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PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 SEVENTH EDITION. 
 
GS IN 
 CLOVER 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK DANBY 
 
 AUTHOR Of " DI. PHILLIPS : A MAIDA VALI IDYLL,' 
 
 "And each man kills the thing he level. 
 
 By each let this be heard, 
 Some do it luith a bitter look, 
 
 Soms with a flattering word, 
 The coward dtes it with a kiss . 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 1912 
 
COPYKIGHT, 1903 
 
 BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 Published May, 1903 
 
 F 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 CHAPTER ONE 
 
 CONSTANTIA met him herself at the station with the ill 
 news. Stephen Hayward was a father, but no longer a 
 husband. Angela's travail had ended ; and the dull grey 
 life, for Angela's life had in truth been both dull and grey, 
 had gone out in the agony of her motherhood. She was 
 not formed for joy. Stephen, poor fellow, shocked into 
 silence with the news, news that he read in his sister's 
 face, in the grasp of her hand, in her filled eyes, followed 
 her into the brougham without a question. But she told 
 him, nevertheless, in a few sentences all that had hap- 
 pened. She spared him the medical details. Everything 
 that it was possible to do had been done, the doctor said. 
 Stephen's quick mind took in the situation. 
 
 " She was thirty-nine, you know," added Constantia 
 through her tears. 
 
 " Have you telegraphed to the Marquis ?" 
 
 :< To everybody." 
 
 " She seemed quite well when she left town," he said 
 dully. 
 
 " I think she has been very happy, dear," she replied 
 soothingly. 
 
 Stephen looked at her under his tired eyes. There were 
 tears in Constantia's, and a break in her voice. 
 
 " Happy !" he said, " happy. So you think she has been 
 very happy?" 
 
 " Yes," Constantia answered hurriedly, laying her hand 
 
 258365 
 
6 PIUS IN CLOVER 
 
 in his. '*' I do think she has been happy. She loved you, 
 Steve she did really, always." 
 
 " I know," he said, and then relapsed into silence. He 
 knew. 
 
 The brougham rolled on through the flat, bare country, 
 and the brother and sister had no more to say to each 
 other of their dead cousin, of Stephen's wife. The shadow 
 of her lay chill between them as they drove. That she 
 had been " happy" with him was absurd. Constantia 
 knew instinctively that she had touched the wrong note. 
 But it was sad, it was horribly sad, that Angela was dead ; 
 she had been in no one's way. 
 
 " How did you get on ?" she asked presently. 
 
 " They listened to me." 
 
 Constantia knew he was satisfied. 
 
 "And the division?" 
 
 " A Government majority of eight." 
 
 " That means dissolution," she said quickly. 
 
 " Something like it." 
 
 Stephen was never voluble; that was all that Con- 
 stantia could glean from him at the moment. Brother 
 and sister were very silent in the brougham, and both of 
 them thought of Angela, although the political value of 
 Bulgaria to the Fourth Party was so much more vital to 
 them both. They drove silently home along the bare 
 road which had once been a thick avenue of trees, the 
 road that led up to Hadalstone Hall. Stephen hated all 
 the part of his life that lay in and around Hadalstone. 
 Here he had realised to what his father had sunk both 
 name and estate. Here, as a little child, he had heard 
 the word " Disgrace" thundered in his ears, and had seen 
 his mother wither under the lash of it. Here, as a lad, 
 he had returned to that dim, miserable dream, and found 
 it wealed across her wounded heart. This was his patri- 
 mony disgrace, bare mortgaged acres, and a dismantled 
 house. And yet he could not part with it, and yet, when 
 Angela was to bear him a child, it was here it must be 
 born. His pride was rooted in the place. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 7 
 
 He turned to Constantia when the Hall was in sight. 
 
 " The luck of the place follows it/' he said. " I suppose 
 she hated being here ?" 
 
 " She liked being here. Again and again she said she 
 was glad she was at Hadalstone. You know, Steve," she 
 added beneath her breath, almost in a whisper, " it was 
 here you first met." 
 
 She laid her hand upon his arm. He took her hand. 
 
 " You are a good soul, Con. You and Angela were 
 always too good for me." 
 
 " I am very proud of you, my dear. I have always been 
 proud of you," she answered with simple truth. 
 
 He knew his unworthiness of these two good women's 
 love and trust, but intellectual pride and consciousness of 
 strength were perhaps better than the virtues with which 
 they credited him. 
 
 " Is the boy all right?" he asked Constantia. 
 
 " Boy ! What boy ? I beg your pardon ; my thoughts 
 were wandering. I meant to tell you, it is a girl." 
 
 " Good heavens ! How like Angela to have a girl." 
 
 Then he was silent, perhaps ashamed to have remem- 
 bered at this moment her characteristic awkwardness. 
 The ten years between the days when as a boy he had 
 made love to her, and the hour when he riveted his claims 
 on the family by leading her to the altar, had developed 
 his knowledge of her. A dull woman, plain, with the 
 respectable ideals of the bourgeoisie. 
 
 The old butler stood in the hall with gloomy face ; all 
 the blinds were drawn down. Last night's scene in the 
 House was clear to Stephen against the background of 
 this gloomy old home of his. There had been his 
 triumph ; here was his misfortune, misfortune others had 
 made for him. In the Hall, in that first moment of ar- 
 rival, he had a bitter feeling towards even Angela, towards 
 his dead wife. His place at Westminster he had won 
 for himself. She dragged him back here, now, in the 
 moment of his triumph, to drive it into him that this was 
 his heritage. 
 
8 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 A little later he went alone into the death chamber. It 
 was just as it had been in his mother's time; on that 
 carved mahogany four-poster he had seen her pale dead 
 face. The scent of death in the room, he remembered that 
 too ; and the old servant who had said : 
 
 " Don't grieve, Master, don't you fret. Poor lady, it's 
 well she's gone ; for she couldn't forget what your father 
 had done, and where he'd spent two years ; and ' Keep 
 my boy abroad ; don't let him know ; don't let him hear,' 
 was what she said to your uncle, time after time. 
 Although she longed for you, she would never let you 
 come." 
 
 It was in this room the veil had been lifted, and he 
 knew that, though the blood of all the Haywards was in 
 his veins, he was, nevertheless, a felon's son. 
 
 How the cold of the room went through him now, he 
 shivered as he stood. There was no old servant in the 
 room now, he was alone. But the words were there, they 
 hung about the shabby draperies, he felt them as he ap- 
 proached the bed where the sheeted figure lay, stiffly 
 defined. He could not raise the sheet for a moment ; he 
 stood still and remembered. 
 
 Poor Angela ! Even death had not beautified her, and 
 Stephen was ultra-sensitive. High cheek bones, and dead 
 sunken eyes, blue stone, thin sunken mouth, blue too, 
 pinched nose ; the grave clothes lay flat on her flat chest. 
 
 " A badly-made woman, and too old to have had a 
 child," was the thought that rose in that logical mind of 
 his. Then he stooped and replaced the sheet, not without 
 reverence. Dutifulness, when he was at Hadalstone, lay 
 on Stephen as a garment, a garment worn in defiance 
 of, and in revolt against, Jack Hayward's lawlessness. 
 Having reverently replaced the sheet, he lingered in the 
 room a few moments, and tried to give his thoughts to the 
 dead woman. 
 
 Death gave Angela no dignity, as it had given her no 
 beauty. Stephen remembered he had thought it strange 
 that she had failed to see the humour of his making love 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 9 
 
 to her. It was not because there were ten years between 
 them, for there were ten years between him and Con, and 
 Constantia was a woman whom any man might have 
 wooed and wed. 
 
 He stood in the chamber where Angela lay dead, and 
 tried to think tenderly of her. 
 
 The family interest she had secured him that. The 
 few years of their married life had been years of unin- 
 terrupted political growth. And he was grateful, he 
 knew he was grateful. Never from him had she had an 
 ungentle word. Her blood circulated slowly, she was 
 awkwardly philanthropic, socially shy. But he reproached 
 her for nothing, contradicted her never, she had lived at 
 his side and he had disregarded her with complete amia- 
 bility. No differences of opinion had vexed their short 
 married life; for Angela had no opinions, and Stephen 
 had not been interested as to whether she shared his. 
 There was no common ground between them whereon 
 they could stand to quarrel; they had had no quarrels. 
 When he had realised she had no sense of humour, he 
 even discontinued laughing at her. 
 
 When he left the room, remembering these things, he 
 thought he had been good to her, that he had done his 
 duty by her. 
 
 But her death was badly timed. Angela had always 
 had a tendency to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. 
 There were, there ought to be, crises at St. Stephen's. 
 His place was there now ; every hour he was away might 
 count against him. There were so many men, so few 
 places. 
 
 He grudged the time she lay dead above ground. Out- 
 wardly he did everything that was correct. Inwardly he 
 chafed, walked up and down the library like a caged ani- 
 mal; waited feverishly for telegrams, despatches, fresh 
 editions of the newspapers. 
 
 Con understood him and left him alone. But she was 
 a dutiful woman, it was instinct with her, not revolt, and, 
 before he left Hadalstone, she brought the baby, the Httle, 
 
10 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ill-timed, unwanted girl, for him to see. He was in the 
 hall, the trap was at the door. He looked at the baby, of 
 course, fastidiously, distastefully, fidgeting with his neck- 
 tie, adjusting the collar of his coat, obviously nervous and 
 bored with the duty before him. 
 
 " Seems a trifle unnecessary/' he said, with a perfunc- 
 tory glance, preparing to retreat if more were expected 
 of him. 
 
 " Yes," answered Constantia, somewhat doubtfully ; 
 the bundle in her arms moved her, it was so small and 
 light. " It is very weakly ; it ought to be christened, I 
 think." 
 
 He looked at it. Out of a puckered red face two blue 
 eyes wandered pathetically on to a motherless world. 
 
 " Singularly ugly, isn't it ?" he asked again. 
 
 " I think it is like Angela," she said, bending over it 
 tenderly. Angela was not so plain to her; she was just 
 Angela, Stephen's first rung. Con did not realise that 
 she had damned effectually in its father's eyes the little 
 thing she held in her arms. 
 
 " Ah ! have it christened by all means. Do the right 
 thing, Con ; you know I'm up to my neck in work." 
 
 He got away from Hadalstone, from Angela's baby, 
 as quickly as he could. He pictured her afterwards, for 
 many years, Angela's daughter, flat-footed, full of plati- 
 tudinous commonplaces, a figureless girl with lank hair. 
 Picture and reality, however, were very different. 
 
 Stephen had no time for domestic life after his wife's 
 death ; as a matter of fact, he had little inclination for it 
 then or before. Politics and salmon-fishing occupied him 
 ostensibly, but there was a trace of his father in him 
 nevertheless. He was no saint, but, realising the value 
 of the world's good opinion, he maintained his own self- 
 respect, and acquired theirs, by his apparent acceptance 
 of popular standards. The greater part of his life was 
 lived in public, a small part in supremest darkness, the 
 rest with Constantia, who did more for him than wife or 
 secretary, and looked upon him always as a sacred 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 11 
 
 charge. She read an excessive sensitiveness into his 
 complexities, affairs of State into his rare absences, and 
 gave him every latitude. 
 
 There was no room in his life for Aline Victoria 
 Ernestine Hayward, as they had christened Angela's 
 baby. Practically he handed her over to Constantia, who 
 had arranged his marriage, dreamed over his career, and 
 lived her life believing in his power to rehabilitate their 
 branch of the Hayward family. The Hayward family 
 was her religion, Stephen her god. Constantia took up 
 the little burden that Stephen had laid upon her as she 
 had always gladly taken up Stephen's burdens, and did 
 her duty by it conscientiously. 
 
 Poor little baby ! it lived at Hadalstone. Stephen saw 
 it at rare intervals; and it happened that on three out 
 of four of these occasions, when Stephen's parental 
 promptings brought him to Hadalstone, it would develop 
 the usual infantile ailments. Therefore he never cor- 
 rected his first impression, never dissociated her from her 
 mother until too late. 
 
 In fourteen years Stephen visited Hadalstone about half 
 a dozen times. He always spoke amiably of the child, 
 and to her on the rare occasions when they met in the 
 darkened sick-room; and, when she was convalescent, 
 he would send her, or Constantia would send in his name, 
 toys, cakes, money. The name of father became synony- 
 mous in her youngest days with pleasant things. Later, 
 it became synonymous with great ones. Stephen's foot- 
 steps scarcely wavered during Aline's childhood. The 
 Fourth Party collapsed and the brilliant leader with it, 
 but Stephen Hayward found safety and possibilities under 
 a Liberal Government. 
 
 It was but for a short time, however. A great political 
 landmark was swept away; an old man in his dotage 
 had put his hands on a mighty lever the love of the sons 
 of the Empire for the mother that bore them. The ma- 
 chinery moved, groaned, turned, and Liberalism was 
 shattered and scattered in the first rotation of the 
 
12 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Other men were flung here and there in the revolution, 
 moved by strange cranks. Stephen was flung back into 
 the arms of the Party with which he had originally been 
 associated, the Party of which Lord Sarum was the 
 head. He drew his cousin with him, and thus the Mar- 
 quis of Jevington, and his sons and nephews and cousins 
 and all his relations, found themselves standing shoulder 
 to shoulder in their strong, united effort to stop the 
 mischief that the dotard had done. 
 
 Of all those relatives and lieutenants of the great house 
 that stood shoulder to shoulder supporting the leadership 
 of Lord Sarum, there were few more active, or more 
 valuable, than Stephen Hayward, with his thin, nervous 
 face and clever, cynical tongue, the son of that old black- 
 guard, by courtesy, Lord John Hayward, who had been the 
 family disgrace and the family scandal in days gone by. 
 
 After the final defeat of the Home Rule Bill, Stephen 
 Hayward's position was assured. The Marquis was again 
 in the Cabinet, and his brilliant cousin was Under- Secre- 
 tary of State. If he had to wait for place, he had never 
 again to wait for appreciation. Much that he had wanted, 
 it seemed to him, he had achieved, although he was a poor 
 man, and his poverty still galled him. By this time the 
 whole family, that family with its many ramifications and 
 its great name, were satisfied that Stephen Hayward was 
 one with it. 
 
 They had their own way of showing their appreciation 
 and their respect, as, in early days, when the old Marquis 
 had supported him and encouraged him, they had had 
 their own way of showing him the cold shoulder, of let- 
 ting him know that his father rankled with them, and that 
 he was his father's son. Now, not only the Dowager, but 
 the Countess of Whittendone and Lady Sarah Comner- 
 lies, and all the aunts and cousins buzzed around him, and 
 exhibited their satisfaction with him. And they began 
 to be interested in Aline, and to cross-examine Constan- 
 tia about her, and to interfere in the selection of her gov- 
 ernesses, and her dresses, her education, and her mode 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 13 
 
 of life. The Duchess even, who, although she was but a 
 distant branch of the family, was the real head of it since 
 the death of the old Marquis, undertook to present 
 Stephen Hayward's daughter when the time should come. 
 In the meantime, she remembered Aline was her god- 
 daughter, and worried Constantia by letter to be careful 
 of the girl's deportment. 
 
 No more than her brother, had Constantia had much 
 time for Aline in the stirring years of Stephen's political 
 life that followed the establishment of the Unionist party. 
 For, now in office, and now in opposition, Stephen's 
 talents, Stephen's brilliant militarism, never went unrec- 
 ognised. He was listened to, he was waited for, the 
 aroma of the " coming man" hung about him. Every- 
 thing was expected of him, and some things were feared. 
 He became at once the strength and the weakness of his 
 Party. They could not reckon without him, nor quite 
 with him. In those years whilst the baby at Hadalstone 
 was growing into girlhood, Stephen Hayward became a 
 personality, and although he had as yet held no office 
 higher than his under-secretaryship, there was not one 
 that seemed too high for his wayward abilities. 
 
 Constantia's income was vital to Stephen, his own was 
 ever precarious; the house in Grosvenor Street, which 
 had come to her with that income, was his London resi- 
 dence. And there together they lived, and she watched 
 him with ever gathering pride, and never wavering faith. 
 Youth, beauty, and love, Constantia Hayward had relin- 
 quished that she might help Stephen; all of these went 
 past her in the years in which Aline grew to girlhood. 
 Now that she was fifty and grey, and the claims of the 
 child were pressed upon her, it was still Stephen that held 
 all her maiden heart. 
 
 As Constantia could give time and attention to Aline, 
 so could Stephen take some measure of rest in that short 
 summer session of 1893. Once more he was in the Oppo- 
 sition ; once more a fickle and ill-informed electorate had 
 entrusted the Empire to weak Liberal hands. It was a 
 
14 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 time of waiting; there was little to be done at the mo- 
 ment but watch. Stephen went fishing in Scotland, and 
 Constantia paid a round of country-house visits. To both 
 of them it tasted sweet in the mouth that, where they 
 once were tolerated and pitied, now they were esteemed 
 and envied. About them both now was that social assur- 
 ance that told of achievement. They were quietly tri- 
 umphant, and accepted the position they had won, 
 Stephen with reticence and Constantia with dignity; but 
 there was no doubt it illuminated both their lives. The 
 early autumn of '93, although Stephen was in Opposition 
 and their finances were somewhat straitened, was one of 
 content for them both. 
 
 Whilst Stephen had had his short spell with the rod, 
 Constantia had found time for a flying visit to Hadal- 
 stone. To-night in Grosvenor Street they met again, and 
 Stephen thought this tall grey lady with the slender figure 
 and calm face graced his home completely. She filled the 
 faded drawing-room for him with that distinction which 
 gratified his taste. Their companionship was perfect, be- 
 cause all of this brilliant, strange brother of hers that 
 Constantia saw but dimly she had the sense and courtesy 
 to leave untouched; there was no listening behind the 
 doors of his character to discover his aestheticism, his 
 interest in the higher philosophy, his few experiments in 
 classic tradition. She was in sympathy with his opinions 
 and politics, with his ambition and the recoil from his 
 father's history that had prompted it. To-night with her 
 grey hair and her face still maidenly, in her grey velvet 
 with its rose point kerchief, she seemed to him the epit- 
 ome of a cultured womanliness. The slight touch of aus- 
 terity that hung about her, that was as the aroma which 
 clings to the dead leaves of faded roses, became her well. 
 His appreciation of her included it. 
 
 When he gave her his arm into the dining-room he 
 almost told her so. They did not often bandy compli- 
 ments, this brother and sister, but Stephen, as he led her 
 downstairs, said: 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 15 
 
 " You are looking very well, Con ; London seems to 
 have agreed with you." 
 
 " I have not been in London ; I have been at Hadal- 
 stone," she answered quickly. 
 
 " At Hadalstone !" he exclaimed with surprise. For in 
 their autumn plans this visit had not been projected. And 
 then he frowned, for all of his pride and none of his hap- 
 piness was at Hadalstone, and his daughter there was but 
 a vague responsibility to him, less real than the shadows, 
 his father, his poor mother, his dead wife. " You did not 
 tell me you were going to Hadalstone/' 
 
 " I had not intended to go, but Aunt Mary seems to 
 have paid Aline a flying visit," Aunt Mary was the 
 Duchess, " and she wrote me such a long letter about 
 Miss Clare and Miss Clare's flirtation with the curate, 
 and Aline's education, and general childishness, that I 
 thought I ought to go down myself and see how things 
 were." 
 
 "And you found ?" he asked, unfolding his dinner 
 napkin, contemplating his soup. 
 
 " A certain amount of justice in her complaints too 
 much justice, in fact." 
 
 Constantia was a woman of the highest principle, and, 
 although the Duchess had found fault with her, she could 
 give the Duchess right. 
 
 " Poor Con," said Stephen, with whimsical sympathy. 
 " Aunt Mary on the war-path ! Didn't you tell her you 
 were my secretary, and had no time to spare from your 
 selfish brother?" 
 
 " No, dear," she said, looking at him affectionately, " I 
 told her nothing ; but I went down to see, and I do think 
 we ought to make some change. Miss Clare is a nice girl 
 and a good girl ; her flirtation with the curate turned out 
 to be a quite legitimate engagement, quite suitable too, 
 but Aline " 
 
 She paused a little. She and her brother had a certain 
 sympathetic understanding. He had come home full of 
 plans for an electoral, or by-electoral, campaign. 
 
16 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He had been staying with the Marquis. Lord Sarum 
 had been there, and together they had made a survey of 
 the political horizon. All saw the death-cloud hovering 
 over the head of the poor old man who was trying to 
 steer the ship, the very machinery of which had been 
 altered past his senile understanding. They saw his suc- 
 cessor, and knew him for a negligible quantity. Openly, 
 Stephen had discussed with them the Disestablishment 
 of the Church in Wales, but, in moments of rare inti- 
 macy, Lord Sarum had admitted that he did not think 
 the new Liberal Party had any real hold on the country. 
 No promise had been made to Stephen, but he under- 
 stood that the post he coveted would be his for the ask- 
 ing when the country should awake to its interests, and 
 give its honour into the keeping of the Conservative 
 leader. 
 
 He had come home full of his visit to the Marquis. 
 He and Constantia had not spoken of it yet ; they had a 
 hundred things of which to speak. Aline was so very 
 subsidiary; the child, she was only a child, held no con- 
 scious place in the minds of either. Constantia felt the 
 want of tact in commencing to speak of her, and of plans 
 for her, until they had discussed the position. 
 
 " Well," he said, " Aline! what of Aline? Surely she 
 hasn't taken the measles again?" 
 
 " I think she ought to have finishing governesses, mas- 
 ters ;" then she added hesitatingly, " Do you think what 
 do you think of moving her from Hadalstone, of bringing 
 her up here ? She is quite strong now." 
 
 There had been a fiction associated with Aline's early 
 childhood that she was delicate, that London was impos- 
 sible for her, that the fine bracing air of Hadalstone was 
 necessary to her rearing. 
 
 "Here!" Stephen's face expressed Stephen's distaste. 
 
 " She ought to have governesses and masters. Aunt 
 Mary says she is musical " 
 
 " No ! you don't mean it ! Angela was musical, you 
 remember." His dismay was not all assumed, although 
 
 : 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER IT 
 
 perhaps exaggerated to disarm Constantia's reproof. An- 
 gela's music had been indeed a trial to brother and sister ; 
 the Continent had taught them too much. 
 
 " Will she practise her scales whilst I am dictating?" 
 
 " Oh, perhaps," Constantia hesitated. It would be a 
 thousand pities, she thought, if Stephen should be incon- 
 venienced, the charm of their mutual life interrupted. 
 " Perhaps a different sort of governess, a finishing gov- 
 erness down there." 
 
 " Of course" he pushed his plate away " Of course, 
 a finishing governess, that's the thing." 
 
 He had enjoyed an excellent dinner. Constantia was 
 a restful woman to sit opposite, the best of companions, 
 cultured, not too intellectual, devoted to him, assured that 
 he was the most brilliant of his sex, and that the only 
 position suitable for him was head of the State. Also the 
 electric light, a new installation, was admirably shaded, 
 the handsome room looked at its best in the red reflection, 
 its shabbiness was concealed ; the white cloth threw into 
 relief the Queen Anne silver with the Hayward crest, the 
 rare cut glass that he had collected himself. The Board 
 of Trade that his cousin had hinted at was not perhaps 
 all he had expected, but Brodribb wanted it, and Stephen 
 would get it; and Stephen, who had been named with 
 that prominent Conservative, had Whig enough left in 
 his Unionist clothing to be glad that it would not be 
 wrongly placed. Altogether the son of Jack Hayward, 
 looking round him at things in general, was not dissatis- 
 fied. To bring a child into the house, a girl-child prac- 
 tising scales, with Angela's lank hair, big feet, general 
 awkwardness, would be to spoil his life ; he really felt it 
 would spoil his life to have the child meeting him on the 
 stairs, filling the place with her incongruity. 
 
 " Perhaps I am selfish ; you have made me so," he said 
 to Con affectionately. " I don't want anything to inter- 
 rupt our life together." 
 
 Neither in truth did she. She was so proud of her 
 brother, of her position with him; she missed nothing 
 
18 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 that other women had of husband or children. Stephen 
 was all-sufficing. 
 
 And, after all, it would have been awkward to bring 
 Aline to town just now. For Stephen and Constantia 
 were engaged six weeks deep; and, notwithstanding 
 Stephen's occasional official income, there were always 
 debts and difficulties about money in the Hayward fam- 
 ily, and no room for unlimited expenditure on a retinue 
 of maid and governess and tutor, and, as it were, a whole 
 establishment for Aline. 
 
 So it was settled that, for the present, she should re- 
 main in the country, and that Constantia, with the assist- 
 ance of the Duchess, who would then be satisfied, should 
 secure for her a superior governess to replace the some- 
 what frivolous and inferior Miss Clare. 
 
 After this decision was happily reached, Stephen began 
 to enjoy his evening, to talk to Con and to listen to her, 
 to make plans for his coming office, and frame speeches 
 with which to meet his constituents after Christmas. 
 
CHAPTER Two 
 
 THAT was how Fraulein Eckelstein came to Hadalstone 
 Hall sixteen years after Angela's death, to stand in the 
 place of mother, father, brothers, and sisters to Aline, to 
 be her companion, to fill the life of a girl, a girl who, 
 though Stephen had forgotten the fact or its significance, 
 was Lord John Hay ward's granddaughter, and might 
 (this was only problematic, yet it should have been taken 
 into consideration) have inherited from him as well as 
 from Angela. Moreover, let it be understood at once, 
 anything less like his daughter than Stephen's mental pic- 
 ture of her at this moment it would be impossible *o find. 
 
 Fraulein Eckelstein arrived one dull autumn evening, 
 and Aline, rather shy, in her short school-room dress and 
 pinafore, her long fair hair down her back, and her blue 
 eyes still misty with the tears shed over Miss Clare's de- 
 parture, was in the hall waiting for her with eager ex- 
 pectancy. It was a dull life the child had lived at Hadal- 
 stone, and even the coming of a new governess was an 
 excitement. Miss Clare had been there ever since Aline 
 could remember; she was a kind and gentle creature of 
 the recognised nursery-governess type, curiously igno- 
 rant, and very sentimental. She nurtured romantic 
 attachments, sometimes to the ritualistic rector, and some- 
 times to the elderly doctor's locum tenens, and always to 
 the Honourable Stephen Hayward, whom she had seen 
 on rare occasions. She and Aline talked of him fre- 
 quently in the key Constantia set, regarding him as a 
 king amongst men, in intellect as in character, a Bayard 
 of the nineteenth century. That she had finally given her 
 heart and hand to the curate was, as Constantia had said, 
 completely suitable. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Aline expected Fraulein Eckel stein at least to share the 
 opinion of her little world; but the very first evening she 
 was disillusioned. Fraulein said : 
 
 " I haf not heard of your father ; I haf not seen him. 
 Your aunt it was I saw." 
 
 " But you know how great my father is ; you know he 
 might have been in the Cabinet if he had remained with 
 Gladstone?" 
 
 " I would haf you know there is no great statesman in 
 England ; no man is like the Count von Bismarck. You 
 haf much to learn." 
 
 Fraulein Eckelstein was a treasure. Constantia had. 
 been most careful in examining her credentials, and the 
 Duchess had agreed with her that they were really beyond 
 reproach. 
 
 " A treasure, my dear. The very woman for poor An- 
 gela's girl; I congratulate you on having secured her," 
 said the old lady, out of the wisdom of her eighty years. 
 " I see by her papers that she is certificated here as well as 
 in Germany, and that she was with the Von Orlondoff 
 girls. Very charming girls they were, I remember. One 
 of them married Cecil's nephew, and the other is in Rome 
 Princess Plom. You could not have done better." 
 
 If Aline had inherited anything from her grandfather, 
 she had certainly inherited from her father his fastidious- 
 ness, his aesthetic sense, his refinement of sensation ; that 
 one saw at once in her delicate, high-bred air, in her 
 childish daintinesses and dislikes. But there was no one 
 to note Aline's dislikes; she was very childish for her 
 sixteen years, and shy. She only knew what Miss Clare 
 had taught her. 
 
 She waited for her new governess in the old hall. 
 Almost the first words of Fraulein Eckelstein were to 
 complain that it was draughty. It was of oak, black with 
 age; the supporting columns of the wide staircase had 
 been carved by Grinling Gibbons, but the panelling of 
 the walls that held the ancestral portraits had been there 
 two centuries before his time. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 21 
 
 " Draughty !" repeated Aline, with wide eyes, won- 
 dering. She was a child of the open air, the pale rose of 
 her young cheeks was sun-kissed, wind-caressed, her fair- 
 ness browned a little through its transparency. 
 
 " It is very draughty ; we will not linger here long. I 
 will go to my room now. We will not begin work until 
 to-morrow. I do hope that the school-room has south 
 aspect. Now, you show me my rooms. We will be very 
 good friends, and you will work hard, eh ! but to-night I 
 must rest; I haf my neuralgia. I will haf supper in 
 mein own room." 
 
 That was the first Aline heard of draught or of neu- 
 ralgia. Miss Clare had been a healthy English girl, not- 
 withstanding her leaning to romance and sentimentalism. 
 
 " I do not like the bedroom you haf given me," she 
 said the next morning, " there is dirty stuff on the walls ; 
 the bed is wooden, wooden. I cannot sleep." 
 
 That she disparaged the tapestry hangings of the 
 second-best bedroom, and its bed of Spanish mahogany, 
 hurt the child somehow. She loved her home, there was 
 nothing else for her to love; decayed, dilapidated, bare 
 it was, yet she loved it, knew its history, and the history 
 of all its rooms. 
 
 " I'll tell the housekeeper," she said quietly ; " she will 
 change it for you. Perhaps you would like to choose one. 
 We have twenty-seven bedrooms," she was proud of that ; 
 that twenty of them were uninhabitable seemed of no 
 consequence. " I chose yours for you ; I thought you 
 would like it. The tapestry there is Dutch, and so is the 
 chest in the corner. It was Captain Thomas Hayward's 
 room, the one who fought at Leyden in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury." 
 
 " It is very dirty," said Fraulein Eckelstem. 
 
 She was a tall woman, had mittens on her bony hands, 
 and a shawl over her sloping shoulders. She was truly an 
 excellent creature, but she had ruined her system in her 
 youth by cramming a very small brain with dry cachets 
 of learning. She was conscientiously anxious to feed her 
 
22 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 new pupil on the same pabulum. It had not been thought 
 necessary in her case to wash it down with the milk of 
 human kindness ; there was no milk in her. 
 
 Among the idiosyncrasies that Aline hated most was 
 Fraulein's habit of wearing a black silk apron, and of 
 constantly using her pocket-handkerchief. Every time 
 her bony hand drew her handkerchief from her glace silk 
 pocket the child's teeth were set on edge. Then, Aline 
 loved England, that was in the Hayward blood, their 
 inalienable inheritance ; and Fraulein disparaged England 
 in favour of the Fatherland, from which, by the way, like 
 so many of her compatriots, she had voluntarily exiled 
 herself from the meanest motives. She found the climate 
 insupportable, and she excluded as much of it as possible. 
 Aline's lesson time was a continuous struggle to keep 
 awake in a room from which all draughts and all air were 
 shut out relentlessly. 
 
 Fraulein's digestion played as prominent a part in her 
 conversation as her neuralgia. 
 
 " It is your English cookery, your vile English cookery, 
 that I feel ; the beef and the mutton, the mutton and the 
 beef, ach! and so hard. I haf pain in my chest and 
 your puddings I cannot eat them." 
 
 She grumbled continuously, the meals were made un- 
 appetising with gross comment. She took a daily consti- 
 tutional with her pupil conscientiously, and she found 
 fault all the time. The park was damp, the climate was 
 English. Goloshed and generally mackintoshed, her nose 
 red, cotton wool in her ears, she persistently grumbled, 
 and Aline found her walks were spoiled for her as her 
 meals had been. In lesson time Fraulein grumbled also, 
 not without cause, at Aline's ignorance, inattention, stu- 
 pidity. She said it was so English; only in England 
 could a girl of fifteen, nearly sixteen, know nothing, ab- 
 solutely nothing. Ach ! it was terrible, horrible. 
 
 Fraulein Eckelstein prided herself on speaking English 
 perfectly; nevertheless, her accent grated on the child's 
 ear. She grew to hate it so desperately that any other 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 23 
 
 accent, local, cockney, Yorkshire, grew soft, attractive 
 to her, by contrast, and this was another of her misfor- 
 tunes. 
 
 It is important to realise Fraulein Eckelstein, for a cer- 
 tain amount of sympathy is necessary in reading Aline's 
 history, and to live with Fraulein Eckelstein was a mis- 
 fortune, nothing less. These German governesses, excel- 
 lent creatures, good teachers, soul-deadening companions, 
 press hardly on their sensitive pupils, even when tem- 
 pered with mother, father, brothers, sisters, home; en- 
 dured without these mitigations, they are simply stupi- 
 fying; and Aline, if she spelt better, was still less 
 intelligent at the end than at the beginning of Fraulein's 
 ministrations. 
 
 Until Fraulein Eckelstein came, she had been a happy 
 child, if a lonely one. There were butterflies, flowers, and 
 bees in her garden, squirrels in the woods, hares in the 
 heather. There was everything a child could want, ex- 
 cept fellow-children. She was ignorant, perhaps, but 
 sweet and wholesome, loving nature. She grew depressed 
 before Fraulein had been a week in the house, almost 
 before she had turned the flowers and the birds out of the 
 schoolroom, remnants of woodland rambles, and had had 
 white linoleum nailed on to the schoolroom table, and 
 marked out a daily course of study on a ruled sheet of 
 paper. Soon everything about Fraulein Eckelstein, her 
 German self-satisfaction, the interest she took in her own 
 health, her blatantly bad digestion, her constant colds, her 
 ugliness, everything about and pertaining to that certifi- 
 cated treasure, became alike intolerable to the sensitive, 
 growing girl. A year found her reading and writing im- 
 proved, she remembered a few dates, she could do a 
 simple, a very simple, sum in arithmetic, and she knew 
 a little, a very little, German grammar, but it found her 
 also grown out of childhood, not yet into womanhood, 
 and with her character all awry and deformed ; the pres- 
 sure had been in the wrong places and the result was 
 disastrous. 
 
24 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Aline became introspective, cried constantly, had 
 spasms of acute self-pity. She was motherless, her father 
 did not love her, at least, he did not come to see her; 
 she read his name in the newspapers, treasured the para- 
 graphs about him, the reports of his speeches, made a 
 cult of him, and dreamed constantly of emotional mo- 
 ments in which he would figure. She was very much 
 alone ; her distaste for her governess extended to the way 
 she walked, the way she ate, and sat, and spoke, and 
 breathed. 
 
 After her sixteenth birthday Aline got over her weep- 
 ing and her fits of melancholy, nature reasserted itself in 
 a measure. But she never got over her distaste for the 
 German woman, while the image of her father, which had 
 dominated her morbid period, had not died out of her 
 mind. 
 
 Fraulein Eckelstein, for all her certificates and knowl- 
 edge, was provincial, plebeian, narrow-minded, ill-bred. 
 Because she was all this and more, Aline spent no time 
 with her that she was not compelled to spend; and the 
 governess was glad of many hours to herself. She wrote 
 long letters on thin foreign paper to friends, former 
 pupils, relatives, long letters with involved sentences, and 
 verbs that played hide-and-seek, long, verbose, unneces- 
 sary letters; it was her only relaxation. She thought it 
 literary and appropriate, and in a measure dignified. She 
 did not grumble in her letters ; she endeavoured to im- 
 press upon her correspondents the grandeur of her posi- 
 tion. 
 
 While Fraulein Eckelstein wrote letters, Aline was 
 either alone or went for long rides with old Sam Shingles, 
 who had been stud-groom to Stephen's father in the days 
 when there had been a stud, racehorses, and a training 
 stable at Hadalstone Hall, and all the paraphernalia that 
 had spelt Stephen's ruined inheritance and blasted name. 
 Sam taught Aline to ride, he gave her respite from Frau- 
 lein ; he was part of the tonic that cured her of morbid 
 weeping. He talked to her of the good old days when 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 25 
 
 her grandfather was alive, and the Hunt met nearly 
 every week in the Hadalstone woods, when the stables 
 were full of young 'uns, and there was never a year when 
 Hadalstone had not a string of horses at Doncaster. He 
 had the tact to omit the time that came after. He let Jack 
 Hayward's difficulties, forgeries, expiation, lie in the 
 grave with him. The old stud-groom remembered noth- 
 ing of his old master but his generosity, and easy ways, 
 and the handsome face and figure that had brought the 
 women after him. 
 
 This was much more interesting than French verbs. 
 The gallops through the woods, the whiff of fresh air in 
 her face as she leaped gate or bar, the rise and motion of 
 the animal beneath her, were rest and refreshment and 
 new life after Fraulein and the stuffy, overheated rooms. 
 And she liked hearing about her grandfather. 
 
 It was all right as long as Sam Shingles rode with her ; 
 she got nothing but good from her two hours' canter, air, 
 and exercise. She was stupid and dull with Fraulein; 
 for her taste was violated, the air was vitiated, and the 
 guttural German voice outraged her delicate Saxon ears. 
 She learned as little as she possibly could, and, if Frau- 
 lein Eckelstein had not been a truly indefatigable teacher, 
 even that little would have been less. 
 
 So Aline talked to her maid, played sometimes with 
 the vicarage babies, and envied them their father, who 
 kissed, and dandled, and spoiled them ; she was consoled 
 by the cheery doctor for her enforced hours with Frau- 
 lein, and, until she was approaching her seventeenth year, 
 she lived practically without further companionship. In 
 letters, and during rare visits, Constantia excused 
 Stephen for his apparent neglect : " his country claimed 
 him," she said. But Aline felt he was the one thing in 
 the world that belonged to her, and she longed always 
 that he should love her, write to her, notice her, come to 
 her. She was lonely in her seventeenth year ; there were 
 gardens and woods, and wide stretches of moorland, but 
 she was a girl-child, and these were not enough. Aunt 
 
26 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Constantia was vague and indefinite as to when she or her 
 father would come; she forgot to hold out prospects of 
 Aline coming to them. The family visitors were few and 
 far between. The Duchess's appearance remained a 
 unique visitation, and Aunt Constantia promised Aline no 
 immediate change. She was to be " finished." At eigh- 
 teen, or perhaps a little later, the Duchess would present 
 her. In the meantime, she was told to work hard at her 
 studies with Fraulein. 
 
 It was a critical moment for Jack Forrest to appear 
 upon the scene. Aline, in revolt at Racine with a German 
 accent, and Schiller in a voice like a nutmeg-grater, had 
 begun to read penny novelettes, threepenny gutter fiction, 
 Family Herald Supplements, borrowed from the silly, 
 sentimental London servant who acted as maid to her. 
 She grew as romantic as Miss Clare, and she longed for 
 adventures. She longed for adventures! And fate, or 
 Stephen, or perhaps an unfortunately wise decision of the 
 Jockey Club, sent Jack Forrest to Hadalstone. 
 
 There w T as nothing whatever attractive about Jack For- 
 rest; he was a hard-featured, dun-coloured, under-sized 
 man of about thirty, who chewed a straw, and wore high 
 collars, and looked like a prematurely decayed stable-boy. 
 Even Aline, keen for novelty and experience and perhaps 
 emotion, was disappointed in his appearance the first 
 time she saw him. Jane had talked about his coming in 
 mysterious undertones as she brushed that golden hair 
 at night. Aline had listened open-eared ; there was a 
 mystery, and Jack Forrest was the hero of it. Her inter- 
 est was quickly aroused, her feelings no less quickly ex- 
 cited. Jane was a comparatively newcomer at Hadal- 
 stone, but Mrs. Dean had been there in the time of 
 Stephen's father and mother. Aline resorted to Mrs. 
 Dean for further information. The housekeeper's room 
 had been the harbour of refuge for Aline ever since her 
 babyhood ; there jam was to be found, and sweet cake, 
 and gossip about the glory of the house in those bad old, 
 good old, days, when Mrs. Dean and Sam Shingles were 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 27 
 
 hardly middle-aged, and that fine, dashing, rakish grand- 
 father of Aline's was alive. 
 
 Mrs. Dean was in her dotage, garrulous, indiscreet, in 
 the first stage of senile decay, but still she alluded and 
 maudled, instead of speaking out. Aline was a child with 
 her head full of impossible, unnatural, kitchen-maid ro- 
 mances, and the romance of Jack Forrest seemed to touch 
 her nearly. She misunderstood it, of course. The sor- 
 did intrigue between Mrs. Dean's daughter, who had been 
 housemaid at the Hall, and that wretched debauchee, 
 Stephen's father, was something it would have been im- 
 possible for her to understand. And Mrs. Dean, with all 
 her garrulousness, was careful not to mention her own 
 relationship to the newcomer. All that Aline took in was 
 that Jack Forrest was an unacknowledged son of the 
 House; that he had been neglected, sent away from 
 Hadalstone, and his return in a menial capacity was a 
 tardy act of reparation of her father's doing. She had 
 seen little, known little of her father; she hardly realised 
 of what she suspected him. She was under the spell of 
 the penny novelette. " An unacknowledged son of the 
 House" was the romantic euphemism with which she 
 clothed the ci-devant stable-boy. And the House, the 
 family, her grandfather, were all of extraordinary impor- 
 tance to her. 
 
 But she was very disappointed with Jack Forrest's ap- 
 pearance the first day he came to Hadalstone. He was 
 not a romantic figure in a Newmarket coat, unnaturally 
 light, and a billycock hat unnaturally curved. 
 
 Here is the history of his coming to Hadalstone. 
 
 About the time that Sam Shingles ceased to be the 
 nominal head of the defunct Hadalstone stables, Stephen, 
 busy and overworked in London, received an ill-written, 
 indifferently spelt, communication that he showed to his 
 cousin. He took the letter to the Marquis and asked, 
 " Is it true ? Do you think it is true ?" For Stephen, 
 although he knew so well that his father had been a black- 
 guard, knew little of details, and nothing of the house- 
 
28 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 maid and her child. The present Marquis of Jevington 
 had been a man, and in his father's confidence, when 
 Stephen was a little boy at school. 
 
 " What does it matter ?" answered the other carelessly, 
 having skimmed the letter. " The fellow says he is your 
 father's son ; he asks for help on that ground. It is very 
 likely true," he added drily. " Surely it is not a great 
 shock to you that it is very likely true." 
 
 " No," Stephen answered, not letting his cousin see he 
 was stung, hiding his sensitiveness, his wounds that never 
 healed ; " it is not a great shock that my father had an 
 illegitimate son. But this fellow is a peculiarly notorious 
 blackguard," he went on, after just a little pause to 
 take breath. For it hurt, it always hurt, that his father 
 had been himself. " He has just been warned off the 
 turf." 
 
 " If he had written you before, you might have ar- 
 ranged something with the Club?" 
 
 " It is a particularly bad case. He pulled the beast up 
 just under the judge's nose. Not the first time either; 
 I heard all about it from John." 
 
 John was the eldest son of the Marquis, in age 
 Stephen's contemporary ; he was absorbed in racing, and 
 one of the Stewards of the Jockey Club. 
 
 " What does he want you to do ?" 
 
 " He wants me to lend him some money. 1000 is the 
 sum he names ; an insolent letter. There is no doubt his 
 mother was in service at Hadalstone; I remember her 
 faintly." 
 
 " You can't let him starve ; you must find something 
 for him." 
 
 " I thought perhaps you could employ him at Cul- 
 pepper. I asked John, but John says he won't touch him ; 
 he's a thorough scoundrel." 
 
 " No, I can't do anything ; I have too many claims on 
 me. Send him back to Hadalstone; that's where his 
 mother came from. Make him groom, gamekeeper, or 
 steward; surely you can find some sort of sinecure that 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 29 
 
 will enable you to give him a small income without ap- 
 pearing to be blackmailed. He certainly could not do any 
 harm at Hadalstone." 
 
 The sapient Marquis thought he could not do any 
 harm, and in the end Stephen offered him Sam Shingle's 
 sinecure. It was a curious, unfortunate, almost dramatic 
 coincidence that the only post at Hadalstone into which 
 Jack Forrest could fit with any approach to suitability 
 should have been vacant at this moment. Jack Forrest 
 accepted it, since nothing better offered. He would see 
 his grandmother; he had a sneaking respect for her, a 
 respect his mother had forfeited many years ago, before 
 she disappeared in the vortex of Piccadilly Circus. His 
 mother had told him the true story of the trick she had 
 played on her old master at Hadalstone, and twitted him 
 with his likeness to his real father, a stable-boy, whose 
 brief stay at the Hall had been terminated by a kick from 
 a restive racehorse. The truth had been kept from the 
 respectable Mrs. Dean; the shock of her daughter's be- 
 haviour had been softened to her by the Master's gener- 
 osity. The girl flaunted her shame in the village until 
 Stephen's father died, and her boy had been a familiar at 
 the Hall in those days, and was constantly in and out of 
 that same housekeeper's room where Aline now made her- 
 self at home. 
 
 It was natural that on his return to Hadalstone, after 
 nearly eighteen years hard-lived disreputable years, Jack 
 Forrest should seek out his grandmother, natural, too, 
 that Aline should see him there; but all that followed 
 was unnatural, horrible, almost incredible. 
 
 The mystery about Jack Forrest, that hint and innu- 
 endo created, was, in the face of Aline's ignorance and 
 innocence, responsible for her interest in him. She could 
 not but take an interest in him since she had gathered, 
 easily, that he was a " son of the House," and since the 
 House seemed to her in her retired and lonely life of such 
 paramount importance. Jack Forrest, the housekeeper's 
 room, Jane's hair-brushing confidences, were all so much 
 
SO PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 more vital than Fraulein Eckelstein. She began to live 
 vividly in the romance she was creating. 
 
 Jack Forrest looked better on a horse than anywhere 
 else. The first time Aline had seen him she had been 
 chilled, disappointed; but in the saddle, his limited legs 
 in gaiters, a cap replacing the cockney billy-cock, and 
 gloves on the rough hands, it was possible, though even 
 then it should have been difficult, for the halo of romance 
 slowly to transfigure him. And riding with Aline was 
 the only one of Sam Shingle's duties that Forrest actually 
 performed. They rode together daily. He taught Aline 
 a few things about horses that Sam had forgotten, or had 
 never known ; he was a man of very few words, a silent 
 man who chewed rather than talked, but for the moment 
 his few words spoke praise. He told Aline she had the 
 makings of a fine horsewoman, he praised her courage, 
 once he praised her figure. 
 
 Nobody suspected danger ; it was impossible to suspect 
 the child, so fair, with her proud carriage, and delicate 
 high-bred air, of having anything in common with the 
 ex- jockey. Mrs. Dean and Jane had talked much of 
 Jack Forrest before he came. It was dull in the country, 
 and they had few things to talk about, but, after he came, 
 and he had had tea once or twice in the housekeeper's 
 room, they left off talking of him, or even thinking of 
 him. He was one of themselves, and not a bright one. 
 His habit of silence alienated them. He lived over the 
 stables where Sam had lived, and his spare time seemed 
 to be spent in the public-house. A boy brought Miss 
 Aline's horse up to the house every day, and Jack came 
 up with it, mounted her, and they rode out together, just 
 as it used to be in Sam's time, only Sam used to bring the 
 horses up himself without the assistance of the stable-boy. 
 
 Together they rode away from the verbs and the trans- 
 lations and Fraulein Eckelstein. Jack Forrest was a man 
 of little education and low wit, but he knew how to hold 
 his tongue ; he had learned it in the training stables. Into 
 this thin-lipped, clean-shaven, silent man, then, with small 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 31 
 
 eyes close together, and impenetrable face, poor Aline read 
 an epitome of all her novelettes. He was the rightful 
 owner of the Hadalstone estates, her father was the 
 usurper, she herself an interloper. If he was silent, he 
 was thinking of his wrongs ; if his words were strange, 
 unpicked, his accent unaccustomed, it was their fault, the 
 Haywards' fault, for neglecting him in his youth. She 
 was not a clever girl ; she did not, as will be seen, become 
 a wise woman. In her extreme youth and ignorance, in 
 her loneliness and dislike of the one companion with 
 whom she had been provided, she was amenable to any 
 sort of temptation, exposed to any danger that should 
 threaten her. Rightful heirs, unacknowledged and de- 
 spised, were common enough in penny novelettes. Even 
 in a book that Aunt Con had given her was the story of 
 a Scotch laird who posed as a groom to win his sister's 
 love and confidence. Aline's imagination, roaming in 
 narrow limits, called Jack Forrest Jack Hay ward, and 
 tried to see in him a hero of romance. 
 
 It was not entirely Jack Forrest's fault. He was not 
 responsible for the muddle-headed child's wrong infor- 
 mation, or wrongly understood information. He was not 
 the sort of scoundrel that he appeared to be by what 
 followed, but he was " dead broke," and suspended from 
 riding, and he had a scheme, every broken-down jockey 
 has a scheme, and it wanted money to work it. Stephen 
 had written him a curt letter, and given him the post at 
 Hadalstone and two pounds per week. The scheme or coup 
 was connected with horses and faking; it could not be 
 worked from Hadalstone. Forrest tried his grandmother, 
 but she had no savings. Wages were not high at Hadal- 
 stone, they were not even paid very regularly ; and what 
 little she had, had gone from time to time to that poor 
 painted woman, Jack's mother, who walked the town, 
 until, five years ago, she had walked into the great Silence. 
 
 And Aline threw herself at his head, literally threw 
 herself at his head. He told Stephen so, in that one inter- 
 view he had with him, that too late interview, and 
 
32 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Stephen's bitter incredulous contempt made it seem ab- 
 surd. But it was true. The child had beautiful thoughts, 
 she meant to give him back the inheritance of which he 
 had been robbed. She was always thinking of how this 
 could be accomplished. She puzzled over it, and thought 
 of it, night and day. Wild schemes of appealing to her 
 father were quenched by her limited knowledge of how 
 he stood in the matter. It seemed as if Stephen, having 
 been his father's heir, must be concerned in the wrong 
 that had been done to Forrest. She was hazy about the 
 story, and thought of the broken jockey as " Cousin Jack." 
 Her heart beat high when the right thought came to her 
 some few weeks after he had arrived at Hadalstone. 
 There was a wonderful flush in her peach-like skin, a 
 brightness in her blue eyes, when riding with him on the 
 day that the light had dawned. She turned in her saddle 
 quickly, as the great thought took shape, and asked him : 
 
 " Are you married ; have you ever been married ?" 
 
 The man was low class, but sharp enough. On the 
 answer he gave her she slowly, with heightening flush 
 and brightening eye, told him her fine thoughts. Often, 
 since he had discovered her misinformation, they had dis- 
 cussed his " wrongs ;" and he followed her meaning 
 quickly now. 
 
 " By Gad ! she's not a bad bit of flesh, and he'd have 
 to fork out then," was his unspoken answer. And then 
 he played his easy part. He told her he was not married, 
 and he would like well enough to marry her. His part 
 was easy to play, because Aline gave him all the cues. 
 He had not quite understood the " tack" she was on at 
 first, but she talked more and more freely to him, and he 
 followed where she led. Very little was required of him. 
 The horrible sacrifice seemed the simplest matter to Aline. 
 She promised to marry him almost before he had made up 
 his mind that the " spec" was a sure one. 
 
 " You'd better not mention anything up there," he said. 
 Up there, accentuated with a jerk of the head, meant the 
 Hall. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 88 
 
 " Of course not," she answered quickly ; " we won't 
 say a word until afterwards." 
 
 " After we're spliced, you mean ?" 
 
 " When I can go to my father." 
 
 " I'll have the banns called at the next village," he said, 
 looking at her out of his little close-set eyes with some- 
 thing of interest. She had, to use his own vernacular, 
 " snapt him up at a word." He did not realise the weeks 
 of misguided thought that had led up to that moment. 
 
 " In the books they always have a special licence." 
 
 " By Jove ! she's goin' it," was the unspoken comment ; 
 but he said, " Yes, I know ; but a special licence costs 
 money, and " 
 
 She interrupted him hastily. 
 
 " Oh ! I've got plenty, ever so much, in the bank and 
 at home. My father always sends me money, and I never 
 spend any." 
 
 They rode on together in the spring, the hidden sun 
 making warm and sweet the perfumed air. Jack calcu- 
 lated that Stephen could not give him less than 1000, 
 and the coup could be brought off with half. Aline was 
 excited, not at all frightened at what she had done, but 
 proud of herself rather. She talked her thoughts aloud. 
 
 " I shall go to my father afterwards." She had a 
 strange picture of her father in her mind, so had no fear 
 of the quiet sarcasm that might have met her. " I shall 
 say to him : ' now you may embrace me, father, now you 
 may look with pleasure on your child; she has righted 
 the wrong you have done.' ' 
 
 She broke off from her grandiloquent speech, and said, 
 with a touch of wistfulness in the blue eyes which she 
 turned toward Forrest: 
 
 " He has never cared for me, or for Hadalstone. I 
 think it must have been because of you. I think he must 
 have felt remorse, and here it haunted him most." 
 
 Jack nodded, and went on with his straw. 
 
 " You'll keep it quiet," he said. 
 
 " I must not say to you, ' on the honour of a Hayward/ 
 
 3 
 
34 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 but, on my honour," she answered, and rode home, big 
 with her secret, proud, excited. She was a child, play- 
 ing at being the heroine of one of the penny novelettes. 
 She was very happy in her play. Forrest hardly figured 
 at all in his proper person ; he was " the rightful heir," 
 that was all. 
 
 Nobody noted the excitement, the delight, under which 
 she lived during those few days whilst the man was in 
 London getting the licence. She was playing at make- 
 believe, as happy children always play, but was not, un- 
 happily, playing, as they do, on equal terms ; and the 
 play turned to earnest before fear dawned. She might 
 have told Jane, might have confided in her maid; they 
 did that sometimes in books. But Jane failed her at the 
 critical moment. Jane was sulky and silent because her 
 young man (he was the butler, and at least sixty) had 
 toyed with the kitchenmaid. She brushed Aline's hair 
 and put her to bed, but she did not talk, she was too 
 full of her own trouble, and Mrs. Dean had gone down 
 another step on the road to senility, so Aline had no con- 
 fidante. 
 
 Fraulein sat in the schoolroom through the spring day, 
 with the exhilarating sun shining on the windows, trees 
 budding, birds singing, and she set the child abominable 
 tasks of translating long, involved, verbless German sen- 
 tences. She said Aline was more inattentive than ever. 
 They had been long days for Aline, without even a ride 
 to which she could look forward ; for Forrest was away, 
 and Fraulein said she must not ride. It was " pas gentil" 
 "pas gentil" with a German accent. Long, restless, 
 interminable days! Aline was so excited that she could 
 not listen or learn, or even pretend to; she was living 
 in a world of ruined castles and wicked earls and dis- 
 guised heirs. It was agony to her to sit still and be 
 nagged about German verbs. She cried over her lessons, 
 angry tears, but Fraulein went on grinding, and said she 
 was " unverschamt." She began to count the hours 
 which must elapse before she could get rid of Fraulein, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 35 
 
 began to count the hours when, through Jack Forrest, she 
 should emancipate herself from German verbs and ac- 
 cents. 
 
 On the very last day of all, Fraulein made her put " Die 
 Glocke" into English verse. Not a word of it did she 
 understand in English or in German. Her brain would 
 not work. She rebelled, flung her book on the ground, 
 she would not, could not, learn any more, she said. Her 
 head was aching, she cried in her unrest and excitement, 
 and threw her book on the floor, when nothing would 
 come of 
 
 " Ob das Sprode mit dem Weichen 
 Sich vereint zum guten Zeichen" 
 
 but 
 
 " If the mass well blended be 
 Then will the bell sound properly." 
 
 Fraulein with gutteral indignation ordered her to her 
 room; and Aline rushed away in a frenzy of desire to 
 tell her that by to-morrow she would be away from her 
 and free. Free! that was what the girl thought when 
 she rushed out of the room. 
 
 Fraulein Eckelstein took out her blotter and began to 
 write letters. The scene had agitated her, she thought it 
 might bring on her neuralgia, it was necessary not to be 
 in arrears with her correspondence. 
 
 Aline did not go to her room. She went instead into 
 the garden, where the scents soothed her, and the wind 
 kissed her hot cheeks ; there were buds on the rose-trees, 
 green leaves and green blossoming on the lilac, the birds 
 cooed to each other as they paired. She was soothed and 
 calmed. 
 
 To-morrow was to be her wedding-day. It was Fri- 
 day; Forrest had been away since Sunday. They were 
 to meet by the coppice at the bottom of the garden after 
 breakfast, just before lessons, Aline had arranged that. 
 They were to go to the next parish by train, John had 
 
36 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 arranged that. She knew all the programme, she was 
 not frightened, she had no misgivings; the week had 
 been long, too long. The dramatic moment, the moment 
 she was waiting for, was when she should go to her 
 father, holding her husband by the hand, and should say, 
 " I have Righted the Wrong," with capital letters. She 
 dwelt on that moment all the time. Her father, not Jack 
 Forrest, was prominent in her mind, and had been, though 
 she scarcely knew it, all the time. Stephen, the politician, 
 with his cynical face and proud position (to be an Under- 
 secretary of State seemed a proud position to Aline), who 
 who had been so little of a father to her; it was round 
 him her young thoughts naturally clustered. 
 
 She had been wonderfully happy in her newly discov- 
 ered play, in having found out why Stephen had neglected 
 her and Hadalstone. She did not, of course, realise her 
 mental attitude, but the image of her father, seen through 
 Aunt Constantia's adoring eyes, was mirrored in the ether 
 of her dawning soul. All the rest was play-acting. She 
 was mentally dressed up and performing a part, the Mar- 
 ried Woman, the Saviour of the Family, the Heroine; 
 of Jack Forrest, of her playmate, in truth, she thought but 
 little. Her father was the chief of her romance. Patri- 
 cian and patriot, his name spelt to her the definition of the 
 Ideal, and she longed, with that curious intense longing 
 unloved children have for love, that her hero should love, 
 notice, approve her. 
 
 She was going to marry Jack Forest to free her father 
 from remorse, to make him love her, and tell her she had 
 done well. 
 
 That night, the night before the wedding, she sat by 
 the window. A dark night it was, the moon only edging 
 the clouds, with no stars dawning through their darkness, 
 nor in the grey depths behind them, all her thoughts were 
 of Stephen and what she would say to him. She thought 
 of what she would say, perhaps, more than of what he 
 would answer. But she imagined he would fold her in 
 his arms, and kiss her; she blushed in the darkness at 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 37 
 
 the idea of the kiss her father would give her. These" 
 were her thoughts on the eve of her wedding. 
 
 She went to bed with that blush on her young cheeks, 
 and a tremulous, happy smile on her lips. She had for- 
 gotten all about Forrest, except that she would take his 
 hand and lead him to her father. She slept the sweet 
 untroubled sleep of childhood, although in the morning 
 she was going to marry Jack Forest, and she had never 
 so much as touched his ungloved hand. 
 
 If ignorance, downright abysmal ignorance, of any- 
 thing in the world but how to do sums badly and German 
 exercises worse, constituted innocence, then was Aline 
 Alexandra Victoria the most innocent of children, and, 
 if such innocence was what Constantia thought desirable, 
 then was she justified in her avoidance of boarding- 
 schools. 
 
 But in such case, when we pray, those of us who do 
 pray for our babies, that they should " keep innocency," 
 is it a merciful God who leaves our prayers so oft un- 
 answered? 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 
 ALINE ALEXANDRA VICTORIA HAYWARD married Jack 
 Forrest at Little Hempstead, next parish to Hadalstone. 
 She was a month short of seventeen years old. Forrest 
 had procured a special licence. There was not the slight- 
 est difficulty about getting the ceremony performed. The 
 bleer-eyed country parson, hanging on to his stipend 
 twenty years after his capacity for earning it was ex- 
 hausted, made them man and wife without comment, 
 thought or spoken. He hurried over the beautiful words, 
 mumbling them with unseemly haste. His comfortable 
 library chair called to him; he was back in it, and fast 
 asleep before Aline had done more than realise that, when 
 Jack Forrest took the liberty of kissing her, he smelt of 
 tobacco and made her feel sick. This was when she had 
 been married an hour. 
 
 The story this book has to tell is not the story of the 
 married life of Aline and Jack Forrest. A week of it, told 
 truly, as it dare not, and must not, be told, might be 
 trusted to destroy the dangerous germ of romance in 
 some girl-reader's heart, and set her mending stockings, 
 or even sweeping floors, with trembling thankfulness for 
 an employment, independent and solitary. 
 
 Impatience at Fraulein Eckelstein, sentimental dream- 
 ing over her father's personality, and the excitement pro- 
 vided by kitchen literature, were all Aline knew of emo- 
 tion at the end of May. Before the beginning of June, 
 she had learnt terror, pain, disgust, a horrible self-loath- 
 ing, and shame in its most degrading form. She cried 
 nearly all the week, not the light pasionate tears of child- 
 hood, but the bitter ones of a miserable dawning woman- 
 hood. She was sick several times, she had fits of shud- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 39 
 
 dering when the jockey came near; she changed from 
 a pretty child, with her proud little head in the air, and 
 her blue eyes bright and sparkling, into a white-faced 
 fevered girl, who looked as if she had just come out of a 
 hospital ward, and ought to be back in it. 
 
 That was the condition in which Stephen found her 
 after she had enjoyed the title of married woman a little 
 over a week. 
 
 It was not entirely Jack's fault. He had not been in- 
 tentionally unkind, or callous, or brutal. He was not 
 wrong in objecting to Aline going off to find her father 
 immediately after her marriage. He recognised what an 
 absurdity any claim to the Hadalstone estates, or the Hay- 
 ward honours would be. He did not tell Aline this, 
 which was considerate of him ; but he told her that Hadal- 
 stone was mortgaged up to the hilt, and wasn't worth 
 " a two-penny damn" ; he also informed her that illegiti- 
 macy was a bar to succession, and explained to her what 
 illegitimacy meant. He was a man of few words, but 
 now they were coarse ones. 
 
 He went to the public-house, or inn, at Little Hemp- 
 stead for the honeymoon, took a bedroom over the bar, 
 and used the bar parlour for sitting-room. They had it 
 to themselves, with its white cotton antimacassars, its 
 smell of stale beer, its engravings of the Queen and the 
 Prince Consort behind fly-blown glass in early Victorian 
 wooden frames, its stuffed fish in cases, its dirty cruet- 
 stand on the mean mahogany chiffonier. Here he smoked 
 his pipes, and drank his gin, and spelt out the sporting 
 papers. He did not mean to be unkind ; he swore, under 
 his breath only, that, for a miserable, puling, white-livered 
 wench as he ever saw, commend him to the girl he had 
 married. 
 
 From cursing Aline to himself to cursing her openly 
 was an easy transition. 
 
 There is little doubt that, if his marriage had lasted 
 another week, he would have thrown things at her when 
 she sat on the sofa, with frightened eyes in white face, 
 
40 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 staring at him as if she were magnetised, and alternating 
 this with fits of wild sobbing and hysteric shudders of 
 repulsion. A " damned good hiding," which was already 
 simmering in his mind, would have followed in due 
 course; after which she might have grown acclimatised 
 and settled down, bruised and battered morally and physi- 
 cally, until she was soft enough to be moulded into the 
 shape of the life that lay before her. For she was barely 
 seventeen, malleable, the daughter of first cousins a de- 
 cadent by inheritance. 
 
 The Honourable Stephen intervened, however. Dimin- 
 ishing majorities, difficulties in keeping the House to- 
 gether, signs of weariness and inorganism in the front 
 benches, warned the political prophets that a General 
 Election was at hand. The Grand Old Empire-Breaker 
 had entered a larger kingdom ; and, as Lord Sarum and 
 the Marquis had jointly predicted, his successor wielded 
 an uncertain sceptre. A popular Derby win delayed mat- 
 ters a full twelvemonth, but that was not foreseen in the 
 early spring. Preparations were being made on a large 
 scale for a complete bouleversement of the position. The 
 Opposition Leader was in request when Ministers had 
 to be heckled, or wavering constituencies informed as to 
 what should be their future course; and Stephen Hay- 
 ward was one of his most valuable lieutenants. The 
 Easter recess had been full of stump oratory. It was on 
 a hurried visit to Grosvenor Street, between instructing 
 Huddersfield and educating Fife, that Stephen received 
 Aline's grandiloquent letter, written the night before her 
 wedding. 
 
 His sense of humour almost overcame his paternal irri- 
 tation. She would " right the wrong and bring Jack 
 Forrest to him, and together they would throw themselves 
 at his feet," she had written. It was a long letter, very 
 grandiloquent, not quite coherent, indifferently spelt ; she 
 had written it in an excess of admiration at her own 
 heroine-like conduct, and she thought it quite magnificent 
 in style and phrasing. Unfortunately it was not very 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 41 
 
 clear. Stephen did not really understand the step she 
 contemplated. He cursed Jack Forrest and his father's 
 errant fancies, he meant to show the letter to Constantia 
 but forgot, he dictated a few lines of brilliant badinage 
 in reply. Aline would not have understood the tone if she 
 had received the letter, but of course she never did re- 
 ceive it, for she had already left the Hall. Stephen for- 
 got to show the girl's letter to Constantia because he was 
 immersed in business. 
 
 It was an anxious, harassing time. He was absorbed 
 in business, making speeches, sending telegrams, canvas- 
 sing for his colleagues with all the energy of a man who, 
 most valuable as a free lance, yet dreams fitfully of the 
 sweets of office. And the thirst for power had grown 
 on him. When the Liberal Prime Minister should retire 
 into his well-merited obscurity, Stephen's hour would 
 come, he thought. To this end he threw himself into one 
 bye-electoral campaign after another. To this end he 
 worked feverishly, impetuously, in the manner he had 
 made his own. He had forgotten all about Aline and her 
 letter before he had finished dictating the reply. He had 
 barely an hour to get through his correspondence and 
 catch the express to Delamere. There was only a borough 
 election there, it is true, but Mildmay had been beaten 
 last time by over four hundred votes. To turn a Liberal 
 majority of four hundred votes into a Unionist victory 
 just now was not unworthy the effort even of a Stephen 
 Hayward. Stephen had promised to speak for Mildmay, 
 to explain the policy that actuated the Opposition. So 
 he hurriedly dictated the answer to the childish scrawl, 
 and he meant to tell his secretary to enclose it to Con- 
 stantia, who was in Scotland. He duly caught his train, 
 and it was only a week later that he remembered anything 
 about Aline and what she had written. He had even for- 
 gotten that he must discharge Forrest. The next time 
 the matter was brought before him he got it full in his 
 face, like a blow. 
 
 He had had a busy week with Lord Mildmay, the local 
 
42 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 agent, and a house full of lady and gentlemen canvassers. 
 They had entertained th~ Primrose Leaguers, visited the 
 doctors and lawvers and clergy of the county, performed 
 all the siigntly degrading social tricks that the neighbour- 
 hood and the outlying parish expected, and to-morrow 
 they hoped to reap the reward. To-night they had re- 
 turned from a meeting in the Town Hall only just in time 
 to dress for dinner. Stephen's letters, a pile of them, 
 were on his dressing-table. He would have left them 
 until later, but, as it happened, Aline's childish hand- 
 writing caught his eye, reminding him of something he 
 had forgotten; it was unusual for her to write to him. 
 He tore open the letter; perhaps he had a presentiment. 
 It was written four days after the wedding, and had fol- 
 lowed Stephen round the country. There was no grand- 
 iloquence in it, and it was very short. 
 
 " DEAR FATHER, I have married Mr. Forrest, and he 
 won't let me come to you. Do come to me ; it was all a 
 horrid mistake. I wish I was dead. What shall I do? 
 
 Your broken-hearted (t A 
 
 ALINE. 
 
 Stephen, standing up in stiff-fronted evening shirt, his 
 tie not yet on, and his valet waiting with his dress-coat, 
 read the letter twice, and stood with it in his hand. 
 
 His face changed, the nervous intellectual face grew 
 haggard and troubled, the keenness went out of it, the 
 eyes looked dully back into an old trouble, the lips trem- 
 bled. At that moment he did not remember Aline was 
 his daughter so vividly as he remembered she was Jack 
 Hayward's granddaughter ; that the inheritance his father 
 had left him, flung its sinister bar across his path at the 
 very moment the way to the goal seemed clear. He 
 crushed the letter in his hand; almost unconsciously a 
 curse broke from him, stifled into a groan. His secre- 
 tary's apology for not having heard him distinctly, the 
 man's attitude, pen in hand, his vacant cough, however, 
 helped Stephen to pull himself together for the moment 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 43 
 
 " That will do," he said abruptly to the valet, dismissing 
 him. " Get on, if you please, Mr. Jenkins, with the 
 next." He opened the rest of the letters, dictating stead- 
 ily, finishing first his correspondence, then his toilet. His 
 mind, that distraught, far-seeing mind of his, was working 
 all the time. 
 
 " Nothing to be done to-night, nothing to be done at 
 all; mustn't spoil the meeting; Mildmay's chances are 
 improving, and it would be a useful seat for us to win. I 
 can't do any good here in the morning ; they'll have made 
 up their minds by then, and to see me driving about with 
 Mildmay will make no difference. I can get from here 
 to Little Hempstead. What the deuce can her governess 
 have been up to? Constantia ought to have saved me 
 this sort of thing, but she would go up to Scotland just 
 at the wrong time. I've half a mind not to go at all ; she 
 has made her bed, let her lie on it. But I must not have 
 a scandal, just at this moment. The man's capable of 
 anything. I had better see him. What a fool the girl has 
 made of herself. I suppose they only want money from 
 me; God knows where I'm to get it from. They must 
 undertake to emigrate ; I can't have a broken-down black- 
 leg of a jockey calling me ' father-in-law/ Perhaps it 
 can be hushed up. The last thing one would have ex- 
 pected from a daughter of Angela's," and so on. 
 
 Not a thought of pity for the girl, though it was a 
 pitiful letter enough. But Stephen was as yet so de- 
 tachedly a father that, on his journey to Little Hempstead 
 next morning, all his thoughts and fears and annoyances 
 were for himself and the family, and, perhaps, a little for 
 the Party. 
 
 He thought he had lived down Lord John Hayward, 
 but the whole wretched story would be raked up again. 
 It was a tedious railway journey, with many stoppages 
 and changes, drizzling rain, and dilatory guards at ob- 
 scure local stations. With damnable persistency the 
 thought haunted him that, if the Press got hold of the 
 story, his father's name and Jack Forrest's career would 
 
44 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 be on every tongue. The wretched girl ! why, if the man 
 was anything, he was her uncle. " Good God ! the thing 
 was not even legal !" he said to himself. 
 
 At length, the train steamed into the little station of 
 Little Hempstead, with the name stiffly written in white 
 stones set in a border of green plants. 
 
 The solitary porter directed him to the inn, " not five 
 minutes from the station," he said. Stephen asked about 
 the returning trains ; he did not think the task before 
 him, so unsavoury, so distasteful, would take long. It 
 was still raining, a gentle persistent summer rain, a trifle, 
 perhaps, but this added to his annoyance. 
 
 There was a porch to the inn, through the window on 
 the right he could see the labourers conversing over their 
 beer. Their deep voices and the fumes reached him where 
 he stood. The proprietor stood behind the bar in shirt- 
 sleeves. 
 
 " Is Mr. Forrest within ?" Stephen asked, his disgust 
 quickening round the lines of his mouth, and showing in 
 his voice. 
 
 " Yes, sir ; I think so, sir." The lessee of the Little 
 Hempstead Arms had been a butler, and knew a gentle- 
 man when he saw one. " Allow me through here ; first 
 door on the left." 
 
 " Through here" was a dark passage behind the bar. 
 Stephen's hat nearly touched the ceiling. The proprietor 
 opened the door for him. He did not think he would 
 have done so for a visitor to Jack Forrest; he knew the 
 jockey, and his reputation, but the shrinking bride he had 
 hardly seen. 
 
 Stephen saw his daughter in the muggy, evil-smelling 
 parlour, saw her instantly in the corner of the rickety 
 horse-hair sofa. It was one of the moments when Forrest 
 had been explaining matters to her, and she was staring 
 at him with her terrified eyes. All her misery was ap- 
 parent in those wide eyes, it showed too in her cheeks, 
 white and sunken, it quivered round her pale lips, and 
 trembled in her little childish hands, which she clasped 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 45 
 
 and unclasped as she stared at Jack. He was puffing 
 awg y at his pipe. 
 
 " A damned good hiding, my gal, that's what you want, 
 and I've half a mind " 
 
 Aline never took her eyes off his face. She had been 
 crying day and night for hours at a time. His voice hac 
 roused her from a sobbing, half-stupefied slumber. He 
 had had it all his own way with her, and had let her 
 cry, but now her miserable face had begun to get on his 
 nerves. He culled a few choice epithets from his stable 
 days, used a word she had only before heard applied 
 to Mary of England, and she sat up and gazed at him 
 with that look of fascinated terror which, together 
 with the length of her eyelashes, the colouring of her 
 hair and her slender figure, arrested Stephen's attention 
 immediately. 
 
 " Beautiful ! My God, beautiful !" That was what she 
 was, and the very image of his mother, his mother as he 
 remembered her before he had been sent to France. His 
 heart gave a quick throb. His daughter! why had he 
 never realised it? For the space of a second after the 
 door opened the jockey kept his seat, replacing his pipe 
 in his mouth. Then Aline s'aw her father, half rose as if 
 to go to him, sank back on the sofa, covered her face with 
 her hands, and broke into hysterical sobs. 
 
 " She's bin goin' on like that for four bloomin' hours," 
 said Forrest, rising and pointing at her with the stem of 
 his pipe. " How would you like it? I want to know how 
 you'd like it." This was his apology for the arrested 
 words Stephen had heard. 
 
 " I don't like it," said Stephen under his breath, and 
 went over to the girl. 
 
 " Aline, look up, child ; speak to me." He rested his 
 hand a moment on her bent head. Like silk, like soft, 
 abundant silk, it felt under his hand. She was unhappy, 
 unhappy as his mother had been, and how was he better 
 than his father? The twinge of remorse, compunction, 
 pity, that went through him was the birth of a new emo- 
 
46 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 tion. " Don't cry, my child," he said. And the " my 
 child" was as a sudden thrill. So slender she was and 
 beautiful and sad ; she was suddenly dear to him. 
 
 " Take me away ; take me away from him," she said, 
 and clung to him with those small childish hands, speak- 
 ing wildly. " Oh, take me away, father ; take me away 
 from him. I want to go away; I want to die. Oh, 
 father!" 
 
 " Hush ! hush !" his tone was strange to himself, his 
 voice soft. For in his heart was that strange thrill, the 
 thrill of his fatherhood, that overmastered for the mo- 
 ment the politician in him, overbore the higher philosophy, 
 and revealed a phase in common humanity that touched 
 him poignantly. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! you can take her away if you like ; I know 
 I should be damned glad to get rid of her," said Forrest 
 sullenly, knocking the ashes out of his pipe against the 
 mantelpiece, and eyeing Stephen. 
 
 " Will you take me away, will you, will you, will you ?" 
 She was clinging to her father hysterically, shaking all 
 over, wild with fear and hope. 
 
 " Yes, yes ; hush, it's all right ; be a good girl ; don't 
 cry. I'll take you away ; don't fear." 
 
 This was not what he had expected or intended. He 
 was moved so suddenly, so completely, by her trembling, 
 sweet lips, by the taper fingers of her clinging hands, that 
 he was hardly master of himself. 
 
 " You damned scoundrel !" He turned upon the man 
 with sudden fierceness. Forrest was watching the pair 
 out of his little closed eyes, and thinking. " I'll take you 
 away," said Stephen to the girl, in a different tone, half 
 ashamed of his ebullition of feeling. 
 
 " Scoundrel, or no, you can only take her away if I 
 choose ; she's my wife, you know," Forrest said. " You 
 be careful with your ' scoundrels,' " he grumbled. 
 
 The girl shuddered against her father, and he put his 
 arm around her. Then he said again very gently, leaning 
 down so that she could hear : 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 47 
 
 " You'd better let me talk to him alone. Can't you 
 go upstairs, anywhere?" 
 
 " You won't go without me ?" she said agitatedly. 
 "You won't?" 
 
 " I won't move from this room until you come down 
 again." 
 
 She had to pass Forrest to reach the door; it was a 
 pitiable sight. 
 
 " Half an imbecile, that's what she is, half an imbecile. 
 You'd think I'd walloped the life out of her, wouldn't 
 you ? I dare say you do think so. But, so help me God, 
 I've never laid a hand on her, much less a stick. Flung 
 herself at my very head, she did, and now " 
 
 " Look here," said Stephen abruptly, " it's a question 
 of money with you, I've no doubt. Nobody knows of 
 tni* infernal marriage, if it is a marriage. What will 
 you take to go your way and let her go hers, to hold 
 your tongue, and let me see what I can do to annul the 
 whole business ?" 
 
 " Oh ! the marriage was right enough, worse luck." 
 
 Stephen kept a difficult control over himself. 
 
 " What will you take ? that's the question ; what will 
 you take?" 
 
 'Take to let her go?" 
 
 :< Yes, to let me take her back, and keep the matter 
 quiet." 
 
 " Take ? Just what I'd have took at first a thousand 
 quid. I didn't want the girl ; it was her idea all along ; 
 but I thought that would make you fork out, and it seems 
 I was right. Miserable little devil! I'd give her to you 
 for nothing if I could afford it." 
 
 The two men were in strong contrast ; a foot and a half 
 in height between them, and several centuries of culture ; 
 yet the little jockey in slippers, without a collar, saw, no 
 less than the other, the full strength of his position. 
 
 " Not but what I could lick her into shape ; I've had 
 some skittish fillies in my time, and broke 'em in." 
 
 *' I haven't got a thousand pounds with me," said 
 
48 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Stephen sharply. " You know what you've done is ille- 
 gal; you'll have to lower your terms." 
 
 " Not a penny ; what do you take me for ? Legal ! 
 you'll like to stand up in court and say I'm your brother." 
 
 " It's a lie ; if I'd seen you before, I should have known 
 it was a lie. Whatever my father was, there is not a 
 drop of his blood in your miserable veins ; I could swear 
 to it." 
 
 " That's as it may be ; you'd have to prove it. What's 
 the good of talking? You'll have to give me the money." 
 
 " If I do, will you clear out, get out of England, never 
 let me hear of you, or see you again?" 
 
 11 Well, I expect you'll hear of me. Jack Forrest is 
 pretty well known, and I'm not going to give up riding, 
 if that's what you mean. But give me the money, and 
 you can do what you like with the girl there, isn't that 
 enough for you?" 
 
 " What guarantee can I have that you won't blackmail 
 me?" asked Stephen irritably, trying to think where he 
 could raise a thousand pounds. He habitually spent about 
 four times his income; there were always a hundred 
 calls on his ready-money, and a chronic over-draft at 
 his bank. 
 
 " That's not my game," said the jockey, resuming his 
 seat, his misshapen hands spread out on his knees, and his 
 ferret face contemptuous, " not my game at all. The girl 
 threw herself at my head. You can take her back, 'ush 
 it all up ; there's nobody need be the wiser. The clergy- 
 man that married us was half asleep, and not a soul at 
 the hall knew what was up. I never was one for women. 
 But I must have the money. Why, man," his nefarious 
 scheme began working in his head, and his face bright- 
 ened, " with a thousand pounds, I'll tell you what I can 
 do. I can break " 
 
 " Do ! what does it matter to me what you do with it ?" 
 the other broke in impatiently. " Will you keep out of 
 my way and the child's way? That is all I ask of you 
 now. That you'll do something disreputable goes with- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 49 
 
 out saying; but I don't want to be connected with it, 
 that's all. Will you disconnect yourself at once and for 
 ever from me and mine if I get this thousand pounds for 
 you ?" 
 
 " And damned glad to do it. Do you think I've had a 
 pleasant time hangin' round that hole of a Hadalstone, or 
 sittin' up here bein' cried on? It was none of my doin' 
 from first to last. I wrote you fair and square as man to 
 man, asking you for a thousand pounds, and you put me 
 off with a letter that I wouldn't have flung at a stable-boy, 
 and two quid a week." The jockey felt he had been in- 
 jured. " Fork out, and that ends it ; it would have ended 
 it before it began if I hadn't been down to my knuckle 
 bones at the time, and obliged to take what I could get. 
 You'll have to come to my terms now, thanks to that 
 slut, and my price is a thousand pounds, and I won't take 
 a bob less." 
 
 The irresistible logic of the situation was not lost on 
 Stephen. If he had not seen Aline and remembered that 
 she was his and Angela's and the family's generally, he 
 might have told Forrest to go to the devil, and let him 
 and his wife fight it out. That is what he had meant to 
 do, what had been in his mind in the train; to promise 
 them an income and ship them to Australia, seemed 
 vaguely the aim of his journey. " Keep the matter out of 
 the newspapers," was the definite refrain of his thoughts. 
 But matters had shaped differently under the influence 
 of the girl's misery and beauty, and the strange thrill of 
 memory caused by her likeness to his mother. 
 
 He cut the interview as short as he could ; the atmos- 
 phere he was in was intolerable. He promised all the 
 man asked ; it seemed to him he had no choice, if he 
 wanted to take Aline with him. He undertook to send 
 a cheque within three days. At first, Forrest meant to 
 refuse to let the girl go until he had the money, but he 
 was tired to death of her, he had begun to hate the very 
 sight of her, she made him feel mad, and he really did 
 not want to try his drastic remedies if he could "kick 
 
 4 
 
50 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 her out" instead. His " scheme" was much more impor- 
 tant to him than the girl, and, of course, he realised he 
 had the whip-hand of the pair. 
 
 Stephen found Aline outside the parlour door ; she had 
 been unable to get further. All her being trembled with 
 one question. "Will he let me go?" Her lips could 
 scarcely form the words. 
 
 " It is all right, it will be all right ; you need never see 
 him again." 
 
 Stephen knew instinctively the answer she wanted to 
 hear, he devoutly hoped he was justified and accurate, but 
 he feared, doubted, thought he had made a fool of himself, 
 and had opened the door to endless annoyance and ex- 
 actions. The position was forced on him, and he accepted 
 it, that was all. 
 
 He telegraphed to Constantia, and he took Aline to 
 London, to the house in Grosvenor Street; there was 
 room for her there, after all, they found, now that it was 
 too late. Not governesses nor masters they wanted for 
 her, however, but doctors and a hospital nurse and all the 
 paraphernalia of illness. Constantia, who travelled from 
 Scotland at express speed in response to her brother's 
 telegram, found, instead of the gentle, affectionate child 
 she expected to see for Stephen's message only told her 
 that Aline was in town and wanted her a restless head, 
 on a white pillow, with fevered eyes and incoherent 
 tongue, raving of unspeakable things. 
 
 Constantia went down to the library after her visit to 
 the sick-room. Stephen was walking up and down. 
 
 "Well?" he asked. 
 
 " Tell me about it, Steve ; I don't understand." 
 
 In a few short sentences he told her. 
 
 " What is the man like ? What on earth is the man 
 like?" 
 
 " A wretched little blackguard." 
 
 What could they say to each other, this brother and 
 sister, with their father's history between them? Con- 
 stantia had mothered the young politician, been secretary 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 51 
 
 to the poor one, watched over him ; for him she had borne 
 her gathering years in maidenliness, and grown concen- 
 trate on Stephen's career. They had fought on uphill 
 together; that they never spoke together of what made 
 the fight difficult, of what, even now, made the ultimate 
 issue doubtful, left it no less certain that both of them 
 remembered constantly. Now they feared the world 
 would remember; they feared that when the short Lib- 
 eral day was done, and Lord Sarum came into power, 
 Lord Sarum would remember. Miserably, Stephen 
 walked. about the room. 
 
 " A wretched little blackguard, looks like a stable-boy. 
 You would not have imagined it possible." 
 
 " Couldn't you have sent them to Australia, and hushed 
 it up ? But, no," she added quickly ; " I see it would have 
 been impossible." 
 
 In the hearts of both the thought lay heavily, that, 
 perhaps, they had not done their duty by tfie girl, and 
 both of them, notwithstanding what she had done, feit 
 tenderly towards her. Compunction left them now, un- 
 ready of speech to each other and without decision. 
 
 " Do you blame me, Steve ?" said Con unsteadily, after 
 a pause. 
 
 " Not more than I blame myself," he answered impa- 
 tiently ; " no, of course not." 
 
 "Fraulein?" 
 
 " She tells me Fraulein knew nothing ; nobody knew 
 anything." 
 
 " If it is possible " 
 
 " Possible, or not possible, we are bound to try " 
 
 " To hush it up ?" She looked at him anxiously. 
 
 " To keep it quiet, at least, until after the General Elec- 
 tion. What a brute I am! After all, even now I am 
 thinking more of the elections than of the child. That's 
 
 been the mischief " Hurriedly he walked up and 
 
 down, and the short sentences fell from him in jets. 
 " Myself and the party ; myself first, I suppose the 
 country, perhaps, yes, certainly the country, but myself 
 
52 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 with it, always myself. I suppose that was at the root of 
 our father's life too utter selfishness." 
 
 " Stephen," she laid her hand on his arm, " don't 
 don't blame yourself. I cannot bear it ; if there has been 
 neglect, it has been my neglect. You left it to me; I 
 thought I had done what was necessary." 
 
 " No," he shook off her hand, and the comfort she 
 wanted to give him. " You would have brought her up 
 here two years ago. It was I who would not have it. 
 I feared she would practise her scales ! Good God ! if 
 I'd only let her practise her scales over my head." 
 
 So Stephen talked, for his daughter, bearing the stamp 
 of his unhappy mother in her young unhappy face, had 
 forced a sudden way into his heart, and made it sore. 
 " She is such a child, such a baby we have let her fall 
 into such a morass." 
 
 " You are going to try and pull her out, you are going 
 to fight for her ?" she said quickly. 
 
 " I am going to do my best. I am going to get her 
 release from that scoundrel if it costs me my last penny 
 and my name." 
 
 " No, no ! Stephen," she cried. " I couldn't bear that. 
 You will hush it up, pay him anything, you won't imperil 
 your position." 
 
 Wild thoughts of resigning, of throwing up his posi- 
 tion, of retiring into private life, had come to him in the 
 gloom of that evening. But Con's distress, Con's appeal, 
 showed him the folly of any precipitate action. If they 
 could keep it quiet, this desperate, disgraceful marriage, 
 and still save the child the consequences of her folly, they 
 would do so. That was the possibility, the one hope to 
 which they clung after their hour's talk. They must face 
 the certainty of a perpetual blackmail, if, by submitting to 
 it, they could guard the girl's secret, their own secret. 
 This was their decision. 
 
 That night Constantia wrote to Hadalstone for Aline's 
 clothes, announcing incidentally her arrival in town. In 
 a dignified letter she dismissed Fraulein Eckelstein, in- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 53 
 
 forming her that, although Miss Hayward was welcome 
 at her father's house, neither she (Constantia) nor the 
 Honourable Stephen Hayward, were satisfied with not 
 having been notified of her arrival. Constantia took a 
 certain risk in writing thus peremptorily, but the risk 
 was justified. Fraulein Eckelstein knew nothing. Jack 
 Forrest and the young lady had disappeared simultane- 
 ously, but nobody at Hadalstone thought of connecting 
 the two events. Fraulein accepted unquestioningly the 
 explanation that the girl had grown tired of the solitude 
 of the country and had joined her father and aunt with- 
 out leave, and, trembling for her recommendation, if it 
 should be known that a young lady under her charge had 
 " run away," even to her father, in a copious answer, full 
 of split infinitives and hide-and-seek verbs, she begged the 
 secrecy that would have been begged of her. So far they 
 were safe. The illness, too, that would pass. The old 
 family doctor, incurious, was satisfied with a halting ex- 
 planation, and comfortably diagnosed " shock to the sys- 
 tem." 
 
