BARONESS VONHUTTEN
 
 CupyrlKlic. 1909, by 
 Frederick A. Siokes Company 
 
 BEECHY"
 
 B E E C H Y 
 
 OR 
 
 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE 
 
 BY 
 
 BETTINA VON HUTTEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "OUR LADY OF THE BEECHES," " 
 "PAM DECIDES," ETC. 
 
 WITH COLORED FRONTISPIECE BY 
 A. G. LEARNED 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK v .'. v PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY 
 BITTINA VON HUTTBW 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 September,
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 To Bareness Louise von Hutten, my 
 mother-in-law, and always one of my dearest 
 friends, I dedicate this book as a slight re- 
 membrance of all her kindness to me. 
 
 B. v. H. 
 
 2228503
 
 IT may be as well to explain to those of my readers who 
 know nothing of Italian, that the Italian diminutive of 
 Beatrice, " Bice " or " Bici," does not rhyme with " mice," 
 but is pronounced very nearly as I have anglicized it, 
 " Beechy." 
 
 And may I take this opportunity, in the old-fashioned 
 way, of saying that I hope the American public, always so 
 kind to my books, and so dear to me, may like my poor 
 Beechy as well as they like the very grateful Pam and 
 Tommy ? 
 
 BETTINA VON HUTTEN, 
 
 Col de la Schlucht, Vosges, 
 
 May 4th, 1909.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE STREET OF THE VIOLIN ... i 
 
 II. A CHANGE OF SEX ...... 8 
 
 III. THE STORY OF A REHEARSAL ... 15 
 
 IV. THE JOY OF BEING A BOY ... 23 
 V. AT THE Two QUEENS 29 
 
 VI. THE EMPTY CRADLE 38 
 
 VII. ONE WAY TO FACE THE WORLD . . 44 
 
 III. PROMOTION ......... 51 
 
 IX. FATHER ANTONIO .. . 60 
 X. WHY GIACOMINI'S FACE WAS 
 
 SCRATCHED 67 
 
 XI. WHY BEECHY BECAME A GIRL ^ ^ 75 
 
 XII. THE CALL OF THE ORPHANS . . . 85 
 
 XIII. IN THE CONVENT 94 
 
 XIV. BACK TO THE THEATRE . . . . 101 
 XV. OLD FRIENDS 109 
 
 XVI. BEECHY MEETS A PRINCE AND A TENOR 119 
 
 XVII. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 129 
 
 XVIII. 'NRY PEECRAFT'S LETTER . 139 
 
 XIX. THE ROVING DROP 146 
 
 XX. BEECHY ARRIVES IN LONDON . . . 152 
 
 XXI. AUNT AUGUSTA 160 
 
 XXII. A TEA-PARTY AND A HAM BONE . . 169 
 
 XXIII. ABOUT AURELIO 177 
 
 XXIV. BUCINI 1 88
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXV. "ADDA" AND AN EVENING FROCK . 196 
 
 XXVI. A YEAR LATER 206 
 
 XXVII. BEECHY MEETS LORD CHARLES CRES- 
 
 SAGE 214 
 
 XXVIII. LORD CHARLES'S FIRST STEP . . . 223 
 
 XXIX. A SMALL DINNER 229 
 
 XXX. ROMAN SKETCHES 236 
 
 XXXI. LORD CHARLES MAKES LOVE . . . 241 
 XXXII. BEECHY MAKES LOVE AND MEETS A 
 
 STRANGER 248 
 
 XXXIII. LADY CHARLES 255 
 
 XXXIV. SlGNOR SCARPIA AND IL SlGNOR LORD 26 1 
 
 XXXV. BEECHY MAKES A NEW FRIEND . . 268 
 
 XXXVI. THE FATE OF BEECHY'S GARDENIA . 275 
 
 XXXVII. THE HONOURABLE MRS. BOB . .281 
 
 XXXVIII. THE WHITE COTTAGE 288 
 
 XXXIX. " MADNESS IN THE BRAIN "... 295 
 
 XL. THE DUCHESS'S CONCERT . . . 304 
 XLI. LORD CHARLES TELLS THE TRUTH 
 
 ABOUT His OTHER LOVES . . . 313 
 
 XLII. Two LETTERS ... . . . . 322 
 
 XLIII. THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CAPE . 330 
 
 XLIV. " CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP is EVIL " 338 
 
 XLV. LADY SHALLOP 347 
 
 XLVI. IN A BALCONY 356 
 
 XLVII. " CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP OF Lovi 
 
 is GOOD " 365 
 
 XLVIII. BEECHY TAKES UP A NEW DUTY . 375
 
 BEECHY
 
 BEECHY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STREET OF THE VIOLIN 
 
 WHOSE had been the violin for which the street 
 was named, no one knew with certainty, but 
 there was a tale that a cripple dwelling there 
 years ago when the grim old palaces were new, had one 
 warm summer evening been playing in his window when a 
 crowd of gay youths passed and paused to listen. 
 
 Knowing the street one can picture the scene; the moon- 
 light cutting the narrow way in two, the sharp roofs jut- 
 ting against the bright sky, the velvety darkness, the golden 
 moonlight, the lights in some of the windows, the blankness 
 of those behind which good Roman gentlefolk slept. And 
 pouring down from the high balcony with the delicately 
 fluted pillars, the wailing of the cripple's violin. 
 
 The band of gaily-dressed revellers, heated by the wine 
 of the feast they had just left, laughing and jesting, pour 
 into the quiet place like a cluster of bright-coloured flowers 
 on a stream. 
 
 " Hush ! " says one. And they all pause and stem the 
 idle words on the young lips, for he who says hush is their 
 leader. So there they stood for a while, listening, and 
 watching the face of him with the violet velvet cap. 
 
 The cripple, unseeing, plays on, the bitterness of his heart
 
 2 BEECHY 
 
 in his music, and when at last he stops, the youths tiptoe 
 out of the darkness into the light. 
 
 "Who plays?" asks the leader. 
 
 After a pause the player, leaning over his beautiful para- 
 pet, and peering at them, answers surlily, " No one. A 
 cripple." 
 
 "A musician, friend," contradicts the other happily, in 
 his generous young voice " a great musician. Where are 
 we, what is the name of this street, that I may return?" 
 
 But the cripple draws back and is silent. 
 
 The youth doffs his velvet cap. " I crave your pardon," 
 he says, still with that invincible gaiety of his, " I shall re- 
 turn nevertheless to hear you play to Madonna Luna. And 
 as to the street, I will give it a name of my own ; la via del 
 Violino." 
 
 Then, laughing, he led his friends down towards the 
 river. 
 
 Whether he comes back the story does not tell, but one 
 hopes he did. Whether the story is true, no one knows, 
 but one hopes it is, for the violet-capped youth, it tells, was 
 Raphael. 
 
 At all events it is a pleasant little tale, and all pleasant 
 little tales should be true. 
 
 The Street of the Violin, then, was in its glory in the 
 divine Urbino's time, and its vicissitudes have been many. 
 
 Roman palaces were built by men who knew their work, 
 and who did it well, and even to-day the great walls are 
 as sound as they were the day they were completed. But 
 they are blackened and discoloured, the coats of arms over 
 the doors are broken and defaced, the great families have 
 died out or sold their unfashionably situated property, and 
 the street, once glorious, has become a street of the poor.
 
 THE STREET OF THE VIOLIN 3 
 
 Behind the rusty bars at the lower windows, time-black- 
 ened blinds are covered with dust and cobwebs. And under 
 the once imposing archways, where stood portly and digni- 
 fied major-domos, small and humble shops have done their 
 trade for many years. But to a little girl who lived there 
 nearly thirty years ago, the Street of the Violin was a very 
 delightful place indeed. For it was a home to her. 
 
 The room high up under the jutting, fluted roof in the 
 Palazzo Vincenzini was the centre of her home, to be sure, 
 for there lived her father, and there she slept, but the street 
 itself, with its cheerful, gossiping swarms of people, its 
 ever-changing excitements, its never-failing variety of amuse- 
 ment, was Beatrice Cavaleone's whole world. 
 
 There was an old man who made cane seats for chairs 
 in a small corner shop, and who was possessed of a vast 
 store of useful and thrilling information which, as he wove 
 his coarse material, he greatly enjoyed giving out to an en- 
 thralled audience of one. 
 
 It was he, old Lamberti, who told Beechy, as her English 
 mother had called her, all about Garibaldi in his famous 
 red shirt, and Victor Emanuel, il Re Galant 'Uomo, who 
 created the greatest kingdom on the broad earth, and shut 
 up the villainous old pope. He also told the child about 
 the Coliseum, a distant ruin ten times as high as the highest 
 palace in the street, whither he had once gone in his youth. 
 
 "And the Capitol," he explained, taking a huge pinch 
 of snuff, " where the wolves are. Long ago, you know, all 
 the Romans were wolves." 
 
 But this statement Beechy received with silent incredulity. 
 Her mind was so constituted that she could not believe cer- 
 tain things. 
 
 Lamberti was a kind old man who often shared with her
 
 4 BEECHY 
 
 the bowl of macaroni that was brought to him every day 
 at half past eleven from The Beautiful Florentine over the 
 way, and Beechy loved him. Then there was The Beau- 
 tiful Florentine itself, a small dingy restaurant with six 
 tables covered with red cloths, and, at the back, between 
 the sala (in which hung an exceedingly lovely oleograph of 
 the young Queen Margherita) and the kitchen, a kind of bar 
 where flashed and sparkled not only flasks of wine of the 
 Roman castles, whose generous richness left a beautiful stain 
 in one's glass, but also bottles of golden and crimson and 
 green liqueurs. 
 
 Signer Benedetto, the proprietor of the restaurant, a one- 
 eyed man who had seen the Pope, and Signora Marianna, his 
 wife, were very kind to the sick gentleman's little one. 
 
 Signora Marianna, who had eleven children, was glad 
 enough to allow Beatrice to sit in the warm, stuffy, untidy 
 kitchen and keep Peppino and Luisina and Chiarina from 
 falling over the pots and pans; and more often than any- 
 one knew the sick gentleman's extremely humble dinner, the 
 money for which arrived with the utmost regularity tied 
 in a rag of the child's frock, was augmented by some dainty 
 morsel quite beyond his means to buy. 
 
 Old Agnese, too, whose brutal son kept a bird-shop when 
 he was not in prison, where luckily he passed the greater 
 part of his time, liked Beechy, and had once given her a 
 small bird who sang like a feathered angel until the cat of 
 a seamstress living on the same landing as the Cavaleones, 
 made a meal of the poor little creature. 
 
 So it will be seen that for a child who, in slightly better 
 circumstances would undoubtedly have been lonely, the 
 Street of the Violin was a magic place full of delights, where 
 people were kind and food almost always forthcoming.
 
 THE STREET OF THE VIOLIN 5 
 
 Freedom is a most excellent thing, and freedom Bici 
 Cavaleone had unlimitedly; friends are good, and friends 
 were hers; health, too, she possessed to a remarkable degree; 
 and she was very young indeed when she discovered another 
 of her greatest gifts: beauty. 
 
 Her father, " II Signore Malato," as they called him in 
 the street, had been an invalid ever since she could re- 
 member the result of an accident; and never once within 
 her memory had he been able to do more than with infinite 
 pains cross the floor from his bed to the little loggia where, 
 rumour had it, the cripple had played that night to the 
 young Raphael. 
 
 " It is a fatal room," Cavaleone said once, to his only 
 friend, a certain long, lank, haggard old man known to the 
 street as the Commendatore. " If the legend is true the 
 violinist of Raphael could hardly walk. Albertino Spada, of 
 my grandfather's time, lived here for ten years with a broken 
 back, and now me!" 
 
 The Commendatore, who was roasting a long thin cigar 
 over a candle, waited until he had succeeded in coaxing the 
 tightly rolled tobacco to ignite, before he answered. 
 
 " You didn't hurt your back here," he said. 
 
 The Sick Gentleman shrugged his shoulders gaily. " To 
 whom do you tell it ? It is a beautiful room, isn't it ? " he 
 went on, his musical voice warmed by enthusiasm. " I some- 
 times believe Raffaele did come back that those scraps of 
 fresco are his. Look at that panel of fruit. Very like the 
 Stanze decorations " 
 
 The Commendatore smiled, the queer smile that drew his 
 mouth so far up under his nose. 
 
 " Marvellous man," he returned. 
 
 The child, then about nine years old, who was sitting
 
 6 BEECHY 
 
 near them playing with a grey kitten and a string of coral 
 beads, looked up. 
 
 " Why is Papa a marvellous man ? " she asked. 
 
 " Because I don't growl and make a fuss, my dear," an- 
 swered Cavaleone simply. 
 
 She looked at him with the dark blue eyes so like his own. 
 "Why should you growl and make a fuss?" she asked, as 
 simply. 
 
 The Commendatore, who had hated her mother, glared 
 into a dark corner of the room in a fuming silence, but 
 Cavaleone, laying his thin hand on the child's head, said in 
 French, " She has never seen me different, remember, old 
 friend." 
 
 Beechy, whose eyes were sharp as well as beautiful, 
 watched the two faces for a moment in silence, and then got 
 up and kissed her father. 
 
 "/ no love a heem" she said, with a nod towards the 
 old man, and her father burst out laughing. 
 
 " Run away to bed, dear," he said, gently, " you are 
 wrong, for he is good " 
 
 The bed was out of earshot when the two men spoke low, 
 for the old room was very large. 
 
 Beechy crept under the covers and lay watching her 
 father's face as he talked long and earnestly to the older 
 man. 
 
 She knew, although she could not hear, that they were 
 discussing her. She knew that the Commendatore did not 
 like her, and she did not care, for he was ugly and silent, 
 and crabbed. But she knew that his dislike for her troubled 
 her father. 
 
 That evening was one of many very like it, but somehow 
 that particular one stayed in her memory. It was a cold 
 night in November, and the wind howled venomously ; loose
 
 THE STREET OF THE VIOLIN ^ 
 
 blinds flapped and banged, something on the roof creaked 
 with a continuous grinding noise. 
 
 And within the vast room reigned the darkness that is a 
 part of poverty. The small bright place where the two men 
 sat, the yellow light of the cheap lamp, the red glow from 
 the charcoal brazier which was all the fire they had, sending 
 a faint glow, pale fingers of light, into the encompassing 
 gloom that somehow, to the imaginative child, seemed to in- 
 crease the howling of the storm, the darkness of the un- 
 broken blackness of the corners of the room. 
 
 Her father's long, well-modelled head, leaning, as it al- 
 ways leaned, against the back of the old leather chair in 
 which he lived, was well in the circle of light thrown by 
 the lamp ; a little out of the light, but reddened by the glow 
 from the brazier, the ugly, underhung face of the older man. 
 
 And near them, on the deal table that Donna Marianna 
 had procured for them in the final collapse of the one with 
 which Beechy had, she felt, grown up, lay the dominoes 
 with which her father amused himself by the hour. 
 
 " Now I lay my down to sleep," prayed the child 
 mechanically, in the old prayer taught her by her mother, 
 the words of which meant absolutely nothing to her, " I 
 pray thy Lord my soul to keep " 
 
 And quietly, happily, her last sleepy glances for her father, 
 she dropped asleep. 
 
 The room was poor and sordid; her bed hard; the 
 air was chill, and winter, enemy of the poor, was at hand, 
 but she went to sleep happy. 
 
 For the lamp-glow, the faint-coloured paintings on the 
 wall, the carved, once-gilded cornice in the dusk overhead, 
 the very pillow, hard as only an Italian pillow can be, 
 these things meant to the little creature, home.
 
 CHAPTER! II 
 
 A CHANGE OF SEX 
 
 LLTER, looking back at her own life, the next scene 
 that stood out definitely against the background of 
 shifting, indistinct events, was a very different one. 
 
 Her father, some two years after the evening when the 
 wind so howled, lay in bed with closed eyes, the first time 
 she had ever seen him in bed after ten o'clock in the morning. 
 
 It was autumn again, but it was broad day, the pale 
 afternoon sun showing up all the poverty of the room, and 
 dancing, through a bottle of water in a little blot of light, 
 on the wall. 
 
 The Sick Gentleman was ill. 
 
 At the foot of the bed sat good Signora Marianna, a baby 
 at her breast, and Beechy herself carrying the baby before 
 last. 
 
 The doctor, a short man with an extremely ugly harelip 
 that made Beechy feel rather ill, had just gone, leaving on 
 the table two bits of paper covered with hieroglyphics. 
 
 Silence reigned but for the heavy breathing of the baby 
 before last, a large and inconveniently fat boy of three. 
 
 " I haven't a soldo," observed Beechy, after a long pause. 
 "What shall I do?" 
 
 Signora Marianna sighed so deeply that she disturbed the 
 last baby who growled and went to sleep again. 
 
 " Carina povera mia ! I have five francs for the medicine, 
 and the wine all the wine in the shop is his that you 
 
 8
 
 A CHANGE OF SEX 9 
 
 know. But ! The blessed Madonna herself knows that 
 I have no money for long illnesses. If poor Benedetto had 
 lived ah, my dear, there was a man! I always said that 
 his one eye was more use than the two of any other man I 
 ever knew! But peace to his soul, he has gone, and what 
 am I to do with ten living children and his old mother, God 
 bless her, who eats as much as two able-bodied men ! " 
 
 Beechy nodded. The mixture of complaint and real, hon- 
 est charity that is in the very poor was not new to her. And 
 she, too, lamented the death of good Benedetto, who had 
 died in the spring of a fever. 
 
 "There is nothing to sell," she observed presently. 
 " No," assented Signora Marianna. 
 
 The clock had gone, the coral beads, a silk gown that had 
 belonged to the child's mother. 
 There was a long silence. 
 Then, suddenly, Beechy rose. " I will go and get the 
 
 medicine," she said, " if you will give me the money " 
 
 Signora Marianna fumbled in her dark green skirt and 
 at length produced two dirty bits of paper which, pieced to- 
 gether, proved to be an ancient five-lire note. 
 Beechy took them with a careless nod. 
 " Thank you, dear Signora Marianna," she said, but hers 
 was a nature of the receiving kind. She would give, will- 
 ingly, whatever she might have, but having little to give 
 did not trouble her, and to accept gracefully, even graciously, 
 was part of her. 
 
 Taking up her shawl, an ancient square of deep purple 
 woollen stuff, she put it over her head and shoulders, after 
 the inherited graceful manner of the Roman woman, and 
 closing the door softly after her, went lightly down the 
 dark stairway.
 
 *o BEECHY 
 
 At the first floor a door suddenly opened and a boy of 
 about her own age came running after her. 
 
 " 'Ngiorno, Bici," he exclaimed, pronouncing properly the 
 diminution of her beautiful name. 
 
 " Buongiorno, Simeone." 
 
 "Thy father is ill?" 
 
 The boy was very small, and very dark, with dark, long- 
 lashed eyes and a musical voice. 
 
 Beechy looked at him affectionately. "Yes, Simeone. I 
 am going to the apothecary's to get him a draught. Where 
 are you going?" 
 
 Simeone laughed. " I ? To the Teatro Leopardi ! I am 
 singing in opera." 
 
 Beechy's red underlip shot out suddenly in amused dis- 
 belief. " In opera, you ? Oh, you little liar." 
 
 Simeone was too thoroughly a Roman to object to the 
 term. He laughed instead. " Ma e vero. It is true ! It 
 is an opera called ' Carmen,' and there is a chorus of boys, 
 and we are paid a lira and a half a week for singing and 
 marching." 
 
 In the dark archway that led into the street Beechy 
 stopped short. 
 
 " But you can't sing! " 
 
 " Yes I can. It goes like this ti turn, turn, turn, ti, 
 deedledy tumm tumm " he hummed the well-known air, 
 squaring his little shoulders and pursing his mouth as he 
 did so. 
 
 " It's very jolly music. And the baritone gave me some 
 chocolates, and they all fight, and it's most amusing!" 
 
 " How much did you say you got a week ? " interrupted 
 Beechy, her small face very keen under the purple shawl as 
 she awaited his answer.
 
 A CHANGE OF SEX n 
 
 " One fifty." 
 
 " H'm. And you have no voice! What do they get, 
 those others, who have a voice ? " 
 
 Simeone's jaw fell. 
 
 " Who have a voice ? WTiat do I know ? We are a lot. 
 We must be fifty boys," he bragged. " And when we sing 
 it is beautiful." 
 
 It was raining now though the sun still shone faintly. 
 Opposite, the arched doorway of a charcoal shop, at the back 
 of which glowed a faint fire, looked as if cut out of black 
 velvet. 
 
 Simeone watched Beechy longingly. He admired her, but 
 he was afraid of her. 
 
 "And the girls?" she asked, sharply. 
 
 "The the girls? There aren't any. At least there 
 aren't any little ones," he stammered. 
 
 " No little ones? As little as as me? " 
 
 Her eyes were suddenly very anxious and his feeling of 
 manly superiority was restored as suddenly. 
 
 " Che! No. All the girls are big twice as big as you. 
 It is only the boys' chorus who are little. Why, we march ! 
 Girls don't march." 
 
 Beechy looked at him with the faint protrusion of her red 
 lower lip that was later to be so well known. " Oh, don't 
 they?" she said, with a short laugh. "Don't they?" 
 
 And before he could answer she had darted out into 
 the rain, her purple shawl held tight under her chin. 
 
 Simeone watched her for a moment, and then went back 
 to his father's rooms, the wind absolutely, though quite un- 
 justly, taken out of his sails. 
 
 The draught bought, and given into Signora Marianna's 
 safe hands, Beechy again went down stairs.
 
 12 BEECHY 
 
 She was very thoughtful, evidently, for her narrow black 
 eyebrows were drawn together a little, and her full red 
 lips a trifle fixed. 
 
 As she passed Simeone's door she spoke aloud. 
 
 " Imbecile," she said. 
 
 Old Agnese, the woman who kept the bird-shop, was sit- 
 ting over her earthenware pot of red coals, telling her beads 
 drowsily, when the door burst open and Beechy came in. 
 
 " Madonna mia, what is it ? Is thy father worse, child ? " 
 
 Beechy shook her head as she took off her shawl and 
 picked up the rosary the old woman had dropped. " No^ 
 no, he's no worse, but Oh, Agnese, will you lend me a suit 
 of Giulio's clothes?" 
 
 " A suit of Giulio's clothes? But, why what is it, why 
 do you want them ? " 
 
 Beechy's blue eyes were grave and anxious, but at the 
 sound of her old friend's voice the child burst out laughing, 
 a big dimple dancing in her right cheek. 
 
 " Oh, poor Agnese, do not be afraid," she cried, " it is 
 only that I must earn money. My father is ill and must 
 have many things, and there is no money, so I must work ! " 
 
 " Work, yes, we must all work, but but " 
 
 " It is Simeone Antonetti who sings sings, he I at the 
 Teatro Leopardi, and only boys can go." Her small face 
 was glowing with excitement, her cheeks as red as roses. 
 
 " But you are not a boy," insisted the old woman ob- 
 stinately, her slow mind not taking in at once what it all 
 meant. 
 
 Beechy clasped her hands dramatically, stretching them, 
 united out to their full length. " But don't you see" she 
 wailed, desperate with impatience, "if I have on Giulio's 
 clothes, I shall be a boy! "
 
 13 
 
 Old Agnese burst out laughing, showing her old faded 
 gums in which one huge hollow tooth, like a stag's, still 
 clung. "You will be a boy! Oh, Mamma mia, what a 
 child it is, what a child." 
 
 But Beechy's story was tumbling out before she had 
 finished her exclamation; the excited, delighted, confident 
 story told as she was to tell stories all her life, in a way 
 that inculcated her hearer, at any rate for the moment, with 
 a firm acquiescence in her power to do whatever she under- 
 took. 
 
 " And if Simeone can earn one fifty a week," she wound 
 up triumphantly, jerking on the long pepper and salt 
 trousers outgrown by her old friend's grandson, and shaking 
 them down with a series of vigorous movements. " Simeone 
 who sings like a creaking door, then surely I can earn five 
 francs and Papa can have all he needs. Give me the coat." 
 
 Strutting up and down the shop as she talked, she was a 
 queer enough little figure in the boy's clothes, for being a 
 woman child she of course swaggered as every woman wear- 
 ing man's garments has swaggered since the world began. 
 
 She looked smaller and slighter than usual, and carried 
 her dark head extremely erect. 
 
 " No one will ever know," she declared. " Look at the 
 parrots, not one of them recognises me! " 
 
 Then, suddenly, she stopped, her face white with tragedy. 
 " My hair," she cried. 
 
 " Gia." The old woman raised her hands helplessly. 
 "Of course!" 
 
 Then she took from the drawer an ancient astrakhan cap 
 worn bare in places like a mangy dog. 
 
 " Let us try, my dear " 
 
 The long dark pigtail pinned on the top of her head, th
 
 14 BEECHY 
 
 cap jammed tightly down to the nape of her neck, the danger 
 seemed very well averted. 
 
 " No one will know," declared Agnese, " but don't fight 
 and take it off!" 
 
 Beechy threw back her head with a jerk, and made a 
 little clucking sound that meant disdain. 
 
 " Not I ! Well, thank you, Agnese, a million thanks to 
 you. I will go now. Oh, do you know where the theatre 
 is? " 
 
 " Yes, just off the Corso, near the via Mer lana, near 
 the Church of Santa Lucia, can you find it ? " 
 
 Beechy had only once or twice in her life been more than 
 a stone's throw from the Street of the Violin, but in big 
 enterprises the small difficulties contingent on them are easily 
 disregarded. 
 
 " Of course I can find it. Good-bye, and once again, a 
 thousand thanks to you."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE STORY OF A REHEARSAL 
 
 IMBECILES, children of 'dogs, animals all of you, do 
 you call that singing? Here am I wasting my life, 
 my nerves, my genius, trying to beat into your stupid 
 heads ah, my God, what a life ! " 
 
 Maestro Checco Landucci banged his baton down on the 
 music stool and groaned loudly, while the gentlemen of the 
 chorus stared at him with unmoved and uninterested faces. 
 
 The theatre, small and dingy, was dark but for the stage, 
 and two boxes where some friends of some of the artists were 
 sitting chatting. 
 
 In the orchestra the various masters, including the mas- 
 ter of the drum, wore their hats, and most of them their 
 coats, for the place was cold. 
 
 It was a sordid, unbeautiful scene, but such as it was it 
 stamped itself indelibly on Beatrice Cavaleone's mind as she 
 stood, quite unobserved, at the back of the house. 
 
 Not knowing where to go she had managed to slip by an 
 old man who was sweeping the foyer, and found her way 
 in alone. 
 
 Small, alert, keen-eyed, she saw it all; the strange effect 
 of the lighted stage in the midst of the darkness; the poorly 
 dressed, huddled chorus-people, the prompter half out of his 
 box scolding vigorously, the roughly set scenery with the 
 long flight of steps at the top of which Micaela, a very small 
 woman in a huge be-feathered hat, stood talking to the bari- 
 tone. 
 
 15
 
 16 BEECHY 
 
 In the orchestra the patches of white light against which 
 were etched in sharp relief the bored, unshaven faces of the 
 musicians, the half -hysterical director waving his arms 
 furiously. And in the air, sniffed at rapturously by Beechy's 
 small nostrils, the indescribable, intoxicating stage odour 
 that, composed of a hundred different things, is the same in 
 all the theatres of the world. 
 
 " Now then, my children, commence again," went on the 
 director, with a sudden change of tone, " ' Sulla piazza si 
 schiamozza' try to get it right, or you will break my 
 heart " 
 
 The doleful looking men, their hands for the most part 
 buried in their pockets, responded without enthusiasm, Mor- 
 ales inspecting his face in a small pocket mirror as he sang. 
 
 " Now, then, Celli, come on, come on," bawled the di- 
 rector, " and don't fall down again " 
 
 " For Charity's sake " began the stage manager, as the 
 diminutive Micaela started down the steps, but the director 
 waved him into obscurity. " Louder, Signorina, louder or 
 else make faces so they can see that you are singing ! " 
 
 " ' Who ? I seek a brigadier,' " piped the girl, her white 
 gloved hands making an ugly spot on her dark skirt as she 
 sawed them up and down. 
 
 Morales, wasting not his hour, urged her to await the 
 absent Jose but the timid creature refused, flatting deplor- 
 ably, and skipped coyly away. 
 
 Beechy stood transfixed, her head swimming with emo- 
 tional delight, but her ear pierced by the well-brought-up 
 maiden's final g natural. 
 
 Then, at last the stage manager, an Olympian person with 
 a flower in his coat and an endearing manner, waved his 
 hand towards the wings and out came a stream of little
 
 THE STORY OF 'A REHEARSAL 17 
 
 boys, marching prou'dly, piping wildly. " Uno due, uno 
 due," roared the stage manager, "Keep time! Look out or 
 you'll fall down " 
 
 Down the steps they came, little boys in long trousers, 
 little boys in knickerbockers, little boys in rough capes, little 
 boys with mufflers, but all little boys pinched with cold and 
 poverty and forgetting everything in the truly little boyian 
 joy of marching to music! 
 
 "Stop, stop, stop!" 
 
 The baton crashed more loudly than ever on the iron 
 music stand and the director pulled his black hair into a tall 
 peak that promptly fell over his brow in a manner most 
 artistic. 
 
 " What are you singing? What do I hear? Have you 
 no mercy on me? God forgive you all, you are murdering 
 me." 
 
 " Come, come, Maestro," protested the stage manager, 
 still marking time in a bewitching way with his patent- 
 leathered feet, " it isn't that bad ! " 
 
 " Dear Thou," retorted the director, more enraged than 
 ever, " it is well known that thou art no artist. If thou 
 wert, thy nerves " 
 
 " In Heaven's name let's get on," put in unexpectedly a 
 woman's voice, " your temper is impossible, Landucci." 
 
 " Dearest Giacomini, wilt thou have the inexpressible kind- 
 ness to mind thine own business? Now then, boys, begin 
 over." 
 
 But the boys, while they marched well, could not sing, 
 poor little wretches, for the excellent reasons that the music 
 is written in an almost impossibly high pitch and that there 
 was not a voice among them. 
 
 Suddenly the director flung down his baton and tearing
 
 i8 BEECHY 
 
 his hair wildly turned round and gazed into the empty 
 theatre. " You, Rinaldi," he called, his voice choking with 
 rage, " tell me how can I bear this ! " 
 
 Rinaldi, one of the men in the box, who was smoking, 
 gave a great laugh. " Care, Maestro," he returned, sym- 
 pathetically, " don't ask me. What you need is voices." 
 
 Landucci with a shrug and a huge sigh, was about to turn 
 when he caught sight of a boy standing alone in the dusk. 
 
 "A boy! " he cried, " another boy! Have you a voice? 
 Do you belong to the chorus? " 
 
 " All the boys are here, imbecile," bellowed the stage 
 manager, " drop your nonsense, Landucci." But to his 
 amazement out of the darkness came a small clear voice. 
 
 " I have a beautiful voice," it said, " and I can sing. 
 How can I get up ? " 
 
 Signora Giacomini, the Carmen, who was sitting in one 
 corner of the stage sewing, leaned over the footlights. 
 
 " This way, little dear," she called. " Give him a lift, one 
 of you maestri." 
 
 So thus it was that Beatrice Cavaleone was lifted up to 
 the stage on the occasion of her first appearance, by the 
 master of the trombone. 
 
 "Isn't he a dear?" "How pretty." "What lovely 
 eyes." To such remarks Beechy's ears were calmly deaf. 
 She had marked the stage manager for her own, as a person 
 in authority, and went straight to him, her cold little hands 
 in her jacket pockets. 
 
 " How do you do," she began politely, " will you have 
 them play it over once more? I have heard it before, so 
 once will do " 
 
 Everybody laughed, at which she gave a glance round her. 
 
 Landucci now laughing loudly, raised his baton and all
 
 THE STORY OF A REHEARSAL 19 
 
 the little boys began marking time with that unfeigned joy 
 that in every representation of " Carmen " that has ever been 
 given, has characterised the little boys. 
 
 Beechy listened to the music, her brows drawn together, 
 her lower lip thrust out. When the music ceased she 
 nodded to the director. " Va bene," she said, and it did go 
 well. 
 
 Singing with no words, her high clear pipe rose like that 
 of a bird well above the feeble shrilling of her companions; 
 and as always happens in chorus-singing, the inefficient 
 singers followed the efficient one, so the result was satisfac- 
 tory, even to the difficult Landucci. 
 
 "Bravo, bravo!" 
 
 " What is thy name, Carino? " 
 
 " Give me a kiss," suggested Carmen, looking up from 
 her sewing. She did not particularly care to have Beechy 
 kiss her, but trusted that her request might annoy the 
 director. 
 
 Beechy stood still, smiling to herself, unheeding because 
 not hearing, the chatter. She had heard the call of the 
 theatre. 
 
 Then Don Jose, a pallid youth in a brown bowler, and 
 Morales had their little dialogue, and then once more the 
 enraptured albeit blue with cold little boys burst out again 
 in a song, and swaggering violently were led up the steps 
 and off to the right. 
 
 Carmen, who was pleased with the world because her 
 baby was better, because she herself had just annoyed the 
 director who was in love with her, and because Micaela had 
 no voice whatsoever, listened to the cigarette-girls' chorus 
 and Landucci's vituperations of these ladies, with much sat- 
 isfaction. The sordidly dressed, dull looking women, as
 
 20 BEECHY 
 
 much unlike dashing bewitching cigarette girls as so many 
 nuns would have been, stood huddled together, their heads 
 wrapped for the most part in knitted scarfs, waving large 
 red hands from time to time, turning bored eyes on the 
 frantic little man with the baton. 
 
 He scolded so much and so vehemently that he had lost all 
 effect on them. 
 
 " ' O'er our senses,' " the women bleated, 
 
 "'Joy is stealing'" 
 
 Carmen looked up suddenly as a merry bubbling laugh 
 startled her. Beechy stood by her, having come quietly 
 down the steps under the stage manager's very nose, unseen 
 by that great man. 
 
 " One would say, wouldn't one, Signora, that joy was 
 stealing o'er their senses?" exclaimed the child. 
 
 Signora Giacomini rose. " You funny little boy ! I 
 must go now " 
 
 And off she ran, leaving Beechy alone but without em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 While Carmen gave her impressions of Love to an unin- 
 terested crowd, Beechy sat and studied the scene. 
 
 To him who has not the stage instinct; to whom 
 the very word stage does not bring a kind of secret vibration 
 of soul, the most perfect and modern of theatres can say 
 nothing. 
 
 Whereas to him who has the stage instinct, to whom the 
 theatre-magic is a real thing, as real as a vivid dream (and 
 everyone knows that nothing in real life is as vivid as some 
 dreams), the poorest, dirtiest theatre in the world, even a 
 booth pitched at some country fair, contains all the magic, 
 all the wonder, all the queer unrealness that is so much 
 more real than the richest, fullest outside life.
 
 THE STORY OF A REHEARSAL 21 
 
 So Beechy had found in the small and miserable theatre, 
 the home of her mind. 
 
 Someone gave her a bit of chocolate, someone else wrapped 
 round her a dirty pink shawl for it was growing colder. 
 The Remendado came at length and sat down by the child. 
 He was a tall man with an egg-shaped head and only one 
 little ringer. 
 
 " You have a good voice, little boy," he said kindly. 
 " Don't ever try to sing loud, or you'll spoil it. I hope," 
 he sighed, " that it may be a tenor. Only tenors count, 
 really." 
 
 Beechy nodded. She wished he would go away. 
 
 "Who is that man?" she asked. 
 
 " II tenore," explained the Remendado with gloom. The 
 tenor had not much voice, but he sang well. Beechy loved 
 the duet, she loved it all. Perhaps best of all she loved her 
 own little legs in their grey trousers. It was great fun be- 
 ing a boy. It was delightful having one's legs free, hav- 
 ing pockets wherein to bury one's cold hands. 
 
 She liked it all. The stage-manager came and asked 
 her her name. 
 
 " Beechy " she stammered, terrified. 
 
 " Bici, oh." He wrote it down, thinking it was her 
 surname, and went away telling her to come again the next 
 day. Time went on and on. 
 
 Signora Giacomini, walking through her part, using only 
 a little of her rather worn voice, reached the last act in 
 safety, and then suddenly in the scene with the desperate 
 Jose, broke into real song, real acting. The tenor stared, 
 but took her cue, and as they both knew their parts the 
 scene rushed on to its frightful ending as if inspired. 
 
 " Carmen io t'amo "
 
 22 BEECHY 
 
 Down came the knife, down fell the woman, and in the 
 cry of the man and a crash of the music, it was over. 
 
 " Brava, Giacomini, brava, bravissimi to you both ! " 
 
 She rose, wiping the dust from her skirt and breathing 
 hard. 
 
 " I didn't mean to do it," she exclaimed, " I was a fool 
 to tire myself out so, but " 
 
 "What made you, so suddenly?" queried the Dancaiie. 
 
 For answer she pointed to Beechy who stood with her 
 two hands clasped hard to her breast. 
 
 " He made me," returned the soprano, " just look at his 
 eyes!"
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE JOY OF BEING A BOY 
 
 WHEN one has been a member of a distinctly in- 
 ferior, though in many ways favoured sex, and 
 then by a wave of a wand, becomes that king 
 of creation, a Boy, the effect is dazzling. 
 
 And if that hypothetical critic, the fly on the wall, had 
 been there to observe the effect on Beechy, of her change of 
 costume, he would, were he an astute fly, have foreseen for 
 her a variety of things not obviously the outcome of her 
 position in life. 
 
 Not the mere fact that she walked precisely like a some- 
 what swaggering boy, and that each of her attitudes was 
 in its essentials quite ungirlish, but the very expression of 
 her face had changed. Wildly excited by her experiences 
 at the theatre, her original object, money, quite lost in the 
 incidental joys appertaining to it, the child hurried back to 
 her own street, whistling loudly a scrap of the music that 
 was whirling in her brain: 
 
 "Aha la, chi vi la 
 Dragon d'Alcate " 
 
 It was nearly dark, and to her the homely poetry of the 
 streets of the poor at the hour when work ceases, and lights 
 are lit, was always to appeal loudly. 
 
 Work people loitered along, warm red light streamed out 
 into the blackness from opening doors, a cheery smell of 
 
 23
 
 24 BEECHY 
 
 frying oil and garlic met her eager little nose from time 
 
 to time. 
 
 'Alta la, chi vi la 
 Dragon d'Alcala!" 
 
 A slim youth, standing with his eyes fixed on an upper 
 window of a well-to-do house not far from the Street of the 
 Violin, turned as the whistler drew near. 
 
 " Hello you little boy " 
 
 Beechy stopped with an impertinent upward jerk of her 
 chin as foreign to her nature as were the trousers she wore 
 to her legitimate costume. " Want to earn fifty centimes ? " 
 
 The amount named was staggering, but Beechy nodded 
 hastily. " Yes " 
 
 It was all a part of the wonderful day that a mystery 
 should at that dream-hour project itself into her life. 
 From behind his back the young man produced a bunch 
 of chrysanthemums. " See that window? " 
 
 " Si, Signore." 
 
 "Well can you read?" 
 
 " Of course I can." 
 
 " Well, take these flowers up to the third floor, and ring 
 at Dr. Mincotti's door. When the maid opens the door, 
 ask to see the the Signorina Elvira. Then give her 
 these." 
 
 Beechy nodded eagerly. " Va bene, va bene." 
 
 From his pocket the young man took a letter which he 
 folded very small. 
 
 " Can I trust you? Yes, I think I can. See, some day 
 you too will be sending letters to some Signorina " 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing and the young man drew back 
 angrily.
 
 THE JOY OF BEING A BOY 25 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," she added hastily. " I do understand. 
 I am to take the letter and give it to the Signorina Elvira 
 without anyone else's seeing. Is that right? " 
 
 The Italian had nothing but admiration for her ready 
 comprehension. 
 
 " Yes, you are a good boy. And she may give you a 
 letter for me I will wait here " 
 
 Beechy touched her cap dashingly. " Va bene." 
 
 The stairs were of stone, very cold, and but poorly 
 lighted, but in comparison with the ones the child knew, very 
 grand. 
 
 She raced up in one breath, the letter in her trousers 
 pocket, and gave a faint ring at the bell. After a long 
 pause the door opened and a tiny maid-servant with a large 
 wart on her nose, appeared. 
 
 " I have nothing for you," she snapped, and was about to 
 shut the door when Beechy thrust the flowers nearly into 
 her face. " I want to see the Signorina Elvira, please. 
 These are for her." 
 
 "Well, you can't see her, then. I'll take them." 
 
 " No. I want to see her myself." 
 
 But the maid with the intimate knowledge of all that 
 concerned her master's family that characterises Italian 
 servants of her class, gave a short laugh. 
 
 " Of course they're from the Signor Paolino. Well, you 
 may tell him that the Signore Dottore is not going to let 
 the Signorina Elvira have anything more to do with him, 
 so he may as well take his flowers to someone else." 
 
 It was discouraging, but Beechy was fearless, and in a 
 flash saw what her best line of argument was. 
 
 A door at the end of the narrow red tiled passage was 
 open, and beyond it was firelight, a red sofa, a gilded table.
 
 26 BEECHY 
 
 Before the maid could raise a finger, Beechy had dashed 
 down the passage and into the gorgeous room where sat a 
 girl of twenty with a very elaborately dressed head of hair, 
 absently stroking a cat that was sitting on her lap. 
 
 "Signora Elvira?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Before the indignant maid had reached the door the letter 
 was lying between the cat and the girl's lap, and Beechy 
 was holding out the flowers. 
 
 " These are for you, Signorina." 
 
 " Ma Signorina, this impertinent little guttersnipe " 
 
 " Go away Rosa, get me a penny for the little boy ; he 
 has brought me some flowers I ordered for Papa's birth- 
 day." 
 
 Rosa departed, crestfallen, and the ready liar, to whom 
 all Beechy's admiration went out, quite untempered by dis- 
 approval, in a gust of enthusiasm, took from her pocket a 
 smooth pink envelope and crushed it into the messenger's 
 hand. 
 
 " You are a dear little boy," she said, " a good little boy. 
 What is your name ? " 
 
 " Here is the penny, Signorina," interrupted Rosa, re- 
 turning. " Shall I put the flowers in the Signor Dottore's 
 room? They will be a delightful surprise for him, after 
 your sulking all day with him." 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Rosa. Good-bye, piccino. I am 
 perfectly satisfied with the flowers." 
 
 Beechy raced down the stairs and gave the letter to the 
 impatient lover who duly rewarded her with fifty centimes, 
 an extravagantly large sum for so simple an errand, but 
 which, in the expansion of his satisfied heart, he would will- 
 ingly have increased to a lira.
 
 THE JOY OF BEING A BOY 27 
 
 When his eulogium of Beechy's genius and virtue had 
 ended, he added, " I might need you again. Where can I 
 find you? " 
 
 Beechy hesitated, and then, with the confidence of the 
 born persuader that he can persuade away any difficulties 
 that might arise, she answered: 
 
 "At Carelli's bird-shop, 22 Via del Violino. Ask for 
 Bici." 
 
 The young man made a mental note of the address and 
 Beechy sped away to persuade Agnese not to betray her. 
 
 "Well, and did you sing? " the old woman asked, look- 
 ing up from the soup she was making over her absurd little 
 stove in her dark living-room. 
 
 " Yes, I sang and there were, oh, lots of gentlemen play- 
 ing instruments, too beautiful. And some of them sang 
 alone, and some together, and one gentleman killed a lady 
 with a long knife." 
 
 "Holy Madonna!" The old woman turned, her jaw 
 dropped in horror. 
 
 Beechy laughed merrily. " Not really, you know. In 
 the play. And, only guess, thou! Simeone didn't know 
 me, and they all call me little boy! Also I earned half a 
 lira carrying some flowers and a letter to a young lady. 
 There was," she added, " a golden table in the room ! " 
 
 "A golden table!" 
 
 " Yes. It was a wonderful palazzo." 
 
 While she got into her own clothes again her tongue 
 flew on, recounting in detail all the wonders of the Signorina 
 Elvira's salon. The room was in reality a very tasteless, 
 gaudy, middle-class Roman sitting-room, and her inexperi- 
 enced imagination transformed it into a dream of fairy- 
 land, but allowing for this, the accuracy with which she
 
 28 BEECHY 
 
 described the things she had seen for the first time in her 
 life, and therefore at the most six minutes, was remarkable. 
 
 "There was a glass box with the loveliest dead birds 
 on a tree; and gold chairs and a piano with a carpet on it 
 with ladies dancing in a meadow painted on it or sewed 
 into it and looking glasses with butterflies painted on the 
 frame and one on the glass; and red chairs and the most 
 beautiful pictures, one of a lake with boats on it, and one 
 of a girl combing her hair in an open window. And the 
 curtains were lace, with flowers in the lace, and the lamp 
 had red silk over it, so the light was red. And Miss El- 
 vira was so beautiful, her face very white, and her hair 
 oiled, and she smelt of vanilla." 
 
 " Well, well, well, what a magpie you are, to be sure 5 
 Here, have some soup, my dear, and rest your tongue or it 
 will drop out." 
 
 As she ate the very welcome soup, Beechy unfolded her 
 scheme, which developed as she unfolded it, of being, in the 
 future, as much as possible a boy. 
 
 "You will, I am sure, lend me the clothes, and I will 
 sing every day, and I can earn money. Oh ! " suddenly 
 she rose. "God forgive me, I had quite forgotten Papa! " 
 
 Horrified by, but not at all ashamed of, this fact, she 
 embraced old Agnese, unpinned her pigtail, and scampered 
 up the street homewards. 
 
 The great room was quite dark, and the sick man asleep. 
 Signora Marianna had gone home. Silently, moving with 
 the stillness characteristic of her, Beechy lighted the lamp, 
 blew the dying coals in the brazier into a comfortable glow, 
 and made her humble preparations for supper. 
 
 When her father at last awoke she was sitting curled up 
 in his big chair, sound asleep, the grey kitten in her arms.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 AT THE Two QUEENS 
 
 MAESTRO LANDUCCI, the terror of the artists, 
 the most honest of men, yet lived a double life. 
 This has happened before and to many people, 
 for after all, men are the playthings of circumstance, and 
 circumstance was too much for Landucci as it has often 
 been for his betters. Sensitive tenors and mezzo-soprani 
 trembled under the lash of his meridional tongue (baritones 
 and soprani are of sterner stuff, for soprani are hard to find, 
 and fully appreciate and even misuse their power; whereas 
 tenors having always much of the woman about them are 
 things of nerves and moods, and, so, thin in the skin). 
 
 Thus, at the Leopardi, Landucci's power of invective 
 made him a creature to be disliked if not feared, but at home 
 at the Hotel delle Due Regine, near the Pantheon, for 
 the director was a Calabrian and so was Landucci things 
 were different. For Signora Landucci was to her husband 
 in the matter of temper and what the simple cockney simply 
 calls " language," as wine to water, as a blazing tropic sun 
 to the languid northern moon. 
 
 Signora Landucci was a small dark woman, in looks 
 what the Italians call " dry," and she had a heavy mous- 
 tache. 
 
 She was blessed with unfailing appetites for food and for 
 gossip, with a thousand lire a year of her very own (a tre- 
 mendous power against her poverty-stricken husband) and
 
 30 BEECHY 
 
 against him, too, she held the strongest of weapons, the fact 
 that in marrying him she had married beneath her. Her 
 father had had a small hotel in Pontesuaggio, a town built 
 on a promontory overhanging the sea near Reggio in Cala- 
 bria. 
 
 Whereas Landucci's father had been a mere railway- 
 porter and Landucci, although an artist elastic word in 
 dear Italy was also a pauper. A more miserable man than 
 the present director of the Orchestra of the Teatro Leo- 
 pardi never lived. 
 
 About a week after Beechy's unceremonious debut into 
 theatrical life, Landucci went home to the Inn of the Two 
 Queens after the last rehearsal. He was tired, but rather 
 pleased with himself, for he had won hands down in a battle 
 with the tenor, who had insisted on singing the Romance 
 of the Flower much slower than it had ever been sung 
 before, and when Landucci had broken his baton, in a fit of 
 rage, the stage manager had taken his side, routed the tenor, 
 and at the same time begged Landucci for his own sake to 
 try to control his temper. 
 
 This, to the hen-pecked husband, was as balm on a raw 
 wound, as many will understand. So although the Tra- 
 montana was blowing germ-laden dust fiercely through the 
 stony streets, and though his head ached, Landucci was 
 fairly happy as he made his way past the Pantheon and up 
 the narrow lane that led to his hotel. 
 
 Italian life is so much written about and so curiously 
 poetised and de-poetised by the writers that one some- 
 times wonders that no one protests. Mr. Stopford and Mr. 
 Willoughby both poetise, but Mr. Stopford 's keen sense 
 of humour as well as the intelligent experience of many 
 years, saves him from misunderstanding this delightful race.
 
 'AT THE TWO QUEENS 31 
 
 Mr. Wflloughby's Italians are charming, and human, 
 and beautifully explained, but they are simply people, not 
 essentially Italians, and possibly this is because Mr. Wil- 
 loughby himself is essentially English. Easier, perhaps, for 
 the camel to pass through the needle's eye than for a full- 
 blooded Briton really to understand full-blooded Italians. 
 
 The two races reason from quite opposed standpoints, and 
 miracle of miracles, such a thing as an Italian snob does 
 not exist. 
 
 This last of course means that the difference between the 
 Italian aristocrat and the Italian peasant, is infinitely less 
 than that between the English aristocrat and the English 
 peasant. 
 
 The Italian ploughboy will greet you with a great 
 courtesy, or as great intentional rudeness, as will the Italian 
 nobleman. Shy uncouthness is unknown in the peninsula, 
 as unknown as abstract Horror of a Lie. 
 
 There are, to Italians, two kinds of lies. Bad lies and 
 good lies. And good men tell only good lies. That is all, 
 and it is simple. 
 
 As to women ask your most cherished, your most cul- 
 tured and cosmopolitan Italian friend, about truth-telling 
 women. His answer, or his shrug, will be illuminating to 
 you. 
 
 So in describing the Landucci menage, up three pairs of 
 dark stairs at the Two Queens, I am describing any un- 
 evenly-matched Italian couple. And this in spite of the 
 well-known fact that no Italian is content to be an Italian; 
 he is a Roman or a Torinese or a Neapolitan as the case 
 may be, right through the scale, down to the peasant who 
 having no town to claim, claims his province. 
 
 And if this is so to-day, how much more was it so in the
 
 32 BEECHY 
 
 days of which I write, when Italy as a kingdom had existed 
 for only a few years. 
 
 Maestro Landucci, his high coat collar pulled well up 
 round his ears against the piercing wind, hurried through 
 the streets thinking of his dinner, for he was hungry and 
 had worked hard all day. 
 
 Dinner and bed were good things to be counted on, and 
 it might be, as well, that Luisa's temper would be at its 
 best. Hope dies hard. 
 
 The Two Queens is a very old hostelry situated in a 
 courtyard. On the ground floor are three large rooms de- 
 voted to the restaurant service, high frescoed dingy rooms 
 packed with small tables and shiny wooden chairs. Up- 
 stairs is the hotel itself, a congeries of tortuous passages 
 and rooms of all shapes and sizes, for the Two Queens has 
 two entrances, and has gradually come to comprise three 
 old palaces. 
 
 The Signora Campi, the proprietress, a monstrously fat 
 old woman with several velvety brown moles on her silky 
 pink face, looked up from her chair in the bureau as Lan- 
 ducci passed. 
 
 " Good evening, Maestro." 
 
 " Good evening, Signora. My wife " 
 
 " The Signora is upstairs. And the opera, how goes it ? " 
 
 Landucci unbuttoned his shabby coat as he answered with 
 despairing eyes. " Dear You " (this does not by any means 
 signify " You dear "). " What is one to do with a band of 
 imbeciles, of born idiots? They prance and make gri- 
 maces, but sing? Madonna Santa, who could sing without 
 a voice, I ask you ? " 
 
 " The Giacomini's not so bad," criticised the old woman 
 shrewdly.
 
 AT THE TWO QUEENS 33 
 
 " No. But her day was fifteen years ago, and the tenor, 
 if he ever has a day, will have it when ten more years have 
 passed. He is a baby, a green baby. And even with 
 double soles and high heels he reaches only to the lobe of 
 her ear." 
 
 "Such is life, Maestro Mio! By the way, a little boy 
 has been here this evening asking for you, it is over an 
 hour now since he left " 
 
 Landucci pondered. 
 
 " A little boy? Who was he? " 
 
 " I don't know. He came and waited some time, but he 
 would not tell his name. A slight boy with blue eyes and 
 something very well-educated and refined about him." 
 
 "Well dressed?" 
 
 " Macchi, no ! Poor clothes, grey and a fur cap but 
 for all that, you know, something very gentlemanly " 
 
 The director's face lighted up. " I have it ! It must 
 be little Bici. A boy who is in the chorus. His father has 
 been very ill, and for two days he has not come. I wish 
 I had seen him " 
 
 As he spoke the door opened and several men, habitues 
 of the restaurant came in, and he went on upstairs. 
 
 Signora Luisa was high-busted, and small-waisted, her 
 that poverty of languages compelled the poor man to call by 
 the beautiful name of home. 
 
 Signora Luisa was high-busted, and small waisted, her 
 sharp nose was red at the point, her thin lips were pale 
 and set: a shrew, plainly labelled as such. 
 
 But in garb she was rather gorgeous, for her red blouse 
 was of papery satin and her hat was covered with feathers 
 of the same hue. 
 
 Most people have if no really good qualities, at least
 
 34 BEECHY 
 
 some useful small charms. A dimple, a pretty ankle, has 
 kept men from utter despair. 
 
 But Signora Luisa had no small charms, and as her spirit 
 was low and her temper high, she was very dreadful as a 
 wife. 
 
 Landucci spoke to her softly as was his way, and, as was 
 hers, she stormed at him for being late, for looking tired, 
 for being himself and not someone, anyone, else. 
 
 He combed his tossed hair and washed his hands and then 
 they went down to dinner. 
 
 At a small table in the corner of the middle room, they 
 ate. First raw ham and salami smelling of garlic. Then 
 a mixed fry, bits of liver and tripe, bits of brains, bits of 
 artichoke, all fried in oil. 
 
 Then after a short, sharp dispute they ate roast veal 
 and spinach. The rneal was ending more or less peaceably 
 with hot custard in coffee cups, when Beechy came in, and 
 after one of the rapid, comprehensive glances characteristic 
 of her, made straight for their table. 
 
 " Oh, Maestro," she began, plunging at once into the 
 matter of her coming. " My father is dead ! " 
 
 Signora Luisa drew herself up in a way meant to express 
 fastidious terror of the public mention of death. 
 
 " Thy father " stammered Landucci. 
 
 " Yes. And he told me to go to the Commendatore 
 and I don't know the Commendatore's name." 
 
 Landucci looked nervously at his wife. 
 
 "Well, well, I am very sorry for you, Bici, Poverino! 
 But you see, my Signora and I are we are dining." 
 
 He was not an unkind man but the woman had made a 
 coward of him. 
 
 Beechy stared. " Dining I have had no food since last
 
 AT THE TWO QUEENS 35 
 
 night," she said with a short laugh. Then she sat down 
 and breaking a great bit of? the long brown loaf, began to 
 eat. 
 
 Her face was very white and her eyes swollen. She had, 
 obviously, cried all her tears. She loved her father and he 
 was dead. 
 
 But she herself was alive, and hungry, and although she 
 did not know it, she was an artist, and to artists more than 
 to other people, even, is self-preservation the first law of 
 nature. 
 
 She had formulated no theories on the subject, but sub- 
 consciously the clearest fact in the universe was, r to her, 
 the fact of her own small, adrift, hungry, helpless per- 
 sonality. 
 
 And with a shrewdness beyond her years she had seized 
 the fact that the irascible director -was, of all the people at 
 the theatre, the one most likely to be kind to her. 
 
 " I got your address from the Hunchback," she explained, 
 " and I came this afternoon, but you were out." 
 
 " What do yu want ? " 
 
 The words, the first she had heard Signora Luisa utter, 
 fell on her ear like something cold. 
 
 " ' What do I want ? ' ' For a second the child studied 
 the woman's face and then with something like the ghost 
 of a twinkle of amusement in her own, she answered in- 
 nocently, " Some thick soup, please, and then some meat." 
 
 Two men at the next table burst out laughing, and 
 Signora Luisa's thin lips narrowed to vanishing point. 
 
 " Come, Checco," she said, rising suddenly, " I won't 
 want any coffee. We will go upstairs." 
 
 But Landucci drew a long breath and sat still. " I I 
 will come up immediately, my treasure," he answered.
 
 36 BEECHY 
 
 " First I will give Bici something a little to eat. He 
 has just lost his father, poor little fellow." 
 
 " Bravo," murmured one of the listening men. 
 
 Signora Luisa turned to him. " Bravo Lei" she snapped, 
 " badly educated one." 
 
 After which extremely insulting remark she left the room. 
 
 " Oh, my God, my God," poor Landucci leaned his tired 
 head on his hand for a second. " Oh, my God." 
 
 Bici frowned, because she did not understand. Then as 
 comprehension came to her she observed sententiously, " A 
 bad wife is worse in the house than a serpent. Why don't 
 you beat her? " 
 
 " Oh, hush ! You are a naughty boy," protested the hor- 
 rified director. " Luisa is not a bad wife, and men don't 
 beat women." 
 
 " H'm" returned Beechy, catching the eye of the badly 
 educated man who was drinking black wine. 
 
 The man burst out laughing, and Landucci banged his 
 hand down on the table. 
 
 The man's laughter went as suddenly as it had come. 
 
 " You are a very naughty boy," Landucci repeated, " and 
 if your father were not dead a very naughty boy! " 
 
 Beechy's eyes filled again with tears. Her father had 
 been to her, not a father, but a friend and a splendid house- 
 decoration. But she had loved him and now she was 
 ashamed of having for a moment quite forgotten him. 
 
 fl Cameriere! Waiter! Bring this boy some food at 
 once, some veal and potatoes. Now, Bici, drink some 
 wine and water." 
 
 Beechy obeyed, and let her tears dry on her lashes rather 
 than publicly remove them. 
 
 " Take off your hat," suggested Landucci.
 
 AT THE TWO QUEENS 37 
 
 " No, thank you, Maestro." 
 
 After a pause she went on. " They buried him to-day. 
 And it is so cold," she shuddered. 
 
 " He doesn't feel the cold, my dear. He is in paradise." 
 
 Orthodox Catholic children are duly instructed in the 
 theory of purgatory and paradise, but it may be observed 
 that when one of its own family dies, the child is invariably 
 told that that particular soul has gone to paradise. 
 
 Beechy, however, had a touch of reasoning. 
 
 " He was very good, my father," she remarked, attack- 
 ing her veal more wolfishly than was quite beautiful. 
 " Very good. Also, he was a gentleman. But no doubt 
 he had some small sins on his soul. Father Amedeo says 
 everyone has except the blessed saints, so I fear he is in 
 purgatory now, just for a little while." 
 
 Landucci started. 
 
 " What an extraordinary little boy you are! " 
 
 In vino veritas. 
 
 The wine and water had increased in the child a delicious 
 belief in the kindness of everyone, while Landucci, giver of 
 veal and potatoes, appeared to her a philanthropist worthy 
 of any confidences. 
 
 " I am not an extraordinary little boy," she whispered, 
 leaning towards him, her glass to her lips. 
 
 "You are not a why aren't you? What do you 
 mean ? " he answered. 
 
 She drank slowly, her lucent eyes fixed on his. 
 
 " Because," she said, " I am an extraordinary little girl."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE EMPTY CRADLE 
 
 THERE are those who complain that Rome is no 
 longer Rome, that the new, stucco, be-villa'd quarter 
 has ruined it; that the horrors of busy streets like 
 the via Nazionale have destroyed the charm of the lovely 
 place. 
 
 These disgusted spirits, like most other people in the 
 long run, get what they deserve. For if beauty, a more or 
 less tangible thing, existent at least to a great degree, under 
 certain fixed laws, is in the eye of the beholder, how much 
 more is the essence, the charm, of a great city? Rome, the 
 Rome of modern life and politics, the Rome who does not 
 scruple to use the base of her ancient columns as a hoarding 
 for electioneering bills bidding " Romans, elect Giuseppe 
 Ruffo, the Socialist candidate," the Rome of ugly villas and 
 busy thoroughfares, of trams and electricity, of vacuum- 
 cleaners and motors and steeple chases, is for a' that, still 
 Rome. For no city worth loving at all is made by these 
 external things. To the lover of cities, each one has its 
 own atmosphere, what may be called its psychic smell. And 
 of all cities in the world, this holds good of Rome. 
 
 There is an early morning hour when the streets round 
 Trajan's forum are busy only with the humble people who 
 live there, when housewives are buying their stores for the 
 day, when smooth-cheeked, serious men on their way to 
 business, pause and exchange the usual morning compli- 
 ments; when quiet and sunlight lie on the little enclosure 
 
 38
 
 THE EMPTY CRADLE 39 
 
 whose great past is part of the world, when the broken 
 shafts and the mysterious piles of stone seem to brood un- 
 resentfully on what has been; when the observant lover of 
 the spirit of Rome, if he understands Italian, and if he is not 
 aggressively a foreigner, will, walking bookless about the 
 ancient quarter, and if his imagination is in good working 
 order, find himself back in the years himself a Roman, un- 
 derstanding the Roman mind, feeling in his breast a Roman 
 heart. These moments do not last; they are as fleeting as 
 they are wonderful ; rainbows across the dulness of ordinary 
 hours. 
 
 They are rare for they are not waking dreams, they are 
 inspirations flashes from the sleeping years for years do 
 not die, any more than souls do and they cannot be ex- 
 plained; they can only be felt. 
 
 But to those who have felt them the cry " Rome is no 
 longer Rome" is the chattering of malicious monkeys, the 
 plaint of a man at the Aquarium, who, with his silly nose 
 glued to the glass behind which the fish swim, declares that 
 there is no water because he, forsooth, remains dry! 
 
 Peace to their ashes, for so far as Rome is concerned they 
 are dead. 
 
 Rome with all her ruins, all her history, is alive and will 
 live, and why anyone should wish her to have remained 
 early Victorian, a kind of picnic ground for the romantic 
 traveller, is incomprehensible, and argues no more than 
 narrow heartedness on the part of him who so wishes. 
 
 So even to-day, I maintain those who deserve it find the 
 Dream-Rome that is the Real Rome, and those who deserve 
 an inferior Chicago or Liverpool, will find even that in the 
 city of the Caesars. 
 
 So Rome endures.
 
 40 BEECHY 
 
 In Beatrice Cavaleone's childhood the kingdom was a 
 new kingdom, Garibaldi's work was but newly accom- 
 plished, the gallant King, ugliest and most charming of men, 
 was but recently dead, there was no via Nazionale, no 
 electric trams, and the railway was a thing still new enough 
 to be talked about. But the real Rome was exactly what 
 it is to-day. 
 
 For the first three years after her father's death the child 
 lived at the Two Queens. 
 
 That evening, in the restaurant when she told the amazed 
 Landucci that she was a girl, he had been frightened to the 
 verge of terror. What in Heaven's name was he to do with 
 a girl child of eleven? He, most downtrodden of penniless 
 men? Yet Beechy had come to stay. She was alive, there- 
 fore she must live and someone must provide for her. This 
 was her own idea, elucidated with the greatest clearness 
 and with characteristic lack of embarrassment. 
 
 " I like you," she concluded. 
 
 " My Signora " began the unhappy little man, his pale 
 face furrowed with anxiety, but Beechy laughed. " Oh, 
 I don't like her," she said consolingly, " I sha'n't bother 
 her" Inferring that those she liked she would naturally 
 lean on. It was one of the small points that marked her 
 for the artist. 
 
 Landucci gave his head a great shake, that brought lank 
 locks over his brow in a way he liked. 
 
 " I am poor," he avowed. 
 
 " Oh that, of course. That doesn't matter. I shall stay at 
 the theatre. I am going to be a great singer." Then she 
 dipped a hunch of grey bread into her wine and water, and 
 tore at It with the frank delight of a dog over a particularly 
 succulent bone.
 
 THE EMPTY CRADLE 41 
 
 Landucci never forgot the scene. The now nearly empty 
 room, faintly lighted by bad-smelling lamps, the heaviness 
 of cooking in the air, the weary unshaved waiter with a 
 dirty napkin over his arm. And the little bright-eyed boy- 
 girl devouring mulberry-coloured, dripping bread as she un- 
 folded to him her perfectly simple scheme of life. 
 
 " Will they let me stay on in the boys' chorus if they 
 know I'm a girl ? " 
 
 " I I don't know " 
 
 " Then we had better not tell them. We! " 
 
 " But my dear, I have no house, no room for you 
 have you no friend with whom you could live?" 
 
 " Only Signora Marianna, the trattorista's widow, and 
 she has dozens of children. Oh, no, I will come here. I'll 
 work, you know." 
 
 " There isn't any work," protested the poor director 
 faintly; but it was all in vain. 
 
 Beechy meant to come and live at the Two Queens; and 
 she came. 
 
 Fat Signora Campi, the padrona, kindest of women, lis- 
 tened sympathetically to Landucci's tale, and found for the 
 child a wee room up close under the roof, a room shaped 
 rather like a flat-iron, owing to the encroachments of other 
 rooms. There was in the flat-iron a small iron bedstead, 
 a chair that had once had a cane bottom, a rusty tin washing 
 stand in which stood a broken basin, and an old-fashioned 
 cradle, a brown carved cradle on rockers, put up in this 
 uninhabited corner of the old inn to be out of the way. 
 
 Signora Campi wiped her eyes as she looked at this last 
 bit of furniture. 
 
 " My dear," she said, " all my babies were rocked in that 
 cradle; seven. And they are all dead."
 
 42 BEECHY 
 
 Beechy delighted and happy (but not in the least con- 
 sciously grateful) in the possession of her new home, put 
 her foot on one of the rockers, and the cradle began to 
 rock. 
 
 " Madonna mia, Madonna mia," cried the old woman, 
 clasping her beringed hands, " to think that they are all 
 gone, my little beautiful babies." 
 
 Three of them had lived to marry, and one, the one who 
 had been the most beautiful of all to the mother, had been 
 shot for selling information to the Austrians, but to her 
 heart, as she watched the slowly ceasing movement of the 
 cradle, they were little babies still. 
 
 For mothers do not change, any more than Rome changes. 
 They grow old, fat, thin, disagreeable, even wicked, as the 
 case may be, but put them in front of the cradle or bed that 
 used to hold their babies, and watch their eyes! 
 
 Beechy, when she was alone, suddenly remembered her 
 father, and cried desperately for an hour. All her life she 
 remembered with tenderness the kind, gentle-voiced man in 
 his armchair. It was not her nature to forget, but (and 
 this faculty of artistic people is often misunderstood) her 
 mind never lingered long in the past. 
 
 So after a torrent of hot tears the child blew her little 
 nose in her little handkerchief and went to sleep in a kind 
 of comfortable whirl of excitement. To-morrow was com- 
 ing, and what might it not hold? . . . 
 
 There was a moon that night, a warm mellow moon 
 away from which the black tramontana had blown all the 
 clouds. A moon who looked down at old Rome and saw, 
 probably, much that she had seen in the days when her 
 light fell on Nero's. Human ambitions, passions, ideals, 
 as she had seen then. Poor old moon, are you ever bored
 
 THE EMPTY CRADLE 43 
 
 by our exact and commonplace likeness to those who have 
 gone on ahead? 
 
 And as long since the moon had looked in at the sleeping 
 face of some youthful vestal virgin, so that night she gazed 
 at Beechy, as the child slept, her soft brown cheek pillowed 
 on her right arm a trick she never lost. 
 
 Beechy slept well, for she had not slept much of late, 
 she had cried herself to the stage of exhaustion, and her little 
 stomach was fuller of good food than it had ever been. 
 
 But at length she stirred, turned, smiled and opened her 
 eyes. And her eyes fell on the little old brown cradle, as it 
 stood by the window. 
 
 " Povera culla," said Beechy, sitting up in bed, " Are 
 you lonely ? " 
 
 Answering to the vibration caused by the passing in the 
 narrow street below of some heavy waggon, the cradle 
 stirred slightly, as if a ghost hand had touched it. 
 
 Beechy 's eyes widened. " Poor cradle," she repeated. 
 Then, springing out of bed she took her little jacket, rolled 
 it up in a long roll, and laid it in the cradle. 
 
 " There's a baby for you," she said. 
 
 Then she went to sleep again to dream that she was 
 rocking the next youngest of Signora Marianna's children, 
 and singing to it.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE rehearsals for " Carmen " then, mind you, a new 
 opera went on regularly, and in their small way 
 most of the artists were good. 
 
 They had not great voices, but having a voice never yet 
 made an artist, and being nearly voiceless never yet pre- 
 vented a man or a woman's being an artist. 
 
 Giacomini was a very good actress indeed, and managed 
 what remained of a very fine mezzo-soprano with consider- 
 able skill. The most fiery of wantons on the stage, she was 
 at home a devoted wife and mother, the laziest, most placid, 
 sweet-natured friend. This although Giacomini's affection 
 for his wife was known to be a thing of the past. 
 
 Landucci had been in love with Angela Giacomini for 
 the past two years, and although he knew she loved her hus- 
 band and that she was thoroughly indifferent to the tenor, 
 he felt no jealousy whatsoever for the husband, and writhed 
 and sweated with anguish while she coquetted with Don 
 Jose. 
 
 Every performance was thus a torture to the man, and 
 caused him literally to waste away. When the cigarette 
 girl sat on the tenor's knee (in reality on the chair, for she 
 was heavy) and made love to him, Landucci's staring white 
 face was horrible to see. Beechy, sitting with her confreres 
 in the gallery at Lillas Pastias, soon noticed this phenom- 
 
 44
 
 ONE If Ay TO FACE THE WORLD 45 
 
 enon, though she was too young to understand the reason 
 for it. 
 
