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Pain

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STORIES

IN . .
GREY

NEW FICTION AT 6s.

FERGUS HUME - - The Blue Talisman
STANLEY PORTAL HYATT Makers of Mischief

SHAN BULLOCK - - Hetty— The Story

of an Ulster
Family

MURRAY OILCHRIST - The First Born
M. P. SHIEL - - - The Pale Ape
SEWELL FORD - - Torchy
ELEANOR M. INGRAM . John Aliard
F. HOPKINSON SMITH - Kennedy Square

NEW FICTION AT 2s.

IN A COTTAGE HOSPITAL. A Novel.

GEORGE TRELAWNEY

An epoch-making novel. It is hoped this book will do for
the sick poor of England what "The Jungle" did for the
Chicago Workers. This is not a novel for little people nor
for fools.

A GIVER IN SECRET - - THOMAS COBB

This is a new novel never before published and first
issued at 2s. net.

STORIES IN GREY

By
BARRY PAIN

T. WERNER LAURIE

CLIFFORD'S INN
LONDON

ft 15 -&

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NOV

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CONTENTS

PAGE

SMEATH . . . . . i

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA . .42

BURDON'S TOMB . . . . .69

THE UNKNOWN GOD . . . .in

THE LAST CHANCE . . . .116

HER PEOPLE . . . . .134

ROSE ROSE . . . . . 145

SAINT MARTIN'S SUMMER . . .155

THE DOLL . . . . .162

Too SOON AND Too LATE . . .181

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER . . . .194

MINIATURES . . . . .215

LINDA . . . . . .272

THE GOOD NAME . . . .291

THREE DIALOGUES . -. . . 295

Stories in Grey

SMEATH
I

PERCY BELLOWES was not actually idle, had a
good deal of ability, and wished to make money.
But at the age of thirty-five he had not made it.
He had been articled to a solicitor, and, in his
own phrase, had turned it down. He had neglected
the regular channels of education which were open
to him. He could give a conjuring entertainment
for an hour, and though his tricks were stock tricks,
they were done in the neat professional manner.

He could play the cornet and the violin, neither
of them very well. He could dance a breakdown.
He had made himself useful in a touring theatrical
company. But he could not spell correctly, and
his grammar was not always beyond reproach.
He disliked regularity. He could not go to the
same office at the same time every morning. He
was thriftless, and he had been, but was no longer,
intemperate. He was a big man, with smooth
black hair, and a heavy moustache, and he had the
manners of a bully.

STORIES IN GREY

At the age of thirty-five he considered his
position. He was at that time travelling the
country as a hypnotic entertainer, under the name
of Dr Sanders-Bell. At each of his entertainments
he issued a Ten Thousand Pound Challenge, not
having at the time ten thousand pence in the
world.

He employed confederates, and he had to pay
them. It was not a good business at all. His
gains in one town were always being swallowed up
by his losses in another. His confederates gave
him constant trouble.

But though he turned things over for long in his
mind, he could see nothing else to take up. There
is no money nowadays for a conjurer without
originality, an indifferent musician, or passable
actor. His hypnotic entertainment would have
been no good in London, but it did earn just
enough to keep him going in the provinces.

Also, Percy Bellowes had an ordinary human
weakness ; he liked to be regarded with awe as a
man of mystery. Even off the stage he acted his
part. He had talked delirious science to agitated
landladies in cheap lodgings in many towns.

Teston was a small place, ajid Percy Bellowes
thought that he had done very well, after a one-
night show, to cover his expenses and put four
pounds in his pocket. He remained in the town
on the following day, because he wished to see a
man who had answered his advertisement for a
confederate, " Assistant to a Hypnotic Enter-

SMEATH 3

tainer" was the phrase Mr Bellowes had used
for it.

He was stopping at the Victoria Hotel. It was
the only hotel in the place, and it was quite bad.
But Percy Bellowes was used to that. A long
course of touring had habituated him to doubtful
eggs and indistinguishable coffee. This morning
he faced a singularly repulsive breakfast without
quailing. He was even cheerful and conversational
with a slatternly maid who waited on him.

" So you saw the show last night," he said.

" Yes, sir, I did. And very wonderful it was.
There has never been anything like it in Teston,
not in my memory."

" Ah, my dear. Well, you watch this."

He picked up the two boiled eggs which had
been placed before him. He hurled one into the
air, where it vanished. He swallowed the other
one whole. He then produced them both from a
vase on the mantelpiece.

" Well, I never ! " said the maid. " I wonder if
there's anything you can't do, sir ? "

"Just one or two things," said Mr Bellowes,
sardonically. " By the way, my dear, if a man
comes here this morning and asks for me, I want
to see him." He consulted a soiled letter which
he had taken from his pocket. "The name's
Smeath."

Mr Smeath arrived, in fact, before Bellowes had
finished his breakfast, and was told he could come
in. He was a man of extraordinary appearance,

STORIES IN GREY

He was a dwarf, with a slightly hunched back.
His hands were a size too large for him, and were
always restless. His expression was one of
snarling subservience. At first Bellowes was
inclined to reject him, for a confederate should not
be a man of unusual appearance and easily
recognizable. Then it struck him that, after all,
this would be a very weird and impressive figure
on the stage.

"Ever do anything of this kind before?" he
asked.

" No, sir," said Smeath. " But I've seen it done
and can pick it up. I think I could give you satis-
faction. You see, it's not very easy for a man like
me to find work."

All the time that he was speaking, his hands
were busy.

"When you've finished tearing up my newspaper,"
said Bellowes.

" Sorry, sir," said the man. He pushed the
newspaper away from him, but caught up a corner
of the tablecloth. It was frayed, and he began to
pull threads out of it, quickly and eagerly.

" Ever been hypnotized ? " Bellowes asked.

"No, sir," said Smeath, with a cunning smile.
" But that doesn't matter, does it ? I can act the
part all right."

" It matters a devilish lot, as it happens. And
you can't act the part all right, either. My
assistants are always genuinely hypnotized. I
employ them to save time on the stage. After I

SMEATH 5

have hypnotized you a few times, I shall be able
to put you into the hypnotic state in a minute or
less, and to do it with certainty. I can't depend
on chance people from the audience. Many of
them cannot be hypnotized at all, and with most
of the others it takes far too long. There are
exceptional cases — I had one at my show only
last night — but I don't often come across them.
Come on up with me to my room."

" You want to see if you can hypnotize me ? "

" No, I don't. I know I can. I simply want to
do it."

Upstairs in the dingy bedroom Bellowes made
Smeath sit down. He held the bright lid of a
cigarette-tin between Smeath's eyes and slightly
above the level of them.

" Look at that," he said. " Keep on looking at
it. Keep on ! "

In a few minutes Bellowes put the tin down, put
his ringers on Smeath's eyes, and closed them.
The eyes remained closed. The little hunchback
sat tense and rigid.

An hour later, in the coffee-room downstairs,
Bellowes made his definite agreement with
Smeath.

" You understand ? " said Bellowes. " You'll be
at the town-hall at Warlow to-morrow night at
seven. When I invite people to come up on the
platform, you will come up. That's all you've got
to do. Got any money ? "

"Enough for the present." Smeath began to

6 STORIES IN GREY

pull matches from a box on the table. He broke
each match into four pieces. " But suppose that to-
morrow night you can't do it ? "

" There'll never be a day or night I can't do it
with you now. That's definite. Now, then, leave
those matches alone. I might be wanting one of
them directly."

After Smeath's departure, Percy Bellowes sat
for a few minutes deep in thought. In that dingy
room upstairs he had seen something which he had
never seen in his life before, something of which he
thought that various uses might be made. He
picked up the newspaper, and was pleased to find
that Smeath's busy fingers had spared the racing
intelligence. Then he sought out the landlord.

" I say," he said, " I've got a fancy to put a few
shillings on a horse. Do you know anybody here
it would be safe to do it with ? "

" Well," said the landlord, " as a matter of fact
you can do it with me, if you like. I do a little in
that way on the quiet."

" The police don't bother you ? "

" No ; they're not a very bright lot, the police
here. Besides, they're pretty busy just now. We
had a murder in Teston the day before you came."

"Who was that?"

" A Miss Samuel, daughter of some very well-
to-do people here. They think it was a tramp.
See that plantation up on the hill there? That
was where they found her — her head all beaten to
pulp and her money gone."

SMEATH 7

" Nice set of blackguards you've got in Teston,
I don't think. Well now, about this race to-day."

When Percy Bellowes left the Victoria Hotel on
the following morning he was not required to pay
a bill. On the contrary, he had a small balance to
receive from the landlord.

" Bless you, I don't mind," said the landlord, as
he paid him. " Pretty well all my crowd were on
the favourite. Queer thing that horse should have
fallen."

II

AT Warlow the entertainment went very well.
When it was over, Bellowes asked Smeath to come
round to the hotel. They had the little smoking-
room to themselves.

"You remember when I hypnotized you
yesterday ? "

" Yes, sir. Yes, Mr Bellowes."

" Do you remember what you did, or said ? "

Smeath shook his head.

" I went to sleep, the same as I did to-night.
That was all."

" Know anything about horse-racing ? "

" Nothing. Never touched it."

" You mean to say you've never seen a horse-
race?"

" Never."

" What did you do before you came to me ? "

" I had not been in any employment for some

STORIES IN GREY

time. I was once in business as a bird-fancier. I
had bad luck and made no money in it. You ask
me a great many questions, sir."

" I do. That's because I've been turning things
over in my mind. I want you to put your name
to an agreement with me for three years. A pound
a week. That's a good offer. A man who's been
in business, and failed, ought to appreciate an
absolute certainty like that."

" It would be the same kind of work ? " Smeath
asked.

"Pretty much the same. When I've finished
this tour I am thinking of settling down in
London. I should employ you there."

"No, thank you, Mr Bellowes," said Smeath.
" I would rather not."

" Oh, all right," said Bellowes. " Make an idiot
of yourself, if you like. It doesn't make a pin's-
head of difference to me. I can easily find plenty
of other men who would grab at it. I thought I
was doing you a kindness. As you said yourself,
chaps of your build don't find it any too easy to get
work."

" I will work for you for six months — possibly a
month or two longer than that. But, afterwards,
well, I wish to return to the bird-fancying again."

" No, you don't," said Bellowes, savagely "If
you can't take my terms, you're not going to make
your own. If you won't sign for three years, out
you get! You're talking like a fool, too. How
can you go back to this rotten business in six

SMEATH 9

months ? D'you think you're going to save the
capital for it out of a pound a week ? "

" I have friends who might help me."

"Who are they?"

" They are — well, they're friends of mine. You
will perhaps give me till to-morrow morning to
think it over."

" Very well. If you're not here by ten to-morrow
morning to go round to the solicitor's office with
me, I've finished with you. Now then, I'm going
to hypnotize you again."

"What for?"

" Practice. Now then, look at me."

In a few moments Smeath sat with his eyes
open, but fixed.

" Tell me what you see ? " asked Bellowes.

" Nothing," said Smeath. " I see nothing."

"Yes, you do," said Bellowes. "There are
horses with jockeys on them. They are racing.
See ? They get near the winning-post."

" Yes," said Smeath, dully. " I see them, but it
is through a mist and a long way off. Now they're
gone."

" Yesterday when I hypnotized you, you saw
clearly. You actually described a race which
afterwards took place. You gave me the colours.
You gave me the names that the crowd shouted,
You described how the favourite crossed his
legs and fell. Can you do nothing of the kind
to-day ? "

" No, not to-day. To-day I see other things."

io STORIES IN GREY

"What?"

" I see a street in London. There is a long row
of sandwichmen. My name is on their boards.
There are many fashionable people in the street.
Expensive shops. Jewellers' shops, picture-
galleries. I can see you, too. You have just
come into the street."

" Where have I come from ? "

" How can I tell ? It may be your own house
or offices. Your name is on a very small brass
plate by the side of the door. You have got a
fur coat on, and you are wearing a diamond pin.
You get into a car. It is your own car, and you
tell the man who opens the door for you to drive
to the bank. You look very pleased and pros-
perous. Now the car starts. That is all. I can
see no more."

Bellowes leaned forward and blew lightly on
Smeath's eyes. The tenseness of his muscles
relaxed. He rubbed his eyes and stood up.

" Do you know what you've been saying ? "
Bellowes asked.

"I've been saying nothing," said Smeath. "I
have been asleep, as you know. You made me
go to sleep."

Bellowes looked round the room. His eye fell
on an empty cigarette-box, lying in the fender.

" Pick that up, and hold it in your hands," he said.

Smeath looked surprised, but he did as he was
told. There was a loose label on the box, and his
fingers began to tear it off in small pieces.

SMEATH ii

" Now then," said Bellowes, <k can you tell me
anything about the man who had that box, and
threw it down there ? "

" Of course I can't. How should I be able to
do that? It's not possible."

"Very well," said Bellowes. "I'm going to put
you to sleep once more."

" I don't like this," whined Smeath. " There's
too much of it. It's bad for one's health."

" Nonsense ! Look here, Smeath. I want you
for three years, don't I ? Then I'm not likely to
do anything that will injure your health. You'll
be all right."

When Bellowes had hypnotized Smeath, he again
put the cigarette-box in his hands.

" And now what do you see ? " he asked.

" This is quite clear. It is a short, thick-set man
who takes the last cigarette out of the box and
throws it down. As he smokes it, he walks up
and down the room, frowning. He is puzzled
about something. He takes out his pocket-book,
and as he opens it a card drops to the floor."

" Can you see what's on the card ? "

"Yes. It lies face upwards. The name is
' Mr Vincent.' And in the left-hand corner are
the words 'Criminal Investigation Department,
Scotland Yard.' Now he closes his note-book."

" What was written in it ? "

" I only saw one word — the name ' Samuel ' . . . .
Now a waiter comes into the room, and the man
asks for a time-table."

12 STORIES IN GREY

Once more Bellowes restored Smeath to his
normal state.

" That'll do," he said. " That's all for to-night. You
can be off now, and think over that offer of mine."

At ten on the following morning Smeath kept
his appointment. He said he would sign an
agreement for two years only, and that he would
want thirty shillings a week.

" What makes you suddenly think you're worth
thirty shillings a week ? "

" I have no idea at all, but I know you need me
very much. I have that feeling."

" It was three years I said, not two. If I pay
you thirty shillings a week, you can sign for three
years."

" I cannot. I want to get back to my birds. I
will sign for thirty shillings a week for two years,
or I will go away."

"Oh, very well," growled Bellowes. "You're
an obstinate little devil. Have it your own way.
I hope to goodness I'm not going to lose money
over you. I've never paid more than a pound to
an assistant before. By the way, Smeath, were
you ever in London ? "

" Yes ; several times."

" Do you know Piccadilly, or Bond Street, or
Regent Street ? "

Smeath shook his head.

" I have only passed through in going from one
place to another. I know the names of those
streets, but I've never been in them."

SMEATH 13

" Very well," said Bellowes. " Come along with
me, and we'll fix up the agreement."

Ill

ABOUT a month later Mr Bellowes, who had
come up to London for the purpose, called at the
office of Mr Tangent's agency in Sussex
Street.

" Appointment," said Bellowes, as he handed in
his card, and was taken immediately into the
inner office. Mr Tangent, a florid and slightly
overdressed man of fifty, rose from his American
desk to shake hands with him.

"Well, my dear old boy," said Tangent, "and
how are you ? "

11 Fit," said Bellowes. " Remarkably fit."

"And what can I do for you? I had an
inquiry the other day that brought you to my
mind. It's not much. A week, with a chance
of an engagement if you catch on."

"Thanks, old man, but I don't want it. I've
got on to something a bit better. What I want
from you is a hundred and fifty pounds."

Tangent laughed genially.

" Long time since I've seen so much money as
that. Well, well ! What's it for ? Tell us the
story."

" I've had a bit of luck, Tangent. I've got a
man booked up to me for the next two years who

14 STORIES IN GREY

is simply the most marvellous clairvoyant the
world has ever seen."

" Clairvoyants aren't going well," said Tangent.
" Most of them don't make enough to pay for
their rent and their ads. in the Sunday papers.
The fact is there are too many of them. I don't
care what the line is — palmistry, crystal-gazing,
psychometry, or what you like. There's no money
in it."

" Let's talk sense. You say there's no money
in it ? Do you remember when Merion fell, and
a ten-to-one chance romped home ? "

"Remember it? I've good reason to. I'd
backed Merion both ways, and didn't see how I
was going to lose."

"Well, I backed the winner. Not being a
Croesus like yourself, I only had five bob on. I
backed him, because my clairvoyant saw the whole
thing, and described it to me before the race was
run."

"tan he do it again ? "

" He has not been able to do it again yet. He
has seen what happened in the past many times,
and he has never been wrong. He is exceptional.
He is only clairvoyant when he is hypnotized. In
the normal state he sees nothing. He's an ugly
little devil, a dwarf, and if I bring him to London
he'll make a sensation. What's more, he'll make
money. Pots of money. I know the crowd you've
been talking about. They're a hit-or-miss lot.
They're no good. This is something quite different.

SMEATH 15

We shall have all the Society women paying
any fee I like to consult him. There's a fortune
in it."

Tangent lit a cigarette, and pushed the box
across to Bellowes. " What is it you propose to
do ? " he asked.

" Rooms in Bond Street. Good furniture.
Uniformed servant. Sandwichmen at first. Once
the thing gets started, it will go by itself. Any
woman who has consulted him once is absolutely
bound to tell all her friends. The man's a miracle.
I'll tell you another thing I'm going to do. When
the next sensational murder turns up, and Scotland
Yard can't put their hands on the man who did
it, I'm going to turn my chap on to the job. I'll
bet all I've got to sixpence that we find the
man."

" There was the case of that girl — Esther
Samuel."

" Yes, I remember that. But by this time most
of the public have forgotten it. A better chance
is bound to turn up soon."

" I don't see how you're going to start on a
hundred and fifty."

" I'm not, my boy. I've got money of my own
that I'm putting into it as well.'*

" Let's see," said Tangent, picking up a pencil.
"What did you say was this man's name and
address ? "

Bellowes laughed. " Oh, no, you don't," he said.
"At present that's my business. Make it your

16 STORIES IN GREY

own business as well and you shall be told every-
thing."

" I don't know why you should call it business
at all. You ask me to lend you a hundred and
fifty. You offer no security. All I've got is your
story that you've found a clairvoyant who's really
good."

"Very well. If you satisfied yourself that the
man was really good, would you lend the money
then?"

"On terms, yes. But they'd have to be satis-
factory terms."

" They would be. Well, you shall see for your-
self. The man's waiting in a cab downstairs."

" You might have said that before."

"Why? Anyhow, I'll go and bring him up
now."

It was a chilly morning, and Smeath shivered
in a thick overcoat, which he refused to remove.
No time was wasted on preliminaries. Bellowes
hypnotized him at once.

" Now then, my boy," said Bellowes. " You
shall see for yourself. Give me any article which
you or someone else has worn, or has frequently
handled."

Tangent opened a drawer in his desk, and pro-
duced a lady's glove. " That," he said, " was left
in my office a week ago. Let's see what he makes
out of it."

Bellowes put the glove in Smeath's hands.
Srneath began to pull the buttons off it. He

SMEATH 17

dragged and tore at the glove like a wild animal
at its prey. Then suddenly he began to speak.

" I see a handsome woman with bright golden
hair. I think the hair has been dyed. It has that
appearance. She is talking with Mr What's-his-
name in this room. Each is angry with the other.
She is accusing him of something. Suddenly —
yes — she picks up an ink-bottle and throws it at
him. Ink all over the place. He bangs on a
little bell, and a man comes in who looks like a
clerk. That is all. I cannot see any more."

" Wake him up and send him down to the cab
again," said Tangent. " Then we can talk."

"Now," said Bellowes, when they were alone
together. " Had he got that right ? "

"Absolutely. The woman was Cora Vendall.
She wanted a particular berth, and thought I
ought to have got it for her. She's fifty-six if
she's a day, and not in any way suitable for it.
If I had proposed it, the people would simply
have laughed at me. She did get into a blind
fury with me, and she did throw the ink at me.
She's been made to pay for that, and she's been
told not to show her powdered nose inside my
office again. Your man is remarkable, Bellowes.
There can be no two opinions about it. There is
certainly money in him."

" You will find the hundred and fifty, then ? "

"Yes, I'll do that. Mind, I must have a word
to say in the management. The right sort of
people will have to be got to see that man. Once

18 STORIES IN GREY

that has been done, I do believe you're right, and
the thing will go by itself."

" What interest do you want ? "

" I don't want interest. What I do is to buy for
a hundred and fifty pounds a share in your profits
from your agreement with the clairvoyant."

"You shall have it. It's a jolly good thing I'm
putting into your way, Tangent. I had never
meant to part with a share, and I'd sooner pay
you fifteen per cent, on your money. However, if
you insist, you can take a sixteenth."

"Rats!" said Mr Tangent, impolitely. "This
is not everybody's business. Step across to the
Bank of England, and see how much they'll
advance you on it. There are three of us in it.
Him and you and me. I'm going to take a third.
Do just as you like about it. If I go into it I can
make it a certainty. I can get the right people to
see the man."

" A third's too much. You must be reasonable,
Tangent. I discovered him."

" A man once discovered a gold-mine. He had
no means of getting the gold out. He was a
thousand miles from anywhere, and he was all
alone. He died on the top of his blessed gold-
mine. However, I'm not arguing. I'm simply
telling you. Give me a third, and my cheque and
the agreement will be ready this time to-morrow
morning. Otherwise, no business."

Mr Bellowes hesitated, and then gave in.

SMEATH 19

IV

AT six o'clock on a summer evening, in a well-
furnished room that overlooked the traffic of Bond
Street, Smeath and his employer sat and quarrelled
together. Both of them wore new clothes, but
Bellowes had the air of prosperity, and Smeath
had not.

" It's no good to talk to me," whined Smeath.
" I know what I'm saying. Where an essential
consideration has been intentionally concealed, an
agreement cannot stand. You never told me I
was a clairvoyant."

" No," said Bellowes, " I did not. And I don't
tell a man what the colour of his hair is, either.
Why ? Because he knows it already. You knew
that you were a clairvoyant."

" I did not. I swear I did not ! " said Smeath,
raising his voice.

" Now, don't get excited. Don't squeal."

" I'm not squealing. Do you think that if I'd
known, I would ever have come to you for a wage
like that ? We've had fourteen people here to-day.
What did they pay ? "

" Mind your own business ! "

"But it is my own business. And as you
wouldn't tell me, I've taken my own steps to find
out. Not one of them paid less than a guinea.
You had as much as five guineas from some. And
here am I with thirty shillings a week. I can get

20 STORIES IN GREY

that agreement set aside. I can prove what I'm say-
ing. I had never been hypnotized until I met you."

"Look here," said Bellowes. "Let us get this
fixed up once for all. I don't know who's been
cramming you up with these fairy-tales about my
fees, but I don't get what you think, or anything
like it. I get so little, that I don't want to waste
any of it on lawyers. Besides, it would do the
business no good, and it would do you no good.
I should leave you, and then where would you
be ? Remember that you are not clairvoyant until
I make you clairvoyant."

" You think, perhaps, I have not read what the
newspapers say about me ? I can find a hundred
hypnotists very easily. But there is no other man
who's clairvoyant as I am."

" And there is no other man who can run a show
as I can. Who brought the newspaper men here ?
Who paid for the advertisements? Who did
pretty well everything ? However, I'm not going
to argue. If you want more money, you can have
it. Name your figure. If it is in any way reason-
able, you shall have it, on the understanding that
this is the last advance you get. If it is
unreasonable, you'll get nothing. You can take
the thing into the Courts, and I'll fight it. And,
mark my words, Smeath. If I do, you may get
a surprise. You know nothing at all about
hypnotism. You may find yourself in the witness-
box saying things that you did not intend to say.
Now, then, name your figure."

SMEATH 21

The little man took time to think it over. He
rubbed his chin with his fingers reflectively. He
seemed on the point of speaking, and then stopped.
Suddenly he snapped out :

" I want four pounds a week ! "

" It's simply bare-faced robbery," said Bellowes.
" But you shall have it. Mind you, you will have
to sign another paper to-morrow, and this time
there shall be no doubt about it."

" If you pay me that, I'll sign anything. With
four pounds a week I can keep some very good
birds again. But you are right that it is bare-faced
robbery, and I am the man who is being robbed."

There had been many disputes between the two
men during the six weeks that they had been
associated. It was by Tangent's directions that
Bellowes acted in the present quarrel.

" It would be better to pay the little devil twenty
pounds a week, and keep him, than to refuse and
lose him," said Tangent. " I believe he's right, and
that your precious agreement isn't worth the paper
it's written on. Anyhow, I'll get a new agreement
ready. Pay him what he wants, and he'll sign
it." '

" Well," said Bellowes, doubtfully, " if you say so
you're probably right. But in that case we ought
to get an extension of time out of him."

"No," said Tangent, "the chap's suspicious of
you. He hates you. If you try any sort of
monkeying, he'll be off. Besides, with the fees
you're charging, two years will about see it through.

22 STORIES IN GREY

There are not such a vast number of people who
can afford the game."

" As things go at present, it looks as though it
might last for ever. You should see the engage-
ment-book. We've got appointments booked for
two months ahead. It isn't only a game you see.
It's not just a pastime for fashionable women. We
get men from the Stock Exchange, business men
of all sorts, racing-men. Yesterday morning we
had the Prime Minister's private secretary. He
didn't give his right name, but Smeath was on to
it, and then he admitted it."

" Hot stuff, Smeath. Do you get much out of
him in the way of prophecy? Foretelling the
future ? "

" Not very often. He has done some wonderful
things that way, but more usually he deals with
something that is past."

" Why don't you get him to foretell your own
future, Percy ? "

Bellowes shook his head.

" Not taking any," he said. " He shall have a
shot with you if you like."

But Tangent also refused.

Their business had certainly progressed very
rapidly. Tangent arranged a report in a news-
paper. He communicated with one or two doctors
whom he knew to be interested in the subject.
He sent a couple of popular actresses to Smeath.
He arranged a special seance for a Cabinet
Minister, whose principal interest was psychology.

SMEATH 23

After the first week they no longer employed
sandwichmen and advertisements. The ball had
begun to roll. Everybody who came to Smeath
sent somebody else. Everybody in Society was talk-
ing about the hideous little dwarf and his marvellous
powers. Bellowes was regarded as a showman
and a charlatan, but Smeath was clearly the
genuine thing.

Despite their mutual dislike, Bellowes and
Smeath both lived in the same house — the
Bloomsbury lodging-house. It was Bellowes who
had insisted on this. He had never felt quite safe
about Smeath, and even after the new agreement
had been signed he had his suspicions. He was
afraid that Smeath would run away. Bellowes
occupied fairly good rooms on the first floor.
Smeath had one room at the top of the house, but
this happened to suit him. Through his windows
he could get out on to a flat, leaded roof. There
he made friends with the pigeons and sparrows.
The maid-servant at the house, who one day saw
him out on the roof with the birds all round him,
said that it was witchcraft.

" They were 'opping about all over 'im. Some-
times he put one down and called another up. I
never saw anything like it in my life before."

She had the hatred of the unusual which is
prevalent amongst domestic servants, and gave
notice at once. But before the month was up she
had grown quite accustomed to seeing Smeath
playing with the birds, and the notice was revoked.

STORIES IN GREY

BELLOWES still used for business purposes the
name of Sanders-Bell, but he no longer called
himself a doctor. He was meeting too many real
doctors, and Tangent had advised against it. The
room in Bond Street was divided in two by a
curtain. The outer part served as a waiting-room,
and here, too, Bellowes had his bureau. In the
inner part of the room the actual interview between
the client and the clairvoyant took place. Their
usual hours were only from eleven to one and from
two to four, but Bellowes would sometimes arrange
for a special interview at an unusual hour and an
increased price. On these occasions he always
took care to pacify Smeath. Sometimes he gave
him money, and sometimes other presents ; on one
occasion he gave him a big book about birds, with
coloured illustrations, and Smeath remained docile
and in a good temper for days afterwards.

" Yes," said Bellowes. " You have complained
once that I was robbing you. You can't say that
now. You have fixed your own salary. If there
is the least little bit of extra work to be done, you
always get something for it. You are not as
grateful as you ought to be, Smeath. Where
would you have been without me? What were
you doing before you came to me?"

" Nothing. For some weeks I had been very
hungry. I make no complaint against you, but

SMEATH 25

when my time's up I shall stay no longer. I go
back to the birds again."

" It would be more sensible of you," said Bellowes,
" if you banked your money. What did you want
to buy that great owl for ? He makes the devil of
a row at night. We shall have people complaining
about it."

" She is a very good friend to me, that owl," said
Smeath. " I am teaching her much. She will be
valuable."

At this moment there was the sound of a
footstep on the stairs, and Smeath stepped behind
his curtain.

The man who entered was not at all the type of
client that Bellowes generally received. He was
a thick-set man of common appearance, and he
was unfashionably dressed. He did not look in
the least as if he could afford the fee. Bellowes
saluted him somewhat curtly.

" It is ten minutes to eleven, sir, and our hour
for beginning is eleven. However, as you have
called, if you like to pay the fee now — two guineas
—I will make an appointment for you, but I'm
afraid it will have to be in nine weeks' time."

The visitor looked reflective, turning his seedy
bowler hat round in his hands.

"Don't think that would do," he said. "Nine
weeks — that's a very long time. Couldn't Mr
Smeath see me to-day? Couldn't he make an
exception ? "

"Only by giving you a special appointment.

UES IN GREY

And for that a very much higher fee is
charged."

" How much ? " asked the man.

" He could give you ten minutes at one o'clock
to-day. But the charge for that would be six
guineas. You see, Mr Smeath is only clairvoyant
while in the hypnotic state, and that cannot be
repeated indefinitely."

The visitor took an old-fashioned purse from his
hip-pocket. He pulled out a five-pound note, a
sovereign, and six shillings

" There you are," he said. " Please book me ten
minutes with Mr Smeath at one o'clock to-day."

" Very good," said Bellowes, opening the engage-
ment-book. He looked up, with his pen in his
hand. " What name shall I put down ? "

" I am Mr Vincent."

"You'll be careful to be punctual, of course. Mr
Smeath will be ready exactly at one o'clock."

" I shall be here," said the man.

He had no sooner gone than Smeath emerged
from behind the curtain again. " What on earth
did you do that for ? " he asked excitedly.

"Keep your hair on, Smeath. It's all right.
I'm going to buy you a big cage for that owl of
yours."

"I do not want any cage. My birds are not
kept in cages. It is not the extra work that I
mind. It is that I cannot do anything for that
man. I tell you he is dangerous."

"In what way dangerous ? "

SMEATH 27

" I don't know. He is dangerous to me."

" He looked to me an honest man enough. He
had the appearance of a chap up from the country.
Probably wants to know what his best girl is doing.
I shouldn't worry about it if I were you. Don't
stand in the way of business, Smeath. You don't
know what the expenses are here. I've got to pay
the rent next week, and if I told you what that
was, you wouldn't believe it. If you don't want
the bird-cage, you shall have something else."

But it was necessary to show Smeath a sovereign,
and to present him with it before he would consent.
Even then, he did so with great reluctance.

Clients with appointments came in, and the
ordinary business of the morning began. Smeath
no longer spoke when in the clairvoyant state, for
he was often consulted upon matters requiring
secrecy, and what he said might have been heard
by other clients in waiting. He had a writing-block,
and scribbled down on it in pencil what he saw.

At one o'clock precisely Mr Vincent returned,
and was at once brought behind the curtain.
Smeath sat there motionless. His eyes were open,
but he did not look up at Mr Vincent.

"Now then, sir," said Bellowes. "What is it
you want?"

Mr Vincent drew from his pocket a comb
wrapped in paper. It was of the kind that women
wear in their hair, and it had been broken.

" I want him to tell me about the girl who wore
this at the time when it was broken."

STORIES IN GREY

Bellowes placed the comb in Smeath's hands.
Smeath held it for a moment, and then the fingers
relaxed, and it dropped to the floor.

Bellowes again placed it in his hand, and this
time Smeath flung it from him. But immediately
he began to write, Mr Vincent watching him
narrowly as he did so. He wrote with an extra-
ordinary rapidity. Presently Bellowes, who had
been standing behind him, and reading what he
wrote, asked Mr Vincent to wait in the outer part
of the room. As soon as he was alone with
Smeath, he took the writing-block out of his handsj
tore the sheet from it, folded it, and put it in his
pocket. Then he rejoined Vincent.

" I am extremely sorry, sir," said Bellowes, " that
the experiment has failed completely. There is
perhaps some kind of antipathy between Mr
Smeath and yourself. These things do occasion-
ally happen. I find that he can tell you nothing
at all, and under the circumstances, I should
perhaps return your fee."

Vincent did not seem particularly surprised.

" Very well, " he said. " I had hardly expected
to get what I wanted, but I thought I might as
well try. I paid you six guineas, I think. You
seem to be treating me fairly, and I have given
you a certain amount of trouble. Supposing you
return me five of them."

The money was handed over, and Vincent
departed. Bellowes went back to Smeath and
brought him out of the trance. Smeath shivered.

SMEATH 29

"Is he here still?"

"No. Gone."

"Was it all right?"

" It was quite all right."

" I'm glad he's gone," said Smeath. " I was
horribly afraid of something. Now I can go out
and get my lunch, and I have to buy food for the
birds too."

" I shouldn't spend too much money on it if I
were you," said Bellowes.

Smeath laughed.

" It is not very expensive," he said. " And I
have made one extra sovereign. Why not ? "

"Because, in future, Smeath, you are going to
work for me for much less money — for a pound a
week, to be precise."

" I shall not," said Smeath, loudly.

" I told you once before not to squeal. I don't
like it. You will do exactly as I say, and for a
very good reason. If you don't you will be taken
to prison, and you will be tried before a judge,
and you will be hanged, Smeath. Hanged for the
murder of Esther Samuel in the woods at
Teston."

VI

"WHAT makes you say that? How do you know it?"
asked Smeath. The fingers of his big hands locked
and separated and locked again. His eyes were

STORIES IN GREY

fixed intently on Bellowes. He looked excited,
but not frightened.

" How do I know it ? " echoed Bellowes. " I
have it here in your own handwriting." He tapped
his breast-pocket. " You do not remember what
happened when you were hypnotized. I put a
broken comb into your hands. It was a comb
which the murdered woman had worn. You
began to write at once. You've put the rope
round your neck, Smeath."

"And that man — the man that I knew to be
dangerous ? "

" Mr Vincent ? I told him that the experiment
had failed, and returned his fee. He knows
nothing. So long as you do exactly what I tell
you, you are quite safe."

" Who was he, this Vincent ? "

Bellowes shrugged his shoulders.

" How should I know ? Possibly one of the
Samuel family. Possibly a 'tec. If I had given
him what he had paid for, we should have had the
police in here by now. I have saved your skin for
you, Smeath. Don't forget it."

" Will you read it out to me, the thing that I
wrote down ? "

" No. It tells one everything, except the motive."

" The motive was obvious enough. I was hungry
and had no money. I had tramped to Teston and
reached there two days too soon. I had nowhere
to go, and I lived and slept in the woods. I
begged from the girl at first, and if she had given

SMEATH 31

me a few pence she might have been alive now.
She was not the least bit afraid of me. Why
should she have been? I was small, misshapen,
and looked weak. She was tall and strong. As
she turned away from me, she said the tramps in
the neighbourhood were becoming a nuisance, and
she would send the police after me. Even then I
only meant to hit her once, but that is a queer
thing — you cannot hit a human being once. You
see the body lying at your feet, and you have to go
on striking and striking. When I knew she must
be dead, I flung the stick down. I took nothing
but the money, nothing which could be traced.
Even the money made me so nervous that I hid
most of it — buried it in a place where I could find
it again. If the police had found me, there would
only have been a few coppers in my possession,
and I did not look like a man who could have
done it. But they never did find me."

" I see. That was why, when I offered to
advance your railway fare, you told me you had
money. You had a pair of new boots on when
you turned up at Warlow. I remember what an
infernal squeaking row they made on the platform.
Well, you've done for yourself, Smeath. You've
got to work for me on very different terms now."

" No," said Smeath. " That is not so."

"Very good. I'll write my note to Mr Vincent
now. He'll do the rest."

" No you [won't, and I'll tell you why. You can
destroy me very likely, but if you do, you'll destroy

32 STORIES IN GREY

your own livelihood. And you always take very
good care for yourself, Mr Bellowes."

" Destroy my livelihood ? " said Bellowes, thump-
ing on the table with his fist. " That's where you
make your mistake, you little devil ! Because
you're useful, you think you're indispensable. You're
not. There's a reward of two hundred pounds out
for anyone who finds the murderer of Esther
Samuel. I'm a born showman. With two hundred
pounds capital I can chuck this and start some-
thing else that will pay me just as well."

"It looks as if I shall have to give in. Well,
there's no help for it. I must get a much cheaper
room, of course."

" No, you won't. You'll stop in the same house
as me. D'you think I haven't worked it all out ?
After you've paid your rent, you've a shilling a
day for food, and better men have lived on less.
I'm not going to give you a chance to bolt. And
mark my words, Smeath, if you do bolt, the very
moment I find you've gone I give you up. Don't
imagine you can get away. There are not many
men of your build. The police would have you
for a certainty within twenty-four hours."

" Then I become a slave ; I can do nothing.
There were other birds that I meant to buy. And
in time I could have started a business again.
That must all go."

" Quite so. That must all go. In fact, before a
fortnight is out I expect you'll sell that big white
owl of yours. You'll grudge him his keep."

SMEATH 33

" It is a she-owl, and I shall not let her go. She
can do things that would surprise you."

"Can she?" said Bellowes. "It might be
rather effective if you brought her down here.
She would impress clients."

" I shall not. I keep her for myself! "

"Don't talk like a fool! You are forgetting
that I hold you between my thumb and finger. If
I tell you to wring that bird's neck you will have
to do it."

Smeath rose to his feet in fury.

" Where's my hat ? " he said. " Give me my
hat ! "

Bellowes stood in front of the door.

" What's the matter with you ? Where are you
off to?"

" Checkmate for you, Mr Bellowes. I am going
now to give myself up. Where is your two
hundred pounds reward, eh ? Where is the money
that you make out of the clairvoyant ? "

" Sit down, and don't talk in that silly way. I
never told you to kill the bird. I was only
speaking in your interests when I said I doubted
if you could afford to keep it. As a matter
of fact, I don't care a pin's head about it either
way. If you set so much store by it, keep it by
all means."

" In that case," said Smeath, " I will go on
working for you, and on the terms that you have
said."

" That's all right ; and now you can go out to
c

34 STORIES IN GREY

lunch. Remember that you have to be back at
two o'clock. If you are not here by ten minutes
past two, I shall send the police to look for
you."

" I shall be here, Mr Bellowes."

Every Saturday morning at half-past nine Tan-
gent called on Bellowes in Bond Street, to look over
the books and to collect his share of the profits.
Tangent had no great faith in Mr Bellowes.
Smeath was never allowed to be present on these
occasions.

On the Saturday after Mr Vincent's visit,
Tangent was well pleased with the results.

"Mind you," he said, "the little dwarf isn't
doing so badly out of it either. He gets his
regular four pounds a week. This week I see
he's had one pound ten in cash for extra work,
and you're charging twelve-and-six for a present
to him. What was the present ? "

" Oh, a bird of sorts. The little beggar's simply
mad about birds. That did more good than if I'd
given him the actual cash."

" Oh, I'm not grumbling, Bellowes," said Tangent,
surveying with complacency the diamond ring on
his ringer. " If, by giving him a trifle extra now
and then, you can keep his goodwill, it's quite
worth our while to do it. No man will work for
nothing, and I suppose he finds this clairvoyance
game rather exhausting. Not over and above
good for the health, eh ? "

SMEATH 35

" He says it's exhausting. He seems to me
well enough."

When Tangent had gone Bellowes smiled. To
swindle Tangent was a real pleasure to him, even
apart from the profit he made for himself. He
remembered the terms which Tangent had forced
him to accept for the provision of capital for the
enterprise.

The introduction of a large white owl into the
Bloomsbury lodging-house could have but one
effect. The maid-servant gave notice at once on
general principles. It was Smeath this time who
persuaded her to remain.

" You must not be afraid of the white owl," he
said. " Owls are wise birds. She knows who my
friends are, and who my enemies are. You are
my friend, and she will never hurt you. She will
let you feed her and stroke her feathers. They
are very, very soft, the feathers of an owl."

In a week's time Jane was neglecting her work
to play with the white owl out on the leads.

VII

FOR several weeks no change took place. Smeath
did his work with patience and docility. He
addressed Mr Bellowes with respect. He made
very little objection to private engagements. As
a munificent reward, on two occasions Bellowes
took him out to luncheon, and once presented him

36 STORIES IN GREY

with some Sunday tickets for the Zoo, which he
himself did not want. Every Saturday Tangent
inspected, with satisfaction, some purely fantastic
accounts. Bellowes was specially careful that
Smeath and Tangent should never meet, lest the
discrepancy between the statements in the books
and the actual facts should be discovered.

And then business began to fall off. There was
no excessive drop, but the previous standard was
not quite maintained. That astute showman, Mr
Bellowes, decided that something would have to
be done. Some new feature would have to be
introduced, to set people talking again.

" Smeath," he said one day, " didn't you tell me
something once about a white owl ? "

" Yes," said Smeath, " I have one."

" It does tricks, don't it ? "

" It does a few things," said Smeath, grudgingly.
" You do not want it. You said that you would
leave me my owl."

" You needn't get into a stew about it, and do
for goodness' sake keep those great hands of yours
still. They get on my nerves. Nobody wants to
take your blessed owl away from you. The only
thing that I was wondering about was whether it
might not be worth while to keep the bird here,
instead of at your lodgings."

" No, sir ! No, Mr Bellowes ! It is in my
leisure time that I want my owl."

"Well, I was talking to Mr Tangent about it,
and he thought it was a good idea ; in fact, he

SMEATH 37

said I ought to have done it before. We must
think about it. I have been pretty easy with you,
Smeath."

" Also, I've worked very hard for you."

" You've done what you were told, and of late
you've given me no trouble. You might let
Tangent and myself have a look at the bird,
anyhow. It would be effective, you know — the
dwarf clairvoyant and the great white owl on the
back of his chair. Tangent spoke of a poster.
I'll tell him to give us a call in Bloomsbury on
Sunday morning."

" I do not want my owl to be taken away. It
lives there on the leads outside my window. Here
it would be unhappy. How could I leave it here
all night alone ? "

" Don't be unreasonable, Smeath. You will see
more of the bird then than you do now."

" No," said Smeath. " The greater part of the
time when I'm here I'm like a dead man, and
know nothing."

Bellowes had quite realized that this was the
point on which Smeath would have to be handled
carefully.

" Look here," he said, " I wouldn't do anything
to hurt the bird. At anyrate, let Mr Tangent and
myself see it. Let us see if it can really do the
things that that girl Jane jabbers so much about.
If Tangent and I think it would be an asset to the
show, I am prepared to go quite beyond our agree-
ment. I'll give you two or three shillings for

38 STORIES IN GREY

yourself, Smeath. You can give yourself a treat.
You've not been having many treats lately ; in
fact, you look just about half starved."

It was true. The little dwarf had grown very
thin. His eyes seemed to have got bigger and
brighter. There was a look in them now which
would have made Bellowes suspicious if he had
noticed it.

"Jane," said Smeath, as he met her on the stairs
that night, " they are coming on Sunday morning
to see my owl."

"Then they'll see miracles," said Jane, with
confidence.

" And they're going to take it away."

"If that bird goes, I goes!"

Smeath burst into a peal of mirthless laughter.

Mr Tangent arrived in a taxi-cab at the Blooms-
bury lodgings at eleven on the following Sunday
morning. He was in a bad temper, and swore and
grumbled profusely.

"So I've got to turn out on Sunday morning
and work seven days a week, just because you're
such a damn bad showman, Bellowes ? You've let
the thing down. The books on Saturday were
perfectly awful."

"I'm not a bad showman, and it's not my fault.
The weather's been against us, for one thing. And,
besides, no novelty lasts for ever. We must put
something else into it to buck it up, and we must
get that poster out."

"That means more expense. I don't see why

SMEATH 39

we should keep on paying Smeath four pounds a
week if business is falling off. And as for that
rotten old owl of his, I'm no great believer in it.
It will look all right on the poster, but it will do
no good in your Bond Street rooms. I know
those tricks. The bird picks out cards from a
pack, or shams dead, or some other nursery
foolery. Stale, my boy, hopelessly stale."

" According to what I hear, the bird does none
of those things. It's a new line."

" Is it ? I'll bet a dollar it ain't. However, tell
Smeath to bring it down, and let's get it over."

"Smeath won't bring it down. We shall have
to go up to it. He makes a great favour of show-
ing it to us at all. And, if you will take my tip,
you'll say nothing to Smeath beyond a good-
morning. I can tell you he wants devilish careful
handling about this bird of his. If you interfere,
you'll spoil it. All you've got to do, if you think
it at all remarkable, is to say to me that it might
possibly do. I shall understand. Now then, come
along up ! "

" All those stairs ! " groaned Tangent. He was
a heavy and plethoric man. When they reached
Smeath's room he stood for a minute, panting.

The room was ordinarily dingy enough. It was
a fine morning, and the sun streamed in through
the window. On the leads outside they could see
the great white owl perched on the bough of a tree
which had been fixed there. Smeath, with his hat
off, stood beside it, and seemed to be talking to it.

40 STORIES IN GREY

Around his feet were a flock of pigeons and sparrows.
He nodded to the two men, and then gave one
wave of his hands. The pigeons and sparrows
flew off and left him alone with the white owl.

" Funny sight ! " grunted Tangent. " Devilish
funny sight ! "

Smeath opened the window, and called into the
room :

" Good-morning, gentlemen ! Will you come
out?"

" Don't much like it," said Tangent. " I've no
head for this kind of thing."

" Oh, you're all right ! " said Bellowes. " You
needn't go anywhere near the edge."

He placed a chair for him, and Tangent climbed
out on to the roof, followed by Bellowes.

" I will leave you to look at the bird by your-
selves, gentlemen," said Smeath, and stepped down
into the room.

"Then who's going to make the bird do its
tricks ? " asked Tangent. " It's a fine-looking
beggar, anyhow. Seems about half asleep. Tame
enough." He passed his jewelled hand over the
snowy plumage on the bird's breast. " There's a
feather-bed for you," he said, laughing.

The bird opened its eyes, and leaped straight
into the face of Bellowes. Its plumage half stifled
him, its sharp claws tore his eyes. He screamed
for help.

Tangent, in horror, had flung himself down flat
on the leads, covering his face. Within the room

SMEATH 41

Smeath stood with folded arms, watching the
scene with the utmost calmness.

