CHAPTER III

IN WHICH EUTERPE IS CALLED UPON TO PLAY THE PART
OF INTERPRETER

The concert was over. Coming out of the Rotunda—a domed and pinnacled building of glass and iron, half conservatory, half theater, set on the hillside against a crown of evergreen-trees—the audience poured in a dark stream down the steep garden walks to where, flanked by red and yellow wooden kiosks, the turnstiles and entrance gates open on to the public road.

Joanna Smyrthwaite was among the last to leave the auditorium. She did so in a dazed and almost sleep-walking condition, exhausted and enervated by the tumult of her own sensations. But that enervation was singularly pleasant to her, since, by reducing the claims of her overdeveloped intellectual and moral nature, it left the emotional element in undisputed ascendancy. She was, indeed, jealous of any interruption or curtailment of this condition. Therefore she lingered, unwilling to leave the place where so much inward felicity had been procured her, and fearing to meet any of her acquaintance. Dr. and Mrs. Norbiton and Mrs. Paull had, she believed, occupied stalls a couple of rows behind her. She wished to avoid conversation with them, and still more to avoid offering—her carriage was waiting at the entrance gates—to drive them to their respective homes. Their comments upon the performance, however intelligent and appreciative, must, she knew, jar upon her in her present frame of mind. Felicity would be extinguished in irritation, and for such deplorable downfall she should, she knew, hold her good neighbors responsible. It was wiser to avoid occasion of offense since she so wanted, so really needed, to be alone.

Her sister Margaret's musical requirements went no further than the modern English ballad. For preference of the description in which roses, personal pronouns, cheap erotic sentiment, endearing diminutives, and tags of melody appropriated—without acknowledgment—from the works of early masters go to make up so remarkably meritricious a whole. Of this Joanna, while duly deploring Margaret's artistic limitations, was really very glad. It enabled her to attend the weekly Wednesday and Friday classical concerts, at the Rotunda, by herself. She had always wished to attend these concerts, but only since her father's demise had she felt free to gratify her wishes in respect of them. Since that event, they had become first a permitted pleasure, then an indulgence crying aloud for gratification, and finally a duty of a semi-religious character on no account to be omitted. To-day the religious sentiment was conspicuously present, as the programme consisted of excerpts from Wagner's operas. Reared in a creed which sublimates the deity to an inoperative abstraction, Joanna's thought reacted just now toward an exaggerated anthropomorphism. In her mind, as in those of many persons deficient in the finer and more catholic musical instinct, the titanic quality of so much of the great composer's work excited feelings of astonishment and awe which resulted in an attitude closely akin to worship. The elevation of primitive human passions—desire, remorse, anger, revenge, blood-hunger—to regions of portent and prodigy, so that they stalk, altogether phantasmal and gigantic clothed in rent garments of amazing and tormented harmonies across the world stage, their heads threatening the integrity of the constellations while their feet are made of, and squarely planted upon, very common clay, is, undoubtedly, a spectacle calculated at once to flatter human pride and provoke a species of idolatry. For some reason, moreover, lust is less readily conceivable in the neighborhood of the pole than in that of the equator; so that the bleak Northern atmosphere, in which the Wagnerian dramas move, procures for them an effect of austerity, not to say of chastity, almost amusingly misleading.

Humor, however, is indispensable to the recognition of the above little truths, and Joanna's composition was innocent of the smallest admixture of that merrily nose-pulling ingredient. She took her emotions quite seriously; not only nursing them when present, but finding in them later assurance of the reality of certain fond dreams, vehement hopes and longings, which possessed her. Therefore, standing under the glazed marquise of the Rotunda she watched, with strained face and pale, anxious eyes, until the little company of her acquaintance—she could distinguish Dr. Norbiton by his height and the green felt hat, cleft in the crown, which he wore—reached the turnstiles and passed out toward the animated open space of The Square.

This last, like the flat of the valley, lay in shadow; faint pearl-gray mist veiling the modest stream whence Stourmouth derives its name, and the lawns and borders—now gay with spring flowers—of the well-kept ornamental grounds through which it flows. But, across the valley, the fir plantation upon the opposite slope, and the houses and big hotels—the streaming flags of which supplied a welcome note of crude color in the landscape—rising behind the dark bar of it, along with the upward curve of shops and offices in Marychurch Road, and the three tall church spires—two of buff-gray stone, the third red-tiled and elegantly slender—were flooded with steady sunshine. Thrushes sang loud in the grove at the back of the Rotunda. Perched on the outstanding ironwork of the dome, starlings creaked and whistled. A grind of tram wheels, hooting of motor horns, barking of dogs, and sound of voices, borne on the easterly breeze, arose from The Square. The bell of an Anglican church called to evensong. From the bandstand, situated at the far end of the public gardens, came the strains of a popular march; while with these, in a soft undertone, mingled the murmur of the many trees and hush of the sea.

Seeing and hearing all of which, in her present highly sensitized condition, realization of the inherent beauty of things, the inherent wonder and delight of Being, pierced Joanna Smyrthwaite's understanding and heart. Her whole nature was fused by the fires of a limitless tenderness and sympathy. And, being thus delivered from the tyranny of words and empty phrases, from the false standards of thought and conduct engendered by her upbringing, and from ever-present consciousness of her own circumscribed and discordant personality, for the first time in her experience she tasted the strong wine of life, pure and undiluted. During a few splendid moments she knew the joy of genius' sixth sense—becoming one with the soul and purpose of all that which she looked upon. Hot tears rose to her eyes. She was broken by a mute ecstasy of thanksgiving.

But it was impossible this happy state should continue. The malady of introspection was too deeply ingrained in her. Tormenting fears and scruples again arose. Innate pessimism laid its paralyzing influence upon her. She felt as one in whose hands a gift of great value has been placed; but whose muscles being too weak to grasp it, the precious lovely thing falls to the ground and is shattered. Whereat tears of enraptured sensibility turned to tears of bitter humiliation. Drawing a black-bordered handkerchief from the silver-mounted bag hanging at her waist, she pressed it against her wet, yet burning, face and hurried down the hill.

