"Have you known many other women?"

"One way and another, in the course of my life--yes. And what I liked so
much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me
rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love
with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit.
It was as if they were always expecting something from me--I couldn't
for the life of me tell what--always on the look out, don't you know, for
some mysterious moment that never arrived."

She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with
incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed
to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have
been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable,
mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever
at assigning causes.

He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you
know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly.
Being with you was peace."

"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all."

"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began."

"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me.
I must have seemed to you at peace, then."

"You did--you did. Weren't you?"

"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace
here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?"

"I wish we had. I say--are you never going to forget that?"

"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand."

"Understand _what_?"

"How you could be capable of caring for me--like that--and yet--"

"But the two things are so entirely different. It's impossible to explain
to you how different. Heaven forbid that you should understand the
difference."

"I understand enough to know--"

"You understand enough to know nothing. You must simply take my word for
it. Besides, the one thing's an old thing, over and done with."

"Over and done with. But if the two things are so different, how can you
be sure?"

"That sounds awfully clever of you, but I'm hanged if I know what you
mean."

"I mean, how can you tell that it--the old thing--never would come back?"

It _was_ clever of her. He realised that he had to deal now with a more
complete and complex creature than Anne had been.

"How could it?" he asked.

"If _she_ came back--"

"Never. And if it did--"

"Ah, if it did--"

"It couldn't in this case--my case--your case--"

"Her case--" she whispered.

"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come
back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is _that_ what
you've been afraid of all the time?"

"I never was really afraid till now."

"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head
for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you
should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take
my word for it."

He paused.

"But, since you have raised the question--and it's interesting, too--I
knew a man once--not a 'bad' man--to whom that very thing did happen. And
it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary,
he was still insanely fond of her."

"What did it mean, then?"

"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more
for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way
it was a sort of test."

"I pray heaven--" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the
anecdote to shape her prayer.

Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious
for the exposition, went on.

"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her
still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet
all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have
been as straight as anybody if he could have married her."

"But what does all this prove?"

"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two
things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you
seem to think."

"Did Edie care for that man?"

"I believe so."

"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made
him a sinner."

"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was
uncommonly hard on him."

"Does she know?"

"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows."

"And she loves him in spite of it?"

"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either."

No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace.

Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its
vibrating, sub-passionate note.

"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different."

He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart
of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own
hour, warned him that his hour was not yet.

And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne
Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged
with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland
influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul.
They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the
flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth.

The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above
them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by.




CHAPTER X


"Are you tired?" he asked.

They had walked about the wood, made themselves hungry, and lunched like
labourers at high noon.

"No, I'm only thirsty. Do you think there's a cottage anywhere where you
could get me some water?"

"Yes, there's one somewhere about. I'll try and find it if you'll sit
here and rest till I come back."

She waited. He came back, but without the water. His eyes sparkled with
some mysterious, irrepressible delight.

"Can't you find it?"

"Rather. I say, do come and look. There's such a pretty sight."

She rose and went with him. Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards
from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild
hyacinths. It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that
hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either
side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the
wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks
and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that
sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in
one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for
it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from
their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver.
The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light
till it shone like emerald. A stone cottage faced the path; so small that
a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against
the grey gable of its side. The patch of garden in front was stuffed with
wall-flowers and violets. The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred
in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day.

Majendie grasped Anne's arm and led her forward.

In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in
warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet. She
laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to
the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with
the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body
to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and
began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song.

"Look," said Majendie, "that's what I wanted to show you."

"Oh--oh--oh--" said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still.

The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene. Green
earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and
solitary joy.

"Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?" said Majendie. "That
anything could be so young!"

Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination.

As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and
crawled over the grass to her feet.

"The little lamb--" said she, and stooped, and lifted it.

It turned to her, cuddling. Through the thin muslin of her bodice she
could feel the pressure of its tender palms.

Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess
himself of the delicate clinging fingers. But his eyes were upon
Anne's eyes. They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the
meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze.

A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen
thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast.

At first she did not heed it. She stood hushed, attentive to the
prescience that woke in her; surrendered to the secret, with desire that
veiled itself to meet its unveiled destiny.

Then the veil fell.

The eyes that looked at her grew tender, and before their tenderness the
veil, the veil of her desire that had hidden him from her, fell.

