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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 55296
   :PG.Title: Farquharson of Glune
   :PG.Released: 2017-08-07
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: May Bateman
   :DC.Title: Farquharson of Glune
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1908
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE
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      FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE

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      BY

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      MAY BATEMAN

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      AUTHOR OF
      'THE ALTAR OF LIFE,' 'THE GLOW-WORM,' ETC.

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      WARWICK COLONIAL LIBRARY

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      Sole Agents for India and the British Colonies
      HODDER & STOUGHTON
      1908

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      Dramatic and all other rights reserved

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      RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
      BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
      BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

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      TO

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      MRS. GEORGE ALEXANDER

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      IN MEMORY OF
      NEVER-FAILING KINDNESS

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   CONTENTS

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PART I

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`THE GOAD`_

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PART II

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`THE SPUR`_

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PART III

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`THE BETRAYAL`_

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PART IV

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`THE BESTOWAL`_

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PART V

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`VICTORY`_





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.. _`THE GOAD`:

.. _`CHAPTER 1-I`:

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   PART I

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THE GOAD

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"I have not, as some do, bought penitence with pleasure!"—SHELLEY.

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"When the soul arms for battle she goes forth alone."—LYTTON.

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   FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE

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CHAPTER I

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"The potter, also tempering soft earth, with labour fashioneth
every vessel for our service, and of the same clay he maketh
both vessels that are for clean uses, and likewise such as serve
to the contrary; but what is the use of these, the potter is the
judge."—*Wisdom* (Douay Version).

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Two men, leisurely climbing a steep moor in
the north of Perthshire, stopped near the summit
to read a sign-post which pointed out the way to
Glune.

No one was in sight.  Poverty held Glune in
bondage, and such attractions as she yet could
offer were not of the type which appeal to casual
trippers and excursionists, eager for gossip and
refreshment after a stiff walk up-hill.  For a
solitary shop, from which emerged the pervading
smells of leather, peppermint and onions, represented
all that local enterprise could compass, even
at Bruchill, the nearest village.  Cottage upon
cottage was empty, and those that were still inhabited,
showed evidence of neglect.  Women standing at
their doors, stared dully at the unaccustomed
travellers; children playing in the ill-kept gardens
were heavy-eyed and pallid.  No joy of life, no
hospitality was offered.  The most persevering
Bohemian or antiquarian, drawn to the desolate
spot by love of adventure or tradition, was eventually
pulled up short at sight of the empty lodge,
the impenetrable castle gates, high and with narrow
grilles, which shut in the vast wilderness of tangled
growth and ruin.

Grief and sorrow had concentrated about Glune,
until, for Scotsmen, it had become a second
Escorial.  Inanimate things are as tragic in their
way as human beings.  A man or woman,
however crushed and broken, has moments of
quickened vitality in which hope springs, even if
mockingly.  Otherwise brains would snap.  But a
room which a strong personality has made vital
with its presence, becomes temporarily as a place
of the dead.  The Escorial does not depend on
shape or colouring for its impression of gloom;
its air breathes tragedy on the tenderest April
morning.  Glune had something of that same
relentless force of character which makes the
Escorial one with the relentless character of its
founder.  But whereas jolting trains and the
pitiless volubility of Cook's guides bring the palace
in view a full hour before you reach it, there was
but a single point from which Glune actually could
be seen, so sheltered was it from inquisitive eyes
by the reserve and mystery of wood and hill.

Had there been one to see, he might have
wondered what freak of fate had led the present
travellers to a spot so lonely and obscure, and
again, what chances had combined in fellowship
two men outwardly quite incompatible.  Each of
them had the hall-mark of the public school upon
him, but there their likeness ended.  For the elder
was of the type which willingly pays a guinea
to advertise its arrivals and departures in the
*Morning Post*; while the younger was a mere boy,
whose heart as yet stirred only to the love of sport.
Explorers, shooters of big game, men who had
dared and done, were Cummings' models.  Where
Brand, his companion, was hourly handicapped by
ill-health, the young man's greatest trial as yet
was his total inability to achieve what could be
called a moustache by any but the most biassed
relative.

Brand was indeed insignificant, one degree only
removed from actual deformity.  His mouth
twisted uncontrollably when he smiled, and one
shoulder was higher than the other, although a
well-known tailor had done his best to remedy the
defect.  His eyes, set close together, were
unusually light in tone, and apt to evade the glance
direct.  He had a trim Vandyke beard, and was
dressed neatly and well.  His complexion was
pale, and he bore his single eye-glass as one who
tolerates the defects it magnifies, because he is
convinced that his Creator's designs are generally
crude.  Some women found him interesting; the
more refined shrank back from him instinctively,
and wondered why.  On the other hand, his
knowledge of great cities and their haunts at
nightfall, and an unusual memory and gift of tongues
lent him an air of distinction which was admired
and imitated by younger men within his circle.
Cummings, for instance, thought he leaned upon
a stick rather from choice than necessity, and
would have given a fortune to exchange his own
stereotyped courtesies for Brand's easy assurance.

For the lad, tall and athletic, with a trick of
blushing, had yet to find himself.  The pages of
his life, so far, were singularly blank.  He had the
sensitive nostrils and frank gaze of a man
susceptible—almost too susceptible—to influence and
impressions, yet good breeding had often made
him elude opportunities which less artistic natures
coveted.

That beauty of any kind would sway him you
saw at a glance; beauty of soul and shape, Divine
and human.  Had he not in certain instances been
kept back by the fitness of things, he would have
invariably given himself joyously to its influence,
as a swimmer to the sea, playing with it, while
knowing that it had the power to drown.  His
eyes were a dreamer's eyes, able to see the Beatific
Vision on Clapham Common—a faculty not often
met with in a man so broad of chest and lean of
flank.  So far as personal courage went,
Cummings' might have carried him through almost
any form of mediæval torture, except the
deprivation of his means of washing.  At Eton and
Sandhurst he had passed through many dubious
escapades unscathed, delightfully blind to "scum
and rot," as he mentally summed up certain
vagaries of his companions.

But he was now of the age which believes
worldly experience to be a necessary factor of life.
In the last few days he had begun to be ashamed
of his own ignorance of inessential things.

It diverted Brand to play with, some said
corrupt, such natures.  He had won the lad as
tactfully as a woman might have done, luring him
step by step until confidence was established.
Once that was done, the rest was easy.  Little by
little the sanctuary of Cummings' thoughts was
invaded; his circumstances, his surroundings, his
hopes betrayed, until his soul lay naked in the
day.  Another man, with so definite an end in
view as Brand had, might have hastened matters
and spoilt all.  He made no such mistake.

"Looks and means," he said now dreamily, in
the quiet high-bred voice, which was one of his
most valuable assets.  "You ought to do well in
life, with both in your grasp.  Few women
withstand either, and none both; and later on you'll
realize that success in life nearly always augurs
a swish of frills and furbelows in the background."  He
looked at Cummings critically.  "Remember
what wins women wins fame.  She's wanton too.
You have more than your share of good things,
my dear fellow.  The only point you really lack
is confidence, the recognition that you can hold
your own as well in a crowd as in a *tête-à-tête*.  If
a man doesn't believe in himself he'll never get
even a woman to believe in him."

"Oh, come now, I always think I'm such an
awful ass," Cummings protested.  His conversation
was still in the ejaculatory stage.  But he was
pleasantly excited.  What boy of his age would
be unsusceptible to the flattery of being sought
after by an older man?  A chance meal in an
anglers' inn, where space and table-cloths were
equally limited, had given Brand his looked-for
opportunity; a glass or two of Burgundy, and the
discovery of a remote connection, warmed the
acquaintance into friendship.  Across the border
such kinship made a closer tie than south of the
Tweed, Brand asserted.  The two men joined
forces on the strength of the statement.  Long
walks and rides were the result—the first links in a
chain which was to rivet more than one future.

"Men of my age are not apt to make mistakes
in character," the elder man continued, after a
pause.  Cummings, eagerly listening, failed to
see the irony of his tone.  "You say you haven't
brains enough for diplomacy; I beg to differ.
That's a career worthy of a man of influence, like
you.  With a good private income such as you
have, and Calvert to back you—why, you could
pull the strings of the world, if some one showed
you how to set about it, and incidentally have a
good time."

"We've always gone in for the Army or the
Church in our family, you see," said Cummings,
simply disposing of the question.  "As to what
I've got in the money line it isn't worth speaking
of; two thousand a year doesn't go very far in
the Cavalry.  Besides, of course my uncle might
marry, and he's not absolutely bound to leave me
his money; in any case I never count on it, though
I'm supposed to be his heir.  Rather a low-down
game waiting for a dead man's shoes, don't you
think?"  He stopped awkwardly, finding it rather
difficult to frame the right words in the face of
Brand's mocking smile.

By now they had left the main road, striking a
sheep track across the narrow pass which separated
Glune from distant Bruchill.  Even the broad road
had been singularly deserted; here, neither browsing
cattle nor sheep broke the gloomy lines of the
spurs, deepening from purple to indigo.  Grey
clouds hung low, heavy with tears.  The silence
was eerie; one of the two men felt its spell.  To
detach yourself from man is often to come near to
God, but there was something sinister in this
unsmiling landscape, which savoured more of the
powers of darkness than of light.

So far the two had walked in close companionship,
but now, quickened by the wider life of the
hills, and lashed by the mountain air, Cummings
unconsciously set a pace which kept time with his
rapid thoughts.  Brand's words fell meaninglessly
in his ears, like pebbles thrown to lure a terrier
but sucked in by the tide before the dog had time
to reach them.

Brand tried to keep up with his companion, but
failed.  His forehead grew clammy with the effort.
He broke down at last, catching his breath with a
choking cry that pulled up Cummings abruptly in
his hot pursuit of fugitive visions.

The boy turned, scarlet and confused.  "I'm
awfully sorry I dashed off like that.  Here, take
a pull from the flask.  Do forgive me, old chap.
It was beastly bad form of me forgetting——"  He
stopped in embarrassment, taken aback by the
curious change that broke out in dull white patches
on Brand's face at his words.

But Brand was of the world worldly, not likely
to lose the object he had in view because of a
temporary obstacle which tact could bridge.  There
was no trace of resentment in his answer.

"You must remember my grey hairs.  I'm
quite ready to rest if you are.  There's lots of
time, and you've had rather a strenuous week, I
gather?  Although I'm a distant relation, I've
only actually met Martin Calvert once, and then I
found him a tough customer.  Isn't a visit there
rather a test of endurance?  A bit of a bore
between ourselves, eh?  No leniency to one's little
failings to be met with in that quarter.  People
say blood is thicker than water; one's relations
always think it means that one is thicker-skinned."

"My uncle has been most awfully good to me,
you know," Cummings said, with some embarrassment.

Brand flicked his cigar ash lightly.

"A millionaire's virtues can be seen with the
naked eye, my good fellow.  Once you step into
the dead man's shoes of which we were speaking
just now, your friends and enemies alike will find
you possessed of a thousand admirable qualities,
to whose existence they were blind before.  'To
him that hath shall be given' is about the only
scriptural injunction that society ever lays to heart,
you know."

"Oh, come now, that's a bit satirical," cried
Cummings impatiently, flushing again.  The pass
had narrowed into a gloomy gorge, through which
it was impossible for two to walk abreast.  The
younger man stopped short, glad of an excuse to
change the conversation.

"What extraordinary country!  Nothing but
waste land.  What's wrong with the soil?  It was
right enough by Bruchill.  Whom on earth does
this belong to?"

It was said of Henry Brand in Pall Mall clubs,
that were he hurled headlong into the heart of
Central Africa he would know the name and sum
up the exact precedence of any tribe he came
across.

He answered deliberately.  "There are about
thirty thousand acres of this desert all told.  And
it belongs to Farquharson of Glune.

"Farquharson of Glune," Cummings repeated.
The name rang familiarly.  "Didn't a Farquharson
once marry one of the Kilmaurs?  Stay—I
seem to remember some story—wasn't there a
rumour——"  He broke off abruptly, knitting his
brow.

"Stories!  There have always been stories
about Glune and its inmates, past and present,"
said Brand.  "Tragedies mostly.  The Farquharsons
of Glune are all men of violence; leaders
of forlorn hopes; knights-errant to distressed
damsels, saints or outcasts; fierce heroes from
whose doings tiresome bards make tiresome
music—you know the sort of thing."

Cummings not only knew "the sort of thing,"
but held it very sacred, so he kept his peace.

"Well, what's the present Farquharson of
Glune thinking about to let good land lie fallow
like this?" he asked.

"Farquharson of Glune is about ten years old,"
said Brand.  He gave his explanations complacently,
with the air of a broker propitiating his
client with some valuable tip.  "He lives with
his mother, and they're poor.  There are two
kinds of poverty as you know, the poverty of the
man who sells one or two horses out of his racing
stud, and stops playing bridge if the points are
more than half-a-crown a hundred, and the poverty
which slowly starves itself to death to keep
inviolate the terraces and gardens and
bedchambers which Royalty has—honoured with its
presence."

He stopped to cut and light another cigar; he
was a connoisseur in cigars, the bill for which was
paid by other men.

"The last is the kind of poverty the Farquharsons
could tell you all about—if they told anybody
anything."

"Poor souls!  And, meantime, this all runs to
waste.  The timber's excellent—why don't they
sell it?  Does Kilmaurs know anything about it
all?  I thought Scotch people prided themselves
on hanging together.  The clan's rich enough.
Why can't somebody buy——"

The elder man interrupted with a laugh.

"Buy Glune!  Mrs. Farquharson would starve
first.  Probably will.  She's got the old Covenanter
blood in her veins.  It leaves taints.  The
elder son—did you ever hear how Douglas
Farquharson died?"  He paused significantly.

Cummings hesitated.  "Something about it;
not a pretty story."

Brand shrugged his shoulders.  "Suicide is
seldom artistic.  Douglas was always a bungler; he
tried several means before he was successful.
Mrs. Farquharson turned off the whole staff of servants
and labourers on the estate (with the exception of
her own old nurse, who had lived with her since
childhood) on the day of the funeral.  Everything
that could be sold with decency was sold;
everything, that is to say, that could be taken from
the house by night.  To the best of my belief
neither friend nor relation has been inside Glune
since, nor is Richard allowed outside the gates,
except to go to the kirk on Sunday.  You know
how entertaining that is—black gown, tuning fork,
and paraphrases—damnation measured out by the
square yard.  A cheerful outlook for a lad, isn't it?"

"Cheerful!"  Cummings echoed the word with
a deep breath.  It struck him for the first time that
he took too many things in this world for granted,
that there were indeed a hundred and one good
times in such a life as his which he failed to
appreciate fully.  He had imagination; he could
enter into the lonely boy's revolt at the betrayal
of his childhood, his indignation at the grey life
Glune demanded, alike tributes to its power.
Memories of his own pleasant childhood came back
to him in vivid contrast, recalling its sunshine
and glow: competition and excitement, friendly
rivalries in work and play; small sacrifices for
sport that brought their own reward; his father's
pride in him, his mother's love, their rooted—if
delightfully absurd—conviction that he was bound
to excel in anything he undertook, his personal
ardour and ambition, the thrill of success....

He turned impulsively.  "There must be something
to do?  Surely one could do something?"

Brand laughed again.

"It's hardly your business, is it?" he asked in
a calm philosophical tone that shamed the young
man's enthusiasm into silence.  "Besides, it
would be interference in what parsons tell us is
the great scheme."

The boy winced.  His father had come into
the family living as a matter of course; a genial
atmosphere of piety had sweetened the limited
disappointments of Cummings' youth.

"That bugbear of religion," Brand went on,
"what atrocities are committed in its name!
'God made all men equal.'  What a lie!  Some
men are born to go under.  In the fight for mere
existence no allowance is made for frailty.  Unless
a man can keep up with his fellows, he must drop
out of life's race.  Some of us are doomed at the
outset, fashioned and shaped and moulded in God's
image, only to be ground down to powder by the
great Juggernaut of circumstance, like that beetle
under your heel."

He pointed contemptuously to the road.

"The days of miracles are passed, if they ever
existed.  Unless Richard Farquharson gets away
from his surroundings, he will never have a chance
in life.  Stunted in mind and doubtless in growth,
half starved, friendless, and unloved, pent up all day
with a mad mother and an old woman of seventy—what
can he do?  It wasn't only in the much
abused Herod's time that innocents were
massacred.  Take the police records of to-day....
No! don't, they're ugly reading."  He stopped
again.  "Richard Farquharson's next-of-kin is
now at Oxford.  He has a father who moves with
the times.  He'll get on.  The patriots of old
bought titles with their blood, but gold is cheaper.
This man wiped off one of a prince's debts, and
got a knighthood for the privilege."

"Look," said Cummings suddenly.  The two
men stopped near the summit of a heather-covered
spur, overlooking the castle.  Cummings took a
few steps forward, mounting to the crest, and then
with that instinctive reverence, which one must be
very young or very pure instantly to respond to,
raised his cap.

Bleak, barren, desolate, perched like an eyrie
upon the peak of a lonely moor, Glune held herself
against the winds of heaven.  Storms might come,
storms did come, thunder would break, lightning
and gales destroy, this or that avenue of trees.
The spaces in the forest, the gaps and rents in
the more cultivated landscape of the drive only
served to give a clearer view of the severe outline
of the grey building, about which such green
things as strove to grow were ruthlessly cut down.

Some houses are almost human in their
characters and impressions.  In an English
hospital Cummings had once seen the death of a
veteran pensioner, a corporal who had served at
Balaclava under his grandfather.  Something in
the look of the rugged stone, defaced but defiant in
its pride and poverty, recalled the light in the old
man's dying eyes as he said, "I've served my
time, sir, eighty years of it all told, and I've got
my faculties to the end, which is more than many
a man can boast."  Glune seemed as if it would
keep its faculties to the end too.

The young man looked across to the further hills
and down at the castle soberly.  The grey of the
afternoon had broken; the long, narrow windows
opposite had captured the reflected light, a
blood-red light which flamed out dazzlingly.  The
shadows of the pines and firs cut the rank grass
of a neglected lawn immediately in front of the
house; the glow of the sky was repeated in the
running water of a little burn at the base of the
hill.  So far as eye could see, a chain of purple
hills stretched loftily.  Hills full of warmth and
colour, and the mystery which compels a man's
attention.  So infinite, so eternal they seemed, that
facing them the petty jars of daily life took their
true value; and young as he was, Cummings realized
in a flash that only what children call "big
things" are of account in Heaven's reckoning—love,
penitence, and sacrifice.

"I'm not with you," he cried, stammering and
stumbling over the hasty words.  "What you say
can't be true.  A boy who lives here has got his
chance.  I bet you anything you like he'll make
something of it.  Stunted! narrow!  He needn't
be!  Why, if the boy is only strong enough to
climb these hills and look about him, he'll educate
himself instinctively.  Not in book lore, of course,
but book lore isn't all, nor even much.  Learning
from Nature is like learning at your mother's knee,
you can't forget it."  He caught his breath
uncomfortably, and then ran headlong on, as though he
were ashamed of being ashamed to speak.  "Both
make one feel—why, more, they make one know—that
there's a God in the machine somewhere."

His companion had moved away.  His limp
showed very perceptibly at that moment.  The
western windows of Glune were dull red now,
flushing and scintillating like rubies in a curious
setting.

Cummings stood still for a moment, obviously
discomforted, his face brick-red from the rare effort
of wrestling with unaccustomed thoughts.  Then
he ran on lightly for a yard or two, and joined his
companion.

"Rotten luck, the whole thing," he said
good-naturedly.  "Let's stop at the inn at Bruchill, and
drink the poor little chap's health as we pass, eh?
I'm sick to death of all this arguing."

Brand raised his eyebrows.  His face was livid,
except where an angry smear of red had broken out
below the cheek-bone.

"Oh—were you arguing?" he asked.





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.. _`CHAPTER 1-II`:

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   CHAPTER II

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"Suffering of body and soul is civil war."—MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON.

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Thrown upon his own resources practically from
four years old, Richard Farquharson at ten was
older than many boys of his age.  His memories
grouped themselves into scenes, one was his nightmare.

That dreadful day!  Did he really remember
it, I wonder, or was it merely a mental landmark
in that valley of vision to which his old nurse had
taught him the way of escape from the harshness
and austerities of his life at Glune?

He thought of it sometimes with that strange
sort of pride which very sensitive children, and
children of a larger growth who have gone forward
in spite of inward shrinking, feel when recalling
at a safe distance an experience which at the
time had strained their courage to breaking-point.
A raw, cold day, the first of days which were all
raw and cold; a line of dark shadows clustered
together in the gloomy hall, forming an impenetrable
circle about one central shadow deeper than
the rest, across which heavy drapery, a pall, was
thrown.  Upon this unknown object the look of
all was fixed; child as he was Richard shrank back
from it.  He longed and feared to know what was
beneath.  And presently strangers appeared, six
figures, which formed into a rigid line led by one
familiar shape, which for the first time struck
terror into his heart—his mother.

The circle broke, pierced by strangers; there
was a dreadful grating sound as the men bent
beneath the weight of a heavy burden.  Then all
filed out, and Richard, a tiny child, was left
forgotten, in a silence that frightened him so that he
could not cry out nor move, a paralyzing silence
that clutched him with ghostly fingers and
strengthened its grip as the massive door clanged
against him with an echo that mocked the
four-year-old child, left alone in a place where
dishonoured Death had just held revel.

His nurse remembered him, and ran back to
fetch him five minutes later.  But that five minutes
of mental agony had done a work which was never
to be effaced.  The powers of evil had come
paralyzingly close, and nothing can compare with
the terrors of helpless childhood.  Like dying
saints, children have eyes to see what is invisible
to others.  Children's dreams are not necessarily
pleasant.  There are some whose souls are laid
bare to the onslaughts of devils as well as angels.
Even the deaths of good men and women are not
always, nor even often, peaceful.

To Richard, cowed and trembling—picture him;
a small boy in a white sailor suit, with tiny fingers
battering vainly at the great oak door whose latch
was beyond his reach!—the five minutes of
desertion spelled eternity.  The Bible had already
taught him that a day might be as a thousand
years.  His momentary vision as to the real
meaning of the verse was kept alive in him thereafter
by the weekly sermons of the Forbeggie minister,
who loved to dilate—under some fifteen or sixteen
headings—upon the torture of impenitents by
cheerful means of "worms of the damned that
dieth not and fire that is never to be quenched."

So much for the dark side of the picture, but
Richard had many compensations.

*Fide et Fortitudine* was the motto of his race;
he learnt its lessons early.  Let him but keep his
inheritance, and he would not grudge one of those
many supperless occasions which helped to retain
the mere necessities of a clan deriving from
Macduff, Thane of Fife.  He loved his land, and
throve quite joyously upon austerities that would
have broken the spirit of a less hardy lad.

His natural reserve was fostered by enforced
solitude.  The days went swiftly.  To be more or less
alone in the world, except for a collie dog, is
certainly not to be unhappy when every other bird
comes to your call, when stoats and ferrets even
are familiar friends.  Richard's mind, dependent
upon nature for its amusements, was seldom called
upon to translate the word disappointment.  The
peace which wrapped him round became his dear
possession, and was peopled with invisible
playmates.  There was a hut in the park near the
river, some three miles away, where Dan, the
collie, and he played the parts of settlers in a land
full of enemies.  He knew the range of every
object within view.  He altered the defences day
after day, laying down wire entanglements, building
rough stockades, or primitive trenches, with
loopholes and head cover, in all of which Dan took
a profound interest.

Richard was his own stern critic, and yesterday's
work was pulled down on the morrow, until a day
came when, after subjecting it to the severest tests
he knew, he found it good.

Continually burrowing in dirt, growing in
experience, could the heart of boy ask more?

Nature is a jealous mistress, but she gives openly
of her best to the lover who lives with her as
whole-heartedly as did Richard.  He never felt the
want of toys or ordinary amusements.  The elation
that came to him at times was very sweet and
bore him far.

His eye and ear presently became so well trained
that from a great distance he could detect a moving
object, and with the wind blowing gently towards
him, and his ear to the ground, could distinguish
a single footfall on a path nearly a mile away,
like any scout.  Blindfold, or in the dark, he made
his way across Glune without a slip.  Books of
travels in far countries, stories of Burnham and
other members of the brotherhood of the intrepid,
taught him to destroy the tracks of his incoming
and outgoing, so that every step of the way to
special places of concealment had in it the thrill,
the enchantment of an adventure.

To one who has never been to a theatre, a
country life becomes a beautiful play of birth and
death; things move and have their being, that he
may see them pass to their appointed end.  The
green earth is the stage, Nature the playwright,
and God Himself the Great Scene Painter.

Richard's tutor, a half-blind village schoolmaster
who came for three hours daily when Mrs. Farquharson
could afford to pay his meagre fees,
was the only "outside" person whom he ever saw.
Between the boy and his mother, there was neither
freedom nor confidence.  He shrank away if he
heard the rustle of her dress.  Her presence in the
house acted upon him like the presence of death.
It was as if she stood with uplifted hand always
ready to strike some covert blow at one of his
innocent pleasures.  He told her nothing; what
was there to tell?  She looked upon the things he
loved with terror.

Morning and evening found him bidden to
stand, mute and resentful, beside her erect form in
its accustomed place, a high-backed chair in the
study where his father's papers and diaries were
collected.  Her frozen lips—lips tightened into a
line so hard that he always thought it must hurt
her to move them, would touch his forehead stiffly
in greeting, as one touches a thing with loathing
and abhorrence.  Of bosom throbbing at his
approach, and the light of motherhood in her eyes,
which she stifled as she heard him coming, he
knew nothing.  He would leave her rejoicing at
a hard duty again accomplished.  That she longed
for him hungrily all day long, that she stealthily
followed him to his play, that her spare tense
figure was often shaken by passionate longing to
clasp the slender limbs that had once lain warm
and quiet beneath her heart, he never knew.

Only the exceptional man or woman bears the
strain of a great shame and sorrow with no outside
help.  Mrs. Farquharson's pride in her son went
side by side with ceaseless fear.  Richard's fatal
likeness to her dead firstborn, dearer far than
Richard because he was the child of early wifehood,
stabbed her heart.  She had loved that child
too well; forgetfulness of God by the mother had
been visited by God upon the son, she told herself.
And to watch another pay the price of your own
sin is sin's most bitter penalty.

In Douglas Farquharson's case, there had been
that sudden extraordinary return to a vicious type
which occurs occasionally in a family that has for
centuries bred fine men and fair women.  When,
page by page, after his death the record that proved
his guilt was spelled out by his mother, the only
plea she could urge in his defence was that the
selfishness of her own love, given to man instead
of God, had marred and distorted the human
image by its very fervour.

She had "counted it a glory to make vain
things."  Her care had been, like the potter, "to
strive with the goldsmiths and silversmiths."  The
voices of husband and child had made such
triumphant music in her ears, that God's sublime
call was drowned; she had bartered Heaven for a
brief hour of human rapture, to find that God was
a God of vengeance as well as love and love a
two-edged sword which can wound or kill.

That very night, on her bedroom wall, she
thought she saw a warning written in letters of
flame.  "His heart is ashes and his hope vain
earth, his life more base than clay." ... "Being
himself mortal, he fashioneth a dead thing with
his hands."

Day after day, as Richard grew stronger and
more handsome, she asked herself if he were born
only to inherit his brother's legacy of dishonour.
He looked frank and open enough, but eyes that
shone as purely as his had been the casket of lies,
and lips which had met hers more easily had given
themselves to what was incredibly base.

The dead are often nearer to us than the living.
Mrs. Farquharson's dead were scourges.  When
Douglas killed himself the shock broke his father's
heart.  By day and night his mother made silent
pilgrimage to two lonely graves.

One morning, drawn early to the cool solitude
of the river after a sleepless night, she saw her
boy bathing, a slim white figure without an ounce
of superfluous flesh on his bones, with every muscle
developed, and skin like satin, shining purely
against the deep banks and undergrowth; a picture
framed by pines, through which the light of the
autumn dawn came slowly.  Hidden from him, she
watched with look wide and tender, with eyes as
moist as the supple limbs from which he shook
the water of the burn, standing strong and
vigorous, breathing quickly after his swim,
unconsciously rejoicing in his power.  Bone of her bone,
flesh of her flesh, she thrilled again with proud
remembrance that she had borne pain for him and
given him life....  Then his characteristic
gesture the impatient pushing of the wet hair from
his forehead, reminded her suddenly of his brother.
She shrank back as if a spirit of evil pursued her.

Between herself and God there was a wall too
high for mercy or prayers to pierce.  Her religion
forbade her to pray for her dead—prayers for the
dead were heresy.  In the blindness of her despair
she invented a species of soul crucifixion striking
with almost frenzied agony at the root of her love
for Richard.

He at least should never know how she loved
him; discipline and duty should be the twin lights
to guide his way, never the false light of a selfish
love.

After this she instituted a new and more terrible
rule of discipline, both for herself and her son.
Richard came to her daily as before, but now even
the conventional kiss was denied him, and three
hours' study of complicated points of doctrine took
its place.  The fate of sinners was the prevailing
theme, the punishment of sins of whose very
existence he was unaware.  In the narrow hot room he
would stand rebellious, either answering at random
or not answering at all.  Outside, bees hummed
and birds sang, and insect life was joyous.  The
world he loved stretched very far in infinite
fairness, God's exquisite world that had hitherto raised
his thoughts to its Maker.  "His brother the wind,
his sister the earth," had seemed to point the way
to a God worth loving.  But how could he but hate
the dreadful God of the ancient law into whose
power it was so terrible to fall, the God who raised
His hands only to strike, who broke the heart of
His children as men break stones by the wayside,
and had so little pity for the innocent child of
shame?

Yet this was the God with whom he was brought
in hourly contact, this Being who saw evil where
Richard was convinced no evil was.  Why was it
wrong, for instance, to love inanimate things so
passionately, to weep at a bird's death and rejoice
at its birth?  Why should not his face light up at
sight of the small furred and feathered things,
which were his only friends?  He would escape
for hours to be in their company, and pay the
penalty for such adventures later, when, sought
for with terror, he was met with punishment and
humiliation.

Only when he was alone would passionate tears
come, choking sobs that shook the boy's body
and were succeeded by stoniness.  Sorrow may
melt the heart like dew; rebellion breaks it.

Night after night, prostrate upon the floor of
her room, Mrs. Farquharson would pray for her
son with tears of blood, as one who would wrest
grace from the Almighty.  And night after night,
in his attic, Richard would lie awake, lonely and
impenitent, thinking himself loveless and neglected
while love was burning at his very door.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 1-III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |                                    "Not
   |  So much as even the lifting of a latch,
   |  Merely a step into the outer air."—LONGFELLOW.

.. vspace:: 2

The picture-gallery ranked high in Richard's
list of compensations.

Although it was the sanctuary of fine records,
he always associated it with the last definite
memory of his elder brother.  Two or three days
before Douglas chose that easy way of shifting
responsibilities which it takes a brave man or
woman to evade, Richard had been carried pick-a-back
by his elder brother down the long gallery;
had been shown, with a certain solemnity, pathetic
in view of what was so soon to occur, portrait upon
portrait of their ancestors, notably men who were
famous for good rather than great deeds.

There were two especial portraits before which
they lingered, Richard remembered afterwards—that
of their great-great-grandfather, upon whose
tomb, by the wish of his country and his tenantry,
the motto, "Noble by birth, noble in all things
else," had been engraved; and one of his wife,
known in her day as "The Ivory Mayde," because
of the dazzling fairness of her skin.  A
contemporary poet wrote of her—

   |  "Snow her fayre body—snowier white her soul."
   |

"Something worth while, old chap, to have that
said of one," Douglas had commented, and Richard,
bored at the delay, overcome by the gloom
and seclusion of the gallery, and long array of still
figures in unaccustomed clothes; remembered butting
at him with his head until his brother cried
out for mercy and moved on.

The portraits—the knights in armour who
guarded the entrance to the rooms so jealously,
awed him still, but not as of old.  They were his
friends now, like the squirrels, and passionate love
and pride thrilled him each time he entered the
gallery.  The deeds they had done, the records
they had left, few even in Scotland could match.
The blood they shed made a sea of glory which
reflected the light of God; merely to cross the
threshold was an act of faith.

Richard could have prayed to some of these more
easily than to an unknown God.  He knew their
histories, man for man, woman for woman.  Before
some he habitually paused longer than before
others.  Had the veil invisible between that world
and his been rent, and the familiar shades taken
fleshly form before his eyes, and called to him, he
would not have known fear.  He was theirs and they
were his; he faced them buoyantly, with head erect.

His mother and nurse shunned the gallery,
believing it to be haunted—so much the better!

Time after time, generally at dead of night, but
sometimes even in the day, Richard himself had
fancied he heard the stir and rustle of a silken
skirt close beside him, and saw the flash of some
dead soldier's dirk.  Whereupon, the moment
being critical, a cold draught from some open door
would generally blow in upon him, keen and sharp
like the wind in mountain heather, to announce
some ill-timed interruption of his nurse.
Afterwards—a shrill scolding and imprisonment in a
room from whose window he would immediately
get out.  Richard had no compunction as to
flight when it was thus forced upon him, but by
the time he returned the dream unfortunately, like
many a later dream, would have had time to break.

"Do you think that is what dreams are made
for, Dan—only to break?" he asked his collie
sometimes.  Whereupon Dan would look up with
the profoundly wistful negation of one who,
although dumb, is wiser than his master.

.. vspace:: 2

Eight—nine—ten—eleven.

The old clock on the stairs in the west wing
clanged asthmatically, hesitating between the
strokes as one who doubted its ability to make the
final effort.  It was out of repair and past use,
like most of the furniture of Glune.  But Richard
loved it.  In Prince Charlie's days the worn
clock-case had sheltered one of his forbears, a
Farquharson who, while carrying despatches to the
Prince, was tracked and discovered by the enemy.
Richard loved to poke his fingers into breathing
holes which had been hastily bored at the back of
the case, while armed men were clamouring for
admittance at the very gates of Glune.

From the first, it was to the call of valour and
endurance that the boy's heart leapt.  Hunting
about in an old lumber-room he had once come
upon a box of marvels—forgotten papers and
documents which he looked at, and went back to, and
wept salt tears over, time after time.  Every relic
in the house was dear to him.  The torn plaid
upon which Charlie Stuart's bonny head had lain,
in the days before that brave heart had turned to
water, and innocence was drowned in a flood of
despair and shame—the tattered fragment of silk,
once a flag, which a Farquharson had died upholding,
a century before; a sporran stained quite lately
with the blood of his grandfather—and a host of
like treasures, witnesses of what a man should do,
and of what alone was worth attempting.

Richard slept in a little attic near the tower, far
from his mother's and the nurse's rooms.  Bare
as a monk's cell, it was "all his own."  He swept
it out and tidied it for himself daily; no woman's
foot, so far as he knew, had ever trod the staircase
which led to it since he was first moved there
four years before.

.. vspace:: 2

Eight—nine—ten—eleven—midnight at last.

The boy, with a start, shook himself free from
his dreams and woke, as was his habit, to full and
immediate consciousness of his surroundings.  This
eve of his twelfth birthday was a crisis in his life,
high time for one who had made up his mind to
be a leader of men to turn his back on childish
things.  And Richard, true to that unconsciously
dramatic instinct of imaginative childhood which
inspires children in the little plays they make from
common incidents of every-day life, set about his
task dramatically enough.

For years he had kept nightly tryst with a
certain portrait in the gallery; an image which kept
alive in him the only spark of tenderness that
remained after long months of frozen silence and
reserve.  It was an unnatural tryst for a boy of
twelve, but Richard's life was all unnatural.  And
love, which craves so passionately for outlet, has
sometimes to content itself with the inanimate,
instead of what is living and responsive.

We have our favourites, even among ancestors.
It was a certain Margaret Cunningham, daughter
of that Earl of Glencairn who, being of the Privy
Council of James V, was taken prisoner by the
English in the year 1542, at the battle of Solway,
who had won Richard's heart.  Marrying a
Farquharson, she died six months later, "whereat,"
tradition said, "she waxed exceedingly joyful,
since her whole heart's love had been given since
childhood to her cousin of Kilmaurs, but her
parents, being worldly, would not permit the
marriage, since Farquharson of Glune had more
land and a finer heritage."

True to his sex, Richard had been vanquished
by the most tender, the most lovable little face in
the whole gallery.  It was to this picture that he
confided his dreams, his ambitions; it was to this
one of all others that he found it so infinitely hard
to say farewell.  But say farewell he would,
notwithstanding, for the hardening process had
already begun in him.  He had to make his way
in life; and such a way could not be carried out
at home.  Beyond the park gates and the empty
lodge lay a world from which he meant to wrest
power to restore Glune to her former beauty.
Tragic and broken, she was to him as a living
woman, who needed his help and claimed it as her
due.  And the one way he could really help her
was to go.

He had packed a chosen few of his belongings;
of money he had none.  But he was strong on the
bread of hardship.  Dan would, of course, be his
companion; no one else.  Richard had guessed the
secret of this life's success.  Unhampered by ties
of kinship or love, alone, a man may hope to find
the key of that secret cupboard in which the world
conceals her few prizes.

Richard pushed the door of the picture-gallery
wide, and stood on the threshold for a moment, a
look of resolve on his stern young face.  These—his
best loved—would understand what it cost him
to leave them.  The older faces seemed to turn to
him, expectant.  Through the stained glass windows
with their emblazoned coat-of-arms, a steady
stream of moonlight flowed triumphantly, taking
the colour of the glass it came through—now rose
and now pallid green.  Not less steadfast the light
in the painted eyes of some of the men he looked
upon, martyrs in their way—men who had fought
and died for a Cause—whose purposes, like his,
nor tears, nor smiles, nor force could turn.

With his hands clenched very firmly and an
uncomfortable tightening of the throat, Richard
looked straight and long at the portrait of his
ancestress to-night, and thought again, as he had
often thought before, how strange it was that God
did not make mothers in a mould like this.  And
in that moment he committed every line of the
portrait to memory, never to be erased—the oval face,
and soft hair, a dark curtain, banded over the low
white forehead; the grave eyes that pursued you
to the door, eyes painted with a hint of tears, a
favourite trick in a certain school of art; the turn
of the proud head, the white neck visible beneath
a veil of drapery.  The moonlight fell upon all
lovingly.  One little beam of light travelled
upwards and tried to linger in the shadows of the
misty eyes.

.. _`"GRAVE EYES THAT PURSUED YOU TO THE DOOR"`:

.. figure:: images/img-032.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: "GRAVE EYES THAT PURSUED YOU TO THE DOOR"

   "GRAVE EYES THAT PURSUED YOU TO THE DOOR"

Richard turned, his heart throbbing convulsively.
Was that a footfall?  He crept for shelter
to the picture of a malignant-looking gentleman
of the tenth century, whose full-length portrait
moved on pulleys, and which was now drawn out
to an acute angle, half across the gallery, as Dan
started forward.  Both waited in silence for some
time, but the sound—if sound it were—was light at
best, and did not return.

Richard came back to Margaret Cunningham.
Sentimentality was childish, the sort of thing a
future empire-builder must infallibly renounce.

"Good-bye," Richard said gravely; "Dan and
I shan't be here again for ever so long.  We're
going away—both of us—but we mean some day
to come back.  I'm growing up, you see; I'm
going to make my name, and a big future, and
keep Glune."

In spite of the brave words he walked away
from the picture drearily enough, fancying that
Margaret's eyes were extraordinarily misty,
because his own were drowned in tears....  He
shivered.  How cold it had become!  He must
have been there far longer than he intended; his
bare feet on the parquet floor were cold as death.
He whistled to Dan, who had, contrary to his usual
custom, scampered away to snuffle anxiously at
the door.

Outside, through one light pane of glass,
Richard could see the snow thick on the white
stone balustrade.  How silently and swiftly it must
have fallen!  When he came in there were only
a few flakes.  Eager to be off, he ran down the
gallery.  But Dan, evading his master's hand with
a whine, leapt forward again, scenting eagerly,
and then scratched at the door with a low whine of
terror.

Something had fallen in the corridor beyond the
gallery, something heavy and dark.  Something
that pressed against the door that Richard strove
to open, at first gently, then with a sudden sickening
dread that taxed his self-control.  As the door
gave way at last, it pressed the unknown obstacle
back with it slowly—the unknown obstacle at the
sight of which the boy fell on his knees with a
cry.  For it was a woman's figure—his mother's—which
lay prone in the moonlight, with thin
arms stretched towards him, giving way too late
to the longing they had crushed for years.

Face to face with death for the second time,
Richard found himself more wondering than pitiful,
more perplexed than sad.  How swiftly God's
arrows struck—how unerringly!  The terrified,
staring eyes were fixed in their last challenge of
the Almighty Power.  Even in death there was
no peace.

The hand—cold as of old—fell from his grasp.

He tried to close the dreadful eyes, but failed;
tried once again, and failed, and then rose,
panting.  His cry had awakened his old nurse.  She
came to him feebly, candle in hand, with Dan
sniffing at her ankles.  At sight of his master the
dog ran forward, and then, as if aware of mourning,
crouched quietly on the floor beside the dead.
And Richard, looking down upon his mother, and
hearing Nurse Ailsa's lamentation shrill out of the
silence, realized that this was indeed the end of the
old hampering life, that he had put away "childish
things" once and for all.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SPUR`:

.. _`CHAPTER 2-I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART II

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   THE SPUR

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "He had stamped with steady hand God's arrow-mark
   |  Of dedication to the human need;
   |  He thought it should be so, too, with his love.
   |  He, passionately loving, would bring down
   |  His love, his life, his best (because the best),
   |  His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high
   |  Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass,
   |  The dust of golden lilies on her feet,
   |  That she should walk beside him on the rocks,
   |  In all that clang, and hewing out of men,
   |  And help the work of help which was his life,
   |  And prove he kept back nothing—not his soul."
   |                                      E. B. BROWNING.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

"You and I are the only mortals that I know of who ever
found a way to each other's inner being by the touch of the
hands."—GEORGE DU MAURIER.

.. vspace:: 2

Making as it does for desultory conversation
and tempered criticism of your neighbour's failings,
the half-hour after tea in a country house is
one of the most pleasant of the day.  Confidences
spring from it, and intimacies ripen.  Lovers drift
happily away from their chaperones, knowing their
absence will be unnoticed.  The elder folk, who
find interest and joy in each other's company, move
together with no conscious effort into friendly
nooks and corners where they are unobserved.
Silences fall quite naturally on such occasions.
Nobody minds them.  They are, indeed, keys of
that deeper confidence which is one of life's most
beautiful gifts.

The five or six members of Lord Creagh's house-party
who collected in his study day after day at
the same hour, ostensibly to admire the tropical
plants for whose cultivation he was famed, had
come to look upon this reunion as the most vital
of the day.

"Wit and brilliance depend almost as much on
the furniture of a room as on the furniture of a
mind," thought Evelyn Brand, one of the two
women in the group, giving herself up, as Celts
do, to the characteristic atmosphere.  "Even Lady
Mary Wortley-Montague herself could never have
made her brilliant epigrams on a black horse-hair
sofa backed by magenta curtains and stuffed birds
in glass cases.  The Nonconformist conscience, if
it did but know it, owes quite half of its solidity
to the mahogany four-poster in which it came to
life.  'Victorian suites' make you formal and
stilted, just as chintz and lavender and lattice
windows compel discretion and a modest blush.  How
I love lavender!  Why, age itself would fall quite
tenderly upon the occupant of such a house as I
would furnish if I could—a tender place of peace
and perfume.  Grey hair and gentle influences go
together; old age should win one as a lover instead
of capturing one as an enemy."

Under the spell of her idea, Evelyn fell into one
of those quiet abstractions which her husband had
found so convenient before marriage and so
melancholy after.

And yet discriminating eyes looking at her for
the first time would have seen mystery rather than
melancholy in her gaze, thought the man who was
sitting beside her watching the progress of her
dream with a gentle smile.  Creagh, many years
before, had lost the woman whom he loved so well
that for her sake all other women could count upon
his friendship.  But he had his favourites.  He was,
for instance, one of Evelyn's staunchest admirers.
Belonging to the type of man who achieves nothing
very vital himself, he was always the cause
of achievement in others.  Many years ago
Evelyn's husband, who had a dangerous habit of
epigram, nicknamed Lord Creagh "The Holy
Freak," and the name stuck.

Creagh's head and body looked like two balls,
one large, one little.  They grew together with no
perceptible join.  He had so short a neck as to
make a turn-down collar appear positively high,
whilst his legs were as out of proportion to his
body as most men's incomes are to their desires.
His plain face was withal so genial that a woman
must have been prejudiced indeed to look upon it
without pleasure; his words took weight from their
sincerity.

Each member of the little group which had
gathered in the study was, in his way, a celebrity.
Creagh's invitations attracted interesting persons.
As the head of one of the oldest families in Great
Britain, his rank secured him from small aims,
even in friendship.  Unlike most men, he chose his
acquaintances with more care than his dinner.
Himself an ardent Roman Catholic, he took the
widest pleasure in the companionship of those
whose openly professed beliefs ran absolutely
counter to his own.  Your next-door neighbour
at his table was as likely to be a Parsee as a
Protestant, and his widowed sister, who kept house for
him at Creagh, had once been present at a
luncheon where one of the guests was a small
Brixton tradesman (captured in the very act of
trespassing on the estate), and the other the new
British Minister at Rome.

Beadon, Colonial Secretary in the late Ministry,
sitting on the left of Mrs. Brand, was probably the
best known man present.  Comic papers made him
familiar to the public; he had a clever face, which
lent itself to caricature.  Clean shaven and wiry,
he looked rather like a dapper priest.  His eyes
were alert and keen; his friends said that upon one
occasion only had his judgment been proved to be
false.  His enemies were naturally as the sands of
the sea; they bit and snapped at him in the House
of Commons like so many angry curs, but generally
withdrew the worse for the fray.  His heel of
Achilles was his only child, Dora, a lady who had
received more proposals than the average American
heiress—partly because of her mother's fortune,
and partly because of her father's position—and
complacently believed them all to be the tribute of
her personal charms.

Short and squat, sallow, and of bad figure, with
colourless hair, which the products of the
hairdresser and the attention of a maid alone made
passable, Miss Beadon was one of those extremely
plain women whom men call "a good sort" for
lack of a more distinctive term; a type which too
often after marriage proves the exact antithesis of
early promise.  A woman is not necessarily amiable
because she has no personal attractions.  Miss
Beadon was chattering just now with much
animation to Lord Meavy, a new-comer, home on leave
for the first time since his appointment as Governor
of South Africa.  Long experience had shown her
the advantage of being first in the field with a
possible "lion."

Meavy was more like a poet than a statesman.
Slender and romantic, with pointed beard, he had
the tired eyes of a man who has persistently cut
short his sleep until Nature, in revenge, denies him
rest in the few remaining hours he might otherwise
snatch.  He liked Miss Beadon; she was negative,
so did not tax his brain, and he was susceptible,
like most men, to her obvious appreciation of his
society.

Washington Hare, who had the fourth seat in
the circle, leading literary critic of the *Times*, was
a complete contrast in type to Meavy.  Seventy-three
years old, gaunt and rugged, his intellect was
as mature, his judgment as virile, as that of a man
in the prime of life.  He called his art a trade, with
a grim smile, and loved it passionately.  Bad
craftsmen fled his presence as if it conjured before
them a grim array of the infinitives they had split
and the phrases they had worn too well.

His voice, breaking in raucously upon a discussion
in which he had hitherto taken no part,
attracted Mrs. Brand's attention.

"Carlyle summed up the question," he said,
"when he called universal history the history of
great men who had worked in the world.  The
nation needs great men just now.  Mediocrity and
indifference are the curses of the empire.
Mediocrity produces cheap content with small successes,
and indifference is deadly poison—a kind of
gangrene of the soul.  Indifference is infectious.
Unluckily, the men who catch its breath do not die
swiftly.  Themselves immeasurably corrupt, they
live to corrupt others."

"Come now, I can recall the names of three
great men, all living," suggested Creagh good-humouredly.

"Oh—well—you are indulgent," said Beadon
dryly.  "Two of them are bitter enemies, and the
third celebrated his seventieth birthday lately."

"I suppose there are some younger men
somewhere," Dora Beadon put in gaily.  "Father
won't let them come to our parties because he's so
afraid they will all want to marry me!  But surely
they exist."

"Take our young politicians," Hare continued,
ignoring Miss Beadon's interruption, and warming
to his subject as the babble of talk died down.
"Not an ounce of stamina in the lot.  One
particularly young gentleman in the Ministry
happens to have pushed himself to the fore, but he
won't stay there.  The party, as a whole, is
hypnotized by those of its members who have a few sparks
of magnetic force.  On our own side it's as bad.
We've got men of average intelligence, and average
intelligence is a most stultifying quality.
Two-thirds of sublime folly and a fraction of wisdom
produce a better leader than any amount of
average intelligence can compass.  And as for the
sacred fount, immortal fire, food of the gods, call
it what you will, that undefined quality that leads
men on to dare forlorn hopes and brave
martyrdom—the House of Commons would not recognize
it if it were there.  And yet without it, men are
impotent.  They themselves move and have their
being, but cannot produce life in others."

"Isn't your vital element patriotism?" asked
Evelyn.  "I always think a man should love his
country like his wife, with knowledge and tenderness
and passion and forbearance.  In nine cases
out of ten, nations fail just as women do, for trivial
causes.  Both may slur common duties, but the big
crisis finds them ready.  If her husband's love is
waning a woman will strain every nerve to keep it,
just as a nation will appeal to her sons when the
enemy has issued his ultimatum."

"Very soon the nation's appeal will be vain,"
said Meavy.  "We forget as no other nation
does."

