He wondered if he could have done it if he had not loved his father? He
wondered if his father would ever understand that it was the hardest
thing he had ever yet done or could do?

But the trees would be beautiful. He would rather like seeing the trees.

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever care about a tree again.

Trees--

He wondered whether he would ever see a tree again, ever smell tree-sap,
or hear the wind sounding in the ash-trees like a river and in the firs
like a sea.

Trees--

He wondered whether any tree would ever come to life for him again.

He looked on at the tree-felling. He saw slaughtered trees, trees that
tottered, trees that staggered in each other's branches. He heard the
scream and the shriek of wounded boughs, the creaking and crashing of
the trunk, and the long hiss of branches falling, trailing through
branches to the ground. He smelt the raw juice of broken leaves and the
sharp tree dust in the saw pits. The trees died horrible deaths, in the
forests under the axes of the woodmen, and in the schools under the
tongues of the Professors, and in Michael's soul. The German Government
was determined that he should know all about trees. Its officials, the
Professors and instructors, were sorry if he didn't like it, but they
were ordered by their Government and paid by their Government to impart
this information; they had contracted with Herr Harrison to impart it to
his son Michael for so long as he could endure it, and they imparted it
with all their might.

Michael rather liked the Germans of Aschaffenburg. Instead of despising
him because he would never make a timber-merchant or a tree expert, they
admired and respected him because he was a poet. The family he lived
with, Herr Henschel and Frau Henschel, and his fellow-boarders, Carl and
Otto Kraus, and young Ludwig Henschel, and Hedwig and Löttchen admired
and respected him because he was a poet. When he walked with Ludwig in
the great forests Michael chanted his poems, both in English and in
German, till Ludwig's soul was full of yearning and a delicious sorrow,
so that Ludwig actually shed tears in the forest. He said that if he had
not done so he would have burst. Ludwig's emotions had nothing whatever
to do with the forest or with Michael's poems, but he thought they had.

Michael knew that his only chance of getting out of Germany was to show
an unsurpassable incompetence. He showed it. He flourished his
incompetence in the faces of all the officials, until some superofficial
wrote a letter to his father that gave him his liberty.

The Henschels were sorry when he left. The students, Otto and Carl and
Ludwig, implored him not to forget them. Hedwig and Löttchen cried.

       *       *       *       *       *

Michael was not pleased when he found that he was to go home by Dresden
to bring Veronica back. He wanted to be alone on the journey. He wanted
to stop in Paris and see Jules RГ©veillaud. He was afraid that Ronny had
grown into a tiresome flapper and that he would have to talk to her.

And he found that Ronny had skipped the tiresome stage and had grown up.
Only her school clothes and her girlish door-knocker plait tied up with
broad black ribbon reminded him that she was not yet seventeen.

Ronny was tired. She did not want to talk. When he had tucked her up
with railway rugs in her corner of the carriage she sat still with her
hands in her muff.

"I shall not disturb your thoughts, Michael," she said.

She knew what he had been thinking. Her clear eyes gazed at him out of
her dead white face with an awful look of spiritual maturity.

"What can have happened to her?" he wondered.

But she did not disturb his thoughts.

Up till then Michael's thoughts had not done him any good. They had been
bitter thoughts of the months he had been compelled to waste in Bavaria
when every minute had an incomparable value; worrying, irritating
thoughts of the scenes he would have to have with his father, who must
be made to understand, once for all, that in future he meant to have
every minute of his own life for his own work. He wondered how on earth
he was to make his people see that his work justified his giving every
minute to it. He had asked RГ©veillaud to give him a letter that he could
show to his father. He was angry with his father beforehand, he was so
certain that he wouldn't see.

He had other thoughts now. Thoughts of an almond tree flowering in a
white town; of pink blossoms, fragile, without leaves, casting a thin
shadow on white stones; the smell of almond flowers and the sting of
white dust in an east wind; a drift of white dust against the wall.

Thoughts of pine-trees falling in the forest, glad to fall. He thought:
The pine forest makes itself a sea for the land wind, and the young pine
tree is mad for the open sea. She gives her slender trunk with passion
to the ax; for she thinks that she will be stripped naked, and that she
will be planted in the ship's hold, and that she will carry the great
main-sail. She thinks that she will rock and strain in the grip of the
sea-wind, and that she will be whitened with the salt and the foam
of the sea.

She does not know that she will be sawn into planks and made into a
coffin for the wife of the sexton and grave-digger of Aschaffenburg.

Thoughts of Veronica in her incredible maturity, and of her eyes,
shining in her dead white face, far back through deep crystal, and of
the sense he got of her soul poised, steady and still, with wings
vibrating.

He wondered where it would come down.

He thought: "Of course, Veronica's soul will come down like a wild
pigeon into the ash-tree in our garden, and she will think that our
ash-tree is a tree of Heaven."

       *       *       *       *       *

Presently he roused himself to talk to her.

"How is your singing getting on, Ronny?"

"My singing voice has gone."

"It'll come back again."

"Not unless-"

But he couldn't make her tell him what would bring it back.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Michael came to his father and mother to have it out with them his
face had a hard, stubborn look. He was ready to fight them. He was so
certain that he would have to fight. He had shown them Jules
RГ©veillaud's letter.

He said, "Look here, we've got to get it straight. It isn't any use
going on like this. I'm afraid I wasn't very honest about Germany."