At the gates the well-appointed barouche and pair of fine brown horses awaited her—Johnson, the coachman, rotund and respectful, in his black livery, upon the box; Edwin the footman, elongated and respectful, her rugs and wraps over his arm, at the carriage door. The spring evenings still grew chill toward sundown; and Joanna's circulation was never of the best. She stood silent and abstracted while Edwin put her cloak—a costly garment of Persian lamb lined with ermine—about her thin shoulders; nor, until she was seated in the carriage, the fur rug warmly tucked round her, had her agitation subsided sufficiently for her to speak. She would not go the short way home by Barryport Road. She disliked the traffic. The trams made her nervous. She would go by the new drive along the West Cliff, and across Tantivy Common.

Obediently the carriage turned to the left through the shadow, up the steep hill behind the Rotunda. The horses climbed, straining at the collar. Then, the top of the ascent being reached, they bowled along the broad, even road, snorting in the sparkle of the upland air and recovered sunshine. Joanna sat stiffly upright, shivering a little and blinking in the strong light. She still held her handkerchief in her hand, and it was through a blur of again up-welling tears that she saw the uninviting red and gray terraces and large, straggling boarding-houses, set in a sparse fringe of fir-trees, on either side the road. This quarter of Stourmouth, declining from fashion, is given over to cheap pensions, nursing-homes, and schools. The footwalks were infested by hospital nurses and bath-chairs, while long files of girls, marching two and two, meandered home and seaward. Some of these maidens stared enviously at the young lady, wrapped in furs, driving along in her smart carriage, and sighed for the glorious days when mistresses and lessons would have no more dominion over them. But Joanna remained unconscious of the interest she excited. Her thoughts had returned upon a subject which now constantly and all too exclusively occupied them—a subject to which even the admirable playing of the Rotunda orchestra and noble singing of the young dramatic soprano—though she had listened to both in a fervor of reverential emotion—supplied, after all, little more than a humble accompaniment.

In the silver-mounted velvet bag hanging at her waist, neatly filed and dated, encircled by elastic bands to keep them perfectly flat and prevent their edges from crumpling, were all the letters she had received from Adrian Savage. Even the thin French envelopes, cross-hatched with blue inside to secure opacity, had been carefully preserved. Even the telegram she had received from Adrian, in response to the announcement of her father's death, found a place there. The letters in question were discreet, even ceremonious epistles, dealing with business and plans, expressing regret at the delays in his return to England caused by "our good Challoner's" slowness in preparing documents and accounts, and making civil inquiries as to Joanna and her sister's health and well-being. Quaint turns of phrase and vivacity of diction gave these letters a flavor of originality; but, taken as a whole, less intimate or more uncompromising effusions it would be difficult to conceive. By this fact, however, Joanna was in no wise daunted. As all his many friends agreed, Adrian Savage was a dear, delightful, and very clever fellow, who would assuredly make a name for himself. But Joanna went far beyond that, endowing him with enough virtues, graces, and talents to people this naughty old earth with sages and stock all heaven with saints. Consequently in the graceful lightness and polite restraint of his letters, alike, she found food for admiration and security of hope—namely, consideration for the difficulties of her unprotected position, delicacy in face of her recent bereavement, a high-minded determination in no way to hurry her to a decision.

At night Joanna placed the slender packet in a Russia-leather wallet beneath her pillow. By day she carried it in the bag at her waist. Often, when alone, she drew it forth from its hiding-place and fondled it tremulously. She had done so this afternoon during the concert more than once. It was unnecessary for her to re-read the letters. She knew their contents by heart. Adrian had touched them. He thought of her when writing them, when folding the thin sheets of paper, when stamping and addressing the envelopes. Thus they constituted a direct material, as well as mental, link between herself and him. Perpetually she dwelt on this fact, finding in it a pleasure almost painful in its intensity. Only for a few minutes at a time, indeed, could she dare to hold or look at the packet. Then, replacing it in the wallet or bag, she struggled to regain her composure, merely to take it out at the first favorable opportunity, and repeat the whole process again.

In the same way, although longing for the young man's return, to the point of passion, she hailed each obstacle which postponed that return. To see him, to hear his voice and footsteps, meet his gallant and kindly eyes, to watch him come and go about the house, to listen to his clever and sympathetic talk, would constitute rapture, but a rapture from which she shrank in terror. She felt that she could hardly endure his presence. It would drain her of vitality.

Now, sitting upright in the carriage, while the horses carried her forward at a spanking pace through the sea and moorland freshness and the delights of the spring sunshine, a new form of these fears tortured her. Adrian's love, constant association with him, participation in the varied interests and activities of his daily life and in that of the brilliant society in which he moved—this, and nothing less than this, in sum and in detail, constituted the lovely precious gift placed in her, till now, so sad and empty hands by a strange turn of Fortune's wheel. Were those poor hungry hands strong enough to close upon and hold it? Or would they, weakly faltering and failing, let it fall to the ground and be shattered? The shame of such prospective failure agonized her. To renounce a crown may be heroic, but to have it incontinently tumble off, when you are straining every nerve, exerting every faculty, to keep it safely balanced on your head, is feeble, as she felt, to the point of ignominy.

At last the schools, pensions, nursing-homes, and lodging-houses were left behind. The carriage reached the open common. Tracts of gorse, thick-set with apricot-yellow blossom, broke up the silvery brown expanse of heather. In sharply green, grass-grown hollows ancient hawthorns, their tops clipped by the sea wind into quaint shapes, compact and ruddy, were dusted over by opening leaf-buds. High in air screaming gulls circled. The shadows were long, for the sun drew down toward its setting. Then, as once before to-day, the happy appeal of outward things—in which, as in glass, man may, if he will, catch some faint reflection of God's glory—made its voice heard, awakening Joanna Smyrthwaite from the fever-dreams of her almost maniacal egoism.