"Is that because, as every Englishman is an
embryo hero, we count upon him in our hour of
need?"

Meavy laughed.

"Tactfully turned, Mrs. Brand.  It sounds very
nice, but I'm afraid it's not really the case.  As for
patriotism, it's a lost art.  Love is not love at all
without an element of passion, and passion is a fire
which must have fuel to be kept alive.  Most
modern men and women are incapable of loving
anything with ardour, except themselves.  If they
swear by a special county it's merely because they
happen to be landowners, not from tradition nor
history.  Men back the merits of a manufacturing
town, because it gives them daily bread.  There is
a man on the St. Pancras Board of Guardians now
who boasts, 'I made my money 'ere, and 'ere I'll
spend it.'  The fact of being British does not stir
a man; one doubts if he remembers it unless he is
on the Continent."

"There are those who say England is doomed,"
said Beadon.  "Since we left Gordon to his fate
the old fighting spirit waxes more and more frail.
For heaven's sake don't quote the South African
War as a proof to the contrary.  Quite half of that
wild enthusiasm was a phase of social hysteria.
We are all mad on excitement now; we prostitute
our very ardour.  If we can't get recreation by one
means we get it by another.  Drink, drugs,
lovers—all come under the same category.  At times
these fail to allay us.  We see red then, like other
nations, but we have no national outlet like
Southerners, with their bull-fights and the like.  So
war—in countries to which we can be transported with
all the latest comforts of civilization—breaks the
monotony."

"Aren't you too pessimistic?" said Creagh
thoughtfully.  "Personally I believe in the hour
and the man.  We are at a critical point just now,
I admit, both individually and as a nation, but
I believe that a man will come with the need, as
he has always come since the world began."

"Oh, England's merely superficially corrupt,"
said Hare.  "If the right surgeon were to operate
she would be cured."

"And which of us is skilful enough to perform
the operation?  No one in the present Ministry.
We've only got two sound men—men whom we
trust.  Both have had their day."

"England may be corrupt," said Evelyn, "but
she's not ignoble.  Like a woman, again, she finds
herself and loses herself, and then has to find
herself once more.  Do you remember Borrow's
prayer?  I found it in some old book as a child,
and learnt it by heart; it's wonderful.  It seems to
apply now.  'If thy doom be at hand, may that
doom be a noble one....  May thou sink, if thou
dost sink, amidst blood and flame with a mighty
noise, causing more than one nation to participate
in thy downfall.  Of all fates, may it please God
to preserve thee from a slow decay, becoming, ere
extinct, a scorn and mockery for those self-same
foes, who, though they envy and abhor thee, still
fear and honour thee even against their will.'"

There was a pause.

"In England's extremity oughtn't we to pray
that prayer each day?"

"'May more than one nation participate in thy
downfall,'" repeated Beadon gravely.  "Amen to
that."

"Now, do say it all over again, slowly," said
Dora Beadon, who had a knack of reducing any
serious conversation to a commonplace level.
"Have you got a pencil, Lord Meavy?  Oh,
thanks so much; how good of you!—and some
paper?  Now again, Evelyn; don't hurry so,
there's a dear; I really like it, and I'm so short of
quotations for my extract book just now."

But Evelyn was leaning forward.  Throughout
the little interlude her look, slightly narrowed and
anxious, had been fixed on Creagh.  She touched
his arm suddenly, in triumph.

"You spoke of the hour and the man—and you
are keeping both from us.  You've planned the
one already, my dear Dick, and you've arranged
that the other should appear.  It's no use denying
it.  I've been cudgelling my brains ever since you
spoke last, wondering who on earth you could
possibly have in view."

Hare frowned at her beneath his heavy eyebrows.

"There you are again, Mrs. Brand, with your
visions and dreams.  And you're so horribly right
too, as a rule!  I don't like your uncanny ways.
Not so many years ago you would have been
burned as a witch, and you'd have richly deserved
it."

"It's her Celtic blood," Creagh explained, patting
her hand affectionately.  "I might have talked
to you sordid English until doomsday and you
would never have guessed what she has just stated
as a fact.  You're quite right, Evelyn; I've heard of
a man who might do.  A man of very high intelligence
and power.  He's young, and has made his
way already, out of England.  Some of you may
even have heard of him; he specializes in the rather
uncommon line of empire building."

"Well, that's a useful characteristic," said
Meavy enviously, thinking of South Africa's many
needs.

"Not a soldier, I hope," Hare grumbled, true
to civilian prejudice.

"His name is Farquharson," said Creagh.  "He
was once Farquharson of Glune; his brother's
story must be familiar to you all.  I fancy things
have always gone dramatically with him.  He ran
away from home at twelve years old; just how he
kept body and soul together for the next few years
no one knows.  Then—through some accident—he
came across and was of service to Martin Calvert,
the millionaire who had just disinherited his heir,
Jack Cummings, for becoming a Catholic."

Beadon whistled.

"The man who did so well in the last Indian
famine business?  A secular priest, isn't he?
Self-exiled to the most fever-stricken district in the
country?"

"Yes."  Creagh hesitated.  "It was a case of
what is so often called 'The foolishness of the
Cross.'  Well, from a human point of view it
certainly resulted in one man's loss and another man's
gain.  Calvert, like David, was cursing God in his
heart when he met Farquharson.  As for the
lad—well, you know some of you how he was brought
up in that stern Scotch school which begets
defiance of God and enmity of man under some
circumstances.  I think the fact that Farquharson had
thrown off every scrap of faith in things Divine
and human appealed to Calvert doubly at that
moment, and strengthened his desire to keep him.
The Cummings episode was a bad blow."

"So he put Mr. Farquharson in his nephew's
place?" said Evelyn.

Creagh nodded.

"He carried him off, then and there, put him
through his paces with some elementary work to
see what he was capable of, then gave him the
lowest place in the office, kept him at the mill,
ground from him his last grain of work, like the
hardest taskmaster, led him on by successive rises
to his own private secretaryship, and then shipped
him to Taorna and gave him a magnificent chance
of making name and fortune."

Hare rose, grumbling.

"Don't pin your faith on such a broken reed.
You'll make a mistake.  The man's had things too
easily.  What age is he?  Thirty?  I thought so.
Why, a man worth calling a man ought to contest
every inch of the way until he's forty; the law of
the survival of the fittest obtains in politics as
elsewhere.  There ought to be an injunction to prevent
people coming into money easily—money, in any
case, mars ten men for the one it makes.  While
Calvert's alive to keep him in order, your young
man may possibly play the game for a bit, and
even achieve a certain success.  Mark my words,
after Calvert's death his *protégé* will marry some
designing woman, who will use him as the means
to a title, and gratify her ambition at the cost of
his career."

"Or one who makes him happy," said Beadon
grimly.  "That's quite as bad, although more rare."

Creagh shrugged his shoulders.

"What a cynical lot you are!  So far as
Farquharson's methods go, I have had to take them
on trust.  I only know the results of his work; I
should advise you to read them for yourselves in a
blue-book which will be out very shortly.  But
Calvert we all know is as shrewd as any Scotsman,
and just as little liable to err.  Ask him what he
thinks of the man; make him tell you what means
Farquharson employed to annex that little island
whose pearl fisheries quadrupled Calvert's
income."  His eyes twinkled.  "It's an Arabian
Night's tale in its way."

"Pearl fisheries! that sounds attractive," said
Dora Beadon, her eyes gleaming so far as such pale
eyes could gleam.

"May we really ask Mr. Calvert about it?  You
expect him to-day, don't you?" asked Evelyn
quietly.

Creagh looked at his watch.

"They should be here now.  By the way, my
dear, Farquharson hates your sex as well as all
religion.  Both men were on their way up north,
so of course I asked them to stay; but their rooted
antipathy to Papists won't allow them to spend a
night under my roof."  He smiled good-humouredly.
"They'll dine here instead, and put up at
the inn."  He looked around at the group.
"Seriously, I believe Farquharson to be a great man in
his way.  I want you all to help him if you can."

"I think they have arrived.  Hark! they are
coming along now," said Evelyn.

Creagh, with a startled exclamation, hurried
forward to meet the new-comers.  The study door
opened upon a long corridor, down which footsteps
were heard approaching.  A little wave of expectation
stirred those who stayed behind, but no one
spoke.

Each member of the group was intent on his
own thoughts and conjectures.  Meavy watched
eagerly; the man might be useful to him, he
wanted new blood for South Africa.  Beadon's
smile was non-committal; he had his doubts of
Farquharson's capacity.  He knew Lord Creagh's
weakness for hero worship, and his new brooms
occasionally left more dust behind them than they
cleared away.  Dora Beadon was interested in the
stranger because of his youth and sex and chance
of making money.  It was perhaps the last factor
which weighed heaviest in the scale of her regard.
Hare, an acute observer, was the most interested
of all; men of character appealed to him; he looked
to them to uphold the traditions of the race.
Evelyn, with perceptions quickened by the dramatic
setting of the scene, followed the young man every
step of the way, wondering how its beauty would
affect him.

The entrance to this house would be for
Farquharson the threshold of his career; surely he
could not pass along the lovely lanes which led to
it hedges festooned with wild blossom, unmoved.
Rising, always rising, the way was one of pleasant
scents and sounds, its foliage brilliant with the
stir of butterflies, and spring's caress.  Past deep
gorges, and ever winding circuitously up the hill,
it opened out at length upon the moor.  Evelyn
wondered if Farquharson, too, would feel its power,
to her as magnetic as that of the Karroo of South
Africa, which most people call barren and desolate.
Evelyn had given herself up to the Karroo; its
immensity, its pathos, had flooded her soul and
left traces which would never be washed away.
Its wide spaces and streaks of crude colour, the
lines of hills in the distance, now curved and
rounded as delicately as a woman's breast, now
straight and slim, like an index finger pointing to
the sky, the peace and awe broken at intervals by
a flight of ostriches from a tiny farm, or by the
figure of a solitary rider abruptly outlined against
the strong yellows and browns and purples and
greens which blossomed for such eyes as could
distinguish them—all touched her infinitely.  She
felt as if God's Voice must penetrate the silence,
and that to hear the Voice was to obey.

But where the Karroo had calmed, Dartmoor
always frightened her.  She loved Creagh itself,
but the moor which one must cross to come to it
was surely, as a whole, more cruel than peaceful.
It wantonly played with men and women whom it
bred, who looked to it for protection.  Its bogs had
buried little harmless children; it cheated and
deceived prisoners trying to escape in the fog,
walking round and round in ever-widening circles, only
to fall at last, starved and exhausted, to find a
cordon of warders drawn about them, and the
prison walls in view.

She wondered if Farquharson would leave it as
gladly as she had done for the valley, to which they
must presently descend again.

Creagh itself lay low; one came upon it through
one of the finest fir plantations in England.  There
was a natural opening in the hills beyond, and
within sight of the study window the little ribbon
of water widened to the sea, and was itself lost in
the greater power, an augury of life.

"Up to the hills, down to the valley, and then
Eternity," thought Evelyn.

.. vspace:: 2

Creagh, Farquharson and Calvert stood talking
together at the open door for a moment or two
more before entering.  Calvert's brow was riddled
with lines; one would have called him a stern man
until his face lit up and became transfigured at
some casual remark of Farquharson's.  This was
a man who had worked hard for his money, you
could see; if life had brought him much, it exacted
full payment for its every gift.

Calvert had begun to help Farquharson because
he foresaw that the latter was one who would get
on, Evelyn decided quickly; but he helped him
now from love, not charity.  The world which only
knew him in his aspect as a shrewd business man
would never divine the later motive.  But Evelyn's
heart went out to him impulsively, as it always
went out to those who gave, whatever the bestowal.

Farquharson himself, the prominent factor in the
group of figures, alone was in the shadow.
Between him and Evelyn, Hare, Beadon and Dora
stood; it was not until he was actually within a few
feet of her that she saw him clearly.  And then it
was rather of his mental than of his physical aspect
that she received the real impression.  Tall and
well made, dark and pale, he had presence and
distinction, and remarkable composure.  Supremely
conscious of himself, the knowledge did not disturb
him for a moment.  Most men depend upon the
external view for an effective entry; Farquharson's
was attractive.  But it was actually the singleness
of the man's aim, his sincerity and sense of grip
that carried conviction to the critical little group
which concentrated its interest in his approach.
It saw that he was born to succeed.  For he not
only had his goal in view, but would attain it.

"Wait, though," thought Hare.  "No strong
man yet but can be turned by a slight obstacle."

Steady and resourceful, knowing that he was
being weighed in the balance, Farquharson busied
himself with weighing others.  No single detail of
his surroundings was lost upon him.  Evelyn
watched him rapidly gauge and sum up one after
another, the character of each person present.

In Beadon he recognized a man who might
help, for whose favour he must in any case bid
openly.  He was a necessary factor in
his—Farquharson's—career; without him nothing could be
done.  Between the young man and Hare, the
rugged critic, an odd kind of attraction would
exist; loyalty even in antagonism.  Meavy, the
idealist, Farquharson passed over with a cursory
glance; a weak man, this, whatever the world
might say.  Creagh's cordiality he could appreciate,
but native caution made him fear to trust it.
People did not usually give without some adequate
return, and for the moment he did not see how he
could serve Creagh.  Miss Beadon, as a woman, he
ignored; his glance simply disposed of her.  Her
presence or non-presence meant nothing to him.
As for Evelyn, he knew her name, and she had
influence.  He distrusted women with influence,
but they were worth conciliating.

Their eyes met.  He started slightly.

Before him stood a woman whose face changed
indescribably, but who always possessed fascination.
Slender and pale, Evelyn's one real beauty
lay in the shape of her features, the modelling of
her face; in the extraordinary light and shadows
that made her eyes profound, her look a spur to
flick a man's blood into action, or a caress in which
he might find peace.  And as Farquharson looked
another picture rose suddenly before him, a vision
of his childhood.  The oval face, the dusky hair
that waved back from the forehead, the turn of the
rounded throat, the shape of the small head, all
were familiar.  He recognized them.  They were
his own—he had loved them long ago.  He had
stood before them night after night in the
picture-gallery at Glune.

"A woman to dream of and to work beside."  As
Kilmaurs had written about Margaret
Cunningham, in a lyric the ink of which had faded
many years before, so Richard Farquharson felt
now for the woman of his dreams.  Here, in the
flesh she stood before him, perfect companion,
perfect lover and wife.  He looked half smiling
at her hands—the hands he had loved in the
picture—and for the first time wondered what it
would be to a man to feel such hands about his
throat, drawing him down in mute surrender.

"*Non so dirvi la sensasione che mi danno.*"  A
scene in D'Annuncio's play came back to him; the
sight of the slender figure recalled Bianca Maria's
passionate appeal to Anna, when the blind woman's
hands were passing, feature by feature, across the
girl's face, feeling for the beauties which she could
not see, but for which others hungered....
"*Sembra che le vostre dita vedano....  E come
uno sguardo che insista, che prema, sembra die
tutta l' anima discenda all' estremita delle vostre
dita.*"

"*Sembra che tutta l' anima discenda all' estremita
delle vostre dita.*"

He could not have spoken the words aloud, for
no one heard them.  But there are thoughts which
have wings, like birds, which fly home to nestle
in their natural sanctuary.  Evelyn drew back,
disturbed and tremulous, like a child who stands
hesitating at the door of a room which it has always
wanted to enter, but which has been barred until
now.

In the music-room beyond, a professional pianist
was playing the opening chords of one of Brahms'
preludes.  The notes echoed like the accompaniment
of powerful thought.  Evelyn, moving back
unconsciously, swayed with sudden vertigo.

Farquharson turned to answer some question of
Beadon's.  Hare crossed to Evelyn; it seemed to
her afterwards that he must have interposed his
massive figure between her and Farquharson.  He
spoke, and the sense of his words came to her
vaguely, like a dream.

"A strong personality—that.  The man sees
clearly and acts promptly, and will usually get
what he wants."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
   |    In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
   |  We should count time by heart-throbs.  He lives most
   |    Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
   |  And he whose heart beats quickest ...
   |    Lives in one hour more than in years do some
   |  Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins."
   |                                        PHILIP JAMES BAILY.

.. vspace:: 2

"Is that all I can do for you, ma'am?"

"You might put another little pearl pin at the
back of my bodice, please, Emily; I can't quite
reach it.  Thank you; that's very nice."

The third housemaid—Mrs. Brand had never had
a maid of her own in her life—withdrew with a last
gratified glance at her handiwork.  She thought
her "lady" in an inexpensive gown had a better
appearance than any other member of the house
party.  All servants liked Evelyn; she treated them
as human beings, not automatons.

Mrs. Brand looked at her watch.  Yes, there was
still a quarter of an hour's grace before dinner.  She
switched off the electric light, and, drawing a chair
beside the open window, leant out to the night and
drank in its wonderful perfume.  There was never
a place so full of sweet scents and sounds as Creagh.

Some one else had dressed quickly too.  The
echo of men's voices rose presently from the
verandah below.  She recognized them with a start as
Creagh's unmistakable chuckle of delight broke
out at something Farquharson said.  Then the
younger man pulled his chair forward—she heard
the sound grate on the stone—and took up the thread
of talk again with an alert and interested air.
Evelyn, curiously tired, listened for a moment to the
murmur of voices without taking in the full
significance of words which occasionally reached her.
Creagh seemed to be unfolding some plan of
campaign, to which Farquharson said but little in reply.
His tone was deliberate and extraordinarily final;
one or two words reached Evelyn clearly.  She drew
back further into the shadow, fearful of playing the
part of eavesdropper.

The frayed edge of her gown, mended and
adapted almost beyond recognition, caught her eye.
She went to her work-basket and mended it
mechanically.  It was draped with the lace of her
mother's and her own wedding veil, and sweet with
the scent of lavender bags where it had been laid.
The skirt was made from the fifteen-year-old Court
train of her bridal gown; a pearl spray clasping the
flowers at her breast was one of Creagh's numerous
wedding gifts, her fan and handkerchief another.
Every appointment of her dress to-night recalled
her marriage.  The maid had put out another gown
upon the bed, which Mrs. Brand had discarded,
choosing by preference that which she had worn
the night before.  Evelyn had to practise every
pitiful little shift of poverty "to keep up an
appearance."

Only Henry Brand knew the precise amount of
their income.  Its fluctuations and diminutions were
a constant terror to his wife.  There were times
when money, obtained how she did not know,
seemed fairly plentiful; again, at other times, her
desk was laden with unpaid bills, and she worked
far into the night to make the money wherewith
to meet them.  She photographed and painted, and
could turn her hand to journalism as easily as to
upholstery.  Accustomed to do without from childhood,
she had limited her personal wants to absolute
necessities; she was, moreover, a practical woman
who could cook and sew or do housework better than
most of the people she employed.

A world which generally expels its social paupers
was singularly lenient to the Brands.  Some of the
great ladies of the land drove down at night to the
tiny flat in West Kensington, where Evelyn
dispensed hock-cup and home-made cakes, without a
murmur; it was said that two young duchesses,
rival beauties, had come incognita on one occasion
behind thick veils inside a motor 'bus.  The latest
explorer, the coming man, gravitated naturally to
a place where every guest was made to feel
individually welcome.  Evelyn's reunions recalled
something of the famous *salons* of the past.  Her
tact and sympathy drew opposing bodies together;
the little circle had grown from a mere gathering
of intimate friends to be the coveted goal of those
who wished to meet important persons on an easy
and natural footing.  Converging opinions met and
mixed here like rivers in the sea.

Mighty political battles had been fought out in
Evelyn's presence.  A famous K.C., with more
truth than gallantry, boasted openly that she was
the one woman in England who was just and
temperate in argument, and the present Prime Minister
had said he would drive willingly four miles farther
out of London to be welcomed by such a hostess at
the end.  Unlike most women, technicalities did
not alarm her.  Men who came to discuss their
business investments found in her as ready a listener
as men of action.  Nor did she shun, although she
never actually invited, the confidences of her own
sex.  The pain of others hurt her physically; to
give real sympathy is, after all, to let "virtue go
out of one."  Most men and women shun sorrow as
if it were leprosy.  But in the bank of feeling
Evelyn's account was always overdrawn.

It was certainly a point in Henry Brand's
favour that he had so early foreseen his wife's
possibilities.

His one brief hour of popularity had long since
passed.  There were unpleasant stories about him.
He was, for instance, sole trustee under his father's
will, and the money was equally divided between
himself and the two unmarried daughters, at whose
deaths it would revert to him, failing their
marriages, in which case the husbands would have
life-interests in the estate, and, if there were issue, the
children would eventually succeed.  The younger of
the two Miss Brands was fragile and delicate; a
course of the systematic bullying and petty
tyrannies by which a man can make his sisters' lives
unbearable, made her run away one night and take
refuge in a convent, whose stern *régime* presently
brought about her death.  The elder sister, stronger
in will and brain, was more difficult to deal with;
but there are many forms of cruelty practised by
those amongst whom we live unrecognized by the
law, and which the law has so far never punished.
Brand made this woman's life a martyrdom; her
every action was thwarted, and every pleasure
arrested midway towards its fulfilment.  In time her
spirit broke.  She lived with him because she could
never break away; unluckily for her, she had none
of that special knowledge which enables a better
educated woman to make her own way in the world,
and defy those enemies of the household who can
be the most bitter and unyielding.  Marian Brand
was found in bed one morning dead, with a broken
bottle of chloral at her side.  Brand was the first
to break into the room.  Accustomed to come down
late he had missed his sister's usual preparations
for his comfort.  The frightened servants at his
heels never saw him pick up a letter addressed to
himself which lay upon the bed, and which he
presently destroyed.

But trustees who benefit by certain deaths under
a will must needs go warily, and facts like these
leak out in time, however carefully concealed.
Brand, pleasantly aware of the world's forgetfulness
found it advisable to travel abroad for a while.

It was not, indeed, until after his marriage that
he was again universally received.  Even now he
was only allowed access to the houses where Evelyn
was a popular guest because from the first she had
refused all invitations which did not include him.
The position galled him, although he made the best
of it; he had aged of late years, his limp becoming
daily more prominent, and the stoop from the
shoulders stiffening with time.

.. vspace:: 2

Evelyn herself seldom looked back or forward,
but to-night, for some unknown reason, as she sat
in the dusk by the open window, a tide of memory
swept her along to the shore of her youth.  Past
days of dreams and personal ambitions—how far
she had drifted from them lately!  The red and
black days which marked special epochs, beginning
with her childhood in the convent and ending with
her marriage, came before her in a series of pictures.
She looked at her dead youth, and felt anew the
shocks that killed it.

The prim convent parlour, the chairs set staidly
with their backs to the wall, the discreet solemnity
of the drab curtains, the precision with which each
book, each print was arranged, how well she knew
them all!  Entry into those solemn precincts was
a matter of reflection.  Evelyn remembered rushing
in once, as a child—the subsequent correction....
Fortunately perhaps for her, her personal visitors
were few and far between at that time.  When she
was two years old her mother died.  She scarcely
knew her father.  Her uniform, the air of repression
with which she had been taught to receive guests,
raised a high wall of separation between the
handsome, easy-going Indian officer, whose interest in
life was bounded by polo and "shikar," and the
decorous child, whose passionate revolt against her
surroundings he was not wise enough to guess.  It
was not his fault.  He knew nothing of children,
and Evelyn's weekly mail letters, written under the
personal supervision of the Reverend Mother, were
scarcely valuable as evidences of character.

Colonel Harcourt usually wrote to announce his
return to England, but, on Evelyn's fourteenth
birthday, he arrived unexpectedly.  She found him
the parlour, nervously dog's-earing the pages
of one of Lady Georgina Fullerton's novels.  He
looked unusually big and ill-at-ease, even for him.
Evelyn saw with horror that the *Catholic Times* and
*Universe*, the Reverend Mother's personal property,
which were invariably folded in their original
folds when read, to be posted to a poorer French
community, had been crushed almost out of shape
by his nervous fingers, and lay in an untidy heap
upon the floor.

In one hand Colonel Harcourt convulsively
clutched a large brown-paper parcel.  Evelyn tried
to turn her eyes from it in vain.  She knew it was
for her—her birthday present, and her heart leapt.
What a day of days it would be!  Perhaps—her
eyes glowed at the thought—her father might even
take her to some place of amusement.

Colonel Harcourt started as she ran towards him.
Something about her reminded him of her mother.
Her look was so gay, her cheeks so flushed, and, in
her hurried obedience to the lay sister's call, a long
tress of dark hair had escaped from its restraining
ribbon.

He stared her up and down, disconcerted, suddenly
conscious of difficulty in his self-appointed
task.

"Time passes very quickly," he complained;
"how you've grown!  I've brought you a present
for your birthday, and, now I see you again, I'm
not quite sure you'll like it.  And I chose it so
carefully too!"

"Whatever it is, I shall love it," Evelyn cried
ecstatically.  To unwrap her own parcel was in itself
a joy to one to whom parcels were practically
unknown.  In her heart of hearts she thought the
presents given her by her companions in the
convent were dreadfully pious and dull.  She had had
a mother-of-pearl rosary from her godmother—the
fourth given her in six months—a rosary-bag from
a school-fellow, a coloured lithograph of "Nostra
Signora del Perpetuo Succorso," from the
Reverend Mother, framed in perforated card by a nun
who was quite wrongfully supposed to be an artist
of merit, and four printed "*Mottoes*" from the
sisters, the "Virtues" of which were heavily
underlined, to point no doubt a needed moral....
Evelyn felt guilty as to the personal significance of
many, such as, "*Venial sin, persistently indulged
in, becomes mortal,*" and "*Never forget your vile
body will at last be food for worms.*"  Evelyn was
constantly being corrected by the nuns for
disorderly habits and impatient words.

Under the outer covering of brown paper, sheets
of tissue were closely folded.  The girl unwrapped
each more tenderly than the last.  The shape was
odd, unwieldy, and cumbersome—what could it be?
A vase?  Too light, surely; but then Indian pottery
was not really heavy.  Something in filagree,
perhaps?  None of the other girls had a father who
lived in India; this present would be unlike any of
the others.  She tore back the last covering—to
disclose a wax doll, dressed in purple velvet and
tinsel and imitation Valenciennes lace.

"The eyes open and shut," her father said
complacently.  "And if you press it here"—he groped
with some diffidence in the lower region of the blue
satin sash—"it says 'good-morning,' and 'how
are you?' quite like a gramophone."

"It must have been dreadfully expensive,"
Evelyn answered.  Her voice was low.  The
disappointment was acute.  Then she pulled herself
together, and faced him bravely.  "Thank you so
much, dear father.  How kind of you to choose it
all yourself."

"I'm afraid you've got a cold, my dear," said
Colonel Harcourt, withdrawing apprehensively.
His glance wandered to the wall in search of
distraction from the sight of his sick child, successfully
evading the picture of St. Lawrence on the
grid-iron, only to light upon the martyrdom of
St. Agnes, from the details of which he visibly shrank.
"Good God, what awful pictures!  How you
can——"  He stopped abruptly and seized his hat.
"Well I've some news for you.  I'm sorry I can't
take you out to-day."  It struck him that the
delicate oval face might have found a more suitable
frame than the stiff black sailor hat which the nuns
had chosen for it.  "You won't mind, I know; I've
got an engagement I can't break.  I'm going to
give you a new mother, my dear; I'll bring her to
see you some day, and then we'll take you to the
Zoo?"  He halted again, inwardly convinced the
future Mrs. Harcourt, to whom he had described
Evelyn as "only a baby," would resent the
inconvenient size of his offspring.  "Now good-bye,
my dear; you'll be wanting to play with your doll.
God bless you."

The last unintelligible ejaculation was intended
to convey his strict observance of that piety which
is demanded of all who pass through convent
gates.

He was gone.  Evelyn heard his footsteps die
away, and caught his relieved farewell to the
sour-faced portress before the front-door clanged.  She
could almost hear the breath of relief he would draw
as the tension of the last few uneasy moments
snapped....  What did he know of her?  What
did he care to know?  A new mother!—A new
*mother*!

She ran down the corridor, sweeping aside the
restraining hand of a nun who tried to stop her.
She wanted Sister Veronica; Sister Veronica would
understand; Sister Veronica was still young.  Sister
Veronica was daily corrected for evil-doing; Sister
Veronica's heart had not yet turned to stone.

"That's well over," Colonel Harcourt congratulated
himself complacently, hailing a hansom.
"What a prison it is—harder to escape from each
time.  They'll make a nun of the child eventually,
I suppose.  Perhaps it would be the best thing, after
all."

.. vspace:: 2

But Evelyn was not of the material which makes
nuns.  The convent appealed to her neither as an
escape from sin, nor a barrier to temptation.  She
loved part of the life, and turned from much in
loathing.  When she was seventeen it frightened
her no longer.  Her childish rebellion at petty
penances, at the narrow outlook of women whose
breasts had never thrilled at the touch of a child's
lips, yet who pathetically demanded the title of
"Mother" as a cherished claim, had changed to
pity.  Each grim line that repression had seared on
brow or cheek seemed now to Evelyn as a wound
received in mortal combat against the glowing,
ardent youth that leaped so fearlessly in her own
veins at sight and sound of growing things, green
shoots of trees, showing timidly, early violets
lifting shy heads, the twittering of the mother bird
teaching her young to spread her wings.  She knew
and understood no more of her own nature than
this—that it was good to live in spring and summer
and early autumn, while even some winter days
had their own stinging joy—that the blood which
was daily wet on Mother Veronica's discipline, the
hair-sheet by which that young and tender flesh
was lacerated, were alike protests against
intoxicating dreams....  Yet dreams were sweet, and why
should they be broken?

.. vspace:: 2

Another picture.  The convent chapel this time;
the hour of Benediction which she loved.  Warm
glow from the altar, warm glow about her heart.
A suffused radiance from the lamps that burned
day and night before the Body of the Lord; a wave
of light, from the candles upon the altar, that
seemed to roll upward as the incense soared, a vivid
golden cloud that changed its shape momentarily,
and was always beautiful, carrying your eye higher
and higher until its glance rested at last in perfect
peace upon the jewelled monstrance and pyx that
held the Sacred Host.  The nun's song stilled—that
swan-song of dead womanhood—the hush of
concentrated prayer—silence—the tinkling of a
bell—the blessing that bathed one in a sea of light....

Music again; the organ only.  The sense of
human breath, temporarily suspended, returning
simultaneously to a vast crowd that had for a short
while been swayed by an eternal mystery.  The
shuffling of feet, the changed poise of many bodies,
the jingle of rosaries, hastily kissed and put away,
the rhythmic filing out of obedient convent
boarders, outer air flowing in.  But for some time
afterwards Evelyn would move in a dream-world, a little
detached from, a little unaware of, the gay chatter
and talk of her companions in their recreation hour.
One day, when in this mood, she was called to
the parlour.  Her father and stepmother awaited
her with a strange man.  It had been suggested that
Evelyn was to sail with her parents for India, three
months later, but Mrs. Harcourt, who, though no
longer in her first youth, possessed some charm
still for the other sex, had dreaded the rivalry of the
younger woman, and was in consequence untiring
in her efforts to alter the arrangement.  Henry
Brand, an acquaintance of her husband's, had been
struck by Evelyn's beauty when visiting the convent
in a friend's company one day to hear the music.
He offered himself now as a solution to the problem.

"Would you like to be married, Evelyn?" her
stepmother demanded abruptly.  Something in the
rapt look of the girl's face showed her that direct
methods would be best.  "Your father and I are
anxious about you; we feel sure that you are much
too delicate for India.  Mr. Brand says that he
wants to marry you, and we should like to leave you
in his care."

"Why—should I mind?  Yes, of course I'll
marry him if you wish me to," said Evelyn dazedly.
She had never cared to dwell on the thought of
India in her stepmother's company; marriage with
any one—the veriest stranger—would be better.
She looked at Henry Brand gravely and sedately
as he came to her and took her hand.  The expression
of her father's face, half-ashamed, and
half-relieved, perplexed her; as her stepmother sprang
forward, she shrank back from the hilarious embrace.
The woman glanced at her husband and nodded.
All three conspirators had counted upon Evelyn's
obedience.  Convent training does its work, and
the moment had been especially propitious.

"Quite a leading of Providence, in fact," said
Mrs. Harcourt, summing up the situation to
everybody's satisfaction.

.. vspace:: 2

The last picture—the last, at least, upon which
Evelyn chose to linger.  Her wedding, hastened to
fit in with her parents' autumn visits, and to prevent
the possibility of a change.

The Oratory this time, large and massive; it felt
very grey and cold after the convent chapel.  A
short Mass and no music—Henry Brand was avowedly
a Protestant, but had no fixed belief.  There
were strangers in the congregation.  Some one
sobbing—why should Sister Veronica cry?  Distractions
pouring in; Evelyn pondered as to the meaning
of certain directions given her by her confessor;
she wondered if she would be allowed to visit the
different altars of the church after the ceremony;
she noticed a brilliant feather in a lady's hat; for
the first time she felt a little shy and lonely.  She
wished that every one would not look at her; there
were some pretty people to look at!  She hoped she
would be happy; she thought how nice it would
be to be married, to have a man—even if his back
were not quite straight—to go about with, instead
of a mere nun.  In future she would be able to wear
nice clothes, to move freely in the world, to read
what she liked, and be taken to public places where
she might even meet some of the people she had
crowned with laurels—Chamberlain, Curzon,
Kitchener.

How wicked she was!  She shut her eyes and
knelt up very straight, practising every art she
knew against the onslaught of distraction.  Above
the altar was a picture of the Blessed Virgin and
the Eternal Father, painted by a French father of
the community, after a design by Sebastian Concha
of Turin.  She looked from it to the cartouche
above, the gilt heart surrounded by rays; then on
again to the central picture.  Little, forgotten stories
of St. Philip Neri came back to her; little, forgotten
maxims.  She remembered how, on one occasion,
a rich noble had come to St. Philip, full of his
worldly plans and ambitions.  The saint had
listened patiently to the confidences, as was his
habit.  But at the end—"And then?" ... he
asked.

Her dreams of happiness, her hopes of success,
both seemed to sweep her towards the mysterious
shore of marriage—that Sacrament which Catholics
approach with prayer and fasting.  So far so good.
But—then? ...

The church faded; she was lost in the whirl and
confusion of amused spectators, who pelted her
with rose leaves and confetti, praising her beauty
till she blushed.  She drove off with her husband,
still half-intoxicated with excitement.  Then came
a picture to which she shut her eyes, the first of a
long series, blackening with time.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

"They should take who have the power."

.. vspace:: 2

Martin Calvert was a business man, pure and
simple.  But he had withal a certain clairvoyance
which enabled him to detect in others such qualities
as would produce the most marketable and
satisfactory results.

Starting life with a fairly large income, he had
slowly but surely added to it, by effective, if
unsensational, means.  He had travelled in many
countries, discarding the methods of the Yellow Press
and its like, comparatively early in his career.  It
seemed to him that a man only reached permanent
fame by being sincere himself and dealing sincerely
with human problems.  His sense of honour was so
acute that it entered even into his business
transactions.  He had, of course, to make use of the
weakness of others to a certain extent, to bend
opportunity to his will on occasions; but he set about his
work with a straightness not always, nor even often,
found in Wall Street.  Yet he had learned something
from America, although it was said of him in
that country that he missed more chances of making
fortunes in a day than most men did in a lifetime.

But his round million of money satisfied him after
all.  He had no near kith or kin to work for, and,
patriotic as a man may be at heart, impersonal ties
seldom stir his blood so deeply as do those of
family.  Evelyn was right, he had learned by now
to look upon Farquharson almost as his son.  He
had recognized him from the first as being a man of
power, and the incident of their meeting was
dramatic.  A big ecclesiastical procession was
marching one Easter down the Rambla at Barcelona;
Calvert, standing at a street corner, was watching
it with immense disapprobation.  The crowd surged
onward, sweeping all before it like a mighty flood;
a child, running suddenly across the path of the
procession, slipped, and was trampled out of sight
almost without a cry, lost in the religious exaltation
that is so often blind to human claims.  From the
opposite side of the road a man dashed forward;
so sudden was his movement that it arrested even
the half-dazed crowd.  The child was saved.  He
had borne it away before more than the first ranks
of the spectators knew what had happened.

The promptness, the surety of the action, appealed
to a man to whom swift decisions came naturally.
The rescuer was neat, but shabby.  Calvert invited
him to his hotel.

Farquharson made no claim on Calvert's pity or
patronage.  But, after a few judicious questions,
the older man discovered that the stranger was of
some social significance, and had been out of
employment for about three weeks.  The secretary for
whom he had last worked in an office had absconded
with the contents of the till.  Calvert had important
business letters to send to England that evening.
He hired Farquharson's services then and there for
the night, and presently gave him a place in his
office.

And now, fifteen years later, he looked back upon
this act of impulse as being the wisest of his life.
From a commercial point of view, Farquharson had
paid his way.  More than that, he had healed an
old sore in Calvert's heart; he had renewed the
man's lost faith and hope.  And Calvert was old
enough to realize that in life the things we can
touch and lay hold of are not always or even often
the most valuable.

.. vspace:: 2

The dinner hour, usually a propitious moment in
which to discuss claims and urge the need of
benefactions, was almost always a cause of annoyance
to Calvert.  He hated ostentation; the very men
who were anxious to gain his favour frequently
lost it by offering him out-of-season delicacies on
gold plate.  Once, at a small dinner party in New
York, where over a thousand dollars had been
spent on table decorations alone, Calvert rose at the
fourth course and struck the table with a blow
which shook the gay, luxurious crowd from its
apathy.

"You have got starving men outside," he said.
"Every dish you have set before me, to my mind,
is wholesale murder.  You and your ways remind
me of Babylon; beware lest her fate overtakes you."

But the startled guests broke in here with hilarious
shrieks of laughter.  The episode was supposed
to have been got up by the host as a new form of
entertainment to pique their jaded palates.

Conforming to custom in his own house, Calvert
always offered his guests champagne at dinner, but
he himself invariably drank ale.  Democrat as he
was, he could complain of nothing in the meal that
had just been served at Creagh.  It was characteristic
of his host; good and simple without display.
And the talk through the dinner was genial and
unaffected; something in the atmosphere of a room
which has grown warm with human kindness calls
for a like response from those of its occupants who
are sensitive to influences.

Calvert felt his own mind expand.  He had
talked openly, as he seldom talked, and Farquharson
was at his best.  The elder man took a pride
in watching this child of his deliberate choice, who
never failed him.  Farquharson was a man who had
from the first seen two moves ahead in the game of
life, and Calvert, himself a skilled player, gladly
acknowledged himself beaten by a pupil to whom
he had taught the rudiments of hazard.

The drawing-room at Creagh was essentially a
pleasant room.  Innumerable flowers, books and
reviews, Lady Ennly's spinning-wheel and lace
pillow, kept in constant use, gave it a homely,
old-fashioned appearance.  Calvert, aware of comfort,
although unable to analyze its cause, crossed the
room to Mrs. Brand, who withdrew to a distant
corner as the men entered the room.

She swept her skirt aside, and pointed to the seat
beside her.

"How nice of you to come and speak to me!
I thought you meant to," she said.

Calvert smiled.

"Lord Creagh told me you were just like that.
'Confide in Mrs. Brand, tell her everything you
want; the more direct you are the more she'll like
you,' he said.  Now, I'm a plain man, Mrs. Brand,
and have never been used to women and their ways.
I deal with facts, not illusions."  He seated himself
more comfortably in his chair, obviously preparing
for an intimate talk.  "I'm commercial through
and through, you know; if I want a thing I like to
pay its proper price.  Now, I want something from
you, and you're not the sort of woman to take any
price at all.  That annoys me, because I haven't
the faintest shadow of a claim upon your interest."

Evelyn was silent for a moment.

"Women aren't very active powers in the world
as a rule," she said; "I'm a dabbler.  I paint little
pictures, I write little stories and do fancy work, for
money—that's all.  I think I could have been a
good mother, but I've never had a child.  There's
nothing in this world of my very own I can shape
and mould as I should love to shape it.  I suppose
I like to play with lives as other women do with
stocks and shares.  It's just another form of
speculation.  So when men who can do things—there
aren't many of them!—are good enough to trust
me, to confide in me even the tiniest inkling of their
plans and hopes, I'm very proud."  She waited.
"I've always had one big ambition.  I've wanted
to do something to help on, even in the smallest
way, some one who'll do big things; to show that
I believed in him before the world had the least
knowledge of what he was capable.  I think you re
going to give me my opportunity—I know what
you want, of course; any one would, who saw you
with Mr. Farquharson.  You want every scrap of
help for him that you can get.  Now, mind, I don't
really see where I come in, for he's a man who won't
need even you for long.  He stands alone; he'd
always like to, wouldn't he?"

"You're right; he'd always like to," Calvert
admitted slowly.  There was some sadness in his
tone.

Evelyn put out her hand.

"It's a good trait, isn't it?  It hurts other people,
of course.  I think no one gets on in the world
without hurting some one else in the process.  But
there are times when one thanks God that one was
just the person who was called upon to make that
special sacrifice which was counted on and taken,
so very simply.  Not that I see there should be
any sacrifice in Mr. Farquharson's case.  He is
your *protégé*.  Everything he does will tell for
you.  He came to you with a handful of irons, and
you gave him fuel and lit the fire, and you'll be
even prouder of the fact some day than you are
now.  Well, if you can let me put in even one tiny
piece of wood to keep that fire alight, you may
guess how delighted I shall be."

Calvert gave a sigh of relief.

"Thank you.  You're right, of course.  I'm
acting the part of beggar for the boy's sake.  You
are—forgive me, I don't mean it rudely—a sort of
fashionable cult.  You know a great many persons,
and everybody likes you.  Some one once said of
you that if a man really wanted the key of the
Foreign Office secrets he would hunt for it in your
flat.  And they said, too, that you were as straight
as a die: it's a quality one doesn't invariably find
in political women.  I want it to be under your
wing that Richard"—he was unconscious of the
lapse—"meets people.  I'd like him to go into the
world as a friend of yours.  Oh yes, Creagh can
do a lot for him, I know; but Creagh's religion
puts off many people.  You're a Romanist, too;
but, then, one lets a woman have her little failings.
Now, in many ways I'm broad-minded; Farquharson's
political opinions and mine are at opposite
poles, for instance; but I want him to have a free
hand.  There'll be a change in the Ministry soon.
I give our present Government six months.  We've
decimated the Army, and the Navy's at boiling-point;
the Labour candidates and Irish members
are aggrieved as usual.  You know what all parties
think about the Education Bill—one needn't go
into that; and I hear hints of so-called Licensing
reforms, which will set the country by the ears."

He waited.

"Yes?" said Evelyn.

"During the winter I want Farquharson to meet
men who are likely to form the next Ministry,"
said Calvert deliberately, lowering his voice.  "To
meet them intimately and often—under convenient
auspices.  I should like them all to forgather at
your house.  You bring the right people together,
and you make them talk."

"I only listen."

Calvert laughed again.

"The music of a man's voice is very sweet in his
ears.  You're a born diplomat, Mrs. Brand.  You
and Richard have a quality in common—you're
both 'masters of the unspoken word and slaves of
the word you have spoken.'  I don't want a cheap
success for Richard.  He's a man of men; in my
heart I believe him to be the one man who can save
our country in its crisis."  There was a little pause.
"It sounds sentimental to say it, but I love England.
So does he.  His pulses beat to music which most
men only hear once in a lifetime.  Things must
come to him in time.  He mustn't eat his heart out
wanting them.  For the country's sake as well as
his I'm in a hurry.  He ought to have a place in the
next Cabinet."

Music was seldom permitted at Creagh, the
conversation was usually too good for it.  But a French
opera singer was amongst the guests that night,
and the words of her song came to them, clear and
pathetic, in the pause that followed—

   |  "Cet espoir, hélas! d'un avenir doré
   |  Ces apparitions, ces rêves ont duré,
   |  Le temps d'une aube boréale,
   |  Et mon esprit partit aux fabuleux
   |  Ou l'on pense cueillir les camélias bleus
   |  Et trouver l'amour idéale."
   |

How long would Calvert's dream last?

.. vspace:: 2

"I should like to know Mr. Farquharson better,"
said Evelyn presently.  With the exception
of Farquharson and his host, the remaining guests
had gathered round Madame de Mirelle.  Not to
have paid for a professional entertainment is the
surest factor in its enjoyment.  As her voice died
away, tenderly, like a caress, the buzz of talk rose
and fell easily, and drifted to them at intervals.
Presently the accompanist began a few modulations,
preparatory to the prelude of the next song.

"I will do what you say, of course; I will gladly
make opportunities, if Mr. Farquharson will take
them."

"He only needs a chance," said Calvert.  "Look
at me."  He rose heavily from his chair and stood
before her: a man of loose build, large and solid;
the type of man whom a photographer would pose
beside a writing-table, with right hand extended on
an open book, against a "good library background,"
like some suburban mayor.  "I'm not a
romantic figure, am I? but I've had my dreams, as
romantic as any lover's, and Farquharson materialized
one of them.  I want to materialize his now as
a thank-offering."

Evelyn said nothing.  She looked up with eyes
quick with sympathy, that drew him gently to her
side again.

"I wanted an island to play with—to administrate,"
said Calvert after a pause.  "It was the first
definite plan that came to me after a blow which
shook my world.  You know about that, probably.
I had nothing of my own left to care for.  Kith and
kin had either died or left me—they cared for
nothing but my money.  I wanted some one thing—in
default of a person—a place I could do as I liked
with—could run on my own lines—make in my own
image, as you would have made your child.  They
were Utopian lines, maybe, which I meant to
follow, but I wanted a commercial success too.
There were plenty of useless places to be had as a mere
matter of barter; some of them even carried titles
with them! They didn't do.  Hobbies—as hobbies—don't
appeal to me.  I went to Stamford's and
bought maps; spent hours at the Geographical
Society in Savile Row, groping in Parliamentary
Reports, and so forth, until I found a spot which
seemed to be all I wanted.  And one day, very
shortly after, Farquharson and I set sail for
Taorna."

His eyes softened as a man's eyes soften when
he recalls a splendid vision.

"If you could see it," he said impulsively,
"you'd understand then all that the first glimpse
of it meant to me.  It's as dear to me now as it
was then.  It was Farquharson's first voyage.  We
got there early one morning, soon after dawn.  Our
bagahalow drew in to the shore as slowly and
rhythmically as a gondola.  There was light and
colour everywhere.  Bamboo skiffs, their decks
flush with the sides, floated by, steered by negro
slaves, singing.  The oil of their skins gleamed
like polish.  The whole scene——"  He stopped,
seeking for the right expression.  "It throbbed with
the sunlight.  Naked boys near the shore were
diving into the water, not for pennies as they do in
Madeira, but to catch shining fish in their hands,
or in bright nets.  A herd of little black babies with
big stomachs were rolling over and over in the
lemon-coloured sands, under the charge of atoms
of three and four years old, twirling tops made out
of whelk shells."

"For nobody knew what the bagahalow was
bringing," said Evelyn softly.

"Unconscious, all," said Calvert grimly.  "That
was what touched me—and their patience.  On the
shore a group of slaves stood chained together;
they had unhealed wheals across their shoulders,
and the fetters had cut into their arms and made
festering sores.  I've lived too long out in the East
to call black men my brothers, but injustice sticks
in my gorge.  All the voyage I'd been digesting a
volume of evidence as to the Sheikh's ways of
dealing with offenders."

He knocked the ashes off his cigarette with care.
Lady Ennly, more accustomed to the society of
men than women, allowed her guests to smoke in
the drawing-room.

"Well, that's not pretty, and the scenery was,"
he said.  "I can see it all now.  A hill like a tower
standing over five hundred feet high faced us, and
dotted all over the islands were groups of Wanabi
mosques with minarets.  At the base of the hill
there were the remains of the old capital, a white
stone city, so brilliant in the sunshine that we had
to shade our eyes.  But everything was brilliant.
Taornian sportsmen hunting gazelle in the distance,
I remember, were riding horses with gold and
crimson trappings, and in the east some women,
unconscious of our field-glasses, had pushed back their
masks; they carried baskets of citrons on their
heads, and wore upper garments rather like red
chemises, with flapping orange-coloured trousers.
But all the colour concentrated in the gardens;
hibiscus, pomegranates, plumbago, every tropical
fruit and flower almost that you can think of grew
in profusion."

Madame de Mirelle was singing again, a Bedouin
love song this time.

"They were chanting something not unlike that
song she's singing," said Calvert, jerking his broad
thumb in the direction of the music-room.  "It had
a sort of droning note—pathetic almost.  I suppose
a sentimental man would have taken it as a call
... it meant a lot to me somehow."

"It must have meant still more to Richard
Farquharson," said Evelyn slowly.

"He knew all along I was making him ready for
some trial of strength; what it was he didn't know.
I'm not the man to speak of dreams until they are
within an ace of realization.  He scored off me on
one point, I remember.  I'd made arrangements for
our landing; amongst other items I'd ordered
suitable conveyances.  They sent us white donkeys of
the swift Taornian breed, for which they're famous.
Their tails and manes were very smart with henna,
but they had neither reins nor stirrups.  Our choice
lay between them and camels.  I chose a donkey,
because it was less far to fall from."  He paused.

"Go on, please," said Evelyn.

Calvert nodded.

"Curious how such details stay with one.  I
remember the very words I used to Farquharson at
that moment, the look on his face as he listened.
I purposely gave my order as though I were
telephoning for a restaurant table.  I said, 'I mean to
have this island.  You must get it for me.  I'll
give you a free hand, but everything must be fixed
up before I leave for the next meeting of the
Kimbala Mines in a week's time.'  And Farquharson"—his
eyes narrowed, and he smiled the slow smile
of a man who looks back on a pleasant
memory—"Farquharson turned very sharply; it was a savage
place, you know, and he would have to deal with
savages.  So far he hadn't come across them.  He
said——"

Evelyn leant forward.