 She also observed that when, in the third act, Carmen 
 turns towards Escamillo, Landucci's heckling of the tenor 
 ceased as by magic and the baritone became at once the ob- 
 ject of his bitter invective. 
 
 Carmen, herself, of course realised the situation per- 
 fectly, and, equally of course, it amused her. The tenor, 
 a stupid youth, never could make out why the director was 
 so savage with him, during the first acts, so gentle after- 
 wards. " I sing the last act worst of all, too," he would 
 add, " the tempo is so devilish." 
 
 Poor Landucci, it was balm to him to see the haggard 
 woe-begone Jose spurned by the little, unspeakable, high- 
 heeled person with the mantilla. 
 
 But oh, how he loathed the Toreador, all red and white, 
 all swagger and seduction. 
 
 And Beechy, still known at the theatre as a boy, watched 
 with innocent, shrewd eyes, and wondered. Three days 
 after she had taken up her abode at the Two Queens, the 
 child might have been seen making her way Tiberwards at 
 about four o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 It was a sunless, cheerless, colourless day, a day when 
 all the atmosphere seems to have been absorbed by the 
 dull stones of the city, when mystery has withdrawn from 
 Rome, history sleeps, and even poetry is mute. Tramon- 
 tana, in other words. Beechy hurried along, her hands 
 buried deep in her breeches pockets, her cap jammed down 
 hard over her brows. 
 
 It was a day that gave her misery, as she put it. And 
 she was bent on a sad errand. 
 
 Her father's few bits of furniture were that day to be
 
 46 BEECHY 
 
 sold, and she was going for the last time to the great room 
 where she had been born, and that had been her home all 
 her life. 
 
 She felt small, unwanted, like a stray dog. The streets 
 were full of busy, happy, unkind people, all of whom were 
 members of a family. Only she, Beechy, was alone. 
 
 She was utterly miserable with that miserable misery 
 that comes from the soul, from within, not from external 
 circumstances. 
 
 When she came to the corner of the Lane of Jesus Christ, 
 and turned into the Street of the Violin, she stood still, 
 her hands, blue with cold, clasped against her breast. 
 
 Home! Light, food, friends, mirth and nonsense. Here 
 were all the good things of life. 
 
 Gone the misery, gone the very cold! 
 
 Walking as if there were springs in her feet, even danc- 
 ing a little, her face ever and again breaking into a smile, 
 she hurried to old Agnese's. An oil lamp burned already 
 in the little room beyond the piled-up cages, and the old 
 woman sat by it, holding a large green parrot in one hand 
 while she vainly tried to clip one of its struggling, flapping 
 wings. 
 
 "Oh, Signora Agnese," cried Beechy, throwing her arms 
 around her friend's wrinkled neck, " the saints bless you. 
 I am so glad to see you." 
 
 She caught the parrot's wing deftly and knelt down. 
 "I'll hold him be quiet, you devil! Oh, isn't he strong? 
 Well, tell me, how are you?" 
 
 " And how are you all ? Signora Marianna and old 
 Lambert! and Peppina and Luisina " 
 
 Agnese, who had at length succeeded in clipping the 
 wing of the adventurous-minded parrot, rose and shut the 
 bird away in his cage.
 
 ONE WAV TO FACE THE WORLD 47 
 
 "Che! So you remember us after all?" she asked. 
 
 Beechy stared. 
 
 " Remember you ? What do you mean ? Why shouldn't 
 I remember you? " 
 
 The lamp threw a wavering exaggerated shadow of the 
 old woman's beaked profile on the wall as she came back. 
 
 "To go away like that and not come back!" she grum- 
 bled. 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing. " You look just like a cross 
 old parrot yourself, on the wall! But not come back?" 
 with an expressive throwing out and up of her hands, " am 
 I not here?" 
 
 " It's four days." 
 
 The child reflected for a moment and then shrugged her 
 shoulders. "What are four days?" After a pause she 
 added with a little puzzled frown, " What dees it matter, 
 now that I am here ? " And this was her instinctive atti- 
 tude toward life. 
 
 The fussing, the small hurts, the little jealousies and 
 narrow acquisitiveness of the greater part of humanity 
 she never, as she always expressed it, arrived to understand. 
 
 It was not that she would not; she simply could not. If 
 she was busy for six weeks, busy with work or with amuse- 
 ment, she could not write letters, and when her subsequent 
 greetings, personal or epistolary, were met with reproaches 
 for past neglect, her cry was always, " What does that 
 matter, when I am here now?" 
 
 Old Agnese's attitude was that of most people. 
 
 " You might have let us know ; you might have come 
 sooner. How did we know that you were safe?" 
 
 And Beechy, bored, but struggling for patience, "You 
 ought to know that I am always all right." 
 
 After a time the old woman's wounded feelings were
 
 48 BEECHY 
 
 soothed, and she and Beechy set out together for the Pa- 
 lazzo Vincenzini, the child attired in the clothes of her 
 own sex. 
 
 The humble sale was going on when they arrived. The 
 bed had already gone to a Jew, the old easy chair was 
 being bidden for. 
 
 Beechy stood by the door, an unexplained, unexpected 
 feeling of anger tearing at her. These things were hers. 
 How dared people sell her things? 
 
 Signor Antonelli, Simeone's father, crossed the room and 
 spoke to her. 
 
 " We got a good price for the bed," he said, " and the 
 chair " 
 
 Beechy stamped her foot sharply. " The chair is mine. 
 I won't have it sold." 
 
 But " 
 
 " I won't have it sold." 
 
 Marianna, carrying two children, the elder of whom was 
 stirring up civil strife by trying to put his finger into the 
 eye of his cadet, came up and tried to explain. " But 
 Carina, Bici dear, you have no money, you know, and 
 the chair will bring " 
 
 " I won't have it sold." 
 
 The corners of her mouth were deep set with obstinacy, 
 her brows drawn together. 
 
 " Thinorina," lisped the Jew, " I will give you ten francs 
 for the chair " 
 
 " No, and no, and no! It is my chair and / will not 
 sell it!" 
 
 She was now in a towering rage, the small creature, and 
 unreasonable and silly though the rage was, its effects were 
 fine. Her cheeks were deep red and velvety, her eyes as
 
 ONE WAY TO FACE THE WORLD 49 
 
 black as brimming ink-wells, her round chin pointe'd up de- 
 fiantly at these grown people who were boring her to 
 death by forcing her into speeches where a word should 
 have sufficed. 
 
 "No. And basta, enough." 
 
 Then she sat down in the chair and crossed her ankles 
 and her arms and was silent. Nobody laughed. 
 
 Half an hour later everyone had gone but old Agnese. 
 The bed, too, had gone, the tables everything but the 
 easy chair in which the child still sat. 
 
 "What will you do with it? " 
 
 Old Agnese's voice startled the silence and woke an 
 echo which had crept into the emptiness. 
 
 " Keep it. Always. My father always sat in it. It was 
 his." 
 
 "Yes, but now? You have nowhere to keep it, and it 
 is too big for me or Marianna to have room for it." 
 
 " I have fifty-seven francs. And I have a room in a 
 hotel. And I am earning money." 
 
 The old woman was silent. Then Beechy said, " Would 
 you mind going home, Signora Agnese? I will come 
 in a little while." 
 
 Grumbling, the old woman went stumblingly down the 
 sharp-echoing stairs. 
 
 Beechy sat quite still. She was not sad. She was too 
 busy with the dramatic quality of the situation to be actively 
 sad. Here was she, Beatrice Cavaleone, aged eleven, alone 
 in the world, leaving for ever the house that had been hers 
 since she was born over there in the dark corner the big 
 bed had stood. 
 
 And she had fifty-seven francs a huge fortune and 
 she was an opera-singer.
 
 50 BEECHY 
 
 The world was at her feet. Hers. 
 
 And the world was full of almost unbearably beautiful 
 things. 
 
 Presently she found that the corner where the big bed 
 had stood was no darker than the rest of the room. 
 
 Night had come. 
 
 Through the delicately curved arches of the little loggia 
 the stars twinkled. The moon had gone. Beechy went out 
 and stood leaning where, if the legend is true, the cripple 
 had leaned to listen to the merry voice of Raphael that 
 night long ago. Beechy thought of the story. 
 
 Like all Romans she was proud of Raphael as if he had 
 been a Roman himself. 
 
 " Some day," she said, " I will go and see his pictures, 
 I will go to the Vaticano. I will also see the Holy Father, 
 like Benedetto. And the King, I will see him." 
 
 Leaning over the parapet, looking down at the velvety, 
 light-streaked and spotted street, she shivered with de- 
 light. 
 
 The world was there and it was hers.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 PROMOTION 
 
 BEECHY, at this time of her life, rose early; at 
 about six. This not because she liked it, for she 
 loved her bed and the last snuggling nap after 
 getting-up-time was as dear to her as it is to most other 
 people. 
 
 She got up because she was, as well as an opera-singer, 
 a newsboy. Day after day, all that winter, she crept down 
 stairs, out into the dull dawn, and shivering made her way 
 to the office of the biggest morning paper of the day. 
 
 There she waited with a crowd of boys, until the papers 
 were distributed, and away she ran, her damp bundle under 
 her arm. 
 
 By this time hunger would not be denied, so back she 
 raced to the Two Queens where one of her intimate friends, 
 a sub-pastry-cook, would give her a large cup like an Orien- 
 tal bath tub, of cafe au lait sweetened with coarse, brown- 
 ish sugar, and as much of yesterday's bread as she could 
 eat. 
 
 And she could eat a good deal, our opera-singer. 
 
 The kitchen was pleasantly warm, and Ercole, the sub- 
 pastry-cook, as pleasantly cheery and easy tempered. 
 
 Her breakfast eaten, she refolded the newspaper that 
 Ercole in return for his kindness was permitted to read, 
 and then for three hours the child roamed the streets of 
 Rome bawling out her wares, cheeking people, producing 
 
 Si
 
 52 BEECHY 
 
 coppers in change from her pockets in a boyish way that by 
 this time was second nature to her. And she was not in 
 the least to be pitied. It was fun rushing about the streets, 
 it was a marvellous, glorious spree, being a boy. 
 
 Later, as she looked back at this period, Beechy could 
 not recall any conscious realisation that she was not a real 
 boy. Her travesty of course brought in its wake many 
 amusing incidents, many laughs to one's self, but as a 
 whole the child felt, as she looked, a small male street 
 urchin. 
 
 Her language was vile when necessary, rough and cheer- 
 fully profane at all times, and she could never recall having 
 felt any shame therefor. 
 
 One day in a quarrel a big boy pulled oft her cap. Be- 
 fore he had noticed her tightly twisted pigtail she had seized 
 her cap and fled out of the dark courtyard, leaving her 
 papers behind her. She had juggled with Fate and now, 
 suddenly, she saw her danger. 
 
 Back to the via del Violino she ran, and into old Ag- 
 nese's shop. 
 
 " Agnese," she cried, panting for breath, " You must cut 
 off my hair." 
 
 And the old woman, lamenting loudly, obeyed her. 
 
 " Don't cry," Beechy said roughly, " it's my hair, and 
 
 I love it, but it's the only thing to be done." Her de- 
 cision was late, but it came irrevocably. An hour later, 
 pigtailless, she sprang on her late enemy from behind, and 
 gave him a thorough beating. 
 
 Through this feat her prestige was assured and her 
 battles were few, for she could now, as the conqueror of 
 
 II Rosso, refuse without loss of honour to engage in other 
 battles.
 
 PROMOTION 53 
 
 The winter dragged by, hastened by, melted away, ac- 
 cording to the mental states of those who underwent it. 
 
 The opera was in its way a success, it was played for six 
 weeks, then gave place to another, in which there were not 
 only no little boys, but also, no little girls. Apparently 
 the operatic career was closed to Beechy. Remained, how- 
 ever, her branch of journalism, and there were, some years 
 later, many men who publicly boasted of having bought 
 papers of her during that phase of her queer childhood. 
 
 Her fortune, her fifty-seven francs, had gone the way of 
 other inherited fortunes, and kind Signora Campi had 
 no scruple about taking the newspaper money in return for 
 the bread and lodging of her busy little protegee. 
 
 ' The room, one understands, I do not need, and he is 
 welcome to it; but his food! Holy saints, but he eats, the 
 boy; he eats like a grown man; he is always hungry, and 
 when he is no longer hungry, then still he is always ready 
 for more." 
 
 Under the generous regime of the Two Queens, fish fried 
 in oil, macaroni and its like, oil-soaked salads and vege- 
 tables, the child grew strong and sturdy and her quick 
 mind never had a chance to outweary her lengthening body. 
 Many people go through life hampered by some delicacy 
 or weakness acquired through a lack of proper food in their 
 childhood. 
 
 Although no longer in actual fief to the Leopardi, Beechy 
 had acquired a certain position among the kind-hearted 
 artists, and nearly every day the old hunchbacked stage- 
 door keeper let her in with the smile that most people have 
 for pleasant children. The old man had a weakness for 
 Greek olives; the wizened, wrinkled, dark green salt things 
 that are sold in grocer's shops out of huge jars, and very
 
 54 BEECHY 
 
 often indeed the child brought him some wrapped in brine- 
 soaked grey paper. 
 
 In return he used to give her triangles of dingy, delicious 
 chestnut paste ; so they were good friends. 
 
 No one but Landucci knew that il piccole Bici was a 
 girl, and to Landucci it was a guilty secret that he tried 
 to forget. 
 
 For his Signora hated the child, and would not allow 
 the poor man to speak to her, for Beechy had made 
 people laugh at her that first evening in the restaurant, and 
 moreover Beechy had shown too plainly that she liked the 
 director. 
 
 Everyone else from the soprano down to the scene-shifters 
 called her Piccolo Bici, and, as I have said before, the child 
 herself could not recall in later years that she was con- 
 scious of deception in the matter. It was not only romantic 
 and delightful to be a boy, it was also useful in every way, 
 and a wonderful simplifier of life. So she was a boy. That 
 was all. 
 
 Lent came early that year, and at Mi-Careme " Carmen " 
 was revived. 
 
 Beechy was delighted. Before the first rehearsal, she 
 had her rapidly growing hair cropped afresh, and per- 
 suaded Signora Agnese to give her another suit of clothes. 
 This time the trousers were short, dark blue, and the 
 jacket was a sailor jacket, with a broad collar. When she 
 came running in at the last moment, out of breath and 
 rosy, Giacomini caught her and gave her a resounding kiss 
 on each cheek. 
 
 " Look at the dear little legs," the soprano cried, " the 
 sweet little calves to them, and the ankles! What a pity 
 you are not a girl, and you could be a page in "
 
 PROMOTION 55 
 
 Beechy stuck out her lip. "Aren't pages boys?" 
 
 " They are supposed to be, but they are always girli 
 dressed up." 
 
 They all wondered why the handsome little fellow burst 
 out laughing. 
 
 When the rehearsal was over, Beechy, as was her custom, 
 walked as far as the Pantheon with Landucci. 
 
 He was visibly disturbed, his black moustache looking 
 like an ebony bar against the pallor of his face. 
 
 " It's Carmen that makes you suffer," remarked Beechy. 
 
 He started. " Carmen, you're mad ! Signora Giac " 
 
 Beechy cut him short. " Of course I don't mean her, 
 I mean just the whole opera I remember in the early 
 winter you looked as you do now." 
 
 Landucci sighed with melancholy vanity. His passion 
 was sincere, his pain so great that he was nearly mad, but 
 at the same time he could not, being a man of the theatre, 
 help enjoying the way he looked his part. 
 
 But he had a new trouble now, and Beechy hit on it as 
 they hurried on through the cheerful streets. 
 
 " The new tenor," she observed with an air of fine criti- 
 cism, " pleases me." 
 
 "Pleases youl" 
 
 " Yes. He has a good voice, and he is good looking." 
 
 Landucci caught her arm suddenly in a grip that hurt. 
 " Is that what women call good looking? Confectioners' 
 pink sugar and spun-sugar hair? " 
 
 " Aie, you hurt me! And I am not a woman, so how 
 do I know? Me, he pleases." 
 
 Landucci gave a short laugh. " I didn't mean to hurt 
 you, poveretto," he said, " and I suppose you are right, he 
 is good looking. And he has a coat with silk braid all
 
 56 BEECHY 
 
 round the edges. The uniform," he added with a sudden 
 incongruous chuckle, " will be too small for him ! " 
 
 Beechy thought no more of the conversation, and a few 
 days later she met with a rise in the world. Among the 
 women who sang in the chorus of gypsies was one Violetta 
 Urbani who took the high notes. She had no middle regis- 
 ter but somewhere in her long throat she had a most use- 
 ful little set of piercing shrieks tuned to the notes of from 
 a to c in alt. 
 
 And the Mercedes being extremely bad, this woman 
 Violetta used always to stand close behind her to supple- 
 ment her faded high notes. In the fortune-telling duet 
 Violetta stood looking over Mercedes' shoulder weaving her 
 voice with some skill into the other woman's. 
 
 So Violetta was useful, and when she fell ill and could 
 not come, the stage manager tore his hair (literally and 
 dramatically) and did not think he could bear it. 
 
 "The only b flat in the whole chorus," he stormed, 
 " and no time to try for a new one." 
 
 Signora Giacomini, who was sitting sewing a button on 
 the dashing Morales' uniform, looked up quickly. " There's 
 little Bici," she suggested. 
 
 " A boy ! " muttered the stage manager scornfully. 
 
 " Why not ? Girls dress as boys, and even grown women 
 as men. He is as tall as lots of the chorus ladies, and as 
 pretty as any girl you ever saw. With a wig little Bici, 
 come here." 
 
 Beechy, who had been doing an errand for the Dan- 
 caire, ran across the stage. " Signora? " 
 
 "Could you sing Urbani's part?" 
 
 Beechy nodded, "with Mercedes? Yes, I think so, 
 why?"
 
 PROMOTION 57 
 
 " Because she's ill, and Mercedes well, you know. Do 
 you think you could walk with a skirt ? " 
 
 Beechy, who had a deep-seated sense of humour, caught 
 Landucci's eye. 
 
 " I could try. But my hair," she suggested innocently. 
 
 " Come here and try," interrupted the stage manager 
 suddenly. " It's worth trying. When the devil is hungry 
 he eats flies. Number 15, Maestro " 
 
 The orchestra struck up, and the card duet began. " La- 
 la, la, la" sang Beechy, wordless but perfect as to tone, 
 the high notes piercingly sweet, the tempo perfect. 
 
 They then went back to the quintette in the second act 
 and here through some trick of memory Beechy knew the 
 words too. They struck her as, in the circumstances, very 
 amusing. 
 
 When they stopped singing, Mercedes, a pretty woman 
 with bad teeth, put her arm around her coadjutor. 
 
 " That's perfect," she said heartily, " far better than 
 Urban! who splits my ears. May I keep her, Signore? I 
 will dress her myself if you will send me a wig " 
 
 And thus it was settled, and thus, the evening of Mi- 
 Careme of that year, Beechy, a girl disguised as a boy dis- 
 guised as a girl, made her debut in the role of Mercedes. 
 
 The words she learned in two days, Landucci whose 
 wife believed him to be out, sitting in her little room with 
 her by the light, oh luxury, oh wicked extravagance, of 
 two .candles. 
 
 Her memory was quick and acute, and her musical ear 
 extraordinary. Indeed throughout her career she owed 
 less to her voice than to her other gifts. 
 
 Landucci was goodness itself to her, and found much 
 comfort in her innocent society. The man was literally
 
 58 BEECHY 
 
 torn to pieces by his love for the commonplace soprano, his 
 afternoons and evenings in the conductor's chair, separated 
 from the ogling, flirting thing only by the footlights, were 
 to him a veritable torture. 
 
 Somehow his mind refused to accept the woman as she 
 was, an ordinary, nice little soul whose chief passion in the 
 world was for sweets, and who went her way through life 
 undisturbed by any possibilities of other things. 
 
 To him, she was irrevocably the fatal charmer whose 
 smiles lost an honest man his soul, and by constant thought, 
 ceaseless brooding, his sense of proportion was imperilled, 
 the demarcation lines between the real and the unreal, wa- 
 vering and uncertain. 
 
 The night when Beechy, a most enchanting little gypsy, 
 tripped about the stage for the first time in skirts, was the 
 night she grew up in some ways. 
 
 There was a fearful, thoroughly feminine joy in the mock 
 adoration of some of the men. The Remendado indeed 
 kissed her, and her powers of acting were loudly applauded 
 when in a perfectly sincere access of fury she boxed his 
 large red ears. 
 
 " Brava, Signorina!" 
 
 Someone on this occasion even called her by her real 
 name, in the fond delusion of making a pun. 
 
 "Signorina Bici Signorina Beatrice! Che bel name 
 beautiful Beatrice of Dante," with a low bow. 
 
 She was in an ecstasy of delight, the only drawback to 
 perfect rapture being that no one else knew the marvellous 
 humour of it all! 
 
 Her rough curly black wig aged her face a little, she 
 wore a padded vest under her bodice she looked seven- 
 teen. She sang well, and she acted well, with the natural
 
 PROMOTION 59 
 
 grace of all Italians and the originality of her own decided 
 little entity. They were all proud of her. She was too 
 young to provoke the ever-ready actors' jealousy, and be- 
 sides, the men could not have been jealous of her travesty 
 as a girl, while the women of course looked upon her as a 
 boy. 
 
 It was a very involved and bewildering situation, but 
 never was a situation better enjoyed by its occupant. 
 
 It was, also, something to be able to sing notes that 
 flew well out over the braying orchestra and found appre- 
 ciation in the faces of the audience. When Mercedes 
 bowed, her hand on her bosom, Beechy giggled audibly 
 and was reproved by the prompter. 
 
 The new tenor, who had not been present on the occa- 
 sion of her appointment to her part, was the ready victim 
 of a joke arranged by the Remendado. He was presented 
 to Beechy. 
 
 " Signer Tenore, allow me to introduce you to my 
 niece, Beatrice h'm Beatrice Bid. She makes her debut 
 to-night." 
 
 And the tenor, the pink and golden Torinese, bowed 
 deeply. He was highly susceptible, and Beechy was indeed 
 very pretty. She was also a flirt and to everybody's joy she 
 led him a dance the whole evening, at last cuffing him 
 soundly to Landucci's hysterical amusement. 
 
 When she had reached the Two Queens and was alone, 
 she stood in front of a broken glass that had recently been 
 banished to her room to get it out of the way. 
 
 " Am I a boy dressed as a girl or am I a girl dressed 
 as a boy? " she asked herself; then she sat down and, start- 
 ing the cradle rocking, remained for many an hour dream' 
 ing and wondering.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 FATHER ANTONIO 
 
 SPRING brought to Rome that year an unusual quan- 
 tity of daffodils, so that the old streets were full of 
 the golden things. Carts of them, banks of them, 
 baskets of them, bunches of them carried by foot passen- 
 gers, carriage-hoods filled them, buttonholes adorned 
 by them. 
 
 Daffodils, daffodils everywhere, as if the splendid sun- 
 shine had spilled out of the sky and settled in pools and 
 splashes all over Rome. 
 
 It was the boy Bici's last spring, and he loved it. It 
 was the girl Beechy's first spring in some ways and it went 
 to her head like wine, and made her laugh and jest and 
 chatter until everyone she knew laughed and jested and 
 chattered with her. 
 
 Until, much later, real trouble came to her, she was 
 never so much as bored. Healthy, well-fed and busy, the 
 joy of life was at times almost more than she could bear. 
 
 There were moments when her radiant smile of joy, a 
 smile she could not repress, needed an excuse and she made 
 silly explanations of it to people. The very delight of 
 being in the world was a great and marvellous thing, and 
 frequently required the expression of a rapid pas seul or a 
 roulade copied with surprising fidelity (with all her faults 
 of rocalisation) from Signorina Blandi, the new soprano. 
 
 60
 
 FATHER ANTONIO 61 
 
 There are nowadays, not many natures like Beechy's. 
 It would seem that the world, beautiful as it is, is too old 
 for such primitive joyousness; but when a human soul 
 is given such a spirit, let it rejoice, for it holds one of the 
 greatest gifts, if not the very greatest gift, ever known. 
 
 Possibly in early days when the world was young, when 
 the people old Homer (and what a young Homer they 
 must have been to write as they did! as Max Beerbohm 
 says) tells about, were living, loving, fighting creatures 
 there were more natures like Beechy's, more bubbling wells 
 of animal joy. 
 
 She was like a kitten in the sun, like a song bird at dawn 
 singing to the light, like, in her joyous prodigality, the 
 daffodils that gladdened her old city that eventful spring. 
 
 It was, moreover, no mere ebullition of youth. That 
 one often sees. Most young things, thank God, are gay 
 and keen, and full of quick laughter. One looks at sad- 
 faced, peevish women and remembers wonderingly how 
 merry and hopeful they were twenty-five years ago; but this 
 characteristic of Beechy's was different. It was as much a 
 part of her very spirit as her hands were a part of her 
 person; it was the essence of her; the mainspring of her 
 being ; her principal, held in trust for her against all possi- 
 ble expenditure of income; it was a magic chain-armour 
 shirt against the world's arrows; it was a pair of wings 
 to bear her away from things that would have killed her. 
 It was the just gift of some beautiful heathen goddess to 
 whose worship she unknowingly bowed, in spite of her 
 Christian baptism and easy belief in saints and priests. 
 
 So Easter came, roses and violets and tourists filled Rome, 
 and Beechy's twelfth birthday dawned. 
 
 At this time she was a strong-limbed, rather square-
 
 62 BEECHY 
 
 built child with broad shoulders, a peculiarly well-poised 
 walk and an uplift of the chin which she kept always. Her 
 large eyes, very clear and of a very unusually dark blue 
 like sapphires in the sun, held a fearless look like those of 
 a boy. The beauty of her full smooth eyelids that was 
 later much talked about was not yet noticeable. 
 
 Her mouth, rather large, was not yet beautiful. It was 
 too set in repose, too abandoned in laughter, but it was red 
 and smooth over the white teeth that were not quite 
 straight. Later, her mouth became very lovely. 
 
 As to her hair, close cropped, the ends turning up like 
 acanthus leaves, it was fine and dry, with a soft gloss and 
 bluish shadows, and grew in a splendid smooth line round 
 her brow over the temples and ears and down to the nape. 
 She never had short untidy hair at the back of her neck, an 
 unusual thing. 
 
 Early in the morning of Easter Sunday Beechy rose and 
 went to confession. It was a warm, bright morning, and 
 the church was chill after the glow of the streets. 
 
 The old priest in the confessional listened with a dull 
 ear to her conventional little sins, and absolved her with- 
 out more to-do. 
 
 She rose from her knees and went forward towards the 
 altar and knelt politely, to say a few prayers. The altar 
 was gay with flowers, several early worshippers knelt near 
 her, and through a gorgeous, dingy, coloured window the 
 baffled sun tried to peer in. 
 
 Beechy prayed rapidly, looking round her as she prayed. 
 
 " Holy Madonna," she said after a time, " help me to 
 be good and successful; make my voice grow and make the 
 Signor Stage Manager give me a role soon. Madonna 
 mia cara "
 
 FATHER ANTONIO 63 
 
 A heavy hand was at that moment laid on her shoulder 
 and turning she found the old priest looking down at 
 her. 
 
 " Why are you dressed like this ? " he asked sternly. 
 
 "Dressed Oh, like a boy, you mean?" 
 
 She rose, smiling broadly. She liked the old man, even 
 though he frowned. 
 
 " Come into the sacristy when you have finished your 
 prayers," he returned, and left her. 
 
 A moment later she found him sitting on a brown bench 
 by the open sacristy door, a book in his hand. 
 
 " I am right in thinking that I confessed you a few 
 minutes ago ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He looked shrewdly at her, his small bright eyes very 
 sharp to see. 
 
 " You are a girl." 
 
 " Yes, Father." 
 
 " Then why do you wear these unseemly clothes? " 
 
 She smiled. "They are nice clothes." 
 
 " You come to the House of God thus travestied! Shame 
 on you." 
 
 Beechy's smile disappeared. " I am not ashamed," she 
 said, " I always wear boy's clothes." 
 
 The old man hesitated for a moment, and then asked her 
 to explain. 
 
 She did so, very frankly, rather amused, on reflection, by 
 her own skill in passing herself off for a boy, sorry to have 
 offended a priest, but quite convinced that God was not 
 in the least angry with her. 
 
 " How old are you ? " 
 
 "Twelve to-day. This is my birthday!"
 
 64 BEECHY 
 
 Again she smiled, and he wavered. Her utter innocence 
 baffled him. 
 
 " Do you not see that it is not not proper " 
 
 Merrily she shook her head. 
 
 " Proper? But why? Am I not decently covered? And 
 I can run, and jump skirts," she added, with a compre- 
 hensive glance of sympathy at his dusty old soutan, " are 
 such a nuisance, aren't they ? " 
 
 Her eyes said more. They said : " After all, dear good 
 old man, isn't it rather a joke, you, a man in petticoats, 
 scolding me, a girl, for wearing trousers ? " 
 
 He shuffled his clumsy, silver-buckled shoes uneasily on 
 the stone floor. "Are your father and mother alive?" 
 
 " No, both dead," she answered cheerfully. 
 
 "What what were they?" 
 
 Vaguely he felt that she must be a little better bred than 
 most of his parishioners. 
 
 But she did not understand. 
 
 " My father was a Roman, Padre, and my mother was 
 English." 
 
 " Ahl " The old man rose, rubbing his hands, and nod- 
 ding with relief. " English ! That, then, explains it. 
 There are no doubt many very good English people, but- 
 they are all a little queer, all a little queer. And you? 
 You have lived in England?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No, Padre. I am a Roman." 
 
 She stood there, the Roman, a gallant little figure in 
 the sunlight, the faded blue of her sailor collar throwing 
 her rich colouring into fine relief. 
 
 "I am all Roman, I!" 
 
 So she thought.
 
 FATHER ANTONIO 65 
 
 But the old man thought differently and smiled at her 
 very kindly. 
 
 " I see, I see, my dear," he said, " but you are growing 
 up, you are nearly a woman " 
 
 " God forbid ! " she interrupted heartily. 
 
 " Hush ! Nearly a woman. And it is time you wore 
 the clothes of a female. Will you not take an old man's 
 advice?" 
 
 She smiled at him. " Ah, Padre dear Father, don't 
 say that. Think of my poor legs in petticoats ! " 
 
 " Your poor legs are too old to be exposed. They must 
 be covered. They must" 
 
 Out in the little patch of garden leading to the priest's 
 house, a bird sang in a blossoming almond-tree. Beechy 
 forgot her legs and listened rapturously, her mouth quiv- 
 ering with delight. 
 
 " Oh, how sweet, how lovely ! " she cried. " I do love 
 birds." 
 
 The old man whose day, such as it had been, was done, 
 watched her a little sadly. His eyes had been sharp, his 
 wits keen, but his field of observation had necessarily been 
 narrow. And here, in this brown-faced girl-boy he knew 
 he had found something beyond his understanding. That 
 she was half-foreign explained much, for every uneducated 
 Italian knows that all foreigners are a little mad, but there 
 was not only her strange blood to deal with, there was some- 
 thing else that he could not at all seize. 
 
 And this saddened him, for he was of those, perhaps 
 really the salt of the earth, whose only ambition is to help 
 others. 
 
 " You run great dangers by this way of dressing," he 
 murmured feebly.
 
 66 BEECHY 
 
 "Oh no! Not that. You see, Padre mio buono, I am 
 an opera-singer at the Leopardi, and they are all very 
 good to me. If I was a girl the women would not be 
 good to me because I sing well. Besides " 
 
 "Besides?" 
 
 " If the men knew I was a girl they would make love 
 to me ! " she chuckled. " Once I was dressed as a girl in 
 a chorus, and the tenor tried to kiss me! " 
 
 Brazen reminiscences told at the foot of a great wooden 
 crucifix in a sacristy on Easter Sunday! 
 
 A great clashing and clanging of bells, filling the air 
 with their clangour, ended the conversation. Sighing, the 
 old man rose and bade his visitor depart. 
 
 " Come and see me," he said gently. " I live across the 
 garden Father Antonio. You will come ? " 
 
 " Gladly, Father, and thank you." 
 
 But he knew something of the world after all. 
 
 "You promise?" he insisted gently. 
 
 " I promise, Father." 
 
 Then he let her go and she crossed the dark church 
 again, with a hasty bob to the altar, and, her brow and 
 fingers damp with blessed water, she pushed back the dirty 
 leather curtain and went out into the sunny little piazzetta.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 WHY GIACOMINI'S FACE WAS SCRATCHED 
 
 SIGNOR GIACOMINI, the husband of the dramatic 
 soprano, was a typical Mangia-cantante or, literally 
 translated, " Singer-eater." 
 
 That is to say, he lived, with beautiful completeness, on 
 his wife. 
 
 In early life a waiter in a restaurant, he had on her first 
 success retired from business and settled down as a gen- 
 tleman of leisure, haunter of theatres, sponge, vagabond, 
 doer of dirty work. 
 
 Signora Giacomini loved him, and was an honest woman, 
 but had she not been honest the role of mart complaisant 
 would assuredly have been added to the others he adorned. 
 
 He was a small swaggering man given to occasional erup- 
 tions of imitation jewelled tie-pins, studs and chains. His 
 eyes were puffy and sly, his hands dirty and eloquent. 
 
 He exists in theatrical circles by the hundred, and as a 
 rule he is despised, though individually he is sometimes 
 rather popular, for he is as often as not free with his wife's 
 money and always ready to waste time laughing, and play- 
 ing cards, and drinking very slightly alcoholic drinks. 
 
 Giacomini possessed an intensely sweet little tenor voice, 
 and might easily have sung in the chorus had such a posi- 
 tion not been beneath the dignity of the soprano's hus- 
 band. 
 
 6?
 
 68 BEECHY 
 
 So he spent most of his time sitting in the wings criti- 
 cising the artists or playing cards at a cafe round the cor- 
 ner. 
 
 The man was thoroughly to be despised, and of no im- 
 portance whatever except that he brought about a small 
 event that was of certain usefulness to Beechy. 
 
 " Carmen " was at that time a new opera and in Rome it 
 was very popular. So after Easter it was put on again 
 and Beechy was permanently advanced to the part of first 
 aid in high notes to Mercedes, vice Violetta Urbani, re- 
 tired. 
 
 Landucci was ill, not too ill to go on with his so sorely 
 needed work, but far from well. Beechy was very fond 
 of the little director, and detested as cordially his carp- 
 ing, disagreeable wife. So it was with great joy that the 
 girl came in one evening to find Landucci sitting by her 
 window. "She has gone!" he cried, "gone for a whole 
 week!" 
 
 "Bravo! But where?" 
 
 " To Calabria. Her mother is ill Oh, Bici," the poor 
 man went on, stretching his arms over his head with a deep 
 sigh, " I am so glad." 
 
 Beechy poured some water into her basin and washed her 
 hands. 
 
 " Glad! So am I! What luck to have her mother ill." 
 
 " Oh, hush ! I am sorry she's ill you ought not to say 
 that " 
 
 Beechy laughed. "Why not? I don't know her, and 
 somebody's mother is bound to be ill, I suppose, so I'm 
 glad it's the Signora Luisa's. You look tired, Maestro." 
 
 His face darkened. " Tired ! Yes. Bici " he hesi- 
 tated, pushing the dark black hair from his brow.
 
 WHY HIS FACE WAS SCRATCHED 69 
 
 " Ebbene? " 
 
 " How old are you, twelve? Yes. No. You are too 
 
 young, too young " he broke off and gazed regretfully 
 
 at her. 
 
 "Too young for what, Maestro?" 
 
 She stood still, the coarse towel in her hands. 
 
 With a shrug he tried to laugh, " No, no, it is nothing. 
 Let's go and dine, you must be hungry." 
 
 She said no more and they went downstairs to the res- 
 taurant. 
 
 It was only six o'clock and the place was empty. The 
 director ordered some macaroni and a flask of Chianti. 
 " This is the first meal I have had without her for over two 
 years," he said, " God! " 
 
 Beechy, who was hungry, began to eat bread at once. 
 She now paid for her food as she ate it, but only half what 
 other people paid. 
 
 In return for this favour she read the paper every day 
 to Signora Campi, and did that unwieldy woman's errands 
 twice a week, devoting the whole afternoon to them. 
 
 It was a business arrangement like another and proved 
 very satisfactory both to the party of the first, and the party 
 of the second. 
 
 Tripe and onions was her choice of a dish for that 
 evening, and very good it was with bread and wine. 
 
 Landucci was silent at first, and then, towards the end of 
 the meal, he began to talk. 
 
 " It is hell," he said, " neither more nor less, I tell you. 
 And two hells in one life is too much. Too much ! " 
 
 "Two hells?" 
 
 "Yes. The one at the theatre and then here with
 
 70 BEECHY 
 
 Beechy, whose table manners were, of course, those of 
 her associates, wiped her plate scrupulously with a bit of 
 bread and popped the bread into ther mouth. " But what 
 hell at the theatre ? " she asked. 
 
 Landucci poured out another glass of the oily dark wine. 
 " Ha! You haven't seen it. Of course not. Who cares 
 about about me ? " 
 
 Beechy glanced sharply at him. 
 
 "You'll have a headache if you drink any more wine," 
 she observed. 
 
 " Headache! Do you think a man whose heart is being 
 torn to shreds by red-hot pincers can even feel a headache ? " 
 He laughed harshly. 
 
 His forcible language made no effect on Beechy, hyper- 
 bole is the natural expression of his kind. But his laugh 
 was wild and his face very white. 
 
 " If he should get to the theatre drunk," she reflected 
 quite without horror, " there would be a row and he would 
 get the sack. What had I better do?" 
 
 " A headache! " he repeated with scorn. 
 
 "Well at all events," she retorted adroitly, "you are 
 being very greedy and not giving me any." 
 
 This touched his mind and eagerly he filled her 
 glass. 
 
 There it stood. If she herself drank it, what would hap- 
 pen? The bottle was empty now but for a little, and that 
 he drank thirstily. 
 
 "Ebbene? Don't you want it?" 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 " Because if you don't I have the devil's own thirst to- 
 night " 
 
 Rapidly her brain worked. If Landucci got drunk, he
 
 WHY HIS FACE WAS SCRATCHED 71 
 
 would be ruined. If she, Beechy got drunk, it meant 
 she could go up to bed and merely pay a fine for missing 
 a performance. 
 
 So she took the glass, looked at it with a funny little 
 smile and drained it. 
 
 "Bravo!" Landucci rose with a loud laugh. "Well 
 done. Come along, it's time time to get back there " 
 
 Beechy followed him obediently. Because she did not at 
 once stumble and fall she concluded that the wine was not 
 going to affect her. 
 
 They walked slowly through the streets, still in broad 
 daylight, and then Landucci's voice became the voice of a 
 man speaking through a trumpet. It was so loud, so 
 resonant, so very, very queer. No one, strangely enough, 
 turned to look at him, and this surprised Beechy. 
 
 Then she forgot his voice in the strangeness of finding 
 that the street was paved with dough. Her feet sank into 
 the dough, it stuck to them, they stuck to it; she pulled 
 and shook them in vain. 
 
 Then Landucci looked at her for a moment and with a 
 sudden laugh picked her up and carried her the short way to 
 the theatre. 
 
 " Don't bother him," she heard him say, somewhere miles 
 away as he laid her down. " He's tired, but he'll wake up 
 in time to dress " 
 
 Then oblivion. 
 
 When oblivion passed away in great shreds, like clouds 
 after rain, letting in light and sight, music filled the 
 air. 
 
 Beechy sat up and listened, smiling indulgently. Then 
 her face changed. It was the Toreador's song! Shr, was 
 too late!
 
 72 BEECHY. 
 
 They were there, the others, at Lillas Pastia's, the quin- 
 tette was sung and what could it have been without her? 
 Her artistic appreciation of her own value, a quality so 
 often mistaken for conceit, gave her a little shock. The 
 quintette, without any high notes must have been horrible, 
 and the card scene was coming 1 
 
 Giving herself a hard shake she rose and made her way 
 into the dressing-room where her costume hung. 
 
 The dresser, an old woman with only one tooth, grinned 
 at her. " Begun young, you have," she cried jeeringly. " f The 
 Materassi tried to wake you, but you only grinned and slept 
 on " 
 
 " Shut up," ordered Beechy unabashed, " and help me 
 dress. Thank goodness I woke up in time for the fortune 
 telling " 
 
 Hastily she got into her little red skirt and white blouse 
 an'd pulled the blue shawl round her shoulders. Her 
 wig went on with a jerk and a dab of paint on each 
 cheek administered with hasty skill, completed her prepara- 
 tions. 
 
 She was just going out when the door opened and 
 Giacomini came in. 
 
 " Hello," he said, " why were you so late ? " 
 
 " Drunk," returned Beechy, kicking off her boots and 
 holding out her hand for her high-heeled slippers. 
 
 He laughed a little shamefacedly, for not only did h 
 not believe her, but he thought she was referring to an in- 
 creasing shortcoming of his own. 
 
 " Little beast," he muttered. " I say, it's hard luck for 
 you that you aren't really a girl. You'd be a very pretty 
 one, you know." 
 
 She surveyed herself in the glass, pulling at her sleeves
 
 WHY HIS FACE WAS SCRATCHED 73 
 
 and adjusting her wig with the frank absorption in her ap- 
 pearance that stage people all seem to have. 
 
 "Pretty, should I? You think so, old Red-Nose?" 
 
 Being a boy had decidedly deteriorated her manners, and 
 her vocabulary was nearly as rough as that of her confreres. 
 
 He flushed angrily. "My nose isn't red," he retorted, 
 "and if it was " 
 
 " And if it was, your wife is a singer, isn't she, so you 
 are a great swell " 
 
 She pirouetted on her heels and making a hideous grimace 
 at him tried to dash past to the door. 
 
 But he was extremely angry and he thought her only a 
 very impertinent little boy. 
 
 Catching her tightly he laid her over his knees and ad- 
 ministered to her a short, sharp spanking. 
 
 " Take that, you little swine, and that ," he said, and 
 
 then let her go, with a laugh. 
 
 But she! 
 
 At that moment she became so to speak a girl. All 
 sorts of hitherto unfelt delicacies sprang into life in her 
 breast; feminine vanity, feminine pride, feminine helpless- 
 ness set her raging. 
 
 And then with feminine ringers she clawed his face, 
 scoring it well under one eye, hurting him horribly, nearly 
 blinding him as, all unprepared as he had been for thz 
 attack, he tried to disengage himself. 
 
 " You swine, you dog, you " uneditable all her 
 
 epithets, culled from a choice vocabulary of street boys' 
 language. 
 
 She left him dancing with pain and rage. Incidentally, 
 he called her things that at least equalled her epithets, but 
 the mischief was done.
 
 74 BEECHY 
 
 Only a woman thing could have done just that; a man 
 thing would have gone at him with fists or feet, and the 
 snarling, high-pitched, half-sobbing voice had also been 
 that of a woman. 
 
 The Singer-eater wiped his face with a checked purple 
 and yellow handkerchief, and powdered it tenderly. 
 
 Then he went round to the wings. He had a plan.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 WHY BEECHY BECAME A GIRL 
 
 MEANTIME Beechy had gone on to sing Mer- 
 cedes' solo, that lady being what her English 
 prototype would have styled down and out with 
 toothache. 
 
 "You know the words, don't you?" asked the stage 
 manager, wiping his harassed brow. 
 
 " Si, Signore Direttore." 
 
 That was all. And thus, that eventful night, Beechy 
 sang a real name-part. 
 
 Her immature, shrill voice was true, and she knew her 
 lines perfectly. Things went well, and the Maestri of the 
 orchestra smiled up at her encouragingly. She sang so hard 
 that she nearly burst. Her one idea was to be heard, and 
 in her ignorance shrieking seemed the only way to gain her 
 end. So she shrieked. She also thoroughly enjoyed her- 
 self. 
 
 It happens to few to be spanked at ten o'clock and 
 promoted to a name-role at eleven! 
 
 When her duo was over she sat on a sack of shav- 
 ings and looked round. 
 
 Everyone had a good word for her. She was not only 
 popular but she was to all these people of small intense 
 rivalries beyond the pale of competition. She was a boy. 
 
 But to-night more than one looked at her cunningly. She 
 was thoroughly feminine even in expression to-night. 
 
 75
 
 76 BEECHY 
 
 " Give me a kiss, Mercedes," said Morales, now a gypsy, 
 making her an absurd bow. 
 
 " Stow it," answered the fair one vulgarly. 
 
 Her language was crude but she was remarkably pretty, 
 and different from usual. 
 
 Landucci was leading badly, his face as white as paper, 
 his eyes burning. 
 
 He looked dangerous and Beechy regretted her long sleep. 
 If she had been awake she might have kept an eye on him. 
 " I do hope he hasn't had any more wine," she thought. 
 
 Then Escamillo came on and Jose's despair began. The 
 barley-sugar tenor was a good actor, and there was no 
 sugar about him now. 
 
 The scene between the two men (musically one of the 
 finest in the opera) went on, and then Carmen interfered. 
 
 At this point Landucci usually began to smile with sat- 
 isfaction, but to-night his tense face did not relax. Beechy 
 watched him anxiously. 
 
 Disaster was indeed in the air. 
 
 " Look at the director," she whispered to Carmen as 
 that troublous person sauntered past her during Jose's short 
 duologue with Mecaela, " doesn't he look queer? " 
 
 " He always does look queer," returned the woman in- 
 differently. " Bici, have you seen my husband this even- 
 ing?" 
 
 Beechy laughed. " Si, Signora ! " 
 
 " Why do you laugh ? " Carmen turned, her painted eyes 
 suddenly alight with a kind of hunger of suspicion. 
 
 " Whom was he talking to? Not " 
 
 "With me" Beechy hastened to reassure her, and the 
 woman sighed, relieved. 
 
 Beechy's smile, however, hovered on her lips still.
 
 WHY BEECHY BECAME A GIRL 77 
 
 " Well what are you laughing at ? " 
 
 " He I scratched him. Wait till you see his face ! " 
 
 "Scratched him! But why?" 
 
 " He struck me." Something within her prevented hei 
 from telling the whole truth, some new sense of indignity. 
 
 Signora Giacomini shrugged her shoulders as she pre- 
 pared to go back to the centre of the stage. " Scratching 
 is a woman's trick," she said, with light disdain. "Boys 
 don't do it ! " 
 
 Beechy stuck out her lip. It was true. Boys hammered 
 the enemy with their fists hitherto, in her not unfrequent 
 battles, she too had done so, or even butted, goat-like. 
 
 " I scratched," she decided, half-ashamed of her sex, " be- 
 cause I am a girl. Oh, dear ! " 
 
 Meantime, everyone on the stage felt vaguely that some- 
 thing was in the air, something ominous. 
 
 Italians are extremely sensitive to such atmospheric warn- 
 ings. 
 
 Beechy worked her way through the crowd to the right 
 and watched the faces of the chorus people, catching a 
 whisper here and there. 
 
 "Look at him " "Santa Madonna, what is it?" 
 
 " If I were the tenor " 
 
 The tenor had started away with Micaela, the crowd 
 making way for them, and thereby it seemed, as it al- 
 ways seemed, that if they hurried, they might get away 
 before Escamillo's return, and all the subsequent tragedy 
 be averted. 
 
 Landucci was paler than ever now, and his hands waved 
 rather vaguely over the heads of his men. 
 
 " I'll get him home at once," Beechy decided, " as soon 
 as it's over. He is ill, poor Maestro."
 
 78 BEECHY 
 
 " Toreador " 
 
 The insolent, triumphant air rang out from the left. 
 Carmen started forward, her face expressing ecstatic de- 
 light. 
 
 Jose pushed his way through the crowd, haggard, des- 
 perate his facial expression, Beechy saw with a shock of 
 sudden terror, the counterpart of the director's. 
 
 Roughly he caught the woman and flung her down. 
 " Sei mia," he thundered. " Thou art mine " 
 
 At that minute, in the midst of the music a pistol shot 
 rang out, the tenor flung up his hands and, lurching heav- 
 ily forward, fell. 
 
 For a moment the musicians played on, and the audience 
 did not realise what had happened. Then a woman 
 screamed, someone gave a loud laugh, the music clashed and 
 broke off, and the stage was filled with a huddled, wild- 
 faced crowd in the centre of which knelt two or three 
 people, and a man's voice cried, " Is there a doctor in the 
 audience ? " 
 
 Landucci stood still in his place. Then he turned and 
 looked at the audience, his pistol still in his hand. 
 
 " E mia," he said with a silly laugh, paraphrasing Jose's 
 last words, " She is mine." 
 
 The confusion was indescribable, and in the midst of it 
 a small thin man in brown clothes hurried down the aisle 
 and clambered up over the footlights. The doctor. 
 
 The orchestra had already dispersed, but the director 
 still stood in his place, looking now at his revolver, then 
 at the audience. 
 
 As the curtain went down two men in long black cloaks 
 and cocked hats came marching down the middle aisle, every 
 one making way for them. Policemen.
 
 WHY BEECHY BECAME A GIRL 79 
 
 Landucci's quick eyes saw them and he pointed his pis- 
 tol at them. They paused. 
 
 " I will shoot if you come any nearer," he called, 
 'distinctly. "I am going to shoot several people to- 
 night " 
 
 The theatre was by this time nearly empty. 
 
 " You are covered from the stage," returned the quicker- 
 witted of the two guardie. " If you shoot you will be 
 shot from behind " 
 
 The madman hesitated and half turned 
 
 " It is a lie there is no one there and she is mine 
 now!" 
 
 The hubbub behind the curtain (on which was de- 
 picted a moonlit scene on Lake Como strangely peaceful 
 and out of place it seemed) had subsided. 
 
 The men of law consulted rapidly. Landucci could not! 
 leave the theatre. Whichever exit he might try was 
 guarded, but he might do much harm with his pistol. 
 
 Suddenly from the left the great curtain stirred as if a 
 mild earthquake were moving the marble balcony over the 
 lake, and a small white-faced woman came out. 
 
 " Maestro," she called softly, leaning over the footlights. 
 
 He looked over his shoulder. 
 
 "Oh, it's you what do you want?" 
 
 " I want will you help me down, please ? " 
 
 He hesitated. "What do you want to do?" 
 
 " I want to come down." 
 
 She looked very small, and his mazed mind seemed to* 
 grasp the fact of her utter helplessness. 
 
 " Yes, I will help you, Bici, you, but no one else." 
 
 He went to the footlights, stood on a chair and held out 
 his hands. He had forgotten the guardie.
 
 8o BEECHY 
 
 " Is he dead ? " he asked cunningly, and she answered 
 with a grave, unmoved face: 
 
 " Oh, yes, quite dead. Don't let me fall Oh please 
 put down that thing ! " 
 
 He frowned and drew back. " No, oh, no, I won't put 
 it down, don't be afraid of it " 
 
 She leaned down and put her hands, trumpet-wise, to 
 her mouth. " You know," she whispered, " I am really a 
 girl!" 
 
 Landucci burst out laughing, and laid his pistol down 
 on the edge of the stage. " So you are, poverina," he cried, 
 uproariously. " I had forgotten. Well, come along " 
 
 A minute later and he was held and bound by the guardie 
 and Beechy sat huddled on the floor by the big drum, crying 
 as she had never cried in her life, shaken and trembling, 
 and as feminine a creature as ever was born. 
 
 When the poor man had been taken away she crept back 
 up on to the stage and went behind the curtain. The tenor, 
 dead, lay where he had fallen, several people standing round 
 him. Carmen, leaning on her husband's arm, the stage man- 
 ager, Frasquita who had been in a dead faint, and whose 
 red hair was dark with water, the doctor and one or two 
 others. 
 
 Beechy never forgot the picture; the dirty stage with its 
 coarsely painted rocks and trees; the camp-fire still glowing 
 like a ruby under its painted fuel; the sacks and boxes of 
 the smugglers, the Toreador's cloak lying in a heap where 
 he had in his horror dropped it, and in the middle of the 
 stage, the pitifully small body of the dead man in his green 
 velvet suit, his painted face stiff with horror. 
 
 " Has he gone ? " whispered Frasquita, her lip shaking. 
 Beechy nodded. " Yes, the guardie took him. Oh, how
 
 WHY BEECHY BECAME A GIRL 81 
 
 awful it is." She crossed herself as she looked at the dead 
 man. "What had they quarrelled about?" 
 
 Carmen shuddered and laid her face against her hus- 
 band's arm. 
 
 " Hush," said the stage manager, sharply. " You had 
 all better go, Signora Giacomini " 
 
 She nodded and, taking Beechy's hand, the three walked 
 away, towards her dressing-room. 
 
 Everyone else had gone, for Italians do not like tragedy 
 and have none of the morbid excitement of an English 
 crowd. 
 
 Beechy sat down and began to cry, silently, without 
 grimaces, big tears rolling down her cheeks. 
 
 " Don't dear," said Carmen kindly, taking off her jacket. 
 " It can't help " 
 
 "But why did he do it?" persisted the child, "dear, 
 good Maestro! Why?" 
 
 The woman paused as she stepped out of her skirt, and 
 glanced at her husband. 
 
 " Mad, dear." 
 
 " Poor Maestro Landucci," declared the Singer-eater, with 
 vanity, " had the misfortune to love my wife. And he 
 was jealous." 
 
 Beechy dashed the tears from her eyes. " Oh ! " 
 
 " Yes. And poor Mascheroni, he always hated him 
 because my Signora in the opera, loved him. I mean " 
 
 " Oh hush, Nino," protested Maria Giacomini. " What 
 is the use of telling him ! He's too young to understand." 
 
 " No, I'm not, Signora. I do understand. He was mad 
 with jealousy, really, the way the poor tenor was as Don 
 Jose. Oh, poveretto, poverettol What will they do to 
 him?"
 
 82 BEECHY 
 
 Giacomini, whose scratched face hurt him, came near the 
 child. 
 
 "They will let him off for a crime of passion, or 
 they will shut him up as a lunatic, Signorina" he said 
 slowly. 
 
 Beechy started. The man had lent a very marked signi- 
 ficance to his last word. 
 
 " Do you understand, Signorina ? " he added. 
 
 His wife, who was cleaning the grease from her face with 
 cold cream, paid no heed. To her he was teasing a boy by 
 referring to the girl's clothes he wore. 
 
 But Beechy knew that she was discovered. 
 
 "At the trial," pursued the man, licking his lips with 
 enjoyment, "you will be an important witness; you knew 
 the murderer well; you lived in the same house with him; 
 you dined with him this very evening, or last night, for 
 it is now after midnight. If you prove that he is sane, 
 Good-night! " He made a gesture signifying that it would 
 be the end of all things for Landucci. "And you will be 
 an interesting witness for many reasons" 
 
 Beechy watched him with fascinated loathing as he went 
 on. 
 
 " ' The boy Bici,' will be in all the papers ' the boy 
 Bid' Signorina ! " 
 
 Suddenly she was seized with a perfectly unreasoning 
 terror. The trial, the newspapers, the badgering people 
 above all this horrible leering man with the scratched face. 
 They would all know that she was a girl, for he would 
 tell. 
 
 And a blinding rush of shame of her travesty came over 
 her. It seemed to her that she was a monstrous thing, that 
 it was disgraceful to be a girl and wear a boy's clothes.
 
 WHY BEECHY BECAME A GIRL 83 
 
 For the second time that night she felt herself a woman 
 and this time the realisation had come to stay. 
 
 Without a word she left the room and hurrying into the 
 clothes that she now blushed to wear, she crept past the 
 hunchback at the door and once in the street ran as hard as 
 she could run, away from the direction of the Two Queens. 
 The horror of the morrow was too great to be borne, so 
 she would not bear it. 
 
 It was striking one when she reached the Church of Saint 
 Franceschino. The two great doors were closed, but to the 
 right was a small wicket in a dusty old stone wall. And a 
 rusty bell-wire hung by the wicket. Far away she heard 
 the little tinkle. Then she waited. She waited for a long 
 time, and pulled twice again before the wicket opened and 
 an old woman in a short skirt and a purple jacket asked 
 her what she wanted. 
 
 " I must see Father Antonio " 
 
 " Is it for the Sacrament? " 
 
 To have said yes would have been a bad lie. So she told 
 a good lie instead. 
 
 " No, but it is about a death. A confession, " 
 
 The old woman who was the priest's cousin and servant, 
 looked very cross, but her orders were strict, so Beechy was 
 led across the little sleeping garden, that smelt of violets, to 
 the house, and told to wait in a bare room adorned by a 
 glaring chromolithograph of His Holiness Leo XIII. 
 
 The vast grin of that clever man at first interested, then 
 rather appalled her. " He looks like a baboon," she 
 thought, irreverently, adding " God forgive me." 
 
 Father Antonio, when he came in, found her standing 
 with her arms folded, her head bent, a Napoleonic attitude 
 that was natural to her.
 
 84 BEECHY 
 
 " So you have come back," the old man said gently, rec- 
 ognising her with surprise. " I am sorry to see that you 
 are still wearing trousers." 
 
 Beechy drew a long breath. 
 
 " I have come to ask you to let me stay here for a day 
 or two," she said simply. " I I am tired of being a boy. 
 I am going to be a girl now."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE CALL OF THE ORPHANS 
 
 THE instinctive evasion of unpleasantnesses and diffi- 
 culties was as deep-seated in Beatrice Cavaleone as 
 was the habit of breathing. She was no coward, as 
 her going to Landucci when he had a revolver in his hand, 
 has proved. She had in her earlier days gone hungry to bed 
 without a word of complaint, envy was unknown to her, the 
 contemplation of beautifully-dressed, well-fed children 
 awoke in her only a sense of artistic pleasure. Forgiveness 
 came to her with no effort whatsoever, and nothing she 
 could do for those she loved (and she loved many people) 
 was any trouble to her. She had her good points. But if 
 an unpleasant situation could be evaded, she evaded it, con- 
 scienceless and content. In this matter of the inquest and 
 trial she would have done her part not only with scrupulous 
 correctness, but also with a sort of grim enjoyment, for it 
 would have been an experience, and her eager mind was 
 hungry for experiences. She would have testified, given up 
 her time, without a murmur, had it been a question of the 
 boy Bid. 
 
 But Giacomini had showed her that the matter was not 
 so simple. Not only the boy Bici, the hard-skulled news- 
 paper-vendor with his ready wit and store of forcible lan- 
 guage, would be questioned and badgered; he could have 
 borne it all with more than equanimity. 
 
 85
 
 86 BEECHY 
 
 But that new person, the girl Beechy, how could she 
 endure it? 
 
 She would suffer in her strange girl-feelings, incompre- 
 hensible to their owner; she would feel all hot in the cheeks 
 as she had when that dog of a Giacomini had spanked 
 her. 
 
 It was a strange thing, the boy Bici had been knocked 
 about by other boys there was one battle in the Piazza 
 Navona the evening of Epiphany out of which the boy 
 Bici had emerged with an awful eye and a cut lip. She 
 had been beaten then, and she had been angry and longed 
 for revenge. But her feelings then had been quite different 
 from those which lent sharpness to her nails after the spank- 
 ing affair. 
 
 It was all a puzzle; but one thing was plain: the new 
 creature, the girl, could not and would not go through the 
 horrors of the inquest and trial. So she had come to Father 
 Antonio, intending to stay, if he would allow her, for three 
 days. 
 
 She stayed many months. 
 
 That is, she spent more than a year in the neighbouring 
 convent of San Franceschino, and as the gardens of the 
 convent opened into the priest's garden, never a day passed 
 that she did not see the good old man and the sour-worded, 
 kind-hearted old Assunta, his servant. 
 
 It came about very simply, as strange things were always 
 to come to Beechy. 
 
 The morning after her arrival at his house, Father 
 Antonio sent Assunta out to buy proper clothes for his 
 guest. 
 
 The old woman, grumbling under her breath (for her 
 cousin and master had an awful way of silencing her and
 
 THE CALL OF THE ORPHANS 87 
 
 bringing shame to her by quoting the New Testament to 
 her) departed, a large basket on her arm. 
 
 Beechy wandered round the little garden, in which hya- 
 cinths were beginning to dig their way up to the sunlight, 
 and waited. 
 
 Father Antonio was saying mass, and the child was 
 quite alone. 
 
 It was a mild day that smelt of spring. In one corner 
 of the garden lilies-of-the-valley were coming, and birds 
 flew against the bright blue of the sky. A day that brings 
 song naturally to the throat, and laughter to the lips. 
 
 Poor Maestro! Beechy walked up and down, her arms 
 folded, thinking of her friend and his probable fate. If 
 things went badly, if any doubt grew in the minds of those 
 responsible for his future, then she must go and help, feel- 
 ings or no feelings. She remembered many things that had 
 happened of late, things that might go to prove the poor 
 man to be of unsound mind. 
 
 Ah yes, if she could help him she would go. But if she 
 could not help him, why should she leave this lovely quiet 
 place that seemed so well to suit the new Beechy? 
 
 To her mind it was perfectly logical and perfectly fair. 
 
 The quiet of the old, world-forgotten Piazza was very 
 soothing to her tired nerves; from the church a delightful 
 church unvisited by tourists, for it held no art treasures, 
 and no remnants of saintly humanity came the drone of the 
 organ; in the Piazza stood tall red houses inhabited by 
 decent poor people. Children played in the broad open 
 space, not even cabs disturbed the silence, for the place was 
 no thoroughfare, and there was nothing to see in it. A lost 
 corner of the world; a backwater of life. 
 
 Beechy knelt by a flower bed and sniffed at the hya-
 
 88 BEECHY 
 
 cinths. They smelt more of damp earth than of anything 
 else, for their bells were still rolled tightly together, and 
 their colours were veiled and chill. 
 
 Still they smelt of spring. Everything smelt of spring. 
 
 Beechy rose and to express her feelings turned half a 
 dozen somersaults. Then she walked on her hands. 
 
 It was in this attitude, as she waved her clumsily booted 
 feet joyously in the air that the horror-stricken old Assunta 
 found her on her return. 
 
 " Santissima Madonna ! Verily, I believe you are pos- 
 sessed," the old woman said, setting down her basket and 
 locking the gate. " It is a scandal. Suppose one of the 
 good Sisters should see you ! " 
 
 Beechy, right side up, rubbed her hands together and 
 turned round. " One of the good Sisters?" 
 
 " Yes. In the Convent. Holy ladies who teach poor 
 children and pray for the unregenerate." 
 
 "Like me! Then that is a convent? Well I won't 
 do it again, only, Assunta, dear," she picked up the basket 
 and laid her arm over the old woman's bent shoulders, " you 
 have no idea what a relief to one's feelings it is to walk on 
 one's hands ! " 
 
 When Father Antonio came in for his frugal breakfast, 
 he found a tall girl in an ill-fitting, bright blue woollen 
 frock, sitting in the garden. 
 
 Beechy had looked far better in her boy's clothes, for the 
 blue frock was very hideous indeed. 
 
 Also she stumbled over the skirt which was too long, and 
 sitting in boyish attitudes gave her a very queer look. 
 
 But Father Antonio was much pleased with the change. 
 
 Why she had come he did not know. He had asked no 
 questions, possibly because he was learned in the matter of
 
 THE CALL OF THE ORPHANS 89 
 
 getting information from women, and as yet she had said 
 nothing. 
 
 At about four o'clock, when he called her, he found that 
 she had disappeared. 
 
 She had taken the hat Assunta had brought her, a brown 
 straw sailor, and gone out to buy a newspaper. 
 
 She got one without any difficulty, and holding up her 
 skirts in a laughably clumsy way, hurried home. 
 
 Afraid to take the paper into the house, she tucked up 
 her offending and senseless skirt and climbed into a tall tree 
 that grew near the convent wall. 
 
 At almost the first words she closed her eyes and clung 
 hard to the branch on which she was perched. 
 
 Landucci was dead. On his way to the police-station 
 he had poisoned himself with some stuff he had had in his 
 pocket. 
 
 " Mad, or not mad?" the paper asked, going into the 
 matter at some length. 
 
 Beechy, sick with horror, wondered. He had been in 
 love with the Giacomini. And he had hated his own wife. 
 He was jealous. He had prepared the poison, he had de- 
 liberately shot the man while in a position that absolutely 
 prohibited his escape. 
 
 "Not mad," decided the child. "If he had been, he 
 wouldn't have got the poison." And she never changed her 
 mind. 
 
 For a long time she sat there among the young leaves 
 afraid to move. Landucci had been good to her and she 
 had seen the horror of his life, and she had loved him. 
 Her father had gone, and her friend had gone. The world 
 for about ten minutes seemed a very dreadful place to her. 
 
 Then, suddenly, a sound of singing came to her; a
 
 90 BEECHY 
 
 quaint, quiet singing; a simple unadorned air, many voices, 
 yet strangely without body. For a moment the sound added 
 a new terror to things, and then she realised why it was 
 strange. 
 
 There was no orchestra, and the voices were all children's. 
 Plaintively cheerful it was, real music of orphans. 
 
 " Our little hearts we bring them, 
 Oh, Mary dear, to thee " 
 
 Beechy's brows untied and her mouth softened. Then, 
 very cautiously, she climbed higher and looked down into 
 the garden of the convent. 
 
 Forty odd little girls stood in two rows in the evening 
 light, behind long narrow tables on which at regular inter- 
 vals stood coarse brown bowls of milk, each flanked by a 
 hunch of grey bread. 
 
 They wore ugly little grey frocks and white caps under 
 which their serious eyes looked very sweet, and their eighty 
 odd little hands were neatly folded as they sang their grace 
 before meat: 
 
 " Oh, Mary dear, we thank thee 
 For all Thy sweet bountee " 
 
 It was quite a delightful picture, and Beechy laughed 
 aloud with appreciative delight. 
 
 " Little dears," she said, " how quaint they are ! " 
 
 Two young nuns stood at each table, and when the grace 
 was ended the children sat quietly down and dipped their 
 big spoons into their milk. 
 
 Beechy's mind, thoroughly feminised by the innocent 
 spectacle, flew back to the Two Queens.
 
 THE CALL OF THE ORPHANS 91 
 
 " Oh, my cradle," she thought, sick for home, " I want 
 my cradle." 
 
 An hour later as Father Antonio sat dozing over his 
 rosary Beechy came in. 
 
 The room was small, floored with well-oiled dark brick, 
 and contained, beside two straw-bottomed chairs, only a 
 table, covered with a neat red and white cover, a chest of 
 drawers on which stood two piles of books and a white wax 
 crucifix twinkling with mica, under a glass case. On the 
 wall hung an engraving of the Pope, a rather good copy 
 of Guido Rent's Ecce Homo, and a water-colour sketch of 
 the Cathedral of Siena. A bare and clean little room, its 
 open door and window looking into the garden that spring 
 had already smiled on. 
 
 The old priest's fine head stood out against the square 
 of light that was the window, his diaphanous hands folded 
 on his lap round the forgotten rosary. A good man full of 
 years. 
 
 "Padre!" 
 
 He started, his big steel-rimmed glasses sliding down his 
 long nose. 
 
 " Yes? Yes? What is it, my daughter?" 
 
 Beechy stood awkwardly in the doorway, her ungainly 
 gown hanging stiffly round her. 
 
 " Father, I have been listening to the children sing. To 
 the little orphans in the convent garden." 
 
 "Yes, my child?" 
 
 Cautiously, that she might not fall, she scratched one 
 leg with the toe of her other boot. 
 
 " I I like orphans," she said. 
 
 " That is right. We should all love orphans " 
 
 " Besides, I am one myself."
 
 92 'BEECHY 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 The old man was tired, and did not quite guess her 
 meaning, but his kindness was unfailing. 
 
 Beechy looked (with sincerest admiration) at the glisten- 
 ing crucifix with its ornament of ivy leaves. 
 
 " I was thinking," she went on slowly, " that perhaps 
 the good sisters would allow me to go and play with the 
 orphans with the very little ones." 
 
 Father Antonio murmured a hasty prayer of thanks for 
 this simple elucidation of his problem of what to do with his 
 strange guest. 
 
 " I will ask the Mother Superior," he declared, taking a 
 large pinch of snuff from an old tortoise-shell box, and 
 sneezing into his red handkerchief. " I will go at once." 
 
 Beechy stood watching his tall, bent figure as it crossed 
 the garden and went into the precincts of the convent, to 
 which he was a confessor. 
 
 The dramatic contrast of her present environment to the 
 one she had just left was felt by the girl in every fibre. 
 
 The terrible event of the night before had unnerved her 
 as much as things were ever to upset her, and the simple 
 peace of the scene of the orphans' supper appealed very 
 strongly to her. 
 
 The theatre seemed a thing obnoxious and too far away 
 even to approach again. The evils of it stared at her, the 
 beauties were dulled, effaced by the sordid tragedy that was 
 its outcome. Only artists can understand how eagerly her 
 mind embraced the new idea that appealed to her. Had it 
 been possible for her to take eternal cloistral vows that even- 
 ing, she would have taken them ; the only life possible seemed 
 the life between high walls, the only friends these quiet re- 
 ligious people, the only music the hymns of the little orphans.
 
 THE CALL OF THE ORPHANS 93 
 
 The old man was a long time away. When he came 
 back she ran to meet him. "Will they have me? Will 
 they let me come ? " she cried. 
 
 He smiled, a little sadly, for human nature is much the 
 same wherever one finds it, and the simple old man had seen 
 much. 
 
 " We shall see. You are to stay here, my guest, for a 
 week, and go every day to the good Sisters. Then, at the 
 end of the time, if you have pleased them, you are to go to 
 them for a while until until we shall see," he repeated, 
 vaguely. 
 
 The sun was going and long cool shadows crept across 
 the garden. Suddenly the evening bells began to ring all 
 over Rome, soft in the mellow air. 
 
 "Angelus Domini," chanted the orphans. 
 
 Beechy crossed herself hurriedly and then passing the old 
 man as he hurried towards his church, and opened the door 
 he had just closed. 
 
 The garden was full of the little grey-clad creatures, 
 their caps spotless and upturne'd like so many white sweet- 
 pea blossoms. 
 