Bellowes tore at the bird with his hands, but
step by step it forced him back. There came one
final scream from him, and then two seconds of
silence, and then the thud as his body struck the
stones below. Up above, the white owl flew
swiftly away.

The dwarf rubbed his hands and laughed. And
then, changing his expression to one of extreme
dismay, went to the help of the prostrate Tangent.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA

I

BEFORE BIRTH

I AM a literary idea. Unborn as yet, I have not
the incarnation of paper and printing ink which
will be mine hereafter. I am conscious. I have
knowledge without the usual apparatus for its
acquisition and storage. I see without eyes, and
hear without ears. I move as I will, and material
things cannot hinder my movements. They are
swifter than light, and just as swift as thought.
You know, of course, that if an idea is going to
come to you, neither locked doors nor iron walls
will prevent it ; it arrives inevitably and insuper-
ably ; you are to be its parent and make it come
into the world. You may be ranked as a genius
because you are its parent, and (this amuses me)
you will think that you are its parent because you
are a genius.

To the large eyes of the imagination I might be
pictured, in my unborn state, as a Puck-like
phantom ; only the imagination can see me until
I select my parent. Ideas have that privilege.
Human beings — on very slight evidence — believe

that they do not select their parents ; but, on the

42

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 43

other hand, they believe — on no evidence at all —
that they do select their ideas. I am not prescient,
but I fancy that the man whom I select for my
parent should be a very happy man. I am a
perfectly brilb'ant idea. I am new, and I am a
master ; the world will say it. I shall bring
fortune and fame to my parent. Even now —
when I am unborn and cannot tell the precise
form that I shall take — I exult in my own utter
goodness. This is, of course, vain. But then
humility is only one of the impositions of the weak
majority upon the strong minority, to enable the
weak majority to keep up a self-respect to which
facts do not entitle it.

I decided to come here. Before me lies a vast
mass of building materials, sorted out into houses
and the like, and known on the eighteenpenny
folding map as " London and its Environs." It
swarms. It is too large. Let me see what is
immediately before me.

Before me is No. 23 Harriet Terrace, Fulham.
It is a new terrace of thirty-pound houses, and
there is no external difference, except the number,
between 23 and the rest. It is the residence of
Albert Weeks, literary hack. Shall I enter, and
bid Albert Weeks be my parent ? I should bring
him money and reputation. He would be able to
live in a better house than this ; people would
come to him and say, " Albert Weeks, where did
you get that perfectly splendid idea ? " He would
taste popularity, smile complacently, and subscribe

44 STORIES IN GREY

to a press-cutting agency. Shall I select him or
not? He might possibly, after he had become my
parent, be unable to reach the same level again.
But that disaster rarely happens. Ideas and sheep
follow where there are ideas and sheep in front of
them ; genius is more often chronic than acute. I
do not think that I should have to reproach myself
with having caused him ultimately the bitterest
failure — the failure of a man who once succeeded.
But shall I select him ?

Albert Weeks is married, of course, and has
three children. His wife is well-meaning, but, I
fear, a trifle under-educated. He met her in the
old days when he was on a kind of a spree; his
love-making was a kind of a spree ; there was a
touch of sheer spree even in his marriage. It was
all irresponsible — enthusiastic — desperate ; and
the spree is well out of their lives for ever and
ever — unless I interfere. They are still heart-fond
of each other, though she has ceased to remark on
his cleverness and sometimes is almost snappish,
and he has no time to pet her because he is so
busy for so little remuneration.

The front room in which he is sitting is rather
sordid. They call it the drawing-room, sometimes
substitute it for the nursery, and habitually use it
as his study. There is a quaint gathering of
antagonistic furniture. He bought as little furniture
as possible at first — because he was no fool and
knew that they would have to be economical — and
he has added to it since on occasions when he

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 45

could not possibly afford it. There are, for instance,
two chairs from a drawing-room suite — two only.
These are covered with pale green velvet, and the
velvet is covered with dust. On the chair nearest
to the table at which he is writing stands a chipped
cup of cold tea, surmounting the dust and the
velvet. The cold tea seems to be looking upward
with a grey, patient eye at the gaudy paper lamp-
shade, the photogravure of "The Prodigal Son,"
and the smoked ceiling. It is a room that must
always have had crumbs in it. House-flies go
long distances in order to die in this room. They
have died conspicuously and frequently in it. In
one corner broken and bygone bamboo has now
definitely despaired of ever signifying refinement ;
and in the one piano-sconce which is not broken
lingers the stump of a candle that has wept its
composite heart out over the stained keyboard —
wept for the death of the flies, and the despair
of the bad bamboo, and the general deadliness of
everything.

There is on the table a handsome, black-spotted
wedding present of an inkstand. In front of it
sits Albert Weeks at work. He is rather a small
man with sandy hair, and the frock-coat which he
has given up wearing out-of-doors, or when, as his
wife says, " there are people." There are not any
now, for he is alone in the room. The expression
of his face is careful. He has to be careful, because
the editor of The Inner Circle was by no means
satisfied with his last batch of paragraphs, and he

46 STORIES IN GREY

cannot afford to be deprived of the guinea a week
which he receives from that very fashionable
journal.

The editor had said — though more rudely,
technically and briefly — that either Mr Albert
Weeks would have to convey a more convincing
impression of his intimate acquaintance with high
society or The Inner Circle would dispense with
his valuable services. The words that the Editor
— who was rather less fashionable than his penny
panting paper — actually used were, " More savvy,
or outside only, my dear boy, and don't you forget
it."

What are you to do when you are too good
to know the butler, and not good enough for
the butler's master to know you ? This is
what, I perceive, Albert Weeks is doing, writing
laboriously : —

" The season is dying fast, and I am sure that
most of my readers will agree with me that it has
been an unusually brilliant one. So everybody
was saying to me at Lady Ballingham's last night.
By the way, Lady Ballingham must have the
secret of eternal youth; last night she looked
more beautiful than ever. As for her house in
Park Lane, I have always considered it to be quite
the most charming town-house that I have seen
in the whole course of my experience. Well,
the long round of delightful and luxurious — "

Here he is interrupted, because his worn-out,
striving, vulgar, respectable, loving, sharpish wife

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 47

had come into the room with a blue paper in her
hand.

" Supper, Albert ; come on now. Oh, you ain't
touched your tea, and I was particular to bring it.
Are you comin' ? 'Ennery 'as broke the soap-dish
in the nursery ; that's what the cryin' was about.
This here is Bilderspin's for what he did to the
kitchen range. It's high — one-seventeen-six."

That is the last straw. His editor has bothered
him. His work has bothered him. He is very
tired. A paragraph — which was really coming
out very nicely — has been interrupted. Money is
very scarce. And supper is mere mutton, and his
wife looks rather ill, and Bilderspin is one-seven-
teen-six. The combination overpowers him. The
little man throws down his pen, stamps his foot,
and swears like a mad blackguard — swears
profusely.

His wife takes a step backward, as if to get out
of the room. Then her face becomes twisted, she
sits down on the music-stool, and suddenly begins
to cry. She is shaken with sobs. "Oh, Albert!
Oh, Albert ! " she says, over and over again, and
then : " How can you be so cruel ? Aren't things
bad enough without that ? "

Then he goes quickly to her, and is remorseful.
He is not angry with her, of course. It is only
that things are going so badly. He takes her
hand. She regains her composure. She is sure
that he is quite overworked, but he ought not to
give way ; on the contrary, he should 'ope for the

48 STORIES IN GREY

best. There is a good deal of make-believe cheer-
fulness over the mere mutton subsequently.

Now, then, shall I make this man my parent ?
If I crept through that sandy hair into the whitey-
grey brain, what a change there would be. He
would be conscious that he had got a new, tre-
mendous, imperial idea. He would put down his
knife and fork, finish the beer in his glass at one
gulp, explain hurriedly to his wife that he was
really inspired this time, and rush wildly at the
handsome inkstand and his work. By the follow-
ing midday I should be in manuscript. In six
weeks Albert would be famous. In six months he
would have real money and no debts, and there
would be more money to come. There would be
a new soap-dish, new furniture, new dresses for his
wife. 'Ennery would have toys and a go-cart ;
Albert would, on little occasions, have Heidsieck.
They would be off to the seaside for a fortnight,
and do the thing well, and the personal paragraphs
would say that Mr Weeks and his family were
spending the winter in Brighton, " where it is to
be hoped that this new and brilliant author will
not allow his pen to be idle." No, I definitely
decide that I will not make Albert Weeks my parent.
I am not a philanthropist ; I am only an idea. I
do not want to benefit Albert Weeks, and I do
want to satisfy my own whim. My own whim
definitely refuses Albert Weeks.

At the same time, I am in a great hurry to be
born. I have knowledge, but it is limited. For

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 49

instance, I believe that I am an idea for a short
story, but I am not sure. I know I am a miracu-
lously good idea, but I do not know in what way
I am miraculously good. I yearn to see myself in
my final form. I must positively get born.

Well, let me examine elsewhere.

Here, I observe, the traffic is being partially dis-
turbed by a long funeral procession coming briskly
back from the cemetery. In the first coach is a
young man alone. He is in deep mourning. He
has drawn the window-blinds down. His hat is
placed on the front seat. He himself is kneeling
on the floor of the coach ; his arms sprawl over
the back seat ; his eyes are glaring, hot with un-
shed tears ; he bends his head and bites the wrist
of one hand. I knew his name at once and some-
thing about him. He is the Hon. Charles Tumour
Wylmot. Away in the cemetery lies the still
body of Maud Farradyce, whom Wylmot was to
have married two months hence if she had lived.
The agony of his grief would not be doubted by
anyone who saw him now.

Yet Wylmot is a man who has always doubted
himself. He is haunted with the thought that he
is a sham. He once doubted his love for his
books, and had himself put up for a sporting club
which neither interested him nor desired his
membership. The reactionary fit was bitter, but
it was short. As with his books so with his writ-
ing. In proud moments he believes that he is
going to be a leader; he pays for his pride with

50 STORIES IN GREY

days of depression when he doubts whether he is
even capable of being a decent follower. As with
his writing so with his love. A few weeks ago he
asked himself seriously if he was not merely trying
to be romantic, if he really loved this Maud
Farradyce who was to be his wife. That doubt
went before the pretty yellow-headed girl died.
And now he does not doubt his sorrow.

Yes, the Hon. Charles Tumour Wylmot shall be
my parent. He shall bring me into the world.
Now, as he sprawls in that mourning-coach, his
wild, aching brain shall become possessed of me.
It is a delightful whim.

In I go.

II

BIRTH

THE Hon. Charles Tumour Wylmot has, later in
the same day, in the solitude of his comfortable
chambers overlooking Piccadilly, just recovered
from rather an unpleasant fit of hysteria. Albert
Weeks would have thanked God for me, but
Wylmot positively does not want to be my parent.
He would cheerfully sacrifice a year's income if by
so doing he could definitely get me out of his
head. But he cannot. I am going to be born,
and this is the first part of the process.

The trouble is that 1 am inappropriate — horribly
and grotesquely inappropriate ; for I have dis-

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 51

covered more about myself, and I find that I am
a humorous idea. I am the newest, the most
delicious, the most inevitably humorous idea that
ever has been or ever will be. The bare thought
of me brings a deep satisfaction right away down
in the very pit of one's appreciations. At first I
am too great for laughter, but the laughter comes.
It comes in chuckles ; it swells and grows to
shaking paroxysms. Here, in this room, but half
an hour ago, Wylmot at last reached the full
appreciation of me. It had been growing upon
him ever since the moment in the mourning-coach
when I first came to him. There had been at
intervals sudden smiles over his face, succeeded by
an expression of agonized shame and contrition.
But at the full appreciation of me he gave up the
struggle and began to laugh. He threw back his
head ; he stamped one foot ; he held his sides with
both hands ; he roared ; he howled helplessly. He
staggered about the room, doubled up with con-
vulsions of laughter ; he tried to stop, but could
not ; he tried again, and for one moment gravity
secured a foothold ; then it slipped and off he
went once more, worse than ever, roaring, howling,
screaming, purple in the face.

His laughter stopped quite suddenly, as great
fits of laughter often do, as if it had been cut short
with a clean stroke of a knife. He took out his
watch, glanced at it, and — just as he had realized
the full humour of me — realized the full horror of
the situation. Three short hours before he had

52 STORIES IN GREY

stood beside an open grave, wherein he did then
most truly believe that all his interest and all the
brightness of his life lay. He had wanted the
world to stop because Maud Farradyce was gone,
and there was nothing else of importance. He
had heard the robed priest, Maud's cousin, reciting
in a voice that tried to be steadier than it was :
" From henceforth blessed are the dead which die
in the Lord." He had become unconscious then
of the service, unconscious of anything but the
burning in his heart. Someone had touched him
on the shoulder when it was time to go.

That was three hours ago.

And yet he had just finished a fit of the wildest,
most uncontrollable laughter. He had been allow-
ing himself to be amused. It was just here that
Wylmot had that unpleasant attack of hysteria.

He has recovered from it, and has composed
himself. His face is very white now, and he looks
rather like a man under a curse. He gets out his
writing materials. " Maud," he says softly, " you
are not minding, are you? This damned thing
has got into my head. I didn't want to think of
anything humorous, but this came to me. Maud,
it would make the dead laugh — it is too funny —
and I don't want to think about it any more.
That is why I am going to write it all out. Then
perhaps I may be able to put it aside. Oh, Maud,
don't think that I'm irreverent and unfeeling. My
heart is dead and with you. I hate myself for
having laughed, but I had to. I will get rid of

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 53

this idea that's haunting me, and then I don't
think I shall ever laugh again."

He sits down, and at the top of the page writes
in a large hand, " Ellen." It is the title of the
story which is to embody me. He writes fast for
half an hour, and then a servant brings in the
lighted lamps.

" Will you dine in to-night, sir ? " he asks, when
Wylmot looks up from the paper.

"Yes— no — I don't know." He speaks a little
absent-mindedly, with one hand on his forehead,
shading his eyes, as though he held the idea there
and were afraid that it would escape. I have no
intention of escaping. " I'm busy ; if I want to
dine I'll go to the club. That will be all to-night."

" Very good, sir."

The moment the servant has gone, the pen
dashes down on the paper . again, as though it had
gained an additional impetus by being kept back
for a minute. He does not dine out ; he does not
go to the club. He writes at lightning speed, only
pausing to laugh from time to time more wildly
than ever. He laughs and writes, writes and
laughs, on and on, until he finds that the lamps
are going out, and glances at his watch. It is five
o'clock in the morning, and the stack of paper in
front of him is the finished story — me myself —
me, the magnificently humorous idea.

He draws back the curtain and lets the wan
London daylight into the room. He realizes that
he feels very exhausted and shaky, goes to the

STORIES IN GREY

sideboard in an adjoining room, and gets himsell
some brandy. He drinks two glasses of it in rapid
succession ; then he goes off to bed. He is too
tired for any further emotion. Laughter and tears
alike will be a closed book to him until he has
slept. He falls to sleep at once, and sleeps long —
heavily, dreamlessly.

And I lie on the table in the study, new-born,
in a snow-white manuscript incarnation. Will my
reluctant parent burn me in the morning ?

Ill
AFTER BIRTH

No, I am safe — safe in a foolscap envelope,
directed, sufficiently stamped, whirled about by
postal arrangements.

It happened in this way. Wylmot came into the
study rather late next morning. He looked beaten,
humiliated, tired, and half-starved. He cast one
vindictive glance at me, and passed into the next
room, where breakfast was ready for him. He was
rather a long time over breakfast. When the
emotional heart is completely broken up, the
ordinary blood-pumping heart will still go on with
its work. So with the other organs. Sorrow
postpones appetite rather than destroys it.
Wylmot had no dinner on the day of Maud's
funeral ; he had quite a nice breakfast on the
following morning.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 55

He came back to me at last, and I knew that he
meant to destroy me. His face was intentionally
rigid, the lip set firm, the eye merciless. Yet
somewhere at the back of that merciless eye lurked
a quite different, milder expression. The fried sole
and eggs had done their carnal work ; an incon-
gruous geniality was struggling upward in him ;
he was going through the disgusting experience of
feeling the better for his food. However, he poked
the fire fiercely ; then he lit a pipe, with the air
that he did not care about it, but did not think
it worth while to omit it. And then he picked me
up, to hurl me in the fire. As he held me in his
hand, his eye rested for one second on the front
page.

In that one second my young life hung in the
balance. It was a moment of terrible excitement
for me. The eye glanced through a few lines, and
I felt a shade safer. The eye twinkled. Then I
knew that it was all over, and that my future was
assured ; Wylmot would not burn me. His habit
of doubting himself had triumphed once more.

Of course, after that he had nothing to do but to
sit down before the fire and argue it out with him-
self. The story should be published in The
Cosmopolitan. Why not? It was unhappy, in-
congruous, wretched that a humorous idea should
have come to him yesterday of all days. But he
had not sought for it. He had even struggled to
the utmost to put the thing out of his head. After
all, if there was any harm done — if there had been

56 STORIES IN GREY

any sign of want of feeling on his part — that lay
far more in the writing than in the publication of
the story. He would never put his name to it, of
course. No one should be able to say that Maud's
lover took the loss of her lightly. And he would
take no remuneration for it. He would forward
the amount of the cheque that he received from
The Cosmopolitan to some charity. Besides, what
right had he to keep that story from the public ?
It might not be — probably was not — so splendidly
and amazingly good as he had imagined, but still
he knew something of his business, and he knew
that it would be likely to be popular. It might
cheer many who were ill and depressed, and add
something to the sum of human happiness. And
he did not think that the critics, with their
Athenian longing to see and to hear some new
thing, would miss noticing the novelty and spirit
of it. Indeed he had mingled feelings of philan-
thropy and self-abnegation as he sat down to write
(on deep-edged paper) a little note to the editor of
The Cosmopolitan.

To a certain extent he deceived himself. If
Albert Weeks had voluntarily surrendered, on
sentimental grounds, his honorarium for a short
story, there would have been something in the
sacrifice. But Wylmot had a private income, more
than sufficient for all his needs, and to him the
surrender of the cheque meant nothing. His
surrender of the reputation which he believed
would attach to the author of " Ellen " did amount

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 57

to something, for he had the weakness cut etiam
saepe boni indulgent ; but it did not amount to very
much, because it is an exceedingly rare thing for a
single short story to attract any attention at all,
and although Wylmot believed in the chance of
" Ellen," he knew that it was not more than a
thousand-to-one chance. Nor was there very
much in his doubt whether he had the right, for
the sake of his personal sorrow, to deny the public
an enjoyment.

The real reason that swayed him was paternal
love. He had made me and seen that I was very
good. He could not commit infanticide. He
liked to explain himself, but his curious mixture of
intense humility and some subtle vanities always
made a desperate business of it whenever the real
explanation was some simple thing.

His note to the editor of The Cosmopolitan ran
as follows :

"MY DEAR ROGER,— If you will read the
enclosed story, you will understand how gladly I
could have sent it to you a few weeks ago. As I
did not do so then, I do so now — but, as you will
imagine, with the greatest possible reluctance. I
send it, because I do really think that it is the
kind of thing that I have often heard you say you
want. The only condition I make is that my name
shall not be put to it, or disclosed in connection
with it. I send it you to-day, instead of waiting,
because I am leaving England, and I am trying to

58 STORIES IN GREY

put my house in order before I go, and to clear up
such business as I have on hand. But I am sure
you will appreciate how eager I am to get to some
place — any place — where solitude and silence are
possible. I fear that this will be my last contribu-
tion to The Cosmopolitan. If it were not so
melodramatic to say so, I would tell you that from
henceforth I am practically dead. — Yours ever,

"C. T. WYLMOT."

Now I think it must be acknowledged that, for
a man who was not, as a rule, a liar, this letter is
from a liar's point of view distinctly creditable.

I hold that letter in my own, somewhat corpulent,
manuscript embrace. It and I together, in the
twilight seclusion of a foolscap envelope, are at
present being whirled through postal machinery.

It is all over. My embodiments have been
multiplied, since The Cosmopolitan has sold out
seven editions of the number which contains me,
to a marvellous extent. I have been a phenomenal
and unprecedented success. In the library of the
country house, in the rectory, in Mayfair drawing-
rooms, in Bloomsbury parlours, in working-men's
clubs, in public-house bars, in England, in America,
in the Colonies — everywhere where English, or an
approximation to it, is spoken — I am the subject
of discussion. There is a touch of the universal
about me, and already the translators are busy.
Enthusiastic critics have been more screamingly

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 59

enthusiastic than ever before about me ; the
severest critics have unbent. I have the additional
attraction of a mystery. Only two people really
know who wrote me — Wylmot, my author, and
Roger Birman, his editor — and neither of them
will tell. On the authorship of " Ellen " only two
people have dared to question Birman : his
assistant-editor and his proprietor. Birman has
told neither, and quarrelled with both ; it is the
day of his glory, and he can afford to quarrel with
almost anybody. Canards on the subject of my
authorship have flown over the country in dense
flocks. Albert Weeks has, as usual, drawn his
long-bow at a venture ; and, as usual, missed the
joints of the harness. This is his little paragraph
on the subject :

" The secret of the authorship of * Ellen ' has
been wonderfully well kept. There are probably
not more than twenty people in London who really
know it. When the secret is told, and — unless un-
foreseen circumstances occur — it will be told very
soon, there will be howling and gnashing of teeth
among various uninformed paragraphists who have
been spreading their rumours on the subject. As
an instance of the importance which the author
attaches to the secret, I may say that one of the
twenty 'in the know' is a butler who became
possessed of the information by accident, and that
he is to be rewarded for his silence with an annuity
of £200. More than this I am, unfortunately, not
permitted to say at present."

STORIES IN GREY

Of course, I knew from the first that I was
exceedingly good, but still it is very pleasant to
have it acknowledged. My success is a joy to me ;
it is also a joy to Birman ; it is also a joy — and
this is really terrible — to the Hon. Charles Tumour
Wylmot. For in this latter case I fear the re-
action. Letters, forwarded by the secret hand of
Birman, have come to him from the office of The
Cosmopolitan. For many editors have been
anxious to communicate with the author of
" Ellen," care of The Cosmopolitan. He has
answered none of them. Yet, just for a minute,
he has hesitated. At this time he carefully
abstains from any thought of Maud ; if such a
thought arises, he. puts it out of his head again
feverishly. That is the trouble — he dare not think
about Maud.

Maud is apparently not to be denied. The
power of the dead has come forth. Wylmot's
heart and brain are filled with Maud now. He
sees her eyes on him, and hears her voice in day-
dreams and night-dreams. He is alone in his
rooms, doing nothing, frightened, sickened,
humiliated ; it seems to him that he had once the
belief that, with all his faults, he was at least a
man of feeling and honour, and that he has now
lost the belief, and that he cannot live without it.

He starts from the chair, and paces the room
slowly in utter agony ; his brows are contracted ;
his eyes ache ; sometimes his hands close convul-

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 61

sively ; sometimes he draws a deep breath, like
one who is enduring a torture that kills.

It is the reaction. It began yesterday.

Yesterday he noticed that he felt uneasy when-
ever he looked at the little oil-painting of Maud
that hung above his mantelpiece. He thought
that must be because the portrait did no true
justice to her, or because it distressed him that any-
other eyes but his own should see Maud's picture.
During the whole period of joy in the funny
successful story that he wrote on the night that
Maud was buried, he had been ready with shoals
of euphemistic cheerful arguments to prove that he
was acting finely. Yet, as a matter of fact, the
uneasiness that he felt arose from a kind of fear.
He decided to lock the portrait away with her
letters in the bureau. As he was doing so, his eye
fell on the first note that he had ever received from
Maud — merely an invitation to dinner, written to
save her mother the trouble, written in shy, formal
language, and commencing with " Dear Mr
Wylmot." An impulse seized him to look
again, by way of contrast, at the last letter that
he had ever had from her. It was written in
pencil, just at the beginning of Maud's sudden and
fatal illness. It began thus : —

" They tell me I am very ill, Charley, and they
won't let me write more than just a little letter.
They say that they will send you a longer letter
themselves all about the illness. Oh, my poor
dear one, I must tell you ! I got it out of the

62 STORIES IN GREY

k^^r.

doctors that they think I am going to die, perhaps.
But I'm not ! You've made my life so sweet that
I won't leave it. I can't die and be taken away
from you. Do not be despairing, my lover ;
doctors so often make mistakes, you know, and I
am sure that I shall get better. How could I die
when you've made living so well worth while?
Oh, dear lover, did any man ever love so finely
and nobly as you ! I don't deserve you — no, I
don't."

The letter shook in Wylmot's trembling hand.
It was with difficulty that he read on : —

" I cried so much last night, and you weren't
there to comfort me, and I was so lonely. Why — '

He had to stop there. His throat moved involun-
tarily, and he was on the verge of sobbing.
Moving slowly and quietly, he put the letters back
in the bureau and the portrait back in its place on
the wall. He sat down in front of the portrait and
gazed at it — a pretty, yellow-haired girl with
mournful eyes, who had loved him well and thought
him noble. And God had taken her and left him
to the composition of an intensely humorous story.
Now that he has lost the belief in himself as a man
of feeling and honour he cannot live without it.
Late at night he goes out. He goes down to the
Embankment with the intention of killing himself.

He does not do it because he arrives there just
in time to stop another man from killing himself.
The other man, a stranger to Wylmot, is a

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 63

young man with sandy hair — to wit, Mr Albert
Weeks.

" I think," says Wylmot, speaking firmly, but
with a curious smile on his face, " you had better
come back with me to my rooms and talk this
over." He stops a passing cab.

" What's it got to do with you ? " Weeks begins.

" You happen to have saved my life."

" That's a lie. You saved mine, though I didn't
want your damned interference. You pulled me
back as I was on the parapet. What do you
mean by saying / saved your life ? "

" Ah ! " Wylmot says, with the same dreary smile,
" that is what I want you to come and talk about.
I also had intended to commit suicide. Surely
that is sufficient introduction. Come now ; get
into the cab."

At Wylmot's chambers the servant, with an
anxious expression on his face, let them in. It
vanished as he saw Wylmot. He had been
nervous about his master, and he was glad to see
him no longer alone and looking in better spirits.

" Have you dined ? " Wylmot asked Weeks.

" I don't care for it," Weeks answered doggedly.

"No? Nor do I. We will suppose dinner.
Francis, bring coffee. Yes, and we will have a
bottle of the port." Francis recognized the force
of the definite article.

Albert Weeks felt mazed and wondering. Were
the events of the last few days that had driven him

64 STORIES IN GREY

to desperation unreal, or was this unreal? The
two men had drawn their chairs up in front of the
fire. Albert Weeks sipped the fragrant coffee and
blinked his eyes ; he was in a kind of dream.
Through it he heard Wylmot speaking.

" Yes, if it had not been for you, I should have
drowned myself to-night. The sight of another
man on the verge of committing exactly the same
act suddenly showed me that suicide was running
away. One should not run away. It is not
brave, though brave men have done it through
sudden panic. You have placed me under a very
great obligation to you."

Weeks shook his head. " You saved me too."

" No, no, I saved you from an isolated act. You
saved me from an entirely wrong principle. I do
not know whether I make myself clear. But I
feel the obligation deeply, and I will speak of it
again afterwards. In the meantime you should
know my name." He handed Weeks a card.

Weeks glanced at it and said : " I have no card,
but my name is Albert Weeks, and I used to live
at No. 23 Harriet Terrace, Fulham. I was a
journalist. I failed. I used to be on The Inner
Circle but I got kicked off. Do you know The
Inner Circle?"

" I've seen the posters, but I cannot say that
I've ever read it."

" It's nothing much to read, but it was all I had
to live on. I'm married, with children. It was
very difficult to get along. Sometimes I got a

Thft

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 65

short thing taken elsewhere, not often. I borrowed
a little money on my furniture. When I got
kicked off The Inner Circle I couldn't pay the
interest due, and so the Jews took the furniture.
My wife and the children have gone to her married
sister — a Mrs Warboys. She wouldn't have me,
and she grudges the shelter that she gives my wife
and children ; they'll come to the workhouse. So
I haven't lived anywhere the last two days. To-
night I sold the last thing I had. It was my
mother's wedding-ring. I thought I'd buy myself
a good dinner before I died."

" Then why didn't you ? "

"Oh, I'd got into the habit of giving my wife
anything that I happened to make, so I went into
a post-office and sent it off to her without thinking."

" Go on," said Wylmot.

" Well, there wasn't much more. In the letter 1
sent from the post-office, I told her I had a berth
to go abroad, and if I could make anything I would
send it. I've cut my name off the linen. If I'd
once got into the river, there would have been
nothing to identify me by. So she'd have got used
gradually to being without me. And her married
sister would have felt she'd more claim for support
if she had no husband."

" Now I must tell you about myself."

" Well, of course, I know a little about you. I've
seen signed things by you in The Cosmopolitan. I
was never one of the lucky ones — they wouldn't
take me on the swell magazines."
E

66 STORIES IN GREY

"Did you read 'Ellen'?"

" Read it and roared over it."

" So did I."

" They kept the secret well. I suppose they
didn't tell you who wrote it ? "

" No, they never told me. Fill your glass again."

Albert Weeks did so. The wine was warming
him, giving him a little more self-confidence and
geniality.

" This is beautiful port," he said, " really beautiful
port. I can't understand why you should have
wanted to commit suicide. You have no money
troubles ? "

" None."

"You live in these comfortable chambers in
perfect luxury, with a butler and everything. You
can get your stuff taken by the very best papers.
I don't say that you've made a real hit, like the
man who wrote ' Ellen,' but you must be good to
get into The Cosmopolitan"

" It's so much better, you know, Weeks, to be a
good man than to be a good author. I had done
a disgraceful thing. It did not involve public
disgrace ; it was not, in the eyes of the law, an
offence at all. But it took away my self-respect,
and I did not feel as if I could live without it. It
was driving me mad. I would rather not speak of
the details."

" Certainly not," said Weeks.

" Now I want to talk over some plans for you,
but I must first write a letter. Will you excuse

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA 67

me ? " The letter was soon written, and given to
Francis to post.

" Now then," said Wylmot, standing before the
fire, " as we have finished our wine we will smoke.
A cigar? It seems to me indicated. As I said
before, without intending it, you have placed me
under a very great obligation. I feel sure that you,
as a gentleman, will understand that I should like
to show my sense of the position. As some slight
acknowledgment of the great service that you have
rendered me, I have just sent instructions to my
solicitors by which you will, on my decease, receive
a legacy of one thousand pounds. You want
money now, and I want to give it you, but of
course you would not consent to the humiliation
of receiving a present of money. A legacy is a
different matter ; and one can take a legacy."

" I — I do not know how to thank you," said
Weeks. " I could not, of course, have accepted a
present of money."

" Now I must tell you my plans for you. You
love your wife ? "

" She and the children are — well, they're natur-
ally the principal thing."

" Now it is quite evident to me that it is your
duty to take them into the country for a holiday.
You look overworked."

" Oh, I worked pretty hard, but it didn't come to
anything. I failed."

"Very likely from overwork. Your wife and
children, too, will want a change. You must be

68 STORIES IN GREY

away at least two months. When you come back,
I will give you a letter to the editor of The
Cosmopolitan ; he will do, I may say, a good deal
for me. If you can write, he will let you write. If
not, he will find some other remunerative occupa-
tion for you. And, I think, you would probably
like to discharge any pecuniary obligation that you
may be under to Mrs Warboys."

" I should. But it is impossible. There is no money."
"Oh, some arrangement can easily be made.
Let me see. Why not borrow a hundred from me,
giving me your I.O.U. ? Even if it is not con-
venient for you to pay before my decease, the sum
to which you are entitled under my will — "

" Stop," said Weeks. " It doesn't take me in.
You're giving me money ; I take it with gratitude.
You've saved my life, and you've made it possible
for me to go on living. And you've done it all so
kindly, treating me as an equal, and no one's been
like this to me for a long time — and, damn it, I
can't even speak about it ! " He rose and turned
to the window with a sob in his throat.

Albert Weeks holds a sub-editorial post on The
Cosmopolitan now. He has a very comfortable
little flat in South Kensington. Wylmot did his
best to live without self-respect. He lasted a few
years wearing himself out with work. He died of
something quite commonplace.

But I am still remembered. I am still the standard
of humour to which nothing more recent approaches.

iMr

BURDON'S TOMB
I

THE EARTHQUAKE

MRS LANGLEY and her companion, Miss Gilderay,
both thought rather well of Mr Agravine. It was
their first visit to Egypt, and Mr Agravine's
greater experience had been of use to them. He
was quiet and without presumption, an elderly
man with tired and rather magnetic eyes. " He
has a story, of course," said Miss Gilderay.

"We all have," said Mrs Langley; "and we
never tell them."

Miss Gilderay blushed. She was plain, kindly,
sincere, and thirty-five. Mrs Langley was five
years older and looked five years younger. She
was not beautiful, but everybody said she had nice
eyes and a pretty figure.

" I am glad he is coming on the Rameses" said
Mrs Langley. " He is useful. He has done it all
before, and he knows more than the dragomans.
Of course, Mr Castle is useful too. A frightful
nuisance, though."

" Oh, frightful ! " Miss Gilderay assented. " Still,
one feels sorry for him."

In the lounge of the hotel after dinner that
69

70 STORIES IN GREY

night Mr Agravine spoke to them about Sir Felix
Burdon's tomb. The tomb was thus spoken of
by careless people in Cairo and Luxor, but Sir
Felix had merely been its excavator, and the work
of excavation was not yet quite complete. It was
the tomb of a high priest who had died in Thebes
twelve hundred years before Christ was born. It
was of considerable size and importance, and its
mural paintings were interesting and well-pre-
served. Mr Agravine wished particularly to see
this tomb, and said he should try if anything
could be arranged through the dragoman on the
boat. He was describing some interesting points
about this tomb when young Mr Castle came up
and joined the group. He was always doing that,
and sometimes he was a nuisance. He was a
young man of twenty-eight, travelling by himself
and paying a good deal for excess luggage. He
was possessed of many and elaborate clothes.
Chance propinquity at the hotel dinner had intro-
duced Mr Agravine, and Mr Agravine had in turn
presented Mr Castle. This had been at Mr Castle's
request, for he had very nearly decided to fall in
love with Mrs Langley. She was just enough
interested in him to flirt with him, and only just.
To-night she sent him away at once. " Go and
find out the name of that very beautiful girl with
the red hair."

The girl with the red hair was travelling with
two elderly ladies, who were set in a totally differ-
ent key from her. The old ladies were Victorian.

BURDON'S TOMB 71

The girl looked as if she had walked straight out
of a German fairy tale.

Mr Castle did not know his way about at all.
At the end of the evening he had not got the
required information. He came back to Mrs
Langley, and, though she laughed, she sent him
away again. She was definitely not going to
speak to him any more until he could tell her
what she wanted to know.

Chance gave it to him next morning. He
happened to see the girl come out of her room,
and he noted the number. He had only to look
now at the numbers in the hall and see what
name was attached. He went to Mrs Langley in
triumph. " I've got it," he said. " She is Miss
AveriL"

"Who is?"

" The red-haired girl that you wanted to know
about. She is travelling with two sisters — Miss
Brya'ns. They are probably her aunts."

" I don't think I care," said Mrs Langley. " It
was really her first name that I wanted to know."

The subject turned up again on the first day of
their departure from Cairo on the Rameses. Miss
Averil and her two aunts happened also to be
going on to Assouan on the Rameses, and Mrs
Langley, in a comparatively short space of time,
had taught Miss Bryan an entirely new patience.
As she walked the deck that evening after dinner
with Mr Castle by her side she said, "What an
idiot you are, if you do not mind my saying so.

72 STORIES IN GREY

You never found out that girl's name at all. I give
two minutes to it, and find out everything myself."

" And what is her first name ? " asked Mr Castle,
patiently.

"Well, you ought to know. You ought to be
able to deduce it from looking at her."

" Yseult ? " suggested the young man.

"Oh, goodness, no. Her name is Zoe. Don't
you think that's right ? "

"No," said Mr Castle. "Zoe is a maid of
Athens, very nearly as black as the ace of spades."

" Rubbish ! Anyhow, Zoe Averil is not a maid
of Athens. She is a maid of Oxford. And what
Oxford has done to deserve it I don't know. Her
aunts are highly cultivated and belong to a
Browning society. Now, why don't you find out
interesting things and tell them to me? You
never seem to know anything."

She sent him to fetch French coffee for her, and
when he brought it decided that she would take
Turkish coffee that night. Really, she did not
treat him very well. Her manner with Mr Agravine
was quite different.

On the day that they arrived at Luxor Mr Agra-
vine told them that there was quite a chance that
they would be able to see Burdon's tomb. The
dragoman of the boat had been Sir Felix Burdon's
dragoman during his first season in Egypt. He
had assisted him since in some trouble that Sir
Felix had had with his labourers. It was quite
possible that he would be able to arrange it.

BURDON'S TOMB 73

The dragoman did arrange it. Chance favoured
him. Sir Felix was waiting for some heavy timbers,
and meanwhile the work of excavation had ceased.
He cursed the dragoman sincerely. He said most
insulting and improbable things about the drago-
man's ancestry. He told him that if he ever
suggested such a thing again he would break his
head with a stick ; but none the less he permitted
him to bring up his gang from the Rameses on the
following day. They were not, of course, to enter
the two chambers of the tomb which Sir Felix
used as his living-room and stores.

The party from the Rameses, about thirty in
number, crossed the river from Luxor and rode
five miles. They halted and dismounted at the
top of the long slope which led down to the
tomb.

Led by the dragoman, the procession of tourists
passed down the sandy slope into the darkness,
under a crest piled with great rocks. Then came
the burning of magnesium wire and the dragoman's
lecture — a little sketchy, because he did not know
the tomb — on the paintings and inscriptions. He
was most impressive. "This tomb never been
shown before, ladies and gentlemen. Special
permit. No other dragomans can show it."

He scooped up two inquiring Germans, who
would have made a dash for that part of the tomb
which they had been particularly requested not to
enter, and shepherded his party out into the open
again — all but five of them.

74 STORIES IN GREY

Just as these five were leaving, they found them-
selves confronted by a man in grey flannel trousers
and an old Norfolk jacket of brown canvas. He
reminded Mrs Langley at once of Don Quixote.
He began to speak to them about what they had
seen, and he spoke with evident knowledge and
authority.

Miss Gilderay whispered a word to Mrs Langley,
and Mrs Langley said, " I suppose so," and turned
to the stranger : —

" You are Sir Felix Burden, are you not ? "

" Yes, that's my name."

" I asked you because we wanted so much to
thank you for letting us come in here. It's too
interesting for words. I hope we haven't been
interrupting your work ? "

"Not at all," said Sir Felix. "We don't start
digging again till to-morrow. I was just waiting
for some stuff to come up from Luxor. I shall be
living here for the next two months, you know."

" Living here ? " said Miss Gilderay. " Actually
in this tomb ? "

" Why not ? In here or in a tent just outside.
I make myself very comfortable, and it saves the
bother of going backwards and forwards."

"It seems wonderful. I supposed that you
lived on the Lotus. We saw it just above
Luxor."

" Last year I used the dahabeeyah a good deal,
and I am meaning to dine and sleep there to-night ;
but the Lotus leaves to-morrow for Assouan,

BURDON'S TOMB 75

taking some friends of mine who are to go on to
the Second Cataract."

As he spoke he glanced over the party. Mr
Castle carried Mrs Langley's camera and fly-whisk.
Mrs Langley looked charming and Miss Gilderay
earnest, and a pretty girl with red hair was talking
to Mr Agravine on one side.

" I tell you what," said Sir Felix, cheerfully ;
" there's a very interesting bit of painting in that
second chamber on the left there, and I think your
dragoman missed it. I should really like to show
you that. I will get candles."

" It's very, very kind of you," said Mrs Langley.
" But won't they be waiting for us ? "

"Oh, I hope so. Your dragoman knows that
you are speaking with me, and therefore he must
wait. We shan't keep them five minutes."

He dived away into the darkness as he spoke,
and returned with a box of candles.

As they were lighting their candles it chanced
that he heard Mr Agravine's name mentioned.

" I wonder," said Sir Felix, " are you Mr Agra-
vine, the collector, the great authority on Corot ? "

"A great authority on nothing, I'm afraid. But
I've been a collector of pictures all my life, to my
sorrow."

" But why to your sorrow ? "

" A long story, and I should be ashamed to tell it."

"When we get back to the boat," said Miss
Gilderay, as she lighted her candle, " the rest will
be very jealous of us."

76 STORIES IN GREY

" What on earth for ? " asked Sir Felix, laughing.

"Because we have special privileges. The
others have only had a dragoman ; we get the real
explorer."

"Can't understand jealousy," said Sir Felix,
" even if it's anything of importance."

"Why not?" Mrs Langley asked.

Sir Felix shrugged his shoulders.

" To the ancient Egyptian," he said, " death was
the only important thing that happened to him in
his life. Once one gets that point of view one
ceases to be jealous."

" But it's rather amazing that you should have
that point of view," said Miss Gilderay.

"Oh, well, explanations are long and tiresome
things. Now, then, here is the thing I wanted to
show you. Hold your candles up very high, please.
That's right. It's really an astonishingly modern
idea, considering the date at which it was painted.
You see that figure — "

He never finished that sentence. The floor of
the chamber seemed to sway upwards. They
staggered against one another. Miss Gilderay
caught at a sliding surface of wall, and fell to the
ground grotesquely. There was a sharp hissing
sound, followed by a roar like a cannonade, that
drowned their exclamations. Then came a heavy
thud — thud, as of some titanic hammer beating
down soft earth. And then all was still. Sir
Felix alone still held his lighted candle in his
hand. The other candles had fallen and gone out.

BURDON'S TOMB 77

Sir Felix helped Miss Gilderay to her feet again,
and assured himself that nobody was hurt. They
found and relit their candles.

"But what on earth was it? What terrible
thing has happened ? " cried Miss Gilderay.

" It appeared to me," said Mr Agravine, " like
a shock of earthquake. It was as if a mountain
had come down on us."

"That is probably what has happened. If you
don't mind waiting a moment, I'll go and see
what I can find out. I'll be back as soon as I
can."

It seemed a long time before he returned. They
spoke together in awed tones, speculating on the
chances. When Sir Felix came back to them, he
saw white, grave faces, but no sign of panic. He
hesitated. He had practically to pronounce a
death-sentence on these five people and on himself.
And then Mrs Langley spoke.

" You have bad news, I see," said Mrs Langley.
" But we have expected it. The entrance to the
tomb is blocked ? "

" That is so," said Sir Felix. " It is bad for me,
because I brought you back here. The rest oi
your party are safe outside. However, we must
see if we can work a way out. I have a pick and
a couple of shovels here."

"Can't we do anything too?" asked Miss
Gilderay.

" Nothing at the moment, I think. Make your-
selves as comfortable as you can there."

78 STORIES IN GREY

He pointed to the chamber which had been
furnished as his own living-room.

The men returned to the entrance-hall, stripped
to the waist, and began their labour. It was
absolutely ineffective, and Sir Felix had known
from the first that it would be ineffective. But
everything had to be tried. The sand and rubble
fell in on them, and they could make no way. At
last they gave it up.

" Will you call the ladies who were with you ? "
said Sir Felix. " They had better know."

II

THE CONFESSION OF SIR FELIX BURDON AND
OF MR CASTLE

DECK-CHAIRS had been found for the three
women. Agravine and Castle sat on the ground,
their backs to the wall. Sir Felix remained stand-
ing. There were plenty of candles and the hall
was brightly lit.

"Tell us now," said Mrs Langley, "what the
chances are."

"We will look at the best side first," said Sir
Felix. " We are five miles from Luxor, and Luxor
is on the rail. The tools and the men needed for
an attempt at rescue ought to be available and to
be here within a very few hours. You're with
Thomas Cook & Son, and they won't lose any-

BURDON'S TOMB 79

body if they can help it, and they are pretty potent
people in Egypt. The natives will probably be
scared, and may be reluctant to come to work
here. But baksheesh and the hide-whip are good
arguments. I think we will take it for granted
that everything that can be done to save us will
most certainly be done."

" I see," said Zoe Averil, " that you think it will
be of no use."

" I do, but I may be wrong. I am guided by
the sounds we heard and by my knowledge of the
conformation of the ground round here. I believe
that we're buried too deep for them to reach us in
less than a week's work. You must remember
that they will probably find it difficult at first even
to determine the point at which they shall dig.
I've been talking it over with Mr Agravine, and
we don't think that the air here will last more than
three or four days. So now you see what I've done."

" You must not say that again," said Mrs Langley.
" Nobody here would be mad enough to hold you
in any way responsible. Besides, we've talked it
over — Miss Gilderay, Zoe Averil and myself — and
we also had come to the conclusion that there
was very little hope. As it happens, we three,
more, perhaps, than most women, can take this
quietly and wait for death without making any
fuss."

" Yes," said Zoe. " I see you're looking at me,
and I know I've been crying. But that was
because of my people, and not for myself at all.

STORIES IN GREY

So far as I myself am concerned — I'll tell you a
secret— I'm glad."

" How horrible ! " said Agravine.

And then they began to discuss together the
best arrangements that could be made for the three
days left to them. On one point they were
unanimous. Those days were to be made as easy
as possible. The candles that lit them, and the
flame of the spirit stove, would burn up air. But
the tomb was to remain lit, and they would eat and
drink, though to-morrow they would die. And
when there were signs that the last moments were
approaching they would not prolong the period of
headache and malaise and nausea. Sir Felix had
a charcoal stove, which he used for cooking on in
the open. If this were lit all would soon be over.

There was not the slightest fear of any suffering
from hunger or thirst. The chamber which Sir
Felix used for his store-room had already been
rilled for the season, and even a modified luxury
would be possible. The women claimed for
themselves the slight household work that there
would be to do. Sir Felix used paper plates and
dishes that would not need to be washed, and when
used could be thrown, with all other refuse, down
the deep shaft at the farther end of the tomb. At
night the men would camp in the entrance-hall, on
deck-chairs. The women would fare a little more
easily, dividing such bedding as there was among
them in the room at the other end of the tomb.
The big tank had been filled, and there was bottled

BURDON'S TOMB 81

water for drinking besides. The only thing that
seemed likely to distress them was the waiting,
the actual waiting for three days before death came.

At present they did not feel this at all. The
earthquake shock had thrown them into something
approaching stupor. Now came the reaction.
They were excited, and talked eagerly. There
was much to be done. The floor of the big hall
had to be sprinkled with water, that the dust
might not bother them. A table and seats had to
be improvised, and a meal prepared. Young
Castle, under direction, opened tins. Miss Gilderay
busied herself at the spirit stove. Mr Agravine
and Sir Felix were occupied with a little rough
carpentry. There was much activity and good
temper. There was even laughter at minor
mishaps. It was an astounding and fantastic
picnic in the very face of death.