Obeying a sudden impulse, she stopped the carriage, alighted, and walked out on to the little promontory the neck of which the road crosses. Here the sand cliffs, dyed all shades from deepest rusty orange to palest lemon-yellow and glistening white, descend, almost perpendicularly in narrow water-worn shelves and ledges to the beach nearly a hundred feet below. Looking eastward, up the wind, the sea horizon, Stourmouth, its many buildings and its pier, and all the curving coastline away to Stonehorse Head—the dark mass of which guards the entrance to Marychurch Haven—showed through a film of fine gray mist. Westward, the colors of both land and sea, though opaque, were warmer. Across the golden gorse of the common in the immediate foreground Joanna saw the great amphitheater of the Baughurst Park Woods extending far inland, the rich blue-purple of the pines and firs pierced here and there by the living sunlight of a larch plantation. Beyond Barryport Harbor, only the farthest coves and inlets of whose gleaming waters were visible, the quiet, rounded outlines of the Slepe Hills pushed seaward in blunt-nosed headland after headland, softening from heliotrope to ethereal lavender in the extreme distance, under a sky resembling the tint and texture of a pink pearl.

Joanna, her fur cloak gathered closely about her, stood a lonely black figure amid the splendor of the scented gorse. There is an exciting quality in the east wind. The harsh tang of it galvanized her into an unusual physical well-being, making her chest expand and her blood circulate more rapidly.

A new thought came to her. To doubt her power of meeting the demands of Adrian's affection and of rising to his level was really to doubt the vivifying power of that affection, to doubt his ability to raise her to his own level. Her doubt of her own worthiness was, in point of fact, an accusation against his intelligence and his judgment.

Joanna slipped one hand inside the velvet bag under her cloak and clasped the thin packet of letters. With the other she momentarily covered her eyes, as though in apology and penitence.

"Ah! how miserably faithless I am," she murmured in her flat, toneless voice. "How wickedly ungrateful it is not to trust him. As though he were not capable of supplying all that is wanting in me—as though he did not know so far, far best!"

CHAPTER IV

SOME PASSAGES FROM JOANNA SYMRTHWAITE'S LOCKED BOOK

That evening Joanna went to her room early. She permitted Mrs. Isherwood to help her off with her evening dress and on with a purple lamb's-wool kimono, the color and cut of which were singularly ill-suited to her pasty complexion and narrow-chested figure. She then rather summarily dismissed the good woman, who retired accompanied by black silk rustlings indicative of respectful displeasure and protest. These Joanna refused to let affect her. The experiences of the day had aroused an inherited, though until now latent, arrogance. She regarded herself as sealed to that altogether-otherwise-engaged young gentleman, Adrian Savage, and set apart. Yet ingrained habits of obedience and self-repression still stirred within her, making her timid in the presence of any sort of established authority, even in that of her old nurse. She needed solitude to enable her to enjoy the luxury of such "sealing" to the full. Therefore, when the door shut upon those remonstrant rustlings, she followed almost stealthily and locked it, stood for a moment listening to make sure of Isherwood's final departure, then extended both arms with a voiceless cry of satisfaction, crossed to her satinwood bureau, opened it and took the current volume of her diary from a pigeon-hole, fetched lighted candles and the silver-mounted bag containing Adrian's letters from off her dressing-table, and sat down to write.

"April 20, 190-

"I have neglected my diary for many weeks. But I have feared I might set down that which I should afterward regret. Indeed, all my accustomed occupations and employments have been neglected. They have appeared to me tedious and trivial. My mind has been strangely disordered. But to-night I feel this state is passed. I see my duty clearly, and shall not allow anything to interfere with it or deflect me from the pursuit of it. I owe this to the person who has so wonderfully chosen me."

At this point the small, neat, scholarly writing became irregular and almost illegible. Joanna rose and paced the room, pressing her hands against her high forehead. Presently she returned and sat down again.

"It is unwise to dwell too much on this. As yet I am unequal to any adequate expression of my feelings. When rearranging the books in library last week I happened to open a volume of Mrs. Browning's poems containing her 'Sonnets from the Portuguese.' They appeared to me singularly appropriate to my own case. I have, indeed, been weakly jealous that any other woman should have felt, and so exactly expressed, my own thoughts and emotions. Yet I read and re-read the sonnets daily. They speak for me not only more eloquently, but more truthfully, than I can speak for myself. But, unhappily, I have less, terribly less, to offer in return than the poetess had. This has racked me with distress, annihilating my peace of mind, and in great measure dimming my gratitude, until to-day. I see how very wrong this has been. It has its root in pride. For, as I now understand, distrust of myself is nothing less than distrust of him. I am resolved to exterminate my pride and submit to be nothing, so that he may give everything. Already I feel relief and a growing repose of mind from this resolve. Already I feel my pride yielding. Soon, I believe, I shall almost rejoice in my own absence of gifts and attractions, since it enlarges his opportunity for generosity."

The chatter of young women upon the gallery, accompanied by smothered laughter, not to say giggling. Joanna ceased writing, blotted the page, and returned the diary to its pigeonhole. She moved into the center of the room and stood anxiously listening. But to her relief no knock came at the door. The two voices grew faint along the corridor, and ceased. Joanna could not, however, immediately settle to her diary again. The giggling had brought her down, from high poetic regions to common earth, with a bump. Pride, cast out in one direction, pranced in another unrestrained—as is pride's wont. When Joanna resumed her writing subject and treatment alike were changed.