 Within two days of Aline's arrival in Grosvenor Street, 
 the silence of Hadalstone, and the acceptance of Gros- 
 venor Square were secured. There remained only 
 Jack Forrest. It was all very well for Stephen and Con- 
 stantia to face vaguely the possibility of blackmail, but 
 certain it was that a thousand pounds must be found im- 
 mediately. This was a ridiculously small sum for Aline's 
 freedom, if they could persuade themselves that even for 
 this sum they were securing it. But, between them they 
 had not a thousand pounds lying idle at their bankers, 
 nor had they securities on which they could raise such an 
 amount. Yet, whether it represented the full purchase 
 price of security, or merely an instalment, its payment 
 was imperative. 
 
 Constantia, when the first two days had gone safely by, 
 and it seemed that no one was the wiser for the girl's 
 escapade, began to breathe more freely, and to consider 
 the pecuniary question, to talk things over with Stephen, 
 
54 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 and suggest expedients. Theirs was not by any 
 a wealthy family; even the Marquis had estates to keep 
 up commensurate, at least, with his income, and Stephen 
 had already received as much help as he cared to ask from 
 both his uncle and his cousin. He could not go to them 
 for this sum. He ran over in his mind a list of people 
 whom he might ask for the loan, and he rejected them 
 one by one. Then, being absolutely at his wits' end, he 
 commenced to reassure Constantia. He told her not to 
 worry, the money would be all right. When she was 
 reassured, he lay awake all night, going over impossible 
 channels wherein he might possibly find one thousand 
 pounds. 
 
 On the third day after he had brought his daughter 
 home he received a letter from Jack Forrest, asking him 
 when he might expect the money. It was perfectly civil, 
 but Stephen detested the necessity of replying to it; he 
 hated the sub-suggestion that he had been dilatory in 
 keeping his word. 
 
 He wrote curtly back that a cheque would be forwarded 
 on the morrow, pressure of business accounted for the 
 delay public business that would not wait. 
 
 Then he breakfasted, and again reassured Constantia, 
 went for his morning canter, and later to the club for 
 lunch. Whom he met at the club, and what happened 
 there, must be told in another chapter. 
 
 Suffice it now that Jack Forrest received, not a cheque, 
 but a thousand pounds in hundred pound notes, and his 
 mean little eyes sparkled when he opened the registered 
 packet, and straightway he began to make calculations 
 with a stump of pencil in an uneducated hand. All his 
 calculations came out exactly as he thought they would, 
 which is not surprising, since he reckoned his gains as 
 many people count their chickens ! When he had finished, 
 and ceased poring over his dirty little bit of paper, and 
 had enjoyed again the rustle of the crisp notes Stephen 
 had sent him, he said to himself : 
 
 "If it comes off crooked, all the worse for Stephen 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 55 
 
 Hay ward." This really summed up the situation, but left 
 out one factor, which, as it happened, was the very one 
 that ultimately decided the matter. The factor omitted 
 was Providence. " If it comes off crooked," said the 
 jockey, thinking of his scheme, his coup, which now, at 
 last, he had the money to work, " all the worse for 
 Stephen Hayward!" 
 
 It will be necessary to see where Stephen obtained that 
 thousand pounds, and on what terms, before one can defi- 
 nitely pronounce Stephen " none the worse" for his ex- 
 perience ; but there need be no delay in summing up the 
 situation as far as it affected Jack Forrest, blackguard, 
 ex- jockey, and racing tout. 
 
 He took himself and his ten notes to Friston, where 
 the friend upon whom he relied for help in his scheme 
 superintended Lord Ralming's racing stables. This other 
 scoundrel was quite prepared to discuss the business, and 
 over a hearty lunch they did discuss it. After the lunch 
 Jack tried Jemima over the hurdles, not that he had any 
 chance of being allowed to ride her in the race about 
 which they were plotting, for the exclusiveness of the 
 Jockey Club was complete, but he wanted to see what the 
 filly could do in experienced hands, with a view to her 
 not doing it. 
 
 Then it was that that most wonderful accident hap- 
 pened, a bit of luck the Haywards could never have ex- 
 pected, a coincident at which even a novelist might hesi- 
 tate. He took the filly into the field, rode her for all she 
 was worth, and stopped her by his new trick, a trick 
 which, more slowly performed, was to be the crux of the 
 coup. But Jemima crossed her legs, she came down 
 heavily, and over her head, as neatly as possible, came 
 Jack Forrest, that capable jockey, an inexplicable acci- 
 dent. He had ridden for ten years, been over water and 
 over fences, he had won or lost, as it suited his book, 
 but he had never before met with an accident. He never 
 met with one afterwards. His ample luncheon may have 
 unsteadied him, or it may have been the effect on his 
 
56 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 nerves of his recent experiences, or the weight of the 
 notes he carried ; or, perhaps, that unknown factor, Provi- 
 dence, was working for Aline, or saving Stephen Hay- 
 ward for the Conservatives ; or it may have been, as the 
 editor of The London Sportsman said to his sub., that the 
 god who watches over newspapers knew they were short 
 of half a column. Whatever the cause, the effect was 
 supreme. Jack Forrest's neck was broken; he never 
 spoke, and never moved after that successful trick of his 
 was successfully accomplished. Whether it was the con- 
 cussion that killed him, or the shock to the spinal cord, 
 was the subject of discussion that entertained twelve 
 farmers and a medical coroner for a whole afternoon. 
 
 The London Sportsman, out of gratitude, gave Forrest 
 a handsome obituary ; the writer never mentioned he had 
 been suspended, but enumerated the races he had won, 
 recounted his good seconds, and filled up the half column 
 without difficulty. 
 
 Stephen was not a reader of the racing papers, and it 
 was John, eldest son of the Marquis, who told him the 
 news. Not that John thought it was of any particular 
 interest to Stephen, though the latter had once questioned 
 him about Jack Forrest; it was simply that John had 
 nothing to talk about at any time but racing or horses, 
 and, meeting Stephen, it was natural for him, with the 
 vague memory of that question, to say : 
 
 " Did you see that that fellow Forrest you once asked 
 me about was killed at Friston, jerked out of his saddle? 
 I'll bet ten to one he was at some trick or other with 
 Jemima ; the filly broke her legs." 
 
 Stephen could not believe it at first. He borrowed the 
 paper as unconcernedly as possible, and, while he was 
 reading that absorbing half column, he heard no more of 
 the things that John was telling him. He parted with his 
 cousin abruptly, anxious only to get home to Constantia 
 with the news. 
 
 " Hullo, you've run off with my paper," John called 
 after him, as Stephen jumped into his hansom with a hur- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 57 
 
 ried nod of farewell. Then he went off grumbling be- 
 cause he had forgotten to note the odds against Isinglass 
 for the Spring Handicap. Stephen, reading and re- 
 reading the half column, could hardly believe his good 
 fortune, could hardly credit his freedom. On the way 
 home he stopped the cab, and bought all the sporting 
 papers. Each of them had something, if only a line or 
 two, about the inquest. There was no manner or shadow 
 of doubt that Jack Forrest was really dead. 
 
 When he arrived home, Stephen sent for Constantia 
 to the library, put the papers into her hand, pointing 
 out the paragraph, then gently pushed her toward the 
 door. At a glance she seemed to gather the startling 
 import. 
 
 " There, go now," he said, " you can read them at 
 leisure. There is no doubt about it, no doubt at all. I 
 am very busy. I've done nothing these few days ; I must 
 get to work. Send Jackson down to me, will you? He 
 has been very worried about my neglected letters. What ! 
 crying, Con? Well, I shouldn't have expected it of 
 you." 
 
 " It's too good to be true !" She was not crying, but 
 there were tears of thanksgiving in her eyes. " I'll take 
 these up to the child, half her illness is fear. I suppose 
 she deserves her punishment, but it is pitiable to see 
 her." 
 
 " Deserves, nonsense !" said Stephen, with quick irrita- 
 bility. " Don't let me hear you say that again. ' De- 
 serves !' it's we who deserved punishment ; and now we 
 haven't got it, and are not going to get it. The whole 
 incident can be forgotten. We'll make up to the child for 
 our neglect." 
 
 Stephen was softer to the girl in his heart than Con- 
 stantia ; but then, Constantia was a woman, and had been 
 in the wrong. 
 
 From that day Aline's recovery to health was rapid, 
 She clung to her aunt during her convalescence, and won 
 on her through her weakness. The motherliness in Con- 
 
58 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 stantia, which had been lavished on Stephen, was hard 
 to awaken at the call, at the need, of her niece. She had 
 so nearly wrecked Stephen's career, so perilously nearly. 
 Very slowly her affection for the girl revived, at the best 
 it had been a poor thing, with Duty at its root, and a 
 certain jealousy cramping its growth. Constantia was 
 a cold woman naturally. Aline clung to her, but could 
 get only a limited hold; she got chilled herself in the 
 contact. 
 
 However, Constantia was bent now on doing her duty 
 to Aline. She made plans, an autumn in Florence, a win- 
 ter in Rome, no presentation until the next season. In 
 everything Aline acquiesced humbly. Her body grew 
 well quickly, her mind was paralysed by what she had gone 
 through ; still she clung chilly and forlornly to her Aunt 
 Constantia. Preparations were made for their journey 
 abroad, Aline always dumbly acquiescent. Jack Forrest 
 was dead; that was all that seemed to have reached her 
 intelligence. 
 
 It was arranged that Stephen should follow them after 
 the recess. 
 
 As they were just about to start on their journey, Con- 
 stantia, neat and prim in her tailor-made clothes, stand- 
 ing in the hall amid the piled-up luggage, waiting for 
 Aline and the maid, sprang upon Stephen at last thf 
 question he had been waiting for during the last three 
 weeks. 
 
 " By the way, Stephen, I never asked you, I forgot 
 to ask you ; where did you get that thousand pounds after 
 all?" 
 
 It was what she saw in his face that made her leave 
 the luggage, and follow him into the library. She had 
 read, in the report of the inquest, that in Jack Forrest's 
 pocket a thousand pounds in Bank of England notes had 
 been found. She knew these must have come from 
 Stephen, but, in the midst of preparations for the foreign 
 tour, and the social and household arrangements, she had 
 forgotten to ask her brother from whom, or how, he had 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 59 
 
 obtained the money. Stephen, when he smiled in answer 
 to her question, and evaded it, had a curious whimsical 
 look of guilt. Where could he have obtained it? She 
 followed him into the library, and repeated her question. 
 He held the door open for her. 
 
 " Now, don't faint ; don't excite yourself unduly " 
 
 " Be serious, Steve " 
 
 " I will I was I am ," but his expression seemed 
 to doubt how she would take the news. " As I remarked 
 don't faint I borrowed it from Karl Althaus." 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 STEPHEN HAY WARD had excellent reasons for with- 
 holding from his sister the name of the gentleman from 
 whom he had borrowed the money, excellent reasons for 
 breaking it to her gently when she asked him point-blank, 
 and even for fearing that she might faint when he told 
 her what he knew she would regard as a painful and 
 unfortunate indiscretion that he had borrowed from 
 Karl Althaus. 
 
 Constantia Hayward, whom her flippant young rela- 
 tives looked upon as a stiff old maid, was of course noth- 
 ing of the sort. But, being a Hayward, and estimating, 
 perhaps overestimating, the family importance, she had 
 certain narrow codes by which the family should support 
 it. The misfortune of her father's character was not to 
 her what it was to Stephen, her pedigree overrode it. 
 Governing these codes or creeds was a dislike to the social 
 laxness which had allowed what Lady Violet called the 
 " pigs in clover" element to intrude into the circle, where, 
 in Constantia's estimation, blood should have been the 
 only credential. Constantia was strong on " blood" and 
 its privileges ; and she thought that among the privileges 
 held by the Hay wards was the right of exclusiveness. 
 Incidentally, she wished them to set to society generally 
 the example of keeping their drawing-rooms and their 
 visiting lists free from outsiders. 
 
 It was no question with her of whether these lived in 
 Piccadilly or in Park Lane, in Grosvenor Square or in 
 Belgravia, whether they were Americans, Germans, 
 Dutch, or Englishmen, whether they had changed their 
 names or retained their patronymics, whether they were 
 millionaires or multi-millionaires, whether they professed 
 60 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 61 
 
 the religion of the country they inhabited, or whether 
 they acknowledged, if they did not conform to, the re- 
 strictions of a more ancient faith. She did not care 
 whether they were railway kings or Chicago sausage- 
 makers, Australian squatters or South African mining 
 magnates. She did not gamble, so their habits did not 
 attract her, she did not personally require money, so their 
 liberality did not appeal to her, she had more than she de- 
 sired of society, so their hospitality had no charm for her. 
 
 At first it had been a joke among her friends, later 
 it had been recognised that Constantia Hayward had ab- 
 sorbed all the family pride, and left none for her relatives. 
 But when others of the family followed suit the matter 
 became somewhat serious. It was a large, independent 
 family, with many ramifications, it had more than one 
 member in the Cabinet, more still in the House of Lords ; 
 there were Haywards in the Diplomatic Service, at the 
 Admiralty, in the Services, everywhere. If they and thei? 
 women set to work to keep out social intruders, to form 
 a holy of holies, a cave, an inner circle, to which birth 
 and breeding gave the only entree, they were capable of 
 doing it; they could build a barrier that should mark a 
 fixed demarcation line between the best people and the 
 second best. It was serious, because the best people 
 some of the very best people indeed wanted money, and 
 the newcomers, who wanted position, were prepared to 
 give it. But these insisted on a place among the exclu- 
 sives ; some of them put the accent on the first syllable, 
 and they would not pay for lower places. If the Hay- 
 wards would not meet them, would not entertain them, 
 would not be entertained by them, the difficulties of the 
 poor Marquises, and Earls, Honourables, and Baronets, 
 who were trying to assist them to realise their laudable 
 aspirations, were enormously increased. 
 
 Everybody had been trying to influence everybody else 
 all through the season before Aline's marriage. Would 
 the Duchess of Alncaster receive Mr. and Mrs. Bernard 
 P. Coots, whose rose ball had cost them ten thousand 
 
62 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 pounds, or would she not? Dared the Lady Dorothea 
 Vespris allow the Drovingtons, who were popularly sup- 
 posed to own half Australia, to open their doors in Gros- 
 venor Square, and take poor Lord Swanerton's Scotch 
 estates off his hands, in vain ? Would the De Vere Pon- 
 sonbys refuse to hunt the wily fox on the Cottesdale hills 
 now that that ennobled foreign banker, Lord Redmayns, 
 had taken Cottesdale? 
 
 Would society, under the guidance of the Haywards, 
 allow Karl Althaus to erect his temple in Park Lane, and 
 refuse to worship at the shrine he put up for them? 
 
 Constantia had her partizans and her opponents, even 
 in the family, of which, by the way, so many members 
 were impecunious, but her heart was set on the crusade, 
 and she fought hard ; with her it came next to Stephen's 
 career, it became to her a mission, the part of the debt 
 her father had left undischarged. It was not the black 
 sheep of society she wished to keep out, it was the sheep 
 that belonged to another flock altogether. The exclusion 
 of the nouveaux riches became an obsession with her. 
 Having neither husband nor children, she wished to take 
 Society, with a capital S, under her protection, and keep 
 it safe and shepherded from stray cattle. It had been 
 her absorbing interest in this campaign, perhaps, that had 
 led to her neglect of the call to be read between the lines 
 of Aline's weekly letter from Hadalstone. 
 
 Karl Althaus, with the set that followed in Karl 
 Althaus's wake, had been recently her principal bete noir, 
 her dominant fear. Accident had thrown him in her way, 
 and his tall, rather clumsy figure, his massive head, with 
 its plentiful hair, wiry, shaggy, grey, and his keen eyes, 
 were not to be overlooked. They had met at a crush, 
 the ball at the Countess of Kintaille's. Positively and 
 certainly on mischief intent, Algy Cardargan had brought 
 him up to be presented to her. 
 
 It was Karl himself who related the incident to 
 Stephen. Karl had not resented it; on the contrary, it 
 had made him roar with laughter. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 63 
 
 " She drew herself up a very fine woman, your sister ; 
 she didn't bow, she just tilted her head a shade. ' My 
 acquaintance is already sufficiently large/ she let out, 
 as if she were a refrigerator bunged up with ice. Her 
 acquaintance was already sufficiently large. I said, ' Well, 
 madam, surely I'm large enough even for your acquaint- 
 ance.' She didn't smile; she just passed on. I don't 
 think, between ourselves, you know, Mr. Hayward, that 
 your sister has got much sense of humour !" 
 
 Stephen had humour; he enjoyed the anecdote. 
 Firstly, his sympathy with this particular crotchet of Con- 
 stantia's was very perfunctory, secondly, this newcomer, 
 this Karl Althaus, really interested him. He was pic- 
 turesquely different from the club men, politicians, and 
 parasites, from the men trained at one school, and cut 
 out of one pattern, with whom Stephen habitually con- 
 sorted. And Stephen's history and early training had 
 put him a little apart from those who should have been 
 his boyhood companions. He had a world of experiences 
 unknown to them. He was more akin at heart to this 
 outsider. Even had Stephen backed up Constantia loyally 
 in her social crusade, it would have been difficult to avoid 
 speaking to Karl Althaus in Mildmay's smoking-room; 
 it was rather difficult, in fact, to speak to any one else, for 
 Karl's grey, massive head and deep voice dominated the 
 room. He had a way of monopolising the conversation, 
 and, when Stephen Hayward was in the room, he directed 
 his talk as far as possible to him. A very interesting man 
 Karl Althaus; Stephen found him increasingly attract- 
 ive as a companion, he was so natural, so genuine, so 
 positive. He was paying a flying visit to London. He 
 spoke much of South Africa, and South Africa, a year 
 before the Jameson raid, was even then the topic of the 
 day. He knew his subject thoroughly, and everything he 
 said was said well, that is, with emphasis, and convic- 
 tion, and a certain rough eloquence. But Karl knew 
 other things beside South Africa ; he was a buyer of pic- 
 tures, a collector of bric-a-brac; he had no culture, but 
 
64. PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 a fine, instinctive taste. Stephen soon found it was worth 
 his while to take Karl with him to Christie's. What 
 Stephen had learned Karl knew without learning. The 
 two men, so acutely different, were strangely sympathetic. 
 
 Stephen had not told Constantia of his growing friend- 
 ship with the big South African. Karl may have laid 
 himself out to attract Stephen, but that Stephen was at- 
 tracted was due to no manoeuvre of Karl's, it came about 
 naturally. They met at the club, for Constantia and her 
 set had not been successful in keeping Karl out of the 
 Carlton, they had met at picture-galleries and private 
 exhibitions of works of art, they had grown, too, into the 
 little intimacies of congenial club acquaintance. There- 
 fore, when Stephen had turned over in his mind every one 
 to whom he could apply for Jack Forrest's thousand 
 pounds, and had rejected them all, had searched every 
 channel, and searched in vain, he permitted himself to 
 remember that that big, eager colonial acquaintance of 
 his had, time after time, suggested, even insisted, that he 
 was flinging away opportunity after opportunity, wasting 
 a fortune in not investing or speculating in mine or land 
 shares under his direction. Stephen had hitherto brushed 
 aside all such suggestions. He had neither capital to 
 invest nor credit with which to speculate. He was incor- 
 ruptibly honest, because, both in his limitations and his 
 strength, in his instincts and in his ambitions, he was the 
 embryo of an English statesman. 
 
 But now he was a father also, and that pretty, heart- 
 broken girl belonged to him, and looked to him to bring 
 her freedom, an expensive purchase, for, that the thou- 
 sand pounds would be only an instalment, Stephen had no 
 doubt. He could not know that that restive mare was 
 going to complete the deal. 
 
 For two days he listened to the bulletins, heard the 
 distant sound of moans as he hurried to his rooms, met 
 Constantia red-eyed on the stairs, saw the trim hospital 
 nurse busied about her work, and felt that he alone was 
 doing nothing, that everything remained for him to do. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 65 
 
 He recognised it as a fortunate coincidence that the first 
 man he met when he turned into the Carlton on the day 
 he received Jack Forrest's letter of reminder was Karl 
 Althaus. Stephen would have passed him with a nod, 
 but somehow his mind was relieved. There is no doubt 
 these rich men, these men with the rumour of many 
 millions surrounding their personalities, have a certain 
 irresistible attraction for the impecunious. Stephen had 
 discussed this curious magnetism, but he had never felt 
 it. He had always been poor, but he had never wanted 
 money as keenly as he wanted other things. He wanted 
 money badly now, and Karl's big body, strong face, and 
 deep voice, seemed like a promise. Still, he would have 
 passed him with a nod. 
 
 " Now, then, that won't do, Mr. Hayward ; one would 
 think you were your sister, eh ! passing me by like that. 
 Coin' in to lunch, are you ? So am I ; we'll have a snack 
 together. The African mail is in ; things are getting very 
 tight up there, your people won't be able to keep their 
 eyes shut much longer." 
 
 Stephen smiled. 
 
 " Tight, are they? Eldorado played out?" 
 
 " Eh ! You may laugh ; that's what you fellows do, 
 you never notice the sky is getting dark until a thunder- 
 bolt falls on your head. Here, waiter, chops and potatoes 
 for two." 
 
 Stephen unfolded his napkin, surveyed the bill of fare. 
 
 "What's the good of that? Eleven times altogether 
 I've seen you lunching here. You take five minutes look- 
 ing down that greasy bit of paper, and then you order a 
 chop, and a whisky and soda." 
 
 Stephen laughed as he abandoned the menu, and leaned 
 back in his chair. 
 
 " You seem to know my habits." 
 
 " Oh ! any one would notice a habit like that. Now, 
 what a pity it is, Hayward you'll excuse me dropping 
 the mister, I can't get my tongue round these ceremo- 
 niousnesses what a pity it is you're such a squeamish 
 
 5 
 
66 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 fellow over money matters. Here, you, waiter, I'll have 
 a pint of Bass. There never was such a time as now for 
 making money." 
 
 Stephen surveyed his chop, and Karl watched him. 
 
 " What do you call squeamish ?" he said, looking up. 
 
 " Squeamish ? Well, I call it squeamish, knowing me 
 as well as you do, that you never take advantage of it." 
 
 " Take advantage of it?" 
 
 " I've told you, well, a dozen things, hinted at others." 
 
 " Oh ! I don't speculate," said Stephen weakly, playing 
 with his knife and fork, seeing the opening, yet shrinking 
 from it. 
 
 "And why not?" 
 
 " No money," he said briefly. 
 
 " That's a reason for speculating, not for leaving it 
 alone. But I wasn't talking of speculating, certainties I 
 mean, man, certainties." 
 
 "Are there any?" 
 
 " Dozens, when you've got Karl Althaus at the back of 
 you." 
 
 Stephen went on with his lunch, although all the time 
 he was thinking of that thousand pounds, wondering if he 
 could ask Karl Althaus to lend it to him, it would be a 
 small sum to such a man, or whether he should ask Alt- 
 haus to show him how to make it, or whether, after all, 
 he had not better do anything rather than become in- 
 volved in pecuniary transactions with what he and Con 
 had always called " the gang." It was a strange coinci- 
 dence that Karl Althaus should have begun at once to 
 talk about speculation. It was not so strange as it seemed 
 to Stephen, for neither Karl, nor Karl's set, habitually 
 spoke of anything else. Stephen was absorbed and per- 
 plexed, his chop was dry and tasteless, he grumbled at it. 
 Karl, shrewdly observant, said: 
 
 " You've got the hump to-day, you're out of sorts. 
 What's wrong?" Stephen looked up and met Karl's grey 
 eyes, one of them a little bloodshot. 
 
 " Well," he said whimsically, " you've hit it. I have 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 67 
 
 got the hump, I am worried." He pushed his plate away. 
 " I must get out of this. I've been overworked. A couple 
 of days with the rod will put me right." 
 
 " Bosh ! Overworked ! Who minds overwork ? Why, 
 
 man, I've " And here followed a wonderful relation 
 
 of fifteen consecutive days in which Karl, with an average 
 of three hours' sleep in the twenty-four, had outwitted 
 a big Company, and netted half a million of money. 
 
 Stephen listened with interest keener than, and differ- 
 ent from, any he had hitherto given to Karl Althaus's 
 financial stories. 
 
 " What do you think of that for work ? Overworked !" 
 Karl flung his grey mane back in contempt. 
 
 Almost involuntarily Stephen said: 
 
 " I think I'd do fifteen days' work like that if I got as 
 well paid for it." 
 
 Karl took the cue he had been waiting for very quickly. 
 
 " Do you want money ?" 
 
 And still Stephen fenced. 
 
 " I suppose every one wants money, more or less." 
 
 " Stick to the point. I've an idea you're in a fix, want 
 a lump, perhaps. Do you think there's a better man in 
 the world to come to than Karl Althaus? Eh!" 
 
 " I suppose you are used to people consulting you about 
 money matters?" 
 
 " Consulting me !" Karl laughed outright ; the chair 
 creaked as he put his back against it and laughed. " You 
 bet ! Consultation you call it ! Why, they drag it off me, 
 put their hands in my pocket and pull it out, they dip 
 into me as if I was a lucky bag. Consult !" 
 
 " So you've a fine contempt for your fellow men ?" 
 
 Karl answered quickly: 
 
 "Contempt? Not I! They can't want it worse than 
 I've done, and they can't do worse to get it either. But 
 come, now, what do you want ? How much do you want ? 
 I'll put you on the right horse, never fear." 
 
 Stephen took a sudden resolution, dropped his noncha- 
 lance, leaned forward, and said hurriedly. 
 
68 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I do want money, want it badly a sum and at once. 
 Your ' good thing' is of no use to me. I shouldn't know 
 how to take advantage of it, probably, and, anyway, I 
 suppose it would be an affair of weeks. The money I 
 want will be of no use to me if I don't have it to-day, 
 to-morrow at latest. Will you lend it me? That is the 
 question. You know something of my affairs I I am 
 pretty sure to have a large augmentation of income one 
 of these days." The slow blood mounted to Stephen's 
 face when he alluded to his possible promotion. " I will 
 pay you back, and with interest, as soon as I am in a 
 position to do so, but I have no security to offer, none." 
 
 " A large sum ?" 
 
 " Large to me." 
 
 " A hundred thousand ?" 
 
 " Good God, no. I want a thousand pounds." 
 
 Karl smiled ; it was a charming smile, frank, engaging, 
 one might almost say sweet; his teeth were so sound 
 and even, the curves of his thick lips so generous. Other- 
 wise he was a plain man, although impressive. A man 
 of about forty-five, his grey, thick hair crowning a strong, 
 clean-shaven, mobile face. He did not look like a gentle- 
 man, perhaps, but he had a personality. He stood out 
 from the ruck of men as something bigger, stronger, 
 more important than his fellows. His hands were brown, 
 with square finger-nails ; Stephen's, white and tapered, 
 looked like a woman's beside them. He rose from his 
 chair. 
 
 " Come on, come up to my rooms with me. I'll write 
 you a cheque. It's absurd, absurd for a man like you to be 
 short of a thousand pounds. And I'll show you what to 
 do with it ? you mustn't throw it away in paying things ; 
 tradesmen can wait, they're used to waiting." Stephen, 
 following him out into the street, answered, shortly, 
 almost sullenly, it seemed to Karl : 
 
 " But it isn't tradesmen." 
 
 " Not tradesmen ?" Karl linked his arm in Stephen's 
 as they walked down St. James's Street together, talking 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 69 
 
 confidentially at the top of his voice. Stephen was 
 ashamed of himself for feeling ashamed of Karl. 
 
 "Well, well, now! Not tradesmen, eh? I remember 
 
 when I was selling winkles off a barrow in Hoxton " 
 
 The rest of the anecdote reached Stephen confusedly, for 
 Algy Cardargan bowled past them in a hansom, and Algy 
 looked at him and his companion with amusement, cu- 
 riosity, surprise. " Damn him, with his ' I'll tell Con' 
 expression," Stephen said to himself irritably, and so he 
 lost the Hoxton story. 
 
 Stephen knew something of Karl Althaus's taste in 
 bric-a-brac. The sumptuous rooms in Piccadilly were but 
 an ante-chamber to the palace building in Park Lane, he 
 had heard. 
 
 " I'm staying in these diggings till they've run up my 
 shanty in front," was Karl's apology, as he put his key 
 in the door. Bronzes and majolica were in the front hall ; 
 a Velasquez, two Teniers, a Rubens, hung in the square, 
 top-lighted, inner one. The screen, behind which was the 
 door that led to the study, was hung with Raphael Mor- 
 ghen engravings and Rembrandt etchings. 
 
 " And did you really sell winkles at Hoxton ?" was 
 Stephen's involuntary exclamation. 
 
 Karl, leading the way into the library, answered indif- 
 ferently, turning round as he spoke to look at his pet 
 Turner he never came into the room without a glance at 
 that wonderful sea and sky : " I can't remember whether 
 they were winkles ; they may have been mussles. I know 
 they were in a saucer, and there was a bottle of vinegar 
 attached to the show, and some pepper; and then that 
 fellow bilked me, as I was telling you coming along " 
 
 " And now you're building that great big palace in 
 Park Lane?" 
 
 " And hobnobbing with a future Prime Minister ! 
 Never you mind about that, there's nothing in that. It 
 is only the first few thousands that take the blood out of 
 you, the rest is easy enough. Money's like rabbits, when 
 you've got a start, you simply let it breed. Mine's breed- 
 
70 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ing. I'm going to make this cheque for a couple of thou- 
 sand," he said, seating himself at the writing-table, " and 
 then I'm going to show you how to make it breed." 
 
 Stephen was uncomfortable, he didn't sit down. Sud- 
 denly the Turners arrested him ; he had a cultured eye. 
 
 " Those are the Abbotsford Turners," Karl said, no- 
 ticing, as he wrote, the restless footsteps halt. " I've 
 picked 'em up one by one. Some cheap, some at the price 
 of their weight in diamonds, some off dealers who put 
 on an honest profit, some off collectors who knew they'd 
 got a buyer, and opened their mouths till you'd think the 
 top of their heads would come off. Here you are." He 
 had been writing as he spoke ; now he rose and held out 
 the pen and slip of paper to Stephen. Stephen put out 
 his hand and hesitated. It was acutely necessary for 
 him to have the money. Without it, to-morrow Jack For- 
 rest might be sitting in the library in Grosvenor Place, 
 straw in mouth, obstinate and cunning, insisting on his 
 right of access to that miserable little girl upstairs. But 
 still Stephen hesitated, for it seemed the price of his 
 peace, of his independence. 
 
 " Althaus," he said desperately, " why are you so good 
 to me? Why are you lending me this? Have you got 
 anything in your head? Are you trying to buy with it 
 something that I shall never be able to sell ? Don't think 
 me ungrateful. I'm desperately in need of money, 
 but " 
 
 " Well, you can put it up. I don't want a title, at 
 least not yet, and I don't want you to help me to get into 
 Society. Society is much more anxious about me than 
 I am about it, so you can make your mind easy. Tut, 
 man, don't make an ass of yourself. What's two thousand 
 pounds to me ? It's not a button off my coat." 
 
 " But you want something you haven't resented my 
 sister's attitude ; I see you know all about that." 
 
 " Yes, yes, and that she calls us ' pigs in clover.' ' 
 
 " No ; that was the famous mot of Lady Violet, the 
 Duchess's daughter." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 71 
 
 " Well, any way, I know all about it, and about the 
 social crusade, and I don't care a damn !" 
 
 " And you single me out " 
 
 " Yes ; I single you out. But it's not because of your 
 blue blood or your social privileges." 
 
 " Well, I'm in the Opposition " 
 
 " I know. But that won't last. Hayward " Karl 
 
 leaned forward and put his hand on Stephen's arm. " You 
 can take it from me, if I do want something off you, it's 
 something you will want to give, and will be proud of 
 having given. They wanted you, you remember, on the 
 Charter, on the Board; you wouldn't come. Well," he 
 spoke seriously he was suddenly serious, " I want to 
 give you a hint. There's trouble brewing over there 
 trouble they don't understand here, won't listen to. True, 
 you're in the Opposition, but the time's not far off when 
 you won't be. We want a friend over here a friend in 
 power " 
 
 " My dear fellow, I don't know what you're trying to 
 tell me. I am not quite sure I want to know. But you 
 haven't quite the hang of English politics; you've come 
 to the wrong shop. If I've any idea of what you're hint- 
 ing at, it's to the Colonial Office you ought to be address- 
 ing yourself to the Marquis of Ripon. Here," he held 
 out to Karl the cheque he had given him, " if you're lend- 
 ing me that on the strength of any power I have, or may 
 have, in South African affairs " 
 
 " Put it up, man. I know what I'm doing. I am lend- 
 ing you the money because I like you : I've lent bigger 
 sums for worse reasons. I know all about Ripon and the 
 Colonial Office ; we'll work that another way. But you're 
 a Hayward, and your boss is well in with Sarum. Sarum 
 has been Prime Minister before, and will be again, Jev- 
 ington is a Privy Councillor, and you lead him by the 
 nose. You see I know all about it. I don't want to bind 
 you to anything, but if the time comes when life gets in- 
 supportable for us up there" " up there" meant in 
 Johannesburg, Stephen knew " and we have to take mat- 
 
72 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ters in our -own hands, we may want a friend at Court. 
 WiH you be that friend?" 
 
 " I don't know to what you are committing me/' said 
 Stephen slowly. 
 
 " To nothing," answered the other sharply. " I'll put 
 it in a nut-shell. I don't know what steps we are going 
 to take ; I don't know how much more we are going to 
 stand, nor what we are going to do. Six weeks before I 
 started I had no more notion of what was on hand than 
 you have, but I met a woman in Cape Town well, I 
 won't bother you about that, but it's the woman who 
 wrote ' The Kaffir and his Keeper,' and, if I hadn't known 
 beforehand, she'd have taught me then, that you can't 
 afford to let things go on as they are. My way isn't clear. 
 I've seen two or three of the leaders, but their way isn't 
 clear; we've all of us got divided interests. But I have 
 an idea in my head that Rhodes means business this time. 
 Now, when the time comes, if ever the time should come, 
 when that idea matures, and we take action, we shall want 
 some support at home, tacit, any way moral, support and 
 countenance. I don't care a curse who forms the Govern- 
 ment; I don't suppose we'll want the Government ex- 
 actly, though we may; but what we're pretty certain to 
 want is Parliament, and I suppose I'm not going far 
 astray in thinking there are large sections in both Houses 
 led, directly or indirectly, by the Haywards. That's what 
 we might want representation, a friend at Court. If I 
 send you a message asking for it, you will send me a sign, 
 a ' yes' or * no/ that I can understand ? If you're no 
 longer in Opposition, and, mind you, we may wait for 
 that why, all the better." 
 
 It seemed a little thing to promise, though Karl was 
 in such tremendous earnest about it, solemn even. It 
 made Stephen Hayward thoughtful ; it must be borne in 
 mind that it was as an Imperialist he had originally won 
 his spurs. 
 
 " What you want me to do is this : If you fellows out 
 there decide upon endeavouring in any way to force the 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 73 
 
 Transvaal Government to redress those grievances you 
 talk about, you'll send me word before you take action, 
 and on my reply you'll base vour proceedings. Is that 
 right?" 
 
 " Quite exact. Send us a word, a sign. Let us know 
 where we are with the people at home !" 
 
 " But I may have no power, no place." 
 
 " Oh, rot ! We're talking sense, we two. You'll do 
 it?" 
 
 " I think so. Yes ; I don't think I am promising any- 
 thing I cannot perform. I think, if all you want is to 
 know our views at home on any action you may take, I 
 may promise you shall hear them from me," answered 
 Stephen slowly, not without reflection, carefully, and after 
 consideration. 
 
 ' Then," Karl subsided into his chair, he had been 
 watching Stephen with some anxiety, " that's all right. 
 Now I'll teach you how to make two thousand pounds 
 breed a hundred thousand. But, first," he leaned for- 
 ward, touching him lightly, sympathetically, " what's the 
 trouble?" 
 
 Stephen was not naturally communicative he had 
 never been in a position to afford it ; the question startled 
 him. He had hardly yet grasped the meaning of the first 
 request, nor known why he had acceded to it. Karl was 
 so so crude. Stephen hesitated. 
 
 " Oh ! of course you needn't tell me unless you like. 
 Of course, if you would rather keep it to yourself, why 
 there the matter ends. But I've dealt with more black- 
 guards in my time than you have, and I play most games 
 of chance better than most men; that's how I'm here. 
 You're in trouble you want money it isn't trades- 
 people ; I know that well enough knew it when I asked 
 you, your position would keep them quiet, and besides 
 there's never any hurry about honest debts. Ergo, you're 
 in a mess blackmail. You'd better let me see you 
 through." 
 
 It was impossible to resent the words. Karl's voice and 
 
74 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 manner were full of kindness, of real interest. The big 
 man looked strong, helpful, and he had dealt with many 
 blackguards, no doubt. The impulse was strong in 
 Stephen to consult with him, to ask his advice, to be 
 guided by him in dealing with Jack Forrest. 
 
 Who could guess that Providence would take the whole 
 matter out of his hands, that by this time to-morrow all 
 fear from Jack Forrest would have been at an end, and 
 the secret safe? 
 
 " Well," he began, hesitated again, stopped short. 
 
 " There is a man," suggested Karl helpfully. 
 
 " Yes, a blackguard, a broken-down jockey, a " and 
 then followed slowly, sometimes helped out, sometimes 
 embroidered by Karl's quick apprehension and ready sym- 
 pathy, the whole pitiable, discreditable story. 
 
 Karl got up and walked about as Stephen had done. 
 He was startled. It was not the card he expected to find 
 in his hand. He had a standard of honour, a curious 
 standard of his own, very different from that of other 
 men, and he did not want to have to use a woman in his 
 game. It was a card, a good card, and it had taken a 
 trick, but Karl walked the room impatiently. 
 
 " I was sure it was blackmail," he said, almost to him- 
 self ; " that I was sure of." 
 
 " Why?" said Stephen thoughtlessly. 
 
 " Well," answered the other slowly, still off his guard, 
 " you're not always in your place, your health is a trifle 
 more precarious in the Press than your doctor admits. 
 I guess you're a man like the rest of us, you've got a 
 non-political side to your character, if you do keep it out 
 of sight." 
 
 The color slowly mounted to the thin, fair face. 
 
 " These non-political qualities of mine, to which you so 
 gracefully allude, exist only in your imagination," said 
 
 Stephen, rising. " I must be going, I think " Karl 
 
 pushed him back into his chair. 
 
 " Don't be huffy, man ; I meant no harm. We'll talk 
 this over. I'll find a way out for you, never fear. I know 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 75 
 
 rather more of this Jack Forrest than you do, I fancy. 
 He was no more your father's son than I am, to begin 
 with." 
 
 Stephen allowed himself to be persuaded to stay, and 
 the two men discussed, from the different standpoints of 
 their different natures, the way to deal with the situa- 
 tions which, as it happened, never arose. Karl recovered 
 the confidence his unfortunate allusion had so nearly for- 
 feited. 
 
 After they had discussed Aline, they discussed finance, 
 and Stephen began to change his views about money- 
 making, to hope that it might not be necessary to be dis- 
 honest in order to become rich. Also he began to under- 
 stand Karl Althaus a little, and the qualities that had 
 placed him where he was, and to be less satisfied with 
 his own progress, and his own talents in achieving, what, 
 after all, seemed at the moment so vague a success. 
 
 But he only thought this when Karl brought out a case 
 of miniatures by Oliver, and made him envious of many 
 things money could buy. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 IT was Karl Althaus's money that gave Aline her di- 
 vorce, although it was only accident that made the decree 
 absolute. A period of anxiety followed, the waiting for 
 eventualities. It was impossible to say at first whether 
 the secret had been, or could be, safely guarded, but, when 
 three months had gone by and nothing had occurred, 
 no whisper penetrated, no shadow from the past fallen 
 athwart their path, Constantia took heart, and Aline, 
 clinging to her, moved slowly out of sight of the precipice 
 that had yawned before her. 
 
 She and Constantia went to Rome, to Florence, to Nice, 
 to the Riviera, and the Italian lakes. Constantia took the 
 girl wherever society congregated. She wished her to be 
 en evidence, to be seen as a child, with her dress short, her 
 hair hanging down in ringlets. Scandal could never touch 
 a life lived from the beginning openly, and in the sight of 
 men and women. All the family, who had promised them- 
 selves to be kind to Angela's child when she came out, 
 blamed Constantia seriously for letting her be seen at so 
 early an age, but Constantia had deliberately arranged her 
 alibi, and bore rebuke with unwonted meekness. 
 
 The pair were back in London early in the year, and 
 then Aline was put under the care of governesses and 
 masters, conventionally educated people who taught con- 
 ventional things. She was very grateful, deeply grateful, 
 to aunt and father. That her gratitude was silent made it 
 no less genuine. She would have done anything they 
 asked of her, but all they asked of her was to mould her- 
 self into the form that society demands. All her impulses 
 were dead, and her spontaneity ; she was still dazed, and 
 sometimes she hardly resiised-ker deliverance. 
 76 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 77 
 
 It was arranged that there should be no presentation 
 until the following season, but there were many young 
 friends coming in and out, young cousins and relatives, 
 and now and then there was a night at the Opera, always 
 a Sunday parade in the Park. It seemed that Aline was 
 never out of sight. Her cousins found her cold, some 
 of them used another word and said stupid. Lady Violet, 
 the most flippant of the cousins, said she was like all old 
 maids' children! But, that they saw her and talked of 
 her was enough for Constantia; she wished Aline ap- 
 parently to pass before their eyes from childhood to 
 womanhood, and she achieved her object. Never could 
 the girl's relatives believe but that they had watched her 
 grow up innocently. 
 
 From childhood to womanhood she grew, apparently in 
 the open, grew into a young model of her aunt, an ac- 
 knowledged beauty, though somewhat too stately, a 
 thought cold, but with the Hayward carriage and the 
 famous Jevington instep. Nor Stephen nor Constantia 
 could find fault with her demeanour, and when, in her 
 nineteenth year, she was presented by her aunt, the Duch- 
 ess of Alncaster, there was neither whisper about her 
 name nor shadow on her fame; her correctness was as 
 unquestioned as her beauty. She had taken all the var- 
 nish those conventional instructors had given her; she 
 had become cased in it. She may have become cramped, 
 but the experience of the natural growth had proved so 
 nearly fatal that all her desire was for restraint. Her 
 immobility helped to spread the varnish thicker, it slowly 
 hardened in the atmosphere about her. Her individuality 
 shrank and withered. She was all conduct and all deport- 
 ment, and, though, perhaps, it were harsh to echo the 
 judgment that called her stupid, it did not appear that her 
 intelligence had developed very notably since her illness. 
 She was indisputably dull. She echoed Constantia's senti- 
 ments, but without Constantia's conviction, and she joined, 
 as far as her youth and subsidiary position permitted, in 
 Constantia's crusade. She refused introductions to mil- 
 
78 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 lionaires, and even had been heard to repeat quite gravely 
 Lady Violet's oft-quoted mot, that they were only " pigs 
 in clover." 
 
 " I cannot think what Constantia and Stephen mean by 
 it," lamented the Duchess, successor to that old lady who 
 had interfered in Aline's education. " The girl, with all 
 her beauty, is not in the least attractive ; Stephen has no 
 means of providing for her, and the only class of men 
 who would be likely to take a fancy to her she has been 
 taught to consider beneath her notice." 
 
 " Oh ! Constantia is mad on blue blood and noblesse 
 oblige, and all those exploded old notions,'" answered the 
 flippant cousin, " and as for Aline, either she has no mind 
 at all, or she has not the pluck to exercise it. She is not 
 allowed to talk to anything under four-generation men, 
 and she has nothing to say even to those. She watches 
 old Constantia out of the corners of her eyes as if she 
 were frightened of her, and she moves with the mechani- 
 cal precision of clockwork. She is not a girl at all, she 
 is only an automaton." 
 
 " Her mother was not clever, but then, she was not 
 handsome either, and she had thirty thousand pounds," 
 said the Duchess reflectively. " If Stephen had not spent 
 the thirty thousand pounds, there would be more excuse 
 for the way they have brought the girl up; and, as for 
 Constantia's money, in the first place it is very tightly 
 tied up, and in the second I did not think she had any of 
 it left." 
 
 The Duchess was not famous for her consistency in 
 argument, or, in fact, for anything except the amount of 
 bugles she managed to concentrate on her unwieldy per- 
 son, and the open manner in which she had rejoiced at 
 the disappearance of her husband's mother. 
 
 " Why did Constantia never marry, mother ? You say 
 she had money, though you don't seem to know what has 
 become of it ; she certainly must have been a very good- 
 looking girl, and she is not within a hundred miles of 
 being as stupid as Aline." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 79 
 
 " It is really most disrespectful of you to speak of your 
 aunt as old. She is sixteen years younger than I am, very 
 little over fifty. As a matter of fact, your Aunt Con- 
 stantia remained unmarried because she wished to devote 
 herself and her income entirely to her brother Stephen; 
 it is only an income, by the way, and goes back to the 
 family after she dies." 
 
 " But there must have been a love story !" 
 
 " I never heard of one." The Duchess was a gossip, 
 and the Lady Violet was peculiarly modern, therefore it 
 was not so unnatural, as it would have been in the eigh- 
 teenth century, for the mother to give the girl an outline 
 of the conduct and career of Stephen's and Constantia's 
 father. Lord John Hayward was almost historical. 
 
 " Con has never really left Stephen," the Duchess ram- 
 bled on. " I think poor Angela must have felt quite an 
 outsider." 
 
 " Well, any way, Aline is not devoted to anybody, so 
 there is no excuse for her being unlike other people. 
 When she goes into a ballroom everybody looks at her, 
 but when she goes out they all heave a sigh of relief. 
 She won't have been out two years before it will be abso- 
 lutely impossible to get a man to speak to her. Dick says 
 he felt as if he were in Earlswood when he took her down 
 to dinner the other night." 
 
 "Your father does not think her stupid at all," the 
 Duchess said, with that complacency with which she usu- 
 ally regarded that hereditary legislator, the Duke of Aln- 
 caster, " he says she is only shy." 
 
 " Poor girl ! if father is going to be her advocate her 
 last chance is gone." This was unfilial on Lady Violet's 
 part, but not incorrect, for the Duke was a bore, and, if 
 a bore talks enthusiastically about a dull person, the two 
 become segregated within their zone of unrelieved tedium. 
 
 But Stephen and Constantia heard none of the current 
 comments on Aline. She had apparently done all that 
 they asked of her ; she had seemingly forgotten the epi- 
 sode intervening between her leaving Hadalstone and her 
 
80 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 coming to them in Grosvenor Square. The Dowager 
 had been pleased with her appearance on returning from 
 the Continent, and had commended the girl to her son, 
 and her son's wife, and the latter had duly and dutifully 
 presented Aline. It was enough for Stephen and Con- 
 stantia that no shadow should rest on her youth. That 
 neither of them found her companionable each thought 
 was due to the intervention of the other. In truth, both 
 their lives were full without her. Although the ministry, 
 which seemed to be tottering when Aline returned to them, 
 was still standing when she made her timid bow to her 
 Sovereign, Stephen was none the less hopeful, none the 
 less full of electoral and Party affairs. 
 
 He had also other interests now. Karl had not per- 
 suaded him to joint the Board of the Chartered Company, 
 nor any other directorate, for Stephen held the strongest 
 possible opinion as to the necessity of separating politics 
 from finance. But Karl had allotted certain shares to 
 Stephen, and, when Stephen remonstrated, Karl said he 
 was sorry he had misunderstood him, he thought he was 
 interested in the water-supply of Johannesburg. Stephen 
 was annoyed, but admited that, when Karl had spoken 
 of a system of irrigation and waterworks for Johannes- 
 burg, he had expressed himself favourably. Still, he ob- 
 jected to his holding, and, on Karl's advice, directed his 
 bankers to sell his allotment. The allotment had been 
 at par; the market price was promptly four. Stephen 
 thus unexpectedly, and, through no fault of his own, be- 
 came possessed of capital. This capital he invested on 
 Karl's recommendation, and both Constantia and Aline 
 benefited indirectly by the resultant dividends. 
 
 When Karl left England, an event that ante-dated 
 Aline's presentation, he did not lose sight of Stephen's 
 interests, nor his interest in Stephen. They corresponded, 
 and Stephen, profiting by this as far as he legitimately 
 could, half as far as Karl considered he might, became 
 ever more convinced of his correspondent's shrewdness 
 in money matters. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 81 
 
 It is strange, but true, that the Duchess and her shrill 
 and attenuated daughter, the Lady Violet, were little more 
 interested in Aline, in her own and father's fortunes, than 
 was Karl Althaus up in Johannesburg, trying to reconcile 
 irreconcilable elements, and full of big affairs. He was 
 one of a crowd, seen in England as shadows, hardly real, 
 in Cape Town more vividly as struggling figures on a 
 dim horizon black with war clouds. Karl had had no 
 desire to meddle with politics politics were forced upon 
 him. His life had been spent in money-making; to 
 wrench himself away, to divorce himself from his life's 
 scheme, was not the work of a day. When the National 
 Union, representing the intelligence of Johannesburg, first 
 invited him, as one of the capitalists, to join them, his 
 reply had been an unhesitating negative. He had his 
 hands full enough, he told them, without Imperialism, or 
 Anti-Krugerism, to complicate his dealings. 
 
 But, on his way to England, before that memorable 
 visit during which we have seen his endeavouring to per- 
 suade Stephen Hayward of the importance of South Afri- 
 can affairs, he had stayed a month in Cape Town, and 
 there a little woman, whom he had sought for far other 
 reasons, had taught him, in some subtle way that little 
 women have, that there were things in life more worth 
 having than money or works of art. Among the things 
 she had taught him were worth the having, and which, 
 under her influence, he had begun to dimly realise, was 
 his place in the Empire, his stake as an Englishman. 
 When he had spoken to Stephen of what would or might 
 come, he spoke out of the wisdom that little woman had 
 taught him. It was an old story now, told often and 
 differently, but, in truth, the position of affairs in the 
 Transvaal while Karl Althaus was in England laying 
 plans, whilst Aline was making her unfortunate experi- 
 ment in matrimony, and Stephen Hayward his first in 
 finance, was well-nigh desperate. 
 
 The two races, Boer and British, were living, side by 
 side, under almost impossible conditions. Authority was 
 
 6 
 
82 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 with the first ; industry, intelligence, capital, with the lat- 
 ter. The struggle was inevitable; that Karl Althaus 
 should be involved in it was due to Joan de Groot. 
 
 Karl Althaus, before he had stopped at Cape Town on 
 his way to England, had been satisfied to fight tfk Boers 
 with their own weapons. He, too, had subsidised, under- 
 mined, bribed, intrigued. Meanness and lying, craft and 
 diplomacy, had been the weapons with which the heads 
 of the great mining industry had met the Chadbands of 
 the first Raad. But, after Karl had met Joan de Groot, 
 and, through her, had met the men who were moving, 
 impelled by a motive, perhaps patriotic, perhaps personal, 
 towards a great end, he seemed to see his way more 
 clearly, and it was a different way. There was a lumi- 
 nosity in the soul of the big South African millionaire that 
 made him reflect a little light very largely. 
 
 It is easy to understand the source of that light. Before 
 Karl went to England, the authoress of " The Kaffir and 
 his Keeper," and the Prime Minister of Cape Colony had, 
 jointly and separately, persuaded the multi-millionaire that 
 his financial interests were threatened by Boer ambitions, 
 Boer aggressions. He went home fully persuaded that 
 something must be done. What that something was had 
 not been fully explained to him. But he had been advised 
 to pour into the ears of certain men the position of their 
 fellow Britons in the Transvaal ; and it had been pointed 
 out to him that, through their connection with Lord 
 Sarum, the Haywards as a family, and Stephen Hayward 
 in particular, represented more than their or his imme- 
 diate position. Hence his seeking out of Stephen, for 
 Karl believed in men, not multitudes. And he returned 
 to South Africa in good spirits, for he considered he had 
 tapped the source of power, obtained the key to the future 
 cabinet. 
 
 He told this to the Prime Minister of Cape Colony, who 
 met him on his return, eager for news, strong, and full of 
 indomitable purpose, quite ready for reinforcements. The 
 Prime Minister carried him off to Groot Schurr, and took 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 83 
 
 two days to extract from him all he wanted to know. His 
 plans were fairly clear. The game lay as on a chess-board 
 before him. This big, unwieldy knight, this Karl, whom 
 he had been moving, must be brought again into position. 
 
 " A weak Government like this isn't of use to any one," 
 Karl told him. " I tell you the Liberal Party has gone to 
 pot over there, it's weak, it's vacillating, it's decayed, it's 
 effete. It's the strong Opposition you've got to tackle, 
 not the falling Government." 
 
 " You're right, Althaus, you've got the ropes at once. 
 Liberalism is dead as a door nail. It spells Individualism, 
 and, thank God, England can't stand that as a political 
 standard. The Government is doomed. The Haywards 
 and Job Chesham will divide the power when the time 
 comes. You couldn't have done better than tackle 
 Stephen Hay ward ; he has got all the brains of the fam- 
 ily. I'm not saying much, but one might say a bit more 
 and not go off the truth. Chesham is a friend of mine; 
 Chesham knows pretty straight what is going on over 
 here, though I can't bring him into line with our way of 
 tackling it." 
 
 " And what is your way of tackling it ? That's the 
 point you've left me a little hazy about. You must have 
 something up your sleeve ; it's not a fighting force up 
 there." 
 
 " You'll see soon enough. You'll join us, you say, 
 whatever we decide?" 
 
 " Well," Karl answered bluntly ; " I promised Mrs. de 
 Groot, and I'm not going to back out." 
 
 " What we are aiming at is the Transvaal for the Em- 
 pire. What they are aiming at is South Africa for the 
 Transvaalers. What we've got to do is to try and hold 
 out until the Unionists are ruling the roost over there. 
 What we've got to be prepared for is being unable to 
 hold on until then. Do you see ?" 
 
 " Not as clearly as I should like to. But, as I told you, 
 I'll go it blind. What do you want me to do?" 
 
 " Use your position to force the knowledge of theirs 
 
84 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 upon your fellow-countrymen. Tell 'em you made a for- 
 tune, because, when you were not helped, you helped 
 yourself. Do you understand ?" 
 
 "Helped myself, did I?" 
 
 " Of course, and I've helped myself. And we're where 
 we are. Well, England is not going to help the Johannes- 
 burghers unless they show they can help themselves. Go 
 up there and preach it, that's your ticket; ram it down 
 their throats, make 'em get ready." 
 
 " Right you are ; I said I'd go it blind, and you've got 
 the deal." 
 
 " Teach 'em not to show their teeth, but to keep them 
 filed. D'ye understand? When I'm ready, and you other 
 fellows are ready with that lesson, we can go on." 
 
 " Bechuanaland ?" suggested Karl. 
 
 " That's my business," answered the empire-maker. 
 
 Karl waited a day or two longer in Cape Town. He 
 had to meet Van Biene, for Karl Althaus was a man of 
 large affairs, and Van Biene was his lawyer. Also he 
 wanted to see Joan de Groot, wanted desperately to see 
 that little woman again. But, whilst Karl had been pay- 
 ing his flying visit to England, the authoress of " The 
 Kaffir and his Keeper" had gone up country with her 
 brother, and Karl, to his bitter disappointment, missed 
 the encouragement and approval on which he had counted 
 securely. 
 
 By the time he returned to Johannesburg events had 
 begun to move. He found himself in the midst of a 
 population inflamed, uneasy, ominous. At Cape Town 
 the air had been full of rumours, at Johannesburg the 
 rumours faded before ugly facts. The taxes wrung from 
 the Uitlanders were being spent on arms ; a big fort was 
 building at Pretoria; the men, who were not allowed a 
 voice in the government of the land they had enriched, 
 were ordered to fight under Boer leadership, to wrest 
 territory, the possessions of natives, for their tyrants. 
 
 The town was in an uproar over the question of the 
 commando. The men refused to obey the order to fight, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 85 
 
 and were taunted as cowards. Karl heard the Boer opin- 
 ion of rheineks, of Englishmen; it was forced down his 
 throat, and now he no longer cared to swallow it. He 
 helped with his purse the men who were standing out. 
 From the authoress of " The Kaffir and his Keeper" he 
 had seen in a new light the treatment the natives would 
 receive from their conquerors. From Stephen Hayward 
 he had gathered incidentally, but no less definitely, that 
 neither Rhodes nor Joan de Groot overvalued their birth- 
 right . No Englishman should fight to win slaves for the 
 Boers if he, Karl Althaus, could prevent it. 
 
 For that moment, however, revolution was averted. 
 The Commissioner came up, some display of firmness was 
 made, and the obnoxious order was withdrawn. But 
 Karl began to see his way ever more clearly, and, whole- 
 heartedly now, he threw in his lot, and the lot of his firm, 
 with the National Union. This was in the autumn of 
 1894, when the Derby win had secured the Liberal party 
 an unfortunate renewal of the lease of power, and no 
 Imperialist could safely rely upon the Government at 
 home for support or countenance. 
 
 The word came to Johannesburg from Cape Town that 
 the National Union must lie low, must wait and watch. 
 It was all new to Karl Althaus, who was a financier by 
 instinct and ability, and only a politician by accident. He 
 had been told he had done well to secure Stephen Hay- 
 ward and his interest, but after all, they must wait until 
 the party Hayward represented came into power before 
 they attempted to profit by any aid from him. The visit 
 of Loch to Johannesburg was the culminating situation 
 in the first scene of the revolt of the Uitlanders. 
 
 Karl went back to finance, it was a milieu in which he 
 found himself more at home. For the time being the 
 National Union resolved itself into a talkee-talkee club 
 of journalists and lawyers, and vexed his soul with dia- 
 lectics. 
 
 The offices of the Goldfields Company in Johannesburg 
 were the headquarters of the association. There, in the 
 
86 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 big room with the oriel window that commanded Sim- 
 monds Street, Karl discussed the situation, for the thou- 
 sand and first time, with Louis. Louis had come from 
 Kimberley at his summons, and come gladly. South 
 Africa was the wrong environment for Louis Althaus. 
 He had often told Karl so, and Karl had released him 
 whenever it had been possible. Karl had summoned 
 Louis now to Johannesburg, but had given him to under- 
 stand it was en route for home. 
 
 The offices of the Goldfields Company had been erected 
 with some pretentiousness, some attempt at architecture. 
 The room in which the Althauses had their interview was 
 furnished as an office, but handsomely, with oak furniture 
 and green leather chairs, maps of various properties 
 adorning the walls. Beyond was the clerks' room, the 
 room where, in the days to come, the Reform Committee 
 were to sleep and guard nothing, not even the personal 
 safety that was their first consideration. 
 
 Karl, as usual, walked up and down while he talked, 
 big, vehement, overwhelming. Louis, contemplating his 
 own slender foot, caressing his imperial, wandering in 
 fancy already to Poole's, and giving a careless retrospec- 
 tive glance over his wardrobe, felt a twinge of pity for 
 his brother by adoption, because, although he had come 
 straight from London, the tweeds that he wore were so 
 evidently of Cape Town cut. 
 
 They had got through their greetings, warm ones, for 
 these two, save for each other, were alone in the world. 
 And now they would be together but a few hours. Karl 
 had received instructions from Cape Town to " slow 
 down," to keep for the present to strictly constitutional 
 lines in case of any agitation, to forget the wild talk that 
 had been prevalent and encouraged before the Commis- 
 sioner's interference. But Karl came into line with diffi- 
 culty, he saw many points that escaped the wire-pullers 
 in Cape Town. An idea had been put into his head, and 
 there it stayed obstinately. He told Louis all about it, 
 that in his opinion there was now only one way to secure 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 87 
 
 good government and justice, and that way was armed 
 revolution. The inspiration had been given him, and he 
 could not rid himself of it. That he should select Louis 
 as a confidant was characteristic of Karl. He had, not- 
 withstanding many shocks and incidents that should have 
 opened his eyes, a very tolerant view of all Louis Alt- 
 haus's failings, a very high opinion of his abilities, a great 
 admiration for his charm of manner and indisputably 
 handsome person. For Louis was the antithesis of Karl, 
 there was not the slightest suggestion of roughness about 
 him, he was so supremely polished that one could almost 
 see him glisten ; even his clothes had a gloss on them. 
 
 " You must get to London, Louis. I <k>n't think 
 Rhodes, or any other of them, has quite grasped the situ- 
 ation up here ; any way, I was not prepared for it. There 
 is no end to the villainies they are perpetrating. The last 
 move to prevent us getting a judgment if we get a verdict 
 kills any possibility of justice. The Union are petitioning 
 the Landrost again; they might just as well petition 
 Malacho." 
 
 " Why on earth are you mixing yourself up in it ? 
 That's what I can't understand." 
 
 " Oh ! you'll soon understand that. It's life and death 
 to the gold industry." 
 
 " Twaddle." 
 
 " I mean it." 
 
 " Well, go on. What am I to do?" 
 
 " Go home, and get public opinion on our side. It's 
 Rhodes's belief that, when there's a change of govern- 
 ment, there will be a change of policy. I've broken the 
 ice ; practically I've secured Stephen Hayward ; but there 
 must be some one on the spot to use the right moment 
 when it comes." 
 
 " Why Stephen Hayward ?" interrupted Louis, looking 
 up quickly from the consideration of his really elegant 
 foot and ankle. "Why not Stanley? He was the last 
 Conservative Colonial Secretary." 
 
 " Oh, they will have to give the loaves and fishes to the 
 
88 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Unionists. I know what I am talking about. He's the 
 best man they've got, a nice fellow too, knows more about 
 marks on china than any Englishman I ever met." 
 
 "How on earth did you get hold of Stephen Hay- 
 ward?" 
 
 " He was in a bit of a mess, and I helped him out ; 
 he helped me once. I was making a fool of myself over 
 a famille verte vase, Ming period, the cleverest fake you 
 ever saw." 
 
 " In a mess ?" Louis questioned Karl with interest. 
 " What had he done ? how did you get to know ?" 
 
 " No, no, nothing at all ; nothing to do with himself. 
 He's got a daughter, some trouble with his daughter, it's 
 all right now." 
 
 Louis curled the ends of his moustache and looked self- 
 conscious. It was a way he had when women were men- 
 tioned. He had infallible theories, and unfathomable 
 interest in women. Whenever he heard of a woman who 
 was, or had been, in trouble, he had the air and, in truth, 
 the belief that, whatever the incident, it was only accident 
 prevented him from being the hero of it. Karl did not 
 satisfy his curiosity about Aline Hayward, he was vexed 
 with himself for having mentioned it, and tried to slur 
 it over and erase what he had said. But Louis made a 
 mental note, and only permitted the subject to be changed 
 when he had no choice. 
 
 Louis's interest in revolution was very perfunctory. 
 Karl had talked to him of little else since his arrival, 
 and yet, notwithstanding Karl's enthusiasm, he had 
 stirred none in Louis. Of course, he would buy arms, 
 Louis liked buying, patronising, playing at power, and 
 he would keep Stephen Hayward informed of every step 
 they contemplated, or, at least, of every step they took. 
 All this he promised Karl. 
 
 Louis was glad to get his orders for London. South 
 Africa was no field for him; he knew that. He and 
 Karl had been continually separate since he had reached 
 adult age. London, Paris, Vienna, had been Louis' so- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 89 
 
 journing places. He had generally carried out Karl's 
 instructions straightforwardly, recognising, instinctively 
 perhaps, either how much he owed the older man, or how 
 impolitic it would be to play him false. The firm had 
 grown into a large one with colossal international inter- 
 ests. Louis, trusted implicitly by Karl, had frequently 
 been the latter's agent. Forgetting how simple his in- 
 structions were, how clear, and, remembering only how 
 everything had prospered with him, Karl had grown to 
 look upon Louis, notwithstanding some disappointments, 
 some shocks even, as having something of his own fibre. 
 These shocks, disappointments, divergencies, had ob- 
 structed him in his desire to make Louis a partner in 
 the firm, but pecuniarily the younger man suffered little 
 from the exclusion. 
 
 Louis had no misgivings as to his power to carry out 
 the diplomatic work of which Karl now spoke, and with 
 which Karl now entrusted him. Louis had no doubt of 
 himself. He appreciated Karl's success, though he was 
 apt to attribute much of it to luck. But all Karl's quali- 
 ties he saw in himself transmitted into something finer, 
 more delicate, more tactful. There was nothing of which 
 Louis Althaus did not think himself capable. That he had 
 achieved nothing in no way interfered with this estimate. 
 
 He had a way of talking of Karl, and of Karl's good- 
 ness to him, that somehow or other made all this obvious. 
 
 " There's no one like my adopted brother Karl," he 
 would say, " he has been father, mother, everything to 
 me since we were both left orphans." Then, with that 
 deprecating shrug of his mobile shoulders one of the 
 foreign habits he had acquired, that went with the im- 
 perial and the dark moustachios, he would add, " But 
 much as I appreciate him, I must say" and the things 
 he felt himself compelled to refer to were all true. Karl 
 wore shocking boots, square-toed, hideous, his clothes 
 were very often atrocious, he was loud in public places, 
 he had more than once played poker through an evening 
 and night right into the following day, he could drink 
 
90 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 a tumblerful of whisky neat, and he very frequently 
 did. These were unimportant details, and Karl's friends 
 smiled at them, but women noted with an approving eye 
 the difference between Louis Althaus, gentleman, and 
 Karl Althaus, millionaire. They were a little sorry for 
 Louis that his adopted brother should not be more worthy 
 of his refined taste, and they thought well of him because 
 he cared so much for his unfashionable guardian. 
 
 Karl rarely spoke of Louis except to his intimates, and 
 never discussed him, but all Johannesburg and all Pre- 
 toria and all Cape Town, in fact, all English-speaking 
 South Africa, knew that Karl Althaus loved this elegant 
 Louis. 
 
 Having discussed, in its various phases and aspects, the 
 revolution that was to be engineered, without Karl real- 
 ising how very vague was Louis's interest in the imperial 
 side of the question, and how very doubtfully he regarded 
 the value to the firm of the economical side, the brothers 
 found time, before Louis left for Cape Town, to discuss 
 business matters. 
 
 Karl's habit of walking about when he talked fidgeted 
 Louis, but, when Louis was not personally contradicted 
 or crossed, or made to see his shortcomings, he was a 
 man of imperturbable good temper, the unreliable good 
 temper of the completely self-satisfied. He never com- 
 plained that Karl's restlessness was unpleasant to him. 
 He sat on the easiest chair in the room, and faced the 
 light, and listened. 
 
 " Do you remember the Geldenrief , Louis ?" 
 
 " Do I remember a mine that cost us a quarter of a 
 million, that panned out before we'd got back the ex- 
 penses of the prospectus! Not that I think you were 
 clever over that affair. You could have kept back the 
 report until the market had absorbed at least half the 
 shares. We could have got out with the loss of a hun- 
 dred thousand." 
 
 " And damned every other venture we ever put out ! 
 No ! no ! There's only one way of doing big business, if 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 91 
 
 you want to go on doing it, and that is to do it straight. 
 I found that out a bit late, but you can take it from me 
 there's no doubt about it. But that's not the question. 
 The reef was on the land right enough, I always knew it 
 was ; we got down a hundred feet, and it pinched out." 
 
 " And you sent out the report, and on the strength of 
 the report the shares went down to half-a-crown, and the 
 syndicate lost its money." 
 
 " Exactly. Well, suppose I know what direction the 
 
 reef took, and that " Karl suddenly came over to his 
 
 brother, lowering his voice, " and that it is about the 
 widest, richest, finest reef on the whole of the Raad." 
 
 Louis looked up, and there was greed in those soft 
 eyes, round those thin lips under the dark moustache, in 
 the lines that tightened about the mouth, and there was 
 eagerness. 
 
 " And the syndicate, and the shareholders know noth- 
 ing?" 
 
 " No, nobody knows it but you and me." 
 
 " What do you suppose it's worth ?" 
 
 " Millions, Louis, millions." 
 
 " And you're worrying yourself about the franchise !'* 
 
 "Oh, rot! I don't care a damn about the franchise; 
 I've told you so before. I care for our rights, I don't 
 care a damn about how we get 'em. The Geldenrief is 
 a case in point. Under decent Government, it could have 
 been worked at a profit until the Company and everybody 
 had got to know what nobody knows now but me and, 
 perhaps, one or two other people. That Bewaarplatzen 
 scandal was the first nail in the coffin of the Geldenrief." 
 
 "What are you going to do?" There was no doubt 
 about Louis's eager interest now, it narrowed his eyes, 
 hardened the lines round his mouth; he was still hand- 
 some, but the poetry went out of his beauty. The face 
 disappointed when one looked from the broad forehead 
 down to the narrow chin. In his happiest moments it 
 was the broad forehead and splendid eyes that attracted 
 attention. But, when one talked of mf>f*ey, it was the 
 
92 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 lower part of the face that seemed to come into promi- 
 nence, a certain Mephistophelian cunning became mani- 
 fest, the lips grew thinner, and seemed to contract. 
 " What are you going to do ?" 
 
 " I'm goin' " Karl resumed his restless walk, " I'm 
 goin' to show the syndicate that trusted Oldberger, Alt- 
 haus & Co., and the jobbers that hold the shares, and the 
 public that bought a few of them, I'm goin' " he burst 
 out with, he shouted, " I'm goin', by God, I'm goin' to 
 make all their fortunes." His voice fell again as he emp- 
 tied his glass. " I don't know how I'm goin' to work it. 
 For, though I went up three months ago with nothing 
 else in my mind, something occurred " he hesitated, 
 " many things occurred, to put it out of my mind." 
 
 He tossed off a tumbler of whisky and soda, from 
 which the soda had been omitted, and he pushed the bot- 
 tle over to Louis, but Louis shook his head; he was 
 abstemious. 
 
 " What do you think of that?" Karl asked. 
 
 But Louis did not commit himself. 
 
 " I should like to hear more about it." 
 
 " So you shall. You remember we leased the land 
 from Piet de Groot ; we wanted the whole estate, but the 
 farm he refused to sell, talked a lot of twaddle about his 
 grandfather having reclaimed it, and his father and him- 
 self being born there, and all the rubbish they do talk 
 when they're going to swindle you. Well, we got a lease 
 of the land, and of a certain amount of dumping ground. 
 I got an inkling of this reef business" (the inkling had 
 cost Karl three months' hard work, and about ten thou- 
 sand pounds in hard cash), "and I claimed the ground. 
 Then this wretched Bewaarplatz business was dragged 
 in, brought before the Groundwet, and there it sticks. 
 Meanwhile " 
 
 "Meanwhile?" 
 
 Karl, always restless, was exceptionally so just now. 
 
 " As I've told you, I got in with the crowd who mean 
 tc make the Groundwet listen to reason. The Geldenrief 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 93 
 
 has nothing to do with politics, but perhaps it showed 
 me more clearly than anything else could have done how 
 we're all being swindled. I couldn't touch the Bewaar- 
 platz without De Groot's leave. De Groot's a member 
 of the first Raad, second cousin or something or other to 
 the old thief " 
 
 " Then what chance have we got ? How are we to 
 get hold of it?" 
 
 " I'm coming to that." But he didn't come very 
 quickly, though Louis's attention was fully riveted. 
 
 " Piet de Groot's got softening of the brain, creeping 
 paralysis, they call it, and I I've met Joan de Groot." 
 
 Karl's face softened, his voice grew husky; he took 
 another pull at the whisky before he went on. 
 
 "Louis, did you ever meet Mrs. de Groot? She was 
 up here for a few months, an Englishwoman, sister of 
 John Finnes, the Cape Town Advocate-General. She 
 married Piet when she was seventeen. He treated her 
 like the brute that he is, and she left him; she was in 
 Pretoria for some time." 
 
 " Do you mean the woman who has just published a 
 book called ' The Kaffir and his Keeper' ?" 
 
 "Yes. Did you know her?" 
 
 " No. Not my line of country a wretched, little, scrib- 
 bling half-caste." 
 
 "Oh! don't be a fool." 
 
 Louis was absolutely surprised; he got up from his 
 seat. 
 
 " Oh ! sit still, I beg your pardon, but I have met her." 
 
 " Well! what has she got to do with us?" 
 
 " I'm coming to it ; give a fellow time. Louis ! she's 
 the most fascinating, charming, delightful woman I ever 
 met in my life, and, damn it, she's as honest as the day." 
 
 " But what's she got to do with the Geldenrief, that's 
 what I'm waiting to get at, that's what I want to know ?" 
 
 '' The reef goes under the farm, dips on the curve, and 
 widens out, and the widest, richest of it, we reckon, is 
 just under Piet's farm. We've got the shaft, we've got 
 
94 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 the machinery, we've got nearly two hundred thousand 
 pounds lying on the outcrop, and Piet won't deal !" 
 
 Then Louis's eyes questioned as well as his voice. 
 
 " And she " 
 
 " Inherits the farm under her marriage settlement." 
 
 " Phew !" Louis sighed with relief. " Well, if she's 
 got it, we've got it, I suppose. You know her, have seen 
 her, been with her, got her promise?" he asked eagerly. 
 
 " Never so much as asked her for it. Went there on 
 purpose, and hardly mentioned it, forget, in fact, whether 
 I did or didn't. She drove it out of my head, drove every- 
 thing out of my head. I meant to see her again when I 
 returned on my way up here, but she was at Wynberg ; I 
 just missed her." 
 
 " Drove a million out of your head ! A little, scribbling 
 Dutchwoman !" 
 
 " What's a million more or less ! Louis, I'll show you 
 the woman she is. Poor as church mice, the lot of them, 
 mind you. Began with nothing, and have got it still. 
 Well, ever since that book of hers came out, she has been 
 overwhelmed with offers from London newspapers to 
 give her views on this and that and the other question. 
 Five thousand pounds I offered her, five thousand golden 
 sovereigns and I don't believe the woman has got five 
 hundred in the world to give my views on a certain sub- 
 ject instead of her own. The Jackson affair, in fact. She 
 laughed at me, Louis! So help me, God! she laughed 
 at me. Did you ever meet a woman like that?" 
 
 " I've met every sort of woman," answered Louis, with 
 a caress of his moustache and a softening of the eyes. 
 
 " Oh ! I know you've been a devil of a fellow ' for 
 women," Karl had had reason to know it ever since Louis 
 was fourteen, " but have you ever met a good 'un ? I 
 don't mean one like this, for there isn't such another, but 
 one you couldn't ask for the things you most wanted of 
 them?" 
 
 " Never," smiled Louis. " Never," he repeated, with 
 a satisfied laugh. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 95 
 
 Poor old Karl ! Fancy comparing himself with Louis 
 where women were concerned. 
 
 " I suppose you want me to tackle her." 
 
 " I'm damned if I quite know what I want. We'll have 
 to make little Joan a rich woman, whether she cares for 
 it or not. She's just as mad on a united South Africa 
 under the British flag as Rhodes is. Half the interest she 
 took in me " 
 
 " She did take an interest in you, then ?" 
 
 " Was due to the fact that she was keen on the capital- 
 ists joining the National Union." 
 
 " I begin to see daylight ; I begin to see the meaning 
 of your new-born patriotism/' 
 
 " I knew she was right," said Karl sharply ; " I knew 
 we ought not to sit down and see our country shoved in 
 the background." 
 
 " And the Geldenrief dumping ground claimed," inter- 
 posed Louis with a laugh. 
 
 " A man may have a dozen motives. I'm opening my- 
 self out to you. If I want the Geldenrief, I only want 
 my own. We've spent two hundred thousand pounds 
 upon it, and Piet doesn't make three hundred a year out 
 of the land. It doesn't seem to me justice to let it lie 
 waste like that. I tried to persuade Joan, but I couldn't 
 make her see it. You must take it on now; you're a 
 better talker than I am. We must make her a rich 
 woman, whether she wants it or not." 
 
 " And get a bit for ourselves." 
 
 " I'd like the old syndicate to get their money back, and 
 a bit over ; I don't deny that. When we bring the Alt- 
 haus Bank out next year, I should like to have the Gelden- 
 rief Deep as an asset; I don't deny that either. But I 
 couldn't ask the little woman to promise me the reversion 
 of the farm as the price of my throwing in my lot with 
 the revolutionists. I couldn't do it. I am in with them now, 
 all the way ; she can take it how she likes. I don't want 
 you to do anything but persuade her that, when she gets 
 possession of the land, it's too good to graze sheep on." 
 
96 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Never fear ; I'll persuade her." 
 
 " And don't stay too long in Cape Town. For, now 
 that I've thrown in my lot with these fellows, I'm hot 
 on it. I never put my hand to a failure yet; and when 
 I put my hand to getting the Transvaal for Great Britain, 
 Great Britain is going to get it. Because Joan because 
 Joan de Groot is Joan de Groot, I couldn't take the mat- 
 ter of the farm any further; because Stephen Hay ward 
 thinks himself under some sort of obligation to me, I 
 couldn't force him into compromising his position by 
 showing any active sympathy with us over here ; but we 
 might make her one of the richest women in South Africa, 
 and we might make him one of the most-talked-of men 
 in England. Do you see my point? Will you tackle 
 them? I must stick to my post here; but you're such 
 a clever fellow, I think you can do anything with them. 
 I own I want to play Providence to them both, with or 
 without their consent. Do you think you can take it on ?" 
 
 " Think ! my dear fellow think ! Give me a task 
 worth doing ; tackling a woman or an English politician 
 is child's play. Tell me, does any one else know about 
 the Geldenrief, and Mrs. de Groot's marriage settle- 
 ment?" 
 
 " Not a soul." 
 
 " It was rather a risky thing leaving her up there with- 
 out any sort of promise, if you gave her a hint." 
 
 The whisky was beginning to have its effect on Karl. 
 
 " I wouldn't have left her there if I could have helped 
 myself," Karl said, almost to himself. 
 
 Louis whistled. This was a new development for Karl. 
 
 " Oh ! that was it, was it ? That's her school ?" 
 
 Karl turned on him roughly. " No, that wasn't it. 
 Little Joan de Groot is as virtuous as she is honest, and 
 that's saying a great deal." He thumped his big fist on 
 the table. " And any one who tempts the one or the 
 other has got to reckon with Karl Althaus," he shouted. 
 
 Louis soothed him easily enough, and went on talking. 
 Presently he learned enough to know that the " Gelden- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 97 
 
 rief Deep," for so he began to think of Piet's farm, was 
 protected by its lease. Its owner would not sell, had 
 vowed he would never sell his grandfather's and his 
 father's grave, the oasis they had wrested from the wil- 
 derness. But Van Biene, who had drawn up Joan's mar- 
 riage settlement, had drawn up also the lease of the out- 
 crop, and, by a covenant in the latter, if ever the farm 
 was sold, the Geldenrief Company was to have the first 
 refusal. 
 
 Louis's journey to England, Louis's mission to Stephen 
 Hayward, seemed to him of little importance in compari- 
 son with Piet de Groot's homestead. 
 
CHAPTER Six 
 
 THAT Joan de Groot had impressed Karl Althaus was 
 strange, but the effect Karl had had upon Joan, less ele- 
 mental, was perhaps even more remarkable. He came 
 into her life at a critical period. The publication of 
 " The Kaffir and his Keeper" marked the end of her girl- 
 hood, although she was eight-and-twenty, and had been 
 a married woman nearly eleven years. The transition 
 time between that ending girlhood and commencing 
 womanhood was Karl's opportunity, an opportunity of 
 which he remained ignorant always. 
 
 Out of the dull, poor parsonage in Devonshire Joan and 
 her brother had emigrated, he to take up the post of 
 second master at the newly erected Cape Town College, 
 she, nominally to keep house for him, actually because 
 there was nowhere else for her to go, nothing else for her 
 to do. But her inveterate childhood's habit of thinking 
 of something else rather than of what she was doing at 
 the moment; a habit that had left her educated only in 
 strata, layers of ignorance alternating with golden veins 
 of knowledge, rendered her as incapable a housekeeper 
 as she was a pupil. Some kindly-meaning, bungling 
 friend of her brother's arranged the marriage with Piet 
 de Groot, and supplemented her sixty pounds per annum 
 with a simple trousseau. Van Biene drew up the 
 settlements, whereby the farm was left to her and her 
 children. 
 
 The girl had an irregular, indefinite sort of imagina- 
 tion that made her see pictures where there were only 
 words. She was quite pleased to be married, and more 
 than pleased at the prospect of going to her husband's 
 farm with him; she saw a wonderful pastoral scene, set 
 98 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 99 
 
 in wild veldt stretches, and a kindly, patriarchal Dutch- 
 man, full of simple talk of sheep and of the land. She 
 was tired of the life with her brother. She thought she 
 could dream uninterruptedly, with only this bearded 
 farmer to talk to her, now and again, of his herds and 
 his crops. Piet de Groot, however, was as utterly unlike 
 the picture she had formed of him as the dry and arid 
 ostrich-farm, with its milk-plants, stony kopjes, and scant 
 vegetation, dying in the red sand, under the hot sun, 
 was unlike the green undulating English land she had 
 seen in her mind's eye ; and she was as incapable of ful- 
 filling her duties towards either of them as she had been 
 of conceiving them. It was two years, however, before 
 the untenable situation came to a natural end, separating 
 husband and wife, but leaving to each of them a certain 
 respect, a certain surprised understanding of the other. 
 After that time Piet made himself comfortable with the 
 aid of a woman of his own people, and henceforth Joan 
 had nothing to complain of except neglect, and of that 
 she never complained, for solitude, freedom to dream 
 amid infinite space, was all her slow mental growth de- 
 manded. 
 
 She dreamed over the books and newspapers her 
 brother sent her, developed so slowly that it was five 
 more years before she realised how clear her dreams had 
 grown, how much more vivid they were than any of the 
 gross realities surrounding her. She had taken in her 
 impressions, however, and when, through her magnetic 
 pen, she spread them before a wondering world, their 
 success was instantaneous, as remarkable as " Evelina" 
 had been, as " Jane Eyre" or " Scenes from Clerical 
 Life." 
 
 Her book succeeded by dint of its simplicity, and a 
 realism that had in it nothing of coarseness, nothing of 
 exaggeration. The instinctive art by which the scenes 
 were selected, each calculated to show special character- 
 istics of the country or of the people, was remarkable; 
 the effect produced was startling. Reading this book, one 
 
100 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 heard the swish of the sjambok, and saw the red eartK 
 under the karoo bushes dyed redder with the blood of the 
 black man. To those intense blue skies, arched over the 
 Southern Continent, ascended the cries of the enslaved; 
 the heavens were rent with them, there were sudden 
 storms, and the earth was convulsed. The rough egotism 
 of the Boers was vivid in the book, their brutalities, their 
 cunning also; one saw their strength, but one turned 
 sick at their hypocrisy. One realised through Joan de 
 Groot's pages the superficial religion that taught the Boers 
 neither virtue nor charity; their Biblical learning that 
 yet left them a prey to every superstition, while the les- 
 sons of cleanliness in the Old Testament were as little 
 regarded as the lessons of mercy in the Now. It was a 
 nation that passed before the reader's eye, a winding 
 pageantry of ignorance, strong and menacing, a danger 
 to civilisation. 
 
 On the strength of the book's success, and urged now 
 by her brother, who had discontinued teaching, and was 
 secure in his position both at the bar and as a Progressive 
 member of the Cape Parliament, Joan left her husband 
 and the farm, and went to live with her brother in Cape 
 Town. Their house was within a stone's throw of Gov- 
 ernment Gardens, it was a villa, green verandahed and 
 low, nestling at the foot of Table Mountain. From the 
 window of her bedroom she could watch the grey mists 
 softly settle on the mountain, the distances grow dense 
 and impenetrable. In the shadows she could dream her 
 dreams. But in the front of the house, on the stoep, life 
 moved vigorously, and everything that was strenuous and 
 active in Cape Town grew and developed under the stimu- 
 lus of her interest, in the orbit of her ready sympathy. 
 It was not a narrow political ism, a Tweedledum and 
 Tweedledee of local affairs, that held either brother or 
 sister. Imperialism versus Africanderism had been his 
 clarion call to office. And Joan too, self-exiled as she 
 was, with a Dutch name, was a passionate patriot, and her 
 book itself had been less to her than all that lay beneath 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 101 
 
 the jtirring symbolism of the -flag 'that nung unfurled 
 above her. 
 
 Party feeling ran high in Cape Town fully a year be- 
 fore the policy was defined which made party feeling 
 subordinate to imperial feeling, and Joan de Groot was 
 not the only woman who was looking and listening and 
 spending her quota of intelligence in trying to grasp or 
 vary the situation. " The Kaffir and his Keeper/* and 
 her brother's appreciation, gave her a definite position. 
 In the forcing-house of that appreciation she grew slowly 
 and sweetly to fill the place she had made for herself. 
 Their little home was the centre of the Progressives, the 
 stronghold of those who opposed the formation of the 
 Bond, and exposed continually, in Parliament and out, the 
 tendency and the teaching of its Leaders. But Joan's 
 slight form, her small eager face, with its crown of wavy 
 brown hair, her light blue eyes and moving lips, curved 
 and soft and red, won more than intellectual tribute. The 
 house was ever full of men, men used to the light ways 
 of Cape Town women and girls, men of the Louis Alt- 
 haus type, officers from Simon's Town and Wynberg, as 
 well as from the barracks. Yet she was safe from all 
 these, for, if she was not quite without coquetry, she 
 learnt easily to fence and parry, she enjoyed her tributes, 
 and, if she had a child's heart, she had a^ man's brain. 
 The womanhood in her had not yet reared its dangerous 
 head above the level of the white sheets on which she 
 wrote her tales of love or war. 
 
 The story of " The Kaffir and his Keeper" had caught 
 the public ear ; its politics and its local colour had opened 
 the magazines to her, and made her realise the quickening 
 delight of journalism, when the immediate note of her 
 sounding pen echoed back into her ears, swelled by ac- 
 claiming, contradicting, chorusing voices. Delight, joy- 
 ousness came to her with the realisation of her capacity 
 for expression, the pleasure of putting her thoughts into 
 rhythmic phrase was sufficient to fill her days, the tempta- 
 tion to sacrifice the thought to the rhythm was the great- 
 
102 PI&S IN CLOVER 
 
 est temptation sh& had ever met ; that she yielded to it 
 taught her nothing. There was no room or need in those 
 full days for amorous adventure, until the coming of the 
 Althauses into her life began to teach her that even jour- 
 nalism and rhythmic phrase, politics and imperialism, 
 were not all-sufficing. Already, perhaps, she was in- 
 stinctively beginning to look around for fresh material, 
 throwing out feelers, weaving spells, when she made the 
 acquaintance of Karl Althaus. 
 