Presently Mrs Langley came up to Sir Felix.

"Zoe — Miss Averil — and I have found among
your stores a big package of native costumes —
women's costumes. May we use them ? "

" Of course you may. But please ask permission
for nothing again. All that is here is common
property. It belongs to all of us. I was com-
missioned by a lady in England to get those dresses
for her. And the commission bored me terribly.
Now I feel grateful to that lady."

An hour later they all met at dinner. The
materials of the repast had mostly come out of tins,
but Miss Gilderay had been very clever. The
F

82 STORIES IN GREY

champagne was excellent, though two of the men
were compelled to drink from tea-cups. Mr
Castle's voice began to be heard rather frequently.
There was a faintly triumphant note in it, and it
was not entirely due to champagne. The pro-
pinquity of Mrs Langley affected him.

,At the end of the repast Mr Castle opened a
gold cigarette-case and presented it to Mrs Langley.
She did not appear to see it, taking no notice of it.
Selecting a cigarette himself, he took from his
pocket a gold matchbox. All his waistcoat-pocket
furniture was of pure gold, and silver was nothing
accounted.

" Wait one moment, Mr Castle," said Sir Felix.
" What do you think about it, Agravine ? It's not
as if we could open the windows and make the
whole thing fresh again to-morrow."

" By Jove ! I hadn't thought of that," said Castle,
and returned the cigarette to his case.

" Well," said Agravine, " our principle was that
we were to make it as easy for ourselves as possible.
This hall is fairly lofty as compared with the
smaller chambers. Suppose we permit each person
one cigarette after dinner to-night, and then see
what it is like to-morrow morning ? I imagine we
shan't notice it, but, if we do, we can set one of
the smaller chambers of the tomb apart as a
smoking-room, hanging something over the
entrance."

"Good!" said Sir Felix, "I think you are
right." He produced his own cigarette-case, and

BURDON'S TOMB 83

Mrs Langley and Miss Gilderay both took cigar-
ettes from it. Zoe Averil did not smoke.

There was a little buzz of conversation, and then
a sudden silence. And into the silence broke the
clear, silvery voice of Zoe Averil.

" I want to ask you something, Sir Felix. You
look rather anxious, and I don't understand anxiety
when the end is so certain. What is it you are
afraid of for us ? "

" I'll tell you frankly. I'm afraid of reaction.
I have got no words to say how splendid I think
you three women have been. You all seem
without fear. But we have many hours before us
yet. There will be little or nothing to do. Here
we shall be in prison together glaring at one
another. If our cheerfulness broke down, if we
ceased to be good-tempered, if we got to long for
the end — well, it's possible."

" Tell us your story, Sir Felix," said Mrs Langley.

" My story ? What do you mean ? "

" The story of yourself."

" I've never yet told it. I'd never meant to tell
it at all. Yet, now that I come to think about it, I
don't know that it wouldn't ease my mind to make
a confession before I died. You will none of you
think very well of me when you've heard it, and so
I must make one condition. There is not to be
one word of comment."

To this all agreed.

" I am at present thirty-eight years ol age.
When I was a boy of fourteen, early one summer

84 STORIES IN GREY

morning I wrecked the whole of my life. It is
in consequence of what I did, or failed to do, then
that I succeeded to the baronetcy — if that is worth
anything — and became a rich man, and have never
since had one moment of complete happiness.
What I've got to tell you is that I was a coward.
Even now, in similar circumstances, I think I
might be a coward again. There are people
who have no fear. There are people who are
brave enough for the ordinary things of life, but
have one special fear which overmasters them.
I believe there are many such, and I was one of
them. With some men the overmastering horror
is connected with fire. They live in dread of it.
They never go to an hotel or a house for the first
time without looking from their windows to find
what they would do in case of fire. The thing
haunts them. My case was different. I was
supposed to be a particularly courageous and
high-spirited boy, but I also was haunted — by the
dread of drowning. I was afraid of the water. As a
child, when I first saw the sea I screamed with terror.
As I got older and went to school I had to get over
this to some extent. I managed, with the greatest
agony to myself and with the strictest concealment
of my real feelings, to learn to swim. In the
summer holidays I bathed every morning with my
elder brother in the river before breakfast. I used
to pretend that I loved it. And yet every day it
was all I could do to get myself to go in. There,
can't you guess the rest of it ? No, don't speak."

BURDON'S TOMB 85

He took a sip of champagne, and continued his
story.

On the morning in question Adrian, his elder
brother, who was an expert swimmer, had remained
long in the water after Felix had left it. Suddenly
Adrian was attacked by cramp and cried for help.

" I was unable to move," said Sir Felix. " I
stood there on the bank half-dressed, looking at
him, and I was actually unable to move. I could
not make myself do it. I pictured him dragging
me down into the green water. I also began
to call loudly for help. I told myself that when
he was insensible, and it would be safe for me
to tackle him, I would go in and rescue, but it
was not till I heard steps and became afraid of
being found on the bank that I managed to fall
into the water. I never reached my brother.
Fear had taken all the power from my muscles.
I could not swim at all. I went down at once.
When we were taken out by the men who came
in answer to my call, he was dead and I was
insensible. I recovered, told a lying story, and let
people praise my heroism. Can you wonder that
the recollection of that morning has haunted me
all my life ? I, who hate cowardice and lies and
selfish brutality, have to look upon myself as a
coward, a liar, and a murderer. Since then I have
done everything I could, short of actual suicide,
to end it. In South Africa the Boer bullets and
the enteric took better men and left me free.
Here in Egypt I found a fascination. Here also

86 STORIES IN GREY

lived people who all their lives through had looked
forward to their death. Excavation, too, has its
risks, or can be made to have them. I have shirked
none of them. I have even invented them. And
all the time I have had to put a good face on
things before the world. I dared not let people
know what I really was. I joined in sports, I
laughed at jokes, I pretended to be interested in
all manner of things. It is a relief unspeakable to
me that from this moment, for the few hours that
will elapse before I die, I need pretend no longer.
I have shown myself as I am."

There was complete silence when he finished
speaking. It had been agreed that there was
to be no word of comment. Then openly, across
the table, Mrs Langley stretched out her hand to
him, and he held it for a moment. Miss Gilderay,
rising, with Zoe Averil close to her, began to
clear away things. Mr Agravine, helping them,
sought and found an occasion to say something
absolutely commonplace.

Suddenly Mr Castle brought his hand down on
the table.

" Wait a minute," he said. " If you don't mind,
I mean. If I don't do it now, I never shall."

" What is it, Mr Castle ? " asked Mr Agravine.

" My name's not Castle, but that's no matter.
It's the only name you'll ever know me by. I've
got a story to tell — a true story. The night's
young, and in any case we shall be getting a long
sleep soon."

BURDON'S TOMB 87

"Don't get excited about it, Mr Castle," said
Mrs Langley, quietly. " We are quite willing to
hear you."

Those who had risen from their places sat down
again, and the young man began.

" I suppose I ought to blame myself alone for
what I am going to tell you, but I don't. I blame
my father more than myself. He's a solicitor
in Lincoln's Inn Fields. I dare say you'd know
the name if I gave it. I have been on bad terms
with him all my life. All my life he has kept me
short of liberty and short of money. He forced
me to take, or to pretend to take, his views in
religion and politics and everything. It was only
by hypocrisy that I could make life with him
tolerable. He insisted upon it that I should follow
his profession, although he knew that I hated it.
I don't care now whether I'm laughed at or not,
and I'll tell you what I wanted to be. I wanted
to be an actor. He would not hear of that, of
course. He'd given me a good education, public
school and Oxford, and I was to go into his office.
I hated it, but I did what I was told. I went
through my articles, I passed all necessary exam-
inations. I became admitted as a solicitor, and
then, for years, I did the work of managing clerk
for him for about half a managing clerk's salary.
At twenty-seven I had very little more freedom
than I had at seventeen. I was not allowed a
latch-key. I had to give an account of everything
that I did and almost everything that I thought.

88 STORIES IN GREY

It would have been just if I had been taken inl
partnership, but my father would not hear of that.
I was to inherit the business when he died, and
until then I might wait. So it went on. Month
after month of formal and uninteresting routine.
Month after month of snubs and checks. If ever
a man hated his father, I hated mine. Well, he'd
screwed down the safety-valve, and after that it
was his own look-out. What happened was
inevitable."

He paused a moment, irresolute.

" Go on," said Mrs Langley.

" Oh, I'm not going to shirk it. One day last
July my father handed me the firm's cheque for
nine hundred pounds. I was to cash it and go
on to the office of another solicitor to complete
a purchase on behalf of a client. It was the kind
of thing I had often done before. As you know,
of course, payment is generally made in Bank of
England notes. Until the moment when I had
that cheque in my hands I had formed no plan at
all. I had had a specially exasperating week with
my old father, and was determined that something
would have to be done. As I slipped that cheque
into my pocket I decided what it should be. I
got cash for the cheque, taking the greater part
of it in small notes and twenty pounds in gold.
I was very well known at the bank. If I had
asked for the whole of it in gold I doubt if it would
have aroused any suspicion. Then I got into
a cab and drove round to one or two shops and

BURDON'S TOMB 89

bought a dressing-case and some other things.
The change had begun already. My father did
not permit me to take cabs when a 'bus would
serve, or a 'bus when it was an easy walk,
though he never went anywhere except in a cab
himself. I knew that the last place in which they
would look for me would be in the neighbourhood
of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and so I went to a small
hotel in Holborn. For two or three days I lay
low and watched the papers carefully morning
and evening, expecting to find some account of
my disappearance. There was never a word about
it, and then I knew that I was quite safe. My
father had not taken the view that I had been
abducted by thieves, but that I myself was a thief.
To save his name and the name of his firm he
would be quite willing to pay that nine hundred
out of his own pocket. I laughed at the thought
of that. It occurred to me, however, that he would
probably have put private detectives on to me,
and for some weeks I was careful, going out only
at night in closed cabs. It was dull, because I
knew nobody. I still watched the papers, and
still found no allusion to myself. I had expected
a veiled notice in the agony column of the Times,
but there was nothing. The old man had evidently
determined to cut me off altogether. At last, one
night, more because I was sick of the solitude than
because I thought it was safe, I crossed over to
Calais by the night boat. I remained in Paris
for a few weeks, and then started off on a kind

^ STORIES IN GREY

of walking tour. I made a good many acquaintances
and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I never had
the slightest qualm of conscience, and I am not
sure that I have any now. I said to myself that
I had not stolen the nine hundred pounds, I had
merely drawn my back pay. I got plenty of
amusement, and incidentally I improved my
French. On my return to Paris I happened to be
in Cook's office one day and heard a man inquiring
about Egypt. It was now November. My walking
tour had cost me very little, and I still had plenty
of money left. That is how I came here. There
is my story, and you can think what you like."

" Thank you for telling us," said Mrs Langley.
" It is better to make no other comment."

" I notice," said Mr Castle, bitterly, " that you
do not give me your hand."

" I do not," said Mrs Langley.

" You can treat me as a leper if you like."

" Nor do I do that."

Miss Gilderay broke in hastily. "But what
did you mean to do when the money was all
gone ? "

" I was willing to do anything, except to arise
and go to my father. If I had found an oppor-
tunity I should have taken it. If I had found
none I should probably have committed suicide.
Burdon's tomb has spared me my pains."

And from that time onward Mr Castle began to
give trouble.

BURDON'S TOMB 91

III

THE CONFESSION OF MISS GILDERAY AND OF
MRS LANGLEY

THE night seemed interminable. Sir Felix
Burdon, an old campaigner, slept well enough in
his deck-chair, but all the others were restless.
In the passage one candle burned. Its flame,
absolutely motionless in the still and yellow air,
was like a piece of burnished metal. At the
farther end of the tomb, in the chambers where
the women slept, low voices could be heard at
intervals all through the first hours of night.

At five in the morning all was still. Mr
Agravine, who had tried a thousand positions,
had found one in which he was able to sleep.
Castle, who had stretched himself at full length
on the sandy floor, lay with his face on one arm,
breathing heavily.

Suddenly Castle sprang to his feet.

" I want to get out of this," he shouted wildly.
" I'm not going to die like a rat in a trap. Let
me out. I've got money to spend, I tell you. I
must get out."

Sir Felix Burdon, awakened by the noise, sprang
to his feet. He was rather angry.

" Hold your row," he said. " D'you want to
wake everybody? If you start that screaming
again, I'll gag you."

92 STORIES IN GREY

Castle collapsed. He sat on the floor, with his
head in his hands, rocking to and fro. " Give me
a drink and I'll keep quiet," he said. " If I can't
get out, give me a drink."

" Oh, go and get what you want," said Sir Felix,
contemptuously.

Agravine, who had lighted his candle, watched
the scene with grave and dispassionate eyes.

Castle went off to the stores. They could hear
him moving about there. Presently he returned
with a cup and a bottle of whisky. His exceed-
ingly elaborate knife contained a corkscrew
amongst other implements, and he drew the
cork.

" Why don't you all join me ? " he asked. " Best
thing you can do."

The other men refused, as briefly as possible.
Castle poured the whisky into the cup and began
sipping it.

" This is doing me good," he said. " I was
suffering from chill. That is what it was. Might
happen to anybody. This is the finest thing on
earth, taken medicinally."

Nobody paid any attention to him. For half
an hour he went on sipping steadily, then he drove
the cork into the bottle with one blow of his fist,
and flung himself at full length on the sand again.
A moment later he was snoring. Sir Felix and
Mr Agravine were both awake now. They glanced
at him and their eyes met.

"Yes," said Agravine. " I'm afraid he's a skunk.

BURDON'S TOMB 93

He was all right in the hotel and all right on the
boat. But this experience has tried him a little
too high. What ought we to do ? "

Sir Felix shrugged his shoulders. " I don't see
that we can do anything. It's only a short time
now, anyhow. I don't know if it's my fancy, but
the air here seems to me to be worse and closer
already. If he wants to die like a hog, he must.
Of course, if he gets noisy, we shall have to take
some measures, but as long as the stuff makes him
sleep — well, he's best asleep."

And then for a while they dozed fitfully. At
seven o'clock they could hear sounds of move-
ment at the farther end of the tomb, and then Zoe
Averil appeared at the entrance of the hall. She
wore a long native robe of dark blue.

" We're making some tea," she said. " Shall I
bring you some ? "

" That would be very kind of you," said Sir
Felix. " I hope you've slept."

" I slept very well indeed. I had a little room
all by myself. But I think the other two did not
sleep so well. Miss Gilderay looks very tired and
worn out."

Miss Gilderay and Mrs Langley brought in the
tea, but waited only for a moment and then went
back to their own quarters. Hot tea, a wash in
cold water, and a change of clothing refreshed the
two men. They sat up and talked in low voices,
while Castle still lay and snored.

" An experience like this," said Agravine, " makes

94 STORIES IN GREY

one realize what an absolutely fantastic and foolish
thing property is. One begins to wonder why
one ever attached any importance to it. As you
know, I simply gave up my life to the acquisition
of one form ol property — beautiful things —
pictures. How absolutely absurd ! Nothing of it
is any good to me now, and I cannot take it along
with me. Here in this small, imprisoned society
for a few hours we lose the sense of property
altogether. I am wearing one of your shirts, Sir
Felix. It doesn't seem to me to matter in the
least whose shirt it is. I really hardly thanked
you. Community of goods becomes quite easy
when one knows that one will soon be dead.
And," he added sardonically, " becomes still easier
when one man in the society finds all the goods,
and the rest simply do the communing."

Sir Felix laughed. He pointed with his foot
to the prostrate Castle. "Shall we wake the
beggar," he said, " and let him clean himself up a
bit?"

" No," said Agravine. " The longer he sleeps,
the better his nerves will be when he wakes."

An hour later Castle awoke of his own accord.
He certainly did seem very much better. He was
ashamed of himself and apologetic.

"Afraid I kicked up rather a row last night.
Sorry. I suppose my nerves gave way. I shall
be all right now that I have had a sleep."

" Oh, yes," said Sir Felix, kindly. " You'll be
all right. You've missed some very good tea by

BURDON'S TOMB 95

your slumbers. I dare say they'll make some
more for you."

" Thanks," said Castle. " I don't want to trouble
them. I'll wait till they join us."

Meanwhile he proceeded with his toilet, and
accomplished the rather difficult task of cutting
himself with a safety razor. Of his own accord he
washed the cups which had been used, and took
them and the whisky bottle back to the store-
room. There he found Zoe Averil and Miss
Gilderay, and remained talking with them for a
little time. Presently the whole party gathered
together again round the trestle-table in the
entrance-hall of the tomb.

The table was laid just as neatly and carefully
as if it had really mattered. The women had seen
to that. Zoe Averil still wore the native robe, the
other two were in their ordinary clothes.

Castle was quite good-humoured at lunch and
very talkative ; it was fairly obvious that he was
drinking too much. Suddenly Miss Gilderay, who
sat next to him, said, in a low voice, " I used to
do that, too."

" Do what ? "

" I'll tell you." She raised her voice and
addressed the others. " I was just saying to Mr
Castle that I, too, have a confession which I might
make. It does not seem to be fair that you, Sir
Felix, and you, Mr Castle, should tell the worst of
yourselves, and that I should still let you believe
the best of me,"

96 STORIES IN GREY

" I don't want you to suppose," said Sir Felix,
" that there's the slightest compulsion upon you to
say even one word. You mustn't feel bound to
disclose anything."

" Down here, so near the end, disclosure is really
very easy. You see, it does not matter any more.
I shall not be mixing with other people. I have
not got to pretend that I am almost without fault.
The only thing I am afraid of is that you will
laugh at me, or want to laugh at me. I've got no
illusions about myself. I know that I am not
pretty and never have been pretty. I am elderly,
and it must seem absurd for me to speak of
romance and love."

" I feel sure," said Mr Agravine, " that we shall
not want to laugh at you. No one ever wants to
laugh at anything which is quite genuine."

" Hear, hear," said Castle, rapping noisily on the
table.

Miss Gilderay moistened her lips with the tip of
her tongue, looked at them unflinchingly, and
began to speak.

" My father was the vicar ot a London church
which was in its way rather celebrated. The
music was very good. The ritual was very ornate,
and the sermons were very short. My father was
a good musician and a very fair man of the world.
He understood business thoroughly, and the greater
part of his income was derived from careful specu-
lations. There was a stockbroker in his congrega-
tion, an old man called Baldwin, who thought very

BURDON'S TOMB 97

highly of my father — as, indeed, most people did
— and he used to advise him. My father was very
careful that the world in general should know
nothing of these business transactions, but to me
he always defended them. He said that there
were many calls upon his charity, and that one
could only give in proportion to one's income.
If he made money in Steel Commons, then he had
the more to give away. He reminded me that
some of the apostles themselves got their living
as fishermen. It did not seem to me the same
thing at all, but I did not criticize him. I was too
fond of him to be critical.

" I used to help my father a good deal, doing
all his secretarial work for him. I would type out
his sermon and his instructions to his broker all in
the same morning.

" The choir of the church was for the most part
paid, and paid by my father out of his own pocket.
He said it was almost impossible to get good music
except from professionals. But one day he came
to me in a state of great delight. He had found a
new and admirable singer, a tenor, who was willing
to give his services for nothing. ' He's a gentle-
man,' said my father, and paused. 'Or almost,'
he added. I laughed, and told him that I knew
that kind.

"When I saw the new tenor — Henderson his
name was — I still felt that I knew that kind. He
had good looks of rather a common description.
His eyes were too small, his face too fat. He

was slightly under the average height, I should
G

98 STORIES IN GREY

say. I was quite prepared to take no interest
him whatever.

"And then I heard him sing, and forgot the
man in the voice. He had a real tenor, and his
singing was perfectly true. Somehow it was
impossible to hear it without believing that behind
that voice there was a beautiful and noble tem-
perament. As a matter of fact, I know now that
this is one of the commonest of illusions. Music
has its special beauty, which is quite isolated. It
does not imply any other beauty of any kind.

" But that was ten years ago. Every Sunday I
heard that man sing. I do not think now that I
fell in love with the man, but I fell in love with
the voice, and began to make inquiries about him,
and found nothing very romantic. He was em-
ployed in an insurance office and was doing very
well. He was unmarried and lived with his two
sisters. One Sunday night he had been taking
the solo part in the anthem, and I suppose that I
was more than usually impressed. At any rate,
when I got home I wrote a foolish letter and sent
it to him.

"It was my belief that I had not committed
myself in any way. I had given no address and
put no signature. In case my hand-writing should
be recognized I had typed the letter.

" Some weeks later my father thought he should
take some notice of this Mr Henderson, and told
me to ask him to dinner. He came, and every minute
I liked him less and less. In the drawing-room
afterwards he got a chance to speak with me apart.

BURDON'S TOMB 99

" * You do all your fathers typing for him, don't
you ? ' he said.

" I assented. I had typed lists and notices for the
use of the choir, which, of course, he would have seen.

"'You ought to have a new letter "f" put on
that machine,' he said. * The top of it's got broken
off. I notice these little things. I have noticed
that broken " f " in everything that you have typed.'

" I did not lose my head. I said it was very
likely, that the machine was always open, and
that it was my belief that one of the housemaids
used it to type her love-letters on. I said that I
would have the T key put right, but that I could
not make out how on earth he came to have
noticed it. This was as good as I could do, but
it did not deceive him, and I saw that it had not
deceived him. Before the evening was over I
hated him far more than I had ever loved him.

"I spent a sleepless night in an agony of
humiliation, and next day I was tortured with
neuralgia. That was the beginning of it. To
relieve the pain of the neuralgia, for the first time
in my life I drank wine."

" Look here, Miss Gilderay," said Sir Felix, " we
quite understand. You need not tell us the rest of it."

Miss Gilderay smiled mournfully. " I am not
going to tell you the whole story. It is quite
loathsome. I do not think I could do it. It is
the story of endless effort and endless failure.
The thing became public at last, and my father
had to leave that parish. He died a few months
afterwards, and I suppose his death saved me.

ioo STORIES IN GREY

At any rate, I have been able to do the most
difficult thing of all. I am not what I once was,
neither am I an abstainer. I drank a glass of
wine at lunch just now. I shall drink another at
dinner. But don't imagine that I am proud of my
victory over myself. I could not be that, knowing
as I do at what cost it was bought. Nor can it ever
blot out of my mind the shame of so much previous
defeat. I have spoken of it with a reason, though."

She looked full at Mr Castle. "All right, all
right," he said impatiently. "All these things
have a physiological explanation."

" Yes," said Mr Agravine. " And what explains
the physiology ? "

Mr Castle glared and said nothing. Zoe Averil
changed her place and nowsat next toMissGilderay.

" It always seemed to me a pity," Mr Agravine
continued, " that any convention which is entirely
false should be generally accepted. That is the
case of the convention that divides people into
saints and sinners. There are no saints, and in a
sense there are no sinners. We are human beings,
defective, but with some goodness. If we could
only get that to be recognized, if that were the
general opinion of society, society would be all the
better for it."

" I've often thought," Sir Felix said, " that the
case is very hard of a man who goes to prison
once. What happens to him when he comes out ?
By most people he is not forgiven, and in the
other cases forgiveness is patronage. Both are as
bad as can be. And yet I don't see what other

BURDON'S TOMB 101

line is to be taken. To treat crime solely as dis-
ease is more amiable than practical."

" I have no panacea," said Mr Agravine. " I can't
make a new heaven and a new earth. But in my
time I have often wished I could make a new earth."

"The fact of the case is," said Mrs Langley,
" that one can't make any general rules at all. We
can only deal with special cases as they arrive as
intelligently and as humanely as possible."

" I see," said Mr Castle, " that you take a very
superior standpoint, Mrs Langley. You pose as a
righteous person, who is to do her best for people
like — well, like Miss Gilderay and myself."

" I do not pose at all," said Mrs Langley. " I
was not thinking of how I should judge, but of
how I should wish to be judged. If you want to
know, I have already made my confession. Miss
Gilderay has been a friend of mine for three years
past. Last night I told her something that I had
never told her or anybody else before. I am not
going to tell you any more now, except that some
time after my marriage I went through a week of
madness. My punishment has been that I have
had to be a coward, that I have had to join in the
general combination against more than one woman,
though I knew that they were little if at all more
guilty than myself. You have made me face this
shame before you men. Now are you content ? "

" You know perfectly well that I had intended
nothing of the kind."

He moved away from the table, and sat in the
farthest corner of the hall with his back to the

102 STORIES IN GREY

others. Presently he took a cigarette from his
case and lit it.

" I say," said Sir Felix. " Just put that down,
will you, and stick your heel on it."

Mr Castle scowled, but did as he was told. The
others rose and began to clear away the things on
the table.

IV

THE CONFESSION OF MR AGRAVINE AND THE
STORY OF MISS AVERIL : AND SO TO A
CONCLUSION

THE three women spent most of the afternoon
in their own quarters. In the hall Mr Agravine,
with his pocket-knife in his hands, sat and carved
a peach stone ; he was astonishingly clever at
work of that kind. Sir Felix wrote with the writ-
ing-block on his knee. If, as seemed likely, their
bodies were ultimately dug out, he wished to leave
behind him some instructions witn reference to
his property, and also with reference to the ex-
cavation work which he had in hand. Castle did
nothing but sit in sulky silence.

At five o'clock Sir Felix looked at his watch.
" Agravine," he said, " we've been shut up now for
twenty-six hours. What d'you think of it ? "

" I think another twenty -two hours will see the
end of it. Before that time we shall have to light
the charcoal stove and finish quickly. Have you
got it ready ? "

" Not yet. Come along to the store-room, and
I'll show you how the thing works."

BURDON'S TOMB 103

Castle followed the two men and stood watch-
ing them, his hands in his pockets. Once or twice
he asked a brief question. The visit to the store-
room gave him an opportunity to resume posses-
sion of the whisky bottle. Before dinner-time he
had finished it. The other two men remonstrated
with him, but he said gloomily that a man con-
demned to death had the right to eat and drink
what he liked. He refused to join the others at
dinner.

In truth dinner had become a farce. Confine-
ment and oppressive air had destroyed the appetite
of all of them. Even their conversation was at
first quite without animation. But presently Miss
Gilderay said :

" Do you know what Zoe Averil has been telling
us this afternoon ? She says that she hears some-
body coming."

"Don't laugh at me," said Zoe Averil. "I'm
quite sure."

Sir Felix looked across at Mr Agravine. Were
they all of them going mad, then ?

" I don't see the possibility of it," said Sir Felix.

Suddenly from his corner Mr Castle burst into
a loud laugh. "What else did you expect?" he
shouted. " It is the high priest come back to see
the Christians who have defiled his tomb, and to
watch their last agony."

" 1 think," said Mr Agravine, " that you would
do better to be quiet, Mr Castle."

Castle growled that in future he would do what
he liked.

104 STORIES IN GREY

" The question rather is," said Miss Gilderay,
"if we want anybody to come — I mean, if we
want to be rescued. I don't think I do particu-
larly. Life does not hold very much for a plain
and unmarried woman of my age, and yet — "

"Yes," said Mrs Langley, "and yet. I know
what you mean. Instinct is too strong for us.
We thought we were sick of the world, but we
would both go back to it if we could."

" I also," said Sir Felix.

" Not me," shouted Castle. " Not me. I would
go back alone, but not with the rest of you. You
all know too much. One would never be safe.
At least, you think you know too much. That
story I told you was make-up, to draw you all on.
Idiots ! Fools ! "

Sir Felix stood up. " Get out of this, Mr Castle.
We cannot have you with us."

Castle did not move till Sir Felix was quite
near him. Then he rose and lurched out of the
hall and down the passage, flinging himself into
one of the chambers at the side.

They went back to the point at which he had
interrupted them. " Personally," said Mr Agra-
vine, " I think I should be contented either way.
The effect of being buried alive for a few hours
has been to show me that the whole of my life has
been a mistake. I have been a collector, as you
know. True, I have collected beautiful things.
That makes no difference. Property has been my
master. Property has made me do base and de-
grading things. Of one thing I am certain. If

BURDON'S TOMB 105

by any chance Miss Averil were right, and we
were rescued, I would change my way of life.
My pictures should go to the nation. I would be
the slave of property no longer."

" I don't think I quite understand," said Mrs
Langley, " what you mean by that."

" I will tell you. It can hardly be called a con-
fession. It is really too paltry for that. I was
hypnotized, fascinated, by the collector's mania,
and that drove me into stupidities."

" Still," said Mrs Langley, " tell us. It will make
the time pass."

" I suppose," said Mr Agravine, " that it is not
the love of beautiful things which degrades. I
hope not, for I have always had that love. De-
gradation comes, not from love, but from posses-
sion, and that applies to more things than pictures.
Until quite recently I was not a wealthy man.
All that I could possibly spare was spent in the
acquisition of what might be called stagnant capital.
The possession of a thousand-pound picture costs
a man forty pounds a year, whether he knows it
or whether he does not. I was frequently hard
pressed for money. I was frequently tortured by
being compelled to relinquish some purchase on
which I had set my heart.

"Such things do one no good. Again, I have
not been a picture-dealer in the accepted sense of
the word, but I have often sold one beautiful thing
in order to acquire something which I thought
more beautiful. I made the greatest profit that
I possibly could. I brought commerce very near

io6 STORIES IN GREY

to a swindle. One instance particularly lingers in
my memory. It was a thing which I did quite
deliberately, and it now seems to me both cruel
and absurd to have done it. A friend of mine
told me that he knew an old Frenchman living at
Eastbourne who wished to dispose of a picture.
He knew nothing of its history, but believed it to
be good. He wanted an expert opinion upon it,
and I was an expert. To oblige my friend I went
down to Eastbourne one Saturday to see this
Frenchman — Janvier his name was. Janvier was
a bachelor living in a small house, with just suffi-
cient income of his own. In all matters of art I
soon found that he was absolutely ignorant, but
none the less he had from time to time bought
pictures, some twenty of them. He brought out
his great prize, the picture which he believed to be
good, and I was able to tell him at once where-
abouts in the National Gallery he would be able
to find the original of which it was rather a poor
copy. But among the twenty there was one other
picture which I saw at once I should have to buy.
I asked him about it. ' It was sold me,' he said-
he spoke admirable English — 'as being, in all
probability, by Corot.'

" I laughed, and told him that a great many
pictures were sold in that way, and that if Corot
had lived to a hundred years and painted every
minute of his time he could not have covered all
the canvases that have since been assigned to him.
All the same, that picture was a genuine and very
fine Corot, and I knew it.

BURDON'S TOMB 107

" ' I gave ten pounds for it,' said Janvier, ' and I
would not take less than twenty.'

" I told him that a hundred per cent, seemed
rather a large profit to expect, but after a certain
amount of grumbling I wrote him a cheque for
twenty and took the picture back to town with me.
It is one of the best things in my collection and it
is worth a very large sum, and I am heartily
ashamed of it."

" But," said Miss Gilderay, " is there, after all, any-
thing dishonest about it? If the people who are
ignorant try to do business with the people who are
expert, has not the expert got the right to profit
by it?"

"It ought not to mean that he should buy a fine
Corot for twenty pounds. Do you still hear some-
one coming, Miss Averil ? For I assure you that if
we are ever released Janvier shall have his picture
back."

"Well," said Sir Felix, "we have all told our
stories now except Miss Averil. And she is too
young to have any story to tell."

" I have done good things and bad things, but
nothing very good or very bad," said Zoe.

" And yet," said Sir Felix, " you said you
were not sorry that this had happened, and that
your life was to come to an end."

" That is true. But it is the future, and not the
past, from which I was eager to escape. I will
tell you just a little thing, a scrap of family history.
My parents died when I was a child, and one of
my earliest recollections is that I was rather proud

io8 STORIES IN GREY

of my hair, because an artist had admired it and
had asked to paint me, and that my mother told
me not to be proud of it, and that if I knew it
would be a cause of grief to me. I did not know.
She was speaking of a tradition which had been in
our family for six generations. It was only a
year ago that in some papers of my father's I
came upon the story. From time to time during
the last six generations a girl had been born in
the Averil family with hair like mine, and in every
case she had come to disaster. In most of the
cases recorded she had died insane. During their
lifetime my father and mother had said nothing of
this to me, and I believed that, if my father had
not died so suddenly, he would have destroyed those
papers, in order to spare me. Ever since I read
them I have been haunted. For it is true that I
am not quite normal. Every now and then, not
at my own wish, and often to no serious purpose, I
have had what Mrs Langley calls that special
sense. I have seen things that were happening
far away. It's a pity, because I love life."

" And if we are rescued ? " said Mr Agravine.

" What is to be is to be. If I had meant to take
my life, I should have done so a year ago. If I
am rescued, I shall go back and meet whatever
fate has got for me. And I think we shall be
rescued, for now I hear far more distinctly the sound
of people coming. Listen ! Can you not all hear it ? "

For a moment all held their breath. There was
a tense, deep silence. And then suddenly Mr
Agravine rose and put his ear to the wall.

BURDON'S TOMB 109

"It is so," he said. "Come here, Burdon,and listen."

Sir Felix listened for a moment.

"There can be no mistake about it. That is the
sound of picks. There are many of them at work.
In a few hours now they should get through to us."

" Wouldn't it be a good thing if I went and told
Mr Castle ? " said Zoe Averil. " I think it was he
who most wanted to get back to the world again."

" No," said Sir Felix. " Don't do that. I will
go and tell him myself."

He went, and in a few moments returned. He
said nothing until Miss Gilderay questioned him.

" Yes," he said. " I've told him."

" Hasn't that made any difference ? " asked Mrs
Langley. " What did he say ? "

" He says that the spirit of the high priest is in
him, and that this is his tomb. Nothing else.
Mad, of course. But he is perfectly quiet. He
will probably recover when he gets out of this."

The women had a feeling that their rescuers
should find them ready, and that everything should
be in order. Helped by Sir Felix and Mr Agravine,
they cleared the table out of the hall altogether.
In the chamber where he lay, they could hear Mr
Castle breathing heavily, as though asleep.

About an hour later, as Sir Felix and Mr
Agravine sat listening to the sound of the picks,
the women entered. Mrs Langley was drawing on
her gloves and carried her camera. Zoe had
changed into her own clothes again. Miss
Gilderay had rearranged her hair. They were all
quite ready.

no STORIES IN GREY

"This is good of you," said Sir Felix. " It will
be much pleasanter if we five all wait together.
There is only another hour or two now. Listen ! "

They could hear the blows of the picks. They
sat down, and for a time talked a little, wondering
who had organized the rescue and how it had been
accomplished. And presently, because the air was
very heavy and they had been short of sleep the
night before, and a great strain had been taken off
their minds, they became drowsy.

" I believe I'm going to sleep," said Miss
Gilderay, leaning back in her deck-chair,

"I too," said Sir Felix. "Why not? It will
help to pass the time of waiting."

Soon they were so soundly asleep that they did
not hear the stealthy footsteps from the adjoining
chamber.

Silent and barefooted, carrying the glowing
charcoal stove in his hands, Castle crept into the
store-room. With deep breaths he drew in the
poison. He turned to tear down the curtain that
filled the entrance to the room, in order that the
fumes might spread and all might die together.
But before he could reach it he swayed and fell,
and lay motionless.

And now the picks broke down into the entrance-
hall of the tomb. Through the opening streamed
in a glorious sunlight that made the candle flames
pale, and fresh, untainted air. And with these
came fresh life and fresh courage to face it — for all,
save that dead boy lying behind the curtain by the
charcoal stove.

THE UNKNOWN GOD

THE air of the primitive and remote island was
soft and languorous. Its population consisted of
a man and woman, brown-skinned, and without
any of the blessings of education and religion.
This afternoon the population had been bathing,
and now lay on the sand in the sun.

" Presently," said the man, " we will go and look
at the boat which has drifted ashore."

" Presently," said the girl, lazily. " It is a good
boat."

" Very good boat," echoed the man. " It will
be useful to us." And immediately he fell
asleep.

In a moment or two the girl awakened him.
She was in a philosophical humour, and there is
not much fun in being philosophical all by yourself.

" Are you happy ? " she asked.

" I do not know," said the man. " I have never
thought about it."

" Then you are happy," she said with decision.
" People who think about it are not. I, for ex-
ample, am not."

" If we now roused ourselves a little and caught
a few fish—"

" No," said the girl, decisively, " I wish to talk."

The man sighed.

HI

ii2 STORIES IN GREY

"Do you not know what it is to wish to be
taken out of yourself, and to become somebody
else — to be full of inspiration from the gods?
These days and nights that are always the same
are becoming a burden to me. I want to be dif-
ferent for a little while."

" It is not possible," said the man. " There are
gods undoubtedly. It was always the opinion of
our forefathers that there were gods, but the gods
never interfere with us and we cannot get at
them. Therefore they do not concern us, and it is
much better to catch a few fish."

The girl, looking as if she might burst into tears
at any moment, said that she hated fish, and that
she hated her island, and that she hated herself.

" I wish to meet with one of the gods," she said.
" I wish to talk with someone who is more than
mortal. Tell me what the gods look like."

"As to that," said the man, "more than one
opinion has been expressed. There are some who
say that the gods are like big men, taller than the
palm trees, of gigantic strength. There are others
who say that the gods cannot be seen, and that it
is only by their influence within us that they may
be recognized. To talk of things which we do not
know is very foolish. If you will not catch fish,
let us go and look at the boat."

The woman arose rather sullenly, and followed
him.

They found in the boat a tin containing biscuits.
They had never seen biscuits before, but a little
investigation showed them the use to which they

THE UNKNOWN GOD 113

should be put. They bored holes in them and
hung them round their necks.

They found, moreover, a large square bottle,
containing a colourless fluid. The girl removed
the cork, dipped her finger in the fluid, and touched
her tongue.

"Of what does it taste?" asked the man,
anxiously.

" Of fire and sleep and sin," answered the girl.

" In that case," said the man, " I will go and
fetch our drinking-cups."

The drinking-cups were two halves of the shell
of a cocoanut, smooth and polished by much use.
The man filled them, and they drank in slow sips.
A drink which tastes of fire and sleep and sin
cannot be taken hastily. As she filled their cups
for the second time, the girl observed that she be-
lieved there was a god in that bottle.

Next morning the girl awoke and zigzagged from
the point where she had fallen down the beach to
the sea. She kept her head under water for the
longest possible time. Then she rose to the sur-
face and swam slowly and lazily. Presently the
man's head shot up by her side. He also had been
down below.

" There can be no doubt about it at all," said
the girl. " We have found the unknown god, and
by his influence within us he may be recognized."

"I do not feel at all good this morning," said
the man.

"Nor I," said the girl. "But last night was
H

H4 STORIES IN GREY

magnificent. Never have I danced so long and so
wildly. Never have I laughed so much."

" I had an impression," said the man, as he
swam by her side, "that I was being unusually
witty."

" No," said the girl, " I do not think it was that.
Everything was amusing. I laughed at the sea, I
laughed at the boat, I laughed at the trees. You
also laughed."

"I remember it," said the man. "The entire
world had suddenly become ridiculous. But this
morning I do not feel at all good." He dived
under a wave with the girl after him, and presently
they lay side by side on the sand.

" It is about this time in the morning," said the
girl, " that we generally catch fish for our breakfast,
but to-day I do not wish to catch fish for my
breakfast, and I think I do not wish to eat any-
thing more as long as I live."

" I have the same feeling," said the man. " Why
then should this be if indeed it was a god that we
found in the boat ? "

" Because," said the girl, " if with great force you
pull the bough of a tree in one direction and then
let go, it will swing with great force in the other
direction. Because last night we were exalted,
therefore this morning we are abased. I am
willing. I pay the price. Why do you get up?
Where are you going ? "

" I am going," said the man, " to see if by any
chance there is still left in the bottle a little of that
drink which tastes of fire and sleep and sin."

THE UNKNOWN GOD 115

" Lie down again," said the girl. " There is not
any left. I have looked into the matter myself."

Two days later the man and the girl built up a
rough altar of white stones on the beach, and on
the top of the altar they placed the bottle in which
the god had lived. The perfume of his presence
was still there. The man thinks now that the girl
spends too much time in the contemplation of
it. And what will happen when the missionaries
land ?

THE LAST CHANCE

I

DAWN was coming. Birds were waking and
twittering in the Embankment Gardens. A cool
breeze swept out the heavy and sultry air of the
night. In another half-hour Mr Horrocks would
be able to extinguish the lights at his coffee-stall.
Meanwhile, in an interval of business, he talked
to a young man who had been a regular customer
of his for many nights past. Mr Horrocks did not
remain idle while he talked. He wiped his counter
down, and gave certain thick cups and saucers
as much washing as he thought would be good for
them. He was a placid and portly man of fifty,
much respected by his customers. If two of these
scarecrows of the night had a difference, they would
occasionally ask Mr Horrocks to adjudicate, and
from his decisions there was no appeal.

The young man who was talking to Horrocks
was in rags, but he was not altogether ill-looking.
He had melancholy eyes and a gentle expression.
His speech was the speech of an educated man.

" I can find nothing to do," he said. " I'm at the
end of my money. I've some thoughts of putting
myself in the water. The trouble is that I can
swim a bit."

Mr Horrocks considered the proposition without
116

THE LAST CHANCE 117

emotion, much as if the young man had said he
was going to have his hair cut.

"I shouldn't advise it," he said. "You never
know your luck. Now, from what some of the
others told me to-night, I rather gathered you was
one time at Cambridge College."

"No. I was an Oxford man. I was sent
down."

" All the same thing," said Mr Horrocks. " It
means you've got eddication. That's a grand
thing. Wish I had it myself. That gives you an
advantage over the others, that does. School-
mastering, now — that's open to you."

" In these clothes ? And with no character ? "

" That's against you," Mr Horrocks admitted.
"Done time?"

He put the question as casually as if he had
been asking the young man if he knew Brighton.

" No, I've never been in prison. I was a gambler
and still am. I drank very hard, but I've given
that up. It has to be all or nothing with me.
I've been chucked by my family and most of my
friends, and I've chucked the rest myself, out of
pride. I believe I have the makings of an artist
in me — a painter, you know."

"Some of the screevers do well enough. You
want a dry day and a good pitch."

" I don't mean that. I mean real painting. But
I can't get at it, and I don't suppose there'd be
any money in it if I could. I can't beg, or steal,
or use any tools that make a nasty noise. Some
men can, but I can't ; I can't do what I don't like."

n8 STORIES IN GREY

"Ah!" said Mr Horrocks. "If you starts
picking and choosing, no wonder you finds it
difficult. You can't afford to do that. That's
what you've got to say to yourself. Seeing now
as you can't get at the painting and decorating,
what is it you do want ? "

" I should like your berth very well," said the
young man.

" Hard work, me young friend. A deal harder
than you think."

" There are some kinds of work," said the young
man, reflectively, " that I don't object to at all. I
like to be out at night. I like to talk to the people
who've gone under. I like to see the dawn coming.
You've got an interesting life, Mr Horrocks. Is
there any money in it ? "

"There isn't a fortune, but there's a livelihood
for a worker."

" If you'd take me on to help you, I'd work."

Mr Horrocks extinguished an evil-smelling flare.

" There's no work for you here," he said. " But
I might find it for you elsewhere."

" Meaning what ? "

" Meaning that I could do with another stall.
I should know where to pitch it, and how to work
it. If I had it, I'd give you a chance. You can't
get a stall and a fit-out like this for nothing. If
you could come to me and put down three golden
sovereigns, I'd start you right away, in a sort of
partnership with myself."

" Three golden sovereigns," said the young man,
and laughed.

THE LAST CHANCE 119

" Well," said Horrocks, " that ought to be possible
for a young man that's been to Oxford College
and had all the advantages."

" Can't be done. I've no more clothes to pawn
— nothing but what I stand up in."

"If that ring on your ringer ain't flash, you've
got a chance still."

The ring was a plain gold signet. The young
man looked at it.

"It's all right," he said. "What could I get
for it?"

" A sovereign. I'd lend you that on it myself.
Then you'd go to the Salvationers, or to the
Church Army, and they'd show you how to
start at peddling. You'll have made the money
in a month. It's worth thinking about. Better
than the river, anyway."

The young man drew the ring from his
finger.

"I hadn't meant to part with this," he said.
"But, however, it's the last chance. Take it,
Mr Horrocks. If you find it's all right, give me
a sovereign for it to-morrow night."

Mr Horrocks examined the ring with great care.
Then he took a sovereign from his waistcoat
pocket and laid it down on the counter.

" You can get quite a nice lot of stuff for that,"
he said. "As much as you can carry. Dress
materials and a line of cheap watches is what I
should recommend. Get hold of the servants at
the good houses. They've all got some money
to spend, and they're mostly mugs."

120 STORIES IN GREY

" No," said the young man. " I'm not going to
do that."

" What, then ? " asked Mr Horrocks.

"Perseus for the Derby," said the young man.
" Didn't I tell you I was a gambler ? "

" They tell me it's all right," said Mr Horrocks.
"There's nothing else in it except the favourite.
I'd thought of backing it myself. Still, you see,
it's no certainty, and the other thing is."

The young man laughed, finished his coffee,
and walked away.

II

EDWARD SEATON tramped from London to
Epsom. This is the cheapest way to go to the
Derby, and on a fine day it is not the least
pleasant. He had deposited his sovereign with
a substantial bookmaker whom he had known
in his younger days. He had threepence in his
possession. One penny of this was to pay for
his breakfast. The remaining twopence was to
help him on his way back to town. Of course, he
might be able to get a lift for nothing, but it was
better to have something in reserve.

Queer and erratic, he saw now a possibility of
the kind of life that he would like. He would do
his utmost to make Horrocks's new coffee-stall
successful. He himself would live as cheaply as
possible. Very soon he would be able to buy the
materials, and, when his night's work was over,

THE LAST CHANCE 121

would get two or three hours of painting before he
went to bed. It was a life which would never
bring him into contact with any of the people
whom he had known in his old days — the people
before whom he felt humiliated. He would be
dealing with the dead-beat, and he understood
them. He had had hours of the greatest excite-
ment, thinking over this last chance, planning the
great results that might ultimately follow from his
partnership with Mr Horrocks. His life so far had
been a mistake. He had tried to live the con-
ventional life, and it had torn up his nerves and
driven him to drink. He had neglected, his one
natural gift. A few sneers from his family had
been enough to make him ashamed, and to
convince him that he could never become an artist.
That was all past now. In future he would model
his life to suit himself, and one day, possibly, he
might find himself back in his old position. What
he had to do was to be independent, to judge for
himself, to map out his own line. In his boyhood
he had tried to be docile, and docility had been a
complete failure.