 " Et concepit de Spiritu Sancto " 
 
 Beechy knew her prayers, for Signora Marianna, the pub- 
 lican's wife, ha'd taught her. The hour and the place cast 
 their spell over her, and her dark head bent over her folded 
 hands. She prayed with the orphans, under the approving 
 eye of the young nuns in charge. 
 
 " Ecce Ancilla Domini ; 
 Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum n 
 
 Thus Beatrice Cavaleone began her convent life.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 IN THE CONVENT 
 
 IT was characteristic of Beatrice Cavaleone that a plan 
 should at once have created itself for her in the convent 
 of San Franceschino. She wished to go and stay with 
 the orphans, and, a week from the evening when their little 
 peaceful voices made their appeal to her imagination, she 
 was installed in the cleanest of small rooms (nearly as 
 good, she thought, as a cell), up at the top of the vast cold 
 building. 
 
 Mother Maria Maddalena, her faculty complete, would, 
 but for the charity incumbent on her position, have given a 
 direct negative answer to the old priest's appeal, but she 
 was a good woman, and had promised to see the child. 
 
 " She is too old to come to us as an orphan," she said, 
 " but perhaps we can give her work. We will try, Padre 
 Antonio " 
 
 But, as she stood by her window listening to the Ave 
 Maria of her charges, she glanced beyond them and beheld 
 the interloper just within the gate. And the interloper pos- 
 sessed the invaluable quality of graceful adaptability, so that 
 she fitted into the picture as well even as the little nuns 
 with their round empty faces, or the small orphans them- 
 selves. 
 
 It seemed that a tall child in a hideous blue frock had 
 always stood there by the old brick wall, her black head 
 
 94
 
 IN THE CONVENT 95 
 
 bent, her lips reverently framing the words of the prayer. 
 Mother Maria Maddalena's heart warmed. 
 
 " Poverina, poor little motherless child and she has 
 been well brought up, she knows the prayer " 
 
 So Beechy was asked to go in to see the Reverend Mother 
 and clumped down the cold passage to the Reverend 
 Mother's room. 
 
 "Your name?" 
 
 " Beatrice Cavaleone." 
 
 "Cavaleone? Not the Cavaleone?" 
 
 " I don't know. My father is dead, and so is my 
 mother." 
 
 " What was your father's name ? " 
 
 "Giulio, Mother." 
 
 "And your mother's?" 
 
 " My mother's name was Smiss and she was English." 
 
 " Smiss. I do not know the name. How old are you? " 
 
 "Twelve." 
 
 The gentle interrogation went on. It grew dark and a 
 lay Sister, who had had chilblains all winter and whose walk 
 was a ceaseless shuffle, brought in a lamp. 
 
 " When the children go for walks with two of the Sisters 
 you might go with them, and walk in the middle of the 
 line " 
 
 The Mother Superior hesitated, for this office that she 
 was inventing was entirely a superogatory one, and she 
 knew it. 
 
 " Yes," agreed Beechy eagerly, " I could pick them up 
 if they fell down." 
 
 " They never fall down," returned the Mother Superior, 
 a little regretfully. " But if you went, Sister Ippolita who 
 walks along the line, might stay at home "
 
 96 BEECHY 
 
 " Yes. And then I could do lots of things here." 
 
 " Can you pare potatoes? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Beechy boldly. She had never in her 
 life peeled a potato, but she felt within herself an undoubted 
 capacity for that branch of labour. 
 
 " Can you sweep ? " 
 
 "Yes. And I can wash windows like anything." 
 
 This she knew to be true, for she had kept her own small 
 window at the Two Queens as bright as ever a window 
 could be, for the excellent reason that she liked to be able 
 to see out. 
 
 " And I can sing, Reverend Mother, I can teach them 
 songs " 
 
 Mother Maria Maddalena laughed and waved away the 
 suggestion with a mildly horrified fat hand. 
 
 " No, no, my dear. They sing only hymns, and those 
 the dear Sisters teach them. If, later, you should have a 
 vocation " 
 
 But Beechy shook her head. " Oh, no, I shall never want 
 to be a nun." 
 
 So she was taken in, so to speak as " odd girl " her 
 work was to do anything that turned up, an'd she proved 
 entirely satisfactory in her new role. Perhaps one reason 
 for this was that the role gradually adapted itself to her, 
 instead of her being obliged to adapt herself to it. 
 
 She liked to sweep. It is, indeed, a fine exercise, giving, 
 once the arms are used to it, a glorious expansion to the 
 chest, and a fine sensation of deep breathing. So she swept 
 much. Washing windows, too, scrubbing at the panes un- 
 til they glistened, was not unpleasant. 
 
 But washing clothes she did not like, and though she 
 never objected verbally to doing it, it soon came about, no
 
 IN THE CONVENT 97 
 
 one quite knew how, that the washing of clothes was not 
 one of her duties. Shaking and beating strips of carpet 
 would not be bad, for it is a rough, boyish exercise, but the 
 dust makes one sneeze and one's eyes water after it. Beechy 
 beat carpets three times, after which that department of 
 work reverted to its former incumbent, one of the lay 
 Sisters. 
 
 Digging in the garden with Sister Gismonda and Sister 
 Ludovica, brown, rough, laughing peasant women, was the 
 greatest of fun, so all summer Beechy worked in the brown 
 earth, planted it, and laboured it to grow. 
 
 Also, for her slim hands were deft, and her taste good, 
 all the flowers for the altars were arranged in their cheap 
 white and gilt vases by her. It was delightful to get up 
 early in the coolness of the morning and, in the still shadowy 
 garden, to cut the sleeping flowers. 
 
 Then, the vases filled with fresh water and standing in a 
 row on the table in the refectory, she carried in her baskets, 
 and set to work. 
 
 It was a long job, for she had the church altars as well 
 as the convent chapel to adorn, and in the garden itself there 
 was a grotto made of artlessly artificial rock- work, in which 
 stood a different statuette for each month, before which 
 flowers must bloom. 
 
 The Mary month, May, was the best, but in June came 
 a little Saint Joseph in a splendid scarlet cloak, July had 
 Christ with the sacred heart glowing in His torn breast, 
 and all the other months had their saints. 
 
 The summer flew, each warm languorous day full of 
 hours, but the season, looked back upon, having gone in a 
 flash. Winter came and went, and summer again. Beechy, 
 dressed like the orphans, in rough grey stuff, but without a
 
 98 BEECHY 
 
 cap, was as busy as the day is long. She loved the children, 
 some of whom were not more than two years old, and they 
 loved her. Once one little girl was very ill, and cried for 
 Beechy. The nun in charge of her did her best to comfort 
 the little thing, but in vain, and in the middle of the night 
 Beechy was roused and bidden to come. 
 
 " Sing to me, Bici," moaned the sick child. 
 
 So Beechy sang, and after that was attached as a kind 
 of under-nurse to the case. 
 
 In September, after nearly six weeks of illness, the child 
 died, and there was a little pathetic funeral, the cheap white 
 coffin followed by a string of weeping children to the old 
 cemetery at the foot of the hill. Beechy never forgot the 
 funeral; the long tramp in the blazing sun, the bared heads 
 of the passers-by, the gleaming light on the coffin. 
 
 Sister Arduina, the organist, asked a little later in the 
 year permission to give Beechy singing lessons. 
 
 The Mother Superior assented. 
 
 One day in her second November in the convent, when 
 the last roses in the garden were subject to temporary oblit- 
 eration of leaves falling from the plane-trees, Beechy went 
 into the organ-loft where flat-nosed Sister Arduina was 
 awaiting her. 
 
 She had sung, of course, all along, with the others, but 
 the organist-Sister had a plan for making her sing solos. 
 
 " At Christmas we might have a real bit of oratorio. 
 And you could sing the soprano part." 
 
 " Yes," said Beechy, her thumbs stuck into her belt. 
 
 " How high can you sing? " 
 
 "B flat." 
 
 Sister Arduina opened her eyes very round. 
 
 "You mustn't boast," she admonished.
 
 IN THE CONSENT 99 
 
 " I'm not boasting. Give me the middle b." 
 
 The nun did so, and Beechy struck the eighth higher 
 with great ease though some shrillness. 
 
 "Goodl Now sing a scale." 
 
 Beechy obeyed. It was extraordinary how easily the child 
 had learned obedience, after the rough independence she had 
 had after her father's death. It is, however, a fact that 
 obedience in indifferent matters. is often easy to very strong- 
 willed people. 
 
 They worked for nearly an hour, and then Beechy was 
 sent to cut some roses for the house-chapel. Somehow the 
 singing alone had reminded her of the theatre. She won- 
 dered how they all were, and the artists. If Giacomini 
 was still there, and good old Piombini, the basso. The little 
 hunchbacked doorkeeper, was he still there, and who gave 
 him Greek olives nowadays? 
 
 In the desolate autumnal garden the girl stood thought- 
 fully, her rusty scissors in her hand. She thought of the 
 footlights' cheerful blaze, the good-natured, sweating scene- 
 shifters, the delicious, thrilling tuning-up of the orchestra 
 it all seemed very far away and very wonderful. As she 
 stood there the very feel of it seemed to come back to her; 
 the very smell; the magic of it rushed over her like a warm 
 tide, till her blood tingled in her veins and her head swam. 
 
 " I must go back," she said aloud. 
 
 With a little start she set to work cutting the roses, poor 
 sad things on their leaf-bare bushes, and laid them in her 
 old basket. 
 
 Her hands shook with impatience. How could she have 
 borne it for so long? Looking back on the year and a half 
 that she had been there she could not understand herself. 
 " I have been asleep," she said, as she snipped at the
 
 ioo BEECHY 
 
 bushes. She went into the refectory, arranged her flowers, 
 and went up to the chapel. 
 
 The place was nearly dark, and the red light over the 
 altar glowed like a ruby in the dusk. 
 
 Against the pale evening sky the angular figures of the 
 saints in the windows looked like ghosts, and a marble 
 statue of Christ being taken from the cross made her start 
 and shudder. She felt as if she had been living in a tomb. 
 With a perfunctory reverence to the altar she set the big 
 vases in their place and left the chapel. 
 
 " I will go after supper," she said, " only two hours, and 
 then "
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 BACK TO THE THEATRE 
 
 OH, the marvel of the streets at night after eighteen 
 months of going to bed at nine o'clock. Oh, the 
 excitement of the sauntering pleasure-bent crowd, 
 with, each member of it, his or her individual interests and 
 secrets and ambitions. Oh, the beauty of the women, the 
 strangeness of their clothes (fashions change a great deal in 
 a year and a half), the gaiety of the lighted shops, the 
 cosiness of the little fleeting scenes within them as one hur- 
 ried by. 
 
 In a word, Beechy was full of the glory and majesty of 
 life in a great city as she hastened down one of the seven 
 hills, up and down another to the Corso and by the narrow 
 streets to the theatre. She did not realise it, but her habit- 
 like gown and ugly felt hat stood her in good stead. 
 
 Almost as unobserved as if she had been a nun she sped 
 along, gazing intently at everything she passed, smiling, 
 almost laughing, to herself. People who love the country 
 are almost invariably proud of their preference, and the 
 urban-souled usually feel that they ought to explain why 
 they prefer the ways of man to the haunts of trees and 
 cattle. 
 
 Beechy was a town-lover and as such adored the feel 
 of the stones under her feet, the light-garlanded darkness, 
 the people she passed, and I for one, see no reason why she 
 should have been ashamed of her love. 
 
 101
 
 102 BEECHY 
 
 With all his faults surely the city-bred man (I speak of 
 the poorer classes) is a more living creature than his country 
 cousin. 
 
 Give me the gamin any 'day rather than the lout. 
 
 The night had come down chilly and a little windy. 
 Men wrapped their long cloaks round them, hurrying women 
 pulled closer their knitted scarves, children blew on their 
 little fingers and trotted hard to keep up with their elders. 
 And the sound of Rome was like the beat of its great 
 southern heart. 
 
 " Ah Dio, Ah Dio," the girl repeated under her breath, 
 " Ah Dio, Dio, Dio," and in its inarticulate way it was a 
 prayer. 
 
 A horse went down and a crowd collected. Beechy was 
 one of the crowd. The poor beast, an underfed cab horse, 
 struggled and scrambled while its driver beat it over the 
 head with the butt end of his whip. (This treatment of 
 animals is not a phase of their character on which the lover 
 of Italians cares to dwell.) The horse at last got up and 
 galloped away, and the crowd dispersed. A man and a 
 woman emerged from the blackness of a side street. His 
 arm was about her waist, her head leaning to the detriment 
 of her hat, against his arm. 
 
 " Amor mio ! " he said, and she murmured in return, 
 " Amore." 
 
 Beechy heard them and her smile was tender. Lovers. 
 Alas, poor Landucci! Love, what was it? The dear 
 good Sisters they would have none of it. They loved Christ 
 bleeding on His Cross, but of earthly love they would not 
 hear. 
 
 Yet Padre Antonio continually married people. Beechy 
 had seen several weddings, so she knew. The nuns are
 
 BACK TO THE THEATRE 103 
 
 rather well, not silly of course, but illogical, the girl re- 
 flected, as she loitered behind the lovers, because if there 
 were no lovers there would be no fathers and mothers to die 
 and leave dear little orphans to be cared forl 
 
 Ah, the world! The lights 1 The people! 
 
 Suddenly she found herself in front of the theatre. 
 Large posters adorned the walls, and cabs stood in front of 
 it, while the swing-doors seemed the converging point of the 
 crowd. 
 
 " Carmen! " 
 
 It was only of a piece with all the other marvels of the 
 world that they should be giving " Carmen " to-night. 
 Hurrying round to the stage-door she addressed the little 
 hunchback, still in his accustomed place, and unchanged, 
 apparently. 
 
 " Buona sera, Ercole ! " 
 
 He looked up at her, wondering. 
 
 " Don't you know me? " 
 
 " Signorina, excuse me, no." 
 
 She laughed. " Don't you remember il piccolo Bici ? " 
 
 The little man rubbed the back of his head. " Yes, 
 but " 
 
 Well I am the little Bici- 
 
 Again she laughed and he stared at her, puzzled, vaguely 
 remembering her. 
 
 " But Bici was a boy " 
 
 " Yes, and now he is a girl. Signor Ercole, let me in, 
 there's a dear." 
 
 A moment later and she was in the wings. The curtain 
 had just gone up and the men were still singing the open- 
 ing chorus. Ah the smell of it! 
 
 She stood sniffing, peering round her on all sides. She
 
 104 BEECHY 
 
 could not see the director of the orchestra from her place, 
 but it seemed as though poor Landucci must be there, his 
 wild black hair flying. 
 
 " Hi, what are you doing here?" 
 
 She turned, annoyed by the tone of the voice that ad- 
 dressed her. She had learned to be annoyed by minor things 
 like vocal shades in speech. 
 
 "I I am sorry. Am I in the way?" 
 
 The man stared at her with a little laugh. " I beg your 
 pardon, Signorina, I suppose you have come to see one of 
 the artists Signora Caccia?" 
 
 " Yes, please, I wish to see Signora Caccia." 
 
 The man, who was a stage carpenter, withdrew politely, 
 and she stood for a long time watching. 
 
 As she listened the music came back to her, she remem- 
 bered it all and sang softly under her breath. 
 
 When the curtain went down she awoke with a little 
 start and drew back to let the singers troop past her. 
 
 One of the first was old Narolo, one of the soldiers. 
 
 " Signer Narolo!" 
 
 He stopped, wiping his face on his handkerchief. 
 
 " Signor Narolo, don't you know me? Bici?" 
 
 He stared. " Holy Madonna, yes, it is you, but " 
 
 She caught his hand and held it in both hers. " I know 
 I used to be a boy, but never mind that. I I am so glad 
 to be back ! " 
 
 " Where have you been ? " 
 
 She laughed a little hysterically. " In a convent. Tell 
 me, are all the artists changed ? " 
 
 " Yes, all except Celli and me. The baritone Ven- 
 dramini is singing in Petersburg. Fa carriera, lui. Ah 
 yes, he makes a career, while we others "
 
 BACK TO THE THEATRE 105 
 
 " May I see la Celli ? " asked Beechy eagerly. 
 
 The man spread his hands. " I don't know. Shall I 
 go and see? By the way have you heard that Vendramini 
 married poor Maestro Landucci's widow?" 
 
 Beechy gasped. She had not yet learned the fact that 
 some women, irrespective of looks, character, or fortune, 
 possess what may be called the marrying faculty, and are 
 never at a loss for a husband. 
 
 "The baritone! But why?" 
 
 Narolo shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows?" he re- 
 turned philosophically. 
 
 A moment later he returned, and led Beechy into 
 Micaela's presence. 
 
 La Celli was a good soul and apparently packed full of 
 short screeches, which she let forth from her stiff painted 
 mouth in lieu of words. " Aie," she said when she saw 
 Beechy. "Oh!" 
 
 To her the appearance in her dressing-room of a young 
 girl in semi-monastical garb was too astounding a thing to 
 be met with articulate language. 
 
 Beechy held out her hand. " How do you do, Signora," 
 she said rapidly. " I am Beatrice Cavaleone, who used to 
 sing in the boys' chorus in ' Carmen,' and then as supple- 
 mentary Mercedes. Little Bici. Yes, I know you thought 
 I was a boy. Well I wasn't. How are you? You are 
 in excellent voice." 
 
 " Oh, I have had a very bad throat, very. But I have an 
 inhaling machine that is doing marvels for me, marvels. 
 How do you like my dress? Yes, of course, I thought you 
 were a boy. Where have you been all this time? " 
 
 Beechy told her as much as she wished to have known, 
 which was not much, and then in her turn asked some ques-
 
 io6 BEECHY 
 
 tions. She learned all the news of the little theatre; that 
 the new director of the orchestra was charming, so good- 
 tempered; that the tenor was not bad, but wanted all the 
 applause ; and was very jealous of her, the Celli's, popularity ; 
 that the woman singing Carmen was a stick with no voice 
 at all, but who had a friend who paid a very big " claque " 
 for her so that she was encored every evening. 
 
 " Una vergogna, a shame, caro I should say cara, but 
 I can't get over the feeling that you are a boy." 
 
 The stage manager was the same. " He is married and 
 his wife is very rich." 
 
 " Where are the Giacomini ? " asked Beechy, keenly in- 
 terested in it all. 
 
 " She is singing in Messina this winter. Her little girl 
 died, poor soul. He is worse than ever, lives like a prince, 
 on her shoulders. Husbands are horrible," added Micaela 
 giving a dash of black to her right eyebrow. 
 
 " Yes," agreed Beechy. " Signorina I want to learn to 
 sing." 
 
 But Celli, like most artists, was grave over the possibility 
 of another's learning what she had learned. 
 
 " To sing, my child ? Ah, it is a difficult art." 
 
 " I know. But I I must learn. And you, who sing 
 so well you will advise me." 
 
 This was not conscious artfulness on the young girl's 
 part; it was part of her artistic nature, the unerring instinct 
 for the right thing in the right place. Later she had days 
 of the clumsiest blundering, when she said and did the most 
 uncomfortable things, but these were days when her artistic 
 nature was troubled by the conventional one that grew up 
 with her experience of the world. For the present she was 
 that happiest of human things, an uncomplicated artistic
 
 BACK TO THE THEATRE 107 
 
 nature growing towards expression. Celli smiled with the 
 simple vanity of her kind. 
 
 " Well they do say I sing well open that drawer there, 
 dear, and you'll find last night's paper. It's marked in 
 blue pencil " 
 
 Obediently, Beechy read the conventional words of ap- 
 proval. An odd wave of pity swept over her as she read. 
 This would not have satisfied her. No. For her things 
 would have to be big. 
 
 At length, after ten minutes skilful conversational lead- 
 ing, she drew from Celli that her teacher was one Signora 
 Scarpia, who lived up four flights of stairs at the back of 
 an old palace near the Palace of the Csesars. 
 
 " I will write to her and tell her about you," concluded 
 the little woman rather grandly. 
 
 " Ah yes, a word from you " 
 
 Beechy left her and went back to the wings. Some of 
 the chorus-people on hearing who she was, came and talked 
 to her. They had all liked her, for when she had been at 
 the theatre she was too young to have used the strong will 
 that later made many enemies for her. 
 
 Her eyes glowing, she told her simple story, without, 
 however, naming the convent, for she knew that the gentle 
 nuns would not welcome their theatrical brethren and sis- 
 ters. The stage manager (beautifully dressed now, and 
 with a very wealthy manner) paid her courteous compli- 
 ments on her appearance. 
 
 " You are going to be very beautiful," he said. " Even 
 now, with good clothes " 
 
 Perhaps he was right, for while clothes do not make the 
 man, they certainly very nearly make the woman. Beechy 
 showed her teeth in a pleased grin.
 
 io8 BEECHY 
 
 "You think so? So much the better." (What she 
 really said was meno male, which means, literally, " so 
 much less bad.") 
 
 Everyone was greatly amused at seeing her, for the 
 Singer-eater had told one or two of his discovery that she 
 was a girl, and some of the new artists had laughed at the 
 story, and now here was the heroine. Until the lights were 
 out and even the grandest of the artists leaving ( for it takes 
 the creator of a name-role much longer to get the grease 
 paint off his or her face than it does a humble lady or gen- 
 tleman of the chorus) Beechy stayed on. She knew that 
 there would be a row at the convent on her return, but the 
 joy of being once more on a stage was irresistible. 
 
 Her thin nostrils inflated nervously like those of a horse 
 as she talked and listened, her cheeks burned crimson. 
 
 Then at last she, too, left the theatre, and hurried home- 
 wards. 
 
 It was very cold now, and scudding clouds made the 
 moonlight fitful and fantastic. 
 
 At the gate of the convent, before she pulled the bell, the 
 girl stood and looked out at the Piazza. 
 
 " Oh, the poor nuns," she said, under her breath, " never 
 to be able to go about at night."
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 OLD FRIENDS 
 
 IT is an unpardonable thing to have done," declared 
 Father Antonio, severely. 
 "Nothing is unpardonable, Padre caro," returned 
 Beechy, with a more saintly expression than usual. 
 
 The old man's eyes fixed themselves on her for a mo- 
 ment. " When there is repentance comes pardon ; not when 
 there is stiff-necked pride in evil-doing." 
 
 The morning sun lay in pleasant patches on the brick 
 floor, the cat purred loudly, and from the kitchen came a 
 delightful sound of frying. 
 
 " Do I smell it with my ears," Beechy wondered, " or 
 hear it with my nose?" 
 
 Good Mother Maria Maddalena had, after a long talk 
 with the girl, sent her over to be scolded by Father Antonio. 
 And Father Antonio had scolded for about ten minutes, with 
 no effect whatsoever. Beechy stood before him in a respect- 
 ful attitude, her hands clasped against her scant grey skirt, 
 her clumsily booted feet quite quiet. 
 
 Only her face wore a most inappropriate expression of 
 triumph. 
 
 "You are not showing the gratitude I had hoped for," 
 sighed the old man at length. 
 
 " But I am grateful, Padre! Grateful I am," she went 
 on, changing the wording of her phrase in the pretty Italian 
 way. " You have all been so good to me, so good ! I shall 
 
 109
 
 no BEECHY 
 
 never forget it. And I love you all even Sister Veronica 
 with the beard. But now I must go. I must go and learn 
 to sing." 
 
 " But I cannot let you go, my dear. You are a child, 
 you do not know the world, you have no parents, you are 
 alone " 
 
 It was the old, old story, and of course youth won. 
 
 Beechy sweetly smiled at him, but her smile was in- 
 exorable. " I will go and live with Signora Campi at the 
 Two Queens. She is very fond of me and will be glad 
 to have me." 
 
 Her confidence was rather beautiful and the old man 
 could not find it in his heart to disturb it. If he had 
 tried, however, he would have failed, for the sense of 
 security in the affection of her kind was a very strong one 
 in the child and lasted more or less all her life. 
 
 " But who will pay for your singing lessons ? " 
 
 This he expected to be a facer, but it failed. 
 
 " I shall work," she returned. 
 
 " In what way ? What can you do ? " 
 
 " I can cook, I can sweep, I can clean lamps, I can sell 
 newspapers, I can make beds, I can blow an organ, I 
 can dig " 
 
 She was, in thus naming her accomplishments, perfectly 
 serious. It was ridiculous, but not to her. She had a keen 
 sense of humour, but it did not apply to herself at this early 
 period of her life. 
 
 Father Antonio shook his head gently. 
 
 " You cannot sell papers nor dig now, you are too old, 
 and for the other things, surely you don't wish to be a 
 housemaid ? " 
 
 Beechy stood, looking what the French very expressively
 
 OLD FRIENDS in 
 
 call interdicted. This aspect of the case appeared to her 
 for the first time. She had been living on charity on 
 generous, loving charity, and as she had worked in the same 
 spirit from morning to night no feeling of humiliation had 
 ever come to her. Nor did it come, retrospectively, now. 
 
 It is a gracious quality, that of giving well, but there 
 are not many people who receive well, and of these few 
 Beechy was one. Quite simply she took, all her life, what 
 was given to her. If Father Antonio had said to her, " Here 
 is money, go and live as you like," she would have been 
 profoundly grateful in the sense that warm love for him 
 would have surged up in her heart, but she would have felt 
 no immediate impulse of return in kind. 
 
 It is hard to explain this, but it exists in some artist 
 souls, and when it has existed and been educated away, a 
 great charm of childlikeness has gone with it. 
 
 But the old priest's words now taught the girl that she 
 had no means of living unless, as he said, she became a 
 servant. 
 
 " I should not like to be a housemaid," she said thought- 
 fully. 
 
 Father Antonio took a pinch of snuff. 
 
 " While your father lived," he said, " there was money? " 
 
 " Yes. Very little, but I didn't have to work." 
 
 "Well how did it come? Did you go to a bank for 
 it?" 
 
 " No, the postman used to bring it, every quarter. I 
 wonder " 
 
 "And so do I wonder! Why did you never inquire? 
 Someone must have sent it to him, you never asked ? " 
 
 Beechy spread out her hands. " Che ! No, there was no 
 one to ask. The Commendatore might have known, but
 
 ii2 'BEECHY 
 
 he never came again, and then I went to the Two 
 Queens " 
 
 Father Antonio put his old snuff-box into his pocket and 
 waited for his sneeze. It came at length, shaking him de- 
 lightfully, and then he spoke. 
 
 " I will find out for you through the post-office people. 
 Strange that it never occurred to us before And then if you 
 insist on leaving us I shall miss you, Bici, I will find 
 some good woman who will take you into her home " 
 
 Beechy thanked him and went slowly into the garden. 
 The sun had come out warm and yellow as if winter were 
 over and spring knocking at the gates. The roses that 
 had looked lonely and chilly the evening before glowed 
 proudly, boasting of the way that they were keeping their 
 youth. 
 
 But to Beechy the charm had gone. She had loved the 
 convent, but now its time had passed, and the world was 
 calling her. 
 
 She moved restlessly about, forgetting her work, regard- 
 less of the gentle troubled faces that now and then looked 
 out at her from the windows. She wished to go to the 
 Two Queens, back to her little room under the roof, back 
 to the old cradle that she had rocked every night in fantastic 
 pity for some little wakeful ghost baby in it. 
 
 She wanted people. 
 
 Up and down the garden she paced, her arms crossed in 
 her Napoleonic way, her little round chin almost touching 
 the bib of her blue holland apron. People, noisy, clamour- 
 ous, eager, selfish, living people. Even the hurrying, fussy 
 waiters in the Two Queens restaurant interested her. They 
 were alive. 
 
 And the dear good nuns were half alive, to be sure, but
 
 OLD FRIENDS 113 
 
 also half dead. What did they know of the magic of the 
 city? What would a great crowd be to them but a terror? 
 What would be to them the bursting into bloom of these 
 night flowers, the street lamps? 
 
 No, poor things, when they took their vows and lay be- 
 fore the altar like the dead, it was true that something of 
 them died, the best part, it seemed to Beechy, their imag- 
 inations. 
 
 " Bici, we are going for our walk, will you come?" 
 
 Sister Monica, youngest and prettiest of the nuns, stood 
 there in the sun, her sweet brown eyes troubled, her brown 
 hands clasped. Beechy nodded. " Yes, my Sister." 
 
 Together they went to the house and found the orphans 
 lined up ready to start. Forty-five little creatures in grey 
 cloaks and ugly black hats, and they all smiled and chat- 
 tered as Beechy came in. 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears. They were small, the orphans, 
 but they were alive, and they loved her and she loved them. 
 She would miss them, and they would miss her. 
 
 " Oh, you dears," she cried suddenly, kneeling down and 
 gathering the two nearest to her breast. 
 
 All the tiny creatures rushed at her, shoving and scolding 
 each other, trying to reach her warm arms. 
 
 It was a pretty sight and Sister Monica's eyes filled with 
 tears as she watched. She was less dead than Beechy 
 thought, Sister Monica. 
 
 The children gathered round Beechy, like bees round a 
 flower, and she kissed all she could reach, her eyes wet. 
 
 Then order was restored and the little procession filed 
 out of the big door into the street, a nun at the head and a 
 nun at the tail, and Beechy in the middle leading a very 
 small orphan by the hand. They did not go into the city.
 
 ii4 BEECHY 
 
 Instead they turned sharp off up the hill and then going 
 down a flight of steep steps came out near one of the city 
 gates and under its old arch they marched, and then out 
 along desolate, muddy streets, past humble shops and ugly 
 houses of workpeople. 
 
 It was a horrible walk and Beechy loathed it. " Beauti- 
 ful Rome," she thought, " of all your streets why must we 
 come here ? " 
 
 High carts piled with stones creaked by, splashing the 
 orphans with mud, filling the air with their rumbling and 
 rattle. The orphans prattled, enjoying the sunlight and 
 the movement. The nuns and Beechy were silent. 
 
 At length the end of the street was reached. It ended 
 like a street in a dream, abruptly. The last house in it was 
 a tall tenement built as a speculation, a failure. Beyond it 
 stretched a brick and paper-scattered wilderness, and be- 
 yond that the Campagna. The mountains were veiled in 
 purple haze, the sky above them blue. The distance seemed 
 infinite. 
 
 For a moment the little group of feminine creatures stood 
 and watched the scene. They all loved its beauty, even the 
 little ones, all but Beechy. 
 
 The country saddened her; wide spaces filled her with a 
 kind of uneasiness; the romance of the mountains gave her 
 a sensation only to be explained very badly by the word 
 embarrassment. 
 
 And she felt an intruder, and as such, shy. She sighed 
 with relief when they turned and started back towards the 
 city. 
 
 As they reached the convent door Father Antonio passed 
 them, his old umbrella under his arm, his shoe buckles
 
 OLD FRIENDS 115 
 
 twinkling in the sun. He smiled as he went by, and Beechy, 
 when the last orphan had filed past her into the dark hall- 
 way, turned without a word and rushed after him. 
 
 " Padre you are going to the via del Violino," she 
 panted at the top of the east end of the Piazza. " I must 
 go with you " 
 
 He did not protest, perhaps because he was wise enough 
 in his gentle old age to feel that already she was lost to 
 them, that the world's claims on her could not be denied. 
 
 " Ebbene, child," he said, " you may come." 
 
 Several people turned in the friendly Italian way to look 
 after them as they crossed the city. The little old priest 
 with the long white locks hanging from under his shabby, 
 clean hat, and the springing, vigorous, handsome child. 
 Grey sackcloth did not seem appropriate wear for Beechy. 
 She walked as though she wore velvet, and her hideous hat 
 with its black ribbons looked like a Carnival freak of dis- 
 guise. 
 
 " It seems that I should have gone long ago to see them 
 all in the Street of the Violin," she said, as the old man 
 gently refused alms to a beggar. " They will think I have 
 forgotten them, but I have not, I love them all. Dear 
 Signora Marianna and dear old Agnese. She's the one who 
 gave me the boy's clothes, you know! She has a bird- 
 shop. Such beautiful birds! Do you like birds, Father 
 Antonio?" 
 
 "Yes, my dear." 
 
 " I must go and see Lamberti, too," she went on, " while 
 you are at the post-office. Old Lamberti will be surprised 
 to find me so tall; he use'd to say I should be a dwarf to 
 tease me, you know. And I'll go and see Simeone,
 
 u6 BEECHY 
 
 Father Antonio smiled. " You are very anxious to see 
 them all, my dear," he said, " have you not thought of them 
 all this time?" 
 
 Beechy paused for a second. " No," she answered with 
 unabashed frankness, " I haven't thought of them, but I 
 didn't forget them." 
 
 " That seems strange." 
 
 " Strange? No, Padre, mio buono. It is like say one's 
 summer hat. It is put away in the autumn, and one doesn't 
 think about it during the winter because it is winter and 
 one wears one's winter hat. But when the summer 
 comes " she made a fluttering, expressive movement with 
 her hand " one gets out one's hat and is delighted to wear 
 it again." 
 
 The joyous egotism of this parabolic explanation did not 
 escape the priest, but he did not protest, he merely said, 
 " Some people would not care to be regarded as your sum- 
 mer hat, my child." 
 
 But Beechy laughed. 
 
 "But why? I do not mind being theirs" she returned. 
 And she meant it. 
 
 Father Antonio, who was full of the instinctive wisdom 
 that intelligent priests, be they never so shut in, almost in- 
 variably become possessed of, watched her closely during 
 the time they passed in the Street of the Violin. For she 
 insisted on his going with her to see all her friends, and 
 he went. To the restaurant, where the children all seemed 
 to Beechy to be grown almost beyond belief ; to the bird-shop, 
 where old Agnese hardly recognised Beechy in her turn and 
 where a fine new grey parrot had come to live. 
 
 To the chair-seat maker's dark box of a shop, where a 
 packet of chocolate was at once found for the girl, but
 
 OLD FRIENDS 117 
 
 where reproaches about the long desertion of the old street 
 were loud and eloquent. 
 
 " You forgot us," the old man repeated, rubbing his red 
 nose indignantly, " forgot all your old friends." 
 
 " But I didn't" Beechy protested, munching the choc- 
 olate with great relish, " I didn't forget you a bit, did I 
 Father Antonio?" 
 
 The old man smiled from the big chair that had been 
 dragged into the shop from the back room in his honour. 
 " Children are different from grown people, Signore," he 
 said with innocent diplomacy to Lamberti. 
 
 " And how is Giovacchino ? " inquired Beechy, " and little 
 Filippina in Napoli ? " 
 
 " They are quite well," Lamberti admitted, grudgingly. 
 
 " And," went on Beechy, " did Luigi marry the vineyard- 
 keeper's daughter?" 
 
 Her face was aglow with real interest and Lamberti 
 melted suddenly. 
 
 " Ah," he said, rumpling his hair with a violent motion 
 and turning to the priest. " It is not heart that she lacks, 
 the little one " 
 
 " No," agreed Father Antonio, well pleased. 
 
 " What is it then? " 
 
 Beechy's voice almost throbbed with the excitement of 
 the question. " What is it I lack ? " 
 
 " Not vanity, anyway," chuckled Lamberti, " that is 
 certain." 
 
 But calling her vain never hurt her in the least. She 
 was vain as naturally as a peacock is, and when her self- 
 interest was touched deeply as it was on this occasion, her 
 insistence was unending. Alexis Wauchope, the critic, once 
 said of her that her vanity was so great that he always saw
 
 ii8 BEECHY 
 
 her in an iridescent light, as though she was surrounded by 
 spiritual peacocks' feathers. 
 
 " You do not yet realise," answered the priest, rising, 
 and speaking with conscientious seriousness, " the importance 
 of other people." 
 
 Beechy said good-bye to Lambert! and then, after walk- 
 ing in silence for several minutes, answered the criticism. 
 
 " Well," she said, decisively, " if / don't, they do, and 
 that evens things up."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 BEECHY MEETS A PRINCE AND A TENOR 
 
 THE most romantic things have a way of happening 
 to certain people from the day they are old enough 
 to toddle across the room. Other people may travel, 
 tempt Fortune in a variety of ways, lose and make for- 
 tunes, love, marry, and be buried without the smallest unex- 
 pected event breaking the hideous monotony of their days. 
 One blames dull people for their dulness, than which exists 
 no greater injustice. Who wishes to be dull? No one. 
 And those poor creatures who are dull ought to receive from 
 the lucky others at least the tribute of pity. 
 
 Beechy was of the adventurous type, but that in itself 
 meant nothing. Many adventurous-minded people are 
 dodged all their days by romantic happenings. I know a 
 woman who went through Persia on horseback and all that 
 happened to her worth remembering was that she broke the 
 busk of her stays and was made miserable thereby for days. 
 
 Now Beechy was of the sort to whom if shut up in one 
 room in an hotel in Manchester, something diverting would 
 happen, even if the hotel had to be burnt to the ground to 
 bring it about. 
 
 And it was certainly romantic to find through the post- 
 office people that the small sum of two thousand lire had 
 been sent through the post in quarterly payments to the 
 late Giulio Cavaleone from old Prince Cavaleone who lived 
 in the palace in the Corso. 
 
 119
 
 120 BEECHY 
 
 The old postman whom Beechy had known all her life 
 had known all about it, and he was easy enough to find. 
 
 Father Antonio drew a deep breath. If Beechy was one 
 of the Cavaleones, she was to his simple mind provided for, 
 and there seemed no doubt about it at all. 
 
 " Did your father ever talk about his people? " he asked 
 the child as they made their way homewards. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Never?" 
 
 " Never, Padre mio." 
 
 "And after his death the money ceased to be sent," 
 mused the priest, who was tired, and had a stone in his 
 shoe. " That looks as though the Signor Principe does not 
 know of your existence. Did your father ever write 
 any letters?" 
 
 Beechy reflected. " I can't remember but I never 
 posted any for him. Perhaps the Commendatore " 
 
 The afternoon was chill and gusts of rain flew into their 
 faces as they hurried home. Rome is a city of many colour 
 expressions; sometimes she dresses herself in violet; some- 
 times in ruddy gold; sometimes in grey. To-night she was 
 a dull grey city, desolate and empty looking as the rain came 
 down harder. 
 
 " We must let the old Signor Principe know that you 
 are alive," Father Antonio said, turning up the collar of his 
 old coat, " I will write to him." 
 
 " Why don't we go to see him ? " suggested Beechy 
 calmly. 
 
 She was not at all elated by the discovery of her rela- 
 tionship to a princely house, for Italians are not snobs and 
 princes are many. But she was keenly interested and fully 
 alive to the material advantages of her new position.
 
 MEETS A PRINCE AND A TENOR 121 
 
 " I should like to live in a palace," she mused, " and I 
 will buy a long string of coral beads at once." 
 
 The old priest's little living room looked very cosey after 
 the long walk in the rain. Beechy, whose black woollen 
 ankles were wet, kicked off her shoes and sat down by the 
 little stove. 
 
 " It's the palace with the loggia under the roof, isn't 
 it ? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes. And a fountain by Bernini in the courtyard. 
 But don't dream about living there, my dear. If your 
 father had been friendly with the family you would not have 
 lived in the via del Violino. Or he may have been only a 
 very distant cousin whom the Signor Principe helped be- 
 cause of the name." 
 
 Beechy, who was crouching over the fire, sat up suddenly. 
 " No ! I know why it was," she exclaimed. " It was be- 
 cause he married my mother. I remember once he and the 
 Commendatore were talking about it while I was in bed. 
 My mother was a nursemaid or something. She was 
 English." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 The old man's face fell. Matters did not look to him 
 very promising. An English housemaid and an obstinate 
 younger son. He knew of the old Prince enough to con- 
 vince him that the child of such a marriage stood a very 
 small chance of any kindness from him. 
 
 If Beechy's father had been a son of the head of the 
 house her chances were very small indeed. 
 
 If on the other hand he had been merely one of the dis- 
 tant connections to whom great Romans are so wonderfully 
 good, the old man might consent to provide for the child.
 
 122 'BEECHY 
 
 At least, Father Antonio told himself, the effort must 
 be made, and Beechy's suggestion that she should go with 
 him to see her great relation, seemed a good one. Uncon- 
 sciously the old priest counted on the child's quality of 
 charm as an asset in the important interview. 
 
 He had given up all hope of persuading her to renounce 
 her ideas of studying singing; indeed, such was her inno- 
 cent power of conviction, he even began to see that, as God 
 undoubtedly meant opera-singers to exist, Beechy must be 
 one of those predestined to that fate. 
 
 It saddened the good old man, for the life looked to him 
 a terrible one full of temptation, and he loved Beechy, but 
 sad things are often the most inevitable, and Life had taught 
 him the value of the immediate and gracious acceptance of 
 the unavoidable. 
 
 So the two plotters laid their heads together and planned 
 the storming of the palace in the Corso. 
 
 Three or four days later the very grand majordomo 
 at the door of the palace was startled by the appearance of 
 a shabby old priest and a long-legged little girl who de- 
 manded quite simply to see His Excellency. 
 
 " His Excellency ! Per Bacco, and have you an engage- 
 ment with him? " 
 
 The man, very gorgeous in his green and gold livery, 
 his tall gold-knobbed stick in his hands, showed quite 
 plainly that he scorned the poor. 
 
 His question was one of rather malignant sarcasm, but it 
 evoked an astonishing answer. 
 
 " Yes," returned the priest. " He told us to come at 
 three." 
 
 So there was nothing for it but to allow these amazing 
 guests to pass; to hand them on to another man in livery
 
 MEETS A PRINCE AND A TENOR 123 
 
 who dwelt in a pen under the great stone staircase, and who, 
 conducting them up to the piano nobile, presented them to 
 a third and very haughty functionary in black, who led 
 them down long corridors through endless doors, across the 
 great ballrooms whose shining floors were pathed with 
 narrow strips of red carpet. 
 
 At last the guide stopped, knocked at a door and, after 
 listening with smooth, bent head for an answer, opened the 
 door and led them into a small room lined with books. 
 
 By a generous open fire sat an old man, a large Russian 
 boar hound at his feet. 
 
 " Oh," he said, bowing curtly. " You have come. 
 Chairs, Giovanni." 
 
 Beechy looked at him. In his hands lay her destiny, 
 and never since God had with His hands created the world, 
 had anything ever been so important as her destiny. 
 
 "You say you are Giulio Cavaleone's daughter?" asked 
 the old man. 
 
 " Si, Signore." 
 
 " Have you any proofs? " 
 
 Beechy, whose own identity was to her the most undeni- 
 able thing in the universe, gave a little gasp. 
 
 " Proofs? " asked Father Antonio gently. "All the peo- 
 ple where she lived until about three years ago knew 
 both her father and her. There can be no doubt, Signer 
 Principe." 
 
 " There can always be doubt about everything. Have you 
 her baptismal certificate? The the marriage certificate?" 
 
 " No, Signer Principe." 
 
 " H'm. Well, my position is this. Giulio Cavaleone 
 was my second cousin. For reasons of my own I brought 
 him up under my roof. He disobeyed me in the matter
 
 124 BEECHY 
 
 of his marriage and I never saw him again. When he be- 
 came an invalid an old acquaintance of mine, Commendatore 
 Luchini, came and asked me to help him, so I sent him 
 money. When he died, the money was returned to me, and 
 the child having disappeared, I thought no more about her. 
 She has, as you no doubt know, relations in England." 
 
 Father Antonio looked at Beechy who shrugged her 
 shoulders. " I don't know. I only know that my mother's 
 name was " 
 
 " Your mother's name was Smith and her father had," he 
 paused, to give full weight to his information " a shop in 
 Fulham." 
 
 " Oh," said Beechy. " What fun ! " 
 
 The two old men looked at her. She was obviously de- 
 lighted by the tidings. " And where is the Commenda- 
 tore? I will go and see him. You see, I had never 
 known his name " 
 
 Prince Cavaleone was silent for a moment, his mean 
 face quite expressionless. Then he said to Father Antonio, 
 " She is, I see, Giulio Cavaleone's daughter. I will have 
 my steward send her the money I sent her father with 
 
 the arrears. And now, I have the honour to " He 
 
 rose. " I have your address and will have the money sent 
 to your care. Good-evening." 
 
 The priest's quiet bow said little, and Beechy was as 
 silent. 
 
 When they were again in the street she said thoughtfully, 
 "What a horrid old man. But then, that doesn't matter. 
 Did you see what funny little eyes he had? And what a 
 horrid little mouth!" 
 
 " I had hoped he might be kinder, blood ought to tell," 
 sighed the priest.
 
 MEETS A PRINCE AND A TENOR 125 
 
 " Blood ! He may keep his blood ; " Beechy laughed as 
 she spoke, "but it is nice to have some money." And she 
 never referred to her august distant cousin again. 
 
 Father Antonio wondered sometimes if it never occurred 
 to her that a little more humanity on Cavaleone's part might 
 have meant for her a share of the good things of the world, 
 but apparently the thought never came to her. 
 
 Her ambition was to study for the opera, and now that 
 it was attained she was perfectly happy. 
 
 All her life she was like this; unacquisitive to a very re- 
 markable degree, unenvious, demanding as a right the things 
 her nature made essential to her, but disregardful of the 
 merely luxurious or even the merely beautiful. 
 
 The story about the twenty-six hats is true, but that came 
 long after, and was a mere freak of her imagination. 
 
 So back she went to the Two Queens, for no amount of 
 persuasion could induce her to stay on at the convent or 
 even with her beloved Padre. 
 
 Back to the Two Queens, to fat Signora Campi with the 
 black velvet spots on her smooth cheeks, to the little room 
 at the very top of the tall red house, to the broken basin and 
 the empty cradle. 
 
 Her days were full and busy, for she was incapable of 
 idleness all her life when she got into mischief investiga- 
 tion might have proved that the mischief had been preceded 
 by a period of enforced inactivity. For her indeed did 
 Satan find trouble when her hands were momentarily 
 idle. 
 
 But in those early days her mischievous characteristics 
 were still dormant in her little flat breast, and good Campi, 
 true to her former principle of giving the girl the best of 
 food, but of getting from her in return as much work as
 
 126 BEECHY 
 
 possible, Beechy speedily developed into a very good little 
 under-housekeeper indeed. 
 
 She rose early, swept, brought the Signora her coffee on 
 a tray, looked after the waiters, made these gentry sweep (a 
 thing they all loathed) and struggled with some success 
 against their deep-laid habit of spitting on the restaurant 
 floor. 
 
 The hotel part of the Two Queens was a very old-estab- 
 lished business and frequented by provincial tradespeople of 
 the better class. 
 
 Those ladies who indulged in the luxury of breakfast 
 in bed were served those three years by a tall, rather un- 
 gainly girl with red busy hands and a remarkably attractive 
 smile; a girl whose manners were a trifle queer but who, 
 when she brought hot water brought it hot, and under 
 whose sway towels never ran out. 
 
 But in the afternoons a very different Beechy was to be 
 seen leaving the old house and making her rapid way to a 
 street near the Palace of the Caesars. A dark-attired girl 
 with decent cotton gloves and a hat that framed her face 
 and looked as if it really lived on her head. She was gifted 
 in the putting on of hats. 
 
 She was, although rather awkward at that time in rooms, 
 a very good walker. She walked as though there were 
 strong steel springs in her feet, and her head was always 
 held up. The woman who taught her singing was a dark, 
 blowsy, stayless person with a moustache, who lived year in 
 and year out in her little apartment at the top of the house. 
 She never came down into the streets, and her passion was 
 the breeding of canaries. All her life Beechy could close 
 her eyes and hear the ceaseless twitter and piping of the 
 myriad little yellow things hung in their cages in the sun.
 
 MEETS A PRINCE AND A TENOR 127 
 
 Signora Scarpia was a very good singing-teacher, and a 
 conscientious woman. She had had a sister who was a 
 famous operatic contralto, and thus had heard much music 
 and knew what she was about in her lessons. 
 
 Beechy sang very little at first, because she was so young, 
 but the Signora, whose own voice had been very good, and 
 whom only an overwhelming indolence had deterred from 
 an operatic career on her own account, used to sing to 
 her. In these days of gramaphones there is nothing new 
 in the idea, but in Beechy's early years it was an original 
 one. 
 
 Sitting in a shabby plush chair, watching the blue of 
 the sky between the screen of little cages and flitting yellow 
 birds, Beechy heard the soprano parts from the old operas. 
 
 Long before she could sing it Lucia's madness was a thing 
 to hum under her breath as she worked. And one morning 
 about a year after her going back to the Two Queens, some- 
 thing happened. 
 
 Beechy, a red handkerchief tied round her head to pro- 
 tect her hair from the dust, was busily sweeping a room on 
 the first floor of the hotel. 
 
 And as she worked, she sang. " Ah, fors'e lui," she sang, 
 her young, rather hard voice as clear as a bell. She was 
 fifteen now, and a tall, vigorous girl with a strong big 
 throat and a large and flexible mouth, a mouth that made 
 itself square when she sang. 
 
 Her voice, never very big, was even then extremely 
 pliable, and the roulades and trills bubbled out as exactly, 
 as purely, as if she had been a bird. 
 
 Suddenly the door leading to the next room was opened 
 and a man's face, half covered with lather, appeared in the 
 crack.
 
 128 'BEECHY 
 
 "Madonna/ And who are you to sing like that? Not 
 much of a voice, but but you can sing." 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing. " Your servant, sir," she 
 answered. " Why shouldn't I sing ? " 
 
 After all, why shouldn't she? 
 
 The man retired and after a moment returned more 
 fully clothed and with the hastily dried lather gleaming on 
 his fat face. 
 
 " I am Subiaco," he said, much as if he had said, " I am 
 Napoleon." 
 
 Beechy dropped her broom. " Subiaco ! " 
 
 " Si, Signora servo tuo," he mocked parodying her words 
 of a few minutes before. 
 
 Beechy's feelings cannot be described. For the man was 
 the greatest Italian tenor of his day, a creature to be spoken 
 of with bated breath; to hear whom even Signora Scarpia 
 had left her eyrie and descended, choking, in stays. 
 
 "Well?" he asked sharply. 
 
 Beechy stared. " Will you sing for me ? " she asked. 
 
 The great man (who, such are the ups and downs of 
 artistic life, had, ten years before sold stoves in Bologna), 
 laughed, his mouth squaring itself about his white teeth 
 as Beechy's did. 
 
 " Per Bacco 1 Yes, I will sing for you. And you shall 
 sing for me."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 i 
 
 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 
 
 THE next day the great man arrived, puffing wofully, 
 at Signora Scarpia's door. He was accompanied by 
 his accompanist, a melancholy man with a drooping 
 moustache like a Chinaman's. 
 
 Signora Scarpia, in a green plush garment, received the 
 two men with such a profusion of thanks and exclamations 
 of gratitude that Subiaco shut her up rather abruptly. 
 
 " I heard your pupil sing," he said, spreading his fat red 
 fingers that looked like so many little sausages, on his 
 knees. " You have taught her well." 
 
 " Yes, I hope I have. Del resto, I myself studied with 
 Lamperti and my sister is Giulia Trupetti." 
 
 " Indeed. Then we are in an artistic country. So much 
 the better. How old are you, Signorina and what is your 
 name? " 
 
 Beechy gave him the desired information and subsided 
 again into her excited silence. 
 
 " Too young. I mean too young for any sustained work. 
 You must stick to your brooms an'd to the Signora's care- 
 ful instruction for several years yet." 
 
 " She is a distant cousin of Prince Cavaleone," explained 
 the Scarpia. " Her mother was English." 
 
 Subiaco shook his head. He did not approve of the 
 English. 
 
 " Sing something for me," he said. 
 
 129
 
 130 'BEECHY 
 
 The depressed accompanist spread his coat tails with the 
 greatest care over the back of the piano stool, as if they 
 were priceless tail feathers of some kind, and began to play. 
 
 "What shall I sing?" 
 
 After a moment's reflection the Scarpia decided in favour 
 of an old Italian Canzone, " Caro mio ben." It did not 
 suit Beechy's voice at all, and she sang it very badly. 
 
 " H'ml " said Subiaco, rubbing his remarkably azure 
 chin. 
 
 There was a moment's silence, and then Beechy turned 
 to him. " May I sing ' Fors' e lui ' ? " 
 
 " Yes. Try it." 
 
 And she sang it from beginning to end, without a fault. 
 It is an extremely difficult aria, but the qualities it most 
 calls for, were the qualities possessed by the girl more than 
 any other at that time; later of course her voice became 
 much heavier of extreme highness of pitch and great flexi- 
 bility. 
 
 She carolled away, a hand on her hip, her red mouth 
 squared, her eyes dancing with pleasure, and when she had 
 finished the little man with the big diamond in his shirt 
 signified his approbation in the most unqualified way. He 
 kissed her soundly. 
 
 " Brava, brava! And to you, Signora! All my felicita- 
 tions to you both. The timbre is perfect and the execution 
 quite extraordinary for so young a singer. Signorina, if you 
 continue to work you will one day be a very great coloritura- 
 singer." (This, of course, was a mistake.) 
 
 Signora Scarpia flushed and panted with gratification. 
 Beechy stood still by the piano. 
 
 "Do you mean it?" she asked with sudden ungracious- 
 ness.
 
 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 131 
 
 " Mean it ? Does Camillo Subiaco lie about his art ? " 
 
 After which they all partook of some sweet white wine 
 in small green glasses, and little crisp cakes of which Beechy 
 ate a great many. 
 
 Subiaco was the kindest of little men, and before he left 
 he had given the Scarpia a voucher for a third tier box at 
 the opera that very night. 
 
 It was all most romantic and wonderful, and the rest 
 of the afternoon was passed by Signora Scarpia, kind soul, 
 in arranging one of her own blouses for Beechy to wear. 
 
 Beechy never forgot that blouse, which she heartily ad- 
 mired, and which always, in her memory, had about it a 
 touch of magic. It was pale blue and had a black velvet 
 collar on which were stitched little round flakes of silver. 
 
 Beechy's hair, now long, was loose on her shoulders, 
 smooth dark waves reaching nearly to her waist, hair with 
 shadows in the hollows of its waves and high lights of an 
 indescribable colour in its crests. 
 
 " You are very pretty, cara," pronounced the good 
 Scarpia, herself resplendent in purple. 
 
 Beechy went silently to a glass-doored wardrobe and con- 
 templated herself. 
 
 " The blouse is beautiful," she said, " but I ? My mouth 
 is too big and too red and my eyes are queer " 
 
 Signora Scarpia nodded. " Yes, your eyes are queer, 
 dear; and they will be queerer before long." 
 
 But Beechy's vanity did not extend to her physical ap- 
 pearance. She asked no question regarding her friend's 
 speech, and the friends supped. They had, that night of 
 Beechy's first appearance in an audience spaghetti with 
 tomatoes and large slices of garlicky salami. These, washed 
 down with rough new Chianti and water, made a sufficiently
 
 i 3 2 BEECHY 
 
 good supper for anyone, and there is a little Italian res- 
 taurateur near Covent Garden Opera House who still 
 boasts of the great singer who some ten years after that 
 famous evening used to come to his place and beg him in 
 rapid Roman dialect to make her just such a spaghetti. 
 
 The canaries that night had been put to bed, their little 
 cages shrouded with squares of grey muslin; the window 
 of course was tight closed against the pernicious evening air ; 
 the little room was warm, ill-ventilated, and overfull of 
 stuffy, shabby furniture. 
 
 But to Beechy it was all a part of a beautiful whole 
 and as such she never forgot it. 
 
 At last the cab came! A cab! Wicked luxury paid for 
 by Beechy, and the journey was accomplished in safety, al- 
 though the horse fell down and nearly decided to die where 
 he lay. 
 
 Signora Scarpia, very magnificent and short in her man- 
 ner to the old man who conducted them to their box, would 
 have amused Beechy on any other occasion, but the girl was 
 too engrossed in her own sensations to notice any external 
 thing. 
 
 " There," said Signora Scarpia, when she had settled her- 
 self in her place, " is the Mayor." 
 
 Beechy did not answer. Mayors were as naught to her, 
 and even the smartly dressed people in the boxes below. 
 
 To her the dark well of the orchestra and the curtain 
 beyond were the beginning and the ending of the world. 
 Behind that red velvet was the stage. The stage with its 
 queer smell, its painted wings, its dust, its shirt-sleeved 
 men, Life, in a word. 
 
 And it seemed to the girl that time had rolled back and 
 that she must be standing dressed as a boy, down in the
 
 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 133 
 
 darkness, waiting for Landucci to speak to her. The inter- 
 vening time was gone, impossible to realise. The large 
 white gloves on her hands, what were they? and the blue 
 blouse ? 
 
 For a moment Beechy, literally and honestly, asked her- 
 self, such was her excitement, what these things meant. 
 Then the maestri of the orchestra came out from the dark 
 doors under the stage, and the ravishing sound of tuning up 
 began ; a sound she never could hear without a certain queer 
 little thrill in the back of her neck. 
 
 The opera was " Rigoletto," and it was well sung. Gilda 
 was old but a good artist, and as the duke little Subiaco 
 was in his glory. 
 
 His was one of the musical beguiling, disturbing voices 
 produced only in Italy. And in a rather common way he 
 was a good actor. His little plump legs (cunningly elon- 
 gated by long heels) were encased in rose-coloured tights, 
 his doublet was black embroidered in silver. And his wig 
 it was amusing, his wig. 
 
 " Com'e bello," whispered Signora Scarpia. 
 
 Beechy did not hear her. 
 
 Leaning forward in her place, the girl listened, listened, 
 her eyes half closed under their thick white lids. 
 
 She was even then an intensely keen critic, and with her 
 delight mingled regrets of the obvious age of the over- 
 painted Gilda. 
 
 " I could sing that," was her first remark, as Gilda 
 finished her famous aria. 
 
 And there, in four words, was her attitude. Could she, 
 Beatrice Cavaleone, do such and such a thing, or could she 
 not? 
 
 And it was that very night that the germ of her great
 
 134 BEECHY 
 
 idea, the idea of which, later, English newspapers were to 
 make such a great deal, quickened in her mind. 
 
 " How much do tickets here cost ? " she asked the Scarpia, 
 at the end of the second act. " I mean, up there in the 
 gallery first row, in the middle." 
 
 " A lira, or one fifty why? " 
 
 " Because," returned Beechy with great calm, " I am go- 
 ing to come to the opera every night." 
 
 " While Subiaco is here?" 
 
 "No. Always." 
 
 The Scarpia gasped, and opened her fan with a rapid 
 gesture not at all in keeping with the hitherto studied 
 majesty of her demeanour. 
 
 "Always?" 
 
 " Yes. I find that I must see all the operas that there 
 are. And in that way I shall learn to act, while you are 
 teaching me how to sing. For instance, Gilda uses her arms 
 as if they were wings. She flaps them. I shall not do 
 that." 
 
 And she did not. 
 
 Her great idea embodied the beginnings of a very orig- 
 inal and curious system, by which she abided with the 
 greatest scrupulousness. 
 
 It was, to put it shortly, a system of elimination. Daria 
 used her arms like wings; Agostini never stood still; Marie 
 Malapert attacked the high notes half a turn too low and 
 slid up to them; Augusta Bremer the great Wagnerian, sang 
 in her throat and rolled her eyes. 
 
 And all these defects as well as a hundred others in a 
 hundred other singers, Beechy noted and avoided. Her 
 voice as I have said was never of the very first flight, but 
 her management of it was marvellous and her acting quite
 
 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 135 
 
 the best of any living operatic soprano. She was the only 
 one, remember, whose Marguerite was as young and inno- 
 cent as Goethe meant her to be. Not even Melba of the 
 golden throat, could quite produce Cavaleone's effort of 
 unprotected piteous youth. It was when she was twenty- 
 nine that Aubepine told someone he loathed singing 
 " Faust " with her, she made him feel such an unmitigated 
 monster! 
 
 Imagine her going doggedly night after night to the gal- 
 lery of the Costanzi, no matter how tired she might be, 
 no matter what the weather was. 
 
 All winter she went and during the short spring season. 
 Then came summer, when her evenings were passed with 
 Signora Scarpia or with Father Antonio. The nuns she 
 visited fairly often, and they were always glad to see her. 
 
 She had deserted them, but her sober, hard-working life 
 did them credit and they loved her. 
 
 The little garden was very pleasant in the summer, and 
 the young girl had no hesitation in declaring that her visits 
 were more frequent in the summer than in the winter for 
 that reason. 
 
 She never could see why her own innocent preferences 
 need be concealed. 
 
 Occasionally she would toil up the Gianicolo to the 
 shabby old villa where the Commendatore lived with a mar- 
 ried daughter. 
 
 The Commendatore, discovered by means of the address 
 Prince Cavaleone had given Father Antonio, was always 
 glad to see the daughter of his friend, but Beechy did not 
 greatly like him. He was distinctly not simpatico, and his 
 attitude towards her career was mutely inimical. These 
 people are all of minor importance, but such as they were
 
 136 BEECHY 
 
 they were Beechy's friends during her most impressionable 
 years, and therefore they must be described. 
 
 All this time up to the day, ten years after her meeting 
 with Camillo Subiaco, when she left England, she was 
 under the gentle, penetrating influence of the good nuns 
 and the old priest. 
 
 At the same time she went, whenever there was opera, 
 to her solitary outpost in the world of art, in the gallery 
 of the Costanzi, filling her ears and her brain with music 
 and the mimic life so magically fascinating to her. And 
 occasionally she would spend a long day in the Street of the 
 Violin, hearing all the news of her old friends there, listen- 
 ing to it with the keenest interest, giving quite unasked the 
 best advice she could think of, keeping fresh in her heart all 
 the memories of her earliest childhood that might otherwise 
 have been gradually effaced by time. 
 
 Could she, later, when her own personal drama came to 
 her, have been expected to take it as would have taken it 
 some young girl with only one bringing-up? 
 
 I say no. 
 
 She had no book learning beyond a very little that she 
 had acquired in the convent, and she never loved reading 
 for its own sake. 
 
 And one day in October, when she was seventeen and a 
 half, something else happened, and a new phase began for 
 her. 
 
 She was sitting by the window one Sunday afternoon, 
 watching a pouring rain that she feared would prevent her 
 making her intended visit to Father Antonio. If she had 
 been sitting straight in her chair the old chair in which 
 her father had always sat nothing might have occurred. 
 But she was sitting on one foot, and sidewise, and at a sud-
 
 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 137 
 
 den noise overhead which she mistook for a knock, she 
 jumped up. On such trifles as a bit of unsewn tape round 
 the inside of a skirt, can so much hang. 
 
 Her foot caught, she lost her balance, flung out her arms 
 and fell back, opening, as she fell, a small opening in the 
 left arm of the chair. 
 
 And in the opening, a place half the length of the chair- 
 arm, were several letters mostly tied together, and a flat 
 green cardboard box. 
 
 Beechy, ecstatically surprised, opened the box, and there 
 she found several things. 
 
 A faded daguerreotype of a young woman with a wreath 
 of flowers balanced on her very smooth hair; a bracelet 
 made of gold, with " Caroline " and a date engraved on it, a 
 lock of faded brown hair, and a tarnished filagree silver cross 
 such as one can buy in Rome by the million for a few pence 
 apiece. Valueless stuff; but to Beechy most precious, for the 
 things had of course belonged to her mother, and as such 
 had been cherished by her father. 
 
 The girl's eyes filled with tears. Her poor little mother 
 had worn the trinkets, the picture must be hers, and the 
 lock of hair had probably been cut from her head after her 
 death. 
 
 She had never before missed her mother, but now, at the 
 sight of the curiously personal little trifles that were all 
 that was left of her, the girl suddenly felt very lonely. 
 Reverently she took the letters from the yellowed envelopes. 
 There were five. 
 
 Two were written in very bad Italian in a pretty, delicate 
 hand, and began " Mio carissimo Giulio." The other three 
 were dated Herne Road, Fulham, some time before her own 
 birth, and were in three different handwritings.
 
 138 BEECP1Y 
 
 But they were in English and Beechy could not read one 
 word of them. 
 
 For a long time she sat there in the dull little room, 
 the letters and the trinkets on her lap. 
 
 After all life was a sad thing. Her poor little foreign 
 mother Caroline why had she had to die, and leave her 
 little baby? 
 
 As she dreamed, her eyes on the empty cradle, Beechy 
 almost saw her own dusky six months' old head on the little 
 pillow. 
 
 "How I must have missed her," she thought. "Poor 
 little baby!"
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 'ENRY PEECRAFT'S LETTER 
 
 THERE was in the Convent a little old Sister who 
 had once been in England, and who was supposed 
 to enjoy a complete mastery of the barbarous tongue 
 of that island. 
 
 This was Sister Caterina who spent that part of her life 
 that was not engaged in prayer, surrounded by great baskets 
 and pots of different sorts of vegetables that she was en- 
 gaged in transforming into various kinds of soup for the 
 great household. 
 
 She was a small squat woman with bright little black 
 eyes and a broad mouth scarred with smallpox. The 
 daughter of a poor peasant, she had grown up in the Cam- 
 pagna under the shadow of an old bit of aqueduct. Her 
 childhood was passed in hard out-of-door labour, man's 
 work, and even now, after years of vegetable-preparing, her 
 arms were the strongest in the Convent. 
 
 And while she worked, digging, ploughing, binding up the 
 scant sheaves, her mind with dogged persistency was with 
 the Blessed Mother and the Saints. 
 
 To her they were the whole romance of life, and indeed, 
 regarded simply as legend, the lives of the saints are very 
 charming reading. 
 
 A famous atheist has said that the story of Christ's birth 
 is the most beautiful piece of fiction ever invented. And to 
 
 139
 
 i 4 o BEECHY 
 
 the poor peasant-girl believing reverently every scrap of lore 
 that came her way and pondering it over and over in her 
 heart, her real life was the dream and her dream-life the 
 real. 
 
 So when her father died and her brothers went away to 
 America, her ideal was fulfilled and she became a nun. 
 
 And now she had been for thirty-five years preparing 
 and washing vegetables in the kitchen of the Convent of San 
 Franceschino, and her mind had become a vast storehouse of 
 holy legend. 
 
 She was sitting by a window one day in October, paring 
 turnips. A picturesque red place, the kitchen, with smoke- 
 stained arched roof, and dark angles lighted by the gleam 
 of copper pots and kettles. 
 
 Several Sisters bustled about in the distance, near the 
 stoves, preparing dinner, but Sister Caterina was in a world 
 of her own. 
 
 She was back in the middle-ages living over with a cer- 
 tain holy woman her cruel experiences under (Oh, horror, 
 hardly to be thought of) a wicked Mother Superior. 
 
 The height of cruelty was reached when the wicked 
 woman ordered the poor girl to bring her fried snow-balls 
 for her supper, and the miracle consisted of the obedient 
 frying of the snow-balls. 
 
 Sister Caterina's fingers flew over her turnips, but her 
 eyes were veiled. Surely it was a very wonderful miracle, 
 and its humble worker was now a blessed saint in Paradise ! 
 
 The hard-featured old woman's expression was very beau- 
 tiful in its simple reverence. 
 
 When Beechy, her cheeks glowing with her quick walk in 
 the autumn air, came into the kitchen, the Sisters all greeted 
 her affectionately.
 
 'ENRY PEECRAFTS LETTER 141 
 
 " Well, thanks, very well and you all ? No, thanks, 
 nothing to eat I can stay only a few moments, for I have 
 an engagement. I want to see ah, there she is " 
 
 Sister Caterina was surprised, for Beechy had never 
 wasted much time on her. The good woman was too ab- 
 sorbed in her visions to be very amusing to the young girl. 
 But now Beechy needed her and of course came to her with- 
 out hesitation. 
 
 "You speak English, Sister?" 
 
 " Ah, yes, Bici mia. Was I not three years in the Isle of 
 Wight with the dear Sisters ? " 
 
 Beechy sat down and took from her pocket the letters she 
 had found a few days before. 
 
 " These letters are written to my mother by her people 
 in England. I want you to read them to me." 
 
 Sister Caterina wiped her hands on her blue apron and 
 put on her spectacles. 
 
 " I cannot read the English well," she confessed, " they 
 spell it in a manner quite senseless! But I will try " 
 
 Bici waited patiently, going over in her mind a difficult 
 bit of recitative in " Somnambula." 
 
 It was a pleasant place, the warm old kitchen, and the 
 girl had no fastidious dislike of the smell of cooking. 
 
 " If we eat it, why can't we smell it ? " she asked some- 
 one years later. 
 
 Outside in the old garden the trees tossed in a high wind, 
 and in the city dust rolled in clouds. To workers, the mere 
 fact of cessation from work and being in warmth, suffices 
 for their pleasure, and Beechy was a worker. 
 
 One of the nuns took from the fire a great copper full 
 of boiled potatoes, and began piling them up on platters. 
 It was dinner-time.
 
 142 BEECHY 
 
 Beef was boiling hard too, and the nuns hurried about in 
 cheerful confusion. 
 
 " H'm! She says they were angry, it seems. They 
 1 much-a-displeased ' ' molto dispiaciuto.' They not wish 
 her to marry an Italian ! " 
 
 The old woman's face expressed amused contempt for 
 this ridiculous attitude of mind. 
 
 " They say she should come back and marry 'Enry 
 Enrico somebody. The father was ill. And they have all 
 been to the capella to pray. Even in England, you see, 
 prayer is the best thing ! " 
 
 The next letter, written a month later was found to 
 mean that the disapproved marriage had taken place. " She 
 has made a bed what that can mean? and must lie on it. 
 That means that she was very ill, probably. And she is 
 never to write to them again. And the father was very 
 ill " 
 
 Beechy thrust out her lip. " Never to write to them ! 
 A nice, kind family that!" 
 
 Sister Caterina caught up a turnip and pared it with 
 masterly swiftness. 
 
 " They were probably very grand people," she said, " and 
 very rich. And rich English people, oh so proud." 
 
 " Do you think," asked Beechy suddenly, " that they are 
 rich?" 
 
 " All English people are either very rich or beggars. 
 But why?" 
 
 " Read the other letter, please, dear Sister." 
 
