*       *       *       *       *

But that was in the days (they were comparatively innocent) of his first
motor-car. Round that car there really is a light of romance and of
adventure, a glamour that isn't at all the glamour of his opulence. In
those days he did look upon a motor-car mainly as an instrument of
pleasure, and not as a vulgar advertisement of his income. In June, at
any rate, he was still the master of his car and not--as we saw him later
on--its servant. There never was anything like that first fury of his
motoring.

It couldn't last. He was wearing himself out. Those early excesses
exhausted his capacity for pleasure, and when we came to stay with him in
the last two weeks of July we found him apathetic about motoring.

But not about motor-cars. As far as the cars went he had developed into
an incurable motor-maniac. He was never tired of talking about
carburetters, and tyres, and petrol, and garages and gear. He dreamed of
these things at night. Every day he invented some extraordinary
contrivance for increasing speed and lessening friction. He knew all that
was to be known about the different kinds of cars; and he would roll
their names on his tongue--Panhard and Fiat and Daimler and MercГ©dГЁs and
Rolls-Royce, as if the sound of them caressed him like music.

And the first car which he had mastered--it was a comparatively cheap
one, but it wouldn't be fair to say what kind it was, for the poor thing
had gone to pieces under his hand in six months; he had served her, his
chauffeur said, something cruel--that first car had been sold for a
hundred and fifty pounds, and Viola was mourning for it when we came down
in July.

We couldn't think why she mourned, for he had bought another. We supposed
that the new car had broken down, for we were met at Midhurst station by
the local cab proprietor. But we were very soon to know that nothing
had happened to the new car, and that something very serious indeed had
happened to Jimmy.

He had gone mad--you can only call it mad--over his new car.

As soon as we had tea we were taken to see it where it stood in the
coach-house that served as a garage.

It was a magpie car--the first, Jimmy told me, that had appeared down in
that part of the country--white, with black bonnet and black
splashboards, and black leather hood and cushions; so black that its
body, in the matchless purity of its whiteness, staggered you. Anybody,
Jevons said, could have an all-white car, and it wouldn't be noticed any
more than a common taxi-cab. But one magpie in a countless crowd of cars
annihilated all the rest. Lemon colour was good and so was scarlet; but
for effect--for sheer destruction to other automobilists--there was
nothing like a white car with black points. It was, Jimmy said and
Kendal, the chauffeur, said, a perfect car. From their tone you wondered
what you had ever done that you should be allowed to approach and see it
where it stood.

Where it stood, I say. You couldn't see that car doing anything else. It
stood like an immense idol in a temple; and it looked as if all its life
it never had done anything else but stand in its perfection to be stared
at. And by its air of self-consciousness, of majesty, of arrogant power
in repose, you gathered that it knew it was there to be stared at. The
thing was drawn up at the far end of the garage, where no breath could
blow on it, over an open pit. You knew that Kendal, the chauffeur, went
down on a ladder into the pit to examine the secret being of the car; you
knew it and yet it was incredible. You refused to believe that an outrage
to which common cars were subject ever had been or would be perpetrated
on this holy one. You would have said that no spot of mud or dust or rain
had ever lighted on it; it might have descended into the garage out of
heaven for any sign of travel that it showed. It was surrounded by I
know not what atmosphere of consecration and immunity.

So that Norah's first question sounded like a profanity.

"What speed is it?" she said.

It might have been fancy, but I thought that Jevons's face underwent a
change. I certainly saw Kendal the chauffeur looking at it.

"Speed?" he said. "Speed? Well--you _can_ speed her up to sixty miles an
hour if you want to." (He seemed to say, "If she ever is speeded up," or
"You jolly well may want.")

He ran his hand lovingly along the car's white flank as if it were alive
and could respond to the caress.

"She's a beauty," he said.

The chauffeur looked at him again.

"You won't want to knock her about like you did the last one, Mr.
Jevons," he said.

And Jimmy's face expressed a sort of horror.

The chauffeur looked at us then, and, if you can wink without any motion
of the eyelids, he winked. He saw, and he was trying to indicate to us,
the state that Jevons had fallen into.

It was infatuation; it was idolatry; it was the most extraordinary
passion I have ever known a man otherwise sane to be possessed by. You
would have said that that creature with the black-and-white body and the
terrific bowels of machinery had some sinister and magic power over him.
He loved it; he worshipped it; he was afraid of it. And when you think of
how, as the chauffeur said, he had "served" the other car--

Knock her about, indeed! He daren't take her out of the garage for a
fifteen-mile run without agonies of apprehension. He never took her out
at all unless he was certain that it wouldn't rain and that there
wouldn't be any mud or any dust or any wind (I don't know what harm he
thought the wind would do her). Instead of taking her out he would spend
hours in the garage standing still and looking at her, stooping sometimes
to examine her for a spot or a crack on her enamel, but always with
reverence. I believe he never touched her without washing his hands
first.

We had been at Amershott a week and we hadn't been out in that car three
times, though the weather was perfect. Jimmy never could see that it was
perfect enough. If it hadn't rained for two days he was afraid of dust;
if it did rain he was afraid of mud; what he wanted was one light shower
to lay the dust; and when he got it he was afraid of another shower
coming. And on hot days he was afraid the sun might do something. And he
was afraid of _us_ all the time lest we should ask him to take the car
out on a day that wouldn't do.

