UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 CATHERINE CARSWELL 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 
 
 IQ20
 
 COPYRIGHT, IQ2O, BY 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. 
 
 THE OUINN BODEN COMPANY 
 RAHWkV. !V. J.
 
 I? 
 
 (COOS' 
 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 '. . . Open the door, and flee." 2 Kings ix. 3. 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FOR Juley Bannerman to leave home was in any case 
 a heavy undertaking. Even without her four children, 
 even with the admonishing help of her husband, the occasion 
 was one for which complicated plans gallant but not availing 
 had to be laid weeks beforehand. And on this morning 
 neither alleviation was hers. 
 
 As always she had done her best, of course. The night 
 before she had not undressed, had not so much as taken the 
 hairpins from her aching head. Then since breakfast her 
 two daughters, aged twelve and fifteen, had rushed about the 
 house, strapping and unstrapping luggage, and exhorting her. 
 Her confused servants had done what they could. Even her 
 little sons had tried to help, and as the four-wheeled cab 
 went lumbering over the granite setts of the city, they strove 
 ^ unskilfully to knot up her bonnet strings between them. 
 
 But it was all no use. The morning express from Glasgow 
 to Edinburgh, said the porter, had been gone these two 
 
 t minutes. Now there was no train until ten minutes past 
 twelve. 
 
 Smarting, not for the first time, under this kind of public 
 
 ignominy, the children precipitated themselves upon the pave- 
 
 Q ment before Queen Street Station, and Georgie, the eldest, 
 
 * a stout and lively girl, addressed herself with violence to 
 
 N the open door of the cab. 
 
 " It's always the same when Father isn't here," she stormed. 
 z " I told you we'd miss it, didn't I? " In her rage she could 
 have struck her mother. 
 
 It exasperated the children that the culprit still stayed 
 
 Ctr 
 
 UJ 
 
 o
 
 4 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 sitting in the cab, untying and retying the black ribbon 
 strings of her bonnet with a little defiance in her face; and 
 they knew she was avoiding their eyes when she leaned for- 
 ward smiling at the porter, seeking his sympathy, speaking 
 in her warm pleasant voice. 
 
 " Oh! But I feel sure there must be a train before then," 
 she urged, as if by sheer hopefulness she could belie the time- 
 tables. " Let me see the board." And she began a cumbered 
 descent from the cab. 
 
 For a woman of but forty-two, even allowing for the fact that 
 at this time she was some months gone with child, Juley 
 moved heavily. Not even the loss of a night's rest could rob 
 her face of its girlish freshness, but this very youthfulness and 
 ardour of exp/ession served to emphasize her physical inepti- 
 tude. It was as if she had never grown used to her body. 
 Often enough had her children heard her sigh impatiently for 
 wings. 
 
 Yet Joanna, her younger daughter, looking on, could not 
 believe that swiftness and grace were not mere matters of 
 goodwill, and that therefore this clumsiness was deliberate. 
 
 " Why will mother move like that? " she questioned in 
 childish vexation. And driven by a strong craving, she 
 stared away from the imperfection facing her, and set her eyes 
 instead on a patch of the blue, perfect sky of May which had 
 shone out suddenly between showers above the house-tops. 
 
 " The man must know about the trains, Mother," Georgie 
 scolded, and turning to the porter she asked him when the 
 twelve o'clock train reached Edinburgh. 
 
 " But Aunt Georgina's lunch is at one! " declared the 
 elder boy, Linnet, when he had heard the reply; and spinning 
 on his heel he seemed to find a zest in adding to the family 
 misfortunes. " Aunt Georgina will be cross ! And what 
 about the carriage? It'll be waiting at the station for us." 
 
 At this a disconsolate exclamation came from Sholto, the 
 youngest. Sholto did so love to sit by Mackintosh, his Aunt's 
 coachman whose fur cape smelt of naptha, as they drove 
 along Princes Street. 
 
 Georgie glared murderously at her mother. 
 
 " It's all because Father isn't here," she repeated. 
 
 But the time-table had showed a train that would leave 
 the Central Station in half-an-hour. So the luggage was put 
 back on the railed top of the cab, and the children crowded
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 5 
 
 into it for the five minutes drive. Their last difficulty lay 
 in getting their mother to break off a conversation with the 
 porter. She had discovered that as a lad he had attended her 
 husband's Bible Class for Foundry Boys: and now she was 
 telling him about the Evangelistic tour Mr. Bannerman was 
 making in the United States of America. She had to be 
 pushed and pulled, protesting into the cab. Then some one 
 remembered that a telegram must be sent to Aunt Georgina. 
 But at last they v/ere set out on their way again, and they 
 were soon arranging themselves in the train. 
 
 ii 
 
 Though the third-class compartment which the Bannerman 
 family had secured to themselves would have seated ten 
 full-grown people with comfort, it now appeared so to over- 
 flow with animated life that other travellers, valise in hand, 
 passed it after one hesitating glance through its windows. 
 Certainly the children from the moment of their entrance 
 did everything they could think of to repel fellow-passengers. 
 Not only was this by tradition essential to the joy of a jour- 
 ney, but if strangers got in, Mrs. Bannerman was sure to 
 talk to them. She loved and idealized strangers, eagerly 
 furnished them with reading matter, and was swift in leading 
 the talk to eternal verities all of which was a severe trial 
 to her daughters in their sensitive teens. In most ways lead- 
 ing quite detached lives, and feeling a good deal of contempt 
 each for the other, Georgie and Joanna were at one in this: 
 they hated any publication of their mother's peculiarities. 
 
 And so young Sholto was posted at one of the platform 
 windows and told to grimace with all his might at anyone 
 who seemed to have designs on the door-handle, while behind 
 him, Linnet, disguised as an invalid, lay at full, length, 
 propped slightly by a hold-all and covered to the chin with 
 his mother's shepherd-plaid shawl. In another window, an 
 umbrella, crowned with Sholto's glengarry and draped with 
 Linnet's reefer coat, served as an additional scarecrow. 
 
 In all this the leader was clearly Georgie. She gave her 
 orders in Double Dutch, a secret family language much used 
 and treasured by the four, and the younger ones did her bid- 
 ding more or less. To the mother's fitful supplication for 
 quiet, no one paid much attention. But really Juley was as 
 youthfully elated as any of her children at the adventure
 
 6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 of travelling, and they knew it. Her satisfaction, together 
 with great pride in her unmanagec ')le flock, beamed from her. 
 She enjoyed, too, arranging the hand-luggage on the racks 
 and beneath the seats, and was joyfully looking forward to 
 opening the letters of that morning, one letter bearing the 
 Philadelphia postmark. She had a day-old newspaper to 
 read as well, and had brought with it several issues of The 
 Believer and of Distant Lands some of these still in their 
 uncut wrappers of weeks ago and showing marks of dust. 
 In the current number of The Believer she knew there was a 
 breezily up-to-date article by her husband, entitled " Are 
 Miracles Essential? " To read with a clear conscience was a 
 luxury Juley never enjoyed at home, where calls on her time 
 and strength were unending, and household duties, in spite 
 of her three servants, ever in arrears. Already on this journey 
 she had expressed some of her pleasant anticipations to the 
 kind guard who sympathized with their loss of the other 
 train. Next, to her daughters' distress she confided in the 
 ticket-collector. " We are going," she told him, " to the 
 Assembly of our dear Free Church." 
 
 " I do wish, Mother, you wouldn't tell every one where we 
 are going," objected Georgie the moment the door was closed 
 again. " People only laugh at us. The man was laughing. 
 I saw him. What's the use of telling him that Grandpapa 
 came out at the Disruption? He's probably a U. p. any- 
 how." 
 
 " Dear, dear, how sensitive you children are," replied Juley 
 undisturbed. She was annoyingly accustomed to such rebukes, 
 and feeling suddenly hungry she opened a small paper bag 
 and began to eat from it with relish. She had thriftily saved 
 half a buttered roll from their hasty breakfast. 
 
 " What if he did smile, Georgie? " she went on between 
 bites. " It will do him good to smile, and us no harm." 
 
 Georgie blew an irritated breath, and settling herself with a 
 wriggle in the corner where the umbrella had been, she 
 resolutely opened the book she had brought with her. It 
 was Sartor Resartus. She did not understand it, but it ex- 
 hilarated her with a sense of superiority to the rest of the 
 family. She glanced scornfully across at her sister who was 
 reading Tit-Bits, indulging an inferior appetite for mere bits 
 of curious information. 
 
 The train had moved out of the station, but just then it
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 7 
 
 slowed down and stopped on the high bridge which there 
 spans the Clyde. Joanna, from learning how many times a 
 sovereign beat finely out would engirdle the earth, looked up 
 and out of the window. Below her, framed in the great 
 transverse shanks of the iron grille, the water looked so beauti- 
 ful that she could have called out. Yet something kept her 
 quite still and mute in her corner. 
 
 It had been raining half an hour before, and now the sun 
 gleamed on the brown surface of the river and on the wet, 
 gray granite balustrades of the Jamaica Bridge. The bright 
 red and yellow horse-cars flashed as they followed each other 
 northwards and southwards along shining rails, and the pass- 
 ing craft on the water moved in a dun-colored glory. By 
 one bank some paddle steamers were being re-painted for 
 the coming season. Joanna with the others had often sailed 
 in them for summer cruises, and she knew by the number of 
 funnels and their colors to which line each boat belonged. 
 She knew the dredgers too, obstinate in mid-stream, with 
 their travelling lines of buckets trawling glittering filth from 
 the river-bed, while passing them, a string of half-submerged 
 barges and rafts hung behind a little panting tug. Less 
 familiar was a giant liner that made her slow way seaward. 
 Her decks were deserted. Only a negro leaned, gazing, upon a 
 rail astern. 
 
 This picture, cut into sections and made brilliant by the 
 interposing trellis of black metal, appealed not so much to 
 the little girl's untrained eye, as symbolically through her 
 eye to her heart which leapt in response. The sunshine on 
 that outgoing vessel and the great, glistening current of brown 
 water filled her with painful yet exquisite longings. She did 
 not know what ailed her, nor what she desired. She got no 
 further than thinking that she would like to be a stewardess 
 when she grew up. 
 
 With a warning cry and a long shudder the train, which had 
 only stopped for a moment, started again. But before it had 
 passed over the bridge, Georgie too, glancing up from her 
 reading at the disturbance, caught sight of the river. 
 
 "Oh, look! Just look! Look at the river, all of you! " 
 she shouted, rushing across the carriage. " Mother! Joanna! 
 Isn't it simply lovely? Isn't it exquisite? " And in her 
 enthusiasm she dragged her mother to the window at which 
 her sister was seated. " Only look there! "
 
 8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Juley leaned to look back at the retreating vision. She 
 had laid her hand on Joanna's shoulder, partly to steady her- 
 self, partly in affection. 
 
 "Yes, dears, beautiful! " she agreed with warmth. "God 
 has put us into a beautiful world. Let us try and make our 
 own lives to match it! " And after a pause she quoted words 
 which had risen in her mind at the sight : " They go down to 
 the sea in ships, and see His wonders in the mighty deep." 
 
 Joanna felt miserably inclined to shake off her mother's 
 touch which had increased to a meaning pressure on her 
 shoulder. It seemed to violate her, and she guessed with 
 hatred at the pleased, ready tears in her mother's eyes. Even 
 while her own tears pricked painfully behind her eye-balls 
 at the beauty of her mother's words, she threw up frantic 
 defences against their bid for her sympathy. Not for the 
 world would she have yielded, not for the world could she have 
 told why. The familiar, absurd thought came to her that 
 she was perhaps a changeling or foster-child in the Bannerman 
 family, no real relation to any of them. How else explain this 
 trouble, this obstinate aloofness that was so common with her? 
 
 As for Juley she sat in her place and reviewed her little 
 family, her " hens of gold " as she loved to call them. God, 
 in His infinite mercy, she mused, had seen fit to give her the 
 charge of these four immortal souls; and she would, with His 
 help, try not to fail in so great a trust. In the scurry that 
 morning she had not found time to kneel as long as usual by 
 her bedside. Without constant and secret prayer she knew 
 herself unable to face the difficulties of daily life. So now she 
 closed her eyes and prayed. She prayed for each of her 
 children, including the one yet unborn: for strength and 
 wisdom to guide their feet in the way of peace: for her husband 
 in Philadelphia, and the work he was doing among souls 
 there between the intervals of his business. Lastly she 
 prayed for the whole family of mankind. But prayers em- 
 bracing the human race are so generous that upon the soul 
 that offers them they have the soothing and releasing effect 
 of a wide landscape or a river which has quietly overflowed 
 its banks. And this is what happened to Juley Bannerman. 
 A sense of extraordinary peace lapped her about. The white 
 Believers and the blue Distant Lands she had thought to 
 enjoy, were destined to travel back to Glasgow a week later 
 in their unviolated wrappers. She slept.
 
 Ill 
 
 The train ran on with a throbbing rhythm that was grate- 
 ful to the sleeping woman. Linnet sat in a lethargy as usual, 
 twitching his pale blue, delicate eyes in a way he had; and 
 Sholto who wanted to fire off a new penny pistol, searched his 
 sporran for pink percussion caps. With his glengarry off 
 the child showed a bullet-like head covered with short, dark 
 fur, a head that looked as if it could ram enemies out of its 
 way. And the strong knees beneath his tweed kilt were 
 always covered with bruises which were his pride when the 
 first pain of them was past. Already he was more than a 
 match for Linnet, and his sisters had been compelled to aban- 
 don physical reliance in their dealings with him. When he 
 was whipped he bellowed, but shed few tears, unlike Linnet, 
 who overflowed at a touch. Indeed it was enough to address 
 Linnet teasingly as " President Lincoln " (his namesake) to see 
 the corners of his mouth go down. Though he was now ten, 
 his mother had not yet had the heart to cut the fair effemi- 
 nate ringlets which reached the collar of his sailor suit. 
 The others, all straight-haired, were proud of Linnet's 
 curls. 
 
 Georgie and Joanna seemed deep in their reading. Joanna, 
 seeing her mother asleep, had kicked off her shoes without 
 untying the laces: her brown beaver hat lay beside her. Both 
 girls were dressed alike in porridge-colored coats trimmed 
 after the fashion of the nineties, with panels of terra-cotta 
 plush. Ugly garments they were, but they had a special 
 quality in their wearer's eyes because Aunt Perdy from Italy 
 had chosen them. About a month before Aunt Perdy, Juley's 
 sister, till then known to the children by name only, 
 as " poor Aunt Perdy," who led a vaguely romantic, vaguely 
 unmentionable existence on an Italian hill-top, had seized 
 the chance of her disapproving brother-in-law's absence to 
 pay them all a visit in Glasgow. During her short stay she 
 had turned the Bannerman household upside-down. It was 
 a household where personal remarks were not made, but Aunt 
 Perdy's talk had consisted chiefly in personalities. She had 
 turned from her soup at dinner to tell the housemaid that her 
 hair was glorious, but her face stupid: had assured Georgie 
 that her neck and hands were her only good points in looks: 
 had drawn up impromptu horoscopes unasked for each
 
 io OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 member of the family from Juley to the cook. It was on the 
 occasion of the choosing of the porridge-colored coats that 
 she had announced with all the gravity and force of prophecy 
 that Joanna promised to be a beauty in the course of time. 
 It was a prophecy rebuked by Juley, but both Joanna and 
 Georgie had heard it; and since that day the relations be- 
 tween the two girls had changed subtly. Till then the elder 
 had been a secret bully. When they were dressing together 
 she would often throw Joanna's clothes on to the dusty 
 top of the wardrobe, and she had enjoyed watching her 
 suffer. But even then she had sometimes felt a curious 
 spasm in herself seeing her youngest sister asleep in the bed 
 they shared. Joanna's skin made her think of wild roses, 
 and there was a suggestion of fragility in these undecided 
 contours that roused something besides her contempt. Not 
 so very long before, at a Christmas party at Aunt Georgina's, 
 when her mother had arrived very late, bringing her whole 
 flock though only two had been expected Cousin Irene, 
 newly returned from " finishing " in France, had swept the 
 apologetic little Glasgow group with her tortoiseshell lorgnette 
 (Irene was terribly fashionable). 
 
 "What stu-u-r-dy children! " she had drawled. 
 
 Juley, proud of the robust bodies she had brought forth 
 and reared, had smiled delighted at the compliment. But 
 Georgie had been lashed by her cousin's patronage. She had 
 stood out crimsoning and looking in that moment sturdier 
 than ever. 
 
 " That shows all you know! " she had exclaimed. " Lin- 
 net's extremely delicate he has to wear a truss. And Joanna 
 is not a bit sturdy. She has to have Malt Extrack with 
 every meal, and it was all mother could do to rear her at 
 all!" 
 
 What Georgie had not realized before her Aunt Perdy's 
 visit was that Joanna's look of fragility held a promise of 
 future beauty. Now without question she knew and accepted 
 it. She felt not a trace of envy. The contempt did not go, 
 but the bullying ceased. 
 
 Juley still slept. She had in full measure the capacity for 
 making up arrears of sleep; and it was well that she had, 
 for failing to get to bed in the ordinary way and at a reason- 
 able hour of the night was one of the sins that did most easily 
 beset her. She acknowledged it, fought and prayed against
 
 OPEN THE DOOR n 
 
 it, but with little avail. And her children were as ashamed 
 of it as if she had been a drunkard. 
 
 To herself Juley's weakness was a baffling mystery. Night 
 after night, soon after ten o'clock had struck, however strong 
 her resolve of the earlier evening had been, she was beset by 
 a vision of duties undone. There were letters that should 
 have been answered weeks ago, the accounts needed making 
 up, cheques ought to be signed. Throughout the day inter- 
 ruptions, to which she was ever a victim, had prevented her 
 from attending to these things; and now, between ten and 
 eleven, they collected to form a dark cloud about her. Scratch, 
 scratch, would go her unready pen; and she took great pains 
 with her erasures, always having a fine pen-knife by her in 
 her japanned pencil case, and finally rubbing the place quite 
 smooth with the back of her finger-nail. When her husband 
 was at home he had the authority to drive her to bed, but 
 now that he was away the girls would wake with an unhappy 
 start hearing the clock strike two, and would steal in to re- 
 monstrate. Never in after life could they hear the sound of 
 a quill pen squeaking along paper without a vision of their 
 mother by candlelight, her face wearing a look of innocent 
 craft, mingled with guilt at being found out. True, even then 
 she usually maintained the defensive. So long as she was at 
 her chaotic desk she was upheld by the sense that she was 
 fulfilling duties, however belatedly. But there were times 
 when in the delicious quiet of midnight she would be ensnared 
 by the unread newspaper of that morning; and this, whether 
 discovered in it or not, she held to be sinful. At other times 
 again, on some slight pretext, such as a fresh box of matches, 
 she would with many precautions creep down the basement 
 stairs and prowl about the kitchen, peeping into jars, sniffling 
 inquisitively at their contents, testing Ellen's saucepans with 
 a forefinger to see if they were thoroughly scoured finding 
 a dozen things amiss. Ultimately, the housewife in her ram- 
 pant, she would spend three-quarters of an hour cutting up 
 bars of soap into even squares for. the economy of drying 
 before use; and when she came to place them neatly in rows 
 on a high shelf, she would find that the shelf wanted dusting. 
 On these occasions she reverted entirely to the careful, secre- 
 tive, peasant stock from which her family had sprung on her 
 father's side a strong stock that had risen and married far 
 above itself. In spite of a pricking conscience, Juley enjoyed
 
 12 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 her stolen visits to the kitchen like a truant schoolgirl, and 
 during such raids her mouth would be set in lines of obstinate 
 naughtiness. 
 
 When her husband was at home, however, there were but 
 few adventures below-stairs for her. Her unpunctuality, her 
 muddle-headedness and her slowness were very trying to a 
 facile and naturally precise man as he was, and she was 
 achingly aware of her own shortcomings. Not that Sholto 
 treated her harshly. He was forbearance itself, and she knew 
 he recognized her constant struggle to please him. Greatly 
 she craved his affection, and he gave it to her. But not like 
 a spendthrift. He doled it out, while she devoured it hungrily. 
 She was conscious without vanity that he had a fixed percep- 
 tion of her goodness, her inherent purity of heart and motive, 
 and that he consciously kept this in mind when she tried his 
 patience. And for this she was humbly grateful, often telling 
 herself how blessed she was in such a husband. But without 
 knowing it she thirsted for something Sholto did not give her, 
 as he had it not, and when this thirst attacked her she suffered 
 a sick loneliness of heart that drove her to her knees. There 
 by her bedside, many a time, with tears she would ask for- 
 giveness of God for having married. 
 
 For when she was twenty-five there had come very defin- 
 itely to Juley Erskine, as she then was, the call to a religious 
 vocation. Had she been a Roman Catholic she would un- 
 doubtedly have entered some working Order such as that 
 church provides, and under its strict rule and constant spiritual 
 exercises might have thriven. But to her the Church of Rome 
 was the Scarlet Woman. So her call demanded simply that 
 special kind of consecration, which, so long as there are Leper 
 Islands abroad and slums at home, will always remain open 
 to ardent souls of any denomination. Juley had taken her 
 decision, but not yet a definite post for service, when she met 
 Sholto Bannerman. And very soon after their meeting he 
 asked her to become his wife. 
 
 Sholto with his immediate charm had become accustomed 
 to women's admiration, and up to a point he was susceptible; 
 but no woman had ever appealed to him so strongly as this 
 one. Miss Erskine was not pretty, but her physical freshness, 
 notable in itself, was made arresting by some spiritual quality 
 in her which Sholto did not attempt to define. And she was 
 just difficult enough to make the winning of her a pleasure.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 13 
 
 She would have refused anyone else ; but Sholto's chance lay in 
 the fact that they had met in mission work, and in a particular 
 Vineyard where he was already an experienced laborer. 
 
 In 1 88 1 there had swept over Scotland a wave of religious 
 revival the second and lesser wave set a-going by Moody 
 and Sankey and in Glasgow alone the registered converts 
 numbered over thirty-two thousand. There were stupendous 
 after-meetings which made the City Hall resemble a vast 
 fishing ground, with the blind, sweet-voiced singer and the 
 nasal, humorous Yankee orator as the skilful casters of nets. 
 Both Sholto and Juley had readily lent themselves as helpers 
 and it was thus that they had met. 
 
 Juley had hesitated long dnd seriously, but in the end she 
 had taken Sholto instead of her dream of holiness. He was 
 so handsome, so masterful, yet so gracious so full of sun- 
 shine, and apparently so warm. He was so sure too that as 
 his wife she would be fulfilling her true destiny. Every 
 argument was on his side. The idea of a home of her own 
 had always worked strongly in Juley. She loved children, 
 and seemed made to care for them. So she recanted. But 
 she never forgot her dream. And when her babes came, she 
 told herself that surely the beings born of such a marriage 
 would give themselves in due time to the Work from which 
 their mother had turned back. Nay, they would do it far 
 better than she, with her many drawbacks of temperament, 
 could ever have done. So one by one she dedicated them, 
 and prayed for them, and was content to be obliterated from 
 the Book of Life itself, if only her prayers might be an- 
 swered. 
 
 With her husband she had a measure of happiness. To 
 the end she idealized him; to the end hid her hunger under 
 self-censure. In the intimate chamber of their married life 
 she was never really awakened. Sholto in the early days used 
 to tell her laughing that she compared favorably with other 
 women in her wifely demands, which he declared were for an 
 almost fraternal affection. She believed this, and was flat- 
 tered by it as he had intended she should be impressed too 
 by his air of worldly knowledge. But it was not the truth. 
 She wanted utter union with him, and as she could unite with 
 no one, she remained wrapt within herself. When she felt 
 the stirrings of passion in herself she was dimly ashamed, and 
 had to reason that after all this world was peopled by God's
 
 i 4 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 own ordinances. Only the yielding up of oneself to mere delight 
 was sinful. 
 
 As for Sholto, he too was faintly ashamed of his sensual 
 self, but it was not so strong that he could not keep it fairly 
 easily in hand. The baffling truth about him known to 
 no one, least of all to himself was that at the very heart of 
 him there was an emptiness. He was a fine, gracious figure 
 of a man. But at the center of his being there was a falling 
 away. This though he gave other reasons, and believed 
 them was why he shunned intimacies. Sometimes when life 
 pressed hard on him, a look of vague fear would cross his face. 
 But it always passed quickly, and the guarded, sunlit empti- 
 ness returned. He subscribed to the Evangelical system, 
 not passionately like his wife, but because it saved him from 
 thought. He had the faith of a little child; he had also the 
 spasmodic terror of a little child that its faith may be mis- 
 placed. Indeed he was in twenty ways a child. He liked all 
 games and played them well without taking special pains 
 he liked laughter too, and could never resist a pun. Being 
 with his children gave him pleasure, and he took them out 
 for long walks on Saturday afternoon, when they had much 
 ado to keep up with his strong, springing steps. To them it 
 seemed that the earth shook a little under his tread, and they 
 looked up to him as to a god. To women it was his habit 
 to speak banteringly; and they liked it, smiling on after he 
 was gone. 
 
 But what Sholto loved best of all was public speaking. 
 Better than games, better than being with his children, better 
 than shooting capercailzie and rabbits at Duntarvie, their 
 house in Perthshire, better than his curbed enjoyment of his 
 wife's virginal freshness, was to him the elevation of a plat- 
 form. This for him was the unique sensation of existence. 
 He had the gift of winning and holding attention, and he was 
 supremely conscious of the upturned faces of his audience 
 drinking in each word as he made point after point with a 
 shallow, limped charm. So long as he was speaking to an 
 assembly that secret emptiness of his did not matter. 
 
 rv 
 
 Juley had wakened, and was rummaging in her stuffed 
 hand-bag for Sholto's letter. To find it, she had to turn 
 everything out upon the seat beside her. There were various
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 15 
 
 purses and pocket-books part of her complicated system of 
 account also several handkerchiefs, a good pair of gloves 
 to put on when she reached Edinburgh, some tracts pink 
 and yellow and the paper bag in which the breakfast roll 
 had been, now folded and neatly encircled by an elastic band. 
 Linnet pounced on a piece of toffee he had given to his mother 
 a week ago. But he and his brother at once stopped fighting 
 for the sweet when at length Juley began to read aloud from 
 the sheets of crackling paper written over in the father's fine 
 flourishing hand-writing. 
 
 " . . The blessed work goes on famously here, thank God," 
 he wrote. And his wife raised eyes shining with solemn 
 hilarity eyes none of the children cared to meet. "... Pray, 
 Juley, that our little ones may all become workers in His 
 vineyard Bannermen and Bannerwomen of that Better 
 Country to the end! I have had a troublesome cold this last 
 week, but hope to shake it off in a day or two, D.V. We are 
 having severe weather; and although in other respects superior 
 to ours in Glasgow, the Y.M.C.A. Hall here has a very draughty 
 platform. Tell Georgy-Porgy that Father wears the wollen 
 comforter she knitted for him, and has found it a comforter 
 indeed. But it would hardly do to appear in it while address- 
 ing a meeting of 2,000 souls, now would it? Kiss her and 
 Joanna and the boys for me, and tell them Father expects 
 them to look after you in his absence, particularly as to getting 
 you to your bed in decent time . . ." 
 
 "A-ha! Do you hear that, Mother? " interrupted Georgia; 
 but her mother lifted a forefinger for silence. 
 
 " Remember," she continued reading, " that the Body, 
 ordained as the earthly temple in which the Soul dwells 
 during our brief sojourn here, needs reasonable rest and care 
 until that joyful Day of our Release. To die in harness has 
 always, been my prayer, but we have been given certain Rules 
 of Health on the most sacred authority, as also the Common 
 Sense enabling us to observe them. May God guide you, 
 my dear wife, in all wisdom, and give you ever more deeply 
 that Peace which passeth all understanding. 
 
 " Your .affectionate husband, 
 " JOHN SHOLTO BANNERMAN. " 
 
 Before she was quite finished, Juley's voice broke, and she 
 wiped her eyes with simple ostentation.
 
 *6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 '' Thank God, children, for such a father as you have' " 
 
 she exclaimed. Then finding that Sholto had added a post- 
 
 script to his letter-" Since writing this," she read out my 
 
 cold has become worse, and seems now to be on my chest 
 
 not chest of drawers, tell Linnet!), but Mrs. Ross here, is a 
 
 koff shortly " E 8reat P Ulticer ' S0 l ex P ect > D ' V -> to throw 
 
 i "A\ Fa * er ^ ied ' would we have a cablegram by the line 
 laid by the Great Eastern? asked Linnet with unusual 
 animation. 
 
 "Linnet! How can you!" cried Georgie. Whereupon 
 Linnet subsided But his imagination had been captured by 
 the idea of the cable, and he had been thinking of it 
 while his mother was reading. Two months ago they had 
 all gone to Liverpool to see their father off, and the children 
 had been taken over the Great Eastern which lay there as a 
 show ship before being broken up. Linnet had been im- 
 pressed by the story of how the cable had been laid under 
 
 2TrtS ; fc J25 J 6 h u! f h ped ^ his father w <>ld die, 
 so that he should be able to see with his own eyes what a 
 cablegram looked like. He wondered if it got much nibbled 
 by fishes on its way. 
 
 ***** 
 It was after all a united little party that was driven an 
 hour later to Aunt Georgia's imposing front door in Moray 
 ce; the more so because certain humiliation awaited 
 hem there. Unpunctuality was a weakness with which Mrs 
 ilmam had no sympathy; and from their cousin Mabel' 
 who alone had met them at the station, they knew that their 
 telegram had not arrived in time to prevent inconvenience. 
 Mabel with Irene, Aunt Georgia's only daughter had already 
 started in the carriage to meet the missed express, whereat 
 Irene had been greatly annoyed. She and the carriage were 
 now paying calls, so that the Bannermans must be content 
 with a common cab. Mabel, who was a Bannerman, not a 
 Balmain, and was not an intimate of the Moray Place house- 
 hold was sympathetic, as always, in a misfortune. But 
 neither Georgie nor Joanna failed to notice the sly grin which 
 their orphaned cousin could never wholly restrain when the 
 family from Glasgow got into trouble with their Edinburgh
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 17 
 
 To the Bannermans from Glasgow the worldly grandeur 
 of their father's eldest sister did not make for comfort. They 
 would far rather have stayed, as Mabel did, with the gentler 
 spinster Aunt Ellen, in her rambling house at Colinton that 
 had been worn shabby by generations of the family. True, 
 even at Aunt Ellen's there was nothing like the freedom of 
 Collessie Street, but at least one did not suffer from con- 
 stant strain and terror. Mabel was double-faced, but she put 
 on no airs like Cousin Irene, whose recent engagement to a 
 rising young member of Parliament had caused a stir in Edin- 
 burgh Society. Mabel was only too glad to be invited to 
 Duntarvie in the holidays and to wear Georgie's outgrown 
 muslins. Though her mother had been a Bannerman, her 
 father had come of less desirable stock. But Aunt Georgina's 
 husband was Lord Westermuir, a judge of the Court of Session ; 
 and her prune-colored silk gown that rustled, her long, gold ear- 
 rings that dangled, and the profusion of old lace which was 
 displayed on her handsome bosom, all proclaimed that in 
 her the high-water mark of the Bannerman house had been 
 reached. 
 
 The same ineffable standard was set by Aunt Georgina's 
 luncheon table, at which on the following day the Glasgow 
 Bannermans took their places. At Morey Place every meal 
 was a ceremony. But luncheon with its decked sideboard, its 
 gloss of perfect damask, its array of polished crystal and 
 crested silver, and its ormolu-handled fruit dishes of apple 
 green and gold, was for the children the supremely dis- 
 concerting event of the day. Joanna had always connected 
 its restrained lavishness with a verse of Scripture often quoted 
 by her mother, bidding us to " seek first the Kingdom of 
 God ..." It was the " all these things " of the latter part 
 of the text, which were to be " added unto " the obedient 
 seeker, that seemed embodied to the carnal eye in Aunt 
 Georgina's table at precisely one o'clock each day. And it 
 was a puzzle to the child, considering her mother's fine en- 
 thusiasm for God's Kingdom, that the Collessie Street appoint- 
 ments should remain so lacking in elegance. 
 
 That morning Juley had taken the four children and Mabel 
 to the opening of the Free Church Assembly. For her it was 
 the treat of the year, and she was so genuinely aglow with it
 
 i8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 that the children had to share in her elation. Besides, the 
 big ministerial gathering on the Mound was an impressive 
 sight, especially to those who had a traditional part in it, 
 and had not both their grandfathers " come out " at the Dis- 
 ruption of 1843? Had not Grandpapa Bannerman been so 
 famous that wherever they visited they saw his engraved 
 portrait hanging in people's entrance halls? 
 
 So the young people had been thrilled as they took their 
 seats in the large, square building, and they had loved stand- 
 ing up when the compact body of black-coated men, ringed 
 about by their womenfolk and children, rose to receive the 
 venerable Moderator. But the climax was reached when the 
 Assembly, without the accompaniment of any, instrument, 
 had lifted up its voice in the Old Hundredth. Then Juley, 
 as she sang loudly, had wept with unconcealed joy; and 
 Georgie and Joanna might also have yielded to the surge of 
 emotion had it not been for the smirking scrutiny of Mabel. 
 
 When Juley shed tears because of God's amazing goodness, 
 her face became enraptured; yet at the same time one knew 
 that she rejoiced in her capacity for rapture. The emotion 
 was valid, but she hoped it would not go unremarked, and in 
 the way she looked about her with wet eyes, there was a hint 
 of reproach for the apathetic world in which her ecstasy found 
 itself singular. 
 
 To her daughters the perception of all this was bad enough 
 in public places; when it was shared by Mabel it was tor- 
 ture. Mabel, so pretty, dark and sidelong, (when she walked, 
 she actually seemed to advance sideways) would look linger- 
 ingly at her Aunt's face. Then dropping her eyelids she would 
 smile to herself. Soon she would send a liquid glance either 
 way to Georgie and Joanna to make sure that they had ob- 
 served her amusement. She would know at once by their 
 stony expressions that the shaft of ridicule had gone home. 
 
 And now Aunt Georgina had helped them all to soup from 
 a silver tureen. Georgie was sipping hers in what she knew 
 to be the correct way, from the side of the spoon instead of 
 from the tip as she did at home; and Joanna had nervously 
 raised a glass of water to her lips, when she caught her Aunt's 
 eye upon her. 
 
 "We don't usually drink water before our soup, Joanna," 
 said Mrs. Balmain quietly. " At least," she added, " I don't 
 know how you do in Glasgow. In Edinburgh it is thought
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 19 
 
 vulgar to drink immediately before food. Besides it is bad 
 for the stomach." 
 
 Joanna crimsoned and put down her glass untouched. 
 Neither her mother's kind, grieved glance nor the message 
 of sympathy sent across the table from Georgie's eyes could 
 salve her wound. Though a murderous hatred of her aunt 
 rose in her, she unhesitatingly condemned herself. She had 
 not known any better than to drink water before food, and 
 now she sat disgraced before them all particularly before 
 Cousin Irene, for whom that very morning at breakfast she 
 had conceived a violent admiration. Oh, why were she and 
 her family not in keeping with the elegance around them? 
 Why were they not cool and at ease at the luncheon table 
 as Cousin Irene was? Joanna and Georgie had long ago 
 agreed that Cousin Irene was a " softie " and a snob. But 
 at this moment Joanna with her craving for exquisiteness 
 was passionately envious of Irene's endowments. She felt 
 ashamed, not only of herself but of the others. She looked 
 across at her mother who was encouraging Sholto to finish his 
 soup by blowing upon each spoonful; at Linnet who lounged 
 back in his chair; at Georgie who was being so careful with 
 her tablespoon. And there was Mabel smiling hatefully, with 
 her eyes on her plate. Joanna reminded herself desperately 
 that the Erskines, on one side at least, were of a far more 
 distinguished history than either the Bannermans or the 
 Balmains. But this consideration only added the sting of 
 unfairness to her present sense of inferiority. And she 
 suffered. 
 
 VI 
 
 Three days later came the news of their father's death from 
 pneumonia. 
 
 They were all five sitting in Aunt Georgina's little morn- 
 ing-room, the only room in the house where the children 
 felt at ease. The boys were on the floor making a paper 
 fire-balloon; and Joanna, with the book of directions open in 
 front of her, was at a table cutting out and glueing together 
 the more delicate parts for her brothers. They were very 
 happy and busy amid a litter of tissue paper. But Georgie, 
 sitting by the window, would insist on discussing the verbal 
 inspiration of the Bible, a subject mentioned that morning
 
 20 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 in the Assembly. And Juley had laid down her Asia's 
 Millions, the better to refute her daughter's argument. 
 
 " It says in Genesis, Mother, that Adam and Eve were 
 the first man and woman; now, doesn't it? " demanded 
 Georgie. 
 
 " Yes, dear, " Juley admitted, but doubtfully, suspecting 
 a trap. 
 
 " Yet," pursued the girl with increasing truculence, " when 
 Cain was sent to wander about after killing Abel, he got 
 married and had children. Now who could marry him, if he 
 only had brothers and sisters? There couldn't even have 
 been cousins! " 
 
 " Besides," put in Joanna as she neatly blew out a section 
 of the balloon on which the glue had dried, " it says that God 
 told people not to kill Cain. What people can these have 
 been? " 
 
 " You must admit it looks a bit fishy, Mother, " wound up 
 Georgie. 
 
 " Georgie! " her mother reprimanded her, here on sure 
 ground, " I cannot have such words used of God's Holy 
 Word! " 
 
 " Oh, well! Anyhow you can't get over the contradiction, 
 can you? And that's only one of heaps. Now, what I say 
 is . . ." 
 
 But no one was ever to hear this important saying of 
 Georgie's for at that moment Aunt Georgina entered the 
 room. Tight in her hand she carried a slip of greenish paper, 
 and though her grip on herself was equally firm, even little 
 Sholto knew instantly that she was the bearer of grave tid- 
 ings. At her low-voiced, startlingly kind bidding, the children 
 trooped out by the door she had left open. But before it 
 had shut behind them they caught the magic word cable, 
 and were terrified by the even more unusual expression on 
 their Aunt's lips My poor sister! " 
 
 Instinctively the four moved to the end of the passage 
 and huddled close together there, like sheep before the storm 
 breaks. Not a sound came from the little morning-room. 
 Linnet durst not ask his sisters the questions about the cable 
 that trembled on his lips. 
 
 It was thus that their Aunt found them when she came 
 out again, softly closing the door after her as if upon a sick- 
 room. On her proud face was a look none of them knew
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 21 
 
 a look of stricken passion that altered her and frightened 
 them. Sholto had been among the few beings his sister had 
 ever loved, and when they were boy and girl together she had 
 been madly proud of him. 
 
 She laid her hand now on her young namesake's shoulder. 
 
 " My poor children," she said. " You will have to be very 
 brave for your mother's sake." 
 
 Georgie was the only one to speak. The others seemed 
 petrified. " It's not anything wrong with Father? " she 
 questioned. And on a rising key at her Aunt's low reply, she 
 cried out 
 
 " No, no! ... I won't have it ... I can't bear it ... 
 I tell you it isn't true! Father, Father! Let me go. Don't 
 touch me! " 
 
 There was horror for Joanna in the noise Georgie was mak- 
 ing. Georgie's voice sounded all over the house, while Aunt 
 Georgina was so quiet. And how quiet it was in there where 
 Mother was! With a quick movement the child broke from 
 the others to run to her mother. But Aunt Georgina caught 
 her by the arm, still gripping Georgie also. 
 
 " Control yourself, Georgie, and think of your mother," 
 she commanded with grievous severity; and her fingers felt 
 like iron on the young flesh. " Remember you are the 
 eldest. Think of how your father would wish you to be- 
 have." 
 
 " I'll try, I'll try! " sobbed Georgie. "Don't speak to me." 
 And presently their Aunt left them, telling them they might go 
 to their mother. 
 
 In the morning-room they found Juley strangely uplifted. 
 And when each had clung to her in turn, she addressed them 
 starry-eyed and lyrical. 
 
 " My beloved children," she said quietly, " it has pleased 
 Our Heavenly Father to lay His hand upon us all, and try 
 our faith, whether it be faith indeed. He has taken your 
 earthly Father to Himself. We can only pray for strength, 
 and look for our refuge in Him. For He is our Refuge and 
 our Strength in time of trouble. Let us pray to Him now, 
 together, that I, my darlings, may be given the strength to 
 be to you father and mother both, until it pleases Him in His 
 great mercy to take me also to Himself. Let us pray to the 
 Father of the fatherless." 
 
 Upon this the tears gushed from her eyes, and she would
 
 22 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 have knelt down with them at the sofa. But Georgie re- 
 fused. 
 
 " I won't pray to your God! " she cried out at the pitch of 
 her voice. " If it pleases Him for Father to die, like this, 
 away from us all, I don't love Him. I hate your God! My 
 God is quite different. I'll go and pray to my God. He'll 
 know that you can't ever make up to me for Father. Oh! 
 I can't bear it! " And she rushed from the room. 
 
 " Poor Georgie! " said Juley. " God the Maker of our 
 hearts speaks to us all in different ways." And with the 
 remaining children she poured herself forth in prayer. 
 
 When at length she had left the boys in Joanna's charge, 
 none of them spoke for a few moments. Then in the gaping 
 chasm of silence Linnet moved diffidently to where his inter- 
 rupted work still lay on the carpet, and he picked up a streamer 
 of blue paper. 
 
 " I suppose we may as well finish making our fire-balloon, 
 Sholto, " he remarked. 
 
 Now 'the tears sprung to Joanna's eyes and rolled down her 
 cheeks. It was 'not that she felt any real, personal loss. 
 But something in her little brother's aspect made her see them 
 suddenly as fatherless. 
 
 "Oh, Linnet!" she exclaimed, striving for a degree of 
 realization. " Think! We'll never hear Father blow his nose 
 again like a trumpet in the lobby when he comes home at 
 night." 
 
 " And he'll never be Lord Provost now, either," appended 
 Sholto morosely, " with the two lamp-posts in front of our 
 door." 
 
 Linnet nodded, seeing the tragedy in this. And in defer- 
 ence to it, he kept to himself his bitter disappointment about 
 the look of the cable. 
 
 VII 
 
 But is was Georgie who was wakened in the small hours 
 of the morning, and taken to her mother's bedside to play the 
 daughter's part there. They had had to send for the doctor 
 at midnight; and Aunt Georgina had not been able to lie 
 down, nor even to take off her dress. She was grim with 
 weariness and sorrow. 
 
 Henceforward Georgie wore a look of satisfied importance, 
 as of one who has been momentously confided in. But it was
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 23 
 
 some days before Joanna could get her to share the secret. 
 
 " You must promise faithfully not to tell Mabel," Georgie 
 stipulated, giving way at last. 
 
 Joanna promised faithfully. 
 
 " Well then, " said Georgie, lowering her voice to a searching 
 whisper, " we were going to have had a baby; but now it's not 
 coming, because of Father. And that's why Mother is ill 
 in bed and seeing the doctor. She only said it was a Dis- 
 appointment. It was Aunt Georgina told me the rest. She 
 said at fifteen I was old enough to know. All the same, re- 
 member you have promised not to tell Mabel." 
 
 Joanna, gratifyingly awestruck, gazed at her sister. The 
 collective " we " in Georgie's mouth impressed her strongly. 
 Had she sought in her mind there were a thousand questions 
 to be asked. But at twelve one is still used to accepting mys- 
 teries without challenge. 
 
 And so this strange new loss which was in some indiscover- 
 able way connected with her father's death in America, was 
 stored in the dark lumber-room of the child's mind.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AS soon as Juley was well enough she returned home with 
 the children to Glasgow. And there, when they were 
 got past the first excitement of condolences, it looked as if 
 things would continue much as they had been in Sholto's 
 life-time. Every one said that the widow bore up wonder- 
 fully, that she was an example of Christian fortitude. 
 
 Sholto's affairs were in good order though people were 
 surprised at the smallness of his estate, and business acquaint- 
 ances shook their heads a little, murmuring the word " specula- 
 tions." But Juley herself made no complaint. She was in- 
 deed relieved at having to give up her husband's cherished 
 project of moving to a grander house in a more fashionable 
 neighborhood. 
 
 Collessie Street, at the top of its precipitous, roughly 
 cobbled hill, had at one time been a residential quarter of 
 distinction. But in 1896, the roomy, solid, black houses 
 deep-bitten by the carbonic deposits of half a century 
 with their square-pillared porticoes, and their stone areas 
 guarded by rusty spear-head railings, had a forsaken look. 
 Their domestic curtains were more and more giving place to 
 the ground-glass and perforated metal screens of institutions; 
 and where once a famous surgeon had brought up his family, 
 there was now a dingy training-home for fallen girls. The 
 place, however, was not without dignity. And to Juley and 
 her children, the ugly, well-built house at the corner felt like 
 a part of themselves. They all hated the idea of leaving it, 
 even for the excitement of a West-End mansion. 
 
 From the big day-nursery windows on the top story which 
 commanded wide, gray views to the south and west, the girls 
 could remember watching the distant ascent of their first 
 fireworks rockets soaring in honor of Glasgow's earliest Ex- 
 hibition. From the same windows they had seen with rapture 
 the first lighting of the city by electricity. And three times 
 they had hung out great flags over the sills for Royal Pro- 
 
 24
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 25 
 
 cessions. Once Georgie was quite certain that Queen Victoria 
 driving up Sauchiehall Street, had waved her hand in special 
 acknowledgment to their high window. 
 
 Within the house, as one entered, the first thing to meet 
 the eye was a richly illuminated scroll bearing the words 
 
 AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE, WE SHALL SERVE 
 THE LORD. 
 
 It had been Sholto's first act on returning from his wedding- 
 trip, to hang this text. And Juley often looked at it now, 
 remembering vividly how her bridegroom had stood on a 
 chair to nail it in its trumpery frame full between the marbled 
 pillars of the lobby so that nobody could miss it. He had 
 laughed and had kissed her afterwards. And the sight of 
 it in these, the early days of her widowhood, always filled her 
 with resolution. 
 
 But as time went on it began to be evident that Sholto's 
 widow and his children were variously disposing themselves 
 to serve the Lord in ways which Sholto himself would have 
 dealt with summarily had he been alive. More and more 
 Juley's resolution when she looked at the house-text became 
 linked with a stricken conscience: more and more she saw 
 that to play the double part of father and mother was not 
 going to be so easy as at first she had imagined. 
 
 " I wonder," said Joanna tentatively one night as she and 
 Georgie were getting into bed " I wonder what Father 
 would say if he knew you missed out ' for Jesus' sake ' in 
 your prayers now? " 
 
 But Georgie was ready for such questions. 
 
 " Father isn't the same now as he was," she told her sister. 
 " He understands everything now, and knows just what I 
 feel about God and all that." 
 
 n 
 
 It was at this time, within a year of her father's death 
 that Joanna had a dream about him. 
 
 She was sleeping that night with her mother (in spite of 
 many disadvantages it was still regarded as a treat among 
 them to sleep with Mother) and had wakened suddenly at 
 three in the morning with a familiar pang of misery at finding
 
 26 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 no bedfellow. Juley had not even got so far as to fall asleep 
 at her prayers by the bedside. So Joanna arose, and shiver- 
 ing with fury and cold went barefoot down to the parlor. 
 There, as she expected, she found her mother seated before 
 her untidy roll-top desk with her head fallen on her papers. 
 She had dropped asleep over a letter in the middle of an 
 erasure, and she wore the old squirrel-lined cape in which she 
 always ran out to catch the midnight " lifting " at the corner 
 pillar. 
 
 When at last they were both upstairs, Joanna climbed 
 back into bed, and, having exhausted herself in bitter reproach, 
 lay wide awake and silent while her mother undressed. No 
 matter how tired she felt, Juley was meticulous over her 
 toilet. Always she had to dip her brush in the ewer so as 
 to dampen the front part of her hair before plaiting it separ- 
 ately from the rest. Her creamy neck, covered at other 
 times, and her raised, unconscious arms, so astonishingly soft 
 and youthful, gave the watching child a deep thrill of pleasure. 
 Soon the thin, sleek plait was ready to be tossed back, and 
 Juley turned out the gas. Then did Joanna creep immedi- 
 ately into her mother's arms, and in that warm, lovely encirc- 
 ling, her thin little body was flooded with well-being. 
 
 When they were both asleep, Joanna dreamed that a 
 visitor was standing on the outside doorstep, ringing and 
 ringing at the bell for admittance; but that she alone of all 
 the house heard the summons. Going downstairs in her dream 
 to open the door, she peeped first through the ground glass 
 which formed its upper panel. Engraved on the glass was 
 the head of a man with a curly beard, long believed by the 
 children, for some inexplicable reason, to be a portrait of Satan ; 
 and by putting an eye level with Satan's eye they were ac- 
 customed to spy through upon visitors. Joanna did this in 
 her dream, and saw what froze her with horror. It was her 
 father that stood without. He was unmistakable, though in 
 some indefinable way horribly altered, and his presence filled 
 her with repulsion. Father was dead. They had had a cable 
 to say so, had mourned him, and he had no right to come 
 back in this way. In terror, but under a kind of constraint, 
 she opened the door one small inch. And that dreadful 
 stranger who was yet her father tried to push his way into 
 the house. But now hatred overcame every other feeling, and, 
 shutting the door with all her might, Joanna fled upstairs.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 27 
 
 As she went, all her determination was never to let the others 
 know who had called. 
 
 On waking, which she did immediately afterwards, the 
 child was first conscious of immense relief that no such return 
 need in reality be feared. " For, " said she to herself in that 
 conscienceless moment, " we can do as we please now he is 
 gone." But with complete awakening, all and more than all 
 the repulsion of her dream turned upon herself. How could 
 she have acted so wickedly in sleep, thought so unkindly on 
 waking? She lay listening to her mother's quiet breathing, 
 picturing her mother's eyes and Georgie's, could they have 
 seen into her unloving mind. And for days afterwards, until 
 she had done penance, her heart was heavy. 
 
 m 
 
 The opportunity for penance came in this way. 
 
 On the road to school, Georgie and Joanna had to pass a 
 wind-swept corner where a disfigured woman sat all day on a 
 camp stool. Slung from her neck was a stout piece of card- 
 board on which the words KIND FRIENDS I AM BLIND 
 had been scrawled. And sometimes though their father had 
 always condemned what he called " unorganized," " indis- 
 criminate," or " spurious " charity, particularly in any case 
 so clearly marked as this one was for the Blind Asylum of 
 which he was a director one of the girls would slip a penny 
 into the beggar's hand. Once Georgie had spoken to her, ask- 
 ing if she had any children at home, and Joanna had been 
 smitten by the toneless negative of the reply. " Do you think 
 anybody ever kisses her? " she asked her sister after they had 
 walked on some way in silence. 
 
 " I don't expect so," had been Georgie's answer. And as 
 an afterthought " She wouldn't be very nice to kiss, would 
 she? " 
 
 It could not be denied. Even while Joanna was feeling 
 obscurely something of that strangest envy of the human 
 soul the envy of utter misfortune she shuddered at the 
 thought of touching the afflicted face with her lips. Yet she 
 was sure she ought to. The unkissed woman with the terribly 
 prominent, closed eyelids persisted in her imagination. Night 
 after night, when the figure of sorrowful censure visited her 
 bedside, she said to herself" To-morrow I will do it. To- 
 morrow I will make myself kiss her! " But day after day,
 
 28 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 passing to and from school, she had shrunk from the deed 
 which the night before had seemed so possible and right. 
 And gradually she was becoming used to the denial. 
 
 Under the fresh reproach of her dream, however, Joanna 
 conceived of this kiss, so long withheld, as the appointed 
 expiation. At night she had anguished moments in which 
 her father on one hand and the blind woman on the other 
 leveled at her an accusation the less tolerable for being un- 
 spoken. 
 
 And on the following Sunday she was finally urged to the 
 act. A strange minister was preaching in their church. He 
 spoke with kindling eloquence about the woman who was 
 healed by touching Jesus in the crowd; so that suddenly 
 Joanna, strung to an ecstasy, took her resolve. It would be 
 more correct to say that there flashed in her in that moment 
 the absolute knowledge that she would accomplish the deed 
 next day. 
 
 On Monday she and Georgie passed the woman as usual. 
 Georgie, who was holding forth on the iniquities of her former 
 mistress, did not even glance towards the camp stool. Nor 
 did she look round, when a few yards further on, Joanna mur- 
 mured something unintelligible and ran back. 
 
 Now that the first step was taken, only desperation held 
 her to her task. Her breath went from her, her lips felt 
 parched, and as she stooped to the sightless head a clang of 
 bells sounded in her ears. For a moment she lost all con- 
 sciousness of her surroundings. 
 
 On feeling the nearness of another human being, the poor 
 creature on the stool instinctively held up her little tin mug; 
 and as Joanna drew back after giving the kiss, she saw this 
 gesture. There had been no other response. The face was 
 vacant and unlovely as ever. 
 
 Joanna felt deeply ashamed. In her self-centered anxiety 
 about the kiss she had forgotten to bring a penny. 
 
 " I'll bring you one to-morrow," she assured the beggar 
 hastily. Then turning away she sped after Georgie. 
 
 " Were you giving her a penny? " Georgie asked but with- 
 out interest. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " What were you doing then? " 
 
 " Nothing, fastening my shoe-lace. Go on with what you 
 were saying about Miss Dunbar."
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 29 
 
 rv 
 
 All her childhood Joanna had been a fugitive from the 
 realities immediately surrounding her town existence, and her 
 intenser life was lived in her flights. She had many avenues 
 of escape; but of these the best was provided by her passion 
 for the country. 
 
 And for her " The Country " and every one of its joys was 
 summed up in the single word Duntarvie. 
 
 The children owed Duntarvie which was a real place as 
 well as Joanna's home of dreams to their mother. For 
 Juley, if she yearned principally after her children's souls, 
 cared shrewdly too for their bodies. She would not allow 
 them to have dancing lessons, but she believed in young legs 
 running wild. Above all she insisted that a free country life 
 for at least four months out of the twelve, was necessary to 
 counteract the early delicacy of Linnet and Joanna. The old 
 farm-house in East Perthshire had once belonged to the 
 Erskines, though it had passed half-a-cent,ury ago into the 
 hands of strangers. But when Joanna was five Juley learned 
 that it was to be let, and she gave Sholto no peace till he had 
 taken a lease of the place. 
 
 To the children there was music in the very name of the 
 village from which Duntarvie was three miles distant uphill. 
 And the square white-washed house with its red-tiling 
 (a paradise for climbers), its ponds, its ruined saw-mill, 
 its haphazard garden full of gooseberries, currants and 
 wizened tea-roses, became a far dearer home than the one 
 in town. 
 
 Their last summer at Duntarvie was that before Sholto's 
 death. For some reason there could be no renewal of the 
 lease. Loud were the expressions of sorrow in the household, 
 and Juley, in spite of the enormous addition the place made 
 to her domestic cares, was as sad as the children. 
 
 As for Joanna, her love for the place as the end of the 
 time drew near increased to an agony, and more and more 
 she withdrew her voice from the chorus of regret. Instead, 
 when she could, she would leave the others, and run up and 
 up the moor in front of the house, not once pausing till she 
 reached a secret lair of her own finding a dry, pale, golden 
 bed among the high heather, close by the little firwood boun- 
 dary with its rotting silvery fence, and there flinging herself
 
 30 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 on the ground she would bury her face in the sunwarmed 
 moss and draw deep breaths of the earth. 
 
 Among these embraces lavished by the child on the earth, 
 embraces more fervent than any she had given as yet to a 
 human being, there was one that stood out for ever from the 
 others. 
 
 One September morning during the last week of their stay 
 she had slipped out a while before breakfast, taking her way 
 through the fringe of beeches which ran up behind the house 
 between steeply sloping fields till it enringed the upper pond. 
 The lower pond, near the outhouses and the swing, was a 
 homely puddle nozzled in by ducks and navigated by a raft 
 made from the doors of an old shed with Joanna's stilts as 
 oars. But the upper pond, besides being twice the size of 
 its neighbor, was a mysterious water. It was fed by a natural 
 spring; and a legend of the neighborhood told of a golden 
 cradle in its depths containing the body of a King's babe im- 
 mune from mortal decay. It was rush-bound, betraying its 
 treacherous surface in glints only, and wild fowl of many 
 kinds made it their habitation. Foxes in the moonlight slunk 
 to its edge to drink; and on an islet in the middle season after 
 season a pair of herons reared their young. 
 
 To this haunted pool, with its girdle of beech trees, on 
 which Joanna knew every foothold and every untrustworthy 
 branch, she stole that morning. Lying concealed among the 
 drenched reeds of the margin, she waited until the disturbed 
 coots and waterhens went reassured about their interminable* 
 business. For what seemed an age she stayed motionless, 
 listening intently to each tiny splashing and diving, to the 
 whisperings among the bearded rushes, to the sudden plump of 
 the frogs, to the chuckling of the water-fowl under the banks. 
 
 At that moment the twelve-year-old child entered deeply 
 into Nature's heart, and for the first time it came to her that 
 she might make of her rapture a place of retreat for future 
 days. It was a discovery. Henceforth she felt that nothing, 
 no one, would have power to harm her. For all her life now 
 she would have within herself this hidden refuge. Even if 
 she were to be burned at the stake, or flayed alive like the 
 people in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, she would be able to fly in 
 spirit from her torturers to this reedy water; and they would 
 wonder why she smiled amid the flames. 
 
 So she lay on till she was bodiless; and only the cold, pene-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR . 31 
 
 trating through her clothes to her skin, reminded her. She 
 moved, and only in moving realized that she was wet through, 
 and cramped. Her stirring startled the old heron. He rose 
 noisily, first trailing his feet a little way along the surface of 
 the tarn, then made away westwards till he became a far 
 speck over the hollow where the nearest farm lay. 
 
 Stretching herself and shaking the water from her hair, 
 Joanna felt glad at the thought of breakfast. It was good 
 that the others were waiting at home, sitting at a table spread 
 with the floury baps that came each morning fresh-baked from 
 the village; and coffee, and bramble jam, and fresh butter, 
 which she loved to greediness, from their own cow's cream. 
 But before turning homeward between the beech trunks, she 
 stooped once more to the ground, and leaning on her two palms 
 kissed the moist grass till the taste of the earth was on her 
 lips. " If I forget thee O Duntarvie! " she whispered, " let 
 my right hand forget its cunning." (She was not clear about 
 the meaning of this phrase; but she loved working with her 
 hands, and the words expressed her emotion better than any 
 other words she knew.) Then she picked up some odds and 
 ends a small lichen-covered twig, a skeleton leaf, and the 
 untimely fallen samara of a sycamore to keep as remem- 
 brances of her vow, and racing back to the house she arrived 
 in a glow, bright-cheeked, her short skirts dripping from the 
 brackens. 
 
 Mingled with these raptures were the early stirrings of 
 Joanna's womanhood, and at seven she had fallen deeply in 
 love with her cousin Gerald Bird, who was then twenty-five. 
 
 Gerald, only son of Aunt Perdy, was a soldier, and he was 
 recovering from fever caught in India when Juley invited him 
 to Duntarvie. She was sure that he would quickly get strong 
 in that wonderful air. And strong he did get in spite of his 
 Aunt's perseverance in probing him for what she called " the 
 root of the matter; " in spite also of his having left his sus- 
 ceptible heart in the keeping of a blue-eyed jilt in Calcutta. 
 
 He traveled with the Bannermans from Glasgow, and on 
 the little local line which ran from Perth to their village, the 
 compartment was so crowded with people returning from a 
 cattle-show, that he took Joanna on his knee. Gerald was 
 far from being aware of the bliss his careless contact gave to
 
 32. OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 the small girl. But so it was. For the last forty-eight hours 
 Joanna had been his passionate slave. Now the loved one held 
 her in his arms, and that she might stay there as long as pos- 
 sible she pretended to fall asleep, leaning her cheek against 
 the rough coat he wore. Ever afterwards the smell and 
 texture of Harris tweed recalled the delirium of that journey 
 in the embrace of a god. 
 
 To Joanna Cousin Gerald was indeed a god. He trans- 
 gressed against all her standards. He even shot chaffinches 
 and robins with his revolver and afterwards skinned them. 
 Yet she asked for nothing better than to stand watching 
 while the plumage was slit down the breasts and slipped deftly 
 from the piteous little bodies of Gerald's victims. The young 
 man's lean wrists and his long fingers, so dark and merciless, 
 thrilled the child to the soul. Secretly she imagined herself 
 a little fluttering bird in their cruel yet skilful grasp: and she 
 felt she would gladly have let them crush the life out of her 
 for their own inscrutable ends. 
 
 Actually one wet afternoon it had looked to her as if her 
 fantastic wish might come true. She and Gerald were in 
 the coach-house, where the stanhope and dog-cart were kept 
 among a litter of odds and ends, gardening tools, empty 
 flower-pots, wheel-barrows, and rolls of wire netting for the 
 chicken runs which Sholto was always making and for 
 perhaps half-an-hour she had been watching in rapt silence 
 while a pearly-breasted chaffinch was stuffed and sewed up. 
 But, suddenly tired of his finicking task, Gerald threw down 
 his work and stretched his arms above his head with a groan. 
 He was sitting on the worn bench by the door, with his back 
 to the dripping eaves, and presently to amuse himself he drew 
 Joanna between his knees. Smiling, he pointed his penknife 
 that was still blood-stained against the child's breast, almost 
 cutting through the wool of her faded, tightly stretched jersey, 
 and he threatened to skin her like a little wild bird. To his 
 surprise for he expected her to wriggle or protest Joanna 
 stood dumb and quite still and strange in his grip. So he 
 soon stopped teasing her. But he had provided her with a 
 theme which she afterwards embroidered out of all recognition 
 in many an erotic rhapsody. 
 
 Joanna admired everything about her cousin. She idolized 
 his brown face and bright gray piercing gaze, vibrated at the 
 sight of his hands, and at any time, night or day, could see
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 33 
 
 with her minds' eye the wave with which his hair crossed his 
 brow. She had tried hard to make her own hair lie like his; 
 but where the line of growth began round her forehead there 
 was what Georgie called her " baby fringe," and this crop of 
 short new hairs, fairer than the rest, would do nothing but 
 curve downwards in obstinate, fine half-hoops of gold. 
 
 There was, however, one secret about Gerald which terrified 
 while it fascinated her. 
 
 It happened one afternoon that, climbing about the old 
 sawmill, he slipped and hurt his foot. Some stones in the 
 crumbling walls had given way, and when he picked himself 
 up he limped with a screwed-up face to the burn that flowed 
 from under the ruin. Joanna was there in the boggy field 
 picking marsh-mallows and some reeds to make a rattle, and 
 Gerald sat down on the bank near her. Already his foot was 
 beginning to swell, and he wanted to dip it in the water. 
 Joanna stood beside him clutching her heavy-headed yellow 
 flowers, and the beards and sharp pofnts of the reeds tickled 
 her chin. She watched the young man take off his shoe with 
 a grimace, and peel the sock from the bruised ankle. And as 
 he rolled back the gray flannel of his trousers half way to the 
 knee she saw with a pang of delicious horror that his leg was 
 hairy. From the ankle upwards it was covered with black 
 silky hairs that clung to the gleaming skin. 
 
 The child's first thought, that her cousin was the victim 
 of some terrible blemish, passed almost at once. There could 
 be no mistaking his unassumed indifference. So in a moment 
 she knew she must accept this strange thing as normal. Men 
 grown-up young men were like this. Later on she often 
 visualized their amazing ankles guiltily, But she would not for 
 the world have spoken of her discovery, not even to Georgie. 
 
 VI 
 
 Yet another incident which made its mark on the still 
 folded woman in Joanna, belonged to this time at Duntarvie. 
 And like the ecstasy by the upper pond it happened during 
 the Bannermans' last summer there when the girl was enter- 
 ing her teens. 
 
 She and the others with Mabel, who always spent July 
 with them had been making blaeberry wine down in front 
 of the house by that same burn which further on flowed 
 beneath the sawmHl. It was late afternoon on one of these
 
 34 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 endless midsummer days of childhood in the North when the 
 sun puts off its setting till long, long after bed-time. The 
 children had been up on the moor for hours past with mugs and 
 baskets, picking the new-ripened fruit which grows so fragrant 
 and near the ground, its leaves showing dapper among the 
 heather. Their faces and hands, their bare legs and under- 
 clothes, were stained with purple. They had eaten their 
 fill, and had rolled afterwards on the green, richly decked 
 table of the moor. And now using their handkerchiefs as 
 strainers, they were crushing the gathered berries till the dark 
 juice ran through into jars beneath. Three times a sounding 
 call had come from the house, and at last Georgie and Mabel 
 lingeringly climbed the bank towards the road, dragging the 
 small boys with them. 
 
 " Come on to supper, Joanna," they cried over their shoul- 
 ders in their young high voices, as they came to the rickety 
 one-legged gate of the garden. But Joanna, though she cried 
 in return that she was " just coming," made no movement to 
 follow them. 
 
 Instead she began to trail her dyed handkerchief in the 
 water, startling the little shadowy trout that were so hard 
 to catch; and every now and then she tossed back the long 
 loosened strands of h.er hair, the better to see her own reflec- 
 tion in the brown mirror of the stream. Dreamily, she wished 
 she were as pretty as the little girl in the water. 
 
 But a shadow passed, blurring the magic, and Joanna 
 looked up quickly to see Alec Peddie standing on the opposite 
 bank. Alec, the lad from the nearest farm, was a handsome 
 rascal of fifteen, supple as an Indian and almost as brown, 
 with a skin as soft as the corduroy of his breeches. He often 
 came across the hill to help with odd jobs at Duntarvie, and 
 in a sense was the children's playmate. He was great at 
 birdnesting, at draining ponds and damming streams. And 
 in the Easter orgies of whin-burning he was the acknowl- 
 edged leader. Himself in the grip of a curious still excite- 
 ment, he would dare the others to jump after him over bigger 
 and bigger bonfires; and Joanna especially would fly in a 
 frenzy at his bidding over the great crackling bushes, her eyes 
 tight shut, her hair full of sparks and her clothes singeing 
 amid the smoke. Afterwards, when the flames had died down, 
 they would all rush about stamping on the embers, kicking up 
 fiery spouts with their scorched shoes, and screaming like cur-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 35 
 
 lews in a gale. Only when the fires were quite out and black, 
 would a certain estrangement in their relations with Alec re- 
 assert itself, and this would remain more or less until Easter 
 came round again. He was useful to them, and in a way they 
 loved him, but they did not trust him. 
 
 As he stood now looking across at Joanna with careless, 
 glinting eyes that were the color of the water below, Alec 
 showed his white teeth in an impudent grin. 
 
 " Hullo, Alec," said the girl, shyly. 
 
 In reply the boy jumped over to her side, and immediately 
 helped himself royally to her blaeberry wine. Then unasked 
 he plunged his fingers into one of the baskets and empurpled 
 his mouth widely with a great handful of fruit. " You look 
 awful bonny, Jo! " he said thoughtfully with steady eyes on 
 her, and again he crushed a mouthful of berries against his 
 palate. 
 
 It was the first time Joanna had ever been called pretty to 
 her face. She was moved, and did not know what to say. 
 
 "So do you! " she countered, bashfully; and at this Alec 
 burst into a ringing appreciative laugh. 
 
 After that there was a silence between them, and Joanna 
 gathered her things together and stood up. But the boy put 
 out his hand hastily and touched her wet arm. He was look- 
 ing at her oddly when she glanced into his eyes. 
 
 " If ye'll come up yonder on the moor wi' me, Joanna," 
 he said rather fearful but with a word of cajolery in his rich 
 voice " I'll show ye what lads is for." 
 
 A minute later she entered the house while Alec unabashed 
 by her shy denial went whistling and cutting solitary capers 
 across the darkening moor. But the thrill of the boy's touch 
 remained with the girl, and the shameless young pagan look 
 he had given her took its place also in her dreams.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 T7OR in town Joanna led almost wholly a dream life. The 
 jT indoor existence, the hard streets which she hated though 
 they made a good playground, the petty boredom of school, 
 and the growing disharmony at home, all drove her in upon 
 herself. In two respects only was the child's being vivid in 
 the activity of her body, and in her dreams. 
 
 At twelve she was a reckless rider a menace to foot- 
 passengers of a maimed tricycle horse which had once been 
 dappled, and fiery of nostril. And when nursery shows were 
 got up, with Sholto as " Handy-Andy," and Linnet as the 
 performer of transparent conjuring tricks, Joanna, dressed in 
 tights suspiciously recalling woven underwear, always per- 
 formed upon the trapeze. 
 
 But what satitsfied her most deeply was climbing. Climb- 
 ing involved a mental and physical equilibrium which was 
 a delight. She welcomed the cool excitement that possessed 
 her in dangerous places, up high trees and on the windy 
 edges of roofs. She learned to walk steadily, balancing with 
 her arms along the top of a narrow paling, and knew how to 
 trust only half her weight to a weak foothold, passing in a 
 swift, predetermined rhythm to one more secure. At such 
 moments she was the queen of her own body, and not of 
 her body alone, but of a whole system of laws she could not 
 begin to formulate. 
 
 Joanna, however, was afraid of jumping. She always felt 
 terrified of a jump beforehand; and afterwards, practice as 
 she might, it jarred her painfully. Often when her com- 
 panions had leapt unhesitatingly one after another from the 
 rather high back garden wall at Collessie Street into the stony 
 lane beyond, she had to stay behind for long minutes. To 
 have sat on the wall and scrambled down with a twist would 
 have been easy enough. But this the child would not do. 
 And she always jumped in the end, though no one looked on 
 and she was sick with fear. Once indeed of her own accord 
 
 36
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 37 
 
 she set herself a jump that was mere foolhardiness. There 
 was a legend in the nursery that cousin Gerald had jumped 
 from -the parlor window across the area at the back of the 
 house a considerable feat even for a young man and the 
 time came when Joanna got it into her head that she must 
 do it too. It was weeks before she could bring herself to the 
 point, and often she would stand by the window looking at 
 the forbidding stone drop, some six feet wide and twelve deep, 
 which separated the house from the sloping green below. 
 Then one day, in the middle of the Latin lesson at school 
 a lesson through which Joanna habitually dreamed it came 
 to her that she would do it that evening. 
 
 When she got home she went straight to the parlor. It 
 was empty; and she opened the window and quaking climbed 
 out upon the sill. Suppose she managed the jump, but did 
 not land high enough on the slope? That would mean over- 
 balancing into the awful area, and suppose she slipped on 
 leaving the sill? Her palms, wet with fear, clove to the pane 
 behind her. She had a prickling agony all over the front of 
 her body. She was lost if she jumped. Yet she knew she 
 would have no peace till she did. She shut her eyes, opened 
 them again, leaned back for impetus. " If I am killed it can't 
 be helped! " was the thought that flashed through her mind 
 like a solution. Why had she not thought of that before? 
 And springing with all her strength she landed on her hands 
 and knees well up on the grass. 
 
 It had been easy as easy, she told herself when she picked 
 herself up. But she was shaking all over as she went up the 
 dark kitchen stair. And she never attempted it again. 
 
 n 
 
 As a dreamer, the child was of that sort whose imaginings 
 are never without some touch of the practical, and the ma- 
 terial and the ideal often went curiously linked. One night, 
 not long after her thirteenth birthday, just as she was drop- 
 ping off to sleep, an idea flashed in her mind and it so worked 
 upon her that she lay awake for hours. Perhaps it had been 
 suggested to her by the description of the Tabernacle which 
 her mother had been reading at evening prayers. Anyhow her 
 notion was herself to build a temple using as her materials, 
 candles and a wooden box. She thought of the vistas of 
 
 445537
 
 3 8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 pillars this temple would have beautiful white pillars, more 
 beautiful than the alabaster ones in the City Chambers rising 
 out of a floor of wax which was to be scored and scored 
 across while still soft to make it like a marble pavement. 
 Tossing from side to side on her bed, she wondered whether 
 the pillars should be left plain, or fluted by an excoriating 
 finger nail. As the possibilities of her design grew upon her 
 she became more and more wakeful, with a touch of fever. 
 She would have, she determined, a tiny Ark of the Covenant 
 made from a wax-coated match-box, and at either end, guard- 
 ing it, she would put the two little stucco angels Aunt Perdy 
 had brought her from Italy. She would gild them; and a 
 vision floated before her of kneeling cherubim gleaming be- 
 tween aisles of flawless marble all the work of her own hands ! 
 
 Next morning was a Saturday, and Joanna, hardly able 
 to bear her excitement, ran with her weekly sixpence down 
 the hill to the grocer. Though he gave her the cheapest 
 candles to be had, there were only twelve in the packet, and 
 they looked disappointingly unlike marble. On the other 
 hand they were longer than she had expected. And forgetting 
 for the moment the considerable size of Aunt Perdy's angels, 
 Joanna thought she might reduce the scale of the Temple by 
 making two pillars out of each candle. 
 
 When she got back to the house breathless, her mother 
 opened the door to her and could not help noticing her bright 
 countenance. Questioned, the child poured forth an inco- 
 herent tale about match-boxes, marble pillars and angels. 
 Juley did not attempt to follow it. She only comprehended 
 an unusual excitement, and she noticed with a pang that at 
 such moments her daughter bore a strong likeness to poor 
 Aunt Perdy. 
 
 " Would that I could see my dear child as much concerned 
 about spiritual things! " she lamented with a grieved shake 
 of her head. 
 
 When Joanna set to work upstairs with more doggedness 
 now than enthusiasm, the result was a conflagration which 
 left a large hole in the nursery carpet. Then and there the 
 remaining candles were confiscated for household use. But 
 Juley, always scrupulous in money matters, gave the Temple- 
 builder as many pence as they had cost.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 39 
 
 in 
 
 Even during Sholto's life-time there had hung over Juley's 
 dressing-table a rival text to the one in the lobby. No richly 
 illuminated scroll, this, but a simple square of glossy, maroon- 
 colored cardboard, silver edged, and showing up in silver let- 
 ters the words 
 
 TO THE JEW FIRST. 
 
 The importance of the Jews had been a subject on which 
 Juley and her husband had differed, sometimes painfully. 
 Juley, try as she might and she never gave up trying had 
 not been able to convince Sholto that God's promises in the 
 Prophets had been particularly to .His Chosen People. The 
 curses, Sholto would admit, must apply to Israel: but every- 
 thing else he appropriated to himself and those like-minded 
 with him. Nor would he admit his illogicality in the matter. 
 It was without his approval therefore that his wife had gone 
 regularly to a seedy and unpopular Jewish mission on the 
 South Side of the river. 
 
 Juley's belief was that the scattered nation had been or- 
 dained to preach the gospel in all parts of the world, thus 
 hastening the return of Christ. She could not help regarding 
 the most unattractive Hebrew, as a second, or at least as a 
 third cousin of her Saviour. And the lustrous-eyed men in 
 greasy clothes who had cringed before Sholto, expanded 
 sometimes alarmingly in the sunshine of his widow's frank 
 sympathy. More and more often they were to be seen at 
 her table. 
 
 As for Sholto's attitude with regard to the Second Advent, 
 Juley had found it still more puzzling. As an evangelical, 
 he had perforce held theoretically correct views on the sub- 
 ject. But Juley had only to mention what to her was the 
 most joyous topic of the Gospels to realize that he considered 
 the actual prospect highly inconvenient. 
 
 In this as in the Jewish question Sholto had had the dis- 
 creet backing of his minister Dr. Ranken, and Juley had come 
 away worsted more than once from visiting her pastor with a 
 request that he would lend his pulpit to one of her Hebrew 
 proteges. But Sholto had been dead over a year before the 
 idea of leaving St. Jude's occurred seriously to her.
 
 40 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 It was a bold idea, for till then the Bannermans' church 
 had been as much a part of themselves as their house. Indeed 
 it was more deeply connected than the house with their family 
 tradition. Their grandfather had made it famous among 
 Glasgow churches, and in the eyes of many among the con- 
 gregation their father, as a prominent elder, had been a more 
 important figure there than Dr. Ranken the minister, who 
 had begun his career merely as the great Dr. Bannerman's 
 assistant. 
 
 From the gallery, whither they were banished four times a 
 year on Communion Sundays, the children used to lean for- 
 ward with awe in th, ' f r hearts, and in their throats a choking 
 sense of their father's dignity. Sholto always led the other 
 elders in their solemn progress through the napkin-decked 
 body of the church to the choir rails. And there, after the 
 grave order of the Scottish service, they partook of the broken 
 bread from Dr. Ranken's thin hands before they dispensed 
 it, pew by pew, to the waiting congregation. 
 
 The children of course had all been baptized at these same 
 choir rails. They were known individually to each member, 
 and every detail of the building was as familiar to them as the 
 interior of their nursery. How well Joanna knew the pattern 
 of the colored, diamond-shaped panes in the high rectangular 
 windows: there were two yellow diamonds, then a blue, then 
 two more yellow, and a red square at each corner. Then 
 there was the dark, highly varnished pulpit with its canopy 
 of mahogany spires. Often she had half-hoped, half-feared 
 that the great bristling lid would fall by its own weight on 
 Dr. Ranken, extinguishing him in the middle of his sermon 
 like a jack-in-the-box. Yet it remained poised; and cer- 
 tainly its intricacies provided a maze in which a child's imagi- 
 nation could run riot. It was one of Joanna's fantasies to 
 picture herself and her cousin Gerald (conveniently reduced 
 to scale) playing a madly amorous, yet innocent game of hide- 
 and-seek amid the wilds of this Gothic forest. 
 
 But a period of changes had come in which Sholto was 
 prime mover, and the canopy had been done away with. At 
 the same time offertory bags were substituted for the plates 
 at the door, a paid quartette was added to the choir, the con- 
 gregation was requested (with very partial success) to join 
 in the Lord's Prayer, and the whole church was upholstered 
 in blue-gray repp, instead of in crimson as formerly.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 41 
 
 Sholto had always advocated what he called " a bright serv- 
 ice." " The only way to keep a hold on our young people! " 
 he would say breezily in the face of conservatism. Certainly, 
 at the time of his death the decoration of St. Jude's vied with 
 its service in sprightliness. With its white and pale blue paint, 
 its gilding, and its palm trees in niches, it resembled a Casino 
 rather than a church. And the paid vocalists never for one 
 moment allowed it to be forgotten that they were paid. A 
 stranger could have picked them out as they stood shoulder 
 to shoulder in the van of the choir the contralto as manful and 
 almost as mustachioed as the bass singing the praises of 
 God right into the faces of those who w :e fortunate enough 
 to occupy the front pews. 
 
 The only thing not in keeping with this airy spirit of reno- 
 vation was the minister himself. Dr. Ranken was bleak- 
 faced, with hard-bitten features, and a smoldering misery in 
 his deep-set eyes. And he so constantly sought his text in 
 the Pauline Epistles that the children came to fancy him a 
 reincarnation of the Apostle. Georgie in particular conceived 
 a violent dislike toward St. Paul in the person of Dr. Ranken, 
 and within six months of her father's death she began to 
 wander from St. Jude's on Sunday evenings. As Juley her- 
 self paid tentative visits to other places of worship in her 
 search for some richer milk of the Word, she could not well 
 forbid her daughter, but when Georgie began to attend openly 
 the church of Mr. Nares a Congregational pulpiteer and 
 strenuous moralist from England who was reputed little better 
 than a Unitarian things were serious. Since Dr. Ranken 
 had refused Juley's request that he would preach at least once 
 a year on the Millennium, she had not felt able to call upon 
 him for his pastoral advice. She longed to consult him about 
 Georgie, but she could not forget the manner of his refusal, nor 
 the way he had looked at her, making her feel herself peculiar. 
 What was to be done? 
 
 After much prayer Juley summoned all her courage, and 
 once more visited her minister. She entered the dark study 
 feeling painfully shy and forsaken, and when Dr. Ranken 
 rose in his unsmiling way to shake her by the hand and bid 
 her be seated she was smitten by a keen consciousness of 
 widowhood. The truth was that shyness was his own afflic- 
 tion. Juley could have knelt before him, covering his hands 
 with her tears, begging his counsel in her many difficulties,
 
 42 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 pouring out her heart to him. But his own forbidding reti- 
 cence made of any such action a ludicrous impossibility ; 
 so she sat down in silence, praying within herself desperately 
 that she might be given the strength to see her task through. 
 She must try to put her case without exposing the needs of her 
 soul in any way that he would shrink from as undignified. 
 
 So, restraining herself and in an agony of faltering, she told 
 him that unless he could give her and her children greater 
 spiritual nourishment, she had prayerfully decided to leave 
 St. Jude's. His forbearance when she had said her say 
 brought her nearer to breaking down than ever. No one knew 
 better than she what it meant to Dr. Ranken to lose the 
 Bannerman family in this way, yet he uttered no reproach. 
 He merely said she must do as she felt best, advised her to 
 send Georgie to a boarding-school, and expressed a hope that 
 at least his family and hers would remain on friendly terms. 
 Bob, his fifteen-year-old son, was a constant visitor at Collessie 
 Street; and it would be a pity, the minister said with a 
 wintry gleam of humor crossing his face, that the children 
 should cease to enjoy each other's society because Mrs. Ban- 
 nerman could not conscientiously enjoy his sermons! 
 
 So yellow-haired Bob Ranken came about the house as much 
 as before, and for a time he struck up quite a friendship with 
 Joanna. But Juley became subject to fits of depression which 
 no wrestlings of the spirit seemed to avert or allay. Indeed 
 the attacks grew denser in quality and longer in duration 
 till her old conviction of sin in marrying became almost 
 abiding. Her children suffered seeing their mother's increas- 
 ing difficulties in. the routine of life, but as yet they did not 
 guess at the depths of her dejection nor at her heroism. 
 Scrupulously she went on with her duties. But sometimes 
 the God she worshipped appeared less like the Father to her 
 than like the stupendous Tradesman of the universe Who slowly 
 renders His accounts. 
 
 In her wanderings from church to church she sought her 
 ideal pastor in vain. Ministers began to fight shy of her, and 
 she became increasingly nervous of them, though her convic- 
 tions never wavered. Her severance from St. Jude's told 
 both on her and on the children. Church-going became spas- 
 modic and a matter for individual decision. Sometimes of a 
 Sunday the Bannermans would have extra long family prayers 
 at home instead of going to any outside service; and as likely
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 43 
 
 as not a Jew from the South Side mission would officiate. 
 But Juley never felt perfectly easy about such shifts. The 
 household seemed dishevelled. Besides, in any other place 
 of worship than St. Jude's Sholto Bannerman's widow found 
 herself a nobody. She began somehow to lose caste a little, 
 and shrank from the greetings of her husband's old acquain- 
 tances. As time went on she would once in a while steal 
 in on a Sunday evening to the very back of Dr. Ranken's 
 gallery, taking all precautions to avoid observation. And 
 there she would listen to his arid discourse carefully and 
 with tears, to know whether she might not return to his fold 
 without violating her conscience. The children could always 
 tell by her face at supper when she had been to St. Jude's.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 EACH year the family fell farther apart. Shortly after 
 the interview with Dr. Ranken Juley took his advice, 
 and Georgie was sent to a boarding-school at Bristol. But 
 though the school was only decided upon after much prayer 
 and careful inquiry, the girl returned for her holidays less 
 manageable at the end of every term. Both Juley's daughters 
 had derived from her in full force the capacity for ecstasy. 
 But she seemed powerless to direct their energies, and with 
 increasing grief she saw her prayers apparently unanswered. 
 Her faith was sorely tried, and often she wept in secret. 
 But she always renewed the attack, and with a peculiar 
 obstinacy, maddening to them, attempted to force her vision 
 on the children. Once they had been.ready to drink in their 
 mother's words as the essence of truth, and she had flashed 
 veritable heaven at her babes from her apocalyptic eyes. 
 Now it needed all her courage to maintain her beliefs in the 
 face of their entrenched hostility. 
 
 Also Juley failed them socially, and the girls felt this more 
 than they knew. They were no longer invited to Aunt 
 Georgina's. Soon they hardly went anywhere. Sholto's 
 acquaintances dropped off one by one, and most of Juley's 
 " friends in the Lord " were either freakish or out at elbow; 
 so that Joanna came to think that Heaven must have a 
 predilection for ill-looking oddities. Some of them turned out 
 to lie rogues as well. One, a negro revivalist to whom Juley's 
 efforts had opened two Glasgow pulpits, was discovered to be 
 a bigamist on a brilliant scale. Another, a Polish-American 
 Jew who had paid long visits to them in Collessie Street, and 
 addressed many drawing-room meetings there, absconded with 
 the money collected for the establishment of a Hebrew Mis- 
 sion-Church in New York. Even the more deserving were 
 feeble creatures in any earthly sense, and Juley herself some- 
 times mourned the days of her youth when God's people made 
 a better show in the world of mammon. She never put down 
 
 44
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 45 
 
 the change to her own growing eccentricity. Though always 
 perfectly cleanly and careful in detail she was dressing her- 
 self with increasing dowdiness, and she sorely grudged 
 herself a new garment. Her income was strained by the 
 children's growing needs, but she none the less continued, 
 as Sholto had done, to set aside one-tenth of it " for the Lord," 
 and never did she refuse an appeal for help, whether made to 
 her purse, her time or her strength. She was loved by the 
 poor. But Joanna and Georgie, just as they would have 
 given all the spiritual qualities of their home for material 
 graciousness, would gladly have exchanged their mother's 
 unselfishness for dignity and tact. 
 
 ii 
 
 It was therefore natural that both the girls should turn 
 for help to the fine arts. It was a misfortune that neither 
 was greatly gifted, but Georgie at any rate had no hesitation 
 in accepting her own enthusiasm as marked talent if not genius. 
 The only thing she was uncertain about was the field in which 
 this talent was to have play. She had thought of writing, 
 and once actually started a novel in which Mr. Barr, the 
 organist of St. Jude's, with whom both she and Joanna were 
 in love, was to be saved from his unfortunate weakness for 
 the bottle by a heroine remarkably like Georgie herself in 
 everything except appearance. But in the second chapter 
 unexpected difficulties arose, and at the same time Georgie 
 heard Madame Neruda play at one of Sir Charles Halle's 
 concerts. From that day the girl decided that music was her 
 natural means of expression, and the violin her instrument. 
 It was dreadful to think how much time she had already 
 wasted over the piano. 
 
 So Georgie was given violin lessons at the school in Bristol, 
 and when at nineteen, she came home for good, she wandered 
 from teacher to teacher much as her mother wandered from 
 church to church. Each time she meditated a change there 
 were the best reasons for condemning her present instructor, 
 and before very long it came to this, that no one in Glasgow 
 could give her precisely what she needed. There was a 
 man in Dresden . . . she was certain that if she could only 
 go to Dresden. . . . 
 
 " But dear, you seemed to be getting on so nicely," Juley 
 pleaded when Germany was first mentioned. " Mrs. Boyd was
 
 46 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 charmed with the way you played Simple Avett the other 
 day at the Canal Boatmen's P..S.A." 
 
 "Mrs. Boyd! " cried Georgie in loud scorn. "What does 
 Mrs. Boyd know about music? She would like Simple Aveu! 
 And that's exactly what I'm trying to tell you. Simple Aveu 
 is the kind of piece Miss Findlay gives to all her pupils 
 because she thinks it will please their friends to hear them 
 play it in the drawing-room at night betause it's tuney! 
 Don't you see that if I'm ever to do anything with my 
 violin anything real I must go somewhere where they take 
 music seriously? " 
 
 This discussion one of many happened one Sunday even- 
 ing in Spring. Juley and her daughters were returning after 
 church from a walk along the Great Western Road, and Joanna 
 seeking a refuge from the distress by her side, found it in 
 the beauty of the world about her. For the Great Western 
 Road at sunset on a fine Sunday is a romantic highway. 
 Once a stranger had stopped Joanna there, and sweeping off 
 his hat, had asked in broken English how soon, continuing 
 westwards, he should get to the sea. The question, though 
 geographically astonishing, gave some expression of the mag- 
 nanimous charm of the road. Now troops of church-goers, 
 their faces illuminated by the glow on the horizon, sauntered 
 westwards; and others with their faces in the shadow returned 
 to the town. Innumerable couples Highland servants 
 chattering loudly in Gaelic, strings of very young girls in their 
 Sabbath finery, young men with button-holes and whirling 
 canes, who eyed the girls as they passed all used the whole 
 breadth of the road for walking, and only moved aside deli- 
 berately to make way for a jogging Sunday horse-car. 
 
 Joanna steeping her mind in vague dreams tried not to hear 
 what Georgie and her mother were saying. But the argument 
 continued even after they had got home and were waiting 
 in the parlor for supper. Joanna's silence was taken for 
 granted, and she sat by the window looking out. She still tried 
 not to listen though it was harder indoors. 
 
 " But you said only the other day dear," (it was the pained 
 yet patient mother's voice speaking), "that Miss Findlay 
 was a splendid teacher and thought so highly of you. Besides 
 poor thing, you know her circumstances and what the loss of 
 a pupil means to her, quite apart from the hurt to her feel- 
 ings."
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 47 
 
 From the window now Joanna was watching two pigeons, 
 burnished on their high perch by the hidden sunset. They 
 sat on the ledge of a house opposite, one motionless as a 
 carved bird, the other making his toilet. With gentle yet 
 precise movements the male arranged his breast and back 
 feathers, unfolded, folded, and refolded his wings; and when 
 at length all was to his liking, he sidled caressingly up to his 
 mate. 
 
 " Of course," shouted Georgie, " if you are going to sacri- 
 fice my career to Charity! " 
 
 At that word, as at a signal, both pigeons took flight. Joanna 
 followed their swift passage across the clear cube of sky, then 
 sighing turned to face the dark interior. 
 
 m 
 
 Georgie had her way and went to Dresden. The photo- 
 graphs of Joachim and Neruda vanished from the bedroom 
 mantel-piece. The motto, " Genius consists in an infinite 
 capacity for taking pains," which had been pinned up also, 
 went along with them in Georgie's trunk. And at first the 
 family felt a strange blank in the mornings, no longer being 
 awakened by the thin scrape of exercises in the third position. 
 
 Though Georgie did not realize it, her victory was due, not 
 so much to her own forcefulness as to her mother's desire that 
 she should be provided with the means of earning her own 
 livelihood. Secretly Juley disbelieved in Georgie's dreams of 
 the concert platform. But if the girl really loved music she 
 would be the better equipped for having studied abroad. 
 Matrimony in Juley's eyes, was not a thing to be sought for 
 its own sake, and if her daughters neither married nor felt 
 the call to be missionaries, they would have to do something 
 for themselves. Sholto's estate when divested of his legacies 
 to charity, had not amounted to more than 7,000; and when 
 this should come at Juley's death to be divided, equally be- 
 tween the four children, the portions would not be large. 
 
 With the same practical end in view, Joanna was allowed to 
 forsake her High School for the School of Art when she was 
 barely seventeen, and not yet in the sixth form. For some 
 time it had been understood at home that Joanna should be- 
 come an artist. She was neat figured. Her mother always 
 counted on her to print the invitations and decorate the col- 
 lection card for the monthly Jewish meeting held in the draw-
 
 48 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 ing-room; and at school she generally carried off a second 
 prize for drawing. What sort of an artist she wanted to be- 
 come she did not yet know, but that could be decided later. 
 
 Another change at this time was the coming of Mabel to 
 Collessie Street. Mabel, faced even more urgently than her 
 cousins by the necessity of earning a living, had decided to 
 become a hospital nurse; and before starting her regular 
 training she came to spend a winter of study in Glasgow. 
 
 Juley told herself that this was a happy arrangement for 
 Joanna during Georgie's absence. The two boys, now four- 
 teen and twelve, lived apart in a world of their own. School 
 claimed them all day, and lessons most of the evening; and 
 on Saturdays they went off to football, returning mud-coated, 
 and arguing about " half-backs " and " scrums," " fouls " 
 and " forwards. " But in reality it was Juley herself, in 
 dire need of sympathy, who fastened on Mabel when she came. 
 Mabel was nothing if not sympathetic, and her aunt poured 
 into her ready ears much that had better have remained un- 
 spoken, while in return Mabel imparted many of the confi- 
 dences she had at various times received from Georgie and 
 Joanna. Juley, already admiring her niece's choice of a pro- 
 fession, was impressed by a maturity in the girl quite lacking 
 in her own daughters. She attributed it to the fact that 
 Mabel was an orphan, and she rejoiced in the good influence 
 Mabel was bound to exercise over Joanna, whose bed-room 
 she was to share. 
 
 iv. 
 
 The remarkable thing was that Joanna, receptive as she 
 was at this time, remained immune to this same influence. 
 Seven years earlier both she and Georgie had taken a passive 
 pleasure in Mabel's fertile invention in the field of childish 
 indecencies: but in their later girlhood they had provided 
 a disappointing market for her primitive antidotes. Georgie 
 in fact had warned her sister that there were others like their 
 cousin at the school in Bristol, and that all that kind of thing 
 was detestable as one grew older. And now Mabel at nine- 
 teen, returning to the charge with a smattering of physiology, 
 a great store of bald tales, and some grotesque confidences 
 of the hospital, found Joanna unresponsive. 
 
 It was not that Joanna made any prudish objections. In a 
 sense she even listened. But while she continued as in child-
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 49 
 
 hood to hoard the correct and incorrect together in the 
 dark chambers of her mind she by nature ignored all that 
 made the telling savory to Mabel. If she was still amazingly 
 ignorant about life it was not exactly from lack of informa- 
 tion. At Duntarvie she had been in close touch with nature. 
 In Glasgow she had been allowed to play in the streets. Juley 
 was no believer in ignorance for young people. She had even 
 approached Joanna once or twice with an attempt at definite 
 enlightenment. But Joanna had shied so badly and so per- 
 sistently that at length she was left to herself. She would 
 not have it that her very considerable knowledge of natural 
 processes should in any real way affect the love-fantasy in 
 which she now had her being. Constantly and to the full 
 she indulged herself in the drug-habit of maidenhood; but her 
 waking dreams were quite as innocent as they were sensuous. 
 What she learned from Mabel therefore was kept jealously 
 shrouded. It was no more true to her than it was true 
 that members of the Young Men's Christian Association, be- 
 cause they were men, were potential lovers. 
 
 Yet all the time a lover was what she unceasingly sought. 
 In the streets, at church, on tram-cars and steamers, at con- 
 certs, even at religious meetings, Joanna was for ever seeking 
 faces that would suit the hero's part in those dreams of which 
 the constant heroine was herself. In any kind of assemblage 
 there was sure to be one such face at least, and when she had 
 found it she knew a dozen ways by which to induce immediate 
 delirium. She need only, for instance, recall with closed eyes 
 a moonlight cruise on the Clyde the midsummer before. The 
 paddle steamer loaded with embracing lovers had churned 
 phosphorescently through the black lochs. The band had 
 played dance music. At intervals the spray of fainting rockets 
 had been shaken down the dark sky. 
 
 No one seeing her aloof eyes and still face would have 
 guessed at the eagerness of the girl's search. Young men 
 feared her, knowing she hardly saw them. Yet at eighteen, a 
 little weary of fruitless emotion, a little dream-sick, the con- 
 viction had begun to force itself on Joanna that she was 
 without attraction. For the past ten years she had lavished 
 unreciprocated passion on individuals of both sexes. She 
 had worshipped Gerald Bird, had longed to reclaim the booz- 
 ing organist of St. Jude's, had trembled in the presence of 
 her geography teacher at the High School a plain, middle-
 
 5 o OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 aged woman with mysterious eyes. And these were but three 
 out of many. But never yet, so far as Joanna knew, had she 
 figured for an instant in the dreams of another human being, 
 and she was beginning to give up hope. Clearly she foresaw 
 a dismal stretch of life to an unloved old age.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 TWO years passed in this way; and when Joanna was 
 twenty and full of desperation, she heard that Bob 
 Ranken was coming to Glasgow for his Easter holiday. 
 
 She had been seventeen the last time she saw her old play- 
 mate, he eighteen. Two years after his interview with Juley, 
 Doctor Ranken 's health had begun to fail; and after strug- 
 gling on gallantly for a while with a " colleague and succes- 
 sor," he had retired as " minister emeritus " to Tunbridge 
 Wells, where he had a married sister. He himself had been 
 long a widower. He had hoped rather than suggested that 
 Bob should enter the ministry. But the boy was set on being 
 a mining engineer, and on leaving school went to South Ken- 
 sington to study at the School of Mines. 
 
 Thenceforward his visits to Glasgow had been rare. But 
 on the Easter immediately following Joanna's twentieth birth- 
 day Dr. Ranken was sent to Bad Nauheim and Bob came to 
 stay with one of the oldest families of the St. Jude's con- 
 gregation, the Boyds of High Kelvin Place. 
 
 From the moment Joanna heard from Mamie Boyd that 
 Bob was expected, her imagination busied itself with the 
 coming meeting. In her condition any excitement was wel- 
 come. But most welcome of all was an excitement that 
 promised to bring nearer to her that great and solid world, 
 in the existence of which she believed as only your dreamer 
 can believe. 
 
 Would Bob be much changed? she wondered. And gazing 
 into her mirror she tried to see herself with his eyes. Would 
 he tease her about her long skirts and her hair done up? 
 (She wore it in a fine shining knob now on the top of her head). 
 It was wonderful how suddenly her lassitude gave place to 
 gaiety. 
 
 She recalled the little constraint that had arisen between 
 Bob and herself during his last school holidays in Glasgow. 
 
 5i
 
 52 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 How clearly she was able to re-live it! They had started 
 romping, as in the old childish days; but Bob's touch on her 
 had brought a giddiness. He had tried to snatch a sketch- 
 book from her; and she, half pretending, half really shy of 
 letting him see her drawings, had fought to keep it. They 
 had wrestled for it Bob grunting with laughter when in the 
 tussle they upset a small table covered with books until 
 he got her pinned against the wall and she had to own herself 
 beaten. A tremble of pleasure went through her now at the 
 feeling of his yellow tousled head, so near to hers as it had been, 
 and his red, laughing, triumphant face. There had come a 
 sudden steadiness into his blue eyes, as if he had observed 
 something new in her or in himself. Then his eyelids with 
 their pale lashes like veils, had drooped, and he had let her 
 arms go. She had felt like water that runs swiftly over an 
 edge of rock, that shivers in mid-air before falling in a shaken 
 dazzle of delight down into nothingness. 
 
 And now she was to see him again. 
 
 On the evening he was expected, she spent a long time over 
 her dressing. She took a hot bath everything must be 
 perfect : and though it was only Wednesday, she put on 
 every stitch clean. She hoped Bob would not think her dress 
 too odd. She had designed and made it herself at the School 
 of Art, and it was of thin crinkly apple-green silk quite un- 
 trimmed. She could not help feeling elated when she ran 
 into her mother's room to see herself in the long wardrobe 
 glass. She felt sure the narrow apple-green ribbon looked 
 well round her hair, but it was a trial that her cheeks became 
 so easily scarlet. She was thankful Mabel was not to be 
 in that night. And the boys had gone to Aunt Ellen for 
 Easter. There would only be her mother. 
 
 While still in her mother's room Joanna heard the door- 
 bell ring, and she listened throbbing while the visitor hung 
 up his hat and crossed the tiled lobby to the parlor at the 
 back of the house. How was she to go down to enter the 
 room? 
 
 But after all it was astonishingly easy! And when they 
 had shaken hands firmly and were talking hard, she asked 
 herself what she had been afraid of. It was like the jump 
 out of the parlor window long ago the same relief, the same 
 slight trembling afterwards. Bob's hair wasn't so yellow as 
 it used to be. In this light it was the color of ashes. His
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 53 
 
 voice was the same though soft, almost lazy. And he still 
 grunted funnily when he laughed. His eyes Joanna could 
 not bring herself to look at his eyes after the first encounter. 
 She looked instead at his hair, at her own hands, at the fern- 
 case by the window, in which her mother cherished delicate 
 little plants. And she heard herself chattering freely about 
 the School of Art, and asking Bob all about London. 
 
 But in the depths of her confused heart she knew it was not 
 like old times, however hard both might pretend it was. At 
 the very first glance something must have happened between 
 them. Otherwise why could she not look at Bob? And why 
 did he never for a moment stop looking at her? She wondered 
 at herself for having imagined he would laugh at her for 
 being grown-up. She could not now have asked him what 
 he thought of her hair. She had caught a glimpse of her new 
 self in his eyes, and under her chatter she felt lost and 
 troubled. But it was a sort of happiness too, this breaking 
 of the life in her out of the old confines. 
 
 At tea the mother's presence was a respite. Joanna was 
 like a child again, hiding in her mother's skirts and peeping out 
 from that refuge at the too persistent stranger. She tried 
 hard to collect herself. If Bob would have spared her only 
 for one minute. But then all of a sudden her lips curved into 
 a smile, and from that moment she smiled uncontrollably. 
 She would have given anything to hide her burning, smiling 
 face. There was panic in her breast. And to recover gravity 
 she tried to think of the saddest thing she knew. She thought 
 of the Crown of Thorns. But is was useless, especially when 
 Juley was questioning Bob about the Presbyterian churches 
 in London. Only when she looked up and found herself in 
 Bob's waiting eyes did Joanna stop smiling, and then her 
 breath went from her. 
 