"Weren't you?" said Anthony. "Let me see, I think you said you'd take it
on your way to China and Japan."

"Did I? I tried to be straight about it. I thought I was giving it a
fair chance. But that was before I'd seen RГ©veillaud."

"Well," said Anthony, "now that you have seen him, what is it exactly
that you want to do?"

Michael told him.

"You can make it easy for me. Or you can make it hard. But you can't
stop me."

"What makes you think I want to stop you?"

"Well--you want me to go into the business, though I told you years ago
there was only one thing I should ever be any good at. And I see your
point. I can't earn my living at it. That's where I'm had. Still, I
think Lawrence Stephen will give me work, and I can rub along somehow."

"Without my help, you mean?"

"Well, yes. Why _should_ you help me? You've wasted tons of money on me
as it is. Nicky's earning his own living, and he's got a wife, too.
Why not me?"

"Because you can't do it, Michael."

"I can. I don't mind roughing it. I could live on a hundred a year--or
less, if I don't marry."

"Well, I don't mean you to try. You needn't bother about what you can
live on and what you can't live on. It was all settled last night. Your
mother and I talked it over. We don't want you to go into the business.
We don't want you to take work from Mr. Stephen. We want you to be
absolutely free to do your own work, under the best possible conditions,
whether it pays or not. Nothing in the world matters to us but your
happiness. You're to have a hundred and fifty a year when you're living
at home and two hundred and fifty when you're living abroad. I suppose
you'll want to go abroad sometimes. I can't give you a bigger allowance,
because I have to help Nicky--"

Michael covered his face with his hands.

"Oh--don't, Daddy. You do make me feel a rotten beast."

"We should feel rottener beasts," said Frances, "if we stood in your
way."

"Then," said Michael (he was still incredulous), "you do care?"

"Of course we care," said Anthony.

"I don't mean for me--for _it_?"

"My dear Mick," said Frances, "we care for It almost as much as we care
for you. We're sorry about Germany though. Germany was one of your
father's bad jokes."

"Germany--a joke?"

"Did you take it seriously? Oh, you silly Michael!"

"But," said Michael, "how about Daddy's idea? He loved it."

"I loved it," said Anthony, "but I've given it up."

They knew that this was defeat, for Michael was top-dog. And it was also
victory.

They had lost Nicholas, or thought they had lost Nicholas, by opposing
him. But Michael and Michael's affection they would have always.

Besides, Anthony hadn't given up his idea. He had only transferred
it--to his youngest son, John.



XV

It was five weeks since Nicholas's wedding-day and Desmond had
quarrelled with him three times.

First, because he had taken a flat in Aubrey Walk, with a studio inside
it, instead of a house in Campden Hill Square with a studio outside it
in the garden.

Then, because he had refused to go into his father's business.

Last of all, because of Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress.

Nicky had said that his father, who was paying his rent, couldn't afford
the house with the studio in the garden; and Desmond said Nicky's father
could afford it perfectly well if he liked. He said he had refused to go
into his father's business for reasons which didn't concern her. Desmond
pointed out that the consequences of his refusal were likely to concern
her very much indeed. As for Captain Drayton and the Moving Fortress,
nobody but a supreme idiot would have done what Nicky did.

But Nicky absolutely refused to discuss what he had done. Nobody but a
cad and a rotter would have done anything else.

In the matter of the Moving Fortress what had happened was this.

The last of the drawings was not finished until Desmond had settled down
in the flat in Aubrey Walk. You couldn't hurry Desmond. Nicky hadn't
even waited to sign his name in the margins before he had packed the
plans in his dispatch box and taken them to the works, and thence,
hidden under a pile of Morss estimates, to Eltham. He couldn't rest till
he had shown them to Frank Drayton. He could hardly wait till they had
dined, and till Drayton, who thought he was on the track of a new and
horrible explosive, had told him as much as he could about it.

Nicky gave his whole mind to Drayton's new explosive in the hope that,
when his turn came, Drayton would do as much for him.

"You know," he said at last, "the old idea of the _forteresse mobile_?

"Yes."

He couldn't tell whether Drayton was going to be interested or not. He
rather thought he wasn't.

"It hasn't come to anything, _has_ it?"

Drayton smiled and his eyes glittered. He knew what that excited gleam
in Drayton's eyes meant.

"No," he said. "Not yet."

And Nicky had an awful premonition of his doom.

"Well," he said, "I believe there's something in it."

"So do I, Nicky."

Drayton went on. "I believe there's so much in it that--Look here, I
don't know what put it into your head, and I'm not asking, but that
idea's a dead secret. For God's sake don't talk about it. You mustn't
breathe it, or it'll get into the air. And if it does my five years'
work goes for nothing. Besides we don't want Germany to collar it."

And then: "Don't look so scared, old chap. I was going to tell you
about it when I'd got the plans drawn."

He told him about it then and there.

"Low on the ground like a racing-car--"

"Yes," said Nicky.

"Revolving turret for the guns--no higher than _that_--"

"Yes," said Nicky.

"Sort of armoured train. Only it mustn't run on rails. It's got to go
everywhere, through anything, over anything, if it goes at all. It must
turn in its own length. It must wade and burrow and climb, Nicky. It
must have caterpillar wheels--"

"By Jove, of course it must," said Nicky, as if the idea had struck him
for the first time.

"What have you got there?" said Drayton finally as Nicky rose and picked
up his dispatch-box. "Anything interesting?