Her face burned, and she hid it against the child's face as it burrowed
into the softness of her breast. When she would have parted the child
from her, it clung.

She laughed. "Release me." And he undid the clinging arms, and took the
child from her, and laid it again in the cradling grass.

"It's conceived a violent passion for you," said he.

"They always do," said she serenely.

The door of the cottage was open. The mother stood on the threshold,
shading her eyes and wondering at them. She gave Anne water, hospitably,
in an old china cup.

When Anne had drunk she handed the cup to her husband. He drank with his
eyes fixed on her over the brim, and gave it to her again. He wondered
whether she would drink from it after him (Anne was excessively
fastidious). To his intense satisfaction, she drank, draining the last
drop.

They went back together to their tree. On the way he stopped to gather
wild hyacinths for her. He gathered slowly, in a grave and happy passion
of preoccupation. Anne stood erect in the path and watched him, and
laughed the girl's laugh that he longed to hear.

It was as if she saw him for the first time through Edith's eyes, with
so tender an intelligence did she take in his attitude, the absurd, the
infantile intentness of his stooping figure, the still more absurdly
infantile emotion of his hands. It was the very same attitude which had
melted Edith, that unhappy day when they had watched him as he walked
disconsolate in the garden, and she, his wife, had hardened her heart
against him. She remembered Edith's words to her not two hours ago:
"If you could only see how unspeakably sacred the human part of us is,
and how pathetic." Surely she saw.

The deep feeling and enchantment of the woods was upon her. He was sacred
to her; and for pathos, it seemed to her that there was poured upon his
stooping body all the pathos of all the living creatures of God.

She saw deeper. In the illumination that rested on him there, she saw the
significance of that carelessness, that happiness of his which had once
troubled her. It was simply that his experience, his detestable
experience, had had no power to harm his soul. Through it all he had
preserved, or, by some miracle of God, recovered an incorruptible
innocence. She said to herself: "Why should I not love him? His heart
must be as pure as the heart of that little blessed child."

The warning voice of the wisdom she had learnt from him whispered: "And
it rests with you to keep him so."

He led her to her tree, where she seated herself regally as before. He
poured his sheaves of hyacinths as tribute into her lap. As his hands
touched hers her cold face flushed again and softened. He stretched
himself beside her and love stirred in her heart, unforbidden, as in a
happy dream. He watched the movements of her delicate fingers as they
played with the tangled hyacinth bells. Her hands were wet with the thick
streaming juice of the torn stalks; she stretched them out to him
helplessly. He knelt before her, and spread his handkerchief on his
knees, and took her hands and wiped them. She let them rest in his for a
moment, and, with a low, panting cry, he bowed his head and covered them
with kisses.

At his cry her lips parted. And as her soul had called to him across the
spiritual ramparts, so her eyes said to him: "Come"; and he knew that
with all her body and her soul she yearned to him and consented.

He held her tight by the wrists and drew her to him; and she laid her
arms lightly on his neck and kissed him.

"I'm glad now," she whispered, "that Edith didn't tell me. She knew you.
Oh, my dear, she knew."

And to herself she said proudly: "It rests with me."




BOOK II




CHAPTER XI


It was October, five months after Anne's birthday. She was not to know
again the mood which determined her complete surrender. Supreme moods can
never be recaptured or repeated. The passion that inspires them is
unique, self-sacrificial, immortal only through fruition; doomed to pass
and perish in its exaltation. She would know tenderness, but never just
that tenderness; gladness, but never that gladness; peace, but never the
peace that possessed her in the woods at Westleydale.

The new soul in her moved steadily, to a rhythm which lacked the diviner
thrill of the impulse which had given it birth. It was but seldom that
the moment revived in memory. If Anne had accounted to herself for that
day, she would have said that they had taken the nine-fifty train to
Westleydale, that they had had a nice luncheon, that the weather was
exceptionally fine, and that well, yes, certainly, that day had been the
beginning of their entirely satisfactory relations. Anne's mind had a
tendency to lapse into the commonplace when not greatly stirred. Happily
for her, she had a refuge from it in her communion with the Unseen.

Only at times was she conscious of a certain foiled expectancy. For the
greater while it seemed to her that she had attained an indestructible
spiritual content.

