"Not agreed," said Dorothy and Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer all at
once.

"I will now call on Miss Maud Blackadder to speak. She will explain to
those of you who are strangers" (she glanced comprehensively at the
eleven young girls) "the present program of the Union."

"I protest," said Miss Burstall. "There has been confusion."

"There really _has_, Rosalind," said Dorothy. "You _must_ get it
straight. You can't start all at sixes and sevens. I protest too."

"We all three protest," said Miss Farmer, frowning and blinking in an
agony of protest.

"Silence, if you please, for the Chairwoman," said Miss Gilchrist.

"May we not say one word?"

"You may," said Rosalind, "in your turn. I now call on Miss Blackadder
to speak."

At the sound of her own name Miss Blackadder jumped to her feet. The
walking-stick fell to the floor with a light clatter and crash,
preluding her storm. She jerked out her words at a headlong pace, as if
to make up for the time the others had wasted in futilities.

"I am not going to say much, I am not going to take up your time. Too
much time has been lost already. I am not a speaker, I am not a writer,
I am not an intellectual woman, and if you ask me what I am and what I
am here for, and what I am doing in the Union, and what the Union is
doing with me, and what possible use I, an untrained girl, can be to you
clever women" (she looked tempestuously at Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer
who did not flinch), "I will tell you. I am a fighter. I am here to
enlist volunteers. I am the recruiting sergeant for this district. That
is the use my leaders, who should be _your_ leaders, are making
of _me_."

Her head was thrown back, her body swayed, rocked from side to side with
the violent rhythm of her speech.

"If you ask me why they have chosen _me_ I will tell you. It's because I
know what I want and because I know how to get what I want.

"I know what I want. Oh, yes, you think that's nothing; you all think
you know what you want. But do you? _Do_ you?"

"Of course we do!"

"We want the vote!"

"Nothing but the vote!"

"_Nothing but?_ Are you quite sure of that? Can you even say you want it
till you know whether there are things you want more?"

"What are you driving at?"

"You'll soon see what I'm driving at. I drive straight. And I ride
straight. And I don't funk my fences.

"Well--say you all want the vote. Do you know how much you want it? Do
you know how much you want to pay for it? Do you know what you're
prepared to give up for it? Because, if you don't know _that_, you don't
know how much you want it."

"We want it as much as you do, I imagine."

"You want it as much as I do? Good. _Then_ you're going to pay the price
whatever the price is. _Then_ you're ready to give up everything else,
your homes and your families and your friends and your incomes. Until
you're enfranchised you are not going to own any _man_ as father, or
brother or husband" (her voice rang with a deeper and stronger
vibration) "or lover, or friend. And the man who does not agree with
you, the man who refuses you the vote, the man who opposes your efforts
to get the vote, the man who, whether he agrees with you or not, _will
not help you to get it_, you count as your enemy. That is wanting the
vote. That is wanting it as much as I do.

"You women--are you prepared to go against your men? To give up your
men?"

There were cries of "Rather!" from two of the eleven young girls who had
come too soon.

Miss Burstall shook her head and murmured, "Hopeless confusion of
thought. If _this_ is what it's going to be like, Heaven help us!"

"You really _are_ getting a bit mixed," said Dorothy.

"We protest--"

"Protest then; protest as much as you like. Then we shall know where we
are; then we shall get things straight; then we can begin. You all want
the vote. Some of you don't know how much, but at least you know you
want it. Nobody's confused about that. Do you know how you're going to
get it? Tell me that."

Lest they should spoil it all by telling her Miss Blackadder increased
her vehement pace. "You don't because you can't and _I_ will tell you.
You won't get it by talking about it or by writing about it, or by
sitting down and thinking about it, you'll get it by coming in with me,
coming in with the Women's Franchise Union, and fighting for it.
Fighting women, not talkers--not writers--not thinkers are what we
want!" She sat down, heaving a little with the ground-swell of her
storm, amid applause in which only Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer did not
join. She was now looking extraordinarily handsome.

Rosalind bent over and whispered something in her ear. She rose to her
feet again, flushed, smiling at them, triumphant.

"Our Chairwoman has reminded me that I came here to tell you what the
program of our Union is. And I can tell you in six words. It's
Hell-for-leather, and it's Neck-or-nothing!"

"Now," said Rosalind sweetly, bowing towards Miss Burstall, "it's your
turn. We should like to know what you have to say."

Miss Burstall did not rise and in the end Dorothea spoke.

"My friend, Miss Rosalind Jervis, assumed that we were all agreed, not
only as to our aims, but as to our policy. She has not yet discriminated
between constitutional and unconstitutional means. When we protested,
she quashed our protest. We took exception to the phrase 'every means in
our power,' because that would commit us to all sorts of
unconstitutional things. It is in my power to squirt water into the back
of the Prime Minister's neck, or to land a bomb in the small of his
back, or in the centre of the platform at his next public meeting. We
were left to conclude that the only differences between us would concern
our choice of the squirt or the bomb. As some of us here might equally
object to using the bomb or the squirt, I submit that either our protest
should have been allowed or our agreement should not have been taken for
granted at the start.

"Again, Miss Maud Blackadder, in her sporting speech, her heroic speech,
has not cleared the question. She has appealed to us to come in, without
counting the cost; but she has said nothing to convince us that when our
account at our bank is overdrawn, and we have declared war on all our
male friends and relations, and have left our comfortable homes, and are
all camping out on the open Heath--I repeat, she has said nothing to
convince us that the price we shall have paid is going to get us the
thing we want.