"No," said Nicky. "Mostly estimates."

For a long time afterwards he loathed the fields between Eltham and
Kidbrooke, and the Mid-Kent line, and Charing Cross Station. He felt as
a man feels when the woman he loves goes from him to another man. His
idea had gone from him to Drayton.

And that, he said to himself, was just like his luck, just like the
jolly sells that happened to him when he was a kid.

To be sure, there was such a thing as sharing. He had only to produce
his plans and his finished model, and he and Drayton would go partners
in the Moving Fortress. There was no reason why he shouldn't do it.
Drayton had not even drawn his plans yet; he hadn't thought out the
mechanical details.

He thought, "I could go back now and tell him."

But he did not go back. He knew that he would never tell him. If Drayton
asked him to help him with the details he would work them out all over
again with him; but he would never show his own finished plans or his
own model.

He didn't know whether it had been hard or easy for him to give up the
Moving Fortress. He did it instinctively. There was--unless he had
chosen to be a blackguard--nothing else for him to do.

Besides, the Moving Fortress wasn't his idea. Drayton had had it first.
Anybody might have had it. He hadn't spoken of it first; but that was
nothing. The point was that he had had it first, and Nicky wasn't going
to take it from him.

It meant more to Drayton, who was in the Service, than it could possibly
mean to him. He hadn't even got a profession.

As he walked back through the fields to the station, he said to himself
that he didn't really care. It was only one more jolly sell. He didn't
like giving up his Moving Fortress; but it wouldn't end him. There was
something in him that would go on.

He would make another engine.

He didn't care. There was something in him that would go on.

"I can't see," Desmond had said, "why Captain Drayton should be allowed
to walk off with your idea."

"He's worked five years on it."

"He hasn't worked it _out_ yet, and you have. Can't you see "--her face
was dark and hard with anger--"there's money in it?"

"If there is, all the more reason why I shouldn't bag it."

"And where do I come in?"

"Not just here, I'm afraid. It isn't your business."

"Not my business? When I did the drawings? You couldn't possibly have
done them yourself."

At that point Nicky refused to discuss the matter farther.

And still Desmond brooded on her grievance. And still at intervals
Desmond brought it up again.

"There's stacks of money in your father's business--"

"There's stacks of money in that Moving Fortress--"

"You are a fool, Nicky, to throw it all away."

He never answered her. He said to himself that Desmond was hysterical
and had a morbid fancy.

       *       *       *       *       *

But it didn't end there.

He had taken the drawings and the box that had the model of the Moving
Fortress in it and buried them in the locker under the big north window
in Desmond's studio.

And there, three weeks later, Desmond found them. And she packed the
model of the Moving Fortress and marked it "Urgent with Care," and sent
it to the War Office with a letter. She packed the drawings in a
portfolio--having signed her own and Nicky's name on the margins--and
sent them to Captain Drayton with a letter. She said she had no doubt
she was doing an immoral thing; but she did it in fairness to Captain
Drayton, for she was sure he would not like Nicky to make so great a
sacrifice. Nicky, she said, was wrapped up in his Moving Fortress. It
was his sweetheart, his baby. "He will never forgive me," she said, "as
long as he lives. But I simply had to let you know. It means so much
to him."

For she thought, "Because Nicky's a fool, I needn't be one."

Drayton came over the same evening after he had got the letter. He
shouted with laughter.

"Nicky," he said, "you filthy rotter, why on earth didn't you tell
me?... It _was_ Nickyish of you.... What if I did think of it first? I
should have had to come to you for the details. It would have been jolly
to have worked it out together.... Not a bit of it! Your wife's
absolutely right. Good thing, after all, you married her.

"By the way, she says there's a model. I want to see that model. Have
you got it here?"

Nicky went up into the studio to look for it. He couldn't find it in the
locker where he'd left it. "Wherever is the damned thing?" he said.

"The damned thing," said Desmond, "is where you should have sent it
first of all--at the War Office. You're clever, Nicky, but you aren't
quite clever enough."

"I'm afraid," he said, "_you've_ been a bit too clever, this time."

Drayton agreed with him. It was, he said, about the worst thing that
could possibly have happened.

"She shouldn't have done that, Nicky. What on earth could have made her
do it?"

"Don't ask me," said Nicky, "what makes her do things."

"It looks," Drayton meditated, "as if she didn't trust me. I'm afraid
she's dished us. God knows whether we can ever get it back!"

Desmond had a fit of hysterics when she realized how clever she had
been.

       *       *       *       *       *

Desmond's baby was born late in November of that year, and it died when
it was two weeks old. It was as if she had not wanted it enough to give
it life for long outside her body.

For though Desmond had been determined to have a child, and had declared
that she had a perfect right to have one if she chose, she did not care
for it when it came. And when it died Nicky was sorrier than Desmond.

He had not wanted to be a father to Headley Richards' child. And yet it
was the baby and nothing but the baby that had let him in for marrying
Desmond. So that, when it died, he felt that somehow things had tricked
and sold him. As they had turned out he need not have married Desmond
after all.

She herself had pointed out the extreme futility of his behaviour, lest
he should miss the peculiar irony of it. For when her fright and the
cause of her fright were gone Desmond resented Nicky's having married
her. She didn't really want anybody to marry her, and nobody but Nicky
would have dreamed of doing it.