He was no longer excited. The moment for
that had gone past. He got away from the roaring
crowd on the hill, and sat at a little distance by
himself. He had meant to watch the race, but
after the first false start he found that he could not
stand it. It was better for him to sit quietly with
his head in his hands. He could hear now the
roar of the crowd. " Perseus ! Perseus wins !
Perseus ! "

122

STORIES IN GREY

He rose to his feet now and walked slowly back
to the crowd. He limped badly, for his feet were
blistered with the long walk.

"What's won?" he asked of the first man
he met.

"The favourite," said the man, exultantly.
" Won by a head. Good finish."

Seaton burst out laughing. " Very good finish,"
he said, and turned away.

There would be no hurry to get back to London
now. He spent his twopence on food, for he
was terribly hungry, and then sought out some
spot on the downs where he could lie quiet and
sleep.

As he limped along his eyes caught a bright
object lying in the grass. For one breathless
moment he thought that luck had come back to
him. Then he picked the thing up. It was not a
sovereign, after all. It was a new farthing, on one
side of which a cross had been scratched.

As he stood looking at it two people approached
him. They belonged to the class that he did not
want to meet any more — a man and a woman.
The man was elderly and correctly dressed, a
veritable tailor's triumph. The woman was very
young, pretty, and impulsive in manner.

" You've found it ? " she said eagerly.

Seaton raised his cap. " I have found a new
farthing," he said. "If that is what you mean, I
shall be very happy to return it to you."

She stared at him. His words and appearance
did not seem to consort together. She took the

THE LAST CHANCE 123

coin from him, thanked him, and turned to her
companion.

" George," she said, " give this man a sovereign,
please."

" Certainly, a shilling by all means. And a very
good bargain for you, my fine fellow. If you can
keep on exchanging farthings for shillings you'll
soon be rich."

"Don't be a fool, George. I said a sovereign.
Are you getting deaf already ? "

" Oh, have it your own way," said the man, as
he took the coin from his sovereign-case.

"But," said Edward Seaton to the lady, "why
do you give me a sovereign for a farthing ? "

" Why ? Did you never hear of mascots ? That
farthing's the finest mascot I ever had in my life.
I wouldn't have lost it for anything."

" Here, I say," said the man. " We can't stop
talking to this chap all day."

" Of course you can't," said Seaton.

He took the coin, thanked them, and limped
away. Here, then, was a reprieve. The last
chance was not yet quite over. It was true that his
scheme had failed, but that seemed to him now of
much less importance. He would not be compelled
to walk back to London. And when he got there
he would be able to afford himself the luxury of a
bath and a good bed. Also, he would eat and
drink. And to-morrow, of course, he would die.

He passed through a crowd of shouting book-
makers, and unintentionally his eye fell on the list
of horses for the next race, with the odds chalked

124 STORIES IN GREY

up against them. One of the horses had a name
which arrested him. He picked his bookmaker
very carefully.

" What price Farthing ? " he asked.

" Thirties."

" Right," said Seaton, handing up the coin. " I
want a sovereign on."

The bookmaker was a good-humoured, honest-
looking old fellow. He bent down towards
Seaton.

"Look here," he said. "You don't want no
thick 'un on it. Have a shilling on it. It can't
win. No earthly. I don't want to take a poor
man's money. Put- a shilling on, and save the rest
to buy the missis a tarara."

" I dare say you're right," said Seaton ; " and
you're a good chap, anyhow. But I want to put
that sovereign on. I suppose you can pay if
I win ? "

The bookmaker laughed. " Pay ? Yes, and be
thankful to have the chance. You're the only
man on the earth that's backed it."

A few minutes later Seaton, with thirty-one
pounds in his pocket, was making his way to the
railway station, when once more he encountered
that extremely well-dressed old gentleman.

" I beg your pardon," said Seaton.

" Chuck it ! " said the man. " You get no more
out of me to-day."

" I wanted to return this sovereign. Thank you
very much for the loan of it."

THE LAST CHANCE 125

III

MR HORROCKS could hardly believe his own eyes.
He groped for a possible explanation.

" Then you didn't back Perseus after all ? " he
said.

" I did," said Seaton, "and I lost."

"You've got a new fit-out of clothes. You've
just given me a quid to get your ring back. It
beats me. Oh, I see. Your people have been
coming down with the stuff, eh ? "

" No. After the Derby had been run I borrowed
a sovereign, and backed the winner for the next
race. Thirty to one."

"You, in those rags, managed to borrow a
sovereign up on Epsom Downs? Man, you're a
genius."

"Yes, I know," said Seaton. "But let's talk
business."

"What? You're still game to come in with
me?"

"Of course I am. I've got to live, and I want
to paint. I shall get my living out of the coffee-
stall, and I shall get it in a way that won't upset
and annoy me. I shall have plenty of time left
for painting. I don't sleep much."

Seaton went back with Horrocks to his home
after business, and was presented to Mrs Horrocks.
He examined such accounts as Horrocks kept,
and was surprised to find that so much profit
could be^made by catering, in part, at any rate, for

126 STORIES IN GREY

the last pennies of the dead-beat. Of course,
Horrocks had working-men customers as well,
substantial men who really breakfasted. For the
next few nights Seaton assisted Horrocks with his
stall, and learned more thoroughly the details of
the trade. After that he managed another stall by
himself.

Ten years later, when Edward Seaton was
elected Associate of the Royal Academy, nobody
was surprised. Many thought that he should have
been elected earlier.

Good fortune had followed him persistently.
The first two pictures that he sent to the Academy
were hung on the line. They were London sub-
jects— " Dawn on the Embankment " and " Satur-
day Night in the Edgware Road." They were
mentioned with approval by a bishop preaching in
Westminster Abbey. In all questions of art the
bishop was an innocent child. But that did not
matter. Through the whole of Monday there was
always a little group of people in front of Seaton's
pictures. A critic, who had returned to the show
after many days, in order to settle a point in
dispute between himself and another critic, noticed
the group, and for the first time noticed Seaton's
pictures. He spent about half an hour on them,
and then decided to discover Seaton.

He discovered him in an article in a daily paper,
also in various paragraphs, also in conversation
with critics and other artists. The innocent
bishop, finding to his utter amazement that he had

THE LAST CHANCE 127

for once appreciated a work of art, purchased
" Dawn on the Embankment " for the sum of one
hundred pounds. He subsequently sold it for five
hundred, and we may be sure that he devoted the
profits to some good purpose.

Having taken his line, Seaton kept it. He never
painted a portrait. He never painted anything
except London. The critic who had been his first
evangelist was in the habit of saying that Seaton
had discovered London. In the following exhi-
bition he again showed two pictures — " Sunset in
Regent's Park " and " The Coffee-Stall." He sold
both of these, and sold them well. It was at this
juncture that he gave up work at the coffee-stall
himself, and became known once more to his family
and friends. His family, having done their very
utmost to prevent Edward from becoming an artist,
now rejoiced in a success which, they asserted and
believed, they had always foretold.

On the occasion of his election a few bachelor
friends of his asked him to dine at the club. They
were for the most part artists, but the talk after
dinner strayed over many subjects, and lingered
finally on the subject of the theatre. "I often
wonder," said old Burden, " what became of Mar-
garet Gaye. She was about the finest Juliet we've
ever had. She could play comedy too, and she
was as pretty as one could wish. I wonder why
we never hear of her now."

" She's been ill," said another man. " I know it
because I was painting her portrait at the time.
That was a queer thing. She showed me her

128

STORIES IN GREY

mascot, a farthing with a cross scratched on it.
Her belief in it was intense. She said she would
never part from it and that while she had it her
luck would never leave her. Next day she was
down with rheumatic fever. It was nearly a year
ago, and I've got that unfinished portrait in my
studio still. I've never seen her since."

" Why not ? " asked Seaton.

"I ought to have done. Meant to have done.
But just at that time I was most appallingly busy,
and afterwards it slipped out of my mind. I sup-
pose she's still alive, as we've seen no obituary
notices. I'd go and look her up next week, if I
knew where she lived. She had a house at Earl's
Court, but somebody or other told me she had
given that up and gone away."

"Let's see," said Seaton, reflectively. "Whom
did she marry ? "

"Never married anybody. Might have done.
As things have turned out, I dare say it would
have been better for her if she had. I don't
suppose she had saved much money. She was a
reckless little woman, and a born gambler."

" Gambling's a mistake," said Seaton, as he filled
his glass and passed on the decanter. He himself
played bridge for half-a-crown a hundred now, and
never for any higher point, and never made a bet.
He had given up teetotalism and drank wine at
dinner and at no other time. He had got himself
in hand. It had taken a good deal of doing, but it
was done.

On the following morning Seaton went to a

THE LAST CHANCE 129

private inquiry office. " I want," he said, " the
present address of Miss Gaye."

" Margaret Gaye ? The actress ? " asked the
private detective.

"Yes. About a year ago she had a house at
Earl's Court. That's all I can tell you. Can you
do that for me ? "

The detective smiled. " I wish I was never
asked to do anything more difficult, sir."

" You understand that it must be done without
Miss Gaye's knowledge, without causing her any
annoyance."

"Quite so. As a matter of course. You will
have the address to-morrow, sir."

IV

SEATON drove down to Wimbledon in his own car.
Then he sent the driver back with the car and
started on foot in search of the house. He found
it with no great trouble — a very small house in a
very back street — and a very young servant
answered the bell.

"Is Miss Gaye in?"

"Well," said the maid, doubtfully, "she is in,
but—"

" Give her this note — my card's in it — and ask if
she will see me."

In a minute the maid returned. " Miss Gaye
will see you, sir."

Seaton was shown into a drawing-room of the

130 STORIES IN GREY

smallest size, principally furnished with a grand
piano. As he entered Margaret Gaye rose from
her chair by the fire, still holding his note in one
hand. She was thinner than when he last saw her,
and she was older — as a matter of fact, thirty-two.
The impression she made on Seaton was that
her beauty had become etherealized and rather
pathetic.

" I don't understand this at all," she said, as she
shook hands with him. "You say I once saved
your life. I never did anything so heroical. I'm
afraid I've saved very little, and certainly not the
life of a famous artist. Won't you sit down and
tell me about it, Mr Seaton ? "

He sat down and told her his story, from
beginning to end.

"Then," she said, "it was true what I read in
one of the newspapers — that you once kept a
coffee-stall?"

"Perfectly true. Quite interesting work for a
time."

" And is it really true that you've been looking
for me ever since ? "

"Quite true. I did not know your name, you
see. I had nothing to go by. It was only two
nights ago that I was dining with some artists,
and they spoke with admiration of your
acting."

" I'm afraid that's all over," said Margaret.

" I hope so," said Seaton, and did not appear to
notice that Miss Gaye looked slightly perplexed
at this, "And one of the artists," he continued,

THE LAST CHANCE 131

"happened to mention your farthing mascot.
Then, of course, I knew."

" I had a very long illness and had to leave
London. I went — well, down in the world. None
of my old friends ever comes near me. How did
you get my address ? "

"In the dirtiest possible way — through a private
inquiry office. If any dirtier way had been
necessary I would have taken that. It has taken
me ten years to find you. Once I was on the
track I couldn't, of course, have allowed anything
to stop me."

"Why not?"

"But it's so obvious. Now tell me all about
yourself. Who was the man that you called
George ? "

" George Belmont. He was a banker. He was
a very good friend of mine, until he got angry
with me."

" All the same, you were quite right to refuse a
man who was old enough to be your grandfather.
Was he much surprised that I returned him the
sovereign ? "

She laughed. "He was astounded. It made
the story dearest to his heart. He told it every-
where. He dined out on it. He made people sick
of it."

" But won't you get on, please ? I want more
about yourself."

"But really, is there any reason why I should
tell you?"

"There is the best reason in the world, And

132 STORIES IN GREY

you shall hear it later. Let me see. You fell ill.
Go on, please."

And so she told her story, which was ordinary
enough. She had at one time been very successful,
and had earned high salaries. She had been im-
pulsive, generous and improvident. Rheumatic
fever has its sequelae, and she had been ill and
unable to work for a long time. She considered
that she had now entirely recovered — Seaton
disagreed with this — but she found it difficult to
get back into her profession again on the old
basis. She had an offer from one manager, but it
was not very tempting. It was not an offer that
he would have ventured to make two years before.
She was in doubt about it. She still had the
farthing mascot, and though it had not treated
her very well lately, perhaps after all it would give
her a last chance. It was no longer a new farthing ;
it had grown very dingy.

" Perhaps," said Seaton, gravely, " if you paid it
a little attention it would reward you. You should
clean it. Wash it in a twenty-five per cent,
solution of sulphuric acid, and polish with pumice."

Again she laughed. " How on earth do you
know these things ? "

" Quite simple ; I work on copper plates some-
times. Are you going to give me any tea ? "

" Of course I am."

"Then I think I'll step out to the telephone
office first."

" Something you've forgotten ? "

" I sent my car back. I want it to return here

THE LAST CHANCE 133

at seven, to take us both to dine in town. After-
wards we can go to the theatre, or we can talk.
Just as you like."

"But, you amazing person, you haven't even
asked me if I'll go yet. I don't think I ought to,
and I don't believe I've got a dress."

"Oh, yes, you have. And you simply must
come. Do you think, when I've found you after
ten years, that I'm going to let you go again ?
Never ! I won't hear of it. Ah, here's the tea ! "

After tea they cleaned the farthing mascot, and
brought it to a great state of perfection, without
using either sulphuric acid or pumice. As they
did so they talked eagerly, in close proximity.
When the motor-car arrived Margaret Gaye was
quite ready.

As he was driving her back to her house that
night, she mentioned once more the engagement
which had been offered her. " It's not what I like,
but I think I should accept it, don't you ? "

" No, certainly not."

"Why not?"

" Because I do not wish my wife to be on the
stage."

She was astounded. He explained further, and
with considerable eloquence. As he kissed her
when they said good-night, it is probable that she
was convinced.

HER PEOPLE

I

" NOT got your car here to-night, Miss Urwen ? "
asked Mr Fielding.

" It was here," said Lydia. " I sent my maid
back in it with the floral tributes."

"That's you all over," said Mr Fielding, with
enthusiasm. " Any other woman would have kept
her car for herself, and sent her maid back in a
taxi."

" My driver's been up late three nights running
now. That was why I didn't let him wait. I
expect my bouquets were getting rather thirsty too."

"You love flowers?" said Mr Fielding. He
still lingered at the door of the taxi-cab. A kind
old man, but he bored the great violinist extremely.

" Yes, but I don't like to be suffocated by them.
So I let poor Stamford be suffocated by them
instead. Good-night, Mr Fielding. Thanks so
much."

" Mayn't I see you home ? "

" Oh, no ! Certainly not," said Lydia, laughing.
" But thank you again."

" Bore ! " she exclaimed with conviction as the
cab passed down Regent Street. Presently she
picked up the communication tube and spoke to
the driver. He had been given her home address

134

HER PEOPLE 135

away in South Kensington. She now directed
him to stop at the next corner on the near side.
A big private car was waiting here. She dismissed
her cab and overpaid the driver. She always
overpaid everybody. The door of the private car
stood open now, and the young man who had
emerged from it raised his hat to her.

" I've not kept you waiting ? " she said, smiling.
" Old Fielding would cling on to me and talk."

" Poor old Fielding ! " said the young man.
"Get in, won't you? No, you've not kept me
waiting."

The car moved slowly on through the heavy
traffic. For a few seconds they sat in silence.
Then he took her hands and kissed them.

"You're a darling," he said, "and you played
divinely to-night."

" It's a very good thing that you're so fond of
music," she said. " But it's a still better thing that
you don't know too much about it. In that last
movement — well, I was rather glad the maestro
wasn't there. He wouldn't have told me that I
played divinely. It is quite probable that he
would have sworn at me."

" The pig ! " said the man.

" Oh, don't say that. I adore him, you know."

" Do you adore me more ? "

"I shan't tell you anything about it."

" Why couldn't I come straight to the Queen's
Hall for you to-night ? Was it simply the feminine
desire for mystery and romance ? "

" Oh, dear, no ! One must avoid scandal.

136 STORIES IN GREY

That's all. Most people there know your car and
your liveries. Mr Fielding knows that you are a
married man and I am an unmarried woman.
He would come to conclusions."

" I suppose he has to know the truth sooner or
later."

" His conclusions would not be the truth. When
the time comes — when I give myself to you — then
he may know everything. I shall never see him
again then. I shall never see England again."

" You give up too much for me. Your career,
your reputation, everything."

" I want to give up everything for you."

"Two weeks longer to wait. How long two
weeks can be ! "

" But after that our lives are in front of us."

As the car stopped before her house he kissed
her on the mouth. She got out and ran up the
steps. She waited there till the car was out of
sight. Then she opened the door with the little
gold key that hung from her wrist.

II

IT has happened that a horse taken out of the
shafts of a cab has subsequently won a classic race.
Genius has no pedigree. Mr Urwen was a fairly
prosperous grocer and provision merchant at
Helmstone. His wife was kindly and apologetic.
Neither of them had been greatly endowed by
nature. Not one of the other children soared far

HER PEOPLE 137

above the commonplace. Lydia was the star of
the family. She reverted to some long- forgotten
ancestor. Almost her earliest recollection was one
of grief and tears because the piano was out of
tune.

Musical genius has very little chance nowadays
of remaining in obscurity. Lydia's first teacher
spoke to the leader of the orchestra at Helmstone.
The leader of the orchestra sniffed and was superior,
but said he would hear the kid. After he had
heard the kid he passed the news a little further
up the great staircase, and an elderly gentleman in
a fur coat — Mr Fielding, to be precise — came down
from London. Mr Fielding talked to Mr Urwen,
and it was all settled.

Lydia received most of her musical education
abroad. Now that she was in the front rank of
violinists she had perforce to travel much. A part
of the year she was at her own house at South
Kensington. Very seldom was she at home. Her
visits were great occasions. She came laden with
presents and with glory, and the family made no
attempt to conceal their inordinate pride in her.
When Lydia was expected, the piano-tuner was
summoned, and the man with the mechanical piano,
who played waltzes in the drive of The Elms —
Mr Urwen's private residence — was instructed to
discontinue himself until further notice. Mrs
Urwen consulted a little note-book, in which she
had written down every preference that Lydia had
ever expressed.

The two weeks, which to one man were to seem

138 STORIES IN GREY

so long, were drawing to an end. Lydia had made
up her mind to spend her last three days in her
old home. She did not mean to tell any of her
people what her intentions were. She justified
herself to herself. She was about to run away
with a married man ; but that statement did not
tell all the truth. He was married to a woman
who was chronically ill and chronically ill-tempered
— a woman who had told him more than once that
she wished he were dead. For five years he had
suffered for his mistake, and Lydia felt that he had
suffered long enough. As for herself, she had been
adored by many people. Her appearance was of
a romantic type, and many men had fallen under
her spell. She had grown weary of this persistent
adoration, just as she had grown weary of the
scent of too many roses and of the roar of applause.
She had never loved but one man, and to that one
man — whatever the judgment of the world might
be — she intended to give her life. Indeed, she
felt as if she were now going to begin life. All
that had gone before had been but a preparation
for this. She closed the door on her old self, said
good-bye to her own people and went out, as it
seemed to her, towards infinite possibilities.

She had brought much luggage for a three days'
visit, but that did not surprise her family. Lydia
always brought much luggage. Clara said that
she wore a new dress every ten minutes, and was
almost afraid to admire any of them. If she
admired anything of Lydia's, Lydia gave it her at
once.

HER PEOPLE 139

Her father and mother met Lydia at the station.

" It takes a good deal," he said, " to get me away
from my business at three o'clock in the afternoon,
but still there are occasions."

" I wish there were more of them," said Mrs
Urwen. " Your father does too much, Lydia."

Certainly, Lydia thought, he seemed older and
more worn, although he was perfectly cheerful.

"The fact of the case is," he said to Lydia,
"we've had to face some serious competition of
late. One of the big cut-price gangs has started
a branch not ten doors away from my own shop.
For some time I was nervous about it. I met
each move they made. I sold stuff for less than it
cost me, sooner than be left behind."

" It's all right now?" asked Lydia.

" Oh, yes. It's all right now. They hadn't got
the quality — that's where I had my pull. There's
plenty of room for both of us in Helmstone, they
taking the low class, and me taking the rest. We
came to an arrangement. Yes, we're quite on
good terms now. If I meet their manager in the
street we always have a chat together. They
aren't bad people at all for a low-class trade."

" I wish you were out of business altogether,"
said Lydia. "You've done enough. You ought
to take a rest."

"Ah!" said Mr Urwen. "That's what your
mother said. But we're not so rich as all that. It
may come, one of these days."

Two of Lydia's sisters, Clara and Ruth, and
Lydia's youngest brother, Bill, were at home. Her

140 STORIES IN GREY

two other brothers were away at a public school,
and her other sister, Catherine, was giving cooking
demonstrations at a domestic training college. Mrs
Urwen gave a favourable report of all the absentees.

" Yes," said Lydia's father, " all my children are
good, and one of them is famous. I don't want to
boast, but upon my word I might."

The three days passed very quietly. The pro-
vinciality and narrowness of her people impressed
Lydia much less than their goodness. Their un-
bounded faith in her touched her. Clara and Ruth
were absolutely without any jealousy. They did
not merely accept the fact that Lydia was brilliant,
and they themselves not. They rejoiced and
gloried in her superiority.

"But," said Lydia to Ruth one day, "you
mustn't exaggerate about me, or you'll make people
laugh at me. I didn't invent the fiddle, you know."

"That's almost what it comes to," said Ruth.
" You show people what can be done with it."

" There have been a few others," said Lydia,
laughing. " Kubelik isn't bad for a beginner."

Her small brother rather amused Lydia. He
was an extremely grave and reserved boy. He
considered any demonstration of affection to be
unmanly. He told Lydia solemnly that he was
pleased to see her. Later he admitted that he had
changed the name of one of his rabbits, and had
changed it in Lydia's favour. Mrs Urwen had to re-
monstrate mildly with Lydia about Bill. He really
ought not to have so much money to spend. He
was too young.

HER PEOPLE 141

If Mrs Urwen felt any uneasiness at all on
Lydia's account, it was because of her extravagance
in the matter of presents. She rained presents
upon the entire family. She sent hampers of
presents to the boys at the public school. She
sent a travelling-bag of great luxury to the demon-
strator of cookery. She showed the utmost in
genuity at discovering things which her father
and mother might possibly want, and great celerity
in procuring them.

"And when shall we see you again?" they
asked when it was time for her to go.

" Soon," said Lydia. " Very soon."

Ill

THE young man drove up to the little junction, left
his magnificent car in the station-yard, and went to
meet the local train from Helmstone. It was late and
leisurely, as usual. Lydia did not travel with her
maid when she went down to Helmstone, and for
a few minutes the man was busy with luggage.

" I've got the car outside," he said.

" Why ? " said Lydia. " You had my letter this
morning, didn't you ? "

"Yes. But I can't leave it like that. Don't
you see that I can't possibly do without you now ?
You must come with me. You belong to me."

He turned to a porter to give a direction about
the luggage, but Lydia forestalled him.

" All those things in the London express. How
long have I to wait?"

142 STORIES IN GREY

"Twenty minutes, m'lady. Should have been
more, but the local's a little after her usual time."

" Very good," said Lydia. " Look after all these
things for me. I have a carriage reserved for me
on the train. The name's the same as on the
luggage. You'll find it when the train comes in."

"I'll see to all that, m'lady. There shan't be
any mistake."

He was not a man of great intelligence, but he
had a fine flair for potential generosity. Ladies
who reserved first-class carriages for themselves
could afford to be generous, and the porter believed
the application of a courtesy title to be soothing
and emollient. He had already addressed the
young man as Captain.

Lydia now turned to the young man.

" I can give you twenty minutes," she said.

" I don't want twenty minutes. I want the
whole of your life."

She shrugged her shoulders.

" Then, if you don't care to talk until the train
comes in, I won't keep you. You said your car
was waiting outside, I think."

"Will you come in here?" he said sulkily,
opening the door of a waiting-room. And before
the fire in the dingy waiting-room they sat on
uncomfortable chairs and talked.

"I suppose," said the young man, "I've done
something you don't like. I don't know what it
is, and you don't tell me in your letter. Tell me
now. I apologize in advance. Surely it must be
something that I can put right again."

HER PEOPLE 143

" No, it's not that," said Lydia.

" Then you have ceased to care for me."

" I shall never cease to care for you," said Lydia
simply and with conviction.

"Then you must come with me now. Think
no more about it, but come. You had quite made
up your mind, you know."

" Yes, I had. I have changed it again, and for
the last time."

" Why ? Tell me at least why."

" I tried to tell you in my letter. But I suppose
I'm not so good at writing as I am at playing the
fiddle. It's — it's almost a matter of business."

"Business? What do you mean? What has
business got to do with it ? "

" One may pay too much for anything. I should
have to pay for my happiness with the misery of
other people. It is like paying for it with stolen
money, and with money stolen from those who
are very dear to me."

" Your people would understand in time. And
when they understood they would forgive."

" You don't know my people at all. It is quite
certain they would forgive. 1 1 is equally certain that
they would never understand. I do not wish them
to have to forgive."

" What is it you mean to do, then ? "

" I am going back to London to-night. I have
had an extremely good offer for an American
tour. It was forwarded to me this morning. To-
morrow I shall see my agent about it. I am going
to accept that offer. I shall be away for six

144

STORIES IN GREY

months, and I shall make a great deal of
money."

"What do you want to make a great deal of
money for? You know that I hate the idea of
your making money on the concert platform.
And, as it happens, there is not the least necessity
for it. If you come with me — "

She tapped the floor with her foot impatiently.

" Must I keep on repeating it ? I am not going
away with you. In future you have my friendship,
if you will accept it. But until you are a free man
you can have nothing else. I am sorry if I hurt
you, but remember that I hurt myself too. It is
better than hurting so many other people. I am
not going to make this money entirely for myself."

Her last words were drowned by the roar of the
express as it entered the station. She had to
repeat them.

" Why, then ? " the young man asked.

" My father is growing old. He seems to have
grown much older in this last year, and — "

The door of the waiting-room opened.

" Don't want to 'urry you, my lady," said the
porter. " But everything's in, and you've only two
minutes. Will the gentleman be coming ? "

" No," said Lydia.

The young man followed her to her carriage.
They reached it only just in time. The porter
noted a certain formality in their farewell hand-
shake. It did not distress him. He had just
received half-a-crown for two pennyworth of work,
and was quite satisfied.

ROSE ROSE

SEF TON stepped back from his picture. " Rest
now, please," he said.

Miss Rose Rose, his model, threw the striped
blanket around her, stepped down from the throne,
and crossed the studio. She seated herself on the
floor near the big stove. For a few moments
Sefton stood motionless, looking critically at his
work. Then he laid down his palette and brushes
and began to roll a cigarette. He was a man of
forty, thick - set, round - faced, with a reddish
moustache turned fiercely upwards. He flung
himself down in an easy - chair, and smoked in
silence till silence seemed ungracious.

" Well," he said, " I've got the place hot enough
for you to-day, Miss Rose."

" You 'ave indeed," said Miss Rose.

" I bet it's nearer eighty than seventy."

The cigarette-smoke made a blue haze in the
hot, heavy air. He watched it undulating, curving,
melting.

As he watched it Miss Rose continued her
observations. The trouble with these studios was
the draughts. With a strong east wind, same as
yesterday, you might have the stove red-hot, and
yet never get the place, so to speak, warm. It is
possible to talk commonly without talking like a

K 145

146 STORIES IN GREY

coster, and Miss Rose achieved it. She did not
always neglect the aspirate. She never quite
substituted the third vowel for the first. She
rather enjoyed long words.

She was beautiful from the crown of her head to
the sole of her foot ; and few models have good
feet. Every pose she took was graceful. She was
the daughter of a model, and had been herself a
model from childhood. In consequence, she knew
her work well and did it well. On one occasion,
when sitting for the great Merion, she had kept
the same pose, without a rest, for three consecutive
hours. She was proud of that. Naturally she
stood in the first rank among models, was most in
demand, and made the most money. Her fault
was that she was slightly capricious ; you could
not absolutely depend upon her. On a wintry
morning, when every hour of daylight was precious,
she might keep her appointment, she might be an
hour or two late, or she might stay away altogether.
Merion himself had suffered from her, had sworn
never to employ her again, and had gone back to
her.

Sefton, as he watched the blue smoke, found
that her common accent jarred on him. It even
seemed to make it more difficult for him to get the
right presentation of the " Aphrodite " that she
was helping him to paint. One seemed to
demand a poetical and cultured soul in so
beautiful a body. Rose Rose was not poetical nor
cultured ; she was not even business-like and
educated.

ROSE ROSE 147

Half an hour of silent and strenuous work
followed. Then Sefton growled that he could
not see any longer.

"We'll stop for to-day," he said. Miss Rose
Rose retired behind the screen. Sefton opened
a window and both ventilators, and rolled another
cigarette. The studio became rapidly cooler.

" To-morrow, at nine ? " he called out.

" I've got some way to come," came the voice of
Miss Rose from behind the screen. " I could be
here by a quarter past."

" Right," said Sefton, as he slipped on his coat.

When Rose Rose emerged from the screen she
was dressed in a blue serge costume, with a
picture-hat. As it was her business in life to be
beautiful, she never wore corsets, high heels, nor
pointed toes. Such abnegation is rare among
models.

" I say, Mr Sefton," said Rose, " you were to
settle at the end of the sittings, but — "

" Oh, you don't want any money, Miss Rose.
You're known to be rich."

"Well, what I've got is in the Post Office,
and I don't want to touch it. And I've got some
shopping I must do before I go home."

Sefton pulled out his sovereign-case hesitatingly.

" This is all very well, you know," he said.

" I know what you are thinking, Mr Sefton.
You think I don't mean to come to - morrow.
That's all Mr Merion, now, isn't it ? He's always
saying things about me. I'm not going to stick
it. I'm going to 'ave it out with 'im."

148 STORIES IN GREY

" He recommended you to me. And I'll tell
you what he said, if you won't repeat it. He said
that I should be lucky if I got you, and that I'd
better chain you to the studio."

" And all because I was once late — with a good
reason for it, too. Besides, what's once? I
suppose he didn't 'appen to tell you how often
he's kept me waiting."

"Well, here you are, Miss Rose. But you'll
really be here in time to-morrow, won't you?
Otherwise the thing will have got too tacky to
work into."

" You needn't worry about that," said Miss Rose,
eagerly. " I'll be here, whatever happens, by a
quarter past nine. I'll be here if I die first !
There, is that good enough for you ? Good after-
noon, and thank you, Mr Sefton."

" Good afternoon, Miss Rose. Let me manage
that door for you — the key goes a bit stiffly."

Sefton came back to his picture. In spite of
Miss Rose's vehement assurances he felt by no
means sure of her, but it was difficult for him to
refuse any woman anything, and impossible for
him to refuse to pay her what he really owed.
He scrawled in charcoal some directions to the
charwoman who would come in the morning.
She was, from his point of view, a prize char-
woman— one who could, and did, wash brushes
properly, one who understood the stove, and would,
when required, refrain from sweeping. He picked
up his hat and went out. He walked the short
distance from his studio to his bachelor flat, looked

ROSE ROSE 149

over an evening paper as he drank his tea, and
then changed his clothes and took a cab to the
club for dinner. He played one game of billiards
after dinner, and then went home. His picture
was very much in his mind. He wanted to be
up fairly early in the morning, and he went to
bed early.

He was at his studio by half-past eight. The
stove was lighted, and he piled more coke on it.
His " Aphrodite " seemed to have a somewhat
mocking expression. It was a little, technical
thing, to be corrected easily. He set his palette
and selected his brushes. An attempt to roll a
cigarette revealed the fact that his pouch was
empty. It still wanted a few minutes to nine.
He would have time to go up to the tobacconist
at the corner. In case Rose Rose arrived while
he was away, he left the studio door open. The
tobacconist was also a newsagent, and he bought a
morning paper. Rose would probably be twenty
minutes late at the least, and this would be some-
thing to occupy him.

But on his return he found his model already
stepping on to the throne.

" Good-morning, Miss Rose. You're a lady of
your word." He hardly heeded the murmur which
came to him as a reply. He threw his cigarette
into the stove, picked up his palette, and got on
excellently. The work was absorbing. For some
time he thought of nothing else. There was no
relaxing on the part of the model — no sign of
fatigue. He had been working for over an hour,

150

STORIES IN GREY

when his conscience smote him. " We'll have a
rest now, Miss Rose," he said cheerily. At the
same moment he felt human fingers drawn lightly
across the back of his neck, just above the collar.
He turned round with a sudden start. There was
nobody there. He turned back again to the
throne. Rose Rose had vanished.

With the utmost care and deliberation he put
down his palette and brushes. He said in a loud
voice, "Where are you, Miss Rose?" For a
moment or two silence hung in the hot air of
the studio.

He repeated his question and got no answer.
Then he stepped behind the screen, and suddenly
the most terrible thing in his life happened to
him. He knew that his model had never been
there at all.

There was only one door out to the back street
in which his studio was placed, and that door was
now locked. He unlocked it, put on his hat, and
went out. For a minute or two he paced the
street, but he had got to go back to the studio.

He went back, sat down in the easy-chair, lit a
cigarette, and tried for a plausible explanation.
Undoubtedly he had been working very hard
lately. When he had come back from the
tobacconist's to the studio he had been in the
state of expectant attention, and he was enough
of a psychologist to know that in that state you
are especially likely to see what you expect to
see. He was not conscious of anything abnormal
in himself. He did not feel ill, or even nervous.

ROSE ROSE 151

Nothing of the kind had ever happened to him
before. The more he considered the matter, the
more definite became his state. He was
thoroughly frightened. With a great effort he
pulled himself together and picked up the news-
paper. It was certain that he could do no more
work for that day, anyhow. An ordinary, common-
place newspaper would restore him. Yes, that
was it. He had been too much wrapped up in
the picture. He had simply supposed the model
to be there.

He was quite unconvinced, of course, and merely
trying to convince himself. As an artist, he knew
that for the last hour or more he had been getting
the most delicate modelling right from 'the living
form before him. But he did his best, and read
the newspaper assiduously. He read of tariff,
protection, and of a new music-hall star. Then
his eye fell on a paragraph headed "Motor
Fatalities."

He read that Miss Rose, an artist's model, had
been knocked down by a car in the Fulham Road
about seven o'clock on the previous evening ; that
the owner of the car had stopped and taken her to
the hospital, and that she had expired within a
few minutes of admission.

He rose from his place and opened a large pocket-
knife. There was a strong impulse upon him, and
he felt it to be a mad impulse, to slash the canvas
to rags. He stopped before the picture. The face
smiled at him with a sweetness that was scarcely
earthly.

152 STORIES IN GREY

He went back to his chair again. "I'm not
used to this kind of thing," he said aloud. A
board creaked at the far end of the studio. He
jumped up with a start of horror. A few minutes
later he had left the studio, and locked the door
behind him. His common sense was still with
him. He ought to go to a specialist. But the
picture —

" What's the matter with Sefton ? " said Devigne
one night at the club after dinner.

" Don't know that anything's the matter with
him," said Merion. " He hasn't been here lately."

" I saw him the last time he was here, and he
seemed pretty queer. Wanted to let me his
studio."

" It's not a bad studio," said Merion, dispassion-
ately.

" He's got rid of it now, anyhow. He's got a
studio out at Richmond, and the deuce of a lot
of time he must waste getting there and back.
Besides, what does he do about models?"

" That's a point I've been wondering about
myself," said Merion. " He'd got Rose Rose for
his ' Aphrodite,' and it looked as if it might be
a pretty good thing when I saw it. But, as you
know, she died. She was troublesome in some
ways, but, taking her all round, I don't know
where to find anybody as good to-day. What's
Sefton doing about it ? "

" He hasn't got a model at all at present. I
know that for a fact, because I asked him."

ROSE ROSE 153

"Well," said Merion, "he may have got the
thing on further than I thought he would in the
time. Some chaps can work from memory all
right, though I can't do it myself. He's not
chucked the picture, I suppose ? "

" No ; he's not done that. In fact, the picture's
his excuse now, if you want him to go anywhere
and do anything. But that's not it : the chap's
altogether changed. He used to be a genial sort
of bounder — bit tyrannical in his manner, perhaps
— thought he knew everything. Still, you could
talk to him. He was sociable. As a matter of fact,
he did know a good deal. Now it's quite different.
If you ever do see him — and that's not often —
he's got nothing to say to you. He's just going
back to his work. That sort of thing."

" You're too imaginative," said Merion. " I
never knew a man who varied less than Sefton.
Give me his address, will you ? I mean his studio.
I'll go and look him up one morning. I should
like to see how that ' Aphrodite's ' getting on. I
tell you it was promising ; no nonsense about it."

One sunny morning Merion knocked at the door
of the studio at Richmond. He heard the sound
of footsteps crossing the studio, then Sefton's
voice rang out.

" Who's there ? "

"Merion. I've travelled miles to see the thing
you call a picture."

" I've got a model."

" And what does that matter ? " asked Merion.

154 STORIES IN GREY

" Well, I'd be awfully glad if you'd come back in
an hour. We'd have lunch together somewhere."

" Right," said Merion, sardonically. " I'll come
back in about seven million hours. Wait for me."

He went back to London and his own studio in
a state of fury. Sefton had never been a man to
pose. He had never put on side about his work.
He was always willing to show it to old and
intimate friends whose judgment he could trust ;
and now, when the oldest of his friends had
travelled down to Richmond to see him, he was
told to come back in an hour, and that they might
then lunch together !

" This lets me out," said Merion, savagely.

But he always speaks well of Sefton nowadays.
He maintains that Sefton's "Aphrodite" would
have been a success anyhow. The suicide made a
good deal of talk at the time, and a special attend-
ant was necessary to regulate the crowds round
it, when, as directed by his will, the picture was
exhibited at the Royal Academy. He was found
in his studio many hours after his death ; and he
had scrawled on a blank canvas, much as he left
his directions to his charwoman : " I have finished
it, but I can't stand any more."

SAINT MARTIN'S SUMMER

I

JUDITH SECCOMBE'S papa had white hair but a
young heart, and a great capacity for enjoyment
when it could be reconciled with his conscience.

When he took the house in South Kensington
he told himself he did it entirely on Judith's
account. She was seventeen. It was necessary
that she should go about and see the world. She
must make the acquaintance of his many friends.
Judith whirring over the asphalt, in a taxi-cab,
thought of a wood she knew where the bluebells
made one sheet of colour. But London never
bored her father.

To-night he had been quite apologetic. He had
only been able to procure one stall for the first
night of the Pinero play. His daughter could not
go to the theatre alone, but he could. On the
other hand, he had a guest in his house, an old
friend, Gilbert Raynor by name. But Raynor
showed him that he did not in the least wish
to go to the theatre and that he did not in the
least mind being left alone. "Judith and I will
make some music, perhaps."

So they dined rather earlier than usual, and
even so, Judith's papa had to hurry off before the
coffee had been brought.

155

156 STORIES IN GREY

"Isn't he wonderful?" said Judith. "He goes
to everything, he does everything, he enjoys every-
thing. And I myself am weary to death of it all.
When one does the same things over and over
again, that is not amusement, that's business."

"Young people never understand the en-
thusiasms of the aged. We old people — "

" You are not old," Judith interrupted.

" Forty-eight," said Raynor, " which is on the
whole a little worse than sixty-eight."

"Numbers don't mean anything," said Judith.
" Come upstairs and I'll play to you."

Presently Raynor sat before the fire in the big
drawing-room and listened to Beethoven's E Minor
Sonata. The room was lit only by the candles at
the piano and by the glow of the fire.

II

MRS RAYNOR had not accompanied her husband
on this visit. London was too noisy for her and
the country was too quiet. A provincial town on
the sea-coast met her requirements. As a rule it
met her husband's requirements as well. He did
not care very much where he lived. They had
been married twenty-four years, and were the
parents of two grown-up sons who had a passion
for being correct that almost amounted to priggish-
ness. In the inevitable course of nature and
circumstance romance had died both for Gilbert
and his wife. There was still affection. The

SAINT MARTIN'S SUMMER 157

chief evidence of it on her side was her suspicious-
ness. Love leaves a deposit of jealousy just as a
river throws down mud.

Listening now to the music, Gilbert thought
about his family. About this time of the evening
Harold, the younger son, who was still at Oxford,
would be talking dogmatically of his own fastidious
tastes in wines. Frederick, the elder son, would
possibly be examining with care and a magnifying-
glass the objects dearest to his heart. He was a
philatelist and an expert. Mrs Raynor would
either be grumbling at a servant or reading a
novel. These two splendid occupations nearly
filled her life.

It might all very easily have been so much
worse. Harold knew too much about vintages,
but he was not intemperate. Frederick would do
very well in the bank in which his father was a
senior partner. Mrs Raynor had become slightly
shrewish, but had no other bad habits.

And it might all very easily have been so much
better. The colour of life was fading for him into
a grey monotone. There were no more great
possibilities. A man of forty-eight, so Gilbert
reflected, ought to be very fond of his dinner.
There is nothing else left of which he can be very
fond.

His eyes fell on Judith. She was playing now
the ecstatic melody of the second movement, and
her eyes shimmered in the candle-light under dark
lashes. He could remember her as a child of
eight. With a sudden impulse he got up and

158 STORIES IN GREY

walked to the door. He ran his hand over the
switches of the electric light. White light suddenly
applied changes very often the train of one's
thought, and his own thoughts were getting too
much in tune with the evening, with the firelight,
with the music, with the faint perfume of the heavy
drooping tulips on the mantelpiece. An evening
paper lying on the table was a further corrective.
He opened it at the city intelligence and read
with care the figures which showed him what
rubber and oil were doing. The music
stopped.

Judith came and stood beside him, leaning one
arm on the mantelpiece. In this position the loose
white sleeves fell back. She looked down at him,
and under her gaze he moved uneasily in his
chair. He folded the newspaper and flung it
down.

" Why did you do that just now ? " she asked.
" All these lights, I mean."

" I wanted," he said, " to see the price of Shell
Transport."

She walked to the door and paused with one
hand poised over the switches. " Do you mind ? "
she said. " I don't like very much light to-
night."

Again the «room was lit only by the glow of
the fire and by the candles at the piano. She
knelt down on the hearth-rug, spreading almost
transparent hands to the fire.

" What was the price of Shell Transport ? " she
asked.

SAINT MARTIN'S SUMMER 159

The question was unexpected, and he gave
the true answer.

" I don't know," he said.
She sighed deeply.

Ill

"TAKE me away with you," she said suddenly.
The tone of the voice was serious, almost as if
she had meant what she said.

"Where shall we go?" he asked in the same
tone.

" I don't think I mind very much. I should
like it to be so far away that it took us days to
get there. It must be a lonely place, too."

He looked at her and said nothing, wondering
what was happening and what might possibly
be going to happen.

Her voice shook a little as she spoke. " Do
you love me so very, very much ? " she said.

It was not till that moment that he knew how
very, very much he did love her.

"Why do you think so?" he asked. "Tell me
about it."

" I know about you," she said. " Don't you
know about me, too ? "

" What is it you have to tell me ? "

She rose to her feet, and walked a few steps
away from him. Her back was turned to him as
she spoke.

" I love you very, very much," she said. " I

160 STORIES IN GREY

love you more than all the world. I know it's
wicked and I don't mind it. I know I had never
meant to say it, and I have said it."

He was a guest in the house of the girl's father,
his own old friend. About a hundred miles
further north an elderly, thin-lipped lady (probably
complaining at the moment that the silver candle-
stick that would light her to her rest had been
imperfectly cleaned) had a sure claim upon him,
and had once loved him. A smooth-haired young
man (counting the perforations of a forged colonial
stamp) had also a right to expect that his elderly
father should not bring scandal upon the family.

But there was also the girl Judith to think
about, standing trembling in the dim light and
waiting for him. Here in this quiet room, at this
very moment, was, he knew, the last chance of
poetry and of paradise. In a flash he saw his
whole course clear in his mind. He went to her,
put his arms around her and kissed her on the
mouth. He said nothing. For a moment or two
she rested her head on his shoulder. And then
she went back to the fire again and knelt down
and spread out her hands as before.

They heard now the sharp burr of the electric
bell downstairs. Judith smiled faintly and
wanly.

" He has forgotten his latchkey again," she said.
" He always forgets it."

" Listen," said Gilbert. " This is our good-bye.
We can have no more than we have had. It will
be a secret between us, and I shall never forget

SAINT MARTIN'S SUMMER 161

it. I am called away on business early to-morrow
morning. Do you see ? "

She nodded, caught his hand and kissed it,
and went to the piano. She began to play once
more the melody of the second movement.

The door opened and Judith's papa entered,
rubbing his rather fat white hands together and
looking pleased with the world.

"Well, you two people," he said. "You have
missed a most glorious evening."

IV

JUDITH did not appear at breakfast next morning,
and soon afterwards Gilbert Raynor received the
necessary telegram and had his bag packed. His
conscience did not trouble him. He felt more
at peace with the world than he had done for
a long time past.

When, some five years later, Judith married,
quite as well as could have been expected, he sent
her a little silver statuette by an artist of great
repute, but did not attend the ceremony.

Two years afterwards they met in Paris, and
with a look of clear innocence in her beautiful
eyes she introduced him to her husband.

"Mr Raynor, a very old friend of my father's.
He used to know me when I was quite a little
kid."

THE DOLL

I

" A WAX doll, please," said the woman, and the shop-
man, conjecturing from her appearance the amount
she would spend, showed her something at two
shillings.

Certainly, Miss Mordaunt was not wealthy, and
did not look wealthy. Her dress was severely
plain. She might have looked much prettier than
she did, for she had fine eyes and beautiful dark
hair. She would not cut her hair, but she packed
it into the smallest possible compass, converting
the glory of the woman into a neat, hard parcel.
Her age was thirty-two, and she earned thirty
shillings a week.

But the two-shilling doll did not please her.

" Not made to take off, I see," she said rather
disdainfully.

" No, miss," the shopman admitted ; " but we
have a better article here with the removable
clothing. Four-and-two this one. A nice thing."
Miss Mordaunt took it up tenderly. She made it
shut and open its eyes ; but it did not satisfy her.

"I think," she said, "the — er — the little girl
would prefer a larger one." Her hesitation in this
speech was due to the fact that she was unused to
deceit. The doll was not intended for any little
girl ; there was no little girl in the question.

THE DOLL 163

Finally, Miss Mordaunt (who made thirty
shillings a week) bought an eight-shilling doll.

" Practically a work of art," said the shopman,
as he folded soft paper about it and packed it in
its box. " A very nice thing indeed. Sure to give
pleasure." Really, he seemed almost reluctant to
part with it. He tried to turn the conversation to
the toy gyroscope and the animated skeleton, " an
ingenious little thing." But Miss Mordaunt said
gravely that she did not require anything further.