 She knew of him, of course, even before he came to 
 the house; he represented an important interest; and 
 he knew of her, for, as we have seen, she was Piet de 
 Groot's wife, and the remainder of Piet de Groot's farm 
 was vested in her. 
 
 Karl Althaus was a new type to Joan, a new experience, 
 notwithstanding her two years in Cape Town. For, 
 though all kinds of men visited the house, and conversed 
 upon the stoep, few of the mining magnates at this period 
 found it worth their while to conciliate or fraternise with 
 the Cape Town parliamentarians. Karl's absolute pas- 
 sion for money-making, his completely unstudied, almost 
 unconscious, unscrupulousness, and the massiveness of 
 his grey head, interested her. Somehow or other he en- 
 larged her horizon. That he fell in love with her at first 
 sight, that she influenced him and made him forget all 
 for which he had originally sought her, she failed to real- 
 ise immediately. He was forty-five years of age, and in 
 the most personal sense no woman had ever touched him. 
 His life had been too full of money to have room for 
 sentiment ; and love without sentiment had made but lit- 
 tle variation of his daily pursuits. 
 
 In Joan's presence he had forgotten Piet's farm, which 
 would one day be hers, also the possible value of her pen 
 to many causes he had at heart, and all the machinery for 
 the moving of which he had meant to use her. And he 
 interested her, there was no doubt about that. His large 
 personality, his overwhelming volubility, his visible 
 strength and brain power, the way he persistently sought 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 103 
 
 her, made his month in Cape Town memorable to 
 her 
 
 He told her much, for he was ever a man who loved 
 the sound of his own voice. He taught her, without in- 
 tention, things he would perhaps have left untaught, had 
 he known the use to which she meant to put them ; how 
 the Government concessions were being obtained, for 
 instance. She always listened to him, drew him out, en- 
 couraged him to come again and again. She liked listen- 
 ing to him, though nothing he wanted seemed to her quite 
 worth the having. Money and power were both unknown 
 wants to her, but the strength with which he wanted them 
 appealed to the strength in her. So she drew him out, 
 made him talk, which was in truth not difficult, and learnt 
 to respect everything that was respectable in him, and to 
 enjoy his society more than that of other people. 
 
 She was so young in her ways, so ingenuous in her in- 
 nocence and ignorance of the world, it was difficult to 
 reconcile her personality with the reputation her almost 
 miraculous book had given her. It was inspiration, 
 genius, a unique, almost unconscious efflorescence. This 
 Karl Althaus could not see or know. He saw only a 
 dainty little woman, with puzzled eyebrows and animated, 
 questioning face, lithe movements, quick and graceful, 
 instinct with vitality and the joy of life. It was strange 
 to find her so apt in argument. Karl's intelligence went 
 under before hers ; she saw not only quicker, but further. 
 With Karl's instinct for self-preservation she had little 
 sympathy; the devil would have gone unlighted to bed 
 had he depended on Joan de Groot for candle. The 
 jargon of " constitutional means," the shadow grasped 
 by the mining interest whilst the substance was escaping 
 them, she rejected disdainfully. Unlike the majority of 
 her sex she lacked diplomacy, her simplicity of thought 
 suggested that if, as Karl told her, and, indeed, as 
 she well knew, the policy of the Transvaal was to make 
 residence there impossible for self-respecting Englishmen, 
 then the outraged and insulted Uitlanders should fight, 
 
104 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 fight not only for their own rights, but for the honour 
 of their country. 
 
 She it was who had urged Karl Althaus along the path 
 that led from sufferance to revolt. The talk of the men 
 who gathered on the stoep of that little house was sub- 
 dued in the presence of their host, the Advocate-General, 
 was subdued too when the Prime Minister, big and silent 
 and attentive, was with them, but it flamed now and again 
 in short gusts of indignation when Paul Kruger's name 
 was thrust as a lighted faggot amongst them to fire them 
 with the knowledge of his contemptuous tyrannies and 
 injustices. And, with little Joan to fan the flame, Karl 
 too had become ignited. 
 
 During those days in Cape Town, Karl Althaus drank 
 more whisky, and played poker for higher stakes, than he 
 had ever done before. Joan excited him in some way that 
 his forty odd years of experience failed immediately to 
 explain to him. He lived that month in a whirl ; it was 
 the month before he had gone home. It was not until 
 later he had fully realised that which he told Louis in 
 Johannesburg. In England too he had become cooler 
 over it; he had had the leisure to realise all Joan had 
 taught him. At the time he knew nothing, except that 
 there was a little woman whom he had meant to use, and 
 that she laughed at him and left him dry-mouthed, with 
 a deep thirst on him which even whisky did not quench. 
 Joan knew before Karl did what it was that ailed him, 
 and that what he was learning was not only what he owed 
 his country; but, because she was a novelist first, and 
 only realised her womanhood afterwards, this merely 
 touched her lightly. 
 
 He talked to her of his mother, and the paralysed 
 woman lived for her in the clear illumination of her im- 
 agination. He told her of Louis, not only of his birth 
 and parentage, but of his beauty and charm, for men 
 who are in love like talking about those they have loved 
 only less, and Karl had loved no one but Louis. He told 
 her of mines and combinations of financiers, and advised 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 105 
 
 her of forthcoming swindles, and she laughed at him that 
 such things should move him. He talked to her of his 
 people, when she talked to him of patriotism, and then 
 she had a glimpse into his great heart. There were many 
 such conversations. 
 
 Joan was looking for a subject for a new story. Karl, 
 always egotistical, was autobiographical to Joan. She 
 said to him one day : 
 
 " Yours must have been a varied life, Mr. Althaus ; 
 you must have had some strange experiences?" 
 
 " Experiences ! I believe you. I've se?n things that 
 would make your hair stand on end, eh! and stop there 
 too ; swindles ! my word !" 
 
 " Oh ! I don't mean financial things, I mean personal 
 things things that have influenced you, made you. I 
 want to get the recipe, the ingredients of millionaire- 
 making. I think I must evolve a millionaire for my next 
 book, and I want to know how he feels from the very 
 start. Tell me, are you alone in the world? Have you 
 no father, mother, sister, brother?" 
 
 " Brother ! oh, yes !" Karl's face lit up " Don't you 
 know my Louis?" 
 
 " I haven't been long back, you know. No ; I did not 
 even know you had a Louis. Is he your brother?" 
 
 " Well, no blood relation, but all I have belonging to 
 me, all the same. Louis's mother was a Christian." 
 
 " And you, is it true that you are a Jew ? That inter- 
 ests me; that really accounts for you." 
 
 " Yes ; I belong to the ancient people," he said ab- 
 ruptly. " I am a Jew by birth, by instinct, by sympathy. 
 Judaism is to me what England is to you, part of myself, 
 the best part. Jews helped me when I was a child, and, 
 when I was a grown lad, a starving one, Jews helped me 
 again, and that only because I was one of themselves. 
 They kept my mother, my poor old paralysed mother, 
 kept her with me and for me ; that makes me hand and 
 heart with them." 
 
 " So you are a Jew ! I heard it, but was not sure. I 
 
106 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 did not feel sure it was true. It is a wonderful religion !" 
 The word set her mind roving eastward. 
 
 " No, no ; there you are wrong again ! It is not a re- 
 ligion at all; it is a thing of forms and foods, a race 
 habit. There's no religion in it. When you've said 
 they would not accept the Christ, you've summed up their 
 faith." 
 
 Karl had never heard of Jewish ideals, the ideals which 
 have preserved Judaism intact through the ages. He was 
 only now awakening to ideals of any kind. 
 
 Joan took his meaning quickly. 
 
 " Not a religion, only a negation, a great negation ?" 
 
 " Yes. I've stood by more than one deathbed where 
 there's been a priest, Catholic or Protestant, Quaker or 
 Calvinist, and they all had religion. We have only sym- 
 bols. I remember" Karl began to walk up and down, 
 to become reminiscent consciously, " I remember my own 
 mother's deathbed, but there was no religion there, nor 
 faith, nothing to hold on to, nothing about the hereafter, 
 no word I understood at all. And I was such a wretched 
 little fellow, so heart-broken over it. They mumbled over 
 her in Hebrew, and I didn't understand one word. I saw 
 an Italian organ-grinder die once, when I was a boy, 
 down in a mews in Houndsditch. Just when he drew his 
 last breath and half-opened his dying eyes, a priest came 
 in hurriedly, flung himself on his knee by the bed a filthy 
 truckle-bed the whole place was filthy and held up a 
 crucifix. You should have seen the look in the glazing 
 eyes of that dying man, I've never forgotten it, the hope, 
 the life that came into them. It's the dream of my life 
 to see such a look in the eyes j>f a dying Jew. Ah ! you've 
 got a religion, we've only got a tradition, an obstinacy, and 
 even that our priests tell us of in Hebrew." 
 
 "Why in Hebrew?" 
 
 "That's it! Why in Hebrew? They say all their 
 prayers in a dead tongue, dead as the religion they don't 
 preach." 
 
 " It has kept you a race apart. I remember now, I 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 107 
 
 have read about it, ' separate in your synagogue.' You 
 ought not to complain of the Hebrew, the idea is so 
 picturesque." 
 
 " That's it again, a picturesque idea. Poetry if you 
 like, but not religion; it don't help you when you're 
 going out. An empty thing of ceremonies, without the 
 great Sacrifice, or the lesson of Love, vvithout the Cross, 
 and without the Crown, and no Christ to intervene for 
 sinners. Ah! I've heard it all since. Such a wonderful 
 story ; the ' story that has moved the word,' Stead called 
 it. I wish I could believe it. ' God gave His only be- 
 gotten Son to save sinners.' There's an idea for you! 
 In the Jewish quarter in Whitechapel, it isn't told, it isn't 
 known. There's forty thousand pounds spent a year in 
 converting heathens, and until I was nineteen I never 
 hard anything about Christ excepting that His mother 
 must have been but there, I won't insult you by repeat- 
 ing it. My poor mother loved me, I was her only son, 
 and I should have known what the love meant, and the 
 sacrifice. I am a Jew, but there are times when I'm just 
 on fire to tell that story properly to all the youngsters 
 who've got nothing to hold on to but their Passover cakes. 
 Mind you, I'm not pretending that I believe it; I heard 
 it too late for that. Faith comes in childhood, or not 
 at all ; and when I was a child I believed in fried fish 
 and fasting once a year. It was all I'd been taught. I 
 don't believe in Christ, but I'd give half a million i r I 
 did." 
 
 Karl, who was a man of contradictions, now selling 
 winkles, now buying Fragonards, professed, and boasted 
 of, his Judaism, but, in all jiis moments of restlessness 
 and rare depression, he longed for Christianity and its 
 early lessons, for himself and for his people. When Joan 
 was trying to teach him patriotism, and succeeding, it 
 seemed to him that he had many other claims upon him, 
 and not the least of these was the obligation of his lack 
 of faith. 
 
 " I wish to God we were popular, sought after, thought 
 
108 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 much of, I could do it then, go over to the other side I 
 mean. You understand me ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, we always understand each other. You lack 
 the courage of your want of opinion," she said smilingly. 
 " Your sharp I suppose you wouldn't help me ?" 
 " To retain South Africa for the Empire ?" 
 " Are you a religious woman ?" 
 She colored at that : " No yes I don't know." 
 " That book of yours, now that's full of it." 
 " You must allow for a little literary insincerity." 
 " Well, you want to retain South Africa for England. 
 Do you care about winning a nation, a big nation, mind 
 you, over to her Church ?" 
 
 " You want to convert the Jews !" she asked him. 
 " No ! I want to keep them just as they are. Give me 
 a Jew rather than a Christian any day in the week; he's 
 got more guts in him, I tell you that. I'd like to keep 
 every custom and habit and ceremony he's got, but I'd 
 like him to know about Christ; I'd like to give him a 
 chance." 
 
 " Why, you are not a Jew at all. You have the mis- 
 sionary spirit." Joan was interested, almost excited, by 
 what she read into him, his limitation and the causes of 
 them. 
 
 " And not the only one. Why, little woman, believe 
 me," Karl spoke impressively, and accentuated his 
 words with restless hands : " There are hundreds of Jews, 
 the salt of the Jewish race, the cultured ones, who heard 
 it earlier than I did, and who know it is all true. They 
 feel it, and they accept it, but they can't admit it, can't 
 profess Christianity openly, because there is a prejudice 
 against Jews, a Judenhetz. As long as that is about we 
 must fight under our own flag, whatever our convictions. 
 Put, if ever the Jews are honoured because they are Jews, 
 the very best of them will come out into the open, take 
 their hats off, and shout out in their synagogues : ' I be- 
 lieve in Christ ; thank the great God, I can say it now ; I 
 believe in Christ !' " 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 109 
 
 " You're laughing at me ... it's no laughing matter 
 to some of them. Judaea is to them what England is to 
 you: and they can't give her away because the Boers or 
 their neighbours shout Jew' or ' Uitlander' in their faces, 
 and shake their fists. Say now : why should I mix myself 
 in your quarrel, if you've nothing to say in mine? But 
 there, there, little woman, you needn't worry; I've only 
 given you what is in a corner of my mind ; I keep it in 
 the background generally, but I like you to know all 
 about me. I'll take part in what's coming on here, I'll 
 do what you want me. We're Englishmen as well as 
 Jews, and you needn't be afraid." 
 
 That, briefly, was the spark that lit the flame in the 
 woman, who at this time, at least, was little more than 
 pen and ink. She wanted Karl on paper, and saw that 
 it was not as a man she must hold him up for men to 
 see, but as a nation. The atmosphere and background 
 of her last book was Boer, the atmosphere and back- 
 ground of her next must be Jew. Everything in Joan's 
 life went by the board during the last part of Karl's stay 
 in Cape Town; she had to see him, learn him by heart, 
 read into him his people's history. " The making of a 
 millionaire" should be the title, for sub-title she would 
 call it " The Book of the Jew." She examined and cross- 
 examined him endlessly. And he exposed himself as un- 
 consciously to her as a chloroformed patient to the sur- 
 geon; for her little hands and feet, her brown hair and 
 smiling eyes, bewitched him, and he unclothed his very 
 soul at the bidding of those mobile lips and varying 
 dimples. 
 
 Concretely, the sum of his biography is soon shown. 
 But concrete facts were not to Joan's taste, neither did the 
 story reach her brain that way. 
 
 That Karl Althaus.was the son of a Wardour Street 
 bric-a-brac dealer did not interest her. It was only with 
 the death of the bric-a-brac dealer, before he had time 
 to make provision for wife and child, that Joan's sym- 
 pathies began to stir and visualise for her the sharp little 
 
110 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Jewish boy and his widowed mother. She saw vividly 
 that great-hearted mother of Karl's, after the week of 
 mourning was over, her eyes still red with weeping, her 
 heart still liquid with tears, setting herself to earn a living 
 for herself and her child. Karl was then only ten, a big 
 boy, clever beyond his years. Mrs. Althaus went a little 
 further east, to live near her relatives in the Whitechapel 
 Road. There, since she knew nothing of the fine arts, 
 and her parents had kept a fried-fish shop, she opened 
 a Kosher provision store. Karl went to the Jews' Free 
 School in the mornings, but in the afternoon he would 
 help to cut the smoked salmon into thin slices, to fry the 
 plaice that they sold all through the evening at twopence 
 a piece, to bottle the olives that came over to them in 
 casks, to take the large yellow cucumbers out of the big 
 pickling tubs. He was as happy as the day was long, and 
 so, in reality, was that fat and perspiring widow. For 
 the business flourished, and Karl, her Karl, was the 
 quickest, the most industrious, the best, the dearest of 
 boys, the envy of all the mothers in the neighbourhood. 
 She told him so often; she was expansive, voluble, and 
 she had only her Karl to whom she could talk freely. 
 
 Joan understood it all, the happiness of the then, and 
 the pathos of what followed. 
 
 One day, it appeared, there came begging into that 
 prosperous provision shop, a Polish Jew, a refugee, a 
 ragged figure with handsome eyes and an unpro- 
 nounceable name, a man who whined out his sorrows in 
 Yiddish, who cried and said he was hungry. Because she 
 was a Jewess and he a Jew, after the benevolent fashion 
 of her race she fed him, she gave him of her husband's 
 clothes, she put money in his pocket, and took him by the 
 hand. He came back again, and yet again, sometimes he 
 begged, sometimes he only admired her fine figure (of 
 nearly fourteen stone), her handsome son, perhaps her 
 thriving business and untiring industry. He came and 
 came, and, at last, notwithstanding the advice of her 
 friends and relations, he came and he stayed. She mar- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 111 
 
 ried him, and from that moment her fortune, and the for- 
 tune of the little provision shop, failed. Ludwig's sur- 
 name was unpronounceable; in the shop they called him 
 by the name that was over the lintel, soon it seemed to 
 become his; there was nothing he would not take, not 
 even a name. He ate, he begged, and wheedled and 
 whined, but he did not work. She worked for them both, 
 for all three of them, worked early and late. Karl 
 watched her; he did all he could, but he was at school 
 half the day, and his stepfather wheedled all the money 
 out of the poor woman's pocket, presently out of the 
 bank, wheedled and whined, ate and drank and smoked, 
 bought luxuries, bright waistcoats and neckties that grew 
 greasy. He had a perpetual cough, maddening to listen 
 to, he made a market of it, and the good woman with the 
 big heart nursed it, tempted his appetite with delicacies, 
 sat up with him in the night, worked for him in the day. 
 Yet she had time for her boy, kept his clothes neat, let 
 him see he was still the idol of her heart. But Ludwig 
 absorbed all the savings ; sometimes, too, it grew difficult 
 even to renew the stock. He would have begged, for he 
 liked begging, she worked instead, overtasked her 
 strength. She knew she had made a mistake, and it 
 preyed on her mind. When Ludwig's cough could have 
 let her sleep, the knowledge of it kept her awake. The 
 poor fat Jewess, with her black fringe, and coarse fea- 
 tures, for so Joan pictured her, and pictured her correctly, 
 lay awake through many nights thinking how she could 
 contrive to satisfy that insatiable schnorrer she had mar- 
 ried, while her Karl should not go short. Black fringe, 
 perspiring face, coarse hands yet Karl Althaus loved 
 his mother as dearly, as desperately, and as jealously, as 
 Stephen Hayward had loved that delicate, aristocratic lady 
 whose heart his father had broken. Karl watched Lud- 
 wig, the Polish beggar, out of his keen Jewish eyes, and 
 saw him spoil his mother's rest, eat her earnings, wear 
 the fruits of her toil. And the mother knew he was 
 watching, and they would speak together of everything 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 else, theirs was a communicative, voluble race but of 
 Ludwig Karl never spoke to his mother. 
 
 The rest of this story Karl spoke of more lightly to 
 Joan, and some of it Joan guessed, and some of it, alas ! 
 she never guessed, and was never told. 
 
 For the great misfortune, the great tragedy, came, it 
 was inevitable it should come, but it came so soon. Karl 
 was barely twelve, and Ludwig had eaten his mbther's 
 bread, and begged her savings, and dressed himself out 
 of her toil, and coughed her out of her rest, for two whole 
 years, when one day she fell, fell down in the shop in the 
 very act of serving a customer, struck down by an unseen 
 hand. Henceforth she was debarred for ever from work, 
 from giving the help she loved to give. She became a 
 dead body living, a burden where she had been a blessing, 
 locked in hideous death-in-life, powerless, paralysed, 
 dumb. A few jerky, incomprehensible words, like the tick 
 of an old clock that had run down, and two live eyes, were 
 all that were left of her. 
 
 She lay and watched ruin creep round and about the 
 home she had made. Who shall ever write the anguish 
 of the paralysed ? This strong, good woman, struck down 
 in her prime, iron-bound ever after and almost speechless, 
 Hying in that front room over the shop, heavy with 
 odours, dingy and forlorn, watched for two long years, 
 ere death tardily released her, everything she valued lost, 
 and everything she loved neglected. Ludwig, her hus- 
 band, cried over his bad luck, begged with slobbering 
 tears, and whined and stood about, doing nothing, not 
 selling, not buying, simply doing nothing. Karl's anguisn 
 forced him into premature manhood. He was only twelve 
 years of age, but he tended that mute figure of a mother, 
 bore with Ludwig, who tore and lacerated his feelings, 
 and poured vitriol into the open wounds he made. 
 
 Ludwig talked of the strong brave mother as a " bur- 
 den" ; the boy, proud in his swelling heart, heard their 
 poverty spoken of, their straits exposed; all he did was 
 nothing, they were beggars, for Ludwig said it hourly. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 113 
 
 And Ludwig went from bad to worse. That martyred, 
 mute, unwieldy figure, neglected save for the boy with 
 the large tumultuous heart, who took his strange place 
 so uncomplainingly, saw, from her heavy flesh prison, 
 idleness turn to viciousness, viciousness to crime. For, 
 to her mind, that chaste and virtuous mind that is the 
 heritage of Jewish women, it was a crime when Ludwig 
 brought another woman into the house that she had kept 
 holy with cleanliness and honest labour. Ludwig brought 
 another woman into the shop, and into the parlour be- 
 hind the shop, and finally into the bedroom over the shop. 
 For when vice and poverty join hands they dance lewdly 
 over decency. The paralysed Jewess had kept it all so 
 clean, and Karl was there. She could make no movement 
 to oppose, could bring no words of indignant protest over 
 the heavy tongue and paralysed throat. No word, when 
 these two polluted her home, no word, when they cor- 
 rupted her poor overtasked boy, and taught him to steal, 
 whom she had proudly taught to work, the boy who 
 kissed her still, as he had always done, night and morn- 
 ing, stroked the heavy motionless head, and washed her 
 face tenderly, the broad face that lay agonised with 
 staring eyes. Perhaps he read, poor boy, who learnt to 
 read so quickly, the anguish in those fixed eyes. With 
 the precocious knowledge of the slums the position was 
 clear before him. 
 
 Nevertheless, he worked early and he worked late, he 
 put up with the treatment of a dog and the food of a dog, 
 although a place was offered him where he would have 
 had civil words and the money he earned. He went hun- 
 gry, rather, for he was not going to leave his mother. 
 He knew how she had worked for him since his father's 
 death. Some children would not have known, but Karl 
 knew. 
 
 The foreign woman that Ludwig had brought in (I 
 follow the language of the Jewish quarter, though, in 
 truth, she was English enough, a gutter girl of loose life 
 and free tongue) learnt to know that she could depend 
 
 8 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 upon Karl when she could not depend upon Ludwig. 
 She learnt to value him, and not to nag him, to over- 
 work him still, but to show him surreptitious kindness, 
 and, even once, not many days before the end, to put her 
 arms round him and kiss him, rather wildly, and tell him 
 he was a good little chap, and she wished to God his 
 father was like him. 
 
 A few days after that kiss Karl had to run in all haste 
 for the next-door neighbour, and there were yells and 
 shrieks in the house, and then strange quiet, and a shrill 
 wailing cry. Karl was in the room, there is nothing hid- 
 den among the poor, and the wretched woman called to 
 him. He stood beside the bed ; her face was white and 
 drawn, and the life was ebbing away from her with every 
 breath she drew. 
 
 r< 'Ere ; you're a good sort, Karl. Look after the kid 
 a bit. 'Es just as well without me, p'raps, but Ludy'd let 
 him starve. Will yer take care of 'im, Karl; will yer? 
 I ain't bin bad to you, not as bad as I have to most. 
 You've looked after your mar, will you look after my pore 
 little kid?" 
 
 " I'll look after him," answered Karl solemnly. He 
 had never hated her, she hadn't called his mother a bur- 
 den; he had not so much resented her position, he had 
 only resented that she did not work. " Me and mother'll 
 look after him." 
 
 For the paralysed woman was never wholly dead or 
 silent to Karl, he was always watching and waiting for th? 
 day when she should speak again and be well. He often 
 talked to her, said words that penetrated perhaps, though 
 no answer came, only broken sounds. 
 
 " I'll look after him," said Karl. And we shall see how 
 Karl the man kept the word that Karl the boy gave by 
 that sordid death-bed. 
 
 Karl took the baby from her when she was dead, held 
 it in his arms a little, looked at it and wondered at it, 
 stroked its tiny hands, put his cheeks against the soft 
 downy head, let it creep into his heart, where it stayed 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 115 
 
 for ever. Afterwards he laid it by his mother's side, and 
 tended them both. It seems incredible, but neighbours 
 helped, good, kind, greasy, gossiping Jewish girls and 
 women, chaffed him, and taught him, and helped him, 
 and saw them through the next few months. Not one 
 of these did Karl forget in his later prosperity. 
 
 The shop was let ; only the one room retained. There 
 Karl, and the paralysed woman, and the baby lived, or 
 starved together. The Board of Guardians helped them 
 at last. But it was a case difficult to help ; for Ludwig 
 pleaded illness, and would do nothing, and Karl fought 
 that his mother should not be taken away from him, and 
 the baby, that had no right there at all, lay beside the 
 paralysed woman, and set up its own false plea for toler- 
 ance. 
 
 The Jewish Board of Guardians is an organisation 
 with its roots deep planted in the throbbing heart of hu- 
 manity. Goodness radiates from it and the charity that 
 ignores logic. Its almoners understand and keep its un- 
 written rules. Karl Althaus, wheeling a barrow, run- 
 ning errands, helping a Punch and Judy man, bringing 
 home his daily pence, fighting for home as a man might 
 fight, won from them the man's privilege to keep his 
 mother with him. The fight was hard because of Ludwig ; 
 nevertheless the Board of Guardians paid the rent, and 
 allowed them ten shillings a week. 
 
 But Ludwig wanted so much, and there was little for 
 mother and the baby, so Karl knew what it was to go 
 hungry. Once he went nearly forty-eight hours without 
 food ; that is how he learnt pity, learnt never to say " No" 
 to a beggar who pleaded hunger. It is not easy to be 
 honest when there is abundance all around, when there 
 are warm-smelling bakers' shops, tempting things on bar- 
 rows, or exposed on the pavement, and from the hooks 
 that butchers use. Karl, in the streets, learnt the morality 
 of the streets, they were his public school. Often after he 
 had tidied the room, done what he could for his mother, 
 and fed the baby, he would go back into the streets where 
 
116 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 he had been the livelong day, they would grow grey, and 
 cold, and unreal, and his head would feel large and empty, 
 his eyes a little dim, because he had given all he had 
 earned, and his growing boyhood starved. These were 
 the times temptation came to him. He could not beg. 
 Everything he earned Ludwig took from him, now on one 
 plea, now on another, and all that Karl could keep back 
 from him went to buy the milk and beef-tea that kept his 
 paralysed mother alive. 
 
 Eighteen months he worked and starved, and stole per- 
 chance, but never begged, resolution and strength grow- 
 ing in him the while and an indomitable greed. All around 
 he saw what he wanted ; wherever he wheeled his barrow, 
 or led the dog round to collect the coppers, or held horses, 
 or sold newspapers, all around he saw money, and the 
 things that money could buy. 
 
 Then she died, the mother died. The Jewish women 
 who came from the synagogue muttered their prayers in 
 Hebrew, but showed the poor body no respect when they 
 took it from the bed. They made an alien of him, though 
 it was thirty years before he voiced himself to little Joan 
 de Groot in Cape Town. The neighbours who in all kind- 
 liness said to him : 
 
 " It's a good thing she's gone ; now you'll be free," 
 made an exile of him from the quarter. He had loved 
 his burden, hugged it to him, never forgot how she had 
 worked for him. He knew it better every day ; he re- 
 membered lying in bed in his baby days, and seeing her 
 stitching away by candle-light to make him his velveteen 
 suit for Saturdays. Ludwig had pawned the suit; but, 
 when Karl saw his mother at last dead, indeed, cold, with 
 closed eyes, he remembered it; how she had worked at 
 it after her long day's toil was done, how she would come 
 ever and anon to his cot, rumpling his curls with her 
 large hand, while she kissed him, and told him he must 
 go to sleep now, and he should have a brave suit for the 
 Sabbath. To him she wasn't a fat and greasy Jewess, 
 with a black fringe; she wasn't a poor paralysed figure 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 117 
 
 eaten up by bed-sores, cruelly wasted and hideous; she 
 was just " mother," the best thing the world ever showed 
 him. They said : 
 
 " It's a good thing she's gone, at last," and that broke 
 him down, sent him away from Whitechapel, away from 
 the people who did not understand. 
 
 Karl Althaus, the multi-millionaire, who laughed at 
 Stephen Hayward for being short of a thousand pounds, 
 and at Joan for being scrupulous at accepting five thou- 
 sand, did not find people very ready to understand him, 
 then or ever. A big heart and a grasping fist seem incon- 
 gruous. 
 
 He had a wondrously diversified career after the death 
 of his mother, and sounded every note in the gamut of 
 privation. He had Louis to keep as well as himself, 
 Louis, the little by-blow of the Whitechapel provision 
 shop. He had promised Louis's mother, and he kept his 
 promise; though oftentimes hungry Louis cried himself 
 to sleep in the arms of hungry Karl. 
 
 Karl was a pawnbroker's assistant at the beginning of 
 his more prosperous period, and saved his wages to buy 
 old pledges to resell ; he was clerk in a foreign bank by 
 the time he had put Louis to school, and paid for the 
 funeral of his stepfather, who died of consumption in the 
 Jewish ward of the London Hospital, begging to the 
 last. When Karl worked his passage out to South Africa, 
 before the first annexation, he had with him money of 
 Messrs. Oldberger and Sons, and they had not lent it 
 to him. A year's school fees for Louis had been paid in 
 advance out of that money. But he paid it back very soon, 
 and wrote Messrs. Oldberger a manly letter, telling them 
 of his acute necessities. The firm forgave him, they were 
 of a forgiving race ; presently they began to do business 
 with him, and finally, which makes it more curious still, 
 Karl became their partner. 
 
 Karl Althaus was at the birth of the goldfields ; he also 
 had prospected successfully for diamonds. Is it possible 
 to make millions honestly?' Karl did not know the mean- 
 
118 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ing of the word, never learned it. But he was untiringly 
 industrious, orientally generous, and he had graduated 
 in sharpness in the streets of Whitechapel. He swindled 
 natives, bamboozled Dutchmen, turned over the money 
 he had annexed again and again. In early days he played 
 " heads I win, tails you lose" all the time. In later times 
 he made the chances even more certain. 
 
 Karl lived in South Africa from 1875 to 1881. Then 
 he came home with a strange story to tell, and tried to get 
 a hearing for it at the Colonial Office. He failed, failed 
 absolutely, hammering at the iron-bound door of official- 
 dom in vain. Karl guessed, even then, that the time would 
 come when they would have to listen, when that which he 
 had to tell them would otherwise be thundered into their 
 ears by guns, and shrieked at them through the red blaze 
 of battle. He knew it, many men in South Africa knew, 
 or guessed, but neither he nor they got a hearing; the 
 Boer delegates had it all their own way, and the miserable 
 Convention was signed that made our countrymen helots 
 where they should have been heroes. 
 
 Karl did not care very much. There was no money to 
 be made by political success, and things had not pro- 
 gressed far then. The slim and wily Dutchman kept a 
 show of justice, and ever promised decent government. 
 The times were not ripe, the grain not garnered, the guns 
 not bought. 
 
 Karl, received in London Society with the courtesy 
 his wealth demanded, and at the Colonial Office with 
 the indifference that the thing he had to tell failed to 
 justify, returned to South Africa to get more gold whilst 
 it was possible. He had learned a great deal during his 
 visit. 
 
 He went back and held a candle to the devil, and the 
 devil rewarded him royally for his courtesy. He bribed 
 and robbed and intrigued with the Boers, not against 
 them: he obtained concessions. Every one connected 
 with him grew rich, but always he grew richer. 
 
 Then the dogs he fed took to snarling, and he could no 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 119 
 
 longer listen to men who told him that the English na- 
 tion does not want to be well served, she wants simply 
 to be allowed to sleep, peacefully. For he met Joan de 
 Groot, and learnt that there were many better things than 
 money ; patriotism being among them. And, as we have 
 seen, Karl went to England again, and tried to find out for 
 himself who was right. Because little Joan de Groot had 
 touched his heart, or his imagination, in some strange 
 way, he concluded that it was she. Then he made plans, 
 and of all the plans he laid, none seemed so good to him 
 as the one that touched Stephen Hayward. 
 
 But during the month Karl was in Cape Town, talking 
 his autobiography to Joan de Groot, he had as yet made 
 no plans. 
 
 Of course these two talked politics as well as biog- 
 raphy. They had different standpoints, different motives, 
 but, nevertheless, they arrived practically at the same 
 conclusions. 
 
 The two races, English and Dutch, must live side by 
 side under the English flag. The weapon of power had 
 been put prematurely into a hand unfit to wield it; it 
 must be taken back. This Joan persuaded him. Eng- 
 land should be the paramount power in South Africa, and 
 England must assert this now with loud insistent voice, 
 before the newly-formed Bond should have time to weld 
 the party whose watchword was South Africa for the 
 Afrikanders. Karl recognised, although perhaps he over- 
 rated, the power of Joan's pen. He wanted her to write 
 home what they both knew. He told her how to place 
 and marshal her facts. He had his private ends to serve, 
 of course, and at first all of them meant only money. 
 Seeing this, she remained firm against his arguments. 
 
 She would only write what she felt or what she saw, 
 and, because she was conscientious and literary in the 
 finest sense of the word, she wrote but slowly, and little 
 of what she wrote seemed to her worthy of publication. 
 Karl knew, better than Joan, that, if she for ever hit the 
 tin tacks of fact with the light hammer of feminine 
 
120 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 argument, she would never build a platform. She must 
 screw in wild injustices, exaggerated histories, she must 
 make a dust and a whirl about her work, he told her. 
 
 But she would only write as the mood seized her, and 
 the little provocative woman laughed at his arguments, 
 and flung his thinly-disguised offers of bribery back in 
 his admiring face, and clashed her wit against his with 
 bewildering lightness. Karl would have given her every- 
 thing. Whether by way of bribery, because he wanted 
 her pen as his mouth-piece, or whether it was simply that 
 when a little woman bewitches a big man he wants to 
 lavish on her out of his abundance, even out of his pov- 
 erty if he be a big poor man, Karl did not know at first, 
 though Joan suspected. Yet she took nothing from him 
 in kind, only experience and sensation, and gradually a 
 dawning, shaping thought. 
 
 Before that nebulous thought took shape, however, 
 Karl had left Cape Town. 
 
 All that he said to Louis about Piet de Groot's farm 
 had been in his mind when he had come to Cape Town, 
 but all of it had been forgotten whilst Joan was teaching 
 him. It revived, momentarily, when he went to say good- 
 bye to her, and his " good-bye" was characteristic. 
 
 " I'm off to England." 
 
 "Business?" 
 
 " Business and politics are synonymous just now. One 
 thing or two," he looked at her in the little pause be- 
 tween that " or two," and she reddened; " I want before 
 I go. I want to get in touch with your husband " 
 
 She did not know why she had flushed, but still his 
 eyes were seeking hers. 
 
 " Piet is ill; he is in Pretoria just now. Dr. Wolff is 
 treating him." 
 
 " You are not with him." 
 
 " He is not alone." 
 
 Karl understood, having heard something of the story. 
 
 " I want him to lease me the farm, or sell it." 
 
 " I hope you will be more successful in obtaining your 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 other desires than you will be in that," she said quickly, 
 thoughtlessly. 
 
 " Do you ?" he answered, and the undercurrent of feel- 
 ing between them made her hurriedly continue talking, 
 so that only the surface should be skimmed. 
 
 " Piet will never sell the farm while there's breath in 
 him." 
 
 Karl kept the conversation for the moment where she 
 had led it. 
 
 " He'll have to. The deep-level of the Geldenreif is 
 under it." 
 
 " That won't even interest him." 
 
 Karl grew impatient. 
 
 " Now then, little woman, don't talk twaddle. He's ill, 
 and not very strong in his brain-pan when he's well, but 
 he's not ill enough to be allowed to browse his mangy 
 ostriches on a hundred millions of gold quartz." 
 
 " As long as life is in him he won't sell the homestead. 
 Why, when he settled it on me on our marriage, he made 
 me promise I would never part with it. And then, you 
 know," she added, twinkling her blue eyes at him, " he is 
 not in love with your methods, since you tried to do him 
 out of the Four Acre because he had let you use it as a 
 dumping ground for a few years." 
 
 " Oh, I know how he feels towards us. I know how 
 they all feel towards the men who brought the money 
 into their bankrupt, starving country; but they are get- 
 ting to the end of their tether. I tell you," he spoke bit- 
 terly, " they are nearing the end, putting the nails in 
 their own coffins. Bewaarplatzen, indeed ! Thieves !" 
 
 And she laughed at his bitterness, at his indignation. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; it's a desperate thing, to want to keep what 
 belongs to one when Karl Althaus wants it for himself." 
 
 The light laughter, or the womanliness of her, standing 
 there, so small and brown and wilful, moved him on a 
 sudden to her side. 
 
 " Joan ! Don't be frightened, child, little woman ; why, 
 I was not going to hurt you." 
 
1 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He had caught hold of her, for Karl was primitive. He 
 had startled her. It was not the first episode she had 
 passed through, or provoked; but Karl was so big and 
 not young, and she liked him so much. 
 
 " I'm not going to hurt you." His face was tender, 
 if his touch had been rough. She left her hands in his, 
 then, though her heart beat fast, and her breath came 
 quickly. 
 
 " That's right, take it quietly. I must speak ; you'll 
 have to listen. I'm going to ask for something ; but you 
 won't, I know beforehand, you won't give it me. Damn 
 it! you're such a good little woman!" She stood quite 
 still now, though his voice was thick, and his grasp on her 
 hands tight. 
 
 " You were quite right in what you said just then. It's 
 pretty desperate to keep from Karl Althaus what he 
 wants." 
 
 He stopped for words a minute. As she saw his agi- 
 tation she grew suddenly calm, her hands resting in his ; 
 some comprehension, some sympathy even, were in her 
 blue eyes as she watched him. He recovered himself. 
 
 " I want you! God ! if you only knew how I want you ! 
 You are right not to struggle, dear ; I wouldn't hurt you, 
 you know that, well enough. Now tell me, is there any- 
 thing, anything on earth I could give you, that would 
 make you come to me?" 
 
 The slow colour mounted on her cheek, flushed up to 
 her eyes, and blinded them. She shook her head. 
 
 " Come ; you want fame, money will buy fame. You're 
 such a little thing, and the world is such a big place ; you 
 ought to have some one to take care of you. Joan, let 
 me take care of you, let me. I'm pretty rough, but I 
 minded my mother, and I've minded Louis. I'll be so 
 careful of you, dear, not a breath shall blow on you. 
 Can't you do it, dear, can't you?" She only shook her 
 head, but her eyes were full of tears. Seeing them, he 
 released her hands : 
 
 " Never mind, then ; don't cry." He walked away 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 123 
 
 from her, turned his back to her a minute. When he 
 faced her again her tears were falling. 
 
 " Don't cry. I'm a blackguard ever to have thought of 
 it. Nothing you have said, nothing you have done, war- 
 rants it, I know that ; don't you think I don't know that ? 
 Come" he went up to her again " leave off crying. I 
 cannot bear it, I tell you ; you're driving me mad with it ; 
 forgive me, you'll have to forgive me," he said gruffly. 
 
 " Oh, I'm proud, proud you want me," she cried. He 
 knelt before her then, and took both her little hands in his 
 roughened ones, and kissed them. 
 
 " You are such a good little woman. I've nothing to 
 tempt you with. I'm only a coster-boy in your eyes, I 
 see that ; all my money doesn't help me with you." 
 
 Suddenly she put her face down, and kissed him lightly 
 on the cheek, and over the slow flush of his face that fol- 
 lowed so quickly she put her released hand. 
 
 " Karl, I'm proud, I can't help it, I'm proud you like 
 me. It's impossible; you know it's impossible. There's 
 Piet, and I don't, I don't love you, Karl." Her cheeks too 
 were hot. 
 
 " If it hadn't been for Piet?" He was standing again 
 now, out of breath as if he had been running, moved by 
 that sudden kiss, and shaken to the depths. 
 
 " If it hadn't been for Piet, dear ; if it were not for 
 Piet?" Again he knelt, and laid his hot lips on her little 
 hands. 
 
 " I don't know. I don't love you." She left him her 
 hands. " But you are strong and so different, and I think, 
 I do think you're good, except about money. And no one 
 else has seemed so interesting, and I am glad you want 
 me, and " 
 
 He did not give her time to finish her sentence. The 
 big man had risen and caught her in his arms. 
 
 " Joan, if ever there is no Piet, if ever you are a free 
 woman, may I come to you again? Do you know that 
 kiss you gave me of your own free will, my sweet, the 
 only kiss I've ever had, since my mother died, that I 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 haven't paid for, that kiss has somehow made you sacred 
 to me. Give me another, little Joan, kiss me once on the 
 lips. Tell me that I may come to you again some day. 
 Do that, and I'll let you go, and I'll never come to you 
 again, never, until you are free, or unless you send for me. 
 You don't know how I love you ; I love you enough to do 
 without you." 
 
 But, though his lips sought hers, they only brushed her 
 cheek. She struggled against him, and he released her as 
 soon as he realised it. He looked at her, but she averted 
 her eyes. 
 
 " You couldn't do it. I'm a rough chap, whisky sod- 
 dened. Never mind ; give me your hand again." 
 
 She gave them both without a word. 
 
 " I'm off now. But I want you to remember, never to 
 forget, that you've got a pal in Karl Althaus. I'll come 
 to you again some day when you are free, not until then. 
 God forgive me for having soiled you with such a thought 
 as I had in my mind. You forgive me, too, I know that, 
 dear ; know it by that kiss. Bless you for it ! I'll come to 
 you when you are free; but I don't suppose it will be of 
 any use ?" There was an interrogative note on the linger- 
 ing words. 
 
 " I don't know." Her voice was stifled. 
 
 " Well perhaps. I dare not stay God bless you." 
 
 And he was gone, with a slam of the front-door that 
 might have been heard at Government House. 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 JOAN missed Karl, but she was a writer first, and a 
 woman afterwards, and, until the afterwards, all her 
 experiences took the form of phrases, and grouped them- 
 selves into sentences and paragraphs. The nebulous 
 thought with which Karl had inspired her was that the race 
 story, written so often, must now be written differently. 
 It was the Jew in Karl that had moved her, she thought, 
 for that she had been moved momentarily there was no 
 doubt, and it was to sympathise with the strange lurid 
 race that dominated the business quarter of Cape Town. 
 Karl had been fond of talking of Jews ; he had contrived 
 to make their claim insistent. Now, as she walked 
 abroad, she saw, behind every pair of sharp, black eyes, 
 behind bald heads and prominent noses, in stooping, 
 shabby forms and coarse accents, she saw that large intel- 
 ligence, that big heart, that gentle kindliness of Karl Alt- 
 haus. She saw the restless hands eager to grab, ready to 
 give. She saw, for Joan's light blue eyes were wires to 
 her brain, and telegraphed truly, that there pulsed be- 
 neath these sordid, grasping, greedy Jews, who walked 
 the Cape Town streets and congregated in its market- 
 places, a wealth and warmth of goodness, of generosity, 
 of which the colder, slower, Northern men were scarcely 
 capable. She saw them often dishonest, never brutal, with 
 the lowest standard of honour, and the highest ideal of 
 Brotherhood. 
 
 But she missel Karl for hardly more than a week. 
 Almost before her hand had forgotten that painful pres- 
 sure of his big fist, almost before her cheek had lost the 
 flush where his rough face had touched her, Karl had be- 
 come a figure-head ; and the next book, the " Story of the 
 
 125 
 
126 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Jew," began to quicken in her, a Jewish novel the Jew- 
 ish novel ! That was what filled her nights and days ; she 
 was big with it, as a happy woman with child. It had no 
 shape or expression as yet, but she felt the life in it. All 
 the people, all her friends, who were not Jews, spread their 
 vapid personalities and weak wiles, their dull talk, before 
 her in vain. She walked about among her fellow-men and 
 women as one walks with shadows ; nothing was real but 
 the book she was going to write, the " Book of the Jew." 
 
 Thus it was that, when Karl sent Louis to her, she was 
 malleable, ready, eager. Karl had told Louis " there is a 
 little woman in Cape Town " and he had shown his heart 
 to his brother. There was no room in it for doubt, or fear, 
 or suspicion of Louis. All the world he could suspect 
 and doubt, perhaps fear, before he grew too powerful for 
 fear, but Louis and he were alone together in the world- 
 Karl loved him loyally. 
 
 When Louis left Pretoria for Cape Town en route for 
 England, he had his instructions. He was to influence 
 Joan de Groot, an easy task, to tackle the English Govern- 
 ment through Stephen Hayward, an enterprise not un- 
 worthy of his talents. 
 
 Van Biene was jackal, lawyer, creature, anything one 
 liked to call him, to the Unterwald gang. Louis saun- 
 tered into Van Biene's office the morning he arrived in 
 Cape Town. After a few preliminary business details had 
 been run through, he asked: 
 
 " Can you put me in the way of meeting a Mrs. de 
 Groot, a writing woman ; she is married to a man whose 
 farm we've got to get. Karl gave me a letter to her, but 
 that is too formal a business." 
 
 Van Biene, little old ferret that he was, looked sharply 
 over his spectacles at Karl Althaus's representative. 
 
 " She's not with her husband, and has no influence with 
 him. Your brother knows that." 
 
 Louis, in the easy-chair, surveying with some pride the 
 patent leather shoe that covered the " best instep in South 
 Africa," smiled, caressing his dark moustache. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 127 
 
 " Karl couldn't pull it off. But you would not call poor 
 old Karl the best man in the world to tackle a woman, 
 now, would you?" 
 
 He gave another upward turn to that dark moustache 
 with a hand, small, well shaped, sinewy. 
 
 " Come, out with it where is she to be found ? I ex- 
 pect I'll know how to make her work in our interests." 
 
 Louis's self-satisfied smile and manner, his shiny, im- 
 maculate clothes, the whole, handsome, assured air of 
 him, irritated the old lawyer. Van Biene's little mouth 
 was all awry, as if he had tasted something nauseous, 
 when he answered: 
 
 " She's not your sort at all. You really should not 
 waste yourself on a woman given up to literature and 
 politics. She is not an adventurous woman. Curl up your 
 moustaches from now till doomsday, they won't appeal to 
 Joan de Groot." 
 
 Happily Louis could catch a glimpse of himself in the 
 mirror over the mantel, and he smiled again at the reflec- 
 tion. He need not put himself out of the way to be civil 
 to old Van Biene, they had half a hundred holds over 
 him. 
 
 " Had a look in in that quarter yourself, old man ? She 
 seems very attractive to fogeys. Even old Karl was im- 
 pressed. But go on, hurry up, I've no time to waste. I'm 
 off to England in a fortnight. Whom does she visit ?" 
 
 " Give up the idea. She can't help us. If she could, 
 I am not sure that she would. You've nothing to bribe 
 her with." Van Biene shot another disgusted glance at 
 Louis. " She won't notice your clothes, and if it had 
 been a question of money I believe you'll allow Karl 
 could bid as high as you can." 
 
 Still Louis smiled. The old lawyer's irritation with him 
 was nothing new. 
 
 " Oh ! you notice they fit, do you ? Poole's best cut- 
 ter !" He felt where the well-pressed trouser exhibited its 
 regular seam, patted his chest where the double-breasted 
 waistcoat showed there was a waist to consider. " But 
 
128 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 get along ; spit it out." Louis's refinement was one of the 
 garments he only wore for special occasions. " You've 
 got to do what I ask, so why make such a fuss about it? 
 Where does the woman hang out? I haven't got the let- 
 ter with me. If I can't meet her about, I shall have to 
 make a formal call." 
 
 Still Van Biene hesitated. 
 
 " She's got ink in her veins, not blood. They've all 
 been at her; your brother Karl wasn't the only one that 
 had a story to tell. But nobody moves her; you leave 
 her alone with her books. You'll do nothing with her, 
 and then you'll grow spiteful. I know you." 
 
 " I believe you're frightened to bring us together. By 
 Jove !" he got up and walked round the lawyer, survey- 
 ing him with some interest, " I never looked upon you in 
 that light before. Somehow or other, you never struck 
 me as a Don Juan." 
 
 " Don't make a fool of yourself." 
 
 " And what does Mrs. Van Biene say to it, eh ?" 
 
 A lecherous, treacherous fellow, Van Biene thought 
 Louis Althaus, scarcely white ; his contempt was mingled 
 with hatred. Yet, if he did not give him the asked-for 
 opportunity, some one else would ; there was no difficulty 
 in meeting Joan de Groot in Cape Town society. 
 
 " If you are really set on knowing her, you can dine 
 with my wife to-night. Mrs. de Groot and her brother 
 are both coming," he said sullenly. Louis patted him 
 on the shoulder. 
 
 " Why didn't you say so before ? What a man you are, 
 to be sure. I'll be there ta-ta. And, if I notice any- 
 thing, I'll not say a word to Mrs. B." 
 
 "Phew!" 
 
 Van Biene breathed again, the office was clear of Louis. 
 But he sat down to his desk with some presentiment of 
 evil, some uneasiness. Joan was eclectic in her innocent 
 flirtations, and the wizened old lawyer had a keen brain, 
 and an appreciative wit. His dry cynical humour, his 
 knowledge of men, had made him a congenial companion 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 129 
 
 to her. There was a sympathy between them that neared 
 friendship. 
 
 "A lecherous, treacherous fellow," he thought, "but 
 she'll see through him." 
 
 Still he worked uneasily. He knew more about Piet de 
 Groot and his farm than Louis did. But what he knew 
 Louis might soon learn, and, if what he had heard was 
 true, then Joan might indeed become essential to the in- 
 terests of the Unterwald Company, in which case, better 
 Karl than Louis to play the game for them. The lawyer 
 was uneasy, for he appreciated Joan, perhaps guessed 
 where she might be weak. 
 
 There was no doubt about Louis's good looks. His 
 dark eyes were Spanish in their sleepy depths, his brushed 
 up moustache and slight imperial kept the foreign contour 
 of his face, but his fair skin was English, pale and clear. 
 The hair had retreated a little on his temples, he wore it 
 brushed back, without a parting, lying as straight and 
 sleek as the valet could make it, but at the nape of the 
 neck you could see the end of the wave it had, and his 
 neck was firm and white, his head splendidly set upon it. 
 
 Van Biene watched from the window Louis's graceful 
 saunter down Adderley Street. His grace had in it some- 
 thing feline to Van Biene's old eyes, but he knew he saw 
 him differently from the way others did. Louis was tall 
 and lean of flank, his back was straight with a fall towards 
 the waist, the slight slope in his shoulders, the easy move- 
 ment from the hips, were part of the fine make of him. 
 
 "Damn him! he looks like a gentleman," said Van 
 Biene, when he left the window and went back to his 
 papers. 
 
 That evening when, for the first time, Joan met those 
 dark melancholy eyes, she saw little else. They were 
 brown eyes, blue in the whites, brown in the centres, 
 there was depth in them and melancholy, they spoke, they 
 seemed to tell a history ; they brought " Thaddeus of 
 Warsaw" to her mind. She was only a writing woman 
 at the beginning of that dinner, and she thought here was 
 
 9 
 
ISO PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 another chapter for her book, the agony of Poland, vi- 
 brant, inarticulate. 
 
 " I wanted to know you," was all Louis said, as he 
 bowed over her hand with that graceful half-foreign 
 gesture of his. " I came here to-night on purpose to 
 meet you." 
 
 " I am flattered." Joan was used to compliments, but 
 to-night, somehow, she was not at her ease with Karl 
 Althaus's adopted brother. 
 
 " I am glad I asked Mrs. Van Biene to send us in to- 
 gether." Joan was glad too. It was absurd, but she was 
 glad. She knew so little, with all that she had written 
 of love, and written well, that she took no warning when, 
 as she laid her fingers lightly on his coat sleeve, she felt 
 a thrill run up her arm, a thrill that ended in her heart, in 
 a slight shudder, in an accelerated breath and pulse-beat. 
 
 " I am glad to meet Karl Althaus's brother," she an- 
 swered, and blushed, remembering. For an instant his 
 eyes met hers, and she wondered if indeed she was glad 
 because he was Karl Althaus's adopted brother. But for 
 a little space she spoke of Karl breathlessly, and Louis 
 looked at her; his pointed tongue now and again moist- 
 ened those thin lips of his, his hand caressed his imperial, 
 brushed up his moustache until the ends were feathery 
 and light against the transparent skin, and his eyes were 
 melancholy and impenetrable. Everything about him had 
 a subtle indefinable attraction and charm for the girl- 
 woman, who had been for a short time the wife of Piet de 
 Groot, and for the rest had thought that literature was life. 
 
 Afterwards Joan knew that it had been a strange din- 
 ner. She had eaten nothing ; there had been an unusual 
 nervousness about her. She had torn her menu into little 
 bits and played with the pieces she remembered that, but 
 what they had said to each other she could not recall. It 
 seemed to her she had scarcely looked at him, yet she 
 knew that those dark eyes had starry centres, she knew his 
 voice was soft and low, she heard again the slight roll of 
 his " r's," as if they left his tongue reluctantly. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 131 
 
 And the poor little clever fool, going home to lie awake 
 and dream, with a soft hand-pressure coming back again 
 and again always with its own thrill and message, thought 
 it was all because the quickening idea was embodied, 
 and that the Jew of dreams was incarnated to make her 
 book live. 
 
 A writer, born, not made, has this apart from other 
 men and women, a power of detachment, an impersonal 
 double sense that visualises the picturesque, the apposite, 
 and sees it apart from its surroundings, framed and made 
 separate. The writer born, not made, can sit by the 
 deathbed of a beloved one and forget the dying, see the 
 dear face on the pillow, listen to the laboured difficult 
 breathing, hideous with the hoarse death-rattle, and be 
 filled with naught but the difficulty of translating the 
 scene into phrase, of grouping the sentences so as to make 
 the room with its medicine bottles, its white-capped nurse 
 and drug-smells stand out, solemn and cold and clear 
 in the black and white sharp outline, the shadowlessness 
 of print. 
 
 Joan sat at that dinner-party, the deathbed of so much 
 that was strong and self-reliant and powerful in her, the 
 deathbed of her girlhood and her untroubled heart and her 
 innocent spirit, and, as she nervously shredded the menu 
 card, she mentally described the dinner-table, the flowers 
 and white napery, the silver dishes heaped with fruit, the 
 shaded candles and the glass, saw it always and merely as 
 a chapter in the " Book of the Jew." Only she never fore- 
 saw in print the vague unrest that throbbed its warning 
 to her ; she could neither search for nor find a phrase to 
 meet her quickening pulse. 
 
 There is a mystery known to all who know men and 
 women, to all who have insight into, sympathy with, or 
 understanding of, their fellow-travellers, but it is blank 
 and incomprehensible to the Pharisees, and to all who 
 would read and run at the same time. This is a mystery 
 that fills the divorce courts, mocks the incredulous, and 
 sets at naught all creeds and convictions. It is that a 
 
132 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 certain something, subtle, sweet, and rare, not a perfume, 
 not a touch, but an echo of both, light, elusive, all- 
 pervading, is the special property of some loose-living 
 men, a property that is beyond the reach of analysis, but 
 recognisable in the freemasonry of the passions by all 
 who have realised its existence. It is as the candle to the 
 moth, as the rose to the butterfly, as the magnet to the 
 steel. It is a surface lure of sex, it is an all-compelling 
 whisper, almost it seems that to hear it is to obey. But 
 some ears are deaf to it, some few dull ears. Van Biene, 
 wizened and bitter and old, knew of this mystery; he 
 knew it well, knew too that Louis Althaus held the key 
 to it in that sleek head, that strait back and those sloping 
 shoulders, those lean flanks and nervous hands, knew that 
 the co-respondent, no less than the poet, is born, not made. 
 But he thought Joan's ears were deaf, he hoped Joan's 
 ears were deaf ; so dull she had proved to other men who 
 had tempted her with other wiles. 
 
 On the evening of the dinner-party he watched those 
 two, watched the bright alertness fade a little out of the 
 woman's face, and her lids veil her eyes. Out of the cor- 
 ners of them she would look now and again at Louis, but 
 it seemed that she too was nervous, Van Biene missed 
 her low laughter. He noted the small fingers mechanic- 
 ally tearing up the name-card, then the menu. And all the 
 time Louis talked in a low voice, disjointed talk it seemed 
 to the old man watching, and Louis's wonderful eyes were 
 full of softness, and his voice with the burred " r's" 
 sounded musical, and the atmosphere in which these two 
 apparently sat apart from all the others seemed charged 
 with electricity. 
 
 For those two there was nobody else at the dinner- 
 party; Louis absorbed Joan, and was absorbed by her. 
 Van Biene ground his teeth at them, but knew he was 
 powerless. 
 
 There had been cross motives running in Louis's subtle 
 handsome head, when he had asked for the invitation, 
 when he had entered the dining-room. But Joan herself 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 133 
 
 blotted out her farm that evening with Louis no less than 
 she had done with Karl ; there was not a doubt about 
 that. Her charm surprised him out of his scheming. He 
 was not too absorbed, however, to notice Van Biene's 
 expression, and his vanity was all alert. That Joan was 
 what she was, excited it further. Karl, steady old Karl, 
 rough old Karl, had had a fancy for her too, he remem- 
 bered, and he laughed to himself at the thought that Karl 
 should rival him here. The woman was made for him, 
 he felt that immediately ; he tried to convey it too. He 
 knew many tricks and subtleties to awaken light thoughts 
 in light women. Joan's innocence, ignorance, instinctive 
 purity, missed them all. Quickly, very quickly, he saw, 
 he realised that, if success was to follow him, he must, as 
 he worded it to himself, begin at the beginning ; it was a 
 new language he must teach her. He had not hoped for 
 all he saw. 
 
 He had expected to find the celebrated authoress a 
 mere writing-machine, an ink-stained, bony thing, not 
 even young. In reality, she was as delicate as a Cosway 
 miniature, with an eighteenth century piquancy in her 
 grace. Joan wore green that evening, a soft dress, with 
 some white stuff, still transparent, draping the shoul- 
 ders. But the shoulders themselves were whiter than 
 the stuff that draped them, a wonderful creamy white. 
 On the left side Louis saw there was a dimple, they had 
 not got as far as the entrees before he knew it was there 
 for him. Her arms were round, like a baby's arms, and 
 again there were dimples in the elbows, and slender wrists, 
 and small hands with tapering fingers, and Louis's heart, 
 though it was as wizened as Van Biene's figure, beat fast. 
 
 " Is it true that you only care for pen and ink, that you 
 want to write, and not to live?" Louis Althaus talked 
 ever in questions. 
 
 " It seems the same thing to me," Joan answered sim- 
 ply. But that was at the beginning of the dinner, for 
 very soon the mystery of Louis touched her senses. " I 
 have never cared for anything or anybody I know so 
 
134 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 much as I have cared for the things and the people I have 
 imagined." 
 
 " I am sorry you have cared for the people you have 
 imagined." 
 
 The delicate colour stole into her cheeks. 
 
 " Imagined I cared," she interpolated and smiled, but 
 nervously. Was he familiar, impertinent? She hardly 
 knew ; at any rate, when she had time to analyse her 
 feelings, she thought she would find she had material for 
 a new chapter. 
 
 " But in real life," he persisted, his voice low, " in real 
 life, have you ever cared?" 
 
 The voice and the words penetrated, or perhaps it was 
 the dark eyes, soft yet searching, and all at once Joan 
 knew she was lonely, and that love, love of which she 
 read, of which she wrote, had been nothing but a pulse- 
 less word, colder than print. Her loneliness shuddered 
 through her, and then was gone, and the low voice with 
 its burred " r's" filled its place. 
 
 It was a short dinner, a shorter evening. Louis never 
 left Joan's side. The drawing-room, heavy with flowers, 
 the women in their decolletage, in their diamonds, the 
 loud-voiced men, the music, swayed about her, and seemed 
 unreal, absurd, negligible. She hardly grasped the pur- 
 port of the things he said to her, of the things he com- 
 pelled her to answer. In some strange way he made her 
 conscious of emotions which, until this evening, she had 
 never known were possible to her. And the bright elusive 
 womanhood, which had bewitched Karl, Louis saw shy 
 and wild, and he wanted it, as men want always to bring 
 down wild things. Every trick began to tell, every move 
 " to come off," but, as the evening wore on, he forgot to 
 be tricky and studied. What there was of man in him 
 woke up and wanted her. He was amazed at himself. 
 What he had meant but he did not stay to remember 
 what he had meant ; only, as he walked back to the hotel 
 that night, he said to himself that he was in love, and he 
 knew it was for the first time, and even to Louis Althaus 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 135 
 
 it seemed that the summer night was more beautiful than 
 ever summer night had seemed before. 
 
 And Joan! 
 
 It was Louis who had put the cloak about her shoul- 
 ders, who had whispered passionately in her ear : 
 
 " We shall meet again ; we must meet again." 
 
 She heard the words as one hears far off the strain of 
 some sweet distant music, entrancing, strange, exciting. 
 She heard them until she fell asleep. She understood 
 nothing of what had happened to her, why her heart beat 
 fast, why her pulses throbbed, why her cheeks glowed in 
 the darkness. It must be because she had found the hero 
 for the " Book of the Jew," she said to herself, as at last 
 she dropped into happy dreams. 
 
 Three days passed before they met again, and, in the 
 meantime, Joan found a strange paralysis had overtaken 
 her pen. For hours she sat with it suspended over a 
 blank sheet, whilst no thought came to her, no phrases 
 framed themselves ; she was conscious only of a restless- 
 ness, of an excitement, for which she had no name. She 
 left off trying to write, and took long solitary walks in- 
 stead; she became certain it was exercise she needed. 
 Her brother had often told her she led too sedentary a 
 life. Now she abandoned her pen altogether. When the 
 solitary walks only tired her, and the charm of Nature 
 vanished, when the Victoria Road with its tropical foliage, 
 flamboyant with blossoms, and the sapphire sea that glit- 
 tered in the sun, and the turquoise sky that hung above 
 it, actually began to pall upon her, began to spell unrest, 
 excitement without cause, the atmosphere seeming too 
 clear and searching, she turned her footsteps towards the 
 business portion of the v town. She threw herself fever- 
 ishly into her household duties, made daily pilgrimages 
 to Cartwright's stores, selecting groceries as if they had 
 suddenly become of vital importance. Then, too, she took 
 a strange interest in her toilette; all at once her dresses 
 seemed old, or shabby, or unbecoming. She spent one 
 whole morning at Stuttaford's, trying on rich stuffs, dis- 
 
136 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 carding pattern after pattern, dissatisfied, but not know- 
 ing why. 
 
 She hardly thought of Louis, at least, she hardly knew 
 she thought of him, but the set of his handsome head and 
 his dark eyes, followed her about, and pursued her awake 
 or asleep, followed her into Stuttaford's as into Cart- 
 wright's, became mingled with the clothes no less than 
 with the household stores. 
 
 Twice a week the military band played in Government 
 Gardens ; there too Joan walked, or sat, noting the faces 
 that she knew, evading the acquaintances who would have 
 monopolised her, a solitary figure, watching. To herself 
 she said she was pursuing the idea, trying to track down 
 the inspiration that only a week ago she had found in 
 every Jewish face and form, but, if indeed it was that she 
 sought, it eluded her perfectly. 
 
 When she saw Louis there was a rapid flow of blood 
 to the heart, and then a reaction. He was not as hand- 
 some as she remembered him ; he looked better in even- 
 ing than in walking dress. Hurriedly she said these things 
 to herself. Her bow to him was quite slight. She thought 
 he would have passed on ; she made no motion that there 
 was room on the seat beside her, yet he stopped before 
 her and spoke. 
 
 " They are playing very well to-day," she said, as if 
 both of them were thinking of the military band. 
 
 " Ver-ry," he said, with the " r's" just as they had 
 echoed in her dreams. " I knew we should meet again/' 
 he added. " May I sit down ?" 
 
 He did not wait for permission. When he sat down by 
 her side Joan thought that, after all, he was just as good 
 looking by daylight. Only the hat covered the broad fore- 
 head, the lower part of the face was narrower. His eyes 
 spoke eloquently ; his gaze at her was intent. " At last !" 
 he said. 
 
 " You had difficulty in finding a seat ?" 
 
 He would not follow her lead, would not keep the con- 
 versation at her level. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 137 
 
 " Did you feel that we should meet again ?" 
 
 " I don't know ; I don't know. Oh ! why do you talk 
 so strangely to me?" A school-girl could not have an- 
 swered with more confusion. Why had he not let her 
 talk commonplaces, and get quiet in her heart, which now 
 beat too loudly? She was not well, she was quite sure 
 she could not be well, her nerves were playing her such 
 strange tricks. 
 
 "Have you thought of me, missed me, wanted me?" 
 said Louis. " All the world has been different with me 
 since I met you that evening. I can't talk rubbish ; I can't 
 pretend ; I must know what you have been feeling. Tell 
 me, did it mean anything to you that at last we had met? 
 Did it seem to you like that, that at last we had met, found 
 each other? There has never been anything but you in 
 my life, I swear it." 
 
 " I don't know," she answered timidly. And Louis's 
 heart swelled, for, was she not the cleverest woman in 
 South Africa, the authoress of " The Kaffir and his 
 Keeper"? Van Biene had defied him to win her, and old 
 Karl had failed. Yet, here she was, flushing and paling, 
 and, if his own heart was beating fast, well he knew that 
 hers was beating faster. 
 
 " Karl has spoken of you to me so often," she said 
 weakly. 
 
 " Don't talk to me of Karl ; don't talk to me of any one 
 but yourself. Come, let us go for a walk together." 
 
 " Down Fleet Street, like Dr. Johnson ?" she said, with 
 a nervous laugh, but rising, nevertheless. 
 
 " Not like anybody but ourselves," he answered. 
 
 " I suppose I am very wrong to take it for granted you 
 want to be with me as I with you. Tell me, am I wrong? 
 Have you thought of me since that night?" 
 
 " One always thinks of a pleasant evening." 
 
 " Don't put me off ; I don't want generalities. You 
 have never been out of my mind for a moment. Have 
 you thought of me at all? I must know." There was no 
 response, and he continued earnestly. " Don't let us 
 
138 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 stand here and talk in the midst of people. I want to be 
 alone with you. Do you feel that? Do you feel we have 
 thousands of things to say to each other?" 
 
 " It is very nice here," she said, moving on neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 She liked walking by his side. Considering his appear- 
 ance alone, he was a man by whose side any woman might 
 have liked to walk. There were other people walking up 
 and down, and several bowed to Joan. Louis's hat was 
 off half-a-dozen times in as many minutes. All Louis's 
 ways had that half-foreign suggestion about them that 
 appealed to her ; he took off his hat to the veriest stranger 
 with a bow, with a graceful movement. She liked him 
 better with his hat off, then she saw the sweep of the dark 
 hair above the low brow; even the slight shrug of the 
 shoulders, as he turned to her again and mutely com- 
 plained of the interruption, she found fascinating. He 
 moved in his clothes so that one saw how the muscles ran 
 beneath the skin, saw his litheness and grace. 
 
 " I can't talk surface talk to you," he said ; " I don't 
 know why. You noticed that, even the first evening? 
 We seemed to have met before, to understand each other 
 at once?" 
 
 " Don't talk in questions I don't know I haven't 
 thought at all; I've been busy. What have you been 
 doing ? what do you do ? Do you want all the same things 
 your brother does? I don't mean for South Africa, I 
 mean for yourself. Do you collect pictures, and heap mil- 
 lions upon millions like Pelion upon Ossa, and go on 
 doing it because it has become a habit?" 
 
 " Do you think I am like Karl?" 
 
 She cast a side glance at him, caught a smile and re- 
 turned it. No ; he was not like Karl, she felt a throb of 
 disloyalty, for, if Karl had been rough, he had been sin- 
 cere. He was coarsely moulded, badly built, big and 
 heavy, but he had been gentle with her, good to her. 
 Louis beside him was as " Hyperion to a satyr." But she 
 ought not to have smiled. She was sorry she had smiled 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 139 
 
 back, and he caught her -egret and answered it before it 
 was spoken. 
 
 " He is a good fellow, there is no one like old Karl. 
 But you must not make me jealous of him. You ought 
 not to have met him first." 
 
 In the valley, through the afternoon, they walked and 
 talked. Louis was no pedestrian, but a little way up the 
 green precipitous side of the dominating mountain they 
 wandered together. Then the shadow of the quickly de- 
 scending mist hid the turquoise sky, hid the wild trun- 
 cated top of the Devil's Peak, laid its chill warning on 
 them, so that their footsteps halted. Into the mist Joan 
 walked presently, but to-day, to-day at least, she turned 
 back. They parted at her brother's door. 
 
 The love idyll between these two took no time in the 
 making. It sprang into life almost full-born. Perhaps 
 the hot African sun was responsible. Certainly the bar- 
 riers that convention has erected between man and woman 
 seem lower in those southern climes, less difficult to leap, 
 more easily demolished. The situation came upon the 
 woman so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the outposts 
 were carried before she knew a sentinel was needed. He 
 had found the weak place in her defence ; he was in the 
 heart of the citadel before she realised the necessity of 
 hanging out a flag. She found the days empty and blank 
 when they were without the sound of his voice, the touch 
 of his hand, the desire in his eyes, even before she had 
 realised that his eyes held a desire, and that in her trem- 
 bling lips and fearful heart was the response. 
 
 For a week they met and talked, met accidentally, and 
 had sausage and eggs together at Wronski's in Adderley 
 Street, met by appointment, and in Louis's light Cape cart 
 went the Kloof drive, or when they wanted a long day 
 together, they found themselves lingering in Father 
 Peck's strange Caravanserie at Musenburg. In the cu- 
 rious sign-board that swung from the lintel there they 
 saw a mutual message, and read it to each other. The 
 sudden hail storm a South African hail storm each 
 
140 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 drop a menace that bound them prisoners there, rejoiced 
 their hearts; and when, on leaving, an asp in their path 
 uplifted a hooded head and danger barred their way, they 
 had less thought for what it symbolised than the huge 
 Kaffir who made an end of it. With or without excuse 
 they met, and talked, and met again, finding daily in each 
 other's society the something that each felt a necessity 
 of existence. For three weeks they met and talked, real- 
 ising strange moments and the thrills that silence holds 
 in sudden twilight, and then then Louis voiced their 
 feelings. 
 
 It was at home, in her own little drawing-room, with 
 its books and flowers and the nick-nacks that women 
 gather around them, that Louis became explicit. Joan 
 had been trying to work, and was holding a piece of em- 
 broidery in unsteady hands ; so little had Louis said until 
 then. His elbow rested on the mantelpiece, he was look- 
 ing down upon her bowed head, with its wavy crown of 
 brown hair, looking down on the small fingers ; his words 
 had been few, and she could still pretend to work, but 
 of his presence she was keenly conscious, every fibre of 
 her was conscious of his figure, of the way he held him- 
 self. She had no need to look upon him, so plainly she 
 saw him, though her head was bent over the silks. 
 
 " It won't do, Joan," he said at length. " What is the 
 good of pretending? You are not working; you can't 
 work whilst I am here. Look up." 
 
 She obeyed him; her work lay upon her lap; she 
 looked up and met his eyes, and, seeing what was in them, 
 dropped her own again with crimsoned cheek. 
 
 " Do you know where we're drifting ?" he went on. " I 
 am sure of myself ; are you sure of yourself ? I warn you 
 now" he ought to have warned her before " there can 
 be no going back for us two. There has never been a 
 woman in my life before." 
 
 It was true ; whatever the man was, he spoke the truth 
 to her then. There never had been another Joan, and 
 all he had known or ever felt of love was concentrated 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 141 
 
 on her, while everything else for the moment he had for- 
 gotten. It would come to him again, but this week he 
 had remembered nothing but that Joan de Groot was the 
 one woman in all the world for him, that this married 
 woman with the purity of a girl, this genius with the 
 heart that had never been found, this delicate, shy wife 
 who had no husband, was the goal to which all his flirta- 
 tions had tended, the cut de sac to his dreams of delight, 
 the end of his strayings into the gardens of love. 
 
 " I warn you now ; every time I see you it becomes 
 more impossible for us to live without each other. I told 
 you the very first evening, although you did not believe 
 it I saw you did not believe it that love is pain." 
 
 "Ah ! " she hardly saw it now, though she watched 
 him, and listened to him. If he threatened her with love's 
 penalties, did he not tempt her with love's delights? 
 When his arms were around her, and the soft surprise of 
 his thin lips taught her more than his threats, she remem- 
 bered that against Karl's arms she had struggled, but now 
 there was no resistance in her; so beautiful he was, and 
 passionately tender. 
 
 " Joan, in a week I am going to England. Am I to go 
 alone? Ami?" 
 
 But the anguish of her surrender was not yet, not 
 nearly yet. She could still struggle against him, deny 
 him. She could plead with him, and every plea he an- 
 swered. All the sophistry of the seducer was at that thin 
 tongue-tip of his that moistened his lips. He was gour- 
 met, not gourmand; delicately he would have his feast- 
 ing, and the full flavour of it he would realise. He had 
 tact and self-restraint, he met her reluctance with an 
 assumption of his own, led her after him, gently, retreat- 
 ing only when he was sure she would follow. He weak- 
 ened her moral fibre so slowly, so imperceptibly, that she 
 thought she was growing philosophic, when in truth she 
 was only growing weak. He blotted out thought, and 
 gave her sensation in its stead ; she vibrated at his touch 
 as violin strings at the hand of a musician ; he swept the 
 
142 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 strings, and wonderful chords from her passionate heart, 
 from her luminous brain, answered his delicate fingers. 
 It had been easy to win Joan's love, easy to deepen and 
 widen it, until it engulfed and drowned everything but 
 her woman's modesty; but the rest was not easy. A 
 hundred times under the spell of his eyes and wandering 
 lips, and encroaching hands, she vowed herself to him, 
 and promised him everything. A hundred times in wild 
 reactions she begged him with passionate tears and timid- 
 ities to give her back her promise. No other man could 
 have won this woman from her virtue. Always he met 
 the moods half-way. If she did not care for him '' in 
 every way," if she was not as sure, as he was, that life 
 meant nothing for either of them apart, then she was 
 right. He would not take her in a mood ; she must come 
 to him because she wanted him as he wanted her. He 
 was an artist in his role. 
 
 "If you don't care for me to touch you, then you don't 
 care for me. If, when you kiss me to-day, you repent it 
 to-morrow, then you don't love me." 
 
 Once she doubted herself. Once, when there had been 
 a wild scene between them, and a wilder reaction, and 
 she was all unstrung and trembling, she flung herself on 
 her knees beside him, where he sat on the sofa his head 
 on the cushions, averted from the woman who had er- 
 proached him and asked him, with tears, with agony in 
 her voice : 
 
 " Louis, you know me ; Louis, is it true ? I want to 
 give myself to you ; I want to do everything you would 
 have me do but, I can't I can't Louis, don't I love 
 you? Is that it?" 
 
 With all his good looks and all his culture, Louis Alt- 
 haus was the descendant of that wheedling, ringleted son 
 of a weak race that is no longer a nation. Easy tears came 
 to his eyes, and these she could not look at. 
 
 " I dare not think. I am afraid Ah ! Louis, help 
 me!" 
 
 " I will, I will ;" his arms were around her again, his 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 143 
 
 dear breath about her. " You do love me I know you 
 love me. It isn't that. I have not given you time enough ; 
 we must wait. Don't think you fail in love for me, but 
 you are a good woman, and so innocent, and it is hard; 
 but oh ! Joan" and the rest was only breathed. 
 
 Always in her dreams and in her waking hours, until 
 the day she died, with it still murmuring to her dulling 
 ear, she heard the soft burr of the " r" as he whispered 
 " in every way" 
 
 Then came the voyage. For the trick Fate played 
 Joan was to send her an invitation from the newspaper 
 with which she had been corresponding, to come to Eng- 
 land for the arrangement of her permanent appointment 
 as South African correspondent, and this at the very 
 time that Louis must leave for England. Then, if Louis 
 had even had an eleventh hour repentance, if he had fal- 
 tered in his purpose, or realised the nature of the woman 
 whose life he was taking into his keeping, there came to 
 him Karl's last instructions, and, according to his own 
 superstitious reading, took the matter out of his hands. 
 
 " This ought to reach you the day before you start," 
 Karl wrote. " Good-bye, old chap, and God bk ;s you ! 
 I know you'll do the best for us, but Heaven knows if 
 you'll be in time. I am losing touch with tht fellows 
 here; there is the lot that want to fight, whatever the 
 cost, and these there is no holding. They are importing 
 arms, and talking wildly, so that the old man can get to 
 hear everything that is going on. And Rhodes is sick. 
 I am overwhelmed with anxiety. All our interests are 
 involved, and all our interests seem threatened. Have 
 you seen Joan de Groot? Don't lose sight of her. i 
 haven't managed to get hold of Piet. But it's no conse- 
 quence; he's on his last legs. Well make her fortune 
 for her whether she likes it or not, if only these beggars 
 will make up their minds what they want to do, and let 
 me get to work. And we'll see what she says when she 
 finds herself a rich woman. England ought to know 
 what we have got to put up with just now. If it's a ques- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 tion of fighting, and it's bound to come to that, we must 
 be supported from headquarters. Get home as quick as 
 you can, there's a good chap, and wake them up at the 
 Colonial Office. A blasted Boer policeman shot a man at 
 Pretoria yesterday for protecting one of his boys from 
 being sjamboked to death. We'll make a test case of it. 
 But look out for squalls." 
 
 Karl's instructions were definite, " Don't lose sight of 
 Joan de Groot," he had written, and Louis told himself 
 that he had never disregarded definite instructions from 
 Karl. He took his passage on the Arizona, and he wrote 
 Joan a line. 
 
 " I won't see you again until you have made up your 
 mind, at least, as to whether you are going to England. 
 I won't say a word about how I feel. It is sixteen hours 
 since I have seen you, but I answered your question quite 
 truly. You do care for me. How much or how little, I 
 sometimes know, but I sometimes doubt. Words say 
 very little to me, and as yet you have only given me 
 words. Will you * lay your sweet hands in mine and trust 
 me'? If I go alone, our lives are parted for ever; it is 
 not in my nature to go on caring for a woman who can't 
 love me as I want her to. And at the end of your life 
 you'll know you have missed everything that makes life 
 worth living. If you let me take your passage too, on 
 the Arizona, I shall bind you to nothing, everything shall 
 be as you wish ; you know I only want you to be happy, 
 and I want to see you every day. But I shall never ask 
 more than you want to give me, or sooner than you want 
 to give it me, so only that I know your love meets mine. 
 
 " Answer this by bearer. Am I to take your passage, 
 yes or no. If you say ' yes/ I am for ever, more than ever, 
 and in every way Your Louis." 
 
 There came no answer, and Louis, hurrying on his 
 preparations, in a fever of watching and anxiety, saw the 
 hours slip reluctantly past. He would not go to her. His 
 vanity, or his knowledge of women, told him not to ; and 
 he left her to fight her fight alone, now that he thought he 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 had made her victory impossible. He was not sure, not 
 absolutely sure. Of every other woman he had been 
 sure. To such a man as Louis Althaus nothing had been 
 easier than the wooing and winning of light women. 
 
 But Joan was not light. He realised she would give 
 herself to him, if, indeed, that giving became inevitable, 
 because her mind was conquered no less than her eyes, 
 because she saw that in a woman's life there could be but 
 one man, and Louis Althaus was surely the one man that 
 could be her lord and lover. If she saw this, he knew she 
 would not stay for convention, for the atmosphere of 
 Cape Town was not conducive to conventional thinking. 
 
 Still the answer to his letter tarried, and Louis suf- 
 fered his suspense as small natures suffer great things. 
 Sometimes he saw her all fire and ice, full of sweet sur- 
 prises, with the most delicate appeal, with the most elusive 
 charm of reluctance. Sometimes he saw her as a mere 
 journalist, with ink in her veins, a phrase-maker only, 
 and he considered how he could punish her because she 
 had made him feel. At these times he would remember 
 Piet's farm, and would frame letters to Karl, ascribing 
 to her the faults she had not committed, suggesting there 
 should be let loose against her all the agents whose un- 
 scrupulousness would make their success certain. Then 
 again he remembered that he loved her ; his vanity no less 
 than his desire was all expectant and sensitive. He was 
 cold and shocked in his desire and his vanity when he 
 thought it possible he might set sail without her. 
 
 And Joan? Joan knew, from the moment she got his 
 letter, that she must go must, must, must. His hold 
 on her was complete. For three weeks there had been 
 nothing but Louis in the world. She could not live in a 
 grey world of shadows, looking out at phantoms through 
 dreary eyes, holding a nerveless pen in a cold unguiding 
 hand. The world was Louis Althaus ; this was the book 
 she would write and the life she would lead, for he epito- 
 mised for her the people to whom he only half belonged, 
 and it seemed to her now, looking back on the episode 
 
 10 
 
146 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 with Karl, that his people were her people. Her emo- 
 tionalism, which had hitherto found expression only on 
 paper, her imagination, which had roamed loosely in 
 vague phrases, her defective education, which had given 
 her the poets, and hidden from her the philosophers, all 
 helped to her undoing. She made an honest effort in 
 those two days whilst Louis waited, she endeavoured to 
 interest herself still in her brother, his visitors, politics, the 
 party, but these were all shadows. She tried to write, sat 
 for hours with a pen that made no move over the paper, 
 dipped it again and again in the ink that dried on its 
 point unused, whilst the brain held no guidance for it. 
 She could think of nothing but Louis, and of him, in truth, 
 it cannot be said that she even thought. She felt him 
 and his demands, him, and what he had taught her, his 
 words and looks, in every weakened fibre that he had left 
 unstrung. 
 
 And strangely, unfortunately, sentences she could not 
 compose, could never have composed, haunted her, and 
 influenced her. 
 
 " I will speak thy speech, love, think thy thought, 
 Meet, if thou requirest it, all demands, 
 Laying strength and spirit in thy hands." 
 
 To this little woman, so infinitely ignorant, so gifted, 
 and so untrained, came the poets, tempting her with voices 
 that followed her singing into dreamland. Why should 
 she doubt? 
 
 " Where the apple reddens, never pry 
 Lest we lose our Edens, you and I." 
 
 Why should she hold back? 
 
 " Take in season, 
 Thought with reason, 
 Think what gifts are ours for giving." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 147 
 
 Why should she alone not know the 
 
 " Beauty and music of an altered world" ? 
 
 Why should she remain ignorant of the bliss he prom- 
 ised? 
 
 " Ah ! shouldst thou live but once love's sweets to prove, 
 Thou wilt not love to live unless thou live to love." 
 
 Was it not true that 
 
 " She that shuts love out, in turn shall be 
 Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie 
 Howling in outer darkness"? 
 
 " In outer darkness." Could there be a more apt de- 
 scription ? What had there been in her life before she met 
 the Althouses? A few dreams, and a book she had 
 already half-forgotten, a brother, to whom at first she 
 had been a burden, a brother, whose life was full with- 
 out her, a few acquaintances, a possible fame, nothing, 
 emptiness, shadows. Her mind had no fight in it ; reason 
 as well as instinct was on Louis's side. She loved him, 
 and he wanted her. Her heart had no fight in it. It was 
 in truth an empty heart, with little memory of mother in 
 it, or of loving sisters, no nestling child's head, nothing. 
 There were only her woman's instinct and her woman's 
 modesty to save her ; and Louis had had such wonderful 
 self-restraint, he had shocked neither. Now he stayed 
 away. 
 
 No woman feels pity for another woman who has such 
 a decision to make, and makes it wrongly. But Christ 
 had pity for the Magdalen, and His " neither do I con- 
 demn thee" seemed but as another poet's singing voice, 
 mocking her gently for holding back. 
 
 Once the decision was taken, however, once the voyage 
 had begun, she put doubt and unhappiness out of her 
 mind, and gave herself, as such women as this do give 
 
148 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 themselves, with no restraint, no conscious thought, save 
 how to meet his every wish. 
 
 She had never answered Louis's letter; she could not 
 frame the words with which to answer it. She came on 
 board at the last possible moment. Louis's doubts made 
 his certainty tumultuous. Yet he must have credit for his 
 virtues; his tact, his self-possession, were perfect when 
 he saw her. His greeting was that of a friend only, his 
 lips had surface words, but his eyes spoke and thanked 
 her, and his magnetic hands, as they grasped hers, 
 brought the easy flush into her cheek ; but all he said was 
 to inquire about her luggage. 
 
 John Fiennes came to see her off, and many friends ; 
 not Van Biene, unfortunately. Van Biene might, even at 
 the eleventh hour, have uttered some word that would 
 have drowned the echoes to which she had been listening, 
 but Van Biene was in Kimberley, and there was no warn- 
 ing word. John Fiennes was glad Joan would have com- 
 pany. Quite lightly he commended her to Louis's care, 
 no less than to the captain's. Quite gravely Louis prom- 
 ised his services. 
 
 It was a dream voyage, with nothing in it but love and 
 the immortals. All the surface emotionalism of Louis, 
 exquisitely presented in wonderful poets' voices, seemed 
 to broaden and grow deep. She read to him, and it seemed 
 to her that she read of him. She threw into this simu- 
 lacrum of a man, this hollow hero, all the passion that 
 Browning voiced, and all the sentiment that Tennyson 
 sang. There was always the personal undercurrent, the 
 application of lines, there were always eyes and hands 
 meeting before wonderful sunsets, or on moonlit evenings, 
 amid stormy seas or in the sunny calm of foam-flecked 
 waves. 
 
 Joan passed into that empty vessel by her side all the 
 romance that had made her novel a success, all the senti- 
 ment that was as fresh as if she had been seventeen in- 
 stead of eight-and-twenty, all the emotions that had hith- 
 erto had no outlet but her pen. And the empty vessel, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 149 
 
 transparent as glass, beautiful of shape, and delicate and* 
 rare of make, took all she threw into it and reflected ex- 
 quisite colour. Louis had made love to many women, 
 and many women had made love to him, but never one of 
 so large a heart, so wide an intelligence, so strong a per- 
 sonality. If he had known her superiority she might have 
 bored, oppressed him; if she had known it, she might 
 have given him all this, but fed his vanity, his self-love, 
 his sensuousness, with something of contemptuousness, 
 with something of condescension. But she knew noth- 
 ing except that he made infinite things seem clear to her, 
 brought her close to God and to the poets, illuminated 
 dark passages, and made them full of glowing meaning. 
 Such women deny nothing to the man they love. Such 
 men as Louis Althaus intently demand everything. 
 
 The quick voyage came to an end, but between those 
 two that had occurred which made the voyage's end seem 
 but as a step forward on the journey they would make 
 together, a journey that was to lead through Elysium 
 right up to the gates of heaven. That is what Joan felt, 
 and, when Louis was with her, taking prismatic colours 
 from her brave spirit and surrender, that is what Louis 
 said he too was confident about. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 THE dream voyage had come to an end; and life had 
 begun ; life that was to lead along flower-gemmed paths, 
 bedecked with shining dew, through green avenues of 
 trees with sunlit tops, and sweet winds swaying in the 
 branches. The path along which they should wander 
 hand in hand right up to the golden gates of heaven 
 stretched itself brightly before them. 
 ) And they walked on it a little way. 
 