She conceived a profound affection for her home. The house in Prior
Street became the centre of her earthward thoughts, and she seldom left
it for very long. Her health remained magnificent; her nature being
adapted to an undisturbed routine, appeased by the well-ordered, even
passage of her days.

She had made a household religion for herself, and would have suffered in
departing from it. To be always down before her husband for eight-o'clock
breakfast; to sit with Edith from twelve till luncheon time, and in the
early afternoon; to spend her evenings with her husband, reading aloud or
talking, or sitting silent when silence soothed him; these things had
become more sacred and imperative than her attendance at St. Saviour's.
The hours of even-song struck for her no more.

For, above all, she had made a point of always being at home in time for
Majendie's return from his office. At five o'clock she was ready for him,
beside her tea-table, irreproachably dressed. Her friends complained that
they had lost sight of her. Regularly at a quarter to five she would
forsake the drawing-rooms of Thurston Square. However absorbing Mrs.
Eliott's conversation, towards the quarter, the tender abstraction of
Anne's manner showed plainly that her spirit had surrendered to another
charm. Mrs. Eliott, in letting her go, had the air of a person serenely
sane, indulgent to a persistent and punctual obsession. Anne divided her
friends into those who understood and those who didn't. Fanny Eliott
would never understand. But little Mrs. Gardner, through the immortality
of her bridal spirit, understood completely. And for Anne Mrs. Gardner's
understanding of her amounted to an understanding of her husband. Anne's
heart went out to Mrs. Gardner.

Not that she saw much of her, either. She had grown impatient of
interests that lay outside her home. Once she had decided to give herself
up to her husband, other people's claims appeared as an impertinence
beside that perfection of possession.

She was less vividly aware of her own perfect possession of him. Majendie
was hardly aware of it himself. His happiness was so profound that he had
not yet measured it. He, too, had slipped into the same imperturbable
routine. It was seldom that he kept her waiting past five o'clock. He
hated the people who made business appointments with him for that hour.
His old associates saw little of him, and his club knew him no more.
He preferred Anne's society to that of any other person. They had no more
fear of each other. He saw that she was beginning to forget.

In one thing only he was disappointed. The trembling woman who had held
him in her arms at Westleydale had never shown herself to him again. She
had been called, created, for an end beyond herself. The woman he had
married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance
in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her
reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of
the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an
explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too
sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him when he
thought of her. As for the actual present Anne, loyalty was part of the
large simplicity of his nature, and he could not criticise her.
Remembering Westleydale, he told himself that her blanched susceptibility
was tenderness at white heat. If she said little, he argued that (like
himself) she felt the more. And at times she could say perfect things.

"I wonder, Nancy," he once said to her, "if you know how divinely sweet
your voice is?"

"I shall begin to think it is, if you think so," said she.

"And would you think yourself beautiful, if I thought so?"

"Very beautiful. At any rate, as beautiful as I want to be."

He could not control the demonstration provoked by that admission, and
she asked him if he were coming to church with her to-morrow.

His Nancy chose her moments strangely.

But not for worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in
a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it.
Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and
sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him
during his hours of business.

Anne did not like his business. But, in spite of it, she was proud
of him, of his appearance, his charm, his distinction, his entire
superiority to even the aristocracy of Scale.

She no longer resented his indifference to her friends in Thurston
Square, since it meant that he desired to have her to himself. Of his own
friends he had seen little, and she nothing. If she had not pressed Fanny
Eliott on him, he had spared her Mrs. Lawson Hannay and Mrs. Dick
Ransome. She had been fortunate enough to find both these ladies out when
she returned their calls. And Majendie had spoken of his most intimate
friend, Charlie Gorst, as absent on a holiday in Norway.

It was, therefore, in a mood of more than usual concession that she
proposed to return, now in October, the second advance made to her by
Mrs. Hannay in July.

Majendie was relieved to think that he would no longer be compelled to
perjure himself on Anne's account. The Hannays had frequently reproached
him with his wife's unreadiness in response, and (as he had told her) he
had exhausted all acceptable explanations of her conduct. He had "worked"
her headaches "for all they were worth" with Hannay; for weeks he had
kept Hannay's wife from calling, by the fiction, discreetly presented, of
a severe facial neuralgia; and his last shameless intimation, that Anne
was "rather shy, you know," had been received with a respectful
incredulity that left him with nothing more to say.