I do not know how or why he had come to look on that car as his god. It
wasn't, I do believe that it wasn't, because the thing was valuable,
because he had sunk so much capital in that body and those engines (he
had bought the most expensive kind of car you could buy). There was a
sort of romance, a purity in his passion that redeemed it from the taint
of grossness. It was the car's own purity, her unique and staggering
beauty that had captivated him. And mixed with his passion there was the
remorse and terror caused by the memory of his first car, the victim of
his intemperance in motoring. He had evidently said to himself:
"Motor-cars are perishable things. I did for my first beloved by my
excesses. Rather than knock this divinity about I will abstain from
motoring." And the cab-proprietor of Midhurst must have made a fortune
out of Jimmy's abstinence.

The odd thing was that Charlie Thesiger respected it. (He too had come
down for the last fortnight in July.) He was the only one of us who
didn't protest, didn't clamour, didn't try to reason or to laugh Jimmy
out of his insanity. And he went further. He refused to enter the car, to
be taken in it on the few suitable days when Jimmy allowed it to go out.
It was as if he were dominated by some scruple as morbid as his host's
passion. We couldn't account for it at the time, for he liked motoring
excessively, and he couldn't afford it.

I've wondered since whether this wasn't the way Charlie settled with
his conscience, his own sacrifice to decency. He could eat Jimmy's bread
and drink his wine and stay for weeks under his roof, since his
necessity--the necessity of seeing Viola--compelled him, but to profit by
him to that extent, to make use of Jimmy's opulence, was beyond him. His
conscience may have even said to him, "If he loves his motor-car, for
God's sake let him have _that_, at any rate, to himself."

And Viola seemed to share Charlie's scruple. She, too, shrank from using
the new car. And I remember her saying to me one day as we crossed the
courtyard and saw Jimmy, as usual, in the garage, worshipping his car,
"I'm so glad he's got it. I think it makes him happier." As if she had
confessed that it was all he _had_ got; that she was not able to make him
happy any more; and as if, in some day of unhappiness that she saw
coming, it would be a consolation to the poor chap. At any rate, as if
she were not in the least jealous of the power it had over him.

So, that July, Norah and I drove with Jimmy when the car, so to speak,
let him drive it; and Viola walked through the woods and over the downs
with Charlie Thesiger.

We often wondered what they found to talk about.

That wonder, of what Viola could see in Charlie, and how she could endure
for so many hours the burden of his society, was all that Norah had
allowed herself, so far, to express. If she felt any uneasiness she had
not yet confided it to me. As for Jevons, he tolerated him as you only
tolerate a thing that doesn't matter. I think honestly that to both of
them, Charlie, in any serious connection with Viola, was as impossible as
Jevons himself had been to her brother Reggie.

So little did he take him seriously that at the very end of July he went
up to London for the inside of the week (he went by train so as to save
the car) while Charlie was still at the Old Grange.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the week of the international crisis, and European mobilization
was occupying Jimmy's mind to the exclusion of other matters. Still, you
could hardly suppose that it was the crisis that was taking him up to
London. I remember thinking he had run away from Charlie Thesiger,
because he bored him.

He left on Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, and he was to be back on Friday,
the thirty-first, and Charlie was to leave with Norah and me and our
nurse and Baby on the Monday following, when our fortnight was up.

So on Friday afternoon I was a little astonished to find my
sister-in-law, dressed in her town suit of white cloth, drinking tea at
three o'clock before going up to London. She simply stated the fact that
she was going up. Norah had said she might stay in our house and she
hoped I wouldn't mind.

When I suggested that it would surely be nicer for us all to go up
together on Monday she looked at me with a certain long-suffering
expression that she had for me at times, and said that wouldn't suit her,
since she had got to go to-day. She was of course awfully sorry to leave
us, but Norah understood, and Jimmy would look after us very well.

No. She wasn't going up by Midhurst. She was going by Selham.

She rose. I noticed the impatient energy of her little hands as they
knotted her veil under her chin. I looked up her trains and found that
there was none from Selham till four forty-five. I pointed out to her
that there was no hurry; she had missed the two fifty-five, which had
left Selham fifteen minutes ago, and she had an hour to spare even if the
car took half an hour getting to the station. (The day was fine and there
was no dust. Even Jimmy couldn't have objected to her taking the car.)

But she said she hadn't missed the two fifty-five; she wasn't trying for
it; and she wasn't going in the car; it would be wanted to meet Jimmy at
Midhurst Station; and no--no--_no_--she didn't want a cab from Midhurst.
She was going to walk.

I said it was absurd for her to walk four miles on a hot day like this,
and she replied that the day would be cool enough if only I'd keep quiet.
(She was still long-suffering.)

Then of course I said I'd walk with her.

But that was too much for her, and she stamped her foot and said I'd do
nothing of the kind. She didn't want anybody to walk with her.

And when I inquired about her luggage--But I can't repeat what she said
about her luggage!

Then she softened suddenly, as her way was, and kissed Norah, and said I
was a dear, and she was sorry for snapping my head off, but it was all
right. Norah knew all about it. She'd explain.

I can see her standing in the postern doorway and saying these things and
then giving me her hand and holding mine tight, while she shook her head
at me and smiled that little baffling smile that seemed to come up
flickering from her depths of wisdom on purpose to put me in the wrong.

"The trouble with you, Furny," she said, "is that you're much too good."

She went; and we saw her tall, lithe figure swinging up the lane, past
the courtyard and the paddock and the moor.

Then Norah plucked me in by the coat-sleeve as if she thought we oughtn't
to be looking at her. We shut the door on her flight and turned to each
other where we stood on the flagged path before the house.