 And after tea came prayers. Prayers at Collessie Street took 
 place without respect of visitors, and generally Joanna re- 
 sented this with bitter ennui. But to-night everything was 
 different. She did not know what she looked for in the com- 
 ing act of worship, but she felt it held something hidden for 
 Bob and herself. Till then they would both be in sus- 
 pense. 
 
 When the servants had come upstairs and were in their 
 places near the door, Juley opened her Bible on the half- 
 cleared tea-table, and with a short prayer that God would
 
 54 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 not let His Word return to Him void, she began to read the 
 passage for that evening. 
 
 Joanna, with her spreading apple-green skirts crinkled as 
 petals that are folded in a poppy bud, sat very still on the 
 worn leather sofa, and Bob in an armchair faced her across 
 the hearthrug. She seemed to him like an early spring flower, 
 and his eyes, young and disturbed, never left her. As for 
 Joanna, though she gazed steadfastly aside at the crumbling 
 coals, the young man's presence was putting a spell upon her. 
 The space between them vibrated unceasingly, and there was 
 magic for both of them in the familiar, unheeded poetry the 
 Mother was reading. 
 
 Even Juley's interpolations as she read the Bible had no 
 power this evening to irritate her daughter; and as if know- 
 ing this, she lingered to her heart's content on the precious 
 phrases, explaining them to the servants, and drawing the 
 sweetness from each word before she passed on. Poor Juley! 
 After a day of small desperations she now came to refresh her- 
 self at God's footstool with an eagerness that made her quite 
 blind to what was passing beside her. Half an hour hence 
 she would be staggering once more under her burden; but 
 for this blessed space she was laying it aside with deep-drawn 
 sighs of content. 
 
 " May God bless to us His Holy Word. Let us 
 pray! " 
 
 At this signal the servants rustled starchily from their 
 seats and Joanna and Bob stood up. It was the moment, 
 Joanna then knew, for which they had both been waiting. 
 As her mother and the servants knelt before their chairs, 
 she raised at last her full eyelids, and with his whole being 
 Bob held her glance. It was only an instant that they stood 
 thus, but to Joanna it seemed an age. Then Bob crossed to 
 her side, and trembling they knelt down together at the 
 sofa. 
 
 As soon as they knew by the modulations of her voice that 
 Juley's prayer was in full flight heavenwards, the boy and girl, 
 so far as they could for nervousness, began to look into their 
 new situation. In her own agitation Joanna made no allow- 
 ance for Bob's, but his was the greater. She felt rather than 
 saw that his right hand lay palm upwards close by her left 
 elbow on the rubbed leather sofa. It lay waiting there dumb 
 and humble for hers. She was thrilled by this, but at the same
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 55 
 
 time a little spasm of disappointment passed through her. 
 Why could not Bob take her hand simply, boldly? Was 
 it not the man's part? Here was she, ready at a touch to 
 give all that could be asked for. 
 
 But swiftly that moment passed. After all, this was Bob's 
 way of asking, and she had never been asked before. Besides, 
 though she did not guess at his shy terror, Joanna could 
 read aright the urgency of his desire. The knowledge of 
 this set an abrupt flame leaping in her. She became wooer as 
 well as wooed. With averted face, and eyes obstinately closed, 
 she shifted her weight wholly on to her right elbow, and her 
 left hand, released, slid down and laid itself on the patient 
 hand beneath. Timidly she gave herself, yet with fullness, 
 palm to palm. And Bob clasped her in a rapture of gratitude. 
 With his first touch she was flooded with happiness. But at 
 his kiss she became dreadfully conscious of her knuckles which 
 she felt must stick out hard against his lips. If only she had 
 hands like Georgie's, with soft dimples instead of knuckles! 
 How she wished to be perfect for him! 
 
 n 
 
 After all she had only a few minutes alone with Bob before 
 he left the house an hour later, and even then they were 
 not secure from interruption. Hardly had they risen from 
 their knees, when Mabel came into the parlor; and though 
 Joanna tried afterwards she could never recollect her cousin's 
 excuse for this unexpectedly early return. All she could recall 
 was the picture of Mabel looking up at Bob with her coy, cur- 
 iously liquid gaze from under the brim of her hat as she took it 
 off. But Bob had no eyes that evening for anyone but Joanna, 
 and after some talk suddenly, as if he had that moment re- 
 membered something, he said he must be off. 
 
 Joanna went with him to the lobby and stood watching his 
 rather blundering actions at the hat stand. In his acute self- 
 consciousness he fumbled like a blind man. The two did 
 not speak for a few minutes, partly from shyness, partly be- 
 cause Mabel had only just disappeared round the bend of 
 the staircase, leaving the parlor where Juley still was, with 
 the door open. 
 
 But to Joanna's delight Bob in a low voice began talking 
 to her in Double Dutch. That she herself, or Georgie, or the 
 boys should ever forget their old secret language was of course
 
 5 6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 unimaginable. Yet she had not dreamed that Bob would 
 remember it Bob a grown man who had gone out into the 
 world! Joanna loved him for it, and she blushed at him, 
 bright with grateful surprise. 
 
 " Joey," he whispered as he tugged on his waterproof. 
 " Can't you come out for a minute? " 
 
 " 111 try," breathed Joanna in return, and she wondered 
 at her calmness, making this her first appointment with a 
 lover. 
 
 " I'll wait at the corner of Burns Street where we used 
 to play peever," said Bob. " How long will you be? " 
 
 " I'll come as quick as I can." 
 
 " I'll wait half an hour. Promise you'll come! " 
 
 " 111 come within ten minutes." 
 
 " All right. But remember I'll wait half an hour." 
 
 She opened the door and he went out. They had not touched 
 each other since they knelt at the sofa. They were waiting. 
 
 Joanna shut the door, and for a moment stood suspended, 
 uncertain. Her pulses raced and her brain was working 
 swiftly. She was afraid to follow Bob at once. From the 
 outside the front door could only be shut with a bang, and she 
 knew her mother would run out at the sound, and standing 
 on the steps would call to ask her where she was going. That, 
 she could not have borne. But she feared- still more to go 
 into the parlor or upstairs, lest her return to the lobby should 
 be somehow prevented. So she hovered in the dim hall, 
 resting on tiptoe ready for flight. She listened with sharp- 
 ened hearing to the sounds in the house. She ought to go 
 and change her thin slippers, but Mabel was still in the bed- 
 room. Joanna could hear her moving, though she was two 
 floors distant. Scarcely half a minute had passed, but in 
 despair she was sure Bob must be tired of waiting. He would 
 be gone. He would think she didn't care. It was terrible. 
 
 Half frantic, she pulled on the blue woollen tammy which 
 was on the hat stand and threw a short old tweed cape round 
 her shoulders. Then passing the bottom of the stairs, and 
 slipping quiet as a shadow down the long, tiled passage, she 
 looked into the parlor. 
 
 Juley was there, standing burdened by the table. With 
 one uncomfortable hand she clutched some little flower- 
 glasses which needed fresh water, with the other she held up 
 a newspaper. Something on the printed page had caught her
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 57 
 
 eye just as she was leaving the room, but not for the world 
 would she relinquish duty for enjoyment. It was like her 
 thus to tax self-indulgence with physical discomfort. 
 
 " Mother, I'm running to the post. I'll be back in a min- 
 ute," Joanna rattled out the old, old formula in a colorless 
 voice, and was off, not waiting for an answer. Before her 
 mother had taken in her words, she had fled the house. She 
 went the length of Collessie Street like the wind. Then feel- 
 ing safe she made her way more slowly towards the place 
 where Bob would be waiting.. 
 
 m 
 
 Some clock was striking the last strokes of eight, but dark 
 had scarcely fallen. It had been a wet afternoon, and though 
 the streets were drying rapidly now under a sounding wind, 
 they still held pearly reflections of the pale, torn sky. Where 
 the moisture stayed in shallow pools, it was like the high 
 light on round white pearls, where the shadows of the tall 
 houses congregated it was like gray and black pearl. Soft 
 clouds, gray as doves, drove slowly across the luminous sky. 
 The universe was washed clear of color, and the world 
 through which Joanna sped light-footed, might have been one 
 of those dim pictures in which children take delight pictures 
 that lie scattered by the thousand on the sea-shore, and are 
 so cunningly painted on the pearly inward of each deserted 
 shell. 
 
 And though along *he whole vista of dark stone street there 
 was no tree, the emergency of spring made itself felt as surely 
 as in any country woodland. Certainly the young woman in 
 each pulse and duct and pore of her body was alive to the 
 season's clamor. She was unfurled like a flag to the wind of 
 spring. For the first time since she had lain by the margin 
 of the upper pond at Duntarvie, she found herself able to 
 look full upon beauty without grieving. In the interval there 
 had always been a discord between herself and her apprehen- 
 sion of beauty outside herself. Sunsets, the faces of flowers, 
 the evening star raised steadily like a torch above a screen of 
 cloud these had been hardly endurable, always lacking the 
 consummation they called for. But to-night she felt at one 
 with the whole earth's loveliness, for she was desired, and her 
 lover awaited her coming.
 
 58 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 At the appointed corner Bob in his shabby waterproof 
 moved to meet her. 
 
 " Let's go down there, shall we? " he suggested. And 
 with a nervous movement of his chin he indicated the hill that 
 plunged downwards on their right. There was no one else 
 in the quiet street but a lamp-lighter who scurried on in front 
 of them, lighting the yellow lamps one after another, till he 
 turned a corner; and with the coming to life of the lamps, 
 as by a miracle the world was flooded with transparent, 
 wonderful blue. " Now " thought Joanna, as they reached 
 one of the flights of stone steps which in places eased the steep- 
 ness of the hill, " Now he will tell me he loves me." Surely 
 the moment had come the moment for which all her life she 
 had been waiting. 
 
 When they were gone down the first flight, Bob jerked out 
 his arm and just touched the back of her cape. It was as if 
 he meant to enfold her. But instead, losing courage he 
 dropped his hand and took hers, pressing it with an abrupt 
 terrified action against him. With the back of her fingers 
 Joanna could feel the hard outer muscles of his thigh through 
 his waterproof. Thus joined they went on more slowly across 
 the paved landing to the top of the next flight. 
 
 " Joey, do you really care? " he whispered. 
 
 This was something altogether different from her imagin- 
 ings, but not for anything would Joanna let Bob think she 
 judged him. Besides there was an appeal in his muffled 
 voice and in his dimly seen face which moved her. 
 
 " Yes," she returned in small, bereft tones. " Of course 
 I do." Then fearing this might be the wrong answer, she 
 added, " If I didn't, I shouldn't let you hold my hand." 
 And she gave him a timid beseeching look. 
 
 Bob stopped, glancing swiftly up and down the steps. 
 Still never a soul ! Far, far below was the foggy incandescent 
 track of the New City Road, with its crowds, its passing cars 
 full of light, and its sordid glare of shop windows made beauti- 
 ful by distance. But up here the two of them clinging to- 
 gether in the dark blue middle air, seemed suspended on a 
 ladder between earth and sky, a frail ladder that was shaken 
 by the travelling wind. 
 
 "Will you kiss me just once! " he pleaded drooping his 
 head towards her. 
 
 This again was not of the pattern of Joanna's dreams. Had
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 59 
 
 she been all wrong about love? Well, if she had, it was her 
 fault, not love's. She must still believe, and follow where 
 love led. So she turned her obedient face Jo Bob, and he 
 bent shyly down to her. He was completely surprised by 
 the rich surrender of her lips, she no less amazed by the bash- 
 fulness of his. 
 
 " Is this the first time anyone has kissed you? " The 
 question slipped instinctively, jealously from him. 
 
 The girl's heart leapt in response to that. " Yes," she 
 replied with joyous truthfulness. " The very first time." 
 
 " I'm glad," he said. 
 
 In the little pause that followed, Joanna felt that it was her 
 turn. " Is it the first time you have kissed anyone? " she 
 asked, ignoring as he had done, the fact that all the virility 
 of their first intimate touch had been on her side. 
 
 " It isn't the same for a man," Bob told her, and a smile 
 flickered across his face. 
 
 " You mean you have? " Joanna was intent. And her 
 real unconscious hope was that he had kissed many 
 women. 
 
 " Only once, and it was not like this at all. It didn't 
 count really." 
 
 Joanna was silent for a moment. She tried to feel disap- 
 pointment that she was not the first. 
 
 " But now you'll never kiss anybody else," she exacted, 
 " Never, never again! " 
 
 " I shan't want to," Bob assured her. 
 
 " No, but promise! " 
 
 " I promise. There! And now kiss me again." 
 
 " You kiss me this time," ventured Joanna with a daring 
 that shook her. She felt a new recklessness of response, and 
 this time as he pressed her lips more manfully, a kind of drunk- 
 enness crept up behind her eyes. Yielding to it was like 
 plunging down and down, forfeiting one's identity, losing the 
 power of sight. Bob's features became indistinct and dream- 
 like. 
 
 " How wonderful your lips feel," said Bob solemnly, as if 
 he were reading out a text in church. 
 
 " Do they? " Joanna felt them with her finger-tips, won- 
 dering. " I love your hands Bob. I was looking at them at 
 prayers," she said in return. But she did not tell him that 
 it was because they reminded her of Gerald's hands.
 
 60 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " Tell me," he asked her presently, when they had walked 
 some way on in silence. " How long have you cared? " 
 
 And Joanna, floating in a rosy haze, was easily harmonious 
 at the cost of truth. 
 
 " I must have cared for years and years without knowing it," 
 she replied, happy in pleasing him. " And you? " 
 
 " I suppose I must have too." 
 
 " I wonder what makes you like me, Bob? " 
 
 " I think it's because you are so gentle." 
 
 So they strolled homewards, lying sweetly to one another 
 and their own hearts for love's sake, till they came to the 
 bridge which led across to High Kelvin Place. Here Bob 
 stopped, saying he would see Joanna home again. But be- 
 fore turning back they paused, leaning on the parapet of the 
 hing-hung bridge, and they gazed down into the wooded bed 
 where the river was only betrayed from time to time by a 
 snaky gleam. To their right rose a sheer escarpment of stone, 
 and towering yet higher behind it, tier upon tier of flats full 
 of windows seemed in the darkness to be a dense forest screen 
 hung unevenly with barred, many-colored lanterns. To their 
 left ran the low crescent of shops, like a necklace of gold and 
 brilliants curved in a velvet case and with the colored lights 
 of a chemist a great ruby and emerald for its central gems. 
 And above them, across the great moist arch of sky, so candid 
 and pale, an endless volume of cloud streamed up like smoke 
 from the horizon. 
 
 " How lovely everything is! " murmured Joanna entranced, 
 and she longed for Bob to take her in his arms, and with her 
 all the wonder of the night which was in her heart. But he 
 seemed in a dream, and as they returned hand in hand to 
 Collessie Street, she felt there was a shadow over him. He 
 himself could not have named it, but he was beset by that 
 dread of young men, the dread that he would never be able 
 to earn a living. He was working now, he told her, for an 
 examination in the autumn, and much depended on his pass- 
 ing it. That he was going up for it at all he owed to his 
 father's sacrifices. And what with this and with his father's 
 illness Bob was oppressed and fearful. 
 
 He broke it to her that after the examination he would be 
 going to South Africa. One got on faster abroad, and he 
 longed to pay his father back, without delay. It would mean, 
 of course, that Joanna and he would have to wait for years to
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 61 
 
 be married, but not for so many years as if he stayed in this 
 country. The question was could Joanna wait for him? 
 
 Yes! Joanna could wait; a lifetime if need be. She 
 showed him shining eyes of assurance. She was gluttonous 
 for sacrifice. 
 
 And would she not mind keeping everything a secret from 
 other people for the present? To announce it would only dis- 
 tress his father neeoUessly. Besides, until he had some defi- 
 nite prospects he would rather have nothing said. 
 
 Joanna agreed almost rapturously to everything, though 
 the situation as it unfolded struck some unacknowledged 
 misery into her. She declared that he was not asking any- 
 thing nearly difficult enough for her. She wished to be put 
 to the hardest tests. 
 
 Indeed Bob was a little taken aback by her eagerness. Were 
 women then so easy to win? Her capitulation seemed as com- 
 plete as though it came at the end of a long siege. 
 
 When he gravely kissed her good-night she surprised him 
 again (though herself still more) by pressing her body with 
 a swift wildness against his. It was only for a delirious in- 
 stant that she leaned so. But later, as she lay awake think- 
 ing over what had happened, it was upon this instant that she 
 dwelt most of all. For her it was the astonishing jewel of 
 the evening. Yet even so she did not let herself look closely 
 and directly into it. Her choice was to keep it vague and 
 veiled. And she hid it forthwith in the inner shrine of a 
 temple not made with candles. 
 
 IV 
 
 Though Bob had still a fortnight of holiday before him, 
 the summer session at Glasgow University opened next day, 
 and Joanna and Mabel went together to the Anatomy Class 
 at three o'clock. Joanna had promised to meet Bob after- 
 wards, and at ten minutes past four she was racing towards 
 the gate of the Botanic Gardens where he waited. Escaping 
 from Mabel had not been easy, but she had managed it some- 
 how. 
 
 She distinguished Bob's figure from a distance, though he 
 was standing with his back to her, and she wondered how it 
 was that with all men so much alike, one's lover should be so 
 unmistakable. He was at the entrance to one of the glass 
 houses, which, with their squatting, opalescent bosses, are like <
 
 62 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 breast-plates of mother-of-pearl. Under the bright lift of the 
 sky, that seemed to have burst upwards through tatters of 
 brown cloud, the world showed a shouting violence of color. 
 
 Yet it was the lassitude of spring that assailed the two as 
 they strolled about the hilly red paths of the garden. They 
 talked disjointedly, and with uncomfortable silences in which 
 Joanna found herself drifting irresistibly into solitary dreams. 
 They passed some stunted stone pines that laid their dark 
 heads together in a conspiracy, their black tufts and tassels 
 showing in Japanese detail against the sky. And by the 
 side of these bandit trees a company of beeches stood like 
 nuns, so detached and pure were they in their pallor. Joanna, 
 thinking these things, found herself again and again inatten- 
 tive to what Bob was saying. 
 
 Still unlinked, they descended to the Kelvin by a long wind- 
 ing flight of timber-edged steps cut in the steep earth of the 
 ravine. Quickly the sunshine was left behind, and they dropped 
 into the damp shrubby gloom. Then mounting the slight 
 wooden bridge, so arched that it had slats nailed across for 
 foothold, they stood in the sunlight once more and looked 
 down at the stream. Among the willows leaning top-heavily 
 over the swollen current, some of the longest twigs were 
 already threaded with silver. The water kept catching at 
 their drooping ends and letting them go again. Two grayish 
 swans stayed themselves on the swirling surface. The rank 
 grass was sprinkled with a few scraggy hyacinths. Joanna 
 wished it was more beautiful. 
 
 " I say, Joanna! " said Bob, and something in his abrupt 
 voice made her search his face quickly. " After all I wrote 
 to Dad this morning to say that telling him about you and 
 me " 
 
 " But I thought " began Joanna in concern. 
 
 " Yes, I know. But afterwards I felt that if it got round to 
 him and I hadn't told him, it would hurt him. Besides 
 well, I told George Boyd last night. We were sitting up talk- 
 ing by the fire. You don't mind, Joey, do you? It was 
 really because I'm so proud of your caring about me." 
 
 " I don't see why I should mind," replied Joanna unsurely. 
 
 " It was you yourself that said " 
 
 " I know," admitted Bob, " and I still think we ought to 
 keep it to ourselves as much as possible. George has promised 
 not to say a word to anyone. But with Dad so anxious about
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 63 
 
 me, and ill and all that " His voice trailed off weakly. 
 
 " I'm afraid he's pretty bad. The doctors don't seem too 
 hopeful, though even at the worst it will most likely be a long 
 business." 
 
 Bob gazed with gloomy, rather foolish eyes up stream at 
 the anchored swans and bobbing willow-slips, and a nerve 
 in his cheek twitched slightly as he spoke of his father. 
 Joanna looked at him, and far down in her heart came the per- 
 ception that he was no use to her. But never, never would 
 she admit it! Her eyes rested on his sensitive, too short 
 upper lip, and remembering the night before, she found she 
 could conjure up again that curious drunken feeling behind the 
 eyeballs. 
 
 " Bob ! " she whispered, moving closer to him. 
 
 " Yes? " He slipped her hand with his into his pocket 
 and looked aslant at her. 
 
 " Promise me! " (why of course she must love him if 
 his touch made her voiceless) " promise me you won't stop 
 loving me whatever your father says." 
 
 And Bob promised. But Joanna scarcely listened now. 
 So long as they stood linked ever so slightly, the stream of 
 her being ran full and sweetly, and Bob too was at peace. 
 
 Joanna had shown her drawings to Bob and he had admired 
 them. And she had made tea for him in her new studio that 
 she was so proud of, though it was only a little draughty 
 attic wedged under the slates of a high block of offices in town. 
 And now as they sat there at either side of the tea-table, a 
 wicked silence sprang between them. It had not been wicked 
 at first; it had simply been rather wretched. Neither had 
 seemed to have anything more to say. And while Bob 
 fidgeted with his cigarette, Joanna had let herself slip under 
 a spell of inertness. But wickedly, after a few moments, 
 she had begun to wonder how long, left to itself, the silence 
 would last. At first she could not, now she would not 
 break it. What would Bob do? 
 
 She waited, her hostility increasing instant by instant till 
 she was perfect in hardness against him. And when he sprang 
 up, as if to him the situation was no longer bearable, a little 
 cold, satisfied flame shot up within her. But she was unpre- 
 pared. And when Bob strode to the back of her chair, thrust
 
 64 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 his hands under her armpits, and jerked her roughly to 
 her feet, it shocked her like an explosion. 
 
 For a second she stood outraged and quite still where he had 
 put her; then wrenching herself from his hold she walked to 
 the window without looking at him. 
 
 Bob followed, and they both stood staring out in consterna- 
 tion at the chimney-pots and the knotted meshes of telegraph 
 wires. 
 
 " You hurt my arms," said Joanna in a queer muted voice. 
 "Why did you?" 
 
 " I didn't know. I'm sorry." He too sounded strangled. 
 
 She glanced at him, but could make nothing of his face. 
 She had hoped to find strength there, but she saw him be- 
 wildered and quivering, cheated of his manhood. 
 
 " Truly I'm sorry," he repeated. " Somehow I couldn't 
 bear to see you sit still a moment longer, never thinking of 
 me at all. Kiss and be friends, Joanna! " 
 
 He eyed her guiltily, and guiltily she went into his arms. 
 They had not before felt so close to each other. 
 
 VI 
 
 When she was alone, however, Joanna remembered the 
 exasperation in Bob's touch. What had happened? She 
 did not know, though in her self infatuated humility she was 
 ready to lay all the blame at her own door. If she were to be 
 great in love, as she had dreamed, she would have to go 
 some other way about it. 
 
 With her brain on fire she devised a plan a fresh, sur- 
 prising way in which to shine before Bob; and that night 
 before going to bed she posted a note asking him to lunch 
 with her at the studio next day. 
 
 " Be sure," she wrote in the postscript, " to bring a new 
 penny with you. It's for something special. Don't fail 
 me." 
 
 After a restless night, she went out and ran in and out of 
 shops spending her pocket-money with a perilous elation, She 
 bought flowers, fruits, and the most tempting luncheon food 
 that she could find. She even went to a licensed grocer for 
 the first time in her life, and asked for a bottle of their very 
 best champagne. Never having seen, much less tasted cham- 
 pagne, she imagined a ruby-colored vintage in the tiny bottle 
 all trussed up in gilt paper, for which the man asked twelve-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 65 
 
 and-sixpence. Willingly she would have given him all the 
 money left in her purse. 
 
 The next thing was wine-glasses, for there were none at 
 home, and Joanna bought two that caught her fancy in the 
 window of a second-hand dealer. Set exquisitely on their 
 octagonal stems, they were like the calyxes of water-lilies, 
 and the ancient flint glass from which they had been cut, 
 seemed to imprison the faint green shimmer of river water and 
 the criss-cross of reeds. 
 
 When Bob arrived he was dumbfounded by the extrava- 
 gance of these preparations, and by the convulsive welcome in 
 Joanna's embrace. She asked him at once if he had brought 
 his new penny, and he showed it to her, wondering. Seeing 
 her corybantic face, he felt afraid, even a little sheepish. 
 
 She would not answer any questions, but made him uncork 
 the champagne, and cried out in amused distress when, instead 
 of ruby, a pool of amber rose hissing in one of the wine glasses. 
 He laughed too, then making her sit on his knees, and some 
 of her strange gaiety diffused itself into his veins also. 
 
 " As we are engaged," said Joanna radiantly, " I want you 
 to give me an engagement ring. It's always done, you know! " 
 And she paused a moment, rejoicing in her lover's clear dis- 
 comfort. 
 
 " You see, Mother and Mabel know now," she continued 
 smoothly. 
 
 " They do, do they? " 
 
 Saying this, Bob sat up, almost dislodging Joanna, but she 
 clung to him, and with eyes full of cruel tenderness, watched 
 his trouble grow. 
 
 " Well, why not? " she challenged gently. " You told 
 Georgie and your father. I really only told Mabel. And 
 Mabel, though I said she musn't, told Mother. It was mean 
 of her, but is there any reason why they shouldn't both know 
 now? " 
 
 " Of course not, no reason. Only " Bob broke off 
 
 to begin afresh with " What did she say? Did she mind? " 
 
 " Mother? No. She was nice about it, especially when 
 I told her it would be years before we could get married, or 
 even tell people we were engaged." 
 
 " H'm, she'll want to speak to me, though." 
 
 " She does. Do you mind? " 
 
 " Of course not."
 
 66 
 
 But Bob did mind. Joanna knew by his slackened hold on 
 her. In the little silence she stood up and began to tidy her 
 hair at the mirror over the mantlepiece. 
 
 " And Mabel? " Bob asked presently. 
 
 Joanna turned smiling broadly with her arms still raised, 
 and she had never been more attractive to him than at this 
 moment. " Mabel asked me to show her my ring," she 
 replied. 
 
 " So that's why you want me to give you a ring? " 
 
 " Don't be a silly, Bob! I only want to wear something 
 you've given me." 
 
 " Do you think I haven't thought of it? " said the young 
 man wretchedly. " I haven't any money now, but as soon 
 as I have " 
 
 <r O Bob dear! " Joanna sang to him with ringing sweetness, 
 " It isn't a real engagement ring with diamonds on it I want. 
 A bit of string or an elastic band would do perfectly if it could 
 be made to last. That's why I got you to bring the penny 
 to-day. Show it to me again." 
 
 Coming close to him she collapsed softly on the floor with 
 her hands on his knees, and she looked up at him with shining 
 eyes of false worship. 
 
 " Now this is what I want you to do," she told him. " Give 
 the penny to George and get him to put it in the puncher down 
 at the yard. He did one for Mamie once. You'll see what a 
 perfect ring it makes, with the date inside and everything 
 just like a wedding ring and then you'll put it on my finger, 
 and I'll wear it for ever and ever." 
 
 Bob pulled her to him and hugged her between his knees, 
 fond, but in misery. 
 
 " You are splendid, Joanna," he said, " I'm far too com- 
 monplace for you. You should marry a poet, or something 
 or other of that sort." 
 
 Though she was flattered by it, Joanna did not like this 
 remark. She became very still in his arms, then withdrew a 
 little, sitting back childlishly on her heels. 
 
 " You know what I said that day on the bridge in the Botanic 
 Gardens? " she began, not looking at his face. 
 
 " What, particularly? " 
 
 " About your always, always loving me? " 
 
 "Yes."
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 67 
 
 " And the first time you kissed me I made you promise never 
 to kiss anybody else? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " That was all wrong," she insisted beginning to glow again. 
 " Last night I was thinking things over. If people love each 
 other they shouldn't make bargains or tie each other down 
 (much less of course if they don't love each other). I want 
 you to feel quite, quite free. And if you should ever stop 
 wanting me, you aren't to feel bad or anything. You are 
 just to tell me straight out. That is to be our sort of engage- 
 ment." 
 
 She took Bob's hand, but there was no response in it, even 
 when she laid her cheek against it. 
 
 " I suppose you mean it's the same on your side too? " 
 asked Bob taking his hand away. 
 
 For a moment Joanna felt the impulse to unsay all that she 
 had said. And with the slightest encouragement she would 
 have thrown her arms around him, giving and demanding 
 afresh the immemorial vows of love. But there was that in his 
 downcast eye and twitching cheek which kept her isolated. 
 
 " Surely," she said dully, instead. " You wouldn't want 
 to hold me against my will? " 
 
 " You know I shouldn't! " 
 
 " Well, neither should I you. That's all I mean." 
 
 So Joanna's carefully planned betrothal feast ended in 
 flatness. 
 
 VII 
 
 Within the next week Bob received three letters from his 
 father. They were grave and affectionate, containing no 
 definite reproach, but flying unmistakable signals of distress. 
 There was an appeal in their restrained exhaustion, and the 
 son knew that the writing of them had cost something. 
 
 Bob had his talk too with Juley, and though she had been 
 kind, he came away writhing. He had barely escaped having 
 to kneel down on the parlor floor with her to pray for guid- 
 ance in a matter of such moment as the joining of his life with 
 another's. 
 
 As for Mabel, she had congratulated him with a sly touch of 
 amusement in her eyes which made him redden uncomfort- 
 ably afterwards, and often at Collessie Street he noticed her
 
 68 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 calculating glance pass between himself and his betrothed as 
 though there were for Mabel some secret edification in their 
 connection. 
 
 He hated going to Collessie Street, and always tried to get 
 Joanna to meet him outside or at her studio. But early one 
 afternoon he was caught in a heavy shower in town, and ran 
 in to the Bannerman's house for shelter. Joanna was not 
 there, but Mabel was, and Bob and she sat talking until 
 Joanna should come in. 
 
 Before ten minutes had passed, Bob became aware that he 
 was enjoying himself as he had not enjoyed himself for weeks. 
 Mabel was wonderfully pleasant company. She made none 
 of that emotional demand on him that he was conscious of 
 when he was with Joanna. She neither exalted him into 
 something that he was not, nor pushed him into a mere pup- 
 pet's place. His manhood expanded itself in Mabel's sensual 
 warmth, and it was a relief that she did not touch his imagina- 
 tion. He began to have a glimmering of what was wrong 
 between him and Joanna. She would not let him be himself. 
 She had no use for the man in him the man he essentially 
 was. She did not even see what he was, much less love it. 
 Mabel never got near his emotions; he felt no excitement 
 sitting here with her: yet she went straight to the male in 
 him, recognized it, made him feel pleased to be what he was. 
 She interested his mind too, and he found himself watching 
 her face. Even when she was not talking, he found himself 
 wondering what were her thoughts. Why had it never struck 
 him before that Mabel was clever? But just as he was ask- 
 ing himself this, Mabel invited him with a sigh to sympathize 
 with her stupidity. 
 
 " Joanna, now, makes me feel so commonplace and silly, 
 you can't think! " she said. " She's like a person in 4 a book. I 
 always think, don't you? But I never succeed in being any- 
 thing but ordinary and stupid." 
 
 " I shouldn't have thought you were stupid whatever you 
 were," replied Bob. He was smiling at her, his eyes lively and 
 a little teasing. If he had had a mustache he would have 
 twisted it upwards. 
 
 " Oh! but I am." Mabel gave him a look of earnest inno- 
 cence, leaning forward and hugging her knees as if for com- 
 fort. " I shouldn't like you to know how stupid. For instance 
 do you know I haven't yet picked up Double Dutch, though
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 69 
 
 Georgia says it's easy as easy, and Sholto could do it when he 
 was six." 
 
 Bob laughed. " It's only a catch. Do you mean to say 
 you really don't know how to do it? " 
 
 " Really and truly," Mabel assured him. " If you'll try 
 to teach me," she begged meekly, " you'll see for yourself what 
 a little idiot I am." 
 
 Bob knew it was all humbug. But it was trifling, feminine 
 humbug, and behind its shallow pretence Mabel and he under- 
 stood each other and were at ease. He despised and rather 
 liked her. Above all he was grateful to her. It was good to 
 feel himself a man, even to feel a little manly contempt for a 
 girl's trickiness. He could not feel contempt for Joanna even 
 when she was most absurd. 
 
 When Joanna came in she found them chattering between 
 bursts of laughter in the long withheld language, and she 
 knew at once how happy the two had been. Her greeting 
 to Bob was forcedly casual, and soon, Mabel with an elaborate 
 assumption that nothing was amiss, left the parlor. Joanna, 
 who had walked over to the window, stood there biting her 
 lips to keep from crying. 
 
 " What's up? " asked Bob. And he had persuaded himself 
 into speaking rather truculently. (WTiy, from Joanna's man- 
 ner one would think he had been caught kissing Mabel, when 
 surely never on earth had there been a more innocent con- 
 versation! ) 
 
 Joanna turned on him in passionate mortification. " You 
 know perfectly well that we never allowed Mabel to learn 
 Double Dutch! " 
 
 " But Jo! You don't mean to say you keep up a babyish 
 thing like that, now we're grown up. I'd forgotten all about 
 it. Anyway what in the world does it matter, her knowing 
 it, if she wants to? " 
 
 "Don't call me 'Jo'; I hate it! You knew perfectly 
 well," the girl repeated. 
 
 " I tell you it never occurred to me that there was still 
 anything in an old thing like that." 
 
 Meeting under Mabel's eyes, they had not kissed each other, 
 and now it struck both of them at the same moment that if 
 only they could kiss quickly all might be well. But they 
 could not approach each other. Under Bob's wretchedness 
 he was setting hard and triumphant against her, and Joanna
 
 70 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 while she could feel it could do nothing. She could only wait. 
 But she had a fierce longing for him to lay things bare for 
 both of them. 
 
 " I want to talk to you, Joanna." 
 
 " Go on," she muttered. She leaned by the misted fern- 
 case, and behind her the grass in the back garden sloped 
 vivid against the gray afternoon storm, and the newly laid 
 path stood out ruddy with wetness. 
 
 " How can I, if you stand like that with your back to me? " 
 His petulant voice was attractive to her, but when she turned 
 and sat down to hear him, she was frozen again, seeing his 
 propitiating glance. 
 
 Blind she was to his pathos and his decency. She could 
 only hate him for being afraid of her, and she hated herself 
 for having made him afraid. She would like him to have 
 beaten her and made her his, but instead he was cringing now in 
 expectation of punishment. So she sat aloof and forbidding, 
 her hands folded, watching her power in misuse. 
 
 " I feel a beast, Joanna" he began at last; and she knew 
 by his voice how his lower lip was trembling. " But you know 
 what you said that day at the studio? " 
 
 For assent she could only look up. She could not speak. 
 She knew now what was coming, and with all the energy of 
 her egoism she was preparing to meet the shock without a 
 cry. He should see how she could stand by her bargain! 
 
 " I find I'm not so sure of myself as I ought to be, which 
 isn't fair to you," he continued. " Besides you asked me to 
 tell you if I wasn't, didn't you? And you said you'd tell me 
 if you weren't? " Bob knew this was an untrue beginning 
 but it came handy. The larger truth he was grappling with 
 was too difficult. 
 
 " The fact is you are far too good for me" he said; and he 
 stopped in despair. 
 
 But now it was out. That was something. He had only 
 to wait for Joanna. Her eyes were downcast again, and she 
 was so still that Bob longed for an explosion. A little cool 
 excitement took him, as it often did in the laboratory when he 
 watched a test-tube for the verification of some risky hypo- 
 thesis. What would she do? 
 
 " Are you in love with Mabel? " she asked after a moment, 
 and in the chasm of silence that followed, their glances clashed 
 injuriously.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 71 
 
 "No, of course not! " Bob's voice was sincerely indignant, 
 but by the light of this indignation there flashed in Joanna a 
 clear outline, like a map thrown upon an illuminated screen. 
 
 " But being with Mabel makes you feel you aren't sure 
 about me? " she said. 
 
 " Perhaps," Bob admitted slowly. " But I'm not in love 
 with Mabel," he added. " You can take that from me. I'm 
 not never was, never will be." 
 
 Though he struggled nearer to the truth now, it still remained 
 beyond his grasp that Joanna with her romantic cravings had 
 sent him smack to the merely sensual Mabel, and that, as 
 things were, a man's love could not thrive with neither. 
 
 A sudden resigned sadness descended on Joanna, blotting 
 out emotion for the time with its lassitude. It was all too 
 difficult for her to understand. She felt a faint nausea, and 
 only longed to be alone. There was no inclination either to 
 plead or to weep. In a sort of dream she listened to her own 
 voice calmly releasing Bob. What was it to him that she 
 saw the remainder of life stretching before her like a dull dusty 
 road? There was not one kind thought in her for him. He 
 had failed her and made her fail. Still in a dream she watched 
 herself take him to the door and shake his hand mechani- 
 cally. 
 
 But Bob lingered on the steps. And as he looked at her 
 standing there six inches above him on the door-mat, staring 
 past him at the rain, the truth broke from him. It hurt him, 
 and he hoped it would hurt her. 
 
 " If only you had cared one bit for me, Joanna! " 
 
 " 7, for you! " Joanna looked at him now. 
 
 " Yes, that has been it. You've never cared a straw 
 only for yourself, and for something . . . Ideas perhaps, I 
 don't know what . . . never for me." 
 
 At this something seemed to snap in Joanna's brain, and the 
 gray street danced scarlet before her eyes. She raised her 
 right hand, swung it far back, and putting strength into the 
 open palm, struck the side of Bob's fascinated face. 
 
 His bowler hat bounded down the steps with an absurd 
 hollow sound at each contact, and rolled across the wet pave- 
 ment to rest on the grating of an overworked drain. And 
 after one petrified moment he followed it, his hand to his stung 
 cheek. But before he picked it up Joanna was gone into 
 the house and the door was shut.
 
 72 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 vnr 
 
 She ran back to the parlor. For a minute she remained 
 furious, glowing from her undreamed-of action, but this faded 
 quickly and left her ill with chagrin. Who could have fore- 
 seen such an ending to heroic love? What had happened? 
 She must think? No. She must not think! Not yet. Not 
 for some time. 
 
 The noise of some one stirring in the room overhead inter- 
 rupted her at her task of blindfolding thought. There was a 
 sound as if a book had been dropped, and the crystals on the 
 chandeliers tinkled from the vibration. Mabel! Yes, it 
 must be Mabel in the drawing-room. Mabel, sitting smiling 
 to herself! Perhaps she had been at the window had seen 
 what had happened. Joanna felt her vanity flayed. 
 
 It was a relief however having to call upon her energies, so 
 as to escape the slanting, malicious sympathy of her cousin's 
 eyes; and stealing from the parlor she went on tiptoe to 
 the hat stand where she had thrown her wet coat on coming 
 in. As if in league with her action, there was a sudden, reso- 
 lute reinforcement in the sound of the rain outside; and some 
 unconscious instinct of care made the girl take off the trimmed 
 hat she was wearing, and pull on instead, the old tammy in 
 which she had met Bob the first time. 
 
 Once outside she ran in terror, turning uphill at the first 
 corner so as to get quickly out of range of the windows. . 
 
 The heavens were emptying themselves with determined 
 violence, and Joanna rejoiced in the downpour. She gave 
 herself to it, lifting her face to the drench. Soon she stopped 
 running, but held to a rapid walk, as though bound on some 
 definite errand. "I mustn't think! I musn't think!" she 
 told herself, making the words keep time with her foot- 
 falls " Not till I get away. Not till I find a place to hide in." 
 
 Soon she was in a road where green tram-cars were running. 
 She swung herself on to a westward-bound car between stop- 
 ping places, and enjoyed the excitement of the spring. There 
 were empty seats inside, but Joanna climbed upstairs. 
 
 The straight rain came down torrential, and recoiled hiss- 
 ing from the stone setts. The dark slate roofs gleamed against 
 a slowly lightening pall of sky as if they had been varnished. 
 On the exposed Kelvin Bridge a few shining umbrellas hurried 
 and fought their way across to the comparative shelter of the
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 73 
 
 houses at each end. Joanna, with fierce satisfaction grew 
 wetter and wetter. Perhaps she would get pneumonia and die. 
 Father had died of pneumonia. But she felt beautifully warm 
 from her run. 
 
 When the car reached the terminus, she got down and struck 
 off sharply to the right her quickest way of reaching wooded 
 country. After passing some unsightly tenement blocks and 
 crossing the canal, she took an uphill bend between hedges 
 in which last year's leaves rattled fretfully. It was a narrow 
 lane, and for a while she was kept back by a horse and cart. 
 1'he big, beautiful bulk of the horse was strained to the in- 
 cline in a cloud of steam, and steam flew back in gusts from 
 its nostrils. But Joanna must go on: so she ran up the slippery 
 bank, and was soon far ahead. With every step she fled back 
 to her childhood, back to tlia protection of dreams. She was 
 seeking the woods as Juley would have taken refuge in prayer.. 
 She had failed and must find comfort. There was not yet in 
 her the strength to face failure uncomforted. 
 
 And at last she was in the country, though it was all wrapped 
 in cold clouds and mist. There were pastures now on either 
 side, divided by gray stone dykes. A mare on the road shied 
 badly at the lines of white water standing in the fields, and 
 her rider, bowing before the arrowy rain, punished her reeking 
 flanks viciously with his crop. 
 
 Still further on, the road crossed a stream that flowed level 
 with its banks. It was the color of flint, and the white, angry 
 little crests on its surface were like parings of horn. Joanna 
 pulled off her gloves, took Bob's penny ring from her finger, 
 and dropped it into the water. It disappeared without a 
 splash. That was done, anyhow! Her gloves were too wet to 
 put on again: so she flung them after the ring. 
 
 At the next turn in the road she saw what she wanted. Up 
 to the left, beyond a hilly field, a fringe of trees ran along 
 a crest of high ground, and they were like the trees on the 
 way to the Upper Pond at Duntarvie. At once Joanna left the 
 road, squeezed through an unlatched gate, and with her feet 
 sinking at each step deeper in sopping cattle-tracks, she made 
 for her wooded summit. 
 
 When she reached the trees she rejoiced to find that they 
 were mostly beeches. Their trunks, wrinkled and sweating, 
 were stained in dark patches with the rain, and the floor of 
 dead foliage glowed purple and sodden. As the girl wound
 
 74 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 her arms round one of the strong, lovely trees, pressing her 
 cheek against its wet hide, a thrush flew out from the under- 
 growth with a disturbed chudkling cry. 
 
 Now was the time to think things out clearly and bravely 
 to find out what had happened, and to face it. But she no- 
 ticed a leaf that fluttered captive, pierced by a sharp twig, and 
 first she must set it free. Next a blackbird distracted her 
 attention. He sat grooming himself for some minutes; then 
 flew off with a spatter of raindrops. 
 
 So instead of thinking, Joanna sat on the driest log she could 
 find, and slipped moment by moment deeper into the familiar 
 softness of dreams. Soon, very soon, the false image Bob had 
 shattered, pieced itself together again, and she saw herself 
 again in the shape of her vanity. Was not this her supreme 
 opportunity? Could she not prove to Bob what it was that 
 he had cast aside? Yes, she would go on loving him in spite 
 of himself loving him and waiting. She- had a vision of his 
 returning penitent and impassioned after many years, to find 
 her true, unreproachful, angelically forgiving. He would re- 
 turn of his own free will, after long pining in vain for a word, 
 a sign from her. Glowing, she imagined the moment when 
 he would rush across continents to fling himself at her feet 
 (the intervening years having flashed by like minutes). 
 
 But there ran as usual on the heels of Joanna's fantasy the 
 necessity for concrete action. Bob was leaving the day after 
 to-morrow. Her first notion had been neither to see him nor 
 to answer any letter he might write, but to wait silently 
 through the years. But suppose he neither came nor wrote? 
 Then he would never know of her heroic decision a thing 
 not to be contemplated. No, she must see him that night 
 before she slept. But how? If she called at the Boyds' 
 house she was unlikely to see him alone. 
 
 This small but practical difficulty, with its demand on re- 
 source, was refreshing; and even before her plan was com- 
 plete, hope danced in Joanna's veins once more. Perhaps 
 after all she would not have to wait for years! Voluptuously 
 she saw herself begging for Bob's forgiveness. She wallowed 
 beforehand in their mutual abasement which was to end with 
 fresh avowals and herself enthroned. 
 
 So she descended from her beech-grown height and made 
 for town again, tucking her wet hair up under the woolen cap 
 that was heavy with rain.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 75 
 
 In the tram-car a young man with a small mustache stared 
 persistently at her, and when she alighted he followed her with 
 his eyes as long as he could. This was by no means displeas- 
 ing to Joanna, but she told herself how glad she was that Bob 
 had no mustache. 
 
 At a stationer's she bought notepaper and a pencil, and 
 without pausing, scribbled this note to Bob: 
 
 " Come out and see me for a minute. I do want to speak 
 to you. I'm waiting in the close next door. Joanna." 
 
 Having addressed it, she walked quivering towards High 
 Kelvin Place; and the first likely errand boy that passed, was 
 waylaid by her and told how he might earn a six pence if he 
 were clever. Several times he had to repeat his instructions 
 before Joanna would let him go. 
 
 And the plan worked smoothly! The messenger had 
 scarcely claimed his money when Bob stepped bareheaded out 
 of the Boyds' house. He looked in his odd blind way to one 
 side and another before he discovered Joanna, and watching 
 him she felt faint with excitement. 
 
 " I say, you are wet, Joanna! " was his first remark when 
 they had met. Her skirts dripped on the stone flags, and Bob 
 touched her soaked sleeve timidly. Rings of hair, curled and 
 darkened by the rain, lay close against her cheeks. He found 
 her freshened face splendid. 
 
 " Where on earth have you been? How did you manage to 
 send me this? " And he flicked the note which was still in 
 his hand. 
 
 Joanna told him how she had gone into the country and had 
 thrown his ring into a river. But before she could disclose her 
 intention of loving him for ever, she saw that Bob was look- 
 ing on the ground, and she knew herself in the wrong 
 again. It was all no use. His only suggestion was that 
 she should change quickly into dry clothes. That was all 
 then! But what were his thoughts? How unfair, that she 
 could not that she never would know! This unfairness 
 it was that goaded her into asking him again if he loved 
 Mabel; and she really longed for his admission. But no. 
 He still denied it; and she believed him. He did not love 
 Mabel. 
 
 Then why? Why? (How gladly would Joanna have put 
 him on the rack if so she could have wrung some damaging 
 thing from him.)
 
 76 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 But he would only say with maddening quietness that one 
 couldn't argue about a feeling. 
 
 " Good night, then," said Joanna, unable suddenly for more; 
 and she left him, going down the steps. 
 
 Yet when Bob uttered her name with pleading, she had to 
 look back. 
 
 " Aren't you going to kiss me good-by? " he asked. 
 
 She stood amazed at him; and the notion that he was an 
 idiot careered through her brain. Either he was an idiot, or 
 what he had just said was for ever inexcusable. 
 
 But instead of widening the distance between them, Joanna 
 went on looking over her shoulder at him, and she saw how 
 dejectedly he lingered in the dark entrance. He was going 
 away the day after to-morrow, and was asking for a good-by 
 kiss. Why would she not give one? 
 
 In all simplicity now, she ran back to him. And in the 
 shadow of the close she threw her arms round his neck and 
 pressed her shell-cold face to his. To Bob it was the sweetest 
 of their few kisses; but it was a farewell kiss, and short, and 
 he let. her go. 
 
 This time she ran from him without looking back. 
 
 IX 
 
 She did not see Bob again before he left, and with his going 
 her life became empty. All charm and interest went from 
 her studies; and before long her manifest indifference had its 
 effect upon her teachers. They ceased to feel any profes- 
 sional responsibility where she was concerned. She became a 
 notorious shirker of classes, and passed much time in listless 
 dabbling at her studio. Sometimes she lapsed for hours into 
 solitary idleness. 
 
 And at home it was worse. At home there was a jarring on 
 the girl's exposed nerves at every turn. Juley's late nights 
 were telling at last on her health. She was losing her wonder- 
 ful recuperative power, and she suffered from swollen ankles. 
 The children knew now when she had slept more on her chair 
 than in her bed, by a puffiness that showed round her eyes 
 in the mornings. But nothing they could do or say made any 
 difference, so they were all cutting adrift from her. 
 
 Georgie in the Autumn was going to London. She returned 
 from Dresden late in June, her dream of emulating Neruda 
 gone, but her enthusiasm intact. A Dresden fellow-student
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 77 
 
 with a new system of teaching children was opening a small 
 music-school in Hampstead, and she had asked Georgie to 
 help her. Georgie's capital a sum of 400 which she and 
 Joanna alike had by their father's will would be involved. 
 But what a chance after only one year's study abroad! So 
 Georgie got her way. 
 
 There remained the boys: and though they were full of 
 their own occupations, their activities brought the curves of 
 their lives nearer to Joanna's than they had been since nursery 
 days. 
 
 Linnet, with a mind to the Law, and a berth promised him 
 in Mr. Boyd's excellent firm, was preparing for Leaving Cer- 
 tificates. He was studious rather than clever, and often he 
 would come to Joanna begging her to " go over " an English 
 essay, or he would ask her advice on a mathematical problem, 
 the principles of which had first to be explained to her, so far 
 behind had he left his sister in school subjects. 
 
 Sholto on the other hand dreamed Imperial dreams which 
 wavered constantly between Canada and Australia. He loved 
 open air, the exercise of his muscles, and all handicrafts. As 
 soon as he left the Academy he was going to the Argicultural 
 College, after which, before leaving the country he would ap- 
 prentice himself to some farmer in the Lowlands. Meanwhile 
 he spent his leisure in a shed in the back-green where he had 
 a carpenter's bench. He made stools, and medicine-cupboards, 
 and little tables, and afterwards poker-worked them to his 
 immense satisfaction. And though Joanna from her Art School 
 heights despised such a facile mode of decoration, she couldn't 
 help growing interested when he asked her for designs. At 
 Christmas-time especially, they turned out between them 
 heaps of "blotters" and photograph-frames; and in return 
 for his sister's help, Sholto would gladly devote a whole Satur- 
 day afternoon to her when she was trying to turn the shed 
 stove into a furnace for enamel-work. 
 
 But after Bob's kisses there was no more savor for Joanna 
 in her brothers' companionship, and she had a miserable sum- 
 mer. She was glad of one thing only, that Mabel had gone 
 back to stay with Aunt Ellen. 
 
 She was too dispirited even to protest against the small and 
 hideous villa which Juley took for two months on one of the 
 Clyde lochs. And although the boys enjoyed the sea-fishing 
 and knocking about in boats, all five got badly on each other's
 
 78 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 nerves during the holiday. Georgie resented not having been 
 consulted in the choice of a place. They might at least have 
 remembered that she hated the Clyde, and felt ill there. A 
 cold and rainy season did not help. Georgie criticized un- 
 ceasingly, and unceasingly practiced her fiddle in the only 
 sitting-room. Her diligence, as Janet the cook said, was " some- 
 thing awful." Now and then Georgie would demand of the 
 others if they didn't notice the extraordinary difference in 
 her tone, due to Dresden; and if the answer was doubtful, 
 she argued the point till a definitely favorable reply was forth- 
 coming. Once when Sholto stuck to his guns and insisted 
 that it sounded the very same as before, she said, " Well, it 
 can't be helped what you think; I know it's quite different! " 
 Absence had made her very sensitive to the failings of her 
 family, and she girded particularly at her mother. Then 
 Sholto, who could be as inimical to his mother as any of them, 
 would step out as her champion. Georgie and he had always 
 been peculiarly capable of irritating each other, and now they 
 squabbled maddeningly over trifles. Linnet took to mooning. 
 Joanna was quiet and wretched. Juley with many tears 
 prayed for guidance and forgiveness. 
 
 Yet were there hours when for a quiet breathing-space the 
 five seemed to regain something of their forgotten early har- 
 mony. 
 
 One promising afternoon Joanna and Georgie packed a 
 picnic-basket, and with rugs and a kettle they all climbed 
 the hill behind the house. Sholto pushed his mother up the 
 steepest places with such vigor that she laughed like a school- 
 girl with her clear bell-like laugh. Then when they had sat 
 down and spread out their belongings, Linnet took her shoes 
 off, and Joanna pulled out the toes of her thick cashmere 
 stockings in the way Juley loved because it eased her poor 
 feet. Next Georgie massaged the tell-tale ankles, remonstrat- 
 ing with them, but more gently than usual, while the others 
 ran here and there, calling to each other in echoing voices, 
 and collecting wood and dry bits of heather for the fire. 
 Joanna was always happy tending a fire, and the boiling of 
 the kettle was her special charge. After tea they even for- 
 bore to object when Juley read out to them from Asia's Mil- 
 lions how the Gospel was spreading among mandarins. 
 
 Yet another interval of reunion was to remain as a happy 
 memory.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 79 
 
 It had been raining since dawn, but towards evening the 
 sky cleared, and Linnet suggested that they should all go 
 fishing in the bay. It was a job to get started, but once down 
 the steep lane from the house Juley was easy to manage. 
 With encouraging cries the four hauled the rowing-boat down 
 the stony beach: and Juley, very heavy and awkward, was 
 helped aboard from the little jetty. When they had anchored 
 over the fishing-ground, quarreled amicably over the lines, 
 and baited their hooks, the mother gazed at the lingering sun- 
 set and felt that Heaven was very near to earth. Memories 
 of the early days of her motherhood brought happy tears, 
 and she turned her swimming eyes from the radiant West to 
 her full-grown sons and daughters beside her. Georgie was 
 exclaiming excitedly as she wound in the jerking line. She was 
 sure it was either three whiting at once or an enormous dog- 
 fish which Sholto would have trouble in killing. And when a 
 very small but vigorous lythe appeared over the side they all 
 shouted with laughter at her. Joanna caught three flounders 
 running, through forgetting to pull her hooks a yard up from the 
 bottom ; but Juley said she liked flounders better than whiting, 
 and was going to have these cooked for supper that very night. 
 Linnet had no luck at all, and kept shifting his tackle from 
 one side to the other, till at last he got settled in the bows with 
 his norfolk-coated back to his mother, and she noticed how like 
 his father he was growing about the shoulders, one hitched a 
 little higher than the other. Sholto astern, held his line be- 
 tween his knees. Both his hands were busy with a Jew's harp. 
 It was, he said, the appropriate instrument for the son of a 
 Mother in Israel! 
 
 Then as the deliberate Northern night drew on, and they 
 began to feel cold, they shipped the anchor and rowed back, 
 the four taking an oar each. Being used to boats since they 
 could remember, all rowed well. At the end of each stroke 
 the phosphorescence streamed from their blades simultane- 
 ously, and went swarming like millions of fireflies into the 
 black water. And keeping time with their strokes the Banner- 
 mans sang. They sang " A Southerly wind and a Cloudy 
 sky," and many old rounds and catches they had learned in 
 the nursery from their father for Sholto, in his youth had 
 been a great choir-member. And their voices, on the quiet 
 stretch of hill-shadowed loch, sounded very happy, very youth- 
 ful and plaintive. Juley could not join in for tears: beside*.
 
 80 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 though she had a pretty voice, she was apt, she knew, to go 
 out of tune, and she would not for anything have spoiled her 
 children's singing. 
 
 But in autumn, with Georgie gone, Mabel again in Edin- 
 burgh, and the old life in Collessie Street resumed, Joanna 
 sank into a kind of marasmus a wasting without fever or 
 apparent disease. 
 
 She still found Bob's behavior quite baffling, and spasmodi- 
 cally the hope still sprang in her that he would return at 
 length with some undreamed-of explanation. But here was 
 no sustenance for life, and as the weeks dragged on she felt 
 so sore and lonely that she would even have welcomed the 
 return of Mabel*
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ONE day upon coming into the house she found a letter 
 waiting for her on the lobby table. 
 
 She knew at once that it wasn't from Bob (her first glance 
 on coming in was always at the lobby table in case there might 
 be a letter from him, and anything else was a disappointment). 
 But this letter or rather package had some interest. It 
 was rolled up carelessly in a newspaper wrapper, stamped with 
 an Italian stamp, and marked Manoscritti, to save in postage. 
 
 She would have opened it at once, but her hands were full, 
 and she was tired. So she took it unopened to her bedroom, 
 and threw it on the bed while she rid herself of her outdoor 
 clothes. She kicked off her shoes in the way her mother never 
 ceased to deplore, tossed her hat upon the chest of drawers, and 
 her coat across a chair. 
 
 How tired she was! 
 
 Stooping to the mirror on the dressing table, and thrusting 
 back her hair with both hands, she peered at her face in the 
 fading light. She was certainly rather white, and there were 
 blue, pathetic shadows under her eyes. 
 
 A wave of self-pity swept over her. People said youth was 
 a happy time. She knew better. And there and then she 
 determined that she would harbor no such sentiment in old 
 age. 
 
 " Don't forget," she adjured herself " Don't ever let your- 
 self forget that when you were young you were very, very 
 unhappy." And throwing herself with the utmost dejection 
 upon the bed, she lay there staring at the ceiling. 
 
 Oh, how familiar that ceiling was! There in the middle 
 were the plugged-up holes in the plaster showing where the 
 trapeze had hung, in the days when the room was a nursery. 
 And there in one corner was a net-work of cracks like a map. 
 Long ago Joanna had connected this net-work with her mother's 
 weekly petition at prayers for " India, China and the Distant 
 Islands of the Sea." And looking at it now, she wished 
 
 81
 
 82 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 vehemently that she had been born in one of these remote 
 lands. She was certain that no one in China or the Distant 
 Isles could be so bereft of life as she. Why, in India girls 
 married at twelve. And we were asked to be sorry for them! 
 
 As she stretched out her arms in a gesture of weariness, the 
 back of her hand came against the forgotten letter. There it 
 was, still unopened! 
 
 She remained supine: she would -barely admit the diver- 
 sion: but she lost not a moment in stripping off the wrapper. 
 And in no time then she was sitting upright to smooth out the 
 flimsy foreign sheets against her knee. They were so crossed 
 and re-crossed as to be legible only with difficulty; but she 
 had glanced at the end, and with a queer little shock of excite- 
 ment had discovered who the writer was. 
 
 It was a letter from Aunt Perdy in Italy. 
 
 After some re-shuffling Joanna found the beginning. 
 
 " My dear child and niece," she read 
 
 " You will no doubt be surprised to hear from me, and 
 possibly your mother will be displeased at my writing. But 
 the latter cannot be helped; and as for the former, Life is, and 
 ever will be full of surprises for you as for me. How, you ask, 
 do I know this? Ebbene, as we say here; I will tell you. 
 This morning (it is now evening, and from my lonely cot as I 
 write I can see the sun dropping behind my beloved Carraras 
 like a ball of fire) I was clearing an old trunk when I came 
 upon a family birthday book. To refresh my memory I be- 
 gan looking through it (the quotations for each day are from 
 our dear Robbie Burns), and what do you think I found? 
 Why, that the only two births in March for our family are 
 yours and my own. Do you realize what that means, Joanna? 
 No, you do not. But your Aunt Perdy will tell you; for she 
 has devoted years of her life to studying the wondrous signs 
 of the Zodiac. And March the month of Aries The Ram, i.e. 
 The Lamb is the most mystical month of the twelve. It 
 is in March that the earth is born afresh every year. Our 
 Saviour was born in March, not in December as is vulgarly 
 supposed (though I will not go into that now), and the Chosen 
 of God those who are sent into the world to teach and to 
 suffer Ah, above all, my Joanna, to Suffer see the light under 
 the celestial dominion of The Lamb which was from the 
 Foundation of the world. To Suffer, but also to Rejoice, as 
 those born in any of the other months know not joy."
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 83 
 
 Here followed a rough diagram of the Zodiacal signs. 
 
 " This then," ran the letter again " is why I write to you, 
 of all my kindred. Though you are of a younger generation, 
 and I doubt not that whatever you have heard of me from your 
 deluded, conventional father and my poor weak sister, must 
 have prejudiced you against me. Probably also you are stupid. 
 But you were born in March; and this gives me hope that my 
 voice will pierce through all the falseness and deadness enclos- 
 ing a sister soul. I believe that some day you will come out 
 to this glorious land of liberty, and sunshine, this refuge of 
 great-hearted exiles like myself, like dear Byron, like Shelley, 
 
 and a host of others to whom freedom was life ' ; The 
 
 letter ended with a fervent if indefinite invitation. 
 
 Joanna's interest was excited. She resented her Aunt's 
 disparagement of her parents; the Zodiacal Signs did not 
 greatly impress her ; but she was roused because of the imme- 
 diate echoing of her own nature to Aunt Perdy's. The letter 
 meant to her far more than it said: and it did more than it 
 meant. It opened an unsuspected door of escape. She re- 
 membered now, of a sudden, how her mother had sometimes 
 sadly remarked upon a likeness between her and the strange 
 Aunt. This must now be verified, and instantly. 
 
 She ran downstairs to the drawing-room. And there, kneel-' 
 ing all eagerness before the inlaid cabinet, with its glass doors 
 at either side displaying missionary trophies, she lifted out the 
 family album. It had gilt-edged boards and brass clamps and 
 clasps, and lay heavy on her lap as she opened it. 
 
 Yes, here was Aunt Perdy, one of a group of quaint little 
 girls with long drawers showing under their funny dresses. 
 And here she was, coquettish in a voluminous riding-habit 
 looped up in half a dozen places, with her hair in a net, and a 
 tiny billy-cock hat tipped over her nose. And here again she 
 looked up from an open book, her chin in her hand, her pretty 
 elbow on a fringed table, her soul in her eyes. In all the full- 
 face portraits, the eyes rather more deeply set in the head 
 than Joanna's were remarkable, oracular in their intensity. 
 
 Earnestly searching for a likeness to herself, the girl found 
 it most clear in a carte-de-visite photograph in which her 
 Aunt was looking down at a baby on her knees, while a little 
 boy (surely Gerald?) leaned against his mother's full skirts, 
 his legs in their striped trousers mannishly crossed. Here the 
 capricious sunlight had proclaimed the resemblance unmistak-
 
 84 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 ably, and Joanna saw that it was one of contour rather than 
 of features. There was a faintly Japanese suggestion, a flat- 
 ness of structure. It must have been this, thought Joanna, 
 that had made Nilsson, one of the Art School masters, tell her 
 once how like she was to a primitive Siennese painting. 
 
 Then as she still searched the album, an idea blazed in her 
 mind. She would learn Italian! Why had she never thought 
 of it before? The word Italy had always held for her even 
 more than the ordinary measure of romance. Juley's eyes 
 had lightened when she talked to her children of Italy, much 
 as they lightened when she talked of Heaven. Grandpapa 
 Erskine, with his generous theory of education, had taken 
 his motherless daughters, while still in their teens, to Rome. 
 In Rome he had accepted the charge of the Presbyterian 
 church, and had begun to write his life of Hildebrand. In 
 Rome, later on, after forming many ties with the land of his 
 adoption, he had died. There were cousins of Joanna's in 
 Italy of whom she knew very little. Gerald had sisters while 
 another Erskine Aunt Minnie was married to a Frenchman, 
 and had a large family at Turin. They never came to Eng- 
 land; but they sent cards and photographs at Christmas time, 
 giving glimpses of a life wonderfully different from the life 
 in Glasgow. 
 
 And now had come this voice from Italy, claiming Joanna 
 out of all the connection as a kindred spirit. Surely it was 
 the voice of life? Surely she would answer it? And to begin 
 with, she would go to the Italian class at the University. The 
 session was just beginning. She would go to Gilmourhill to 
 make sure, that very afternoon. 
 
 ii 
 
 . Still enlivened with her thoughts she approached one of the 
 southern entrances of the park through which she was going 
 to the University, and there it came upon her with surprise 
 that she was walking amid beauty. The October day was 
 yielding up its breath in faint, dun-colored vapors, and the 
 poor and harsh outlines of this region had borrowed for the 
 time an appealing loveliness. Church-spires St. Jude's among 
 them and tall houses, mysterious at their bases, rose trium- 
 phantly through the sullied lower air to the serenely brooding 
 blue above, where they seemed suspended. And away to the
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 85 
 
 left on its hill, dominating the park, the Gothic University 
 stood high and black and alien against the sky. 
 
 Before entering by the wide iron gates, Joanna paused to 
 look. Here too, all was clothed with the magic of the hour. 
 By day, a squalid, railed enclosure where growing things found 
 a precarious life, the park showed itself now as a place of won- 
 der, a dim paradise, which, as the evening deepened, would 
 become murmurous with lovers. 
 
 In her full response, the girl drew an audible breath of 
 delight and entered. After all it was good at this moment 
 just to be alive, just to breathe. The desire came upon her for 
 liberated movement the deep-set human longing for wings. 
 If only one could flit, swift and noiseless through the haze. 
 She glanced behind her. It was barely the hour for lovers. 
 No one was in sight. 
 
 She chose one of the higher terraces on her right, where 
 many a time as a child she had bowled a hoop; and started 
 to run. Her feet made hardly any sound speeding along the 
 path of hard earth, and her light balanced body was exonerated 
 in its flight through the dusk. 
 
 But before reaching the flagstaff and the group of Crimean 
 guns that threaten the University from their height, she sat 
 down on a bench and stayed there motionless awhile. From 
 here she overlooked the whole park. Behind her curved the 
 topmost terrace, with its stone balustrade and its crown of 
 steep French roofs. Below, lay the level murkiness where 
 moving water was, and captive wild birds uttered disturbing 
 cries. Triple globes marked where the new granite bridge 
 spanned the Kelvin, and in places a pair of yellow lamps 
 showed how a cab threaded one of the wider ways. It was a 
 little world to itself, shut in and stuporose. But beyond it to 
 the south, where a brilliant segment of light marked its con- 
 fines, Joanna could see where the real world began. Nay, she 
 could hear, coming from the Clyde across all that distance yet 
 as if it were the beating of her own heart the dull, steady 
 pounding of the yards. 
 
 But when the first quiverings of pleasure were subsided, the 
 beauty and pathos of her surroundings became a trouble to 
 her, and she wondered, as she had wondered countless times 
 before, why this should be. Why was she not content simply 
 to admire and enjoy loveliness when she had perceived it? 
 Why must she suffer from the desire, herself, to be or do some
 
 86 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 loveliness? What was this ever thwarted need of her being 
 to give itself utterly to the achievement of she knew not what? 
 She recalled her mother's words years ago, on seeing the Clyde 
 shipping in sunshine, " Let us make our lives to match it." 
 And passionately Joanna wanted to conform to loveliness. 
 She longed to be in harmony with the beauty she had always 
 worshiped. But how? Perhaps, as Dr. Ranken had so often 
 used his pulpit to say, this desire ever unfulfilled, and this 
 oppression, proved that her home was in heaven, not on earth. 
 Her mother, she knew, believed this. And was there not 
 something in one's soul which proclaimed it to be true? 
 
 She rose slowly. She was tired again, and unhappy and 
 the evening was barren of magic. Still with a certain saving 
 stolidity she persevered in her resolution and walked on to the 
 University. 
 
 There she learned that she was too late, as the matriculation 
 office was closed for the day. It was scarcely a disappointment. 
 
 On her way out, walking listlessly through the quadrangle 
 where the professors live, she heard behind her the footsteps 
 of some one gaining on her, and before she had reached the 
 postern, a man passed her stepping quickly in the dusk. She 
 saw that he was smallish, and slight, that he wore no overcoat; 
 and something foreign about his alert figure drew her atten- 
 tion. The next moment, as if in response to this, the stranger 
 turned his head, and regarded her fixedly. Thereupon Joanna's 
 observation ceased to be conscious. She had become too 
 acutely aware of herself under his curiously frank scrutiny. 
 
 She carried home with her the impression of a white, small- 
 featured face that seemed scornfully alive. The man must be 
 a foreigner probably an Italian. Who else should he be but 
 Cellebrini, the Italian lecturer, whom, as it happened, she 
 did not know by sight? The certainty that he could be none 
 other, quickened her failing resolve to join the class of which 
 he was the teacher. 
 
 m 
 
 On the opening day, a week later, she arrived ten minutes 
 before the hour of the lesson to find herself alone with one 
 young man amid a shabby expanse of benches. Both fellow 
 students were too shy to speak, and Joanna observing no more 
 than that her companion was dark and bashful chose a place 
 at some distance from him. The ordinary University youth
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 87 
 
 did not interest her, even while he might embarrass her; and 
 she gazed with suppressed excitement at the dusty Gothic 
 window panes on which flaws of rain were appearing. 
 
 There was no doubt in her mind that the lecturer would be 
 the stranger who had stared at her by the gate. 
 
 Presently a third person came in, and Joanna recognized a 
 Mrs. Lovatt to whom she had been introduced not long ago 
 at an evening entertainment at the Art School. Mrs. Lovatt, 
 a great friend of the Director, was a patron of the arts and 
 a well-known figure in the West End. Joanna blushed with 
 pleasure now when the little woman greeted her unhesitatingly. 
 
 " I've forgotten your name," she said. " But I remember 
 quite well being introduced to you by my friend Val Plum- 
 mer." And she sat down by Joanna bemoaning the size of 
 the class. She was a middle-aged woman, but girlish looking, 
 with very bright eyes in her wrinkled, pretty face. Under a 
 soft gray felt hat, her gray hair showed in a becoming dis- 
 order, and with her gray, flowing clothes, she looked like a 
 disheveled, but attractive and perfectly composed little gray 
 mouse. She remembered admiring Joanna's appearance, and 
 studied her now with bright approval, and also with what 
 Joanna felt to be a touch of amused criticism. Without know- 
 ing it, the girl coveted the elder woman's ease and her general 
 air of experience. 
 
 The next to arrive was the lecturer, and as he stepped up 
 to the rostrum Joanna looked up eagerly. The disappoint- 
 ment was intense. There, standing above her was an emaci- 
 ated, tall old man, bearded and rather bent. Surely there 
 was some mistake! Surely Dr. Cellebrini the real Dr. Cel- 
 lebrini must be ill, and this old man had come to tell them 
 so. So firm was her dream that it had to persist a little in 
 the face of reality. But next instant she knew that there 
 had been no mistake except her own. She had believed, 
 because she had so strongly desired the likely thing to be true. 
 
 There was no lecture that day, and Dr. Cellebrini told them 
 that unless at least six students were forthcoming, there could 
 be no class that session. This had been decided by the 
 Senate. He took down their names, however, and Joanna 
 learned that Mrs. Lovatt's Christian name was Mildred. The 
 dark boy, who mumbled his name with a Scotch tongue was 
 called Lawrence Urquhart. 
 
 He left the class-room while Joanna was helping Mrs. Lovatt
 
 88 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 to collect her scattered belongings. Some colored beads had 
 rolled out of a leather wallet on to the floor, and the two 
 in picking them up became still more friendly. Mrs. Lovatt 
 hoped that Joanna would come to one of her informal Friday 
 evenings, and if no more students turned up she had the idea 
 of having an Italian class in her own house. 
 
 They went out together, and as they passed from the dark- 
 ness of the cloisters to daylight, the sound of a door closing 
 made them both look back. Between the broad, stone pillars 
 a man was hastening in their direction. Joanna could not 
 see his face, but she knew him instantly for her foreigner. 
 
 " It is Rasponi, isn't it? " exclaimed Mrs. Lovatt, screwing 
 up short-sighted eyes. " The very man I want to speak to." 
 And leaving her companion, she ran impulsively towards the 
 Italian. 
 
 Joanna was shaken, and she became half dead with embar- 
 rassment. Should she go slowly on? Should she wait? 
 Should she hurry off? No doubt the right thing would be 
 for her simply to disappear. But her fiercer longing chained 
 her feet to the spot ; and in a few seconds she was joined by the 
 others. 
 
 On the first meeting of their eyes, Joanna saw that recogni- 
 tion danced in Rasponi's, and something besides recognition. 
 As her name was made known to him he smiled, showing a 
 line of short, milk-white teeth, and his hand flew uncontrollably 
 to his little black mustache. His face in the daylight was 
 not so much white, Joanna saw, as ivory, with fine, carven 
 features, and remarkable eyelids. There was something of 
 the hardness of ivory in him too; and under the loose gray 
 tweeds he was wearing, she knew his body was like a coiled 
 spring of steel. He was energy itself, but energy pent, not 
 radiant. Joanna had never been so aware of anything: had 
 never imagined anything so living. She was acutely disquieted 
 by his nearness. 
 
 In the quandrangle he excused himself for a moment, as he 
 wished to hand in a note at a professor's house. The two 
 women walked on slowly. 
 
 " Isn't he beautiful? " Mildred Lovatt turned twinkling to 
 her companion. " And a genius as well. It seems too much 
 for one man! " 
 
 Joanna, startled, had no response ready. Did one call men 
 " beautiful? " Women were beautiful of course. But men
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 89 
 
 with their hairy ankles? and he was a genius as well. This 
 meant an artist of some kind no doubt. To conceal her con- 
 fusion she asked what he did. 
 
 Mrs. Lovatt was suprised at the other's ignorance. 
 
 " Don't tell me you haven't seen him racing about the roads 
 on that diabolical bicycle of his? " she exclaimed. " I should 
 have thought everybody in Glasgow must know him by now." 
 And she told how Rasponi had fitted one of the new internal 
 combustion engines to a specially strong bicycle of his own 
 design: and how he was doing research work at the University 
 in connection with a new machine for flying. 
 
 " People laugh at him," she ended. " But I'm convinced, 
 myself, that he'll succeed in time. He'll either fly or break 
 his neck perhaps both! " 
 
 After Rasponi had come up with them again, they stood 
 talking for a minute by the postern at the very spot where 
 Joanna and he had first looked at each other. 
 
 When Mrs. Lovatt had spoken of the small Italian class, he 
 turned to Joanna. 
 
 " You already know some Italian perhaps, eh? " His 
 English had the exaggerated precision of the foreigner. It 
 was not broken, but over-perfect. 
 
 Joanna shook her head; and smiling he moved his eyes to 
 Mrs. Lovatt. 
 
 " Yet Miss Bannerman looks more Italian than I, though 
 so fair. Do j'ou not see it? " he asked her. " Modern Italian 
 perhaps no. But of the Seicento. Why, there is her por- 
 trait in London in your National Gallery, by a painter of the 
 Venetian School Bernardino Licinio, I think it is. You know 
 it? But surely? The portrait of a young man, it calls itself, 
 but I have always doubted it, and it pleases me to have my 
 doubts confirmed." 
 
 Mrs. Lovatt, her head on one side, looked at Joanna and 
 tried to remember the picture he described. She was not 
 successful, but agreed warmly that Miss Bannerman had 
 struck her from the first as quite Early-Italian. Botticelli, 
 she thought or was it Luini? there was surely an angel 
 wonderfully like her in one of Leonardo's groups? 
 
 Unaccustomed to such talk, the young woman felt herself 
 redden furiously. Nor was she spared by Rasponi. His 
 eyes seemed to search her face: then they dwelt on her breast: 
 then sought her feet. When Mrs. Lovatt had invited them
 
 90 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 both to have tea at her house one day soon, there seemed of a 
 sudden no more to say. 
 
 Joanna took leave of them somehow. 
 
 rv 
 
 In spite of its meager beginnings the Italian class prospered. 
 There came to be seven students in all. But the original 
 three remained slightly apart from the rest in a vague fellow- 
 ship of their own; and they greeted each other with a special 
 friendliness. 
 
 Lawrence Urquhart was so manifestly glad to be included, 
 that Mrs. Lovatt in the kindness of her heart, invited him also 
 to tea, and she liked the shy eagerness of his acceptance. His 
 oddly featured, dark face pleased her too, now that she came 
 to look at it. 
 
 " Have you noticed what engaging eyes the creature has? " 
 she asked Joanna; "they are pretty often turned in your 
 direction." 
 
 But Joanna almost resented words that once would have 
 flattered her. She was absorbed by the emotions Rasponi had 
 aroused. 
 
 From the first he had sought her openly, and the whole 
 face of her life was changed. 
 
 On the second day of the Italian class she had found him 
 waiting for her by the gate. He had moved to meet her, 
 sweeping off his hat with a gesture she would have found ridic- 
 ulous in another man. But as he did it, it seemed beautifully 
 to place power in her hands. 
 
 " It has cleared after the rain," he said. " Do you go down 
 the hill and through the park? If so that is my way also. 
 My lodging is on the other side. May I go with you as far as 
 our way lies together? " 
 
 Joanna had meant to walk through the park; but suddenly 
 feeling flight to be imperative, she lied, saying that to-day she 
 must take the nearer tram home. 
 
 Rasponi gave a faint shrug which combined disappointment 
 with resignation. 
 
 " May I come then as far as the terminus with you? " he 
 said. 
 
 To this there seemed only one possible reply, and she gave 
 an unskilful assent, trying hard not to appear as raw and
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 91 
 
 school-girlish as she felt. The Southerner appeared to her a 
 creature incapable of awkwardness. Passionately she wished 
 that her upbringing had been more gracious. 
 
 At the park entrance, which was also the stopping-place 
 for Joanna's tram, three street musicians were tuning up. 
 There was a harpist on a camp stool, a standing fiddler, and a 
 cripple in a wheeled chair, with a rug hiding his legs. They 
 had settled themselves in the corner made by a church and 
 the park railings, and instinctively Raspopj and Joanna paused, 
 waiting for them to strike up. 
 
 Joanna glanced back towards the University. At the top 
 of Gilmourhill where the road cuts the sunset across, two 
 cyclists had that moment mounted from the far side. Their 
 figures, poised in the golden air of the summit stayed for a 
 breath, suspended as by a miracle. Then their machines 
 swept downwards. There was a rush of wind, a shrill whirring 
 of bells, and they disappeared round the curve of the tram- 
 lines. 
 
 And that same instant, as if by conspiracy, the little band 
 by the gates broke into dance music. 
 
 In the girl something was set free, and her heart exulted. 
 
 " No wonder Pilcher chose this hill to test his gliders." 
 
 She looked at Rasponi to discover the meaning of his remark. 
 He too was staring back up the way they had come, but his 
 eyes shone with purpose. 
 
 " Perhaps you saw him trying them? " he continued. 
 " It must be about five years since his Glasgow experiments. 
 A good man, that Pilcher." 
 
 But Joanna had not heard of Pilcher till now. She felt 
 ashamed under Rasponi 's incredulous glance, and was relieved 
 when he put the subject aside. 
 
 There was still no car at the terminus. The harpist was 
 thrumming diligently, the fiddler swayed as he tore the insistent 
 melody out of his instrument, the defornled man in the chair 
 gave forth the same air more delicately on a flute. They 
 played well, and Joanna stood with Rasponi to hear the valse 
 out. 
 
 "Ah! You see that?" 
 
 This exclamation, vibrating and jubilant, was drawn from 
 her companion by an action of the busy little flautist. He 
 had swiftly exchanged his flute for a handful of bound reeds 
 lying concealed on his knees, and at a recurring phrase of the
 
 92 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 melody he blew into the Pan-pipes, drawing them sharply 
 back and forwards against his lips. 
 
 " Now we know why he has to hide his feet! " said Rasponi. 
 And this time Joanna understood. He had moved closer to 
 her under cover of the music. He spoke low, intimately. 
 
 She nodded, smiling too, and their eyes met. Elated the 
 Italian was twisting up his mustache and for the first time 
 the girl saw his narrow, rapacious lips. Ah! yes, Mrs. Lovatt 
 was right. Beautiful he was fine gem-like. Yet for all 
 his delicate, glittering quality, more male than any other man 
 she had yet seen. 
 
 Immediately the car came she moved towards it, though 
 before it could start, the trolley-pole would have to be changed 
 round. Rasponi saw her into it, lifted his hat, and to her 
 surprise went off at once. He did not even turn around. She 
 would have given anything to be by his side, but was com- 
 mitted to her perverse choice. She watched him till he was 
 no more than a speck near the central fountain. 
 
 Looking back afterwards she was no more able to trace 
 the hurried sequence of events which led to her marriage with 
 Mario Rasponi, than one is able to relate the procession of 
 incidents in a dream. Indeed it took its place appropriately 
 in what was still a dream life. Outwardly there was an admir- 
 able semblance of intention, even of calm. But the girl was 
 not yet near waking, and she proceeded in a kind of deliberate 
 trance which brooked neither interference from without, nor 
 direction by her own shrouded intelligence. 
 
 One of the strangest things in the strange business was that 
 Mario never persuaded her into saying that she loved him. 
 She was captured by his ardor; and after the first weak 
 resistance worked, defiant of opposition, for their speedy 
 marriage. But often she still cried at nights for Bob, and 
 felt as if she must go mad in her renewed efforts towards under- 
 standing him. Twice she wrote to him. Surely if there was 
 a scrap of real feeling in him for her, it would show now? 
 But he remained aloof? He begged her to be sure of her own 
 mind, wished her good luck, whatever her decision. In spite 
 of this, Joanna would have gone to him had he been in 
 England. She believed that a sight of his face might have
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 93 
 
 held her firm against Mario. But while awaiting the result 
 of his examination, he was with his father in Germany. 
 And all the time Mario's onslaught continued. 
 The researches which had brought him to Glasgow were 
 complete. He wanted to get back to Italy where there was 
 work after his own heart for the asking ; and he was set on tak- 
 ing Joanna with him whether he won her love or not. His 
 judgment told him that her quick consent was a likelihood: 
 for love there would be time enough later. Actually he pre- 
 ferred it so. It satisfied an insane violence that was part of 
 him. 
 
 To Juley he was attentive and affectionate in a bright filial 
 way which gave her great pleasure. He enlivened her, and 
 she felt at home with him as she did always with foreigners. 
 She loved airing her rusty Italian while he praised her intona- 
 tion. His enthusiasm, his clear unworldiness warmed her 
 heart. They had long and on her side impassionate talks 
 about the persecution of the Jews in Russia. She was delighted 
 with his interest in politics. She was still more delighted that 
 he enjoyed her society. Here was a young, clever man who 
 did not fight shy of her. 
 
 At first Joanna wondered that her mother made so light of 
 Mario's frank irreligion. Was it possible that one to whom 
 faith was everything, could overlook its absence in a son-in- 
 law? Yet the explanation was simple. Rasponi came of a 
 strict Catholic family (one of his uncles was a Cardinal), and 
 the fact that he had broken with the Church of Rome was by 
 Juley accounted to him for righteousness. 
 
 Then there were the rides he gave her. He had rigged up a 
 wicker trailer, and attached it to that amazing machine of his 
 which Juley would insist on calling the velocipede. She 
 enjoyed every moment of the velocipede, from its arrival at 
 the front door. She liked to feel the neighbors at their win- 
 dows while Mario was tucking her in. She smiled happily at 
 the little crowd of children who gathered around; and when 
 he rang his bell, and took her slowly down the long slope to 
 Woodlands Road and back again, she was in raptures. Each 
 time they went out thus her wonder was new. She could not 
 grow accustomed to it. 
 
 But she would not hear about his flying. 
 " If we had been meant to fly," she said, looking sorrowfully 
 at him, " God would have given us wings." And she
 
 94 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 refused to listen to his ready arguments. So he let her be. 
 
 To Joanna he spoke little of his work, but much of woman's 
 place in the scheme of things. He laughed to scorn her ideas 
 of companionship between man and woman. 
 
 " Do you think I would choose you," he exclaimed, one 
 day, " if I wished for a companion? You, a little, ignorant 
 girl from Glasgow, with no experience of life, no knowledge 
 of what most interests me machinery: no intellect to speak 
 of? Why, you don't even know my language! Some day 
 say twenty years hence, when you have learned all I have 
 to teach you, you may be a fit companion for a man, and then 
 only perhaps. But by then you will have lost what now sets 
 my heart on fire. Companion! My poor baby, you do not 
 know what you are talking of! and what it is you want, you 
 still less know. Would you be here with me now, dropping 
 your eyes before the desire in mine, if we were companions? 
 I think not." 
 
 Joanna and he were having tea at a little wayside hotel to 
 which he had brought her in his trailer. The country air had 
 reddened her cheeks, but Mario was whiter than ever, and 
 his eyes danced dark and fanatical in his head. The girl had 
 no answer ready to his tirade, and he expected none. He 
 continued. 
 
 " You and your Bob may be companions if you please. 
 Both of you free to come and go, to take other companions 
 as many as you like to live apart, to discuss this theory 
 and that when you meet. Very good. You might have his 
 companionship. Does it satisfy you? " 
 
 Rolling her bread into balls on the table-cloth, Joanna tried 
 to collect her scattered forces. She could never stand up 
 to Mario in argument, and was so perturbed under his glance 
 that her ideas seemed to melt like snow wreaths near a bon- 
 fire. 
 
 " Can't one have the two things together? " she appealed 
 to him, timidly. 
 
 "In theory perhaps," he replied; and as he spoke he but- 
 toned up with an air of finality, the high collar of his leather 
 coat, " but not in practice. Not at least when I am the man, 
 and you the woman. There is at this moment a man at the 
 corner table who has been looking at you, and I want to kill 
 him for daring to do so. Is that companionship? Nal 
 Let us go back. Waiter, the bill! "
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 95 
 
 As the two left the room, Mario, holding the door open for 
 her, glared at the man in the corner. He was an inoffensive 
 young fellow, who had been struck, not really so much by 
 Joanna as by the atmosphere engendered by the couple. The 
 moment they had gone the other people in the room began 
 to discuss them. 
 
 Another of their talks was in the park. It was strange 
 how in Joanna's emotions the park came to be associated 
 with Mario, as the Botanic Gardens were with Bob. And in 
 the same way the two wooings were bound up with their 
 seasons. Bob's young love, so confused and pathetic, had 
 been in the early spring; Mario's was in the late autumn. 
 And autumn even more than spring is disturbing to those 
 who give themselves readily to Nature's impulses. For if in 
 spring we are pierced by the innumerable points of flame which 
 dart skywards from the ground, in autumn our senses are more 
 subtly assailed. For passion's sake then, the earth 's laying 
 aside her ornaments. There is a new restlessness and rapture 
 of bird life, a new sense of disquiet and elation. The wooded 
 places are full of the intoxicating smolder of fecundity. 
 
 On this November evening, traces of a recent hail-shower 
 still gleamed on the black railings, on the slopes of grass, on 
 the dark-bodied trees, each standing in the circle of its own 
 lovely droppings. The naked sky, lofty and compassionate, 
 flung its arch over a glittering world. And in that arch, 
 incredibly remote, ineffably pure, hung the pale waxing moon 
 like a beaker of fretted silver. To the right of the path 
 chosen by Mario and Joanna, a tree crowned with a top- 
 knot of ivy sheltered a noisy tribe of starlings. It swayed 
 gently under the birds impetuous communings. Over the 
 pink granite bridge swung a glossy private carriage drawn by a 
 pair of bays, and Mario pulled Joanna aside so that she 
 should not be spattered by the mud which lay thick on the 
 road. 
 
 Having crossed the river the two climbed the further 
 hill. Here and there were seats on little semi-circular terraces 
 facing the University, and on one of these they sat down. 
 Mario, as usual spoks first. 
 
 " How like olives those are, except for the color," he said. 
 " Are they not? " He was pointing to a group of small, dis- 
 torted trees on the slope below them. 
 
 " I've never seen olive trees."
 
 96 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " No? But you shall, and soon. Yes, as soon as possible." 
 Mario spoke meditatively, as if calculating, and his eyes did 
 not leave the trees. The girl wondered at his prolonged 
 interest in them. 
 
 " What kind of trees are they? " he asked her. 
 
 Joanna didn't know. 
 
 Now he looked at her. " Do you know anything? " 
 
 Joanna crimsoned. Truly, beside this man she felt her 
 ignorance. But deeper than her shame was the sensual 
 gratification of this inferiority. 
 
 " That one is a willow, I know," she said, pointing to a 
 nearer tree. Its long pliant boughs trailed their ends on the 
 grass all round it, hiding the central stem. " Isn't it like a 
 cage? " 
 
 "A cage, yes," he agreed; and again he turned his eyes 
 from the tree to Joanna's face. 
 
 " How would you like to live in a cage, a cage full of sun- 
 shine and beauty and delight, a cage of which the man you 
 loved kept the key? " 
 
 "I don't think I should like it, thank you." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
 " A cage is a prison, isn't it? " 
 
 " A prison! " Mario made a gesture of despair. " Oh! 
 you English women with your phrases." 
 
 "I'm not English, I'm Scotch." 
 
 "Well you Scottish women with your theories! Tell me 
 what are the things in the world of best to a woman? 
 Are they not air, light, gaiety, love, ease, shelter from the 
 brutalities of life, children, tenderness, adoration? Does this 
 freedom you talk of secure these? Does it not in reality 
 make them impossible. Tell me, you learned little girl of 
 Glasgow, will freedom give you what you hunger for? Look 
 at me, and tell me." 
 
 But Joanna stared persistently at the willow. 
 . " Look at me," he repeated. 
 
 "Why should I look at you," she opposed him with low- 
 voiced obstinacy, " if I want to go on looking at the tree? " 
 Her words sounded to her indescribably childish and silly, 
 but she was near to tears. 
 
 " You are afraid to look at me," said Mario ; and the old 
 taunt succeeded. Joanna turned her face to him. More 
 beautiful she was to him then than any picture he had formed
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 of her. He leaned nearer gripping the back of the bench with 
 one hand. 
 
 " I feel as if once, centuries ago, I had kept you in a cage, 
 and you liked it," he said. " And so that I might have your 
 portrait painted, without the painter falling in love with 
 you, I dressed you as a young man. I shall take you to see 
 that portrait in London; and later when we go to Italy to- 
 gether, I shall get Maddalena, my sister, to make you a suit 
 df black cloth with a linen chemise open at the neck, like the 
 girl in the picture. Maddalena is clever at dress. She will 
 teach you also how to clothe yourself as a woman; for even in 
 this you are ignorant. The coat you wear now is so hideous, 
 I shudder at it. Yes, Maddalena shall teach you much. But 
 I shall teach you more. Then, after many years, when at 
 last your youth is gone and your beauty, you will be a fit 
 companion for men. What do you say? Will you stay and 
 go to school there? " Mario's voice rose as he waved an 
 arm at the darkening University. " Or will you come away 
 and learn from me? There you will have books and bones. 
 Here with me " touching his breast " you will have all 
 that is of value, in either books or bones you will have life. 
 And very soon you must decide." 
 
 VI 
 
 Next morning Joanna woke very early, yet feeling unusually 
 refreshed. She was conscious of an exquisite calm and had 
 a vision, crystal-clear and unshaken, of existence. All diffi- 
 culties fell from her. She knew now as if it were written 
 on her bedroom wall that she would be Mario's wife, and 
 would go away with him to Italy. Already she had shed her life 
 in Glasgow like a husk had it happened in sleep? Before 
 her now lay the new life, and she set her face towards it freed. 
 She was done with questioning. Everything was beautifully 
 simple. Mario needed her: no one else did. It was wonder- 
 ful to be needed by this dark, exigent man with the curious 
 beauty that took her breath away. Everything could be left 
 to him. She had only to hold out her hands: to give. 
 Splendid, giving to anyone who wanted what you had with 
 such blazing eagerness. She would think no more about 
 Bob. He had failed her, or she had failed him. Which, she 
 might never know. Thinking of Bob, she seemed to see his
 
 98 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 face drowned in tears. There was a fountain of tears in her 
 for Bob, or for herself in connection with Bob. That must 
 be sealed up. There were no tears in her for Mario. This 
 was a thought that gave strength. Mario might frighten 
 her He would never be able to hurt her, as Bob had hurt 
 her: as Bob was hurting her even now. It was through her 
 dreams that Bob hurt her. About Mario she had no dreams. 
 He was her escape into reality. 
 
 Resting there in bed, lapped by the silken warmth of her 
 half-awakened body, she wondered why Mario, who wanted 
 her so much more than ever Bob had wanted her, should 
 estimate her so much lower. Bob had admired her drawing, 
 her clothes, the way she did her hair. But Mario 
 
 She recalled the first time she had taken him to her studio. 
 How he had poured scorn on her drawing, reminding her in 
 his denunciations of Nilsson, the Swedish master of design at 
 the Art School, who was the only teacher for whom she had 
 even attempted to work during this last term. 
 
 " You draw with your head alone," Mario had said. " One 
 must draw with one's heart, one's blood." And in quick 
 boredom he had turned from her work to the pair of old wine 
 glasses from which, eight months before, Bob and she had 
 drunk their betrothal champagne. 
 
 " These now," he had exclaimed, " these are truly beautiful. 
 Look at them and see how the maker understood the working 
 of glass with his heart as well as with his brain. And so in 
 the glass you find the wickedness of his heart proclaimed 
 as well as the goodness, a piece of pure, defiant art. In 
 your drawing you suppress the evil that partly creates you, 
 so there is no good there either, no beauty of life. How did 
 you come by the glasses. They are Irish, I should think? " 
 
 Taking them from the mantel-piece, blowing off the studio 
 dust, holding them delicately to the light, Mario had consid- 
 ered them with that intentness of his which was always a 
 wonder to Joanna. He never looked at anything vaguely, as 
 she, confused and absorbed by her own emotions, so constantly 
 did. 
 
 He had raised his brows, as she told him how she had bought 
 them of a dealer for a few shillings. 
 
 " But I won't tell him why I got them," she had said to 
 herself. " That will be a secret always between them and 
 me and Bob."
 
 99 
 
 Yet immediately something that did not seem herself had 
 made her tell him. 
 
 He had watched her face during the brief, hesitating recital, 
 still holding the glasses delicately by their stems, one in either 
 hand, between the forefinger and the thumb. And when she 
 was done, he had raised his hands a very little, and opened 
 his fingers. And the glasses the lovely wine-glasses that 
 were like river water full of the shimmer of wavelets and criss- 
 cross reeds had been shattered on the hearth-stone in ten 
 millions shivers. 
 
 He had offered no apology. " That then is the end of them," 
 he had said. That was all. 
 
 Yes; it might be that she did not love this man. But she 
 exulted in him. She exulted in his certitude, in his power of 
 action. To her he appeared unhampered, and therefore god- 
 like, adorable. And he so gloriously knew what he wanted. 
 He wanted her Joanna, out of all the world of women. 
 Well, he was to have her. It was decided; and decided by 
 some power quite outside of her will. 
 
 vn 
 
 From that moment the end was lost sight of in the many 
 exigencies of the means. On the amazing central fact of her 
 marriage Joanna did not let herself dwell, even in her most 
 solitary hours. All her energies, and her awaking powers 
 of management, were thrown into bringing about the wedding 
 with the least possible delay. 
 
 Once she had pledged herself to Mario, there seemed no 
 valid reason for delay, while there were many for haste. 
 The sooner he returned to Italy, the better their prospects. 
 But he would not suffer a parting. He was afraid of losing 
 her. And Joanna was glad of his refusal; for she shared his 
 fear, shared it strangely on his account. " If he goes away 
 he'll never get me! " was her scarce articulate thought. So 
 they both conspired in doing away with the inevitable obsta- 
 cles. 
 
 And soon their haste, which to their small circle had at 
 first seemed the height of unreason, assumed an air almost of 
 commonsense. It was a little sudden perhaps, but after all 
 the circumstances were exceptional. 
 
 As for Juley, in the turn things had taken she perceived 
 the finger of God. Of late she had been conscious of Joanna's
 
 ioo OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 restless lassitude. But from any appeal for confidence, the 
 girl had at once recoiled further than ever into herself. To 
 pray and sorrow in private, then, was all the Mother could 
 do. And might not Mario be God's answer? One must have 
 faith. Had Sholto been alive, all would have been different. 
 
 vm 
 
 In Glasgow at the moment the Bannermans were awkwardly 
 placed for a pastor, so after much talk it was decided that 
 the wedding should take place in London. Mario went on 
 first to arrange matters with the Italian Consul who was a 
 friend; and Joanna followed with her mother. 
 
 They so nearly missed the London train, that it had begun 
 to move before they were on board. Juley, worn out by the 
 rush, sank down at once in the carriage; but Joanna stayed 
 in the corridor, and hung out of the window to say good bye 
 to her brothers. 
 
 Linnet, rushing along side, thrust something into her hand 
 something small wrapped in tissue paper. 
 
 " That's my present," he panted. " I hadn't any money, 
 but I thought you'd be able to wear this. You'd better not 
 tell Mother. She might be vexed." 
 
 Joanna clutched the little packet, and nodded and smiled. 
 She couldn't see for tears. The train ran faster and Linnet 
 stopped. He waved his cap up and down in a queer, jerky 
 way, as if shy of moving his arms in public. Further down the 
 platform stood Sholto, making wide gestures with two hand- 
 kerchiefs. He had been learning signalling in his cadet corps 
 at school. 
 
 Suddenly the sister felt like a deserter. How could she leave 
 the boys? Why was she doing it? To get married? It 
 seemed unnatural, monstrous. Sholto had worked hard to 
 get his present finished in time. It was a poker-worked toilet 
 set brushes, hand-mirror, boxes and tray all with the same 
 lily-of-the-valley design. She leaned out waving. She waved 
 and waved till the train, curving, cut the platform from sight. 
 Then in the corridor she opened Linnet's package. He had 
 given her his father's gold signet ring. It had been his since 
 his fifteenth birthday, and though he never wore it they all 
 knew he treasured it. It bore the Bannerman crest pro 
 patria under a naked demi-man holding a banner. Joanna 
 put it on under her glove.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 101 
 
 IX 
 
 The night before the wedding, Georgie cried a good deal, 
 for she was sure Joanna didn't properly love the man she was 
 marrying, and marriage without love was the desecration of 
 desecrations. Georgie came to sleep at the little temperance 
 hotel in Bloomsbury where Juley had taken rooms, and she 
 shared Joanna's bed. Joanna's replies to her questions con- 
 firmed her worst fears. Her sister wes entering a loveless 
 marriage. 
 
 But Georgie understood that it could not be stopped; 
 and miserable as she was, it was Georgie who insisted on a 
 white satin bow upon the coachman's whip. 
 
 They had hired a carriage with two horses Georgie said 
 they must have two to take them to the Registrar's where 
 Mario waited with his friend the Consul. The marriage was 
 over in five minutes, and they all drove on to the station for 
 lunch. 
 
 Joanna, in a blue travelling dress, the price of which she 
 would not tell Georpie, and a little, white, close-fitting hat, 
 smote on her mother's heart. She looked so unprepared, so 
 lamentably young. Yet to the last she had sheered away 
 from all maternal warnings and counsel. 
 
 The farewell was scrappy and confused. Juley, at the last 
 moment, remembering injunctions about Aunt Perdy to whom 
 she was sending presents, almost forgot to kiss Joanna good- 
 bye. Georgie blubbered, but bore up. Mario was angry 
 because there were other people in the carriage. But at this 
 Joanna felt a secret relief. 
 
 Not till they were on the Dover packet did she come alive 
 to the strange adventure. She had not been out of England 
 before. The Channel boat was different from any steamer on 
 the Clyde. The waters of the Channel rippled and shone, 
 as she had never seen other waters ripple and shine. Near 
 her some people chattered in French. The sailors ran about. 
 There was a smell of biscuits and brandy, of ropes, of tar, of 
 engines, of the sea the smell of foreign travel. 
 
 A handsome woman, very well dressed, with beautifully 
 tinted hair, scarlet lips and blackened eyelids, looked Joanna 
 down and up, and Joanna took her envy for criticism. Mario 
 had gone to find deck chairs. He stood at some distance 
 speaking to a sailor, his shoulders moving. Very foreign and
 
 IO2 
 
 animated, yet very much at home he seemed to her in these 
 unaccustomed surroundings. Afraid, but thrilled through 
 and through, his bride watched him. That man in the gray 
 suit was her husband. He was a stranger to her: at this 
 moment he appeared a complete stranger. Yet she had left 
 her mother, her home, all that was familiar, to come away 
 with him. 
 
 This then was life at last! But it seemed less real, more 
 dream-like than anything that had gone before. She was 
 going to a strange land, was going among strangers, was 
 going alone with that passionate stranger in the gray suit. The 
 train of experience was alight. Greatly she feared it. But not 
 for anything would she have escaped. 
 
 Soon Mario came, with the sailor carrying chairs. When he 
 had made things comfortable in his deft, experienced way, he 
 groped under the spread rug for Joanna's hand. The middle- 
 aged woman with the very red lips, looked on for a moment; 
 then she turned with a little smile, and leaning on the deck- 
 rail, gazed toward the coast of France.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THEY were to spend their honeymoon at Vallombrosa. 
 For Mario the place had happy memories of childhood, 
 for Joanna the lovely sounding name seemed to breathe the 
 essence of a dream Italy. She imagined Vallombrosa as a 
 wonderful, classic valley, shaded by great trees such as never 
 grew at home, and it was grief to her that they could not go 
 there by a through train from Calais. They would have to 
 stay a night in Florence on the way. 
 