"She says that fighters are wanted, and not talkers and writers and
thinkers. Are we not then to fight with our tongues and with our brains?
Is she leaving us anything but our bare fists? She has told us that she
rides straight and that she doesn't funk her fences; but she has not
told us what sort of country she is going to ride over, nor where the
fences are, not what Hell-for-leather and Neck-or-nothing means.

"We want meaning; we want clearness and precision. We have not been
given it yet.

"I would let all this pass if Miss Blackadder were not your
colour-sergeant. Is it fair to call for volunteers, for raw recruits,
and not tell them precisely and clearly what services will be required
of them? How many" (Dorothy glanced at the eleven) "realize that the
leaders of your Union, Mrs. Palmerston-Swete, and Mrs. Blathwaite, and
Miss Angela Blathwaite, demand from its members blind, unquestioning
obedience?"

Maud Blackadder jumped up.

"I protest. I, too, have the right to protest. Miss Harrison calls me to
order. She tells me to be clear and precise. Will she be good enough to
be clear and precise herself? Will she say whether she is with us or
against us? If she is not with us she is against us. Let her explain her
position."

She sat down; and Rosalind rose.

"Miss Harrison," she said, "will explain her position to the Committee
later. This is an open meeting till seven. It is now five minutes to.
Will any of you here"--she held the eleven with her eyes--"who were not
present at the meeting in the Town Hall last Monday, hold up your hands.
No hands. Then you must all be aware of the object and the policy and
the rules of the Women's Franchise Union. Its members pledge themselves
to help, as far as they can, the object of the Union; to support the
decisions of their leaders; to abstain from public and private criticism
of those decisions and of any words or actions of their leaders; and to
obey orders--not blindly or unquestioningly, but within the terms of
their undertakings.

"Those of you who wish to join us will please write your names and
addresses on the slips of white paper, stating what kind of work you are
willing to do and the amount of your subscription, if you subscribe, and
hand your slips to the Secretary at the door, as you go out."

Miss Burstall and Miss Farmer went out. Miss Blackadder
counted--"One--two--"

Eight of the eleven young girls signed and handed in the white slips at
the door, and went out.

"Three--four--"

Miss Blackadder reckoned that Dorothea Harrison's speech had cost her
five recruits. Her own fighting speech had carried the eleven in a
compact body to her side: Dorothea's speech had divided and scattered
them again.

Miss Blackadder hurled her personality at the heads of audiences in the
certainty that it would hit them hard. That was what she was there for.
She knew that the Women's Franchise union relied on her to wring from
herself the utmost spectacular effect. And she did it every time. She
never once missed fire. And Dorothea Harrison had come down on the top
of her triumph and destroyed the effect of all her fire. She had
corrupted five recruits. And, supposing there was a secret program, she
had betrayed the women of the Union to fourteen outsiders, by giving it
away. Treachery or no treachery, Dorothea Harrison would have to pay
for it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Everybody had gone except the members of the Committee and Phyllis
Desmond who waited for her friend, Maud Blackadder.

Dorothy remembered Phyllis Desmond now; she was that art-student girl
that Vera knew. She had seen her at Vera's house.

They had drawn round the table again. Miss Blackadder and Miss Gilchrist
conferred in whispers.

"Before we go," said Rosalind, "I propose that we ask Miss Dorothea
Harrison to be our Vice-President."

Miss Gilchrist nodded to Miss Blackadder who rose. It was her moment.

"And _I_ propose," she said, "that before we invite Miss Harrison to be
anything we ask her to define her position--clearly and precisely."

She made a sign, and the Secretary was on her feet.

"And first we must ask Miss Harrison to explain _how_ she became
possessed of the secret policy of the Union which has never been
discussed at any open meeting and is unknown to members of the General
Committee."

"Then," said Dorothy, "there _is_ a secret policy?"

"You seem to know it. We have the right to ask _how_ you know? Unless
you invented it."

Dorothy faced them. It was inconceivable that it should have happened,
that she should be standing there, in the old schoolroom of her father's
house, while two strange women worried her. She knew that her back was
to the wall and that the Blackadder girl had been on the watch for the
last half-hour to get her knife into her. (Odd, for she had admired the
Blackadder girl and her fighting gestures.) It was inconceivable that
she should have to answer to that absurd committee for her honour. It
was inconceivable that Rosalind, her friend, should not help her.

Yet it had happened. With all her platform eloquence Rosalind couldn't,
for the life of her, get out one heroic, defending word. From the moment
when the Gilchrist woman had pounced, Rosalind had simply sat and
stared, like a rabbit, like a fish, her mouth open for the word that
would not come. Rosalind was afraid to stand up for her. It was
dreadful, and it was funny to see Rosalind looking like that, and to
realize the extent of her weakness and her obstinacy.

Yet Rosalind had not changed. She was still the school-girl slacker who
could never do a stroke of work until somebody had pushed her into it,
who could never leave off working until stopped by the same hand that
had set her going. Her power to go, and to let herself rip, and the
weakness that made her depend on Dorothy to start her were the qualities
that attracted Dorothy to Rosalind from the beginning. But now she was
the tool of the fighting Suffrage Women. Or if she wasn't a tool, she
was a machine; her brain was a rapid, docile, mechanical apparatus for
turning out bad imitations of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and the two
Blathwaites. Her air of casual command, half-swagger, half-slouch, her
stoop and the thrusting forward of her face, were copied sedulously from
an admired model.