Mrs. Hannay was not at home when Anne called, for Anne had deliberately
avoided her "day." But Mrs. Hannay was irrepressibly forgiving, and Anne
found herself invited to dine at the Hannays' with her husband early in
the following week. It was hardly an hour since she had left Mrs.
Hannay's doorstep when the pressing, the almost alarmingly affectionate
little note came hurrying after her.

"I'll go, dear, if you really want me to," said she.

"Well--I think, if you don't mind. The Hannays have been awfully good to
me."

So they went.

"Don't snub the poor little woman too unmercifully," was Edith's parting
charge.

"I promise you I'll not snub her at all," said Anne.

"You can't," said Majendie. "She's like a soft sofa cushion with lots of
frills on. You can sit on her, as you sit on a sofa cushion, and she's as
plump, and soft, and accommodating as ever the next day."

The Hannays lived in the Park.

Majendie talked a great deal on the way there. His supporting and
attentive manner was not quite the stimulant he had meant it to be. Anne
gathered that the ordeal would be trying; he was so eager to make it
appear otherwise.

"Once you're there, it won't be bad, you know, at all. The Hannays are
really all right. They'll ask the very nicest people they know to meet
you. They think you're doing them a tremendous honour, you know, and
they'll rise to it. You'll see how they'll rise."

Mrs. Hannay had every appearance of having risen to it. Anne's entrance
(she was impressive in her entrances) set the standard high; yet Mrs.
Hannay rose. When agreeably excited Mrs. Hannay was accustomed to move
from one end of her drawing-room to the other with the pleasing and
impalpable velocity of all soft round bodies inspired by gaiety. So
exuberant was the softness of the little lady and so voluminous her
flying frills, that at these moments her descent upon her guests appeared
positively winged like the descent of cherubim. To-night she advanced
slowly from her hearth-rug with no more than the very slightest swaying
and rolling of all her softness, the very faintest tremor of her downy
wings. Mrs. Hannay's face was the round face of innocence, the face of
a cherub with blown cheeks and lips shaped for the trumpet.

"My dear Mrs. Majendie--at last." She retained Mrs. Majendie's hand for
the moment of presenting her to her husband. By this gesture she
appropriated Mrs. Majendie, taking her under her small cherubic wing.
"Wallie, how d'you do?" Her left hand furtively appropriated Mrs.
Majendie's husband. Anne marked the familiarity with dismay. It was
evident that at the Hannays' Walter was in the warm lap of intimacy.

It was evident, too, that Mr. Hannay had married considerably beneath
him. Anne owned that he had a certain dignity, and that there was
something rather pleasing in his loose, clean-shaven face. The sharp
slenderness of youth was now vanishing in a rosy corpulence, corpulence
to which Mr. Hannay resigned himself without a struggle. But above it the
delicate arch of his nose attested the original refinement of his type.
His mouth was not without sweetness, Mr. Hannay being as indulgent to
other people as he was to himself.

He received Anne with a benign air; he assured her of his delight in
making her acquaintance; and he refrained from any allusions to the long
delay of his delight.

Little Mrs. Hannay was rolling softly in another direction.

"Canon Wharton, let me present you to Mrs. Walter Majendie."

She had risen to Canon Wharton. For she had said to her husband: "You
must get the Canon. She can't think us such a shocking bad lot if we have
him." Her face expressed triumph in the capture of Canon Wharton, triumph
in the capture of Mrs. Walter Majendie, triumph in the introduction.
Owing to the Hannays' determination to rise to it, the dinner-party, in
being rigidly select, was of necessity extremely small.

"Miss Mildred Wharton--Sir Rigley Barker--Mr. Gorst. Now you all know
each other."

The last person introduced had lingered with a certain charming
diffidence at Mrs. Majendie's side. He was a man of about her husband's
age, or a little younger, fair and slender, with a restless, flushed face
and brilliant eyes.

"I can't tell you what a pleasure this is, Mrs. Majendie."

He had an engaging voice and a still more engaging smile.

"You may have heard about me from your husband. I was awfully sorry to
miss you when I called before I went to Norway. I only came back this
morning, but I _made_ Hannay invite me."