"Yes?"

Calvert laughed.

"He said, 'Right, sir.  Look out, or you'll be
off that donkey in another moment.'  And that was
all we ever said about the matter till the thing was
done."

Dora Beadon swept across the room, a pair of
youthful members of the Upper House in her train.

"Evelyn, your behaviour at parties is simply
execrable.  You've kept this corner all the evening,
and everybody wants it, it's so comfy."  Then in
an undertone—"Now, do be grateful to me, there's
a dear.  I felt I must in common charity relieve you
of that dreadful old fogey.  And, besides, you
haven't told me yet how you like my gown.  Felice
sat up all night giving the finishing touches, and
was as cross as fourteen hundred sticks all day in
consequence.  Maids are so utterly unbearable."

"It's a lovely frock," said Evelyn, honestly
admiring the beautiful material which no art could
drape in graceful folds upon Miss Beadon's short,
fat body.  "Let off Felice to-night, Dora dear.
I'll come and put you to bed if you'll let me.  You
don't know what a good maid I am."

"You'd ruin any decent maid in a month," said
Dora shortly, her mouth twisting into curves which
always showed displeasure.  "It's a good thing
you're never likely to have one.  Felice is paid to
wait on me; you aren't.  Don't talk nonsense,
Evelyn.  Servants are made for us, not we for
servants.  If they fall ill they can go, and more
fools they, when you think of the wages we give
them.  Oh"—with a brilliant smile—"isn't that
Mr. Farquharson?  Do come here, won't you?
We've kept a place for you in this corner.  Evelyn,
isn't that Lady Wereminster calling?  I wouldn't
keep her waiting if I were you."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

"Thou shalt do a deed and abide it."—LEWIS MORRIS.

.. vspace:: 2

"If I were a younger woman, Richard Farquharson
is a man I should fall head over ears in love
with," announced Lady Wereminster, pausing at
Evelyn's door on the way to her bedroom.  "I
mean no disrespect to Wereminster, of course; than
whom it would be difficult to conceive a more
opposite type.  But the man sweeps one off one's feet,
by sheer force of vitality and power.  The guileless
maiden of my time—it's a type that no longer
exists, my dear; the birth of the twentieth century
killed it—would have been vanquished at first sight,
and suffered from vapours for a week.  I suppose
you have taken him under your wing, Evelyn?  I
noticed his political godfather making overtures to
you in a recess.  Well, you have a *protégé* who'll do
you credit this time.  Not like some of your lame
dogs, who only used their mended limbs to kick
you later.  No, it's no use hushing me down,
Evelyn.  Other people have eyes and ears beside
yourself, you know.  Don't you remember making
everybody's life unbearable until you'd secured an
important colonial appointment for the husband of
some impossible woman who looked like a suffragette
and lived in the suburbs?  After she'd spent the
extra three hundred a year for twelve months or so
she began abusing you because you hadn't got them
an appointment in England instead.  And there was
another woman, who had twins or triplets, or
something tiresome and embarrassing.  You sold your
best lace to provide the unprovided guest with the
requirements of decency, and then the mother
complained that the things you gave her had been
bought at Peter Jones's instead of Steinmann's."

Evelyn laughed.

"Come now, you're the last person to preach.
Your house has always been known to be the refuge
of the socially destitute."

"One has to pay for one's title even if it's an
old one," said Lady Wereminster.  "It tacks on
about thirty per cent. on the price of a yard of ribbon
and lessens your income from five hundred a year
upwards in charitable demands.  But about Richard
Farquharson.  I believe that man's made of the
right stuff, Evelyn."

She laid her hand on the younger woman's arm
with a sudden access of gravity.

"My dear, I'm an old woman, and in my heart
of hearts I'm as troubled for my country as though
she were my child.  All about me are signs of decay.
I see young people spending twice as much a week
on pleasure as their parents would have spent on the
necessities of life in a year; I see every principle
I was taught in childhood violated and outraged.
Private betrayals, political treason, public
indifference, contempt of religion, lightness in
marriage are everywhere.  Signs of the times,
Wereminster says.  It breaks his heart like mine.  I was
brought up to rank honour and truth and sincerity
as everyday virtues, and marriage a church
ceremony so solemn that it made one weep.  I think
we need some national upheaval or shock to make
us realize how we've sunk morally."

"A strong man in politics, for instance, to
take us by our shoulders and give us a good
shaking?"

"Exactly.  And that's just what Richard
Farquharson would enjoy doing!  The man will make
history, my dear, or I'm no judge of character."

.. vspace:: 2

"I'm glad you've made friends with Mrs. Brand,"
said Creagh.  It was past midnight, but
he and Beadon had agreed to walk with Farquharson
and Calvert so far as the village inn.  "She's
a woman of wide interests and sound common
sense.  By the way, she asked me if I knew any
details of how Mr. Farquharson arranged that
island scheme for you.  She said I was not to press
you if you had any objection to telling her."

"It's a long story," Calvert said slowly.
"Farquharson never will speak of it.  I think he went
through worse things than I knew even.  To start
with, he had to go disguised to the bazaar, a thing
not one Englishman out of a dozen could have
carried through successfully, even with his
knowledge of Arabic."

"He tossed the whole thing off to-night in a
phrase when I spoke to him about it—said circumstances
played into his hands, and it was merely a
question of watching and waiting."

"There was a fairly complicated plot involved,"
said Calvert dryly.  "To make you understand
what happened I ought to explain something of the
actual geographical situation.  Taorna, you may
know, is the chief of a group of islands that a good
many Powers have coveted in their day—Turkish,
Muscatian, Persian, even Portuguese.  She was
known to be a prize, her pearl fisheries only needed
to be adequately worked on modern lines to bring
in a big revenue.  The Shah of Persia had had his
eyes on that fishery for some time, and had planted
secret agents very intelligently amongst the inland
tribes of the Shiite sects.  They sowed discontent
and dissension—and we reaped the benefit."

Calvert stopped to light his cigar.

"Let the two others get on ahead a bit.  Farquharson
hates to hear me tell this story.  Well, the
island is divided into two parties; one being
pro-Sheikh Aba, the other pro-Shah Omar.  The
Persians based their claim on the fact that, centuries
before, Taorna had been an appanage of the Persian
crown, under a certain race of kings."

"There were, in fact, the makings of a revolution,
which you successfully turned to your own
ends?" Creagh suggested, smiling.

"To England's eventually, I hope.  Mind you,
the scheme was Farquharson's.  He began by sending
a man to communicate with the British Consul
at Benuni.  Benuni is a port on the western coast
of Persia.  A British political resident lives there
under the protection of a few gunboats.  Sailors
are always ready for a fight, as you know; it's a
pleasant variation from the day's work.  The Shiite
revolution was timed to take place on Thursday
night at ten o'clock.  The palace was to be rushed
and the Sheikh taken off to await the Shah's
decision concerning which especial form of lingering
death his end was intended to take.  The Shah's
claimant was, of course, to be immediately installed
in place of the deposed ruler."

"And then——?"

"By ten o'clock on that same Thursday night
the muzzles of two British gunboats were pointing
at the mouth of Zut harbour, ready to protect my
interests."  There was a twinkle in Calvert's eyes,
but his voice was preternaturally solemn.
"Farquharson had been forced to represent, of course,
that my person was in peril.  You can count on the
British Navy's disinclination to inquire unreasonably
into the precise cause of these little affairs.  I
fear that the Commanders of those gunboats, young
lieutenants both, gathered from the wording of
Farquharson's appeal that my actual purchase of
the island had taken place a few hours before it
actually had; in his hurry he omitted to mention the
exact time of the transaction."  Creagh chuckled.
"It was the death-blow of the plot.  Half the
population made for the shore, to see what the gunboats
meant, and what Power they represented.  And
simultaneously, in the courtyard of the palace, Aba
and his chiefs proclaimed that in view of the fact
that the British had discovered a plot against his
life, he had placed himself under their protection.
Only a question or two was asked.  The gunboats
answered them."

"But I don't see——"

"Farquharson had interviewed the Sheikh first,
of course," said Calvert simply.  "He had made
his way into the private apartments, every inch of
the way to which was guarded.  How he did it I
don't know.  Even by day only the members of the
immediate household were allowed to approach
within praying distance of the burying-place of his
ancestors, where he had ensconced himself.  I know
Farquharson only reached him at the peril of his
own life.  He said the old man was quite reasonable
under sheer stress of terror, and delighted to accept
four lakhs of rupees for the transfer of the island.
I told you he was old, and, luckily for us, his sons
were lepers.  I gave him his summer palace for his
own use and that of the heirs immediate of his body
in their lifetime.  They were not to go beyond the
walls without a permit for fear of insurrection.  Aba
was possibly the more amenable because he was
frightened out of such wits as he still possessed at
the thought of being killed in the same way that
he had killed so many others."

"The three men actually were sent to prison
then?" asked Creagh.

"Call it free accommodation in an hotel, it sounds
better," Farquharson corrected blandly.  He had
caught the last words as the men approached.

"I take it that a liberal supply of palm-oil
greased your way through those closed doors," said
Creagh, turning.

Farquharson laughed.

"Oh, I had luck all through.  I lighted upon
the most useful drug in the bazaar, an excellent
remedy for sleeplessness."

"I should like to hear more about your doings,
Mr. Farquharson," said Beadon curiously.

"They're worth hearing."  Creagh's tone was
hearty.  "He ran a great risk, but it was to some
purpose.  You and I know how useful Mr. Calvert
has been to us, Beadon; how often his munificent
gifts have helped the nation through tight places
when our own exchequer has run dry.  I'm
sure he would be the first to acknowledge that he
owes much of his fortune to Mr. Farquharson's
help."

Calvert nodded approvingly.  Things were panning
out as he hoped.  He appreciated Creagh's
praise, but his eyes were fixed on Beadon—the man
who, politically speaking, held Farquharson's
future in his hand.

And for the moment Beadon was silent.  Then—

"What did you yourself get out of it all?" he
asked abruptly.  "At first I was under the impression
that you were Calvert's secretary, but some one
told me to-night that you held an even more
important post."

Calvert laid his hand affectionately upon the
young man's shoulder.

"He is Administrator of Taorna," he said; "our
report will be published in a few days.  You will
see then that the appointment is no sinecure.  I
think I may say that we work the resources of our
island to the uttermost; we challenge you to make
the fullest inquiries into our methods and criticize
them fairly.  Japan took thirty years to grow;
we've taken ten.  Even the present Government
knows what our trade is: we have been useful to
England already.  We have our own fleet and our
own Army, our own line of steamers for transport, our
Chamber of Commerce and Council.  Farquharson
is the power behind all these; he holds them in the
hollow of his hand.  He works, I pay."  A new
note came into Calvert's voice, a note of gravity.
"I have made him ruler over a few things
already; at my death—God willing—I mean to
leave him in a position where he may rule many
things."

.. vspace:: 2

Creagh and Beadon walked away in silence.  It
was not until they had reached the lodge gates that
the former spoke.

"Well, what have you decided to do for him?"

Beadon smiled.

"That's just like you!  So you take my belief
for granted, eh?  Well, you're right.  One might
not like him, but one must believe in him.  That
impassive, implacable type of man always gets on.
Look at his chin!  But one can't decide these
things in a hurry.  There's the Blue Book to be
looked through first.

"Oh, if it only depends on the Blue Book"—Creagh
shrugged his shoulders—"that's right
enough.  I read the proofs this morning."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "... A bar was broken between
   |    Life and life ...
   |  In spite of the mortal screen."—BROWNING.

.. vspace:: 2

An American's advice to Farquharson at this
particular juncture of his career would have been
to "make things hum."  The phrase itself is
vulgar enough, but, employed with discretion,
American methods have something in their favour.
Farquharson, for one, knew their value.  He
brought infinite tact to bear upon his capture of
London; to have captured London is, luckily for the
nation, still to have captured the world.

He started well, of course.  He had come at an
effective moment, and his coming was judiciously
pioneered.  Then, too, he had the right influence to
back him, and an amazing personality.  It was
impossible to ignore or be indifferent to him; he set
too big forces in motion.  Among the leaders of
society he awoke, indeed, something like
enthusiasm, and the plastic mob followed.  Commercial
enterprise has not yet robbed us of our love of the
romantic, and there was something essentially
romantic about Farquharson's past.

"The man takes one back to Scherazade and her
thousand and one tales," Lady Wereminster
decided.  "He's unique.  If he were to disappear
before your eyes on a magic carpet, or turn your
inferior electro-plate into solid gold, or vice versa,
at an afternoon call, it wouldn't surprise you in
the least.  And yet he is utterly without pose.
Then the man's voice!  Well, Gladstone could
talk about nothing for a solid hour or two, and make
you think you were overflowing with knowledge
until you analyzed what he had told you in cold
blood.  I believe this man could go on talking half
the night, and hypnotize you into believing the
most incredible facts."

That Lady Wereminster should take up any new-comer
so warmly was in itself a proof of Farquharson's
success.  Hare rallied her on the subject.

"You've a positive *flair* for him.  How long
will it last?"

Lady Wereminster shrugged her shoulders.

"One must be in the fashion; his name is
everywhere, like Odol advertisements."

Things had, indeed, opened out amazingly for
the new-comer.  Public curiosity was awakened,
and public curiosity is another way of spelling
success.  Then, too, the political horizon was
uniformly dull.  Farquharson's doings were a positive
godsend to the Press.  The Stock Exchange was
soon alive to his importance; Taorman bonds went
up in leaps and bounds two days after his arrival.

Beadon, coming to visit him one morning and
finding him at work with his secretary upon a mail
from which he had separated a pile of invitation
cards, glanced from them to him dubiously.  Even
distinguished people were anxious to be the first
to exploit this man of the future; social charity,
which popularizes your entertainments with no
commensurate demands upon your purse-strings,
is just as much sought after in Park Lane as in
South Kensington.

"Feeling rather helpless, eh?"

Farquharson pointed despairingly at the invitations.

"Shall I accept or refuse the lot wholesale?"
Beadon frowned.

"A difficult question.  A secretary can't help
you here; very few people could.  It doesn't do to
go everywhere; it lessens your value.  And you
can't afford to waste a moment's time upon
unnecessary people.  No, the Press is no guide.  In
the *Morning Post* you'll find long accounts of
functions you mustn't dream of being seen at."  He
took up four or five invitations haphazard, glancing
at the names.  "Merrimans, Churchleighs,
Halliways—what impertinence!  You must refuse all
those.  I'll tell you who could help you—Mrs. Brand.
She's a great friend of Creagh's; you met
her at his house, I think.  Put yourself in her
hands—you can't do better.  She's a good woman,
always ready to help.  Give her the whole bundle
and take her advice implicitly."

It was the second time that the idea had been
mooted to Farquharson.

He sat for a moment idly after Beadon had left,
pondering.  This would be the first occasion on
which he had ever appealed to a woman for help.
More, indeed, almost the first time that he had
been brought into intimate companionship with
one.  To know a woman well you must see her in
her home, surrounded by her individual accessories,
the little personal touches which are so sure a guide
to character.  And he wanted to know Evelyn better,
to trace the exact extent of her resemblance to
the portrait at Glune, which in the days of his worst
loneliness he had re-christened as his "Bride of
Dreams."

He motored down to West Kensington that very
afternoon, and found Mrs. Brand in and alone.
He went directly to the point, as was his habit;
her slight hesitation in accepting surprised and
even slightly piqued him.  People were usually
proud to do small services for him.

They met again next day by arrangement; he
found her work practical and business-like, and she
was quick in decision like himself.  It was the first
of many visits.

.. vspace:: 2

Little by little Calvert dropped out of the fray;
having put his man in the arena, he could trust him
to hold his own against any opponent.  He was
beginning to feel his age.  But now at last he seemed
on the verge of reaping his reward for many yeas'
toil and struggle.  Farquharson had saved him
from going to the grave a disappointed man.  For
Calvert had loved Cummings like a son, and the
lad's change of front had dealt his uncle the sharpest
blow of his life.  The Roman Catholic priesthood
was, in Calvert's view, a network of intrigue and
deception, the betrayal of a man's heritage of
freedom; he looked upon Cummings as an enemy of
the State.

Calvert's interest had been purely impersonal
at first; courage is after all instinctive, and may
spring as easily from love of adventure as from
nobler motives.  "The crowded hour of life" is no
real test of character.  But Farquharson won him
in spite of himself.  He outstripped Cummings in
a stride.  Farquharson was born to give orders,
Cummings to obey them.  Calvert found himself
erecting a pedestal for the one, while for the other
he had made a home.

Calvert watched the growth of Farquharson's
friendship with Mrs. Brand with openly expressed
delight.  Farquharson needed softening.  The
situation might have proved a trifle awkward in some
cases, but Brand was a mere nonentity—an asp
whose sting had been drawn long ago.  Some years
before a matter of a somewhat shady business
transaction had brought the two men together; Brand
had presumed on his distant connection with
Calvert to use his name, and had been at once
repudiated by the elder man.  By now he had probably
forgotten the incident.  There had doubtless been
many transactions of a like nature in Brand's
career.

To Evelyn, these daily meetings with Farquharson
were the fulfilment of a great ambition.  She
had wanted this ideal companionship all her life;
the real "give and take" from which alone happy
marriages are formed, if men and women would but
realize the fact.  It seemed to Evelyn that to be
useful to such a man as Farquharson, to be at hand
whenever he wanted her, and away when her presence
might have been a distraction, to listen and
understand his aims while keeping her independent
judgment, to share the undramatic part of his work
and leave him the substantial success, was a task
any woman might be proud of.  She threw herself
with absolute ardour into his most minute interests
and schemes; after a time he trusted her even with
the outline of plans which had not yet taken tangible
shape, recognizing the value of her quick perceptions
and sincerity.

.. vspace:: 2

"You limit my acquaintances, but you yourself
know far too many people," said Farquharson one
day abruptly.  "They make claims upon you and
you give in to them.  When I left you the other
day there were four people waiting in the
dining-room, pensioners, claimants, I don't know what
they were, but they annoyed me.  You are a woman
who could do something if you set your mind to
it.  If these good folks want sympathy, let them
go to an idle or frivolous person who can afford to
spend on them the time you should devote to better
things.  Every one should have a set purpose in
life; trivial claims and small anxieties distract one
in spite of oneself."

"What set purpose can there be in the life of an
ordinary woman of no especial talent?" said
Evelyn.  "Only women of genius have real lives of
their own.  Most of us are like poor little
Alice—'part of the Red King's dream'—or some one
else's.  If I died to-morrow, some of my friends
would canonize me and the rest forget.  As far as
acquaintances go, one divides them into two sets:
those one likes to know, and those who like to know
one.  I am nice to the first because I want to be,
and nice to the second because I ought.  I am not
applying the rule to you, of course—what is selfishness
in a woman is singleness of purpose in a man,
remember."

Farquharson frowned.

"Leave cynicism to others.  By the way, we
haven't looked at my morning letters yet."

.. vspace:: 2

At the Wereminsters' dinner party a week later,
Farquharson was paired off with Dora Beadon,
encased as usual in her unyielding armour of
self-esteem.  It was a compliment for which he was not
perhaps sufficiently grateful.  He always found
Miss Beadon dull, but to-night she harassed him
with a stream of impertinent questions intended to
show sympathy: "Why on earth don't you do
this?  Haven't you really done the other?
Everybody says——" and so forth.

"One hears of you on all sides," she said archly.
"Oh, we all know about these little West Kensington
visits of yours; there will be quite a scandal
if you don't take care.  I suppose you'll think we're
all dreadful gossips, but you can't expect charming
women to talk nothing but politics all day, can
you?  Personally, I always think a man wants a
thorough change when he comes home.  Suppose
he's in an office, for instance, why, the last thing
in the world he should do when he gets back
is to talk over troublesome business with his wife."

"I've heard a good many unsympathetic and
incapable wives urge that as an excuse for obvious
neglect," said Farquharson dryly.

"Well, I know I never let my father say a word
about politics or anything he's really interested
in—it's ever so much better for him to hear what
I've been doing all day," said Dora, defending
herself.

"Salt, please."

Miss Beadon reddened slightly and tried another
tack.

"You lazy person, there is some on your left.
You've got an ally worth having in Evelyn Brand,
by the bye.  Father says he has never known even
her work so hard.  She's rather an extraordinary
person too, you know.  She can make any one do
anything she wants.  Well, I suppose one shouldn't
say it"—she laughed consciously—"but pretty
women generally can, can't they?"

"Mrs. Brand's power doesn't depend on mere
looks," said Farquharson shortly.  Across the table,
as he spoke, he met the full look of her animated
face, too pale for perfect beauty to-night, yet
glowing with what, had he been a man whose mind lent
itself readily to religious thoughts, he would have
called the light of the spirit.

There were other far prettier women present;
there were many more notable in the world's eyes.
He looked with distaste at his colourless companion—her
name would be published in the papers to-morrow
and Evelyn's omitted.  Yet scarcely one
topic of conversation was broached that night at
table, of which Mrs. Brand had not some special
knowledge—knowledge so eminently marketable
that, had it been in her husband's possession, the
little West Kensington flat might soon have been
exchanged for more congenial quarters.

"Fancy your not admiring her," Miss Beadon
rattled on, delighted.  "She's certainly very white
to-night, and of course her features never were
good.  But if one's fond of a person their looks
make little or no difference to one.  Love is the only
permanent beauty doctor, I think."

Miss Beadon always gave out her platitudes with
the triumph of one throwing a searchlight on a
gloomy corner.

"Don't you agree with me?" she asked coquettishly,
mentally determining to bombard Meavy
with the same phrase later.

"Love's a subject I know nothing of, I'm
afraid," said Farquharson impatiently.  Yet he
paid Dora Beadon the tribute of remembering one
of the many hints she had let fall.  What she
implied was true; he did already owe Evelyn a big
debt of gratitude.  The hours she had spent in his
service, the letters she had written, the advice she
had given on social matters, even the parties she
had planned, the expense to which she had been
put, her sympathy—he had taken it all for granted,
as though she were his wife and it his due.

Thinking it over later, he was aghast at his own
lack of consideration.  Then, characteristically, he
made the best of things.  Woman was made for
man after all.  Was it Joubert or some other
French philosopher who said one should choose
for a wife only such a woman as he would choose
for a friend were she a man?

A wife!  The word, coming so readily to his
lips, startled him.  A wife ... a helpmate and
companion, the tenderest of mistresses, and best of
friends.  For a moment he saw a vision, a picture of
what his life might be with such a woman....

Such thoughts were not for him.  Abruptly leaning
out of the motor, he hailed a passer-by, a mere
casual acquaintance, who was delighted to be
recognized.  He even drove on to the man's rooms in an
access of quite unusual cordiality.

The little interruption dispersed the vision.  But
it came back to him, as dreams will, when he turned
on the light in his empty room and stood for a
moment absently by the table laden with its mass
of documents and official pamphlets.  It looked bare
and cold—not right, somehow.

Wife!  He tried to close the door of his heart
upon the thought in vain.  He said Evelyn's name
aloud, and smiled as he re-christened her.

"Evelyn—that would do for the world.  To me
she must always be Eve, the first woman."

He drew a long breath, and set to work.  The
rough draft of accounts in connection with a native
industry he was opening out in Taorna had to be
checked and examined before dawn.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-VI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

"Those who want to lead must never hesitate about
sacrificing their friends."—LORD BEACONSFIELD.

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Beadon returned from the Wereminsters'
dinner party even more than usually self-satisfied.
The Prime Minister himself had had a chat with her,
while as for Farquharson, he was constantly at her
side.  Another conquest, she supposed—one worth
considering this time, for Farquharson was in his
way a *parti*.

After all, as nominal housekeeper to her father,
life had little more to offer her.  Even the best
servants like a change of place occasionally!  The
wife of an important man gets more attention than
his daughter.  And some important post would
doubtless fall to Farquharson's share ere long.
Dora had only to mention the matter to her father,
to let fall a few of those ready tears which so quickly
subjugate a man's will and reason, to get her way
later, when there was a change of Government.  Her
father was notoriously—she flattered herself most
men were—indulgent where her wishes were concerned.

Miss Beadon blissfully believed that all her
acquaintances who had done well in life, owed the
position to her patronage.  "So and so would never
have got that post by himself.  Why, I had to beard
the Prime Minister in his den and do my poor little
best to get round him before he consented," she
would say, in reference to some coveted appointment
which obvious merit, or a signed note from
Beadon, had procured.  Outsiders, recognizing her
vanity and her father's weakness, played up to both
because the game paid so well.  If to make Miss
Beadon believe she was the *deus ex machina* of all
social and political events was to secure her father
as ally, it was worth while to frame a few extravagant
compliments, and spend half-an-hour or so,
which might have been more amusingly employed,
in her company.

Miss Beadon fell a very easy prey to the schemes
of intriguing mothers.  She was besieged with
requests for recommendations by indolent young men
who had no qualifications for any opening which
demanded work.  At public meetings she was
invariably pursued by wives of provincial town-clerks
eager to advance their husbands' opportunities; she
plaintively complained that at bazaars her stall was
the rest-house of nervous mothers with marriageable
daughters, who reckoned on Miss Beadon's philanthropy
to procure them coveted invitations.  Bred
in the atmosphere of favour, and herself totally
unable to tell good from bad, Dora distributed
smilingly innumerable small acts of favour, of which
either her father, or some minister anxious to please
him, ultimately paid the cost.  Miss Beadon had
the credit of a good action, which was all that
mattered so far as she was concerned.  One questions if
the Holy Father grants his indulgences with as
much inward satisfaction as did Dora.

The night after the Wereminsters' dinner party,
the Beadons and some others had been invited by
Hare to meet at his rooms and hear a famous
scientist lecture on radium.  Functions like these
bored Dora inexpressibly, but to-night her maid
was closeted with her for over two hours before she
succeeded in pleasing her dictatorial mistress.  For
Farquharson was to be present, and Miss Beadon
had always laid to heart the adage that attractive
clothes complete a man's subjugation.

So Felice, who had been kept up until the small
hours of the previous morning, was made to arrange
and unpick, to drape and re-drape, to alter and
exchange article upon article of Dora's attire.

"Mademoiselle est ravissante!" she cried at
length, with the easy lie of the Latin races, as, the
task completed, Miss Beadon surveyed her reflection
in the mirror with a satisfied smile.  From
crown to foot she represented wealth, and yet how
simple was the whole costume!  The dress itself
was suitable only for a *débutante* in her first
youth—Dora always dressed twenty years younger than
her looks—but her jewels were worth a fortune.

Brand, arriving at the party with his wife rather
late in the evening, noticed them at once and took
in their significance.

"You have excelled even yourself to-night," he
said, adopting the tone of solemn fervour in which
a very pious Catholic speaks of relics.  "Better not
say such things, perhaps, but circumstances are
sometimes too strong for one.  Yours is a regal
power, Miss Beadon, yet you dispense your favours
with quite exquisite simplicity."

Dora looked up, surprised.  Up to the present
she had found little in common with Brand; now
she began to think she had misjudged him.

"Oh, well, it's always nice to help one's
friends," she said, awkwardly fingering her fan.
"Evelyn does it too, doesn't she?  She and
Mr. Farquharson are quite inseparable, I hear."

"Oh, Evelyn——"  Brand shrugged his shoulder,
and, obeying the invitation of her gesture, seated
himself deferentially beside her.  "What of that?
Compare her years to yours, my dear young lady.
Why, she's like a mother to Farquharson.  I dare
say they are really about the same age, but
Evelyn's hard life makes her appear many years his
senior.  Now you, young and fresh——"  He
paused and sighed.  "Ah, Richard Farquharson's
a lucky fellow in more ways than one," he said
daringly.

"I can't think what you mean.  How quite
absurd of you!" giggled Miss Beadon.

.. vspace:: 2

"You must really ask the Brands to dine next
week, father," she announced a little later.
"We've all been mistaken in Mr. Brand, I'm sure;
there's ever so much more in him than one would
think.  We had a most interesting talk together
just now.  And I'm rather sorry for him, too.  I'm
afraid dear Evelyn doesn't make him happy.  She's
such an icicle, and from what he said to me just now
I'm sure he's a man of extraordinarily deep feelings.
There's nothing sadder, dear, is there, than
to see a woman sow sympathy broadcast as Evelyn
does, and yet not spare a grain of it for her
husband?"

.. vspace:: 2

Easy indifference to the faults and failings of
ourselves and our personal friends carry a man
unscathed through many a social dilemma, but
there are certain obvious misdemeanours to which
he cannot well be blind.  Sin—if it be but brave in
face of danger—does not actually alienate us as
mere meanness does.  Love in itself, for instance,
glows with so white a flame that its reflection lights
the face of any woman who has given herself for
love alone.  Such a one hangs hourly upon the
cross of wounded honour, crowding more sacrifices
for her lover into a day than most of us can compass
in a lifetime.  But women who lie for the sake of
lying, who secure confidences by base means to
sell or betray them at the first prick of jealousy, and
men who run up gambling debts and leave their
womenkind to pay them, are on a different level.
They return, like dogs, to their vomit, and the
stench is surely foul in the nostril of God and man
alike.

Yet even for these allowance is made—so prone
is society to condone the faults of its immediate
circle, if the men are good-natured enough to entertain
dull dowagers at dinner parties, and the women
in question have large enough balances at their
bankers' to give large sums in public charity or to
found philanthropic annuities.  A witty raconteur,
Brand's eye for detail, and memory for those trifles
which sum up many of life's minor comforts, had
stood him in good stead for some years.  Luckily
for him, they failed him only when he could count
upon his wife's popularity to keep him in the
position he had once held unaided.  Some men "drop
out or go under" without wincing; Brand was not
of the number.  His hold upon his social niche,
such as it was, was insecure enough, at best; he
meant to grasp it, to which end he laid successful
siege to Dora Beadon.

He was no coward; he faced facts unflinchingly
when alone.  Only a fool makes the same mistake
twice in life, the wise man turns mistakes to his own
ends.  He knew well enough where he had gone
wrong....  Handicapped at the outset, he had
still won some prizes early in his career.  The first
years of his social life were eminently successful;
he played a good hand at whist, and learned the
knack of paying compliments discreetly.  He made
himself indispensable to the type of person anxious
to give parties, but unluckily a trifle hazy as to how
the actual invitations should be worded.  He dabbled
tentatively in stocks and shares, with singular
good fortune, as it appeared to those who did not
know his methods, paying part of his way by taking
boys abroad at the request of their parents.  After
a time it became known amongst his friends that
"Brand was a good fellow, always ready with a
pony when you needed one!"—at sixty per
cent. interest, and the amount doubled if the day of
reckoning brought no cheque.  His influence grew;
amongst those who had not borrowed from him he
began to be quoted as a man to apply to when you
were in difficulties of any doubtful nature, one
who would help you pleasantly to evade the
consequences of almost any imaginable action.
Oh yes, Brand, too, had been a favourite in his day.

But night falls suddenly upon tropical days; it
had so fallen upon Brand's.

He dated his ill-luck to the hour of meeting
Cummings.  Yet he had never paid more attention
to the development of any scheme.  At the
beginning everything seemed to play into his hands.
His idea, of course, was ultimately to oust
Cummings from his position as Calvert's heir, and
afterwards very delicately to insinuate himself into the
vacant place.  He manoeuvred Cummings through
the open door of the Catholic Church with quite
consummate skill—no female convert could have
thrown herself into the task with greater ardour.
From thence to the priesthood, after Calvert's
indignant repudiation of Cummings and his creed,
was an easy, and obviously a final, step.  But the
sincerity of Cummings' detachment had lifted him
to heights which Brand could never realize.  Never
for one moment did he regret his vocation, his only
sorrow being at his relations' pain and the
withdrawal of his uncle's trust.  Actual financial loss
affected him not at all.  The priest's eyes now were
as clear and steady as when, a boy, he had stood
upon the Glune road, nervously trying to match his
untried blade of argument against the older man's
skilled weapons.  His smile, when it came, illumined
his whole face.  If it were possible—yet how
could it be possible?—Brand might have thought
him happy in his life.

So much for the scheme; Calvert himself upset
its fulfilment.  Rumours of Brand's treatment of
his sisters had reached the older man, and on the
single occasion when, in the past, Brand and he
had come across each other, he taxed him openly
with having done to death two innocent women.
More than this.  He accused him of having cleverly
engineered Cummings into "that hotbed of lying
and deception, the Roman Church."  He stated
facts so clearly that the pose of outraged honour
and hurt susceptibility, with which Brand at first
met his attack, broke down completely.  The very
setting of the interview was undignified.  It took
place in the hall, with butler and footman within
hearing.

"There's a notice up, inside, no dogs admitted,"
said Calvert grimly.

Advancing years weakened convictions; Brand
always hoped that with increasing age Calvert's
opinions might change.  But with Farquharson's
entry into Taorna, the last hope died.  It was
doubly unfortunate for Brand that, at this period,
his name should often have been mentioned in
connection with a notorious case where there was a
strong inference of blackmail, even if it could not
actually be proved.

Oh, those hysterical women, with their love of
keeping letters!

All this took place some years before Brand's
marriage.  He went abroad again until the storm
blew over.  This rumour, at least, had never
reached Evelyn.  Had others, he wondered?  In
all such matters she was so strictly rigid; he often
wondered if her uncompromising views of sin were
the result of temperament or convent education.
Uncompromising to sin, that is to say—not to the
sinner.  His wife seemed to separate action from
actor.  The sin itself was loathsome, repulsive—it
made her shrink.  The sinner was wounded, and
for him she had healing balms and ointments.  But
where another woman would have slurred over the
cause of the hurt, she spoke of it confidently by
name, confronting adultery or theft as she would
any other mortal combat.

"We talk of Magersfontein and Colenso," she
said once.  "If we'd met sin on another kind of
battle-field and been defeated, why should we be
ashamed to call the battle-field by its own name?"

That Evelyn was original her husband conceded—at
times he even took a certain pride in her looks
and ways.  They were useful.  But her attitude to
him personally was unendurable.  She had never
loved him, of course—such a man does not ask for
love; he would not have recognized it had he found
it.  On the other hand, he had never claimed
anything from her to which she had not made instant
response so far as she was able.  She had swept
his floors and cooked for him, in their poorer days,
like the docile wife of any village labourer; she had
mended his reputation as well as his clothes, Hare
once said, chuckling.  When he was ill she nursed
him; when he was well she stayed with him or left
him as he wished.  But day by day the wall that
separated them grew higher; he had married a
pliable child, who had become a woman in an hour.

If he spoke of it at all—which was seldom, for,
try as he would, he could find no tangible ground
for complaint—it was only to rail at her religion.

"Those damned priests and directors are behind
this pose of yours.  I'll break it down, as well as
you, before I've done with you."

In an access of fury one day he dragged from her
bedroom wall a Delia Robbia plaque of the Madonna
and Child, before which a lamp was burning,
and flung it to the ground.

Evelyn was smiling when he turned to her.

"Do you think one's faith depends on such
things?" she asked, carefully gathering up the
broken pieces.  "They're quite immaterial.  Your
lover's picture is in your heart, whether you have
his photograph or not.  I'm sorry you broke this,
it is one of the few valuable things we have.  You
may break or burn every outward needless symbol
that I have, if you choose—I'll put them away if
you dislike them.  What you do or what you don't
do doesn't touch anything in me.  You killed my
love long ago, and as for faith—that's just between
myself and God."

She blew out the lamp, when he cursed her, and
it was never lighted again.

Points of view such as these were indescribably
irritating.  In his excuse it must be admitted that
with increasing years Brand's physical health had
grown worse; long paroxysms of pain often seized
him when he was alone.  Once he had been man
enough to fight against his irritability; he tended
it now, watering it with his sense of ill-usage, and
kept its fruits for his wife.  Her unshaken calm,
her peace, her air of quiet rest and strength when
he was nervous and suffering, tried him beyond
words; there were times when he could have
stopped short at nothing to wreck her control, to
subdue the unconquerable spirit that passed
through the mines and tunnels of the world, as
though the way was lit by an enduring light.  The
idea grew to an obsession.  He himself was powerless
to hurt her; he must act through some one else.
Life had been unfair to him throughout; it had
marred him first, then broken him.  Well, it should
mar and break her too.

And if in the fall some other enemy could be
made to suffer too, so much the better ... some
one to whom the gods had been lavish, as in the
case of Richard Farquharson.

Farquharson was drawn to Evelyn, Evelyn was
drawn to Farquharson; there was no doubt of that.
And Miss Beadon meant to marry Farquharson,
and, by herself, would never accomplish her
purpose.  Why, there were all the elements of a
successful comedy in view if Brand could only teach
the puppets their parts.

.. vspace:: 2

An opportunity came shortly.  A few days later,
as Brand was sitting in his little smoking-room,
where the best, the most comfortable chairs and
sofas were collected, he heard his wife's knock at
the door.

He glanced at the open letter in her hand through
half-closed eyes as she approached.

She held it out for him to read.

"Mr. Calvert's chauffeur has just brought this.
The Bedfords have lent him their box at the opera
to-night; the Beadons are going, and he wants us
too.  The man is waiting for an answer.  We're
free, of course, but you don't care for Wagner
opera, do you?"

Brand took the letter and read it with unusual
deliberation.

"'*Tristan and Isolde*, and please be in your place
a quarter of an hour before the orchestra strikes up.
We are a party of six,'" he quoted slowly.  "That
means Calvert, Beadon, Miss Dora, you and I and
Farquharson, I suppose."

"Am I to refuse or accept?" asked Evelyn.
"You look very tired to-night.  Are you up to
going?"

"I'm right enough," said Brand.  "I think—I'm
sure, in fact, it will amuse me, although, perhaps,
that wasn't exactly the intention of the composer."

He looked at her from head to foot critically, then
fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a
sovereign.

"Get some flowers to wear—malmaison carnations
for choice, if the neighbourhood can produce
them.  The colour suits you.  This is the first
invitation Calvert has ever given me, it mustn't be
the last.  Remember, I rely upon you to do all you
can in that direction.  Wear white to-night by the
bye, you're one of the few women who can; and if
the carnations fail, get roses of the same shade."

"Thank you," said Evelyn, lingering still.  So
sudden, so complete a change of manner made her
vaguely uneasy.  Brand never gave her money
without expecting its full value back in kind.

"Give yourself plenty of time to dress, Evelyn.
I want you to look your best.  It's really an
occasion."

He was still smiling as she closed the door.







.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-VII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

"Je connais trop tard quel est l'essential!"—E. ROSTAND.

.. vspace:: 2

"Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you've come to look
after me," said Miss Beadon; "I was getting quite
embarrassed amongst this tribe of men."

She tried to pull Evelyn playfully down beside
her as she spoke into the vacant seat she had kept
between herself and her father, but Calvert interposed.

"I want Mrs. Brand next me, Miss Beadon.
We've business to talk over."  He lowered his
voice.  "I'm going to plunge into things as usual.
Farquharson and I have just been discussing his
plan of campaign.  You've worked wonders for
him already; I'm trusting to you to concentrate
your influence at this critical moment.  He's been
seen and felt already, but he's not actually been
heard in public.  Now I know you've great
influence with Beadon——"

Farquharson, entering the box at that moment;
overheard the last sentence, and came straight to
Mrs. Brand.

"Is my chief worrying you again on my behalf?"

"I refuse to be drawn by that lure," Evelyn
laughed lightly.  "Don't be ridiculous.  I haven't
done a single thing for you as yet.  Mr. Calvert's
right, you know; you ought to speak soon in public.
It's the only way to touch the man with the vote,
the great uneducated majority.  Why, I've seen
two or three thousand people at the Albert Hall
absolutely swaying to one man's words.  Oh,
oratory is the power of powers.  To play on your
audience like an instrument—there's nothing so
telling.  When *The Ambassador* was being acted
at the St. James's Theatre, the manager used to let
me go behind and listen in the wings.  The big
scene was the one between Violet Vanbrugh and
Fay Davis, you know, and Violet Vanbrugh had
certain words to say—I've forgotten the actual
phrase—which always either warmed the house to
frenzy or left it cold.  I used to stand with my eyes
shut waiting for that speech—one became in time
so sensitive to the atmosphere of the house as to
know before it was given exactly how it would be
received.  I've never heard you speak; but I know
just how the world's going to take your speech
when you make one."

"Yet I haven't done much in that line," said
Farquharson.  "The plain audience I'm accustomed
to is quite different to critical London.  Our
whole system in Taorna is different to your system
here, of course.  We can't afford to have wastrels
in our Assembly.  The people elect their Council
from amongst men who've been proved to have the
island's interest at heart.  And then each man has
his own right of judgment.  When an appeal comes
before us, we vote according to our individual
opinion, not according to party.  The President
has the casting vote.  We put men on their honour,
as it were; we don't necessarily oppose because we
belong to the Opposition, nor do we change our
opinions unanimously because we're afraid to face
a general election.  If at any time during his tenure
of office a minister is found to have failed in his
duty according to the opinion of a quorum of his
colleagues, he has to come before a sort of political
court-martial."

"I'm afraid our methods here are less straightforward,"
said Evelyn.  "I know of at least one by-election
where an inefficient candidate was pulled
through solely because his canvassers said he had
a sick wife whose death would be hastened if he
didn't get the seat."

"As a matter of fact he hadn't lived with her for
years, and neither of them took the least interest
in the other, but his agent waxed positively hysterical
over the sentimental aspect of the case.  Had
there been universal suffrage I've no doubt that
the wife would have plumped her vote for the rival
candidate," said Beadon.  "By the bye, Farquharson,
you're in favour of Tariff Reform, of course.
Mrs. Brand asked me the other day to persuade you
to speak for us at our monster meeting at the Albert
Hall next Monday.  You would be in good
company; we have a fine show of speakers."

"Delighted, of course," said Farquharson
impassively.  "It begins at eight o'clock, doesn't
it?"  He took out his note-book.

Brand eagerly interposed.

"Mr. Calvert has just promised to dine with us
that evening.  Will you come too?  Lady Wereminster
always invites my wife to her box; Lord
Meavy and Lord Creagh are coming too.  We shall
have to feed at an unearthly hour, but perhaps you
won't mind that under the circumstances."

"Thanks very much, I shall be delighted," said
Farquharson again.

Evelyn, amazed, leant back in her seat and
whispered to her husband under cover of her fan.

"I didn't know that they were coming.  When
did you ask them?"

Brand bent down, adjusting his opera-glasses.

"Don't give yourself away.  The others will be
glad enough to come if Calvert and Farquharson
do.  Once capture the coming man and others will
follow.  You must help me, Evelyn; it means
everything to me to have it known Calvert visits us."

"Of course I'll do my best.  Oh, hush!" said
Evelyn.  The orchestra had begun playing the first
notes of that exquisite prelude to *Tristan and Isolde*
which, *motif* by *motif*, leads from the first
confession of love by way of desire and magic and
mystery to the deliverance of death.

.. vspace:: 2

Wagner opera was to Farquharson a new experience.
He had come that night in a cynical enough
mood.  The darkness that enfolded the great assembly
in its mantle, the hush and tension under which
it laboured, listening without movement, rather as
one corporate body than as a crowd of separate
entities, struck him at first as a mere pose.  But
presently the power and strength and pathos of the
music carried him away as it carried others.  This
was real flesh and blood; impatience, ardour,
glory, the very song of the sea, transport and
passion, blending with underlying chords of human
sorrow—each in turn rang true.

And as he listened old memories came thronging
back, memories at once exquisite and painful.  For
now the sufferings of his childhood spread before
him like an allegory whose language his mature
eyes could read; they had been encrusted for years
with the ice of bitterness.  But here, under Evelyn's
influence, the ice had melted.  He detached himself,
the man, from the sturdy boyish figure which had
flinched and wavered, but yet never given way, and
saw how the fire of manhood had been kindled by
those hours of stress.  Wind and rain, storm and
torrent, had formed his character, and mountain
fastnesses had been his playground.  The whole
story of his childhood was a preparation for the
battle he was fighting now.  His ceaseless combats
with men and things, even the mimic raids and
sorties he had made as a child upon invisible foes,
had stood him in good stead later when struggle was
as infallibly his portion as it is the portion of certain
men to sleep beside the hearth.

But if life for him was a battle-field, it was no less
a battle-field for the woman at his side.  His foes
were worthy opponents, men of strength who
brought their artillery to bear upon his little
stronghold; hers were mere thieves of the night, but both
came armed with weapons that drew blood.

Apart in body, separated from each other by
every natural barrier, the wheel of the potter, whose
toil is endless, had shaped the rough clay of these
two human beings from very similar moulds.  The
voice of the great religion to which Evelyn
belonged has its unworthy exponents; it is not always
in a convent that the purest souls are reared.
"*Factus obediens usque ad mortem crucis*," is
sometimes chanted solemnly by those who betray
unconsciously the souls of others; who impose
little straws of restrictions upon backs already bent
to breaking by God's unswerving laws.  Should a
Catholic sin, the fault is shrieked from the
housetops, so high a standard is demanded of man or
woman who subscribes to that high faith.

Yet the limits of Catholicism and the limits of
Calvinism—apart as they seem—can touch.  The
bigot of the one may be as the bigot of the other.
The gospel of detachment had been preached to
Evelyn until, for a short time, she let herself drift
upon the waters of submission, and since habitual
and unquestioning obedience must crush in time the
strongest spirit, yielded in the matter of marriage
to the direction of her stepmother and father as she
would have yielded to that of a spiritual adviser.
Now, too late, she knew that for this retribution
would be exacted hourly, for God strikes—not as
men do, at the mere twigs and blossoms of
human frailty, but at the very roots of being.

Unconsciously the thoughts of the man and
woman in the box moved on converging lines and
met, as the music below swayed onward and
upward in Tristan and Isolde's exquisite duet.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "*Isolde*.  So stürben wir,
   |              Um ungetrennt—
   |  *Tristan*.  Ewig einig—
   |   *Isolde*.  Ohne End'—
   |  *Tristan*.  Ohn' Erwachen—
   |   *Isolde*.  Ohne Bangen—
   |  *Tristan*.  Namenlos
   |              In Leib' umfangen—
   |   *Isolde*.  Ganz uns selbst gegeben,
   |              Der Liebe nur zu leben?"
   |

The spell of the music, rising to that passionate
climax of the love song in the second act where
Night the Revealer points the way of human
transport to culminate in the superb Song of Death,
broke the earthly barriers of speculation, and two
souls in the audience called to each other as before
the judgment seat and became temporarily one.
Such things have been since the world came out of
chaos, and will be until it returns again to the void.
There is but one mate for each man and woman in
the world, and until they recognize the fact and
learn with patience to await that note of absolute
conviction which is the one infallible guide to
happiness, marriages will fail as they fail now,
and the Church will give its empty blessing to
those ill-assorted pairs whom God for ever leaves
unblessed.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "... Traut allein,
   |  Ewig heim....

   |  Du Isolde,
   |  Tristan ich,
   |  Nicht mehr Tristan,
   |  Nicht Isolde....

   |  Endloss ewig
   |  Ein-bewusst:
   |  Heiss erglühter Brust
   |  Hochste Leibes-Lust!"
   |

"I always wish that the music of *Peer Gynt*
could have been written by Wagner," said Evelyn.
"Think what he would have made of Anitas' last
words: and the magic of the Troll Kingdom, and
the great scene, as eerie in its way as the Brocken
scene in *Faust*—don't you really know it?  Towards
the end of the play, just before he meets the
Button-Moulder, Peer Gynt, the failure, is standing
alone on the moor with charred trees and desolation
all about him.  Mist has risen, and all the
world is full of little voices.  Tiny thread balls
sweep before him—they are the thoughts he should
have followed.  Dewdrops fall—his unshed tears;
withered leaves drift to and fro in his path and
dazzle him—watchwords he should have spoken;
broken straws lie at his feet—an epitome of his life.
It's all so like one's own life, void and valueless.
And yet things started well enough.  The very trees
flowered, the dewdrops were like gold in the sunshine,
and one heard pleasant voices in the woods,
as a child."

"I've been thinking of my childhood too
to-night," said Farquharson.  "My love for Glune
has been with me through everything.  Out in
Taorna, that night I was waiting in the Place of
Sepulchres, I had a dream—a vision, if you like to
call it so—and Glune stood before me, as brave, as
broken, as courageous as of old.  I could see the
gorse in bloom and the peewits circling round and
round, and Dan waiting patiently as he always
waited....  I shall never forget the day that dog
died mercifully, it was in my arms.  The man
who made this music must have been through
heaven and hell too in his day.  Glune has been
through both, and so have most of us Farquharsons."

   |  "I sent my soul through the Invisible,
   |    Some letters of that after-life to spell;
   |  And by and by my soul return'd to me
   |    And answer'd, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell,'"

Evelyn quoted below her breath.

"Oh, aren't those lovely words?" broke in Dora
Beadon, impatient at having been left so long to
the companionship of Calvert and her father.
"Rossetti's, aren't they?  Oh, Omar Khayyám, is
it?  Well, he's much the same.  One of my
*attachés*, a student at the Academy, promised to set
them to music for me."

"Miss Beadon is a great devotee of music," said
Brand gravely; "she has a pianola and three
gramophones."

Evelyn laughed.

"Dora dislikes musical people as much as I do.
We spread the gramophone story to frighten them
away, don't we, Dora?"

"I shouldn't mind them so much if they were
only clean," said Miss Beadon.  "Or if they wore
better clothes!  There's always a ready-made
thirty-shilling-the-suit look about them, don't you think,
Mr. Farquharson?  By the way, Evelyn, you
mustn't annex Mr. Farquharson any longer; I
really insist upon his coming over here for the last act."