 Mario had not told his sister of their movements, so no one 
 met them at the station. Joanna had not believed any jour- 
 ney could be so long and so tiring; but as they crossed a 
 deserted piazza to their Hotel, a porter running before them 
 with their hand luggage, the midnight air refreshed her 
 wonderfully. She was invigorated too, even in the darkness, 
 by the strangeness of everything. Among these unfamiliar 
 buildings, breathing this new air, walking under this foriegn 
 sky, the man with whom she had passed the last forty-eight 
 hours in the cramped room of a railway carriage, became 
 suddenly an old and tried friend. She clung to his arm and 
 reassured herself by stealing glances at his dim profile. Though 
 he did not once turn his face to hers she knew he was pre- 
 occupied utterly by thoughts of her. 
 
 At the Hotel bureau some letters were handed to Mario, but 
 he stuffed them into his pocket without looking at them. Then 
 Joanna and he were taken up in a lift, and followed their 
 luggage down a long passage. The bedroom had the highest 
 ceiling Joanna had ever seen in a bedroom, and the loftiest 
 windows with curtains arranged in a different way from any 
 curtains at home. But she was most of all struck by the two 
 little high beds. These were pushed together, made up as 
 one, and turned into a huge diaphanous tent by white net 
 draperies which hung from high wooden poles. Instinctively 
 Joanna fancied some bridal symbol, and she would not have 
 been surprised if the snowy hangings had been crowned with 
 
 103
 
 104 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 orange blossoms. But Mario, seeing her interest, explained 
 mosquito-curtains to her; and as she curiously fingered the 
 net, the porter smiled and said something to Mario. It was 
 clearly the first time the young signora had been in Italy! 
 
 When they were left alone Mario glanced over his letters 
 and handed one in a gray envelope to Joanna. " For you," he 
 said, and throwing his own unopened on a table he went 
 into the adjoining bath-room where Joanna heard him turn 
 on a water-tap. 
 
 At the sight of the hand-writing on her letter, Joanna 
 caught her breath. It was from Bob! Its presence here in 
 Italy appeared a miracle till she saw that it had been for- 
 warded from Collessie Street in Linnet's hand. It must have 
 reached home immediately after her leaving, and so had out- 
 run her on the journey south. What could Bob have to say? 
 But what did it matter what he said? The envelope felt 
 very thin. Suppose now, too late, Bob were to tell her that he 
 loved her, that he had loved her all along? Why else should 
 he have written? 
 
 Sitting half on, half against the bed, so that the poles at 
 the corners creaked from the strain on the netting, Joanna 
 read the short note Bob had written her. He wished her well 
 he had passed his examination would shortly start for 
 Africa he was hers ever Bob. And underneath the signa- 
 ture as a postscript he had set the words " Have a good 
 time." That was all. 
 
 Joanna, more shaken than she knew by the sight of Bob's 
 handwriting, was relieved, and chagrined, in the same mo- 
 ment. She was tired out too from the journey, irritated by 
 the dust which felt gritty against her skin all over her body, 
 over-wrought by the excitement of Mario's persistent wooing 
 in the dark railway carriage. Throwing back her head, and 
 puckering up her face like a child she burst out crying. As 
 the first loud desolate wail escaped her she felt tremendous 
 surprise. "I've never cried like this before," she said within 
 herself. " What can be happening to me? " And she went 
 on crying aloud, finding wonderful relief and a kind of healing 
 in the new unrestraint. 
 
 Hearing the noise above his own splashing, Mario came run- 
 ning in to her with a frightened face. His hands were wet, 
 and he had taken off his coat and his collar, which made him 
 into a stranger again. He questioned Joanna anxiously.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 105 
 
 What was wrong? She did not know: but between her as- 
 tonished sobs she tried to tell him. She was afraid he would 
 be angry. But instead he was kind. She handed him the 
 letter to read, and having glanced through it, he let it fall 
 on the carpet, comforting her with his cool, damp hands. 
 And presently, before she had quite stopped crying, he took 
 her to the mirror and made her laugh at the sight of her 
 dirty, tear-stained cheeks. He pulled the pins out of her 
 hat with his deft ringers, and covered her face with kisses. 
 
 "You see I love you, dirt and all! " he said, holding her, 
 laughing at her, brushing the letter and her tears aside as 
 mere childishness. Joanna's heart was warm with gratitude to 
 him. This man knew how to treat her. And now with his 
 wet pushed-back hair, and his strong bare neck, he looked 
 boyish, different from the Mario she had known before. He 
 had irresistible grace. No one had warned her of the beauty 
 men conceal beneath their disfiguring clothes, their stiff collars. 
 
 n 
 
 Early next morning she was awakened by the chant of a 
 goat-herd passing with his flock under the Hotel windows. 
 Hearing it first in her dreams, this most fascinating of Floren- 
 tine street-cries seemed to her a melody of unearthly sweet- 
 ness. Then following, and mingling with it, came other strange 
 cries and sounds floating from the foreign street through the 
 closed shutters into the quite high-walled room. It was dark 
 in the room, but she became immediately aware that sun- 
 light of a kind she had never yet seen was filling the outside 
 world, beating strongly like waves against the fast-bolted 
 shutters. 
 
 Everything was strange. But strangest of all was to see on 
 the pillow beside hers the dark disordered head of the man who 
 had married her. He was still asleep, his face turned away; 
 and keeping quite still on her side with her knees drawn up 
 and her palm under her cheek, Joanna thought of the past 
 night. Wave after wave of purely physical recollections swept 
 through her; but at the same time in her brain a cool spec- 
 tator seemed to be sitting aloof and in judgment. This then was 
 marriage! This droll device, this astonishing, grotesque ex- 
 perience was what the poets had sung since the beginning. 
 To this all her quivering dreams had led, all Mario's wooing 
 touches and his glances of fire! The reality made her feel
 
 io6 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 a stranger in a strange world. Not a rebellious stranger. 
 She was humbly anxious to conform to reality eager to 
 accept and get used to the new aspect of things. But she 
 was before all things astounded. 
 
 Suddenly she felt she must gaze at her husband under the 
 altered conditions he had created, and raising herself very 
 cautiously on her elbow she leaned over and peered down at 
 him in the half light. He was sleeping like a child with imper- 
 ceptible breathing, and he had the innocent look of a child on 
 his unconscious face. 
 
 Joanna, by gentle degrees shifted her position till she was 
 crouching over Mario, then suddenly he opened infantine 
 eyes. She was caught, and she hung above him breathless, 
 gazing ensnared, stirred to a new feeling by the changing in 
 his eyes from babe to man. The next moment his hands had 
 found her, and he drew her down, uttering a deep chuckling 
 groan of content. " Mia moglie," he breathed triumphantly, 
 " Mia moglie, mia moglie, moglie mia ! " 
 
 in 
 
 Vallombrosa was as deserted as lovers could wish. The 
 season had ended weeks ago. Hotels and pensions were for- 
 biddingly closed as if for eternity and except for the pea- 
 sants, and the bitter-faced young priest, there was not a soul 
 about. Even the Foresta had its shutters barred, though the 
 careful padrone walked through the house each day throwing 
 them open to the sunshine for a few hours to keep the place 
 aired. The humble little Villino Medici to which Mario and 
 Joanna went was the only exception, and its proprietor was 
 never tired of telling his guests that they were having the 
 finest weather of the year hitherto. There was hot sunshine 
 all day, and only the least hint of frost every evening. 
 
 Joanna had been entranced by their journey up in the funicu- 
 lar. This was the last thing she had expected to go uphill 
 to Vallombrosa! It was late afternoon and the yet unfallen 
 gold of chestnuts and Italian oaks glowed with an intimate 
 joyousness against the remote amethyst of the sky which grew 
 deeper moment by moment. The few passengers some soldiers 
 and market-women, with whom at first Mario and his wife 
 shared the train alighted at stopping places on the lower part 
 of the hill; so the two were soon left alone except for the 
 conductor who had twinkling eyes, an indigo chin and a huge
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 107 
 
 gray mustache. He smiled indulgently on them, and allowed 
 them to stand out on the little platform in front, while he 
 turned his fat shoulders on them and read his Corriere as long 
 as the light lasted. 
 
 They leaned forward on the rail, he watching her, she gaz- 
 ing with delight first on one side, then on another, of the stony 
 winding track which hardly seemed to violate the hillside. 
 The little engine behind them throbbed gallantly as it pushed 
 them up and up. They did not speak much, but now and 
 then Mario kissed Joanna's shoulder, keeping his lips there till 
 she felt their warmth and their hunger through her thin blouse. 
 It seemed years since the early morning when she had found 
 something ludicrous and inadequate in the decree of nature. 
 Now she thought of the coming night with awakening senses; 
 and for the first time with deliberate intent to stir her hus- 
 band's pulses she turned in the quivering light, and looked at 
 him. Joanna hardly recognized herself in this voluptuous 
 charmer under Italian skies. But was it right? Did all 
 wives feel and behave like this? She thought of her mother, 
 of Mrs. Boyd, of Aunt Georgina, of the teaching and the 
 traditions on which she had been nourished. Which was 
 right those traditions or this abandonment? It seemed im- 
 possible that both could be right, yet could anything be 
 wrong which gave such release, such harmony with the golden 
 world and the violet heavens? It harmed no one, and it 
 swept away the uneasiness under which her youth had 
 labored for so long. She could laugh now in a voice she hardly 
 knew, could cry easily, refreshingly, could express her emotion 
 swiftly in gestures. She no longer jarred on herself. Joanna 
 remembered a frequent saying of her mother's that the test 
 of a thing's Tightness was whether one could pray to God about 
 it without shame. Well, she had never felt so full of worship. 
 Therefore it must be right and yet ? 
 
 With her husband's arm round her, she looked down between 
 the gold and silver of some birch trees to the great plain below. 
 The mist lay there like fallen columns, and the river, which 
 Mario told her was the Arno, wound in and out, shiny like a 
 snail's track. A high old villa on a pointed hill massed itself 
 grandly with its body-guard of cypresses against the sky. 
 Some trees near had scarlet stems from which a few green 
 leaves hung limply. As Joanna gazed, the sky, changing from 
 violet to an intenser blue seemed to tremble downwards on
 
 io8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 the waiting earth like a lover assured of his welcome yet 
 incredulous of his good fortune. Again she turned her face 
 to Mario, this time without a trace of consciousness or coquetry, 
 and all the magic of the Italian night now dwelt for her in his 
 eyes. 
 
 They had to drive from the station some miles in a little 
 open carriage. There was no moon, and the road ran in 
 darkness through the high, breathless pine forests. But 
 lying back with their heads against the folded hood of the 
 carriage they could watch the deep blue, winding river of the 
 night sky flowing between the tree-tops with its foam of stars. 
 So as to lean back comfortably Joanna took off her hat, and 
 wound a white scarf round her head and neck. Mario said 
 it made her look like a nun, and he knelt on the carriage floor 
 at her feet to make love to her. His beseeching face seemed 
 to her like a piece of escaped starlight on her knees. 
 
 rv 
 
 Next morning he took her through the woods to a little 
 pillared shrine in which the dead leaves were drifted in heaps. 
 On the way they passed many other shrines, and Joanna ex- 
 claimed at their number and at the feeling of happiness their 
 presence gave to her. In Mario's shrine he and his sister 
 Maddalena had often played as children, and as he sat there 
 now with his wife, he talked gaily of his boyhood, which had 
 been very happy. 
 
 Again and again, as he was speaking, Joanna felt all the old, 
 accustomed moral values slipping away, and it came to her 
 that she must put new ones in their places, without a soul 
 from the old life to help her. 
 
 In a perfectly matter-of-fact way Mario told that his father 
 had never married his mother as was indeed reasonable, 
 seeing that Count Rasponi was the head of a so famous family, 
 and Maria Cecchi merely the daughter of a professor of 
 mechanics at Turin. Besides the whole affair had been simply 
 a youthful escapade. As was proper, however, Maria's father 
 had brought pressure to bear on the house of Rasponi, with 
 the fitting result that Mario was legitimized and educated at 
 his father's expense. Within a year of his birth his mother 
 had found a husband in her own class a simple surgeon and 
 of that marriage was Maddalena born. 
 
 Since reaching her teens said Mario, his half-sister had
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 109 
 
 treated him constantly as though he, not she had been the 
 younger. She had not married, and since the death of both 
 her parents he had lived with her. Warmly he praised her 
 qualities. " When you see her," he smiled, " you will see a 
 veritable Italian woman." 
 
 But Joanna was nervous of the ordeal awaiting her in 
 Florence where a long visit to Maddalena had been promised. 
 And even when they had left the shrine, crossing a road and 
 descending a green slope all dappled with sunshine, she was 
 still anxiously forecasting the meeting between herself and 
 this unknown, perhaps hostile sister-in-law. 
 
 Nothing Mario could say brought reassurance. Yet a 
 moment later Maddalena was forgotten, and all else. For 
 Joanna attracted irresistibly by a company of trees which 
 stood further down in a hollow of the slope, had run forward, 
 and was trying how many falling leaves she could catch. 
 
 There were perhaps a dozen trees together, with stems as 
 white as milk and their leaves blowing silver against the blue 
 sky; and in their slender posturings and shadows interlaced, 
 they were like a group of Botticelli's women. 
 
 Mario stood and laughed as she raced to and fro after the 
 leaves. Every puff of the morning air loosened one or two; 
 sometimes in a stillness many showered at once. But they 
 evaded the grasp like wild things in their wavering course 
 downwards, and each time she lost one Joanna cried out with 
 disappointment. 
 
 "Each leaf you catch brings a happy year! " she called 
 out, bird-like and shrill, to Mario. And though he found her 
 excitement childish, and in some curious way unwelcome, 
 he presently joined in the game. Already Joanna had grown 
 clever at it. She was getting leaf after leaf, and she laughed 
 with joyous spitefulness because her husband did not catch 
 one. 
 
 Then they grew tired and sat down, and Joanna counted her 
 happy years. Sheep came and cropped the short grass near 
 them, and in another part of the dimpled field two little horses 
 never ceased waving their tails. The hours went winged. 
 Here life seemed quite simple: There was no past, no future, 
 only the simple, beautifully rounded present.
 
 i io OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Three days later Mario said he must stay indoors that after- 
 noon to write letters. He suggested that Joanna too should 
 write, sitting at the table beside him. As yet she had only 
 sent a post-card home each day, and had torn up several 
 attempts at a letter to her mother. 
 
 But she felt incapable of setting words on paper, and said 
 that she would wait for him outside. 
 
 A look of distress crossed Mario's face, but he let her go, 
 telling her twice over exactly to which spot between the 
 disused fish-ponds of the monastery he would follow her in 
 a very short time. As they parted there was a moment of 
 enmity between them, and Joanna knew that he had guessed 
 at and hated her longing to be alone. 
 
 Yet as she went slowly down the hill, her solitude was very 
 sweet to her. It was the first time she had been alone in any 
 way that counted since her marriage. When Mario was 
 with her she could only feel; now she could think quietly, 
 luxuriously. It was as if tight coils in her mind were unloosed. 
 And this though she had been unaware lately of any strain in 
 his company. 
 
 Sitting on a log between the ponds and the edge of the 
 wood, she faced the neat quadrangles of water, and her 
 thoughts flew to Collessie Street. What were they all doing? 
 
 Without warning an overmastering affection for her mother 
 swept through her. 
 
 " When I go back," she told herself passionately, " I'll 
 be loving and most tender, and Mother will be so happy at 
 that. And the boys too. Why have I always been so cold, 
 when I love them so very dearly? I wonder they can like 
 me at all. But they will love me when they find how changed 
 I am. I shall like them to love me tremendously." 
 
 Then sharply came the realization of foolishness in all such 
 thoughts. The old life was over, and with it its chances of 
 loving and winning love. There might be other chances 
 later, never the same again. And now it seemed to Joanna 
 that she could easily, Oh ! so easily have been a loving daughter. 
 It was simply that she had not thought of it at the time. 
 
 Again she found herself saying " When I get back," and 
 again had to pull herself up. How was it that she could 
 not make herself believe that she had finally broken with the
 
 OPEN THE DOOR in 
 
 life at home? How was it that she could never for long rid 
 herself of the irrational conviction that her life with Mario 
 was an interlude which would soon pass? 
 
 " When I get back" only the night before, she had un- 
 wittingly let the phrase fall in talk with Mario, and had stopped 
 short, seeing the look in his eyes. He had demanded the 
 meaning of her words, but she had no explanation. " You 
 speak as if you were my mistress," he had said. " Remember 
 you are my wife; and as I am an Italian, you are my wife for 
 as long as I live." 
 
 He had looked strangely angry, Joanna thought, considering 
 that it was after all a natural slip. But now, as she sat wait- 
 ing for him through this first long half-hour of separation, 
 she knew she could figure no future in their marriage. Once, 
 twice, three times she tried; and the vain attempts made 
 her so unhappy that she rose and went a little way into the 
 wood. 
 
 " I have no imagination, that's it," she told herself for 
 comfort; "or perhaps all newly married women feel like 
 that." 
 
 As she strayed in and out amid the thin skirting of trees, 
 she knew, as if she saw him, how Mario was writing with a 
 frown on his face, and hurriedly, that he might join her with 
 the least possible delay. Before letting her go, he had told 
 her she need never expect to walk out alone in Florence, not 
 even for five minutes. But this, she determined must be 
 put down to his passing vexation. That he should have 
 spoken it in earnest, she could not well conceive. Yet there 
 had been that in his face as he spoke, a look of fixed, almost 
 maniacal resolve, that she was shaken at the remembrance. 
 She had once wondered if Bob were mad. Now she asked 
 herself the same question of Mario. Were all men mad? She 
 felt lonely in the world, like some one from another star. 
 Would she ever learn the ways of earth? ever feel herself 
 at home here? If she had even possessed memories of another 
 world, there would be some solid standing in this. But as 
 she was, she seemed to belong nowhere. 
 
 At that moment Mario stepped out of the villino looking 
 in her direction. From her shelter of trees Joanna saw him, 
 and saw him worried by her absence, but she would make 
 no sign. Instead, to tease him still more, she hid behind one 
 of the broader tree- trunks, and gathered her bright blue skirts
 
 ii2 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 close to her legs, so that there might be no reassuring flutter. 
 As the afternoon was cool, she had borrowed one of her 
 husband's knitted waistcoats with sleeves, which he wore 
 when bicycling; and with the little orange wool coat over her 
 vivid gown, she looked like some gay-colored shy bird. 
 
 She couldn't help laughing to herself as she watched the 
 unwillingness with which Mario turned in at the monastery 
 gates with his letters. If they did not go at once they would 
 miss the post. Besides, she knew that he had to buy stamps. 
 But she saw him hesitate, and twice he looked over his shoulder 
 before he could enter the little post office at the top of the 
 courtyard. 
 
 He was gone but a few seconds; then pushing his letters 
 hastily into the outside box, he ran across the wide paved 
 space, and came running all the way down to the fish-ponds. 
 
 Joanna, still in hiding, smiled broadly and held her breath. 
 Her heart was leaping deliciously. When he came quite 
 close she meant to run into his arms. Now she could hear 
 his quickened breathing, as he looked uncertainly on either 
 side. 
 
 Then he called her name. " Giovanna! Giovanna! " he 
 called. And she no longer smiled. At the note of unlocked 
 for panic in his voice, her blood stood still. All idea of the 
 embrace she had planned, died in her. She stepped out 
 from behind her tree, confronting him. His face was livid, 
 insane, and he stumbled over a root as he ran towards her. 
 
 " Never do that again," he commanded in a strangling 
 fury. " But you shall not again have the chance while I live, 
 for not again shall you go out again by yourself." 
 
 He stood close to her, and now that his fear was past, he 
 was threatening her. Joanna shrank a step back, but he caught 
 her wrists. 
 
 " What did it mean, last night, that you spoke as if we shall 
 not for long be together? Eh? You tell me, what did it 
 mean? " 
 
 Joanna shook her head; and she had to moisten her lips 
 with her tongue before she could answer. 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " You don't know! Dio mio! Can I trust you? What 
 are you? What kind of a woman? I don't know. I know 
 nothing of you. You have treacherous eyes. Down in the 
 field yesterday they were green as the grass. Now they
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 113 
 
 are gray. They change. And your little tongue just now 
 crept out between your lips like a viper. What is the mean- 
 ing of it? Why do you hide from me? " 
 
 Joanna, though now she felt both afraid and in the wrong, 
 stared proudly at her husband, then turned her eyes away with 
 ostentatious carelessness. Anyhow he had no right to speak 
 so to her, and she must be angry in self-defence. At the same 
 time there was a secret, inebriating enjoyment for her in it 
 all. In a new way she became conscious of her power as a 
 woman. 
 
 " I did it for fun of course," she said. " Can't you under- 
 stand a joke? " 
 
 " You did it for fun? A joke! One day you would per- 
 haps think it fun to be unfaithful to me? It would be your 
 little joke to deceive your husband? Perhaps this is the kind 
 of woman you really are? Have you been unfaithful to me 
 already? Here among the trees. That dog of a priest 
 
 At Joanna's very heart something cried out that she was 
 truly accused: but to stifle and deny that voice all her powers 
 leapt up like ruffians. Her brain repulsed his words as prepos- 
 terous, her flesh sprang taut, so that with one sharp movement 
 she wrenched her hands free, and from her lips came an excla- 
 mation as of one bitterly injured. 
 
 But in anger she knew at once she was no match for Mario, 
 and the next moment she had rushed into another false- 
 ness. 
 
 " Mario," she said, looking at him very quietly, " I don't 
 understand. You know I only hid for fun. It was silly of 
 me, and I'm sorry it put you out; but I did nothing wrong." 
 
 She spoke with false, lovely gentleness, deceiving herself 
 as well as Mario, and immediately he was full of penitence. 
 
 " Forgive what I said. It meant nothing. But you make 
 me suffer so terribly. You should not have hidden in that 
 way. I cannot bear it. Never hide from me again. Let 
 us say no more, either of us. Let us kiss and forgive." 
 
 He held out his arms with the expression Joanna most 
 loved on his face human and pleading, very winning to her; 
 and she ran into his embrace. 
 
 " What are you like? " he whispered, when they had stood 
 some moments wrapped together in that solitary place. " What 
 are you like, Giovanna? " and he drew back his head the 
 better to see his wife's face. " To me your body is like
 
 ii 4 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 steel and white swansdown. Your neck, your breasts, are 
 soft as swansdown. Your straight, fine thighs are like steel. 
 Your arms, so long and small, are like the necks of swans. 
 I should like never to let you go. I wish you could be 
 buckled to me, close, close like this for always. When you 
 go from me I feel as if my vitals had been torn out so empty 
 quite useless." 
 
 He held her still closer, bracing his body hard against hers, 
 and suddenly he laughed. 
 
 " I love you for being so strong," he said. " Do you know 
 you have muscles like a leopardess? I must teach you to fence 
 with the sabres. I have a pair in Florence. We shall fence 
 in the evenings when I come home, in our own room, and you 
 shall wear the black suit Maddalena is to make for you. I 
 believe, Giovanna, you could wrestle with me and make it 
 difficult for me to throw you ! " 
 
 At the challenge, Joanna who had been hanging limp and 
 heavy in his arms, tightened her hold on him with an excited 
 laugh. Though so near the Villino their seclusion at this hour 
 was perfect. Over her husband's shoulder, between the trees, 
 away along the road she could just see a tiny black figure 
 the priest, on his way to Compline. She remembered his 
 young, unhappy face, and for that moment it was not Mario 
 that she held against her breast. 
 
 They began to wrestle. 
 
 Silently, save for little, gasping laughs when one for the 
 minute got the better, they strove with one another. They 
 swayed to and fro, staggering. Sometimes they would lean 
 against a tree, panting, then start afresh. 
 
 Joanna fought her hardest at once, and Mario matched him- 
 self to her, always keeping something in reserve. As a school- 
 girl might, Joanna really strained every nerve to prove the 
 stronger. Till, at length, seeing the laughter in her face die 
 under the grimness of supreme effort, Mario used his full 
 strength suddenly, and threw her. 
 
 She had tried her best, and she rejoiced that he had beaten 
 her. He had made her his anew, and she longed for him. 
 For the first time she was truly his bride, he her bridegroom. 
 
 "Mario! Oh, Mario, look at the sky! " she breathed, 
 " the color of it." 
 
 As they lay there all slackly, resting on their backs on the 
 sweet ground, recovering their breath, staring up and up be-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 115 
 
 tween the tree-tops at the quiet sky, the monastery bell began 
 to ring for Compline. The smell of fresh-hewn wood came to 
 them, and the sharp fragrance of the pine needles. Now and 
 then a cone rustled heavily from branch to branch, and thudded 
 to the earth. Somewhere a cicada whirred, like a pigmy's loom 
 weaving indefatigably some fairy- web. Another hidden being 
 spoke in eager whisperings, as a pencil moving over paper 
 speaks, faltering at times as if the poet flagged, but only to 
 begin again with the speed of inspiration. Yet another tiny 
 creature of the forest shrilled and shrilled with its insistent, 
 thread-like voice. 
 
 The austere, Gothic woodland, regular as stone, measured 
 and set in that place by anointed hands, was full of life. There 
 was life in the aisles of air between the trees, life in the dark 
 plumes, life in the stark shafts, life amid the defiant roots. 
 
 The sky palpitated from blue to violet, from violet to a 
 still deeper blue; and a star came down and glittered like a 
 tear in the black meshes of the pines. 
 
 VI 
 
 From that evening till the end of their fortnight at Vallom- 
 brosa, Joanna lived wholly in the new world Mario had created 
 for her. It was a glowing world, inhabited only by the man 
 and the desired woman. 
 
 They were always out of doors, and the forest was a shield 
 shutting them off from every beyond of thought. Joanna's 
 bodily well-being was flawless, and they walked, sometimes 
 long distances, Mario taking pride in her vigor and staying 
 power. 
 
 She was no longer troubled by a conviction of impermanence, 
 nor by the dread of what awaited her; but Mario, though he 
 never left her side, was often in torture. He felt she was 
 escaping him always. When she gazed away from him at trees 
 or stars in a long rapture h could hardly bear it. Even when 
 she entranced him by her eaping response to his passion, he 
 had the sense that she was keeping her ultimate self immune 
 that she was holding back, waiting for some other touch than 
 his. But of all this he said nothing to her. He could not even 
 formulate it clearly to himself. Only by some frantic quality 
 in his embraces did his grievance find expression. 
 
 What they had was not love. But it had beauty, and it 
 served.
 
 ii6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 vn 
 
 It was in Florence that she began to feel herself a prisoner. 
 
 They had not been two days with Maddalena in the little 
 brown villa at San Gervasio, before Joanna knew how far 
 Mario had been from joking when he had spoken of keeping 
 her in a cage. 
 
 In Glasgow the seeming extravagance of his words had 
 helped her to blind herself to their truth. By the fish-ponds 
 at Vallombrosa she had chosen to take his outbreak as a 
 lover's passing frenzy. Even in Florence at first, she refused 
 to believe that her husband, if he could, would have had her 
 go veiled like an Eastern woman ; that he would have kept her 
 sequestered behind high walls while business claimed him; that 
 this desire of his was no bridegroom's freak, but a necessity of 
 his nature as much a part of him as his pallor or the black- 
 ness of his hair. 
 
 And Maddalena shared his view. Maddalena was to keep 
 the door of the cage. 
 
 It was true that walking in the streets of Florence was an 
 entirely different experience from walking in the streets of 
 Glasgow. Joanna had to admit that to herself even before 
 Maddalena pointed it out. With her West of Scotland fairness 
 of skin, so distinct from any Italian fairness, she was a clear 
 mark for every bold Italian eye. Besides, at the moment, 
 she carried upon her the lovely bloom which comes to some 
 women when they are first possessed. People twisted their 
 heads round to look and drew one another's attention to her; 
 and she dreaded the stares because of Mario's distorted face. 
 She found this rage of his hard to reconcile with his light 
 treatment of Bob's letter. 
 
 One day, within a week of their arrival, they went together 
 to change some English money at Cook's office in the Via 
 Tornabuoni. The place was crowded. A young Italian, mark- 
 ing Joanna, nudged his companion, and they both fixed eyes 
 on her, murmuring to each other. They were at some distance, 
 but in spite of the crowd, Joanna knew by Mario's lowering 
 brows that he had observed them. He even stepped towards 
 them balefully as they passed out by the glass doors to the 
 street. 
 
 " If only he wouldn't take any notice," she thought with 
 anger. Then just before her, at the little window of the
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 117 
 
 Bureau de Change, some question was asked with a marked 
 Edinburgh accent. Talking to the clerk about a circular note 
 stood a middle-aged Scotsman. He had gray hair and a kind, 
 shrewd face, and by the side of Mario's frenzy his known de- 
 meanor lacerated her with home-sickness. What was she doing 
 among these insolent and jealous Italians? She longed to ask 
 help of this safe man with the so familiar speech. From the 
 look of him she felt sure he must know her Aunt Georgina. But 
 when he moved away without a glance in her direction, she 
 merely took his place mutely, and picked up her silver and 
 nickel pieces without counting them. 
 
 Not speaking, she and Mario walked back down the Via 
 Tornabuoni. Mario was inwardly vowing that his wife should 
 go no step by herself in town or country, no matter how she 
 might plead. He wondered if even Maddalena could be trusted 
 with her. Not only was he maddened by the staring, but he 
 had seen, as they left Cook's, a look of contempt and rebellion 
 on Joanna's face. Joanna, for her part, was aghast at the 
 situation, and knew not which to hate more the impudent 
 Florentines or Mario's unreasonable anger with what after 
 all seemed the custom of his country. She was alarmed too 
 by her pain of home-sickness at sight of the man from Edin- 
 burgh. Had she not always felt alien in Edinburgh? Even in 
 Glasgow had she not fancied herself a changeling? And here 
 was a new loneliness engulfing her. Was there no place in 
 the world where she might feel at home? 
 
 Both miserable, they made their way slowly through the 
 slow-moving crowds of the Via Ceretane which was already 
 sunk from daylight: and with the flame of sunset behind 
 them, they made for the Piazza, del Duomo where their tram 
 was. 
 
 Two days before, seeing the Duomo for the first time, Joanna 
 had remained aloof. To Mario's disappointment she had been 
 unimpressed by the checkered mass of its marble. 
 
 But now, looking up from the pool of nightfall where they 
 walked, she held her breath. 
 
 There, lifted up to burn and rejoice claiming the sun for 
 its own, like the face of some heavy, splendid flower some 
 dahlia gloriosa with a thousand hearts was the faqade. 
 
 At the sight, Joanna's private trouble fell from her, and a 
 new impersonal happiness she was learning to recognize, surged 
 in her again. Ah! What a coward she had been about the 
 man from Edinburgh! What could he do for her? He could
 
 n8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 but take her back to all she had left and must go on leaving. 
 
 But Mario! Mario was of a piece with the new life. Mario 
 was descended from the men who had spun this blossom out 
 of stone: and he desired her for beauty he saw in her. She 
 too, like the fagade, had a heart for the sun. And he had dis- 
 covered it. Let Mario use her for his happiness in the way 
 he would. Let him kill her if that was his way. But in spirit 
 at least she would never now go back. 
 
 His wife's enthusiasm, and the quick recovery of pleasure 
 in her face, turned Mario's humor. During the race for the 
 tram, whch had already started, they were both mad with 
 excitement. All the way home they wooed each other. 
 
 vm 
 
 But the bars of the cage were still there, and as one result 
 of their presence Joanna was sorely deprived of the bodily 
 exercise which had always meant so much to her. Mario, hav- 
 ing now started work, left the villa at seven, or even earlier 
 each morning. He had not to be at his office till half past 
 eight, but liked always to spend an hour first in the Cascine 
 experimenting with the new brakes or seats or pedals that he 
 was continually inventing. He did not return until six some- 
 times seven o'clock, when it was already dark. 
 
 Maddalena hated walking. Though only thirty-five, she was 
 already very stout. And as the ordinary household shopping 
 was done by the cook soon after dawn, Joanna was compelled 
 to spend the greater part of her time either indoors or lounging 
 in the garden. 
 
 She tried to sketch. 
 
 The little villa, with its ochre walls of stucco on which had 
 been painted imitation cross-timbers of a faded chocolate 
 color, was not attractive. But the stabilimento behind, where 
 the contadini and their beasts lived, offered some pleasant 
 arrangements of wall and terrace, some tempting patterns of 
 sunshine and deep shadow. 
 
 For hours at a time she tried to put on paper some of the 
 charm she saw in the podere, and all the while she kept 
 reproaching herself for not having worked more seriously at 
 her drawing when she had the chance. She was always 
 quite dissatisfied with her efforts, and generally ended by lay- 
 ing aside her pencil and falling into a dream. 
 
 One morning she had been for half an hour thus drawing and
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 119 
 
 despairing. She sat on a cushion upon the low brick wall 
 which surrounded the well, and though it was past the middle 
 of December the garden was full of strong sunshine. On 
 the terrace above the well grew a pomegranate tree. Its lower 
 branches were still green, but it had shaken off its upper 
 foliage, and the slender flakes of gold lay all around. Some 
 were fallen in the well, and these swam on the black water, 
 a flotilla of yellow canoes, wonderfully frail yet with jaunty 
 prows. On the terrace below the well a fig-tree, quite denuded 
 of its leaves, held aloft a few figs right on the tips of its top- 
 most twigs. Joanna thought some giant's child might have 
 stuck them there for fun. No one would ever get them off now. 
 
 As she sat there dreaming and idle, half against her own will, 
 she began to survey her new existence. 
 
 That afternoon, when Maddalena had finished her siesta, 
 they would go together into Florence to the shops. They 
 would not even walk as far as the Ouerce, but would wait for 
 the Fiesole tram at the bottom of the rough lane which led 
 from the villa ; and while they waited, Maddalena would sit to 
 rest on one of the green iron chairs in front of the trattoria 
 where Mario kept his bicycle. During the journey to town 
 Joanna would catch glimpses of Italy that were almost too 
 tantalizing to bear glimpses of a hidden court-yard, a little 
 piazza with a spouting fountain, a shop-window, a narrow, 
 tempting street, a secretive palace. This was her Italy 
 glimpses and dreams. She was hungry to see everything more 
 closely and at leisure. But on plunged the tram with much 
 pounding of bells and tooting of horns to the Duomo. And 
 at the Duomo they would at once hire a vetturino to take them 
 from one shop to another. 
 
 Each article had to be bought at a different shop, and as 
 Maddalena was very particular, each purchase demanded time 
 and deliberation, quite apart from the great final haggle over 
 the price. Maddalena did beautiful Florentine needlework, 
 and all the materials had to be of the best. In one shop she 
 bought the linen: and the salesman had to lift down roll after 
 roll of the cool, fine, woven flax from his high shelves before 
 his customer was satisfied. Even then she would look over 
 every metre herself before consenting to beat down the price. 
 Xo thick thread, no flaw of uneven weaving escaped her black 
 eyes, and she was held in great respect by the shop-people. 
 Her needles and reels came from another shop the only place
 
 120 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 in Florence, she told Joanna, where thread could be depended 
 on. It was near the Or San Michele, and beside it was another 
 for embroidery frames and hoops. Here to-day, a frame was 
 to be bought for Joanna who was being taught drawn-thread 
 work. But the shop that took up most time of all, was the 
 tiny one on the Lung 'Arno, where squares and long insertions 
 and medallions of hand-made filet were to be had. Maddalena 
 went there not so much to buy (for it was a trap for tourists) 
 as to learn new patterns and stitches. And Joanna knew that 
 they would spend nearly an hour there, looking over piles of 
 delicately fashioned dragons, and ships in full sail, and wolves 
 suckling Romulus and Remus, before Maddalena bought the 
 one small piece she had come for. After that, most likely they 
 would go to Gilli's for Maddalena 's glass of marsala, and Joanna 
 would refuse the sweet wine in spite of persuasion, greedily 
 drinking instead some China tea that tasted of straw, and eat- 
 ing little cakes stuffed with chestnuts. 
 
 Maddalena, who, with her mustache, her dense body, her 
 dark, slightly twisted face, and her deep voice, had something 
 of the schoolmistress about her, was trying to instruct her 
 brother's wife. She had taken to Joanna immediately, and 
 Joanna felt warm to her. But to the Italian woman the girl 
 from Scotland seemed almost as ill-educated as a savage. 
 Maddalena could not, for example, get over her sister-in-law's 
 ignorance of all languages save her own, and though she her- 
 self spoke English almost as well as her brother, she refused 
 as a rule to speak it with Joanna. If Joanna didn't under- 
 stand what had been said in Italian, it would be repeated in 
 French. Often the girl wondered what she had been doing 
 during her eight years at the excellent school in Glasgow. 
 Her own ignorance appalled her. 
 
 Another source of amazement to Maddalena, was Joanna's 
 general untidiness. She was never ill-humored about it, only 
 boundlessly astonished; for the gently bred Italian girl is 
 unfailingly and scrupulously tidy. One day she caught Joanna 
 in the act which had so often grieved Juley. The girl was 
 kicking off her outdoor shoes without untying the laces, and 
 the older woman cried aloud in horror. She snatched up the 
 shoes, examined their scratched heels, almost in tears, and a 
 flood of deprecatory speech flowed from her. 
 
 " And where are your shoe-trees? " she demanded at length. 
 
 Joanna confessed she had none.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 121 
 
 "No shoe-trees! Mother of God! " Maddalena exclaimed 
 in her masculine voice, so harsh, yet so warm, and she cast 
 her eyes up till the whites gleamed in her olive face. Next 
 day she made Joanna buy enough trees for all her shoes. 
 
 She had laughed and cried over Joanna's trousseau, declar- 
 ing it was " all bits." 
 
 " Not two chemises alike!" she marveled. " And Dio mio! 
 the fineness of this nightgown! With us only demi-mondaines 
 want such things: why, it will be in ribbons in no time. Ah! 
 You see. Here! What did I say? Already a tear under the 
 arm. That is where they always go first. The other side 
 too! Santa Vergine! You English! Is this what you name 
 a darn? " 
 
 And there and then she had made Joanna unpick her hasty 
 mending with a special pair of fine scissors, and had showed 
 her how a darn should look. 
 
 It was impossible to take anything she might say, in bad 
 part, and Joanna had learned more from her sister-in-law of 
 material efficiency in a few weeks than from her mother in 
 years of despairing correction. She had learned to admire 
 order for its own sake, which was at least a step towards its 
 achievement. With a good will she had set about embroidering 
 her initials J. E. R. on every one of her under-garments, and 
 Maddalena's ready praise of her clever, if untrained fingers, 
 was very pleasant. In a short time she actually felt uncom- 
 fortable if she didn't put her shoes on their trees the moment 
 she had taken them off. 
 
 But the life they led at the villa did not satisfy her. And 
 as she sat by the well this morning, her dissatisfaction began 
 to take form in her thoughts. She saw Maddalena's existence, 
 so complete, so productive of contentment, and having the 
 charm of success. And beside it she placed her mother's in- 
 effectual, uncomfortable struggle. And she could not over- 
 come the belief that her mother's way of life was the better, 
 that it was inexplicably finer, nobler, more winning. 
 
 The comparison roused her, and she turned on herself in 
 terrified disgust. 
 
 " What am I? And what am I doing? " she asked herself; 
 and her face burned with shame at the answers she had to 
 give to these questions. She had accepted the role for which 
 Mario had cast her. She had drugged her spirit, had lived for 
 her husband's return in the evenings, had dreamed through-
 
 122 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 out the day of the night's coming embraces. Was this mar- 
 riage? No, it could not be. Or if it were, there was something 
 wrong about it something at any rate that was wrong for 
 her. 
 
 Not for nothing had Juley nurtured her babes on the belief 
 that God has a spiritual purpose in the life of each one of his 
 creatures, and a purpose for the fulfilment of which the crea- 
 ture is largely responsible. Joanna had tried more than once 
 to express something of this to Mario; but he had condemned 
 such ideas as pernicious and egoistic, and she understood 
 perfectly what he meant. Yet there it was hardly so much 
 an idea for Juley 's children as a fact, a thing bred in their 
 bones by generations of prayer and faith and sacrifice. Mario 
 might say what he liked; he might even be right: but here and 
 now Joanna knew that she would never get wholly away 
 from it. 
 
 As if to meet the new, if still vague independence rising in 
 her, she sprang to her feet and walked along the terrace to 
 the little garden gate which led to the steep lane called the 
 Via Barbacane. Pausing there for a moment she looked 
 swiftly about her. She could hear a contadino singing at the 
 top of his voice behind the outhouses as he picked olives, and 
 every now and then he made a rustling in the tree like a great 
 bird, though he never faltered in his loud, heart-breaking song. 
 Joanna stood so still, listening and looking, that on the warm 
 hard earth of the path a lizard darted between her feet. But 
 there was no human being to be seen; and drawing a long 
 breath she slipped out of the garden arl started running up 
 the hillside. 
 
 It was very exciting to be out alone against Mario's orders, 
 and the excitement added a glowing quality to the beauty 
 the girl saw on either hand. The walled lane ran between 
 poderi of plowed land, and over the walls the olive trees 
 stretched their branches, now thickly strung with harvest-ripe 
 fruit. Here and there the muscular, gray wood had thrust its 
 gnarled elbows through the stone-work, making it bulge dan- 
 gerously, and in places dislodging it altogether. All the way 
 up the hill one one side, a hedge of monthly roses, full two 
 yards high, ran along the wall's top. It was lusty and lovely 
 thickly covered still with its shell-like flowers, which showed 
 more fragile than ever because of the hale scarlet and yellow 
 hips which were maturing on the same stems as the new buds.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 123 
 
 And between the gaps of the hedge, and above it, was the blue, 
 blue sky of the Tramontana. 
 
 Joanna, all her blood dancing, climbed as far as a little 
 balustraded platform of stone which curved out to her left 
 where the wall ended, in a graceful semi-circle. A stone bench 
 ran round it, and its playful builder had decorated it with 
 pillars bearing fir cones on their capitals. 
 
 She knelt on the seat, leaned her elbows on the ledge, and 
 looked down at the world lying in a bath of morning sunshine. 
 Her eyes wandered from Florence to the gray hillsides that 
 glittered when the air moved. She looked at the yellow villas, 
 blind and basking. She remembered one almost hidden from 
 here among its cypresses which Mario had pointed out as the 
 home of a woman celebrated for her loves. La Porziuncola it 
 had been called, and Joanna had a vivid memory of the little 
 sunken door in the wall, where it was said the lover was wont 
 to enter. On one of their rare walks Mario had taken her 
 past it. 
 
 But now, as she looked, La Porziuncola, the other shuttered 
 villas, the restless, glittering spume of olives on the slopes, the 
 quieter shining of Florence and her Arno, seemed to her but a 
 part of the passing dream which was her marriage. 
 
 " It can't go on," she thought. " It won't last. It isn't 
 real. It is playing at something pretending, as children pre- 
 tend when they play." 
 
 The very strength of the December sunshine struck her as 
 incredible, and the hillsides were soulless, surely. 
 
 Yet it was no dream. The seat was hard, and its cold struck 
 through to her knees. She really was disobeying Mario in 
 being here. She really had a husband and a jailer, who at this 
 moment was somewhere down there absorbed in his beloved 
 machinery. 
 
 Joanna recalled the happy oblivion on his face whenever he 
 was busy about his bicycle. That very morning Maddalena 
 and she had gone down as far as the steps at the end of the 
 lane to see him off. They had stood there hatless, trembling 
 a little in the early freshness, but enjoying it, while he got 
 his machine out of the trattoria. He had touched it here and 
 there with loving hands to see that all was right, and had 
 frowned at something which he said would soon want repair- 
 ing. Then he had kissed Joanna's hand, started with unusual 
 difficulty, and waved his hat without turning his head. The
 
 i2 4 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 two women had waited, looking after him till he disappeared 
 round a far corner and only the distant pulsing of the engine 
 came back to them. 
 
 And scarcely three hours had passed since then. How 
 many hours were there till his return? Joanna counted on 
 her fingers, and sighed. Yes, he was still her lover. She still 
 looked eagerly for his coming, and in the pleasure of greeting 
 him, sought compensation for the empty hours of his absence. 
 
 But this evening, she determined she would tell him some 
 of her morning thoughts, persisting till he came to understand 
 her trouble. She would ask him to help her, would show 
 that somehow their love was at stake. She remembered a 
 phrase of her mother's in a talk they had had during her 
 engagement. " It is easy enough to fall in love, my childie," 
 Juley had said, " but to love wisely is sometimes very hard." 
 
 The mere thought, repudiated at first, that love was hard, 
 came to Joanna now as a stimulating discovery. Of course 
 it w?s hard. It needed courage to love. Acquiescence was 
 not the way. And at once she pictured herself walking up 
 the lane with Mario when he got home, persuading him to 
 come with her as far as the stone seat, telling him how she 
 had come there earlier, by herself. 
 
 This she must tell him, even if it made him angry. He 
 must not hear of it first through Maddalena. And fearful 
 that Maddalena might at that very moment be looking for 
 her by the well to give her an embroidery lesson, Joanna rose 
 and hastened back towards the house. 
 
 As she turned the last corner, coming quickly downhill, she 
 saw that two men stood on the road just outside the garden 
 gate. 
 
 Immediately she was struck by disquiet. There was some 
 oddness in the way they were talking, turning constantly to 
 look up towards the villa, yet not going in. One of them, a 
 tall man with thick iron-gray hair, carried his hat in his hand, 
 and kept mopping his brow with a blue silk handkerchief. 
 He seemed terribly worried with the sun full in his face. The 
 other, who had his back to Joanna, was small, and spick and 
 span. 
 
 The absurd idea darted through the girl's brain that Mario 
 had sent these people from Florence to spy upon her. She 
 could not believe them ordinary visitors. Now they were 
 crossing the ditch by the little paved bridge from the lane;
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 125 
 
 but again they hesitated uneasily before going on. They 
 looked almost felonious, and the smaller carried a black bag. 
 
 Joanna wondered if she could possibly slip past by the upper 
 terrace, and so get unseen to the house before them. By the 
 time she reached the gate they had disappeared round a 
 bend in the path. Perhaps she was too late! Breathlessly she 
 scrambled across to the higher path, and flew round by the 
 podere. 
 
 But as she came down the flight of rough stone steps close to 
 the villa, she saw that she was caught. 
 
 Immediately below her, on her right, were the two men, 
 both now holding their hats in their hands: and on her left, 
 Maddalena, with a question in her face moved from the house 
 to meet them. 
 
 Then Maddalena had been in the garden looking for her 
 thought Joanna. What should she do? She might still go 
 back, and run round behind the house, entering by the other 
 side. They had not noticed her. But she found she could 
 not stir from the spot. She had to wait. She must see the 
 meeting between the men and Maddalena, to whom clearly 
 they were strangers. 
 
 Now they had met. The tall man started mopping his brow 
 again: the little man was speaking. 
 
 Suddenly Maddalena 's hand flew to her mouth. She ut- 
 tered a loud scream. And Joanna, leaping down the stone 
 steps, was too late to help. Her sister-in-law had slipped down 
 quite neatly and softly and was lying all her length across the 
 
 terrace. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Mario was dead, Joanna knew that before they could tell 
 her. 
 
 He had been killed in the Cascine. His " auto velocipede," 
 the men said, had collided with a carriage. Death must have 
 been instantaneous. His body was at the mortuary of the 
 Misericordia, whither the Brothers had carried it from the 
 scene of the accident. The smaller of the two men who was 
 a doctor, begged Joanna not to go there. And he looked her 
 up and down searchingly with his wise eyes. The coffin could 
 be brought home later, if they wished it, he said. But better 
 have the funeral from the mortuary. Anyhow, God help them, 
 not to look upon the poor, shattered body. It had been a 
 terrible accident, terrible. But no suffering. That was some-
 
 126 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 thing. All must have been over in a second of time. The 
 poor signore had been riding his auto-velocipede at great speed, 
 and on the wrong side of the road, at one of those sharp 
 crossings near the race-course. The coachman of the carriage 
 must be exonerated in the matter. He was, poor fellow, in a 
 state of collapse. But he had not been to blame. Undoubt- 
 edly the signore had been riding on the wrong side. 
 
 All the things from Mario's pockets were in the doctor's 
 bag. Word of the accident had first been taken to the office, 
 that address being the only one to be found on the body. 
 There the manager had done all that remained to be done. 
 The tall man was the manager from the office. Joanna 
 remembered afterwards how the loose flesh of his face hung 
 down under his cheeks and chin, like a hound's dew-laps: and 
 he had great pouches under his eyes. 
 
 IX 
 
 After the funeral, Joanna did not see the sun for a fortnight. 
 She never went out, not even to the garden. 
 
 She alone had followed the coffin to the grave, for Madda- 
 lena still lay in a darkened room. But she had not seen her 
 dead husband. The Brothers at the Misericordia supported 
 the doctor in this; and thinking to treasure her last sight of 
 him alive, Joanna had not insisted. The bicycle, she had seen. 
 It was crushed and twisted, as might have been a penny toy. 
 
 She did not weep. But when she was not tending Maddalena 
 she sat huddled up, her head on her hands, her eyes starting 
 into distance. And a deep vertical line came between her 
 brows. 
 
 At first, all the time, and again and again, she was irresistibly 
 trying to re-live the experience which had been Mario's in the 
 moment of meeting death. It was as if, before grieving for 
 her own loss, she must share this thing with him. She saw 
 the cross-roads, where she had once been with him, the hidden, 
 noiseless carriage, the tearing bicycle, with Mario on it 
 part of it. There must have been one clear, frantic moment 
 of knowledge. Then the smash. Joanna lived through it 
 with every sinew and nerve in her body strung. They had 
 brought not a word, not even a cry for her to hold on to. 
 If only there had come the smallest message. Why had he 
 been riding on the wrong side. It was not like him. Yet it 
 was like him to be wiped out in a moment.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 127 
 
 In spite of her obedience to the Brothers, when she tried 
 now to call up the white, vivid face which had been so delight- 
 ful to her, she could only see it agonized, infuriated, or pit- 
 eously disfigured. Was it because she had disobeyed him that 
 last day? Why else should he look so angry with her in death? 
 Why else should he be riding on the wrong side? She tried 
 to put the thought from her, but it recurred. Each night she 
 prayed on her knees that she might dream of him smiling 
 at her; but she slept hardly at all, and when she did she started 
 awake with murder on her soul. 
 
 Letters came from home a few shy lines from each of the 
 boys, a long scrawl from Georgie very affectionate, and beg- 
 ging her sister to use the words " passed on " instead of 
 " died," and from her mother almost daily letters, which by 
 the many erasures Joanna knew had been written in forbidden 
 hours. Juley had at once offered to come to Italy. But the 
 girl forbade it, saying she would herself come home as soon as 
 she could leave Maddalena in the company of an old friend 
 who was coming from Sicily to be with her. 
 
 To return home seemed the only reasonable course. Joanna 
 had come to feel a great tenderness for Maddalena. She was 
 moved as well as surprised to find how the elder woman clung 
 to her. For Mario's death had worked a curious change be- 
 tween the two women; and now it was the southerner who 
 with every action betrayed her spiritual dependence on the 
 northerner. But save for Maddalena there was no life for 
 Joanna in Florence, and as the days crept past and past, she 
 had to admit that life was still before her. In time Madda- 
 lena would once more take up the orderly threads of existence 
 in her efficient hands, and the friend from Sicily would probably 
 make her home at the villa. But Joanna could not consent 
 to live on her sister-in-law. Apart from the remnant of 
 Mario's savings a bare fifty pounds she was left without 
 money. No. She must go back to Glasgow and learn how 
 to live. There were listless hours, wasted years to be made 
 good. She felt rather like a child who has played truant from 
 school, and is led back to its task. 
 
 Joanna decided that she would break the return journey 
 at Viareggio, there to see Aunt Perdy and deliver Juley's 
 present. A visit had more than once been suggested, but till 
 now it had not been practicable. 
 
 At the station in Florence she hung round Maddalena's
 
 128 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 neck. Though Maddalena's face was swollen above the high, 
 tight-fitting, black neck-band, and her eyelids were sodden 
 and puffy, she seemed to have shed all her tears. But amid 
 the distractions of packing it was two days since Joanna had 
 cried, and now her eyes streamed. People looked with open 
 expressions of sympathy at the embracing women dressed in 
 deepest Continental mourning. At first Joanna had tried to 
 keep some moderation in her weeds, but seeing at once that her 
 sister-in-law would be hurt by any opposition in the matter, 
 she had become passive. It would be easy to modify her dress 
 when she reached home. Now she wore a skirt bordered with 
 a hem of crape half a yard deep, and a bodice without an 
 inch of white anywhere. And the black veiling which fell from 
 the brim of her hat, reached almost to her heels at the back. 
 With her youth and her white skin she was notable, and she felt 
 like an adventuress. A pang of surprised amusement shot 
 through her when she thought what Mario's feelings would 
 have been at seeing her thus conspicuous. It was as if, far 
 down in the dark mourning waters a silver bubble of laughter 
 were released and struggling upwards. The inclination to 
 laugh was intense, inebriating. It seemed years since she had 
 laughed. For a wild moment she thought she must spout 
 her soul out in an eruption of the old school-girl madness of 
 laughter. But the moment passed; and she only hugged Mad- 
 dalena the tighter because of it, and smiled at her the more 
 tenderly. 
 
 When the train bore her out of the station and into the 
 sunshine of the unstricken world, a new, rare spring of happi- 
 ness came welling up suddenly in her life. She had no definite 
 thought of its source. She merely knew that somehow, un- 
 deservedly, she had escaped. The words passed through her 
 mind : " Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the 
 fowlers; the snare is broken and we are escaped." In spite 
 of a voice of denial deep-buried in her, she saw herself in 
 the image of a dove. 
 
 But it was with more than the wood-pigeon's wildness that 
 she was now spreading her wings. In her body she still grieved 
 for Mario; but she was unbroken, and still hungry for life 
 which was only beginning. Though she was going home, she 
 was not going back not going with the man from Edinburgh. 
 Home was the next step forward; that was all. And now that 
 she knew how ill-equipped she was, she must work. How
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 139 
 
 she must work! As the train ran on through the singing 
 fields, Joanna drank the sunshine with an overflowing heart. 
 Like one who has done murder in self-defence, and is reprieved, 
 she was full of honey-sweet defiance against death. 
 
 It was still early in the afternoon when she climbed down 
 from the train at Viareggio. 
 
 For a moment she looked about her lost. Had no one 
 come to meet her after all? 
 
 Then she knew for her Aunt, an outlandish figure which 
 came flying towards her from the far end of the station, as if 
 on fawn-colored wings. 
 
 The wings, on a nearer view, turned out to be the cape- 
 sleeves of a buff dolman which had been fashionable ten or. 
 twelve years before, and which Perdy always wore on her 
 rare descents to the town. As she ran to meet her niece, 
 this garment fled apart in front, showing the coarse full skirt 
 of a contadina, and her zoccoli clacked sharply on the hard 
 track, as her heels in their thick, red cotton socks parted from 
 the wooden soles with every step. On her head was a man's 
 tweed cap, with the peak pulled well over her eyes. And under 
 it her short hair showed, cut in a thick fringe. 
 
 Joanna immediately dropped her luggage and went blushing 
 to meet her mother's sister. And after Maddalena's hundredth 
 embrace Aunt Perdy's first was like a home-coming. Was 
 it the voice, the intonation, the sweetish odor of her breath, 
 or something in the feeling of her arms, wondered the girl, 
 that made her at once so familiar? In Aunt Perdy's face, 
 with its strangely formed lips and burning eyes, Joanna could 
 not see much likeness to her mother or to Georgie; yet it was 
 as if she were hugging and being hugged by both of them; 
 and by Linnet and Sholto too. She felt herself taken to the 
 family bosom. 
 
 Aunt Perdy, when she had kissed Joanna repeatedly on 
 both cheeks, held her off by the shoulders, saying she must 
 have " a good look " at her. But in a trice her steadfast gaze 
 went from her niece's glowing face to the long widow's veil 
 which floated behind. 
 
 " Fie, for shame, child! " she exclaimed, stretching her hand 
 over Joanna's shoulder and drawing the trail of crape towards 
 her. "You an Erskine! to wear such a thing! As though 
 we were of those that sorrow without hope. I'm amazed at 
 you. Is that all my poor sister has taught her girls? "
 
 130 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Joanna tried to explain that she had not wished to hurt 
 her sister-in-law's feelings. But Aunt Perdy would not listen. 
 
 "Weak, weak! " she said, shaking her head. " But 'tis 
 written on your face. The moment I met you, I saw it. You 
 are too yielding. I used to be too yielding. Life has taught 
 me better, though. You know what dear Browning says? 
 
 'That rage was right in the main, that acquiescence vain, ?' 
 
 And remember that though we are told that Christ, ' pleased 
 not Himself,' we know very well that neither did He please 
 others! But see, we'll say no more now. Luckily I always 
 carry my shears with me." 
 
 Aunt Perdy groped under her wonderful dolman among the 
 folds of her skirt, and presently brought to light a long pair 
 of scissors which were fastened by several yards of tape to 
 her waist. She then walked slowly round Joanna, command- 
 ing her to stand still while she cut off the draperies of widow- 
 hood. 
 
 "There, that's better! " she said. She was delighted as a 
 child with her work. " And now give Auntie another hearty 
 kiss! " 
 
 Again she pressed Joanna to her breast, again held her off 
 for inspection, exclaiming, as if she now saw her for the first 
 time, " So this is Juley's little daughter! " 
 
 By this time everybody in the. station was staring at them; 
 staring not rudely or furtively as people would have stared in 
 England, but with unconcealed interest, and encouraging smiles 
 for such a display of family emotion. (It is only in the matter 
 of sex that the Italian is ill-mannered.) And while Joanna 
 felt that she would have been welcomed quite as warmly 
 without onlookers, she knew her Aunt was stimulated by their 
 audience. " This is an historical meeting," Perdy seemed to 
 say, with a careless invitation to the public, " between a very 
 remarkable woman and her niece. Look on by all means. 
 It does not matter to me; nor to her, if she is indeed my 
 niece! " 
 
 To the gnarled, old peasant whom she had brought with her 
 to carry the luggage, she announced Joanna as her Scottish 
 niece, and the man nodded and smiled. He had to congratu- 
 late the Signora on having so beautiful a relation, with a face 
 like the Blessed Virgin's, and all the way from Scotland too!
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 131 
 
 They left the station, and the peasant took them in a cart 
 through the town, over the canal where men naked to the 
 waist were lifting great blocks of marble out of barges, and 
 across a stretch of perfectly flat country till they reached 
 Torre del Lago. 
 
 From here they were to climb on foot to Aunt Perdy's cot- 
 tage; and the man Tommaso drove off to put the pony up, 
 leaving the women to wait by the roadside with the luggage till 
 his return. 
 
 He would be gone about twenty minutes, Aunt Perdy said; 
 so she and Joanna carried their belongings between them, 
 from the road to the shore of the lake which was only a short 
 way off. It would be pleasanter to wait there. 
 
 Joanna was entranced by the pale, outspread sheet of water, 
 so different from any of the lochs at home. A mirage, she 
 thought, must look like this. Even before Aunt Perdy told her, 
 she had known it must be quite shallow all over. 
 
 When they had been sitting there a few minutes a small, flat- 
 bottomed boat ran softly in to shore, not far from them, swish- 
 ing between the parted reeds; and the two men in it stepped 
 over the side, and hauled their craft easily some yards inland 
 among the bushes. 
 
 Joanna and Aunt Perdy watched, and as the men left the 
 boat and made for the road, Aunt Perdy's short-sighted eyes 
 narrowed, straining in their direction. 
 
 " What are they carrying, Aunt Perdy? " asked Joanna, 
 a note of childish horror in her voice. " They look like big 
 bunches of feathers but they seem so heavy. Oh! But they 
 are birds! And I believe they are fluttering! They are alive? " 
 
 But already her companion was gone, and had descended 
 upon the two peasants like a whirlwind. 
 
 " Slaves and cowards! " Aunt Perdy was saying in her 
 peculiar but voluble Italian, when Joanna came up with them. 
 " Ill-educated, without intelligence, pieces of brute-beasts! " 
 (She spared them none of the phrases most wounding to 
 Italians.) "Was it for this, Niccolo, that I nursed your wife 
 night and day for a week when she was delivered of twins? 
 And you, Francesco! You, whose sweet name-saint was 
 the little brother of the birds! Are you not ashamed to 
 fill your disgusting belly with the flesh of these little, happy 
 bones? " 
 
 " I do not eat them, Signora," said Francesco sheepishly.
 
 i 3 2 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " They are for the market. Times are hard. A man must 
 live." 
 
 Aunt Perdy stamped her foot in its zoccolo. 
 
 "Idiot!" she retorted. "God have patience with you, 
 for the saints never will! How much do you suppose you 
 will get for them in Viareggio? " 
 
 " Two soldi apiece, Signora." 
 
 " Let me buy them from him," pleaded Joanna, and she 
 felt for her purse. She could not take her eyes off the birds 
 alive and hanging there in four great bunches. But firmly, 
 almost roughly, her aunt caught back her hand. 
 
 "Hold your tongue, silly child! " she said. "Francesco, 
 you cannot impose upon the Scottish Signora. You know 
 perfectly that in the time it takes you to snare ihe rondinelli 
 and carry them to the market, you could earn twice as much 
 by digging my garden. It is only because you are lazy and 
 cruel that you prefer to make a few soldi by taking life. And 
 what happens to the money? Ah! Yes indeed! How 
 many soldi return wath you out of the little wine-shop in the 
 Via Cavour? Eh, you, Niccolo? Your wife told me some 
 pretty things when she was ill. And Francesco need not 
 grin, for he is little better. You will set the birds free at 
 once, or I promise you get no help from me the next time 
 trouble comes." 
 
 Niccolo and Francesco accepted the situation. They had 
 been at work snaring the lake swallows since before dawn; 
 but now they merely looked once at one another and shrugged. 
 
 Aunt Perdy grasped a bunch of Niccolo 's birds, but at first 
 Joanna was afraid to touch the little creatures. She could 
 
 / 
 
 not believe that they were not maimed. But Francesco 
 showed her smilingly how each one had the tips of its wings 
 twisted together, and then tied with thread, so that several 
 dozen could be strung conveniently on a single string. All 
 the Signorina had to do, was to cut the threads, and straighten 
 the feathers afterwards. But she must hold the bird's body 
 firmly all the while, or in struggling it might break a wing or 
 a leg before it was ready to fly off. He gave her a pen-knife 
 to work with. Aunt Perdy was snipping away recklessly 
 it seemed to Joanna with her huge shears. 
 
 As she took the first little, palpitating body in her left hand, 
 Joanna's heart throbbed with an almost painful elation. 
 
 She remembered Cousin Gerald and the chaffinches at Dun-
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 133 
 
 tarvie, and how she had quivered when he had pointed 
 his knife at her breast. Birds had always played a memorable 
 part in her dreams, persisting there like a symbol. Sometimes 
 she had dreamed she was holding her hands above her head, 
 while hundreds of swallows passed through her widely spread 
 fingers, brushing her skin deliciously with their feathers. At 
 other times she was gazing up into a sky thick-strewn with 
 stars, with stars like seeds as they fly from the hand of the 
 sower; when to her amazement and her great rapture, she 
 perceived that they were not stars, but swallows millions 
 and millions of swallows, wheeling, and forming into inumer- 
 able companies for their autumnal flight. And the moon had 
 turned their breasts into silver, and their wings into the glitter 
 of diamonds. 
 
 These birds in her fingers now, were mostly a kind of lake 
 swallow black and white, fashioned for swiftness and a swoop- 
 ing flight. It seemed a wonder how they had ever been 
 snared. They had vicious, yellow beaks with which they 
 jabbed unceasingly at Joanna's flesh; apd their bright eyes, 
 though really quite expressionless, seemed wide with terror. 
 
 But the consummate moment was when one could raise 
 one's hand and watch the free bird fly. For an instant the 
 swallow's cold, bewildered claws clung to the palm, scratching 
 deep into the flesh. Then it was gone over the lake. Then 
 it was no more than a swooping black speck among the others 
 yonder. 
 
 As each took flight, Joanna's heart went with it. Had not 
 she too been snared? Snared indeed by her own desire; 
 but still more, by her own desire set free. And each bird 
 as it went from her, was as a thank-offering for freedom. 
 
 One bird she kept to the last. It was different from the 
 others. Much larger. A heavy breasted grey bird, rather 
 like a sea-gull, but with a finer beak, dead straight, and 
 pointed as a rapier. It had lain in her hands, more passive 
 than the swallows, as if dazed. And before she let it fly, 
 she kissed it deep among its breast feathers. Might it perhaps 
 be her messenger, and fly from her to Mario? 
 
 Anyhow her kiss was an unspoken message, breathing re- 
 morse, asking forgiveness, proclaiming triumph.
 
 134 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " No baby coming? " asked Aunt Perdy, her eyes running 
 over her niece's figure as they took off their coats indoors. 
 
 Joanna shook her head. 
 
 " Ah well, perhaps it is better so; though this visit to 
 Auntie in her lonely nest would have been something to tell a 
 child in the years to come, wouldn't it? Your mother will 
 be disappointed I dare say. Juley was always mad about 
 babies. But you will marry again Joanna^ and give her 
 grand-children, I can see that. Trust Aunt Perdy 's eyes. 
 Now come up the ladder, and you can take off your hat in 
 the bedroom. Let me go first to show you. Bring your coat 
 with you, and anything else. I leave nothing about down 
 stairs. Then we can talk till Aurora has the supper ready. 
 Aurora! " she called loudly. "Aurora! Aurora! Vieni! " 
 
 Running feet sounded from the garden, and a big, handsome 
 contadina of about eighteen, dashed into the cottage, smiling 
 all over her face. 
 
 Aunt Perdy, as she had done with Tommaso, presented her 
 niece grandiloquently for the servant's ready admiration. 
 Then, instead of going upstairs, she went out to superintend 
 the picking of the vegetables, and Joanna heard her giving her 
 orders for supper in a torrent of Italian. 
 
 They had reached Aunt Perdy's remote dwelling after a hot 
 forty minutes' climb, by a footpath so narrow that the three 
 had to walk Indian file, Tommaso leading, with Joanna's 
 luggage on his shoulder. The place was no more than a cottage, 
 and that of the humblest kind. But it had been built on a 
 shelf of the hill; and standing at the door with Aunt Perdy's 
 carefully tended vegetable patches on either hand, one grandly 
 overlooked the whole province. Below lay the great plain 
 like a cloak of many colors flung there outspread from the 
 mountains to the sea. On the right the Apennines were its 
 collar, sweeping in a rich curve upwards to the jewels and 
 point-lace of the Carraras. On the left its embroidered fringes 
 were layed by the Mediterranean from Bocca d'Arno all the 
 way round the deeply indented coast-line to the long foreland 
 of Spezia. 
 
 The cottage consisted of two rooms an upper and a lower 
 separated by a flooring of pine which was unplastered below, 
 and so roughly joined that there were gaps large enough
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 135 
 
 to slip a finger through. The lower room was paved with 
 square red tiles, and barely furnished with a deal table, a 
 painted wooden book-case, three cheap chairs, and a shabby 
 but fine, old armchair of woven cane the only one with 
 cushions. Some white enamel cups and saucers mixed with 
 common stone ware stood along the shelves of a fixed dresser 
 on one wall; and the whole of another wall was filled by the 
 fireplace, which gave dignity to everything with its huge 
 sloping hood of stone. 
 
 Joanna, glancing at the book-case when she was for a moment 
 alone, saw Burns' Poems, The Pilgrim's Progress, Looking 
 Backward, A Romance of Two Worlds, and The Schonberg 
 Cotta Family. There were also several works by Pulsford, 
 Harris, and Laurence Oliphant, some more novels by Miss 
 Corelli, and some by Ouida. In all, there were not more than 
 two dozen books. 
 
 On the walls hung a number of old-fashioned daguerreotypes 
 as well as one or two photographs made vulgar by enlargement. 
 In one of these Joanna recognized at once the gentle, fanatic 
 countenance of her Erskine grandfather, whose same adored 
 portrait hung over her mother's bed at home. And above 
 this Aunt Perdy had nailed a reproduction of Holman Hunt's 
 " Light of the World," the only colored picture in the room. 
 
 She had pointed to this the moment they entered the cottage. 
 
 " You see, I will have no imaginative pictures on my walls, 
 except one," she said, " and that Jesus. All the others are 
 photographs of the men who have made Aunt Perdy what she 
 is. There you see your darling grandpapa, my good angel 
 who comes often from heaven to commune with me in this 
 lonely spot, and to tell me what are the words I must say to 
 poor humanity as it struggles in the mire of ignorance. Over 
 there is dear Pulsford. You know his M or gen Rot he? What! 
 You have never read it? Poor child, you have not yet begun 
 to live. And here, here is my beloved Laurence Oliphant 
 my appointed soul's mate, as I have come to believe during 
 this last fortnight, after much prayer and meditation." 
 
 But the photograph which most interested Joanna, was a 
 faded cabinet one which had been nailed up in an inconspicu- 
 ous corner by the book-case. It was so like Gerald, that for 
 a moment she took it for his picture. But on looking closer, 
 she saw that this young man had little whiskers and an old- 
 fashioned collar. Then she knew it for a likeness of Gerald's
 
 136 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 father, her Uncle Henry, a vague figure of whom her mother 
 seldom spoke. He was dead, Joanna knew; and she was 
 dimly aware that for years before his death, he and Aunt 
 Perdy had lived apart. 
 
 As her Aunt returned, Joanna instinctively moved away 
 from the photograph. 
 
 " Yes, that is poor Henry," said Perdy, observing the 
 movement. " I keep his picture there to remind myself 
 that I have forgiven him the great wrong he did me when he 
 put me into what he called a ' Nursing Home/ and kept me 
 locked up there that he might indulge his fleshly lust with my 
 children's governess, whom he never had the courage to 
 marry. No doubt you have had a garbled story from your 
 mother? There is not a word of truth in that. But basta! 
 As I have said, I forgave Henry long ago even before God 
 punished him by a lingering illness before calling him on 
 to another phase in his development. I would gladly have 
 nursed him, if he would have allowed me. But he refused 
 my offer, and did not even answer my letter of tender forgive- 
 ness. In that horrible asylum all those on whom I laid my 
 hands were immediately cured. Thus God causes the wrath 
 of men to praise Him, Joanna." 
 
 During this speech, Aunt Perdy had passed her arm round 
 her niece's waist, and at some points the girl could barely resist 
 her inclination to burst into a fit of laughter. 
 
 " Your stomach is shaking, child," remarked Aunt Perdy. 
 "You are laughing at me. No. You needn't apologize or 
 explain. I see that in spite of the sorrow God has sent, you 
 are still one of the herd. I must have patience with you. 
 Some day perhaps you will understand. Now follow me 
 upstairs." 
 
 Joanna climbed after her aunt up the steep ladder which 
 led through a square opening in the. ceiling to the upper 
 part of the house. 
 
 This was even simpler than the living-room, and contained 
 neither cupboard nor fireplace. There were two iron bedsteads 
 a chest of drawers, an enamel basin and ewer, and a printed 
 calico curtain in a corner concealing a few clothes. The floor 
 was uncarpeted save for a worn strip between the beds. But 
 here also everything was scrupulously clean. 
 
 Joanna was glad to relieve her increasing feeling of tension 
 by at once opening her travelling case, and unpacking the
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 137 
 
 presents she had brought from Glasgow. There were several 
 pounds of tea, on which Aunt Perdy pounced joyfully, and 
 she fingered with critical approval the roll of good wearing 
 stuff her sister had sent rough grey tweed with a herring-bone 
 pattern. She was pleased too with the half dozen pairs of 
 Balbriggan stockings and the stout moirette petticoat. But 
 what took her fancy most of all, was a pair of half-worn 
 brown velvet slippers, with cross-straps and high heels, belong- 
 ing to Joanna. Before Joanna could beg her to keep them, 
 she had put them on instead of her zoccoli, and even over 
 the coarsely knitted socks they fitted her. In her delight 
 she walked up and down the room, holding out her full skirts 
 like a young girl and looking down with pleasure at her elegant 
 feet. 
 
 "I can see you have not the Erskine feet," she said, glancing 
 at Joanna's, " though they are well enough shaped and not 
 large. But look at mine. Though I am over fifty, they 
 are as they were when I was seventeen. And see! " 
 
 Eagerly unfastening Joanna's slippers, and standing on the 
 rough boards in her scarlet, stocking soles, Aunt Perdy sprang 
 right on to the tips of her pretty toes like a ballerina, and 
 stayed there poised for perhaps ten seconds, her arms out- 
 stretched and her fine serious face thrown back in triumph. 
 
 It was true. She had marvellous feet, small, and with 
 strongly curved insteps. On coming into the house she had 
 laid aside her mannish cap and the dolman, and Joanna 
 thought she looked stranger than ever. Her light brown hair, 
 in which there were only a few threads of gray, was cut in a 
 straight fringe starting far up on the crown and coming almost 
 to her eyebrows. Her eyes could at any moment, and appar- 
 ently at will, fill with fire; and in spite of its many fine wrinkles 
 and the absence of color from the cheeks, her face was indomit- 
 ably youthful. Both face and neck were of an even, yellowish 
 tint. Her breast was full and deep. Only in a careless sag- 
 ging of the stomach and thickening of the hips did she show 
 her age. 
 
 The next moment she was unrolling and measuring Juley's 
 tweed to make sure there was enough for a new winter dress. 
 
 The amount hardly satisfied her, and she began to examine 
 Joanna's crape-edged skirt to see if it would do as a pattern. 
 
 " How queer the fashions are now," she exclaimed, keenly 
 interested, but with some disgust in her voice. " Are they
 
 i 3 8 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 really wearing such skirts in Florence? I think them ugly 
 and immodest, fitting so closely round the hips. You have the 
 Erskine figure, Joanna. Our women always had good, well- 
 grown bodies. Turn round, and let me look at you. Yes, 
 you are well set up, and have a good complexion like your 
 Mother, though she was never so pretty as you. But I had 
 a fuller bosom at your age. A woman should be big-breasted, 
 the Italian men say. And I think they are right." 
 
 " Mother has sometimes said I am like you," ventured 
 Joanna who hardly knew what to do with herself under her 
 aunt's scrutiny. 
 
 " Like me? Nonsense, child! Your mouth a little perhaps. 
 Let me see? Yes, possibly a very little. But you have 
 not, and never will have, my wonderful eyes. Have you 
 ever seen eyes like mine? I have never met anyone who 
 has. The young priest at Cammaiuola, our nearest village, 
 whom I am helping and teaching, says my eyes seem always 
 to be gazing straight into Heaven. Yours, Joanna, when 
 they stop dreaming, will have the earthward gaze. I can 
 see and feel it. No, don't argue with me. Aunt Perdy knows 
 these things. You will love with an earthly love, and you 
 will suffer, as all those born in March must suffer, shedding 
 tears that are sweeter than the smiles of others. But it is 
 not yet clear if you will ever attain to the Universal, the Soul- 
 love, which is mine. Why is it I can go about alone here 
 without fear, at any hour of the night or day here among 
 these mountains where there are so many brutal men? It 
 is because I have the perfect love which casteth out fear. 
 If my bosom and my wonderful eyes were to fire a man's 
 passion, so that it entered his heart to do me a wrong, I should 
 take him tenderly in my arms and give him freely all the 
 love he is capable of taking. (Men are thirsting for such 
 love, Joanna, though they may not be aware of it: and few 
 women there are who have it to give.) Then he will go on his 
 way a happier man. And when the fumes of wine or lust 
 have gone from his brain he will know that he has been 
 embraced by one whose soul is already in Heaven looking on 
 the brightness of the Lamb, though her ageing body still 
 walks the earth." 
 
 As she spoke almost chanting in her ecstasy Aunt Perdy 's 
 face grew more and more radiant, her eyes more madly 
 luminous, till Joanna could not bear to look at her.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 139 
 
 Gladly the girl would have escaped; and not from her aunt's 
 rapture alone, but from the strong terrifying response there 
 was to that rapture in herself. She shrank from the deep 
 exposure. 
 
 But as she could not escape, she held herself like stone, 
 sitting there on the edge of the bed and staring at the herring- 
 bone tweed. And the elder woman found her stolid. 
 
 Neither silence nor interruption, however, could long stay 
 the stream of Perdy's speech; and it was still flowing steadily 
 when later in the evening they sat downstairs eating their 
 supper of artichokes fried among eggs in a great earthenware 
 dish. Ordinary talk was impossible, and Joanna soon gave 
 up the attempt. Perdy, even when she put ajquestion, never 
 allowed any one but herself to answer it. All she wanted was 
 a listener. But so manifest was this need, that Joanna wond- 
 ered how she ever managed to pass a day in solitude. 
 
 During supper a small lamp filled the room with deep shadow 
 rather than with light, and in the glow of the charcoal fire 
 Aurora, who cooked and waited on them, looked like a 
 goddess. Joanna could hardly take her eyes from the servant's 
 neck which rose, a thick and golden column, from the great 
 shoulders; and when she turned from the stove to bring them 
 a dish, she walked royally, swinging on her hips. While 
 Aunt Perdy talked and talked, Joanna and Aurora kept smiling 
 at one another with the warm and secret understanding of 
 youth. 
 
 Still Joanna listened; for when Perdy was not speaking of 
 herself, she spoke of the Erskine family; and on her lips the 
 most trifling events assumed an epic quality. An old Dumfries- 
 shire nurse of her childhood moved like a giantess amid her 
 talk; and ancient Huguenot lady known as " Grandy," with 
 a title and a wonderful ebony wig, who had looked after 
 Perdy and her sisters for some years after their mother's 
 death, stood out as another large and gracious figure; a 
 dwarf who had run away from a travelling circus at Peebles 
 to take refuge in the manse, and who had become the child- 
 ren's ill-tempered but loving slave till his death a year later, 
 gave a note of grotesqueness. But all these dim figures, which 
 recalled to Joanna a hundred half-heard tales of home, were 
 no more than the background in Aunt Perdy's narrative to 
 the stupendous figure of Papa. Papa was all and in all. And 
 constantly Joanna found herself glancing up at the wall from
 
 i 4 o OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 which the ecstatic face of the old minister looked down at 
 his daughter and his grand-daughter. 
 
 It had been a grief to Robert Erskine that no son was 
 born to him; for his son was to have been called .Hildebrand 
 after his hero, and he was to have been a great man. But 
 with characteristic vigor this father of four daughters had 
 put his dream behind him, and had thrown all his zeal into 
 the education of his girls. After four of Shakespeare's heroines 
 he had named them Miranda, Perdita, Juliet and Hermione 
 though at home they became known as Annie, Perdy, Juley 
 and Minnie. And though Annie had died at twenty of a fever 
 contracted during one of their educational trips in the Cam- 
 pagna and Juley at eighteen was. on the verge of a mental 
 break-down through over-study, his children's faces still glowed 
 when they spoke of him. 
 
 " Never forget, Joanna," said Perdy, " that Grandpapa 
 was one of the world's great men. Your mother must at 
 least have told you that. Even your Aunt Minnie, who is 
 one of the silliest women imaginable, has done that much for 
 her unfortunate children. Papa was not appreciated by his 
 contemporaries any more than I am by mine. But in the 
 end greatness must be recognized; and my aim is to leave in 
 my writings a picture of Papa which shall be an inspiration 
 to future generations. I, in myself, am nothing." (As she 
 spoke, Perdy stretched out her arms in a magnificent gesture 
 of humility.) " I cannot of myself write one word that will 
 live. But as soon as I have sat down with an obedient heart at 
 that little table by the window, and have taken my pen in 
 my hand, Papa comes to my elbow. And though, alas, I 
 cannot see him, I hear his voice as I heard it in childhood- 
 gentle, yet stern and he says to me, ' Perdita, my child, 
 child of my loins most beloved, write the words I speak to 
 you now, and write no other words, for all other words are 
 of the Devil.' Once or twice nay, many times, for I am 
 weak and sinful still, and in the flesh the Devil has come to 
 tempt me upon my hill-top; and I have disobeyed darling 
 Papa's command. I have written words of my own, or I have 
 made believe that Papa was still at my elbow when he was no 
 longer there (for there are times when God has other work for 
 him to do). But when I do that, when I write my own poor 
 words, or the false words the Devil whispers, do you know 
 what happens, Joanna? " On the very breath of the question
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 141 
 
 Aunt Perdy broke off, turning to Aurora. " Aurora, this 
 butter is rancid again. Where did you get it? There is 
 no excuse at this time of the year. Take it away, and tell 
 Maria that the Scottish Signora is displeased with her." 
 
 Having despatched Aurora, Aunt Perdy bent her gaze once 
 more on Joanna, leaning forward with blazing eyes. 
 
 " Where was I Joanna? Ah, yes. When I disobey sweet 
 Papa, this is what happens. I go to bed and to sleep. And 
 in my sleep a hand is laid on my shoulder, and a voice says, 
 ' Blot the wicked words of self! ' And still in my sleep I 
 get up, and after climbing down the ladder I remember no 
 more. But when I come down in the morning as usual, I 
 find that all the words that were words of self have been blotted 
 by my own hand." 
 
 When she had listened to the sound of her aunt's voice for 
 more than two hours, Joanna was near the end of her strength. 
 Supper was long over, Aurora had bidden them good night 
 and gone home, the charcoal no longer glowed in the wells of 
 the stove, the lamp flickered from lack of oil. Wearied out 
 with the last weeks of grief and sleeplessness, with the excite- 
 ments of the day, with the toiling walk up-hill, with the strange- 
 ness of everything, Joanna's head fell upon her breast. 
 
 " Dear Auntie," she murmured, raising it with an effort. " I 
 am so terribly, terribly tired." 
 
 " I can see you are exhausted," replied Perdy, " and ex- 
 haustion is a poison. No one ought ever to be exhausted. It is 
 stupidity, nothing else. It comes from not knowing how to 
 rest. That is what poor Henry never could see. He was 
 always wanting to sleep. Now I, since I have learned how to 
 rest how to relax every nerve and muscle perfectly, as I 
 shall teach you presently need hardly any sleep. The great 
 thing is to think of your body as a string of beads: then you 
 can give it the rest and refreshment it requires without sleep- 
 ing for seven or eight hours like a hog." 
 
 Joanna made a final effort to listen. But after some time 
 she only understood dimly that something was being read to 
 her. Aunt Perdy's voice was like a river flowing through the 
 room, flowing and flowing, and filling the room with waves 
 of sound. And the sound came and went like the noise 
 of a weir in the breeze. At one moment it seemed to Joanna 
 that she was listening to her mother. Yes, that was her 
 mother talking of "poor, poor human nature! " then it was
 
 i 4 2 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 surely Georgie's voice, assertive, full of challenging assurance. 
 Now her grandfather, whose voice in the flesh she had 
 never heard, was addressing her from his place on the dark 
 wall. Then again the tones seemed to be the echo of her own 
 secret heart. It was the voice, not of a person but of a 
 family. 
 
 But at length only phrases came to her, drifting like islands 
 on a tide of sound " The Father-Motherhood of God " 
 " The Central Sphere " " The Divinity of Sex " " The Man- 
 Woman Creator." Then single words began to spin like motes 
 in the beams of the guttering candle " Duality " " Soul " 
 " Man " " Dove " " Love " " Love " " Love." Then 
 gradually she sank beyond the reach of words. And so she 
 stayed, till drawn up by Aunt Perdy's ice-cold hands upon 
 her wrists she knew she was being told with contemptuous 
 kindness that it was time for bed. 
 
 END OF BOOK I.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 '. . . Open a door of utterance." Col. iv. 3. 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 '"" V O please me, to please your mother, Joanna and it 
 
 A is not very often nowadays that I ask either you or 
 Linnet to do anything to please me." 
 
 It was Juley that spoke. 
 
 Joanna, tormented by the vexation and pertinacity in her 
 mother's voice, looked up from her drawing-board and across 
 the dark parlor. She was sitting close up to the window 
 eagerly using the last of the daylight for her work; but Juley 
 stood uncertainly by the door, grasping the knob with one 
 hand, while with the other she contrived awkwardly, to hold 
 a small tray loaded with tea things. 
 
 To the daughter by the window the mother's face in the 
 interior was only a pale blur; but she knew its expression 
 as surely as though she could see the distressed features. 
 And her blood rose in irritated protest. 
 
 She was working. She was trying to finish a lunette-shaped 
 design for to-morrow's class at the School of Art. Why 
 couldn't her mother let her alone? It was all very well coup- 
 ling her name thus with Linnet's. But in practice Linnet was 
 left unmolested, and went his queer, separate way alone. 
 And it had been the same with Sholto till he had left home 
 a year ago. It seemed as if the boys were exempt from their 
 mother's spiritual passion. She even did her best to forward 
 them in the world, scraping together the money for Sholto to 
 start fair in the colonies when he should be ready to go, and 
 keeping unpunctual Linnet up to the mark in his attend- 
 ance at Mr. Boyd's law office, where he was now apprenticed. 
 
 But when she considered the unspiritual ambitions of her 
 daughters she had never ceased to mourn, and as Georgie 
 
 143
 
 144 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 was away, it was Joanna who chiefly suffered the strain of 
 being yearned over. 
 
 "I say it again, Joanna, my child," continued Juley; and 
 though she tried to put sternness into her tones they remained 
 simply vexed: " To please Mrs. Lovatt, or Mr. Nilsson, or 
 Phemie Pringle, or any of the new friends you have made 
 since you came home, there is no trouble you will not take, 
 and take gladly. But if poor Mother asks you to do something 
 for her sake, it always goes against the grain. How is it? 
 You get lots of flattery, Joanna, outside your home, but I 
 must speak the truth to you; and this that I have said, 
 however it may grieve us both, is the truth. Think how little 
 it is I am asking of you simply to give one short hour of 
 next Friday to read and pray quietly with a few of God's dear, 
 good workers! And remember, my daughter, you will not 
 have mother with you always. She is growing older, and her 
 constant prayer is that she may not be spared to old age, to 
 be a burden to herself and others." 
 
 Joanna sprang to her feet. She was seething with a help- 
 less sense of injustice. It was more than three years now since 
 she had returned from Italy, a widow, to her mother's house, 
 and scenes of this kind were familiar enough. But all of a 
 sudden at this moment she found the situation intolerable. 
 It was intolerable that her mother should stand there plead- 
 ing with her, holding the tray so ungracefully, looking in her 
 shabby dress more like a servant than the mistress of the 
 house. In a confused fury, but controlling her movements, 
 she crossed the room and took the tray roughly from Juley's 
 hands. 
 
 " I'm sorry, Mother," she said. " If you want it so much, 
 I'll go to the meeting." But she was incapable of any accent 
 of relenting tenderness. 
 
 " Thank you, Jo! " The mother smiled now in timid 
 triumph. " You really will come? You promise Mother not 
 to let anything prevent you? " 
 
 " Haven't I said I'll come? " The girl's exasperation 
 brought violent shoots of pain to the back of her eyeballs. 
 " Surely," she thought, "Mother might let it alone, now she 
 has got her way! " And before taking the tray to the pantry, 
 she added, " But remember it is only to please you, not to 
 please Miss Gedge." 
 
 Juley sighed deeply, as she went to light the gas and draw
 
 OPENTHEDOOR H5 
 
 down the parlor blinds. But she looked happier. For after 
 all, Joanna had promised to come on Wednesday night; 
 and Joanna was not to know that the meeting in the tiny 
 vestry of St. Saviour's (the Low and very evangelical English 
 Church to which Juley now went) had been specially arranged 
 for her spiritual benefit by dear Eva Gedge. If Joanna had 
 known, she would have been angry, and nothing would have 
 made her yield. Was it perhaps a little unfair? As the 
 mother swept the table carefully clear of crumbs, and strewed 
 them outside on the window-sill for sparrows an expression of 
 shame did strive for a moment with the satisfied craft in her 
 face. But it was only for a moment. The deceit, she reminded 
 herself, if deceit there were, was for her precious child's eter- 
 nal welfare. Besides, this little gathering of one or two to- 
 gether, with Joanna in their midst, was dear Eva's idea. And 
 it was dear Eva's calling to deal with young people. Why 
 else was she at the head of Elmbank Training College for 
 deaconesses? 
 
 Joanna, in the pantry, rolled back her sleeves, turned on 
 the hot water, and set herself the unnecessary task of washing 
 up. The dishes might quite as well have been left for the 
 housemaid whose day out it was. But if Juley saw them she 
 was sure to slink in later and do them herself. It was a 
 provoking piece of knowledge, and the daughter, as she rinsed 
 the cups and saucers, stared tensly out between the bars of 
 the pantry window at the familiar, darkening slope of the 
 back green. There at the top was the wall along which she 
 had so often raced ; and in the angle of the wall was a disused 
 ash-pit, which at eight years old it had been her dream to 
 turn into a little house for herself and Cousin Gerald. True 
 she had taken no practical steps towards making it habitable, 
 but the picture had so persisted in her mind, that for many 
 months she had not been able to pass a piece of coal in the 
 street, or a stray potato without picking it up. At once she 
 had seen herself in her tiny house, bending over the fire, and 
 cooking the loved one's supper, while he praised her for her 
 thrift. 
 
 And there in another corner of the wall was the carpentry 
 shed, which looked sad since Sholto's departure to a farm in 
 the Lothians where he was learning stock-breeding. Joanna 
 wished that Sholto could have stayed at home instead of 
 Linnet. She and Linnet depressed each other; and the sis-
 
 146 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 ter felt a kind of horror at seeing her own faults so clearly 
 emphasized in her brother. She was ignorant of the real cur- 
 rent of his life, and, in all but superficial ways the two had 
 come to avoid each other, seeking help outside in different 
 directions. 
 
 Suddenly the tears started to Joanna's eyes, and her high- 
 strung fury changed to simple dreariness. Through these 
 childish memories called forth by the sight of the black-green, 
 and these thoughts of the nearer past, she had completed a 
 circle of emotion. Once more she was confronted by her imme- 
 diate trouble, the trouble concerning her mother. And for a 
 moment she tasted despair. 
 
 Almost three years, now, she had been at home; and it 
 had come to this. She had got no further than this in ful- 
 filling her dream of daughterhood by the fish-ponds of Val- 
 lombrosa. In practice she could not be the daughter of these 
 dreams. Still less could she be the daughter her mother so 
 passionately wanted. Why was it? Many times she had asked 
 herself that question, and now she stumbled against it again. 
 She loved her mother: her mother loved her. The dream at 
 Vallombrosa had at least had that much of truth. And all 
 the time in Florence she had known herself spiritually involved 
 with her mother in some inexplicable way. Then why, when 
 they were under the same roof, was there this unending con- 
 flict between them? Whose fault was it? 
 
 Chafed and puzzled as she was by this questioning, Joanna 
 was well accustomed to it, and had her own way of escape, 
 which she presently took. Just as before her marriage she 
 had constantly taken refuge in a world of dreams; so now, 
 shaken awake by the vivid, physical experience with Mario, 
 she fled outwards to embrace the newly discovered actual. 
 WeH she knew her way out. Had she not trodden it these 
 three years a thousand times? So the unf alien tears soon dried 
 in her eyes, and before the last cup was put away, she was once 
 more entirely absorbed in thoughts of the lunette she had to 
 finish for Mr. Nilsson's class next day. Mr. Nilsson, her 
 favorite master, what would he say about it? Thank Heaven 
 she had her work. 
 
 With the natural end of her mourning for Mario, Joanna 
 had become in a perfectly fresh way conscious of the outside 
 world. She had seemed to re-enter life like one new born, 
 and now for the first time was experiencing the vigor of her
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 147 
 
 youth. A shadow and a burden were lifted, a film taken from 
 her eyes. She was able now to interpret the sense of escape 
 that had come to her in the train as she left Florence, and 
 she understood more fully why her heart had almost broken 
 with thankfulness by the lake-side as the rondinelli took 
 their flight from her hand. She was not merely a woman 
 reprieved, but a woman awakened. 
 
 Even now she could not at all times identify herself with 
 this new intoxicating, work-a-day world, which for so long 
 she had disdained in favor of dreams. The other people who 
 were in it, and part of it, must see through her, she often fan- 
 cied, guessing her no true-born inhabitant. But she did not 
 want to be an alien. She had given herself readily to its 
 refreshingly tangible complexities, and quickly she made a 
 place for herself in it, a place where her mother could not 
 follow her. 
 
 Acquaintances she now had in flocks. People of course knew 
 her story and rejoiced in it. Her looks were in keeping with 
 romance. She was everywhere received with a mixture of 
 sympathy and envy which was delicately flattering. She talked 
 with shy eagerness, listened reverently, admired, and with 
 encouragement, criticized. For her the most ordinary social 
 event in this unknown world was highly colored. She might 
 well have been eighteen instead of twenty-four. 
 
 And alongside of this enlargement without making any 
 special effort, she had surprised herself by acqMiring the habit 
 of work. She was making real progress, and in a quiet way 
 had become a figure at the School of Art. The masters were 
 on friendly terms with her: the students discussed her clothes 
 and her features. It was astonishing how much livelier her 
 pencil had become, and she had a passionate appreciation of 
 drapery. Her ambition was to earn her own living, some 
 day to go to London. 
 
 But by Juley every step of this social and artistic advance 
 was subtly opposed. It was a strange, unremitting conflict. 
 The more the mother perceived the daughter's gifts, the more 
 desperately she deplored any little worldly success the girl 
 might have. There was unscrupulous warfare between them. 
 
 And with this result: That Joanna was spurred on her 
 way far more steadily by the discouragement at home, than 
 by all the easily elicited praise outside. Both were useful; 
 but even when it irked her most, the true stimulant lay if*
 
 i 4 8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 the handicap her mother was to her, and obscurely she knew 
 this. 
 
 Poor Juley on her side had no such compensations. Besides 
 she lacked the saving hardness of youth. She too was sorrow- 
 fully puzzled by the turn things had taken. Life had been so 
 very sweet to her for a little immediately after Joanna's 
 home-coming. She had rejoiced in what she described to Eva 
 Gedge as " the softening influence of sorrow," had welcomed 
 the passing simplicity that grief brings. Bereaved Joanna 
 had been very loving and so gentle that to the mother it 
 seemed as if " a real change of heart " must have taken place. 
 The two had been more nearly united than ever before. 
 
 But these first days or were they only hours? had passed 
 all to quickly for Juley into a treasured memory. And now 
 she saw her dear child, dearer now than ever, drifting farther 
 from her and from grace; becoming, as the years passed, 
 more and more worldly and pleasure-loving. 
 
 If Juley faltered at times in this view, letting her natural 
 maternal pride have the upper hand, or excusing her daugh- 
 ter's youth, there was Eva Gedge, and Eva knew how to 
 apply the spur. Such an experience as Joanna had been 
 through said Eva, must lead either to heart-whole dedication 
 or to a more callous resistance. And to know in which 
 direction Joanna was moving, had not one merely to look at 
 the friends she chose for herself? This was an accusation 
 to which Juley had no answer but a sigh. 
 
 Eva's graceless part, indeed, was to foment whatever was 
 mean and sterile, and to drag down all that was fine and pro- 
 ductive, in a contest which, let alone, had little of baseness 
 in it. Like Mabel, she was essentially a divider. Barren of 
 life itself, her deepest passion was to balk and defeat the 
 entering of others into life. 
 
 Not that she was herself aware of her role: nor that others, 
 seeing her warm show of interest in the face of Joanna's 
 cold politeness, would easily have guessed it. She was always 
 the first to smile, with Christian cordiality, when Juley tried 
 to bring daughter and friend to a better understanding. And 
 though it sorely irked her, she almost always refrained from 
 putting into words, her constant disparagement of Joanna's 
 natural qualities. Often she wore a martyred air. And truly 
 enough there was martyrdom to her envious nature in Juley's 
 mounting pride in the younger woman.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 149 
 
 As for Joanna, she had become angry with a kind of scorn- 
 ful jealousy. She knew that Eva's influence was hateful. 
 She knew that her mother, in the deep, human part of herself, 
 was glad that she, Joanna, could no more love Eva than Eva 
 could help envying her. Yet she was helpless. And whenever 
 she had been the subject of a prayerful conference between 
 them, she writhed anew under the reinforcement of authority 
 in her mother's voice, and under the malign gleam that 
 darted from the prominent, black eyes behind Eva's glasses. 
 
 So Joanna was steeled against them both. She knew not 
 how often her mother, out of tender consideration for her, did 
 violence to herself, keeping difficult silences, restraining sor- 
 rowful exclamations, suppressing unkind criticisms of her 
 daughter's new friends. Nor did she know the depth of her 
 mother's loneliness, which by a moment of lavish affection 
 either she or Linnet could better have assuaged than Miss 
 Gedge by many hours of spiritual conversation. 
 
 n 
 
 So far as Juley and Miss Gedge were concerned, Joanna 
 had three friends Mrs. Lovatt, Carl Nilsson, and Phemie 
 Pringle; but each of these represented a growing host of 
 undesirable acquaintances. 
 
 Mildred Lovatt, upon Joanna's return to Glasgow, had 
 hastened to pay a call of mingled condolence and curiosity. 
 It was known what part she had played in Miss Bannerman's 
 romantic marriage; and the moment she had reconnoitred at 
 Collessie Street, she was generously determined to welcome 
 Joanna (but Joanna alone) to her special circle. 
 
 That it was a special circle every one admitted. Indeed 
 if Mildred did not speak of it as a salon, that was only because 
 there were undoubtedly people in Glasgow who might not take 
 such a word seriously/ As a salon she certainly thought of it; 
 and even the scornful uninvited never denied that it included, 
 in a fitful way, ten times the number of celebrities the lady 
 could have achieved with thrice her income in London. Not 
 only was she able to tap the University and the School of 
 Art, which between them should represent the intellect of 
 any city, but her drawing-room in Panmure Crescent had 
 become a known resort for such distinguished visitors as came 
 from London to lecture, act, paint, or make music on the 
 banks of the Clyde.
 
 150 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 And Joanna was young enough to find it thrilling that she 
 should meet famous people in the intimacy of a friend's 
 'ira wing-room. What matter if she rarely saw them oftener 
 ftian once, and then did not get farther than a few remarks 
 about the weather? But she learned quickly to keep from 
 mentioning her notabilities at home, except privately to Lin- 
 net. One evening, at the tea-table, having overflowed in 
 eager chatter about some well-known actor, her words had 
 died under Juley's sad and steadfast gaze. And the lips of 
 Eva Gedge who happened to be there, had suddenly gone 
 rigid. 
 
 in 
 
 Miss Gedge herself, however, was less unsparing in her 
 criticism of Mrs. Lovatt, than was Joanna's second friend, 
 Carl Nilsson. 
 
 Four years earlier, when the middle-aged Swedish artist 
 had come, preceded by a high reputation, to teach design at 
 the Glasgow School, Mrs. Lovatt had piped her sweetest to 
 him. But from the first he had refused to dance. He was a 
 misfit at her parties. Then, as the months passed, and it 
 became clear that there was to be periodic trouble between 
 the temperaments of Nilsson and the Art Director, he was 
 tactfully excluded from the Panmure Crescent salon. See- 
 ing that the Director, Mr. Valentine Plummer, was the salon's 
 principal pilaster, this could not be wondered at. Had 
 Nilsson not been too valuable to the School, he would have 
 been excluded there also. As it was, Mr. Plummer could 
 only make things uncomfortable for him; and Nilsson, know- 
 ing his position secure, retaliated in full measure. Nilsson 
 of course had his own small circle of friends, but outside 
 this he was regarded generally as rather quarrelsome and 
 difficult. 
 
 To Joanna, the little man had been consistently friendly, 
 and she knew him of more value than Mrs. Lovatt and all 
 her kind. She had vaguely feit drawn to him, amused and 
 attracted by his irritability, during the term before her 
 marriage. 
 
 And now, with his sharp criticisms which she sensitively 
 welcomed, and his adroit praises which never made her 
 ashamed, he had become to her a real helper. He gave her a 
 kind of attention she had not had before from anyone.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 151 
 
 Also it was at Nilsson's studio that she first met Phemie 
 Pringle. 
 
 He was at work in the School on a fresco in which was a 
 group of women, and asked Joanna to give him sittings for 
 some details of his heads and hands (she had a " useful head," 
 he told her.) And during these sittings, away from the inter- 
 ruption of the School, their friendship had prospered. Carl 
 seemed to enjoy talking to her about quite as much as 
 he enjoyed listening. She was not a bit in love with him, 
 but it excited her to hear from his own lips how she appeared 
 to this man for whom she had the deepest respect. She felt 
 she could learn immensely from him, and he gratified her 
 Scottish passion for self-improvement. 
 
 On one particular afternoon he had entertained her as 
 he worked by tracing the whole history of their acquain- 
 tance. 
 