Anne murmured some suitable politeness. She said afterwards that her
instinct had warned her against Mr. Gorst, with his restlessness and
brilliance; but, as a matter of fact, her instinct had done nothing of
the sort, and his manners had prejudiced her in his favour. Fanny Eliott
had told her that he belonged to a very old Lincolnshire family. There
was a distinction about him. And he really had a particularly engaging
smile.

So she received him amiably; so amiably that Majendie, who had been
observing their encounter with an intent and rather anxious interest,
appeared finally reassured. He joined them, releasing himself adroitly
from Sir Rigley Barker.

"How's Edith?" said Mr. Gorst.

His use of the name and something in his intonation made Anne attentive.

"She's better," said Majendie. "Come and see her soon."

"Oh, rather. I'll come round to-morrow. If," he added, "Mrs. Majendie
will permit me."

"Mrs. Majendie," said her husband, "will be delighted."

Anne smiled assent. Her amiability extended even to Mrs. Hannay, who had
risen to it, so far, well.

During dinner Anne gave her attention to her right-hand neighbour, Canon
Wharton; and Mrs. Hannay, looking down from her end of the table, saw her
selection justified. In rising to the Canon she had risen her highest;
for the ex-member hardly counted; he was a fallen star. But Canon
Wharton, the Vicar of All Souls, stood on an eminence, social and
spiritual, in Scale. He had built himself a church in the new quarter of
the town, and had filled it to overflowing by the power of his eloquence.
Lawson Hannay, in a moment of unkind insight, had described the Canon as
"a speculative builder"; but he lent him money for his building, and
liked him none the less.

Out of the pulpit the Vicar of All Souls was all things to all men. In
the pulpit he was nothing but the Vicar of All Souls. He stood there for
a great light in Scale, "holding," as he said, "the light, carrying the
light, battling for light in the darkness of that capital of commerce,
that stronghold of materialism, founded on money, built up in money,
cemented with money!" He snarled out the word "money," and flung it in
the face of his fashionable congregation; he gnashed his teeth over it;
he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in
little Tommy Wharton's pluck in "giving it them hot." He was always
giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire. And then little
Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock,
and into the Hannays' house for whiskey and soda. He could drink peg for
peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned
many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid the whiskey and shook her
handkerchief at the little Canon, and "shooed" him merrily away. And
Lawson, big, good-natured Lawson, would lend him more "money" to build
his church with.

So the Vicar of All Souls, who aspired to be all things to all men, was
hand in glove with the Lawson Hannays. He had occasionally been known to
provide for the tables of the poor, but he dearly loved to sit at the
tables of the rich; and he justified his predilection by the highest
example.

Anne, who knew the Canon by his spiritual reputation only, turned to him
with interest. Her eye, keen to discern these differences, saw at once
that he was a man of the people. He had the unfinished features, the
stunted form of an artisan; his body sacrificed, his admirers said, to
the energies of his mighty brain. His face was a heavy, powerful oval,
bilious-coloured, scarred with deep lines, and cleft by the wide mouth of
an orator, a mouth that had acquired the appearance of strength through
the Canon's habit of bringing his lips together with a snap at the close
of his periods. His eyes were a strange, opaque grey, but the clever
Canon made them seem almost uncomfortably penetrating by simply knitting
his eyebrows in a savage pent-house over them. They now looked forth at
Anne as if the Canon knew very well that her soul had a secret, and that
it would not long be hidden from him.

They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon's catholicity bridged the
gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fashionable
Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning
over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win
over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had
yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying
other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success,
hoping (he said) to see his money back again.

Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie. Ladies,
when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate
decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he
loved his dinner more. He loved it with a certain pure extravagance,
illuminated by thought and imagination. Mrs. Hannay was one with him in
this affection. Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising
higher and higher in unwearying flights. It was a link between them;
almost (so fine was the passion) an intellectual tie. But reticence was
not in Hannay's nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly.
She missed the high lyric note in it. All epicurean pleasures, even so
delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay's in his dinner, appeared gross
to Anne.

Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached,
unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay
rallied him on his abstraction.

"If you _are_ in love, my dear Wallie," she whispered, "you needn't show
it so much. It's barely decent."

"Isn't it? Anyhow, I hope it's quite decently bare," he answered, tempted
by her folly. They were gay at Mrs. Hannay's end of the table. But Anne,
who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance
which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston
Square. These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull.

