THE GREATER 
 MYSTERY 
 
 BY 
 
 EDNA DE FREMERY 
 
 WITH FRONTISPIECE ILLUSTRATION 
 BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 Sunset }Dress 
 1920 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 I92O 
 EDNA DE FREMERY 
 
 
O3/t 
 
 DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER 
 
 43870^ 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Love is a greater mystery than death" 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Viola Mordaunt remembered distinctly the first 
 time in her life that she was conscious of jealousy. 
 It was in the day nursery at Haddon Court, one 
 November afternoon, and she and her cousins, 
 Pamela and Anne, had dressed their cats, named 
 respectively "Bubble" and "Squeak," in doll s 
 clothes. 
 
 "You be Mrs. Hatch in the village and Bubble 
 can be your baby child; Squeak will be mine, and 
 Robert s," Pamela indicated her small brother, who 
 was anxious to be included at all costs, "can be the 
 Vicar s wife and bring us sweets and flannel." 
 
 Viola had shrunk from the prospective joys of 
 motherhood, and had turned her back on the 
 beneficence of the clergy. Looking out of the 
 window, she saw, over the burnished tops of the 
 maples, a gray autumnal sky tinted with rose. 
 The far distance, the delicate and illuminated 
 perspective moved her to emotion that she could 
 not express. "Let s play that Bubble and 
 Squeak are enchanted princesses and that, if we 
 touch them with a fairy wand, they ll have wings 
 and be free and then we can fly with them away 
 into the Sunset." Stretching her arms out, Viola 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 moved them up and down. She had felt herself 
 flying out into the soft gray clouds. 
 
 Pamela and Robert laughed and Anne looking 
 vaguely disturbed had said. 
 
 "Don t be so queer Viola, if we are good we 
 are to go down for tea and see Uncle Henry 
 Gaunt. You had much better be Mrs. Hatch. 
 See, the babies are beautiful I ll let you have 
 twins." But Viola was not appeased. 
 
 "Don t you ever want to play a real pretend 
 about some place you ve never seen? I m so 
 tired of being a mother!" 
 
 Anne gathered up Bubble and Squeak with 
 tenderness." What else is there for us to be, but 
 mothers? I m sure I don t want to go to some 
 place I ve never seen do you, Pamela?" 
 
 With an air of great propriety, Anne had stepped 
 forward, come under Melon s brush for a few 
 vigorous moments, and then, settling her sash 
 carefully about her fat little person, had taken 
 Pamela s hand, and the two sisters had gone down 
 the great stairway, to the dim hall, without a 
 glance behind them at the follower of strange gods. 
 Robert, after the manner of his kind, followed the 
 two decorous and conventional ladies; and Viola, 
 left alone with an angry Melon, gave way to 
 violence. 
 
 "It s never my way they never do what I want 
 and their games are so dull : 
 
 "Now, that will do just get up from the floor." 
 A hand assisted her. "Here, I had you all clean 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 and now- look at your frock ! It s the third to-day 
 you ll not go down. Let that be a lesson to you." 
 
 As Melon made these, no doubt, just remarks, a 
 strange feeling had come to Viola. There had been 
 twinges of the same thing before, when Anne and 
 Pamela had been selected for favors or privileges 
 that had not been extended to her; but as she had 
 established a bad character for herself with the 
 nurses, Viola had before this accepted her lot with 
 the thought that it was more or less deserved. 
 But on this occasion the punishment did not fit the 
 crime. Because Anne and Pamela were too stupid 
 to understand her games she must always suffer. 
 
 As she wept ignobly on the nursery linoleum, an 
 unchildish resolution came to her. If she had to 
 suffer, she would suffer all she possibly could. 
 Getting up quickly and silently, Viola crept down 
 the broad stairs, gaining the shadow of the lower 
 hall, and installed herself behind the armour of a 
 certain Henry Cecil Berrold Mordaunt, who fell at 
 Flodden. Looking from behind this kindly shelter, 
 she could, like the peri at the gates of paradise, see 
 the fortunate occupants of the drawing-room. 
 Lady Mordaunt and Uncle Henry Gaunt were 
 seated comfortably before a bright fire. The tea- 
 table was drawn up to them, and its bounties were 
 being dispensed lavishly to Pamela and Anne, 
 whose small features had assumed unnaturally 
 virtuous expressions. Robert was standing by 
 his Uncle, evidently giving respectful answers 
 to some searching questions, for Viola heard 
 
 [3] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Lady Mordaunt s high clear voice say, in a 
 satisfied tone: 
 
 "Well, Henry, they re looking rather fit, don t 
 you think?" 
 
 "Splendid, my dear Adela I only wish I could 
 say as much for Harold. The boy is seedy he 
 reads too much I shall have to lend him to you; 
 you have the magic touch." Sir Henry had 
 sighed and his kind face had looked quite grave. 
 
 "Robert, here is something for you, old fellow, 
 and two packages, for the girls. Will you give 
 them to Anne and Pamela for me? And here is 
 another. Why by Jove, where s Viola? Here s 
 her surprise and I haven t seen the child!" 
 
 Lady Mordaunt turned to Pamela, "Where is 
 Vi, dear?" 
 
 "She s in the nursery, Mother. She was quite 
 naughty and Melon said she was not to come 
 down." 
 
 The armour of Henry Cecil Berrold creaked omi 
 nously from undue pressure brought to bear on it. 
 
 "Oh, come," interrupted Sir Henry, "don t tell 
 me just take this up to Viola, with my love, will 
 you?" 
 
 And Pamela, looking a little disappointed, had 
 made her curtsey and devoirs with punctilio, and 
 departed upstairs, Robert and Anne following her. 
 But Viola, fairly launched in crime, had stayed 
 where she was. 
 
 In after years the memory of that room with its 
 outlook through French windows on a green and 
 
 [4] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 rolling lawn, shaded by the rich autumnal foliage 
 of the copper beeches, would come to Viola with 
 the startling clearness of a cry. She would see the 
 firelight flickering over the polished floor, picking 
 out bright spots on the dark carved furniture, 
 throwing strange shadows on the faces of the man 
 and woman seated before it. 
 
 Sir Henry had spoken first, after the children had 
 left, and his voice had sounded like a stranger s to 
 Viola. 
 
 "Tell me, Adela, is she like- 
 
 "Like the Mordaunts, Henry? No, not at all." 
 
 "Like her mother?" His voice was anxious, 
 yet determined too. 
 
 "In looks, almost exactly," Lady Adela had 
 answered, in a lowered tone unlike any that 
 Viola had ever heard her use. Even to the child 
 there seemed something furtive in it. 
 
 "You know I only saw her once but one 
 wouldn t forget, even if they had no such reason 
 as we have for remembering. The dark hair, the 
 eyes, the features, the foreign look yes Viola 
 will be beautiful. She puts my girls to shame, 
 now." 
 
 "Poor little soul," said Sir Henry. "Is she like 
 any child or is she odd?" 
 
 "She s fanciful imaginative I see Gerald in 
 her in that It s very complicated, you know " 
 Lady Adela sighed. 
 
 The butler came in with lights and took away 
 the tea things; and Viola, stiff from her cramped 
 
 [5] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 position, slipped upstairs like a small shadow. 
 Once in her bed, in the dark, she had buried her 
 face in a pillow and cried with desperate abandon, 
 saying over and over to herself, between her sobs, 
 "My Mother my Mother my Mother." 
 
 After that night, Viola had always a com 
 panion, and her imaginative life, where her mother 
 met her, became far more real to the child than her 
 actual existence at Thorley. This incorporeal 
 parent was invested with supernatural charms and 
 became her child s champion for every real or 
 fancied wrong. 
 
 Viola never spoke of the life she had created for 
 herself out of her discovery, nor did she ask to 
 know more than she had overheard. As the years 
 passed, this separate and secret life of Viola s left 
 it s impression on her. Beside the pretty pink and 
 whiteness of Pamela, and the engaging young 
 strength of Anne, Viola s delicate beauty glowed 
 like some exotic, strangely and inappropriately 
 blooming with hardy garden flowers. 
 
 When she was nineteen years old, and just 
 before she had gone up to London to be presented, 
 Lady Adela, who was then widowed, had sent for 
 Viola, and with every effort to spare the girl all she 
 could, told her what it was necessary for her to 
 know. 
 
 Viola s father, Gerald Mordaunt, younger 
 brother of Lady Adela s husband, had been an 
 exceedingly brilliant, but impulsive young man. 
 In his twenty-ninth year he had gone to Paris as 
 
 [6] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 under secretary to the British Ambassador. He 
 had his foot firmly placed on the ladder to success, 
 when he had seen, and fallen violently in love with 
 Julie de Beaujour, the young and exquisitely 
 beautiful wife of Pierre de Beaujour, a delightful 
 man and member of the Diplomatic Service. 
 What efforts the two ill-fated lovers had made to 
 keep to the path of virtue were never known, as 
 de Beaujour, finding that his wife no longer cared 
 for him, took a terrible revenge, and shot himself 
 dead in her presence. All Paris had rung with the 
 scandal, and Julie and Mordaunt, like two crazed 
 creatures, had been married at a registrar s and 
 flown to Russia, where they had known dreadful 
 poverty, and where Viola had been born. At her 
 birth Julie had died, and Gerald, in despair had 
 appealed to his brother. On condition that Gerald 
 make no future claim to his daughter, Mordaunt 
 had consented to take the tiny thing. 
 
 At news of his brother s death several years 
 later, Lord Mordaunt had been very much 
 relieved. Lady Adela trusted to the girl s sweet 
 ness and the excellent bringing up Viola had been 
 given to secure a happy life for her, though her 
 aunt knew no more of Viola s real nature than she 
 did of the Shah of Persia s. Lady Adela very truly 
 had done the best she could for the child. 
 
 "My dear," she had concluded, putting her 
 hand on Viola s shoulder and looking at her 
 tenderly with her light and sincere eyes, "don t let 
 this preposterous melodrama bowl you over. 
 
 [7] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Remember that it was all done with sixteen years 
 ago, and that you are, and always will be, one of 
 my chicks. I count myself very lucky to have 
 three daughters to take up to London. Suppose 
 you ring now for Parkman, and order some Vichy 
 and lemon?" 
 
 Viola rang, and then, going to her aunt, kissed 
 her with very real affection and gratitude. In the 
 little action, charming, and yet perfectly re 
 strained, there was nothing of surprise. Viola had 
 felt since her childhood, as many clever children 
 do, that there was something remarkable about 
 her parentage, and she had been justified in that 
 thought by what she had overheard Sir Henry and 
 Lady Adela say to each other. For many years 
 that almost whispered conversation had brought a 
 mysterious and cherished figure, clothed in 
 romance, to Viola; and as she had grown up, she 
 had felt no curiosity to substitute facts for the 
 flower of her own fancy. As Lady Adela told the 
 brief history hurriedly, the girl s mind caught the 
 salient points of youth, and love, and beauty, 
 rising like a flame from the darkened embers of 
 tragedy and she felt that her young parents had 
 triumphed. Of the shadow of dishonor that had 
 hidden them from her, until now, she gave no 
 thought. 
 
 "Was my father handsome, Aunt Adela?" she 
 asked, shyly, over her glass of Vichy. 
 
 "What, my dear? Oh yes very," Lady 
 Adela answered, uncomfortably. She was suffering 
 
 [8] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 from being screwed up for a scene that had not 
 come off; and was now frankly distressed at dis 
 cussing such a man as Gerald Mordaunt had been, 
 with his young daughter. 
 
 "Was he? and my mother?" 
 
 Lady Adela made a last effort. "Your mother, 
 Viola, was so lovely that that really it was not 
 right it was hardly respectable. People fol 
 lowed her turned to look, in theaters. I myself 
 only saw her once and that was at the Opera in 
 Paris. She seemed really unconscious of the way 
 people stared I suppose she was used to it. She 
 sat a little in back of us, and both your uncle and 
 I suffered from wry neck for several days after 
 ward. If you are not careful you will be very like 
 her." 
 
 "Really^ Aunt Adela why, how heavenly!" 
 
 "That, my child, remains to be seen. At any 
 rate, your character is your own, and will have 
 more to do with your chances of heaven than your 
 face." 
 
 And Lady Mordaunt, infinitely relieved that her 
 task was done, took up her keys and departed to 
 the store-room. 
 
 But something sang in Viola s heart with the 
 glad voice that might come from the figure of 
 Hope that is blindfolded. 
 
 [9] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 There was a figure in society when Viola and her 
 cousins went up to London that was surrounded by 
 the prestige of fear. The behavior of this man had 
 kept members of the smart set refreshed with 
 anecdote, and quivering with expectation. Clever 
 women angled for him to attend their parties, with 
 varied success, and men in their clubs sought him 
 out. And they did this simply to hear what he 
 would say to them to draw down some fresh and 
 remarkable sarcasm. 
 
 Andrew Ian Mclvor was the name of this man, 
 and he had come down from the fastness of his 
 native stronghold in Wales like a wolf on the fold. 
 He was forty years of age and filled with an over 
 whelming sincerity which Londoners took for 
 everything but what it was. In their eyes he was 
 endowed with the uncanny gift of clairvoyance. 
 Aside from his conversational powers, he was un 
 married, possessed of some twenty thousand a 
 year, estates in Wales and Sussex, and a town 
 house in London. This last, a gloomy Tudor 
 mansion, was left by Mclvor as he found it in a 
 remote and hideous period of walnut. Some really 
 splendid family portraits by Romney and Rey 
 nolds, in their happiest manner, were the only 
 spots of beauty in the place. One, the portrait of a 
 
 [10] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 dissenting minister at the time of John Knox, was 
 very like the present owner. The same tall, 
 angular figure, the dark head with its narrow brow 
 and deep set burning eyes, the high nose and the 
 thin austerity of the lips, were almost absurdly 
 like his descendants; with one difference, where the 
 artist had covered his subject s hands by the folds 
 of the gown, Mclvor might have placed his without 
 dread of comparison beside the molded perfection 
 of an Apollo. Fine in line, beautiful in proportion, 
 with a look of strength and delicacy combined, 
 Mclvor s hands seemed a gracious protest of nature 
 against the harshness of his physical equipment. 
 On a windy morning in November, Mclvor sat 
 in his ugly breakfast room looking over his mail. 
 Out of the mass he extracted a letter at random, 
 which proved to be a wail of reproach from an 
 "improved" tenant on the Sussex property. At 
 the cost of much personal trouble and no little 
 expense Mclvor had gone over the village with 
 care, substituting tiles for the disreputable but 
 picturesque thatches, draining the roads and 
 lanes, and installing modern plumbing. By these 
 benefactions he had called down, not blessings, 
 but curses on his head, this morning s corre 
 spondent alluding darkly to a right of way that 
 had been ignored by the new model gymnasium 
 Mclvor had presented to the village. The law was 
 invoked and threats of "proceedings" dotted the 
 angry letter. Mclvor read it to the end, then 
 laughed a little contemptuously and put it care- 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 fully on file. It was characteristic of the man that 
 he had no secretary. The next communication 
 was a note from Lady Evelyn Malloring asking 
 him to dine, informally with her that evening. 
 "We have a delightful house guest, young Viola 
 Mordaunt. Do come and help me make it 
 pleasant for her ," Lady Evelyn wrote. 
 
 Mclvor drew his brows together. "Mordaunt 
 Mordaunt where did I hear that name? surely 
 there was something extraordinary connected 
 with it, but I can t place it. It s incredible of 
 Lady Evelyn to want me to make things jolly for a 
 young girl. I m not exactly a festive person 
 however " he got up slowly, gathering his corre 
 spondence together, "I shall go to astonish her." 
 
 That evening at eight o clock, Mclvor was put 
 down in front of Lady Malloring s in Half Moon 
 street; but before walking up the red carpet that 
 had been laid on the pavement, he threw his head 
 back and looked up at the wintry sky. A sharp 
 wind was blowing, and ragged clouds swept across 
 the heavens, through which a pale moon shone fit 
 fully. Night in London presented a new scene to 
 Mclvor, and as its airs brushed his cheek, he was 
 conscious of kinship with the moods of nature, 
 of man s response to the heavens, as the tides of the 
 earth are subject to the moon. Something in the 
 wan and sinister light filled him with a feeling of 
 depression, as though he had been made suddenly 
 aware of some impending and unhappy fate that 
 he would be unable to avert. 
 
 [12] 
 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "I m fey tonight," with a shrug of his shoulders, 
 Mclvor ran up the stairs and was admitted to the 
 light and charming house of the Mallorings. Lady 
 Evelyn greeted him cordially, and with no trace of 
 the astonishment that she had really felt at his 
 acceptance of her invitation. She was a small 
 blonde woman, who, if the fates were kind, could 
 be exquisitely pretty, but who, personally, had no 
 instinct at all for dress. When gowned by a dress 
 maker of conscience, in a shade of midnight blue 
 that brought out the lovely color of her eyes, she 
 was charming, but like the chameleon she was at 
 the mercy of her background, and always, like that 
 animal, unconscious of it. Tonight s was, how 
 ever, a fortunate selection and Mclvor looked at 
 her small figure, as she came towards him, with 
 pleasure. His dissenting eyes could not have told 
 why but his artistic hands knew. 
 
 There were only eight guests dining, and as 
 Mclvor was the last, and was to give his arm to his 
 hostess, they went out at once. 
 
 Lady Mainwarring, a large brunette, who was 
 aggressive with health, and had defied heaven, 
 Lord Mainwarring, and her complexion by dressing 
 in purple, was on Mclvor s left talking vigorously 
 to Lord Arthur Drummond, who was a member of 
 the Upper House. She had magnificent breath 
 control, and an undoubted gift for oratory of the 
 impassioned type and poor Lord Arthur, a man 
 of the mildest and most domestic nature, whom 
 the accident of birth had visited with a political 
 
 [13] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 career, and a militant suffragist for a wife, felt that 
 he was drowning in a sea of words and cast a 
 desperate glance at the lady on his right, who had 
 been hidden from Mclvor s amused glance. At 
 Drummond s movement, however, her profile 
 came into view, thrown into sharp relief against 
 the dark paneling of the room. In his astonish 
 ment, Mclvor spoke aloud: 
 
 "Why, who is she?" 
 