She lay weak and pathetic in her bed for about a fortnight; and for a
little while after she was content to lie stretched out among her
cushions on the studio floor, while Nicky waited on her. But, when she
got well and came downstairs for good, Nicky saw that Desmond's weakness
and pathos had come with the baby and had gone with it. The real Desmond
was not weak, she was not pathetic. She was strong and hard and clever
with a brutal cleverness. She didn't care how much he saw. He could see
to the bottom of her nature, if he liked, and feel how hard it was. She
had no more interest in deceiving him.

She had no more interest in him at all.

She was interested in her painting again. She worked in long fits, after
long intervals of idleness. She worked with a hard, passionless
efficiency. Nicky thought her paintings were hideous and repulsive; but
he did not say so. He was not aware of the extent to which Desmond
imitated her master, Alfred Orde-Jones. He knew nothing about painting
and he had got used to the things. He had got used to Desmond, slouching
about the flat, in her sloping, slovenly grace, dressed in her queer
square jacket and straight short skirt, showing her long delicate
ankles, and her slender feet in their grey stockings and black slippers.

He was used to Desmond when she was lazy; when she sat hunched up on her
cushions and smoked one cigarette after another without a word, and
watched him sullenly. Her long, slippered feet, thrust out, pointed at
him, watching. Her long face watched him between the sleek bands of hair
and the big black bosses plaited over her ears.

The beauty of Desmond's face had gone to sleep again, stilled into
hardness by the passing of her passion. A sort of ugliness was awake
there, and it watched him.

In putting weakness and pathos away from her Desmond had parted with
two-thirds of her power. Yet the third part still served to hold him,
used with knowledge and a cold and competent economy. He resented it,
resisted it over and over again; and over and over again it conquered
resentment and resistance. It had something to do with her subtle,
sloping lines, with her blackness and her sallow whiteness, with the
delicate scent and the smoothness of her skin under the sliding hand. He
couldn't touch her without still feeling a sort of pity, a sort of
affection.

But she could take and give caresses while she removed her soul from him
in stubborn rancour.

He couldn't understand that. It amazed him every time. He thought it
horrible. For Nicky's memory was faithful. It still kept the impression
of the Desmond he had married, the tender, frightened, helpless Desmond
he had thought he loved. The Desmond he remembered reminded him
of Veronica.

And Desmond said to herself, "He's impossible. You can't make any
impression on him. I might as well be married to a Moving Fortress."

       *       *       *       *       *

Months passed. The War Office had not yet given up Nicky's model of the
Moving Fortress. In the first month it was not aware of any letter or of
any parcel or of any Mr. Nicholas Harrison. In the second month
inquiries would be made and the results communicated to Captain Drayton.
In the third month the War Office knew nothing of the matter referred to
by Captain Drayton.

Drayton hadn't a hope. "We can't get it back, Nicky," he said.

"I can," said Nicky, "I can get it back out of my head."

All through the winter of nineteen-eleven and the spring of
nineteen-twelve they worked at it together. They owned that they were
thus getting better results than either of them could have got alone.
There were impossibilities about Nicky's model that a gunner would have
seen at once, and there were faults in Drayton's plans that an engineer
would not have made. Nicky couldn't draw the plans and Drayton couldn't
build the models. They said it was fifty times better fun to work at
it together.

Nicky was happy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Desmond watched them sombrely. She and Alfred Orde-Jones, the painter,
laughed at them behind their backs. She said "How funny they are! Frank
wouldn't hurt a fly and Nicky wouldn't say 'Bo!' to a goose if he
thought it would frighten the goose, and yet they're only happy when
they're inventing some horrible machine that'll kill thousands of people
who never did them any harm." He said, "That's because they haven't any
imagination."

Nicky got up early and went to bed late to work at the Moving Fortress.
The time between had to be given to the Works. The Company had paid him
fairly well for all his patents in the hope of getting more of his
ideas, and when they found that no ideas were forthcoming they took it
out of him in labour. He was too busy and too happy to notice what
Desmond was doing.

One day Vera said to him, "Nicky, do you know that Desmond is going
about a good deal with Alfred Orde-Jones?"

"Is she? Is there any reason why she shouldn't?"

"Not unless you call Orde-Jones a reason."

"You mean I've got to stop it? How can I?"

"You can't. Nothing can stop Desmond."

"What do you think I ought to do about it?"

"Nothing. She goes about with scores of people. It doesn't follow that
there's anything in it."

"Oh, Lord, I should hope not! That beastly bounder. What _could_ there
be in it?"

"He's a clever painter, Nicky. So's Desmond. There's that in it."

"I've hardly a right to object to that, have I? It's not as if I were a
clever painter myself."

But as he walked home between the white-walled gardens of St. John's
Wood, and through Regent's Park and Baker Street, and down the north
side of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, he worried the thing
to shreds.

There couldn't be anything in it.

He could see Alfred Orde-Jones--the raking swagger of the tall lean body
in the loose trousers, the slouch hat and the flowing tie. He could see
his flowing black hair and his haggard, eccentric face with its seven
fantastic accents, the black eyebrows, the black moustache, the high,
close-clipped side whiskers, the two forks of the black beard.

There couldn't be anything in it.

Orde-Jones's mouth was full of rotten teeth.

And yet he never came home rather later than usual without saying to
himself, "Supposing I was to find him there with her?"

He left off coming home late so that he shouldn't have to ask himself
that question.

He wondered what--if it really did happen--he would do. He wondered what
other men did. It never occurred to him that at twenty-two he was young
to be considering this problem.