Calvert's eyes and Brand's met for once in the
intimacy of mutual amusement.  Dora Beadon was
laying her snares a trifle flagrantly.

Well, Richard might do worse, Calvert thought.
With so uncompromising a face and figure Miss
Beadon should certainly be a docile wife, and she
had money and position.  Calvert had seen many
brilliant matches fail, two stars outshining one
another and falling into oblivion.  He looked
with awakened interest at the girl; the shadow of the
box was kind to her, and her pleasure at having
drawn Farquharson from Evelyn had given her for
once an almost intelligent expression.  He smiled
benignly and drew Evelyn's attention to the pair,
with a genial little nod of approval.

.. vspace:: 2

It was only at parting that Farquharson got an
opportunity of speaking again to Mrs. Brand.

Then—"I owe the Albert Hall Meeting to you?"
he said, with meaning.  "It's another debt.  No,
don't deny it; you help every one.  What was said
of Madame Recamier is true of you, '*Elle était
pour ses amis la soeur de charité de lour peines, de
leur frailtés, el même un peu de leur fautes.*'"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

"The Sacraments are seven—Baptism, Confirmation, Holy
Communion, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, Matrimony....
Each has its own particular office: all give grace;
but besides ordinary graces, they are intended to bestow the
special grace which may be required to meet particular
wants."—BISHOP BAGSHAWE.

.. vspace:: 2

"A lady to see you, sir."

"Oh, bother!"  Cummings took the card
impatiently, and then gave a startled exclamation.
"Tell her I'll see her in half-a-minute."

The sight of Evelyn's card revived old memories;
he smiled, absently fingering it for a moment before
entering the little sitting-room.  It was years since
he had seen her.  He remembered her as an
undisciplined child; a small person with ideals which
were never realized, an odd mixture of dreams and
contradictions.  Knowing Brand and Brand's
capabilities as he did, no one was more surprised
than Cummings at the marriage.

Partly for love of the cause, partly to kill
thought, he had done the work of ten in his district,
until at last his health gave way completely.  A
stray bishop paying pastoral visits in the
neighbourhood took him in hand, and summarily
ordered him away at a moment's notice on a
sea-voyage and six months' leave.  Medical opinions
at home were slightly alarming; on his arrival in
London he was packed off to Brighton within
twenty-four hours.

As he opened the door of the little sitting-room
he thought at first that it was the old unchanged
Evelyn of childhood who greeted him so warmly.
But to read men's souls is part of the priestly office,
and there was something in her air of enforced
gaiety which made him look at her more closely.

"You dear!" she said, holding his hands in
hers as if they were a source of strength.  "Isn't
this a nice surprise?  Lord Creagh offered to drive
me down, and I couldn't resist the chance of
routing you out."

"You are just one of the few people I wanted
to see," said Cummings.  "One of my last remaining
links with the past.  I won't have another soul
admitted while you're here.  You'll let me smoke,
won't you?  I want to hear about everything
and everybody.  I'm going to have my say first,
yours comes later.  If you talk as much as you
used, I shan't get a look in when once you've
started."

She became more at ease as he spoke.  He pulled
an arm-chair up to the empty grate, and wedged a
shiny black horse-hair cushion at her back.

"Now begin about home, please.  Is my
mother's complexion still like a Greuze?  How
absolutely lovely she was once!  Some one told me
that my father had sold his hunters and taken to
driving out in a governess car behind a fat pony.
Surely that isn't true—they've not lost money, have
they?"

"He is very changed," said Evelyn, hesitating.
"He has become a total abstainer.  Don't look so
aghast, Jack; I believe in a way it suits him.  A
year ago he had a stroke which shook his nerves
a good deal, and your mother is a chronic invalid,
you know.  She was thrown from the box-seat of
a coach at the four-in-hand meet three years ago.
We think some sort of vertigo must have seized her."

She looked pityingly at the bent form of the man
beside her.

"We can't always be young, dear Jack," she
said, with her eyes full of pain.  "I always think
the most obvious compensation of old age is its
inability to feel, as we younger people do.  The
blows which fall on old people scarcely seem to
shake their serenity.  But they shatter us.  Oh yes,
it must be nice to be old.  Your parents are
marvellous considering all they have gone through.
And, you see, you were their life, their all, and
they won't let themselves be happy in your peace.
Oh, my dear boy, don't look like that; things will
come right in time—at least that's what I'm always
telling other people," she added, faltering a little.

Cummings walked up and down the room for a
moment or two before answering.

"*Pone, Domini, custodian ori meo....*  Yes,
we say those things to others, but they don't
always convince us.  There are times when
horrible spiritual dryness grips you, and you grope
for days and weeks in absolute darkness, knowing
that you yourself have raised the veil between you
and the light."

"Sacrifice and death—somebody said those were
the only terms on which the God of life has made
life to exist," said Evelyn softly.  "The French
talk of the soul's secret garden as though it were
a place of promise and perfume.  I always think
one's secret garden is Gethsemane.  And sweat
broke out even on Christ's brow in Gethsemane,
you know.  'All bound together with one chain of
darkness, and to themselves more grievous than
the darkness.'"

"But the saints had a very great light," said
Cummings.  He shook his head back with a
characteristic little gesture of decision.  "Do you know
what it is, Evelyn, suddenly, for no reason, when
you are saying the same prayers in the same way,
kneeling on the same step, practising the same
austerities, whatever they may be, neither more nor
less, to have your hardness break down and your
heart like a little child's again?  That has come
before; it will, it must, come again."

Evelyn sighed wearily.

"It seems to me that sometimes one believes with
one's heart and sometimes with one's head.  I
suppose the best of all is when the two work together.
One can plant flowers in other people's gardens
even when they won't flourish in one's own back
yard.  It's the same principle as telling a rosary.
After you've hammered out half-a-dozen Pater and
a hundred or so Aves, they begin to take some
meaning, don't they?  'Vain repetitions' have
their comfort after all.  I heard such a nice story
the other day about two dear Evangelical old ladies.
At seventy-five and eighty, foreseeing the near
approach of death, they began to take lessons on the
harp, because they thought the knowledge could be
turned to account later on in Paradise.

"Oh, delicious!" said Cummings.  He pulled
the blind up, so that the light fell more fully on
Evelyn's face.  "I've finished whining.  Now tell
me how the world has been treating you for the
last few years."

Evelyn moved away restlessly to the window.

"What a nasty mean trick to let in that glare.
You used to tease me as a child," she said from the
back of the room.  "What made you take these
stuffy rooms, Jack?  They're very ugly and
uncomfortable."

"I didn't anticipate the visits of my female
friends," said Cummings.  "Come here, Evelyn;
be a good girl and—you know the rest.  No, I'm
not chaffing now—you're bothered, aren't you?"

"I rather wish I hadn't come, Grand Inquisitor,"
said Evelyn.  "Well, put down those glasses then;
they worry me."  She came and stood behind his
chair.  "Things are so horribly mixed up, Jack.
One thinks perhaps it's—dangerous to go to a
special place and see a special person—and then
some one who has the right compels one to.  Do
you think what St. Philip Neri said about the way
of escape was true?"

"Ungrammatical—but fairly concise for a
woman.  By the bye, I always gave St. Paul the
credit of the remark you quote," said Cummings,
his eyes twinkling.

"I wasn't thinking of that obvious text," said
Evelyn triumphantly.  "Capecelatro says what I
mean—'Paradise was not made for cowards.'  St. Philip
always told one to face foes visible and
invisible, as you know.  But"—she bowed her
head—"there was one particular temptation he told
us to fly from the moment we recognized even the
barest shadow of possibility of its coming near us."

There was a little pause.

"Yes?"

"Oh, I can look you in the face," said Evelyn
hurriedly, coming forward.  "It's not quite a
temptation, Jack.  A shadow, rather, that I'm flung
against."

"But a substantial shadow."

"I'm shut up in the room with it," said Evelyn.
"I believe I'm exaggerating.  The whole thing
may just be a senseless scruple, or vanity, and
yet——"

"A cloud no bigger than a man's hand on the
horizon," said Cummings softly.

Evelyn sat down.

"I suppose I'd better tell you all about it.  I
believe I meant to from the first.  And yet there's
nothing really to tell.  You remember when I was
a child I always wanted to be in everything—at
the head of it, as a rule.  Well, I honestly have been
able to help one or two people since—it's the old
childish vanity again, perhaps.  There's one special
person I've met often, and been a little—only a
very little—useful to; everything has combined to
bring us together, interest, ambition, sympathy.
You see, the man doesn't trust women, but he
trusts me—vanity again, I suppose you'll say.
Sometimes I make excuses; I say not at home, and
then he goes away."  She stopped for a moment.
"Then a note comes from his great friend, asking
some little favour, saying that only I can do for
him the special thing that is just wanted at the
moment, and so it all begins again.  The man's
a hard man naturally, and I want to soften him.
He's more gentle than he was, and kinder.  He
doesn't believe in anything; that's another point.
I wish he could meet you, or some one like you
who has fought battles and found faith.  I can't
talk about those things—I never have; I don't think
born Catholics often do; we're lazier, perhaps, than
converts.  But he guesses what it all means to me,
I fancy."

Cummings waited.

"I feel like a rat in a cage sometimes," said
Evelyn passionately.  "I gnaw a bar of my cage and
make a passage, and then I'm put into another
cage with stronger bars and told to stay there."

"Come to the light," said Cummings.  "Yes,
I thought so.  You're overwrought and overdone.
Well, I say to you as I should say to any other
woman, 'Go away.'  Remember the accommodation
muscles of one's soul need rest just like those
of one's eyes.  Their focus gets strained too.  And
there's another point."  He hesitated for a moment.
This was hard to say under the circumstances,
knowing Brand as he did.  "Something about
marriage.  Remember that marriage garments have
to be fitted like any others; they don't always suit
at the first trial or the last; but, unlike other clothes,
you may neither sell them nor give them away."

He turned away.  His window opened on to
a narrow side-street; a hawker selling decayed
vegetables and flowers was calling his wares a few doors
away.  Children, playing hop-scotch on the
pavement below, wrangled and screamed over the game.
From the Western Road came the jar and clatter
of motor omnibuses.  Everything was noisy and
turbulent.

"So I'm to go away," Evelyn said at last,
blankly, drawing a deep breath.  "That's your
decision.  Well, I suppose you're right.  The real
country must be very sweet now.  Late the other
night, coming back from Weybridge, we stopped
by the bridge to hear the nightingales in the woods,
just about midnight.  I know a tiny cottage where
I can go quite by myself and be rural.  There's
a farm near which is kept by the kindest, fattest
woman I've ever seen—just like a very amiable
porpoise.  She has cows and poultry, and once she let
me try to milk a cow.  It took me a quarter of an
hour even to get the bottom of the pail damp.
Suppose I go there later, Jack?  There's a big meeting
at the Albert Hall next week, which I've absolutely
promised to do some work for, and go to."

"Take your cottage, by all means, but please
have mercy on the cows," said Cummings.
"You'll get off as soon as you can, won't you?"

They stood for a moment looking at each
other—friends whose paths might probably never cross
again.  Then Evelyn went out with bent head.
Cummings watched her go.  When she was out of
sight he made the sign of the cross and sat down
wearily in his chair.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

"A woman wishes and believes; a man wills and achieves.
The wish of the woman ripens into a faith; the will of the man
hardens into a fact."—J. S. BLACKIE.

.. vspace:: 2

From floor to ceiling the Albert Hall, which
normally contains ten thousand people, was packed to
overflowing.

Tickets for the great Tariff Reform Demonstration
had been begged, borrowed and bargained for;
it was said that a newly made peer had given a
hundred guineas for a box.  Orderly files of subdued
men and women—the prevailing characteristics of
an English crowd are melancholy and dejection—stretched
spirally like a huge serpent, outside each
separate door, awaiting the remote chance of
returned seats.  Hawkers had pursued them to the
edge of the barrier, chaffing them and harassing
them with a motley row of wares—gaudy painted
flags and ribbon badges, highly coloured and
totally unreliable programmes of the evening's
performance, printed on coarse handkerchiefs,
Japanese fans and cheap scent, photographs of the
leading members of the League, postcard views of their
homes and pets, sticks of chocolate, strips of
gay-coloured tissue papers tied together with string
and known to the initiated as "ticklers."  It was
a typical crowd except for its magnitude: street
loafer, cab-runner, British workman, bank clerk
and wide-eyed child who never stopped eating
oranges, the suburban man of business with his
family, the socialist reformer whose personal
habits made his immediate neighbourhood unwholesome,
the cynic who complained aloud of his own
special wrongs and the evils of the Empire, the
people's orator who swelled with importance and
big words, and spoke with patronage of the
King—all were there.

The night was still young, and the policemen,
still good-natured, bore with patience the ceaseless
effort of the crowd to break down the barriers.
Again and again they piloted such privileged beings
as had tickets through the seething, jostling lines
of massed humanity; no easy matter, in view of
momentarily increasing numbers.  Good-natured
still, they bore the banter and abuse of the great
army of the ticketless as the crowd swayed to and
fro with love of excitement, that strange passion for
"seeing things"—from however uncomfortable a
position—which stirs most human breasts.

"London may have its ten men or its million on
the brink of absolute starvation, but while the
half-penny papers exist, it can count upon a given
number of spectators wasting hour after hour of idleness
outside any public building where an important
function is in progress," said Lady Wereminster,
arriving early.

Inside the hall itself, the brilliant gas-jets lit a
brilliant throng.

The gallery was packed so closely as to suggest
a probable need of the nursing sisters and ambulances
outside—now and again a solitary figure in
the background, man or woman, was lifted upon
the shoulders of the person in front to catch a
momentary glimpse of the hall below.  But nearly
everywhere, spaces accustomed to hold one as a
rule held two on this occasion; in the body of the
hall whole extra rows of stalls were added.  The
padded arm-chairs in the boxes had been taken out
and cane seats substituted, and in the larger boxes
so many as twenty or thirty people were assembled.
Amongst these were some of the most notable and
distinguished men in England.  Statesmen,
diplomats, men who had helped to uphold or save their
country, bishops, admirals, generals, explorers,
war-correspondents, critics, leaders of society and
commerce.  Many women were in evening dress;
some wore jewels.  Lady Wereminster was holding
a reception afterwards to meet the chief speakers of
the Tariff Reform League.

Almost every opera-glass was focussed upon the
central platform where the Executive Committee
sat with their friends, eight rows of them all told,
each member of whom was notable in his own line,
and could be recognized by the man in the street,
even without the aid of the printed programme.
The entrance of many more immediately prominent
than others had been cheered, but, except when the
organ pealed out its jubilant marches or national
songs, at intervals, during the assembling of the
meeting, the tension was so great that hardly a
sound or movement broke it.

Evelyn, leaning forward in her box, with
quickened breath and leaping pulses, wondered if, with
the exception of the four great functions of the
century, a more impressive sight had ever been seen
in England.  For like the Jubilee and Coronation
and the passing of the quiet dead, this was
essentially a "one man's show."

Unmoved, and with absolute composure, the
veteran leader made his triumphal entry in the
midst of men and women who had for once lost
all their national calm, whose senses were wrought
up to the highest pitch of almost frenzied welcome,
whose enthusiasm echoed in cheers so loud that the
great building seemed to rock in sympathy.  The
storm of feeling swept alike from stall to gallery in
a wild rush of gesticulation and movement, so that
in every part of the house there was a confused blur
of white waving arms, of fluttering handkerchiefs
and lace scarves, of flags and banners floating
triumphantly in welcome.  There is still a heartier
ring in British cheers than in those of any other
nation, although they come but seldom.

The moment was over, men and women sat back
in their places, physically spent, and a gasp of relief
came simultaneously from the hall.  Much the same
note broke from the men who reached the summit
of Dargai, with ranks thinned and broken by the
enemy's rolling stones and concentrated fire; one
hears such a sound sometimes from a woman who
looks upon her child for the first time.  Then the
audience began to settle down to its practical work
of the night.

There was a mighty rustling of papers while the
agenda was examined by some twenty thousand
persons at the same moment.

The chairman's opening speech was brief.  He
left them, he said, to the care of the man who had
their interests at heart; a man whose aim was to
keep British factories in England, to give to her
sons of the Colonies, who had so lately fought and
bled for her in South Africa, a preference in trade
above that offered to foreign nations whose secret
ambition was to lower our flag and dim our glory.
He called upon "the man of the evening" to
speak; cheers followed.  A moment later "the man
of the evening" was upon his feet.

His first words justified the presence of the great
audience.  One of his hearers heard them with
sickening dread.  One by one, straight and to the
point, the telling phrases fell, delivered in a quiet
voice that carried even to the gallery, as fiery
comments from that quarter testified.  As an Imperialist,
Evelyn rejoiced; the speech was historic, it
would live: but as a woman, her heart fell, aware,
as only the sensitive are aware, of every point the
great leader made and how he made it.

What remote chance had Farquharson of making
his mark to-night?  The ground was being cut
under his feet.  How hard to follow on an expert
speech like this, which seemed to say all that could
be said, which dealt sharply and subtly with every
argument against Protection in a voice that
became ever the gentler and more penetrating after
the characteristic pause which, to one versed in
the ways of public speakers, invariably heralded
some especially telling or sarcastic phrase.

Farquharson was to second an important resolution
which followed the great Fiscal Reformer's
speech, a resolution which Beadon was to propose.
The Leader of the Opposition had pleaded influenza
as an excuse for dealing with the subject very
tersely, and leaving its actual explanation to a man
who, should he win his political spurs to-night,
would be his colleague in the House.  He was
giving Farquharson his chance in every sense of
the word for Evelyn's sake.

And now the long-looked-for moment had come,
and she trembled.  That critical crowd!  So eager
to thrust at the one weak point in the armour even
of its own knights.  How would Farquharson face
it?  He had told her that he did not excel especially
in public speaking; what if he failed?  And why—why
did it matter so to her of all people?

Beadon could always be relied upon to amuse his
audience.  He did not attempt to meet his leader on
his own ground; the aim of his brief speech seemed
to be merely to lighten the tension which succeeded
the conclusion of the former speech, given in words
of solemn warning, rendered the more intense in
view of the speaker's having appeared so little in
public of late years.

As the Leader of the Opposition took his seat a
pleasurable flutter of anticipation moved the
audience.  Like women at a bargain sale, they eagerly
watched the advent of the latest novelty.  Hare,
well to the fore amongst the critics, raised his
field-glasses towards the platform.  In the arena there
was a little hum of expectation.  Even the reporters
below the platform laid their fountain pens and
pencils down to stare up half in curiosity, half in
interest, wondering what signs of nervousness the
administrator of a place which had never been
heard of until ten years ago would show as he rose
to confront the largest concourse of people he had
addressed, amidst the perfunctory applause of a
few friends.

But there were no signs of nervousness to detect
in Farquharson's assured step as he moved forward
or in the glance he flashed over the hall.  He had
himself in hand from the first.  So much Evelyn
could see.  Not a movement, not a tremor betrayed
his emotion, yet the emotion was there, she knew.
She knew that his heart beat to it; that, as before
the eyes of a drowning man, a vision of past and
present opened before him as he looked down upon
the audience.

Evelyn caught her breath.  Only once before had
this wave of absolute momentary unconsciousness
swept over her, leaving behind a definite physical
sensation as though every drop of blood had ebbed
from her body and the little torch of life was
flickering out.  All was dark.  For the moment she
heard nothing and saw nothing and could do
nothing but pray.  All her remaining will seemed
concentrated on one point, a frantic appeal to God
that this man, to whom it meant so much, and who
had no near kith or kin at hand to ask for him,
should do his best, that the crisis should prove no
crisis at all, but triumph.

The wave of faintness passed; presently, out of
a tangled confusion of sound she distinguished the
notes of a voice familiar and yet strange, a voice
whose magnetism seemed to have drawn every soul
in the hall to one central spot on the platform.  Her
tired brain righted itself by sheer strength of will.
She meant to notice every detail; next morning he
would expect her to know just what portions of his
speech had told, how the crowd had taken this and
that dubious point.  She called up every faculty of
criticism and judgment in view of his demand,
weighing and balancing, like an opponent, the new
line Farquharson had taken, his methods, his choice
of language, his rare actions—not with those of the
average politician, not even with an acknowledged
master of debate like Beadon, but with the orator of
the evening, the man who, since Gladstone's death,
had been known as the best speaker in the House
of Commons.

And as she listened her thoughts swept back to
all that she had read of other statesmen—Pitt,
Burke, Peel, Palmerston, Bright, Cobden,
Disraeli and Gladstone—men whose names lived still
in England, and would live for ever.  For
Farquharson beat his leader.  His was the real gift of
oratory, form combined with substance, a flow of
eloquence and imagination kept in check by
reason—the Heaven-sent inspiration which comes,
perhaps, to half-a-dozen men within the century.  His
audience did not applaud—applause would have
interrupted.  They listened spell-bound, every
thought given up to the quiet figure on the
platform, who made use neither of sensational phrase
nor dramatic gesture, but held them by sheer force
of brain and personality, as he marshalled an array
of facts against which there seemed to be no appeal.

"The mantle of Elijah..." said Lady
Wereminster below her breath.  But Evelyn did not
answer.  Through her opera-glasses she saw the
tears of pride on Calvert's cheeks and Creagh's
delighted expression—"Wasn't I right this time,
you fellows?" she could almost hear him say.
There was a tender smile on Hare's face as he
turned in Evelyn's direction and nodded, bringing
the palms of his hands together in noiseless
applause at the same time.  And she saw more still.
A wonderful light had leapt in Farquharson's eyes
as he bowed his acknowledgments; the light which,
having once seen, no woman can mistake, as he
looked straight at her and through her, as though
laying his triumph at her feet.

There was a voice in her ear.

"Ex-cel-lent," whispered Brand.  "You've
done very well, my dear.  I'll make it worth your
while."  He stooped down and patted the
disarranged lace of her fichu with the air of a
proprietor.  "I saw that look.  There's not much I
don't see, you know.  But I'm an amenable
husband, and won't interfere; indeed, if you go on
playing your hand as well as you're playing it now,
I shall have nothing to complain of.  Whatever
happens, you are to keep in with Farquharson—do
you hear?  Whatever happens, mind!"

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Wereminster looked down ruefully at her
glove.  She had herself in hand again.

"Good gracious, look at that.  Split right across,
my dear, with all this clapping.  How my maid
will scold me!  She ran about all over London for
them, trying to match the colour of my gown, and
in the end we had to order them from Paris.  As for
that young man, he's wonderful.  The eighth
wonder of the world—he must have escaped direct from
Ephesus.  I only hope his head won't be turned
after this.  Why, Evelyn, what's the matter?"  She
turned to a young King's messenger at her
side.  "Here, help Mr. Brand to get his wife out
of the box; she's fainting."

"Indeed, no; I've never fainted properly in all
my life," said Evelyn.  But she went outside
obediently, summoning wit and courage to her aid.
The air was cooler there, the platform hidden.  She
laughed and talked with the others while Brand
waited on her assiduously, the image of a devoted
husband, plying her in turn with smelling salts and
scent, and Dora Beadon's ever-ready fan.

But her thoughts were turbulent; the scruple was
no scruple now, but visible danger.  A thousand
dreads and terrors shaped themselves before her,
ghosts of the past, and newer and more terrible
phantoms.  How far could she trust herself—how far trust
him?  Then, too, she had looked into a man's heart
that night—her husband's; even she, who forgave
much, would never forget what she had seen.
Cummings was right, she must go at once; escape for
a time at least from the hideous knowledge of what
her husband was, more clearly defined now than
ever before.  And meantime and afterwards she
must go on living with him, must show herself in
public beside him as his possession, must return
with him that very night to West Kensington to
share his bed and board.  She must suffer all, must
bear all, insults, wrongs bodily and mental, bracing
will and spirit, nerving her frailty to meet such
horrors as convention called upon her to endure.

This was life, this was duty; this stern
uncompromising Catholic ideal of marriage, the
Sacrament.  It was not true, it was not true!  Those
whom God had joined together were joined for all
eternity, but what had God had to do with her own
and many another such marriage?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

"Faith is required of thee ... not understanding."—THOMAS À KEMPIS.

.. vspace:: 2

Public praise does not always come to him who
has legitimately earned it.  A man gives his life
to extend the commercial resources of his native
town, and hears the devotion and sacrifice of some
man of means who has just presented a handsome
donation to the fund openly acclaimed at local
meetings.  By twelve o'clock next day the steps
of No. 50 Carlton House Terrace were besieged by
a crowd of district messengers and telegraph boys
with an array of communications for Miss Beadon.
Everybody believed her to be the one behind
Farquharson's success of the previous evening, and
Dora was the last woman in the world to deny a
rumour so obviously to her advantage.  Indeed, by
the time she had mastered the contents of all her
numerous congratulations, she had persuaded
herself that the young man owed his appearance on
the Albert Hall platform to her, and to her alone.

And now she set to work seriously to weigh the
pros and cons of the situation.  Miss Beadon,
remember, was no longer a *débutante*.  She realized
that her name had appeared sufficiently often in
daily papers with the same prefix.  There is a limit
to public credulity—it is difficult to believe that one
woman has refused every eligible suitor in the
marriage market.  But Miss Beadon had still to find
that convenient person who would add to, instead of
detracting from, her present position.

Farquharson, who, virile and determined, had a
fighting spirit and a great capacity for work, seemed
to solve the problem.  Dora realized that to gain
her point she must lay siege to Farquharson before
his position was established.  She had heard her
father and other ex-ministers talk openly of his
talents; had heard the wildest predictions of
infatuated women taken seriously even by men like Hare
and Creagh.

If she were ever to hold him, the chain must be
forged soon.  But how to deal with such a man?
Dora had, of course, no doubt as to her personal
charms, but Farquharson was a misogynist.  He
had made as many enemies as friends by his
aloofness.  So ordinary wiles and ruses would probably
leave him cold, and she must summon stronger
forces to her aid.  Her father was naturally the
trump-card in her hand; moral suasion or dissuasion,
in politics, is often a synonym of social blackmail.

Evelyn must be confided in, naturally,—one went
to Evelyn for sympathy as one went to Paquin for
frocks—both supplied "the superior article."  Evelyn,
all the same, had done her best to commandeer
Farquharson—Dora supposed he pitied her.  The
Brands were so very badly off.  There could be no
question of rivalry, of course, where Evelyn was
concerned; nor was Dora likely to be jealous.  Even
had Evelyn not been married and a Catholic, one
is not jealous of a woman who has to go through
the season with three frocks, and turn last winter's
gowns, Miss Beadon mused.  Evelyn had a tiresome
knack of pandering to men's vanity,
though—or why should they all combine to rave so idiotically
about her?

Only the generous appreciate generosity.  And
gratitude is an ephemeral bloom which flowers in
too few gardens.

The capture of Farquharson—from a different
aspect—was the object of Brand's thoughts too.
Eminently practical, he was the first to acknowledge
what a mistake he had made the night before.  If
he knew Evelyn at all, she would avoid Farquharson
for the future; religious women were like that—they
always ran off at a tangent when you tried
to pull them up.  Somehow or other she must be
conciliated; must be made to meet the man again
on some plea impossible to withstand.

Appeal to Evelyn's love of help and you won her
at once.  Unluckily, in the present instance
Farquharson seemed rather in the way of conferring than
of receiving favours.  Other means must be used,
as powerful, if less obvious.

It was precisely at this crisis in his thoughts
that, sauntering slowly in the direction of Hyde
Park Corner, Brand came face to face with Dora
Beadon.

Farquharson's pressure of work, which had been
rapidly increasing for the last few days, came to a
climax on the morning after the Albert Hall
meeting.  Acquaintances with whose name he was
scarcely familiar telegraphed congratulations; his
friends thronged to his flat in relays.  The
Taornian Council cabled a long code message; the Stock
Exchange and Wall Street felt the movement.  His
secretaries were kept so busily employed that he was
forced to send his valet with a handful of notes
to interview the representatives of the less important
Press, who had been found upon his doorstep with
the morning milk.

But Farquharson was not openly exhilarated or
depressed.  He was too sure of himself to be easily
surprised.  Last night his pulses had beaten a trifle
quicker, of course; conflict braced him.  But it was
the pride of moving men, not doubt of his ability to
move them, which thrilled him.  The Albert Hall
meeting was a matter of course; a thing he had
worked for, and planned.  Christmas Day falls on
the 25th of December; he was as certain of his
success as that the festival would not be altered.

Calvert, entering his room at the luncheon hour,
found him cool and collected, absolutely unruffled
by events which might legitimately have stirred him.

So busy was he that it was not until comparatively
late in the afternoon that he had time to think
of Evelyn.  Perhaps he took her rather for granted,
too.  His faith, after all, was based on surer reasons
than the average man's trust; he had proved her
loyalty and endurance more in a month than most
men would in a lifetime.  From her alone of his
friends there was no morning greeting, but he was
not disappointed.  Even in small matters it was
impossible to mistake her.  He was to dine that
evening at the Brands'; she would tell him then
what she could scarcely say in a letter.

The last few weeks had altered him more than he
knew.  Between him and Calvert there was now
a sympathy and tenderness which had never existed
in Taorna.  Farquharson had been a machine then,
a magnificent machine which could be relied upon
to produce the best work—nothing more.  Now he
was human.

Too human, probably, he thought suddenly,
realizing in a flash how his work was tending to the
moment when he would reach the Brands'.  "Peace
after Toyle" was what Evelyn brought, absolute
rest of mind and body.  A dangerous quality to
come in contact with when it belonged to the wife
of one's neighbour.

For primitive man may be awakened in even the
most hardened diplomatist.  And Farquharson was
not naturally hard.  Love of victory, too, counts—the
spirit which makes a man want to carry off the
woman he loves in face of danger, and put her
before him on his horse and look back laughing
with bullets whizzing about them, and a precipice
ahead, for sheer love of devilry and adventure and
desire to possess the thing he wants.

.. vspace:: 2

To Evelyn, counting the hours till dawn, and
saddened when dawn came because it brought the
parting of the ways, it seemed that life, so broad
and beautiful only yesterday, had narrowed again
into the old grey road without a turning.  All that
had made life so sweet lately must go now: the
little plans, the little projects to help Farquharson,
their daily meetings, ...; all that had brought
colour into the monotonous road, had made it
fragrant and glowing—how fragrant, how glowing she
had never realized till now when she must make up
her mind to stand aside for evermore; hardest of
all, perhaps, possibly to watch another woman
in her place.

For she could no longer cheat herself with
half-truths, and talk of vanity and imagination.  Last
night the very beating of her heart betrayed her.
In the strange inconsequence of memory, her mind
went back to five years before, when two Glasgow
engineers, who were building a temporary bridge
at Comrie, talked slightingly in her presence of
"*little Highland burns*," when wise men of the
neighbourhood told them that their bridge was built
too low, and that they had not allowed for the rising
of the floods.  For those same little burns took
counsel together, biding their time, waiting until
a night when all was still, when they suddenly drew
the forces of the mountain and swept down the
hillside in a mighty torrent, gathering strength as they
went, carrying all before them, undismayed, until
at last they reached the temporary bridge and tore it
from its moorings, to play with it in mid-stream as
children play with a broken fragment of wood.

So love, once recognized, sweeps all before it,
honour, loyalty, faith, a torrent that nothing can
withstand, nothing compel or alter but the will of
God....

.. vspace:: 2

A little book lay open on her writing-table, a
frequent companion.  It had comforted her before;
she wanted comfort now.  She opened it at random,
and her eyes fell on these words—

"To be fully satisfied shall not be granted thee....
Be valiant in doing as well as suffering things
repugnant to nature....  Do that which is against
thy inclination and let alone that which thou art
inclined to.  That which is pleasing to others shall
go forward; that thou would'st have shall not
succeed.  Others shall ask and shall succeed.  Thou
shalt ask and not obtain."

"*Others shall ask and shall succeed*."  That
sounded like Farquharson.  "*Thou shalt ask and not
obtain*."  Was that herself—an omen of the future?

She took up her pen to write a note postponing
Farquharson's visit that evening.  For once she
must run counter to her husband's interests; she
was in a mood to welcome even the physical roughness
with which he was wont to meet her failures to
obey him.  Just then he entered with a letter, a
pencilled note obviously scrawled with great rapidity
upon a visiting-card of Dora Beadon's, enclosed
in an envelope.

"I met Miss Beadon just now in the street,"
Brand said.  "She asked me to give you this.  She
said it was very important, and that she wanted a
reply at once by wire."

He watched her closely as she read the letter.

It was short and to the point—

.. vspace:: 2

"DEAREST EVELYN,

.. vspace:: 1

"Will you help me?  I have asked the one
man in the world I want to meet to dine with us
to-night, and he has declined on the score of going
to you.  Do not suggest putting him off—he will
guess that I have asked you.  But will you have
me too?  You have often told me that I ought to
marry—well, I've met the one man in the world
who could persuade me, and I owe it all to you.

"Evelyn, you must!  I count on you.

.. vspace:: 1

"D.B."

.. vspace:: 2

"She wants the answer now?" Evelyn repeated
dazedly.  She put her hand to her head.  Calvert's
little gesture on the opera night came back to her;
a thousand trivial incidents which pointed the way
to further possibilities of intimacy between Dora
and Farquharson.

"Here's a telegraph form," said Brand.  He
pushed it towards her, tapping impatiently on the
floor.  "Well, what are you waiting for?  I
thought you were a woman of decision."

"Miss Beadon wants to dine here to-night,"
said Evelyn slowly.  The words were wrung from
her.  Was this the solution of the problem?  It
was so difficult to judge.  She had not meant to
see Farquharson again before she left town, but
now——

"You are to accept," said Brand, with his
hand heavy on her shoulder.  "To accept—do you
hear?"

He stood waiting as she wrote her answer,
noticing the hesitating, illegible scrawl, that was
so utterly unlike Evelyn's usual firm hand.

.. vspace:: 2

"Miss Beadon, 50 Carlton House Terrace,
Shall expect you to-night at eight
o'clock.—EVELYN."

.. vspace:: 2

"Good!" he said jubilantly.  He took up his
hat.  "I'll take it myself.  Clever woman!  We're
getting thoroughly well in with the Beadons.  Miss
Dora's a nice girl, too.  What a match she'd be for
a man who's starting in his career.  She'd get him
to the top of the tree in half the time it would take
any one else."

He left the room whistling.  Evelyn, alone, sat
on idly at her table, her hands resting upon the
book of telegraph forms.  Well, she had had her
day, a perfect one.  No one could take that from
her.  But there was to-morrow to face, and all the
to-morrows still to come.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

"Whether you be men or women you will never do anything
in the world without courage.  It is the greatest quality of the
mind—next to honour."—J. L. ALLEN.

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette and
looked round Evelyn's cheerful little sitting-room
at Bramley with intense dissatisfaction.

"Comfortable in its way, yes.  But, my dear
child, why on earth should you come to such a
dull place in the height of the season?  You must
have had some reason for it.  Illness, economy?
You are not a woman of moods to do things
purposelessly or in a temper.  And to go away and
leave no address too!  I tell you every one's
talking about it.  The charm of the country indeed!
The world won't swallow that.  It only looks upon
the country as a means of wearing a different set
of smart clothes, that's all.  And you yourself
have always waited until August to go to the
country until now.

"I wish you were not so reserved, Evelyn.
You've made enemies, you know; women like you
always do.  You know they say that in a successful
play an audience has to be taken into the author's
confidence from the first act.  Well, the world's
like an audience, and wants to know one's secrets
too.  (It'll betray them at the first opportunity, but
no matter.)  It doesn't understand you.  It calls
itself Christian, but it sees Christian principles so
seldom that when it comes across them it suspects
their probity at once.  When it meets a person who
helps others for the sheer love of giving help, like
you, it says, 'Hallo, there's something behind
this; I must set to work at once and rout it out!'  And
on it switches its most powerful flashlight of
envy and malice.

"Don't contradict me, my dear.  When I was
young I believed I knew better than any one else,
and now I'm sure of it.  If I hadn't learnt
something of life by seventy-five, I should be a fool.
You're quixotic, and quixotry is out of date.
Now-a-days we only take trouble because we want to get
on, to fill our pockets, or be advertised.
Politics—art—we try to excel in these because it will make
people talk of us.  As for charity——!  In nine cases
out of ten charity is the refuge of the uncharitable—the
means by which elderly spinsters and widows
of no social importance foist themselves on the
notice of a public which would never have heard
of them under any other circumstances, and delude
themselves in the belief that they are personages."

"I wish you'd have some lunch or something,"
said Evelyn blankly; "you'd feel ever so much
better then."

Lady Wereminster chuckled.

"A polite way of stopping my tongue, eh?  But
what I've said is for your good, Evelyn, as
unpleasant things always are in the view of the person
who says them.  Every one's discussing this sudden
flight of yours, and the world can't talk about
anything long without saying something scandalous.
And we all miss you so!  Creagh's depressed,
Wereminster's so irritable that I can hardly face
him at meal-times, and as for Dora Beadon, she's
more odious than ever."

"You dear old impostor, I've only been away a
week!"

"A week, my dear—a day's enough to start a
sensation in London, if it's properly spread.  You
see, try as you will, you can't escape being a
personality.  You're known, and you're watched.
Must I speak plainer?  Well, then—when it
happens that the motor of a very notorious personage
has been waiting outside your house day after day
for six weeks or more, and the visits suddenly cease
and you run away into the country, the world scents
out a quarrel, and begins agitating itself as to the
meaning of it all."

"I care very little for the world's opinion," said
Evelyn.

"No incense, please," said Lady Wereminster
sharply.  "Not care for the world—a good-looking
woman like you!  Stuff and nonsense!  You're
living in the twentieth century, not the sixteenth.
People can't go and stand on pillars like St. Simeon
Stylites, and be comparatively disregarded.  The
telephone has made that impossible.  Why, if
anybody did such a thing now, within half-an-hour he
would have a row of Pressmen at his feet, expecting
him to fall off."

"But I don't want to sit on a pillar or do
anything remarkable," said Evelyn.  "I came here
because I was tired out.  I had a lot of work over
that Albert Hall meeting, you know.  As for
Mr. Farquharson, the one or two things we did together
are over now.  One doesn't expect a future Prime
Minister to go on calling on insignificant people
like ourselves day after day."

"Umph!"  Lady Wereminster looked her up
and down critically.  "The man's not in Parliament
yet, even.  So you were tired out?  And never
let one of your friends know?  Is the air supposed
to be especially good here, by the bye?"

"It's the best in Sussex," said Evelyn promptly.
"We are I don't know how many hundred feet
above the sea.  There's no known disease we can't
cure in about ten minutes.  Didn't you notice the
russet-apple faces of the village children as you
came?"

"All I can say is you don't do the air credit,"
said Lady Wereminster; "you're drawn and pale,
and you've got deep lines under your eyes.  And
your *protégé*, by the way, has scarcely been heard
in public since you left.  If you don't come back
and look after him, people will say the famous
Albert Hall speech was his swan-song."

Evelyn laughed outright.

"What utter nonsense!  My dear lady, there's
nothing that man can't do.  If he's quiet now it's
for a purpose.  He means to show us we can't do
without him and so force our hands."

"Perhaps you're right," said Lady Wereminster
slowly, proceeding once more to enfold herself in a
voluminous motor veil.  "By the way, you never
asked me how I found out your hiding-place.  Your
husband gave me your address—in the very strictest
confidence.  I'm not sure he hasn't given it to other
people too.  I saw him standing in a corner last
night at the Beadons' party, with Mr. Farquharson;
the future Prime Minister wrote down something
on his shirt-cuff as your husband left.  It may have
been an appointment, I don't know."  She turned
briskly.  "Well, there's the motor.  You won't
change your mind and let me take you back?
Good-bye, then, wilful woman."

.. vspace:: 2

She was gone.  And Evelyn, standing alone at
the gate watching her out of sight, found her voice
at last and called, "Come back, come back," too
late.  She even ran a few steps in the direction that
the motor had taken before realizing the utter
futility of her action.

Only one's thoughts can keep pace with a forty
horse-power car!

Half-indignant, half-despairing, she repeated
Lady Wereminster's words.  So the world was
talking, was it?  Well, it had no respect of persons.
She was blamed in good company.  In days of old,
a king's conduct was supposed to be beyond
reproach; now-a-days even his Majesty's actions were
occasionally called into question by the daily Press
to whom he gave the liberty which they thus abused.
Surely an insignificant person like herself could
afford to let the world say what it would and bide
her time.  For sooner or later evil tongues bring
evil on themselves; they carry their own corruption
with them.

The poison of asps killed Cleopatra in her day.
And souls and reputations are alike easily slain.
For herself it did not matter.  But Farquharson had
his foot on the ladder of success.  He was in the
thick of enemies; this, the outset of his campaign
in England, was the critical period.  He must not
be checked now, whatever happened.

Too late to repair it, she saw the mistake she had
made.  She had run away like a frightened
school-girl—run away from thoughts and fears and
memories which had only taken a stronger hold on her in
the past week.  A little forethought—a hint of
enforced economy to Lady Wereminster, and she
might have got some post as chaperon to a girl
abroad, and let her flat.  There was her husband to
be reckoned with, of course, but with board and
lodging paid for, she herself could have managed
on very little money, and long experience had
shown her that Brand well paid was Brand well
satisfied.

In solitude, in contemplation, the heart sounds
the depths of its own bitterness.  Solitude brings
peace for the worker who has a task to fulfil which
its special conditions make imperative, or for the
mystic, already detached so far from earth that
human longings can no longer reach him.  But in
the restless and passionate spirit, it breeds new
restlessness and passion.  Only the glare of the world
can blot out certain dreams and visions, only the
hum of Vanity Fair stifle the voice that calls in
darkness.

Bareheaded, her hair stirred by the light breeze,
hardly conscious of where she was going, Evelyn
walked on and on, looking neither to right nor left.
Dusk deepened and found her still searching
aimlessly for peace which had for ever escaped her.
She had eaten nothing since morning, and now it
was nearly nine o'clock.  Physically spent and
broken by the struggle, exhausted and fainting, she
knew suddenly that she could not walk a step
further.  There was an opening in the little wood
beyond which offered temporary shelter.  She was
making her way to it, blindly groping in the
darkness, when from behind she saw two great lights
sweep rapidly upon her, like an animal on its prey.
She gave a startled cry.  The car slowed down; the
man who was driving it got down.  It was Farquharson.

How did he guess who it was?  Trembling, she
turned to meet him.  He lit a match and held it
in front of her, looking straight into her eyes as
it burned out.  He was pale, and his mouth was set
in the determined lines she knew.

"So you thought you could escape me!" he said,
laughing.

.. vspace:: 2

It seemed to Evelyn afterwards that years passed
in the moment he held her to him, stifling her
fluttering cry with the torrent of his words.

"You ran away, did you?  That was very
cowardly, Eve.  Didn't you know I should move
heaven and earth to find you?  As a matter of fact,
no heroics were necessary; I asked Brand for your
address last night and got it at once."  The
explanation was so typical!  "I have been trying to
get to you all day; I came here, in fact, two hours
ago, but they didn't know at the cottage where you
had gone, so since then I've been chasing you all
over the county."  He took her face in his hands;
he could not see its expression, but he felt her
quiver.  "I've learnt a lot of things since I saw
you last, Evelyn," he said, very gently.  "You
can't go on living with your husband, that's one
thing.  I can't go on living without you, that's
another.  Where are the matches?"  He let go of
her to light up again; even in that moment it struck
her how unlike the things that happen in real life
are to the scenes in books.  His eyes were alight
with triumph; there was no tragedy here, only joy.
He asked no questions, he was sure of himself and
sure of her, strong in the hope of victory.

"Career—did I hear you say something about
my career?  Careers don't depend upon conventional
morality.  Besides, it's only a question of
shifting the scene.  If England won't have
anything to do with us, there's always Taorna, my
own place with my own laws.  Or if we want a
bigger field—America.  They let one have the
courage of one's own opinions there."

He stopped.  His eyes looked past her, on into
the world he had never seen where they could
begin life together.  The darkness hid his face or
she would at once have wept and rejoiced at its look
of half-boyish exaltation.  He had had to wait and
work and fight for things all his life; but they had
come to him.  Unconsciously from childhood he
had waited and worked and fought for this—so
surely it was his.

Voiceless still, she swayed in his slackened clasp,
and he bent down, wondering.  His voice softened.

"Still nothing to say for yourself, Eve?  Won't
you even tell me that you're glad?  Try to understand.
It's you who are living a lie, not I.  Real
adultery is to live your life with the wrong man, as
you are now.  You're made for me, and I for you.
The world shan't dare to throw a stone at you—I'll
see to that.  We'll win through everything, hands
down.  Love's the fulfilling of the law.  Sinning
against it is the one unpardonable crime.  It's when
a man does that, that he deserves the hell to which
he's probably already sent the woman who loves him."

"Wait," said Evelyn at last.  "Let me think—I
must think."  She put out her hand to warn him
back.  She was face to face with naked facts; it had
never been Farquharson's way to lie to those he
trusted; he was not lying now.  There would be no
concealment in his actions now or ever, so far as
she was concerned; he would take and keep her in
view of the world, because he thought she was his
by right of love.  So strong, indeed, was he that he
might even wrest a certain sympathy from the world
for his courage and daring.

His words had driven away her faintness; they
were, after all, but the echo of those she had already
stifled in her own heart.  Weakened and unnerved
by the day's fast, they sounded in her ear like a
trumpet call.  Here, beside him, away from husband
and friends and priests and confessors, there
swept before her a sudden glorious vision of they
two together defying the world and yet trampling
upon it.  Were they strong enough to point the
way, to sacrifice themselves openly and without
shame that the great truth behind his words might
reach mankind and help others, weaker than they,
to see the exquisite sanctity of a tie that would be to
them for ever sacred?

But what of faith, what of religion?  She might
defy the world's judgment, there was still God's
to confront.  Hell would be to bring punishment
on another; her own soul might go, but what if
she plunged his into everlasting fires?  Suddenly
Cummings' words came back to her; the boy's
words, not the priest's.

"You're not playing the game, Evelyn," he had
said once, more gravely than occasion seemed to
warrant, when she had just successfully evaded some
trivial rule he had been at pains to teach her.  "One
must always play the game in life, however trivial
it may seem."

"*One must always play the game in life, however
trivial it may seem*."

Perhaps she said the words aloud; she never
knew.  He started.

"My dear, my dear," she said, "I can't!"  She
hid her head on his shoulder, not daring to face
him.  She heard him draw a deep breath, and
stand tense and rigid.  She drew back.  "You
don't want heroics, nor do I.  I am not afraid
of the world or you.  You'd be good to me
for ever, and the best of our friends would be
friends still, whatever happened.  As for you,
you're too big a man for me to harm you here—your
career, I mean.  But that's not all.  There's God
and there's eternity.  They frighten me, not for
myself, but you."

"Eve——!"

She put out her hand again.

"Don't—don't dear, have some pity!"  The
anguish of her tone arrested him midway to her.
He stopped short, a man who had received a
mortal blow.

"No—never again.  It will all be harder for you
because you're a man and I'm a woman," she said,
"but you've got to get on without me, and you will,
you will!  That's the beginning and the end of it.
Oh, there's not a spark of all your generosity to
me that I don't love and worship.  And it will all
be dreadful in the future.  But it's just got to be....
And we must meet, too, ordinarily, in front of
people and by ourselves, as if to-day had never come
to us, as if we'd made a mark and crossed it from
our lives.  We shall do it, and get through—because
we've got to, because we're strong, because
we love each other."

She heard the beating of his heart, she felt its
pulses against her hand as he drew her to him for a
moment in spite of what she had said, in voiceless
pleading while they clung together, and she wondered,
with a little smile, if death would be more
bitter.

Silence again.  He understood he could not move
her.  Then darkness, full and complete.

She heard him go from her, heavily; the car
throbbed.  Presently there was a flash of light as it
whirled past.  It was well, perhaps, that he did not
see her look of dumb agony as she stood alone,
shaking from head to foot, straining her ears to hear
the last echo of the car, making herself ready to
face the long walk back and the long life ahead.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BETRAYAL`:

.. _`CHAPTER 3-I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART III

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

   THE BETRAYAL

.. vspace:: 2

"Iniquity shall bring all the earth to a desert, and
wickedness ... o'verthrow the thrones of the
mighty."—*Wisdom* (Douay Version).

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

"As for them whose heart walketh after their scandals, I will
lay their way upon their head, saith the Lord
God."—ECCLESIASTICUS.

.. vspace:: 1

"Black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them."
... "Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."—MRS. HODGSON
BURNETT.

.. vspace:: 2

"After all," said Miss Beadon solemnly,
"there's nothing like a man's sympathy.  Men are
so much more helpful than women.  With women,
some outside element always seems to spoil the
completeness of sympathy.  Jealousy as a rule, of
course.  How much I've suffered from that no one
will ever know."

"So one would naturally imagine," said Brand
gravely.  "The gods have been unusually kind to
you, Miss Beadon."

Dora smiled consciously.

"Oh, I dare say I have as many disadvantages as
other women really.  Of course I've come in contact
with a great many interesting men, that's in my
favour; I always think experience broadens one's
point of view.  Most women are so extraordinarily
petty.  Now look at Evelyn, even.  I used to think
she was my best friend, but she hardly helps me
now.  Since that night I dined at your house, and
you guessed how matters stood with Mr. Farquharson
and me, and put things before me with such
wonderful delicacy and tact, she has never invited
me once, unless I deliberately asked her to do so.
And he's such a busy man now—he has very little
time to come here.  Besides, of course it's a little
awkward when every time a man dines with you the
papers get hold of it.  Now with Evelyn it's different.
The public eye isn't always upon her as it is
upon me."