She departed with the doll in its box. The box
had a neat little loop of string for her to hold it
by, but she did not use the loop. She nursed the
box in the fold of her arm.

There was much noise at the corner of Totten-
ham Court Road. Motor omnibuses banged and
rattled, impatient to get on with their load of
home-returning clerks. A cabman flicked a bark-
ing dog with the end of his whip, and the dog
howled. Boys shouted " Football edition." There
was so much noise that what Miss Mordaunt said
to the box on her arm was quite inaudible.

She said : " Soon be home now, darling."

Yet Miss Mordaunt was not insane. Insane
people cannot earn thirty shillings a week in the
office of a Holborn cycle manufacturer, as Miss
Mordaunt did. She had gone there at eighteen
shillings a week, and in four years she had made
this considerable advance. Even now the manager
considered that she was well worth her money.
Mr Fort, who kept the books, said that Miss
Mordaunt was " a bit snappy," but he admired her,

164 STORIES IN GREY

The old woman who cleaned out the office con-
sidered that she was " a nice-spoken lady." James,
who took longer over an errand than any other
boy in London, said that Miss Mordaunt was not
his style, so far as looks were concerned, but that
she was all right so long as you didn't start
monkeying. Different people have different ideas
about the same person, but there would have been
a unanimous opinion that Miss Mordaunt was
quite sane, and Harley Street would have endorsed
that opinion.

Yet Miss Mordaunt, aged thirty-two, had just
bought an eight-shilling doll for herself and for
nobody else.

Why ? She was a woman. Fate had made her
a worker, the office was making her a machine,
and Edith Stafford was trying to make her a
fighter. She was all alone, and no man loved her ;
but she was a woman, and the very same thing
made her buy that doll that has made other women
perform the greatest acts of courage and self-
sacrifice. If you like you may call it the maternal
instinct.

Even the purchase of a doll involved some self-
sacrifice for this woman with thirty shillings a
week. She lived in a tiny flat in a back street,
and did everything for herself. The flat consisted
of two small rooms and a box of a kitchen, and
everything in it was intensely neat and orderly.
The little flat had marked an advance ; at eighteen
shillings a week she had been discontented with a
single room and much discomfort. But now —

THE DOLL 165

why, this was her home, and she had almost all
that she wanted, but not quite all.

She lifted the doll out of its box, kissed it,
patted its hair, smoothed its clothes, and made it
sit down on a chair. She said : " You must wait
just a few minutes, Cynthia. Be good."

She put the box with the other card-boxes that
she had kept because they might be useful on the
top of her wardrobe ; she lit the gas-ring in the
kitchen, and put on the kettle. Then she prepared
her supper. There was a tinned tongue in the
cupboard, and that tongue had certainly formed
part of her intentions ; but if you have been buying
eight-shilling dolls, you can do very well on cocoa,
bread, and apricot jam — the last being used with
great restraint. So the tin remained unopened.
We all eat far too much, anyhow. All this while
Cynthia had waited patiently, and had been good,
as directed ; but now she was brought up to the
table, and Miss Mordaunt talked to her a little
during the banquet.

"Much nicer than that stuffy shop, isn't it,
Cynthia ? And what do you think I am going to
do after supper? I'm going to make you the
very doviest white silk nightgown you ever saw.
You'll be quite a princess, and you shall have a
little cot by the side of your mother's bed, and be
ever so happy."

Miss Mordaunt did not always speak quite so
prettily as this. If she was typing a letter at the
office and the machine jibbed, she habitually said
one brief bad word. It always made Mr Fort

166 STORIES IN GREY

laugh, and that laugh always made Miss Mordaunt
very angry. She was never angry with the old
woman who cleaned the office.

As she worked at the white silk nightdress she
gave Cynthia information in a low voice. Miss
Mordaunt confessed that so far she had been
lonely. She had girl-friends, of course — plenty of
them — but she had always wanted a little girl of
her own. She might have bought a dog, but who
was to look after him while his mistress was away
at work ? Cynthia was better than six dogs.

Fortunately Cynthia had permanently an ex-
pression of pleased attention, obliterated only
when you laid her on her back and by a simple
mechanical contrivance her eyes closed. Miss
Mordaunt was explaining to Cynthia what a re-
markably good time she was going to have, when
a light ripple of piano music broke in on the con-
versation, stopped, and then began again.

"Hear that?" said Miss Mordaunt. "I'll tell
you what it means, Cynthia. It means that
they've let the flat next door at last, and that the
girl moved in to-day. We shall have to come to
some agreement with her about that piano. She
seems to play very well, but there must be regular
hours for it. I can't hold a meeting of the
W.W.L.S. in my rooms with that noise going on.
And as I've got to earn the bread-and-butter all
day I can't afford to be kept awake by a piano half
the night. I'll tackle the good lady on the subject
before I go to work to-morrow. And now, Cynthia,
we'll see how you look in your new nightdress."

THE DOLL i67

But for the moment this operation had to be
deferred. There came a sharp rap at the outer
door, and Cynthia and all that belonged to her
were hurriedly deposited in the bedroom. Then
Miss Mordaunt admitted Miss Edith Stafford.

Miss Stafford was tall, thin, jerky, and plain.
Her eyes peered bitterly from behind a gold-
rimmed pince-nez. She did not kiss Miss Mordaunt ;
she abhorred all unhygienic things, especially if
they were at all natural. Cigarettes were an
exception.

" Evenin', Grace," said Miss Stafford. " Looked
in to see why you weren't at the W.W.L.S. last
night."

" I'd had an awfully hard day. I didn't feel up
to it."

" Nonsense," said Miss Stafford, taking a manly
pose in the arm-chair, and producing a leather
cigarette case.

The W.W.L.S. was the Working Women's
Literary Society. It consisted of seven members,
and held fortnightly meetings. Had it consisted
of more than seven they could hardly have met
in Miss Mordaunt's sitting-room when her turn
came round ; even as it was, two bedroom chairs
had to be impressed for these great occasions.

" Nonsense," repeated Miss Stafford. " Women
are only tired because they think they are — it's
one of the ways in which the ordinary woman
makes herself ridiculous and keeps back the move-
ment. Still, you didn't miss much this time.
Margaret Jackson lost her temper as usual.

168

STORIES IN GREY

About Keats. By the way, she said something to
me about you afterwards."
" Indeed ? What was it ? "
" That man Fort. Do you mean to marry him ? "
" Never. Of course not. Why ? "
" Margaret Jackson heard through a friend of
hers, who knows Fort's young brother, that Fort
said you had been much pleasanter in your manner
of late."

" Then Mr Fort will change his mind about that
to-morrow."

" Good," said Edith Stafford, with a jerk of her
cigarette-hand. " This is no time for women to
marry. My word, if all the pretty girls thought
as I do about that, women would be free within a
year. I'm glad you're with me at any rate."

Grace Mordaunt blushed slightly. She thought
that Mr Fort was common, uneducated, and un-
prepossessing. But she also thought that she
was very lonely. A further irruption of music
spared her any discussion of matrimony.

" What a horrible row ! " said Miss Stafford.

"Yes," said Grace. "It's the girl next door.
I'm going to speak about it to-morrow."

" I should. One can hardly hear one's self talk.
Well, I only looked in for two minutes."

She jerked her cigarette-end into the fireplace,
reminded Miss Mordaunt that it was her turn to
entertain the W.W.L.S. at their next meeting, and
said a brief good -night.

When she had gone, Miss Mordaunt undressed
Cynthia and tried on the white silk nightgown.

THE DOLL 169

Alterations were required in the neck, and were
duly effected. Miss Mordaunt went to sleep that
night with the doll in her arms.

II

AFTER breakfast next morning Miss Mordaunt
went to remonstrate with the girl next door about
the piano. She meant to arrange it all in a
friendly chat — to point out that there must be a
certain amount of give-and-take in flats.

The plan was modified in its execution by the
fact that there was no girl next door. The
proprietor of the piano was a man — an enraged,
fantastic, middle-aged, male musician, who had a
fine flow of language, but behaved much like a
distraught and irritable baby.

His name was Malcolm Harverson, and he was
a musician and composer, as he told her before
she had got through the first two sentences of
what she had to say.

He glared at her with large, blue eyes.

He ran his good, white hands through his
excessive crop of fair hair. He gesticulated.

" What am I to do ? What on earth do you
expect me to do ? Do you know I've been turned
out of more flats than any man in London ? The
other tenants always combine against me. At
last I thought I was safe. There are no regula-
tions whatever about piano-playing in these flats —
not the shadow of a ghost of a regulation. I was
jolly careful to find that out before I took this

170 STORIES IN GREY

dog-kennel, and on the second morning after my
arrival I've hardly finished my breakfast — beastly
eggs that I had to cook for myself because I can't
find a servant — when a charmin' lady comes round
to tell me to burn my Bechstein and go to the devil."

Miss Mordaunt resisted with some difficulty a
tendency to smile at this elderly child. " I don't
think that's quite what I said, is it? You can
play as much as you like until six in the evening,
and some evenings you can play from six to ten,
unless I ask you not to, but not after ten, because —

Mr Malcolm Harverson clasped his head with
both hands. " Oh, wait a minute, please ! How
do you expect anybody to remember all that ? I
can't get up at six in the morning, and as for
ten at night — why, there are lots of days when I
don't really begin to live till ten at night. There
ought to be a certain amount of give-and-take in
flats" — Miss Mordaunt was slightly disconcerted
by this phrase, which she had intended to use
herself — "and nobody ever hears me complain.
There's a woman in the flat over mine who has
got a sewing-machine in C minor. Perfectly
beastly. Yet I don't go running round, as you
do, shouting to have her crucified."

Miss Mordaunt tried to explain that she neither
ran nor shouted. She did not require him to burn
his piano. She did not want him to be crucified.
But as she had to rise early to get the work of her
flat done before she went to the office at ten —

" That reminds me," said Mr Harverson. The
way in which he interrupted ladies was quite

THE DOLL 171

shameless. " I suppose you couldn't tell me of
any old woman who'd come in and do the work
of this flat for me. If she arrived somewhere
about eight in the morning, and looked in again
in the evening in the neighbourhood of nine, that
would—"

" Perhaps I might be able to find somebody,"
said Miss Mordaunt. "But that's not what I
wanted to talk about."

She explained once more what it was that she
wanted. He remained quite unsatisfactory. He
would do his best, but he didn't like to make any
promises because (so he said) he knew his limita-
tions, and he might forget. By the way, he hoped
she would not forget to find that servant for him,
because really things were getting rather serious.

Miss Mordaunt had to hurry away in order to
be punctual at her business. She had two minutes
with Mrs Fagg, the old woman who cleaned the
office.

"Yes," said Mrs Fagg. "I could do this Mr
'Arverson, if he suited me, and the work would fit
in nicely. He's all right, miss, I suppose ? "

" Yes, I think so. But he's like most men — not
fit to take care of himself."

"Then I'll just call on him this morning and
judge for myself, saying as you sent me. Thank
you, in any case, miss."

Miss Mordaunt enjoyed the day's work which
followed more than Mr Fort did.

Mr Fort was not in the least in love with Miss
Mordaunt, but he had determined that she

172 STORIES IN GREY

would be just the right wife for him. She was
good-looking. She was thoroughly sensible and
practical. A little short in the temper — but Mr
Fort recognized that he had reached an age when
a man must not be too particular, and that one
may have to wait a long time for absolute perfec-
tion. Besides, once married, he thought that he
could deal with that shortness of temper. Certainly
of late she had been distinctly more civil to him.

Therefore Mr Fort this morning adopted a
manner towards Miss Mordaunt which was
oleaginous and slightly intimate. What Miss
Mordaunt said could have been telegraphed for
sixpence, but it was enough, metaphorically, to
take the skin off Mr Fort. He observed to a
friend at luncheon that women were queer cattle.

A stream of music greeted Miss Mordaunt that
night as she came up the stairs. Mr Malcolm
Harverson was singing to his own accompaniment.
He had a very fair baritone voice, and it had been
well trained. Above all, he was an artist. Miss
Mordaunt was in the mood for music, and was
glad that Mr Harverson had apparently forgotten
her injunction. But the moment she closed her
door the music stopped abruptly. So Miss Mor-
daunt talked to Cynthia instead. Cynthia was
sitting, curiously enough, just where Miss Mordaunt
had left her in the morning — on the cushions of
the one easy chair — and she still wore the expres-
sion of pleased attention.

Miss Mordaunt said that Cynthia had behaved
very nicely, and that she was pleased to see her

THE DOLL 173

again. Then she spoke about the music. " It
would have been more sensible, Cynthia, if he had
just finished that song and then left off. Men are
always so stupidly literal. Or perhaps he's turned
sulky. I suppose you couldn't tell me if he's been
playing much during the day."

She was correct. Cynthia could not.

Miss Mordaunt was opening that tinned tongue
with her accustomed neatness, when she was called
to the door. A man asked if she were Miss
Mordaunt, and — assured on this point — delivered
a florist's box into her hands. It contained white
roses and the card of Mr Malcolm Harverson. On
the card was written : " With many thanks for the
much more useful present you sent me this morning
— I refer to Mrs Fagg."

Since he put it like that she felt that she might
accept them. She loved flowers, but her expendi-
ture upon them was of necessity limited. She
placed the white roses on her supper-table, and
invited Cynthia to admire them. Then she did
devastating work on that tinned tongue — one
might almost have thought that tinned tongue did
not cost money, But Miss Mordaunt was happy
and hungry. Later in the evening she wrote a
brief note of thanks to Mr Harverson, and she
made a fur toque for Cynthia.

Ill

DAYS passed away, and every day Mr Harverson's
piano stopped dumb when Miss Mordaunt returned

174

STORIES IN GREY

from her work in the evening. It was silly of him
to sulk in this way, and she made up her mind
that she would tell him so. It was only on special
evenings, which would be indicated to him, that she
required silence from six till ten. On the other
evenings it would be quite enough if the piano
stopped at ten or thereabouts. The meeting of the
W.W.L.S. in her rooms gave her an opportunity.

Miss Mordaunt possessed just six tea-cups, but
the members of the W.W.L.S. had the Words-
worthian habit of being seven. She was preparing
her room for the meeting when she remembered
the necessity for one more cup. She had meant
to acquire it during the day, and had forgotten
it. It struck her now that she might borrow a
tea-cup from Mr Harverson, and she could at the
same time explain to him that she did not hate
music so much as he thought.

He showed no sign of sulkiness when he admitted
her to his flat. He made her come into his sitting-
room while he went to find a cup which was worthy
of being used by a literary society. The sitting-
room was principally occupied by a short grand
piano and many books. It smelled pleasantly of
russia-leather and Turkish cigarettes.

As he came back with the tea-cup he asked
plaintively if there would soon be an evening when
he might play after six.

" You might have played any of these evenings.
It was only on evenings when I especially asked
for quiet that you were not to play."

He sat down suddenly and nearly broke the tea-cup

THE DOLL 175

" That's me," he said. " If I can get anything
the wrong way round I always do. I thought it
was only on evenings when I received a special
permission that I was allowed to play. Of course,
I had to do what you wanted — after all your
kindness in getting Mrs Fagg for me; but I've
been feeling very virtuous and conceited about it.
Why, it's simply a case of the 10.5 over again."

"What was that?" asked Miss Mordaunt, smiling.

" I had to go North to a rehearsal of some stuff
of mine. I looked up a train, and fixed on the
10.5. That was all right. But then the thing that
I have to use instead of a mind switched the
figures round, and I decided that it was the 5.10 I
had to catch. I got up very early, and had no
time for any breakfast, and I caught the 5.10. At
least, I should have caught it if it had been there.
There wasn't any 5.10, of course. The porter who
told me so laughed, and my own cabman laughed.
I wished I was dead."

Miss Mordaunt said she was so sorry, but she
seemed rather amused.

" I can't understand it. I cannot understand
how anybody with the gift of music, like you,
shouldn't be able to manage little practical things."

" Sometimes I doubt if music is a gift at all.
I'm inclined to think it's a vice. Anyhow, it's
just those little practical things which bowl me
over. I believe I ought to advertise for an attend-
ant— one of those men in black morning-coats
and felt hats that take the soft-headed old gentle-
men out for walks at the health resorts."

176 STORIES IN GREY

"Well," said Miss Mordaunt, "it's most awfully
kind of you to have stopped playing on my account,
and I'm almost ashamed now that I bothered you
about it. Now I've got the literary society, and so
I can't ask you to play to-night."

" Of course not."

" But I hope you'll play to-morrow night just as
much as you like, and — why, there's somebody at
my door. Good-night, and thanks so much."

It was Miss Edith Stafford with a note-book
containing the minutes of the W.W.L.S. " I'm
early," said Miss Stafford. " Thought you might
want a hand to get the room ready."

" Thanks, awfully. Everything's all right now.
I've just been borrowing a tea-cup."

"Ah!" said Miss Stafford. "The girl next
door. I remember. Hope you've persuaded her
to stop that tinkle-box of hers to-night."

"Yes, she won't play to-night," said Miss
Mordaunt, blushing. It has already been observed
that Miss Mordaunt had no natural tendency
towards deceit.

The meeting was quite successful. Miss Tilbury
read a thoughtful paper on some obscure passages
in the work of Robert Browning ; Miss Jackson
animadverted severely upon it ; Miss Edith Stafford
pointed out that it was only men who wrote
obscurely : the woman writer was always lucid, at
any rate. Miss Tomlin said that this reminded
her of a story, which she told. It was quite
a good story, about a lady who bred prize
Persian cats, and nobody knew (or cared) how

THE DOLL 177

Miss Tomlin came to be reminded of it. Then
there was tea, and Miss Mordaunt drank from a
blue cup that did not match the rest of the set.
Miss Stafford asked her what the girl next door
was like, and Miss Mordaunt, blushing, said that
she did not know, and changed the subject rapidly.

Miss Mordaunt told Cynthia in bed that night
that it had been quite a pleasant evening. She
also acquitted Mr Harverson of sulkiness, and
observed that he seemed to be rather well off-
had good furniture, and took cabs, and that sort of
thing. To this Cynthia listened patiently, but, from
the accident of her position, with her eyes closed.

On the following evening Miss Mordaunt had just
finished supper, and was telling Cynthia about some
further additions to her wardrobe, when the sound of
Mr Harverson's piano interrupted her. Miss Mor-
daunt listened with delight. At the end of the piece
she clapped her hands gently by way of applause.

Then there came a knock at the door, and with
some confusion she admitted Mr Harverson.

He stared round the room with his large blue
eyes, and they took in Cynthia, whom Miss Mor-
daunt had forgotten to remove.

But Mr Harverson, who was not more confused
than usual, said nothing whatever about the doll,
though Cynthia was wearing the new fur toque
and looked charming. He said that he had over-
heard the sound of applause, and that if Miss
Mordaunt really liked the music she would hear it
better on the other side of the wall Wouldn't she
come round with him ?
M

178 STORIES IN GREY

Miss Mordaunt accepted, a little surprised at
herself for accepting. She took the one easy
chair in the room that smelled of russia leather and
cigarettes, and Mr Harverson demanded what he
should play for her.

"If you've got a Beethoven handy, I'm fond of
the ' Moonlight Sonata.' "

" Good old * Moonlight,' " said Mr Harverson, irre-
verently. " All the schoolgirls have to go through
it just like the measles. But, however — "

And without troubling to find the music Mr
Harverson sat down and played the " Moonlight
Sonata," and he did not play irreverently at all.

" I suppose it's old-fashioned," she said, when he
had finished, " but it's terribly lovely."

"Yes," said Harverson, "Beethoven's fine. Of
course, if he'd had the modern piano there'd have
been a difference. Still — yes, very fine. I say, Miss
Mordaunt, I forgot to have any coffee after dinner
to-night, and restaurant coffee's rather rotten, any-
how. I wish you'd help me to make some."

" Won't it keep you awake ? "

"No. If I don't have it I can't sleep. I'm all
wrongly constituted, and don't fit into the text-
books."

So Miss Mordaunt helped him to make coffee,
and afterwards helped him to drink it. She felt it
necessary to say that she had not intended her
applause to be overheard.

" No," cried Malcolm Harverson, " but these walls
are very thin. I can even hear when you're talking
to your little friend in the evening. I can't hear

THE DOLL 179

what's said, of course, or I'd have warned you, but
I catch the murmur of the voice."

"What little friend?" asked Miss Mordaunt,
perturbed.

" The doll, of course. You do talk to her, don't
you ? "

"Y — yes," said Miss Mordaunt. "You see—"

" You needn't explain," said Harverson. " Bless
you, I know. That sort of thing is easy to under-
stand. If one didn't understand it one couldn't
make music properly."

Harverson and Miss Mordaunt met again the
next night, and the next, and the next. Malcolm
Harverson and Grace Mordaunt being what they
were, the story could have but one ending — a
happy ending. She was pleased that it was not
until after she had accepted him that she read in
the papers an account of the Festival, with lavish
and unusual praise for a work by Malcolm
Harverson.

Miss Edith Stafford said that she had known
all along how it would be, and had seen it coming.
This prescience seemed to be some slight consola-
tion to her.

IV

SOME years later, when the newspapers had
quite got into the habit of speaking of Malcolm
Harverson as " the eminent composer," Mrs
Harverson decided to give her little daughter a
doll. She confessed that it was not quite a new

180 STORIES IN GREY

doll : in fact, it was one that she had formerly
played with herself.

Miss Cynthia Harverson, who had not begun to
worry about arithmetic, said that she supposed in
that case it would be about a hundred years old.

" Getting on that way," said her mother. " But
it's got the loveliest clothes that I made for it
myself, and it shuts its eyes when it lies down, and
it's got the same name as yourself."

" Let's see," said Miss Harverson.

The doll and its somewhat elaborate wardrobe
were produced, and Miss Harverson was delighted
with them. But she put one finger in her mouth
and sucked it — the sure concomitant in her case
of a mental process. Then she observed that her
mother must have been no end of a child if she
could make doll's clothes like that.

"But I was much older than you are when I
made those clothes, dear."

" How old were you ? "

" I don't like to think about it — ever so much
older than I am now."

They were still busy about the doll when Grace
heard her husband calling her.

" I say, my dear," he said. " I've got to send ten
shillings to a man in Brussels. How does one do it ? "

Grace crossed the passage to her husband's
room. "Give me the letter and the money, I'll do
it for you. You haven't changed one little bit,"
she said, laughing.

Then she sat down, and added seriously, "I've
given Cynthia the doll, and she's quite in love with it."

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE

THE waiter placed before young Mr Haynes a
plate on which were a few white bones, an eyeball,
and a piece of black mackintosh.

" Turbot, sir," said the waiter, in an explanatory
voice.

It was a hotel dinner in an English cathedral
city, and faithful to its type. The green Venetian
blinds were drawn down, and the incandescent
gas was shaded with pink paper. The walls were
covered with a material that is supposed to simulate
Jacobean oak panelling ; it may be acquitted of
any actual deceit.

The room was full, and at the small tables were
many of those middle-aged or aged women that
seem to haunt the provincial hotels of this country.
They are a class by themselves. They wear brown
skirts and a totally different blouse in the evening,
and grandmamma has a grey woollen shawl. They
speak in whispers and peck patiently any odds
and ends that the waiter gives them. They have
an air of defective vitality and chronic discontent.
They nearly all suffer from catarrh and use
eucalyptus on their handkerchiefs. Observe, too,
their surreptitiousness. When the elderly lady,
hand to mouth and eyes glazed with terror, has
given the waiter an order, so hushed as to be

almost inaudible, and then proceeds to build up

181

182 STORIES IN GREY

a screen at her right hand with the wine-list and
cruet-stand, you may be pretty certain that there
will presently be a little weak whisky - and - soda
on the far side of the entanglement.

There were two waiters in the room. The elder
of them was English, had been there for years,
and under the favourable influence of a cathedral
atmosphere had already grown much of the manner
and appearance of an archdeacon. The younger,
a sad-eyed Italian of eighteen, had only been at
the hotel two months, but he looked every inch
an acolyte.

It was the archdeacon who had placed that
plate of alleged turbot before young Maurice
Haynes.

"Turbot, is it?" said Mr Haynes. " Interesting
relic. Now take it back to the cat again, and
bring me something to eat."

Suddenly from the little table next to him came
a wild burst of laughter. It broke out like a
discharge of steam from a locomotive. It bubbled
with pure joy. It stopped abruptly and then
started again uncontrollably. It broke up all the
holy calm of that table d'hote. Withered virgins
of fifty turned round to look at this laughing girl,
some with a sniff of disapproval, others compelled
to a wan, responsive smile. The archdeacon-
waiter seemed pained. The acolyte was proceed-
ing with his work with apparent calm, when
suddenly the laughter-infection smote him full in
the midriff. He dropped a helping of cabinet
pudding, put a hand over his mouth, bolted into

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE 183

the passage, slapped his leg, exploded, and was
asked what the devil he thought he was doing.
In the dining-room the girl still laughed at
intervals.

"Control yourself, I beg," said her flustered
German governess. " It is hysteria. Hosh ! hosh !
Ruhig ! Celia ! It is so rude."

Celia shook her head.

" Can't help it, Fraulein," she gasped. " Anything
about a cat makes me laugh."

And she relapsed again.

Maurice Haynes had not had the faintest
intention of being amusing. It was out of the
bitterness of his soul that he had spoken. He
had already declined to believe that over-diluted
meat-extract with some armorial bearings in
stamped carrot constituted Julienne soup. This
supposed turbot was more than he could endure.
He was an artist, eupeptic and creative, and he
had been travelling all day ; on the morrow he
was to begin the presentation portrait of a scholarly
canon with a fine head ; now, if ever, dinner was
a positive necessity. He sent for the manageress.

The manageress was all black satin and super-
ciliousness when she arrived, but only the black
satin was left by the time Haynes had finished
with her. He was under the impression that he
was being merely firm ; but it seems to me that
when you tell the manageress of the principal
hotel in a cathedral city that she is not fit to cater
for a troop of performing fleas, you go beyond
firmness.

184 STORIES IN GREY

At any rate, he was effectual. He received im-
mediately more turbot than had ever been given
to one man at one time since the foundation of
the hotel. His helping from the joint was such
that he was almost (but not quite) ashamed to
demand a second. And the omelette aux fines
herbes, which came as a peace-offering at the end
of the repast, was exclusive matter for M. Haynes,
Esq., only, and not in the contract.

His sunny temper returned. He consulted
affably with the head waiter on the grave question
of port. And now, for the first time, he turned
his head to see who the cheeky kid was who had
laughed at his righteous indignation.

He saw a tall girl of fifteen with an elderly
governess. The governess was peeling walnuts,
and the girl was eating them ; this seemed to argue
devotion on the part of the governess. The girl
had an Irish beauty of dark hair and blue eyes,
and her face followed her every thought with
marvellous expressiveness. The mouth was
sweet and sensitive. Haynes thought she had
lovely colour, but would be the devil to paint.
One lightning glance showed her that he was
looking at her ; she flushed slightly, knowing that
she had been really too awful, but she also smiled,
because she remembered the cat.

" Nice kid," thought Haynes.

When she had gone, the effect was much as if
the incandescent gas had been lowered. There
was no longer any young vitality in the room,
nothing but a few groups of elderly grey women

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE 185

over their walnuts — pecking, cracking, mumbling
sniffing.

"Waiter," said Haynes to the acolyte, "take
my port into the smoking-room."

The smoking-room was equally depressing. It
seemed to be furnished principally with spittoons
and advertisements of auction sales, and an aged
smell of bad beer hovered over it. Haynes
endured it for the length of two cigarettes, and
then his eye caught, framed on the wall, that
successful Christmas-number plate, "Won't 'Oo
Kiss Doggie?" Haynes groaned and fled.

The room he next tried was the drawing-room,
and to prevent any possibility of mistake its name
had been painted on the door. Here the furniture
was more ambitious, and a long-tailed piano stood
open. The room was empty, and only one gas
jet had been lit. Haynes ran one hand over the
keyboard, and was surprised to find that the
instrument was in tune. He sat down, and began
modulating idly from one key into another, as
his thoughts wandered. Presently he began to
play a waltz of Chopin's, all passion and incense.
He did not hear the door open and close. It was
only as he played the last notes that he found he
now had an audience.

There were two old ladies with their knitting.
There was a German governess engaged on a
bead work cover for a spectacle case. And there
was Celia, quite serious now, and with excited
eyes, coming straight towards him.

" It was too lovely," she cried. " I wish you

i86 STORIES IN GREY

could have gone on for ever." She held out her
hand to him. " Thank you, thank you ! "

Now, more than ever, did consternation fall
upon Fraulein. She lived in a perpetual state of
terror as to what Celia would do next, and Celia
always did it. She was full now of incoherent
reproof to Celia and apologies to Haynes. " She
is zo imbolsive."

Haynes rose from the piano laughing. " Ach,
seien Sie ihr nicht bose" he said. " Es freut mich
jay dass sie meine dumme Musik gerne hort?

If he had really told her in English not to mind,
and that he was glad his silly music had pleased
them, he would have made much less impression.
In the eyes of Fraulein, the fact that he spoke her
native tongue consecrated him ; and Celia sat up
till nearly eleven that night, and went to bed
filled with music and adoration.

Next morning Haynes was precisely an hour
late for his appointment with the scholarly canon
with the fine head. His story in excuse about a
missing tube of colour was plausible and fairly
amusing, but had no foundation in fact. He had
spent that hour in making two rapid drawings of
Celia — effective things in sanguine on grey paper.
And then Celia and her governess had departed
in continuance of a holiday tour to places of
historical and educational interest.

At the end of ten years, on a late afternoon in
June, Maurice Haynes came back to that hotel
again. London had become suddenly intolerable

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE 187

to him. He was tired of his work, and he was
still more tired of his play, if the wearying social
functions that befall the fashionable portrait-painter
are to be called play. He wanted to fly away and
be at rest. If he had not the wings of a dove, he
had, at any rate, a good motor-car, and he drove
it himself. He had no particular destination in
view when he started ; he had driven a hundred
miles before he decided that he might as well stop
at the old cathedral city that night.

He found little change at the hotel. The same
black satin manageress still extended turbots
beyond their natural limit ; but the archidiaconal
waiter had increased in girth and in stateliness of
movement, and had a new acolyte — the sad-eyed
Italian had given place to a straw-coloured
German.

Maurice Haynes dined well, having taken pre-
cautionary measures to that end. As soon as he
had recalled himself to the memory of the
manageress, she had recognized that this was not
an occasion for trifling. But it seemed that other
visitors were not being so well treated. From a
little table behind him Haynes heard much
grumbling in a querulous man's voice. "Food
not fit for a cat/' was one phrase he caught. A
woman answered briefly, in a low and gentle voice,
and Haynes, without hearing what she said, was
conscious that she was being bored intolerably.

Haynes looked round.

The woman sat with her back to Haynes. She
wore a black lace tea-gown, and leaned back in her

i88 STORIES IN GREY

chair. The man opposite to her was about fifty
years of age, and of unprepossessing appearance.
He had that thing which is hardly ever seen,
except on the stage — a red nose. He had also a
mean mouth, and a most abominable and Shakes-
pearean expanse of forehead.

It was only as these two people passed out of
the room that Haynes caught a glimpse of the
woman's face, and recognized that this was Celia.
This was the laughing girl that he had met ten
years before. The man was evidently her husband.
She was very beautiful, as she had promised to be,
but the expression on her face was very sad. It
is a long way from fifteen to twenty-five, and
many changes befall in that decade.

It was to him something more than an impres-
sive coincidence. Suddenly this highly-successful
artist saw his life as a failure. He was convinced
that he should have married Celia, and he was
convinced that they would have been happy. But
the first time he had met her, ten years before, she
had been too young for love. He had found her
beauty adorable, and had liked her immensely as
a child, but until this moment she had remained in
his memory as a sketch in sanguine on grey paper
— nothing else. He had shown no prescience.
He had not guessed at the fruition of the unborn
summers.

For an evening and a morning he had seen her,
and then had allowed the clue of her life to slip
out of his hands. And now chance mocked him
once more with the sight of her — now that she

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE 189

was married to that miserable little man with the
red nose and plaintive voice, now that she was
unhappy, now that it was too late.

Yet, though it was too late, he now went into
the drawing-room and began to play the same
music that he had played ten years before. He
felt certain that if she heard it it would bring her
to him. He was not mistaken.

She paused for a moment in the open doorway,
and then came towards him, smiling and self-
possessed.

" I did not know you were staying in the hotel,"
she said, and then added quickly : " You do re-
member me, don't you ? "

"Yes, Celia," he said as he shook hands with
her. " I remember you very well. I caught a
glimpse of you as you were going out of the dining-
room, I recognized you at once. I was wondering
if you would remember this." His hands on the
piano repeated a phrase of the music.

" Of course I remember it. But I am not Celia
any more. I am Mrs Owen."

" Oh, no," said Haynes, laughing. " When one
has called the child by her Christian name, one
calls the woman by her Christian name. I shall
certainly call you Celia."

" You can if you like."

" Now tell me all about it."

"All about what?"

" All about the last ten years of your life."

" What is there to tell ? I have done nothing.
I was married when I was eighteen. Since then I

igo STORIES IN GREY

have gone on existing. Now you, on the contrary,
have had a splendid — "

" Have you got any children, Celia ? " he asked
suddenly.

She shook her head. " Perhaps it is as well,"
she said drearily. " I don't think my husband
would like children. He is an archaeologist, you
know. That is why we are here. He is making
rubbings of brasses in the cathedral. He has a
great collection of them, all beautifully catalogued."

" How perfectly horrible," said Haynes with
conviction.

For the first time she laughed.

" So you still laugh sometimes," he said.

" Not very often now. But I remember what
you mean. I believe I behaved abominably. I
overheard something you said about a cat. It
was your own private joke, and I did not know
you, and had no right to laugh at it. I don't know
why, but jokes about cats specially appealed to me
then. Now I don't think cats are any more amus-
ing than anything else, do you ? "

"Yes — no — I don't know. Are you happy,
Celia ? "

" I knew you were going to ask that."

"Well, are you?"

" Oh, of course I am. Perfectly."

And by way of proving it she added, with a sob
in her voice, that she must go, that Harry would
wonder where she was. He let her go.

At breakfast next morning Mr Maurice Haynes

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE 191

very deliberately introduced himself to Mr Henry
Owen. Celia was not yet down.

Mr Owen was pleased to be very gracious. He
said that Celia had told him about Mr Haynes,
and that it was a pleasure to meet so distinguished
an artist. " You gave my wife a little sketch you
made of her when she was a girl, I think ? "

" I did."

"Well, I did a silly thing about that. It was
soon after our marriage. A friend of mine came
along and offered me a fiver for it, and I took it."

" I see. And your wife didn't like it ? "

" Oh, she was angry enough ; but that's not
what I mean. If I had only known then that you
were the coming man, I would never have sold
that sketch for a fiver. What would it be worth
now ? "

"Oh, I don't know," said Haynes; "it would
depend upon how much anyone wanted it."

In the course of conversation Haynes learned a
good deal about Mr Owen, who was a gentleman
without reticence. He explained, for instance,
that the redness of his nose was due entirely to
dyspepsia, and not to intemperance. He was
rather pathetic about it, posing as one misunder-
stood by the world. He entered into the question
of dyspepsia generally, with more detail than
seemed to Haynes to be absolutely requisite.
Haynes changed the subject.

" I wonder if you would care to come out on my
car this morning ? " he said — " you and Mrs Owen,
of course. It's rather a jolly morning, and I've

192 STORIES IN GREY

got nothing to do. I would be glad to drive you
anywhere."

" Not for me, thanks. I have my work to do at
the cathedral. Take my wife for a drive, by all
means."

" Thanks, I will. She will be down directly ? "

"Yes; I'll send her to you. She has got the
bad habit of keeping awake all night, and sleeping
in the morning. A great mistake. I'm always
telling her about it."

An hour later Haynes, with Celia by his side,
drove out from the cathedral city.

" Where shall we go to ? " he asked.

" To the world's end," she said fantastically,
laughing. She was in strangely high spirits this
morning.

A mile further on he stopped the car and got
down to pick her the wild roses that she wanted.
As he gave them to her, he said in a low voice :
" What is the good of pretending any more ? You
know perfectly well that I love you."

"Yes."

"You love me, too?" She bowed her head.
" Then you are not going back to him ? You will
come with me ? "

" To the world's end," she whispered.

It was quite late that afternoon when she
suddenly and irrevocably changed her mind. "I
must go back," she said. " This is all very beautiful,
but it is like my wild roses — it falls to pieces.
There is no romance left. The sordid legal

TOO SOON AND TOO LATE 193

business always ends it. Besides, it is stolen
happiness. I must not have it. I have had a day
of life, and I can go on living for a while on
the memory of it. You come to me too late,
Maurice."

It was in vain that he pleaded with her. She
admitted that she did not know whether it was
conscience or cowardice, but she was none the less
resolved. An hour later they were back at the
hotel again.

At Mr Owen's suggestion, Maurice dined at
their table that night. Mr Owen had secured a
valuable addition to his collection, and was feeling
pleased with himself and with the world. He
rallied his wife cheerfully on her want of appetite,
and said that her run in the car did not seem to
have done her much good.

" That's it," he continued. " She has no appetite,
but has a perfect digestion. I have a magnificent
appetite, but I always have to pay for it afterwards.
Seems ironical, doesn't it ? "

And suddenly Celia burst into uncontrollable,
almost hysterical, and quite mirthless laughter.
That laugh haunted Haynes at times for the rest
of his life.

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER

I

I AM by profession an architect. For the last
eight years I have practised in my native town at
Stannoke in Gloucestershire, at first in partnership
with my father, and after his retirement alone and
on my own account. The greater part of my
boyhood was spent in Stannoke, and I have early
recollections of the family solicitor, William Locris.
Twenty years ago I used to see Locris in church
every Sunday morning. He sat with his wife,
a rather heavy and plethoric woman, in the pew
just in front of our own, accompanied by their
son, a boy of my own age. Locris cannot have
been more than thirty-five then, and his hair had
not yet begun to turn grey. He assisted in the
collection of the offertory, and throughout the
service maintained an air of decent interest. His
son sometimes fell asleep in the sermon, and so
did I. My father always did, and, I think, made
a point of it, but Locris was always wakeful and
quietly attentive. He had an office in the High
Street and a villa outside the town — rather an
abominable modern construction called " The
Elms." He must have been fairly well off, for
he had all the best of the business in Stannoke,

but he was not reputed to be a rich man. He

194

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 195

was regular in his attendance at business, and
regular in taking walking exercise. He went
away at the right time every year for his summer
holiday at the seaside. If at that time, or indeed
for many years afterwards, I had wished to express
the quintessence of the commonplace, I should
have described Locris.

I believe he was a fairly good, but not a brilliant,
solicitor. He was honest and punctual and pains-
taking. He always discouraged litigation, and
I owe him a debt of gratitude for having prevented
my father from embarking on a very expensive
and probably fruitless lawsuit.

I was quite a young man when Mrs Locris died.
I remember she was buried rather sumptuously,
and that Locris and his son wore deep mourning
for the prescribed time. I no longer saw him in
church, for I had ceased to go to church, but
I often saw him on his way there, carrying a
prayer-book in his gloved hands. He wore black
kid gloves, the most rancid form of gloves that
has yet been devised. On week-days I used to
see him on his way to the office with the same
loathsome gloves, but with a copy of the Times
newspaper in place of the prayer-book.

Later, I came upon him two or three times in
the course of business. I am inclined to think
the man happy who seldom requires the services
of a solicitor, and that good fortune was mine.
When he had any work to do for me, I always
found him able and practical, and his charges were
fair enough.

196 STORIES IN GREY

Five years ago, when I was nearly thirty, and
Locris must have been quite fifty, he called on me
one morning at my office. He gave me a com-
mission that was quite worth having, but it was of
an extraordinary character. Looking at him now
closely, I saw something in his eyes which seemed
rather to belie the dull and even tenor of his life.
I accepted the commission without hesitation,
because, although the work was of a kind that
I had never done before, I knew where I could
get good advice. I had only to run up to London
and see my old father about it.

II

MY father had lived for by far the greater part of
his life in a provincial town, but he preferred
London. As soon as circumstances made it
reasonable for him to retire and to hand over the
business to me, he took a flat in Jermyn Street
and went to live there. He had many friends
in London and was a member of two clubs. He
was glad enough to be free of routine work, but
he was still interested in his profession, and was
always glad to help me where his greater experience
was useful.

We lunched together at his club, and then,
in a retired corner of the smoking-room, he asked
me what the trouble was.

"Well," I said, "I don't know that I should
call it trouble. It's rather a nice little commission.

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 197

But before we start on that I'd like you to tell me
all you can about old Locris."

" Old Locris ? Oh, damn it, James, he's not so
very old. He's younger than I am. I've only
known him professionally. We never had any
social relations. He's all right, quite a solid man,
I should say."

"Yes, I know that. You wouldn't call him
romantic ? "

" No, not now. There was a story when he was
very much younger, before he married. He wanted
to marry Sir Luke Mallow's daughter — Grace her
name was. She was a pretty girl, with a lot of
golden hair, the kind that you read about in story-
books and never see in real life. They didn't
think Locris was good enough, and I suppose
from a social point of view they were right,
though, for that matter, in spite of her beauty,
it was not every man who would have married her.
I wouldn't myself. The poor girl was short of one
finger on her left hand. She smashed it up when
she was a kid, and it had to be amputated."

" So she chucked Locris ? "

"No. She did not. He and Sir Luke were
fighting it out together, and if Sir Luke did not
give way, I fancy Locris meant to run away with
her. He is an obstinate chap. However, while
they were disputing, Grace settled the question
for them by dying quite suddenly — diphtheria, I
believe. There was a lot of it about at the time.
And within a month Locris was married — daughter
of a poor parson and very appropriate. So it's

198 STORIES IN GREY

Locris who has given you this commission, is it?
Well, the money will be all right. He's never
spent half his income. It's quite time he had
a better house."

" And suppose I told you that Locris had gone
mad?"

"Any man may. It's possible. In his case
I should think it is extremely unlikely. Has he
gone mad then ? "

"Well, he says he has not. While he was
talking to me he made his scheme seem perfectly
reasonable, but if he is not mad, he is at any rate
extremely eccentric."

" Oh, come, come," said my father impatiently.
" Let's have it. What is it the man wants ? "

" Locris has bought land on the east coast not
far from Aldeburgh. He wishes to do there what
the old Duke of Portland did before him."

" I see. Rooms underground."

" Yes. One biggish room, forty by thirty, and
a smaller anteroom communicating with it.
From the anteroom is to be a flight of steps
up to the surface, and the entrance is to be masked
by a small tower with two or three living rooms
in it. Do you call that the project of a sane
man ? "

"If you wanted to do it yourself I should cer-
tainly say you were insane. But I do not think so
in the case of Locris. It is not unnatural in a
man of a certain history who has come to his time
of life. After all, there are days that one does
not wish to see. Speaking frankly, the idea has

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 199

occurred to my own mind before now. I have
never done it, and never shall do it. But it is by
no means without its fascination."

" That is very much the way in which he put it.
In a year's time he means to retire and to leave
Stannoke. And during that year this house is to
be got ready for him."

" Is the construction to be secret ? "

" I asked him that. He said he should make
no effort at secrecy, as such efforts always attracted
too much attention. He says that people will find
their own explanation — that he wants an inordi-
nately big wine-cellar, or something of that kind.
In any case, before the tower had been built three
years, people would have forgotten that there is
this big room below it. I gather that he has
chosen rather a lonely spot where he won't be
troubled by many callers."

" Did he tell you in so many words what his
reason was — why he is doing this ? "

" No. But he said it was a thing which he had
had in his mind for very many years past, and
that he was glad now to have the opportunity to
carry the idea out. You see, he is quite alone in
the world. His wife's dead, and his son's away."

"The son," said my father, meditatively.
" What's the boy doing ? "

" Professorship of Greek in an Australian uni-
versity— I forget which. I don't know what they'll
make of him out there. He was an appalling prig."

" Yesj" said my father. " I remember him.
He was very, very Oxford. \Vell now, it seems

200 STORIES IN GREY

to me you've got nothing to do but to go ahead. Ex-
cavation's a much easier job now than it was twenty
years ago. I can't go into it now, because I've
promised to play bridge. But we will dine at my
flat and spend the evening over the plans afterwards."

" Oh, thanks very much, dad, that will suit me
admirably. Meanwhile, I will go and have a look
at the winter show at the Academy. Oh, by the
way, on that question of secrecy — he did say that
he didn't want the thing talked about in Stannoke,
said it would be unpleasant to be bothered with
questions, and that clients would regard him as a
lunatic and leave him, and that this would have a
bad effect on the value of his practice when he
came to sell it. I don't think that anybody but
myself knows that he means to leave Stannoke.
Down in Suffolk, though, there is to be no secret
about the excavation."

On my way to the Academy I was greatly sur-
prised to see Locris himself. He was coming out
of a shop where they sell ecclesiastical furniture
and vestments. He did not see me, but got into
a cab and drove off. I wondered what he could
be doing in a shop of that description, and reflected
that it was quite possible that he intended to
make some presentation to his parish church before
leaving Stannoke.

Ill

DURING the next year I saw a good deal of Mr
Locris. He liked to be consulted about the
details of the work which I had in hand, and he

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 201

was not an unreasonable man ; that is to say, he
always gave me my own way in the end. His
general principle seemed to be to spend as much
money as possible on the underground rooms, and
as little as possible on the tower, in which I pre-
sumed he would generally live. I did not ask
him in so many words if there was any special
purpose for which he needed these underground
rooms. It might of course be an elderly man's
weariness — the fact that, as my father put it, there
were some days he did not wish to see, and
another explanation also occurred to my mind.

I went up to "The Elms" one night to show
Locris, at his own request, the estimates I had
obtained for carrying out some elaborate metal-
work. The servant, who showed me into the
drawing-room, told me that Mr Locris was in the
laboratory. When he came in a minute or two
later, I spoke to him chaffingly about this, and
asked him if it was another new idea.

" Oh, no," said Locris. " Every man must have
a hobby. The law is a very interesting profession,
but it would interest me very much less if I did
nothing else. I have been a student of chemistry
for many years past in my leisure time."

" Going to invent a new poison ? " I suggested.

" No," he said. " Something new, perhaps, but
not a poison. Shall we get to business ? "

In some ways Locris was a disappointment to
me. He would not fit in at all with my precon-
ceived idea of what a man should be like who
builds himself an underground dwelling. I had

202 STORIES IN GREY

to consult him about this time with reference to
the renewal of the lease of my house. I wanted
to get the renewal, and I did not want the rent to
be put up. Locris managed it for me, showing
tact and intelligence and all good business qualities
in the negotiation. It was true that the law
interested him. He would break off his examina-
tion of drawings of details for his new abode, in
order to speak again of that lease. It contained
one or two unusual clauses.