He rehearsed scenes that were only less fantastic than Orde-Jones's face
and figure, or that owed their element of fantasy to Orde-Jones's face
and figure. He saw himself assaulting Orde-Jones with violence, dragging
him out of Desmond's studio, and throwing him downstairs. He wondered
what shapes that body and those legs and arms would take when they got
to the bottom. Perhaps they wouldn't get to the bottom all at once. He
would hang on to the banisters. He saw himself simply opening the door
of the studio and ordering Orde-Jones to walk out of it. Really, there
would be nothing else for him to do but to walk out, and he would look
an awful ass doing it. He saw himself standing in the room and looking
at them, and saying, "I've no intention of interrupting you." Perhaps
Desmond would answer, "You're not interrupting us. We've finished all
we had to say." And _he_ would walk out and leave them there.
Not caring.

He wondered if _he_ would look an awful ass doing it.

In the end, when it came, he hadn't to do any of these things. It
happened very quietly and simply, early on a Sunday evening after he had
got back from Eltham. He had dined with Drayton and his people on
Saturday, and stayed, for once, over-night, risking it.

Desmond was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, with her thin legs in
their grey stockings slanting out in front of her. She propped her chin
on her hands. Her thin, long face, between the great black ear-bosses,
looked at him thoughtfully, without rancour.

"Nicky," she said, "Alfred Orde-Jones slept with me last night."

And he said, simply and quietly, "Very well, Desmond; then I shall leave
you. You can keep the flat, and I or my father will make you an
allowance. I shan't divorce you, but I won't live with you."

"Why won't you divorce me?" she said.

"Because I don't want to drag you through the dirt."

She laughed quietly. "Dear Nicky," she said, "how sweet and like you.
But don't let's have any more chivalrous idiocy. I don't want it. I
never did." (She had forgotten that she had wanted it very badly once.
But Nicky did not remind her of that time. No matter. She didn't want it
now). "Let's look at the thing sensibly, without any rotten sentiment.
We've had some good times together, and we've had some bad times. I'll
admit that when you married me you saved me from a very bad time.
That's no reason why we should go on giving each other worse times
indefinitely. You seem to think I don't want you to divorce me. What
else do you imagine Alfred came for last night? Why we've been trying
for it for the last three months.

"Of course, if you'll let _me_ divorce _you_ for desertion, it would be
very nice of you. That," said Desmond, "is what decent people do."

He went out and telephoned to his father. Then he left her and went back
to his father's house.

Desmond asked the servant to remember particularly that it was the
fifteenth of June and that the master was going away and would not come
back again.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Nicky walked up the hill and across the Heath, he wondered why it had
happened, and why, now that it had happened, he cared so little. He
could have understood it if he hadn't cared at all for Desmond. But he
had cared in a sort of way. If she had cared at all for him he thought
they might have made something of it, something enduring, perhaps, if
they had had children of their own.

He still couldn't think why it had happened. But he knew that, even if
he had loved Desmond with passion, it wouldn't have been the end of him.
The part of him that didn't care, that hadn't cared much when he lost
his Moving Fortress, was the part that Desmond never would have
cared for.

He didn't know whether it was outside him and beyond him, bigger and
stronger than he was, or whether it was deep inside, the most real part
of him. Whatever happened or didn't happen it would go on.

How could he have ended _here_, with poor little Desmond? There was
something ahead of him, something that he felt to be tremendous and
holy. He had always known it waited for him. He was going out to meet
it; and because of it he didn't care.

And after a year of Desmond he was glad to go back to his father's
house; even though he knew that the thing that waited for him was
not there.

Frances and Anthony were happy again. After all, Heaven had manipulated
their happiness with exquisite art and wisdom, letting Michael and
Nicholas go from them for a little while that they might have them again
more completely, and teaching them the art and wisdom that would
keep them.

Some day the children would marry; even Nicky might marry again. They
would prepare now, by small daily self-denials, for the big renunciation
that must come.

Yet in secret they thought that Michael would never marry; that Nicky,
made prudent by disaster, wasn't really likely to marry again. John
would marry; and they would be happy in John's happiness and in
John's children.

And Nicky had not been home before he offered to his parents the
spectacle of an outrageous gaiety. You would have said that life to
Nicholas was an amusing game where you might win or lose, but either way
it didn't matter. It was a rag, a sell. Even the preceedings, the
involved and ridiculous proceedings of his divorce, amused him.

It was undeniably funny that he should be supposed to have deserted
Desmond.

Frances wondered, again, whether Nicky really had any feelings, and
whether things really made any impression on him.



XVI

It was a quarter past five on a fine morning, early in July. On the
stroke of the quarter Captain Frank Drayton's motor-car, after exceeding
the speed limit along the forlorn highway of the Caledonian Road, drew
up outside the main entrance of Holloway Gaol. Captain Frank Drayton was
alone in his motor-car.

He had the street all to himself till twenty past five, when he was
joined by another motorist, also conspicuously alone in his car. Drayton
tried hard to look as if the other man were not there.

The other man tried even harder to look as if he were not there himself.
He was the first to be aware of the absurdity of their competitive
pretences. He looked at his watch and spoke.

"I hope they'll be punctual with those doors. I was up at four o'clock."

"I," said Drayton, "was up at three."

"I'm waiting for my wife," said the other man.

"I am _not_," said Drayton, and felt that he had scored.