 The other letter was written by one Henry Pyecraft 
 and after stating briefly that old Mr. Smith had died sud- 
 denly the day before, informed Mrs. Cavaleone that the 
 family begged her not to write to them again. " They are
 
 'ENRY PEECRAFTS LETTER 143 
 
 very just, but very unforgiving as you know, and they will 
 never forgive you. I forgive you, though, Carrie," he con- 
 tinued, in his rather ornate writing, in which the upstrokes 
 were delicate and the downstrokes heavy. " I forgive you 
 with all my heart. Please buy with this five-pound note 
 some little present for your baby. And I pray God that 
 you may be happy. Yours always, Henry Pyecraft." 
 
 " He was rich, too," declared Sister Caterina. " Five 
 pounds, that is vediano un po' 120 francs! A hundred 
 and twenty francs to buy a little present for her baby." 
 
 " That was me," observed Beechy absently. 
 
 She sat in the embrasure of the window, her hands 
 clasped round one knee. 
 
 Against the dull grey background of the autumnal 
 garden her warmly coloured face stood out clearly. She 
 was thinking, her brows drawn sharply together, her red 
 lips still extended a little. " He was a good man," she 
 said. " I like him." 
 
 The great bell calling the nuns to their midday meal 
 broke up the little conference, and Beechy with hurried 
 farewells took her leave. 
 
 The letters had disappointed her, but there was some- 
 thing in Sister Caterina's suggestion as to the worldly im- 
 portance of the writers. 
 
 " If they are rich they ought to be good to me, at least 
 that Signer Peecraft Signora Scarpia is right, I ought to 
 learn, to study. If I wrote to Signer Peecraft?" 
 
 She wrote to Signer Peecraft. She wrote a brief but 
 comprehensive statement of her situation, and then had it 
 translated at a " bureau " where such work was done, and 
 when she had posted it, she waited for the answer. 
 
 The answer came, and after a consultation with the faith-
 
 144 'BEECHY 
 
 ful Scarpia, it, too, was taken to the bureau for accurate 
 translation. 
 
 Beechy never forgot her reading of Henry Pyecraft'* 
 letter. 
 
 She took it into the nearest church and sat down to read 
 it by the candles on a side altar to the Madonna. 
 
 " My dear child," it began, " your letter has greatly 
 puzzled me. I was very fond of your poor mother, an'd 
 deeply mourned her loss. But a few years ago I married 
 her sister Augusta, and Augusta, who is a woman of very 
 strong feelings, has never forgiven your mother for becom- 
 ing a papist." 
 
 At this word, left in its original form, for the reason 
 that Italian has for it no exact equivalent, Beechy made a 
 long halt. 
 
 What was a papist? Evidently something very bad. 
 And yet it could not have been very bad or her father 
 would not so have loved her mother. 
 
 " I am greatly interested in what you tell me of your 
 voice, but we think the operatic career a very wrong one, 
 Your Aunt Augusta considers opera absolutely sinful, and 
 I am sure would never consent to knowing you if you con~ 
 tinue in your present way of thinking. Could you not give 
 up the perilous plan? If you do, I am sure I can persuade 
 your Aunt Augusta to allow you to come and visit us. God 
 has blessed us plentifully, and I would love to give to poor 
 Carrie's girl out of my abundance. I have not yet men- 
 tioned your letter to your Aunt Augusta, but if you will 
 write me that you will give up this plan of singing in opera, 
 I will approach her on the matter. God bless you my dear 
 child. " Yours truly, 
 
 " HENRY PYECRAFT."
 
 'ENRY PEECRAFTS LETTER 145 
 
 Beechy sat for some time in the dusky old church, her 
 hands clasped on the letter. 
 
 It was very quiet ; at a distant altar, several people knelt, 
 shapeless dark masses on the stone floor; tall candles burned 
 motionless in the still air. 
 
 In a stained glass window over the high altar the figure 
 of Saint George stood out against the dull sky in a 
 mysterious glow of colour. 
 
 He held a great sword that was about to pierce the neck 
 of the writhing dragon, and his billowing cloak was cherry- 
 coloured above his armour. 
 
 Beechy watched him for several minutes, her mind a 
 perfect blank. This was a thing that happened to her oc- 
 casionally, and was, as a rule, the preliminary to some im- 
 portant decision. 
 
 It was is if, subconsciously, she cleared her brain of all 
 thought, and that the decision when it came to her should 
 flash clean in a clean surface. 
 
 Then she gave a little laugh. 
 
 " Poor 'Enry Peecraft," she said to herself. 
 
 And as she spoke, she knew that she was going to Eng- 
 land.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE ROVING DROP 
 
 GOOD-BYE, dear Father Antonio. Give all the 
 dear Sisters my love again, and the orphans. 
 Good-bye, Signora Campi, it was good of you to 
 come to see me off! Dearest Scarpia, thank you again a 
 thousand times for all that you have done for me. Addio, 
 Lamberti Caro vecchio Addio, Signora Marianna Addio, 
 tutti addio, addio, " 
 
 She leaned out of the window as the train started, a 
 bouquet in each hand, her hat on one side, her cheeks crimson 
 with excitement. 
 
 The dears, how good they had all been to her, and how 
 kind it was of them to come to the station to see her off! 
 God bless them all. 
 
 Then, they were out of sight, gone; they were a part 
 of the past. 
 
 The present consisted of a third class compartment in 
 the train bound north. And the future a grim Aunt 
 Augusta and a small, piteous, pale 'Enry Peecraft. 
 
 She knew that he was small and piteous, though she had 
 neither written to nor heard from him since that day in the 
 church a week ago. 
 
 One of her great-uncles, Ranieri Cavaleone, had been a 
 wanderer on the face of the earth; he had travelled all his 
 life, roughing it cheerfully in the then almost unknown 
 quarters of the globe, living on dried meat and native food, 
 
 146
 
 THE ROVING DROP 147 
 
 sleeping on the ground, or in horrible huts, when, a very 
 rich man, he might have lived like a king in any civilised 
 place. This because he had the magic drop in his veins 
 that prevents its owner (or its slave) from ever settling 
 down. And Beechy had inherited from this uncle a per- 
 centage of the magic drop. She was a born traveller. Not 
 only were discomforts as nothing to her, but the mere fact 
 of being in motion filled her with an inexplicable exhilara- 
 tion of the senses. 
 
 It seemed to her, all her life, that she saw and heard 
 with marvellously increased keenness the minute she was 
 moving. And that early November morning she was in a 
 train for the first time in her life. 
 
 A fat and dirty priest dozed opposite her. Next him 
 dozed a peasant in a red-lined cloak. There were two chil- 
 dren in the compartment, one of whom had a surgical band- 
 age round its head. Then there was their mother, a gaudily 
 dressed woman with ugly sly eyes. 
 
 An unattractive crowd enough, but keenly interesting to 
 Beechy, for they were people. She wondered about them. 
 "Why the old priest was so dirty, why his housekeeper didn't 
 make him shave; why the peasant knew that the red lining 
 would change his cloak from a mere covering to an orna- 
 mental garment full of romance. Why the child had had 
 an operation; why it smelt so very badly of some strong 
 drug; why the mother was so unpleasant to behold. She 
 wondered how old they all were, what their names were. 
 
 Then the marvel of the flying landscape caught and held 
 her; the beautiful unrolling of the view; the mystery of 
 the ever- just-to-be-rounded curve, the glory of the sudden 
 revelation as the train flew along. 
 
 " There will be a house there to the right and children
 
 i 4 8 BEECHY 
 
 at the door " she thought, making a kind of wager with 
 herself. 
 
 They travelled into a heavy rain-storm, when for the first 
 time she saw the beauties of flying cloud-shadows over white 
 mountains. 
 
 They paused in stations where little dramas of greetings 
 and good-byes were taking place, as they always are, bring- 
 ing small pangs of sympathy or envy to the imaginative 
 beholder. 
 
 It was a new world to the girl. 
 
 The hours passed ; she changed into another train, leaving 
 all her companions and stepping into a new act of life, as it 
 seemed to her theatre-soaked mind. 
 
 Here, during the -night, she made friends with a tear- 
 stained girl of about twenty, and the girl told her that her 
 lover had deserted her, and cried and moaned, her hands 
 to her breast. 
 
 " What did you do to make him go, I mean ? " asked 
 Beechy, watching her keenly. 
 
 "Nothing! I was just the same. I didn't change it 
 was he who changed. He used to call me a white blossom 
 because I am so pale, but now he says I am like a 
 cream-cheese and he hates the sight of me! It is the 
 same face but his eyes have changed," mourned the poor 
 creature. 
 
 " No one has more than one face," she added, suddenly 
 sullen. 
 
 Beechy, her cheek resting against her dirty hand, nodded 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " Actresses have," she mused. " And any woman 
 might." 
 
 "Any woman might? Might have more than one face?
 
 THE ROVING DROP 149 
 
 That's all you know," cried the little victim of man's 
 caprice, with disdain. " You have never loved anyone, so 
 how can you tell ? " 
 
 " If I loved a man," Beechy returned, unmoved, with 
 that characteristic immovability of hers, " I should not let 
 my face bore him any more than I should let my mind." 
 
 Something in her manner arrested the other girl, who 
 stared as she mopped her face with her very black hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 " How how would you do ? " she asked, presently. 
 
 When Beechy had followed her idea to what seemed to 
 her its logical conclusion, she answered: 
 
 " If I was a laughing woman and I saw the laughing 
 began to bore him, I'd stop laughing and be mysterious. 
 Or if I was a sad-faced woman with tragic eyes, and he 
 began to tire of tragedy then I'd do a little comedy for 
 him." 
 
 "Do comedy?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " But that wouldn't be natural, it would be acting" 
 said the other. 
 
 Beechy laughed thoughtfully. " It would be natural," 
 she said, " to me. Acting is natural to some people." 
 
 Wisdom beyond her years, but the logical outcome of the 
 effect of her life on her particular nature. To her Camille, 
 Lucrezia, Gilda, and the rest of them were real women, and 
 she had learnt about women from them. 
 
 She slept for several hours after this conversation, and 
 when she awoke the other girl had gone, gone for ever, but 
 leaving a memory, and having been an instrument in 
 Beechy's development, as we are all instruments in each 
 other's development, inasmuch as she caused the girl to
 
 150 BEECHY 
 
 formulate an idea that had hitherto been merely a nebulous 
 dream-thought. 
 
 Many people's dream-thoughts remain nebulous to their 
 life's end, because formulative crystallisation never comes to 
 them, and they go their way apparently theory-less. 
 
 Nothing much in the way of events broke the monotony 
 of the long journey, until she found herself standing on a 
 wharf looking at the first ship she had ever seen. 
 
 A magic thing with a network of ropes against a cold 
 blue sky, a thing that pulsed and groaned as it made ready 
 to start on its journey, as if it feared the sea. 
 
 With her premature appreciation of the value of sensa- 
 tions, Beechy went below at once and waited until the 
 packet was well under way before she looked at the sea. 
 
 She sat in the stuffy little cabin, round which thrifty 
 ladies were taking time by the forelock in the matter of 
 lying down places, for quite half an hour after the first 
 strange pulse that the packet began as it left the wharf. 
 
 Then she crept quietly up to the deck. 
 
 It was about two o'clock at night and the moon shone 
 bright in a cloud-filled sky. 
 
 Beechy walked up the deserted deck and, after shutting 
 her eyes for a moment, took her first, carefully hoarded look 
 at the sea. 
 
 Her first feeling was one of intense disappointment. The 
 horizon line was so near! She had imagined a vastness not 
 to be described, but this she had seen in the Campagna, and 
 she felt cheated. 
 
 Then, as the ship throbbed its way in the silence and 
 clouds flitted across the moon, and the moon's light fitful 
 and strange fell on the little, fine, crimped waves, it came 
 to her, the Wonder of the Sea.
 
 iTHE ROPING DROP 151 
 
 People who do not love the sea will not understand. 
 People who do love the sea will need no words from me; 
 they will have but to close their eyes and it will come back 
 to them, the feeling that is part sadness, part exultation, 
 part a never-ending amazement in and love of its beauty and 
 responsiveness. 
 
 And this Beechy felt that first night as she made her 
 curious little flight to her mother's country. 
 
 Her reasons for going to England would have been, had 
 she attempted to give them, extremely vague. But she had 
 made no attempt to explain even to herself her reason for 
 this extraordinary step. When Father Antonio asked her 
 why she was going, the kind old man had in his own mind 
 a ready reason for her, and required no real answer. She 
 was going because she wished to see her mother's people, 
 he returned the answer himself. 
 
 Signora Scarpia believed that she was going to claim 
 from these wealthy British relations the education they in 
 a remote way seemed to owe her. And there was some- 
 thing of truth in each of these theories. Perhaps in most 
 of the theories that people make about each other's actions 
 there is something of truth. 
 
 But Beechy was going to England in the first place be- 
 cause her great-uncle had gone to India and Japan; because 
 the far-off country called her, because she had the roaming 
 drop of blood, because her time had come to fold her tent 
 and start into the wilderness.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 BEECHY ARRIVES IN LONDON 
 
 THE first arrival of anyone in London is always an 
 event worthy of description, although it has been 
 done over and over again, and will be done over and 
 over again until the end of writing. 
 
 George Ponderro's advent in the old city, in Mr. Wells's 
 Tono Bungay is a marvel of deeply felt description. Mr. 
 Wells is as noted a town lover as was Charles Lamb or 
 Dickens, and there is something of both these old masters 
 in the new master's manner. 
 
 Young George Ponderro, a country-bred youth, saw Lon- 
 don in one light, Beatrice Cavaleone, Roman citizen, saw it 
 in another. 
 
 She arrived in the first place, at Liverpool Street, and at 
 eight in the morning. 
 
 It had been raining, but had turned cold, and as her 
 cab made its way up Fleet Street, a fog crept out of the 
 dark corners of the world and spread itself out, saying to the 
 little eager-eyed Roman, " Here, my dear young lady is the 
 real thing in the fog line." 
 
 And it was. 
 
 For the gods, true to their principle of sending to people 
 the thing they dramatically require, sent Beechy that morn- 
 ing what an Olympian shopkeeper, dealing in elements and 
 weathers, would surely call " a most elegant thing in fogs." 
 Down it came, or up, or out, it came, growing yellower and 
 
 152
 
 BEECHY ARRIVES IN LONDON 153 
 
 yellower, hiding first the sharp corners of the buildings then 
 crawling down and up and round, until everything was lost 
 and void. 
 
 Now It so happened that Sister Caterina's one day in 
 London had been just such a day as this. And naturally 
 her impression of London was that of a Southern peasant 
 who has been for twenty-four hours smothered in a steam- 
 ing blanket. 
 
 Sister Caterina had not been enthusiastic about London. 
 
 As to Beechy, mark this. 
 
 Her entry into London was one of terror. The fog 
 frightened her out of her wits. Huddled in her cab she 
 sat peering with hot eyes into the awful brown darkness 
 that was gobbling the world. 
 
 London, the London she was to learn to know and love 
 as very few Latins have ever known and loved it, met her 
 in this wicked way. 
 
 " 'Ave to go a bit slow, 'ere, Miss," remarked the cabby, 
 a new horror, a disembodied voice in the obscurity. 
 
 The cab crawled its way, and not one thing could Beechy 
 see except dimly burning red lights now and again, and 
 fragments like fragments from the antique, had she but 
 known it, a head here, an arm there, a horse's ears thrust 
 up towards her, followed by a dreadful grinding of wheels. 
 
 And Beechy in her hansom, wept helplessly. 
 
 Near the bank a policeman came and talked to her, but 
 she of course could not understand him and mutely held out 
 the card with Mr. Pyecraft's address on it, as she had suc- 
 cessfully done to the cabby. 
 
 The policeman's face went out as he tried to read the 
 name. It was awful. It was like Hell as pictured in an 
 old book in Father Antonio's little library.
 
 154 BEECHY 
 
 " Oh, Rome, oh, my beautiful 'dear Rome, where the sun 
 always shines! " 
 
 Presently the cabman drew up at the kerb and dis- 
 mounting from his invisible perch waited for his fare to 
 get out. " No use crying, Miss," the man said. " No use 
 in hanythink, as far as that goes. But I daren't go any 
 farder. My 'oss is young an' it ain't safe " 
 
 Beechy understood, and climbed obediently down. She 
 understood that she was now deserted by even the cabman. 
 And anything seemed better than creeping on in that end- 
 less line of invisible, noisy vehicles. 
 
 A chemist's shop near where they had stopped, was throw- 
 ing something like real light into the fog, and the cabman 
 after a short altercation persuaded a ragged man with an 
 awful face, such as Beechy had never seen in all her .life 
 among ragged people, to drag her little box across the pave- 
 ment to the shop. 
 
 Beechy opened her purse. She had a pound in shillings, 
 but she had meant to ask her Aunt Augusta how much she 
 ought to pay. The cabman looked at her as she hesitated. 
 He was a seedy cabman and a thirsty one, as his nose testi- 
 fied. But he was a kind cabman, too. 
 
 When she offered her little store to him he held up two 
 stumpy red fingers and made a little speech about his own 
 inherent qualities. 
 
 She paid him without a word and went into the shop. 
 
 Messrs. Thatcher and Gubbins, the chemists, were both 
 much surprised by the self-possessed advent into their shop 
 of a tall strange-looking girl and a small brass-nailed box. 
 
 " Good-morning, Miss," began Gubbins, whose natural 
 gifts had elevated him, although the junior partner, into the 
 position of leader where customers were concerned.
 
 'BEECHY ARRIVES IN LONDON 155 
 
 " Gmahna," returned Beechy civilly, this being the form 
 in which the words, obviously a greeting, reached her ears. 
 " Gmahnd." 
 
 "What can I do for you this morning ?" 
 
 " Non parlo Inglese," she answered him firmly. Her 
 fears had vanished the moment her foot touched the ground, 
 and she was afraid of no mere tangible man, particularly 
 when fie was a shopkeeper and had no chin at all unless it 
 had slipped down into a place of concealment behind his 
 high collar. 
 
 " I beg your pardon " 
 
 " Non parlo Inglese. Sono Italiana," she repeated, her 
 eye fixed on his in a way that made him feel, Briton though 
 he was, and a Briton in his own shop, a mere interloper. 
 
 " Italiana, ah, yes, just so, Italian ! Dear me, Miss, I 
 am afraid we can't be of much use to you here, ah, 
 Thatcher?" 
 
 Thatcher shook his head. " Sit down, Miss," he said, 
 adding to the chinless one, " poor girl, she's lost in the fog. 
 And no wonder, Gilbert, just look at it. Hi, boy, close 
 that door will you ? " 
 
 The errand boy jumped violently and did as he was 
 bidden. 
 
 Meantime Beechy had sat down and was sitting quietly, 
 her hands folded. 
 
 She was waiting for the fog to go away. 
 
 The two men watched her for about five minutes. 
 
 " Probably just come from Liverpool Street, Tom," sug- 
 gested Mr. Gubbins. 
 
 Thatcher nodded. 
 
 "And probably _dying for a cup of tea, eh, Gil?" 
 
 Thus Beechy, busy with the aria in the first act of " A'fda,"
 
 156 BEECHY 
 
 was awakened to real life by that horrid incident, her first 
 cup of tea. 
 
 Thanking the genial Gubbins, she stirred the strange 
 looking liquid and tasted it with wariness. 
 
 "Ugh!" she said frankly. 
 
 She tried it again, nipping at the side of the cup like 
 a rabbit investigating a new leaf. 
 
 No, it was very nasty. 
 
 " Thanks," she said, " but I don't need it. I am not ill." 
 
 And she gave it back to the young man, whose indignation 
 was intense. 
 
 "By Jove, Tom!" 
 
 Beechy smiled at him and he forgave her. 
 
 " Perhaps they don't drink tea in Italy," he suggested, 
 and Mr. Thatcher agreed, " Perhaps they don't." 
 
 At the end of the first hour, a customer came in, an old 
 woman with toothache. 
 
 She looked curiously at the motionless figure in the chair, 
 but said nothing. 
 
 The next person to come, however, was a little doctor 
 who wished to make some complaint about the making up 
 of an ointment that he had prescribed for one of his patients. 
 
 "You fellows don't mix your ointments well enough," 
 he said, " that's what 7 complain of, you don't mix 'em 
 Hello, what's this?" 
 
 He had caught sight of Beechy and he bristled with 
 curiosity. 
 
 " It's a lady who came in out of the fog," explained 
 Thatcher. "An Italian " 
 
 "Out of the fog! The fog is going to last for hours." 
 
 "Then she'll probably stay for hours," put in Gubbins, 
 humorously. Beechy looked up.
 
 BEECHY ARRIVES IN LONDON 157 
 
 " Do you speak Italian ? " she aske'd in her own lan- 
 guage. 
 
 " Blowed if I do," puffed the little doctor, his grizzled 
 beard in his hand. 
 
 "Rum looking young woman, isn't she? Well, about 
 that ointment. You fellows don't mix enough. Ichthyol 
 needs the deuce of a lot of mixin' " 
 
 Beechy, back in Egypt, was singing mutely. 
 
 " La nella foreste vergine, di fiori profumati " 
 
 Her silent rendering of the lingering, poetic words gave 
 to her face a look of the utmost pathos. 
 
 Poor little Ethiopian princess, sighing for her virgin 
 forests and scented flowers, how well she, Beechy, could feel 
 it here in this awful country where clouds fell out of the 
 sky into the streets and it was night by day. 
 
 " Then under my sky " 
 
 Her eyebrows pathetically arched over wide-opened eyes 
 she went over the words, leaning the lovely music, feeling 
 it. 
 
 " I say, Gil, just look at *er," whispered Mr. Thatcher. 
 
 " Mad," affirmed Mr. Gubbins, " mad as an 'atter." 
 
 But mad or not she seemed harmless enough, and sat 
 with an appalling quietude in her corner until after half 
 past eleven. 
 
 Then, when the fog had resolved itself into a mere hag- 
 gard ghost of its former monstrous self, she rose, and 
 pointed through the window. 
 
 " She means it's clearing, " 
 
 Beechy then went through a pantomime. First she 
 trotted like a horse, her head down, but tossed and dragged 
 at by imaginary reins.
 
 158 BEECHY 
 
 Then she pretended to lift her box and deposit it on the 
 top of a hansom. 
 
 Then she took her purse and opened it. 
 
 Mr. Gubbins's mirth was unrestrained. 
 
 " My word, what a girl ! Look at that, Tom, she's lift- 
 ing up her box-- " 
 
 Thatcher nodded to Beechy. " All right," he said, " I 
 understand. Boy fetch a hansom." 
 
 The hansom was fetched, Beechy gravely watched the 
 hoisting of her box and then, turning, she bowed to the two 
 men. 
 
 " Grazie," she said, pointing to the chair. " Grazfe 
 tanto." 
 
 Then, still quite seriously, she pointed to her heart. 
 
 " She means thanks," babbled Gubbins, " she means she 
 is grateful " 
 
 Beechy shook hands with them, and after showing the 
 address to the cabby, got into the hansom and went her way. 
 
 The fog had gone and the little horse jogged rapidly 
 along over the grassy street. For an hour and a half they 
 kept on their way, through New Oxford Street into Hoi- 
 born, along the Strand, up Piccadilly to the Brompton 
 Road. 
 
 Miles and miles and miles of shops. More shops than 
 she dreamed could be in the whole world. Thousands and 
 thousands of people, all serious, all hurrying to some place, 
 where, apparently, they did not like to go. 
 
 The jog, jog, of the absurd little vehicle (she had chosen 
 a hansom rather than a four-wheeler because the grotesque- 
 ness of the two-wheeled thing appealed to her imagination) 
 seemed to hypnotise her, and after a time the streets, end- 
 less arid crowded, became to her like a pantomime, like a
 
 BEECHY ARRIVES IN LONDON 159 
 
 sordid, unlovely ballet danced to the dull music of the 
 traffic. 
 
 And this was the wonderful London where people were 
 so rich! 
 
 Once the hansom stopped with a jerk to let a troop of 
 soldiers march by, and a woman with a baby came and 
 begged of Beechy, who gave her a copper. A wretched, de- 
 graded-looking woman who smelt very evilly indeed and 
 who luiched unevenly away, into the swinging doors of a 
 very grand-looking shop of some kind with no shop win- 
 dows. 
 
 Beechy shivered. 
 
 It was a new kind of poverty to her. In Rome there 
 were and are, Heaven knows, beggars enough. But there 
 they cause either pity or anger in the minds of those they 
 accost, rarely if ever physical disgust. This drunken slut, 
 child of our vaunted Anglo-Saxon civilisation, filled the 
 little Italian with loathing. 
 
 At last the cab turned into Hartismere Road, in Ful- 
 ham, and stopped at Number 57.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 AUNT AUGUSTA 
 
 NUMBER 57 Hartismere Road is that enviable thing 
 a corner house. It is built of brick, has a bow 
 window, and in front of it is a small garden 
 bisected by a brick path edged with large pink-lipped sea- 
 shells that spent their youth on some southern white-sanded 
 shore. 
 
 On the green front door is a brass plate engraved with 
 the name Henry Pyecraft, and the fanlight over the door is 
 stretched with crimson silk. 
 
 The cuckoo clock in the .'dining-room had just struck two, 
 and the grandfather clock by the dining-room door in the 
 little linoleum-covered hall was going to strike two in about 
 seven minutes which for the grandfather clock was not 
 doing badly. 
 
 The little house was very quiet; it smelt of cabbage, of 
 Irish stew, of furniture polish. In the kitchen came a 
 very faint occasional sound as Amelia moved about cleaning 
 up after dinner. 
 
 Henry Pyecraft himself sat by the dining-room fire, his 
 handkerchief over his head, sleeping, his hands folded loosely 
 over his large round waistcoat. 
 
 Polly pecked occasionally at the bars of her cage, but 
 this little soun'd, like that of Amelia's movements in the 
 kitchen, like the smell of food and varnish, was an in- 
 tegral part of the St. Augustine's afternoon, and did not 
 disturb the slumber of the owner of the house. 
 
 1 60
 
 AUNT AUGUSTA 161 
 
 Opposite the old brown rocking-chair in which Mr. 
 Pyecraft sat, stood a low round armchair covered with 
 faded blue chintz, and on a small table near it stood a 
 work-basket, a gilt-edged book, and a spectacle case. Mrs. 
 Pyecraft 's corner was now empty while its owner took her 
 quotidian rest upstairs in the nuptial. 
 
 The dining-table still had its white cover, and on it stood 
 several piles of clean plates, two very ugly glass and silver 
 epergnes full of small cakes, and at the end near the window 
 stood a brand-new basketwork cake-stand, its little shelves 
 yawning for bread and butter. 
 
 The walls of the dining-room were of a highly genteel 
 dark blue, touched up with silver; they were adorned with 
 a portrait (done after death from a photograph) of Mr. 
 Pyecraft's mother, a forbidding oM woman with a gold 
 chain on her stony bosom; a steel engraving of the signing 
 of the Reform Bill, and a highly coloured lithograph of a 
 young woman in a flying red robe clinging desperately to a 
 granite cross at the feet of which dashed the white-crested 
 waves of a very green and oily sea. 
 
 The mahogany sideboard was heavily carved, and on it 
 stood a flowered soup tureen, an old-fashioned silver cake- 
 basket and two tall vases of the hi'deous, sinister type usually 
 produced in old-fashioned hotels for the accommodation of 
 unexpected bouquets. The carpet was nearly covered by an 
 unbleached drugget. 
 
 A cab passing in the street Polly gave vent to a hoarse 
 bark, and Mr. Pyecraft moved uneasily, knocking his big 
 foot against the brass fender. 
 
 Tick-tock-tick-tock from the passage came the big soft 
 strokes of the clock, one, two. 
 
 " I think," came from under the red handkerchief, " that 
 I'll 'ave another go at that clock."
 
 i6a BEECHY 
 
 Mr. Pyecraft rose slowly, stretched his arms, rubbed his 
 genial-looking red nose, and went out into the passage, 
 leaving the door wide open so that he might have sufficient 
 light. 
 
 He was a very big old man with a bald head fringed with 
 stiff white hair, small grey eyes that twinkled, and a kind, 
 humourous mouth beneath which his chin ran away towards 
 his neck. 
 
 He wore black clothes and across his broad waistcoat 
 stretched a gold watch-chain of a very ornate description 
 indeed. 
 
 On his shuffling feet he wore large red-plush slippers 
 embroidered in purple pansies. 
 
 " If," Mr. Pyecraft said solemnly, to the clock, " you 
 could manage to keep time with 'er cuckoo, you'd save me 
 an awful lot of trouble! " 
 
 He spoke in a hushed voice, and the clock paid no atten- 
 tion whatever to him as he thrust its big black minute hand 
 to that place in its face where the cuckoo insisted it ought 
 to be. 
 
 The old man looked into the dining-room and gave a sort 
 of suppressed wink at the cuckoo. 
 
 " Satisfied now? " he asked that tyrannical timepiece. 
 Then he lumbered up the passage to the door, just inside 
 which lay a catalogue in a fresh wrapper. 
 
 " Button's !" 
 
 As he stooped to pick it up, a pull at the bell startled 
 him so that he nearly fell down, and with a jerk he opened 
 the 'door. 
 
 Beechy looked at him. 
 
 "Signer 'Enry Peecraft?" asked the girl, her eyes fixed 
 on his.
 
 AUNT AUGUSTA 163 
 
 And poor Pyecraft knew by that word " Signer " who 
 she was, and that his sin had found him out. 
 
 To her amazement it appeared that the peculiarities of 
 England extended to the very way the inhabitants of that 
 black country received their guests. For Pyecraft, instead 
 of inviting her in, stepped out onto the doorstep, closing the 
 door softly after him. 
 
 " Beatrice Cavaleon," he said, mispronouncing her beau- 
 tiful name most lu'dicrously, " poor Carrie's girl ? " 
 
 Beechy nodded, holding out both her hands to him. He 
 took them and bending, imprinted a hasty kiss on her 
 cheek. 
 
 So he was friendly, in spite of the closed door. Beechy, 
 tired and hungry, pointed to her mouth and chewed imag- 
 inary food. He nodded, still kindly but evidently in great 
 terror. 
 
 What could it be? 
 
 Ah, she knew, somebody ill! 
 
 "E malata la Zia Augusta?" she asked, pointing to- 
 wards the upper window. 
 
 "Yes, yes, Augusta! Yes, my dear I am delighted to 
 
 see you, but you see I 'aven't mentioned you to her " he 
 
 stammered. 
 
 Beechy after a moment's hesitation slipped off her shoes 
 and began prowling up and down the brick walk with ex- 
 aggerated precautions of silence, one ringer on the lips. 
 " Zitto, zitto" she whispered in a voice that no one could 
 have failed to understand to mean hush. 
 
 Poor Pyecraft watched her in an agony. Suppose Au- 
 gusta should* look down out of the window to find him 
 watching a very handsome young woman a-doing pantomime 
 in the front garden in her stocking feet.
 
 164 BEECHY 
 
 He shivered. "Oh, lor! w'atever shall I do?" he 
 moaned, rubbing his head in the manner of many perplexed 
 old men. Beechy paused and looked inquiringly at him. 
 Then, as he did not move, she opened the door softly and, 
 her fingers still on her lips, went in, he following her in 
 the guilt of despair. 
 
 She opened the door on her left and he followed her into 
 the front-parlour. She was, it seemed to him, a born 
 leader. How else should she know that this grand apart- 
 ment was the last place in the house where his wife would 
 look for him. 
 
 " Oh hello" exclaimed the girl in genuine admiration, as 
 her eyes fell on the crimson and black furniture and the 
 soft medallioned carpet. 
 
 "Bel salone!" 
 
 " Yes, it's a handsome room," he agreed, dully, but " 
 
 Beechy sat down on the plush sofa. Then she rose and 
 removing a small red and white crochetted mat from a large 
 gilt book on the marble centre table, opened the book. 
 
 " Ah ! Gesu Christo," she exclaimed with the eagerness 
 of one meeting an old friend in a strange land. And she 
 crossed herself carelessly. 
 
 Pyecraft's legs flageolletted under him as the French say, 
 and he sank quite flabbily and weak into a chair. 
 
 "To be a naming of 'im like that, every day like, and 
 oh, my God, to make a cross! It'll be the death of Au- 
 gusta." 
 
 Beechy, having glanced through the Bible, next opened 
 a volume of Mrs. Heman's poems, and then walking round 
 the room, submitted that proud apartment to a rapid, though 
 admiring survey. 
 
 The drawing-room suite seemed to her very; beautiful
 
 AUNT AUGUST A 165 
 
 indeed, with its stripes of hollowed gilding in the wood and 
 the silk plush of its upholstery. 
 
 There was also, on a gilt table in the bow window, a 
 glass case under which reposed three stuffed canaries on a 
 glistening tropical tree with feathery foliage. The win- 
 dows were draped in lace and red cloth curtains edged with 
 ball fringe, and in one corner of the room, ornamented with 
 two blue vases fille'd with dried pampas grass and everlasting 
 flowers, stood a strange, ornate wooden thing like a piano 
 and yet mysteriously not a piano! Like an organ and yet 
 not an organ. 
 
 To this Beechy went, and laying her hand on its lid 
 found that it raised. 
 
 It was a piano, though above the keyboard was a row 
 of pegs that she did not understand. She could not play 
 a note, but instinctively she touched the keys, and to her 
 horror they were dumb! 
 
 Her hand flew to her throat as if it had refused to give 
 forth a sound, and in rapid Italian she asked Pyecraft 
 what was the matter. 
 
 " Oh, don't don't," he moaned, his head in his hand. 
 For he had heard in the room above the sound of a light 
 firm foot, and he knew that Augusta would any moment be 
 coming down to prepare for her tea-party. 
 
 Beechy tried the piano again, and then deciding that it 
 was after all an organ, examined the wall about it for the 
 thing to pump air into it. There was nothing! 
 
 To his horror she lay down on the floor and tried to 
 see under the thing. 
 
 And it was at this moment that the 'door opened and 
 Mrs. Pyecraft came in. 
 
 To his dying day Pyecraft could see the scene. Beechy
 
 i66 BEECHY 
 
 as flat as a spatchcock on the flowered floor peering under 
 the pedals of the harmonium, Augusta, a silver epergne full 
 of cakes in each hand, staring at the girl. At last she 
 spoke. 
 
 "'Enry!" she said, and that was all. 
 
 Beechy scrambled to her knees, her hands still on the 
 floor, looked up and smiled. Then she rose, and brushing 
 her hands together, went to Mrs. Pyecraft and before the 
 astonished woman could protest, had kissed her soundly on 
 both cheeks. 
 
 " 'Enry ! Who is this this person ? " 
 
 Pyecraft pressed his handkerchief to his streaming brow. 
 
 " It isn't a person, my dear," he said, vacantly, " it's 
 poor Carrie's girl from Italy." 
 
 " Carrie's girl " 
 
 " Yes. She's an I-talian she's come from Italy." 
 
 " 'Old your tongue, 'Enry. And you, Miss," she added 
 trembling with rage, setting down the epergne with a loud 
 bang, "you go" 
 
 Beechy, supposing her offence to have consisted in lying 
 on the floor to examine this unusual Aunt's piano-organ- 
 thing, smiled deprecatingly. 
 
 " I'm sorry," she said, " I'll never do it again." 
 
 Then spying the cakes she went to the table and pointing 
 to her mouth, rubbed her stomach gently in a way that 
 was realistic but not at all vulgar. 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft gasped, and Beechy, half-starving, gave 
 way to temptation an'd helped herself to a large dark cake 
 that was bursting with plums. 
 
 " Don't be too 'ard on 'er, Augusta, my my love. She 
 is very 'ungry, you see. And she is Carrie's girl." 
 
 " How do you know she is, 'Enry Pyecraft? The best
 
 AUNT AUGUSTA 167 
 
 thing you can do, I should say, would be to tell me all 
 about it." 
 
 Poor Pyecraft did not feel that anything he could do 
 deserved the qualification of " best," or even " good." But 
 with the eager docility of the thoroughly hen-pecked, 
 he confessed. 
 
 " She wrote to me, you see, my dear, 'aving found some 
 some letters I wrote to poor Carrie after her her unfor- 
 tunate marriage." 
 
 " Oh ! So you wrote to her after her marriage, did 
 you? You never mentioned that little fact before. Well, 
 go on." 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft was a small thin woman with a thin nose 
 and thin lips. Everything about her, mentally as well as 
 physically, was thin. 
 
 Her hair was grey behind, and a rich brown in front, 
 and her little eyes, like gimlets, were of a cold grey. 
 
 A very unpleasant woman, Mrs. Pyecraft, although she 
 was for some reasons regarded by all the " Connection " as 
 something like a saint. 
 
 And of all her qualities the one that most terrified her 
 poor, easy-going husband was a trick she had of slowly 
 nodding her head as he talked to her. 
 
 Back and forward it moved now as he told Beechy's story 
 so that he had, at one moment, a full view of the top of her 
 head, the next of a long yellow throat. This rhythmic 
 movement caught Beechy's eye as she munched her cake, 
 and the girl burst out laughing. 
 
 " She does the mandarin," she cried joyously to herself, 
 "like the china mandarin in Signora Scarpia's salottino!" 
 
 " Hush," pleaded Pyecraft with a sidelong glance at her, 
 " your aunt is talking."
 
 168 BEECHY 
 
 " Her aunt, indeed. I am not her aunt." 
 
 " But you are, Augusta. You may we may decide 
 to send her away, but you can't change the fact of your 
 being her aunt." 
 
 " Very good. I am her aunt then," she agreed ominously, 
 with that sudden change of front that makes women such 
 dangerous adversaries. " I am her aunt. You are not 
 her uncle. So I can 'do what I like with my own niece. 
 And what I like is this : Come, you " 
 
 Taking Beechy by the sleeve she pulled her towards 
 the door. 
 
 If Mr. William Tozer, butterman, of No. 7 Shorrald's 
 Road, had not dropped his clay pipe as he left his house that 
 afternoon, Beechy 's life would have been very different 
 from what it actually became. 
 
 By dropping his pipe and returning to his room to get 
 another, it so fell out that Mr. Tozer met the Reverend 
 Mr. Perkins and the two men walked together up Shor- 
 rald's Road to Hartismere Road. 
 
 Mr. Perkins was on his way to make a call at the en'd 
 of Hartismere Road. If he had not met Mr. Tozer he 
 would have gone there. But the conversation with the 
 butterman interested him, and he turned to the left at the 
 angle of the two roads, and walked on with him for five 
 minutes. 
 
 " Very well then, Mr. Tozer, I will come, and thank 
 you very much " 
 
 They parted, and Mr. Perkins, who felt the fog in his 
 bones, hesitated for a moment at the gate of St. Augustine's 
 and then, well knowing that his coming too early would 
 be considered an honour by Mrs. Pyecraft, went briskly 
 up the brick path and rang the bell.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 A TEA-PARTY AND A HAM BONE 
 
 MRS. PYECRAFT'S hand relaxed on Beechy's 
 shoulder as the bell rang. 
 " See who it is, 'Enry," she said sharply. 
 
 Beechy did not move. There was to her something 
 amusing in the scene. 
 
 This little black-silk woman, whom she could have 
 knocked down by a sudden movement, was so utterly mis- 
 tress of the situation. 
 
 Pyecraft was over a head taller than his wife, yet there 
 he stood wordless, terrified. Beechy herself was not ter- 
 rified; indeed it seemed to her somehow appropriate to the 
 general strangeness of inhospital foggy Inghilterra that her 
 mother's diminutive shrew of a sister should thus be march- 
 ing her to the door with a view to ignominiously casting 
 her out. 
 
 Pyecraft, opening the door to the extent of two inches 
 and peering out, gave a sudden gasp and fell back, the 
 door still in his hand. 
 
 Stood revealed, a square-built man in black, with a 
 grizzling beard and the affable smile of one accustomed 
 to warm welcomes and ready cups of tea. 
 
 " Good-afternoon, my dear Mrs. Pyecraft, I come early, 
 but I have been working hard all day and I am weary, 
 weary. I have come to beg you to let me rest in your 
 
 kind home until our dear brothers and sisters arrive " 
 
 169
 
 170 BEECHY 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft, perforce, lowered her hand from Beechy's 
 shoulder and advanced towards her minister. 
 
 " Mr. Perkins, I am delighted," she stammered. " 'Enry, 
 will you take Mr. Perkins into the dining-room? " 
 
 Mr. Perkins hung up his hat and topcoat on the glossy 
 brown hat-rack at the right of the door. 
 
 Then as he was about to follow poor Pyecraft, whose 
 agony of soul was visibly expressed in his pallid face, 
 Beechy's good-angel, at that time in unfailing attendance 
 on her, put a sudden idea into the minister's mind. 
 
 "And this dear young lady," he asked, kindly turning 
 towards Beechy, " another young sister whom I have not 
 yet seen ? " 
 
 Pyecraft drew up his collar with a jerk and cleared his 
 throat. If he hesitate'd now, Beechy would be put out 
 the moment he had obeyed his wife and closed the dining- 
 room door. And, poor man, he had loved pretty Carrie 
 Smith years ago. He drew a quick breath and answered 
 before the minister's smile of amazement had died from 
 his face. 
 
 " This is a niece of my dear wife's," he answered in a 
 louder voice than usual. " She is an I-talian and 'as come 
 to visit us." 
 
 He pause'd, but the roof did not fall. Nothing hap- 
 pened. 
 
 Mr. Perkins beamed and held out his hand to Beechy, 
 who created a timely diversion by kissing it. She saw 
 that he was a power in the land and the kiss was one 
 of propitiation. 
 
 But the good man blushed and coughed nervously, and 
 Pyecraft nearly fainted. 
 
 To his wife, the minister's good opinion was worth more
 
 A TEA-PARTY AND A HAM BONE 171 
 
 than nearly anything in the world, and here was her niece, 
 whom she could no longer repudiate, disgracing herself 
 by kissing his hand! 
 
 "Excuse her, Mr. Perkins," she said, coughing behind 
 her own hand, " she doesn't speak a word of English, 
 nor understand our ways. She's only just come." 
 
 The minister bowed graciously. " She will learn, Mrs. 
 Pyecraft, she will learn from you" he said graciously. 
 " And now, Mr. Pyecraft, if you will let me rest by the 
 fire- 
 Thus Mrs. Pyecraft and Beechy were left alone. For 
 several seconds there was a silence. Then Mrs. Pyecraft 
 said with a snap: "Is that your box?" 
 
 She pointed as she spoke. Beechy nodded. 
 
 "Amelia!" 
 
 There was another pause during which a strange muffled 
 bird-call reached them. Beechy laughed aloud, then, purs- 
 ing her lips, reproduced with extraordinary fidelity the 
 sound of her aunt's favourite clock. 
 
 " Whatever " began Amelia, the cook-general, ap- 
 pearing at the kitchen door at the far end of the passage. 
 " You 'aven't moved the cuckoo-clock ? " 
 
 Beechy seeing her surprise, gave the call again, and 
 Amelia burst out laughing. 
 
 " This is my niece, Amelia," said Mrs. Pyecraft. " 'Elp 
 'er carry 'er box upstairs, will you ? " 
 
 But Amelia had not bargained for nieces. 
 
 " I didn't know you 'ad nieces," she said. 
 
 "Well, I have." 
 
 Amelia was large and her red, glossy-elbowed arms were 
 muscular. But the muscle in Mrs. Pyecraft's little pale 
 tongue outmatched her.
 
 172 BEECHY 
 
 After a moment's hesitation she took up her end of the 
 box, Beechy took up the other, and the two tramped up 
 two flights of narrow stairs to a small room under the 
 roof. 
 
 " You've come, and I 'ope you'll like it," said the cook- 
 general venomously, " but you'll 'ave to do your own work. 
 7 ain't agoin' to work for you." 
 
 Beechy looked at her and then, very quietly, swore at 
 her in fluent Roman street language. 
 
 Amelia stared. " Well, I never. Whatever's that you're 
 talking?" she said. 
 
 Beechy swore on, using words and phrases of which 
 she had not thought since her gamin days. 
 
 At last Amelia fled in confusion. 
 
 The room was small, and very shabby, more a box room 
 than a bedroom. 
 
 There was a bed, but there were also several trunks and 
 boxes in the far end of it, and there was no cupboard of 
 any kind, nor any looking-glass. A dreadful room it 
 would have seemed to anyone in the least fastidious, but to 
 Beechy it was a room, it contained a bed, and that was 
 all that was necessary. 
 
 She sat down by the window, her back to it and reviewed 
 the position in which she found herself. 
 
 Her aunt disliked her for some reason. Her aunt was 
 a devil, so that did not matter. 
 
 Signer Pyecraft was kind. He was a good old man, 
 but evidently quite a secondary personage in the house- 
 hold. 
 
 " He is a wet hen," she said. 
 
 The servant did not like her, but the servant was obvi- 
 ously an animal.
 
 'A TEA-PARTY AND A HAM BONE 173 
 
 At least there was a roof over her, and a bed for her 
 to sleep in. 
 
 " They will have to give me food, too," she reckoned 
 shrewdly, " if the Old Bearded One stays. She fears the 
 Old Bearded One." 
 
 The little low window was shrouded by a grey cotton 
 curtain hung on a rusty wire. Beechy threw back the 
 curtain, and then drew a long breath. 
 
 For before her spread the panorama of chimney-pots 
 that has for some people so much of a strange poetry of 
 its own. Before her and on all sides chimneys, smoking 
 and silent. Brick chimneys, and iron ones. Miles of 
 them, a vast plateau of slate and iron and brick, and 
 little odd windows trying to blink in a pale little sun- 
 beam that was trying to force its way through the heavy 
 air. 
 
 Nearly opposite Beechy a row of geraniums glowed, 
 growing in tins. Strings of faded, shabby clothes hung 
 out to dry here and there, a grey cat minced daintily along 
 over the tiles away to the left. 
 
 Beechy was used to roofs, but in Rome no two houses 
 are of the same level and there are no iron chimney-pots. 
 In Rome roof-landscape is one of mountains and valleys, of 
 precipitous walls, of beautiful garlanded windows, of splen- 
 did domes and towers whose bells boom across the silence, 
 of fluted russet tiles, of sudden bits of garden, whose vel- 
 vety cypresses prick the sky. 
 
 It is romantic, beautiful, and Beechy loved it. But this 
 London here roofs were ugly, sordid, piteous, they were 
 flat, uniform, 'dirty, and yet they had a strange and potent 
 charm not unlike the charm of a vast plain. 
 
 As Beechy watched, an old woman came and watered
 
 174 BEECHY 
 
 the geraniums out of a broken teapot, and then moved them 
 all to the inside of the window. A white cat ran out of a 
 dark place behind a cluster of rusty chimneys; a child's voice, 
 screaming loudly, rent the air. 
 
 It was life; the life of the roofs, and Beechy drew a 
 deep breath, for she felt its charm and loved it. 
 
 " Well I suppose you might as well come down " 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft stood beside her. " Oh, you 'aven't un- 
 packed. Well " Beechy smiled at her. 
 
 A moment later and she had opened her box. Mrs. 
 Pyecraft very ungraciously pulled out Beechy's best frock, 
 a dark red woollen thing, and, in dumb show, ordered her 
 to put it on. 
 
 After a hasty wash in cold water the girl smoothed her 
 hair and obeyed, after which she followed her ungentle 
 relation downstairs. 
 
 Mr. Perkins was now installed in the front parlour 
 and to Pyecraft's relief another guest had arrived. 
 
 This was Mrs. Batter, a wealthy widow, a person of 
 vast importance in the Connection. 
 
 "Ah, and here is our dear young sister what did you 
 say her name was?" broke off Mr. Perkins as Beechy 
 came in. 
 
 " Beatrice. Beatrice Cavaleon," answered Pyecraft, 
 hastily, but Beechy smiled and corrected him, her hand on 
 his arm. " Be-a-tri-ce Ca-va-le-o-ne," she pronounced 
 syllabically, in her pretty soft voice. 
 
 "A German, I daresay," commented Mrs. Batter with 
 a much-travelled air. 
 
 " I-talian. She's only just arrived. Come for a visit," 
 elucidated Mrs. Pyecraft " a very short visit." 
 
 Other guests arrived: Mr. and Mrs. Lacy, a kind pair
 
 A TEA-PARTY AND A HAM BONE 175 
 
 who went in for pigeon-fancying, and whose only son was 
 working in China as a missionary; Mrs. Clapp and her 
 two daughters, serious-minded young women with weak 
 eyes; Mr. and Mrs. Little, the successors to Mr. Pyecraft's 
 drapery-business, very old friends of the Pyecrafts. 
 
 They sat down and ate. 
 
 Beechy, who was bidden to hand round the cake, did 
 so in a fury of thwarted hunger. There was tea and Mr. 
 Perkins himself offered her a cup, but she remembered her 
 experience of the morning and refused. 
 
 She ate two slices of bread and butter, but her aunt's 
 repellent eye stopped her as she was about to take more, 
 and hunger tore at her vitals. 
 
 More guests. Mr. and Mrs. Chubb, a bride and groom, 
 she very elegant in new clothes, an ermine tippet made of 
 cat round her neck, a gold watch suspended in the middle 
 of her chest. 
 
 Mr. Chubb was the wit of the congregation and his 
 most serious observation was met with laughter. The fact 
 that Beechy spoke no English so amused him that he nearly 
 split with laughter, to use his own favourite phrase. 
 
 " No English ! Then what does she speak ? " he asked. 
 Then approaching the girl who stood looking at him, won- 
 dering if he were half-witted, he said : " Let's try her in 
 Chinese. Mick-Mack-mee, Keechy-weechy." 
 
 Everybody was delighted and laughed heartily, while 
 Mrs. Chubb suppressed her pride as best she could. 
 
 Beechy, flushing crimson, moved back a few steps, look- 
 ing at the buffoon with brilliantly visible disdain. " Im- 
 becile," she said. 
 
 The party was a great success. 
 
 Even Mr. Porter, the eccentric Mr. Porter, who lived
 
 176 BEECHY 
 
 at The Willows and kept two servants, appeared at about 
 six o'clock, and he ate several cakes and drank more tea 
 than anyone except Mr. Perkins, whose prowess in that 
 direction was renowned, and a favourite subject of tender- 
 est chaff by his more intimate lady-friends. 
 
 At last the last guest had gone, accompanied to the door 
 by both host and hostess. 
 
 " Well," began Mr. Pyecraft with a sigh of content, " I 
 call that a very pleasant party." 
 
 " Never was a nicer one, my dear. Mr. Perkins 'ad 
 six cups and Mr. Porter four an'd a half. Them little 
 round cakes are " 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft interrupted him. "Where's that girl?" 
 she asked in the tone she would have used if asking where 
 is that boa-constrictor? 
 
 Beechy was nowhere to be seen. No, Amelia had not 
 seen her. Amelia had been in the dining-room, working. 
 
 After a short search Beechy was found in her own room. 
 By her, on a table stood a plate containing bread-crumbs 
 and, oh horror, a ham bone denuded of its last shred of 
 meat. 
 
 And by the plate a little pile of money, at which the 
 girl gravely pointed, after in'dicating with a dramatic wave 
 of her hand, the ham bone. 
 
 " She 'as eaten the 'am we were to 'ave 'ad for sup- 
 per " gasped her aunt. 
 
 " Poor child look she wants us to take money for it! 
 No, no, my dear, an' you're welcome to the 'am," he 
 added hastily, pushing the money away. 
 
 " I dessay she was 'ungry," supplemented his wife, a 
 trifle ashamed of herself. "A nice kettle of fish you've 
 got us into, 'Enry Pyecraft I "
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 ABOUT AURELIO 
 
 IT is well known that Cavaleone never spoke really 
 good English. Her marvellous memory, of course, 
 contributed to her having an excellent and extensive 
 vocabulary, but her musical ear was from the first at fault 
 when applied to the mastery of the pronunciation of the 
 language. French she acquired easily, and a fair amount 
 of German, but she could never learn to end words quite 
 clearly with a consonant, and " th " was always an insur- 
 mountable barrier to her. 
 
 That her h's were always unsteady she owed, of course, 
 largely to the fact that her first years in England were 
 passed among the excellent people of Hartismere Road. 
 
 For, in spite of Mrs. Pyecraft's objections, she stayed 
 on at St. Augustine's. 
 
 One spring day, some two years after her arrival at that 
 house, she was sitting with her aunt in the back garden. 
 Their chairs and a small table stood on a square of old 
 carpet under a very dingy plane tree whose shabby 
 branches, as if ashamed of their poverty-stricken aspect, 
 were hurrying to clothe themselves in a new green garment. 
 
 The little garden was a pleasant place enough, and Uncle 
 'Enry's cheery whistling as he bent over his beloved cu- 
 cumber frame, sounded very pleasant to Beechy. 
 
 "But why you keep me then?" she asked, glancing up 
 from her work, a brown sock which she was darning. 
 
 177
 
 iy8 BEECHY 
 
 " What could I do ? " returned her aunt. " There was 
 your uncle telling Mr. Perkins who you were there was 
 nothing else for it." 
 
 Beechy nodded, sympathetically rather than otherwise, 
 and allowed her eyes to rest for a moment on the delicious 
 rosy snow of an apple-tree growing in the next garden. 
 
 " I don't wonder you no like a " 
 
 " Who'd a-liked it I'm sure I don't know. But there 
 you stayed, and when you behave yourself and don't do 
 awful things I reely don't mind you much." Mrs. Pye- 
 craft spoke, for her, rather graciously. 
 
 "They're coming on, 'Gusta," shouted Mr. Pyecraft, 
 standing up and rubbing his aching back. " The cukes, I 
 mean. This sun is just what they wanted " 
 
 He loved his garden, the good man, and that very after- 
 noon had unbound the straw that had protected his rhu- 
 barb roots from the long winter frosts. 
 
 There were herbaceous borders round the little enclosure, 
 and lettuce also " coming on " under the kitchen win- 
 'dows. Beechy's patch of violets were doing well and their 
 glossy green leaves already hid several buds. 
 
 Overhead the sky was as blue and clear as if it had never 
 heard of smoke and fog. 
 
 Beechy squared her mouth and gave several little snort- 
 ing cries up and down the scale. 
 
 " Voice all right," she said, contentedly. " I was afraid 
 last night I was going to have cold. Aurelio would 
 walk." 
 
 "H'ml" 
 
 "Why you say h'm t aunt? Because Aurelio would 
 walk?" 
 
 The sun shone full in her lustrous eyes as she looked
 
 ABOUT AURELIO 179 
 
 at the old woman, giving to her a peculiarly innocent 
 look. 
 
 " You are treating Aurelio very badly, Beechy." 
 
 " Bah ! Aurelio understands me. You remember, aunt, 
 that first night when he came? Without Aurelio I died, 
 then." 
 
 " I certainly do remember that evening, and 'ow badly 
 you behaved. A big girl like you to kiss 'im like that." 
 
 " But I was so glad to see 'im an Italian ! To hear 
 Italian spoken, to speak with 'im! Of course I kiss 'im! " 
 
 " H-ml 'Enry, I wish you'd leave that tiresome cu- 
 cumber frame and come to talk to me or rather to 
 Beechy." 
 
 Henry obeyed, as usual, at once, and stood before her 
 an humble, earthy, shirt-sleeved old man. 
 
 " I'm telling 'er that she 'adn't ought to carry on so 
 with Aurelio, 'Enry. And she won't listen to me at all. 
 She never will." 
 
 " But aunt, I always listen," proteste'd Beechy, looking 
 more injured than she could possibly have felt. 
 
 " 'E meets 'er every day after 'er lesson and brings 'er 
 'ome." 
 
 "Bringing 'er f ome isn't wrong, Augusta!" 
 
 "Yesterday they went to the Pop for tea. And to- 
 night they are going to the opera." 
 
 " To 'ear the new tenor in Romeo," put in Beechy. 
 "Think of it, Uncle 'Enry!" 
 
 Old Pyecraft scratched his head thoughtfully. 
 
 "You know, my dear," he ventured to his wife, "that 
 / don't 'old by opera goin'! And you know that I did 
 my best to persuade 'er to give up singing and take up the 
 dressmaking. But I failed, as even you and Mr. Per-
 
 i8o BEECHY 
 
 kins did. And there well, we we gave in, didn't we, 
 my love?" 
 
 Beechy watched her old champion lovingly, and gave a 
 little jump as her aunt declared firmly: 
 
 "I never gave in, never. To see my own flesh and 
 blood a-going to perdition is is not pleasant for me, 'Enry, 
 and consent I do not nor will not. But Aurelio answered 
 for Seenior Bucini knowing 'is wife and all, so I can 
 bear the lessons. It's this opera goin' that I object to. 
 And with Aurelio, too ! " 
 
 Beechy tossed her pair of socks into the basket and took 
 up a long stocking. 
 
 "You would not want me to go alone?" she asked, 
 making a face at the damages she had to repair as she 
 drew the stocking over her hand. 
 
 "/ don't care about going with Aurelio! I'll take 
 Annie instead, if she'll swear not to eat during the singing." 
 
 " My dear, surely it is better to 'ave Aurelio take 'er? 
 Young women Annie's still young ought not to go alone 
 to a theatre. And Aurelio " 
 
 "Aurelio is over 'is ears in love with 'er, 'Enry Pye- 
 craft, you silly old bat, and there you 'ave the truth," she 
 flashed out, furiously. 
 
 Beechy shrugged her shoulders. "Poor Aurelio si, 
 vero, 'e loves me. And why not? Besides, it is not new. 
 Ever since that Sunday 'e loves me." 
 
 She made this statement quite unemotionally, and there 
 was a short pause, for that Sunday was a day dreadful 
 in the annals of St. Augustine's. 
 
 It was the occasion of Beechy's first appearance at chapel, 
 a dull Sunday, a fortnight after her precipitous arrival in 
 Hartismere Road.
 
 ABOUT AURELIO 181 
 
 Clad in a hideous brown frock, chosen by Mrs. Pye- 
 craft, the girl sat quietly enough in her place, watching 
 the members of the congregation, the bare walls, the wooden 
 rostrum. 
 
 Mr. Perkins prayed, and Beechy counted the heads in 
 front of her. 
 
 This was a strange place in which to pray. No pictures, 
 no statues, not even a crucifix. 
 
 In place of a beautiful altar, an ugly table; instead of 
 a gorgeous, solemn-voiced priest, Mr. Perkins. 
 
 Beechy said an Ave and two Paters. 
 
 Then a cracked harmonium began to wheeze out a hymn, 
 and the brothers and sisters to sing. 
 
 Now it so happened that the cook-general at St. Augus- 
 tine's was a songstress, and that this hymn, " There is a 
 Fountain Filled With Blood," was her favourite. So 
 Beechy, who had heard it sung loudly every day during the 
 past fortnight, knew the tune perfectly. 
 
 Straightening her back she drew a long breath and 
 joined in the singing. 
 
 Of course she did not know the words, but she knew 
 an Italian ballad (anything but hymn-like in sentiment), 
 the rhythm of which fitted to the music of the hymn. 
 
 At first she sang unnoticed, but after the first few bars 
 her voice rose and soared. 
 
 " There is a fountain filled with blood 
 Drawn from Emanuel's veins " 
 
 The brothers and sisters paused, the five gifted ones 
 who, sitting by the harmonium composed the choir, con- 
 tinued doughtily for a moment and then severally straggled 
 into silence.
 
 i8a BEECHY 
 
 " ' And those who plunged within that flood,' " 
 
 sang Beechy, her beautiful young voice filling the dingy 
 place as irreverently as that of a nightingale would have 
 done, her Italian words melodious and human. 
 
 " ' Lose all their guilty stains.' " 
 
 The organist, who afterwards pleaded a kind of maiming 
 hypnotism as her excuse for not stopping, played on and 
 Beechy continued, gaining confidence with every note, her 
 voice acquiring timbre and fulness. 
 
 Even Mrs. Pyecraft could not make a move towards 
 stopping her until she was half way through the second 
 stanza. 
 
 Then, right in the middle of a wonderful clear high 
 note, Mrs. Pyecraft clutched the singer and gave her a 
 violent jerk. 
 
 " Stop, you wicked girl," she gasped. " Stop at once. 
 You are shaming us all " 
 
 Beechy shook her away, in amazement, but then, as 
 she saw the faces of the congregation, and even Mr. 
 Perkins, as they waked up to the enormity of her offence, 
 she faltered and stopped, her voice ceasing like a dying 
 voice. 
 
 Mr. Pyecraft was white with horror, but to her relief 
 the restored organist again began to play, and the stricken 
 people to sing. 
 
 Beechy stepped over her uncle and went out into the 
 dull daylight. 
 
 At the door, just as Mrs. Pyecraft reached her, stood a 
 young man. 
 
 "Who sang 'Stella del cuor mio'?" he asked abruptly,
 
 ABOUT AURELIO 183 
 
 and Beechy, with a sound between a sob and a laugh, 
 pointed to herself. 
 
 "lo!" she said. 
 
 " Excuse me, madame," the youth went on, to the old 
 woman, " but, to be passing a chapel in Fulham, and 
 to hear an Italian poem sung to a hymn I it was 
 strange." 
 
 " Very strange, indeed. And very disgraceful," returned 
 Mrs. Pyecraft. " Come, Beechy." 
 
 But Beechy clasped her hands. 
 
 " I live at 57 Hartismere Road," she said, pleadingly in 
 Italian, " you must come and see me. I die in this awful 
 country I die " 
 
 " She asks me to come to see her," explained the young 
 man with instantaneous tact, " because she cannot speak 
 English. My name, madame, is Aurelio Ruffo, and I am 
 a goldsmith. I work at Leffingwell's, in the Racton Road, 
 if you will kindly make inquiries. Possibly, if you will 
 allow me to call on you, I may be able to be of assistance 
 to you." 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft, indignant though she was with Beechy, 
 yet saw that the civil young man was right. He might 
 indeed be of use. 
 
 So very sourly she told him that her husband would 
 come to see Mr. Leffingwell. 
 
 Then they parted, and Beechy did not in the least mind 
 the steady flow of invective that was directed at her on 
 their homeward way. For, thanks be to the Madonna, a 
 Christian was coming to see her! 
 
 This, in brief, is the history of the day known to them 
 always as That Sunday. 
 
 They all thought of it that other day, two years later,
 
 184 BEECHY 
 
 when Mrs. Pyecraft appealed to her husband against the 
 opera going. 
 
 " So you know he is in love with you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft was sincerely shocked by this daring 
 avowal. 
 
 Beechy laughed. "Yes. He tells me he does often- 
 enough! Dear old Aurelio, and I love him, too," she 
 added, patting the darn she had just finished. 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft gave a little snort. " Well ! So you 
 love him too, do you, Miss? 'Enry, do you hear that? " 
 
 Mr. Pyecraft, with a sidelong look of warning at Beechy, 
 nodded. 
 
 " I do, my dear. She means like a friend, Augusta, 
 don't you, Beechy? There's different ways of loving 
 lots of 'em." 
 
 It is an odd fact that the drie'd up old woman was, in 
 spite of their long life together, absolutely untroubled by 
 any other woman, very jealous of her husband. 
 
 Beechy looked at them wonderingly. Jealousy as a 
 quality she understood very well, being an Italian. She 
 herself had been jealous of Aurelio Roffo's friendship for 
 a pretty Scotch girl who kept Leffingwell's books, but that 
 her Uncle 'Enry could awaken the sentiment never failed, 
 when the fact was brought to her notice, to amuse her. 
 
 Old Pyecraft, fat, stooping, bald, his respectable and tee- 
 total nose very red, his embroidered braces pulling his 
 trousers well up above his waist it was to the girl's min'd 
 absurd. 
 
 The old man, however, moved his gouty feet nervously. 
 
 " Friendship," he murmured, " friendship is very differ- 
 ent from what a man feels, h'm! for his wife. That's 
 what I meant, my dear."
 
 ABOUT AVRELIO 185 
 
 " That," returned Mrs. Pyecraft, moodily, " is what you 
 say. Trouble will come, 'Enry, I suppose, although we 
 are old now. You remember what I says to you the third 
 time you asked me and I told you about 'Ector 
 Adams " 
 
 " I know, I know " 
 
 At that moment Annie, the sixth cook-general who had 
 come to No. 57 since Beechy's arrival, appeared in the 
 kitchen window and asked her mistress if she would mind 
 stepping in for a moment. 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft stepped. 
 
 "Uncle 'Enry," said Beechy, "what is it about letter 
 A?" 
 
 "'Ush, my dear, 'ushf" 
 
 The old man glanced nervously after his wife. 
 
 " But you said you'd tell me." 
 
 Ever since her first day at St. Augustine's Beechy had 
 felt a sinister influence in the atmosphere there. A mys- 
 terious something referring to her aunt's fate and to the 
 first letter of the alphabet. 
 
 Once or twice she had asked Mrs. Pyecraft, but in- 
 formation had been denied her almost violently, and now 
 the reference to a Mr. Adams had put it into her mind 
 again. 
 
 Pyecraft sat down in his wife's chair. 
 
 " Well, you see, Beechy, it's just this, only mind you 
 never let 'er guess you know. She was born, your Augusta, 
 in Acton, in April, her father's name was Arthur and 'er 
 mother's Annie. When she was twenty she went to visit 
 a friend named Ashby who lived in Alnwick, and there 
 she met a young man named 'Ector Adams. They were 
 engaged."
 
 186 BEECHY 
 
 Beechy had stopped working and watched him with the 
 deepest interest. She was far too Italian not to be super- 
 stitious and the simple fatefulness of the story impressed 
 her. 
 
 " Well, Adams," pursued Uncle Pyecraft, " 'e died. She 
 was awful cut up about it. It was very queer, Beechy. 
 The next year she began 'aving the asthmy, too. Oh, 
 there's lots of things. Asparrowgus, for instance, she can't 
 abide, and I've got the gout, which the real name for it is 
 h'arthritis. When I married 'er she didn't much care to 
 'ave me, my name being 'Enry Pyecraft no a's you see 
 but we named the baby 'Arriet, and she died when she 
 was two. She didn't half like this road beginning with a 
 haitch, but I told 'er an haitch is next best to a h'a. And 
 oh well, it's very strange, Beechy, ve-ry strange. And 
 then your being an actress, and always a-talking about ar- 
 tists " 
 
 Beechy nodded gravely. "Yes, it is strange. All good 
 things and all bad things " (she said ' tings ') " begin with a 
 h'a. Anch io son superstiziosa." As she avowed her 
 own superstitions she instinctively touched a little bunch 
 of charms she wore on a silver bangle. There was a tiny 
 coral hand with the middle finger curled in, the index and 
 the little finger almost meeting across them; a little tiny 
 gold medal of St. Anthony of Padua, a bog-oak pig that 
 Aurelio had brought to her after a trip to the Irish Lakes, 
 and various other trifles. 
 
 " I left it home last week when I went to my lesson, 
 an'd could not sing a little bit. Very bad, Maestro very 
 cross. But, Uncle 'Enry," she began in a low voice, as 
 Mrs. Pyecraft came towards them, " the opera is ' A'ida,' 
 tell her. Now I'll go and practise, aunt."
 
 ABOUT AVRELIO 187 
 
 A few minutes later Mrs. Pyecraft sat with invisible 
 lips as the sounds of the girl's voice, firm and clear in its 
 roulades and sustained notes, came down through her care- 
 fully closed window. 
 
 "It's a beautiful voice, Augusta, ain't it now?" the old 
 man ventured, anxiously. 
 
 " I suppose it is, as you all say so, but it's too loud for 
 my taste. And remember, 'Enry, the minute she is on the 
 stage she leaves my 'ouse." 
 
 " Of course, of course, my dear." 
 
 Somehow, as time passed they had learned to forget 
 that Beechy was Mrs. Pyecraft's niece. It seemed to the 
 old man that she was his, and his attitude towards his 
 wife was one of gratitude for her kindness to an inter- 
 loper introduced by him.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 BUCINI 
 
 IF the Reverend Mr. Perkins had not appeared just 
 when he did that November afternoon Beechy would 
 undoubtedly have been sent away. Mrs. Pyecraft had 
 never forgiven her sister several things, not only her becom- 
 ing a Catholic. Carrie had been pretty and light-hearted, 
 and had been the one pleasant nature in a dull, depressed 
 family, and as such she was unpopular at home. 
 
 Then a Mrs. Arbuthnot, who lived near Acton, met the 
 younger sister, took a fancy to her and used to invite her to 
 her house. 
 
 The young girl here met amusing people of a better 
 class than her own family, she learned to curl her ha.lt, to 
 pinch her waist, to look through her eyelashes, to sing little 
 songs about farewells, and roses and broken hearts. 
 
 All these things Augusta, grim-visaged even then, bit- 
 terly resented. The sisters quarrelled, and Mrs. Arbuth- 
 not took Carrie to Torquay. 
 
 Mrs. Arbuthnot was a vain, under-educated woman, not at 
 all a good friend for silly little Carrie Smith, but she was 
 kind and cheery, and enjoyed life, so Carrie willingly went 
 abroad with her one February. 
 
 In Rome they quarrelled, and poor Carrie was suddenly 
 thrown on her own resources. 
 
 Like most English girls of that period she believed her 
 
 1 88
 
 BUCINI 189 
 
 ignorant, undisciplined self to be perfectly adapted to edu- 
 cate children, and through a series of chances she presently 
 found herself installed as nursery governess to the children 
 of Princess Lilly del Grillo. She was more or less the 
 slave of Mademoiselle Grenier, the governess, but the chil- 
 dren were charming, she had food enough and a dignified, 
 princely roof over her head, so she was not unhappy. 
 
 One day in May, when lilacs and roses filled the garden, 
 she was sitting on the edge of a dilapidated old fountain 
 sketching with the impertinence of her type, the dome of 
 St. Peter's among the roofs in the plain below, when the 
 children's voices were heard calling " Uncle Giulio, Uncle 
 Giulio!" 
 
 The little governess, the sun in her fair hair, looked up, 
 and saw Giulio Cavaleone approaching her; splendid in 
 the gaudy riding costume of the smart Roman youth of his 
 day and type. 
 
 " I I beg your pardon," he said, politely in Italian, " I 
 thought the children were alone." 
 