But at any rate I had this other possible
explanation for his actions. He was keen on
chemistry and was expecting to produce some
new discovery. Inventors are jealous people.
^He might perhaps think himself safer if his
laboratory were underground.

He showed himself to be a kindly man. This
was particularly the case with regard to poor old
Simpson, the verger at the church which Locris
attended. Simpson was a man of well over sixty,
and incapable of doing any hard work. Rheuma-
tism had compelled him to give up the grave-digging
many years before. He was an intermittent
drunkard. He had long spells of total abstinence,
interspersed with brief bursts of intoxication. As
a rule he timed his breakdowns very carefully, so
that they should not attract the attention of his
employers. But on one occasion he had been
found drunk in the churchyard, and he had now
been guilty of a still more horrid delinquency.
He had been found incapacitated by drink in the
church itself, and had been promptly dismissed.

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 203

Locris was quite angry about it. He kept on
repeating that Simpson was an old man and that
there was no chance of his getting any other
berth, and that it was a shameful thing to allow
the one or two days when he had yielded to
temptation to counterbalance his many years of
faithful and effective service. It was plausible,
but it did not prevail. Locris moved heaven and
earth to get Simpson kept on, and Locris had a
good deal of influence with the vicar. But the
thing was too heinous, and the old man was
turned out. It was expected, of course, that, as
he had no one to support him, he would have to
go to the workhouse. But Simpson did not go to
the workhouse. He kept on his small cottage and
worked in the scrap of garden which belonged to
it. When questioned by the philanthropical or
the curious, he maintained that he had private
means. Most people guessed that Locris was
allowing him a small pension.

In due course the work at Mangay near
Aldeburgh was completed, and Locris sold his
practice to a couple of young solicitors who were
in partnership together. It was announced that
he was about to leave Stannoke, and the vicar, in
one of his sermons, made a very feeling and
sympathetic reference to the impending departure.
Locris found himself referred to as " one who has
set such an excellent example, not only in the
rectitude of his professional career and his private
life, but also in his regular attendance at divine
worship."

204 STORIES IN GREY

At the same time, the vicar did not know every-
thing about Mr Locris. He met me in the street
one day and stopped me. " So sorry," he said,
" you are to lose your friend, Mr Locris. He tells
me that he is going to live in the country."

" That is so, I believe."

" But he did not happen in his conversation with
me to mention what part of the country."

"Oh," I said, "there's no secret about it, I
believe. He's going to live in Suffolk."

I hurried on. Suffolk as a postal address is
perhaps somewhat vague, but I do not like curious
vicars. If Locris had meant to have told him
everything, he would have done so himself.

IV

FOR three years I never saw Locris and had no
news of him. For a provincial architect I was
doing fairly well in my profession. I specialized
in bungalows and small houses, and had as much
work as I could do. My father thought that I
should leave Stannoke and come to London, and
I was not altogether averse to making the plunge ;
but still, the local connection meant a good deal
to me, and I did not want to lose it. Life at
Stannoke went on with its customary placidity.
Market-day was the one day in the week when we
all of us seemed to be alive. And Sunday was
the one day in the week when we all of us seemed
to be dead. On the other days we were in a con-
dition of mild lethargy. In such a town very

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 205

small things make a sensation. Sir Luke Mallow,
son of the Sir Luke to whom my father referred,
had an old cart-horse stolen from one of his fields.
We talked about it for weeks, and our best police-
man seemed practically to live on his bicycle.
But neither he nor anybody else ever found the
horse or the man who had stolen it. Then old
Simpson sold his few sticks of furniture to a dealer
one day, paid the three weeks' rent he still owed,
and started off into the unknown. We talked a
good deal about the fate of Simpson too. There
were many theories, but alcohol and sudden death
had their part in all of them. A week later, a
touring company was unwise enough to visit
Stannoke, and the sensation caused wiped out all
recollections of Simpson.

And then a man, whose brother lived at
Stannoke, decided to build himself a bungalow at
Aldeburgh. I knew the brother, and I received
the commission. I went down to Aldeburgh to
spend some days over the business, and it occurred
to me that I was within an easy drive of the tower
where Locris lived. I managed to hire a dog-cart
of sorts, and drove out there one afternoon.

I left my dog-cart at the one little inn in Mangay,
and struck across the fields on foot towards the
tower. I had mentioned at the inn that I was
going to see Mr Locris, and found that any
interest which might have been taken in him, or
his unusual dwelling, had entirely subsided.

" Nice old gentleman," said my landlord.
" Wish I had his cellars. I could buy my winter

206 STORIES IN GREY

coal in the summer then, and save a bit. There's
a fine view, they say, from that tower of his. I
suppose that's what he built it for."

" Do you see much of him ? " I asked.

" Not to say much," the landlord admitted.
" Sometimes when he's out for a walk he'll drop
in here for a glass of bitter, but he's not been of
late. He doesn't enjoy the best of health, they
tell me, and — well, we're none of us so young as
we were."

The tower had changed very little since I last
saw it. As a piece of work I was not very proud
of it. I could have made a good thing of it, but
Locris had been very skimpy and ignoble about
that tower. He would not let me have the
materials I wanted. It seemed absurd enough too,
when he was burying good black-and-white marble
underground.

Greatly to my surprise the door of the tower
was opened to me by old Simpson. He had re-
sumed the suit of black broadcloth, with the boot-
lace neck-tie, which had been his official costume
as verger. He must have recognized me, but he
gave no sign of it. He waited there like a stone
image for me to speak. I asked if Mr Locris was
in.

"He is, sir," said Simpson, severely. "Kindly
wait where you are. I'll inquire if he can see
you."

He returned in a moment with the announce-
ment that Mr Locris would be pleased to see me,
and showed me into one of the small living-rooms,

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 207

where Locris sat writing at a cheap American
desk. I noticed at once that he had aged very
much in these last few years. He was more bent.
He seemed to have shrunken.

He rose as I entered, and shook hands with me.

" It is strange that you have come," he said. " I
had just written to you."

He showed me a sealed letter addressed to
myself, which was lying on the desk, but he did
not give it to me.

" The fact of the case is," he said, " that my son
being out of England, I have made you the exe-
cutor of my will. It will give you very little
trouble. I hope you will not refuse to act."

I answered, of course, that I was quite willing to
undertake the work, and made the usual banal
observation that I hoped the time was still far
distant for it.

" I should not say that," said Locris. " I am
not well. I am far from well. Dr Hanneford
from Aldeburgh is coming up to see me to-morrow
morning. However, I do not want to bore you
about my health. I should perhaps tell you that
by my will I am leaving you my land here."

"You will pardon me," I said, "but I don't
think you should do that. I hope you will re-
consider it. You have a son, you know, and I
believe you have not quarrelled with him."

" I am on perfectly good terms with my son.
I have been in communication with him on this
very matter. He is quite content that it should
be so. You must remember that these three acres

208

STORIES IN GREY

represent a very small portion of my property, and
that he will have the rest." He paused and looked
at me very intently, as if he were trying to read
my thoughts. "Are you wondering," he said,
" what you will do with a house like this ? "

He had guessed my thoughts exactly, but I told
him that the idea had not occurred to me.

" I ask," he said, " because you will not have
the house. You will have the land, but not the
house."

" I don't understand," I said.

"An explanation will be forthcoming. I may
give it to you to-day perhaps — to-morrow perhaps
— any day. If you have not received the explana-
tion at the time of my death, it will be waiting for
you in my writing. You will have the land, and
you will not have the house."

At this moment Simpson brought in some very
strong and bitter tea, and some untidy bread and
butter. These are not things that I love precisely,
but I partook of them meekly. I asked the old
man if he found Simpson a useful servant.

" Simpson has been invaluable to me. From the
domestic point of view he is perhaps the worst
servant that ever existed, but that is a matter of
comparatively little importance. I am not a very
particular man. Almost anything does. Nowa-
days I live principally on tea, and I fancy it is
not very good tea, is it ? "

" Since you ask me, it is a very low grade of
Indian tea, and I should imagine that the con-
tinued consumption of it might have something to

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 209

do with the ill-health of which you complain.
Really, Mr Locris, I think you ought to get
yourself looked after better."

" I have thought so myself," said Locris, sadly,
" Something perhaps must be done. But in any
case I must keep Simpson, because he is a faithful
man and holds his tongue. You see ? He goes
down below with me, and he comes up with me,
and he does what he is told, and no one
hears anything about it. I am never bothered."

I could not quite make out to what he was
referring. I suppose I looked puzzled.

" Yes," said Locris, suddenly. " Why not ? Better
perhaps on the whole. You shall have your ex-
planation now. You shall come down with me."

I consented at once. I was human enough to
be rather curious as to the use to which he had
put these underground rooms.

He rang the bell, and told Simpson to bring the
lanterns. They were just ordinary candle lanterns
of japanned tin. The spiral staircase which went
up to the top of the tower also descended below
the surface to the underground rooms. They were
not very far down, the roof of them being twenty
feet below the surface. We went through the iron
gate and down the stairs together. Old Simpson
went first with a lantern, and I followed him.
Behind me came Locris with the other lantern.

The aspect of the anteroom seemed to show me
that my conjecture had been right. It was fitted
as a laboratory and looked as if it had been in

recent use. Locris waved his hand towards the
o

210 STORIES IN GREY

shelves and bottles. " What do you know about
that kind of thing?" he asked.

" Nothing," I said. " It is not in my line. Is
there anything very wonderful there ? "

"Yes," said Locris, pointing to a bottle which
seemed to contain some brown resinous powder.
" That stuff in there is very wonderful."

I raised my hand to take it down and have a
look at it, and found my arm struck down at once
by old Simpson. Locris could see that I was
angry, and hastened to apologize.

" Sorry," he said. " But Simpson was quite
right. He had to do it in the interests of your
safety."

" I don't see how my safety was concerned. It
doesn't kill a man to touch a bottle. Did he think
I was going to eat the stuff? "

"No, no," said Locris. "The thing is very
simple. You asked me once if I was inventing a
new poison. I told you that I was not. It would not
interest me in the least. And besides, we have
plenty of the old-fashioned poisons which do their
work in a perfectly satisfactory manner. What I
really have invented is a new explosive. There is
a specimen of it in that bottle. Had you dropped
the bottle, it would have been the end of all
of us."

"Cheerful work," I said. "And the big room
beyond? Is that a continuation of the labora-
tory ? "

" Hush ! " said Locris, impressively. " It is not.
The room beyond is a tomb — a chapel of the dead.

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER an

Come, Simpson, give me the keys. We shall
show this gentleman everything."

I picked up one of the lanterns.

" We shall not need that," said Locris. " The
chapel is always lighted."

Simpson was already pulling back the heavy
sliding-doors between the two rooms, and I could
see the bright light beyond. Simpson and Locris
entered first. Locris went down on his knees on
a faldstool near the door, and Simpson, a grotesque
figure, knelt on a hassock behind him. I myself
stood for a moment in the doorway, astonished by
the scene which I witnessed.

In the middle of this underground chapel there
was erected a high catafalque, draped with gold
and white. On the catafalque there lay in her
white shroud the body of a young girl. Her hair,
astonishingly golden and profuse, was loose about
her shoulders. Her hands were clasped on her breast.
As I looked at them, I saw what I had expected
to see. The first finger of the left hand was
missing. The face in profile, as I saw it, was very
beautiful, and had not the yellowish waxy look of
the face of a corpse. There was a tinge of colour
in the cheeks. One could almost have believed
that the girl was alive. On either side of the
catafalque were three brass candlesticks, eight or
nine feet in height. Each of these candlesticks
had seven branches. There were thick yellow
candles in them, now burning low. The candle
flames lit up the red jewels in a high cross that
stood behind the head of the girl. A faint scent

212

STORIES IN GREY

of incense still lingered in the air. The walls of
the room were draped with white and gold, and
but for those things which I have mentioned, the
room was empty. Locris and the old verger re-
mained kneeling in silence for perhaps five minutes,
but it seemed to me a very much longer time.
Then Locris arose, and both of them stepped
backwards from the room, closing the heavy door
behind them.

The silence was perfectly terrible. I wanted to
speak, in order to break the spell of it, but found
nothing to say. At last came the voice of Locris,
almost in a whisper.

" Now do you understand ? "

" Partly, I think. Let us come upstairs again."

As before each of the two men took a lantern,
and I walked between them. Upstairs in the
living-room, Simpson began to clear away the
strong tea and the untidy bread and butter. I
waited until he had gone, and then I turned to
Locris. " How is this to end ? " I said.

" Quite simple," said old Locris, rubbing his thin
hands together. " I shall know when my time has
come, and it cannot now be long delayed. I shall
go down to the chapel, and old Simpson with me.
It is his own wish that he should not survive me.
I shall have nothing to do then, but to start in the
anteroom a little piece of clockwork apparatus.
It is connected with that explosive which you
have seen. In a few minutes, as we are kneeling
there, the crash will come. All your good work
will be spoiled, my friend. This tower will fall,

LOCRIS OF THE TOWER 213

and the rooms below it will be buried deep. You
will have your simple explanation to give. You
knew that I was interested in the chemistry of
explosives, and that 1 worked at the subject in
those rooms down there. You will say nothing
more than this."

" Very well," I said. I was absolutely convinced
of the man's insanity, and was wondering what
was the best thing to be done.

"You see nothing unnatural in this, I hope,"
said Locris. " That, you know, is the only woman
whom I have loved or can love. Life would have
taken me from her, but I could have prevailed
over the living. Death was too strong for me.
When she died I had no other aim in life but to
do what I have done here. For that purpose
alone were all my years of work, and all the
money that I made. For me there has never
existed any other woman."

I ventured to remind him. " But you were
married, Mr Locris."

" Never," he said vehemently, " never ! The man
who passes as my son is not my son. I married
his mother to save her from ruin, but there was in
the marriage no more than the ceremony, and she
understood that there never would be any more."

There were other questions which I might have
asked him, but I thought it better to get away and
take the necessary steps as soon as possible. I did
not know, for instance, how he had managed to
remove the body from the vault in the churchyard
at Stannoke, but the strange alliance between him

214 STORIES IN GREY

and the old verger might be at the bottom of this.
The details of that removal I never did discover.
But I learned that the body had been embalmed,
and a doctor told me that the method of embalm-
ment adopted would account for that slight tinge
of natural colour in the dead girl's face.

I waited impatiently at the inn for my horse to
be put in. My nerves were upset, and I left the
man who was with me to do the driving.

" Back to the hotel, sir ? " he said.

"No. You know where Dr Hanneford lives?
Drive there, and drive as fast as you can."

About two hours later Dr Hanneford and three
other men, of whom I was one, were driving in
the direction of the tower. We had got within a
little more than a mile of it when we heard the
roar of the catastrophe. The horse in the cart
shied violently and fell.

"We are too late," said Dr Hanneford, as he
got down to see to the horse.

MINIATURES
I

THE REMEDY

THE morning was fresh and cool with a promise
of great heat to come later. The street of the
drowsy village was almost deserted. Nothing in
it was very active except the butcher's cart, always
more active than other carts. The children were
at school. Old people stood at their doors waiting
for a chance to tell a passer-by that the weather
promised to be a scorcher.

A neat little old lady came out of a neat little
house at the top of the street and across a neat
little garden in front of it. It was all in keeping.
Given the house, you could have constructed the
woman ; given the woman, you could have con-
structed the garden. She paused at the gate to
explain to her cat that he must not come with her.
The cat was horribly bored and never had any
intention of going with her. Then she went on
her way with a slight smile on her timid, patient
face and her leather hand-bag grasped firmly.

The smile met with responsive smiles as she
went along. Any of the people at the doorways
would have told you who she was and that she did
any amount of good. She spent more of her small

income on others than on herself; she was free
215

216

STORIES IN GREY

nurse to anyone who happened to be ill, and an
accommodating banker to anyone who happened to
be poor ; she had never been able to pass a child
crying in the street without stopping to find out
what was the matter and to put it right if possible.

The curate, a pleasant-looking, bronzed man,
stopped for a brief chat with her. She was sure
that there was not going to be any rain. She
kept a bunch of seaweed and went by that. The
talk turned to church work.

" I suppose," said the curate, " you are out on
your errands of mercy as usual ? "

The old lady's face changed. For a moment
there was a look of horror and of a desperate
resentment. " I can do nothing," she said, " in that
way. I have been at it so long, and it still goes
on — suffering everywhere. To try to abate it is
like trying to clear a desert by picking up the
grains of sand. There is only one thing — "

She broke off abruptly, opening her hand-bag
and producing a box of sweetmeats.

"You will have one of these?" she said
earnestly.

" Thanks very much," said the curate, " I never
eat sweet things, and I mustn't rob your favourite
children."

As she passed on he paused and looked after
her. Really she had been rather queer.

At the end of the street she met a little girl
crying, and heard her story. The little girl had
very bad toothache, so bad that the teacher had
allowed her to go home from school.

MINIATURES 217

"Yes, my dear," said the little old lady, "you
will have that tooth out, and then another one will
ache, and then another. It is the way the world
was made. It goes on like that. But do take one
of these." Again she produced her box. The
child took one and thanked her.

Once clear of the village a tramp of great
judgment saw that this was a suitable opportunity.
He began a plain, manly statement that he had
walked from Manchester and had not tasted food
for three days, and that God knew he was willing
to work if only he could find a job. The old lady
gave him a shilling.

" Yours is a sad case, my man," she said, " and
I have no delusions about it. The shilling will do
you no real good ; by to-morrow or next day you
will be just as poor and just as hungry unless —
But won't you take one of these ? "

The tramp hesitated. Still, she had given him
a shilling and it would do no harm to humour her.
He took a couple of sweetmeats from the box,
thrust them into his large, dirty mouth, and
touched his cap.

The old lady went on her way. Further on she
found a woman, the mother of far too many
children, who complained bitterly. The old lady
heard her story to the end.

" Yes," she said, " it is as you say. There is a
great deal of suffering in the world. I am quite
powerless to alleviate it. But I think you should
take one of these," and again the box was
produced from the hand-bag.

218

STORIES IN GREY

On her way home the old lady passed the
tramp again. He was lying under the hedge and
he was dead. She stood a moment looking at him
without horror and with a mild interest, and then
went back to the neat little house in the neat little
garden. There she sat and waited for the police.

They sent her to Broadmoor, of course.

II

IN THE HOSPITAL GARDEN

THE little grey monkey sat up on the bough of the
lebbek, handling meditatively the slender chain
that limited his freedom. His wise blinking eyes,
looked out towards the desert, and saw the sand
clouds dim in the distance. Soon, soon undoubt-
edly, the khamseen would be here, and the last of
the tourists would go. The khamseen, a hot
dust-laden wind, blows, so the Copts say, from
their Easter until their Pentecost; it keeps its
appointment with fair accuracy as a rule. But,
after all, tourists did not concern the monkey very
much. One or two of them came now and again
on a visit to Hakeem Basha, and he had heard
them in heated argument with superfluous guides
in the road beyond the compound. But he was
the hospital monkey ; not one of those that earn
their bread and their master's in front of hotel
verandahs at a loss of personal dignity, but the
monkey of a small but scientific — and also religious
— establishment. True, the little hospital had not

MINIATURES 219

the extent or the equipment of the great hospital
of Kasr-el-Aini, but it was doing good work ; it
considered the soul as well as the body of the
patient ; the residential monkey at such a place
has a position. And he deserved it ; he never bit
and he never scratched ; he accepted the proffered
nut with solemn civility. If he was somewhat of a
philosopher, that may have been due to the fact
that two or three conflicting religions, all in
excellent working order, were going on under his
very nose. And to the philosophy may be
ascribed his habits of reserve. He did not come
when he was called, unless it was to the soft,
cooing voice of the little blind girl. If any other
•would pet him or play with him, he retired gently
up the tree, turned his back and thought deeply.
He was well aware, too, that if you keep in the
shade and move rapidly, the snap-shot photograph
of you will hardly repay development. He certainly
had the air of knowing much. He would look over
a group of natives as though he diagnosed which
of the common plagues of Egypt brought them
there. This one was eyes and that one also was
eyes. This was tubercular, and that would be
treated with a dose of thymol that would startle
a European practitioner. Perhaps he was not
always accurate. The first day the pretty blind
girl had called him from her seat on the turf under
the lebbek tree he had come to her at once, and
had seen that it was her eyes which troubled her ;
but that was not all, nor was it the worst of the
trouble.

220 STORIES IN GREY

The grey monkey turned to the garden beneath
him. There stretched the hedge of hibiscus, a
glory of scarlet flames. Beyond, there glimmered
faintly in the sun the creamy white of the oleander.
On the seat below the lebbek tree snored a fat
native woman, old and past at thirty-five. But
nowhere could be seen the pretty blind girl. And
this was now the second day that she had not been
in the garden, the second day that she had never
called to him.

He may be acquitted of low motives. It is true
that she fed him, but their friendship dated from
the day when she came in, and she had nothing to
give then. She subjugated the hospital in a few
hours. It may have been because she was so
pretty, or because her cooing laugh was so musical,
or because all her ways were charming, or because
it was so sad that she had lost her sight and was
like to lose her life as well. She became a general
pet, and the monkey was her special pet, and she
did not come to him empty-handed.

The monkey blinked gravely. He could not
think what had happened to her. The reader has
guessed, of course. Inside the hospital all was
over. It was the last chance and it had failed.
The doctor went on to other cases where his skill
might be of better service. The hard-featured
Englishwoman, who did the work of three and
hated sentimentality, was compelled to be angry
with herself. If she was going to — well, to be
stupid — every time a little native girl died, of what
use was she likely to be ?

MINIATURES 221

As the evening came rapidly on, the monkey
made up his mind on two points. Obviously his
friend was quite well again. The doctor had given
her back her sight, and she had gone home. The
second conclusion was that the swivel of his chain
could be negotiated. It was dusk when he
negotiated it, and slipped through the tamarisk
hedge and over the wall to look for the blind girl.
Among the mud huts quick eyes saw him. He
heard the scream of excited voices, and felt the
shower of stones. He fell from the roof to the
ground, and — well, that ends his history. Nor
may we suppose that he and his playfellow will
meet again. The two or three religions that he
daily contemplated are agreed upon that point.

Ill
REASSURANCE

" Now then," said the man sternly when she had
glanced through the letter.

" I always knew this would happen one day,"
she said quietly. "Yes, he wrote it. He wrote
others and I destroyed them. It was careless of
me to let this fall into your hands. Well, what
will you do ? "

" I don't know," said the man. " I think I shall
kill you."

"That would be one way," she said drearityj
tearing the letter in her hands into little pieces as
she spoke. " Perhaps it would be the best way for
me — not for you, nor — "

222 STORIES IN GREY

The man interrupted her. " I shan't kill you till
I've wrung the truth out of you."

" You would never believe the truth now if you
heard it."

"Tell it me."

"The truth is that I love you." She dropped
the little bits of torn letter — a few at a time — into
the basket by her writing-table.

"Indeed?" the man sneered. "And that
letter ? "

"Is it so hard to explain ? Vanity at the age of
forty-one requires a little reassurance. The letter
was a form of reassurance. I am forty-one, you
know, even if I don't quite look it."

" And you dare to tell me that you love me ? "
He seemed less resolute ; there had been sincerity
in her voice and look as she spoke.

" I do ! I do ! I do ! I think there are just two
people in the world for whom I would give my
life. Mona is one, and you are the other. You
and I have been married for twenty years, and
romance does not live as long as that. We may
as well admit that and not grumble at it ; it's silly
to grumble at the inevitable. But if ardent
romance has gone, love has not. The rock is
colder than the flame, but the rock endures. You
are the father of my Mona. I nursed you when
you were so ill. I've had pride in your success
and been ever so sorry when you were disappointed.
You do many things for me every day. We suit
one another, and we don't quarrel. And I know
you so well, too — I often know just what you will

MINIATURES 223

say before you speak. I know you all by heart
and in my heart. How could I help loving you ?
And you loved me too."

" Until this, strangely enough, I believed that
you loved me, although — "

"Yes, yes."

"Listen, please. I must go through with this.
You say that what you have told me is true. Now
I must know the rest of the truth. Tell me about
this man. Tell me everything that — "

He stopped abruptly as a servant entered the
room with a telegram. His face changed as he
read it. He said quietly that he would send the
answer himself later. As the servant closed
the door again the woman sprang from her
place.

" It's bad news," she said. " I know it— I read
it in your face. It's Mona, isn't it ? "

" Yes. A serious accident. They want you to
come at once." He glanced at the clock. " You
will just have time to catch the 3.30. Be quick,
I'll see about the carriage for you."

She was soon ready. He found her standing
before her dressing-table, crying.

" My Mona ! " she said, " she was to have come
home for her birthday to-morrow. I'd been buy-
ing things for her. I'd — "

" Don't ! " he said gently. " Come now, please."

She looked at him. " Why ? " she said, " are
you coming too ? "

"Yes, I'm coming with you."

She could not speak, but her lips made the

224 STORIES IN GREY

word, "Thanks." One hand stole out and just
touched his sleeve, lightly and shyly.

A month later they were still away from home.
During that month Mona had come very near to
death and had turned backward to life again.
She was near now to complete recovery. One
day she told her mother that the really glorious
thing was that the accident had not in any
way injured her personal appearance.

" You're quite beautiful," said her mother, " but
you mustn't be vain. There's nothing more natural
or more dangerous."

" But why dangerous ? "

" Because when you grow to be an old woman
like me—"

" But you're not the least little bit old."

" Listen. If you're vain, when you grow to be
an old woman, just exactly like me, you may want
reassurance. You understand that ? "

" Not the least bit."

" I didn't think you would."

Mona laughed.

That evening in the garden the woman found
her husband and sat down by his side. " Mona's
getting on splendidly," she said. " She will come
down to-morrow."

The man looked at her with kindly eyes. They
had been through the fire together and he saw her
heart as proved gold. He drew her to him and
kissed her, and she sighed the happy sigh of a
forgiven woman. Of that letter and its writer no

MINIATURES 225

word was ever spoken again by either of them. He
asked for no confession and she made none. The
years passed on with placid happiness for them.

IV

THE LUCKY WOMAN

WHEN they were respectively of the ages of
eighteen and nineteen it becomes necessary for the
two Miss Venners to do something for themselves.
They were orphans, and they divided between them
a fortune of £50 a year. The elder and plainer of
the two, Ellen Venner, took her own strong line at
once. She married a Dissenting minister and
made for herself a little home at Brixton. The
more vulgar of her acquaintances said that it was
no great catch.

Beatrice, the younger sister, was fortunate
enough to obtain the post of governess to Mrs
Pawling's three dear little boys ; moreover, she
retained her post, and won for herself some portion
of the respect and goodwill of Mr and Mrs Pawling.
The three dear little boys kicked her with almost
unnecessary profusion and learnt very little from
her. But then boys will be boys and, if we are to
be frank, it must be admitted that Beatrice Venner
had very little to teach. She had good food, she
had £30 a year over and above her private income,
she had occasional holidays and two evening
dresses, and in course of time a still further bless-
ing was to befall her.

226 STORIES IN GREY

The further blessing came when she had been
with the Pawlings for about four years, and it was
beginning to be said by papa and mamma that the
eldest of the dear little boys certainly ought to go
to school now. As he was by far the hardest and
most persistent kicker of the three, Beatrice heard
this without regret ; a governess would still be
wanted for the other two. It was at this time that
Mr Pawling' s old friend, Mr Yardley, came to stay
at the house.

Mr Yardley was a youth of about forty-five, by
profession a stockbroker, unmarried, priding him-
self somewhat on a gallant manner with the ladies.
He was chubby, tubby, and clean-shaven. His
hair was very thin on the top of his head and he
took something for it. He had an income of
.£2000 a year and the most commonplace mind in
the City, and he enjoyed both of them thoroughly.
His was a mind that would never make a fortune
or come to wreck. He was distinctly satisfied
with himself. I do not know whether his friends
and intimate relations had told him so, or whether
he had found it all out for himself, but at the
moment when he came on that visit to the Paw-
lings the decision was firm and hot within him
that he must not lead this gay butterfly life any
longer. He must settle down.

His gallant but perfectly polite eye fell upon
Beatrice Venner. In the drawing-room after
dinner he inquired if she was fond of music, and
added, as he always did, that he himself was
devoted to it, though he was no performer. Pulled

MINIATURES 227

up somewhat short by Beatrice's frank confession
that she did not care for music in the least, he
added, with a reasonable desire to please, that he
himself knew that there were other things, and
that he could get along very well without it. The
conversation passed to other topics. That day,
and the next day, and the next, it was quite
obvious to Mrs Pawling that Mr Yardley was
paying marked attention to the governess.

There was no illegitimate secrecy about the man.
That evening in the smoking-room he explained
portentously to Mr Pawling his decision to marry
Mr Pawling's governess.

" Good heavens ! you don't say so ? " said Mr
Pawling. "Well," he added, "she's a very good
girl, and this will be a rare bit of luck for her."

Beatrice Venner accepted the rare bit of luck
with meekness and gratitude. It was true that
she was not in the least in love with Mr Yardley,
but she admired his income and his other estimable
qualities. Certainly, too, she was not in love with
anybody else. She received many congratulations.
The letter from her sister Ellen was of a somewhat
subacid character, implying that she did not
expect that they would see much of Beatrice down
at Brixton after this. She also added that con-
scientious scruples would not allow her husband
and herself to be present at a wedding in a church.
This did not prevent Beatrice from being married
in a church in a beautful white dress and a beauti-
ful lace veil, with two bridesmaids, with the
youngest Pawling boy as a page, with The- Voice-

228 STORIES IN GREY

that-breathed-o'er-Eden and, generally speaking,
with pomp.

She was quite happy in a placid way for some
time after her marriage, and she did not drop her
sister down at Brixton. Beatrice had no children,
and her sister had many. Beatrice thought of
adopting one of them. Her husband, kindly but
firmly, thought not. She had been married eight
years and the edge of the luxuries had worn off ;
her remarkable luck had become quite common-
place, and she was beginning to find her husband
a very slow man with a tendency to hypochondria,
and one day she went to Brixton to her sister's
squalid abode to play a game with her sister's new
baby, which was a perfect beauty.

She was late in returning, and found that her
husband had already got back from the City and
was going round the gardens. It was springtime,
and she found him standing in the orchard, his
frock coat and his silk hat still on him, looking
grotesquely out of place. He pointed out the
fruit prospects with gravity and with some know-
ledge of the subject. " It's a queer thing," he said,
" that this one tree has got no blossom on it at all."

" I'm glad," she snapped furiously.

He stared at her with his little eyes wide open.

"No, I am not glad," she added quickly, and
pressed her lips to the rough bark of the tree and
kissed it.

" My dear child," he said in gentle remonstrance,
" have you gone quite mad ? "

MINIATURES 229

" No," she said, " but I think I shall." Then she
ran into the house, and he followed laboriously to
inquire what she was crying about.

V

THE WOMAN IN THE ROAD

HENDERSON drove slowly. There were several
small carts in the road, driven in the indolent,
unintelligent, rustic fashion, and little groups of
villagers. All were going in the same direction,
turning in at the gates of the drive. Henderson
had seen the notices of the sale by auction dis-
played on the outer walls of the garden. Every-
thing apparently was to be sold, and everything
included a motor-car. It might be worth while to
look at it. Henderson wanted a more powerful
car than the one he was driving, and there might
be other things that he would like to buy. In any
case these auction sales were frequently amusing.

A dealer came up to him as he stepped out of
his car and asked if he could execute any com-
missions. He took Henderson to see the big
motor-car. " Mr Jasper only drove it about a
month," said the dealer.

" Why is it being sold ? "

"Everything is being sold. Mr Jasper is a
bankrupt and in prison now."

It was a modern, up-to-date, 36-h.p. car, and
Henderson went over it with an engineer's critical
eye and could find no fault. When his prolonged

230 STORIES IN GREY

examination was finished he decided that if it
went for £400 he would buy it. He believed that
it would fetch much more, but at these country
sales one never knew.

He gave the dealer his instructions and the
dealer bought the car for him for £95.

"Now then," said Henderson to the dealer,
" tell me what's wrong."

" There is nothing wrong that a sensible person
would take any notice of. These villagers get
ideas into their heads. Mr Jasper wasn't liked
even before that thing happened, and — "

"Look here! What's this?" said Henderson.
He unwound a few long black hairs that were
entangled in the acetylene lamp.

" Bless my soul ! " exclaimed the dealer. " They
must have come from the woman that he killed."

" Ran a woman down in the road, did he ? How
was that ? "

" He was bad-tempered always, and that day he
was drunk too. I suppose she didn't skip out of
the road fast enough for him."

" Why didn't you tell me all this before ? "

" I supposed you knew it. Everybody about
here knows it. Why, it was because of what she
said just before she died that no one would bid to-
day. She said that she knew she was going to die,
but she was not done with that car yet. She was
a gipsy, and some people think that gipsies can
foretell things. It's all stuff and nonsense to my
mind."

" It's absolute stuff and nonsense. Why didn't

MINIATURES 231

you buy the car yourself? You might have made
money on it."

"Might, or might not. It's not my line of
business. I know nothing about motors, and I've
got no capital to put into a thing like that."

A few days later Henderson got his big car
home. He was delighted with it. He liked to
feel the great power under him and to compare
the pace at which he could take the steepest hills
now with what he had been able to do on the
smaller car. This smaller car he sold for consider-
ably more than he had paid at the auction, and on
the whole he considered that it had been a very
good day's work for him, and blessed the
superstitions and prejudices of ignorant people.

The rest of the story came out in the evidence
which Henderson's driver, a Frenchman who
spoke no English, gave at the inquest. The
interpreter was asked more than once by the
coroner if he was quite certain that he was giving
the man's evidence • correctly. The evidence was
that Henderson was driving fast on a straight
stretch of road with nothing in sight. There was
a stone wall on his left. Suddenly Henderson
gave a loud cry, pulled the wheel hard over to
the left, and dashed into this wall. By some
miracle the Frenchman was not injured in the
least, and he did the best he could for his master,
who lay unconscious. In a minute or two
Henderson opened his eyes and spoke. He said,
" Did we go over her ? " The driver told him

232 STORIES IN GREY

there had been nobody there. " Of course, there
was," said Henderson. " She jumped out suddenly
into the middle of the road, right in front of the
car — a swarthy sort of woman, looked like a
tramp." He tried to say more, but again became
unconscious, and died in a state of unconsciousness
an hour later.

VI

TWO MEN

THE murderer generally knows that he is a
murderer ; the vain man — who, from a social point
of view, is frequently the greater sinner — never
knows that he is vain, unless somebody tells him.
Even then he must be told with considerable force,
and the hypothesis that the teller is jealous must
be too absurd to be tenable. Richard Perral was
convinced somewhat suddenly of vanity and his
other defects by Rhoda Lestrange.

The social manner may be only skin deep, but
it is a tough skin. It takes more than a scratch
to get through it. The natural Rhoda came
through one night at a dance when Perral made
her angry without intending it. When a boy
suddenly tears off the boxing-gloves and wishes
to continue with bare fists, there is generally
somebody handy to stop him. But there
happened to be nobody to stop Rhoda — I doubt
if anybody could have stopped her. A moment
before she had been smiling, and saying the
usual things. And before Perral could grasp

MINIATURES 233

what the reason was — though she soon told him
— she was being absolutely truthful, absolutely
merciless, absolutely brutal. His first feelings
were those that he would have had if a woman
to whom he was talking had suddenly lost all
control of herself through drink or madness.
But those feelings changed later. He was swept
out of momentary horror into lasting shame.

He had been speaking of Lucy Wyllinger's
engagement, which he professed to find incompre-
hensible. Rhoda was an intimate friend of Lucy's,
and understood the engagement perfectly, but as
she had no intention of telling Perral anything
whatever about it, she said that she thought so,
too.

Perral suggested that pique might be the
explanation. "In fact," he added fatuously, " I
have heard it hinted, though it is ridiculous
enough, that I am to blame."

The social manner still held. "What do you
mean ? " she asked. " Did you advise her in any
way ? "

" No ; not that."

Rhoda's eyes flashed.

"Since you are so fond of explanations, I will
tell you one or two things that you had better
know — things about yourself."

" Delighted," said Perral, who had not seen the
eyes or grasped the situation.

"For instance, I think you do not know that
you are the common joke of the set that, by no
means for your sake, still tolerates you. I have

234 STORIES IN GREY

seen you leave people whom you evidently thought
that your bragging had impressed mightily, and I
have been sorry that you did not hear what was
said when you had gone. I suppose you cannot
help it. It is one of your natural disadvantages ;
it is one of many. You need not stare at me. I
know perfectly well that I have lost my temper.
I hope I shall lose my temper again if ever again
I hear a cad lying about a woman to satisfy his
silly vanity ; it is not likely ; one is generally
careful not to meet your type. If a woman talks
to you at dinner, to satisfy conventions and her
hostess, you think that she is in love with you. If
you had not been as dense as a millstone you
must have seen how all women — and Miss
Wyllinger particularly — worked and plotted to
avoid your society. You shall hear presently
what they say of you — of your appearance, your
manners, your habit of drinking too much, your
blunders, your brag, and your fancied accomplish-
ments. You do not even know the nickname by
which everybody calls you. But you shall know
it ; you are fond of explanations. Afterwards,
even your vanity will not tempt you to say that
Miss Wyllinger or anybody else was in love with
you."

Perral had gone very white. " I can see that I
have offended you, but I think that there is a
misunderstanding. I did not say that Miss
Wyllinger was in love with me ; I even expressed
my opinion that the idea was ridiculous."

" You did not say it ? No, because you thought

MINIATURES 235

it would impress me more if you said that others
said it, and you did not mean me to think you
ridiculous. You are amusing when you try to
veil your brag. You always do it so clumsily.
But I thought you would make some such spirit-
less excuse. Well, let me tell you some true
stories — things you have done and things other
people have said of you."

That was where (he told himself afterwards) he
should have left her, but he had a morbid desire
now to know the very worst ; for all the vainest
men live on the edge of a precipice of self-abase-
ment. She gave him chapter and verse, drily and
bitterly — she must have hated him for a long time
and made notes of things in her mind. The image
of himself as he had supposed himself, collapsed in
fragments ; out of them arose a ghastly figure —
himself as he was and now knew that he was.
For a moment he had a sense of injustice ; he had
said a silly thing, from a kind of instinctive vanity
and without planning it consciously, but did it
merit this virulent punishment? What did it
matter? Socially, he was done and finished.
Rhoda Lestrange would cut him, and she would
take good care not to be alone in her action. He
found himself standing up, speechless. He got out
somehow.

After the last carriage had rolled away in the
early morning, he was still awake. He sat and
thought over the comparative values of suicide, the
Catholic Church, active service, the life of a scholar
and a recluse. Underneath them all was the idea

236 STORIES IN GREY

that he had to get away from them ; but primarily
he had to get away from himself.

A few months later he left England for New
York. He returned, three years afterwards, shy,
quiet, unselfish, and wealthy. He then married
Rhoda Lestrange.

And if this seems curious, remember that vanity
is a vice with a cognate virtue, which is imagination ;
and that women, and men, have a tendency to
admire their own work.

VII

THE ENEMY

(From the Letters of Lady Raffenstall> formerly
Miss Hilda Bruntori}

FIRST EXTRACT

(Bearing an Address at Littlehamptori)

You must, of course, write and let me know about
everything. One feels so much out of it in this
forsaken place. For that matter I am not sure
that I do not feel even more out of it when I am in
London nowadays. The plain fact, which to you,
my dear friend, I may mention quite candidly, is
that I am definitely middle-aged. I am just forty ;
I have grown fatter, or, as most of my dear friends
are probably putting it at this present moment, I
have " coarsened." On the whole, it is perhaps as
well that the illness of my children and the usual
doctor's formula have brought me to a hideous and
minstrel-haunted seaside. When I am in London

MINIATURES 237

I am so much less sought after nowadays that I
grow full of bitterness. After one has had the
feast one should lose the hunger. If I had the
making of this world I would make it differently
in many respects. I did have the feast ; they say
that I have two suicides to my credit and some
minor heart-breakages. I could do what I liked ;
everybody was always trying to get me to go to
their things. I was in the Academy three years
running, and always by a first-rate man. And the
kind people say that I must have been a beauty once,
and the unkind people say that I have " coarsened."
By the way, do you remember the portrait that
Hallom did of me fifteen years ago, just before I
was married ? He would not sell it, and Harry
was rather mad about it. Well, Hallom's dead
and has left the portrait specifically to Harry in
his will. It is the one where I am all in white,
playing with a kitten. My God ! What a fool I
should look all in white, playing with a kitten now !
However, Harry is delighted to have got the
portrait, and writes that he has hung it in the
library at our house in Hill Street. He does not
come down here, by the way, which is scandalous
of him. However, he writes letters inquiring
affectionately about the children. How one loses
everything when one is middle-aged !

This is a boresome letter, all about myself; but
you know what the seaside is. There is nothing
in one's surroundings which will bear thinking
about for one moment. A woman with a fringe
and a portable harmonium — neither of which suits

238 STORIES IN GREY

her in the least — has just planted herself in the
street outside these windows, and a husky baritone,
with Cockney accent, is singing, " There's only one
girl hin this world for me ! " What a life ! Yes,
the children are better, thanks. Write again soon.

SECOND EXTRACT

(Bearing the Address of a House in Hill Street, W.)

WHEN one deteriorates in value one ought, I
suppose, to become much cheaper. I am seriously
thinking of becoming much cheaper. I could still,
on the title, get a parcel of little Jews and people
from the City to run about after me. No, I was
joking, and not in the best taste. In five years'
time I shall be all resignation and black cashmere ;
a peaceful, grey-haired old lady with a saintly life
and a spotless reputation, such as is acquired by
those who can neither tempt nor be tempted.
That, again, is rather horrible, and I am inclined
to write no more until I am in a better frame of
mind. However, let's try and look at the bright
side of things.

The children are quite well, and that is a blessing.
Harry gives me no trouble whatever. Of course I
knew he was a maniac when I married him ; I
rather liked him for it. My picture by Hallom in
the library has flowers before it perpetually, and
lighted candles in the evening. He spends most
of the day there with the door locked. Sometimes
for two or three days I never exchange three words

MINIATURES 239

with him. This is rather funny, as we are both
living in the same house. I really fancy he must
be a little mad. I could understand his neglecting
me, which he does in the kindest and most gentle-
manly way, since I am middle-aged and fat and
ugly— or shall we say " coarsened ? " Men don't
age so quickly as women, and he is still far from
being an old man. That is why I want to know
who the enemy is. When he stopped caring a
pin's head about me, who was it for whom he
began to care all the world ? Who is the enemy ?
I do not say this by way of complaint. As I said,
I am looking now at the bright side of things. So
far as I can make out, there is not at this moment
in the world a single woman for whom Harry
cares twopence. But then, as I said, he is a
maniac.

THIRD EXTRACT

{Bearing an Address at Grandtoivn^ Morayshire)

I AM getting seriously annoyed with Harry. I
hate to see money fooled away. He is not a
pauper, but his expenditure should at least be
reasonable. The children and I, with the servants,
came on here first. He followed a few days
afterwards, and he followed in a special train if you
please. When I remonstrated with him on the
absurdity of it, he said that he did not take the
train for his own sake. As there was nobody else
in it, except his valet and the railway officials, I
should be glad to know for whose sake he did take

240 STORIES IN GREY

it. By the way, as a further sign of his mania, in
that same train he brought with him Hallom's
portrait of me from our house in Hill Street. The
same silly nonsense with the flowers and candles
and the locked room has gone on here. At first I
was pleased, even a little flattered, by his adoration
of this portrait, but I confess that it begins to
madden me exceedingly now. One or two of the
people staying in the house have made little jokes
about it which I resented very much. One young
idiot spoke of the portrait to me the other night as
my only possible rival. When the truth is ex-
pounded to you by a fool it is even more infuriating
than the truth generally is.

I like this place. I do not care if I never
go back to London again. I hate Society ; I hate
most things. I think I shall hate Harry, only I
am hardly on familiar enough terms with him to
do that.

FOURTH EXTRACT

(Dated a Month later> from the same Address)

WE have had a scene. That is my great piece of
news : a very serious scene. Partly as a kind of
practical joke, and partly to satisfy my own feeling,
last night, while the men were still lingering over
the cigarettes, I got to the shrine of my sacred
portrait of his worship, and cut it out of the frame
and burnt it. An oil painting, by the way, takes a
good deal of burning : it has to be done in sections.
I was just finishing off the last little piece ; it had

MINIATURES 241

my hand on it with the engagement ring on one of
the fingers, when Harry and the rest came in. As
I said to him afterwards, I do not in the least
mind his losing his temper, and it is quite im-
material to me whether he is in a good temper or
a bad, but I will not have him lose his temper with
me before people. Last night it was really most em-
barrassing. You never heard such a volley of abuse.
Nobody knew what to do or where to look or what to
say. I laughed at him all the time. Amongst other
kindly remarks of his was one that he would much
sooner I had cut myself upin pieces and burned them.
Since writing the above I have seen Harry. He
declines to live in the same house with me any
more, and has gone back to town for the present.
The funny thing is he says he cannot stand, even
for a moment, the presence of a woman whom
jealousy has rendered absolutely insane. If it
comes to a question of sanity I may have some-
thing to say. There will be a separation, I suppose,
judicial or otherwise ; I do not much care.

P.S. — Thanks for the pamphlet on Diet for the
Obese ; I shan't trouble about it though. I think
I shall live on the Continent in future : that is
the place for the used-up. However, I have killed
the enemy now.

VIII
IDYLL IN A CHURCHYARD

THE churchyard stood well above the village.
The nearest way to it was by a path over fields.
Q

242 STORIES IN GREY

At present it lay very quiet in the cool of the
summer evening until the quiet was broken by the
creak of two large new boots. A man of forty-
five, with a complicated face, in deep mourning,
and with a lavish band upon his hat came creaking
round the corner of the church and then creaked
across the grass to a well-kept grave. The face
was complicated because it told such different
things — years of small commerce in the country
had lent it much of the parochial and the com-
monplace, but the eyes were those of a tired
epicure.

The tombstone told in gilt lettering that it was
sacred to the memory of Lavinia, for seventeen
years the pious and devoted wife of Alexander
Hythe. The date of the decease was very recent.
A quotation from a favourite hymn completed the
inscription. The man removed a very shiny black
glove, a glove which had blue high lights on it in
the sun, and began to pull up one or two weeds,
adjusted the cross of everlastings, which was not
quite straight. Then he drew that terrible kid
glove on again and folded his fat hands together
and closed his tearless eyes.