The other man's smile allowed him the point he made.

"Yes, but my wife happens to be Lady Victoria Threlfall."

The other man laughed as if he had made by far the better joke.

Drayton recognized Mr. Augustin Threlfall, that Cabinet Minister made
notorious by his encounters with the Women's Franchise Union. Last year
Miss Maud Blackadder had stalked him in the Green Park and lamed him by
a blow from her hunting-crop. This year his wife, Lady Victoria
Threlfall, had headed the June raid on the House of Commons.

And here he was at twenty minutes past five in the morning waiting to
take her out of prison.

And here was Drayton, waiting for Dorothea, who was not his wife yet.

"Anyhow," said the Cabinet Minister, "we've done them out of their
Procession."

"What Procession?"

All that Drayton knew about it was that, late last night, a friend he
had in the Home Office had telephoned to him that the hour of Miss
Dorothea Harrison's release would be five-thirty, not six-thirty as the
papers had it.

"The Procession," said the Cabinet Minister, "that was to have met 'em
at six-thirty. A Car of Victory for Mrs. Blathwaite, and a bodyguard of
thirteen young women on thirteen white horses. The girl who smashed my
knee-cap is to be Joan of Arc and ride at the head of 'em. In armour.
Fact. There's to be a banquet for 'em at the Imperial at nine. We can't
stop _that_. And they'll process down the Embankment and down Pall Mall
and Piccadilly at eleven; but they won't process here. We've let 'em out
an hour too soon."

A policeman came from the prison-yard. He blew a whistle. Four taxi-cabs
crept round the corner furtively, driven by visibly hilarious
chauffeurs.

"The triumphant procession from Holloway," said the Cabinet Minister,
"is you and me, sir, and those taxi-cabs."

On the other side of the gates a woman laughed. The released prisoners
were coming down the prison-yard.

The Cabinet Minister cranked up his engine with an unctuous glee. He was
boyishly happy because he and the Home Secretary had done them out of
the Car of Victory and the thirteen white horses.

The prison-gates opened. The Cabinet Minister and Drayton raised their
caps.

The leaders, Mrs. Blathwaite and Angela Blathwaite and Mrs.
Palmerston-Swete came first. Then Lady Victoria Threlfall. Then
Dorothea. Then sixteen other women.

Drayton did not look at them. He did not see what happened when the
Cabinet Minister met his wife. He did not see the sixteen other women.
He saw nothing but Dorothea walking by herself.

She had no hat on. Her clothes were as the great raid had left them, a
month ago. Her serge coat was torn at the breast pocket, the
three-cornered flap hung, showing the white lining. Another
three-cornered flap hung from her right knee. She carried her small,
hawk-like head alert and high. Her face had the incomparable bloom of
youth. Her eyes shone. They and her face showed no memory of the
prison-cell, the plank-bed, and the prison walls; they showed no sense
of Drayton's decency in coming to meet her, no sense of anything at all
but of the queerness, the greatness and the glory of the world--of him,
perhaps, as a part of it. She stepped into the car as if they had met by
appointment for a run into the country. "I shan't hurt your car. I'm
quite clean, though you mightn't think it. The cells were all right
this time."

He disapproved of her, yet he adored her.

"Dorothy," he said, "do you want to go to that banquet?"

"No, but I've got to. I must go through with it. I swore I'd do the
thing completely or not at all."

"It isn't till nine. We've three whole hours before we need start."

"What are you going to do with me?"

"I'm going to take you home first. Then I suppose I shall have to drive
you down to that beastly banquet."

"That won't take three and a half hours. It's a heavenly morning. Can't
we do something with it?"

"What would you like to do?"

"I'd like to stop at the nearest coffee-stall. I'm hungry. Then--Are you
frightfully sleepy?"

"Me? Oh, Lord, no."

"Then let's go off somewhere into the country." They went.

       *       *       *       *       *

They pulled up in a green lane near Totteridge to finish the buns they
had brought with them from the coffee-stall.

"Did you ever smell anything like this lane? Did you ever eat anything
like these buns? Did you ever drink anything like that divine coffee? If
epicures had any imagination they'd go out and obstruct policemen and
get put in prison for the sake of the sensations they'd have
afterwards."

"That reminds me," he said, "that I want to talk to you. No--but
seriously."

"I don't mind how seriously you talk if I may go on eating."

"That's what I brought the buns for. So that I mayn't be interrupted.
First of all I want to tell you that you haven't taken me in. Other
people may be impressed with this Holloway business, but not me. I'm not
moved, or touched, or even interested."

"Still," she murmured, "you did get up at three o'clock in the morning."

"If you think I got up at three o'clock in the morning to show my
sympathy, you're mistaken."

"Sympathy? I don't need your sympathy. It was worth it, Frank. There
isn't anything on earth like coming out of prison. Unless it is
going in."

"That won't work, Dorothy, when I know why you went in. It wasn't to
prove your principles. Your principles were against that sort of thing.
It wasn't to get votes for women. You know as well as I do that you'll
never get them that way. It wasn't to annoy Mr. Asquith. You knew Mr.
Asquith wouldn't care a hang. It was to annoy me."

"I wonder," she said dreamily, "if I shall _ever_ be able to stop
eating."

"You can't take me in. I know too much about it. You said you were going
to keep out of rows. You weren't going on that deputation because it
meant a row. You went because I asked you not to go."

"I did; and I should go again tomorrow for the same reason."