Dorothy found her pitiable. She was hypnotized by the Blathwaites who
worked her and would throw her away when she was of no more use. She
hadn't the strength to resist the pull and the grip and the drive of
other people. She couldn't even hold out against Valentina Gilchrist and
Maud Blackadder. Rosalind would always be caught and spun round by any
movement that was strong enough. She was foredoomed to the Vortex.

That was Dorothy's fault. It was she who had pushed and pulled the
slacker, in spite of her almost whining protest, to the edge of the
Vortex; and it was Rosalind, not Dorothy, who had been caught and sucked
down into the swirl. She whirled in it now, and would go on whirling,
under the impression that her movements made it move.

The Vortex fascinated Dorothy even while she resisted it. She liked the
feeling of her own power to resist, to keep her head, to beat up against
the rush of the whirlwind, to wheel round and round outside it, and
swerve away before the thing got her.

For Dorothy was afraid of the Feminist Vortex, as her brother Michael
had been afraid of the little vortex of school. She was afraid of the
herded women. She disliked the excited faces, and the high voices
skirling their battle-cries, and the silly business of committees, and
the platform slang. She was sick and shy before the tremor and the surge
of collective feeling; she loathed the gestures and the movements of the
collective soul, the swaying and heaving and rushing forward of the many
as one. She would not be carried away by it; she would keep the
clearness and hardness of her soul. It was her soul they wanted, these
women of the Union, the Blathwaites and the Palmerston-Swetes, and
Rosalind, and the Blackadder girl and the Gilchrist woman; they ran out
after her like a hungry pack yelping for her soul; and she was not going
to throw it to them. She would fight for freedom, but not in their way
and not at their bidding.

She was her brother Michael, refusing to go to the party; refusing to
run with the school herd, holding out for his private soul against other
people who kept him from remembering. Only Michael did not hold out. He
ran away. She would stay, on the edge of the vortex, fascinated by its
danger, and resisting.

But as she looked at them, at Rosalind with her open mouth, at the
Blackadder girl who was scowling horribly, and at Valentina Gilchrist,
sceptical and quizzical, she laughed. The three had been trying to rush
her, and because they couldn't rush her they were questioning her
honour. She had asked them plainly for a plain meaning, and their idea
of apt repartee was to pretend to question her honour.

Perhaps they really did question it. She didn't care. She loathed their
excited, silly, hurrying suspicion; but she didn't care. It was she who
had drawn them and led them on to this display of incomparable idiocy.
Like her brother Nicholas she found that adversity was extremely funny;
and she laughed.

She was no longer Michael, she was Nicky, not caring, delighting in her
power to fool them.

"You think," she said, "I'd no business to find out?"

"Your knowledge would certainly have been mysterious," said the
Secretary; "unless at least two confidences had been betrayed. Supposing
there had been any secret policy."

"Well, you see, I don't know it; and I didn't invent it; and I didn't
find it out--precisely. Your secret policy is the logical conclusion of
your present policy. I deduced it; that's all. Anybody could have done
the same. Does that satisfy you? (They won't love me any better for
making them look fools!)"

"Thank you," said Miss Gilchrist. "We only wanted to be sure."

The dinner-bell rang as Dorothy was defining her position.

"I'll work for you; I'll speak for you; I'll write for you; I'll fight
for you. I'll make hay of every Government meeting, if I can get in
without lying and sneaking for it. I'll go to prison for you, if I can
choose my own crime. But I won't give up my liberty of speech and
thought and action. I won't pledge myself to obey your orders. I won't
pledge myself not to criticize policy I disapprove of. I won't come on
your Committee, and I won't join your Union. Is that clear and
precise enough?"

Somebody clapped and somebody said, "Hear, Hear!" And somebody said, "Go
it, Dorothy!"

It was Anthony and Frances and Captain Drayton, who paused outside the
door on their way to the dining-room, and listened, basely.

       *       *       *       *       *

They were all going now. Dorothy stood at the door, holding it open for
them, glad that it was all over.

Only Phyllis Desmond, the art-student, lingered. Dorothy reminded her
that they had met at her aunt Vera Harrison's house.

The art-student smiled. "I wondered when you were going to remember."

"I did, but they all called you Desmond. That's what put me out."

"Everybody calls me Desmond. You had a brother or something with you,
hadn't you?"

"I might have had two. Which? Michael's got green eyes and yellow hair.
Nicky's got blue eyes and black hair."

"It was Nicky--nice name--then."

Desmond's beauty stirred in its sleep. The film of air was lifted from
her black eyes.

"I'm dining with Mrs. Harrison to-night," she said.

"You'll be late then."

"It doesn't matter. Lawrence Stephen's never there till after eight. She
won't dine without him."

Dorothy stiffened. She did not like that furtive betrayal of Vera and
Lawrence Stephen.

"I wish you'd come and see me at my rooms in Chelsea. And bring your
brother. Not the green and yellow one. The blue and black one."

Dorothy took the card on which Desmond had scribbled an address. But she
did not mean to go and see her. She wasn't sure that she liked Desmond.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rosalind stayed on to dine with Dorothy's family. She was no longer
living with her own family, for Mrs. Jervis was hostile to Women's
Franchise. She had rooms off the Strand, not far from the headquarters
of the Union.