 For a wonderful six weeks Joan and Louis roamed the 
 Continent, spending Christmas in Dresden and New Year 
 in Paris; in February they were at Nice, and they only 
 reached London, where they ought to have been in De- 
 cember, when St. Valentine's day had come and gone. 
 To Karl and to people who expected him Louis had 
 written of illness ; intrigue had a charm for him, even if 
 it were only for intrigue's sake. But now the necessities 
 of the case quickened his invention, and the fever of 
 which he had written became quite realistic in his letters. 
 
 Louis took a cottage about half-an-hour's journey from 
 London, near Bushey. A desolate little cottage it looked 
 in February, but in summer it would welcome creeper 
 and woodbine. It was squeezed into the corner of a vil- 
 lage, within sight of a common, within sound of the 
 church bells. And there again " love sang to them, played 
 with them, folded them close from the day and the night." 
 As he had promised her, he proved the most exacting of 
 lovers for more than a week. She must not write, she 
 must not even read save aloud to him. He quoted back 
 to her that she must think his thoughts, and in lightness 
 she mocked his " r's" and " spoke his speech." En- 
 wrapped, enfolded, enveloped, she was ready to lie warm 
 150 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 151 
 
 and quiescent in the very core of his heart, giving herself 
 to him in a surrender that made her glad of every little 
 charm he discovered. 
 
 But soon, very soon, he ceased to tell her of this little 
 charm or that, for the man was mean in the very soul of 
 him, and thought " I must not let her know how beautiful 
 she is." And she missed the telling, for she was a novice 
 in the game he knew so well, and wistfully she would 
 ask, " Do I satisfy you ; am I all I ought to be ? I am 
 so ignorant. Help me, Louis, darling; teach me, make 
 me what you want me to be." For answer he took all 
 the sweets of her nature, keeping her always a little hun- 
 gry for his caresses, calculating with her, as he found her 
 generous arms heaped up with fruits for his more easily 
 assuaged appetite. 
 
 But even this could not help him. She was so lavish in 
 the giving, such an amateur in love, that the word satiety 
 was thundering in his ear before he had time to recognise 
 its whisper in the distance. Before three weeks had 
 passed he had grown restless in the cottage, in the village, 
 critical of the accommodation, of the commonplace par- 
 lour, of the daily menu, of the very air. In truth, his time 
 for poetry was over; London lured him, and Poole's 
 called to him, Bond Street was in his blood ; his patent 
 leather-shod feet wanted the pavement, his sleek hand- 
 some head was made for a high hat. And he had a hun- 
 dred glib excuses. There was business ; Messrs. Old- 
 berger and Althaus claimed him, and he had his mission 
 for Karl to fulfil. She knew something of that mission 
 she had, in fact, inspired it and she was eager to help ; 
 but brain and pen were captive. 
 
 He held her by indissoluble bonds through the magic 
 of the flesh, the chain that eats into a woman's heart and 
 holds a man's conscience lightly in its weakest link. The 
 chain was gold as yet, brilliant and uncorroded, set with 
 rare jewels; it hung about her grandly, and the glamour 
 of it was in her eyes. She never questioned when he 
 found the cottage unhealthy, and the common, which held 
 
152 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 a thousand charms for her, cheerless and damp. She was 
 not unhappy in solitude ; she was as one intoxicated with 
 mandragora. 
 
 But the opium dream in its highest, its first supreme 
 perfection, lasted so short a time. 
 
 Louis had indeed business in town, business apart from 
 Poole's and Scott's and Tremlett's, and the other sartorial 
 artists whom he regarded as of paramount importance. 
 He had Karl's instructions to fulfil, and he called on 
 Stephen Hay ward ; but Stephen was still in Scotland, and 
 there was nothing to be done but to await his return, noth- 
 ing political, that is to say. To Louis, at least, that matter 
 did not seem urgent. What appeared really urgent, how- 
 ever, were the affairs of the " Geldenrief," for Joan no 
 longer quite eclipsed her farm in his view, and both now 
 assumed clearly their relative degrees of importance. 
 
 It is necessary, in order not to misunderstand Louis's 
 intelligent survey of the position, to give a rough outline 
 of the way in which the " Geldenrief," like many similar 
 enterprises, was launched on its Stock Exchange career. 
 
 Karl Althaus, during one of his earliest expeditions to 
 Johannesburg, had acquired the option of a piece of land 
 belonging to Piet de Groot, and had had it thoroughly 
 prospected. There seemed little doubt that it was gold- 
 bearing, and Karl exercised his option, and became the 
 owner of what was substantially the " Geldenrief." But 
 money was required to develop it, and money is a thing 
 that millionaires make a rule of never finding themselves 
 for experimental purposes. He sent title, particulars, de- 
 tails, to his firm in London. The price of the mine was 
 nominally fixed at five hundred thousand pounds, and a 
 syndicate was formed to work it. This syndicate became 
 the possessor of two hundred and fifty thousand pound 
 shares which were pooled, and an undertaking was given 
 that they should not be placed upon the market for a given 
 period. The other two hundred and fifty thousand pound 
 shares were in the hands of Messrs. Oldberger and Alt- 
 haus, who doled them out through the medium of brokers 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 153 
 
 at prices varying from ten shillings upwards. Messrs. 
 Oldberger and Althaus had launched the Ge Suit mine 
 in a similar manner ; it had paid big dividends, returned 
 bonuses to the shareholders, and the shares stood at thir- 
 teen. They had also exploited the Kopjefontein with ten- 
 pound shares which were now about twenty-five. Dozens 
 of other more or less successful enterprises testified to 
 their acumen and their judgment. There was conse- 
 quently no difficulty in placing the " Geldenrief ." Options 
 in large lines were given to jobbers at various prices. 
 Dealings commenced in the shares at ten to fifteen shil- 
 lings premium and rapidly rose to two and a quarter. 
 Then bears were trapped and allowed to depress prices. 
 Messrs. Oldberger and Althaus put in their own clients 
 as buyers, and, in the usual way, a market was made and 
 the shares freely dealt in. 
 
 Karl had left that part of the business to the London 
 branch, but, as soon as he was informed that affairs were 
 in train, he had started work at the mine. He ordered 
 machinery, he engaged a manager, he sank a shaft. Alto- 
 gether he spent something like one hundred and fifty 
 thousand pounds. But, as he told Louis, the mine proved 
 a disappointment, the vein was thin, the gold not in pay- 
 able quantities, and, before the syndicate's time-limit had 
 been reached, cable communications from the manager, 
 who was an honest Scotchman, made the shares practi- 
 cally unsaleable. The shares from two and an eighth fell 
 to par in one day, and before two settlements had passed 
 they were at a discount; and then, no amount of para- 
 graphs, contradicting reports, or " tips" from jobbers 
 whose books were uneven, succeeded in galvanising them 
 into life. There was some ill-feeling manifested over the 
 matter. The syndicate thought it had been badly treated, 
 the report prematurely published, their interests not con- 
 sidered. There was no doubt that, one way or another, 
 the loss which the firm had sustained was not to be com- 
 pared with the loss that had been inflicted on the syndi- 
 cate. 
 
154 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 But all this was many years ago. " Geldenriefs" had 
 dropped out of the official list; they were quoted occa- 
 sionally at 2s. or at 45., or some such nominal price. 
 Messrs. Oldberger and Althaus had found ways of com- 
 pensating their friends and clients, and the syndicate, all 
 five of them rich men, had practically forgotten to bewail 
 their loss. 
 
 On his way up to London from Bushey, Louis realised 
 that his instructions from Karl were not at all clear. The 
 Geldenrief, instead of a failure, was going to turn out a 
 big success. The machinery was there and the shaft 
 sunk. That the reef had been struck, that the deep of 
 it, the rich quartz, lay under the De Groot farm, he under- 
 stood ; but, beyond explaining how matters stood, beyond 
 telling him not to lose sight of Joan de Groot, Karl had 
 given him no definite instructions. Louis loved money 
 at least as much as Karl did. He envied Karl his extra 
 millions ; his own was a princely income, yet Karl's gen- 
 erous arrangements for his benefit always seemed to him 
 to fall short of his deserts and his needs. Karl had so 
 much, why should Karl have the " Geldenrief" ? After 
 all, the farm was his, or, at least, it was Joan's, which 
 came to the same thing. He had not been a month in Eng- 
 land, not three weeks at Bushey, before Joan's farm had 
 eclipsed Joan in his thoughts, and the Geldenrief had 
 become more vital, more prominent with him, than she. 
 
 So it became necessary for him to go to London. And 
 happily, at first, she listened to the sparrows twittering 
 their high pathetic notes in the budding trees around the 
 Bushey cottage, and spent glad days in dreaming of her 
 lover. 
 
 After his formal call on Stephen Hay ward, Louis had 
 gone direct to Throgmorton Street. They hardly expected 
 him; Louis was Karl's nominee, they understood that at 
 the office. He had been three weeks in England, but this 
 was the first time they had seen him. He was not more 
 popular in Throgmorton Street than he had been with 
 Van Biene. The clerks, authorised and otherwise, looked 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 155 
 
 up to him, copied his coats and waistcoats, and noticed his 
 boots and trousers; but Israel Oldberger and Israel's 
 brother Sam were unimpressed. 
 
 " I thought we should have seen you before," said Sam, 
 after the usual greetings had passed. 
 
 " There's nothing to do in town before April," was the 
 casual answer. 
 
 Yet Louis showed an inquisitiveness and curiosity about 
 the business of the firm that irritated old Israel. Louis 
 questioned, doubted, cross-examined, talked about every- 
 thing except the " Geldenrief." When he had wasted an 
 hour and a half of the busiest time in Throgmorton 
 Street, he asked Sam to go out to lunch with him. Israel 
 signalled Sam to go; he had had about as much of Louis 
 as he could stomach, and why shouldn't Sam have a cham- 
 pagne lunch at Louis Althaus's expense? Israel was 
 glad to get rid of them both, for he was not a talker him- 
 self, and Louis's voice had so rasped his nerves that he 
 couldn't even endure his brother. And Sam was safe 
 enough. Louis had asked a great many questions, but 
 Israel Oldberger was pretty sure he had got very little 
 information. 
 
 Sam Oldberger, very bald, rather stout, full-visaged, 
 hook-nosed, and red, led his smart partner through the 
 shivering crowd of brokers and bare-headed jobbers, with 
 books and pencils, hurrying along the dull, narrow street. 
 They talked in pairs, in groups, young clerks rushed 
 about; there was no spring in the Throgmorton Street 
 air, it was dull and close, it smelt of finance. Louis looked 
 about him, and smiled now and again at an acquaintance, 
 caressed his moustache, and was possibly a little surprised, 
 in the " Thieves' Kitchen," to find himself of so little 
 moment. But every one was intent apparently on lunch, 
 certainly on his own personal affairs. Louis and Sam, at 
 a table by themselves, were able to converse about Cape 
 Town matters quite uninterruptedly. They did so for a 
 little time, until Sam Was well through his share of the 
 wine Louis had ordered, and the oysters had been sue- 
 
156 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ceeded by the steak. Then, casually, Louis, who had been 
 playing up for it for two hours, asked : 
 
 " Do you remember the ' Geldenrief mine that we 
 worked ? We syndicated half the shares. Do you by any 
 chance remember who they were? I was talking it over 
 with Karl the other day; we had quite a little dispute 
 about it." 
 
 " Remember ? Of course I do ; good cause to. They 
 made fuss enough about it, Heaven knows; as if one 
 is bound to win every time. Fancy your brother forget- 
 ting!" 
 
 " I did not say Karl forgot ; I say we disputed about 
 them," interposed Louis hastily. " Just run through the 
 names, will you, and I'll check them." 
 
 Louis took out his notebook, a very elegant thing of 
 gun-metal, with " Louis" inscribed in diamonds, and en- 
 veloped in a diamond device like an india-rubber band 
 twice twisted. 
 
 Sam told off the names, and Louis wrote them down. 
 
 " Phillips and Jorrocks, Althaus Abrahams, Aronson 
 and Ascher, Lisson Barker, Charlie Bloby." 
 
 " Quite right." The pocket-book closed with a spring, 
 the pencil with its diamond top replaced. " Pretty pocket- 
 book, isn't it? Mrs. Rex gave it me Prossie Rex, as 
 we used to call her." Louis laughed as he recalled the 
 title he had bestowed on the unfortunate woman who had 
 had a preference for him, whom one of her protectors had 
 married when he had attained fortune, and whom she had 
 decorated as his generosity had not deserved. " She is 
 quite in Society now, isn't she? I saw her described in 
 M.A.P. as ' one of our South African hostesses/ " 
 
 Louis laughed, and Sam thought well, Sam had drunk 
 nearly a bottle of champagne, for Louis was always ab- 
 stemious so he did not formulate his thoughts; but he 
 was vaguely sorry for Mrs. Rex, whose history, however, 
 was not unfamiliar to him. 
 
 " Were we landed with any of the shares ourselves ? 
 Did we keep any?" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 157 
 
 " Well, I can't say we were landed with them, but your 
 brother wrote over we were to do what we could to save 
 the situation. He did not look upon the report as quite 
 convincing you see, it was before the true value of the 
 Witwatersrand was understood ; that put everything else 
 in the background and he said he was ready to take back 
 a few shares. I bought twenty thousand myself; they 
 averaged me seven-and-six." 
 
 " Quoted at two-and-ten last time I saw them men- 
 tioned in the list," said Louis. 
 
 " A jobber offered me a line the other day at three- 
 and-nine." 
 
 " But you did not see it?" 
 
 " No ; once bitten twice shy." And Sam smiled at his 
 own shrewdness. 
 
 "Who was the jobber?" 
 
 " Oh, big people in their way Boyle and Marris." 
 
 Louis said casually, " Karl's rather sick about the whole 
 thing. There is not a red cent in the mine. He thinks 
 it will go against him in this new bank business." 
 
 Messrs. Oldberger and Althaus had in contemplation 
 to open a bank in Johannesburg, the scheme was in 
 the paper stage five millions capital ; it was only await- 
 ing the signal from Karl. 
 
 " I don't see why it should ; it was straightforward 
 business." 
 
 " He talked of taking anything there was left off the 
 market. He's a bit of a Don Quixote, you know." 
 
 "Well," said Sam, "he's welcome to mine if he'll 
 give me what I gave for them." 
 
 " Very philanthropic of you. You'll sell him an article 
 worth one-and-ninepence perhaps, for seven-and-six cer- 
 tain?" 
 
 Sam had been on the Exchange for many years. His 
 sly little eyes grew bright. 
 
 " If you mean business, if you're dealing, make me 
 a proposal." 
 
 " No ; I come to you." 
 
158 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I'll sell my lot at six-and-three." 
 
 " Well, come. I'll admit to you that Karl funks the 
 talk there will be about the Geldenrief when the bank is 
 started. And" reflectively " I think he's got an idea 
 of standing for Parliament. Anyway, he's given me a 
 kind of roving commission that if I can buy the mine 
 back for him at something like a hundred or a hundred 
 and fifty thousand, he'll put the loss in his own pocket." 
 
 Of course, the mischief of it was that it was just the 
 kind of thing one might expect of Karl Althaus. And 
 Sam Oldberger had lunched, and six thousand pounds 
 were worth having; so, in the end, the deal was done. 
 
 It would be tedious to follow Louis through the next 
 few days. They were spent in and out of offices, in 
 manoeuvring, in freely using Karl's name. The trans- 
 action between Sam Oldberger and Louis Althaus was 
 hardly complete before the jobber who had offered a 
 line of ten thousand at three-and-ninepence was ap- 
 proached, and, after very clever handling, was induced 
 to part with his parcel at four-and-six. Louis had to 
 instruct a broker, and naturally the broker was not to let 
 it be known for whom he was dealing. Simultaneously 
 the syndicate was interviewed, and the syndicate very 
 readily cleared out the rubbish at prices averaging eight 
 shillings a share; that is to say, four of the syndicate 
 yielded to the representation that Karl Althaus wished 
 to reimburse them their expense, to save them the com- 
 plete loss ; while the fifth, Althaus Abrahams, winked at 
 Louis, and told him he'd take fifty thousand pounds for 
 his shares, not a penny less. He wasn't going to salve 
 Karl Althaus's conscience at a shilling under that price. 
 But then, before Louis had got to Althaus Abrahams, the 
 market, cautiously as it had been worked, had realised 
 that there was a spurt in Geldenriefs, and the shares, 
 from being unsaleable at three-and-ninepence, were fifteen 
 shillings, strong buyers. 
 
 Louis was in able hands. Messrs. Oldberger and Alt- 
 haus turned sellers of Geldenriefs. One whole afternoon 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 159 
 
 a jobber, who was their recognised nominee, announced 
 this to all whom it might concern. He undertook the 
 operation of " banging" the market. But Louis and his 
 supporters were not the only long heads on the London 
 Stock Exchange. His tactics answered less well than 
 they deserved. He sold about five thousand shares at 
 prices varying from ten to fifteen shillings, but, buying 
 back twenty thousand, on balance, proved an expensive 
 game. He settled with Althaus Abrahams at his own 
 price, but he failed to secure more than one hundred and 
 twelve thousand of the floating shares. The last line was 
 bought at over a pound. Altogether he had to part with 
 close on two hundred thousand pounds, a mere flea-bite 
 to a Karl Althaus, but a serious sum to the millionaire's 
 dependent, representing practically his liquid capital. 
 They were four eventful, exciting days that Louis had 
 passed, and he returned to Bushey exhausted with his 
 labours. 
 
 " It's a beastly journey down here," he grumbled to 
 Joan, who was awaiting him with glowing eyes and tender 
 expectation. She knew he was engaged in business ; she 
 could not know or guess the nature of it. " Arms and 
 ammunition" filled the small spaces in her mind that 
 passion left free. 
 
 " But worth it when you get here, dearest ?" she an- 
 swered, helping him off with his coat, relieving him of his 
 stick, hanging about him with a thousand little womanly 
 offices and endearments. He said nothing to the con- 
 trary, but he was unusually silent that evening, and dis- 
 tracted. 
 
 Louis was such an infinitely smaller man than Karl. 
 It seemed to him now that he had put all his eggs into 
 one basket, and he could not tear his thoughts from the 
 prospects of the Geldenrief. Three weeks on board ship, 
 six of continental travel, three in this " cursed hole," he 
 and Joan had been together. And now it was April. 
 How the time flew ! Meanwhile, what of Piet de Groot ? 
 What guarantee had he that Karl was right about the 
 
160 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 mine? And the farm what if Piet de Groot got well? 
 What if the deep level of the Geldenrief could not be 
 bought ? 
 
 " You have had a busy time in the city, dear, an anxious 
 time?" 
 
 The little dining-room looked cosy to Joan. Outside, 
 the branches that tapped on the window were laden with 
 buds. Inside the table was spread, the white cloth held 
 a bowl of primroses, in addition to the primitive collection 
 of plated spoons and dull metal knives. Joan saw the 
 primroses only, Louis the table equipments. No, Joan 
 saw yet more ; the primroses were in a basin of hawthorn 
 blue, a lucky imitation, the pure white paste of which, 
 with the rich blue, satisfied some inward sense. And the 
 sun set luxuriously that day in April ; a red glow from its 
 sinking struck the casement window, and lit all things 
 in the exquisite, strange twilight, the slow English twi- 
 light that she loved. 
 
 " But you forget all cares and worries when you come 
 here." She was standing at the window watching the 
 sunset, and talking to him ; she could not see his lowering 
 face. His temper was new to her, strange as the man 
 himself; his true ego had been hidden from her by his 
 beautiful shell. 
 
 " I always dreamt of a home like this, Louis," she said. 
 
 " Then I'm afraid you'll have to leave off dreaming," 
 he said irritably. " The place is infernally inconvenient 
 for me. And what time do we dine? You said seven, 
 &nd I hurried to get home. It's fifteen minutes past now, 
 and not a sign of anything to eat but a decayed cruet- 
 stand." 
 
 " I'm sorry." She turned quickly then. " I thought 
 you would hate to dine until the light had faded. Dinner 
 came up, but I sent it down. I told them not to come 
 until all the red had gone out of the sky." She could not 
 keep her own eyes from the window. " Louis, come over 
 here; I am sure this will rest you more than a vulgar 
 steak." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 161 
 
 " Good heavens ! you haven't ordered steak again ? 
 That's three times this week; and Sam Oldberger could 
 think of nothing else for lunch yesterday." 
 
 Still, he moved over to her side, though he could not 
 share her humour. Unfortunaely, he could no longer 
 pretend to. Yet she was important to him, vital, in fact. 
 
 She took his hand, mechanically he put his arm around 
 her waist, and they stood together, silent for a moment. 
 It was Joan who broke the silence; she shivered, her 
 hand in his grew cold. 
 
 " A web is woven across the sky ; 
 From out waste places comes a cry, 
 And murmurs from the dying sun." 
 
 " Louis, all of a sudden this reminds me of ' In Memo- 
 riam/ Come away ; ring for dinner. I don't like it any 
 more. As you say, I am a ' woman of moods ;' I'm tired 
 of the sunset." 
 
 The dinner was bad, hopelessly, inexplicably bad. And 
 the woman of moods, rapidly infected by her companion's 
 silence, was cold. 
 
 " I don't know why," she said, " but I feel as if I had 
 been a light, and had been blown out ; it's a most curious 
 feeling." 
 
 " Well, that's the difference between us. I feel as if 
 I wanted a good ' blow out/ something to eat. Really, 
 Joan, can't you manage to feed a man when he comes 
 home?" 
 
 She laughed ; her dull mood was after all a superficial 
 one. " I don't think housekeeping is my strong point. I 
 never can think of anything to tell her to get except what 
 we had yesterday, and, as she always suggests steaks or 
 chops, there is not much variety from what we had yes- 
 terday. You don't really care, do you ?" she added coax- 
 ingly, then got up from the table and went round to him, 
 put her face against his cheek, and took the fork from 
 his hand. 
 
 ii 
 
162 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " What's the matter with the pudding, anyhow ?" She 
 turned it over on the plate. 
 
 " It's only burnt where it isn't raw, and it makes me 
 sick to look at it." He got up abruptly, displacing her 
 with some roughness. " This can't go on, Joan. The 
 place is beastly inconvenient, the cooking is filthy, and 
 I've a thousand things to do." 
 
 Fear at her heart gripped coldly. " Not go on ?" she 
 echoed questioningly, as she fell back from him. 
 
 " We took it for three months, didn't we ? Another 
 two months here would finish me, I reckon. The woman 
 can't cook, and you can't housekeep. I'll tell you what 
 we'll do don't look so scared." He drew her to him 
 again, his good-humour returning as he thought he saw 
 a way to secure his own comfort. " I'm not going to 
 desert you." 
 
 She sighed as she nestled in his arms and smiled at 
 him. Fear had shaken her momentarily as if it had been 
 some living thing; it had shaken her and was gone, but 
 she was weak from the strange experience. She did not 
 admit this to herself ; it was physical only, it had passed, 
 and now she nestled in her Louis's arms and smiled. 
 
 " No ; but seriously, dear, I am needed in London, at 
 the office. You know, when Karl is at the Cape there is 
 no one here but me no head, you understand." If Israel 
 or Sam Oldberger could only have heard him ! " We are 
 full of new business, large business too, and I ought to 
 be on the spot. Then, there is the row over there that 
 you know I am working for here; which reminds me I 
 must run down to Birmingham and see about those guns. 
 Hayward is away, but there is a fellow at the Colonial 
 Office that I think I can get at. Karl is making an ass 
 of himself with the Opposition. It is all very well for 
 Karl to say that, as far as imperial matters are concerned, 
 the Government is only a figure-head, and the Hay wards 
 have all the power, but when your figure-head is Colonial 
 Secretary, you can't ignore the power he's got." 
 
 " You think you ought to be in London ?" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 163 
 
 " I know I ought. It isn't only the day-time I can use ; 
 there is more work done in London in the evenings, over 
 a little dinner at the Carlton, or a grill at the Club after a 
 play, than in many a city office. It's that I'm missing; 
 it's all that that you've put out of my head." He stooped 
 and kissed her lightly. 
 
 " I must not be in the way, I must not stop your 
 career." 
 
 " No; I'm dependent on Karl, as you know." 
 
 She knew, because he had told her. She knew in- 
 stinctively how generous Karl would be. And she had 
 wronged that big-hearted protector of Louis's. Always 
 the idea was dimly with her that she had wronged him in 
 some subtle way, in so nearly caring for him, in not im- 
 mortalising him and his people as she had meant to do, 
 in taking Louis, in absorbing his love. Always she had 
 this vague remorse about Karl, and would nestle closer 
 in Louis's arms to forget it. 
 
 " You must act in Karl's interests, you must do as he 
 would have you do." 
 
 " H'm ! yes," said Louis, with a mental reserve. " I 
 ought to be on the spot. I'll tell you what I think of 
 doing. You know Karl's old rooms in Piccadilly are still 
 furnished and ready. As a matter of fact, he expects me 
 to occupy them until the house is finished. And he has 
 an excellent man there. I think I shall go up for a bit." 
 
 " Oh, Louis !" 
 
 " Well ! what is the ' Oh, Louis' about?" 
 
 " I could not I could not live in Karl's rooms." 
 
 Louis, who had never for a moment intended she 
 should, caressed his moustache and thought things over. 
 Joan was a fascinating little woman, sweet as a child, 
 soft and small, and, of course, she had the farm ; he did 
 not want to part with her. In many ways she suited him 
 better than any woman he had ever met; but she was a 
 wretched housekeeper. " In Memoriam" is all very well, 
 but a man wants his dinner. She could never make a 
 home for him, not the sort of home he had in his mind, 
 
164 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 sensuously luxurious and well ordered. He drew her 
 closer to him and pondered. 
 
 " I don't know what there was between you and Karl, 
 between you and old Karl. I've never quite fathomed 
 that. But, of course, if you feel you can't come with me 
 to Piccadilly, and mind I don't think you are wrong I 
 understand your feelings." 
 
 " I knew you would," she murmured. 
 
 " Well, the fact remains, I've practically no choice. 
 Karl expects me to be in London this season, and he 
 expects me to occupy his old rooms. I've no excuse for 
 not doing so." 
 
 Another pause fell between them ; she played with his 
 watch-chain. 
 
 "No, dear!" 
 
 " No, I've no choice. But I don't see why you shouldn't 
 stay on here for a bit, until the end of our tenancy for 
 instance; and, meanwhile, I can be looking about 
 me, finding the right crib for us both. Karl will be 
 coming over himself in the autumn, and by that time 
 we must have settled some plan. Yes! I think that's 
 best." 
 
 He was caressing her now. How sweet, how intoxi- 
 catingly sweet, were Louis's caresses, so gentle, so full 
 of expectancy. Passionately she seized his hand and 
 kissed it, kissed the soft palm. And he laughed at her 
 and patted her, and realised every impulse of the innocent 
 sensuousness that he awakened in her. 
 
 " There is no reason you should not come up to me 
 every day. You could lunch with me, you know. It 
 would be just the break from my work that I want. Not 
 at Karl's rooms; I'll arrange something. Tell me; you 
 will not be unhappy, if you stay here and come up and 
 see me every day?" 
 
 " I don't think I can ever be unhappy ! You love me," 
 she answered earnestly, with complete conviction. " The 
 last three months have made me feel there is no such wofd 
 in the dictionary of my life as ' unhappy/ I love you, you 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 165 
 
 love me, and you are you. How can there be unhappiness 
 for either of us ?" 
 
 She kissed him softly. 
 
 In the end it was decided so. Louis should take up his 
 abode in those luxurious rooms in Piccadilly. Joan should 
 remain in Bushey, visiting him daily, or almost daily, as 
 he could, or might, arrange. She was still completely 
 content. Her dream life and her real life were so inter- 
 mingled that she already saw those solitary hours filled 
 with him, no less than those meeting hours, ever full of 
 dear delights. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 
 
 SOON after that conversation Louis ceased to live at 
 Bushey, ceased even to go there, save on a dull Sunday, 
 the Easter Bank Holiday, or for a rare flying visit. 
 Instead, Joan went to him in London. Louis was a man 
 of small economies, and all his outer refinements left 
 intact that which lay in the nature of him. It was a 
 strange London that Jhe showed to Joan. She had to 
 meet him, at obscure restaurants, at unfrequented eating- 
 houses, at small hotels, where, in private rooms, stiff with 
 obtrusive velvet furniture, horrible with long pauses 
 between the courses, with the leering waiter knocking 
 ostentatiously before he entered, the glamour of love 
 began to fall before her blue eyes, and the reality of it 
 to lurk hideously in the background of her drugged 
 mind. 
 
 Yet always she loved him, though sometimes she 
 writhed under his exactions, and her bruised modesty and 
 wounded womanhood began to see that passion was ugly, 
 even if Louis were beautiful. But he was beautiful 
 like myrrh unto her. From every meeting she went away 
 full of his charms and sweetness, full of his lips and 
 himself, happy in her complete abnegation to him, in her 
 degradation. She learnt to cry in those days, when she 
 was telling herself how happy she was ; she cried silently, 
 long, often. But she was gay when she was with Louis, 
 because to be dull with him would mean that she was 
 not happy with him; not to be happy with him would 
 mean that she reproached him, and Louis could not bear 
 reproaches. In her eyes, at least, he must be perfect. He 
 gave her to understand this ; and she followed wherever 
 he led, still sleep-walking, still with dream-closed eyes, 
 166 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 167 
 
 her love, like the strength of Antaeus, ever growing as it 
 touched the earth. 
 
 It was not only underground London, however, that 
 Louis showed her, not only in obscure eating-houses 
 that they would meet. Some happy days, before Louis's 
 world had come to town, they sat on the painted wooden 
 chairs in St. James's Park and gazed at the shining water, 
 watched the delicate tracery of the young green spring 
 come to life on the brown branches, felt within their hearts 
 the budding and bursting of the blossoms, and turned to 
 each other sympathetic eyes. If there had been depth 
 enough in the man's nature to hold the woman, or gen- 
 erosity enough to recognise his limitations and let her do 
 the holding, their history might have been written differ- 
 ently ; for she touched all his shallows, and he never 
 loved another woman better, or as well. Almost any 
 man must have loved her, in her surrenders, in her sweet 
 submissions, for all that she was, no less than for all 
 that she gave. 
 
 After they had ceased to occupy the cottage at Bushey 
 together, Joan had suggested the resumption of her lit- 
 erary work. She suggested it perhaps half-heartedly, for 
 her brain was not working well yet; she was feeling 
 acutely, dreaming irresponsibly, thinking not at all. But 
 it seemed to her she had many vacant hours ; she ought 
 to present her letters of introduction, she ought to visit 
 her publisher. Louis would let her do none of these 
 things. It was a newspaper excuse that had led her on 
 board the Arizona; but, before they had touched at Ma- 
 deira, she had written, under Louis's dictation, a letter 
 declining the proffered post. Sometimes now she would 
 tell him wistfully that she would soon forget how to 
 write. Always he would reply, " A good thing, too. 
 You'll get. wrinkles round your eyes, ink on your fingers, 
 and what the deuce for ? There are any amount of books, 
 and who wants to read 'em? Wretched little hacks in 
 attics do the newspaper work, and women that nobody 
 wants write books. What is there to be got out of it? 
 
168 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 I know a man who did a sporting book. It took him two 
 years, and they gave him a hundred pounds. He told me 
 so himself. We gave him more than that in a fortnight 
 for writing a prospectus for us. Why on earth should 
 you write ?" These are the things he said to her, perhaps 
 not all at once, but a sentence or two each time she ap- 
 proached the subject. And she did not want to reason 
 with him. What woman wants to reason with a man who 
 has taught her passion in the first months of her learning ? 
 Not little Joan, the dreamer, with no pen in her hand, 
 and living for the first time. 
 
 About the letters of introduction Louis was equally 
 autocratic. It was necessary Louis should go into society ; 
 it was equally necessary apparently, perhaps even more 
 vital, that society should not hear of the existence of Joan. 
 It is possible he enjoyed their stealthy meetings, and rel- 
 ished Joan's reluctance, his power over her, and the de- 
 basing of her to his level. But the debasement never 
 touched her spirit. The sequel showed that, the inevitable 
 sequel. 
 
 While town was still half empty, when the business of 
 the Geldenrief was finally concluded, and all the transfers 
 were safely locked up at Louis's bankers, Joan was, next 
 No his clothes, again his most absorbing pursuit. He 
 found himself once more in love with her as soon as 
 they no longer dwelt under one roof. Now she repre- 
 sented the farm and rare moments ; but he was not a 
 man to love generously. He invented little causes for 
 quarrels and questionings, he perplexed her. To keep 
 himself amused, interested, occupied, these so-called 
 lovers' quarrels were necessary. He could not doubt, or 
 pretend to doubt, her love ; so he seized upon her habits 
 for pretexts. And the woman who can quote " In Me- 
 moriam" to a hungry stockbroker is not one with whom 
 it is impossible to quarrel. Joan, for instance, was habit- 
 ually unpunctual: time was one of those things of the 
 importance of which she had never been convinced. She 
 thought it was sweet of Louis to care if she was late for 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 169 
 
 this or that appointment, but it did not seem serious to 
 her, and when he talked about it, she listened with only 
 half her ears. The other half heard only the musical low 
 voice of the man she loved; what he said escaped her 
 often. 
 
 As time went on, however, this very confidence, this 
 sweet, unquestioning trust, commenced to irritate him. 
 But it was not until he was in London, and one roof no 
 longer covered them, that he determined to teach her, 
 as he expressed it, that she must not take liberties with 
 him, that his dignity must be preserved, and her lower 
 place recognised. One day press of traffic in Oxford 
 Street a fallen cab-horse, perhaps, too, a delayed start 
 made Joan twelve minutes late, and during those twelve 
 minutes Louis, in all the glory of immaculate morning 
 costume, had walked up and down the little passage that 
 led from Regent Street to Mill Street. There were 
 strange lines on his face when, at last, the little woman, 
 hurrying breathlessly, came in sight, full of smiles and 
 expectation. But she had touched rock this time, and he 
 would not listen. His dignity demanded that she should 
 be punished. 
 
 " I am awfully sorry, Louis ; the cab-horse fell down ; 
 the " 
 
 " I am very sorry, too," he said viciously, those mean 
 lines round his mouth which she had never before noticed, 
 altering him, so that even she could see his beauty 
 eclipsed. " I am sure you could not help it. But I had 
 an appointment, a most important appointment, that I 
 gave up to meet you, and I had only an hour to spare. It 
 is scarcely worth while to lunch together now. I'll go 
 round to the Club. I suppose you can get home all 
 right?" 
 
 " Yes ; I can get home all right," she answered me- 
 chanically, and turned to go. 
 
 Like most sensitive people, when Joan felt deeply she 
 became tongue-tied. The shock of his drawn mouth with 
 the lines in it, ignoble ones, spiteful, small, petty, was 
 
170 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 more than his words or actions. She knew inv e tinctively 
 he had no other appointment. 
 
 She was out of sight before he realised that he had 
 expected tears, protestations, humble apologies. He knew 
 women so well, but Joan had still surprises for him, and, 
 though he loved her in his own way, he hated her for 
 having taken him at his word, for not having stopped to 
 argue with him. For a week he kept completely away 
 from her, for a whole week he left her alone in that 
 country cottage, without a letter, without a visit, without 
 a word. 
 
 Eyes that weep much see clearly: something was 
 washed away from Joan's eyes in that week. And, for 
 the first time since she had given herself to her lover, 
 her mind moved a little, though still it moved more in 
 imagery than in reason. All that week she saw pictures 
 of Paolo and Francesca going together into Hell, with 
 their arms entwined, their eyes on each other's face, hap- 
 pily defying pain, thirst and heat and agony forgotten. 
 She, too, felt the thirst, the heat, and the Hell flames 
 leaping up and scorching her feet; but not into Louis's 
 eyes did she gaze to find liquid food, not with the glory 
 of his love could she hope to vanquish pain. Right into 
 the gloomy pit itself she looked, and she looked into it 
 shuddering and solitary. 
 
 Joan had still a poor, bedraggled, painful pride left to 
 her; Louis had the ineradicable obstinacy of a small 
 nature. It was she, of course, who yielded, for in her 
 heart she did not doubt that he loved her, although, after 
 he had stayed away from her for a week because she had 
 kept him waiting for twelve minutes, he was never again 
 the perfect, divine Louis of her dreams. When the week 
 had dragged itself out, she put her hurt pride where all 
 her other virtues had gone, and wrote him a little letter 
 asking for forgiveness, forgiveness, though she had not 
 sinned ; a letter with her love in it tremulous. 
 
 " DEAR Louis, I was wrong. Don't punish me any 
 more. I am sick with crying " it began. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 171 
 
 When he read her pitiful letter, he said to himself she 
 had had her lesson. His heart swelled; how well he 
 understood the management of women! For the future 
 she would be more more humble, she would know her 
 place better; he would have less trouble with her. He 
 had missed her, too, and vaguely, only vaguely, had been 
 conscious of a certain uneasiness. For he must not risk 
 anything. 
 
 Louis was still buying Geldenriefs buying Geldenriefs 
 had become an obsession with him. And he had muddled 
 things, too. Louis, seeing others as he saw himself, 
 trusted nobody. Another and yet another broker executed 
 his commissions. He thought himself cheated, now of a 
 turn, now of a sixteenth, in the price. He thought his 
 scheme had got wind, and hurriedly sold to allay sus- 
 picion. He was wretched when he had parted with the 
 shares, and could not rest until he had bought them back. 
 There were over a hundred thousand still in the market, 
 and he hated the idea that anybody else should make a 
 profit out of them. He was such a small man in business. 
 He did not know that often to give away money is the 
 way to make it. Without Karl he would have been selling 
 matches at a street corner for the ready cash that he 
 understood. His last action had been to buy the call on 
 twenty-five thousand, and the shares were now at two 
 and five-sixteenths! The Stock Exchange is vibrant as 
 a galvanic battery fully charged. Through all its sensi- 
 tiveness it felt that Geldenriefs were " going better," and 
 that there was a " rig" on. Nobody knew why, no- 
 body stayed to question values. But the jobbers put 
 the price up and up, and recognised that there were 
 always buyers. 
 
 The week, full of Geldenriefs, empty of Joan, had soft- 
 ened his temper toward her; he had achieved his object, 
 her letter moved him, he allowed himself to be moved by 
 it, he answered it in person. 
 
 "You are sorry, I know you are sorry. But I was 
 right, you feel that I was right, to think you could not 
 
172 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 care to see me if you could not even come to me at the 
 time I told you?" was what he said to her. 
 
 She satisfied his petty pride. She ought not to have 
 kept him waiting, she admitted it. It was quite true he 
 was overwhelmed with important appointments, whilst 
 she had nothing to do but obey his wishes. She perceived 
 that he insisted on her seeing that, she was awaking to 
 him slowly. 
 
 " What does your man Browning say? 
 
 ' Meet if thou requires! it all demands, 
 Laying strength and spirit in thy hands'; 
 
 and you couldn't do a little thing like keeping an appoint- 
 ment punctually !" 
 
 She could not argue with him nor defend herself ; she 
 could only be glad he was with her again. She could only 
 try not to realise what his conduct had meant, try to keep 
 her eyes shut a little longer. 
 
 The next occasion on which Louis felt it necessary to 
 assert himself was even more trivial. To Louis, being a 
 dressy man, the right waistcoat, the latest thing in trou- 
 sers, the curve of his hat-brim, the colour of his neckties, 
 and the fit of his boots, were all vital matters. Joan, on 
 the other hand, was careless, almost untidy, about her 
 dress, anyway completely indifferent. So, during the first 
 days of their life at Bushey, Louis had given her a list of 
 fashionable establishments she was to go to for this or 
 that article of attire, and told her which fitter she was to 
 ask for, what details she was to insist upon. And smiling, 
 yet hardly believing that he was serious, but happy that 
 he cared, she had scrupulously carried out his instructions. 
 But, a few days after their reconciliation, the days being 
 cold and damp, she wanted something loose, womanish, 
 comfortable, and bought a dressing-gown in the village 
 shop. He surprised her in it, coming down one day when 
 the brokers and jobbers had combined to upset him, and 
 he wanted the companionship of some one who thought 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 173 
 
 him perfection. He wanted soothing. She was curled 
 up in the dressing-gown on the sofa, looking small and 
 pale and pathetic; but she sprang up to meet him. A 
 month ago she had said the word " unhappiness" had no 
 meaning for her. If she was indeed still ignorant her 
 face belied her. Her lips were tremulous, there were dark 
 shadows beneath her eyes, the colour had vanished from 
 her cheeks. 
 
 "Joan! What do you call that thing?" 
 
 " What? oh !" her voice shook. He bewildered her, in 
 very truth ; so joyfully had she sprung to meet him. 
 
 " What a fearful thing ! Do you mean to tell me you 
 got it at Eugenie's ?" 
 
 " My oh, my tea-gown, Louis !" 
 
 " Oh, is it a tea-gown ? I thought it was a bed-gown. 
 Good Heavens! how can women choose such things? 
 Eugenie ought to be ashamed of herself; it makes you 
 look sallow and as for figure, well " 
 
 " I did not get it at Eugenie's, Louis ; don't be angry, 
 dear. I'll change it." 
 
 She moved hurriedly, she was all tremulous, frightened 
 of him or of herself. She could not face another scene. 
 
 " Let me go and change it." 
 
 But Louis was inexorable ; he persisted in arguing on 
 the heinousness of her crime in going anywhere but to 
 Eugenie's, when it was to Eugenie's he had told her to 
 go ; he liked argument, he thought he shone in argument. 
 He said the same thing over and over again ; that was 
 his idea of debate. Had not he told her not to shop any- 
 where but at Eugenie's? It meant that she no longer 
 cared to please him. It meant the beginning of the end, 
 the " little rift within the lute." 
 
 It was not only that the thing was ugly, common, hor- 
 rible, it was that she no longer cared to do what he 
 wished ! His trick of easy tears, his surface emotionalism, 
 turned the absurd episode into tragedy; and Joan, who 
 had not been used to weep easily, found her eyelids burn- 
 ing 
 
174 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He stayed away from her again after that, and she 
 had time enough for the burning tears, which fell when 
 she was alone, to wash away more illusions. She soon 
 knew, after he had begun to sulk with her and stay away 
 from her, and give her room in which to focus him, that 
 three-fourths of him were woman. But when she knew, 
 she loved him still because of her virile brain. 
 
 She burnt the dressing-gown ; she began to know that 
 never would he hold out the generous olive branch, began 
 to suspect that all the generosity must be hers, but still, as 
 we have seen, she was a good giver, and she went on 
 giving. 
 
 Many episodes such as the foregoing marked the pas- 
 sage of the spring. These quarrels and reconciliations 
 were the savour of Louis's days; they were piquant 
 sauces to the staling dish of his desire. 
 
 And as for her, had he not warned her that love was 
 pain? But she suffered it gladly, for still she could say 
 to herself, " My lover is like myrrh unto me, all night he 
 has lain between my breasts my lover is like myrrh 
 unto me." 
 
 The time came when Louis, receiving from Pretoria 
 the cable he had arranged for, announcing that Piet de 
 Groot was indeed dead, awoke to the consciousness that 
 as yet he had not mentioned the estate to Joan, nor made 
 any distinct effort to obtain the reversion of it. The 
 cable arrived during one of those, now ever more fre- 
 quent, occasions when he was punishing her with his 
 absence for some little lapse from the strict code he had 
 made of her duty toward himself. It drove him in haste 
 to Bushey. 
 
 If on such occasions she never met him with the peni- 
 tence he expected, she never met him with sullenness nor 
 resentment. Knowing, in truth, how well she loved him, 
 and, ever unwitting of her supposed love-crimes, she 
 accepted suffering from his hands as she had accepted 
 joy. She had given herself to him; and as yet there 
 was no repentance. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 175 
 
 To-day, however, when he came to her with the knowl- 
 edge of Piet de Groot's death, he found her in a strange 
 mood. He had something to tell her, but she too had 
 something to confide, with him she had to share an 
 unhappy knowledge which nevertheless filled her with a 
 strange, a tremulous delight. 
 
 Of what was nearest to them both neither spoke at first. 
 Joan was dreading the usual explanations of his conduct 
 in which Louis revelled. They were reflection-glasses to 
 the pettiness of his soul, and ever she wished to turn her 
 head away, so that she might not see, and ever he forced 
 her back with insistent talk and justification. 
 
 To-day she was spared this. 
 
 " Don't let us argue to-day, dear," he had said to her. 
 " I am tired, out of spirits. I miss you when you are not 
 with me. What a pity " 
 
 It was so difficult for him, even to-day in this tender 
 mood, to avoid saying what a pity it was that she was 
 not different. 
 
 But she said it for him. Their little sitting-room was 
 gay with daffodils, and he had come to her and said he 
 had missed her. 
 
 Outside the window was a nesting robin; Joan had 
 been watching it when Louis's brougham drove up, and 
 she showed it to him. She had smiled when he asked her 
 not to argue with him to-day, but he had not seen her 
 whimsical, sad smile; still it lingered on her lips and in 
 her eyes, and, when he kissed her to-day, he kissed her 
 again like a lover. She turned to him so gladly, he put 
 his arm about her and kissed her hair. She was beginning 
 to know him, but still the very breath of him was sweet 
 to her. She laid her head a moment happily against his 
 shoulder ; she was anxious to satisfy all his exactions, 
 and would have been all a man could want if only he had 
 dealt with her honestly. 
 
 " Have you missed me, little Joan ?" 
 
 " I always miss you when you stay away from me 
 What else have I?" 
 
176 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Give me some tea, will you ? then we can talk." 
 
 " Are you going to stay ?" she asked him, with an eager- 
 ness she could not disguise. 
 
 " I think I can squeeze in a day. I must ; I want rest." 
 
 " Do I rest you ?" she asked, nestling against him. 
 
 " You are sweet to me sometimes." 
 
 " Oh, Louis !" 
 
 " Well, we won't talk about it just now. I'll go up and 
 wash." 
 
 " And I'll ask Mrs. Forbes to make you some hot, but- 
 tered toast." 
 
 " Growing into a good housekeeper at last?" 
 
 " Into anything you would have me grow," she an- 
 swered passionately, tears being not far off. And he 
 laughed, well pleased with her mood. 
 
 They had tea together, tea and daffodils. She waited 
 upon him, and he had the grace not to tell her that the 
 butter was salt and the tea too little drawn. 
 
 " Do you remember our first tea at Musenburg ?" she 
 asked him. 
 
 " I remember everything." 
 
 He drew her down on to his knee. In that position 
 they could talk. She hid her face against his coat. She 
 dared not say " Oh, Louis ! why are you not always like 
 this?" In truth, the fear of him, of those reflecting 
 glasses with which speech endowed him, had lain upon 
 her lately like a nightmare. To hide his soul from herself 
 was almost a prayer with her. For, sweet was his breath 
 and soft were his lips, his straying hands magnetic, and 
 when, as now, he held her in his arms, it seemed to her 
 she had nothing, nor words nor self, to tell him how she 
 loved him. 
 
 But she could tell him something, now, to-day ; whilst 
 he was like this, she could tell him something. 
 
 " Louis," she began, and hesitated. 
 
 But he also, in his mood, thought he must ask her, tell 
 her, something, and being, in fact, more feminine than 
 she, was the first to speak out. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 177 
 
 " Tell me, Joan/' he said, caressing her hair ; " tell me, 
 I want to know, we have never spoken of it, but I want 
 to know; do you ever, have you ever, thought of your 
 husband since we have been together?" 
 
 Joan winced, put her head down quickly against his 
 shoulder, and the answer came muffled and low, " Often 
 lately." 
 
 But for the space of a second, more acute than any- 
 thing, was the flash of remembrance of a blue sky and a 
 sapphire sea, and a voice low and tender, saying passion- 
 ately, " Never call him ' husband' again. Never say it, 
 darling, I can't bear it. You have never had a husband ; 
 he is blotted out. I can't hear the word from you; you 
 ought not to have said it." 
 
 In wonderful moments since then, Louis had breathed 
 " wife" into her ear, but she had, as he had bidden her, 
 dissociated the word " husband" from her memories of 
 Piet de Groot, and the pang of it coming now from Louis 
 was like a knife. 
 
 " What have you thought ? Have you heard anything ? 
 What have you heard?" he asked eagerly, and then, re- 
 membering, caressed her. " You must not mind telling 
 me ; I suppose you write to him regularly ; I knew you 
 would do what was right. We mustn't hurt him." 
 
 " Oh, Louis !" the words escaped her, and she caught 
 his hand, and looked up. " You say we must not hurt 
 him. I used to say that too. But I I have prayed this 
 month past, every night on my knees, every morning, 
 there has been an unspoken prayer in my heart, every 
 hour of the day, that God would take him. Oh, Louis ! 
 Can't you guess? Have you guessed? Is that why you 
 are speaking of him now?" 
 
 There was a pause, she felt his hold on her loosen. 
 He caught her meaning in an instant, the recoil was in- 
 voluntary. Then he remembered himself, and gath- 
 ered her closely in his arms, and she hid her face in his 
 breast. 
 
 " Why did you not tell me before?" 
 
 12 
 
178 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I haven't seen you for four days and I was not 
 certain." 
 
 " I have had so much to do, I could not come." 
 
 " Are you glad ? Are you sorry ?" she murmured. 
 
 " How do you feel about it?" 
 
 Her temper was so sweet, her knowledge of him as yet 
 so circumscribed by her love for him, that she forgot for 
 the moment all the drear, hopeless days, all the exhibi- 
 tions of tyranny and of temper, everything, but that which 
 imagination rather than facts had taught her. She an- 
 swered him as she would have answered him three short 
 months since. 
 
 " Nearer Heaven. It is yours, part of you, something 
 you have given me that nothing can take from me; a 
 gift from God and you, ' the divine gift of God upon love 
 that deserves!' It makes the old Greek letters on the 
 ring you gave me stand out like a flame, against all the 
 darkness there has been el? a*!. And now you lie so 
 close to me, so close within me, that I can even bear your 
 absences, because you have left me something of yourself. 
 Oh, Louis ! how I've wanted to tell you ! Oh, my love, 
 my love, what a oneness it is, you and I and he !" 
 
 " So you've made up your mind it is a ' he,' " he smiled, 
 but his smile was forced. However, she was out of his 
 ken now, and, with her head against his breast, she could 
 not see his thin lips tighten. 
 
 " My little Louis," she murmured ; " oh yes, I see his 
 eyes about me always, and his little hands stray up to 
 touch me. I feel his sucking lips against my breast. 
 What you have given me ! what you have given me !" 
 And a silence fell between them, the while she held the 
 cooing baby in her heart, and Louis held them both. 
 
 The man against whose breast she lay, whose lips ca- 
 ressed her, gentle in every movement, and three-fourths 
 of him woman, followed her thoughts and was moved, 
 because the pathos of it rippled over the easily touched 
 surface of him like a wind. But, in his shallow depths, 
 with those telltale lines showing round his mouth, his 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 179 
 
 inner self was muttering " she wants De Groot to die ; 
 she takes it for granted I will marry her. What a cursed 
 nuisance it is that she should be in this condition. How 
 on earth is it to be kept quiet? I suppose she won't try 
 and get rid of it. I had better not tell her just now that 
 De Groot is dead. The farm must wait; if it is hers, it 
 is mine. There is nothing to be gained by telling her 
 just at this moment that De Groot is dead." 
 
 And then he was sweet with her, questioned her as a 
 woman might have done, and seemed to justify her. 
 
 He could not leave her alone at Bushey for the next 
 few days. She thought it was sweet of him when he told 
 her this. She surely wronged him when she saw him 
 other than he was now. The revolt against her, for what 
 she had told him revolted him, so strangely sensitive are 
 such men, made him more tender to her, but she could 
 not know it was the revolt. She was a woman of moods, 
 emotional ; and he seemed to make the spring about them 
 rare, as if the sunshine sparkled in bud and breeze, as 
 if the heavens were open and the scented winds, envel- 
 oping the tall tree-tops, were fanned about them by the 
 branches. 
 
 The next day they were wandering together round the 
 pond on the Common, when the name of De Groot fell 
 again between them. There were ripples of sunlight on 
 the water, the mother ducks were waddling proudly round 
 their little quacking broods. Almost one heard the growth 
 of things, the rustling undergrowth of the spring, the sap 
 rising in the trees, all the new life of the year quickening 
 in the pulses and flushing in the cheeks. 
 
 Joan's spirits, that day, were as light as the hearts of 
 the birds that sang joy about their fledglings. Light, too, 
 shone in her blue eyes, about her lips, her humours played 
 about Louis, she was the old Joan that day, as for twelve 
 hours Louis had been the old Louis. Phrases even formed 
 themselves again for her, and a whole story of home life 
 in England was as an atmosphere in which her spirit 
 moved. She was exultant in her coming motherhood; 
 
180 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 shame during that one short hour was as far from her 
 as from wedded mothers. She was in the heart of the 
 growth of the year. As they walked together her shoul- 
 der touched his arm, as they stood together to watch the 
 little broods her hand slipped into his. 
 
 " Isn't it wonderful to be alive ? Isn't it wonderful to 
 give life? Watch the pride of that grey waddler; she 
 carries her head erect and quacks, literally quacks with 
 the pride of the seven downy little things. I wish the 
 drake were with them. I feel a weird desire to see Mother 
 Duck and Father Drake waddle up the aisle of a parish 
 church with the seven daughters following in their wake. 
 This is the time of the year one hears the appeal of the 
 church bells across green fields, and the smell of the 
 ploughed land is everywhere. Are you in a sentimental 
 mood, Louis? I am. I want to go back to the Arizona. 
 I want to sit on deck and watch the waves disappearing 
 tinder the ship, and remember all my dreams. I want 
 baby to know of them. He will have found the Holy 
 Grail; he will come straight to me from Heaven, with 
 the light that never was on sea or land in his shining 
 eyes eyes like yours, but young, with starry centres 
 and in his dimpled baby hands will be the torch of Peace. 
 He will be as an angel in the house. Nothing I do or say 
 will vex you again, for all the spirits of Harmony will 
 play about his downy head, and be wafted from his sprout- 
 ing wings. He will teach us faith, too, Louis; he has 
 taught it me already. What things he will coo to us, 
 lying smiling at us together. Oh! I see such wonders, 
 such glories through his shining eyes. It wasn't through 
 flower-gemmed paths and under leafy trees we were to 
 walk hand in hand to the gates of Heaven ; it is through 
 my baby's eyes we shall find them, and beyond will be 
 the kind face of God, smiling on us because we loved 
 each other so." 
 
 And it was Louis Althaus who listened to her confi- 
 dences ! It was the last time slrc spoke her soul to him. 
 As she spoke and walked by his side, he noted that the 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 181 
 
 trimness of her figure was gone. Momentarily his mind 
 projected itself into the future, a few months hence, and 
 the picture of her then walking by his side nauseated him. 
 But uppermost in his mind this afternoon was the thought 
 that he must speak to her about her husband and about 
 the farm. He could not make up his mind, could not 
 bring himself, to tell her that De Groot was dead; but 
 he must have her promise, her written promise, to trans- 
 fer the land to him. He must make himself master of 
 the situation. He had not faced the problem that must 
 arise when Karl should find him in possession ; but, that 
 he must be in possession, must be master of what Karl 
 had called the kernel of Geldenrief, he felt in every grasp- 
 ing fibre of him. 
 
 And the woman would have a claim upon him, a double 
 claim. He glanced at her out of the corners of his 
 eyes, and he resented her having that claim upon him. 
 Never before had such an incident vexed Louis's amor- 
 ousness. He felt bitterly that Joan ought not to have 
 done it. 
 
 Then, as if she read his thoughts, she too grew silent, 
 but presently said to him abruptly, for she was a woman 
 of moods, and the spring day seemed closing coldly about 
 them, the heavens withdrawing their glory, and the early 
 dusk hiding the young greenness : 
 
 " Louis, yesterday you asked me about Piet. I could 
 not answer then. Why did you ask? Have you heard 
 anything?" 
 
 "Heard anything? what should I hear?" 
 
 " I did not know ; you have many correspondents in 
 Cape Town ; he was very ill when we left." 
 
 " You would be more likely to hear than I should, if 
 anything had happened to him." 
 
 " Oh, no ; before I left I wrote to him, and told him 
 what I was going to do. I said ' good-bye* to him for 
 ever." 
 
 " What !" He turned on her ; he could not believe he 
 had heard correctly. He was stunned, he could not get 
 
182 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 out another word; the mine, the farm, Piet's will, were 
 racing about in one little whirlwind in his little mind. 
 
 " Yes ! He had been giving me an allowance. Looking 
 back now, I know I was a bad wife to him, an unloving 
 wife. I told him so, told him that I was alone to blame, 
 all through. I told him I knew, now I knew, that I had 
 wronged him always." 
 
 " How dared you !" 
 
 She looked at him, amazed, startled, not understanding ; 
 yet she could see that he was struggling with some emo- 
 tion. 
 
 " I could not do anything else ; surely, I could not do 
 anything else?" 
 
 " And you concealed it from me ?" It was anger, pas- 
 sion, that emotion she could not understand. Oh ! there 
 must be another scene between them; her heart turned 
 3ick within her. 
 
 " Dear, I did not conceal it. It was nothing to speak 
 of between you and me. It was between me and Piet. 
 I said good-bye to him; I told him everything was my 
 fault. Then I came to you free!" 
 
 " Good heavens ! how awful, how unpardonable, to give 
 away our secret, my secret. And you knew how wrong 
 it was, how wicked, that is why you never told me, never 
 consulted me." 
 
 His words came with difficulty, he was choked with 
 ^nger and dismay ; he could have struck her as she walked 
 beside him, something in her gait, a slowness, making 
 evident the misfortune that she had a claim upon him. 
 He would have liked to fell her to the ground ; he hated 
 her, he felt he hated her. 
 
 " How could I consult you ? It was before before I 
 went on board the Arizona. How could I tell you ?" she 
 asked bewildered. " You had said to me, ' never mention 
 his name to me;' those were early days with us, and I 
 thought you meant it." This was the first touch, the first 
 word, of bitterness that had passed her lips. 
 
 He turned on her furiously: 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 183 
 
 " Much you care what I meant, or what I wanted. Any 
 excuse is good enough for a woman when she wants to 
 lie to you." 
 
 " Louis !" She shrank as if he had struck her, and 
 henceforth was silent. 
 
 " Yes, lied ; it was nothing else. You've kept this fact ; 
 this vital fact, concealed from me all this time. And you 
 pretend you thought I wished it. A lot you care for 
 what I wish. You can't even keep an appointment with 
 me; and look at that dressing-gown you bought. You 
 don't care for me, nor for anything in the world but your 
 cursed writing. I can imagine the sort of tale you pitched 
 about me in your letter. Our life together has been a 
 farce, a fraud, from beginning to end, with that between 
 us." 
 
 He had no real words for what angered him. How 
 could he tell her it was the question of her husband's will, 
 her husband's easily altered will, the farm, that so moved 
 him ? She was spared that a little while. Meanwhile the 
 dressing-gown, the broken appointments, anything and 
 everything, served as pegs upon which to hang his angry 
 eloquence. He raked up every difference of opinion, every 
 paltry dispute they had ever had, with which to assail 
 her. 
 
 " It was my secret as much as yours ; you had no right 
 to tell him. I'll never trust a woman again. You are all 
 alike; there is not one of you to be trusted. If ever a 
 man and a woman have a secret the woman blabs it I've 
 seen it again and again or she gets into a mess, and out 
 it has to come. What a fool I was to think you were 
 different. You wrote him behind my back. You did not 
 care what became of me, you didn't care if it ruined me !" 
 
 " Ruined you !" she echoed, startled. 
 
 " What do you think Karl would say if he knew ? He 
 had not grit enough to do it himself; but do you think 
 he'd be pleased about it?" 
 
 But it was not of what Karl would say that Louis was 
 thinking; it was of what Piet de Groot would do, had 
 
184 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 done, of how it would affect himself, of what he should 
 do. Should he tell her? Should he ask her? What of 
 her marriage settlement? What of the farm? The man 
 was beside himself for fear he had spent his hundred 
 and twenty or thirty thousand for nothing, for fear his 
 schemes would come to naught. His self-control was 
 gone ; he railed at her like the unspeakable thing that he 
 was. It was the first time his evil temper had been com- 
 pletely articulate. She walked dully beside him, the gath- 
 ering clouds lowering upon her ; she was cold and sick. 
 
 " Let us go home," she said, shivering, " let us go 
 home, Louis.'* 
 
 " Home ! a nice home to ask a man to go to, and with 
 a woman he can't trust. I wonder how many other peo- 
 ple you have written to; perhaps you've pitched Karl 
 a yarn, too. I suppose you told him I led you away ?" 
 
 Words could hardly pass the hysteric boundary of his 
 throat. Her slower gait and heavier tread angered him 
 greatly, for, indeed, her heart was stone, and her feet were 
 leaden-weighted, and she could scarcely walk. He had 
 really lost control : at heart a coward, in brain a fool, he 
 saw no way out of the quandary in which he was plunged. 
 
 He left her abruptly at the door of the cottage with- 
 out a touch of the hand, without a word to palliate what 
 he had said; he went away, and left her to see, as tear- 
 washed eyes see, to what she had bound herself, to whose 
 son she would give birth. 
 
 There is nothing in the world so cruel as the cruelty of 
 a man towards a woman for whom his passion is dead. 
 There is no power so absolute as the power for torture 
 that a woman puts into a man's hands when she gives 
 herself wholly to him, with no tie between them but her 
 love and his honour. Joan had kept nothing back, had 
 left nothing between herself and desolation but Louis and 
 Louis's love. 
 
 After that hour by the water, and all she had told him, 
 he left her in total, absolute silence, left her to the terror 
 of loneliness and the torture of outraged pride, to sleep- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 185 
 
 less nights and days sick with disappointment, full of 
 phantom footsteps and postman's knocks that brought her 
 nothing. 
 
 Her brain rejected him, even if her flesh ached for him. 
 The dawning knowledge of the degradation she suffered 
 in loving him was as a worm in her brain, boring its 
 agonising way. 
 
 If she could then have written as she then could feel, 
 the scarlet letter might have flamed afresh as a warning 
 beacon to weak women. Her self-respect was tortured; 
 in her own eyes she was defiled. 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 
 Louis's passions were short-lived, feeble things, his 
 sullen resentments were more lasting. He fed and nur- 
 tured his grievances until they grew fat and bloated, vam- 
 pire shapes that filled the air and stank, then his conscience 
 grew ill through them and died. The time would come 
 when the strong wind of expediency would arise and blow 
 them temporarily away ; but, in the meantime, Joan was 
 left alone. The woman in the cottage at Bushey sat by 
 herself and watched the sky, dreary now and grey, and 
 watched the rain beating down the buds, making little 
 rivulets down the casement window, soaking through the 
 ill-fitting joints, puddling on the sill. She sat alone, and 
 thought and thought, and her body yearned for her lover, 
 while her brain saw him clearly, not quite clearly though, 
 for, as yet, she knew little of what he wanted of her, and 
 nothing of the farm. But what she saw of him in that 
 painful brain made her flesh a torture-chamber to her, 
 wherein she lived with screws on her temples and racks 
 on her limbs, and awaited his coming without hope of 
 delivery thereby. 
 
 For, of course, he would come again, this Louis, so 
 beautiful, with the sensuous appeal against which she 
 had no resistance, with the mean shrunken soul that, per- 
 haps, was moving against her heart within that babe 
 through whose eyes she was to have seen straight up to 
 the gates of Heaven! 
 
 A month passed, and she sat by the cottage window 
 and watched and watched, but never came her lover, 
 a whole empty month. She lived through it, but it killed 
 her strength, almost her courage. 
 
 Many things happened to Louis Althaus in that month. 
 1 86 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 187 
 
 To her nothing happened. Nothing came to the woman 
 but pain, always more pain for Joan, the fallen, carrying 
 her unborn bastard, loving her lover, and knowing him 
 abominable, mean, yet longing for the sound of his voice, 
 the touch of his hand, his mere presence. Brain and body 
 fought over him, and the brain never won. 
 
 Louis, in those luxurious rooms in Piccadilly, decided, 
 when his temper had cooled, on cabling to his confidant 
 in Johannesburg to get particulars of De Groot's death 
 and De Groot's will. It would be three weeks before de- 
 tails could come to hand. Meanwhile, Joan must wait 
 no matter what she said or wrote Joan must await the 
 coming of that news for his forgiveness. His forgiveness, 
 it seemed to him, would be a great thing even then. He 
 resented having been forced into plain speaking, he re- 
 sented being still without definite possession of the farm, 
 he resented Joan giving him any trouble ; that is how he 
 worded it to himself, "giving him any trouble." Then 
 he calculated his chances afresh. De Groot had been ill 
 when he got his wife's letter. Had not Karl said his ill- 
 ness was general paralysis, locomotor ataxia? Could a 
 man suffering from locomotor ataxia alter his will? 
 Louis's brilliant perpetual health, Louis had a wonderful 
 physique, was permitted to suffer a temporary eclipse 
 while he sent for a doctor and cross-examined him as to 
 the mental effects of locomotor. 
 
 " Nervous fellows they are, those South African mil- 
 lionaires," said the fashionable physician, talking to a 
 colleague that evening ; " the life they lead plays the very 
 deuce with them. I was with a fellow just now, as 
 healthy a man as I ever examined, a man of about thirty. 
 He had got it into his head that he was a general paralytic 
 what do you think of that ? a general paralytic. There 
 was not a symptom of locomotor he did not think he had, 
 or was going to have. And he questioned me and cross- 
 questioned me about his mental capacity, whether I would 
 certify him as fit to make a will, how long after the dis- 
 ease made its appearance he would be fit to make a will, 
 
188 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 and I don't know what besides. He was luxuriating in it. 
 I assure you the fellow was as well as I better, for he's 
 got fifteen years the pull of me and he's looking forward 
 to mental decay and physical deterioration as if it was a 
 question of to-morrow. Nerves ! why, they're made of 
 'em." 
 
 That is how medical history is made ! 
 
 And now it was May. Parliament had reassembled, 
 Stephen Hay ward had returned to town, and Karl's let- 
 ters were insistent that representations should be made 
 at home as to what they were going through, what the 
 Uitlanders were being made to bear in the Transvaal. 
 The position had altered in every way for the worse, Karl 
 wrote, since Louis had left South Africa. 
 
 " Make Stephen Hayward ask a question in the House 
 about the Van Voeren case ; I send you the report. Mrs. 
 Simpson you remember Mrs. Simpson, the wife of the 
 man whom we picked out as a test case in the commando 
 question well, she found a Boer policeman in her house 
 with one of her Kaffir girls, and ordered him out. He 
 kicked her to death. Don't make any mistake about it. 
 I've got it all down, black on white, from an eye-witness. 
 The man was convicted and sentenced to death ; but the 
 new law Kruger made came in, and they respited him. 
 Now he's let off with four months' imprisonment! Rub 
 that in, will you? And it's only because Mrs. Simpson 
 was an Englishwoman, and her husband had rather gone 
 to prison than on commando. 
 
 " I wish you could come across Joan de Groot ; she 
 might work it up into something. It's just the stuff for 
 the Nonconformists, who won't move in the matter of 
 these swindling concessions and the strangling of the gold 
 industry. There will be a lot of good blood shed if noth- 
 ing is done at home. The National Union means business. 
 I shall have to pay Eloff, the old man's nephew, some- 
 thing like a hundred thousand pounds, on one excuse cr 
 another, before I can even get the Bank properly started." 
 
 In London, already in May, Parliament had re-assem- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 189 
 
 bled under the guidance of the tottering Liberal Govern- 
 ment of 1895, and the doors of Society were flung open. 
 Louis's " open sesame" was that big house now domi- 
 nating London, as it rose broad and solid before the Park, 
 a house, generous wide and high, of simple elevation, of 
 fine taste, a house marking an epoch in architecture, as 
 well as an epoch in finance. And it was the boom time 
 in South African mines ; fortunes were made in a day, in 
 an hour. The South African Bubble, prismatic and beau- 
 tiful and alluring, rose before the gaping mouths and 
 avid eyes of the heirs and heiresses of impoverished Eng- 
 lish acres. Of political affairs in South Africa, of the 
 Uitlanders' grievances, of the National Union, of the state 
 of public feeling, no one in London cared and Louis 
 cared less. What did politics matter while the mines 
 vomited the red gold into his and Karl's pockets ? " Live 
 and let live" was his motto, he said when he was asked, 
 personally he had nothing to grumble about. 
 
 Constantia Hayward and her Crusade were mocked and 
 jeered at and derided this particular season. She and her 
 niece could go nowhere without meeting men with un- 
 pronounceable names, with impenetrable accents, mas- 
 querading now as Germans, now as Dutchmen, yellow 
 men with bitten nails, and Mongol cheek-bones, men with 
 whisky concessions, rich and fat with the dregs and refuse 
 from the black man's drunken orgies, men with bald 
 heads, black eyes, vulture noses, men, aye, and women too, 
 whom no country owned, and no race claimed, the slime, 
 the scum of nations. They blew the bubble of the South 
 African mines with their fetid breath until it hung, gold- 
 hued and glittering, high over ruined homes and bankrupt 
 castles. 
 
 Constantia, with Aline in her wake, passed scornfully 
 through the serried ranks of the gold-bringers and the 
 gold-seekers. 
 
 In these ranks there were women who had been of the 
 Cape Town pavement, but were now dwelling on the in- 
 side of the doors of Piccadilly, instead of loitering before 
 
190 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 them; women, driving through Bond Street, in embla- 
 zoned carriages, with feathers in their fashionable bonnets, 
 diamonds and pearls round their dishonoured necks, wear- 
 ing their borrowed plumage of changed names ; but har- 
 pies and harlots nevertheless, with hard eyes and painted 
 smiles. 
 
 Among such men and women as these, Louis Althaus 
 was a king. He had every external grace, an air slightly 
 foreign, but distinguished, a fine figure, melancholy eyes. 
 The sleek hair had worn a little further from the fore- 
 head than when he was here before, and there were a 
 few lines round the eyes. But all the Althaus stocks were 
 higher. 
 
 Louis had a certain limited social tact or instinct ; the 
 little burr or roll of the " r's" went well with the impe- 
 rial, with the manner, a little too polite, perhaps, towards 
 the men, a thought familiar, confidential, but infinitely 
 charming, they said, towards the women. Other South 
 Africans were courted for their wealth, for what they gave, 
 or presaged, for tips or entertainments, but Louis, hand- 
 some Louis Althaus, gradually was invited to intimate 
 dinners, to theatre parties, to river excursions and race 
 meetings, because the women liked him. 
 
 And the man had a vanity. Joan in her suburban cot- 
 tage, who had given him everything she had, and now was 
 bankrupt of allurements, had rivals among the most fash- 
 ionable and most beautiful hostesses in London. Louis's 
 charm, Louis's appeal, was to the senses, and it is in the 
 senses that all these society women live. 
 
 He relegated Joan to the background of his mind during 
 the three weeks that he waited for news from Pretoria. 
 He had recovered from the ungovernable passion into 
 which the news of her confession to her husband had 
 flung him, though he had not forgiven her. He prided 
 himself on never forgiving. But, once his temper had 
 grown calm and his thoughts about her coherent, he 
 waited with certainty for the day when she would write 
 and implore him to return to her. Then he would per- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 191 
 
 haps play Sultan, then he would perchance stretch out 
 the sceptre. Everything now depended on the news from 
 South Africa, not the political news, old Karl was making 
 a ridiculous fuss about that, for everything would go on 
 as everything had always gone on, and the firm would 
 always grow richer. He was acting on instructions, buy- 
 ing and forwarding guns and ammunition, but he treated 
 the matter lightly, notwithstanding. He did not for a 
 moment seriously believe in revolution. 
 
 The news that he was waiting for was news about 
 De Groot's will, and the farm that held the deep of the 
 Geldenrief. Joan, without the farm, had ceased, for the 
 moment, to be desirable; besides she was always there; 
 there was no need for hurry about her. 
 
 Louis was not without rich food for that social vanity 
 of his ; and the existence of this made Joan's position pre- 
 carious. For, wonder of wonders! one of his conquests 
 was the Lady Violet Alncaster, daughter of the fifteenth 
 Duke, and cousin to Aline Hayward, Stephen's daughter. 
 This conquest, this strange victory, absorbed Louis Alt- 
 haus for the first fortnight of the time that Joan was 
 waiting and watching by the window. It was Stephen, 
 himself, who had introduced them, for Stephen had not 
 forgotten his obligations to Karl. He had called on Louis 
 in Piccadilly, he had invited him to dinner at the Club, 
 he had even strolled in with him to the Opera, and taken 
 him up to his uncle's box. 
 
 Lady Violet, getting on now for seven-and-twenty, and 
 vixenish, saw that he was a very handsome man, graceful 
 too, with eyes eloquent of admiration as they fell upon 
 her meagre charms. Louis's eyes were always eloquent 
 in their unfathomable depths. " It was indeed a privi- 
 lege," he murmured over her hand. And Lady Violet, 
 sharpened through the social mill, knew of the atmosphere 
 of millions in which he was supposed to move, knew too 
 that her betting-book could not pay her milliner's bills, 
 and that her brother was the sponge who soaked up the 
 family resources. 
 
192 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I am delighted to meet you/' she answered. " You 
 are the first millionaire I have come across. How does it 
 feel to be rich? The Alncasters have always been poor." 
 
 " Rich in many things," he said, speaking low. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I suppose so," she answered carelessly, think- 
 ing he meant in honours, in history ; but soon he let her 
 know that it was the beauty of their daughters he had 
 meant. This type of man has only one method with 
 women. Violet had never been a beauty. Even the pa- 
 pers on her debut had forgotten to call her " the lovely 
 daughter of the Duke of Alncaster." Her angularities, 
 her impossible shoulders, flat chest, high cheek-bones, and 
 thin nose, had made it obvious that it must be as a wit, 
 and not as a beauty, she must attract attention. That 
 evening at the Opera, however, when Louis was intro- 
 duced into the box and looked at her with longing eyes, 
 she felt complacently that, perhaps, after all there was 
 something beautiful in her aristocratic air. While they 
 listened to Melba singing, she felt Louis's eyes full upon 
 her in the sentimental passages ; when they left the house 
 Louis attended her to her carriage. Bareheaded he stood 
 by the window and gazed upon her until the coachman 
 whipped up the horses. For the first time in her aristo- 
 cratic life Violet felt she was the heroine of a romance. 
 
 Louis followed up his glances with orchids. He had a 
 philosophy about women. " They are all ' on the take/ " 
 summed it up. " Start with compliments, get to flowers, 
 sweets, then they reluctantly accept bonnets, and you're 
 there; after that comes jewellery, but it always ends up 
 with money, and the cheaper you get off, the cleverer you 
 prove yourself." 
 
 This man Lady Violet Alncaster permitted to take her 
 to tea at Lady Claridge's garden-party. His admiration 
 amused her. She thanked him for the orchids. He said 
 the only pleasure he had had since that night at the O^era 
 was selecting them. The refreshment tent had seemed 
 quite attractive after that, and she remained with him, 
 following the tea with an ice. When they strolled off to- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 193 
 
 gether to listen to the music, he had already asked her 
 who dressed her, and complimented her on her charming 
 figure. 
 
 The attitude he adopted was one of despairing admira- 
 tion; he had found it almost invariably efficacious with 
 these high-born ladies. In their anxiety to persuade him 
 that nothing was hopeless, that, great and beautiful as 
 they were, they were still to be won by boldness, they soon 
 reversed the tables and made love to him. Having seen 
 nothing he desired to gain, his modesty remained fasci- 
 natingly prominent. But, socially at least, he had netted 
 nothing so big as Lady Violet, nothing nearly so impor- 
 tant. The stage in which Lady Violet began to make love 
 to him. when he was always retreating, and she was al- 
 ways advancing, commenced within a week of their first 
 acquaintanceship. Louis's hall-table in Piccadilly was lit- 
 tered with cards, for it was soon understood that where 
 Louis Althaus went Lady Violet Alncaster liked to be 
 also. Her friends were amused, for this sort of folly was 
 not what they had expected of her, or to which she had 
 accustomed them, and they watched the entertainment 
 she provided with open encouragement. 
 
 Louis was intensely proud of himself. His moustache 
 and his imperial received more caressing attention than 
 ever before. His mirror was more assiduously cultivated, 
 and his satisfaction with it more pronounced. Joan's 
 chances looked poor, for Louis had begun to reason with 
 himself as to what he owed her, as to what he risked by 
 leaving her. And, as the days went by and she did not 
 write and beg for forgiveness, he argued that she was com- 
 mitting a love-crime, that she was obstinate, that she was 
 behaving abominably to him, that she deserved to be pun- 
 ished for what she had done. The way she was behaving 
 was not his idea of love ; Louis was great on love's duties, 
 and there was nothing he would not exact. He argued with 
 himself about Joan, and there was only one side to the 
 argument. She ought to write to him, to be abject, and 
 own she was wrong to have written to her husband behind 
 
 13 
 
194 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 his back. How dare she sulk with him? How dare she 
 be proud with him? She was but Louis's thoughts are 
 unwriteable. The girl, she was nothing more than a 
 girl when she had come to him, had lain in his arms and 
 given herself to him because he would have no less ; and 
 the word that rose in his mind when he convinced him- 
 self that she ought to be humble with him cannot be 
 written. 
 
 Joan's chances looked poor, as Violet showed ever more 
 and more plainly that he need not be over-modest in the 
 wooing of her. Only Louis's taste was on Joan's side, for 
 he had taste ; and all of it had been with Joan. She was 
 a woman to any man's taste, with her delicate graces, the 
 poetry of her soul, the flashes of her intelligence, her sup- 
 ple tendernesses. More and more she came back to his 
 mind as the days went on, mornings in the Row, lunch- 
 eons in fine houses, with softly moving servants, tables 
 bedecked with flowers and old silver, all the doors of May- 
 fair open to the son of that Polish adventurer and the 
 gutter-girl from Whitechapel. His cultivated taste was 
 with Joan. He saw Lady Violet as she was, a shrewish 
 thing, beginning to turn sour ; he revolted from her. Her 
 title, her position, moved him, though his vanity almost 
 lifted him above them; that they attracted him to her, 
 even superficially, was because, feline that she was, she 
 purred over him, and he liked being purred over. 
 
 Karl, over in Johannesburg, heard of Louis's social 
 success. It was Karl's way to hear of everything. He 
 was proud of the position the handsome fellow had 
 achieved ; he took it for granted that Louis was working 
 for him, was carrying out his instructions, was impressing 
 society, that part of it which was influential, with the 
 knowledge of the crying needs of South Africa. He took 
 care that nothing was wanted, pecuniarily, for Louis's 
 social campaign. He wrote to him that he knew they 
 could do nothing immediately, but that there would be a 
 General Election in the autumn, though it might come 
 before, any day, in fact; there would then be a redistri- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 195 
 
 bution of seats and of power, the Unionists would rake 
 the country and Stephen Hayward would be in the Cabi- 
 net. Stephen Hayward, he insisted, must be hand and 
 glove with them, with the National Union. Karl wrote 
 also of Sir Henry Loch's visit, and of all they had hoped 
 it portended, and of the disappointment. 
 
 Louis had hardly time to read the letters, dull letters, 
 they were to him, having little in them about money. Karl 
 had tumbled accidentally, as it were, into Imperialism, 
 had grown into intimacy with the Great Imperialist, and 
 found at last a great aim for his great heart and under- 
 standing. He was learning love for his country, now 
 that out there it seemed weak, despised, despicable. Karl 
 thought he loved money, money only, but to his surprise 
 now, at the root of his heart, pulling at it, he found Eng- 
 land. And he wrote passionate letters home to Louis, 
 who barely had time to read them, who pursued Society, 
 Lady Violet, and the gratification of his vanity, who lived 
 luxuriously, and was learning to drive a four-in-hand. 
 
 Only one thing hurt Louis ; it had merely amused Karl, 
 when Karl was in London, but it hurt Louis. That was 
 the Hayward attitude. Anywhere, everywhere almost, 
 that Lady Violet Alncaster went, Louis could go, but the 
 open sesame had no effect on the Hayward door, and this 
 annoyed, worried, and irritated him. He could not bear 
 that he should be barred anywhere. It fretted a little of 
 the varnish off him, and made him show a glimpse of 
 the material of which he was composed. 
 
 " I should like to be introduced to your sister," he said 
 once to Stephen. " You don't entertain at all, I'm told ? 
 Can't you persuade her to let me drive her down to Rane- 
 laghoneday? I've got a coach." 
 
 Stephen, who was busy with the prospect of a General 
 Election, was slightly amused. But Karl and he between 
 them had accepted Constantia's attitude as a joke, and he 
 willingly included Louis in the jest. 
 
 " Not a chance, my dear fellow ; she is as firm as a rock 
 about it. The kingdom of Heaven half-a-dozen 
 
196 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 houses where nobody wants to go are to be shut to the 
 nouveaux riches." 
 
 " I might persuade her." 
 
 Stephen laughed. " Not you ; I've tried it myself. 
 But, after all, cut bonof Do you want to go to the Tem- 
 plegroves or to the Arlingfords ? Because if you do, you 
 must have strange tastes. No, my dear fellow, leave it 
 alone. My sister has little to amuse herself with now but 
 her exclusiveness, and her crusade against outsiders, and 
 I like her to be amused. Why, I beat up recruits for her, 
 and strongly persuade all the dullest hostesses in London 
 to be guided by Constantia, and to close their doors to 
 the nouveaux riches. They wouldn't go there in any case, 
 you know, so, when my hint is carried out, nobody is hurt, 
 and my sister is pleased. Tell me now, what news do you 
 get from the Cape? What is it you are all agitating for? 
 Can't you make millions fast enough?" 
 
 Stephen spoke with interest. Again he was entertain- 
 ing Louis at the Club. He did not quite like the fellow, 
 and this was only the second time he had been alone with 
 him, but Stephen was a politician, and South African 
 affairs had always interested him ; he too had had letters 
 from Karl. 
 
 " I suppose you've heard from my brother. Karl is a 
 bit of a faddist, you know. Kruger has trodden on his 
 toes in some way or another, and, like a fool, Karl has 
 joined the National Union. I told him what a fool he 
 was to do it. Now nothing will satisfy him but that the 
 English Government should back him up." 
 
 "What is the National Union?" 
 
 " Oh ! a few discontented journalists and lawyers." 
 
 He sketched their aims ; Louis was as ill-informed as 
 he was traitorous. Yet Stephen listened to him with in- 
 terest, and was led by him. Karl had written : " My 
 brother will give you details." All that Louis told him, 
 however, made light of the crisis, ignored the seriousness 
 of the situation, described the conduct of the Boer Police 
 as on a par with that of the Metropolitan Brigade, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 197 
 
 and left Stephen Hayward under the impression that the 
 members of the National Union were the Hooligans 
 against whom they made war. 
 
 In fairness to Louis Althaus, it must be admitted that 
 this was not wilful misrepresentation. Nothing that was 
 not personal to himself interested him. He spoke as he 
 felt, as he thought. Karl was a great man at finance, 
 but why the deuce need he meddle with politics ? Stephen 
 could not know that Karl's adopted brother was so totally 
 at variance with Karl's own feelings and opinions. He 
 concluded that the letter he had received very temper- 
 ately had Karl written to Stephen was an exaggerated 
 version of public feeling, that Karl's object in writing it 
 was merely to give him, Stephen, and his party, a pre- 
 text for attacking the Government. But they had other 
 weapons. 
 
 He hoped Louis would give him the pleasure of his 
 company another evening at the Club. He apologised for 
 having to go to the House, he asked Louis if he would 
 care to accompany him; he was sure of a seat in the 
 gallery for distinguished strangers. Louis regretted his 
 inability to go, pleading another engagement. Louis was 
 not fond of being an onlooker, and, listening to a debate, 
 however lively, and on whatever topic, was not his way 
 of amusing himself. He preferred to go on to Castle- 
 maine House, where there was a reception, and where he 
 would meet Lady Violet. He must ask Violet about Con- 
 stantia Hayward and about the Crusade. 
 
 Castlemaine House, where once Johnson had dined, 
 where often Sir Joshua Reynolds had been entertained, 
 where Topham Beauclerc had made love to the outraged 
 wife of Sir Richard Vane, and George III. had com- 
 mented on the extravagances of the table, was now the 
 town abode of a wealthy brewer. Doves circled above 
 its flat roof, and made strange noises that broke in upon 
 the music. Portraits of brewing worthies and their an- 
 cestors filled the frames made for Stuart kings ; modern 
 imitations of Chippendale's designs took the place of 
 
198 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Jacobean furniture. In the library, whither Violet led 
 Louis after the dance, there was hardly room for histori- 
 cal associations; it was overfilled with curtains and up- 
 holstery, and unused modern books in impossible modern 
 bindings. 
 
 " Are you going to the fancy-dress ball at Templegrove 
 House?" Louis asked Violet. 
 
 " I don't care about it. I suppose I shall have to 
 go." 
 
 " I don't like your going," he said softly. " I don't like 
 your going anywhere where I cannot be with you." 
 
 " Oh ! if it comes to that," she said, and hesitated. 
 
 " I know. The Duches^ is one of Miss Hayward's sup- 
 porters ; she will not invite any but aristocrats," he an- 
 swered with a short laugh. " She is your aunt, isn't 
 she?" 
 
 "Yes. You would like to go?" 
 
 " I like to go wherever you go." 
 
 The tip of her nose and the lobes of her ears grew pink ; 
 it was the famous Alncaster blush. 
 
 " I think I think I could get a card for you." 
 
 " Only if you would like me to be there." 
 
 " What would you go as ?" 
 
 " I should first ask you your costume." 
 
 " Oh," she said lightly, " Xantippe has been suggested." 
 
 " Not if I went. I should ask you to go as Beatrice." 
 
 " To your Benedict ?" The idea was not unpleasing. 
 
 " To my Benedict." 
 
 " For one night only ?" She was coquettish. 
 
 " That would be as you might decide." 
 
 It would be a great feather in Louis's cap if he could 
 get an invitation to the famous fancy-dress ball at the 
 Duchess of Templegrove's. 
 
 The Duchess of Templegrove was almost the only seri- 
 ous ally Constantia had secured ; and the position of the 
 Duchess was exceptional. After half a century of blue- 
 blooded poverty, twenty odd years of a more than sus- 
 pected marital infidelity, she had been released by Provi- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 199 
 
 dence from her obligation, and had taken salvation at 
 the altar from the hands of her ducal lover. Because the 
 Duchess of Templegrove had so completely forgotten that 
 impecunious shifty countess, whose identity lay hidden 
 amongst her strawberry leaves, she had decided to hold 
 her court in that very holy of holies where reigned the 
 chaste Constantia; or, perhaps, it was because she had 
 not forgotten. And Constantia, whose social conscience 
 permitted no evil thought of a lady whom her sovereign 
 had always received, brushed aside the talk that buzzed 
 about this strange reputation, and welcomed her with 
 outstretched hands. 
 
 But, whereas Constantia's aim was set on the blood 
 boundary, Society roped in, and secured for the nobly 
 born and excellently bred only, the Duchess's extreme 
 anxiety was for the chaste, the untarnished, those who 
 wore their woman's crown of virtuous life shining purely 
 on their brows. 
 