"No man worth calling a man would willingly
compromise a woman he cared for," said Brand.

He leant back in his chair and looked at Miss
Beadon critically.  Beadon had married beneath
him, of course; all the world guessed as much, and
Brand knew every detail of the story.  Dora was
pre-eminently her mother's daughter; she had fallen
an easy prey to Brand's flattery.  Little by little he
had made himself indispensable to her for the last
few weeks.  She consulted him now about her
engagements and her gowns.  He had made her the
means of paying off many an outlying score which
had rankled for years.  Little by little, he told
himself, his luck was turning; he was regaining his old
power and position.  In time, if things went on as
well as they were doing, he would again become a
force to be reckoned with.  If he could but obtain
some permanent hold on Miss Beadon, the conquest
of a great portion of the social world would be easy,
and if he could but marry her to Farquharson——

But Farquharson himself was a stumbling-block
in the plan.  He had got on, not slowly and surely
as other men may, but in leaps and bounds.  Lady
Wereminster declared that he had signed a bond
with Satan.  Brand saw no way of pointing out
how valuable an asset a charming and tactful wife
would be; for that matter neither adjective applied
to Dora.  The two men seldom came in contact
now; they had nothing in common, and Farquharson's
reserve and courtesy were more baffling than
open antagonism.

Occupied with public affairs, and in much social
request, it was difficult to think of Farquharson as
having either time or inclination to play the part of
a modern suitor—to woo the object of his affections
with lunch at one restaurant and tea at another, and
dinner at a third and supper at a fourth, after the
modern mode.  Indeed, so far as Miss Beadon was
concerned, he scarcely seemed to recognize her
existence.  But for Brand, one doubted if even Dora
could have construed his "good-mornings" and
"good-nights" into the protestations of undying love.

A clever and unscrupulous woman can usually
get what she wants without help.  But Dora was
not clever.  Her platitudes, her plainness, told
against her.  Things seemed at a deadlock.  It is
not much use to have written what you think is a
successful comedy if all the leading characters refuse
to play the parts you have assigned to them.

As well attempt to influence the elements
themselves as Farquharson.  Unless Evelyn could be
made to intervene.  But Evelyn, once so tractable,
was unmoved now by threats or pleading; nothing
would induce her to meet Farquharson voluntarily.

Ah, but what if she could be used unconsciously?
Suddenly Brand saw light.  What had he told Miss
Beadon just now?  "A man will never willingly
compromise the woman he cares for."  If Farquharson
could be made to think that he had put Evelyn
in a false position, he would take the readiest means
of disproving the statement.  And the announcement
of a man's engagement or marriage to one
woman is the best public contradiction of his
interest in another.  Once Evelyn's name was called
into the question, Farquharson was the man to act
quickly.  Let Miss Beadon be but near at such a
moment, and she would seem the easiest solution of
the difficulty.

.. vspace:: 2

"I may be able to help you," Brand said after a
pause.  "It won't be easy—it may give me and
those I love infinite pain.  But friendship isn't
worth much if one isn't willing to risk a great deal
for it, and I am sure you are the last woman in the
world to forget such a kindness."

He spoke meaningly.  Dora held out her hand.
Her vanity was piqued, and as much of her heart
as such a woman can give was involved.  Generally,
to set her heart on anything meant that it
became hers very shortly.  These unaccustomed
barriers had completely unnerved her; she would
have taken any means to secure Brand's help.

"You can count on me," she said, ready at that
moment to promise him anything he asked.
"There's nothing you can ask of me that I won't
do for you in the future if you'll only help me now.
I mean it; and I never break my word."

Brand smiled.

"Oh, well, it won't be a very serious matter.
Perhaps I shall ask you to do some little service for
me later on, but I don't suppose it will tax your
resources as wife of—the Prime Minister, shall we
say?"

They were walking in the direction of Knightsbridge.
The clock at the Guards' Barracks struck
the hour.

"Suppose you go and see Evelyn now?  I see a
way of helping you which must be put in train at
once."  He lifted his hat, and, crossing to Hyde
Park Corner, hailed a hansom.  "The *Crystal*
offices, Fleet Street," he said.

.. vspace:: 2

"Mr. Brand, *Mr. Brand*, did you say?  What
on earth can the man want with me?  Take him to
the library, James, and say I'll come as soon as I
can."

Lady Wereminster, erect and stately, gave Henry
Brand the mere tips of her fingers, and withered
him with her most disconcerting stare.  She knew
that to meet an unwelcome guest in complete silence
puts him at the most serious disadvantage.  Her
quick eye took in every detail of Brand's faultlessly
arranged air of distress.  "Good Heavens, the man
looks like a mourner; even his tie-pin is in keeping.
Has he come to borrow money, or what?" she
wondered.

"Lady Wereminster, forgive me.  May I sit down?"

The voice was low and broken.  Lady Wereminster
raised her eyebrows, allowing but one word
to escape from her tightly pursed lips.

"Certainly."

Brand hesitated.

"I have come to consult you about a matter that
is very near my heart, Lady Wereminster.  A matter
that concerns Evelyn's welfare.  Otherwise I
should never have dreamed of intruding upon you."

"The time between half-past two and a quarter
to three is usually spent in idleness," said Lady
Wereminster grimly.  "Go on, please."

"I shall go straight to the point," said Brand.
"I am in great trouble, I've heard rumours——"  He
stopped again, choked by emotion, while Lady
Wereminster watched him with a look of stone.  "A
man can fight his own battles, good or ill scarcely
matter where his character is concerned.  But when
the name of the woman one loves best——"  He
corrected himself hastily, seeing his hostess's
momentary expression of surprise.  "When one's
wife's name is spoken with ever such slight levity,
it's another matter."  He paused, shielding his face
with his hands, pent-house fashion, as though
utterly overcome.

Lady Wereminster looked rather pale.

"To what, pray, are you alluding?" she asked.

Brand looked up desperately.

"Have you seen this week's *Crystal*, Lady
Wereminster?  It came half-an-hour ago.  I've kept it
from Evelyn till now.  You know those accursed
problems that they print weekly—one's meant to
read between the lines.  The ghastly part of them
is that they are veiled under so damnable and
complete a cloak of anonymity."

"Will you kindly oblige me by being more
explicit?" asked Lady Wereminster, after a glacial
pause.

Brand turned, at bay, his eyes flashing.  He was
really playing his part excellently.

"There's something about Evelyn!—about
Evelyn!—in the paper."

"An unopened copy is on the table beside you,"
said Lady Wereminster.  "Will you kindly read
me the paragraph to which you refer?"

Holding the table for support, Brand read on
slowly, giving each word its full significance.

"'*A woman who contemplates an eventual ménage
à trois is wise not to marry an athletic husband.*'

"'*Gratitude is a virtue, remember, though it
does not always lead to virtue where politics are
concerned.*'

"'*He was lately seen in Sussex, where she had
temporarily taken up her residence.*'

"'*After all, more ways than one lead to the
Divorce Court.*'"

There was a long pause.

"And you mean to tell me," Lady Wereminster
began very slowly.  Then she stopped, her voice
was shaking.

Brand bowed his head.

"Unmistakable.  I heard a man laugh at it just
now in the club.  'Farquharson and——' he said.
Then he saw me."

Lady Wereminster put out a warning hand.

"No names, please; it's not safe even here.  Oh,
if I were a man!"  Her eyes blazed.  "Couldn't
one horsewhip the editor? or—no, that would make
a scandal at once.  That's where people like these
have everything in their hands.  Nothing is so easy
to spread as a lie about a woman.  One word of
suspicion and you could blacken Una herself.  This
must be stopped—but how?  What can we do?"

For the first time in her life she was identifying
herself with Brand, even consulting him on mutual
terms.

"They are bound to go on meeting.  And now
at every turn there will be eyes to watch and lips
to sneer.  If I had my way, I'd have the people who
spread lies like these stand naked in a public pillory.
There's a jealous woman or women behind it, of
course.  Trace any scandal to its source, and you
will find that the one man or woman from whom it
originally emanated was the one who would benefit
by its being spread.  In a question of work, you
will find it is the woman beaten in her own field by
a younger woman, socially superior, who starts the
scandal; in love, the vanquished rival.  Scandal
can't create itself; there's always at least one pair of
lying lips to bring it into being."

"What if the man were to—but then he never
would——" Brand faltered.

Lady Wereminster threw up her hands with a cry.

"You have it," she said; "there's only one
way he can stop it.  He must marry.  People must
think that she has been his confidante throughout—has
known about it from the first.  She's not the
kind of woman to stand up against a stab in the
dark like this.  It would kill her!"

"But is Farquharson likely to marry?  Is there
any one with whom his name is associated?" said
Brand doubtfully.  "He never seemed to me a
marrying man."

"That's not the question," said Lady Wereminster
decidedly.  "The whole point is that he
must save her.  Good Heavens, that Evelyn should
be the talk of any club!"  She rang the bell
violently.  "Give me the paper.  I shall go and see
Mr. Farquharson myself at once, and put the matter
straight before him.  He owes everything to Evelyn,
and he's brought this upon her.  They say it's
always the woman who goes to the wall in these
matters.  Well, she shan't in this case, if I have to
take the man to the church myself.  Good-bye, and
thank you."

She extended a hurried forefinger and waved him
to the door.  He bowed, well satisfied.

"Order the victoria at once, James; I'm in a
hurry."

Taking out her glasses, Lady Wereminster
re-read the paragraph line by line.

"Oh, if I had but seen Evelyn lately!  But
meeting Miss Beadon when I ran in the other morning
stopped my going for a week.  'Sussex'—and
'politics'!—Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 3-II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

"The cleverest of all devils is opportunity."—VIELAND.

.. vspace:: 2

"Evelyn, you must help me," said Miss Beadon
angrily.  "How can you say no, and be so horribly
cruel?  It's such a tiny favour to ask; it shan't cost
you a penny, I promise, if you'll only come.  I'll
let the carriage pick you up."  She was on the
verge of tears.

Evelyn, to whom tears came with difficulty,
thought that they caused other women acute mental
agony like her own.

She held out her hand.

"Please don't cry, Dora.  There's more in this
than you know.  I've got to think things out.  Be
quiet for a minute, dear."

On the face of it it was a small thing Miss
Beadon was asking, merely that Evelyn should
make a point of accompanying her to the last
reunion that night in Hare's rooms before he left
town.  Evelyn had already accepted the invitation
tentatively, meaning only to go if she heard
that Farquharson would not be present.  At large
parties they were able to avoid each other easily.
They had never been much together in public.  But
at so small and intimate a gathering as this—Hare
was expecting only ten or twelve people—they must
infallibly be thrown together and meet as though
things were on the old footing, before their
bitter-sweet secret had drawn them near.

But now Dora had come to demand Evelyn's
help, and she was made to confront the very thought
which she most dreaded.  Dora wanted to marry
Farquharson.  Evelyn shut her eyes and tried to
think what life would be under such changed
conditions.  If the idea was no longer new, it was none
the less terrible.  Spiritual forces may be called up
to battle with many foes successfully, but there are
times when spiritual forces fail, when foes from
within, the very roots of our nature, take arms
against us.  It seemed to Evelyn at that moment
that the civil war within her was sapping the very
life in her body.  She could have stood aside to
watch Farquharson rise higher and higher, alone,
unhampered, even although every step took him
further from her, but how could she bear to see him
live his life out with another woman, reaping the
small domestic joys, gathering in time, perhaps,
even the perfect fruit of the tree of life?

"Thou shalt ask and not obtain."  The words
came back to her.  This was, perhaps, what God
demanded of her, the penalty for having come near sin.
Daily crucifixion—not a mere seven hours agony,
but one which would endure to her life's end.

And yet the horrible selfishness of the point of
view!  What right had she to deny him such little
gifts as he might secure from life, which is so rarely
bountiful?  His inward life, all its purposes and
ambitions, would be hers, and in a career like his
there must inevitably be dark moments when home
comfort and joys, which he had never had, might
brace him to meet his difficulties, and nerve him, by
sheer force of reaction, for future battles.

She looked at Dora critically.  Perhaps they had
all misjudged her.  Her heart seemed to be set
upon her object with absolute determination; and
if she loved Farquharson enough, nothing else
mattered.  Love was what he needed—love near at
hand, love wrapping him round.  The love which
"feels no burthen, gives all for all and is all in all,
which watches and, sleeping, slumbers not, when
weary is not tired."

"You love Mr. Farquharson—you want me to
understand that you really love him?" she said at
last.  "Love is such a big thing, Dora, I often
wonder if girls understand it.  Modern men and
women take more trouble to choose a housekeeper
than they give to the choice of a life-long
companion.  Marriage is all give and take—and there's
more in those words than you will ever realize until
you've gone right through the marriage service,
and come out at the other side.  It's a thing of
deadly gravity, marriage, not a mere shifting of
responsibility, or the prospect of a better position,
or the escape from home discomfort.  You are one
of the lucky people to whom none of these three
incentives need appeal.  Oh, Dora, there are so
many unhappy marriages in this world, and I'm so
tired of them!  Do make up your mind that yours
shall be a beautiful success, not just a brilliant one."

"You always take things so seriously," Dora
said tartly.  "Of course I love him.  Why should
I want to marry him rather than any one else?  It's
not as if he were the only one.  I'm only asking
you to chaperon me for this one evening, not a
lifetime, and it's nothing to make such a fuss about,
after all.  I never get an opportunity of saying a
word to him without everybody seeing.  Even
servants may be reporters in disguise.  It makes
even me unlike myself; and I know it's only the fear
of being seen and watched that keeps him from
speaking to me.  When he was not so important
he used to talk to me quite a lot, and quite
intimately.  I remember one night at the
Wereminsters' when he spoke of you—implied he liked
you, but said you weren't his style, or something
of the sort.  For such a man that meant a lot.  I'm
not a woman to make confidences, as you know, so
I appreciate reserve in others.  I've come to you
because you've seen everything from the first.
You're married, you've got all you want; why can't
you help me by giving me one or two of the opportunities
nobody else in the whole world knows that
I long for?"

This sounded plausible enough.  Dora's ways
were not as Evelyn's, but that was perhaps a mere
matter of temperament.  And the glow of sacrifice
burns with so white a flame that it illuminates even
those trivial objects that it falls upon.

"I'll come," said Evelyn, sighing.  "What
time shall I be ready?"

"We ought to be there at half-past nine," said
Dora.  "Will you be with us at nine-fifteen?  Then
we can have a talk first.  By the way, you'd better
take a cab, Evelyn, after all—you do live such an
awfully long way out."

.. vspace:: 2

"Thanks.  Then you don't think me an interfering
old woman?" said Lady Wereminster.

"I think you are very kind," said Farquharson
courteously.  His tone was final.  He rose and
held out his hand, and Lady Wereminster, who was
known amongst her circle of intimate friends as
"The Social Tyrant," meekly acquiesced and left him.

"The man's extraordinarily reassuring," she
told herself as she drove away.  "He says very
little.  But he's a man of his word, and he'll do as
I want.  There's nothing he wouldn't do for Evelyn.
I didn't dare even say I was sorry for him.
And these are matters that the world would tell you
you might not even pray about!" ...

Farquharson, left mercifully alone, went back to
the table in his study and sat down heavily.  Blue
Books, pamphlets, the records of his work lay all
about him, in orderly piles; Farquharson was
nothing if not scrupulously neat; his life lay there.
Methodical, orderly, brilliant, complete—which
adjective best described it?

Yet in that moment it all seemed to him of little
worth, little real value.  After all, to have your name
in men's mouths for a season, what is it?  Success
and enmity go hand in hand; the man or woman
who finds the highest is beset by a thousand treacheries
and betrayals.  The little bank clerk, with his
hundred and fifty pounds a year, setting out to his
work in the morning unnoticed, and unenvied, and
returning to the woman he loves at the close of
office hours, has a happier lot than the most important
statesman in the empire.  His small cup is full
to the brim with wholesome wine and water; that
of the other is mixed with vinegar and gall.

What had Farquharson's country done for him
that he should work for it?  It had given him a
legacy of dishonour, it had torn his heritage from
him.  Why should he sow in blood, that the wastrel
and incompetent should reap the fruit of his toil in
ease?  Why should he spend himself that England,
who reared heroes only to spit upon them, should
put him on that pedestal which had so often, of
late years, turned to a pillory?  And yet other men
had braved and achieved so much more than he.

His mind leapt back to Kabul; to the doings of
a little Corps of Guides, Hamilton, Jenkyns, Kelly
and the rest.  Who remembered those deathless
heroes now?  Hamilton, the most intrepid, he who
had charged over two thousand of the enemy, first
with four men, and then with three, and last of all
alone, had his memorial in stone at Dublin.  But
stone cannot speak or glow.  Cold and immovable,
it is the symbol of a nation's heart.

Yet the call of one's country is strong.  Now, at
this moment, when he, the strong man, wavered
between allegiance to her service and denial of her
claims, weighing duty in the scale with happiness,
her voice rose with the calm insistence which drives
a man to do the thing he would not—to achieve
what, humanly speaking, we should call impossible.
Peace and ease might have been Farquharson's in
Taorna—life with the woman he loved.  He knew
his power; he underrated Evelyn's.  He faced
again in that moment the temptation to take her
away against her will, maybe, strong in the
certainty that he could satisfy her, that they would
find together something which the average man and
woman could never attain.

But the voice of the nation spoke, implacably.
"I want you.  You must stay.  I shall bruise and
break you.  No matter, you are dust, you can
return to the dust from which you came.  You may
ride in my car of progress day and night, neither
sleeping nor resting so long as your wits are keen
and your intellect alert.  Once your eyes fail or
your hand trembles, I shall have no further use for
you.  From nothing you came, to nothing you may
then return.  But my car will go on, and you will
have driven it for a little time."

Yes, he must stay.  And if he stayed, he must
make this sacrifice for Evelyn; he must give up his
dearest dream.  For, grimly as he faced life as a
whole, he had always cherished the thought of
marriage as his one hope of human salvation.  What
he had said to Evelyn was true; not mere words, but
conviction.  He believed that a man should only
give himself in marriage to the one woman who
could make an equal gift of mind, body and soul,
the supreme trinity of surrender.  Marriage was a
sacrament—marriage as God instituted it, not the
false union that convention recognized.

"And now the dream must go," he said aloud.
His thoughts went back to the old phrase of the
picture gallery when he had spoken to Dan.  "Yes,
dreams are only made to break, I suppose."  He
got up.  "Since one woman is as much or as little
to me as another, if I can't have Eve as my wife—I'll
leave it to chance, and propose to the first
unmarried woman, if she will let me, who speaks
to me to-night at Hare's."

.. vspace:: 2

"At last!" Miss Beadon said.  "I thought you
were never coming."  She was standing near the
door, awaiting Farquharson's entry.  She knew the
value of a convenient position.  "We have hardly
seen anything of you of late."  For once she was
a trifle nervous.  "But I've read all your speeches.
Father has told me how splendidly you've got on."

Not the ideal woman this, but a woman who at
least could sympathize, who would not need to be
taught the necessities of her position.  Farquharson
looked at her gravely.  Something of her self-complacency
had left her; she was nervous and a little
tremulous as to the result of this meeting, for which
she had plotted so eagerly.

"I have something to say to you," he said.  "I
must speak to these people first, and then——  See,
there are chairs in that little recess.  Will you wait
for me there in ten minutes' time?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 3-III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Youth from the windows of his innocence
   |  Sent forth his soul to scan the future years.
   |  Homeward it brings this strange intelligence—
   |        'In life there are no tears.'

   |  We who are older, shake our heads and say
   |  'Another tale, we know, we who are men.'
   |  But haply Youth espies the deathless years,
   |        Seeing beyond our ken."

.. vspace:: 2

"I am not sorry that, after all, you were not
there," wrote Lady Wereminster to Hare, a few
weeks later.  "The Burial Service always strikes
me as comparatively gay when matched with the
amended Marriage Service of the Church of England.
The one gives hope; the other preaches duty
instead.  There is no romance in it, no mysticism.
You are practically told it is your duty to marry
because you are not good enough to remain unmarried,
that you must bring children into the world
because it would look so remarkably odd if you did
not.  As to the meaning of it all, whether it is to
the glory of God or your next-door neighbour, the
advertisement editor of the *Morning Post* is the
best judge.  Anyway, he is the person who
immediately benefits.

"Did I tell you that Richard Farquharson and
Dora Beadon were indissolubly united at St. Margaret's,
Westminster, yesterday afternoon, by the
bye?  I suppose you read all in the papers; there
was fuss enough, in all conscience.  Miss Beadon
saw to that.  I dislike that girl more than ever.  Is
there anything more annoying than the incompetence
of a woman who cannot fill the position she
was born to?

"And now what will happen?  I feel responsible,
having set the machinery in motion.  As a girl, I
played with lives quite easily; it amused me to turn
fate, or juggle with purposes the meaning of which
I could not fathom.  Now, in old age, I have grown
afraid.  Souls are such tiresome things.  I know
old Akbar said, 'I never saw any one lost on a
straight road,' but occasionally one wonders if there
are any straight roads left, now the County Council
has played so many tricks with London streets?

"Dora Beadon is neither a fish nor a vegetable.
She belongs to the new world which we have
created in this after-Victorian era.  Don't think I
complain of her hypocrisy; I suppose we are all
hypocrites more or less.  I was one when I tried
to persuade a man with a career to marry a selfish
woman, with what I hoped to be a nondescript
character, because I wanted him to save the reputation
of a woman who reminds me more of my niece
Asenath than any one I have ever met.  As Dora is
nondescript, she may be amiable.  But—that
mouth of hers!  Have you ever seen it in repose?

"Well, now they are started for good or ill.  I
pin my faith on the man's ambition.  All life's a
compromise.  No woman can have both a Grecian
nose and a perfect figure; no man can have success
and happiness.  And success means more to a man
than to a woman.  If we are human, there's no
single moment in which we would not lay down the
biggest prize the world can offer us at the feet of
the man we love, and say, 'Please take it, dear; I
only won it for you.'  But a man likes to have his
prize in a substantial form, and keep it on his
sideboard, so that his wife can show it, very highly
polished, to his guests.  Look at the presentation
cups in our men's messes!  The trophies, challenge
cups!  Why, a man can't even kill a big salmon
without having it photographed or modelled in a
glass case.  We women kill our salmon every day
and no one knows it.

"So I dispose of Richard Farquharson.  He is
off my conscience.  Life will give him something,
although it is not the thing he wants.  And Dora—she
need not complain; she will have a little more
wealth, a little more luxury, a little more panoply
of amusement and flattery; that is enough for her.
But there's still Evelyn.

"She came to the wedding.  He made her—her
husband.  Oh, if she were only a less good
Catholic!  It is a magnificent system.  It reduces
its subjects to such a pitch of subjection that they
obey in spite of themselves.  The happiness, the
welfare of one unworthy little soul—what does it
matter, so long as the Vatican coffers are full, so
long as the Celebrations on high days and festivals
have still their proper number of spectators?
Inviolable, magnificent, the one wall that will never
be broken, it rears itself ever higher and higher as
the ages roll on, cemented with the blood of a
thousand victims whose names will never be written in
any book of martyrology.

"You like human problems, so I give you one.
There they stand, the three of them, as opposed in
temperament as any of the subjects in Browning's
*Ring and the Book*.  I cannot depict them; I
cannot even prophesy.  Very long ago I found that
God knew a great deal more than I did—a fact
that hardly seems possible to the cocksureness of
youth.  So—wicked old woman as I am supposed
to be by many of my best friends—I end this letter
to you, who know me well, with a real pious
intention.

"You remember the story of the bishop who was
told the ship upon which he was travelling was about
to sink?  I will try and quote it from memory—

   |  "'The sea it was rough and the ship it did lurch,
   |    And it blew without reason or ruth;
   |  And the consequence was this mainstay of the Church
   |    Suffered much for the sake of the truth.

   |  And the sea it grew rough, and the night it grew black,
   |    And the rain-drops fell heavy and thick,
   |  And the bishop he heartily wished himself back,
   |    While Rangoon—it might go to Old Nick!

   |  "Oh, skipper, I really enjoy a good blow,
   |    And 'tis truly a glorious sight;
   |  But your candid opinion I'm anxious to know—
   |    Do you think there is danger to-night?"

   |  The skipper he hitched himself up, and he laughed,
   |    Then he suddenly grew very grave,
   |  As a hurricane squall seemed to stagger the craft,
   |    And she buried her nose in a wave.

   |  And he said, "Well, your Grace, it's a dirtyish night,
   |    But whether the vessel will ride,
   |  I really can't tell you; you'll know before night,
   |    In Providence we must confide."

   |  "Good gracious!" the bishop exclaimed in dismay
   |    As he clutched at his old shovel hat;
   |  "This is terrible, skipper; you don't mean to say
   |    That really it has *come to that*!"'
   |

"I think it has 'come to that' in this instance
too!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BESTOWAL`:

.. _`CHAPTER 4-I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART IV

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

THE BESTOWAL

.. vspace:: 2

"Human endurance is the one miracle left in the world."—E. ROBINS.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,
   |    But cannot get the wood to burn;
   |  It hardly flames ere it begins to falter,
   |    And to the dark return.

   |  'Tis all I have—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour,
   |    Coldness and doubt and palsied lack;
   |  Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver,
   |    Send Thou Thy lightning back."
   |                                  GEORGE MACDONALD.

.. vspace:: 1

"Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he
was meant to live."—MARCUS AURELIUS.

.. vspace:: 2

The sensation of pain does not immediately strike
a man who is severely wounded; first, he feels a
sting like a lash, then numbness succeeds, presently
he falls.

Mental pain is, after all, very like physical.  Acute
shock paralyzes mind and soul; it puts a clog in the
wheel of human machinery.  Great calamities do
not necessarily stop human functions from fulfilling
their duties; a man eats or drinks, or may, in
exceptional cases, even sleep as well in the first moment
of a great crisis as before.  Body and soul are braced
to the day's routine; for a time they continue their
offices unchecked.  But presently the chill and
paralysis of thought and action spread throughout
his being.  Then ordinary work is impossible.
Merely to live is a labour, the most trivial effort an
arduous achievement.

In paralysis, limbs refuse to obey the message of
the brain, or, misinterpreting it, do the thing they
would not.  So, when the roots of a life's happiness
have been struck, the soul cannot hear the message
of the over-wrought body that pleads to it for help
in vain.

In the days that followed, Farquharson and Evelyn
travelled again, invisible companions, down the
same *via crucis* of agony and shame.  To Evelyn,
perhaps, the path was the more difficult to tread
because for the first time faith had failed her.
"Doubt comes," says the Catholic Church, "to
those who wilfully play with sin."  Unyielding,
inflexible, she would have those who profess her faith
remove themselves from the first taint of guilt,
failing to help even the sorely wounded if he who
suffered were one whose imminence brought danger.
It is another of the paradoxes with which faith
abounds; there are times when these same paradoxes
raise an impenetrable wall against which the
human heart beats vainly—bruised, bleeding,
outwardly broken.

Doggedly Evelyn kept to the open evidences of
her belief, sure of their truth, though unable to find
comfort in them.  She knew priests who had done
the same, men who had striven for weeks and years
against overwhelming apathy, alone in the desert of
temptation.  She knew one who had died so, to
whom no ray of illumination had come even at the
last, although only she and his confessor knew as
much.  He was a man who had helped more men
and women than any other member of his brotherhood;
faith seemed to be given him merely to be
spent in the service of others.

But he was a man, and she was only a woman.
And peace of some kind must surely have approached
him, if one believes at all in supernatural
influences, from the very atmosphere of the praying
souls he stood amongst at Mass, from the mere
nearness of the Sacred Host.  Evelyn lived in an
atmosphere of cynicism and doubt; it pressed upon
her, bearing her down now that she had no rival
force with which to combat it.  And because by the
narrow channel through which one doubt enters a
thousand may follow, she found that the silence and
solitude she had once loved were now thronged with
ghosts, ghostly visions of the love she might have
had but would not, and the life she might have lived
with him she loved, one in companionship, one in
ambition, one in the most dear and sacred intimacy
of marriage, one in failure, one in success, one in the
love of the children whose feet they would never now
hear, whose lips would never now meet their own.

There is no hell which equals in intensity the hell
of an imagination so vivid as to create being from
what is void.  When Farquharson left the church
with his wife, Evelyn followed them every step of
the way home.  She looked on to the future; she
forced herself to pray for their happiness, while in
her heart she knew that happiness would be her
death-blow.  As she had striven for him in the past,
using all the human forces at her command in
helping him attain the thing he wished, so she strove
now to make herself desire that he should have the
best life has to offer, not the mere earthly wreath of
laurels, but the unfading crown of peace.

But Farquharson, although she did not know it,
had a harder task.  He had tied himself for life to
a woman who violated his every belief, whose nature
warred with his at every turn.  Realist and man of
purpose as he was, his dear belief that in the world
somewhere, somehow, there lived a second Margaret
Cunningham whom he would ultimately possess,
had sweetened all his work since he left Glune.
When he met Evelyn he knew the dream was true,
and Glune and she were absolutely at one.  He
pictured her its fitting mistress, visiting every haunt
of his childhood, satisfying every memory and
tradition, washing away with her tender tears the
bitterness that had grown part of his heritage, as
labourers would clear away useless timber and
refuse, making all wholesome and clean.

Glune was his now again, a princely wedding
gift from Calvert and Beadon, but all pleasure in
the possession was gone.

.. vspace:: 2

A French writer once said that it is impossible to
predict of any woman the exact change that marriage
will make in her.  We have all seen love turn
to hate in a few hours under certain circumstances,
but there are subtler changes still.  Great emotions
may bring havoc to certain natures; change comes
inevitably, whether the emotions be great or small.
Perhaps Dora had cared for Farquharson so far as
in her lay before he became her husband, but now
he was her property, an object of daily use, as
important, perhaps, as her sponge or toothbrush, but
quite unworthy of any deep regard.  It was better
to be with him than without him.  It never struck
her that she owed him any duty; if she thought
about the matter at all it was merely to consider that
a beneficent Creator had brought him into being for
the special purpose of accompanying her when she
wanted him, and transacting the business that she
had slurred even as an unmarried woman; investing
her money to its best advantage, and paying bills
about whose magnitude she no longer felt even the
smallest compunction.

With those early days of marriage she was entirely
content and satisfied.  No doubt of her ability
to please him crossed her mind; the useless are
invariably self-satisfied.  She had mapped out a
motor tour which was intended to outdo anything
that other brides had accomplished; restless,
untiring, she swept Farquharson on from place to
place, great towns and cities whose very stones
breathed glory and mystery, under the shadows of
mountains which at night looked cold and full of
awe, types of the crushing power that seemed to
rule men's destinies, but which were warmed and
quickened to life by the first gleam of the morning
sun.  Beauty, tradition, mystery, these things
meant nothing to Dora, and Farquharson, who
longed to stay, was openly derided.  Of late years
he had had little or no time to spare for the love of
nature which had trained him as a boy; he steeped
his soul in colour which she did not even see.

They went from big hotel to big hotel; nights
spent in little village inns bored Dora inexpressibly.
Day after day she went out of their road to buy the
English papers.  If their tour was not mentioned
in them she flung them aside; when it was, she
collected the cuttings eagerly.  Farquharson realized
that for his wife the meaning of life was resolved
into a single hope—that the glare of publicity
should be for ever upon them.  He thought of the
future.  He could picture her at Glune, entertaining
the Press, dragging out his relics, giving
chapter and verse succinctly of all those dear records
which had made him what he was.  She would
gossip with the villagers, she would leave no stone
unturned to find out all about his childhood, and
then repeat it at her next afternoon call.  Nothing
was sacred to her, and now for Evelyn's sake he
had learned to look upon women as sacred, and to
try to understand something even of his mother's
nature.  Women like Dora would drag her memory
and his brother's in the dust that they might make
suitable headlines for an "interview."

It was for this he had bartered his dream—for this
and to save a woman's honour.

Well, there was work to do; thank God for work.
Daily routine has saved many a man's brain from
snapping, before now.

.. vspace:: 2

Farquharson returned to town after six weeks'
absence to find great arrears and accumulation of
work, which he welcomed.  Various by-elections
were taking place all over the country; the issue of
the next election mainly depended upon the people's
decision concerning Tariff Reform *versus* Free
Trade.  Since the great Protectionist leader was
unable through illness to carry on the contest,
Farquharson was appealed to on all sides as the
worthiest exponent of the cause.  He was invited
to speak in the north, in the midlands, south and
west alike.

In Taorna, too, there were difficulties.  The
position of the man he had left to act for him wanted
strengthening.  The Council for once was undecided;
Farquharson's message flashed across the sea
and was obeyed.  Beadon read its terms and smiled.

"Men talk of grit," he said, "but you've got
grip.  Do you never lose touch of what you've
once held?"

"That's a real man," was Hare's comment as he
read next morning's paper.  "What he has done
for Taorna, he can do for England.  I am beginning
to have hopes for her.  One man has saved his
nation before now."

That the country was passing through a crisis
was apparent.  Farquharson had set men talking.
His speeches spread dissatisfaction and dissension,
and unrest alone will make a nation rise.  The
Ministry sent its best men to oppose him; in one
important ward it was even rumoured that the
Liberals had bribed men to heckle and annoy the
candidate whom he supported.  But on the night
in question it was Farquharson who faced them,
having persuaded his somewhat timid follower to
plead temporary illness.  And as he spoke better
than he had ever spoken before, even his enemies
were silenced.

Up in the north, that hot-bed of Liberalism, men
weighed his words and were discomfited.  It was
their force, their overwhelming conviction which
told with these level-headed men of business, who,
unlike their Irish neighbours across the sea, were
seldom swayed by impulse or carried away by
enthusiasm.  In Rowan, the nearest town to Bruchill,
a Radical constituency from time immemorial, a
meeting was held eventually, at which it was
decided to ask Farquharson to stand in place of the
retiring candidate.  The news came at breakfast.
It touched him very deeply; he had waited for this,
hoping against hope, and refusing other invitations
against the wishes of his party.  He handed it to
Dora without comment.

She flung it down.

"A trumpery second-rate place like that!  You'll
refuse, of course," she said.

.. vspace:: 2

Farquharson took his seat in the House as Member
for Rowan three weeks later.  After that matters
moved more dramatically than usual in the
undramatic House of Commons.  Amongst its
members may be found a great crowd of wavering
and irresponsible beings delighted to identify
themselves with a real leader; they followed Farquharson
like sheep.  A certain Bill, just brought forward,
had roused the nation's indignation; it touched all
classes, since every insurance office held large
shares in the especial traffic which it threatened.
The Bill gave Farquharson an early opportunity of
taking his stand in the House, and he made the
most of it.

A few weeks later, in a crowded assembly representative
not only of British but of foreign interest,
as the Strangers' and the Speaker's Galleries were
both full, Beadon proposed a vote of censure on the
Government, which was seconded by Farquharson
in a speech that turned the scale.  The motion
was carried by an overwhelming majority.  The
inevitable General Election followed, and event
followed event in quick succession.  Conservative
agencies mustered all their forces, and Farquharson
was bidden to speak in every direction.  The
pendulum swung round, and the Conservatives returned
to power with a gain of twelve seats on the last
amazing Liberal majority of three and a half years
before.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

"If glory does not intoxicate you continually, do not stand
beneath her banners."—THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.

.. vspace:: 2

"Historians and the Press make the mistake,"
said Hare, "of treating the nation as a party.
She is an individual, subject to fluctuations of
health and reason, capable, like a true woman, of
reaching any height or any depth.  She is baffling,
inconsistent, base, and noble within a breath.
Wise men predict her rise or fall according to her
temperament and environment.  Look at Spain.
Melancholy to the roots of her being, mysterious,
ardent—she has those qualities which attain to the
utmost height of glory for a while, then decline.
The Escorial shows one side of the nation; much
the same brooding silence and enmity as were the
hall-marks of the Inquisition.  I doubt if any man
or woman can fully understand what made
inquisitors act as they did until they have been to
Spain.  There is no power so cruel as that of a faith
which literally obeys the scriptural injunction of
destroying limb by limb the body which turns to
evil and forsakes good.  In Grenada you have
another side, everything steeped in colour and
mystery.  Moorish, of course—how few of us realize,
by the bye, that Spain was held by the Moors for
an even longer period than she has been under
the sway of the Spaniards.  But Spain needs
balance.  Till she gets it she will never be a great
nation.  Take Italy, again.  Had she cultivated her
pagan characteristics, as opposed to the qualities
which priests would tell you make for ultimate
happiness, she would have done better.  As it is, she
is rebellious, chaotic, a mass of intrigue and
suspicion, unreliable and weak.  Germany—ah! there's
a power to be reckoned with, scarcely, in my
mind, to fear.  Her death-blow is ambition.  She
is a one-man country, and one man is liable to err.
France is a house divided against itself; a nation
of charming women and irreligious men.  In her
dissensions our security lies.  Russia"—he
shrugged his shoulders—"with her internal
troubles and her exchequer at so low an ebb, we
need not fear her.  In the future aspect of the
Alliance, I fancy China and Japan united may be
our bitter enemies.  Theirs is a waiting game.  At
Berlin and Paris and London you will find students
from these countries assimilating all that we can
teach them, wisely using the best means that other
nations can furnish for their own ends.  You have
the dominant characteristics of different types in
every case.  The real diplomatist deals rather with
the Russian, the Italian, the Spaniard, than with
Russia, Italy, and Spain."

"Quite a good lesson in foreign affairs at first
hand," said Lady Wereminster, turning to her
neighbour, Meavy, who, a disappointed man, had
had to resign his post through ill-health.  "Given,
if I mistake not, to some end.  Has anything
unusual struck you about our little party to-night?"

Meavy looked round.

"Calvert, our host—Farquharson and his wife,
Creagh, Beadon, Hare, the Brands, your husband,
you and myself—your sex is in the minority, Lady
Wereminster."

"Precisely the same party that was down at
Creagh to meet Mr. Farquharson on his first
introduction to English social life," said Lady
Wereminster.  "That was a year ago.  Since then——"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Tides ebb and flow, men come and go," quoted
Meavy dreamily.

"One man's arrived," said Lady Wereminster.
"A year ago we were bemoaning the drowsiness of
the Empire.  She has awakened now.  I suppose,
to carry on Mr. Hare's simile, she has had a good
shaking.  Every one needs it in his day."

"I'm sure *I* don't," said Dora Farquharson,
breaking in.  "Richard, do scold Lady
Wereminster.  She says I need shaking—I'm sure I
don't, do I?"

"Oh, if we all got our deserts——" put in Hare
somewhat grimly.

"Now Richard needs shaking if you like,"
continued Dora, who had begun, since marriage, to
consider herself something of a wit.  "He is the
most *impossible* husband.  Always off somewhere,
at anybody's beck and call but mine.  A dear boy,
of course, but hopeless to live with.  If he had
married an unamiable wife I don't know what he would
have done.  When he's at home, he always says he
is too busy to be disturbed."

"You don't agree with the axiom that women
ought to marry men they dislike because it is the
only way of avoiding them, then?" said Lady
Wereminster.

Dora simpered.

"Oh no.  I was always romantic—just the
opposite to Richard.  Not that I want to complain of
you, old boy."  She leant across the table and
tapped her husband on the arm.  "You're quite
a good sort in your way; you don't mind your little
wife chaffing you occasionally, do you?"

"No man is a hero to his—wife," Creagh misquoted
gently.

Lady Wereminster flashed.

"Don't tar us all with the same brush.  There are
wives and wives, remember; most of us ought to go
through a training school for marriage.  I'm sure
useless subjects enough are taught in modern
schools.  'How to be a good wife' would be an
attractive variety."

"Modern girls' schools are becoming more like
boys'—delightful playgrounds."

"I approve of hockey and the rest in their way,"
said Lady Wereminster.  "If the modern woman
would only take her marriage as seriously as she
does her games she might even bring human nature
into repute again.  Marriage is the only profession
which a woman enters with absolutely no doubt of
her competency.  She may be the most irresponsible
creature in the world, but she thinks the art of
ruling a household is like love or measles—easily
caught.  I don't know how it is in your Church,
Evelyn, but in ours no spiritual director would
dream of suggesting advice in such a matter unless
he were directly asked to interfere.  And yet the
duties are apparent.  Any woman may make or
mar any man with whom she is in daily contact.  A
woman can drag a man down in more ways than
one.  A wife can belittle her husband at every
turn—can, by persistently treating him as an inferior
in his own house, end by making him inferior.  She
can swamp his energy with her idleness, freeze his
love of work with her indifference, fritter his money
away on trifles until he loses all desire to save for a
rainy day, deny him pleasure and outlet at every
turn.  I have no sympathy for such wives when
their husbands leave them.  In many cases, indeed,
they would never stay but for the children."

"'A training school for wives founded by the
Countess of Wereminster,'" said Brand maliciously.
"High fees, of course.  Shall we draw up
the prospectus now?  Will you accept my wife
and Mrs. Farquharson as teachers, Lady Wereminster?"

"Delighted—if you'll agree to go in for the
necessary examination as a husband," said Lady
Wereminster promptly.

   |  "'We do not what we ought,
   |  What we ought not, we do,
   |  And lean upon the thought
   |  That chance will bring us through,'"

suggested Creagh, smiling.

"Talk of duties," interposed Mrs. Farquharson,
raising her voice, "mine are simply appalling.
They were bad enough in my father's house; they
are a hundred times worse now.  But, of course, in
my position they would necessarily be very arduous.
And in the future—oh, but I mustn't talk of that;
that's a political secret."

"Rather an open one," said Brand very softly.
"We have eyes and ears, Mrs. Farquharson.  Your
husband deserves the splendid luck you have
brought him."

"Oh well, it is a good thing, isn't it?" said Dora
proudly.  "But how did you know?  Of course
it has been rumoured for some time, but my father
only decided things to-day, and we don't want it in
the papers for another twenty-four hours."

"It's an appointment in which his peculiar talents
will tell," said Brand, drawing a bow at a venture.

"At first it was a toss-up between that and the
Colonies," said Dora.  "But—but in the present
state of——"

"Foreign affairs?" suggested Brand.

"They thought—yes, they thought he would be
more useful in that Office."

"Yes, it's a big post," said Brand abstractedly.
He looked at his watch.  "I wonder how much
longer we're going to sit here.  I have to make my
excuses early to Calvert to-night; a friend of mine
is ill, and I promised to go to him straight after
dinner."  He lowered his voice again.  "I tell you
this in confidence, of course.  My wife has taken
out a patent in the art of little human kindnesses,
you know; she doesn't like it infringed even by
me."  He smiled a little pathetically.

Dora put out her hand.

"I know how good you are—no one better.
Why, you even helped me once!"

"Ah, that—that was nothing.  But some day
I shall come upon you for the fulfilment of your
promise, Mrs. Farquharson."

Dora looked up, vaguely startled.  Brand's tone
was intentionally grave.

"My promise?  Oh, I remember.  Of course I'll do
what I can.  There's the signal to move," she said
hurriedly, gathering her fan and gloves together.

Farquharson stifled a sigh of relief as his wife
left the room.

.. vspace:: 2

"That woman's insufferable," said Lady
Wereminster.  "How the man stands her I don't know.
She trades on the patience that she knows he must
possess to have reached his present position.  Any
woman, alas! has it in her personal power to make
life unendurable for her husband, but I know of no
surer method than persistently to wound his dearest
susceptibilities.  Dora treats Richard like a
schoolboy—she would degrade a grocer if she lived with
him long enough.  'My this, my that'—she makes
me sick One feels tempted to remind her that the
wife.  who lays so frequent a stress on the possessive
pronoun where her husband and children and house
are concerned, is always suspected of holding them
insecurely.  Did you ever hear the story of the man
who married a rich, vulgar wife, inclined to talk of
'my money, my garden, my furniture my dinner
party,' etc., by way of pointing out the fact that
she had paid for them?  Before a room full of
people one day she asked him, after some temporary
absence, where he had been.  'Trying on your
new trousers, which have just come back from the
tailor's,' he answered.  I hope she laid the lesson
to heart."

"I wish you'd learn to take care of yourself,
Evelyn," she went on, inconsequently, peering sharply
at Mrs. Brand.  "There ought to be some one at
hand who would take care of you, and pet you, and
carry you off to the country every time those
hollows come under your eyes.  You think too much,
Evelyn.  And unless you can kill thought, thought
kills you, remember.  That's why light amusements
that take one out of oneself are popular."

"I get a lot of change one way and another,"
said Evelyn.  "I go out, I mean."

"It's no good to go out if you don't go out with
the right person," said Lady Wereminster.  "One
has always to pay a price for happiness, although it
does not seem to cost much at the time.  Women
sign a blank cheque for it—a most foolish proceeding.
It's filled in by the recipient, and when the
amount falls due there's nothing left to meet it.  But
we are poor economists, and even spend ourselves
if we have nothing else to spend."

"I can't have you two monopolizing each other
all the evening," complained Dora Farquharson,
looking up, aggrieved.  "I wish those men would
come up.  How long they are.  It's always so dull
without men.  And you must both be longing to be
let in to this evening's secret—oh, perhaps you
don't even know there is a secret?"

"If you know it, it can no longer be called one,"
said Lady Wereminster tartly.

Dora bridled.

"I think a woman should begin as she means to
go on, in marriage.  I told Richard from the first
that I expected to know everything about his
work—all the secrets, I mean; not the dull part."

"And what did Mr. Farquharson say?"

"Say!" Dora laughed.  "Why, he never says
anything.  I suppose the so-called great people are
usually dull and commonplace in private life.  I
always tell Richard that if I had only been allowed
a trial trip in marriage I should never have said yes.
He's a dreadful old stay-at-home, you know;
doesn't really care to go out or to bother about one
at all.  He doesn't realize what a change it means
to a girl who has been accustomed to a whole train
of admirers all her life."

Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette.

"My dear Dora, don't talk about your youth to
a woman who was present at your christening."

"Oh, she can afford to," said Evelyn gently.
She slipped her hand into Mrs. Farquharson's.
"Are we ever to know the secret, Dora? and is it
one that will please us all, or only you?"

"Oh, everybody will know it in forty-eight
hours," said Dora, mollified; "but I think you are
to be told to-night.  It was Mr. Calvert's plan; he
thought the announcement would make rather a
charming climax to the evening.  What an old cat
Lady Wereminster is," she added, watching her
opponent withdraw to a distant corner and settle
herself comfortably in an arm-chair with the
evening paper.  "She never has a kind word for
anybody.  Fancy her trying to snub me; luckily I can
afford to overlook that sort of thing in my position.
Why, they say Richard may be anything at this
rate.  Of course, after a time I shall make father
resign in his favour; he's nearly sixty-five, and no
man's really worth anything in politics at that age.
Besides, he should make way for Richard.  I'm
very ambitious, you know; there's nothing I don't
mean to get for my husband.  Look what I've done
for him already.  He would never have been heard
of but for that Albert Hall meeting.  Oh, it's no
good talking of Taorna.  Who in the world cares
about Taorna except a few people on the Stock
Exchange?  I think it's only my duty to impress
upon Richard a proper sense of the obligation he's
under, don't you?"

There is a limit to endurance.

"Obligation?" cried Evelyn indignantly.  Mrs. Farquharson
started.  There was something in the
other woman's voice that struck even her as
unusual.  "You've married a man in a million, Dora;
a man in whose dictionary the word impossible is
unknown; whom people are proud to know; whom
you told me you loved.  I don't believe he owes
you anything, or any one else for that matter.  If
he did, there could be no possible question of
obligation.  In real love there's no bickering over
trifles; you give, if you must call it giving, as you
breathe, and as easily.  Oh, Dora, Dora"—she
put her hand on the girl's arm again—"don't
make the mistake most women do and quarrel over
the ridiculous difference in the change of a letter or
two between meum and tuum!"

Mrs. Farquharson rose, with an assumption of
dignity.

"My dear Evelyn, if I didn't know you so well,
I should really think you were jealous.  Never
mind, dear; I'll try to forget it.  I was always one
of your best friends, you know.  By the bye, would
you mind just putting a pin in my waist-band?  It
seems to have slipped somehow.  Yes, it's a pretty
frock, isn't it?  But Paquin's getting very
tiresome; I had to send up for it three times.  They
said it took five women forty-eight hours each,
sitting up all night, merely to finish that embroidery.
That alone cost six guineas a yard—but it looks
nice, doesn't it?  I always think you look so nice in
that dear old frock of yours—you really do wear
your things wonderfully, Evelyn."

"Time makes one's dresses become trusted
friends," said Evelyn wearily.  How useless either
to protest with or advise such a woman!  "Was
that your husband's voice?"

As the men entered she moved again to Lady
Wereminster's side, and Meavy, in obedience to her
signal, crossed to Mrs. Farquharson.

.. vspace:: 2

"Well, what do you think of my boy's progress?"
said Calvert.  He seated himself between
the two women, and Creagh and Beadon joined
the group.  "That last speech of his added a very
important seat to your long list of victories.  I'm
a Liberal myself, as you know, but I can't say I was
sorry we were beaten on that occasion."

Creagh laughed.

"For once I was right, eh, Beadon?  Do you
remember one afternoon when we were talking about
the man and the hour?"

"You have the man, but the hour has not yet
struck," said Hare gravely.  "After triumph,
reaction."

"You mean that in our national cocksureness
lies our peril?" said Beadon.  "We say we expect
a fight, and then go to sleep on feather-beds in
comfortable security."

"I often think we are like careless housemaids,"
said Lady Wereminster, "who let the dust accumulate
in corners, and bitterly resent the necessity
of cleaning them out."