Frances looked a little careworn. She had been sent for to Grannie's
house to see what could be done with Aunt Emmeline, and had found, as
usual, that nothing could be done with her. In the last three years the
second Miss Fleming had become less and less enthusiastic, and more and
more emphatic, till she ceased from enthusiasm altogether and carried
emphasis beyond the bounds of sanity. She had become, as Frances put it,
extremely tiresome.

It was not accurate to say, as Mrs. Fleming did, that you never knew
when Emmeline would start a nervous crisis; for as a matter of fact you
could time her to a minute. It was her habit to wait till her family was
absorbed in some urgent affair that diverted attention from her case,
and then to break out alarmingly. Dorothy was generally sent for to
bring her round; but to-day it was Dorothy who had important things on
hand. Aunt Emmeline had scented the Suffrage meeting from afar, and had
made arrangements beforehand for a supreme crisis that would take all
the shine out of Dorothy's affair.

When Frances said that Aunt Emmy had been tiresome again, Dorothy knew
what she meant. For Aunt Emmy's idea was that her sisters persecuted
her; that Edie was jealous of her and hated her; that Louie had always
trampled on her and kept her under; that Frances had used her influence
with Grannie to spoil all her chances one after another. It was all
Frances's fault that Vera Harrison had come between her and Major
Cameron; Frances had encouraged Vera in her infamous intrigue; and
between them they had wrecked two lives. And they had killed
Major Cameron.

Since Ferdie's death Emmeline Fleming had lived most of the time in a
sort of dream in which it seemed to her that these things had
really happened.

This afternoon she had been more than usually tiresome. She had simply
raved.

"You should have brought her round to the meeting," said Dorothy, "and
let her rave there. I'd back Aunt Emmeline against Maud Blackadder. I
wish, Rosalind, you'd leave off making faces and kicking my shins. You
needn't worry any more, Mummy ducky. I'm going to rope them all into
the Suffrage Movement. Aunt Edie can distribute literature, Aunt Louie
can interrupt like anything, and Aunt Emmeline can shout and sing."

"I think, Dorothy," said Rosalind with weak bitterness, "that you might
have stuck by me."

The two were walking down East Heath Road to the tram-lines where the
motor buses started for Charing Cross.

"It was you who dragged me into it, and the least you could do was to
stick. Why didn't you keep quiet instead of forcing our hands?"

"I couldn't keep quiet. I'll go with you straight or I won't go with you
at all."

"You know what's the matter with you? It's your family. You'll never be
any good to us, you'll never be any good to yourself till you've chucked
them and got away. For years--ever since you've been born--you've simply
been stewing there in the family juice until you're soaked with it. You
oughtn't to be living at home. You ought to be on your own--like me."

"You're talking rot, Rosalind. If my people were like yours I'd have to
chuck them, I suppose; but they're not. They're angels."

"That's why they're so dangerous. They couldn't influence you if they
weren't angels."

"They don't influence me the least little bit. I'd like to see them try.
They're much too clever. They know I'd be off like a shot if they did.
Why, they let me do every mortal thing I please--turn the schoolroom
into a meeting hall for your friends to play the devil in. That
Blackadder girl was yelling the house down, yet they didn't say
anything. And your people aren't as bad as you make out, you know. You
couldn't live on your own if your father didn't give you an allowance. I
like Mrs. Jervis."

"Because she likes you."

"Well, that's a reason. It isn't the reason why I like my own mother,
because she doesn't like me so very much. That's why she lets me do what
I like. She doesn't care enough to stop me. She only really cares for
Dad and John and Nicky and Michael."

Rosalind looked fierce and stubborn.

"That's what's the matter with all of you," she said.

"What is?"

"Caring like that. It's all sex. Sex instinct, sex feeling. Maud's
right. It's what we're up against all the time."

Dorothy said to herself, "That's what's the matter with Rosalind, if she
only knew it."

Rosalind loved Michael and Michael detested her, and Nicky didn't like
her very much. She always looked fierce and stubborn when she heard
Michael's name.

Rosalind went on. "When it comes to sex you don't revolt. You sit down."

"I do revolt. I'm revolting now. I go much farther than you do. I think
the marriage laws are rotten; I think divorce ought to be for
incompatibility. I think love isn't love and can't last unless it's
free. I think marriage ought to be abolished--not yet, perhaps, but when
we've become civilized. It will be. It's bound to be. As it is, I think
every woman has a right to have a baby if she wants one. If Emmeline
had had a baby, she wouldn't be devastating us now."

"That's what you think, but it isn't what you feel. It's all thinking
with you, Dorothy. The revolt goes on in your brain. You'll never do
anything. It isn't that you haven't the courage to go against your men.
You haven't the will. You don't want to."

"Why should I? What do they do? Father and Michael and Nicky don't
interfere with me any more than Mother does."

"You know I'm not thinking of them. They don't really matter."

"Who are you thinking of then? Frank Drayton? You needn't!"

It was mean of Rosalind to hit below the belt like that, when she knew
that _she_ was safe. Michael had never been brought against her and
never would be. It was disgusting of her to imply that Dorothy's state
of mind was palpable, when her own (though sufficiently advertised by
her behaviour) had received from Michael's sister the consecration of
silence as a secret, tragic thing.

They had reached the tram-lines.

At the sight of the Charing Cross `bus Rosalind assumed an air of
rollicking, adventurous travel.

"My hat! What an evening! I shall have a ripping ride down. Don't say
there's no room on the top. Cheer up, Dorothy!"