 Therefore, when Lady Violet, who was her niece as 
 well as Constantia, asked her for a card for the famous 
 fancy-dress ball that was to mark the re-opening of Tem- 
 plegrove House, too long closed during the faithful bach- 
 elorhood of the Duke, she did not stop to ask, as Con- 
 stantia might have done, for the pedigree of the gentleman 
 in whose name it was to be made out. Perhaps, had she 
 done so, Louis would still have had his card ; for, if the 
 Duchess of Templegrove feared anything, it was Lady 
 Violet's sharp tongue, and, if the Duchess hoped for any- 
 thing, more than her marriage had given her, it was that 
 Violet's ancestry should solidify the title, and Violet's 
 influence should redeem the character, the misspent youth, 
 of the vicious son who bore her first husband's name. 
 
 Lady Violet got the invitation for Louis Althaus with- 
 out any difficulty. 
 
 Nothing was impossible, nothing was even difficult, for 
 him, he thought exultantly when the coveted pasteboard 
 was in his hand. The same post the very same post 
 that brought it brought his South African mail. And 
 
200 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 it told him that not only was Piet de Groot dead, but his 
 will was unaltered. The farm, then, was his, Louis's, the 
 farm that Karl had wanted. Or, at least, if it was not 
 his, it was Joan's, which came to the same thing. He was 
 exultant in his prospects, in his ability; everything, it 
 seemed to him, he could do everything. 
 
 He must see Joan to-morrow, meanwhile 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 TEMPLEGROVE HOUSE was the centre of London on the 
 night of the ball ; it took a whole posse of policemen and 
 a couple of men on horseback to keep back the crowd of 
 sightseers. Royalty was expected; not only the Prince, 
 but the Princess had promised to appear in costume. 
 Crushing up that historical staircase, illumined in a rare 
 blaze of light, came the fantastic crowd. Exquisite faces 
 of women under quaint headgear, under jewelled crowns, 
 hung with strange symbols in gold and gems, smiled with 
 the joy of the masque, laughed in the triumph of their 
 beautiful hour. Amongst them Beatrice viperous, vixen- 
 ish, bored looked with sharp eyes, with pale face, in- 
 congruous, for the tardy Benedict. 
 
 But, indeed, her Benedict had not tarried. An hour 
 earlier, almost among the first arrivals, Louis, brave in 
 slashed velvet, in pointed shoes, in doublet and hose, car- 
 rying his hat gracefully, as he bore his figure, a Benedict 
 without world-weariness, had mounted those same flower- 
 decked stairs, and had found, facing him, in sudden sur- 
 prise, an unexpected Beatrice, passing fair, and more than 
 passing tall. 
 
 Stephen, with a side thought of poor Constantia locked 
 up in Grosvenor Street with the grim demon of influenza, 
 gravely presented his daughter. Aline, always cold, never 
 particularly gracious, acknowledged the introduction as 
 Constantia would have had her do, with the slightest pos- 
 sible inclination of the head, and an indifferent glance that 
 did not linger. 
 
 Aline was in a dress of white brocade, richly embroi- 
 dered in gold, with a crimson velvet overdress or tunic, 
 lined and trimmed with ermine ; the jewelled stomacher 
 
 201 
 
202 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 was met by the rows of pearls that hung around her throat, 
 her quaint Venetian cap with the white veil flowing from 
 beneath it like a mantilla, was also thickly sewn with 
 pearls. She was very fair that evening, and the young 
 face, vacant, expressionless, cold, with chiselled features, 
 caught Louis's eye. Some wondering thought or remem- 
 brance, as Stephen said, " My daughter/' lay at the back 
 of his mind. Her eyes were almost on a level with his 
 own, he questioned them, and the indifferent glance trans- 
 fixed his own definitely. 
 
 " Your costumes go well together," said Stephen mis- 
 chievously. "Beatrice and Benedict, are they not?" 
 Stephen had a very school-boy humour at times, and, 
 although he did not like Louis Althaus, he thought it 
 would do Aline no harm to talk with him for a few min- 
 utes, and it would be something to tease Con about when 
 she got well. It would serve to show her she must not 
 relegate the duties of chaperon to him. 
 
 " I am representing an Italian lady of the thirteenth 
 century, not Beatrice," Aline answered indifferently, as 
 if she were saying a lesson. 
 
 " Dante's ' Beatrice,' perhaps," said Louis, in that soft 
 voice of his, and then, lower still, the Beatrice with the 
 " sweetest eyes were ever seen." When those eyes turned 
 on him he held them until they wandered. No woman 
 should look upon him indifferently. " Sweetest eyes were 
 ever seen," he repeated; "poor Beatrice she had suf- 
 fered too," he murmured, as the Marquis, in crusader cos- 
 tume, claimed Stephen's ear. For now he began to 
 remember. 
 
 " This gay scene, this laughing crowd is incongruous 
 to you, is it not? May I have a dance?" 
 
 Aline, with her secret locked in her breast, shut in by 
 her reserve, and silent, looked up, suddenly startled, and 
 then away again. He meant nothing, he could mean 
 nothing and yet. She looked hesitatingly at her father ; 
 the Under-Secretary of State was talking eagerly. Louis 
 went on murmuring in his low tones, and now, at least, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 203 
 
 he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had secured her 
 attention. 
 
 " Looking around us at a Catherine, an Imogen, a Mary 
 of Scotland all these beautiful modern women imper- 
 sonating all those martyrs of sex is it not odd to think 
 that, perhaps, locked in the breasts of many of them are 
 stories, modern romances, some, maybe, sadder, stranger, 
 at least, than the old ones?" 
 
 "Who was Catherine? Why do you ask me?" The 
 questions rose involuntarily to her pale lips. He offered 
 her his arm. 
 
 " They are forming for the minuet allow me ?" 
 
 With a hesitating look at Stephen, who was too ab- 
 sorbed to notice it, she went agitatedly with Louis. 
 
 The girl was of that unequalled type, completely Eng- 
 lish, fair of complexion, with golden-brown hair, eyes 
 that had been blue in childhood, but were dark now, 
 under long lashes, and mouth that could hold a secret 
 though it let out one, with its short, upper lip, and full 
 lower one, both softly scarlet. Louis Althaus's heart did 
 not beat faster as she laid her hand on his arm, but he 
 racked his brain to remember. Here, on his arm, by his 
 side, was something Karl had told him, something that 
 might be necessary, useful, vital to them. Some secret 
 was enclosed in that cold, high-bred figure, in that fair 
 head with its quaint head-dress of velvet and pearls. It 
 was his luck, he felt exultantly that it was his luck, to 
 have been introduced to her, that this was another of 
 Karl's cards on the table for him to play with. Whether 
 he was to be in partnership with, or antagonistic to, his 
 brother, it was as well to have the trumps in his own 
 hand. He wished he could remember exactly what Karl 
 had told him about this girl. Never mind, she should 
 tell him herself. He looked at her as he led her through 
 the strange company. He must make her tell him herself ; 
 he had no doubt of success. When had he failed with a 
 woman? And this was a charming vestal. She looked 
 like a Madonna, surely he remembered she had been a 
 
204 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 naughty Madonna, yet the lamp that lit the holy of holies 
 was in her hand. She should guide him where he chose ; 
 nobody should shut their doors against Louis Althaus, 
 there was no reason in it. He really thought there was 
 no reason why any one should shut doors against him. 
 They watched the minuet together, her hand resting 
 lightly on his coat-sleeve. 
 
 " Why did you ask me about these women all having 
 stories?" she asked him abruptly. She had not beem 
 watching, she had only been trying to think. 
 
 How easy women are ! His thin lips smiled under his 
 moustache; he drew his arm closer to his side, as if he 
 would have pressed her hand against it. 
 
 " Do you think they have?" 
 
 " I don't know ; why should I know ?" 
 
 " How well you women keep your secrets !" 
 
 " What secrets ? I haven't got any secrets," she stam- 
 mered; then she drew herself up, cloaked herself in her 
 coldness, and copied Constantia's voice. " Will you take 
 me back to my father, please?" 
 
 " Don't ask me to take you back to your father. I want 
 to know something; I want you to tell me something. 
 Are you frightened of me ? Do you want me to go away 
 because I know you have have had a secret ?" 
 
 The colour flushed painfully in her cheek, went down 
 again, and left it pale. 
 
 " I don't know I don't know what you mean." She 
 was trembling, and all the maturity had gone from her 
 face and expression, which were piteous now and child- 
 like. 
 
 He drew her a little out of the crowd. 
 
 " I am very sorry, very sorry." The little burr on his 
 " r's" softened all the sentence, and his voice was full of 
 tender solicitude. " I have distressed, upset you. You 
 are faint ; the heat, too lean on my arm ; the conserva- 
 tory is just at the side. We can sit down there and talk. 
 You shall not be sorry, I promise you shall not be sorry 
 that I know." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 205 
 
 It was a child's face she turned on him, not a woman's 
 - a frightened child's ; he was exultant at the success of 
 his move. 
 
 " Good heavens ! if I could only remember what it was 
 Karl told me," was in his mind, as he piloted her through 
 the crowd to where a green forest of palms made dusk 
 and solitude about them ; that Karl had told him nothing 
 made the reminiscence difficult ! 
 
 " Who who told you ?" She clutched at his hand ; she 
 was nothing but a distressed child. He held her hand and 
 soothed her. 
 
 "What does it matter who told me? What does it 
 matter how I know ? Don't look like that. Sit down here 
 by me. Shall I get you a glass of water ?" 
 
 " No, no, stay with me, tell me." She was almost in 
 tears. He patted her hand, caressed her, and soothed her 
 with voice and touch, and her hand clung to his. 
 
 " For two years, two whole years, nobody has spoken 
 to me about it. He is dead, you know; you are not 
 going to tell me he isn't dead ! I can't bear it I won't 
 bear it I won't go back to him he has sent you ?" 
 
 " Nobody has sent me." 
 
 " What does he want what must I do?" She wrung 
 her hands. " Oh ! I am frightened ; take me back to my 
 father. I want to go home, I want to be with Aunt Con." 
 
 Louis was amazed. The cold and stately Beatrice was 
 like a baby crying before it was hurt. He understood 
 women, but children were strange to him. 
 
 " Who told you? Oh ! who told you? Aunt Con told 
 me nobody knew, or would ever know." 
 
 " Nobody has told me ; don't be silly. Nobody is going 
 to hurt you. I know everything, but I'm not going to do 
 you any harm. Only you must do as I tell you." 
 
 " I always do what people tell me," she answered for- 
 lornly. 
 
 In another five minutes he had begun to understand 
 to understand what no one in the world about her under- 
 stood, what even Constantia shut away from her knowl- 
 
206 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 edge, and Stephen had no time more than to suspect. 
 Locked up in speechlessness, under that conventional 
 mask in which they had encased her, was only the out- 
 raged child whose mental growth had stopped. Fair and 
 stately as she looked, with that young patrician air and 
 proud demeanour, she was empty of spontaneity, or con- 
 scious volition, she always did what she was told; that 
 was the pathetic keynote of her attenuated will. 
 
 Louis's wonderful eyes got behind the mask. At first 
 she shivered and cried in the nakedness of her soul before 
 him, the poor conventional garments slipped so easily from 
 her trembling fingers. But soon there was some fearful 
 pleasure in it; his words were so gentle. Then, in the 
 green solitude of the palms he was kind to her. He had 
 even kissed her, they were not a kissing family, the Hay- 
 wards, she clung to him and kissed him in return, and 
 promised thenceforth she would do only what he told 
 her. It did not seem worth Louis's while to investigate 
 very closely the nature of the secret she held. There is 
 only one secret between a girl and a man, Louis thought. 
 
 " You are happier now, dear ?" he asked her gently, 
 " now that you have some one you can talk to about it." 
 Indeed she felt warmer, happier, but she wanted him to 
 stay with her, to kiss her again. With tact he garmented 
 her soul for her again, and when he led her forth she 
 was clothed conventionally as usual, with her head erect 
 and her lips almost firm. 
 
 He led her back to her father, then he sought a mo- 
 ment's solitude in the crowd. His thoughts were wander- 
 ing, his success exhilarated him. He appeared to have 
 unlimited knowledge, power, strength; his vanity fed 
 voluptuously on his powers. He did not arrange his 
 thoughts sequently. But, it seemed to him, he had all that 
 Karl had wanted Joan de Groot, a lever with Stephen 
 Hayward, the Geldenrief, everything. He had never 
 doubted his own cleverness, now he was half intoxicated 
 by it. He thought kindly of Mrs. Rex, of Joan, of all 
 women. Only of Lady Violet Alncaster, to whom he 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 207 
 
 owed his presence in this throng of princes and nobles, he 
 never thought at all ! 
 
 Lady Violet was not used to being forgotten, ignored. 
 She had sought him everywhere ; at last she had seen him 
 emerge from the conservatory with Aline. 
 
 " How now, my Lord Benedict, hast been with Hero ?" 
 she said, stopping before him and addressing him. 
 
 Louis bowed low before her. 
 
 " Will your Grace command me any service to the 
 world's end?" He had studied his part, learnt portions 
 of it by heart, to impress the forgotten sender of the 
 ticket. 
 
 " I have been looking for you everywhere," he went on 
 glibly. 
 
 " In the conservatory with Aline Hay ward ?" she re- 
 torted shrewishy. 
 
 " Oh God ! here is a dish I love not. I cannot endure 
 my Lady Tongue." Lady Violet flushed furiously. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, the quotation came too trippingly. 
 Forgive me. Mr. Hayward left me with his daughter, 
 and she was faint, unwell; I remained with her until 
 now." 
 
 " A brilliant companion for you !" 
 
 " Is she? I was not interested." 
 
 She believed him, but his defection had chilled her 
 feeling for him. In truth, it was flattered vanity rather 
 than feeling. Lord Dolly had called Louis a veneered cad 
 in a gilded frame ; John, her cousin, had said he was no 
 more like a gentleman than an oleograph was like an 
 oil-painting. Everybody had been surprised at seeing him 
 here, and many had commented upon it. Violet felt that 
 she must have fought well for him to have got him an 
 invitation. That he was not humble at her feet had ex- 
 asperated her. Many things had combined to put her in 
 a quarrelsome mood. She had danced the minuet with 
 Lord John, but John had asked where was Aline; and 
 Lord Legoux, of whose future connection with herself, 
 notwithstanding her flirtation with Louis, she had little 
 
208 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 doubt, had stumbled into the house early in the evening 
 in a state that necessitated his sequestration for repairs. 
 John had told her this, the self-satisfied and remarkable 
 Lord John, who, as the family had recently decided, was 
 to marry poor Angela's daughter. 
 
 Now that she had found Louis, somehow or other, 
 whether it was because of what people had said, or of 
 what she herself had noted, or whether it was owing to 
 that unlucky quotation, she too found him oleographic, 
 she discovered suddenly that his charm had gone from 
 him. As a matter of fact, he was not quite himself, he 
 was rather excited and more natural, more the genuine 
 Louis, than usual. He was careless with her, as Louis 
 was apt to be careless with what he thought he had 
 secured. 
 
 Of course he bent his graceful head, and looked un- 
 utterable things, and paid her compliments, but his 
 thoughts were not with her. These two had not begun 
 where they had left off. Very soon they ceased even 
 pretending; Louis forgot his role, wandered a little, 
 talked of the people, the costumes, the scene, generalities. 
 Lady Violet was bored by him. Yet nobody came up to 
 separate them, for Louis had few acquaintances there, and 
 Lady Violet few friends anywhere. So they were left 
 to each other. This embittered her, and none of her ac- 
 quaintances, and few of her relations, escaped the vitriol 
 lap of her tongue. Scandal was a poor feast, but it was 
 better than going away empty; and Louis blundered, 
 perhaps because it was inevitable he should blunder some- 
 times, perhaps only because his thoughts were elsewhere, 
 and his tact failed him. 
 
 There are many things that all men know, and no gen- 
 tlemen say. Louis Althaus said them. 
 
 " Lady Coromandel as a Carmelite nun !" ejaculated 
 Violet, as they stood to review the pageant. " It only 
 wants Lord Killrowen as monk to make the picture 
 perfect." 
 
 " Is that so ? I thought I saw them together the other 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 209 
 
 day, In a strange part of the world too." He had been 
 with Joan ; poor little Joan, he found himself thinking of 
 her constantly to-night, notwithstanding how badly she 
 had behaved to him. " Supping together in a private 
 room in an obscure restaurant. I met them coming down 
 the stairs. Pretty risky, wasn't it?" 
 
 Lady Violet rather curdled up at that. It is one thing 
 to talk scandal about your friends, quite another to have 
 details thrust under your nose. It made her quiet, and 
 her fancy, it was never anything more, for Louis Althaus, 
 became suddenly something of which she was now 
 ashamed. Nevertheless she went on with her flippant 
 talk. 
 
 " Wonderful diamonds Kitty Stephens is wearing." 
 
 " Yes, I heard some fellows talking about them at the 
 Club the other night. Bischopschwein is a millionaire." 
 
 " Oh, there is nothing in that," she said hastily. 
 
 " Well, perhaps not, but personally, although I do 
 believe in platonic love, I don't believe in platonic jew- 
 ellery. The Duchess now," as their hostess came within 
 their view, " had the discretion to be poor, and even in 
 debt, until her husband died." 
 
 Then Lady Violet thought Lord Algy had been right ; 
 the man was a cad, and she never wanted to see him 
 again. It was unfortunate that Louis saw no change in 
 her sentiment towards him, and put down to pique or 
 jealousy her abrupt dismissal. For he might, it is pos- 
 sible, though not probable, that even then he might have 
 repaired his blunders, or smoothed or glossed over their 
 effect. But he noticed nothing except that she had been 
 annoyed at his inattention; which was unfortunate, for 
 there came a time when her distaste for him precipitated 
 a crisis. 
 
 His mental attitude changed when he was again with 
 Aline. Even whilst he had been talking with Violet his 
 thoughts had been occupied with Aline, wondering how 
 he should contrive to set her at ease with him, establish 
 something in the nature of confidential relations. The 
 
 14 
 
210 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 difficulties in his way, difficulties he in no way under- 
 rated, made him eager for success. The girl was half 
 frightened of him ; he saw that when he claimed her for 
 supper from her surprised cousin, the heavy sporting son 
 of the Marquis. 
 
 " You're surely not goin' to supper with that fellow ?" 
 said Lord John, and hurriedly she answered that she was. 
 
 " Why, what will Constantia say ?" 
 
 " I don't know," the tone was dejected ; Aline's lips, 
 usually so tightly closed, were tremulous, her eyes had 
 more expression in them than usual, and it seemed to 
 John that she was unhappy over her supper engagement. 
 He had no time for more, because Louis, hat in hand and 
 persistent, was bowing before them. Aline withdrew her 
 hand from Lord John's arm and walked off with the 
 charming Benedict. 
 
 " I can't make out what has come over all you women," 
 John said discontentedly to his cousin Violet a few min- 
 utes later, when he had emptied his tumbler of cham- 
 pagne. " You're all alike. Here's a fellow like this 
 Althaus, not one of us, in any sense of the word, with the 
 manners of a hairdresser, and the bow of a dancing 
 master, yet, just because he's got a pair of handsome eyes, 
 a confounded way of making himself at home, and a dis- 
 gusting habit of quoting poetry, you all run after him 
 like a flock of sheep. First you, Violet, who've got brains, 
 though you are such a shrew, and now Aline, who really 
 has been better trained, and ought to know a bounder 
 when she sees one, even if it's only by force of contrast." 
 
 " By comparing him with her brilliant cousin John," 
 Violet interpolated mockingly. " Don't grumble about 
 it. Show your jealousy another way. Cut him out; 
 propose to Constantia for Aline's hand, in correct form 
 to-morrow morning, and make a clause in the contract 
 that she shall not be allowed to speak to any one without 
 the express permission of her noble husband John, the 
 Autocrat." 
 
 John flushed a little under his thick skin, and a little 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 flicker of resentment showed itself in his dull eyes. He 
 had already proposed for Aline, and Violet knew it. His 
 father's wishes, Aline's coldness, her difference from 
 other flippant maidens like the one by his side, had per- 
 suaded him that she would grace his future position, and 
 he had made his formal proposal at the end of her first 
 season. But the thought of marriage was horrible to 
 Aline, difficult even to Constantia and Stephen. Her 
 story would have to be told, and neither John nor his 
 father might accept it with equanimity. The girl had 
 begged to be allowed to refuse the proffered honour ; and 
 she was still so young. On the plea of her youth the 
 elders procrastinated, delayed their answer, asked John 
 to refrain from pressing the question, and John, the phleg- 
 matic, refrained. He was not ardent ; he was in no hurry. 
 He had thrown the handkerchief, the result was in no 
 doubt. How could they, or anybody, do better, or as 
 well? He was even satisfied, secretly gratified at the 
 correctness of demeanour of his proposed bride, the re- 
 luctance of her maidenhood, it all fitted in with his prig- 
 gism, but it soiled her to put the tips of her fingers on 
 Louis Althaus's coat. He grumbled to Violet, whom, 
 years ago, when she was straight from the school-room, 
 fresh and bright, he had had some dim intention of train- 
 ing for the same position to which he now destined Aline. 
 It was in pursuance of that abandoned intention he had 
 assumed the post of mentor over her, lectured her on the 
 enormity of speaking flippantly to her mother, of talking 
 about things that she ought not to know, of smoking 
 cigarettes, of the hundred and one little freaks that so 
 speedily developed when she had emerged from the chrys- 
 alis stage. They had desperate quarrels, and it was after 
 one of these thaf he decided she was not the wife for him ; 
 he made this announcement to her and she laughed at 
 him and called him a prig, her lightness shocked him 
 further, her conduct irritated him. She was fast, she 
 flirted Lord John retired definitely, and Violet, secretly 
 piqued, deteriorated, and grew sharp-tongued, as we have 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 seen her. A sort of true was patched up between them, 
 however, and, though they never met without dispute, 
 they sought rather than avoided the opportunity of rinding 
 fault with each other. 
 
 " Do you include me among the victims to Louis Alt- 
 haus's fascinations?" 
 
 " Why do you call him Louis Althaus, why not Mr. 
 Althaus?" 
 
 " Why not Mr. Althaus, or Herr von Althaus ?" she 
 repeated mockingly ; " simply, my dear coz, because he 
 likes to be called Louis Althaus, or Louis " 
 
 " Pish, you can't make me believe you call the fellow 
 by his Christian name." 
 
 " There's a brother Karl ; they generally speak of them 
 as Karl Althaus, or Louis Althaus, to distinguish. That 
 is really why." 
 
 She was grateful that he did not believe she called him 
 " Louis," and threw him the explanation in acknowledg- 
 ment. 
 
 " You needn't be frightened about Aline ; she's not 
 Con's pupil for nothing, she'll be ashamed of herself 
 to-morrow for having been unable to avoid speaking to 
 him, and Con will rub it in. It looks like one of Uncle 
 Stephen's tricks, just to get a rise out of Constantia by 
 telling her what happens when she leaves him to do the 
 work of chaperon. You know he hates it." 
 
 " Why isn't Aunt Con here?" 
 
 " A sudden attack of ' flue.' In the ordinary way Aline 
 would have had to stop at home, but, with the Duchess, 
 you know," she mocked Constantia's prim speech, " whose 
 aims are the same as my own, my dear niece will 
 be safe not to meet any discordant element under her 
 roof." 
 
 " And how is it that she isn't safe how came the 
 fellow here?" 
 
 Violet looked at him. Inclined to be stout, not quite up 
 to the middle height, with heavy brow, and outdoor com- 
 plexion, he nevertheless represented the romance of her 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 youth. She always wanted the good opinion she always 
 forfeited. 
 
 " I suppose that he or some of his people have backed 
 bills, or lent money, or whatever it is they do, for Lord 
 Legoux, and this is his mother's way of showing grati- 
 tude," she answered after a moment's hesitation, then 
 glanced down again at her plate, and went on dissecting 
 her quail, and relieving it of the unnecessary aspic. 
 
 " If you're going to marry Legoux, why don't you do 
 it, and pay these things for him, and keep him straight ?" 
 John was growling; it was horribly distasteful to speak 
 of these disgraceful transactions, and to think of Aline 
 knowing them. John would have tried to keep all his 
 women-kind in Eastern seclusion, behind bars. And 
 Violet, though she gave him a look that some men might 
 have understood, did not tell him ^vhy she did not dower 
 Lord Legoux with her fortune, or why she had procras- 
 tinated with her fate until his was decided. 
 
 Meanwhile, Louis had sought Aline again, had mur- 
 mured in her ear, had sufficiently engaged her attention, 
 and now was supping with her. He found however that 
 he had not, after all, produced quite the effect on Aline 
 that he had intended. He could read again reluctance, 
 fear in her face, but he could read also a desire to be with 
 him, to hear what he had to say, to know what he 
 would do. 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 WHEN Louis got home, rather excited, exultant, his 
 half-formed plans, and the assistance he would force from 
 Stephen Hayward's daughter, caught fast in the meshes 
 of his vanity, he found Joan's delayed letter. 
 
 " Louis, my Louis, I can bear it no longer. You 
 haven't left me for ever ? you could not be so cruel, could 
 you, dear? I have been wrong to doubt, to torture my- 
 self, and hurt the child perhaps. But, if I am wrong, if 
 you did mean Oh, Louis, I am crying to you. Help me ! 
 Once you loved me, you loved my weakness better than 
 my strength; there is nothing but weakness left. Help 
 me through these few months to come, I cannot bear them 
 else. I am frightened don't despise me for being fright- 
 ened. I am so alone no woman has ever been so alone 
 and at such a time. / fear, I fear, I fear. Oh, Louis, be 
 kind to me just a little while, whatever you mean. I am 
 not afraid of the pain or of death. I wish I were dead, if 
 indeed I have lost you. I am ill, ungainly, ugly, and you 
 are you, my love, so beautiful. How can I hope to keep 
 you ? But I am starving for the sound of your voice, the 
 touch of your hand. Pity me! If you have left off 
 loving me, don't let me know it for these few months at 
 least. I am half mad with loneliness and terror. If I 
 were not mad I could not write, for you have left me 
 alone during these awful days and nights, and for nothing. 
 Oh, my lover, how could you do it ? Is it because I have 
 nothing left to give or offer ? My brain is dull, my body 
 distorted ; like a beggar, then, I will ask alms of you, a 
 little care, forgiveness, if I need it, some strength of 
 yours to lean on now that I am all weakness. You would 
 not refuse a beggar alms, none of you ever do ; throw me 
 214 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 215 
 
 a word. How often I feel for you in the darkness and 
 the emptiness always. Did you mean six months when 
 you said ' For Ever' ? Was I the fool who did not know 
 the game you played, the language you spoke? But, if 
 indeed this be so, for God's sake, for the child's sake, let 
 it mean another three. Forgive me, I am wronging you 
 you only meant to punish me for not telling you every- 
 thing I did. You did not mean to leave me it is only 
 your way, your strange way of loving. Hope is coming 
 back to me as I write, your beautiful eyes will read, will 
 grow soft, my love forgive me, love me. I can't argue 
 with you ; you are right always, whatever you do, what- 
 ever you say." 
 
 Success had made him soft. These dear women, poor 
 things ! It was two in the morning ; his eye wandered 
 doubtfully to the clock and the looking-glass behind it. 
 How Joan would love to see him in his Benedict clothes ; 
 it was a pitiful letter. His brougham was still at the 
 door. James had waited to hear the orders for to-morrow. 
 Should he ? He hesitated poor Joan ! 
 
 And he knew now the will was all right. 
 
 He had his key, he knew the door would be on the latch. 
 She felt for him, poor little woman! and his place was 
 empty always; it was pathetic. She would love to see 
 him in his fancy dress ; and he was too excited to sleep, 
 the music was still in his ears. He went into the bedroom, 
 brushed up his moustache, settled his hair, adjusted his 
 knee-buckles. 
 
 Rolling through the silent streets in the brougham with 
 its rubber-tyred wheels, he thought kindly of himself. 
 How easily he was moved, how quickly, after all, he 
 forgave, although it was against his principles. The very 
 moment she wrote to him he went to her, though it was 
 three in the morning, and he was in fancy costume. He 
 had not even stopped to change his dress. She would 
 appreciate that; she would be grateful for that. When 
 he put his latch-key into the door, quietly as he did it, a 
 blind was lifted, a face looked out a hundred times 
 
216 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 every night, a thousand times every day, that face had 
 looked out. He smiled up at her. 
 
 Her eyes were sunken, her face was lined and seamed, 
 she trembled and shook in his arms. And but a few 
 months since she had been such a bright, sweet woman. 
 Even Louis was moved by her aspect. It was pitiful to 
 see the efforts she made to recover herself. She had 
 been awake so many nights, her nerve was broken, a 
 month of solitary confinement would shake the nerves of 
 a strong man, and she was a weak woman and ill. But 
 soon she made the effort to pull herself together, to meet 
 any mood in which he had come to her. How clearly she 
 had begun to see him; it was for praise he had come, 
 for admiration. She wanted to satisfy him, to keep him 
 from arguing; she knew that whatever he had come for 
 she must give him. Above, below, around, in all the 
 world for her just now there was nothing but this man. 
 Mentally and physically she was weak, she groped in 
 blindness, tottered; there was nothing but him to hold 
 on to a figure that dodged her, drew away from her 
 clinging hands, thrust her into deep water wherein she 
 drowned, whilst he looked on for the safety of his raft, 
 his substantial selfishness. But just now, in the darkest 
 moment, when the sea of sickness and loneliness had 
 broken over her and nearly overwhelmed her, when the 
 sky was black and the sun and moon hidden, he had come. 
 Of course, again she held out clinging hands, answered 
 his demands, yielded under torture. 
 
 " That's right ; pull yourself together. After all it's 
 not such an immense time since I was here, and you know 
 you ought not to have written " 
 
 Don't don't " 
 
 " I won't, we won't discuss it, not now. What do you 
 think of my fancy dress ? I knew you would like to have 
 a look at it. You feel better now, don't you ? I meant to 
 have my photograph taken to-morrow for you, but the 
 reality is better than the photograph, isn't it?" He gave 
 her another light caress, went over to the looking-glass, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 217 
 
 pulled down his doublet. " The tights fit well, don't they ? 
 I have a woollen pair underneath ; it's a tip I learnt from 
 an actor. Well, are you satisfied with me? Eh?" 
 
 " Nobody in the room could have looked like you." 
 She was regaining her balance; her eyes began to focus 
 him. How handsome he was in the short doublet, all 
 slashed and richly broidered ; his head rose from the ruff 
 in splendid strength and vigour, his face was a little pale 
 from fatigue, but the dark eyes were brilliant, he smiled 
 on her, or on the reflection he saw. 
 
 " I dare say you wouldn't have been the only one to 
 say that," he said, smiling in pleasant remembrance. 
 " The most beautiful girl in the room, the daughter of 
 the Honourable Stephen Hayward, was my Beatrice; I 
 went in to supper with her. One of the photographer 
 fellows who were there told me I wore my clothes better 
 than any of the men he had taken." 
 
 What did it matter to Joan what he said? The sound 
 of his voice was enough ; she was no longer alone. His 
 voice was in the room, his presence filled it. He talked 
 for half-an-hour of himself and of the ball, talked himself 
 into good-humour. 
 
 Lying by his side later, the dawn coming greyly 
 through the window, she tried with all the brain that was 
 left, to show him her anguish, to make him see what her 
 pain had been. It was not that she had any real hope or 
 belief in him ; he had killed all that. But it pleased him 
 to-night to play the lover, and in her desperation she made 
 her appeal. His coming like this had satisfied nothing, 
 shown her nothing, if she had been nearly drowned in her 
 loneliness, she was still wet and shivering, almost in 
 despair as she held on to him. Yes! she must try and 
 make him understand. 
 
 " Louis ! You are very good to me to-night. You say 
 you still love me. Perhaps you have not meant to be so 
 cruel; but you don't know what it is to be ill, and not 
 able to think, and to be alone all the time." 
 
 " Well ! you are not alone now. Go to sleep ; haven't 
 
218 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 I been good to you to-night ? What's the matter with you 
 now, anyway?" He was sleepily good-humoured. 
 
 " I can't sleep. I have forgotten how to sleep. Louis, 
 listen, I am desperate. Don't go away to-morrow and 
 not come back. I don't know how to bear it, the watch- 
 ing for you, not knowing if you are ever coming, not 
 knowing what I should do; all the day I watch, and all 
 the nights. My baby, too, Louis, all his movements are 
 the heaving breaths of a baby that has been crying too 
 long, and I can't soothe it. It hurts me so that I can't 
 take it in my arms and soothe it. Oh, Louis ! don't make 
 us cry all the time; already all the brightness has gone 
 out of its eyes, its breaths are convulsive. Louis! if it 
 should die, crying ; it belongs to us ! Whenever I try 
 to think, I think of that that it will die crying." 
 
 "Go to sleep now go to sleep now, there's a dear ; 
 don't nag. You'll feel better in the morning. I am very 
 tired; this is the third night this week I have danced 
 after midnight. Let me go to sleep. I love to feel so 
 tired and to go to sleep." That was all Louis could find 
 to say, though he kept his arms drowsily about her, and 
 felt vaguely, sleepily, that after all it was a dear little 
 mistress he had here. 
 
 She let him sleep on ; it was impossible to talk to him, 
 impossible to make him understand. But here he was 
 and he had loved her, he was here beside her, her awful 
 solitude gone. She listened to his steady breathing, still 
 he was " like myrrh unto her." Presently she felt calmer, 
 safer, left off trying to reason, or think. At last she too 
 .slept. 
 
 They breakfasted together. 
 
 He came down fresh, debonair, smiling, he had let her 
 wait on him, and get out his things, he declared he had 
 not missed his valet. He talked all through the breakfast- 
 time, of himself chiefly, with something thrown in of her 
 failings now and again as a make-weight, but always 
 with the air, with the free admission, that for the moment 
 she was forgiven. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 219 
 
 The coffee was good, the bacon and eggs were not con- 
 spicuously bad, and he had that wonderful sense of self- 
 satisfaction that made him feel at peace with all the world. 
 He had made Joan happy, poor little woman, poor dear 
 little woman. It really was good of him, he thought, to 
 have come straight here last night; no one could say he 
 was not thoughtful and kind and forgiving, even gen- 
 erous. Last night he had indeed had a triumph, a veri- 
 table triumph, and on Saturday he would see Aline again, 
 but, immediately Joan had written him properly, he had 
 come to her. He talked about the ball to Joan, he told 
 her about Lady Violet and the Duchess, and, when he 
 told her of the old love story, and of the Duke's fidelity, 
 her eyes glistened and his own met them sympathetically; 
 it was not difficult for Louis to look sympathetic. 
 
 " And now they are happy ? He knew she gave up 
 everything to him. He loves her better for not saving 
 her self-respect at his expense?" 
 
 It was a wistful question that she put to him she 
 wanted his spoken answer, it was a question she had so 
 often asked herself. She got it with a smile to illumine 
 the words. " Of course, of course, you know that." 
 
 " You've told me so." 
 
 " And isn't that enough?" 
 
 She smiled, she sighed her answer. Looking at her 
 tenderly, he thought how she had gone off, how old she 
 looked, with wrinkles at the corners of her eyes; he 
 thought what a fool a man must be who marries his mis- 
 tress, and then he went round to where she sat, put his 
 arm around her, and kissed her cheek. 
 
 " What questions you ask ; how hard you are to sat- 
 isfy," he said. 
 
 ' There is nothing in the world I want except your 
 love." 
 
 " And didn't last night tell you you had it ?" She could 
 not explain to him all over again what she needed, what 
 she missed. She must take her punishment bravely ; she 
 knew now something of what she had done. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I suppose I am very exacting/' she said mechanically. 
 
 " You forget what calls I have on my time ; it is not 
 only business, though there has been an awful rush these 
 past few days, there's hardly a moment not occupied. 
 I'm engaged three or four deep every night this week. 
 Then Saturday there's Ranelagh" he could not resist 
 talking about it " I dare say I shall drive Stephen Hay- 
 ward and his daughter down." 
 
 ''' The Beatrice of last night?" 
 
 '* Yes ; I am rather anxious to see how she looks in the 
 daytime a beautiful girl in the evening." 
 
 " Have I to be jealous ?" she asked, with a smile ; but, 
 strangely enough, that pain she had not felt, her nature 
 was too simple, Louis's love-making was too recent; to 
 suspect him of loving another would have been impossible 
 to her. 
 
 " You need never be jealous," he answered hastily. 
 " Have I not told you there had never been a woman in 
 my life until I met you? But Karl wants me to get in 
 with the Haywards ; it's vital to the cause that the Hay- 
 wards should be in it." 
 
 " I know." 
 
 " Now, come and sit down and have a cosy chat. 
 There's something I want to talk to you about." Could 
 there be a better time, a better occasion, to clinch that little 
 matter of the transference of the farm ? 
 
 The breakfast things cleared away, she settled herself 
 in her favourite position on a stool at his feet, her head 
 resting against his knees, his hand caressing her hair. 
 That last month seemed like a dream, an unhappy night- 
 mare. If it were not the Louis of which she had dreamed, 
 it was a dear Louis, nevertheless ; and one who loved her 
 in his own way ! 
 
 " You remember when we last spoke ?" 
 
 Did she remember ! 
 
 " Yes," she answered, in a very low tone. 
 
 " It was about your husband " 
 
 " Don't call him my husband," she whispered hurriedly, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 221 
 
 for now her breath was coming very quickly, and her 
 heart was beating fast. For hope is hard to kill, and for 
 what had he come? He went on, soothing her with his 
 hand. 
 
 " You knew he was ill." 
 
 " Yes yes you've heard ?" 
 
 " Hush, hush ! I've heard little or nothing. I want to 
 put a case to you." 
 
 " My dear," she had his hand against her lips, " say 
 anything tell me anything Piet is is go on " He 
 went on, not missing his cue. 
 
 " Yes, he is ill, very ill Karl writes it to me ; he writes 
 me also about the farm." 
 
 Yes go on." 
 
 "Don't be impatient," he chided her gently. "You 
 would like to do something for me, wouldn't you?" 
 
 " Something, my lover, my sweetheart, anything, every- 
 thing! But what can I do? what?" 
 
 " Well, it is possible, it is just possible, if De Groot 
 never got your letter, if if, in short, he knows nothing 
 of what we are to each other " 
 
 Her head, that had been raised in question, sank again 
 upon his knees. What we are to each other ! what we are 
 to each other ! what words ! and Piet ill, perhaps dying ! 
 How sweet the touch of him, his dear hands, one she had 
 in hers, crushed against her lips. Louis was satisfied 
 with her attitude ; he went on : 
 
 " It's just possible, I say, if he knows nothing of what 
 is going on, that he will remember what a brute he was to 
 you " 
 
 " He wasn't a brute to me ; I was a bad wife to him. 
 I know now," she interposed softly, rubbing his hand up 
 and down against her cheek. 
 
 " Let me speak for once ; don't interrupt me every 
 time I open my mouth. I say, if he remembers how he 
 behaved to you, it is possible, just possible, that he may 
 try to make amends to you by leaving you the farm." 
 
 At that she left off her caressing movements and sat 
 
222 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 up. " He settled the farm on me when we were married," 
 she said, surprised. 
 
 " Did he ? Well, I want you, just to please me, and 
 because I know Karl would like it Karl has been very 
 good to me, and I should like you to do something for 
 him to sign a paper. I had the thing drawn up some 
 days ago, for I knew you would never say ' no' to any- 
 thing I asked you." But when his hand sought her hair, 
 she had shrunk back a little, and was gazing at him. 
 " A paper," he continued easily, " saying that in the event 
 of the farm coming to you, you would let us have it, let 
 Karl or me have it, on certain terms." 
 
 He drew a paper from his note-case ; but she had risen 
 to her feet, and was standing up, watching him, startled, 
 her thoughts bewildered. 
 
 " Here is the paper, it gives you five hundred shares in 
 the Geldenrief mine, five hundred fully paid shares ; you 
 will be quite a rich woman," he said, banteringly, running 
 his eyes over the paper he had opened. " You've only got 
 to put your name here ; we can ca'll up the slavey to wit- 
 ness it. Here, where's the ink? It's a wonderful thing 
 you writing women never do seem to have a pen and ink 
 handy!" 
 
 " I'm not a writing woman any more, nor a thinking 
 one," she said, putting her hand to her forehead, trying 
 to grasp clearly what he was asking of her. 
 
 " Read the paper to me, Louis, read it ; I don't under- 
 stand." 
 
 " You need not bother to understand ; you've only got 
 to sign it." 
 
 " But what has the Geldenrief mine to do with me ? 
 What have I to do with it? Read it to me." 
 
 He was rather proud of the wording of that paper ; he 
 had drawn it up himself. It had a legal-sounding phrase- 
 ology, was full of " whereas" and such words as " mes- 
 suages, tenements and hereditament," of " provided that" 
 and " in pursuance with." He read it rather slowly, with 
 emphasis on all the long words, his rolling " r V length- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 223 
 
 ening them. When he had finished and looked up, she 
 was smiling. 
 
 " Where did you get that paper, Louis ? Some one has 
 been hoaxing you ; it's a burlesque, it's a farrago of non- 
 sense." 
 
 The lines round his mouth showed. 
 
 " Since when have you been a judge of law? This is 
 a legal instrument." 
 
 " Don't be vexed, dear. My mind doesn't work as it 
 used. I've grown stupid, I know; but, if the farm 
 belongs to me, and comes to me from Piet, how can I 
 have five hundred shares in the mine when he wouldn't 
 even let your brother have it surveyed for gold ?" 
 
 She was irritating him, but he controlled himself for 
 the moment. 
 
 " Well, say it is a farrago of nonsense, say there is 
 nothing in the paper at all, sign it all the same, sign it 
 to oblige me." 
 
 " I couldn't do that ; you see, dear, as far as there is 
 any sense in it at all, it binds me to an impossibility." 
 
 " What do you mean by an impossibility ?" 
 
 " I mean that it binds me, if I become possessed of 
 Piet's farm, to sell it for the very purpose he most dis- 
 liked." 
 
 " But would it be his wishes you would want to carry 
 out or mine ? Think well before you answer ; you know 
 I don't regard these things lightly." 
 
 His mouth was hard, his narrow chin aggressive; her 
 heart sank, she knew him in this mood. She answered 
 gently, so gently that the tone almost soothed him. 
 
 " I would give my life for you ; you know I would 
 give my life for you." 
 
 He came over to her and put his arm around her, the 
 paper still in his hand. 
 
 " What is the use of arguing ? ' Let's contend no 
 more.' Karl wants this paper signed; even if you are 
 right, and it is waste paper, it can't do any harm." 
 
 She responded to his caress, and moved closer to him. 
 
224 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " But don't you see, darling, it would be leaving Karl 
 under a wrong impression, making him think that when 
 the farm came to me he would have it for his own pur- 
 poses ?" 
 
 " But if his purpose was my purpose ?" Louis had 
 hard work to control his irritated voice : he hated to have 
 to plead to her. 
 
 " If it was your purpose, his purpose, my own purpose, 
 it would make no difference. If, through Piet not know- 
 ing, not having had my letter, he should still have left 
 the farm to me, or if it, nevertheless, comes to me under 
 my marriage settlement, I would not take it I could not 
 take it. You know I could not rob him, because he was 
 dead because he did not know what I had done before 
 he died. You would not let me do it, Louis" she ap- 
 pealed to him " you would not, dear ; say you would 
 not wish that I took anything from his hand, from any 
 hands but yours. Those five hundred shares would burn 
 and stain. Darling because I am what I am darling, 
 you would not have me do that ; say you would not." 
 
 " Oh ! I can't argue with a woman." He disengaged 
 himself from her. " You're all wrong ; I haven't time to 
 argue with you. If you can't see it for yourself, it is 
 waste of breath for me to try to show it to you. You own 
 you can't think, that your brain doesn't work, then why 
 not let me think for you? To whom do you owe any- 
 thing to me or to him? Tell me that. Don't you know 
 I wouldn't ask you to do anything against your own 
 interests ?" 
 
 " Surely there is no question of interest ; it is one of 
 right and wrong." 
 
 " And who made you the judge?" he asked rudely. 
 
 She feared, she dreaded the scene she saw impending. 
 
 " It's always the same when I tell you anything, or ask 
 you anything. You hold your tongue, as if I wasn't 
 worth arguing with. I want to thrash this matter cat." 
 
 " To thrash this matter out" meant that he wanted to 
 say the same thing over and over again. Her heart sank, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 225 
 
 but she tried to convince him. She followed him to the 
 window. 
 
 " I told James to be here at eleven ; it's past that," he 
 said. " There's no good my wasting my time here." 
 
 " Louis, dear," she said, touching his arm very gently, 
 " I want to argue, I want to try and explain myself. Will 
 you listen ? Don't be angry with me before I begin, don't 
 make up your mind to be angry with me." 
 
 " Oh, I'll listen right enough. Fire away ; but you 
 must hurry up, for I'm due in the city." 
 
 " Louis, dear, whether this paper is good in law or not, 
 I don't know, you do ; and you tell me it provides that if 
 I ever inherit or become possessed of Piet's farm, I under- 
 take to sell it, or give it to your brother, in consideration 
 of five hundred shares in the mine he proposes opening 
 there. Is that right?" 
 
 " Quite right." 
 
 " Well, I dare say I expressed myself badly before, and 
 you did not understand what I meant." 
 
 She was speaking very quietly now ; she was the same 
 Joan, almost, that had refused to share in any of Karl's 
 schemes, and had described them to him by their right 
 name. 
 
 " We will say, for the sake of argument, that this possi- 
 bility, this remote possibility, comes true, that Piet is 
 dead, that he has left no will, or one made in ignorance, 
 and that the farm has become mine by law. Dearest, if 
 I had been his wife, his good and loyal wife, I should 
 have kept it ; but, even then, I know, I do know I should 
 have felt myself bound to carry out his wishes respecting 
 it. The wishes of the dead are sacred ; their very power- 
 lessness to enforce them makes such wishes sacred. I 
 think I should have had to leave the farm as he wished it 
 left an oasis of green in the mining country, the un- 
 touched land he inherited from his father, which his 
 father's father found and reclaimed, and in which their 
 graves lie. I gave him no son, but if I had inherited his 
 land, I think, as long as I lived, I must have kept it green 
 
 is 
 
226 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 for him. But now now as it is Louis, dear" for she 
 saw his face was set, and knew she had not moved him 
 " I could take nothing from Piet for myself, who have so 
 dishonoured him ; for our son, who must never oh, my 
 
 God ! if he should ever know and judge " 
 
 . " Nobody need ever know." 
 
 "/ know," she said, in a lower voice, pausing; then 
 hurriedly she went on : "If now by a quibble, an igno- 
 rance, the farm should lapse to me, notwithstanding 
 everything, I would give it back at once, immediately, to 
 the next-of-kin, to the Government, to anybody. I would 
 not, could not, gain advantage by stealing from Piet dead 
 what Piet living would have died rather than give me. 
 Oh, Louis ! I am hoping so hard that you will feel as I 
 do; and my words are so poor. Ever since I've loved 
 you words have failed me, and I can't find a quotation to 
 meet this." Her lips quivered ; she tried to force through 
 the ghost of a smile. " Won't you help me ?" 
 
 He tried, he really tried, to follow her; for, in this 
 contest between them, it was essential to him to win, and, 
 by following her, he might find the clue that would lead 
 him to victory. But it was difficult to him to grasp what 
 she meant, to see from her point of view. Of course, her 
 sense of honour differed from his; there wasn't a drop 
 of good blood in his veins to help him to read her. At 
 last he gave up the intellectual effort, and used instead 
 his easy methods. 
 
 " You may be right. You reason as a woman reasons, 
 but you may be right." 
 
 " God bless you, dear." She put her hand out, and he 
 caught her to him. " You would have seen it before, but 
 I talked so badly. I am ill, overtired. It is a bad time for 
 me just now," she said, leaning against him, hiding her 
 tear-tired eyes. 
 
 " I know, I know. Well, we'll say you are right, feel- 
 ing as you do, thinking as you do. But what about me? 
 Am I not equally likely to be right? Am I never right? 
 Tell me that." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 227 
 
 How could she go on talking? What words were then 
 left to her, leaning against him, his arms around her? 
 
 "Well, am I right?" 
 
 " God knows," she said wearily. 
 
 " Yes ! but that's no good to me. I want you to know." 
 
 There are truths stranger than fiction, trite as the say- 
 ing is ; every day there is an incident that proves it afresh. 
 For weeks she had waited for him; last night he had 
 come. There was no resentment in her, only gladness at 
 his coming. To-day she knew why he had come, and 
 the baseness of it. Yet, standing there with his arms 
 around her, feeling his breath on her hair, she forgot, for 
 an instant, the reason of his coming, and all but his 
 strong comeliness. Her passion for him was like a swell- 
 ing chorus of tumultuous music, the sound overwhelmed 
 her, drowned her intelligence, beat upon her ears. He 
 knew his power with her, and had his victory in sight; 
 he laid a light kiss on the waves of her hair, and it 
 thrilled through her. 
 
 " So you love me all the same," he said, " though I'm 
 never right?" Her lips framed no answer. 
 
 " With your heart and soul?" 
 
 " Ah !" She looked up then. " You have it, with my 
 heart and soul." He caught her back to him again. 
 
 " Then love me with your conscience too." 
 
 It was like Louis to leave her five minutes later without 
 another word about the farm, or about the paper he 
 wanted her to sign, like Louis, too, to be supremely con- 
 tent and assured and self-satisfied. 
 
 " I shall have the paper signed before I'm back in Pic- 
 cadilly," he said to himself, rolling citywards. " The 
 impertinence of the woman to set her will against mine. 
 Well ! they're all alike." 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
 
 WITHIN an hour of Louis's leaving her, Joan heard 
 that De Groot was indeed dead, that he had been dead 
 three weeks, and she learnt, too, that Louis knew it, and 
 had known it all the time. The letter reached her almost 
 before Louis's carriage was out of sight, it was from Van 
 Biene's partner in Pretoria, and it told her that her hus- 
 band had died with his faith in her unbroken. The will, 
 the assignment of the farm, everything, came to her that 
 day from the offices of Van Biene's partner in Pretoria. 
 
 " You know what were his views about the land," wrote 
 Jonathan van Biene. " You are not bound in any way, 
 but he wished it to remain as it was. His father's grave 
 is there, and his grandfather's ; he wishes to be laid beside 
 them. He has provided otherwise for Mrs. Sannig and 
 her children. Only the farm is left to you." 
 
 Joan was not a very strong woman at the best of times, 
 and now her mental as well as her physical strength was 
 strained under the novel conditions. When her mentality 
 was at the lowest ebb, and the better half of her brain 
 was paralysed, phrases came instead of thoughts, not her 
 own, but other people's. To-day, with Van Biene's letter 
 in her hand, and Louis's parting words in her ears, the 
 phrase she saw was Heine's : 
 
 " She was a harlot, and he was a thief, 
 But they loved each other beyond belief." 
 
 The last part of it did not seem to ring quite true, but the 
 first came again and again ; it seemed, indeed, the only 
 thing she could remember, as she sat on the sofa in that 
 little suburban sitting-room, with the deeds of poor Piet's 
 228 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 229 
 
 farm in her hand, and her stunned brain trying to realise 
 her position. Here was Piet's farm in her hand, the 
 farm that Louis wanted. She knew Louis's obstinacy, 
 and the paper stared at her, and she was weak, or felt she 
 was weak, for she loved him with every despairing pulse 
 that beat his worthlessness into her consciousness, where 
 he had set again the impress of his grace and beauty. He 
 had not left the room an hour, yet already she was yearn- 
 ing for his return, for the sound of his voice, for the 
 touch of his hand, for the mere sight of him. 
 
 For a long time after he had left her she sat looking at 
 the papers. The one gleam through the black clouds 
 about her, the one distant possible hope, had been, that, 
 if Piet died, Louis would marry her before the child was 
 born ; then, perhaps, she could influence him ; then, per- 
 haps, the pain she suffered through him would become 
 only a memory. She did not know the value of the asset 
 she had, but she knew that everything Louis wanted 
 became vital to him ; he could brook neither contradiction 
 nor denial, and, above all things, he could brook nothing 
 from her. 
 
 Sitting very still, her hands folded, the paper on her 
 lap, she tried to think closely of the problems before her. 
 She began to realise that this time the issue between them 
 was vital, that Piet was dead, and Louis knew that Piet 
 was dead. He had not asked her to marry him, he had 
 asked her to give him Piet's farm. Could she do it? 
 That was the question, not what he would do with it 
 afterwards ; that she already knew, and she could not be 
 sophistical with herself. He would do with it everything 
 that Piet would not have had him do. The poor dead 
 man! he could not protect himself now against the Alt- 
 haus encroachments, could not protect the land which had 
 become his father's at the time of the great Trek, which 
 they had reclaimed from forest, and planted, and made 
 their own. What was hers was Louis's ; Louis was right 
 there. But could she do it? Her magnetised mind held 
 phrases better than pictures. " She was a harlot and he 
 
230 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 was a thief," wound in and out among the problems of 
 facts and possibilities. If the worst came to the worst, 
 if Louis made her marriage with him dependent on her 
 accepting the legacy, and giving it to him or Karl for 
 mining, could she keep firm, seeing how she loved him ? 
 
 The sun rose high in the heavens, and the warmth and 
 perfume of May were outside that casement windo\, . 
 Inside it seemed dark, and she shivered a little. Her 
 dinner came up and she tried to eat. Another phrase, 
 this time one of her own, came back to her. " I told him 
 he must kill my conscience if he wanted me to do this. 
 How easy it is to him. What has he not killed?" She 
 could not put it into words. 
 
 What was left to her of her womanhood ? Where was 
 her modesty, where her delicacy, reserve, pride? How 
 easily now her eyes were filled with tears, and once she 
 had not known what it was to cry. Where were her 
 dreams? She dared not dream. Would he marry her? 
 Did he mean ? She could not look backward or for- 
 ward and be sure of anything. What little things they 
 were that had made him cruel to her ; and how cruel he 
 had been. It was not strange that, after last night, after 
 that morning episode, she could not think clearly. The 
 documents on her lap, with their scarlet and green seal, 
 the rustling parchment and unfamiliar stamps, were as 
 living things in the room, living things that stood between 
 herself and Louis. 
 
 And without him she could not live ; that was what she 
 thought. She knew her love was one with herself. She 
 knew she was not strong enough to deny him anything 
 whilst the magic of his personal fascination was with her, 
 whilst his voice echoed in her ears, his kisses lingered on 
 her lips, his breath anaesthetised her brain. 
 
 But she was honest. She shuddered at the thought of 
 rearing Louis's babe with Piet's money. What Louis had 
 said to her about the value of the shares in the mine had 
 turned her sick. She had never thought much about 
 money; the Althaus obsession had always been incom- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 231 
 
 prehcnsible to her. Instinctively she felt that Louis was 
 unscrupulous, was less scrupulous even than Karl, and 
 Karl spoke of robbery very lightly. 
 
 Heine's phrase ground itself in, and she reflected mis- 
 erably, " If I had only myself to think of, if I were not 
 going to bear him a child, I might let myself yield, for 
 I am of no consequence a worthless woman, light, lost." 
 
 Whilst her love for Louis had burnt purely, whilst her 
 faith in love was still a white flame, she had never thought 
 of herself thus, but now now . The woman was hon- 
 est. Women who label themselves so proudly might deny 
 this virtue to her, but, nevertheless, it was hers. 
 
 On her lap lay the papers with which she might bring 
 back her lover. But in her womb stirred the babe that 
 was his, and passionately she knew she dared not give 
 him birth, if now she robbed the dead man that the child 
 might know a father. Hope and pride in him were gone, 
 her poor baby, that was Louis Althaus's son. But when 
 he should come into the world he must come with no 
 further stain from her. 
 
 "If I have nothing to give you, my baby, no clean 
 name or heritage, at least, when you lie in my lap, you 
 shall look up at me, and know I have not done this thing 
 to save myself. You shan't come to me and find me thief 
 as well as harlot. Oh, my little son, my baby! would 
 God I had died before I had conceived you !" 
 
 She broke down, and cried miserably enough, with her 
 head pressed against the hard pillow-roll of the horse- 
 hair sofa. But, realising that her strength was limited 
 and the necessity for action lay before her, she checked 
 her tears. The papers had fallen to the ground, she 
 picked them up. How the thought dragged at her heart 
 that Louis wanted them, and yet she must hold them 
 back from him. She must put herself out of danger, 
 beyond the temptation of yielding; she knew her weak- 
 ness, she must make this thing impossible. 
 
 If she were in South Africa now, if only she were in 
 Cape Town, she could have gone to Piet's executors; 
 
232 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 forlornly she thought she might have pleaded to Karl 
 Althaus. Then she saw in fancy the grey strip that had 
 lain between her and Table Mountain as she had steamed 
 over the Bay on board the Arizona, and a sudden home- 
 sickness came upon her, she longed for the shelter of 
 her mountains. She remembered the visits from Karl. 
 Dimly she knew she had more to hope for from Karl than 
 from Louis ; dimly she felt the elder, rougher brother 
 loved her the better. What was hers was Louis's; she 
 had given him, and must always give him, everything. 
 But the farm was not hers to give ; she must dispossess 
 herself of it quickly, immediately, she must put it out of 
 her power to give away what was not hers. 
 
 Van Biene's letter must be answered, but this was not 
 her Van Biene, her friend in Cape Town. The two were 
 brothers, partners ; surely if she wrote to the one, to that 
 wizened, little, old friend of hers in Cape Town, he would 
 understand what she had not been able to make Louis 
 see. 
 
 The ink was dry in the pot, and the pen in the orna- 
 mental inkstand was rusty. The hard, empty blotting- 
 book that lay on the woollen mat was equally imprac- 
 ticable. She had to fetch everything from her own room, 
 but when, at last, she had collected her materials and sat 
 down, she found the words flowed easily enough. She 
 told Van Biene that, when she left Cape Town, she had 
 left De Groot for ever, and that now she was about to 
 become a mother, that Piet, not knowing what she had 
 done, had left her in possession of his farm, but that it 
 would be an infamy to her to keep it, owing it to him. 
 She wished to relinquish all claim to the farm; she 
 wished it to go to his next-of-kin, to his brother, to Mrs. 
 Sannig, to anybody who was Dutch and would keep it 
 intact as he had wished, and she begged the lawyer to 
 put the matter in hand at once. 
 
 Her appeal to Van Biene was to his friendship ; it was 
 an appeal that was touching in its simplicity. - 
 
 " I implore you not to argue with me, not to endeavour 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 233 
 
 to persuade me differently. I am going out now to see a 
 lawyer, I am going to do all I can, but I depend on you 
 to do the rest. I have no one I can trust but you. For 
 the sake of old times, those old times in dear Cape Town 
 when I was an honourable woman, and a happy one, and 
 you were my friend, do this for me now, immediately, and 
 cable me. I feel I may ask you this cable me as soon 
 as you can that I have no part or lot in Piet's property." 
 
 With action came a feverish desire to be accurate, to 
 be exact. She rang and asked to see the landlady; she 
 told her she wanted a lawyer, she must see one that very 
 evening. Fortunately the landlady could oblige her. The 
 gentleman who helped her with the lease of her house, a 
 very nice gentleman he was, and quite a friend of hers 
 too, seeing that her sister was his housekeeper, and he 
 lived almost round the corner, so to speak, in Bushey 
 Terrace. 
 
 Would she give Joan a letter? 
 
 Why, of course she would, or, better still, if Joan would 
 like to go round with her to see him, why, it was a fine 
 night. She'd like nothing better than a chat with her 
 sister, and if Mr. Frere was at home, and doing nothing, 
 the chances were he'd see Joan. He'd do almost anything 
 to oblige Mrs. Gamble, that's what they called her sister, 
 though she had never been married, but 
 
 Joan was out of the room and back again, with coat 
 and bonnet, before her landlady's garrulousness had time 
 to establish itself. But she suffered it gladly during that 
 strange walk down the narrow country lane to Bushey 
 Terrace. Listening even with half an ear to the woman's 
 chatter was better than hearing only the repetition of one 
 dreadful phrase. 
 
 It was a fine night, cold although it was May, the sky 
 cloud-driven with fitful stars, the moon hidden, but 
 making light the heavens. The lanes were muddy and 
 still, the trees showed black against the grey of the sky. 
 Joan listened to all the details of her landlady's family 
 history, and the sister's numerous love affairs. During 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 that walk she became glad in what she had done and was 
 doing, in her steady outlook, in the cool sweet air. She 
 could even smile as she listened somewhat abstractedly 
 to mysterious hints as to the possibilities of Mrs. Gamble 
 ultimately winning the affections of the very gentleman 
 they hoped to see to-night. 
 
 Everything fell out propitiously. Mr. Frere was at 
 home, and would see them. Mrs. Gamble, a facsimile of 
 her sister, fat, in black silk dress and gold chain, volu- 
 bility making mobile her lips, and desire to impart confi- 
 dences making mysterious her manner, ushered them, 
 after inquiry had been made and permission given, into 
 the study, where the lawyer, in comfortable morning coat, 
 in cosy easy-chair, enjoying his cultured leisure among 
 his books and prints, was awaiting them. 
 
 Mr. Frere was a man of about sixty, thin and spec- 
 tacled, dry and tall. He looked at Joan, and she smiled 
 and bowed. 
 
 " This lady," began the landlady, " she's my lodger, 
 sir, and I will say " 
 
 The old gentleman recognised an equal, and placed a 
 chair for her. 
 
 " You would like to have a chat with your sister," he 
 said, waving both the landlady and the hopeful sister out 
 of the room before either had time to finish a sentence. 
 Joan, feeling young for the moment, had smiled. The 
 hopes of Mrs. Gamble, coupled with the illusion-dispell- 
 ing appearance of the old lawyer, appealed to her sense 
 of humour. But her smile quickly faded, and the old 
 man saw wistful eyes, blue as a child's, in a small drawn 
 face, and a figure that told its own history. 
 
 " You want help, advice ?" His generous hand ad- 
 vanced. Joan saw the movement and her eyes filled. 
 
 " Advice," she said quickly, " only advice." 
 
 " You are in trouble. T have a daughter about your 
 age ; she is out in South Africa," he sighed, " wanting 
 advice too, perhaps, poor thing! Her husbarid is in 
 Mashonaland " 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 235 
 
 He wanted to set her at her ease, noting the easily filled 
 eyes, the lips rather tremulous. He spoke another sen- 
 tence or two. She rested her arm on the table, shaded 
 her eyes with her hand, and spoke low : 
 
 " It is about a document I wanted to see you about, 
 some documents Fve brought with me. There are cer- 
 tain estates in South Africa. They belong, they may 
 belong to me. It is not on a supposition I am acting. I 
 have all the papers with me." 
 
 His quick interest abated a little. 
 
 " You want to make claim to an estate ?" 
 
 She kept her hand up, her face was working ; it wasn't 
 easy to talk. 
 
 " No, it is an estate that I am entitled to, it was settled 
 on me when married ; my husband is dead. He was 
 dying, he must have been dying, when I left him. I 
 want to relinquish my claim these papers I want to 
 assign them. I don't know how to put it. I ought not 
 to have them it is a mistake, it is all a mistake. Help 
 me to get rid of them." 
 
 Then his voice was very gentle. 
 
 " You want to relinquish any claim you may have to 
 your husband's, your late husband's estate, on behalf of 
 yourself and your child?" 
 
 Her hand dropped, he saw her eyes. They were dry, 
 though the painful flush made the small drawn face most 
 piteous to see. 
 
 " On behalf of myself and my baby." 
 
 "My dear child you are only a child yourself have 
 you considered, has any one told you " 
 
 " I haven't a soul in the world to speak to me." 
 
 " How long is it since you left your husband ?" 
 
 Joan, thinking of the time when she had left him in 
 thought, and separated herself from him finally, answered : 
 
 " Less than a year." 
 
 "A year and he?" 
 
 " Diecf, knowing nothing." 
 
 " And you want him the world to know ?" 
 
236 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I don't want to take what doesn't belong to me or 
 to let to let my baby." 
 
 " You would brand it illegitimate rather ! Forgive me 
 I cannot help you if I cannot speak plainly to you." 
 
 " Neither he nor I must take what does not belong 
 to us, not even a name." The voice was steady now, 
 although it was low. How right she was! Conviction 
 grew on her as she gave it words. 
 
 " The law would be on your side." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but all the wrong would be there." 
 
 " I want to help you I should like to help you but 
 I am a lawyer." 
 
 " It is good of you to advise me, to want to help me. 
 I see you do. I have been very lonely, perhaps I ought 
 not to have come like this. I don't want you to advise 
 me as to whether I am right or wrong I am so sure. I 
 want you to advise me how to make it certain that I 
 cannot go back, to make it impossible for any temptation 
 to move me." The thought of Louis, perhaps pleading to 
 her, was like a mountain that she must climb, she, who 
 already lay exhausted at the base. 
 
 " Here are the papers." She handed them to him. " I 
 am going to send them back to the lawyers over there, but 
 I want to make it sure, so sure, that nothing can undo it. 
 I know I ought to sign something, or draw up something. 
 Can you help me? Will you help me to that? That is 
 what I have come to you for." 
 
 He glanced through the documents. " I am not well 
 versed in South African law." He hesitated; he was a 
 lawyer out of harness, but he was a lawyer still, and this 
 was an extraordinary step she contemplated. Of the 
 value of the estate she knew nothing, but to rid herself of 
 it summarily did not appear to him feasible. 
 
 " You must face the possibility that your son, if you 
 have a son, may one day reproach you with parting with 
 your property. What is the nature of the estate, what is 
 the approximate value? Is it a tempting one? What is 
 the danger of delay? Surely you are exaggerating the 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 237 
 
 danger of delay ? I am anxious to help you, but the way 
 does not seem clear to me." 
 
 " It is land, a farm, I don't know the value. It is a 
 simple thing I want you to do. You say you want to help 
 me. There is only one way. Draw up a paper, binding, 
 legal, impossible to break through, that rids me of all 
 interest in my late husband's estates." She was fever- 
 ish in her desire for freedom from the burden of Piet's 
 trust. 
 
 " What do you propose doing with this paper if I draw 
 it up for you?" 
 
 " Sending it to my husband's lawyer." 
 
 " Is he your friend ?" 
 
 " I think so. It is because I think and hope he is that 
 I shall send it." 
 
 Very gently he asked: 
 
 " Telling him your motives for such strange action ?*' 
 
 The painful flush that had ebbed flooded her cheeks 
 again. 
 
 " I have kept nothing back." 
 
 The pitifulness of it, her youth, womanhood, condition, 
 the story he read through it all, made the lawyer's re- 
 luctance sympathetic. She urged her case on him with 
 broken eloquence, with wordless pleading. He read the 
 story through her anxiety. Her soul shone through it too. 
 Against his judgment, against all his experience, against 
 even his will, he finally drew up the paper a short one, 
 a mere relinquishment of title in favour of a next-of-kin 
 unnamed. All the time he was writing he tried to per- 
 suade her of the folly of it, but for answer all she could 
 urge was her subtle, secret fear that, if she did not make 
 herself safe, some power would be used, some influence 
 brought to bear, which would make her false to herself, 
 and to the dead man who had trusted her. He felt all 
 that was behind her halting words. 
 
 ' There, you would have your own way I hope you 
 will not live to regret it. Now I'll call up your landlady 
 to witness your signature." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Thank you thank you." She wrote her name with 
 trembling fingers, and took up the paper. " And I may 
 take it that this ends it, ends all my interest in the farm, 
 now and always, and nothing can upset it?" 
 
 "If that paper goes into the hands of Mr. Van Biene, 
 and he wishes to help you, I think you may have achieved 
 your object! Mind I don't know I think; you must 
 not rely upon it." 
 
 Joan gathered up the rest of the papers, all those elab- 
 orate, sealed documents from Pretoria, and held out her 
 hand in farewell. 
 
 " Good-bye, and thank you. You don't know how 
 much I thank you. You have been very good to me." 
 
 He held her hand a moment, and said very gently : 
 
 " But are you wise ? Are you quite sure you are acting 
 wisely ? I am afraid for you ; I don't think I have been 
 kind to you quite the contrary. You are young, frail, 
 you have perhaps a hard time in front of you." 
 
 Her eyes filled, her hand shook in his; she knew the 
 time that was before her without Louis. 
 
 " Have you forgive me if I pain you have you 
 money enough, are you sure of help ? My child, I am an 
 old man, a stranger to you. You are doing a brave thing, 
 a noble thing, perhaps, I don't know, I cannot judge ; you 
 have told me little. But have you counted all the cost?" 
 
 " Oh ! I want to keep my hands clean, I must keep them 
 clean for the boy's sake. I feel he will understand; I 
 can go through until then." She almost broke down. 
 Her womanly craving for love, for understanding, fas- 
 tened itself passionately on to her coming child. 
 
 She left die lawyer soon after that, but drank a glass 
 of wine to please him, and talked a little of commonplace 
 things. He felt the appeal of her ; and she made a friend 
 of him, as she had made friends in the old days out of 
 lovers, admirers, mere partizans, everybody. Mr. Frere 
 was neither emotional nor demonstrative, he was over 
 sixty years of age, a lawyer and an Englishman; but 
 when, on that evening, she gave him her hand in parting, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 239 
 
 he put his thin lips upon it and, as she went out, he said 
 "God bless you!" 
 
 Joan posted her letters and her papers, and that night 
 she slept peacefully and well, as if she had come out of a 
 storm into a calm, safe harbourage. And now no longer 
 she seemed to hear the crying of a babe. All was rest 
 and calm, for the spell of her imagination lay softly about 
 him, and she thought the soul that was coming to her 
 straight from Heaven rejoiced in sweet reconcilement, 
 that at last her weakness was overcome, and the dead 
 man's faith justified. 
 
 She slept peacefully and calmly that night, although 
 she knew, as if the world held no other fact, that between 
 her and Louis all was ended. There was no doubt or 
 hope; it was like a death sentence with no possible re- 
 prieve, no mercy. That she knew, too, but still she slept 
 in utter exhaustion, for the first time in many weary 
 months, without self-loathing and contempt, without a 
 speechless longing, without being torn asunder by her 
 love for Louis and her knowledge of him. That night 
 God gave her sleep, even as He gives His beloved sheep. 
 If then she could have slept on and on and known no 
 awakening, it would have been pardon; but, from her 
 sin, as from her sentence, there was no escape. 
 
 Louis was not the man to be beaten easily in anything 
 upon which he had set his heart; neither his vanity nor 
 his self-respect was of the nature that would prevent him 
 trying to wrest from his mistress anything that she might 
 wish to withhold. 
 
 He waited, expectant of the document and the loving 
 letter. When neither came, he repaired to Bushey with- 
 out delay. 
 
 Joan thought this would have been spared her. She 
 had made her plans and slept, in the belief that she had 
 time before her, that he would not come to her again 
 until she had expiated her offence, that he would, in fact, 
 with this big stake in front of him, pursue the same tactics 
 that had served his purpose well enough when merely 
 
240 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 his appetite required titillating, so little she realised him, 
 even now. 
 
 She had barely dressed and breakfasted, and had not 
 yet commenced her packing, when his brougham drove 
 up, and he was with her. The cruelty of another, a final, 
 scene between them had to be faced. It would have been 
 so easy had she only had him to fight, but she had herself. 
 Even this morning, seeing him in his well-fitting, grey 
 morning suit, with his air of health and the smile in his 
 handsome eyes and under his well-brushed moustache, 
 she knew she loved him, and, when he kissed her his gay 
 " Good-morning," she felt as if she had no strength with 
 which to deny him. 
 
 " Well, old girl ! how's the world with you this morn- 
 ing ? I couldn't sleep ; you oughtn't to have worried me 
 about that paper, the beastly thing haunted me all night," 
 was the way he began. 
 
 She had exhausted reason, he would not listen to 
 reason. She had exhausted caresses, Joan knew that she 
 could not now move Louis with caresses. Tears were left 
 her, but this morning her eyes were dry. 
 
 " I can't sign that paper, Louis," she said to him in a 
 low voice almost immediately, before he had time to say 
 more. 
 
 "Can't sign?" 
 
 What use going over the weary scene, the weary day ? 
 She tried to tell him the farm was no longer hers; he 
 would not listen, perhaps she did not try very vigorously. 
 Her voice was low, her words were few, compared with 
 the torrent that Louis poured upon her. For the whole 
 long day he tortured her, sometimes with tears and fond- 
 lings, sometimes with mean reproaches and threats. 
 Some of his words bit into her, the wounds ached for 
 weeks, ached almost unbearably. He let her see what 
 such men as he think of women who give them what 
 they ask. 
 
 She saw him as God saw him, and all her mind rejected 
 him. Still, she was as a beaten thing before him, bruised; 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 bastinadoed, crawling, because she loved every breath of 
 him. He reminded her of words she had said to him in 
 the abandonment of love, as a lever to wrest the dead 
 man's vineyard from her! 
 
 He told her that if she did not let him have the farm 
 she ruined him and ruined Karl ; he told her all about the 
 Geldenrief, that is to say, he told her that all he had in 
 the world was invested in the outcrop, that the outcrop 
 was valueless without the deep, that the deep lay under 
 the graves of her dead husband and his dead forbears. 
 
 He could not see, she could not make him see, that 
 those brave old pioneers, those sturdy farmers who had 
 reclaimed the soil from waste, had the right to their quiet 
 burial place beneath it, that, weak woman as she was, 
 she could not steal those rights from the powerless dead 
 hands to give them to him. 
 
 All day he talked, all that long endless day, going away, 
 or making a pretence of going away, and coming back 
 before she had time to feel that at last, at last the pain of 
 it was over. 
 
 " Remember," he said to her, coming back for the 
 fourth time to that little dingy dining-room where now it 
 seemed to her the sun had never penetrated, " remember 
 that what I say, I mean. If you send me away, without 
 doing this little thing for me, this one little thing I ask 
 of you, I have done with you for ever. From first to 
 last you have disappointed me. Nothing you could say 
 would undo what you have done. You remember the 
 dressing-gown, and the way you kept me waiting; and 
 writing to the fellow without telling me. It is of him 
 you are thinking now, his wishes, not mine. But I would 
 have forgiven you, forgiven you everything, if you had 
 done what I told you about this. Mind, I don't say every- 
 thing would be as it was between us, you have ruined 
 the chance of that, you are not the woman I thought you 
 you have given me every trouble. But I will be to 
 you, as far as I can, what I have been before. Think 
 well before you answer. If I leave you now I leave 
 
 16 
 
242 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 you for ever, for ever; don't make any mistake. I mean 
 what I say." 
 
 " It is always ' for ever' with you, Louis," she said 
 wearily, not facing him, standing at the window, her old 
 attitude, looking for light. The sun was shining, but 
 there seemed no light, only a glare, and it hurt her eyes, 
 they ached and burned. She went on staring at the sun, 
 physical pain helped her. 
 
 " I don't want any reproaches," he said hastily, " never 
 mind what I said or did; the question is, what are you 
 going to do? Am I to go?" (Three times he had asked 
 her and she had made no answer, and he had gone, but 
 she had not called him back, and yet he had returned to 
 her, for he badly wanted the farm, and his own way.) 
 '' Tell me that, once for all, am I to go? Don't stand 
 staring there ; tell me, am I to go or stay ?" 
 
 She had been so buffeted and beaten about that awful 
 day. At first she had tried all a woman could try to open 
 his eyes, and make him see the thing he was doing; she 
 had failed so completely to penetrate the folds of his 
 greed, of his stupidity, of his egotism, that now there 
 was no strength left in her. She had gone down in the 
 fight. 
 
 She turned from the window as he asked her, and faced 
 him. The sun was still in her eyes as she looked at him, 
 standing at the door, hat in hand, but his figure seemed to 
 sway a little, dark and indistinct before her. She sat 
 down for safety. The room, too, swam a little and was 
 dark. She wanted to be alone, to be quiet; she was 
 tired, desperately tired of Louis's voice. 
 
 " Go," she said, " go. I want to be alone." 
 
 All the day she had argued w'th him, wrestled with 
 him. She was so tired and weak, she knew it was over, 
 but she must have rest, solitude. All the day he had 
 argued with those wearying arguments that held no rea- 
 son. Now she wanted him to go. She knew nothing so 
 definitely as that she wanted him to go. He could get 
 nothing from her but that : 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 248 
 
 " Yes, yes, I understand that you are going, and you 
 are not coming back; don't say it again, Louis, don't 
 stand there saying it ; go, go, go ! I am tired." 
 
 There, against the table where she sat, she dropped her 
 head into her arms, and, though he stood there talking, 
 threatening, even beginning to argue the morality of the 
 case all over again, she never raised it. He thought he 
 would go over to her, put his hand on her head, coax her. 
 But she was dishevelled, unwieldy, he hated her, again he 
 hated her. He could not control his feelings. He went 
 ut and banged the door after him ; she heard the bang 
 dully, but it meant he was gone and she was glad he 
 was gone. 
 
 With all Joan had suffered, and had still to suffer, 
 through this man, this day had been the worst. For 
 she had been face to face with the skeleton of her passion, 
 and it had grinned and gibed at her almost fleshless. The 
 thing she had loved was loathsome, the flesh that clung 
 to it noisome. This day she had lived with the real Louis, 
 and this day she was clear-brained, and knew what she 
 had done. 
 
 An hour after Louis left the cottage at Bushey, Joan 
 left it too. 
 
 When, three days later for Louis's " for ever" had 
 lasted three whole days he went down there again, there 
 was no face at the dining-room window, no curtain drawn 
 aside from the casement upstairs: Joan had gone. She 
 had taken him at his word. She was gone. 
 
 The landlady could tell him nothing, though he cross- 
 examined her with all the skill of which he was capable. 
 She had nothing to tell. Mrs. Grey for so Joan was 
 known, Louis had not lent her his name Mrs. Grey, an 
 hour after he had left, had packed up her things, had had 
 a cab sent for, and driven to the station. She had left no 
 note, she had left no address. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
 
 JOAN was gone, had disappeared, leaving neither letter 
 nor other trace, neither explanation nor excuse. Of 
 course, Louis was dumfounded ; that he was startled out 
 of complacency expresses it but mildly. He had gone 
 down to the cottage, after the lapse of three days, with 
 a whole bushel of new arguments, convincing, irrefutable. 
 Joan must see that he had right on his side, she must be 
 made to see it. By this time, he thought, she would be 
 fearful of the consequences of her action, or lack of action, 
 she would be passionately glad of his coming; in that 
 mood he would clinch the matter, he would leave nothing 
 to chance this time, he knew how to deal with her, and 
 when. 
 
 ' This was the mood he had gone down in, and he found 
 her place empty. Because he was a fool he bullied the 
 landlady, even insulted her in his rage. She must know 
 where her lodger had gone ; she had no right to let her 
 go without telling him. 
 
 " I tell you I don't know naught about her. She said 
 she was going, and she packed up her things and went. 
 You've no call to stand there abusing me. The poor 
 thing wasn't too happy whilst she was with you, that I'll 
 be sworn, and if she's gone to those that will be kinder 
 to her " 
 
 " I don't want to hear your opinion." 
 
 But he had to hear it, and it rankled with him, as he 
 drove off after his unfruitful journey. His anger against 
 the landlady evaporated before he reached Piccadilly, but 
 against Joan 
 
 He would show her what he would do; he wouldn't 
 wait until she came back and pleaded with him. He had 
 244 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 245 
 
 done with her. He was glad to remember her condition, 
 he was glad to think she would suffer. His rage against 
 her because she was not there to listen to his arguments 
 made him almost irresponsible. Still, being Louis's rage, 
 there was sufficient lull in the whirlwind for him to re- 
 member the material injury he suffered from her depart- 
 ure, to remember and seek to minimise it. 
 
 It is' unnecessary to follow the workings of his mind 
 during the twenty-four hours that elapsed after he knew 
 that Joan was out of his reach. His letter to Karl shows 
 the result. Karl had never failed him. 
 
 " I don't know if I have done right," he wrote to his 
 brother, " but I bought up all the shares I could get of the 
 Geldenrief. I did it for two reasons. In the first place, 
 I thought it advisable that the Althaus Bank should come 
 out with flying colours, enabling the financial papers to 
 say that all the Althaus companies were at such and such 
 a price, were doing well, in fact. And in the second, I 
 remembered what you said about using the machinery, 
 and getting at the deep through the outcrop, your idea 
 that the vein was broadening out, and that in another 
 hundred feet it would be payable. Altogether, I thought 
 the right thing to do was to get as many shares as I 
 could. I put them in my name, but, of course, I did it on 
 your account ; I knew you would not let me lose through 
 it. I'll keep the figures until I see you; it has cost 
 me something like two hundred thousand, but then I've 
 secured control. 
 
 " I've met both the Honourable Stephen Hay ward and 
 his daughter. Hayward seems to have taken quite a 
 fancy to me ; I have dined with him twice, and, of course, 
 I've been introduced to his daughter. There seems no 
 doubt that he will have an influential position in the new 
 Cabinet, and, if you are really in earnest about taking 
 the Transvaal, I don't suppose I shall have any difficulty 
 in getting him to stand in with us. He told me you had 
 been advising him as to his investments. If there is going 
 to be a row over there, you had better cable him to get 
 
246 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 out of all his holdings ; if he does this, it will compromise 
 him, and he'll have to back us up. About the daughter, 
 now you know, dear old chap, I would do anything on 
 earth for you, or for any cause you've set your mind on. 
 It's the best blood in England when all's said and done." 
 
 The pen dropped out of his fingers. Why shouldn't 
 he, why the devil shouldn't he? His anger with Joan, 
 his inability to face the situation with regard to the Gel- 
 denrief, had brought him within sight of a strange possi- 
 bility, but each time he looked at it he averted his eyes. 
 His very anger with Joan left him unfree from her. But 
 the written words forced him to consider the possibility 
 of repairing his fortunes, fortunes that Joan's actions had 
 made precarious, and of repairing them through another 
 woman. " It's her own fault, it is all her own fault," he 
 said to himself savagely, as he took up the pen again 
 and went on. 
 
 " If I were to marry Hayward's daughter there 
 wouldn't be a house in England not open to us. What 
 do you think of it? Of course, we should have to come 
 to some different business arrangement, naturally they 
 would want something big in the way of settlements, and 
 a partnership, I suppose I can count on a partnership 
 in the bank? Of course, I know you have always been 
 liberal to me, and that I am your heir and that sort of 
 thing ; ' What's yours is mine/ I've heard you say, and, 
 when I acted for you in the Geldenrief matter, I had it 
 in view, but still, if I am to marry, I ought to be inde- 
 pendent. Anyway, write me your views. I won't let the 
 grass grow under my feet meanwhile. Things are on the 
 boom here, and no mistake." Here followed a list of 
 prices and comments. The most worthless hole in which 
 any digger had ever prospected and been disappointed 
 was quoted at that time at a figure it could hardly have 
 supported if it had been a pocket filled with diamonds. 
 At the end of the letter Louis expressed his conviction 
 that now, this moment, this very moment, and no other, 
 was the crucial time for bringing out the Althaus Bank. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 The letter finished and despatched, the things that he 
 had said in it became vital, they dodged and pursued him. 
 Until the affair of the Geldenrief was settled, he felt poor, 
 his income of about fifteen thousand a year, his free quar- 
 ters, his prospects, did not prevent him feeling poor, now 
 that he had so foolishly locked up his capital. Not that 
 he admitted he had been foolish. He had every right to 
 look upon the De Groot farm as his own, and Karl's 
 judgment was never at fault; the farm must be a marvel 
 of richness, His uneasiness, notwithstanding the argu- 
 ments with which he plied himself, could not be shaken 
 off. The worst of his trouble was that, when he had 
 given a hint to Sam Oldberger about the deep of the 
 Geldenrief, Sam had said, " Thank God, then, we are free 
 of the outcrop." He had been unable to force Sam Old- 
 berger to admit the value of the outcrop and its machin- 
 ery, as an item in considering the deep. He loathed Sam 
 for his opinion, but it stuck nevertheless. 
 
 It forced itself upon him that the only way out of his 
 troubles was to marry Aline Hayward. Karl would make 
 a liberal settlement; Karl would recognise that he was 
 sacrificing himself for the sake of helping the Uitlander 
 cause. And, looking at the thing, it began to have its 
 points. It would be something of a personal triumph to 
 force the stronghold of exclusiveness. Louis Althaus 
 never ceased to resent that there should be certain families 
 who preferred to keep their houses for themselves. He 
 saw no humour in the " pigs in clover" phrase. 
 
 As he wrote to Karl, he did not let the grass grow 
 under his feet. He asked Stephen to drive down to Rane- 
 lagh with him for the next meet of the Coaching Club, 
 and to bring his daughter. Stephen was too busy, he 
 wrote, it was impossible for him to accept Louis Althaus's 
 invitation. In truth, each time he had met the man he 
 had liked him less, and everything he heard men saying 
 of him confirmed his judgment the men whose opinions 
 he valued, that is to say. Louis's popularity was, after 
 all, a limited one, and the things Stephen could not help 
 
248 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 hearing made him regret that Louis Althaus could say 
 he knew Stephen Hayward's daughter. Louis's familiar 
 club-room conversation on the subject of women was 
 appreciated by few, the majority resented it. 
 
 Louis was furious when Stephen declined his invitation 
 to Ranelagh, and yet another, asking him to dine with 
 him, to meet a few friends at the Savoy. Altogether, he 
 was in an irritable frame of mind after he had despatched 
 his letter to Karl. Everything seemed to combine to 
 annoy him. 
 
 He drove a gay quartette to Ranelagh in place of 
 Stephen and his daughter, with whom he had hoped to 
 grace his turnout at the meet, and the gay quartette had 
 been practically all sufficing. He was not yet an enthu- 
 siastic whip, and having his arm pulled nearly out of its 
 socket for four hours did not improve matters. Then, at 
 Ranelagh, he came face to face with Constantia and Aline 
 and Aline, with her aunt's face rigidly set at his ap- 
 proach, although he was accompanied by Lord Dolly, 
 had made his the barest, the tiniest recognition, had been 
 oblivious, or apparently oblivious, of his glance. She 
 bowed timidly, but to Louis it seemed she bowed coldly, 
 she averted her eyes from him, and was afraid lest Con- 
 stantia should notice that she bowed at all. 
 
 Louis practically forced Lord Dolly to present him to 
 Stephen's sister. Karl's experience under similar cir- 
 cumstances had amused the millionaire; but Louis was 
 not amused at being snubbed, and he resented Lord 
 Dolly's entertainment at his expense. Even the Lady 
 Herodsfoot, who cooed up to him a moment afterwards, 
 and asked for a seat on his coach on the way back to town, 
 and told him how his greys had been admired, and what 
 the Prince had said, failed to compensate him for the 
 Hayward attitude. He walked about with Lily Herods- 
 foot for the remainder of the afternoon, and, although 
 she found him unusually silent, she was quite satisfied, 
 for she used her supposed intimacy with the millionaire's 
 brother as a bait to fish for renewed credit, and she knew 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 249 
 
 they would be paragraphed together; but Louis was not 
 satisfied. He began to feel women bored him ; he missed 
 Joan's adoration. Lady Violet, looking shrewish in the 
 cold sunshine, said a bitter word or two to his companion, 
 and Louis resented her too. She had so obviously for- 
 gotten the terms they had been on scarcely a fortnight 
 since. It was all the Hayward fault, the Hayward in- 
 fluence ; he would be even with them yet. Joan had only 
 herself to blame, whatever he did; it was she who had 
 left him. 
 