Now, though Anne didn't in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr.
Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her. Not that he
talked very much to anybody. Now and then the Canon's niece, Mildred
Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in
those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred
and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck
Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their
intercourse.

To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. She tried to be patient with it,
judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen
to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the
Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation.

At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests
to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she
whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint
of filling his master's glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his
protests. And then her voice rose.

"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice
to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're
drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's glass, Gould, fill it--fill it."
She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay.

In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her
to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she
put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs.
Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable
about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa,
and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cushion.
No?--Do--Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay,
supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, "one for
my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I
adore cushions, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cushion
myself, so I suppose that's why."

Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but
she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually
than you could snub a little down cushion. It would be impossible, she
thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface.
Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended
and her vulgarity began.

"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's
attitude. "My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and
I ought to be friends too."

Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning
unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on
the theme of friendship, till her husband appeared with the other three
men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile
drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it
dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it
was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin.

"Did you ever see such a pair? I tell Lawson he's fonder of Wallie than
he is of me. I believe he'd go down on his knees and black his boots for
nothing, if he asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson
I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little
talk with you."

Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her place to him,
cushions and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to
the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his
friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness.

He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty utterance.

"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear
lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint--a Bayard." He
flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the
crescendo of his thought. "A _preux chevalier, sans peur_" said Mr.
Hannay, "_et sans reproche_."

Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence.

Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had
been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife.

And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her
attitude--conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own
shortcomings, and it struck him that Majendie needed some defence against
her judgment of his taste in friendship.

When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last
lingering guest.

"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay.

"_Poor_ Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed.

"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst.

"Oh, I think she's magnificent."

"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?"

"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully.

"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine
it's going to be any gayer now."

"_Now_" said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation
of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville,
with Gwen Richards on."

"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay.

"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no
appetite herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular
dog-in-the-manger of a woman."

"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst. "She can't be as bad as all that.
Edith's awfully fond of her."

"And _that's_ good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay.

"Yes. That's good enough for me. _I_ like her," said Gorst stoutly; and
Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth.

But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated,
"Honestly, I like her."

"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy
forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda.

Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him.

"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she.

"It was a dead failure, Pussy."

"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party."

Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she
did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a
woman of exquisite tact.

"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream--a happy dream."




CHAPTER XII


"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me."

Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and
hostess of the night before.

"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that
she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays.

"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had
not.

"How you ever could--" she began, but he stopped her.

"Oh well, we needn't go into that."

It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind
those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not
wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to
the discussion.

She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble
had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned,
somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She
wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays--detestable people.

She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an
account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into
life.)

"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question.

"No, I don't know that I did. _I_ should have enjoyed it very much
indeed."

"I don't believe you."

"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?"

"The Hannays were there. It was enough."

"You liked Mr. Gorst?"

"Yes. He was different."

"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him."

"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear."

"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy."

"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to
me."

"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a
good friend to him."

"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?"

"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay."

"It's intolerable!" said Anne.

"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike
so much stood by Walter when your friends the Eliotts, my child, turned
their virtuous backs on him--when none of his own people, even, would
lend him a helping hand. It was Lawson Hannay who saved him."

"Saved him?"

"Saved him. Moved heaven and earth to get him out of that woman's
clutches."

Anne shook her head, and put her hands over her eyes to dispel her vision
of him. Edith laughed.

"You can't see Mr. Hannay moving heaven?"

"No, really I can't."

"Well, _I_ saw him. At least, if he didn't move heaven, he moved earth.
When nothing else could shake her hold, he bought her off."

"Bought--her--off?"

"Yes, bought her--paid her money to go. And she went."

"He owes him money, then?"

"Money, and a great many other things beside. You don't like it?"

"I can't bear it."

"Of course you can't. It hurts your pride. It hurt mine badly. But my
pride has had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay."

Anne raised her head as if she refused to lower her pride an inch to him.
She was trying to put the whole episode behind her, as it had come before
her. She had nothing whatever to do with it. Edith, of course, had to be
grateful. _She_ was not bound by the same obligation. But she was
determined that they should be quit of the Hannays. She would make Walter
pay back that money.

Meanwhile Edith's eyes filled with tears at the recollection. "Lawson
Hannay may not have been a very good man himself--I believe at one time
he wasn't. But he loved his friend, and he didn't want to see him going
the same way."