 Lady Malloring turned to him 
 
 "You are not quite definite but don t point; 
 I see that you are looking at our house guest, at 
 Viola Mordaunt." She brought out the girl s 
 name with the slightest precision, and looked at 
 Mclvor to see if it had made any impression. 
 
 "Her beauty must be my excuse it positively 
 startled me " 
 
 Mclvor managed a short, forced laugh that 
 sounded wildly unnatural to himself. But his 
 hostess would not let him off. 
 
 "Is that what startled you, really or was it a 
 a likeness to anyone?" She fixed her blue eyes 
 on him curiously. 
 
 Before Mclvor s inward vision was a scene so 
 distinct that he seemed to be moving in it again. 
 He was a boy of eighteen in Petersburg with his 
 tutor. They were in the dining room of the 
 Winter Palace listening to an orchestra of stringed 
 instruments. The audience was made up of 
 Russians, French, and a good many English; a 
 man and woman had come in a little late and 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 seated themselves near the door, and Mclvor had 
 stared at them with the sheer wonder of one who 
 makes a discovery. Their beauty had seemed like 
 the proclamation of a great truth, the truth that in 
 the love of man and woman immortality is some 
 times made manifest. As the boy had looked at 
 them he was conscious of a murmuring and shifting 
 around him, and several English couples that were 
 near the two had looked with an insolent and 
 brutal curiosity at them, and had then moved their 
 seats. He had seen the man in the doorway 
 flush, furiously, and he had watched the woman 
 smile at him, tenderly, and as though she were a 
 little amused; and she had kept him there until the 
 concert was over. Afterwards, he had heard their 
 story, and he had never seen them again, but he 
 had never forgotten. And tonight he saw that 
 woman s face looking at him across Lady Mallor- 
 ing s flowers. 
 
 "Does she," repeated Lady Evelyn, patiently, 
 "remind you of any one?" 
 
 Mclvor raised his beautiful hands to his eyes for 
 a moment before he answered, and then, facing her 
 squarely, smiled. 
 
 "Not in the least, Lady Malloring, but, I hope 
 you will present me." 
 
 The delicate malice that dwelt in Lady Evelyn 
 was satisfied. The saint in Mclvor, the man of 
 ruthless truth, had been betrayed. London would 
 fear him no more. She knew that he had lied to 
 her, and she had seen the verdict the fates decreed 
 
 [15] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Viola Mordaunt, in this lie. It was evident they 
 had turned up their thumbs. 
 
 After dinner, Lord and Lady Mainwarring and 
 the Drummonds went on to a reception, but the 
 Mallorings had a box at Covent Garden. 
 
 "It s Otello," Lady Evelyn announced in an off 
 hand way to her husband, who was one of those 
 singular but by no means unusual people in whom 
 there is a dislike of music so acute as to cause them 
 almost physical pain when they are obliged to 
 listen to it. Lady Malloring knew perfectly how 
 Sir John felt, and had, in the first years of her 
 marriage, spared him when she could. But lately 
 she had taken up a new and very soothing religion, 
 whose tenets supported one in ignoring all that did 
 not please, and she sought to help her husband by 
 an application of those precepts. 
 
 He cast her a reproachful but patient look, but 
 as he adored her absolutely, got into the motor 
 like a lamb. Lady Evelyn, a little flushed by her 
 victory, and laying its cause to astonishing mental 
 and moral progress, gave him a fleeting and 
 triumphant smile, that caused a glow of pride, at 
 being its possessor, to warm Sir John s heart. 
 
 "She thinks she s managed you," his far from 
 dull intelligence informed him. 
 
 "Well, let her," responded his affection, "She s 
 pretty enough I m for her." 
 
 Owing to Lady Malloring s little coup, her party 
 arrived five minutes before the curtain rose. Poor 
 Sir John made inward lamentation at his ill fortune 
 
 [16] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 in not being spared anything, and even Lady 
 Evelyn cast a look of dismay at the empty stalls, 
 which, however, gradually rilled with miscel 
 laneous, and to her, unknown faces; critics, 
 reporters, semi-smart people and, incidentally, 
 music lovers. 
 
 Looking through her glasses, from their ground 
 box, to the opposite ones, Lady Malloring per 
 ceived that a Royal Personage was in attendance, 
 and that above in the tiers, the opera glasses of 
 many of her friends were leveled at the occupants 
 of her own box. Lady Malloring had managed the 
 seating cleverly, so that Viola was in front with 
 Mclvor in back and a little to her right; Sir John 
 lurked miserably in the back, and would not be 
 placed, Lady Evelyn sat next a chair for him, 
 quite by herself, where she commanded an excel 
 lent view of the house, if not such a fine one of the 
 stage. 
 
 It was a brilliant audience, and though to Lady 
 Evelyn it was nothing new, to Viola Mordaunt it 
 seemed an exciting and stimulating prelude to some 
 remarkable experience. Mclvor, his own face in 
 shadow, was able to watch the fascinating play of 
 expression on the girl s, as the curtain rising dis 
 closed a tavern with an arbor, and in the back 
 ground a quay, and evening light on angry water. 
 To Viola, who had been kept in the careful 
 seclusion of the English school girl, her first sight 
 of the theater, the visualization of what she had 
 loved in literature, moved her tremendously. As 
 
 [17] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the conductor raised his baton, he released a magic 
 flood of harmony on which Viola floated. But the 
 fear of being ridiculous in her enthusiasm, made 
 Viole turn what she thought was a composed face 
 to Mclvor. 
 
 "Rosinni is in splendid voice, isn t she?" 
 
 "Tell me, Miss Mordaunt," Mclvor brushed her 
 banality aside in a characteristic way, "does 
 Otello interest you?" 
 
 "The man? or the play?" 
 
 "You have answered me. You said the man/ 
 he lives to you. Shakespeare did not over-rate the 
 infinite patience of woman, or the infinite ego in 
 man. Poor Desdemona pathetically enumerating 
 the woes he had told her: 
 
 Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, 
 
 Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads 
 touch heaven 
 
 It was thy hint to speak, and of the torments 
 
 Borne by thy noble self 
 
 presents, does she not, a living sacrifice, in the first 
 act?" 
 
 "Why," said Viola with warm championship, 
 "no, she s lovely, and she liked his telling her all 
 that." 
 
 "Didn t it bore her? I mean, doesn t it 
 seem an imposition on his part, giving her all his 
 bogeys?" 
 
 Mclvor spoke with a curious intensity, and 
 Viola, turning to him with an impulsive move 
 ment that was very feminine, answered his mood, 
 
 [18] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 with sincerity. Long afterward she remembered 
 this conversation: 
 
 "Desdemona says, 
 
 I saw Otello s visage in his mind. 
 
 And thus to him did my soul consecrate/ 
 She s splendid but/ Mclvor looked at Viola 
 with his peculiarly bright eyes, "I think that was 
 the beginning of the trouble, don t you? or it 
 would be in a modern instance; a man seeking the 
 understanding of an intelligence, the woman 
 answering with her emotions." Mclvor shifted in 
 his seat. "Is my idea repellent to you? Would 
 you prefer " he gave a short laugh: 
 : * You loved me for the dangers I had passed, 
 
 And I loved you, that you did pity them "? 
 
 Lady Evelyn leaned forward and touched Viola 
 on the arm. "What are you talking about? I 
 can t understand a word of this Italian. Do, 
 Viola, for pity s sake, say something to John 
 Oh, hush there it goes again." 
 
 Before Viola could turn to her host "it" began 
 with the wistful refrain of the prelude for the 
 fourth act. As she gave her attention to the scene, 
 Viola was conscious that Mclvor had moved a 
 little nearer, and that his hand, which had replaced 
 her cloak very gently on the back of the chair from 
 which it had slipped, still retained part of the cloak 
 in its grasp. Viola was as aware of the concentra 
 tion of his mind on her, as she was of his hand hold 
 ing the wrap delicately. And this concentration 
 of his seemed to go with her into the absorbing play. 
 
 [19] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 The tragedy being finally accomplished and the 
 audience once more in a blaze of light, Viola put a 
 handkerchief to her eyes, to hide the tears that had 
 sprung there. Sir John in the good humor natural 
 to one released from torment, patted her 
 consolingly. 
 
 "Nice cheery little piece, my wife fancied 
 forget it, my dear. The only thing I can t forgive 
 them, is that the killing didn t come off in the first 
 act!" 
 
 "Tell me," Mclvor touched his host on the 
 shoulder, "do you ride tomorrow morning?" 
 
 "Yes, at ten, old fellow join me?" There was a 
 touch of surprise in Sir John s voice. 
 
 "With pleasure, if I may. I ve a new mare, 
 Irish bred, that will stand a deal of handling. 
 You care for horses, Miss Mordaunt?" 
 
 Viola looked up, and Mclvor met her glance 
 that was full of astonishment. She had been in the 
 darkened room with the murdered lovers, and she 
 thought this man had been with her there. And 
 now he asked in the most ordinary way if she liked 
 horses. 
 
 "Why, yes, of course surely every one cares 
 for them." 
 
 Mclvor did not take his eyes from hers. "You 
 could never be like every one, and " he added 
 slowly, "I want to know you better, if I may." 
 
 Lady Malloring, caught by two bores that 
 wanted a peep at Mclvor and Viola, refused their 
 pressing invitation to go on to the Ritz, with 
 
 [20] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 decision, and managed to get her party safely into 
 the motor again. "It s high time for you to be in 
 bed, my dear," she said to Viola, relaxing, and 
 becoming almost maternal in her feelings, as she 
 thought of the comfort of being tucked up. Her 
 interest in her protege had been more than justi 
 fied. Viola s beauty was extraordinary; the im 
 pression she had so evidently made on Mclvor, 
 that man supposedly composed of the granite of 
 his native hills, being proof enough. Life was not 
 an exciting thing personally to Evelyn Malloring, 
 but she liked it to be interesting to look at from a 
 safe vantage, and to-night she really had a feeling 
 of giving a turn to the wheel of fate. 
 
 Mclvor had insisted on walking and found the 
 deserted streets with relief. The cold wind had 
 died and the moonlight fell in delicate and lumi 
 nous patterns through the branches of the plane- 
 trees that bordered the pavement, and to which 
 some withered leaves still clung. A faint, white 
 mist, like the breath of approaching winter, filmed 
 the air, and made Mclvor, as he walked rapidly 
 towards Cadogan Square, think of his native and 
 beloved Wales and its especial corner in whose 
 interest he had come to London. He saw the gray 
 walls of Trevwithin set in its green gardens, and 
 the waters of the Conway slipping swiftly below 
 them to the little town of Glas Ogven, with its 
 great slate quarries and its workers that looked 
 to him surely for help. Caught in the grasp of 
 the Snowden mountains, menaced by the sea at 
 
 [21] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 its feet, Glas Ogven looked up to Trevwithin 
 that Mclvor had restored, and lived in that he 
 might answer their need. And to him their need 
 had always come first. To-night he had wanted to 
 share his knowledge of the villagers and their 
 lives he had wanted to speak of his work to a 
 woman whose face had brought to him across the 
 years the memory of love like a flame that had 
 warmed him as he looked on it, but had destroyed 
 utterly the life that had touched it. Mclvor had 
 forgotten that destruction. 
 
 [22] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 It was Christmas week and Thorley was once 
 more full of life and activities. Pamela and Anne 
 who had, it must be admitted, suffered a dimin 
 ished shining in London because of the exceeding 
 effulgence of Viola, were more than pleased to be 
 at home, and the old place had answered with the 
 pathetic and undeniable response of inanimate 
 walls for those whom they have sheltered. There 
 had been a light fall of snow, and the gardens and 
 graveled paths were dusted with it. 
 
 As the motor brought Lady Adela and the three 
 girls from the station through the welcoming 
 village, up the long avenue of beeches to the house 
 itself, all four of them felt a tug at their heart 
 strings at its familiar but almost absurdly picture- 
 card aspect. 
 
 "You get them, five for a penny, at the Green 
 Man, don t you, Aunt?" Lady Adela, wrapped to 
 the eyes, peered at Viola vaguely. She did not 
 understand what Viola was talking about, and 
 was too cold to inquire. Pam, however, faced her 
 cousin with a quick little motion: "You re making 
 game of the old house, aren t you? Perhaps you d 
 like a futurist place better." Pamela was quick to 
 detect any un-English trait in Viola, and since she 
 had been forced to observe her successes, Pamela 
 thought she had seen a good many. 
 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Stamping their chilled feet and wringing their 
 cold hands, the family trooped into the house and 
 were fussed over and made comfortable by the 
 delighted servants. 
 
 Melon, grown gray, and severely buttoned up, in 
 decent black, took proud possession of Pamela, 
 whose rather large features were quite Ted and 
 inflamed from the drive through the cold air. 
 Viola, slipping off her heavy wrap, and turning a 
 face that glowed like a rose, spoke cordially to the 
 old thing, but received a prim response. Melon had 
 never approved of her, and the fact that she now so 
 visibly outshone Pam was not to be forgiven. 
 
 A cry of surprise from Lady Adela, who had 
 been opening some telegrams before the fire, 
 brought the girls to her. 
 
 "Robert is coming down from Oxford will be 
 here to-night that s fine, isn t it? All of us 
 together for the holidays. But here, my dears, is 
 the real surprise!" She held an opened telegram 
 up dramatically, but fixed her eyes on Pamela. 
 
 "Well, mother?" said that maiden, stirring 
 impatiently. 
 
 "Don t get waxy, Pam let the blow fall, please 
 mother." Anne looked at her mother patiently, 
 as one practicing forbearance towards an inferior, 
 but harmless intelligence. "Aren t you curious, 
 Viola ?" Lady Adela, determined on her sensation, 
 waited for Viola s quick nod. 
 
 "This is it, then. Your cousin, Harold Gaunt, 
 whom you have not seen since you were infants, is 
 
 [24] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 home, on leave from India, and will be in this 
 house to-night. The motor has left to fetch him 
 and that, my dears, is the dressing bell; I haven t 
 been so happy in years!" 
 
 The good lady, clutching a miscellany of wraps 
 and bags, and with her small toque pushed to the 
 back of her head, still managed to put an arm 
 about Viola. "I ll come to your room a minute, 
 dear, to see that everything is comfy." Arrived 
 there, however, and deposited hospitably by 
 Viola, in the little chintz armchair, by the fire, 
 Lady Adela did no looking, save at the heaped and 
 brightly burning wood. 
 
 Viola, noticing, despite her aunt s utterly di 
 sheveled condition, the somewhat pensive expres 
 sion of her face, sat down, quietly, by her, and 
 presently Lady Adela, warmed unconsciously by 
 the sympathetic silence, as well as the warm blaze, 
 spoke shyly. 
 
 "It would be awfully nice, wouldn t it, Vi?" 
 
 "What, dear?" 
 
 "Why, if what Henry Gaunt and I had planned 
 so long ago should really happen. If Harold and 
 Pam I think they would be suited. And to have 
 my girl marry some one whom I know. He s quite 
 splendid, you know, took the V. C., probably he 
 would retire, and they could have Hampton, it 
 will be Pam s, anyway." 
 
 "Have they written?" 
 
 "I rather think so. But of course I don t know. 
 Pam is secretive with me in fact," Lady Adela 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 raised her kind face, with the rakish hat on top, 
 somewhat plaintively to Viola s. "So is Anne, 
 but of course they would tell me anything im 
 portant. Well, dear, I must run along You 
 won t breathe a word of what I ve said I want 
 them to be quite simple and natural together, and 
 without any idea that we are thinking things." 
 
 Lady Adela, once more gathering up her belong 
 ings, stood and looked at Viola. As she did so 
 Pam s face, with its prominent highly colored 
 features, light eyes, and decisive expression, came 
 before her mental vision not through the loving 
 and maternal medium through which Lady Adela 
 usually saw her daughter. While her inner eyes 
 glimpsed Pam, her outer ones saw Viola, with mis 
 giving. Surely it had been unnecessary for Vi to 
 have everything. The slender, well poised figure 
 the dark hair gathered in a dusky heap and crown 
 ing her lovely little head with soft curls the eyes, 
 their brown gaze veiled with creamy lids, and 
 made mysterious by black and exquisitely curling 
 lashes the little, delicate nose, turning up ever so 
 slightly over the red lips. 
 
 As Lady Adela looked at Viola her expression 
 became piteous, her voice even trembled a bit: 
 
 "Vi, dear, for my sake, give Pam a chance, 
 won t you? Men, you know, are awful fools." 
 
 "What in the world, dear?" 
 
 "It s hard to say to you but look in the 
 glass! Wear something old; do your hair un 
 becomingly, if you can be late be awkward and 
 
 [26] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 untidy talk politics, tout for Suffrage, or the 
 Radicals, and don t for heaven s sake don t look 
 at Harold Gaunt as you are looking at me, now, or 
 he will have to kiss you, as I do." Lady Adela 
 drew Viola s head down to her and kissed her 
 tenderly. 
 
 "I m too old to hate you for my own sake, and 
 too fond of you to do it for my girls but, be as 
 careful with us as you can." 
 
 Viola lifted an astonished face, one sincerely 
 surprised, as Lady Adela saw, and marveled to see. 
 
 "Aunt, what nonsense! but if Harold is pre 
 served, of course I ll keep off. We ll both be late 
 and frowzy for dinner to-night it s a judgment on 
 you!" 
 
 The gong for dinner sounded faintly. Lady 
 Adela, making a wild snatch at her toque, suc 
 ceeded in pushing it quite over the back of her 
 head, where it hung by one hat pin. Her hand bag, 
 always overfull, being caught up in desperate 
 haste, was unable to bear extra pressure, and 
 burst wildly open, disclosing disordered contents, 
 and Lady Adela crushed them down, but Viola, 
 moved by pity, took the bag away from her, and 
 gave her aunt a gentle pat by way of assistance 
 from the room. 
 
 Alone, Viola stood quietly by an open window 
 for a moment. The night was clear, studded with 
 brilliant stars, and a breath of frost in the air 
 promised a good day for a run with the hounds. 
 Viola s horse Eileen, a black Irish beauty, had not 
 
 [27] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 been sent up to London, and it was quite six 
 months since Viola had been on her. Riding in 
 the Row was not the same thing as the free gallops 
 across the meadow and in the open country that 
 Viola had always taken when the spirit moved her 
 to be away from people, soothed by the indifference 
 of nature. 
 