"The truth is," said Hare, "we're getting too
luxurious.  Even for sport, men don't deny
themselves now as they did at the beginning of the
century.  Love of luxury has spread even to the
lower classes.  A district messenger boy thinks
himself very ill-used if he hasn't got his own bicycle,
and our grooms' sons learn the piano.  We make
extravagance our god, not duty.  Palatial hotels
and motor-cars between them have killed home life
in England.  People won't realize it's a much
greater compliment to be asked by their friends to
dine in private houses instead of restaurants."

"I know that modern girls spend more on their
dress in a month than I did in a year," said Lady
Wereminster.  "I remember a young niece telling
me that it was impossible to go through a London
season with less than twenty-five new evening frocks.
I used to wear book-muslins, and looked a great deal
nicer in them then, Wereminster says, than my
own great-grandchildren do now in hand-painted
chiffon."

"It's the tendency of the age," said Hare; "our
class sins worse than any other in that respect.
Luxury is a blight which has fallen upon the world;
within the last ten years it has grown to be part
and parcel of our existence.  In the old days
politicians and diplomatists took their duties seriously,
and never grumbled at hard work.  If a man does
eight hours' work now he thinks himself ill-used,
and goes to the country to recuperate.  Duty is
irksome—it always was—but fifty years ago men
faced it as a force to be reckoned with, not to evade.
Our blood was blood then, and ran red.  Moral
anæmia had not paled it."

"The good old days," said Creagh, smiling.
"Let us hope our grandchildren will talk of us as
we are now talking of our forbears, and bend the
knee before our memories as we do now before the
memories of our heroes.  Beadon's the man to go
for, Hare; we are in his hands.  Tell him to preach
your gospel to his Ministry, to impress upon them
the policy of constant energy and watchfulness, as
opposed to drastic reforms which, alas! too often
end in sloth."

"The policy of the late Government reminds one
of Lady Wereminster's simile," said Beadon.
"The Ministers certainly swept out a good many
rooms, but they left them bare."

"Isn't it nearly time to tell our news?" said
Calvert.  "I have a little *bonne bouche* for you,
Mrs. Brand—I know how much it will mean to you, the
woman to whom Richard owes so much.  Neither
he nor I forget it, if you have." He took her hand,
and patted it affectionately.

Evelyn could not answer.  There was a mist
before her eyes.

"By the way, what I am about to say is in the
strictest confidence," said Beadon.  "But where is
Mr. Brand?  Oh, he had to leave early, I remember.
I don't want it to reach the Press for fully
forty-eight hours, as Richard's is the first
appointment to be filled in my new Ministry.  He is to be
the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; the
appointment has only just been confirmed.  I think
nothing can suit him better.  His gift of languages,
his tact and diplomacy and unwearying patience—all
will tell to their fullest."

Lady Wereminster clapped her hands.

"Hurrah!  How glad I am!  Come here, Mr. Farquharson,
to be congratulated.  Now you'll go
on from strength to strength."

"I'm delighted, my dear fellow," said Creagh,
his face glowing with satisfaction.  "It's the best
thing for the country.  But I don't know that I
envy our neighbours across the sea, though; they'll
tackle a rough customer in you."

"Good," was Hare's comment; "you deserve it.

"Now we can sleep in peace," said Lord Wereminster
benignly, "and sing 'I fear no foe' with
some conviction."

.. vspace:: 2

Evelyn alone of the congratulatory group was
dumb.  To have one's prayers answered openly is
sometimes a betrayal of what those prayers have
meant to one.  Farquharson came quietly up to
her, and, voiceless still, her eyes searched his face.
How he had aged the last few months!  There was
a great patch of grey hair on the right-hand side of
his brow.  She wondered if she would ever see
again the look of boyish exaltation he had had that
night at Bramley.

Hare, glancing at them, quietly drew Lady Wereminster's
attention to the fact that Mrs. Farquharson
was still sitting apart from the rest with Meavy.
"Would it not be correct to congratulate her too?"
he suggested.

"And you—have you nothing to say?" Farquharson
asked.  They were practically alone for
the first time since his marriage.

Evelyn looked down.  Her eyes were wet.

"Don't—don't!" she said; "it's beyond all
words—the gladness, I mean.  You know the little
desert song—

   |  "'No one but God and I
   |  Know what is in my heart.'

That's what I feel."

.. vspace:: 2

"Now, Evelyn, Evelyn, come over here with my
husband, or I shall feel quite jealous," called
Mrs. Farquharson from the other end of the room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "A sacred burden is the life ye bear:
   |  Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly;
   |  Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly;
   |  Fail not for sorrow; falter not for sin,
   |  But onward, upward, till the goal ye win."
   |                                  F. A. KEMBLE.

.. vspace:: 2

"Once upon a time," said Lady Wereminster,
"I used to meet treachery with openness.  I
believed that to raise the standard of right meant
victory.  Now I know it doesn't, from this world's
point of view.  Men and women who batten upon
each other, who, being insensitive to the feelings
of others, mock at the halt and blind, get all they
want from life.  Life, like the judge in the
importunate widow story, gives only to those who ask
persistently."

"I used to pride myself on asking very little
from life; now I've found out that what I want is
priceless," said Evelyn.  Lady Wereminster had
come in to see her one afternoon after a big function
at Holland House, and stayed, as was her custom.

"You think you're alone in your suffering," said
Lady Wereminster; "well, you're not.  Your
friends suffer with you, they see you shamed and
broken in the world's eyes, and they stand on the
pillory with you, and are beaten with stripes as you
are.  Don't think I'm trying to force your
confidence.  I'm not.  I only want you to know what
people like you so seldom realize, that, as you walk
to the Cross, a host of invisible followers pursue
you, the people you've helped, the people who love
you, the people to whom your hurt is more than
their own.  We're not all of us called upon to make
great sacrifices, Evelyn.  It's only a few people
like you in a century upon whom the demand is
made.  If I were a pagan I should say that the gods
were jealous of the gift of love.  Take any of the
lives you know, and you'll see that, where love is,
the real communion between men and women, the
tie is rudely broken either by death or some more
imminent disaster.  I keep my faith in spite of
being sure that the Great Power behind only allows
us to taste supreme joy for a short time.  Human
beings are born with the capacity of holding a
certain amount of strength and force and happiness.
If they take all their happiness at once, as those
of us do who drink the cup at its fullest, they must
go thirsty for the remainder of their days."

She turned suddenly and held out her hand to
Evelyn.

"You don't want to talk about it, I know.  I
don't, either.  I had to tell you, for I'm an old
woman who has seen many seeming injustices in
the world, and who will rebel against them to the
end—and so I am sorry for you.  Because I believe
in happiness I should have arranged the world
differently to the way in which God has arranged it.
But because He is God, and has rolling centuries
to match my little half-hour of knowledge, I fold
my hands and trust His purposes, although I absolutely
fail to see their meaning.  Now let's talk of
something else.  Have you seen Dora Farquharson
lately?"

"Only casually in the street," said Evelyn.
"She seems rather to have avoided me of late."

"Nor her husband?" asked Lady Wereminster,
intent on fastening her cloak.

Evelyn shook her head.

"We live very far out, you know, and of late,
even had the Farquharsons been disengaged, we've
entertained so little that I've had no excuse for
asking them."

"If you had asked her, she'd have refused to
come," said Lady Wereminster from the door.
"She's jealous.  A woman who is common at heart
takes common means of showing jealousy.  But,
mark my words, the time will come when Dora's
in trouble, and she'll send for you then irrevocably
as the one person she can trust."

.. vspace:: 2

Fond as she was of Lady Wereminster, Evelyn
saw her go with a sigh of relief.  Unseen wounds
hurt enough in any case, without being torn open
daily by our friends.—How hot and sultry it was!

One of the minor evils of what is called the artistic
temperament is its dependence on the changes of the
season.  So far, Evelyn had loved spring and
summer, had counted the days till April like a child
awaiting some coveted adventure.  She loved to
see the orchards break into bloom, on the way to
Kew; the first pink flush of almond blossom, the
coming of little green shoots on barren trees had
struck her with a new significance each year till
now.  The gradual coming of life was so tender,
so wonderful, so mysterious....  But this year,
the light and glow, the call of mating birds, the
caress of the soft air, only served to deepen her
sense of pain.  Everything spoke of the joy and
promise of life from which she stood aloof.  Nature
itself seemed to have taken up arms against her,
and its array of happy changes found her lonely and
sad.

The ordinary routine of life went on, untouched
by mood or whim.  It was an especially busy
season, but lately she had lost her hold on things,
and found it difficult to keep up even the little
weekly salon in which she had once taken such
pride.  To be mated with sorrow is little by little
to lose all vitality and youth; the lassitude that
had come upon Evelyn presently became physical,
gripped her closer day by day, as she strove against
it with ever-weakening strength.  Society had no
longer any power to amuse her; indeed she dreaded
going out, lest she should be forced to listen to more
of Dora's confidences about Farquharson.  Religion
left her cold.  At home, Brand was perhaps
a trifle more cynical than before; he had found her
vulnerable spot, and turned his knowledge to
account.  On those rare evenings when they were
alone together in the little flat at West Kensington
(she often dined now in her own room), she would
surprise him sometimes watching her through
half-closed lids, and smiling as if at some private
reminiscence.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she asked
one night, when for the third time she had met his
mocking look fixed full upon her.

"Oh, I grant you it's rather amazing that a man
should find anything to look at in his wife after so
many years of marriage," said Brand, flicking the
ash from his cigarette.  "You should be flattered
at the compliment.  A husband's tribute to his
wife's charms is worth at least twice as much as
that of any—other.  By the way, our Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs is mounting steadily up
the ladder of fame, isn't he?"

"The papers seem to think well of him," said
Evelyn coldly.

.. vspace:: 2

The postman's knock at the door brought welcome
interruption in the shape of a bulky letter
from Cummings.  She took it to her room.

"By the time this reaches you I shall have set
sail for the East once more," he wrote.  "I have
got all the good I shall out of my trip; it's no use
staying any longer.  It was like you to try to make
my father and mother see me again—I knew they
would not.  Amongst many jealous mistresses—ambition,
pleasure, the quest of forgetfulness or
peace—love of home never loses her sway on a
man's heart.  A man may travel far and try to
stifle, in other countries and other surroundings,
the claims of his own lands and his own people, but
their voices compel him, until at last he is bound
either to obey or else for ever to cut himself adrift.
And for the future I shall cut myself adrift.

"It was like you, too, to collect all that array of
good things for my people; thank you for them all.
Not one will be wasted, and I shall look upon them
with very especial gratitude, because you thought
of me in your own trouble.

"For that you have got to face trouble—perhaps
are facing it now—I know.  I have thought about
you again and again lately, when fighting my own
battles.  The hardest test of faith, after all, is to
fight when one is not sure the cause is good.  Thank
God that you and I both know ten thousand
difficulties do not make one doubt.  Beneath every
paradox of the Catholic Church truth lies concealed,
if we will but dig down to it.  But there are days
when toil is impossible; when merely to attempt
work so hard and difficult brings sweat to one's
brow.  And you will tell me, very truly, that, face
to face with mental wreckage, to talk of paradox is
small comfort.

"You are a unit of a big battalion; only a unit,
but you count.  There are others to right and to left,
in front and in rear of you; they will fall if you fail.
You know that a regiment once was lost through
one man's cowardice.  You and I have got to go
on, whatever happens.  We are not great generals—we
are under command.  Obedience is our watchword.

"I remember in the South African War, before a
certain action, the general sent out an army order
to his men, which I copied at the time, but cannot
lay my hands on just now.  It ran something like
this: 'You are dealing with a treacherous enemy;
one who seeks to lower your honour by his own
intrigue.  Face that fact, and face him; it is the
only way.'  The one simple thing in life for you
and me lies in the fact that, after all, we have but
one thing to do.  We are fighting under a standard
that we are going to uphold to the end.  We shall
bleed for it—a few drops of blood, more or less,
really don't matter; we shall probably fall for
it—we shall have to remember then to hold our heads
up, because the world might think that we were
afraid; we shall die for it, knowing that it is still
raised high in the sight of men, and that it will so
rise, please God, through all the coming centuries
as it has done in all its glorious past.

"Rather cold comfort I am giving you, I suppose
you will say.  But you have been abroad, and seen
life under different aspects, and watched great
issues come to a climax as I have.  Out in India,
at the great Mahomedan festivals, I have walked
ankle-deep through narrow streets reeking with
blood.  I once stood by the unlit *ghât*, and watched
a man's dead body thereon, and saw his little widow
of twenty years old set a light to the pyre with her
own slender fingers, in default of a son old enough
to undertake the office.  Such things make one think.

"I shall never forget her shriek when the flame
rose, nor the dreary misery of her look when,
afterwards, she collected her husband's ashes, and,
being only a peasant, was stripped of her fine
garments, stripped of her ornaments, stripped of all
that made life bearable from her limited point of
view, to begin a new life of drudgery working in
the fields, scorned and mocked by all, an unclean
being to be stoned by the very boys in the street
because, as a widow, she had lost her caste.

"Experiences like these wrench you out of yourself,
and make you thank God you are not God to
judge between the sins and errors of nations and of
individuals.  You and I rebel at drinking our cup
of vinegar and gall because we are merely human,
and so don't like the bitter draught.  But it is
because sin came first, that there is so much suffering
now.  Better drink the bitter cup to its dregs here
than pay the penalty of drinking it hereafter.  And
whether or no it comforts us at the moment, the
light of faith is still ours.  'May we walk therein
until the day of eternal light breaks forth, and the
shadows and figures pass away.'"

.. vspace:: 2

"You've been worrying again," said Lady Wereminster,
returning.  "Don't.  Nothing in the world
is worth worrying about more than half-an-hour.
*Worrying* about, I said, not grieving over.  Legitimate
grief at a legitimate blow is one thing—racking
your brains out adjusting something which
ought never to have gone askew is another.  Worry
puts a spoke in the wheel of thought; it may stop the
machinery from moving.  And then——"  She
shrugged her shoulders significantly.

"I don't think any self-respecting person can be
well in this weather," said Evelyn; "it would be
rather rude not to acknowledge its power."

"It's no use looking at the door," said Lady
Wereminster; "I am not going for hours yet.  I
returned with the intention of bullying you, and
shan't stir until I've done it.  I am in a bad
temper, and must wreak it on somebody.  One ought
to give way to one's temper sometimes, you know,
on the principle of a kettle boiling over and doing
serious damage."

"I'm quite impervious to your tempers," said
Evelyn; "they are more easy to deal with than the
amenities of other people!"

"This is an unlucky day," said Lady Wereminster,
seating herself.  "Wherever I turn I run
up against Dora Farquharson.  Nothing annoys
me more.  I shopped in Sloane Street this
morning—she was there.  I lunched with Lady Ennly
quite unexpectedly; unluckily, that dear idiot
Creagh had run across Dora in the Park, and
brought her on.  She patted her husband on his
back all luncheon time; metaphorically, of
course—mercifully for him he was absent.  If I were a
caricaturist I should draw her putting him flat on
his stomach across her knee and thumping him
as if he were a troublesome infant.  If that woman
lived with Savonarola, she would bring him down
eventually to the level of Simple Simon in the old
nursery rhyme."

"Oh, she can't do him any real harm," Evelyn
said.  "You do exaggerate things so delightfully.
The marriage is not successful, I know—but no one
would know it wasn't if she had any tact.  For he's
patient enough and forbearing."

"Too forbearing," said Lady Wereminster.  "If
a man marries a fool he should treat her according
to her folly.  Once to give in to a blatant
self-sufficient creature like Dora Farquharson is to give
in for all eternity, and so pave the way to your
own downfall.  Fools and scandal-mongers are at
the bottom of all the mischief in the world.  There
are very few systematic schemers and plotters, in
spite of Sicilian melodrama.  Mrs. Farquharson
has a common soul.  One doesn't know how to deal
with such a woman; the whole art of social warfare
has to be re-learned.  She's flagrant; she uses every
one; she's used you; in the old days she traded
on her father's influence; now she trades on her
husband's."

"Dora is rather inconsiderate," said Evelyn.
"Her husband's success might well turn her head."

"Oh, her head's a tee-to-tum," said Lady Wereminster;
"you have only got to touch it with the
finger of flattery for it to spin round and round like
a top.  She gives me a sort of moral vertigo.  It's
rather a dangerous quality, by the bye, for the wife
of a Minister in so important an office.  A judicious
questioner could get anything in the world out of
Dora Farquharson; she'd be worth a fortune to
Fleet Street——"  She stopped abruptly.

The eyes of the two women met.

"Yes?" said Evelyn.

"This is a secret," said Lady Wereminster,
dropping her voice; "a real secret, mind.  Your
husband's out, isn't he? and the servant, I suppose,
is concealed in that dark hole of yours you call a
kitchen.  All the same, I would be rather glad if
you would open the door and take the trouble to
look well down the passage before I tell you what
I've got to say."

"How absurd you are," said Evelyn, returning.
"You're quite safe; there's no one in the
house.  I've looked in every room and under the
beds!"

"Thank you," said Lady Wereminster, with a
sigh of relief.  "It's a serious matter, really,
Evelyn.  You know what friends Wereminster and
Beadon have always been—allies from boyhood.
Wereminster, of course, is like a rock.  You strike
and strike at him, and you don't get even the
vaguest echo.  He's the safest man in the world to
confide in.  He always declares he would never
have found out that he was in love with me if I
hadn't told him first.  And though I talk so much,
I don't as a rule talk personalities.  That's why
people look upon us as safety valves, and we learn
a good deal about small intrigues and difficulties
that other people never hear."

"Don't say names, will you?  I do so hate being
told what I'm not meant to know."

"If I don't tell somebody I shall burst," said
Lady Wereminster.  "You're safe.  You're a
well; people pour their souls into you, and other
people lean over from the brink and see nothing.
It appears that various small matters have leaked
out lately in the Press, and no one can account for
the authorship.  And in each case, unluckily, the
impression given has been true.  So far only
comparatively minor matters have been disclosed; but
who knows when something really important won't
be given away before its time, and so lead to
irreparable harm?  I know, as a fact, that the
P.O. is worried about it."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Six or eight months.  That's the unfortunate
part of it.  It dates back to the time when Richard
Farquharson was made Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs.  Oh, don't look like that—nobody
suspects him, but it's an unlucky incident.  Why,
even his appointment, which was, so far as we
know, known only to the King and his immediate
household, to the Prime Minister and to the
*personnel* who met at Mr. Calvert's famous dinner
party on the second of November, was announced
in all the morning papers, although Mr. Beadon
had expressly told us that it was to be kept private
for the next forty-eight hours."

"Mr. Beadon has new secretaries, I suppose,"
said Evelyn.  "He would probably require more
help as Prime Minister than as Leader of the Opposition."

"Oh, they're above reproach," said Lady
Wereminster; "personal friends mostly, and all men
who have worked with him for years.  Besides, it's
not necessarily John Beadon's news that has been
given away.  It is chiefly minute turns of the
tide which affect the rise and fall of shares, etc.
Anyway, the whole position is discomforting, a
source of real annoyance to the Prime Minister and
his colleagues."

"Stocks and shares," repeated Evelyn.  She
had grown very pale.  "Yes, of course an intimate
knowledge of foreign affairs would make all the
difference in speculation.  But no one, however
base, could do such a thing—no one in our set, I
mean——"  She faltered.

"Some men and women would do anything for
money," said Lady Wereminster.  "What's happened
so far does not affect the nation *en grand*.
It's merely that events have proved that small founts
of knowledge, whose source is supposed to be only
known to the initiated, have obviously been tapped
by some mysterious person, whose identity is as
yet unknown.  And as these things deal mainly
with his office they look like stabs in the dark aimed
at Mr. Farquharson himself.  Such a man must
have enemies, of course, but I never knew—did
you?—that any special person bore him a grudge?"

.. vspace:: 2

"I want to ask you a question," said Evelyn.
Her husband found her in the hall, awaiting him,
when, some time after midnight, he turned the key
in the door.  "You have been comparatively generous
to me lately.  So far as I know, our income is
the same as it has always been, but you have been
less troubled about money matters.  Why?"

Brand put one hand on her shoulder heavily,
and with the other dragged her face sharply
upwards into the full glare of the electric light, and
looked at her searchingly.

"I think I shouldn't make too many inquiries
into the question if I were you," he said deliberately.
"Your way of life and mine are not quite
the same.  I am a plain man, and I go a man's
way to work.  I don't pose or talk cant.  Luck
comes my way now and again, although it's more
often dead against me.  It's with me now, and I
mean to make the most of it.  I owe part of it to
you, you know, and that's why I've been generous."

"You owe it to me—to *me*?" said Evelyn blankly.

He pulled the door-chain, laughing, and she
heard him laughing again as he went up-stairs.
The night was warm, but she stood shivering like
a frightened child in the empty hall at the thought
which struck her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

"If we could see ourselves as others see us, many of us
would wear a mask"—ANON.

.. vspace:: 1

"It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the
same human being."—LORD BEACONSFIELD.

.. vspace:: 2

In work, says an old philosopher, a man may
find his refuge for all ills of the mind; to drink deep
of the fount of knowledge is to bring peace to the
troubled soul.  But work had been too long the
mainspring of Farquharson's life for him to find
in it now the comfort which might have lulled
another man's anxiety.  His life had been one of
toil throughout.  At Glune he had wrestled and
fought for freedom; in the succeeding years, after
his escape, he had struggled for knowledge and
mere daily bread; in Taorna, fortune and fame had
been his two objectives; in England he sought
power.  And after a time strain tells even upon the
strong.  It is often the most brilliant brain that
snaps.

A normal man must have an outlet for his feelings
and emotions.  Farquharson's long self-repression
in the past had made him the readier to be swayed
by the right woman's influence when it came.  He
had never fully realized all that his daily
communion with Evelyn had meant until after the
wrench of their parting at Bramley.

The pain that can be sympathized with openly is
endurable, but hidden pain is crushing.  There is
conceivable relief for a surcharged brain which
can explain the why and wherefore of its sorrow;
but in the world daily we meet widows who were
never wives, and whose despair is the more
hopeless because they have no lawful claim upon our
sympathy.

In his separation from Evelyn, Farquharson had
lost the friend, companion, helpmate, and bride of
his dreams.  Work—to a habitual worker—cannot
heal so deep a wound as this; only complete change
of circumstance and scene might possibly change a
man's thoughts after such a blow.  And for him
there was no change.  Shorn of all joy and pride in
his work, he yet toiled ceaselessly at it; returning
daily to a home which, worse than being bare and
desolate, contained the wrong woman.

There are women who pry into the smallest details
of a man's privacy.  Farquharson's dressing-room
even was not his own.  In certain moods Dora
discovered that the angle of his looking-glass
pleased her better than her own; short of actually
locking the door against her, he was never secure
from interruption even there.  She had developed a
thousand whims and fancies since her marriage.
She had her own boudoir and drawing-room, and
a little sanctum on the stairs which she called her
library, where she began to write many letters which
were never finished, and to grapple with accounts
which were always thrown aside a moment later.
Farquharson, unaccustomed to women's society,
never once thought of forbidding her to invade his
own large and austerely furnished study at the back
of the house; it was not until returning
unexpectedly one day he found her rummaging amongst
some papers on the table that he spoke to her with
unusual severity.

"You have your own room, Dora; kindly keep
there.  I can't allow you to come here.  There are
papers of importance which mustn't be touched.
What's that you've got crumpled up in your hand?
It looks like—why, these are some notes Blair made
for me this morning.  How did you manage to get
hold of them?"

"It's perfectly absurd that Mr. Blair should be
allowed to come in here and go out as he likes even
if he is your secretary, when you forbid your own
wife to come in," said Dora angrily.  "Stupid old
notes, I'm sure I don't want them; I brought in
papers of my own, and I suppose they've got mixed
up, somehow.  They're written on just the same
sort of paper as Louise's bill.  How on earth was
I to know the difference?  Besides, anyway it's
absurd to make such a fuss about a trifle like that.
If I did happen to glance at your dull notes and see
a word or two, who has a better right than I to read
them, after all?"

Farquharson smoothed out the paper and glanced
down it.

"There's nothing that matters in this as it
happens.  Blair's quite a careful boy; he would never
leave out anything really important.  But we are
rather busy people, Dora, he and I, and he has his
own way of arranging things.  He's complained to
me before now that they're upset and made disorderly
by your coming in.  Now, I don't suppose, for
instance, that you've the smallest notion where you
got this from.  Try and tax your memory, and put
it back in exactly the same place."

"How absurd, how maddening you are!" said
Dora, fuming.  "What on earth does it matter
where the stupid old things come from?"  She tore
the paper into a dozen pieces and flung them down,
white with rage.  "You shut me out from
everything.  What's the good of being the wife of a
man in your position if you keep everything so
secret?  I'm the same as yourself; I've a right to
know everything that you know.  I know there is
some big intrigue going on at this very moment
between England and—well, you know which
foreign Power better than I; all the newspapers are
hinting at it—anybody would give anything to get
hold of a little private knowledge about it.  But
here you are keeping it all to yourself, when it's my
right to know, when you ought to confide in me.
It's hateful, it's despicable, it's absolutely lowering;
no wife in the world was ever treated so cruelly
as you treat me."

Farquharson sighed hopelessly.

"We had better understand each other once and
for all.  I should have thought that you, the
daughter of a man who, in the past, was once
Colonial Minister, would have understood matters
without need of explanation.  With an ordinary
wife things may be different, I don't know.  The
wife of a man holding my office must be content to
know neither more nor less than the rest of the
world about the work he is engaged in.  A man's
political and domestic life are absolutely apart.  We
have a lot of years before us, Dora, to live out side
by side.  This point must be made clear now.  You
must submit to me utterly in this; in everything
else I give you your own way, so far as is
compatible with common sense.  It seems to me a
monstrous thing that you should even contemplate
the possibility of my being a spy to satisfy your
curiosity.  Leave my room now, at once, and
remember that I put you on your honour never to
enter it again without permission."

"How dare you? how dare you?" cried Dora,
catching her breath hysterically.  "It's my right,
it's my due, to go where I like and do as I choose.
I won't be shut out of your life like this.  You owe
everything to me, and this is your gratitude.
Taorna—who cares twopence-halfpenny about
Taorna and what's done there?  If I hadn't pleaded
with and begged my father to give you some place
in the Ministry, do you think you'd be there now?
If you hadn't married me you would have been
nowhere and done nothing.  And what have I
gained through marriage with you?  I was
happier before.  People loved me and admired me.
You never give me a word of love or admiration.
You go out with me—yes, because you've got to;
because it's to your advantage to show me off at
parties.  But you never even notice my new gowns;
you never even take the trouble to pay me one of the
compliments I was surfeited with, till I met you.  I
might be—why, I might be just like anybody else
the way you treat me; not a woman of importance,
a woman with wealth and charm, and all the rest
of it—who expects to hear a trumpery secret now
and again, as her right, and is grudged even that."

She stopped for want of breath, and caught at the
table for support.

Farquharson leant back in his chair and looked
at her critically.  He was very pale.

"Three minutes by the clock, my dear Dora.
There's a prize given at Dunmow annually to the
woman who talks longer and faster than any other
in the competition.  It doesn't matter what
nonsense she talks.  You would do well to enter for it.
I believe it comes off in July."

Dora turned suddenly and confronted him.  He
looked at her as at a stranger.  He had had little
experience of hysterical women; the outward signs
of his mother's conflicts with self had been so
sternly repressed that it was only lately that he had
guessed how often that rigid figure quailed under
the strain of its inward wounds.  No other woman
had come into his life as more than a momentary
pastime till he met Evelyn.  The sight of his wife's
short, stricken figure roused no pity in him, only
disgust.  He had had no very high ideal of women
in childhood; that he should have linked himself to
a woman whose motives were so mean, one who,
having no real interest in the cause, could seek to
degrade her husband's honour for the mere sake of
satisfying personal curiosity, of flaunting her
knowledge in the eyes of others, roused his disgust and
shame.

He put his watch down on the table.

"In five minutes I shall expect you to leave the
room," he said.  "If you haven't withdrawn by
then I shall ring for your maid.  In any case I
should advise you to send for her.  You aren't
yourself.  I think even the glass in my dressing-room
would fail to satisfy you as to your appearance
at the present moment."

His cigarette case lay on the table; he reached
his hand out for it, but paused midway.

Dora sprang at him, her eyes blazing.  She clutched
his arm in her grasp, almost like a mad woman.

"I hate you," she gasped.  "You've killed my
love.  What right have you to make me suffer? to
hurt me so appallingly, mentally, spiritually,
physically?  When I think of all I've got to bear
for you it almost drives me mad.  It's too
humiliating and degrading.  Weeks, months of pain for
you—for you that I hate.  I've seen the doctor
to-day; he left just before you came.  Nothing can
save me.  I've got to have a child—a child that will
be like you, hard, cruel and implacable."

For a moment Farquharson sat in silence, aghast,
shaken at the torrent of words.  This was the
explanation, then; the excuse of all the waywardness
and hysteria he had not understood.  He hardly
knew if he was glad or sorry at the news.  The
dream-wife he had longed for would never now be
his; ... the dream-child he had longed for, for
whose dear sake he had striven to win Glune....

Dream-bride, dream-mother—he shut his eyes.
And Dora was the reality, and Dora was suffering....
His anger died, and a wave of tenderness and
sympathy, pity for her as well as for himself, and
awe and wonder that even in this moment the new
tie pulled at his heart-strings, made him stretch out
his arms to her, and take her on his knee almost as
though he loved her.

"My dear, my dear, forgive me.  I didn't understand
or know—I ought to have guessed and been
kinder to you," he said, holding her close.

.. vspace:: 2

But even in the moment of reconciliation a picture
shaped itself before his eyes—a picture which
he resolutely strove to put away, but which returned
again and again during the night.  How differently
the dream-wife would have told him—and what
would it not have meant to him and to her?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-V`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

"Every work that is corruptible shall fail, and the worker
thereof shall go with it."—ECCLESIASTICUS.

.. vspace:: 2

To achieve success by certain ways is not, after
all, very difficult.  The schemers and plotters, even
the merely selfish, have all in their hands for a time.
One need not necessarily be wicked to flourish as a
green bay-tree.  Persistently to use other people to
your own ends, to appeal to pity at the right moment,
to take what is offered you as your due, without
gratitude or sense of obligation, is to lay a very
sure nest-egg of security for the future.

Brand had planned and schemed to some avail.
He had every right to be satisfied with the result.
For years he had cherished the remembrance of
slights long since forgotten by their authors.  Well,
he had been able to wipe off a great many of such
slights lately.  He had struck at Evelyn through
Farquharson; he had struck at Lady Wereminster
through Evelyn; he had struck at Farquharson
through Dora; he would strike at Calvert through
Farquharson.  It was quite simple, after all, to pull
the strings of puppets so foolish as to be swayed by
the great forces of love and honour, no matter how
important the stage on which they played.

Sitting at ease in the lounge of the Grand Hotel
at Brighton one afternoon in June, he reviewed the
situation critically.  He was better off than he had
been, too—always a pleasant matter of contemplation.
Secretly as he worked, he was recognized
by the Press as a man who could tap many mines
of marketable knowledge, "one in the know," as
the phrase goes, unhampered by petty scruples as
to parting with his knowledge for a valuable sum.
He had easily learned the journalists' knack of
dressing his knowledge in pertinent phrase; that
fact told too.  Thanks to Evelyn, he was received
everywhere now; the world forgets very easily,
unless its memory is jogged.  The inscriptions on his
sisters' tombstones were now illegible for want of
care, and Brand himself was not the type of man
whom ghosts haunt.

He was careful in small details, sure in his heart
that Evelyn could not do more than suspect him,
and had no means of proving her knowledge.  Her
hands were tied too.  To prove that Dora
Farquharson had told her husband's secrets to a man
who, in turn, sold them to the daily Press, was,
after all, to drag down Farquharson from his high
place.  Cæsar's wife—he laughed; in this case she
had proved a very useful buffer!  Since the episode
in the hall, Brand had been more careful in
concealing matters from his wife.  He went to another
banker, and kept his cheque-book under lock and
key, for instance—not that that was necessary with
Evelyn—but he took care that she should no longer
benefit by the price he was paid for his items of
news.

And, little by little, he was sowing seeds of
suspicion among the Opposition.  It was his dearest
hope to drag Farquharson's name in the dust.  He
never forgot that it was Farquharson who had
ousted him for ever from the place which he might
have taken in Calvert's regard.  For ever?—the
man was old and weak now; who knew but if
Farquharson failed him he might not lend a more
willing ear to the voice of the ready sympathizer,
who was also a near connection?

In any case Brand was content to wait.  Until he
is found out, a cheat is bound to win the greatest
number of tricks in a game of skill.

Then, too, a physically weak man likes to show
his power; he is often more cruel than a stronger
man.  Brand's meetings with Dora afforded him
constant amusement.  At first she had tried to baffle
and evade him; Dora was the last woman in the
world to hold to a bargain when once she had reaped
its full benefits.  They had quite a disturbing scene
one day.  She was fully alive to the advantages of
her position.  As Farquharson's wife she could go
anywhere, do anything.  And she knew that, did
he once learn by what means she had won him—that
she had allowed Evelyn's name to be brought
into disrepute that she might win her little pitiful
triumph, he was capable of repudiating her at once.
No love bound them.  Separation, scandal, the
dreariness of life under such changed conditions—these
were unpleasant changes which no woman of
sense would wish to face.

Brand worried her very little at first, merely
drawing her on to disclose small items of news more
on the level with Farquharson's appointment.
Little by little his demands grew.  Much of
Farquharson's work was done in cypher at the Foreign
Office, but there were certain notes and jottings
often in his personal possession at Chester Street.
From time to time Dora had got possession of these
notes for him.  Lady Wereminster was right.  In
one way and another a good many important
disclosures had been made.  Some of these Brand
sold directly to the Press, others he used entirely
for his own advantage, and was the richer man
thereby.

He had a great scheme in view now—to get a
copy of some of the terms of this Foreign Treaty
about which there was so much controversy.  A
third Power would give the weight of each word in
gold for even a hint of its contents....  But how
to get it?  Dora had given herself away so ridiculously
on that occasion when Farquharson had
found her in his room; she had admitted losing her
head through absolute terror after his discovery
that she was searching amongst his papers.  That
was the worst of women, particularly women in her
condition.  Never level-headed at best, approaching
motherhood threw some of them completely off
their mental balance, particularly those who, like
Dora, rebelled against its very thought.

Oh, he had got to the crux of the difficulty,
doubtless.  He smoked on meditatively, eyeing, one by
one, the typical little groups of men and women who
were gathered near him: rich Jews, with
over-dressed families, actresses, manufacturers' wives
from the Midlands, a loud-voiced, blatant throng.
Places like these always amused Brand; their little
pitiful attempts to compete with the attractions of
foreign hotels were so lamentable in their failure,
they reminded him of a young bride's efforts to
rival an experienced woman of the world.

An *habituée* of the place, a woman to whom he
had spoken casually on one or two occasions, came
up and seated herself beside him.  "You always
remind me of Burns' poem, Mr. Brand," she said
archly.  "You look 'like a chiel amangst us takin'
notes.'  Aren't you often abused socially for being
so critical?"

"Critical—now I wonder what you mean by
critical?" said Brand.

The woman laughed again, tugging ruthlessly at
her gloves.

"Oh, pulling holes, I suppose.  You look at us
all as though you could strip us threadbare.  I've
heard lots of people say the same.  Now tell me,
aren't you a great personage in London?"

Brand smiled.

"I am only a looker-on, dear lady.  Now and
again I give or withhold a word of advice.  That's all.
Few people have your perspicacity.  Men of force
are usually supposed to have athletic physiques.
Now sport, and all things appertaining thereto,
have always seemed to me—rather cruel and
terrible.  They are always subtle pleasures which
appeal to me.  Goths and Philistines say that the
taste of absinthe reminds them of bad drains;
whereas to me it's of a quite unparalleled purity.
Now there's an odd flavour about life as there is
about absinthe; and the odder it is the more it
appeals to me."

"I think my friend wants me," said the lady,
rather nervously.  She swept away hurriedly.
Brand watched her exit with a smile.  Provincial
women have only one charm; it is easy to be rid of
them when once they bore you.  You have only to
hint at abnormality, or give the merest suggestion
of what, in their own vernacular, would be called
"improper," to send them scuttling away like
frightened sheep.

He rose leisurely and looked at the clock in the
hall.  Two—no, Mrs. Farquharson was eight
minutes late.  Careless, that.  For the future he
must make her realize that he expected her to be
punctual.  The position had shifted; it was he who
now directed, and she who had to obey.

He crossed to the far corner of the lounge, seating
himself under the alcove immediately facing the
door.  Presently the green car arrived, and he saw
Dora emerge from it hurriedly, and run up the
broad steps, with some amusement.  Her obvious
inner tremors were a tribute to his power.  She
spoke to the hall porter anxiously, and was ushered
in full of apologies and mental disturbance.

"I thought I should never get off," she said.
"It takes such an awful time to get down here, and
the chauffeur took a wrong turning at Croydon.  I
daren't risk coming to such a place again.  What
should I do if Richard were to question the man
as to where I've been?  He knows I never do
anything without a motive."

"I should have thought you were accustomed to
inventing excuses by now," said Brand deliberately.
"You've had a good deal of experience,
one way and another.  You have brought the
papers, I suppose?  Here, look at the Sketch.
Hold it in your left hand, so.  Put your bag
underneath on your lap; take out the papers, and pass
them to me presently.  Not just yet, those people
over there are looking.  Thanks.  You're sure
they are what I want?"

"Of course they are what you want," said Dora.
"Understand, this is the very last thing I'm going
to do for you.  I've paid you back a thousandfold
for the little you did.  For that matter, you did me
the worst turn you ever did to any one in all your
life.  My marriage has brought me nothing but
misery and discomfort."

"Oh, so you think you have paid your debt, do
you?" said Brand.  "Tea for two, waiter, please.
Hot cakes I think you like, Mrs. Farquharson; or,
as it's summer, would you prefer sandwiches?  Yes,
cucumber sandwiches, I think, please—anything
cool.  You were saying—by the way, how much
you amuse me, Mrs. Farquharson!"

"Amuse you!" repeated Dora.  She pulled her
veil down again, shrinking back into the corner as
two strangers from the sea front, who had come
in for tea, passed by and glanced at the pair
curiously.

"Cream?  Sugar?" asked Brand.  "What, no
sugar?  I should take it if I were you."

He handed her her teacup with some deliberation.
"There's one quality that you lack,
Mrs. Farquharson—you have all other charms, of course.
You don't balance things quite aptly.  Now, as a
matter of fact, you owe me a debt that can never be
properly repaid.  I've done the utmost that a man
can do for any woman—I've even jeopardized my
wife's honour that you might gain what you
desired."  He shrugged his shoulders.  "The fact
that what you then gained is now of no value to
you doesn't matter at all.  The point is that you
haven't paid your debt off yet—that there's still
more to be done before you and I can properly call
quits."




"More still!" said Dora.  She was very pale,
and her hand was shaking.  "More still!"  Her
voice rose hysterically.

Brand leant back in his chair.

"You shall be free after this one more act, I
promise you.  It's comparatively a difficult job,
I grant.  You know that, owing to widespread
dissension on the frontier, there's a question of a
certain treaty between a very important Power and
England.  The terms of that treaty intimately
concern another Power—she is anxious to know how
far her welfare is attacked.  Your husband is sure
to have notes relating to the negotiations amongst
his papers.  He is a careful man—you may find it
difficult to distinguish them from the rest of his
possessions.  So on this occasion I must ask you
to be wholesale in your methods; you must get at
the whole contents of his safe and send them to me.
What I don't want I shall destroy—be sure of that."

"The whole contents of his safe!" repeated
Dora.  "What you ask is monstrous.  I can't do
it—no one can; no one but I and his secretaries
know where he keeps his keys.  Why, he has often
locked up the door of his room himself, since he
found me there.  The other matters were comparatively
easy—mere questions of notes and things that
were filed with his ordinary papers.  This is impossible;
I can't do it—-I won't.  It could be traced to
me, and he would kill me if he knew."

Brand watched her blandly.  He thought suddenly
of his wife, and of how she would have met
such an appeal.  The question of her husband's
honour, the welfare of her country, meant absolutely
nothing to Dora Farquharson.  All she dreaded
was punishment of her own action, the fear of being
found out.  She was, indeed, panic-stricken at the
thought; little livid patches had broken out on her
cheek.

"You would prefer that I should tell your
husband the truth, then?" said Brand pleasantly.
"Do take another sandwich.  The truth not only
about what happened before his marriage, but what
has happened since?  You are not a very discreet
woman, you know.  All the communications you've
sent me—that you have got hold of so cleverly at
my request—have been addressed in your own
handwriting; most have been accompanied by personal
letters explaining the nature of the matter
sent.  I am afraid your position in the world would
not be very secure, Mrs. Farquharson, when these
facts were made known socially.  Farquharson is
an implacable sort of person, you know; he would
always put the honour of his country above that of
his own.  There would be no question as to which
he would sacrifice, and very unpleasant things are
said of women who do as you have done.  Now,
with one little act you can free yourself from me
and my demands.  The very wholesale nature of
the case will look like commonplace burglary.  I've
got a little instrument here with which you can
break the lock of your husband's safe quite easily,
also a duplicate key of the study door in case of
accidents—an expert made it, and your work will
look like that of an expert.  I shall want those
papers before the end of the week after next.  When
once they are in my hands I'll never trouble you
again."  He took out his watch.  "It's time you
were starting off, isn't it?  I've got an appointment
in ten minutes.  You'll just get back in time for
dinner.  Good-bye now.  Don't forget your
promise."

"My promise?  But——" began Dora again,
and broke off, as if hypnotized by his angry
movement.  She seemed incapable of doing more than
repeat his words.  She stared at him in hopeless
bewilderment, swaying, as though the light of
ordinary intelligence had been wiped from her face.
He looked at her sharply and then rang the electric
bell behind him.  When he spoke again his voice
was kinder.

"Get this lady a brandy and soda—a stiff one,
please.  Drink it off at once; that's right."  He
took her hand in his and closed her fingers over the
key and little instrument.  "Put that in your
pocket.  If I were you I should set about that task
to-night, Mrs. Farquharson—it is always better to
get a job over.  It's quite a little thing really, you
know.  And in twenty-four hours you will feel a
new woman, free from all your worries and difficulties
and obligations.  You will have done good
to a friend who is sincerely fond of you, and, if you
are wise, no harm can possibly come either to you
or to anybody you care about through your action.
You promise, then?  That's right.  Good-bye."

He walked bare-headed out to the vestibule and
watched the car out of sight, speeding back on its
way home to Chester Street.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-VI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

"For you, for me, the cup of trembling...."

.. vspace:: 2

It seemed to Farquharson in the days that
followed Dora's announcement, that he lived and
moved in a dream.  As a rule, the realization of
fatherhood only dawns upon a man when his child
is in his arms.  But to him, already, the
dream-child was a tender promise.  It swept away so
many of the supernatural barriers between him and
Dora.  She had failed him in every office of friend
and companion and wife, but she might yet redeem
the past by giving him this dear possession, the
child whose future he could mould in his own lines,
to whom he could give the fruits of his own toil
and his ambition.  Beadon, Hare, Creagh and
Lady Ennly alike noticed the change in his manner
to his wife.  Her shortcomings and failings no
longer seemed to disturb him; where he had been
merely patient before he was now gentle and tender.
He studied her comfort even in the merest trifles;
he toiled the more hopefully at his work in the
knowledge that sure comfort and help would dawn
presently.  To a man of a certain temperament, the
presence of his living child may even atone for the
otherwise irreparable loss of his dearest hope.
Farquharson wanted to give his son all that he himself
had been robbed of in childhood.  He could look
back on his past life now with the detachment of a
mere spectator, for every rough place that he had
trod, he meant to make a happy playground for the
boy.  That is after all a fitting end of toil and
labour, that a man should forge the sword which
his heir's hand is to wield, that he should deny and
discipline himself that his son may be the better
braced for conflict with the foes within.

So Dora's reproaches left him unmoved, only a
little pitiful, perhaps, that she could not see things
as he did, that to her the coming joy was no joy at
all, only annoyance and restraint.  Not a day
passed but she made some further claim upon his
purse; never economical, she became absolutely
reckless in her expenditure, and when he attempted
to restrain her he was met by a flood of tears and
angry protestations.

"Any one but you would be glad to do what
little you can for me at such a time," she would cry
out, flushing and paling in turn.  "The doctor said
I was not to have one moment's worry, and anxiety
about money matters is worse for me than anything.
If you grudge me what I need, I shall ask Mr. Calvert
for money—he wouldn't be a multi-millionaire
if it were not for you.  Oh, so you see reason at
last!  Any other man in your place would have
given me a cheque at once, instead of making such
a cruel scene about it."

In Dora Farquharson's excuse it may be urged
that she was temporarily beside herself with
discomfort and anxiety.  Brand had given her as his
utmost limit of time a fortnight in which to do him
a service which she thought it would be impossible
to carry out.  He had expected the papers to be in
his hands within two or three days of her visit to
Brighton; when they did not reach him, he wrote
her the first of a series of letters which, though
couched in careful language, contained veiled
threats which were only too intelligible to her.
Fortunately for her, the actual negotiations were
suspended for a week, owing to some official delay,
which gave her time to mature her plans.  She was
not a clever enough woman to scheme and plot for
herself, she had been accustomed in the past merely
to state her wants and have them fulfilled by
those about her.  Where other matters had been
concerned, Brand had given his directions, and she
had obeyed implicitly.

But this was irksome, dangerous even—it
required even a certain mechanical aptitude to be
carried through successfully.  She offered him
money; besought him to release her from her
promise.  But Brand refused.

"It's not a very serious matter after all that I am
asking you," he said.  "A man is never surprised
at his wife's curiosity.  If you're careful you won't
run the least chance of your husband's discovery;
if he were even to find you in his room again, he
would merely think you were suspecting him of
some intrigue or temporary breach of faith.  No
one knows his movements so well as you do.  You
have only to take the first opportunity of his being
kept late at the House to get me exactly what I want."

"But sometimes he goes back to his study on
his return and sits up all night working," said
Dora.

Brand shrugged his shoulders.

"What if he should on this occasion?  It only
means that he will discover his loss a few hours
earlier, that's all.  You've only got to warn me, to
send me a code telegram under an assumed name
three hours before you get the papers, as we have
already arranged, for me to be punctually outside
your window ready to receive them at the hour you
name.  If you do your work properly, Farquharson
could turn the whole house topsy-turvy, ravage it
from garret to cellar and find no traces.  I assure
you it's all as simple as the alphabet," he laughed;
"the very ABC of trivial burglary to help a
friend."

.. vspace:: 2

"For the first time in my life I feel almost sorry
for Mrs. Farquharson," said Lady Wereminster a
few days later.  "She's got the most extraordinarily
furtive and hang-dog air; I met her just now in a
Bond Street shop and touched her on the shoulder,
and she started as if she were being shot.  Are you
going to the House to-morrow night, Evelyn?
Mr. Calvert says the Government expects a rather
furious attack upon this Treaty question; it will
resolve itself, of course, mainly into a personal attack
upon Richard Farquharson.  He's hated by the
Press, you know; I suppose because they can get
nothing out of him.  For that matter, I suppose all
the public is longing to know something about this
business of the Treaty; it involves so many issues.
The prospect of a Continental war isn't cheering in
view of the fact that our Army was decimated, and
the strength of our Fleet lowered, by the late
Government.  One can't wipe out their mistakes
with a sweep of the pen, or an eloquent word or
two.  By the way, my nephew was lucky in the
ballot, and sent me two spare seats in the gallery.
If you can come, I'll sit there with you if you like."

"Oh, I've been longing to go," said Evelyn.
"How good you are.  It seems to me that we are
on the brink of a worse crisis than we have faced
for years—only absolute tact and diplomacy will see
us through.  Mr. Farquharson has both, luckily;
he will need them to-morrow night."

"I should think he would," said Lady Wereminster
grimly.  "What the House of Commons
is coming to I don't know.  We are getting as bad
as the French Chamber.  The language we use is
absolutely scriptural in its plain speaking.  At
the beginning of the century it was said of our
political system that it resolved itself into a
succession of great duels; it seems to me now to have
become an arena in which one man faces an angry
rabble of men who shriek defiance and invective.
We are losing our national dignity and reserve,
Mr. Hare says; I think he's right.  I suppose
Mr. Farquharson knows what he has to expect, if not I
should like to warn him.  They say he exceeds his
rightful powers of office—they always say that, of
course, of a strong man.  They forget that when he
came into office he had to deal with what in many
ways was an almost impossible situation, that in
spite of all our royal visits to other nations and our
own reception of royal guests, there is not a Power
but covets our possessions.  A fig for alliance, I
say.  There is a Power that is very nearly allied to
us by blood which has done us serious mischief
before now in our diplomatic relations, and will
again."

"I think that Mr. Farquharson can stand the sort
of personal challenge you speak of better than most
men," said Evelyn.  "A man in his position
expects disparagement and injustice.  He laughs at
it all, to begin with—and then he has the proud
patience which lives down taint and contumely.
Mud may be thrown at him; it may even soil him
for a time, but not for long.  Love of country is
the strongest force in him, and impersonal love
raises a man to great heights."

She turned suddenly to Lady Wereminster,
smiling.  "Oh, my dear, don't let us insult him
by fearing the issue of to-morrow night," she said.
"I believe in atmosphere: let's surround him with
trust and confidence and hope.  He'll win through
this time of crisis, and every other, and be
successful, no matter what lies are told of him or what
evil is wrought."

.. vspace:: 2

Meantime, at home Dora, preparing for an early
dinner, went into her husband's room.