 He let the man drive on the way back. He sat on the 
 box-seat with Lady Herodsfoot, displacing his other 
 guests; Louis's manners fluctuated with Louis's temper. 
 Lily Herodsfoot had her dressmaker to consider, but she 
 winced a little at Louis's methods during that drive. She 
 reminded herself that she looked upon him only as a 
 means to her dressmaker's end, but she wished vaguely 
 that her own rakish Jack had been rich enough to afford 
 her fidelity to himself. But that, alas! was impossible. 
 So she praised, and wheedled, and persuaded Louis into 
 better humour, and, when she arrived in Grosvenor 
 Square, her last words were to remind him that she ex- 
 pected him at her reception that evening. It was no 
 temptation to him that there would be baccarat after- 
 wards; perhaps another reason for Louis's failure to 
 enlist the sympathies of those men of the world he most 
 frequently met, was that he had none of the thoughtless 
 liberality of the gambler. 
 
 He was in half-a-dozen minds about going to the Her- 
 odsfoot reception. So many houses were open to him in 
 Mayfair, in Piccadilly, in Belgravia why should he bore 
 himself with this silly, little woman who had fallen in 
 love with him? But in the end he went. He had had a 
 set of waistcoat buttons made, the very smartest things 
 that had ever been seen, enamelled buttons resembling 
 white pique, but with a diamond in the centre. They are 
 comparatively common now, but Louis Althaus invented 
 them, they were seen for the first time in the season of 
 
250 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 1895 at Lady Herodsfoot's reception. They almost re- 
 stored Louis's complacency, they certainly drove him to 
 the reception. It was sure to be crowded, the best people 
 were certain to be there ; it was quite possible the buttons 
 would have a line of comment in some Society journal, 
 they really were unique, and in perfect taste. 
 
 When, at that crowded fashionable reception, chance 
 found Louis standing next to Aline Hayward Constantia 
 nowhere to be seen, and the girl practically alone he 
 thought the buttons had brought him luck. The Duke, 
 Lady Violet's father, was nominally in charge at the 
 moment he had meant to take her to the supper-room, 
 but an opportunity occurred of inflicting a country neigh- 
 bour with his views on sheep-rot, and, whilst he button- 
 holed his patient listener, he forgot Aline for the time 
 being, and Louis rose to the occasion. His voice was in 
 her ear, soft, with the rolling " r's," his breath against 
 her cheek. 
 
 "At last! you will allow me?" 
 
 Her hand was on his arm even as she started with 
 timid, quick recognition of his proximity. He knew the 
 way of the house. He led her skilfully, piloting her 
 through the crowd, and they were out of possible sight of 
 Constantia, and in the angle behind the stairs where the 
 crowd was thinnest, before the Duke had time to notice 
 that he was posing to an audience of one instead of two. 
 
 " How unkind you were to me this afternoon," Louis 
 said to her reproachfully. " What have I done to de- 
 serve it?" 
 
 " Oh ! you ought not to have brought me away like 
 this. I don't know what Aunt Constantia will say." 
 
 He pressed her arm. 
 
 " Hush ! never mind what your Aunt will say." 
 
 " But I ought." 
 
 " Don't you like being here with me ?" 
 
 " I did not tell Aunt Con I danced with you the other 
 night. Father thought I need not tell her. That is why I 
 couldn't speak to you this afternoon ; she does not know 
 I know you." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Then it wasn't because you had forgotten me ?" 
 
 " No," she said shyly ; " I hadn't forgotten you." 
 
 " And you don't dislike me?" 
 
 Standing in the shadow of the stairs he went yet a little 
 further. Her hand was on his arm, he put his right hand 
 over it. 
 
 " Do you dislike me ?" 
 
 She liked his hand over hers, although she was nervous 
 with him to-night, more nervous than she had been 
 before ; but he was so gentle and kind, the other night he 
 had kissed her. Constantia knew nothing of it ; but Con- 
 stantia kissed her rarely, her father perfunctorily, night 
 and morning. Louis was sweet and gentle and kind. 
 Their solitude was not complete enough for him to ven- 
 ture far, but she nestled against him, and her arm was 
 pressed against his side. Nobody had ever seemed so 
 kind to her. 
 
 " Did you think I should be satisfied when you bowed 
 to me like that?" 
 
 " I did not know what I was to do. Aunt Con is so 
 kind to me ; she has always been so kind to me." 
 
 " Am I not kind to you ? Don't you know I want to 
 be kind to you?" 
 
 " And you don't think about that that " 
 
 " I shall never remember it, never remind you of it, 
 believe me." Abruptly, suddenly, she said to him, a pro- 
 pos of nothing. 
 
 " They want me to marry my cousin John." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 She paled. " I don't want to. Oh, I don't want to, so 
 badly." 
 
 " Have you told them so?" 
 
 " I have told Aunt Con ; but she thinks I ought, she 
 thinks it will be good for my father." 
 
 " Does Lord John know ?" 
 
 " No !" Her inclination was towards him, and again he 
 pressed her arm. 
 
 " Do you want me to help you ?" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 "Oh! can you?" Her eyes pleaded with him child- 
 ishly. 
 
 " I can do anything. You must leave yourself in my 
 hands." 
 
 " I don't want to marry anybody." 
 
 " Would you rather marry me than Lord John ?" 
 
 She was silent for a minute or two after that. 
 
 " I don't want to marry anybody," she said blushing, 
 wavering. And the difficulties about his project fixed 
 his intention irrevocably, at least, almost irrevocably. 
 Constantia drove in the final rivet; for a wave in the 
 crowd, an ebb in its surging movement, exposed Louis 
 and Aline to her view. Aline, whom she was seeking, 
 for she never liked her to be long from her side, was 
 under the rose-festooned staircase, under the tropical 
 plants, side by side with " that polyglot adventurer !" 
 They were all " polyglot adventurers" to Constantia, all 
 the South African magnates. Of course, she knew it 
 was possible to meet such people at Lady Herodsfoot's, 
 but she did not think she would see one of them side by 
 side with Aline. 
 
 " Oh ! there's my aunt," exclaimed the girl, holding 
 herself suddenly away from Louis, nervously erect and 
 anxious. 
 
 " All right ; don't worry, I'll take you to her. Leave 
 yourself in my hands." 
 
 " Your niece was quite alarmed lest you should miss 
 her," he said in his most fascinating manner, with just 
 that little turn to his moustache, just that look, melan- 
 choly, appealing, presupposing intimacy, that he had 
 found so effective. " I promised I would find you for 
 her ; I hope you have not been uneasy on her account." 
 
 Constantia was equal to the occasion. " The man was 
 odious," she told Stephen afterwards, " he simpered at 
 me, he leered. How they can tolerate such people is 
 more than I can understand." She recovered Aline from 
 him without the smallest acknowledgment of his speech, 
 of his courtesy. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 253 
 
 " Damn her," said Louis to himself, under his breath. 
 " If I thought it would do me any good, I'd take the girl 
 away from her now under her very nose. I'll make her 
 look at me before she's done." 
 
 "John, will you see if our carnage is there, please? 
 Aline is indisposed, tired." 
 
 Aline had not spoken; but the appeal in Louis's fine 
 eyes touched her, if it did not touch her aunt. She was 
 sorry for Louis, being only a child with a child's heart. 
 
 " I couldn't help it, Aunt," she said timorously. 
 
 " I know, dear." Con was never harsh with Aline, she 
 always felt she owed her something, some motherliness 
 that had failed her, that made the failure in her. 
 
 " How came you with that fellow ?" asked John, as he 
 stood beside them in the hall waiting for the carriage to 
 be announced. 
 
 Con answered for her. " It was your uncle, he is so 
 absent-minded. Aline was with him, but he was button- 
 holed by Mr. Fowler, and they left Aline alone. Some- 
 how or other John knew that Aline was not like other 
 girls, that she wanted more care perhaps. It did not 
 repel him, he thought girls should be timid, dependent, 
 feminine. 
 
 " May I come up in the morning ?" he said, as he put 
 them into the brougham, " I want to speak to Stephen." 
 
 " Indeed, John, I shall be glad to see you," answered 
 Constantia cordially. 
 
 Aline thought of Louis's promised kindness, of the 
 warm pressure of his hand, of his handsome eyes. Con- 
 stantia thought how good it would be to hand Aline into 
 John's strong keeping. To-morrow he would ask Stephen 
 again for his answer. She would strongly urge an 
 affirmative, if necessary she would insist. Aline should 
 marry John, and then she, Constantia, could let her con- 
 science rest. She would have achieved all, and more than 
 all, that Angela could have done for her daughter. The 
 Marquis's son represented more than his father's political 
 position. He meant vast estates and safety, and event- 
 
254 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ually the Marquisate. Surely she had redeemed any 
 disregard of Angela, any neglect of Aline in those early 
 days. There would be no recrudescence, no possible re- 
 crudescence of that ugly past once she was John's honored 
 wife. And no one would ever be the wiser. 
 
 It seemed as if everything would come about as Con- 
 stantia had wished, for the very next morning John 
 sought Stephen in his study and formally asked again for 
 his daughter's hand ; and Stephen, duly coached by Con, 
 and strengthened by his knowledge of his chief's approval, 
 cordially promised his support. Nothing was said about 
 the jockey ; Stephen had almost permitted himself to 
 forget him. There was a question as to whether Aline 
 on this occasion would do what she was told, would obey 
 orders ; pressure, of course, must not be used. But Aline 
 could be gently reminded how she had fared when she 
 had acted for herself, she could be tenderly urged, if not 
 coerced, into accepting the proffered honour. It was no 
 new thing, it had been understood by her for some time. 
 
 John stayed to lunch, and after lunch they left him 
 alone with Aline. 
 
 " I don't want to be married, John," she said piteously. 
 
 John did not very much want to be married himself; 
 but he wanted much less that Cecil, his younger brother, 
 or Cecil's " beastly boys," should ever inherit the family 
 estates. 
 
 " Oh, we shall shake down together all right," he said 
 easily, " I don't suppose we shall be much in each other's 
 way. And you've got to marry some one or other, all 
 girls do." She realised that. " You'll be just as well off 
 with me as here ; your father and Constantia have always 
 palled in together, you're only in the way with them. 
 I've got to get married, too, you know, on account of the 
 succession, and I hate the sort of girl, like Vi, who takes 
 care of herself, and smokes and bets. You don't smoke 
 or bet, do you ?" 
 
 " No ; I don't do anything Aunt Con does not tell me," 
 she replied ingenuously. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 255 
 
 " Well, we can go and tell her, then, it's settled, can't 
 we?" 
 
 But Constantia did not leave them long enough alone 
 to necessitate their going to her. She joined them in the 
 drawing-room in a very short time. 
 
 " It's all right, Aunt Con ; Aline says she'll have me," 
 John said. Constantia was expansive in her satisfaction; 
 she kissed her niece, tendered her cheek to John, and 
 promptly sat down at the little writing-table that stood 
 in the bow-window, the bow-legged writing-table with 
 the wonderful Louis Seize mounts and red lacquered 
 interior, and worded the announcement for the papers. 
 
 " A marriage has been arranged, and will take place at 
 the end of the season, between Lord John Cranbury, 
 eldest son of the Marquis of Jevington, and Aline, only 
 daughter of the Honourable Stephen Hayward, and the 
 late Lady Angela Hayward." 
 
 The very next day the announcement was in The Times 
 and The Morning Post. Louis saw it, naturally. All his 
 cards, or Karl's cards, seemed slipping from him. He 
 lost his head in the emergency. He thought Karl would 
 think him a boastful fool when he read his letters, 
 together with the announcement which would probably 
 arrive by the same post. He hated Karl to think him 
 a fool. If he had an expressed contempt for Karl's 
 clothes, habits, Imperial sympathies, he had a very real 
 and deep-rooted respect for his judgments, for his opin- 
 ion. He always wanted Karl's good opinion, the very 
 steps he had taken to lose it had been taken with a view 
 to acquiring it. He wanted Karl to think him a very 
 clever and dashing fellow, diplomat and financier. He 
 would have cheated him of the mine so that Karl should 
 have admired his sharpness. He had heard Karl admire 
 the astuteness of the people who had cheated him. Now 
 Karl would think him a fool. Yet Louis was sure that 
 Stephen Hayward liked him, even if his exclusive sister 
 had, perhaps, persuaded him not to show it. Why else 
 had he invited him twice to the Club? It never struck 
 
256 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Louis that it was for Karl's sake ; Karl was such a rough 
 diamond, not Stephen Hayward's style at all, he thought. 
 
 In his vanity, in his anxiety to right himself with Karl, 
 Louis went to Stephen, sought him at the Club, ran him 
 aground in the reading-room. 
 
 " I want to speak to you," Louis began. Stephen put 
 his book down resignedly. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I am quite at your disposal." 
 
 " We can't talk here." 
 
 The room was fairly full. Buried in easy-chairs, or 
 sitting upright in leather-covered ones with wooden arms, 
 behind newspapers or wrapped in vacuity, were half a 
 score of fogies. Stephen looked around. 
 
 " Seriously now I want to speak to you seriously." 
 
 " Are you sure it isn't Ripon you want ?" Stephen said, 
 with a twinkle in his eye. Stephen was too content, too 
 happy in the coming marriage, in the coming election, 
 and his prospects, to remember to resent Louis. Louis, 
 when he had talked South African politics with Stephen, 
 had openly given it as his opinion that Karl was wrong 
 in thinking Stephen Hayward had any influence or power 
 in the Cabinet or out of it, was wrong in applying to 
 anybody for ministerial support in Pretoria, except the 
 Liberal Colonial Secretary. 
 
 " No ! no ! it's a private matter. It's nothing to do 
 with South Africa. I wish you would come up to my 
 rooms ; they are not five minutes from here." 
 
 " You are living in your brother's old rooms, are you 
 not?" said Stephen, getting up and stretching himself. 
 He remembered those rooms, and the Abbotsford Turn- 
 ers; the only things he had ever envied a millionaire 
 were those Abbotsford Turners and the Oliver miniatures. 
 He really wanted to see them again. It did not seem a 
 great matter to stroll with Louis Althaus a few doors 
 down Piccadilly. He did not wonder what the man might 
 have to say to him. So many people had something to 
 say to him since the doom of the Liberal party had been 
 sealed, grievances to air, or claims to accentuate. He 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 257 
 
 had the ear of Jevington, and it was supposed that Jev- 
 ington influenced Lord Sarum. He did not like Louis 
 Althaus, but then there were so many people he did not 
 like. 
 
 " When is your brother coming home ?" he asked Louis. 
 " That is a very remarkable man, that brother of yours," 
 he said. 
 
 " Do you think so?" said Louis, surprised. " Roughish, 
 isn't he? Old Karl, I shouldn't have thought, now, you 
 would have cared for old Karl; but I tell you what, he 
 is one of the richest men in South Africa, one of the very 
 richest. It's about that, it's something about that," he 
 corrected himself, " at least, that has some bearing upon 
 what I want to speak to you about." 
 
 " Oh !" Stephen elevated his brows. Certainly he did 
 not like Louis Althaus. 
 
 The rooms looked very much as they did when he was 
 in them before. The screen was still hung with Raphael 
 Morghen engravings, the Abbottsford Turners continued 
 to adorn the panels in the oaken library. 
 
 " I am not at all sure the setting isn't too heavy. Not 
 at all sure I wouldn't prefer a dead level wall, neutral 
 tinted canvas, and just the pictures without that distract- 
 ing carving." 
 
 He spoke his thoughts aloud, thoughts that had been 
 with him when he was last here, and he had envied the 
 millionaire so few of all his possessions. 
 
 " Oh, you are looking at the pictures," said Louis in- 
 differently, leading the way, but turning round and inter- 
 cepting his glance. 
 
 " Stumers, I suppose ? Karl goes in for art, you know. 
 His father was a bric-a-brac dealer. It runs in the blood, 
 I think. All the Jews either buy or sell works of art. 
 Curious, isn't it? I've often noticed it." 
 
 "You wanted to speak to me?" answered Stephen 
 coldly, not taking the offered seat. He wished he had 
 not come; what a cad the fellow was! How different 
 from his adopted brother. He took out his watch. 
 
 17 
 
258 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I forgot I had an appointment. I really can only 
 spare you a couple of minutes. I have to meet my future 
 son-in-law." 
 
 " Yes ; it's about that I want to speak to you." 
 
 " About that?" Stephen grew nervous with his 
 amazement, and dropped his glasses. " What on earth 
 I beg your pardon." 
 
 Louis interrupted him smilingly. 
 
 " You are surprised that I want to speak to you about 
 this engagement. Would you be surprised to hear my 
 brother had told me all your daughter's story?" 
 
 " Very," Stephen said. He was surprised, startled 
 almost out of composure. " Very," he repeated, his face 
 flushing. 
 
 " Not that it makes any difference to me. No ! I'm 
 not the sort of man to bring a girlish escapade like that 
 up against her." 
 
 The colour slowly deepened in Stephen's face. 
 
 " I said to Karl at the time, girls will be girls. If I took 
 a fancy to her, it wouldn't stand in my way." 
 
 Stephen was so rarely angry. He was startled now to 
 know how angry he was ; his breath was coming irregu- 
 larly, his heart beating quickly. 
 
 " What is it you want with me, Mr. Althaus?" 
 
 Louis, with his egregious smile, his complete self-satis- 
 faction, thought he was getting on swimmingly; it was 
 with almost a patronising smile he answered, subsiding 
 gracefully into a seat : 
 
 " I want you to break off this engagement with her 
 cousin ; I want you to give your daughter to me instead. 
 No, please," he raised his hand, " please don't answer 
 quickly. I know it is a surprising request. You think I 
 hardly know her you think that old affair " 
 
 Louis wanted to blurt out how very rich was Karl ; he 
 remembered that the Haywards had nothing, practically 
 nothing. 
 
 " I think," said Stephen, cutting into the other's ex- 
 planatoriness, " I think you are insolent, sir, insolent !" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 259 
 
 And he turned on his heel to leave the room. He really 
 could not trust himself. Louis rose too. 
 
 " Insolent ! Insolent ! What do you mean by inso- 
 lent?" he hurried out. "Do you know how much we've 
 got?" 
 
 Stephen stopped a moment, and looked at the man 
 before him. Did he know how much they had ? The very 
 phrase explained the possibility of his daring to make 
 such a proposition to him, Stephen Hayward; the very 
 phrase calmed him. Louis could never have compre- 
 hended how Stephen's blood had boiled within him, how 
 little his estimate of the class to which Louis belonged 
 really differed from his sister's. That the fellow should 
 dare to ask, to contemplate, a Hayward alliance, that he 
 should so misunderstand the toleration with which his 
 presence in Society had been met was incredible ! 
 
 " I have nothing to add," Stephen said coldly. " Let 
 me pass, please." But Louis stood between him and the 
 door. Furious he was, too; his fury drove the blood 
 from his cheeks and lips, his mouth grew spiteful, the 
 pupils of his eyes contracted. 
 
 " What do you think Lord John will say to that old 
 story? Wait a minute, wait! What will her aunts and 
 uncles say? Supposing I were to " Stephen waved 
 him aside contemptuously. 
 
 " I neither know nor care what any one will say about 
 some old unauthenticated story you have fished up. I do 
 your brother the justice of believing he has had no hand 
 in your attempted blackmail. My daughter's first mar- 
 riage was a misfortune" Louis did not know there had 
 been a marriage; Aline had been confused in speaking, 
 and his foregone conclusion had been unshaken. The 
 blow staggered him; he moved forward a little in his 
 astonishment. Stephen used this opportunity to get nearer 
 the door, finishing his sentence, coolly, with his hand on 
 the handle "but still, the misfortune of that marriage 
 was a trifle compared with the disgust with which she and 
 I, sir yes, she and I would look upon an alliance with 
 
260 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 you." He got even cooler as he spoke. With his hand 
 still on the door handle, he added calmly, " I beg to de- 
 cline your offer it was an impertinence." 
 
 The door closed behind him. He got into the hall, the 
 street, but he recovered slowly. He had had an instinct 
 against Louis, a loathing. He reasoned with himself. He 
 would not thus have answered Karl, though Karl had 
 wheeled a barrow in the streets ; it was not entirely class 
 prejudice. 
 
 " Phew ! the fellow makes me sick," was his reflection. 
 He got back into the shelter of his club, and tried to ana- 
 lyse his rage, and rid himself of its effects. His self- 
 respect had been outraged by Louis's proposal. 
 
 Louis's anger at the refusal of it, and the manner of 
 the refusal, was of a different calibre. It seemed to drive 
 Joan and her claims completely out of his head ; he could 
 think of nothing now but how to be revenged upon the 
 Haywards. Even the settlements that Karl was to make 
 became subsidiary to this. He would marry the girl he 
 would marry her with or without their consent. He swore 
 it to himself. His desire for revenge brightened his wits. 
 He lost no time in putting himself into communication 
 with Aline ; he had not to invent anything new, the old 
 methods were good enough. He had but to tell his man 
 to seek out the Hayward's maid ; he had but to mark his 
 course, and bribe it open for him. 
 
 The weeks that followed were for Louis full of in- 
 trigue, plot, and self-control. It was the July when the 
 boom was at its height. The Althaus Bank was launched 
 under wonderful auspices, launched at three pounds pre- 
 mium on the one pound shares. Louis put many of his 
 friends in at par. Not that he liked giving anything 
 away, but his intellect was sharpened just now, and he 
 saw the necessity. Society sought him, hung about him, 
 open-mouthed, with gaping eyes and pockets ; with e^old 
 he plied the avid women, and with soft words and smiles. 
 They sympathised with him when he complained of the 
 set the Hayward faction made against him. One or two 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 261 
 
 bold ones spoke to Constantia about him; unfortunately 
 Stephen had kept his counsel about Louis's proposal. 
 When his rage grew cold, and the emotion of the mo- 
 ment had passed, he smiled at himself for having been so 
 moved. He did not think it necessary to provoke a lecture 
 from Constantia by telling her what his imprudent ac- 
 quaintance had made possible. He had no thought of 
 danger for Aline, for, with Constantia and John, it seemed 
 to him she was well guarded. It struck him, of course, 
 at the moment that Louis, being a cad, might hint at or 
 tell the old story; but, when the days went by, and he 
 heard nothing, he set down the threat, or implied threat, 
 as an empty one, spoken in the heat of the moment. " We 
 both lost our tempers," he said to himself. " I dare say 
 the fellow isn't as bad as I made out; anyway, he has 
 nothing to gain by gossiping." 
 
 The fellow had nothing to gain by telling the story, 
 everything to gain by knowing there was one. It was 
 through Aline's fears he worked, through her undevel- 
 oped will and understanding. Con's vigilance was eluded 
 in crowded assemblies for every crowded assembly had 
 now the privilege of numbering Louis Althaus among its 
 items on race-courses, where rare chaperons were de- 
 puted to take Con's place, and John played vigilant escort 
 when the horses were not running, or after they had 
 passed the ordeal of the judge. But Louis was vigilant 
 while John's horses were being gently walked about the 
 paddock, were kicking at the starting-post, or flashing past 
 the judge's chair in this or the other order. Aline got 
 used to the low voice in her ear, came to look for Louis's 
 beauty, his gentle love-making, his arguments, to scheme, 
 too, to be alone with him where he could kiss and caress 
 her, and fill her poor cramped mind with visions of him. 
 Undeveloped child, or arrested woman, there were yet in 
 her many capacities that neither Stephen nor Constantia 
 had recognised; neither of them were psychologists. 
 Everything she ought to have remembered she had for- 
 gotten. She was dangerously receptive to Louis's love- 
 
262 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 making; a doctor might have warned them, but no one 
 warned them. And Louis, professional almost in his rec- 
 ognition of temperament, moved her subtly and warily, 
 but very easily, as he wished her to be moved. 
 
 Aline took morning walks with her maid a maid sus- 
 ceptible to sovereigns. And John was careless in his 
 security ; the trousseau was being made, wedding presents 
 were being received. After Goodwood he and Aline 
 would borrow the Duke's place in Scotland for a short 
 honeymoon. 
 
 " You don't mind if I have some fellows up for the 
 twelfth, do you?" asked John of his bride that was to 
 be. " We shall be pretty sick of each other by then, and 
 it will just come in at the right time. Con will come and 
 help you with the women. What do you say ?" 
 
 She said she was quite satisfied. She was quite satis- 
 fied with everything clothes, presents, arrangements 
 generally. She had somehow or other brightened and 
 softened, she looked charming. Some of the alertness of 
 her childhood seemed to have come back to her. 
 
 " Is she in love with you ?" Lady Violet asked John 
 satirically. 
 
 " Seems like it," said John contentedly, glancing over 
 to where she sat at dinner, at the right hand of his father, 
 the diamonds in her hair reflected in her eyes. Her lips 
 were brilliantly scarlet, she was not talking Aline rarely 
 talked, but she looked happy, excited, bridal. 
 
 " She's rippin' handsome, isn't she ?" asked John ad- 
 miringly. " Of course it was the Governor's idea, he 
 can't do without Stephen. But it's turning out very well. 
 There's nothing in the room can touch her for looks." 
 He had all the sense of proprietorship and satisfaction, 
 in glancing at her across the table, that he would have had 
 if, in his own stables, he had found a possible Derby win- 
 ner. " And she'll come on, too, you'll see, she'll fill out," 
 he said reflectively. He was not at all emotional, but he 
 tried to catch Aline's eye across the table. He would have 
 liked to signify his pleasure and approval, but he failed in 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 263 
 
 catching her eye ; she had forgotten John. He drank his 
 wine and finished his dinner contentedly enough, never- 
 theless. 
 
 " What a little cat you are !" was all his comment when 
 Lady Violet cross-examined him as to Aline's social and 
 intellectual powers. He was quite satisfied with both. 
 " Every inch a breeder," was his own comment on the 
 girl's aristocratic air and pose. Who the deuce wanted an 
 intellectual wife. Not John; he talked horses with Vi, 
 in which she was acute, Ruff's Guide, in which she was 
 well-read. Lady Violet and he had a thousand things in 
 common, but Aline seemed an ideal wife for him. 
 
 He supposed she was in love with him, though she 
 shrank from his rarely offered caresses. He rather liked 
 her for that; he was not a particularly demonstrative 
 man himself, and it suited his idea of the fitness of things 
 that Aline should be cold. So he talked to Vi and looked 
 at Aline, and was supremely content, after the ladies had 
 left the room, to linger over his wine and continue his 
 racing gossip with the Hon. Jack Alford of the Turf and 
 Jockey Club, who sat on Committees with him and was 
 also versed in form. 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
 
 IT is extraordinary what actions are possible for a well- 
 guarded young lady with a venal maid. 
 
 Aline, with the love-light in her eyes, was happy that 
 night at the Duke's dinner-party. That morning her maid 
 had done the shopping alone. She had taken Aline to 
 Karl's rooms in Piccadilly, where Louis now reigned lord 
 and master, and she had fetched her from those rooms 
 two hours later. Half a year's wages she earned as easily 
 as nothing, and there was plenty more to come, Louis told 
 her, if she held her tongue and did as she was told. Louis 
 but it is never worth while to analyse Louis's feelings. 
 Aline's society made him remember Joan, and when he 
 remembered Joan he was uncomfortable, almost more 
 than uncomfortable by now. 
 
 He wanted to see Joan again, he wanted her to write to 
 him; he realised that she had a hold on him, he knew 
 that what he had told her was true, that he had never 
 loved another woman so well. It was with difficulty, 
 always increasing, that he pushed the memory of her 
 away from him. 
 
 As for Aline, the girl was dull of wit, but she put it in 
 his power to make Stephen regret that word " insolent," 
 she made it possible for him to take revenge on Con- 
 stantia for her contempt, on John for his indifference, 
 on the Hayward clique and family for their ostracism. 
 What form his revenge should take was a detail about 
 which he was not particularly clear. If his was an evil 
 temper, it was a temper no stronger nor wider than the 
 man himself, it was, so to speak, a small, evil temper. 
 Getting his own way soothed it. He was in half-a-dozen 
 minds as to his course of action, when Karl's cable came 
 264 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 265 
 
 in answer to that very letter, the possible effect of which 
 had driven him to speak to Stephen so hastily. Karl was 
 reckless in cabling to Louis : 
 
 " Overjoyed at proposed marriage nothing could suit 
 better secure Imperial interest. Cabling Hayward will 
 make any arrangements for settlements he requires," 
 
 Thus Karl acted the Deus ex machina, and precipitated 
 matters prematurely. The cablegram arrived in the even- 
 ing, the very evening, in fact, of the ducal dinner-party. 
 Louis calculated, and calculated correctly, that the one 
 intended for Stephen would have been sent to Westmin- 
 ster, and Stephen would not receive it until the morning. 
 As a matter of fact, Stephen was in Scotland, on a hur- 
 ried visit connected with the Council of Education, and 
 it was a week before he read the message, which was then 
 no longer cryptographic. 
 
 As it was, Louis thought he was bound to act precipi- 
 tately, and therefore he blamed Karl. All the following 
 morning, when he was getting a special licence, making 
 arrangements at a convenient church, instructing the maid 
 and securing Aline's presence, he was blaming Karl for 
 driving him into premature action, he was thinking of 
 Joan, and feeling encumbered with the prospect of Aline's 
 companionship, lie had it ever in the background of his 
 mind, where he had thrust Joan's image, that she would 
 forgive him his hasty marriage, that she would know 
 it was Karl's fault, that he would one day, one vague 
 day, ask her for sympathy, and let her comfort him for 
 having been thrust into such a position by Karl's impul- 
 siveness. 
 
 In the meanwhile, he completed his preparations, went 
 back to Aline in Piccadilly, found her waiting patiently 
 for him with her maid, drove them both down in his 
 brougham to the little church in Margaret Street, and was 
 married before he had quite decided what should be his 
 next step. 
 
 Stephen's absence in Scotland, of which they told him, 
 assured him safety from discovery for a few more hours. 
 
266 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He sent the maid back to Grosvenor Street to smuggle out 
 such clothes and jewellery as were possible. 
 
 There would be a hullabaloo, there was bound to be an 
 outcry. John, strong and stalwart, might take active steps. 
 Louis did not specify what steps John might take, but he 
 said to himself that anything in the way of a fracas would 
 be undignified! Louis was not handy with his fists, and, 
 like most men to whom libertinism was a habit, he had 
 in early days known the taste of a horsewhip across his 
 back. Taking everything into consideration, " facing the 
 music" made no appeal to him. 
 
 On the other hand, it would be interesting to hear the 
 details of Karl's proposed settlements; he had no doubt 
 of Karl's generous affection, but there was nothing like 
 certainty. The season was so nearly over ; it was impos- 
 sible for him to appear at Ascot, shooting parties were 
 hardly in his line, and there was nothing in the mining 
 market to keep him in England. The flotation of the 
 Althaus Bank, and its extraordinary success, seemed to 
 have been the signal for a general diminution of business, 
 for a general fall in values, or fictitious values. The 
 orders from South Africa, couched in enigmatic language, 
 all spelt " stop," or " go slow," anyway they put the 
 damper completely on speculation, and encouraged, at 
 least in the Althaus office, the opinion that the bears were 
 in for a field day, and not before it was their due. They 
 shortened sail in the Althaus office, and prepared for 
 squalls. 
 
 Altogether, there seemed nothing to detain Louis in 
 England, nothing to prevent him taking his aristocratic 
 bride to his brother, to receive personally his congratula- 
 tions, and anything else with which he might wish to 
 endow them. 
 
 Louis, not being introspective, did not contrast, more 
 than he could help, his voyage in the Arizona with Joan 
 on his way to England with his voyage in the Memphis 
 with Aline, eight months later, on his return to South 
 Africa. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 267 
 
 Aline had the manners and habits of her class, was 
 carefully dressed and attended by her maid three or four 
 times a day, was coifed and manicured, sent forward with 
 her parasol and her handkerchief to take her seat on her 
 deck-chair, and was even supplied with a novel and a 
 footstool. Louis became proud of her ; he told her pedi- 
 gree, or, at least, her relationship to the former Under- 
 secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to as many of his 
 fellow-voyagers as gave him the opportunity. He intro- 
 duced people to her, often he stood by her chair. At first 
 he had drawn her attention to sky and sea, to phenomena 
 of salt spray and colour-effects ; it had given him pleasure 
 to remember the things Joan had said to him, and to 
 repeat them, imagining himself poetic, and an observer 
 of Nature. But Aline's lack of interest gradually chilled 
 his reminiscent ardour. Aline's lack of interest seemed 
 her most prevailing characteristic. He frequently yawned 
 when he stood attentively by her chair, yet he was more 
 satisfied than he had expected to be with the wife he had 
 won. After all, her birth and breeding impressed him, 
 and that she had no conversation and no mind did not 
 detract from her value as an addendum to his personal 
 consequence. Her maid was brighter, smarter, more 
 appreciative, altogether better to Louis's taste, as a com- 
 panion. They had frequent consultations together as to 
 Aline's toilettes and other things. Altogether, though the 
 voyage back seemed infinitely longer than the voyage out, 
 it was not impossibly tedious. There were many ladies 
 on board, one or two of the smaller fry of Cape Town 
 financiers, and Louis's self-esteem was always being fed 
 and petted and his temper kept sweet. Aline was still in 
 love with him, very happy and content. Under Louis's 
 dictation she had written to her father and Aunt Con to 
 tell them so. She hoped they would forgive her for not 
 awaiting their consent, but she could not bear John, and 
 she loved Louis, and often Aunt Con had said she wanted 
 her to be happy, and, then, many great families had their 
 origin in wealth, so the line of demarcation Aunt Con 
 
268 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 had drawn was merely an artificial one. Louis had been 
 very proud of the wording of Aline's letter ; the last trace 
 of irritation against Stephen and Con went as he dictated 
 it. It gave him back his self-confidence. 
 
 Karl met them at Cape Town, and came on board in 
 the tug. 
 
 " Well, Louis, old boy, well, so you have brought your 
 wife out here for her honeymoon." 
 
 " Dear old man," Louis answered affectionately, " I 
 didn't feel I was properly married until you'd seen her, 
 and given us your fraternal blessing !" 
 
 " Oh ! you shall have my blessing right enough, and 
 something besides." They shook hands, patted each 
 other's shoulders, were altogether a little more demonstra- 
 tive than Englishmen would have been. 
 
 " It was a splendid move, an excellent move, nothing 
 could have pleased me better; and you seemed to have 
 fixed it up so quickly too taken time by the forelock, eh ! 
 and tweaked it. What did Stephen say to the hurry, and 
 that stiff sister of his? It was awfully good of him to 
 send us the sign we had been waiting for. How did you 
 manage to persuade them? You must tell me all about 
 it. I suppose it was the Jackson affair that clinched it; 
 they can't afford to sit still and let the world see that 
 Englishmen can't count on their Government when they 
 are wronged and oppressed. I was surprised to get your 
 cable that you were coming out. No waiting for settle- 
 ments or anything. Hayward never answered my mes- 
 sage ; took it on trust, I suppose. Well, he won't suffer for 
 it, nor she either. He's behaved well to you, Louis, and 
 to us," here he gave another pat, "and we'll behave well to 
 him. Now, where is the girl? Hang it all, Louis, just 
 to think of you as a married man ! I suppose I may give 
 her a kiss. Why, it doesn't seem so long ago that you 
 used to kiss me ' good-night' yourself, no, nor an age since 
 we slept together under the counter at Abrahams, the 
 pawnbrokers. You forget that, I suppose ? It was almost 
 my first place, arid I took it for four bob a week on condi- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 269 
 
 tion I might have you to sleep with me under the counter. 
 How you used to nestle up, ' Lulu cold/ you used to say ; 
 it was ' Lulu cold' and ' Lulu hungry' most of those days. 
 And now I am asking whether I may give your wife a 
 kiss, and she Stephen Hayward's daughter! Yes, times 
 have changed for us, haven't they?" 
 
 Louis was quite ready to be sentimental ; he had yet to 
 break to Karl that he had not waited for Stephen's con- 
 sent and then there was the Geldenrief 
 
 " But you've always been good to me, old fellow, 
 though I've been a trouble," he answered affectionately. 
 
 " No, no, never a trouble a bit of anxiety perhaps, but 
 we won't talk of that now ; you're all I've got belonging 
 to me anyhow. I don't feel it's a sister you're going to 
 present to me, I feel it's a daughter; you've been more 
 like a son, haven't you ? And I haven't been hard on you, 
 I hope I haven't been hard on you, because you've got a 
 different nature from mine, and live differently. It's all 
 over now, eh? Benedict, the married man. Is she 
 pretty? I've arranged for you both at the hotel. I didn't 
 know what your plans were. And we've got a heap of 
 things to talk over ; it's not all roses over here just now. 
 But we must see you finish your honeymoon in peace." 
 
 Then, amid passengers with luggage, and sailors, Kaf- 
 fir boys, and the bustle of landing, appeared Aline, calm 
 and fair and collected, in her neat serge costume, her 
 hat, her veil, her gloves, all as if fresh from Piccadilly, 
 and Susan in close attendance, with her leather jewel- 
 case. 
 
 " Oh, my word !" ejaculated Karl. 
 
 " All right, isn't it ?" asked Louis, lisping with his proud 
 air of proprietorship. 
 
 " Aline, this is my more than brother, my guardian, 
 Karl Althaus, the millionaire." 
 
 " Well, he might have left that out, mightn't he, my 
 dear ? Glad to know you," said Karl. 
 
 She put out her hand in its grey kid glove, a small 
 hand that lay in Karl's huge paw, and attracted his eye: 
 
270 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 there seemed no occasion or opportunity for that contem- 
 plated kiss. 
 
 " I am glad to know Louis's brother," she said. " Is 
 that Cape Town ; do we land here ?" 
 
 " Yes, that is Cape Town, and this is Table Bay." Karl 
 felt a pride in his South African home. 
 
 " It seems very nice," she said, in that ladylike, unin- 
 terested way that Louis thought was such good form. 
 
 " Nice, oh !" Karl faced the mountain for a minute. 
 It was crowned with mist; behind those mists was hid- 
 den more than a continent, an empire. Karl's heart was 
 full of empire just now, and his head of dreams; he was 
 growing beyond money, and the land he looked on was 
 great with promise. 
 
 " Louis," said Aline, " my cabin box has not been 
 brought up yet. Susan told the men not to touch it until 
 you went down." 
 
 " All right, I'll see about it ; take care of that gang- 
 way. Karl, see to Aline, old fellow, will you, whilst I 
 look after the things ? I told them not to turn them upside 
 down ; I don't want everything spoilt." 
 
 " Yes, I'll see to Aline. Take my arm, dear. You don't 
 mind my calling you dear, do you ? I dare say Louis will 
 have told you he's been more like a son to me than a 
 brother. I nursed him when he was a baby; he sat on 
 my knee to learn his letters, used to cuddle down too, and 
 pretend he was asleep, so that he shouldn't have to learn. 
 He was a sly little chap, but affectionate, I believe you. 
 But you don't want me to prate about your husband, I 
 dare say you've heard all about it; you'll be glad to 
 get on dry land again, I should think. I always look 
 on the trip as a rest, but I suppose it's different with 
 you." 
 
 Aline had nothing to say. Susan answered for her. She 
 never let her mistress far out of her sight. 
 
 " Yes, indeed, we shall be, sir, cooped up in these cab- 
 ins, hardly room to turn round." 
 
 Karl did not encourage Susan's loquacity. He looked 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 271 
 
 after Aline, and then returned to help Louis with the lug- 
 gage and through the customs. 
 
 " I won't dine with you to-night ; I'll leave you by your- 
 selves. But how about to-morrow ? I want a talk ; I'm 
 at the old rooms. Will you stroll over after breakfast?" 
 
 " Oh, come in to-night. Aline is sure to go to bed 
 early. What do you think of her? What did she say to 
 you?" 
 
 " Not talkative, is she ? A bit of her aunt about her, 
 isn't there ?" Karl said slowly. 
 
 " But she's got the air, the right air about her, hasn't 
 she?" Louis rejoined eagerly. 
 
 " Louis, you're such an affectionate fellow, have you 
 done this for me? She's it's got into my head that 
 you've done this for me ; it's just like you. Tell me " 
 
 " Oh, nonsense, nonsense !" but not in a tone to carry 
 conviction. Why shouldn't Karl think he had sacrificed 
 himself on the altar of fraternal or Imperial interests. 
 " Don't worry about me. Aline is all right, just the wife 
 for me ; and now you've got the connection you want with 
 the Government. Stephen Hayward will be Prime Min- 
 ister one of these days, everybody says so. It's only a 
 question of time." 
 
 " Well, well, I'll see you later. But my mind misgives 
 me, my mind misgives me." 
 
 It did misgive him. Karl, accustomed to deal with men 
 and matters, always ready with a certain penetrative sum- 
 mary of the people before him, had hoped to find a strong, 
 good woman side by side with his brother, one who would 
 lead him, guard him, keep him from straying backwards 
 to those Cupid's gardens, of his dalliances in which Karl 
 had always known. Aline was not a strong woman, he 
 saw that in her wandering eyes ; that she was not a wise 
 one he saw too, not one who would share the responsi- 
 bility he had always had with Louis, she was one who 
 would add to it rather. Karl perceived all that. 
 
 " She hasn't kept simple and straight herself, as a girl 
 should," he thought, remembering the old story. That 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 she was fair and stately in her cultivated carriage did not 
 compensate him for all he missed in her; and his mind 
 misgave him us he drove away. 
 
 He had meant to leave them alone together that even- 
 ing, but his restlessness made it impossible. Louis wel- 
 comed him warmly in the hotel sitting-room, was affec- 
 tionately glad to see him, and ordered up the whisky bottle 
 and cigars, remembering all Karl's tastes. 
 
 " That's just what we wanted, a good old cosy talk. 
 Aline went to bed directly after dinner, tired out, you 
 know. I don't think she's very strong, but Susan looks 
 after her a good girl, Susan. Did you notice her? So 
 you can smoke away with an easy conscience, and they'll 
 air the room before we want it in the morning." 
 
 Louis's fastidiousness foresaw the room filled with 
 fumes of stale smoke and whisky, and provided against 
 it. He took one easy-chair, Karl taking the other. He 
 lit a cigarette, Karl a green Havana. Louis had his coffee 
 and his liqueur at the small table by his elbow, Karl filled 
 half his tumbler with whisky, added a dash of soda, and' 
 put it on the ground beside him where he could reach it 
 easily. 
 
 " Now tell us all about it. I'll unfold my budget when 
 you've done; mine's full enough. I've been hanging 
 about that stoep at Groot Schur for the last week. That's 
 the biggest man we've seen in our time, Louis, the very 
 biggest." 
 
 " You tell me all about everything," Louis interposed, 
 stretching himself out lazily and comfortably, " mine can 
 keep. I'm married and done for, that sums it up ; you've 
 got far more interesting news. What about the Bank, 
 and what's the meaning of the Concessions' Account that 
 we paid ten thousand into, and what has brought business 
 to a standstill in Throgmorton Street, and lots more 
 whats ? Go ahead !" 
 
 " I'm glad to have you back," said Karl ; " I haven't a 
 soul I can talk to as I do to you, Louis. But I wish I'd 
 brought you up differently; I wish I had known what I 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 273 
 
 know now when you were a little fellow, and would have 
 taken it in." 
 
 " Oh ! well, I dare say I know more than you think ; 
 but what's it all about, what's wrong?" 
 
 What Karl Althaus had to tell his brother is an old 
 story now, trite and stale and almost forgotten. For 
 years Karl had thought only of money, and of how to 
 acquire it, of land and how to become possessed of it, 
 but his big heart and big brain wanted only impetus and 
 opportunity to open to finer truths than that money is 
 power. Joan had given the impetus, circumstances the 
 opportunity, and the Prime Minister of Cape Colony had 
 indicated the direction. 
 
 The grievances of British residents in Johannesburg 
 had reached the culminating point. The laws made by 
 the Boers to suit the Boers pressed ever more hardly on 
 those whose interests were not represented in either Raad. 
 The position had become intolerable. Moved partly by 
 genuine patriotism, partly by the counsel of the woman 
 he loved, a little perhaps also by self-interest, Karl Alt- 
 haus had definitely joined the party of revolt. But he 
 hardly anticipated serious opposition ; it was a big game 
 of bluff that he thought would be played, with cannons 
 for counters. The coming of Stephen Hayward's daugh- 
 ter meant that the British residents in Johannesburg held 
 the fifth ace ; and the fifth ace was Imperial support. 
 
 " What have you told Stephen Hay ward?" Karl asked 
 Louis. " When I got your wire, when I knew he had 
 given you his daughter, and that you were both on the 
 way out, I took heart. I went up to Rhodes with the 
 news. ' Stephen Hayward has given his daughter to my 
 brother/ I told him, ' I asked him for a sign, and he has 
 given his daughter to my brother, and sent them both out 
 here/ I suppose, by the way, it was Stephen's idea you 
 should come out here, and be on the spot when the row 
 came?" 
 
 ;< You know, Karl, you may be very well up in the poli- 
 tics of the Rand, but you know precious little about politics 
 
 18 
 
274 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 in England, if you think Stephen Hay ward represents the 
 Government." 
 
 " He represents the Haywards, and the Haywards rep- 
 resent the country, all that is best and most constitutional 
 in it." 
 
 " Stick-in-the-muds, that's what the Haywards are. 
 You'll never get the Haywards to move." 
 
 " We must, Louis, we must. It's life and death to 
 South Africa, it's life and death to British interests here. 
 I do believe it's life and death to British interests through- 
 out the world if we lose South Africa ; and lose it we shall 
 if these eighty thousand Englishmen are left to their fate, 
 to be trampled on, oppressed, fired at and taunted when 
 they threaten reprisals, intrigued against successfully 
 when they appeal to their Commissioner, thrust on one 
 side when they expose their grievances, forbidden to bear 
 arms, to live free, deprived of suffrage, their rights ig- 
 nored." 
 
 " Draw it mild, old fellow, we haven't starved out 
 here." 
 
 " No !" Karl said bitterly, " because we've run with the 
 hare and hunted with the hounds, because we've forgot- 
 ten we were Englishmen. But I'm sick of truckling, they 
 think less and less of us through it. We've got to fight 
 'em, or anyway frighten 'em. That damned fort at Pre- 
 toria has got to be seized." 
 
 " You're such a surprise to me in this mood, I don't 
 know what to say ; it seems a storm in a tea-cup to me." 
 
 " It will be a hurricane by-and-by." 
 
 Karl told Louis everything, walking up and down the 
 room, now in glowing sentences, now in disjointed 
 phrases. He talked far into the night, with the longing a 
 man has for sympathy, for comprehension, from his own 
 kith and kin. 
 
 Louis, at first amused, grew tired, then bored; he 
 yawned, he looked at his watch. Karl went on talking 
 revolution, Louis drowsed in his easy-chair, answering 
 yes and no, murmuring sympathetic agreement, longing 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 275 
 
 foi Karl to exhaust himself. But Karl woke him suddenly 
 when, a propos of nothing, he said : 
 
 " Tell me, you never told me, if you saw anything of 
 Joan de Groot in London. I hear you went over in the 
 same boat; did you get friendly with her? Hers is the 
 very pen we want now and must have. What is she 
 doing? Where is she?" 
 
 " Joan Joan de Groot," stammered Louis. " Where is 
 she? Where?" 
 
 " Yes, man, where, and what is she doing ?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 It was the truth, he did not know. His mind followed 
 the question she and her unborn child, where were 
 they?" 
 
 " Karl, I don't know. I tried to find out, I wanted to 
 know, it's not my fault." He was agitated ; Karl saw he 
 was agitated. " She gave me the slip ; I swear to you I 
 never meant to lose sight of her like this " 
 
 Karl did not understand his agitation ; there were tears 
 in Louis's eyes and his voice was unsteady, even his 
 cheeks had flushed a little. " I never meant to lose sight 
 of her. I wish to God I knew where she was. You have 
 heard something " 
 
 Karl went over to him. 
 
 " What a sentimentalist you are," he said, " what a 
 sentimentalist. I begin to think that any way I had edu- 
 cated you, you would have turned out the same. I tell 
 you of the biggest bit of Empire-making that has been 
 done since Clive was in India, and you yawn your head 
 off. I ask you the address of a woman that I told you to 
 keep your eye on, and because you haven't got it you are 
 half hysterical. Never mind, old chap, if you have lost 
 sight of her. One woman at a time for you, I suppose, 
 and you were completely taken up with the present Mrs. 
 Althaus." 
 
 Louis's smile was sickly. 
 
 " But I'm disappointed " Karl said, walking up and 
 down again, " I must admit I'm disappointed. I thought 
 
276 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 you two would have become friends. I thought you'd 
 have given me news of her. I told you before, didn't I, 
 Louis? she's the one woman in the world for me. And 
 she's free now." 
 
 He grew silent a minute, thinking of her. Louis's 
 heart was beating fast; what would Karl say if he 
 knew ? 
 
 " There is no good writing to her, I shall wait till I go 
 over. I'll find her out I'll ask her again." 
 
 Louis was sick with fear, perhaps with shame. Karl 
 went on talking. " Everything she taught me, everything. 
 Do you know those lines ? 
 
 ' Ever the faith endures ; England, my England, 
 Take me and break me, I am yours, 
 
 England ! my own/ 
 
 She taught 'em to me, made me repeat them after her as 
 if I'd been a child. You ought not to have let her out of 
 your sight or out of your knowledge. She is such a brave 
 little woman, but she has very little money, my mind mis- 
 gives me I can't understand about the Geldenrief , I 
 think she may have got into bad hands. Louis, as I'm 
 talking I'm getting frightened for her. You must have 
 heard of her, you ought to have heard of her. Isn't she 
 writing anything ? How is she living ? What is she living 
 on ? Who's fighting her battles for her ? Oh, Louis, with 
 all your love-making, you don't know what it is to have 
 a little woman like that, all life and sweetness, tugging 
 all the time at the gizzard of you." He stood still a min- 
 ute, miserably, silently. " I wanted her, how I wanted 
 that woman! Never as badly as I do now. I'm an old 
 fool to you, I know I'm an old fool, but she kissed me 
 once of her own free will God bless her. Louis, you 
 ought to have brought me word of her. You knew how 
 it was with me." Louis stammered out that he did not 
 know, had not guessed. 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes, I told you. I must own you won't 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 277 
 
 think less of me, will you? or that I care for you less 
 but I must own that some of the reason why I was long- 
 ing so to see you, to have a good old talk, was just to hear 
 you say where you had left her, how she was looking. 
 What did she say to you, Louis ? I've got a thirst on me 
 when I think of her." He finished off his whisky at a 
 gulp. 
 
 How had she looked? What had she said to him? 
 Louis, even Louis, could not meet his brother's eye. 
 
 " I dare say she's all right," he got out. " What do 
 you mean by ' she has no money,' and about the Gelden- 
 rief ? She's got a good income the farm is hers." 
 
 " No, no ! the farm is ours." 
 
 " Ours?" he exclaimed, unguardedly, thrown off his 
 balance. 
 
 " Yes, didn't I write you ? It is that which has both- 
 ered me, that's what I don't understand. She renounced 
 the farm in favor of the next-of-kin, that drunken half- 
 breed Josephus de Witte. We've bought it off him for 
 eight thousand pounds." 
 
 " Renounced renounced?" he muttered, growing pale. 
 
 " Wouldn't have anything to do with it, she wrote. 
 Van Biene told me about it, he wouldn't show me her 
 letter; it gave no explanation, he said. I can't make it 
 out; of course, I shall preserve her rights. But I get 
 puzzled sometimes ; like to-night, for instance, I get un- 
 easy. What became of her? What is she doing? If 
 she's married again I should have heard I do believe 
 she would have written to tell me. It would be just like her 
 to renounce the property if she had married again, but no ! 
 she would not have done that either not so soon, at least. 
 I thought you would have brought me news. I shan't be 
 able to stand this much longer ; I shall have to go over." 
 His hand shook a little, Louis saw it by the drink in the 
 tumbler. 
 
 " I'm sorry, Karl, I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault, dear old 
 Karl; I'm sorry." He was still fumbling with words, 
 dazed at what he had heard. 
 
278 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Oh, never mind. I must get used to it." He emptied 
 his glass. 
 
 " But the Geldenrief ? Then I was right to buy up the 
 shares?" He was anxious to press, to pursue the subject. 
 
 " We could have dealt with the deep without touching 
 the outcrop. You've paid about two hundred thousand 
 for a hundred and fifty thousand pounds' worth of ma- 
 chinery, and not the latest either. I don't blame you, old 
 fellow, you meant well, we all make mistakes, but you 
 might have let me know what you were up to. It will 
 right itself, I suppose. If what we're projecting for comes 
 off, it will pay to work a lower grade ore, and the Gelden- 
 rief may still yield a dividend. I shall do nothing with 
 the land until I've found the little woman, until I've 
 got to know what she wants, what her meaning was. She 
 always had compunctions as to how she had treated De 
 Groot; I suppose that was it. But you look pale, old 
 fellow, tired. I've kept you up too long, first with my 
 politics, and now with my love affairs. But I have no 
 secrets from you. I'm off, now. I've got to go back to 
 Johannesburg in a couple of days; I've got all my in- 
 structions now, the way is pretty clear. Good-night, old 
 chap, take a long morning, you look done up; it's that 
 confounded cigarette-smoking. And don't you worry be- 
 cause you've lost sight of Joan de Groot, I'll find her, 
 never fear, I don't suppose there's anything wrong. I'm 
 a fidgetty old fool. You know I always fidget over you, 
 if you're out of sight too long, if I don't know where you 
 are, and what you're up to. Good-night !" 
 
 But Louis had a bad night, with troubled dreams, un- 
 easy sleep, and, though he called up to his aid all his 
 grievances against Joan, the shape and substance had gone 
 out of them, they could not fill the room, they could not 
 shut out her small face, her wavy hair, her words, " Louis, 
 if your ' for ever' meant three months, let it last a little 
 longer." 
 
 What had become of her ? 
 
 What would Karl say if he knew? 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
 
 WHAT followed made history. 
 
 Louis and his wife had arrived in South Africa on the 
 eve of the Jameson Raid. Karl, interesting himself in the 
 uprising that was being engineered from Cape Town, tried 
 to carry Louis with him. Louis, fearful lest Karl should 
 rush home on a search for Joan, fearful lest Karl should 
 suspect his loyalty in the matter of the Geldenrief, fell, 
 or pretended to fall, in with his revolutionary sympathies. 
 
 Owing to Karl's trust in him, owing to Rhodes's habit 
 of leaving all details to trusted lieutenants, Louis, after 
 Karl had gone back to Johannesburg, came to have more 
 power in his hands than any other man of the whole party. 
 The way he used his power was to invent codes, intrigue 
 with contractors, undermine petty officials, delay and 
 bungle. 
 
 The arms Louis had ordered failed to arrive, the ammu- 
 nition Louis had provided failed in quantity and quality. 
 Up in Johannesburg grave faces counted men and arms, 
 and looked at each other bewildered. Everything waited. 
 
 Then the young hot-heads, impatient and restless on 
 the borders of Bechuanaland, grew tired of waiting. They 
 moved they were beyond recall. Older hot-heads, big 
 with great purpose South Africa to be won, and the heel 
 stamped on the serpent-head of treason were beyond 
 reason. The Empire-maker's half-hearted cry of " wait" 
 fell on ears deaf, purposely deaf, to its echo. A small 
 man in a big moment precipitated the crisis. Through 
 Louis's instrumentality, that word " wait" reached Johan- 
 nesburg in a tone of thunder ; it died away before it could 
 catch that brave little band that looked to Johannesburg 
 for reinforcements and support. 
 
 279 
 
280 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 When Louis heard that Jameson was moving ; when a 
 foolish official high in the Cabinet told him this, told him 
 also that the whole plot was discovered, the leaders were 
 all known, that peremptory orders were being despatched, 
 that Willoughby and Jameson would be treated as in- 
 vaders of a friendly State, practically as pirates, that they 
 would be shot, that Johannesburg rebels would be simi- 
 larly treated, that the British Government was cabling 
 sympathetically to Kruger; a panic, a paroxysm of fear 
 came over the man, he dreaded he knew not what. He 
 cabled Karl : " Flotation indefinitely postponed. Lon- 
 don takes all shares," and then, terrified at what he had 
 done, and at what he had left undone, picturing Karl in 
 prison in Pretoria, himself implicated, he hurried Aline 
 and Susan on board the first steamer that sailed, and was 
 half-way home before he had regained his nerve. 
 
 Karl interpreted Louis's message that Jameson too had 
 been stopped! and he persuaded his colleagues to accept 
 his interpretation. Nothing synchronised. What Cape 
 Town already knew, Johannesburg heard too late. For 
 those words, London takes all shares, coming to him from 
 Stephen Hayward's son-in-law meant to Karl Althaus 
 that the Home Government was prepared to give active 
 support. He hurriedly left for Cape Town to get further 
 instructions. 
 
 When the crucial moment came in Johannesburg, when 
 at length they heard there that Jameson had not been 
 stopped, that he was marching forward, expecting rein- 
 forcements to ride out to meet him, there was no Karl 
 Althaus on the spot to dominate the situation. There 
 were weak men, and cold-blooded ones, there were pol- 
 troons, and there were wiseacres, there were the men who 
 said that ten thousand rounds of ammunition would last 
 the rifles less than an hour, there were men who recal- 
 culated for the hundred and first time all the chances 
 against them, there was every one to counsel delay, hesi- 
 tation, inaction, to counsel the safeguarding their own in- 
 dividual interests. There was no man, no big, brave, un- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 281 
 
 selfish man, to muster what arms, what fighting power, 
 they had, and to march out with these to join the heroes 
 who had advanced to their aid. 
 
 The desperate muddle that then ensued has now cul- 
 minated in our peaceful possession of the country we have 
 won again and again. But no such vision of the future 
 compensated Karl for the news he heard when he reached 
 Cape Town. There he heard of the great disaster, of the 
 brave little band looking for the reinforcements that came 
 not, of the lost lives, the surrender, the arrest of his 
 friends, his companions, the men he had led into danger, 
 of the Reform leaders in gaol, and Kruger malignantly 
 triumphing over the " tortoise that had put out its head." 
 It was heartbreaking to Karl Althaus, literally heartbreak- 
 ing. He had never been ill in his life, but he broke down 
 in Cape Town, when he heard all Van Biene had to tell 
 him, all the newspapers were full of, when he realised the 
 ruin of his hopes and plans. 
 
 Breakdown takes unromantic forms, and Karl Althaus 
 was never a figure for romance. He got a chill on his 
 journey up, he had been forty hours without food, he was 
 in a state of the intensest, most deplorable, depression. 
 Two hours after his arrival in Cape Town he was in bed 
 with an acute attack of dysentery. For a full week events 
 went on without him. He had a magnificent constitution, 
 but he had tried it severely. He was a wreck at the end 
 of the week. Nevertheless, he wanted to go back. 
 
 That hotel at Sea Point, the best hostelry in South 
 Africa, to which they had brought him in his sudden ill- 
 ness, was for him as a prison. All day in his agony the 
 sun biased into the windows of his bedroom, and the sea 
 swelled smoothly and glassily in the bay beyond, and sun 
 and sea seemed part of the fever which consumed him, 
 and part of the barrier which lay between him and the 
 men by whose side he should have stood. All the days and 
 nights of that week he wanted to go back ; raging in the 
 enforced confinement of his sick-room, he was the despair 
 of his nurses and the terror of his doctor. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 They told his state to a man who valued Karl Althaus 
 there were many such in Cape Town, but this man Karl 
 Althaus valued. 
 
 This man came from his own misery in Groot Schur, 
 and sat by Karl's bedside. 
 
 " You want to get back ; but there's nothing to be 
 gained by going back," he told Karl, who, as he lay 
 and looked at his friend, listened, and began to feel 
 alive again, because here was Rhodes, shading him 
 from the glare of sun and sea, and with Rhodes was 
 strength. 
 
 " The Commissioner has gone up ; I saw him before he 
 started." 
 
 " What did you tell him ? what did you say to him ?" 
 
 " I told him I didn't care a damn what his instructions 
 were, or what authority he'd got ; but if a hair of Jimmy's 
 head was injured " 
 
 He could not sit still and contemplate such a possi- 
 bility. He turned his back to Karl ; nobody should see 
 his face, when he thought of Jimrny, of what might hap- 
 pen to him. 
 
 " Go on, for mercy's sake, go on," said Karl from his 
 sickbed. Rhodes turned round at that ; Karl could see the 
 sun had dazzled his small bloodshot eyes. 
 
 He took out a cigar, and lighted it with shaking hand, 
 forgetting he was in a sick-room. " I told him if a hair of 
 Jimmy's head was hurt, aye, or of any of them, I'd power 
 enough left I'm a broken man, but I've power enough 
 left to to raise hell in the land. I told him if he didn't 
 bring him back to me here safe, I'd arm every black in 
 Rhodesia;" he puffed vigorously at his cigar, but his 
 hand shook as he held it, " and in Bechuanaland. I told 
 him I'm a broken man, but I've got millions of money 
 behind me, and half a continent of fellows that that still 
 trust me, and if she goes back on us, the Mother Coun- 
 try" he was speaking slowly, and Karl hung on his 
 words, every note in that deep husky voice shaking 
 through him in his weakness, " if she goes back on us," 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 283 
 
 he bit his cigar almost in half, but his voice was lowered, 
 not raised in his terrible excitement, " I'll arm every black 
 in the country and send them war whooping with rifles, 
 and with maxims, and with cannon, until there isn't a 
 
 Boer left living in the b y country. That's what I 
 
 told him." He puffed at his cigar and cursed it because it 
 would not draw. 
 
 Karl, lying in bed, too weak to move, watched the big 
 man, and took comfort. They were restless men, those 
 pioneers ; Rhodes had come to sit with his sick friend, but 
 sitting was impossible for him for long. 
 
 " I've been an Englishman," he said, pulling himself up, 
 a strong man, over six feet in height, and fleshy ; he flung 
 out his arms, looked at his big fist, and repeated, " I've 
 been an Englishman, though South Africa made a man 
 of me. I was a rotten puny boy when I left Eng- 
 land; she nurtured me badly, had no suck for me, 
 shoved me out. I've dreamt of her, fought for her. Karl 
 Althaus !" he never raised his voice, " if through her 
 delay, her damnable calm and red tape, there is a hair of 
 one of those men's heads injured, I'll pull the place down 
 upon her, I'll make hell through the length and breadth 
 of the b y continent, I'll " 
 
 Then he broke down and flung himself on the easy- 
 chair by Karl's bedside and groaned ; the bed shook and 
 the room shook, but Karl was comforted. 
 
 Karl, weak and shrunken, grown grey of face, put out a 
 shaky hand. 
 
 " Cecil, old man, keep up, everything depends on you 
 now." 
 
 " No, I'm broke, I've resigned. I'm a damned fool to 
 talk as if I had any power left." He lifted up his head, 
 but the gleam that had been in his eyes when he talked of 
 vengeance had gone out of them, and he looked what he 
 said he was a broken man. 
 
 " But we must do something I must get back this 
 blasted illness " Karl moved with difficulty, with groans 
 of weakness, the sweat breaking out on his forehead. 
 
284 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " That fool is keeping liquor from me, making me as weak 
 as a rat. Cecil, I can't sleep those poor fellows I" 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Blast this illness." 
 
 He could not lie in his bed quietly, he turned and tossed 
 and cursed his body. He was desperate to get back to 
 Pretoria, it seemed to him he had deserted his post, he 
 wanted to be shot, he would rather have died with the 
 troopers who had fallen, or been in prison with the others, 
 than be here. To be here in safety, in bed in Cape Town, 
 made him rave and curse, made him swear and cry. 
 
 The other man had told him there was nothing to be 
 gained by going back; but if Rhodes had told him he 
 ought to go, he could not have moved. The world was 
 all black that afternoon to those two, not because they 
 had failed, both of them had before that faced failure, 
 and worse, but because through them their friends were 
 in jeopardy. The big man was in worse plight than 
 Karl. He had a reputation, and he had lost it. He l.ad 
 a friend, a friend who was dearer to him than himself, 
 or his ambitions, or any country and his friend was in 
 danger. Still it was he who recovered himself first in 
 this interview. He had come here to comfort Karl be- 
 cause he heard that Karl was ill and broken. And Karl 
 sobbed in his bed, lost his self-control before the other, 
 and raved. 
 
 " This won't do this won't do, old man." Rhodes put 
 his hand on the bed-clothes. He was of a different race 
 and hardier. " Here, I've got a flask with me, have a 
 pull. Damn the doctors; there's only one of them who 
 knows everything." 
 
 Ah ! that friend of his, how gentle he was, and he knew 
 everything ! 
 
 " We've got to face the music, there's lots to be done, 
 though I think it's better done here than in Pretoria. 
 Here or at home. Pull yourself together. I'm no good 
 to anybody. I don't know what to be after until I know 
 Jimmy's safe. Curse it ! what fools we've been." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 285 
 
 Silence fell between them now and again. They said 
 a few disjointed words, first one of them and then the 
 other. They could not see daylight. They had been so 
 strong, and so self-reliant. They had meant to win an 
 Empire, and they had ended by wrecking a community. 
 On their strength and self-reliance the others had counted. 
 They had withdrawn the plank when the swimmers were 
 in deep waters. They tried to talk things over, but dis- 
 jointed words and phrases were all that came. Their 
 friendship was riveted in the silences that fell between 
 them in the moments when neither of them could face 
 the other. When they parted they had settled nothing. 
 
 That night Karl Althaus nearly went under. He had 
 a relapse, and he shivered on the brink of death. In his 
 sick man's fancy the smell of death was in his nostrils, and 
 the room was cold. He wanted Louis, wanted something 
 of his own near him. He had nursed Louis more than 
 once through childish illnesses, and held him in his arms 
 through fevered nights. He wanted Louis now to put a 
 warm hand in his ; they were turning grey and cold and 
 he wanted some one to pull him back from the brink. 
 But there was no Louis there ; Karl shivered the night 
 through alone. In the morning hired hands were fetched. 
 He was cared for, but not by the boy who had always been 
 his care. 
 
 He asked for Louis, and they had to tell him of his 
 brother's hurried flight, of his disappearance. Heaven 
 only knows what Louis had feared, but, immediately the 
 news of the abortive raid had reached him, he had fled 
 the country. Letters, papers, telegrams, accounts, all had 
 been left behind, and everybody concerned was incrimi- 
 nated. Karl, with the facts staring him in the face, said 
 to himself only that Louis always had been a bit of a 
 coward ; he pitied him because he was not stronger. But, 
 when his friend came to see him again, he concealed his 
 soreness of feeling and defended Louis, saying his brother 
 was right in considering the position of his wife. 
 
 That second coming of his friend was the end of Karl's 
 
286 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 illness. Rhodes burst into the room in something of his 
 old impetuous manner, with his face alight. He did not 
 wait for the Doctor's permission, nor did he hear the 
 nurse's warning. He was waving a thin cablegram, the 
 broken look had gone; he was himself again, great, though 
 not quite sober perchance. 
 
 " It's all right, old fellow, all right. She's moved, she's 
 moved, that dear old blessed Mother of ours, she's stretch- 
 ing herself, she's waking up. Hurrah ! look at this . . . " 
 Karl stretched out a feeble hand, but the other read to 
 him, his voice deep with satisfaction, and just that won- 
 derful husky note in it again that told of his emotion : 
 
 ' Two regiments ordered to South Africa. Flying 
 squadron mobilised' What do you think of that?" 
 
 Karl's weak smile was eloquent. 
 
 " I thought that's what you'd think. Fairfield wires, 
 straight from the Colonial Office. And they've claimed 
 all the prisoners for trial in England." 
 
 " But why have they mobilised how what has hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 " What has happened ? A miracle ! Kaiser Billy has 
 done the trick; he thought she meant it when she slept 
 on, and let us sweat. He played a dirty German trick. 
 He thought she was asleep, and he gave a kick. ' Codlin' 
 your friend not short,' was his game. And lo! and be- 
 hold, he's kicked her into life, and she's awake, and look- 
 ing over here at us. He cabled Kruger to congratulate 
 him on his escape, and she woke up and flung the Con- 
 vention at him. Good old Kaiser Billy. We're all right 
 now. I'm too full of business to go into detail ; I've got 
 a thousand things to do before I get away. And I must 
 get away. If Jimmy's got to stand his trial he mustn't 
 stand it alone. You must get back as quickly as possi- 
 
 r i 
 
 " Of course. Never mind being ill they'll lift you on 
 board. I've taken your passage on the Dunvegan Castle. 
 She sails to-morrow, so you've another night to get strong 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 287 
 
 in. That precious brother of yours will only have ten 
 days' start of you after all. You'll have to teach him to 
 keep his mouth shut." 
 
 The man was so full of his news, of the rapid shifting 
 of the position, the panorama of events having moved so 
 quickly, that he had no time for Karl's protest on Louis's 
 behalf, nor for hesitation on his own. There wasn't a 
 trace of depression or doubt left in him. The very mo- 
 ment he had the news that the regiments were being sent 
 out, and the fleet had been mobilised, the very moment he 
 knew the supine old Mother in the sea had stirred and 
 moved, and stretched out her arms to her sons, his buoy- 
 ancy carried him triumphantly through the months, the 
 years ; his intellect reasserted itself, and he saw the inevi- 
 table end. 
 
 " We've got her, Karl ; she won't go back on us now. 
 As sure as there is a God in Heaven the British flag will 
 wave over a united South Africa. There will be any 
 amount of time wasted, red tape unwound, and talkee 
 talkee, but in the end we'll make 'em see where the coun- 
 try was drifting when you and I stepped in to save it for 
 them." He talked rapidly as he filled the sick-room and 
 flooded it with promise. The mantle of prophecy was 
 upon him ; he saw through the years. 
 
 " Two damned fools we've been two damned fools, 
 they'll call us. We shall hear it is all our fault while they 
 blunder on with their diplomacy. But we've woke 'em 
 up, Karl, my boy, we've woke 'em up." He shouted 
 to-day at the sick man, who could have shouted back 
 too with joy, because he was going to be moved, going to 
 be taken out of bed, and into the air, and made strong 
 and well again. He did not know what was going to be 
 done with him, or why, but he was infected by the other's 
 enthusiasm, and the shadow of sickness rolled away be- 
 fore the warmth and vigour of the strong man wflb was 
 happy in what he saw or foresaw. 
 
 " What am I to do at home ? You must tell me what I 
 am to do." 
 
288 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Sit on the steps of the Colonial Office and shriek our 
 justification: the Drifts, the Bewaarplatzen, the educa- 
 tion, the franchise, the prohibition to bear arms. Sit and 
 shriek ; work the press. Oh, it's all right. She won't go 
 to sleep again over this job. Two damned fools, they'll 
 call us ; but they'll call us patriots before we're dead, see 
 if they don't." 
 
 We have lived to see the words come true, lived to hear 
 one of the " damned fools" hailed as the greatest English- 
 man of the nineteenth century. But the great English- 
 man, justified to-day in his foresight and confidence, died 
 before the time had come for him to wear his laurels. He 
 lies on the summit of the mountain, and dominates men's 
 minds, sways their judgments, and illuminates their imag- 
 inations ; living he never wore his laurels. 
 
 On this wonderful morning, when he heard that the 
 answer to Kaiser William's congratulatory telegram was 
 the shipping of two regiments and the mobilisation of the 
 fleet, his heart swelled with pride and satisfaction. He 
 was ready to face the music, to face any kind of music 
 they might make about him, to take full responsibility for 
 all blunders, and full blame for all mistakes. He wanted 
 to take everything upon himself, so that all others con- 
 cerned might go free. But he had inevitable prepara- 
 tions to make and business to conclude. Karl must go 
 alone, and he would follow as soon as it was pos- 
 sible. 
 
 " But don't you make any mistake ; Chesham is the 
 man for us, he's proved himself every inch a man. Your 
 Stephen Hayward has fizzled out that was another of 
 our mistakes; Chesham ought to have been in it from 
 the first, not Hayward. Your brother promised every- 
 thing in his name, and, when it came to the pinch, there 
 was nothing to show for it, and Louis bolted home with 
 the daughter on the first hint of danger. I asked him. 
 asked him myself, caught hold of the skunk I beg your 
 pardon and tried to get him to go straight up there, up 
 to Johannesburg, with Stephen Hayward's daughter, and 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 289 
 
 lead the rebellion. They couldn't have repudiated us 
 then." 
 
 " He was bound to consider her safety," said Karl 
 loyally. 
 
 " Safety !" contemptuously. " She would have been 
 safe enough holding the forts at Johannesburg with her 
 husband by her side. With an English Minister's daugh- 
 ter inside the British lines, and defiance flung in the face 
 of Kruger, even with the High Commissioner to back 
 him, every loyalist in South Africa would have flocked to 
 help them, and that ape-faced hypocrite in Pretoria would 
 have yielded all they asked for. I see it clearly enough 
 now." 
 
 He grew almost dejected again, thinking of the blun- 
 ders that had been made. He was ever a man of moods, 
 easily depressed, easily elated, but with a wonderful 
 power of prophecy, of which we reap the fulfilment. 
 
 In the midst of his work and his troubles, for the waters 
 were very stormy, and no one had yet reached port, he 
 found time to superintend Karl's removal to the Dun- 
 vegan Castle, to pat him on the back and shake him by the 
 hand, to put life and spirit into him. For Karl was hum- 
 bled; he had not the Empire-maker's gifts of prophecy 
 and prescience. He was tortured continuously by his 
 sense of his own shortcomings, by his own failure. He 
 felt he had been faint in the fight ; his heart had not been 
 in that call to arms he knew that, and, when the crucial 
 moment came, he had not been there to meet it. 
 
 Of course, at the last, he remembered when and how 
 he could help. Van Biene was instructed that no money 
 was to be spared in Pretoria; he had carte blanche for 
 everybody's expenses. It seemed to Karl that all he could 
 do to compensate the Reform leaders for the troubles he 
 had brought upon them was to pour out his money in their 
 service. Even at the last he would have gone back to 
 share their trial and their punishment with them, had it 
 not been made impossible for him. 
 
 He was carried on board, but his constitution tri- 
 
 19 
 
290 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 umphed, and before they were three days out he was on 
 his feet again. By the time they landed there was no trace 
 of illness about him ; he was ready for the work that was 
 before him. 
 
 He was a little sore with Louis for his flight, and a 
 doubt of the younger man played about him and plagued 
 him. Van Biene, as well as the Empire-maker, had come 
 to bid Karl farewell. From Van Biene he got Joan de 
 Groot's address, the address from which she had sent the 
 papers, and Van Biene had fluttered his doubts into 
 actuality. 
 
 " He has never explained to you why he bought those 
 Geldenriefs, has he?" Van Biene had asked casually, for 
 Karl had few business secrets from Van Biene, and it was 
 not the sort of transaction that remains hidden. 
 
 On the voyage home Karl wondered often why Van 
 Biene had asked that question about Louis and the Gelden- 
 rief immediately after he had given Joan de Groot's ad- 
 dress. Had there been a chink wherein they could enter, a 
 weak place in Karl's loyalty towards his adopted brother, 
 the fluttering doubts would have made entrance. But 
 there were no weak places. 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
 
 KARL ALTHAUS landed in England the third week in 
 January. Nothing was then being spoken of in London 
 but the Raid, everywhere they were applauding the con- 
 duct and diplomacy of the Colonial Secretary. The feel- 
 ing against the German Emperor was deep, but the ex- 
 pression of it was loud. 
 
 Stephen Hayward at Glasgow had gloried in our 
 " splendid isolation." The phrase flattered the public 
 pride in our national unpopularity. It was obvious that 
 South African politics had at last won a hearing. At 
 Glasgow and Manchester, at Newcastle, at Birmingham, 
 at Wolverhampton, the spokesmen of the Government had 
 nothing to tell their audiences so interesting as the truths 
 about the Transvaal. They had no difficulty in persuading 
 their fellow-countrymen that, whether they called it fili- 
 bustering or the passionate patriotism of a forlorn hope, 
 the leaders of that ill-fated expedition were heroes. And, 
 come what might, their countrymen would stand by and 
 applaud them, and hold them morally harmless. Jameson 
 and Willoughby leaped into public favour at a bound, a 
 position that they have never since done anything to 
 jeopardise. In the light of to-day, the sequel to their trial 
 reflects credit on the august host, who threw open the 
 gates of Sandringham, and welcomed one of them as his 
 guest, straight from the prison where he had expiated 
 his mistaken bravery. 
 
 It was not necessary for Karl Althaus to shriek the 
 Uitlanders' grievances and the raiders' justification into 
 the public ear. The public mouth was shouting it. There 
 was no such sympathy for the Reform Leaders, and it 
 was with infinite difficulty that any show of justice was 
 
 291 
 
292 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 gained for them. Their position was misunderstood, 
 through a series of blunders, and through one man's in- 
 capacity; they had been made to appear cowards when 
 in truth they were only fools. Karl heard his race and 
 his religion attacked because that which it had been im- 
 possible to do had not been done. The press and the 
 public were too eager to exalt Dr. Jameson and his band 
 to stop and inquire into the real causes of the disaster. 
 The rashness, the impetuosity, of the attacking force were 
 understood and sympathised with. The actual situation 
 of Johannesburghers and the true reasons for their inac- 
 tion were not understood. Karl made himself hoarse meta- 
 phorically by shrieking it, but the truth of it hardly got 
 as far as St. Stephen's, it certainly never reached Printing 
 House Square, and outside London it was lost in the 
 enthusiasm for the men who were being conducted to 
 their trial in Bow Street through an admiring throng of 
 onlookers. 
 
 Of course, also in the light of recent events, the at- 
 tempt to occupy, with five hundred Borderland Police and 
 a guarantee fund of sixty-one thousand pounds, a country 
 that has taken over four hundred thousand soldiers three 
 years to conquer, at a cost of one hundred and seventy 
 millions, seems phenomenally brave or abnormally fool- 
 hardy. But the " women and children in danger" excuse, 
 though more subtly than realistically true, nevertheless 
 carried conviction. 
 
 The palace in Park Lane was ready now for the occu- 
 pancy of its master. It had been understood that the flat 
 in Piccadilly was at the disposal of Louis and his wife, 
 but, on Karl's arrival in England, Louis and his wife were 
 not there. 
 
 The affair of the Raid had displaced everything else in 
 Louis's mind, and he had bolted precipitately. By the time 
 he had assured his own safety at sea, he had told himself 
 that Karl would remain in Johannesburg. When he had 
 heard Karl was in Cape Town he had felt sure that his 
 brother would not leave South Africa until the Reform 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 293 
 
 Leaders were tried. When, finally, there was no doubt 
 Karl was in England, Louis felt certain that if Joan, too, 
 had remained there he would have heard from her. Karl 
 had no clue to her whereabouts, he was sure. Anyway, 
 Louis, watching to see which way the wind blew, thought 
 he could observe the meteorological direction best from 
 Monte Carlo. There was perhaps a little constraint in 
 the letters the brothers interchanged. Louis wrote affec- 
 tionately, expecting praise, or at least appreciation of his 
 conduct of the business of the London firm ; the London 
 firm had been fully apprised, and was practically clear 
 of stock. The heavy fall in the mining market some days 
 before the Raid became a matter of inquiry afterwards. 
 Karl had loved money all his life, and was essentially a 
 business man, but he was not glad or proud of Louis's 
 forethought about the affairs of Messrs. Oldberger and 
 Althaus. His letters were constrained. 
 
 Karl was unhappy in that big house in Park Lane. The 
 tradespeople who waited deferentially on his doorstep, 
 the curiosity dealers who thrust their treasures upon his 
 notice, even the great ladies who left sympathetic paste- 
 boards with a view to the adjustment of their dressmakers 
 and bookmakers' accounts, afforded no consolation for 
 him. He wanted an interview with Stephen Hayward, 
 but Stephen Hayward was in Glasgow or Manchester, 
 and difficult to follow. He wrote Karl quite curtly, sug- 
 gesting that $he should see the Colonial Secretary. 
 
 Karl saw Mr. Chesham, and put that gentleman in full 
 possession of all the facts, coming away from his inter- 
 view fully satisfied that at last Transvaal affairs were in 
 good hands. Yet, until he had seen Stephen, there was 
 much that he could not understand. Of course, when 
 Karl Althaus had made up his mind that he must and 
 would see Stephen, Stephen had no escape. The very 
 night he came back to London, Karl was walking up and 
 down Grosvenor Street. Neither the cold nor the sloppy 
 wet, nor the fetid Mayfair atmosphere of dust-bins and 
 decay, had prevented him from making it his daily walk. 
 
294 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 When Stephen's cab drove up, and the portmanteau was 
 lifted down, and the neat statesman stepped out, Karl 
 spoke to him : 
 
 " Hayward, I must know why you avoid me why you 
 answer my letters curtly. What have I done to you, man ? 
 If I have done anything, why don't you want to have it 
 out with me?" 
 
 Stephen was taken aback. He had always liked Karl, 
 and he was under obligations to him. That Louis's action 
 had been prompted by Karl seemed difficult to believe 
 when the man was standing before him with the same 
 straightforward look and outstretched hand, and accents 
 that carried confidence. 
 
 " Why don't you want to shake hands with me ?" 
 
 Stephen put his hand out. 
 
 " It's a cold night," he said, and shivered slightly ; 
 " I've had a long journey." 
 
 " Damn the night. I want an explanation." 
 
 " Well, give me time to have some dinner ; the door- 
 step of my own house when a fog is coming on is a bad 
 place for explanations. And really, you know, I think 
 the situation explains itself." 
 
 " Will you meet me at the Club at nine?" 
 
 " I don't want to turn out again," Stephen said 
 weakly. 
 
 " Will you see me here, in your study, at nine ?" 
 
 " There is really nothing to be said between us." 
 
 " It is my right, and I insist. We parted friends ; on 
 my part nothing has been done to forfeit it." 
 
 " Nothing! Good heavens! you call it nothing?" 
 
 The door was open, the footman had taken down the 
 portmanteau, the butler had paid the cab. " But there, 
 I'll hear what you've got to say. But not here I'll meet 
 you at the Club in an hour." 
 
 Karl let him go. 
 
 Stephen, perhaps in order to elicit his own views, per- 
 haps because, even in that brief interview, Karl had be- 
 come too insistent, too impressive for him to ignore, told 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 295 
 
 Constantia during dinner of the meeting, and of the ap- 
 pointment he had made. Whilst the servants were in the 
 room she could say nothing, but he noted with compunc- 
 tion the flush that came to her elderly grey face, the tre- 
 mor in the delicate hands. Constantia had aged twenty 
 years since Aline's second transgression, since John had 
 been jilted, and all her plans proved abortive. 
 
 He deprecated her anger, for that she was angry he 
 could see. 
 
 11 You are very angry ?" 
 
 " You know what I feel about them all," even her voice 
 had aged, had grown thin, and lost its most gracious 
 notes. 
 
 " But I could not help speaking to him on my own door- 
 step. It is difficult to forget how much ease of mind I 
 owe Karl Althaus." 
 
 "Ease of mind?" 
 
 " Dear old Con," he said gently, affectionately. He 
 even went round to her, and patted her shoulders, and 
 stood there a minute. " We have not spoken of this ; 
 there are so many things we have got into the habit of 
 not speaking about." 
 
 " Not always on my account, Steve." 
 
 " No, not on your account, Con," and he sighed, paused 
 a moment " through following Karl Althaus's advice I 
 have been able to redeem Hadalstone " 
 
 " But at what a cost, Steve, at what a cost !" 
 
 "You mean ?" 
 
 " You ought to have been offered the Irish Secretary- 
 ship, you would have been offered the Irish Secretary- 
 ship." 
 
 11 You think they have an idea " 
 
 " That you have touched pitch ? I am sure of it. And 
 now this man has turned up again, is seeking you out. 
 Don't have anything to do with him, Steve, don't. I have 
 a presentiment I had a presentiment from the first mo- 
 ment I saw him, him and his horrible brother, that they 
 would do you harm." 
 
296 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " I can take care of myself, Con ; you know, dear, I 
 can take care of myself." 
 
 " I've always tried to take care of you, haven't I ? of 
 you and yours," she said with a smile, and a sigh. 
 
 He was touched, he laid a light kiss on her forehead 
 truly her life had been given to him. And to-night he 
 noted with a strange pang that youth had gone from her, 
 even gracious age had gone from her. She was palsied 
 as if with old age, she had grown thin. 
 
 " Poor old Con," he said. " You can't get over it." 
 
 " It was a fine end to my Social Crusade." 
 
 " Don't you think, perhaps, the Social Crusade was a 
 mistake, that we were not not quite the people for it?" 
 he said to her very gently. 
 
 It was because she had realised that, because she 
 thought it, that she had been so overcome, so prostrated 
 by the event. But it was hard to own it, even to Stephen. 
 Instead, she tried to get him on her side, tried to make 
 him promise he would not meet the man to-night. And 
 it was with difficulty he got her to see it was his duty, 
 yes, his and hers, to investigate, to make inquiries ; not 
 to let the girl go from them as if they had, indeed, no love 
 for her, as if she were quite responsible, quite like other 
 girls. 
 
 He had no anger against Aline in his heart, nor any 
 feeling but pity, and a hope that she was not unhappy. 
 Certainly, in the first flush of his indignation at the elope- 
 ment, he had cursed the Althauses, root and branch, their 
 race, and everybody connected with them. It is the mis- 
 fortune of the Jews that one of their community cannot 
 misbehave without earning opprobrium for their whole 
 body. The prejudice is still very vivid and real, however 
 it may be glozed over by civilised thought and cultivated 
 reason. Stephen had, by now, reasoned himself out of 
 his mental attitude; and he tried, but unsuccessfully, to 
 reason Constantia out of hers. His quarrel with Karl 
 was of a different nature. He had considered the situ- 
 ation impersonally. It seemed to him that, of her own 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 297 
 
 free will, Aline would never have left the shelter of her 
 home, and abandoned all her conventions; it seemed to 
 him that pressure must have been brought to bear upon 
 her. And that pressure, Stephen more than suspected, 
 remembering Louis, and his interview with Louis, must 
 have been the threat of revealing the old story. 
 
 From whom could Louis Althaus have heard the old 
 story but from Karl, and what motive could Karl have 
 had for telling it but to secure his alliance, this Hayward 
 interest, on which he had ever placed so exaggerated a 
 value? This was what had moved him to deep anger 
 against Karl, who had been his friend, his treacherous 
 friend. He was hot with anger and indignation against 
 him because he had done this mean thing, used his knowl- 
 edge of a weak-minded girl's secret as a lever to work 
 upon her fears. For this is what Stephen thought had 
 persuaded himself to think. 
 
 To-night, when he saw Karl on the doorstep, heard his 
 voice, and ignored his outstretched hand, it did not seem 
 so easy to believe. And even as Constantia talked, and 
 tried to move him to indignation, so did he become less 
 and less sure that Karl Althaus had done this thing for 
 which he was harbouring resentment. 
 