 Straining her eyes in the darkness Viola could 
 make out the stables a boy with a lantern held 
 his small light high for a moment before going in, 
 and Viola half fancied the horse he was leading in 
 was Eileen. 
 
 "But that s nonsense!" she said to herself. 
 "To-morrow will come, and then I shall have a 
 real ride!" 
 
 As she moved from the window, a discreet tap 
 was heard at her door, and opening, Viola saw 
 Melon, grim with disapproval. 
 
 "The others are waiting, Miss. Her Ladyship 
 asked if you would be so good as to come right 
 down?" 
 
 "But heavens! I ve not changed!" 
 
 "No, Miss, but that s what she said." Melon 
 withdrew. 
 
 "Very well " Viola frowned, then touched her 
 white blouse, which was not fresh, and was open 
 at the throat. "I m disgusting, I ll take away 
 their appetites but heaven forbid! not Pamela s 
 admirer!" 
 
 A few moments later, entering the drawing 
 room quietly, Viola saw Harold Gaunt for the 
 
 [28] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 first time in her life. He was talking to Lady 
 Adela or rather smiling down at her, while she 
 talked nervously and disjointedly to him. He 
 was a big man, and though dinner was late and he 
 had evidently come a long way, he did not seem 
 impatient, but kept the very blue gaze of his eyes 
 bent on Lady Mordaunt, as she struggled with the 
 intricacies of a story that had been amusing, even 
 brilliant, when told to her, but became involved, 
 elusive, devoid of point, x when she attempted it 
 herself. Her little effort at wit made Pamela 
 irritable, and she moved over to her mother, her 
 strong, rather heavy figure, in its blue gown of 
 determined simplicity, held stiffly. 
 
 "Shall we wait any longer, Mother, for Viola? 
 She may not be coming down, and poor Harold 
 must be famished. 
 
 "Oh, not at all, thanks, very much. It s jolly 
 being here; let s wait if she s coming? I ve never 
 seen Viola, you now. She was at school both 
 times I made my visits to you. I m anxious to 
 know her " Harold smiled pleasantly at 
 Pamela s effort on his behalf, and then, attracted, 
 possibly, by Viola s eyes upon him, turned and 
 saw her, in traveling skirt and tumbled blouse. 
 
 Lady Adela noticed at once the change of 
 expression that came into his face; she had seen it 
 before when people looked at Viola there was a 
 concentrated and delighted surprise in it, as one 
 seeing visions made flesh. Lady Adela sighed, but 
 advanced to her niece. 
 
 [29] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Come, dear, this is your cousin Harold Gaunt. 
 He was just saying that he had never met 
 you, and perhaps, was thinking that he never 
 might!" 
 
 "I know, Aunt, forgive me for being late, but " 
 
 Gaunt took her slight hand and held it for a 
 moment firmly. "But what?" he said, "what has 
 kept you from rushing down to meet me ? I ve had 
 a most tremendous desire to see you I m just 
 home from Kairpur, from India; this is my first 
 English Christmas in five years." He released 
 Viola s hand, and turned to Lady Adela. "You 
 are making them up to me those years in the 
 desert." 
 
 At the note of sincere warmth and feeling in his 
 voice, Lady Adela s face flushed and her kind eyes 
 were suffused. "Dear boy," she murmured, put 
 ting her hand on his arm, "we love having you. 
 With Robert coming, we are going to be a complete 
 family, for once. You may take Pamela out, 
 Harold, dinner is waiting." 
 
 The dining room at Thorley was both long and 
 wide. The ceiling was crossed by heavy beams of 
 oak, darkened by age almost to black. In the 
 great fireplace huge logs burned and rested on 
 massive andirons of beaten brass, whose polished 
 surfaces reflected the dancing flames. Over the 
 mantel the family arms were cut into the stone. 
 Six windows deep in embrasures looked out on 
 green lawns, a rose garden, and great shady 
 beeches. 
 
 [30] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 The table was prettily laid with modern silver, 
 and delicate French china; a silver epergne, in the 
 center, filled with old-fashioned clove carnations, 
 represented a stubborn defiance of Lady Adela s. 
 The epergne, being frankly hideous as well as 
 undeniably mid- Victorian, had been condemned by 
 both Pamela and Anne as "too much/ After each 
 banishment, it had but waited a discreet interval 
 to reappear, turning, so to speak, a flower-laden 
 cheek to be smitten. Pamela, catching sight of it 
 again, admitted defeat. 
 
 The butler, Parkman, and two footmen waited. 
 To Harold Gaunt the old room bearing on its walls 
 the portraits of his family, extended a splendid 
 hospitality. The warmth of the fire, the heavy 
 fragrance of the clove carnations, the faces of his 
 aunt and cousins seated about the table, seemed 
 like a welcome to what is dearest to an English 
 man his home. 
 
 As Gaunt looked at Viola, he fancied her eyes in 
 meeting his showed sympathy for his years of 
 exile, and a beautiful gladness at his return. 
 
 She did not look at him long, however, but 
 opened an almost violently animated conversation 
 with her aunt, in defense of some militants that 
 had destroyed the contents of a pillar box. He 
 was amused at her championship, watching her 
 quick color, the light in her eyes, and the look of 
 withdrawal and exquisite mystery, when she 
 lowered them, and her long lashes curled against 
 her cheek. 
 
 [31] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 A clear voice at his side interrupted these 
 observations. He turned to look at Pamela, who 
 held his glance with small eyes, guiltless of ambush. 
 
 "I was asking if you would care to hunt with us 
 to-morrow? The weather s perfect, I think, and 
 there s a good horse for you." 
 
 "I d not thought of it. Do you all follow?" 
 
 "I do, not Anne. Viola, I don t know about. 
 Robert is too stuffy he comes home to lounge 
 about; worn out from everything but study. 
 There are some people staying at Crawdon, next 
 us, you know. They may join." Pamela raised 
 her voice slightly. "You ll come? I think it only 
 right for us to take an interest." 
 
 Something in Gaunt, that had its being in a fact 
 of his nature, resented this heightened tone, the 
 hint of compulsion in her words. 
 
 He looked away from Pam. "I think I won t, 
 if you don t mind. It will be rather jolly, just to 
 get acquainted with the old place. And I have no 
 
 mount." 
 
 "There s one for you. Vi, Harold could ride 
 Deegan, perfectly, couldn t he?" 
 
 "Why, yes of course he could." 
 
 "There! now you ve no excuse!" 
 
 Harold leaned a little forward. "Will you ride, 
 Cousin Viola?" And the masculinity that was a 
 very strong trait of his character reveled in the 
 initiative of his question. 
 
 Viola veiled her eyes she did so to make no 
 encroachment on Pam s property. She could have 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 done nothing to make herself more alluring to 
 Gaunt. "I think not, Cousin Harold I must be 
 busy. Letters to write " 
 
 Anne listened in astonishment. "You! letters! 
 since when?" 
 
 Lady Adela looked long at the epergne, which 
 represented her victory. And she remembered the 
 tactics of her warfare. Submission passivity 
 and then return. 
 
 She smiled at Viola: "My dear child, you are 
 talking nonsense. Of course you will ride, to 
 morrow!" Pushing back her chair, Lady Adela 
 stood up, after sweeping a spoon from the table 
 with her napkin, and led the way to the drawing- 
 room. Harold Gaunt was for once in his very 
 polite life distinctly backward about opening the 
 door. He went instead directly to Viola. 
 
 "Will you ride with me to-morrow, Cousin 
 Viola?" 
 
 And Viola, lifting her eyes to his, smiled deli- 
 ciously. "Thank you, Cousin Harold, I shall be 
 very much pleased." 
 
 Lady Adela, before whom doors had always 
 flown open as if by magic, when any Englishman 
 was about, stopped in astonishment before her own 
 door that remained closed. Turning, however, the 
 look of surprise on her face faded. With a sigh, 
 she opened the door herself. 
 
 [33] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Melon, bringing Viola s tea the next morning, 
 was forced to admit a radiant day. She put back 
 the chintz curtains, and Viola saw the copper 
 beeches glowing against a blue sky. The air, 
 sharp and sweet, carried the sound of horses hoofs 
 on the gravel, and the voices of the grooms and 
 stable boys. 
 
 The meet was to lead off from Hatfield Heath, 
 at ten o clock, but the Honorable John Thornton, 
 M.F.H., was to breakfast at Thorley. 
 
 Viola heard voices in the dining-room, as she 
 went down, a little late. She had taken pains with 
 her toilette her hair still damp from the bath lay 
 in charming but carefully arranged waves, under a 
 smart black hat. She wore a black riding habit 
 that had been made in London for Park riding, 
 and her little boots were new, and beautifully 
 varnished. 
 
 Pamela and Anne were already down and mak 
 ing excellent breakfasts. Robert was serving them 
 from the buffet with cold ham, to top off the 
 cereal, liver and bacon, and scalloped fish that was 
 to reenforce them for the hunt. Lady Adela, at 
 the head of the table beside an enormous, and to 
 her, always alarming coffee percolator, watched 
 the satisfaction of her daughters healthy appetites, 
 
 [34] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 with the pleasure peculiar to a maternal parent. 
 Harold Gaunt, in pink hunting coat and white 
 breeches, sat opposite his cousins, and also 
 noticed the appetites and their satisfaction. 
 
 Pamela, wearing a habit of pepper and salt 
 material, fitted so tight as to resemble a third skin, 
 alarmed the young man; she seemed to him on the 
 brink of bursting. Anne s clothes were quite large 
 enough you felt that they were suitable, well 
 chosen. And her gray eyes looking out of a brown, 
 boyish face, convinced one of her capability in any 
 ordinary situation. One also felt that the ordinary 
 situation would be all that she would have to 
 meet. 
 
 As Viola came into the room, the M.F.H., a 
 man of fifty, with sandy hair, and a look of enor 
 mous complacency, stopped in the narration of his 
 difficulties in the village of Watching Tye. It was 
 plainly going to the dogs. His estate of Rawdon 
 to which Watching Tye was attached like an 
 impoverished and undesirable relative, was not 
 self-supporting, and the Honorable John laid his 
 troubles before the Mordaunts. 
 
 At Viola s entrance, his offended throaty voice 
 stopped in its recital, and Harold Gaunt, who had 
 looked past him out of the window to the glittering 
 lawn, got to his feet in a second. The Honorable 
 John soon followed, but there was an odd expres 
 sion in his prominent eyes, as he watched Viola 
 something greedy, and something wary, too, was 
 there. 
 
 [35] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 As Viola took no breakfast and the others had 
 finished and were chatting, a general move was 
 made. Arrived at Hatfield Heath, and mounted on 
 Eileen, who was quivering and restive, Viola 
 turned her horse, after the bugle had sounded, in 
 the opposite direction to that taken by the dogs 
 and the hunters. The mare, her neck arched, her 
 nostrils dilated and showing red, fought against 
 Viola s determination, with fiery spirit; the cry of 
 the hounds in full tongue, the rush of the horses, 
 filled her with an eager excitement and actual 
 animal rage, that a less experienced rider could not 
 have overcome. With sympathy and skill, and by 
 finally giving the horse her head over a sweep of 
 meadow land, Viola got away from the others, and 
 gave herself to the joy of the morning. 
 
 From the blue English sky a lark flung its notes, 
 crystalline, distinct, pure as the air they melted 
 into. The oaks that dotted the rich pasture land 
 were burnished like copper and hung with a fine 
 mist of cobwebs, through which they seemed to 
 murmur and breathe, as all live things do, in the 
 gift of light and air. From the cluster of trees in 
 which she stopped, Viola could see nothing of 
 Thorley, or any trace of human dwellings. 
 Letting the reins loose on Eileen s neck, with one 
 hand Viola took off the little Bond street hat, and 
 felt for the damage done to her hair by the swift 
 run. The pins had been shaken from it, and when 
 the hat came off the heavy mass of it fell about her 
 shoulders. Eileen taking a base advantage broke 
 
 [36] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 into a swift canter. Viola, her hat slipping from 
 her hands, was carried out into the sun, her hair 
 streaming about her. 
 
 "Damn!" said Viola, pulling up with difficulty. 
 
 A tall figure detached itself from a thicket. "I 
 don t blame you in the least," remarked a well- 
 bred voice, with every intonation of respect. 
 "I ve said it myself since I ve been looking for you. 
 You evidently forgot that we were to ride 
 together?" 
 
 Harold Gaunt miraculously and undesirably 
 appearing, came over to Viola. A tide of crimson 
 swept her face. 
 
 "1 don t think I ever said that before. It it 
 was jerked out of me by Eileen. I haven t a 
 hair pin not one, they were jerked out, too!" 
 
 "I had no right here spying on you with the 
 hateful pervasiveness of relatives. You had for 
 gotten my existence yesterday, and to-day I in 
 terrupt your most private opinions. Forgive me !" 
 
 His blue eyes looked up at her with an imp of 
 mischief dancing in them. As he looked, the imp 
 disappeared. 
 
 "Won t you dismount? At least I can find your 
 hat!" He took Eileen s bridle, but Viola, dis 
 regarding his outstretched hand, gave a quick 
 jump and was beside him. 
 
 "I tried to give you a wrong impression, Cousin 
 Harold. I always swear. Aunt has had a dreadful 
 time with me. Pamela never does. If you don t 
 mind, let s get in the shade." 
 
 [37] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 They moved forward, under a great oak. A 
 little breeze shivered and whispered in its 
 branches, and swung a spray of mistletoe above 
 their heads. 
 
 "Do you mind, Viola, if I don t get your hat, at 
 once, and would you please sit just there?" 
 
 "Of course. But why?" 
 
 "I am going to lecture you. YouVe told me a 
 fib to-day, and you acted one last night. You are 
 not a Suffragette and you do not swear. Why are 
 you trying to fool me?" His voice to his own ears 
 sounded hurt, and angry. She was such a lovely, 
 lovely thing, with her shining hair veiling her, and 
 her dark eyes raised to his. The breeze gave an 
 extra tug at the mistletoe. 
 
 Moving closer to Viola, he asked again: "Why, 
 Viola, do you dislike me, and avoid me?" 
 
 "But I don t I didn t." 
 
 "Then admit, you are not a three bottle man!" 
 He gave a short, eager laugh. 
 
 Lady Adela s piteous face floated before Viola. 
 She spoke slowly and precisely, trying to recall the 
 precepts of militants. 
 
 "Don t be absurd. I m unfortunate enough to 
 be a woman in England, but I take all the privi 
 leges of your sex that I care to. As to liking or 
 disliking you, why should I? I m perfectly 
 indifferent to all men." 
 
 There was silence that throbbed, then Gaunt s 
 voice speaking gently: "You are indifferent 
 always? Then you won t mind this, will you? 
 
 [38] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 And it will give me a great deal of pleasure!" 
 Stooping quickly, he took Viola s chin in his hand, 
 and bending his head, kissed her full on her 
 mouth. 
 
 The mistletoe bough stirred in the wind, turned 
 its pearly blossoms to the sun and expanded. 
 Gaunt reached up and broke a spray from it. He 
 offered it to Viola. 
 
 "One of my excuses my my only one," he 
 stammered. 
 
 For all of his effort of nonchalance, his breath 
 came quickly. The touch of Viola s lips had been 
 like snow that had left fire behind it. 
 
 "You will forgive me, Viola? You must it was 
 horribly cheeky." 
 
 The Honorable Viola Mordaunt had turned her 
 back to her cousin and was braiding her hair with 
 trembling hands. Two scarlet spots burned in her 
 cheeks. The braid completed she turned to him. 
 "Eileen, please." Her young voice was not quite 
 steady. A hot wave of shame went over Gaunt. 
 His instinct of the gentleman cried out at him. 
 He brought her horse at once, and mounted her. 
 The touch of the small boot, in his hand, made him 
 feel a cad. 
 
 "Dear Viola, you must listen to me. I m fresh 
 from the plains. You don t know what that means. 
 There have been four of us in Kairpur four 
 Englishmen, the rest natives. And the land is 
 parched, like a man in fever, when it isn t rotting 
 in the rains. I ve had five years of it. And now 
 
 [39] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 England home has gone to my head. I ve been 
 a lout, a fool " He broke off angrily. 
 
 "Come," said Viola, in a small voice, "if we are 
 to have any tea, we must make haste." 
 
 Gaunt flung himself on his horse and followed 
 her. 
 
 "Do tell me," she continued, "about that 
 curious place or rather about what you did there. 
 Aunt said that you had the V. C." She turned 
 her head and looked him full in the face. "Is it 
 given, Cousin Harold, for bravery, or for fool- 
 hardiness?" 
 
 [40] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Turned towards home, the horses went well 
 together. The swift motion of Eileen gave Viola 
 occupation for her hands as well as her thoughts. 
 Red spots still burned on her cheeks, but she was 
 determined to treat this affair as a woman of the 
 world would treat it. To be that, to present the 
 polished surface of an accomplished mondaine, had 
 been one of Viola s youthful and secret ambitions. 
 And that ambition had been fired by her season in 
 town. There she had seen and admired smart 
 women, and elegant women, whose poised manner 
 had reflected the appearance of their lives. They 
 had been nice to her not too nice, because they 
 had enchanting affairs of their own that had their 
 real interest, and which, in a subtle way, Viola had 
 felt were quite unconnected with women. They 
 had shown her a certain graciousness that had not 
 been without challenge, and for that reason was 
 potent. Viola longed to acquire the aura that 
 surrounded her new acquaintances. 
 
 She had made an impression, Evelyn Malloring 
 had insisted, on Ian Mclvor, but the very real 
 modesty that was Viola s had laughed at her 
 friend. Mclvor had been kind, sympathetic, but 
 remote, surely, from her distressingly youthful 
 personality. Viola hated the incoherence of her 
 
 [41] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 youth. It was evidently because of her childish 
 appearance that Gaunt had dared to kiss her 
 hair down and all she had looked a kid. He 
 should learn, if she could manage it, his mistake. 
 