 " They they are" she stammered, " I am only the 
 under-governess." 
 
 She was twenty, he was twenty-two. They were both 
 good-looking, neither was in love with any one else, the 
 month was May, in Rome. 
 
 The only strange part of it was that he marrie'd her. 
 But he did, perhaps, trusting that his new position as a mar- 
 ried man would cause the old prince, his father's cousin, to 
 relent in his attitude towards certain long-outstanding debts. 
 
 This part of the plan failed ; there was a sale, a scandal, 
 and the penniless couple lived for a time in absolute retire- 
 ment, no one knew, or cared, where. 
 
 Cavaleone at last got a very small position as clerk in
 
 igo BEECHY 
 
 some big warehouse, and it was then that he brought his 
 little wife to the via del Violino. At first they lived 
 fairly comfortably, for naturally a Cavaleone had always a 
 small amount of credit, and Carrie had the virtues as well 
 as the faults of her class. She was a tidy little house- 
 keeper. 
 
 The old rooms were in themselves beautiful, and she 
 loved the loggia with its twisted pillars. 
 
 Giulio worked, and for a wonder his love lasted. 
 
 At the end of two years a baby was born and he gave 
 her the beautiful historical name of her family Beatrice. 
 
 Then, Carrie began to die. It took her two years to 
 die, but she w r as happy to the end, and he always thanked 
 the saints, in whom his belief was as un'doubting as a child's, 
 that his accident did not happen while she was there to be 
 hurt by it. 
 
 Beechy was two when they brought her father home 
 limp and white after a misstep in the darkness of the ware- 
 house and a little fall of not more than two feet. 
 
 He never walked again, and the Commendatore, the 
 only one of his former friends who still came to see him, 
 went, as has been told, to the old prince and persuaded him 
 that as Principe Cavaleone he could not allow his second 
 cousin to die of starvation. 
 
 So this is how it all happened. 
 
 Whatever there is in the theory of heredity, it must at 
 least be admitted that it does not fall to many to come 
 of a princely Roman stock on one side, and of small dis- 
 senting Cockney shopkeepers on the other. 
 
 In after life Beechy often wondered what had induced 
 her to stay on with the Pyecrafts. 
 
 She had come, she by that time realised, out of curiosity,
 
 BUCINI 19* 
 
 and the absolute need of change that had seized her. But 
 she was most unwelcome to her aunt, even after she had 
 disclosed her possession of fifty pounds a year. 
 
 The mental atmosphere of St. Augustine's was certainly 
 not congenial to the artist in her, the food was too hor- 
 rible for words (all her life fried fat or butter sickened 
 her), chapel was a nightmare, her aunt snapped and snarled 
 at her like some ill-conditioned dog, from morning till night, 
 and made her wear awful frocks much too large for her 
 so that she might have room to grow in them. 
 
 The climate was a thing unspeakably horrible, the sun 
 a mere pallid imitation of a real sun, and the only music 
 she heard was the frightful growling at chapel. 
 
 "Why, then," she once asked a group of admiring 
 loiterers as she monologued about herself in the inno- 
 cently egotistic way so characteristic of her, "did I not 
 leave?" 
 
 And answering, as usual, her own question, she de- 
 clared with a funny amused twist of her eyebrows and the 
 d roily stuck-out lower lip that women were then imitating 
 and that Sargent deliciously suggested in his great portrait 
 of her, "Why did I not leave? Because the Cockney 'alf 
 of me liked it ! " 
 
 There was also, probably, her natural love of teasing, 
 for it greatly amused her to watch her aunt's dislike of her 
 wax and wane; there was also her real affection for Mr. 
 Pyecraft, and there was the great fact of her education. 
 
 For Aurelio had on his very first visit been told that 
 she wished to learn. 
 
 " What do you wish to learn ? Everything ? " 
 
 To the youth's surprise, however, she shook her head. 
 
 " No. I will learn English and French and history."
 
 192 BEECHY 
 
 "History?" 
 
 "Of course," she flashed impatient as she always was 
 of slowness of comprehension. 
 
 " How can I be an actress if I know no history?" 
 
 So, after two months' hard application to the mysteries 
 of the English language, under the ecstatic guidance of 
 young Ruffo, she learned to read with an old Italian who 
 had lived in London for thirty years and whose English 
 was fairly good. 
 
 Learning to read English, she always declared, was the 
 most difficult task of her life, but at the end of four 
 .months she was sufficiently master of printed words to go 
 to the Polytechnic for history. 
 
 This place was proposed by Mr. Perkins, who, in his 
 rather unctuous way, was extremely kind to her. 
 
 It advanced slowly, the learning, for she had an in- 
 herent distaste for books, but it a'dvanced. 
 
 It was entirely her own idea not to find a singing teacher 
 for the first year. 
 
 " I am young," she told Aurelio, " but I am growing 
 and this English is very tiring. And I must walk a lot." 
 
 Regarding her art, Cavaleone was always distinguished 
 by a most unusual good sense. 
 
 At the end of the first year, she wrote to Camillo Subiaco 
 and he advised her to study with a friend of his, one Antonio 
 Bucini. 
 
 After violent opposition from Mrs. Pyecraft, during 
 which Beechy went out and looked for lodgings, Aurelio 
 discovered a means by which to smooth things out. 
 
 His word picture of Bucini was masterly in detail, con- 
 sidering that it was drawn instantaneously and entirely 
 from his imagination.
 
 BUCINI 193 
 
 "But, Signora," he cried, opening his fine eyes very 
 widely in affected amazement, " what can you object to 
 in that excellent old gentleman? If you could but see 
 him!" 
 
 " Old gentleman ? " snapped Aunt Augusta, suspiciously. 
 
 "But yes! He is over sixty, with much white hair. 
 And he and his wife are so religious and good. Your 
 Queen invites him to Windsor, but he says, ' No * very 
 politely he says, 'No.' For why? He never leaves his 
 dear old wife." 
 
 Whether it was the dear old wife or the Queen's invita- 
 tion that convinced Mrs. Pyecraft of his suitability as a 
 teacher of the wicked art of song, to Beechy, one can but 
 guess, but the old woman silently, ungraciously withdrew 
 her opposition, and Beechy went three days later for her 
 first lesson. 
 
 Aurelio had said nothing to her about his fabrications, so 
 the girl was very much surprised, when she was shown into 
 the master's inner room, to find herself facing a man of 
 forty-two or three dressed in a most lady-killing way, and 
 surrounded by photographs of ladies, all lovely, or at least 
 doing their best to be lovely. 
 
 Bucini had many very bad qualities. 
 
 He was extremely immoral, he was a liar of the first 
 water; he believed no good of any living woman (his own 
 mother being, of course, dead). 
 
 But his two good qualities stood out white and clear 
 among all the baseness. 
 
 The man was as unassuming as a baby, and he was one 
 of the then best singing teachers in the world. 
 
 The others were a man in Paris, and a little old woman 
 in Milan.
 
 194 BEECHY 
 
 Beechy, in her ill-cut frock and cotton gloves, did not 
 please the master as he looked at her. 
 
 " H'm, yes; Subiaco wrote to me about you how old 
 are you?" he asked her in Italian. 
 
 " Eighteen." 
 
 "You have studied?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And you wish to sing for opera? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " H'm. Well, take off your jacket. I will try your 
 voice but I am very busy just now." 
 
 His hair, Beechy noticed, smelt of lilac, and his black 
 moustache was waxed to infinitesimal points. He wore a 
 grey velvet coat and a silk shirt with a silk collar. In his 
 cuffs she observed baroc pearls. 
 
 On his delicate watch-chain hung a small gold locket 
 with a fern leaf clover in emeralds on one side, and a com- 
 plicated monogram in diamonds, on the other. 
 
 He made her sing a scale, some octaves, and some sus- 
 tained notes. 
 
 Then he said : " Can you sing me some song or an 
 aria?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Anything from ' ATda,' or ' Rigoletto,' or ' Traviata,' or 
 ' Faust,' or ' Romeo,' or " 
 
 He turned, laughing up at her. 
 
 "The devil you can! Well, let's have Guilietta's 
 waltz." 
 
 " Ebbene. I have not sung it for a year, but I will try." 
 
 He used to tell the story later. 
 
 " There she stood, dressed in brown-sacking, with red
 
 BUCINI 195 
 
 hands clasped in front of her. She was frightened, though 
 she says she wasn't, for she was pale. 
 
 " And, she sang the thing without hesitating once. Her 
 voice was cold and undeveloped, si capisce, and she had not 
 sung for a year, but there she was, a born singer, with 
 that marvellous flexibility of voice, and the self-possession 
 of a Melba! I knew, of course, that I had found a 
 treasure." 
 
 What he said to Beechy was, however, rather different. 
 
 "Yes, you have a voice, Signorina, and your teaching 
 hasn't been bad, as far as it goes but you have much to 
 learn." 
 
 " That," she answered, quite simply, yet with fine iron- 
 ical effect, " is why I have come to you." 
 
 " Signorina Bellini ? " he called. 
 
 And Signorina Bellini (who for the past ten years had 
 been in the eyes of God and of the law, Signora Bucini) 
 came in, and arranged with Beechy when she was to come 
 again. 
 
 " How much do you charge a lesson?" the girl asked. 
 
 " H'm. That is according " he stammered a 
 
 little. " What can you afford ? There is no good in your 
 taking lessons if paying for them is going to starve you," 
 he added, kindly. 
 
 Beechy reflected. " I have twelve hundred and fifty 
 francs a year," she said, " and I live with an uncle and 
 aunt. I have been giving them six hundred and twenty- 
 five a year. Will the rest be enough for you ? " 
 
 He was startled. 
 
 But " 
 
 " That will be all right," she declared. " Quite right."
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 " AIDA " AND AX EVENING FROCK 
 
 MRS. PYECRAFT always remembered that the 
 night of " Ai'da " was in April, and that Beechy 
 went with Aurelio. It also had not failed to 
 strike her that Bucini's Christian name was Alessandro. 
 It was one of the evenings destined to stand out clear in the 
 memory of each member of the group. 
 
 Beechy dressed with the lightest of hearts. 
 
 She was now nineteen and it may be well to describe 
 her. She stood exactly five foot nine in her stockings, and 
 her figure was fully developed, though less beautiful than 
 it became later, because she wore bad, cheap stays and ill- 
 cut clothes. 
 
 Her hair she wore piled high on her head. It was very 
 thick and had on either temple one big smooth wave. 
 
 The Sargent portrait, whatever one may think of other 
 portraits of the master, flatters her. He has made her 
 nose more delicate than it ever was, and he has shortened 
 her lips. The eyes are marvellously like, and the poise 
 of her head. 
 
 Her complexion, very rud'dy when she was a child, had 
 changed at this time to the soft peachiness about which we 
 all used to talk. (It is, however, not true that she never 
 made up for the stage; she always made up.) 
 
 But the great charm of her was her wonderful mobility 
 of expression. She laughed and smiled quietly, not 
 thereby greatly disturbing the muscles of her mouth, but 
 
 196
 
 " AIDA" AND 'AN EVENING FROCK 197 
 
 her smile seemed to affect in a curious way even her brow. 
 Some child once called her the lady with the smily face. 
 
 On the other hand even in private life, sorrow and anger 
 were quite as keenly shown in her expression. The dark- 
 ness of her eyes seemed as limitless as the darkness of a 
 starless night. Her hands were strong, not very small, and 
 had very turned-back finger tips, and beautifully shaped nails 
 the Cavaleone hand, in short. 
 
 And she walked as she had learned to walk in her 
 rough-shod Roman days, using the muscles of her 'feet 
 as few people have ever done. 
 
 The night of " Ai'da " she dressed carefully, put on a long 
 grey ulster, tied a crimson scarf round her head and went 
 'downstairs. 
 
 Aurelio was already there, wearing, in honour of the 
 occasion, a red carnation in his coat. 
 
 A handsome young man, Aurelio Ruffo, with large, 
 golden brown eyes and brown satin hair, and white teeth. 
 
 " You have the tickets ? " she asked, as she came in, adding 
 casually, " Good-evening." 
 
 Mrs. Pyecraft, who was reading, looked up over her 
 spectacles. " What dress 'ave you on ? " she asked. 
 
 " Come on, Aurelio, hurry or we shall miss the 'bus," 
 cried Beechy. " Good-bye, Aunt Augusta ; good-bye, Uncle 
 'Enry. Oh blue, Aunt." 
 
 She rushed Aurelio out of the house, and when the door 
 closed, laughed in her throat, a kind of child-like chuckle. 
 
 " It is blue," she said in Italian. 
 
 "What is blue the sky?" 
 
 " My dress whatever you like. Oh, Aurelio, to think 
 of it ! To hear Subiaco as Radames ' Celeste Ai'da,' " she 
 hummed, as they started briskly towards Dawes Road.
 
 ig8 BEECHY 
 
 " It is fine music," agreed the young goldsmith, grarely. 
 " And I shouldn't think he could sing it ; it is high. His 
 voice is more lyrical." 
 
 Beechy laughed scornfully. 
 
 " Subiaco not even in a dream is it lyrical ! You have 
 heard him only in Faust, which doesn't suit him at all. 
 And to think that let me see four years ago, he was 
 living at the Two Queens, and singing for a thousand 
 francs a night. Ah, there's the 'bus." 
 
 A 'bus at night is by no means an unromantic vehicle. 
 There is a 'bus-poetry just as there is a poetry of chimney- 
 pots. It is fine to sit on high and look down at the 
 hurrying world, the lights come more into one's range of 
 vision from bus-height than they do from carriage-height. 
 The houses, the buildings are entities, not lower stories, 
 the mystery of traffic comes home to one a thousand times 
 more clearly as one looks down at the apparently inex- 
 tricable tangle of houses and vehicles that unravels so 
 smoothly as it works its way onward. 
 
 Beechy sat next an old woman very much like Mrs. 
 Gamp in appearance a waste, since Beechy had never 
 heard of the immortal Sairey. In front of her, next a 
 youth in a red tie, sat Aurelio, leaning back to look at 
 Beechy. 
 
 He was possessed of all the sympathetic tact of his 
 country, and knew that the girl did not wish to talk. More- 
 over, experience had taught him that when Beechy had a 
 silent fit, either from intense delight of appreciation, like 
 this present one, or one of depression, an inopportune word 
 was likely to call forth from her a sharp rebuke. So they 
 were both silent while the 'bus went up King's Road to- 
 wards Sloane Square.
 
 "AID A" AND AN EVENING FROCK 199 
 
 While they waited for the other 'bus, Aurelio shyly pro- 
 duced from his pocket a small package. 
 
 " Bici, dear," he said in Italian, " I did not forget your 
 birthday, but it has only just come." 
 
 Beechy started. " Oh, Grazie, thank you so much," 
 she answered. 
 
 The little package contained a small book bound in 
 vellum and tied with narrow thongs of kid. 
 
 " It's Dante's ' Vita Nuova,' " the young man explained, 
 rather shyly. " I I thought you might like it." 
 
 Beechy smiled at him. " I do like it, Aurelio. It was 
 so kind of you and it came from the blessed country! " 
 (They had long since agreed to speak of Italy always as 
 the p&ese beato). 
 
 She stood holding the book in her hand, looking at it 
 rather absently. He knew that she did not see it, that 
 she was thinking of Rome, and for a moment he said 
 nothing. 
 
 Then he took it from her. 
 
 " Open it anywhere, by chance, Bici, and see what 
 you come to as a kind of oracle " 
 
 " No, no, I don't wish to " 
 
 " But please, I beg of you to." 
 
 The 'bus was coming. Hastily she opened the book 
 and put her finger on some lines. They were those which 
 Dante Rosetti has so well translated: 
 
 "Certainly the Lordship of Love is evil; 
 Seeing that the more homage his servants pay to him 
 The more grievous and painful are the torments 
 Wherewith he torments them." 
 
 Beechy laughed carelessly. She was superstitious, but she
 
 200 BEECHY 
 
 was so young, at least mentally, that she made no personal 
 application of the words. But Aurelio was not too young. 
 
 He changed colour and his hand flew to his watch- 
 chain, where hung a scrap of coral. 
 
 They climbed up on the 'bus and sat down together. He 
 was very much in love, but he never 'dreamed, even in 
 those days of her obscurity, that Beechy would marry him. 
 Indeed he never asked her to do so, either then or later. 
 His was one of the faithful, undramatic loves that come 
 to most attractive women at some time of their lives; 
 loves that in their unselfish devotion do more than their 
 recipients ever dream of towards making their lives pleasant 
 and easy. 
 
 To Beechy, Aurelio was as necessary now as he had been 
 in the days when he was her only means of communication 
 with the little world in which she found herself. 
 
 He took her to concerts, fetched her when he could do 
 so, from her singing lessons, bought books for her at prices 
 which an older woman would have suspected. He gave 
 her flowers, walked with her, showed to her the great 
 pictures that are part of England's treasure. He once even 
 bought her some stockings when she was too busy with 
 Charles XI to go shopping herself but that was long ago. 
 
 He was not unhappy, the good Ruffo. His love was 
 too true and too unselfish for him not to derive from it 
 much joy. But it was changing his nature, and he was 
 even now quieter, less merry than formerly. 
 
 He lived alone, this cavaliere servente, in a room in his 
 employer's house, and he worked hard at his delicate trade 
 that is an art. He neglected nothing, scamped nothing, but 
 more and more Beechy grew to be a sort of monomania 
 with him.
 
 "'AID A" AND AN EVENING FROCK 201 
 
 He thought of her the first thing in the morning, the 
 last thing at night. 
 
 And all these things Beechy knew in a way; if you had 
 asked her about them she could have, and would have, told 
 them to you without hesitation, but she did not, neverthe- 
 less, realise in the least what it meant. 
 
 He had given her his life and she took it with pleased 
 careless fingers as a child would take a priceless jewel. 
 
 As the 'bus made its way down Piccadilly, the young man 
 pondered all these things for the thousandth time. 
 
 " She likes me as yet better than any other man," he 
 thought, " but when she loves some man she will forget 
 me. Shall I be able to bear it ? " 
 
 And this was all his rebellion. There are some few 
 such men, but not many. Perhaps in the old days there 
 were more; these are individualist days when selfishness has 
 been furbished up into something like a virtue. 
 
 " Certainly ' the Lordship of Love is evil,' " he quoted 
 to himself. " Does that mean it will be evil to her? " 
 
 Again he touched his bit of coral. 
 
 Beechy meantime was blissfully happy. Before her lay 
 the joy of hearing Subiaco sing the best of Verdi's operas; 
 and in the mere present she sat cool and comfortable on a 
 'bus watching London. 
 
 People who sit and wait for great moments, miss many 
 wonderful small moments, and they are to be pitied. 
 
 A barrow of oranges half unrolled from twisted purple 
 papers, caught Beechy's eye. 
 
 " Look, Aurelio, what a lovely colour effect," she cried. 
 
 As Tosca her cloak was of orange velvet lined with 
 violet, and she told Aurelio that the idea had come to her 
 that night in the 'bus.
 
 202 BEECHY 
 
 Proudly Aurelio conducted her towards the stalls, and 
 as she took off her ugly ulster he gasped. 
 
 Beechy was in evening dress! 
 
 It was a dark blue gauzy stuff, almost sapphire in shade^ 
 and it was made without ornament, in swathing folds. 
 
 " Dio Santa, Bici, you are magnificent," the young 
 fellow said. 
 
 She smiled. "Yes, am I not? When the master gave 
 me the tickets I made up my mind to have a decent 
 frock. And dark blue wears well," she added care- 
 lessly. " It was a pleasant surprise to find I had good 
 shoulders." 
 
 Her throat was even then very classic in its white 
 strength. 
 
 Aurelio looked at her shyly. 
 
 It hardly seemed possible to him that this was really 
 Beechy. 
 
 They took their places and looked round. 
 
 It was her first glimpse of the luxurious side of opera- 
 going. 
 
 Strange to sit in front of and behind jewelled ladies and 
 beautifully dressed men; strange to see, as she glanced 
 round, the hair on the brows of the men; there seemed 
 much more hair in London seen from the stalls than seen 
 from the gallery. 
 
 A girl near by wore a string of beautiful pearls, and 
 next her an old woman wore diamonds. 
 
 " Which do you like best ? " asked Aurelio, following her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Diamonds. Pearls are dead, like drawn teeth, but 
 diamonds are alive and burn." 
 
 She never wore a pearl, for this fancy's sake.
 
 " AID A" AND AN EVENING FROCK 203 
 
 At last the tuning up began and her eyes stopped roam- 
 ing. 
 
 Surely Verdi was of the very greatest. A comparative 
 study of his operas seems to me to reveal an almost un- 
 paralleled scale of improvement. 
 
 Compare " La Traviata " with " Aida! " Or the Ballo in 
 " Maschera " with " Othello." A beautiful, busy life, 
 crowned when he was a very old man by the modern, mas- 
 terly Falstaff. {But " Ai'da " is the best of all, to me, and 
 to Beechy. 
 
 Beechy knew " Aida " well. One of Bucini's admirable 
 theories was that an artist singing a role in an opera needed 
 a thorough comprehension, not only of his or her role, but 
 of the whole opera. 
 
 And his accompanist was a great pianist manque; a man 
 who but for his weakness for vodka might have been a 
 worthy rival of the best. So the lessons were not only 
 lessons in singing, but in music, and thus Beechy knew much 
 of the best operatic music in the world, and operatic music 
 was the only kind that ever appealed to her. An orchestra 
 without the accompaniments of voice and action left her 
 perfectly cold always. 
 
 So she was well prepared, that evening, for the feast of 
 sound offered to her. 
 
 The " Aida " was good but not wonderful ; and disregard- 
 ing the perfection of Subiaco, the best Radames there has ever 
 been, Beechy sat there watching the prima donna, all her 
 old critical faculty burning like a fire within her. 
 
 "Splendid, isn't she?" whispered Aurelio, and Beechy 
 answered, her eyes fixed on the stage, " No. You wait 
 till I sing it!" 
 
 After the first act, while the house still echoed with the
 
 204 BEECHY 
 
 wild applause in which the British public, once well stirred, 
 is second to none, a good-looking man with a daffodil in 
 his coat came and spoke to Beechy. 
 
 "Will you come with me, Signorina?" he said courte- 
 ously, " Subiaco wishes to see you." 
 
 " Subiaco ! " Her voice expresse'd great joy but no sur- 
 prise. Of course I will come, Maestro. May Signer 
 RufTo come too ? " 
 
 Bucini nodded carelessly. " That understands it- 
 self " 
 
 They found the tenor lying on a sofa in his dressing- 
 room drinking black coffee in which were beaten up the 
 yolks of two raw eggs. 
 
 He looked strange and very ugly in his make-up, but 
 his manner was as natural as that of a child. 
 
 " Eccola" he cried in a whisper, jumping up and shak- 
 ing Beechy by the hand, " here she is, the little Roman, 
 but a big Roman now. How do you like it ? " 
 
 Like " 
 
 "But the performance! Did I sing well? Do I look 
 well? Do you like my costume?" 
 
 He watched her as anxiously as if his whole career de- 
 pended on her answer. 
 
 " Splendid. Glorious." 
 
 "Good! And you like my gestures? I am dignified, 
 ah? Not too Italian, sufficiently Egyptian?" 
 
 Aurelio listened with a flicker of amusement under his 
 young moustache, but Aurelio was not an opera-singer. 
 
 They talked for five minutes, entirely about Subiaco him- 
 self, and then he sent them away. " I must rest the duet 
 in the next act is horrible, it breaks my heart "
 
 "AID A" AND AN EVENING FROCK 205 
 
 Still under his breath he produced a number of sharp 
 nasal tones between a snarl and a bark. 
 
 " Ah, yes, my voice is high to-night the timbre is good. 
 Good-bye now. Come to see me to-morrow, at the Savoy, 
 at eleven. I wish to hear you sing. You bring her, 
 Bucini good-bye, good-bye " 
 
 He waved them out and as the door closed they heard 
 once more his queer little nasal bark as he tried his voice.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 A YEAR LATER 
 
 "May nth. 
 
 DEAREST Signora Scarpia: 
 " I have delayed writing to you because I knew 
 the papers I sent you could tell you the news better 
 than I. It is all true and I, your little Bici, am now the 
 Cavaleone! It is raining to-day and I am lying down in 
 my Salotto, and Aurelio Ruffo of whom I have written to 
 you is writing to you for me. You know how horribly I 
 write, and now I loathe it. Well, Aurelio writes all my 
 letters now, and corrects them when I make mistakes! 
 
 " You want to hear it all from the beginning. Please 
 read it to dear Father Antonio, will you? An'd give him 
 my love and ask him from me if he would mind telling 
 them in the via del Violino? They will all be glad, dear 
 Signora Marianna, and old Agnese, and the rest. 
 
 "Well, if you could see the room I write you from! 
 
 "The woodwork is all white, shiny and carved with 
 wreaths of flowers, there is yellow silk on the walls, and 
 there is a golden clock on the chimney-piece. 
 
 " The chairs are yellow and gold and white. There is 
 an open fire a big one, sticks, but no pine cones ; Aurelio is 
 going to get me some. 
 
 " Then I have a bedroom and a bathroom made of white 
 tilis. I take a bnth every day. 
 
 206
 
 A YEAR LATER 207 
 
 " My bedroom is beautiful, white and pink, and my 
 maid is opposite me. Yes, la mia camcriera* isn't it a 
 joke ? 
 
 " Well, four weeks ago I ' got my chance,' as you wrote 
 me I should, and sang Giulietta. It was pretty bad, my 
 voice wasn't clear and I was so frightened I kept forgetting 
 the words. Subiaco prompted me a dozen times. It was 
 so bad, I thought they'd hiss, but they didn't. They are 
 not very particular, the English, and I looked pretty, 
 whereas the last Juliet, Madame Delavigne, is as broad as 
 she is long, and old. 
 
 " It is a wonderful role, Giulietta. 
 
 " Wasn't it strange that I was so frightened, after sing- 
 ing all this year in the Provinces? 
 
 " When the Maestro got the provincial engagement for 
 me he did it so I should get over being nervous, but, God 
 in heaven, it did not help at all. 
 
 "To sing in Manchester or any other provincial town is 
 less trying than to sing in any Italian village, the peopl 
 are so inartistic. 
 
 " But London what they don't understand they pretend 
 that they do, and they fool each other and sometimes them- 
 selves ! 
 
 " Well, then, I cried after the first act and dear Subiaco 
 gave me some coffee and I felt better. The second act 
 wasn't much better as to voice, but I found I could act. 
 There are very few singers who can act. 
 
 " S. was an angel to me and I enjoyed it, although I had 
 no mezza voce at all. 
 
 " When it was all over these dear geese called and called 
 for me, by name if you please, and I had two baskets of 
 flowers, one from dear Aurelio and the other from Bucini.
 
 208 BEECHY 
 
 " You will understand that I sang Giulietta only because 
 the prima donna was ill. 
 
 "Luckily she got worse, so the next week I sang 
 Margherita. And, oh, Signora mia cara, I sang well. 
 Aubepine, the French tenor, was Faust, and sang in French, 
 while I of course sang in Italian. I was frightened at first, 
 but got over it, and my voice was very good. 
 
 " Of course there is nothing like practise, and some day 
 I am going to be the very best Margherita, but well, you 
 saw the papers. 
 
 " Aubepine was much pleased. He said I made him feel 
 such a beast, and I don't wonder. What a part Faust's is, 
 what a miserable little man he was. 
 
 "Well, the next day I was sent for to see Mr. Harri- 
 son, the one who engages the singers at the opera, and he 
 engaged me for the rest of the season. They are so rich, 
 so rich, these English! 
 
 " I have so much money that I don't know what to do, 
 and Bucini has made me come to this grand hotel to live 
 and have a maid, and they took me to a shop called Gie's 
 (that is the way it is pronounced) and Bucini's secretary, 
 Signorina Bellini, chose clothes for me. 
 
 " You would like them only they are of dull colours ; 
 me, I prefer frank bright colours, but it doesn't much 
 matter. 
 
 " Aurelio is tired, so I must stop. I have sung five times 
 and to-morrow am to sing Gilda. 
 
 " People send me flowers and letters which Aurelio reads. 
 I have had my photograph taken twice and enclose one of 
 me as Margherita. The dress is grey and I wear my hair 
 plaited. 
 
 " My love to you. Write soon to your Bid."
 
 A YEAR LATER 209 
 
 This letter more or less explains itself, and the interval 
 between the evening of " Alda," an interval of just a year, 
 can be described in a few words. 
 
 Subiaco, delighted with her voice, after some consulta- 
 tion with Bucini had got her an engagement in a very good 
 touring company, in which hard school she learned the 
 thousand small technicalities, the lack of which damn so 
 many gifted amateurs. 
 
 It was no easy life, for she sang nearly every night, in 
 second rate uncomfortable theatres, and her lodgings were 
 cheap and her foo'd bad. 
 
 But these things did not either frighten or harm her, 
 and when her chance came she was readier to take it than 
 her letter implies. 
 
 From the first the public, about whom she was so impolite, 
 was charmed with her, and that goes a very long way to- 
 wards being half the battle anywhere. 
 
 Her fright lent her only a certain gauche grace better 
 fitted to the young Juliet than the maturer fascinations of 
 Madame Delavigne, and her lovely true voice was too well 
 placed to be unbeautiful even when she was frightened. 
 
 And this brings us to a period when a short resume must 
 be given of her different admirers. 
 
 They were many, but they were of very little importance 
 to her, so they may be hastily classified. 
 
 I. Aurelio Ruffo, unaspiring slave and faithful friend. 
 
 II. Bucini, her teacher, tentative, quickly convinced of 
 the uselessness of his attempts, hence almost immediately, 
 and quite unsuspected, retiring from the field. 
 
 III. Harold Purefoy, Esq., of Barfield, in the county of 
 Yorkshire. Intentions undecided, more a gentlemanly
 
 aio BEECHY 
 
 rustic's reaching out for adventures, than anything else. 
 Snubbed into immediate submission and married three 
 months later to a redheaded cousin. 
 
 IV. Sir Oliver Cheshunt: Intentions strictly dishonour- 
 able. Disposed of one autumn evening by a severe box on 
 the ear and the unpleasing realisation that she was three 
 inches taller, and two inches broader across the shoulders 
 than he. 
 
 V. Reverend Peter Creesdale, a curate who should have 
 been nearly anything else, whom she refused very kindly and 
 to whom she gave a lock of her hair. 
 
 VI. (And up to the period of her letter to the Scarpia, 
 last,) Cricket Londale, stroke of last year's Oxford crew 
 and one of the finest youths who ever lived. No intentions 
 whatever, nothing but an aching, maddening love to which 
 she lent a patient though bored ear, and whom she mimicked 
 for Aurelio's benefit. 
 
 She was of the kind of women with whom men do fall in 
 love. 
 
 Roughly speaking, women may be divided into two classes, 
 the kind men do, and the kind men don't, fall in love with, 
 and Beechy was indisputably of the former class. 
 
 But she was not a flirt, and she was very busy indeed, so 
 that the above classification by no means fails to express her 
 attitude towards her victims. 
 
 The next person to be noted is Lady Cossie Bleck. 
 
 How Lady Cossie (Cassandra) got hold of the new 
 soprano, people often wondered, and many of the most 
 romantic suppositions were made about the matter. 
 
 The truth, which never occurred to anybody, was simply 
 this:
 
 A YEAR LATER 211 
 
 Lady Cossie wrote to Beechy and telling her how much 
 she liked her singing (oh horrible limitations of the Eng- 
 lish language), asked her to lunch with her. 
 
 And Beechy went. 
 
 Aurelio advised her to do so, because Lady Cossie was a 
 lady and not a plain Mrs. Also because she lived in Upper 
 Grosvenor Street. 
 
 Lady Cossie was a little old woman, unmarried, who was 
 said to have been very much in love with the present King, 
 though she had never spoken to him. She had a very ugly 
 house full of mirrors and dark plush, and she wore the old 
 clothes of a gay young cousin, which gave her a rather 
 ridiculous air of false youth. 
 
 She was poor, but she would not let her town house, 
 and she was supposed to be translating into English one of 
 M. Beyle's peerless romances. 
 
 " I like your singing very much," Lady Cossie said, as 
 she gave poor hungry Beechy one of the two attenuated 
 chops on the silver platter before her. 
 
 " Tank you," Beechy answered politely. 
 
 " And I thought you looked nice, so I wanted to meet 
 you." 
 
 " Tank you." 
 
 Lady Cossie wore a pale-green frock embroidered in 
 silver; a Grand Prix frock of last year. Mrs. Gerry Bon- 
 nard, her cousin, had been a dream in it, and when she told 
 Lady Cossie this interesting fact, that courageous old girl 
 retorted like a shot, " And I shall be a nightmare," which 
 she was. 
 
 Behind her hung a sketch of Angelica Kauffmann, sup- 
 posed to have been drawn by Sir Joshua, and on the opposite 
 wall hung an excellent Hoppner.
 
 212 BEECHY 
 
 But there was thin bouillon, a chop apiece and a thimble- 
 ful of peas, a tiny sweet omelette and a peach apiece, for 
 luncheon. 
 
 Beechy, hungry singer, longed for food, but her little 
 hostess seemed well-pleased. 
 
 " How old are you ? " she asked. 
 
 " Twenty-one." 
 
 "You look older." 
 
 "Yes, I am so strong. I used " 
 
 "What did you use to do, tell me I" 
 
 "Aurelio a friend of mine, said I mass not tell too 
 much many things!" returned the girl, simply. 
 
 "Ah, but to me!" 
 
 " Well I used to work very hard, sweeping and garden- 
 ing " 
 
 "But where " 
 
 For a moment Beechy weighed in her mind the rival 
 advisabilities of the Two Queens and the convent as an 
 answer. Then with some shrewdness she said, " In a con- 
 vent in Rome." 
 
 " Ah ! So you were educated in Rome ? " 
 
 " I wasn't h'educated anywhere, but I lived in the con- 
 vent for long time." 
 
 Lady Cossie, in pursuit of information, was indefatigable. 
 
 " And is Cavaleone your real name, my dear ? When 
 I was in Rome years ago, my brother was Minister I 
 knew a Prince Cavaleone " 
 
 She hesitated. 
 
 Beechy, looking up from the chop bone she was scraping 
 with more enthusiasm than is usual in society, nodded 
 shortly. " My father's cousin, he's dead" 
 
 This simple statement, passing through the filter of Lady
 
 r A YEAR LATER 213 
 
 Cossie's imagination, did for Beechy far more than she ever 
 imagined. 
 
 " You remember old Prince Cavaleone in Rome ? To 
 whose palazzo we went to see the Carnival Procession, 
 Charles dear? He's her cousin." 
 
 The next person received the impression that the old man 
 was her uncle, and so on it went. 
 
 " Dearest Signora," she burst out in one of the letters 
 dictated to the good Aurelio, " last night I dined at the 
 
 house of Lord X , such a beautiful staircase there is, 
 
 and such beautiful gold dishes. And the food! Never 
 have I eaten so well, or so much. It is wonderful, the 
 way they live, these English ! I sang after dinner, but I had 
 eaten too much and my voice was not good, but they did not 
 know. . . . To-morrow I am going to the house of a 
 Duchess to lunch. I met her yesterday, and she is very 
 nice, but made up as for the theatre, which does not look 
 well in the sunlight. . . . 
 
 " English girls are wonderful, so beautiful, so sweet, and 
 such delicious voices when they speak. When they sing, 
 behold, it is polenta in the throat. Very dreadful. . . . 
 The Signori are very fine, with beautiful shining nails. 
 Their teeth are not so good as Italians. They wear sweet 
 smelling stuff on their hair which is quite flat and shining 
 like satin. They tell me I am beautiful, and they stare at 
 me, but I like it ... etc., etc."
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 BEECHY MEETS LORD CHARLES CRESSAGE 
 
 THE critics at this time had much to say about 
 Cavaleone, and the greater part of it seems to have 
 been true. They agreed that she was the most de- 
 lightful creature on the operatic stage, that her voice was 
 well placed, true, and spontaneous. 
 
 No one denied that she had her many roles at her fingers' 
 or tongue's end. And her acting, by itself was wonder- 
 ful. 
 
 To see her one night as Marguerite and the next as Carmen 
 was amazing, for the one looked not a bit like the other and 
 the very quality of her voice seemed to change with the 
 opera; the voice of poor Marguerite being limpid, tender 
 and pathetic, while that of Carmen seemed heavier, warmer, 
 more passionate. 
 
 The fact that she could at the age of twenty-one sing the 
 role of the abandoned little cigarette-maker as she did, 
 proved not only that she was a great singer, but that she 
 was an incomparable mimic. She had seen Calve. She 
 had seen Ridolfi in the role, and from her keen observation 
 of them she had, so to say, compiled her own edition of the 
 character. 
 
 And she was singing Carmen when she met Charles 
 Cressage. 
 
 It was a gala night and the house was ablaze with jewels. 
 
 In the Royal box sat the Prince and Princess of Wales, 
 
 214
 
 MEETS LORD CHARLES CRESSAGE 215 
 
 and nearly every grand tier box had its diamond fender, for 
 a big ball was on that evening. 
 
 Beechy sat in. her dressing-room making up. 
 
 It was warm and she mopped impatiently at her fore- 
 head as beads of perspiration gathered there to the detri- 
 ment of her work. 
 
 Her hair, which she wore in two long plaits, was tied 
 with scraps of red ribbon, and she wore a costume of her 
 own invention, a short red skirt, and a white blouse over 
 which was crossed a little green silk shawl. A work girl's 
 dress, it was, but effective in colour and very becoming to 
 her. 
 
 " Curses on this heat," she growled in Italian ; " give me 
 a cup of coffee, please, Signora. Oh, I am so nervous! " 
 
 The Signora, for it was an old acquaintance, brought 
 over by the exigencies of Beechy's new position, and a. 
 most miserable old woman away from her beloved Italy, 
 poured out the coffee. 
 
 She was resplendent, in her peculiar way, for Beechy 
 loved to give, but she wore no stays and not even the 
 opulent richness of the folds of ruby coloured silk could 
 conceal the superabundance of her bosom. 
 
 At her throat, fastened in a bit of spangled lace, was a 
 brooch of small diamonds, also a present from Beechy. 
 
 And her still abundant and black hair was combed into a 
 mountain of oily waves and caught with a jewelled comb. 
 
 "Why should you be nervous?" she asked, reproach- 
 fully. " You have sung it a dozen times." 
 
 Beechy turned to her an exasperated face roughly smeared 
 with grease paints. 
 
 " Just try singing in public yourself," she cried. " Nerv- 
 ous! Go and see Subiaco. He'll throw things at you."
 
 2i6 BEECHY 
 
 The Signora rocked comfortably to and fro in her chair. 
 " Va bene, va bene, cara; be as nervous as you like. And 
 have some more coffee. It is poison for the nerves! " 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing. " Give me that box, 
 please. You are right, I am absurd. But oh, the hor- 
 ror of the first glance at all these people, every single 
 one of them seems an executioner. There, is that all 
 right?" 
 
 As she spoke, Subiaco came into the room dressed in his 
 uniform. He was made up but looked agitated. 
 
 "What shall I do? " he began, "the Prince and Princess 
 are here, and I am so hoarse I can't speak ! " 
 
 Beechy looked at him. 
 
 " Macch& ! Nonsense, Subiachino mio. Your voice is all 
 right. Try the pitch." 
 
 He shook his head piteously. " I I am hoarse, I tell 
 you " 
 
 Bici rummaged among the things on her untidy dressing- 
 table and found a tuning-pipe, which she blew. " There! " 
 
 Obediently the great artist sang the note, and after a 
 moment or two another and another. 
 
 He was not in the least hoarse. 
 
 The Signora laughed but with a little fierce gesture. 
 Beechy silenced her. To her, Subiaco's state of nerves 
 was a serious matter, a kind of instantaneous tragedy. 
 
 He sat down by her and took hold of her long plaits. 
 
 " You console me, bring me luck," he said, quietly. 
 
 "You bring me luck," she retorted with one of her very 
 few flare-ups of gratitude. "You have brought me all I 
 have." 
 
 At that moment the orchestra struck up, and Subiaco 
 left the room.
 
 MEETS LORD CHARLES CRESSAGE 217 
 
 " He is very superstitious," commented the Signora, to 
 whom, as to most people, familiarity had brought, not con- 
 tempt, but a friendly lack of reverence. 
 
 " Yes," answered Beechy, thoughtfully. . . . 
 
 Her first fright over, her voice came in great volume 
 and beauty and sure of every note in her role she could give 
 herself up to the joy of being Carmen. 
 
 " It sings itself," she whispered to someone. 
 
 And as she coquetted about the stage, trying to attract 
 Jose's attention, she looked up to a lower tier box on the 
 right, and saw Charles Cressage's eyes fixed on her. 
 
 His face as she looked at it seemed a very strange and 
 contradictory one. And because she subconsciously formu- 
 lated everything, she rapidly drew a little mental descrip- 
 tion of him. 
 
 It was, she thought, a classic face full of modern expres- 
 sion; it had a look of great innocence, the result of being 
 very experienced; it was the face of a man very young for 
 his years, and, for these same years, very old. 
 
 Again and again her eyes met his. And as she sat in 
 the chair mocking Jose, Cressage took a card from his pocket 
 and scribbling something on it, retired from sight. 
 
 The card was on her table, as she knew it would be, 
 when she entered a few minutes later. 
 
 Lord Charles Cressage and following the engraved 
 words he had written : " begs Signora Cavaleone to do him 
 the great honour of permitting him to have a moment's con- 
 versation with her after the opera." 
 
 She was glad, and saw no reason for pretending to be 
 annoyed. The man interested her, and she would be glad 
 to see him. 
 
 Not so the Signora, a model of all the proprieties.
 
 2i8 . BEECHY 
 
 " Very impertinent, my dear, and you living in a grand 
 hotel, like a lady ! " the good woman expostulated. 
 
 * T He is handsome, Signora mia cara, and he is to be 
 shown in here. Understand ? " 
 
 When the last thunder of applause had echoed away into 
 silence over poor little Carmen, Cressage appeared at the 
 stage door and was conducted at once to Cavaleone's dress- 
 ing-room. 
 
 He found her sitting in a low chair, wrapped in a shabby 
 old red cloak, drinking Chianti and eating a piece of rough 
 grey Italian bread that the useful Scarpia provided her with. 
 
 She had not expected him so soon. 
 
 Without moving she looked up, and he never forgot the 
 picture. The red cloak, her high piled hair with its great 
 carved comb, her beautiful forearm in the strong light, the 
 ruby wine. 
 
 " Lord Charles Cressage eh," she said gravely. 
 
 She never learned to pronounce the name. 
 
 " Yes. You are very kind to see me " 
 
 He was never eloquent and his wit, such as it was, was 
 spasmodic. 
 
 " It is very kind of you to see me," he repeated. 
 
 Beechy smiled. 
 
 "You liked it?" she asked. "The singing? And the 
 acting? I was good? Ver* good? " 
 
 Her anxiety to have his opinion flattered him, which it 
 nee'd not have done. Just then he was to her not an in- 
 dividual at all; he was merely the mouthpiece of her late 
 audience. 
 
 But he could not answer. Something in her affected him 
 strangely, making him inarticulate and awkward behind his 
 smooth handsome mask.
 
 MEETS LORD CHARLES CRESSAGE 219 
 
 "If you heard us applaud. And look, I have split 
 my glove." 
 
 He held up his hand. 
 
 Beechy nodded, very much pleased. 
 
 "Ah, bravo. Yes, it was good. Subiaco was wonder- 
 ful. Oh, that romanza with its b flat!" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " Bother Subiaco ! " he exclaimed impatiently. " It's you 
 J. care about. Your voice. You you " He stam- 
 mered, staring at her. 
 
 Beechy burst into delighted laughter. 
 
 "I! Me! Oh, I am vaf please! Delighted. But 
 you flatter me." 
 
 She was very beautiful as she stood there, and more, to 
 him, than beautiful. Most men know what it means, the 
 abrupt, almost appalling coming of the one woman. 
 
 Cressage, who at that very moment was engaged in three 
 different love-affairs, knew that something had happened to 
 him and, vaguely, he realised what it was, but he did not 
 put a name to it, even to himself. 
 
 "Are you doing anything now? " he asked. " I mean, if 
 you are not, perhaps you will come to supper with me ? " 
 
 Beechy nodded. " Yes, I will. I am very hungry. I 
 want eggs a great many eggs, " 
 
 Going to the door she called in the banished Signora and 
 explained to her what was going to happen. 
 
 Then she asked Cressage to wait for her at the stage door 
 in half an hour. 
 
 And, having called his motor he paced up and down by 
 it until the two women appeared. 
 
 Beechy wished to go to the Savoy which she loved, but 
 moved by some semi-conscious jealousy he took them in-
 
 220 BEECHY 
 
 stead to a small French restaurant in Duke Street, where 
 they were almost alone. 
 
 Beechy wore, he always remembered, a 'dark-green coat 
 and skirt, a loose white silk shirt and a black beaver hat 
 with a long plume in it. 
 
 He also never forgot how hungry she was, and how 
 much she ate. 
 
 The Signora, portentously stately, feasted daintily, but 
 the singer was ravenous and ate rapidly, with deep draughts 
 of red wine and water. 
 
 At first he plied her with questions. 
 
 Yes, she was a Roman; yes, Prince Cavaleone was a dis- 
 tant relation; yes (with mischief), her mother was h'Eng- 
 lish. Her mother's sister had married a dissenting 'draper 
 in Fulham. No, she was not married. She was twenty- 
 one. She liked London. She was going to Italy for the 
 summer. Yes, with Signora Scarpi 
 
 Yes, she knew Lady Cossie very well. Yes, she was 
 going to Wychley before she went to Italy. 
 
 And so on. 
 
 She answered all his questions, but she was obviously so 
 very much more interested in her buttered eggs! 
 
 And the Signora's eye was sinister. 
 
 When they got out of his motor at the hotel, Beechy, to 
 whom time never meant anything, politely invited him to 
 come up to her sitting-room. 
 
 Arrived in that ornate bower of which she was plainly 
 proud, she dismissed the Signora, and sat down. 
 
 " I am sleepy," she said, yawning as a dog yawns, all 
 her teeth showing. 
 
 " I will go," he retorted stiffly, and she sprang up in 
 protestation.
 
 MEETS LORD CHARLES CRESSAGE 221 
 
 " No, no, I didn't mean that ! " 
 
 He was a very handsome man, a trifle too handsome 
 many people thought, for his nose was as beautiful as the 
 nose of Napoleon, and his deep-set blue eyes marvels of 
 compelling tenderness. He was forty years old, and what 
 he did not know of the gentle art of lady-killing was not 
 worth knowing. 
 
 Yet now, for once, he was at fault, and sat quite mute 
 while her dark eyes frankly and kindly studie'd him. 
 
 "What a pity you don't sing," she said at last in a 
 thoughtful voice. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because you make a a so beautiful Romeo," which 
 name she pronounced correctly in the accent on the second 
 syllable. 
 
 " I ! at my age." His laugh was a little bitter and 
 passionately regretful. " Would you sing Juliet with 
 me?" 
 
 She looked at him curiously. " Of course, with joy, 
 if you had a voice." 
 
 He rose and took her hand. 
 
 " Some day," he said, clearing his throat, " you will meet 
 a man to whose Romeo you will sing Juliet even if he has 
 no voice." 
 
 "Shall I?" 
 
 "Yes. I mean " 
 
 She burst out into a peal of perfectly unaffected, amused 
 laughter. 
 
 "You mean. I know, L'amore. Chi lo sa? Who can 
 tell?" 
 
 Cressage changed colour. 
 
 " I can tell. There is no one yet ? "
 
 222 BEECHY 
 
 He knew that he was making an ass of himself, but he 
 could not help it. 
 
 At his age, after all his adventures, he had, he realised 
 as he waited for her answer, fallen in love in love, not into 
 one of that much miscalled passion's many substitutes. 
 
 "No one yet?" 
 
 Beechy shrunk back from him. His feeling was too in- 
 tense to be disregarded now. 
 
 " No," she said slowly. " Not yet."
 
 .LORD CHARLES'S FIRST STEP 
 
 T^LEASE, Minnie!" 
 ~ " Please no, my good Charles ! " 
 
 Mrs. Bridport laughed her famous little laugh 
 in which her eyes quite disappeared behind a network of 
 wrinkles. She was the greatest tease in London. 
 
 "Old Cossie does, why can't you?" 
 
 " ' Old Cossie,' as you civilly call her, is the daughter of 
 a hundred Earls. My father is a brewer, bless him! And 
 besides, why should I help you out in your nefarious schemes ? 
 You are shameless, Charles Cressage." 
 
 Lord Charles, who was looking very tired, and almost ill 
 after the fifth sleepless night he had had that week, 
 frowned. 
 
 " Don't try to be funny," he said. " I am quite in 
 earnest. I am much interested in Cavaleone and I want to 
 meet her. So of course I come to you. To whom else 
 should I come?" 
 
 This question appeared to have weight, for Mrs. Brid- 
 port's face changed suddenly. 
 
 " Poor old boy ! But I have nothing in the world 
 against Kitty " 
 
 " Good Lord, neither have I ! " 
 
 His face was supremely innocent as he spoke. 
 
 223
 
 224 BEECHY 
 
 "Who but a brute could have anything against Kitty? 
 And what has she to do with my request to you ? " 
 
 She burst out laughing again, putting up her lorgnon to 
 look at him. 
 
 " Priceless, marvellous man, what -would life be without 
 you? Well, you wish me to invite Cavaleone here, and 
 to invite you to meet her. That must mean that you are 
 in love with her. Don't deny it." 
 
 "Deny it? Of course I don't. Of course I'm in love 
 with her." 
 
 She watched him closely, her brown eyes reduced to mere 
 black specks by the glasses in her lorgnon. 
 
 "What about Belle Bromley?" she asked at length. 
 
 Cressage shrugged his shoulders. "Your imagination 
 does you credit, Minnie. You ought to write books." 
 
 He was indubitably that hateful thing, a lady-killer, but 
 she reflected, as she had reflected so many times before, he 
 was such a well-bred one. 
 
 Also, he was perfectly serious in his loves, each one 
 obliterating, annulling, the very existence of the last one. 
 All his life he had been saying in high sincerity, " I have 
 never loved before." The man could not have helped fall- 
 ing in love even if he had tried, but to do him justice he did 
 not try. And never once by a thing, a smile, or even that 
 exaggerated air of innocence by which some men shrewdly 
 betray things, had he, as Minnie Bridport put it, " given a 
 woman away." 
 
 "You are a cumberer of the earth," she declared, 
 dropping her lorgnon. " You are vain and foolish, but you 
 are not chattering; you are an utterly useless member of 
 society; you are in debt, you gamble, you have no more 
 morals than a monkey "
 
 LORD CHARLES'S FIRST STEP 225 
 
 " But my manners are better," he put in politely, " and 
 manners make the man I never heard anyone say that 
 morals make the man." 
 
 She laughed. " Don't interrupt. You are useless to 
 your country, to your family, to your friends, but you are 
 a dear, and I'll go and lunch with Lady Cossie this very day 
 and arrange to meet this girl. There, are you satisfied?" 
 
 He was, and having then got his own way, he promptly 
 rose and took leave of her. 
 
 Now Mrs. Tom Bridport was a thoroughly good little 
 woman. She adored her big Tom and her twin boys, 
 little Tom and David. She lived in the utmost content- 
 ment in her tiny box of a house, dressed on what her 
 friends called nothing a year for her father, the brewer, 
 possessed the distinction, which would be appreciated by 
 Mr. Henry James, of being an unsuccessful brewer. She 
 was kind to her unattractive suburban relations, to her serv- 
 ants, to her husband's favourite cat, whom she really dis- 
 liked. 
 
 It is something of a puzzle why this essentially good little 
 woman did as she did about Beechy. 
 
 To be sure Beechy to her was the new soprano, Cava- 
 leone. And a new Italian soprano is assuredly a creature 
 able to take care of herself. 
 
 And yet at the luncheon at Lady Cossie's, each of the 
 girl's twenty-one years, years so few, so innocent, seemed 
 to look out of her eyes at her new friend, and Mrs. Brid- 
 port said to her as she ate a very wooden pear : " You are 
 very young, Signorina." 
 
 This was the name they gave her at that time. Her sur- 
 name is long, and to call her Signorina Cavaleone would, it 
 appeared to many people, have taken hours. Whereas no
 
 226 BEECHY 
 
 one in even a partial enjoyment of his or her senses could 
 have called her " Miss." 
 
 She was so thoroughly, triumphantly, Southern! 
 
 That day she wore a little coat and skirt of red cloth 
 and a small black hat. 
 
 She was beautiful and she knew it. Also she was as 
 young as little Tommy and David, in other ways than mere 
 ways of age. All this Mrs. Bridport saw, and yet Mrs. 
 Bridport without one qualm asked her to dine the follow- 
 ing Sunday, adding, " A great admirer of yours is com- 
 ing n ' 
 
 "Lady Alice Ashe?" asked Beechy, smiling delightedly. 
 
 "No, a man." 
 
 "Ah! Mr. Londale?" 
 
 " No. Guess again." 
 
 " The Signorina has so many admirers," laughed old 
 Cossie Bleck, " that she can't guess which one you 
 mean ! " 
 
 If there was sarcasm in her words Beechy did not see it. 
 She merely frowned thoughtfully and guessed again. " Mr. 
 Wauchope ? " 
 
 Mrs. Bridport raised her eyebrows. " No, but do you 
 know Lex? I'll ask him to dine, too. He's a great pal of 
 mine " 
 
 Beechy went on solemnly, naming those whom she be- 
 lieved to be her admirers, and at last, rather shyly, she sug- 
 gested Cressage. 
 
 " Right ! Oh, but tremendously, he admires you. Isn't 
 he charming ? " 
 
 " Very. His eyes make one stop talking," she returned. 
 
 Lady Cossie clapped her hands. " Good ! What a 
 pretty speech. 'Make one stop talking,' do they? Ah,
 
 LORD CHARLES'S FIRST STEP 227 
 
 my dear, beware of Charles Cressage," she added, more 
 gently, her old eyes less shrewd than usual. 
 
 "Why?" asked the girl. 
 
 " Because he is so fascinating, child ! " 
 
 " But I like fascinating people." 
 
 The two elder women exchanged a glance. They both 
 believed in her with the absolute belief that real innocence 
 usually meets. And yet neither of them dreamt of warning 
 her more seriously against the man. 
 
 He was one of themselves, and she was an outsider, an 
 opera-singer. 
 
 Beechy walked home to her hotel where a small luncheon 
 was ready for her. She had learned by this time to put no 
 faith in Lady Cossie's powers of catering to her vigorous 
 young appetite. 
 
 She liked Mrs. Bridport, and she was glad to be dining 
 with her on Sunday. She was also glad that Lord Charles 
 was to be there. 
 
 While she was eating her macaroni in her little sitting- 
 room Henry Pyecraft came in. 
 
 It was the first time she had seen him for over a month, 
 and she embraced him warmly. 
 
 " Dear Uncle 'Enry," she cried, holding him off at arm's 
 length and then kissing him again, "I am glad to see you! 
 'Ow are you and 'ow is Aunt Augusta? " 
 
 Mr. Pyecraft cleared his throat. 
 
 " Well, my dear, quite well," he said, nervously. " That 
 is to say, I 'aven't mentioned to 'er that I was coming to see 
 you to-day. The fact is, Beechy, you 'ave annoyed your 
 Aunt. Seriously annoyed 'er." 
 
 " lo ? Ma come, piccolo zio caro ? " she asked in sur- 
 prise.
 
 228 BEECHY 
 
 " By well, it's nine weeks since you've been to Ful- 
 ham " 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing. " But Uncle 'Enry the last 
 time I came she said she wish-a never see me again! She 
 said I disgrrrrace the family." 
 
 " I know, my dear, I know. But you must remember, 
 she's very nervous, Augusta is, an' and the papers 'ave 
 spoken so well of you " 
 
 The good man broke off, embarrassed, and turned his hat 
 anxiously in his hands. 
 
 "You see, Beechy, them articles in the papers " 
 
 Beechy wiped her plate with a bit of bread. 
 
 " I see, Uncle 'Enry. I quite see." She was silent for a 
 moment repressing the string of sarcastic nonsense that 
 rushed into her mind. Then she added, " Shall I come 
 Sunday for dinner?" 
 
 Poor Pyecraft was radiant. 
 
 He had not ventured to hope for such a generous disre- 
 garding of his wife's remarks on the occasion of Beechy's 
 last visit, and he was very grateful to her. 
 
 He did not know that kindness being as natural to her 
 as breathing, nothing in the world was easier to her than 
 just such generosity. 
 
 Well pleased he went his way, and Beechy, who was 
 singing that night, went to bed.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 A SMALL DINNER 
 
 THE dinner at Mrs. Bridport's was small. She and 
 her husband and Beechy and Cressage were four, 
 and there were besides Alexis Wauchope, the critic, 
 and a girl named West whose greatest claims to distinction 
 seemed to be that she smoked more cigarettes than any 
 woman in town, and Lex Wauchope was supposed to like 
 her. 
 
 Thus Beechy and Cressage were opposite each other at 
 the pretty round table, while Little Lex sat between his 
 hostess and the young singer. 
 
 A large, flat bowl of pink sweet-peas was the only table 
 decoration, so Cressage had an uninterrupted view of 
 Beechy. And he made the most of it. 
 
 Beechy herself, tired after a dull day in Fulham, was 
 a little pale and silent, but to a man as thoroughly in love 
 as Cressage was, every mood has its charms, and he felt a 
 distinct sensation of relief in realising that she was not so 
 hungry as usual. 
 
 Tom Bridport, a burly man with a very gentle voice, 
 liked the girl, and produced for her benefit a few Italian 
 words, remnants of a long-ago winter in Rome. 
 
 "Ah, Roma," she cried, clasping her hands. 
 
 " Sono Romana di Roma, io a Roman of Rome!" 
 
 " Funny how they still say that," observed Wauchope to 
 Mrs. Bridport. " In the earliest days of the Republic the 
 
 229
 
 230 BEECHY 
 
 citizens of Rome used it to distinguish themselves from 
 the Romans of the Provinces. Isn't she beautiful ? " he 
 added. 
 
 A small 'delicately framed man, Lex Wauchope, with a 
 mild face lighted by most romantically beautiful grey eyes. 
 
 He went everywhere, knew everybody and everybody's 
 history, but while his goings and comings were open and 
 his tongue ready to answer any question, no one really 
 knew anything about himself. 
 
 He was unmarried and so far as anyone knew had never 
 had a love-affair; and this remarkable fact lent to him a 
 certain piquancy, for it was about love that he wrote his 
 most whimsical, charming, poetic stuff. He published little, 
 but his every printed article constituted a literary event, and 
 his sudden revelations, always strictly correct, regarding 
 the loves of great men and women of the past, were re- 
 garded by senior historians as worthy of reference in their 
 most solemn works. 
 
 For what Lex wrote about he knew. He wrote lightly, 
 sometimes jestingly, always with a curious gracefulness, but 
 his facts were concrete things, his very assumptions based on 
 firm reasons. 
 
 When he met Beechy he bowed very low, his neat little 
 feet close together in a dancing-school attitude. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," he said in perfect French, " I feel my- 
 self honoured." 
 
 Beechy's French was good as to quality, but nothing to 
 boast about in quantity. 
 
 " Merci, Monsieur," she said, smiling down into his eyes. 
 And they were friends. 
 
 Afterwards, Wauchope told the story of the evening to 
 his one confidante, his mother.
 
 A SMALL DINNER 231 
 
 " She wore," he said, " a green frock. A frock as green 
 as an Alpine meadow in late April. The greenest frock 
 I ever saw. And her dark hair was plaited and twisted 
 round her head over her ears such pretty ears, little and 
 pink. And she wore, of course, no gloves, which made 
 her, in her summer-coloured frock, look like a vigorous 
 nymph. All alert she was, with her blue eyes wide and 
 awake, and her red-velvet mouth, like the leaves of a fine 
 Jacqueminot rose, a trifle open as she looked round. I 
 stood near her. She thought me a dear little man. ' Aren't 
 they wonderful ? ' she asked me, in slow French. She 
 thought I was French. 'Who?' I asked. ' All of them 
 these beautiful Englishmen.' 
 
 " It was delightful. Dear old England, to have her men 
 called beautiful by a Latin maid in a grass-green frock. 
 
 " I asked her if she admired Cressage, who had just 
 come in, looking so damned clean, and she said quite 
 simply, ' Oh, but he is the most beautiful of all.' ' 
 
 This was the origin of Lex's delightful and witty baiting 
 of Charles Cressage. It began that evening and lasted 
 until no one dared mention Beechy to Cressage or Cressage 
 to Beechy. 
 
 It was quite plain to everyone that Lord Charles was 
 head over ears in love. He made not the slightest effort 
 to conceal the fact, either then or later. Which shows a 
 certain wisdom, for whereas real concealment would have 
 been impossible to him, he might easily have tried, thus 
 falling into ridicule. 
 
 But Cressage was never ridiculous. 
 
 After dinner Beechy sang, which she of course should 
 not have done, but she was so happy, and full of the joy 
 of living, that she had to express her feelings.
 
 232 BEECHY 
 
 Standing there by the piano, her hands clasped loosely 
 before her, she made a picture none of them ever forgot. 
 Wauchope accompanied her, a pair of huge round spectacles 
 perched on his nose. 
 
 She sang a French song about May and love, that she 
 had just learned, a little thing full of swing and melody. 
 Then she sang the willow song from " Othello," saddest of 
 ditties: 
 
 " Povera Barbara." 
 
 Her voice was beautifully tender, her eyes half shut as she 
 sang: 
 
 " Sake, Sake, Willow, willow, 
 Alas, poor Barbara." 
 
 The contrast between the two songs was dramatically 
 great, which she of course knew. 
 
 When she finished, Mrs. Bridport came and thanked 
 her, and the girl, who smoked cigarettes, opened her enam- 
 elled case with an air of relief. 
 
 " Look," whispered Wauchope to Beechy, " at the Most 
 Beautiful of All." 
 
 Without laughing she turned towards Cressage, who sat 
 staring over his clasped hands at the carpet. 
 
 The light falling on his smooth dark head was almost 
 dazzling, and that same glossy smoothness had a strange 
 charm for Beechy; the charm of the absolutely new. The 
 heads she had known were either shaggy or ill-kempt, or 
 smooth and heavy with oil, and these well-brushed English 
 heads were very unlike those of either type. 
 
 The breadth of his shoulders too, attracted her and when, 
 feeling her gaze, he looked up and met her eyes with his
 
 'A SMALL DINNER 233 
 
 sombre ones, Wauchope declares she started and put her 
 hand to her throat. 
 
 However it may be, it is certain that her effervescing 
 joyfulness was for that evening gone at that moment. 
 
 She went and sat down by Mrs. Bridport and talked 
 quietly to her for a long time. 
 
 Miss West, the cigarette-girl, smoked in silence, and Tom 
 Bridport and Cressage discussed the new bill. 
 
 It was a charming room, and Beechy was much inter- 
 ested in it. There were little tables covered with flowers, 
 and many scraps of old embroidery and brocade. 
 
 " This," Beechy declared, her hand on a square of gold 
 stuff, " came out of a church ! " She looked a little hor- 
 rified, and everyone laughed. 
 
 " Do you think it wrong of me to have it? " asked Mrs. 
 Bridport. 
 
 " No but I should wish to kneel if I were much in 
 a room with church embroideries. I should be found pray- 
 ing instead of making tea, for instance." She was quite 
 serious. 
 
 " Do you like church ? " asked Miss West, suddenly. 
 
 Beechy looked at her. " But of course." 
 
 After a moment she rose and walked about, looking at 
 the things she so admired. 
 
 Suddenly she held up her ha:..'- towards a picture in a 
 corner. 
 
 " It is Rome, & Roma ! " she burst out in Italian, " la 
 mia Roma cara! Ecco San Pietro Castel San Giorgio 
 oh bello, bello!" 
 
 She turned, flushed with delight, her big dimple deep. 
 
 Cressage came to her. " Ah yes, a charmin' sketch," he 
 said. " I have a lot of pictures of Rome, Signorina. Will
 
 234 BEECHY 
 
 you come to see them to-morrow? I must be off now. 
 Have to go to the House," he explained to Mrs. Bridport. 
 
 She followed him to the drawing-room door. 
 
 " Do be careful, Charles," she said, her hand in his arm. 
 
 " Careful ? " He looked vaguely at her. 
 
 " Yes. You you will make a fool of yourself if you 
 are not careful " 
 
 His face hardened and he looked down, his nose towards 
 her. "What do you mean, Minnie?" he asked. 
 
 But Minnie Bridport was not afraid of him. 
 
 " I mean well, anyone can see the state of mind you 
 are in do be careful " 
 
 Her ugly, kind little face was full of anxiety, and he 
 relented. 
 
 " Well they may see all they like, but no one but you 
 must dare mention it to me." 
 
 "But what do you mean to do?" she urged. "She 
 seems a a nice girl." 
 
 Cressage put his hand to his moustache. The hand 
 trembled. " Yes. She is a a nice girl. As to what I mean 
 I don't know any more than you do, what I mean " 
 
 He went without finishing his sentence, and she returned 
 slowly to her fireside, where Beechy was now keeping her 
 husband and Lex Wauchope in a roar of laughter by a 
 story about an adventure she had had when she first came 
 to England, and was trying to find the National Museum. 
 
 When Mrs. Bridport's guests had gone she and her hus- 
 band sat by the fire for some time. 
 
 " Tom," she said, " I am troubled." 
 
 "'Bout what, dear?" 
 
 "About Charles and that girl." 
 
 "Charles Cressage?"
 
 A SMALL DINNER 235 
 
 " Of course. Do I ever worry about any other Charles?" 
 
 The big man chuckled and rubbed his pipe lovingly. 
 
 " No, I can't say you do, my dear. Bad, old Charles 
 nearly off his head, ain't he?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, it ain't the first time, Min. He'll get over 
 it." 
 
 And Mrs. Bridport, who as a good kind woman should 
 have been troubled about Beechy, did not give the girl a 
 thought. All her anxiety was for that experienced old 
 sinner, Charles Cressage. 
 
 " I know, I know it isn't the first time," she agreed, 
 " but somehow he looked different to-night." 
 
 Bridport chuckled. 
 
 " He always does ' look different.' He has the most 
 damnably tragic face, that chap like St. Sebastian or one 
 of those fellows. Oh, blow Cressage, and get me a whisky 
 and soda, like a good girl." 
 
 Meantime Beechy, in a dressing-gown, was telling her 
 good Scarpia about the evening. 
 
 " Lord Charles Cressage he was there," she said, un- 
 pinning her hair. " He makes eyes at me." 
 
 " Per Bacco," grunted the old woman, " they all do 
 that." 
 
 Beechy laughed. 
 
 " It is the fashion here, and I like it. But this one he 
 is very beautiful, and he is a most excellent actor," she 
 added, seriously, " one would think him dying of love! " 
 
 She rose, and going to a table, looked over some notes 
 that had come during her absence. 
 
 " Ah," she cried, well pleased, " here is one from 
 Cricket!"
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 ROMAN SKETCHES 
 
 A MAN from Knoedler's, my Lord " 
 Lord Charles looked up. " Tell him to come in, 
 Burns." 
 
 "Very good, my Lord." 
 
 The room, -a large artistically furnished sitting-room in 
 St. James, was littered with open parcels, all of them rec- 
 tangular in shape, and all of them flat. Obviously pic- 
 tures. 
 
 Knoedler's man, as he put down his parcel, looked 
 around in surprise. 
 
 " Good many pictures already, my Lord," he ventured. 
 
 Cressage nodded. " Yes. What are yours ? " 
 
 " Coliseum by moon " 
 
 " Have two Coliseums already; don't want that. What 
 else?" 
 
 " A view of the Campagna near the Baths of Caracalla, 
 and a view of the city from the Pincio, my Lord." 
 
 " I have the city from the Pincio. Let's see the Cam- 
 pagna one." 
 
 He brought the picture at once. Then " I telephoned 
 your people I wanted someone to hang pictures for me at 
 once." 
 
 " Yes, my Lord. I can stay now, if you wish." 
 
 His lordship did wish. 
 
 "Take down all the other pictures except those two 
 
 236
 
 ROMAN SKETCHES 237 
 
 portraits and the Constable, and get all these Roman pic- 
 tures up as soon as you can, please." 
 
 " Very good, my Lord." 
 
 Cressage went out, and Mr. Archibald Guthrie Brown 
 of Knoedler's set to work. 
 
 " Well I'll be damned," he said, taking off his coat, 
 " whatever anyone wants with all these water-colours 
 and rotten bad that one of ours is, too! " 
 
 But the sketches stood out charmingly on the dark green 
 walls, and when, at five o'clock, Beechy and the Signora 
 appeared, Beechy's face, as she gazed round the room, was 
 reward enough for her host. 
 
 "Oh, Rome! Then you, too, love it?" 
 
 To say the word was a luxury to the smitten man. 
 
 "Love it? Love it? Indeed I do," he said fervently. 
 
 He was very pale in his dark blue clothes, the coat of 
 which he had starred with a white carnation. 
 
 The Signora looked at him shrewdly, noticing that his 
 eyes never left Beechy. There was little that her small 
 black eyes did not see. 
 
 " And you live here," the girl said to Cressage, " sur- 
 rounded by pictures of Rome!" 
 
 " I live yes, surrounded by pictures " he broke off 
 
 short. 
 
 He was afraid of frightening her, and this, too, the 
 Signora saw. 
 
 He gave them tea, he showed them books, prints, and 
 his collection of knives. 
 
 Two miniatures near his writing-table he unhooked and 
 gave to her. " My father and mother," he said. 
 
 She gave a little cry of pleasure. " Oh, the 'dear little 
 tings! " she exclaimed. " Never I see so beautiful babies! "
 
 238 BEECHY 
 
 He stood watching her, his arms folded, and the Signora 
 watched him. 
 