 " I had my eye on you," he said, winking at Joanna in the 
 odd way that Mildred Lovatt declared was so offensive. " Yes, 
 since the first week I came to your damned School of Plumbers. 
 ' She is nice worth while ' I said to myself, ' but all shut 
 away; and so heavy and dull' what you call it? 'lady- 
 like and 0! My Lord God, so sentimental! No aplomb, no 
 dash, no poise, a formless lump of femaleness, impossible! 
 In that female amoeba there might possibly be a potential 
 woman; again possibly not.' Your Britain is full of the 
 not possibles. ' She had better get a lover, quick march,' I 
 thought, ' or I give nothing for her chances.' But I confess 
 to you now: I did not see how you were to get the lover. 
 I watched you. You kept them a hundred miles away all 
 these young Glasgow students who were ready to flirt with 
 you. Then hey presto! I hear one day you are married! 
 But I was pleased! And to a foreigner, too! Better and 
 better! And off to Italy in such a hurry! That's the style! 
 Yes, I rubbed my hands when I heard. ' She is saved! ' 
 I said." 
 
 " And am I saved? " asked Joanna, with her broad, half- 
 malicious smile. She might have been listening to a story 
 about some one else, except that her heart felt like a fruit 
 ripening on a south wall when the sun is strong. 
 
 " Not quite, perhaps. But one feels a beginning has been 
 made. And now, Madame Joanna, if you would turn the 
 head just a little Na! Too much! I said a little to the
 
 152 OPEN .THE DOOR 
 
 left? So, is good. For one moment, till the kettle shall 
 boil for our tea." 
 
 She sat quite still for him, keeping her head in the position 
 he wanted, and sunning herself in his talk. There was some- 
 thing so genuine in the man that his interest was very 
 sweet. It was good that he should think her worth while. 
 
 But Joanna's too self-satisfied reverie was interrupted by 
 the noise of quick steps in the passage which led from the 
 street to the studio. Both quick, they were, and heavy- 
 sounding like the steps of a child. And next moment the 
 flap of the letter-box was vigorously rattled, and a high, glad- 
 some voice called " Coo-ee! " through the slit. 
 
 Nilsson threw aside his pencil, and a smile of extraordinary 
 pleasure spread over his ruddy face. He was a short man, 
 beginning to get stout, and though the hair on his head was 
 all gone gray, his beard and mustache still held the color 
 of bright rust. To Joanna at this moment he looked sud- 
 denly boyish. 
 
 " Now you shall meet my Phemie! " he exclaimed with 
 delight. " She is the pearl of Glasgow. How glad I am that 
 you should meet her! " 
 
 As he skipped across to the door, Joanna's heart contracted 
 in a spasm of mortification. What a fool she had been to 
 imagine Nilsson especially interested in herself! 
 
 But with her first glance at the newcomer a glance of 
 keenest curiosity some of her hastily discarded complacence 
 was re-installed. How could Nilsson be so delighted with this 
 silly, common, little over-dressed person who came marching 
 blithely into the room? Why, she spoke with a villainous 
 South Side accent, and had a runaway chin! 
 
 " Miss Euphemia Pringle Signora Rasponi ! " sang, out 
 Nilsson. And as he took the kettle off the gas ring for tea, 
 he kept a sidelong eye on the meeting between the two young 
 women. 
 
 When she had put her own firm, square little hand into 
 Joanna's, Phemie tilted back her face, and looked with eyes 
 that brimmed with laughter from Joanna to her host. 
 
 " You never told me you were having a lady friend to tea! " 
 she rallied him. " It's a real shock to find I'm not the One 
 and Only! " 
 
 Though Joanna at this thought her more than ever common, 
 she could not help watching Nilsson's visitor with that fas-
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 153 
 
 cinated envy we feel when suddenly confronted with an em- 
 bodiment of all the qualities in which we ourselves are lacking. 
 
 Phemie laid down a silk-fringed hand-bag decorated with 
 beads, settled herself in a chair that was rather too high for 
 her short legs, and started fanning her bright cheeks with a 
 sheet of drawing-paper. Her smallest movement was full of 
 festivity. 
 
 " Yon's an awful-like stair of yours for a poor thing like 
 me with a weak heart! " She spoke to Nilsson, but her smile 
 was for Joanna. She sought the other girl's sympathy, not 
 for her inane remark, but for all the gaiety there was in 
 life; so that Joanna had to smile back in admission. 
 
 And although during tea Phemie said nothing more am- 
 bitious than this, yet Joanna quite lost the first impression of 
 silliness. Phemie's eyes were too clear of self-absorption for 
 silliness, and her silences were too intent. When anyone 
 else spoke she was poised in almost embarrassing attention. 
 
 Nilsson asked her if she would sing for them. 
 
 " I want you to try my new Steinway," he said. And he 
 told how he had bought the piano at an auction sale in Ren- 
 field Street for five pounds. 
 
 " Is that a fact? " exclaimed Phemie, with a colloquial ex- 
 aggeration that showed how impressed she was. " Yon was 
 a fair bargain! " 
 
 She had risen quite readily on being asked to sing, and she 
 took off her hat as she spoke, stabbing the pins into it care- 
 lessly and throwing it on a chair before she crossed to the piano. 
 
 It stood in the far corner of the studio an out-of-date 
 table-grand, really cumbersome, with its thick body and carved, 
 straddling legs ; and seated before it, Phemie looked very little 
 and dainty. Now that her over-trimmed hat was off, she 
 showed a delicate head with hair parted smoothly and coiled 
 behind. The light which came through a yellow blind beyond 
 the piano, seemed to take pleasure in enveloping her. 
 
 She struck some chords, gently giving the worn instru- 
 ment its chance, her listening face turning the while sideways 
 towards the window. It was a beautiful movement of her 
 long neck and sloping shoulders, a quite unconscious disen- 
 gaging of herself from the others, so that she became aloof 
 in her circle of yellow light she and the huge, old, black 
 piano. 
 
 Then her breast rose, her throat swelled like a bird's, and
 
 154 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 there came quite softly like a fine-drawn thread of gold, the 
 first high, sweet note of her song. 
 
 Nilsson lay back sighing in his chair his eyes closed, and 
 a look of utter contentment on his face. But Joanna leaned 
 forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes on the singer, 
 thirsty for each lovely, careful note. 
 
 This girl, whom half an hour earlier she had summed up as 
 common and silly, was an artist, no less! What a mistake she 
 had made! Now she was eager to accept her humiliation. 
 And above all, if only it might be, she longed to make 
 Euphemia Pringle her friend. 
 
 rv 
 
 When the girls left Nilsson's together, they walked east- 
 wards along Sauchiehall Street, looking at the milliners' win- 
 dows and talking mostly about what they saw there. But 
 under all they said there was a happy excitement. " We are 
 going to be friends! " each kept thinking with delight. Now 
 and again Joanna stole a look at Phemie, and with every look 
 she found new pleasure in the valiant little profile. And Phemie 
 was impressed and carried away by something in the other 
 that she could not define to herself. " A real, wee madam! " 
 was how she would describe Joanna to her sisters when she 
 got home. 
 
 But she had a disclosure to make before she could be sure 
 of this new friendship, and as they turned the crowded cor- 
 ner into Renfield Street she came out with it. 
 
 " Shall I take you in to the Business? " she asked, watch- 
 ing the other's face keenly. " Mamma will likely be gone, 
 but Annie and Florrie should still be there; and young Nora 
 might be in, meeting them." 
 
 Joanna said she would like to be taken, and wanted to 
 know what kind of a business it was. 
 
 " You're never telling me you don't know Prtngles? " 
 
 But Phemie's astonishment was forced, for she was on the 
 defensive " It's Mamma's shop, and two of our girls help 
 in it." 
 
 There was no doubt in either of them that it was a dis- 
 closure; and as they looked steadily into each other's eyes, 
 Joanna was casting about for the way to put things right 
 between them. She felt herself somehow to blame for the 
 troublesome shop. She knew it well, as everybody in Glas-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 155 
 
 gow did: Pringle's, the Ladle's and Children's Outfitter. But 
 never before had she had a friend with a shop in the family. 
 She could see Mildred Lovatt's smile. 
 
 " Of course I know it," she said, after a scarcely per- 
 ceptible pause. " I'm wearing a chemise now that I got there. 
 It's the best I ever had! " 
 
 " That's the worst of Mamma's things," rejoined Phemie. 
 " They wear everlastingly. I have one on too for a wonder! " 
 
 They both laughed a little tremulously now that their 
 anxiety was gone. It was all right. Things were going to 
 be all right between them. 
 
 VI 
 
 Thus it was, that Joanna came for the first time upon the 
 reservoir of human life which gives to Glasgow its essential 
 character. And she came upon its very sources at Sans 
 Souci, the villa on the South side of the River, where the 
 Pringle family vociferously lived. 
 
 It is curious how completely a household like the Banner- 
 man's may lead an alien existence in a town. Juley only com- 
 ing to live in Glasgow on her marriage, had long kept the 
 feelings of an exile; and something of this had been communi- 
 cated to her children. On Sholto's side, the family associa- 
 tions had been with the citizens of the passing generation, 
 and his public ties had died with him. Even in his life-time, 
 Edinburgh had come to be regarded as the true Bannerman 
 headquarters. 
 
 It followed that the children had chosen their few playmates 
 most naturally from among the exotics. And this was especi- 
 ally true of Joanna, with the hysterical aloofness of her youth. 
 She had grown up wonderfully ignorant of her native place. 
 Her West-end school-fellows, with their clipped syllables and 
 narrowed vowel sounds (fondly imitative of an " English " 
 accent), had revealed but a fragment of its integral life, and 
 that, as it were, under protest. 
 
 But in the world of Sans Souci, the mocking, hard-working, 
 mercurial people were indigenous. Their streams of being 
 flowed bright and uncontaminated from Glasgow's central 
 pulse. And they knew it. They were more at home in 
 Paris than in Edinburgh. Buchanan Street existed for them 
 alone. 
 
 At first, thrown among so many young and pleasure-
 
 i 5 6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 loving women, Joanna felt bewildered. But soon she was 
 making good all the enjoyment denied to her shadowed and 
 painful teens. 
 
 At Sans Souci there was a constant noise of talk and 
 laughter. Married sons and daughters ran continually in 
 and out. The unmarried ones lived in an atmosphere of 
 sweethearting which pervaded the rooms and the garden. 
 The family was sharply divided into blondes and brunettes, 
 accounted for by the Italian strain. (For old Mr. Pringle, 
 who wore a sombrero in the garden and had flashing eyes, 
 lost no time in making it clear to Joanna that his distant 
 forebears had been called, not Pringle but Pellegrini.) 
 
 From the crowd of them " our Florrie," " our Tom's 
 wife," " our Polly's wee girl," " our Nora's ' latest ' ' there 
 principally emerged for Joanna, Annie, grave and handsome 
 with a pile of honey-colored hair, Nora, black-haired, skinny, 
 and almost uncannily vivacious, and pale, strange-eyed Jim- 
 mie who was generally understood to be Phemie's young 
 man. 
 
 All the doors of all the rooms were left open, and long conver- 
 sations were carried on by people in different rooms, on differ- 
 ent floors. The single servant, which Mamma considered 
 sufficient for the needs of any family, never stayed long. 
 But her going inconvenienced nobody. Even when she had 
 not yet gone, there would always be more people in the 
 kitchen than in the drawing-room. Particularly when Mamma 
 was in the house was it an understood thing that no 
 one should sit down for more than a minute at a time. To 
 be settled in an arm-chair reading was violently contrary 
 to Mamma's fixed notions of young womanhood. It was not 
 thus that she had built the Business up. 
 
 And for Mamma, the Business was life, was romance. She 
 had built it up herself out of nothing, her husband finally 
 taking his humble place in it as book-keeper (for Mrs. Pringle 
 could not add a column of figures) ; and her nine children and 
 these children's friends were shadowy to her, except in so far 
 as they touched the well-being of the Business. When Joanna 
 was introduced, Mrs. Pringle had taken her hand in a strong 
 clasp, very like Phemie's own. But there had been no scrutiny 
 whatever in the innocent eyes that were set far apart in the 
 broad, babyish face: and Joanna had felt sure she would 
 not be recognized on a second meeting. Mere human beings
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 157 
 
 were excluded from the absorbing pattern of this woman's 
 existence. 
 
 Assuredly it would have been difficult to find anything in 
 greater contrast to the quiet, sad-colored life at Collessie 
 Street, with its intense spiritual currents, than this household 
 of Sans Souci.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 " T 'VE got Louis Fender (you know his work of course) 
 A coming here unexpectedly for the week-end, and as 
 there is a students' dance at the School to-morrow night, 
 I thought we might go on there after dinner with our little 
 party. Will you be one of us? Do. We dine at a quarter 
 to eight. Don't answer, but come." 
 
 On the morning of the day appointed for Miss Gedge's 
 meeting, the post brought Joanna this invitation from Mrs. 
 Lovatt, and she read it through in a growing distraction. 
 
 It seemed to her that she had never before wanted so much 
 to accept an invitation as she did now; and a malignant 
 fate had fixed the affair at St. Saviour's for seven o'clock 
 that same night! She would know better another time than 
 to let herself be nagged into giving her word. 
 
 But in the same moment Joanna took her resolution. 
 Come what might, she would be at Mildred's at a quarter to 
 eight; and she would be there if possible without having 
 broken the promise to her mother. How this was to be done, 
 she did not yet know. She only knew that a way must be 
 found. 
 
 True, this was the first time in her life that she had heard 
 of Louis Fender. And under Nilsson's influence she was be- 
 coming less impressible by Mildred's celebrities. True, also, 
 the little dancing she knew had been picked up during play- 
 hours at school, and she had never been to a dance. But at 
 this moment she could imagine nothing more desirable on 
 earth, than that she should meet this man with the pleasant 
 name at dinner, and go to the dance afterwards. She wanted 
 to dance, even should she not have the courage to accept a 
 partner for anything but a reel or a set of lancers, in either of 
 which she felt secure. 
 
 She looked again at the letter. 
 
 " Also, as an experiment," wrote Mrs. Lovatt in her slap- 
 dash handwriting, " I have asked that young Mr. Urqu- 
 hart whom you may remember in our Italian class. In spite 
 
 158
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 159 
 
 of his appalling shyness, I gather he remembers you. I 
 discovered him to-day having tea at the Tullises'. It seems 
 Professor T. thinks well of him as a budding anthropologist." 
 
 And there was a postscript, telling that Louis Pender was 
 in Glasgow as the possible painter of some panels in the City 
 Chambers, about which there had been some talk of late. 
 
 Yes: Joanna was determined to go that evening to Panmure 
 Crescent; but how was it to be done? 
 
 Quite apart from the St. Saviour's complication, she well 
 knew that the dinner could only have been achieved by great 
 skill, and the dance by deceit or open rebellion. In all these 
 things, her mother's will was set hard against hers. And there 
 was the particular promise besides! 
 
 There was no means she did not now consider, from flag- 
 rant lying to wild revolt; from the plea of illness, to the 
 attempted cajolery of Miss Gedge to alter the hour of prayer. 
 But one by one each plan had to be rejected, and again nothing 
 remained but the sheer determination. 
 
 Then, sudden and simple, like the unexpected appearance of 
 the sun on a black day, came the solution. 
 
 In a fever of excitement she laid her plans. She was trium- 
 phant, amazed that she had not thought of this at once. It 
 would involve no more deception than either she or Georgie 
 had perforce practised a hundred times before where their 
 mother was concerned. 
 
 At half-past five, she went to her bedroom, locked the door, 
 and dressed for the dance. Her dress, which she now wore 
 for the first time, had been made, amid the mingled jeers and 
 acclamations of Sans Souci from a curious old piece of grena- 
 dine belonging to Juley's girlhood black, with bright blue 
 stripes and at intervals little yellow embroidered flowers. It 
 had a low bodice, tiny sleeves, and a very full, short skirt. 
 And when the girl had put on over it her day blouse and a 
 dark skirt, covering all with a coat, no one would have guessed 
 her secret. She pulled a pair of black stockings over her 
 bright blue, silk ones, and she hid her slippers and a black 
 lace fan in the inside pocket of her coat. It was done! 
 
 When Juley came down to the lobby, ready in time for 
 once, she found her daughter waiting for her with red cheeks 
 and shining eyes. It gave her great delight that Joanna 
 took her arm affectionately in the street, and her hopes for 
 the meeting ran high.
 
 160 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 n 
 
 Not until the proceedings at St. Saviour's were in full cry, 
 did Joanna know herself to be their quarry. 
 
 Long ago in self-defense she had perfected her faculty for 
 not listening, and on this occasion she had rendered herself 
 inaccessible the more easily as no answering speech was 
 required of her. Exulting in her hidden finery, and full of 
 anticipations for the coming evening, she had been for some 
 time wrapped quite securely away. 
 
 Indeed a more observant person than she, might well have 
 been misled by the innocent beginnings of the meeting. Not 
 more than a dozen people were present, including Juley, 
 Joanna and Miss Gedge. The others were Mr. Bridgewater, 
 the incumbent Miss Bostock, a deaconess and some of Miss 
 Gedge's students; who wore their dark blue uniforms. 
 
 After a short request by Mr. Bridgewater, that their coming 
 together here might not fail in its intent, a hymn had been 
 sung. A passage from the Bible followed. Then at a pre- 
 arranged signal, all the women rose, turned themselves about; 
 and fluttered to their knees. Whereupon the clergyman, hav- 
 ing done his part, tiptoed out and left them, softly closing the 
 vestry door behind him. 
 
 It was this odd departure of Mr. Bridgewater that first 
 roused Joanna to what was forward; and when, after a few 
 strained moments, Eva Gedge led in prayer, she knew her- 
 self entrapped. 
 
 There was no mistaking the suggestions that were now laid 
 before the Lord first by Eva; then, after a pause of dread- 
 ful discomfort, by Miss Bostock; then, at the end of a breath- 
 less term of suspense, by one of the younger women. These 
 last clearly suffered acute nervousness at having to address 
 God in public. But this was an art they had come to Miss 
 Gedge to learn so not one of them would relinquish such an 
 opportunity for practice. 
 
 And in scarcely veiled language, every one present was 
 praying for Joanna. 
 
 Joanna's first impulse, when she realized how matters stood, 
 was of sheer wrath. She wanted to leap up and fling out 
 of the vestry full of praying women. 
 
 But she did not so act. She realized at once that such 
 rudeness, while it would pain her mother, would give the
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 161 
 
 highest satisfaction to Miss Gedge. Besides, what, after 
 all, did it matter? These people could not harm her, could 
 not prevent her from doing as she wished. She turned her 
 head, furtively counting the bowed backs. By now, the 
 last the very last, surely of the students was praying. She 
 was a timid creature, and her shaking voice sounded sin- 
 cere. 
 
 " We ask Thee," she was saying, " that our dear young 
 sister, with the gifts Thou hast given her, may not be among 
 those that perish, but may enter with all joy and everlasting 
 delight into fulness of life, both here and hereafter! " 
 
 At the words, " fulness of life " really so sweetly spoken 
 by the trembling young woman, Joanna was swept by 
 a wholly unlooked-for wave of emotion. She could do no 
 other than make the prayer her own. But in the succeeding 
 silence she grew cold again. The same thought was in every- 
 one's mind. Was not Juley going to pray? 
 
 In an icy panic, Joanna changed her own cry for life into 
 the supplication that her mother might keep silence. 
 
 " O God, don't let Mother pray out loud, for Jesus' sake, 
 Amen! " Again and again she repeated the same phrase 
 with passionate fervor; and a huge load was lifted from her, 
 when with a quiet rustle of skirts they all rose from their 
 knees. 
 
 The meeting was over. 
 
 As they stood at first, silent, Joanna felt embarrassed. At 
 her mother whose face was bathed in tears, she could not 
 look: at Miss Gedge she would not. 
 
 So she gazed steadfastly at the shy girl who had last prayed. 
 
 " Thank you," she said at length, the first to speak. And 
 she moved nearer to where the other stood. " I liked your 
 prayer, and I hope it will be answered. It was good of you 
 to come." 
 
 The student blushed as deeply as Joanna was blushing, but 
 she shone as well, and a cloud came upon Eva Gedge's face. 
 
 Joanna enjoyed a moment of pure malice. She had tri- 
 umphed. Then turning to her mother she spoke loudly 
 enough for Eva to overhear. 
 
 " I shall have to go at once, Mother," she said. " I pro- 
 mised Mrs. Lovatt to call there this evening. It may be 
 fairly late before I'm back. You mustn't wait up." 
 
 And she was gone before a word could be said in reply.
 
 1 62 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 It was already twenty minutes to eight, but Mildred's 
 house was not far off, and Joanna could be fleet. 
 
 in 
 
 Even to herself Joanna did not admit how nervous she 
 became in the Lovatt's house. But from the moment the 
 front door closed between her and the street, there was al- 
 ways a tightening of all her nerves. As she passed through 
 the square entrance hall, so unlike any other known to her, 
 with its black-tiled floor, bright blue carpet, and white walls 
 hung with black-framed etchings, her very muscles would 
 stiffen a little in the involuntary effort which these decora- 
 tions seemed to demand. In the same way, the rooms, though 
 they were neither so large as the rooms in Collessie Street, nor 
 nearly so rich as Aunt Georgina's, imposed a peculiar restraint. 
 The way in which a few flowers stood up from a shallow glass 
 dish; the black sofa bolsters tasselled with gold; the signed 
 scribbles in pencil (generous as to margin) by Sargent or 
 Burne- Jones, which leaned unfixed on a molding against the 
 drawing-room wall; and here and there, resting on the same 
 ledge for the convenience of handling, a framed autograph 
 letter these were evidences of a world in which Joanna did 
 not yet move easily, a world where the small talk, like the 
 material furnishings, had its own shibboleths of seeming free- 
 dom and simplicity. 
 
 But on this evening Joanna had great hopes of escaping 
 the usual ordeal. The swift transition from St. Saviour's 
 to the house in Panmure Crescent, the emotional tension of 
 the prayer meeting, the bizarre concealment of her ball-dress, 
 acted upon her like some stimulating and skilfully mixed 
 potion. 
 
 Although not late, she was the last guest to arrive, and was 
 glad to have the bedroom to herself so that she could take off 
 her outer clothes unnoticed. The extra garments and the 
 race through the streets had made her hot, and it was a de- 
 licious refreshment to emerge in her thin evening gown. As 
 she shook out the voluminous skirt before Mildred's cheval 
 glass she seemed to herself as light as gossamer. She pal- 
 pitated in response to the brightness in her own eyes, to the 
 wild color in her cheeks, to the inebriating savor of life on 
 her palate. And on the way down the blue-carpeted stair, 
 she felt as if the vessel of her being were full to the lip with
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 163 
 
 incandescent flame. From the moment she entered the draw- 
 ing-room she knew she need fear nothing, for this evening at 
 least. 
 
 To her bright, unseeing gaze the room seemed full of people 
 standing up. Actually there were only six, counting herself. 
 She shook hands with the Lovatts and with Mrs. Plummer, 
 a woman distressingly thin, with masses of untidy black hair 
 and a green velvet dress. Then turning in obedience to a 
 sign from her hostess, she became conscious of a strange man, 
 blase yet dapper, with a straw-colored mustache and rather 
 prominent hazel eyes. He was staring at her through the 
 strong lenses of his glasses with the painter's intentness. In- 
 deed, but for that look, which she had sometimes seen in 
 the eyes of Nilsson, Joanna would not have taken Louis Pen- 
 der for an artist. Particularly by the side of Mr. Lovatt, the 
 carpet manufacturer, with his stooping shoulders, velvet jacket 
 and silky gray beard, his guest appeared a person entirely 
 worldly. Of the three men present, he was the only one wear- 
 ing a stiff shirt, and his dust colored hair was quite short 
 and carefully brushed. It looked incongruous with the as- 
 tonishing yellow mustache. 
 
 Yet in spite of this deference to convention there was some- 
 thing so resentful in the man's whole presence that the friend- 
 liness of his hand-clasp came to Joanna as a surprise. She 
 looked inquiringly, involuntarily, straight into his eyes, and 
 while she saw how their color was accentuated by fair lashes, 
 she had the curious sensation that her heart was holding its 
 breath. When he heard Joanna's foreign name Fender's lids 
 lifted slightly with interest. 
 
 So engrossed was she that it was an effort to attend to what 
 Mrs. Lovatt was saying. But presently Joanna understood 
 that she was to accept Mr. Urquhart's shyly proffered arm to 
 the dining-room. 
 
 > 
 
 On the staircase she was so conscious of Pender who walked 
 behind with Mrs. Lovatt, that she did not say a word to her 
 companion. But on renewing the acquaintance it had sur- 
 prised her to find how well she rememberd him. This was 
 the first time she had set eyes on him since the Italian class, 
 from which she had not knowingly carried away any vivid 
 impression of him: yet now his dark, silent face, and bashful 
 body appeared almost intimately familiar.
 
 164 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 At dinner he hesitated several times before achieving speech, 
 and Joanna, instead of helping him, waited with indolent 
 cruelty. She guessed at his shyness, but in her own hour 
 of release showed no mercy. Besides she was watching Fender 
 who sat opposite at the further corner of the table. There 
 was a jauntiness in his movements which might have been 
 taken for self-assertiveness. But somehow, Joanna knew bet- 
 ter. Somehow, with a secret warmth of knowledge she saw 
 him unsure, bitter, on the defensive. 
 
 " I only learned yesterday from Mrs. Lovatt that you were 
 back in Glasgow." 
 
 Lawrence had spoken at last, and Joanna was caught by 
 the pedantry of his phrasing. So shy he was, yet so precise! 
 And she smiled at him, dazzling him with all the new joy in 
 her heart. 
 
 " And I learn" she replied, " that you are the coming 
 anthropologist! " As she spoke, he saw her gay smile change 
 into a regular schoolgirl grin which put everything else out 
 of his head. Not till this moment had he known how keenly 
 he had looked forward to meeting her again. He still re- 
 membered the pain of unreasoning anger and emptiness with 
 which he had heard of her marriage and departure to Italy. 
 
 How was it that she had been back for three whole years 
 without his having once seen her? 
 
 " Glasgow is a bigger place than one thinks after all," was 
 what he succeeded presently in saying. 
 
 But Joanna only smiled a vague assent, and he saw that he 
 had lost her. She was listening, not to him but to the talk 
 between Fender and Mrs. Lovatt. She had gathered that 
 Mrs. Tullis, the Professor's wife was calling next day to meet 
 Fender. 
 
 " As I shall stay down here until I know one way or the 
 other," Fender was saying. " I may as well do a portrait of 
 her if she'll sit to me. Yes, I was to have painted her two 
 years ago, up in town. But Tullis got his Glasgow job and 
 carried her off, so nothing came of it. It wasn't a commission 
 of course. She was a friend of my wife's." 
 
 Then he was married! 
 
 Rousing herself Joanna turned again to Lawrence. 
 
 " You are a friend of the Tullises? " she asked him. But 
 Mrs. Lovatt cut gaily across his unready reply. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Urquhart, you tell us! Do you think Mrs.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 165 
 
 Tullis so pretty? " she demanded to his consternation, drag- 
 ging the young man into the open. 
 
 At Mildred's question, Joanna looked instinctively at Fen- 
 der's face; and she saw embarrassment like a cloud pass 
 over it, leaving it the next moment devoid of expression. 
 
 While Lawrence sought his answer, Mrs. Plummer spoke 
 for him. 
 
 " I think she is really rather beautiful! " said she, with her 
 overweighted head on one side, and as if she gained a re- 
 flected glory by praising the good looks of another woman. 
 " There's a something of the woods about her, don't you 
 think, that's very lovely? Farouche, I think is the word." 
 
 " For myself," Mrs. Lovatt retorted, " I should rather 
 have said vixenish than farouche, with that hair and those 
 two little sharp white teeth in front " Pretty Mrs. Fox" is 
 my name for her. Come and meet her here to-morrow, Joanna, 
 and tell me if you don't agree with me." 
 
 " Mildred always was jealous of red-headed women," whis- 
 pered Mr. Lovatt in a stage whisper aside to Joanna. And the 
 others laughed and fell apart. 
 
 Joanna, who did not know the professor's wife by sight, 
 had taken no part in the discussion. And she had been all 
 the time aware of Fender's so different isolation, which yet 
 seemed to bring him nearer to her. She felt a hatred rising 
 in her against this Mrs. Tullis, against Mrs. Fender, against 
 Mildred, perhaps against all women, because they were some- 
 how responsible for the despicable uneasiness under Fender's 
 practised surface. 
 
 She wondered if he would want to talk to her at all at the 
 dance. Then she would discover him, perhaps. 
 
 With this thought, this longing, there flashed unbidden in 
 her memory the vision of a little door in Italy, once pointed 
 out by Mario. It was that door in the garden wall of a villa 
 through which a famous woman was said to have welcomed 
 her lover. Strange that Joanna should think of it now! 
 Strange that it should have remained forgotten all these years 
 to recur this evening like an unacknowledged, all unsatisfied 
 desire! 
 
 IV 
 
 At the School the fun was in full swing when Mildred's 
 party arrived. A waltz came to an end as they were taking off
 
 166 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 their wraps, and Joanna thought Mrs. Plummer would never 
 stop re-arranging her hair, which stayed perfectly untidy in 
 spite of prolonged fingering. 
 
 When at last they entered the dancing-room, the students 
 were grouping themselves noisily for the foursome reel. Most 
 of the dancers already stood facing one another, in two 
 double lines whkh stretched from end to end of the long class- 
 room; but still here and there some couples ran linked, laugh- 
 ing and sliding on the polished floor in a race for the few gaps 
 left. Onlookers sat round on benches, or on the floor. Many 
 had kept on their overalls of holland or blue linen, and num- 
 bers of the girls were so young that their hair still hung over 
 their shoulders. There was something easy-going, almost 
 countrified about these dances. The sloping timbered ceiling, 
 hung with a few lanterns of yellowish paper, made Joanna feel 
 as if she were in a barn; and she thought that the easels and 
 thrones stacked in each corner looked like farm implements. 
 
 And if it was a village festival, Mr. Valentine Plummer 
 united in himself the parts of the Squire and the Vicar. He 
 came effusively to greet the newcomers, pressed them to join 
 in at once, and shepherded them to the far end of the room. 
 " There is always room at the top," he said, cracking his 
 little parsonish joke. But neither the Lovatts nor Mrs. 
 Plummer nor Fender could dance the reel. 
 
 Lawrence Urquhart glanced at Joanna, biting his lip. 
 
 " You, then, bella Signora! " exclaimed the Director jocosely. 
 " Come. Shall it be said that a Scotswoman refused to take 
 part in a reel? " 
 
 " Will you? " asked Lawrence. 
 
 But Joanna shook her head, excusing herself. 
 
 "Ah! but do, do dance it! " 
 
 Not Lawrence this time but Louis Pender had spoken. 
 He stood close to Joanna, and begged like a lively child who 
 fears the loss of a long-promised treat. And Joanna, blushing 
 deeply with pleasure, laughed and yielded. 
 
 She gave her hand to Urquhart who was clenching his black 
 mortified brows. Only to please this other was he accepted! 
 
 Although a couple was wanted almost where they stood, he 
 set off with her to the far end of the room. It was some satis- 
 faction to him that he was really dragging her there; but 
 he suffered too all the way from the hateful reluctance of 
 her body. She was humiliated by his knowledge that she
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 167 
 
 desired to dance before the other man. But by her back- 
 ward drag on his arm she thrust him down so far below her- 
 self that her humiliation was a triumph compared with his. 
 
 Still he plodded on, his head forward and hanging a little. 
 And they had barely got to their places when the band let 
 fly with the tune. 
 
 To Joanna's great astonishment Urquhart danced well. It 
 was the last thing she had expected of him; but he sprang 
 featly to music, and his body was delivered by the steady 
 rhythm from all stiffness and self-consciousness. As he passed 
 and re-passed her in the figure eight, taking first one of her 
 hands and then the other; as he placed his own hands on his 
 slight hips or raised them high above his head; as he swung 
 his partners round, each time lifting them clean off the floor; 
 above all as he came to go through his complicated steps 
 facing Joanna in the middle, gravely leaping on his small 
 Highland feet while the couple outside beat the time with their 
 hands; the young man was wholly possessed. He had to the 
 full that tranced and happy seriousness which is the spirit 
 of a national dance. 
 
 From the outset he caught Joanna up into something of 
 his own dignity, winning her surprised acknowledgment. Then, 
 as the reel progressed, she began to lose all sense of identity. 
 Every moment she became less herself, more a mere rhyth- 
 mical expression of the soil from which they both had sprung. 
 The memory dawned in her of some far back ancestress, of 
 whom unheedingly she had heard her mother tell. Fresh, 
 dim, sweet like dawn, she could see the Stirlingshire farmer's 
 daughter carrying the milk-pails at sunrise and at sunset to 
 the Castle on its hill. She could hear the swinging clink of 
 the pails, could smell the spilt, clover-sweet milk, while the 
 farmer's daughter gave her lips to the young, unknown Welsh 
 soldier who kept the drawbridge. She was that lass, that meet- 
 ing, without which her being would not have been. And soon 
 she was not even these. Beneath the candid darkness of Law- 
 rence Urquhart's face, soon she was no more than a field of 
 barley that swings unseen in the wind before dawn. 
 
 But suddenly, though the music went on, and though her 
 feet persisted in its rhythms, she was recalled into herself. 
 Louis Fender, edging along by the wall, had come unknown to 
 where she was dancing. And now that she had seen him, 
 she knew nothing else but that he watched her through his
 
 168 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 glasses with his practised, unhappy eyes. She did not look 
 at him, but his being there changed everything for her. It 
 changed subtly the spirit of her dancing into a conscious revela- 
 tion and a less conscious withholding. She became an appeal, 
 a claim, a scarcely endurable excitement. She could not help 
 herself. 
 
 The moment the music stopped she longed to get rid of her 
 partner. He was inexpressive again, but that was not why 
 she wanted to be quit of him. When they had sat silent in 
 the corridor for a minute, and he had brought her a little red 
 glass of lemonade, the next dance was announced. It was 
 a schottische, and Joanna feared that Urquhart would ask for 
 it. While she was wondering how to refuse, Carl Nilsson 
 passed them. She had not known him there till then, and 
 ran to him with relief, an impetuous greeting on her lips. 
 
 She introduced the two men, and Urquhart went up in her 
 mind as she saw them clearly take to each other from the 
 first. Carl was no dancer, he said, and had only looked in 
 for a moment. He was even now making for home. Yet he 
 stood talking to the younger man, which Joanna knew he 
 would not have done out of mere politeness. Her own escape, 
 however, was still first with her. And as soon as she could, 
 she slipped away to where Mrs. Lovatt was sitting. She did 
 not even notice that Carl and Lawrence had drawn two chairs 
 for themselves into a quieter angle of the corridor. 
 
 She knew now that Fender would seek her out. 
 
 For hours she had been looking, unknowingly, for this 
 moment. It had lain veiled in her throughout the dinner; 
 had become more and more immanent during the dark cab 
 drive; and had leapt into certainty as a tiger leaps from its lair, 
 when she had caught sight of him watching the dance. 
 
 And now she had the impulse to fly. In spite of her ex- 
 perience she was too raw and unprepared afraid too, terri- 
 bly afraid. She rose, making in a panic for the corridor. She 
 could hide downstairs. 
 
 But in the doorway she came face to face with Fender. 
 His eyes filled with light. 
 
 " Here you are! " he said. And he stood smiling at her 
 with extraordinary kindness, such as she had never seen on 
 any face before. But as they stood looking at each other,
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 169 
 
 a different sparkling triumphed over the light of kindness in 
 his eyes, and there was excitement in the square, nervous 
 hand that stroked his mustache. 
 
 The woman remained perfectly still in the doorway. She 
 was stiff with shyness and delight, and could move neither 
 backward into the room nor forward into the corridor. The 
 man's physical nearness robbed her of initiative. 
 
 u Is there ever such a thing as a waltz at your Glasgow 
 balls? " he asked with a touch of petulance that she liked. " I 
 
 understand the next dance is a scot scot , something 
 
 that sounds like catching cold." 
 
 " A schottische? " Joanna laughed. 
 
 Up flew Fender's eyebrows, and without any other per- 
 ceptible change, every line in his face and body became ex- 
 pressive of comic despair. 
 
 " I ask you, do you see me dancing it? " 
 
 He had the comedian's gift, and Joanna's laughter rang 
 out readily. Yet it was above all when he was clowning for 
 her entertainment that she felt the underlying discord and 
 distress of the man. Her heart seemed to drip sweetly with 
 pity for him, like a full honey-comb. It was as if her blood 
 told her that there was virtue in her for his healing, his 
 lavish consolation. 
 
 " Come and sit it out with me," he urged. " I've seen the 
 very place for us downstairs. It's so hot and noisy up here. 
 I hate it." 
 
 There was empty chairs on the landing, and Fender with 
 Joanna on his arm hesitated a second before taking her do^yn- 
 stairs. It was one of these little human waverings that are so 
 pathetic on the eve of an already settled fate. There they 
 stood poised, she in her gay dress, all billowing in the draught 
 from the ball-room, her face turned like a flower, like a ques- 
 tion, to the man's, abiding his decision; he, refusing his answer, 
 taking counsel alone, weighing his little world that he hated 
 yet feared, between his palms, and gnawing anxiously at 
 his petulant under-lip. 
 
 " I suppose at dances in London there are nothing but 
 waltzes now? " Joanna asked, when they had got half-way 
 downstairs. But she did not even notice that her question 
 remained unanswered. She was all exultation in the surety 
 that he too had been waiting for this. Had he not looked 
 for a place apart where they could sit together and talk?
 
 i 7 o OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 When he led her along a darkened passage on the ground 
 floor, she guessed they were going to the Antique Class-room; 
 but the room they entered was worlds removed from the fam- 
 iliar place in which she had worked through many an hour 
 of daylight. Its known contours were all disfigured by moon- 
 light, and by the straggling rays of a street lamp which came 
 mixed with moonlight through the long plaster-coated win- 
 dows. The statues lurked strangely in corners. The place 
 was not illumined; its darkness was made manifest, and its 
 unsuspected secrets of darkness. 
 
 In silence Joanna perched on a high stool, and her compan- 
 ion pulled forward a small throne on castors, and sat upon 
 it between her and the windows which all ran along one wall. 
 Color could not persist in this underworld, and Joanna's 
 head and shoulders and breast, rising from her dress, might 
 have been of marble but for the living shadows. Fender's 
 face was in deep shade. She could only see the glint of his 
 glasses, and his lightly clasped hands, caught by a shaft of 
 light from the street as he leaned forward, elbows on knees. 
 The music of the schottische came to them from far above, 
 not as melody, but as a monotonous pulse of sound. They 
 were together, hidden, remote, in a forsaken world revolving 
 in melancholy but beautiful twilight. 
 
 " What a thing light is! " exclaimed Fender in low, struck 
 tones. " As I see you now, I shouldn't know you for the 
 same woman I saw ten minutes ago, dancing." 
 
 Joanna, in the reel, had seemed to him, for all her slight- 
 ness of figure, like a young heifer in a clover field, essentially 
 sturdy, full of unbroken, untouched vigor; and the combina- 
 tion of this with her face which he found over-refined in fea- 
 tures, had inflamed him to a degree astonishing to himself. 
 Now she was suddenly aloof as a moon-maiden, and his pas- 
 sion recoiled into himself. But he was surer than before of her 
 attraction for him, surer rather of the special quality of the 
 attraction. 
 
 " Yes, everything is different," she agreed, her voice also 
 quiet with wonder. " I am only beginning to see you now. 
 It's so queer, isn't it, how every bit of color is washed out? 
 I can never help thinking that color is really form, though 
 I suppose we know it isn't." 
 
 The speech pleased Fender. 
 
 " Who really knows what color is? " he said. " But I be-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 171 
 
 lieve I get that feeling at times ." His grave, interested 
 
 voice was charming to Joanna ; and suddenly he leaned further 
 forward, looking up at her, his face coming into the shaft 
 of light, his eyes no longer appraising. 
 
 " Will you sit for me some day? " he asked, with such 
 boyish, shy directness, that it was like taking off a mask 
 or -throwing open a door for her to enter. 
 
 "I'd like to," Joanna replied in simple delight; but even 
 as she spoke her simplicity gave way to excitement, and she 
 became rigid with it as she had been in the doorway up- 
 stairs. 
 
 " Good. That's settled." Fender spoke evenly, but the 
 excitement was mounting in him also. " As soon as I can get 
 some sort of a studio rigged up, I'll let you know," and 
 though he had leaned back into the darkness again, Joanna 
 could feel the unsheathed boldness of his eyes like weapons, 
 there in the darkness like weapons ready to strike. And sud- 
 denly she remembered something of the hawk in his face was 
 it the eyes, the nose, or was it no matter of feature? 
 
 Two long ends of narrow, bright blue ribbon hung from 
 Joanna's waist to the floor on the side where Fender was; and 
 when he had spoken she saw his hand go out and take hold 
 of these. She saw his hand slip gleaming, snake-like, through 
 the discovering ray, passing swiftly from dark to dark, and 
 though it was only her ribbon he touched, a quiver passed 
 through her whole frame. 
 
 " You are going to paint Mrs. Tullis too? " Against her 
 will Joanna asked this, but she must hear his voice when he 
 spoke of this other woman. 
 
 Fender stopped his winding up of the ribbon, which had 
 seemed as if lessening the distance between them, and answered 
 rather stiffly. 
 
 " I may, if she has time to sit." Then he went on with his 
 winding, gathering a larger and larger spool of the silk girdle 
 between his finger and thumb. 
 
 " You like her? " 
 
 Under Joanna's persistence he moved abruptly, but with 
 what meaning she could not tell. 
 
 " She's a very charming woman or was " he said, and 
 he flicked the spool of ribbon from him so that it lay split 
 again on the floor. " I've not seen her for some time. But 
 don't you know her? "
 
 i 7 2 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " No. You say you like her? " Joanna hated herself, but 
 could not refrain. 
 
 For this last minute they had talked in strained, unhappy 
 voices, but Fender broke the tension between them with a 
 little laugh. 
 
 " I couldn't say till I see her again whether I like her or 
 not," he said, speaking now quite naturally. " I once liked 
 her very much indeed; but one never knows how one will 
 feel after six months, let alone two years and more. Don't 
 you find it so? " 
 
 So he had told her! And though Joanna was taken aback 
 by what she rightly felt to be the directness of his reply, she 
 understood and was grateful. This man, she realized, had 
 his loves, like the Italians of whom Mario and Maddalena had 
 been used to speak casually. He was of those who took un- 
 faithfulness in marriage as a matter of course. And there 
 flickered again in the girl's mind, like a single phrase from a 
 melody but once heard, the remembrance of that little, secret 
 door, set deep in the wall of La Porziuncola. 
 
 " While I'm waiting about in Glasgow " he was speaking 
 
 again. " I hear there's a cottage and studio I might get 
 
 at a place called Carmunnock said to be nice. Do you know 
 that part? I couldn't stand being in Glasgow itself." 
 
 Joanna spoke a little about the country round Carmunnock, 
 and the talk faded out. 
 
 They rose indefinitely and moved to the door. 
 
 On the lighted stairs each looked timidly at each to discover 
 the new thing, the fine, frail intimacy that had sprung up be- 
 tween them in the darkness. 
 
 " Do you know what I wanted when I was watching you 
 dance? " said he, smiling into her eyes. " I wanted to see 
 you on the Downs, in the wind, with your face red from the 
 sun, and your hair all blown about anyhow. Do you think 
 I ever shall? " 
 
 " I'm afraid there are no Downs at Carmunnock," she 
 replied, smiling back with an unaccustomed touch of coquetry. 
 
 " That's a pity." 
 
 " But there are moors." 
 
 " A moor will serve," he allowed, showing his amusement. 
 
 " Will your wife be coming to Glasgow? " Joanna presently 
 asked, in a different, very steady voice. And at the ques-
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 173 
 
 tion so flatly put, Louis gave her a glance in which resent- 
 ment was struggling with his amusement. 
 
 " She may, or may not," he answered, in some confusion. 
 
 This woman's bluntness, stimulated, and at the same time 
 repelled him a little. She had had a husband, he told him- 
 self; so she must know her whereabouts. Had she been the 
 untouched creature she seemed, of course he would have let 
 her be. There was danger in her certainly. But it was his 
 danger. He supposed she could look out for herself. 
 
 Upstairs he asked her for the waltz which had just begun. 
 She refused; he insisted. But it was a failure. And when 
 he had gone half round the room with her, trying every few 
 turns to make her reverse, he stopped and took her away. 
 
 "You were right: you are no waltzer, my child," he said, 
 resignedly. 
 
 At his rudeness the tears sprang to Joanna's eyes. She was 
 already sick with vexation at her failure. 
 
 " I was never allowed to have lessons," she said, biting 
 her trembling lip. " This is the first dance I've ever been to." 
 
 Upon this he eyed her quickly. 
 
 "Well, well, never mind my rudeness," he said in hasty 
 shame. " It's easy enough to learn. I didn't want to hurt 
 you, but it was such a disappointment." 
 
 Though there was some penitence here, he was still child- 
 ishly overcome by his impatience of being thwarted in a 
 pleasure. He asked no further question, and Joanna felt 
 he would not have been interested had she told him of the 
 prayer meeting and her hidden ball-dress. Yet she knew he 
 was somehow vitally interested in her. How was it, then? 
 She was at a loss, and groping for the key to his nature. 
 
 It was late when the waltz finished. Joanna realized that 
 she must go home. Mildred, who was passing on Valentine 
 Plummer's arm, told them that Urquhart had gone some time 
 ago. *And when she added that he was working at nights 
 for a fellowship, Joanna felt a stab to her vanity. She would 
 have been gratified to think that he had left early on her 
 account. She was relieved however that he had not seen her 
 in the waltz with Fender. 
 
 The rain was slashing outside, but she had only to cross 
 the road to be at home. And so great now was her longing 
 for solitude, that she could hardly endure the walk downstairs
 
 i 7 4 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 in Fender's company, nor his insistence in seeing her to her 
 very door. 
 
 " You will get drenched," she remonstrated, looking at his 
 bare head in the slanting rain; and with a h*urried hand- 
 shake she ran up the steps of her mother's house and let her- 
 self in. 
 
 But when the door was shut between them, she bent down to 
 look back at him, through the old devil's beard in the glass. 
 She looked, as long ago she had once looked at her dead 
 father. 
 
 Louis was turning away, slowly in spite of the rain.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ON" Saturday afternoon, according to Mildred's invita- 
 tion, Joanna went to Panmure Crescent. 
 
 The house, as she entered it, had none of its usual effect 
 upon her, and she passed through the blue and black hall 
 quite absorbed. With what face would he meet her? 
 
 But only h^r hostess and Lawrence Urquhart were in the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 " Fancy! Mr. Fender has had to go back to town: isn't 
 it too sad? " said Mildred, as she shook hands. 
 
 Joanna, standing there in the middle of the room, felt 
 as if she had been dealt a violent and treacherous blow. It 
 was a wonder to her that she remained erect. But even so, 
 a moment passed before she could admit to herself that any- 
 thing had happened. " Town " to any Glasgow person 
 means Buchanan Street: and though Joanna perfectly 
 grasped the meaning of the word on Mildred's lips, she seized 
 on this poor excuse for confusion as a momentary anaesthetic. 
 Only thus could she survive the first shock without betrayal. 
 
 Then as the drug wore off she faced the news with gathering 
 strength. He had gone away to London. She was not to 
 see him to-day. She might not ever see him again. She only 
 knew by their shattering how many pictures of meeting she 
 had woven since the parting of the night before. With a 
 costly effort she collected herself now and shook Urquhart's 
 outstretched hand. 
 
 " It's hard lines on us," Mrs. Lovatt was talking as she 
 poured out tea " and I expect Mrs. Tullis will feel sold if 
 she comes: but it was good news for Fender. He got the 
 telegram at lunch-time and just caught the two o'clock train. 
 Some dealer from Paris wants to see him about a one man show 
 there. I could hardly believe it, when he told me this would 
 be the first, either in Paris or London. It seems too prepos- 
 terous. But he says the money or the luck has always been 
 
 i75
 
 176 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 wanting. That Fender should still be so hard up is a standing 
 
 wonder to me. When I think of his things ! There's only 
 
 one Fender. Don't you agree? " 
 
 " I take it," said Urquhart, " that he hasn't practised the 
 great art of self-advertisement." 
 
 (Joanna moved impatiently in her chair. " / take it I " 
 What a stilted way he had of speaking! ) 
 
 " That's it exactly! " responded Mildred with animation. 
 " And not only that, but he has never troubled to hide his 
 contempt for those who do practise it. They say he is the 
 most unpopular artist among artists in London. There's 
 no doubt that something in his personality has stood in the 
 way of his getting on. But it's a sin all the same. To think 
 of the prices his stuff will fetch the minute he's dead! And 
 I've no doubt the dealers are beginning to realize this. The 
 brutes! " 
 
 " Would you guess," she continued, handing a cup to Jo- 
 anna, " that he was geting on for fifty. Forty-seven, he must 
 be, at the very least. Would you think so? " 
 
 " I can never guess ages," replied Joanna, as she had to 
 reply, " but I shouldnft have thought him so old." 
 
 To her fifty was age, was worlds removed from herself. 
 Her father, she knew, had been barely fifty when he died, 
 and she had always thought of him as an old man. 
 
 Yet in connection with Louis Fender, the word fifty, re- 
 mained meaningless. So far as she was concerned it had no 
 bearing on him. 
 
 " Physically he may look younger, perhaps," said Urquhart 
 with calm unexpectedness, " but I, myself, should have put 
 him down as older. 
 
 Under the questioning looks of both the women, he was 
 quite aware that he had blundered, but he persisted. 
 
 " I mean," he said, " he looks to me so sick and tired of 
 everything." 
 
 " I think he looks very much younger than his age," said 
 Joanna displeased. 
 
 " So do I, I must say," agreed Mildred, " though of course 
 I know what you mean, Mr. Urquhart. He looks rather dis- 
 illusioned. His marriage ah well! " And she sighed, lifting 
 her brows a little. 
 
 Presently she noticed that Joanna's eyes had strayed ques- 
 tioningly to a pile of art magazines surmounted by a case
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 177 
 
 tied with tapes, which lay on the sofa opposite beside Lawrence 
 Urquhart. 
 
 " Don't tell me that I never showed you my Fenders? " 
 she exclaimed. " Is it possible? Mr. Urquhart has just been 
 looking at them. Pass the case, will you, Mr. Urquhart? Or 
 will you sit on the sofa, Joanna? " 
 
 Hungering for a sight of Fender's work, Joanna crossed to 
 where Urquhart was, and sat down by him. As he handed 
 her the uppermost picture, her eyes were so dizzied with excite- 
 ment that she could scarcely see; but instinctively, with pro- 
 tective deceit, she held it from her in the approved atti- 
 tude of the student. 
 
 Then gradually as her blood subsided and her eyes served 
 her again, she became conscious of disappointment. 
 
 Could it be possible that he was only a fan painter? Cer- 
 tainly this that she held in her hand was the design for a fan! 
 
 To spare her the weight the drawings would have been upon 
 her knees, Lawrence passed them to her one by one, and she 
 resented his handling of them. More and more burningly 
 she resented his presence, Mildred's presence, Mildred's run- 
 ning commentary of explanation and praise. If only she might 
 be alone with Fender's work! 
 
 " That now, that you are looking at! " cried Mildred point- 
 ing a forefinger. " It's early work of course, and one can 
 see that he was under the spell of Veronese. But even then 
 it seems to me he had nothing to learn from Veronese himself 
 in the matter of color. Just see the red of that dress by 
 the pillar in the fore-ground, with the blue, night sky behind 
 these high-arched windows. Doesn't it sing? And the com- 
 position! All these figures on a small fan: yet the whole is 
 as broad and mellow as a fresco on the wall of a palace. The 
 sense of space is marvellous." 
 
 Under this fire of enthusiasm Joanna felt her every nerve 
 frayed. But at the very point when she believed her endur- 
 ance was at an end, the drawing-room door opened and Mrs. 
 Tullis was announced. 
 
 As soon as she had touched pretty Mrs. Tullis's hard hand, 
 and heard her little hard laugh which sounded too often, 
 Joanna blamed and despised her. 
 
 The woman had finish. And that Joanna admired jeal- 
 ously. She had a kittenish charm too, though it was harden- 
 ing a little, growing a thought brittle. Enviable looks she
 
 i 7 8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 had. lovely hair and eyes. And under all there was a hard, 
 excitable sexuality, for which against her will Joanna was 
 sensible of a certain respect. She believed Mrs. Tullis worlds 
 more attractive to a man like Fender or for that matter 
 to any man than she herself could ever hope to be. She 
 felt crude by the side of Mrs. Tullis. Yet in that same in- 
 stant she denied Mrs. Tullis's claim to any attraction or beauty 
 whatsoever. Nay. even while she sat trembling with primitive 
 jealousy, she was possessed of the proud and dangerous know- 
 ledge of her own intrinsic superiority. She could not have 
 named it, could not even examine into it. But there lay in 
 her a. gift for Fender which he could never receive or have 
 received from this other woman. And hi this she triumphed. 
 
 Within ten minutes, not merely jealousy, but ordinary in- 
 terest had faded; and Joanna began to look once more at the 
 drawings, now all collected in spite of Urquhart, on her lap. 
 
 And by degrees, as the voices of Mrs. Tullis and her hostess 
 sounded alternately, now speaking of Fender's enforced, hasty 
 return to London, now questioning Urquhart politely as to the 
 exact subject of his thesis for a forthcoming fellowship, she 
 found herself entering into the fantasy of the artist. 
 
 At first she had been taken aback by the occasional weakness 
 and even faultiness of his drawing. Now, wth her sight sharp- 
 ened by decisive emotion, she realized only that she was en- 
 tering the country of his desire, and that it was a country 
 which she had longed all her life to visit. 
 
 It was a world of elegance passionately felt, of gallantry 
 founded on a perfection of melancholy. Its beauty was full 
 of farewells, at times resigned, at times defiant but always 
 exquisite. And before one could enter this world one had to 
 learn the idiom of its creator. This was the more difficult, 
 because unlike so many moderns, Fender had imposed on him- 
 self severe conventions. It seemed he had to work in fetters. 
 Joanna discovered that he was least sure of himself when con- 
 fronted by an actual sitter or a real landscape. With any 
 attempt at realism the soul was apt to go out of his work. 
 
 When Mrs. Tullis left, Joanna hardly marked her going. 
 
 During the next week she worked little and carelessly, di- 
 viding her time between Panmure Cresent and Sans Souci.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 179 
 
 She found herself avoiding Carl Xilsson's inquiring eye on 
 the few occasions when she attended his class, and was thank- 
 ful that he never persisted to the point of speech. 
 
 She grew skilful at inventing pretexts for seeing Mildred, 
 and if ia their talk Fender's name was not spoken, she re- 
 turned home feeling empty. She brooded over each scrap of 
 knowledge, piecing them together. Very soon she was in 
 possession of all that Mildred could give her. 
 
 It appealed to her imagination, that by the strangest of 
 chances Fender had been born in Glasgow. 
 
 His father a Hungarian actor with a self-cultivated talent 
 for scene-painting, and his mother, an English parson's 
 daughter, who, eloping with the elder Louis, had made a 
 quite noteworthy career for herself on the stage, had been 
 staying in theatrical lodgings in Glasgow when their only child 
 was born. Later they had ceased their roving life, establishing 
 themselves at Baling; and until she became an old woman, 
 Madame Fender as she called herself in her widowhood 
 had maintained some reputation as a teacher of elocution in 
 that suburb. 
 
 From the first, young Louis had showed a gift for drawing, 
 and his mother had let him follow his bent. At the Art School 
 he had quarreled with his teachers, been disliked by his fel- 
 low-students, and failed to win all save one of the scholar- 
 ships on which his parent's heart was set. But even so 
 there was never any doubt of his ability. And now at middle 
 age, after many rebuffs, and much bad fortune he had in his 
 own peculiar way, arrived. 
 
 Concerning his marriage, Joanna could not bring herself 
 to question her friend directly. But there was no need. For 
 here, with some head-shaking, Mildred was at her most com- 
 municative. 
 
 He had married young, she said, a handsome girl of more 
 distinguished social connect 'ons than his own. And his wife's 
 money, though it had unf -tunately been lost within a few 
 years of their marriage, had helped at a critical time in his 
 career. It was common talk that for many years past he had 
 foraged for love (though always with a certain discretion) 
 outside matrimony; and surprise was sometimes expressed 
 that an open break had never occurred. Now it was no 
 longer expected. People understood that the couple were held 
 together by worldly interest, and by their twin sons, bora in
 
 iSo OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 the first year of marriage, old enough now for one to be in the 
 army and the other just entering the Indian Civil Service. 
 
 ni 
 
 At Sans Souci apart from Phemie herself, it was the music 
 which had become the great attraction for Joanna. 
 
 Though Phemie was the only one who had been trained save 
 in the most haphazard way, the whole family was gifted with 
 music, and the sisters, besides having good natural voices, 
 possessed an extraordinary sense of style. 
 
 Joanna never tired of listening on the evenings when five 
 or six of the girls crowded round Phemie at the piano, to 
 " try over bits," sometimes out of an operetta, at other times 
 from the St. Matthew or the St. John Passion Music; for they 
 all belonged to the Bach Choir and practised hard for the 
 Easter performance in the Cathedral. 
 
 Then how serious, fresh and beautiful the Pringle girls 
 looked. But always, after a time, Nora the youngest grew 
 tired of not laughing: and she would introduce some absurd 
 words, or with all the terrific complacency of a prima donna, 
 some flowery musical phrase of her own; until at last the 
 chiding gravity of the others was upset. Once " our Nora " 
 started there was no stopping her, and from making subtly, 
 comic grimaces, she would grow wilder and wilder in her clown- 
 ing till every one was in paroxysms, and there could be no 
 more Bach that night. 
 
 Nora it was who discovered in some magazine, the mar- 
 vellous " bloom-bath " alleged to be the secret of Mrs. Langtry's 
 beauty. And one afternoon when Joanna should have been 
 at the Art School, she and Nora and Phemie in their petti- 
 coats, with shrieks of laughter and pain nearly steamed the 
 skin off their faces. There was always some " ploy " for- 
 ward with the Pringles, and Joanna, who in these ways had 
 never been young before, entered into everything like a 
 schoolgirl. 
 
 It was some time before she realized that the Pringle girls 
 deeply hated the disorder and publicity of their home-life: 
 that although outwardly they combined with zest to keep it 
 going, each concealed a passionate longing for escape. 
 
 Phemie especially fretted for the day when she and her 
 Jimmie would be able to afford marriage. And the existence
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 181 
 
 the two had planned for themselves, was in every respect 
 opposed to existence at Sans Souci. A dignified and beautiful 
 quiet was its essential. 
 
 " No ornaments hardly, as they only make work," Phemie 
 was discoursing one night as she showed Joanna the piled- 
 up treasures of her " bottom-drawer." " But lots of really 
 lovely linen, all kept with lavender in among it. O! I do 
 love the feel of good linen in my hands, don't you, Joanna? " 
 
 And lifting out a folded linen sheet, elaborately hem-stitched, 
 Phemie sniffed its fragrance appreciatively with her little nose. 
 
 " And all the furniture real antique Jimmie has collected 
 quite a lot not ' arty ' you know Joanna, but just old and 
 good, and chintz covered with roses in the drawing-room, 
 and all Jimmie's books, and a Bechstein grand, and the bed- 
 room all white with pink roses on the wall-paper roses I 
 do love and adore. And at nights Jimmie and I will sit 
 before the fire in perfect arm-chairs reading and of course 
 I'll change every evening into a tea gown the most exquisite 
 ever! pink of the palest and fearfully simple! " 
 
 As she spoke, Phemie was rummaging in the drawer (she 
 could keep no drawer tidy, not even this sacred bottom one) 
 and presently finding what she sought, she drew forth a 
 night-gown of gossamer. 
 
 " What do you think of this pattern, my darling? That's 
 none of Mamma's goods, as you may perchance guess; our 
 Nora got it from an American girl. Feel the stuff! " 
 
 Joanna laid admiring fingers on the lawn and lace, and put 
 her cheek luxuriously against its softness. She thought of 
 Maddalena, and seemed to hear her bass voice denouncing 
 the beautifully flimsy garment. And surely Maddalena would 
 have died of horror could she have seen Phemie dressing any 
 afternoon to meet her Jimmie in town! Every drawer and 
 door in the bedroom stood open; and from a tousled trunk 
 under the bed Phemie would select a flower, a feather, a tip 
 of fur, or bow of ribbon, which, straightening impatiently 
 before the mirror, she would pin upon a hat from which last 
 day's trimmings had been hastily torn. Sometimes the result 
 was happy, oftener it was not. But always, as she turned her 
 bird-like head this way and that, to see the effect of the decora- 
 tion, Joanna was delighted by her friend's odd, endearing 
 beauty. 
 
 " You see," continued Phemie, breaking into Joanna's
 
 182 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 thoughts of Maddalena, " I suppose a woman is a kind of 
 fairy to a man. Isn't that so, my darling? " 
 
 IV 
 
 One Thursday, calling at Panmure Crescent on the pretext 
 of returning a borrowed book, Joanna found Lawrence Urqu- 
 hart there again. She was vexed at this. It was three weeks 
 now since Fender's going, and she had come hoping for word 
 of his return. But she could not bring herself to speak of 
 him before Urquhart. 
 
 " I'm glad you have come to-day, Joanna," was Mildred's 
 greeting. " I have news for you." 
 
 " I think it will please you," she continued, nodding mys- 
 teriously. " Just wait a moment. The letter is downstairs." 
 And she left the room. 
 
 A pulse beat in Joanna's throat. Surely, at last he must 
 have written. Or was there news from the Town Council? 
 If his designs had been accepted he should soon be back in 
 Glasgow. More than ever now she wished Urquhart absent. 
 Why should he dog her footsteps in this way? 
 
 But he seemed unconscious of her resentment, and the 
 moment Mildred had gone, he began to talk with less than his 
 usual hesitation. 
 
 He had just discovered, he told her, that his mother, who 
 as a girl had " sat under " Joanna's grandfather at St. Jude's 
 had been in those days a constant playmate of the Bannerman 
 children. Her particular friend, it seemed, had been a daughter 
 called " Gina." 
 
 " That must have been Aunt Georgina," asserted Joanna, 
 " though it is difficult to think she was ever little, and even 
 if she was, I can hardly believe that anyone would dare to 
 call her 'Gina! '" 
 
 " Come one afternoon to our house and talk to my mother 
 about her," invited Lawrence. " She will love it if you will. 
 She asked me to tell you so." 
 
 Joanna promised that she would call upon Mrs. Urquhart, 
 and an afternoon was fixed for the following week. Even 
 while she told herself that in common courtesy she could do 
 no less, she found herself interested suddenly in the young 
 man's dark irregularity of feature. Certainly his face could 
 light up in an unexpected way. 
 
 Mildred now returned holding an open letter.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 183 
 
 " Here it is," she said. " Now listen, and tell me if this 
 isn't what you have been longing for? No, you mustn't 
 go, Mr. Urquhart. It's nothing private. No, indeed it isn't. 
 Do stay and give us your opinion." 
 
 Lawrence, who had risen, sat down again with a glance at 
 Joanna's averted profile, and the letter was read out. 
 
 It offered Joanna her first chance of earning money. 
 
 A friend of the Lovatt's the manager of a leading Glasgow 
 drapery firm, was making a new departure. He wanted some- 
 thing fresh in the way of catalogues, frontispieces, and adver- 
 tisements generally. Designs were to be submitted. Here 
 was the chance for young talent. Did the Lovatts know of any? 
 
 " If you think I'm good enough," said Joanna more than 
 doubtfully when Mildred had finished. It was indeed what 
 she had longed for the first step towards that independent 
 life in London which was her dream. Yet the actual sugges- 
 tion filled her chiefly with the terrified sense of incompetence. 
 It seemed absurd that work of hers would be thought fit 
 for reproduction and payment. How she must have imposed 
 on people that such an idea should be for a moment consid- 
 ered ! Now they would find her out. 
 
 Yet she knew she would try. 
 
 "Why of course you are good enough," Mildred encour- 
 aged her. " And I hope for one design you'll send that nice 
 thing you were working on the other day women dancing 
 I was so struck with it! I don't wonder Val Plummer says 
 you have a feeling for drapery." 
 
 " What is more, Nilsson says the same," put in Lawrence, 
 glowing with satisfaction, and Joanna was reminded by his re- 
 mark that in the three weeks since the dance, the two, intro- 
 duced by her, had become good friends. 
 
 So it was arranged, and Joanna found that she had agreed 
 to send in six designs by a given time. After all, she told 
 herself, if she failed she could kill herself! 
 
 In spite of her disappointment about Fender, of whom no 
 word had been spoken, she trod home that afternoon on air. 
 
 According to her promise, Joanna set out for the Urquharts 
 on the following Thursday afternoon: but she grudged the 
 time. Her designs were going to take even longer than she 
 had expected, and she was aghast at the unfinished and feeble
 
 184 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 appearance of work which unchallenged had pleased her a 
 month before. 
 
 The widow, whose only child Lawrence was, lived in a small 
 top flat near the Boyds in North Kelvinside. On her way 
 there therefore, Joanna had to cross the high bridge which 
 for her would always be associated with Bob Ranken, and then 
 she had to pass the steps where four years ago she and Bob 
 had parted. 
 
 When she came to the bridge, to her surprise a slight 
 trembling seized her. Far behind and done with was that ex- 
 perience, yet the peculiar misery of it still remained quick, 
 and as it were ambushed to spring out hurtfully upon her 
 at the touch of memory. Why was it? Why was it that 
 there was no such quality of torture of canker almost in 
 her memories, so much more tragic, of Mario? 
 
 For a moment she leaned on the parapet where she and 
 Bob had once stood, calling themselves lovers: and in that 
 moment, more clearly than by spoken word, the truth of 
 that past emotion was made known to her. 
 
 How she had lied to herself and to Bob! How sick she 
 had been with self-love! Why, she had merely invented him 
 as a lover to meet her need; had cared only for her own in- 
 vention, never a scrap for the living man she had used there- 
 for. Now she was open-eyed and ashamed. Bob had been 
 more honest than she. He had at least been struggling amid 
 the bewilderment of his blood towards a truthful attitude. 
 If only he could have pierced clean through all her pretences, 
 they might have emerged together, achieving real contact. 
 As it was, she was thankful for the bitter and humiliating 
 knowledge that had come to her at length, and she was grate- 
 ful to Bob for his part in it. Now that she knew, the venom 
 was gone from the memory. For her there would be no 
 decking of altars to sweet first love. The dead branch could 
 be ruthlessly lopped off. 
 
 And she did not regret. Even her falseness, she did not 
 regret. No ! 
 
 She gazed down on the full, brown February flood. The 
 last pieces of ice were breaking from the banks, and being 
 jostled in mid-current among torn branches of trees. Al- 
 though a spring thaw had set in, many of the rhododendron 
 bushes were still covered with hoar-frost. On some bushes 
 the folded leaves hung down like the lop-ears of a hare;
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 185 
 
 on others they were cocked up in tufts like the feathers of a 
 field-marshal's hat. Everywhere the evergreen bushes flou- 
 rished, hardy and rank, and between them rushed the swollen, 
 headlong water. 
 
 Ah! How remorselessly the stream swept away all the 
 debris of winter it could reach! As Joanna watched it in 
 fascination she was one with it, and she rejoiced. Her life 
 was it not as that flood? Was it not muddy, littered, unlike 
 the life she would have imagined or chosen? But it was 
 a life. It moved. It possessed the impulse, the impetus, the 
 inner fount of desire not of mere detached wishes that suc- 
 ceed each other capriciously, but of desire that springs from 
 some undiscoverable source, and is imperious as the waters 
 in spring-time. If only she had the courage to obey her true 
 desire always, would she not be purged ultimately of all her 
 falseness? This at least was her scarcely articulate faith. 
 
 At the Urquharts, a charwoman, disguised against her will as 
 a housemaid, admitted Joanna and led the way stealthily 
 down a long, dark and stuffy passage. Even in the dark- 
 ness the solid tastelessness of the dwelling was made known, 
 and there were many traces of that kind of careful spirit 
 (as different from simple thrift! ness as from poverty) which 
 cannot endure to let outward show correspond with reduced 
 circumstances. 
 
 At the far end of the passage they came to the dining-room, 
 and as she entered, Joanna's sense of oppression was increased 
 by the sight of a lar ;e table, spread (solely, as it seemed, in 
 her honor) with so many specimens of tea-bread that it 
 looked like an exhibition of bakery. She could not have told 
 why, but the plated tea-baskets at the corners, the great 
 abundance of rock-cakes, the tall, forbidding tea-pot on its 
 beaded mat, and the chairs of horse-hair and very ruddy ma- 
 hogany which had been pushed up to the damask, did un- 
 doubtedly combine rather in the cold effort to defy criticism 
 than in any spontaneous hospitality. 
 
 But as Mrs. Urquhart crossed the room to greet her, Joanna 
 was fully enlightened. Here was the source of suffocation 
 in the house. Here in this woman with the large, pale face, 
 the beautiful snow-white hair, of an astonishing thickness 
 (at one time no doubt, black like her son's), and the great, 
 cashmere bosom, surmounted by a heavy, gold brooch like
 
 1 86 
 
 a snake coiled and knotted. In her large, comely whiteness, 
 Mrs. Urquhart seemed to Joanna to absorb light and oxygen, 
 as might some powerfully succulent plant. Anything staying 
 beside her for long, must surely yield up its share and lang- 
 uish. Though one of the two windows was open at the top, 
 Joanna could have cried out for air as her hostess bore down 
 upon her. 
 
 Not that Lawrence's mother was not smiling, even gushing 
 in her manner. In talking she frequently leaned her body 
 towards Joanna's with an enveloping movement clearly meant 
 to convey an impression of quite remarkable warmth. Each 
 time this happened it is true that Joanna found herself draw- 
 ing back with instinctive hostility: but whenever she had 
 done so, she was somehow made to feel herself in the 
 wrong. 
 
 " What ! I give such a hearty welcome to my son's guest, 
 and this is all the thanks I get! " Mrs. Urquhart seemed to 
 say. 
 
 Aloud, she was making the ordinary, polite enquiries after 
 Mrs. Bannerman's well-being. But here again, her words and 
 the impression she conveyed were two very different things; 
 and Joanna, though she struggled against it, understood at 
 once that in the speaker's estimation, her mother was a highly 
 ridiculous and eccentric person. 
 
 " I had a great admiration," continued Mrs. Urquhart, 
 
 " a very great admiration for your dear father, Mrs. you 
 
 must excuse me, I have never grasped your married name." 
 
 Joanna informed her, and flushing rather from annoyance 
 than from shyness, begged to be addressed by her Christian 
 name. Her requests came automatically, simply because it 
 was expected of her, and even as it crossed her lips she knew 
 she was being bullied by this heavy, white woman. She was 
 sure that the excuse about her surname was untrue. Yet 
 was it not all friendliness on Mrs. Urquhart's part? 
 
 " Yes, I admired Father," repeated the elder woman, ex- 
 uding a geniality which was falsified by the little, calculating, 
 fixed eyes. " I worked with him many a day at the Foundry 
 Boys and the Children's Dinner Table; and when my boy told 
 me you were coming to tea, I was glad to welcome you for 
 Father's sake. No man in Glasgow, I have always said, was 
 more respected. And so handsome too: and a smile for 
 every one. Lawrence had an idea that you had his features
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 187 
 
 but I cannot say I see it. No: to my way of thinking you 
 favor your mother." 
 
 Joanna having nothing else to say felt she must thank her 
 hostess at this point for having so kindly invited her. 
 
 " Not at all," was the rejoinder. " Lawrence will tell you 
 I make all his friends welcome as far as my means permit. 
 I was always one to let the boy choose his own companions, 
 and I encourage him to bring them to the house. It cannot 
 be said of me, as of some mothers, that I grudge any innocent 
 pleasure to the young folks. If only Lawrence appreciated 
 this. But you would wonder at how many of his evenings he 
 spends with friends Mother never sees." 
 
 As some response to this was expected, Joanna supposed 
 at random that Lawrence had to see such friends in connection 
 with his work. 
 
 " He seems to be a worker," she said with an attempt to 
 brighten things up. She resented being forced thus into the 
 position of Lawrence's defender: but it was true that she 
 credited him with tenacity. 
 
 " I'm glad to hear it." 
 
 The mother spoke these words in such a curious tone that 
 Joanna looked full at her. But she looked away again in 
 distaste of what she saw. 
 
 " I suppose he has told you," Mrs. Urquhart pursued " that 
 his present fellowship ends within the year? " 
 
 Joanna wished angrily that Lawrence would come and 
 interrupt this stifling conversation. Why was he not there? 
 Was there a purpose in his absence? But while she longed 
 to disclaim any knowledge whatever of his affairs, she found 
 herself speaking against her will of the thesis she knew Law- 
 rence was just then writing on some anthropological subject 
 in competition for the Hume Fellowship. 
 
 "Ah! I'm glad he confides in you, Mrs. Joanna," said 
 Mrs. Urquhart. " Of course he will have told you of the trip 
 to the continent he is bent on taking shortly with this Mr. 
 Nilsson? " 
 
 "With Carl Nilsson? Really!" Joanna exclaimed, now 
 with genuine pleasure. " How I envy your son! I'm sure 
 no one could be a more perfect travelling companion than Carl. 
 I'm so glad. It was I who introduced them to each other, 
 you know." 
 
 It would not be true to say there was no ring of defiance in
 
 188 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Joanna's enthusiasm; and the sense of conflict between the 
 two women increased. 
 
 " I haven't a word to say against Mr. Nilsson." Mrs. 
 Urquhart spoke in cold reproof. " I have never met the 
 man. I merely hope he realizes that the boy's work has to 
 come first. You, my dear, will understand me when I say it 
 is pure mother love makes me so anxious. Nothing must 
 distract Lawrence's attention from his work at present. You 
 have seen already that I grudge him no reasonable pleasure." 
 
 During this speech, and more of the same kind that fol- 
 lowed, Joanna felt like a fly which is trussed up more and 
 more completely in the scarcely perceptible trammels of a 
 spider, Great was her relief when a sound in the passage out- 
 side told of Lawrence's arrival. 
 
 Mrs. Urquhart, who had heard also, rose and moved to make 
 the tea with an agility surprising in one so stout. 
 
 "I always feel," she concluded, just before her son came 
 in, " that a female friend, a little older than himself, can have 
 such a very steadying effect on a young man." 
 
 During tea, Lawrence spoke and ate little but he looked 
 more than once from Joanna to his mother, and from his 
 mother back again to Joanna. More than once his mother 
 reproached him for his inattentiveness in the matter of hand- 
 ing cakes. But she herself made up for this by constantly 
 pressing food upon her guest. She was affronted when Joanna 
 refused a second kind of jam. 
 
 " Both preserves are home-made," declared the hostess, 
 " as I ought to know, seeing I made them myself. But per- 
 haps there is some other kind you would prefer? There is 
 apricot in the sideboard." 
 
 Sooner than this, Joanna yielded and helped herself, but 
 the food seemed to choke her. 
 
 To the invitation, sent by Juley, that she would come one 
 day to Collessie Street, Mrs. Urquhart shook her head. 
 
 " I'm none too strong," she said, '' with my heart, as Law- 
 rence will tell you; and could never climb that terrible hill 
 of yours. But maybe Mother could manage round here one 
 of these days? " 
 
 Joanna replied that her mother was no caller, either. 
 
 " But we are flitting in May," she added. " We shall be 
 near here then. Yes," she went on in answer to a look from 
 Lawrence, " our house in Collessie Street is too big for us
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 189 
 
 now. My brother Sholto is away, and before long I hope to 
 get work in London. So ' 
 
 " You're never going to leave your mother alone again? " 
 interrupted Mrs. Urquhart, while Lawrence searched Joanna's 
 face silently, so that she wished she had not spoken. 
 
 " Not alone, Mrs. Urquhart/' she replied in a tone of forced 
 lightness. " There's Linnet, my other brother, at home. 
 Besides I don't think Mother will want always to stay in 
 Glasgow. My sister is in London. Why should we not all 
 be there together after a few years? " 
 
 This last idea, of a family life in London, was a protective 
 invention of the moment. It was far enough in truth from 
 Joanna's latest ambition. Yet, affected as she was by Law- 
 rence's questioning eyes so steadily set upon her, it became 
 when once uttered a possibility to be considered. 
 
 " All the same, what right," she asked herself angrily, 
 " has he to look at me like that? " And with cheeks 
 aflame, she continued to talk rapidly about the new house. 
 
 " It is in La France Quadrant," she exclaimed, " just 
 opposite, one of the main-door flats. I believe you could 
 see it from here." And rising abruptly she went to the win- 
 dow. She was glad to turn away her face. 
 
 Lawrence followed, and they both stood looking across the 
 bushy gully of the Kelvin. 
 
 " Yes. There! Not far from the lower bridge," Joanna 
 showed him, pointing, as if her life depended on it, with the 
 tip of her fore-finger pressed against the pane, " almost oppo- 
 site the flint mill. Do you see the yellow blinds, three, 
 four, five windows beyond the lane? That's it! " 
 
 Before she left she asked Lawrence if he would come to 
 Collessie Street on Sunday afternoon. Both her brothers 
 would be there, she said. Sholto was arriving from his farm 
 on Saturday, to stay at home till his ship sailed for Australia 
 a fortnight hence. 
 
 She invited him hoping that he might refuse; but Law- 
 rence, looking simply glad, accepted at once. 
 
 VI 
 
 That Friday a telegram was handed to Juley at breakfast. 
 Telegrams did not make her nervous, but always before 
 reading one she would close her eyes and utter within herself
 
 igo OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 a brief prayer for strength, in case it should be God's will 
 to try her. 
 
 She did so now, Linnet and Joanna waiting impatiently. 
 
 But immediately she had read, she took off her spectacles 
 and her face was irradiated by a tender, beaming smile. 
 
 " Dear, warm-hearted Georgie! " she exclaimed, bright- 
 eyed. 
 
 She read Georgie's message aloud. 
 
 " Must join you dear people and say goodbye darling Sholto 
 arrive tomorrow morning love Georgie." 
 
 For a moment Joanna's heart sank. How was she to get 
 on with her designs amid the upheaval of Georgie's visit and 
 Sholto's prolonged leave-taking? There was always some- 
 thing at home to keep one from working. Yet she too was 
 pleased at the thought of the family re-union. She would 
 have been disappointed had a second telegram came from 
 Georgie annulling the first. 
 
 That morning, instead of drawing, she busied herself in her 
 bedroom making it attractive for her sister. She cleared 
 some drawers and a space in the wardrobe, and spent more 
 than an hour polishing the long neglected Venetian-glass 
 toilet bottles with gilt filigree tops, which had been Madda- 
 lena's wedding present. And in the afternoon she flung her- 
 self with ardor into the making of several pairs of twilled 
 silk pajamas she had cut out many weeks ago as her share of 
 Sholto's new outfit. 
 
 Feverish and half frenzied in her determination to finish 
 them then and there, or at the least to have one pair ready and 
 laid out on his bed against Sholto's arrival, she was still sit- 
 ting over the sewing-machine at two in the morning. 
 
 "Joanna, dear, do go to bed now!" remonstrated her 
 mother, coming to the parlor door for the third time since 
 midnight. " I'm sure you are keeping the neighbors awake. 
 That poor machine must need oiling, I think." 
 
 It was true: the old treadle machine which Juley as a 
 bride had received from Aunt Georgina, and had felt as a 
 reproach (for she was no seamstress), was making a clatter in 
 the quiet, small hours, like the clatter of a stony field under 
 the harrow. 
 
 But Joanna, though for some time past she had been finding 
 the noise hardly endurable, spoke without stopping her work 
 or even looking round. She merely slackened a very little.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 191 
 
 " Don't worry about me, Mother," she exclaimed fractiously 
 above the rattle of the old Singer. " If you'd only get to 
 bed yourself it would please Sholto and Georgie far better 
 than anything else you could do. You know it would. But 
 of course you'll go on sitting up and distressing us all. It's 
 different for me. I can sit up for once. I don't want to be 
 machining when they are here. I can finish the button-holes 
 and things while we are talking, but I must do the stitching 
 now. It won't take much longer. 
 
 The last few words were uttered almost in a shout, as the 
 girl set tearing off again like mad upon a long trouser seam; 
 and the night was filled with the racket. 
 
 For a moment Juley stood irresolute in the doorway. Then 
 knowing by experience that Joanna's obstinacy matched her 
 own, she went back sadly and without another word to her 
 writing. She was still fully-dressed though heavy-eyed and 
 weary. For hours she had been struggling against sleep at 
 her desk, in the forlorn hope, that contrary to all knowledge, 
 she might thus get clear and have a mind at leisure for her 
 son on the morrow. 
 
 But within ten minutes she re-appeared in the parlor with 
 a happier face. She had brought some eatables upon a little 
 tray. These she set down on the edge of the machine table, 
 smiling ingratiatingly at Joanna. And Joanna looked up and 
 smiled too and stopped working. The night became at 
 once blessedly quiet. There were two glasses of milk, some 
 gingerbread, a few raisins on a saucer, and a small tin box 
 containing a special kind of flaked chocolate which Juley 
 always kept in a corner of her desk. 
 
 Mother and daughter ate almost in silence, but happy 
 together now with a delicious, secret communion and acknowl- 
 edgment. 
 
 Even so, Juley (in most things generous) could not help 
 being stingy towards Joanna over the raisins and the choco- 
 late. They were always kept apart for herself alone and were 
 sacred to her desk and her midnight labors. 
 
 In the morning Georgie's train arrived so punctually and 
 she took such an unusually fast cab, that she was home 
 almost half an hour before they had counted on seeing 
 her. 
 
 Joanna, in her chemise when she heard the sound of wheels, 
 and with her hair still in a dishevelled plait, flew downstairs
 
 i 9 2 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 without sparing the time even to throw on a dressing-gown. 
 On the landing, half-way, she ran into Linnet. 
 
 He had only that moment rolled out of bed, and was 
 crumpled all over, hardly awake yet. His fair dank hair which 
 no longer had any tendency to curl, lay in ruffled swathes 
 about his head, and Joanna was shocked by the dullness of 
 his eyes with their blinking, puffed lids. How little she had 
 looked at Linnet lately! What was he doing with himself? 
 Where did his life lie? He seemed to have so little part in 
 the life at home. But at this moment Georgie's arrival took 
 precedence of all these questions, and the brother and sis- 
 ter having exchanged a hurried, nervous glance, started a race 
 down the remaining flight of stairs. Pell-mell and laughing 
 they went, taking two steps at a time, and they arrived to- 
 gether panting just as Georgie threw down her luggage on the 
 lobby floor. 
 
 After the first impulsive hugs, the three stood chatting, 
 overwhelmed by a sudden shyness and uncertainty. 
 
 Joanna took an overcoat of Linnet's from the hat-stand and 
 pulled it on over her chemise, snuggling into it with a shiver 
 for the early morning air was fresh. 
 
 "No! Sholto hadn't come yet. . . His train was due in 
 about half an hour. Wouldn't Georgie like a bath?. . . Had 
 she slept at all on the journey? Surely that was a new hat 
 she was wearing? But since when had she taken to veils? 
 Carl Nilsson said veils were so bad for the eyes, especially 
 veils with spots like that. But how well Georgie was looking, 
 wasn't she? No, no! Not flatter! Thinner on the whole! " 
 And Georgie declared that Joanna with her pig-tail and the 
 loose, short-skirted, tweed coat, looked just as she used to 
 look at school. 
 
 " But, Linnet, my dear boy, you look awful/ " exclaimed 
 Georgie turning to her brother and pushing the spotted veil 
 farther off her eyes. " What's wrong with him, Joanna? " 
 (Georgie had that wounding habit of involving a third per- 
 son, a sort of dumb partner, in her adverse criticisms.) 
 
 " Haven't shaved, that's all," mumbled Linnet, putting his 
 hand up to his face defensively. " Think I'll go and have 
 a wash now." And he moved away from them and towards 
 the staircase. 
 
 " I hope you don't look like that every morning when you
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 193 
 
 get up. Does he, Joey? " Georgie called out after him in 
 high good-humor. But just as she was about to hurl another 
 elder-sisterly gibe, advising Linnet to eschew all shades of 
 mauve in his night attire, a wail of distress came from the 
 landing above. 
 
 All three young people turned up their faces. 
 
 It was their mother. She leaned, in her thick, iron-grey 
 dressing gown, over the bannister opposite her bedroom door, 
 and was covering the top of her head with both her hands. 
 By her voice they knew she was almost weeping. 
 
 " That isn't Georgie! " she cried reproachfully. " No, Geor- 
 gie, I won't have you coming up yet. You are too early! 
 Your train isn't due yet by my watch, and I put it right 
 last night. Now that you are here of course it can't be helped: 
 but you must wait till poor Mother puts her fichu on. You 
 children don't think! " 
 
 Having delivered herself Juley disappeared into her bed- 
 room and shut the door behind her. 
 
 Georgie burst out laughing. 
 
 " There's no place like home! " she averred delightedly. 
 " Everything is always the same. Why do I expect it to be 
 different each time I come back? But what was that Mother 
 said about a fichu, Joanna? " 
 
 The younger sister explained. Juley's hair had lately be- 
 come very thin upon the top. It was difficult to dress, so 
 she had taken to appearing at breakfast with a white net fichu 
 draped over her head, and fastened with a brooch under her 
 chin. Wearing this fichu (which not only concealed her defect 
 in a becoming manner but postponed indefinitely the daily 
 purgatory before the mirror) Juley had seen herself greeting 
 Georgie in the lobby with outstretched arms, and she was 
 utterly disappointed at the failure of her welcome. 
 
 " No, don't come in! " she called out, though she was half 
 laughing at herself now, as Georgie opened the bedroom door. 
 But it was no use, and the next moment her warm arms 
 were round her child. 
 
 Breakfast was happy and noisy, and Joanna, taking part, 
 but always a little outside, thought that surely there had never 
 been such a pleasant family party. She longed only for 
 Sholto to join them. How entirely different from any other 
 family they were! Was there not an atmosphere, a charm,
 
 194 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 impossible to explain? She loved most of all her mother's 
 puzzled face when any of them made a joke she could not 
 follow. 
 
 The fichu was duly admired by Georgie. 
 
 " It makes you look foreign, Mother," she said, "like a 
 picture I have seen somewhere." And she was right. The 
 simple drapery, unspoiled by lace, accentuated the breadth 
 of Juley's abruptly sloping forehead, and with her rather 
 prominent, worn eyelids and her eyes of sad, but unquench- 
 able enthusiasm, she might well have been one of Diirer's 
 sacred women. 
 
 Then the dining-room door opened quietly and Sholto ap- 
 peared. (Janet, the old cook had run to let him in before he 
 could ring the bell, and she stood behind him now, smiling 
 proudly at them all.) 
 
 " Hul-lo, you people! " he exclaimed, in his jolly, rather 
 slow, young man's voice; and Joanna felt warm and shy all 
 over. It was only a few months since they had seen him last, 
 but the sister easily forgot while he was away that her little 
 brother was a grown man now. 
 
 As he stooped to kiss his mother she stroked his cheek with 
 earnest tenderness. 
 
 " Well, son? " she said. 
 
 But the others were all over him, chattering like so many 
 daws. 
 
 " Doesn't he look a farmer, just? " 
 
 Look at the color of his face! " 
 
 Sholto, your neck is like a bull's! " 
 
 " Another white pudding for Master Sholto, please, Janet," 
 ordered Juley, smiling, and trying to make herself heard 
 above the din. " Bairns, bairns, Mother's ears are splitting! " 
 
 But they paid no heed to her, and as in the old days she 
 mustered her flock and was heartily proud of them. There 
 they were, her " hens of gold," and in spite of all Eva Gedge 
 might say and might say truly, the sight of them pleased her. 
 
 So she sat looking from one to another, not following nor 
 anxious to follow any of their talk. 
 
 Linnet, shaved and dressed, was a different being. His 
 long, narrow face showed pale certainly beside his brother's, 
 but he was the handsomer of the two; and those somewhat 
 exhausted features of his, with the very broad shoulders, long 
 limbs and slender body so like his father's, made a fine gentle-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 195 
 
 man of him. Sholto, half a head shorter, was stocky with 
 great thighs and calves. His features seemed still unfinished, 
 but he had frank, slow-moving eyes and was lovable. He 
 and Linnet chaffed each other with awkward, but observant 
 affection. 
 
 As Joanna watched them, the thought of Lawrence Urqu- 
 hart cropped up in her mind. Why had she asked him to 
 call to-morrow? She now had the idea that her brothers 
 for some reason would look down on him. They would even 
 reckon the advantage they had in being Academy boys while 
 Lawrence had only attended the High School. Georgie too 
 was always an unsparing critic of her sister's friends. She 
 had once said that she could not " was very sorry, but simply 
 could not " get over Phemie Pringle's commonness. 
 
 Yet there it was, Phemie was an artist and great of soul 
 where Georgie was the vainest of amateurs. And Lawrence? 
 Comparing him in her secret mind with her brothers, Joanna 
 felt him to be of finer grain, more compact and passionate, 
 with more purpose hidden in him. 
 
 But when it came, as it happened, his visit counted to 
 Joanna chiefly because of the piece of news of which he was 
 the bearer. 
 
 Louis Pender, Lawrence was able to tell her, was coming 
 back to Glasgow in a fortnight. He was coming on the very 
 day Sholto's boat was to sail. The Committee, after sharp 
 disagreement had accepted two of his designs, holding over 
 the others provisionally. 
 
 It was indeed curious how intensely and secretly this knowl- 
 edge infused itself amid the disturbing atmosphere of Sholto's 
 farewell. It lurked for Joanna in every preparation for her 
 brother's departure and her agitation sought relief in a fever- 
 ish, practical energy. 
 
 For this at the moment there was plenty of scope. There 
 were, for one thing, the nerve-racking shopping expeditions 
 with Sholto and Juley, both impossible shoppers. Sholto so 
 hated any shop he entered that he always endeavored to 
 escape without buying what he had come for. It could be 
 got to-morrow, he would say; or probably even better in 
 Australia when he arrived. But Juley, proceeding with a 
 slowness of mind and body that was an affliction to her 
 children, regarded each separate purchase as a campaign in 
 itself. She looked for advice of every shopman, explaining
 
 196 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 all the circumstances to him, with much reminiscence where 
 she was an old customer: and in every department she found 
 that her son needed far more than she had at first thought 
 necessary. She strongly condemned what she called " scamp- 
 ing ways of doing things," and in most of the shops she con- 
 sidered it would be as well to replenish Linnet's wardrobe at 
 the same time. It was a real pleasure to be a salesman if he 
 could confront Juley with an improvement or a new invention. 
 She could be carried away by an ingenious patent stud. 
 
 Georgie, on the other hand, whatever the purchase, had 
 always seen something very much better and more conven- 
 ient, not to say cheaper, in London, and she did not fail to 
 make these reproachful facts known to the Glasgow shop- 
 keepers. This enraged Sholto, and he depended on Joanna to 
 make things easier for him. After that first happy break- 
 fast hour, he and Georgie had argued fiercely about every- 
 thing (particularly about politics and religion) and one day 
 upon Joanna's suddenly taking Sholto's side in the discussion 
 Georgie had burst into tears. It was in the middle of dinner, 
 and Georgie had rushed from the room calling out that no- 
 body loved her now at home, and that she would be glad to 
 get back to London again. At this Sholto had sworn, Linnet 
 had bolted his pudding and gone off to one of his eternal ap- 
 pointments, and Juley had sent Joanna to comfort her sister 
 and bring her back to table. Soon all their nerves were on 
 edge. 
 
 Amid all this Joanna found it so hard to go on with her 
 designs that she almost gave up the idea of sending them in. 
 But the thought of Fender acted here as a spur. She believed 
 that to be worthy of meeting him again she must live up to 
 the loftiest standards of duty, and this drove her to the 
 desperate measure of early rising. Sometimes too she was 
 able for an hour at a time to take refuge in Nilsson's studio; 
 and her lofty standard, it must be confessed, did not pre- 
 vent her acceptance of all the help he offered. In one case, 
 without the least pang of conscience, she allowed him to alter a 
 drawing substantially, and in the end her work was handed 
 in well up to time, just two days before Sholto's sailing. 
 
 On that Saturday they were a wretched little party down at 
 the docks, waiting about four hours with Sholto already on 
 the deck of the liner which seemed rooted to the wharf. It 
 appeared fantastic to believe that Sholto was really going to
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 197 
 
 that place called. Australia. Who had been the first to suggest 
 such a preposterous thing? But he was on board. It was 
 done. Lots of other people went, and their friends and 
 mothers were seeing them off calmly enough. They must just 
 pretend to be like the others. It was an alleviation that 
 Georgie was not there. (After all she had returned to London 
 four days earlier.) 
 
 They all longed for the liner to move, but nothing happened, 
 and nobody could give them any definite information, except 
 that passengers must remain on the ship and friends on the 
 wharf. 
 
 Presently Linnet remembered quite suddenly that though 
 it was Saturday he had to call for something at the office, 
 and with a foolish wave of his hat towards the liner he went 
 away. But Juley and Joanna stayed on and on, hanging 
 about. Sometimes they walked up and down, sometimes 
 they rested on barrels or on coils of rope till they were chilled 
 again by the March evening. It was horribly sad, and quite 
 useless to wait. But to have left now would have been like 
 shirking one's watch beside a dead body. It began to grow 
 dark. Lights were hoisted on the masts of the ships, and here 
 and there on the wharf. 
 
 At last a man carrying a lantern came up to them and told 
 that the start had been postponed till next morning early. 
 But all passengers, he said, must stay on the ship. He prom- 
 ised to deliver the farewell notes they now wrote to Sholto. 
 When that was done they left the wharf. They were dropping 
 with fatigue. 
 
 Entering the first eating-house they could find in the dingy 
 street which led from the docks, they were brought a great 
 black pot of tea, piles of ready-buttered bread, and a dish of 
 thick, briny bacon with eggs. Though the fare was rough 
 it was cleanly served, and Juley ate and drank greedily. As 
 she grew older and more prone to exhaustion, food seemed to 
 act more and more quickly upon her as a stimulant. Often 
 now she would climb the steps at home, so weary from shop- 
 ping and the steep hill that she had to sink down on one of 
 the lobby chairs with all her parcels still in her arms. But 
 if there was food ready for her she would devour it and feel 
 immediately revived. At the same time, she always ate under 
 protest. She was growing stouter, becoming heavy about the 
 hips, like her elder sister Perdy, but she had not Perdy's
 
 i 9 8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 agility. She deplored her heaviness and tried to deny herself 
 starchy food. But if there was or 3 thing Juley loved, it was 
 a potato. Early in the meal she would utterly refuse to par- 
 take of that vegetable. Then she would declare for " just 
 half a one, for a treat, and not to waste the gravy ": and after 
 that, when she thought no one was looking, she would help 
 herself to a small quantity time after time. To make up for 
 this " sinful self-indulgence " she would dose herself between 
 whiles with patent medicines. She had a dread of internal 
 trouble, especially of such kind as would involve any opera- 
 tion, but it was illness, not death that she feared. She was 
 quite ready, she said, when this heavy, fleshly tabernacle 
 should be worn out, to go. She did not wish to grow old and 
 a burden. In speaking of Heaven she had still the face of a 
 young girl. 
 
 But while Juley restored herself there behind the wharf, 
 recovering energy with each mouthful in the sordid little 
 shop, Joanna could hardly touch anything. With mechanical 
 persistence she kept trying to imagine the moving away of 
 Sholto's ship at dawn, and could not. She could only see it 
 rooted there by the wharf for ever and ever. It was like a 
 nightmare. She could not believe in Australia nor in the 
 ship's power to sail there, nor in Sholto's continued existence. 
 Really she was delirious with exhaustion. 
 
 But she was not unhappy. Beneath the senseless, whirring 
 of her fatigue there was the knowledge of Fender's coming. 
 It had been there hidden all day, unexamined, yet making 
 life endurable. And now it rose and rose, till all her con- 
 sciousness was suffused with it. Again and again she looked 
 at the watch on her wrist, the little gold watch with its 
 Milanese plaited strap which Mario had given her. " By 
 now," she thought, " his train has passed Carlisle." " Per- 
 haps he is drinking tea in the restaurant car." (As she pic- 
 tured him she could see exactly, though she had never in 
 his presence consciously noticed it, the peculiar way in which 
 his square fingers grasped the handle of a cup, and the strong 
 curve of his wrist as the sleeve slipped back a little.) " By 
 now he must be very near Glasgow." " He must be gather- 
 ing up his things." " Now, if he has come at all, he has 
 certainly arrived." " Even if the train is later than it ever is, 
 he must be here." " Will Mildred meet him, as he is going 
 at first to stay with her? " " Or will he leave the station alone
 
 O P E N T H E D O O R 199 
 
 in a cab? " " How long will be stay at Panmure Crescent 
 before going to the studio-cottage Mildred is so proud of 
 having found for him at Carmunnock? " 
 
 But what did any of these things matter? Nothing! It 
 only mattered that after so many weeks he was already here. 
 That at this very moment he was in Glasgow. That he was 
 breathing the same air that she breathed. That some day 
 soon she would see his square-fingered hands, and feel his 
 strange, prominent eyes upon her.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 EXACTLY four weeks later, at much the same hour of 
 the day (although, the Spring being further advanced, 
 the sky had not yet begun to make its preparations for sun- 
 set), anyone walking across the summit of Garnet hill would 
 have noticed a man who waited at the street's highest point. 
 Further, anyone of the smallest experience would have known 
 that this man waited there for a woman. In his thick, but- 
 toned-up, dark gray overcoat, he stood in the middle of the 
 roadway, disdaining criticism and both pavements, and now 
 and then with a movement half nervous and half defiant, he 
 adjusted his soft, light gray hat to an even jauntier angle. 
 He wore gloves and carried a stick. His very outline against 
 the sky was suggestive of gallantry. 
 
 Since his return to Glasglow Louis Fender and Joanna had 
 met frequently. They had met at Panmure Crescent; she 
 had come with Mildred to see the Carmunnock studio where 
 he was now living; the Plummers had brought her to the 
 City Chambers to look at the scaffolding and other prepara- 
 tions for his work there. But each of these meetings had been 
 in the company of others. Not since the night of the dance 
 had the two spoken alone together for more than a few scanty 
 seconds; and not till the day before this May afternoon had 
 Louis found an opportunity to suggest the kind of meeting 
 for which he was now waiting. It had been in obedience to 
 circumstance the merest tentative suggestion of an appoint- 
 ment on his part, and without ratification on hers, so as he 
 stood there on the hill he was agitated by a pleasant, boyish 
 nervousness. Experience, however, bade him hope, as also 
 did his shrewd reading of Joanna's character. He had lost 
 no time in learning her story from Mildred, and judged 
 rightly that she had reckless blood. 
 
 But would she come? It was not in Pender's nature to be 
 fatuous in these matters, and he held, in spite of a fair share 
 of conquests, a really low estimate of his own attractiveness. 
 
 200
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 201 
 
 When six o'clock struck, and there was no sign of the young 
 woman for whose appearance he owned to a surprising hunger, 
 he mildly cursed himself for a middle-aged fool. Another 
 quarter of an hour he would wait, he decided, and no longer. 
 And with a superstitious notion that his too eager looking 
 might foil its own end, he turned his back on the direction 
 from which the nymph might most reasonably be expected 
 to come. 
 
 At least, thought he then being forty-seven and having 
 survived many excitements and disappointments he might 
 enjoy the extraordinary, mounting beauty of the evening 
 about him. Perhaps after all it was only in cities of the North 
 that one got such a voluptuous contrast and harmony as now 
 presented itself to his gaze! Above, the stony, clear austerity 
 of the town curved the sky. It curved, holding its fill of 
 light, ebullient, like a bubble of serenest blue; and forming 
 that bubble's tumultuous outer rim were the piled-up, yellow, 
 flamboyant clouds whose huge tops seemed on a level with 
 Fender's admiring eyes. 
 
 A month ago he would not have believed it possible to 
 find himself so charmed in this dismal hole of a place called 
 Glasglow. But neither would he a month ago have credited 
 himself with any interest in a woman so strong as he now felt. 
 It had surprised him during his stay in London tha Joanna's 
 image had persisted. Perhaps it had still more surprised 
 him on his return to find no waning in her appeal. It was odd, 
 he mused, that he should run across this girl just when he 
 fancied himself done with amorous interludes. Odd, too, that 
 she should be so different in type from the women he had gone 
 after hitherto. He had always admired short-featured women 
 with square jaws, and strongly marked cheek-bones, women 
 who carried their own shadows about with them. And here 
 was one who was at the mercy of every variation of light. 
 He was not even sure that he admired her. She certainly 
 troubled him. 
 