"The same way? That means that, if it hadn't been for Mr. Hannay, he
would never have met her."

"Mr. Hannay did his best to prevent his meeting her. He knew what she
was, and Walter didn't. He took him off in his yacht for weeks at a time,
to get him out of her way. When she followed him he brought him back.
When she persecuted him--well, I've told you what he did."

Anne lifted her hand in supplication, and rose and went to the open
window, as if, after that recital, she thirsted for fresh air. Edith
smiled, in spite of herself, at her sister-in-law's repudiation of the
subject.

"Poor Mr. Hannay," said she, "the worst you can say of him now is that he
eats and drinks a little more than's good for him."

"And that he's married a wife who sets him the example," said Anne,
returning from the window-sill refreshed.

"She keeps him straight, dear."

"Edith! I shall never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's
horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps him straight!'"

"You think I take for granted a natural tendency to crookedness. I
don't--I don't. What I take for granted is a natural tendency to
straightness, when it gets its way. It doesn't always get it, though,
especially in a town like Scale."

"I wish we were out of it."

"So did I, dear, once; but I don't now. We must make the best of it."

"Has Walter paid any of that money back to Mr. Hannay?"

Edith looked up at her sister-in-law, startled by the hardness in her
voice. She had meant to spare Anne's pride the worst blow, but something
in her question stirred the fire that slept in Edith.

"No," she said, "he hasn't. He was going to, but Mr. Hannay cancelled the
debt, in order that he might marry--that he might marry you."

Anne drew back as if Edith had struck her bodily. She, then, had been
bought, too, with Mr. Hannay's money. Without it, Walter could not have
afforded to marry her; for she was poor.

She sat silent, until her self-appointed hour with Edith ended; and then,
still silently, she left the room.

And Edith turned her cheek on her cushions and sobbed weakly to herself.
"Walter would never forgive me if he knew I'd told her that. It was awful
of me. But Anne would have provoked the patience of a saint."

Anne owned that Edith was a saint, and that the provocation was extreme.

In the afternoon, Edith, at her own request, was forgiven, and Anne, by
way of proving and demonstrating her forgiveness, announced her amiable
intention of calling on Mrs. Hannay on her "day."

The day fell within a week of the dinner. It was agreed that Majendie was
to meet his wife at the Hannays, and to take her home. There was a good
mile between Prior Street and the Park; and Anne was a leisurely walker;
so it happened that she was late, and that Majendie had arrived a few
minutes before her. She did not notice him there all at once. Mrs. Hannay
was a sociable little lady; the radius of her circle was rapidly
increasing, and her "day" drew crowds. The lamps were not yet lit, and as
Anne entered the room, it was dim to her after the daylight of the open
air. She had counted on an inconspicuous entrance, and was astonished to
find that the announcement of her name caused a curious disturbance and
division in the assembly. A finer ear than Anne's might have detected an
ominous sound, something like the rustling of leaves before a storm. But
Anne's self-possession rendered her at times insensible to changes in the
social atmosphere. In any case the slight commotion was no more than she
had come prepared for in a whole roomful of ill-bred persons.

"Pussy," said a lady who stood near Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had her back
to the doorway. The lady's voice rang on a low note of warning, and she
brought her mouth close to Mrs. Hannay's ear.

The hostess started, turned, and came at once towards Mrs. Majendie,
rolling deftly between the persons who obstructed her perturbed and
precipitate way. The perfect round of her cheeks had dropped a little; it
was the face of a poor cherub in vexation and dismay.

"Dear Mrs. Majendie,"--her voice, once so triumphant, had dropped too,
almost to a husky whisper,--"how very good of you."

She led her to a sofa, the seat of intimacy, set back a little from the
central throne. (Majendie could be seen fairly immersed in the turmoil,
struggling desperately through it, with a plate in his hand.)

Mrs. Hannay was followed by her husband, by the other lady, and by
Gorst. She introduced the other lady as Mrs. Ransome, and they seated
themselves, one on each side of Anne. The two men drew up in front of
the sofa, and began to talk very fast, in loud tones and with an
unnatural gaiety. The women, too, closed in upon her somewhat with their
knees; they were both a little confused, both more than a little
frightened, and the manner of both was mysteriously apologetic.