"What does it mean?" I said.

"It means that she's at the end of her tether."

"The end--?" I think I must have gasped.

"The very end. She can't stand it any longer."

"But," I said, "she--she's got to stand it. After all--"

"There's no good talking that way. She _can't_, and that settles it. I
knew she couldn't, once she got beyond a certain point."

"Do you mean to say," I said, "that she's going to leave him?"

"I--don't--know. I believe--she's going to think about it."

"But--it's out of the question. She mustn't think about it."

"You can't stop her thinking, Wally. She's gone away to think about it
sanely. It's the best thing she can do."

"And you're helping her to get away?"

She was silent for a moment.

"I'm only helping her to think," she said.

I was stern with her. "You're not. You're just helping her to bolt," I
said. "You're conniving at her bolting. You've lent her our house."

"Isn't it better she should come to us?"

"No, it isn't better. I don't like it. And I won't have it. I won't have
you mixed up in it. Do you understand?"

"Dear Wally--there isn't anything to be mixed up in. We'll be back on
Monday; then she'll only be staying with us."

"And till then--?"

"Till then--for Heaven's sake let the poor thing have peace for three
days to think in."

"That's all very well," I said, "but what are we to say to Jimmy when he
comes back this afternoon?"

"You say--you say she's tired of--of Amershott and wants three days in
London to herself.--No, you don't. You don't say anything. You leave it
to me. Vee-Vee said it was to be left to me."

"And _I_ say I won't have you dragged into it. Good Heavens, have you any
idea what you may be let in for, supposing--?"

"Supposing what?"

I couldn't say what. But I don't think I really had supposed
anything--then.

"You needn't suppose things," she said. "Vee-Vee would never let us in.
Look here, Wally--you've got to trust me this time. I'm going to see
Vee-Vee through, and I'm going to see Jimmy through; but I can't do it if
you don't trust me. I can't do it if you interfere."

I said I did trust her, and that God knew I didn't want to interfere, but
was she quite sure she was doing a wise thing?

She said, "Quite sure. Let's go and lie down in the pine-wood till
tea-time. I wonder if Jimmy would mind us going into Midhurst with the
car. We shouldn't hurt it, sitting in it."

We lay out in the pine-wood till we heard the bell for tea, which we
had ordered a little before four, in case Jevons should wire for the
car to meet him by the early afternoon train that got to Midhurst at
four-sixteen.

The table was set as usual in the garden on the lawn in front of the
house.

By four o'clock no wire had come from Jevons; so we knew we needn't
expect him till a later train. He nearly always came by Waterloo and
Petersfield and was met at Midhurst, which gave him his public. But he
might come, as Viola had gone, by Victoria and Horsham and be met
at Selham.

I remember saying, in a startling manner as the idea struck me,
"Supposing he comes by Victoria?"

And Norah said, "What if he does?"

And I, "They might meet at Horsham."

"Why shouldn't they?" she said. "You don't suppose he'll eat her for
running up to town?"

"He might," I said, "think it odd of her."

"Not he. The beauty of Jimmy is that odd things don't seem odd to him. Do
you know where Charlie is?"

I didn't. We had finished tea before either of us had thought of him. We
shouted to him through the open windows of the house, for Charlie had a
habit of mooning about indoors till Viola was ready to walk with him.

No answer came to our summons, but it brought Parker, the butler, out on
to the lawn. He had a slightly surprised and slightly embarrassed look on
his respectable and respectful face, no longer demoralized by Jimmy.

"Were you looking for the Captain, sir?" he said.

I said we were.

Something grave and a little sorrowful came into Parker's embarrassed
look.

"Didn't you know he'd gone, sir?"

I said I didn't even know he was going; and then I saw Norah looking at
me.

Parker was trying not to look at Norah. He began gathering up the
tea-things as if to justify his presence and explain it.

"When did he go?" I said as casually as I could.

"Well, sir--the cab was ordered to catch the four thirty-five from
Midhurst."

Now the four thirty-five from Midhurst is the four forty-five from
Selham, the train that Viola had gone by. We knew this; and Parker knew
that we knew it. That was why, instead of stating outright that Captain
Thesiger had gone by that train, he tried to soften the blow to us by
saying that the cab had been ordered to catch it, and leaving it open to
us to suppose that perhaps, after all, it might have missed it.

"Did he say when he was coming back?" I asked, again casually.

"He isn't coming back, sir," said Parker. "He's took his luggage with him
and all."

"Of course," said Norah. "He's gone to see what they're doing at the War
Office. He said he would."

But I knew and she knew and Parker knew he hadn't--or, if he had, it was
only one of the things he had gone for. Because, if the War Office had
been all that he had in his mind he would have told us, and Viola would
have told us, and they would have gone openly together, instead of
dodging about like two clumsy criminals, one at Midhurst and the other at
Selham.

When Parker had left (he did it very quickly) Norah got on her feet.

She said, "Go and find Kendal and tell him to bring the car around at
once."

I asked her what she was going to do?

"Do?" she flashed at me. She had changed all in a moment into a woman
whom I did not know.

"I'm going to fetch her back," she said. She had wriggled into her coat.
"We'll overtake her before she gets to Selham, if you're quick."

I looked at my watch. It was barely half-past four. Yes, if we were
quick, if we started at once, if we let the new car rip we should
overtake her on the road, or at the station before she could get into
that train with Charlie Thesiger in it. I meant, and Norah's eyes meant,
that we would stop her going with him, if we had to drag her from the
platform.