 But anyhow, confound her, she wasn't coming! It was a 
 quarter past six. He was tired of studying the buoyant out- 
 lines of those yellow clouds. He would wait only five minutes 
 more. A woman came punctually to a first appointment or 
 not at all. 
 
 And while Louis waited there, a stone's throw from the 
 Bannermans' house, Joanna had been looking despairingly
 
 202 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 for him at the far end of the hill, low down and out of sight, 
 some hundred yards away. 
 
 It was her nature to think that she must always be the one 
 who had the more trouble to take, the longer way to travel: 
 so she had stayed there a full ten minutes before it struck 
 her that he might possibly have meant the corner nearest 
 her home. " The corner of Dunbar Street," he had said 
 ambiguously. 
 
 Now she became certain that he had been at the other 
 corner all the while and that she would find him gone. 
 
 She ran all the way up the long hill. She had no hope. 
 
 But there he was! There on the topmost joint of the 
 gray stone ridge. He was standing with his back to her, 
 still as a stone man against the sky. Only the ends of his 
 loose tweed coat flapped a little in the air. 
 
 The instant she saw him Joanna stopped running. She 
 must recover her breath. So she went on at a walking pace, 
 and it was an astonishment to her that she was still able to 
 advance, to place one foot regularly before another on the 
 granite setts of the- hill. For the sight of him there, waiting 
 with such patience for her so long after the time appointed, 
 had a violent effect upon her knees. 
 
 Then before she had walked a dozen more steps towards 
 him Louis turned his head and saw her, and the next moment 
 they had met. They looked into each other's eyes with a 
 first swift searching, as their hands clasped firmly. 
 
 " You have come," said he. " I had almost given you 
 up." 
 
 While she explained her mistake and he blamed himself, 
 neither listening to the other's words, they turned towards the 
 now setting sun and with the strong glow of it full in their 
 faces began to walk downhill. 
 
 Until the first breathlessness of their meeting had subsided 
 they could only make superficial conversation. Louis pointed 
 out to his companion that with the sun so low now in the sky, 
 all the color in the world lay behind them to the East, and 
 he had to make her turn round several times before he could 
 convince her. But really, while they argued with vehement 
 lightness, each was groping under every tone and movement 
 and all the flurry of sensual excitement for the truth of the 
 other.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 203 
 
 The region through which they were now walking was for 
 Joanna full of childish memories, which in a curious way added 
 to her excitement. They had passed the dark Synagogue 
 with its dome, the Salvation Army Shelter, which had once 
 been a little farm-house and still stood in its blackened garden, 
 and the smart new Cancer Hospital built of garish, red stone. 
 And on the other sic 1 ? ran fine, dismal, old family dwellings 
 with porticoes and high, square-paned windows which now 
 sheltered obscure mantle-makers, cheap teachers of elocution, 
 and theatrical landladies. It was one of these houses which had 
 been old Horatio Bannerman's manse in the early days. 
 
 But Louis looked about him with a little shudder of distaste. 
 
 " How very depressing all this is! " he said. 
 
 When Joanna could not help championing it, he looked at 
 her with a warm amused smile, which faded however when 
 she asked him rather timidly about his own childhood. 
 
 " I can't remember," he replied emptily. " It's queer 
 how little I can remember. I don't think it particularly 
 interested me being a child." 
 
 That Joanna could not understand. 
 
 " I remember everything everything/ " she told him, 
 wondering. 
 
 " Well, for one thing you aren't so far from your child- 
 hood as I am," Louis replied, speaking in a certain light tone 
 which gave his companion a peculiar sense of unhappiness. 
 " That makes a difference, you know. Wait till you are my 
 age." 
 
 " No, no! I'll remember till I'm dead." It was almost as 
 if she warded off a blow. 
 
 " Not the disagreeable things, surely? Or were you always 
 happy as a child? " he asked, looking at her. He was not 
 interested in their talk, nor in what she was about to say: 
 but he liked to see her face thus serious. She looked now, he 
 thought, like an early Gothic Madonna, rather faultily carved 
 perhaps, but with inspiration. 
 
 " No, I wasn't." Joanna looked at' him in return. " But 
 I like to remember, even the unhappy things. They seem 
 part of it all, part of me. I couldn't bear to forget. It 
 would be like losing bits of myself." 
 
 " Oh, come! That's morbid, I consider. I prefer to be 
 like the sundial and ' reckon none but sunny hours,' or what-
 
 204 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 ever the exact words may be. Anything unhappy or dull or 
 painful I make haste to forget. I assure you it is an excellent 
 habit." 
 
 Joanna shook her head. All that he had said was hurtful, 
 full of death to her, but it was impossible for her to explain 
 either to him or to herself why it was so. 
 
 " I'm not like that," was all she could say. She spoke, 
 however, with a stoutness that was pleasing to him. He was 
 curiously moved by this woman's egoism, grateful for her 
 absurd seriousness. 
 
 " Then we are different, you and I," he said gently, and he 
 smiled full at her, charming her suddenly, winning her with 
 what she felt to be a rare tenderness. 
 
 " But," he went on, in a different voice and with a light 
 in his eyes that was purely predatory, " 111 tell you some- 
 thing I shall never forget to my dying day. And that is the 
 first moment I set eyes on you that evening at the Lovatts." 
 
 Joanna, in bliss, remained silent. 
 
 " Neither shall I forget," Louis resumed, " seeing you dance 
 the reel up at the School. These, you see, are the kind of 
 things I remember and want to remember. Do you know 
 what I was doing up on the hill there while I was waiting for 
 you? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Try to guess." 
 
 " Perhaps remembering other times you had waited for 
 a woman? " she said. 
 
 Louis laughed with enjoyment. 
 
 No, Mrs. Clever, and I wasn't. I was trying to draw the 
 lines of your face from memory against the sky as if it were 
 a canvas." 
 
 Again Joanna had nothing to say. 
 
 " If you don't like me to tell you such things, Signora 
 Rasponi," he continued, " mind you tell me to stop." 
 
 He had got her to look at him again, and again she spoke 
 with that stoutness of .hers that so pleased and tickled him. 
 
 " I like it," she said. 
 
 Louis was really amused by her, refreshed, and at the same 
 time he could not quite make her out. 
 
 When they had got to the bottom of the steep hill and were 
 walking on the level, still westwards, he began to talk to her 
 about his work.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 205 
 
 " I ought to be ashamed of myself," he spoke with im- 
 patience, almost disgust " at being so pleased over this two- 
 penny-halfpenny commission. Why, by this time of day, 
 people ought to be begging and praying me all over the place 
 to paint their walls. But they don't, you know! And here am 
 I, as bucked as if I were a pavement artist at being rather 
 reluctantly asked to add my daub to the other daubs in that 
 ghastly, chocolate-colored building you Glasgow people are so 
 proud of. You'll admit, I hope, that it is a beastly pile? " 
 
 " It is ugly, I suppose." Joanna conceded. Yet she _re- 
 membered the rich and splendid vision it had been to her as 
 a child when her father had taken them all to receptions up 
 its alabaster staircase. 
 
 "I've no doubt, however," added her companion, " that 
 it will be uglier still when I have contributed my own particular 
 piece of ugliness to it." 
 
 His self-aspersion was wounding as an insult. Why did 
 he give her ground to stand upon and then take it back from 
 under her feet? Had he himself no foothold? He seemed 
 continually to lead her along a sure path, only to leave her 
 with a flippant gesture at the edge of a precipice. 
 
 " I am no longer pleased with my drawing for the panel," 
 he went on restlessly. " The lunette is well enough. But 
 the panel, I now see, is rubbish or nearly so. I am altering it. 
 The Committee will have to like the change or lump it. 
 
 " I thought it so lovely," said Joanna. 
 
 " Very nice of you: but unhappily your kind thoughts, 
 my child, don't affect the design," said Louis. " No. _The 
 thing isn't good and it has got to be altered or not done at 
 all. But for God's sake let us talk of something else. Tell 
 me " he asked, pointing to a new, still unoccupied block 
 of flats they were now passing " why do you build so much 
 up here with that red stone? I don't like it, do you? It 
 always stays so raw looking on a wet day almost bleeding. 
 But let's have a look at the inside of this, shall we? See 
 the doors are not on yet. Come. Do let us! " 
 
 Eager as a child, Louis led the way across a bridge of 
 planks left by the workmen at the entrance. The building 
 was finished all but the fittings, and now awaited the glaziers 
 and paper-hangers. 
 
 Joanna followed him up the stairs which were littered 
 with shavings and rubble. His swift transitions of mood
 
 206 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 affected her painfully, but she became calmer as they mounted 
 from floor to floor and examined the rooms of the various 
 dwellings-to-be. 
 
 " I think we'll make this the drawing-room. Or do you 
 think the nursery, my dear? " Louis asked her, play acting. 
 
 Joanna, being no actress, could not respond in the same 
 vein, but she stood laughing at him, happy again, and watching 
 him, with a curious, maternal tenderness as she listened to 
 his easy flow of nonsense. 
 
 Suddenly he broke off and came nearer to her. 
 
 " By God, I wish it were all true," he said very seriously. 
 " You look so lovely in this light standing there smiling at 
 me with your eyes shining. I wish I could live with you. 
 Would you like to live with me? Say you would, just to 
 please me." 
 
 Joanna remained quite still. 
 
 " You must not say such things to me." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " For one thing, there's your wife." 
 
 " There's my wife, yes. Shall I tell you about her? " 
 
 Joanna's eyes widened as he stared into them defiantly. 
 And her heart leapt. She had felt from the first that Fender's 
 wife did not essentially matter. Now she was sure of it. 
 
 " If you like," she said, and waited. 
 
 " Well, I think you may understand. Anyhow this is how 
 things are," he said. " I married when I was twenty-three. 
 Alice was a little older, not much. The boys were born the 
 first year. They are twins you know and their mother pretty 
 nearly died with them. When she got better she couldn't 
 bear me to come near her. That kind of physical terror is 
 common enough, as perhaps you know, but at the time it 
 was a fearful blow to me. We went on of course, thinking 
 it would pass, even in time thinking it had passed. But it 
 hadn't, and somehow the bottom was knocked out of things. 
 I can't quite explain but it was. Perhaps we were wrong from 
 the start. To do my wife justice she recognized it as well as 
 I did, and set to work to make the best of it in her own way 
 just as I did in mine. Only our ways were different. You 
 can guess perhaps what happened. Even under good condi- 
 tions I won't say I should have made a faithful husband. 
 As it was you'll admit I had at least an excuse. You'll say 
 I should have left her. At one time I was very near to it.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 207 
 
 But I didn't, and I can't honestly say I've regretted it. You 
 must remember she wanted me needed me, she said in the 
 other ways. Then there were always the boys. Somehow 
 I shouldn't like to go back on them; or shall we say I haven't 
 yet found anything that seemed to make it worth while doing 
 so? So you see! " 
 
 During this recital Joanna had withdrawn her eyes from 
 his, but she could feel his bold, nervous stare while she looked 
 past him and out at the street through the unglazed windows. 
 The lamps were being lighted one by one in the dusk. She 
 did not to the full realize the disbelief in himself which was 
 the essential thread running through this man's confession: 
 she merely felt sad for him and for herself. 
 
 " Do you blame me? " he asked, longing for her reproach. 
 
 " Yes. I mean, no. How can I blame you? " Neither 
 at this moment had Joanna any belief. She and he were under 
 the same spell of helplessness, as if drugged. 
 
 " Well then? " 
 
 " Doesn't your wife mind? " she asked, knowing it an idle 
 question. 
 
 " She can't have it both ways, can she? Come. After all. 
 And I've got to be considered too." 
 
 " Was it Mrs. Tullis you nearly went away with? " 
 
 " Yes. It was." 
 
 " I'm glad you didn't." 
 
 " So am I. By Heaven I'm glad." 
 
 It was almost dark as Louis and Joanna walked in silence 
 up the long semi-circular slope to the Park. By unspoken 
 consent they had taken the longer way to avoid passing 
 Panmure Crescent. And soon they were crossing a wide de- 
 serted circus of houses, making for the highest gates of all. 
 
 " Walk a little in front of me," said Louis, falling be- 
 hind. 
 
 " How I like to watch you move," he told her from there, 
 as he followed her slowly through the gates. " I walk behind 
 and worship. I should love above all things to see you walk- 
 ing so, but quite naked in the summer dusk. Just so, between 
 these iron gates." 
 
 He spoke with such simplicity that Joanna could only re- 
 joice in his frank worship. He gave glamor into her keeping. 
 Gladly would she have walked naked for his delight in the 
 soft darkness.
 
 208 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 Presently, when they reached the great treble flight of gray 
 granite steps leading down into the Park, Joanna sat on the 
 stone balustrade and Louis stood beside her with one foot on 
 the low escarpment. He took off his hat welcoming the little 
 breeze that stirred up to them from the river. There was no 
 moon, and beyond the lighted lamps on the terrace the sky 
 showed richly blue. In front the faint regular lines of the 
 wide stairway descended into a blue haze: behind was the 
 sweeping curve of pavement and railing flanked by tall houses 
 with fretted roofs. 
 
 Suddenly Louis bent closer to Joanna, kissing her without 
 a word on the point of her shoulder, and to her dismay she 
 broke down utterly. 
 
 In consternation then he sat by her side to comfort her. 
 
 " I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, my child, if I've offended or hurt 
 you. Truly I am. But what was I to do? You mustn't 
 cry so. No, no, really you mustn't. What have I done? Now 
 do stop. Upon my soul if you don't cheer up I shall be crying 
 myself directly. You know, you take things altogether too 
 seriously. Don't let us be too serious. Tell me now, am 
 I to apologize or what? I'll do anything you say. Is this 
 your way of showing virtuous indignation? Come tell 
 me! " 
 
 " You know it isn't," said Joanna wiping her eyes but un- 
 able to help smiling at him as he bent forward. 
 
 " What then? " 
 
 " I don't know. I suppose I love you." 
 
 Louis quite taken aback did not speak at once. Then gaz- 
 ing up at her sideways he gave her one of his wonderful affec- 
 tionate looks. 
 
 " I'm afraid, Joanna, that you are a fearful goose," he said, 
 using her Christian name for the first time. 
 
 " I'm afraid I am, Louis." 
 
 As they looked into each other's eyes she wished he would 
 take her. 
 
 " Never mind ; this light is very becoming to you, my dear," 
 said Louis, holding back, he did not know why. " In fact you 
 look perfectly lovely to me at this moment. And see these 
 steps, and that stony terrace curving away back so finely. 
 You might go anywhere, I tell you Italy, Greece, anywhere 
 you like: I don't care you could find nothing more beautiful. 
 And at this moment you seem to me the most beautiful woman
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 209 
 
 in the world. So why be sad? Do let us, ah! do let us be 
 happy. I so want to be light hearted." 
 
 But he did not kiss her again that night, not even at parting. 
 
 ii 
 
 From that day, however, they met constantly, nor did they 
 ever part without arranging a further meeting. Both were 
 quite careless of outside comment. They were absorbed in the 
 unending debate and conflict between them. Soon they be- 
 came lovers in all but the final abandonment, and this was 
 never out of their thoughts. 
 
 Joanna was not happy: neither was she unhappy. She was 
 again undergoing a change a divestment of which the mean- 
 ing could not become clear for her until the process was com- 
 pleted. Swaddled from before birth in religious emotionalism, 
 in romance and spiritual exaltation, it was natural that she 
 should cling to these suffocating wrappings. Should cling, that 
 is, with the conscious mental part of her, so that as far as she 
 was conscious she was false. It had to be so. She had virtue 
 on the other hand in the unconscious but actual acceptance 
 of the changes that were her fate. And the proof that her 
 virtue was stronger than her falseness lay in the fact that no 
 man she attracted could act falsely toward her. Punish them 
 she might, but she drew the truth from them. 
 
 Thus, though it seemed monstrous to her at times that all 
 the weight of the decisioa should lie as it did upon her, that 
 Louis should only talk and wait and walk unburdened, still 
 she knew it must be so. Just because it was she that chose 
 to regard their love as something final, she must be the one to 
 decide. 
 
 Meanwhile Louis took what he could of her, fitfully. He 
 continued to woo her with the touches and kisses without 
 which she would now have found existence barren. But there 
 were days when he made as if he would put her away from him 
 with words of warning and farewell. Again he would declare 
 himself as fundamentally lightminded, telling her with radiant 
 amusement of his earlier affairs, urging her to throw aside the 
 foolish gravity of her nature and upbringing, and with him 
 to regard love as the most charming and recreative of pas- 
 times. 
 
 Not for any length of time could Joanna retain this view. 
 But it had a strong appeal for her, the more that it discovered
 
 210 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 clearly in her the longing to compete on their own ground 
 with the unknown, fascinating women of whom Louis told 
 her. Once she had held all such women to be inconsiderable. 
 But she had seen them afresh through her lover's eyes. She 
 must match her powers against theirs, must commit herself 
 to the test instead of scorning it, to prove her greater worth 
 if it existed. She still believed she could outdo them in weav- 
 ing a spell for Louis, and passionately she coveted his acknow- 
 ledgement of this. In every mood, serious or light, she felt 
 sure that she could keep his respect. Unhappiness, she ex- 
 pected, but never the unhappiness of his scorn. And like her 
 Aunt Perdy she could summon an elation for pure disaster. 
 
 So everything pushed her towards Louis, everything, that 
 is within herself. But in him there was that which long 
 kept her from yielding. It was something immovable in him, 
 against which she hurled herself without understanding. Always 
 she waited for some change in him that never came. But he 
 remained staunch to himself and so in the long run to her. 
 
 " Surely there are two things," she said to him one day, 
 " there's love, and there's the other thing? " 
 
 Louis turned his head to look at her, and smiled as if 
 valuing her earnestness even while he laughed at it. It was 
 a Sunday, and she had brought luncheon in a basket to the 
 deserted City Chambers where the canvas, begun in Fender's 
 studio, had been temporarily put in its destined place. He 
 insisted upon continuing the painting there, after the manner 
 of the Italian fresco painters. " It is to hang here," he de- 
 clared, " not on the line at the Royal Academy or in Mrs. 
 Lovatt's drawing-room; and it is here that it must look well, 
 if it looks well anywhere," So after a gay picnic in his little 
 workroom hidden away on the top floor, they had climbed out 
 upon the sunshiny leads to talk. 
 
 "To my mind," he replied,. "there is no essential difference 
 between the two. Or perhaps it is simply that I'm only 
 capable of what you so tactfully call ' the other thing.' Any- 
 how I won't deceive you about myself. I want you frightfully, 
 as I think you must know by this time. And I want you in 
 a way that it seems to me just now mind, that's all I say, 
 in a way that it certainly seems to me just now I have never 
 wanted any woman before. The queer thing is I feel quite 
 unworthy of you, my dear, pretty child (actually, you look 
 pretty this afternoon, neither beautiful nor plain, but pretty!)
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 2 x n 
 
 It seems far, far too good to be true that you should, for a 
 single moment, want me as I now want you. Yet for all that 
 I don't suppose I'm offering you what you with your notions 
 would call love. Mind, I believe if I were free, in spite of all 
 experience and caution, I would be asking you to marry me. 
 I know, you see that's the worst of it that you are too good 
 for anything else. You know that too, Joanna. You know 
 I respect you like anything, and always shall. Yet upon my 
 soul I'm not prepared, as things are at present, to bolt with 
 you to America or wherever it is people go who give up all 
 for love, as they say. Not that you would fly with me, I 
 daresay, if I asked you. Don't think I'm taking things fatu- 
 ously for granted. I'm not. But there, you know what I 
 mean, my dear heart." 
 
 " You mean you are too worldly-minded," said Joanna with 
 pain and contempt in her voice. 
 
 " Perhaps. Call it what you like. It may be that I am 
 not a good enough artist, or it may be that my nature is 
 peculiar. Anyhow, to do my work I need a certain kind of 
 stimulus, which I can only get in conventional society. Heaven 
 knows I've no illusions about it. And as often as not it 
 bores me to the point of nausea. But I always come back to 
 the knowledge that I need it." 
 
 In the silence that followed this speech a distant church 
 bell began to toll and a clock nearer at hand gave out the 
 hour. 
 
 "Mercy! It will be dark in no. time! " cried Louis start- 
 ing up. " I must get back to work. Will you come up on 
 the scaffolding with me? I want you to see the lunette from 
 there too." 
 
 " You know," he said boyishly on the way downstairs, " I 
 always want to hear what you think. That's the strange 
 truth, Joanna dear. There are times I feel I could work the 
 ends off my fingers for you." 
 
 As she climbed after him up the ladder, and stood by him 
 on the narrow, frail platform listening to his vehement exposi- 
 tion, Joanna tasted happiness. If only for the moment, he 
 was pleased with his work, and this endeared him to her with- 
 out wounding her. As he set to painting he whistled gaily 
 under his breath. And in two minutes he had completely for- 
 gotten her. But never had she felt closer to him than then. 
 She could have stayed for ever, it seemed to her, unnoticed
 
 212 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 and joyful by his side. Indeed it was some time before turn- 
 ing quickly for a brush he saw her happy face. Hardly paus- 
 ing, he realized her then and smiled and kissed her. He was 
 speedy and warm: Joanna adored him. 
 
 " Get some tea, and call me in half an hour," he bade her, 
 " the light won't last longer." 
 
 She was swift to obey him; and as she brewed tea for them 
 both upstairs in the little studio all pleasantly littered with 
 traces of him, her bliss was so acute that she felt her elements 
 must dissolve and fly apart. So long as Louis believed in 
 himself she was content. Even to be the toy and refresh- 
 ment of one who knew himself a creator of beauty was enough. 
 
 But one day, later on, when she tried to tell something of 
 this to him, Louis protested. 
 
 " Don't be a fool! " he exclaimed. " You are talking bosh. 
 You know it's bosh! " 
 
 There was nothing unpleasing to Joanna in his roughness, 
 especially as she could detect the pleasure concealed beneath 
 it, and she remained unmoved. She was sitting to him that 
 morning in his Carmunnock cottage for the third time, but 
 he was dissatisfied so far with all his sketches of her. 
 
 " It is the truth, Louis," she retorted gravely. 
 
 " Now, look here, my child," he said in his gravest tone and 
 laying his pencil aside. " You are working yourself up about 
 me, and you mustn't do it. I don't mean that you don't 
 believe every word you say at the moment. I believe I under- 
 stand you through and through. In some ways, allowing for 
 different circumstances, we are not so very unlike, you and 
 I. We are the kind of people for whom there does not seem 
 much provision made in a modern world. In Greece I suppose 
 we should have had our festivals and run about the hills in a 
 leopard skin apiece, which would have been enormously be- 
 coming to you I've no doubt, though I shudder to think of 
 my own figure in the costume. If you could only see your 
 eyes, Joanna, when I am kissing you! With you love is 
 simple intoxication; but an intoxication absolutely necessary 
 to your well-being. And why not? One of the things I like 
 in you is that you are frank about it at heart. But don't 
 take yourself too seriously. Listen to the wisdom of middle 
 age and you will spare yourself much pain. What will happen 
 is that one of these days you will find yourself wondering what 
 you can have been thinking about. Look at me! I ask you
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 213 
 
 to look at me, Joanna! What is there in me for a woman like 
 you to care about? No I assure you that much of your feel- 
 ing for me is quite transitory. More's the pity for me! But 
 you will not be able to say I haven't warned you. No re- 
 proaches, my dear, I beg of you, when the time comes! " 
 
 " You mean you are afraid you will get tired of me? " asked 
 Joanna painfully. And as Louis made no answer, only smiling 
 at her strangely, she went on. " You have got tired of so 
 many women." 
 
 " Oh! Come! " he exclaimed grimacing a little. " I'm not 
 the rake you make out. One thing is certain: I have not 
 tired of so many as have tired of me. But seriously 
 now I am talking quite seriously there have not been more 
 than five or six women whom you could say had counted at all 
 in my whole life. Don't you call that a very modest record? 
 Remember I shall soon be fifty. I consider my allowance 
 has been small, very small indeed. Five into fifty: he wound 
 up frivolously, "why, it only comes out at one every ten 
 years! " 
 
 " Tell me, Louis," persisted Joanna. " Do you think you 
 would get tired of me? " 
 
 " How can I tell? Perhaps. Yes, perhaps. Who knows? 
 If I were twenty I should say certainly not swear it by all 
 my gods. But I am forty-seven. What amj[ to say but the 
 truth perhaps? It is possible. I can't answer for myself, 
 that's all. My dear, I want to be straight with you from the 
 start. I feel that is your due." 
 
 There was a silence. Joanna felt hopeless, exasperated, 
 puzzled. It was not so he had spoken the day before, when 
 he had courted her with boyish ardor. And though she knew 
 him equally sincere in both moods, it was the mood of disbelief 
 that most deeply impressed her. There was something light 
 and hard to-day under h ; .s mocking tenderness, like the claws 
 concealed within the pads of the cat. 
 
 But an idea came that expanded her shrinking heart with 
 a brave rush of joy. And the words proceeded out of her 
 mouth, live things, independent of her volition. 
 
 " I'll tell you what, Louis. You will never get tired of 
 me. One of these days you will fall in love with me, and 
 you'll never be able to stop." 
 
 The bold statement sent a delirious shiver of terror through 
 her, but she sat looking calmly at Louis without a smile. A
 
 214 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 shade of fear flashed through the inquisitive, fascinated eyes 
 he turned on her, meeting her glance full. 
 
 " But I'm in love with you as it is," he muttered. (It was 
 true that he had never been more subjugated than at that 
 moment, had never felt so strongly the curious moral spell she 
 had for him.) 
 
 But she shook her head, smiling now as he became grave. 
 Now she was no longer the wounded mouse in the cat's keep- 
 ing. She had towered in one moment above her persecutor, 
 demanding and obtaining worship. 
 
 "I say you will," she repeated. "I am not afraid! " 
 
 " That settles it then," said Louis. And after a moment, 
 he added " I must say you seem to know all about it! " 
 
 Instead of answering, Joanna rose and moved towards the 
 window near which he was sitting. Louis followed her with 
 his eyes. There were certainly times when she was full of 
 magic for him and this was one of them. 
 
 " I wonder if it will rain before I get home? " she was 
 saying, as she looked out at the gathering blackness of cloud 
 against which the trees, now almost in full leaf, were intense, 
 mounting flames of green. 
 
 " That's right! " Louis retorted with forced lightness. " Let's 
 talk about the weather. I'll forget that I'm madly in love 
 with you. It's an excellent idea. Or politics? Politics is 
 always safe. What do you think? Will there be a general 
 election soon? But tell me first: have you fallen in love with 
 anyone since we said good-bye last night? You seem to me, 
 one way and another, to meet a fair number of young men. 
 There's that young fellow with the dark, devoted eyes Urqu- 
 hart. He would make you a good husband now. Why don't 
 you take him? I'm sure you have only to mention it to him." 
 
 At the unlooked-for mention of Urquhart's name, Joanna 
 turned her head in curiosity. Why should Louis, like Mildred 
 Lovatt, insist that Lawrence was in love with her? And her 
 brothers too! After Lawrence's unremarkable call at Col- 
 lessie Street two months before, since when she had not met 
 him, they had teased her about him. But she herself was 
 by no means certain. He was too persistently friendly. And 
 lately, during his absence on the continent with Nilsson, her 
 unsought friendship with him had taken on a new and more 
 permanent aspect. Out of the joy of his heart Lawrence 
 had written to her from Holland, from Switzerland, from Italy.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 215 
 
 And she had found herself rather to her own surprise respond- 
 ing with unaffected warmth and freedom. How well she could 
 sympathize with the raptures of that first escape from the walls 
 and the sounds and sights of home! 
 
 " Do you think," Joanna asked Louis, still looking question- 
 ingly, at him " Do you think that was he by the steps the 
 other night? " 
 
 " I neither know, my dear child, nor do I care," replied 
 Louis. " But as this is the third time you have asked me that 
 same question, I take it that you do care." 
 
 No. Joanna protested that she didn't care either. It was 
 only that she was curious to know. 
 
 What had happened was this. While Joanna had stood 
 waiting in the late afternoon near the granite steps of the 
 park where Louis was to join her, she had noticed at some 
 distance a figure very like Lawrence Urquhart's also apparently 
 waiting, and she had felt that her doings were watched. Then 
 Louis had come and the figure had disappeared. Could it 
 have been Lawrence? He was certainly due to be back in 
 Glasgow, but she had not heard of his return. 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is," continued Louis. " You are a 
 bad, dangerous woman, a devourer of men, Joanna. That's 
 what you are. With all your talk about love and ' the other 
 thing' forsooth! And your delicate madonna-ish airs! You 
 simply want us all to be mad for you. That's the long and 
 the short of it. Now isn't it? " 
 
 But he had quite forgotten Lawrence now; and as his 
 tongue tripped on between his smiling lips, irresponsibly, 
 Louis, with all his mind and body, was really only waiting 
 for the moment when Joanna would have to pass him again 
 on her way from the window. When that moment came he 
 clasped her waist, and Joanna responded, throwing her arms 
 gladly round his neck. 
 
 " We are just a pair of innocent babes, you and I," he de- 
 clared, " infants, that's what we are. You can take it from 
 me. But the whole wretched world is a conspiracy to call us 
 guilty. That's all that's wrong." 
 
 " I should like to defy the world. I feel able," said Joanna, 
 with elation. 
 
 " As you please, my noble goose! But I cannot join you. 
 I know the old monster too well. It's no use. We should 
 only get smashed. No. There's only one way permitted
 
 216 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 to us, and you know it. And speaking for myself, I think it 
 absurd that we should not take it. Shall we not take it? 
 Ah! Do be weak, and let's take it! " 
 
 " But I want to be strong. I don't mind paying," said 
 Joanna. 
 
 ' Xo. Be weak! Please be weak," he urged. 
 
 She made no further protest, but lost herself in his embrace 
 which was more passionate than ever before. 
 
 m 
 
 Next morning on first waking she felt such misery that for 
 some moments she mistook it for physical illness. But with 
 gathering consciousness she knew her body quite free from 
 pain. Her trouble then was not physical. What was it? 
 With a sudden access of suffering that made her flesh shrink, 
 she remembered yesterday's parting embrace. It overwhelmed 
 her that she could so yield to a man not yet in fact her lover. 
 Wliat was to become of her? 
 
 Yet last night there had been no sense of wrong-doing. It 
 was as if certain moral standards she had thought long since 
 discarded, had re-asserted themselves treacherously while she 
 slept. 
 
 For a long half-hour, Joanna lay trying with tense nerves 
 to see wherein she was a sinner. In such an attempt it was 
 inevitable that the religious teaching of her childhood should 
 have a part. Indeed the very attempt showed how far she 
 still was under the spell of that teaching. For her there was 
 no escape save by following it out remorselessly in action. 
 In Juley's evangel common morality must ever give place to 
 the larger spiritual issue and so in the end to a dominant 
 egoism. As " between their own souls and God " she had 
 always declared her children's errors. Therefore, while Joanna, 
 like King David, was prepared to cry " Against Thee, Thee 
 only, have I sinned! " her conscience on Mrs. Pender's account 
 troubled her as little as did the laws of Moses. Such were 
 mere worldly concerns to be paid for, if put on one side, by 
 mere worldly suffering. Sin, if sin there were, lay elsewhere. 
 
 Yet searching now by this misleading, but not ignoble light, 
 the only sin Joanna could discover lay in her lover's insuffi- 
 ciency. If only Louis could have committed himself with her 
 to the risks and sacrifices involved, she would have been un- 
 troubled. But he lacked either the certainty or the courage
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 217 
 
 of his love, and this infirmity of spirit in him imposed 
 sin upon her also. No man sinneth to himself! Herein then 
 lay the wrong for them both. 
 
 She was ready to acknowledge this and to accept her share 
 of it. But having done so, her mind was immediately filled 
 with schemes for its removal. Where was the use of perceiv- 
 ing a sin unless it could be obliviated? Louis must come 
 by the assurance he lacked. Only so could her conscience and 
 his be appeased. Then it mattered not what the world did 
 to them. 
 
 But here again Joanna was driven back time after time 
 upon her original, deep-set belief, her instinct (so perfectly 
 in harmony with her physical passion) that Louis could be 
 wholly won only by the giving of herself in faith. There could 
 be no pledge, no assurance from him beforehand. And this 
 was the reason why the choice remained with her. 
 
 But if that was so, sin could be exercised only by sinning, 
 not by renunciation. Was this the truth? 
 
 Unable to think further, Joanna rose at length and dressed. 
 It was Saturday, and there was nothing to do. Often on a 
 Saturday she went walking in the country with Louis. But 
 this week there were friends with him from London and she 
 would not see him until Tuesday. How was she to pass the 
 day? 
 
 At breakfast her mother begged her reproachfully to go to 
 La France Quadrant with a measuring tape and note-book. 
 The removal was now fixed for a fortnight hence, and Joanna's 
 self-imposed task of measuring beforehand for furniture and 
 carpets had already been shirked more than once. But this 
 morning,, grateful for the enforced activity, she set out at 
 once. 
 
 The hours slipped away quickly as she went from one empty, 
 tree-shaded room to another in the new house overlooking the 
 flint mill. The mechanical yet exacting work was soothing to 
 her state of mind; and by the time she re-emerged from the 
 Quadrant, a little dazed by the steady physical effort she had 
 been making, one o'clock sounded to her surprise across from 
 the University tower. 
 
 She was too late then for the midday meal at home. And 
 there, directly opposite, were the shining plate-glass windows 
 of Sangster the baker. The smell of hot bread rose from the 
 pavement gratings and made her mouth water: the trays of
 
 2i8 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 glistening, sweet cakes, and the rows of mahogany-colored 
 " cookies," still undetached and gleaming with their high var- 
 nish of egg, gave her a peculiar sensation in her jaws which 
 was almost pain. She could not pass the place. 
 
 On leaving the white, spring sunshine of the street and 
 entering the dark inner shop, she did not at once see very 
 clearly. But a young man seated near the door drew her 
 attention by one of those slight but uncontrollable movements 
 that never go unremarked. The next moment her sun-dazzled 
 eyes had recognized Lawrence Urquhart. 
 
 So he was back! 
 
 He at once made room for her at his table so that she 
 had no choice but to sit by him. He was drinking coffee 
 and had been reading from a big brown book which was 
 propped against the sugar basin. This he moved aside, shut- 
 ting it carelessly without troubling to notice the page or to 
 replace the marker which lay beside it. 
 
 After the first greeting with its little spontaneous rush of 
 pleasure for the unforeseen encounter, shyness came upon 
 them both. He said he had been back these three days, and 
 then she was sure it was he who had witnessed the meeting 
 between herself and Louis by the granite steps. But when he 
 went on to tell her that his mother had fallen ill while out of 
 town so that he was travelling up and down daily and had not 
 yet spent a night in Glasgow since his return, Joanna became 
 again uncertain. It annoyed her that she should be sensitive 
 now for the first time to his opinion. What did it matter 
 whether he had seen her or not? 
 
 To cover their awkwardness they tried to talk of Nilsson, 
 of the places Lawrence had visited, of the first payment for 
 her designs which Joanna had received some days ago accom- 
 panied by an order for more work. But very soon the con- 
 versation failed again, and Joanna ate more quickly and drank 
 her coffee without wasting a moment in her desire to be off. 
 
 " It seems a sin," he said presently, stretching out his hand 
 for a cake he did not want " Don't you think it seems a sin 
 to stay in town on an afternoon like this? " 
 
 Joanna had to admit that it was a lovely spring day. 
 
 " Couldn't we go for a walk? " he asked then, speaking as 
 if the idea had that moment struck him. And seeing that 
 she was going to refuse him without considering he went 
 on:
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 219 
 
 " I know such a good walk, quite short, by the canal all the 
 way. The hawthorn is going to be a wonder this year, and 
 there's a place for tea near one of the locks. I wonder do 
 you know it? " 
 
 As he grew more urgent Joanna became colder, more de- 
 tached from him. He had not finished speaking, before she 
 wondered, slighting him in secret, whether this walk of his 
 might prove one which later she could show to Louis. Louis 
 was always accusing her of ignorance of her own country- 
 side. 
 
 But as her companion searched her face, something in his 
 good eyes, penetrated her suddenly, unexpectedly, deeply. Not 
 that she would acknowledge it. On the contrary in that very 
 moment she busied her mind more and more consciously, 
 more and more in pure wickedness, on Louis's behalf, and 
 it was as if she dealt deliberate wounds to the eyes that faced 
 her across the little table. But all the same she had become 
 possessed of the triumphant knowledge of how those same eyes, 
 at present so steady and anxious, would lighten, would trans- 
 form themselves under her kisses. 
 
 Meanwhile she heard herself giving perfunctory consent to 
 Lawrence's suggestions for the afternoon, and with a show of 
 polite interest which masked even from herself her shocking 
 excitement, she listened to his enthusiastic description of a 
 " kind of little farm place " above the lock where the woman 
 gave one home-made jam and fresh-baked griddle-scones for 
 tea. After all (Joanna excused her acquiescence to herself, 
 unconscionably) it would be better than staying all afternoon 
 at home. To-morrow Sunday would be bad enough, and 
 she had Monday as well to get through before seeing Louis. 
 The sudden thought followed that on Tuesday Louis would 
 learn of her walk with Lawrence. This was enlivening; and 
 involuntarily she smiled at her companion as if prepared now 
 for enjoyment. He found it hard to subdue the delight caused 
 in him by that smile of malicious sweetness. 
 
 But when they were got well on their way, and were strol- 
 ling side by side a pair of young lovers to the casual eye 
 along the canal bank which was festive with newly formed 
 leaves and the hard, ball-like beginnings of blossom, she re- 
 pented that she had come. How lacking in savor was this 
 compared with even her least happy hours with Louis! What 
 was Louis doing now at this very moment? What sort of
 
 220 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 people were those London friends of his? As the longing to be 
 with Louis increased like a fever, her self-distaste for having 
 consented to the present situation was also augmented; and 
 as both emotions intensified each other, her spite against Law- 
 rence crouched yet lower and stiffened for the spring. 
 
 She was not made gentler by the fact that Lawrence was 
 talking more than he usually did in her company. He was 
 talking with positive gaiety; now of the habits of the mayflies 
 which drifted in derelict heaps on the surface of the canal, 
 now of a prospective lectureship in Mythology and Folklore 
 for which in time he hoped to be a candidate, now of the 
 Black Cat at Bruges where Nilsson had introduced him to the 
 great, half mad, Irish sculptor, Conolly. Again, with a curious 
 kind of tremulous, very youthful unction which Joanna par- 
 ticularly resented, partly because it was so Scotch in him, 
 partly because she guessed it a cloak for emotion, he under- 
 took to describe at length a solitary walk he had made from 
 Zurich across the Alps into Italy. 
 
 And as with so many ordinarily silent people, speech, when 
 it came to him was all absorbing. Lawrence's companion 
 well knew that he went untroubled by her presence for this 
 hour at least, and as he persisted, glowing and unobservant, 
 she withdrew herself in a more and more violent aloofness. As 
 the tigress withdraws upon herself under the dark thicket 
 before she leaps with gathered strength upon some unwitting 
 beast that gambols outside in the sunshine, so Joanna with 
 her bright hair blowing, and her fresh, virginal cheeks, was 
 essentially at this moment a thing hunched-up with the desire 
 to inflict pain. How dared Lawrence stretch himself, uncon- 
 scious as an animal in the spring sunshine, finding happiness 
 in himself, in all about him, even in her unresponsive com- 
 panionship, while she walked by his side in torment? How 
 dared he? 
 
 In her fury of malevolence she had the impulse to push him 
 with all her might into the dark water of the canal. Then 
 how she would rush to Louis, abandoned and laughing! How 
 she would throw herself into his arms! 
 
 But later, as they sat drinking tea and eating floury griddle- 
 scones in the cottage which was on a little hillock above the 
 lockhouse, her anger against Lawrence changed its form in- 
 sidiously. And now if Lawrence was more than ever in her 
 power, Joanna was no less the victim of a ruthless force.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 221 
 
 With leaping excitement she looked across at his contented 
 face. He was grown handsomer, as she had already noticed, 
 from his holiday and happy exposure to the sun; and as she 
 looked she knew finally and clearly that she must see his 
 features transfigured as she alone could transfigure them. She 
 must have him no longer content but entirely at her mercy. 
 
 Abruptly she rose and moved from the table to the window. 
 These last few minutes had brought a silence between them. 
 She had seen a puzzled look cross her friend's face, and with 
 all the weight of imposed and inherited inhibitions she was 
 struggling against her deepest impulse. 
 
 " It was good of you to bring me to this pretty place," 
 she said. It was the first banality that came to her, but in 
 each tone of her voice the triumph of impulse sounded. 
 
 In reply Lawrence got up and came to her, knocking against 
 a chair on his way across the room. He was shaken through 
 and through by her altered manner and voice, by the strange 
 glance she had given him before she turned away, by the subtle 
 but overwhelming appeal of her movement and of her whole 
 body there by the window. 
 
 He stood behind her waiting. He was near enough for her 
 to feel his breathing on the nape of her neck. But still he 
 waited in terrible hesitation. From the first he had kept his 
 feeling for this woman apart, had refused to connect it with 
 that passionate dreaming which he regarded as the bane of 
 his life, and he could not now believe what his senses were 
 telling him loudly enough. 
 
 " Not at all," he replied feebly. (He would try even at the 
 last gasp to put the incredible thing from him and avoid ever- 
 lasting catastrophe). " On the contrary, it was so friendly 
 of you to come more friendly even than I dared to hope 
 from your letters." 
 
 But now Joanna turned her face to him, and he was lost. 
 All her features seemed to him to utter a cry for help. The 
 eyes were the eyes of a woman drowning and already half 
 submerged. But more than in the eyes the urgency was 
 centered in the mouth with its sad, young contours. He could 
 see the strong teeth which for some reason in their slight 
 irregularity had more power than any other single character- 
 istic of hers to haunt and disturb him. 
 
 And what was her appeal? Was it for comfort? For 
 refuge? For love? He did not know. He only knew that
 
 222 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 whatever it was, she must be answered. And with the whole 
 world darkening about him he put out his hand and took hers. 
 
 " I think you would be the best of friends," said she, uncer- 
 tainly, and she trembled. They both stood trembling together 
 full of fear, all the world an abyss beneath them. Only in 
 the remote distance Joanna seemed to perceive the faint, 
 luminous beginnings of a rainbow that arched over a world of 
 gray chaos. There, there it was! Dim, but shining, the gate- 
 way of escape from Louis. 
 
 " Do you really mean that? " asked Lawrence, almost 
 voiceless, and his eyes never moved for an instant from the 
 lips he so awfully loved. Joanna, with a sudden departure 
 of strength from her knees, had sunk down facing him upon 
 the chintz-covered window seat. Through the widely-thrown 
 open lattice they could feel the cool airs of the spring sundown, 
 and below was the white-washed lock house, so cold and com- 
 pact and pretty in the mounting shadow, and the closed lock 
 gates through the joints of which the heavy, thwarted water 
 hissed threateningly. 
 
 " I do mean it," Joanna answered, looking at his hands, 
 and though she was fighting hard for steadiness, her voice 
 went wavering pathetically like a lost child's. " I wish I could 
 know you were my friend. I think I need you " 
 
 Not one other word could she speak. But there was no need, 
 for the next moment Lawrence's black head was against 
 her knees, against the knees that even now he dared not pic- 
 ture as a woman's. He had dropped crouching on the floor 
 before her, burying his face in her skirts, and his arms clasped 
 her with trembling determination. 
 
 " You know I am yours," he said, " to do as you wish with, 
 at any time, in any way." 
 
 " Do you mean you love me? " Over Joanna's chaotic 
 gray world the rainbow gateway of escape arched more and 
 more radiantly. Here was what Louis could never give her, 
 what at the eleventh hour would save her from Louis. 
 
 But when Lawrence first raised his head and looked up at 
 her she was filled with sheer terror seeing what she had done. 
 So, she thought in dismay, must dying men look. 
 
 " You must always have known I loved you," he replied.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 223 
 
 IV 
 
 When she was alone again and at home Joanna tried hard 
 to shut out all that had happened but a single fact. Lawrence 
 had offered her a way of escape from Louis. She had called 
 and he had answered, and so there was plighted troth between 
 them. No matter that from the moment of his single embrace 
 she had retreated as subtly as surely from him : no matter that 
 now in solitude she was becoming for the first time in her 
 adult life aware of sheer wickedness gushing up in her as a 
 spring essential to her nature: there should be no going back. 
 With each hour that passed, the desire increased to inflict 
 suffering. What lay behind this desire and beyond its ful- 
 filment she refused to contemplate. 
 
 At first she was determined to write to Louis cutting herself 
 off entirely and at once. But when Sunday morning came she 
 could not do this. Instead she sent him a note telling him 
 that she had engaged herself to marry Lawrence Urquhart 
 and that she would explain everything face to face if he cared 
 to meet her on the coming Tuesday, as had already been 
 arranged between them. 
 
 From the moment of posting this, all her force contracted 
 into a single spark of expectancy. To see his face that was 
 her one need. As for Lawrence, there would be time later on 
 to think of him. She was not to see him again till Wednesday. 
 His mother's illness had helped Joanna to make this arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 In Collessie Street there was a deathly atmosphere of Sab- 
 bath. Linnet had gone out: Juley was closeted in prayer with 
 Eva Gedge: one of the neighbors played hymns lingeringly 
 on an American organ Joanna felt she must run out of the 
 house or go mad. 
 
 But where to run to? The streets were worse than indoors. 
 Though it was afternoon they resounded with gratuitous church 
 bells. They were tolerable at such times only for swift pas- 
 sage. And to whom could she pass through them? Mildred 
 was gone to London for Easter: Carl Nilsson was in Germany: 
 the Pringles, like most other people, were out of town. 
 
 It crossed Joanna's mind, however, with a spurt of hope, 
 that it was just possible Phemie might be alone at Sans Souci.
 
 224 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 On the Saturday, there had been, she remembered, an orches- 
 tral concert at which Phemie's favorite soprano had been 
 singing. Surely for such an occasion she would have returned 
 to town. It was at least worth trying for. 
 
 So Joanna swung away to the South Side of the town, 
 perched and clinging to her hat on a wildly rocking tram-car. 
 (The electric cars rushed and swayed on a Sabbath with special 
 defiance as if repudiating the jog-trot observance of the horse- 
 cars they had not long supplanted.) And she told herself 
 how glad Phemie would be, upon hearing of her engagement 
 to Lawrence. Though little had been said between them of 
 Louis, she knew that her friend regarded that whole situation 
 as hopeless or in her own vernacular as "simply no earthly." 
 And now, with the wind in her face and the gay motion of the 
 car as it tossed her up hill and down, Phemie's friend was 
 ready to admit the verdict. It might not be true to say that 
 she had envied the straightforward devotion of young Jimmie, 
 in whch Phemie throve and put forth blossoms like a healthy 
 plant. But it was none the less a satisfaction that she could 
 take her place as it were, in the same sunny, unadventurous 
 plot. After all, was there not a sweetness in plain, common 
 sense? 
 
 But when she reached the villa all the blinds were drawn 
 down and there was no sign of life. 
 
 It was a disappointment. She felt repulsed, quite flat 
 suddenly. Only now did she realize how desperately she had 
 been counting on Phemie's approval. 
 
 Hoping against hope she entered the garden and walked up 
 the path to the front door. To her joy the outer door at least 
 was unbarred. She rang the bell eagerly, but waited in vain 
 for any answering signs from within. Again after a minute 
 she rang, this time without Expectancy. And again nothing 
 happened, except that another tram-car went rocking past 
 outside on the road and the people on the top looked down on 
 her efforts, mockingly, as it seemed to her. 
 
 Then, just as she was turning to go, one of the blinds in the 
 bow-window of the dining-room moved a very little and she 
 distinguished Phemie's face peering out below it. 
 
 " Phemie! " she cried, running up the steps as the face 
 instantly disappeared again on recognizing her. " Phemie! 
 Phemie! " 
 
 Within the house to her relief there was an answering cry,
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 and she heard the familiar, characteristic sound of Phemie's 
 feet thudding childishly across the stone hall. 
 
 But the moment she had set eyes on Phemie's face her own 
 affairs sank into insignificance. It was so altered, that usually 
 gay visage, with long continued weeping, and the small, charm- 
 ing features were set in such lines of fear, that seeing it 
 Joanna feared for her friend's wits. 
 
 At first they could do nothing but hug each other, Phemie 
 returning Joanna's embrace convulsively. Then they went 
 together into the sunless, calico-covered dining-room. 
 
 " Phemie, what is wrong? " exclaimed Joanna. " Tell me, 
 what is it my darling? Or shall I go away? Would you rather 
 I went away? " 
 
 "No, no! " Phemie begged, clutching her like a despairing 
 child. " Don't go. Don't leave me. I'm that glad to see 
 you! I thought I was going out of my mind till you came. 
 See, sit here. I'll make tea. Or no, let's go to the kitchen: 
 this room is like death itself. Oh! Lord, what a comfort to 
 have you. Wait, 111 tell you. I'll just put the kettle on 
 first." 
 
 In the kitchen Joanna sat on the edge of the table watching 
 her friend's impetuous movements (surely no one else had so 
 to fly about to make a cup of tea!) and turning over in her 
 mind all the calamities that could have happened. The fact 
 that Phemie could think of tea was no proof that her trouble 
 was a small one. If the Last Trump had sounded, Phemie 
 would have contrived to get tea before answering the summons. 
 Besides in spite of her lively movements there was still all the 
 while that deep, painful frown between her brows. Joanna 
 could not doubt that something serious had happened. 
 
 " I'm going to New Zealand," announced Phemie when 
 she had pushed away her thrice emptied cup, and she threw 
 back her face down which the tears were now rapidly coursing, 
 " going to-night, and I'm Terrified! It's Jimmie," she 
 continued. " He's in Liverpool now. No one knows but 
 his father and me. And I'm to join him to-night. The day 
 after to-morrow we sail. If we didn't he would have to go to 
 prison. It's a fearful thing. Yes, wait, I'll try to tell you 
 it really wasn't Jimmie's fault. At least heaps of men do 
 the same, he says, every day, only they don't get found out 
 just at the wrong time, and later on people only think how 
 clever they were. But anyhow with him it was all for my
 
 226 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 sake so that we could get married sooner we were both 
 sick tired of waiting no one knows lately it has been awful 
 if it's anyone's fault, it's Papa's and Mamma's. They could 
 have helped us long ago instead of waiting to leave us money 
 when they die. But they wouldn't. Parents are awfully 
 wicked, I think, don't you? But oh, I don't want to go away 
 I mean I didn't. And you know Papa was giving us the villa 
 next year and we had nearly all the furniture for it. Now 
 Jimmie's father will take that to pay part of the debt! " 
 
 Gradually, as she grew calmer, Phemie was able to give 
 Joanna a preciser account of the catastrophe. Jimmie had 
 been speculating with business money, and borrowed money 
 at that. Phemie herself did not know the exact nature or 
 extent of the crime. She only knew that he had done some- 
 thing big enough and bad enough to be sent to prison for ; and 
 that he had risked this only for love of her. Otherwise his 
 record was clean. It was because of this that his father, and 
 his creditors for the sake of his father, were willing to hush 
 things up. But the condition of hushing up was that he should 
 leave the country at once. And if there was one thing Phemie 
 was sure of, it was that once the facts came to her parents' 
 ears, she would never never on this earth be allowed to 
 follow her disgraced lover. It was now, she felt, or never. 
 And Jimmie needed her and she needed him, and she had prom- 
 ised, and their passages were booked steerage, and they were 
 to be married by special license before sailing on Tuesday, and 
 here was her ticket to Liverpool which Jimmie had given her 
 yesterday in her stocking for safety. But it would be a lie 
 to say that the prospect did not fill her with absolute terror. 
 To her the voyage was a horror, the new country a place of 
 rawness and struggle, desperate struggle for one's bare sub- 
 sistence. The Pringle family was too newly removed from 
 real poverty for its daughter not to have this dread; and more 
 and more exquisite as it receded seemed the South Side villa 
 with its antiques, its deep arm chairs, its rose-patterned 
 chintzes. 
 
 To Joanna, out of whose blood generations of easy if frugal 
 living had bred all fear of destitution, this was the least part 
 of Phemie's trouble. How joyfully thought she, would she have 
 followed a dishonored and penniless Louis to any part of 
 the world if he had but summoned her. 
 
 And it was by this envy more than by sympathy that she
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 227 
 
 presently succeeded in cheering her friend to some degree. 
 At first Phemie was astounded by the mere possibility of envy 
 of her lot, but it did not fail in its effect. Indeed before an 
 hour was passed she found herself able to laugh with tremu- 
 lous amusement. After tea they had gone upstairs to finish 
 the packing which Joanna's arrival had interrupted. And 
 Joanna had set about making an inventory of the once precious 
 bottom-drawer possessions which had mostly to be left behind. 
 No doubt Annie, whose own wedding was not far off, would 
 buy the things and send her sister the money. Annie could 
 be counted on for that. As they spoke of this, Joanna's own 
 secret trembled on her lips, but she could not bring herself 
 to utter it. 
 
 Phemie's train was at seven, and as the afternoon drew on 
 she grew nervous again. Without Joanna, she declared she 
 simply did not know how ever she should have managed. 
 It was Joanna who strapped the luggage, her own fingers 
 trembled so that Joanna went for the cab while she sat shaking 
 all over on the edge of the bed. But half dead with fear as 
 she was, Phemie had no doubts. Nothing could have dis- 
 suaded her. She was Jimmie's, and this awful thing had to 
 be gone through. So far, except for one or two moments under 
 Joanna's influence during the packing, she had enjoyed none of 
 the savor of adventure. It was too real as she saw it, too 
 stark for that. But Jimmie would be on the platform at 
 Liverpool waiting for her: and once with him she would be 
 all right. She clung blindly to that. 
 
 Joanna would have made the journey with her, but Phemie 
 refused with sudden firmness. " I must learn to do things 
 by myself now," she said, trembling but resolute, " otherwise 
 I shan't be much good to Jimmie out there." 
 
 So they said good-bye. Phemie hung out of the carriage 
 window fluttering her sopping handkerchief, and Joanna weep- 
 ing also, torn between tenderness, the pain of parting, and 
 sharpest envy, stood waving on the platform till the train was 
 out of sight. 
 
 There was nothing to do now but to go drearily home. 
 
 VT 
 
 That night she was restless and her sleep full of uneasy 
 dreaming. She dreamed that Jimmie was her lover and had laid 
 his head in her lap. But when he looked up, his face was the
 
 228 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 face of Lawrence Urquhart, and Joanna felt ashamed before 
 him, knowing that she had that day promised to go with Louis 
 to New Zealand. 
 
 On the Monday morning she had work to do but could not 
 settle to anything. 
 
 By this time, she kept thinking, Louis must have got her 
 letter. What did he think? She grew more and more miser- 
 ably certain that he would not come the next day, that she 
 would never see him again. Then she wouldn't, she vowed 
 vindictively, see Lawrence either. She would join Phemie 
 and her Jimmie at Liverpool and get them to take her abroad 
 with them. For some indefinable reason she could not endure 
 the idea of seeing Lawrence again unless she had first seen 
 Louis. She felt wild, defiant, false to every one. Let them 
 think of her and treat her as they liked! She would escape 
 from them all. She would go to some place where she could 
 live in utter solitude. But first she wanted to hurt them all, 
 to revenge herself on them. 
 
 She could not stay still indoors, and soon after break- 
 fast went out and walked in the streets staring at shop-win- 
 dows. A lust came upon her for the acquirement of new 
 clothes. This she did not attempt to withstand. True she 
 had no money. All she had had in her purse the day before 
 (two pounds which was the remains of the first payment for 
 her designs) had been slipped as a surprise wedding present 
 in among the folds of Phemie's honeymoon night-gown. But 
 this did not stop her. She knew that as Miss Bannerman, if 
 not under her married name, she could get credit anywhere 
 in town. So she bought herself a coat that had taken her 
 fancy. It was of powder blue cloth, belted like a highway- 
 man's. And to go with it she discovered a gallant hat. Leav- 
 ing her old coat and hat to be sent up later, she paraded 
 home in these new clothes. She knew not how she was to 
 wait till the morrow. 
 
 She was inspecting her new finery afresh after the midday 
 meal, in front of the long mirror in her bedroom, when Janet 
 the old cook knocked at the door and cried out querulously 
 that there was a visitor for Miss Joanna downstairs. 
 
 Before opening, Joanna bundled her purchases guiltily into 
 the wardrobe. Who could have called? It was not yet three 
 o'clock!
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 229 
 
 The cook stood panting outside, on the landing. She exuded- 
 reproach, holding her hand with a world of meaning to the 
 left side of her large,' starchy print bosom. Mary the house- 
 maid had been ill and was having a fortnight's holiday before 
 the ordeal of the flitting. (The Bannermans kept but two 
 servants these days). And as it was Janet herself who had 
 elected to carry on single-handed in the interim, sooner than 
 have " a strange girl about," Janet had acquired the right to 
 be cross and sorry for herself from morning till night, but 
 most particularly in the afternoon when anyone was ill-advised 
 enough to ring the front door bell before three o'clock. 
 
 " There's a gentleman downstairs," she said, speaking quite 
 faintly now that she was observed. " He asked for you 
 he gave his name but I've nae heid for names, and if I had, 
 thae stairs would have knocked it out o' me." 
 
 " No'm. Not a young gentleman," she replied in answer 
 to a question from Joanna, and she fetched a yet more painful 
 sigh, " at ony rate no' what you'd ca' young." 
 
 As Joanna crossed the landing at the top of the stairs she 
 shook so that she was afraid she would not be able to walk 
 down. 
 
 It must be Louis! He had come. It was only Monday, so 
 his friends from London were still with him. But he had not 
 been able to stay away after getting her news. He had even 
 broken through his hitherto firm objection to calling at Col- 
 lessie Street. This was the first time he had entered the house, 
 and he had done it unasked. 
 
 She began the descent of the stairs. 
 
 At first she had to move slowly, mechanically: she was so 
 perfectly the victim of the beating of her own heart. Her 
 heart was a flail, an appealing, demented flail, assaulting her. 
 All other sensation was cancelled. Under its persecution she 
 barely clutched consciousness, barely kept her body upright 
 and progressive by clinging with her right hand to the steep, 
 downward-sloping banister. 
 
 But by the time she reached the second flight she went free 
 from that dominion. It was gone completely, as if it had 
 never been. And now instead, her heart felt small, felt tiny, 
 felt buoyant like a boat or a bird that is serenely lifted on a 
 quiet, immense, triumphant surge. She had never been so 
 exempt. It was something like the fearless, sudden clarity
 
 230 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 which had come in childhood when she climbed high up on a 
 dangerous place or ran barefoot from stone to stone with 
 perilous gathering momentum down the Duntarvie burn. 
 
 Save that now it was a dual and therefore a rarer, maturer 
 ecstasy. She was poised and keen, a hawk in mid-air, a speck 
 of perfect bliss upheld in perfection of readiness for the pre- 
 datory swoop. Yet in that same instant she also lived in 
 every pulse for that other consummation of her nature in which 
 her breast would be transfixed by talons stronger than her own. 
 
 And therein shining in this moment of dual revelation 
 her new knowledge lay clear. Why, she asked herself in 
 amazement, had she all her life taken for granted that she 
 was innately gentle, candid, good, when in reality she was 
 quite as innately fierce, treacherous, wicked? She had been 
 taught, of course, that all human virtues were sadly tinc- 
 tured as by some tragic accident with their " natural " oppo- 
 sites, qualities wild and dark ; but that in the struggle towards 
 perfection such qualities remnants of the jungle from which 
 Christ redeemed us must be expelled increasingly from our 
 lives. In their total expulsion perfection would lie and Heaven 
 be achieved. And this famous and stimulating doctrine had 
 never been seriously questioned by her. She had not been able 
 to accept Georgie's gratifying theory that all evil was but 
 perverted good. But now, descending the familiar staircase, as 
 by lightning, Joanna saw a different truth. It was a truth of 
 which she had many times before had glimpses. With Gerald, 
 with Mario, even with Bob always when her essential female 
 being had come into conflict with the male, obscure hints of it 
 had sought admission to her understanding. But not until now 
 had it really emerged as something complete, authoritative like 
 the writing on the wall. 
 
 Joanna's discovery was that " evil " (in the Christian sense 
 of the word) quite as much as " good " had made her alive, 
 that " evil " quite as much as " good " had made her an 
 individual, a human being, a divine creation herself capable 
 of creative life. 
 
 Further she perceived that this admission altered every- 
 thing. It was as if before her eyes the Creator had once more 
 divided chaos with a word into darkness and light. No longer 
 did her " good " show dimmed and confused by her " evil," 
 nor her " evil " faintly transfused by her " good." Her " good " 
 was now dazzling and apart, a pure element of light: her " evil "
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 231 
 
 was utter and separate, a pure element of darkness. They 
 were the two sides of a coin. The dove was on one side; on 
 the other side the hawk. To obliterate either was to invali- 
 date the coinage, to defame the mint from which it had issue. 
 And the two could be mingled only in the discreditable act 
 of destruction. 
 
 To her it was a vision, no less. She knew she would never 
 be quite the same after it as she had been before. 
 
 Smiling, half-blinded as if by bursting sun-rays, though the 
 house was dark enough and it was a dull day out of doors, 
 Joanna opened the door of the room where Louis was waiting 
 for her. She became aware at once by some other than her 
 ocular sense, it seemed to her that he was grave as she had 
 never seen him, and intensely anxious; and her smile broad- 
 ened. She wanted to shout with laughter till the hidden stars 
 shook in their places. He had made her suffer. Now it was 
 his turn. 
 
 They stood facing each other without any formal greet- 
 ing. 
 
 " Was that true that you wrote me? " he asked. 
 
 When she heard his voice Joanna's vengeance passed. With 
 his first syllable that part of her consummation was com- 
 plete and she rendered up the ascendancy to him. As he 
 watched her in cold fury she ceased to be the kestrel poised: 
 she became instead the small bird that flutters close to the 
 ground for its life. After all there was a justice in things: 
 she admitted that rejoicing. 
 
 " Is it true? " Louis repeated. 
 
 "Yes," she said. She dared not look at him. 
 
 "Well, of course you are free to do as you please," he 
 struck out at her with venom, " and I suppose I'm hardly in 
 the position to criticize. All I can say is that such a trick is 
 the last thing I expected of you. Till I got your letter this 
 morning, I didn't know how well I had thought of you. No 
 one in this world but yourself could have convinced me that 
 all the time you had been carrying on with another man. 
 Engaged to be married! Pah! I'm ashamed of you and 
 still more ashamed of myself. Don't you think it was going 
 a bit out of your way to stab an old fool in the back like that? 
 But what's the use of talking? I'm sure I don't know why 
 I came here to see you. After all, as I've already said, your 
 life is your own to do as you like with, and I've no doubt you
 
 232 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 have got some kind of satisfaction out of fooling me. You 
 have certainly succeeded." 
 
 Joanna, who had been Very white in the face at the be- 
 ginning of this speech, was red before it was finished. She 
 sat down heavily on the sofa and now her eyes never left 
 Louis. But he would not look at her now. Such pain as this 
 she had not expected. 
 
 " Louis," she said, " say what you like to me, but that about 
 fooling you about carrying on with Lawrence isn't true, and 
 you certainly are a fool if you believe it. He never made love 
 to me till Saturday, or perhaps I made love to him. Something 
 drove me to it. You drove me to it. But till then I hadn't 
 the faintest idea." 
 
 Louis had to believe this. 
 
 " I give it up then," he said with an assumption of still 
 greater indifference though before he spoke he had covertly 
 scrutinized the quivering girl. " You are all the more incom- 
 prehensible to me." 
 
 " What's the meaning of it all," he continued more warmly. 
 " Can you tell me? I promise I'll listen as patiently as I can, 
 and try to understand. Here's a woman. On Friday she swears 
 she loves me, throws herself at my head, in fact! On Satur- 
 day she promises to marry some one else. There must, I 
 suppose, be some reason? Is it that marriage is so greatly 
 to be coveted? I thought you agreed with me about that. 
 Didn't you tell me one day of your own accord ? " 
 
 " I never stopped loving you ! " interrupted Joanna pas- 
 sionately, and she pressed the palm of one hand against her 
 throat. " You know it well enough. And I don't want to 
 get married. At least not yet and not to Lawrence." 
 
 " If that's so, then you must be mad, that's all," returned 
 Louis; " and I think you are, too." But a change had come 
 over his face, and for a second his fingers went slyly to his 
 bright mustache, an action that always made Joanna's blood 
 mount like wine. 
 
 She held her hands tightly together in her lap. 
 
 " Don't you see," she pleaded, " it's because you don't love 
 
 me enough I can't be 1 don't what can I say? 1 
 
 musn't let you go on making love to me when you really care 
 so little. For you as well as myself; I can't, can I? Don't 
 you feel in your heart that I'm right not to? Tell me hon- 
 estly what you think I should do, and 111 do it."
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 233 
 
 Louis looked at her for some moments in silence. 
 
 " It seems to me," he said at length, " that there's no more 
 to be said. You know best what it is you want: and if you 
 don't think I love you enough you are the one to judge. 
 I can't offer to marry you. Frankly, if I could, I believe I 
 would if that's any good to you. But it isn't, I know. 
 Nothing I can say or do is any good to you. Don't you 
 think I've gone over that a hundred times in my mind? And 
 just because I feel as I do towards you I'm the last person to 
 advise you. I see you sitting there looking like I don't know 
 what I never quite know what you make me think of 
 and I feel I'd rather you were dead than in another man's arms. 
 There you are! And what use is that to you? I believe you 
 really want to get married. Besides, in any case you have 
 decided that I don't love you enough." 
 
 " So, Signora Rasponi," he continued with one of his 
 flourishes, when he had waited in vain for some retort from 
 Joanna, " it only remains to wish you every happiness in the 
 lot to which it has pleased heaven to call you." 
 
 " Really, my dear," he finished, becoming suddenly tired and 
 simple, " perhaps you are quite right. I honestly hope so. 
 Anyhow I wish you all the luck. I can't say more, can I? 
 I only want you to do the best for yourself. And now good- 
 bye." He picked up his hat and stick and held out his hand. 
 
 Joanna did not move. She had ached to rend open this 
 man's heart, to wrest from him the secret truth of his being. 
 And she had failed. He had kept himself almost wholly 
 inviolate. But in the attempt she had discovered anew that 
 she needed him. He must stay. She could not let him go. 
 All her energy now centered on this, that he must not go. 
 Perhaps for the first time since childhood she was in deadly 
 earnest. The insistent, warping histrionics of girlhood were 
 gone. She was a simple, desperate woman trying to hold a 
 man for her need. 
 
 " Can't you understand? " she demanded miserably. " I've 
 made a fool of myself, not of you. I've made a stupid, dread- 
 ful mistake. You know I love only you. But I hoped 
 
 Don't you see? " 
 
 " No!" she exclaimed, raising her voice loudly in anger. 
 "No. No. No! " and she struck upon her knees with her 
 clenched hands while the tears of utter humiliation rushed 
 scalding from her eyes " it's impossible, quite impossible
 
 234 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 that you should ever understand. Idiot that I was! I see 
 that now." 
 
 Louis laid aside his hat and stick again with one of the 
 curious, deliberate movements which with him marked ex- 
 citement. And he sat himself down by Joanna on the sofa. 
 
 " Idiot you are! " he agreed. " But truly, Joanna, do you 
 want me? " 
 
 " I do. Louis, you know I do. But do you want me? " 
 
 "By God! I do. Oh! my dear child. What a ghastly 
 pang when I thought I'd lost you." 
 
 He sighed deeply, boyishly. It was a great danger that was 
 overpast; and now that she was once more against his breast 
 and returning his kisses, it seemed as if their love, always 
 sweet, was wonderfully enhanced. This was all they thought 
 of. They easily refused to envisage the part played by Law- 
 rence Urquhart in their new-found happiness. Surely they had 
 been born for this thing, and the attempt to escape it was 
 worse than idle? The result, whether for happiness or sor- 
 row must be left in the hands of nature who had driven them 
 into each other's arms. Any penalty paid by themselves or 
 by others was better than the denial of so strong an impulse. 
 
 At last they drew apart, and Louis said he must go. But 
 Joanna sprang up radiant, with shining eyes and dishevelled 
 hair. 
 
 " Wait for me one minute. I'll walk to the station with you! 
 
 She rushed upstairs, threw on the new coat and hat, and 
 rejoined him within two minutes. Her lover noted with a 
 pang that she looked a mere schoolgirl. Her cheeks were 
 blazing. 
 
 "What! New clothes? " he exclaimed in a peculiar tone. 
 
 "You like them?" 
 
 " Very much. They are the best I've seen you in. But 
 you are a mad-woman, you know. I'm not at all sure that 
 young Urquhart isn't well quit of you." 
 
 VII 
 
 In the evening Joanna wrote to Lawrence. It was a longer 
 letter than the one she had sent to Louis, and was written with 
 labor and self-loathing. She tried to persuade herself that 
 Lawrence would not suffer more than she had suffered with 
 Bob. Sometimes one was made to suffer; sometimes one 
 made others suffer; that was life. Besides, Lawrence, loving
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 235 
 
 her as he did, would necessarily have suffered even if she had 
 not given him this false promise of happiness. She had 
 only accelerated, not created his misfortune. So she reasoned, 
 while she filled her letter with ready-made phrases of peni- 
 tence. She was " dreadfully sorry and ashamed," her conduct 
 had been " unforgivable." 
 
 It was hardly possible for her to say the truth to him, for 
 the truth would have run something like this: " Because you 
 have a fitful, incomprehensible attraction for me, and because 
 I trust you more than anyone I know, also because I wanted 
 to feel I had power over you, I have used you shamefully. I 
 have made you tell me that you loved me, not only to make 
 sure of that, but to force the hand of the man I am myself 
 in love with. On the whole I have succeeded, and now, though 
 I am surprised at myself and perhaps ashamed, I am not re- 
 pentant. All I wish is never to see you again. Your pain 
 might trouble me, and I want to be free from remorse and 
 reproach to follow my desire. If you will keep out of nay 
 way I shall try to feel friendly towards you." 
 
 This, however, though not the letter Joanna wrote, was not 
 so very unlike the letter that Lawrence was to read at the 
 other end. Throughout all the trite, laborious phrases put 
 down upon the paper the reality made itself felt clearly enough. 
 
 That same night Juley took to her bed with a bad gastric 
 attack which had been threatening her for some time, and 
 the doctor was sent for. It was not immediately serious, he 
 said when he had questioned her, but she must have special 
 care if it was not to become so. Above all, for the next few 
 weeks she should have absolute rest. 
 
 But while the doctor was speaking, there spread over 
 Juley's face a crafty and obstinate expression well known to 
 her children. As soon as he was gone she declared that she 
 felt better and that it was a pity he had been sent for at all. 
 And next morning, do what they would, she got up. She 
 could rest, she said, " after the Flitting " which, on account of 
 incoming tenants to Collessie Street, could not well be put off 
 to a later date. Meanwhile it was urgent that she should " set 
 to " and start clearing those many " places " of hers which were 
 choked with the accumulations of nearly thirty years. 
 
 This clearing business was an obsession and a shame to 
 Juley, and a matter in which she was fiercely secretive. And 
 sacred above all from the prying eyes of her children and
 
 2 3 6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 servants did she hold the famous middle part of her huge 
 bedroom wardrobe with its many shelves and drawers. When 
 the children were small they had regarded as a treat of treats 
 that they should be in the room on the rare occasion of a 
 clearing of this receptacle by their mother. It was always 
 kept locked and the key in Juley's key-basket. Even when 
 Joanna became a woman she had felt it something of an honor 
 to be handed the key and asked to fetch something out of the 
 front part. And now, by the doctor's explicit orders, the 
 entire wardrobe with all the other places to be cleared, was 
 delivered into her hands. 
 
 There was no doubt that Juley would have defied the doctor 
 (even with Eva Gedge and her children to back him) had not 
 Linnet conceived the happy idea of sending for Mrs. Boyd. 
 And to everybody's relief Mrs. Boyd came. 
 
 Either because of her pleasant and equable disposition, 
 which Juley so wistfully admired, or because long ago in her 
 girlhood she was known to have cherished a romantic passion 
 for the elder Sholto, Maggie Boyd had a more dependable 
 influence over Juley than anyone else, and it was certainly 
 clever of Linnet to have thought of her. Since the Banner- 
 mans had left St. Jude's they had seen very little of their 
 father's old friend; but for this very reason she would have 
 all the more weight now. 
 
 It was Joanna who went for her, and no sooner had the 
 little old lady taken in the situation than she put on her bonnet 
 and cloak and came back to Collessie Street, bringing her 
 daughter, Mamie, with her. 
 
 She would have no nonsense, she announced, calmly lead- 
 ing Juley in her gray dressing-gown away from a bewildered 
 survey of the crowded box room under the stairs and back 
 to the bedroom. Juley was to come straight to High Kelvin 
 Place this very day, to be nursed and kept in order. Joanna 
 and Mamie between them would be responsible for the 
 flitting. 
 
 " Two great strapping girls," she insisted, indicating the 
 two rather slender young women who sat either side on the 
 edge of Juley's bed. " If you leave everything to the young 
 people, my dear, you will soon be led to see that your illness 
 was providential. And there's Janet too! A regular host 
 in herself. Don't tell me! I had no idea you were such a 
 faithless Christian, Juley Bannerman! "
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 237 
 
 Very soon it was decided. Juley protested. She even 
 cried a little. But she was smiling through her tears. Really 
 she loved to be exhorted, accused of lack of faith, treated as 
 a child, except by her own household. And though it still 
 distressed her to think of her wardrobe and the disgrace of her 
 cupboards, she was actually got off in a cab by the afternoon, 
 all wrapped up in shawls and childishly excited at the pros- 
 pect of being ill at High Kelvin Place. 
 
 Rather to Joanna's surprise, two days had passed without 
 word or sign from Lawrence. But on Wednesday morning 
 the post brought a letter addressed in his hand. It was 
 black-edged. 
 
 With a premonition of distress she opened it and read: 
 
 " Dear Joanna, 
 
 " They say troubles never come singly. Certainly that 
 has been my experience these last few days. When I got home 
 here on Saturday evening I found my mother had taken a 
 turn for the worse and she died on Monday. It was her 
 heart that gave out. Then this morning your letter reached 
 me. I am still too confused and stunned to grasp all that 
 it means, and fortunately as I must suppose, my whole atten- 
 tion is still required for practical matters in connection with 
 my mother's death, You say I am to forget what passed 
 between us on Saturday, as it was all a mistake on your part. 
 Bitter as this is to me I can understand it well enough. What 
 I cannot understand is how I ever for a moment believed 
 it was anything but a dream. But why is it better that I 
 should not see you again? I do not want, nor do I mean to 
 make any appeal ad misericordiam, if that is what you are 
 afraid of. But in the circumstances surely it is for me to 
 decide whether or not I am to see you again on the former 
 friendly footing? You cannot know what it is to me to see 
 you or you would not ask this. If, as you say, you are 
 the one in fault, how is it in your right to dictate in the matter 
 of my small remaining claim? You say you would rather 
 have suffered yourself than make me suffer. If this is true 
 then let your penance be the continuance of our friendship. 
 Perhaps I need that just now more than the other. 
 " Forgive me if I seem rude, and believe me, 
 Ever your friend, 
 
 LAWRENCE URQUHART."
 
 238 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 As she read this letter, anger struggled with acknow- 
 ledgment in Joanna. Somehow she was thwarted by it, be- 
 littled and punished and put down, while the writer rose 
 suddenly to a new place in her thoughts. She had to admit 
 his right to make her feel not so much wicked as wanton and 
 petty: but it angered her that fate had tendered him the 
 unexpected courage to use this right. If his mother had not 
 died at that moment Joanna tried to tell herself he would have' 
 sent a very different message. What, she wondered with deep 
 interest, had his mother's death meant to him? Anyhow, 
 she begrudged the event that had strengthened him by dealing 
 the two blows simultaneously. Could it be then that she 
 had coveted the sole power of dealing him pain? 
 
 In reply she wrote a formal letter of sympathy, and told 
 him that she would be busy moving house for the next few 
 weeks. 
 
 vm 
 
 Through the next ten days she worked with Mamie Boyd 
 and Janet, but harder than both of them put together. She 
 worked harder than at any time before in her life, and far 
 more efficiently. For the time, she put her drawings and all 
 else aside; and from early each morning till past midnight, with 
 hurried intervals for meals, hurled herself at the set task. 
 
 She had met Louis but once since their readjustment, and 
 then only for a few minutes in the street. He too, as if in 
 harmony with her, had taken to working harder and longer 
 than before. 
 
 But their one meeting had been significant, full of under- 
 standing and tremulous concord. Desire had hovered and 
 beckoned behind the flimsy mask of his attention as Joanna 
 told Louis how she was placed in sole charge of all the arrange- 
 ments at home: and while she was speaking his dumb appeal 
 received its answer without need of words. He was smiling, 
 she very grave as he read the steadfast promise in her eyes. 
 
 And both Mamie, who was her elder by five years, and Janet 
 who had been privileged to scold her not so long ago, obeyed 
 her without question. They carried out her plans, which were 
 surprisingly ingenious and practical, as if she were a proved 
 general. In every one of her actions Louis was in some way 
 involved, but now she would not think about him. Her 
 imagination, was a falcon, hooded and chained till the appointed
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 239 
 
 moment, but all her executive faculties were sharpened. She 
 seemed to have eyes all round her head, to dwell upon a high 
 watch-tower, to be able to think collectively of a dozen things 
 at one time. 
 
 The state of the hidden places at Collessie Street was a 
 fresh revelation to her of her mother's cumbered life, and she 
 became every hour more reckless in the work of simplification. 
 She was sure that nine-tenths of the stuff they had housed all 
 these years would be neither used nor missed by any member of 
 the family. Fuller and fuller grew the old ash-pit in the back 
 green. But Joanna had an inbred hatred of waste; and she 
 would trudge up and down the long stairs fifty times a day 
 with her arms full, while Mamie made her heaps into bundles 
 and despatched them to this poor person or that charity. And 
 at night, dazed with fatigue and satisfaction, she would stumble 
 up to bed. When she lay down at first her thighs and the 
 muscles of her back ached so acutely that she groaned aloud, 
 but within five minutes she would be sleeping like a stone. 
 
 In the sacrilege of the wardrobe she would allow no one else 
 to share. 
 
 As the great, curving, mirrored door swung heavily back 
 upon its hinges Joanna was a child again; and the enclosure 
 with its trays and drawers, and its middle place lined with 
 faded blue box-pleating, appeared to her as the very ark of 
 romance. But at the quick of her excitemert was something 
 which had nothing to do with memory or with childhood ex- 
 cept in so far as it signified the departure from both. This, not 
 the hour of her marriage with Mario, was the time of severance, 
 the final breaking of the umbilical cord. Very slowly had she 
 drawn apart from her mother. Even while she had thought 
 herself detached she had really been held and harried. But 
 now she was removing her entire being in an act of irreparable 
 rebellion. And this was the symbol: this laying of her new, 
 alien hands upon her mother's treasures. 
 
 For here were all the little souvenirs of Juley's life-time, 
 most of them valueless in themselves, but so precious to her 
 that her children were accustomed to hold them in reverence. 
 
 Among the many packets of letters and faded photographs 
 neatly docketed and banded with elastic, that snapped at a 
 touch, Joanna found stray pages from an old Erskine journal. 
 The delicately penned entries were very affectionate, " Our 
 sweet baby Perdy cut her second tooth on Thursday of this
 
 240 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 week. Old Nursie calls her our c hen of gold,' " was one 
 that caught Joanna's eye. From further back in the same 
 drawer came an inlaid cedar box. This was stuffed with tiny 
 locks and plaits of hair, each having been lovingly labelled. 
 " Our little Miranda's hair at two and a half years. Sept. 
 1846." " Darling Papa's hair, at the time of his death, Jan. 3, 
 1870." " A piece of my hair cut off during an attack of brain 
 fever in Rome, 1860 " " Mamma's hair as an infant."- 
 " Baby Robert's hair." Who, wondered Joanna, was baby 
 Robert? And here was one of her own locks as a baby, fair, 
 like gold silk, and Georgie's only a little darker, and Sholto's 
 quite dark like greenish bronze, and Linnet's like white floss. 
 How many tresses there were! 
 
 She drew out her mother's. It was unlike the other tight 
 little sheaves of hair, being fine and long full half a yard long 
 and the sheen of youth was upon it still. (Eighteen, Juley 
 had been, when her father's passion for education had brought 
 serious illness upon her.) Joanna carried it lying silkily across 
 her extended hands to the window, let the light play on it, 
 kissed it, with sudden, sorrowful passion inhaled its pleasant, 
 aromatic odor. And there before the dressing-table mirror 
 which had so often reflected her mother's painful toilets, she 
 laid it against her own light brown head. As she had thought, 
 it was of the very same texture and color as her own hair. 
 
 Having restored it tenderly to its place, her next interest 
 was her mother's square old jewel-case. A wedding present 
 this; big and solid, covered with black Russia leather and 
 lined with bridal satin. In spite of her knowledge of the 
 contents Joanna felt a stirring of the old childish excitement 
 on opening it and lifting out the trays. Once Juley had had 
 a diamond ring and some pearl ornaments, presents from her 
 bridegroom, but she had lost these long ago; and now there 
 remained only some pebble and silver brooches, a cameo or 
 two, a bunch of worn seals, a set of beautiful but clumsy 
 amethysts which were an Erskine heirloom, an ivory carved 
 fan with some of the sticks broken, a silver vinaigrette that 
 still smelt faintly invigorating, the children's broken strings 
 of coral the girl went over all these, fingering them with 
 a fresh curiosity, but there was nothing here she did not 
 know by heart. 
 
 Right at the bottom of the deepest drawer however she was 
 to come upon some almost forgotten possessions.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 241 
 
 Here was some bed linen too fine for the household chest: 
 here, pinned within a towel was the Bannerman christening- 
 robe with its intricate, wonderful embroidery of thistles all 
 down the front. And beside it were a bunch of rare laces 
 tied with tape and an infant's scarlet slipper. 
 
 But the real find was a shawl which Joanna had never 
 seen before. Had she set eyes on it, even in her earliest 
 childhood, she was sure she could not have forgotten it. 
 Folded up, it had taken very little space in the drawer, for 
 it was woven all of silk thread, and its deep fringe was of 
 ivory colored silk. But the pulses of its finder quickened as 
 she shook the foreign thing out into a great gay square. It 
 more than covered Juley's double bed with its rich, mellowed 
 whiteness, and there were flowers and leaves all over it big 
 blotches of scarlet and yellow and blue flowers, and little 
 blue-green leaves that interlaced, and tendrils that were 
 purplish, almost black, between. 
 
 When she had looked her fill at it Joanna folded it again and 
 put it on the top of a separate pile which had been growing 
 steadily at one particular corner of the bed. 
 
 IX 
 
 On Friday, the day before the vans were expected, Joanna 
 told the astonished but grateful Janet that she might sleep 
 till Monday at a sister's house. She would only be asked to 
 come for some hours to Collessie Street the next day. Lin- 
 net had already found a bed with friends, and the Boyds were 
 taking it for granted that Joanna would come to them. 
 
 On the Saturday morning she was very early astir. The 
 transcendent assurance of the preceding days still possessed 
 her, and she felt finely strung, alert, complete mistress of 
 herself and of those about her, a perfectly adjusted instru- 
 ment. 
 
 Up and down stairs she followed the burdened, staggering 
 men, carried out many of the things herself, was there ready 
 with a cloth when a few drops of rain fell upon the drawing- 
 room cabinet as it stood on the pavement. 
 
 She was hovering on the pavement, inspecting the half- 
 packed vans and thinking how poor and undignified even the 
 most cherished pieces of furniture appeared under the open 
 sky, when Louis came up behind her, and touched her and 
 spoke.
 
 242 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 He was hungry and thirsty for a sight of her, he said; and 
 his eyes bore out his words as they rested by turns on her 
 flushed face, her little head which she had bound from the dust 
 with a green and yellow handkerchief, her old brown skirt 
 half covered with a black apron. Might he come and see her 
 to-night? Where would she be? Would she be alone? When 
 and where would she ever be alone? There was something 
 in his face as he pressed her (she did not take it for shame) 
 that made him look a little brutal; but his brutality was 
 something she could exercise. She would be waiting for him 
 in the evening at the new house. Alone? Yes, if it could be. 
 But he must go away now. When he had gone she fled 
 indoors and stood for a minute in one of the empty rooms, 
 very still and white, with her hands clasped. 
 
 Later, when all was done, and she and Janet were drink- 
 ing a last cup of tea in the stripped parlor, using the window- 
 sill as a table, Mamie Boyd arrived. 
 
 " How fresh you do look ! " she exclaimed as she kissed 
 Joanna, " More as if you had been having a holiday than a 
 flitting! But you must be feeling quite worn out all the 
 same. I'll wait with you as long as there's anything to do. 
 Mother says I'm not on any account to come home without 
 you." 
 
 While Mamie entered into a long explanation of why she 
 had not been able to turn up earlier, Joanna was in an un- 
 reasoning terror. Would the Boyds somehow coerce her into 
 coming to them? The image was absurd but she could see 
 herself being dragged by force past the door of the new house 
 and over the bridge to High Kelvin Place. 
 
 By what excuses she managed presently to shake Mamie off 
 she could never afterwards remember. She did it however 
 without giving any definite promise, and almost pushed her 
 too hospitable friend down the front steps. Soon afterwards 
 Janet also departed having made the feeblest of protests. 
 
 Left to herself Joanna went slowly from room to room of 
 the empty house in a mute farewell. Here, under this roof 
 she had spent her childhood and adolescence, and in leaving 
 it she knew she was leaving her first youth behind. She had 
 loved this house as well as hated it and was prepared for some 
 emotion of melancholy on the occasion of departure. But 
 no such sentiment would rise in her. Her spirit had already 
 taken flight forward to a riper phase of life, and she was glad
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 243 
 
 of it, and only glad. Without a single pang she took leave of 
 the despoiled, sad walls. 
 
 At La France Quadrant, when the unloaded vans had driven 
 off with the men asprawl and joking inside, Joanna was able 
 at last to shut the door upon staring humanity which had all 
 day been so interested hi her and her belongings. It was a 
 relief. 
 
 She sat down on a packing-case in the still crowded hall. 
 The new electric wiring had not yet been connected, and in the 
 dusk of the spring evening the round stone pillars on either 
 side of her might have been tree-trunks. The confused shad- 
 ows from the laburnum outside were thrown on the glass panel 
 and fanlight of the front door. She listened intently. The 
 house was utterly still, and from outside she could hear no 
 sound but the faint, determined rushing of the stream far down 
 where it passed by the flint mill. She was cut off now from 
 the rest of the world, remote and alone, waiting in a dense 
 forest: and she felt a little afraid. 
 
 But once she had left the hall, going to the back of the 
 house she began to be busy as a bird is busy with its nest. 
 Already in one of the rooms each piece of furniture was 
 in its place, the windows were curtained, and even some rugs 
 had been unrolled upon the bare floor. Now Joanna fetched 
 fuel from the kitchen, for the evening was cool, almost frosty, 
 and when the fire had burned up she drew the curtains and 
 began to unpack by candlelight. 
 
 For the last forty-eight hours she had been planning for 
 this. Every least thing had been thought of beforehand. She 
 was of those who ever desire material fitness and she had 
 discovered the same desire in Louis also. It was one of the 
 many bonds between their natures. In a suit-case she had 
 put together the few fami! possessions which had seemed to 
 her worthy of her lover's e e, and it did not take her long to 
 dispose these. The result was far enough from the perfect 
 beauty she longed for, but as she looked round upon her work 
 she had a strong feeling of pleasure. In the flickering light of 
 fire and candles it was a room prepared for the beloved and 
 therefore lovely. For the first time Joanna was alive to the 
 clear sincerity of design in the high silver candlesticks which 
 had been a presentation to Horatio Bannerman from the St.
 
 244 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 jude's congregation on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his 
 ministry and the foreign shawl, spread as a coverlet upon the 
 wide mahogany couch gave a glamor. 
 
 Then, putting on her hat, and fingering the latch-key in 
 her pocket and to be quite sure she had it safe, she went out to 
 the shops. 
 
 More than once during her errands there she asked herself 
 what she was doing. She had no remembrance of having 
 planned this. It was as though she were blindly carrying out 
 the orders of another. But in one place there was a clock which 
 pointed to half-past seven, and straight on that panic seized 
 her. Louis, if he got no further message, was to be with her 
 soon after eight, to sup with her. This sudden knowledge, as 
 it seemed, sent her hastening toward home again. The par- 
 cels she had bought kept slipping precariously through her 
 trembling fingers. 
 
 " I can still change my mind," she told herself as she plod- 
 ded back in an agony to the house, " or something may have 
 prevented him so that he won't come in any case I have only 
 to tell him to go," and a wild aloof amusement shot through 
 her at the thought that she might simply not open the door 
 if he came. 
 
 But on her return to the Quadrant where the house was the 
 last in a short, blind row, she saw that some one stood there. 
 Her heart thudded sickly. In spite of the uncertain light, 
 she recognized the figure of Mrs. Boyd, Mrs. Boyd! 
 
 She had only to walk on, to call out, and she was saved! 
 But she neither spoke nor went forward. Instead -she re- 
 treated with bird-like swiftness into a lane immediately upon 
 her right, and there waited and watched, thanking the dim 
 stars that the arrival had been during her absence from the 
 house. Had she been in she must have been caught. 
 
 Meanwhile the old lady, after gazing reproachfully at the 
 dark windows from the pavement, reascended the steps and 
 rang the door-bell with vigor. Joanna heard it screech in 
 its socket, once, twice; and between while she heard the visitor's 
 knuckles rapping sharply upon the glass pane of the door. 
 Almost five minutes passed, and the girl in hiding, though 
 her reason told her it was merely a question of waiting, was 
 half dead with fear. 
 
 At last Mrs. Boyd gave it up and walked slowly away, pass- 
 ing the nearer end of Joanna's lane, and now and then looking
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 245 
 
 back as if she still expected the house to give some sign. And 
 Joanna pressed her body closer against the wall and kept quite 
 still. 
 
 No sooner had she drawn a breath freely, than heavy foot- 
 steps coming up the lane from the far side struck a fresh 
 terror into her. It was a policeman. He looked curiously 
 at her as he passed, only seeing her face as a pale triangle be- 
 neath her hat, and under his official glance she clutched her 
 purchases as if they were stolen goods. Her fingers were 
 stiff with the dragging strings, and the wet stalks of a bunch 
 of anemones had soaked through her gloves. 
 
 By this time, however, she knew that Mrs. Boyd must be 
 well round the corner, so she made bold to leave the lane. The 
 policeman on burly guard at the mouth of it followed her move- 
 ments furtively and she could hardly endure it. She had to 
 drop her parcels on the outside mat as she fumbled with chilled 
 hands for the latch-key. But at last she was in, and at once 
 she sank down in security. 
 
 Vanished now was her mirage of serenity, gone her exhilara- 
 tion. She felt stripped, dislocated, defenceless. And it was 
 Louis who had brought her to this! She hated and blamed 
 him bitterly. 
 
 But immediately upon her blame rose the clear, unsum- 
 moned memory of his face as she had first seen it. His face 
 swam up at her out of the fog of reproachful thought, and under 
 his teasing smile she read as never before his sadness and 
 dissatisfaction. 
 
 Thought followed thought then that softened and calmed 
 her. Having put her anemones in water she remembered 
 that she had eaten scarcely anything since the morning. She 
 must have food at once and a change of clothes, must wash 
 the dust and weariness from her skin. 
 
 Before going out she had put on a kettle which now boiled 
 noisily. The firelit room was peaceful, and she devoured some 
 sandwiches with relish. 
 
 She was standing in the bathroom with her dress off, dry- 
 ing her neck and arms all fresh from the steaming water 
 when the front door bell rang. She stared reassuringly up 
 at herself in the little fixed mirror over the basin, for her 
 heart seemed to have stopped. She heard the sound of her 
 own blood winnowing in her ears, saw her eyes dilated and 
 shining. And in that instant she knew she had come from
 
 246 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 marriage immune; she was giving herself as a sealed and 
 virgin fountain into the hands of Louis. He, a man, might 
 never know it, but it was true, and she was glad. 
 
 Flying back as she was, in her white petticoat and little 
 white, sleeveless under-bodice, to the firelit room, she 
 snatched the shawl off the couch and wrapped herself in it 
 hurriedly. The bell in the basement pealed a second time. 
 That it should sound a third time was not to be borne. A 
 gay figure, she sped across the dark hall. Noiseless she went 
 on stocking foot, trailing the long white fringes of the shawl 
 behind her. 
 
 Yes, it was he! He had taken off his hat. As Joanna 
 darted forward between the pillars which were like the trunks 
 of beech-trees, she could see his shadow on the glass of the 
 door. Against the thread-like, waving tangle of the laburnum, 
 his head showed like a satyr's, eager and suffering. His 
 suffering pierced her breast like a joyous spear. 
 
 She opened to him, and in a close, speechless embrace they 
 leaned against the inner side of the door till the catch went 
 home. Louis knew without asking that they were alone to- 
 gether in the house. 
 
 But Joanna, drawing back for a moment, saw that in his 
 face, which she would never quite forget or forgive, a look 
 of shame. In spite of all he had said to her, he was ashamed. 
 There it was in his face warring with his delight, and by this 
 dastard shame of his she herself for the moment was be- 
 trayed, was besmirched. True, it was only for a moment. 
 In the radiance of her welcome and her giving the deadly 
 thing passed from him. He became free, simple, exultant as her- 
 self. Still she had seen it; and all night it lurked like a foul 
 wolf outside the room she had prepared, the glowing secret 
 room where the lovers were creatures of pure magic to each 
 other. 
 
 Later, when she lay at rest in his hands, Joanna, still awake, 
 was lapped strangely about by thoughts of death. Now death 
 showed as beautiful to her as life, life as terrible as death. 
 And she seemed to hold the secret of existence between her 
 hollowed palms. It was a secret at once so stupendous and 
 so simple that she wondered she had been so long of finding 
 it out. 
 
 But soon her thoughts became confused, incongruous. The 
 glowing coals crumbled downwards on the hearth with a quiet,
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 247 
 
 grating sound. The ceiling leapt to an arch of guarding flame. 
 Flames like sentinels sprang into being around the walls. 
 They kept all shameful wolves away with their brandished 
 swords. Whatever was to come after, she and Louis could 
 sleep unscathed here. This innermost chamber, the very 
 kernel of fire was their safe hiding place.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WHAT followed was a path into the unknown and a path 
 unexpectedly solitary. 
 
 It surprised, at first it frightened her that she was to get 
 so little help from Louis. Without a doubt his presumed 
 greater knowledge of life had been one of the powerful ele- 
 ments attracting her to him. With his advantages of age, 
 experience, circumstances, he seemed to her to move surely 
 in that fabulous world of mammon for which she had so 
 hungered as a child and had not yet attained. For her he 
 personified not only that for which the little green door in 
 the wall of La Porziuncola had stood as the symbol, but also 
 the finely decked luncheon table of Aunt Georgina. And be- 
 tween these two extremes of illicit adventure and conventional 
 elegance (utterly dependent as they are one upon the other) 
 lay the whole wondrous realm which is Society, which 
 is aestheticism, which is history, which is the multi-colored, 
 solid-seeming fruit of human civilization. For a complexity 
 of reasons, provincial and individual, the girl had always felt 
 herself deprived of this traditional world. Now in Louis she 
 was to possess it. 
 
 Yet they had not been lovers a week before she knew this 
 same Louis powerless to direct their love's course. It was 
 like being at sea with a companion whose sole idea of sea- 
 manship was to let drift. She could not easily grasp what 
 was the truth, that to Louis also, because of her being as she 
 was, their situation was essentially without precedent. Still 
 less did she understand albeit she was compelled to act 
 upon it the curious fact that Louis was clutching like a 
 drowning man at her spiritual certitude. It was essentially 
 the same movement as that made thirty years earlier by 
 Sholto her father towards Juley her mother. 
 
 But if Louis in himself was Joanna's fascinating symbol 
 for the greatly coveted world of mammon down the ages, 
 there was that in the contigencies of their coming together 
 
 348
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 249 
 
 which answered with equal strength to the opposite need of 
 her nature. He was not merely the fruit, he was forbidden: 
 therefore in partaking she gratified her lust for rebellion and 
 for sacrifice, for rejection of and by the world. This it was 
 which had stirred in her long ago when she kissed the blind 
 woman. But now the two opposing passions, the high bar- 
 barian pride of life and the deep Christian pride of humili- 
 ation, were mounting together to fulfilment. All the long 
 contact with her lover was colored by them. It was the first 
 that held sway over her imagination. It was the second that 
 vitally governed her actions. The second too insinuated itself 
 like some exquisite drug into every sensual abandonment 
 (not for nothing is it that the most desperate of sinners are 
 the quickest to comprehend Christ's message). 
 
 And thus from the beginning she was careless of discovery. 
 She wished if possible to spare her mother, and to this end, 
 as also for convenience, could lie and scheme without scruple. 
 But really she was indifferent to outside opinion, and it was 
 probably this indifference that was answerable for the unfail- 
 ing success of her schemes and her lies. Confidences apart, 
 if one is at no pains to keep the truth from people they will 
 scarcely ever suspect it. 
 
 True, there was something in Carl Nilsson's looks that be- 
 trayed him as a possible exception. But of this Joanna was 
 glad. She often longed to speak to him of her life and her 
 strange solitude; but his own descretion kept her mouth shut. 
 Phemie she would have told, had Phemie been in Glasgow; 
 but the information could not be committed to writing, and 
 there was no one else in whom she wanted to confide. 
 
 In the absence of human counsellors she instinctively tried 
 prayer. For a time it would often happen that while the 
 mother was kneeling by her bedside, the daughter knelt also 
 by hers, only a thin wall of lath and plaster dividing them 
 as they sought along the same road for guidance and strength. 
 And without doubt strength was given her of a kind. In- 
 variably she rose from her prayers happier, more serene, with 
 reinforced endurance. But it was a sacrificial, deathly endur- 
 ance, full of the exaltation of humility, exuding tenderness, 
 pity and forgiveness towards Louis. And though it lifted 
 and puffed up her spirit, somehow Joanna knew it was not 
 good. She knew that such praying was a subtle indulgence 
 and intoxication that she were better to abstain from. Some
 
 250 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 day she might learn another way of prayer. Meanwhile 
 she thought she had gained a greater understanding of her 
 mother's daily failure. 
 
 Probing for help in other directions, the girl now applied 
 herself for the first time in her life with real eagerness to the 
 world of books. Not till now had she apprehended the vital 
 relation between that world and the. world of actuality. And 
 as it came home to her like a startling discovery she took to 
 searching out in novels and biographies the cases that had 
 anything in common with hers. 
 
 Unluckily the men and women in print were either so much 
 nobler than Louis and she, or so much more depraved, or their 
 circumstances were so entirely different, that their experience 
 gave little help. She awoke in the process, however, to what 
 had scarcely existed for her before human character as 
 distinguished from elementary emotions. It was one of Pen- 
 der's fads that he could compose with greater freedom as 
 well as more concentration if some one read aloud while he 
 worked; and Joanna, delighted by every new use he found 
 for her, grew apt in the choice of books for that purpose. He 
 liked her voice, was soothed by it, and often for long stretches 
 she would hardly know how far any of the sense was reach- 
 ing him through his primary absorption. But she was always 
 re-assured in time by some sceptical or approving interjection. 
 Best of all she was pleased when she could lead him on to the 
 eager discussion of some point of conduct. They quarrelled 
 most deeply over tragedy. 
 
 " People are like that," was his shrugging comment on the 
 catastrophe in Anna Karenina: and he only smiled and went 
 on painting when Joanna, with a whitening face, insisted that 
 Anna could have saved the situation. 
 
 That was in the Carmunnock studio, now their securest 
 meeting place. It was for their hours together there that 
 Joanna particularly lived. Louis had taken it on a yearly 
 tenancy; for though he went often to London and abroad, 
 staying away for months on end, Glasgow had for the time 
 become his working head-quarters. The first panel and lunette 
 in the City Chambers were finished some while ago, it was 
 true, and it seemed doubtful whether he would be asked 
 to do others there; but to his amused pleasure a brewer with 
 a castle on Loch Lomond had commissioned him (having seen 
 the panel) to decorate the ancestral billiard-room. Between
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 251 
 
 whiles he painted some portraits of Glasgow people (includ- 
 ing Mrs. Tullis, of whom Joanna was secretly jealous, quite 
 without cause) and in these portraits he experimented for the 
 first time in realism. Whenever he wanted her, Joanna sat 
 to him. 
 
 She lived for their hours together, but she lived at any 
 rate during that first year in trepidation. 
 