"Marion Chase is staying here, as usual," she wrote. "In some ways I am glad of this. It relieves me of any obligation to be constantly with Margaret. To be constantly with her would be very irksome to me. I no longer pretend that she and I have much in common. Since papa's authority has been removed the radical divergence between Margaret's character and mine becomes more and more evident. Marion Chase has no intellectual life. Her pleasures are active and practical. These Margaret appears increasingly to enjoy sharing. To-day she and Marion have been to Southampton and back in a new motor-car Margaret has on trial. Mr. Challoner selected it for her in London. It came down yesterday. Margaret is very much excited about it. She is, of course, at liberty to buy a motor-car if she pleases, though I think it would have been better taste to wait until the business connected with our inheritance was finally settled before making any such costly purchase. I prefer Johnson and the horses. Motoring would, I feel sure, cause me nervousness. Mr. Challoner, I heard this evening, met them in Stourmouth, and, under plea of seeing how the car worked before advising Margaret to keep it, accompanied them to Southampton and back. This appears to me quite unnecessary. I could not make out from Marion whether his going was by previous arrangement or merely the result of a sudden thought and invitation. In either case I cannot but disapprove of his joining the party. He is still here very frequently, and Margaret quotes his opinions on every occasion. Those opinions are prejudiced and insular, as one might expect from a man who has enjoyed few social and educational advantages. Papa used to say the worst enemies of patriotism were patriots. This is certainly true in the case of Mr. Challoner in as far as the effect of his conversation upon me is concerned. He knows nothing of foreign countries and foreign politics, and yet speaks contemptuously of whatever and whoever is not English. Margaret has taken to echoing him until I grow weary and irritable. Surely it might occur to her that reiterated depreciation of everything foreign must be displeasing to me. But Margaret has no perception. Argument is lost upon her, so I am constrained to remain silent. Yet I cannot disguise from myself that her constant association with Mr. Challoner and the influence he undoubtedly has obtained over her may lead to great difficulties in the future—particularly in the event of my own marriage."

Here, once again, the neat writing became erratic. Emotion gained upon Joanna, compelling her to lay down her pen, rise, and pace the room.

"My own marriage—my own marriage," she repeated, her head thrown back, her eyes shut, her arms hanging straight at her sides, while her hands worked, opening and closing in nervous, purposeless clutchings.

Presently she walked back to the bureau and took Adrian's letters out of the velvet bag. Resting her left hand, her fingers outstretched, upon the flat slab of the bureau for support, she held the letters in her right. Their contact made her wince and shrink, as though she held white-hot metal instead of innocent bluey-white note-paper. Only by degrees could she muster sufficient composure to look at the slim little packet upon which encircling elastic bands conferred a distinctly prosaic and even bill-like appearance.

"'And yet because thou overcomest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple round me, till my heart—'"

Her voice failed, dying in her throat, leaving the quotation incomplete. Hastily she pushed the packet of letters back into the bag, snapped to the silver catch, and, again pressing her hands to her forehead, paced the room till such time as her agitation had sufficiently subsided for her to resume her writing.

"I must resist the temptation to dwell upon a certain subject, save in silence. To refer to it in words moves me too deeply. That subject is the life of my life. Of this I am so utterly sure, so utterly convinced, that I can surely afford to keep silence. Just in proportion as I know that my heart is beating, it becomes unnecessary to count the heart-beats. I had better write of practical things. To do so has lessened the worry they too often caused me in the past. I trust it may do so again. I mean this specially in connection with the anxiety Margaret's association with Mr. Challoner occasions me. I fear Margaret is disingenuous. Mamma used to deplore a tendency to deceit in her, deceit in little things, even when she was a child. Margaret enjoys concealment. It amuses her and gives her an idea of her own astuteness and superiority. I do not wish to be unjust, but I cannot help fearing this tendency to slyness is increased by her intercourse with Mr. Challoner and with Marion.

"In addition to the fact of Mr. Challoner's drive with them to Southampton something else came out at dinner, to-night, which disturbed me. On my way home to-day, after crossing Tantivy Common, Johnson turned along Silver Chine Road. A pantechnicon van stood before one of the small houses which I recognized as that which Margaret once pointed out to me as belonging to Mrs. Spencer. As the carriage passed, I saw Mrs. Spencer herself and her young sister, Miss Beatrice Stacey, directing the men who were carrying out the furniture. I thought they both looked hard at me, but I did not bow. I sent cards to Mrs. Spencer, as to every one else who called here to inquire after papa's death, but I do not desire her acquaintance. On the few occasions when I have met her she appeared to me a frivolous, dressy person, whose influence upon Margaret would not be for good. I do not wish to be uncharitable, but her manners struck me as unladylike. At dinner I mentioned the circumstances under which I saw her this afternoon. Marion glanced at Margaret with a singular expression of face.

"'I heard Mrs. Spencer and Bee were leaving soon,' she said. 'I believe they have taken a house at Marychurch.'

"I observed Margaret flushed, but she did not speak.

"'Of course I don't believe there is any real harm in her,' Marion added, again looking at Margaret, 'or I should not have gone there so often. But I do think whatever talk there has been is entirely her own fault.'

"Then Margaret began to speak of the car, and Mr. Challoner's advice to her about buying it, in a rather loud tone. She hardly spoke to me during the rest of the evening. I certainly had no intention of annoying her by mentioning Mrs. Spencer, but she was evidently very angry with me. I cannot help being anxious—yet I know my own great happiness should make me patient and tolerant, even when vulgar and trivial matters are pressed upon my attention. I am very weak. I ought to rise above all such things and rest calmly in the one wonderful thought that I am no longer alone, that I no longer belong to myself."

Joanna put her hand over her eyes.

"'Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling thy purple round me,'" she again quoted half aloud. Then once more she wrote.

"I am glad that I am rich. I have never felt glad of this till to-day. We have always been rich, and, though papa inculcated economy as a duty, I have taken riches for granted as a natural part of my own position. Now I recognize their value. I have at least that to give—I mean, a not despicable amount of wealth, and the dignified ease which wealth obtains. In this respect at least I can make some slight return. Since there has been time to look into affairs, we find papa's estate considerably larger than we supposed. Margaret and I shall each have between seven and eight thousand a year. Yes, I am very, very glad. At least I do not go to him an empty-handed beggar in material things."

She sat awhile looking up, both hands resting on the edge of the slab. Her mouth was half open, her eyes fixed, her face irradiated by an expression of ecstasy painful in its strained intensity. A little more and ecstasy might decline to idiocy. Joanna doted; and always—though particularly under such circumstances as Joanna's—it is a mistake to dote.