We ran to the garage to find Kendal. The new car, the superb black and
white creature, stood in the middle of the courtyard, ready to start when
Jimmy's wire came. So far it was all right.

But we had reckoned without Kendal, the chauffeur.

Kendal, absolved from the four-sixteen train at Midhurst, was at his tea
in the servants' hall, and at my summons he came out slowly, munching as
he came. He was visibly outraged at our intrusion on his sacred leisure.
And when he was ordered to start at once for Selham, he refused. There
was no train from Victoria, he said, between the four-four that Mr.
Jevons hadn't come by and the five fifty-two. _If_, Kendal said, he did
come by Victoria, and he always came by Waterloo.

What was the sense, said Kendal, with his mouth full, of going to Selham
when we hadn't got a wire?

The sense of it, Norah told him, was that we had a message--an important
message--for Mrs. Jevons, which she _must_ get before she started.

At this Kendal left off munching and looked at my wife. Even in my
eagerness I was struck by the singular intelligence of that look. There
was nothing covert in it. On the contrary it was a most straightforward
and transparent look. Kendal's knowledge--which might have sought cover
if you had hunted it--had come out to meet ours on equal terms.

It only lasted for the fraction of a second. Kendal repeated firmly, but
this time respectfully, that she was Mr. Jevons's car and he couldn't
take her out without Mr. Jevons's orders, for if he did Mr. Jevons would
give him the sack.

To which Norah replied that Mr. Jevons would give him the sack if he
didn't, or if he made us miss that train by arguing. I told him sternly
to look sharp. He looked it and we got off. I had begun to crank up the
car myself while I spoke.

But he had wasted three minutes of our valuable fifteen. Though on the
open road we speeded up the car to her sixty miles an hour, we had to
slow down in the narrow lanes. Once we were held up by a country cart,
and once by cows in our track, and Norah was beside herself at each halt.

As we careened into the station yard I thought that my wife would have
hurled herself out of the car.

The station-master stood by the booking-office door. He had an ominous
air of leisure. And when he saw us coming he looked at his watch.

He told us that we had missed the train by three minutes (the three
minutes that Kendal had wasted).

I had jumped out of the car and was telling Kendal that it was all his
fault, and that if he'd done what he was told we should have caught the
train, when he turned on me as only a chauffeur convicted of folly can
turn.

"Stand away from the car, sir," he shouted. He jerked her nose round with
the savage energy of a chauffeur in the wrong; he seemed to impart his
own fury to the car. She snorted and screamed as he backed her and drove
her forward and backed her again.

And again he shouted to me. "You get in, sir, if you don't want to be
left be'ind."

As he seemed to be animated chiefly by the fear of Jevons (whom, by the
way, he adored), we could only suppose that his idea was to fly back to
Amershott in time for Jimmy's wire.

On the high road past the station he took the wrong turn.

_I_ shouted then, "What do you think you're doing, you confounded fool?"

"Ketch the London train at 'Orsham, sir," said Kendal. And he grinned.

"You can't do it," we said.

"I'll 'ave a try," said Kendal.

His honour as a chauffeur was at stake. His blood was up. His knowledge
had begun to work in him and he adored his master. He knew what he was
trying to do.

We could do it if we kept our heads; if we exceeded the speed limit; if
we had luck; if we didn't break down; if neither the county constabulary
nor the country traffic held us up.

Kendal declared we could do it easily and allow for accidents. At Horsham
Junction you have nearly half an hour to wait between the arrival of the
Midhurst and Selham train and the departure of the London express. And
the local trains take more than half an hour to get from Selham to
Horsham. At a pinch you could speed the car up to the limit of the local
train. And, as we had to allow for accidents, we did speed her up
whenever we saw a clean track before us.

The run to Selham was nothing to it. It was as if we were racing the
train with its three minutes start, as if, positively, we might overtake
it at any of the intermediate stations, as if it were in this hope that
we dashed up the long white slope to Petworth.

The heat of the day gathered over our heads and smouldered in the east.

And as we ran I realized at last why we were running and what the race
was and the hunt, and what our quarry. I remembered that other slower
chase that was yet so keen and so agonizing; that hunting down of the
same tender flesh and blood, over the Channel and across a foreign
country. That was bad enough; but it was not like this. For then I was
alone in my hunting of Viola; there was nobody but me, who loved her, to
see her run to earth and caught crouching in her corner. That she would
crouch, this time, and hide herself, I had no doubt. This hunt that I
shared with her sister and her servant was abominable to me and shameful.
And between the shame of that flight of hers and this flight there was no
comparison. You don't go looking at belfries with Charlie Thesiger. I
could not reconcile that enchanting and enchanted Viola of the garden of
Bruges with this dreadful flying figure.

I hated myself; I hated Kendal, the chauffeur, as I sat behind his tight,
efficient body that quivered with the fury of the hunt. (To think that
_his_ blood should be up and against Viola!) I hated the car that seemed
more than ever a living thing, that breathed and snorted and vibrated
with the same passion, and was endowed with this incredible speed and
this superhuman power. With its black nose and white flanks, and its
black hood and the black wings of its splash-boards, it was some terrible
and sinister and malignant monster of prey hunting down Viola. Its body
had been built, its engines had been forged, to hunt down Viola. The
infernal thing had been invented to hunt down Viola.

Somewhere between Petworth and Fittleworth Kendal stopped to water his
engine. It was then that we noticed how the gathering heat was piled into
a bank of cloud over the east. At the back of our necks we could feel a
little hot puff of wind that came up from the west.