 So Viola listened, demurely, after her first kiss, 
 and stilled with difficulty many and surprising 
 sensations. 
 
 Harold Gaunt, his blue eyes on her face, talked 
 in a very un-English way. He was quite accus 
 tomed to doing his part in conversation, in fact, 
 had often cause to regret a facile power to please, 
 and attach to himself people in whom he had not 
 the slightest interest. When that interest was 
 held, however, he could be an observing as well as 
 an animated young man; and he now understood 
 Viola s precocious handling of the situation. He 
 had seen young girls in India imitate the manner 
 of older, and much admired ladies, and now, as 
 then, he had known quite clearly that it was the 
 manner and not the thing that made it, that was 
 marvelously reproduced. 
 
 So he told Viola of his loneliness, of his hard 
 ships, of the time he had been wounded by a 
 native that had run amuck. Of how he, Gaunt, 
 had stopped, struggled with, and finally killed the 
 man, after being stabbed, and had found some 
 government papers on him. 
 
 Viola s imagination had kept step with his story. 
 She saw the man, streaked with sweat, running in 
 the white dust of the road, as a mad thing runs. 
 She saw that flight checked, and two figures in the 
 
 [42] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 dust a black hand with a knife poised, its swift 
 descent, blood oozing, welling, pouring from its 
 mark. The black hand raised again but held. 
 Another hand, white red streaked catching, 
 forcing, breaking its hold the gleam of the knife 
 again, a cry, a figure of horror springing into the 
 air falling, collapsing, shuddering to the earth 
 lying there still. 
 
 Viola felt enveloped by the fetid air of Kairpur. 
 Through its clinging languor she saw her cousin, 
 bending over and searching the body that he had 
 slain. Searching it, touching it, till he found the 
 papers, then turning, in the breathless air, and 
 under the baleful sun to make his way home, 
 alone, fainting, staining the dust with scarlet. 
 
 Gaunt stopped in surprise, for Viola had uttered 
 a little cry and turned a white face towards 
 him. 
 
 "What is it, Viola ? Did something startle you ?" 
 He checked his horse and looked on either side of 
 the country road. The afternoon was deepening 
 towards its close, blue shadows mingled with the 
 aspiring and acrid smoke of burning leaves. A 
 crimson sun was dying in the heart of a pure sky 
 that preserved miraculously its opalescent inno 
 cence. As Gaunt looked at the heavens, they 
 symbolized to him what love might be in the heart 
 of a young girl. 
 
 Viola s voice, natural now, came to him. "Oh, 
 it s nothing, Cousin Harold but how horrible! to 
 kill that man and how did you get home?" 
 
 [43] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "It was a nasty thing for him, poor beggar! 
 But don t waste your sympathy on me. It s hazy 
 in my mind about getting back to quarters I had 
 a go of fever, but all that was luck, don t you see 
 sheer luck it brought me home that much 
 sooner." He let his eyes rest on her face that was 
 not quite composed, and that held a delicate 
 eagerness of pity. 
 
 "But who nursed you?" 
 
 "An old coolie as long as my tobacco lasted." 
 Gaunt gave a short laugh. 
 
 "And then?" persisted Viola. 
 
 "My wound healed, the rains came, and the 
 doctor with them. You have been more than 
 patient this can t possibly have interested you, 
 my beastly maundering about myself." 
 
 "You made me see that place you made me 
 feel your loneliness, your isolation, the dead air, 
 and the sickly rain." Viola cleared her throat, 
 with an odd little sound of decision. She stooped 
 to her stirrup and touched a perfectly adjusted 
 buckle. Under her long lashes a faint flush 
 showed itself. "I can t bear to think of you there 
 ill, with only a coolie to see to you." 
 
 The horses were on soft loam now, and going 
 quietly like good comrades. Dense shrubberies 
 made a dim twilight about them. Gaunt put out his 
 hand and held the bridle of Viola s horse, and the 
 animal stopped at once, turning a surprised head. 
 
 "Viola, please, will my sins be forgiven me? I 
 must know before we go home." 
 
 [44] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Viola looked up, startled. The manners of the 
 admired ladies of London were forgotten. She 
 was aware of Gaunt s presence, of the anxiety and 
 intention of his gaze, as she had never before felt 
 conscious of anyone s, except, for a mistaken 
 moment at "Otello," when she had yielded surely 
 to an over-stimulated imagination, and fancied 
 Mclvor in sympathetic accord with her tragic 
 mood. But, raising her eyes now to her cousin s, 
 she forgot that incident, as she had forgotten 
 desired and imitated mannerisms of speech. Sin 
 cerity of expression shone like a light in her eyes, 
 and Gaunt answered that sincerity. Dismount 
 ing, he went to Viola s side. A few rooks flying 
 homeward made the only sound that broke the 
 stillness of the green and exquisite twilight that 
 enfolded them. Against the dark shrubberies 
 Viola s white face looked like a pale exotic flower 
 but a flower surely with a soul. 
 
 "Little cousin little girl don t let me frighten 
 you. Since I saw you last night, I ve changed 
 I m not the same man " His voice, which had 
 been curiously level in tone, broke, went on 
 rapidly, "I m not old Viola but ten years of my 
 youth have been wasted swallowed by routine; 
 ten years of youth think of it, Viola spent in 
 loneliness and the plains. I ve had my dream 
 of love, of companionship surely every man has 
 had that! But it has been nothing but a dream. 
 You welcomed me last night, Viola you made me 
 feel that I had really come home, perhaps without 
 
 [45] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 meaning it but you did! You did And to 
 day " he drew an uneven breath, and moved 
 nearer, but did not touch her. It s like this to me, 
 Viola. A nature that has never loved is like the 
 waste places, the solitudes in which I ve lived 
 abominable. I ve been like them, but I m not 
 that any more! You ve made me different, 
 already in a day." 
 
 A wave of emotion swept over him. He covered 
 his face with his hands. He felt like a worshipper 
 that had come to kneel, but had been filled with a 
 spirit fiery, ungovernable, that had proclaimed 
 itself through his lips. And by so doing had 
 shocked, perhaps offended, the mysterious thing 
 he worshipped. For it was the youth, the in 
 nocence of Viola that had kindled this flame, 
 at her shrine. 
 
 Viola, astonished, shaken, looked at his dark 
 head bowed before her. The sense of his nearness, 
 his emotion, gave her an intolerable feeling, half 
 pity, half repulsion. She put her hand on his hair, 
 lightly. 
 
 Instantly he looked up. "You are not angry, 
 little Viola?" His hand, strong and full of heat, 
 took hers. At his touch that which had been pity 
 in Viola vanished, and that which had been 
 repulsion vanished also. She felt composure like a 
 torn mantle slipping away from her, and she 
 longed to grasp it and hold it together with some 
 familiar and commonplace words. But they would 
 not come. She took her hand from his, touched 
 
 [46] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Eileen with her heel, and the horse, startled, 
 indignant, sprang forward. 
 
 The bell for even-song from the church in Little 
 Harley sent the sweet appeal of its voice to float 
 in the evening air. The sound held a certain note 
 of authority. The authority that lives in simplicity 
 and in goodness and that makes a harmony of its 
 own. As Viola listened to the old bell, her mood 
 changed. She checked Eileen, and waited for 
 Harold, and they rode home abreast. 
 
 [47 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Left to herself Lady Adela had spent a delightful 
 day, until four in the afternoon. At that hour, the 
 servants, and especially Melon who was now 
 housekeeper saw her enter her own room with 
 relief. Because she was a good mistress. Lady 
 Adela was an enquiring one; so investigations were 
 rigidly conducted. Safe in her room, however, she 
 had locked the door, taken a small key from a 
 closed triptych on a Boule table, and with it 
 opened, stealthily, a carved rosewood chest that 
 contained childish souvenirs and photographs, 
 which had been repudiated by her adult but by no 
 means mature family. 
 
 Selecting a particularly offensive picture of 
 Pam, mercilessly represented with her fair hair 
 strained from her high forehead, and her pale eyes 
 stony above a smirking mouth, Lady Adela dived 
 again amongst her treasures, and brought up this 
 time a photograph of Harold Gaunt. Placing the 
 two young faces next each other, Lady Adela had 
 sunk into a comfortable chair, and yielded to her 
 imagination. Her face relaxed into lines of con 
 tentment but rarely seen on the faces of those who 
 dwell exclusively in the bleak regions of reality. 
 
 She saw Pam regarding her fiance with a look of 
 girlish admiration she saw that deepen to a fond 
 
 [48] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 and doting expression, not perhaps to have been 
 easily achieved by Pam, but justified by its object, 
 Harold, wrapped in the reserve and majesty of the 
 British husband. 
 
 A knock on her door brought Lady Adela, a 
 rejoicing grandparent, untimely from the christen 
 ing of their first son. Rising reluctantly, she 
 passed her handkerchief over her face to remove 
 from it any lingering cathedral expression. 
 
 Clarkson waited with three cards. Lady Mor- 
 daunt, flushed, with hair untidy, looked at them, 
 took them with a sigh and immediately felt guilty 
 of inhospitality. 
 
 "I ll be down at once, Clarkson," she announced 
 firmly. 
 
 " Lady Malloring," she read, " Mr. Ian 
 Mclvor/ and really! how very extraordinary! * 
 
 Over the third card poor Lady Adela exclaimed: 
 
 "How very extraordinary! Madame du 
 Guenic. 
 
 And then Lady Adela s imagination, after giving 
 her pleasure, froze her with fear; the syllables she 
 spelled were only too familiar, but had been con 
 signed to the Limbo, where the ghosts of family 
 skeletons walk forlorn, but hopeful of a resurrec 
 tion of the flesh. 
 
 Moistening her dry lips and putting a hand that 
 further disarranged her hair to her head, Lady 
 Adela entered her own drawing-room with decision. 
 
 Lady Malloring, victimized by a dressmaker 
 devoid of conscience, came towards her, heavily 
 
 [49] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 upholstered in a rich material of a really terrible 
 shade of green. Her large hat supported a forest 
 of feathers, through which one glimpsed brocaded 
 fruits, gilded vegetables, and was led to hope for 
 Paul and Virginia in their earthly paradise. 
 
 Lady Malloring, as happily unconscious of being 
 badly dressed as she was charmingly so when well 
 turned out, took her hostess s hand. 
 
 "This is an avalanche, Lady Adela, but don t be 
 unduly puffed up, or unnecessarily cast down. We 
 are really calling on your cottages 
 
 Mclvor came forward and interrupted. "Please, 
 Lady Mordaunt, it is quite true that my interest is 
 deeply centered on the present condition of the 
 workingmen in dependent villages, and that yours 
 have an unusual record of usefulness and pros 
 perity. It is also true," he smiled down at her, 
 "that you would delight me if you would let me go 
 with you into Little Horley and see the methods 
 and condition of the people. But " his voice 
 deepened, "I must be frank, my visit is social, and 
 I m hoping you ll let me stop to tea." 
 
 Lady Adela concealed her surprise. While in 
 London Mclvor had called several times, but it had 
 seemed to her nothing more than the politeness of 
 a young man to one of the season s generous 
 hostesses. She had thought of him as a caustic and 
 brilliant person devoted to disturbing sociological 
 pursuits, and attending her parties even from a 
 sense of rigorous and unsleeping duty towards his 
 fellowman. From these vague impressions Lady 
 
 [50] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Adela sought the reason of his coming, while she 
 made all her guests welcome, with very real 
 hospitality. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic, born Hortense du Prez, eldest 
 daughter of Baron du Prez and only sister of Julie, 
 Viola s mother, was an accomplished femme du 
 monde. Though she was now approaching her 
 fiftieth year that year which seems to toll a bell 
 in the lives of frivolous women, and to set a 
 definite limit to that frivolity her rather full 
 erect figure, dark hair, and brown Latin eyes, 
 languorous, yet full of light, expressive, as well as 
 receptive, gave out to the world a personality full 
 of power to attract. She was counting on that 
 power to help her now, in the desolate time of her 
 life. If it could secure for her the companionship, 
 for awhile at least, of her niece, Viola, she felt that 
 her own connection with youth would be renewed; 
 that her being would be refreshed at the well 
 springs of life. 
 
 Viola s birth had been to this woman a tre 
 mendous affront. The only fact that had enabled 
 her to bear it with any inner composure was, that 
 for the new life which had been given another had 
 been taken. She had made at the time no attempt 
 to see the child, but had heard, with infinite relief, 
 of its reception and adoption into the English 
 family. 
 
 But that had been years ago, when she was 
 young and had not been alone, had not known 
 of the waste places of the soul in which no voice 
 
 [51] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 but that of self is heard. She had lately heard that 
 voice and she was afraid. 
 
 To Lady Adela, Mme. du Guenic presented a 
 delicate but suggestive surface the graceful and 
 charming talk of a woman of the world, with the 
 subtlety of a proffered intimacy. 
 
 Poor Lady Adela, who had lived in dread of this 
 event for many years, until the last, and had 
 endowed Viola s maternal aunt with the repulsive 
 attributes of those who can take from us what we 
 love, felt remorse for the mental injustice she had 
 done, and in her anxiety to make amends, met 
 Mme. du Guenic more than half way with cordial 
 ity. And in so doing armed her adversary with a 
 knowledge of her own simplicity and goodness. 
 
 "You must be very tired, all of you." Lady 
 Adela addressed her guests with a fluttering sigh. 
 It did seem too much, to be caught alone with this 
 astonishing trio. 
 
 Lady Evelyn, with her flair for a situation, had 
 immediately sensed one, and was aflame with 
 curiosity. Drawing Mclvor to the window in 
 pretense of admiration for its disclosures, she tried 
 by the use of interrogative and raised eyebrows, 
 and a repetition, in the voice of a conspirator, of 
 the words, "The French aunt The Faubourg, San 
 Germain," to share it with him. He became, how 
 ever, merely irritated and bewildered. 
 
 Seeing the two that were, for her purposes, de 
 cidedly de trop, engaged together, Mme. du Guenic 
 turned a handsome shoulder towards them, and 
 
 [52] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 fixed her brown eyes that held the light of a Madeira 
 wine upon Lady Adela. Her low and beautiful 
 voice took another quality the proffered intimacy 
 that had been in it, deepened to confidence. 
 
 "I have so often thought of you in your English 
 home so longed, and yet feared to present myself. 
 You might easily have felt it an intrusion you 
 may feel it so now. There are things between us 
 that are impayable. But there is also Viola " 
 
 Mme. du Guenic pressed her hands together, the 
 rings on them cutting into her flesh. She con 
 tinued, speaking rapidly. 
 
 "You took her at first, out of charity it was 
 generous it was noble of you! In Paris there 
 were sore hearts that secretly blessed you for that. 
 I thought of Viola on her saint s day, when she was 
 a child, with yearning, but also with shame, and 
 that was my sin. I have been punished for it. 
 You are a happy mother Ah, I know it. Your 
 children are with you my husband and my only 
 son are dead. I am quite alone." 
 
 Lady Adela gave an incoherent murmur of 
 pity. The French woman made a gesture, as 
 of one accepting possible, and even welcome 
 sympathy. 
 
 "My home is closed now. I am quite free 
 living sur la branche. I have come to beg from you 
 from your generosity. Let me have Viola, if she 
 will come to me for six little months. We will 
 travel Paris, Vienna, Rome, Sicily it may 
 amuse her! I know them like my pocket. And 
 
 [53] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 then back to you. Ah, I should be thankful 
 grateful beyond words. Please!" 
 
 Lady Adela, painfully conscious of the rigid 
 attitude of attention taken by Evelyn Malloring s 
 back, touched by the appeal made to her humani 
 ties, and overwhelmed by the thought of answering 
 that appeal, greeted the diversion made by tea, 
 with eagerness. 
 
 The two at the window were obliged to come 
 over, and the talk became general. Mclvor guided 
 it safely, if a trifle didactically, amongst the 
 dwellings of the slate workers in Glas Ogven. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic listened to him with delightful 
 sympathy, interjecting, while she watched his 
 face, expressions of interest. 
 
 Lady Adela, vastly relieved, was able to find out 
 from Evelyn Malloring that permission had been 
 granted for the opening of a bazaar, the proceeds 
 to be given to a little band of devoted men and 
 women who were taking their religion (incidentally 
 it was Lady Adela s religion, too) to northern 
 India. Once arrived with it safely, their intention 
 was to insist, with of course tact, on its adoption by 
 the natives. So that those who went now un 
 ashamed in nakedness and beads might wrap 
 themselves in embarrassment and calico. Lady 
 Adela was very pleased that the bazaar had 
 received royal sanction; she sought Lady Evelyn s 
 evasive eye to express her satisfaction. 
 
 But at that moment Viola and Harold Gaunt 
 came in, together. 
 
 [54] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 It was ten months later. A golden afternoon 
 dreamed itself away in Nice. From the terraced 
 and enclosed gardens of the Villa Atalanta, Viola 
 sat and watched the sea. Two books were beside 
 her, on a small tea table one a volume of the 
 sonnets of Ronsard, open at the one beginning, 
 "Cueillez des aujourdhui les roses de la vie." 
 Tennyson s "Princess" held an envelope that 
 marked, "Tears, idle tears." As she had read the 
 verses, Viola s eyes had been suffused with tears. 
 She had been obliged to put the book down. 
 
 Orange trees in bloom, and standing in green 
 painted tubs, breathed their fragrance into the air 
 that was cooled by the spray from a fountain 
 fashioned in Italian marble, and representing a 
 stout and charming child controlling a sea monster. 
 Water gushed from the mouth of the fish, sparkled 
 in the bright air, and fell into a mossy pool with a 
 delicate and musical sound. 
 
 On the terrace below, oleander bushes bloomed 
 their rose-colored flowers vivid against the silver 
 gray of olive trees. 
 
 From her place Viola looked out over the detail 
 of the garden and the white palm-bordered 
 Boulevard des Anglais, its shops and casinoes, to 
 the land-locked Bay of the Angels. The water was 
 
 [55] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 of that blue that suggests the ideal of beauty to an 
 impressionable mind beauty of the sea, of the 
 heavens, of a soul. It was profoundly still, so still 
 that where the water seemed to meet the sky the 
 two were like one ether. Some fisher boats, their 
 lateen sails bright flecks of color on the blue, lay 
 idly waiting for a breeze, but the fishermen sent 
 their songs across the water. 
 