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH ADRIAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF SOME INHABITANTS
OF THE TOWER HOUSE IS SENSIBLY INCREASED

A week of the burning mid-May weather, such as often comes in the fir and heather country. The Baughurst woods and all the coast-line from Marychurch to Barryport basked in the strong, still heat. Over open spaces the heat became visible, dancing and swirling like the vapors off a lime-kiln as it baked all residue of moisture out of the light surface soil. Aromatic scents given off by the lush foliage and lately risen sap filled the air. The furze-pods crackled and snapped. Fir-cones fell, softly thudding, on to the deep, dry beds of fir-needles, and films of bark scaling off the red upper branches made small, ticking noises in the sun-scorch. All day long in the heart of the woodland turtle doves repeated their cozy, crooning lament. Wandering cuckoos called. In the gardens blackbirds and thrushes, though silent at mid-day, sang early and late. Great blue and green dragonflies hawked over the lawns, darting back and forth from the warm dappled shade of the fir plantations, where their enameled bodies and transparent wings glinted across long slanting shafts of sunlight. In the shrubberies rhododendrons, azaleas, pink thorns, and crab-trees were in flower. Lilac and syringa blossom was about to break. The sky, high and unclouded, showed a deep, hot blue above the dark-plumed pines and fir-trees and against the red-tiled roofs and sextagonal red-brick tower—surmounted by a gilt weather-vane—of the Tower House from sunrise to sunset.

Adrian Savage lay back in a long cane chair set upon the veranda, around the fluted terra-cotta pillars of which trumpet-flowered honeysuckle, jasmine, and climbing roses flourished. He found the English heat heavy and somewhat enervating, clear though the atmosphere was. It made him lazy, inclined to dream and disinclined to act or think. He laid The Times down on the wicker table beside him, put his Panama hat on the top of it, returned a small illustrated French newspaper, of questionable modesty, to the breast-pocket of his jacket, stretched, stifled a yawn, and lighted his third cigarette. Then, reclining in the chair again, he contemplated the perspective of his own person—clad in a suit of white flannel with a faint four-thread black stripe—to where the said perspective ended in a pair of tan boots. He had bought the boots in London. He knew they represented the last word of the right thing. So he ought to like them.—He crossed and re-crossed his feet.—But he wasn't sure he did like them. On the whole he thought not. Therefore he sighed meditatively, pulled the tip of his close-cut black beard and pushed up the rather fly-away ends of his mustache. Stared sadly at the tan boots, raised his eyebrows and shoulders just perceptibly, and mournfully shook his close-cropped black head. Sighed again, and then looked away, across the gravel terrace and flower-beds immediately below it crowded with pink, mauve, and pale-yellow tulips, to where, on the sunk court at the far end of the long, wide lawn, four agile, ruddy-faced, white-clothed young people very vigorously played tennis.

In the last three months Adrian had lost weight. La belle Gabrielle had not been kind; not at all kind. More than ever did she appear elusive and baffling. More than ever was the mysterious element of her complex and enchanting personality in evidence. She frequented drawing-room meetings at which Feminists, male as well as female, held forth. She received Zélie de Gand and other such vermin—the term is Adrian's—at her thrice-sacred flat. Finally, her attitude was altogether too maternal and beneficent toward M. René Dax. These things caused Adrian rage and unhappiness. He lost flesh. In his eyes was a permanently pathetic and orphaned look. Happily, his nose retained its native pugnacity of outline, testifying to the fact that, although he might voluminously sigh as a lover, as a high-spirited and perfectly healthy young gentleman he could still very handsomely spoil for a fight.

But no legitimate fight presented itself—that was exactly where, from Adrian's point of view, the worry came in. He might haunt la belle Gabrielle's staircase, spend hours in consultation with wise and witty Anastasia Beauchamp, exert all his ingenuity to achieve persuasion or excision of René Dax, but without practicable result. About as useful to try to bottle a shadow, play leap-frog with an echo, tie up the wind in a sack! Really he felt quite glad to go away to England for a time, out of the vexatiously profitless wear and tear of it all.

The sun, sloping westward, slanted in under the round-headed terra-cotta arches supporting the roof of the veranda. Adrian drew his feet back out of the scorch, and in so doing sat more upright, thereby gaining a fuller view of the tennis players.

Marion Chase happened to be serving. She interested him as a type produced by current English methods of mental and physical culture practically unknown in France. She stood—so she informed him with the utmost frankness—five feet ten in her stockings, took eight and a half in shoes, measured forty inches round the chest and twenty-nine and three-quarters round the waist. To these communicated details he could add from personal observation that she had the complexion of a Channel pilot, owned a sensible, good-tempered, very managing face, and spoke in a full barytone voice. He accredited her with being very fairly honorable, irreproachably virtuous, and conspicuously devoid of either the religious or artistic sense—though she frequented concerts, picture galleries, and church services with praiseworthy regularity and persistence. He liked her rather, and wondered at her much—being unaccustomed to the society of such large-boned, athletic, and sexless persons, petticoated, yet conspicuously deficient in haunches and busts.

Miss Chase, he further remarked, was permanently in waiting upon Margaret Smyrthwaite, while a tail of youths and maidens was almost as permanently in waiting upon Miss Chase. Their relation to her was gregarious rather than sentimental, a mere herding of children who follow a leader at play. The said tail to-day consisted of the Busbridge boys and Amy Woodford—the former two lanky, sandy-headed, quite innocuous young fellows in immaculate flannels, their nether garments sustained by green and orange silk handkerchiefs knotted—Adrian trusted securely—about their waists; the latter a rather stout, dark-haired young lady, arrayed in white linen, who would have been very passably pretty had not her mouth been too small, her nose too long, and her bright, boot-button-black eyes set insufficiently far apart.

Idly he watched the quartette as the members of it ran, leaped, backed, called, stood breathing after a long rally, with, apparently, as little soul or mind in their active young bodies as a mob of colts and fillies. Then his eyes traveled to Margaret Smyrthwaite sitting outside the larch-built, heather-thatched tennis pavilion beyond the court in the shade of a grove of tall fir and beech trees.