 " That child with the pony, there to your left, is my 
 brother, Bridgewater. I I wish you might see Bridge- 
 water Hall." 
 
 "Your house?" she asked. 
 
 " No, I only wish it were. I am only a third son. 
 But I was born there." 
 
 It was plain that he loved the place, and Beechy smiled 
 at him. " I should like to see it," she said. " I like 
 beautiful houses. I am going to Wychley at Vitsuntide. 
 You have been there ? " 
 
 " Yes. It is a dear little place," he answered. " Lady 
 Cossie Bleck is a sort of cousin of mine. It will be dull, 
 her party." 
 
 " Then I'll not stay," returned Beechy, simply. 
 
 He laughed, showing white teeth under his dark mous- 
 tache. 
 
 " I'll ask her to invite me down, if you think I could 
 help prevent you from being bored." 
 
 " Oh, yes, please. I when I am lonely I am so miser- 
 able, and I hate the country." 
 
 Women who hate the country were unadmirable to him, 
 but in Beechy the characteristic was as lovely as every- 
 thing else. 
 
 " How beautiful you are," he said, softly, handing her 
 yet another miniature, 
 
 "Am I really?" 
 
 "You know it." 
 
 She smiled. "Ah, this is you. You were a dear little 
 boy," she said. " Che bella famiglla! " 
 
 They were a handsome family, the Cressages, and Charles 
 was the handsomest of all.
 
 ROMAN SKETCHES 239 
 
 He smiled absently. 
 
 " Come and see my come in here," he said, suddenly, 
 drawing her towards a curtained door. 
 
 She went willingly enough, and found herself in a tiny 
 conservatory full of orchids. 
 
 "How beautiful!" 
 
 " Signorina Cavaleone," he said in excellent Italian, " will 
 you shake hands with me ? " 
 
 Beechy stared, crimson with delight, her blue eyes al- 
 most black. " You speak Italian," she cried, " why did . 
 you not tell me before?" 
 
 "Because I didn't dare. I I feared I might say 
 things you would not like let me take your hand for a 
 moment." 
 
 She held out both her hands. " Ma si, ma si," she mur- 
 mured, moved by his emotion. " How wonderful that you 
 should speak Italian." 
 
 Cressage held her hands close in his for a moment and 
 then pressed them hard against his lips. 
 
 She was far too Southern in nature to remain cool in 
 the presence of so much passion. 
 
 She paled and drew away from him. 
 
 " Please," she said in Italian, " Oh, I beg you " 
 
 " Beatrice I surely you see that " 
 
 Before he had finished speaking, Signora Scarpia came 
 into the conservatory. 
 
 Cressage was very angry with her, and showed it, but 
 the good woman was quite undaunted. 
 
 " I think we must go now, Bici," she said quietly, with 
 dignity, and Beechy followed her in undemurring obedi- 
 ence. 
 
 Cressage, who had all of the family temper, bit his lip 
 to keep from expressing his annoyance.
 
 240 BEECHY 
 
 " Good-bye," he said to Beechy, kissing her hand in 
 Italian fashion, " I shall see you soon." 
 
 To the Signora he said stiffly, " Addio, Signora." 
 
 When the two women had reached their carriage, the 
 Scarpia said gently, " Bici cara, you must be careful. He 
 is dangerous, that man." 
 
 Beechy laughed. " Perhaps. I like them dangerous, 
 you know." 
 
 During the days intervening between the visit to Cres- 
 sage's rooms and the Whitsun holidays, Beechy saw Cres- 
 sage often. 
 
 He came twice to her dressing-room; he appeared at 
 Lady Cossie's and at Mrs. Bridport's; he bought a roll of 
 purple tweed from her at Stafford House, and once he 
 motored her and Mrs. Bridport to Ranelagh for luncheon. 
 
 Beechy was happy with him, although something about 
 him made her feel shy. 
 
 He had a way of coming up to her suddenly in a crowd 
 and murmuring to her in Italian. " I adore you," he 
 would say, or " I love you, Beatrice." 
 
 She could never recall the first time he told her he 
 loved her. She seemed to have known it always. It came 
 to her without any sense of offence, but with a certain 
 mingling of fear, shyness, and joy. 
 
 It was May, and she was twenty-one.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 LORD CHARLES MAKES LOVB 
 
 WCHLEY, Lady Cossie Bleck's little country 
 louse, was near Box Hill. It was a one-story 
 iiouse, and its garden was delightful. 
 
 Lady Cossie, being poor, let the place for the whole year 
 to one of her nephews, on the condition that at Whitsun- 
 tide he must clear out for four weeks, when the old lady 
 came herself to enjoy the spring flowers. 
 
 This year Lady Cossie was not well, so her party was 
 very small, consisting of an orphaned Eton boy, a great- 
 nephew named Chris Bidfield^ his sister, a girl of eighteen, 
 and Beechy. 
 
 " I feel old, this year," Lady Cossie explained to Beechy, 
 " next year I'll be young again, but now I am old. So I 
 am not having a real party. But Lady Harrowstone has 
 her houseful as usual, and no doubt there will be some 
 gaiety for you." 
 
 Beechy, to her surprise, felt rather tired herself and 
 was glad enough for a few days quiet in the little place. 
 
 The spring was a late one, so the May trees were still 
 lovely and narcissi and jonquils filled the grass in the old- 
 fashioned way, while crimson ramblers on the north end 
 of the house were already bursting into bloom. 
 
 Beechy and Chris Bidfield became fast friends at once. 
 He was a nice, ugly little boy with large red ears and a 
 
 241
 
 242 BEECHY 
 
 confiding heart, and he loved Beechy very much. The two 
 walked together, her arm over his shoulders, for he had 
 the courage of his convictions, and scorned to tell her that 
 fellows of his age didn't usually do such babyish things. 
 When she sang, he listened open-mouthed. Helen, his sis- 
 ter, was busy with a secret engagement with the chauffeur of 
 one of her uncles now abroad, so she was as unobtrusive as 
 one could wish. Lady Cossie, looking indeed very feeble in 
 her incongruous frocks, used to sit in the little arbour in 
 the garden and watch the flowers grow. 
 
 Two days passed very quietly. Then, the evening of the 
 second day, as Beechy was dressing for dinner, she heard 
 from the hall a voice that made her drop a pin she was 
 putting into her hair. Cressagel 
 
 He was here, he would make love to her, and she told 
 herself with Southern simplicity she wanted to love and 
 to be loved. 
 
 Was she to love this magnificent Englishman? 
 
 For the first time in her life the girl felt timid as she 
 went into the dining-room, a little late for fear of finding 
 Cressage alone. He was standing by a tall pink-draped 
 lamp, bending down while Lady Cossie drew the stem of 
 a rose through his buttonhole. 
 
 " Here she is," the quick-eared old woman declared, and 
 holding on to his coat so that he could not, without actual 
 rudeness, move. In the lamplight his deep flush was plainly 
 visible to her. 
 
 " Caught," cried Lady Cossie " I mean you catch 
 Charles making love to me ! " 
 
 Beechy laughed. She was so glad to see him, so happy 
 to feel her hand in his that she laughed on an'd on. Lady 
 Cossie was delighted. " He has come," she explained, half
 
 LORD CHARLES MAKES LOVE 243 
 
 maliciously, " to stay till Monday. I did not invite him 
 and I don't want him, but here he is." 
 
 Cressage, too, laughed, and Chris Bidfield coming in at 
 that moment from the garden, where he had been making 
 a nosegay for Beechy, joined in merrily. 
 
 " I say," asked the boy, " what are we all laughing 
 for?" 
 
 Beechy put his flowers in the lace at her breast, and 
 then laid her arm on his shoulder. 
 
 " Because because it is spring, and the garden is full 
 of flowers, and the room is like a dream-room, and Lady 
 Cossie is good to us, and because Lord Charles has 
 come!" 
 
 Her Italian accent grew stronger as she hurried on to 
 her audacious conclusion, and after a pause she again held 
 out her hand to Cressage. 
 
 " I am so glad to see you," she added in her own tongue. 
 
 His eyes closed for a second. 
 
 She wore white and looked more like other girls he knew, 
 for the moment, but she looked so beautiful, so sweet, so 
 absolutely desirable and lovable that he could not answer 
 at once. 
 
 " Bravo," cried their old hostess, ironically, " a modest 
 creature like Charles Cressage needs a little encourage- 
 ment, my dear ! " 
 
 " Don't chaff, Cousin Cossie," he said, gently, his beauti- 
 ful eyes on hers. " Don't spoil things." 
 
 And the old woman was silent. 
 
 There was only the one lamp lit in the long, low, faded 
 room. The western windows, diamorid-paned, were still 
 glowing from the sunset, and from an open door the light 
 from the hall flowed in over the ancient polished floor,
 
 244 BEECHY 
 
 ending where the gilded claw-foot of a chintz-petticoated 
 sofa blazed back at it. 
 
 There were bowls of fresh flowers standing about, and 
 mingled with their scent was the faded fragrance of old 
 preserved rose leaves that stood on the tables in white jars 
 with perforated tops. 
 
 There were cabinets filled with old family treasures, 
 there were oval framed portraits of dead and gone Blecks, 
 and Eustaces (Lady Cossie's mother, and Charles Cres- 
 sage's grandmother had been Eustaces and cousins) hung 
 on the faded walls, and the curtains were tied back with 
 broad faded-blue ribbons. 
 
 Such a room as cannot be made, but must grow with 
 time and care and long habitation. 
 
 To Beechy, who loved bright colours and gilding, the 
 room was not beautiful, but its poetry she felt strongly, 
 and she felt as she sat in it that she was learning. Roger 
 Eustace, the man who lived in the house, had a good 
 cook, so Beechy sat down to 'dinner feeling thoroughly 
 happy. 
 
 Poor old Lady Cossie enjoyed it, too, although she re- 
 sented fate, whose cruelty forced her to let the house. 
 
 " All this is mine," she said mournfully to Cressage, 
 " these dear old spoons and forks and that duck of a George 
 II teapot on the sideboard. All mine! I wanted to take 
 them to town, of course, but that brute of a Roger offered 
 me so much for the use of them that I couldn't resist! " 
 
 Cressage nodded. " I know. My grandfather was the 
 only one with sense enough to marry money. He hated 
 my grandmother, too, didn't he? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. The Cressage men are all abominable hus- 
 bands and very bad lovers."
 
 245 
 
 Cressage bit his lip. He was angry. 
 
 Beechy, however, was chattering with Chris, and had 
 not heard. 
 
 When dinner was over Beechy said to Cressage : " Will 
 you come out and see the flowers, Lord Charles? " 
 
 He hesitated, looking at Lady Cossie. 
 
 " Oh, Lady Cossie does not mind," she added hastily, 
 " she has to rest a little after dinner before Chris and I 
 have our concert, don't you, Lady Cossie? " 
 
 The old woman nodded. " In plain English, Charles, I 
 like a ten minutes' sleep! Frankness, thy name is Cas- 
 sandra Bleck ! " 
 
 Beechy fetched her a small pillow from the sofa and 
 when she was comfortably settled in her chair Beechy led 
 the way into the garden. 
 
 Charles Cressage was forty years old. He had run the 
 gamut of most sentiments, he had made love to heaven 
 knows how many women, of how many different kinds. 
 
 He had made love in houses, in gardens, in boats of dif- 
 ferent kinds, in steamers, in motors, once, even, in Paris, 
 in a captive balloon, once, even, in church. But as he 
 stepped out that evening into the old-fashioned garden with 
 Beechy he felt as shy and doubtful as a boy. His assur- 
 ance was gone, his confidence in his own skill in the game, 
 for now it was no game, but bitter earnest. 
 
 "What is the matter?" Beechy asked him. 
 
 He looked down at her, into the blue eyes of her. 
 
 " You know," he said, stammering a little, " I I love 
 you." 
 
 His face was white and as he stopped speaking he caught 
 his lower lip with his teeth to stop its trembling. 
 
 They stood close to the window, rather far apart, in the
 
 246 BEECHY 
 
 yellow moonlight. He was terribly shaken, and looked, 
 though pale, younger than she had ever seen him. 
 
 The moonlight and also possibly the nature of his feel- 
 ings obliterated for the time the tell-tale lines in his face. 
 
 " Beatrice I my God, what can I say to make you 
 see what I mean ? " he cried, running his hand through his 
 smooth hair in a way that brought a lock of it over his 
 brow and gave him a distraught look. 
 
 " I this is Saturday, and since Wednesday, when I last 
 saw you, I I have been nearly mad. I literally haven't 
 known what I have been doing. This this can't go on." 
 
 Beechy laid her hand on his arm. " Come," she said, 
 " let us walk down to the sun-dial. Lady Cossie might 
 see your face." 
 
 He obeyed in silence, and when they had reached the 
 little circular grass plot where round the foot of the old 
 stone sun-dial, pink and white wall-flowers were planted, 
 she went on quietly. 
 
 " You are excited," she said in her pretty English, " Ver' 
 much. But why? I like you to love me; I like you far 
 better zan any one h'else." 
 
 There was a carved stone bench in the curve of the 
 hedge just there, and he led her to it, kneeling in front 
 of it when she had sat down. 
 
 " Oh, Beatrice, Beatrice," he cried, putting his arms 
 in her lap and his face in them, " help me to be good." 
 
 They were both silent for some time, while the only 
 sound that broke the quiet of the country night was the 
 baying of a very distant dog. 
 
 And from the wall flowers came a faint spicy odour, 
 delicious, and homely and pure. 
 
 Charles Cressage felt as if he were a child again. His
 
 LORD CHARLES MAKES LOVE 247 
 
 love for Beechy was as innocent as that of a child for its 
 mother. He moved slowly, for her hands were on his 
 head, and looked up at her. "What have you done to 
 me?" he murmured. 
 
 And, bending down to him, she pushed back the dishev- 
 elled lock and kissed his white forehead. Another minute 
 and he stood, his arms folded, staring moodily at the sun-dial, 
 while Chris, who had been with his sister to post a letter, 
 ran up to them calling loudly to Beechy.
 
 BEECHY MAKES LOVE AND MEETS A STRANGER 
 
 THE next morning Beechy rose very early and started 
 off with Chris for a walk. She would have liked 
 to go to mass, but there was no Catholic church 
 nearer than London, and the next best thing was a morning 
 in the woods. 
 
 Chris was what his sister called an understanding little 
 cuss, and Beechy knew that he would fall in with her 
 mood of silence. 
 
 Up the glistening road they walked, he holding to her 
 arm in brazen affection, his mother was an American, 
 which may have accounted for his lack of British shame- 
 facedness his face very near her shoulder. They mounted 
 a hill, and then striking off to the left followed a narrow 
 path, where some belated primroses still nestled, and at 
 length got into the woods. 
 
 The lovely lime-leaves glistened in the young sunlight, 
 a great oak, gaunt and sere, towered above the firs, and 
 somewhere out of sight a brook called back to the birds. 
 
 " Chris," asked Beechy with many r*s in the word, " don't 
 you love the spring?" 
 
 " Rather," returned the boy. " I do so like flowers, I 
 think roses are the nicest flower, don't you? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, and I like wall-flowers, too." 
 
 As she spoke, she blushed to remember why she liked 
 wall-flowers.
 
 'MAKES LOVE AND MEETS A STRANGER 249 
 
 "Yes, wall-flowers are jolly. Helen likes geraniums, 
 but I don't much, they smell so." 
 
 They wandered down the slope and came to the brook. 
 
 " I say," began the boy, suddenly, " I am glad you came, 
 Beechy. It was so dull last year; nothing but grown-ups." 
 
 Beechy glanced down at him, not without pride in her 
 age. 
 
 "I am grown up, Bat Ear," she said, using his nick- 
 name. 
 
 " Of course you are, in a way," he hastened to apolo- 
 gise, " only you are young too. And besides " 
 
 He broke off, " I don't quite know, but " 
 
 She laughed and patted his hair. " Good little Young 
 Etonian," she said. 
 
 " Lord Charles calls me that. H'm do you like him, 
 Beechy?" 
 
 " I do, Bat Ear." 
 
 "Helen says he's in love with you. Is he?" 
 
 Beechy laughed again. " You ask heem" she answered. 
 " Ah, here he comes, ask him now ! " 
 
 She was teasing, for she knew the little boy would not 
 dare. Cressage came rapidly down the slope, his hat in 
 his hand. 
 
 " I say, Young Etonian," he said, as he kissed Beechy's 
 hand, " I want to talk to Signorina Cavaleone you run 
 on ahead and I'll take you to Dorking in my motor this 
 afternoon." 
 
 Sorely tempted, Chris hesitated. " Do you wish me to? " 
 he asked Beechy. 
 
 She nodded, and the boy ran away, tossing up his cap. 
 " I'll wait for you at the road," he called back with a rush 
 of diplomacy.
 
 250 BEECHY 
 
 They both laughed. Then, when he was out of sight, 
 he turned to Beechy. 
 
 " My dear," he said gently. 
 
 His hat lay on the ground near the brook, and the sun- 
 light coming through the trees dappled his hair. He took 
 her hands very tenderly and kissed first one, then the other. 
 " Beatrice I love you." 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 " And and what you have done to me Heaven only 
 knows, but I feel like someone else." 
 
 He was speaking the simple truth and it meant much 
 more than she could even imagine. 
 
 They had left their usual selves in town; he had left 
 his weary old pleasure-seeking, cynical self; she her self- 
 centred, ill-educated, artistic self; and here in the clean 
 country, Sunday morning, they each found a new, better 
 nature. She smiled at him. 
 
 Sometimes in its eager vitality her face lacked tender- 
 ness. Now it was softened and lovely. 
 
 " I love you, too," she said at last, almost in a whisper. 
 The inimitable scene in " Richard Feveril " flashed 
 into his mind as she spoke. He forgot his age, his past, 
 his future. For him there was only the marvellous, inno- 
 cent present. He kissed her with something very near rev- 
 erence. 
 
 " Let us go now, dear," he said, " or Chris will be tired 
 of waiting." Leaning on his arm, she climbed the slope 
 and they joined the little boy who was whistling softly to 
 himself at the edge of the road. . . . 
 
 That one day was perfect, and as such remained a beau- 
 tiful memory always. 
 
 After breakfast they all went to church and Beechy was
 
 MAKES LOVE AND MEETS A STRANGER 251 
 
 surprised and delighted by the likeness of the service to some 
 services in her own church. 
 
 After luncheon she and Cressage and Chris went to 
 Dorking in his motor, as he had promised, and the 'drive 
 was an excursion into the realms of Paradise. Cressage 
 and Beechy did not talk much, for the motor was an open 
 one and Chris on the front seat had quick ears. But it 
 was bliss enough to be together, and together, to look at 
 the lovely spring-decked world as they sped along. On 
 the way home it grew cold and Cressage wrapped the girl 
 in a fur coat of his own. " I envy it," he whispered, and 
 she blushed vividly, putting into the words more than he 
 meant. 
 
 For he was keyed up to a kind of ecstacy of mind that 
 made him for the moment less earthly than she, young, 
 Southern and in love in the spring-time. 
 
 " The rector and Mrs. Maddison are in the drawing- 
 room, Miss," Roger Eustace's butler told her as they en- 
 tered the house. 
 
 "Oh! I wonder " She laughed. "Do you think 
 
 I would like them, Meakin ? " she asked. 
 
 "Well, Miss, no, I 'ardly think you would, Miss," he 
 answered, not so shocked by her bad manners as he should 
 have been. 
 
 " Come into the library, dear," put in Cressage, before 
 she could say anything more. 
 
 The library was nearly dark, but a low fire still glowed 
 on the hearth. Beechy stood by it, holding up one foot 
 to the warmth. 
 
 " How cold it is," she said. " Ah, what a day to-day 
 must be in Roma." 
 
 Cressage did not answer. He was watching her.
 
 252 BEECHY 
 
 " In England," she went on, absently, " it change so 
 quick. One hour warm, then puff! it is winter again. 
 I hope I have not taken cold." 
 
 Her mouth closed; she sang two or three nasal notes, 
 laughing afterwards with content. " No, my voice is all 
 right. On the tenth, you know, I sing ' Ai'da.' ' Ai'da ' for 
 the first time! Oh, it makes me so nervous. Suppose I 
 break down cielo, mi fa tanto paura! " 
 
 Cressage frowned. He was forgotten and he was jealous. 
 
 " Beatrice, tell me you love me," he commanded. 
 
 She looked up, delighted, stirred, by the authority in his 
 voice. " Love you ? Ma si," she went on in Italian, " I 
 love you, my Love, my Love ! " 
 
 Running to him she threw herself into his arms, her 
 face held up to his, not an English girl accepting only, 
 but an Italian giving as much as she accepted, warm- 
 blooded, demonstrative, strong. 
 
 Cressage lost his head. He loved her and under the 
 innocent passion of her embrace his strange recent mood of 
 exaltation was swept into oblivion. " Mine," he whis- 
 pered between kisses, " my girl, my woman, my mate." 
 
 And she was glad. 
 
 She loved, and she liked his warm human love far better 
 than his respectful homage. She was kissed and she kissed, 
 and clung to him with her strong young arms. 
 
 " Oh, I am glad," she said, at last, drawing away from 
 him, "glad." 
 
 "My girl!" 
 
 " Yes. It is good to love," she said in Italian. " It 
 makes one good and strong. It is good for everything. I 
 shall sing better now. Now I can sing Giulietta! Aube-
 
 MAKES LOVE AND MEETS A STRANGER 253 
 
 pine said to me the other day that I could not sing Giulietta 
 until I loved." 
 
 "Oh, did he?" asked Cressage, drily. He hated the 
 idea of her love for him warming her voice for that little 
 swine Aubepine. All the Cressages are jealous. 
 
 "Yes," Beechy answered, too wrapt in her own thoughts 
 to notice his ill humour. " Oh, caro, caro, caro." 
 
 Under the light in her eyes he melted. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " my beloved. Beechy, I mean 
 to be very good to you." 
 
 " Yes, yes, of course. And I to you." 
 
 "You must understand me, dearest. I am a beast, you 
 know. I I am horribly jealous." 
 
 "Of course. All men are jealous. But of me? No, 
 not when I love you as I do." 
 
 "Well, I don't know. I loathe Aubepine, damn him. 
 And that little bounder who sang ' Faust ' with you the 
 other night." 
 
 She burst out laughing. "Subiaco! Poor little Ca- 
 millo, no! " 
 
 " Yes. And for heaven's sake don't call him by his 
 Christian name." 
 
 " My dear all artists call each other " she began, 
 
 but at that minute the dressing-bell rang and he caught 
 her to kiss her good-bye till dinner. 
 
 There was a party that night, but Beechy could never 
 remember of whom it consisted. There was a young man 
 with red hair, she knew, who didn't know think of it! 
 who she was, " never went to opera," he said, unabashed. 
 
 After dinner, just after the men had come to the drawing- 
 room, Beechy again, by request, in her white frock of the
 
 254 BEECHY 
 
 evening before, was standing by a window talking to an 
 old lady the lids of whose eyes looked like raw beef, so 
 that it was hard to appear unconscious of them. 
 
 " Jenny Lind," the old lady was saying, " was lovely 
 and such a lady. An artist, I used to say, but at the same 
 time, such a lady." 
 
 As she arrived at this point, Beechy regarding her sol- 
 emnly, in a violent effort not to laugh, Meakin opened the 
 door softly. 
 
 " Lady Charles Cressage, my lady," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 LADY CHARLES 
 
 THERE was a moment's silence, and then as a very 
 tall, very thin figure with a near-sighted forward 
 poke of the head, appeared in the lamplight, Lady 
 Cossie rose and went forward. " My dear Kitty," she said, 
 suddenly, " what a delightful surprise." 
 
 Lady Charles gave a little, nervous high laugh. 
 
 " Thanks, Cousin Cassandra," she returned. " I have 
 come in a motor to ask you to let me stop the night. I 
 wish to see Charles on business. How do, Charles?" 
 
 "My wife," remarked Lord Charles to Beechy and the 
 old lady with the red eyelids, " is the only creature on 
 earth who calls Cossie Bleck ' Cassandra.' " 
 
 Then he shook hands with his wife and stood looking at 
 her as if her sudden appearance caused him a mild sort of 
 amusement. 
 
 Lady Charles was thin almost to emaciation, but red- 
 brown and healthy looking. Her neck was the neck of a 
 plucked fowl, her eyelashes white, her nose red and hooked. 
 She wore over her hat a very ugly grey motor veil, and 
 over her short coat and skirt a long, equally ugly light 
 brown motor coat. 
 
 Catherine Margaret Clifford Duplessis, only daughter of 
 the Earl of Dundee, wife of Lord Charles Cressage. 
 
 Beechy's first curious sensation was one of amusement, 
 but she felt as if she had been suffering for hours as the 
 instinct to laugh came to her. 
 
 255
 
 256 BEECHY 
 
 Lady Charles was not only ugly, she was almost ridicu- 
 lous as she stood blinking in the strong light. 
 
 " I shall have to be off by seven," she said, " for I have 
 the house full of people may Charles come and talk to 
 me, Cousin Cassandra? " 
 
 Lady Cossie nodded. " Of course, my dear Kitty. 
 Charles." 
 
 The old lady's pronunciation of Cressage's name bore 
 something very like command in it. He smiled. 
 
 " I obey, Cousin Cossie. There's a fire in the library, 
 Kitty." 
 
 An hour and a half later, the guests having gone in a 
 group, very early, Lord and Lady Charles came back into 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 " Thanks so much, Cousin Cassandra," Lady Charles 
 began, abruptly. " Oh, may I have some food ? I left 
 home just after tea." 
 
 She had taken off her coat and stood revealed in a 
 shabby dark blue coat and skirt. 
 
 Lady Cossie bustled out of the room. " My dear Kitty, 
 I must see that your room is comfortable." 
 
 " Beatrice," said Cressage quietly, " come and let me 
 introduce you to my wife." 
 
 Beechy came forward. " Kitty, the great Signorina 
 Cavaleone," he continued. " Sit down, Beatrice." 
 
 Lady Charles shot at him a look of a kind of wild dis- 
 like that sat oddly on her thin face. 
 
 " I have heard about you, my 'dear," she said kindly, 
 turning to the girl. " That is why I have come." 
 
 Beechy had of course expected jealousy, anger, dislike. Bit- 
 terness, sarcasm, even rudeness would not have surprised her. 
 
 But Lady Charles's words and voice took from her all
 
 LADY CHARLES 257 
 
 power of speech. She stood quiet, looking at, but not 
 seeing, the fire. 
 
 " Sit down," Lady Charles went on, and Beechy obeyed. 
 
 " Yes, I have come on purpose to see you," she con- 
 tinued, rubbing her red, bony hands together. " He is 
 furious with me. He'd like to wring my neck, wouldn't 
 you, Charles? But he can't. Against the law. He is 
 going away to-morrow to Paris. To stay for a long time. 
 Aren't you, Charles? " 
 
 "Yes, I am going away, Beatrice," he said, his nostrils 
 as white as chalk. 
 
 " Before he goes, however," went on Lady Charles to 
 Beechy, with a little grim smile. " I wish to ask you a ques- 
 tion, before him. Did you know that he was married?" 
 
 There was a short pause. Cressage did not move, he 
 did not raise his eyes, but Beechy understood his position 
 and without a moment's hesitation, lied for him. 
 
 " Of course I knew it," she said deliberately. 
 
 Lady Charles did not answer, and for several seconds 
 the only sound was that of the leaping of the flames in 
 the hearth. 
 
 " Then well, everyone knows that I left him because he 
 is so bad," went on the strange woman at last, " that 
 well, I have only this to say: It is a good thing for you 
 that I heard about you, and then, yesterday, about his 
 being here. You will hate me for sending him to Paris, 
 but you'll find the charm doesn't last when he's out of 
 sight. It is chiefly looks." 
 
 Beechy fixed her eyes on Cressage. 
 
 " Do you allow yourself to be sent away like this? " she 
 asked gently. "Are you a child, or an imbecile?" 
 
 " Yes," he returned in the same voice. " I am an
 
 258 BEECHY 
 
 imbecile. Well this is bad," he said, his voice changing, 
 " I have had enough of it. Good-bye, Kitty. Good-bye, 
 Beatrice. Don't forget me." 
 
 He went quickly from the room, and Lady Charles 
 'drew a long breath. " I do so dislike him," she said ab- 
 sently. 
 
 Beechy gave a short laugh. " So it seems," she said. 
 
 " My dear if you knew him as well as I do." 
 
 Beechy looked at her with much dignity. " I sink I 
 know him more better zan you," she said. 
 
 Lady Charles rose, overturning a small chair as she did 
 so, but appearing not to notice the accident. " My dear 
 child," she cried kindly, "don't think that. Don't mis- 
 trust me. I am trying to help you, indeed I am! I know 
 that he is in love with you and he is always charming 
 when he is in love. I don't 'deny that for a moment. But 
 you are a good liar, but I knew you were lying a man 
 who will let a young girl fall in love with him under the im- 
 pression that he is unmarried. My dear, quelle canaille! " 
 
 She spoke with an earnestness that convinced Beechy 
 once and for all of her good faith, her good intentions. 
 
 But Beechy loved Charles Cressage. " He did not know 
 I did not know he was married," she said, speaking slowly 
 and carefully. " We never talk about it. People might 
 have tell me everything. He knew that. It was pure 
 luck. That is the truth." 
 
 Lady Charles stood close by her, looking 'down. " That 
 may be, my dear. Let's hope it is. But you see I knew 
 he was married and I heard of you from several people; 
 that you are young and good. So I came. Try not to 
 hate me." 
 
 Beechy looked up. " You make him unhappy," she an-
 
 LADY CHARLES 259 
 
 swered, primitively, " so of course I hate you. But," she 
 added slowly, " you are good." 
 
 She was obviously trying to be just, and Catherine Cres- 
 sage saw it. 
 
 " I try to be good," Catherine Cressage answered. For 
 a moment the two simple souls were very near each other. 
 Then through the window came a whiff of cigar smoke 
 and Beechy rose abruptly. 
 
 " Thank you," she said, " and good-bye." 
 
 She went to her room and locking her door sat down by 
 a window. Cressage, "she knew, was waiting for her in the 
 garden, but she did not go to him. She believed (and it 
 was indeed true) that he had never dreamed of her be- 
 lieving him to be an unmarried man; she saw how it had 
 happened, and she appreciated his behaviour the evening 
 before and that morning. He had believed that she knew, 
 and yet he had treated her with the utmost respect. 
 
 For this she loved him more than before, but her love 
 was young and her pain was great, and he had stood before 
 his wife in a mental attitude that hurt her pride in, as well 
 as for, him. 
 
 There was not, she knew, much for a man in his posi- 
 tion to do but the little he might have done he had over- 
 looked, and not taken the trouble to do. 
 
 There he was in the garden, sauntering about among the 
 flowers, his cigar a little beacon signalling to her to come 
 and join him. 
 
 But she did not go. 
 
 At last he came in, and in a few minutes came a short 
 knock at the door. She sat still, her heart beating hard. 
 The knock was not repeated and when at last she rose to 
 go to bed she saw under her door an envelope.
 
 2 6o BEECHY 
 
 " My beloved," it said, " do not be cruel to me. I must 
 go. She is right, you see. You must not love me. My 
 loving you will do no harm. You have made me not good, 
 but less bad than I ever dreamed of being. So I will not 
 try to see you." 
 
 Beechy sobbed herself to sleep. 
 
 So he was good after all. As good as one of the holy 
 Saints. And she loved him, she loved him. All her life 
 she would live on the memory of their short happiness. 
 
 When she awoke, he had gone to London and Lady 
 Charles, Lady Cossie told her, back to Beckenbrake.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 SlGNORA SCARPIA AND IL SlGNOR LORD 
 
 ON the last night in June Alexis Wauchope, after 
 the second act of " Aida," went behind to see Cava- 
 leone. " I found her," he told his mother, " walk- 
 ing up and down her room, poor Scarpia out of the way. 
 When I told her through the door who I was, she let me 
 in, saying, ' Oh, it's only you ! ' J 
 
 " She had sung magnificently, but she looked very ill in- 
 deed, her eyes hollow, her chin sharp. I had not seen her 
 for a fortnight. 
 
 " ' You are ill.' I said." (Wauchope never asked ques- 
 tions.) 
 
 " ' Yes,' she said with her beautiful directness. 
 
 " ' Overwork.' 
 
 " ' No, Lex.' 
 
 " She stood there looking at me from under her pearl 
 cap a braid as big as a cable on either shoulder. 
 
 " So then I said ' Love.' 
 
 "'Yes, Lex.' 
 
 " It had come sooner than I had expected it, but I had 
 of course been looking for it. Women with physiques like 
 hers I knew. She held out her hands and I kissed them. 
 Nice hands, cool and strong, with pink finger tips. Poor 
 Beechy. She looked straight into my eyes for a long time. 
 She looked proud of it, which was fine, for I of course 
 knew that man was Charles Cressage. 
 
 261
 
 262 'BEECHY 
 
 " ' Lex he has been gone so long,' she said, as if she 
 had lost her doll. 
 
 f ' Paris,' I answere'd. 
 
 " ' Do you know when he is coming back ? ' 
 
 "'No, Beechy.' 
 
 " She drew away her hands. ' I don't think I can bear 
 it much longer,' she said. ' This music drives me mad.' 
 It was the most direct confession of the effect of music on 
 the senses that I have ever heard. 
 
 "Then she turned and looked at herself in her long 
 glass. ' I am hideous, to-night, too. But I am singing 
 very well, ain't I ? ' she added. 
 
 " The ' ain't I ' she had caught from Cressage. 
 
 "Then I left her, and the first man I saw on my way 
 to my stall was Cressage." 
 
 (Old Mrs. Wauchope heard all the details, but no one 
 else ever learned one thing from Little Lex.) 
 
 "'Hullo,' I said. 'You back?' 
 
 "'Yes. Have you been behind?' 
 
 "'Just come back.' 
 
 " ' How is the great lady ? ' 
 
 " ' What you swells call jolly seedy.' 
 
 "'No!' 
 
 " ' Yes.' Then I looked away. Wife or no wife it 
 wouldn't do for her to get ill. 
 
 " He never moved during the third act. WTien she was 
 called before the curtain he didn't even clap. Poor devil. 
 Then he went behind of course. And I went to the 
 Savoy an'd drank a small bottle of Pol Roger by my wee 
 self and meditated on love and other trifles." 
 
 When Cressage found himself at Beechy's door, he 
 paused. If he went away even then? She was young
 
 SIGNOR4 SCARPIA AND IL SIGNOR LORD 263 
 
 tout-passe. Then he heard her voice speaking to her maid, 
 and he knocked. 
 
 She was sitting at her 'dressing-table, her hair unplaited, 
 preparatory to being bundled up on her head for her home 
 going. 
 
 "Who is it?" 
 
 Then she turned. 
 
 " You may go, Mrs. Williamson," she said quietly. Then 
 when the door closed she went to Cressage. 
 
 " I can't bear it," she said, putting her arms round him, 
 "you must stay with me." 
 
 Then she burst into tears and cried till she could cry 
 no more. 
 
 Cressage was used to Beauty in Tears, and held her 
 close and comfortably until the outburst was over. 
 
 Then they sat down and talked. 
 
 "What did you do in Paris?" 
 
 " Cursed. And longed for you." 
 
 "When 'did you get back?" 
 
 " At seven-thirty." 
 
 "And " 
 
 " And I love you. You missed me ? " 
 
 For all answer she held up her arm and he saw that 
 she had grown thin. 
 
 " I couldn't sleep," she aid. 
 
 " Nor I. Beatrice my beloved it has been horrible. 
 Never again my wife will get after us she is bent on 
 saving you." 
 
 Beechy laughed. "Did you promise not to see me?" 
 
 " Certainly not. I keep my promises, dear. But she 
 inferred things. She liked you. Poor Kitty," he added 
 with genuine kindness. "You liked her, didn't you?"
 
 264 BEECHY 
 
 " No," said Beechy firmly, " I wouldn't. I wanted 
 to, but she was 'orrid to you." 
 
 " Cockney," he teased. " But don't think her 'orrid 
 to me. She's been very good to me in her way," he went 
 on meditating. " I was impossible as a husband." 
 
 "Surely you weren't unkind to her?" 
 
 " Oh, no ; never unkind. But so damned unfaithful." 
 
 She burst out laughing, the laughter ended in a sob, and 
 back she flew to his arms. 
 
 " Hold me tight or you will melt away like a dream," 
 she begged, piteously, like a child. 
 
 Presently she sent him out to wait for her, and called 
 in her dresser. An hour later they were at her hotel. 
 
 " My poor Scarpia is ill," she explained, as they went 
 into her sitting-room. " She has such a bad cold. Besides, 
 you were safe in Paris! I must tell her you are here," she 
 added. 
 
 The room was full of flowers, and several letters and 
 notes awaited the prima donna. 
 
 Cressage, left alone, walked up and down pulling at his 
 moustache. 
 
 Here he was again I And in a moment she would be 
 coming back to him. And she loved him. She knew her 
 own mind. They had tried separation and it had done no 
 good to either of them. Vogue la galere. 
 
 When Beechy came in, a long mauve tea-gown sweeping 
 round her, he drew her down to a sofa beside him and the 
 galere voguait, voguait, voguiat, until he had nearly lost 
 count of things when the door opened and old Scarpia, in 
 red satin, came in. 
 
 "JBuona sera," she said, ungraciously. 
 
 Beechy rose. " Oh, Signora Evelina ! "
 
 SIGNORA SCARPIA AND IL SIGNOR LORD 265 
 
 There was in her voice a mixture of anger and depreca- 
 tion that perfectly expressed her relations with the older 
 woman. 
 
 " Send her away," muttered Cressage, pulling his mous- 
 tache nervously. 
 
 " Please go back to bed, dear friend," Beechy began, but 
 Signora Scarpia waved her words away with some effect. 
 
 " No, my dear. I love you, and I will not leave you 
 alone with il Signer Lord." 
 
 The Signer Lord frowned but smiled ruefully at the 
 same time. 
 
 " Dear lady," he said, " you wrong me. Incidentally 
 are you quite fair to Beatrice who " 
 
 " Who is a young woman very much in love," retorted 
 the unwieldy old singing teacher firmly. " I wrong no 
 one, Signer Lord Carlo " 
 
 Beechy, touched, put her arms round her faithful friend 
 and kissed her. 
 
 " Listen, dear Signora Evelina," she said. " You are 
 right in one way. I love Lord Charles, and he loves me. 
 But he's married, alas, so you see " 
 
 Scarpia sniffed, but she held Beechy's hands in hers. 
 
 " That marriage is a safeguard against love and all 
 other ills," she returned drily, " we all know. But " 
 
 "Hush, dear!" 
 
 Beechy drew away her hands and laid one over the old 
 woman's mouth. " Don't be cross. Lord Charles is not 
 bad. He is good. He went away and tried to stay. But 
 he could not. And me, I was dying you know I was 
 dying," she added simply, " so he has come back. But 
 we are going to be very good. We are going to be friends, 
 not lovers," she used the unmistakable Italian noun fear-
 
 266 BEECHY 
 
 lessly, looking straight at Cressage, as she spoke. " Are 
 we not? " 
 
 He was cruelly embarrassed. It was ghastly to have thus 
 to justify oneself to this vulgar old matron in a red satin 
 tea-gown. He hated her. But Beechy's question must be 
 answered. 
 
 " Dear Beatrice," he said, " your wish is my law. What- 
 ever you say shall be done." 
 
 She drew a long breath, triumphant. " You see, Sig- 
 nora Evelina? Well yes. We are to be friends. And," 
 to the Scarpia, " I give to you my word of honour." 
 
 The old woman kissed her and left the room without 
 a word, her eyes full of tears. 
 
 "Why did you do that?" asked Cressage in Italian, as 
 the door closed. " What in the name of God has she to 
 do with us two? What has anyone to do with us 
 two?" 
 
 Becchy sat down by him. 
 
 " She has been very good to me," she returned, " and 
 I love her. If she didn't love me she wouldn't care. 
 And I couldn't have her worried. Ah, my dearest, don't 
 scold me! I am so happy to-night " 
 
 Cressage was silent for a moment. " But how can 
 we be friends? I tell you plainly I can't do it. I love 
 you, you understand ! " 
 
 Springing up she faced him. " Ma si, ma si ! You can. 
 Of course you love rne. But we will be friends. You 
 see, I I know your wife." 
 
 He was honestly puzzled. " What has she to do with 
 it? You seem to think our affairs concern everyone on 
 earth but me! You don't think Kitty cares what I do? 
 She was concerned only for you, to do her justice!"
 
 SIGNORA SCARPIA AND IL SIGNOR LORD 267 
 
 " I know. But she was right. You said so yourself. 
 Look " 
 
 Opening the bosom of her gown she drew out a little 
 white satin bag from which, folded very small, she took 
 the letter he had slipped under her door at Lady Cossie's. 
 " ' You see she is right,' she quoted. ' You must not love 
 me.' " 
 
 He was greatly touched. " You have worn that there 
 all this time? " 
 
 " Night and day," she said. " It was all I had." 
 
 He rose and took her into his arms again. 
 
 " God knows where I got the courage to write that," 
 he said, " but I did write it, so we will try to stick to it. 
 You are right. Kitty is right. Poor old What's-her-name- 
 Scarpia is right. All right, all you good people. Only I, 
 the Bad Man, am wrong." 
 
 He made a funny wry face as he bent and kissed her 
 hair. " I am always wrong," he added a little sadly, 
 " but I love the best woman in the world." 
 
 " Don't laugh at me. But Carlo mio " she had never 
 
 before called him by his name, and the event carried with 
 it its usual thrill, " it is so easy to be good when one is 
 happy. And now you have come back and I can see you 
 sometimes I shall be so happy. Ah, how I shall sing! " 
 she added. 
 
 When he had left her she knelt in front of a little blue 
 and white statuette of the Madonna by her bed; and 
 prayed. And for the first time in her life she forgot to 
 pray for her voice and herself.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 BEECHY MAKES A NEW FRIEND 
 
 EJDY CHARLES CRESSAGE was sitting in the 
 library of her house in Portland Place. It was 
 a rainy afternoon and two big bronze electric 
 lights were aglow under their green shades, and a fire 
 burned low on the hearth. The way different people take 
 solitude is very useful as a key to their characters, and 
 Lady Charles was of those who not only bear solitude well, 
 but really love It. 
 
 She sat there in her father's solemn old library, which she 
 had not altered in any way since his death made it hers, 
 working with knotted brow and eager eyes, over a pile 
 of letters and leather-bound account books that looked de- 
 pressingly dull reading. Beside her sat a small white dog, 
 a dog with the jaw of a bull-dog, the ears of a fox-ter- 
 rier, and, together with his blotted 'scutcheon, all the qual- 
 ities a dog could have. 
 
 His name was Snob, because his one evil trick was a 
 trick of snapping at servants and poorly dressed strangers. 
 This is supposed to be the outcome of a shamefaced mem- 
 ory of his own humble childhood, and the brute from whom 
 many years ago Lady Charles had bought him. 
 
 We all have our faults. 
 
 Snob was asleep that rainy afternoon, his head on the 
 skirt of his mistress's gown. And in the silence, broken 
 
 268
 
 BEECHY MAKES A NEW FRIEND 269 
 
 only by the turning of the pages and the crackle of the 
 fire, he dreamed. 
 
 Presently Lady Charles laid down the fountain pen with 
 which she was adding up long columns of figures and 
 looked at the clock. 
 
 " Bless me ! " she said and rang the bell. 
 
 Then she worked till the smartly dressed head parlour- 
 maid brought in tea. Lady Charles disliked men servants. 
 
 Ellen drew the curtains closer and went out of the 
 room hardly breaking the silence, and when the tea was 
 quite cold Lady Charles remembered it and drank it. 
 
 " Snob, wake up. Tea-time! " 
 
 Snob growled sleepily, but sat up and tried to look alert. 
 
 " Those babies are not to be bankrupt this year," went 
 on Lady Charles, cheerfully. " Your friend Mr. Topp 
 is a wonderful man." 
 
 Lady Charles treated her dog with more respect than 
 she ever displayed for a mere man, and the dog of course 
 responded to treatment. Dogs always do. The droop of 
 his right ear meant, she knew, a lively pleasure in the 
 financial welfare of the babies in question. 
 
 " But we need another room, Snob. Badly, we need it. 
 And then there's that bit of woodland behind the house 
 pines, Snob, and pines and sunlight make ozone, and ozone " 
 she gave him a large bit of toast together with the in- 
 formation, " is good for babies; particularly babies who 
 have no fathers. I wonder " 
 
 While she was wondering, Ellen appeared again, to say 
 that a lady wished to see her Ladyship. 
 
 " A foreign lady, my Lady. She has forgotten to bring 
 her cards, but says she met your Ladyship at Lady Cassan- 
 dra Bleck's."
 
 270 BEECHY 
 
 " Oh I A very pretty young lady, Ellen, with blue eyes? " 
 
 "Yes, my Lady." 
 
 "Ask her to come in here, please. And, Ellen " 
 
 Lady Charles looked rather shamefaced " will you bring 
 some fresh tea. This is cold." 
 
 Ellen gaped reproachfully at her mistress, caught red- 
 handed in the drinking of the cold tea. 
 
 " Very good, my Lady," she answered. 
 
 When Beechy came in Lady Charles met her most kindly. 
 " This is nice of you," she said, " I am so delighted to see 
 you!" 
 
 Beechy, glowing with happiness, was indeed a pleasant 
 sight. 
 
 " I I am so glad you do not mind," she answered. " I 
 'ave something to tell you." 
 
 Lady Charles's face changed. " Something about Lord 
 Charles?" 
 
 " Yes. He has come back." 
 
 The elder woman rose and stalked about the room in a 
 restless way peculiar to her. " You have seen him, then ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Of course I knew he would come back. He refused 
 to promise not to see you, so I knew he would try. But 
 I had hoped," she ended roughly, " that you had some 
 sense." 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing. 
 
 " Me, oh, no, I 'ave no sense. But do not be angry I 
 may tell you all about it ? " 
 
 " Yes yes, my dear. Sit down by the fire and tell me." 
 
 Beechy sat down, and, the red lamplight and the red 
 firelight glowing over her, told the story. 
 
 She told the truth, but she told the truth as it seemed
 
 BEECHY MAKES A NEW FRIEND 271 
 
 to her; a truth so beautiful, so romantic, so utterly wild 
 and impossible that Lady Charles groaned internally. 
 
 " You see love is such a terrible t'ing. It is so strong. 
 It is impossible to love and not see the person, and live. 
 It takes sleep and hunger. All. And I am a Roman. 
 So when you sent 'im away, I began to die. He wrote 
 me such beautiful letter. So good. 'E say 'she is right; 
 you must not love me, you have made me not good 
 but less bad than I 'ave ever been, so I will not see 
 
 you ' " 
 
 Lady Charles stared, her light grey pink-rimmed eyes 
 round with wonder. 
 
 " Charles wrote that to you? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Charles's wife was silent for a moment, readjusting her 
 ideas. If he had written it, he meant it, she knew, for she 
 was perfectly just to him, and knew that he was no hypo- 
 crite. 
 
 Beechy watched her closely for a moment. 
 
 " Yes he wrote me that. Then he went. And/' she 
 repeated solemnly, " me, I began to die." 
 
 " Oh bosh," snapped Lady Charles. " And now that he 
 has come back you can see for yourself how much the 
 letter meant you begin to live ! " 
 
 Beechy rose suddenly, " Ah, yes. I begin to live. We 
 are so 'appy," she went on, her cheeks crimson, " so 'appy. 
 And we are both going to be so good ! " 
 
 Most women would have considered her exultation, as 
 under the circumstances, insulting. Kitty Cressage under- 
 stood. 
 
 " You are going to be good, you and Charles," she 
 said gently, grasping the situation with the quickness that
 
 272 BEECHY 
 
 made her, in spite of her appalling ugliness, so sympathetic. 
 " You and Charles Cressage are going to be good ! " 
 
 Beechy looked at her. 
 
 " Why do you speak like that ? " she asked. 
 
 Ellen, entering with fresh-made tea, postponed the answer 
 to the question, but when the door had closed the girl re- 
 peated it, and got her answer. 
 
 " My dear don't you know that he never is good where 
 a woman is concerned." 
 
 But Beechy shook her head smilingly. " He is an angel." 
 
 " Oh, dear me, dear me! Do you take sugar?" 
 
 " No tea, please, if you don't mind " 
 
 So Lady Charles drank it herself and made a mental 
 note, as she did every time she drank hot tea, that she liked 
 it hot and would not forget to drink it promptly in the 
 future, when she was alone. 
 
 "You you are very obstinate," she began again pres- 
 ently, while Beechy still smiled at her angelic vision. 
 
 " You puzzle me. But why have you come to tell me 
 about it? After all, he is my husband. We are not di- 
 vorced, you know." 
 
 " I know. And I came to tell you because I wanted 
 you to know how good he is." 
 
 There was a long pause, and then Lady Charles said, 
 while Snob settled himself on her lap. " I see. Well, will 
 you tell me? " 
 
 Beechy leaned forward and held her beautiful hands to 
 the fire. 
 
 " You see, I was unhappy, ma infelicissima. If it had 
 not been for ' Ai'da ' I should be dead. But ' A'ida ' ah, he 
 speaks Italian. You too ? " 
 
 Lady Charles did. She and Lord Charles had lived to-
 
 BEECHY MAKES A NEW FRIEND 273 
 
 gether two years in Rome when they were first married, 
 he at that time being First Secretary. 
 
 So Beechy went on in her own tongue. 
 
 " ' A'ida ' was my ideal to sing. I know it all, all, and it 
 is divine music. And I sang it, you know, the loth, so I 
 was busy, busy always, till then. They said I was too 
 young, my voice not ready, but bah! She who can sing 
 ' Carmen ' and ' Giulietta ' can sing ' A'ida.' And there were 
 the costumes. They are very good, my costumes, they are 
 historically correct. And I am an Egyptian in ' A'ida,' not 
 an Italian. I am slim and narrow and quiet. So I 
 worked, and I lived. And the success oh, it was a tri- 
 umph. No ' A'ida ' is so good as I, they all said it, all. And 
 for a day and a night I was happy. Then the flowers 
 came, and presents which Aurelio would not let me keep, 
 and the papers wrote about me, and they engaged me for 
 oh so much money for next spring, and I am to go to 
 America, and people buy my photographs and the Princess 
 of Wales had me come to her loge and said kind things to 
 me, and I did not care. 
 
 " The sun shone and beautiful day come every morning, 
 and I was invited to dine at the Duchess of Liverpool's, 
 and I did not care. I was dying because he was not there. 
 I lost three pounds. And I did not care to eat even the 
 beautiful things in little dishes before the meals." 
 
 A little downward sweep of her rosy fingers expressed in 
 a wonderful way her utter misery and hopelessness. 
 
 " Then the night before last he came. And I told 
 him he must never go away again. And he will not! " 
 
 She looked up with a radiant smile and Lady Charles 
 drew a deep breath. 
 
 "And the goodness?" she asked.
 
 274 'BEECHY 
 
 " Ah, yes. Well, you see, Signora Scarpia, who lives 
 with me, came in and scolded him. She thought that I 
 would be his mistress " 
 
 "Oh dear!" 
 
 " And then he told her no. I am well-educated, me," 
 she explained, using the word in the Italian sense, meaning 
 something like well-bred, " and I am a Christian. Oh, yes, 
 I am a Christian and I go to mass and to confession." 
 
 " You would have married him then ? " 
 
 " Of course. I love him. But there is you! " 
 
 She was far too happy to be at all bitter, and she smiled 
 affectionately as she spoke. 
 
 Poor Lady Charles sighed. 
 
 " Yes, there is me. And so ? " 
 
 " And so we are going to be very good friends and meet 
 very often, but that will be all, we shall " 
 
 Lady Charles held out her hand, to ward off more of 
 the girl's unqualified frankness. 
 
 " I see. You are to be friends." 
 
 She rubbed her long nose until it seemed as if it must 
 drop off. " Friends. Charles Cressage," she added to her- 
 self and Snob, " is to be the friend of a woman with whom 
 he is in love. Oh dear, oh dear! " 
 
 " I thought," said Beechy, her face falling, " that you 
 would be glad." 
 
 " I am glad, my dear for some things. And I like you 
 and thank you for coming to tell me." 
 
 Rousing the drowsy dog, she rose and walked about for 
 a few moments. Then she came back to the fire. 
 
 " You need a friend," she said, holding out her hand, 
 " may I be one? "
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 THE FATE OF BEECHY'S GARDENIA 
 
 IT was at this time that Sargent painted his great por- 
 trait of Cavaleone. Beechy was at her most beautiful, 
 because at her most happy, period. She glowed, she 
 laughed ; happiness and innocent vanity radiated from her. 
 
 She bought presents for everyone she knew, and Aurelio, 
 going to Italy for a few days to see one of his sisters mar- 
 ried, was obliged to take with him an extra box to carry 
 the remembrances sent to Roman friends by the girl. 
 
 She and the watchful Scarpia shopped by the hour. They 
 bought: 
 
 A pair of gold spectacle-rims for old Lamberti, the 
 maker of cane chair-seats; a silver photograph for Beechy 's 
 photograph for him; a huge box of Fuller's chocolates 
 ( " to remind him of the chocolate he used to give me when 
 I was little"). 
 
 Suits of clothes and frocks for Signora Marianna's chil- 
 dren (the measures secretly obtained through old Agnese) ; 
 sailor suits for the boys, and the gayest-coloured frocks for 
 the girls. A string of gold beads for Chiarina, " whom 
 I loved the best." A dress-length of scarlet silk for Signora 
 Marianna herself. 
 
 For old Agnese a warm green shawl to save for the 
 winter, a black silk dress-length and a beautiful statuette 
 of St. Joseph. 
 
 For Simeone a silver watch and chain for was it not 
 
 275
 
 276 BEECHY 
 
 owing to that early songster that Beechy owed her whole 
 career? There was a beautiful silver Madonna and Child 
 for Father Antonio, and an inlaid snuff-box in which was 
 folded a five hundred lira note for his poor people. 
 
 And for the nuns, who could accept no presents, went 
 two large boxes of sweets, which they loved, and another 
 banknote. 
 
 " I ought to have another box, if I am to take sweets for 
 the orphans, too," poor Aurelio cried ruefully, as they had 
 tea at Fuller's. 
 
 Beechy laughed. " How good you are to me," she said 
 affectionately. "The poor orphans must have some sweets, 
 caro!" 
 
 And she knew perfectly well that if she asked Aurelio 
 to take one of the zoo tigers with him as an offering to 
 someone, he would at once set about getting a cage made. 
 
 Signora Scarpia, looking really rather imposing in a 
 handsome grey gown and a toque trimmed with violets, 
 drank her chocolate with pleasure. Things were now go- 
 ing to the good woman's perfect satisfaction. Beechy was 
 well, happy, and the Scarpia's keen eyes had discovered that 
 the girl was absolutely sincere in her intentions regarding 
 Cressage. 
 
 The Scarpia loved Beechy as if she had been her own 
 child, but being an Italian woman of the lower middle- 
 class, she would not have been at all surprised had she 
 found that the girl had deceived her. Love is worth lies, 
 she would have said with a shrug in any other case, but 
 Beechy was dear to her. 
 
 The old woman, a willing and excellent liar herself, had 
 fully expected to come upon signs of secret meetings, 
 upon letters, upon a thousand tokens of a hidden under-
 
 THE FATE OF BEECHY'S G4RDENIZ 277 
 
 standing, and unscrupulously she had searched for these 
 traces. But it was in vain that she rose early for the early 
 letters and manoeuvred the first glimpse of the other posts. 
 All flowers she opened and foraged for notes hidden amongst 
 them. Cressage did not write. 
 
 When Beechy went out alone, on two solitary occasions, 
 the bulky Signora, who hated walking, slipped along behind 
 her, hiding in doorways, when she turned to look into a 
 shop window, panting but rapid, until the girl had done her 
 errand and reached the hotel again. 
 
 And once Beechy had gone to Asprey's, and the other 
 time to Solomon's, to order some flowers for Lady Cossie, 
 who was not well. 
 
 So Cressage, too, was playing his part in good faith 
 and the Signora, amazed, but happy, gave up watching. 
 
 Never had Beechy been so gentle, so unselfish, as she was 
 then, never so thoughtful of others, and her blue eyes were 
 the happiest eyes in London, Lex Wauchope said. 
 
 That afternoon at Fuller's, Beechy wore a beautiful 
 new gown, of which she was very vain, and in which she 
 looked her best; a long skirt and coat of heavily braided 
 white cloth. It fitted close and, with her flat black hat on 
 the edge of the brim of which were clustered the gardenias, 
 gave her something the air of a fantastic huntress. In it, 
 she should have ridden a white palfrey in a pageant. In 
 her coat she wore a real gardenia. 
 
 " I thought you didn't like gardenias," observed Aurelio, 
 suddenly. 
 
 She laughed, an odd little laugh, with a kind of bubble 
 in it. " I didn't. But Carlo wears one always so you 
 see " 
 
 Aurelio nodded. " Si, cara, I understand."
 
 278 'BEECHY 
 
 Beechy made no secret whatever of her love for Cres- 
 sage, and Aurelio had seen it from the first. She had talked 
 of Cressage a great deal, and while he was in Paris her 
 misery, tragic in her, unconsciously expressed in a thousand 
 half theatrical gestures and intonations, had been for the 
 eyes of anyone with whom she found herself. And 
 more than once she had wept unrestrainedly in Aurelio's 
 arms. 
 
 He bore it well, the young goldsmith turned secretary, 
 as he would have borne torture by fire for her. He had 
 been, indeed, her greatest help, for into his patient ears 
 she poured by the hour her unrestrained and dramatic 
 lamentations. 
 
 When, moreover, she told him of her pact with Lord 
 Charles he believed her at once. 
 
 " It can't last, you know," he warned, but in her good 
 faith and Cressage's, too, he never doubted, a tribute she 
 did not appreciate, for while she readily and without dis- 
 gust suspected small treacheries in others, she took for 
 granted that she herself should be believed, when she was 
 telling the truth. 
 
 It is difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand the Latin 
 standard of honour. It is different from ours, but it never- 
 theless exists and is clearly outlined. 
 
 In the little matter, for instance, of making his friend's 
 wife his mistress, the well-bred Latin has a qualm, whereas 
 the menage a trois has become something like a national 
 institution in England, and in some circles is accepted even 
 with gaiety. 
 
 This arrangement honestly scandalises your Italian, who 
 in consequence believes that in England no man knows or 
 cares whose son is his heir. Naturally the Italian exag-
 
 THE FATE OF BEECHY S GARDENIA 279 
 
 gerates, but the kernel of his belief is sounder than is quite 
 pleasant. 
 
 Aurelio knew enough to be sure that trouble must come 
 of the plan arranged by Beechy, but he was there and the 
 Scarpia was there to safeguard the girl they both loved, 
 and for the present at least Cressage's faith was good. To- 
 day, however, Aurelio was sad and absent-minded, for he 
 was leaving England the next day for a fortnight, and in 
 a fortnight, he told himself, much might happen. 
 
 " Oh, Aurelio, how I envy you ! " 
 
 They had left the shop and walked along Bond Street 
 towards Piccadilly. Aurelio, who dressed very well, was 
 nearly as pleasant to look at as Beechy. He was remarkably 
 beautiful, the young Italian, with the velvety smooth brown- 
 ness of a youthful fawn, and the most romantic golden- 
 brown eyes in the world. 
 
 Many people turned to look at them, for the prima 
 donna was the celebrity of the season and her pictures were 
 on sale everywhere. 
 
 " Look Cavaleone," they would say, and when she 
 heard it, Beechy invariably smiled at them. She loved the 
 homage as she loved the sunshine, and she never could see 
 why she should conceal her feelings. 
 
 Aurelio, for his part, felt none of the half surly shyness 
 an Englishman in his position would have experienced. 
 
 He was proud of her and her fame, and proud of being 
 seen with her. The Signora, as delighted as a child with 
 her new lace parasol, the handle of which, a carved parrot in 
 ivory with two very crimson cherries in its beak, hurt her 
 hand, gladly suffered to be beautiful. They were, in spite 
 of Aurelio's faithful and hopeless love, a very happy trio 
 that afternoon as they walked slowly up Piccadilly.
 
 280 BEECHY 
 
 " Be sure you tell dear Mother Maria Maddalena," be- 
 gan Beechy, at the corner of Hamilton Place, as a four-in- 
 hand, very yellow, very imposing, nodding with gay hats 
 and parasols, came towards him. 
 
 " It's the Signer Lord," exclaimed Signora Scarpia, 
 eagerly, almost waving her parasol. 
 
 Lord Charles, on the box, did not see them. 
 
 On high against the trees in the park, silhouetted sharply 
 against the beautiful green, he sat like a god, driving his 
 four celebrated bays. In his coat he wore a gardenia, as 
 usual, and as the drag passed the little group of Italians, 
 he was bending over to say something to the lady beside 
 him. 
 
 She, a beautiful white and gold vision, was smiling up 
 at him, and his eyes were crinkled in a way that meant in 
 him amused delight and homage. His eyes had this way of 
 saying, " You amuse me keenly, witch, and your beauty fills 
 me with joy, but you are a goddess and I worship you." 
 
 Beechy stared at him, standing quite still. Then, when 
 he had passed, she tore the gardenia from her coat and, 
 crushing it furiously in her two hands, threw it into the 
 street. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " oh, the brute, the beast, I hate 
 him." Aurelio and the Signora exchanged an appalled glance. 
 
 " Come, dear, we can't stand here," the Scarpia said. 
 
 Beechy's face was perfectly white and its bony structure 
 seemed to stand out under the flesh. 
 
 "Did you see, Aurelio? Did you, Signora Evelina?" 
 
 " I I will never forgive him, never " 
 
 Sadly they accompanied the young fury home. They 
 were grieved, but not at all surprised. 
 
 Senza gelosia I'amore non e.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 THE HONOURABLE MRS. BOB 
 
 BUT that evening when Cressage came to take Beechy 
 out to drive, he noticed nothing beyond a certain 
 pallor which he himself set down to the heat. 
 
 They went to an Italian restaurant near Covent Gar- 
 den and dined simply, but well, with things she chose. 
 One of his good qualities was a comparative indifference to 
 food and drink, and the little meal satisfied him perfectly. 
 
 " Why did the Signora allow you to come alone with 
 me?" he asked, as they sat down in the small back room 
 where a vivid lithograph of King Humbert stared down 
 at them from over the mantelpiece. 
 
 " I I told her I wished to. I I want to talk to you ; " 
 she answered. " I wish to ask you something." 
 
 But Marcantonio Bifi, the proprietor, a small dark man 
 with white teeth, and the most beautiful manners in the 
 world, stood by them, and the dinner must be ordered. 
 Bifi knew of course who his beautiful patroness was, for 
 he, in his turn, was a constant patron of the opera, and 
 Beechy had been to his restaurant once before. 
 
 " Oysters? " he suggested. 
 
 Beechy, very white and tragic under her small black 
 toque, with sharply cut wings, like the wings in Mercury's 
 cap, shook her head. 
 
 . " No," she returned in a sombre voice, " Raw ham, 
 vegetable soup, spaghetti with tomatoes and roast kid" 
 
 " Si, Signora." 
 
 281
 
 282 BEECHY 
 
 "Roast kid, then, and salad. And Zabajoni?" 
 
 " Si, Signora." 
 
 Bifi sped away, his shabby pumps noiseless on the bare 
 floor and Lord Charles asked her what Zabajoni was. 
 
 " A sort of hot custard with Marsala in it. When I 
 was little," she added, dreamily, " I loved it better than 
 anything and anybody on earth." 
 
 He laid his hand on hers. " Greedy little beast," he 
 said. For several seconds she looked silently at his beauti- 
 fully cared-for brown hand with the inconspicuous seal 
 ring on the little finger. Then, looking up, she asked 
 fiercely, " How many women have you loved ? " 
 
 He started, then he laughed, holding her hand closer in 
 his. 
 
 " Child, child, what a poser for a poor old man." 
 
 " You are not old. Tell me, " 
 
 Cressage looked vaguely about the shabby clean little 
 room. He saw the four vacant tables with their patched 
 and darned cloths, their battered knives and forks. He 
 saw the bare walls, the ugly green curtains at the window, 
 the black marble mantelpiece and the hearth, filled with 
 shavings of magenta paper. 
 
 Then he looked at Beechy. 
 
 If he had not loved her, he would have known how to 
 answer, how to please her. But because he loved her he 
 blundered into the truth. 
 
 " My dear," he said gently, " I've loved a lot of women, 
 but I've forgotten them all now." 
 
 " Ugh!" Her little grunt was indescribable. 
 
 " All men love or think they do a good many 
 times " he went on, " and then when they really love, at 
 last, they regret all the others."
 
 THE HONOURABLE MRS. BOB 283 
 
 " Ecco, Signora, real Italian ham, and Greek olives, 
 and Salami from Bologna " 
 
 Marcantonio Bifi set down the dishes and stood smiling. 
 
 When he had gone, closing the door against the intrusion 
 of less distinguished patrons, Beechy again spoke. 
 
 " And me you will forget me, too," she said, tragically. 
 " And you will wish you had not known me, too " 
 
 Cressage was utterly taken aback. 
 
 Jealousy was not unknown to him, but he had done ab- 
 solutely nothing to make Beechy jealous, and that this was 
 a variety of the passion unknown to him except by hearsay 
 he could not doubt. 
 
 "What is the matter?" he asked gently. 
 
 Then she told him. 
 
 " Who was that woman with you in your coach to-day ? " 
 
 So that was the trouble. 
 
 "Ah! where did you see us? That was Mrs. Bob 
 Romney, but surely you can't mind my seeing other 
 women ? " 
 
 Beechy laid down her fork. " I I do. I mind your 
 looking at them, and talking to them, and smiling at them 
 and wrinking your eyes at them I I mind everything, 
 Carlo," she burst out, her cheeks suddenly burning. " I I 
 want you all to myself." 
 
 She was splendid in her strong feeling, more splendid 
 than he had ever seen her on the stage. 
 
 " Beatrice " 
 
 He took her in his arms and held her close to him, her 
 emotion rapidly extending to him as he kissed her. 
 
 " You you madwoman! " 
 
 His stammering, inefficient words were more convinc- 
 ing than a long eloquent speech.
 
 284 BEECHY 
 
 For a moment they clung together in all the bliss of an 
 absolute understanding. Then the door opened and Bifi 
 appeared, bearing a huge old-fashioned soup tureen. Be- 
 fore the two could spring apart the door was again shut 
 and they were alone. 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing and dashed the tears from her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Poor Padrone. He will never dare come back," she 
 said. "Ah, Carlo mio caro, I am so happy! Will you for- 
 give me? I felt so little, so humble, so far away from you 
 to-day, you up against the trees, I in the street. And she is 
 beautiful! Forgive me, my treasure." He pulled his 
 moustache nervously. 
 
 " My dearest you must know I love you," he returned. 
 " I love you so that I I hardly know myself. And as 
 to Mrs. Bob Romney she isn't fit to touch your shoe. 
 Fancy," he added in obviously sincere amazement, " your 
 being jealous of me!" 
 
 Beechy gave another laugh and rose to look at herself 
 in the green, uneven-surfaced glass over by the door. 
 
 Then she turned, her hands at her hair. 
 
 " Charles," she said, suddenly serious, using his English 
 name, " if you stopped loving me I should die. Die, under- 
 stand?" 
 
 He sat staring at his knife and fork, a straight line be- 
 tween his eyebrows. 
 
 " If you love me like that," he began, but she inter- 
 rupted by ringing the bell. " Hush ! Not a word. I do 
 love you! like that! I adore you, but ah, Signor Bifi, 
 the soup, please." 
 
 The proprietor smiled openly at him, a delightful smile 
 of respectful sympathy and protection, and Beechy smiled
 
 THE HONOURABLE MRS. BOB 285 
 
 at him. She was not in the least embarrassed, but Lord 
 Charles was. 
 
 " Damn the fellow," he said, when Bifi had again closed 
 the door on them, "what does he mean by smiling at 
 you like that ? " 
 
 " Italians always enjoy lovers," she said. " He is happy 
 for us, and I am glad he is. Smiles bring good luck, 
 dear." 
 
 The rest of the evening was very happy. After dinner 
 they took a hansom and drove out Regent's Park 'way in 
 the moonlight, and by half-past ten were back with the 
 Signora in Beechy's ornate, flower-filled sitting-room. 
 
 The sunshiny, happy, triumphant days hurried by. The 
 opera of course was over. Beechy's last night had been an 
 ovation; even her older rivals were cordial and kind to her. 
 She was for the time a kind of queen of song, as the original 
 minded ha'penny papers called her. She lingered on in 
 London because she had promised a very high-placed old 
 lady to sing at a charity concert the last week in July, the 
 very last concert of a very late season. 
 
 Many people had gone, but London was still full, and 
 every night had its engagement to dine or dance. 
 
 " The girl is a dear," the old Duchess of Wight said, 
 " and the story about Charles Cressage is a lie." 
 
 ' The story about Charles Cressage is true," another 
 powerful person declared, " and why not? Kitty Cres- 
 sage is an idiot and deserves what she gets. And the girl 
 loves Charles and it is a pretty sight. A pity he can't 
 marry her, for upon my honour I believe he would ! " 
 
 " Ah, the singing-girl," lisped Mrs. Bob Romney, looking 
 up through the delicate fringe of pale gold hair which, in 
 spite of the dictates of fashion, still decorated her white
 
 286 BEECHY 
 
 brow, " isn't she a lovely young creature? So pretty. And 
 Lord Charles is in love with her, isn't he? " 
 
 She put all her remarks in the form of questions. Alto- 
 gether an appealing, wide-eyed, helpless-seeming woman, 
 a woman classified by the old Duchess of Wight as 
 follows : 
 
 " Maudie Romney is as bad as she can be, has no more 
 morals than a sparrow, no more mind than a chicken the 
 most idiotic woman in London. But she has two qualities: 
 she never gets caught, and she never makes other people 
 feel ignorant." 
 