 And in this calm Viola tried to lose herself to 
 let her mind find peace. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic s plea had been heard, had 
 proved itself to Lady Adela not only a blessing in 
 disguise, but almost an answer to prayer. Viola 
 had gone to her aunt at once, with an ardent 
 admiration for her very unusual attractions, and 
 by so doing had felt herself nearer that dear 
 romance of her life, her mother. 
 
 Lady Adela, after a week of indecision, had the 
 unusual but delightful experience of obeying at the 
 same time the voice of conscience and the voice of 
 desire. For with Viola s departure with Mme. du 
 Guenic, Pamela and Anne had been given their 
 chance; they would no longer be outshone in their 
 own home, and after the fashion of lesser lights 
 when a greater is withdrawn, they made a very 
 charming glow of their own a glow suitable to 
 hearthsides. And Lady Adela, in spite of a very 
 real longing for Viola who had always been a sweet 
 and sympathetic companion to her, could not help 
 a feeling of satisfaction at having her girls young 
 faces no longer compared with Viola s. 
 
 [56] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Mme. du Guenic had been entranced with 
 Viola s beauty. She enjoyed the admiration and 
 envy it aroused as much as though it had been 
 created by the possession of a unique jewel. To be 
 guardian and aunt was an entirely new sensation. 
 
 There had been wonderful shopping expeditions 
 in the Rue de la Paix. The weary voices of dress 
 makers and mannequins had uttered their ecsta 
 sies, with a note of sincerity surely refreshing to 
 their own souls. 
 
 The Faubourg had opened its doors, if not its 
 heart, and Viola had sat through rigidly formal 
 dinners given to her aunt, with a great deal of 
 discomfort. The curiosity felt about herself, 
 though by no means evident in the manners of any 
 of Viola s new acquaintances, was however so 
 active in their minds as to make her feel that she 
 was suddenly and for them obligingly made of 
 glass. Their surprise and interest had been for her 
 remarkable and lovely resemblance to her mother. 
 Viola had felt it called forth by some youthful 
 gaucherie of her own. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic, often amused at Viola s 
 sufferings, had told her kindly that she lacked 
 confidence. And with the delightful anxiety of 
 youth to please where it admires, Viola tried to 
 enter into her aunt s by no means simple life, with 
 as little disturbance to it as possible. And she did 
 very well. For six months Tante Hortense felt 
 pride, amusement, affection of a comfortable 
 quality in her presence; also, a profound sensation 
 
 [57] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 of personal nobility, strange and a little oppressive. 
 These periods of gentle melancholy descended 
 usually upon Mme. du Guenic, after she had been 
 made the confidante of some youth or man infatu 
 ated with Viola. There is no age at which some 
 women can bear the praises of others. Instead of 
 linking her with youth, Viola placed her definitely 
 amongst those whose day, of a kind, is over. 
 Once more the hand of jealousy thrust itself into 
 Viola s life. 
 
 One evening at the end of the six months, Viola 
 was sitting in a bedroom of her aunt s house on the 
 Boulevard Haussemann. She was enjoying the 
 luxury of solitude at the hour of Ave Marie. The 
 scent of lilac, rising from the freshly watered and 
 enclosed garden, distilled itself through half-opened 
 blinds, and from the street came in a strong 
 but untrained tenor s "Un peau d amour," 
 sung with the enthusiasm it deserved. The little 
 tune with its wistful refrain and graceful plaint 
 suited the delicate sentimentality of her mood. 
 For Viola had received that afternoon an offer of 
 marriage. It had come from Ian Mclvor in Glas 
 Ogven. It lay, with a sort of dignity, in her lap. 
 Its simple, rather grave expressions of devotion, 
 had not disturbed Viola with any vehemence of 
 passion. Mclvor seemed offering her rather 
 gracefully, but certainly with no desperate ardor, 
 the most important place in his life. And he let 
 her know that it was a life of importance to many. 
 Viola read it twice, then slipped it into its envelope. 
 
 [58] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Tante Hortense, coming in before dressing, put the 
 lights on rather crossly. 
 
 She had spent the afternoon, fruitlessly, at a 
 reception given by the wife of the Danish minister, 
 who had made a discovery of some South American 
 musicians. The musicians had been placed in a 
 remote conservatory, but had got out of control, 
 and ruined all talk. 
 
 "It was banal odious." Mme. du Guenic 
 shrugged. "I was obliged to take tea I couldn t 
 simply sit and be deafened, while a bore screamed 
 at me." She straightened her handsome but broad 
 shoulders resentfully. 
 
 "At your age all things are possible. At mine 
 an extra wafer makes one thing inevitable. I do 
 not wish to end my life describing a circle." 
 
 Mme. du Guenic, denying herself the luxury of 
 sitting down, in penance for the wafer, stood over 
 Viola and noticed the letter in her lap. 
 
 "Ah, mail, I see. That reminds me. The excel 
 lent Aunt Adela is on the eve of a great happiness." 
 Tante Hortense s brown eyes shone wickedly. 
 
 "Do tell me?" 
 
 "It is the large daughter the one with the sub 
 stantial nose, and I ve no doubt, character. She 
 looked so thick to me." Mme. du Guenic mused 
 pensively. "I m sure she s solid all the way 
 through. At any rate, a husband has been secured, 
 or is about to be secured. What s his name 
 Gaunt Gaunt ?" 
 
 "Harold Gaunt?" 
 
 [59] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "That s it. Not much of a parti but they 
 seem very happy about it. Your cousin will write 
 you, when things are settled. This of course is in 
 confidence. Tell me, what was your news?" 
 
 Viola did not answer at once. She was feeling 
 like one in whose face a familiar door, the door of 
 home, has been closed. Her aunt moved im 
 patiently, and Viola managed a small voice: 
 
 "Why, it s it s nothing, Tante Hortense, at 
 least, you may read it, if you like. I m sure Mr. 
 Mclvor would expect you to. For you are my 
 guardian now, aren t you?" Tears struggled in 
 that small voice, but Mme. du Guenic ignored 
 them. 
 
 "Of course, child, of course, you must show me 
 your letters. Mclvor? Didn t I meet him? Tall 
 dark cottages ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Viola. "Cottages and slate quar 
 ries." She gave the letter at once. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic read it, very carefully, then she 
 looked at her niece with an appraising eye. 
 
 "He wants to come and see you here. Why not 
 let him?" 
 
 "Why, but Tante he would expect he s in 
 Wales, you know." 
 
 "What of it ? Let him come and we shall see." 
 
 With a sudden and sweet smile, Mme. du 
 Guenic pressed the girl to her for a moment. 
 Viola, unused to any demonstration, received it, 
 however, with gratitude. Held by her aunt s arms, 
 enfolded surely by her love, Viola felt herself 
 
 [60] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 protected, no longer alone. And she longed to give 
 obedience to her protector. 
 
 Four months later Viola Mordaunt and Ian 
 Mclvor were married quietly from the Boulevard 
 Haussemann, and went to spend their honeymoon 
 in the Villa Atalanta, at Nice. As Viola watched 
 the sea on the day of their arrival, Mclvor was in 
 the town making inquiries for facilities that would 
 enable him to receive mail daily. His absence from 
 Glas Ogven had come at a particularly bad time. 
 The demands for higher wages from the slate 
 workers had reached a pitch of insistence no longer 
 to be ignored. And Mclvor was the last man to 
 thrust serious things, no matter how uncomfort 
 able, from his mind. But the problem he was faced 
 with was, briefly, this. 
 
 The rate of production and sale from the 
 quarries at present and for the last five years had 
 fallen below the output for wages. If Mclvor 
 closed them down, men that were unfit for any 
 other work and men for whom he felt himself 
 in the capacity of landowner responsible would 
 be deprived of their means of existence. On the 
 other hand, if he granted their demands at a still 
 greater personal loss to himself and kept the men 
 on, he would feel himself guilty of yielding to 
 pressure, and by so doing pauperize the workers, 
 take from them one of the inalienable rights of 
 man that the laborer be worthy of his hire. 
 
 As he made his arrangements for messenger 
 service, Mclvor s heart ached for his villagers 
 
 [61] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 thick-set, tawny men and women, in his comfort 
 able new cottages, out of which they had made 
 cosy homes for red-faced babies. That the entire 
 village was at present concentrated on him with 
 hatred and furious demand for a very large share 
 of his own income, disturbed Mclvor, only as a 
 source of anxiety for them; even on his honeymoon 
 their distresses weighed upon him, and he wished 
 that Viola and he could be with them at once to 
 help. 
 
 A plan of teaching them intensive farming, of 
 leasing them the land necessary for such experi 
 ments by some arrangement that would make it 
 possible, if the venture were moderately successful, 
 for them to repay him. Such a procedure would 
 reconcile them to the land again Viola and he 
 would live useful lives among a contented peas 
 antry. Mclvor longed to leave this place of idling 
 and to take his wife to his home. 
 
 As he left the Bureau de Telegraf (where he had 
 uttered his careful, painfully correct French, with 
 an incisive and Britannic accent, to an attentive 
 Swiss who, after listening patiently, responded in 
 glib English), Mclvor took his way through the 
 town. The people on the small, palm-bordered 
 pavements interested him as humanity in the 
 mass always did. 
 
 American, French, Swiss, an occasional African, 
 strolled with cosmopolitan indifference. Smart 
 women and men in motors flashed by, and over the 
 hill to hidden villas and the Cafe de Paris opposite 
 
 [621 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Monte Carlo. An Italian band, in the Place, 
 played "L amour est un ouiseau rebelle," with the 
 long enduring "Santa Lucia," to a drifting but 
 complacent audience. In the bright sun, the light 
 dresses of the women the gay colors of their hats 
 and parasols, accented by the occasional dark coat 
 of a man the air of carelessness with which they 
 lounged or strolled, struck a note that was not 
 harmonious to Mclvor. To sit in the sun, when it 
 was not too hot, to listen to love songs, to go, 
 later, and gamble, those were surely the acts of the 
 people he was among. 
 
 But Viola had longed to come here. As he 
 thought of her Mclvor s rather pale face flushed, 
 and a feeling of which he was ashamed came over 
 him. If he had obeyed his impulse, he would have 
 hailed a dilapidated but hopeful cocker that had 
 been following him, and been driven at once to the 
 Villa Atalanta. 
 
 But he did not yield. Ascertaining by his 
 Baedecker two possible ways of approach to the 
 Villa, he chose the longer of the two, and falling 
 into the stride with which he was accustomed to 
 cover English miles, he started to walk there. 
 
 And he put his mind on the problems of Glas 
 Ogven, and resolutely kept it there. 
 
 Alone in the garden, Viola watched the hours 
 slip away. When it was six o clock her own maid, 
 Leone, a French girl that had been with her in 
 Paris, and who was puffed with pride and curiosity 
 at coming with "Madame" on this interesting 
 
 [63] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 journey, appeared with tea and a brioche on a 
 tray. Her white face wore an unnaturally respect 
 able expression. 
 
 Viola declined the tea, but picked up her shady 
 white hat and walked down the sanded path to the 
 house. Leone supplicated. 
 
 "What gown to-night, Madame? The white 
 Callot? Madame est exquis in white!" 
 
 Viola hesitated. "Really, Leone? I want to 
 look well. You think the white?" 
 "Oui, Madame , oui, certainment!" 
 "Very well, then, you may put it out." 
 A veil of deeper blue seemed drawn over the 
 bay and the sky. They withdrew behind it. 
 Pale lemon-colored lights sprang out in the 
 casinoes, and larger golden globes pricked their 
 outlines at regular intervals, from the street 
 lamps. Nice was stirring to its activities of the 
 night. But it was exquisitely still in the garden 
 Viola looking up saw a great tremulous star above 
 her. A childish rhyme came into her head, and 
 she spoke the words aloud: 
 
 "Star light, star bright, 
 Very first star I see to-night, 
 I wish I may, I wish I might, 
 Have the wish I wish to-night!" 
 
 For some reason the last line of the simple couplet 
 was very difficult to say. Viola faltered. The 
 star and the wish of childhood seemed equally far 
 away. Presently Viola heard Mclvor s voice in 
 
 [6 4 ] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the house asking for her. A feeling of constraint, 
 of terrible shyness, came to her with the tones of it. 
 It was impossible for her to answer him she 
 longed to hide herself in the shady and scented 
 mystery of the garden. But Mclvor, inquiring 
 from Leone, came out onto the path. He had been 
 walking rapidly and a lock of dark hair clung to 
 his forehead. It gave him an unusual expression of 
 youth. Viola noticed it at once, and some of her 
 diffidence left her. Mclvor, seeing her white 
 figure, came up at once and Viola turned to him. 
 He made a gesture as though he would take her 
 into his arms, but she moved, or he fancied she 
 had and he did not. They did not kiss in the 
 garden under the luminous star. But Viola spoke 
 to him at once. 
 
 "It is so lovely here, Ian, I ve not half seen it. 
 Perhaps, to-morrow, we can explore it together 
 our own little demesne, I mean. After that there 
 will be excursions to make into the country 
 and " she laughed. "I want to indulge a rooted 
 but sinful desire " 
 
 "Viola sinful you!" 
 
 "I m not sure it s wicked but I know I want 
 to. It s very banal to seasoned travelers, but the 
 idea excites me." She put her hand on Mclvor s 
 tweed coat, and her voice sounded like a child s 
 coaxing. "Wouldn t it be fun for us to go to 
 Monte Carlo and risk a little?" 
 
 Mclvor laughed then pulled his brows 
 together. 
 
 [65] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "You ridiculous child! Do you think I would 
 let you go into that atmosphere ? The place is full of 
 riffraff. Besides, we may not be here so very long/* 
 
 "Why, why not? Did you have bad news?" 
 Viola took her hand from his arm, but her voice no 
 longer sounded like a child s. 
 
 "No, dear, nothing new. But you know I am 
 worried about my people. It s a very bad time for 
 them. I feel we should be there, not idling in this 
 place, where people seem to have very few responsi 
 bilities. His voice had a faint edge of contempt. 
 He put his hand on Viola s to lead her towards the 
 house. 
 
 "Must we go in, Ian? You ve not even looked 
 at our view! I think there s a dear small moon 
 hiding behind those cypress trees. Don t they call 
 them the fingers of the Madonna?" 
 
 Mclvor s hand became insistent. "Let s go in, 
 dear I ve a great deal to talk of to you. We 
 must make plans." He drew her to him as they 
 entered the house. 
 
 "I have a wife a companion now," he whis 
 pered against her hair. 
 
 Viola, looking up, saw that his eyes were full of 
 tears. A curious thought flashed through her 
 mind it was like the swift flight of a bird, seen 
 for a moment against an infinity of sky. Viola did 
 not speak her thought, but it was this: 
 
 "And I, have I a lover?" But the thought 
 passed as a bird does, and they went together into 
 the house. 
 
 [661 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 There was a wooden pavilion, painted green and 
 red, that could be reached by opening the French 
 windows of Viola s sitting room, descending some 
 outer stairs, and taking a few steps along a yellow 
 sanded path, bordered with wallflowers. Break 
 fast, or rather coffee with rolls and honey, had been 
 taken there by Leone, at nine o clock, and placed 
 on a round rattan table, covered with a white 
 cloth. Leone arranged everything carefully, touch 
 ing the heavy white china with its simple design 
 in green delicately and as though it were precious. 
 After immense pains with the serviettes, she con 
 verted them successfully into two open and 
 symmetrical fans. Regarding these with satis 
 faction, she stepped into the garden, selected two 
 exquisite and almost perfect white rosebuds, and 
 laid them, with a sentimental glance, beside each 
 place. 
 
 Mclvor interrupted these ministrations. He 
 gave Leone a kind "good morning," in his rather 
 deep but very pleasant voice, and asked if she 
 could find him a morning paper. Leone departed, 
 amazed but submissive, and soon returned with a 
 copy of Le Temps ^ two days old. Mclvor accepted 
 it gratefully, however, and immediately began to 
 read it. After reading two leaders, whose contents 
 
 [67] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 he already knew, Mclvor became conscious of the 
 flight of time and an aching void within himself. 
 A continental breakfast seemed a poor thing at 
 best and not to be borne at its worst. Mclvor 
 touched the little coffee pots with his hand and 
 found them quite cold. The butter had taken on a 
 dissipated and jaded appearance. Mclvor drew 
 his brows together, stepped into the garden path 
 and called. 
 
 "Viola! Viola!" Receiving no answer, he took 
 out his watch, and by a glance at it felt himself 
 justified in irritation. He and the breakfast had 
 been waiting half an hour. 
 
 Putting Le Temps down in the pavilion, Mclvor 
 started off for the house. At the door of Viola s 
 sitting room he encountered Leone, whose white 
 face at sight of him became alive with curiosity. 
 Mclvor resented the curiosity. 
 
 "Where is Madame?" he asked curtly. 
 
 "Why, but M sieur, not here! surely in the 
 garden surely with you!" 
 
 Mclvor restrained his temper. He was amazed 
 to find that it needed restraint over such a trifle. 
 
 "I ll look in the garden." 
 
 Leone flew before him. "Perhaps, this path, 
 M sieur, it leads to those trees it is mysterious! 
 Madame would like " 
 
 "Never mind, Leone I ll go. Thank you." 
 
 The path indicated as mysterious wound away 
 from the house, towards the crest of the hill. It 
 
 [68] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 was carefully sanded, as were the other paths, 
 with bright golden grains, evidently selected for 
 their beauty. In his haste Mclvor scattered them. 
 After a ten minutes walk between beds of pink and 
 blue hydrangea, red roses, white and red camellias, 
 the cultivation of the garden gave place to a 
 sylvan and delicate wildness. Grass sprang up in 
 the path, cypress trees, trimmed, massed their 
 dark and shadowed foliage against the soft green 
 of wild olives. Here and there great rocks, 
 covered with moss and lichen, shouldered their 
 gray outline against the sky. As he gained the 
 summit of the hill, a glade opened before Mclvor. 
 Through the low growing branches of oak trees, 
 linked together by chains of ivy, the sun diffused 
 a golden light. In the center of the circle was an 
 immense rock. Ferns and wild grasses had found 
 a foothold in its crevises, and on its summit 
 perched a small boy. He was dressed in rags that 
 fluttered and fell away from his thin brown arms, 
 as he held a pipe to his lips and played upon it. A 
 little, haunting air crept out thin, elusive, an 
 elfin thing. 
 