If Marion Chase caused him wonder, Margaret caused him very much more, though from a different angle. Her development in the last three months struck him as phenomenal—a startling example of the adaptability to environment inherent in the feminine nature. From a rather negative and invertebrate being, with little to say and a manner alternately peevish and silly, she had grown into a self-possessed young woman, capable of making her presence, pleasure, and displeasure, definitely felt. The likeness and the unlikeness she bore to Joanna had from the first appeared to Adrian both pathetic and singular. Now, on seeing the twin sisters again, this likeness and unlikeness passed the bounds of pathos and became, to his eyes, quite actively cruel. For they bore to each other—it was thus he put it—the same relation that the édition de luxe of a book bears to its original rough copy—Joanna, naturally, representing the rough copy. All the ungracious and ungrateful aspects of Joanna's appearance were nicely corrected in her sister, fined down or filled out—heavy, yellowish auburn hair, improved to crisp copper; a pasty complexion giving place to a fair though freckled skin and bright color; blue eyes no longer prominent or anxious, but clear, self-content, and possibly a trifle sly.

At forty Adrian could imagine her fat and a little coarse-looking, but now her figure was graceful, and she dressed well, though with perhaps too great elaboration for impeccable taste. Adrian trembled as to the flights of decorative fancy which might present themselves when her period of mourning was passed! To-day she wore a black muslin dress and a wide-brimmed, black chip hat, trimmed with four enormous black silk and gauze roses, the whole of rather studied candor of effect. Yes, she was quite an agreeable object to look upon; but Joanna, oh! poor, poor Joanna!

Adrian lit a fourth cigarette, stretched himself in his chair again, crossing his legs and gazing up at the roof rafters. Joanna afforded him an uncomfortable subject of thought, and one which he tried to avoid in so far as possible. He respected her. More than ever he felt a chivalrous pity toward her. But he did not like her, somehow. Ridiculous though it might sound, he was a wee bit afraid of her, conscious of self-protective instincts, of an inclination to erect small barricades and throw up small earthworks behind which to shelter when alone with her. He was ashamed of his own sensations, but—and more particularly since he had seen those degraded drawings upon the wall of René's studio which so dreadfully resembled her—she, to use a childish expression, gave him the creeps.

Then, suddenly penetrated by a conviction that her pale eyes were at that very moment fixed upon him, Adrian whipped out of his chair and wheeled round, very alert and upright in his tan boots and light flannel suit.

"Ah! my dear cousin, it is you! I thought so," he said, quickly. "At last you come out to enjoy this ideal afternoon. That is well. Is it not ravishing?"

For quite a perceptible space of time Joanna made no reply. She stood on the stone step of one of the large French windows opening on to the veranda. Her lips were parted and upon her face was a singular expression, midway—so it struck Adrian—between driveling folly and rapture. This recalled to him with such vividness those evil drawings upon the studio wall that had the likeness been completed by her sporting masculine attire it would hardly have surprised him. She, in point of fact, however, wore nothing more peculiar than a modest, slightly limp, black alpaca coat and skirt. Adrian was aware of developing an unreasoning detestation of that innocent and very serviceable material.

"I am so sorry," she said, at last, in a sort of hurried whisper. "I ought not to have come out unexpectedly thus, by the window. I have disturbed you. It was thoughtless of me and inconsiderate."

"But—no—no—not in the least," he assured her. "I was doing absolutely nothing. The hot weather disposes one to idleness. I tried to read The Times. I found it a monument of dullness. I looked into a little French paper I have here." He patted the breast-pocket of his jacket. "I found it quite too lively."

The corners of his mouth gave slightly; for oh! how very far away from poor Joanna's was the outlook upon things in general of that naughty little print!

"Have no fear," he added. "It shall remain safely stowed away. It is not, I admit, exactly designed for what you call family reading—unsuited, for example, to the ingenuous minds of those excellent young tennis players! Ah, the energy they display! It puts me to shame."

Joanna came forward slowly, touching chairs, flower-stands, tables, in passing, as though blindly feeling her way.

"I have wanted so much to speak to you alone," she said.

"Yes—yes?" Adrian answered inquiringly, with a hasty mental looking around for suitable barricade-building material.

"Ever since you told me you had lately suffered anxiety and trouble," she continued.

"Ah! my dear cousin, you are too sympathetic, too kind. Who among us is free from anxieties and troubles—des ennuis? One accepts them as an integral part of one's existence upon this astonishing planet. One even cherishes a certain affection for them, perhaps one's own dear little personal ennuis."

Joanna sank into a chair. Her lips worked with emotion.

"I wish I could feel as you do," she said. "But I am weak. I rebel against that which pains me or causes me anxiety. I have no large tolerance of philosophy. But, therefore, all the more do I admire it in you. Now, when I allude to your trouble you try to put the matter aside gracefully out of consideration for me. Indeed, I appreciate that consideration, but while it causes me gratitude, it increases my regret.—You will not think me officious or intrusive? But I cannot tell you how it distresses me that you should endure any mental suffering, that you should have troubles or anxieties. I had never thought of the possibility of anything unhappy in your life or circumstances. Since you told me I think of it continually. Forgive me if I appear presumptuous, but you have done so incalculably much for—for us—Margaret, I mean, and me—especially, I know"—her voice faded to a mere thread—"I know, of course, for me—that I have wondered whether there was not anything in which I could be of some slight use to you, in which I could help you, in return?"

Adrian had subsided into his long chair again. He leaned sideways, his legs crossed, his right arm extended to its full length across the arm of the chair, holding his cigarette between his first and second fingers, as far from his companion as possible lest the smoke of it should be unpleasant to her. His lean, shapely hand and wrist showed brown against the hard white of his shirt-cuff, and the blue smoke from the smoldering cigarette curled delicately upward in the hot, fragrant air. And Joanna watched his every movement; watched with the fixed intentness, the beatified idiocy, of those who dote.

Outwardly the young man remained charmingly debonair. Inwardly he labored at the erection of barricades and the strengthening of earthworks with positive frenzy, distractedly apprehensive of what might be coming next.