 At the Club, later on, when Karl's big figure and 
 rugged features came in sight again, he had a certain 
 impulse to apologise, to hold out his hand and say : " I 
 beg your pardon." But Karl gave him no opening, he 
 offered no greeting. He had been walking about since 
 he had left Stephen, in the cold February fog; he could 
 not understand it at all, he had done nothing but good 
 to Stephen. As far as he knew, there had not been a 
 deal through him, or through his firm, that had not come 
 up trumps. 
 
 And yet the man refused to shake hands with him, 
 didn't want to speak to him. 
 
 " Damned if I can understand it," was his last com- 
 ment, as he gulped down his dinner and prepared for the 
 interview. 
 
298 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Stephen was waiting for him in the smoking-room. 
 From this very room Stephen had followed Louis to Pic- 
 cadilly, and there had contemptuously refused him as a 
 suitor for his daughter. Karl's cablegram as to the settle- 
 ments had reached him after Louis had abducted the girl, 
 for abduction Stephen considered it. How rashly he had 
 concluded Karl had been a party to the act ! Here, face 
 to face with the man himself, it seemed he had jumped 
 to a rash conclusion. 
 
 " Well, what's the offence? What have I done?" 
 
 The rugged features and tangled thatch of grey hair, 
 the searching eyes and unaffected manners had not al- 
 tered. What, then, had altered? They were practically 
 alone, for the fog was filling the room, and they stood in 
 the shadow of it. 
 
 Stephen had to recall his anger, his bitterness. He 
 advanced, he half stretched out his hand. 
 
 " Not me ! You Ve refused to shake hands with me on 
 your own doorstep. I'm not asking any man twice. But 
 what's it all about ? That's what I want to know. What 
 have I done to you?" 
 
 " You don't think I've any cause for anger against you, 
 any grievance?" asked Stephen quickly, but feeling, 
 nevertheless, doubtful and in the wrong. 
 
 " Not to my knowledge, not through my fault. I sup- 
 pose" Karl moved over to the fire, stood before it " I 
 suppose Louis gave you the tip?" He was getting at it 
 slowly, he had been turning it over in his own mind on 
 his way to the Club, and whilst he had been bolting his 
 dinner, and he thought he began to see daylight. " You 
 got the tip about the Raid, and you sold stock a bear? 
 And they've got to know, and have rounded on you ? So 
 you round on me, but what " 
 
 " Not a stock, not a share. Since you wrote me it was 
 time to give over speculating and invest what I'd made, 
 I haven't had a transaction," Stephen said earnestly. 
 " I've sold nothing since the Bank shares ; you know what 
 I made over that. I'm quite ready to admit you've been 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 299 
 
 a good friend to me in the past; I know what you've 
 done." He flushed, and the flush hurt Karl. 
 
 " Don't be a fool, Hayward. I'm sorry I asked you 
 that, if it isn't that ; but I can't make out what has come 
 between us. You're not the man to blame me for what 
 happened out there, to make it a personal matter. I 
 never got it straight from you what you expected us to do. 
 By hurrying on the marriage and sending them out " 
 
 "What what ?" 
 
 " Without waiting for settlements or anything." 
 
 " Good heavens !" 
 
 " Giving your daughter to Louis, and sending " 
 
 " Giving giving I would rather have seen her dead 
 at my feet a thousand times " 
 
 "Hayward!" 
 
 " Do you mean you don't know ?" 
 
 " Know what ? Get on, man, what are you trying to 
 tell me, what are you telling me ? Get on, for God's sake, 
 get on. Didn't you give her to Louis ? Didn't you send 
 her out to us as a sign, didn't you ?" 
 
 He caught hold of Stephen, it seemed as if he would 
 have shaken him ; but Stephen was glad of that rude hold 
 on his shoulder, of that impatient questioning. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Althaus. Forgive me, I've been 
 a fool, of course I've been a fool." 
 
 " Didn't you send her out to us ?" 
 
 " I don't know how I could have been such a fool as to 
 think you knew. Gently, now, gently," he smiled under 
 that impatient hand. 
 
 " Louis didn't lie to me?" It was a horrible thought. 
 
 " He ran away with her. She was engaged to her 
 cousin. Of course you did not know ; I was a fool to 
 suspect you. But the man threatened me, I suppose he 
 threatened her, with raking up that old story; nobody 
 but you knew it I thought forgive me, old fellow." 
 
 Karl's hand had left his shoulder, the blow was so un- 
 expected; Karl reeled under it, caught his breath, he 
 sank into a chair. 
 
300 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Wait a minute, I haven't got it clear wait. They 
 ran away! But I cabled you, Hay ward, I cabled you 
 myself." 
 
 " I got the message a week after they had left !" 
 
 But " 
 
 " I'm sorry, Althaus, I'm a thousand times sorry. Try 
 and look at it from my point of view. You knew this 
 secret, no one else knew it, and you wanted my political 
 support, for what it was worth." 
 
 " You thought I betrayed the secret I'd got from you ?" 
 
 " The man knew it." 
 
 " Not from me an unguarded word perhaps ! But 
 Louis, no ! I don't believe it of the boy ! I don't know 
 what I meant to do myself when I started on you. But 
 you've knocked me out of time; neither of them said a 
 word so you never sent her ! And you thought I'd 
 arranged it you wouldn't speak to me, you didn't want 
 to speak to me!" 
 
 " But I do now ; that adopted brother of yours is a 
 scoundrel." 
 
 " No, no." 
 
 " What's the use of not looking facts in the face? If 
 he were your real relation, if he had any real hold on 
 you " 
 
 " Man alive, he's all the hold I've got. I've brought 
 him up from a baby. You don't know what it is, you 
 
 fellows, the way we care about each other " Karl's 
 
 voice broke. 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 " Oh ! I know, I know all you're going to say. But 
 I must hear his story. He didn't do it to harm me, did 
 he? Whose interests do you think he had in his mind? 
 He may have blundered; I brought him up badly, I 
 wasn't so straight myself. Leave off trying to turn me 
 against the boy; you're not the only one that's been at 
 it. But no one can come between me and Louis. It 
 was me he was thinking of ; I can see that clear enough. 
 He ought to have told me he had stolen her, but, after 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 301 
 
 all, he knew what she was wanted for. And at the end 
 you see he thought of her, and of you ; he wouldn't com- 
 mit you " 
 
 " I suppose it never strikes you he thought of him- 
 self?" 
 
 " Leave it off ; it's no good. I know the boy ; there 
 may be cleverer fellows than my Louis, but he has got 
 a good heart, I tell you. You knocked me out of time 
 for the moment, but I'm coming round. Threatened her ! 
 You bet she didn't need any threatening. Why, the 
 women have been round Louis like flies about honey ever 
 since he's been so high," Karl said, placing his big hand 
 about a foot from the floor. 
 
 He was trying to convince himself, to reassure himself, 
 as he talked. Stephen saw that. 
 
 " You can't let him go ?" he asked curiously. 
 
 " He was thinking of my interests ; he has always 
 been true to me. He half ruined himself at that very 
 time over a mine we've got hold of. He was guarding 
 the name; he likes to hear people speak of the Althaus 
 stocks as A i." 
 
 Stephen was sorry for Karl, sorry he had suspected him 
 of underhand dealing, sorry he had tried to take away his 
 confidence in the blackguard to whom he had given his 
 name. Sore and angry as Stephen was over the marriage, 
 over his daughter's second betrayal, her deception, her 
 flight, he could turn aside from the contemplation of his 
 own wrongs to consider Karl. The millionaire was so 
 obviously startled and thunderstruck by the discovery of 
 the treachery of which Stephen and Stephen's daughter 
 had been the victims, and of course he had not betrayed 
 the girl's secret. Thinking things over, he remembered 
 Louis had started, had been surprised at something in that 
 interview. Karl had spoken the truth, he had let fall 
 an unguarded word, and the traitorous fellow had seized 
 upon it. Stephen set himself, strange politician that he 
 was, to the diplomatic task of restoring Karl's balance, 
 and establishing the status quo ante in their relations. 
 
302 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He succeeded ; but the assault on Karl's loyalty to Louis 
 this time had been severe, the edifice was shaken. 
 
 The two men talked far into the night. They talked 
 no more of Louis or of Aline, but of patriotism and 
 Imperialism. Stephen saw far into the simplicity and 
 into the strength of his companion ; there was no subtlety 
 about Karl ; he was as ready to talk of his failure with 
 the Reform league as he had ever been to talk of his 
 early poverty and privation. He made no complaint of 
 anybody; the delayed guns, the miscalculated ammuni- 
 tion, the misunderstood, badly worded telegrams did not 
 dwell with him as grievances. The thing had been mud- 
 dled, there was no good looking at details, crying over 
 spilt milk; to wipe the slate clean as quickly as possible 
 was all that he wanted to do. And he felt he had been 
 at fault, somewhere. 
 
 But Stephen, listening, loathed his son-in-law with a 
 great loathing, and wondered at Karl's blindness. That 
 there was more for Karl to learn he suspected, al- 
 though his ignorance of much in Louis's history made 
 him look for the scent of it in the wrong direction. 
 Louis's treachery he understood, Louis's motive he could 
 not quite see. 
 
 Karl walked home with Stephen, because of the fog, 
 because he did not want to be alone, to think, to examine 
 into that shaken edifice of his trust in Louis ; and he 
 knew Stephen still was his friend. He smothered the 
 slender figure in his own fur coat, made him put his 
 handkerchief over his mouth, held him by the arm and 
 led him carefully, showing him he resented nothing, show- 
 ing him he was glad in their renewed intercourse, show- 
 ing him also, but this unwittingly, how the revelation of 
 Louis's turpitude had affected and hurt him. His heart 
 was heavy as he walked back alone to that palatial man- 
 sion in Park Lane. The shaken citadel of his confidence 
 in Louis made all the world about him unsteady. He 
 could not but feel he had been treated unfairly, and that 
 by Louis. Why had no confidence been given him? He 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 303 
 
 solaced himself by trying to make excuses to himself, 
 even as he had made them to Stephen, but somehow they 
 rang false and empty. 
 
 Louis had been travelling, moving about, showing his 
 wife the Continent, or the Continent his wife. In any 
 case, with Susan to accompany them, Louis had, as he 
 announced to Karl, taken his belated honeymoon. Karl 
 had not answered his letters, but Louis had not taken that 
 seriously; Karl was always desultory in his correspond- 
 ence. And Louis, like a child who knew he deserved 
 punishment, was glad to keep out of the way of the 
 authorities. Karl was the authority he feared most. It 
 was his fault the arms had not arrived in time, the am- 
 munition was short, Jameson had been expedited, and 
 Johannesburg delayed. He had muddled matters, he 
 knew it well enough. He had been half-hearted, as he 
 was always half-minded. He had been impulsive and 
 enthusiastic in Cape Town when he thought it vital to 
 keep Karl in South Africa ; he had even had short bursts 
 of enthusiasm when this or that interested speculator had 
 persuaded him that if the Chartered Company, Gold 
 Fields, and De Beers seized the Transvaal, all their prop- 
 erties the properties in which he and Karl were so 
 largely interested would be tremendously augmented in 
 value, and, rich as they all were, they would double or 
 treble their possessions. If they had less freightage, no 
 duty on dynamite, and fewer taxes ; if they governed the 
 country themselves in safety and economy, it was a miner- 
 alised Piccadilly they would have, a Tom Tiddler's ground, 
 on which no one but themselves might pick up gold. 
 
 But he had grown doubtful from time to time, afraid 
 of the oligarchy, of having to fight, of disturbing the 
 state of things under which they had, so far, done so well. 
 All his actions were guided by all his changes of points 
 of view. Now he had ordered arms, now he had hesitated 
 at forwarding them, now he had calculated the ammuni- 
 tion required, now he had neglected to provide it. In 
 short, he had muddled. 
 
304 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Of course he was ready after the event to exonerate 
 himself, and, as many prominent people were ready and 
 anxious to accept all responsibility, he and his commis- 
 sions and omissions were left in the background. 
 
 Before he returned to England from the Continent to 
 which he had fled, he had persuaded himself that he had 
 no cause for self-reproach, that he was a very fine fellow 
 and deserving of some of the public appreciation that was 
 being lavished on Jameson and Willoughby. 
 
 For the moment, too, he had forgotten what had first 
 led him into the imbroglio, forgotten Joan and his anxiety 
 lest Karl should find Joan. The larger events of which 
 the papers and the public mind were so full had eclipsed 
 her. 
 
 He was surprised not to find Karl waiting for him at 
 the station, disappointed to find no greeting or message 
 from him. He had apprised Karl by telegraph from Paris 
 of his return ; he fully expected to see him on the plat- 
 form at Victoria, to learn that the rooms were in readi- 
 ness, to be welcomed as usual. Karl had had occasions 
 before this to be vexed with Louis ; but Louis had always 
 kept out of the way a little while, and been greeted open- 
 armed on his return. Louis had been more than a son 
 to Karl ; prodigal or otherwise, he had been all the older 
 man had had to care for. 
 
 Louis looked well and handsome and self-satisfied when 
 he arrived at Victoria Station that March evening; he 
 was thoroughly self-content. The ensuing London sea- 
 son, he thought, would see him no less the hero of it 
 because he was married to Stephen Hayward's daughter, 
 and he had been instrumental in providing for the Ex- 
 pedition against the Transvaal. He understood that all 
 but the Reform Leaders were to be lionised. He was sur- 
 prised and a little chilled that Karl had not met him at 
 the station, and, failing an invitation and direct intima- 
 tion, he went to the Savoy Hotel instead of to the rooms 
 in Piccadilly. But he was not surprised when, almost 
 before he had finished dinner, his brother was ushered in. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 305 
 
 '* This is good of you, Karl ; I half expected you at the 
 station, but I suppose you never got my wire." 
 
 " Oh, I got your wire right enough." 
 
 Louis was dining in his own private room, alone with 
 his wife. Karl had come there to talk to him, to talk 
 straight to him, because he could not let things drift, 
 because he wanted to have it out with Louis and know 
 why he himself had been deceived. There was something 
 else in Karl's mind something he had not voiced to him- 
 self, something that tore at him, and clamoured for utter- 
 ance. But there sat Louis, handsome and happy and well- 
 groomed, with his wife at the bottom of the table, and 
 waiters in the room. The position was difficult, impossi- 
 ble. It was like Karl to rush round to the hotel, suddenly 
 and impetuously to make up his mind to put everything 
 before Louis, to hear what he had to say for himself 
 like Karl too not to consider the difficulties. 
 
 Louis got up quickly from the table, greeted him 
 warmly, looked evidently for the same affection, and was 
 eager to show his. 
 
 " It's good to see you again, old chap. I only heard 
 you had been ill when I got to Madeira. I ought to have 
 been with you. How often you nursed me through ill- 
 nesses when I was young, and never gave me a chance 
 in return. And now you just managed to be knocked 
 up when I was out of reach. You are all right now, 
 aren't you? You're looking fit." He surveyed Karl af- 
 fectionately, with obvious interest. " I believe you've put 
 on flesh, and you've got smartened up. What's come to 
 you ? I'm hanged if that isn't a Poole coat." 
 
 Karl could not but respond. He had come there to 
 question Louis, to make him explain himself, perhaps to 
 be reassured by him; and here was Louis, with eager 
 welcoming voice and outstretched hands. All his life he 
 had loved the handsome fellow, and been proud of him 
 and of his affection. What a man does for over thirty 
 years, habitually, becomes so ingrained that to change 
 conduct is to change individuality. He shook his brother's 
 
 20 
 
306 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 hand he was glad again in the young man's beauty and 
 health. He thought he had been a traitor to doubt him 
 or his affection; the hand-shake lingered. 
 
 " Go on with your dinner ; don't mind me," he said 
 hastily. " You're looking well too." 
 
 Louis knew knew in a moment. That sympathetic, 
 adaptive faculty of his, one of the secrets of his successes 
 with women, told him his brother had come there to 
 quarrel with him, to upbraid him. Round and round the 
 cage of his little mind flew his little thoughts. Was it 
 details of his management in Cape Town? Was it the 
 Geldenrief ? Was it was it Joan? 
 
 But, quickly as the little thoughts flew round that little 
 mind, quicker still was his determination that, whatever 
 it was his brother had come to upbraid him about, he 
 should deny it, he should defend himself; and his first 
 defence, and, as he well knew, his most potent defence, 
 was his affection. He resumed his seat at the table, and 
 he went on talking. He told Karl how he had missed him 
 these six months, pressed whisky and cigars on him, 
 talked little of his journey and much of his longing for 
 Karl's scanty letters. He wholly ignored Karl's silence 
 and uneasy attitude. 
 
 " And now, old fellow," he said, pushing his plate away 
 and his chair back, " I am ready for our chat. I see you 
 want to tell me no end of things, and Aline won't mind 
 if I ask her to leave us." 
 
 Aline never minded. She had been thrust further and 
 further back from Louis's confidence, but his confidence 
 she had never had. Her dull mind had taken in more 
 quickly than Joan's intelligent one that she had made a 
 mistake in her marriage. Things that would not have 
 jarred on Joan hurt Aline. If the analogy of the Princess 
 and the Pea does not quite fit the situation it anyway sug- 
 gests it. Aline knew that Louis was not a gentleman, 
 and she also knew that he was too intimate, too familiar 
 with her maid. A more normal woman would have 
 shown active resentment, Aline's was passive. She left 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 307 
 
 the two men easily enough to their talk, when the table 
 had been cleared and the waiters had withdrawn. 
 
 " And now draw up your chair, and let's be comfort- 
 able, and tell me all about everything." 
 
 " I have had a long talk with Stephen Hayward," Karl 
 said uneasily. How he hated to find fault with this hand- 
 some, debonair fellow; but he must get to the truth, he 
 must find out why Louis had left him under the impres- 
 sion that it was with Stephen's concurrence he had 
 brought the latter's daughter to Cape Town. 
 
 Louis smiled, turned up the brushed end of his mous- 
 tache, stroked his imperial, took his cigarette out of his 
 mouth. He saw his influence reasserting itself, that, 
 whatever Karl had felt recently when he had entered the 
 room, would come from him now with reluctance, with 
 toleration, as, indeed, Karl had always treated his pecca- 
 dilloes. 
 
 " Oh, so you have seen Stephen ! And you have heard 
 that Aline and I didn't exactly wait for his consent to 
 our nuptials, and you're angry with me because I didn't 
 tell you before?" 
 
 " It wasn't fair," said Karl reluctantly ; " you know it 
 wasn't fair, Louis. I suppose it wasn't true " He hesi- 
 tated, he could not bring it over his lips to ask Louis if 
 he had used a secret that he knew concerning the girl as 
 a lever to wrest her consent from her. 
 
 " What isn't true ?" asked Louis, blowing smoke-rings 
 lightly from his cigarette. 
 
 Louis was immensely relieved at finding it was Aline, 
 and neither Joan nor the Geldenrief, about which Karl 
 was going to upbraid him. The mere shred of a con- 
 science he possessed had not been touched by his be- 
 haviour to Stephen. There, at least, he felt himself com- 
 pletely justified. 
 
 Karl answered him, but not without going over to him 
 and standing by his side, to soften the words he never- 
 theless must speak. 
 
 " True that you dragged up that old story ?" 
 
308 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Oh, that is what he said, is it?" 
 
 " You didn't do it, Louis?" Karl pleaded with him to 
 deny it. 
 
 " What does it matter what I did or what I did not do ? 
 You are such a fussy fellow. Anyway I married the girl, 
 history or no history, so what the deuce have they got to 
 complain of? Sit down, Karl, give us your hand first," 
 he held his up to him, " and don't drag the red herring 
 of my running away with Aline across the path if you 
 have got any real fault to find with me. Come now, I 
 can see you are hipped, out of sorts, what have I done? 
 I thought there was something when you didn't turn up 
 at Victoria. Who has been making mischief between 
 us? It's that precious father-in-law of mine, I suppose. 
 He told me I was insolent, insolent when I asked him 
 to give me the girl. I think I have taught him a lesson, 
 and I have not done with him yet/' 
 
 " But it was a dirty trick," persisted Karl, " if you used 
 that secret, those few words I let fall, the trick of a 
 scoundrel. You didn't do it, boy, tell me?" his voice 
 pleaded for the contradiction. 
 
 " Scoundrel, indeed ! That's a tall order. You have 
 done some Kaffirs out of concessions in your time, to say 
 nothing of some little Stock Exchange tricks. Don't 
 come the high horse over me, Karl. I know you have 
 been a very good brother to me, but I am hanged if I 
 should call you a saint." 
 
 " To take advantage of a half-witted girl like that !" 
 
 " I say," said Louis, flicking his cigarette ash, and with 
 a certain assumption of dignity, but watching Karl very 
 closely, " I really can't allow you to speak of my wife 
 like that. Aline has got her wits about her right enough. 
 You ask Worth." 
 
 " Damn Worth ! Why didn't you tell me it was runa- 
 way match?" 
 
 Louis was watching Karl, because it seemed to him that 
 there was something else underneath his restlessness and 
 obvious distress. Karl was unlike himself. Less self- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 309 
 
 confident, less overwhelming, than usual. Somehow or 
 other he seemed to have shrunk. It was not within 
 Louis's capacity to realise what a blow it would be to 
 Karl to find him completely unworthy ; and Karl had said 
 nothing to lead Louis to suppose that he had any clue 
 to the way in which he had wronged him most. 
 
 " You were mad enough for the Hayward's support in 
 your enterprise, and there was no other way of getting 
 it for you. It was not my fault if you deluded yourself 
 into the belief that the Haywards had rushed at me with 
 the girl. That is the worst of you, Karl/' looking up 
 with the sudden idea that it was best to carry the war 
 into the enemy's camp. " You do jump to conclusions. 
 That Raid business, now; you know you jumped at the 
 conclusion you were going to be supported from home, 
 and then you jumped at the conclusion that you were not, 
 and rushed back without waiting to think how bad it 
 looked. It looked awfully bad, you know, that you were 
 not with the others." 
 
 Karl was startled. " Well, of all the infernal" and 
 then his sense of justice choked and silenced him. It 
 had looked bad, even to himself. 
 
 " There is no good getting in a rage, old chap," went 
 on Louis, smiling at the success of his manoeuvre. 
 "You'll know I'm right when you think it over; you 
 ought to have stayed and seen it out." 
 
 " But you you wired for me !" 
 
 " Oh, hang it all, you are my brother, my more than 
 brother. I was bound to give you the tip that the bubble 
 had burst ; but I didn't expect that you would think only 
 of yourself, I really didn't. I thought better of you, old 
 man. Of course it doesn't make any difference, I mean 
 I don't care for you any less we've only got each other. 
 But it didn't seem the right thing to do to leave them to 
 bear all the brunt." 
 
 Karl, after he had tugged at the window-blind and 
 thrown open the window, and muttered that it was " in- 
 fernally hot," found himself voicing his justification. 
 
310 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " There seemed nothing to be done there at the mo- 
 ment. I thought Jameson had been stopped, and every- 
 thing was held over, we all thought so. There were two 
 thousand rifles, and less than half-a-million rounds of 
 ammunition, there were seven Maxims, and nothing to 
 serve them with. It was a hopeless muddle, and Wolff 
 nowhere to be found. Then your wire came, and by 
 * Flotation postponed' of course I thought the whole thing 
 had been put off. I was bound to find Wolff, and to see 
 Rhodes and try to get things straight. If there was to 
 be fighting we weren't half prepared. Everything had 
 been muddled. I never guessed, never dreamed, that 
 Jameson would move whether we sent for him or not. 
 Do you think I would not have warned the women, have 
 taken them with me? There were dozens of women in 
 Johannesburg, and, when it came to it, the Boer guns 
 were trained on the place, and there were forty thousand 
 people in jeopardy. Do you think, if I had guessed, I 
 wouldn't have seen that at least our own women, the 
 wives of the Reformers and their friends, were in safety. 
 As it was, I told Lady Sarah to be prepared ; I expected 
 to be back within the week." 
 
 " Oh ! that's all very well. But I can tell you I've heard 
 people say very nasty things about it, even about your 
 telling no one but Lady Sarah ! One woman is as good 
 as another, people say, and why did he only try to save 
 the aristocrat? Never mind, old man," he stretched him- 
 self out, and put his arm over his shoulder in the old 
 familiar way, " it's no matter to me what you do, dear 
 old Karl ; I am glad to see you again." 
 
 " Well," Karl answered, mollified in spite of himself, 
 by that caress he could not help being proud of Louis's 
 cleverness " I suppose you are satisfied. You think you 
 have made a fool of your old brother once again, that I 
 am not to say a word about that runaway match of yours, 
 so that you may forgive me for making a fool of myself 
 over this Johannesburg business, and now that it is all 
 straight between us, you want to leave it to me to try 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 311 
 
 and make things right between you and your father-in- 
 law." 
 
 " To tell you the truth, I don't care a damn whether 
 you do, or you don't. I don't suppose I shall want 
 Stephen Hayward, and, as I understand you control his 
 money matters, you can make it worth his while to behave 
 decently to us if you think it worth doing. But I am not 
 going to kootoo to him. He owes me an apology, after 
 all. I should think I am good enough even for his 
 daughter," and Louis strolled towards the glass and sur- 
 veyed himself with unmistakable satisfaction. " Why, I 
 could have married Lady Violet Alncaster ; I never told 
 you about that, did I ?" 
 
 " No, but we will leave that over a bit. There are one 
 or two things that ought to be cleared up between us. 
 Don't be hurt at what I'm going to say, Louis. But the 
 Geldenrief, now, how about the Geldenrief? See, dear 
 boy, don't mind if I am a bit upset to-night, I have had 
 a lot to worry me, and there are things I don't under- 
 stand ; Van Biene hinted at something, and I must admit 
 I'm troubled in my mind. Nothing must come between 
 us. You're right there. When you bought those Gelden- 
 rief shares did you know anything about the deep, any- 
 thing you had not told me ? Louis, forgive me for asking 
 you, had you met, talked to, heard anything from, Joan 
 de Groot?" 
 
 The name drove the colour from Louis's cheek, " Joan 
 de Groot?" he repeated. 
 
 Karl, who had never been a dull man, was struck by 
 that change of colour, by that halting answer. He spoke 
 sharply now in his anxiety : " Joan de Groot you were 
 on the same boat with her, you travelled home with her ; 
 you talked about the farm? I told you not to lose sight 
 of her, to get clear with her. Come, where is she? She 
 did not answer my letter. My mind misgives me that 
 there has been some foul play there. So help me God, 
 if I thought but there, as I told you, I'm not myself 
 to-night. I don't know what has come over me." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Louis faced the position, not without a craven fear at 
 his heart, although he put a bold face on it. 
 
 " Keep calm, don't lose your head. Of course I trav- 
 elled over with her. Of course we talked about the deep. 
 Who do you think put her up to renouncing her interest 
 in it? But there, I never get any gratitude for what I 
 do ; and, as for the woman " 
 
 " Ah !" Karl drew a long breath, he was still looking 
 at Louis, and whatever he had feared, he never feared 
 more than at that moment. 
 
 " The woman was nothing but a " 
 
 The word had not time to pass his lips, it was choked 
 in his throat. Karl had his big hand on him. 
 
 "You fool, you blasted fool, what are you saying?" 
 
 As once before, Louis's temper overmastered Louis's 
 reason. 
 
 " Take your hand off me, leave go my throat," he 
 twisted himself free. " You don't know anything about 
 women, how should you ? I don't know what has become 
 of her on the streets, I suppose, women are all alike " 
 But again there was no time for the word to pass. This 
 time Karl nearly strangled him, shook him like a dog, 
 the grey eyes were suffused with blood, and it was blood 
 Karl saw through them; there was murder in his heart. 
 Louis put out his hands to defend himself, wriggled him- 
 self free again, had not the sense in his blind rage and 
 fear to keep his venemous mouth shut. 
 
 " I dare say you know all about her ; she spoke of you 
 as if you did " His white face was set in malice ; Karl 
 dashed his fist into it, a blow strengthened by the fury 
 of his outraged love as well as by his overmastering an- 
 guish. For a second the little woman was before him, 
 her hand against his mouth, her cool cheek brushing his 
 as she stooped to him, the little body he had held, but 
 which had never rested in his arms. A sob broke from 
 him, he turned and fled, rushed from the room; it only 
 came to him afterwards that under that blow Louis had 
 gone down like a stone, only a vague impression was 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 313 
 
 with him as he rushed away, of a prone figure, huddled 
 and still. 
 
 It took an hour or two of hard walking before he re- 
 membered that. His rage and his anguish held him fast. 
 
 All -the quiet of the broad embankment, all the calm of 
 the shining river, and the cold of the wind-blown March 
 night, were needed to quench the hot fury that was in 
 him. But the sky was full of cold stars, and gradually 
 the cold cooled him. He walked rapidly as far as the 
 Houses of Parliament, then his steps began to linger. 
 He leant over the parapet, and gradually the flowing 
 water soothed him. Into the flowing water he looked 
 and saw visions not of Joan, he dared not, he must 
 grow calmer before he dared to think of the little woman 
 who would have none of him, who yet haunted him. 
 
 Thirty odd years he had cared for this Louis, nursed 
 him in his arms when he was a baby, forgiven all his 
 boyhood's faults, helped him through his scrapes, been 
 proud a little of Louis's weaknesses in his young man- 
 hood, forgiven him and loved him, and looked after him. 
 Loving and caring for Louis was the habit of a life-time, 
 ineradicable. 
 
 His hot sudden rage now fled as suddenly as it had 
 arisen. He began to reconsider what had happened, and, 
 seen in the retrospect, it appeared that nothing had hap- 
 pened. He knew before he went that Louis had married 
 his wife without Stephen's leave, but Louis had been 
 galled by the Hayward attitude, perhaps by the word 
 " insolence" ; Karl did not condemn him for being galled. 
 
 But there was something else ; what had the something- 
 else amounted to? He did not know Joan, could not 
 have known her, save on that short voyage; and now 
 he was ignorant even of her whereabouts. A fortnight 
 Karl had been in England, he too was ignorant of her 
 whereabouts. He had written to the address Van Biene 
 had given him, but he had had no answer. He had al- 
 lowed himself to fly into a rage because Louis had spoken 
 lightly ; but what could Louis know ? He had been mar- 
 
314 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ried, he had been out with him in Cape Town. The boy 
 was always quick tempered ; he had met him, Karl, with 
 affection, and how had he responded? Only with fault- 
 finding, with reproaches. 
 
 Quickly he had come away from the hotel; slowly, 
 very slowly he retraced his footsteps. 
 
 As he went he remembered little things about Louis, 
 absurd little things. One day, twenty-six years ago, he 
 had pushed half a bun into Karl's mouth, tried to push it 
 in with both his little fists. " Bun for Karl," he had said ; 
 Karl had a lump in his throat even now when he recalled 
 it. He had been hungry, half starved, for a year after 
 his mother's death Karl had been half-starved that Louis 
 should be well fed, but Louis had pushed the bun into 
 his mouth that day, and he had choked over it with grati- 
 tude and love for the beautiful little fellow who had had 
 all he wanted of his dry cake, but who, Karl thought, 
 had read his hunger. Louis was eight years old before 
 Karl left England for the first time. All these eight years 
 he had shared Karl's bed, now under a counter, now in 
 a common lodging-house. Karl had been years, literally 
 years, in South Africa, before he had forgotten the feel 
 of that little downy head against his arm, before he could 
 rid himself of the habit of expecting a good-night kiss, 
 and listening for the tired murmuring of the baby he had 
 promised to look after. 
 
 " I promised I'd look after the kid," he said to himself 
 forlornly, as slowly he walked back to his hotel. " What 
 a mess I've made of everything. I've had the bringing 
 up of him, nobody ever interfered with me. God ! how 
 fond he was of me when he was a little chap. It was 
 ' Karl' here, and ' Karl' there, all over the place, until I 
 cleared out in a hurry and left him behind. He'd have 
 done anything for me. That was the beginning of it, 
 leaving him behind. I wish now I'd never let him out of 
 my sight. I expect if I'd been his real brother things 
 would have been different between us, and I never even 
 made him a partner " 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 315 
 
 Nobody in the sitting-room, darkness, and nobody to 
 be seen. He rang, and the waiter went to inquire the 
 number of Mr. Althaus's bedroom, to tell him his brother 
 wanted to see him. He must hear if Louis was all right, 
 if he had injured Louis, before he went home. The 
 electric light was turned up, and Karl waited five min- 
 utes ten waited until impatiently he rang the bell 
 again, and again sent up a message. 
 
 " The gentleman is very ill, and can't see no one, and 
 there's no message." 
 
 He scribbled a line on a card. " Give that to Mrs. 
 Althaus." He must know that Louis was all right, that 
 he had not hurt him, at least not materially. 
 
 Aline came down in her elaborate white bed-gown, her 
 hair hanging in two plaits, fair, very fair, with blue wan- 
 dering eyes, and lips loosely hung. 
 
 " You wanted to see me. I came directly they brought 
 me your card. I had gone to bed." 
 
 " Louis, how is Louis, tell me ?" 
 
 " He has a doctor, and Susan is nursing him. Some 
 one knocked him down. I heard the doctor say he would 
 have a fine pair of black eyes in the morning. What has 
 he been doing?" She asked as a child might have done, 
 coming close to Karl. He took her hand. 
 
 " Never you mind, dear, you just go up to him and tell 
 him I want to see him. Tell him his brother can't sleep 
 until he has seen him; remind him we've never gone to 
 bed ill friends yet." 
 
 But Louis never faced a situation. He would not see 
 his brother that night. 
 
 And, before the next day had grown warm in its sun- 
 shine, Louis and Aline had left London. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
 
 THE next morning Karl, coming down to breakfast, 
 heavy-hearted, heavy-headed, for it had needed a great 
 deal of whisky to wash out the remembrance of what had 
 happened between him and Louis, found on his plate the 
 letter he had sent Joan de Groot, returned by the post- 
 office " not known." " Not known" at the address Van 
 Biene had given him ! 
 
 It startled him, his hand shook over it. I'm over- 
 doing that whisky," he muttered, for his mouth was dry, 
 and his stomach rose at his breakfast, and his thoughts 
 were incoherent. Where was she? Where on earth was 
 she? What was the mystery or secret? What had Van 
 Biene meant about the Geldenrief, by connecting Joan 
 and Louis and the Geldenrief? What the devil did it 
 all mean? He must pull himself together, he must find 
 out. 
 
 There was no doubt he must find out, get face to face 
 with what was puzzling and worrying him. Louis would 
 tell him nothing, perhaps Louis could tell him nothing, 
 anyway he had cut himself off from that source of infor- 
 mation. He could not get Louis out of his head ; remorse 
 and clamorous doubts fought for mastery. 
 
 The coffee was filthy, the food seemed to stink : " Bring 
 me a bottle of Clicquot '84 and a soda-water tumbler," 
 was his order. He knew how to pull himself together, 
 and he must pull himself together. He was maddening 
 himself with what he suspected, and he knew nothing. 
 Karl couldn't stand it. 
 
 When the champagne had done its work, he faced the 
 situation. He must find Joan the situation concentrated 
 itself in that, he must find the little woman. When he 
 316 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 317 
 
 had decided this, his head grew lighter and his brain 
 clearer. It ought not to be difficult to find a woman in 
 London. He must take up the clue where it was dropped. 
 
 The champagne disposed of, the kidneys and bacon 
 ignored, his head clear, he flung himself into a hansom, 
 his impatience, his desire for action, would not let him 
 wait for the brougham. He drove down to Bushey, to 
 the cottage, which had been creeper-covered, woodbine- 
 welcoming, with casement windows, tree encircled, where 
 Louis and Joan had lived and parted. It was forlorn 
 enough in January; the creeper was brown in its 
 branches, showing damp-stained wall, the trees were bare 
 against the winter sky, the windows, closed against the 
 weather, were small and light-obscuring. 
 
 It needed some skill in eliciting information, some tact 
 and self-control to gather from the garrulous landlady 
 that at the date Karl mentioned she had had a lady staying 
 with her. It needed some exercise of credulity for Karl 
 to believe that Joan was using a name neither her own 
 nor her husband's. On the verge of the mystery he shut 
 his ears to it. He could not the man was suffering in- 
 tensely he could not push his inquiries to learn who 
 visited her, what manner of man it was who came and 
 went, and of whom the landlady spoke with such gar- 
 rulous anger. Who visited the lady? Who were her 
 friends ? What was her occupation ? He took hope when 
 he heard that she had no occupation, that she was not a 
 lady with a pen in her hand, covering reams of paper, 
 phrase-making, and revelling in ink. He took hope; 
 he might be on the wrong scent. She wrote to Van 
 Biene from here, but she may not have been here never- 
 theless. 
 
 " Did she, did this lady go nowhere, see nobody, do 
 nothing ?" 
 
 " Nobody, nor nothing, sir ; leastways " He did not 
 question her as Louis had done, so she told him the little 
 that she knew. The visit to the lawyer then came out, 
 and hope grew obscured again ; it was a lawyer who 
 
318 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 must have drawn up that paper she sent to Van Biene. 
 His next visit was to Mr. Frere. 
 
 The lawyer did not keep his guest waiting, the card 
 was an open sesame. Karl's name was not strange to 
 Mr. Frere, nor to any Londoner. What the millionaire 
 wanted with him he could not guess, but he did not keep 
 him waiting. An old man, Karl's sharp glance took in 
 an old man, rheumy-eyed, a gentleman though, with thin 
 hands and prim, loose clothes. Karl went straight to the 
 point with him. 
 
 " About six months ago you drew up a paper for a 
 lady, who forwarded it to Mr. Van Biene, a lawyer in 
 Cape Town." 
 
 " Won't you sit down ?" Mr. Frere's attention, his 
 interest, were riveted immediately. He had thought of 
 his strange client more than once. 
 
 " You remember her ?" 
 
 " Perfectly, perfectly. She sat where you are sitting 
 now, stood at first though, until I made her sit down, 
 poor thing !" 
 
 " Why ' poor thing' ? What was the matter with her? 
 What do you mean?" he asked quickly. 
 
 " May I ask, are you a relation of hers ?" 
 
 " Oh, go on, man don't stay to ask questions, answer 
 them. Why do you call her ' poor thing' ?" 
 
 " She was in great distress ; it was obvious she was 
 suffering. She was keeping back some story, some dis- 
 graceful story," he said reflectively, seating himself, mo- 
 tioning his visitor to a chair. But Karl could not sit 
 down. 
 
 " Tell me all you know. For God's sake, don't beat 
 about the bush." 
 
 " I must know by what right you ask, what right you 
 would have had to her confidence ?" asked the other, fum- 
 bling among his papers, adjusting his glasses, looking at 
 Karl inquiringly. 
 
 " Oh, damn you lawyers and your caution. Can't you 
 see I don't want to do her any harm. Good God, man, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 819 
 
 show a little humanity. Why do you call her ' poor 
 thing' ? In hell's name, what was wrong with her ? Who 
 but no ! Go on." 
 
 Mr. Frere looked away from Karl. He had seen Joan 
 had been suffering that day ; it was not less easy for him 
 to note Karl's anxiety, his restlessness, the high note in 
 his voice. He beat on the table with his fist. 
 
 " I want to know where she is?" 
 
 " Well, I can answer you that at once. I do not know. 
 Since that day she came to me with the paper you speak 
 of I have never seen her." 
 
 Karl gave an impatient sound, took a restless turn about 
 the room, his voice was rough when he spoke again, the 
 high note had gone out of it, it was rough and hoarse, 
 not loud. 
 
 " What trouble was she in?" he said. 
 
 " She was about to become the mother of an illegiti- 
 mate child." Karl was almost incoherent with what rose 
 in his throat. 
 
 " Impossible ! I tell you it is impossible." The hoarse 
 voice rose, " It's a damned lie." Mr. Frere could not 
 resent the words, there was a sob in the voice that spoke 
 them, an entreaty for denial. 
 
 " She told me so herself. ' The child must be honest/ 
 she said. ' I'll keep nothing, not even a name that doesn't 
 belong to him. Get rid of the estate, I cannot look upon 
 my baby's face until I have cleansed myself from it, from 
 the lie the inheritance of it means/ Those were her words. 
 I tried to persuade her, but she was very much in earnest, 
 very unhappy. So I wrote the paper for her." 
 
 Karl looked at the old lawyer. 
 
 " She was terribly in earnest over it," Mr. Frere said, 
 still fumbling among the papers, still avoiding Karl's eyes. 
 
 Karl fell into a chair then, heavily, his head went down 
 upon his arms ; for the moment he could not confront the 
 daylight in the room. There rose before him again the 
 dear little face, the wavy brown hair, the blue eyes that 
 brimmed with fun, the mobile lips ; the dimples and the 
 
330 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 little svelte figure and the little white hands and the 
 brightness and the charm of her. A sob shook him; he 
 forgot to be ashamed. Presently, abruptly, he raised his 
 head. 
 
 " How do you know it was illegitimate, man ! How do 
 you know that?" 
 
 " Her husband was only just dead, she told me," the 
 lawyer answered drily. Karl hid his bloodshot eyes again, 
 but not for long; soon he pulled himself together, soon 
 he began again his restless walk. 
 
 " I must find her, I must get to the bottom of it," he 
 was speaking to himself. 
 
 " The man " 
 
 Karl turned on him fiercely. 
 
 " What man ? There is no man I tell you, there's some 
 damnable, hideous blunder somewhere. But what am I 
 staying here talking for?" He shook himself free from 
 the thing that had fastened on him, the fear. " I must 
 get to the bottom of it ;" adding, under his breath, " My 
 little Joan !" Then, " You're a lawyer, you were kind to 
 her were you kind to her?" 
 
 " I think so, I tried to be." 
 
 In the end the old man fetched his overcoat and his 
 goloshes. He lived carefully and guarded himself, but he 
 went out with Karl in the cold to search for her ; for to 
 every one Joan made appeal, and he had not forgotten her 
 piteous blue eyes, her poor eloquent figure. 
 
 Six months since she had last been heard of! Who 
 could help them in the search ? 
 
 Six months ago the gate of the cottage had closed 
 behind Louis, and she had heard the wheels of his 
 brougham roll luxuriously away, as she lay on the sofa 
 all numbed and quiet, though there was a singing in 
 her ears and a great sickness upon her. For she saw to 
 what she had given herself, and realised him, and prayed 
 for death. Numb she lay on the sofa and prayed for 
 death. But the infant stirred in her womb, and she knew 
 it was life and not death she carried about with her. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 321 
 
 And she loathed the child she bore within her for one 
 instant, one shuddering terrible instant that brought her 
 face to face with abysmal horror. But in the recoil she 
 grew strong, and clearer in her mind, and saw her duty, 
 and knew that she was nerved to it. 
 
 That she was a burden and disappointment to Louis, 
 that he wished never to look upon her face again, that 
 the child which was coming to them both must come to 
 her alone, were not words only, they were facts to face. 
 And she was brave, a very brave little woman, when she 
 was well ; the weakness of her womanhood was upon 
 her, but her spirit gathered itself together, and she was 
 brave still. She could not debase herself further, the 
 coming child made it impossible; she could pass out of 
 his life. That was clear to her, comparatively easy; the 
 rest must wait, must take its chance. Each step was a 
 step in the dark, and the first one must be made with her 
 eyes shut. 
 
 She did not let the night go down upon her determina- 
 tion. She ate her solitary dinner, made herself eat, there 
 was work to be done before she dared sleep again, and 
 strength she must have or she could not act. The land- 
 lady, who was summoned to her, was sympathetic. After 
 all, if she was to lose her lodger, there could not be a 
 better time than May, the season was in full swing, the 
 backwash of it might land another even more desirable, 
 and a little more chatty, into Bushey Cottage. She did 
 not ask any questions about her lodger or her " hus- 
 band's" strange ways or erratic comings and goings. She 
 had kept a furnished house too many years in the neigh- 
 bourhood to be inquisitive. So she heard without com- 
 ment that Mr. Grey had been suddenly called abroad, 
 and that Mrs. Grey proposed joining him at Southampton. 
 She helped poor Joan to pack up ; they looked up a train. 
 Joan gave the requisite touches to the story with realism, 
 the trunks were labelled Southampton, the cab was 
 directed to Waterloo. 
 
 That she changed her mind before she had turned out 
 
 21 
 
322 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 of Baker Street was nothing to the imperturbable cabby ; 
 ladies were most always changing their minds, he thought. 
 
 " Drive to Islington," she said. 
 
 " Any perticklar part of Islington, ma'am?" 
 
 Why Islington ? It was the first name that occurred to 
 her. It seemed to her quite the other end of London, and 
 all she wanted was to be quite the other end of London, 
 out of Louis's way, hidden. But even the cabman was a 
 force to be reckoned with; his curiosity, it seemed like 
 curiosity, must be satisfied. And the worst of it was she 
 could not remember a single street in Islington, and she 
 did not even know if Islington had streets ; perhaps there 
 were only squares there, or terraces. The man, not get- 
 ting a reply, drew the cab up to the curb and lumbered 
 down from the box. 
 
 " I beg yer pardon, ma'am, but I didn't hear wot you 
 said, wot part of Islington wos you for?" 
 
 " I can't go on to Southampton to-day. I will go into 
 lodgings; drive me where I can get lodgings," she 
 answered faintly. 
 
 " Would you like to go back where you came from ?" 
 he asked, being a family man himself. 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! As far as possible, I must I must get 
 to Islington." 
 
 " Well, it ain't very near Waterloo," he commented, as 
 he climbed into his seat again. " S'pose she's "ad a row 
 with the landlady; looks rum though." 
 
 She roused herself, when, after an apparently inter- 
 minable time of noise and jolting, he pulled up again. 
 
 "This yere's the Kingsland Road; there's a bill in 
 most of the winders, if so be it isn't any perticklar apart- 
 ments you wos looking for." 
 
 So ignorant, so inexperienced was the poor little 
 woman, that she took the first apartments they stopped at, 
 paid the cabman all he asked, and felt grateful to him 
 for helping to carry the luggage upstairs. It was a slat- 
 ternly woman, poor Joan's new landlady. All that lug- 
 gage! A week's rent in advance, a ready agreement to 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 823 
 
 give what was asked; she didn't want a reference, not 
 she, though she mentioned it as a point in her favour, 
 more than once, not only now, but later. Joan gave her 
 name as Mrs. de Groot; she was glad to get into the 
 dingy rooms. The bedroom, first floor back, looked onto 
 a mews, the drawing-room, first floor front, faced the 
 tram-lines. But, notwithstanding dirt and noise, she was 
 thankful to be there, she felt less degraded than she had 
 felt for months ; she breathed more freely. 
 
 It was the beginning of a time very easy to imagine, 
 very difficult to endure. The dismal houses in that long 
 Islington street, each one a copy of its neighbour, here 
 and there one conspicuously dingy, here and there one con- 
 spicuously cleaner, and yet grimy and poverty-haunted, 
 grew slowly into her consciousness. It was all part of 
 her terrible loneliness. One day she remembered why 
 she, ignorant of London, had said " Islington" haphazard 
 to the cabman. It was Karl who had told her of Isling- 
 ton. Somewhere near there his mother was buried. She 
 remembered he had told her of the funeral, of the Hebrew 
 prayers. Impelled by some strange curiosity, she asked 
 where was the Jewish cemetery; she dragged herself to 
 Ball's Pond Road, spent an absorbing half-hour seeking 
 for an insignificant grave in that dreary little God's acre, 
 and was questioned at last by the inquisitive little Hebrew 
 who had been watching her. 
 
 " Grave of a Mrs. Althaus ? Lord bless yer, yes ; yer 
 couldn't miss it. There it is, monument put up by her 
 son, twenty years after they had both been dead and 
 buried and forgot. Related to the family?" 
 
 The fountain of Joan's tears had dried up, but her eyes 
 smarted when she saw the marble Karl had erected. So 
 much care he had for the dead, so little his brother had 
 for the living. It added something to her loneliness to see 
 the magnificent tribute, " To the memory of Karl Alt- 
 haus and Johanna his wife. 'Happy he with such a 
 Mother! Faith in womankind beats with his blood, trust 
 in all things high comes easy to him'" The rest of the 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 inscription was in some strange lettering that she could 
 not read. She remembered Karl had asked her once what 
 they had written upon her mother's gravestone, and she 
 had told him that " With Christ, which is far better," was 
 inserted on the simple cross in that Devonshire church- 
 yard, where father and mother lay in one common grave. 
 Karl had walked about the room, repeating the simple 
 words to himself. 
 
 "Beautiful," he said, "beautiful! I don't believe a 
 word about it, but it's beautiful all the same. And you 
 feel they are up there, in Heaven, with Christ? God 
 knows where my poor old mother is. I put up a stone 
 to her two years ago; the man who writes me pros- 
 pectuses found me the words for it, they weren't true as 
 far as I'm concerned, but I think she'd have liked 'em. 
 Somehow or other they've had more meaning since I've 
 met you, little Joan." 
 
 That is what Karl had said to her a few short months 
 ago. 
 
 All that evening she cried, cried herself sick, in the 
 miserable Islington lodging. The slatternly landlady, 
 when she brought up the badly-cooked dinner, remon- 
 strated with her. 
 
 " It ain't good for you and it ain't good for 'im that's 
 comin'. We've all got our troubles " 
 
 " You're very kind." 
 
 " Nothin' to speak of," which was true, " but I'm sorry 
 for a young critter like you. I don't ask no questions, 
 but if your 'usband's left you, why, it's better than 'avin' 
 one as knocks you about. An' if you 'av'nt got a 'usband, 
 why, all the freer for you when you've got over your 
 trouble. So long as you've got plenty of money, wot do 
 it matter about the man? I s'pose you've got plenty of 
 money to see yer through ?" 
 
 The inquisitiveness of the lower orders is extraor- 
 dinary. Joan's tears dried up. The landlady was in a 
 friendly mood. 
 
 " 'Ere, draw up yer chair an' eat it while it's 'ot." It 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 3S5 
 
 was very unappetising a bit of mutton without gravy, 
 served on a tablecloth that showed marks of the coffee 
 the wretched maid-of-all-work had spilled over it in the 
 morning, flanked by a dish of potatoes and greens under 
 one broken cover. 
 
 " I didn't cover up the meat, thinkin' you'd set on to it 
 at once. I 'av'n't ast you before, but I s'pose you've got 
 everythink ready ; you don't expect me to look after yer, 
 for that I wouldn't undertake. An' 'ow long will it be 
 before, if I may ask?" 
 
 " I I don't know." Joan flushed crimson. The land- 
 lady was impertinent, intrusive, slatternly, but she was 
 a woman. 
 
 Before the evening meal was over, before the landlady 
 had shuffled off in her heelless slippers, Joan had remem- 
 bered with a pang of dismay that it would be some time 
 yet before her troubles would reach their climax, that 
 she had forgotten to think of, or to provide for, nurse and 
 doctor and clothes, that all her experiences had not suc- 
 ceeded in making her practical. She had reckoned to 
 meet the immediate future with what she had in her 
 purse. After that could there be an after that? she 
 wondered miserably there was her pen. But now she 
 learnt she could not wait to provide for her needs until 
 that afterwards. 
 
 It was not entirely Louis's fault ; she had been proud, 
 had paid her own bills. He had laughed and told her to 
 come to him when her store was exhausted, the last 
 moiety of her allowance from De Groot, the last instal- 
 ment she had had from her publishers. Perhaps he had 
 had an exaggerated consideration for her susceptibilities ; 
 but she had kept that little stock of pride to draw on, and 
 he had been sensitive to her wishes in this matter. He 
 had not had time to teach her that she could freely take ; 
 he had been occupied in proving to her that she must 
 freely give. And his attitude had given her pleasure. 
 But now 
 
 Before she went to bed that night she wrote a few 
 
326 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 lines to her publishers, and went out by herself to post it. 
 It was Saturday night in Islington Causeway. She was 
 conscious of endless traffic, and the iron rails of tram- 
 cars, costermongers bawling their goods under the wild 
 flare of naptha lamps, noise, and the brushing against 
 her of common women and men with evil-smelling pipes. 
 There was a public-house at the corner, a horrible efflu- 
 vium was wafted to her at the red letter-box; this was 
 the world in which she found herself, the cul de sac to 
 her vista of Paradise. She shuddered all the way back 
 to the lodging-house, and found herself still trembling 
 when she got up to her rooms. 
 
 It was difficult for her to think, but it seemed to her 
 that all the suffering in the world was borne by women. 
 She had met them bruised and battered, in drunken mis- 
 ery, reeling; to-night her own burden was well-nigh 
 unbearable. 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 
 
 IT was the publisher to whom Joan had written who 
 gave Karl the clue for which he had been two days search- 
 ing. Mr. Frere had done his best, but his best was police 
 stations and hospitals, infirmaries, and charity organisa- 
 tions, a horrible best. " Her publishers may know, the 
 publishers of ' The Kaffir and his Keeper' " was his last 
 hopeless suggestion, and, as it happened, it was the one 
 that put the thread into their hands. 
 
 Karl had met many types of men in his time, men of 
 divers business pursuits and modes of life Barabbases 
 of all shades and opinions but a publisher was new to 
 him. And the gentleman who had made half a fortune 
 over " The Kaffir and his Keeper" was, unfortunately, not 
 a fair representative of his class. The front room on the 
 ground floor, where Karl kicked his heels in impatient 
 waiting, was dirty and untenanted, the window decorated 
 with fly-blown periodicals; behind the counter was a 
 shabby boy, cadaverous, a very Smike among clerks, who 
 promised dubiously to inquire if Mr. Jones could see Mr. 
 Althaus. Mr. Jones hardly saw any one, and Mr. Francis 
 Jones was out. He went away doubtfully and slowly; 
 but his doubt was turned to awe and respect by the time 
 of his rapid return, for now it had got into his dull head 
 that the visitor was the South African millionaire, and 
 there seem no wits so dull that the glitter of millions 
 cannot brighten them. 
 
 ' This way, sir ; Mr. Jones will see you at once," said 
 the boy. 
 
 Karl followed him up the narrow, dirty, wooden stair- 
 case, to the office, murky from the uncleaned windows, 
 where, like Dickens's " dirty old man in a dirty old house," 
 
 327 
 
328 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 the wizened old scoundrel sat laying snares for young 
 authors. 
 
 With Karl he put on the airs of a literary man. He 
 hoped he had brought him a book on South Africa, which 
 he was anxious to publish at his own expense ; but when 
 he knew the real object of Karl's visit he grew insolent. 
 
 " The authoress of ' The Kaffir and his Keeper/ oh, 
 yes ! I know her address well enough. She wrote me two 
 or three weeks ago, or months, perhaps, asking for money, 
 royalties ; what do you think of that, sir ? I published the 
 book at my own expense ; I paid everything, advertising, 
 proof corrections, everything. Look at the puffs I got 
 out, look at the criticisms. Why, I made her fortune over 
 that book, and now she has written me for the royalties 
 that were due to her. Did you ever hear anything like 
 that?" 
 
 " Well, I hope you sent her what she asked you !" 
 
 The publisher barked at him, showed his yellow fangs, 
 and barked almost in the extremity of his indignation at 
 being asked for money. 
 
 " Royalties ! why, the woman is in my debt. The book 
 never paid the expenses, books never do." 
 
 It cost Karl an immense amount of self-control to sit 
 still and listen whilst Mr. Jones explained the half-profit 
 system, and why a book that had run through six editions 
 in four months had become a loss. But when he realised 
 the miserable scoundrel he had to deal with, he dealt with 
 him as he had dealt with scoundrels all his life. He was 
 within reach of Joan now she was 'alive, in communica- 
 tion with the publishers ; he could afford to delay a short 
 time with the information, to investigate how she was 
 being cheated, to take at least one of her affairs into his 
 strong hands. He let the publisher tell his own story, 
 give his own figures of expenses of publishing and adver- 
 tising: Karl was in his element with figures. Then he 
 asked abruptly: 
 
 " So you would not bring out another book by Mrs. de 
 Groot ; you would not take the risk ?" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 329 
 
 The keen little eyes twinkled as Mr. Jones admitted 
 that he was prepared to take the risk, as he explained how 
 much less advertisement would be necessary. He even 
 offered twenty-five pounds for the copyright. Karl 
 undertook to open negotiations for him on this basis ; he 
 was completely self-controlled, and secured the address 
 that he might discuss the subject with Mrs. de Groot. 
 Then he rose to go, but not without showing his gratitude 
 to Mr. Jones, who asked him about the mining market, 
 by giving him the " tip" he angled for. Having given it, 
 and being prepared to go, he came back to impress its 
 value upon Joan's publisher. " They must go up," he 
 said ; " don't buy a few shares, and be satisfied to make a 
 thousand or two. A man at your time of life ought to 
 put himself outside the necessity of work. Put the pot 
 on, go for the gloves. It's not one of those things there 
 is any doubt about." 
 
 It was not ; Karl knew that. He went away with the 
 satisfaction of feeling that the man who had cheated Joan 
 was in the fair way of receiving punishment for it; he 
 knew quite well the market prospects of Chartered at 
 eight! The man ought to have been kicked, but Karl 
 thought he had done better than kicking him. He had 
 not a twinge of conscience about it, never had, only 
 laughed under his breath when he saw the name in the 
 Gazette seven months later. 
 
 The address was in Islington. It was in Islington he 
 had wheeled that barrow of which he had spoken to 
 Stephen Hayward. He tried again to remember what it 
 was he had wheeled about Islington, and what sort of 
 neighbourhood it was. He was in his own brougham now, 
 and many rich men would have tried to forget the days 
 of the barrow. Not so Karl, he was never ashamed nor 
 sorry for the work he had done. All his doubts and fears 
 for Joan were chattering and chirping about him, were 
 loud and ear-splitting, they had prevented him sleeping 
 or eating or resting these last few days; but he shook 
 them away with an impatient toss of his head as he looked 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 out of the window, seeing tram-lines and poor gentility, 
 with tenement houses, all grey and dull, and big factories 
 and warehouses, all smoky and unprosperous. There was 
 another figure he saw sometimes with Joan's ; but that he 
 dashed away from him, that he would not contemplate, 
 that he could not bear. 
 
 " It was in the summer ; I recollect the smell of the 
 tram-lines. I was wrong about winkles, I was never such 
 a fool as to sell winkles in the summer; it must have 
 been strawberries." 
 
 A man with a barrow was trying to sell something, 
 calling out his wares. Karl recalled the cry, and let down 
 the window with a bang. 
 
 " Pull up. Can't you hear when I speak?" 
 
 The coachman brought the horses to a sudden standstill, 
 and the smart footman jumped down. He touched his 
 cockaded hat, but his master's head was half out of the 
 window, and he was shouting to a costermonger : 
 
 " Here, you, hi !" 
 
 The costermonger looked across, and the footman was 
 ashamed for his master. 
 
 " Go over there and stand by that barrow, and look 
 after it. I want to speak to the man/' 
 
 It was very disgusting, but Karl always knew how to 
 get himself obeyed. The smart footman minded the bar- 
 row, to the infinite delight of three or four ragged urchins 
 and some slatterns, and the coster came over to the 
 brougham. 
 
 " What have you made to-day ?" 
 
 The man didn't pull his cap; he was a sturdy coster, 
 hoarse and direct. 
 
 " Ninepence, guv'nor. At it since four." 
 
 If he had been a boy, it was in Karl this moment, on 
 his way to Joan, to have taken him from his barrow, 
 charged himself with his future, tried to bribe Provi- 
 dence; but he smelt of drink, and was slouching and 
 disreputable and hopeless. 
 
 " Ah ! well, I wheeled a barrow once ; here's a sov- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 331 
 
 ereign for you." Then he put his head in, and, before the 
 coster had recovered from his astonishment, the footman 
 was back on the box, and Karl was once more on the 
 way to Joan. 
 
 The Islington Road is the longest, dreariest street in 
 the whole of London. The brougham pulled up at a mis- 
 erable house, narrow-gutted, with no curtains, and dirt 
 enough on the windows to make them unnecessary. The 
 brougham, the footman's bang on the wretched knocker, 
 quickly brought out a little " marchioness," cap awry, 
 draggle-tailed, smutty. Karl was out of the brougham 
 almost before it stopped. 
 
 "Is Mrs. Grey here?" 
 
 The maid-of-all-work stared at him. 
 
 " No, she ain't. Nor never hasn't bin ; don't know no 
 such a name." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I forgot, I meant Mrs. de Groot ; is Mrs. 
 de Groot here?" 
 
 " Then why don't yer say wot yer mean." But the little 
 slut was pushed aside by her mistress, gaping and curious, 
 with no collar on her rusty black dress, an elderly gar- 
 rulous slattern. " Who is it he's askin' for ?" The girl 
 had only been there a fortnight ; the lodgers of yesterday 
 were unknov/n to her. 
 
 " Oh ! Lord knows. Sellin' Bibles or sewin'-machines, 
 I shouldn't wonder." 
 
 " You get back to your work." 
 
 Karl raised his hat. " I was inquiring for a Mrs. de 
 Groot." The publishers had made no mention of another 
 name ; it must be that she had resumed her own. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. de Groot! Step in, will you?" She led thS 
 way, and Karl followed her through the narrow oil- 
 clothed passage, into the reek of the house, into the stuffy 
 front parlour. 
 
 "Is she here?" 
 
 " Not exactly here." 
 
 " Thank God for that," was his quick thought. " But 
 you know where she is ?" were his words. 
 
332 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Yes ! You come in here, sir, an' I'll tell yer all about 
 it." 
 
 This noble gentleman, Karl, with his carnage and 
 footman, seemed a noble gentleman to the Islington lodg- 
 ing-housekeeper, merited the greatest attention. And 
 once more Karl was patient whilst a flood of talk was 
 poured over him. She stood in the parlour with her arms 
 akimbo, and told him all about her lodger. 
 
 " Yes, she was 'ere sure enough, nigh on five weeks, 
 an' if I do say it myself, I nursed 'er like a mother, I did, 
 though me 'ands was full at the time, an' I'm a widow 
 woman myself, an' I never ast no questions, not me. 
 P'rhaps," inquisitively, " the gentleman would know what 
 I am alludin' to, but I never ast 'er where 'er weddin' ring 
 was, nor nothin'. She was took bad one night. I fetched 
 the doctor to 'er myself, an' after he'd bin up talkin' to 
 'er a time I'd 'ave gone up with 'im, but you see I'd 
 other lodgers in the 'ouse. It's a 'ard life mine, sir, you 
 can see that for yourself, with no one to look to but my- 
 self." Here followed a little biography. " Well, after 
 that man 'ad bin with her p'rhaps 'alf-an-'our, the girl 
 fetched me 'ome I'd just bin round to 'ave a drop. I 
 don't believe in 'avin' drink in the 'ouse with gels about. 
 I don't know whether you agree with me, sir, but that's 
 my plan, an' she always knows where to find me. Well, 
 she brought me back, an' I come in 'ere, an' 'e says to me, 
 the doctor says, ' Mrs. Maggs,' says 'e, for 'e knows me, 
 'twas 'im mended my leg when I broke it come a year 
 ago last Micklemas. ' Mrs. Maggs,' says 'e, ' you've bin 
 very kind an' attentive to Mrs. de Groot, an' she's dooly 
 grateful ; but seein' she's so ill, and not like to be better 
 afore she's a sight worse, I've advised of 'er to go into a 
 nursin' 'ome round 'ere, as I know on, an' I'm goin' 
 round to see about it, an' I'll fetch her there, by-an'-by. 
 Now, you just go up an' 'elp 'er with the packin', there's 
 a good woman, an* you'll get a week's rent, an' a week's 
 notice, an* that's better than 'avin' an inquidge in the 
 'ouse, wich is wot's very likely to 'appen.' >; 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 "Where is the home?" asked Karl quickly. "Who 
 was the doctor?" 
 
 " I'm comin' to that, sir, give me time." There was no 
 way out of it, he had to give her her own time; she 
 rambled on. 
 
 " I'm glad to hear you were so attentive to her," he 
 broke in as soon as he was able, taking a five-pound note 
 out of his pocket. " Here, buy yourself something to 
 remember her by. Where's the address, did you say?" 
 Never were five pounds less honestly earned, but he got 
 the address no more quickly even then, and mixed up 
 with it eventually were a few details of Mrs. Maggs's 
 personal history, and a wholly gratuitous assurance that 
 so long as Maggs was alive he always voted Conservative. 
 " As true as I'm standin' 'ere," she said, " ' workin' man 
 or no workin' man,' say 'e, ' I'll vote for the 'Ouse o' 
 Lords/ " 
 
 Karl got away at last. 
 
 The Home was a corner house, green verandahed, 
 white curtained, spotlessly clean, the little gravel path 
 that led up to the door was freshly rolled, the green grass 
 plot on either side closely cut, tended evergreens were in 
 the tiled window-boxes. 
 
 "Is Mrs. de Groot in? Can I see Mrs. de Groot?" 
 The door was not opened by a parlour-maid, but by a trim 
 hospital nurse. 
 
 " Mrs. de Groot? Yes, sir, indeed you can. We were 
 only saying it would be a good thing if she had some 
 friends, some one to rouse her. You know she has been 
 very ill?" 
 
 Karl did not know what he knew, nor what he feared. 
 He waited in the neat little room with its light wall-paper 
 and portrait frames, its antimacassars and green flower- 
 pots, whilst the nurse went to prepare Joan for his visit. 
 He was hardly master of himself when he followed her 
 upstairs, he found himself trembling. He told himself he 
 had only just recovered from an illness. 
 
 When Karl Althaus had last seen Joan she was queen- 
 
334 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 mistress of Cape Town society, her small head erect, her 
 bright eyes full of laughter, full of life and intelligence, 
 with a certain alertness and joy of the world, giving an 
 impression of more vitality, more conscious pride of her 
 vitality, than any woman he had ever met. 
 
 She was lying on a sofa now, her eyes were quenched 
 and tired, there were crows'-f eet round them ; her mouth 
 had a pathetic droop, her figure was listless. 
 
 " Karl is it Karl ?" she said. She was so weak, past 
 surprise or shock. Submerged in suffering, she had 
 hardly come to the surface, to the knowledge she was 
 still alive; it was the mere remnant of a woman Karl 
 saw before him, but he knelt before her, knelt down by 
 the sofa, put his broad hands over those white skeleton 
 ones of her's, and stayed there a minute, wordless, with 
 bowed head, with his big shoulders shaken, with his eyes 
 too dim to see, with his voice past control. 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me ? why didn't you send for me, 
 Joan, little Joan?" were the first words he got out, and 
 they sounded like a sob too. 
 
 "I'm better now; don't cry, Karl, don't cry." She 
 drew one weak hand away and laid it on his head, on that 
 grey, thick thatch of his. " How thick your hair is ; they 
 cut mine off when I was ill." 
 
 He got to his feet in a moment or two ; the frailty, the 
 timbre of her voice, so weak and altered, warned him that 
 his own emotion must be controlled. He drew a chair 
 beside the sofa, a low one. She did not resist when he 
 took her hand in his, and held it there while he sat, now 
 and again putting his lips upon it, hiding his eyes from 
 her ; more than one salt drop fell upon that little hand. 
 
 " So they cut off your hair?" Still there were clusters 
 of it, heavy over the white brow. 
 
 " It's growing again now." 
 
 And then silence. 
 
 In the cage by the window the canary burst into chirp- 
 ing song, and a little whimsical smile came to Joan's pale 
 lips. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 885 
 
 " He has more to say to me than you have." 
 
 "My dear, my dear!" 
 
 She watched him a little while, strong and comforting 
 he looked, although his voice was strangely shaken, his 
 words so few, his eyes so bloodshot. But how had he 
 come? Who had sent him? The weak heart began to 
 beat, the pale face to grow whiter, even the lips to lose 
 their colour. She made a movement ; Karl saw the direc- 
 tion, had poured the brandy out, held it to her lips with 
 his arm making a pillow for her head, quicker than a 
 woman could have done. All his strength turned into 
 tenderness. 
 
 " Lie still, you'll soon be all right, touch of faintness 
 nothing when you're coming out of an illness. I had it 
 myself in Cape Town. Gulp it down. Don't like it, eh? 
 I suppose it is pretty bad." 
 
 When she had forced down the dose he had given her, 
 he put the glass to his nose. 
 
 " Thought so poison One Star ? Must see about 
 getting you something decent to drink." 
 
 " Don't go," she gasped out. 
 
 " Go ! Not me," he said. " Why should I go?" 
 
 " Oh ! but if you knew, if you knew." 
 
 She was not ,past the shame of it, the painful red 
 showed through the wan cheeks, and the eyes filled. Her 
 hands went* up to hide her face. She buried it in the 
 pillow. Karl, unnerved, dropped the glass, damned it, 
 put a caressing hand on her shoulder; she felt the 
 tremour of it. 
 
 " My dear, my dear," he said again, not master of his 
 voice ; he could not bear to see her ashamed before him. 
 " Don't speak, don't try to speak. God knows I don't 
 want to hear what you've got to say. But you won't hide 
 away from me again, will you? You'll let me help you? 
 Oh, Joan, my little love, my little only love, don't hide 
 yourself away from me because you've been in trouble." 
 And then, emboldened, he had both arms about her, and 
 his wet cheek next her wet cheek. " That's right, let old 
 
336 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Karl comfort you, poor old Karl, who hadn't the luck to 
 help you through it, whatever it was, but who is here 
 now." 
 
 Presently they both grew calmer. Karl was able to 
 walk about the room a little, to stretch himself, to clear 
 his voice and throat. 
 
 " I am not ill now, only weak and I didn't expect you. 
 You haven't told me how did you find me who did 
 anybody send you?" said Joan from the sofa. 
 
 " Nobody sent me. I had to find you ; you know I told 
 you I'd come to you if ever you were free " 
 
 " Oh ! don't, don't. You don't know what has hap- 
 pened ! Karl ! oh, Karl !" and the shame seized and shook 
 her with sobs. 
 
 He left off walking about, he had his arms about her 
 again, his voice was as deep as his heart was large. He 
 whispered to her : 
 
 " Hush ! hush, my darling, don't cry, Karl knows, Karl 
 understands. Some villain has stole a march on you, God 
 curse him ! Do you think it matters to me, do you think 
 it makes any difference between us? Some day perhaps 
 you'll tell me about it, and he'll get his deserts, but to-day, 
 to-day, dear, say you're glad because I'm here, rough old 
 Karl, who loves you, who wants you never to cry any 
 more. Hush, hush, darling, I can't bear it." Gradually 
 her sobs ceased. 
 
 " How good you are." 
 
 "Good!" 
 
 " But you mustn't call him a villain. It was my fault 
 mine." 
 
 " Never mind, dear, never mind." 
 
 " Oh ! but I must say it. I had known him such ' 
 little time." 
 
 " Don't talk about it." 
 
 " And there was no one like him. Fve heard you sa> 
 it, there was no one like Louis." 
 
 " Louis !" 
 
 There was a noise as if something had broken in his 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 337 
 
 ears, and his face grew swollen and red. All his warnings 
 had not warned him. Louis ! the word beat upon him, 
 throbbed in the room. His hands clenched and un- 
 clenched themselves mechanically, he swayed on his feet, 
 and Joan's face was indistinct. Her weak voice went on : 
 
 " You must not be angry with Louis. Karl ! don't be 
 angry with Louis. I had known him barely three weeks. 
 What wonder so light a woman held him so short a time." 
 
 Her heart had grown soft, not hard in her suffering. 
 She remembered only the lover who was " like myrrh 
 unto her." She had no thought of him that was not 
 mingled with the craving for his presence. Even his 
 name helped her, and here was Karl, who loved him too. 
 Hope was like wine in her veins. 
 
 " Tell me about him, Karl, tell me. He has forgiven 
 me?" 
 
 " Eh ! What !" He was coming to himself, the room 
 was growing clear ; but now his face was paling, settling 
 into rigid lines, his eyes looked wild, fierce, and strange. 
 
 " I ought, sometimes I think I ought, to have done what 
 he asked me. It was for you he wanted it. Karl," for 
 he had turned his back upon her, she could not see his 
 working face. " Karl, are you angry I did not give him 
 the farm?" 
 
 " Wait a minute, wait a minute, dear." The hideous 
 thing was true then, it fastened on him. And the whole 
 truth was here before him ; he had but to keep calm, keep 
 quiet the foul deed, the full ugliness of it was going to 
 be shown to him if only he could keep quiet, if only the 
 blood would leave off beating in his ears. Back to the low 
 chair he came, and this time it was she who sought his 
 hand, and held it. 
 
 " Karl, was I really wrong ? I think I was ill then, but 
 even now it seems to me you know how Piet hated the 
 mining and he was dead, he could not protect himself." 
 
 Karl's voice was strangled in his throat, but Joan 
 noticed nothing; she was pleading with him to find her 
 wrong. 
 
 22 
 
338 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " Louis wanted you to make over the ground to him ?" 
 Karl got out. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose you instructed him ; it seemed impos- 
 sible for me to do it. I was wrong, perhaps I was wrong." 
 
 " Tell me clear, try and tell me clear." 
 
 " He loved me at first, he did love me, Karl, nothing 
 to do with the farm." 
 
 So she had doubted too ! He heard it in her assevera- 
 tion. He had dashed his fist in Louis's face, and then 
 crawled back to say he was sorry. What a fool he had 
 been not to kill him, wring his neck, the viper, the vermin ! 
 The veins swelled on his forehead. 
 
 " And when you wouldn't let him have the ground " 
 
 " I left him, he didn't leave me, he didn't desert me, 
 don't think it, Karl. He was disappointed in me. I 
 didn't want to be a drag on him. I knew he was de- 
 pendent upon you, I knew he wasn't rich " 
 
 " What !" he shouted, screamed it almost. No one had 
 ever seen Karl Althaus like this before. He had risen 
 from his seat, his face was purple; but still he saw her, 
 terrified, white. 
 
 " Go on, go on. He wasn't rich " 
 
 " Karl." 
 
 " I'm beside myself. Don't mind me he wasn't rich, 
 you say. For God's sake get on. Oh, my God, don't tell 
 me he left you without money! Oh, my God, the thing 
 I've reared!" 
 
 She was frightened then, would say no more, would 
 have retracted what she had said, she began to realise that 
 Karl had come to her in ignorance. She began to plead 
 to him then, not for herself, for Louis. 
 
 He tried to get hold of himself, not to let himself go. 
 The treachery was unspeakable; he had loved the man 
 as more than a brother, had given him his confidence, had 
 trusted him. But the woman must be thought of first; 
 what was she saying? 
 
 " Little woman, I'm floored. There's no good trying to 
 hide it from you. It's done me ; I loved the boy " He 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 339 
 
 might control his words, but his voice was beyond con- 
 trol. " This room is so infernally hot " 
 
 He was rushing from it, but she struggled to her feet, 
 and held out her weak hands. 
 
 " Karl, you mustn't go, I can't, I can't let you go. 
 Promise me you won't hurt him, you won't go to him." 
 
 He caught hold of her or she would have fallen, made 
 her lie down again, was gently rough with her, and re- 
 proached her for over-exerting herself. 
 
 " You won't go to him?" was all she answered, putting 
 her arms round his neck and holding him. Anything he 
 would have said to sooth her, anything. 
 
 " I only want air, dear, let me go. I'm stifling in here, 
 look at me." 
 
 She looked at his red face, and into his reddened eyes. 
 
 " Promise me you'll come back before you have seen 
 Louis." 
 
 " I'll come back, I promise to come back." 
 
 " Before you have seen Louis ?" 
 
 He drew her arms down gently from about him, laid 
 her back on the pillow. 
 
 " I promise. There is no hurry ; Louis can wait." 
 
 " When will you come back ?" 
 
 " To-morrow. I must be alone now. Believe me, I 
 must be alone." 
 
 " And you won't see Louis until you come ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 He was not in a hurry to see Louis ; there was no hurry 
 over the score that must be settled between them. He 
 was glad to get into the streets ; the close little room, and 
 the sick woman pleading for Louis, were too much for 
 him. He was no figure of romance, this poor Karl. The 
 first thing he did was to look for a public-house, and to 
 gulp down a dram that would not have steadied most 
 people's nerves. But it steadied his a little. Then he 
 retraced his steps, and got from the nurse the address 
 of the doctor who had been instrumental in removing 
 Joan from her dirty lodging-house. 
 
340 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He got clear as to the history of her struggle then. It 
 was true, it was shockingly true, that she had fought 
 poverty as well as illness. The baby who had lived one 
 short painful week owed even its burial to the samaritan- 
 ism of strangers. The doctor himself had been respon- 
 sible for her at the Home. Delicately he told Karl he had 
 friends who were interested in the case ; but Karl was 
 rough in his acknowledgment, not a roughness that re- 
 pelled the doctor. 
 
 " Fifteen thousand a year the fellow had, he never had 
 less than that. It wasn't enough for him to break her, but 
 he left her like this." 
 
 The dead baby cried to Karl. The passion of ven- 
 geance was like the taste of blood in his mouth, the 
 passion of pity was like a sword that pierced him, as 
 he tore out of the doctor's small house as he had torn 
 out of the small room that held Joan. He couldn't 
 get air enough or whisky enough. But it was the whisky 
 that sobered him finally when he found himself at home, 
 in his own room, with steadier nerves and more compre- 
 hensive thought, and the ruin of all the best that life had 
 given to contemplate calmly. 
 
 "I'll look after the kid," he had promised Louis's 
 mother, and the " kid" had been father, mother, sister, 
 brother to him. Curious the incidents that came to him 
 as he sat alone, his limbs stiff, his locomotion paralysed, 
 gazing at the past with staring eyes, the empty bottles and 
 the overturned glass, and the dawn creeping into the dis- 
 ordered room, epitomising his wretchedness. Himself 
 and Louis, Louis and himself, he saw the two figures to- 
 gether through many vicissitudes, the boy always cling- 
 ing to him, he felt the cling of the warm little hands still ; 
 a few maudlin tears found their way down his nose. He 
 was not drunk, his legs might be unsteady, the muscles 
 of his face working rigidly, but the things he saw were 
 quite clear to him. He had been hideously betrayed, ill- 
 used ; but it was not of himself he was thinking. 
 
 Did Joan know Louis was married? or must he, must 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 341 
 
 Karl, tell her? And would she still plead for him when 
 she knew ? 
 
 What must he do, what could he do to heal her wounds, 
 to make her forget what she had suffered, to bring health 
 and strength back to her, to make right the thing his Louis 
 had done ? 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 
 
 JOAN had not known ; but, when she learnt that Louis 
 was indeed married, she easily persuaded herself, she tried 
 to explain to Karl, that it was for his sake, for the sake 
 of the Hayward interest, and the Hayward support, that 
 Louis had done it. Karl said Louis's wife was half-wit- 
 ted. Joan dwelt on that, there was just one little thing 
 she could not face. But the power of seeing pictures that 
 was coming slowly back to her made it unnecessary she 
 should see Louis as husband to this half-witted girl of 
 whom Karl spoke. He had carried her off to get for Karl 
 what Karl wanted. The marriage ceremony was part of 
 the sacrifice ; Louis was no woman's husband but hers 
 all this she persuaded herself. 
 
 Karl listened to her the next day, and the next, and the 
 one after. For, soon he found there was no pleasure for 
 him like the painful pleasure of hearing her talk. Again 
 and again he went back and listened to her, and never 
 contradicted nor argued. He renewed his promise, and 
 was even made to swear it, that he would not seek Louis 
 out to injure him. So far he promised. He made his 
 mental reservations, began to see his way a little clearer, 
 and visited the sick woman every day whilst pursuing it. 
 Flowers, fruits, and wines were lavished on her. The 
 Samaritans were compensated, the doctor made rich for 
 life, the Home endowed all this Karl could do for her. 
 And she clung to him, there was no doubt she clung to 
 him, in her weakness and convalescence, flushed at his 
 coming, paled at his going, watched for him, and clung to 
 him. 
 
 Karl, going back every day to that big empty palace 
 of his, was ever more oppressed by its size, by its empti- 
 342 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 343 
 
 ness. He had built it for Louis, for himself and Louis, 
 he had never pictured himself alone in it. He told Joan 
 how lonely he was. She was lonely too ! 
 
 " You could write there," he said wistfully. " There's 
 a big room with a bow-window looking right on to the 
 Park, and never a sound would come to you. I'd never 
 disturb you." 
 
 For some plans Joan must make, something must be 
 decided when she was strong enough to think. Already 
 she had been out, Karl had fetched her in his victoria. 
 Wrapped up carefully, propped up by pillows, protected, 
 Joan looked again on that world which had so nearly re- 
 ceded from her. She told Karl of her visit to the ceme- 
 tery in the Ball's Pond Road, of how she had stood before 
 his mother's grave. Nobody would have believed the 
 rough fellow could have been so moved. Later on when 
 they drove out he took her to see a little marble cross he 
 had ordered; the carving and the inscription were yet to 
 come, he told her. 
 
 " Shall we put, ' With Christ, which is far better'?" he 
 asked gently, when the tears his thoughtfulness had 
 started ceased their healing flow. " I remember you said 
 that was on your own mother's stone. I thought I'd wait 
 to ask you." 
 
 " He was baptised." 
 
 " I know ; you called him Karl, the doctor told me." 
 
 " Louis always said he must be called Karl." 
 
 They drove on a little in silence. 
 
 " I want to have something else put on it, Joan." Un- 
 der the rug he took her hand. " Do you know what I 
 want?" 
 
 " To put on the marble?" 
 
 " Yes, dear. It is ' To the memory of little Karl/ I 
 want to put ' To the memory of little Karl Althaus.' ' 
 
 Still she did not understand, only her face seemed to 
 grow smaller and more pathetic, and unshed tears dark- 
 ened her eyes. She could not answer him. He went with 
 her into the house, each day she had grown stronger. At 
 
344 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 first he had carried her upstairs, then he only supported 
 her, now she walked alone with only his arm to steady 
 herself by; he dared not wait until she was independent 
 of him. He followed her into the room, helped with her 
 unswathing from her wraps. 
 
 " Joan, I'm all alone in that big, empty house of mine. 
 I ought to have been your brother-in-law. I'm the nearest 
 to you, you know you've got no one nearer than me. 
 Come and make a home for me. I'm a rough fellow, but 
 I know how to keep out of your way when you don't want 
 me. It's a beautiful room to write in; I've told you it 
 looks right over the Park. Some days perhaps you'll dine 
 with me, sit at my table ; you know what it would mean 
 to me, just having you there. Will you come?" 
 
 She was weak in health, a little weak perhaps mentally. 
 She had been through deep waters. But since Karl had 
 come she had felt the comfort of warm human sympathy, 
 and the forlornness had left her. Only six weeks ago the 
 poor half moribund baby had been born to her ; she could 
 not yet face the burden of her own life, she realised 
 vaguely that she was not fit, not yet fit to face it. It was a 
 resting-house he offered her, she thought, a space in which 
 to grow strong. 
 
 And he pleaded well. 
 
 " I built it for two, for him and me, and now I'm alone 
 in it." 
 
 In her soul she had built a pleasure-house for Louis, 
 and been alone in it. 
 
 " I'm not well enough to move," she said weakly. 
 
 " No, but you'll grow strong there. Both of us are 
 alone. I suppose it means asking you to take pity on me, 
 but I've thought it over every way, and I don't see a 
 better way out. You don't know what it is to walk about 
 that damned house when I leave you, and think what a 
 mess I've made of things ; they are ghosts I see there, 
 ghosts." 
 
 She had made a mess of things too. 
 
 " I've got to begin all over again. I was always look- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 345 
 
 ing for Louis, and Louis's children, to get a family around 
 me. Whenever I was money-making, I thought it would 
 be good for them. Whenever I thought over what I'd 
 got, I thought how I'd spend it on 'em, how the boys 
 should go to Eton, how they'd look to me for treats. I 
 thought of the country estate I'd buy; an infernal fool, 
 you'll say, of course I'm an infernal fool! But all the 
 house is full of Louis and those children of his ; I planned 
 it that way. It haunts me now; it's ghastly. All of it 
 gone into one little grave. Let me put the name, let me 
 put ' To the memory of little Karl Althaus ;' I expect it's 
 to the memory of all the Althauses there will ever be. 
 And take my name yourself, Joan. It's not much of a 
 name, but you've got a greater right to it than ever he 
 had." 
 
 She was trembling. 
 
 " What are you asking me, Karl ? What are you ask- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Nothing you need mind giving, nothing. Just the 
 right to take care of you, that's all. Give it me, little 
 woman, you'll never be sorry, I can promise you that." 
 
 He was standing beside her, not touching her. 
 
 " If there was a better way, a better way for you I 
 mean, I should see it. My heart is in my eyes, Joan, 
 when I'm looking at anything for you, and I've faced this 
 fairly. 'Twill be heaven to me to have you there, but if 
 it weren't best for you too, I'd do without it. Come, say 
 yes." 
 
 He had made up his mind whilst hers was unstrung, 
 feeble. Still she made it clear to him, it was always clear 
 to him, that she had nothing to give him. He made it clear 
 to her, however, that he asked nothing from her but the 
 right to take care of her. And Louis was married ! She 
 could see Karl was angry with Louis, she could not see 
 all his cause, but she could influence him until his anger 
 cooled, she could do something for both of them. Since 
 she had known the Althauses, they had swallowed up 
 her life, there had been nothing else since she had known 
 
346 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 the Althauses. And to sum it all up, she was too weak to 
 take care of herself, and she felt that she would never 
 grow strong again, and that it did not matter what be- 
 came of her. Whenever Karl left her she cried, because 
 she felt so feeble, and could hardly move, and thought she 
 would never get better. Whenever he was with her his 
 strength revived her, and his voice put courage into her, 
 and his big presence comforted her. And he wanted her, 
 he wanted her so badly, he said, and nobody else wanted 
 her. So, in time, he won, won a half comprehending con- 
 sent from her to take his name. 
 
 Because, with strong men words become actions almost 
 before they are shaped, before she had realised quite what 
 he had meant, she found herself at the registrar's with 
 him, vaguely repeating the formula that turned Louis Alt- 
 haus's mistress into Karl Althaus's wife. 
 
 The next few weeks were spent by the sea. Instead of 
 the scantily furnished " Nursing home for poor gentle- 
 women," Joan found herself in a palace. Instead of a 
 hurried attention from an overworked nurse with four 
 other patients, she had a day nurse and a night nurse to 
 herself. There was a physician from Brighton who came 
 twice a day to see her, there was a great man from Lon- 
 don who consulted with him, there were unheard-of lux- 
 uries to tempt her appetite, elaborate contrivances to give 
 her air without exertion. The whole cultivated intelli- 
 gence of half-a-dozen people was brought to bear upon 
 the simple problem of restoring to strength and health 
 this poor little woman who had been so buffeted and 
 beaten by fortune. 
 
 Gradually her health was restored, and then Karl 
 brought her to London to make a home for them both. 
 
 She lived in his house, in that grey solid temple he had 
 erected to himself in Park Lane. The green grew round 
 it, the trees he had planted flourished, and grew tall. 
 Ever through the windows the panorama of the Park 
 stretched its paths and green spaces before Joan, to rest 
 her tear-tired eyes. Slowly her vitality and strength and 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 intelligence returned to her ; but her beauty never wholly 
 returned. Always there were, always there would be, 
 lines round her eyes; and she was worn, wrinkled, she 
 had dried up with the blast of the furnace through which 
 she had matured. But still it was a dear face, and it filled 
 the empty house for Karl, and made it home. Karl had 
 never had a home since he had been a man, and he grew 
 to strange happiness in it. She lived there, and it became 
 as a sacred place. He was no bridegroom, but he was a 
 happy man who had a home, with a woman in it who filled 
 his heart. 
 