"Shouldn't wonder if there was a storm," said Kendal. He added, with the
ghost of a grin, "If Mr. Jevons sees that cloud, sir, he'll not wire to
be met at Midhurst. He'd crawl home on his 'ands and knees first."

He slipped into his seat and we dashed on.

At Fittleworth, within a stone's-throw of the railway and the road, there
is a patch of moor where the ground rises in a hillock. In July and
August when the heather's out this hillock is a crimson landmark above
the water meadows.

When we came within sight of it Kendal suddenly slowed down, then jammed
his brakes hard, and with an awful grinding and snorting the car came to
a stand-still.

Kendal stood up. He muttered something about being blowed. Then he
turned.

"Got the glasses there, sir?"

I found the glasses, but I didn't give them to Kendal. I stood up too and
looked through them.

I couldn't see anything at first.

"There, sir," said Kendal, pointing. "No. You're looking too much to the
left. You got to get right o' thet sandy patch--against thet there clump
of heather. Now d'you see, sir?"

I did.

Kendal had made out with the naked eye a figure, the figure of a woman,
seated on the hillside, a white figure that showed plainly against the
red background of the heather.

"It's Mrs. Jevons, sir," he stated.

It was.

I could see her quite distinctly through the field-glasses. She was
sitting on the clump of heather to the right of the sandy patch, settled
and motionless, in the attitude of one who waited at her ease, with hours
before her. And she was alone.

We went on as far as we could towards the moor. Norah and I left the car
and struck across the moor by the sandy track that led to the bare patch
and the clump of heather.

The seated figure must have been aware of us from the first moment of our
approach. You couldn't miss that black and white car as it charged along
the highway, or as it stood now, with its engines still humming, by the
roadside. But the figure remained seated in its attitude of waiting. It
waited while we crossed the moor; and as we climbed the hillock we became
intensely aware of it and of its immobility.

We saw its face fixed on us with an expression of tranquil patience and
expectation. I may say that I felt an intolerable embarrassment before
this quietness of the hunted thing that we had run to earth; especially
as it was on me, and not Norah, that Viola's face was fixed as we came
nearer.

Then she smiled at me; there was neither conciliation nor defiance
in her smile, but a sort of serene assurance and--yes, it was
unmistakable--contempt.

She said, "Whatever do you think you're doing _now_?"

I said we might not know what we were doing, but we knew what we were
going to do. We were going to take her back with us in the car.

At that she asked us (but without any sign of perturbation) if we had got
Jimmy there?

Norah said No, our idea was to run back to Amershott before Jimmy got
there.

"Where were you running to when you saw me sitting up here?" she said.

I said we'd meant to catch her at Selham but we missed the train and were
trying to get to Horsham before the London train started.

She was looking at me now with a sort of compassion, the tenderness of
her contempt.

"I see," she said. "You _were_ clever, weren't you?"

She looked at her watch. "Well, as you _are_ here," she said, "I'd let
you run me down to Horsham, if you want a run, only I can't very well use
Jimmy's car."

I think it was Norah who asked her what on earth she was doing at
Fittleworth.

"Can't you see," she said, "that I'm waiting for the next train?"

"Did you walk here from Amershott, or what?" I said.

She said, "Rather not. I was in the train."

Then Norah said, "What happened?"

It had dawned on us both how odd it was that Viola should be here,
apparently alone, at Fittleworth. It was also odd how we were all
ignoring Charlie. I believe I had a sort of idea that she had got him
hidden somewhere in the landscape.

Viola smiled a reminiscent smile. "If you _must_ know," she said, "what
happened was that Charlie was in that train, too--he came bursting out on
to the platform at Selham, awfully pleased with himself, because he'd
picked my luggage up at Midhurst and bagged a corner seat for me, and
made faces at people to keep them out."

"Did you know he was going up to town?" I said.

"No, of course I didn't. He didn't know it himself. There was no reason
why he shouldn't go. And you'd have thought there was no reason why we
shouldn't go together. He was all right till we got to Petworth. But
after that he lost his head and made such an ass of himself that I had to
get out here and make him go on by himself. Silly idiot!"

We were sitting in the heather, one on each side of her, and I saw my
wife slip her arm into hers and hug it to her.

"Did _you_ know," she said, "that Charlie'd gone?"

We didn't answer. We simply couldn't.

And then Viola said, "Poor little Norah!"

And she told her to run away for ten minutes while she talked to me.

"Why poor little Norah?" I asked when we were alone.

"Because," she said, "you frightened her."

"I? Frightened her?"

"Yes," she said. "You made her think I was going to run away with
Charlie. There's no good trying to look as if you didn't. You're quite
awful, Furny, in the things you think. You can't help it, I know. You're
so good, so shockingly good, and you can't bear other people to be
naughty. You thought I'd run away to Belgium with Jimmy and you came
rushing after me and fetched me back. You thought I'd run away with
Charlie and you came rushing--in your dreadful rectitude, and in Jimmy's
motor-car that he won't let anybody look at. You'll have an awful time
with Jimmy when you get back. It's going to rain, and there'll be mud on
the car, and he'll dance with rage when he sees it. And he won't think
it's any excuse if you tell him you thought I was running away with
Charlie, and you took the car to fetch me back; he'll say you'd no
business to think it and in any case you'd no business to take the car
out. And poor Kendal will be sacked.

"That's all you've done," she said, "by your fussy interference."

She went on. "It wouldn't matter what you think about me--but it was
beastly of you to go and make Norah think it."