 " My dear one! How nice you look to-day! " If that were 
 his greeting all was well. Louis would then be a god to her 
 and a revelation. She loved the way he would speak of the 
 wonders of the body. " Every inch of you full of pores and 
 ducts and odds and ends of things to make you live," as he 
 put it. And he made her see what a marvel of balance it 
 was that one could stand upright. " I think myself, you 
 know," he had told her one day, looking at her very boyishly, 
 " that a man has no right to go near a woman unless he feels, 
 for the moment at least, that she's a goddess. I certainly feel 
 so for you. On my word, Joanna, every time we meet it is a 
 fresh adventure and you show me a new charm." 
 
 But it was not always like this with them. Joanna had 
 learned to search his face swiftly as they met, and she kept 
 the ears of a newt for his first utterance. She soon came to 
 know and dread the comprehensive, slightly incredulous glance 
 with which he could sum her up afresh. An unfortunate 
 hat at such times could make him, it almost seemed, revise 
 his whole opinion of her. And Joanna was not always happy 
 in her hats. Once, in desperation at the prospect of a spoiled 
 afternoon which she had read in his cool eyes, she had tossed 
 the offending thing of straw and flowers high into a tree in 
 the park where they had just met. But instead of sticking 
 there, it had tumbled from branch to branch and down into 
 the dust at their feet. And to her inexpressible mortification 
 Louis, taking no pains to hide his annoyance, had made her 
 put it on again. 
 
 And later on that same day he had ground her mercilessly 
 between the mill-stones of his self-distrust and his rancor 
 against life. 
 
 " Though I loathe things as they are, he confessed " I 
 don't really know what I want what kind of life." 
 
 Already that afternoon he had spat contempt at his work 
 and harped on his middle-agedness with a peculiar disgust 
 that sent despair like a shudder through Joanna's very flesh.
 
 252 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 Now, as his deepset bitterness welled up in him, he struck 
 out at her and at himself with equal savagery. 
 
 " I suppose I'm a coward," he girded. " Well, what's to 
 be done about it? If it's a hero you want, better have noth- 
 ing more to do with me. It isn't too late. I've really done 
 you no harm, have I? My advice to you is leave the old 
 ship in time. Take a lesson from the rats, my dear. The 
 worst of it is you are not of the rat tribe. You'd stick to me, 
 I do believe. Why are you so good? I don't think I want 
 you to be so good. It only makes things worse for me." 
 
 By experience Joanna knew that whatever she might say 
 would be wrong in reply to this outburst; so she kept silent. 
 It was in these tormented hours that she loved Louis most 
 poignantly. But she was like a mother quite alone with a 
 sick, deliriously fractious child when there is no doctor within 
 miles. She would have done or given anything to restore 
 him, would have foregone her sex if that had been possible 
 (and sometimes she had the strange feeling that he desired 
 this of her); but she could not tell his malady, and so was 
 helpless. 
 
 When they had parted thus, she would wander in a limbo 
 of blind and suffering endurance till their next meeting. Where 
 was it, she questioned herself, that she failed him? And 
 again, how could she do aught but fail him so long as he 
 would not take her wholly, wholly give himself? Engirdled 
 by the flames of La France Quadrant they had rushed together 
 to assuage their immediate, mutual need, and she had fan- 
 cied herself at last possessed. But with the dawn of the next 
 day she had known that Louis no more than Bob, no more 
 than Mario, had made her his. Nor had he committed him- 
 self to her. (This, though their love had emerged only the 
 sweeter and the freer from that first embrace.) Dimly she 
 realized that such a union as she desired beyond all desires was 
 what her mother had in vain craved from her father through 
 all the years of a marriage physically fruitful. Was it some- 
 thing that only women desire? Did men fear and avoid the 
 consummation of spirit it was bound to bring? Or was it, 
 whispered the sceptic in her, a lovely delusion? There were, 
 one must believe, certain false dreams will o' the wisps 
 which could lead the spirit disastrously astray. Was this 
 such a dream? 
 
 But no! The absolute denial at least must be set aside.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 253 
 
 For there was Phemie's achievement with the unlikely Jim- 
 mie. Joanna could not tell how the knowledge had come to 
 her that Phemie and Jimmie possessed the valid promise of 
 what she herself desired. But there it was. She was sure of 
 it. Could it be simply that it was a possession not given to 
 such as herself, or to such as her mother? 
 
 All these wistful questionings, however, were apt to be dis- 
 sipated by the next meeting, when Louis would be gay, lov- 
 ing, apparently at peace *with the world. It seemed to 
 Joanna then that if she were to suffer for ever, it would be 
 light payment for the treasure he poured out to her. Then 
 his superior age, his sex, his mind, were things for her to 
 worship, not to wrestle with. She loved it that his judge- 
 ments made her own seem petty and at fault, that he was 
 kinder to human nature, more tolerant than she. 
 
 Also his richness of talent filled her with admiration. He 
 had the tricks of music and of mimicry could play by ear 
 upon the piano with a sure delicate touch, could make his 
 beloved rock with laughter by his beautifully sensitive imita- 
 tion of a penguin in a hurry. 
 
 Or he would improvise a super-solemn dialogue on ART 
 between Mrs. Lovatt and Val Plummer. His power of obser- 
 vation alone was a miracle to Joanna. During their very 
 first meeting, he had shocked her by his oblivions. Now she 
 became fully awake to her own dream-wrapt egoism. To 
 please him and in emulation too she had begun to notice, 
 to discover as if with new eyes the little, significant things 
 of daily life. Also a sense of humor, long dormant, was prick- 
 ing up in her like green blades in spring. 
 
 Was not this in itself a kind of consummation? It was 
 certainly growth. And it brought with it so strong a sense 
 of well-being that Joanna, sunning her unfolding petals, easily 
 doubted the conclusions of sadder hours. Indeed the joy 
 of a purely intellectual flowering is savored all the more keenly 
 because of the dark, unregarded fruits of death which are 
 quietly ripening alongside. 
 
 n 
 
 Joanna and Linnet had formed one of those fluctuating 
 friendships which may blossom at any time between two of 
 the same family especially when conditions in that family 
 are becoming more and more impossible, and complete disin-
 
 254 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 tegration is at hand. The feeling between them had budded 
 on that morning of Georgie's arrival, in the moment of dis- 
 may when Joanna had seen Linnet come out rumpled and lack- 
 lustre from his bedroom. Then during the hours of waiting 
 on the quay, when they had shared the burden of their mother, 
 the two had sent out signals to each other, signals of claim 
 and distress, as might two sailors marooned upon neighbor- 
 ing islands. 
 
 For a while, however, nothing had come of it. Joanna was 
 far too much absorbed in her love, and her energies were too 
 completely engaged in withstanding her lover's strange, re- 
 current exhaustions, to have anything to spare for her brother. 
 
 Yet is was through Louis that in due time the fleeting 
 friendship was brought to flower. 
 
 They had been lovers a year, and Joanna was suffering from 
 one of Louis's long absences, when she began with all the vig- 
 or of her awakened faculties, to handle a situation which till 
 now had found her quite at its mercy. Of late something 
 different from endurance (either of the stoical or the Christian 
 variety) had stiffened itself in her. She knew that if she could 
 not bring about a change between Louis and herself misery 
 must ensue for both. And all that was most robust in her 
 nature rose in a sudden demand for happiness, for happiness 
 and fair play. 
 
 At the moment she was certainly miserable. It was the 
 seventh time that Louis by his going had left her to an 
 empty existence in Glasgow. That was what it had come to. 
 Existence without him was a mere shell, a semblance, a wait- 
 ing. Yet it appeared from his letters, that he all the while 
 was contriving to lead a full enough, real enough life away from 
 her. He spoke torturingly of his boys and their doings, of 
 pleasant hours passed with friends, of successful parties in 
 the newly decorated studio at Campden Hill. True, he wrote 
 that things were only endurable because of her being there 
 in the background, that they would be intolerable were 
 it not for the thought of their next meeting. And Joanna 
 was happy in knowing that he meant what he said. But it 
 was not enough. Besides, if she in return were to write of 
 her hideous loneliness, he would be sure to reply in the dis- 
 tressed and powerless tone which she most dreaded. His 
 only suggestion made for the hundredth time- would be that 
 she should come to London to live, as there he thought things
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 255 
 
 would be easier for them both. As if she herself were not 
 working towards London incessantly! But it would take 
 time as he knew. He knew she had promised her mother 
 to stay at home for at least another year until some satisfac- 
 tory household arrangement could be come by. Meanwhile 
 she needed other comfort than that they should take things 
 as they came, remain cheerful in absence, make the best of 
 their hours together. 
 
 It wasn't fair! Joanna had accepted it, borne with it, even 
 hugged it for twelve months and more. But it wasn't fair! 
 With a single irrevocable movement her characteristic sense 
 of balance righted her! 
 
 And upon that conviction followed a definite withdrawal of 
 her tenderest self from Louis. If he would not have love 
 then let it be war. It was curious how her instinctive pro- 
 cedure tallied outwardly with his unwelcome advice. She 
 set about the separate, defiant enrichment of her own 
 life. 
 
 And this was where Linnet, among other things, came in. 
 
 For in that separate, defiant enrichment of hers to which 
 Louis had driven her, Joanna grasped at any emotional 
 activity that offered. 
 
 She had known that Linnet had a lot of friends whom he 
 never brought home, though it was with them he spent his 
 spare time and all his holidays. She had known this, but it 
 had not concerned her. Now, as she hardened self-defen- 
 sively towards Louis, her shoot of tenderness for Linnet was 
 enlarged. For the first time she really listened, encoura- 
 ging his confidence, and in so doing became in some measure 
 involved. It was clear that her brother and she and Louis 
 all suffered from the same manie de la grandeur. The form 
 only was different with Linnet. 
 
 All his friends were newly-rich. The girls were solidly 
 material in their worldliness and inclined to be fast. The 
 young men drank champagne with their luncheon at the 
 " North British," made a point of being seen about with the 
 musical comedy star of the moment from London, and had 
 always some "gemble " or other on hand at the Stock Ex- 
 change. They lived in suburban villas and had other villas 
 at the coast. They kept motors and racing yachts. To 
 Joanna their lives appeared ugly and on the whole vapid; 
 but to her new powers of observation nothing human came
 
 256 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 amiss. In some curious way too the mere fact of their wealth 
 served her with Louis. Never meeting them, he learned of their 
 doings only through Joanna's talk and letters, and he was 
 childishly impressed and perturbed by the growing incident 
 in her life apart from himself. 
 
 But what interested her to the point of anxiety was the 
 transformed Linnet she now saw. It was evident that the 
 Howdens, the Rintouls, the Bells and the rest (there were 
 not above six families in this particular set) could not quite 
 accept young Bannerman (" Linty " as they called him) 
 as one of themselves. True, he dressed like them, like them 
 wore his hat well back on his head, and shared in all their 
 pursuits. But he was never able to invite them to his house, 
 and always in his background there was the consciousness of a 
 mother eccentric in ways prohibitive to the Bells, the Rintouls, 
 and the Howdens. Sc it had come that Linnet, himself 
 excruciatingly subject to his disabilities, had taken the only 
 way open to his nature. He had traded on the family eccen- 
 tricity, and in the circle he desired to enter, had constituted 
 himself as clown. He had only to meet one of his gay friends, 
 Joanna noticed, to be electrified into an almost frightening 
 animation. Her heart ached for him as she watched him wave 
 his arms about, and listened to his outrageous speeches. But 
 what touched her to something deeper than pity was the un- 
 conscious isolation and contempt that lay beneath his fooling. 
 He had succeeded in his aim. His friends rewarded his queer 
 physical abandonment with laughter and a special kind of 
 affection that apparently gratified him. He was both popu- 
 lar and privileged. But his sister descerned in him something 
 of the wistful, increative solitude which she had obscurely felt 
 in her popular father. " A queer fish " his friends called him, 
 and it was so he liked to think of himself. But as yet 
 he had no being save in the shoal, and thus, not belonging 
 there, had less being than they. 
 
 On his tentative introduction of Joanna, Linnet took a 
 slightly altered place hi his friend's estimation and conse- 
 quently in his own. 
 
 She was " uncommon looking," said the girls, and one of 
 the Howden boys went so far as to fall in love with her for 
 a whole fortnight. She tried to believe herself amused by 
 this new. phase of life, threw herself into it, and had the 
 momentary satisfaction of rousing Fender's possessive instincts.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 257 
 
 But it could not last long. Before many weeks had passed 
 she knew that Linnet was the only one among her new ac- 
 quaintances to claim her sympathy, and the mushroom growth 
 of her intimacy with the Howdens, the Bells and the Rintouls 
 died rapidly away. 
 
 After all there were other things and far less tiresome that 
 would answer the same end. 
 
 There was her work. She had discovered that Louis took 
 an odd pride in her capacity to earn any money whatsoever. 
 Accordingly she set herself to earn more, and soon with her 
 fashion plates, and an evening class for teachers which she 
 took twice a week at the School of Art she was making from 
 5 to 10 a month. This had the added advantage of bring- 
 ing London nearer. Not that she had started saving as yet 
 for that end. To Juley's grief all her daughter's money went, 
 with an increasing extravagance of ideas, on self adornment. 
 Nothing at this time was too good for Joanna, and she became 
 noticeably elegant in her dress. Poor Juley had long and 
 desperate confabulations with Eva Gedge over the child's 
 growing worldly-mindedness. 
 
 m 
 
 A happier thing came when Carl Nilsson one day suggested 
 that Joanna should go riding with him. In her immediate, 
 joyful agreement she certainly had Louis again in mind, but 
 she had also in mind her beloved rough-coated pony of the 
 Duntarvie days. The idea in itself, that is, was congenial. 
 Here was something far better worth spending one's money 
 upon than anything to be had in the shops. And extrava- 
 gance in clothing one's body appeared suddenly as a bore 
 and a vulgarity to be dropped with Linnet's friends. 
 
 And after a few lessons in the great brown-befogged riding 
 school which smelt of tan and ammonia, and echoed like a 
 bath with raised voices and the thud of hoofs, Joanna became 
 a good enough horse-woman. As she hastened to the mount- 
 ing place her heart would flutter in her breast with delight. 
 Her shining face on horseback often made Nilsson look at 
 her with his sidelong inquisitive gaze that was yet all friend- 
 liness, but when she asked him what was wrong he would 
 only smile, praise her seat, and watch her cheeks brighten 
 still more. 
 
 Henceforward she had few happier hours than those in
 
 258 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 which Carl and she went riding into the country together. 
 Sometimes they would not start till Carl had done his morning's 
 work, and on these days they would soberly jog out fifteen 
 miles or so, probably in the direction of Killearn, alighting 
 there at an inn for a dish of steak and onions better than any 
 other steak and onions in the world. At other times they 
 would wait until the later afternoon and go simply for a gallop 
 in the fields about MUngavie. But Joanna liked it best on a 
 Saturday: for then they could start very early, posting through 
 the dark and misty autumn dawns, and pushing their way up 
 through sopping little woods to high ground that they might 
 canter forward to meet the rising sun. And it was after 
 these rides that they went in just as they were, glowing and 
 bespattered with mud and dew, to Sangsters for what Carl 
 called " a hunter's breakfast " porridge with cream, kid- 
 neys and bacon, toast and " baps " and " special " coffee, 
 with a bottle of Graves to stand by. They were really merry, 
 these hunters' breakfasts. Though a table was kept apart 
 for the riders, they always took possession of the place (half 
 empty at that hour) with their rollicking spirits, and the wait- 
 resses seemed to participate. Carl had a ringing laugh that 
 made the other late breakfasters or early lunchers turn their 
 heads. 
 
 So it was that tales went round, and one day Eva Gedge 
 reported the affair to Juley in such a manner that Juley un- 
 willingly felt it laid upon her to remonstrate with Joanna. 
 We ought, said she, to " avoid the appearance of evil." She 
 herself " knew her children too well to listen for a moment 
 to foolish gossip," but " dear Joanna must remember that she 
 was still young and a widow, and it had pleased God to give 
 her good looks beyond the average." At this most rare parental 
 allusion to outward appearances Joanna stared. But she only 
 kissed her mother with reassuring affection and went on her 
 way. 
 
 The stables from which they hired their horses had been 
 private at one time to a family mansion. This still stood at 
 some distance, (the stables being on the outskirts of the 
 grounds at a far corner) empty these several years and now 
 waiting, blackly and squarely forlorn, for its demolition. But 
 for some reason its surrounding gardens had been kept care- 
 fully tended: and especially before the early morning rides, 
 when the grass and bushes were still gray with dew, Joanna
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 259 
 
 keenly enjoyed the short cut which might be made by pass- 
 ing diagonally across the sloping lawns and shrubberies. 
 
 It was on of these mornings that a new element was 
 added to her pleasure in riding. 
 
 There had been a hoar frost the night before, whitening the 
 grass, the trees, the high walls and railings, and Joanna cross- 
 ing by herself to the stables with her skirt held up, left a 
 trail of dark footprints behind her. There were no other 
 tracks, so she knew she was the first to arrive. She could 
 hear the groom chirruping beyond the stable wall, and the 
 noise of nervous hoofs on the cobbles as he saddled the hacks 
 sounds that usually made her quicken her pace with an eager 
 springing forward of her whole body. But on this morning 
 she continued to walk slowly and without looking about her. 
 She was absorbed entirely in the news received the night 
 before, that Louis was on his way back to Glasgow. He was 
 returning after a longer absence than usual, returning from 
 Paris. She would see him the next day. His letter, full of 
 devotion and hunger for her, was between her breasts at this 
 moment, pressed close there by her buttoned-up riding-coat. 
 And her heart was contracted with desperate longing and 
 fear and joy. 
 
 But somebody was shouting her name. It was Carl, lower 
 down in the garden behind her. She smiled automatically 
 and turned round with a friendly gesture of greeting. This 
 however was arrested midway, and her uplifted hand in its 
 leather glove clutching a little riding-switch, dropped quickly 
 to her side again. 
 
 For Carl was not alone. Lawrence Urquhart was with 
 him and dressed for riding. 
 
 Joanna was angered. As the two men came towards her, 
 crisping with their boots through the short, brittle grass, she 
 blamed first Lawrence, then Carl, and she met them with a 
 blank face. Lawrence might, thought she, have kept away. 
 He must know how impossible it was to carry out in practice 
 his suggested friendship. The strain and futility of their few 
 meetings during the past year (it was now eighteen months 
 since his mother's death) should have convinced him of that. 
 And since the last meeting, so long a time had elapsed that 
 she had fancied him sensible to the situation. But here he 
 was again. And now the rides would be spoiled! 
 As for Carl he was still more to blame than Lawrence.
 
 26o OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Carl, knowing as she was sure he did, about Louis, had deliber- 
 ately invited Lawrence to join them. It was wicked of Carl: 
 no wonder he did not care to meet her gaze as he explained 
 volubly that Urquhart had been having some lessons and 
 only needed company to complete his enjoyment in the sport. 
 
 And to this tale Lawrence assented with a simplicity which 
 astonished Joanna almost out of her anger. He had kept his 
 dark eyes on her face while Carl spoke, smiling with a lively 
 but baffling candor of pleasure. There was a perfect under- 
 standing between these two male beings that was like a con- 
 spiracy against her; and she resented it all the more that they 
 were both so incomprehensible to her. 
 
 Incomprehensible they remained. But they had not ridden 
 far with her before she recovered her good humor and for- 
 gave them more than forgave them. After all sang her 
 quickened blood when they had got their beasts out of town 
 and she was giving her companions a pounding lead round the 
 gallop at the water works after all they both knew how things 
 were, and if they still liked to be in her company it was of 
 their own choice. Before starting upon another break-neck 
 round, she stole a look at Lawrence. He was only a tolerable 
 rider, but on horseback as in the dance he escaped from his 
 nervousness and was enjoying the exercise with a curious 
 kind of still excitement. Though he used no enthusiastic expres- 
 sions of pleasure Joanna knew that he had entered with her 
 and with Carl into the spirit of the morning. A dark radiance 
 emanated from him. 
 
 Soon a ride was not complete without him. 
 
 IV 
 
 To Louis Joanna made the most of these rides, and it 
 pleased her to find that he was both envious (himself no horse- 
 man, and too old, he said, to learn) and jealous of her company. 
 So now by severance was she learning to bind him to her. The 
 deep appeal for uncalculating union had failed: the sensual 
 appeal was erratic: now she was discovering a new emulative 
 relation in which the balance of power was re-established in 
 her favor. Once, laughing, Louis had told her of a French- 
 man who, when asked if he believed in platonic friendship 
 between man and woman, replied "Maisoui! Apres! " And 
 undoubtedly as time went on, more and more of their hours 
 together were hours of sheer friendliness, especially on the
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 261 
 
 part of Louis. The suffering of these friendly hours fell to 
 Joanna, but she braced herself to bear it as something inevit- 
 able. She could bear anything, thought she, seeing Louis 
 at peace. And he was often curiously peaceful in such hours. 
 
 With the paintings he did of her he remained dissatisfied, 
 and he would not finish any. But he was constantly begging 
 her to sit. 
 
 " It is strange," he exclaimed one day, " I always get 
 you better when I draw you from memory. Look at this! " 
 And he showed Joanna a brilliant little figure drawing he 
 had done quite without notes when he was in Paris. 
 
 " There is your very self," he declared, satisfied for once, 
 " your movement see that bold, beautiful action of the thigh. 
 That is you more you than the eyes in your head. And I 
 hope you admire the articulation of the knees, the fineness, 
 see there! as it also is yours my pretty one, more yours than 
 the nose on your face. Not that the face is so bad in the 
 drawing either, mind you. I've got you there too I think. 
 But of course the figure's the thing here. That's as I saw you 
 the day we took bread and cheese down to Loch Katrine: 
 do you remember? And I dared you to bathe! I'll not 
 forget how you looked, Joanna, running out to the water from 
 under those little hazel trees. I do believe I'll go on to my 
 dying day drawing you as you looked to me then." 
 
 Yet Louis did not offer her the drawing, and he took no 
 notice when she said she would love to have it. 
 
 She puzzled over this. At home, unknown to him, she 
 had a letter-case crammed with the treasured pen or pencil 
 sketches with which her lover habitually illustrated his talk- 
 scrawls done hastily on the backs of envelopes, on fly-leaves 
 torn out of books, on any scrap of paper that came handy. 
 But a serious drawing he had never given her, and there was 
 no other material gift she could have wished to have from him. 
 She had indeed been always deeply pleased, if also a little 
 piqued, at his oblivion on the subject of presents. She had 
 liked it that in their goings about he would let her pay her share 
 of things. For somehow she had known that he was not mean. 
 She also knew that in spite of the sums he was now earning, 
 sums that seemed enormous to her when he mentioned them, 
 he was often really short of money. His personal habits 
 were of the simplest, yet he was continually harassed by debt 
 of which he had a puritanical hatred. He had told her frankly
 
 262 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 that his London household was maintained in a mannner 
 beyond his means. 
 
 But all this was no reason why he should refuse her the 
 drawing she so wanted, and she now begged for it, rather 
 timidly. 
 
 Louis looked at her and moved his eyes away again. 
 
 " My wife hates me to part with any of my stuff," he said. 
 " She has some kind of notion that it is her due, that if I were 
 to die she would be provided for by having everything that 
 wasn't sold in the usual way. As we live you see I can't save 
 a halfpenny. She is queer about it perhaps but there it is. 
 One way and another I owe her a good deal, and as I've 
 been pretty filthy to her on the whole, I feel I must defer to 
 her in this." 
 
 A chasm gaped in the little silence that followed. With his 
 first words Joanna had suffered a hideous sinking of spirit. 
 The very tones of his voice seemed echoing in response to 
 some unsuspected hollowness in the world. She had a picture 
 of her lover stamping with shamefaced bravado upon a vault 
 in which his own dead body lay. Involuntarily she shut her 
 eyes for a second. But she gave no other sign or word. She 
 never again asked him for a drawing. 
 
 There were times when she felt she possessed him most in 
 absence. When he was away he was in all she did, and she 
 had increasing certitude that he felt his life vitalized by her. 
 Never a letter-writer before, he had acquired, unasked, the 
 habit of writing to her constantly and at length. He wrote 
 from London, from Paris, from New York, from Moscow 
 flowing letters like his speech, and interspersed with drawings 
 of people and things that had caught his fancy. (As his wife 
 hated travelling he generally made his journeys alone). His 
 hand-writing came to affect Joanna like his bodily presence, 
 made her tremble through her being when her eye lighted 
 upon it. And in return she filled her letters to him with 
 spontaneous but not wholly artless glamor. She knew so well 
 these days how to pique and interest him that it cost her no 
 effort, was indeed a keen excitement and enjoyment. 
 
 And their meetings became more like their letters less 
 stormy, less dependent on passion except that in his presence 
 Joanna played her part heavily burdened. Yet she believed 
 it was a part worth playing. She had always one tale to 
 tell, another tale to hear, and Louis revelled light-heartedly
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 263 
 
 in the exchange. He often questioned whether they would 
 have got one tithe of the fun and charm out of their experi- 
 ences had these been matrimonially shared. The deadliest 
 dinner party, he declared, became diverting when he had to 
 describe it to her; and the most commonplace events of her 
 life, when she recounted them to him, were bathed in the 
 light that never was by sea or land. 
 
 This then was their solution for the time. From their two 
 years as lovers they emerged as two distinct and separate 
 streams of existence. Momentarily they might and did flow 
 as one. But they were never so much in unison as when 
 they flowed apart, each sweeping outwards round a rich indi- 
 vidual curve, each rushing in an opposite direction but ever 
 onwards and ever with gathering impetus towards the next 
 brief mingling. 
 
 Meanwhile life in La France Quadrant became every day 
 more difficult. The business of housekeeping, even for so 
 small a family, was too much now for Juley. She went weighed 
 down with it, and people in the streets looked askance at her 
 unslept face and dragging gait. She had her being in a cruel 
 trough of muddle, released only when sleep overcame her, 
 or when she could pray aloud with a companion, and so keep 
 sleep at bay while she cried for succor. But she was vigorous 
 still. She could not live in the house and see herself super- 
 seded by a daughter. At the utmost she would apportion 
 only certain vague duties to Joanna; and even here she was 
 continually changing and fault-finding. At odd times, exas- 
 perating to one with work of her own to consider, she would 
 make desperate appeals for daughterly help. Yet if Joanna 
 tried unobtrusively to take some of the burden off her weary, 
 indomitable shoulders, she was apt to resent it. A " com- 
 panion " she would not hear of. " Treating me like a child or 
 an idiot in my own house! " she exclaimed at the bare sug- 
 gestion, and she would repeat the saying common with her 
 " better to wear out, than rust out." 
 
 Both the remaining children knew that a change in their way 
 of living would have to be made, and made soon. But what 
 change? And how bring it about? In the frequent debates 
 between them and their mother each was prompted by a 
 secret, personal desire, and these desires were in conflict.
 
 264 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Linnet longed to be in rooms of his own: Joanna was heading 
 for London: Juley did not know what she wanted. Pierced 
 as she was by the knowledge that her children wished to be 
 gone from her, she yet clung to the familiar. She fought 
 against any acknowledgment that it was failing her at every 
 point. 
 
 But in March came the tidings that Georgie was engaged 
 to a young man of whom she had made mention continually 
 for two years past a London doctor named Max Wyler 
 and at La France Quadrant the announcement was hailed with a 
 special excitement. Apart from its ordinary interest it intro- 
 duced a new and unexpected element into the family situation. 
 At the least it would bring about an immediate and, as it were, 
 official family conclave. For Georgie was coming home at 
 once to be married (Max, she wrote, strongly disapproved 
 of long engagements) ; and .with her and her beloved (a 
 Eugenist, she said he was) coming fresh to the problem, it 
 was felt that some solution was imminent. 
 
 And at about the same time, cousin Mabel proposed a long 
 visit. Mabel had been married for several years now in India, 
 but on this, her first visit home, was without her husband. 
 Why should not Mabel also, knowing them all as she had 
 done since childhood, have a voice in the Bannerman council? 
 
 Mabel did. She arrived looking as pretty and as shifty as 
 ever (the East had hardly affected her peach-bloom com- 
 plexion), and she was full of stories that proved how besottedly 
 her husband was in love with her. Careful she was, too, to 
 ask what had become of Bob Ranken. Subtly she smiled 
 when she heard that he prospered and that Joanna still had 
 an occasional letter from him. 
 
 And from the first Mabel was loud in her applause of the 
 fine new family plans which Georgie and her Max had evolved 
 between them, plans which were based on the separately 
 confidential letters Georgie had lately received from Joanna, 
 Linnet and her mother. (An astute man, this Max. Jewish; 
 by the irony of fate; beautifully considerate and understand- 
 ing with Juley; giving her a new lease of life by permitting 
 her to regard him in the light of a possible convert; charming 
 her with his persuasive tongue, his oriental, intelligent eyes; 
 and exercising to the full upon her that magnetism which only 
 his enemies designated as the making of a clever charlatan. 
 Clearly, even to his enemies, a future lay ahead of this tall
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 265 
 
 and willowy young Hebrew with the curly black beard. And 
 how his Georgie adored him! ) 
 
 Unfolded his plans were these. 
 
 Joanna was to have her wish and go to London: (absurd 
 that she should neglect the chances of work now offering 
 there!) But she was to go, not merely, not even primarily 
 on her own account. She was to be a forerunner. With 
 Georgie married in London the mother too would surely have 
 to make her home there before long. She must of course 
 take her own time. And while Joanna was finding her feet, and 
 at the same time keeping her eyes open for a suitable house 
 say in Hampstead (Georgie and he were to be in the Garden 
 Suburb) no doubt Mrs. Bannerman would be glad to see 
 Linnet comfortably settled in Glasgow where his lot was cast. 
 For the present, a holiday from housekeeping was essential. 
 What was to prevent Mrs. Bannerman from spending the com- 
 ing six months with her friend Eva? Had it not been her 
 lifelong desire to devote herself to mission work?. Her children 
 were now men and women. God had given her energy and 
 leisure. Many years of usefulness doubtless lay before 
 her. In London of all places, later on, when her strength 
 was restored, she could make her choice of congenial work. 
 
 How simple it all seemed after all! Delightful. And so 
 full both of common sense and piety! Mabel was almost 
 melting in her admiration of each point; Joanna and Linnet 
 rejoiced silently in their different degrees; Georgie looked 
 unspeakably proud and possessive of the new genius who had 
 deigned to confer himself on her family. Juley alone was 
 doubtful and had qualms. But even she had to agree in a 
 measure. Might not her doubts spring from lack of faith? 
 She thought of the children her own eldest born was sure to 
 bear to this man black-eyed, curly-haired babes with the 
 blood of Abraham in their tender bodies. And deep within 
 her soul the old hopes stirred afresh. 
 
 Georgie 's wedding was a bourgeois but very happy affair 
 in the drawing-room. A suitable minister had at first been 
 something of a difficulty. Unfortunately Juley at the moment 
 was in that particular stage of progression between two 
 churches which debarred her from asking a favor of the 
 pastor of either; and it had of course to be explained that the 
 new son-in-law was not more than tolerant at present of the 
 Christian religion. A young missionary, however, who had
 
 266 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 just arrived at home on a holiday from Constantinople, was 
 prevailed upon to officiate, and after that all went smoothly. 
 
 Max certainly behaved beautifully. At the way he kissed 
 Juley's hand after the simple ceremony, Mrs. Boyd shed tears 
 of joy: and seeing this, the bridegroom proceeded gallantly 
 to kiss hers also, bending his long, elegant waist before her 
 as if she were a queen. Even the laconic Linnet who gave 
 Georgie away had to admit that his brother-in-law was " a 
 very decent chap, and clever, by God! " 
 
 And some at least of the schemes suggested by Max in 
 March were being carried out in practice three months later. 
 
 By June it was actually decided that Joanna should go to 
 London. The other changes would follow; though not to 
 Linnet's mortification at once. His mother, after many 
 prayerful but not wholly satisfactory colloquies with Eva, had 
 decided to stay on with him until such time as a temporary 
 and very humble niche should be created for her by her friend's 
 kindness in the Lady Missionaries Training College. Linnet, 
 she said sadly, would have long enough by himself later on. 
 Besides for the next month or two Mabel was to be at La France 
 Quadrant. Mabel had a year to spend in England, and she 
 wished to devote a good part of that time to dear Aunt Juley. 
 And Mabel had succeeded where others had failed, in coaxing 
 Juley to hand over all the housekeeping for a few weeks at 
 least. 
 
 VI 
 
 Before she left Joanna called on Carl Nilsson to say good- 
 bye. 
 
 Louis for some months past had been in London, and with 
 Phemie gone, Carl was the only person in Glasgow to whom 
 she could really speak. 
 
 The little, grizzled artist looked rather sharply at her as, 
 with a sense of dejection, she sat down on her own special 
 chair in the studio (the same chair on which Phemie had 
 perched on the afternoon of their first meeting). But for some 
 minutes they only spoke of Phemie. On first reaching New 
 Zealand things had gone hard with her. And she had been 
 ill. But that she was happy, deeply fulfilled in her marriage, 
 both her friends were assured by the tone of her letters. 
 
 And Urquhart? Had Joanna had word lately of Urquhart 
 at all? asked Carl presently.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 267 
 
 " He was passed over you know," he told her, " for the 
 Folklore Lectureship about two months ago. Yes, an out- 
 sider got it. Had she not heard? " 
 
 But Joanna had heard nothing. It was three months or 
 more, Carl must remember, since their last ride in his com- 
 pany. Didn't Carl recall it? His horse had gone lame, and 
 Lawrence and she had had to leave him behind at Milngavie? 
 She had never ridden since that day. She had been saving 
 all her money for London. ("As if that were the reason! " 
 said Carl's eyes), and she had heard and seen nothing of Law- 
 rence since that day. She was sorry about his disappointment. 
 
 " And well may you be sorry, Signora Madonna! " agreed 
 Carl, looking as if he would gladly shake her. " I'm sorry too 
 to have lost my pleasantest companion in Glasgow. Many a 
 night has he sat where you sit now, talking with me till four 
 in the morning. Many the good bottle we have emptied too, 
 rearranging the world." 
 
 " Where what has he gone to London then? " faltered 
 Joanna with misgiving. 
 
 " No," Carl returned shor'jy, rising from his place. " No. 
 You needn't be afraid. He's in Oxford, not in London yet! 
 He has gone to " scrub " as he calls it, for Manson, the anthro- 
 pologist who soon brings out the last volume of Arcana 
 Promethea you have heard of the Arcana perhaps? a truly 
 encylopedic work on the evolution of culture, For Urquhart 
 I'm glad enough, though sorry for myself. It is work to 
 suit him. He was in the marsh here the stuff you call it? 
 stuck and stagnant. There, he may find his rock-bottom. 
 But Joanna O! my poor, stupid Joanna! And all for a 
 man that's as dead as dead! Pfui! " 
 
 At the onslaught, so unexpected and severe, Joanna flushed 
 painfully and avoided her friend's shrewd gaze. In her heart 
 there could be no misunderstanding of his words. The dead 
 man he had spoken of was not Mario, not her dead husband. 
 His words too had forced her to recall a confused but vexing 
 memory. She was compelled to re-live the last ride which, 
 owing to a mischance, had been taken alone in Lawrence's 
 company. She saw again the muddy country lanes, darkness, 
 the humid air of evening, and they framed the bitterness of a 
 young man wounded in his manhood. She winced again under 
 his reproaches. From below the hoofs of their horses, the 
 thick, glistening mud had flown up at them, blackening the
 
 268 
 
 belly of Lawrence's tall, whitish hack; and above them the 
 dripping trees had bent over the road like the wires of a steel 
 trap. How she had longed to escape from him and forget. 
 And she had escaped, was going to forget! But it was hateful 
 that Lawrence had sat in this very chair and had talked about 
 her to Carl. She wished never to see or think of Lawrence 
 again. She was sorry, of course, that he had failed to get 
 his lectureship. But she was glad, glad now without a single 
 regret, that she was going to London. There would be no 
 Carl there to reproach her. No Lawrence to love and accuse 
 her. There would only be Louis. She would go her own 
 way. No one should stop her. 
 
 END OF BOOK n
 
 BOOK III 
 
 "... Behold, I make all things new." Rev. xxl 5. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 i 
 
 JOANNA reached London on a Friday late in June. 
 She was met at Euston Station by Georgie, and carried 
 enthusiastically off to her sister's beautiful hygienic home 
 in the Garden Suburb. Without and within the house was 
 all green and white. It suggested some very pleasant kind of 
 institute rather than a personal dwelling place. Nevertheless 
 its mistress had caused the name Duntarvie to be painted 
 in clear letters upon the gate. Joanna duly admired everything. 
 
 But sincere as was this admiration of Joanna's, it was 
 in no degree of the covetous sort; and at breakfast on Satur- 
 day the elder sister was provoked to a considerable exaspera- 
 tion by the quiet obstinacy displayed by the younger on the 
 subject of lodgings. It was not, she complained, as if Joanna 
 could give any definite idea of what she did want. Why then 
 should she be so positive in her refusal even to look at the 
 rooms her brother-in-law had kindly bespoken for her, rooms 
 green and white like Georgie's own, and so nice and near in a 
 New Era boarding house opened only a week ago by one of 
 Max's enterprising friends? Joanna sat accused of prejudice 
 by both Max and Georgie. But in vain. For she admitted 
 it, and she did not see the New Era rooms. 
 
 And after luncheon she gave Georgie the slip, and within 
 an hour, as if by instinct, found herself in the region of May- 
 fair. 
 
 There she strolled about, ravished by glimpses of the Green 
 Park and deeply pleased with all she saw. Here was the old 
 order, beautiful and old-established, (a little dead perhaps at 
 the core Georgie would certainly have called it rotten) yet 
 still by Joanna unpossessed. And what a finely grained 
 modest surface it presented! Here surely was the London 
 
 269
 
 270 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 of Louis. Its appearance was extraordinarily touching to 
 her. Here she could have walked, thought she, all the after- 
 noon and evening, seeing her lover on every hand: could have 
 walked for the sheer enjoyment of looking and finding him. 
 For that she should find in this Mayfair rooms for herself 
 seemed scarcely a possibility. Louis had warned her, laugh- 
 ing, that she would most likely have to be content with Maida 
 Vale or Kilburn or West Hampstead. And he ought to know. 
 He himself lived at Campden Hill. Mayfair indeed! 
 
 It was at this very moment that Joanna drew level with 
 a break in the low line of shops which now ran opposite. 
 The break was caused by a square, rather wide archway which 
 gave vent between the shops while leaving the dwelling-houses 
 above intact. That is to say it carried a room directly over 
 it. Joanna stopped and stared intently. It was a room surely 
 enough. It had an old jutting window which was bare of 
 curtains. And in that window all Joanna's dreams of a lodg- 
 ing in London were immediately crystallized. 
 
 She crossed the road with a wildly beating heart. 
 
 She was still in Mayfair, but had slipped in her wanderings 
 into one of those little colonies of working people which are a 
 distinguishing feature of fashionable London. The more pro- 
 hibitive the quarter, the more certain one may be of finding 
 such a dependence tucked away in it; and very often, as 
 in this case, it will happen that the dependence retains a living 
 dignity and a gaiety which have some time since departed 
 from the greater houses of the neighborhood ._ 
 
 Here there was a smell of mews, and sounds of various 
 business came forth from the court to which Joanna's archway 
 gave entrance. Beneath the flat-faced old brick houses the 
 shops looked neat and prosperous, and shone with an attractive, 
 light-hearted sort of respectability. On the left hand corner 
 of the archway an open fruit stall spread itself like a down- 
 turned fan that had been painted in bright, triangular sections, 
 green and red and yellow. On the right hand corner was an 
 undertaker's. Next door was a saddler's. 
 
 But it was upon the undertaker's that Joanna concentrated 
 her attention. For in this window, positively as if created 
 by her strong desire, a card was displayed. It advertised: 
 
 Two UNFURNISHED ROOMS TO LET 
 Apply 5 Chapel Court
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 271 
 
 Several times over Joanna read this notice, and now all her 
 longing was to discover whether one of the two rooms might 
 be that above the archway. But so fearful was she of disap- 
 pointment that she remained a full minute nerving herself for 
 it. She stared at the card, at the discreetly elegant urn of 
 polished stone against which the card was propped, at the 
 three words Funerals, Cremations, Embalmings which, 
 engraved in gilt upon some oak panelling, formed a chaste 
 back-ground for the urn. Clearly a superior sort of under- 
 taker's, this. Here were no brittle but imperishable wreaths 
 under glass shades, no vaunting that Pinking and Kilting 
 were done on the premises, no china scrolls bearing in black 
 lettering the motto " Lost, but not forgotten," Reformed 
 Funerals was the reticent announcement across its plate-glass 
 front; and the dark gray urn, veined with a yet darker gray, 
 was the only decoration. 
 
 Her courage in hand, Joanna entered Chapel Court and 
 looked round it. How Louis would approve of this! Some 
 children played across the cheerful paved slope which was 
 raised on one side above the level of the few little shops so that 
 one would have to go down two or three steps to enter them. 
 They were very small shops, like toy ones a little news- 
 vendor's, a little barber's, a little public house called The 
 Bird in Hand. A washing fluttered from a sort of roof-garden 
 where somebody had every reason to be proud of the petunias, 
 perhaps still more of the nasturtiums. And the room over 
 the archway had a window looking into the court as well. If 
 only if only she might show it as her own to Louis on 
 Monday! 
 
 For till Monday she was not to see him. He was out of 
 town till then. And it was a relief. On the threshold of 
 her new life in London such a trembling had taken her. Louis 
 in Glasgow she knew. But would Louis in London be the 
 same man? Would he find her the same woman? Much, 
 she felt, depended on their first meeting. Suppose it were 
 unfortunate, one of their failures? Suppose in London he no 
 longer liked the look of her? Coming along the streets that 
 afternoon she had been studying the women with an almost 
 painful concentration of inquiry. They had a look, a some- 
 thing that she lacked, and she felt sure her lover admired 
 that something. If only she were certain, quite certain of 
 what he felt for her!
 
 272 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 As she searched for number five in the court, she recalled 
 carefully the last talk between them. 
 
 " Do you love me? " she had asked, and in the pause that 
 followed, would gladly have withdrawn her question. But it 
 was uttered now. No help for it! And she had waited 
 miserably, furious with herself and with him. 
 
 " I believe I do, worse luck for me," he had said at length, 
 giving her a quick, troubled glance. " But you needn't 
 ask what I feel for you, Joanna. You must know perfectly 
 well." 
 
 It was not the answer she hungered for, but she was thank- 
 ful he had not simply replied with an impatient " Of course I 
 do! " And there had been a ring of rueful truth in his " worse 
 luck for me." 
 
 But now she had found the door she wanted, a neat, moss- 
 green door tucked away up three crooked steps in a corner. 
 She knocked, waited, and at length heard the heavy, careful 
 feet of a child coming down the stair inside. It must be a very 
 steep stair, thought she. 
 
 The next moment the door was cautiously opened and a 
 very little boy, wearing a notably clean holland tunic, stood 
 in the narrow aperture looking up at her. 
 
 Joanna looked down at him with eyes almost as grave as 
 his own, and as she looked she hoped very much that he would 
 like her. His curious seriousness, and indeed his whole small 
 person was attractive to her. And this though there seemed 
 to be something indefinably wrong with his proportions. He 
 was not deformed, but his head looked too large for his rather 
 dwindled limbs, a fault which was accentuated by the unusual 
 thickness of his brown hair. And there was a look of premature 
 intelligence in his gray, starry eyes, seldom to be seen in the 
 eyes of a child who is not crippled. 
 
 " I saw the card in the window," said Joanna. " Is anyone 
 at home? " It took the little fellow a few moments to 
 collect himself. He had a slight hesitation in speech, but the 
 words when they came (saving that he could only pronounce 
 th as v) were exquisitely enunciated. 
 
 " My FWver is out," he said, " and my muwer is out. 
 My sister and I are at home. Muwer said she would be 
 back very soon indeed. She is just darting to the chemist's." 
 
 Joanna smiled. Perhaps, thought she, his mother is a 
 bird! The child himself, with his small figure squeezed
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 273 
 
 between the barely-opened door and the jamb, looked not 
 unlike a nestling whose wings are still absurd where flight is 
 concerned. 
 
 " Do you think I could come in and wait till Mother comes 
 back? " she asked. 
 
 "'I fink so, certainly," was the boy's well considered reply, 
 and when he had spoken he widened the aperture where he 
 stood and displayed a narrow, ladder-like stair covered with 
 polished blue linoleum spotless as his tunic. 
 
 Joanna entered marvelling at his self-possession. He could 
 not, she judged from his size, be more than six years old. 
 
 " I'm eight," he replied, however, to her question on this 
 point " and my sister is twelve. But I am small for eight," 
 he added stocially, " and she is very long indeed for twelve." 
 
 Joanna asked him his name. It was Rodney Bannister 
 Moon, he told her, which she thought a very nice, pretty name. 
 And his sister what was she called? 
 
 " She's called Miss Moon," said he. 
 
 The visitor, feeling a rebuke in the perfect, bright gravity 
 of this reply, asked no more questions. But as her host 
 stumped manfully on his short legs up the stairs in front of 
 her, he volunteered some further, and as it were pleasanter, 
 information. 
 
 " She's an invalid," he announced with great cheerfulness. 
 " Would you like to see her? She's been moving her head . 
 so nicely to-day, and when she opens her mouf I'm allowed 
 to put a little sugar in. Just a weeny, teeny grain of course, 
 or else it might choke her." 
 
 A door on the landing above stood open, and Joanna as she 
 followed the boy wondering, had a glimpse of the little sitting- 
 room to which he was leading her. It was a room (saving 
 that the rug before the fireplace was littered with fine, curi- 
 ously shaped pieces of metal) tidy to a scrupulous degree. 
 And more than tidy indeed. For there were Diirer prints 
 hung with discrimination upon the plain, lavender walls, and 
 an old diamond-paned bookcase stood opposite to the door, 
 and in a corner, also visible from the staircase, was a Heppel- 
 white music-stand with a violin-case beside it. 
 
 But once she had entered Joanna saw only a single object, 
 and it was none of these. It was a thing that lay flat on its 
 back in a wicker spinal carriage near the window. It was 
 an unhappiness from which when one perceived it, it seemed
 
 274 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 wrong not to avert one's eyes. Yet one had to look. So 
 this was Miss Moon! 
 
 Joanna looked, and looked again. She was thankful to 
 have seen, with time for recovering herself, before the mother's 
 arrival. And she was steadied by the unconcern of Miss 
 Moon's brother. 
 
 " She had a fit this morning," he was saying, making polite 
 conversation from where he was squatted on the rug, and with- 
 out looking up from his interrupted work of piecing together 
 the parts of a meccano. " When she has a fit, white stuff 
 comes out of her mouf. But my Farver says it isn't the 
 sugar really. My Farver says it is froff, like what a horse 
 gets on its bit sometimes. You see " he explained, summing 
 up " she's afflicted, that's what it is." 
 
 Joanna who had sat down in a little rocking-chair, looked 
 again at the stricken one by the window, and she looked this 
 time differently. The boy's way of regarding his sister as a 
 wonderful sort of live doll had curiously cleared and altered 
 her vision. Her first horror was gone, and looking simply, 
 a child herself for the moment, she saw that the still face was 
 beautiful. The close-cropped skull, its sharp temples so trans- 
 parent and blue-veined, was shaped for splendor, and noble 
 brows guarded the vacant, long-lashed eyes. In the piteous 
 mouth alone was any trace of suffering visible. The clear 
 eyes and forehead, the dilated nostrils, fragile as porcelain, had 
 no recollection of the pain by which they had been purged 
 into what they were. Miss Moon was like some sea-shell, 
 delicately empty, cast high upon the beach, which it has taken 
 the whole cruel ocean to blow into shape, to flute and carve 
 and lave to a foam-like whiteness. Her long surprisingly 
 long body (could it be that she was only twelve?) was 
 covered by a Jaeger rug, and no movement showed anywhere 
 saving, when the tapering, filigree fingers twitched, tinily 
 convulsive, on the woolly, fawn colored stuff. 
 
 At the sound of a latch-key downstairs, Joanna rose instinc- 
 tively from the rocking-chair. At being found here like this 
 she felt somehow guilty. 
 
 " That's my Muwer," quoth Rodney undisturbed in his 
 playing if the word " play " could be applied to anything so 
 intent as his occupation. And the next moment his mother 
 entered. 
 
 At first in the rather dim light of the room for a thunder-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 275 
 
 storm was gathering outside and the sky had darkened within 
 the last ten minutes to a threatening degree Joanna took 
 Trissie Moon to be a woman little older than herself, that is 
 to say some years under thirty. She was noticeably neat 
 in figure, girlishly quick in movement, and her face with its 
 dusky hair looped curtain-wise over her ears, seemed very 
 youthful in the shadow of a mushroom-shaped hat. 
 
 "Have you been waiting some time? I'm so sorry! " she 
 exclaimed with an exaggerated, slightly jarring brightness. 
 (She was your hostess apologizing for lateness to an invited 
 guest). "That Knaggs man, you know, will talk and talk. 
 All I wanted was to get Roddy's bottle re-filled; but he 
 would ask about Edwin, and were we going away at all this 
 summer though we couldn't go last, nor for that matter the 
 summer before. For he has a brother-in-law, he says, who 
 could give us very moderate rooms at Dymchurch, a man 
 called Stabb who plays the 'cello: and he thought Edwin 
 and this man Stabb, if only they could find a third, might get 
 up some trios of an evening. It would certainly please Edwin. 
 I'll tell him about it to-night. But I doubt if it could be 
 managed. And all this time you have been waiting! " she 
 broke off " Well, I hope Sonny has done the honors." 
 
 As the mother caressed her child's head with one hand (he 
 ducking away from her impatiently) she took off her hat with 
 the other, pressing her wrist against her brow a moment as if 
 to placate a permanent ache there. And Joanna saw then 
 how superficial had been that first impression of youthful- 
 ness. 
 
 Mrs. Moon's face with its small, almost infantine features, 
 had been cruelly used by trouble and the years. Under the 
 grayish skin there was a bruised look the dull yellow and 
 purplish marks of irreparable fatigue; and the tiny ruptured 
 blood-vessels of effort beyond recovery, alone gave other 
 color to her cheeks. Her eyes were strangely dilated, still 
 more strangely smiling, as if to deny with their final glance 
 that her life was as a cord perilously stretched near, ever 
 so near to breaking point. On she talked with a rattling 
 inconsequent gaiety of Mr. Knaggs the chemist, of Roddy, 
 of Edwin (whom she took for granted Joanna knew to be 
 Mr. Moon and no other), of summer holidays in the long past, 
 in the highly debatable future. 
 
 Very soon her listener had to abandon any attempt at
 
 27 6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 following the ins and outs of a tale, for the understanding of 
 which an essential was some familiarity with the people and 
 events so freely referred to by the teller. Instead she used 
 her energy to fight down the sensation she had of watching a 
 sleep-walker who strayed along the precarious edge of a 
 cliff. In time, however, by putting in a question now and 
 then she did gather that the rooms of her quest were empty 
 through the perfidy of somebody or other. Edwin, the unprac- 
 tical, declared Mrs. Moon with a wild little laugh, had only 
 lately abandoned his notion of turning the one upstairs into 
 a music-room, the one over the archway into 
 
 At this point, Joanna, overjoyed, succeeded in making an 
 interruption. Was the room over the archway then really 
 one of the two that were to be let? And if so, might she 
 see it? 
 
 Full at once of apologies, Mrs. Moon showed her the rooms 
 in question and wanted to conduct her all over the house. 
 
 But a glimpse was enough. 
 
 Small the rooms were, but what did that matter? They 
 were attractive in shape, and had clear distempered walls, 
 upstairs gray, over the arch, white. And they were cheap. 
 While her landlady resumed her nebulous family history, 
 determined to be impressive yet still more anxious to remain 
 obscure, Joanna busied herself by furnishing her new quarters 
 in thought. Upstairs she would sleep. Over the arch would 
 be her studio. To every one of Mrs. Moon's ambiguous sug- 
 gestions about charwomen, latch-keys and the like, she replied 
 that would do very well. Nor would she wait to see Mr. 
 Moon whose return from a professional engagement was ex- 
 pected at any moment. Rather by the piecing together of 
 evidence than from any definite statement, she had discovered 
 that Edwin was employed in some important capacity by the 
 undertaker downstairs. 
 
 As she crossed the road again on her return, Joanna looked 
 back at the archway and at her window above it. No dwelling 
 in her experience not the house at Collessie Street, not the 
 brown villa at San Gervasio, not the whitewashed farm of 
 Duntarvie itself had been so dear to her as this was going 
 to be, this place in London of her own finding. 
 
 And on Monday she would bring Louis. He should see! 
 Kilburn, he had said: Maida Vale: West Hampstead! It was 
 in May fair she would live, and nowhere else. As her pleased
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 277 
 
 eye passed to the window of the shop below, her lover's face, 
 as she would see it two days hence, rose vividly before her. 
 " So convenient too! " she could hear him speaking, could 
 see the whimsical, affectionate twist of his lips. " So very 
 convenient: you can be buried whenever you like! " 
 
 Xo longer had she the slightest fear of the coming meeting. 
 Everything would be all right now. And she stood there in 
 the middle of the road in Mayfair, and laughed with satis- 
 faction. 
 
 n 
 
 In Joanna's life hitherto, no period had contained so pro- 
 longed a rapture of enjoyment as the six months that followed 
 her entering into possession of the room above the arch- 
 way. 
 
 Louis in London was better than Louis in Glasgow in fifty 
 ways. His spirits were both higher and more equable; he 
 was kinder, yet at the same time far more passionate. And if 
 he was also busier, telling her seriously each time they parted 
 that his punctual appearance at their next tryst might be 
 prevented by circumstances unforeseeable, this was largely 
 balanced by two facts. One was the geographical fact of his 
 nearness: the other the physical fact of her own entire free- 
 dom. There was a telephone downstairs in the undertaker's 
 office at Chapel Court by which means he would be able 
 to warn her of any ordinary changes in his plans, and by 
 this same means at certain hours of the day Joanna knew she 
 could have speech of him at his club. 
 
 But so far in these five months Louis had never once failed 
 her, and she had begun to doubt the possibility of such a thing 
 happening. Neither had he been away from London longer 
 than a couple of days at a time, saving for two weeks during 
 August, the two empty weeks which Joanna spent quite 
 happily in Scotland with her mother and Linnet. 
 
 From the very first a fresh element of delight had entered 
 their meetings. On the Monday after her arrival she had 
 flown confidently to the place appointed between them, and 
 that evening had returned to Georgie, radiant as from a corona- 
 tion. Louis had betrayed extravagant gladness at seeing her, 
 had been lost in admiration of Chapel Court and every- 
 thing therein, had generously given her the credit not merely 
 for finding it, but for a dozen charms he was the first to see
 
 278 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 there, had himself re-discovered the beauty of the Green Park 
 in his delighted showing of it to her. To her joy she had gone 
 up instead of down in her lover's eyes by comparison with the 
 London women whose rivalry she had feared. And in her 
 eyes his face in the new environment had acquired a fresh, 
 peculiar quality of intimacy which was inexpressibly dear. 
 By his glances, and by many small, involuntary movements of 
 guardianship as he piloted her about the streets and watched 
 over her impressions, he seemed to acknowledge a responsi- 
 bility she had not once thrust upon him. It warmed and 
 established her to feel his real care for her happiness: it 
 touched him to chivalry to see how simply that happiness 
 was attained. He laughed at her childish jubilation over the 
 furnishing of Number Five. Yet of the two it may be ques- 
 tioned whether he were not the greater child. He regarded 
 both her and her house as his most exquisite playthings. 
 
 And all these joys, this delicious newness of enjoyment 
 after nearly three years of love, were heightened by a season of 
 surpassing beauty. A fine, very hot summer was succeeded 
 by an even lovelier autumn, and every sunset seemed to 
 participate in Joanna's elation. 
 
 On the June morning when she went forth alone to buy her 
 first chairs and tables, it would not have surprised her had 
 her half consumed body been drawn up swiftly through space 
 till it was lost in the life-giving, life-taking heart of the sun. 
 A man passing along the gutter of Tottenham Court Road 
 had boards hanging from his shoulders. 
 
 THE LORD HIMSELF! Joanna read thereon 
 
 SHALL DESCEND FROM HEAVEN WITH A 
 
 SHOUT! 
 
 and instinctively, expectantly she had looked skyward. 
 There would need a god, no less, appearing in radiant omnipo- 
 tence, to comprehend such ecstasy as hers. 
 
 And surely that god would wear the transfigured face of 
 Louis himself! Louis had been better than his word. He 
 had given her the world. London was hers like a jewel. 
 And how easily she wore it! She was already at home, with- 
 out shyness, in the Moon household: with a few instructions 
 given by Carl and by Mildred, she had soon found she might 
 enter almost any studio she pleased: by means of her cousin
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 279 
 
 Irene she could if she chose, make the passage to more con- 
 ventional society. And at the back of all these manifesta- 
 tions of worldly fulfilment stood Louis. But for Louis not 
 one of the paths opened by circumstances would have profited 
 her. Because of Louis she tripped along them with the light 
 feet of success. And because of Louis she needed none of 
 these paths at all. For worldly possession also is a spiritual 
 achievement. 
 
 in 
 
 It was four o'clock on a cold but fine afternoon in November 
 when Joanna set out to pay her first call upon Cousin Irene. 
 
 She had asked Georgie more than once to come with her, 
 but Georgie had refused with bridal self-importance. She 
 would think, said she, of leaving cards on Irene when Irene 
 had been to see her. She, not Irene, was the new married 
 wife. Besides only let Joanna think for a moment of how 
 Max compared in any scale of public importance with Irene's 
 husband. (" Rising M.P. indeed! " exclaimed Georgie in 
 hearty scorn. " That he may have been when Irene married 
 him. I told Max that was what they called him in the Scots- 
 man. But Max says he has done no more rising since than 
 a piece of unleavened bread.") For Joanna to go was quite 
 different Georgie allowed that. Indeed she took to urging 
 her younger sister to call and report. Irene's children, whose 
 pictures she had seen in the illustrated papers were apparently 
 very pretty. But all girls! And at this observation Georgie 
 had smiled mysteriously. It would appear that she herself 
 had a foreknowledge of being the mother of sons. 
 
 So Joanna, upon a day just five months after her arrival, 
 had arrayed herself in her London clothes and betaken herself 
 to Bryanston Square where Irene's house was. It was now 
 some time since she had acquired, partly by the help of Louis, 
 still more by instinct, the outline of a fashionable young 
 woman. And with that had come what she had so envied her 
 cousin long ago a free, self-contained assurance of manner. 
 Yet on an occasion of this kind she could not escape a half- 
 amused consciousness of masquerading. 
 
 She felt something of this now as she sailed gallantly up 
 the very middle of her cousin's flight of steps and rang the 
 bell. Surely the servant opening the door would see through 
 her disguise! Or if the servant should be deceived, Irene
 
 280 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 with a glance would strip her naked and expose her in her 
 ineradicable wildness. 
 
 While she stood there, loosening her dark furs and glancing 
 over her shoulder at the square, two men passed along the 
 pavement. One was young, the other middle-aged with a 
 fine worldly face and great pouches of well-survived dissipa- 
 tion beneath his keen eyes. Both looked up at her, and from 
 head to heel she was sensible of their approval. As she watched 
 their course to the corner a few yards off, glad that their cour- 
 tesy forbade a backward glance, she knew as if she had heard 
 their speech that when the elder turned his head to the 
 younger it was to praise her. Then, masquerader or no, she 
 was accepted by this London at its best! 
 
 But even more than to her own success, Joanna at that 
 moment had been alive to the attractiveness of the two men 
 simply as male creatures. And here, strange as it may seem, 
 was an experience unknown to her before her coming to Lon- 
 don. Till then she had been penetrable only by an individual 
 fascination. But now, in her awakened state so long deferred, 
 all the tortured, sighing boys, all the cynical men of experi- 
 ence, all the world-weary elders might have taken her. It 
 was by their ignorance alone that she went safe among them. 
 Or perhaps by the fact that in Louis she possessed them all. 
 
 Just as the two men went round the corner the younger 
 only then permitting himself a swift half turn of the head in 
 Joanna's direction Irene's glossy double doors, which till 
 this moment had confronted the visitor forbiddingly, were flung 
 wide with a great show of hospitality by two smiling, be- 
 streamered maid-servants. 
 
 "Just like Aunt Georgina's! " thought Joanna smiling, 
 but not without a shiver of the old terror, as she passed in 
 between them. She recollected a remark made recently by 
 her cousin Mabel, that the house in Bryanston Square was 
 but a reproduction brought up to date of the parental home 
 in Edinburgh. It had been a crank of cranky old Lord Wester- 
 muir's that two women, and not the butler, should attend the 
 front door of a town house: and many a time poor Juley, 
 gathering her brood about her skirts for the ordeal, had 
 likened herself to that pilgrim whose way ran betwixt two 
 lions. 
 
 In the drawing-room Irene was combining the parts of 
 hostess and Mamma before an audience of two women friends,
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 281 
 
 and she afforded the vaguest of fashionable introductions to 
 her cousin. Joanna found her less fluffy than of old and more 
 substantial. The attractive frothiness had disappeared in 
 favor of body, as it will with a glass of ale which has been 
 let stand for a while. Indeed with her fair hair, and her dress of 
 smooth yellowish satin, Irene might well have conveyed the 
 suggestion of pale, full bodied ale, had not Joanna from the 
 first moment been constrained to ransack her small zoological 
 memory for an analogy still more apt. A camel! That was 
 it! Cousin Irene was like a camel. But she was like such 
 an elegant, well-tended and most lofty full-grown camel, 
 that Joanna, even while she laughed in secret, was impressed 
 and rendered slightly nervous. 
 
 The three children in their white embroideries and crisp 
 ribbons had but that minute emerged from the nursery for 
 inspection, and the sunny-haired cherub of a baby sat in 
 Mamma's silken lap and played with Mamma's long amber 
 necklace. They were sweet looking little girls enough. But 
 for the life of her Joanna could not see them as other than 
 elegant, well-tended little camels just three camels like 
 Mamma, saving that for the moment they were blessed with 
 youth. And her thoughts reverted with passionate preference 
 to that other group of children she had come to love in Chapel 
 Court. There was poor beautiful Edvina whose soul was gone 
 elsewhere, there was Roddy with his intent jewel-like eyes, 
 and there was little Ollie Garland, a neighbor's child, round- 
 faced and timorous, who came almost daily to play in Number 
 Five while her mother sought a precarious foothold in Fleet 
 Street. What had these three that was wanting in Irene's 
 glossy babies? Wherein lay the essential difference? That 
 it was not merely external she felt sure. Convinced as Joanna 
 was of her own correctness in all outward appearance, she 
 felt exposed beneath the glances of Irene's friends. And 
 even the children or was this her fancy only? seemed to watch 
 her closely and defensively, as they would have watched 
 some being of another species. As for Irene herself, one could 
 hardly be insensible to the curiosity, the hostility, the calcu- 
 lation of her travelling eyes. 
 
 There it was: Joanna and her kind were different, and always 
 would be different from Irene and Irene's kind, and as she 
 replied formally to Irene's perfunctory family inquiries, this 
 difference became even more manifest. Joanna now possessed
 
 282 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 the world as Irene would never possess it, but for that very 
 reason she could never be a part with its essence. 
 
 But happening to introduce Fender's name into the flagging 
 conversation, and seeing the quickening of interest in the faces 
 of Irene and her guests (Cousin Mabel had also said that if 
 Irene might not regard any given London celebrity as a friend, 
 that celebrity must be at least " the friend of a friend ") 
 Joanna's first conception of her difference contracted into a 
 pettier defiance. 
 
 Could it be that something in her looks had betrayed her 
 secret? Of a certainty she had not till this moment realized 
 how increasingly during the past six months she had been 
 forced into thinking of her love as an intrigue. With the flam- 
 ing up of passion between herself and Louis in the new environ- 
 ment, had come the increased necessity for secrecy. Here 
 he was among his friends. If Joanna wished to keep their 
 happiness she must guard it jealously, must measure its safety 
 continually by the world's standards. It had been easy to 
 blind herself to these exigencies by the very ardor with which 
 Louis had imposed them. Never had he showed himself 
 so fearful of losing her: and was not that enough? But now, 
 as Irene went on to ask why Georgie had never called, and, 
 with a drawl accentuated to conceal a more genuine curiosity, 
 put questions about Georgie's husband (clearly known by 
 repute both to her and to her guests) Joanna had a swift 
 horrified glimpse of herself rather as the world's prey than 
 as its possessor. Was this the price demanded? A chasm 
 of misery and shame seemed to open beneath her feet. 
 
 As soon as she could, she rose and made her escape. Irene 
 had announced her intention of calling upon Georgie within 
 a few days; had accorded an invitation for one of her forth- 
 coming " evenings " to Joanna. The visit was over. 
 
 Once in the open air she was happy again. It was as if 
 she were rushing from Irene's doorstep to meet again her own 
 palpitating and lovely existence, left there waiting outside 
 in the street. 
 
 Though winter had followed early upon autumn, a beautiful 
 day was expiring with the lighting of the lamps, and the 
 young, living woman drew the blue and gold freshness of the
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 283 
 
 West end square into her lungs with an access of vigor which 
 in itself was delight. 
 
 She was going to meet Louis in Piccadilly. They would walk 
 awhile, and then return together to Chapel Court where supper 
 was prepared. For a wonder he had not only the late after- 
 noon but all the evening free. And Joanna had strung Chinese 
 lanterns across her archway room for welcome and delight. 
 Again and again during the day she had lived beforehand 
 through that moment when the door would be shut on the 
 outside world. Into that first embrace would go the emotion 
 of her solitary morning's work, her strong attraction by the 
 two passing men, her scorn of Irene, her tenderness for Ollie 
 and Roddy, her voluptuous breathing of the elixir of London. 
 Louis should have them all. 
 
 A clock struck half-past four, and though her tryst was for 
 a quarter past five, Joanna fell into a panic at the strokes of 
 the bell and hailed a taxi-cab, asking the man to take her to 
 the nearer end of Bond Street. 
 
 After five months in London she was still strangely ignorant 
 of directions. Mention Regent Street to her and she would 
 see a wide current of sparkling shallows down which she had 
 often gone in a gay drifting from pavement to pavement, 
 drawn now to one side, now to the other, by the lure of the 
 shops on either hand. Speak of Trafalgar Square, and there 
 would rise a great tilted expanse of stone, stone palaces full 
 of treasures surrounding it, dazzling white clouds above 
 it a man walking past the iron railings of a church with a 
 basketful of tulips on his head, yellow and scarlet tulips that 
 had bright blue paper wound about their stems Louis had 
 kissed her in Trafalgar Square suddenly, unexpectedly, had 
 kissed her in broad daylight amid the sound of fountains, 
 blown spray, the calling of the high, children's voices . But 
 put Joanna in Regent Street, and ask her to point the way to 
 Trafalgar Square: and she could not have done it. 
 
 Set down however by her taxi-cab at the northern corner of 
 Bond Street she felt herself fairly safe afoot for Piccadilly 
 (unless indeed always with her a possibility the streets 
 during the past night should have been dissolved and crystal- 
 lized anew). And her reason insisted further that she had 
 fully thrice the time the walk needed. So with her mind 
 tolerably at rest she took her way at leisure among the other 
 leisurely, well-groomed men and women.
 
 284 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 She went gazing with discretion, now at the people who 
 fascinated her by their sophisticated faces and movements, 
 now at the jewelled windows of the shops, now at the pure 
 and quivering sky that arched itself like an iridescent bubble 
 over many-masted London. 
 
 And once, not so long ago, she had hated this same London! 
 On the brief visit before her marriage, and upon her return 
 as a widow, during the few days spent with Georgie, it had 
 oppressed her almost to death. But now Louis had given it 
 to her like a plaything, and she carried always in her breast 
 a secret talisman of passion. 
 
 It was hers, all hers the mounting sky, the decorous people, 
 the precious stuffs, the gold and silver and rubies brought 
 together from the ends of the earth. Only a trifling accident 
 of circumstances prevented her from laying immediate hands 
 upon those of her treasures which she most fancied at the 
 moment. Her essential knowledge of possession was no whit 
 disturbed by the unimportant fact that behind any of these 
 shining panes she would be asked to pay money before she 
 might carry her own goods away. Not all the riches of Solomon 
 will buy such a sense of possession. 
 
 Besides, in money also Joanna felt herself rich. She had 
 come to London with a hundred pounds part her own sav- 
 ings, part a gift from her mother, and for the present she was 
 being allowed as well seven pounds a month. Soon she would 
 be able to write home and declare herself independent of this. 
 From the first by her keeping in touch with her Glasgow 
 employer, the draper, irregular sums had come her way; and 
 lately through one of Carl's London introductions, a new and 
 steadier means of earning had presented itself. This involved 
 the sketching of dresses at the theatre, a pursuit bringing with 
 it considerable excitement. For Joanna at the theatre was 
 still easily carried away by the glittering show of the world 
 there spread so cunningly before her. It was the theatre 
 rather than the play that affected her. And so it was with the 
 more experienced Louis. Did they go together, it was to 
 musical comedy. Joanna had no choice, and Louis, with only 
 occasional lapses into boredom, liked the music, the prettiness, 
 the absurdity, the deliverance from contact with reality there 
 to be found. Also he would point out how much more grateful 
 to the eye the audiences attending this kind of piece. 
 
 Afterwards they wou!4 quarrel happily over the catchy tunes.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 285 
 
 "No! You go wrong there! This is how it went! " 
 Louis would cry, clapping his hands over Joanna's mouth. 
 " Ta-ra-ra-tiddy-iddy-iddy-um-a-tum ! " And she would dis- 
 pute it, until at length they got it right between them with 
 a warm, unbounded sense of friendship. 
 
 There! Just as Joanna came within sight of the Piccadilly 
 traffic, a piano-organ struck up one of the airs she and Louis 
 had first heard together four months ago at the Gaiety. 
 Since then how many recollections must that same refrain, 
 repetitive as the call of a bird, have stored within itself for 
 a thousand scattered lovers! To Joanna it recalled every 
 least incident of their return from the theatre that breathless 
 midsummer night when the stars had been like a million golden 
 bees swarming in the dark hive of the sky. 
 
 And now, drawing nearer and nearer to the end of Bond 
 Street, walking more and more slowly, vibrating with greater 
 and greater violence to the surety that Louis, if not already 
 there, was hastening towards the place, Joanna felt afraid. 
 The passers-by must see her, thought she, moving among them 
 like a blazing torch dangerous to their safety. And seeing 
 her so, would they not contrive to put her out of being? 
 She had the real fear that they would. But even if they did 
 not, must she not of herself be consumed, must she not 
 unhindered shoot upwards, a mere dissolving flame? 
 
 rv 
 
 But when she saw the face with which her lover was hurry- 
 ing towards her, her heart dropped like a shot bird. 
 
 " I'm so sorry, my dear; so frightfully sorry " he began 
 to speak at once and with rapidity almost before they had 
 met " I can't tell you how sorry I am, how disappointed: 
 but our evening has fallen through. What's her name 
 Marietta, my new daughter-in-law, has turned up. It was 
 at the last moment and quite unexpected. How I got here 
 at all I hardly know. But I remembered the telephone was 
 no use to-day as you were going out early, and I hated to 
 fail you altogether." 
 
 Side by side they turned, instinctively shunning the bustle 
 of Piccadilly, and they had walked some way up Dover Street 
 before Joanna could speak in reply. All her being, so exult- 
 antly exposed till a moment ago, now labored under the
 
 286 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 reverse it had suffered. It would take her a little while to 
 recover. 
 
 " You know, my dearest heart," pleaded Louis anxiously, 
 his eyes on her unhappy face. " If you are to be so upset 
 when this happens, we shall have to make an end. You must 
 know it can't be helped at times. Come: cheer up! I can 
 tell you it is as bad for me as for you. Worse perhaps. I 
 was living all day to-day for the evening. That dear little 
 room of yours. You know I was. You know there isn't a 
 place on earth where I'm half so happy, so peaceful? You 
 do know? " he urged, touching her arm appealingly as she re- 
 mained silent. " Don't you? Say you do! " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, then? " 
 
 But while they drank tea in a shop Louis having decided 
 that he might risk just ten minutes longer with her he fell 
 to talking quite gaily of his son's wife. 
 
 " She's a nice, charming girl," he declared. " I must say 
 it. With the most splendid yellow hair you ever saw in your 
 life." And he kissed the tips of his fingers to the air in 
 worship of Marietta's tresses. " Rather a fine person in her- 
 self, too, I shouldn't be surprised," he added more soberly. 
 And he went on to hope that Marietta would sit for him. But 
 he suspected she was already in the way to make him a grand- 
 father. 
 
 "Me! A grandfather, Joanna! Think of it! I'll have to 
 reform my character, shan't I? Yet how preposterous that 
 anyone should regard you as a siren who is leading my gray 
 hairs to perdition! " 
 
 Perhaps Louis however was not so sure after all. Anyhow 
 within two minutes he was bewailing that he and Joanna were 
 lovers. 
 
 " I so often long," he confessed, " to have you up to the 
 house and show you off to my friends. There's to-night. I 
 know you would like Marietta and she you. We could have 
 all sorts of pleasant times. And I'd be so proud of you. But 
 things as they are, spoil all that. Do you remember my 
 bringing old Perrin out to Chapel Court to see you? And 
 how horribly self-conscious we all were? " 
 
 Joanna assented but without speaking. Somehow, though 
 Perrin had been as friendly and courteous as possible, she 
 could not bear to be reminded of his visit.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 287 
 
 " You are too good for this kind of thing, Joanna. That's 
 the trouble," said Louis, gloomy and worried. And he looked 
 at his watch. 
 
 (What a strange echo was there of something Bob had said 
 long, long ago! ) Joanna lifting eyes full of pain to his face, 
 mutely opened her lips once, twice before die words came. 
 
 " Is any woman too good to be loved? " she asked at 
 last. 
 
 He gave her a startled glance and his mouth formed a word 
 of sincere response, but he checked himself and veered off 
 impatiently. 
 
 " What's the use of talking? " he protested. " With you 
 and me it had to be like this, and that's all about it. Besides 
 hasn't it been worth it? If it were all to end to-day, hasn't 
 it been worth it again and again? For me it has. I shall 
 never go back on that. But for you? " 
 
 " For me too," answered Joanna looking at him sadly. 
 And even though her lips shook, she repeated the affirmation 
 steadily, like a knell. " For me too." 
 
 "I'll tell you what!" said he, leaning forwards towards 
 her with energy. " I'll tell you what, Joanna! All the 
 rest of life is either a labor or a bore. That's what it comes 
 to. And it may be as well to keep love quite separate. 
 ' Better face facts,' a man said to me once, ' and never mix 
 up love and marriage.' And there is some truth in it, don't 
 you think so? Come! " he continued, rallying her affec- 
 tionately. " Dear, pretty one, you mustn't look so sorrowful. 
 Tell me I have only two minutes more tell me where you 
 were calling this afternoon? Was it on friends of your sister? 
 Garden Suburb people with sandals and djibbahs? " 
 
 Doing violence to herself, Joanna gave Louis quite a lively 
 account of the visit in Bryanston Square. He laughed at her 
 description of camels great and little, and showed interest 
 when she mentioned the name of Lady Pilkington as one of 
 Irene's guests. 
 
 " Pilkington? Why that must be the explorer man's wife? " 
 he interrupted. " Perrin is always talking of bringing them 
 round. He pointed them out one night in the theatre. Is 
 she good-looking? She made no impression whatever on me. 
 But what a fine ugly brute the man is! I'd be glad of a chance 
 to paint that queer, almost devilish, triangular mug of 
 his! "
 
 288 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Louis pondered for a moment. 
 
 " I'll tell you a secret, my girl," he continued warmly. 
 "And you alone, mind! Of late I've got a fresh glimpse of 
 things. If only I could somehow beat out to it, I believe I 
 should see my new way clear." 
 
 For Louis to speak in this way of his work was rare. And 
 when he went on with diffident excitement to describe to her 
 the beginnings of a new picture, Joanna was far more stirred 
 than by words of love. Was this at last the budding between 
 them that she had longed for? If so Louis was hers, she his, 
 even though the solid world should sunder them. She need 
 have no fear. 
 
 She was unhappy again, however, when the conversation 
 returned to Irene, and with a heat astonishing to herself, she 
 was presently championing the people of the Garden Suburb 
 by comparison with the Irenes and the Pilkingtons. The 
 discussion indeed was rapidly assuming the features of a 
 familiar quarrel between them. 
 
 " I know what you mean," said Joanna antagonistically, 
 when Louis with hardening eyes had re-stated his inveterate 
 preference for the world of fashion, " I know Georgie's friends 
 are rather ' awful.' But they really are interested in ideas, 
 and the Irenes aren't. Isn't that a great thing? " 
 
 Louis looked elaborately bored. 
 
 " It may be," he conceded in fretful hostility, " though I 
 think it's open to question whether these dire-looking people 
 who take themselves so seriously are really the ones to help 
 things on. Whether or no, I can't help my own liking for 
 more comfortable society. Can I? " 
 
 To this Joanna agreed, but unhappily. For there had been 
 that in his voice which proclaimed a discord in himself. And, 
 as many a time before, she had the vision of him as a man 
 torn in twain. 
 
 But now, their ten minutes being long exceeded, he must go 
 his ways and she hers. 
 
 " Pay no attention to my moods," he begged at parting. 
 " Remember that, anyhow so far as you are concerned, they 
 mean nothing. Things are difficult for me; that's all. For 
 you too, my dear. Don't I know? You need never tell 
 me. I know everything. I appreciate everything more than 
 you can ever guess. It is never out of my mind what you 
 do for me, what you are to me. So, Joanna, bear up if you
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 289 
 
 can. You are the good thing in my life. Don't leave go of 
 me. Without you I should be in the mire." 
 Next moment he was gone in his taxi-cab leaving her alone. 
 
 She walked back to Chapel Court, and all the way she was 
 trying to draw the sustenance she terribly needed, from her 
 lover's parting words and demeanor. Her efforts met with 
 some success: especially when she dwelt upon the last look 
 he had given her, a look of solicitude that was at once sincere 
 and helpless. But she no longer flitted through the streets 
 like a flame. She went weighed down, unconscious of all 
 about her, quenched, closed in upon herself, slow-moving as 
 a deep-sea diver. 
 
 Since her coming to London, there had been only one inci- 
 dent to match with this. It had happened months ago, and 
 had since been made light of in memory. But under present 
 stress it came back to her with vengeful clearness. 
 
 Rather early one morning she had been alone in town, 
 and was crossing a part of Oxford Street almost clear of traffic 
 at that moment, when an open taxi-cab drove quickly past. 
 In it was Louis, with another man towards whom his face 
 was turned in laughing expostulation. Though Joanna was 
 already near the middle of the roadway he did not see her. 
 And next moment he was gone. 
 
 It was nothing of course. Joanna knew that as well as 
 anyone could. She was well aware that Louis must inevit- 
 ably drive about with friends in taxi-cabs, just as he walked, 
 talked and ate with men and women she never saw, men and 
 women who, taken together, were as nothing in his life com- 
 pared with herself. She fully realized also that it was by 
 mere accident she had now for the first time seen him entirely 
 out of contact with herself. To-morrow he would be sure to 
 tell her all about his companion, his destination at that early 
 hour, even the subject of his expostulation. And they would 
 laugh together over the spasm of jealous emotion. 
 
 But it was the first time. And there Joanna had stood, 
 in the middle of the roadway, quite bereft, and staring after 
 the taxi-cab as if in its swift passage it had snatched her very 
 soul from her. Another driver had to shout at her in a fury. 
 He had only just saved himself from knocking her over. 
 
 Yes, in the face of all reason it had been a bitter experi-
 
 2QO OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 ence. The sense her lover had conveyed of inhabiting a 
 world from which she was excluded, his animation, his com- 
 plete unconsciousness of her presence, the impossibility of 
 thrusting her presence upon him by a gesture: these had 
 been bitterness. And in these he had played but an involun- 
 tary part. In this new failure he was both conscious and 
 acquiescent! 
 
 With deathly apprehension Joanna beheld a future full of 
 similar failures, involuntary failure alternating with failure 
 that was voluntary. It was not to be borne. 
 
 But why was it not to be borne? 
 
 As the minutes passed, the girl's reasoned endurance and 
 her stubborn will reasserted themselves, not for the first 
 time. It was folly to say it could not be borne when she 
 had already borne it more or less knowingly for a space of 
 years. Did the mere seeing with one's eyes of something 
 already known, make unbearable what was bearable before? 
 Where was her courage? Had she not prepared herself for 
 this many and many a time? Had Louis not warned her 
 fairly? Had she not accepted the circumstances in which such 
 trials of love were to be looked for? Had she not even 
 desired such circumstances? Yet here she was shaken by 
 the first trial. 
 
 So yet again did Joanna gather up all the deathly courage 
 that was hers, and recover a deathly buoyancy. Yet again 
 with her lover's appeal ringing afresh in her ears did she draw 
 herself up to her full stature of proud humility. Let the 
 next testing come when and how it might, she would be un- 
 shaken. She would show Louis a composed and cheerful coun- 
 tenance. Had he not so far humbled himself as to ask a 
 favor of her? So long as he could do that: so long as she 
 was his angel, his friend and his love, was there anything she 
 could not endure? 
 
 As she crossed the road to Chapel Court she braced herself 
 to look calmly upon her joyous decoration of the little studio. 
 She would take down the gay, unlighted lanterns and put them 
 away for a happier occasion without repining; would divide 
 among the children the fruits and dainties she had provided 
 for a love feast; and having herself eaten a sober meal, she 
 would work until bed-time. She would not even allow her- 
 self the distraction of a book. 
 
 With a strong, puritan revulsion of disfavor did she now
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 291 
 
 look back upon the inebriation of her afternoon. Sobriety 
 showed as the condition to be striven for. A " godly, right- 
 eous and sober life "! How wonderful, that an expression, 
 until now quite devoid of personal significance, should spring 
 up suddenly in living, most desirable beauty! Hencefor- 
 ward she was determined to withstand that inherited ten- 
 dency of hers to barren ecstasies. 
 
 Greatly restored by this discovery, Joanna immediately 
 quickened her pace. It was as if no time must be lost in 
 putting it into practice. And at the same moment that her 
 feet stepped to a livelier measure, came a thought which 
 caused a broad, amused smile to overspread her features. 
 How amazingly ignorant, thought she, were those persons 
 that would condemn her relations with Louis on grounds of 
 laxity or self-indulgence! What other situation between 
 man and woman could demand so constant a self-discipline, 
 such sacrifice, such effort, such a putting aside of all slackness 
 and sloth? Assuredly the reality was very different from 
 anything she herself, standing by the little garden door of 
 La Porziuncola had imagined. Yet she was glad it was 
 different; glad to have it so; glad of love's hardness. 
 
 No longer smiling, but grave and resolute, she was about to 
 pass under the archway when Edwin Moon came out of the 
 shop and made to speak to her. In a frock-coat and top- 
 hat, he seemed smaller and more bent than usual. He was 
 carrying his black attache-case. 
 
 " A lovely evening, isn't it? " he asked, looking submis- 
 sively at the heavens. He had stopped, so Joanna was com- 
 pelled to stop also. Clearly there was something further in 
 his mind to say to her. 
 
 A little embarrassed, but patient with him by experience, 
 Joanna waited. From the first she had felt a liking for the 
 little, vague man with his shabby gait and his oddly dispas- 
 sionate face. And lately her liking had developed into a kind 
 of championship. She could not get out of her mind the sound 
 of Trissie Moon's voice as she had heard it (overheard it 
 rather) late one night in the summer. It had wakened her, 
 that voice of Trissie's floating in at the widely opened window 
 of her bedroom to the accompaniment of a flowing tap in 
 the yard below, where husband and wife were together en- 
 gaged upon a midnight cleansing of the kitchen. 
 
 " The longer I live with you the more you drive me mad! "
 
 292 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 This was the only complete phrase which had emerged clear- 
 ly from the low, stinging tirade, pertinacious as the water 
 that beat steadily upon the stones of the yard. Twice only 
 could the involuntary listener detect the man's meek murmur 
 in protest or self-defence. But the pushing, contumelious 
 voice of the woman had gone on till it was checked by its own 
 hoarseness. Then only it had faltered. Then only, after 
 reviving time and again, but ever with lessening strength' 
 had it fallen into a derisive implacable silence. 
 
 Since that night Joanna had sided in secret with the hus 
 band. And this though it was the wife who went constantly 
 out of her way to be helpful. Especially in the matter of 
 arranging Joanna's rooms Trissie Moon had spared no pains. 
 Joanna indeed had never known anyone to compare with her 
 in all that concerned a house. Her taste was wonderfully 
 sure it did not surprise her lodger to learn one day by chance 
 that she had been a promising art student before her marriage 
 and her practical knowledge never failed. But gratitude 
 and admiration notwithstanding, Joanna had acquired the 
 habit of avoiding her presence when she could. It was not 
 that she disliked Trissie. She had to admit a real, even 
 a painful liking for her. But it had come as a relief, when a 
 month ago, Trissie, declaring herself sick to death of household 
 drudgery, and giving as an excuse that she must find extra 
 money for Roddy's massage, had rushed into the manage- 
 ment of a local laundry which was changing hands. Since 
 then even the growing discomfort of the Moon household, 
 under the neglect of its mistress and the efforts of spasmodic 
 charwomen, seemed preferable to Trissie's strained smile and 
 unceasing stream of talk. 
 
 But Mr. Moon was still speaking with diffident persistence, 
 and as his manner was, circuitously approaching his point. 
 
 "I always say," he told Joanna mildly, "that the pet 
 
 days of the year come in November and in March the very 
 
 late autumn, the very early spring. There's a something in 
 
 the air then jocund? fecund? which is it? So I find 
 at least. But I rarely get anyone to agree with me. People 
 say they feel ill in March and melancholy in November. 
 I remember when we lived in Hampshire, we used to ride in 
 the forest in November. There was nothing melancholy about 
 
 that. 1 had a strawberry mare equally good to ride or drive 
 
 she was called Bathsheba after one of Hardy's heroines
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 293 
 
 ~_* that of course is the Hardy country for a time he was 
 
 one of my " Edwin Moon's voice trailed off, and his 
 
 pale, blue, ambiguous gaze travelled into space. 
 
 His companion was eager in expressing her entire agree- 
 ment with regard to the pet days of the year. But this being 
 decided between them, she was still waiting for what he really 
 wanted to say. 
 
 " Is it an embalming this evening? " Seeking for some 
 chat to fill in the silence, Joanna pointed to the attache-case 
 in which she knew he carried his instruments. She had now 
 known for some time in which capacities her landlord was 
 engaged by the undertaker downstairs, and that he was no 
 more than an ill-paid, if also indispensable, hireling in that 
 profitable business. She also knew that as a rule he did not 
 wear his top-hat if he had no more to do than to measure the 
 client's body. 
 
 "Yes," he replied, brightening. "But not for us: for 
 Maple's. Maples are sending a gentleman back to South 
 Africa at the end of the week. And when the Equator has 
 to be dealt with, they can trust no one in town with the job 
 but myself. Most of the trade, as I daresay you know, is 
 with the United States. And there are quite half a dozen 
 embalmers in London who can deal safely as far as New York, 
 and might even guarantee the overland journey to the West 
 Coast. But the Equator that's the real test." 
 
 Though he was a broken man and knew it, Mr. Moon could 
 not keep the light of professional arrogance from dwelling at 
 this moment in his eyes. 
 
 What had gone to the breaking of him, and by what slow 
 or swift stages he had declined to his present way of life, 
 Joanna did not know. Unwillingly well nigh under pro- 
 test she had gathered from Trissie's wild talk that once 
 they had had money and professional standing (It looked as 
 if Edwin had been a country doctor with means); that there 
 had come a catastrophe involving disgrace; that after an 
 interval of some dark nature, they had gone to live in America 
 where Roddy had been born. But she had always shrunk 
 from gratifying her own natural curiosity by means of poor 
 Trissie's incontinence, and had pried no farther than she 
 could help into the undoubted mystery that surrounded the 
 pair. 
 
 " What I wanted to ask you Trissie is sure to be late home
 
 294 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 again to-night I wonder, would you be so very kind? if 
 
 it wouldn't really be troubling you too much ? " At last 
 
 Mr. Moon was getting to the pith of his request. 
 
 " You want me to keep an eye on the children? " exclaimed 
 Joanna, grasping his meaning with considerable relief. " Of 
 course I will! " 
 
 " It is kind of you to offer: very kind," he breathed, peering 
 at her gratefully. " After that Swedish woman's pummelling 
 to-day, Roddy ought to get to bed early. I'd see to it myself 
 if it weren't for this." And he disparagingly indicated the 
 attache-case. 
 
 " I'll bath him and give him his supper the minute I get 
 in," promised Joanna with ready energy. " Is Ollie with us 
 to-night? " she asked as she moved off. 
 
 " I'm afraid she is. Yes. Mrs. Garland has a theatre, and 
 asked us if we could keep Ollie late," admitted Mr. Moon. 
 " It's unfortunate. Do you think you can manage both? 
 It seems too bad to ask it of you." 
 
 " You know I enjoy it," Joanna assured him smiling. It 
 was not the first time, nor yet the tenth that similar requests 
 had been made and similar apologies offered. True, it had 
 generally been Trissie who had asked her lodger's help in 
 various ways with the children (with the exception of Edvina's 
 washing and bedding which was performed at five o'clock 
 each day by a trained nurse who came for that purpose only) ; 
 but Mr. Moon must have known of it. 
 
 Upon entering the house, Joanna stepped upon several 
 letters which lay dimly white upon the linoleum just within 
 the front door where they had fallen from the postman's hand. 
 By the light from a lamp in the court outside she could barely 
 decipher their directions. Only one was for herself a bulky 
 one in her mother's unmistakable hand-writing Urgent was 
 marked clearly upon the left hand top corner of the envelope. 
 
 But in this there was nothing disturbing. For as Juley had 
 a strong sense of human frailty which made no exception of 
 the postal service, her correspondents were well accustomed 
 to find either of the words Urgent or Immediate, and frequently 
 the word Private as well, upon the outside of her communi- 
 cations. 
 
 Joanna thought she would read this letter in her bedroom 
 where she had been going to take off her coat and hat before 
 joining the children. But having already laid her hand on
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 295 
 
 the knob of the door leading to her separate staircase, she 
 involuntarily paused to listen. 
 
 It was not usually so quiet as this in the house when Ollie 
 was there. Though Ollie and Roddy seldom shared their games 
 they were decidedly vocal in company. And if both voices 
 were not to be heard placidly pursuing independent mono- 
 logues, Ollie's at least would be lifted, loud and utterly 
 absorbed, in unending song. 
 
 But on this evening not a sound came from upstairs. And 
 Joanna, wondering and suddenly anxious, pushed her un- 
 opened letter into her pocket and went straight up through 
 the dim little house to the Moon's sitting-room. 
 
 The moment she had opened the door, the queer silence was 
 explained. 
 
 The walls of the lamp-lighted room, the mantel-piece, the 
 furniture, even Edvina's empty carriage, were stuck all over 
 with oddly shaped bits of paper. Roddy on the floor was 
 laboriously writing with the very wet stump of a pencil upon 
 similar bits of paper. His cheeks were bright scarlet with 
 the efforts he was making and the excitement of what was 
 already achieved. Ollie, plump-legged; round-faced and short- 
 haired, stood on tip-toe before the glazed book-case, and was 
 busy plastering Roddy's work as high as ever she could reach 
 upon the panes, having first wetted each printed or illustrated 
 scrap wth her tongue. 
 
 Both children looked round at the intruder with delighted 
 but somewhat anxious eyes. Ollie particularly was on tender- 
 hooks, and the corners of her smiling lips were ready to drop 
 at a word. 
 
 " Why, whatever have you been up to, you two? " Joanna 
 exclaimed. And she examined more closely into the children's 
 handiwork. 
 
 " Such a lovely game, being dead! " declared Roddy's 
 matter-of-fact voice. But Ollie hovered in uncertainty. She 
 was wavering now on the brink of dismay, and did not take 
 her bright, misgiving eyes off Joanna's face. 
 
 What they had got hold of, as Joanna now saw, was one 
 of the monumental mason's catalogues from the office down- 
 stairs. All the slips of paper were tombstones. There were 
 plain marble crosses and wormy Celtic ones; there were 
 broken pillars, massive sarcophagi, slabs and kerbs; there 
 were mourning angels, shattered vases and draped urns. The
 
 296 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 children had cut them out, growing less and less neat as they 
 had progressed helter-skelter through the catalogue, and had 
 filled each in with a name they knew. 
 
 Joanna studied one tombstone after another. 
 
 RODDY DIED, she read. Then EDVINA DIED, OLLIE 
 DIED, MOTHER DIED, FATHER DIED. (All were in 
 Roddy's bold but erratic printing. Ollie being a backward 
 scholar). And besides what she took to be an attempt at her 
 own name MISSES REST PONY DIED, stuck by the side 
 of the fireplace upon a very imposing piece of scrollworked 
 sculpture, there was pinned up one of the undertaker's printed 
 order forms. Here Roddy, unable to subdue his caligraphy 
 to the spaces left blank for customers, had answered several 
 questions at once with a single YES or NO, or by some secret 
 hieroglyph of his own. 
 
 Thus, opposite " Measurement of Body," he had put X 
 
 opposite" Shell Cov'd *| 
 
 Lead Coffin [ he had 
 
 Mahogany Coffin [put Yes. 
 
 Outside Casket " J 
 
 opposite " Is Hand Bier required of us? 
 Is our Hearse to go through by rail? 
 Are Bearers to go through by rail? 
 Valuations for probate? 
 Monumental Masonry? 
 Terms of payment? " 
 
 he had 
 put NO. 
 
 And wherever he had felt doubtful, or had been presented 
 with a nice large space, he had firmly planted his own name 
 RODDY. . . RODDY. . . RODDY. 
 
 Joanna shuddered. She told herself it was absurd to feel 
 anything but amusement, yet she could not help that shudder. 
 For the very reason perhaps that she could well enter into 
 the children's excitement at having all by themselves discovered 
 so novel a game, she was quite overcome; and for a few 
 moments she dared not turn round from her inspection of 
 the book-case, lest her unreasoned dread should be com- 
 municated to Ollie who stood just behind her. Perfectly she 
 knew how Ollie was standing there, twisting the corner of her 
 pinafore between her fingers, awaiting the verdict. Roddy,
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 297 
 
 she need not trouble about. Roddy was shielded impenetrably 
 by the walls of the citadel in which he dwelt apart, exempt. 
 Nothing from the outside world could come near him, much 
 less wound him. But Ollie! From the first Joanna had 
 understood in little Ollie something of her own passionate 
 wistfulness of desire towards the world. Ollie wanted the 
 world. And she wanted it perfect, ever so perfect in 
 gaiety and loveliness. So Ollie could not bear one hint of 
 reproach or unhappiness. 
 
 At last, feeling she was mistress again of her countenance, 
 Joanna turned, and immediately she had to meet the little 
 girl's look of apprehension. 
 
 " I think that's rather a silly game," she said with studied 
 lightness. She smiled and held out her hand. " Let's tidy 
 the room all up, shall we? " 
 
 But Ollie threw back her head, and set up a loud and bitter 
 wailing. 
 
 There is something so ultimate in the despairing crying of 
 certain children that the solid ground of sufficiency seems to 
 crumble beneath the feet of those that hear it. To all laughter 
 and contentment it gives the lie: upon all theories of childish 
 happiness, even upon the very possibility of any well founded 
 happiness upon earth, it casts a deep shadow of doubt. It 
 seems to recall all former mirth and to cancel it, or to show at 
 least how closely the tears are at all times lying beneath. It 
 seems to warn the hearer that in future joy no confidence must 
 be placed. 
 
 " Ollie! Darling Ollie! " implored Joanna half distraught. 
 And she folded the little shaken, sobbing figure to her breast. 
 She had dropped to the floor upon her knees before Ollie, and 
 there she rocked her backwards and forwards, giving and taking 
 all the solace of the blood, but unable to console the spirit 
 of one who, like herself, could hardly endure the inevitable 
 approach of dissolution. The tears fell from her own eyes, 
 and all the sadness of the afternoon, itself a foretaste of death, 
 welled up in her afresh. Even while she gained ground with 
 the child, soothing and cheering her by degrees, her own 
 sadness welled up and overflowed. 
 
 " Come! Dear, darling, pretty Ollie! My pet! My sweet- 
 heart! My wee lamb! My hen of gold! " she besought. 
 " Let us make Edvina's supper. You shall help. You shall 
 stir the pan for me. And Roddy and you can both have
 
 298 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 splashy baths to-night. And if you like you may sleep in my 
 bed till Mother comes for you. There! And I'll read you 
 Beswarragel again the whole of it, though it's so long. 
 There! " 
 
 And at last, after much coaxing and cuddling, Ollie's sobs 
 subsided. They subsided and she was once more a happy 
 little girl. She was just a happy little girl again, saving that 
 every now and then she gave a curious reminiscent gulp, 
 saving that she glanced very often up at Joanna with eyes 
 suspiciously bright, saving that when she laughed, her laughter 
 sounded perilously gay and boisterous. 
 
 It took Joanna a full hour and a half to finish with the 
 children. Both in their different ways were greatly excited, 
 and she had cause to rue some of her desperate promises, 
 especially that one of the splashy bath before the fire, 
 
 Ollie in the tub, shaking her head wildly and screwing up 
 her eyes under a wet fallen fringe of hair, rocked in the water 
 and beat upon it unremittingly with her palms, until such 
 moment as Roddy, standing by should shout the magic words 
 " Peace! Be still! " when she became immediately motionless. 
 And when Roddy was in the bath the process was reversed. 
 But in each case the periods of storm were prolonged out of all 
 proportion to the periods of calm, and Joanna came near to 
 losing patience. 
 
 " You know what Father said, Roddy," she pleaded. " That 
 on the night after your massage you must be early in bed, or 
 it won't do you any good. You know it is making your 
 legs bigger and stronger already. Don't you want to be big 
 and strong? " 
 
 As she urged him she was thinking how like the Moons it 
 was that they should pinch themselves, as they undoubtedly 
 were doing not to speak of Trissie's working herself to 
 threads at the laundry so that expensive attention should 
 be lavished upon Roddy's delicate limbs while they allowed 
 him night after night to sit up till all hours, and gave him 
 his supper at any time between five o'clock and eleven. The 
 wonder was that the child should show any benefit from this 
 one-sided treatment. But he certainly did; and now with 
 his clothes off he looked much like any other rather thin little 
 boy. 
 
 " I like my massage," Roddy was remarking meditatively 
 in response to Joanna's rally. u Miss Olssen's fingers are 
 just like jewels on my back." But this observation, charming
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 299 
 
 as it was, made him no faster in his deliberate washing of his 
 person. And Joanna knew by experience that he would resent 
 with all his manhood any offer of hers to do the soaping or 
 sponging for him. 
 
 At last, however, she had got both the small, young naked 
 bodies dried: Roddy's stringy and hard, yet so helplessly 
 tender: Ollie's, petal-soft, yet firm as a stephanotis bud. And 
 she thought how defenceless, how touchingly exposed the man- 
 child seemed by the side of the finished, compact budlikeness 
 of the girl baby. 
 
 " Tell me Ollie " she asked while she brushed the child's 
 
 damp, short hair back from her forehead fine, dead-straight 
 hair it was, cut boyishly indeed, but so female to the touch, 
 
 so different from Roddy's mane. " Tell me, would you 
 
 rather be a girl or a boy? " 
 
 " I'd rather be a girl," laughed Ollie at once, but quite 
 inattentively. She was trying all the while to twitch the 
 jacket of Roddy's pa jama suit away from him before he could 
 struggle into it. 
 
 " Keep still, Ollie, do! Why would you rather be a girl? " 
 persisted Joanna. She was surprised a little by the child's 
 readiness, and therefore doubtful if there had been any mean- 
 ing behind her answer. 
 
 This time Ollie had to think for just a moment. She stood 
 perfectly still under the brush. 
 
 Then " Because I like boys best," she gravely replied. 
 
 But when Joanna could not help smiling, Ollie, in a little 
 panic was no longer sure what she had said, or whether it 
 was right or wrong. ^ 
 
 She looked at Joanna sideways, questioning. 
 
 VI 
 
 When the children were asleep, the bath emptied, all remain- 
 ing traces of tombstones removed, and a tea-tray put ready 
 for the exhausted Trissie's arrival, it was nearly ten o'clock. 
 Only now did Joanna remember her mother's letter. She 
 opened it at once. 
 