 And on these two qualities the Hon. Mrs. Bob got on 
 very well indeed. 
 
 She was always beautifully dressed, thanks to her maid, 
 " a perfect wonder, my dear " and the Hon. Bob's many 
 and manifest sins created for her a pleasant little role of 
 ill-treated wife which she used excellently well. 
 
 " Poor dear old Bob," she would say brightly, " he really 
 is a dear, you know," and then he or she to whom she spoke 
 usually felt a thrill of pity. Particularly if it were a he. 
 She had known Lord Charles Cressage for years, in a very 
 superficial way. He had sat next her at dinners once or 
 twice, and once they had been on the same yacht at Cowes. 
 But it so happening that when they met they had both been 
 very busy with some one else, they had never interested each 
 other particularly. 
 
 This June, Mrs. Bob was interested in no one; and her 
 nature being of those that cannot exist without a love affair 
 of some kind, she decided to make him fall in love with her. 
 It would be easy, she was so very pretty and so very experi- 
 enced. Meeting him at a dinner just before he met Beechy, 
 she asked him to call and see an old book she had picked
 
 THE HONOURABLE MRS. BOB 287 
 
 up somewhere with a coat of arms that she thought was 
 his, on its cover. 
 
 He called: the drawing-room was cool and fragrant with 
 roses, and she looked very lovely. He knew her to be ap- 
 proachable, and she had adorable eyes, slightly made up 
 and he liked her rather artificial air of course he made 
 love to her, without even troubling to go slowly. 
 
 Someone interrupted them while he was holding her 
 hand and telling her how lonely he was, but they met the 
 next evening at a ball and sat for an hour together in a bal- 
 cony looking over the garden where honeysuckle grew. She 
 wore shell pink and looked really too fragile and helpless 
 for this world. He made more love to her. 
 
 Two days later she went to his rooms for tea, accom- 
 panied by one Miss Spanning, a morose, flat-nosed old maid, 
 who knew her role to perfection, and at once produced a 
 passion for books and sat for an hour in the library, where 
 the low murmur of voices reached her through the heavy 
 velvet curtain. 
 
 Lord Charles was enchanted. He believed himself to be 
 falling in love with Mrs. Bob and nothing could be pleas- 
 anter than a discreet affair with the lovely little blonde who 
 never got caught. 
 
 But the next night he met Beechy and Mrs. Bob was at 
 once forgotten. 
 
 Alas, that these matters are not always so simple as they 
 might be. Mrs. Bob did not forget Lord Charles. But she 
 was wise in her way, so she called Beechy the beautiful 
 singing-girl, declared Beechy's voice was " quite too divine " 
 and, in her busy little mind, spun webs.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 THE WHITE COTTAGE 
 
 TWO days before the concert at the Duchess's Beechy 
 and Cressage went to the country. 
 It was a beautiful morning and the motor flew 
 along the damp road as if it had wings. A motor is an 
 unromantic looking thing, but surely it more closely than 
 any other vehicle can give to happy lovers a sense of the 
 realisation of their fancied power of disembodied flight. 
 
 Everything had wings that day, to the two in the motor. 
 They had run away from everybody, Beechy breaking an 
 engagement for luncheon, he one at his brother's for dinner. 
 They were going to be quite by themselves all the long day, 
 and now it was only nine! 
 
 Richmond Park was a miracle of beauty in the sunshine, 
 even the policeman who stopped them for speeding was a 
 benevolent soul who accepted a very fat, gold-girdled cigar 
 from the culprit in chief, and let them go with a friendly 
 warning. 
 
 "Where are we going?" Beechy asked, as they left the 
 park at the gate of the Star and Garter. "You haven't 
 told me." 
 
 He looked quickly at her. " Haven't I ? " he asked, a 
 little embarrassed, " I I thought I had." 
 
 " No. You only said * the country.' Where are we 
 going?" 
 
 "To a little place I have near the river a cottage. 
 
 288
 
 THE WHITE COTTAGE 289 
 
 Haven't been there for some time, and I thought we might 
 have a look at it. I wired out to them to have lunch for 
 us and dinner it's a charming little place, I'll take you 
 for a pull on the river afterwards." 
 
 " Oh, how perfect! I didn't know you had a cottage. 
 It will be fun." 
 
 He bent over the wheel, relieved. 
 
 It was so early that there were no people about but the 
 people who lived in that part of the world, and the long 
 white road was nearly empty. 
 
 Not far from Windsor, near Gatchett, a narrow lane 
 leads down to the river, and here, in a quiet reach of the 
 river, where there are no villas to be seen, no house boats, 
 was Lord Charles Cressage's cottage. The White Cottage, 
 it was called. A long, rambling, one-storied cottage, with 
 small windows and a red roof ; a cottage standing in an old- 
 fashioned garden ; a cottage made of plaster and wood, but 
 so overgrown with roses and honeysuckle that barely a ves- 
 tige of its architecture was visible. 
 
 A most romantic little place, built thirty years ago by 
 a sentimental stock-broker for the lady of his heart, bought 
 fifteen years ago by a scarcely less sentimental Oxford grad- 
 uate named Charlie Cressage for the then lady of his heart, 
 and kept on by him lafter his departure as a useful little 
 box though damned damp. 
 
 He was a trifle ashamed as he led Beechy in through the 
 badly hung gate. He had been there so often before, and 
 they all said, " Oh, how lovely." 
 
 Luckily she said it in Italian. And after all, it was the 
 only place he knew where they could be quite free from 
 prying eyes all the long summer day. The old woman who 
 lived in the cottage all the year round, had put everything
 
 290 BEECHY 
 
 in order, and they would, he knew, find the little rooms full 
 of flowers. She was a wise old creature, Harriet Jane 
 Taylor, and she never talked. For years she had been there 
 whenever he came down, but each time, he knew, he would 
 find a new parlour-maid. 
 
 Before the cottage door there was a little terrace of 
 oiled red-brick, and at the corners of the terrace terra-cotta 
 water pots brought from Italy held great clumps of pink 
 geraniums. Lord Charles hated red ones. And before 
 them, as they stood looking down over the velvety lawn, the 
 broad Thames flowed softly. 
 
 " Oh, Carlo, what a heavenly place," Beechy said, tak- 
 ing off her straw hat -and running the pins ruthlessly through 
 the roses on it. " The sky is nearly as blue as in Italy ! " 
 
 " Every bit as blue, darling. Nothing so blue as a real 
 good English sky, I always say. Kiss me." 
 
 She put up her lips as a child does, but she was thinking 
 of the scene before her, not of him. 
 
 " The trees across the river, whose are they, yours ? " 
 
 " Oh, dear, no. They belong to Sir William Londale, 
 the late Prime Minister." 
 
 "Londale? He must be Cricket's father. Oh, Carlo, 
 is he Cricket's father?" 
 
 This was a new way of regarding the grim old man in 
 question, and Cressage laughed. 
 
 " Bambina how do I know? He has children, I know. 
 One of the girls married cne of the Swedish attaches the 
 other 'day. Who is ' Cricket ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, he's the most adorable boy. A perfect dear. He 
 writes me such funny poetry, and ah, well, a charming boy. 
 He was ' stroke ' in his Varsity boat this year," she added, 
 using the English terms with much importance.
 
 THE WHITE COTTAGE 291 
 
 Cressage smiled at her. A quite new smile this that no 
 one else ever saw. His mother, had she been alive, might 
 have remembered it. 
 
 " Come in, dear, and see the cottage." 
 
 She loved it all; the deep window-niches, the rose-col- 
 oured chintz with green leaves all over it, the oak floor 
 with rugs on it (like the floor at Wychley!), the queer old 
 jugs and vases filled with garden flowers, the low book- 
 shelves full of books. And on the walls, the coloured 
 prints of old coaching days. All, everything pleased her, 
 and her enthusiasm pleased him. It was rather unusual to 
 find, nowadays, a woman whom things sincerely surprised 
 and delighted. 
 
 Harriet Jane Taylor, a blinking old woman with reddish 
 grey hair and an asthmatic croak in her voice, gave her 
 master the news of the place. 
 
 William Emmens, her nephew, who looked after the lawn 
 and the garden, was married. He wanted his wife to do 
 permanent parlour-maid's work at the cottage, but she, 
 Harriet Jane Taylor, thought better to say no to this plan. 
 " I think better," she said primly, " to change" 
 
 Cressage frowned. "Yes, yes, quite right. Nothing has 
 happened in the way of damages to the place, I suppose? " 
 
 " No, sir." Harriet Jane Taylor always called him Sir. 
 
 Beechy wandered from window to window while they 
 talked, and afterwards she was taken to see the other rooms. 
 
 There were three little bedrooms, all done up in light 
 chintzes, pretty pictures on the walls, pretty silk coverlets 
 on the beds. 
 
 " Do you stay here often ? " said Beechy. 
 
 He turned away. " No, not often. I used to at one 
 time used to bring people down for a day or two."
 
 292 BEECHY 
 
 Beechy was far from ignorant of life and if she had been 
 asked what she supposed his life to have been her answer 
 would have been fairly correct and very clearly expressed. 
 
 But this dear little place whither he had brought her 
 seemed innocent and wholesome, and she thought nothing 
 more of it than that it was an adorable place that was 
 his. When they had gone over the small domain they 
 had their lunch by the rose-hung window in the dining- 
 room. 
 
 The new parlour-maid, who did not even know her em- 
 ployer's name, watched Beechy curiously. 
 
 " The lady's face is familiar-like," she said to Harriet 
 Jane Taylor, as she waited for the asparagus, " I've seen 
 it in a paper sommeres." 
 
 " I daresay," returned the old woman drily. 
 
 There was chicken to eat, and delicate potatoes, and as- 
 paragus, and a raspberry tart with a junket. 
 
 Beechy enjoyed everything. 
 
 " It is lovely here," she said at last, as they sat over 
 their coffee and he smoked cigarettes. " I should like to 
 stay." 
 
 Cressage lit a match, but it went out, and he lit another 
 for the fresh cigarette between his lips. 
 
 "Would you?" 
 
 " Yes, for a week, or two weeks I should not mind the 
 loneliness if you were here. Is there a piano? Yes, of 
 course. And then the river, running water is cheerful; it 
 is the great lapping, struggling sea that is sad." 
 
 "Don't you like the sea?" 
 
 " I love to be on it, but not by it. It climbs and climbs, 
 and crawls and crawls, trying to get out, and up on the 
 land, it makes me feel very tired, as if I wanted to help
 
 THE WHITE COTTAGE 293 
 
 It out as one does a dog. But this river here it goes 
 hurrying on, cheerily yes, I love it." 
 
 Cressage did not answer. He played with the match-box 
 and pulled at his moustache; then he drank more wine. 
 Beechy, engrossed by her own thoughts, monologued on 
 and on, without noticing his distraction. 
 
 Presently a clock struck two and he jumped up. 
 
 " Come along, let's go out into the garden, shall we ? " 
 
 It was warm, and the sky had clouded over. Beechy took 
 her parasol and they went out. In the afternoon heat the 
 flowers gave out their strong drowsy scents as they drooped 
 a little on their stalks. 
 
 The china-asters and the peonies alone seemed not to 
 mind the heat, but the wall-flowers drooped, the lilies 
 looked delicate and pale, the carnations top-heavy and 
 sleepy. 
 
 On the edge of the river stood a small arbour over- 
 grown with creepers. Here they sat down in long chairs 
 prepared by the careful Harriet Jane. 
 
 Beechy leaned back against a cool little green-linen pillow 
 and shut her eyes. " I am so sleepy," she said. " Do you 
 mind if I go to sleep?" 
 
 She yawned widely, showing her glistening white teeth 
 and a curling pink tongue like a puppy's. 
 
 " Of course I don't mind," he said absently. " Heavens, 
 it's warm! " 
 
 Beechy watched him through her lashes. How adorable 
 he was, and how noble, and how beautiful. She was pre- 
 fectly happy. The heat to-day, she reflected, made him 
 pale, and a lock of black hair fell over his brow as it had 
 done that evening at Lady Cossie's. 
 
 Her eyes closed. The smell of wall flowers reached her
 
 294 BEECHY 
 
 as it had that same evening, the wall-flowers round the sun- 
 dial she thought in Italian " How does one say it in Eng- 
 lish ? Ah, yes, of course, ' time-table ' " 
 
 She was asleep. 
 
 When she awoke she was alone, and the heat was very 
 oppressive. She pushed back her damp hair, powdered her 
 face with a tiny puff she carried in her purse, and rising, 
 stretched her arms at full length and yawned again. 
 
 Then as she was about to go to look for Cressage she 
 caught sight of a letter lying on the floor, and picked it 
 up. What pretty paper! 
 
 For a moment she stared at the little square mauve sheet 
 with the complicated gold monogram on it, in innocent 
 admiration, and then her eyes fell on the name at the foot 
 of it. Slowly she read the whole thing. 
 
 " So sorry, dear Lord Charles," the affected, pointed 
 writing said, " to have missed you yesterday. Why didn't 
 you telephone first? Will you come on Thursday at five? 
 I have nothing of importance to say to you, but I feel that 
 we are friends, and a sight of you will do me good. Venez 
 done, ami I 
 
 " Yours, 
 " MAUDIE ROMNEY." 
 
 For a moment Beechy stood as if, as the phrase goes, she 
 had turned to stone. 
 
 Then, dropping the letter where she had found it, she 
 went slowly out into the dazzling sunlight of the garden.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 " MADNESS IN THE BRAIN " 
 
 THE next day Beechy did not see Cressage. He 
 called in the afternoon, but she was lying down 
 and told the puzzled Signora to tell him she had a 
 headache. But it was not a headache that made her pale 
 and heavy-eyed. It was jealousy. 
 
 All the afternoon she went over and over in her mind 
 the events of the last few days. Charles had told her that 
 she was absurd, that night at the Italian restaurant, and 
 she had known that he was right. His voice had expressed 
 something more even than indifference to Mrs. Romney's 
 charms; it had expressed a kind of scorn. Plainly she had 
 understood that he had for the pretty golden-headed little 
 lady none of the respect she felt in his every word to her. 
 And for the time that had been enough; she had been 
 quite comforted. 
 
 But in the mauve letter Mrs. Romney had " Been so 
 sorry to miss him " " Why had he not telephoned ? " 
 " She felt that they were friends " " A sight of him would 
 do her good." Much intimacy crowded into one small 
 sheet of paper. 
 
 To herself Beechy called the Hon. Mrs. Bob several 
 very shocking and unqualified names, but they did not 
 greatly comfort her, for, granted that Mrs. Bob was all 
 these things, what good did her being so, do? 
 
 Beechy knew that men liked such women, loved them. 
 
 295
 
 296 BEECHY 
 
 They were, she believed, brilliant in conversation and 
 learned in all the arts of making men love them. 
 
 As she lay that afternoon in her darkened room, her 
 tortured imagination pictured Mrs. Bob as the most en- 
 chanting of women. She was as pathetic as the woman in 
 " La Traviata," as seductive as Carmen, as beautiful as 
 Dante's Beatrice. She was as witty as Madame 'de Pompa- 
 dour, an historical heroine greatly admired by Beechy. 
 
 All these things she was, and Carlo, her Carlo, was at 
 that moment with her, in a rose-coloured drawing-room, 
 alone ! 
 
 If Cressage had come at five Beechy would have flown 
 to his arms and begged for his forgiveness. But he had 
 come at half-past three, thus, she concluded, saving time to 
 keep his tryst with Mrs. Bob at five. 
 
 As a matter of fact he had utterly forgotten Mrs. Bob's 
 note, not even noticing its loss, and when, towards six, he 
 did appear at her door it was because, unable to see Beechy, 
 an'd moody and restless as he had been of late, he found 
 himself in her street at that time, and remembered that she 
 had asked him to call. 
 
 "At least she'll be glad to see me," he thought, as he 
 followed the servant upstairs. 
 
 Beechy's demeanour the day before, after her nap in the 
 arbour, had puzzled and distressed him. She was silent, 
 brooding, and sullen-eyed. When he asked her what the 
 matter was, she lied, saying that nothing was the matter. 
 
 At tea she had hardly spoken, and when he asked her to 
 sing she refused, saying that she was too tired. 
 
 When it grew cooler he took her on the river, and she 
 lay on the cushions in the boat watching the crimsoning 
 sky and hardly hearing him when he spoke to her.
 
 "MADNESS IN THE BRAIN" 297 
 
 The man was utterly puzzled, and that he at last, after 
 repeated efforts to sweeten her mood, gave it up and sub- 
 sided into a silence as sullen as hers, is not to be wondered 
 at. 
 
 He was an undisciplined, headstrong, spoiled creature, 
 who never before in his life had found himself in his pres- 
 ent position. He loved her with an almost violent force, 
 and she had consigned him to the role of friend, pal, con- 
 stant companion. 
 
 When this had happened to him before, he had simply 
 gone away. But Beechy he could not leave, because he 
 loved her too much. At any price he must see her, but 
 the price he was paying was a heavy one and he felt his 
 position, although he accepted it in good faith, to be a 
 ridiculous if not a false one. 
 
 He pulled up stream for half an hour and then shipping 
 his oars let the little boat float back over the radiant water. 
 
 She sat hatless, gazing past or through him at the sky, 
 the loose hair round her brow curling into little damp rings, 
 her mouth set. 
 
 " Beatrice," the infinite longing in his voice stirred 
 her and she started. 
 
 " Dear what is it? Tell me. It makes me so horribly 
 unhappy to see you so so different. It frightens me. Is 
 it that you do not really love me?" 
 
 She frowned quickly and then laughed. " Mace fief 
 No, of course not. It is it is that I am a fool, I sup- 
 pose, that someone else made the world and I don't like 
 it 
 
 Reaching out, he pulled the boat under the long branches 
 of a tree that hung far over the water. 
 " Beatrice let me come and sit near you," he continued
 
 298 BEECHY 
 
 with wonderful patience for a man of his temperament, 
 "and tell me. Surely you can trust me?" 
 
 But she waved him away nervously. " No, no, let's get on. 
 I hate being here in the dark I want to see the sunset." 
 
 He let go the branch and the boat darted under its dip- 
 ping leaves out into mid-stream. 
 
 He was very angry now, and said no more. 
 
 She sat dragging her right hand through the water, her 
 eyes bent to her lap. 
 
 Then, suddenly, she gave a little cry. " Oh, Cricket ! 
 It is Cricket!" 
 
 In her excitement she tried to stand up and he bade her 
 sharply to sit still, looking round as he spoke. On the 
 bank near them, nearly opposite the White Cottage, stood a 
 tall, slight red-headed youth in flannels. 
 
 " Oh, please pull in, I want to speak to him," she ex- 
 claimed, adding in a calling voice, " It is me, Cricket, 
 Beechy! " 
 
 The youth waved his cap. "You!" he cried, "what 
 luck. How are you ? " 
 
 Cressage pulled up to the landing, and Beechy held out 
 her hand. 
 
 " I am so glad to see you," she said ; " it's such a long 
 time I was telling Lord Charles about you this very day 
 get in and tell me about Switzerland " 
 
 But young Londale stood shyly there on the landing, 
 his fiery hair glowing in the universal glow of things, and 
 made no move. 
 
 " Suppose," remarked Cressage, politely, " you introduce 
 Mr. Londale to me! " 
 
 Beechy burst out laughing, apologised, and in another 
 minute the three were floating along together.
 
 "MADNESS IN THE BRAIN" 299 
 
 " We have had luncheon here, and are to dine, and then 
 we go back to town in the motor," Beechy explained, and 
 Cressage making the best of a bad job, let her chatter on 
 uninterrupted. " Do come and let me show you the cot- 
 tage. It is too charming," she went on in her broken Eng- 
 lish, " that is unless you are busy " 
 
 Cressage listened in amazement. He could not be jealous 
 of this ugly red-headed stripling, but how was it that her 
 ill-temper had fled at her first sight of the red-head? 
 
 Was it after all, the thought smote him hard, so that 
 he caught his breath, that she was too young to be really 
 happy with him? That her youth cried out for youth to 
 amuse it? He set his teeth hard and then spoke, very 
 gently: 
 
 "Perhaps you would dine with us, Mr. Londale?" 
 
 Cricket started and hesitated. 
 
 "Oh you are very kind," he said, but Beechy burst in: 
 
 "You must, oh yes, you will dine with us," she said, 
 " that is ver' good plan ! " 
 
 Her pleasure was perfectly genuine and it was another 
 blow for Cressage. 
 
 However, they dined quite merrily, Beechy doing nearly 
 all the talking, and after dinner she sang. 
 
 Cressage, thoroughly unhappy, walked up and down the 
 little terrace and smoked, while her beautiful voice floated 
 out through the open windows. 
 
 " I will leave them together," he thought, bitterly, " I 
 am too old for them." 
 
 Later it was he himself who asked the youth to go back 
 to town with them in the motor. This he did, hoping that 
 it might hurt Beechy, but it did not, and he saw it. 
 
 She was sincerely relieved to have the tete-a-tete inter-
 
 300 BEECHY 
 
 rupted, for she dared not mention Mrs. Bob to him, and 
 she could not force herself to feign happiness. 
 
 Nine o'clock came, and Harriet Jane Taylor, whose ex- 
 pressionless face betrayed none of the surprise she must 
 have felt at the unexpected appearance at the cottage of a 
 second gentleman, curtsied to them at the door. 
 
 The homeward ride was rather noisy, for Beechy sat be- 
 hind with Cricket and they chattered and laughed without 
 ceasing. 
 
 Cressage left them at the door of her hotel and went 
 directly to his rooms. 
 
 As he entered Mrs. Romney's drawing-room the next 
 afternoon after having failed to see Beechy, the remembrance 
 of the event of the day before gave an added tenderness to 
 his reception of his hostess's greeting. She, at least, was 
 glad to see him. 
 
 Beechy, that evening at a dinner at the Carlton, led the 
 conversation with one of her neighbours to the subject of 
 the Honourable Mrs. Romney. 
 
 " Ah, yes, Maudie," the man said, " yes, she is pretty. 
 Lots of fellows have been mad about her. Yes, lovely hair, 
 but rather too untidy to suit me. Bob? Oh, Bob's a good 
 old ass, not half bad, but an awful ass, you know." 
 
 " I have heard Lord Charles Cressage talk about her," 
 Beechy went on, cheerfully, eating salad, " he admires her 
 very much." 
 
 The man to whom she spoke had happened in at Mrs. 
 Bob's that afternoon. He gave a sudden chuckle. 
 
 " Yes, so I gather," he said, in all innocence, for he had 
 just come back to England from Canada, and had heard 
 no gossip about Cavaleone and le beau Charles as some poly- 
 glot ladies liked to call him.
 
 "MADNESS IN THE BRAIN" 301 
 
 Beechy looked at him, smiling. " How did you gazzer 
 it?" 
 
 " I called there this afternoon, to take her a package from 
 a chap in Canada, and there sat 'is Ludship as snug as you 
 please, holding some silk for her to wind. I've held silk 
 for her in my day, too," he went on. " She never sews 
 but she always has silk to be wound. Little devil, she's jolly 
 attractive, something about her hard to explain pretti- 
 est hands I ever saw, little white things no bigger than a 
 child's." 
 
 " Perhaps that's why she winds silk," laughed Beechy, 
 adding, " Mrs. Morrow, your other neighbour, has very 
 pretty hands, too. Better talk to her a little, 'adn't you?" 
 She went on with her dinner, talking now to her other neigh- 
 bour, one of the French Embassy youths, with the greatest 
 composure. What they talked about she could never recall. 
 
 When she went home she found roses and a note from 
 Cressage. 
 
 " Beloved," he had written. " I was so sorry to miss 
 you. How is your poor head? May I come to-morrow 
 morning? The days when I cannot see you are unbearable. 
 Telephone me when you come in, I will stay at the club 
 until twelve. I love you more than the whole world. 
 Charles." 
 
 Ordinarily his letter, written in faulty Italian, filled her 
 with the tenderest joy. His mistakes were delicious to her, 
 a badly spelt word would be kissed. 
 
 But to-night she burst into a sneering laugh, tore the 
 paper into small bits and tossed it into the waste-paper 
 basket. Then she rang. 
 
 " You may have these roses," she said to her maid, " the 
 scent makes my head ache."
 
 302 BEECHY 
 
 After which, with an angry glance at the telephone, she 
 went to bed. 
 
 A little later he called her up, to be told by the maid 
 that the Signorina had gone to bed and was asleep. 
 
 In the morning he came. 
 
 She put on a tea-gown and went to see him. 
 
 He stood by the window. 
 
 " I wish to know," he began abruptly, " what has hap- 
 pened to make you treat me like this ? " 
 
 She raised her eyebrows affectedly. " Like what ? " 
 
 "You refuse to see me you will not telephone to me 
 you you treat me like a dog. Why?" 
 
 Never had she so admired him as at that moment. But 
 she laughed and picked up a book that was lying on the 
 table. " You are absurd," she said. 
 
 " That," he returned, " is true. I am absurd or I have 
 been. I am not going to be absurd any longer. I love 
 you and you know it. I refuse to be your plaything any 
 longer. If you love me you must cease this nonsense. If 
 you don't love me, I will go. That is all I have to say." 
 
 Her heart beat furiously at the ring in his voice. He 
 did love her or he could not speak like that. And she 
 adored him. She made a step towards him, and as she did 
 so the telephone bell rang. 
 
 She unhooked the receiver. "Yes yes, yes, I am Sig- 
 norina Cavaleone ah," she gave a little laugh of greeting, 
 " thanks so much, Mrs. Romney. Yes, me too, I 'ave 
 wished to know you thanks yes, I 'ope so yes, Lord 
 Charles is 'ere but of course^ of course! One mo- 
 ment " 
 
 She turned and said, so carelessly that he was completely 
 hoodwinked, " Mrs. Romney wishes to speak to you."
 
 "MADNESS IN THE BRAIN" 303 
 
 Mrs. Romney was alone; her old man had deserted her 
 for the day and night, and would Lord Charles come and 
 dine with her and Miss Spanning, and take them on to the 
 Duchess's concert to hear that exquisite Cavaleone sing? 
 His servant had told her where he had gone would he be 
 a perfect dear and have mercy on two lone women? 
 
 He looked round as she spoke. 
 
 Beechy was bending over a great sheaf of lilies that had 
 just been brought to her. 
 
 "Look," she whispered, " from Cricket!" 
 
 Yes. Lord Charles would be enchanted to come. 
 
 "At eight-fifteen, I suppose? But, dear lady, the 
 pleasure is all on my side good-bye, until this evening, then. 
 Yes. Good-bye." 
 
 He was in the state of mind when a man would be jealous 
 of a wooden Indian. 
 
 " Ah, young Londale sends you flowers, too, does he ? A 
 conquest worthy of your bow and spear, my dear." 
 
 " He is good and kind and I like him," she flashed back, 
 furiously. 
 
 Cressage laughed as very angry people laugh. 
 
 " Good ! Well, he will no doubt follow his lilies shortly 
 and I'll be off. Good-bye. We shall meet at the concert." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 She found him suddenly quite calm. 
 
 . " You must introduce me to Mrs. Romney," she said 
 politely. " She was very nice to me over the telephone, and 
 I should like to know her " 
 
 He stared, then bowed. So she was no longer even jeal- 
 ous? "I shall be delighted," he said, "you have one or 
 two things in common. A rivederci."
 
 O 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 THE DUCHESS'S CONCERT 
 
 LD Mrs. Wauchope on the terrace of the Casino 
 at Aix-les-Bains, received, a fortnight later, the 
 following letter from her son: 
 
 " My dear little much missed Mother. Are you sitting 
 like a quaint olden-time lady in your silken gown and lace 
 cap among all the gilded vice of our beloved old Aix? Do 
 the wicked coquettes and cocottes stand and stare at you in 
 surprise at your survival, as they did last year ? And 'do you 
 love it all (the place, not the sinful people), as much as 
 ever? 
 
 " It is a heavy responsibility to send one's charming young 
 Mother all alone to Aix! And your going there puts me in 
 an awkward position. How explain that you, well known 
 to be goutless, and innocent of all the ills that other people 
 sport when bent on frivolity of furrin' watering places 
 insist on going to Aix for July because it amuses you? No 
 one ever does anything because it amuses him or her. Real 
 ladies go to Aix for gout, to Marienbad God bless him 
 for their digestion, to Paris for a change of air. I alone of 
 all young men have an old mother who goes to Aix on sprees 
 by herself! 
 
 " Lady Charles pities me, but she alone. By the way, 
 she sends you her love and best thanks for the cheque 
 (which you forgot to sign and for which I gave her an- 
 other), and will write soon. She says Sky Hill is doing 
 
 304
 
 THE DUCHESS'S CONCERT 305 
 
 very well, and I should think it might well be. Friday of 
 last week Esther Duchess gave a concert for it in her gilded 
 halls, and Cavaleone sang. She sang divinely, and looked 
 like a figure of tragedy as she did it. A marvellous evening. 
 You remember what I told you about her and that enchant- 
 ing rascal, Charles Cressage? Lady Charles told me, so I 
 know it to have been true. 
 
 " Well, trouble is brewing there. In the first place 
 Cressage looks ten years older and as black as your hat 
 (your best black velvet one), and in the second place he 
 has been having a violent affair with Maude Romney. Last 
 night as I was sitting humbly wedged between Lady Ascott 
 and the very richest recent American, in came Charles with 
 Maudie and Mary Spanning in one of her old frocks, and 
 Maudie was radiant, and so helpless and sweet as would 
 have done your heart good to see. She beamed, she drooped, 
 she waggled her eyelids, she went through all her little tricks 
 quite nicely and without a single misstep. 
 
 "They sat near me, and I watched them. I had not 
 seen my dear Beechy, as she lets me call her, for some time, 
 and when, after the Spanish baritone chap, she stepped out 
 on the stage, we all simply roared with delight. She is a 
 very wonderful girl, and, I believe, good. She wore black, 
 and looked more nearly plain than I had ever seen her. 
 
 " But she sang! She was billed for two songs, the dear 
 old ' Habanera ' with its nice old-fashioned deviltry, and 
 ' Fors e Lui.' I, of course versayed des larmes. It was 
 amazing. And then when we roared like starving beasts 
 for more she silenced us with a gesture and said, peering 
 down at us in our semi-obscurity, ' If Mr. Wauchope will 
 kindly h'accompany me ' 
 
 " And behold your little Lex. A proud moment for your
 
 306 BEECHY 
 
 son's mother's son! My old ladies heaved and loosened me 
 from my pen, and up I went straight into glory. She 
 thanked me so charmingly, and led me to the piano, and then 
 we talked a little, and discussed what I could play by heart, 
 and then she sang again. 
 
 " She sang Faure's ' Seranata Toscana,' and one of Landon 
 Ronald's songs, about a road, and dear old Gounod's dear 
 old ' Ceque je suis sans toi ' Ah, the way she sang that 
 made me sit up and wonder. I knew she was suffering 
 horribly and it hurt me so that I nearly stopped playing and 
 bade her be silent. 
 
 "The audience clapped till its hands nearly dropped off. 
 She sang a Neapolitan song, and then she stopped. 
 
 " Up went the lights and she made her pretty, half-shy 
 curtsies that the gallery gods so love. I, too, made beauti- 
 ful bows. And as I bowed I watched our old Lothario. 
 It is absurd to call Charles Cressage old, but compared to 
 her in her glorious youth, he with his five hundred great 
 loves seems a worn-out dotard. 
 
 (You will observe, Mutterchen, that I am gnawed by an 
 unhappy passion for her myself!) 
 
 "There he sat, Lothario, frowning savagely, his damned 
 good-looking face as white as your hat. (Your frivolous 
 one with the violets in it). And she, too, looked at him. 
 She would not sing again, and Wierzbicki played, accord- 
 ing to the programme. He played all over the place, as 
 usual no restraint; but he is great in his way and we 
 clapped. 
 
 " Then came Loria in magnificent voice ; truly the glory 
 of the century as far as voice is concerned, and she sang 
 like an angel. 
 
 " After her we made an awful rumpus, but she was going
 
 THE DUCHESS'S CONCERT 307 
 
 to sail for America the next day, and refused with her 
 quarter of a century old childlike gesture, expressing that 
 her poor little throat was tired. 
 
 " Just in the midst of the uproar in came a note for Cava- 
 leone. She gave it to me, and guess whom it was from! 
 Lady Charles! Surely the ways of the Great God Chance 
 are past finding out. 
 
 ' Will you not, my dear,' Lady Charles wrote, ' make 
 a tiny little speech for Sky Hill ? There are many million- 
 aires in your audience, and after singing to them, surely you 
 can ask what you like. The Duchess has telephoned me to 
 ask you to do this. 
 
 "'Your friend, 
 
 " ' CATHERINE CRESSAGE.' 
 
 " It was dramatic. 
 
 "The concert was over, the audience, now brightly 
 lighted by those distressing gilded candelabra the old Duke 
 was so proud of, chattered preparatory to rising. 
 
 "'Yes,' I said, 'do.' 
 
 " She nodded, drawing a deep breath. The rest you will 
 have seen and read in the papers. That's all I will tell 
 you. 
 
 " I struck a sharp chord on the piano to attract their at- 
 tention, and she went to the extreme edge of the stage. Be- 
 hind her hung an old yellow satin brocade curtain. The 
 effect of her, all black but her beautiful head and shoulders 
 and arms, must have been magnificent. 
 
 1 ' Ladies,' she began, in a frightened voice ' and gentle- 
 men.' 
 
 " There was a hush you might have seen. 
 
 ' I have just receive a letter from Lady Kitty Cressage ' 
 everyone sat up with a little jerk.
 
 308 BEECHY 
 
 11 Then she read the letter, if you please, every word of 
 it, in her funny accent, each word distinct. When she 
 paused there was a roar of laughter. Oh, for rank, human 
 emotionality commend me to an English after-dinner audi- 
 ence. She had not meant to make them laugh, and for a 
 moment stood looking puzzled. 
 
 " Then she went on ' About Sky '111 you all know what 
 it is. A beautiful house on a hill in Surrey where mothers 
 without without 'usbands may leave their babies while 
 they work, and come to stay whenever they can. Lady 
 Kitty has told me. The Society pays the tickets. And 
 there are so many mothers without 'usbands * 
 
 " Not an ' h ' 'did she have in the whole speech. Luckily 
 we were all of the very double cream of English society, or 
 we should have been shocked about the 'usbandless mothers. 
 A suburban audience could not have borne it. 
 
 " On she went, explaining just a little about the place 
 and a most sensible charity it seems to me and at last she 
 ended with the words, ' So now I will sing little French 
 song " A vingt ans " to remember you all of when you 
 had twenty years.' And then I'm blessed if she didn't trans- 
 late the dear old song from beginning to end, seeking each 
 word in a kind of exquisite hesitation as if fearing to wrong 
 the poet by the least departure from his meaning. 
 
 " When she had ceased speaking some idiot began to clap, 
 but was promptly snubbed into silence by his neighbours, and 
 she sang. You know the song, and you can imagine its 
 effect on her kind-hearted, rich, sentimental, overfed audi- 
 ence. At the words Comme on pleure a vingt ans (she 
 herself is just twenty-one) some one gave a loud and hideous 
 sniff, but no one laughed at it. 
 
 " And when she ceased, there was a long pause, and then
 
 THE DUCHESS'S CONCERT 309 
 
 came such a roar of applause that I hoped the gilded 
 chandelier might be shattered. (It wasn't.) 
 
 " They stormed and called her name and clapped for six 
 or seven minutes I should think, but she stood quite still, 
 her face as white as snow. 
 
 "Then she took up my hat, and went down and 
 handed it round, if you please, herself, quite simply, as if she 
 were a girl at a country fair. 
 
 " Old Schwarzmann was there, and Ludermeier, and each 
 of course wrote on a bit of paper and gave her that. Edgar 
 Wight followed suit, and several others, and the rest gave 
 money. If I told you what that blessed damozel picked up, 
 you would not believe me, but the papers were not far out 
 for once. 
 
 " It was a strange scene. She was serious no, more than 
 serious she was tragedy in person. She did not smile, her 
 mouth was very red and very set. She did not thank any- 
 one. Old Harmon said he felt that Charity herself had 
 come not to ask but to demand her share of the world's 
 wealth. 
 
 " And it is true that we were all impressed. 
 
 "When she came to Maudie Romney I watched closely. 
 Her face never changed, nor did she recognise Cressage be- 
 yond giving him the grave bow she gave all her acquaint- 
 ances. He put money into my hat, and so did Maudie, in 
 silence. When she had been all round the great room she 
 went to the Duchess, made her a little curtsey and gave 
 her the hat. It was full of gold, notes and twists of paper 
 promising gold and notes. 
 
 " The Duchess kissed her loudly on both cheeks. 
 
 " ' I think some one ought to kiss me,' I whispered in my 
 lonely heart, ' it's my hat.'
 
 3io BEECHY 
 
 " But no one kissed me. No one ever does but you, 
 Madame ma Mere, and I took my hat, squashed it, and 
 went to get a drink. . . . 
 
 " Thursday 
 
 " At this point, Mother dear, I was interrupted by a brute 
 of a telephone message; someone clamouring for an article 
 I had utterly forgotten, so I will now go on with my letter. 
 
 " An hour later came what to me, with my little eye, was 
 the clou of the whole thing. I, sought out if you please 
 by the lovely Beatrice what a magnificent name it is, 
 Beatrice Cavaleone ! was walking with her in a room about 
 half a mile from the concert-room. She was very silent and 
 suddenly out of her silence she said, ' Lex I am very 
 un'appy.' 
 
 "Lex: 'I know. I have seen.' 
 
 " The Prima Donna: ' I am jealous, Lex.' 
 
 "Lex: 'Jealousy is a flame of fire.' (She didn't know 
 that another great man had said it years ago.) 
 
 " The Prima Donna (very seriously) : ' It is the devil.' 
 
 " Lex: ' Why don't you fight ? ' 
 
 " The Prima Donna (without the usual pretence of non- 
 comprehension). 'I don't know how.' 
 
 " It was very pathetic, Mother. She told me, then, they 
 were to have been friends, (Charles Cressage her friend!) 
 and she was so happy. Then suddenly this yellow-haired 
 
 woman, this her nouns are forcible but unfit 
 
 for your ears. She hated Maudie Romney. She wished 
 Maudie would die of an apoplexy. She would like to kill 
 her. 
 
 "Lex: 'Why don't you? Why don't you kill her, I 
 mean ? ' 
 
 " The Prima Donna: ' I after all, she is a great lady
 
 3 
 
 and I I sold papers in Rome, in boy's clothes, ten years 
 ago ' 
 
 " We walked on, her hand on my arm, until we came 
 quite unexpectedly, for me (for I always get lost in that 
 awful gilded wilderness of a house) to the Conservatory. I 
 had a feeling that we'd find Maudie and her young man 
 there, and I'm blowed if we didn't. 
 
 " Under a palm, of course, a becoming light, a tinkling 
 fountain within earshot, and the rest. Trust Madame 
 Maudie to spy out all the obvious points for a situation! 
 Pretty she certainly is, though I know her head is stuffed 
 with pumpkin seeds instead of grey matter, and in her blue 
 frock she looked quite lovely, as she smiled up at him. 
 Cressage, poor devil, was enjoying himself. She was mak- 
 ing violent love to him and in spite of his evident misery 
 he couldn't help enjoying her homage. They didn't see us 
 and for a long time (it seemed) we stood and looked at 
 them. 
 
 " Then he took her hand and played with her naughty 
 charming fingers. ' Let us go back to my quiet little draw- 
 ing-room,' she said softly, ' and talk it over ' 
 
 " ' Hurry,' I said to my splendid lady, ' now's the mo- 
 ment/ 
 
 " ' What shall I say ? ' she whispered. 
 
 " ' Anything the truth but hurry.' 
 
 " Up she went to them as straight as if she had been an 
 arrow sent from an old oak bow. 
 
 " ' Carlo,' she said gently, in English, for the enemy's 
 benefit, ' Come I want you to take me home.' 
 
 " He rose, startled out of all his self-possession. 
 
 "'Home?' he said. 
 
 "'Yes.'
 
 312 BEECHY 
 
 " That was all. I hurried up to cover his retreat, he 
 stammered good-night to poor little Maudie, for whom I felt 
 a truly Christian sympathy, and off they went together. 
 
 " The Honourable Mrs. Bob does not lack courage. She 
 turned a very green colour that might have been green but 
 for her patina, and said to me, ' What a splendid couple, 
 aren't they? I like poor old Lady Kitty, but ' 
 
 " Rather fine in its way, wasn't it ? ... 
 
 "Your devoted son, 
 
 " LEX."
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 LORD CHARLES TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT His OTHER 
 
 LOVES 
 
 AD that, so far as Beechy is concerned, was the end 
 of the Honourable Mrs. Bob Romney, for the time 
 being. 
 
 A week later the Signora and Beechy went to Italy, and 
 ten days after that, Charles Cressage followed them. 
 
 The reconciliation had been complete. Beechy's apologies 
 as full-hearted as was her jealousy, she concealed nothing, 
 attempted no mitigations, made herself in her furious 
 humility, a worm in the dust. Cressage held her in his arms 
 which had ached for her and forgave everything, blaming 
 himself for things he had not 'done, loading his own 
 shoulders with quite imaginary faults. They kissed and 
 wept, kissed and wept again. His nerves had been as strung 
 up as hers, and in his doubts and fears about his age had 
 given him pangs of which she could not even guess. 
 
 " I am old," he said, " and you are divine youth incarnate. 
 Can you love a man of my age who has lived the life I 
 have?" 
 
 And she closed his mouth with kisses against such blas- 
 phemy. 
 
 " You look ill, ill," she wailed, " and it is my fault." 
 
 " It is mine for being a fool and letting you imagine 
 things " 
 
 And so on and so on. All will understand except those 
 
 313
 
 3H BEECHY 
 
 poor, excellent beings who have never made fools of them- 
 selves and then been forgiven. 
 
 They sat in the little sitting-room until far into the small 
 hours, and then Cressage, after half a hundred last kisses, 
 made her wake the Signora. 
 
 When the Signora, whose own nerves were not quite what 
 they might be under the strain of Beechy's misery, had 
 dressed and come into the sitting-room, Cressage rang the 
 bell. 
 
 A sleepy waiter appeared, and the Signora with an os- 
 tentatious yawn, bade him bring tea and bread and butter. 
 
 "I know it is very late," she said (he was an Italian), 
 "but I am extremely tired and must have some." As she 
 spoke she gave an angry glare at Cressage, a touch of Mac- 
 chiavellian realism that won for her, as the door closed, a 
 delighted hug from Beechy. 
 
 " Oh, you darling Signora Evelina," the girl cried, " what 
 an angel you are. How Aurelio will laugh." 
 
 " Aurelio is back ? " asked Cressage. 
 
 "Yes. He returned the day before yesterday. Oh, Sig- 
 nora Evelina, where are my presents and letters ? " 
 
 The via del Violino had written as one man, through the 
 elegant medium of young Simeone. It was grateful, the via, 
 and flattered, and delighted with its gifts. Above all was 
 the via proud of its great child. And it sent to her as a 
 souvenir and token of affection a large gilded vase on which, 
 in the midst of a bright blue medallion, a golden-haired 
 Juliet bent from the window to kiss a green-legged, black- 
 haired Romeo. 
 
 " Isn't it lovely?" Beechy asked, her hand on the mon- 
 strous thing, and Cressage admitted that it was. 
 
 Father Antonio had written, and Sister Ippolita, the
 
 LORD CH4RLES TELLS THE TRUTH 315 
 
 erudite nun, for the whole convent. The Sisters and the 
 orphans, children all of them in their powers of enjoyment, 
 loved the sweets. And dear Lucia was dead, and the dear 
 Reverend Mother was to have an operation for the cataract 
 and Beechy must pray for her. 
 
 " Do you pray for her?" asked Cressage, awkwardly. 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 He looked at her, his dark eyes full of the expression that 
 only his dead mother might have recognised. 
 
 "Pray for me, too," he said, still awkwardly. Her 
 eyes filled with tears. 
 
 " I do always." 
 
 He took the two women to the station the next day, gave 
 them books and papers, and then walked slowly back across 
 the park along Piccadilly to Dover Street. He was not 
 quite sure where he was going, but on he went along Bond 
 Street, Brook Street, and through Regent Street to Portland 
 Place. 
 
 At the corner of Langham Place he paused for a moment. 
 It was a dull, thunderous afternoon, and the broad street 
 was nearly empty. Lord Charles, five minutes later, rang at 
 his wife's door. 
 
 When, a fortnight later, he saw Beechy at her little villa 
 near Frascati, he told her about his call. 
 
 " She was very good to me," he said. 
 
 " So she was to me. But why did you go? " she asked. 
 
 She was sitting on the wall of the stone parapet below 
 which spread the sea-like waves of the Campagna. It was 
 a golden afternoon, but under the thick-leaved trees the 
 long path by which they had come from the house lay in 
 black shadow. 
 
 Cressage looke'd at her. "Well," he said, "I don't
 
 3i6 BEECHY 
 
 quite know. She is a good woman, you know, and I felt 
 good." 
 
 She nodded. " I understand. Ah si, capnisco io" 
 
 " I knew that that Maudie Romney would talk, and 
 and others and I wanted her, Kitty, to know. She 
 was," he added slowly, "pleased. She was also surprised." 
 
 " I don't see why she was surprised." 
 
 Beechy, who wore a white linen frock and a brown hat 
 covered with poppies, stuck out her lip. " Why was she 
 surprised ? " 
 
 He laughed. " Well I am a very good man these days, 
 ain't I? That's enough to surprise anyone. She sent you 
 her love." 
 
 "Thanks." 
 
 They were silent for a time. She was perfectly happy 
 in having him with her, he was perfectly happy in watching 
 her. She was so much her most true to type here in her 
 little old villa ; so thoroughly a Roman. Had he not known 
 Italian he could never so thoroughly have understood her, 
 but his familiarity with her language gave her that perfect 
 freedom from self-consciousness that alone permits one to be 
 one's real self. 
 
 In the villa at the end of the allee, the good Scarpia was 
 taking her siesta. In a little time the sun would set, and 
 there would come a simple dinner on the terrace under the 
 stairs and he and Beechy would stroll about together lis- 
 tening to the nightingales. 
 
 Then, at half-past ten, they would climb the high steps 
 to the house, the steps, the stone balustrades to which were 
 completely hidden by a mantle of ivy and going into the 
 bare yellow hall, light their candles and go to bed. 
 
 Cressage had seen his room, a small, clean, place bare of
 
 LORD CHARLES TELLS THE TRUTH 317 
 
 all but absolutely necessary things, and decorated by two old 
 portraits of some ancestors of the owners of the house; a 
 mincing lady in an insufficient blue velvet bodice and an old 
 man in a fur cap. There were two windows overlooking 
 the garden, and one opening on to a little court, across 
 which he had heard, while he dressed after his journey, 
 Beechy and Signora calling to each other from their ad- 
 joining rooms. 
 
 The Signora, thoroughly satisfied of his morality, cared, 
 he knew, not one button for conventionality, and he was 
 free to stay as long as he liked. 
 
 These things he thought of as he watched her perched 
 on the parapet. 
 
 "How is Snob?" she asked, suddenly. 
 
 " Well, thanks. A consistent person, Snob. He hated 
 me when she bought him, eight years ago, he growls at me 
 now." 
 
 They both laughed. 
 
 " I have my contract for America," she said. " I go in 
 October. I I shall miss you." 
 
 He nodded. " And I you. But somehow " he 
 
 paused and gazed for some time at the violet shadows that 
 were creeping up over the wonderful rolling plain below 
 them. 
 
 " She is right," he said at length, rising and going to her. 
 " You are reforming me ! " 
 
 She looked up into his serious eyes. "Nonsense! Re- 
 forming you from what?" 
 
 She was marvellous to him with her passion, her jealousy, 
 and her utter content in his friendship. Marvellous, until 
 he looked at the greater miracle she, or something in her, 
 had wrought in him.
 
 BEECHY 
 
 That her innocent mind was what it was he could, after 
 all, nearly understand, but that he, Charles Cressage, should 
 be happy in the mere comradeship of the woman he loved 
 more than he had loved any woman in his whole life seemed 
 little less than a miracle. 
 
 But this he could not tell her. He knew, moreover, that 
 the continuance of their happiness depended on him. As 
 long as he was content and at peace so would she be. But, 
 something told him, once he lost his self-control, her peace 
 would go too, and with a crash. For a moment as he 
 watched her he almost longed to see what would happen 
 and then with an angry shake of his head, he chased the 
 idea from his mind and peace fell over him again. 
 
 " My family," she began, presently, her dimple showing 
 as she smiled, " has cut me off." 
 
 "Aunt Augusta?" 
 
 " Aunt Augusta. Such a letter ! I wonder who told her. 
 She knows all about you and more than is true. She tells 
 me I am living in sin." 
 
 " Hell," muttered Cressage under his breath. 
 
 She burst out laughing. " Oh, the ugly word ! Poor 
 Aunt Augusta, she is a dreadful woman, but I am sorry 
 for her." 
 
 " Did you write to her? " 
 
 " No. She wouldn't have believed me. I wrote to poor 
 good old Uncle 'Enry. He believes me, and I told him the 
 truth. It will make him happier. Aurelio told him about 
 it, too. Aurelio visited them before we left." 
 
 " Aurelio is a good sort," said Cressage. 
 
 After a moment he said: "When we go back to Eng- 
 land, dearest, we must be careful. People do talk, you 
 know."
 
 LORD CHARLES TELLS THE TRUTH 319 
 
 " Yes. But I don't care," she returned tranquilly. 
 " Uncle 'Enry knows, and the Signora and Aurelio, and 
 Lady Charles, and Lady Cossie." 
 
 He made a face. He knew what old Cossie Bleck 
 thought. 
 
 " We must be careful, however," he repeated. " You 
 see, darling, I have such an infernally bad reputation, " 
 
 She turned half-way round and put her cheek against his 
 shoulder, thereby cocking her hat over her right ear and 
 squashing several poppies. 
 
 " Poor darling," she said in English, " what a shaaamel " 
 
 He kissed her. 
 
 " Here comes Aurelio." 
 
 Later, as they walked in the garden after dinner, they 
 returned to the subject. 
 
 " Were you really so very bad ? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't wish to boast, carissima," he returned, his arm 
 round her waist, " but I suppose I was." 
 
 "And now?" 
 
 " Now I am good. Am I not very good ? " he added 
 half seriously. 
 
 " Ah, but very." 
 
 After a long pause, she began again in a careful under- 
 tone. 
 
 " But it wasn't real love? " 
 
 Poor old question. And should he tell the usual poor 
 old lie? 
 
 He had told it many times, but now it stuck in his throat. 
 
 " Yes," he said gravely, " I suppose so. There are 
 more kinds of love than there are days in a man's life, be- 
 loved. And I was always sincere, thank God. Only 
 this is different, and this is the best of all."
 
 320 BEECHY 
 
 She was content with his answer, for she realised its truth, 
 though she did not understand it. 
 
 "The best of all," she repeated, leaning against his 
 shoulders. 
 
 ** Yes. You see, if I were free, you are the only 
 woman in the world to whom I would give my name, and 
 whom I should wish to be " 
 
 " The mother of your children," she finished for him, 
 quietly. " I understand, dearest." 
 
 "Yes I told Kitty that, and she was glad. She is a 
 very good woman, Kitty. If it were not absolutely against 
 her belief she would divorce me, I know, so that I might 
 marry you. But she doesn't believe in divorce." 
 
 Beechy smiled with the superiority of those to whom that 
 belief is as natural as their belief in the impossibility of 
 adding a cubit to the stature. 
 
 " Of course there is no divorce," she said carelessly. 
 
 " Then even if she had? " he asked, standing still. 
 
 She shrugged her shawled shoulders. 
 
 " My dear, I couldn't. The church doesn't admit it." 
 
 Her voice was perfectly conclusive, but a sudden curi- 
 osity seized him. 
 
 " If I were not the saint I am " 
 
 After a few seconds she answered him. 
 
 " Of course I would have," she said, simply, " but it 
 would have been mortal sin." 
 
 Then it was her actual belief he knew, and somehow it 
 troubled him. Mortal sin which she would have committed, 
 " of course," for him. 
 
 He kissed her hand. 
 
 " Give me the rose in your breast," he said, and she 
 obeyed him. " I shall keep this/' he said.
 
 LORD CHARLES TELLS THE TRUTH 321 
 
 He was, he quite sincerely felt, a very good man indeed 
 that evening. He was also a wonderfully happy man. 
 
 After he was in bed he could hear her merry laughter 
 and chatter with the faithful Scarpia. In the darkness, he 
 kissed the rose.
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 Two LETTERS 
 
 EA.RLY in October Cavaleone went to New York 
 where she was engaged at the Metropolitan Opera 
 House for the winter season. The summer and the 
 early autumn had been perfectly happy for her. She and 
 the Scarpia stayed at the villa until the last of September, 
 Cressage remaining with them until the beginning of the 
 month. 
 
 People have been said to be possessed of a devil. Surely 
 at that time Charles Cressage must have been possessed of 
 an angel. 
 
 As the long warm days passed, he passed through a phase 
 of self-admiration and amazement into one of quiet, happy 
 taking for granted of his own peace of mind. They sat by 
 the hour together in the cool old house in the neglected, 
 romantic garden with its beautiful ilex-trees; she prac- 
 tised every day, she embroidered she was making an altar 
 cloth, all crimson and gold, for the convent in the cool of 
 the evening they walked. 
 
 They were together from early in the morning till the 
 early good-night hour, and he had never been so happy in 
 his life. 
 
 The peasants thereabouts grew well-used to the sight of 
 the beautiful Signore forestiere who walked about with the 
 beautiful cantatrice, and they liked him, for Cressage was 
 
 322
 
 TWO LETTERS 323 
 
 the soul of idle good nature and he had been given a smile 
 that seemed to mean all sorts of wonderful things. 
 
 Beechy went to mass often, but every afternoon she went 
 to the old church in the village to sit in the purple and 
 gold from the west window, and Cressage went with her. 
 
 " I like sitting in the wonderful colour," she said, " it 
 makes me feel like an empress." 
 
 And as she sat there in her white dress, her radiant eyes 
 looking at the altar more in friendly comfort than adora- 
 tion, she seemed to him something infinitely higher and 
 more beautiful than any empress who ever lived. 
 
 Once, in forgetfulness, she held her hand, wet with 
 blessed water, out to him at the church door as they went in. 
 
 Then as she knelt, he looked shyly at his finger tips on 
 which the water still glistened. He wished, ah, how he 
 wished, that he was young and innocent and an unques- 
 tioning believer in the beautiful old religion that taught her 
 to do the exquisite superstitious things he found so charm- 
 ing. 
 
 She lost a brooch and lit a candle before a small figure of 
 St. Anthony, gaily muttering prayers as she did it. When 
 she found the brooch another candle must be offered, and 
 she spoke of it as of a visit to a kind old thing of an uncle, 
 rather a bore but so good to one that one mustn't be un- 
 grateful. 
 
 And it pleased her to carry armfuls of flowers to the 
 Madonna. 
 
 These things she did, not over-reverently perhaps, but 
 with a friendly grace that enchanted him. Her ignorance 
 of religious matters was great, but her church was to her 
 an integral part of life, not an affair of Sunday mornings 
 and dull duties.
 
 324 BEECHY 
 
 They had visitors, too, at the villa. 
 
 One day, a splendid motor appeared at the gates just as 
 Beechy and Cressage were going for a walk. 
 
 "La Signorina Cavaleone? " A tall well-dressed young 
 man sprang out, smiling at Beechy with eyes very like her 
 own. 
 
 "Yes, I am she " 
 
 " Then, bella mia cugina," he returned, kissing her hand, 
 " let me introduce myself. I am your cousin Leopoldo 
 Cavaleone your most humble servant." 
 
 He was the son of her old enemy and benefactor, Prince 
 Cavaleone, who had died some months before. And he 
 was delighted to find his famous relation so young and 
 beautiful. 
 
 As soon as she began to earn money with her voice 
 Beechy had written to the old prince thanking him for his 
 help and returning his last cheque. To this communica- 
 tion he had paid no heed, but the cheques had ceased at 
 once. 
 
 Dino, the young prince, spoke of this, and Beechy told 
 him, quite without bitterness, that she was very glad to need 
 no more assistance from her father's people. The young 
 man was very charming in his way, regretted his father's 
 obstinacy about " Cousin Giulio's " marriage, and declared 
 that he himself was almost perfectly sure he could remember 
 Beechy's mother whom he had seen when sent to play with 
 the del Grillo children. 
 
 " I seem to remember a very pretty, fair young lady," 
 he said earnestly. 
 
 He was a nice boy, with a passion for " lo sport " and for 
 London-made clothes, and as he was deeply in love with a 
 lady old enough to be his mother and about whom all sorts
 
 TWO LETTERS 325 
 
 of the most awful tales " all untrue " were toldj Beechy 
 thoroughly enjoyed him. 
 
 One day he asked her about Cressage. 
 
 "Your fidanzato?" 
 
 " No. He is married and I know his wife. But I love 
 him more than anyone in the world," she answered, 
 serenely. He believed her to be Cressage's mistress, but 
 he did not care at all, and indeed greatly admired the 
 older man and asked him for his bootmaker's address, 
 
 A happy month! 
 
 One day all the orphans were brought out in a tramcar 
 that Beechy chartered. Forty-three little orphans, their 
 faces shiny with soap, and three nuns to guard them, and 
 Father Antonio to guard the nuns. They had their dinner 
 at one o'clock in the garden, and such a dinner as it was! 
 
 After it two orphans were sick under a tree, but they 
 were glad they had eaten so much, nevertheless. 
 
 Father Antonio, very old and frail now, sat in a comfort- 
 able chair in a cool place, and Beechy herself waited on him. 
 It was pretty to see her, full of anxious hospitality for 
 everyone, bent with all her mind on making the day happy 
 for them all. 
 
 The culmination of joy was when the ices came, beauti- 
 ful vanilla and raspberry ices in red glasses, and each orphan 
 carried home her glass to drink her milk from in the future. 
 
 When they were tired of walking about and picking 
 flowers, Beechy sang. She sang her very best, standing 
 seriously by the piano, and her programme had been care- 
 fully selected. She sang old religious songs her accompanist 
 had found for her, lovely, simple things over which the 
 orphans' eyes grew round and solemn. The three Sisters 
 sat, their heads bent over their folded hands and listened
 
 326 BEECHY 
 
 with delight, for it was pious music and, as such, not sinful. 
 
 Cressage was deeply touched by the whole day. Never 
 before had he seen Beechy so tender and gentle, never had 
 her beautiful voice seemed so exquisite. 
 
 When they had gone, laden with flowers, back across the 
 Campagna in their tram to Rome, he drew her into his 
 arms and held her there without kissing her. 
 
 " My dear," he said. That was all, but she understood. 
 
 And when his last day there came, they parted almost 
 as simply. 
 
 " Good-bye, my dearest," he said, " until the last of Sep. 
 tember." 
 
 " Good-bye, my Carlo 
 
 When he had gone she went up the steep hill to the 
 church and sat there for a long time thinking about him. 
 They met again in London just before she sailed. She was 
 to be away until March, five months, but the charm of the 
 summer was still on them both, and they parted calmly 
 enough. 
 
 " Remember," she said, at the station, " if you cease to 
 love me, I die." 
 
 "When I cease to love you I shall be dead," he re- 
 turned seriously. 
 
 Poor Beechy, she was the worst of sailors and for four 
 days she lay moaning in her bed, forgetful of everything in 
 the world but her own misery. 
 
 The Signora, on the contrary, defied the waves and en- 
 joyed the trip and the mystery it pleased her to maintain 
 about Beechy when questioned by the curious. 
 
 No one, not even the representative of the New York 
 World, succeeded in getting any information from the new 
 soprano's companion. Indeed, it was always a sorry day for
 
 TWO LETTERS 327 
 
 a reporter when Beechy was out or indisposed to see them. 
 For the Signora hated reporters, and was abominably rude 
 to them always. 
 
 New York! How they loathed it, the three Italians. 
 
 They had learned to love London, for London has its 
 own wonderful atmosphere and its beautiful buildings and 
 its air of being a city with a history second only to that of 
 Rome. 
 
 But New York! The vaunted blue sky, with its sharp- 
 ness and coldness, its narrow vaults of streets, its pitifully 
 hideous houses and its neglected streets a horrible city, 
 void of history, of charm, of romance, good only for the 
 rapid accumulation of dollars. The pride of its marvellous 
 growth was not theirs, and that was the trouble. It did 
 not matter to Beechy that the city had grown like Jacob's 
 bean-stalk. The results of its growth remained the same 
 and it chilled and depressed her and she hated it. Her suc- 
 cess, we all know, was phenomenal. The hateful clear air 
 was good for her voice, and she had never sung better, and 
 the American public is generous. 
 
 She was the darling of it and the flamboyant press all 
 the season, and for singing in one or two of the Royal 
 Palaces that masquerade, in Fifth Avenue, as private houses, 
 she made several small fortunes. 
 
 At Christmas she was taken South in a private car, and 
 at Palm Beach she had the honour of refusing two mil- 
 lionaires and a billionaire from Chicago, whose hobby was 
 the collecting of souvenirs of fair frailties who had been the 
 playthings of kings. A nice man, this pork-packing per- 
 son, as New Yorkers called him (though he had never had 
 anything to do with pigs in his life, and had made his money 
 on the stock exchange), and when Beechy refused him, went
 
 328 BEECHY 
 
 away leaving her as a souvenir a fan that had belonged to 
 an old favourite, Madame de Pompadour. 
 
 This fan she used in " Manon." 
 
 Her youth, her beauty, her innate gaiety, charmed every- 
 body. Even the women liked her, for American women are 
 kinder than any others to other women. Is it because they 
 are very sure of their own charms? Never mind, the fact 
 remains and is pretty to observe. In February Beechy took 
 cold and was ill for a week, after which she was taken to 
 Lakewood. 
 
 Cressage had written frequently, and he wrote charming, 
 expansive letters. He missed her horribly, he adored her, 
 he dreamed of her. He had the miniature she had sent him 
 on a chain and wore it round his neck. 
 
 Did she wear his little ring? 
 
 She did. It was, curiously enough, the only ring she 
 had ever owned, an old one that had belonged to his mother, 
 a very fine, small ruby, set in gold tiger's claws. 
 
 Her letters to him were both rarer and shorter. Italian 
 though she was, she could not express herself so well as 
 he, and the sight of her own words on paper made her shy. 
 She sent him no notices of her successes, but told him 
 roundly: "Last night I made a huge success. They say no 
 one ever sang ' Manon ' as I do because my voice is so fresh 
 as well as well trained. I have beautiful costumes and 
 look lovely in them." 
 
 Another time she wrote him : " I hardly could believe 
 last night that it was my voice I heard Giulietta singing, 
 
 it was so beautiful " He used to smile over her letters 
 
 sometimes. 
 
 One morning at Lakewood she received her home mail 
 and took it into the woods to read. It was a beautiful
 
 TWO LETTERS 329 
 
 mild day, snowless and sunny. She sat down on a sheltered 
 bench and looked through her budget. No letter from 
 Charles! 
 
 It was ten days since she had heard from him, and 
 she had been sure that she would have a letter to-day. 
 
 But now. A dozen or so perfectly indifferent communi- 
 cations, and then one from Lady Charles. 
 
 Beechy's heart stopped for a second. He was ill or 
 dead. 
 
 " My dear Beatrice," the eccentric kind woman wrote, 
 " just a line to ask you when are you coming back ? No 
 one seems to know. I have not seen Charles for some time 
 and as you know I never write to him. When you do come 
 I want you to visit me. It will be a good way of stopping 
 a little malicious chatter I have heard of late, and besides 
 I want to see you and I want you to see Sky Hill. So glad 
 for all your success. 
 
 "Yours sincerely, 
 " CATHERINE CRESSAGE." 
 
 Beechy read the letter twice. Something was wrong. 
 What did Lady Charles mean ? And no letter from Charles. 
 
 After a long pause, she opened the next letter, which was 
 typewritten. 
 
 " If you care for Charles Cressage," it said, " you had 
 better come back and look after him. He is making a fool 
 of himself over Lady Shallop, the new beauty. 
 
 " X. Y. Z."
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CAPE 
 
 THAT bulwark of American society, Town Topics, 
 gave Beechy her next blow. It is easy to say 
 " despise anonymous letters," but Beechy was madly 
 in love, wise enough to realise that Cressage's position re- 
 garding her was, in spite of his beautiful acceptance of it, 
 an anomalous one, and she was in America and he in 
 England. 
 
 Her first act after long reflection over the two letters, 
 was, in spite of her furious jealousy, one of trust in him. 
 She had been, she said to herself, an idiot over Mrs. Bob 
 Romney, she would trust him still. She cabled to him, 
 using a little code they had drawn up together, " Do you 
 still love me ? " 
 
 How they had laughed over the absurdity of putting 
 such a useless phrase into their code! 
 
 Now she used it, and waited. 
 
 His answer, not in code, was simply, " Goose, of 
 course ! " She read it a thousand times. Was it the 
 expression of a bored man trying to put off an evil day 
 of explanation, or was it a tender jest at her absurdity in 
 doubting him? Town Topics seemed to answer her ques- 
 tion. 
 
 " The beautiful Lady Shallop," it said, " who was in 
 New York and Boston last winter, has taken a house in 
 
 33
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CAPE 331 
 
 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, for the season. Young 
 Alfred Paradyne, son of the copper king, seems to have 
 recovered from his infatuation for this lovely red-headed 
 Irish woman, for he is reported to be engaged to a Rhode 
 Island girl of no particular position. But the fair Edith 
 never lacks adoration, and I am told by a friend in London 
 that her latest victim is no other than a certain noble Lord 
 whose horse won the Oaks three years ago, and whose 
 eccentric but charitable wife is the last of a historic house 
 whose name died out with her father. The noble Lord 
 in question is seen everywhere in close attendance on Lady 
 Shallop, and he makes no more effort to conceal this pas- 
 sion than he has to conceal the others, the number and 
 variety of which have given to him the reputation of be- 
 ing the greatest Lothario in England." 
 
 That evening Beechy saw her throat specialist. 
 
 She was burning with fever, her eyes hollow and the 
 peculiar baby look came to her face that suffering always 
 brought to it. 
 
 " I am ill," she said. " I am worse." 
 
 " Your throat," he answered, " is not worse." 
 
 " No, but I I am in trouble," she said, her hands 
 clasped, " I must go home. You must give me a certifi- 
 cate " 
 
 This he very gently refused to do, for she was not ill 
 enough to justify it. Her contract was up in three weeks, 
 but she could not wait. All night she paced up and down 
 her room, the distracted Signora sitting in tears outside 
 her door. And in the morning she was ill. 
 
 Her physician wrote out the statement that in his opin- 
 ion she would be unfit for work for two months. 
 
 The opera management was very kind, although very
 
 332 BEECHY 
 
 sad, and the next day Beechy sailed, a silent, sombre, 
 pale woman, who sat staring by the hour at the sea, the 
 Signora and Aurelio guarding her against intrusion. 
 
 At Euston she bade them good-bye. They were to do 
 whatever they liked for a week, except tell that she was in 
 England. She would write to Aurelio. They were not 
 to come to see her. 
 
 Nearly in tears they obeyed. They knew, poor souls, 
 only that something had happened. Aurelio went to the 
 address he had given her, the Signora to stop with a friend 
 near Leicester Square. They obeyed her because they must, 
 but they were heart-broken, the faithful friends. 
 
 They knew of her plans only that she was going to stay 
 in town, and that she would write within a week. 
 
 She kissed them both, pulled down her thick veil and 
 took a hansom. Her plans were all made and she carried 
 them out with that perfection of detail that made her the 
 artist she was. 
 
 She went to a private hotel near Russell Square, three 
 houses painted the colour of bullock's blood, that had been 
 turned into one, " Edinburgh House." 
 
 She engaged two back rooms high up, and gave her name 
 as Mrs. Craddock, a name she had seen on a sign on her 
 way from Euston. 
 
 She told her landlady that she was companion to a lady 
 in the West End, who had to get her rooms out of the 
 house for a week, as she had guests coming, but that she, 
 Mrs. Craddock, was to go to Mrs. Green's every morn- 
 ing, and to stay until after the dinner guests had left. 
 " She entertains a good deal," she added. 
 
 Mrs. Toomey watched her keenly. " You 'ave no lug- 
 gage, ma'am ? " she asked.
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CAPE 333 
 
 Beechy smiled. "No, I shall of course dress 
 there." 
 
 She had silver bottles and brushes, etc., and her trav- 
 elling dress was new and smart. 
 
 Mrs. Toomey gradually softened. Not that the woman 
 altogether believed her new lodger's story, but she looked 
 thoroughly respectable, her purse was full of gold, and in 
 case she went out one fine day and never came back 
 there were the bottles and brushes instead of her three 
 pounds. 
 
 Beechy did not go out that day. It was cold and rainy, 
 and she was tired out. 
 
 But on Monday she left the house at about ten and went 
 to Clarkson's, where she bought a grey wig. 
 
 The wig on her head, she bought a cheap grey hat and 
 a long blue golf-cape. In the dressing-room of a cheap 
 hotel where she lunched, she made up; a very little, but 
 enough to change her face, combined with the wig 
 and her hat and cape, to prevent any one from recognis- 
 ing her in a casual meeting. 
 
 It all sounds very far-fetched and impossible, but far- 
 fetched things are often the easiest, and in certain natures 
 the most natural in certain circumstances. 
 
 Every morning that week, then, a well-dressed young 
 woman with a small bag went into one of the dressing- 
 rooms at Victoria station and a few minutes later a badly 
 dressed elderly person emerged with the same bag. 
 
 No one ever noticed her goings or comings. Luck 
 was on her side and no power on earth is so strong as 
 luck. 
 