I said I didn't suppose either of us thought anything, except that since
she was going up to town with the idea of leaving her husband, it was not
desirable that she should go up with Charlie Thesiger.

"Who could possibly have supposed," she said, "that Charlie would be such
an ass?"

I said I for one could.

"Oh, you--haven't I told you you're always supposing things?"

"Surely?" I said, "you must have seen--yourself--"

She smiled. "My dear--I couldn't see anything but poor Jimmy."

"And yet," I said, "you could think of leaving him?"

She moaned. "You fool--you fool--that's _why_ I'm thinking of it."

She pressed her hands to her eyes as if she shut back the sight of him.

"You aren't thinking of it," I said. "You haven't left him. You've only
been for a good long walk to Fittleworth, and we've come to fetch you
back in the car."

"Haven't I told you that I can't and won't use Jimmy's car?"

"You can't use it to run away from him in; but you can very well use it
to go back to him."

"I'm not going back to him," she said. "Can't you see that I've burnt my
boats?"

"You may have burnt the old ones, Viola," I said. "But you can build
new."

"You must give me time, Wally. It'll take a long time. And you don't
understand me. I _want_ to get away from Jimmy. That's why I'm going away
now, while he isn't there. That's what I mean by burning my boats.
If I go back to him--if I see him--I shall never get away. I shan't have
the courage. I shall just crumple up with the first sight of him--with
the first word he says--"

"Why not," I said, "crumple up?"

She lifted her head as I had seen her lift it before.

"Because," she said, "I wish to be straight."

I asked her if running away behind Jimmy's back was her idea of
straightness? To which she replied that _my_ rectitude was excruciating
and that I'd twist anything to a moral purpose, but it was twisting all
the same. Couldn't I see that _the_ awful thing would be to come sneaking
back and pretend to Jimmy that she hadn't run away from him?--If that was
my idea of straightness she was sorry for me.

I said, "My dear child, you must see that running away by yourself is one
thing, and running away with Charlie Thesiger is another. It would be all
very well if Charlie hadn't got into that train."

She wanted to know what that mattered when she had got out of the train?
I suggested that the people who saw Charlie get in hadn't seen her get
out, and that she must look at the thing as it appeared to other people.

"Look," I said, "at the facts. Mrs. Jevons walks to Selham Station for
the London train. Captain Thesiger joins her there, presumably by
pre-arrangement, leaving by Midhurst station so that they may not be seen
going away together. She is, however, seen entering his compartment at
Selham. At Fittleworth she is seized with prudence and with panic. She is
seen getting out on to the platform. And she is seen two hours later
following the Captain up to London by the next train."

She seemed to be considering it.

"How many people," she said, "know that Charlie was in that train? People
that matter--I don't mean you and Norah."

"Your butler, your parlourmaid, your housemaid, your cook, your
gardener--by this time--and Baby's nurse--"

("And Baby," she interrupted.)

"--The guard of the train, the booking clerks and porters at Midhurst and
Selham, and the station-masters at Midhurst and Selham and Petworth
(probably) and Fittleworth. Quite a number of important people, to say
nothing of Kendal, who is perhaps the most important of them all."

"And who was it who brought Kendal into it?"

I was silent.

"Nobody but you, Furny, or a born fool, would have dreamed of bringing
Kendal in."

I said that a little reflection would show her that it was impossible to
keep him out. To this she said, "Please go and find Norah. I want her."

I found Norah. I warned her that Viola was going to be extremely
difficult. She said it would be all right if I left Viola to her.

As we approached, Viola turned to her sister with an air of outraged and
long-suffering dignity.

"Norah," she said. "I do wish you would make Wally see what an ass he's
making of himself."

My wife said, in her admirable, judicial way, "How an ass?"

"Well--trying to make me go back and bringing Kendal out here to fetch
me. He doesn't seem to see that if I do go back with him it'll be as good
as proclaiming to everybody that I ran away with Charlie and was found
out by my clever brother-in-law who tracked me down in my husband's
motor-car and brought me back in it. Whereas, if I go quietly on to
London, as I meant to and as everybody knows I meant to, it'll be all
right."

"It won't," I said, "as long as Charlie's there. It will be if you come
home with us in the car now, and go up to town with Norah and me on
Monday."

"I've told you," she said wearily, "that I can't go back because I shall
never get away if I do. And I _must_--I must--and I will."

"Yes, dear, and you shall," my wife said, as if she were humouring
somebody who was mad.

But for a mad woman Viola, I must say, was extraordinarily lucid.

"What excuse did you give to Kendal for following me in this way?"

"We told him we had an important message to give you before you started."

"Important message! That was pretty thin. I'd have thought of something
cleverer than that if I'd been you. You _are_ a precious pair of
conspirators. Can't you see that it's you--with your ridiculous
suspicions--that have given me away?"

Norah answered her.

"Oh, Vee-Vee," she said, "we hadn't any suspicions. The message was to
tell you that Charlie was in the train. We knew you didn't know it."

To this Viola said coldly, "Walter didn't."

I tried to reassure her, but she waved me away with her hands and
implored me to "let her think."

"Well," she said presently, "it isn't as bad as you've tried to make it,
even with Kendal thrown in. You came rushing after me to give me a
message, and you _have_ given me a message, and now you'll go and tell
Kendal that it's all right, and thank him nicely for catching me up, and
_you_ rush home again, and I go on quietly to London by the next train."

"Yes, dear," said Norah. "And I'm going up with you while Wally rushes
home and follows with Nurse and Baby and the luggage by the morning
train."