"But it isn't a reason. It's not as if I'd asked you to go against your
conscience. Your conscience hadn't anything to do with it."

"Oh, hadn't it! I went because you'd no right to ask me not to."

"If I'd had the right you'd have gone just the same."

"What do you mean by the right?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

"Of course I do. You mean, and you meant that if I'd married you you'd
have had the right, not just to ask me not to, but to prevent me. That
was what I was out against. I'd be out against it tomorrow and the next
day, and for as long as you keep up that attitude."

"And yet--you said you loved me."

"So I did. So I do. But I'm out against that too."

"Good Lord, against what?"

"Against your exploiting my love for your purposes."

"My poor dear child, what do you suppose I wanted?"

She had reached the uttermost limit of absurdity, and in that moment she
became to him helpless and pathetic.

"I knew there was going to be the most infernal row and I wanted to keep
you out of it. Look here, you'd have thought me a rotter if I hadn't,
wouldn't you?

"Of course you would. And there's another thing. You weren't straight
about it. You never told me you were going."

"I never told you I wasn't."

"I don't care, Dorothy; you weren't straight. You ought to have told
me."

"How could I tell you when I knew you'd only go trying to stop me and
getting yourself arrested."

"Not me. They wouldn't have touched me."

"How was I to know that? If they had I should have dished you. And I'd
have stayed away rather than do that. I didn't tell Michael or Nicky or
Father for the same reason."

"You'd have stayed at home rather than have dished me? Do you really
mean that?"

"Of course I mean it. And I meant it. It's you," she said, "who don't
care."

"How do you make that out?"

He really wanted to know. He really wanted, if it were possible, to
understand her.

"I make it out this way. Here have I been through the adventure and the
experience of my life. I was in the thick of the big raid; I was four
weeks shut up in a prison cell; and you don't care; you're not
interested. You never said to yourself, 'Dorothy was in the big raid, I
wonder what happened to her?' or 'Dorothy's in prison, I wonder how
she's feeling?' You didn't care; you weren't interested.

"If it had happened to you, I couldn't have thought of anything else, I
couldn't have got it out of my head. I should have been wondering all
the time what you were feeling; I couldn't have rested till I knew. It
would have been as if I was in prison myself. And now, when I've come
out, all you think of is how you can rag and score off me."

She was sitting beside him on the green bank of the lane. Her hands were
clasped round her knees. One knickerbockered knee protruded through the
three-cornered rent in her skirt; she stared across the road, a long,
straight stare that took no heed of what she saw, the grey road, and
the green bank on the other side, topped by its hedge of trees.

Her voice sounded quiet in the quiet lane; it had no accent of self-pity
or reproach. It was as if she were making statements that had no
emotional significance whatever.

She did not mean to hurt him, yet every word cut where he was sorest.

"I wanted to tell you about it. I counted the days, the minutes till I
could tell you; but you wouldn't listen. You don't want to hear."

"I won't listen if it's about women's suffrage. And I don't want to hear
if it's anything awful about you."

"It is about me, but it isn't awful.

"That's what I want to tell you.

"But, first of all--about the raid. I didn't mean to be in it at all, as
it happens. I meant to go with the deputation because you told me not
to. You're right about that. But I meant to turn back as soon as the
police stopped us, because I hate rows with the police, and because I
don't believe in them, and because I told Angela Blathwaite I wasn't
going in with her crowd any way. You see, she called me a coward before
a lot of people and said I funked it. So I did. But I should have been a
bigger coward if I'd gone against my own will, just because of what she
said. That's how she collars heaps of women. They adore her and they're
afraid of her. Sometimes they lie and tell her they're going in when
their moment comes, knowing perfectly well that they're not going in at
all. I don't adore her, and I'm not afraid of her, and I didn't lie.

"So I went at the tail of the deputation where I could slip out when the
row began. I swear I didn't mean to be in it. I funked it far too much.
I didn't mind the police and I didn't mind the crowd. But I funked being
with the women. When I saw their faces. You world have funked it.

"And anyhow I don't like doing things in a beastly body. Ugh!

"And then they began moving.

"The police tried to stop them. And the crowd tried. The crowd began
jeering at them. And still they moved. And the mounted police horses got
excited, and danced about and reared a bit, and the crowd was in a funk
then and barged into the women. That was rather awful.

"I could have got away then if I'd chosen. There was a man close to me
all the time who kept making spaces for me and telling me to slip
through. I was just going to when a woman fell. Somewhere in the front
of the deputation where the police were getting nasty.

"Then I had to stay. I had to go on with them. I swear I wasn't excited
or carried away in the least. Two women near me were yelling at the
police. I hated them. But I felt I'd be an utter brute if I left them
and got off safe. You see, it was an ugly crowd, and things were
beginning to be jolly dangerous, and I'd funked it badly. Only the first
minute. It went--the funk I mean--when I saw the woman go down. She fell
sort of slanting through the crowd, and it was horrible. I couldn't have
left them then any more than I could have left children in a
burning house.

"I thought of you."

"You thought of me?"

"Yes. I thought of you--how you'd have hated it. But I didn't care. I
was sort of boosted up above caring. The funk had all gone and I was
absolutely happy. Not insanely happy like some of the other women, but
quietly, comfily happy.

"After all, I didn't do anything you _need_ have minded."

"What _did_ you do?" he said.