 But the world has a way of interfering with strange 
 happiness, of disapproving of what it fails to understand, 
 of being impertinent and inquisitive, and resentful of 
 being ignored; and Karl had ignored the world there 
 was no doubt about that. 
 
 Society was ready to be entertained at the house in Park 
 Lane, Society heard with a shock that there was a lady 
 installed there ; the thing was whispered, but the sounds 
 spread, the whispering voices swelled into chorus, then 
 the clamour grew loud, and reached Stephen Hayward's 
 ears. 
 
 " Have you heard anything about the Althauses ? about 
 Karl Althaus ?" he asked Constantia carelessly. Stephen 
 had learnt wisdom since the day when he suspected Karl 
 of underhand dealings, but he had not been able to im- 
 part much of it to his sister. He veiled his interest in the 
 question, sauntered into her room, took up the quarterly 
 she had laid down and made a comment or two on an 
 article in it, before he asked the question about the Alt- 
 hauses. Constantia was more in the way of hearing gossip 
 than he, and the kind friends who had laughed at the 
 climax to her endeavour to straighten out Society, would 
 have been sure to bring to her such a titbit as that. 
 
 She was not the woman she had been. 
 
 " Why do you care, why do you want to know ?" 
 
 " I like him Con. I can't help liking him. So would 
 you if you knew him. Why are you so obstinate, dear?" 
 
348 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 He was very gentle with her, smiled and shook his head 
 at her, his reproach was half in jest. 
 
 " He is a thorough good fellow, a gentleman too, for all 
 his want of a coat-of-arms." The last sentence had the 
 bitterness of which Stephen had never cured himself ; his 
 own tarnished coat-of-arms never gave him the pleasure 
 in contemplation that it gave her. 
 
 " Am I obstinate ? I don't think I am obstinate." 
 
 " You haven't heard from her again ?" he ventured. 
 
 " No ! Only the one letter you saw ; her handwriting, 
 but his letter." 
 
 It struck him that Constantia was a little lonely, that the 
 girl, even as she was, would have softened the loneliness 
 of his sister's age. The years between them seemed to 
 stretch ever a wider gap ; his daughter might have bridged 
 it. The poor girl! if her face was a little vacant, her 
 ways were very gentle; he had missed the young figure 
 about the house, the sense of responsibility, even, that it 
 brought with it. His disgust for Louis never spread to 
 the girl; he missed her, he thought perhaps Constantia 
 missed her too. 
 
 " You would not punish her for what was not her 
 fault?" he said tentatively, fidgeting with the paper, put- 
 ting it down. 
 
 " She doesn't want me, she has her husband," she an- 
 swered slowly. Constantia was lonely too. Stephen saw 
 that. He went on more hopefully. 
 
 " The story is about at the clubs I thought you might 
 have heard it that Karl Althaus is not living alone in 
 Park Lane. He is not at all the sort of man to make 
 himself a scandal, to contract a vulgar liaison. I haven't 
 seen him for the last five or six weeks. My own 
 affairs " 
 
 There was no need to tell Constantia that. She knew 
 his own affairs had not been going well, that the promo- 
 tion he had looked for had not come, that his diplomatic 
 visit to Berlin had been a mere sop, a mere excuse for 
 leaving him out when there had been something to be 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 349 
 
 given away. She knew that he was in sight, not of the 
 success he had earned, to which he was entitled, but of an 
 obscurity, of a being passed over, that he had not been 
 prepared for. 
 
 " It strikes me as possible," he went on, " as just pos- 
 sible, that it is Aline who is there, that he is shielding her, 
 or looking after her for some reason. I heard, too, he 
 had quarrelled with his brother. I don't know how these 
 things get about. I thought I'd go over, and look him 
 up, but there is no use my doing so, if your mind is set 
 against her, if you won't see her." 
 
 She looked at him through her glasses, she wore 
 glasses now. 
 
 " I'm getting an old woman, Steve, an old woman. 
 I'm not so sure r about things as I used to be. If Aline 
 wants me, if Aline is in need of me I failed her many 
 times, I fear, poor child I am ready. She can come back 
 here. Angela would not have done more for her than 
 I would have done, than I will do; but don't ask me to 
 see him." 
 
 All the vale of poor Constantia's declining years was, 
 nevertheless, full of doubt. Would Angela have done 
 more for her, could Angela have done more for her ? <She 
 knew the answer. It was hidden from Stephen, but she 
 knew it. Angela would have loved her little daughter; 
 Constantia had only loved Stephen. 
 
 " Very well, then, I will go over. It's a mare's nest, 
 I've little doubt it's a mare's nest they've got hold of, and 
 it's Aline that Karl is looking after." 
 
 So certain was he that when he asked for Karl, and was 
 shown up, not to the library, as heretofore, but to the 
 drawing-room, and had a back view of a figure in white 
 draperies on the sofa protected by a screen, he made a 
 step forward, spoke Aline's name, or had almost spoken 
 it, when Karl's outstretched hands and hearty voice 
 checked him. 
 
 " This is good of you, Hayward. By Gad, Hayward, 
 I'm glad to see you. Joan, my dear she has been very 
 
350 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 ill, you know. Don't get up, Hayward will excuse you. 
 She wants a lot of care " Karl's smile when he looked 
 down upon the fragile little woman that lay there not 
 Aline, but a fragile little woman, with a wide intellectual 
 forehead and pathetic eyes was a revelation to Stephen. 
 His very voice had altered, it was quiet, with a depth in 
 it, with a note of tenderness, of overwhelming anxiety and 
 tenderness, that it was difficult to hear unmoved. 
 
 Stephen, being a man of the world, did not allow his 
 surprise to escape him. He took Joan's hand, and hoped 
 she was on the road to recovery, and congratulated her 
 on her view from the window, and was altogether appar- 
 ently at ease and at home in the situation. But he was 
 inwardly almost overwhelmed, not because he was a stern 
 moralist, or because he had thought Karl Althaus a saint, 
 but because, after all, the gossip had been justified, and 
 the little woman well, did not seem quite the type that 
 one would have expected to find in the position. 
 
 Of course it was absurd of him, he realised it had been 
 absurd of him, to be so sure it was Aline Karl was guard- 
 ing. Aline, of course, was still with her husband, still 
 with that cad who had taken her away. 
 
 Stephen accepted a cup of tea from the invalid, who sat 
 up to pour it out, and explained that her invalidism was 
 a thing of the past, that now it existed chiefly in Karl's 
 imagination. She said a pretty word or two of acknowl- 
 edgment, by the way. Stephen found her fascinating. 
 He got under the charm of her personality very soon, 
 and he perceived her rare intelligence. It transpired in 
 half-a-dozen sentences that she was from the Cape, and 
 well up in the political affairs of the Colony; and they 
 talked South Africa with rare pleasure and enjoyment. 
 He noted Karl's pride and contentment as he lay back in 
 his easy-chair and watched them. 
 
 It was almost the first afternoon Joan had felt well 
 enough, or been considered well enough, to come down to 
 the drawing-room, and Karl seemed so glad, so pleased, 
 too, when his friend was announced, that Joan could but 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 351 
 
 feel happier and more like her old self than she had done 
 before. 
 
 Stephen was carrying away the impression of a pleas- 
 ant hour, when he remembered the incongruity of it, and 
 what people were saying. He could not understand the sit- 
 uation even yet, could not credit that it was as people said. 
 
 Karl had gone downstairs with him. They turned into 
 the library. " You were surprised, Hayward ?" he asked. 
 The pride had gone out of him a little. It struck Stephen 
 he didn't look altogether happy or at ease. 
 
 " Well, yes, I had heard something of it, of course, but 
 all the same " 
 
 11 You didn't expect to see me in the character of a mar- 
 ried man, eh ?" 
 
 Stephen hesitated, turned as if to say something, but 
 thought better of it. After all, he shrugged his shoul- 
 ders ; it was no affair of his. She was a nice little woman, 
 a clever little woman too. 
 
 " I think you are very fortunate," was what he finally 
 got out. 
 
 Karl sighed at that, looked at Stephen doubtfully. 
 
 " I suppose I'm not the sort of fellow you would have 
 thought she would have married?" 
 
 " She ? But I don't know who she is. I've never met 
 her, have I ?" He was bewildered, and why did Karl harp 
 upon the word marry ? 
 
 " You must have heard of her. She wrote ' The Kaffir 
 and his Keeper,' and those articles on ' Religion and 
 Slavery' in the Times/' 
 
 " Good heavens ! Did that delicate little woman write 
 ' The Kaffir and his Keeper,' and and ?" After all 
 there was no good making another muddle, no good not 
 " speaking out." " When did you get married, Althaus, 
 why have you kept your marriage a secret? Are you 
 married?" he asked abruptly. 
 
 " What do you mean, what the devil do you mean ?" 
 
 " It's not I," he said quickly, " not I only, old chap ; I 
 heard something. I did not credit it ; that is why I came 
 
352 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 here to-day. You say you are married, then why, why the 
 secrecy ?" 
 
 Karl reddened. 
 
 " I suppose they're asking?" he said. 
 
 " Is it to be wondered at?" 
 
 " Hayward " 
 
 " Don't confide in me," Stephen put in hastily. " My 
 dear fellow, I don't want to know. If you had not put it 
 that way I should never have asked." 
 
 " But I want you to know. I want everybody to know. 
 Good God ! what are they saying ?" 
 
 Perhaps Stephen had a certain curiosity. She was a 
 charming little woman. 
 
 " What has become of the Turners ?" he asked, as he 
 flung himself into a chair prepared for a confidence; 
 " that's a Wilson over the fireplace, isn't it?" 
 
 " Yes, the others are still in Piccadilly. I haven't had 
 time to arrange things yet." 
 
 He had not had time to arrange even his thoughts, he 
 had forgotten the world. 
 
 " What are they saying?" 
 
 " What do they always say under the circumstances ?" 
 
 " You don't mean " 
 
 " They say you are living here with a lady " 
 
 " With my wife." 
 
 " Where did the ceremony take place ? Why does no- 
 body know her? Wherefore the mystery? You make 
 me speak ; I'm not trying to force your confidence. I did 
 not credit the thing when I first heard it, I came round to 
 ask you what it meant. There I found you and her !" 
 
 " I've been a fool, I see I've been a fool." 
 
 " Is she your wife ?" It was interest now, not curiosity 
 that prompted him. 
 
 " Thank God, yes. But she has been very ill ever since 
 we have been married. I took her away, we've only just 
 come back ; I never thought about that, about what people 
 would say. I wanted to keep it quiet for a bit, I had my 
 reasons for wanting to keep it quiet." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 353 
 
 " They ought to be strong ones. Am I to go on ques- 
 tioning you? Am I to ask what they were? You can 
 check me you know ; if it's a delicate matter, I don't want 
 you to tell me. But if I can put anything right, help you 
 in any way, well, you know the boot has been on the other 
 leg long enough." 
 
 Karl could not quickly make up his mind. Of course 
 he saw in a moment the mistake that might have arisen, 
 that it was not problematic but certain, he hardly realised. 
 And the mistake must be put right. But how much must 
 he tell Stephen ? He was perplexed, and Stephen, seeing 
 that he was perplexed, spoke then with more earnestness 
 than was habitual to him, perhaps more sympathy. 
 
 " I needn't tell you, I don't think I need tell you, that I 
 shall respect any confidence you choose to place in me; 
 but there may be something here in which a man of the 
 world, a man of this particular little Mayfair world, can 
 be of use. If you care for me to know, I should be glad, 
 Althaus, I should feel it a privilege to be of use to you." 
 
 Stephen thought of unmortgaged Hadalstone, of his 
 secured income. And he had done nothing for Karl, 
 nothing. He was a proud man, it would solace his pride 
 if he could help Karl Althaus ; in a delicate, trickish social 
 matter, as this seemed to be, he might find the opportunity 
 to show his gratitude. 
 
 Karl made a dash at an explanation. 
 
 " My wife was a Mrs. de Groot. Her first husband was 
 a Dutchman. We were married recently, in Islington, at 
 a registrar's office." 
 
 There was a want of frankness in Karl's manner, a note 
 of embarrassment. 
 
 " But what then why ?" 
 
 " Wait a bit. The fact is, the matter touches you in a 
 way." 
 
 "Touches me!" 
 
 Louis's name was nauseous to Karl's lips, the thought 
 of Louis was noxious in Karl's mind. Daily it became 
 more so, as he watched Joan struggle back to health. 
 * 2 3 
 
354 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 But Stephen would have to be told something, he was 
 Louis's father-in-law, some explanation was due to him. 
 
 " There was a bit of land." How it all halted, how dif- 
 ficult it was to tell ! " Her husband owned it it passed 
 to her. A scoundrel some fellows wanted it Louis " 
 Karl floundered, but Stephen thought he began to see 
 daylight. 
 
 "If you are trying to break to me that my precious son- 
 in-law is a scoundrel, and that you've only just found it 
 out " 
 
 "But I've got to get even with him." Again Karl's 
 eyes were bloodshot, and the veins on his forehead swelled. 
 
 After all he was on fairly safe ground with the " bit of 
 land;" he need not tell more of the story than that, the 
 ugly mean story. 
 
 " It was the deep of the Geldenrief. He bought the out- 
 crop against me, thinking to get the deep from her. 
 Everything he had came from me " 
 
 There he broke off. Everything Louis had came from 
 him, and everything Louis had taken from him. He 
 lived in the house with Joan, under his roof he sheltered 
 her, but nightly his arms were empty, and never would it 
 be otherwise. He could be brother, protector, friend, but 
 between them for ever was Louis, and what Louis had 
 done. Something he must tell Stephen. 
 
 " The Geldenrief outcrop isn't worth twopence, and the 
 deep I've given her back. I've got money enough, I've 
 given her back the deep. I can break him. I'd like to 
 wring his neck. His father was a wrong 'un, and his 
 mother. I ought to have guessed how he'd turn out. 
 I've promised not to lay a finger on him Stephen, he's a 
 real wrong 'un, a damned bad 'un. Thinking of him 
 drives me mad." He got up and walked about the room. 
 
 "He robbed her?" 
 
 " Of everything." 
 
 " I suppose she knew nothing of business." 
 
 " Oh, it wasn't that" then he stopped short. 
 
 " He doesn't know you have married her ?" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 355* 
 
 " That's it," he stopped his restless walk abruptly. 
 " That's it, you have hit it. I didn't want him to know 
 yet." 
 
 " But you've not seen him lately, you have had some 
 sort of a difference ?" 
 
 " I didn't know of this. It was over his marriage we 
 quarrelled. Damn him, damn him, damn him!" Karl 
 dug his foot into the carpet, smashed a paper-knife in his 
 hand, flung away the pieces, swore again, groaned. 
 
 " Stephen, what am I to do?" 
 
 " Announce your marriage, have your wife presented at 
 court," answered Stephen promptly, rising, stretching 
 himself. " Hasn't he counted on inheriting your wealth, 
 sharing it? Won't this marriage be a sufficient blow to 
 him, what are you waiting for, man, what is there to wait 
 for?" 
 
 Stephen had no thought of his daughter, of the altera- 
 tion in his daughter's prospects. He only thought how 
 best to help Karl, how to straighten out matters for that 
 nice little woman upstairs. He did not try to learn more 
 than Karl told him. 
 
 Of course there were difficulties to overcome, difficulties 
 Karl himself had created. 
 
 In the ordinary way Constantia would have helped them 
 out, but Stephen hesitated at asking her to present Karl 
 Althaus's wife. He told her the circumstances, however, 
 and was surprised to find how comparatively mild she 
 was, how comparatively easy to persuade that the author- 
 ess of a book which had actually captured the novel-read- 
 ing world about two years ago was worthy of presentation 
 to Her Majesty. She would not do it herself, could not, 
 even now, stultify herself and her mission to this extent. 
 
 " Besides," as she told Stephen, with rather a painful 
 smile, " if I have to present a Mrs. Althaus, it ought not 
 to be this one." Which speech Stephen deemed of happy 
 omen for Aline. 
 
 But Constantia, not being antagonistic, and Stephen and 
 she owning magnificent poor relations, and Karl Althaus 
 
356 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 a practically unlimited banking account, with the exercise 
 of a little tact and social delicacy, the matter of Joan's 
 presentation at court was duly arranged. 
 
 One of the difficulties was Joan herself, when the 
 project was first mooted to her. 
 
 As she grew stronger and her mind clearer, her posi- 
 tion too began to grow cruelly clear. When Karl told her 
 that she was to be presented at court she shrank from it. 
 
 " Oh, no, Karl, not that, not that. Let me live in retire- 
 ment, let me live in solitude. I can't face it, you know I 
 can't face it." 
 
 She saw this hurt him, though when she pleaded with 
 him he had no answer. He saw no flaw in her, he knew 
 she was fit to face the world. Yet he would not, could 
 not, urge her to anything that would trouble her. He 
 only grew more restless, looked unhappy, brooded; she 
 thought he brooded over what his Louis had done to her. 
 He wanted her to face the world. She could give him so 
 little, do for him so little, but this she could do, she could 
 nerve herself to this effort. If harm came of it, if he 
 and she lost instead of gained by the move, at least she 
 would have tried to please him, and shown him her desire 
 to do so. He wanted to see her back on her pedestal, that 
 pedestal of womanhood and purity from which, in his 
 eyes, she had never slipped ; but, deep down Joan knew, 
 as woman do know these things, that no pedestal, how- 
 ever high, could be tall enough to conceal the flaw that 
 was on her. If he would put her up for all the world to 
 see, then all the world might see the stain. 
 
 But when she hinted or urged it, it hurt him. So, in 
 the end, she yielded, for, why should she hurt him? 
 Rather, far rather, would she risk that curious, question- 
 ing eyes should hurt her. If Karl, therefore, thought that 
 diamonds and feathers in her hair, a train, and Her 
 Majesty's gracious acknowledgment of her curtsey, would 
 stamp out the past, why should Joan, poor clear-sighted 
 Joan, deny him this false hall-mark of her value ? 
 
 So she was dressed by Jay's in a real lace petticoat and 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 357 
 
 a train of fine velvet ; she wore a parure of diamonds for 
 which a Marie Antoinette might have sacrificed a king- 
 dom or a minister and looked in all her fine feathers, 
 what in truth she looked without them, a delicate little 
 woman with a network of wrinkles round her wistful eyes, 
 a pathetic droop in the corners of her mouth, an air of 
 fragility and aloofness which effectually distinguished her 
 from the young and frivolous debutantes, the happy 
 brides, and the ambitious matrons, who thronged to Buck- 
 ingham Palace on the same June day. 
 
 Still, her individuality gained her ascertain distinction. 
 In any case Society would have accepted her; the Hay- 
 ward approval, the Althaus millions, would have given 
 her the entree. Even Constantia admitted that it was fit 
 and becoming Society should on rare occasions permit 
 genius to consort on equal terms with birth, and " The 
 Kafnr and his Keeper" had undoubtedly been a work of 
 genius. In the presence of Joan, the sceptics forgot to 
 say that, of course, it was written by some man or other, 
 but, when she was not present, they instanced the fact 
 that it remained the solitary proof of her talent, that she 
 had never written anything else, to prove that she must 
 have been assisted in it. Nevertheless, she was received, 
 even run after, and she achieved what is called a social 
 success. 
 
 But Joan was no longer happy among people. The nai- 
 vete and charm that had been hers in Cape Town were 
 lost ; she was shy and constrained, conscious of her false 
 pretence. Her success was due to reclame, to Karl and 
 Stephen, perhaps not to anything she herself said or did. 
 A stray allusion, an untoward anecdote, brought the sud- 
 den red to her cheek, the sudden tear to her eyes. She 
 grew paler, thinner, in a month of the season's gaiety, and 
 Karl took alarm. 
 
 She had also grown nervous with him, she avoided his 
 glances, evaded being alone with him; he could not fail 
 to notice it. 
 
 " She's taken a dislike to me. I've blundered some- 
 
358 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 how, she is going back, not forward, I'm just about 
 making another mess of it," was his explanation to him- 
 self; but he sought for opportunities to put her at her 
 ease, to restore her confidence, to get her to tell him what 
 ailed her. 
 
 It was during this time he made his arrangements about 
 Louis, definitely dissociated himself from him in business, 
 returned his letters unread, and communicated to him, 
 through a solicitor, that he had done with him. In fact, 
 he could not have trusted himself in an interview, the 
 interview that Louis, relying on the old power and the 
 old love, had asked for. 
 
 When Louis heard of the presentation of Karl's wife, 
 when he knew who that wife was, he ceased to press foi 
 an interview. Karl, influenced by Stephen, was satisfied 
 for the moment to go no further in his vengeance. Louis 
 had money enough to live on, Karl had been too liberal in 
 the past for Louis to have any immediate difficulties about 
 money. When he wanted more, he would be unable to 
 make it ; everywhere he would find the ground had been 
 taken from under his feet. That was all Karl did, cut 
 him off from himself, and tried, very hard, and somewhat 
 unsuccessfully, to forget his existence. He did not want 
 to be hanged for murder, and there were only two ways 
 open to him. He made a settlement on Stephen's daugh- 
 ter, on Louis's wife, a settlement of which only Stephen 
 and the lawyer knew, a provision in case Louis's charac- 
 ter developed. Stephen understood the spirit in which it 
 was drawn up, and was grateful, but he told Karl he 
 could now provide for his own daughter, that he was 
 anxious to do so, that both he and Constantia were anxious 
 for reconciliation. Karl's impatient persistence in the deed 
 made further argument impossible. He could not bear the 
 mention of Louis's name. 
 
 Neither man contemplated any possible reprisals on 
 Louis's part. They were short-sighted, they felt secure, 
 they looked not an inch beyond their noses; and under 
 their noses at the moment were only Joan, and the Com- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 359 
 
 mission that the Radical papers had forced upon the Gov- 
 ernment, to report upon the Raid. 
 
 Joan had grown pale, and weary of the season, and 
 Karl watched her wistfully, followed her about, endeav- 
 oured to interest her in the coming Commission, in a big 
 scheme he had on hand for bringing Oberammergau to 
 the East End, and he tried to bring back the smiles to 
 her lips. He did not guess, at first, that it was this very 
 watching, this very care he had for her, that was bringing 
 that curious frightened look into her eyes, that curious 
 shrinking when he approached her. There was nothing of 
 his care for her that she missed, there was nothing of her 
 gratitude that failed. 
 
 " Don't you think you could start writing again ?" he 
 asked her one day, wistfully. " That book now, that 
 ' Book of the Jew' that you told me about, don't you think 
 you could get on with it? I'd take you down to the East 
 End, show you the sights, local colour, don't you call 
 it? I could give you local colour for your book." He 
 remembered how once she had told him the joy it was to 
 her to trace the words on paper, when thought turned 
 into phrase. 
 
 " Oh, Karl, don't ask me to write. I was so happy when 
 I wrote." 
 
 She burst into tears. But when he wanted to take her 
 hands from her face, to let her cry on his shoulders, to 
 comfort her as he had done when she was ill, she had 
 shrunk from him, thrust him from her, and rushed from 
 the room. 
 
 " God, she hates me !" he cried, and stood bewildered. 
 What had he done, or left undone ? Why did she repulse 
 and dread him ? 
 
 It was her clear sight that was moving her, her restored 
 intelligence had begun to see what Karl had done for her, 
 what sacrifice he had made in this marriage, this pre- 
 posterous marriage, into which she had been hurried. She 
 knew all he had done for her ; but it was a preposterous 
 marriage. 
 
360 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Karl loved her! Not like the brother, whose part he as- 
 sumed, but like the lover, whose privileges he would never 
 claim. She saw it in his eyes, sometimes, when, un- 
 awares, she raised hers and met them, felt it when they 
 drove home together in the brougham of an evening, and 
 parted in the hall, knew it when, in strange moments, 
 she saw a flush in his cheeks, an involuntary movement, 
 and a sudden fearful beating of her heart betrayed him to 
 her. 
 
 She trusted him completely. Nevertheless, the day 
 might come when he might ask no, he would never ask 
 but when, in return for his care, his unselfishness, duty, 
 answering unselfishness, might force her to give from pity, 
 from infinite comprehension, that which to another she 
 had given in love. 
 
 At the prospect she shuddered, and her dreams became 
 haunted, and she wanted to hide herself from his sight. 
 Karl's eyes, which seemed to her pleading eyes, Karl's 
 wishes, which she thought she read there, Karl's hand on 
 her shoulders, all outraged her ; for in her life there was, 
 there could be, but one man. 
 
 She had caught a sudden glimpse of Louis in Bond 
 Street, seen the wide shoulders, the poise of the hand- 
 some head, and again she was back in the past, and all of 
 it was dim but the dear touch of him, when he had first 
 loved her, when life had opened glowingly. Now life was 
 empty, there seemed no hope in it. After she had seen 
 Louis once more, and this time the dark eyes had met 
 hers, the hopelessness was full of anguish. She knew that 
 her marriage had outlawed her, even from memory. And 
 what she had felt for Louis in the past was not dead nor 
 exhausted. 
 
 Oftentimes, when Karl's footsteps overhead woke her 
 from a sudden dream, and she realised of whom she was 
 dreaming, she wished she was dead, she wished she had 
 died with her baby. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 
 
 HAD Stephen Hayward's career not been at stake about 
 this time, he might have been able to help, might have 
 seen more of what was going on. As it was, he was 
 absorbed in his efforts to persuade his cousin, and to 
 cause it to be represented to Lord Sarum, that neither 
 his daughter's marriage nor his notoriously augmented 
 income justified the suspicion being cast upon him that 
 he knew of the Raid, or had in any way taken advantage 
 of it. That the former Under-Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs was one of the ablest men on their side of the 
 House the new Government knew, but the sensitiveness, 
 the extreme sensitiveness, of the public conscience in re- 
 gard to the character of their statesmen was reflected in 
 a certain party aloofness or party coolness of which 
 Stephen had begun to be aware. It was inadvisable for 
 him to make himself conspicuously Karl Althaus's friend, 
 inadvisable for him to become associated in the public 
 mind with the South African capitalists. He had to walk 
 with extreme wariness, and his footsteps had better take 
 him, for the present, past the Althaus door. 
 
 Karl had only himself to rely upon in his fierce en- 
 deavour to understand Joan's attitude, his miserable effort 
 to find out what ailed her. He lavished diamonds on her, 
 but his diamonds made matters worse, he saw that. They 
 went out a great deal, and they entertained a great deal, 
 and Joan grew paler and wearier. He insisted on a week's 
 quiet, and took her away with him to Paris ; the shrinking, 
 nervous manner she had begun to show when alone with 
 him grew more pronounced. He began to lose heart, to 
 grow depressed, and, as ever, when Karl Althaus grew de- 
 pressed he harked back to his unfaith, and talked Judaism 
 
 361 
 
36S PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 with a sort of rage at its limitations. He was supremely 
 uncomfortable, and he had a sort of idea that Christianity 
 would have helped him. He felt that curious alienism of 
 the Jew, felt it was that which was estranging Joan, was at 
 least standing between him and his complete comprehen- 
 sion of her. When he got on this topic he was quieter, 
 less obviously seeking for an explanation of what Joan 
 could not explain, less embarrassing, so she encouraged 
 him to talk to her about it. 
 
 He got it into his head, in this restless, unhappy time, 
 when the little woman who shrank from him occupied his 
 thoughts by day and through troubled, sleepless nights, 
 that if he felt his limitations so acutely he should do 
 something to minimise other people's. This was what 
 started that futile scheme which brought Karl so much 
 undeserved obloquy. Yet, in the idea there is A germ 
 that may some day bear fruit. 
 
 Karl's idea was not to convert the East End Jews, but 
 to teach them the story of Christ and let that convert 
 them. Societies and missionaries had been a complete 
 failure, at least that is what it seemed to Karl, because 
 he was a man grown before he had heard of the Disciples. 
 He thought, nevertheless, that he had found a way of 
 teaching Christianity to his fellow-countrymen in White- 
 chapel. He wanted to give them, these poor brothers of 
 his, the belief he longed for but had never attained, 
 because he had seen it bring happiness to death-beds and 
 comfort to survivors, and no amount of money had been 
 equally efficacious. He was shy of his own idea, because, 
 not having personally accepted the Gospel, nor being any- 
 thing but ineradicably a Jew and an unbeliever, it was 
 difficult for him to explain his attitude; and with the 
 people who could best help him he was least in sympathy. 
 It was only the Nonconformists, the Christians who have 
 the greatest simplicity in their faith, that he had found 
 able to grasp his mental attitude ; and it was only the 
 Romanists who, through the medium of sensation, could 
 convey what he wanted to teach. 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 363 
 
 He was like a man who, drunk with champagne, learns 
 that pure water can quench thirst, that, try as he may, 
 give as he can, the people are too many for him to fill 
 with wine, and some of them must ever go thirsty if he 
 could not teach them of water. His wealth was cham- 
 pagne to him, and he was even now and always exhila- 
 rated with it; but this Christianity that soothed death- 
 beds was water, and if he could give his people that, it 
 was an inexhaustible well, and they would thirst no more. 
 
 Ever since he had begun to be a rich man he had 
 wanted his mother back again, to ply with luxuries. But 
 Joan had written on her mother's grave, " With Christ, 
 which is far better." He wanted to feel like that, he 
 wanted his people to feel like that. 
 
 He was confused, because nothing is so confusing as 
 the endeavour of a teacher to impart a knowledge which 
 he does not possess; but he worked out a plan which 
 seemed picturesque to Joan, and capable of being turned 
 to political account by Stephen, who had a new Education 
 Bill in the back of his mind, and had realised, when at the 
 Local Government Board, some of the difficulties pre- 
 sented by alien immigration. Oberammergau gave Karl 
 his inspiration. 
 
 He would build and endow a national theatre for the 
 performance of miracle plays, of Passion plays, of plays 
 illustrating stories from both Testaments. On Saturdays 
 and Sundays it should be open all day, it should be in 
 the heart of Houndsditch, and the Jews should be bribed 
 and tempted to come by stories of Ruth, and tableaux of 
 Hagar in the wilderness ; they should be taught the habit 
 of coming, and then, when it was their resort, their habit- 
 ual resort, the Story he wanted them to know should be 
 gradually unfolded. 
 
 Karl had a thousand charitable schemes for his people ; 
 his contribution to the Board of Guardians, gratefully 
 large and unstinted as it was, hardly represented what he 
 was prepared to do. There should be schools and hospi- 
 tals, nursing-homes and homes for the dying^, maternity 
 
364 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 charities and orphanages ; but all should be in connection 
 with his theatre, the theatre, where, in a language, the very 
 poorest, the very youngest, and the most neglected, could 
 understand, the language of scenery and circumstance, 
 the " story that had moved the world," should be borne in 
 upon them morning and afternoon and evening. He had 
 it in his mind to engage great actors for the parts, great 
 artists for the scenery, great musicians. And everything 
 they should see for nothing, those poor Jews, who now 
 heard the story only in adult life, when, like Karl, it was 
 too late for them to realise it. As a race he would help 
 to keep them apart; their food, their language, their 
 ceremonies, he would preserve. But they should hear 
 Christ was born for them, and died for them ; they should 
 hear His message. 
 
 This scheme, crude and absurd in the telling, never- 
 theless had a purpose and a poetry in it that made Joan's 
 life harder. This big man, with his simplicity and all 
 his unsatisfied longings, she could read more easily than 
 he read her. She, no more than the religion he failed to 
 grasp, had power to help him, or at least, if she had the 
 power, she had hardly the will. The situation between 
 them was strained, at times almost to breaking point. 
 The stronger she grew, the more the thought of Louis 
 rose and dominated her mind ; and Karl's dumb love for 
 her, Karl's touch, even his presence in the room, made 
 her longing for the other more and more intense. 
 
 She tried to be sympathetic with Karl in his strangely 
 inconsistent scheme. He would buy land in the East End 
 for his theatre, he commenced buying land. 
 
 " You see, Joan," he said, talking eagerly to her with 
 the plans in his hand, and an appointment with the archi- 
 tect actually made, " you don't get a chance of believing a 
 thing if you don't hear it till you've grown old, and scep- 
 tical about most beautiful things, and are always looking, 
 so to speak, for hall-marks, and authentic signatures, 
 doubting everything. If I build this theatre, mind you, 
 and fill it with little children, and let them see the Na- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 365 
 
 tivity, and the Wise Men coming from the East, and the 
 Resurrection, and all the rest of it, they won't forget it, 
 they won't pooh-pooh it ; it will just sink into their minds, 
 and it will stay there " He was always wistfully ask- 
 ing for sympathy, for assurance. 
 
 A short interregnum there was in Joan's poor literary 
 life, when Karl re-inspired her, when she started writing 
 again with the big scheme for inspiration, when she sat 
 in that many-windowed square room which overlooked 
 the Park, and tried to repay him for all he had done for 
 her, by making him the hero in that " Book of the Jew" 
 which was faintly projected, which seemed still to have 
 life in it, even if it were a life she found it hard to kindle. 
 
 But Louis was in London. It was that, it was the rare 
 hurried glimpses of him in the Park or in crowded as- 
 semblies that paralysed her pen, made her days tumultu- 
 ous, and her nights sleepless. That fine fa<;aded Park 
 Lane house held an unhappy man and an unhappy woman, 
 living, the one in his artificial complication of the White- 
 chapel conversion scheme, the other in the make-believe 
 of her literary work, but each of them distracted by the 
 other, and owning it in guilty glances, averted faces, 
 strange silences, awkward moments. 
 
 Great love has great insight. Karl begfan to under- 
 stand. He had known for a long time that he wanted 
 his wife ; he began to know it was that which she feared. 
 He did not suspect she had seen Louis, for he thought 
 Louis had left London, and had not been in town since the 
 night when he had knocked him down. Chance, which 
 had given Joan her distracting glimpses, had left Karl in 
 ignorance. Not knowing she had seen Louis, not fearing 
 anything but that she feared himself, he made his sudden 
 plan, and saw yes, saw relief flash into the tired eyes, 
 heard a sigh break from her, a sigh of relief. 
 
 " Do you think you could get along without me for a 
 bit: I don't like the way this thing is going on over 
 there. I'm uneasy about the way they are conducting 
 the trial ; I don't trust the judge. I've got a lever I could 
 
366 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 use with Kruger, even now, and I could use it better from 
 Cape Town than from here. The boat goes Thursday; 
 I'd like to slip over for a spell. They could get on with 
 the theatre plans just as well without me, and you you'd 
 be all right for a bit; you could get ahead with the 
 book." 
 
 He had seen the relief lighten into her eyes: 
 
 " Of course I should miss you." 
 
 " Eh ! oh, of course. But you think I'm right, don't 
 you ? You think some of us ought to be on the spot ?" 
 
 " Not Pretoria ! You don't think of going to Pre- 
 toria?" 
 
 " We must see how the land lies." 
 
 She was glad, there was no doubt she was glad, in the 
 prospect of his going. That had been her first thought; 
 it swallowed up everything else. She would be alone ; 
 she would be free from watching, loving eyes, she would 
 be free from the good-night kiss that Karl gave her some- 
 times, that she always dreaded, free from the shy broth- 
 erly touch that had no touch of brotherliness in it, from 
 the nights when Karl's restless footsteps over her head 
 filled her with remorse, when the cessation of them filled 
 her with terror. She would be free, the days and the 
 nights and the house would cease to hold this anguish 
 of conflicting passions. 
 
 Something of this she tried to tell him before he went. 
 When he was actually going, every other feeling was 
 subordinated to remorse. 
 
 " You have been so good to me, Karl, and I I have 
 given you nothing." 
 
 She broke down at his going, and sobbed in his arms. 
 
 " I'm not ungrateful, I understand, I know. Karl, 
 come back to me soon. I will be different, I will try to 
 be different." 
 
 He soothed her and caressed her hair. 
 
 " There, there. What is there to fret at? I'll soon be 
 back. There's no talk of gratitude between you and me. 
 I don't want anything of you." 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 367 
 
 He lied ; she felt it in the sudden beat of his heart, the 
 sudden tightening of his arms. " I only want that you 
 should put on a smile, and be the old Joan, and be happy 
 with me." 
 
 " When you come back " 
 
 She felt his goodness, all his sacrifice. 
 
 " When I come back," his voice was hoarse, " it shall be 
 as it was before I went away just as you wish, every- 
 thing as you would wish." 
 
 " Oh, Karl! why aren't you different? you make me 
 ashamed. Why was I never worthy of you?" 
 
 " Nonsense," he thrust his emotion into the back- 
 ground, spoke gently: 
 
 " You mustn't have morbid ideas, dear, mustn't let me 
 go away and think you're brooding. Perhaps " 
 
 But, even in this her softened mood, when he held her 
 in his arms, he would not say that, perhaps when he came 
 back, perhaps when she had had time to think things over, 
 when she had grown accustomed to the knowledge how 
 well he loved her, she would let him love her. He would 
 not say it, not leave it as a dread in her mind, a duty to 
 which she must nerve herself. He finished his sentence 
 differently to what he had meant. His voice was gruff 
 and broken : 
 
 " Perhaps when I come back we'll give up this town 
 life, try the country, and see if you don't do a bigger thing 
 even than ' The Kaffir and his Keeper,' with our English 
 fields and hedges to help you/' 
 
 So the moment of their farewell was over, and, if Karl 
 took his last kiss from her lips instead of from her cheeks, 
 losing control for one half-second, he realised, before he 
 was in the train on the way to Southampton, that, with all 
 her tears, or remorse for her coldness, there had still 
 been no response from those lips. 
 
 And now again Joan was alone. 
 
 Louis knew it, knew it almost before it was an accom- 
 plished fact. It was in the air that Karl Althaus was 
 going back to South Africa to use his personal influence 
 
368 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 with Kruger on behalf of the Reform Leaguers, and that 
 he had secured a passage on the Berwick Castle. It was 
 in the evening papers the night before he sailed. Of his 
 actual departure Louis assured himself. 
 
 All those titled friends of Louis's, all those Society 
 ladies who had found him attractive, had not forsaken 
 him because he had married Stephen Hayward's daugh- 
 ter, or because Karl had quarrelled with him. Many of 
 them did not even know that Karl had quarrelled with 
 him. That was how he came to be at Lady Herodsfoot's 
 reception two nights after the Berwick Castle had left 
 Queenstown. Karl had wished Joan to go out during 
 his absence, to go on living her life as she had been 
 living it. 
 
 There was nothing dress could do that it had not done 
 for Joan that night. Karl's absence had already taken a 
 little of the strain from her eyes. Then, she had written 
 a few sentences, and the ring of them was pleasing her 
 still as she mounted the stairs, there was a certain curve 
 in her lips, and a dreaminess of expression. Louis 
 watched her from his point of vantage, he had thought 
 she would come, and he watched for her. She had re- 
 gained her figure, once more it was attractive, slender, 
 yet svelte and full of curves. 
 
 The French artist, who was responsible for her toilette, 
 had undraped the white shoulders below the top of the 
 arm, cutting the dress as our grandmothers cut their low 
 evening bodices. The little face set on the delicate throat 
 was pathetinlly small, and the blue eyes were wistful 
 eyes, but Louis was satisfied with what he saw. 
 
 She was still desirable, and she was his, of course 
 she was his ; she had been stolen from him Karl had 
 stolen a march upon him. He watched her coming up 
 the stairs, and, when the sudden heart-beat told her he 
 was there, and she looked up and saw him, she saw the 
 old Louis; his hand was brushing up his moustache, a 
 smile sat on his lips. When that hand of his was stretched 
 out to her she did not touch it, she was speechless, she 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 369 
 
 bowed her head only, but the crush on the stairs impris- 
 oned her and held her, and his voice had lost no charm. 
 
 " At last !" he said ; " at last !" Then stairs and peo- 
 ple, flowers and music became confused and indistinct 
 about her, and only Louis's voice and face were clear. 
 His " at last !" was a low murmur for only her ears. 
 By his side was Aline in her tall, patrician fairness. 
 
 "Your wife?" said Joan, and this time she put out 
 that trembling hand. It was cold, too ; Aline felt it was 
 cold through her glove. 
 
 " You are Louis's brother's wife ?" said Aline. 
 
 Louis's brother's wife! The words were strange 
 enough with Louis smiling there, his handsome eyes and 
 lips smiling at her, no less beautiful than she had ever seen 
 them. How the smooth, thick black hair lay back from 
 the white forehead. In the imperial, in the brushed-up 
 points of the moustache, there were touches of grey. 
 
 " You and Joan ought to see something of each other," 
 he said, still looking at Joan with that smile. " This is 
 the first time you have met, but Joan has heard of 
 you. I told you of Stephen Hayward's beautiful daugh- 
 ter, you remember at the fancy-dress ball?" he had the 
 insolence to add. 
 
 She remembered, she was stunned with memory. 
 
 They played the farce through. Aline, dull to what 
 went on around her, was attracted in some unusual way 
 to this little woman, pale, and with such cold hands, wife 
 of that strange brother of Louis's, who sat up all night 
 drinking whisky with him in Cape Town, who was so 
 rough, and unlike any one she had ever met. Louis left 
 the two women together, he made the opportunity to leave 
 them together. He could afford to wait his time. 
 
 Joan could not reject the advances Aline made. She 
 had been told the girl was not quite like other girls. Very 
 soon she penetrated into the truth of it, and was subtly 
 glad, without knowing why, and interested in her. 
 
 " I want to come and see you. I may come and see 
 you?" Aline pleaded, as they parted. Not a word had 
 
 24 
 
370 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Louis said, not a word to her alone. Some one else had 
 taken her to supper, and called up her carriage for her. 
 Mrs. Karl Althaus never lacked cavaliers, and Louis had 
 stood aloof. It was in the hall they had met again and 
 Aline had made her request. The Society shibboleth came 
 so easy, so pat. 
 
 " I shall be charmed/' answered Joan. She said the 
 words over to herself as she sank back into her carriage 
 and laughed hysterically. She would be charmed if 
 Louis's wife came to see her. How strange it sounded, 
 how strange it was, and the evening was stranger still. 
 Why was she excited, what agitated her, filled her veins 
 with fire, shook her, and banished thought? 
 
 Of course Aline called on Joan, she called the very next 
 day; used as a pawn, she made her unimportant move. 
 The link that bound these two was magnetic between 
 them. Aline came constantly to Park Lane during the 
 next week or two. Louis never came at all. The works 
 of art, of which the house was so full, drew Aline, who 
 had grown up in an atmosphere, dim with crystallised cen- 
 turies. The bronzes, the tapestries, the few ivories, held 
 her wandering eyes, and Joan followed her about from 
 room to room, and tried to see what it was she missed in 
 her, what it was that set her apart from her fellow-women, 
 and wondered too but checked herself wondering if 
 Louis knew she came, if Louis sent her. She knew he 
 could not come himself, to Karl's house, and she set down 
 to wounded feeling and delicacy of conduct that which m 
 truth was but part of a scheme, a deliberate plan. For 
 always she misjudged Louis; how could it have been 
 otherwise ? 
 
 The Turners had been sent over from Piccadilly. They 
 hung, until Karl should come back, in the picture-gallery, 
 in strange juxtaposition to the Fragonards. Joan, groping 
 in the dark after Aline's intelligence, took her in to see 
 them. She hardly paused before them, but the amorous 
 light of the sun-lit Fragonards drew and held and fasci- 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 371 
 
 nated Louis's wife. The poor brain that lay behind the 
 impassive beauty of the young patrician saw, unrepelled, 
 what the painter had tried to convey. There was some- 
 thing, unhappily, that had not died in her when her sen- 
 tient youth was killed. 
 
 " They tell of great joy. Don't they tell you of great 
 joy, and sunlight? We had two at Hadalstone in the 
 drawing-room. A woman and a man and Cupid, roses, 
 and always the wonderful sunlight. In those others there 
 is no life, only dead scenes, gorges, waterfalls " She 
 shivered. " I hear them drip. I hate to hear water drip 
 monotonously." 
 
 And Joan, calling it the " novelist's instinct," the " study 
 of psychology," calling it anything but by the right 
 name, listened to and was endlessly interested in Louis's 
 wife. 
 
 " Do you love pictures?" asked Aline of her. 
 
 " Only those that are never painted," she answered 
 vaguely, seeing them. 
 
 " When I was going to marry my cousin John, he 
 wished me to be painted. I didn't want to hang on a wall 
 and stare. I didn't want to marry my cousin John, and 
 secure the succession." 
 
 "And you are glad that you did marry Louis?" haz- 
 arded Joan nervously. Then she hurried to another ques- 
 tion, and would not listen to the answer, and felt her 
 cheek burn; she knew she must not, dare not, pry into 
 Louis's married life. 
 
 But always she had the longing to see him, to hear his 
 voice again. 
 
 " Are you going to Lady Herodsfoot for Goodwood ? 
 Do come. I want you to come," said Aline on another 
 day. 
 
 " Are you going ?" Joan asked guiltily ; for she had 
 had an invitation, and was wavering, and dreaded where 
 her wavering would take her. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; for the week. My cousin Violet is going, 
 and perhaps John. I would like you to know John. I 
 
372 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 could not marry John " She begged Joan to come to 
 Goodwood. 
 
 Louis thought it was he who prompted every move, 
 who stood behind, directing, guiding it, but it was not 
 entirely so. Somehow these two, Joan, who had never 
 had a woman friend, and Aline, who stood outside friend- 
 ship, had a curious affinity ; something they held in com- 
 mon, these two women who loved Louis Althaus. Aline, 
 who lived in silences, the gentle girl who had lost her 
 way so early, and Joan, who talked all her life, with pen 
 and ink sometimes, but eloquent always, would have been 
 drawn together however they had met. Joan told herself 
 this, constantly. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 
 
 IT was a very smart party Lady Herodsfoot had gath- 
 ered together for Goodwood. Jack and she always knew 
 how to do the right thing; the worst of it was they so 
 seldom had the wherewithal to do it. But Jack was very 
 easy-going, and he credited the story of this wonderful 
 bargain of a house, and the bit of luck at bridge, and all 
 the little miracles that made it possible for him to go 
 through the week in style. The only members of the party 
 that made him elevate his eyebrows were Louis Althaus 
 and Karl Althaus's wife; he could not see exactly how 
 they fitted in. It did not suit Lady Herodsfoot to explain 
 to her Jack that one of these two was the party. She said 
 Lady Violet Alncaster was coming, and so was Legoux, 
 and anything like a revival of the flirtation between Violet 
 and Louis Althaus which had amused them all so much 
 a season or two ago, might bring matters to a point. 
 
 " Oh, well, if the Duchess suggested it," said easy-going 
 Jack, " I suppose you could hardly say no. But I should 
 think that Althaus would be rather bally awful in a 
 houseful of people for a week on end." 
 
 Lady Herodsfoot promised to keep him out of the way. 
 The extraordinary part of it was that Lady Herodsfoot 
 really thought it was on Violet Alncaster's account Louis 
 had taken the house, had asked her to play hostess, and 
 made everything possible and convenient ; for so he had 
 meant her to believe. Once his opportunity had come, 
 once he and Joan were under the same roof, with a week 
 before him, he had no doubt he could put matters right 
 between himself and Karl. His vanity was not cured, 
 neither was his hopefulness for the future. When Joan 
 was completely under his influence she would work Karl 
 
 373 
 
374 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 for him; that she would come under his influence again 
 he read easily enough in her nervous avoidance of his 
 eyes, in her want of self-possession. 
 
 The Goodwood house party had all the right ingre- 
 dients. There were two duchesses, with Lady Violet 
 and Lord Legoux, a foreign royalty from Germany and 
 an Indian Prince, two or three racing women without 
 their inconvenient husbands, the owner of " Saltpetre/' 
 and two other members of the Jockey Club, a couple of 
 the racing women's addenda, and the Althauses. Jack 
 Herodsfoot was a capital host. 
 
 Louis had taken the largest and best house in the neigh- 
 bourhood ; there was a chef from the " Savoy," and 
 there were a couple of four-in-hands for driving to the 
 course. He had a big stake to play for, and although he 
 was not reckless in money matters as a rule, he made an 
 exception here. People talked, of course, people talked, 
 about the Herodsfoot income, and the Herodsfoot 
 menage; but the Indian was conspicuous in attention to 
 the hostess, and Louis kept himself discreetly in the back- 
 ground. It was the second day before Joan arrived. 
 
 She was incongruous there, it struck her so the very 
 first evening when the gabble at the dinner-table was all 
 of racing, and the gabble in the drawing-room followed it 
 closely, and four tables of bridge were started as soon as 
 the men came up. She had no place there, she watched 
 them a short time from her vantage coign on the sofa, 
 then rose to retire, thinking to escape inconspicuously. 
 The window offered the easiest exit through the French 
 window to the garden she slipped. 
 
 But when she had stepped through the window, and 
 was in the moonlit shadows of the old garden, her foot- 
 steps lingered. It was an exquisite night, the heat of 
 the day had turned to cool languor and restfulness ; still- 
 ness was in the depth of the dark green trees, the air was 
 odorous with the breath of exhausted flowers. 
 
 It was where the trellised rose-beds gave on to the 
 shelving bank of green turf that she saw Louis ; she stood 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 375 
 
 still, she saw him! But now they were alone, with only 
 the moon and the broken shadows on the path, and the 
 stillness. She stood, uncertain, but he made a quick step 
 forward. 
 
 " At last, at last, Joan," he said again, and would have 
 caught her to him, but she put out both hands to push 
 him back. " No, no Louis !" He would not let her 
 hold herself away from him ; not her fear, not her reluc- 
 tance, but that which was at the back of both, he knew 
 when he drew her to him. 
 
 " My Joan," he said, and kissed her lips no, not kissed, 
 he rested his on hers, and had his arms about her, and 
 made her remember what they had been to each other. 
 For one obliterating moment nothing was real but his 
 arms, and his dear breath, soft lips, soft eyes ; everything 
 else was forgotten, and she only felt she had found life 
 again. 
 
 It was only a moment, a flower caught by a drowning 
 woman as the rushing stream hurries her to destruction. 
 He met her reaction, that was Louis's talent, met the re- 
 coil and revolt. 
 
 " Leave me your hand, Joan, there is no harm in that 
 leave me your hand," he pleaded, and though hers 
 trembled, he held it. 
 
 " Don't think I would hurt you. You ought not to 
 have left me, you know you ought not to have left me, 
 but I am not going to reproach you." She left her hand 
 in his ; how little he had altered ! " I searched every- 
 where for you; I've been wretched without you, miser- 
 able. You ought to have thought of how I should suffer. 
 You are the only woman I have ever cared for. You 
 have spoiled my life ; but I don't care for that. I don't 
 mind being ruined !" 
 
 " Ruined !" The word startled the echo from her. 
 
 " Don't you know that Karl has flung me out, dis- 
 carded me ? I don't care, but Joan " 
 
 " But he promised me " 
 
 " Well, never mind what he has promised you he has 
 
376 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 broke me, broke me. But, Joan, it isn't that ; let that go. 
 Why do you want to take your hand away? Oh! 
 Joan," and now he had caught her to him again, " I've 
 been so miserable without you, so miserable " 
 
 How could she resist him ? 
 
 He did not woo her, he only reminded her, and be- 
 wildered her, and begged to her. 
 
 " I know you are thinking of your duty to Karl, but 
 you owe me something. You knew nothing about love 
 until I taught you. You could never love anybody but 
 me, could you, Joan?" 
 
 And indeed she never had. 
 
 " I tried all I could to find you, but Karl was urging 
 me about securing the Hayward interest. He forced my 
 hand. Joan, you know I tried to find you." 
 
 " Leave me go, Louis ; don't hold me, leave me go." 
 
 " I won't touch you. But don't tell me you've forgotten 
 me, that I am nothing to you now, that Karl has robbed 
 me of you too." 
 
 Every other feeling and emotion in her was subordi- 
 nated to the wish to tell him that Karl had not robbed 
 him of her. Karl was the better man, the better lover, 
 but it trembled on her lips to tell him that she was still 
 Louis's Joan. 
 
 " I will never interfere between you, but you must 
 let me see you sometimes. I must have you to talk to." 
 
 " Louis, it's all wrong. I can't bear it, let me go." 
 Her voice was faint. Never had she been able to resist 
 him, never, she had only been able to flee from him. 
 
 " Although you left me like that, I forgave you at 
 once, immediately. I never bore you any malice. I knew 
 you did what you thought right. I did think, I own I 
 thought, you ought to have let me be the judge. And 
 look what happened. We got the farm all the same. 
 But I swear I never left off caring for you, Joan. I must, 
 I must," he held her to him, " I must hear you say that 
 you have never cared for anybody but me." 
 
 And she never had 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 377 
 
 That was the danger of it. The man's voice, though 
 her brain rejected his arguments, always touched her 
 heart, his presence always moved her senses, her defences 
 were all down before him, and he saw into every weak, 
 unguarded place. 
 
 That night in the dark garden he made her promise, 
 he wrung from her a promise, that she would not avoid 
 him, that she would let him talk to her, that they should 
 discuss the position. He moved her by his desire for 
 reconciliation with Karl, by telling her of his love for her, 
 and his unhappiness without her, he moved her through 
 all her starving womanliness and faithfulness to him. 
 There had been no other man in her life. He moved her 
 by the fervour with which he told her they would not 
 wrong Karl, would only talk, and be together sometimes, 
 and wrong nobody. 
 
 That was the first evening. Her dreams were broken 
 that night. She wandered with naked feet on rocky 
 ground; hanging precipices, gloom and danger were 
 around her, and she heard Karl calling to her, she strug- 
 gled on toward his voice, stumbled and fell, struggled on 
 again, bleeding, and ever desperate and crying as she 
 went, but ever stumbling and falling, then she woke to 
 find she had been crying in her sleep, and her pillow was 
 wet. Three times she dreamed that dream, it was all the 
 night held for her. 
 
 The Goodwood party flirted and raced, played bridge 
 and talked scandal. Soon it was smilingly recognised that 
 Louis Althaus was very attentive to his sister-in-law; 
 yet Aline clung to Joan, and refused to understand at 
 what Violet hinted, and other people smiled. And Louis 
 manoeuvred for short interviews, and pressed his claims, 
 and made her life bitter sweet, and poignant. But that 
 they " would not wrong Karl" was the phrase their inter- 
 views heard oftenest. So the week sped along, until 
 Friday came. To-morrow the party would break up, 
 to-morrow Joan could get free, go back to Karl's house, 
 and be alone with her memories there. 
 
378 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 But on the last day of the races a soaking rain drove 
 the party to an early return, and, whilst some of them 
 sought their bedrooms to repair their bedraggled condi- 
 tion, to preen their feathers and dry their curls, and others 
 had found that daylight was no bar to the joys of a 
 " heart" call, and in the gaiety of their afternoon spirits 
 were declaring " withouts" on spade hands, Lady Violet 
 prompted by some malevolence, some lingering spite about 
 Louis, followed Aline to her bedroom, and pointed her 
 wit in such a manner that it precipitated the inevitable 
 catastrophe. 
 
 " Let us have tea up here, Aline. Send Susan down 
 for it." 
 
 She had followed Aline into her bedroom, somewhat 
 rudely displacing Joan, who had had the same intention. 
 Joan hesitated, then turned her lingering steps away, per- 
 haps guiltily glad. 
 
 " I can't play bridge in the day-time, and if I sleep 
 now I shall be awake half the night, so I thought I would 
 come in for a gossip," began Violet. 
 
 Then followed the little talk about horses that made 
 Aline yawn, then about dress, which woke her up again, 
 and then about people. 
 
 " Who made the Herodsfoots invite your sister-in-law 
 here ? She is awfully out of it." 
 
 " I don't know. I asked her to say yes to her invita- 
 tion." 
 
 " Oh, you asked her to say yes !" Violet laughed ma- 
 liciously. " So that is the way of it, is it? Have you 
 and John ever met since you chucked him overboard?" 
 
 '' Not until yesterday." 
 
 " When he came up to the coach, and they asked him 
 to join our party this evening?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That was Louis Althaus's idea, I suppose/' 
 
 Aline hesitated. " I don't know." 
 
 " What are you playing at, you two ? Did you want to 
 meet him?" 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 379 
 
 "I? Oh, no." 
 
 " I never asked you about your elopement. How did it 
 come about?" 
 
 "My elopement? My elopement?" 
 
 " Yes, your elopement. Why did you chuck up John 
 in such a hurry and bolt with Louis Althaus?" 
 
 " I I don't know." 
 
 "If you fell in love with him, why don't you want to 
 keep him?" 
 
 "To keep him?" 
 
 " Yes. Why do you let him take on his brother's wife ?" 
 
 " His brother's wife?" 
 
 " Oh, don't be such a fool, Aline. You must know what 
 I mean. Everybody's talking about it. They're together, 
 morning, noon, and night." 
 
 "Joan?" 
 
 " Joan ?" repeated Violet mockingly. " Really, Aline, 
 sometimes I think you must put it on, that you cannot be 
 such a fool as you look. You must have noticed them 
 during the last four days, seeking every opportunity to 
 be together. If they are not on the drag, and they have 
 only once been with us, they find room in the dog-cart ; 
 if one has a headache, the other stays at home; and 
 evening after evening they moon about the garden to- 
 gether. You don't mean to say you have not noticed it. 
 Where are your eyes?" 
 
 " Joan and Louis," repeated Aline more stupidly than 
 ever. 
 
 " Yes, ' Joan and Louis.' You don't suppose he would 
 be above it, do you? You don't look upon your husband 
 as a saint, I suppose. But mind," the little vixen said, 
 leaning back in her chair luxuriously, " that's the differ- 
 ence between him and one of us. He chooses his brother's 
 wife for his carrying on; it's playing it too low down, 
 you know. I suppose they have got a standard, those out- 
 siders, but it's a different one from ours. There is some- 
 thing about Louis Althaus I don't say there isn't; as 
 you know, he and I were very good pals once upon a 
 
380 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 time. But I should never have thought of marrying him. 
 That's where you took my breath away. I'd as soon have 
 thought of marrying a crossing-sweeper. That is, I mean 
 if I wasn't broke, or in any sort of a mess. Were you 
 in any sort of mess ever?" 
 
 " I ?" But of course she flushed. 
 
 " Yes, you ! I know Constantia looked after you like 
 a dragon from morning to night. But what on earth 
 should have made you throw over John and run away 
 with the crossing-sweeper, I mean, with Louis Althaus, if 
 you were not in a mess, is more than I can understand. 
 If John does come here, do you think you and he will 
 foregather? Do you think, if he sees your husband 
 running after another woman, he will return well, I 
 won't say to his first love, because I rather fancy I was 
 that, but to his second ?" 
 
 " Violet," said Aline earnestly, standing by the easy 
 chair and laying her hand on her cousin's arm, " I can- 
 not quite follow what you are saying ; you know I am 
 not as quick as you are what do you mean about Louis 
 and about Joan?" Violet laughed at her. 
 
 " I mean, my dear," mockingly, " I mean that your 
 husband and your sister-in-law are engaged in a very 
 pretty little flirtation together, always supposing it's not 
 more than a flirtation and I want to know whether you 
 are going to console yourself with John ; and the reason 
 I want to know is " 
 
 " Oh, I know, I know," said Aline impatiently. " I 
 am not so simple that I don't know, that I have not always 
 known, you like John." And then Violet flushed too a 
 little and said: 
 
 " Like John ? Oh, rubbish ! We've always been pals, 
 one must have somebody to quarrel with." 
 
 Aline brushed it impatiently aside. " But what do you 
 mean about Joan and Louis ?" 
 
 " Are you in love with him still ? asked Violet curiously. 
 
 Aline flushed at that, but made no reply. She cross- 
 examined her cousin abruptly, impatiently. Lightly and 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 381 
 
 jeeringly Violet, nevertheless, managed to make her un- 
 derstand that it had been noticed in the house that Joan 
 and Louis were engaged in what seemed to that light, 
 superficial crowd as a flirtation. 
 
 Neither the word " flirtation" nor the substance of it 
 was understood by Aline. Her experience was as limited 
 as her mental capacity ; love-making had only one mean- 
 ing to her, and Joan it seemed impossible to connect 
 Joan and Louis in that way. She had no one to whom she 
 could speak of the dreadful thing that Violet had told her. 
 
 The tired, noisy party who had played bridge all that 
 wet afternoon, played again all that pouring evening. 
 Joan had not come down to dinner, she had a headache, 
 she stayed in her room. Aline went up to her, sat by the 
 bedside, put her head beside her on the pillow, tried to 
 nurse her and take care of her, comfort and make up to 
 her in some vague way for the horrible things that Vio- 
 let had said. But Aline did not soothe away Joan's head- 
 ache, or make her any happier. Neither the handkerchief 
 dipped in eau de Cologne, nor the darkened room, nor 
 the timid ministrations of Louis's wife, helped to make 
 Joan's pain less. 
 
 For Aline talked. 
 
 " You don't like this noisy party, do you ? you haven't 
 been at home or happy here. They are not nice, not 
 really nice, but they are all going away to-morrow, all 
 of them. Louis has taken the house on for a few days ; 
 he thinks I ought to have quiet. You'll stay with us, 
 won't you? It will be so nice, just us three. Perhaps 
 Louis will go to town on Monday, then we'll be alone 
 together, you and I; you won't mind being alone with' 
 me, will you, Joan? You don't mind because I am not 
 clever, or like those others. You are fond of me, are not 
 you, Joan? I always think you are." She nestled up to 
 her, and Joan put her arm around her, and answered her 
 mutely, and felt her eyelids smart with the tears that rose 
 as she lay with her arms round this poor wife of Louis.' 
 
 Aline had the mind of a little child, and the nature of 
 
382 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 a little child. This grown-up person, so much wiser than 
 she, was in pain or trouble. Some one had hurt her, that 
 was all Aline had gathered from Violet, some one had tried 
 to hurt Joan ; so she would cuddle up to her, and comfort 
 her and make her smile and look happy again. Louis's 
 wife had the sweet ways of a child with poor Joan, who 
 suffered under the petting, and was silently moved and 
 well-nigh desperate through it. 
 
 What had Louis said that afternoon, when, turned away 
 from the refuge of Aline's bedroom, Joan had been met by 
 him, had gone with him into the library, and been weak 
 with him. 
 
 Everything about him was sweet to her, his eyes and 
 lips, his arms in which she had so often rested, his shoul- 
 der that her head had pressed, the crisp curls, tinted now 
 with grey, that curled into his neck, his small warm hands. 
 She loved him, perhaps, as men love women, and he had 
 beauties that men see in women, rarely women in men. 
 His ears were set flat to his head, beautiful ears, often 
 her kisses had lain behind them. 
 
 And she had been weak with him. 
 
 She had belonged to him in a way that banishes a 
 woman's greatest and most powerful protector. The man 
 had made her his, with infinite difficulty, perhaps with 
 the breaking down of the barriers one by one, with tender- 
 ness and with tears, with prayers and protestations, per- 
 haps with gentle force, but he had made her his. And 
 before him all her fortifications were down. Woman's 
 fortification is not her virtue for woman's virtue is the 
 same as man's virtue, no more, no less her fortification, 
 her bulwark, is her modesty; and Louis had coaxed and 
 wheedled, sacked and undermined, left it fallen and ruined 
 before his exactions and encroachments, made her utterly 
 defenceless before him, and been satisfied with nothing 
 short of this. 
 
 And to-day he had confused her with argument, weak- 
 ened her with tears, tempted her with kisses, made her 
 promise 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 383 
 
 What had he made her promise? 
 
 Tonight, with Aline's soft cheek against hers, Aline's 
 ministrations about her, Aline's childish love and confi- 
 dence echoing in her ears, how could she remember what 
 he had made her promise ! 
 
 " You will stay on with us, do stay with us, Joan." 
 Aline pleaded, and all through a sleepless, feverish night, 
 after Louis's wife had left her, two voices pleaded. 
 
 " What harm should we do to Karl ? You will let me 
 come to you. Joan, I am ill, I am quite ill with longing 
 for you, I can't sleep " 
 
 Louis's speeches came back to her disjointed, her ears, 
 her heart were full of them ; her throbbing pulses echoed 
 them ! 
 
 On Saturday the party broke up. 
 
 Joan and Aline watched the departing guests from the 
 window, the brake full of chattering women, the 
 brougham for the Duchess of Templegrove and the Duch- 
 ess of Alncaster, the dogcart with the impatient horse 
 champing at its bit ; all the cheerful confusion and adieus. 
 It had been decided, it seemed to Joan it had been decided 
 for her, that she was to remain behind, that she was not 
 to go with the rest of them. Her maid had not packed ; 
 there was no place reserved for her in the brake. After 
 yesterday's rain the sun shone brightly on the scene, the 
 ground was all cut up by the horses, the metal of their 
 harness shone. Lady Herodsfoot had a blue marabout 
 feather in her hat, the bugles on Violet's stout mother 
 gleamed like the harness of the horses. Joan noted a 
 hundred little things in colour juxtaposition the yellow 
 gravel, the yellow silk frou-frou of some one's petticoat, 
 a clump of yellow sun-flowers, then, some notes of scar- 
 let, poppies and the horses' head-bands, Lord Legoux's 
 button-hole, given him in derision, the same flowers as 
 Lady Violet's waist-belt; small things to notice, but, as 
 she watched at the windows whilst the party drore away, 
 they aroused vague, momentary interest. 
 
 And now they were all gone. 
 
384 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Louis came in from the hall. 
 
 " At last." 
 
 She had heard him say that before, but less lightly; 
 she knew his limited vocabulary. 
 
 " At last we've got rid of them, now we can begin to 
 enjoy ourselves. Aline, did you say good-bye to your 
 aunt, I saw her looking round for you?" 
 
 " I forget yes, I think I did. She kissed me, some of 
 her beads came off on my lace blouse. Look !" 
 
 There was a tear in it, and an entangled bead or two. 
 Louis laughed. 
 
 " Well, I suppose you want to change it. We shan't 
 do anything until after lunch." 
 
 Joan would have left the room with her, but Louis, di- 
 vining her intention, intercepted her. 
 
 " What ! Frightened of me ?" he said, when they were 
 alone. His smile, reminiscent, satirical, challenging, was 
 a smile that hurt her. Nevertheless it was a smile that 
 sat on the lips she loved. " Don't you want to be alone 
 with me? What a strange little woman you are. You 
 don't mean to say you are frightened of me, Joan?" 
 
 She began to answer, with strange stammering words : 
 
 " Yes, of course I am, or of myself." 
 
 " Nonsense !" He put his arms about her. " Whom 
 are we going to hurt? What a fuss you are making. 
 One would think I had never been in your room before. 
 What an extraordinary little woman you are." 
 
 " I wish I was dead," she said, and burst into tears. 
 
 " You don't mean it, don't snuggle your head down 
 there." For, of course, she had not disengaged herself 
 from him. " You are spoiling my coat. And you know 
 we are going to be happy together. There, don't be 
 silly, have you ever cared for anybody else in your life? 
 Of course you haven't. Tell me, has there ever been any- 
 body but me ?" And he drew the oft-told answer through 
 her trembling lips. 
 
 That was how Aline saw them. For, when she got up 
 to her room, Susan was nowhere to be found, and, of 
 
PlliS IN CLOVER 885 
 
 course, she could not change her blouse without assist- 
 ance. She came back, therefore, and saw her husband 
 with his arms round Joan, and his head bent lovingly 
 over her. Joan had been crying. When he hurriedly 
 released her, and paled, and began to make some inco- 
 herent excuses, Joan went on crying. So it was to her 
 Aline went. 
 
 " What is it, Joan? What's the matter, Joan?" And 
 Louis's arms were replaced by Aline's. 
 
 Louis slunk out, leaving the two women together; he 
 thought Joan could compass an explanation good enough 
 for Aline. He damned the interruption, but lighted a 
 cigarette and got his hat and sauntered into the garden, 
 making sure it would be all right. It was wonderful how 
 he understood women. Joan had made a terrible fuss 
 about her loyalty to Karl, but he had soon shown her that 
 it was himself, not Karl, she had to think about. He 
 thought of Karl, as he sauntered in the shade and threw 
 away his cigarette, and let his mouth harden into mean 
 lines, remembering Karl had knocked him down, had sent 
 back his letters, and cut him off from the firm ; only these 
 things he remembered. 
 
 Meanwhile, Aline asked Joan why she cried, and Joan 
 tried to answer her. 
 
 " Because I am wicked, Aline ; because I can't be faith- 
 ful to the man who has been so good to me ; because the 
 very bricks of the house would cry out if they knew, 
 because. Oh ! because I am so wicked." She burst 
 into fresh tears, and flung herself onto the sofa, and 
 sobbed. 
 
 " Lady Violet said you were wicked," Aline answered 
 slowly, in perplexity. " At least that is what I think she 
 meant. I didn't believe her. What have you done? 
 Joan, why don't you pray about it? I pray sometimes, 
 God seems to listen now; he used not to. But now I 
 pray I may be kept from harm, and nothing ever happens 
 to me. Shall I pray for you, Joan?" She knelt down 
 by her side. Joan sobbed on with averted head, and the 
 
 25 
 
386 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 simple one went back to what that frivolous governess 
 had taught her in happy childhood, and repeated the 
 Lord's prayer. 
 
 " ' Lead us not into evil, but deliver us from tempta- 
 tion, for thine is the power ' " 
 
 " Oh ! don't Aline, don't, I can't bear it " 
 
 It was unbearable. She gave the other a little caress, 
 but it was unbearable, unthinkable. 
 
 " What did Lady Violet say ? Tell me, tell me quickly.' 1 
 
 " Are you angry ?" 
 
 "No. What did she say?" 
 
 Aline could not get her thoughts together as quickly 
 as Joan wanted. 
 
 " About you and about Louis ?" 
 
 It was unbearable. And it was a lie, a cruel lie. She 
 had done nothing, nothing yet to justify any woman call- 
 ing her wicked. She said so passionately ; and Aline told 
 her she believed it, she knew it. 
 
 " You won't be wicked, Joan, will you ? You won't 
 ever be wicked? It makes everything slip about, and 
 away from me, and frightens me." Her own words 
 frightened her, and set her trembling, for she was not 
 quite as other people, and she grew white, and some in- 
 ward terror seemed to seize upon her; she was palsied 
 and grey and shaking, and she frightened Joan in her 
 turn, who had to rouse herself and forget her own trou- 
 ble, and chafe her hands, and get her warm, and give 
 her air, and altogether exert herself to check what seemed 
 likely to culminate in some sort of a seizure. Again and 
 again Aline repeated, in frantic excitement : " You won't 
 be wicked, Joan; you won't be wicked?" and clung to 
 her, and begged of her. And Joan promised, promised at 
 first hurriedly, and then seriously, and finally solemnly, 
 and so in the end reassured her. 
 
 Joan and Louis lunched together. Aline was ex- 
 hausted, Joan had given her into Susan's keeping, and 
 explained she had been over-excited, hysterical. Susan 
 had had her like that before, and understood what to do, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 387 
 
 had, in fact, a draught that she gave under the circum- 
 stances. In her own way Susan was devoted to Aline; 
 it was a way that had made the girl Louis Althaus's 
 wife, but, since marriage was decreed for her, was not 
 Louis as fit as John ? So it seemed to Susan, and, never- 
 theless, she cared for Aline. And now the girl was lying 
 down, calmed, and slowly recovering under her care. 
 
 Joan was very quiet during that lunch, her thoughts 
 were abstracted, her words few. Louis watched her and 
 felt satisfied. He could not question her before the men. 
 He read her short answers, her abstracted thoughts, as 
 he wished to read them. He had no misgivings. 
 
 But Joan had seen herself reflected from other eyes; 
 and she had made a solemn promise. Dimly she began 
 to see her way, a dread way, but the only one. Seeing it 
 filmed her eyes, and made them misty, made a loud sound 
 in her ears as of breakers on a gaunt shore, and a throb- 
 bing as of an engine getting up steam for a long journey. 
 She would not look at Louis ; nothing must stay her from 
 her journey. His voice was muffled among the noises 
 that she heard. 
 
 An hour after lunch she spent in her own room, on 
 her knees. But she found no help ; for, between her and 
 help stood Louis, with his Mephistophelean smile, remind- 
 ing her, always reminding her, of what she had been; 
 and his lips were thin, and his smile was cruel, but she 
 loved him. With his wide shoulders, and well-set head, 
 and dark eyes, he stood between her and her prayers. 
 So, at the end of the hour, she rose from her knees ; her 
 legs trembled under her, and she did not see very clearly 
 before her. Everything was darkened, and she saw 
 through a mist; but the path that she must follow was 
 deadly clear. 
 
 They met for tea at four. Aline had rested, had re- 
 covered, had forgotten all that had passed, but her eyes 
 sought Joan's wistfully; and, reassuringly, if wearily, 
 Joan smiled back on her. 
 
 " It's all right, dear," she whispered to her, hurriedly. 
 
388 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 " All right, have no fear." For Louis's step was at the 
 door. 
 
 They went out driving together, all three of them. 
 For so Louis had arranged. 
 
 The day was warm and sunny about them, with blue 
 sky overhead ; little white clouds, big white clouds, moun- 
 tains of white clouds swept the horizon. All the country 
 was richly green, all the trees were thick with leaves, all 
 the fields golden with heavy swaying grain, the full sum- 
 mer of the year was heavy about them. 
 
 They drove. Louis talked of the scenery, of the 
 racing, and of the party. He exalted himself, and sang 
 his own praises; it exhilarates a man to be in the com- 
 pany of women who love him. How well he had ar- 
 ranged everything! He dwelt on the work that the sta- 
 bles had put out, he explained his organising powers, and 
 he did not disdain to tell them what the week had cost 
 him. 
 
 And both women were silent. 
 
 Joan hardly listened to him, but he filled her eyes. 
 How he eclipsed the rough, unwieldily figured Karl ! His 
 face was more than handsome; through the clear pallor 
 of his skin one saw the superb health, saw it too in his 
 easy grace, in the movement of his sleek limbs. His dark 
 eyes were beautiful, and his little well-set ears. He took 
 his hat off more than once that the gentle summer breeze 
 should cool him; how fine the sweep of the dark hair 
 from the white forehead, from the straight pencilled 
 brows. When he saw her looking at him, he smiled ; in 
 that narrowing jaw, beneath those thin lips, she caught a 
 glimpse of his even teeth, his pointed restless tongue; 
 she averted her eyes, felt the sudden rise of a sob in her 
 throat, and knew how he moved her. 
 
 Joan, later on, in her white evening dress, with pearls 
 round her slender throat, diamonds sparkling in her hair, 
 threw off for a short space all that was troubling her. 
 There was a red spot on each of her cheeks, and her eyes 
 shone. Louis looked at her often, and though her eyes 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 889 
 
 fell before his, and there were no answering glances nor 
 smiles, he thought he understood her gay mood, and was 
 triumphant and cynical and impatient. Aline sat at the 
 bottom of the table, her eyes wandered uneasily, her 
 hands and face twitched a little, for, as the dinner pro- 
 gressed, Joan grew more and more unlike the Joan she 
 knew. 
 
 " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," was 
 the toast she pledged Louis across the table. " You re- 
 member, I always quote when I leave off thinking," she 
 said lightly. 
 
 " So you Ve left off thinking ? Well, that's one good 
 thing done. Women ought not to be allowed to think, 
 there ought to be a law against it, they always think the 
 wrong things; it's the way they are made. Here's to 
 Cape Town and the old days. Fill Mrs. Althaus's glass. 
 Do you remember Government Gardens, Joan?" 
 
 Did she remember! She remembered everything of 
 the old days. 
 
 " How mad, and bad, and glad they were, but oh ! 
 how they were sweet," she quoted. 
 
 " Plenty more where they came from." 
 
 At that she laughed hysterically. 
 
 To Louis she seemed the old Joan that evening, gay 
 and young, pelting him with old phrases and the old 
 quotations. The tarnished treasury of her happy days 
 was ransacked to-night, and the baubles flung out, in 
 recklessness, and an anguish of fevered haste. He saw 
 no tarnish on the baubles, he saw only the glitter. 
 
 To Louis, Aline at the bottom of the table added a zest 
 to each allusion, and a savour to what lay before him. 
 Joan's feelings, too, were poignantly affected by Aline's 
 presence. 
 
 Joan, in this mood, so light Louis thought her mood 
 light careless, a trifle hard and shameless seemed more 
 and more desirable to him. The hardness would die out, 
 he knew how to move her, how to work upon her ; al- 
 ready he felt the little flushes of his coming triumph. 
 
390 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 Now he encouraged her to talk, made her fill her glass 
 again and again, urged her with champagne. The dinner 
 was all too short. 
 
 When the women went into the drawing-room, Joan's 
 cheeks were still redder, her eyes were brighter. She 
 rattled on a little to Aline, but Aline was frightened of 
 her, shuddered from her. Yet, when they parted they 
 kissed each other, those two women. Joan's kiss was 
 long. " Good-night, Aline, good-night," she said. And 
 Aline shuddered and ran from her, for Joan's cheeks 
 were so hot, Joan's hands were so hot, Joan's breath came 
 so quickly, and Aline rushed from her as from an impure 
 thing. And Joan laughed when she left her, sat by her- 
 self in the big drawing-room and laughed. 
 
 Inside she was all trembling, frightened, much more 
 frightened than Aline had been. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 
 
 SHE did not stay in the big, empty drawing-room by 
 herself, laughing, for long after Aline had left her. She 
 would not wait until Louis had finished his cigarette, 
 everything had been said between them, everything. She 
 had remonstrated and prayed, and tried all she was able to 
 resist him. But the enemy was within, not without; it 
 was herself she had to fight, not Louis. And her fight- 
 ing days were over, there was no pure-souled little baby 
 coming to her, with starry eyes, no little pure baby to 
 fight for, this time. A sudden rush of tears blinded her 
 as she stumbled upstairs quickly to her room, quickly, 
 as if she heard footsteps in pursuit. With panting breath 
 she rushed to her own room and flung herself into a 
 chair, and waited until the painful heart-beats had stilled 
 their loud uneven pulsing. But the terror that was upon 
 her made the stifling difficult, and presently she found 
 herself listening to it, consciously trying to calm, to quiet, 
 her heart and breath. When she realised what she was 
 doing she laughed again, hysterically; why should she 
 try to be calm? 
 
 She looked round the bedroom, chintz-covered, laven- 
 der-scented, with its four-post bed. The sight of the bed 
 sent a sudden shudder through her; she could not stay 
 the trembling that seized upon her, she put her head 
 down upon her arms, hid her eyes, and had a moment's 
 thrill, a moment's ecstacy and then remembered and 
 arose. The blinds were still undrawn, it was barely nine 
 o'clock, the maids were still at their supper. The wide 
 windows looked on to the broad sweep of upland, it was 
 purple, not green, in the light from the rising moon. 
 
 She had drunk too much champagne, and she was 
 
392 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 trembling, and the loud throbs of her heart were in her 
 ears and in her head, shutting out thought ; yet she must 
 think. She went over presently and stood by the window, 
 and tried to think. 
 
 " The wages of sin is death" 
 
 It was no use to let words rise and bubble on the sur- 
 face of her mind, she must think. 
 
 She was weak, and loved Louis Althaus, and could not 
 resist him. She could run away from him, she had run 
 away from him once ; but the world was not large enough 
 for her to hide herself from Louis, so it was out of the 
 world she must run. Must she? 
 
 " Set His canon 'gainst self-slaughter/' 
 
 That was another bubble, she brushed it aside impa- 
 tiently. She stood between Karl and Louis, and satisfied 
 neither of them. If she went from them, they might come 
 together again, but without those two what had she to 
 live for? 
 
 " Scorn delights and live laborious days" 
 
 She let that stay with her a little. She could write, 
 she knew it as -she gazed at the wealth of the summer 
 night, and felt it exquisitely. She could see the mists 
 rising from the ground, the cowering flowers and droop- 
 ing grass bending before it, to rise to-morrow morning 
 refreshed, dew-laden, to sparkle before the morning sun, 
 every detail she realised and knew she could phrase. She 
 could write a better book now than " The Kaffir and his 
 Keeper/' her eyes were wider open, what she had said 
 vaguely then, she could say vividly now. But to-night 
 to-night Louis! Her cheeks flamed hot. 
 
 Karl had married her. How clearly she saw into the 
 chivalry of what he had done ! What a beautiful nature 
 he had, this uneducated South African millionaire! It 
 was the fashion to jeer at such men as Karl Althaus, but 
 what a man he had been to her! How low and ill and 
 miserable she was when he came to her ; all that she fore- 
 saw then was only hunger or charity, for at the time Karl 
 found her she could not work. She had received charity, 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 393 
 
 charity had buried Louis's baby. Karl had taken every 
 care from her. He loved her, he wanted her as she 
 wanted Louis. Karl had gone away ; he would not plead, 
 he would not ask, he effaced himself. Karl did not talk 
 of sacrifice, did not tell her he was ill, ill with longing. 
 Karl was a man, strong, he put himself on one side; he 
 thought of her, of the woman he loved, he went away so 
 that she should not see he suffered. But she saw, never- 
 theless. 
 
 The panther in Louis, the mere beast, she saw too. And 
 the beast within her leapt to it! 
 
 To-night 
 
 And by to-morrow she would be the word that decent 
 women will not speak. The word would be reflected in 
 Aline's eyes, and in the eyes of all the world about her, 
 and in Karl's when he returned. She shrank and shiv- 
 ered at the thought of Karl's face; it would not be re- 
 proachful, she thought, it would be appalled, horrified, 
 then pitiful. She could not face that pity in Karl's honest 
 eyes, nor the trouble that would be there. 
 
 Could she not subdue the beast in her? 
 
 But to-night now in an hour 
 
 There was only one way out of it only one. Karl had 
 sacrificed himself, effaced himself, gone away. She must 
 follow him, but on a longer journey. 
 
 And no one ever faced grey Death with more horror. 
 
 She had written of that which no woman knew better 
 of the solitude of the soul, of the loneliness of each of 
 us, as we walk side by side, with the men and the women 
 who think they are our friends, and know our thoughts. 
 She had written of the loneliness, and had felt it. Now it 
 froze upon her. A sudden wild longing for Karl came 
 upon her. He would protect her, guard her, forgive her. 
 But no man could protect her ! For she longed for Louis ; 
 she could not lock her door against him hear his foot- 
 steps, and lie still. Her cheeks grew flushed again and 
 hot. Nothing she could deny him nothing. Once be- 
 fore she had fled because she could deny him nothing, but 
 
394 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 this time she must go beyond reach, beyond possible 
 reach. 
 
 Down the avenue, she could see from her bedroom win- 
 dow, the road lay grey. The trees were laden with the 
 summer haze; it lay on their tops, it was cold among 
 their branches. Beneath the grey mist, in the garden 
 under her window, the flower-beds were as graves. And 
 she wanted to live, desperately she wanted to live, her 
 eyes filled and overflowed with pity for herself. She 
 stood, gazing, and the tears streamed from her eyes, 
 because she wanted so to live, and dared not, and the 
 flower-beds were as graves, dark mounds in the moon- 
 light. 
 
 She turned away from the window at length, saying 
 her " good-bye" to the world. Good-bye, to all the world 
 held for her, to fame and love, and all it held in sea and 
 mountain, in sweet spring and splendid storm, and wind- 
 swept skies, good-bye to Nature. With eyes that 
 streamed and trembling hands, she shut the window; 
 she had said good-bye, she shut it all out, and moved 
 away from it, moved stiffly on her frozen feet. She was 
 shivering. 
 
 But she got to the medicine chest, and nothing was 
 steady about her, neither hands nor thought; her teeth 
 chattered. 
 
 The champagne had helped her nevertheless, not 
 enough to disguise the taste of the opium, but enough 
 to nerve her to the gulp; the taste lingered, nauseous 
 and sickening. Quickly, very quickly, her brain grew 
 as unsteady as her hands had been. She got to the bed 
 and lay there, flat on her back, for a little time, and ter- 
 ribly frightened. Then slowly a beautiful phrase shaped 
 itself in the darkness, and helped her into calm: 
 
 " After life's fitful fever she sleeps well." 
 
 Now all she felt was the bitter horrible taste in her 
 mouth. Everything else was calmed and quieted by the 
 
PIGS IN CLOVER 395 
 
 drug, but the taste in her mouth was horrible, nauseating. 
 The horror of what she had done seized her, and convul- 
 sive shuddering and a white sweat of terror broke over 
 her. 
 
 In another drifting hour heart and mind grew torpid, 
 and she ceased to know or suffer. Then came semi- 
 consciousness. She wanted to tear at the thing that held 
 her. She had changed her mind, she must get up, what 
 had she done? The anguish that seized her was un- 
 governable, her half-paralysed hand, so heavy and diffi- 
 cult to move, got at the bell, and pulled, and pulled 
 and pulled. The knob came off in her hand, and the 
 room swam round her, and then grew dark and peaceful. 
 She had no taste, no smell, and she smiled to herself in 
 the dark. 
 
 "After life's fitful fever " 
 
 She had pulled the bell it was an electric bell she 
 should have pushed the knob, she smiled to herself in the 
 dark, growing sleepy now, and calm again. It was stupid 
 of her to have pulled the bell, but her hand and arms were 
 too heavy to move, and all of her was heavy. How in- 
 tensely dark and quiet it was ; she opened her eyes the 
 darkness swam and floated, and made her feel sick, so 
 she closed them again. How peaceful it was, how rest- 
 ful ! " After life's fitful fever " 
 
 But the bed was too high, she could not get low enough 
 in it ; she was sinking, but she wanted to sink lower, she 
 would feel better on the floor. 
 
 And then a long silence, the silence of oblivion, and 
 again a vague consciousness. How high the bed was! 
 She wanted to go lower, get quieter, there was another 
 convulsive shuddering, and Nature's effort to reject the 
 poison. When this was over, in semi-consciousness, she 
 saw a crawling Reptile of Fear, with viscid eyes, and 
 tongue that slobbered red saliva, it sickened her with its 
 odour, it was the odour of dead desire. Overpowering, 
 the Thing crawled about the room with ribbed and 
 
396 PIGS IN CLOVER 
 
 heaving sides, and she lay there shuddering at it, not 
 knowing its direction, as it moved, a hateful yellow light 
 shone through and about it. Then the reptile turned 
 beast, and she recognized it and tried to shriek. It 
 was the beast in Louis! It would spring on her and its 
 mate was dead and stank in the bed. With gasping, 
 painful breath and shudder she lay; and in the room, 
 now visible, now crouching, hiding, more fearful still, 
 was that dank, viscid beast, lurking, feeling for its dead 
 mate. 
 
 Its mate was coming to life! She struggled against 
 the drug, she was bound, and gagged, and choked, and 
 again convulsions seized her. 
 
 Louis's knocking, Louis's soft knocking, penetrated. 
 But it was the knocking on her coffin that she thought 
 she heard. They were the nails in her coffin being driven 
 in. They were fastening her down, suffocating her ; she 
 fought for breath, for strength to shriek, fought in her 
 dying, with gasping breath, to still her lover's gentle 
 tapping drifting through agony into deep unconscious- 
 ness, and thence to cold death, her last pang coming from 
 his hand, as her first had come. 
 
 THE END 
 
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