He opened his eyes again as he heard a step on
the gravel. The woman, who had once been good-
looking, came along the path towards him. She
was neatly dressed in a brown coat and skirt, and
she had small feet and hands. One of the hands
carried a bunch of white roses. She came across
the grass to the mourner, said good-evening timidly,
and feared that she intruded. Then she laid her

MINIATURES 243

roses on the grave and would have slipped away,
but the man stopped her.

" You needn't go, Mrs Burgess," he said heavily,
" not at least so far as I am concerned."

" I just wanted to leave these few roses," she
said. " You see, not being a relation, I don't wear
any mourning. George, in fact, objected to it just
for the funeral. He said that it was carrying
things too far. Still, she and I were always friends
and — But I do feel that I am intruding. It
was a pity I chose just this time."

" What for ? " said the man, almost savagely.
"You've got all the right here that I have, and
perhaps more. Pious and devoted wife it says.
She was pious too. I've never seen the weather
yet that would keep her out of this church Sunday
morning or Sunday evening, not while she had
strength to walk."

" Devoted, too," said the woman, warmly.

" Yes," the man said drearily, " Lavinia was
devoted enough. She knew her place and never
went out of it. She had always got a sharp eye to
my interest. How I'm to replace her in the shop
I really don't know. But — "

" Well," said the woman a little eagerly.

" You know," he said bitterly, " you know well
enough. Regular hell, that's what it was, and I
may as well say the truth about it to some living
being and get it over. It was your fault too."

" Mine ? " the woman gasped.

"Yes," said the man. "I was a boy when I
married her, and I was in love with you all the

244 STORIES IN GREY

time. I never told you so — I never breathed a
word of it till this moment. I daresay it comes as
a shock to you."

" I never knew it," the woman said huskily.

" How should you ? You were rather a cut
above me, and you took all the care you could to
keep out of my way. I wasn't going to make a
fool of myself then, though I don't seem to care so
much now. Lavinia was ready, and one thing led
to another. Well, I wouldn't put a lie on a tomb-
stone or anywhere else. She was a pious and
devoted wife, and you may leave it at that. I did
my duty by her too. This last illness, money was
not spared I can tell you. I could show you the
bills, though of course it's no use. Some of the
things I could get at trade prices, but not chemist's
stuff, of course. You may say that she had every-
thing she wanted. And I've had nothing that I
wanted — nothing. Not one solitary thing all my
life."

The woman looked away from him and out into
the distance. She spoke hesitatingly. "At that
time, when we were quite young, boy and girl
together, I suppose it never occurred to you — "

" What ? " said the man. And as he looked at
her he knew.

For a minute or two neither of them spoke.

" Perhaps I shouldn't have let myself go like
this," said the man, shyly and apologetically.
"When one has kept silence for so many years
one might go on to the end. I should have
remembered that you were a married woman too.

MINIATURES 245

I ought to have asked after your husband. No
worse, I hope?"

The woman nodded, shivered, and began to
cry. He came nearer to her, and she ran away
from him down the path.

Next day Mr Hythe made some inquiries for a
woman to help in the shop to do the work that his
late wife had done. He explained that it would
be just a temporary appointment.

IX

THE LIFE UNDERGROUND

(From the Unpublished Letters of Horace Marsh
of Saxwold)

So, my dear Edward, it is all over. My sanity is
proved to the satisfaction of the lawyers and the
medicine men, and poor Herbert will not at present
have the management of my affairs. I fear he is
sadly disappointed. I have made a new will
to-day, and when nature calls me from this world
and the contents of that will become known, he
will be sadly disappointed again. It is possible
that he will try once more then. The old stories
of the Temple of Aphrodite in the park and of my
underground mansion and of the immense sums
that I have squandered on them will be brought
out again — anything to prove that I was not of
sound disposing mind. Really the newspapers
ought to subsidise poor Herbert. He gives them
such stories.

246 STORIES IN GREY

And what will you say in my defence when that
day comes and I can no longer speak for myself?

You have an easy tolerance, Edward. You
admit that I have spent these vast sums, and that
I have spent them on objects on which the ordinary
rich man would not care to spend twopence. But
as you pointed out to Herbert, the money was
mine to do with as I would, nor am I, in spite of
all the expense, ruined in fortune. On the question
of my desire at times to live underground you
refused to see any evidence of madness there.
" Every man," you added truly, " has some eccen-
tricity or other."

Yes, I am sanguine enough and optimistic
enough to believe that even the most commonplace
of mortals — a governess or a minor poet — in some
respect, mere trifle though it may be, is differ-
entiated from the others. But if you import into
that word, eccentricity, any hint of irrationality or
weakness, then, so far as my underground life is
concerned, I join issue with you. I have my
reasons for what I do.

Nor can I admit that I am so very unusual.
The temporary withdrawal from the world is a
luxury for many natures and a necessity for some.
It may be the desert or the mountain -top, or the
hermit's cave or, as in my own case, the more
complete seclusion of an underground dwelling.
One would hear more of such things if more men
had the courage of their opinions or could pay the
price of their satisfaction.

Imagine, if you can, all that the iron outer doors

MINIATURES 247

of the descending stairs shut out for me. Down
there the engines of the world are stopped and the
rattle is still. There is no fatal recurrence of day
and night, and one loses that intolerable sense of
time going on as a turning wheel in a vast mill
where mortals are but the grain. Down there it is
always the same light and always the same hour.
The past that I spent in the world above becomes
to me quite unreal, and the present moment is
perfect rest. And the future ? There seems to be
none. The engines of the world are stopped : I
am no longer the grain in the mill, I am " the
captain of my soul." Free-will may still be a
delusion, but the delusion is complete.

You shake your head and talk of neurasthenia ;
names have never frightened me. You may call
it that if you like, and you may call my life under-
ground the treatment. For it is due to that with-
drawn and secluded life that I can come back to.
the world sane and steady and convince the
medicine men and disinherit poor Herbert. Names
do not frighten me, but I am a coward before facts.
This to the ordinary man is an idyllic spot in the
open country — a peaceful resting-place for the
over-civilised and over-tired. It is not so to me.
It is full of torturing facts. I stand appalled as
much before the needless and inevitable fecundity
as before the pitiless and inevitable destructiveness
of nature. All that is inevitable is to me terrify-
ing. It is nothing that the streams run downward
and that the stone released from my hand falls to
the ground ; but it is everything to me that the

248 STORIES IN GREY

stream must run downward and the stone must
fall. It gives me no sensation of beneficent law
and order. I feel as I were being carried away, I
knew not whither, on some machine that I can
neither control nor understand. I am frightened.
And just as a terrified child buries its head under
the bed-clothes, so I go to my underground dwell-
ing, the expensive construction of which annoyed
poor Herbert so much.

Do not tell me — since I am well aware of it —
that time goes on and the natural laws are not
suspended below ground. I know it ; but down
there the evidence is less overpowering. Do not
think either that this terror is always with me. If
it had been so, poor Herbert would have had his
way. There are days when a flower is to me the
same thing of beauty and fragrance that it is to
others, and nights when I can listen to the nightin-
gales in my garden with joy. I can talk then
without great trouble of local politics and cricket
scores to the somewhat indifferent specimens of
my species that live in this neighbourhood. I am —
to use your favourite word — normal. And then
the day comes when I can see nothing in the
flower but a grotesque and purposeless reproduc-
tion of its kind, when the song of the nesting bird
is the more bitter for its beauty, when every village
child in the street is a tragedy. On every life —
every useless life — is a senseless death for its
birthmark.

And this is, of course, especially terrible in the
springtime. The wheel is at the height of its

MINIATURES 249

revolution ; the furnace roars ; the engine throbs.
The mighty machine that makes and breaks us
works overtime. If only one could find in nature
the least human analogy! If only in the purpose
at the back of things one could discern a standard
of values which was humanly comprehensible !
But it is not so. Nature knows nothing of utility,
or beauty, or nobility as we know them. It knows
nothing even of cruelty. If it were maliciously
inhuman one might bear it ; but it is not human.
And the highest we can think or do may be a jest
elsewhere to other beings.

And since it is now the springtime, my dear
Edward, and since poor Herbert has made me
very tired, you will not hear of me for a week
or two.

SORROW IN THE COUNTRY

THE Poet walked along the winding lane on the
hillside in springtime. A mile back a cart had
met him — a slow, heavy cart, whose driver lolled in
a beery drowsiness, the reins slack in one dropped
hand. Since then he had seen no one. On either
side the hazels showed their delicate green ; the
bluebells grew in profusion ; under the hedge the
half-opened curves of the young common ferns still
made their faithful promises. Below him lay the
plantation, dusky and mysterious. Lower still,
not far from the village, came the rat-tat-tat of the
workman's hammer ; for there the trees had been

250 STORIES IN GREY

cleared, and some human brute was building for
himself a big house, where he should give dinner-
parties and be just about as common as other
people. But for that, there was, the Poet felt, a
pleasure in the suggestions that the scene offered
him. A sense of solitude without dreariness, of
remoteness not too remote. A half-hour's descent
would have taken him down to the village,
humming there in the haze.

A turn of the lane brought him suddenly upon
a cottage, with thatched roof and white walls ; it
stood in a little garden, old-fashioned, where the
white rhododendrons and big red peonies opened
slowly, a restrained and yet inevitable outburst of
delights. The garden merged haphazard into an
orchard. The white pear-blossom, most precious
of all to the bees, had already paid its tribute and
ended its little day of beauty. But the apple-trees
were glorious in the sun — heal thy, sturdy Blenheims,
and here and there a rare Ribstone, showing where
a dead arm had been lopped off, dying out, the
sickly mother of the finest fruit. (Are there not
also fine poems from men with the morel ear and
all the rest of the stigmata ? ) And, as in that old
rhyme, someone was in the garden hanging out
the clothes.

She was hanging out the clothes — clothes of a
most intimate character — with a simplicity and a
total absence of embarrassment possible when facts
are comprehensible but suggestions an unknown
language. The Poet liked that particularly.
There was nothing shirked. The beauty of the

MINIATURES 251

scene was intrinsic, not gained by a pettifogging
trick of trimming and cutting out what was ugly.
It was beautiful because it had not cared, and did
not care, anything at all about that. The heavenly
pinkish snow from the shaken apple-trees was due
to the same breeze that played vulgar monkey
tricks with the hanging clothes.

She wore a print gown of pale mauve and a
coarse apron ; neither of them, examined closely,
would have been found to be quite clean. They
did for working in, and it was the work that threw
her into a grand pose. Her head was thrown
back, her arms raised high, the dress strained over
the deep bosom. She would have been the delight
of a sculptor, and the despair of a fashion-plate.
Tall, erect, strong, shapely, she seemed as one
come back from the old days, before we all grew so
clever and so chetif^ a relic of the healthy animal
that dies out of the race as our poisonous civilization
does its work. Red lips, big eyes, a mass of black
hair twisted up anyhow, the melancholy — one
might almost have said sulkiness — of her unin-
telligent expression, the Poet noted them all. He
noted too, with delight, that the mouth was too
large and the hands and part of the splendid fore-
arm were red from the wash-tub. That was right.
It was all so good because it was so true, and you
could afford to see everything.

With the quick enthusiasm of a poet, he
wondered how it would be if he stepped across the
grass, took her in his arms and kissed her, and as
soon as might be, set the wedding-bells a-jingling.

252 STORIES IN GREY

That she would marry him he had no doubt. Not
for the offer of his person — an unseemly mixture
of the puny and the portly — but for position, and
money, and laziness, and fine clothes, and the envy
of others. It was not for his own sake that he
gave up the mad scheme, though he recognized
what misery the load of years with her might
mean ; it was because he felt there was something
that belonged to the garden and to solitude, and
that would die if transplanted. He would not
even cross the grass to her with a pretext of asking
his way, lest her voice should shrilly disappoint
him. Rustic words and accent he welcomed as
the truth, but the voice — he heard it in imagination
as a contralto.

Also the Poet was, as poets so often are, just a
little bit afraid.

At that moment she turned and looked at him
curiously, and with a clumsy pretence of a pause
to light a cigarette, he passed on. He reflected
that their curiosities would be very different. She
would ask herself if he was stopping down at the
" Lion," and if he was one of those artists, and
there she would leave it. His wonder as to her
was wider and deeper. Memory for a whim
marked that page as one that was to remain, and
years afterwards the Poet, dying, recalled the scene.

On the evening of the day on which he saw her,
long after the rat-tat-tat of the hammer had ceased
in the big unfinished house below, when the crescent
moon relieved the growing dusk, she came out of

MINIATURES 253

the cottage. The old people were chatting in the
kitchen, and it would have been remarked if she
had run upstairs. But out here one was not
observed, and for a while she sobbed passionately,
leaning against the trunk of an apple-tree. She
sobbed not on account of the Poet — of whom she
had not thought twice — but on account of the
beery giant whom he had met driving half-asleep
the heavy cart.

XI

A CIVIL WAR

Miss ANNABEL BLAKE and Miss Jessica Wynch
possessed certain points of resemblance. They
were about the same age, and had about the same
moderate income. Both were plain, slightly
eccentric, sturdy, and even pugnacious. Both of
them hated men and loved gardening. Both were
independent, methodical, and hot-tempered. Both
had quarrelled with all their relations.

It was chiefly on that account that at the age
of thirty they decided to join their forces and take
a house and garden in the country together. The
relations smiled and said they would give that
arrangement just one month to last. They
calculated that by then Annabel and Jessica would
have flown at each other's throats and parted for
ever.

But the relations were wrong. Both of the
ladies were shrewd enough to see that the only
possible modus vivendi was one which, as far as

254 STORIES IN GREY

possible, left to each her independence. A book of
rules was drawn up in manuscript, each lady
possessing her own copy. As the years went on
the rules grew in number, to meet every occasion.
They were agreed to by both parties, and there
were fines for breaking them, and the fines were
always paid. The making of these rules caused
a good deal of friction, generally ending in an
even compromise. Neither lady could claim to
be the predominant partner ; gradually the spirit
of an accurately-measured give-and-take grew up
between them. The compromise might, for
instance, have been traced in Rule 78, which
ordained that fires in the reception-rooms were
permissible only between 6 P.M. of October I5th
and 10.30 P.M. of the following April 23rd. It
took two evenings of animated discussion to make
that rule. Once made it passed into the things
beyond discussion, and there was no more trouble
about it. An entire absence of anything that
could possibly have been called a sense of humour
helped them.

Thanks to the rules and compromises, Miss
Blake and Miss Wynch managed to live together
for twenty years. They did not pretend to have
much mutual affection, but they enjoyed a little
sharpness of the tongue ; perfect calm would have
bored them. They had, however, a certain amount
of mutual respect, since neither was a person who
could be put upon, and from the similarity of their
tastes it was probably easier for each to live with
the other than with anybody else. Besides, there

MINIATURES 255

Avas a distinct saving of money from living together ;
and though they were not precisely miserly, they
liked good management.

But in the twenty-first year, in the springtime,
when the birds were singing prettily, and the
blossoms were looking lovely, and Nature gener-
ally seemed smiling and peaceful, the great war
broke out between the two ladies. The war had
its origin in the garden. The paths and lawns
were common ground, though the care of the paths
was assigned to Miss Wynch, while Miss Blake
was responsible for the lawn. The rest of the
garden was divided into equal parts. By Rule 3
Miss Blake owned and cultivated that part of the
garden on the left side of the path, and Miss
Wynch owned and cultivated the other half on
the right side. They -employed no gardener, and
needed none. These two ladies of fifty could do a
piece of hard digging — and no nonsense about it —
as well as most men. There were rules that a
certain proportion of each allotment was to be
kitchen-garden, and the crops for these were to be
settled in January by discussion. Otherwise, the
two ladies might have had too much of one thing
and none of another. This discussion was much
less fiery than might have been expected. The
capabilities of the land and of its cultivators
had been early recognized. When a difficulty
did arise, a short squabble and a sternly just
compromise settled it. The rest of the allotments,
the flower-gardens, never came under discussion at
all ; there each proprietor, by Rule 15, was supreme.

256 STORIES IN GREY

Now it happened that Miss Wynch in turning
over her seed-packet one evening, came on one
that bore no label and no indication of its contents.
Miss Blake expressed her opinion, to give her
exact words, that Jessica Wynch was a careless
fool. Miss Wynch said she had never seen the
packet before, and the seedsman must have sent it
by mistake. It was probably rubbish, and she
should burn it. She added that people who forgot
to get the crumb-tray repaired should not call
other people careless fools. Miss Blake said that
people who burned seeds deserved to live to want
bread to eat. Jessica said that Annabel could
have the packet for a penny, and the money was
paid. Annabel sowed that seed, and it flourished
exceedingly. It was a foreign weed — as ugly,,
vindictive, and prolific as a Chinaman ! Where it
was put in there was its base of operations for
evermore. So the war began. And so far Miss
Wynch had right on her side.

Miss Blake made a heap of the weed and set fire
to it on a day when the wind carried the smoke
across Jessica's allotment. For this infringement
of Rule 70 she was fined fourpence. Jessica then
threw a healthy collection of large snails across
into Miss Blake's flower-beds. Miss Blake appealed
to Rule 35, under which rubbish from one allot-
ment might not be deposited on the other. Miss
Wynch objected, under the plea that rubbish
meant something dead, and the snails were alive.
Miss Blake said " Very well," and spent an afternoon
in getting together an army of fat caterpillars for

MINIATURES 257

Jessica's roses. In a week's time the two ladies had
ceased to speak to one another — whenever speech
could be avoided — and took their meals separately.
They would undoubtedly have separated alto-
gether and lived apart, but one day in July,
when Jessica was hurrying to the nearest town to
get her will altered, she was knocked over by a
cart and killed. That stopped the war !

So Miss Blake, having inherited all her enemy's
possessions, now lives in the old house alone ; and
her temper is a little more fiendish than before.
So the gardener says, who is now called in to
help. He looks after the lawn and the paths, and
is permitted to work on Miss Blake's side of the
garden. But Miss Blake herself works much
harder, with more knowledge, and with more
conscientiousness in the garden of her dead enemy.
It is on that side that most of the money is spent.
Miss Blake surveyed it one summer evening when
it was at its best. " I think," she said, " that
Jessica would be satisfied."

XII
HIS LIFE'S WORK

THE day had been spent very quietly. Now that
the work of thirty years was finished, there was
none of the triumph of completion and not even
the sense of relief that is so often felt when a long
task is at length laid aside. All through the house
the tone was grave, almost mournful.
R

258 STORIES IN GREY

The old man in the spare hours that science had
left him had found time to win the love of many.
This change frightened them. They were anxious
about him. What would he do with his mornings
now ? He had never been easy to interest ; of
politics he knew nothing ; he thought of art gener-
ally as a pleasant parlour game for ladies ; science
and the ties of personal affection had been the only
realities for him. And he was about to give up half
his realities.

Yes, after the work would come the reward ;
they did not forget that. The book was not for
the general reader, but it was certain of a magni-
ficent reception from the learned. It was a book
that had been long expected, for which the scientific
world was impatient. Yes, for a time he would find
occupation in seeing the book through the press ;
and then there would be the honour and glory ;
but what after that ? He had been so inseparably
linked with the preparation of that book. His
health had been good or bad, proportionately as
the work had gone well or ill. And so it happened
that on the day that he announced the completion
of the manuscript, side by side with the spoken
words of cheerful congratulation went thoughts
that were grave and apprehensive.

The little old gentleman himself took the whole
affair with a certain dignity. He gave no sign of ex-
ultation or depression. In fact, he was scarcely con-
scious what his own feelings were, but he told himself
that it was vulgar to expect and base to fear. After
dinner he retired to the library instead^of joining^his

MINIATURES 259

family in the drawing-room as usual, and took from
thedeepestof thedrawers in thewriting-tablethe pre-
cious manuscript, finished and ready for the printer.
The library was a large room, furnished in the
simplest manner, and the simplicity was not an
arranged simplicity. It was so, not in the least
because he had tried to make it simple, but because
he had never tried to make it elaborate. It was
not the simplicity of a consciously severe taste, but
the less pleasing result of pure chance. The in-
congruous presents of friends and relatives
mingled with the essential apparatus of his
studies. One wondered how anybody who wanted
that big microscope could also want that violet wool
mat or the " crystoleum " representation of a stout
Naiad. He had never been guilty of adding one
decoration to the room himself; but if people gave
him things — well, it was very kind of them. It was
Aunt Alice who had given him the pair of candle-
sticks that he now placed on the table beside his
book. They were of white china, and bore views
of some of the more tempting parts of Eastbourne.
He had never desired them, but he used them with
gratitude, and lighted the candles with a match
from a box that bore the needless and insensate
inscription : " Strike a light." He drew from
among the sheets of his book a large diagram,
full of minute detail, drawn with exquisite
neatness, and peered closely at it. No : there was
nothing to correct and nothing to add. To the
best of his ability it was finished. He put down
the sheet and leaned back in his chair.

260 STORIES IN GREY

He did not share the apprehensions of his
relatives about his future. ... If he pictured it
at all, he saw himself busy with an interminable
correspondence arising out of his book. Not all
the letters that he would receive would be pleasant.
There is a deal of jealousy about, even in the
scientific world, but there would be the congratula-
tory messages as well. The effects of the book, as
he imagined them, would last for years and years
— all the years that were likely to be left him.
The work of preparing new editions would alone
be enough to keep him fully occupied. He
reminded himself that it was vulgar to expect ;
but in a few minutes he was thinking out phrases
of a suitable modesty to use in a reply to an
illuminated address from a learned body. Why
not? There was thirty years' work, unusual
resources, great devotion, and — well, yes — some
intelligence in the book. It deserved recognition,
and with this comforting thought he grew drowsy,
and nodded off to sleep in his chair.

In his sleep he had a dream. He was present
at a great banquet, and he became aware that the
banquet was given in his honour, and that he
would shortly be expected to speak. He had no
feeling of nervousness ; in his hand were the notes
of his speech already written out, but he felt
absolutely independent of them. He was full of
the happiest ideas, inspired with telling phrases,
conscious of power. At last the moment came
and amid loud applause he rose to his feet. He
almost whispered the prefatory formula : this was

MINIATURES 261

calculated. Managing his voice to perfection, he
became more audible as he referred in well-chosen
language to the interest which His Royal Highness
had always shown in the work of the Society and
to the honour that he conferred upon them by his
presence. Then he paused and allowed the
courteous applause to die away before getting to
the real business of his speech. Raising his voice,
and with a noble, sweeping gesture, he continued :
" Wherever I gaze I see before me. . . ."

And at that moment the arm of the sleeper shot
out and upset one of the white china candlesticks
with the views upon them. It fell over on the
pile of manuscript — the one copy of the great
work, waiting for the printer. Awake? No, he
sleeps on and on as though nothing had happened.

When you knock over a lighted candle, the
candle (except in stories) is generally extinguished
by the draught occasioned by the fall. That is
what happened in this instance. The precious
manuscript was absolutely uninjured, except for a
spot of grease which was removed with a flat-iron
and blotting-paper on the following day.

And many a time since that night has he longed
(ah ! how ardently) that the flame had not failed
in its work, that the child had been stillborn, that
the book had never seen daylight.

Within a week of its publication, an elderly
round-faced German brought out another book on
the same subject, the result of forty years' study,
of greater resources, and of a finer intelligence.

262 STORIES IN GREY

The junior partner in the firm which published the
little old gentleman's book committed suicide, and
the book (which was to have been the standard
work on the subject for the next ten years) fell
flat and unnoticed, and . . . the old gentleman
immediately commenced another.

But this is a work which will require many more
years yet, and he is no chicken.

XIII
THE END OF THE STORY

THE two old ladies took a penny weekly paper,
and took it very seriously. Its due delivery on
Saturday morning by the village newsvendor was
a notable event. They fixed dates by remembering
the week when The Sunday Miscellany failed to
arrive ; a local train had broken down, and the
paper did not come till the following Monday, and
the earth — so far as the old ladies knew it — was up-
side down. They did not glance hurriedly through
it and then fling it aside. They read every word
and commented sagely and soberly upon it.

Incidentally, it solved a problem for them.
They had never varied from their strict upbring-
ing, and they were forbidden by their consciences
to read novels on Sunday. But they were not
forbidden to read The Sunday Miscellany. Was
it not, as its name implied, a Sunday paper ? Was
it not edited by a clergyman ? And it possessed
a serial story. They followed every instalment

MINIATURES 263

with the keenest interest. They were critical, too,
but rather of the characters in the story than of
the author's work.

"Where he was wrong," Priscilla would say,
speaking of the hero of Percival's Atonement, "was
in going to London at all. The good bishop
had warned him of the temptations which awaited
him there. I cannot help feeling sorry for him,
but so far as I can see from the last chapter this
week, that poor boy's going to the bad."

" I hope not," said her sister, seriously. " It
does look like it this week, but I pin my faith in
that girl, Olive Lorraine. I feel convinced that we
shall hear a good deal more of her, and I can see
already that she is taking an interest in him.
However, we shall see next week. It is un-
fortunate that every week the story stops just at
some point where one wants to know more. But
I suppose it is unavoidable."

The Editor would have been pleased if he had
heard that. The serial stories in The Sunday
Miscellany were innocuous and stereotyped. The
lurid light which they cast on the high life of
London was never too lurid. Virtue was always
triumphant, and the end was always happy. But
with the two old ladies these stories never
missed their mark. When in the very first chapter
Percival plunged into the dark pool to rescue the
drowning kitten, and his father exclaimed : " It is
all over ; we shall never see him alive again ! " it
never occurred to the old ladies to ask how on
earth the serial story was going to get on if the

264 STORIES IN GREY

hero died in the very first chapter. On the con-
trary, they took a pessimistic view of the situation.
" Thank heaven, he's alive ! " exclaimed Priscilla, as
she anxiously attacked the next week's instalment.

" Was he injured ? " asked her sister eagerly.

" He speaks of a strain on his nervous system,
and says he is still very feeble."

That Percival was pretty feeble all the way
through the story. But he had a sunny smile and
curly hair. Even his London excesses could not
quite destroy the old ladies' affectionate admiration
for him.

PercivaFs Atonement was a very long serial.
The clerical editor, who paid starvation prices in
any case, had got a reduction on taking a quantity.
At the end of six months Percival was safely
engaged to that charming lady, Olive Lorraine ;
but "in the dim twilight" he had accidentally
espied her kissing another man. He did not ask
for any explanation. He merely became seriously
ill and moaned a good deal. The Percivals of
fiction are like that.

And just at this juncture Priscilla, the elder of the
two sisters, also fell ill. It was a sudden illness, and
ended in her death. She knew that she was dying.

One Sunday afternoon she had lain for a long
time without speaking. Her sister had read out
to her the chapters of the current number of The
Sunday Miscellany ', and sat by the fireside, waiting
for a chance to do something else for Priscilla. In
the silence, the clock seemed to tick laboriously, as
if the quiet of the room had nearly overwhelmed it.

MINIATURES 265

"I cannot believe," said Priscilla at last, "that
Olive Lorraine was guilty. It seems so unlike
her. In the twilight a man might very easily
make a mistake — it was probably some other
girl."

" Or," said her sister, " the man may turn out to
have been her brother or her father."

" It is, perhaps, a pity that Percival did not
think of these things. I should have liked to have
known how the story ended before I died."

" Nonsense ! " said her sister. " You're much
better. Anybody can see that."

Priscilla shook her head. That night she got
little sleep ; her mind was much worried about
Olive Lorraine and Percival. To the sick woman
these absurd characters out of a stupid story had
become intensely real. She babbled of them at
times when she was light-headed.

And her sister wrote a letter to the author
of Percival 's Atonement, and got a reply of a
favourable character by return of post. It was a
quite unusually good-natured author.

The sister went to Priscilla in triumph. " I
thought, my dear, that your anxiety about Olive
and Percival was perhaps making your recovery
rather slower than it should be."

" Yes," said Priscilla ; " if I only knew that they
were safely through this trouble, I feel that my
mind would be easier."

" I have taken rather a liberty, Priscilla. I have
written to the author of the story, explaining the
circumstances, and I have had a most kind reply

266 STORIES IN GREY

from him. He sends me some long slips of paper
on which the rest of the story is printed."

" It is kind of him and of you," said Priscilla,
" very kind." She seemed to hesitate.

"Would you like me to read them out to
you now ? "

"No," said Priscilla, firmly. "It is very kind of
you both, but I must not take advantage of it. It
would be irregular. It would even be a little dis-
honourable. To my mind it seems very much like
cheating at ' Patience.' You are not offended ? "

" No, dear. Of course not."

" And you see," Priscilla added, " I shall know
the end of all the stories so soon now."

XIV

THE ARTISTIC SUCCESS
(Monodrama)

ACT I

The scene is a garden, old-fashioned, with high yew hedges.
In one of the shaded walks Percivaljoye Smith, aged
eight, paces to and fro ', lost in thought. He is attired
in pale green plush and frills, surmounted by a
foolish beej-eater hat. He has a bad loose mouth, no
chin, splendid eyes, and a roomy head of queer shape.
He speaks :

YES, if we are to be strictly accurate, I have
thrown the cat on the fire, stolen the money of my
governess, and told three large but unsuccessful
lies. My governess is perhaps at this moment

MINIATURES 267

reporting my offences to mamma. If not, she is
but waiting for the return of my father, in order to
appeal to the sterner tribunal. It is time that I
looked out for myself.

Flight? I think not. I am aware that in
books about boys one runs away, and has ideas
about going to sea, and is in other respects very
absurd. It may even be that such things some-
times happen. But not in the case of a thoughtful
and observant boy with a sentimental mother.
He knows something better, and he dislikes
adventure, as a rule, and he prefers to take his
meals regularly.

Remorse ? That is very good if it is done on a
large scale, and includes the refusal of food and
sleep, and is accompanied by floods of tears, and
lasts for days. But all this is very trying,
and tends to lessen one's self-respect. It will be
a better plan to say something.

Whenever I say something, mamma writes it
down in a little book, and puts the date to it. If
there are visitors here and I say something that
attracts a little attention, I can do what I like with
mamma afterwards. My words speak louder than
my actions ; that is fortunate, for I find words
comparatively easy. Before I try to explain to
mamma that I was holding the cat up to the
window so that it could see out, and that it
dropped on the fire accidentally, and that I took
the money to give to the missionaries, and that the
lies were not real lies, but statements made in
joke — before I proceed to these explanations, I

268 STORIES IN GREY

should certainly say something, something that will
give them colour and probability. I think, on the
whole, I could not do better than go into the draw-
ing-room with a grave face and upturned eyes and
ask mamma if the stars are God's daisy-chain.
[He does so.]

ACT II

The scene is a third-floor bed-sitting room in Doughty
Street. It is furnished exactly like a third-floor bed-
sitting room in Doughty Street. In it sits Percival
Joye Smith, aged twenty-five. He wears a shabby
tweed suit oj a large pattern. He looks dirty, in-
temperate and partially starved. He smokes cigarettes
— his fingers are stained with them — and looks
through his letters received by the second post. He
speaks :

So the governor has found it out and stopped it,
and the mater ain't to send me any more money.
She will continue to write. . . . Plucky lot of
good that is without the cash.

I never asked to be born into this beast of a
world. It was their look-out. But if they're
going to shirk their responsibilities — and I own
that the mater has hung on as long as she could —
I suppose I must look out for myself. And it's
not so easy to look out for oneself when one has
been expelled from two schools, sent down from
Oxford, has lost one's character, and been
abandoned by one's friends.

I could dig, but I won't ; I am not in the least
ashamed to beg, but I have no luck, and I should
have a cart-load of Mendicity Societies down on
me in no time. At the first glance it seems that

MINIATURES 269

all means of livelihood are closed to me. I have
still a hundred of the money the governor sent me
to pay my Oxford bills, when he cut me off, but
even with that little capital to invest I see no
occupation for me which would be remunerative
and pleasing.

[He smokes two cigarettes, drinks a little gin and
water, and resumes :]

There are just two things that seem to me to
be left for a man of spotted character. I might
join a mission, and preach ; or I might write
a great book. In my youth, and since then, I
have found the utility of saying things ; it is only
a question of saying things again, but to the
sentimental mother-hearted public this time.

Yes, I will write a work of genius.

[He does so.]

ACT III

The scene is a small flat in Davies Street, W. It is a
dull November afternoon, and the room seen is lit
with wax candles, free from the "rose shades" so
dear to the fashionable writers of Halfpenny Home
Slitherings. The room is furnished with exquisite
severity, and is one of the few rooms in the West of
London at the time that are not overcrowded with
furniture . It is unsullied by bamboo, or the
"portiere," or the imitation Chippendale table for
the exhibit of three- and-sixpenny silver boxes and
ornaments. Percival Joye Smith, correctly dressed,
aged thirty, sits at the writing-table. He speaks :

So here — and at my cottage at Sunning — I
have everything I want ; and five years ago I

270 STORIES IN GREY

had nothing but debts and a bad reputation.
Then I starved ; and now almost my only source
of anxiety is my waist-measurement. Then I
was but Smith ; and now I am Percival Joye,
the author of Stay With Me and several other
popular novels.

Yes, several other popular novels. That was
a beastly thing in the Critical Review about that.
The old parrot cry of excessive production — spite
in the guise of kindliness. Oh, damn the thing !
It's the penalty of artistic success, and one must
put up with it.

It's so good for one — success. To be thought
well of, without having to do much to deserve it,
makes one moral. I shall write to my father and
mother and say that I forgive them, though they
never understood me.

[He does so.]

ACT IV

The scene is as in Act II. ; the time is three o'clock on
a summer morning ; the dawn comes through a green
blind and lights the shabby narroiv bed ; on it, clad
in bright blue pyjamas ', lies Percival Joye Smith, aged
forty. He is bald, unshaven, wide-awake and
tremulous. Beside him, on a wicker-seated chair, are
a medicine-bottle, a glass, a stump of candle in a
painted china candlestick, some letters, and a
smouldering cigarette-end in a Jubilee ash-tray.
He speaks :

POPULARITY ! Money ! Light come and light
go, with both of them. The fashions change. Oh,
goodness. Yes. We are wearing our stories

MINIATURES 271

rather longer this season. Selling a good deal
of adventure just now. Sin and epigrams are
quite out ; they are overdone. Some of the smart
people are in favour of the simple pagan. Percival
Joye? Oh, never asked for nowadays.

It was a quick fire, but it's blazed quite out,
dead out. %,

[He takes up the letter s> and grins. ~]

They're all so damned polite. Porter regrets
exceedingly that he has no work to offer worthy
of my attention ; Simpson thinks that to put
me on to reviewing would be to cut wood with
a razor; Wilton thanks me most cordially for
my kind offer, but fears he has no vacancy at
present. All alike. They know I'm done.

My own fault? Wickedness? Any amount.
Extravagant living? Of course. Add to it all
the rest of the purulent mess that goes to make
up an artist of my type. But don't forget the
kind of world it is. A fine world for tailors !

[He pours from the bottle and drinks. 1

Three doses instead of one. So when my
landlady comes to turn me out of this palace of
luxury to-morrow, she'll be disappointed. After
all, one can die.

[He does so."]

LINDA

MY elder brother, Lorrimer, married ten years
ago the daughter of a tenant farmer. I was at
that time a boy at school, already interested in
the work which has since made me fairly well
known, and I took very little interest in Lorrimer
or my sister-in-law. From time to time I saw her,
of course, when I paid brief visits to their farm
in Dorsetshire during the holidays. But I did
not greatly enjoy these visits. Lorrimer seemed
to me to become daily more morose and taciturn.
His wife had the mind of a heavy peasant, deeply
interested in her farm and in little else, and
only redeemed from the commonplace by her face.
I have heard men speak of her as being very
beautiful and as being hideous. Already an artist,
I saw the point of it all at once : her eyes were
not quite human. Sometimes when she was angry
with a servant over some trivial piece of neglect,
they looked like the eyes of a devil. She was
exceedingly superstitious and had little education.
Our guardian had the good sense to send me
to Paris to complete my art education, and one
snowy March I was recalled suddenly from Paris
to his death-bed. I was at this time twenty-two
years of age, and of course the technical guardian-
ship had ceased. Accounts had been rendered,
Lorrimer had taken his share of my father's small
272

LINDA 273

fortune and I had taken mine. But we both felt
a great regard for this uncle who, during so many
years, had been in the place of a father to us.
I found Lorrimer at the house when I arrived,
and learned then, for the first time, that our uncle
had strongly disapproved of his marriage. He
spoke of it in the partially conscious moments
which preceded his end, and he said some queer
things. I heard little, because Lorrimer asked me
to go out. After my guardian's death Lorrimer
returned to his farm and I to my studies in Paris.
A few months later I had a brief letter from
Lorrimer announcing the death of his wife. He
asked me, and, indeed, urged me not to return
to England for her funeral, and he added that she
would not be buried in consecrated ground. Of
the details of her death he said nothing, and I
have heard nothing to this day. That was five
years ago, and from that time until this last winter
I saw nothing of my brother. Our tastes were
widely different — we drifted apart.

During those five years I made great progress
and a considerable sum of money. After my first
Academy success I never wanted commissions.
I had sitters all the year round all the day while
the light lasted. I worked very hard, and, possibly,
a little too hard. Of my engagement with Lady
Adela I will say nothing, except that it came
about while I was painting her portrait, and that
the engagement was broken off in consequence
of the circumstances I am about to relate.

It was then one day last winter that a letter

274 STORIES IN GREY

was brought to me in my studio in Tite Street
from my brother Lorrimer. He complained
slightly of his health, and said that his nerves had
gone all wrong. He complained that there were
some curious matters on which he wished to take
advice, and that he had no one to whom he could
speak on those subjects. He urged me to come
down and to stay for some time. If there were
no room in the farmhouse that suited me for my
painting he would have a studio built for me.
This was put in his usual formal and business-like
language, but there was a brief postscript — "For
Heaven's sake come soon ! " The letter puzzled
me. Lorrimer, as I knew him, had always been
a remarkably independent man, reserved, taking
no one into his confidence, resenting interference.
His manner towards me had been slightly patron-
izing, and his attitude towards my painting frankly
contemptuous. This letter was of a man disturbed,
seeking help, ready to make any concessions.

As I have already said, I had been working far
too hard, and wanted a rest. During the last year
I had made twenty times the sum that I had
spent. There was no reason why I should not
take a holiday. The country around my brother's
place is very beautiful. If I did work there at all,
I thought it might amuse me to drop portraits
for a while and to take up with my first love —
landscape. There had never been any affection
between Lorrimer and myself, but neither had
there been any quarrel ; there was just the steady
and unsentimental family tie. I wrote to him

LINDA 275

briefly that I would come on the following day,
and I hoped he had, or could get, some shooting
for me. I told him that I should do little or no
work, and he need not bother about a studio for
me. I added : " Your letter leaves me quite
in the dark, and I can't make out what the deuce
is the matter with you. Why don't you see
a doctor if you're ill ? "

It was a tedious journey down. One gets off
the main line on to an insignificant local branch.
People on the platform stare at the stranger and
know when he comes from London. In order
to be certain where he is going, they read with
great care and no sense of shame the labels on
his luggage. There are frowsy little refreshment
rooms, tended by frowsy old women, who could
never at any period of their past have been bar-
maids, and you can never get anything that you
want. If you turn in despair from these homes
of the fly-blown bun and the doubtful milk, to
the platforms, you may amuse yourself by noting
that the further one gets from civilization, the
greater is the importance of the railway porter.
Some of them quite resent being sworn at. I got
out at the least important station on this un-
important line, and as I gave up my ticket,
asked the man if Mr Estcourt was waiting for
me.

"If," said the man slowly, "you mean Mr
Lorrimer Estcourt, of the Dyke Farm, he is
outside in his dog-cart."

"What's the sense of talking like that, you

276 STORIES IN GREY

fool ? " I asked. " Have you got twenty different
Estcourts about here ? "

"No," he replied gravely, "we have not, and
I don't know that we want them."

I explained to him that I was not interested
in what he wanted or didn't want, and that he
could go to the devil. He mumbled some angry
reply as I went out of the station. Lorrimer
leant down from the dog-cart and shook hands
with me impassively. He is a big man, with
a stern, thin-lipped, clean-shaven face. I noted
that his hair had gone very grey, though at this
time he was not more than thirty-six years of age.
He shouted a direction that my luggage was to
come up in the farm cart that stood just behind,
bid me rather impatiently to climb up, and brought
his whip sharply across his mare's shoulder.
There was no necessity to have touched her at
all, and, as she happened to be a good one, she
resented it. Once outside the station yard, we went
like the wind. So far as driving was concerned,
his nerves seemed to me to be right enough.
The road got worse and worse, and the cart
jolted and swayed.

"Steady, you idiot!" I shouted to him. "I
don't want my neck broken."

"All right," he said. He pulled the mare in,
spoke to her and quieted her. Then he turned
to me. " If this makes you nervous," he said, " I'd
better turn round and drive you back. A man
who is easily frightened wouldn't be of much use
to me at Dyke Farm just now."

LINDA 277

"When a man drives like a fool, I suppose
it's always a consolation to call the man a funk
who tells him so. You can go on to your farm,
and I'll promise you one thing — when I am
frightened I will tell you."

He became more civil at once. He said that
was better. As for the driving, he had merely
amused himself by trying to take a rise out of
a Londoner. His house was six miles from the
station, and for the rest of the way we chatted
amicably enough. He told me that he was his
own bailiff and his own housekeeper — managed
the farm like a man and the house like a woman.
He said that hard work suited him.

" You must find it pretty lonely," I said.

" I do," he answered. " Lately I have been
wishing that I could find it still lonelier."

" Look here," I said, " do you mind telling me
plainly what on earth is the matter ? "

" You shall see for yourself," he said.

The farmhouse had begun by being a couple
of cottages and two or three considerable additions
had been made to it at different times ; consequently,
the internal architecture was somewhat puzzling.
The hall and two of the living rooms were fairly
large, but the rooms upstairs were small and
detestably arranged. Often one room opened into
another and sometimes into two or three others.
The floor was of different heights, and one was
always going up or down a step or two. Three
staircases in different parts of the house led from
the ground floor to the upper storey. The old

278 STORIES IN GREY

moss-grown tiles of the roof were pleasing, and
the whole place was rather a picturesque jumble.
But we only stopped in the house for the time
of a whisky-and-soda. Lorrimer took me round
the garden almost immediately. It was a walled
garden and good as only an old garden can be.
Lorrimer was fond of it. His spirits seemed to
improve, and at the moment I could find nothing
abnormal in him. The farm cart, with my luggage,
lumbered slowly up, and presently a gong inside
the house rang loudly.

"Ah!" said Lorrimer, pulling out his watch,
"time to dress. I'll show you your room if you
like."

My room consisted really of two rooms, opening
into one another. They seemed comfortable
enough, and there were beautiful views from the
windows of both of them. Lorrimer left me, and
I began, in a leisurely way, to dress for dinner.
As I was dressing I heard a queer little laugh
coming apparently from one of the upper rooms,
in the passage. I took little notice of it at first ;
I supposed it was due to one of the neat and
rosy-cheeked maids who were busy about the
house. Then I heard it again, and this time it
puzzled me. I knew that laugh, knew it perfectly
well, but could not place it. Then, suddenly, it
came to me. It was exactly like the laugh of my
sister-in-law who had died in this house. It struck
me as a queer coincidence.

Naturally enough, I blundered on coming down-
stairs and first opened the door of the dining-room.

LINDA 279

I noticed that the table was laid for three people,
and supposed that Lorrimer had asked some
neighbour to meet me, possibly a man over whose
land I was to shoot. One of the maids directed me
to the drawing-room, and I went in. At one end
of the room a log fire flickered and hissed, and
the smell of the wood was pleasant. The room
was lit by two large ground-glass lamps, relics
of my dead sister-in-law's execrable taste. I had
at once the feeling that I was not alone in the
room, and almost instantly a girl who had been
kneeling on the rug in front of the fire got up and
came towards me with hands outstretched.

Her age seemed to be about sixteen or seventeen.
She had red hair, perhaps the most perfect red
that I have ever seen. Her face was beautiful.
Her eyes were large and grey, but there was
something queer about those eyes. I noticed it
immediately. She was dressed in the simplest
manner in white. As she came towards me she
gave that little laugh which I had heard upstairs.
And then I knew what was strange in her eyes.
They also at moments did not look quite human.

"You look surprised," she said. "Did not Mr
Estcourt tell you that I should be here ? I am
Linda, you know." Linda was the name of my
dead sister-in-law. The name, the laugh, the
eyes — all suggested that this was the daughter of
Linda Estcourt. But this was a girl of sixteen
or seventeen, and my brother's marriage had taken
place only nine years before. Besides, she spoke
of him as " Mr Estcourt." I was making some

28o STORIES IN GREY

amiable and some more or less confused reply
when Lorrimer entered.

" Ah ! " he said. " I see you have already made
Miss Marston's acquaintance. I had hoped to
be in time to introduce you."

We began to chat about my journey down, the
beauty of the country, all sorts of commonplace
things. I was struck greatly by her air, at once
mysterious and contemptuous. It irritated, and
yet it fascinated me. At dinner she said laugh-
ingly that it would really be rather confusing
now ; there would be two Mr Estcourts — Mr
Lorrimer Estcourt and Mr Hubert Estcourt. She
would have to think of some way of making
a distinction.

" I think," she said, turning to my brother, " I
shall go on calling you Mr Estcourt, and I shall
call your brother Hubert."

I said that I should be greatly flattered, and her
grey eyes showed me that I had no need to be.
From this time onward she called me Hubert,
as though she had known me and despised me
all my life. I noticed that two or three times at
dinner she seemed to fall into fits of abstraction,
in which she was hardly conscious that one had
spoken to her ; and I noticed, moreover, that these
fits of abstraction irritated my brother immensely.
She rose at the end of dinner, and said she would
see if the billiard-room was lit up. We could
come and smoke in there as soon as we liked.
I gave a sigh of relief as I closed the door behind
her.

LINDA 281

"At last!" I said. "Now, then, Lorrimer,
perhaps you will tell me who this Miss Marston
is?"

"Tell me who you think she is — no, don't.
She is my dead wife's younger sister, younger by
many years. Her father took the name of Marston
shortly before his death. I am her guardian. My
wife's dying words were occupied entirely with
this sister, about whom she told me much that
would seem to you strange beyond belief; and
at the time she gave me injunctions, wrested
promises from me which, under certain conditions,
I shall have to carry out. The conditions may
arise; I think they will. I don't mind saying
that I'm afraid they will."

"Why does she bear her sister's name? Why
does she address you as ' Mr Estcourt ' ? And
why do you address her as * Miss Marston,'
when she introduces herself to me simply as
'Linda'?"

" Her mother had three daughters. The eldest
was called Linda. When she died, the second,
who was my wife, took that name. When my
wife died the name descended to the third of
them. There has always been a Linda in the
family. The rest is simply Miss Marston's own
whim. She has several."