Which showed that Rosalind Jervis was a free woman, suggested that life
had richer thrills than marrying Dorothy's brother Michael, and fixed
the detested imputation securely on her friend.

Dorothy watched her as she swung herself on to the footboard and up the
stair of the motor bus. There was room on the top. Rosalind, in fact,
had the top all to herself.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Dorothy crossed the Heath again in the twilight she saw something
white on the terrace of her father's house. Her mother was waiting
for her.

She thought at first that Aunt Emmeline had gone off her head and that
she had been sent for to keep her quiet. She gloried in their dependence
on her. But no, that wasn't likely. Her mother was just watching for her
as she used to watch for her and the boys when they were little and had
been sent across the Heath to Grannie's house with a message.

And at the sight and memory of her mother Dorothy felt a childish, sick
dissatisfaction with herself and with her day, and an absurd longing for
the tranquillity and safety of the home whose chief drawback lately had
been that it was too tranquil and too safe. She could almost have told
her mother how they had all gone for her, and how Rosalind had turned
out rotten, and how beastly it had all been. Almost, but not quite.
Dorothy had grown up, and she was there to protect and not to be
protected. However agreeable it might have been to confide in her
mother, it wouldn't have done.

Frances met her at the garden door. She had been crying.

"Nicky's come home," she said.

"Nicky?"

"He's been sent down."

"Whatever for?"

"Darling, I can't possibly tell you."

But in the end she did.



XII

Up till now Frances had taken a quiet interest in Women's Suffrage. It
had got itself into the papers and thus become part of the affairs of
the nation. The names of Mrs. Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and
Angela Blathwaite had got into the papers, where Frances hoped and
prayed that the name of Dorothea Harrison might not follow them. The
spectacle of a frantic Government at grips with the Women's Franchise
Union had not yet received the head-lines accorded to the reports of
divorce and breach of promise cases and fires in paraffin shops; still,
it was beginning to figure, and if Frances's _Times_ ignored it, there
were other papers that Dorothy brought home.

But for Frances the affairs of the nation sank into insignificance
beside Nicky's Cambridge affair.

There could be no doubt that Nicky's affair was serious. You could not,
Anthony said, get over the letters, the Master's letter and the
Professor's letter and Michael's. They had arrived one hour after Nicky,
Nicky so changed from his former candour that he refused to give any
account of himself beyond the simple statement that he had been sent
down. They'd know, he had said, soon enough why.

And soon enough they did know.

To be sure no details could be disentangled from the discreet
ambiguities of the Master and the Professor. But Michael's letter was
more explicit. Nicky had been sent down because old "Booster" had got
it into his head that Nicky had been making love to "Booster's" wife
when she didn't want to be made love to, and nothing could get it out of
"Booster's" head.

Michael was bound to stand up for his brother, and it was clear to
Anthony that so grave a charge could hardly have been brought without
some reason. The tone of the letters, especially the Professor's, was
extraordinarily restrained. That was what made the thing stand out in
its sheer awfulness. The Professor, although, according to Michael, he
conceived himself to be profoundly injured, wrote sorrowfully, in
consideration of Nicky's youth.

There was one redeeming circumstance, the Master and the Professor both
laid stress on it: Anthony's son had not attempted to deny it.

"There must," Frances said wildly, "be some terrible mistake."

But Nicky cut the ground from under the theory of the terrible mistake
by continuing in his refusal to deny it.

"What sort of woman," said Anthony, "is the Professor's wife?"

"Oh, awfully decent," said Nicky.

"You had no encouragement, then, no provocation?"

"She's awfully fascinating," said Nicky.

Then Frances had another thought. It seemed to her that Nicky was
evading.

"Are you sure you're not screening somebody else?"

"Screening somebody else? Do you mean some other fellow?"

"Yes. I'm not asking you to give the name, Nicky."

"I swear I'm not. Why should I be? I can't think why you're all making
such a fuss about it. I don't mean poor old 'Booster.' He's got some
cause, if you like."

"But what was it you did--really did, Nicky?"

"You've read the letters, Mother."

Nicky's adolescence seemed to die and pass from him there and then; and
she saw a stubborn, hard virility that frightened and repelled her,
forcing her to believe that it might have really happened.

To Frances the awfulness of it was beyond belief. And the pathos of her
belief in Nicky was unbearable to Anthony. There were the letters.

"I think, dear," Anthony said, "you'd better leave us."

"Mayn't I stay?" It was as if she thought that by staying she could
bring Nicky's youth back to life again.

"No," said Anthony.

She went, and Nicky opened the door for her. His hard, tight man's face
looked at her as if it had been she who had sinned and he who suffered,
intolerably, for her sin. The click of the door as he shut it
stabbed her.

"It's a damnable business, father. We'd better not talk about it."

But Anthony would talk about it. And when he had done talking all that
Nicky had to say was: "You know as well as I do that these
things happen."

       *       *       *       *       *

For Nicky had thought it out very carefully beforehand in the train.
What else could he say? He couldn't tell them that "Booster's" poor
little wife had lost her head and made hysterical love to him, and had
been so frightened at what she had done that she had made him promise on
his word of honour that, whatever happened, he wouldn't give her away to
anybody, not even to his own people.

He supposed that either Peggy had given herself away, or that poor old
"Booster" had found her out. He supposed that, having found her out,
there was no other line that "Booster" could have taken. Anyhow, there
was no other line that _he_ could take; because, in the world where
these things happened, being found out would be fifty times worse for
Peggy than it would be for him.