"I just went on and stood still and refused to go back. I stuck my hands
in my pockets so that I shouldn't let out at a policeman or anything (I
knew you wouldn't like _that_). I may have pushed a bit now and then
with my shoulders and my elbows; I can't remember. But I didn't make one
sound. I was perfectly lady-like and perfectly dignified."

"I suppose you _know_ you haven't got a hat on?"

"It didn't _come_ off. I _took_ it off and threw it to the crowd when
the row began. It doesn't matter about your hair coming down if you
haven't got a hat on, but if your hair's down and your hat's bashed in
and all crooked you look a perfect idiot.

"It wasn't a bad fight, you know, twenty-one women to I don't know how
many policemen, and the front ones got right into the doorway of St.
Stephen's. That was where they copped me.

"But that, isn't the end of it.

"The fight was only the first part of the adventure. The wonderful thing
was what happened afterwards. In prison.

"I didn't think I'd really _like_ prison. That was another thing I
funked. I'd heard such awful things about it, about the dirt, you know.
And there wasn't any dirt in my cell, anyhow. And after the crowds of
women, after the meetings and the speeches, the endless talking and the
boredom, that cell was like heaven.

"Thank God, it's always solitary confinement. The Government doesn't
know that if they want to make prison a deterrent they'll shut us up
together. You won't give the Home Secretary the tip, will you?

"But that isn't what I wanted to tell you about.

"It was something bigger, something tremendous. You'll not believe this
part of it, but I was absolutely happy in that cell. It was a sort of
deep-down unexcited happiness. I'm not a bit religious, but I _know_ how
the nuns feel in their cells when they've given up everything and shut
themselves up with God. The cell was like a convent cell, you know, as
narrow as that bit of shadow there is, and it had nice white-washed
walls, and a planked-bed in the corner, and a window high, high up.
There ought to have been a crucifix on the wall above the plank-bed, but
there wasn't a crucifix. There was only a shiny black Bible on
the chair.

"Really Frank, if you're to be shut up for a month with just one book,
it had better be the Bible. Isaiah's ripping. I can remember heaps of
it: 'in the habitation of jackals, where they lay, shall be grass with
reeds and rushes. And an highway shall be there ... the redeemed shall
walk there: and the ransomed of the Lord shall return with singing into
Zion' ... 'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary;
they shall walk, and not faint.' I used to read like anything; and I
thought of things. They sort of came to me.

"That's what I wanted to tell you about. The things that came to me were
so much bigger than the thing I went in for. I could see all along we
weren't going to get it that way. And I knew we _were_ going to get it
some other way. I don't in the least know how, but it'll be some big,
tremendous way that'll make all this fighting and fussing seem the
rottenest game. That was one of the things I used to think about."

"Then," he said, "you've given it up? You're corning out of it?"

She looked at him keenly. "Are those still your conditions?"

He hesitated one second before he answered firmly. "Yes, those are still
my conditions. You still won't agree to them?"

"I still won't agree. It's no use talking about it. You don't believe in
freedom. We're incompatible. We don't stand for the same ideals."

"Oh, Lord, what _does_ that matter?"

"It matters most awfully."

"I should have thought," said Drayton, "it would have mattered more if
I'd had revolting manners or an impediment in my speech or something."

"It wouldn't, _really_."

"Well, you seem to have thought about a lot of things. Did you ever once
think about me, Dorothy?"

"Yes, I did. Have you ever read the Psalms? There's a jolly one that
begins: 'Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to
war and my fingers to fight.' I used to think of you when I read that. I
thought of you a lot.

"That's what I was coming to. It was the queerest thing of all.
Everything seemed ended when I went to prison. I knew you wouldn't care
for me after what I'd done--you must really listen to this, Frank--I
knew you couldn't and wouldn't marry me; and it somehow didn't matter.
What I'd got hold of was bigger than that. I knew that all this Women's
Suffrage business was only a part of it, a small, ridiculous part.

"I sort of saw the redeemed of the Lord. They were men, as well as
women, Frank. And they were all free. They were all free because they
were redeemed. And the funny thing was that you were part of it. You
were mixed up in the whole queer, tremendous business. Everything was
ended. And everything was begun; so that I knew you understood even when
you didn't understand. It was really as if I'd got you tight, somehow;
and I knew you couldn't go, even when you'd gone."

"And yet you don't see that it's a crime to force me to go."

"I see that it would be a worse crime to force you to stay if you mean
going.

"What time is it?"

"A quarter to eight."

"And I've got to go home and have a bath. Whatever you do, don't make me
late for that infernal banquet. You _are_ going to drive me there?"

"I'm going to drive you there, but I'm not going in with you."

"Poor darling! Did I ask you to go in?"

He drove her back to her father's house. She came out of it burnished
and beautiful, dressed in clean white linen, with the broad red, white
and blue tricolour of the Women's Franchise Union slanting across
her breast.

He drove her to the Banquet of the Prisoners, to the Imperial Hotel,
Kingsway. They went in silence; for their hearts ached too much for
speaking. But in Dorothy's heart, above the aching, there was that queer
exaltation that had sustained her in prison.

He left her at the entrance of the hotel, where Michael and Nicholas
waited to receive her.

Michael and Nicholas went in with her to the Banquet. They hated it, but
they went in.

Veronica was with them. She too wore a white frock, with red, white and
blue ribbons.

"Drayton's a bit of a rotter," Michael said, "not to see you through."

"How can he when he feels like that about it?"

"As if we didn't feel!"