"Father tells me that he thinks I ought to be at
the House to-morrow night," she said.  "He says
you're going to make a speech on something important;
it's a great bore, but I suppose I'll have
to go."

"I don't think it's in the least necessary," said
Farquharson.

Dora shrugged her shoulders.

"I at least am not accustomed to putting myself
in the wrong, whatever you are," she said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-VII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

"Danger, the spurre of all great mindes...."—G. CHAPMAN.

.. vspace:: 2

"Got on your coat of mail?" said Beadon cheerfully,
next afternoon.

Farquharson laughed.

"I rather enjoy a scrimmage, you know—'Though
the House of Commons lately has justified
its title,' to quote Lady Wereminster.  As a
matter of fact I think the Assembly in Taorna would
hold its own against our English methods any day."

"In my heart of hearts I don't approve of
government by party, as you know.  Party too often
resolves itself into person.  Political bouts are like
wrestling matches: they open out a wide field of
corruption.  But in England, of course, there can
be no other method," said Creagh.

"Oh, it's undoubtedly one that gives rein to
intrigue and self-aggrandizement.  I was talking to
H—— the other day"—Farquharson mentioned
a leading member of the Opposition.  "There's a
man with a brain if you like, virile even in his way.
He knows as well as you or I that as a mere question
of the country's safety it is absolutely necessary
that we should keep our policy with regard to
these present troubles on the Continent as secret as
possible.  He said as much, in fact.  Yet he'll
heckle and hustle and harass us to-night with the
rest, running absolutely counter to his own
convictions to strengthen the war-cry of his party."

"Of course you're a born man of war," said
Beadon.  "Conflict braces you.  You've got a
tough job on to-night, though.  To-night's
questions have been framed very carefully, and have a
distinct challenge in them.  Our opponents aren't
such fools as to think that even the British
public—gullible enough, Heaven knows—would contemplate
a Secretary of State giving away news about a
Treaty before it had actually been framed.
Unfortunately, a third Power is involved.  The tie of
blood which undoubtedly binds us to it has given
the Opposition its opportunity of inflaming the
country against us.  The Press has taken the matter
up, of course.  What conscience-prick would it not
stifle for the sake of a glaring headline or poster?
You know, all of you, that we are hemmed in on all
sides, that we are really in a tight place this time.
The utmost tact has to be exercised to save our
being involved in a big European war, as that third
Power, which shall be nameless, has undoubtedly a
right to expect its claims to weigh with us in our
negotiations."

"And the foreign Press, of course, is watching
the issue of to-night's debate with lynx-eyes—whelps
of war waiting to spring the moment they
are unleashed," put in Farquharson.

"Farquharson trusts to his art of talking
eloquently for hours without imparting one item of the
required knowledge to carry him through to-night's
crisis," chuckled Creagh.  Then, more seriously,
"All the same, you've never been present at a real
scene in the House, Farquharson—I don't think
you take the matter quite seriously enough.  Beadon
tells me that you haven't even prepared your speech;
that you're trusting in that power of gripping the
House, which has certainly so far never failed you."

"But there's another tiresome question involved—that
of the letter of the impetuous Sovereign whose
facility with the pen has already led him into such
regrettable complications," drawled Meavy
languidly.  "The halfpenny papers make great capital
out of that."

"But that letter wasn't written to Farquharson,
but to Gaunt," said Creagh impatiently.  "What
has Farquharson to do with it?"

"He sent me a copy, unluckily," said Farquharson.
"You needn't worry about that.  It has never
left my possession for a single instant.  Personally,
I should have torn it up, but our respected colleague
thought it wise to keep a copy lest anything
untoward should happen to the original."

"You've got it locked up in there, I suppose?"
said Beadon, pointing to the safe.  "Well, that's
right, particularly as you always lock up this room
now when you leave the house."

"The fact remains," said Meavy, "that no man
of our time has ever been so fiercely abused as you
by the Press I speak as one who knows, having
had my share of it.  I believe you've got a very
dangerous enemy to deal with—the more dangerous
because unknown.  I think somebody has been
stirring up the Press against you personally.  Did
you see that scurrilous article in the *Crystal* last
week?  It almost said in plain words that you were
not to be trusted.  You see, one or two minor points
have leaked out lately that had no business to have
got published at all, and, unfortunately, they have
been matters which concerned your department."

Beadon shook his head.

"Farquharson scoffs at all that; it is immaterial,
though puzzling.  Personally, I think they point the
way to treachery, and in such cases"—he spoke very
gravely—"one's enemies are usually those of one's
own household.  Farquharson has a large retinue
of employés—I believe that one of them has been
bought."

"Impossible, my dear fellow," said Farquharson
impatiently.  "Your imagination runs away with
you.  The members of my household are kept very
strictly in their own places, and I have every
confidence in my secretaries.  As far as the actual fight
goes—well—it doesn't bother me.  Remember, I
was never at a public school; I had to wait to see
red until I was a man."

Creagh frowned.

"I agree with Meavy.  You don't take things
seriously enough, Farquharson.  You men of one
idea, who go straight to the point and disregard all
obstacles, are the very ones who trip over a mere
stone in the path."

Farquharson leant back in his chair and looked
from one to the other, smiling.

"Well, if I were ill at ease, your conversation is
hardly likely to inspire me with confidence," he
said.  "You're wrong, though—if there's treachery
anywhere it's in the F.O. itself.  After all, a good
many people go in there on one plea or another, and
other nations employ a very much greater number
of secret agents than we do.  As for to-night"—he
rose and stretched himself—"I'm looking
forward to my scrimmage.  I may get a bit knocked
about myself, but I shan't let my opponents go
unscathed."  He looked at his watch.  "I ought
to be off now.  Von Kirsch wants another interview;
he's ill in bed, poor chap.  He had a motor
accident the other day, you know.  I can't get
down to him and back under three hours."

"Isn't that running things rather close?  Better
dine with me; it's nearer the House," said Beadon.

"Thanks," said Farquharson, "I think I'll get
a chop there instead.  Time is short anyway, and
one can't hurry a sick man.  I shan't have more
than ten minutes or so to spare for a meal.  Good-bye,
then, for the present."  He went off whistling.

Beadon looked after him, smiling affectionately.

"He's brightened up a lot lately.  Success suits him."

"You are the more troubled of the two about
to-night," said Meavy, watching him intently.

"Oh, well, that's natural," said Creagh.  "Besides,
Beadon's been on the sick-list.  His doctor
threatens all sorts of complications if he goes on
working as he has done lately."

"The brunt of to-night's battle will fall on my
son-in-law, who is more than capable of meeting
it," said Beadon.  "I'm a bit run down, that's all.
Who's that at the door?  Oh, you, my dear."

He went forward and greeted Dora with a playful
tap on the shoulder.

"You're looking very anxious, Dora; what's the
matter?  You mustn't worry about to-night;
Farquharson's got himself well in hand, as always."

"Oh, to-night—I wasn't thinking about to-night,"
said Dora nervously.  She stood by the
study table looking from one man to the other,
rapping it impatiently with her fingers.  "Richard
says he is not coming back again.  Do you know
where he's gone?  As usual, he didn't say."

"He was hurried at the last," said her father.
"He's got a long journey before him and won't be
back for another three hours, he said.  Then he'll
go straight to the House.  You are coming, of
course; everybody will be there."

"Three hours," repeated Dora blankly.  "Are
you sure he said three hours?—And he won't be
dining at home, you are quite certain that he
won't come back?  Oh"—she looked 'round the
room—"what about Mr. Blair and Mr. Jefferson?
I suppose they'll be coming here to work in his
absence?"

Beadon produced a key from his pocket.

"No, my orders are to turn you all out and lock
the door.  Blair and Jefferson are to await Richard
at the House.  You're looking very pale and worried,
Dora; why not come off with me now, and tell your
maid to bring your evening things later?  You're
a grass-widow to-night, aren't you?"  He glanced
round the room.  "Off with you all.  There, now,
that's right."

He locked the door and pocketed the key.

"Don't wait for me," said Dora nervously;
"I've got things to do.  If you go off now I'll join
you at dinner; I couldn't possibly get to you before.
Good-bye, Lord Creagh.  Good-bye, Lord Meavy.
Yes, father, you can count upon me.  But do go
now, I'm really busy; I won't ring for the men, I'll
go to the door with you myself."

.. vspace:: 2

The door closed.  She stood for a moment silent,
fingering two keys in the bosom of her dress, looking
round despairingly, starting at every sound and
peering into the corners like a hunted animal at bay.
Sure at last of being alone, she slipped into her
boudoir, and, going to the writing-table, took out
a telegraph form and proceeded to write hurriedly.

"I've got the three hours to myself," she said;
"more, even, because he's dining out.  What a
fool I was to say I'd go to father.  And yet I don't
know, it will be better to be away in case either of
the secretaries comes back and discovers the loss
before to-morrow morning.  I shall have to send
the telegram to Mr. Brand myself; I can tell Felice
that I'm going to the Park for a minute or two.
Good Heavens, how white I am!  I hope to
goodness she won't guess there's anything wrong."

.. vspace:: 2

"A most uncomfortable place," said Lady Wereminster.
"Have you got any room at all, Evelyn?"  She
looked icily in the direction of the lady at
Mrs. Brand's right hand.  "There's only one thing in
the world that would ever make me in favour of
franchise for women, and that is, that I should
immediately use my power to press the passing of a
Bill that would enable us, as spectators, to see and
hear and to be seen and heard in the House of
Commons.  Grilles belong to the Middle Ages, and as
nobody is even middle-aged now-a-days, one resents
their existence."

"How full it is already," said Evelyn; "every
seat taken.  Look at the hats, and just see the
Strangers' Gallery and the Speaker's!"

"Everybody flocks to a tussle like this," said
Lady Wereminster, disposing of her skirts as
comfortably as the limited space would allow.  "Let
us see what's to be the first question of the evening?
These twopenny-halfpenny matters they're discussing
now don't count.  No, I absolutely refuse to
keep quiet, Evelyn.  Nothing important's going
on.  If the wife of the Member for East Mumsted—the
mere prefix stamps the place as vulgar and
suburban—is anxious to hear her husband stammering
trivialities upon a matter which interests nobody
except himself, she can give him unlimited scope
for boredom in his own home circle.  Give me the
Agenda again, or whatever they call it, Evelyn.
Good Heavens! we've got at least three-quarters of
an hour of this before the business of the evening
comes on.  Who's that at the door?—Mr. Beadon,
Mrs. Farquharson and Mr. Calvert.  Fancy Dora
honouring her husband by coming!  Let's go and
speak to them outside, shall we?  I hope your
husband's in vein to-night, Mrs. Farquharson."

"Well, we're in for a stormy evening," said
Beadon cheerfully, piloting Lady Wereminster to
a place of comparative seclusion.  "Farquharson
hasn't turned up yet even.  I never saw such a man,
he thrives on criticism.  He knows as well as I that
there is a regular organized claque of Irish Members
here to-night ready to shriek him down, 'spoiling
for a row,' as we used to say at Eton."

"Now, I'm not a betting man, as you know, Lady
Wereminster," interposed Calvert, smiling genially,
"but I'm ready to lay you long odds that that
boy of mine arrives at the last moment cool and
collected, with every fact marshalled and an indomitable
flow of courage and good-will that would break
the back of the most determined enemy.  He's got
the gift of humour, and in time that tells with the
most angry crowd.  They're up in arms against
him to-night, I know; I can't quite make it out.
He's got on too quickly, I suppose, and made
enemies."

"A strong man is always loved or hated," said
Evelyn.  "Mr. Farquharson is not only an orator,
but he knows how to hold his tongue.  Such men
are always attacked.  Think what Cobden and
Bright had to suffer in the Anti-Corn League
agitation, and O'Connell in the Repeal year!  And they
were men with vulnerable spots, and the world
hasn't found out Mr. Farquharson's weak spot yet."

"If they once rouse him they'll be amazed,"
Beadon said.  "He's a man who asks no quarter
and gives none.  Well, I think you'd better take
your seats, don't you?"  He glanced at his watch.
"In a quarter of an hour or so Farquharson will be
speaking.  Oh, there's Jefferson calling me; I
expect Farquharson's come.  Take care of yourself,
my dear."  He gave Dora's hand an affectionate
squeeze before hurrying away.

"So your seat's near ours?" said Lady
Wereminster, somewhat displeased.  "Evelyn"—in
urgent parenthesis—"if that woman begins cackling
at inopportune moments, you have my full permission
to envelop her in my chuddah, and make
the attendant take her out.—Well, the hats have
been replaced by their owners now—I really don't
know that the change is for the better.  We were
a middle-class lot enough eight or nine years ago,
but now so many Labour Members have come
in——!"  She raised her eyes expressively.  "One
vacant seat only on the Ministerial
benches—Mr. Farquharson's—oh, he's filled it now.  A man of
great distinction, your husband, Mrs. Farquharson;
he's got the hall-mark of birth upon him as well as
intellect.  Thank goodness no one would ever think
that his seat was paid for by working men's sixpences."

"Oh, he's very well in his way, as husbands
go," said Mrs. Farquharson.  "My father was
certainly right in taking him up so warmly."

"That's the third time you've had to pick up
that odious creature's bag," said Lady Wereminster
in an undertone.  "I never saw anybody's fingers
shake so.  I wish to goodness she was sitting
further off.  She makes me feel quite nervous."

"Oh, do be quiet now, there's a dear," said Evelyn.
"Mr. Farquharson's rising.  Ah!"

Farquharson's opening words were drowned in
a low rumble of muttered comments and hisses.
Then suddenly, as if at some preconcerted signal,
the Labour Members, the Irish Party, and a great
number of the Opposition, whose voices were never
heard except on these occasions, broke into a clamour
of groans.  Evelyn grew pale.  The scene was so
overwhelming, coming as it did after a period of
slackness and indifference, that even the Speaker's
call to order was disregarded, and when eventually
there came a lull, it was tense with envy and hatred.

Calvert was right.  Farquharson faced the storm
with the air of one who, at a policeman's bidding,
is held up by street traffic.  He looked perhaps a
trifle bored at first; the delay was not serious, but
inconvenient.

When at last he could make himself heard, he
repressed the cheers of his colleagues with a
gesture; Beadon, knowing his wishes, also hushed
them down.  There was a speck of dust on his right-hand
shirt-cuff; he waited to flick it off deliberately
with his handkerchief in the pause before he took
up the broken thread of his speech.

When, in next day's papers, Evelyn read the
report of his words, she wondered no longer at
the spell he exercised over his audience, as, every
nerve quickened by the strain he had just gone
through, he spoke straight to the heart in simple
language and a voice that even his enemies declared
brought back memories of O'Connell in its passion
and sweetness.  The silence of the great hall is
often broken by voices raucous and harsh and
stammering; there were some who listened now for
the mere sake of hearing the silver tongue ring
unaccustomed echoes.  Others, again, were swept
away by the flow of easy words, chosen apparently
with consummate care, yet which were in reality
inspired by the moment's conflict; words carrying
conviction because they were given with all the
force of personal magnetism, and all the art of
accomplished extempore oratory.  Men shifted their
positions as they listened; the anxious expression
on Beadon's face and that of Farquharson's
colleagues deepened into pride.  On the Opposition
benches lounging and brooding figures braced
themselves.  It was as though a clear flood and
torrent had swept suddenly throughout the House,
breaking down barriers, washing away envy and
malice and lack of charity by sheer force of its
onslaught, by reason of its purity and its wholesomeness.

Farquharson spoke to a silent House, a House
which hung upon his words.  But suddenly from
the distance another noise made itself heard—cries,
shouting and disturbance.  Evelyn and those about
her did not take the interruption seriously at first.
Yet presently it penetrated to the body of the
House; Members broke free from the spell of
Farquharson's words and turned, uneasily aware that
some important matter was in progress.

The shouts concentrated, then reached even to the
gallery.  One or two Members left their places,
attendants were seen hurrying, now at the gallery
door, and again in the lobby below that immediately
faced the Ladies' Gallery.  Farquharson went
on speaking, apparently unmoved, but he had lost
his hold upon his hearers.  Every eye was turned
away from him in the direction of a white-faced
member of the Government who, at Beadon's
direction, handed him a slip of paper.

Outside the House the noise reached its climax,
the shouting of an angry mob at bay.  Evelyn
saw other Members come back hurriedly; there were
whispered colloquies between separate members of
the Opposition; the Irish benches were almost
deserted.  Then suddenly Beadon rose to his feet,
catching convulsively his collar; he flung his hands
up, with an inarticulate cry, and fell down as though
he had been shot.

Evelyn heard the outside cry taken up again by
those within the House itself, and saw peace broken
visibly as though an earthquake had rent the whole
assembly.  Farquharson had leapt to Beadon's
side, and was bending over him; for a moment the
business of the House was set aside in the sense
of imminent personal disaster.  Impervious to
private sorrow, the Leader of the Irish Party sprang
upon his feet, gesticulating and pointing at the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.  And Evelyn
saw the men of his own party turn to look at
Farquharson as though they could not trust the
evidence of their own eyes; she saw him break and
falter as the word "traitor" rang through the
House.

In the Speaker's Gallery, confusion, horror; in
the Peeresses' Gallery, a flash of light as women in
evening dress rose hurriedly from their seats; in
the Strangers' Gallery, a murmur of comment and
dissension; the body of the House, convulsed with
new and overwhelming emotion, collapsing like a
house of cards.

An attendant with papers was at the door of the
Ladies' Gallery; there was a rush in his direction.
Evelyn must have pushed forward and bought one,
how she hardly knew.  She was just about to open
it when Dora Farquharson, at her side, caught at
her arm and fell, terror-stricken, across the seat; she
felt Lady Wereminster snatch the paper from her
with shaking fingers, and, while she was lifting
Dora to her feet, she looked over her shoulder and
read the headlines of the page aloud.

.. vspace:: 2

"*Treachery in the Foreign Office; the text of the
secret Treaty in the hands of a Foreign Power.  A
European war inevitable.*"

Below: "*The Emperor's letter to Lord Gaunt
given verbally.  Startling disclosures.*"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

"The longer I live the more I am certain that the great
difference between men—between the feeble and the powerful,
the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible
determination—a purpose once fixed,
and then death or victory.  That
quality will do anything that can be done in this world; and no
talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a
two-legged creature a man without it."—SIR F. FOWELL BUXTON.

.. vspace:: 2

"I have been sitting here with my pen in my
hand, wondering how to find words in which to tell
you what really happened at that awful scene in
the House of Commons," Lady Wereminster wrote
to Hare next day, with shaking hand.  "I want to
put it all down in plain English, to make myself
see the main facts more clearly—at present my
whole vision seems blurred and vague.  I now
know something of what women felt when they
stood outside a door and knew that within the room
their husbands were being racked.  One of my
nieces was out in South Africa during the war, you
know.  She told me that one of the most terrible
things she saw was a man, a common soldier, in
one of the hospitals at Kimberley, who had been
wounded by expanding bullets in the hand between
the thumb and forefinger, and in the thigh.  Both,
under ordinary conditions, would have been mere
flesh-wounds; as things were, the space between the
forefinger and thumb had swollen as high as a
muscular man's arm, and the wound in the thigh
was in the same condition.  But the man could not
die, and medical convention prevented his doctor
from putting him out of pain.  He lingered on, to
Mary's knowledge, in agony, from the battle of
Roidam, which took place on the fifth of May, until
she left Kimberley on the thirty-first of the month.
Throughout that time he had not even momentary
cessation from torture.  And when she went away
the doctor told her that the man's vitality was such
that he might well last a fortnight longer.

"A fortnight—think!  Remembrance of that
suffering man flashed back to me the other night in
the House.  Nobody likes having to see physical
pain; as for mental pain, the only way we treat it
is to slur it over.  Like St. Thomas, we can only
understand wounds we can put our fingers into
and probe.

"But you have imagination; you can guess what
last night meant to Richard Farquharson and us
all.  He had been warned that some mischief was
afloat, but he never dreamed how far it could go.
He came in quite buoyant and undismayed; the first
taunts and invective left him unmoved.  He bore
them down by sheer force of will; giving one rather
the impression of facing his enemies 'with his
tongue in his cheek,' as Shakespeare says.  But
presently he began to realize that matters were
serious enough to bring the best he had in him to
the fore, and then he did indeed give us the best he
had of truth and sincerity.  He shook off his cynicism
and indifference like a cloak.  The words sound
cold—oh, if I could but make you hear the man's
speech as we heard it, spell-bound, breathless!
Old members of the House, who had been there for
forty and fifty years, say they never heard any
speech approach it.  I suppose he actually reached
the summit of his power in those few moments.
Then downfall came.

"The panic that spread as the news about the
Treaty filtered through the House was absolutely
indescribable.  Farquharson never flinched.  That's
where blood tells.  A man of the people in a like
crisis would have wavered and lost his head.  But
when our class is face to face with imminent peril,
mental or physical, we are encompassed with a host
of silent witnesses, before whom it is impossible to
quail.  Voices of our dead forbears murmur, 'We
are watching you from the heights.  We, too, knew
danger in our day, and met it.  And our blood
flows in you, remember.  Be true, not only to
yourself, but to the dignity of your race.'

"You will remember the story of that Marquis
in the Revolution who, driving to the guillotine
with other aristocrats, finely attired, sniffed at a
rose to the last, because, as he explained, the smell
of the rabble so annoyed him?

"We found afterwards that influence had been
at work undermining all one side of the House with
suggestions and innuendoes.  It appears that the
whole of the Opposition was expecting some
dramatic *dénoûment* to Farquharson's speech; what it
was they didn't know, but they were prepared for
some great climax which would tell in their favour.
Anonymous letters had been sent to individual
members; the whole work had been done subtly.
But for that I doubt if there would have been that
instantaneous reaction, the sudden change of aspect
between a great assembly hanging on a man's
words, one with him in spite of themselves, and a
body of men scenting treachery and dishonour,
furious at having been fooled and tricked.  It took
one back to Pilate's house, to the judgment of
Christ, when the crowd cried 'Crucify Him,
crucify Him!'

"They say that but for Mr. Beadon's seizure a
vote of censure would have been moved at once.
Under the circumstances it was impossible to go on
with the ordinary business of the day; at the
moment we all feared that the poor Prime Minister
would actually die in his seat.  The House was
adjourned.  There are rumours of Mr. Farquharson's
resignation, but I heard just now that he absolutely
refuses to give up his post until he is assured that
he has lost the confidence of the country.  It seems
as though he could not take in the fact that he had
hardly a friend in the world except our own little
coterie.  He got on too well and too quickly not to
arouse envy and jealousy on all sides.

"I send you, under separate cover, some cuttings
from the papers; the leading ones were of course
non-committal, the others are full of invective and
denunciation.  As for the *Moon*, it did not mince
matters at all.  Caring not a jot what it said so long
as it just escaped the law of libel, it practically
accused Farquharson of selling the nation for his
own ends.  As you know, he has never been popular
with the Press.  No newspaper can say of him,
'This is my puppet; I pull the strings and he does
as I direct.'

"It is now supposed that Mr. Farquharson's
study and safe must have been opened by duplicate
keys on the afternoon of the great crisis in the
House.  The question is how an impression could
have possibly been taken of the key of the safe, as
it never leaves Mr. Farquharson's personal
possession.  The safe was ransacked, nearly everything
in it being taken—everything official, I mean;
private papers were left.  Detectives are at work on
the affair, of course.

"It appears that Mr. Farquharson went out early
that afternoon, leaving the Prime Minister to lock
the door.  Lord Creagh, who was with Mr. Beadon
all the time, says that he never parted with the key
until he returned it to his son-in-law.  Both of
Mr. Farquharson's secretaries can prove alibis on the
day in question; the servants have borne irreproachable
characters for years.  The fact that Richard
himself spent the afternoon with Herr von Kirsch,
the representative of that Government into whose
possession this special information was proved to
have been given that very day, is dead against him.
Mr. Farquharson means, I hear, 'to face the music'
to-night; the papers will tell you that most of the
other Ministers have been suddenly stricken down
with influenza.  Wereminster says that the party
is in a state of absolute panic; they got into office
on a wave of public emotion, and are terrified lest
the tide should turn.

"Did I tell you that Dora Farquharson was
there?  Somehow or other, I don't know how, the
three of us got together at the door of the Ladies'
Gallery, and were the first to read the paper—Evelyn,
Dora and I.  I think Evelyn did one of the
pluckiest things I ever saw a woman do in my life.
There was such confusion in the House below that
no noise in the Ladies' Gallery was likely to be
specially noticed.  The tumult was shocking and
the rush.  With Dora Farquharson clinging to her
arm she read the news aloud, and calmed the
tumult.  'They dare to say Mr. Farquharson has
done this thing,' she said; 'it is a lie.  It may not
be proved to-day or to-morrow, but it is a lie all the
same.'  You should have seen those women pause.
We are like sheep, after all; we follow our strong
leader, be it man or woman.  Another woman took
Evelyn's cue; she was, I think, one of the heads of
the women's franchise movement, or some such
thing.  Anyway she was quick enough to see that
in a moment of national excitement it would speak
well for women if they could comport themselves
quietly and with dignity.  To quote the morning
papers, 'In spite of the disturbance and dissension
below, the occupants of the Ladies' Gallery withdrew
in perfect order, and with no signs of excitement,
a great contrast to the prevailing attitude of
the House.'

"Evelyn and I led the way with Dora Farquharson.
She had, of course, to be taken home at once
and put to bed.  One dreads the advent of the
evening papers; more still the comments of the foreign
Press.  And if we dread them, what must Richard
Farquharson feel?  I never knew how much I loved
my country until now.  These low little papers!—every
stone they fling hurts me personally.  To
hint of corruption and bribery here, in England!—I
am only a woman, and I feel this acutely.  Again,
what can it be to Richard Farquharson?  As things
stand, it is as though he had wounded almost to
death what he loves best and would sacrifice most
for.  This is a blow at his heart, and a blow at the
nation.  How to meet it, decadent as we are,
demoralized by that love of luxury and advertisement
which brings us day by day nearer disaster and
downfall?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

"Never make a defence ... before you are accused."—CHARLES I.

.. vspace:: 2

In youth, a great crisis may only spiritualize and
refine the features; in maturity, it leaves ineradicable scars.

The first great blow of Calvert's life had embittered
him; the second left him shattered.  Farquharson
was like his son, more to him in some ways
than his own son would have been.  Parents have
always to face the possibility that their children
may go absolutely contrary to their wishes; the
transfusion of two souls may create a being which
develops on entirely different lines from those
desired by they who willed it to exist.  But
Farquharson had fulfilled Calvert's every hope; his
appointment in the Ministry was the culmination
of Calvert's ambition.  Calvert, looking upon him,
felt that he could say his *Nunc Dimittis* thankfully;
how easy to depart in peace when one had left behind,
as legacy to the empire, so strong a man of war!

But human strength is, after all, limited; no
single unit can hold on steadily against a battalion
of armed foes.  Farquharson woke the day after the
attack in the House to find himself hemmed in,
surrounded by enemies, his name bandied from one
man to another, in the dockyard, on tubs at Hyde
Park Corner, in open booths at Walworth Bridge
Road.  The socialists saw their opportunity and
made the most of it: "A starving man may steal a
loaf of bread and be sent to prison for five days—this
man, who has sold the secrets of his nation, will
probably go unscathed because he is of gentle birth."

It was torture to Calvert to go out that day; he
never knew when in 'bus or tube or district railway
he would hear Farquharson's name spoken
contemptuously by strangers.  For men spoke of
circumstantial evidence, and "Circumstantial
evidence is the hardest to disprove, and frequently
unreliable," as a great criminal lawyer once said.
Brand had done his work well.  But—"In so
gloomy a climate as ours we must expect the
powers of darkness to prevail," said Lady Wereminster.

Stunned and horrified, Farquharson himself did
not at first take in the full force of the rumours that
were being spread about him.  It was impossible
to conceive that he should be suspected of treachery.
When, the night before, he lost grip of his audience,
he had at first believed that it was through some
fault of his own.  He had never seen suspicion in
men's eyes before.  But next day's papers were
more explicit.  Men and women discussed the subject
over the luncheon table, at Princes or the Piccadilly
Hotel.  "Such a pity—one had always thought
Mr. Farquharson quite a nice-minded man."  There
is after all no ball so light to fling as that of a man's
or woman's character, and no sport so amusing to
the players.

When the question of moving the vote of censure
was fixed for the next evening, Calvert's last hope
died.  Who was there to stand by Farquharson?
Beadon was lying sick to death.  Shock had
snapped some lesion of the brain, and he lay
paralyzed.  Richard would pull through, of
course—what would he not pull through?  But the older
man felt the shame, the ignominy of his position
almost as keenly as he did himself.  Farquharson,
called to account for his actions by a set of men
who did not know the meaning of the word honour;
Farquharson, impeached by some who could
scarcely spell the word—Farquharson, steady of
purpose, sure of aim, a king amongst puppets, held in
contumely, derided, blackened a little as a man or
woman must always be blackened by the mud
thrown even by the very scum of humanity.

It was bitter, it was unbearable.  Calvert counted
the hours until the moment when, across the Bar
of the House, the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs would have publicly to repudiate a deed
which the powers of hell themselves would never
have forced him to commit.

.. vspace:: 2

Evelyn, instead of having been paralyzed by the
shock, found it had quickened every instinct.  She
felt as if she were charged with a new and strange
force, a kind of super-consciousness which made her
the recipient of a thousand telepathic messages,
along which communications carried with the speed
and safety of a telegram.  It took her away from
ordinary surroundings and left her indifferent even
to all Brand said and did—although he naturally
spared her nothing.  There is an inner chamber to
every heart, a place of refuge and concealment of
which at times one may mercifully turn the key.
Evelyn withdrew there now when he attacked her;
safe within its four walls, she listened to his
criticism of Farquharson as one listens to the ravings of
a madman.  He could touch her no longer; he could
hurt her no more.  That is the comfort of receiving
a mortal wound.  The thrust of spear and
bayonet may tear and lacerate to an unendurable
pitch of torture, but a blow at the heart kills.

.. vspace:: 2

"As we have seen nothing of Mrs. Farquharson,"
said Lady Wereminster, "we will charitably
suppose that for once she has been of use to her
husband.  There are women who fail in every minor
office who can yet rise to occasions.  And a man in
trouble must have sympathy, no matter from what
source.  Dora Farquharson has got the opportunity
of her life if she did but know.  Never expect
me to pity a woman who can't keep her husband.
She's a fool, and I hate fools.  Men are naturally
more domestic animals than women.  The ties of
daily intimacy make enduring claims upon them.
A man may be consumed by the fire of undying
passion for one woman, but he's dependent on the
one he lives with, if she will only minister to his
daily needs, and never let his supply of whisky or
cigarettes run short, and be ready with a new dish
or a soothing medicine as each is required."

"If Dora fails her husband now——" said
Evelyn.  She stopped.

"Oh, if it were but the ideal marriage," said
Lady Wereminster.  "With the right woman he
would have braved all this and carried it through
triumphantly.  They have been married long
enough now to have begun to form the deeper ties
of union and of confidence.  It partly amuses,
partly hurts me when people talk of the early days
of marriage as though all the sweetness and ardour
and passion and tenderness of life were concentrated
in them.  When two people really love each other
those things not only endure and strengthen, but
take exquisite sanctity as years go by.  The plant
strengthens.  Its blooms are finer.  As the years
go, its colour and texture are fit to grow in the
Garden of God.  Something of the Eternal Love
has filtered directly through from some crevice of
heaven and shone upon them; their scent isn't of
this world, but eternity."

"And you think that might apply to Mr. Farquharson
and his wife?" said Evelyn.  She stood
quite silently, looking away from Lady Wereminster.

"Never," said Lady Wereminster; "but men
are human.  They're like dogs who are hurt.  They
cringe away into corners where, for a while, they
miss accustomed voices, and presently creep out,
ready to lick the hand of even the hardest master
so long as he is master.  When men are hurt they
slink off, in much the same way; but daily routine
tells.  They are creatures of habit, who miss even
the harshest voice if they have once got used to it.
Dora Farquharson is on the spot, and there's the
other tie....  How far that will tell one doesn't
know.  Fatherhood affects different men differently,
but I have an idea it will constitute a strong claim
on Mr. Farquharson."

.. vspace:: 2

There was a knock at Evelyn's bedroom door;
her maid entered with a letter.

"The man is waiting for an answer, ma'am."

"Excuse me," said Evelyn.  The letter was from
Mrs. Farquharson, so hurried, so incoherent that
she did not at first grasp the meaning of the few
excited words.

"Please come at once, no matter what you're
doing.  I must have you; I must speak to you.  I
am almost out of my mind with agony and horror;
you mustn't fail me.  Richard doesn't know I'm
writing.  I don't know what to do.  For God's
sake, come at once."

"She's failed him again," said Evelyn slowly.
Lady Wereminster snatched the letter from her.

"It isn't that at all.  Here, get on your things,
I'll take you on in the car.  That it should come
to-day of all days—poor Mr. Farquharson!"

.. vspace:: 2

Dawn—cold, grey, chilling.  The stir and bustle
of servants' steps; low voices.  The household at
Chester Street had been hurrying to and fro
sending telegrams and dispatches and messages ever
since Evelyn had arrived at twelve o'clock on the
previous day.  While the Leader of the Opposition
was preparing his vote of censure on the Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, and such members as
were in the country were hurriedly returning to
town in order to be present at one of the most
dramatic debates of the century, the fate of
Farquharson's child hung in the balance between life
and death.

Lady Wereminster was right; when Evelyn
entered the house she saw at once how matters
stood and sent for the doctor.  She had found Dora
in a state bordering on frenzy, bitter, reproachful,
incoherent.  The torrent of words with which she
was met dazed Evelyn so that she could scarcely
take in their full force; Farquharson, very still and
pale, was standing upright by the fire-place in the
dining-room, listening with a face that might have
been carved in marble, so still was it, so utterly
expressionless.  But Evelyn, entering, saw the deep
lines cut obliquely from nostril to lip; saw the
furrows in the brow, cut as if by a chisel—those lines
of ineradicable pain which the years deepen instead
of smoothing.

She swept across the room, and, catching Dora's
trembling figure in her arms, put her hand above
the girl's mouth and checked the hideous torrent of words.

"You must come up-stairs at once to your room,"
she said sharply.  "You've sent for the nurse, of
course, Mr. Farquharson?  Then please do so at
once.  Come up with me, Dora—or, better still, let
your husband carry you.  No, I'm not going to
listen to a word now; you're better for the moment,
and this sort of scene does you no good at all.  You
may think I'm speaking harshly, but I'm not.  Send
for Felice, Mr. Farquharson, will you?  Or, if she's
hysterical, the head housemaid, please; she's a
sensible woman."

"It's awful, it's ghastly," said Dora, fighting
them both, as they tried to carry her up-stairs,
between spasms of pain.  "It's unendurable, and I
won't bear it.  Doctors are beasts; I know this man
won't give me chloroform until the very end.  I
won't bear it till the end, do you hear?  Why
should I be tortured so for a man I loathe?  I won't
have it, I tell you; I won't have it!"  Her voice
rose to a shriek.  "Make the doctor come, Evelyn;
make him give me something.  I won't stand it, I
tell you; I won't stand—oh, God——"

This was the prelude of hours of revolt and rebellion.
It seemed to Evelyn that for a lifetime she
had listened to Dora's ravings.  She tried to excuse
them on the score of delirium, and failed.  In some
ways Dora was a typical modern woman, eager to
take all that life offered her and pay no penalty;
rebellious at the gift of a new responsibility which
compelled her to take life from another point of view.

Nurse and doctor both came presently, and then
another nurse was sent for, Mrs. Farquharson was
too unmanageable for one alone.

Evelyn, sitting in the room beyond, was called
for ceaselessly.  No one could do anything so well
as Evelyn.  No one else fanned Dora in the right
way, or knew when she wanted her pillows moved.
Now she must have her head laved; now she wanted
special scent on her handkerchief.  The pillows
were wrong again now....  No, Evelyn could not
have anything to eat at this moment.  How could
she when Dora was in such pain?  She could go
down-stairs and have something presently, when
the nurse had finished her meal.

But the "presently" never came.  Hour after
hour Evelyn sat, waging perhaps the hardest battle
of her life, as Dora's rebellion gave way to hatred,
and hatred to passion so intense that the very room
seemed charged with it.  Evelyn had seen Farquharson
come to the door; from her bed his wife
had recognized him, and poured out such a torrent
of contempt that Evelyn ran to her and put her
hand upon the quivering mouth.

She dragged her tired limbs now to the head of
the stairs, but Farquharson had gone.  She wondered
which would be the hardest ordeal, the facing
of that stern tribunal before which he would
presently stand at bay, or the one through which he
had just passed.

Of late Evelyn's prayers had been merely
mechanical.  To-night they concentrated; let him
have this at least, dear God—one thing in the world
which might comfort and cheer him....  But
where it became a question of the child's life or
Dora's there was, in Dora's mind, no choice.  She
had never wanted the child from the first, she loved
her own life.

At midnight Evelyn heard Farquharson return.
She knew by the sound of his footsteps that the vote
had gone against him.  She tried to disengage her
hand from Dora's, but failed.  By the time she
was free, he had gone to his own room; she heard
him move heavily across it.

.. vspace:: 2

Physically spent herself after hours of struggle
with a woman whose strength in intervals of pain
was almost incredible, Evelyn watched day dawn,
with a face that was haggard and worn.  Dora's
shrinking at pain she would have borne so gladly
shattered her.  In moments of physical anguish
souls are revealed, and she had never seen Dora in
so pitiful, so low, so unworthy a light as she did
now.  Wearied out at last, she moved mechanically,
like one in a dream, going to and from the
sick-room as she was bidden.  Dora had got her way;
the doctor had administered chloroform long before
he would have given it in the case of a courageous
patient.  Sitting alone in the little anteroom, Evelyn
watched grey shadows come and go, frightened
servants stepping on tiptoe, the doctor and the
nurse, even Farquharson, whose ravaged face put
him beyond the reach even of her spoken sympathy.
In the house it was presently rumoured that the
real struggle with death had begun; the piteous
struggle of the child to whom Dora had denied any
chance of vitality which might have given her one
added pain.

The end came in the morning as light trembled
into being.  As if in a dream, Evelyn heard a cry
that pierced her heart; a cry that seemed to sound
the death-knell of her own dream-child, that put
Farquharson further away from her.  Some smell
of chloroform or ether—she was no longer able to
distinguish between the two—was penetrating into
the inner room.  When presently her name was
called, it seemed to make a definite atmosphere
through which she feebly groped her way to Dora's
bedroom.  One of the nurses met her there with a
tiny bundle in her arms.  Evelyn took it; it was
pitifully light.

"He may not live," the nurse said; "the doctor
thought his father would like to see him.  I must
go back to the room, Mrs. Farquharson is so dreadfully
nervous and hysterical; we are both quite worn
out.  Just hark at her now!  Would you kindly
take the baby down, Mrs. Brand."

The gods have an unlimited belief in one's powers
of endurance.  Slowly, with breaking heart, her
eyes drowned partly for self-pity, partly for fear lest
the flickering little life she held might breathe its
last before the end of her journey, she went
downstairs and entered the sitting-room where
Farquharson stood waiting.  She saw his face as he greeted
her, its pallor, its anxiety transfigured suddenly by
the light which comes but once in a lifetime to a
man, and that only when he looks upon his firstborn
son.  Without a word he held out his arms; without
a word Evelyn handed him her dear burden.  Then
the room rocked, she put out her hands blindly,
swaying.  So bitter, so cruel, so overwhelming was
the moment's agony, that it was as though a chord
had snapped in her heart, and left her struggling
for breath.  But Farquharson neither saw nor heard.
She closed the door gently—how she did not
know—and left him alone with his son.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

"The cord breaks at the last by the weakest pull."—Old Spanish Proverb.

.. vspace:: 2

At one point in pain, all sense of value dies.
Nothing is left but the overwhelming realization
that, throb by throb, it will increase until it reaches
the climax, when a woman bites her pillow to stifle
her shrieks, and a man in all probability blows out
his brains—the shortest way of escape.  To the
woman there succeeds what may be called reaction,
a temporary lull, in which body, mind and soul are
alike so bruised and stricken that, possibly from
sheer weariness, sleep may come for a brief hour.
But next day the pain begins again and concentrates
again, and so on and on from day to day and
week to week, the only change being that soul and
mind and body become daily a little more bruised,
a little more stricken.

This is worse than a mere period of spiritual
dryness; it is an active wrestling with the powers of
hell.  It is in such moments that religion fails, and
the faith to which one was born seems to spell
restriction.  One would prefer to fling it away
altogether, to deny its truth, to escape to a world where
the light of the heart might give out its full
radiance, even if the soul shrank in gloom.

Doubts creep in in such moments of peril.  Catholics
do not mince matters.  They do not expect to
cheat God in their lives and the devil in their deaths
by tardy repentance.  If they sin, they risk eternal
damnation, and know it.

The description of a picture she had once seen
had often been in Evelyn's thoughts lately.  God
sat in judgment on His throne.  Before Him was
ranged a tribe of kneeling figures—kings laying
down their sceptres, soldiers their swords, queens
their jewels, men their symbols of ambition, women
their guerdons of beauty.  Some hung back as
though unwilling to give up so soon all that was
pleasant.  In the foreground of the picture knelt a
young girl's shrinking form.  Her eyes, mystical
and reverent, were looking at the throne; she held
one hand bravely outstretched, but the other was
concealed within the drapery of her gown.  In the
hand that pointed direct to God there was the half
of a little human heart, her own, all that she had to
give, for the other half was withheld.  Amongst so
vast a crowd of worshippers she thought that
perhaps God might not see the gift she offered was
divided.

Torn with conflict, every energy, every force
concentrated on one prevailing thought, the daily
routine of her life temporarily suspended, what had
Evelyn now to give God?  Little pitiful utterings
of prayer, the mechanical moving of lips to the
rhythm of habitual words—that was all.  Yet, after
all, what proof had she that what she had been
taught in childhood was true?—Think of the bitterness
that would come, if at the end of life, when the
secrets of all are revealed, we were to find that we
had given up love, in bitterness and agony, for the
sake of a phantom God and a phantom creed....

The thought passed.  Belief held her still.  But
in the conflict between self and soul lay her real
torment.

It was the sight of Farquharson's child that had
broken her, a child born in rebellion and anger,
wresting its life from the God of Being in spite of
its mother's cowardice.  She felt as if her own child
had been stolen from her.  Wounded and weeping
tears of blood, she must stand by and watch it in
another woman's arms.

The inscrutable laws of human destiny!  Call
them rather those of blind chance, since some of us
seem born only to be first tossed to and fro on the
waves of disaster, and then thrown, helpless and
mangled beyond recognition, upon the shore with
other refuse.

.. vspace:: 2

It was in such a mood as this that Evelyn awaited
Lady Wereminster's arrival a week after the vote
of censure.  Farquharson had allowed himself this
specified time in which to battle with public opinion.
If at the end it still went against him he would hand
in his resignation.  It is only when a man is called
upon to defend his honour that he knows which are
his friends and which his foes.

All through the week Evelyn had hoped against
hope; had worked and striven on his behalf as
much as she dared, only to meet an icy wall of
indifference.  The world had given its verdict.
Temporarily the Farquharsons were to be ostracized.
When your acquaintances in high places are openly
accused of bribery and corruption by the foreign
Press, it is high time to revise your visiting-list.
Obviously Mr. Farquharson had to resign.  That
he should continue to hold such an important post
would make matters very uncomfortable for all who
knew him.  Eventually things might blow over; but
in the meantime society shrugged its shoulders, and
shook its discreet skirts free from the least trace
of contamination.

"The time is up.  We shall know Mr. Farquharson's
decision to-night," Lady Wereminster said.
"I must save you from hearing the news shouted in
the open street.  I shall come on to see you directly
his announcement is made, if it is made to-night."

.. vspace:: 2

The moments crept by, and hours, while Evelyn
waited.  Mercifully she was alone.  Brand had been
called to the country on some mysterious business,
and she had sent her servant away for the night.
West Kensington is not usually a neighbourhood
where there is much traffic during the social hours
of the evening; its inmates are more inclined to go
by foot or rail to their engagements than by carriage
or motor.  But it seemed to Evelyn that night that
the streets were full of noise and movement.  Time
after time she heard the approaching hoot of a
motor, and went to the door to find that the sound
existed only in imagination.

But Lady Wereminster came at last, slowly, with
head bent and lagging steps.  Her news was written
on her face.  Evelyn drew her into the inner room
without a word.

"He has resigned," Lady Wereminster whispered.
"And he looks as if it were his death-blow."

"I must try to tell you consecutively," she went
on presently.  She stretched her hand out trembling
towards the liqueur glass of brandy which Evelyn
had poured out for her, and drank it off at a gulp.
"I'm unnerved, I suppose.  It was one of the most
awful things I've ever witnessed.  The scene in the
House the other night was nothing to it; men were
beside themselves then with the sudden shock, the
very noise and tumult helped to carry one through.
But to-night there was a frozen silence, a great icy
wall of horror and contempt and deadly purpose,
that turned the very blood in one's veins.  When
Mr. Farquharson entered, I thought of a time in Egypt
when I had seen the people shrink from a man who
was stricken with leprosy.  One looked to right and
left and asked, 'Where are his friends?  Where
are the people who have canonized him and
idolized him, fawned at his feet, and cringed before
him?'"

There were tears in her eyes; she stopped
abruptly.  Evelyn, quite tearless, listened.

"And then?" she said.

"It was as though when he spoke they were
stripping him threadbare," said Lady Wereminster, her
mouth rigid.  "To my mind, he dealt with charge
upon charge with absolute sincerity and conviction.
His hearers listened with the air of spectators at a
play, a play whose chief actor lacked what the
French call *vraisemblance*.  There's nothing so
impossible to grip as an audience that has wrapped
itself in the cloak of indifference.  I suppose at
heart there isn't a man in the House but covets
Farquharson's position; not a man but thinks he could
fill it as adequately were he called upon to do so.
And jealousy, as you know, has been at the root of
every betrayal, of every libel, since the world
began."

"Were there no cheers, no interruptions?" asked
Evelyn.  Her hands, gripped tightly together, alone
betrayed her.  "Surely his colleagues cheered him?
It was the least they could do."

"There's not a man amongst the lot," said Lady
Wereminster.  "They were all deadly nervous.
Each waited to see what his neighbour was going
to do before he dared act on his own initiative.  One
or two nodded to Farquharson, that was all.  There
was only one course open to him, and he took it."

"He resigned, then?" said Evelyn.

"He explained very clearly at the beginning of
his speech that it was the only course open to him
under the circumstances.  The whole affair being
without precedence, I understand that he was
practically given a free hand in his way of dealing with
it.  He said that he had from the first courted the
fullest inquiry; he had immediately put matters
into the hands of Scotland Yard.  Everything that
could be done had been done to compel the Power
which had bought the information to admit from
what source it was obtained.  Up to the present
moment its refusal was absolute.  He accounted
briefly for his actions on the day in question; even
reading a letter from Von Kirsch, which, in my
view, entirely cleared him.  He said he knew that
as yet he stood in the position of a man who had
not legally proved his innocence, but that up till
now he had not thought it possible that his
fellow-members should seriously suspect him.  In the face
of public opinion, which he supposed was echoed
by the House, he would resign his office until he
was once more asked by his colleagues to take a
seat in that great assembly.  The whole speech was
on these lines—direct, concise and manly.  But he
ended as he had begun, in silence."

"Silence!"

In the street below a man and woman were singing
the refrain of a popular music-hall melody.  The
windows of the little flat opened on to the street, so
in the pause that followed the words echoed
distinctly, accompanied by the giggling murmur of the
crowd, and the strumming of three primary chords
on the piano-organ.

   |  "Don't you wish 'e might get it, Bill?
   |  Oh, ain't he a powerful man!"
   |

"Good-bye, I'm going now," said Lady Wereminster
brokenly.  "The street boys will be here
soon, calling the extra specials.  Well, you're
prepared for them now, thank God.  Go to bed soon.
You're looking absolutely dead beat."  She took
the girl's face in her hands and turned it towards
the light of the little lamp which stood upon the
three-cornered table by the mantelpiece.  "Your
heart's been bad again, hasn't it?  Your face has
got its old grey look—the look that always frightens
me."

"Oh, I'm all right," said Evelyn tonelessly.

At the door Lady Wereminster turned suddenly
back and put her arms round Evelyn again, as
tenderly as a mother.

"Hold on," she said; "you are one of those who
must hold on, because we expect you to.  So far
you've been brave, Evelyn; don't give in now."

.. vspace:: 2

Usually a quiet sleeper, Lady Wereminster found
that night that her thoughts were as clear, her mind
as capable of action, as in the day.  She had a
pleasant little boudoir attached to her bedroom; at about
two o'clock in the morning she rose from her bed
and flung herself down upon the couch, a most
unusual proceeding.

To be able to see from only one point of view is
indescribably consoling.  Unluckily for her, Lady
Wereminster could put herself in other people's
places, could judge the result of her own work as
critically as she judged the work of others.  When
she had, more or less, compelled Farquharson to
marry, she had acted emotionally; her one idea
had been to save Evelyn from threatened scandals.
She had not reckoned, for one moment, on
Farquharson's temperament.  She had practically bid
him seek a wife—any wife.  What was the result?
She forgot that she was dealing with a reckless and
adventurous man—the type upon which one can
never count with certainty.  There had always been
a spark of dare-devilry in Farquharson's nature.
She had expected him to weigh the various
advantages of the various charming ladies who tripped
across his social stage as possible candidates for
marriage.  Instead of doing this, he had flung himself
headlong into the first abyss which gaped before
him.  It would have been worth another man's
while perhaps to marry Dora; but Farquharson
could get on without Beadon's influence.  And
Dora's character was, as any woman of discernment
would observe, one which must inevitably repel and
alienate him.  Such women are like cancerous
growths; they eat away a man's vitality, robbing
him in time of strength and force of will.