He tried to recall the scene in the back drawing-room where she had
asked him so often to have tea with her alone. The most vivid part was
the end of it, after he had given his promise. Peggy had broken down and
put her head on his shoulder and cried like anything. And it was at that
moment that Nicky thought of "Booster," and how awful and yet how funny
it would be if he walked into the room and saw him there. He had tried
hard not to think what "Booster's" face would look like; he had tried
hard not to laugh as long as Peggy's head was on his shoulder, for fear
of hurting her feelings; but when she took it off he did give one
half-strangled snort; for it really was the rummest thing that had ever
happened to him.

He didn't know, and he couldn't possibly have guessed, that as soon as
the door had shut on him Peggy's passion had turned to rage and utter
detestation of Nicky (for she had heard the snort); and that she had
gone straight to her husband's study and put her head on _his_ shoulder,
and cried, and told him a lie; and that it was Peggy's lie and not the
Professor's imagination that had caused him to be sent down. And even if
Peggy had not been Lord Somebody's daughter and related to all sorts of
influential people she would still have been capable of turning every
male head in the University. For she was a small, gentle woman with
enchanting manners and the most beautiful and pathetic eyes, and she had
not yet been found out. Therefore it was more likely that an
undergraduate with a face like Nicky's should lose his head than that a
woman with a face like Peggy's should, for no conceivable reason, tell a
lie. So that, even if Nicky's word of honour had not been previously
pledged to his accuser, it would have had no chance against any
statement that she chose to make. And even if he had known that she had
lied, he couldn't very well have given it against poor pretty Peggy who
had lost her head and got frightened.

As Nicky packed up his clothes and his books he said, "I don't care if I
am sent down. It would have been fifty times worse for her than it
is for me."

He had no idea how bad it was, nor how much worse it was going to be.
For it ended in his going that night from his father's house to the
house in St. John's Wood where Vera and Mr. Lawrence Stephen lived.

And it was there that he met Desmond.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nicky congratulated himself on having pulled it off so well. At the
same time he was a little surprised at the ease with which he had taken
his father and mother in. He might have understood it if he had known
that Vera had been before him, and that she had warned them long ago
that this was precisely the sort of thing they would have to look out
for. And as no opinion ever uttered on the subject of their children was
likely to be forgotten by Frances and Anthony, when this particular
disaster came they were more prepared for it than they would have
believed possible.

But there were two members of his family whom Nicky had failed
altogether to convince, Michael and Dorothy. Michael luckily, Nicky said
to himself, was not on the spot, and his letter had no weight against
the letters of the Master and the Professor, and on this also Nicky had
calculated. He reckoned without Dorothy, judging it hardly likely that
she would be allowed to know anything about it. Nobody, not even
Frances, was yet aware of Dorothy's importance.

And Dorothy, because of her importance, blamed herself for all that
happened afterwards. If she had not had that damned Suffrage meeting,
Rosalind would not have stayed to dinner; if Rosalind had not stayed to
dinner she would not have gone with her to the tram-lines; if she had
not gone with her to the tram-lines she would have been at home to stop
Nicky from going to St. John's Wood. As it was, Nicky had reached the
main road at the top of the lane just as Dorothy was entering it from
the bottom.

At first Frances did not want Dorothy to see her father. He was most
horribly upset and must not be disturbed. But Dorothy insisted. Her
father had the letters, and she must see the letters.

"I may understand them better than you or Daddy," she said. "You see,
Mummy, I know these Cambridge people. They're awful asses, some
of them."

And though her mother doubted whether attendance at the Professor's
lectures would give Dorothy much insight into the affair, she had her
way. Anthony was too weak to resist her. He pushed the letters towards
her without a word. He would rather she had been left out of it. And yet
somehow the sight of her, coming in, so robust and undismayed and
competent, gave him a sort of comfort.

Dorothy did not agree with Michael. There was more in it than the
Professor's imagination. The Professor, she said, hadn't got any
imagination; you could tell from the way he lectured. But she did not
believe one word of the charge against her brother. Something had
happened and Nicky was screening somebody.

"I'll bet you anything you like," said Dorothy, "it's 'Booster's' wife.
She's made him give his word."

Dorothy was sure that "Booster's" wife was a bad lot.

"Nicky said she was awfully decent."

"He'd _have_ to. He couldn't do it by halves."

"They couldn't have sent him down, unless they'd sifted the thing to the
bottom."

"I daresay they've sifted all they could, the silly asses."

She could have killed them for making her father suffer. The sight of
his drawn face hurt her abominably. She had never seen him like that.
She wasn't half so sorry for her mother who was sustained by a secret,
ineradicable faith in Nicky. Why couldn't he have faith in Nicky too?
Was it because he was a man and knew that these things happened?

"Daddy--being sent down isn't such an awful calamity. It isn't going to
blast his career or anything. It's always touch and go. _I_ might have
been sent down any day. I should have been if they'd known about me half
what they don't know about Nicky. Why can't you take it as a rag? You
bet _he_ does."

Anthony removed himself from her protecting hand. He got up and went to
bed.

But he did not sleep there. Neither he nor Frances slept. And he came
down in the morning looking worse than ever.