 The boy s eyes were shut, and his thick curly 
 hair uncovered. 
 
 A gray squirrel, his little head turned on one side 
 as though he were listening to the tune, sat so that 
 the boy could have touched him. Near the rock, 
 but quite motionless, stood Viola. She was dressed 
 in a dark brown corduroy skirt, quite short, that 
 showed high walking boots, a loose short jacket, a 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 white blouse open at the throat, and a white felt 
 hat with a scarlet quill in it. 
 
 Mclvor, at sight of her, was conscious of an 
 immense relief, and also of the fact that he had 
 been very badly treated. It was a small feeling, 
 but resentment often comes to one who has been 
 made unnecessarily anxious. 
 
 "Viola!" His voice had more than an edge of 
 impatience. It had also quite the effect of leger 
 demain on Viola, the flute player and the squirrel. 
 The two last vanished like a puff of smoke, and 
 his wife gazed at him in amazement. But almost 
 at once her face broke into smiles, and she ran up 
 to him. 
 
 "Did you ever see anything so adorable as that 
 little boy? Don t you think he s a faun? I came 
 up early and when I first saw him in this delicious 
 place it was like finding one of Corot s inspi 
 rations. Don t you envy artists, Ian? I mean, of 
 course, real artists that spend their lives finding 
 beauty for the world?" 
 
 "Naturally, Viola, civilization owes a debt to 
 artists. But to my mind it is not a pressing one, 
 and art is often used as a mantle for things that 
 are far from the only beauty that is of real 
 importance 
 
 "The only beauty, Ian?" 
 
 "You interrupted me. I meant, of course, what 
 is obvious to you. The only beauty that can be of 
 great importance to any one is that which con 
 cerns their " Mclvor hesitated and then did 
 
 [70] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 characteristically what he disliked doing; he 
 brought out the word, "souls." 
 
 "I see," murmured Viola. "You mean, of 
 course, something splendid." 
 
 She was conscious of a strange embarrassment 
 as Mclvor discoursed, reluctantly but firmly, 
 about that deeply personal thing, a soul. Viola 
 felt as though she had been guilty of an imperti 
 nence; almost at the same time she remembered 
 the breakfast waiting in the green and red pavilion, 
 and though quite aware that it was not en rapport 
 as a topic of conversation with their present 
 unexpectedly exalted one, she broached the 
 subject. 
 
 Mclvor responded with alacrity and they were 
 soon seated opposite each other. Fresh coffee was 
 brought, and presently a packet of mail. With a 
 hasty excuse Mclvor became immersed in his. 
 Viola received two rather characteristic messages 
 one a long but almost incoherent letter from 
 Lady Mordaunt, full of kindly but rather senti 
 mental platitudes, selected evidently as appro 
 priate to the occasion. Towards the last of her 
 letter, however, she forgot the occasion and 
 became natural. 
 
 "It is very dull, dear. There is no one at 
 Harley, and we have hardly had any week-end 
 parties since you left. The young people seem 
 very much engaged. Harold Gaunt, as you prob 
 ably know (this last was heavily underscored), has 
 gone back to Kairpur. I have given Wimbish, the 
 
 [71] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 foreign missionary we are sending to India a 
 dear good man he is, too Harold s address. The 
 dear boy may have some comfort (also under 
 scored) from him." 
 
 Lady Mordaunt then subscribed herself, rather 
 abruptly, as "Your affectionate Aunt." 
 
 Viola read the letter more than once, then let it 
 fall from her hand. She looked out through an- 
 airy aperture of the pavilion that was framed in 
 white jasmine to the blue freedom of the sky. 
 
 Mclvor, finishing one letter, glanced up. He 
 was eager to tell his news. Eager to make plans 
 for leaving Nice. He imagined in Viola the exist 
 ence of all the traits that he fancied he admired and 
 desired in woman. He credited her with a 
 superiority over foolish sentimentality that needed 
 repetitions of a once proclaimed devotion. He 
 knew her to be sympathetic, gentle, womanly, in 
 the tenderest way to himself. He imagined her 
 capable of exerting those qualities in the larger 
 interests of humanity. He believed her extra 
 ordinary physical beauty held a rare flame of the 
 spirit that burns for others. 
 
 Mclvor was not, at this time, selfish. He 
 made the frequent mistake of the humanitarian, 
 who ignores the one he could help for the many 
 that he cannot reach. Viola needed to know that 
 her husband loved her, not that he wanted her 
 support and interest in his affairs. 
 
 So again, Mclvor spoke of Glas Ogven. By 
 leaving the Villa at nine the next morning, they 
 
 [72] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 could be in Paris in the evening of the same day, 
 spend the night, cross from Calais in the morning, 
 reach the Castle by night. 
 
 "Could you do it dear, packing and all ? We are 
 really needed badly!" 
 
 Viola did not answer at once. Her gaze was still 
 on the blue. Mclvor noticed that one letter lay 
 unopened at her place. He touched it with his 
 slim, strong hand. Viola took the letter from him 
 with a start and Lady Adela s effusion fell to the 
 ground. 
 
 This is from Tante Hortense, Ian. Do you 
 want to know what she says?" 
 
 "Of course! but you haven t answered me." 
 
 "About leaving here? Why, yes just what you 
 say. It will be simple enough to be ready." 
 
 Mclvor rewarded her with one of his rare 
 smiles. 
 
 "Thank you for that! And now the news 
 won t you read me your letter?" 
 
 He settled back in his chair and watched his 
 wife. Her little white teeth were pressed on her 
 lower lip, and as she looked down at the letter in 
 her hand her dark lashes made a shadow on her 
 small face. She looked extremely young, and at 
 the moment rather sad. Mclvor noticed it, but 
 thought it the effect of her coloring and her 
 spirituelle type of face. He wished, however, 
 rather vaguely that she would look up. 
 
 Viola did not. She read Tante Hortense s 
 letter, at least the first part, aloud: 
 
 [73] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "My dear child: 
 
 It is a selfish thing for me to intrude my voice 
 into your paradise, but perhaps the thought of me 
 and other Parisians shrouded in rain and fighting 
 influenza will make your lot that much brighter in 
 comparison. I am willing to let you picture me in 
 the last ignominy of immense handkerchiefs and a 
 lonely hearth. If I in my turn could have a line 
 that would say how it is with you " 
 
 Viola stopped reading aloud here, but the note 
 was not finished. A tardy, and half maternal 
 qualm, as well as a real curiosity, had evidently 
 made Tante Hortense their prey. 
 
 "You are a dear child, little Viola you deserve 
 happiness. You know now whether you have 
 found it. I will know when I see you. Stay as 
 long as you can in the villa, dear have a good 
 holiday. Perhaps in another month I might run 
 down to Mentone 
 
 "Will you mind seeing me very much? If so, I 
 shan t be offended, but will stay in my corner, and 
 understand." 
 
 "Ian, how long have we been married?" 
 
 Mclvor started. "My dear, what a question! 
 All of four days you didn t know!" 
 
 Viola stood up, but she did not raise her eyes. 
 "I m going in now to see about my packing." 
 She spoke rather gravely, and turned at the door of 
 the pavilion. 
 
 "I did know about our marriage, of course, Ian. 
 I wasn t quite sure, but now I am 
 
 [74] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Mclvor watched her slim figure as it moved 
 away slowly. 
 
 "Sure of what?" he wondered, then gave a short 
 laugh, that held a note of tender indulgence. 
 
 "Four days or four years there is no essential 
 difference, after all. There will be, please God, 
 ties and responsibilities added to us but already 
 Viola and I are a family!" 
 
 A sensation of profound satisfaction pervaded 
 Mclvor, as he voiced his thought aloud. He was in 
 a splendid physical condition, and now that he was 
 to return to Castle Conway, felt himself able to 
 meet and master the difficulties there. Being a 
 family man would, perhaps, give his opinion more 
 weight with the villagers he longed to influence. 
 Pacing up and down the terrace on which the little 
 marble fountain played, Mclvor thought of Viola 
 as mistress of his home, with warm pride. She would 
 make an adorable chatelaine, and a kind and 
 friendly patron to his poor. He could almost see 
 her stopping in one of the lanes of Glas Ogven, by 
 a honeysuckle hedge, to speak to a child perhaps 
 pick the little thing up, and at an anxious invita 
 tion from its proud mother, see her enter the lich 
 gate, cross the bare threshold, and sit in the ingle 
 nook for a cup of tea from the copper kettle. Or 
 presiding at their own table, in the immense oak- 
 panelled dining hall of the Castle they would often 
 be alone, as Mclvor thought with satisfaction. 
 Once a week the Robinsons would come, and 
 once a fortnight the Macreadys from Dhin Dhu. 
 
 [75] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 And after a while possibly, perhaps, surely, Viola 
 would understand his efforts at a democratic 
 relation with the tenants, and beginning with the 
 mothers and children have them up for a jam tea. 
 
 As he imagined small feet marching with strict 
 decorum through his big rooms, a new thought 
 came to Mclvor. It was of a room in a turret, 
 whose windows watched the ocean from all sides, 
 and around which the sea winds sang. The walls 
 of the room were hung with faded tapestries from 
 the Mabinognion. Geraint, in the forest with the 
 white stag, and the face of Enid looking on her 
 lord "with meek blue eyes the truest eyes that 
 ever answered heaven." 
 
 On the stone floor was a very beautiful rug that 
 had been placed there when the room was closed. 
 Near the door that opened into what had been 
 Mclvor s mother s sleeping room, was a wooden 
 cradle, of carved oak. On the wall that faced the 
 east hung a silver crucifix of exquisite workman 
 ship, and underneath it was a worn Prie Dieu 
 that was all that the room had held for nearly 
 forty years but Mclvor s thought filled it with a 
 delicious vision. 
 
 He put his hands in his pockets, and moving one 
 foot back and forth in the path, scattered the 
 golden grains of sand. 
 
 "Jolly little beggars children!" he said aloud. 
 
 [76] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 In the morning and from the window of their 
 carriage, Viola said good bye to Nice. She gave a 
 small boy, who was trying to create a market for 
 some atrocities, in the shape of baskets covered 
 with woolen oranges, and with the name "Nice" 
 written on them, the immense sum of five francs. 
 His astonishment that broke into smiles of joy and 
 a pretty gesture of gratitude, made Viola glad for 
 the opportunity of her kindness. 
 
 Mclvor watched her with amusement. "You 
 will spoil him, utterly he will expect the same 
 from other travelers and be disappointed." 
 
 But Viola put her hand out of the window and 
 waved to him. "I have an odd feeling that I will 
 come back here some day, Ian, and it will be good 
 to see a friendly face." 
 
 "You like the place?" 
 
 "I love the south I feel a sense of let me 
 borrow a southern phrase here and call it dolcefar 
 niente? Sometime, Ian, may we go to Italy?" 
 
 Mclvor looked down from some rugs he was 
 arranging. He was dressed in a black and white 
 tweed suit that fitted his tall and slightly angular 
 figure closely, and as though he were accustomed 
 to it. There was nothing in his attitude or appear 
 ance to suggest that prodigy of interest a return- 
 
 77 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 ing bridegroom. Though Mclvor succeeded com 
 pletely in looking and behaving like a man who has 
 been married for a period of years, he did not look 
 as though he were married to Viola. 
 
 There was something youthful, untouched, in 
 her rather wistful glance, as she looked up at her 
 husband. He did not answer her question, but 
 made her and himself comfortable with magazines 
 and papers. 
 
 The road-bed was rough and the carriage rocked 
 with a sickening motion, as they emerged from one 
 tunnel, to plunge into another. Viola did not 
 read, and soon gave up her attempt to watch the 
 country, and in so doing became the prey of hateful 
 and insistent thoughts. 
 
 She was returning not only from a journey into a 
 land of languorous sunshine, dream-like seas and 
 skies, but from a great adventure of the soul. The 
 end of that pilgrimage had not been reached in the 
 Mecca of spiritual attainment, or even found in 
 the exotic garden of the senses. Viola knew her 
 self to be like one wandering alone in a wilderness. 
 
 The trip to Paris was interrupted at the frontier 
 by two almost passionately important guards, who 
 relapsed into human beings on receiving Mclvor s 
 just if not generous pourboire, with his assurance 
 that neither Viola, Leone nor himself were conceal 
 ing jars of jam or boxes of cigars about their 
 persons, and were about to depart when a douanier 
 looking fiercely interrogative, insisted on a thor 
 ough search being made in their compartment. 
 
 [78] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Viola and Mclvor were obliged to submit, and 
 were turned out with Leone on a platform. After 
 much rummaging there was a shout of exultation, 
 and the douanier held up a small box triumphantly. 
 He theru invited the passengers to return to their 
 places. 
 
 "Viola! M sieur!" he exclaimed, thrusting the 
 box, with its outer cover removed, but a layer of 
 green leaves over its contents, almost into Mclvor s 
 face. "What a loss! The good Father Descoings 
 left this treasure, but telegraphed us to search, as 
 he will follow later." Raising the leaves carefully, 
 he displayed several rows of neatly packed snails. 
 
 "Enfin! Escargo!" he called triumphantly. 
 
 Arrived once more in Paris, they went at once by 
 motor to the Ritz, and were given a suite facing the 
 Place Vendome. It was nearly ten and Mclvor 
 advised dining in their rooms. Viola longed to go 
 down into the brilliantly lit salle a manger; she 
 wanted to feel life about her, to be distracted by 
 strange faces, but she was determined not to have 
 time for Tante Hortense that lady had admitted 
 herself to be possessed of too observing an eye. 
 
 Leone, miraculously revived by her arrival in 
 Paris, looked disappointed at Mclvor s decision, 
 but as Viola agreed to it, began laying out things 
 from the dressing bags. 
 
 Viola bathed and slipped into a white negligee, 
 and after a somewhat silent, but very delicious 
 dinner with Mclvor, she drew back the heavy 
 velvet curtains, the lace ones, unfastened the volet 
 
 [79] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 de fenetre, and looked out into the Parisian night. 
 It was very clear, but evidently sharp, as pedes 
 trians, and even people leaving or entering motors, 
 were well wrapped up. The trees on either side of 
 the avenue held up attenuated and naked branches 
 to the brilliantly-starred sky, as if in fruitless but 
 inevitable supplication. As Viola watched the 
 street she felt herself mentally removed from the 
 room she was sharing with her husband, and she 
 wished to prolong that sensation. 
 
 Mclvor, tired after the day s travel, threw him 
 self on s couch. From its cushions he watched the 
 outline of Viola s white gown, the shadow of her 
 dark hair against the rose colored curtains. She 
 was so still that after a few moments Mclvor 
 roused himself and spoke to her. 
 
 "We make another early start to-morrow, you 
 know. Hadn t you better think of bed?" 
 
 Viola turned from the window reluctantly. "I 
 was thinking of my of my mother. She was a 
 French woman a Parisian. I told you about her 
 before we were married." 
 
 Mclvor stirred slightly, and shaded his eyes 
 with his hand. 
 
 "Whenever I am in Paris I imagine my mother 
 living here. Driving in the Bois taking part in 
 the gaiety admired for her beauty having her 
 following " she broke off, with a little half 
 laugh. 
 
 "I even go to early service with her, at the 
 Madeleine Paris seems to hold her for me." 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 There was a short and rather constrained silence. 
 Moving from the window into the lighted room. 
 Viola wished she had not spoken so intimately. 
 
 Mclvor did not break the silence, and after a 
 few moments, Viola spoke his name. He did not 
 answer, and she went up to him. His tall and 
 strong figure was completely relaxed his head 
 turned on one side showed an uncompromising 
 profile against the cushion. His breath came 
 regularly from slightly parted lips. As Viola 
 watched him an almost ironic expression crossed 
 her face. She bent over him but not near enough 
 to wake him. 
 
 "You ve gone to sleep, but you won t have 
 dreams," she thought. "I was telling you mine 
 but you didn t listen. You won t ever understand 
 them." 
 
 For a moment her eyelids stung with tears, then 
 she moved quietly to the bedroom, took a com 
 forter from her bed and covered Mclvor carefully. 
 One of his hands slipped down from under the 
 cover. As she touched it his eyes opened. 
 
 "Viola! what in the world!" 
 
 "Nothing, Ian. You dropped off and I 
 
 "You were tucking me up like a baby! How 
 absurd of me it s not eleven yet." 
 
 He got to his feet with difficulty, struggling in 
 the folds of the quilt. Viola did not help him. 
 
 "I m tired, too," she said, going toward the 
 door. At the threshold she turned. "Good night, 
 Ian you will have me called in time, won t you?" 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Why, yes, dear, but are you really going now? 
 I feel quite refreshed." He gave a short laugh. 
 The thought that he had asked a good deal of his 
 wife, in giving up the villa to take this hurried and 
 tiresome journey, had just occurred to Mclvor. 
 He had felt that she understood the need of it, 
 almost as much as he himself but now a faint 
 doubt crossed his mind. Was she really tired, or 
 had he offended hurt her? 
 
 "Then you may sit up," she responded, gaily 
 enough. 
 
 Mclvor came up to her, bent down and kissed 
 her. 
 
 "Good night, Ian." Gently freeing herself, 
 Viola entered her room and closed the door. 
 
 82] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 The next day, after fifty minutes of acute misery 
 for Viola on the Channel, the Mclvors arrived at 
 the Savoy. A brief rest there, and they were again 
 on their way, speeding through Gloucestershire. 
 Viola watched the parklike landscape, dotted with 
 oak trees and marked with well-tended hedges and 
 cultivated fields, give place to the green and 
 rolling country watered by the Thames and Severn, 
 and the blue line of the Cotswold Hills. 
 
 Leone was amazed and indignant at what seemed 
 to her a deliberate choice of discomfort, and when 
 a hurried change was made at Liverpool to a 
 steamer of the North Wales Company, she bore 
 herself as one upon whom the last indignity has 
 been heaped. 
 