 For days, then, she watched Charles Cressage, and, thanks 
 to his fondness for walking, it was fairly easy. If he took
 
 334 BEECHY 
 
 a cab she took another, and once she even took a motor 
 and followed him as far as Knightsbridge. 
 
 For three days she drew a blank. He went as usual 
 to his clubs; to see his sister, Mrs. Merrodowne. He dined 
 at different houses, he lunched once at the Bridport's and 
 once at a house in Grosvenor Square. But never once did 
 he go to Number 61 Chester Street. 
 
 Beechy had two pictures of Lady Shallop, one cut from 
 the Sketch, one from Black and White, and she knew that 
 she would recognise her if she saw her. 
 
 But Lady Shallop was not among the ladies she saw get 
 out of their carriages at the houses he entered at lunch 
 or dinner-time. 
 
 On the other hand he was a very unpunctual man, so 
 after the first evening she walked about and waited until 
 the parties were over, thus seeing the last of the guests 
 leave. He did not, she could be fairly sure, see Lady Shal- 
 lop during those first days. 
 
 Her spirits rose and she began to hope again. 
 
 She was not in the least ashamed of what she was do- 
 ing. The disguise, the travesty, would have amused her 
 had she been in a light mood, and to her mind she was 
 merely exercising her rights in watching Cressage. He was 
 hers and she was fighting for him. 
 
 But she must be sure. She could not make herself 
 ridiculous a third time. 
 
 Once or twice a policeman advised her to go on her 
 way, but her answers were ready and policemen are hu- 
 man. Once Lord Charles turned sharply as he went 
 up the steps of his club and looked her full in the 
 face. 
 
 For a moment she thought he recognised her, but he
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CAPE 335 
 
 was busy with his thoughts and had looked through, not 
 at her. 
 
 Thursday evening, at about seven, she lost him. She 
 was waiting outside his door and as his motor was not 
 there she half-hoped he would be staying in as he often did, 
 dining in his rooms. 
 
 Suddenly he came out, and at that moment a hansom 
 rattled round the corner. 
 
 He jumped in and was off. Two more hansoms fol- 
 lowed, but both had fares, and Beechy was left alone in 
 the rain. 
 
 After a moment's acute misery she walked until she found 
 a cab and gave the address: 
 
 " 61 Chester Street, Belgrave Square." 
 
 She was sure that he had gone there, and she was right. 
 The house was a small one with very fresh paint. As they 
 reached it a cab disappeared into the square, his cab, she 
 was sure. She dismissed her own and going down into 
 the area of Number 59, sat down on the steps and 
 waited. 
 
 The street was quiet that night. At the far end of it 
 an awning indicated a festivity of some kind, but here 
 where Beechy sat, all was quiet. 
 
 Huddled in her cape she sat, the world's latest great 
 soprano, her head on her knees, despair tearing at her 
 heart. 
 
 He had looked so splendid as he left his door, his coat 
 opening on his gleaming shirt-front. She had caught the 
 scent of his gardenia as he passed her. 
 
 It seemed, as she waited in the cold damp, as if the last 
 year was a dream, that she had never been warm and dry 
 and full of comfortable food. That this, sitting in the
 
 336 BEECHY 
 
 darkness, shivering and miserable, was her share of the 
 world. 
 
 And in that house he was sitting, laughing and talk- 
 ing, and crinkling his eyes at the beautiful Irishwoman he 
 loved. 
 
 The indignity of her spying on him, as I have said, did 
 not occur to her. To her primitive soul, she was fighting 
 for that which was hers. But her misery was intense. 
 
 Time passed; cabs and motors went by carrying people 
 who, because they were warm and satisfied, seemed to her 
 to be of a necessity happy. 
 
 She had not long to wait. At about half-past nine a 
 motor stopped at the door. It was his. 
 
 The chauffeur rang the bell and then waited. 
 
 " 'Ello, my dear," he said when the door opened, " will 
 you tell my boss we're 'ere ? " 
 
 After a moment filled in by a giggle, he went on, " We're 
 going to a music 'all, I take it? Too late for a play! " 
 
 Beechy crept close under the steps. 
 
 " You're going to the Empire," the parlour-maid said, 
 " to see the noo bally ! " 
 
 Then after another giggle, the door was closed. 
 
 A few minutes later she was walking rapidly towards 
 Lower Belgrave Street, where she took a cab off the stand. 
 
 " The Empire." 
 
 Lord Charles and his friends had a box, and as they 
 looked down at the audience Beechy watched them from 
 her place in the gallery. 
 
 Yes, Lady Shallop was beautiful with her red head and 
 her white skin and her clean cut, unpencilled black brows. 
 She kept her furred velvet cloak round her, but her shoul- 
 ders were bare and on it flashed diamonds.
 
 THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE CAPE 337 
 
 The third member of the party was a little old man in 
 a brown wig, who seemed to be deaf, for when Lady 
 Shallop spoke to him she made a shell of her hand and spoke 
 through it. 
 
 Beechy scorned him as passionately as she hated her 
 rival, for was he not the husband, and did he not go to 
 sleep and let Charles Cressage whisper, whisper to his 
 wife? 
 
 As a matter of fact Sir George Shallop was on his way 
 home from Ceylon, where he had been looking after a 
 rubber plantation he had there, and the old man was a 
 great uncle of Lady Shallop's, dragged away from the com- 
 forts of home at the last moment that evening to chaperone 
 his lovely niece. 
 
 Cressage looked as he had looked ever since Beechy had 
 been following him, ill, but he was obviously keenly in- 
 terested in Lady Shallop. 
 
 Beechy knew the signs, his nervous pulling of his mous- 
 tache, his quick frowns, his way of leaning towards her 
 when he spoke. 
 
 The ballet was beautiful and Genee danced wonderfully, 
 but neither Lord Charles nor his charmer paid the least 
 attention to the stage. 
 
 Beechy watched, watched, watched. One of her neigh- 
 bours, a young man who smelt of white rose scent, caught 
 sight of her face and stared hard, but she did not see him. 
 
 It was true, then, Charles Cressage no longer loved her, 
 and the world had come to an end.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 "CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP is EVIL" 
 
 FOR two days more the unconscious Cressage was 
 followed by the woman in the blue cape. And 
 during those two days she twice saw him go to the 
 house in Chester Street. Once she saw him go to the 
 Carlton at tea-time, and a few minutes later Lady Shallop 
 came in smiling, beautifully dressed, radiating self-satisfac- 
 tion and happiness. 
 
 Then Mrs. Toomey lost her strange lodger, and Sig- 
 norina Cavaleone, accompanied by her companion and her 
 secretary, reappeared at the hotel where they had lived the 
 year before. 
 
 Beechy said nothing to her two friends about where she 
 had been, and they asked no questions. 
 
 She looked desperately ill and was extremely silent, but 
 she was very gentle, and spoke calmly, asking Aurelio 
 to telephone to her accompanist to come as usual every 
 morning. The next day she went with the Signora to 
 Redfern's to order clothes and made all the other arrange- 
 ments for her opera season. 
 
 " I suppose," the Signora ventured timidly as they dined 
 that first evening, " that the Signer Lord " 
 
 "Lord Charles is in Paris," answered Beechy, and the 
 matter dropped. 
 
 This was true. She herself had seen him start, the day 
 
 338
 
 "CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP IS EVIL" 339 
 
 before. When his train was well out of the station she 
 drove boldly up to Lady Shallop's door. 
 
 " 'Er Ladyship is out of town," said the parlour-maid 
 not very uncivilly considering the blue cape. 
 
 " Ah, yes to Paris, then " 
 
 " 'Ow do you know?" returned the girl curiously, but 
 the woman in the blue cape turned without a word and 
 got into her hansom. 
 
 Beechy, an hour or two later, clad in her dark travelling 
 dress and a smart new hat, was walking" out of Victoria 
 Station, her bag in her hand, when she ran into Lady 
 Charles Cressage. 
 
 " You ! " The elder woman blinked anxiously at her, 
 forgetting to shake hands. " I thought you were still in 
 America " 
 
 " I have just got back," the girl answered, " and you 
 you are well? " 
 
 Lady Charles, whose short skirt and pork-pie hat was 
 exciting considerable amusement in the bosoms of two ladies 
 from Ealing passing at that moment, flushed a sudden, ugly 
 brick-red. " Well, no. I have been worried to death 
 listen, where are you going now ? " 
 
 Beechy told her that she was on her way to pick up 
 the Signora Scarpia near Leicester Square. 
 
 " Come with me first, I I want to talk to you that is, 
 I think I ought " 
 
 " Yes, I'll come with you. Have you a cab ? " 
 
 The flustered courtesy peeress, as she had explained to 
 Beechy she was, forgot for a moment and then remarked 
 that she had come in her motor. 
 
 " I've been seeing one of my cousins off. Oh, dear me, 
 and I've lost Snob."
 
 340 BEECHY 
 
 After a short search Snob was found peacefully and 
 sensibly waiting for them at the motor's door, and the 
 two women got In. 
 
 " Just drive to the Park, Auguste, round and round 
 till I tell you to stop." 
 
 Then she turned to Beechy. "When did you hear from 
 Charles ? " she asked as if she were firing a pistol into the 
 girl's face. 
 
 " It is some time ago.'* 
 
 " I thought so. Oh, the wretch, the villain." 
 
 The poor lady's light, green eyes filled with tears, be- 
 hind which they looked like candied grapes. 
 
 " I don't know how to tell you," she said, " but I feel that 
 I must." 
 
 " I know," answered Beechy stonily. 
 
 Lady Charles peered at her. " Of course you do, you 
 poor child, and that's why you look like that." 
 
 There was a short silence, and then Beechy asked her 
 friend to tell her all about it. " I know only the main 
 fact and her name," she explained. 
 
 Lady Charles blew her nose with a loud noise and gave 
 her skirt an upward jerk as if it were trousers and she afraid 
 of springing their knees. 
 
 " To make you understand I must go back a long way. 
 He was always like that. Always sincere, mind you, that's 
 his one good quality, but as unstable as water. It it 
 nearly killed me at first. When he asked me to marry him 
 I was nearly mad with joy. I was poor then, you know, 
 and my two brothers were alive, and the second one mar- 
 ried. Of course no one thought I'd ever have the money. 
 He married me because he liked the stock. He was al- 
 ways fond of horses and that's how he put it. And I
 
 "CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP IS EVIL" 341 
 
 'didn't so much mind his not loving me. I was so ugly 
 I of course couldn't expect that. He fell in love with a 
 girl who was visiting me, and as he behaved very well and 
 went to the Cape to get away from her I was as kind as 
 I knew how to be, I wasn't angry. But before he reached 
 the Cape he was in love with the wife of an officer going 
 out to join her husband, and oh, there was a disgraceful 
 row and the husband insulted Charles at the club they 
 had some kind of a duel, it is said, but no one knows. He 
 was away for a year and he no sooner set foot in England 
 than he fell in love with Lizzie Lightfoot, a most awful 
 woman. She came to me a disgusting affair, and then 
 I was angry. 
 
 " The others, I have forgotten their very names came 
 thick on the heels of each other and we separated. I 
 couldn't stand it. Of late years I have lived very quietly. 
 I never go out at night on account of my lungs, so I don't 
 know much of his doings. When you appeared you 
 know, I did my best. But I failed. He was quite won- 
 derful for a time, you had a very good influence on him, 
 my dear," she added kindly, laying her hand on Beechy's. 
 " He seemed marvellously changed, and told me that he 
 thought he was. He came to see me one day " 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 " And when he left you at your villa he wrote to me just 
 to say that you were an angel and he a saint. Poor 
 Charles! I began really to have a faint hope that he 
 might turn over a new leaf. And even now I believe that 
 if he could have married you it might have lasted how- 
 ever, he couldn't, and you went away, and then this 
 happened. 
 
 " She is very pretty and apparently mad about him. She's
 
 342 BEECHY 
 
 a lady by birth, but her birth occurred some years ago. 
 Her husband is a ninny. She has the money. Ten days 
 ago, just after I wrote to you, I sent for him. We always 
 see each other if one of us asks the other. 
 
 " He came, and I asked him. He was furious with 
 me raged about like a wild man, but I didn't mind that, 
 of course. He didn't deny anything. He never does. She 
 has evidently driven him nearly mad, that's her way. 
 He was very strange about you. Refused to say one word 
 about you. I wasn't sure you had not quarrelled. I asked 
 him, but he only stamped about and swore to himself. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, I am so ashamed of him ! " 
 
 She had, poor awkward lady, too much of that real 
 tact that comes from the heart to tell the girl that she 
 pitied her, and Beechy accepted her kiss gratefully. 
 
 Somehow Lady Charles's grief helped her. She had felt 
 so utterly alone in the world, so poor and outcast, that 
 it was balm to feel that this good woman's sympathy 
 brought a certain amount of relaxation to her strained, 
 taut mind. 
 
 " You are good," she said, and it was the first time 
 for a week that she had had a thought for any creature 
 under the sun beside herself. 
 
 The motor glided silently along, the trees wore the queer 
 dark damp look they have just before the first leaves come. 
 It was going to be spring. 
 
 " Are you going to see him ? " asked Lady Charles, sud- 
 denly. 
 
 Beechy looked at her as if her eyes were blurred by sleep, 
 blinking and frowning. 
 
 " See him? I don't know. I had not got to that yet. 
 He is in Paris now "
 
 "CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP IS EVIL" 343 
 
 After a while Lady Charles gave the chauffeur the ad- 
 dress of the Signora's friend near Leicester Square. 
 
 "Will you come to see me, Beatrice? " 
 
 " I I will write to you. And you will not tell him 
 you have seen me." 
 
 " I shall not see him again," answered her friend, sud- 
 denly grim. 
 
 "And if / see him " Beechy broke off short. 
 
 Lady Charles kissed her as they parted, but when 
 Beechy had watched the motor disappear into the gather- 
 ing fog, she turned away from the house and went to the 
 little French Church in Leicester Street. 
 
 Before an altar to the Madonna she knelt, her eyes 
 closed, her hands clenched on her breast. 
 
 " Oh, Madonna," she prayed rapidly, " help me, help 
 me, help me. He has left me and I am dying. He no 
 
 longer loves me, and he loves her " she broke off short, 
 
 for she had nearly cursed that other woman, here in a holy 
 place. " It will kill me, for I cannot live without him. 
 But help me to be good. Help me to forgive him, as Lady 
 Charles does. Help me to be good, like Lady Charles. 
 Oh, Mary, dear, Christ's Mother, take away this awful 
 feeling in my head, and make me stop thinking. Make me 
 sleep. Oh, make me sleep. I want to be good, I want to 
 be like Lady Charles. If I had not met her oh, Mary, 
 look what I have brought to you ! " 
 
 From her pocket she took a small revolver and held it 
 in her two hands like a votive offering. 
 
 " I had meant I had meant to kill them and then me, 
 but now I will not. See here it is, oh Lady of the Seven 
 Douleurs, I give it to you, and you give me peace in- 
 stead, la paie la paie "
 
 344 BEECHY 
 
 After a moment she rose. It was nearly dark in the lit- 
 tle church. Two blue-frocked nuns in strange butterfly- 
 like caps were telling their rosaries at the high altar, and 
 in the silence the click of the beads was distinctly audible. 
 
 Looking round in a hasty, furtive way, the great singer, 
 become a child in the hour of stress, crept quietly to the 
 altar and reaching up, laid her pistol without any noise 
 on the embroidered altar cloth behind a vase of fuchsias 
 that stood at the statue's foot. 
 
 Then she knelt again for a long time, and this time the 
 rest and peace she so long needed came to her in the dusky 
 place. 
 
 That evening when she had gone to bed the Signora and 
 Aurelio talked things over in the sitting-room. 
 
 " It has to do with him," Aurelio said, fiercely, " curse 
 him." 
 
 " Yes, an apoplexy take him, of course it is. I wonder 
 if she has seen him ? " 
 
 They wondered on, wasting much time in that un- 
 profitable occupation, but before they separated Aurelio 
 formulated their line of action. 
 
 " We mustn't ask her any questions, Signora Evelina," 
 he said, "we must just pretend not to notice, and try to 
 be always here when she wants us, and out of the way when 
 she doesn't " 
 
 Beechy had done nothing to deserve such faithful and 
 loving friends, but there they were, suffering with her, 
 thinking only of her, ready to do anything in the world 
 for her. The world is a good place. 
 
 The days passed slowly. Beechy was gentle to every- 
 one but looked pitiably ill. She studied, saw the opera 
 people, sent for her doctor and faithfully took the tonics
 
 ''CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP IS EVIL" 345 
 
 he ordered. Every afternoon she went out alone, and 
 Aurelio, following her to the little church in Leicester 
 Street, left her there and went back to the anxious Scarpia 
 with a lighter heart. 
 
 " Church is good," he said. 
 
 To Aurelio she only once spoke of her grief, and this 
 fact in itself, the fact that she had learned to be reserved, 
 told the faithful soul how great her suffering was. Gone 
 the stormy, tearful child who only a year ago had sobbed 
 out her sorrow in his arms, and, in her place this absent- 
 looking, pale woman with the great violet marks under 
 her eyes. 
 
 One evening, a week after their return to the hotel, 
 Beechy came into the sitting-room where Aurelio was 
 writing. 
 
 " Aurelio, " 
 
 He turned. She had on a white dressing-gown and her 
 long hair hung straight over her shoulders. She looked 
 very young and very piteous. 
 
 " Do you remember," she said, " giving me a little book 
 long ago, on my birthday? The evening we went to 
 hear'Aida'?" 
 
 " Yes Bici, dear, of course I remember " 
 
 " And you made me open it, while we waited for the 
 bus, and put my finger on a verse ? " 
 
 He nodded, remembering his superstitious horror at the 
 time. 
 
 She held out the little book. " I just found it, I have 
 been unpacking. Aurelio, do you remember what the words 
 are?" 
 
 She came and stood near him, her arms hanging close 
 to her sides.
 
 346 BEECHY 
 
 " Certainly the Lordship of Lov i evil; 
 Seeing that the more homage his servants pay to him 
 The more grievous and painful are the torments 
 Wherewith he torments them." 
 
 " It is true, Aurelio, dear," she said, her eyes wide and 
 fixed, " ' the more grievous and painful are the torments.' 
 You are so good to me, you and Signora Evelina, Aurelio, 
 I wanted to tell you, but I cannot talk about it " 
 
 She laid her hand for a moment on his shoulder and then 
 went out of the room, the little book still in her hand.
 
 LADY SHALLOP 
 
 THE afternoon before her first opera season, Beechy 
 had a letter from Charles Cressage. 
 "May I come to see you?" he wrote curtly. 
 " I am just back from Paris." 
 
 His man waited for the answer, and she gave it to him 
 almost at once. 
 
 " Dear Lord Charles," she wrote. " Please 'do not come 
 to see me. I forgive you. Beatrice Cavaleone." 
 
 Then she went for a long walk with Cricket Londale, 
 who had turned up again looking quite as freckled and 
 sunburned as if it were August instead of April. 
 
 " I have written a lot of poetry," the youth told her 
 as they tramped along the Round Pond towards the Broad 
 Walk, " and I'd like to read it to you if you don't 
 mind " 
 
 " I shall like very much." 
 
 He watched her anxiously. Yesterday he had asked the 
 Old Girl, as he called the Scarpia, if his divinity were ill, 
 and the Signora, with unnecessary vehemence, had said no. 
 But Beechy was ill, he knew, and it made him miserable. 
 Another undeserved affection. 
 
 " You are tired," he said eagerly, " let's sit down under 
 that tree." 
 
 Beechy nodded. "Yes, I am tired. The first warm 
 
 days, you know " 
 
 347
 
 348 BEECHY 
 
 Some children were laughing over their little boats, two 
 severe-looking nurses in hospital uniform (which practice 
 is a deplorable one and should not be permitted) watch- 
 ing over them. The grass was green, the sky blue, and 
 flecked with snow-white clouds. 
 
 Beechy leaned back and was silent as she watched a 
 merry little boy in wide jack-tar trousers as he screamed 
 with joy over his boat's swiftness. 
 
 She was glad to be with young Londale, for she liked 
 him, and the mild air felt pleasant after the cold of New 
 York. 
 
 Suddenly the young man said, " Oh, by the way, I saw 
 Lord Charles Cressage in Paris the other night at the 
 Cafe de Paris. What an awfully fine-looking fellow he 
 is." 
 
 Beechy nodded. "Yes, isn't he?" 
 
 " He was with a cousin of mine, a chap named Shallop, 
 an awfully decent little beggar. His wife is the beautiful 
 Lady Shallop. She had on the biggest hat I ever saw in 
 my life." 
 
 "Yes, she is very lovely, I have seen her," answered 
 Beechy, smoothing the back of one glove with her other 
 hand. "Do you like her?" 
 
 Londale hesitated. " Oh, well ' like ' I don't know. 
 She's awfully jolly, but I've always been fond of Archie 
 Shallop, you see " 
 
 " I see," Beechy answered, quietly. It was strange, she 
 thought, how quickly she had grown old. Only a few 
 months ago she and this boy had been the same age. Now 
 he seemed a child to her, and she was treating him as if 
 she, not he, were the child. 
 
 " I am told," she said after a moment, " that Lord
 
 LADY SHALLOP 349 
 
 Charles greatly admires your cousin Lady Shallop, I 
 mean." 
 
 Cricket chuckled. " Rather/ But he doesn't much count 
 in this way I imagine. Archie says he's always mad over 
 some woman. That's rather sickening, I think, don't you ? " 
 
 " I do. Shall we walk on? Let's go past the palace 
 and see the flowers " 
 
 They crossed the spongy grass to the Broad Walk and 
 walked on, the boy talking eagerly. 
 
 Off to their right the old palace basked in the pale sun- 
 light, the trees were frothed with green, and the tulips and 
 hyacinths stood up bravely on their stout little legs like 
 children playing at soldiers. 
 
 It was a delightful, languid, peaceful afternoon. 
 
 Near the Albert Memorial they met two men and a lady. 
 Beechy did not see them at first. She was looking down. 
 
 " Hullo," cried Cricket, giving a little hop like his name- 
 sake, " here they are, by Jove ! " 
 
 Charles Cressage, a carnation in his coat, bent over Lady 
 Shallop as they walked and he talked to her, for she was 
 not so tall as he. Sir Archie was plainly bored. Just be- 
 fore Beechy and young Londale reached them, the little 
 baronet stopped. " Well I'll go back and speak to Peter," 
 he said, " or get him on the telephone. You will take 
 Edith home, Cressage, hello, Cricket," he added heartily, 
 " how are you ? " 
 
 They shook hands and Beechy looked up at Cressage. 
 
 " 'Ow do you do, Lord Charles ? " she said quietly. 
 
 He held out his hand. He was very white and his lips 
 moved nervously. " How do you do ? " he returned, like 
 an automaton. 
 
 Lady Shallop came forward. " Now, Lord Charles,"
 
 350 BEECHY 
 
 she said with an intensely sweet smile, " here is your chance 
 to keep your promise I have so wished to meet you, Sig- 
 norina I am one of your greatest admirers we are all 
 coming to hear you to-morrow " 
 
 Cressage muttered something and the two women's hands 
 met. 
 
 " I am ver' glad/' Beechy answered. " You like music? " 
 Then she went on to Cressage, " I 'ope you are well, " 
 
 As they walked on she heard the little red-headed beauty 
 exclaim, " But she hasn't an ' h.' How quaint ! " 
 
 It had happened, then, Beechy told herself over and 
 over again, and she still lived. He had had her note he 
 knew they were not to meet again and here he was walk- 
 ing with the new one. 
 
 For a moment the fierceness which had prompted her 
 to buy the little revolver came back to her and she could 
 have wished to kill them both. But it is outraged pride 
 more than outraged love that brings the wish for revenge 
 with it, and Beechy was not proud. On the contrary 
 she was very humble, and the thought of her childish 
 Hays in Rome seemed to set her in the dust at Cressage's 
 feet 
 
 " It is after all natural," she reflected, as she sped home 
 alone in a hansom, having dismissed Londale ; " he is a 
 great gentleman and I what was I ten years ago ! " 
 
 After a moment she added to herself: "He looks ill, 
 so ill!" 
 
 She had a horrible night dreaming of Cressage as he had 
 been, waking to realise what he now was, and to sob her- 
 self to sleep again. 
 
 The next night she opened the season in " Manon " and 
 her witchery and charm was amazing. She sang her very
 
 LADY SHALLOP 351 
 
 best, and she was, in her careful make-up and beautiful 
 rococo costumes, deliciously pretty. 
 
 In a box she saw Lady Shallop and several other people, 
 but Cressage was not visible. 
 
 And now began her wonderful season. Night after night 
 she sang Marguerite, Carmen, Manon, A'ida, roles not 
 usually regarded as suited all to one voice, but possible to 
 her because of the extraordinary flexibility of her voice. 
 And in her close attention to her work her health im- 
 proved, at least apparently. Her colour came back and the 
 bones in her face receded to their proper place. She worked 
 very hard and her reward was great. 
 
 A Royal Personage gave her a diamond brooch, she 
 was commanded to sing Manon on a Royal Birthday, the 
 great people of England combined to honour her. 
 
 And when young Dino Cavaleone came, and not only 
 acknowledged but proudly claimed the cousinship, her 
 triumph was complete. 
 
 Everyone knew that an English Marquis asked her to 
 marry him; at a week-end party she was presented to the 
 First Gentleman in Europe; and the story about Charles 
 Cressage was either forgotten or overlooked. 
 
 Beatrice Cavaleone was the most sought-after woman in 
 London that season. 
 
 Lady Cossie was delighted, and at Whitsuntide asked 
 her down to Wychley again. " I am a year younger than 
 I was last year," the old lady said, gaily, tugging at the 
 lace in her sleeves to coax it to hide her knobby old el- 
 bows, " and your adorer Chris Bidfield, is longing to see 
 you again." 
 
 But Beechy did not flinch as she regretted her inability 
 to accept Lady Cossie's invitation.
 
 352 BEECHY 
 
 " Well, well, my dear, I am sorry. I like you, and I 
 enjoyed you last year. By the way, what an ass Charles 
 Cressage is making of himself again, isn't he? " 
 
 Beechy was graver than she had been a year ago, but 
 she was more beautiful, and she had acquired through asso- 
 ciation and observation the grand air that belonged to her 
 by birth. 
 
 The tragic woman of the early spring was as dead, in 
 her turn, as the child of the preceding year, and behold 
 the Beauty, armed cap-a-pie, self-possessed, serene, delight- 
 ful. She had never, since she came back, seen Cressage 
 alone. They had met more than once, of course, but al- 
 ways surrounded by others. And the few commonplace 
 words they exchanged were heard of everyone near. 
 
 He went his way looking no longer ill but inexpressibly 
 bored, which was a sign for the runner to read. 
 
 " Tired of Edith Shallop, my dear," Beechy heard some 
 woman whisper to another one night at a dance. " Just 
 look at him!" 
 
 Beechy looked too. 
 
 Lady Shallop, surrounded by eager men and boys, was 
 flirting audaciously and near her, like a patient footman 
 waiting for his services to be required, stood Cressage, his 
 arms folded. Bored! Yes, that was the word. A pang 
 of pity came over Beechy, but she turned away. 
 
 Sometimes she wondered something. On Whitsunday 
 she had received down in Kent, where she was staying, a 
 big box full of wall-flowers, brown and gold ones. There 
 was no card, and the box had been brought by a boy on a 
 bicycle who left no message. 
 
 Beechy was used to flowers, it was a kind of fashion, 
 set by a young American who had come to London in her
 
 LADY SHALLOP 353 
 
 wake, to send her flowers of every kind, but no one, hith- 
 erto, had sent her wall-flowers. Surely they came, they 
 must come, from Cressage. She looked at them wistfully. 
 If he had sent them they must be meant to remind her 
 of the evening he had knelt by her in Lady Cossie's gar- 
 den, the evening when he had asked her to help him to 
 be good. 
 
 She set her lips. She had tried to help him. She had 
 not failed him, it was he who had failed her. She went 
 for a long walk that day, and wore a brown, velvety, wall- 
 flower in her belt. When she came back the flower was 
 limp and faded, but she put it away in a little bag, with 
 some other treasures. 
 
 And all this time no one mentioned her to Cressage, nor 
 Cressage to her. One or two men had, as they put it, tried 
 to draw him, but Cressage was fierce and unpleasant when 
 he was annoyed, so he was let alone. 
 
 As to Beechy, the Signora Evelina and Aurelio never 
 mentioned Cressage's name to her, nor did Lex Wauchope. 
 
 Wauchope's mother died in the spring and he went about 
 in his black clothes, a very little ghost of a man. Beechy 
 and he grew very fond of each other at this time, and he 
 used to tell her long stories about dead and gone greatnesses 
 of whom she knew nothing. His fantastic dressing of 
 words pleased her very much, and his preference for love- 
 stories over all others, of course, appealed to her. 
 
 Her favourite tale was about Fair Rosamond and her 
 bold Henry. " It would," she used to say, " make an 
 opera, Henry the tenor, Rosamond the soprano, and the 
 queen, of course, the contralto " 
 
 Sometimes they would plan the scenes and Lex would 
 describe to her the costumes she might wear. They be-
 
 354 BEECHY 
 
 came greatly attached to Fair Rosamond, these two wool- 
 gathering friends, that spring! 
 
 Early in July Mrs. Pyecraft died. Beechy received a 
 telegram just as she was going out to dinner on Sunday, 
 and telephoning her excuses, set out as she was to Fulham 
 with Aurelio. It was a very warm night with, in the 
 air, something of the electricity that makes night a thing 
 so wonderful in the South. 
 
 Beechy was excited and nervous. " Poor old Aunt Au- 
 gusta," she said, " she'd hate my coming, if she knew, but 
 Uncle Henry is alive and must be considered first " 
 
 They were in her electric brougham, a new acquisition, 
 and rolled noiselessly southwestwards. 
 
 " She was a very hard poor woman, very narrow," Au- 
 relio said after a while. He had always resented Mrs. 
 Pyecraft's attitude towards Beechy regarding Cressage. 
 
 Beechy smiled a little sadly. " She was perfectly true 
 to her type, as Wauchope says," she answered. " As she 
 thought me wicked she was quite right not to see me " 
 
 Aurelio grunted. " E morta," he said, " and as she is 
 dead I say no more " 
 
 They found St. Augustine in the hands of Mrs. Batt, 
 the wealthy friend who of late had become gratifyingly 
 intimate there, and a Miss Timotheus, a maiden lady who 
 filled to the best of her ability the obsolete role of hired 
 mourner among her friends and acquaintances. 
 
 " Where is my uncle ? " Beechy asked. 
 
 He was in the back-garden, poor old man, sitting in his 
 chair weeping. He looked very ridiculous and old and 
 broken, and Beechy wept with him herself, suddenly bitterly 
 unhappy. She was crying for her own loneliness, her own 
 ceaseless heart-ache, but this poor Uncle Henry did not
 
 LADY SHALLOP 355 
 
 know, and everyone of her tears fell like balm into his 
 heart. 
 
 " She was proud of Beechy," he moaned. " Whatever 
 she said she oilers looked in the Morning Leader" he 
 sobbed, " an' read about the opera. Oh, Beechy, she was 
 a good woman, and I am all alone." 
 
 It was pathetic. The little garden was dusty and sun- 
 burnt, the border of thrift hung faded in the light from 
 the kitchen door. Overhead a moon in the first quarter 
 shed a warm light, glinting on the neatly tied up lettuces 
 under the window. 
 
 " I was going to cut the cukes for 'er to-morrow," the 
 old man exclaimed, suddenly, raising his head. " Come 
 and look at 'em! " 
 
 Beechy followed him down the little path to where the 
 glass of the frame gleamed like a pool of water in the 
 moonlight among the shadows. 
 
 Two fine cucumbers lay in the frame, portly and solemn 
 among the feathery leaves of some flourishing seedlings. 
 
 " That there I was agoing to cut for 'er lunch to- 
 morrow," the old man explained. " I said to her, you 
 never ate a better one in your life, 'Gusta, I said, and 
 now " 
 
 Kneeling down he burst out crying again, and Beechy, 
 her rose-coloured cloak falling back from her bare shoul- 
 ders, sat down on the edge of the frame, her hand on his 
 shoulder, in silence.
 
 CHAPTER XLVI 
 IN A BALCONY 
 
 IT was the third Friday in July and Beechy and the 
 Signora were leaving London the next day. At about 
 five o'clock Beechy was sitting alone in her sitting- 
 room. It was extremely close and occasionally the sound 
 of far-off thunder reached her. A sultry, ominous after- 
 noon, and she, superstitious, wondered what was going to 
 happen. 
 
 Suddenly everything seems sudden on such days the 
 telephone bell rang. 
 
 "AlK?" 
 
 After an inarticulate buzz she caught the voice. It was 
 Mrs. Geoff Barminster speaking. Mrs. Geoff who drcve 
 her own motors (this was some years ago) and bred bull- 
 terriers. And Mrs. Geoff wanted Beechy to make one of 
 a party of revellers who were going down to Brighton to 
 spend the week-end. 
 
 " It is so hot," Mrs. Geoff's bluff voice boomed over 
 the buzzing wires, " the sea looks good to me. And to you, 
 I hope." 
 
 Beechy hesitated. 
 
 " If it isn't a big party I am in mourning for an 
 aunt, " 
 
 But Mrs. Geoff pooh-pooh'd the idea of its being a big 
 party. " Only two motors of us nine or ten in all. Do 
 come." 
 
 356
 
 IN A BALCONY 357 
 
 Now Beechy, like many superstitious people, had very 
 often been justified in her forebodings and the like, and 
 as she stood there in her cloud-darkened room talking to 
 the lady in Bryanstone Square, she felt a sudden certainty 
 that Cressage was to be of the party. 
 
 She had no reason for this belief, for only a few days be- 
 fore Mrs. Geoff had happened to mention to her that 
 she knew him only very slightly. And Beechy was seized 
 with an ungovernable longing to see him, to hear his 
 voice. 
 
 " Very well," she said, " I will come, and sank you 
 very much." 
 
 Then she went and sat down again and picked up her 
 fan. Ever since Mrs. Pyecraft's death she had been trying 
 to get away from town, but the old man had been ill and 
 she had shrunk from deserting him. Yesterday she had 
 taken him to his sister's house in Derbyshire, and leaving 
 him comfortably settled there until the autumn, when he 
 was coming back to Fulham, she felt that her task was ac- 
 complished, and that she was free to go back to Italy. 
 
 And now she was to see Cressage. 
 
 She had been brave, she knew, and good. She had 
 made no moan, she had gone her way, done that which lay 
 at her hand to do, and she had held her head high. Cres- 
 sage himself must, she knew, be assured by this time of 
 her complete indifference. 
 
 But to-day the time had come when she must see him. 
 And the god in the car was Mrs. Geoff. She smiled at 
 the Image, for Mrs. Geoff was at that time the woman 
 who of all the women in London knew the most about 
 motors. And to-night in an hour's time she would see 
 Cressage. She told the Signora to postpone the arrange-
 
 358 BEECHY 
 
 ments for their departure until Monday; she dressed and 
 sat down to wait. No one came to interrupt her brood- 
 ing, and she gave her long pent-up imagination a loose 
 rein. She remembered, remembered, remembered, until with 
 a cry she rose and walked up and down the room, her hands 
 clasped on her breast. 
 
 It was all no good. Nothing helped. She loved him 
 and must love him until she died, and the sooner she died, 
 the better. Tears burnt her eyes, but she wiped them away 
 and drank some cold water to quiet her nerves. She won- 
 dered suddenly how Lady Charles was. She had not seen 
 her since that meeting at Victoria, but some one had told 
 her that she was at Beckenbrake. 
 
 Beechy would have liked to see her again, but she had 
 not dared to put herself in touch with Cressage even 
 through the medium of his wife, and she had never made 
 a sign of life to the older woman. 
 
 " I can ask him to-night," the girl thought suddenly. 
 "I can ask him!" 
 
 It seemed to her as if she could not bear the joy of it. 
 She forgot his falseness, the suffering he had caused her, 
 the scorn his fair-minded wife felt for him. She remem- 
 bered only the eyes of him and the sound of his voice. 
 
 When Mrs. Geoff came in for her she was ready, a red 
 rose in her coat, a bright colour in her cheeks. 
 
 " It is good of you to come," the big woman said, roll- 
 ing down the passage to the lift (her father had been an 
 admiral and she always said she inherited his walk) , " they 
 are all delighted." 
 
 The two motors were nearly full, but Cressage was not 
 there. Beechy, placed between a Miss Peregrine and a 
 strange man who looked like a Jew and instantly told her
 
 IN A BALCONY 359 
 
 he wasn't one, drew a deep breath. He was to be there, 
 she knew, but 
 
 " Now then, all ready? Off we go to St. James's Place." 
 
 Beechy burst into a little laugh, at which Miss Pere- 
 grine not unnaturally looked surprised. 
 
 " You are to get in with me, Lord Charles," Mrs. 
 Geoff explained as Cressage came out of his door. " You 
 know Signorina Cavaleone and Miss Peregrine, Pickle for 
 short. Oh, and Mr. Curry." 
 
 She wasted no time on ceremony, Mrs. Geoff, and in two 
 minutes Cressage was sitting on Beechy's left, while Mr. 
 Curry, the Jewish-looking Gentile, faced them. 
 
 Beechy and Cressage had shaken hands and now sat si- 
 lent. Mrs. Geoff's driving was reckless in the extreme and 
 once or twice Miss Peregrine gave a little shriek, and 
 Cressage looked grave. It was extremely warm and the 
 sky was black. 
 
 " We're in for a ducking," observed Curry after a while. 
 
 Then he and Miss Peregrine began to talk. 
 
 " How much longer are you to be in England ? " asked 
 Cressage presently. 
 
 Beechy looked past him. " I was to have gone to-mor- 
 row, but have put it off until Monday." 
 
 " I ought," he said in Italian, " to tell you that I knew 
 you were coming to-day " 
 
 " I quite understand," she said coldly. Curry, bobbing 
 about on the little seat opposite Miss Peregrine, was very 
 noisy. Neither he nor the girl had ears for anything but 
 their own nonsense. Cressage sat forward and Beechy 
 leaned away from him into her corner, but his arm touched 
 hers from the shoulder down, and she could see him breathe 
 as she looked towards him under her flat cap-brim.
 
 360 BEECHY 
 
 Near Three Bridges the other motor left them behind, 
 for something had happened to one of Mrs. Geoff's tires 
 and she and the mechanician got out and began to tinker 
 at it. 
 
 " You see to the rooms, Geoff," she called in her great 
 voice, " and order dinner, we'll not be long." 
 
 Miss Peregrine and Curry got out and sat down on a 
 dusty bank by the road. 
 
 " Do you care to get out? " asked Cressage. 
 
 "No, thanks." 
 
 He turned and looked at her closely. " Do you wish 
 to be let alone," he said abruptly, " or may I talk to 
 you?" 
 
 " Just as you like." 
 
 He paused for a minute and then went on doggedly: 
 " Well I suppose there is no use in my explaining ? " 
 
 It was such happiness just to be near him and hear him 
 speak that a little laugh came to her lips. 
 
 " Explaining? But there is no need," she said. 
 
 He misunderstood her laugh and relapsed into an angry 
 silence. Presently she said, " How is your wife?" 
 
 "I haven't the slightest idea." 
 
 There was a long pause, and then he said gently, 
 " Beatrice, I know what a beast I am, but do you be- 
 lieve that I am sorry for hurting you if it did hurt you," 
 he added in haste, to give her a loophole if she should 
 choose to accept it. 
 
 But she did not. " Hurt? Yes, it hurt. But it's quite 
 all right now." 
 
 " I love you, you know," he added, not in an access of 
 passion, but in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice as if no one 
 could ever have doubted his love.
 
 77V "A BALCONY 361 
 
 She sat quite still for a moment and then she repeated 
 slowly, "You love me?" 
 
 " Yes, I do. I have always loved you. Oh, I can't ex- 
 pect you to understand, no woman ever would, at least 
 no girl. But it is true all the same. My God," he went 
 on, facing her again, and speaking very rapidly, " you 
 don't think I ever felt about Edith Shallop as I did about 
 you? Can't you remember the villa?" 
 
 She did not answer until he had repeated his question, 
 and then she said shortly, " Yes, I remember." 
 
 " Now, then, children, in you get," roared Mrs. Geoff, 
 rubbing her hands together and then putting on her gog- 
 gles. "That little job's done!" 
 
 Miss Peregrine and her admirer obeyed, and as the motor 
 started off with a bound, Cressage went on talking. 
 
 " If you had seen me when you first came back, I would 
 have told you at least what I could but you wouldn't. 
 You didn't help me much," he added bitterly, and Beechy 
 laughed. 
 
 " Help you! Did you need it?" 
 
 She spoke scoffingly, but he paid no heed to her tone.- 
 
 " Yes, I did, if a man tottering on the brink of Heaven 
 over Hell needs help. I loved you, I tell you. That is 
 what you didn't realise." 
 
 " I say, Signorina Cavaleone," began Miss Peregrine 
 suddenly at this point, "which do you think sings the 
 best, Aubepin or Subiaco? " 
 
 Beechy answered her, and the conversation remained 
 general for a long time. When it had ceased Beechy 
 leaned back and closed her eyes. What would happen 
 next? 
 
 By seven o'clock they were nearly at Brighton.
 
 362 BEECHY 
 
 " We're going to dine and then take a spin by moon- 
 light if there is a moon," explained their jovial hostess. 
 
 Cressage darted a quick glance at Beechy. 
 
 " Don't go," he said in Italian, using an involved phrase 
 to express his meaning, " I want to talk to you." 
 
 At ten o'clock they sat alone together on the balcony of 
 Mrs. Geoff's sitting-room. The others had gone to East- 
 bourne piled into one motor. 
 
 Beechy, in her black frock, looked very pale in the moon- 
 light. Cressage saw it. " You are tired," he said sud- 
 denly, sitting down by her and frowning. 
 
 " Yes. I have had a sad time of late. My poor old 
 uncle has been very ill and very unhappy " 
 
 " Your uncle ? Cavaleone ? " 
 
 " My Uncle Pyecraft, in Fulham. His wife died a little 
 while ago." 
 
 " Poor Beatrice " After a pause he went on in a 
 
 low voice. 
 
 " I have no right to beg your pardon, I have no right 
 to assume that you will pardon me. But you wrote that 
 you did, " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And if you knew how miserable I have been the 
 whole time since you left for America you would be sorry 
 for me." 
 
 And looking at his face she knew that he spoke the 
 truth. 
 
 " I am sorry, Carlo," she said gently. 
 
 All the wild feelings of the early afternoon had fled, 
 leaving in their place the old sensation of rest, the sensation 
 she had always experienced in his presence. It was a feel- 
 ing of having reached home at last, although she knew it
 
 72V A BALCONY 363 
 
 could not last. Yes, it was home. She longed to take his 
 hand and comfort him, but something kept her hands 
 quietly folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the black, sil- 
 ver-edged clouds that were scudding about in the sky. 
 
 " It I missed you unbearably, Beatrice. That is that 
 is why I got into mischief. If if you had never heard of 
 it, I honestly believe it would have passed away with no 
 harm to anyone." 
 
 "And to her?" 
 
 " Lady ? Ah, bah ! " he laughed contemptuously. 
 
 " She simply doesn't count, my dear. But that's what I 
 can't expect you to understand. But you did find out and 
 you wouldn't see me. Mind you, I am not blaming you. 
 You were perfectly right. A man who can't be faithful 
 for six months to the woman he adores deserves all he gets, 
 he is a swine, but there you are, I am the man who 
 couldn't be faithful to to you, great God! What I mean 
 is that when you cast me off she seemed well, all I had 
 left and I tried to make the best of her, and to to stick 
 to her." 
 
 Beechy did not answer. By this time she had heard 
 from more sources than one what kind of a woman Lady 
 Shallop was, and she felt no squeamish reluctance to hear- 
 ing her enemy given her due. She was primitive enough 
 to enjoy Cressage's open scorn of the woman who had been 
 no more to him than she had been to several other men. 
 But she could not decide what to say and therefore she 
 was silent. 
 
 " Try," he said after a long pause, " not to judge me 
 too harshly." 
 
 She held out her hand as she rose. 
 
 " I do not judge you harshly," she answered in a low
 
 364 BEECHY 
 
 voice. " It is all done with now, and indeed I did for- 
 give you when I wrote you I did." 
 
 He looked at her hopelessly. He had spoken the absolute 
 truth. At she stood there she seemed to him the embodi- 
 ment of all earthly perfections. 
 
 " Beatrice," he cried suddenly, drawing her to him by 
 the hand he still held, " could you " 
 
 But she stopped him by a gesture. 
 
 " Hush, no, and good-night " 
 
 She was gone, and he sat smoking in solitude until the 
 others came back, tired and clamouring for food and drink. 
 
 " Miss the furrin lady went to bed before eleven, 
 Madam," Mrs. Geoff's maid told her. " She 'ad a 'ead- 
 ache, and asked me to unhook her frock." 
 
 " Poor Lord Charles," exclaimed Mrs. Geoff, bustling 
 on to the balcony a moment later. " I am sorry. I thought 
 you'd have a delightful evenin', but how bored you must 
 have been." 
 
 " Oh, no," he returned politely, " I was not bored."
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 " CERTAINLY THE LORDSHIP OF Lovs is GOOD " 
 
 ONE afternoon late in the following March Beatrice 
 Cavaleone stood by the fireside in her little house 
 in Buckingham Gate, reading a letter. 
 
 She had been in Russia all the winter and looked the 
 better for the bracing cold there, but her eyes were red 
 with crying and she wore a black gown. 
 
 War was claiming its hideous payment, and among those 
 who had fallen in South Africa were gallant young Cricket 
 Londale, whose broken old father had just left her. 
 
 " He told me about you," Sir William had said, hold- 
 ing her hand, " and in the last letter I had from him he 
 enclosed this, for you, and asked me to come and see you." 
 
 Beechy read the letter, and then as the suddenly frail old 
 man put his hands over his face, she knelt by him and held 
 him in her strong young arms, her tears wetting his white 
 hair. 
 
 It was a daring, a demonstrative thing for a stranger 
 to do, and no English woman in the circumstances would 
 have done it, but Beechy did not know that, nor would 
 she have cared if she had known. And the bitter-tongued 
 old politician wept as he had been unable to weep hitherto, 
 all the weeks since the news came. 
 
 After a time he sat up, wiped his eyes and asked her 
 gently, " And you, my dear, you too have lost someone?" 
 
 365
 
 366 BEECHY 
 
 " I have lost Cricket," she said simply. " He was my 
 friend." 
 
 Since the young fellow's death no one had dared call 
 him by his nick-name to his father. He had been spoken of 
 as " Gerald," and now Sir William smiled. " Ah, yes 
 ' Cricket.' You called him that. And you are wearing 
 black " 
 
 Beechy made a little gesture expressing a difficulty of 
 explanation. " Ah, I love England," she answered, " and 
 so many are gone I do not care for colour just now. 
 Lady Cossie Bleck calls me an eediot, I think she thinks 
 I have no right to a black frock, as I am ' only an Italian,' 
 but " 
 
 Sir William rose. In ordinary days her garb of woe 
 might have seemed to him as it did to some others, either 
 an affectation, or an unwarranted assumption of what Ger- 
 mans call " a share-taking," " theilnahme." But now 
 the stricken old man saw in it the honest sympathy and 
 tribute it was, and he forgot to say to himself that theat- 
 rical women do theatrical things. 
 
 He took his leave and Beechy read her letter. It was 
 from Mafeking. Short, merely a few words of gallant 
 excitement, and of affectionate turning of his heart home- 
 wards. " Of course I know you are unhappy," he said, at 
 the last, " and I do hope with all my heart that things may 
 turn out all right. All my love to you. Cricket." 
 
 Beechy kissed the paper and wept over it. 
 
 She had had a busy summer, and a busier winter. All 
 summer long she and the Signora were in Italy, first at 
 Salsomaggiore, where she took a cure for her rather tired 
 throat, then in the mountains near Turin, where she 
 had hired a shabby little villa. Her accompanist was with
 
 "THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE IS GOOD" 367 
 
 her and she learned " La Boheme," in which she was to make 
 her next season's debut in London. 
 
 It was not an unhappy time. The Signora, comfortable 
 fat lady, released from the bonds London imposed on her, 
 sat about in loose garments from morning till night, not 
 infrequently lamenting over Beechy's amazing ardour in the 
 matter of learning. 
 
 Why, after working all winter and making all that 
 money, need the girl work at French and English all 
 summer? 
 
 But Beechy only smiled and worked on. 
 
 In the neighbourhood there was a large Hydropathic 
 among whose guests were a young Englishwoman and an 
 old Frenchman, both more than willing to help pay for 
 their expenses by giving lessons. Every other afternoon 
 they came, turn and turn about, and with them Beechy 
 made steady progress in the two languages. The ambitious 
 Miss Smith (whom Beechy first hailed as a probable rela- 
 tion) introduced her to Carlyle, but of him the prima donna 
 would none, clamouring for Dickens, of whom she knew 
 already a little, and who remained her favourite author. 
 
 Perhaps she was not so much bent on improving as she 
 was on occupying her mind. However that might be, she 
 worked hard, even learning some poetry by heart. 
 
 M. Ferrier, the old Frenchman, taught her to speak his 
 beautiful language far more correctly as to accent than she 
 ever learned to speak English, but she refused the classics 
 to a man, until one day he had an inspiration and wrote to 
 Paris for a copy of Laboulaye. 
 
 Fairy tales she loved, and they were absolutely new to 
 her. Her first comment upset her teacher. 
 
 "They rather remind me of the lives of the saints," she
 
 368 BEECHY 
 
 said innocently, and he, very devout, was frightened. But 
 seeing her the next day in the ugly little village church 
 praying busily, he took heart of grace. 
 
 Aurelio that summer was happier than he had been for a 
 long time. Beechy was busy, cheerful, and well, and the 
 faithful young man began to hope that she was forgetting 
 Cressage. 
 
 One day Beechy followed Aurelio into the garden where 
 he was smoking. " Aurelio," she said, " I am going to sing 
 in a charity concert in Rome in November it is for the 
 people in that place that was destroyed by fire, Val 
 d'Anca. 
 
 " But you were going " 
 
 " I know. But I'll arrange that. You see, I like to 
 to help with my voice. It is a kind of trust, isn't it? 
 Besides, it makes me happier to sing for people, not just 
 for money." 
 
 " You are very good, Bici." The young man threw away 
 his cigarette and put his hands into his jacket pockets. 
 
 " I ? Nonsense, Aurelio, I am not good at all. Think 
 how disagreeable I was to you the other day about that let- 
 ter you forgot. I am," she burst out dramatically, her eyes 
 wide, " a horrible tyrant, that's what I am, Aurelio ! " 
 
 Aurelio smiled at her, and then said seriously, " Bici 
 may I speak to you about about that little book, Dante's 
 'Vita Nuova'?" 
 
 She nodded. "Yes." 
 
 " Well I have been thinking about it of late. I wanted 
 to tell you this before we left London, but I I didn't 
 quite like to. You remember that about The Lordship of 
 Love?" 
 
 Again she nodded. He could see that she remembered 
 the words.
 
 "THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE IS GOOD" 369 
 
 " Well, one day in London I was reading the book and 
 I found another sentence about that. I wanted to show 
 
 it to you, but " he hesitated, his brown eyes fixed on 
 
 hers. 
 
 " Tell it to me now, Aurelio." 
 
 Gently she held out her hand, with the gentleness which, 
 coming, a quite new quality, just at the time when her 
 suffering had been the most acute, gave such appositeness 
 to his discovery in the little book. 
 
 Holding her hand he gave the quotation: 
 
 " Certainly the Lordship of Love is good, 
 Seeing that it diverts the mind from all mean things " 
 
 There was a pause. He longed to tell her how clearly 
 he saw that it was diverting her mind from mean things, 
 from her old self-centredness, her ruthlessness, her occa- 
 sional violence, her selfishness. 
 
 But he dared not. 
 
 Her eyes slowly filled with tears. " Thank you, Aurelio, 
 dear," she said in a soft voice. Then she left him. 
 
 One day she received a letter in dressage's writing, and 
 after a long disappearance into the pine woods behind the 
 villa, came back pale and tired-looking. 
 
 " Oh, Beatrice " he burst out, in spite of himself. 
 
 She smiled. " Don't, Aurelio, dear. He wants to come 
 and see me. But I have written to say no " 
 
 She sat down, closing her eyes wearily. " You see," she 
 went on, half to herself, half to him, as he stood looking at 
 her in silence, " there is no use. He is not to be trusted." 
 
 " But if he still loves you, 'dear, you ought to forgive 
 his little unfaithfulness men are like that, and if his heart 
 is true to you "
 
 370 BEECHY 
 
 For the first time Beechy claimed her Anglo-Saxon blood. 
 
 " No. I am half-English, remember, Aurelio, and my 
 man must be faithful to me." 
 
 He said no more, and Beechy, having departed from her 
 long silence, handed him the letter. It was short and 
 matter of fact in tone, telling her that Cressage was to be in 
 Italy in September, and asking her if he might come to see 
 her. 
 
 He did not write again. 
 
 Once Lady Charles wrote to her asking for money for 
 Sky Hill. " We have had to turn away a good many," 
 the letter said, " and we are out of funds. I have done 
 all I could, but you know how many claims there are on 
 me, " 
 
 It then went on to ask Beechy not to forget her promise 
 to come to Beckenbrake, and, from thence, visit Sky Hill 
 and sing to the girls at one of their parties. No mention 
 of Lord Charles was made. 
 
 The first of October Beechy went to Rome. Signora 
 Evelina was obliged to stay in Turin to nurse a sister who 
 had been very ill, and Beechy and Aurelio travelled south 
 together. 
 
 She left him at the door of the convent, and a moment 
 later sat among the delighted Sisters in the refectory. 
 
 She spent a month in the quiet place, working, and play- 
 ing with the children before going north. 
 
 It was fine weather, a dreamy golden October. The 
 garden in which she had dug as a child was still gay with 
 flowers, the fig-tree in the corner covered with sweet purple 
 fruit. 
 
 Beechy wore a coarse grey frock made by the tailor-Sister, 
 and a flat brown hat like the one she had worn years ago.
 
 "THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE IS GOOD" 371 
 
 Once when she was walking in the long line of children 
 as they took their walk she was startled by meeting the 
 young marquis who had asked her to marry him. He 
 was walking with another man, and they both, it seemed to 
 her, stared straight into her face. But they did not know 
 her and she went her way laughing. " Fine fezzars," she 
 said to herself, employing one of the proverbs she had 
 learned in the summer, " make ze bird! " 
 
 She was now very proud of her English. 
 
 Often she used to read aloud to Father Antonio or to the 
 Mother Superior whose eyes, after her operation, had re- 
 mained delicate. 
 
 Sister Catherine, she of the legendary lore, found in the 
 great lady who had once been little Bici, a wonderful 
 listener. Beechy sat with her by the hour, working away 
 at the vegetables while her old friend told her stories of the 
 Saints. They were, Beechy thought, nearly as good as 
 Laboulaye. 
 
 All the simplicity of her character was now in the ascend- 
 ant. Life seemed to her a pleasant thing, although there 
 was always in her heart the wound that opened at a touch. 
 
 And after all she was only twenty-three. 
 
 One day there was an awful scene in the garden. The 
 post had come and after reading her letters Beechy unfolded 
 her English papers. She was sitting quietly there under the 
 trees, Mother Maria Maddalena beside her, when suddenly 
 she rose, her face white with rage, her eyes full of hatred. 
 
 " Liar ! " she cried, furiously. " The animal, the can- 
 aglia!" And then, in the quiet place, she used words that 
 caused the poor Mother Superior to cross herself with 
 trembling fingers. 
 
 " Bici, Bici, stop ! " The old woman's voice was stern.
 
 372 BEECHY 
 
 But Beechy was walking up and down, muttering to 
 herself, the newspaper twisted in her hands. 
 
 Nuns have much dignity. 
 
 Mother Maria Maddalena rose quietly. " When you 
 have come to your senses, my child," she said, " I wish to 
 speak to you." 
 
 Then she went into the house. 
 
 Three hours later Beechy knocked at her door. 
 
 " Forgive me, Madre cara," the girl said, kneeling im- 
 pulsively by her, " I am so sorry." 
 
 Someone had started a story that Cavaleone had lost her 
 voice and would be obliged to retire. She had wired at 
 once to the principal papers, and that afternoon went to 
 Professor Archangeli, the great throat specialist, and after 
 singing for him and having her throat thoroughly examined, 
 had made him write a certificate to the effect that her voice 
 and throat were in magnificent condition. 
 
 This she sent to the powers that be at Covent Garden 
 Opera House. Then she went and apologised to the Mother 
 Superior. 
 
 The next week, however, brought her dozens of letters 
 from friends, acquaintances, and perfect strangers, asking 
 for the truth, sympathising, hoping that their sympathy was 
 unnecessary. 
 
 The girl was greatly touched. She felt an immense love 
 for all these people who loved her voice, for her voice was 
 the best part of herself, and who loved her voice loved her. 
 
 She answered all the letters, and when the two misin- 
 formed newspapers apologised, she wrote her forgiveness to 
 them. 
 
 In November, after the concert, she went to Milan and 
 then on to Berlin, where she sang in a concert, by special
 
 "THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE IS GOOD" 373 
 
 permission from the opera people in Petersburg; and then 
 came her wonderful winter in that city. 
 
 She was very gay; very brilliant, but her England was 
 in mourning, and the papers were full of bad news for her. 
 Charles Cressage had rejoined his old regiment and sailed 
 early in November. She knew this from the papers, but 
 Lady Charles wrote, too. 
 
 " You will, I am sure, be glad to know that Charles has 
 gone to the front. Even if he should be killed I shall be 
 glad he went. It is the right life for a man." 
 
 And Beechy was glad, too. Somehow she never feared 
 for his life. She feared for Tom Bridport and for Cricket 
 Londale and for one or two others, but never for him. 
 
 He was at Modder River and at Colenso, where poor 
 Bridport lost a leg. 
 
 Then came the siege of Ladysmith. " I feel," wrote 
 Lady Charles, "that Ladysmith will fall and that he will 
 be killed." 
 
 But still Beechy was not afraid. When her season in 
 Petersburg was over she sent Aurelio on ahead to London 
 to take a house for her, and she and the Signora went to 
 Paris for a few weeks. Cricket Londale fell at Mafeking, 
 Lady Cossie had lost a cousin, and the Honourable Bob 
 Romney was dead of enteric. London was a tragic place 
 and the first time Beechy went out, dressed in a gay blue 
 frock, she met a dozen women she knew, all in black. Feel- 
 ing herself to be a heartless monster, she ordered black frocks 
 and wore them despite the Signora's superstitious horror. 
 
 That March afternoon when Sir William Londale 
 brought her the letter from his dead son, Beechy had been 
 in London ten days. She had seen Mrs. Bridport and her 
 husband and watched with a sick heart his forced jollity
 
 374 BEECHY 
 
 over his crutches. She had seen Lex Wauchope, who told 
 her all the news, and she had written to Lady Charles 
 but received no answer. 
 
 It was a blustering, cold afternoon, reminding her of the 
 days when she was following Cressage, and she sat close 
 to the fire in her little drawing-room. 
 
 Cricket's brave little letter on her lap, she sat looking into 
 the red coals. 
 
 Presently the door opened and the parlour-maid appeared. 
 
 " Lady Charles Cressage, Miss.'
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 BEICHY TAKES UP A NEW DUTY 
 
 MY dear," Lady Charles said, "he has come 
 back." 
 "Come back!" 
 
 " Yes. Invalided home. It seems he had fever in Lady- 
 smith and never got over it. They had to carry him out of 
 Mafeking, and they have sent him home. He didn't write 
 to me, of course, but when he got home he sent for me. 
 Put on your things and come." 
 
 There she stood, the bringer of news, badly-dressed, red- 
 nosed, bony, absurd, but for her look of breeding. 
 
 Beechy stared at her as if she had been an angel with 
 azure wings. 
 
 " I am to come ? " she whispered. 
 
 "Yes. He is ill, so of course, that changes everything." 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 Cressage might be unfaithful, careless, he might have 
 been far worse than he was, but his illness changed every- 
 thing. If he wanted her he should have her. 
 
 Without a word she went upstairs and as she was putting 
 on her hat Lady Charles called to her. 
 
 " Bring your dressing-case, he is at Beckenbrake." 
 
 Ten minutes later they were in the motor. 
 
 "Is he dying?" asked the girl, after several minutes of 
 unbroken silence. 
 
 " I don't think so. He was fairly well when he sailed, 
 but got worse on the ship." 
 
 375
 
 376 BEECHY 
 
 Beckenbrake is in Kent, just over the border from Sur- 
 rey. The wind blew and gusts of rain blurred the win- 
 dows as the powerful motor flew south-eastwards. They 
 talked little, both were busy with their thoughts. As they 
 passe'd Mitcham, Beechy asked suddenly: 
 
 " Does he know I am coming? " 
 
 " Yes," returned Lady Charles, shortly. " He knows." 
 
 She offered no explanations beyond the main facts she 
 had given, and Beechy asked no more. 
 
 It was enough to her that she was going to him. 
 
 Three miles out of Epsom the motor broke down and for 
 an hour the two women walked up and down the road 
 in the chilly 'dusk, while the chauffeur worked. Beechy, 
 from long habit, tied a silk scarf closely about her throat 
 and turned up her coat collar, but she did not really feel 
 the cold. Her voice was forgotten except subconsciously. 
 Her whole mind was occupied with Charles Cressage. 
 
 " People will think him mad for coming to my house," 
 Lady Charles burst out suddenly, as they settled them- 
 selves once more in the motor, " and me mad for taking him 
 in, but that doesn't in the least matter." 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 Again the busy silence fell. After a long time the elder 
 woman spoke again. 
 
 " We are nearly there, Beechy," she said, " and the thing 
 for you to remember, is not what he is, dear, but that 
 you love him." 
 
 " Yes," answered Beechy. 
 
 "After all," went on Lady Charles, laying her hand on 
 the girl's, " that is all that matters ; what we give, not what 
 we get." 
 
 Presently the motor .stopped and they got out at a long
 
 BEECHY TAKES UP A NEW DUTY 377 
 
 stone terrace at the top of which an open door sent out a 
 broad shaft of light. 
 
 " How is his lordship, Putnam ? " 
 
 " A little better, my Lady, the nurses say." 
 
 Unbuttoning her motor coat, the same one in which she 
 had appeared nearly two years before at Lady Cossie's, Lady 
 Charles tore it off and dropped it on the floor before the 
 man could turn from the door he was closing. 
 
 " Come," she said. 
 
 Beechy followed her up the broad uncarpeted oak stairs, 
 down a long passage with doors on one side, windows on 
 the other, through a pleasant little dark red room with a 
 huge fire on the hearth. Then she stopped. 
 
 " Wait here for a moment," she said, and opened a door 
 and disappeared. 
 
 Beechy stood by the fire. This then was Beckenbrake, 
 where Lady Charles, that mad creature, as many people 
 called her, lived her lonely, unselfish life. 
 
 Beechy loved Charles Cressage, but she never for a second 
 doubted that the faults between him and his wife were all 
 on his side. 
 
 And here, when he was ill and sad, the prodigal hus- 
 band had crept back, sure of a kind welcome. 
 
 Surely the ugly, grotesque woman was one of the good 
 of this world. 
 
 " Beatrice will you come ? " 
 
 The room was dimly lighted, but a fire was burning redly, 
 and its flickering flames danced over the sick man's face. 
 His eyes were open, and as they fell on Beechy, he smiled a 
 gay little smile. 
 
 " How good of you," he said, holding out his hand. 
 " Now that I am ill you are both kind to me."
 
 378 BEECHY 
 
 Lady Charles told the girl to sit down and then, rather 
 suddenly, she sat down herself. 
 
 " He is better," she said, " the nurse tells me he is much 
 better. It was the fatigue of landing that made him seem 
 so much worse." 
 
 He looked very ill, however, and Beechy's lips shook 
 as she watched his face. 
 
 "Beatrice," he said, "will you forgive me?" 
 
 "Yes. I do I did always." 
 
 He frowned impatiently. " I don't mean that. I mean, 
 will you give me another chance ? " 
 
 His voice was so weak that she had to lean towards him 
 to hear the last words. 
 
 Then she sat back in her chair, her cheeks scarlet. 
 
 " Say yes, Beechy." It was Lady Charles who said 
 the words. 
 
 Beechy clasped her hands tightly. " But how can I 
 
 how can we " she murmured, confusedly. " I don't 
 
 see " 
 
 The sick man held out his hands. " Kitty, take my hand. 
 And you Beechy " 
 
 The two women knelt by him obediently and he smiled 
 his old beautiful smile, but touched by something between 
 pity and tenderness. " Tell her, Kitty," he said. 
 
 " H'm! Well, Beechy, I told you in the motor to for- 
 get what he is, and to remember only that you love him. 
 He is ill now and pathetic, but he is going to get well, and 
 you know our English saying about the impossibility of 
 teaching an old dog new tricks." 
 
 Cressage burst into a feeble laugh, and then drew his 
 wife's bony hand to his lips. " You mean the one about 
 the silk purse, Kitty."
 
 BEECHY TAKES UP A NEW DUTY 379 
 
 Lady Charles did not seem to notice what he had said. 
 " He will not really reform," she went on slowly, " he will 
 always more or less run after women. He will cause 
 you many a heartache. And you will wish many things. 
 But " her voice changed and the incorrigible artist in 
 Beechy watched eagerly the priestess-like look in her weather- 
 beaten face " he loves you. His love, that is to say the 
 best there is in him, is yours. In spite of everything I, 
 who you know am not at all prejudiced in his favour, am 
 convinced of that. The best of him is yours. And this 
 being so, will you, as he put it a moment ago, give him 
 another chance ? " 
 
 To Beechy it seemed that the wall opposite her rocked 
 as if in an earthquake. 
 
 She stared at Lady Charles and saw that the elder 
 woman's wrinkled brow was covered with drops of sweat. 
 
 " I I don't understand," she said, slowly. " I suppose 
 I am stupid, but " 
 
 " Tell us just what you think, my dear," answered Lady 
 Charles. 
 
 " I think I fear it's no use," the girl answered. " I 
 it nearly killed me. I don't think I could live through it 
 again. Nobody knows how how bad it was." 
 
 They did not answer and after clearing her throat she 
 went on. 
 
 " I think you are an angel, Lady Charles, and yes, I 
 love you, Carlo, just as I always did, only more, because 
 I seem to understand things better now. But I couldn't 
 go on seeing you." 
 
 " He will be goo'd, Beechy." 
 
 She gave a little forlorn laugh. "You know he 
 couldn't! " she said. "You said so yourself! "
 
 38o BEECHY, 
 
 Then Lady Charles drew her to her feet and sitting down 
 in the big chair she had left to kneel by the bed, made the 
 girl sit beside her. 
 
 " Beechy," she said tenderly, " listen to me. I failed in 
 my duty. I gave up, lost courage, deserted him. And 
 now, I hand my duty over to you." 
 
 "But " 
 
 " Hush. Don't be shocked I have known it for nearly 
 a year, and I don't mind I am going to die. It may be 
 a few weeks or at the outside it may be a year. And you 
 must take care of him for me." 
 
 Beechy listened dully, her face almost stupid. Then as 
 she understood, she burst into tears and flung herself into 
 Lady Charles's arms. 
 
 " Hush, my dear, hush you must not excite him you 
 must not excite me." 
 
 After a time the girl quieted herself arid put three or 
 four sharp questions. Was Lady Charles sure ? What was 
 it? Could she not see other doctors? 
 
 Lady Charles answere'd her patiently, stroking her 
 hair. 
 
 Charles Cressage lay there in his bed, watching the two 
 women whose lives he had so strongly influenced. 
 
 " Kitty," he said at last, as Beechy stood by the fire 
 wiping her swollen eyes, "you are the best woman I ever 
 knew in my life, and I believe you will go to heaven and be 
 happy there. Kiss me." 
 
 Tenderly, but not much impressed by his perfectly sin- 
 cere little outburst, she bent and touched his brow with her 
 big mouth. 
 
 " Thank you, Charles. Now talk to her." 
 
 She left the room, and Beechy came back to the bed.
 
 BEECHY TAKES UP X NEW DUTY 381 
 
 " She she is a saint," the girl said, still with a sob in 
 her voice. 
 
 " Yes," he answered gravely. Then he went on, " Beat- 
 rice, listen to me. It is all true what she says, all true. 
 But I have suffered, dear, this past year, and I don't 
 like to boast," he smiled, " but I think I have learned some 
 things. I shall be good to you, dear. And what is more, 
 I believe that if a year ago you and I had been even engaged 
 to be married, that would not have happened. There was 
 never in it, on my honour, one minute in which I even 
 thought I love'd her. Some day you will understand that 
 I was in a a queer position. And, what poor Kitty means, 
 is this. It is quite true that she is dying. And she wishes 
 us, you and me, to marry, as soon as as it is over." 
 
 "Oh, isn't she wonderful, wonderful?" 
 
 "Yes, she is. And until then we, you and I, are to 
 be engaged, though of course, no one shall know. It is 
 her own idea, and her sincere wish." 
 
 There was a long pause. 
 
 " Beatrice," he went on, taking her hand, " will you do 
 what she wishes ? " 
 
 "Yes, Carlo." 
 
 " And will you try to trust me ? I have not deserved 
 it, God knows, but I will, in the future." 
 
 Beechy kissed his hand. " Carlo I, too, have learned 
 some things, and perhaps I understand a little. If if 
 dearest, there is nothing I could not forgive you." 
 
 Then he took her into his weak arms and she laid her 
 head on his breast. 
 
 In the dusk of the firelit room a little clock struck six. 
 
 Beechy rose. 
 
 " I must go and look for her," she said.
 
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