"Sympathy so generously given as yours can never be otherwise than helpful, dear cousin," he said. "Believe me, I am deeply touched by the interest you take in me. But the trouble I have on my mind—and which it was foolish and selfish of me ever to allude to—"

"Oh no," Joanna interrupted, breathlessly. "Do not say that. Pray don't. It was entirely my doing. Both Margaret and I observed that you—you looked sad, that you had grown thinner. I questioned you. Perhaps it was intrusive of me to do so. Yet how could I remain silent when all which affects you necessarily concerns me so profoundly?"

Notwithstanding the high temperature, Adrian felt something queerly like a trickle of iced water down the length of his spine. He just managed not to change his position, but remained leaning sideways toward her.

"You are more than kind to me, dear cousin," he said. "Really, more than kind and good. But I am sure your ready sympathy will make you comprehend there is a stage of most ennuis, private worries and bothers, when it is only discreet, only, indeed, honorable, to maintain silence. Yet, believe me, I shall never forget your amiable solicitude for my happiness. Some day in the future it may become possible for me to explain—"

"Yes—oh! yes—in the future—thank you—I know—in the future," Joanna whispered, pressing her hands over her eyes.

And Adrian shrank away from her. He couldn't help it. Mercifully, she wasn't looking. He uncrossed his legs, sat upright. Then, leaning forward with bent head, he stared at the red and purple quarries of the pavement, resting his wrists upon his knees. He was about to reply, but Joanna's toneless speech rushed onward.

"Pray, pray do not suppose that I wish to cross-question you or force myself into your confidence. Nothing could be further from my intention than that. I am so sure you know far best what to tell and what to withhold from me. I could never question your judgment for an instant. In this, as in everything—yes, everything—I am ready and contented to wait. Only sometimes there are practical ways of being helpful. I have lived among business people all my life, and I could not help thinking that if there was any scheme—connected with your Review, for instance—forgive me if I am presumptuous—but any business affair in which you were interested and which might require capital, might need financing—"

Adrian raised his head slightly. His face was drawn and very pale. His nostrils quivered. He had sufficient self-control to keep his eyes steadily upon the white, capering forms of the tennis players there on the other side of the sunny lawn. Was it conceivable that she, Joanna—of all created women—was trying to buy him? The degradation, the infinite disgust of it!—But no, that really was too vile a thought. With all the cleanness, all the chivalry of his nature, Adrian thrust it aside, refusing to dishonor her so much. Again he nerved himself to speak, and again her speech rushed onward like—so it seemed to him—some toneless hissing of wind over a barren, treeless, seedless waste.

"Pray, pray do not be displeased with me," she pleaded. "I may be acting unconventionally in touching thus upon matters apparently outside my province. But, as I think you will admit, I am at most only forestalling the right, the privilege rather—for to me no privilege could be greater—which will be mine later on, in the future of which you just now spoke. Please think of it thus. And if my action is premature, a little unbecoming or unusual, you—who understand everything—will most surely forgive. No—Cousin Adrian, do not answer me, I implore you—not just yet. I have longed so earnestly for this opportunity of talking alone with you. Give me time. Let me finish. I know I do not express myself well. But be patient with me. When we are together I am only conscious of your presence. I become miserably deficient in courage and resource. Words fail me. I am so sensible of my own shortcomings. Therefore I cannot consent to lose this opportunity. There is something I so intensely need to tell you, because I cannot help hoping it may lighten the anxieties which have been troubling you—"

During this extraordinary address Adrian held himself rigidly still, his head again bent, while he stared at the red and purple quarries. He could not trust himself to move by so much as an inch lest he should betray the repulsion with which she inspired him. Meanwhile his mind worked like some high-powered engine at full pressure, for, indeed, the situation was extravagant in its unpleasantness. How to say anything conclusive without assuming too much passed human wit. Yet what more fatuous, what more execrably bad taste than to assume just that too much? He wanted to spare the poor woman, and act toward her with as perfect charity, as perfect good breeding, as he might.

"This is what I have so wanted to tell you, Adrian," Joanna went on. "Lately I have felt quite differently about my unfortunate brother, about poor Bibby, of whose unhappy career I spoke to you when you were here before. I have learned to think differently upon many subjects in the last three months—"

Joanna paused, pressing her hands against her forehead.

"Yes—upon many, many subjects," she said. "That is natural, inevitable, with the wonderful prospect which lies before me."

The young man braced himself, each muscle growing taut, as a man braces himself for a life-and-death fight. But he did not alter his position.

"When we talked of my brother before, I told you—I thought it right to do so—that I proposed to put aside the larger portion of my fortune for his benefit. I believed it my duty to do my utmost to make amends for papa's harshness toward him. But since then I have come to see the matter in a different light. I no longer feel that my brother has the first claim upon me. I no longer believe my first duty is to Bibby. It is to some one else. And I have ceased to believe he is still living. A strange and deepening conviction has grown upon me that he is dead."

Adrian's muscles relaxed. He threw back his head and looked into the sky, into the strong, steady sunlight. For hearing Joanna's last words, he hailed salvation—salvation coming, be it added, from the very queerest and most unexpected quarter.

"Consequently I have decided to alter my will," Joanna continued. "I scrutinized my own motives carefully. I have earnestly tried not to be unduly influenced by my own inclinations, but to do what is just and right. I have not yet spoken to Margaret about it, but I intend to make a redistribution of my property, devoting that portion of it which I held in reserve for my brother to another person—I mean another purpose. Under my altered circumstances I feel not only that I am justified in doing this, but that it has become an imperative obligation. Were my poor brother still living the news of papa's death must have reached him by this time and he would have communicated either with Andrew Merriman or with me. As he has not communicated with either of us, I am free to assume the fact of his death. You agree with me, Adrian? I am at liberty to make this redistribution of my property? You—you assent?"

"Since you are good enough to ask my advice, dear cousin," Adrian said, looking upon the ground and speaking quietly and distinctly, "I am compelled to answer you truthfully. You are not free at the present time, in my opinion, to make any alteration in your will which affects your bequest to your brother."

"But," Joanna protested, with a smoldering violence, "but if I am certain, morally certain, that my unfortunate brother is dead?"

Putting a strong force upon himself, Adrian leaned sideways in his chair, again crossing his legs, turning his face toward Joanna, and looking gravely and kindly at her.