 Mclvor looked at her white, disgusted face with 
 amusement, knowing what was in store for her. 
 He hoped that Viola would send the French 
 woman home of her own accord, when she reached 
 Castle Conway, and take a village girl. Something 
 in Mclvor resented the sophistication of the little 
 Parisian waiting upon the innocence of his wife. 
 
 On the sloping and soon violently-agitated deck 
 of the small steamer, Viola felt again the creeping 
 wretchedness and enervation that is by no means 
 the easiest type of mal de mer to endure. Mclvor, 
 
 [83] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 who was a splendid sailor, secured her a deck 
 chair in a sheltered corner, tucked her up care 
 fully, and with an admonition to stay as she was, 
 delivered in an unconsciously hearty voice, he 
 left her. 
 
 A fine rain, almost like mist, was falling from 
 low-hanging sulphur colored clouds. The water 
 that rose in long swells about the boat was a sickly 
 green, and looked swollen, as a monster in disease 
 might look. A heavy smell of oil mingled with the 
 odor of frying food. There were few passengers. 
 Mclvor, glad of the opportunity for exercise, 
 walked at a good pace around the deck. He wore a 
 green cap, with a visor pulled well down over his 
 eyes, and as he walked his mind was alert, quick 
 with plans for his people. His rapid steps, as 
 they passed Viola at regular intervals, made a 
 rhythmic accompaniment to her otherwise form 
 less thoughts. 
 
 As Port Penryln came in view, Mclvor stopped 
 by his wife s chair, and roused her to look at the 
 Harbour. 
 
 "See, my dear, we re nearly in. I want you to 
 notice nearly all of this traffic is carried on for 
 slate." He pointed an eager and instructive finger 
 towards the harbour and its activities. 
 
 Leone, who had emerged from the lower and 
 mysterious regions of her berth, like something 
 dead propelled automatically, was arrested by his 
 remark. Her small and bead-like eyes, from which 
 all life had gone, stared stonily. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Viola, making a tremendous effort, stood up and 
 tried to be interested. 
 
 "Is it all from your quarries, Ian?" 
 
 "No, none of it we have our own shipping 
 point from Port Madoc. This is the beginning of 
 our real journey. You will be in Wales when we 
 land, but you will not be in Glas Ogven until 
 to-morrow night. 
 
 Mclvor s cheerful and resonant tones were those 
 of one who was making a pleasant announcement, 
 and it was pleasant to him, to show Viola the 
 familiar sights of his native place. 
 
 "Mon Dieu!" came from the parted lips of 
 Leone, in a tone of despair. 
 
 Viola turned to the poor thing. "Never mind, 
 Leone, we will soon have a good rest there s an 
 hotel here, isn t there, Ian?" 
 
 "Yes, very fair, we ll go right to it." 
 
 An open motor, driven by a thick-set, dark man, 
 dressed in a faded mackintosh, carried them from 
 the dock into a narrow cobbled street. A keen wind 
 was blowing, and as Viola looked up the steep slope 
 of the hill they were mounting, she saw an immense 
 medieval fortress black against the murky sky. 
 On either side of the street narrow stone houses 
 evidently sheltered some life, as a dull glow from 
 lamp or fire shone out occasionally from behind 
 closed blinds. A cold and clinging mist had 
 taken the place of the light rain, and seemed to 
 issue like the breath of the town from the stone 
 buildings and rise like an exhalation from the street. 
 
 [85] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 The driver of the motor, beside whom Leone 
 was sitting, proceeded without words or inquiry 
 up the hill to the frowning walls of the castle, then 
 turned abruptly down a side street and stopped 
 before the faintly illuminated sign of the Royal 
 Goat Hotel. 
 
 Chilled and almost numb with fatigue, Viola 
 stumbled, and would have fallen as she left the car 
 had not Mclvor steadied her with a firm hand. 
 Leone, who had sat sphinx-like until the driver 
 had offered her an immense hand clad in a huge 
 woolen mitten, shrank from him, uttered a shrill 
 "Non, non," and bounded with amazing vitality to 
 the pavement. Safely there, she crept to Viola, as 
 one who seeks sanctuary. 
 
 The dining room of the "Royal Goat," though 
 bearing witness by its long table, with the cloth 
 spread and a double row of napkins in rings to a 
 sufficient clientele, was quite empty of guests when 
 the Mclvors were ushered in by a butler of 
 immense dignity and splendid calves. 
 
 The room was long and narrow, with melan 
 choly mustard colored paper on the walls, and a 
 single suspended oil lamp that seemed to sway as 
 it cast its sickly light on the not quite clean cloth, 
 with its meek and uninviting preparations for the 
 morrow. The floor was stone, covered with strips 
 of a mild green carpet. On the walls hung four 
 engravings in gilt frames: "The Stag at Bay," 
 "The Last Hope," "Windsor Castle" and "The 
 Lakes of Killarney." A white, air-tight enamel 
 
 [86] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 stove concealed within itself some small sticks 
 that were not dry. The evidence of this was a 
 diffused odor of wood smoke. 
 
 Mclvor seated Viola and raised his brows at her 
 quizzically from across the table. 
 
 "You will try to take something, won t you? 
 Hot soup something?" 
 
 To Viola the whole room seemed to be swaying 
 with the dreadful roll of the sea. The thought of 
 food in this melancholy place was unbearable. A 
 slice of cold mutton, a preserved pear checked her 
 denial. Looking over them to her husband, she 
 found him attacking his repast with enthusiasm. 
 Mclvor met her eye with authority. 
 
 "Take it, my dear, this is traveler s fare," he 
 smiled at her quite kindly, and very carefully 
 began "making" talk about the neighborhood in 
 which they were. Of the college, with its three 
 hundred students, and its departments of agri 
 culture, mining and sciences, from whose gorse- 
 covered hill a glimpse of Snowden could be had 
 of the first Christian Church founded when 
 Anarand was King of North Wales, and from whose 
 rood-loft a figure of the Virgin bearing a holy 
 cross had fallen upon and killed the insistently 
 supplicating wife of Stylyt, Governor of the 
 castle. Of the revenge taken on the holy figure by 
 the outraged villagers, by throwing it into the sea 
 of its final arrival on the beach, at a distant and 
 jealous town of its burial there, with an inscrip 
 tion over it. 
 
 [87] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "If I remember correctly, it goes like this." 
 Mclvor closed his eyes and made an effort of the 
 mind. Very soon the odd words came to him: 
 The Jews their God did crucify, 
 These others their s did drown. 
 Because their wants she d not supply, 
 and now lies under this cold stone. 
 
 Viola, pushing her plate from her, gave a short 
 laugh that did not sound as though she were 
 amused. 
 
 "Poor woman, what an answer to prayer! She 
 might well have thought, Je ne sais pas a que 
 cest que la vie eternelle, mais c elle est une mauvaise 
 plaisanterier 
 
 Mclvor looked up a little surprised and dis 
 pleased at Viola s quotation and tone. Rather 
 awkwardly, as he drew her chair back, he said: 
 
 "You know, dear, our people are very religious 
 it goes deep with them 
 
 Viola interrupted it seemed to Mclvor as 
 though she had not heard him. 
 
 "Let s go I m so tired." 
 
 At the door of Viola s bedroom large, high 
 ceilinged, hung with funereal draperies Mclvor 
 paused a moment before following his wife. He 
 wished that she would speak to him, assure him 
 that she wanted him with her. As Viola did not, 
 however, but slipped at once into a small chair 
 drawn up by an open fire, Ian assumed the 
 elaborate indifference that the really shy wrap 
 themselves in, and began examining some small 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 books that Leone had put out on a little table by 
 the bed. Two of them were a girl s books, two 
 were not: Tennyson s "Idylls of the King," Sir 
 Walter Scott s "Lady of the Lake," "Thomas a 
 Kempis," and a charmingly bound and illustrated 
 copy of the"Rubaiyat." Selecting the "Imitation," 
 Mclvor turned to a favorite passage of his own. 
 
 "This is fine, Viola, isn t it?" 
 
 " The Love of Jesus is noble, and spurs us on to 
 do great things, and excites us to desire always 
 things more perfect. . .It makes us desire to be at 
 liberty and estranged from all worldly affection, 
 lest its inner view be hindered, lest it suffer itself to 
 be entangled through some temporal interest, or 
 give way through mishap 
 
 As he read the indifference left Mclvor s voice, 
 and a note of strong sincerity rang in it. For the 
 first time Viola felt that she had listened to the 
 inner voice, the real voice of her husband. 
 
 "How true that is! how easy how pitifully 
 easy to be distracted from our work to give not 
 our best effort, but the little that is no effort at all, 
 and that we only give after our own selfishness has 
 been satisfied." 
 
 "Do you mean, Ian, that we don t give to 
 charity?" 
 
 "Charity, no, Viola, how I hate that word! I 
 mean that we don t feel the interest in others that 
 we do in ourselves." 
 
 "But if we did! Surely, we might risk being 
 thought intrusive." 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "That s it ! Of course, you are thought intrusive, 
 meddlesome, crazy, by the very people you are 
 trying to help. I don t mean, Viola, the interest 
 in others that might be felt by a male gossip 
 I mean the interest for others that every man of 
 responsibility should recognize. I mean that, 
 speaking personally, it would be far more comfort 
 able for me as well as our people at Glas Ogven, to 
 let them go on as they are, with added wages that 
 they don t earn, than it is going to be, to shut the 
 quarries down and try to have them make a go of 
 farming." 
 
 "Won t they suffer, Ian, if you do that?" 
 
 "For a time, perhaps." 
 
 "But we have plenty of money!" Viola got up 
 quickly. "I have more than I need! Perhaps the 
 quarries will do better if we see them through 
 another year!" 
 
 "My dear child!" With a distinct effort 
 Mclvor checked his impatience, and moved away 
 from Viola. "You re tired now. You can t have 
 understood me at all! I ll say good night and we 
 can talk of this when we are at home." 
 
 Left alone in her bedroom, Viola sat quite still 
 for a few moments and closed her eyes, in the hope 
 that the floor, walls and furniture would become 
 stationary, for they seemed to sway with the 
 sickening motion of the sea. Presently, when she 
 looked up the movement had ceased, and Viola 
 was conscious of a slow drip, dripping from the 
 eaves of the house. Her room was a corner one, 
 
 [90] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 overlooking the street, nothing was heard then 
 but the sound of an occasional pedestrian on the 
 pavement below. But the footsteps were not 
 many. 
 
 As she got up to ring for Leone she noticed the 
 "Imitation" opened at the passage Mclvor had 
 read to her. Picking the book up. Viola read 
 further, and as she did so was conscious of a 
 tightening in her throat, of a desire for tears. The 
 beautiful words did not seem to her the expression 
 of a remote theology, or the admonition to walk 
 alone through the earthly life. 
 
 " Love feels no burthen, regards not labors, 
 would willingly do more than it is able, pleads not 
 impossibility, because it feels sure it can and may, 
 do all things. It is able, therefore, to do all things, 
 and it makes good many deficiencies and frees 
 many things for being carried out when he who 
 loves not faints and falls down/ 
 
 Viola felt, as she read, as one who is freezing 
 might feel if they looked across a distance to 
 where a great flame rose to heaven. Without 
 calling Leone, she got into bed, put out the light 
 and tried desperately to sleep. The bed clothes 
 seemed damp, and gave out a musty, penetrating 
 odor. The small fire had not burned away, but 
 cast grotesque shadows on the floor and over the 
 furniture. 
 
 After what seemed hours of lying quietly, there 
 was a sound of footsteps walking rapidly in the 
 corridor a door opened sharply, and a vague 
 
 [91] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 hubbub of voices escaped. Raising herself in bed 
 Viola lit the candle and strained her ears. Presently 
 the footsteps were audible again they walked 
 rapidly to her door, and Viola heard the heavy 
 timbre of Mclvor s voice interrupting the lighter 
 and hurried speech of some unknown and evidently 
 agitated man. After a few rapid questions and 
 answers, Mclvor knocked softly on Viola s door, 
 immediately she answered him, and almost at 
 once he was standing at the foot of her bed. 
 
 He looked very much excited, and not in the 
 least as he had looked when Viola had not grasped 
 his sense of man s cosmic obligations. He seemed 
 sure that she would understand him now. 
 
 "My dear Viola, I m very sorry to disturb you 
 but there is urgent need. I m going to ask 
 you to dress just slip on something dark and 
 warm, if you have it, and I will wait in your 
 sitting room to explain." 
 
 Without a word, Viola obeyed him. The room 
 was very cold, and as she moved about trying to 
 find her things with only the candle and fire to 
 light her, she struck sharply several times against 
 the furniture but in spite of the difficulty in 
 dressing without Leone, in an incredibly short time 
 to Mclvor, Viola was ready. She was dressed in a 
 dark blue serge, with a simple white collar, and she 
 had done her hair low at the back of her head. 
 
 Her big eyes were wide with astonishment, but 
 she did not question her husband, only stood 
 waiting for him to speak. Just before he did so 
 
 [92] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 there was a curious cry from the end of the 
 corridor. After it died away and it was not loud 
 the air seemed to throb, to palpitate. Mclvor 
 grew quite pale. He took Viola s hand. 
 
 "It s this, Viola. A chap I know, he has been 
 curate at Dhin Dhu, for the last sixteen years, is 
 taking his wife home she s English home to 
 Devon. She was ill when they started but, well, 
 she wouldn t wait. They ve literally starved on 
 their living, I m afraid and they ve seven child 
 ren to see to, seven and another coming and, 
 poor souls nothing ready! The only doctor that 
 lives here can t be located Macready s almost 
 crazy. They ve sent out for a nurse, but it s late 
 she doesn t come and it s terrible to think of that 
 poor woman all alone." Mclvor passed his hand 
 across his forehead and listened, but his eyes never 
 left Viola s. 
 
 "But but her husband s with her, Ian?" 
 
 Mclvor threw out his hands. "A man! and a 
 terrified one! What use would he be! I ve 
 promised to walk him about " again Mclvor 
 paused, listened, "keep him going till it s over. If 
 you would go to her, Viola she s a lady, you 
 know!" 
 
 Viola turned away rather sharply. "I wasn t 
 thinking of her social position, Ian, but how can 
 her husband leave her?" 
 
 "But, my dear, he s never stayed she prefers 
 not! It s too shocking for him. I tell you the 
 man s unnerved now!" 
 
 [93] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Again the odd little cry struggled out into the 
 corridor. Every vestige of color left Viola s face, 
 but she moved decisively. 
 
 "I know nothing, Ian, nothing but at least, as 
 you say, I m a woman " 
 
 "Good! Come, my dear, this way!" 
 
 Warmth glowed at Mclvor s heart, for he had 
 known one moment of doubt. 
 
 At the end of the corridor they almost stumbled 
 over a gentlemanly figure, in clergyman s dress, 
 that was pressed against the wall, with two large, 
 well-formed hands held to its ears. At sight of 
 Viola the figure became animated the Reverend 
 Macready grasped her hands without ceremony. 
 His large, pallid and distressed face relaxed 
 piteously. Viola was afraid he was going to 
 cry. 
 
 The reverend gentleman tapped gently on the 
 door> opened it gingerly, and in a shaking voice, 
 announced, "Mrs. Mclvor, Dora," to the unseen 
 inhabitant. 
 
 Then the two gentlemen linked arms, and after 
 begging to be sent for when there was news, 
 walked rapidly away. 
 
 Viola hesitated on the threshold. A faint voice 
 had replied to its lord. 
 
 "I m sure it s very kind of her, John dear. Now 
 you won t mind leaving me till the doctor comes. 
 I m easier now quite all right." The small voice 
 had finished heroically, if somewhat abruptly. As 
 John departed down the passage, however, it spoke 
 
 [94] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 again it broke on the words of agony, "My God 
 my God how much longer!" 
 
 Then Viola went in quickly, and closed the 
 door. 
 
 95 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 It was morning when Viola came out of the 
 Macreadys room. There was even pale sunshine 
 that looked as though it, too, were exhausted from 
 the rigors of the night. Leone had tidied things 
 had found some valley lilies and put their white, 
 waxen flowers and delicate green leaves on the 
 writing table with a morning paper. 
 
 Dr. Alan Joyce, who had come to the hotel about 
 four in the morning, came in with Viola. He was a 
 man of fifty, of middle height, heavily built, with 
 thick, dark hair and a grizzled beard. He wore 
 spectacles, and his clothes had never been pressed 
 since the day he bought them. 
 
 He seated Viola carefully, looked about for the 
 bell and rang it. When it was answered by an 
 astonished-looking boy, he ordered: 
 
 "Coffee, two cups, please, and without cream." 
 
 Then he moved away from Viola, and picked up 
 the paper. The sheets gave out the peculiar smell of 
 printers ink, and crackled as though they had been 
 starched. Viola watched him as he read watch 
 ed his large hands as they folded the pages deftly. 
 
 "I always make such a wreck out of a news 
 paper, Dr. Joyce." 
 
 "They are not made for ladies hands, Mrs. 
 Mclvor they soil you." 
 
 [96] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 He looked over his glasses kindly at Viola, but 
 she avoided his glance. The coffee came, a fire was 
 lit, and presently Mclvor, looking pale and 
 disheveled, came in. He went at once to the 
 doctor. 
 
 "What an appalling thing, Dr. Joyce. I know 
 you did all anyone humanly could. Macready 
 fully realizes it. But to be left, as he is, with 
 young children " Mclvor cleared his throat. 
 "She was a young woman, too! * he added. 
 
 "Yes," agreed Dr. Joyce. "She was a young 
 woman. And a brave one." 
 
 "But to die ! Why, she spoke quite cheerfully to 
 her husband, just as he left her the last time. I 
 heard her voice." 
 
 "Then that is a good thing for him to remem 
 ber." Dr. Joyce got up heavily. 
 
 "I will be back later and if you will take my 
 advice, Mrs. Mclvor, you will get some rest." 
 The door closed behind him. 
 