Dorothy thought, "It must be awful to have children if it makes you feel
like that." She thought, "It's a lucky thing they're not likely to cut
up the same way about me." She thought again, "It must be awful to have
children." She thought of the old discussions in her room at Newnham,
about the woman's right to the child, and free union, and easy divorce,
and the abolition of the family. Her own violent and revolutionary
speeches (for which she liked to think she might have been sent down)
sounded faint and far-off and irrelevant. She did not really want to
abolish Frances and Anthony. And yet, if they had been abolished, as
part of the deplorable institution of parentage, it would have been
better for them; for then they would not be suffering as they did.

It must be awful to have children. But perhaps they knew that it was
worth it.

And as her thoughts travelled that way they were overtaken all of a
sudden by an idea. She did not stop to ask herself what business her
idea had in that neighbourhood. She went down first thing after
breakfast and sent off two wires; one to Captain Drayton at Croft House,
Eltham; one to the same person at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

"Can I see you? It's about Nicky.

"DOROTHY HARRISON."

Wires to show that she was impersonal and businesslike, and that her
business was urgent. "Can I see you?" to show that he was not being
invited to see _her_. "It's about Nicky" to justify the whole
proceeding. "Dorothy Harrison" because "Dorothy" by itself was too much.

       *       *       *       *       *

As soon as she had sent off her wires Dorothy felt a sense of happiness
and well-being. She had no grounds for happiness; far otherwise; her
great friendship with Rosalind Jervis was disintegrating bit by bit
owing to Rosalind's behaviour; the fiery Suffrage meeting had turned
into dust and ashes; her darling Nicky was in a nasty scrape; her father
and mother were utterly miserable; yet she was happy.

Half-way home her mind began to ask questions of its own accord.

"Supposing you had to choose between the Suffrage and Frank Drayton?"

"But I haven't got to."

"You might have. You know you might any minute. You know he hates it.
And supposing--"

But Dorothy refused to give any answer.

His wire came within the next half hour.

"Coming three sharp. FRANK."

Her sense of well-being increased almost to exaltation.

       *       *       *       *       *

He arrived with punctuality at three o'clock. (He was in the gunners and
had a job at Woolwich.) She found him standing on the hearth-rug in the
drawing-room. He had blown his nose when he heard her coming, and
that meant that he was nervous. She caught him stuffing his
pocket-handkerchief (a piece of damning evidence) into his
breast-pocket.

With her knowledge of his nervousness her exaltation ceased as if it had
not been. At the sight of him it was as if the sentence hidden somewhere
in her mind--"You'll have to choose. You know you'll have to"--escaping
thought and language, had expressed itself in one suffocating pang.
Unless Nicky's affair staved off the dreadful moment.

"Were you frightfully busy?"

"No, thank goodness."

The luck she had had! Of course, if he had been busy he couldn't
possibly have come.

She could look at him now without a tightening in her throat. She liked
to look at him. He was made all of one piece. She liked his square face
and short fine hair, both the colour of light-brown earth; his eyes, the
colour of light brown earth under clear water; eyes that looked small
because they were set so deep. She liked their sudden narrowing and
their deep wrinkles when he smiled. She liked his jutting chin, and the
fine, rather small mouth that jerked his face slightly crooked when he
laughed. She liked that slender crookedness that made it a face
remarkable and unique among faces. She liked his brains. She liked all
that she had ever seen or heard of him.

Vera had told them that once, at an up-country station in India, he had
stopped a mutiny in a native battery by laughing in the men's faces.
Somebody that Ferdie knew had been with him and saw it happen. The men
broke into his office where he was sitting, vulnerably, in his
shirt-sleeves. They had brought knives with them, beastly native things,
and they had their hands on the handles, ready. They screamed and
gesticulated with excitement. And Frank Drayton leaned back in his
office chair and looked at them, and burst out laughing, because, he
said, they made such funny faces. When they got to fingering their
knives, he tilted back his chair and rocked with laughter. His sudden,
incredible mirth frightened them and stopped the mutiny. She could see
him, she could see his face jerked crooked with delight.

That was the sort of thing that Nicky would have done. She loved him for
that. She loved him because he was like Nicky.

She was not able to recall the process of the states that flowered in
that mysterious sense of well-being and exaltation. A year ago Frank
Drayton had been only "that nice man we used to meet at Cheltenham."
First of all he had been Ferdie's and Vera's friend. Then he became
Nicky's friend; the only one who took a serious interest in his
inventions and supported him when he wanted to go into the Army and
consoled him when he was frustrated. Then he had become the friend of
the family. Now he was recognized as more particularly Dorothea's
friend.

At Cheltenham he had been home on leave; and it was not until this year
that he had got his job at Woolwich teaching gunnery, while he waited
for a bigger job in the Ordnance Department. Ferdie Cameron had always
said that Frank Drayton would be worth watching. He would be part of the
brains of the Army some day. Nicky watched him. His brains and their
familiarity with explosives and the machinery of warfare had been his
original attraction for Nicky. But it was Dorothea who watched him most.

She plunged abruptly into Nicky's affair, giving names and lineage. "You
know all sorts of people, do you know anything about her?"

He looked at her clearly, without smiling. Then he said "Yes. I know a
good bit about her. Is that what's wrong with Nicky?"

"Not exactly. But he's been sent down."

His wry smile intimated that such things might be.

Then she told him what the Master had written and what the Professor had
written and what Michael had written, and what Nicky had said, and what
she, Dorothea thought. Drayton smiled over the Master's and the
Professor's letters, but when it came to Michael's letter he
laughed aloud.