"That's all very well," said Viola, "but who explains to Jimmy?"

"Oh," said my wife, "Wally does that. You can trust him. Besides you
haven't got to explain things to Jimmy."

Well, we settled it that way. It was the only possible solution. The more
she thought of it, Viola said, the more she liked it. And she rubbed it
into me that it was Norah's solution, and not mine.

Her last words to me as I saw them off at Fittleworth Station were that I
needn't worry. It was going to rain. And when poor Jimmy saw his car come
in all splashed with rain and covered with mud--"It won't be me," she
said, "you'll have to explain about."

And it wasn't.

The storm came down just as we were leaving Fittleworth, and we brought
that car back in an awful state. You wouldn't have known it had ever been
a black-and-white car. And Jevons (in a mackintosh) was waiting for me in
the lane by the courtyard gates. He had caught the early train, but he
had seen the storm coming and had walked up from Midhurst, and, as I say,
he was waiting for us.

Well--neither Viola nor Norah was with us, and the language, that Jimmy
poured out over me and Kendal recalled all the freshness and the vigour
of his earliest inspirations; it was steeped, you might say, in all the
colours of the sunset; it had flashes of tropic splendour; it was such a
gorgeous specimen of an art in which Kendal dabbled, as he said modestly,
a little himself, that it "fair took the shine out of him." The chauffeur
was prostrated with admiration.

"When Mr. Jevons lays himself out to express himself, sir," he said
to me as we retreated, "he pulls it off what you may call a bleedin'
masterpiece."

I tried to explain about Viola an hour later. But he wouldn't listen to
me. That was all right, he said. He was going to ask us to take her for a
month or so anyhow. It was getting a bit stuffy for her down here.

Then he fixed me with "Did Thesiger go up with her?"

There was no good trying to lie to Jevons, so I said that had been
Thesiger's idea, but Viola hadn't cared much about having him, for she
had got out at Fittleworth and taken Norah on with her.

"I suppose the young ass tried to make love to her. He's fool enough for
anything," said Jimmy. But he reverted. "I still can't see why you took
the car out. Anybody but an idiot would have known it was going to rain."




BOOK III

HIS BOOK




XII


At this period, and even now when I go back to it, I am completely
puzzled by Jevons. Here was a man who professed to understand his wife,
to know what she was feeling and thinking in every moment of her
existence; he would tell you that a man was a fool if he couldn't get the
woman he wanted; and yet, having got her, he didn't seem to know in the
most elementary way how to keep her. He didn't seem to care. He adored
her, and yet he didn't seem to care. I believe he knew that she was
leaving him, that she had left him; and yet, here he was, treating her
departure as if it didn't matter, as if it were the most natural and
reasonable thing in the world, and lashing himself into a fury about his
wretched motor-car. And he was treating the dangerous element in the
case, Charlie Thesiger, as if it didn't matter either; as if it didn't
exist. He must have known we'd taken his car out to bring his wife
back--he knew we wouldn't have touched the beastly thing for anything
short of saving her life or his honour; and yet he had flown into a
passion and sworn at his chauffeur because we'd taken it. He adored his
wife and yet he behaved as if she were of no importance compared with the
god he'd made of his motor-car.

All that evening, I remember, he was absorbed in the solitary problem of
how he could save his god from further outrages. He settled it towards
midnight by saying that he'd buy another car that we could do what we
damn-pleased with--a car that wouldn't matter--that you could take out in
all weathers.

"I'll not have that black-and-white car used as it was used this
afternoon," he said. And after lashing himself up again he ended quite
sweetly by saying, "It's my fault, Furny. I ought to have had two cars
all along."

I said it _would_ be a good plan, if a black-and-white car was only to be
looked at.

He admitted (with a recrudescence of his old childlike innocence) that he
liked looking at it. I've no doubt he said it made him feel something,
but I forget what.

But when the morning came he wouldn't hear of my going. I was to stay out
my fortnight. It was a fine day and the dust was laid; perhaps he could
take me for a spin across the Downs to the coast or somewhere. He'd send
Parker up to town to look after Nurse and Baby and the luggage. He didn't
want, he said, to be left alone.

Oh yes, it was plain to me that he didn't want to be left--that he
couldn't bear it. He was trying to lure me to stay with him by holding
out this prospect of a spin. I have since believed that he would have
agreed to take his car out in almost any weather, if that had been the
only way to keep me. He clung to me desperately, pathetically, as he had
clung nine years ago at Bruges when Viola had left him there. He might,
possibly, this time, have clung to anybody; he was so afraid of being
left alone. I think he felt that loneliness here, in the vast, unfamiliar
landscape that he had invaded, would be as bad as loneliness in Bruges.
He would be abandoned, as he had been then, in a foreign country.

So till Sunday morning I stayed with him.

It was on my last evening, the evening of Saturday, August the first,
that he spoke of Viola.

He asked me if I thought that Norah and I could keep her with us, if
necessary, for--he hesitated--for six months? (It was as if he had given
her six months.) It would, he said, be better.

I said that Norah would be delighted to keep her for any number of
months. But did he think she'd stay?

He said why shouldn't she stay? Of course she'd stay. She was awfully
fond of us and it was the best thing she could do. And it would make it
so much easier for him. He'd feel more comfortable as long as he knew she
was with us.

He spoke as if it were he and not Viola who was leaving.

I said then that though we were glad to have her we couldn't, of course,
accept any responsibility--

He smiled slightly and asked, "For what?"

