Dollie would love it," said Drusilla. "Besides, he can talk French like a——"

"Like a french polisher," said Lionel, who has a turn for mechanical wit.

"Ah!" I said, "you lean towards France."

"Does he know Italian?" asked my step-sister.

"We seem to be crossing the Alps," I said.

"But, my dear Kent," Naomi remarked very earnestly, "you don't really mean to spend all that money on a holiday?"

"Why not," I asked, "if it comes from a clear sky? Let us consider it manna and quails, and consume it."

"I certainly should not dream of going," Naomi replied, "unless you promised at least to halve the amount and use the other half for some other purpose—helping some of my poor people, for example."

I threw the cheque to Naomi. "There," I said, "put it in the bank, and when we are ready to go, give us exactly half of it, and we will stay away until it is spent or we are all tired of seeing each other at table d'hôte. The other half you must do with exactly as you will."

"You dear thing!" Naomi cried.

All through dinner we discussed the merits of Continental resorts.

We began with France. Lionel suggested Trouville; but his sisters would have none of it.

"Then I can't go," he said. "I couldn't possibly be away for more than a few days until the season closes. We've got several matches yet."

Drusilla also remarked that she did not want to be away for so long as a month, but would not explain why.

Alderley wanted Brixen. He had heard so much of it from a Judge. No one else had heard of it at all, and he became very plaintive about money foolishly flung away on the education of the young. "Brixen," he said, "is in the Tyrol—a mountainous district of Austria."

After a short sharp passage with Drusilla he admitted to having first met the name and fame of Brixen only a fortnight ago.

My sister voted for the Juras. She had seen a picture in the Academy, of a valley of wild flowers there, by MacWhirter, and she had always longed to visit them.

But against Switzerland rose the universal voice.

Norway was excluded on account of the sea voyage; Rome for its heat; Spain for ignorance of the language and (on Mrs. Wynne's account) prevalence of anarchists and bombs; the Black Forest for its want of civilised apparatus; the Tyrol for its steepnesses.

And then Naomi hit the nail on the head. "Venice," she said.

Of course.

Later in the evening Dollie Heathcote came in. He had looked round the dancing rooms to which he had been invited, had disapproved, and, disapproving, had with a bachelor's lofty privileges done what he called a guy.

"Besides," he said, not in excuse, for he admits to no errors, but in further explanation of a perfectly rational line of conduct, "there were crowds of men over—oceans."

"What do you know of Venice?" Naomi asked him.

"Venice," he said, "I know all about Venice. It is a suburb of New York, the streets are flooded, and there is nothing to eat except for mosquitoes, and they eat you."

"Very good," I said.

"Don't encourage the ass," said Lionel.

"Very good," I said, "but now be practical."

"Oh, as for that," said Dollie, "I know nothing of Venice except that the wise are said to stay at the Lido, where there is ripping bathing and no mosquitoes, and go over to Venice when they want to. It is quite close—much closer than the Isle of Wight is to Portsmouth and much jollier. I hate the Isle of Wight."

"Will you come with us?" I asked him. "As my guest?"

But he could not. He had arranged a series of visits for the Long Vacation, and he obviously wanted to pay them, or he would have accepted my invitation instantly. His duty always lies along the primrosiest path.

"Then it is you who will have to pay the bills and tip the waiters," I said to the K.C.

"Alderley loves that," said his wife.

And so it was settled: we were to go to Venice and go very soon.

I wrote to Miss Gold to tell her of the projected journey, and she replied instantly, asking me to come down at once and to be sure to bring Naomi with me.

She received us very warmly and got to business almost instantly.

"I have been making a new will," she said, "and I want you to be my executors—you, Kent, and Miss Wynne. It is, I know, unusual for one to ask one who is outwardly a total stranger, as Miss Wynne may feel herself to be, to take such a post; but lying here and thinking, I seem to know you so very well, my dear, quite as well as I know many people whom I see, and I want you to humour an old sick woman who has so long been a friend of your friend Mr. Falconer.

"Besides," Miss Gold continued, "my will is not a very personal affair. There will be no grasping relations to deal with. I merely want to leave the money in trust to you two, to go on with certain schemes that I should not wish at once to be interrupted just because I was no longer lying here as usual. You will be business people—that is all."

"Tell us," I said, "what some of the schemes are."

"Well," she began, "for one thing I have a seaside home for London children—a mixture of seaside and country. It is in Sussex. I bought an old farmhouse and windmill, about a mile inland, and added to them until we can accommodate twenty children and three or four people to look after them. The farm goes on all the time, but the mill is idle. They play in that. There are very good sands there, I am told, and woods too. It seems to be an ideal spot. The children go down in twenties for ten days each from April till the middle of October—that means about four hundred children."

"But how do you choose the children?" I asked.

"Well, that is of course a difficulty. A Poor Law Inspector in Clerkenwell helps me. They are all Clerkenwell children. One must be local or one is lost. He tells me the best cases.