Anne, with her deep, insulating sense of superiority, had no doubt as to
the secret of the situation. She felt herself suitably protected, guarded
from contact, screened from view, distinguished very properly from
persons to whom it was manifestly impossible, even for Mrs. Hannay, to
introduce her. She was very sorry for poor Mrs. Hannay, she tried to make
it less difficult for her, by ignoring the elements of confusion and
fright. But poor Mrs. Hannay kept on being frightened; she refused to
part with her panic and be natural. So terrified was she, that she hardly
seemed to take in what Mrs. Majendie was saying.

Anne, however, conversed with the utmost amiability, while her thoughts
ran thus: "Dear lady, why this agitation? You cannot help being vulgar.
As for your friends, what do you think I expected?"

The other lady, Mrs. Dick Ransome, could not be held accountable for
anything but her own private vulgarity; and it struck Anne as odd that
Mrs. Dick Ransome, who was not responsible for Mrs. Hannay, seemed, if
anything, more terrified than Mrs. Hannay, who was responsible for her.

Mrs. Dick Ransome did not, at the first blush, inspire confidence. She
was a woman with a great deal of blonde hair, and a fresh-coloured,
conspicuously unspiritual face; coarse-grained, thick-necked, ruminantly
animal, but kind; kind to Mrs. Hannay, kind to Anne, kinder even than
Mrs. Hannay who was responsible for all the kindness.

Charlie Gorst hurried away to get Mrs. Majendie some tea, and Lawson's
Hannay's large form moved into the gap thus made, blocking Anne's view of
the room. He stood looking down upon her with an extraordinary smile of
mingled apology and protection. Gorst's return was followed by Majendie,
wandering uneasily with his plate. He smiled at Anne, too; and his smile
conveyed the same suggestion of desperation and distress. It was as if he
said to her: "I'm sorry for letting you in for such a crew, but how can
I help it?" She smiled back at him brightly, as much as to say; "Don't
mind. It amuses me. I'm taking it all in."

He wandered away, and Anne felt that the women exchanged looks across her
shoulders.

"I think I'll be going, Pussy dear," said Mrs. Ransome, nodding some
secret intelligence. She elbowed her way gently across the room, and came
back again, shaking her head hopelessly and helplessly. "She says I can
go if I like, but she'll stay," said Mrs. Ransome under her breath.

"Oh-h-h," said Mrs. Hannay under hers.

"What am I to do?" said Mrs. Ransome, flurried into audible speech.

"Stay--stay. It's much better." Mrs. Hannay plucked her husband by the
sleeve, and he lowered an attentive ear. Mrs. Ransome covered the
confidence with a high-pitched babble.

"You find Scale a very sociable place, don't you, Mrs. Majendie?" said
Mrs. Ransome.

"Go," said Mrs. Hannay, "and take her off into the conservatory, or
somewhere."

"More sociable in the winter-time, of course." (Mrs. Ransome, in her
agitation, almost screamed it.)

"I can't take her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a
thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of
Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine,
benignant gaze.

Mrs. Hannay was beside herself, beholding his invertebrate behaviour.
"Don't sit down, stupid. Do something--anything."

He went to do it, but evidently, whatever it was, he had no heart for it.

A maid came in and lit a lamp. There was a simultaneous movement of
departure among the nearer guests.

"Oh, heavens," said Mrs. Hannay, "don't tell me they're all going to go!"

Anne, serenely contemplating these provincial manners, was bewildered by
the horror in Mrs. Hannay's tone. There was no accounting for provincial
manners, or she would have supposed that Mrs. Hannay, mortified by the
presence of her most undesirable acquaintance, would have rejoiced to see
them go.

Their dispersal cleared a space down the middle of the room to the
bay-window, and disclosed a figure, a woman's figure, which occupied,
majestically, a settee. The settee, set far back in the bay of the
window, was in a direct line with Anne's sofa. That part of the room was
still unlighted, and the figure, sitting a little sideways, remained
obscure.

A servant went round lighting lamps.

The first lamp to be lit stood beside Anne's sofa. The effect of the
illumination was to make the lady in the window turn on her settee.
Across the space between, her eyes, obscure lights in a face still
undefined, swept with the turning of her body, and fastened upon Anne's
face, bared for the first time to their view. They remained fixed, as if
Anne's face had a peculiar fascination for them.