" Who chaperons her here ? " I asked.

He smiled. "That question is typical of you.
She is little more than a child, and she has an
almost excessively respectable governess living
here to look after her. Only I can't be bothered

282 STORIES IN GREY

with the governess at dinner quite every night.
Does that satisfy you ? "

" No ; well, perhaps yes. I suppose so."

" It may make your rigid mind a little easier
if I tell you — and it is the truth — that if I had my
own way I would turn Miss Marston out of this
house to-morrow, and that I would never set eyes
on her again ; that I have a horror of her, and she
has a contempt of me."

"And of most other people, I fancy. Well,
anyhow, what's the trouble ? "

" I haven't the time to tell you a long story
now ; she will be waiting for us. Besides, you
would merely laugh at me. You have not yet
seen for yourself. What would you say if I told
you of a compact made years and years ago with
some power of evil, and that this girl was concerned
in the fulfilment of it ? "

" What should I say ? Very little. I should get
a couple of doctors to sign you up at once."

" Naturally. You would think me mad. Well,
wait here for a few weeks, and see what you make
of things. In the meantime, come along to the
billiard-room."

The billiard-room was an addition that Lorrimer
himself had made to the house. We found Linda
crouched on the rug in front of the blazing fire ;
I soon found that this was a favourite attitude
with her. Her coffee cup was balanced on her
knees. Her eyes stared into the flames. She did
not seem to notice our entrance.

" Miss Marston," said my brother. There was

LINDA 283

a shade of annoyance in his voice. She looked
up at him with a disdainful smile. " Do you care
to give Hubert a game?" he asked.

" Not yet. I want to watch a game first. You
two play, and I'll mark."

" What am I to give you, Lorrimer ? " I asked.
" Thirty ? " He was not even a moderate player.
I had always been able to give him at least
that.

" You had better play even," said Linda. " And
I think you will be beaten, Hubert."

I looked at Lorrimer in astonishment. "Very
well, Miss Marston," he said, as he took down his
cue. I could only suppose that during the last
few years his play had improved considerably.
And even then I did not see why Linda had
interfered. How on earth could she know what
my game was like ?

" This is your evening," I said to Lorrimer after
his first outrageous fluke.

" It would seem so," he answered, and fluked
again. And this went on. His game had not
improved ; he did the wrong things and did them
badly, and they turned out all right. Now and
again I heard Linda's brief laugh, and looked up
at her. Her eyes seemed to have power to coax
a lagging ball into a pocket ; one had a curious
feeling that she was controlling the game. I did
my best with all the luck dead against me. It
was a close finish, but I was beaten, as Linda said
I should be.

Linda would not play. She said she was tired,

284 STORIES IN GREY

and suddenly she looked tired. The light went
out of her eyes. She lit a cigarette, and went
back to her place on the rug before the fire.
Lorrimer talked about his farm with me. The
quiet of the place seemed almost ghastly to a man
who was used to London. Presently Linda got
up to go to bed. " Good-night, Mr Estcourt," she
said, as she shook hands with my brother. Then
she turned to me : " Good-night, Hubert. You
shouldn't quarrel with ticket-collectors about
nothing. It's silly, isn't it?" She kissed me on
the cheek, and ran off laughing. She left me
astounded by her words and insulted by her kiss.

Lorrimer turned out the lights over the billiard-
table, and we sat down again by the fire.

"What did you think of that game?" he
asked.

" It Was remarkable."

" Nothing more ? "

" I never saw a game like it before. But there
was nothing impossible about it."

"Very well. And did you have a row with
that ticket-collector?"

" Not a row exactly. He annoyed me, and I
may have called him a fool. I suppose you over-
heard and told her about it."

"I could not have overheard. I was outside
the station buildings and you were on the further
platform."

"Yes, that's true. It's a queer coincidence."

" I tried that, too, at first— the belief that things
were remarkable, but not impossible, and that

LINDA 285

queer coincidences happen. Personally I can't
keep it up any more."

" Look here," I said. " We may as well go to
the point at once. Why do you want me here ?
Why did you send for me ? "

" Suppose I said that I wanted you to marry
Miss Marston?"

" I thought that at the time of my engage-
ment with Adela I wrote and gave you the
news."

"You did. The artistic temperament does
sometimes do a brilliant business thing for itself.
Lady Adela Marys — "

" We won't discuss her."

"Then suppose we discuss you. You are half
in love with Linda already."

" Very well," I said, " let us carry the supposi-
tion a little further. Suppose that I or anybody
else was entirely in love with her, what on earth
would be the use ? The one thing that one can
feel absolutely certain about in her is that she has
an amused contempt for the rest of her species,
male and female. It's not affected, it's perfectly
genuine. Even if I wished to marry her, she
would not look at me."

" Really ? " said Lorrimer, with a sneer. " She
seemed fond enough of you when she said good-
night."

" That," I said meditatively, " was the cleverest
kiss that ever was kissed. It finished what the
interchange of Christian names began. It settled
the situation exactly — that I was the fool of a

286 STORIES IN GREY

brother, and she the good-natured, though con-
temptuous sister."

"You needn't look at it like that. It is im-
portant, exceedingly important that she should be
married."

"Marry her yourself — it won't be legal in this
country, but it will in others, and I don't know
that it matters."

" No, I don't know that it matters. On the day
I wrote to you I did ask her to be my wife. She
replied that it was disagreeable to have to speak
of such things, and that they need not be allowed
to come to the surface again, but that, as a matter
of fact, au fond we hated one another. It was
true. I do hate her. What I do for her is for
my dead wife's sake, for the promises I made, and,
perhaps, a little for common humanity. There
are others who would marry her. The man
whose pheasants you will be shooting next week
would give his soul for her cheerfully, and
it's no use. Very likely it will be of no use in your
case."

" What was the story that you had not time to
tell me after dinner ? "

The door opened, and a servant brought in the
decanters and soda-water and arranged them on
the table by Lorrimer's side. He did not speak
until the servant had gone out of the room, and
then he seemed to be talking almost more to him-
self than to me.

"At night, when one wakes up in the small
hours, after a bad dream or hearing some sudden

LINDA 287

noise in the house, one believes things of which
one is a little ashamed next morning."

He paused, and then leant forward, addressing
me directly. "Look here; I'll say it in a few
words. You won't believe it, and that doesn't
matter a tinker's curse to me. You'll believe it a
little later if you stop here. Generations ago, in
the time of the witches, a woman who was to have
been burned as a witch escaped miraculously
from the hands of the officers. It was said that
she had a compact with the devil ; that at some
future time he should take a living maiden of her
line. Death and marriage are the two ways of
safety for any woman of that family. The com-
pact has not yet been carried out, and Linda is
the last of the line. She bears the signs of which
my wife told me. One by one I watch them
coming out in her. Her power over inanimate
objects, her mysterious knowledge of things which
have happened elsewhere, the terror which all
animals have of her. A year or two ago she was
always about the farm on the best of terms with
every dog and horse in the place. Now they will
not let her come near them. Well, it is my
business to save Linda. I have given my
promise. I wish her to be married. If that is
not possible, and the moment arrives, I must kill
her."

"Why talk like a fool?" I said. "Come and
live in London for a week. It strikes me that
both Linda and yourself might perhaps be bene-
fited by being put into the hands of a specialist.

288 STORIES IN GREY

In any case, don't tell these fairy stories to a sane
man like myself."

"Very well," he said, getting up. "I must be
going to bed. I am out on the farm before six
every morning, and I shall probably have break-
fasted before you are up. Miss Marston and Mrs
Dennison — that's her old governess — breakfast at
nine. You can join them if you like, or breakfast
by yourself later."

Long after my brother had gone to bed I sat
in the billiard-room thinking the thing over,
angry with myself, and, indeed, ashamed, that I
could not disbelieve quite as certainly as I wished.
At breakfast next morning I asked Linda to sit
to me for her portrait, and she consented. We
found a room with a good light. Mrs Dennison
remained with us during the sitting.

This went on for days. The portrait was a
failure. I have the best of the several attempts
that I made still. The painting's all right. But the
likeness is not there ; there is something missing
in the eyes. I saw a great deal of Linda, and I
came at last to this conclusion, that I had no
explanation whatever of the powers which she
undoubtedly possessed. I also learned that she
herself was well acquainted with the story of her
house. She alluded to the fact that neither of
her sisters was buried in consecrated ground ; no
woman of her family would ever be.

"And you?" I asked.

"I am not sure that I shall be buried at all.
To me strange things will happen."

LINDA 289

I had letters occasionally from Lady Adela. I
was glad to see that she was getting tired of the
whole thing. My conduct had not been so calculat-
ing and ignoble as Lorrimer had supposed. She
was a very beautiful woman. It was easy enough
to suppose that one was in love with her — until
one happened to fall in love. I determined to go
to London to see Lady Adela, and to give her
the chance, which I was sure she wanted, to throw
me over. I promised Lorrimer that I would only
be away for one night. Lady Adela missed her
appointment with me at her mother's house, and
left a note of excuse. Something serious had
happened, I believe, with regard to a dress that
she was to wear that night. But, really, I do not
remember what her excuse was. I went back to
my rooms in Tite Street, and there I found a
telegram from Mrs Dennison. It told me in plain
language, and with due regard to the fact that
each word cost a halfpenny, that my brother, in a
fit of madness, had murdered Linda Marston and
taken his own life. I got back to my brother's
farm late that night.

The evidence at the inquest was simple enough.
Linda had three rooms, opening into one another,
the one furthest from the passage being her bed-
room. At the time of the murder Mrs Dennison
was in the second room, reading, and Linda was
playing the piano in the room which opened into
the passage. Mrs Dennison heard the music stop
suddenly. Linda was whimsical in her playing,
as in everything else. There was a pause, during

290 STORIES IN GREY

which the governess was absorbed in her book.
Then she heard in the next room Lorrimer say
distinctly : " It is all right, Linda. I have come
to save you." This was followed by three shots
in succession. Mrs Dennison rushed in and
found the two lying dead. She was greatly
affected at the inquest, and as few questions as
possible were put to her.

Some time afterwards Mrs Dennison told me a
thing which she did not mention at the inquest.
Shortly after the music had stopped, and before
Lorrimer entered the room, she had heard another
voice, as though someone were speaking with
Linda. This third voice, and Linda's own, were
in low tones, and no words could be heard. I
thought this over, and I remembered that Lorri-
mer fired three times, and that the third bullet was
found in another part of the room.

Lady Adela was certainly quite right to give
me up, which she did in a most tactful and
sympathetic letter.

THE GOOD NAME

THERE was once a girl of whom her friends — that
is to say her enemies — used to observe: "You
never would have thought it to look at her."

Nor would you. She had the wondering and
affectionate eyes of a child. There was not a
vestige of cruelty in her pretty mouth. If there
was any vanity in the way she did her brown hair
it was the vanity that finds its best means in
simplicity. Her voice was low and sympathetic.
Her general appearance suggested, if anything, an
unusual degree of shyness. The girl had left a
trail of broken hearts behind her. She had done
all that was mad, and wicked, and shameless, and
delightful. But certainly you would never have
thought it if you had looked at her. She was just
twenty-three when she first of all heard of the
flower which is called the flower of the good name.
Everybody about her believed in the existence of
that flower, chiefly, perhaps because no one had
ever found it. It was to be found only by the
most virtuous among women. A few unkind
words and their chance was gone. The most in-
considerable flirtation and you would never find
the white flower. This girl never even looked for
it. Her girl friends made a point of going to look
for it every Sunday. Uncharitable people said

that they did this in order to improve their reputa-

291

292 STORIES IN GREY

tions. It was a way of saying that they conscien-
tiously believed that they had a chance.

But the shameless girl never went to look for it
at all. Early on a summer morning she went for
a bathe. As she came back from the seashore
with her wet hair hanging down her back and not
looking quite so nice as usual, she was conscious
that she had swum far and that the morning was
hot, and that it would be no bad thing to sit down
and rest. Her seat was a boulder of granite. She
sat there and whistled a tune — which was dis-
graceful and boylike — and looked across the
meadow before her. And there in the meadow
she found it — a white flower, shaped like a seven-
rayed star, each petal edged with gold and a heart
of gold in the centre. She gave an exclamation of
surprise, which was slightly vulgar. Then she
bent down and examined the flower more closely.
Then she picked it and kissed it.

What was she to do next ? The first thing was
to take that flower to some man of science and
learning and to get its genuineness fully established.
Then she would go and visit all those cats, who, as
she was well aware, were in the habit of saying
things about her, and she would wear that flower
conspicuously so that they might see it. But she
would talk only of the weather so that they mignt
think that her finding of the flower was to her bu
a trifle which she had always known must happen
one day or another.

Then she changed her mind. No good woman
could have changed her mind with greater rapidity

THE GOOD NAME 293

than did this sinful little vixen. No, it was no
good. All the learning and science affidavits and
sworn statements in the world would never have
convinced anybody that she had found the white
flower. Really, she could hardly believe it herself.
She looked back over her past — she was only
twenty-three, but she had quite a good deal of
past. As she thought out its tempestuous incidents
there were times when she smiled, and times when
her eyes grew sad, and once when she closed them
altogether. It was beyond belief. It could not be
true that she had found the white flower. Well,
there it was in her hand, and the gold of its pollen
had stained her red lips.

Then the thought came to her that perhaps after
all she had found this flower not by virtue of her
past but by virtue of her future ; not for what she
was, but for what she was to become. She took
the flower home and pressed it between the leaves
of a missal, and said nothing whatever about it.
But she was going to be a little saint now, and on
this point she did not change her mind.

Years afterwards, her friends — that is to say her
enemies — used to observe : " Yes, but you should
have known her as she used to be." Such testimony,
and here and there a little gratitude and her con-
sciousness of her goodness were all the rewards
that her goodness ever got. And of these, the
last was most satisfying. There came an evening
when she had watched the sun setting to music
and felt too unearthly for anything. That evening
she went to her missal and took out the flower and

294

STORIES IN GREY

carried it with her to a man of great learning. He
immediately fired three Latin words right into the
middle of it and one of these words was " vulgaris."
" It has sometimes been confused," he added,
" with the flower of the good name."

" Really ? " said the saint, with an intelligent
smile, " give a woman a good name and she may
as well hang herself."

" I beg pardon ? " said the man of learning
coldly.

She did not repeat the statement. She went
away to find some lonely and appropriate spot
where she might cry.

THREE DIALOGUES

BIRTH

[The scene is the drawing-room in Mrs Hanford Blake's
house in Mayfair. The time is the afternoon, three days
after the birth of Alicia Theodora Eltham Gervis, daughter
of the Hon. Rupert Gervis and Theodora, his wife, and
granddaughter of Mrs Hanford Blake.]

THE room is large and fussy. There are only two
men in it : Mr Arthur Agger, a sexagenarian, and
Rupert Gervis. They talk apart : at least Mr
Agger talks, and the young father listens as well
as can be expected under the circumstances.
Around Mrs Hanford Blake is gathered a pretty
feminine group : Mrs Agger, who is dark-eyed,
red-lipped, and thirty years younger than her
husband : Mrs and Miss Sturt, who are both
doing good work, but are less plain than one would
have supposed, and Mrs Hector K. Girder, who
is just too perfectly sweet for words. Lady
Rothen is upstairs inspecting Alicia Theodora
Eltham Gervis, but she will be down directly.
Do wait.

There is a sound of talk and tea-cups. Outside
in the hall there is a gentle rain of cards of con-
gratulation and inquiry. The muffled knocker is
busy, and from time to time one hears the soft
thud of a sample packet of babies' food in the
letter-box.

295

296 STORIES IN GREY

MRS BLAKE: Yes, Theo is wonderful. The
doctor is more than satisfied. But that does not
prevent me from taking every possible precaution.

THE GROUP : How right ! How wise !

MRS BLAKE : I have to exercise my authority
a little. What is the use of being a grandmother
if one doesn't ? Now, there's Rupert.

MRS STURT: Ah, yes!

MRS BLAKE : We are all so fond of him, but
really at such times the father is a perfect nuisance
in the house. But for me he would be in and out
of Theo's room all day ; I have had to make the
strictest rules about it. And it's so bad for him
too ; he goes nowhere and does nothing but mope
about the house; his only occupation is to walk
to Regent Street once a day to buy a ring or
bangle for Theo.

MRS GIRDER : Now, I call that just too sweet.
Why, when my little girl was born Hector meant
well, but he didn't know anything but Guava jelly.
The supply of Guava jelly got so far ahead of the
demand that I had to speak about it.

MRS AGGER : Now really, Nancy !

MRS GIRDER : I'm telling you the truth.
Hector's like that, and so are many men. When
one is ill they get bubbles in their think-tanks,
and Guava on the brain. And you've got to put
up with it.

Miss STURT : I don't know whether Mr Gervis
wants an occupation, Mrs Blake ; but if he does
I am sure we could find him one. Mamma and I
are trying to get up a —

THREE DIALOGUES 297

MRS AGGER : Now, Mrs Blake, you really
must tell us more about that little angel upstairs.
Eight pounds, you said.

MRS BLAKE : And a half.

MRS AGGER : Oh, that's splendid ! I've (look-
ing defiant and speaking rapidly) got no babies of
my own, you know, but I adore them and know
all about them. I think the names you have
chosen are quite perfect, aren't they, Nancy?

MRS GIRDER : Why, yes. It's most important
to get a child named properly. Now Hector
wanted to call our little girl Georgina Washing-
tonia, but I wouldn't have it. I'm patriotic, but
there is a limit. " Why, what do you mean ? " I
said. " That's unlucky. Suppose she took it from
the name and couldn't tell a lie. How would she
get on ? It's as bad as making her colour-blind."
So we called her Irene Veronica.

MRS AGGER : Nancy, you are altogether beyond.

MRS STURT : Personally, I have always set my
face against even the ordinary social —

[At this moment Lady Rothen enters in a state of
ecstasy, hands clasped, eyes bright, triumphant. ,]

LADY ROTHEN : Seen it ! Held it ! Kissed it !

MRS BLAKE : Her. Not it.

LADY ROTHEN : Of course. Poor mite. She's
a little woman. Kissed her — Her — HER !

MRS GIRDER : Now, Lady Rothen, you mustn't
be so proud ; we've all been up, and we've all
taken her.

LADY ROTHEN (with supreme dignity)-. But
she didn't cry when I took her — HER.

298

STORIES IN GREY

MRS GIRDER : She only cried with me because
she wanted my new hat. And I don't blame her.
I nearly cried myself before I persuaded Hector
that I couldn't live without it. That's a child
with ideas. That's a child that will get on.

Miss STURT : I think I should care for hats too,
if only I could put out of my mind the many
toiling millions who never know what it is to have
even the simplest —

ARTHUR AGGER (aside to his wife) : I say,
what the devil's the use of sticking here ? Can't
we go?

MRS AGGER : Oh, Arthur, I'm taking Nancy to
Paquin's in the brougham. You can't come there ;
you had better take a taxi to your club.

ARTHUR AGGER : What ? A taxi ? Stuff and
nonsense ! I take the 'bus.

[The Aggers and Mrs Girder go out. Rupert
Gervis makes for the door, but is swept back again
by a rolling tide of Sturt. They pin him in a corner
and tell him all about a cottage-hospital. Lady
Rothen becomes suddenly confidential in her manner^

LADY ROTHEN : Jane, I oughtn't to say it, I
suppose, but I hate that woman.

MRS BLAKE : What ? Mrs Girder ?

LADY ROTHEN : Oh, no ! She's a darling, in
spite of her frivolity. She's a good wife and a
good mother. It is Mrs Agger that I hate. That
woman dishonours her sex.

MRS BLAKE : But, my dear, you surprise me.
I have never heard a word against Mrs Agger —
not the faintest breath of scandal.

THREE DIALOGUES 299

LADY ROTHEN : I don't mean that. It's her
marriage makes me furious. Her beauty even
now is a joy to look at ; she had youth, health,
and the sweetest ways ; she would have been a
bride for a king among men — and she marries that
thing. Do you mean to tell me that she or any
woman could by any possibility love that disgust-
ing brute ?

MRS BLAKE : S-s-s-h ! Really !

LADY ROTHEN : I can't help it. It makes my
blood boil. Men ol that type should be made to
understand that with all their wealth there are
some things that they can't buy. Women who
marry them are traitors to their sex.

MRS BLAKE : Well, my dear, I don't know.
He's not nice to look at, and his manners and
customs are slightly — what shall I say ?

LADY ROTHEN : Repulsive's a good word.

MRS BLAKE : Well, they certainly are not
tempting. But everybody is agreed that he's the
kindest of husbands ; she spends money like water
and has everything she wants.

LADY ROTHEN : Everything ?

MRS BLAKE : Well, it's no good her breaking
her heart about that. She is in many ways a
most fortunate woman. And I don't know that
we have any fair grounds for saying that she isn't
fond of her husband. All women are not alike.
Any sign of strength tells, and his big fortune is
a sign of strength.

LADY ROTHEN : Or unscrupulousness.

MRS BLAKE : He's generous ; she's grate-

300 STORIES IN GREY

ful. And how far is it from gratitude to
love?

LADY ROTHEN : About as far as from the earth
to the moon and back.

MRS BLAKE : Don't you believe the sentimen-
talists, my dear ; or the cynics either. I've seen
many such marriages arrange themselves very well
indeed in practice. It ought to turn out all wrong,
but in my experience it doesn't ; and I'm an old
woman now.

LADY ROTHEN : You ? You're the youngest
grandmother in London. We won't quarrel, Jane,
but I warn you that if you are Alicia's grand-
mother I am her godmother, and I will never let
her make a marriage like that.

MRS BLAKE : Well now, my dear, what sort of
husband would you approve of for Alicia.

LADY ROTHEN (unhesitatingly) : A soldier.

MRS BLAKE : I know you will think me sadly
unromantic, but I cannot agree with you. We
three women, you and Theo and I, have the child's
happiness to consider, and what is superficially
attractive is not always the most conducive to
happiness in the long run. Your soldier might be
very desirable in every other way, but there are
the risks of his profession to be considered. Think
of Alicia, left perhaps at the age of thirty, with
a lifelong sorrow and loneliness. On the other
hand if she married a capitalist — she need not
necessarily take the oldest and ugliest — he
would not be exposing himself to any such
risks.

,

arth

THREE DIALOGUES 301

LADY ROTHEN : No, they generally take good
care of themselves.

MRS BLAKE : There would be no fear that she
might lose her husband before they had been
married a year perhaps.

LADY ROTHEN : No fear ! You mean no hope.

MRS BLAKE (rather warmly) : Really I think
you let your tongue run away with you. You
cannot seriously mean —

LADY ROTHEN (with equal warmth] \ I assure
you that whatever you may think about it —

\_At this moment Rupert Gervis and Mrs and
Miss Sturt come forward together^

RUPERT GERVIS : Well. What's all the quarrel
about ?

[Lady Rothen and Mrs Blake suddenly realize
iv hat the quarrel really is aboutl\

LADY ROTHEN : Jane, if you tell him, I'll never
speak to you again.

MRS BLAKE : I don't dream of telling him. It's
nothing that concerns you, my dear Rupert ; at
least not at present

RUPERT : All right. Regular bag of mysteries
this house is nowadays.

\He goes to the doorl\

MRS BLAKE : You are not to go up to Theo.

RUPERT (gloomily) : All right. Wasn't going
to. Only fetching my cheque-book.

MRS STURT : He has been kind enough to
promise us a donation for one of our charities.
You were more fortunate than I, Lady Rothen ;
Alicia was asleep when I saw her.

302

STORIES IN GREY

LADY ROTHEN : Isn't she adorable !

MISS STURT: To think that there is a new
little life come into the world !

LADY ROTHEN : That little bundle of flannel-
how many hearts she may break !

MRS BLAKE : She may have an immense influ-
ence over men.

MlSS STURT : She may change the map of
Europe.

MRS STURT : She may alter our theory of the
universe.

LADY ROTHEN : I wonder what she would say
if she could know what lies before her. Here she
is, and she doesn't know what is to happen to her.
She was never asked ; here she is — poor mite !
and she has got to go through with it. Really I
wonder what she would say.

\The door opens, as Rupert returns, envelope in
hand. From the upper storey of the house is heard,
faintly in protest, the voice of Alicia Theodora Eltham
Germs.]

A. T. E. GERVIS (in the distance) : Yee-ow, yee-
ow, yee-ow !

MRS BLAKE : Nothing wrong with her lungs, at
any rate.

RUPERT (handing the envelope to Mrs Sturf) :
Here's that — er —

MRS STURT : Thank you so much. I always
find it easy to get money from people who have
just had a great joy or a great sorrow. I wonder
why it is.

RUPERT : Reason upset, I suppose.

THREE DIALOGUES 303

LADY ROTHEN : I expect he adores the child,
doesn't he ?

RUPERT : If I may be allowed an opinion, he
doesn't.

ALL : What !

RUPERT : No, I'm not particularly fond of it.
I'm naturally slow and I don't know it well enough.
I shall get fond of it, but I can't manage the
instantaneous enthusiasm and interest that you all
can. You've settled its marriage already, haven't
you?

LADY ROTHEN : There may have been some-
thing said.

MRS BLAKE : I didn't know you were listening.

RUPERT : Wasn't. Conjectured it. You've
mapped out a career for her. You've settled
whether she is to be buried or cremated, and how
she ought to leave any property of which she may
have a disposing power. The way of a woman
with a baby astounds me, especially when it's
somebody else's baby. How do you manage to
fall in love instantaneously with a three-day-old
infant who talks like this ?

[He opens the door.']

A. T. E. GERVIS (in the distance) : Yee-ow, yee-
ow, yee-ow !

LADY ROTHEN : We are just going, if you
would like to run up, Jane, to see that everything
is all right.

MRS BLAKE : I confess that I didn't quite like
the sound of that cry.

RUPERT : Nor did I.

304 STORIES IN GREY

MRS BLAKE : It sounded to me as if the child
were in pain. I think I should like to reassure
myself. But don't go.

LADY ROTHEN : Must, unfortunately.

[Good-byes. Kiss-pecking. Mrs Blake goes up to
the nursery. Rupert with almost indecent alacrity
scoops Lady Rothen into her brougham, removes the
two Sturts, who will walk, and closes the front door.
He surveys the empty hall.']

RUPERT : Coast clear? That's all right.

[He slithers stealthily and rapidly up the stairs to
TheJs room.]

MARRIAGE

[The scene is a bleak hill surmounted by a ruined chapel,
outside a provincial town. It is a clear day in spring, the
air still and the sun shining. One can see the housetops
and the church-spire in the valley below, and hear an
inordinate sound of joyous bells. A man (Edward Hearne,
to be precise) with a dead-beat face, a worn, blue serge suit-
a briar pipe, which he is smoking too fast and biting too
hard, an age of twenty-five years, and an artistic tempera-
ment, has climbed to the top of the hill in search of soli-
tude ; so also has a woman (Anna Larose, to be accurate)
who has twenty years, was awake all last night and crying
most of the time, and is beautiful on fire-and-darkness lines.
As he turns the corner of the chapel he meets her, to the
disgust of both. She really smiles, and he contorts his
mouth with a similar purpose, but a different result. They
shake hands.]

ANNA: What? You?

EDWARD : Y-yes. I suppose so.

ANNA: Do you mean to tell me that Mrs
Gervis hasn't requested the pleasure of the assist-
ance of Mr Hearne at the marriage of her daughter,
Alicia Theodora Eltham— and all the rest of it ?

THREE DIALOGUES 305

EDWARD : Oh, yes, I was asked !

ANNA: But you surprise me. I've met you at
their house so often, and it was always thought
that you and Alicia were such good friends.

EDWARD : Very good friends.

ANNA : Then why aren't you there ?

EDWARD : In case you meet any of them, and
hear my name mentioned, I am at the present
moment in London, whither I have been summoned
by Messrs Agnew to settle about the sale of one
of my pictures.

ANNA : But you are not in London.

EDWARD : If we are going to be accurate,
neither have I sold a picture, neither am I likely
to sell a picture, neither have Messrs Agnew ever
heard of me, nor would it make the least differ-
ence to them if they had.

ANNA : What an unnecessarily elaborate fib !

EDWARD : Yes, I know it's not good. Men get
so little practice.

ANNA : And the real reason why you are here
instead of being in your place in the church is that
the artistic temperament loathes the big social
function.

EDWARD : The real reason why I am here is
that I wanted to be alone.

ANNA (not in the least angry , but recognizing
that her self-respect requires that she shall not take
this tamely} : I was just going on, in any case. It
was not necessary to be insufferable.

EDWARD : I beg your pardon. I hardly know
what I'm saying this morning. Do, please, stop.

306 STORIES IN GREY

ANNA : If I am to stop, it will perhaps occur to
you that I also may wish to be alone.

EDWARD (with a sig!i) : All right ; I'll go if you
like. I hate the world this morning, and I think
you know why. But I wish you would let me stay
with you. Down in the street or in some infernal
drawing-room I should be civil enough, and say
the usual things about croquet and so on. But
here we are a woman and a man out of the world,
and you were one of her best friends, and —

ANNA: As you wish. Stop if you will. I'm
horribly tired ; can't you find somewhere where
we can sit down.

EDWARD : Yes, you look tired. Will this do ?

[He indicates a low fiat tombstone. They sit
down.]

ANNA : That will do beautifully. What a view
one gets from here! And the air's so soft and
clear to-day.

EDWARD (perfunctorily} : Yes.

ANNA : Oh, I know what you want to talk about,
of course ! But what is the use ? The time's past.
They're in the vestry by now, asking where they
are to sign their names. If you loved Alicia, why
didn't you tell her so? Why didn't you marry
her?

EDWARD : Instead of leaving her to that brute.

ANNA : He is not a brute.

EDWARD : Oh, no ! Excellent young man !
Will be a baronet one of these days. I did not
tell her because I loved her. There was never the
ghost of a chance for me. While I said nothing I

THREE DIALOGUES 307

could still hang on and hang on. If I had spoken,
that would have ended everything at once. I was
happy enough ; I never expected her to care
about me ; I was content as long as she did not
care about some other man.

ANNA: Even if she had cared about you, you
could not have — well, as we're speaking plainly,
you know her people would never have permitted it.

EDWARD : If she had cared for me they couldn't
have stopped it. I've not been stopped by my
circumstances ; I have been stopped by myself.
That would be humiliating if I had ever had any
pride. I was the hopeless detrimental. By all the
rules of the game I ought to be handsome and
accomplished and beloved ; and my rival, as he is
wealthy and a germ of a baronet, ought to be
hideous, and old, and stupid, and she ought to be
marrying him against her will at the instigation of
an ambitious mother. The reverse is the case.
Why, he's an abominably handsome man.

ANNA : Do you think so ?

EDWARD : Of course. Don't you ?

ANNA : He's not bad-looking.

EDWARD : Then he has all the accomplishments.
The poor and lowly born ought according to all
the stories to come out strongly here. .What
rubbish ! Accomplishments mean education, and
education means money. I can't shoot, or ride, or
fence, and I have the cheek to call myself a man.
There is not a single thing that I can think of that
I can do, except paint ; and a good many people
would tell you that I can't do that.

308 STORIES IN GREY

ANNA : Do you really think him so very
accomplished ?

EDWARD : Haven't I just said so?

ANNA : So you did. Go on.

EDWARD : And he's also a good fellow. I don'
suppose he's much more of a saint than other men.

ANNA (indignantly): How dare you say that?
It's the cowardly thing men always say when they
meet a better man than themselves. One has
only to look at him to —

EDWARD: Well?

ANNA : Leave it ; go on.

EDWARD : I didn't mean to imply that he
forged cheques or picked pockets. I'm not
interested enough in him to want to do him an
injustice. That's honest ; it's not affectation. My
trouble is not that she has married him, but that
she should have married anybody. A moment
ago, when I was laboriously doing him justice,
commending his points, you did not seem to
believe me ; but when I hint at the possibility of
spots on the sun, you turn again and rend me.
What can I say to please you ?

ANNA: Nothing; nothing can please me. I
know you have suffered, though you speak
flippantly or even cynically, but I can hardly pity
you. It is your own fault. You must have
known that she would marry : you can't have
supposed that your silly philandering could go
on for ever.

EDWARD: It was not silly, and it was not
philandering, and I did not suppose it could go

THREE DIALOGUES 309

on for ever. But though the child knows that
its bun is finite, it is none the happier when it
has finished it ; and though I knew somewhere at
the back of my head that she would marry, I
shirked thinking about it. One does not care to
think of the fall of an angel.

ANNA : Spare me the rhapsodies. You should
have spoken to her —

EDWARD: We've been through all that. Do
you yourself think she could ever have cared for
me?

ANNA! Oh, I don't know. She thought that
you could paint. She told me so once.

EDWARD: Did she? What were her words?
How did she say it? Oh, what does it matter!
Even if I could paint, what would it matter ?
Women don't love men for that.

[A long pause. Anna sits with her head resting
on her hands^ looking far into the blue. Edward
paces to and fro miserably ', but sits down again
when she speaks I\

ANNA : Did you send anything?

EDWARD : A wedding-present ? Yes. Silver
candlesticks.

ANNA: You should have sent one of your
pictures.

EDWARD : Too personal. And what did you
give them ?

ANNA (unshrinkingly) : Fish-slice.

EDWARD: Why?

ANNA : Is there anything more unromantic
than a fish-slice ?

3io STORIES IN GREY

EDWARD : No.

ANNA : Well, that's why.

EDWARD: Oh! (There is another long pause.
The sound of cheering comes faintly up from the
valley below. A look of irritation passes over his
face as he hears it. White butterflies dance in the
sun, and he watches them. Suddenly he speaks]
Lord, what a beautiful day for the sacrifice !
Why are the wedding ceremonies performed in
public ?

ANNA (impatiently] : Oh, I don't know !

EDWARD : It's appalling, Alicia and that brute
beside her with everybody in the church staring
— Alicia in the newspapers — Alicia all in white,
with her train of bridesmaids — why, what am I
saying? You were to have been the first brides-
maid yourself. Why —

ANNA : No, no. That's wrong.

EDWARD : I'm sure I was told so.

ANNA : People say anything.

EDWARD : But you're not there. Good Heavens !
Why didn't that strike me before ? Not even there !
I go on talking about myself, and — well ?

ANNA : You don't think that a father, a mother,
two sons, and a daughter, are about enough from
one house ; that the other daughter hadn't better
stop at home or go for a walk ?

EDWARD : No, Miss Larose, not in this case.
You ought not to have absented yourself; you
were her best friend almost, weren't you ?

ANNA: That's a strong phrase; I can't say.
Talk about yourself again.

THREE DIALOGUES 311

EDWARD : I'm an insufferable, unmanly, un-
attractive fool, and I've had the cheek to break
my heart just as if I were somebody. There's the
last word about me. Pass on. Alicia ?

ANNA (scornfully) : Oh, spare me ! I know the
colour of her eyes and hair, and how long she
takes to do it as a general thing. Pass Alicia.

EDWARD : Then we'll discuss the bridegroom-
brute.

ANNA (sharply) : No.

EDWARD : Why not ?

ANNA : I said no. Leave it, please.

EDWARD : Then we return to you again. Why
are you not at the wedding ? Oh, happy thought !
You are in the same position as I am ; you are
smitten with the charms of the noble and high-
souled bridegroom. You are the maid that never
told her love, but let the worm of something or
other — never could remember quotations — play
the deuce with her damask cheek. Your aching
heart — (He stops suddenly^ seeing the look on her
face> and realizing that unconsciously and un-
intentionally his stupid gibe has hit right home) —
I beg your pardon, I'd no idea, I'm terribly sorry
How can I have made such a brutal blunder?
Anna, for God's sake, don't cry ! Forgive me !

ANNA (rising to her feet): I am not going to
cry. I forgive you. You never meant to hurt me.
I know that. After all, why shouldn't you know ?
I would sooner cut my tongue out than tell a
woman ; I would sooner hold my hand in the fire
than let a woman know. But we are in the same

312 STORIES IN GREY

condemnation, aren't we? And I feel what you
said just now, that we are out of the world up
here on this hill-top, and can say things that we
should never have dreamed of in the streets below.
Why, it's almost like being dead. Afterwards
when we come down from here, never speak of it
again to me. It was not his fault ; thank God, he
never knew ! He won't be able to talk me over
with Alicia at least. Oh, how tired I am, how*tired
I am.

EDWARD (thoughtfully) \ I wonder if there is
anything that I could say — no, no.

ANNA : Edward — I don't think I ever called
you by that name before — shall we be real
friends ?

EDWARD : Yes, dear. Always. (He takes her
hand and kisses it.} It will all be over by now,
shall I take you home ?

[They go down the hill in silence and hand in
hand. Sometimes they slip a little on the close-
cropped turf, but they feel more than mortal all the
same. They pause a moment at the foot of the
hill.]

ANNA : I shall tell them that the walk has quite
cured my headache. Don't come any further with
me, please. Mamma is asking you for the 6th,
dinner. I hope you will be able to come.

EDWARD : It will give me much pleasure.

ANNA : Good-bye, Mr Hearne.

EDWARD : Good-bye, Miss Larose.

THREE DIALOGUES 313

DEATH

[The scene is the dining-room at No. 23 Alberto Parade,
Hoxley-on-Sea, where the Rev. James Theodore Blake has
a curacy. He is considered to have married beneath him.
The oval table is laid for breakfast. At one side Mrs Blake
presides over a block-tin percolator and two plain and
practical cups, flanked by a milk-jug of a different pattern.
She has thirty-nine years, eleven stone eight, a double
chin, no corsets— these will occur later in the morning — and
a pale blue dressing-gown that is due at the cleaner's.
James has a weak, thin face, and gazes abstractedly at a
hot-water dish surmounted by a pewter cover. He bends
towards it and closes his eyes.]

JAMES : Benedictus, benedicat ! (He lifts the
pewter cover and turns to his wife) Have you any
preference, Edith?

EDITH : There's not much difference between
kippers. Give me the smallest.

JAMES : The smaller.

EDITH : Smaller then. I seem put off my
appetite this morning.

JAMES : I don't think that is a very happy
phrase, is it, Edith ?

EDITH : Oh, do keep your temper, James ! I do
my best, but Rome wasn't built in a day. These
things slip out. Why don't you open your letters ?
(Bitterly.} There may be a fortune in 'em.

[As he speaks he opens his letters one by one.]

JAMES : Barkham, for the kitchen sink, two and
three.

EDITH : Barkham knows how to stick it on. I
could have done it myself if I'd had a cane.

JAMES : Barkham was here only twenty minutes.

314 STORIES IN GREY

I timed him. The Canon regrets that he will be
unable to dine on Thursday.

EDITH : Well, that's something saved.

JAMES : True. (At the next letter he pauses and
puts his hand over his eyes.) Edith, my Aunt
Alicia is dead.

EDITH : What ? At last ?

JAMES: Edith!

EDITH : Well, you always said when she died
our troubles would be over.

JAMES: But do not forget that I have lost
an aunt.

EDITH : No, of course not. Does the letter say
anything ?

JAMES : It is from the solicitor. It appears that
I am the residuary legatee.

EDITH : What does that mean ?

JAMES : I am given to understand that I inherit
almost the whole of her fortune.

EDITH : Well, it never rains but it pours.

JAMES : You seem to forget that I have lost an
aunt.

EDITH : But you only saw her three times in
your life.

JAMES : An aunt is still an aunt.

EDITH : And she was a Ritualist.

JAMES : But beneath these outward forms she
has shown that she had a strong sense of duty.
She has recognized that all that we have is only
held on trust, and that it is our duty to leave it
to our nearest kin. This will be a disappointment
to the Wildersons. I cannot profess to be sorry

THREE DIALOGUES 315

in that respect. Yes, there is some justice in this
imperfect world after all.

EDITH : Oh, James, if you only knew how happy
I feel !

JAMES : Must I say it again ? I have lost a
dear aunt.

EDITH : Yes ! Oh, yes ! I'm sure I feel that too.
What you must do, James, is to keep yourself up.
It's not a question of expense any more, and
however reluctant you may be, you must not let
yourself break down. Think what a lot of business
is going to be thrown on your hands. In that case,
I think one kipper is an insufficient breakfast for a
man. Now, even against your own inclination
couldn't you —

JAMES : I should never have thought of it it
you had not mentioned it. You are always so
practical, Edith, I leave that branch entirely to
you. Shall we say an egg, boiled or poached,
whichever gives the least trouble ?

EDITH : I'll run and poach a couple of eggs
for you myself. The gel's upstairs with the
children.

JAMES : Do not say gel. Say the servant, or
call her by her name, Martha.

EDITH : What a one you are for grammar !
Martha, then. Now, I'll be off. And here's
Hector come to say good-morning.

[As she goes out Hector enters. He is a re-
markably plain boy of nine^ with a very solemn de-
meanour, suggesting great age. He shakes hands
with his father^

3i6 STORIES IN GREY

HECTOR : Good-morning, father. Is there any-
thing of importance in the paper this morning ?

JAMES : I have not yet opened the paper this
morning. My attention has been occupied with
some sad news, which has just reached me by post.
A dear aunt of mine has just passed away.

HECTOR: Oh! Let me see; your aunt would
be my great-aunt.

JAMES : Yes, my boy. She was your great-aunt
Alicia.

HECTOR : I do not remember that I ever met
her, and the relation does not seem to be very
close; don't you think that, under the circum-
stances, it would be enough if I had a black band
on the sleeve of my light suit. I suggest it
because I know we are not rich, and the expense
of a new black suit is considerable. The money
might be spent in other ways that I could tell you of.

JAMES : No, Hector, I wish you to be dressed in
complete mourning. You are so much older than
your years, that I may mention to you what, in an
ordinary way, a father would not discuss with a
boy of nine ; by the death of my Aunt Alicia I
became a rich man, and am intending to give up
this curacy and to adopt a style of life more in
accordance with the means that Providence has
been pleased to bestow on me. The price of your
new clothes is a matter no longer of any great
importance.

HECTOR: Oh? (He reflects a minute and then
puts his question somewhat bluntly?) Are you more
sorry she's dead, or more glad you're rich ?

THREE DIALOGUES 317

JAMES : How can you ask such a question ?

HECTOR : Well, I didn't know.

JAMES : The loss of an aunt must inevitably
— ah ! there's your mother.

[Edith enters with the poached and supplemental
eggs on a very hot plate^ which she is anxious to put
down quickly '.]

EDITH : There, James. Two beauties. Mind
the plate. I've pretty nigh burnt my hands off
with it.

JAMES: Thank you. You are very good. I
shall enjoy these. Hector, go outside for a
moment. {Hector goes out.) Don't say "pretty
nigh," my dear ; say " very nearly."

EDITH : All right, dear. Very nearly. (Calling.)
You can come in again, Hector.

HECTOR (from without) : It is time I went up
to take the children in the multiplication table.

EDITH : What a good boy he is ! Not a bit like
other boys ! Really, he is a great help, and there's
nothing he won't do. He is working a pair of
slippers for himself. Wonderful !

JAMES : When I have recovered from the blow
which I received this morning, it will be some
pleasure to think that we shall be able now to put
the education of the children on a different basis.
Hector must go to school, ultimately to Eton.
The younger children will have a governess. I
shall in all probability accept a college living where
the income is practically nothing — that is of no
importance to us — but the vicarage is large and
situated in a pretty country. There will be

3i8 STORIES IN GREY

an ample garden and so forth. I shall look out
for a place where the work is light, and I shall
employ a curate. I shall in that way have leisure
for those literary pursuits which are most to my
taste, and perhaps are more valuable than purely
parochial work. I have sometimes felt that at
present I am a razor used for cutting wood.

EDITH : That's true enough, I'm sure.

JAMES : Even the little I have been able to find
time for has not been without promise and profit.

EDITH : You mean what you write for the
papers ?

JAMES: I have made on an average seven
shillings from the Comic Halfpennyworth alone. I
have also had occasional work in the Children's
Sunday ', the editor of which says he will always be
glad to consider anything of mine. And you must
remember, Edith, that has been done under very
trying circumstances. There has been the worry
about money, and I have no working room, and
my time has been very limited, and I have suffered
from the want of a proper holiday. When I start
work in a spacious and well-furnished library,
looking out on to beautiful grounds, invigorated by
good food, refreshed by a long holiday on the
Continent every year, without a care, not over-
worked, taking riding exercise every afternoon—

EDITH : Oh, James !

JAMES : Then I think I may be able to produce
something in comparison with which what has
gone before will seem but child's play.

EDITH : Oh, James ! Shall we keep a horse then ?

THREE DIALOGUES 319

JAMES : Our position will make it essential that
we shall keep horses, and there will be a pony for
the children as well, I hope. But in the meantime
there is much to be done. You must order mourn-
ing for yourself and the children. Let it be plain
but of the best quality. It should be put in hand
this morning. I must go up North to-night ; the
solicitor wishes to see me about the funeral ; in
fact, I gather that the whole matter is left more or
less in my hands.

EDITH : Poor James ! I don't envy you the long
journey in a wretched third-class —

JAMES : Under the circumstances I shall go by
sleeping-saloon.

EDITH: Oh (timidly) \ You don't think there
will be any difficulty about ready money ? Of
course it's coming, but still —

JAMES : The solicitor will advance anything
that I may require. He implies as much in his
letter, and puts it very delicately. I shall certainly
employ him. Tact, that is what one wants in a
solicitor.

EDITH : I feel almost as if I should open my
eyes and find it all a dream.

JAMES : Alas ! It is no dream. She has gone.
The end was peaceful. She was eighty-three ; I
shall never shake her by the hand again.

EDITH : You were never what could be called
intimate, though, were you ? It's not as if —

JAMES : An aunt must always be an aunt.

EDITH : Well, yes.

JAMES : I trust I shall bear the blow with

320

STORIES IN GREY

fortitude and resignation. But the tie of blood is
a very real one. She has shown that herself.
During her life the Wildersons saw far more of
her than I did, but at the last the claim of relation-
ship told. I am not sorry for the Wildersons ; I
consider they did their best to rob me.

[Hector enters, wearing a pained expression.]

HECTOR : I am sorry to say that Henrietta
refuses to learn anything, and has been impertinent.

EDITH : You run along. I dare say if the truth
were known there are faults on both sides.

HECTOR: I hope not.

EDITH : Well, I'll come in a minute.

HECTOR : Thank you. (He goes out.)

EDITH : I suppose I may write to my two
sisters.

JAMES: Certainly.

EDITH : They'll like to hear the good news — I
mean I must break it to them about your Aunt
Alicia.

JAMES : I think the latter is the better way of
expressing it. You must remember that money is
not everything.

EDITH : No, James. I shall be better able to
see that now.

[She goes out. James rises from the table and
paces to and fro. His expression is one of gravity
and solemnity. As his thoughts flit on the expression
changes \ giving place to a broad and ecstatic smile.
He rubs his large, fat hands softly together^

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