 " MY BELOVED CHILD (it ran), 
 
 " Much has happened of late which I have not felt able 
 to mention in my ordinary letters to you. Mother had to 
 meditate and pray before coming to such an important deci- 
 sion, and in her great solitude she had none to help her but
 
 300 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 our Heavenly Father who is ever so long-suffering towards 
 the feeblest of his children. O! my own, darling daughter, may 
 you never fail to seek that Source in times of trial when the 
 Evil One lieth in wait, for other help is there none. You will 
 not be surprised when I tell you, dear, that the Matter in which 
 I have been seeking Guidance, is whether my future abode is 
 to be in Glasgow or in London. You remember how we all 
 talked of this at the time of dear Georgie's wedding? 
 
 " When you left, as I have already told you in my letters, 
 Mabel was very kind and attentive. Indeed I knew not what 
 I should have done without her. But now that she is gone, I 
 feel I can tell you without seeming ungrateful that she was far, 
 far from being one of my own precious girls. I do not think 
 she intends it, but Mabel with her gift of sympathy has a 
 way of making me say things of my nearest and dearest which 
 I very much regret afterwards. 
 
 " Not long after Mabel left us, I saw that Linnet, impatient 
 and restless, would really be better living by himself, at least 
 for a time. Eva Gedge, whom I consulted, did not agree with 
 me in this. She thought it my Christian duty to remain with 
 Linnet. But God had shown me otherwise, as He did when 
 I let you go, dear, to London. And I told this to Eva, at the 
 same time offering myself for a few months' trial, as her co- 
 worker in whatever way she thought best. I offered, if she 
 liked, to take over Evening Prayers at the Training College, and 
 to have special Bible Readings (dealing especially with pro- 
 phecies of the Second Coming) for the students. For gifted 
 as Eva is, and intellectually far above my reach how often, 
 Joanna, has Mother to pray against envy of the gifts of others! 
 I could not but see that there was a conventionality, even a 
 seeming coldness about her prayers and exposition of the Holy 
 Word. In all prayerful love I had thought this to show that 
 her real sphere was organization. And as Eva has always 
 tried to help me by pointing out any shortcomings of mine, 
 I ventured with none but the most sisterly feelings to draw 
 her attention to what I am sure is the truth. But you will 
 hardly believe me when I tell you how completely her manner 
 has changed towards me from that very moment. Christ's 
 Kingdom is indeed still far off so long as His Chosen ones have 
 so little of His spirit! It was a most painful, most bitter 
 experience, and has made any further idea of my living under 
 her roof (even if she were willing) quite impossible.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 301 
 
 " This happened about three weeks ago, but wishing to 
 say nothing unjust I did not tell you of it at once. Now, after 
 much wavering I think I see my way clear. As soon as 
 suitable rooms can be got for Linnet I must come to London. 
 And I must do what you have all so often begged I now 
 see rightly : I must hand over all the housekeeping to you, 
 if you still feel able for it, and confine myself to certain duties 
 which wll lighten your responsibilities. Your frequent affec- 
 tionate letters, and Georgie's have been a great strength to 
 me in some dark hours, and I feel a growing longing to be with 
 you in that great and wonderful city where so much is being 
 done (do I not read of it continually in my weekly magazines?) 
 to hasten the Coming of His Kingdom which is all my prayer 
 and desire. It will of course take some time to get Linnet 
 comfortably settled here. But we shall go as we are Led, one 
 step at a time. Meanwhile it might be as well don't you 
 think? to be on the look-out for a suitable, quite small 
 house in the neighborhood of Hampstead Heath? I should 
 wish, of course, not to be far from Georgie. If possible Pd 
 rather not have a flat, never having fancied one (though 
 I'm told the London people prefer them, and I know they 
 are very different from our Glasgow closes). You need not 
 be told how happy Mother is with a bit of garden to tend. But 
 this may be too much to hope for ? " 
 
 Joanna read this long letter and there was much more of 
 it through to the end with a loving but heavy heart. Though 
 it told her little that was unexpected, she knew now how 
 surely she had come to count upon her mother's protracted 
 unwillingness to leave Glasgow. The loss of this surety was a 
 blow at her freedom and her new-found happiness. But she 
 felt for Juley, and she was not free from self-reproach. She 
 tried hard to persuade herself that, given entirely new condi- 
 tions, she and her mother might be able to find a new and 
 happier existence under the same roof. 
 
 Anyhow there was but one thing to be done, cost what it 
 might later. She wrote a welcoming, affectionate letter home 
 without delay.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 BUT nine months passed: nine months, including Christmas 
 and Easter holidays spent as usual by Joanna in Scot- 
 land; and Juley seemed no nearer to the carrying out of her 
 decision. Whether there was anything in the various prac- 
 tical excuses for delay periodically alleged by Juley in further 
 letters and talks; whether she did not as yet, after all, feel 
 perfectly sure of Heavenly guidance; or whether she was 
 simply not equal to the uprooting, Joanna did not know. 
 At intervals she continued to urge her mother's coming, but 
 now that the summer holiday was again at hand, and nothing 
 in the situation changed, she had begun once more to accept 
 her freedom as a permanent condition. 
 
 Neither had Louis afforded her any further, or at least any 
 definite occasion of testing, such as she had prepared herself 
 for on that November evening. On the morning after his 
 daughter-in-law's unexpected arrival he had set aside all family 
 claims, and had gone with Joanna down into Surrey for a 
 long blissful day's walking. They had climbed up, down, and 
 about Leith Hill, and had discovered a solitary inn, with a 
 wide triangular common to itself. And Louis had been at 
 once more winning and more serious with her than ever 
 before. Since then, she had perfectly accommodated herself 
 or so she thought to the inevitable difficulties of their situa- 
 tion. She had anyhow grown used to them; and against 
 them in the balance she could place a steady progress in her 
 work. This much was certain under the combined discipline 
 and excitement of her life her technical accomplishment in- 
 creased. 
 
 It was a brazen, stifling Sunday afternoon in August, the 
 day before Bank Holiday. Louis had left town the morning 
 before. Joanna did not start for Glasgow until the Tuesday 
 morning. As usual, with London bereft of her lover, she 
 found a blankness in the air. Everything seemed empty and 
 echoing. But it was not wholly unpleasant. She liked to 
 
 302
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 303 
 
 miss him. They had parted firmly, almost happily. Her 
 mind was already set forward upon her holiday, badly needed, 
 and beyond her holiday upon the next coming together. 
 Moreover, without any doubt there was a sense of relief in 
 the knowledge that she was free, to herself alone, for that 
 day and the next: that she could come and go from the house 
 without any fear of missing some call or telephone message 
 from Louis. While he was in town, it was a fear that never 
 quite left her. 
 
 In spirit therefore, Joanna inhabited a kind of limbo to 
 which she had long since become accustomed on these thresh- 
 olds of holiday. But in the flesh, this afternoon at three 
 o'clock, she sat with the Moons on their roof-garden. 
 
 At the moment, her head on one side, and only the absorbed 
 curve of her lips showing beneath the drooping brim of her 
 hat, she was making a birthday present for Ollie Garland. 
 Some days before, she had black-lacquered a small wooden 
 work-box, and now that the surface had hardened, she was 
 painting a bright, impossible bird on the lid and little gay- 
 colored flowers on the sides. 
 
 " I do hope Ollie will like it! " she exclaimed happily, not 
 speaking to anyone in particular. 
 
 " What sort of a bird is it supposed to be? " asked Trissie 
 Moon, lifting her heated face and pushing back a fallen loop 
 of her hair with her forearm. In the other earthy hand she 
 clutched a trowel, and had been working this last hour at her 
 nasturtiums with penal energy. 
 
 When Trissie was gardening one had to wonder what it 
 was that she was so fiercely punishing in herself, or for what 
 it was in another that she thus made expiation. Or was it 
 merely some spite against life which she was confusedly wreak- 
 ing upon the earth? Her eyes, with the bruised shadows 
 beneath them, were burning. Her pallid forehead glistened 
 with sweat. Her mouth was set in lines of pain. 
 
 She was the only one on the roof-garden not at peace. Mr. 
 Moon sat reading on a canvas chair. Edvina was asleep in 
 her carriage, with a dark parasol stuck through the wicker- 
 work to keep the glare of the sky from her upturned face. 
 And Roddy, squatting on the leads, was placidly involved in 
 a net- work of railway lines. 
 
 Joanna gave a little laugh in reply to Trissie's peremptory 
 demand.
 
 304 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " I'm not sure," she admitted. " I'm making it up as I 
 go. I thought a phoenix perhaps? " 
 
 Edwin Moon looked over his spectacles and his British 
 Medical Journal at the box in question. 
 
 " I don't think it's a phoenix. No," he observed unemphati- 
 cally. And in the colorless tone of your true scholar, he 
 proceeded to describe that mythological bird. 
 
 Joanna gave him an interested glance. Rarely would her 
 landlord himself initiate any learned conversation. But 
 while others talked loosely of this or that, it was astonishing 
 how often apt or curious information was furnished in his mild 
 voice. 
 
 " What about a bird of paradise, then? " asked Joanna. 
 " I think I'd like it to be a bird of paradise." 
 
 Mr. Moon seemed to give this his approval. 
 
 " And the less like the real thing the better," he suggested 
 with the ghost of a twinkle in his quenched blue eyes. 
 
 " You know of course," he went on, " that there is a legen- 
 dary bird of paradise as well as the one they kill for women's 
 hats? Give little Ollie the myth." 
 
 But Joanna knew nothing of the legend. 
 
 "Yes," Mr. Moon told her, as he picked up his Journal 
 again. " According to the old zoologists this kind of bird 
 was irresistibly attracted by the nutmegs strewn on the floors 
 of certain island forests. And it came down in flocks and 
 devoured the spice till it was drunk. While it was drunk 
 its legs were eaten off by ants. So that afterwards it had to 
 live always in the air. Having no legs it couldn't alight even 
 to sleep, and was seen continually on the wing. Hence 
 bird of paradise." 
 
 Joanna had stopped her painting to listen. 
 
 "What a sad bird! " she exclaimed. "I shan't tell Ollie 
 that story." But to her own secret heart she added, " That 
 bird is like me! " 
 
 With her fine, sable-hair brush she put a scarlet feather a 
 high, delicate loop of scarlet into her bird's tail. Then she 
 put a sheer sweeping blue one. Then one that cascaded pure, 
 lemon yellow. And she held the box away, drawing back 
 her head the better to appreciate her work. How well these 
 clear colors were shrilled out upon the black! She had 
 never succeeded with lacquer half so well before. 
 
 " Now I have the trick," she declared, " I'd love to do your
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 305 
 
 tray for you, Trissie; and that old pencil-case of Roddy's. 
 I feel I could paint every bit of wood in the house." 
 
 A gentle consciousness of pleasure came to her there on the 
 roof-garden, and she loved her quiet companions. These 
 Moons were her friends! What other friends had she made in 
 London these fourteen months? In Georgie's world she was 
 not at home; she was joyless in Irene's; and despite common 
 interests she had made no intimates in the Chelsea studios. 
 In all these quarters she had persevered chiefly because she 
 was afraid, because she dared not lose superficial touch with 
 her fellows, because she feared that the strangeness of her life 
 might react in some monstrous external strangeness. But 
 here with the Moons she was able to feel simply human, free 
 and at her ease. She believed that both Trissie and Edwin 
 had long ago guessed her secret, and that they understood. 
 They were themselves sorrowful, outcast people, and therefore 
 must surely be kind. 
 
 Joanna's meditation was interrupted at this point by an 
 exclamation of annoyance which came from Trissie. For 
 some time past, neglecting her gardening she had been peering 
 through the trellis, apparently observing with apprehension 
 the uncertain movements of a stranger in the court below. 
 
 " It is a visitor for us," she announced in despair. And as 
 she spoke the knocker sounded upon the front door. " Who 
 can it be? You must go, Edwin. My hands aren't fit to 
 be seen. It's probably some one for you." 
 
 " I don't expect anyone, anyhow," said Joanna peacefully, 
 and filling her brush with bright orange pigment, she proceeded 
 to block in a nasturtium upon a blank side of Ollie's box. 
 
 Mr. Moon, having gone obediently downstairs, returned the 
 next minute, " Some one to see Mrs. Rasponi," he informed 
 them. " I've taken him up." And he sat down again to 
 his reading. 
 
 As Joanna in a little confusion laid aside her paints, mur- 
 muring the while that she wondered who on earth it could 
 me, a gleam of pure malice flashed from Trissie's eyes. 
 
 " It isn't Mr. Fender," she volunteered in a low, acrimonious 
 voice. And she dug her trowel passionately into a tub of 
 fresh mold. " It's a young man . . . dark . . . seemed not 
 to know his way." 
 
 Like a fury she began tying up the long, helpless trails of 
 her creepers with pieces of bast, tweaked viciously from a
 
 306 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 sheaf which she was holding between her compressed lips. 
 But Joanna was too much absorbed in her own speculations 
 to be more than dimly aware of the other woman's malevo- 
 lence. And she passed unscathed into the house. 
 
 n 
 
 As she entered the archway room, her visitor it was Law- 
 rence Urquhart turned quickly from the window to meet her. 
 He looked more self-possessed than she remembered him, and 
 so well, that when they had shaken hands, for want of any 
 thing better to say, she remarked upon it. 
 
 He admitted that he was quite well. How was she? 
 
 Joanna was quite well too. But as she assured him of this, 
 she did not meet his eyes; and when he admired her room, 
 she set rather hastily about displaying her possessions. That 
 was her Italian mirror: these her mauve and gold luster tea- 
 cups picked up at Dorking: here was her Empire coffee-pot, 
 wasn't it a beauty? and there by the window was the brass- 
 clamped sea-chest she had got for a few shillings one wet 
 day in an open-air market. 
 
 It was their first meeting since the last unhappy ride to- 
 gether more than a year ago, but in the interval Joanna had 
 once accidentally had a glimpse of Lawrence unknown to 
 him. It had been on a night when she was leaving a theater 
 with Louis. Lawrence with a friend another young man 
 had been in the crowd, and the unexpected sight of his uncon- 
 scious face had affected her so oddly that she had not 
 pointed him out to Louis. Why was it, she had asked herself, 
 that seeing Lawrence's features anew, after absence, was like 
 being confronted suddenly by some vital memory of childhood? 
 He was only an acquaintance of her adult years. Why then 
 should his eyes recall so strongly the very look of the pools 
 in the burn at Duntarvie? " 
 
 But Lawrence was not yet living in London. He told her 
 this as if it were the apology for his visit. He was here only 
 for the Bank Holiday to make quite sure of a certain berth in 
 Fleet Street. . . . Yes, he was leaving Oxford ... No more 
 work for him there after September. . . . And Joanna must 
 know what a sad, untidy, waste-papery sort of place London 
 was, of a Sunday afternoon. He agreed with her that Glas- 
 gow was fifty times worse in the same circumstances. Still
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 307 
 
 one felt even more left to oneself in London. At least he 
 did. So he had taken a walk through the Green Park; and 
 being then so near, had thought to look her up Carl had given 
 him the address but he had hardly expected to find her in 
 town. 
 
 He told her that outside this two days' run to London, he 
 was not having a holiday this year. 
 
 She had begun to pour tea from the Empire coffee-pot into 
 one of the mauve and gilt cups, but now she paused with ques- 
 tioning eyes upon him. All the time she had been wondering 
 obscurely wherein he was changed. It seemed that Oxford 
 had done for him what she believed London had done for 
 her. How had it come about in his case? 
 
 " You look to me as if you had just returned from a holi- 
 day," she said with just a thread of vexation in her voice. 
 " I never saw you look better." And she went on with her 
 tea-making. 
 
 " It's more than I can say of you," he replied quietly. 
 
 Taken off her guard, Joanna looked up quickly and had to 
 meet his scrutiny. To her dismay she felt the blood rise hot 
 in her face. 
 
 " I expect I need my holiday," she said, handing the cup 
 to him less deftly than was her wont. He had moved from 
 his seat to take it, and now stood close by her, looking down 
 at her. 
 
 " But you needn't be so disagreeable about it," she added 
 harshly, fighting him off. 
 
 Though she was glad then to see him turn away in distress, 
 it was she that presently harked back to the subject. 
 
 " What makes you say I look such a fright? " she could 
 not resist questioning him. 
 
 Lawrence protested that he had said no such thing. 
 
 " It sounded like that." 
 
 " No. You look ..." The young man frowned and 
 hesitated. But now Joam a had seen from his eyes that he 
 found her beautiful. 
 
 " Yes? Go on," she insisted. 
 
 " Last night at the Coliseum, I saw a juggler," he began. 
 " He was keeping a dozen plates in the air at once. But it was 
 his face I watched. He wasn't exactly anxious. He knew his 
 job brilliantly. Still it was taking him all his time and every 
 ounce of his strength to do it and keep a calm front."
 
 . 3 o8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Joanna waited. But it seemed that Lawrence was finished. 
 
 " And I look like him? " she asked, keeping tight hold of 
 herself. She was seething with anger. 
 
 " As I see you," persisted Lawrence bravely. 
 
 " I'm very sorry! " She sat biting her lower lip which would 
 miserably tremble. Then a single heavy tear slid out of one 
 eye and ran with surprising momentum down her cheek and 
 on to her lap. 
 
 She kept perfectly still. As it was the far-away cheek from 
 Lawrence, and as she was sitting with her back to the light, 
 she hoped he would not notice. But almost immediately a 
 second tear, scalding and vexatious pushed itself over the lower 
 lid of the other eye. 
 
 She sprang up and made for the window. 
 
 " Why . . . are you ... so ... horrid? " she just man- 
 aged to articulate. And then all in one gasping breath, . . . 
 " Can't you see I'm tired? I've been over-working. I need 
 a holiday." 
 
 If now she expected a penitent, prostrate Lawrence, she 
 was mistaken. He sat stark still in his place and did not say 
 a word. 
 
 She recovered all the more quickly for his immobility, and 
 turned herself about again with a face suffused. 
 
 " I wonder . . ." She could almost smile though her 
 voice was still full of treacherous quavers. . . " I wonder why 
 I always behave like an idiot when I'm with you? " 
 
 " Because I'm an idiot myself," was Lawrence's sour re- 
 joinder. And though they both knew better, this helped to 
 restore their calm. 
 
 " Listen ..." she began presently as she helped herself 
 to more tea. " . . .1 saw you in the theater one night. And 
 
 " she added with tremulous mischief " you were not 
 
 by yourself." 
 
 To her gratification Lawrence looked at her quite startled. 
 
 " When was that ? " 
 
 " One Saturday night in summer." 
 
 " Let me see now," he considered warily. " Which theater? " 
 
 " Daly's." 
 
 " Ah! Daly's? " She could feel him hiding his relief. He 
 remembered now. He had come up with a man . . . Martin, 
 his name was ... a very entertaining fellow . . . not unlike 
 Carl Nilsson in some ways ... he would like Joanna to
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 309 
 
 have met Martin. And what had she thought of the piece? 
 Why had she not spoken to them? he asked. 
 
 Joanna explained some of the circumstances. It had been, 
 she said, in the vestibule crush, struggling for cabs on a night 
 suddenly turned to rain as he might remember. And then 
 something forced her to add " I was with Louis Fender! " 
 
 But on this Lawrence made no comment. 
 
 Soon they spoke of other things. She put some vague ques- 
 tions about Oxford, and was struck by his detached and 
 critical attitude. Here surely was another sign of change in 
 him? In Glasgow he had been in some awe of the very name. 
 
 " I've learned one thing there, anyhow," he told her. " I've 
 learned to shudder at the thought of what I should have 
 become with a tolerably successful academic career. I was 
 shifted out of that, and a good job too! " 
 
 Though he did not actually add in words " I owe it to 
 you," Joanna felt herself both implicated and exonerated. 
 She asked him what his new choice was to be. 
 
 " Not journalism surely? " she hazarded. 
 
 Lawrence replied looking at her, and perceiving a certain 
 repugnance in her face that journalism it was, for the time 
 at least. He had got a newspaper job of sorts jumped at 
 it indeed because that would bring him to London, and 
 because he could go on reading for the Bar at the same time. 
 What it was all to come to, he himself did not yet know. He 
 only knew that he wanted to be " in the stream of things." 
 
 " And professors aren't? " asked Joanna. 
 
 " Not in the way I mean," he replied. " They are all 
 fenced in and sheltered. A few of them keep up the pretence 
 that this isn't so. But it is. It has got to be." 
 
 So they talked on for a while, sticking cautiously to general- 
 ities, till Lawrence sprang up, as if he had quite suddenly 
 recollected an engagement elsewhere. As he said good-bye 
 he asked Joanna if she would go with him next day for a 
 glimpse of Hampstead Heath. He had always wanted to see 
 it on a Bank Holiday. 
 
 After a moment's hesitation she agreed. She always hated 
 the blank day before a journey and Louis was out of town. 
 " We might have another ride together, this time on wooden 
 steeds," suggested Lawrence.
 
 3io OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 m 
 
 But the walk on Monday was no pleasure to Joanna. 
 Though she had been well disposed toward Lawrence at part- 
 ing and in her after- thoughts of him the next meeting found her 
 weary and hostile. She would like to have shut her ears to 
 whatever he said, and the blaring, glaring, untidy Heath had 
 none of the charm she had found there at the Whitsuntide 
 holiday when Louis had been her companion. The vile, 
 raucous voices were an affront, and the ugly laughter. She 
 loathed the reeking faces and the horse-play. She refused 
 after all to ride on the merry-go-round, refused to have tea 
 anywhere but at home. It was all hateful to her. 
 
 Some relief came with the escape back to her rooms, though 
 Chapel Court itself was noisy enough. She had thought to 
 shake Lawrence off at the street door and go up alone. Surely 
 he must feel as she did, what a failure the afternoon had been? 
 Then why had he not the sense to leave her? But no! He 
 stuck like a burr, and seemed oblivious to the languor of her 
 invitation. 
 
 Still things were better in the quiet interior, and there would 
 be some comfort in tea sipped behind the closed shutters. Here 
 over the archway one was safe. And the cool, untouched 
 breeze crept in at the sides of the curtains. 
 
 Leaving Lawrence on their entrance, Joanna ran to her 
 bedroom and threw off her hot and dusty outer clothes. Her 
 thin dresses were already packed, so she had nothing to put 
 on saving one of the holland smocks she wore for working. 
 But no garment she had was more becoming to her, a fact 
 which had more than once been pointed out by Louis. Assur- 
 edly in the cool, pleated linen, when she had laved her face, 
 and doubled up her hair anew, she felt a different creature. 
 
 The young man gave a little start of joy as she came into 
 the sitting-room. But his only spoken comment was that she 
 looked " nice and cool." 
 
 For a while they talked of the heat. Then " You know 
 what I said yesterday . . .? " questioned Lawrence abruptly. 
 ..." that about having no more use for the back-waters? " 
 
 Yes. Joanna remembered. 
 
 " It was you helped me to it," he said quietly, only his 
 breathing playing him false." ... I wanted to tell you that. 
 You helped so tremendously. You have always stood for
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 3" 
 
 the real world which I would have hidden from if I 
 could." 
 
 Joanna wondered in all honesty how this could be. " I've 
 always been in such a dream myself," she declared, "... till 
 quite lately." 
 
 " Perhaps . . ."he winced a little " . . . I don't 
 
 know about lately. But that first evening at Mrs. Lovatt's 
 house at dinner. You seemed a different person from the one 
 in old Cellibrini's class. You had got away, really away . . . 
 didn't belong any more to Glasgow. You hadn't been just 
 travelling or sight-seeing like the others. How I admired 
 the way you had escaped ... it was something I needed so 
 badly and had so little courage for. Couldn't we start being 
 friends from now? " he ended abruptly. 
 
 "We might ..." she allowed. But she hesitated. 
 
 " You seem to grudge it," his voice was sharp. " If you 
 knew how I need . . . what happiness it would mean to 
 me. ... " 
 
 " That's exactly it," Joanna interrupted him quickly. " I 
 do believe we might be friends if only it weren't a thing you 
 thought you needed to make you happy. Don't you see? " 
 
 " No. I don't think I do see." He was taken aback. 
 
 " I mean, surely happiness has to be in ourselves if it is to 
 be any use at all? I've thought such a lot about this lately," 
 said she with growing eagerness. " If your happiness is in 
 the hands of other people, or of any circumstances whatever, 
 it is really only misery. If you were happy in yourself now, 
 it would be all right. We could be friends and get pleasure 
 out of it. Otherwise I don't see the good." 
 
 Lawrence pondered this resentfully. There was too much 
 truth in what Joanna had said for him to scout it on the in- 
 stant. Had he not all his life gone seeking happiness outside 
 himself? It came to him now almost with the force of a dis- 
 covery. And yet it was a lie what a lie it was! that 
 this woman he loved now so plausibly asked him to share. 
 He himself had lied when he had said her friendship would 
 make him happy. He did not expect happiness from it. He 
 needed what he could get of her. That was all ... didn't 
 even want it ... needed it. And he cared not what he had 
 to pay for it in wretchedness. 
 
 And just because he needed it, she wasn't playing fair. No, 
 she wasn't. But he would have to share her lie. For he
 
 3 r2 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 feared above all things to lose his chance of seeing her 
 again. 
 
 " Then if I come to see you when I'm settled in London," he 
 managed to say, with a peculiar smile, as he was leaving, "it 
 will be because I'm happy in myself. I think you may count 
 on seeing me." 
 
 All the evening Joanna was alone. Having finished her 
 packing she started putting her rooms in order. 
 
 She existed submerged beneath the incessant holiday clamor. 
 The revellers were returning to their homes, and by nine 
 o'clock the trampling and shouting in the street had become 
 a steady torture. The only respite came when a band of boys 
 and girls passed along the pavement singing the music-hall 
 song of the moment. They sang with the irreproachable 
 ecstatic rhythm of the Cockney, their voices twanging out 
 defiantly in -parts. 
 
 Then in the court below, a piano-organ struck up, and people 
 began to dance in front of the Bird-in-Hand. It was a ta % king 
 tune, full of negro syncopations; and Joanna leaned her fore- 
 head against the pane of her back window and looked down 
 at the dancers. A fat girl in crushed white muslin, with 
 clumsy feet, wriggled her body monotonously to the music, 
 and there was a fixed, mesmeric smile on her gleaming face. 
 Opposite to her a decrepit man hopped in time, while a 
 baby clutched one of his knees, and granny, careworn and fit 
 to drop, rocked back and forth in toothless laughter at her 
 old man's antics. 
 
 " In the stream of things! " Why should one want to be 
 in the stream of things? questioned Joanna in her upper dark- 
 ness. Yet is was true that it was terrible to be shut out 
 in undesired solitude. A sudden hatred of this London, so 
 noisily vacant without Louis, this London with its choice be- 
 tween a festering stream of things, and an insane and sterile 
 solitude, rose in her heart like a corroding poison. And what 
 of that invincible inward happiness of which she had so com- 
 placently discoursed to Lawrence but a short while ago? Ah, 
 it was easy to talk! All she knew now was that her whole 
 life stayed suspended till her next meeting with Louis. 
 
 VI 
 
 September had come again; gusty and golden, and Joanna 
 had not yet been put to that test she had almost a year before
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 313 
 
 imagined herself as meeting with a perfection of equanimity. 
 
 She was in good spirits, standing before her mirror and 
 trying on an absurd little blue hat. She pinned its feather 
 its feather that so beautifully matched her jade necklace first 
 at the front like a hussar; then at back like a sportsman; then 
 at one side like a coquette. And she wondered if Phemie too 
 was pinning on a feather at the other side of the world. 
 Though she was only going to a private view of Arts and 
 Crafts, where she was hardly likely to see Louis, she had 
 dressed with special care. 
 
 Her summer holiday had refreshed her, and had been unex- 
 pectedly happy. She and Linnet and their mother had en- 
 joyed themselves very peacefully in one of the remoter West 
 Coast villages, and the weather had continued so fine that she 
 had left them there for another week or two by the sea. That 
 her mother and she would be setting up house together in 
 London (Georgie expected a baby early in February) was 
 finally decided. But it no longer seemed a calamity. It was 
 simply a situation, and a situation Joanna now boasted, could 
 always be mastered with good will and management. 
 
 Certainly things for the moment were going well with her. 
 Her holiday had been good, but it was still better to be back 
 in London. Her theater work was now well established, yet 
 remained enough of a novelty to be an excitement. Louis 
 had praised her last two drawings, and praise from him was 
 sweet. Even sweeter had been the extraordinary solicitude 
 he had shown on the night of her return a week before. Her 
 train had been an hour late, but Louis was waiting on the plat- 
 form a thing she had scarcely allowed herself to hope for 
 during the crowded and exhausting journey. He would have 
 walked the station all night, he vowed, if need be. And, 
 the Moons being away in the country (for the first time these 
 three years, Trissie had written grimly), he had himself under- 
 taken her comfort, not only at the station but in the empty 
 house afterwards. He had coaxed her to eat and drink, had 
 shaken out her travelling clothes, had insisted with unfamiliar 
 tenderness on airing her sheets and taking off her shoes. 
 More than by the expected passion of their first meeting 
 after weeks of separation, had she been stirred and made glad 
 by his new care of her. 
 
 She decided upon keeping the little green feather at one side. 
 
 Though there was not -a tree in Chapel Court, its corners
 
 314 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 were heaped with leaves this yellow September afternoon, and 
 the wind kept blowing them about the paving stones and 
 against the walls of the houses. When front doors were 
 opened it even blew them upstairs and into the top rooms ; and 
 now again a solitary, crumpled leaf tossed high in the air, 
 would fly in at a window. 
 
 One came sailing in at the top of Joanna's window now, just 
 as she had set the feather to her liking. It sailed in, as if 
 doubtfully, then floated downward and wavered against her 
 breast. 
 
 "Another happy year! " she murmured joyously as she 
 caught it. There was no longer any grief in the memory of 
 that company of milk-white-trees of Vallombrosa under which 
 she had fled about with Mario, trying to catch the falling 
 leaves. 
 
 So exhilarated was she, and so vivid were all her sensations 
 during the walk of twenty minutes to the gallery, that on 
 getting there she found the specimens of Art and Craft dull 
 by comparison. 
 
 Really as often happens with a certain kind of solitary 
 exhilaration when it is transferred from a vague to a definite 
 setting a peculiar reaction had taken place. Joanna herself 
 was not immediately aware of it. She merely condemned 
 the exhibits as astonishingly tame, and turned instead to 
 look at the people. Very likely, she told herself, she might 
 see some one she knew; and with a little unacknowledged 
 sinking of her heart she admitted it would be pleasant at the 
 moment to have company. 
 
 Having already made a vain tour of all the rooms with this 
 in mind, she now returned to the first room and began to watch 
 the new arrivals as they came in from the street through the 
 principal swing doors. Above these doors was a clock. It 
 pointed, as Joanna absently noticed, to a quarter past five. 
 
 All at once, as if some stony word had been uttered in her 
 ear, her body became tense. She had seen Louis enter the 
 room. And with him was his wife. Joanna had never seen 
 his wife before, but she could not be mistaken. That smiling 
 woman swathed in smoke gray for whom he had held open the 
 door was she. Joanna knew it, though now, as she saw, there 
 were two other women with him. A tall old man and a young 
 man followed. 
 
 The party, self-absorbed and moving leisurely, proceeded
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 315 
 
 through the first room. Clearly the object of their visit did 
 not lie here. And now Joanna was conscious only of disap- 
 pointment. Louis had not seen her! How she had prayed, 
 while awful things were happening in her breast, her throat, 
 her limbs, that he would not see her. But now he was almost 
 at the further door, and she could not bear it. Her feet carried 
 her rapidly up the long, crowded room after him. 
 
 There they were, in the next room now. She stood in the 
 doorway, looking. Why, of course it was the Mortlake tiles 
 they had come to see! Some dozen of them were showing in 
 that case . . . rare old Persian ones ..." a sight more worth 
 while than most pictures! " Louis had said of them once 
 cocking up his eyebrows in sincerest admiration. . . . And 
 that tall, old man was Sir John Mortlake. . . . Had she not 
 a drawing of his leonine head at home on the back of a receipt? 
 
 It was a small room, and as the Pender party had just met 
 more friends, they seemed to fill it up. Louis was introducing 
 some one to the smoke-gray woman. His voice and manner 
 seemed to imply that the gallery existed for him and his 
 friends. 
 
 " You know my wife? ..." 
 
 Each time his voice sounded shutters of darkness kept de- 
 scending across Joanna's line of vision. But it was as if in 
 addition to her ordinary sight she possessed some microscopic 
 inner eye which was exempt from emotion; and with this 
 she continued to register facts. 
 
 That young man, it said, was not Francis, his father's 
 favorite: that was Oliver, the soldier's son. And the pretty, 
 fair girl was his wife, Marietta. 
 
 Yet, when it came to Mrs. Pender, the tinily working 
 mechanism would only chronicle a dress. Nothing but a 
 dress! A very beautiful dress it was . . . remarkable even 
 among the many unusual toilettes surrounding it ... other 
 women had to turn and look at it with admiration. . . . But 
 what of the face above these subtle folds and draperies? Do 
 what she would, Joanna could not see it. She was anxious 
 to see it, and by looking once or twice aside, tried to refresh 
 her vision for seeing it. But no! The nodding, smiling, 
 ineloquent face of the woman baffled her each time. And 
 though she gazed till she was almost in a stupor with gazing 
 she could see only a smiling nothing under a hat. 
 
 " She's nothing! " cried the girl in her heart with fierce
 
 3 i6 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 satisfaction. " She's nothing . . . like Irene. How can he 
 laugh and talk like that? Why does he bear it? " 
 
 Undoubtedly Louis appeared very sprightly. Was this 
 his Society manner? Joanna shivered. She remembered his 
 half amused strutting on the night she first met him. He 
 was never like that with her now, she thanked Heaven! 
 
 But this was what he could not give up for her. A nausea 
 crept over her. 
 
 Still she couldn't turn and leave the place. She could not 
 go till she had seen his face in recognition. 
 
 At that moment Louis turned with a roving eye and saw 
 her. He made no visible movement. For perhaps three 
 seconds he stood staring straight at her, maintaining the same 
 apparently easy posture, yet Joanna knew him rigid in every 
 sinew. 
 
 Then he shifted his hat very slightly on his head, and turned 
 away. There had not come the faintest change on his face. 
 It was less an acknowledgment than a denial. It would rob 
 her of identity. 
 
 Joanna went out. She passed down the long room steadily, 
 pushed herself through the swing doors, and after walking 
 blindly for some minutes found herself in Regent Street. Here 
 she paused for a moment as if overtaken in spite of her haste 
 by what she most desired to escape. What a sickness was 
 this! What a devastating disgust! 
 
 " Shall I bear it? " she asked. And she spoke the question 
 again and again, in a low voice but audibly as if it relieved her. 
 " Shall I bear it? Shall I bear it? " 
 
 That she could bear it alas! even now she knew. Already 
 the old excuses were beginning to marshal themselves for 
 Louis. What should she have done in his place? What else 
 could he have done? In the circumstances would it not have 
 been the most distressing folly for him to have acted other- 
 wise? And she herself was a party to circumstance. It was 
 only because of her extraordinary lack of imagination that she 
 now suffered so acutely. Nothing was altered. 
 
 Not only by her reason, but by her proved capacity for en- 
 durance she knew she might bear it. How she could revel 
 in the part of the oppressed and humble still! How she 
 could hug to her bosom the secret jewel with its luster turned 
 inward, which is the inalienable treasure of the outcast! Was 
 it not this that she had unwittingly coveted when for a penance
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 317 
 
 she had kissed the blind beggar? Besides, did anything she 
 had seen to-day make her need Louis less? And was it less 
 true what he had said " If you leave go of me, I shall be in 
 the mire? " 
 
 She could bear it. 
 
 But would she? 
 
 It was not true that nothing was altered. Louis had been 
 lowered in her eyes. She had seen him joined to his idols. 
 
 And where did the blame lie? In his weakness, or in her 
 own dreadful endurance and humility? 
 
 This was what must be put to the test for his sake as well 
 as for hers. Her lust for sacrifice should be gratified no 
 longer. Would he also put his infirmity behind him? She 
 had made her choice. He must make his. If the mire was 
 his place, let him sink into it.. It was cleaner than the stifling 
 falseness into which she had dragged him. 
 
 Having walked about for nearly two hours, now in a sick 
 fury, now in concentrated thought, she slowly returned to 
 Chapel Court. 
 
 Her face under the rakish little hat looked pinched as if 
 by illness. But as she was wearily opening the Moons' 
 green door, she stopped, and a more hopeful expression came 
 over her features. 
 
 Some one had begun to thump out the tune called Simple 
 Aveu upon a neighboring piano. 
 
 Vulgar and sugary air! How often in her early teens had 
 Georgie wakened the household of a morning by practising it 
 thinly upon her fiddle! The atmosphere it now conjured up 
 was one of so utter, so unsuspectedly morbid a dreariness, that 
 Joanna was forced to take comfort thereat. Whatever life 
 might be now, it was a thousand times better than it had been 
 then! Not before had she realized to the full the unhappiness 
 of her teens. If she were at that moment, half so unhappy, 
 she would certainly kill herself. But she had something better 
 to do. 
 
 In the house a telegram awaited her. It was from Linnet. 
 
 It was a telegram of eleven words. 
 
 Joanna read it once. After a short, passive interval she 
 read it a second time. After a longer, more actve interval
 
 3 i8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 she read it a third time. But already at the third time she 
 knew it by heart. 
 
 When she drew the thin, folded slip out of its envelope that 
 she might read it a fourth time, she was seated in the night 
 express on her way to Scotland. She still knew it by heart. 
 For the past five hours it had been reiterating itself in her 
 brain, even on her lips. What was more, the wheels under her 
 carriage and the pulsing engine in front, had both got it by 
 heart. They kept repeating the eleven words over and over 
 in a kind of drone. But though this was so, though it had 
 caused her to do so many things with collected swiftness; 
 though it had brought her to the station, and had put her into 
 this train that swung and thudded northwards, perhaps it 
 was all a mistake, a figment of her own tired brain? 
 
 So she read it for the fourth time: 
 
 " Mother not well don't worry but think you should come 
 Linnet. " 
 
 It was dated from the village where she had left her mother 
 and Linnet. And it had been dispatched at 5:15 p.m. . . . 
 A quarter past five! The hour upon the clock over the swing 
 doors of the picture gallery! Just as she had caught sight of 
 Louis Linnet's message had started trembling along a wire 
 in the North! 
 
 A long, long time ago it seemed. Far longer than five 
 hours. And it was the telegram that had made it so. Because 
 the telegram had compelled action. It had visibly and in an 
 instant transformed her life, while that other had produced 
 nothing but emotions. Under the violence of the new com- 
 pulsion, Joanna was tempted for a moment to deny the impor- 
 tance of the earlier event. It seemed trivial beside the fact 
 of her mother's illness. But she was growing honest and she 
 refused the evasion. What had happened in the picture 
 gallery was important, but it could be left. That was all. 
 The summons from Linnet could not wait. Their mother 
 was ill. When had she been taken ill? He did not say. 
 There had been no hint of illness in any letter. A week 
 ago she had been well particularly well. How ill was she 
 now? 
 
 " Don't worry," Linnet had said, and Joanna had dwelt on 
 that part of his message in her hurried talk with Georgie before 
 leaving London. They all knew that Linnet was helpless in 
 the slightest case of illness at home. How much more so,
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 319 
 
 away there in that remote village, and under such primitive 
 conditions. It was natural that he should send for one of his 
 sisters. And Georgie was not in a state to travel. 
 
 She was not to worry. Linnet had expressly said so. But 
 Joanna lay awake all night in the train and knew that there 
 was no hope. Linnet, when he telegraphed, had not known 
 that there was no hope. She was sure of that. His tele- 
 gram had told her what he himself did not or would not 
 know. 
 
 Though she could not sleep, she lay down, trying to rest. 
 The day had told upon her in an aching fatigue, and she must 
 save the strength that remained for what was coming. To- 
 wards morning she slept a very little. 
 
 In Glasgow she found there was a coast train she might 
 catch with a rush, and a later one which would give her time 
 for some tea and a wash. " Don't worry," Linnet had said. 
 But Joanna raced for the first train, and scrambled into it 
 as it was moving. 
 
 On the steamer she swallowed some breakfast, though the 
 thick, round oaten biscuits, which in childhood she had en- 
 joyed, were as sawdust in her mouth. It was a rough, bright 
 crossing. There was a band, to which the plunging paddle 
 seemed to keep time and all the white, churned wake to 
 dance. Everything recalled the unforgettable journeys of 
 childhood . . . with piles of luggage, baths with straps round 
 them, perambulators, bags of biscuits for the sea-gulls .... 
 their father pacing the deck springily, laughing with the wind 
 in his beard . . . their mother falling asleep in a sheltered 
 corner with a tired, happy face. But now all the blown people 
 on the deck looked like ghosts. 
 
 Upon landing she was told that no coach ran till the arrival 
 of the next steamer, an hour later. So she started on foot, 
 leaving her bag to follow by coach. She set out at a good 
 pace, but very soon her fears made the slowness of walking 
 unbearable, and she broke into a run. She ran till her breath 
 came in agonizing gasps and she was forced to walk again. 
 She was not to worry. ... It was probably only a bad cold, 
 or perhaps another gastric attack like the one at the time of 
 the removal nothing really serious. But the question was, 
 would she get there in time? If she went on walking she 
 would be too late. So she ran again. And so she kept 
 on running and then walking, and then running again but
 
 320 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 mostly running all the way along the winding, coast road, 
 with her eyes continuously dazzled by the glittering morning 
 sea. She had about four miles to go. 
 
 At last. There was the cottage! It was the very end one 
 at the far-away end of a row of small, white cottages, some 
 thatched, some slated, which stood only about half a mile 
 ahead round the bay. Everything looked as it had looked 
 on the morning, little more than a week before, when Joanna 
 had left for London. The peat smoke rose comfortingly from 
 the chimneys into the pale blue sky: dogs barked: children 
 were playing on the road between the cottages and the sea. 
 
 And there was Linnet! 
 
 He waved his hand, shouted, disappeared into the cottage 
 and in less than half a minute came out again and began run- 
 ning towards her. 
 
 Joanna waved and ran faster. It was all right after all. 
 She need really not have worried. Linnet would not wave 
 and shout if. mother was dead. He must have dashed into 
 the cottage just to tell her. 
 
 " I knew you would come," Linnet's first words clashed 
 with the sighing "How is she? " that came from his sister 
 as they both sped on without pausing a moment. 
 
 " She'll be as right as rain now you are here," he said 
 soothingly (but with what relief!) as he took the breath- 
 less Joanna's arm. ..." She was so pleased when your wire 
 came." And he told how their mother had been well never 
 in her life better and in splendid spirits, till three days ago 
 when she had been taken ill in the night with bad pains. In 
 the morning she had been better, but worse again towards 
 evening. It had only been yesterday morning, that he had 
 gone, without telling her, to fetch the doctor. Mother had 
 been cross. She was positive a strange doctor couldn't under- 
 stand her constitution, but she had been glad to see him all 
 the same, and had taken his medicine. But this morning, 
 all of a sudden, she had seemed rather low. It was good that 
 Joanna had come to nurse her. 
 
 Joanna hardly listened to Linnet's words. She heard in a 
 heavy stupor of amazement his declaration that, though he 
 had sent for her, he had not been the least anxious till this 
 morning. But in her pocket she had his telegram of the day 
 before giving her no hope. And for all his voluble reassur- 
 ances he had not yet contradicted that message.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 321 
 
 He waited in the tiny, littered sitting-room while his sister 
 went through to her mother's bedroom beyond. 
 
 There was a dreadful, cottage closeness in the air that puffed 
 out to meet her as she opened the door. And mingling with 
 it came an abhorrent breath, which the girl recognized though 
 it had never before blown against her face. 
 
 VI 
 
 On the bed, under a tumbled patchwork quilt lay Juley. 
 Without changing her uneasy attitude she turned her face 
 as her daughter came in. 
 
 " My own dear child ! " she said, with a curious, difficult 
 utterance. But her eyes were lit up. 
 
 Joanna put her arms round her mother, kneeling by the 
 bed, and the tears rained down her cheeks. 
 
 " I came as quick as I could, my darling," she said, laying 
 her head on Juley's breast. " And now I'll never leave you 
 again." 
 
 Juley stroked her child's head in silence. 
 
 " How are you dear? Are you better? Is the pain gone? 
 Can I get you anything? " 
 
 " Quite gone. I'm better. No, nothing to drink . . . I'll 
 soon be well . . . but I'm uncomfortable, and how untidy 
 the room is." 
 
 " That's what I'm here for to make you comfortable. 
 This isn't like you, Mother," Joanna, chided, drawing herself 
 gently away and looking about the dark, untidy little room. 
 "What a mess! Linnet is a bad nurse. Shall I tidy up a 
 bit before the doctor comes, or is there anything I can get for 
 you first? " She tried to speak with composure. 
 
 " No, dear. Tidy ... I'd like th' room tidied ... but 
 leave the bed ... no pain now . . . but must keep still 
 . . . don't touch. ..." 
 
 Joanna who was trying to open the deep-set, impossible 
 window, looked round aghast. The sick woman beginning 
 the sentence distinctly enough, was now mumbling like a 
 drunken person, and at the end of the mumble there was a 
 little, dreadful gulp. Running to the bedside the girl saw 
 that a change had come over the face on the pillow. 
 
 "Linnet!" she called out loudly. "Fetch the doctor! 
 And run! Run! "
 
 322 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 As if he had been waiting for that word, Linnet sped from 
 the cottage. 
 
 And now Juley's face had changed still more. She raised 
 her strong, beautiful voice in what seemed urgent speech, 
 but Joanna, to her despair could not distinguish a word, 
 not even a syllable in the sounds that came. She would 
 have given her life to read the meaning in the eyes that 
 gazed with such intentness of supplication into hers. But she 
 could not. 
 
 She tried to find some comfort in the strength of her mother's 
 voice. Dying people surely spoke feebly? 
 
 " Don't talk now, darling. It will tire you. I'm not going 
 away. We can talk afterwards. Shall I read to you . . . 
 the morning verses? " Joanna pleaded. And she held up the 
 familiar, worn copy of Daily Light with its stamped leather 
 covers and a star on the back, which had lain by Juley's 
 bedside these forty years. 
 
 But Juley shook her head emphatically. 
 
 "No, no!" she said "not now." And having clearly 
 uttered these words she babbled off again, vehement but 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 Then she stopped speaking, and a look of extreme surprise 
 crossed her face. 
 
 Joanna, beside herself with helplessness, tried to give her 
 water in a tea-spoon, tried brandy and water. But the liquid 
 only ran down outside the unconscious mouth . . . 
 
 And the next moment Juley's face passed from surprise 
 to profound preoccupation. She seemed to sink within her- 
 self, drew one long terrible breath, and frowned intently. 
 Joanna looked for the first time upon death. 
 
 vn 
 
 Linnet had not yet returned, and after the first panic and 
 blankness, Joanna resumed her mechanical task of tidying 
 her mother's room. It was the last thing she had been clearly 
 asked to do. And as she did it she became gradually aware 
 of a deep contentment which she could neither understand 
 nor question. Soon she would be involved in the explosion of 
 mourning. There was Linnet, poor boy! Georgie would 
 have to be told. The doctor would come, and with him an 
 unending, impertinent train of arrangements and condolences. 
 But now, for this little while, she felt close to her mother
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 323 
 
 as never before. Without speech they seemed to share the 
 secrets of life and death. Soon enough would grief with its 
 clumsy trappings and its real pain smash the exquisite prism. 
 Then all would be chaotic and desolate again. None must 
 rob them of this moment of union. It was infinitely precious 
 and perfect. 
 
 So Joanna made the toilette table neat, arranged the bottles 
 together on the crazy mantelpiece, and tried to make the room 
 seemly as her mother had liked it to be. 
 
 But each time she turned away, the bed drew her back. 
 And she came again and again to gaze at her mother. She 
 laid her hand upon the forehead, and her flesh recoiled from 
 the waxen coldness of that contact. This then was death. 
 We must all die and be like this. No wonder little Ollie 
 had cried. No wonder! Joanna was filled for the moment 
 with anger against the physical outrage of death. She searched 
 the immovable face, questioned it fearfully. We must all 
 die. None could escape. But here was one who had been 
 used to speak of death as of hidden treasure, to be waited 
 for with patience, but to be coveted exceedingly. Now she 
 had her wish. What was it to her? In that last profound 
 withdrawal by which she had met it, had she been afraid, or 
 joyous, or simply unconscious? 
 
 Though the frown remained a stern furrow between the 
 brows, the puzzled look was gone; and now the face seemed 
 full of judgment. Joanna had heard that the faces of the 
 dead were peaceful. This face was set in a perfect stillness 
 of indignation and judgment. Juley, the merciful, the striver, 
 the stricken, had become the judge. And to her child she 
 would not say one word. She lay there in grave, remote, in- 
 exorable understanding, in unrelenting judgment that would 
 never be disclosed. 
 
 As Joanna was trying unavailingly to straighten the bright 
 quilt over the already stiffening body, a printed card slipped 
 from a fold of the pachwork into her hand. It was lettered 
 in blue, with red capitals and gold underlining, and she knew 
 it must have fallen earlier out of Daily Light, within the flaps 
 of which it had been Juley's custom to cherish such things. 
 
 " These children are dear to Me," it ran: " Be a mother 
 to them and more than a mother. Watch over them tenderly. 
 Be just and kind. If thy heart is not large enough to embrace 
 them, I will enlarge it after a pattern of My Own. If these
 
 324 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 young children are docile and obedient, bless Me for it: if 
 they are forward, call upon Me for help: if they weary thee, I 
 will be thy Consolation: if thou sink under thy burden, I will 
 be thy Reward." 
 
 The daughter, having read, leaned down, whispered some- 
 thing in her dead mother's ear, and ran out of the cottage blind 
 with tears. 
 
 This was death. Not the cold forehead, the stillness, the 
 sad, uncouth posture. But this that the child could never 
 again say " I love you," and see her mother's eyes light 
 up with joy! How unimaginable it was, and how pitiful, 
 that she should now have to ask herself whether once in all these 
 years of womanhood she had clearly and simply declared her 
 love! Now it seemed to her that all these years her mother 
 had been supplicating for that alone. And now it was too 
 late. 
 
 In the afternoon Joanna and an old woman from the village 
 washed Juley's body and dressed it for burial. 
 
 The brother and sister took turns in sitting by the dead till 
 morning. Sometimes they remained a while together, talking 
 in low tones. One or twice they laughed a little. They felt 
 like plotters. 
 
 At dawn Joanna was there alone, and suddenly she could 
 endure the room no longer. What foolishness to stay here 
 when her mother had escaped had gone like a bird over a 
 lake had fled and left behind all the tedious, daily matters 
 she had so hated, the staleness, the fearfulness, the makeshifts, 
 the heavy, dragging carcase of flesh ! 
 
 Outside on the road before the cottage door, she drew the 
 breath of the early morning deep into her weary body. After 
 the night in that miserable, airless death-chamber, she knew 
 how to savor the caller saltness of the sea- weed and wet rocks: 
 she could detect by turning her face inland, that warmer yet 
 as sharp fragrance of the bog-myrtle: and through eager 
 nostrils she inhaled the homely pungency of the peat-reek. 
 In her blood she could feel the stirring and upstanding of the 
 millions of tiny plants upon the hillside. With her blood she 
 knew them the little spiky, spotted, orchises, the knowing 
 fly-catchers with sticky leaves, the waxy heads of bell-heather, 
 the small daisy buds innocent buds that like cherubim and 
 seraphim, covered their faces with all their narrow, crimson- 
 tipt feathers. The sun was not yet risen, but the sky looked
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 325 
 
 pearly, and far up some flakes of cloud, winging higher than 
 the rest, were rosy with prophecy. 
 
 Thep along the horizon a line of fishing-smacks came beating 
 back to harbor after the night's catch. 
 
 A meaning, a cohesion in everything she saw, struck on 
 Joanna's spirit as the opening bars of a compelling air of music 
 strike on the ear. The freshness, the pulsing flight of some 
 birds speeding inland, the faint stirring of the trees, the first 
 thin, blue smoke rising from a distant cottage chimney 
 these were harmonies in a complicated yet decisive theme. 
 They were full of solutions. They gave release to all that was 
 cramped and tortured in the heart. And dominating all of 
 them like a thought, like melody, like the soul of man 
 went the tiny, indomitable brown sails, beating along home 
 between the sea and the sky. 
 
 VIII 
 
 But the funeral and all connected with it was a progression 
 of horrors. 
 
 On the steamer, the coffin having been slung on board from 
 the ferry like any other piece of heavy luggage, Linnet and 
 Joanna felt as if they were the sharers in a shameful secret. 
 In Glasgow, the house stank with the sweetness of white 
 flowers, most of them sent out of mere respect by old acquain- 
 tances of their father, so that to Juley's children the names 
 on the cards were but names. And the rooms seemed always 
 full of whispering people who would belie the dead by their 
 praises. The only relief came from such of Juley's poor folk 
 as came timidly to the door that they might look once more 
 upon her face and weep. For to them Juley had been but 
 goodness and mercy, and nought besides. 
 
 Georgie, in spite of her condition, had travelled north. 
 Her grief was real and simple. Vet when she joined exuber- 
 antly with Aunt Georgina, Aunt Ellen and Mrs. Boyd in cata- 
 loguing her mother's virtues, Jcanna turned away, feeling that 
 the dead woman was deserted indeed. If only one of them 
 would say the truth" She failed," or " She went unfulfilled," 
 or " In death alone has she come to blossom! " But no. They 
 would have it, perhaps for their own solace, that she had gone 
 bearing her sheaves with her. 
 
 More loving than such love there flamed up in Joanna the 
 desire for clear knowledge, for the deep and free admission,
 
 326 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 in which alone our failures may find their absolution, even 
 their vindication. Oh, when she came to die, might there 
 be one that kept knowledge of her, rather than many that 
 self-sparingly loved, forgave, and so annulled her ! 
 
 Mabel, though she was again at home, this time with her 
 husband, did not come to Glasgow. Neither did she write 
 to Joanna. But she was at some pains to explain both omis- 
 sions in a letter to Georgie. She hinted at certain of " poor 
 darling Aunt Juley's " confidences during her stay at La 
 France Quadrant over a year ago. She was " awfully sorry " 
 that under the circumstances, and as a sincere person, she felt 
 unable to express the usual kind sympathy with Joanna. And 
 so, as she wished not only to preserve her own integrity but 
 to avoid giving unnecessary pain, it was better, wasn't it, 
 that she should not stand with them by the grave? She would 
 be with them in spirit. Joanna, with her hatred of false con- 
 ventionality, would be the first, she hazarded, to appreciate 
 her genuineness. This had not been an easy letter to 
 write. 
 
 And along with the letter, Mabel sent an anchor of violets, 
 of which the too faint natural scent had been fortified by liberal 
 sprinklings of Ess. Bouqet. 
 
 Joanna was grateful to Georgie for the wrath she displayed 
 over both the letter and the flowers. The perfumed anchor 
 was picked out of its box with the tongs and thrown upon 
 the fire to frizzle. Georgie hugged her sister and swore she 
 would never forgive Mabel, who after all couldn't help being 
 a sneak, as she had been born so. But the cousin's accusation 
 remained with Joanna and tortured her. 
 
 Unkindness . . . neglect . . . and was there something be- 
 sides? Certainly Mabel had implied a more direct guilt. 
 Joanna remembered the strange gladness she had felt during 
 these few minutes alone with her dead mother before the world 
 had broken in with its lying and vulgar clamor of lamenta- 
 tion. And now it was true except for a moment, to give 
 and get assurances of love beyond all question, to give and 
 get the kiss of perfect, clear-eyed understanding, she would not 
 have her mother back. A thousand times, no! Was she 
 then at heart her mother's murderer? Perhaps she was. But 
 even so, coming from Mabel, the charge was foul. Mabel, 
 who knew them all! Mabel, who with nods and smiles had 
 from the very first, urged on the breaking of the household.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 327 
 
 Oh! Mabel, more hateful and destructive than any murderer, 
 what degradation to be blown upon by such as you! 
 
 These miseries weighed so heavily on Joanna that at first 
 she hardly felt the stroke of outward shame that now fell on 
 the family. And when she did feel it, she inclined almost to 
 welcome it as a destruction. 
 
 Yet in itself it was grave enough. On the division of the 
 Bannerman estate, Linnet had had to confess to speculative 
 follies of long standing. Only by foregoing the greater part 
 of their portions would the girls and the absent Sholto be able 
 to meet their brother's debts and prevent his public disgrace. 
 And this done, Mr. Boyd, as their mother's trustee, their 
 father's friend, and Linnet's employer, insisted seriously on 
 the expediency of Linnet's leaving Glasgow with the least 
 possible delay. 
 
 Linnet himself, rather to everybody's surprise, made no objec- 
 tion. Sholto, he declared, had long ago invited his coming 
 to Australia, and he was not forced to assume that Mr. Boyd 
 had anything to do with the prompt but hearty renewal of 
 that invitation which he now received by cable. 
 
 Joanna saw him off. To the end he maintained an admir- 
 able show of unconcern. He had been deucedly unfortunate, 
 said his manner. And though his sister could not meet 
 his eyes because of that in them which so belied his words, she 
 had to love him for his refusals, to pay him tribute in that he 
 neither cringed nor broke down. 
 
 Seeing her brother on the deck of his ship, waving his hat 
 to her in farewell, and with his narrow, finely cut head bare 
 against the gray morning sky, Joanna was confronted yet 
 again with her most familiar image. Like a key the master 
 symbol of her life heretofore was put into her hand .... 
 
 " Ev'n as a bird 
 Out of the fowler's snare 
 Escapes away, 
 So is our soul set free ! "
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WHEN the ugly flutter of death had subsided, Joanna 
 with mounting terror discovered that her world was 
 changed. The mask of stability had been stripped from out- 
 ward things. Inherent deathliness was everywhere made 
 visible. Even her own firm self seemed to be crumbling 
 within her. 
 
 Desperately, and with every subtlety at her command, she 
 fought against the dissolution which threatened on her re- 
 turn to London. She kept the outer shell of her existence 
 intact the shell composed of work, duties, human contacts, 
 the care of her room, her clothes, her body. And because 
 all meaning had gone from these components because her 
 work (though there was more need now than at any former 
 time, that she should bestir herself in making a livelihood) 
 was loathsome to her, and seemed particularly useless this 
 was a kind of heroism. 
 
 Unhappily it was a heroism that demanded all her strength 
 and emptied her of real courage. Under the strain of keeping 
 up appearances her resolve to force a choice upon Louis melted 
 quite away. Instead she turned frantically to him for help. 
 Louis had never lied to her, thought she, never pretended. 
 He had been frank in disbelief. In him might she not find 
 at least a foothold of sure ground amid this quaking bog of 
 death? 
 
 Surely enough it looked at first as if she might get from him 
 the succor she needed for life. Regarding the incident at 
 the private view, he had that same day written to her; and 
 this letter, full of love and self-loathing had reached her on 
 the morning of Juley's funeral. At their next meeting, some 
 weeks later a new flower of passion had blossomed between 
 them. Now she longed for him bitterly all the hours they 
 were apart, while Louis on his side laid caution aside in 
 flying to her. But a fearful thing had happened between them. 
 Now when she lay in his arms, there came always a vision 
 
 328
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 329 
 
 of her mother's face, dying or dead The heavy frown, 
 the altered mouth, the long, dreadful breath. And when he 
 left her she was cold as earth. 
 
 She could hardly bear it. Yet even the inner deathliness 
 of his embraces still seemed better than the final outward 
 rending of losing him. Did she not love him? Her ideals 
 were all for faithfulness in love, and her cowardice pointed 
 the same way. Did he not still need her, still keep the power 
 to make her tremble though with a touch, a look? If that 
 went, what was left? 
 
 So she was beset on both sides by fear. And she survived 
 from day to day, from week to week, by sheer stiffness of will. 
 
 ii 
 
 Early in October Georgie became the joyful mother of a son. 
 
 Even before Juley's death Joanna had taken to spending 
 much of her time with Georgie. The sisters had sat and sewed 
 together many hours, making baby clothes. And they had 
 spoken of all the things sisters would inevitably speak of on 
 such occasions. The elder had been the more voluble, being, 
 like Aunt Perdy, that kind of talker that needs little more 
 than a listener. But Joanna too had borne her part, and one 
 day she had come very near to a full disclosure about Louis 
 and herself. She would certainly have made it so, had not it 
 been for her continual and very sensitive consciousness of Max 
 in the background. As it was, she left Georgie in no doubt 
 that she had had the misfortune to love a married man and 
 the temerity to make her love the pivot of her life. 
 
 Immediately after their mother's death, the two, as was 
 natural, saw still more of each other. Joanna was still able 
 spasmodically at least to believe that her world was shaken 
 by the ordinary course of bereavement. Her mother, she 
 told herself, had stood, more than could have been guessed, 
 for the external seemliness and the underlying coherence of 
 things. And now that her mother was gone, these were 
 challenged. But here was Georgie, herself soon to be a mother. 
 Here was Georgie, eloquent and beaming a very embodi- 
 ment, if ever there was one, of the affirmation that all was 
 solidly established as before. In Georgie's company Joanna 
 was able to regard her own deathly knowledge as mere, sickly, 
 grieving fancies. And this was what she frantically sought. 
 
 Then in October the baby boy, the treasure of treasures,
 
 330 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 arrived. And amid that wonder and rejoicing and piercing 
 wistfulness of envy Joanna thought she perceived the way 
 by which she might save herself. 
 
 Though it came to her apparently as a revealing flash from 
 without, she had no sooner measured its importance than she 
 knew it had lain in her heart for years past. Why else had 
 she drawn such peculiar comfort from the presence of Ollie and 
 Roddy in Chapel Court? Why had the tending of their 
 bodies so deeply stirred her own flesh? Why now did the 
 handling of this small new creature Georgie's firstborn send 
 so strange a quivering up her arms to her heart, and from her 
 heart back along her limbs to the very hollows of her 
 feet? 
 
 The answer, she thought, was clear. If only she might 
 bear Louis a child! 
 
 Far from raising new problems in Joanna's confused and 
 tortured life this idea offered her a well nigh perfect solution. 
 Not only did it promise an enforced consummation of her 
 love for Louis, but the very material difficulties, which might 
 have appeared as obstacles to another woman, were to her 
 so many spurs urging her on. They attracted because they 
 seemed to show the direction in which effort would be worth 
 while. As for the immediate conventional bearings of the 
 situation she had no fears. Her mother was dead, her brothers 
 away, Georgie married and happy. And just because she 
 was herself ready for all risks, she knew she could be prudent. 
 Within the first hour in which she saw herself as a mother, 
 a complete program of action arranged itself in her mind. 
 She would go, she told herself, to Aunt Perdy's mountain top 
 to have her child. If Louis chose to cleave to her it would 
 be salvation for him as well. If he dared not, she would let 
 him go. There would be no alternative. Besides, with a 
 girl-babe like little Ollie or a man-child like Roddy sprung from 
 their love, she would have her place in that world which now 
 was slipping from beneath her feet. 
 
 That Louis might refuse a demand at once so imperious and 
 so reasonable as this seemed to her she would hardly admit. 
 He must see clearly that it was no more than her right. 
 Hers was the ultimate undertaking, his only whatever share 
 in the responsibility he freely desired. To any other view 
 she closed her eyes. 
 
 At the same time, even in her exaltation, some instinct
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 331 
 
 warned Joanna to go cautiously to work. Men were so strange. 
 One never knew with what unexpected, incomprehensible 
 prejudice a man might regard so perfectly straightforward 
 a matter. And she was in this man's power. With every 
 logical and passionate argument on her side, he could yet 
 deny her the one vital thing left in life. This made her very 
 wary, and she waited for her moment without saying a word 
 to him of what filled her mind. Sometimes she thought he 
 looked at her curiously. 
 
 ni 
 
 But one day in the Christmas holidays, when Georgie's 
 baby was three months old, the sisters planned a shopping 
 expedition on his behalf. Already he was growing out of 
 all his clothes and would presently be ready for short-coating. 
 
 The night before, Joanna had lain long awake thinking 
 and thinking of her mother. Was it after all her death that 
 had changed the face of the world? Was it not rather the 
 manner of her death? She had gone without once attaining 
 the full stature of her soul, without once uttering clearly the 
 word it should have been hers to utter. With all her strug- 
 gles, her nobility, her sacrifices, she was unfulfilled. She was 
 like the sides of an arch that fall in together in a heap because 
 the keystone is missing. Yet who had faith if not she? 
 What had been wrong? 
 
 All at once Joanna turned in accusation upon her dead 
 father. In spite of the unkind childish dream she had kept 
 his memory all these years as of some one good beyond 
 question, almost god-like. Nor had Juley ceased to foster 
 to the last this ideal image in her children's minds. But 
 now this with other security was gone from life; and in that 
 quiet midnight hour Joanna asked herself if he was not 
 greatly to be blamed. Was it not their father who had failed 
 them all? Was the keystone of the arch of fulfilment not 
 placed in the hands of the male? 
 
 She condemned him pitilessly, as only a woman can con- 
 demn a parent. It had been all wrong, that apparently happy 
 and peaceful marriage wrong from beginning to end. There 
 had been no beginning and no end. There had been only a 
 confused and accidental issue of wrongness, of which she, 
 Joanna, was a part. She remembered the words " In sin 
 did my mother conceive me." Why not " In sin did my
 
 332 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 father beget me "? And in her very bones she could feel at 
 work that reward of sin which is death. 
 
 She blamed her father. But amid the heat and misery of 
 her indictment, Sholto's face, so long vanished from earth, 
 rose cold and sweet and patient before his daughter, and he 
 refuted the charge. It was long years since she had shut the 
 door against him in her dreams. Now it seemed as if he 
 had been waiting and waiting there outside for her mature 
 reproach. And was not this patience of his, his everlasting 
 vindication? O! the patience the heart-breaking, awful 
 patience of the dead! O! that face with its sweet, sunshiny 
 smile, and its eyes so puzzled and afraid, yet innocent, like 
 the eyes of a child! Had not he also, he asked her, been 
 denied fulfilment? If Juley's soul through him had suffered 
 a tragic negation, what of his own extreme, irremediable 
 pathos of incapacity? 
 
 Weeping Joanna turned her face upon the bed. And weep- 
 ing she forgave her father and begged his forgiveness. 
 
 Next day she tried to discover her trouble to Georgie. She 
 was almost speechless with shyness; but as they were sitting 
 alone together at Duntarvie, drinking cups of chocolate before 
 starting for town to buy young Sholto's " shortings," she 
 managed to put into poor words some part of her mid-night 
 thoughts. 
 
 The sisters in their black dresses sat facing each other across 
 a small table in the green and white morning-room. Georgie 
 lolling back a little in her chair, showed all the pride of young 
 and fruitful womanhood. Her eyes were absorbed and manger- 
 worshipping, her face ruddy with health, her breasts large and 
 sweet with milk. Joanna, as she rather painfully spoke, 
 leaned forward her elbows on the table and the tips of her 
 fingers pressed against her temples as if the pulse there needed 
 protection. And though she still looked very girlish, she was 
 white-faced and harassed, with a faint shadow under each 
 cheek-bone, and between her eyes the same sad, vertical line 
 of perplexity which had been there at the time of Mario's 
 death. 
 
 Georgie broke in upon her halting questions with such 
 
 ready and emphatic replies that Joanna immediately regretted 
 
 'having spoken. Having spoken she would listen. But here 
 
 was no help to be had. Georgie, as her sister now realized, 
 
 was enclosed and impenetrably protected by the immediate
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 333 
 
 experience of her own motherhood. She was set on seeing 
 in their mother's death both release and happy fulfilment. 
 For any declarations of imperfections in this world she was 
 ready with assurances of perfections in the next. Above all 
 she was generously up in arms against each word that might 
 be construed as criticism of the dead. She would remember, 
 she insisted, raising her voice, none but the good and beauti- 
 ful things about her parents: because only beautiful and good 
 things were real. Faults and failures were best forgotten for 
 the simple reason that they were of no vital importance. 
 They had no lasting truth. They were but passing aberra- 
 tions which, if we had more faith, we should not even see. 
 
 Was Georgie right? Joanna's beseeching eyes rested on 
 her as she discoursed more and more eloquently upon the non- 
 existence of evil. And the younger sister felt so greatly at a 
 disadvantage that she was almost inclined to repudiate her own 
 experience. Was truth not best proved by such a union of 
 physical health and spiritual satisfaction? Was Georgie not 
 happier, more useful, immeasurably fuller of faith and cer- 
 tainty than she? 
 
 Yet for all that she could only look blank and miserable, 
 feeling as Georgie's spirit soared, that her own by that very 
 action was being thrust further into darkness. There is a 
 buoyant and genuine faith which, while ostensibly stimulating 
 the faith of others, seems only to be able to swell itself at 
 their expense. And while Georgie glowed and spoke of their 
 mother, it was to Joanna as if the coffin lid were being screwed 
 down afresh, this time more sacrilegiously on Juley's soul. 
 
 On their way to the shops, the elder sister, warm with the 
 consciousness that she had given from her own rich store to 
 one in distress, began rosily to sketch out her son's future and 
 her plans for his upbringing. 
 
 She was, she declared, ambitious in the best sense of the 
 word. In baby Sholto the fine religious motive of his grand- 
 parents was to be mingled with his father's agnostic humani- 
 tarianism. But above all things he was to have absolute toler- 
 ance inculcated. From an early age he should develop 
 grace of body and a sense of rhythm by means of the very 
 latest method, the lamentable absence of which in Georgie's 
 own childhood must entirely account for her own abortive 
 musical attainment. (She stated now by the light of this new 
 discovery that even in Dresden the teaching had been com-
 
 334 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 pletely at fault.) Sholto was never to be punished or forced 
 to act against his inclinations, but would gain his education 
 in Nature's own way, by receiving full and truthful answers 
 to his questions. Georgie herself might be a stupid failure 
 she laughed happily in everything she had tried save mother- 
 hood. But what did that matter? All that mattered was 
 the new generation, which was so wonderfully to profit by our 
 mistakes. They would do, and do far better all that we had 
 left undone. 
 
 It would have surprised Georgie could she possibly have 
 known how every word of cheer she uttered struck a fresh 
 blow at the last of her sister's hopes. Joanna herself did not 
 immediately guess the collapse of that hope. At first she 
 only knew that as she listened her heart grew more and more 
 like lead in her breast, and she wondered vaguely why this 
 should be when she had a fair degree of sympathy with 
 Georgie's theories of education. 
 
 But in Regent Street, while they were buying little wincey 
 dresses and woolly jackets and boots and cunning caps for 
 Baby, it broke upon her so suddenly that for the space of about 
 a minute the shop and all it contained whirled about her 
 like a tornado. 
 
 Not for her that newly-springing and so fair-seeming hope 
 that by her own achievement of motherhood she might make 
 good! Not any longer for her! Here was Georgie turning 
 each purchase over, again and again reminding Joanna of 
 their mother as she tested its softness against her cheek. 
 Ah! There it was! Their mother had done this for them, 
 and her mother for her, always with the same eager and 
 touching confidence in the next generation. And what was 
 to come of it? 
 
 Nothing! 
 
 Nothing because it was based on a lie. Nothing be- 
 cause it was a shirking of the personal issue. Nothing 
 because it was the last, most exquisite cowardice. 
 
 Shaking all over, Joanna examined some white lute ribbon 
 her sister had put just then into her hand, and she gave as 
 her opinion that it would be quite strong enough for binding 
 flannel pilches. 
 
 No! If the children, born and unborn were to be served 
 fairly, one must utter clearly and fearlessly one's own word 
 of truth in one's own lifetime. And against this utterance,
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 335 
 
 hard enough in itself, the whole world was combined in the 
 most tyrannical of all combinations, the combination of the 
 past with the future generation. What a plausible and cruel 
 trick was there! 
 
 It gagged one (yes, that was the right shade of blue for a 
 sash,) stifling, if it could, even the word of failure. For fail- 
 ure might be one's word. All could not blossom. But all 
 could reject the greater disaster of unacknowledgement. And 
 this was what Georgie with her light talk of failure would 
 not do. She would sooner deny meaning to their mother's 
 life than admit its failure. She would deny her own failure 
 by child-bearing and the expedient of shifting her fulfilment 
 from her personal hands to the impersonal hands of the 
 future. And this she would call by the name of faith. All 
 round her she shed easy enthusiastic denial, and Joanna 
 shrank back forsaken and unsheltered. Such enthusiasm 
 only increased the menace she felt everywhere. By the time 
 Sholto's new sash was measured and cut her disbelief in that 
 fair hope by which she had lately been living was complete. 
 It was finished and hard in the darkness a jewel of unfaith. 
 
 They left the shop. And as they walked, hugging their 
 parcels, from Piccadilly Circus to their station in Leicester 
 Square, she looked with strange, terror-stricken eyes at the 
 faces of the passing people. There were the satisfied, solid 
 ones, the flighty, knowing ones, the benevolent, the wicked, 
 the careless, the merely anxious. How they had impressed 
 her once, taken as a whole: and never so much as when her own 
 course was most erratic! Once she had believed that some- 
 how, between them all, they possessed human truth and know- 
 ledge. To-day, for the first time she saw them as a flock of 
 blind things, each one trusting implicitly, as she had done, 
 in the corporate wisdom of all the other blind ones. . . . 
 Louis blind . . . her mother blind ... the sadness of it al- 
 most killed her 
 
 " Isn't life too gorgeous, ... too wonderful . . . ? " ex- 
 claimed Georgie, breaking in upon her thoughts at that in- 
 stant. And in her exaltation Georgie shouted, so that people 
 turned their heads some smiling indulgently, some with con- 
 tempt, others with a peculiar frown of anger . . ." And I 
 feel the whole time that darling Father and Mother, united 
 now, are watching over us, rejoicing so lovingly over the prog- 
 ress of the next generation. Don't you, Joey dear? "
 
 336 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 The other did not at once reply. With the bitterness of 
 spears behind her eyeballs she saw again the strange indigna- 
 tion in her mother's dying features. Then at the very last, 
 when the poor tongue could only babble senselessly had 
 Juley not been trying perhaps to leave her special word of 
 truth with her children? Anyhow at this moment, just as 
 the sisters were passing the steps of the Empire Theatre, 
 Joanna came by the absolute knowledge that if she did not 
 give Georgie the lie here and now their mother's prayers had 
 been in vain. In understanding and obedience therefore, she 
 fell at her mother's feet. She would do it. 
 
 She was afraid, however, horribly timid of Georgie. 
 
 " I don't believe a single word of all you have said to-day." 
 
 Painfully as these words were wrenched out, and appalled 
 as Joanna was by their clumsiness and crudity, they were 
 spoken distinctly. 
 
 But the elder merely looked at her younger sister, first 
 in astonishment at this unexpected rudeness, then, seeing the 
 quivering lips, in affectionate pity. 
 
 Later, when Georgie began soothingly and deliberately to 
 speak of trifles, Joanna knew that she was being humored 
 probably by her brother-in-law's advice as one in a morbid 
 and overwrought condition. 
 
 IV 
 
 Joanna knelt by the hearth in the archway room, and piled 
 up her fire between the hobs of the little dog-grate as high as 
 she dared. It was bitter, cold January weather, and she 
 expected Lawrence Urquhart in the course of the evening. 
 
 Since Juley's death Joanna's oft fading friendship with 
 Lawrence had put forth fresh shoots. On her return from 
 Glasgow he had appeared at her side with a quiet offering of 
 understanding that could not be refused. As concerned love 
 she believed (sometimes with a pang of which she was ashamed) 
 that he had gone from her; but all the more readily did she 
 admit and even cling to the new bond he had unobtrusively 
 created. It was something different from the former spas- 
 modic attraction, so that she no longer scrupled to make use 
 of his steady kindness in any small practical ways which 
 might relieve her extremity. Also he had become an ack- 
 nowledged friend of the family. She often saw him now at
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 337 
 
 Georgie's house where he seemed to enjoy talking with Max. 
 And more rarely he would come to Chapel Court. 
 
 Earlier that same evening Lawrence had been called to 
 the Bar. And at his invitation Joanna had gone to see the 
 ceremony in Middle Temple Hall. 
 
 Its baldness had somewhat disappointed her. From her 
 perch in the high, cramped cage of the gallery she had watched 
 the little doll-like figures advancing in wig and gown to sign 
 the roll as their names were called, and she had hardly been 
 able to distinguish her friend among them. 
 When it was over, and she had squeezed down the cork- 
 screw staircase in a press of womenfolk, she saw that Lawrence 
 had already almost made his way to her through the crowd 
 and the congratulations. It was then that she was surprised 
 by quite a new view of him. The sculptural folds of the gown 
 gave a dignity that his slight figure needed; and beneath the 
 formality of the white horsehair wig, all his features were 
 sharpened into a more insistent yet sensitive maleness. 
 
 This she had seen, or rather felt. But she had felt also 
 that Lawrence had never been so far removed from her as at 
 that moment. He was gone utterly into the unknowable 
 world of men. Nothing of her world could touch him. She 
 was alien, even hostile to the strongly suppressed excitement 
 in his face and movements. 
 
 For a minute they had stood talking together. The Call din- 
 ner, Lawrence said, would last till about nine o'clock, after 
 which the other members of his mess would want to go to a 
 music hall. He himself didn't much like the idea for one 
 thing he had been half-crazy with neuralgia all afternoon. 
 Still it would be better than to return straight from the din- 
 ner to his rooms in Chancery Lane. And when Joanna in 
 commiseration (she too had suffered of late from neuralgia) 
 suggested phenacetin with tea by her fireside later in the even- 
 ing, he thanked her gladly. 
 
 So she had stacked up the fire (for though her room with 
 it windows vis-a-vis, was ideal in summer, it was searched 
 by shrewd draughts during the winter) ; and she had lighted 
 the candles on the mantel-piece, and drawn the curtains close, 
 and set out the tea-things on table and hob. She had changed 
 her day dress too for a thinner one of black silk of the kind 
 that floats and does not rustle. All these festive and hos- 
 pitable things she had done. At the same time her mood was
 
 338 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 despondent, and she dully regretted having asked Lawrence 
 at all. 
 
 When ten o'clock came, however (it had been six when she 
 left the Temple), and there was still not a sign of her visitor, 
 her depression showed no lifting tendency. It was indeed 
 considerably increased. A further restless quarter of an hour 
 passed and she could settle to nothing. She had just made up 
 her mind to go to bed, and was in the act of blowing out 
 the first candle, when she heard the belated steps of Lawrence 
 passing under the archway. 
 
 Was it the frost, she wondered when he came in, that had 
 given him such a cheerful, unusual starriness? As they shook 
 hands she realized that he was for once quite divested of his 
 shyness, and so seemed other than himself. 
 
 While she busied herself with the tea, which she was making 
 after the Russian fashion in tumblers with slices of lemon, 
 Lawrence sat down and passed his hand over his hair as if he 
 feared it might be disordered. But it was perfectly smooth, 
 reflecting the candle-light almost as well as the polished stove. 
 
 " How is you neuralgia? " asked Joanna observing the 
 action but mistaking its motive. 
 
 " My neuralgia? " He repeated the question as if at a loss 
 for the moment. " . . . O! It's gone, thank you. . . . 
 quite better ... I had forgotten about it." 
 
 He refused the tabloids which she had laid ready for him, 
 but drank her tea thirstily. 
 
 " It was good of you to ask me," he said happily, pushing 
 his second empty glass aside, and leaning back in a posture 
 of greater physical unconsciousness than was usual with him. 
 "... I'm afraid I'm rather late, but it was impossible to 
 get away sooner. Call dinners are long affairs." 
 
 " You were only to come if you felt inclined," Joanna 
 reminded him. " I had almost given you up, and was going 
 to bed." 
 
 " I wanted to come, you stupid," he retorted in calm good 
 humor, arid clearly without the slightest consciousness of 
 rudeness. " I'm glad wou didn't quite give me up," he con- 
 tinued not noticing her look. "... It's something not quite 
 to be given up: isn't it? " 
 
 As he seemed brightly unabashed to be waiting for an an- 
 swer, Joanna murmured in a neutral voice that she didn't
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 339 
 
 know. It had struck her for the first time that perhaps he 
 had drunk too much at dinner. This would account for the 
 lyrical quality in his appearance. 
 
 " You are cheerful to-night," she said, staring at the flame of 
 a candle she was snuffing. The room was lighted only by 
 candles and by the splendid, leaping glow of the fire. 
 
 Lawrence might well have been warned by her tone; but 
 he merely recrossed his feet and looked more cheerful still. 
 
 "I am," he returned. "Why shouldn't I be? I've had 
 a good dinner. I'll never have to go in for another examina- 
 tion in my life. It's a pleasure to me to sit here by your 
 fire with you. Why shouldn't I be cheerful? " 
 
 " No reason," admitted Joanna. And having trimmed all 
 four of her wicks on the mantel-piece, she sat down aga,in and 
 leaned her head back against her chair. 
 
 At that ever so slight but desolate movement Lawrence 
 changed his own attitude. Now he bent forward resting his 
 elbows on his knees. 
 
 " But you aren't," he said. " . . . I'm afraid you're sad. 
 It was all the kinder of you to ask me this evening. I wish I 
 could cheer you up. Won't you tell me what troubles you 
 so?" 
 
 Complete silence and stillness were the only reply. 
 
 The young man looked his fill at the heart-breaking shape 
 opposite apparently so intimate in the firelight, yet really 
 so far out of his reach at the dear brown head outlined 
 against the linen chair-back, at the disconsolate hands folded 
 languidly in her lap. And though his immediate feeling was 
 one of concern for her, he savored at that moment both 
 her soft dejection and her damnable obstinacy. 
 
 " Are you grieving very much for your mother still? " he 
 asked, kindly. 
 
 His beloved stirred slightly and looked at him. 
 
 " It isn't exactly grieving for her," she made answer. " I'm 
 glad for her and for myself that she's dead. No. It's that 
 everything else seems to have collapsed with her." 
 
 " Perhaps that's a good thing," said Lawrence after a few 
 moments. " I can't help thinking it is." 
 
 Joanna's languor vanished as she sat up in her place. It 
 was not the first time Lawrence had thus disturbed and upset 
 her all of a sudden.
 
 340 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " It's all very well for you," she exlaimed resentfully. 
 
 "Why all very well? I lost my mother too," he returned 
 almost roughly. 
 
 "I know. But ... " 
 
 " And I'll tell you what," he interrupted her with ve- 
 hemence, using strangly enough a phrase which Joanna had 
 long ago come to associate with Louis ". . . I loved her. 
 But I never knew till she was dead what an injury she had 
 done me. And I couldn't forgive her. I don't know if I 
 forgive her now. She had drained me ... all my life she 
 had drained me ... I can't think of any other word . . . 
 of my manhood till it was almost gone. She lost me you. 
 Don't speak. I know what I am talking about. She lost 
 me you. You did right not to take me then. I doubt whether 
 even you could have saved me. I had to have everything 
 collapse round me too. You look doubtful. I tell you it 
 was so. Carl could tell you." 
 
 " Still ..." Joanna persisted, after a short, astonished 
 pause. " You had your world of men to fly to, and you found 
 it solid. That seems always left to a man . . . what you 
 said once about being in the stream of things. Look at 
 you to-night. You are quite happy. But what you have 
 wouldn't satisfy me." 
 
 " Quite happy, am I? " asked Lawrence, appearing to ex- 
 amine the backs of his finger-nails with the greatest atten- 
 tion. 
 
 " You seem to be. A minute ago you said you were, didn't 
 you? " 
 
 He raised his eyes at this. " I said no such thing. I 
 said cheerful." 
 
 " I'm sorry. Is there so much difference in your case? " 
 
 With a violent gesture of his right hand, Lawrence jumped 
 to his feet. 
 
 " Why are you so hateful to me? " he demanded " so 
 perfectly brutal and hateful? You know no one better 
 that I need you. . . . Not for happiness . . . happiness be 
 damned . . . but just for life. Yet you shut me out; and 
 are vile to me into the bargain. You talk about the world 
 of men. Don't you know it's only a makeshift without the 
 other you won't give me? " 
 
 " I can't give what's not in my power." 
 
 " Ah! There you are. You can't give. No. I ought not
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 341 
 
 to have asked you to give. You're much too fond of giving 
 Joanna: and your kind of giving, if you only knew, is sheer 
 robbery. Give, give, give to the poor man, when in reality 
 it all goes to feed your own egoism. You are all self-will. 
 Try to take from a man for a change. Then perhaps you 
 will learn really to give. Carl was right in what he used to 
 say of you." 
 
 " What did he say? " 
 
 " He said that in love you were like ..." Lawrence con- 
 sidered a moment. ". . . Carl's way of talking is apt 
 to sound rude to anyone else's mouth." 
 
 " Never mind, what did he say? " Joanna insisted. 
 
 " He said you were like a clod of earth trying to give itself 
 to a seed, by shoving itself inside the husk. I believe myself," 
 added Lawrence with growing animation, " that you work with 
 all your strength for the very opposite of your nature's 
 true desire." 
 
 " So I'm a clod, am I? " asked Joanna, her eyes dancing 
 with spite. " Once I was a juggler. Now I'm a clod. Shall 
 I tell you what you are? " 
 
 "If you like." 
 
 " You are . . . YouVe been drinking too much." 
 
 11 True. But I am not drunk." 
 
 " Perhaps not. I didn't say so." Joanna spoke coldly. 
 Her voice seemed to be holding her skirts round her as if they 
 might touch him. 
 
 " I shouldn't have come here if I had been drunk. You 
 know that," said Lawrence. " I did feel braver than usual, 
 and thought it would be good to be with you feeling brave 
 for once. Now I've begun, I may as well finish ... I dare- 
 say that's nonsense about the clod though remember that 
 for the seed the clod has all the sky in it, and the rain and sun 
 and sea and wind as well as the earth. . . . Images, though, are 
 apt to be misleading. Who knows? Perhaps you are the 
 seed and I the clod. I daresay. What I'm certain of, more 
 certain than I ever was before, is that I need you. I need to 
 hide myself and to lose myself in you. If you knew what my 
 life is like these days! All that can be said is that I have the 
 grace to be sure it isn't life. And I do believe you need me too. 
 My poor, hopeless pet! . . . Let me call you that this once 
 ... If you were getting on well without me, I wouldn't 
 say a word. But you aren't getting on."
 
 342 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 " Whether I'm getting on or not doesn't help in this." 
 
 " Why not? It should." 
 
 " I love someone else. You see it's no use. And you knew 
 it before. Carl must have . . ." 
 
 " I don't believe it," he interrupted doggedly. 
 
 " What don't you believe? " 
 
 " That you know anything whatever about love . . . yet." 
 She turned from him. " Perhaps that can only be proved 
 by my faithfulness," she murmured " and it shall be." 
 
 Lawrence groaned. 
 
 " Joanna, you are such a fool, I almost wish I didn't love 
 you." 
 
 She pondered a moment. Then 
 
 " You would soon stop loving me if you knew the kind of 
 person I am," she declared. And to Lawrence's amazement 
 she suddenly smiled as she spoke. 
 
 " Why? What do you mean," he asked. 
 
 " I'm really bad," she said, a little more seriously but still 
 with a peculiar, ungovernable flippancy. 
 
 " How bad are you? " 
 
 " Just bad." 
 
 "Tell me." 
 
 She paused a moment; and then looking steadily away from 
 him, spoke in a different, quiet voice. 
 
 " So bad that I can be attracted by men I don't love at 
 all." 
 
 It was the man's turn to smile now. But Joanna did not 
 see him. 
 
 " Who says that's bad? " he asked. 
 
 " Everbody in a woman." 
 
 " Sometimes," said Lawrence, all the lines of his body 
 expressing relief from strain " . . . sometimes you shock 
 me. You have always seemed so complete to me ... so 
 much a woman . . . and then you say a thing like that, 
 which one would think could only come from a schoolgirl." 
 
 He waited, but there was no answering smile on Joanna's 
 face. Instead a quiver passed over it, and the bright color 
 that had swept into her cheeks, ebbed quickly under his eye. 
 
 Would he never understand what she was trying to say? 
 
 " I should have said ..." she persevered clutching all 
 her courage (and now indeed she was cruel in all conscience: 
 now indeed she chose her words with merciless directness)
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 343 
 
 " ... I should have said that though I belong to one man, 
 and always must belong to him, I'm capable of feeling strongly 
 attracted by others." 
 
 From the first word of this speech she had kept her eyes 
 immovably fixed upon Lawrence's which at the moment were 
 intently regarding the flame of one of the candles. But a 
 minute before, he had taken the candle-stick in his hand, and 
 with a match had been kneading the rim of the hot wax into a 
 scalloped frill all round. The small, erect flame illumined the 
 irises of his eyes. Joanna could see how surprisingly light they 
 were in color like peaty pools. She could even see '3 
 darker flecks in the iris, which made her think of trout .. j. 
 burn. And not a flicker of the eyelids could have escaped her 
 vigilance. 
 
 But she had said her say, and there had not been the faintest 
 tremor. The hand which had been wielding the match be- 
 came perfectly still. That was all. The eyes and face, 
 still already, became stillness incarnate. Then he put the 
 candle-stick back in its place, and stopped so that his face 
 was hidden. He stopped ostensibly that he might throw 
 into the fire the match that had dropped from his fingers. 
 
 The instant she had spoken, Joanna felt happier. Law- 
 rence's stillness was too extreme to deceive her. She knew 
 by it for certain that her disclosure had been a disclosure 
 indeed, and that it had hurt him. All the more had she been 
 all this time to blame. 
 
 Now that was said which should in fairness have been said 
 long ago. It was too bad that he should suffer. But she was 
 thankful that he could take it like a man. Suppose he had 
 winced and wept and reproached her, as on that last ride? 
 
 When he faced her again, his lips shook but his words came 
 composedly enough. 
 
 " I take back what I said about your needing me," he said 
 slowly. " I was wrong seemingly. Please be generous and 
 put it down to the fact that I had been drinking more than 
 was good for me. I should perhaps have been wiser not to 
 have come to-night." 
 
 " Perhaps. . . . Still I wanted you to know. ..." Joanna's 
 gaze was almost fawning on him now for a kind look, though, 
 to do her justice, there was no appeal in her detached voice. 
 It merely served her in the making of a true statement. 
 
 " If you are satisfied, that's something," said Lawrence,
 
 344 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 his eyes flicking her like a whip. " I think I'll wend my way 
 homeward now," he continued. " It must be late" (Even as 
 he spoke, he wondered at the absurdity of his using that 
 absurd phrase now for the first time since his schooldays. 
 Why " wend his way " to-night?) 
 
 ' My watch has stopped," Joanna said helplessly looking 
 at her wrist. " But it's only about eleven I believe. The 
 clock on the mantelpiece is slow." 
 
 He studied his own watch as if the time were a matter of 
 real importance to him. " Five minutes to eleven, I make it." 
 
 As they said good-night, both their voices plodded along 
 the dead level of exhaustion. 
 
 But Joanna must go down the dark little staircase with 
 her guest to see him off. Just as if their evening had been of 
 the happiest kind, she must open the door for him and warn 
 him of the three crooked steps. There was a moon somewhere 
 low in the sky behind the tall houses, but the court was full 
 of treacherous shadows. 
 
 Lawrence lost no time in parting from her. He made 
 nothing of the steps. And almost before she realized he 
 was gone, she heard the echo of his quick retreating tread. 
 
 When that had quite died away in the street outside, she 
 went forlornly up to her bedroom as one who has lost a 
 friend. An old-fashioned expression of her mother's came 
 appositely into her mind. She felt, she told herself, " like 
 a knotless thread." 
 
 For the next three months and more, Lawrence was not 
 seen at Chapel Court. Even to the Garden Suburb he no longer 
 came. A single accidental meeting which Joanna had with 
 him about six weeks after that evening in January, served 
 only to strengthen her conclusion that he had dropped out 
 of her life. 
 
 It happened that Ollie's mother, Mrs. Garland, was ill in 
 bed, and had asked Joanna to deliver some copy for her in 
 Fleet Street. Until she was at the very door of the office, 
 Joanna had not known that Mrs. Garland's paper occupied 
 the same building as the Sunday Budget for which Lawrence 
 worked. Still it seemed improbable that she would come 
 across him. He was not likely to be there. And in any 
 case the Budget office was on the third floor, while her errand
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 345 
 
 was on the second. She was taken aback when, immediately 
 after her handing Mrs. Garland's copy to the small imp 
 at that moment in charge of the tape room, an inner, glass 
 door was opened, and laughing over some unknown jest, two 
 men came out, one of the two being Lawrence. 
 
 With a sudden scarlet in her cheeks, Joanna bowed uncer- 
 tainly. But if Lawrence too was taken at a disadvantage 
 he hardly showed it. Leaving the editor to melt back into 
 his glass room, he came across to her, exhibited ordinary, 
 friendly surprise at her presence, heard the reason of it, 
 chatted a minute or two with cool detachment, and as soon as 
 he could do so politely, ran back to remind the man within of 
 some forgotten matter. 
 
 As Joanna descended the stairs she again heard his voice 
 and the other's raised in exclusive mirth. She had hardly 
 recognized her lost friend in this easy, keen, absorbed young 
 man. Indeed and indeed men were to be envied in their 
 work. Lawrence might protest as he liked that there was 
 no satisfaction in it. No doubt while he was with her he 
 had felt it so. But his face, both now and on Call night had 
 told a different story. 
 
 On her way home she was more than ever convinced that 
 she had at last made a clean break between herself and Law- 
 rence. Further she felt sure that Lawrence was not averse 
 to her knowing it. 
 
 VI 
 
 So she went on with the bitter and deathly course which 
 accorded with her ideas of faithfulness. She was upheld in 
 it by her one conscious belief the belief that she loved Louis. 
 
 When, one morning in May, Mr. Moon summoned her to 
 answer a telephone call in the shop below, Joanna guessed 
 it must be from Louis. His way was to telephone rather 
 than to write, and it was five days since she had seen him. 
 Always at the end of three days they were both restless for 
 sight and sound of each other. 
 
 She ran downstairs, eager and trembling for his message as 
 ever. 
 
 Xo sooner had she heard it than the familiar office, with its 
 urns and its samples of stone and wood, spun darkly round 
 her, and she had to hang her head for faintness. 
 
 Louis was going to Edinburgh next day. And he wanted
 
 346 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 her to come with him. Except for a peculiar, almost angry 
 note in his voice, he might have been proposing that she 
 should take a walk with him in the Park. Yet this was the 
 first time he had ever asked her to go away with him. Both 
 of them hitherto had fought shy of anything suggestive of the 
 ordinary intrigue. Wherever Joanna was Louis had known 
 he could come without fear or shame. And there had been 
 their country walks. But for anything else, Joanna had 
 instinctively waited till their going should be a real departure. 
 Tacitly Louis had understood this and had acquiesced. They 
 had let slip many opportunities. 
 
 But here was he all of a sudden asking her to take a real 
 journey with him, and at the very peremptoriness of the re- 
 quest her heart cried out in hope. He could not well tell 
 her so much in words at this moment, but might not this be 
 his way of coming to what she longed and lived for? 
 
 Half fainting she said she would go; and they made arrange- 
 ments for meeting. Baldly they fixed time and place. By 
 not a word did they betray the unusual nature of their decision. 
 
 It was her lover's plan for the next morning that she should 
 take an early train as far as Peterborough, and there wait for 
 the two o'clock express by which he was travelling. From 
 then on, they would be safe. In Edinburgh the following day 
 he would hurry over the event which was taking him North 
 the unveiling of some panels of his, in which from their 
 earliest drawings Joanna had taken a lively interest. And 
 after that he would be free. They could go anywhere, do 
 anything, be all the time together. 
 
 As she packed her travelling-case, Joanna had to fight down 
 a certain nausea by pretending to herself that the whole thing 
 was an adventure, thrilling and sweet, above all rather humorous 
 and dashing. That she and Louis should go together to Edin- 
 burgh of all places! Was there not a nice irony in that a 
 delightful stroke of defiance? 
 
 But really, from the moment of agreement, her heart was 
 sick with apprehension. The crisis of their loves was at hand. 
 She knew it. And she was certain that Louis also knew. 
 
 Vn 
 
 At Peterborough she had four hours to wait for the train 
 that was to bring Louis. 
 
 She tried to eat, but could not, so left the station.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 347 
 
 Walking aimlessly in the unknown streets she found herself 
 looking about her and listening, like one who has never looked 
 or listened before. The experience of sight was intense, almost 
 like pain; and each sound came unprotected to her ears as if 
 thick veils had been drawn away between her and the world. 
 Even the movements of people, the grouping of buildings, 
 the ways in which the clouds were arranged, were like words 
 or sentences piercingly spoken. Arrowy voices were aimed 
 at her from all sides. She was a frail, silken banner, riddled 
 and tattered by well directed shafts. She was more alive to 
 the world of sense than would long be endurable. 
 
 Coming to a bridge, she stood leaning over the parapet 
 as if to find a refuge in the steadiness, the simplicity, of flowing 
 water. The air was laden with sun and dust. The leaden 
 sunshine weighed everything down. Only on the water was 
 it pointed with silver. From an opening far up in a flour mill, 
 men were loading a barge with sacks. The sacks were sent 
 flying down two very long planks which, bending under their 
 own slim weight, reached from the high doorway to the deck 
 of the barge. 
 
 When she had gazed a while, still in that strange helplessness 
 of receptivity, one of the men who was in the barge helping 
 to pile up the sacks noticed her. He rubbed the sweat from 
 his forehead with his arm, smiling intently up at her; and 
 must have said a word to his mates, for they too looked up 
 amid their cloud of flour and stopped working for a moment. 
 
 And Joanna, before she drifted on, treasured their gazes 
 like a farewell. A dreadful sense of approaching death was 
 upon her. She was looking her last on the world in which she 
 had lived till now was severing all human contacts one by 
 one. Already her body seemed near to dissolution. 
 
 In absolute terror she entered a church and knelt down. 
 She had not even realized that it was the cathedral. Mechani- 
 cal with fear, she began to repeat the prayers of childhood. 
 " This night I lay me . . ." she began: then prayed for her 
 mother, for Georgie, Linnet and Sholto. " Bless poor Mario, 
 bless my Louis, bless Lawrence. . . . Help me to be good! " 
 she murmured swiftly. And so that she might include enemies 
 in her blessing, she tried to bring in Mrs. Fender's name. 
 " May we all have what is best for our souls and bodies," she 
 concluded, using a phrase she had heard a thousand times on 
 her mother's lips.
 
 34 8 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Suddenly then, as she cowered in the dark and lofty cathe- 
 dral, it seemed to Joanna that she saw the Lord on His throne. 
 And that He was preparing to answer her prayer for herself, 
 not with His smile but with His sword. She could feel before- 
 hand the stab that would destroy her. But she would not 
 shrink. Rather would she lift up her breast to receive it. 
 If it was God's will to slay her, then must she be slain. Xot 
 for nothing was she Juley Erskine's daughter. 
 
 vn 
 
 She had been more than half an hour in the station when 
 the train from London came in. 
 
 At the sight of her lover leaning from the carriage window 
 looking out for her, all her fears, all she had just gone through, 
 became absurd. Here was the old solid world claiming her. 
 She could still cling to it. She rushed forward, and Louis 
 came in his rather fussy way to meet her. 
 
 But when she had taken her place beside him, and the 
 crowded journey northward was resumed, Joanna knew that 
 she would have given anything not to have come. 
 
 It was not because there were other people in their compart- 
 ment a man and two women. It was not because the women, 
 who were evidently well disposed toward Louis, looked distrust- 
 fully at the newcomer. Joanna would not have minded these 
 things if only Louis had stood by her. She remembered the 
 many happy hours they had spent in trains, going out to 
 country places for their walks: and some of the most memor- 
 able had been merely enhanced by the presence of other people 
 as by every other fetter of circumstance. Louis when he 
 wished could give her such a sense of the secret warmth 
 between them, that the very disadvantages which might 
 most easily have blown upon their pleasure added a zest. 
 
 Why then to-day, after the first flush of greeting, should he 
 lapse away from her in a strange, hostile exhaustion? The 
 unexpectedness of it paralyzed her. His looks were like axes 
 that had been sharpened in secret to sever the bond between 
 them. And he left her quite exposed to the disapproval and 
 curiosity of these onlookers. Was it for this that he had 
 asked her to come away with him? 
 
 It would have helped her somewhat if she could have accused 
 him simply. But beyond all easy argument she knew that 
 Louis no less than she was taken unaware. It was one of these
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 349 
 
 things, by no means simple in themselves, which happen sud- 
 denly and, as it were, involuntarily. Louis, she was positive, 
 had invited her in good faith. But somewhere a spring had 
 clicked, and here they were, both in some cruel trap, baffling 
 to him as to her. 
 
 For a while he made conversation. He had been up half 
 the night, he told her, working at a belated drawing so that 
 it might be in the publisher's hands that day. Up half the 
 night . . . and yet had had to rise early this morning to finish 
 it ... such a brute it had turned out. . . . Now he was 
 dead tired. Again and again he repeated how tired he was 
 " Dead tired . . . down and out ... a dead beat old man. 
 . . ." His reiteration chilled her. For he did not want sym- 
 pathy. That he made clear. Persistently he used his tiredness 
 not to draw her to him as he might have done, but to push 
 her farther and farther away. That he was very tired 
 she pitifully knew. His face was gray and lined with 
 weariness. 
 