I said, "Well--" And he answered his own question in the pause I made.

"I suppose you mean for anything she may take it into her head to do?"

I put it to him that Viola's movements were not always exactly
calculable. She might take it into her head to do anything. I really
couldn't answer for her.

"_You_ can't," he said. "But _I_ can. She may go off and look at a belfry
or two." (I should have said that "looking at the belfry" was a phrase
the family had adopted for any queer thing that any of us might do.) "If
there's a belfry anywhere to be seen you may depend upon it she'd want to
look at it."

"Whether," I said, "it's in a dangerous place or not?"

"Whether it's in a dangerous place or not. But I'll trust you to keep her
out of dangerous places. That's rather what I wanted to talk to you
about."

I protested. "There's no good talking about it. I've told you that's just
precisely the responsibility I won't take. And I won't let Norah take it.
If you think there's going to be any danger you must look after your own
wife yourself."

"My dear fellow, how can I look after her if I'm not here?"

"You're as much here as I am," I said. "More so. And she's your wife, not
mine."

I can say now--there's no reason why I shouldn't; it would only amuse
Jimmy if he were to see it written--I can say now that for one awful
moment I suspected Jimmy of meditating an infidelity. Perhaps he was; but
not as we count infidelity.

He ignored what I took to be the essence of the thing.

"We don't know," he said, "where any of us are going to be for the next
four months--or the next four years. I know that _I_ jolly well shan't be
here. What I want to propose is this: that you'll look after Viola and
let her have your house when she wants to be in town; and that you have
this house for yourself and Norah and Baby when you want to be in the
country--just as if it was your own. There'll be that other motor-car you
can have--as if it was your own. You can run up to town in it. And you'll
probably find that the country will be the best place for you. It'll be
much the best place for _them_, and the safest--if you aren't here."

I couldn't see it even then. I said, "My dear chap, why shouldn't I be
here? I certainly mean to be here."

And he considered it and said, "I don't see why not. It's different for
you. You've got a child and I haven't."

I said I couldn't see what Baby had to do with it.

And he replied that a young child was an infernal complication, and that
he was jolly glad he hadn't got one. What Baby had to do with it was to
keep me out of it.

Then I asked him what on earth he was talking about.

He said, "_I'm_ talking about the European conflagration. What are you?"

He had been talking about it all the time, he had been thinking of
nothing but the European conflagration for the last four days. It was the
thing, he said, that he had prophesied nine years ago--didn't I remember?
(Oh yes, I remembered; but then, he was always prophesying something.)
Well then, here it was. And it had come, by God, at the very date he had
given it.

I can see him sitting there in his study at Amershott Old Grange. He was
deadly quiet. Not a gesture came to disturb my sense of his tranquil
triumph in the fulfilment of his prophecy. To say that he enjoyed the
European conflagration because it had proved him so abundantly right
would give a false impression of an extraordinary and complicated state
of mind. There _was_ a sort of exaltation about him (his face positively
shone, as if the European conflagration illuminated it from afar); but it
was a holy and a sacred exaltation, pure from egoism, except that he saw
himself--there's no doubt that already he did see himself--figuring.

I remember saying, as lots of people were saying then, that I didn't
suppose for a moment we should be dragged into it.

"Dragged?" he said. "Dragged? We shall be in it without dragging--in the
very thick."

From the instant the Germans broke into Luxembourg--and he gave them
twenty-four hours--we should be in it. We couldn't keep out with a rag of
honour to our names. France, he declared, would be in to-day. He gave us,
I _think_--but I do not like to say positively that he gave us--three
days; he couldn't have been as dead right as all that.

What struck me then as so extravagantly odd was, not that he had
foreseen the war, and England's part in it, but that he should have
seen himself there, in the thick--blazing away in the very middle of the
conflagration. What on earth Jimmy conceived that _he_ should have to
do with it I couldn't think. And all of a sudden I had a reminiscence of
Jevons as I had seen him nine years ago, talking to Reggie Thesiger in
Viola's rooms at Hampstead, prophesying war, and lamenting that he
wouldn't be in it because he was an arrant coward.

And as I looked at him again I saw that what made his face shine like
that was the sweat that had broken out on it.

Then he made a remark about Charlie Thesiger. Thesiger, he said, knew all
about it. He had gone up--he supposed I knew that?--to offer his services
to the War Office in the event of England's coming in.

That Charlie had used the opportunity of going to make love to Jimmy's
wife didn't seem to bother Jimmy in the least.

Sunday, I remember, was a fine day, with all the dust laid, and Jimmy
made himself lovable by running me up to London in his sacred car. He
still clung--I could see that he clung--to the superstition of its
sanctity.

He left me at my door in Edwardes Square, which he refused to enter. I
think he was afraid of seeing Viola. I thought at the time that this was
because he was aware of her attitude; that he knew she was at the end of
her tether, and that he wanted to be righteously fair, to give her time
to think about leaving him, if she wanted to leave him; that he was
behaving now as he had behaved at Bruges when he stood back and let me
have my innings, and gave her her chance to free herself. And yet I was
puzzled. Even he could hardly stand back to give Thesiger an innings. He
_may_ have had an inkling. There may have been something of his queer,
scrupulous tenderness in this avoidance of her; there may have been his
reckless propensity to take the risk; but I am convinced that even then
his main object was--like Viola--to burn his boats. He was afraid that if
he were to see Viola again he wouldn't be able to go through with it. He
may even have been glad that she had left him, because it had made his
way easier.