"Dear cousin," he said, "perhaps I should have acted more wisely had I written or spoken to you before now of a certain discovery which I happened, accidentally, to make immediately after my return to France. I hesitated after the exhausting experiences you had recently passed through to subject you to further anxiety and suspense or to raise hopes which might be fated to disappointment. But I possess evidence—to myself conclusive—that your brother was living as lately as three months ago; that in February last he was in Paris. Yes, I know, I sympathize—I readily comprehend," he went on, feelingly, "how greatly this information is calculated to surprise you. On that account I have withheld it, and I grieve it is not possible to soften the shock of it by giving a happy account of your brother's state of mind or of his circumstances."

Here the speaker stopped, for Joanna raised her hand with an almost menacing gesture.

"Wait, Adrian," she cried, "wait! I cannot bear any more at present. I must accustom myself to this idea. It means so much, so dreadfully much. I must have time to think."

CHAPTER VI

WHICH PLAYS SEESAW BETWEEN A GAME OF
LAWN-TENNIS AND A PRODIGAL SON

Coming in by the wicket gate from the carriage-drive, Challoner sauntered with a deliberate and even proprietary tread along the shrubbery path skirting the eastern side of the lawn. He was clothed, with a view to sports and pastimes, in a loosely fitting gray Norfolk jacket, white trousers, and a hard, white straw hat, the low crown of it encircled by a band of purple-and-scarlet-striped ribbon. The said hat, set on the top of his tall, upright head and neck, and straight, solid figure, gave him—in outline—an appearance remarkably suggestive of a large medicine bottle with the cork rammed well in. Over his shoulder he carried a racket, from which dangled a pair of by no means diminutive tennis shoes.

Only recently had Challoner received invitations to the Tower House of this purely social character. They gave him the warmest satisfaction, as marking progress toward the goal of his ambitions. He had been elected to the Baughurst Park Ward; by a narrow majority, it is true, still he had been elected—and that was the main thing, since it supplied a secure basis from which to manoeuver. Before the next election, if all went well—and he would compel all, never fear, to go well—he would be in a position to ride rough-shod over the Baughurst Park Ward, herding its voters to the poll like so many obedient sheep. His wits and professional standing plus Margaret Smyrthwaite's fortune and social standing would make him master not only of the Baughurst Park Ward, but of all Stourmouth. Yes, Sir Joseph and Lady Challoner, sons, perhaps, at Eton, daughters presented at Court and marrying into the peerage! Such beatific visions floated before him, and Challoner felt then, indeed, he would not have lived in vain. The job of uprooting and deporting Mrs. Gwynnie had been a nasty one. It hit him very hard at the time. There were moments of it he didn't care to remember very clearly even now. But, as he sauntered slowly in the still afternoon heat through the aromatic atmosphere of the radiant garden, and glanced up at the imposing mass of the big red house, its gilt weather-vane cutting into the blazing blue, he thanked Almighty God from his heart, piously, that he had had the pluck, and forethought, and resolution to go through with that nasty job of uprooting and deportation. Only weak men let women wreck them; and, thank God, he, Joseph Challoner, wasn't weak. Meanwhile—here piety had the grace to walk out and let honest cynicism walk in, winking—meanwhile Margaret Smyrthwaite grew better-looking and more accessible every day. Yes, unquestionably Providence is on the side of the clear-headed, helping those who help themselves, who know the chance of their lives when it comes along and don't allow sentimental scruples to prevent their fixing right on to it. Only the unfit go under—such, for instance, as that flimsy little baggage, Mrs. Gwynnie. And, if you look at things all round calmly and scientifically, how very much better for everybody concerned, public morals included, that under such very unfit little feminine baggages should very completely and finally go!

Chewing the cud of which philosophic reflections, Challoner pursued his prosperous and contented way. From the tennis court the players waved and called their greetings as he approached them. Margaret Smyrthwaite, leaving her seat in front of the pavilion, came forward to meet him, her smart black figure and enormous hat backed by a bank of crimson and pink rhododendron in full blossom. She moved with the rather studied grace of a girl who expects, and is altogether ready, to be admired. Challoner had no quarrel with this. For his taste she could not be too ornate. He appraised her appearance, her costume, the general effect of her, as he might a fine piece of plate for his table. Well, didn't he propose she should be, in a sense, just that—his domestic and social centerpiece? The more glory to him, then, the more expensive she looked! And she could afford to look expensive, thank God!—here piety stepped in again momentarily.—And he could afford to let her look so; for once that handsome fortune of hers in his keeping, be d——d if he would not double or treble it.

He raised his hat and stood with it in his hand. His eyes covered her covetously. If she wanted admiration, it was hers to order. He could supply a perfectly genuine article in unlimited quantity. And, though his countenance was not an expressive one, he contrived to convey the above information to her quite clearly. The young lady responded. She talked of the weather, the heat, the game, and such-like inanities; but she displayed her fine plumage and trailed her wings all the while. Challoner began to think of a game of tennis as a wholesome corrective. The temperature became high in more senses than the meteorologic one. Presently she made a gesture calling his attention to her sister and Adrian Savage sitting on the veranda; smiled slyly, looking up at him, and then turned and sauntered a few steps beside him back along the path.

Witnessing all which suggestive pantomime from his distant station, Adrian had much ado to maintain an attitude of circumspection and restraint. For was it conceivable that those two—Margaret and Challoner—in any degree shared, or affected to share, poor Joanna's infatuated delusion? Was ever man landed in so false a position! An atmosphere of intrigue surrounded him. He felt as though walking among treacherous quicksands, where every step spells danger of being sucked under and engulfed. Inwardly he tore and plunged, cursing against the hateful, the dishonoring silence imposed upon him by circumstance. He was tempted to rush out on to the sun-bathed lawn, regardless of all mercy, of all decorum, and shout to the four winds of heaven his unique, inextinguishable devotion to Gabrielle St. Leger, his sole desire and love! Only by some such public loud-tongued demonstration did he feel he could regain safe foothold and cleanse his honor from the detestable and insidious duplicity fathered upon him through no act or lapse of his.