 Before strangers however they could have no real talk, and 
 presently Louis fell asleep in his corner. Joanna then went 
 out into the corridor and stood there a long time, seeing the 
 flying landscape through sheets of tears. 
 
 For a part of the way the train ran beside the sea, and the 
 tide was far out, leaving bare the great, clean stretches of sand. 
 The tide that was what Louis was like in his love! The 
 shoreward waves had been so strong that she had not realized 
 the ebb of the whole ocean of his being. He was too old. 
 He had said it, and she had shrunk from it with closed eyes. 
 He was too old an ebbing, dying man. No power could 
 alter that grievous, icy fact. She saw that now. And yet, 
 and yet she cried out that she loved him. If he would but 
 allow her to share in this death of his, she would surely go 
 through with it. She loved him so much. So much did she 
 long to be faithful. 
 
 As the landscape darkened, however the tears stiffening 
 painfully on Joanna's face and Louis still slept on in uncon- 
 sciousness, she became subject for a time to less exalted feelings. 
 What right, she asked herself angrily had this man so to 
 humiliate her? He need not have suggested her coming to-day. 
 But having done so, whatever his feelings, he should have de- 
 ferred this treacherous blow. In the circumstances it was 
 mean and shameful of him. She would not tamely submit to
 
 350 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 it. And she actually allowed herself to be beaten up into 
 what is often known as " spirit," by remembering with what 
 difficulty she had got together the money for her ticket. 
 
 This mood, the more wretched for being foreign to her 
 nature, was aggravated by Louis's behavior in the restaurant 
 car during dinner. As always he revived, superficially at 
 least, under the stimulus of food ; but on this occasion whatever 
 energy he thus gained was vindictive. Having glanced without 
 remark at his companion's inflamed eyes, he proceeded to 
 talk with a certain vivacity of their fellow travellers. He 
 pointed out the extraordinary likeness between the man in 
 the corner and a bust of the youthful Nero in the British 
 Museum. And had Joanna noticed the clear-eyed, pretty 
 girl who had sat opposite to him? 
 
 Joanna had of course noticed her, and with that wistful 
 admiration we accord, when deeply harrowed ourselves, to 
 one who is as yet untouched by life. The girl in question was 
 merry, quite young, and of a type essentially English. At any 
 other time Joanna would have listened equably to any praise 
 of her. But to-day there was an element in Louis which made 
 his eulogy of this other unendurable. As clearly as his weary 
 glance had earlier showed Joanna that her new way of wearing 
 her hair with a fringe (impulsively adopted that morning) was 
 distateful to him, so clearly did he now seize upon this nice 
 young thing's charm as an instrument of repudiation. At 
 his pointed enthusiasm Joanna arose from her untasted din- 
 ner, and stumbled along the cruelly swaying corridor till she 
 reached an empty compartment. 
 
 Here Louis followed her, though not at once. He was 
 relieved to see that she was not crying. And indeed she 
 had been struggling hard in the interval to gather some 
 steadiness. 
 
 He sat down opposite to her without a word, only making 
 a warmer gesture than he had yet used that day, as he bent 
 forward and brushed some grits from her skirts with his bare 
 hand. 
 
 " What's wrong? " 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 It was wonderful though how his action freed her from all 
 pettier exasperation. 
 
 " Louis," she said in a low voice innocent of resentment 
 " why did you ask me to come to-day? You shouldn't have
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 351 
 
 asked me. You needn't have. You might have told me you 
 had changed toward me. When did you change? " 
 
 Louis stirred unhappily before speaking. 
 
 " But I haven't changed toward you," he replied at length. 
 " That is, not that I know of. If I've changed as you say, 
 I've changed somehow to myself rather than to you. I don't 
 myself know what has gone wrong. It's true something seems 
 to have broken in me just gone phut. ... I can't explain." 
 
 " You mean, now? " Joanna asked in mournful wonder 
 " All of a sudden , since this morning? " 
 
 " I have told you I don't know! " He was becoming restive 
 again. " I certainly was unaware of it before. You must know 
 that. ... I wouldn't have ... as I say, I can't explain 
 it to myself. I'ts just one of these things there's apparently 
 no accounting for ... there seems nothing to be said. . . ." 
 
 Truly there seemed nothing. Or if a'fter a time there might 
 have seemed something, it was prevented by the arrival just 
 then from dinner of the rightful occupants of the compartment 
 into which Joanna had drifted. 
 
 She and Louis had no choice now but to return to their 
 own carriage where the youthful Nero, and the pretty girl 
 and her mamma were already reinstalled. And before many 
 minutes were gone Louis lapsed again into the disheartening, 
 jaded sleep. 
 
 IX 
 
 They stood for a few minutes on the platform at Waverley 
 Station, chilled and uncertain. Louis had already told her 
 that an artist friend half expected him for the night. 
 
 " You had better go to him," said Joanna tonelessly. " I 
 know you hate hotels, and you have a cold, besides being so 
 tired. You had better go to him, Louis." And she shivered 
 in the draughty place. 
 
 Louis too was miserably chilled after his cramped doze in 
 the train. His cold felt many degrees worse. He hesitated 
 with his reply: and she waited, not quite hopeless yet, in 
 spite of her own suggestion. Was it possible that he should 
 leave her now? Was it in common kindness possible? Yet 
 she saw the callousness of his worn and clouded face. 
 
 " But what about you? " he asked. With so simple a 
 question did he deal out death to her, finally, unmistakably. 
 ". . . . What about you? " He repeated stupidly.
 
 352 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Joanna received the wound without a sign. 
 
 " I'll be all right," she heard herself say. " I can get a 
 room at the station hotel." 
 
 She remembered once seeing hari-kari enacted in a Japan- 
 ese play remembered the actor's queer silence when the dag- 
 ger first ran into his body up to the hilt. It was a silence 
 in which he had continued his beautifully ordered movements. 
 Only when the dagger was withdrawn, had he lost control 
 and expired in a bubble of blood. 
 
 Now she only wanted to be alone. Louis too, she could 
 see, was longing to be gone from her. But he found it difficult 
 to move. 
 
 "Joanna! " he paid her his tribute "You are a generous 
 woman. The most generous I ever knew." 
 
 At that a smile twisted her mouth for a moment, and again 
 they were standing, looking fixedly, strangely at each other. 
 He had a moment of cowardly fondness, and took her limp 
 hand. " After four to-morrow I should be free," he said. " I'll 
 call or send a message the instant I can. I wish things were 
 different. Do you see? But, my child," he continued with 
 a violent shudder, " the draught in this place! It's icy! The 
 old man will drop dead in a minute. There's a cab. Hi! 
 There! I'll be off. Till to-morrow, old girl. Take care of 
 yourself." 
 
 They shook hands like acquaintances. Louis comically, 
 as Joanna had to think lifting his hat. She saw him cross 
 the pavement with a, touch of his old jauntiness, and get into 
 the cab. It rumbled away. 
 
 She walked carefully to the hotel. Unless she walked very 
 carefully she must surely reel or fall down. It seemed to her 
 that Louis had broken her right across with his hands. It 
 would not do if people were to see that she was broken right 
 across. She must keep upright till she got into a place by 
 herself. 
 
 But even when the hotel attendant had left her alone in a 
 great, high, inimical box of a bedroom, she continued to move 
 with circumspection. When she unpacked her nightdress, 
 she noticed an odd thing. The low neck was threaded with 
 a piece of mauve ribbon taken from one of her mother's funeral 
 wreaths. How it had ever come to be there she could not 
 think. She must have used it unconsciously, not even know-
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 353 
 
 ing that she possessed it though now she recognized it at once. 
 She let it be. 
 
 All night she lay a broken thing hearing the banging and 
 shunting of trains. And her feet were like stones. Now and 
 again a kind of ague took her. She could not weep, could 
 not think, could hardly even feel. There was in her no real 
 anger against Louis. The waves of fury that overwhelmed 
 her from time to time, were all from the outside and inessen- 
 tial? What really concerned her was that the menace of 
 death which had been with her all these months was now ful- 
 filled in her. Louis was no more than the instrument in a 
 proceeding as far beyond his own control as her. 
 
 x 
 
 Neither then nor afterward* was Joanna able to account 
 for her actions of the following day. They seemed merely 
 automatic. There was no real life left in her. 
 
 At eight in the morning, having dozed a very little during 
 the last hour, she dressed herself, and with that factitious 
 access of spirits, rather lightheaded, which comes to some peo- 
 ole as one of the phases before collapse, she paid her bill and 
 left the hotel. Louis would send his message, or more pro- 
 bably would come himself. And he would find her gone. 
 That was something. 
 
 She could not think of London, however, while he was still 
 in Edinburgh. So she walked stupidly about, always carrying 
 with her, her bag which grew heavier and heavier. 
 
 It occurred to her that she had better look for a room. 
 She began accordingly to make inquiries wherever she saw a 
 card irr a window. But in the district where she happened 
 to be wandering, lodgings were of the cheap, theatrical sort; 
 and she fled time after time from the vision of a sordid, un- 
 made bed, and an empty tumbler of the night before on a 
 bed-side table covered with circular stains. 
 
 At length, returning to the other side of Princes Street, she 
 found what she sought in a small and friendly temperance 
 hotel. Here she dropped her bag with relief, then went out, 
 bought a bunch of wall-flowers dark red and yellow which 
 had caught her eye at a street corner earlier and put them in 
 water on the dressing table of her new quarters. A passionate 
 gratitade welled in her for these warm, sweet flowers with their
 
 354 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 homely air. They were her only friends, and she wished for 
 no others. 
 
 At luncheon time she followed the general drift into the 
 coffee-room, and when food was set before her she was sur- 
 prised to find she could not eat. She was more than surprised 
 she was suddenly afraid. She began to fear as if it were 
 something quite disjoined from herself for her willing body. 
 But though she tried methodically, her gorge rose at each 
 mouthful and she had to stop. The bill of fare appalled her 
 boiled cod, minced " collops," corn-flour pudding. She wished 
 there were some food she had never yet tasted food with a 
 new, unearthly flavor food ambrosial that would melt 
 into her dry, bitter mouth without effort. 
 
 She had been dimly conscious of a great many black coats 
 in the room giving the place an atmosphere that was both 
 familiar and depressing. Then scraps of talk came to her from 
 the next table where sat a frizzy-haired young minister. He 
 had just been assuring his wife that they were in ample time 
 for their train. 
 
 " I'm sorry to miss the closing address to-night," he went 
 on. " I doubt we won't see the old man again in this world." 
 
 " With that halo of snow-white hair, Dr. Ranken makes a 
 very dignified Moderator," said the wife. 
 
 " But, frail, frail," returned the husband. " It is a marvel 
 to every one how he has carried through the ten days." 
 
 The month of May! Black-coated figures everywhere, 
 chattering cheerfully like a colony of starlings! Why of 
 course, it was the General Assembly! Not since the year 
 of her father's death had the General Assembly existed for 
 Joanna, so that a bewildering cloud of reminiscence was evoked 
 in her by the casual discovery that it was even now in progress, 
 and an added sharpness was given to memory by the mention of 
 Dr. Ranken's name. The General Assembly and Dr. Ranken as 
 Moderator! Looking at the hearty ministerial feeders around 
 her, Joanna felt more than ever a ghost. 
 
 Within the next half hour she was drawn back by an ob- 
 stinate revival of hope to the station hotel. Here there was 
 a telegram for her ; and she was further informed that a gentle- 
 man had telephoned at breakfast time had telephoned again 
 later had called at about twelve o'clock, but had left no mes- 
 sage. 
 
 As she tore open Louis's telegram she was almost ready to
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 355 
 
 come to life again. Was it all a mistake? Was she a fool, 
 so to have taken to heart a momentary state of fatigue? She 
 was at the mercy of a sickening back-wash of the life she 
 thought to have parted from. 
 
 Louis asked her to meet him at half-past twelve. (There 
 was only the bare request). It was now half-past two. 
 
 She went out again, desperate to find him, utterly unable to 
 comprehend her own actions of the morning by which she 
 had brought this about. And in Princes Street, close by the 
 Scott Monument, she was almost run into by a figure from 
 which long scarves and mulberry-colored draperies fluttered 
 picturesquely in the east wind. It was Mildred Lovatt. 
 
 " You here, my dear girl! " cried the little woman. " But 
 why were you not with us? We have just given Louis Pender 
 such a send-off! You know his panels were being unveiled 
 to-day at the new Nicholson Hall? The Seasons to my mind 
 he's never done anything better. But I needn't tell you! I 
 was not the only one to recognize the face and figure of Spring! 
 After the unveiling we gave him a luncheon party; and as 
 he had to go by the two o'clock train, we all went and saw 
 him off. He had a frightful cold, poor man, but I think we 
 succeeded in cheering him up a little. You should have been 
 with us, Joanna. Fancy your being in Edinburgh. . . ." 
 
 Somehow Joanna excused herself and made her escape. 
 Louis was gone. It was all over. No more hope. Though 
 it had been by her own doing that she had not seen him again, 
 she did not deceive herself on that account. If he had wanted 
 to see her from any other motive than remorseful kindness, he 
 would have waited longer. He must have remembered that 
 he had mentioned four as the hour he would be free. Yet he 
 had left no further message at the hotel. He had brought her 
 to Edinburgh and had left her there alone. He had been glad, 
 no doubt, to escape so easily. 
 
 That she could do anything else now than return to her hotel 
 for the night never occurred to her. Louis was gone. But 
 for herself as yet trains to London had no existence. The 
 last grain of her initiative was gone. Immediate shelter was 
 all she could think of. 
 
 Hour after hour passed till night came. Still she had not 
 swallowed a morsel of food: and as she lay, once more sleep- 
 less, on a strange bed, with a laboring heart, and lungs unable 
 to compass the top of a breath for all their continual, deep
 
 35 6 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 sighing, she was again beset by that sudden fear for her body. 
 
 It was full of strange pains. Suppose it were to take ill 
 here in the hotel? Suppose it were to die? Two o'clock 
 struck from a church outside . . . three o'clock . . . four 
 o'clock. She lacked the courage to rouse strangers at this 
 hour. Yet she felt so ill so sinking all at once that by the 
 usual waking time she was sure she would be lastingly stricken. 
 Without some outside help, she would be very ill, or mad, or 
 dead by dawn. Her flesh would not hold out so long. 
 
 But why should it hold out? Was it not right that the 
 vessel no longer informed by the spirit, should fly asunder? 
 Would not its now useless particles be thrown back swiftly 
 among the other broken potsherds, diminished not one whit 
 for the unceasing purposes of creation? As for the spirit, 
 truly one need never fear for that. The spirit could neither 
 be defrauded nor added unto. It needed no salvation and no 
 pity, returning always to its place till it should be breathed 
 again into some new vessel, fashioned from the immemorial 
 stuff of the old. 
 
 It was she only Joanna She, Herself that would be no 
 more if her body were now to perish. 
 
 Was this the Law? Was this what her mother had called 
 the Will of God? If so she would yield herself to it, and in 
 faith would even cease utterly to be. She had lived a little 
 . . . her eyes had beheld the sun . . . Un peu d'amour, et 
 puts bon jour! That was as Louis saw it. And not Louis 
 only, but a great mass of the world's sages and poets. Was it 
 not enough? Truly it was a good deal. Truly it had its 
 beauty of pathos, its melancholy fascination, its own deathly- 
 sweet flower of satisfaction. 
 
 But it was not enough. Not at least for her. It was no 
 more enough for her than her mother's transference of fulfil- 
 ment to another world of sheer spirit had been, nor than Geor- 
 gie's relinquishment to the next generation. And was it 
 indeed a thing ordained any more than they? Had it not been 
 said " My Word shall not return unto Me void? " What was 
 oneself, if not a word? Oneself was not all spirit, as Juley 
 had believed. No self could be, without the body, without 
 the form of clay into which a puff of spirit had gone from God's 
 mouth. In breath alone there is no word. The word comes 
 by the conscious molding of the lips, by that which gives a 
 preconceived shape to the formless issuing forth of breath.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 357 
 
 Grasping this, Joanna was yet more terrified. At first it 
 had seemed to her that by the untimely death of her body, her 
 proper self would cease to be. Now she saw that if her body 
 dissolved into its elements at that moment, she would more 
 truly never have been at all. For that fusion between flesh 
 and spirit in which alone is absolute being had not taken 
 place in her as yet. The spirit had been in her: the form 
 of the word she had been designed to utter had been hers. 
 But the two had stayed apart, and now they would go their 
 several unfertile ways. Here was annulment indeed! Here 
 was the empty returning of the word which God hated. Before 
 ceasing to be, she must be. And to that end the disruption of 
 her body must be deferred yet awhile. The flesh must be kept 
 from its separate extinction till it had lived again and anew, in- 
 terpenetrated by the returning spirit, and so serving its purpose. 
 
 The question that now grew every moment more urgent 
 was how this might be done. How save her body when she 
 could neither rest nor eat nor sleep? While she did nothing 
 but think, the unravelling was steadily going forward. Soon 
 she would be too late. 
 
 As these fears swept her distracted being, memories of 
 Aunt Perdy began to present themselves. Tentative at first, 
 they became persistent. Aunt Perdy had spoken of fleshly 
 renewal, of death, of a new birth. She had spoken much and 
 with authority of unseen forces that were in the air about us 
 ever in attendance to help or to hinder. 
 
 And what was it that Aunt Perdy had said about the-body 
 being as a string of beads? ... a shock of ripe corn . . . 
 of its capacity for relapsing into a motion of such fine degrees 
 that is was a kind of living stillness in which restoration came 
 to it from every side? 
 
 Joanna slipped out of bed. She could smell the wall- 
 flowers on the dressing-table. The room was not quite dark, 
 but of a negative gray dimness filled with triangular shadows. 
 As she drooped, and sank, and came limply to the floor like a 
 heap of grain that is softly flung down, she thought involun- 
 tarily of a field in which the meek sheaves are bowed together. 
 She herself had fallen into something of the posture of an 
 Oriental at prayer. And as she had fallen, so she remained 
 a long while at rest. Her lax thighs ached violently, and her 
 loins were wrung with a new pain as if some poison had sud- 
 denly revealed its course. But gradually the ache grew less
 
 358 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 and less; and when it was gone, instinctively as a woodland 
 creature turns in its sleep, she let herself roll with a gentle 
 heavy movement on to her back. Her limbs, all slack, went 
 sliding and quivering their length upon the gray floor. Soon 
 every inch of her lay there released. Not till that moment 
 did she know how tightly strung she had been for the last 
 forty hours and more. 
 
 Then how steadily and how strangely the deathliness of 
 fatigue went rippling along her arms, along her legs, and away! 
 Here at least Aunt Perdy had been right. One thought wrongly 
 of the body as of something single and upright. Truly it 
 was no more than a handful of various weights strung loosely 
 on a string. 
 
 Joanna knew that she was safe now from what had threat- 
 ened her. Her body, still bereft, was safe. Her defeated 
 brain was laved by the clear waves of nothingness. She lay 
 and lay till time for her was not. Slowly her breathing 
 altered. It grew deeper, milder, more regular, and at last in 
 the sure knowledge of sleep she returned to her bed. 
 
 It was now that there sounded in her soothed ear a small, 
 sweet forgotten voice of childhood. At Duntarvie, long ago, 
 her bed had stood within hearing of the house cistern. Here 
 in the same room with her, by a curious chance, was the water 
 tank of the hotel. It was hidden in a cupboard, and in the 
 daytime she had only dully recognized a familiar presence 
 by certain muffled thrummings and spoutings and sudden gush- 
 ings. Through the night as yet she had marked no sound at 
 all. 
 
 But now in this secret hour before dawn, when the rest of 
 the world was asleep, and Joanna was waiting in quietness till 
 sleep should come to her, the water began to speak. It started 
 unaccountably out of the silence with exquisite precision. 
 
 Drip . , . dreep-dreep-dreep . . . drop, drop . . . dripeet, 
 dripeeteet . . . drip-ipeet-ipeety! went the tiny, silvern, in- 
 terminable cadenza. Like silver its music tinkled like seed- 
 pearls, like icicles, so fine and clear and absolved that it was 
 an ecstasy to hear a keen ecstasy quite purged of any dross 
 of excitement. Steadily the singing would go on for a bar 
 or two, tone after perfect tone. Then like a rill that leaps 
 under starlight it would scatter its drops in a spray of grace- 
 notes. On it went, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking, 
 modulating continually from one delicate, undreamed-of
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 359 
 
 rhythm to another. And though it was a voice from child- 
 hood, Joanna had never truly heard it before. It was the still, 
 small voice of a new birth, of a new life, of a new world. It 
 was a new voice, but it was the oldest of all the voices. For it 
 was the voice before creation, secure, unearthly, frail as filigree 
 yet faithful as a star.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SHE had slept, and in the train next day on her way to 
 London she was still able to rest. Her body was weak 
 but safe. After the alternation of sharp, riving pain and dull 
 stupor which had been her existence for the last two days, 
 this was almost happiness. 
 
 In the barn-like Waverley Station wherein the passengers 
 seemed like so many strewn grains from the threshing, she 
 had slipped clear of her trouble. She too was now but a 
 grain, a speck, whereas last night her heart had filled the uni- 
 verse with its heavy and clamorous throbbing. In this re- 
 stored proportion she had only her infinitesimal part in the 
 whole, and it was enough. Behind her lay great misery: before 
 her in London she knew that more awaited her. But she 
 might make of this journey a quiet breathing space a narrow 
 oasis in which for an hour she could forget the choking 
 desert. 
 
 Having no stomach yet for everyday victuals, she had 
 bought herself a little, rare basketful of fruit. Here was a 
 knot of grapes the color of glacier water, here were two grana- 
 dillas passion-flower fruits with their tough rinds full of 
 luscious, translucent globules, here were almonds to crunch, 
 a white-fleshed apple into which to drive one's teeth, a peach 
 from which the velvet, scented skin came glibly away. 
 
 Leaning back idly in the corner of an empty compartment 
 she watched the wheeling countryside. It was a poet's May 
 morning, one of those mornings when white, white clouds are 
 piled up and gleaming, and the sunshine lies like snow along the 
 hedges. Young lambs that might themselves have been snow 
 leavings, were scattered upon the emerald grass. A faint, 
 low haze of hyacinths hovered in the bare woods. In one 
 small station through which the train passed without stopping, 
 the steep banks were rich with crocuses that had already been 
 split and ravished with crocuses that were flaming their 
 lives out like passionate lamps. 
 
 360
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 361 
 
 Joanna sat on that side of the train next to the corridor, 
 and every now and then passing between her and the Lothians, 
 some passenger would blot out a whole brown woodland or 
 amber colored field or bare hill of palest amethyst. To her 
 at the moment one broad, obscuring back was like another. 
 She hardly realized therefore, that a particular pair of tweed 
 shoulders returned again and again until they came at length 
 to a hesitating stand-still opposite the door of her compartment. 
 Even when the door opened, and a man's brown face looked 
 in with inquiring friendliness, and a lean hand was stretched 
 out, and her name warmly uttered even then it was several 
 moments before she realized that the stranger was her old 
 playmate Bob Ranken. 
 
 " Joanna! It is you! " 
 
 "Why ... Bob! " 
 
 He wrung her hand and sat down opposite, smiling taking 
 off his hat, looking at her with evident pleasure. 
 
 Joanna too looked at him. He was the same old Bob! 
 After the first shock of shyness and strangeness she saw that 
 he had not really changed. He was bigger, older, and certain 
 marks of worldly assurance were as clear as the deep sun- 
 wrinkles that surrounded his eyes. But the African sun had 
 not burned away the spiritual indecision lurking about his at- 
 tractive lips, nor informed the almost callow innocence of his 
 gaze. 
 
 " Do come into our carriage," he begged her schoolboyishly. 
 " My father is there with me. I thought and thought it must 
 be you. But your hat hid your eyes and I wasn't positive." 
 
 " I wonder you knew me at all," said Joanna. " I am 
 changed more than you, I think. Am I not changed? " 
 
 "Yes and no," he replied. "I felt a bit afraid of the 
 dashing-looking female I first caught sight of. But now that 
 I have a good look at you I can see the old Joanna. I wish 
 you would take your hat off. Would you have known me? " 
 
 ' ; Anywhere! " 
 
 " Yet you didn't when I first came in and stuck out my paw 
 at you." 
 
 " Xo. I was half asleep." 
 
 " Asleep? You didn't look it! " 
 
 " Thinking, then." 
 
 "Ah! " 
 
 He searched her face curiously as she rose, and they went
 
 362 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 together to the other carriage where Dr. Ranken sat reading 
 with one plaid about his shoulders and another over his knees. 
 The old minister looked fragile indeed, but he had maintained 
 a brittle alertness. He smiled his wintry yet rather sweet 
 smile at Joanna, and made her sit by him while he asked about 
 her doings, and about her brothers mentioning both by name 
 and about Georgie and Georgie's baby. It was a clear and 
 a pleasing point of vanity with him, this individual remem- 
 brance which he kept of each boy and girl who had ever had a 
 place in his flock. And Joanna was the more surprised as in 
 their childhood he had never seemed to them to notice their 
 existence. Certainly his former bleakness was gone. Time, 
 sometimes generous, had given him with his white locks, 
 a distinction quite denied to his middle-age. And it was 
 perhaps his own appreciation of this that made him 
 genial. 
 
 " And your mother," he said presently, " I was sorry, 
 very sorry to hear of her death. Your mother, my dear, was 
 a good woman." 
 
 " Yes," said Joanna. 
 
 " I never knew a better. And she had courage a rare 
 gift ... a gift I esteem not less but more as I grow older. 
 True, theologically we did not always see eye to eye, your 
 mother and myself . . . "he twinkled. 
 
 So they talked mostly of the early days in Glasgow, of St. 
 Jude's Church, of the Boyds, of this one's death, that one's 
 marriage, the disgrace of that other. And the old man was 
 lively in his interest. As for the young man, he sat smoking 
 and watching, seldom speaking. In answer to Joanna's ques- 
 tions he told her a little about his work, and she divined that he 
 loved the part of the world where it was. Laconically as he 
 spoke, there was enthusiasm in his description of a certain high 
 mountain which dominated the landscape visible from his 
 bungalow. 
 
 But if Bob took no great part in the conversation, he was alJ 
 the more intent in listening to every least remark of Joanna's. 
 When they parted at King's Cross he was emphatic upon the 
 strange coincidence of their meeting. He had meant, he said, 
 the very next day to have sought her out at Chapel Court. 
 Might he still come? He was to be at the least a fortnight in 
 London. Joanna could not but see that his eyes were full of 
 eager reminiscence.
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 363 
 
 ii 
 
 But at the Moons' house there was trouble. 
 
 Roddy, who had fallen ill suddenly, was to be operated upon 
 next day. Edwin Moon was white with anxiety. Trissie 
 was gray. He was bowed more than ever. She was more than 
 ever upright. Dreadfully upright she was, with her shoulders 
 thrown back and her desperate head held high. 
 
 They had " taken the liberty " they told Joanna, upon her 
 arrival when the bad news was poured out of using her bed- 
 room as the sick chamber. It was the most suitable in the 
 house, and they could not bear to have the child taken to a 
 nursing home. Already the stripped walls were hung with 
 sheets drenched in carbolic, and the scrubbed kitchen table 
 stood shockingly in the middle of a bare floor. 
 
 During the week that followed, Joanna, sleeping on the sofa 
 in her sitting-room, gave every minute of her time and every 
 ounce of strength to the racked household. She cooked, ran 
 errands, found a substitute for Trissie at the laundry, inter- 
 viewed customers downstairs for Mr. Moon, helped to tend 
 the unwitting Edvina. And so long as all went well with 
 Roddy she was content. While the distraction of illness lasted, 
 her own essential life stayed apart, suspended. It was a respite. 
 
 And the operation was a success. Roddy emerged from it 
 his entire, bright self. It seemed there was no further cause 
 for anxiety. Yet Trissie's face remained tense and ashen as 
 before, nor would Edwin leave the bedside. 
 
 That night, though she was very weary, Joanna lay sleepless. 
 With Roddy out of danger her own troubles were again un- 
 leashed, and now like hounds they threatened her. She stayed 
 broad awake till after sunrise. Then, when she had newly 
 fallen into a drowse, came a touch on her shoulder. She sat 
 up instantly. It was Trissie, who said a low word and was 
 gone. Joanna leapt up, threw on her dressing gown, and 
 followed. 
 
 An hour before dawn nearly twenty hours after the sur- 
 geon's work was satisfactorily completed the child had begun 
 to look strange about the eyes. Then he had slipped by slow, 
 obstinate degrees into unconsciousness. Now he was in a 
 coma. " Coma," was the word that had remained with Jo- 
 anna when Trissie had spoken and vanished. 
 
 It was " a most uncommon case," declared the puzzled phy-
 
 364 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 sician (the surgeon having performed his task and being busy 
 elsewhere, did not appear). But he thought they would 
 "pull the little chap through." 
 
 Trissie's eyes widened in murderous disbelief till the white 
 glared all round the irises, but she carried out every direc- 
 tion submissively and well, winning the doctor's praise. There 
 never had been such a nurse. As for Edwin Moon, through 
 each unfolding horror of activity around the bed, he only 
 sat with his head hanging, looking on without hope, quite 
 passive. 
 
 Twice in the course of the day they managed to rouse the 
 boy so that he uttered conscious and natural cries of protest. 
 And after the second of these times he lay awhile quiet, and 
 was his composed self as if he would recover. 
 
 The father raised his head then and gazed into his son's 
 open eyes. And Roddy, as if he had been waiting for this, 
 smiled back at him contentedly. 
 
 So they would have remained, but the mother bent forward, 
 thrusting herself between them in her terrible jealousy. 
 
 " How does my sonny feel now? " she asked, curbing her 
 frenzy with an effort that almost killed her, into a tone of 
 gentle ordinariness. 
 
 At this, Roddy only moved his head restlessly, searching 
 past his mother with feeble impatience for his father's lost 
 face. 
 
 How's my sonny? " she repeated, this time a fine jet 
 of her agony breaking through in her voice. 
 
 " Much better thank you." 
 
 Roddy spoke with the politeness he used to strangers. And 
 again he sought his father's eyes. 
 
 Trissie turned away. Her face was like some crude, grin- 
 ning mask of tragedy. 
 
 But the child had scarcely spoken, before consciousness 
 flickered out again. An hour . . . two hours ... of un- 
 broken stupor followed, do what they would. And then the 
 small, square finger tips began to curve strangely outwards 
 like young leaves that are too near a flame. And he grew 
 cold. And one long, long breath was the last he would ever 
 draw. 
 
 The mother, her eyes wide and unseeing, stayed by the dead 
 boy. And the father, having composed the small limbs, 
 wandered slowly from the room.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 365 
 
 in 
 
 It was on the night before the burial that Trissie found 
 relief in a stream of incoherent speech which seemed as though 
 it had been pent up for ages and now could never have an 
 end. 
 
 Edwin, she told Joanna had gone out, and would probably 
 walk the streets till morning, as he had done many a time 
 before. This was not their first trouble. What else indeed 
 but trouble had they known these many years? 
 
 She sat on the little rocking chair in the archway room 
 that midnight, and her story or what she thought was her 
 story came from her in a bitter confusion of words. 
 
 When all had been said, Joanna knew little more about 
 the Moons than she had already gathered half-consciously 
 by living with them. She learned indeed for the first time 
 that Moon was not their real name, and that the name they 
 had foregone was one well thought of in a northern county 
 where once they had lived prosperously. But what Edwin 
 had done saving that it had been an act of criminal folly 
 by which he had nothing to gain and everything to lose 
 all Trissie's incontinence did not disclose. He had done it, 
 declared Trissie, when he was not himself. For he had never 
 been himself since the day when his pet Edvina, from being 
 a lovely, lively child of two, had within an hour become the 
 thing she now was. Was it any wonder if crazed by this 
 blow he had thought for a time that certain babies were 
 better not to be born into the world at all? Be that as it 
 might, such thoughts had led to a disaster from which his 
 life and hers had never recovered. Ill luck had dogged them 
 ever since. 
 
 Here was the burden of Trissie's lament. Here, in the steady 
 incorrigible tracking down by misfortune. It was Edwin 
 whom the pursuing furies had marked for their prey. She, 
 Trissie, had been born she was sure of it for good fortune. 
 It was this knowledge that had bred in her a bitter envy of 
 Joanna's youth and freedom, an envy she now begged to be 
 forgiven. She had always been known as a lucky person, and 
 was convinced she would be still, were it not for Edwin. It 
 was Edwin who had spoiled her life, who had cheated her of 
 her happiness, who had brought upon her one trouble after 
 another. And he had done it in all innocence. Therein
 
 366 
 
 lay his offence. Any wickedness again and again Trissie 
 wildly repeated this phrase any wickedness, she could have 
 forgiven him. For then she could have cut herself off from 
 him. If he were a guilty man, she could have gone free, been 
 happy (once, just before the birth of Roddy she had tried to 
 leave him, and he had told her she was free to do the best 
 for herself). But he was an innocent man. It was only 
 that fate had marked him as a prey. And how could she leave 
 this Jonah, this victim, this man set apart for vengeance, 
 by whose side nothing could prosper? 
 
 So the wife raved and wept. 
 
 But on the day of the burial, Joanna came nearer to the 
 true heart of the mystery. 
 
 In the church, and afterwards by the graveside, she saw 
 how the strange couple clung each to the other. And there 
 was that in their clinging which was more than the ordinary 
 holding together for comfort of married mourners. To Jo- 
 anna it seemed to proclaim their secret from the housetops. 
 The Moons, like Phemie and Jimmie, possessed what she in 
 her own unfulfilled being must envy. 
 
 IV 
 
 Now she would have to go back to her own life. 
 
 But the day before, it had seemed as if she might live only 
 in Trissie's life and in entire devotion to Trissie's unhappiness. 
 Now she knew that Trissie did not need her. The husband 
 and wife had cast her out by the grave. She had no part 
 with them. She must go on again alone with what was 
 no longer a life, but only a dying and a denial. 
 
 So it was that in the weeks that followed, Roddy's death 
 ceased to cause her any personal grief. It became merely 
 another incident in the recession of all life from her. For days 
 on end she was shorn of herself, shorn of the world, shorn of 
 the old assured existence for which her mother at one end, 
 and Louis at the other, had supremely stood. She was de- 
 nuded even of the warm and exquisite fleece of memory. 
 She had no past, no living present, no conceivable future. 
 But under all her deathliness was one grain of faith that death 
 must be fulfilled to the uttermost before any new birth can 
 be. She lay abandoned, waiting in a perfection of emptiness.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 367 
 
 But to die is not so easy to die, that is, the death in which 
 is clenched the seed of a new birth. There are pangs in it of 
 false resurrection, dreadful like the return of Lazarus. As in 
 the death of the body, the will revives time after time and 
 fights. Appalled and faithless the consciousness struggles 
 in the very act of dissolution to be again what it was to 
 escape its appointed re-entry into the dark womb of extinc- 
 tion. 
 
 In these weeks there were mornings when Joanna woke full 
 of a gnawing malaise for Louis. 
 
 Then all her memories, fiendish, but clad like angels, would 
 leap to their deathly work. All the old lies would raise their 
 plausible, flat heads, denying the possibility of true renewal. 
 Back, back, back she must go into safety; back to haven: 
 back to the known system which swung securely between the 
 psalm-singing, sunset faith of her fathers and the exquisite 
 underworld of moonlight and falling leaves wherein Louis 
 had his dwelling. Resignation, renunciation, sacrifice! These 
 thrust forward their false, lovely faces; and all their plead- 
 ings were for the revival of self-insistence under the mask 
 of immolation. 
 
 For even in extremis a choice is left, and the will has its 
 part. Joanna had lost Louis. But there was still a way in 
 which she might refuse to go from him. The very circumstan- 
 ces of their love which had kept them apart for months at 
 a time, the fact that in her dealings with him she had been 
 clear of pettiness, his assurance in the train that he had not 
 so much changed toward her as broken down in himself 
 all these offered her that way of death in life which is chosen 
 every day that passes by people of her nature. 
 
 She could be faithful to Louis. She could refuse to forget 
 and to go on. With loyal obstinate submissiveness she could 
 turn her life into a shrine. She had seen the faces of women 
 who had done this. Was it not the best way when one had 
 so deeply committed oneself? It was not the way of the new 
 birth, but it lay at hand; it showed the sign-post of authority; 
 one could travel it and not yield up one's will. 
 
 Or on other days a different brood of devils would crowd 
 in upon her. These had features less like Juley's than the
 
 368 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 last, and more like Louis'. They were full of pleasantry and 
 mocking reasonableness. 
 
 Why take so tragically, they asked, what was probably only 
 one of her lover's bad moods? It was a question of time and 
 good sense, good sense being what she had chiefly lacked. 
 He had behaved badly no doubt. But she might have man- 
 aged him if she hadn't been so painfully in earnest. She might 
 still, with time, coolness and skill, win him afresh. 
 
 Or quite suddenly she would find herself caught up in a 
 whirlpool of hatred and all-encompassing spite. 
 
 Why should Louis go free while she was thus tormented? 
 she would then ask. Could she not make him suffer, perse- 
 cute him, even kill him? Why not? As man to desperate 
 woman, his would be the disadvantage. He was spared by 
 her scruples, not by her fears. It was no matter what 
 became of her so that she could wreak herself once and for 
 all upon him. When she dragged him out before his world 
 that he so feared, ranted forth her mind at him, showed him 
 like a beaten cur to his wife and his sons and his son's wife, 
 made the seemliness he so treasured, impossible for him forth- 
 with, she could complete the work by killing herself. What 
 was to prevent her? Nothing! 
 
 Nothing, save that in spite of all, she knew she was finely 
 prompted in respecting Louis's obduracy. Something whis- 
 pered that is was not all cowardice for him to have cast her 
 off, that beneath the maddening incidents of their parting 
 he had taken a step which was intrinsically decent. Was not 
 his action in harmony with the unknown forces that had long 
 been driving her out of his world? What if the break be- 
 tween them had sprung from his refusal to drag her further 
 into his own long dying? 
 
 So she took no decisive action. And the only outcome of 
 all her stormy hours was some letters. She could not help 
 writing letters to Louis that were by turns exalted, self-abas- 
 ing, passionate, reasonable, threatening, and simply appealing. 
 
 Louis replied by one letter only. 
 
 " You must allow me to act," he wrote at last, " as I think 
 best. Believe me, I'm saving you from yourself, as well as, in 
 another way, saving myself from you. I don't want to see 
 you. I won't. It could serve no purpose except to hurt us 
 both, and what's the use of that? I haven't exactly changed
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 369 
 
 in my feeling toward you. I've meant every word and more, 
 that I ever spoke to you. You know that well enough, I 
 expect. There will never be anyone else to count. There 
 never was anyone else that meant at all the same as you have 
 meant (and I suppose, still mean) to me. It may seem strange 
 to you when I say I care every bit as much as I ever have 
 possibly more. I confess it seems strange to me. Certainly 
 I didn't expect anything of the kind when we began. But 
 something has gone dead in me, Joanna. I can't go on. 
 That's what I realized on the journey to Edinburgh when I 
 was so awfully tired. Quite suddenly, once and for all, I 
 realized it. I can't go on. And in this of ours, we must go 
 on or make an end. Don't you agree? As I see things now, 
 it has been tug and tug between us this long time past per- 
 haps the whole time. If I'd had it in me I would have gone 
 off with you long ago. You always wanted that, I know, and 
 once or twice I have fancied that I could. But I know now 
 that I never could have. It would only have been a sicken- 
 ing disaster for both of us if I had tried. Perhaps I was too 
 old when you got me. You don't know yet what that feels 
 like and you ought to be thankful. Anyhow there it is. 
 It has wanted courage for me to cut loose from you and stay 
 behind. You must have the courage to cut loose from me and 
 go on. I believe you can do this. But whatever you do, 
 don't make things ugly and regrettable at the end by asking 
 the impossible of me. I'm sure I've done you no harm, 
 and I hope I may have done you good. Let me alone, my 
 dear, with my memories. Be sure a man never had sweeter 
 ones. Be sure I wish you well, and am forever grateful. 
 
 " Your old lover, 
 " Louis." 
 
 If many a time, in his love-making, Joanna had been driven 
 to make excuses to herself for her lover, in his withdrawal he 
 rose far beyond any need of apology. If she indeed had it 
 in her to go forward into a new, unimagined life, here in this 
 letter would lie her dearest trophy from the old. 
 
 VI 
 
 During the futile weeks that followed, she even took to 
 visiting fortune-tellers. It was a tribe that had never be-
 
 370 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 fore caught her attention. But the days must be passed 
 somehow. 
 
 Though she despised herself for it, and had little enough 
 money to spare from necessities, she would put down the pre- 
 posterous fee eagerly for the false excitement it brought 
 would wait trembling in the frowsy ante-chamber of the oracle. 
 And once, when some hag of the Edgware Road hinted at 
 what might be construed into a marriage, after many years, 
 with Louis, she went home with a lighter step to know within 
 the hour that is was a shameful drug. 
 
 This however did not prevent her from repeating the same 
 folly, and she continued fitfully to go from one soothsayer to 
 another. 
 
 " I see a dark ... no, a fair man ..." droned the sibyl, 
 (This time she was rich in her appointments, and herself 
 young, large and comely as a stalled ox.) ..." I see a 
 medium fair man . . . still young . . . yes . . . the first 
 love ... his thoughts are toward you . . . there was a break 
 . . . both were in fault . . . years have passed . . . but 
 he has been faithful . . . and now his heart is set toward 
 his first love ... I see happinness . . . money . . . child- 
 ren . . . two boys ... no ... a boy and a girl . . . seas 
 to be crossed . . . many storms in the past . . . but happiness 
 close at hand! " She sank back in her chair as if utterly ex- 
 hausted, drew the black velvet over her glass ball and closed 
 her eyes. 
 
 And Joanna was impressed. 
 
 During the last fortnight Bob Ranken had continually 
 sought her company. Noticing her drooping spirits, he had 
 insisted more than once upon her going out with him to dinner 
 in town and had taken her to a theater afterwards. And that 
 very afternoon, on her return to Chapel Court, she met him 
 coming dejectedly away after a vain call there. In a week 
 he would be leaving England. So she had to allow him to 
 turn back with her, and to sit talking in her room. She had 
 only to look at him to know how very easily she might make 
 the crystal-gazer's prophecy come true. 
 
 She was tempted. She did not love Bob, but he had still 
 the power to stir a curious tenderness in her. Also it was 
 dangerously sweet and flattering, especially coming upon the 
 heels of such humiliation as could hardly be borne, to have 
 stumbled upon the fulfilment of an old dream. After all
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 371 
 
 these years, Bob wanted her. There would not only be safety 
 with him, but as well a kind of newness which promised much. 
 What of the mountain he could see from his bungalow . . . 
 The African veld . . . different skies . . . dark faces . . . yet 
 another escape? And with Bob, however fond a wife she 
 might become, she knew that she would be able to keep 
 her essential being intact, a shrine for Louis to the end. 
 
 But Joanna's will, which had so often served her badly, 
 served her well in this; and that day she put the temptation 
 aside. Better never be than be so falsely, foisting at the same 
 time falseness upon another. 
 
 So she turned from him, and denied him every chance of 
 speaking. And the next week Bob left England as he had 
 come. 
 
 VII 
 
 She visited no more palmists. She did nothing and went 
 nowhere, neither worked nor read. The long-preserved shell 
 of habit had crumbled at last. But although acquiescence 
 might mean open ruin, she could only wait passively. She 
 could not move without some vital prompting. 
 
 It was not till the middle of June that the first hint of direc- 
 tion came to her, the first faint summons bidding her live 
 anew. And as once before, in the life that was now dead and 
 discarded, it came in the shape of a letter from Aunt Perdy. 
 
 " I am passing," she wrote, " through a time of hideous, 
 lonely suffering. The powers of darkness in the heavens 
 above are doing all they can to kill my heart and brain. It 
 is dreadful to be like me open to invisible influences; for by 
 the same means I am both aided and hindered. Pray for 
 Auntie, whose heart is almost breaking, and who is presently 
 without love or hope of any kind, and feels miserably conquered. 
 Come to see her if you possibly can." 
 
 To this Joanna sent no answer, but she moved out of her 
 lethargy and made simple preparations for a journey to Italy. 
 To raise the money she found she must sell some of her 
 treasures, but she did so without a pang. Not that there was 
 any excitement or expectancy in her as there had been when she 
 responded to her aunt's first summons. Now she was simply 
 obedient to the seeming accident through which her new, 
 untried life could stir. Her will no longer rose hard and pos- 
 sessive, driving her hither and thither. Her will now was
 
 372 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 merely the helm by which her frail bark might once more be 
 steered to float upon a stream of life. But what other power 
 had urged her to respond, whither the stream might bear 
 her, she did not ask. 
 
 Not that even now she was quite beyond the reach of a 
 deathly backwash. In the late afternoon of the day before 
 her departure, when nothing remained to do, she found her- 
 self overwhelmed once more by the old sadness. 
 
 There was the deep chair in which Louis and she had so 
 often kissed and held each other: here was a case she had 
 come upon while packing full of his letters and drawings: 
 there on the mantelpiece was the Tanagra figurine with blown 
 out drapery which he had brought her from Paris, declaring 
 it was like her. All the little room spoke of him and of 
 what he stood for. And mingling with these passionate 
 memories were thoughts of Roddy who was dead, of Ollie 
 who was soon going to Canada to make the third in a patched- 
 up reconciliation between her parents. Wrenched with sob- 
 bing she lay back in the shadowed room. She cried a long 
 time, so that when at length she was done, the evening had 
 drawn grayly in. But she did not stir to light the lamp, and 
 even when rain began to fall, beating more and more heavily 
 against the black window-panes, she had no thought of draw- 
 ing the curtains. There seemed no reason why she should 
 ever move again. From shaking storm she had lapsed into 
 stillness. Never before had she been sunk so deep in the 
 blessed wells of nothingness. 
 
 How many minutes or hours passed then, she did not know. 
 But the room had long been quite dark, when a sound from 
 downstairs made her slip free of her abandonment in the low 
 chair and stand alert listening. Her ears served her so beau- 
 tifully at that moment that she could separate each from 
 each as an embroidress might separate a skein of colored 
 silken threads all the faint vibrations of sound in the house. 
 She heard Trissie open the door and parley with a visitor. 
 It was impossible to distinguish words, but she knew imme- 
 diately that Lawrence's was the low voice asking if she was 
 in, and she could supply the answer in Trissie's doubtful 
 murmur. 
 
 The next moment she was leaning over the wide-topped old 
 banister of the staircase. 
 
 " I'm here," she heard her own voice assuring Trissie. And
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 373 
 
 almost before she had spoken, there was Lawrence stand- 
 ing before her. 
 
 On the little dark landing they could see each other's faces 
 as pale blurs only. 
 
 " How wet you are! " she exclaimed as he touched her 
 hand with his, all cold with the rain, and she could smell the 
 rain-soaked wool of his clothes. 
 
 " Yes. It is pouring." 
 
 He followed her into the room while she groped for matches 
 and lighted the lamp. And now, instead of her ears, it was 
 her hands, that moved with a new perfection and certitude 
 that almost frightened her. 
 
 The wick caught evenly all round, and as the twin flames 
 sprang up bright and smokeless in the funnel, Lawrence's 
 eyes were upon her. Her face, she knew then, must be rav- 
 aged and unsightly from her long crying. At any former time 
 of her life above all with Louis she would have shaded the 
 unmerciful light hastily, turning her face aside the while. 
 But this evening with Lawrence she had no more impulse to 
 conceal it than she had to display it for his sympathy. Rais- 
 ing her head she returned his look starkly, and thus they both 
 stood for a long second with the revealing lamp between them. 
 
 " Yes? " Joanna asked him. That he would only have come 
 to her on some urgent errand, she knew of herself. And if 
 she had not known it, his white, fixed face would have told 
 her that something decisive had happened to him. 
 
 But he had seen her now, and in his eyes his own trouble 
 made way for hers. 
 
 " What's wrong? " he demanded, instead of replying to her 
 question. 
 
 " Nothing is wrong. I've been crying. I'm all right now. 
 I'm going to Italy to-morrow." 
 
 It seemed odd to her that he should show no surprise. 
 
 " To Italy, you are going? " he said. . . . I'm going away 
 too. That's what I came to-night to say." 
 
 Joanna was the one to be astonished. His way of speaking 
 was strange. 
 
 " Where are you going? " she asked wondering. 
 
 " I don't know yet, nor for how long. North, probably. 
 It really doesn't matter. Though I think I'm about due a 
 holiday." 
 
 " I'm afraid you are ill. You look ill," said Joanna,
 
 374 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 anxiously. There was that kind of sharpness in his features 
 which often presages severe illness. 
 
 But he assured her brusquely that it was only a cold hang- 
 ing about him. 
 
 " How long will you be in Italy? " 
 
 She did not know. She begged him to hurry home and 
 change his clothes. 
 
 " Good-bye, then," Lawrence said, holding out his hand " It 
 was mostly to tell you I was going away that I came. I 
 couldn't help coming and now I feel you are going South for 
 the same reason that I am going North. You have come to 
 an end really come to an end at last. Is it so? " 
 
 Joanna nodded. She was full of wonder, yet it seemed 
 natural that he should know about her. 
 
 " I have been at an end now for ages," she said. " The 
 thing is, is there any new beginning? " 
 
 " For you I feel there must be: for me I see none," re- 
 plied Lawrence. "I'm simply down and out; last time we 
 talked I was glib enough. I thought I knew what it was. But 
 I didn't." 
 
 Would he stay? Joanna asked him shyly. Would he sit 
 down a while? Would talking be any use? But he shook 
 his head, so she went downstairs to the door with him. 
 
 The yard was spouting with rain, and rivulets of rain coursed 
 under the archway. As Lawrence and she clasped hands 
 Joanna loved the sound of it. 
 
 " Endings have to be gone through by each one alone," 
 said he, " but I doubt if ever a true beginning was solitary." 
 And with that he was gone into the dark, slanting curtain of 
 the rain. 
 
 As she went slowly back to her room, she dared hardly 
 believe in the virgin jet of promise that bubbled tinily, limpidly 
 up through her own nothingness.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 "T TOLD you," persevered the voice of Irene's holiday gover- 
 
 J. ness, " that some seeds, and some fruits too, have 
 wings. Can either of you tell me the name of a tree that has a 
 winged fruit? Come, Carola! You try! The rain might go off 
 if you would stop looking at it. ... " 
 
 At one end of the long, country drawing-room she sat 
 with her two little girl pupils, filling in the slow half-hour be- 
 fore tea with a Nature talk. At the other end Irene was 
 having an argument with Aunt Georgina. And the murmur 
 of the children at their lessons made a kind of droning 
 counterpoint for the more acrimonious voices of their mother 
 and grandmother. 
 
 " This is just a fad of yours, Irene," declared the elder 
 speaker inclemently, " about the children needing sea-air in 
 August. I never heard such rubbish. Compared with these 
 hills the sea is a nasty bilious place." 
 
 It was now two years since the widowed Lady Wester- 
 muir had left Edinburgh and come to live at the small Perth- 
 shire estate from which her husband had taken his judicial 
 title: and in this June afternoon (the very same afternoon 
 upon which her niece Joanna was speeding South on the first 
 wind of chance) she was seated by a window that looked 
 out upon the Grampians. 
 
 " A mere doctor's fad ! " she pursued. " They would be 
 far better here with me till October. Broadstairs, too, of all 
 places! " 
 
 While her daughter crouched shivering by the fire, the old 
 woman herself had made no further concession to the weather 
 than by having thrust her feet into a deer-skin hassock. 
 She sat steely and erect on a straight-backed chair before 
 her desk in the deep window-bow that was her favorite post, 
 and this though the mountain prospect that she loved was 
 quite gone in mist. Mist, chill, heavy and sopping on this 
 day of summer, had left nothing for the disconsolate eye to 
 
 375
 
 376 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 rest upon save a drenched garden terrace, some shrubs weighted 
 with the rain, and a broken regiment of tiger-lilies. " My dear 
 Mother," returned Irene in a tone of martyrdom which her 
 mother guessed was due less to maternal anxiety than to her 
 grievance at having had to leave London in the middle of the 
 season, " you surely don't imagine that / like our summer 
 arrangements. But you see for yourself that Carola has had one 
 cold upon another since we came here. And after bronchitis 
 so lately ..." 
 
 "... Look! " went on the persistent undertone of the 
 lesson. " This is a seed of the ash a single seed in a sheath 
 which is really a wing. It is called a samara. See the twist 
 that helps it to fly! And this is a sycamore fruit with two 
 wings." 
 
 " Can it really fly, Miss Frew? " asked Carola, the elder 
 child, suddenly taking some interest, "like a bird?" 
 
 " It can whirl along on the wind for miles and miles." 
 
 " The child doesn't go out enough," announced Carola's 
 grandmother. 
 
 "... Suppose it fell on a stone, Miss Frew? " 
 
 " Then if it lived long enough, it would have to wait for 
 another wind to blow it to a place where it could sprout and 
 take root ..." 
 
 " Would you have her go out on a day like this? " 
 
 " Most certainly I should. To hear you one would hardly 
 think you were a Scotswoman at all." A fine, metallic thread 
 of contempt was one of the strands in the withered old voice. 
 
 "... Suppose the wind blew it on to another stone, and 
 and other stone lots more stones, Miss Frew? Or into the 
 sea? ..." 
 
 " I don't hold," Aunt Georgina still spoke " with your 
 doctor's fiddle-faddle about bronchitis and sea-air and non- 
 sense. However, I see your mind is made up, and after all 
 they are only my grand-children, not my children! " 
 
 "... For one seed that sprouts, millions and millions 
 only rot every year." 
 
 " Do billions and billions rot? " asked Phyllis, the younger 
 child, speaking for the first time. 
 
 " I suppose so." 
 
 " And trillions and trillions, Miss Frew? ..." 
 
 " I dislike having the house to myself in the autumn, and 
 most people have made their plans by now. Of course I
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 377 
 
 might ask one of your cousins, Sholto's girls. It has been in 
 my mind for some time to ask Joanna. Joanna used to be 
 fond of the country, and has no home of her own to go to 
 these days. That is one thing I will say for your poor Aunt 
 Juley she brought her children up to be hardy. I remem- 
 ber how they used to run about in all weathers like so many 
 young colts. Yes, I shall tell Joanna to come in August and 
 see her old Aunt." 
 
 n 
 
 At the moment when Aunt Georgina's invitation was being 
 fastened in its envelope, Joanna, a little dazed by her long 
 journey, stood once more by the widely spilled water of Torre 
 del Lago. She stood looking across the white expanse that 
 seven years before had marked the turning of her life from 
 dream to reality; clearly she now knew that turning for what 
 it was but a part of her inevitable progression towards death. 
 She had lived out the dream, had embraced the reality, and 
 now death was fulfilled in her. She saw that, however different 
 might have been the circumstances of her travelling in it, for 
 her at least there could have been no other progression. Now 
 it might be that death was her portion, or it might be that 
 out of her very recognition and acceptance of death, a new life 
 might spring. It came to her that the world was walked by 
 thousands who were dead and whose true deathliness lay in 
 their continued assertion of life. Such life surely was mere 
 putrefaction, and from putrefaction came no new life worth 
 having. The phoenix could not rise anew but from its acknow- 
 ledged ashes. Anyhow she relinquished all claim to the old life. 
 She rested in the void and was content to bide her time without 
 a single defiant reaching forth. 
 
 And while Joanna climbed the steep winding path to the 
 cottage (since her last visit there was no change in the hill- 
 side save that now on every hand the cherry trees declared 
 themselves from among the olives by their brighter fruit) 
 Aunt Georgina in her old age sometimes generous on second 
 thoughts was re-opening her invitation and inserting a 
 cheque. 
 
 m 
 
 Though the door stood open, Aunt Perdy was not in the 
 cottage. Nor was she in the garden. Aurora however
 
 378 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 larger and handsomer than ever, with two babies grabbing 
 at her skirts was there cutting artichokes, and upon catching 
 sight of the unlocked- for- visitor, she uttered a cry of mingled 
 surprise and welcome. 
 
 " But what! Of course she remembered the Signorina 
 Scozzese! But the misfortune! The poor Signora del Monte, 
 (it was by this name that Aunt Perdy was known to the 
 district) taken ill suddenly, had only the day before been 
 fetched away by the other Signora, her sister doubtless also 
 well known to the Signorina who had at Turin the fine house 
 and the distinguished family! At Turin for certain the Sig- 
 nora del Monte would be well cared for. Nor did Aurora 
 expect her return for some weeks. What was to be done? " 
 
 Joanna did nothing and suggested nothing. She merely 
 stayed quietly on at the cottage. While she felt no particular 
 relief at her Aunt's absence, neither did she feel any disappoint- 
 ment; and Aurora seeing this, fell in with it unquestioningly. 
 She waited on the niece as she had waited on the Aunt, as 
 a matter of course; and Joanna with her return ticket safe, 
 was able to eke out over some six weeks money that in 
 London would hardly have lasted for one. 
 
 Between the garden and the orchard, with eggs and an 
 occasional fowl from Aurora, she found food enough, and 
 other needs she had none. Occupation there was for her in 
 plenty. She washed and mended whatever of Aunt Perdy's 
 she could find that needed repair, put the cottage in shining 
 order, weeded and dug in the garden, and between whiles she 
 lay for hours at a time on the garden's highest ridge from 
 where she could gaze upon the wide, sparkling sweep of the 
 sea. Often then she remembered those sea-going ships upon 
 the Clyde that had nearly drawn the childish heart out of 
 her breast. But up till now all her adventures had been 
 inland. Only now was she loosed if so be the capacity lay 
 in her at all for the true voyage. 
 
 But the will to shape circumstances or to force an issue 
 was gone from her. She had become submissive to the uncom- 
 prehended current of events. She did not grieve or rejoice. 
 She did not live. She only waited. 
 
 And when Aunt Georgina's letter reached her she accepted 
 the invitation. The wind had blown her South, now the 
 wind was to blow her North. Free as a flying seed, she still 
 was as is a seed at the mercy of the winds. When would she
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 379 
 
 be driven to the place where she might strike her roots and at 
 last raise her leaf and her bud? She recalled Mr. Moon's 
 legend of the bird of paradise. It was one thing to die to the 
 world, to devour the sweet spices and so for ever lose your 
 foothold. It was another to find a resting place in some new 
 way of life. She could still feel the lake swallows digging into 
 her palms with their frantic claws. But of what use was their 
 escape to them, if escape were all? Was Lawrence too, she 
 wondered, without foothold in the world? It seemed to her that 
 for a man the whole scheme of things must be different. Yet 
 he too, as she could not forget, had conceived of his life as 
 a seed foiled of its consummation. 
 
 IV 
 
 August was nearly over, when one evening she stepped down 
 from the train at a Highland junction to be driven ten miles 
 along wet, bog-scented roads to Aunt Georgina's house which 
 she then saw for the first time. 
 
 It stood, white-washed and four-square on its hill, with no 
 creepers to break its bareness a typical Perthshire dwelling 
 of the severer sort, set in good, though not showy grounds. 
 And on its wide semi-circular steps, confronting the terrace 
 and the watery sunset, stood its mistress awaiting her guest. 
 
 Joanna, who first caught sight of the straight, unmistakable 
 figure from a turn in the drive, was surprised by a familiar 
 tremor. Since her mother's funeral, when all family relations 
 were abnormal, she had not seen her aunt; nor had she slept 
 under her roof oftener than twice in the last ten years. And 
 if, in middle age, Lady Westermuir had been a person to strike 
 terror into young bosoms, in old age she was even more 
 intimidating. True, at that moment, in the yellow light that 
 beat up against her from the wet gravel, turning her widow's 
 cap with its precise goffering into a molding of pale brass, she 
 might from the waist downward have stood to a sculptor for 
 the figure of Charity, the folds of her skirts black now instead 
 of prune colored flowed out so generously at either side, 
 ballooning slightly in the air as she advanced. But no Caritas 
 ever kept shoulders so erect as these under the brown and 
 scarlet Paisley shawl: and the triumphant clash of cymbals 
 would better than any more Christian music have expressed 
 these leonine features. 
 
 Yet Joanna's fear proved after all to be but the ghost of a
 
 3 8o OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 bygone subjection. Being faced with its object it passed so 
 wholly that it only served to mark the distance she had tra- 
 velled. For without doubt she emerged unshaken from the 
 stately embrace, the condescending greeting and the critical 
 old stare. 
 
 Two days later the morning gave promise of sunshine 
 even of heat after a spell of rain, and Aunt Georgina de- 
 cided that she would pay a call upon one of her more distant 
 neighbors, a retired sheriff, whose house lay a few miles from 
 Perth on the further side. As she had not visited there before, 
 a map was produced and laid open on the breakfast table. 
 And that her younger eyes might be made use of, Joanna 
 was seated before it. 
 
 It was only then that there came to her as a perfect astonish- 
 ment, what she must long before have known, had her childish 
 geography not been of the haziest and never amended Wester- 
 muir lay within twenty miles of Duntarvie! 
 
 Incredible as it may seem, she had never thought of Dun- 
 tarvie as having a place upon the map. Deeply shaken she 
 traced the district with her forefinger. Duntarvie. And close 
 to it upon the printed map Drumwharrie, the farm where 
 Alec Peddie had lived. Before her eyes were the names of 
 villages, streams and hills, which till now had seemed names 
 in a tale. 
 
 The cob had gone lame, and Lady Westmuir did not con- 
 sider the small pony equal to her weight upon the steeper 
 hills; but the fine day was not to be missed, so she would go 
 by train. If her niece really wanted to re-visit Duntarvie, 
 why not do so that day? They could travel together as far 
 as Perth. 
 
 So it was. At Perth Joanna saw her aunt drive off in a 
 hired carriage, and herself returning to the booking-office, 
 she took her ticket to the village from which Duntarvie was 
 but three miles distant. 
 
 Though she had nearly an hour to wait for her train, she 
 could not leave the magic enclosure of the station. She was 
 filled there for the first time these many days with the 
 strangest expectancy; and even apart from this, she found 
 pleasure in the bustling holiday sight. Kilted men with guns 
 swung past her, followed by excited retriever dogs. Anglers 
 in shabby homespuns carrying their rods and baskets, moved 
 more philosophically. Everywhere trolleys heaped with kit-
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 381 
 
 bags and golf-clubs blocked the way. Children clutching green 
 butterfly nets hurried before their parents across the big, 
 black iron bridge. They were fearful lest they should not 
 find their platform in this widespread network of arrival and 
 departure. How well Joanna remembered that trembling lest 
 the others should lag and keep one back, and so one's heart be 
 broken by the sight of a missed train. Duntarvie, Duntarvie! 
 Would the stream still be flowing clear brown, and its furry 
 stones be sheltering the spotted trout? Would the heron 
 still have his nest upon the island in the upper pond? Would 
 the blaeberries be ripe and the larches heavy with their swing- 
 ing tassels? 
 
 In the refreshment room to which she was driven by a slight 
 dizziness, memory was further assailed by a vision of her 
 mother's unslept but ardent face of travel. It had always been 
 part of the ritual of the long journey from Glasgow that Juley 
 should take her children here to drink tea out of these thick, 
 white cups that had the thrilling word Perth emblazoned across 
 them upon a blue strap. 
 
 Having ordered tea, she went to a small table opposite 
 the entrance. Above that was the clock; and even while she 
 raised the cup to her lips, she could hardly take her eyes from 
 the slow, jerking, minute hand upon the dial. Only twenty 
 minutes now, and she would be on her way! 
 
 A traveller came pushing himself in between the swing 
 doors. He wore a sporting suit of a loud and gay pattern of 
 tweed, woven perhaps in Scotland, but destined for no Scots- 
 man to wear. And slung from his shoulders was a bulging 
 ruck-sack. 
 
 "Carl! Carl Nilsson! My dear, dear Carl! " 
 
 Impetuously Joanna started from her seat and ran toward 
 the newcomer, all the other people in the restaurant looking 
 up to watch the meeting. 
 
 Strangers will always watch with a good deal of interest 
 what is clearly a chance meeting. On this occasion, one at 
 least of the onlookers a stout woman of unimaginative ap- 
 pearance enough was so anxious not to miss a single clue, 
 that she could spare no glance for the lump of sugar which she 
 held suspended half way to her cup. She dropped it with a 
 clatter on the marble table-top: and even then did not take 
 her eyes from Joanna's face. 
 
 Indeed, Carl's queer clothes and foreign looks notwithstand-
 
 382 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 ing, it seemed to be Joanna rather than he that held the atten- 
 tion of the onlookers. Quite apart from dress and feature, 
 Joanna had lately got that in her presence which put her apart 
 and set people speculating. She looked young (not more, 
 decided the stout observer, than twenty-five) yet she had al- 
 ready discarded that density which is peculiarly the mark of 
 youthful flesh. Had she perhaps just recovered from an illness? 
 That seemed ruled out by the bounding movement of greeting 
 with which she had run forward. Neither was she particu- 
 larly thin. Yet there was a difference, a rarity something 
 that marked her out. 
 
 And how came Carl to be in Perth? 
 
 And how Joanna? 
 
 The better to talk, they sat down at her table and she told 
 him briefly of her doings. It was more than two years since 
 they had met, and Joanna could feel her friend's clever eyes 
 noting the changes in her. In him, except that the last traces 
 of red had vanished from the gray of his beard, she could see 
 no difference. 
 
 When she seemed to have no more to say, he told her that 
 he was even now on his way to meet Lawrence Urquhart. 
 Lawrence had been ill. She had not heard? Well, he was 
 better now or nearly so, and together they were going to make 
 what Carl called a " footing tour " in Fife. Carl had long 
 wished to see the Fife villages which were said to be like vil- 
 lages in the Low Countries. Lawrence was also to see them 
 now for the first time. . . . Cupar, Falkland, Auchtermuchty, 
 Strathmiglo! . . . such promising names as they had! Did 
 Joanna know any of them? She did? Good! What now of 
 the " ancient, royal burgh " of Auchtermuchty? It was there 
 he was going to meet Lawrence that afternoon. Was it a 
 place to be sketched? Had it, as the guide-book assured him, 
 a beautiful town hall? 
 
 After having declared eagerly that she well knew Auchter- 
 muchty, Joanna discovered that she could tell Carl nothing 
 definite about it. It lay little more than five miles from Dun- 
 tarvie, so that she had been there many a time. She remem- 
 bered the horse-shows there, the crowded country races her 
 father had enjoyed in spite of his principles, the great July 
 Fair where as children they had crunched bright pink sugar 
 hearts and wondered if they would be kidnapped by gypsies. 
 But as to the size of the town, its situation, its architecture
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 383 
 
 as to anything indeed which might have been of use to Carl 
 and Lawrence she was so ignorant that she began to wonder 
 if in reality she had ever been there at all. She was all the 
 more anxious to go to Duntarvie to make sure beyond a 
 doubt whether a certain white-washed house and red-tiled stead- 
 ing had once stood in a fold of moorland. 
 
 But in the middle of her talk of Duntarvie, she became aware 
 that Carl was looking at her with a thoughtfulness not caused 
 by her words. 
 
 " Meet us at Auchtermuchty to-morrow," he said as she 
 faltered into silence. " See your Duntarvie if you must. Look 
 your fill. I see you have to go. But get your memories 
 over and be done with them. Stay the night at your village, 
 and in the morning walk across and join us. We shall wait 
 for you. Here is the name of our inn. But you will probably 
 find me sketching the town hall and Lawremce looking for 
 Roman rubbish." 
 
 He watched her closley. 
 
 " I told my Aunt that I should be back in time for dinner 
 to-night." 
 
 " O! La, la! The Aunt! " laughed Carl. " You send her 
 a telegram." 
 
 " Do you think I should? But truly, Carl? " Her whole 
 being seemed arrested, waiting for his answer. 
 
 " I have suggested it, perhaps wrongly. The matter is 
 one you must decide for yourself," Carl replied after a moment. 
 
 " But I cannot decide anything these days. You must 
 help me, Carl. Do, please help me! " she begged him most 
 earnestly. 
 
 " Are you a free woman? " 
 
 At his so abrupt question a very billow of blood swept over 
 her from head to foot, but she raised her suffused eyes and 
 faced him bravely. 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I'm free quite, quite free . . . but 
 I know nothing . . . and I am so weak. I know nothing, 
 nothing! I can't tell what I should do. I'm blown by any 
 wind. There seems no life in me." 
 
 Carl took her shaking hand and patted it kindly. 
 
 " Go, send the telegram," he bade her as if it were a child 
 he spoke to. " I'm heartily glad of what you tell me. More 
 glad than I can say. Go send the telegram. I will meet you at 
 the train. It seems we go so far together."
 
 384 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Joanna lost no time, but she was not flurried. In spite of 
 her grave face, her steps to the telegraph office were set almost 
 to a dancing rhythm. Dear Carl! Good, dear Carl. What 
 had she ever done to deserve such a friend? 
 
 A slight, but not a painful constraint arose between them 
 upon the short journey. They had the musty compartment 
 of the little puffing train to themselves, and she was hoping 
 that Carl would tell her more of Lawrence and his illness. 
 Nothing however seemed farther from Carl's intention. Nor 
 could she bring herself to question him till the moment of 
 parting was almost upon them. Instead, therefore, they spoke 
 of Joanna's work in London, of changes in Glasgow, of Phemie's 
 expected visit home that October. Yet Joanna was happier 
 than she knew; and as the train came nearer and nearer to 
 Duntarvie, she grew eager in pointing out each well-remem- 
 bered landmark. There was the tower which some people 
 said had not been built by the Picts: there, the church: 
 there, the queer, pointed hill that wore its fir woods as though 
 they were a cloak and a plume of feathers, so that she had al- 
 ways thought it looked like a highway robber. Every moment 
 established her belief that Duntarvie was a real place after 
 all, and her companion's praise of the countryside gave her 
 keen joy. These were hills and woods and rivers that she 
 herself would never be able to see with the painter's eye, but 
 she was loverly proud to have their beauty vindicated by one 
 who could. 
 
 They were jogging slowly into the station which seemed 
 even smaller than her memory of it, when at last she turned 
 from the window and spoke with timid haste. Carl had 
 said Lawrence had been ill. Did he mean that he had been 
 seriously ill? 
 
 Carl replied with a certain dryness that this was precisely 
 what he had meant. Lawrence, he said, had quite unexpec- 
 tedly turned up at his studio in Glasgow early one morning 
 in June it was straight from a night journey. He was then 
 suffering from a chill which was bad enough to account for 
 the sharp illness that had followed. But what had made Carl 
 more anxious was the wretched slowness of the convalescence. 
 There had been one unaccountable relapse after another 
 the whole thing, a regular break in health rather than any 
 specific illness. In his last letter, however, Lawrence had de- 
 clared himself fit for the " footing " tour. This sunshine,
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 385 
 
 if only it would last and really today it looked like it- 
 should help to set him up. 
 
 There was no time for more. A warm grip of Carl's hand, 
 a glance grave and trustful on her part, smiling and kindly 
 on his, a renewal of her promise to meet them without fail 
 the next day, and Joanna was alone. She watched the tail 
 of the train carrying Carl off till it disappeared at lesiure 
 round a distant hill-corner, then crossing the rails by the 
 footboard she walked up the lane, past the round tower 
 where an iron ring for the necks of felons was still fixed at a 
 height for misery in the stones, and so on into the village. 
 
 v 
 
 To her delight it was just as she remembered it a little 
 smaller perhaps as the station had been, but otherwise un- 
 changed. The single, wide street still straggled unevenly 
 downhill, keeping many levels in one width of its close-set 
 cobbles. And there, perched on its mound at the top of the 
 village, was Tweedie's, the post-office and principal shop. It 
 too looked the same is it had always looked. The same stiff 
 bunches of boots and breeches stuck out from its dark door- 
 way. The same smell of cheese and porpoise boot-laces, 
 paraffin and bacon came forth from it. Not before she entered 
 (and Joanna did enter, for in Tweedie's she knew she would 
 learn whatever was to be known of Duntarvie and its present 
 owners) would she have discovered that old sandy-haired 
 Tweedie was dead, and that young sandy-haired Tweedie, 
 already a bald-headed man was the master. 
 
 But this was as nothing to the news of Duntarvie that she 
 brought with her out of that cavern of boots and breeches. 
 During the last eighteen years, Tweedie had said, the house 
 had changed hands many times. It had been found too 
 solitary for domestic use; too cold in the winter for the poultry- 
 keeping attempted by one tenant; the soil was too poor to make 
 the place profitable for the ordinary farmer. So for some years 
 it had stood empty, till six months ago it had been taken over 
 by the parish authorities. Now it was used for housing old 
 and mindless paupers. There they might indulge in their 
 feeble antics in the sunshine without distressing their fellows. 
 
 Here was a change to be faced. 
 
 Joanna however recovered her serenity as she stood awhile 
 outside and surveyed the basking village. If Duntarvie
 
 3 86 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 house, she reminded herself, was become a place of sadness, 
 there was still the moor, the burn, the upper pond: and 
 what were the mere four walls compared with these in her 
 memory? Save for its inmates who were quiet and never 
 strayed beyond the lawn, Tweedie had assured her that the 
 place was quite unchanged. After all perhaps a few poor 
 old lunatics were less hateful as tenants than would have 
 been some strenuous family who would rebuild the steadings, 
 or some speculative farmer who would divide the moor into 
 hen-runs. 
 
 She ate in the village, also buying food to take with her 
 so that she might be free for her next meal. Then leaving 
 the main road by a rough old short cut that was more like the 
 dry bed of a stream than a path, she set out. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon when she gained a track that 
 ran thread-like, high up around the flank of a hill; and still 
 she was but half way to her destination. But she would not 
 hurry. She was kept loitering, partly perhaps by some dread 
 of what might await her, but much more by the quiet new 
 vitality which seemed to well, more and more sweetly, more and 
 more surely, in her with every step. 
 
 How still it was! almost sombre, in the strong, late sun- 
 shine. The birds did not sing. The larger ones only called 
 and called to one another, while the smaller brown dunnocks, 
 green and yellow siskins, finches and linnets of every variety- 
 fluttered silently from bush to bush or twittered vigilantly in 
 the undergrowth. The leafage everywhere was of that dark, 
 lack-luster green which is as different from the green firs of 
 spring, as from the flaming red and yellow of later autumn. 
 Yet was that mighty business of scattering, of which the scarlet 
 banners of October only mark the end, already well on its 
 way. Lying with her eyes shut among the bushes of broom 
 and whin, Joanna heard all around her the tiny sharp rever- 
 berations of pods splitting in the blessed heat. Opening her 
 eyes she saw a thousand acorns pushing out their blunt and 
 glossy noses from beneath the dark foilage: she espied a 
 million winged fruits, which from having long hung aimlessly 
 upon the parent boughs, now lifted themselves in swarms, 
 ready with every pinion spread for the wind: she held in her 
 wondering fingers the purple-black riven pods, that dis- 
 closed each one a row of ebony seeds embedded in silvery silken 
 down. Fir cones that were now no more than empty hives, lay
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 387 
 
 everywhere around her. Others, untimely fallen, would never 
 yield up their fruits, but would sink tightly clenched into 
 dissolution. The whole earth was strewn with the signs and 
 wonders, the triumphs and the vast wastage of the year's 
 fulfilment. 
 
 Even in the sun's decline it was hot, and Joanna, finding a 
 knee-deep pool in the stream all overgrown at that part with 
 elder and rowan trees, and hazels rich with nut clusters, 
 stripped herself and bathed. With its pale, sandy bottom 
 and moss-covered stones, and its little brown fall that gushed 
 from above, it made a lovely bath. Half sitting, half lying 
 in it the young woman let the water splash upon her shoulders 
 and run in a rivulet between her breasts. For some minutes 
 she stayed there watching the flecks of sunshine move 
 among the rippled pebbles. Then feeling fresh to the heart 
 she regained the main road and went more steadily on her 
 way. 
 
 Duntarvie lay two miles farther on, still uphill, at the end 
 of its own steep and rocky road which, being tree-embowered 
 for the last fifty yards or so had always been known to the 
 children as the " Avenue." Emerging from there to the open 
 space before the house Joanna stopped and sadly looked. It 
 was more forlorn than she had expected. Yet she was com- 
 forted also. For a faint wisp of smoke rising from the kitchen 
 chimney, and some hens that picked about the scratched 
 grass behind sagging palings, were the only signs of human 
 habitation. She had dreaded the sight of strangers on the 
 lawn. 
 
 Slowly, and with some backward looks, she passed on. She 
 crossed to where the hunched-up, red-and-gray steading seemed 
 to have settled so deeply into the earth as to have become 
 one with it, stooped below the iron girders of the mill shaft, 
 to which no horse had been harnessed these fifty years and 
 more, and skirting the shrunken lower pond began to climb 
 the slope beyond among the beech trees. Nothing suffers 
 more from human abuse than water. And when Joanna hadf 
 seen the well covered with broken boards and nettles, and the 
 pond with is stream half choked and its banks a wide margin 
 of mud, she trembled for the heron's pool which supplied the 
 house from the summit of the hill behind. There, however, 
 she must go that night. The moor could wait till the morning. 
 She would cross it on her way to Auchtermuchty.
 
 3 88 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 On her reaching the place, it seemed at first as if her worst 
 fears were to be realized, and her heart sank heavily. Here 
 were the trees all standing round on guard as she remembered 
 them. There was no touch of spoliation anywhere. But in 
 the cup below her she could see only unbroken greenness. 
 Where was the water she had so loved, the water that had 
 figured all these years as a kind of shrouded symbol in her 
 life? Had it disappeared, or had it never been? 
 
 Then even as she looked, a breeze came running through 
 the trees at her back, and stirred the rushes, and the pale 
 green evening sky discovered for her as if by a spoken word, 
 the living glitter of waters. There it was! There was its 
 perfect circle as of old. There was the living, undespoilable 
 spring that had been set here to spill and spill for ever from 
 its far hidden source in the earth. 
 
 So after all one need not despair! Joanna remembered 
 } when her life had lain broken within her, the water had 
 sung to her from its tank in the Edinburgh hotel bedroom. 
 And it was this now silent, almost hidden water that had made 
 hopeful music for her when she lay a child in bed in the house 
 below. 
 
 " If I forget thee, may my right hand forget its cunning! " 
 That had been the vague but fervent exclamation of her 
 childhood in this spot. Indeed she had forgotten! All these 
 years, in her striving for the world, in her keeping Louis 
 Fender as her center of energy with the whole force of her 
 wits and her strongly disciplined will, she had been madly 
 oblivious of the sweet hint vouchsafed to her in childhood. 
 She had forgotten because she had never truly understood. And 
 so it was good to have forgotten. One had to forget first. 
 One had first to expend and lose utterly all the disastrous 
 cunning of one's right hand, before one could at last simply be 
 as one was meant to be. Here surely was the new birth. Why 
 it should have to come by such a widely circling and deathly 
 route, why so much pain and wastage should intervene before 
 one could start fair, was a vain question. Enough that for her 
 at any rate there could have been no other way. She could 
 'iook back now, without regret or sadness, to the beginning when 
 her life had been as a seed enfolded in a double mesh of 
 desire. On desire her life had fed these many years, imprisoned 
 but ripening. A long agony it had been, for she had never 
 known to which desire she must be given to the desire of sac-
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 389 
 
 rifice or to the desire of pride. Each had asserted its sole 
 claim: each had denied that the other had any right in her. 
 And so she had turned from one to the other in a torture of 
 ignorance and indecision. Only now that both had fallen away 
 outworn did she come by the steady knowledge that both had 
 been needed, that in the following of one alone there would 
 have been sterility. Why then regret? That period of life 
 conscious and striving but blind was past. She was free of 
 it in knowing she could not have been free without it. Now her 
 absolved self had its birth. 
 
 No moon rose behind the low, straight band of cloud that 
 girdled the horizon, but the sky had become a dark-belted 
 cupola of stars. Joanna wandered through forest clearings 
 and across the open country where the dew-slippery grass 
 showed like a gray web among the black bushes of whin and 
 heather. She sat on a high stone dyke, ate some biscuits and 
 raisins, and wondered where she should sleep. The idea of 
 sleep became suddenly overpowering. But it was too wet to 
 lie in the open, and she could not bring herself to knock at the 
 doors of Duntarvie. Here and there in the distance from her 
 high perch she could see the tiny lights of farm houses, but 
 none seemed within a mile of her, and she felt too tired to 
 go so far. 
 
 She bethought herself of the steading below, and went back 
 there quickly. Her desire to throw herself down in some dry, 
 dark place and sleep, grew upon her with every step. 
 
 The barn was locked. She could hear the sleepy rustling 
 and fluffing and clucking of the enviable fowls inside. So was 
 the old byre door locked. But to her joy, the latch of what in 
 her childhood had been the stable, yielded under her thumb. 
 
 It was dark inside, for there were only a few small panes of 
 cobwebbed glass among the tiles of the roof; but she groped 
 about and soon found her bearings. Clearly the place was 
 used by the present owners as a byre, for there was no mistak- 
 ing the warm, sweet redolence of cows, and these were no 
 horses that sighed and snuffled in the two stalls. Joanna's 
 relief was all the greater when she stumbled up against the 
 old stable bin in its accustomed place, standing a little way 
 out from the wall so that the lid could be propped upright. Best 
 of all, it was full to within a foot of the top with some kind of 
 chaff mixture. It was a great metal box, long as a coffin and 
 far deeper, and saving that it was rather narrow, a better bed
 
 390 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 could hardly have been found. Throwing off her hat and 
 shoes, and spreading her short coat over her as a cover, Joanna 
 climbed in. The chaff yielded comfortably to her hips and 
 shoulders. In five minutes she was asleep. 
 
 She slept fitfully however, being straitened for room, and 
 woke again and again, to long, albeit peacefully enough, for 
 the morning. Her deepest bout of sleep was the last, which 
 carried her far past dawn, and she sat up half in fear to the 
 long-drawn pipe of a starling on the chimney outside. Fine 
 as the bird's whistle, a golden rapier of sunlight lay across 
 her body in the corn bin. She looked at her watch. Six 
 o'clock so late! The wonder was that no one had come 
 from the house yet to see to the cows. She felt ravenous. 
 
 When she had put on her shoes, shaken her clothes free of 
 the chaff bedding, and gone out into the pearly morning, she 
 could see no sign of anyone stirring. Her good fortune seemed 
 assured by the kitchen blinds being still drawn, so hastening 
 back to the byre she laid hold of a metal dipper which had 
 been in the bin, and with soothing words she approached one 
 of the cows. 
 
 To her relief the beast looked round at her, mildly wrinkling 
 a velvet neck, and did not low. Joanna's experience of milk- 
 ing was limited to a few half playful lessons in childhood in 
 this very building, and she was unsure of herself. But she 
 crouched down resolutely and grasped the two near teats. 
 So, so, so, so! One must go on tugging firmly and with a 
 fearless rhythm. That she knew. She laughed as two sud- 
 den, hard, white spirts came sideways at her like arrows, 
 striking warm to her knees through her wollen skirts and 
 thence dribbling to the ground. Soon the milk was coming 
 bravely. The only difficulty now was to direct it from the 
 slippery teats into a small and awkwardly shaped vessel be- 
 neath. For once that the criss-cross darts went hissing into 
 the dipper, they would three-times slither over the byre floor, 
 blackening the cobbles, forming small white pools upon the 
 hard earth between, or driving skewer-like into the soft round 
 heaps of cow-dung. But Joanna persevered, and by the time 
 she was warm through and through and her fingers cramped 
 with clinging to the heavy, freckled udder, there was a good 
 cupful for her breakfast. Splendid it was too clover-fresh, 
 and sweet, and warm; and with the last of the biscuits, it 
 stayed immediate hunger.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 391 
 
 The next minute she was out in the sunshine. She crossed 
 the stream at a bound, climbed over the squeaking wire fence, 
 and was straightway on the old moor. The morning, for its 
 freshness, might have been the first of creation. Small gleeful 
 birds whistled in the whins which were bound each to each by 
 a thousand radiant spiders' webs; and Joanna, as she broke 
 through them, loving what she must destroy, stooped to pick 
 handfuls of bloom-gray blaeberries. She could still hear the 
 strange, long, satisfied cries of the starlings on the steading 
 roof, and magpies and whaups went circling and calling in 
 the further fields. A lark flew up voiceless from her feet, a 
 weasel darted behind a boulder. As she got higher, she saw 
 that the greater part of the moor was now a plantation of 
 baby pines and firs and larches. In ten years time it would 
 be a moor no longer, but a forest. As yet, however, the little 
 sturdy conifers few of them over two feet in height had not 
 interfered with the heather, the high-growing blaeberry plants, 
 or the tufts of long, needle-like grass interspersed with clumps 
 of wild thyme which lay between. It was happiness just to 
 pass between these young trees that sprang everywhere with 
 a such delicate, balanced strength, and were so dew-covered 
 and innocent. Already the moisture was being sucked up so 
 swiftly by the sun that it could almost be felt flying skywards 
 in an ecstasy. And when, after some wandering, Joanna came 
 to the corner she sought, she found the ground almost dry. 
 Here at the boundary of the moor, where dark old woods lay 
 beyond the lichen-covered paling, the hollow of grass and 
 heather received the sun as if in a chalice. 
 
 Choosing a springy tussock of heather near some rocks she 
 sat herself down in great contentment to wonder what she 
 should do next. It was still too early to start for Auchter- 
 muchty. To Duntarvie house with its forbidding decrepitude 
 she would not return. She began to trifle with the idea of 
 making Drumwharrie farm away to the South. Perhaps they 
 would give her breakfast there before she went on her way over 
 the Fife border. Surely at Drumwharrie there would still be 
 some one who remembered the Bannermans? To Drumwharrie 
 she would go. 
 
 Presently that was! . . . Not quite yet. . . . The sun 
 was indeed getting at her in this sheltered cup. > It was getting 
 most gratefully at her very marrow: and now a drowsiness 
 swam along her limbs and drew film after film over her
 
 392 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 eyelids. She had slept in the corn bin, but not enough for 
 her need. Now her eyelids fell, and her head sank toward 
 one shoulder. Her last conscious movement before yielding 
 utterly was a pushing an insinuating of herself as far into 
 the bush of heather as she could get. With a comfortable 
 sigh she settled yet more deeply. On all sides she was sup- 
 ported by the springy stems, yet she was so far sunken out 
 of sight that the warm, rustling flowers nearly met over her. 
 
 When she was awakened by the abrupt cu-uck . . . cu-uck 
 of a cock-pheasant quite close to her ear, it was her firm belief 
 that she had slept but a few minutes. Yet is was past ten 
 by her watch, and the sun had mounted high in the sky. Had 
 it not been for the shade of a larch bough, its rays must have 
 beat her eyes open long ere then. As she rose stretching her- 
 self, leaving such a deep impression of her body in the heather 
 that it would be days before the fine gray thongs would stand 
 again upright, the cock-pheasant stalked out of sight. His 
 gait declared that he was prudent, but that he refused to 
 be hurried. Two young rabbits nibbling near the fence were 
 less careful for their dignity. 
 
 Perching on a boulder higher up, Joanna shaded her eyes 
 and searched toward the south for a sign of Drumwharrie. 
 It was with a touch of incredulity that she recognized, well 
 within a mile from where she stood, the dark slate gables 
 and the high old smoke stalk which in childhood had seemed 
 a day's journey across the steeply curving hillsides. She was 
 about to descend from her rock, facing a little the other way 
 to avoid the sun in her eyes, when something made her gather 
 herself back into intent, balanced stillness. Away on the 
 moor a jerkily moving object caught the sunlight. It was the 
 bare, black head of a man who was otherwise hidden by 
 rising ground and whins. It moved along quickly; sometimes 
 bobbing up and down as its owner ran a few steps or leaped 
 over the knots of heather; sometimes disappearing completely 
 behind a hillock; but always widening the distance between 
 itself and her. 
 
 Now it had gone, and Joanna watched for its re-appearance 
 with a feeling in her heart different from anything she had 
 ever known before. Now it came again into sight, followed 
 rapidly by the shoulders and the man's whole body, as he 
 mounted a little hill perhaps two hundred yards away. She 
 knew then beyond all doubt that it was Lawrence and no
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 393 
 
 other that was here on the moor with her. And it was only 
 then that she was pierced through and through by the clue 
 of her own new-born life. Clear as the starling's whistle, 
 piercing as the first ray of the morning, she knew her happi- 
 ness and hailed it. 
 
 But he had not seen her. He did not know. He was not 
 even looking for her! As fast as he could, he was walking 
 away and away. Soon in a moment he would be gone. 
 
 He must not go. 
 
 Every thought, every desire, every invigorated cell of Jo- 
 anna's renewed body leapt on the instant in unison with this 
 declaration of her spirit. Lawrence must not go. She must 
 stop him. She had never known anything as she knew this. 
 She had never experienced living knowledge till now. Law- 
 rence too must be pierced with this new, dazzling ray of 
 knowledge or there would remain only darkness. 
 
 She started running at top speed. First she went pelting 
 down her hillock, losing all sight of him; then, zig-zagging 
 like a hare along the clear passage of grass that wound 
 pale yellow between the whins, and springing over the sap- 
 ling pines, she breasted the longer hill in front. She could 
 see him again now. If only he would turn round. But no! 
 He stared sometimes a little to the right or to the left, but 
 never turned his face enough for any movement from behind 
 to catch his eye. And not once did he glance back. What 
 breeze there was on these heights was contrary, and so would 
 prevent the sound of her running from reaching him till she 
 should come up close. Once or twice she thought she could 
 hear that he whistled to himself as he walked. He looked 
 young and care-free, with his coat off and thrown over one 
 shoulder, and though the breath was failing her, a spend- 
 thrift laugh escaped her when she saw him go flying over a 
 particularly wide obstacle of rock and heather. 
 
 She had reached the top of the second hillock between them, 
 he meanwhile climbing also, when her plight began to seem 
 desperate. The last push up hill had made her breathing 
 fearfully ragged, and she had reached the top just in time to 
 avoid falling. She realized also, what she had not grasped 
 before, that her task was not merely to cover the stretch of 
 uneven ground between herself and Lawrence, but to over- 
 take him as well. If she could not gain seriously on him by 
 the next plunge down hill and across the intervening shallow
 
 394 OPENTHEDOOR 
 
 dip, before he was again descending at a helter-skelter pace, 
 she was done . . . she was lost. She would have to sink 
 mute upon the earth while he would go on whistling and un- 
 knowing. It was too late to attract his attention by calling. 
 Even if she had tried to shout earlier, with the wind as it 
 was, it would most likely have been mere waste of precious 
 breath. Precious breath indeed! Now it was too late for 
 the weakest cheep of a hoi-hoil Soon she would have no 
 breath left for anything, not even for survival. 
 
 She plunged down the hill, not zig-zagging now, but jump- 
 ing and stumbling straight forward, sometimes falling on 
 her hands and knees. The braid of her skirt was torn into 
 festoons and her knees trembled shockingly. It was even 
 worse going downhill than up. But she went on, and across 
 the amber colored dip which was full of quivering air. Only 
 twice before in her life had she run so. Once, it had been up 
 the Glasgow hill to her first meeting with Louis, under the 
 dread that he would be gone. And once it had been along 
 the winding shore road to the West Coast village where her 
 mother lay dying. She remembered these times now. . . . 
 " Once for love, once for death "... Her blood took up 
 the refrain with its bursting throbs. ..." Once for love, 
 once for death . . . this time for life! " It was life that she 
 ran for now. Life . . . few there be that find it. Life . . . 
 that for her Lawrence held in his keeping . . . and was carry- 
 ing swiftly away. 
 
 Again she had lost sight of him, and the knowledge that as 
 she was crawling up this next slippery hill, he was going pell- 
 mell downwards, nearly killed her. She uttered his name now 
 in gasping, voiceless breaths, though she knew it was worse 
 than useless. But she could not refrain. If only he would 
 stop for one moment. To die with one last, short breath 
 on his breast would be better than to recover in solitude. 
 There was no real recovery for her but on his breast. If she 
 fell short of him her heart would break. It was breaking now. 
 She had to keep her hand pressed over it. Why did he go 
 on so fast and never stop? A fury of anger against him 
 ran parallel with her desire. She loved him, needed him, 
 hated him, all at once. 
 
 With the tears pouring down her scarlet cheeks, and all 
 her features convulsed like a frantic lost child's, she got some- 
 how over the brow of the hill and looked for him.
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 395 
 
 He had stopped. He had turned round. She heard him 
 shout . . . saw him come running towards her; and she 
 tried to raise her arm in a signal. Though she was saved, 
 she could not have stopped running now not if she had 
 known the next stop to be her last. But soon they were only 
 a few paces apart, and Lawrence, becoming suddenly unsure, 
 stood still. He uttered some inarticulate sounds of question 
 and welcome, but knew that he must wait for her. There 
 was a treacherous looped root of heather in the turf between 
 them, and Joanna was no longer able to lift her feet, nor to 
 look where she was going. With her eyes on Lawrence's face 
 she tripped badly on the root, and as he darted forward to 
 save her, she pitched forward right upon his breast. 
 
 For what to both seemed a long time, no word was spoken. 
 Joanna clearly was quite unfit for speech. Her breath came 
 and went in painful, sobbing gasps, do what she would to 
 allay it, and her tumultous heart-beats shook her body through 
 and through. As for Lawrence, silence was his better part. 
 He could only hold his love to him in fearful happiness. 
 
 But as soon as she began to draw away from him, he let 
 her go. She still panted, her hair was fallen in a lump on 
 one shoulder, her moist face blazed like heather flowers in 
 September sunshine after a rain shower. She groped in her 
 skirts and in her bosom. 
 
 " I must have lost my handkerchief! " 
 
 Lawrence pulled out his a comfortable male square of 
 linen and put it in her hand. 
 
 " Thank you ..." she murmured fervently. And when 
 her face was a little comforted, she added seriously 
 
 " I ran after you." 
 
 Lawrence threw back his head and laughed to the sky. 
 
 "You did that! " he replied when he could speak. Then 
 " See, sit down here," he went on, as if he were coaxing some 
 panicky animal. " Here's a good seat. Take your time. 
 You must have run ever so far to get yourself in such a 
 state. Why didn't you shout to me? " 
 
 " The wind was against me ... then my breath was gone," 
 said Joanna. She was recovering, but still had to heave 
 great sighs, and she pressed her hands to her flaming 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Rest a bit," urged Lawrence as she tried to rise. " Could 
 you drink some cold coffee? I have some here, see ... "
 
 396 
 
 He knelt beside her, unfastening his ruck-sack, while Joanna 
 tried to twist up her hair. 
 
 " All my hair-pins are gone," she complained. 
 
 " I'm afraid I can't help you there." 
 
 " No. I shall just have to plait it." 
 
 With practised fingers that seemed to her companion to 
 accomplish a miracle of skilfulness, she made a long braid of 
 her hair and doubled it up under her soft hat. 
 
 "I think I'll never be cool again! " 
 
 " Not up here, certainly," agreed Lawrence. " Shall we 
 go down among these trees? There should surely be a burn 
 there? " 
 
 She nodded. " There is. My burn. Let's go." And she 
 scrambled to her feet. 
 
 " But first here's your coffee," he said, giving her a cup, 
 and she drank gratefully. 
 
 As she handed him back the empty cup their eyes met, and 
 it was as if each now saw the other for the first time. Only 
 now did Joanna clearly note the marks of his recent illness 
 in his face; but it was no more this that kept her eyes so 
 long upon his than it was her morning freshness that made 
 Lawrence gaze on her as if he could never look elsewhere. 
 Never before had their primary flames of being leapt up so 
 nakedly. And they were full of recognition, each for the other. 
 There on the moor that vibrated with noon-day, he was Adam to 
 her Eve. There among the broom bushes whereon the dark 
 seed pods went crack, cracking in the strong sunshine, the past 
 was shed from both of them like a garment. Nor did any 
 future as yet exist for them. They were " in the beginning " 
 of their new creation. 
 
 <: Did you see me on the rock? " A question leaped at 
 last from her. "Were you trying to get away when I ran 
 after you? " 
 
 " I didn't see you," he replied, " not till I turned and 
 you were quite close. How can you ask? I would never 
 run from you. I must always follow you for ever." 
 
 Joanna had never listened to words of such penetrating sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 " If I hadn't caught up on you," she said, " I should have 
 died." 
 
 " And I," said Lawrence, " should never have lived." 
 
 They went for shade down to the burn, and there they sat
 
 OPENTHEDOOR 397 
 
 to talk. They talked till the afternoon drew in, but it seemed 
 to them that they could never be done disclosing to each 
 other the so widely differing courses of their two lives which 
 had yet converged at last. 
 
 Joanna told about Gerald, her first love, who close by where 
 they sat had skinned the wild birds, and about Alec Ped- 
 die's offer in this very spot (how Lawrence laughed at that ! ) 
 to show her what lads were for. And she talked of Mario 
 and Italy and Aunt Perdy. Of Louis she found she could not 
 yet speak plainly. The reminiscent misery of that was still 
 too raw. But when she told, as she did, of the secret gar- 
 den door of La Porziuncola, and of all that love had meant 
 to her . . . escape . . . adventure . . . excitement . . . 
 learning . . . possession of the world . . . she found that Law- 
 rence understood. She knew well that no corner of her life 
 would be or need ever be kept from him. 
 
 And when in turn he told her of his life, she listened amazed. 
 Where she had been as a field under the harrow, never left 
 in peace, he had lived folded in upon himself. She knew now 
 what he (and Carl too) had meant when they reckoned him as 
 the seed and her as the clod of earth. For in her had lain his 
 one means of escape, and she had denied him. Elsewhere he 
 had been able neither to give nor to take in any vital way. 
 His essence and his treasure had lain hoarded up for her alone. 
 
 In an interval of their talk she laved her face in the stream 
 and they squatted gaily to share the food Lawrence had brought 
 in his ruck-sack. When they had eaten it all they fell silent 
 at last. Joanna rested, leaning slackly against a beech trunk. 
 Her hat was off so that the long unfastened braid of her hair 
 hung fallen behind like a schoolgirl's, and round her forehead 
 the smaller locks clung to the skin in damp rings. Except 
 for the bright patch of sunburn where her linen blouse fell 
 open at the neck, and a vivid stain on either forearm, she 
 now looked cool as satin. 
 
 " How old are you? " asked Lawrence out of the quietness. 
 
 " Thirty." 
 
 " I suppose you are! " 
 
 " Why? " She answered the wonder of his tone. " How 
 old do I look to you? " 
 
 " No particular age. But you look just such a lassie! " he 
 said. 
 
 " Not weary and worn? "
 
 OPEN THE DOOR 
 
 Ae." 
 . . . eh? When I look like a juggler? 
 
 Yes. I've seen you so. And you looked horribly beau- 
 tiML Afl the sane, I like best for you to be as you are now. 
 
 *w4 E^M ^^MUk_^K4 A %4 
 
 W CVCB UmBC-gCQ. -ADu 
 
 .' : ". ' " ~- " 1 ~ "!_--" 
 
 My love. YOB needn't be actions! There is more youth 
 poo HMTB real Tooth, than in a gki of seventeen. 
 ; I befieve that is true. Yet, SOB^OW I know it here with 
 
 7, all her face bright. "How 
 
 I! And yes: you look it. Alas! 
 
 ly I might 
 
 (I have a toughness of fiber I found that 
 oat when I was flL) Bat not a bit of freshness would have 
 
 fou do make me sound a tough, old thing! " she pro- 
 
 Not toogh, sturdy! " he corrected her. ". . . like 
 of those sapling firs up there that shoot op all the stronger 
 
 Later they cfimbed the gray dyke and went swinging in 
 
 \^ A A.lfc^ M vfeA h^MW S+ 4-l^^rr 
 
 DC WoUCBg. AS uKy CVHB EaT II, mey 
 
 nooDOIDCSS DCCV6CB IDC OCT JF""5C^^BCQ. SOOCJCS 
 
 : Happy? " asked Lawrence breaking a long unconscious 
 
 "I haven't thought,"
 
 OPEN THE DOOR _-:-;- 
 
 " But I have, though," said he, "and I know, JOT art by 
 your voice. 
 
 It is true, Lawrence," she replied. u I think my heart 
 ever felt light tffl now." 
 
 Together at Joanna's ay they wheeled to look. Amid die 
 
 ------ -- --- ,^_ - - 
 
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 r T ~ I " " l_~_-l~_~7r H * j. " t I 1 T J. * ~ .11 1 Z .1 . "T 
 
 _* *--* 
 
 __ _ ^ 
 
 " Tike the seed of a passion lover, aren't they? 
 
 No need to ask die moon if 
 
 ce roast 
 
 5crC5 2:
 
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