"It's all very well for _us_. But Daddy and Mummy are breaking their
hearts. Daddy says he's going down to Cambridge to see what really
did happen."

Again that clear look. She gathered that he disapproved of "Booster's"
wife. He disapproved of so many things: of Women's Suffrage; of
revolutions; of women who revolted; of anybody who revolted; of Mrs.
Palmerston-Swete and Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite. It was
putting it too mildly to say he disapproved of Rosalind Jervis; he
detested her. He disapproved of Vera and of her going to see Vera; she
remembered that he had even disapproved, long ago, of poor Ferdie,
though he liked him. Evidently he disapproved of "Booster's" wife for
the same reason that he disapproved of Vera. That was why he didn't
say so.

"I believe you think all the time I'm right," she said. "Would you go
down if you were he?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because he won't get anything out of them. They can't give her away any
more than Nicky can. Or than _you_ can, Dorothy."

"You mean I've done it already--to you. I _had_ to, because of Nicky. I
can't help it if you _do_ think it was beastly of me."

"My dear child--"

He got up vehemently, as if his idea was to take her in his arms and
stifle her outbreak that way. But something in her eyes, cold, unready,
yet aware of him, repelled him.

He thought: "It's too soon. She's all rigid. She isn't alive yet.
That's not what she wired for." He thought: "I wish people wouldn't send
their children to Newnham. It retards their development by ten years."

And she thought: "No. I mustn't let him do that. For then he won't be
able to go back on me when I tell him my opinions. It would be simply
trapping him. Supposing--supposing--"

She did not know that that instinctive renunciation was her answer to
the question. Her honour would come first.

"Of course. Of course you had to."

"What would you do about it if you were Daddy?"

"I should send them all to blazes."

"No, but _really_ do?"

"I should do nothing. I should leave it. You'll find that before very
long there'll be letters of apology and restitution."

"Will you come down to the office with me and tell Daddy that?"

"Yes, if you'll come to tea with me somewhere afterwards."

(He really couldn't be expected to do all this for nothing.)

She sent her mother to him while she put on her hat and coat. When she
came down Frances was happy again.

"You see, Mummy, I was right, after all."

"You always were right, darling, all the time."

For the life of her she couldn't help giving that little flick at her
infallible daughter.

"She _is_ right--most of the time," said Drayton. His eyes covered and
protected her.

Anthony was in his office, sitting before the open doors of the cabinet
where he kept his samples of rare and valuable woods. The polished slabs
were laid before him on the table in rows, as he had arranged them to
show to a customer: wine-coloured mahogany, and golden satinwood; ebony
black as jet; tulip-wood mottled like fine tortoiseshell; coromandel
wood, striped black and white like the coat of a civet cat; ghostly
basswood, shining white on dead white; woods of clouded grain, and woods
of shining grain, grain that showed like the slanting, splintered lines
of hewn stone, like moss, like the veins of flowers, the fringes of
birds' feathers, the striping and dappling of beasts; woods of exquisite
grain where the life of the tree drew its own image in its own heart;
woods whose surface was tender to the touch like a fine tissue; and
sweet-smelling sandalwood and camphor-wood and cedar.

Anthony loved his shining, polished slabs of wood. If a man must have a
business, let it be timber. Timber was a clean and fine and noble thing.
He had brought the working of his business to such a pitch of smooth
perfection that his two elder sons, Michael and Nicholas, could catch up
with it easily and take it in their stride.

Now he was like a sick child that has ranged all its toys in front of it
and finds no comfort in them.

And, as he looked at them, the tulip-wood and the scented sandalwood and
camphor-wood gave him an idea.

The Master and the Professor had both advised him to send his son
Nicholas out of England for a little while. "Let him travel for six
months and get the whole miserable business out of his head."

Nicky, when he gave up the Army, had told him flatly that he would
rather die than spend his life sitting in a beastly office. Nicky had
put it to him that timber meant trees, and trees meant forests; why,
lots of the stuff they imported came from the Himalaya and the West
Indies and Ceylon. He had reminded him that he was always saying a
timber merchant couldn't know enough about the living tree. Why
shouldn't he go into the places where the living trees grew and learn
all about them? Why shouldn't he be a tree-expert? Since they were
specializing in rare and foreign woods, why shouldn't he specialize in
rare and foreign trees?

And the slabs of tulip-wood and scented camphor-wood and sandalwood were
saying to Anthony, "Why not?" Neither he nor Frances had wanted Nicky to
go off to the West Indies and the Himalaya; but now, since clearly he
must go off somewhere, why not?

Drayton and Dorothy came in just as Anthony (still profoundly
dejected) was saying to himself, "Reinstate him. Give him
responsibility--curiosity--healthy interests. Get the whole miserable
business out of his head."

It seemed incredible, after what they had gone through, that Drayton
should be standing there, telling him that there was nothing in it, that
there never had been any miserable business, that it was all a storm in
a hysterical woman's teacup. He blew the whole dirty nightmare to
nothing with the laughter that was like Nicky's own laughter.

Then Anthony and Drayton and Dorothy sat round the table, drafting
letters to the Master and the Professor. Anthony, at Drayton's
dictation, informed them that he regretted the step they had seen fit to
take; that he knew his own son well enough to be pretty certain that
there had been some misunderstanding; therefore, unless he received
within three days a written withdrawal of the charge against his son
Nicholas, he would be obliged to remove his son Michael from the
Master's College.