And she was responsible for this outrageous
marriage—she, Mary Wereminster.  She who had
always prided herself upon her judgment and
balance.  Lives are, after all, very dangerous
chemicals to play with.  Mix the wrong two
together, and disaster follows.

With the best intentions in the world, what had
Lady Wereminster compassed after all?  She had
not really saved Evelyn; there are times when even
a surgeon decides that a disease is inoperative.  She
had taken Farquharson from a life of comparative
peace and thrown him into one of petty annoyance
and difficulties—jars which strain such a man's
endurance to the utmost.  Lady Wereminster did not
for one moment believe that Farquharson had
committed the act of which he had been accused; but
she thought that he might possibly have been careless,
and, if it were so, his failure was due to the
consequence of that mad marriage into which she
had pitilessly flung him.  So the tragedy, the
betrayal, the very position that her nation stood in at
the moment, was due to her own folly, her own
ruthless activity.

Impulsively spoken words, letters written under
misapprehensions, can never be withdrawn.  If as
a child one makes a mistake in a sum, one can erase
the figures and add them up afresh.  But in life a
mistake once made is irremediable, as Lady
Wereminster knew.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 4-XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

"To all men there comes the last battle."—GEORGE STEVENS.

.. vspace:: 2

The door closed with a bang.  How final it
sounded!  Almost as if Lady Wereminster were
going out of her life, Evelyn thought.  She put
her hands to her head.  Momentarily she was
overpowered by the strange, sudden faintness which
had come upon her so often lately.

It passed, and she went back to the sitting-room,
waiting with a set purpose.  Sooner or later he
would come.  She looked for no merely human
message.  Between two hearts that beat absolutely
as one there is no need for such communications in
moments of great crisis.  The one calls to the other,
and the other obeys.

At about eleven o'clock, the echo of boys' voices
calling the news rang through the open windows.
Evelyn, still strangely idle, listened unmoved.
She heard front doors being hurriedly opened, the
shuffling of many feet up and down the kitchen
steps; now and again voices from bedroom
windows calling to the men below to wait for a
moment until some hastily-awakened servant had
time to get down and unlatch the door.  Even in
West Kensington such news had its interest.
Evelyn pictured the thousand and one faces which,
in London, were at that moment bending over
"late specials," reading the lines which crushed
a man's career, temporarily at least, and broke his
heart.

The noise lulled.  With ears extraordinarily
quickened, Evelyn had heard the sound die away
in the direction of Hammersmith and Fulham.  The
words echoed in her brain, like a discordant piece
of music, recurring again and again—

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   "RESIGNATION OF THE SECRETARY OF
   STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS!"

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   "MR. FARQUHARSON'S RESIGNATION."

.. vspace:: 2

Then new sounds came to distract her; the bustle
of feet as the last Tubes disgorged late occupants
returning from the theatre; the whir of an
occasional taxi-cab; the hurrying wheels of hansoms;
the almost inevitable discussion as to fares.

Silence again.  Then a new chorus of sounds—altered
in character.  This was the hour when belated
clients were turned out from public-houses.
They were uncertain, stumbling footsteps that
passed now, confused voices, readily roused to
mirth or anger.  She heard a jumble of conflicting
notes, annoyance, irritation, cajolery, laughter,
broken at last by a policeman's voice and a sharp
order to move on.

Then silence again.  Nothing, now, but the bark
and growl and eventual whimper of a stray
fox-terrier shut out from the house opposite, and the
never-ending wailing of cats, which sounds so
exactly like the cry of a frightened child.

Two o'clock—three o'clock.  He was late.
Evelyn, hearing the clock strike, tried to move,
and found herself held in the grip of almost
intolerable physical pain.  For hours she must have
sat in one position, leaning forward in her chair,
with hands lightly crossed upon her knee; every
limb was cramped.  She crossed to the window,
and pulled aside the blind for a moment.  In the
daytime the windows were alight with a thousand
eyes; now they were blank and sightless.  The
street was deserted; the reflection from the lamp
showed a long expanse of deserted pavement.

Then from afar she heard the sounds of approaching
footsteps, firm, determined; belonging to one
she knew.  Her thought had drawn him as she
wished.  She let the blind fall, and going to the
hall door awaited his coming.

.. vspace:: 2

We read, mostly in books by spinsters, a great
many unnecessary details of what in their view is
a scene of passion.  But when a man is
overwhelmed and broken it is the mother-love of the
woman he cares for most to which he looks for
peace and security.  There are no sweeter or more
tender services than those which a woman can offer
her lover under such conditions, and nothing draws
them nearer than his temporary dependence.

Farquharson came in blindly, like a dazed man,
gripping her arm with a strength he did not realize.
She knew there was some new pain behind his
stricken eyes; when the hospitable gods give you a
bitter cup to drink they are very careful to fill it
full.  He sat in absolute silence for a while, and
she knelt beside him.  It struck her afterwards as
a wonderful proof of the tie between them that he
did not question her when she met him at the
threshold, that he took her waiting, her expectation,
her very silence for granted.

It was a long time before he turned.  Then he
looked her full in the face, with eyes from which
all the light and youth had gone.

He caught his breath.

"You have heard the news?" he said.  "I
thought so.  The streets were alive with people last
night.  I was pressed to buy papers over and over
again on my way here.  The result had barely been
announced in the House when a message reached
me from home"—Evelyn winced—"from the
nurse, to tell me that *my wife*"—he laid stress on
the word—-"was ill, and wanted me.  As I was
leaving the House, at the very door, I was stopped
by another messenger, it was an important cable
in reference to a big Russian question; it required
special knowledge.  The man who is taking over
my work had to deal with it then and there, and
couldn't without help.  I stayed.  That meant ten
minutes' delay, but it had to be.  It took me another
eight minutes to get home.  Two minutes before
my son had died in agony, left by the nurses in
order that they might attend to Dora, who was in
violent hysterics because she thought they were
neglecting her to look after my child."

He pushed Evelyn's hand away and walked to
the mantelpiece.  The light of the little electric
lamp defined every line, every feature, with all the
havoc that the night had wrought.

"My dear! my dear!" said Evelyn brokenly.
There was a fierce battle in her heart, but she stood
silently beside him, and dawn filtered slowly
through the half-drawn blinds.

"I could not have left him but for you,"
Farquharson said, after a pause.  "He's lying there
now in my dressing-room, on a little bed of flowers;
there were flowers enough in her room and to spare;
I took them.  Have you ever seen a dead baby,
Eve?  He's like marble now, the little mouth all
set and cold—you would never think it, but he
smiled at me only yesterday.  He knew me, you
know.  I know they say it's absurd that a baby of
a week old should, but I'm sure he did.  He used
to clutch my finger—you would never have
believed how strong he was!—and snuggle in here
in the bend of my arm, where I'm holding you now.
I had to be everything to him, you see; his mother
had never even had him in the room from the
first."  He stopped abruptly.  "When I went in
to tell her he was dead, she said, 'Well, I'm
afraid that's the end of your hopes of an heir,
Richard.  I shall never go through this again, I
assure you.'"

"Don't, don't," said Evelyn; "I can't bear it!"  She
caught him in her arms and held him close,
with strength that seemed to have been given her
for that one purpose.

But presently she spoke; clearly, concisely.

"You asked me once to go away with you,
Richard, and I refused.  You had your life before
you then, and you could do without me.  Now you
have nothing.  Do you know how I suffer with you
in every ache that's tearing your heart-strings at this
moment?  I had my dream-child too, dear—its loss
was bitter enough, but yours was worse.  You've
got the touch of little, living fingers to remember,
the light of dear wee smiles that were your very
own from the beginning.  If you want me still I'll
come to you anywhere, anyhow, so long as I can
be with you and comfort you.  When you could do
without me, religion was strong enough to keep
us apart, but now it isn't.  Things are too hard
for us, and I've given in."

"Eve——!"

He looked at her, stupefied; hardly understanding
what she said.

She pulled the blind back.

"See, there is the dawn.  Our dawn, Richard.
There shall be no grief or repining if you take me,
dear.  I'll make you as happy as I can, and give
you all I have and all I am—your absolute
possession, bought by pain."

.. vspace:: 2

The light from the east came in upon the man
and woman, standing close together, more in the
position of two persons who had been one for many
years than that of lovers whose lips had met only
for the second time.  They watched it touch the
commonplace houses of the dreary street with its
transfiguring light.  As Evelyn looked, a sense
of peace came over her.  After all, it was the
conflict which had been so infinitely bitter, the
civil war between soul and body, reason and
heart.

"You needn't speak," she said; "I know what
you've decided.  Let me know in a few days when
you want me to come, what you want me to do.
You'll have to say good-bye to your little son, you
see; you'll let me come and say it too, won't you?
Good-bye till then."

"*When I want you*—God!"

"Now you must go!"  She faltered; all that the
man had suffered showed in his last words.

He kissed her and went out.  The sun rose,
flooding her with light as she stood on the
doorstep watching him.  He thought of her many times
afterwards as he saw her at that moment, tall, pale,
yet radiant, unashamed, with eyes mystic and
sad, and features a little drawn but spiritualized by
the night's waiting and suffering.  She looked as
though peace encompassed her, stilling the turbulent
forces which had enfolded her so long.  Had
she been summoned before God just then she
would have used the very selfsame words in which
she spoke to Farquharson: "Things were too hard
for us—I have given in."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VICTORY`:

.. _`CHAPTER 5-I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART V

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large bold

VICTORY

.. vspace:: 3

"Love ... when weary, is not tired; when straitened, is not
constrained; when frightened, is not disturbed, but like the
lively flame of a torch all on fire, mounts upwards and securely
passes through all.  He that loves most willingly embraces all
that is hard and bitter.

.. vspace:: 1

"... If the works of God were such as might be easily
comprehended, they could not be called wonderful and
unspeakable."—THOMAS À KEMPIS.

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "It were not hard to suffer by His Hand,
   |  If thou couldst see His Face;—but in the dark!
   |  That is the one last trial:—be it so.
   |  Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too:
   |  How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else?
   |  Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand,
   |  Only the cruel crushing of the feet,
   |  When through the bitter night the Lord comes down
   |  To tread the wine-press—Not by sight, but faith....
   |  Endure, endure—be faithful to the end."—MRS. HAMILTON KING.

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.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,
   |  But the high faith that failed not on the way."
   |                  *Lines written upon a photograph.*

.. vspace:: 2

At the same hour as Evelyn and Farquharson
parted, Hare, wrapped round with all the
paraphernalia of illness, sitting beside his window at
an hotel in Biarritz which faced the Plage, braced
himself by force of will to write a letter which he
felt impelled to send.

"By the time this reaches you, dear Evelyn, I
shall be dead.  I shall leave instructions with the
solicitor to whom I telegraphed six hours ago, that
this letter shall be held back until the end.  I have
always been fond of you, as you know; it is not
often given to childless men to meet with their
ideal daughter; but in my heart I have always
regarded you as that.  I have been powerless to
save you from the consequences of your actions,
to spare you one lash of the whip with which the
malicious sprites which govern this world's
happenings have seen fit to scourge you.  Throughout the
vicissitudes through which you have passed, I have
stood detached, a critical spectator.  You might
have resented my explanation in life; you are
amongst those who forgive with exquisite
tenderness the past impertinences of the dead.

"I suppose instinct led me to read you aright
throughout.  I saw you, as a child, battling against
the inevitable; you are waging the same war
to-day.  You may, or you may not know, a phrase
which is bandied about by 'common people' in
Hindoo bazars—'Likka hai'—'It is written.'  From
the first, you have had to brave the most
cruel enemies that can beset a woman—enemies of
the household—secret enemies; enemies far more
powerful, of faith and doubt.

"People will tell you that at the end, our
thoughts are usually concentrated upon self—that
the scenes of a man's mimic life pass each in turn
before him in succession.  I have not found that
to be true.  I am thinking of you now, your doubts,
your difficulties, the problems that you are
grappling with, which you have never told me, but
which I have never mentioned until now.

"I am not a pious man, as you know.  I pay no
attention to the ordinary claims of religion.  I take
precisely the same pleasure in the Tenebrae of the
Catholic Church, as I do in the Burial Service of
the Church of England.  In both you are swept
from your ordinary course of placidity on the waves
of the eternal.  In the first, you have the dull
rhythm of sound, with breaks, and curious changes
of key and tune—if tune it may be called which is
so Gregorian in its methods.  Working up, step
by step, with the disciples in their vigil with the
Lord, you have the putting out of candle upon
candle, the pause, the heart-stirring silence,
culminating in complete darkness symbolical of
dissolution.  That is dramatic and intense.  In
the second, you have the direct voice of God.
St. Paul never spoke with so clear a note as in his
wonderful description of the triumph of things
spiritual over things temporal.  'We shall not
sleep, but we shall all be changed....  There is
one glory of the sun, and another glory of the
moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star
differeth from another in glory.  So also is the
resurrection of the dead.  It is sown in corruption;
it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour;
it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is
raised in power....  As is the earthy, such are
they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such
are they also that are heavenly....  The sting of
death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.'  We
can never find words to match these either for
concentration or for power.

"Catholicism is, as you know, not so abhorrent
to me as it is to some Anglicans.  To begin with, I
am an historian; that in itself is a strong point in
favour of a creed which personally I dislike.  I
think myself that it was a good thing for England
when she threw off the yoke under which she had
bled for so many centuries; my greatest contention
against the Catholic power is her interference in
the politics of nations, and her attacks on men's
independence.  On the other hand, I admit that one
of the first charges we bring against her exponents
is a paradox; we call them too worldly and too
mystic; complaining that their eyes are fixed so
steadily on the vision of Heaven, that they fail to
recognize ordinary precautions which men of business,
dealing with men of business, should observe.
There are a million paradoxes in the Church; you
can explain them only by admitting her claim,
acknowledging her, like Christ Himself, to be the
possessor of two different entities, Divine and
human.

"I have known many Catholics in my day; I
have never known one like you.  You weigh all
questions fairly, without prejudice, but shed on the
solution of great problems the light of an undying
faith.  You know I obey no active claims of
religion; yet I have never willingly abjured God in
my heart.  Mine is a negative quality, not aggressive.
I am as sure that, were your faith called into
question, you would go to the rack to uphold its
most trivial point as I believe in God myself.
There are many who trust you in this way; I am
one of the number.  If you failed, their faith would
shatter; it would be as the foundation of a house
sinking suddenly.

"Many things have been denied you in life,
those things even which you most ardently wished,
and for which from our human point of view you
were most fitted for.  But this is yours: The
power to point the way by example; to uplift, as
a living witness of its purity, the creed to which
you have subscribed, and against which here in
England so many barriers are raised of scorn and
contumely and indifference.

"Here, on the very brink of the unknown,
having gone through life as best I might, faultily.
no doubt, but as, I hope, a gentleman to the last,
I look to you with failing eyes and raise my hat
in farewell.  And perhaps I see you more clearly
now than I ever did.  You have been led away by
emotion in your day; the devil seldom errs in aim;
in your case, he has lodged his shaft in your most
sensitive spot.  Other women fall through egotism
or ambition; you would fall through pity.  But
you are eminently logical.  Should the time come
when you are face to face with a great crisis, I
beg you to remember my words and to pause and
inquire.  You would sacrifice yourself to one; yes,
but would you sacrifice others?  And there are
many others who look to you as I do now, as the
living witness of the purity of a faith which has
kept its pre-eminence in spite of scorn and mockery
and scourging—a faith which will, I think, always
endure.

"The sea has lashed itself into absurd frenzy as
I write.  The sea can be very cruel.  It longs to
destroy, to tear and rend, like any human being.
Three or four nights ago, as you doubtless read in
the papers, it broke up a big ship like matchwood;
it met and battered the men who tried to fight it
beyond recognition, from mere wickedness.  The
sea and life are very alike in their methods.  Life
mars and mutilates the body.  But if the soul has
been true to itself, it looks upon those human
wounds as outlets through which it may creep hour
by hour, filtering through earthly channels to be
one at last—bleeding but satisfied—in the image
of its Creator.

"You have the ordinary human struggles against
poverty to confront, amongst others.  I have
neither kith nor kin of my own.  I have left you
what I die possessed of, absolutely, with the
exception of a few small legacies which I desire you
should give as soon as possible to the members
of my own household, my servants and personal
attendants.  Money has its value—at times it may
even remove you out of the way of a disaster which
you could not otherwise escape.  And I know that
in the past you have suffered many small
inconveniences through being unable to give in charity
as much as you wished.  Now you are my almoner—chosen
because of my explicit trust, both in your
guardianship, and in the beacon of light to which
you look, which guides so many faltering footsteps
in the eternal way."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 5-II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
   |  A stage where every man must play a part,
   |  And mine a sad one."—SHAKESPEARE.

.. vspace:: 2

The great decisions of our lives are generally
made in very undramatic settings.  There is no
stage music to carry us through the dreaded
moment; we live through a crisis, and take up the
thread of ordinary life again without a pause.

Morning dawned dull and grey, inclined to be
rainy.  Breakfast was served at eight-thirty as
usual; at nine o'clock Evelyn interviewed her
cook-general.  Half-an-hour later she was hard at work
upon the ordinary duties of the day.  There was
household linen to mend, silver to clean, china to
be dusted; we have to go on with our daily work
until the heavens mercifully fall.

There was no item of regular routine which she
omitted: not even that of prayer.  Yet Evelyn was
no hypocrite.  She knew quite well what the Church
would say of her decision; she knew that she was
risking her hold even on Christ's all-embracing
pity.  For the wantons and sinners He had
forgiven had come to Him in shame and penitence,
meaning to sin no more.  In the one Biblical
incident where He was brought in contact with a
woman who expressed no remorse for the past, He
Himself had given His injunctions solemnly—even
while forbidding others to condemn her—"Go thou
and sin no more."

Evelyn, of her own deliberate choice and will,
from whatever motive, was setting out upon the
path which religion and the world alike call
iniquitous.  The point of difference between the two
judgments lies in this alone, that whereas the
Catholic Church tries to stamp out and does actually
condemn deeds which may for ever be concealed
from those about us, the world condones all sin
that clokes itself attractively, until the cloak is torn
away.  Then it is prompt to give sentence.

Those who, like Evelyn, make their choice in
something of the spirit of a martyr, neither shirk
nor evade the details of their fall.  She was offering
herself to Farquharson as the alternative of worldly
fame.  Had he retained his post in the Ministry she
would, little by little, have drifted away from his
life.  But as things stood, this was impossible.
Last night she had seen him shorn of every
ambition, every hope, bereft of power and honour,
shamed and broken, disappointed and disillusioned,
forced to live with a woman who, once only
uncongenial, was now actively abhorrent; stricken to
the core of his being by the loss of the little son whose
tender breath upon the waters of life had turned
its gall and bitterness into sweetness and solace.

Now, having made her decision, there would be
no turning back, no failure in carrying out the
least of the many arrangements which it demanded.

Mechanically, she set about her task of tidying
the house, of setting in more precise order that
which was always orderly.  She had withdrawn
what little money she had in her banking account,
and left it in the table drawer; Brand should not
be pecuniarily the worse for her absence.  She
wrote to various friends offering them the flat for
the season; she told them to deal direct with her
solicitor, at 88 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, as she
was going away shortly.  She would not saddle
her husband with the rent of a flat when he could
live in bachelor quarters far more cheaply and
conveniently.

There were a few personal possessions of her
own, too, which were of value—an old diamond
pendant, a pearl necklace which her grandmother
had left her, a sapphire bracelet her godmother had
given her at her marriage, and a few other wedding
presents which were marketable.  She telephoned
to a jeweller whom she could trust, and interviewed
him in the afternoon.  The result exceeded her
expectations; she was able to leave over two
hundred and fifty pounds in bank-notes and cash in the
table drawer, for her husband to dispose of as he
chose.

.. vspace:: 2

Five o'clock struck before Evelyn had time
to think of herself.  And then it was only a very
ordinary incident that recalled her.  In her
bedroom, on her mantelpiece, there stood a plaster
cross which she had bought in Italy some years
before.  It was unusual in its way, the work of a
man she had rescued from starvation.  The cross
was shaped conventionally enough, but the Figure
upon it was clumsy and distorted.  It looked like
a travesty of suffering, an almost grotesque image
of the sublime sacrifice.  Of late, she had noticed
that the pedestal on the right side of the cross had
worn away a little; in her hurried dusting, the
maid had perhaps given it a knock which made it
likely to overbalance.  Evelyn came into the room
suddenly, and the Image fell, shattered, at her
feet—crushed into so many pieces that nothing would
mend it.  She lifted it up with a little cry of
dismay; one may renounce one's creed, in action, yet
worship it in the temple of the heart.

She did not often enter Brand's dressing-room,
so full was it of little things which jarred.  Over
his bed there was the figure of a satyr chasing a
nude figure; water dripped from the woman's
limbs, surprised while bathing.  The walls had
been distempered in a pale green tone which gave
significance to the frames of the other pictures,
mostly reproductions of French impressionist
studies, types of the art of Claude Monet and his
followers.  One showed a naked woman lying on a
bed with black sheets and black pillows; round her
neck was a narrow band of black velvet.  Another
was the picture of a ballet-dancer, done by a
leading member of the New English Art Club, a clever
study in its way.  In the foreground was the flare
of footlights, concentrating their illumination upon
the bare boards of a Paris music-hall stage.  The
central figure was that of a ballet-girl with whirling
skirts and disordered hair; she was leaning forward,
smiling, as she danced, at an audience roused
to the utmost pitch of frenzy by the suggestion of
pose and gesture.  Another was the copy of an old
French print, called in simple language, "Le
Bouquet."  A woman was lying in a wood, her
head resting on a mound; her lover was kneeling
beside her, looking down; he was crushing a bunch
of roses against her breast and its disordered
drapery.

The writing-table was in the window.  Evelyn
crossed to it; it was dusty.  She cleaned and tidied
this room herself, remaking the bed, which the
servant had made carelessly; washing the glasses
of the pictures, and the frames; tidying the
dressing-table and polishing the wardrobe.  When all
was done she stopped to look back at her work, to
see if anything was forgotten.  The waste-paper
basket was still full.

She slipped off her apron and emptied the
contents of the basket in the folds.  She was just
gathering the bundle up when a stray word caught
her eye.  She glanced back at it, puzzled, suddenly
suspicious.  "Concession?"—that was not a term
of which one made general use.  She took up the
torn slip of paper—"... *garding the terms of the
concession.*"

The first word was broken, but it was obvious
enough: "Regarding the terms of the concession."  What
did that mean?  The note was in Brand's
handwriting; to what concession did he refer?
Forgotten words and acts returned to her; the
terrible suspicion raised by Lady Wereminster's
innocent words—the scene in the hall, now some
time back.

She stood for a moment looking down, bewildered;
then bolted the door and prepared slowly
to sift, one by one, the contents of the basket.
Brand was a careful man.  He had disposed of the
torn-up pieces of his notes of the Treaty which he
had stolen from Farquharson in various channels.
Some had been thrown from the window; others
scattered in the wind on his way to the Strand;
there were but a few pieces of the original paper
upon which he had scrawled his first rough
translation of the cypher in the waste-paper basket,
which Evelyn's careless maid-servant had left there
for more than a week, because it was not noticeably
full.

She had set out upon the table certain familiar
words and phrases in an unfamiliar shape.  As yet
she did not take in their full force.  Yet they rang,
with curious insistence, at the door of her heart;
she was sure that in some way they affected the
welfare both of herself and him she loved.
Fate—rather, God—had decreed that she should find
them and act upon her knowledge.

She looked at them again, amazed and stupefied.
They had been written in a hurry, and blotted,
seemingly, upon soiled blotting-paper; the words,
even the separate words, were blurred and almost
unintelligible.  Yet some stood out, clear and
distinct: "Treaty—concession—negotiations," the
very name of the Power involved.  And all these
she recalled; she had read them on the morning
after the great scene in the House; they were the
terms of the Treaty which Farquharson was
supposed to have sold to the Power that coveted
England's supremacy.

Why should Brand have copied them when he
could have cut out the more concise account that
was printed in the daily papers? ... And this
work showed signs of obliteration and change, as
though translated by an unaccustomed hand; there
were many erasures and corrections.  In one case,
for instance, there was the revision of a complete
sentence which had obviously been misunderstood
at first by a reader unversed in the code.

Evelyn had caught up the heap of scattered
fragments in her hurry.  Such portions as had been
destroyed had evidently been chosen in haste,
picked at random from a number of torn pieces;
for occasionally one could put together half a
consecutive line, while often again whole lines were
missing.  The notes and letters were in various
handwritings.  White to the lips, her face set and
stern, dreading she knew not what, she separated
those which were not written by Brand from those
which were.  Pausing a moment to reflect, she went
back to these, and patiently grouped them into little
heaps, piecing them together with infinite care.
Amongst others there was a note from Dora—this
was the first time she had learned that
Mrs. Farquharson was in communication with her
husband.

Dora's note—oh, the rashness of women!—was
dated two days before these inexplicable notes of
Brand's.  "I don't see how I can do what you
want," she had written; then a few lines were
missing, "should you press me ... can't hold up
against ... too strong ... as you wish
... time is short ... we have ... hurry.  Cruel of
... he has never done much for me ... should
think ... his piece of mind? ... Miserable
... unhappy ..."

A few odd fragments of note-paper were still
left in the basket, written in a strange hand.  Evelyn
took these out.  They contained a brief message
arranging an immediate interview, signed with the
name of the man through whose hands it was
suspected, failing Von Kirsch, that the stolen notes
had passed.

The envelope was addressed to Henry Brand.

"*To-day at four-thirty—Meningen.*"  And the
date upon the letter was one never to be forgotten.

"*To-day at four-thirty—Meningen.*"  Evelyn
repeated the words aloud.  The sound reached her
meaninglessly, in confused vibrations, as sounds
reach the ears of the deaf.  For the moment reason
swayed; how could she grapple with the difficulties
that faced her? with all that the little scraps of paper
involved?

Cold, stern, pitiless, Evelyn stood beside the
table, looking down at her work.  How clear things
seemed now, and yet—could they be clear?  Would
any Englishman, however poor, be treacherous to
his country where her honour was imperilled,
where her safety was threatened?  Would any wife
betray her husband to save herself?  Her heart
answered her.  Only a man like Brand—the man
with whose life she had been linked indissolubly;
only a woman like Dora—without heart or imagination.

This must be given to the world—at once.  Her
heart leapt.  Farquharson would be saved—by
her—his character re-established.  Once reinstated
he would hold his own; the stronger for the seeming
fall, he would go on from strength to strength.

But what of her?  He would not need her now.
And what of Brand?  Shamed and broken, proved
a traitor, forced perhaps to pay the penalty of his
crime, how could she desert him now?

Yet—how to stay?  She shuddered.  No, to
stay was impossible.  But she must safeguard
Brand as far as possible.  There was no one she
could take into her confidence, no one to help her.
And again there was so much to do, so little time
to do it in!

Evelyn knew something of official methods in
dealing with secret agents; the country which had
benefited by Brand's betrayal of the negotiations
would be the last to help him.  Yet he must be got
away at once, to another country under another
name.  He was staying at Seaford; from there it
would be easy to get to Newhaven; if she wrote at
once, he would get her letter by the second post
at latest, he could in all probability take the
morning boat to Dieppe, and from thence journey
inland.  There was a little village she knew of, a
few miles from Paris, where he would be secure
until he had arranged his plans.  Or he could ship
straight to Marseilles; there were no towns more
easy to be lost in than Marseilles and Barcelona,
hotbeds of cosmopolitan intrigue.

Her brain cleared.  She would arrange to meet
Brand at Marseilles, to give him the money which
she dared not trust by post.  A cheque was, of
course, too dangerous to be thought of for a
moment; notes even might be traced, so could
money orders and drafts upon foreign banks.  It
would take an hour or two at least to change so
large a sum of money into the English gold which
alone was secure.

So much for the practical side; what of the human?

How could she go back to her old life now, when
the new life had been within her very grasp?
Hourly to spend oneself for others, to wake in
the morning with no thought but how best to equip
relations and friends with armour to shield them
from the world's slings and arrows, to be a sort of
model housekeeper with no wages, is doubtless
excellent and useful, but it is not life.

She went into the little sitting-room and stood
where she had stood a few hours before, her lover's
arms about her, his kiss on her hair.  It was the
hour of her life, all she would ever have.  Other
people talked of love; she knew what it was.  There
was a difference.  She had always known it in
her heart; known what it might be to surrender
herself utterly, in the way which most human beings
cannot realize, bending will and mind and heart in
joyous service, one with her husband, as Lady
Wereminster had meant when she said that only
in the later days of marriage was its summit
reached—because to the right man and the right
woman custom only deepens the tenderness of first
tremulous ties and changes their promise to fulfilment.

Her love and Farquharson's was born of conflict
and sacrifice.  It is the only love which survives.
For years her life had been actively paralyzed; the
frozen blood in her veins had warmed at his touch.
When, at parting, she had seen his eyes kindle at
the reflection of the light in her own, her heart had
leapt radiantly, as though for the first time
conscious of its power.  Yet now at the very moment
when life had opened out limitlessly, she must
turn her back upon it, must shut out the glowing
picture.

Must she shut it out?  Must she?  Would he
wish it?  She could give him the human
happiness which he craved, peace and oblivion.

Peace, when he had left his wife?  And what of
Evelyn herself?  Before her stretched two paths.
Which should she take?

There were voices in her ear; the voice of her
director, stern, implacable; the voice of conscience,
loud and shrill; Cummings' voice, grieved and
pitiful.

"Marriage is a sacrament," said one; "how
have you observed it?"  "You have abandoned
yourself to sin; you have renounced your safeguards
of salvation, abjuring the help of your creed
for the sake of a passing illusion," said another.
"Alas! because of you, Christ is crucified daily,"
said the third.  "Not a wound of His but bleeds
afresh when you sin."  "How can there be aught
but eternal damnation for him who sets his hand
to the plough and turns back?" asked the first.
"Faith encompassed you as a garment," said the
second.  "You have rent its mantle.  You have
stripped yourself to stand in voluntary wantonness
before the eyes of men, you who were made in the
image of your Maker, upon whose brow there has
been set the seal which for ever places you apart
from your fellow's—the mark of God by which
He knows His own, that you are ready to sear
now and efface."

"You plead love as your excuse," said the third
sadly.  "But is it love to drag down the soul of
another into eternal conflict?  A mother refuses her
child what it wants, although it hurts her to deny
him, because she knows he cannot take the thing
he would without harm.  God knows best."

"It is the eleventh hour," said the first; "but
the Church has spoken and you must obey.
Therein lies her power; she does not plead, but she
demands.  You subscribed to her irrevocable tenets
as a child; they hold you still.  No merely human
power is mighty enough to withstand her, because
she rests upon unshakable foundations, and you,
unstable and derelict as you are, still know that
from afar the beacon of light shines, that although
you have strayed now from your Mother, she will
guide you to the end."

A derelict—a human derelict.  Yes, it was
true—the words described her.

She fell down on the floor of the little sitting-room,
sobbing great tearless sobs and beating
fruitlessly at the air.  Useless to fight the most
perfect, the most complete, the most unanimous
system that has been since the world began.  The
Catholic Church is like a wonderful machine;
unlike that made by man, it cannot break down.
Evelyn was its child, bred in obedience.  Once,
many years ago in Liverpool, she had seen some
wonderful invention which revolved at the rate of
some hundreds of turns in thirty seconds.
Unluckily for her, she entered the room just after a
serious accident.  A careless workman standing near
had been caught by the wheels and cut to pieces
before it could be stopped.  The invention itself was
beyond praise; it had done incalculable good to
humanity.  Only a few comparatively worthless
lives had been sacrificed to it.  That was all.  It
had helped millions.  Was that not also true of
the Church?

She rose wearily.  Time was passing.

She took up her pen and wrote to Brand, sealing
the letter.

"I hope that this will reach you in time, that
you may catch the morning train to Marseilles.  I
have found the absolute proof in your own handwriting
that you stole the Treaty.  I am withholding
these proofs for twenty-four hours; that will
give you time to leave the country.  You will, of
course, change your name.  If you go at once, on
receipt of this, to the Hôtel de Londres, I will meet
you as soon as possible, within twenty-four hours
or forty-eight, as the case may be, with about two
hundred pounds in English gold.  That should
make your position clear until I have time to carry
through my intention—which is to make over to
you, under whatever name you permanently assume,
the hundred pounds a year which I received from
my father.

"At the Hôtel de Londres I shall ask for Mr. Hendry.
See that your name is booked as that
in the hotel register."

Evelyn fastened the letter deliberately.  No very
difficult task this.  But—what of her letter to
Farquharson?

For here—how many sides took arms against her?
Nature—cowardice—physical frailty, even.  They
were so mighty an array, these almost visible
temptations which struck at the very root of her being,
which surrounded her and weighed her down with
a solid panoply of strength.  And to meet them
she had but her piteous array of threadbare honour
and tottering faith.

For Farquharson it was different.  Those who
have fame cannot reasonably expect love; life is
as best a compromise.  Farquharson's career was
wide and high.  The fate of nations lay in his
hand; nations, like individuals, move mechanically
to a set tune.  The average man deals in small
issues; his view is bounded by his neighbour's
fences.  But Farquharson's boundaries were
limitless; they stretched from empire to empire.

.. vspace:: 2

"I send you these enclosures," she wrote at last,
"they explain themselves.  I trust to your honour
to keep them back for two and a half days from
your receipt of this letter.  You have borne so much
already; you will bear this for me.  This alters
everything, of course.  You won't need me now.
Had I been able to atone in the smallest degree for
your shame and betrayal, you know that I would
have given myself gladly, without a moment's
hesitation.  But your career is opening out again
before you.  You are not mine really, you see;
you never were mine in the biggest sense.  Men
like you are too big to be bound down by a woman's
love; you will reach your goal the quicker because
you haven't me beside you.  Everything is settled;
my husband's escape and my own.  It will tell in
his favour if I too seem involved in the inevitable
scandal.  We shall have to stand or fall together
in this.  Such help as I can give him by identifying
myself with his interests must be his—is, in
fact, his due, considering that in my heart I violated
every law of God's that bound us.

"Don't try to find me; I have to take my courage
in both hands as it is.  There are some things
beyond expression.

"Good-bye.  That's a cold word to say.  I
doubt if it ever has been said with a more profound
sense of farewell.  We shall never meet again in
the future; we have met too often in the past.  Yet
how sweet it has been, some of it—worth every
pang, every wound.  How sweet it might have
been, you and I know....  But we cannot stand
against God's will.

"I could write on for ever—what's the use?  We
know the truth.  We belong to each other, now
and always.  The two lives which stand between
us now are shadows, which once in eternity will
disappear."

She folded the two letters, addressed them, and
went down-stairs to post them herself.  There was
a letter with a foreign postmark in the box; she
recognized the handwriting as Hare's, although
so weak and tremulous.  She held it for a moment
in her hand, wondering what it contained; Hare
was an infrequent correspondent.  She decided to
post her letters first, and read his message
afterwards.  There was so much still to be done that
night.  She had still to arrange her own plans of
escape.  To Marseilles she must inevitably go—but
afterwards?  That lay on the knees of the gods.
When once she had seen Brand, she would take
the next train out to the unknown.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 5-III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

"They kill me, they cut my flesh ... what then? ... In
matter of death carry thyself scornfully ... either the gods
can do nothing for us, or they can allay the distemper of thy
mind.  If they can do nothing, why dost thou pray?"—MARCUS
AURELIUS.

.. vspace:: 2

To overwrought nerves there is occasionally
something soothing in the movement of a train.
Evelyn, on her way to Marseilles, looked back to
the rush of events of the last few days with
amazement and wonder.  By the same post as Hare's
letters there had come one from his solicitor; a brief
announcement of the fact that he had received
instructions from his client authorizing him to
communicate with Mrs. Brand immediately upon his
death.  The solicitor wished to see Mrs. Brand, if
possible, within the next twenty-four hours, as
she, amongst others, benefited by the will.  Would
she telephone to 8431, Central, at once to fix a
meeting?

She had met him then and there, in view of her
sudden departure abroad.  It was necessary to make
a fresh will; having disposed of Hare's legacy in
charity, the solicitor obeyed her instructions
regarding her husband, without restriction.  An hour later
found Evelyn ready to leave England, to start a new
life under new conditions.  Through the train
windows she watched village after village flit by, as
though she was looking at the shifting scenes of a
biograph.  Only dimly aware of beauty, she whirled
through the kaleidoscope of colour, of full and
fragrant orchards, of fields of daffodils, by vineyards
and woods, until at last she reached the coast, and
before her the view of the Mediterranean stretched,
in its eternal blue.  She had gone through the hours
of travel oblivious and stupefied, hardly conscious
even of the occasional stoppages of the train.

Brand was awaiting her, he had arrived twelve
hours before.  Their interview was brief.  He took
the money, and promised what she asked.  He
would never trouble her again; this was the end.

She did not take his hand; she could not.  At
the last he turned.

"You're a good woman, Evelyn," he said suddenly.

That chapter of her life was closed, and she set
out for the unknown.

.. vspace:: 2

She was bending her steps towards a radiant
vision—Monserrato.  Years before, on a night's
journey from Barcelona, she had come upon it
unexpectedly in the dawn.  Her fellow-travellers in
the compartment had departed; she was just then
alone with her companion, a portly lady of
uncertain age, who would have slept profoundly through
an earthquake.  Tired and over-wrought, Evelyn
had for some time been looking at the landscape
with eyes which scarcely took in its significance.
Suddenly, on her right, there rose a vision so
startling, so mysterious, that for a moment she believed
it to be the image of her brain, a supernatural
vision.  Spire upon spire showed before her,
serrated hills, bare and austere, grey and cold in the
first gleam of the morning.  She saw their outlines
distinctly for a full half-minute; then, as the
railway line swerved, they were lost to sight, and for a
little while she thought they were a dream.  They
looked so like hills of illusion, behind which lay
God's gift of eventual peace.  But as the train
converged towards the station the hills came suddenly
close again, and she knew them to be real.

So near at hand, they almost terrified her.  One
realized in face of them how Ignatius Loyola had
toiled, barefoot, every step of the way across those
rugged paths.  They were an obvious *viâ crucis*.
To step across them in shoes, with the ordinary
trappings of civilization, was sacrilege; they
compelled renunciation, the absolute denial of all that
life held dear, before a believer dared set foot on
that sacred pathway.

Well, she had proved her right to stand there, to
walk in the way of the martyr.  The bleeding of
human feet is, after all, a temporary small
inconvenience; when the soul bleeds, God tests its loss
and gain.

.. vspace:: 2

Hour after hour went by; she was too tired to
think or read.  Now and again a sharp pain at her
heart, like a blow, brought her to herself, and she
had to raise herself from the cushions against which
she had fallen, limp and lifeless, absolutely
apathetic, to gasp for breath.  The little physical
interruption cleared her brain; she looked quite
clearly at the future, and knew what its ensuing
hours would bring.  In time, probably, she would
take up old threads again.  Habit is strong, and
friends assertive; bury herself as she would, some
one would find her out and come inevitably for help
or pity.  But she would have to draw now upon the
well of bitterness instead of a sacred fount.  No
matter.  The water looked as crystal clear; those
who sipped it would not know from what source it
had sprung.

Before her interminable days, immeasurable
nights.  The nights were the worst.  Already terror
seized her in its grip.  She had awakened to find
herself calling upon Farquharson with passionate
frenzy; shrieking to him to come and help her bear
what could not be borne alone; to drive away, if it
were but for an instant, the host of shapes that
threatened her, the inward foes that tore at every
bleeding fibre, and mocked her as they bathed
themselves in the blood of her heart.  When she
was awake, she longed for sleep; when sleep came,
she prayed for wakefulness.

That way lay mania; better death.  Ah, but death
comes so seldom to him who craves it as a boon; it
only robs the mother of her son, the husband of the
wife he cherishes, the little, helpless baby of his
mother's care!——

She fell into a troubled sleep.

.. vspace:: 2

She woke to find the beauty of the Mediterranean
on her left, its exquisite coast-line soft with the flush
of evening.  Leaning back in hopeless weariness,
she wondered how, had she come face to face with
her Maker at that moment, she would have justified
her existence.  For a short while before she had
asked herself, in all gravity, why she should give
up all that life held dear for the sake of what might
be after all, the beautiful dream of a young
Nazarene, who died for the sake of His philosophy,
as many others did before his time?

Yes, love had been her betrayer, the seducer of
her soul.  In the old legends the gift of love was
always made by the good godmother.  Treasure as
it was thought to be, it had sharp facets which
wounded the heart of her who pressed it to her
bosom.

Looking at life now with that sense of curious
detachment which comes to some of us when we stand
on the brink of a moral precipice, it seemed to her
that God had given His Great Gift of Love for this,
and this alone—to show by the mutability of earthly
things—even by the very highest passion which
human love can attain—the necessity of leaving all
for eternity, of tearing every human chord and tie
to shreds, that from the broken strands we might
weave a tiny ladder upon which wearily to climb
into God's Kingdom.

One compensation had been given her.  She had
helped the man she loved.  She had made him
forget the bitter memories of his childhood; she
had rejoiced at his success, and mourned with him
in pain; she had reinstated him in the eyes of the
world he loved, and made it possible that he should
leave behind an honoured name.  Only one thing
was wanting....  But suddenly a vision formed;
her life was full of visions now—she could not tell
reality from dreams.  She saw the open door of a
little church on the hillside, far away in a distant
land, but full of the presence of God.  She saw the
light of faith issue from it in a visible stream,
pouring like a mountain torrent down the hillside,
giving life to flowers which sprung up on the way.
Up the steep hill a traveller came; he moved faintly
and wearily, the light had gone from his eyes; she
recognized him.  Slowly Farquharson came to the
door, there to stand blinded in the transfiguring
light shed from the jewelled monstrance high upon
its throne.  And a man came forward, a man with
outstretched hands, whose look was very
welcoming—Cummings.  She heard his voice ring out with a
great gladness: "This is what she wished; it was
for this that she laid down her life...."

.. vspace:: 2

Now she was nearing her goal—had come, indeed,
almost within range of Monserrato's message.
But there was Barcelona to go through first; that
wild hell of intrigue and rebellion, the threshold of
unbelief.  Its noise, its tumult, its gaiety, its
dissipation, lay visibly before her as the train crept
slowly in, on its long pause in the station.  She got
out wearily—it was strange how her limbs had
dragged these last few days—and took her breakfast
in the little *fonda*.  She sat there motionless,
watching the hurrying cosmopolitan crowd of passengers
go swiftly to and fro.  Barcelona harbours the refuse
of many nations, and of itself breeds anarchy and
terror.  But on beyond—not very far the great
pinnacles of Monserrato were raised high in the
heavens.  Barcelona might lie and cheat and steal
and vomit infamy; nothing could break the force
of those eternal hills beyond, and nothing sully them.

She had still a journey of three hours before her.
The train came at last and she got in.  This was
not the season for tourists; in all probability she
would be alone in the convent.  She knew what she
had to expect: a bare room, with its plain bed and
chair, a crucifix upon the wall, the mere necessities
of life—more, after all, than had been offered to the
Mother of God at Bethlehem.

It seemed to her as she approached the little
station that she caught an echo of faint Gregorian
music, the only music that such mountains could
give back.  It rang like a distant chant.  Sometimes
she seemed to catch a word or two, a kind of
*Nunc dimittis*, the song of the soul from which all
earthly trappings had fallen away, which was
setting out, weary and travel-stained, on its last
journey.

.. vspace:: 2

The train slowed down.  She rose.  The breath
of the mountains was upon her now, solemn and
mystic.  Above her, in the dusk, they loomed
massive and upright, like great giants.  Past their
base the footsteps of at least one saint had gone;
the way was wet with the blood of pilgrims.

The place of suffering—made by sufferers.  Well,
she had earned her right of entry.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 5-IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "The perfect beauty of the body and soul thou saved
   |  In thy passion for God's sake, He who is Pity.
   |  Was the trial sore?—temptation sharp?  Thank God a second time.
   |  Why comes temptation but for man to meet
   |  And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
   |  And so be pedestaled in triumph?"—R. B. BROWNING.

.. vspace:: 2

A night of stupor, in which Evelyn lay wide-eyed,
staring out into the darkness, feeling the close
presence of the mountains, whose solemn force
penetrated even her bare bedroom.  A day of comparative
peace followed; of quiet detachment.  The tranquil
life was broken only by the sound of the
convent bell.

At the back of the convent was a garden of roses
which reminded her of the Valley of Vision in the
Bible—roses, miraculously brought, said the legend,
from a great distance.  They had once bloomed
white, but a drop of our Lord's blood, flowing from
the Cross at Calvary, had stained them red.  The
rosery was backed by long lines of hills, each
separate hill converged to a point; there were terraces
full of perfume and colour, supernatural in their
silence.  Everything about her breathed prayer and
sacrifice.  In the chapel, of course, the twin forces
concentrated; one expected as much—but they were
visible, too, in the quietude of the deep ravines,
bordered with ilex and box, the huge gorges, and in
the little hermitage, to which a way was found by
means of a path most perilous.  Here—at the Cueva
de Garin—she found a painted figure on the wall
depicting a hermit who, having travelled there on
hands and knees, lived on in that position till his
death.

Only the greatest love, only the greatest suffering
can be laid on the altar of Monserrato.  It is like
the corridor of Eternity; immortal life is only just
beyond.

The hours crawled by sluggishly, wearily;
Evelyn scarcely knew how.  The monks offered the
actual lodging free, but near at hand there was a
*fonda* where simple fare could easily be obtained.
It was not easy to think of the little ordinary
conveniences of life in Monserrato; they scarcely
seemed to matter; and Evelyn, setting out early
next afternoon, began to make her pilgrimage
towards the summit of the mountains, with labouring
breath and faltering footsteps, unmindful of the fact
that she had not tasted food for many hours.

She reached her goal only when sunset had
painted the very ground she stood upon with roseate
colours.  Between herself and the highest heaven
there stretched a gossamer veil of gold.  And here
at last was the reality for which she longed.  She
felt as though, had she but faith enough, she could
have been carried through the whirling spaces
upwards and onwards to a place of rest whose beauties
were undreamed of by even the purest saint in the
little monastery below.

She stayed there for a long while—longer even
than she knew.  The light failed.  She rose slowly
to her feet.  Descent was difficult; she knew now
how weak she was.  Now and again she stumbled.
Over her eyes there was a strange dimness, the
gradual decay of thought.  Presently limbs and
brain alike refused their offices.  She felt as though
she were being taken up bodily into the grip of
some great grey, mocking Shape that held her to
itself and paralyzed her.  But she pressed on,
guided by some unswerving instinct, to the door of
the convent.  There, and there only, she dropped
in the act of pulling at the bell.

Some one came; some one carried her into her
room.  She revived when water was poured on her
forehead and her hands were laved.  They left her.
After a while she recovered sufficiently to undress.
Presently all was still.

There was no sound in the convent now, not even
in the chapel; the dull droning of monks in their
lonely cells, chanting offices of penitence and
remorse, did not reach her.  And now in this infinitely
lonely hour, alike afar from friend and foe, a kinder
form seemed to come close, one which she did not
recognize, yet which made clear those hidden things
about which she still feared to ask.

Away in the distance, very far away, as she
passed swiftly through those grey shadows of
oblivion which so many of us would welcome as
friends, she saw the figure of her lover up to the last
standing erect and triumphant on his little pinnacle
of fame, the living symbol of that for which she
had come near renouncing every hope of the
hereafter which held her at that very moment in its
grip.  The vision dispersed.  Through the room,
very slowly, she thought she felt little streams of
cold air filtering; they made a dull rhythm, like the
running water of a Highland burn.  She tried to
listen to their music, but could not; in the hour of
death the brain, last servant to escape from the
house of a powerful master, mocks our call.  She
struggled desperately to come back from the long
passage down which her weakened spirit was being
compelled—the last effort of one who was born a
fighter.  Over her body an icy sweat had broken,
in her limbs there was no longer warmth or life.
She listened to the beats of her heart striking dimly
like the hammer of a clock that was running out.
This, then, was death—the truce to struggle.

She was too tired even to be glad.  But suddenly
light broke.

At the beginning of life there had been offered to
her, as there is offered to each one in turn, the choice
of many banners, one of which she was bound to
uphold until the end—fame, wealth, peace, honour,
and love and sacrifice, which go together.

She had chosen the banner of love and sacrifice.
Very feebly she sought to grasp it now; it seemed
to her a visible fragment which she must wave as
her breath died.  She fell back.  And suddenly out
of the darkness she seemed to smell the perfume of
a rose, a pure white flower that turned deep red
before her eyes.

Was it fancy, or did the Figure on the wall, the
crucified Christ, turn His head?  All was blurred
and indistinct, but once again she thought she
heard Farquharson's saddened voice in her ears, and
Farquharson's touch laid tenderly on her brow.
She tried to say his name, but her stiffening lips
would not frame it.  She tried to grasp her rose,
but it fell in dust.

In his cell below, an old monk, weeping, lifted
his voice in passionate appeal.

   |  "Oro supplex et acclinis
   |  Cor contritum quasi cinis,
   |  Gere curam mei finis."
   |

In the morning they found her still and quiet, in
the possession of the one good gift which life had
brought her.  Her face was turned, her fingers
pointing towards, but not grasping, the little
wooden crucifix upon the wall.  So they unhung it
and laid it on her breast.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center

THE END

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center small white-space-pre-line

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

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