 "Yes, Viola you must be worn out. I ll go " 
 
 Thrusting his hands in his pockets, Mclvor 
 began striding up and down the room. His 
 imagination, usually under excellent control, was 
 in a state of rebellion. It scourged the com 
 placency of his accepted views of life. That women 
 suffered when they gave a new life to the world, he 
 of course knew. But they soon, and gladly, forgot 
 their hour of pain, in the joy of their children. 
 They went down, unafraid, for a moment of dark 
 ness, to emerge triumphant into the light of 
 
 [97] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 mother love. Men knew this, and were able to 
 accept it, knowing that their gift of a child to the 
 woman they loved, was the crown of her woman 
 hood. Surely that was so. But Macready s wife 
 had died. She had gone into the darkness and 
 she had not returned. She had been tortured. 
 And Viola had seen that agony had perhaps 
 comforted it. What it must have been to see, to 
 stand by, and watch the little creature suffer, 
 endure, be overwhelmed! Mclvor remembered 
 Dora Macready perfectly. She was a small, fair 
 woman, with soft, appealing blue eyes, and a com 
 plexion that got faintly pink when she was spoken 
 to sharply. Macready had sometimes done that 
 he was a good fellow, but the noise the children 
 made irritated him, and he naturally enough 
 would call to his wife. 
 
 But he loved her, of course, and she had left him. 
 Mclvor found himself thinking resentfully, "She 
 chose to leave him women are not supposed to 
 die she could have fought harder!" He even 
 formed the words with his lips. 
 
 Viola spoke to him: "What is it, Ian? What 
 are you saying? * And Mclvor felt the blood rush 
 to his face. 
 
 "It s nothing, Viola I am thinking of 
 Macready and you." 
 
 Viola stood up. "I was not thinking of him. If 
 you don t mind I will rest a little." 
 
 Unconsciously, Mclvor waited for Viola to speak 
 to him, to tell him something of her initiation into 
 
 [98] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the mystery of woman s terrible hour. He longed 
 to be reassured, to hear that this tragedy was 
 exceptional, but Viola s words, "I know nothing, 
 Ian, absolutely nothing," came back to him. She 
 had been ignorant, and he had sent her in to 
 knowledge. Had thrust her, without warning, 
 before revelation. And his imagination that pic 
 tured Dora Macready as man s victim, pictured 
 Viola with her. 
 
 He covered his eyes for a moment. His temples 
 were throbbing, and he felt like a man in night 
 mare who assumes griefs that are not his own. 
 His common sense stirred, protested against the 
 injustice of such thoughts. Viola had done what 
 was right, what was womanly, had obeyed her own 
 heart, and not his request. She was his comrade, 
 his helpmate, not an exotic to be sheltered, pro 
 tected from all the realities of life. And he would 
 have acted basely towards her had he treated her 
 as one. 
 
 Mclvor recalled the night that he had met 
 Viola, and the feeling of depression that had 
 flooded him, as he looked at the wintry London 
 sky before he went into Lady Mallor ing s. He had 
 felt conscious of impending calamity, almost as 
 though words of warning had been whispered in 
 his ear on that night and he had gone in, to meet 
 Viola, and thus proved that mood absurd, as this 
 was. He would drown the voice of hysteria and 
 morbid introspection that told him Viola s inno 
 cence had perished as Dora Macready and the 
 
 [99] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 little child had done. He would still that voice 
 with Viola s assurance. 
 
 He looked up, but she was no longer in the 
 sitting room. Walking resolutely to her door, he 
 turned the handle. Leone appeared in the aper 
 ture. Her black eyes burned with malice. She 
 raised a clever and somehow unscrupulous-looking 
 finger to her pale lips. 
 
 "Madame sleeps, M sieur, she is exhausted 
 she asks that you will not disturb her 
 "But surely, she is not asleep, already?" 
 "M sieur, can judge! after last night!" 
 Leone put her hand on the inner knob, and began 
 slowly to exert a slight pressure on it. 
 
 At once Mclvor stepped back and the door 
 softly closed. The answer he had longed for had 
 been given him by the lips of the French maid. 
 
 loo] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 The next morning the Mclvors went on. The 
 pale sunshine of the previous day that had con 
 tended feebly with the native mists, succumbed to 
 them, and was further obliterated by angry gusts 
 of rain, driven by cold blasts from the sea. The 
 windows of the railway carriage were hopelessly 
 blurred, excluding even the faintest glimpse of 
 landmarks Mclvor longed to point out. Emerging 
 from the long tunnel into the country from which, 
 on a clear day, one may see the Menai Bridge, Ian 
 made a fruitless and somewhat absurd effort to 
 clear a tiny space of window glass, for Viola to peep 
 through. As she saw his disappointment at being 
 unable to exhibit this prodigy of engineering feats, 
 Viola was conscious of astonishment at the trace of 
 boyishness in her husband. The length and thick 
 ness of the supporting chains was imparted with 
 empressement, and the name of Telford spoken in a 
 tone that asked for a responsive exchange of 
 admiration. 
 
 Being possessed of a nature that clamored to give 
 always what was asked of it, Viola did her best to 
 be appreciative. 
 
 "It is splendid, I m sure the rain is too dis 
 appointing. There s something a rhyme, I 
 think" 
 
 [101] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "My dear Viola, a rhyme? 
 "Yes O, what is it?" 
 
 I heard him then, for I had just 
 
 Completed my design 
 To keep the Menai Bridge from rust 
 By boiling it in wine! 
 
 "That s it! What a lamb Lewis Carroll was!" 
 
 Mclvor tried to smile indulgently, but the 
 interest had gone from his expression, and he 
 looked reserved and withdrawn into himself. He 
 did not attempt to show Viola anything more, nor 
 even to talk with her. As she stole a glance at 
 him from her corner and the book she had picked 
 up, Viola felt repelled, almost as though she was 
 physically chilled by his detachment. She also 
 felt as though this journey would never end that 
 it might be broken into again by another tragedy, 
 arrested in some dreary twilight of unreality, but 
 that a final destination would never be reached. 
 The sound of the train merged with the uproar 
 made by the angry water of the Sient and Menai 
 Straits, as it flashed by the gray walls of 
 Carnarvon. 
 
 At Afon Wen the door of their carriage was 
 flung open, their luggage gathered up, and they 
 themselves changed into a car of the L. N. W. R. 
 Veils of gray mist seemed to unite the waters of the 
 harbour with the lowering heavens, from which 
 torrents of heavy rain fell, as though it were being 
 shaken out of a bag by an angry hand. A semi- 
 
 [102] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 circle of beach along which clouds of sand were 
 driven, was headed by an esplanade. 
 
 As Mclvor settled their things into place, he 
 wanted to tell Viola how beastly he thought the 
 weather was, and how responsible he felt for it. 
 As he looked at her delicate little face, framed in 
 the dark fur collar of her warm cloak, he was again 
 assailed by doubts. Perhaps she was only a child, 
 a beautiful, unawakened fairy whom he was 
 brutally subjecting to reality. But he knew now 
 that he could not ask her the question he had been 
 so ready to last night, any more than he could 
 deplore to her the discomforts of their journey. 
 For the first time in his life Mclvor was afraid to 
 know truth. And in his fear was something 
 chivalrous, delicate, to his wife. It was his refusal 
 to believe her less true to a fine conception and 
 ideal of life than himself. 
 
 Twilight came swiftly, came as the culmination 
 of gray through which they journeyed. At Glas 
 Ogven they left the train. Huge cliffs towered 
 above and behind the little village, that was 
 menaced by the sea on one side, but protected on 
 the other by an embankment built by Mclvor s 
 great grandfather across the estuary to reclaim the 
 Traeth Mawr. 
 
 Leaving the train to enter a carriage, piled high 
 with warm rugs and drawn by two horses, Viola s 
 impression of dream and unreality deepened. The 
 evening sky was obscured with vapour, except for a 
 thin line of pale lemon color in the west against the 
 
 [103] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 farthest horizon of the ocean. Its effect was 
 melancholy a light to expose darkness, not to 
 dispel it, and in whose sad prescience the gray 
 slate cottages of the village seemed broken bits of 
 rock fallen from the giant cliffs above them. 
 
 The horses broke into a quick trot on the uneven 
 road that began at once to ascend. On one side 
 the Conway slipped with slow whisperings between 
 its mossy banks that harbored clusters of colum 
 bine, spotted foxgloves, and birches that gleamed 
 delicately white against the dark water. Very 
 soon the horses began to strain at the traces, as the 
 road grew steeper and beset with rocks, whose 
 jagged outlines suggested the ferocity of wild 
 beasts. Through an occasional opening in the 
 barrier of granite, Viola had glimpses of an 
 immense sweep of gorse-clad plain. A cold wind 
 blowing from the great spaces bore a salt tang, a 
 scent of heather and bracken, and in^its voice, the 
 infinite sad sound of the sea. 
 
 After an hour s riding, Mclvor longed to tell 
 Viola they were approaching Trevwithin, and that 
 on the plain below was the slate quarry. But the 
 keen wind that braced and welcomed him as it 
 stung his face, had made Viola draw warm wraps 
 about her until even her head disappeared beneath 
 them. Leone, her spirit completely broken, col 
 lapsed upon the impersonal shoulder presented by 
 Mclvor s driver. 
 
 At last the horses stopped, and their feet rang 
 upon stone. A torch flared and writhed in the 
 
 [104] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 night air, lighting the gateway of the castle. 
 Viola, roused by Mclvor s voice, looked up at a 
 frowning tower that bore low on its face sinister 
 slits for defense. Above them, the figure of a 
 saint, in a niche to the right and left, turrets 
 rising above the walls. 
 
 In answer to Mclvor s call, a man s figure 
 sprang out, the gates drew back, and the horses 
 drove quickly into the courtyard and up to the 
 castle. A pool of light fell on the stone stairs. 
 Mounting them Mclvor drew Viola into a great 
 hall that was filled with a strange sound. Taking 
 her to a window, he flung it wide. Below them 
 was a sheer depth of cliff, and a whispering, 
 mysterious expanse. And the sound that filled 
 the castle, that breathed like a presence in the 
 great rooms, was the infinite sad sound of the sea. 
 
 105] 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 It was hot in Kairpur. The white light of a 
 brazen sun beat down on the gray dust of Harold 
 Gaunt s compound, and onto the roof of his dak- 
 bungalow, and put long fingers between the green 
 shades. Mrs. Lathrop s bearer, seeking admit 
 tance, looked with envy but also with hope, at 
 Gaunt s tall figure stretched out on a cot under a 
 moving punkah. With a profound salaam, Kali 
 Bagh awaited attention. He was beautifully 
 oiled, his turban was immense and his dhoty 
 immaculate. To bear small notes had never been 
 without profit. 
 
 "Hazur." 
 
 Gaunt, who had been asleep, looked up, reached 
 in his pocket for money. 
 
 "You have something for me?" 
 
 "Gee-ha! hazur" 
 
 Kali Bagh extended his mistress* letter deli 
 cately. Gaunt took it, bestowed largess, said: 
 
 Tu mjane suet a . 
 
 Whereat the bearer salaamed again and 
 departed. 
 
 Possessed of the letter, Gaunt seemed in no 
 hurry to read it. Instead he packed his pillows 
 behind his head with a practiced hand, lit a 
 cheroot and looked idly at the plaster ceiling of his 
 
 [106] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 room, that was washed a faint green, but on which 
 brown stains were encroaching. 
 
 He looked older than he had when staying at 
 Thorley. A sharp attack of fever from which he 
 was just recovering had left its mark, in the pallor 
 of the face, in the bistre shadows under the eyes, 
 in his relaxed and emaciated figure. 
 
 The small room with a cot in the center was 
 utterly bare, except for two straight chairs, a 
 table, on which was an untidy heap of papers and 
 magazines, several months old, and, as always 
 before the rains, flies droning, buzzing, their fat 
 black bodies, lethargic and torpid, striking the 
 windows. After nearly half an hour s contempla 
 tion of these surroundings, Gaunt drew out Mrs. 
 Lathrop s note, opened and read it. Then he 
 struck a match, and holding the thin paper 
 between two hands that were transparent against 
 the flame, he burned it. When it had been con 
 verted into a tiny quivering and blackened heap, 
 he dropped back on his pillows, uttered a fervent 
 "Damn!" and went to sleep. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop, in her pretty drawing room, hung 
 with chintz and ornaments from home, was 
 waiting Kali Bagh. She was a little woman, 
 nearer forty than thirty, and India had made 
 parchment of her face, and had written on it many 
 things that Mrs. Lathrop thought known only to 
 herself and two, or at the most, three others. She 
 was blonde, with rather light blue eyes, and she 
 dressed excessively well, for the wife of a man in an 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 inconsiderable position in the Civil Service. But 
 perhaps she had money of her own. She was at 
 present, and in her way, in love absorbingly, 
 fearfully, inconveniently infatuated. Perhaps the 
 end of worry about financial matters, which had 
 been very bad, indeed, had something to do with 
 it; perhaps the new interest and activity that she 
 had found and exerted on Gaunt s behalf when he 
 was down with fever had more to do with it; 
 perhaps the knowledge of her husband s approach 
 ing return from his unattractive district had the 
 most to do with it. At any rate, Mrs. Lathrop, to 
 use a slang expression, was decidedly not her own 
 man. When Kali Bagh, who walked as one having 
 infinite leisure, made a languid appearance, his 
 mistress questioned him sharply. 
 
 The Sahib received the letter, but had at once 
 dismissed the bearer, giving no answer. 
 
 "Did he?" 
 
 Then Mrs. Lathrop checked herself, before 
 falling into the enormity of talking with natives, 
 and went into her own room, which was light and 
 attractive. The bed and dressing-table were of 
 wicker, and the latter held in a large silver frame a 
 picture of her husband that was only slightly 
 flattering. From it one could not tell whether he 
 was a short man or a tall one. But Mrs. Lathrop 
 knew, and did not look at it. Instead, she threw 
 herself on the neatly-made bed and thought of 
 Gaunt and cried a little the kind of tears that 
 come silently and swiftly, because the trouble that 
 
 fioSl 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 they spring from fills the whole mind, and speaks 
 aloud when there is no one to hear. 
 
 When the light no longer came through the 
 broad leaves of the teak-wood trees into her bed 
 room, but had moved on to a frangi panni tree 
 that hung heavy-scented blossoms that seemed to 
 give out the breath of the East, over the garden 
 wall, Mrs. Lathrop got up, dressed without looking 
 at her poor face that had red lines on it from being 
 pressed into a figured bed-spread, and began 
 putting things into a dressing bag. Then walking 
 as delicately as Agag, she left her house, threaded 
 through the garden, called a ticca-gharry that had 
 been resting in the shade of a building till the sun 
 was low, and was driven through the dusty, baking 
 streets, almost to Gaunt s bungalow. She pre 
 ferred to walk the short distance to the compound, 
 and up to the porch, and did so without mishap. 
 
 Gaunt s punkah-wallah had deserted, and only 
 the flies droning heavily were able to see Mrs. 
 Lathrop as she came up to Gaunt. He was still 
 asleep, with a little pile of ashes and a burned 
 match left untidily by his side. Seeing that Mrs. 
 Lathrop smiled, and began putting things to 
 rights. She was not light on her feet, and Gaunt 
 wakened when she moved a chair. 
 
 He lay quite still watching her. 
 
 "Celia!" 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop started, and dropped a book she 
 had picked up. It lay with its leaves crushed 
 under it, and Gaunt frowned both at the un- 
 
 [109] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 expected sound and because he was fond of the 
 book. 
 
 "Hal! That stupid bearer did not bring any 
 answer I thought I I would come for it myself 
 or perhaps, you did not have my note at all?" 
 
 Her eyes begged of him. Gaunt looked away. 
 
 "Are you turning out for the dance, to-night, 
 little woman?" 
 
 "Surely, you are not well enough to go?" 
 
 "I m better, much. Thanks to you. I ll be 
 leaving for home at the end of the week." 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop came up to Gaunt s cot slowly, 
 getting down on her knees beside it, and took one 
 of his hands between her two that were moist and 
 cold. 
 
 "You don t know how I care for you I oughtn t 
 to v say this, I know, but I don t care for anything 
 else only you 
 
 "Celia, little woman, don t and please get up." 
 
 Gaunt tried to free his hand but could not 
 without being rough, so had to leave it. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop s voice, which was husky, hurried 
 on: "Please, Hal, surely you re lonely in this 
 place I could make it all comfy and cosy I ve 
 brought my things and you know he s coming 
 home." 
 
 Gaunt put his arm about her. 
 
 "But, dear, I m leaving and perhaps, it s not 
 as bad as you think. Perhaps, he will make you 
 happy this time." 
 
 "Happy!" 
 
 [no] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop stood up, her cheeks burning, and 
 her breath came through her nose. 
 
 "Do you know what it is to belong to some one 
 who knows nothing about you? Whose habits 
 irritate you whose talk bores you who thinks 
 you love them when their touch sickens you who 
 takes your virtues for granted, and only speaks 
 about your faults? You don t know because you 
 are a man and a man is free I want to be free, 
 too I m sick of pretending." 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop s chin began to quiver, and the 
 ever ready tears to stream down her cheeks. She 
 was not playing the game cleverly, or even toler 
 ably, but it had ceased to be a game to her, and she 
 flung away her pride so that Gaunt might believe. 
 She did not stop to think that the sight of naked 
 truth may be repellent. She did not think at all- 
 she gave herself to emotion, and was betrayed by 
 it. 
 
 Gaunt got up from his cot and looked out of the 
 window to give her time to compose herself. He 
 was tingling all over chiefly with irritation. 
 Though he could not see her distorted face, the 
 sounds of grief were sincere and penetrating, and 
 he knew that she was looking at him with eyes that 
 were far from lovely. 
 
 "Don t pretend, Celia, that is beastly." 
 
 "Well, then, what?" There was hope in her 
 voice. 
 
 "Why, tell him tell him how it is with you. 
 He s not a bad chap." 
 
 [mi 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "You mean tell him I care for you?" 
 
 "Good Lord, no! Celia, you don t you re 
 nervous, worn out, little girl this climate does for 
 everyone. Go back and talk to to Lathrop, and 
 then go home for a year." 
 
 "When do you go, Hal?" 
 
 "There s a P. and O. boat leaving from Calcutta 
 in a week s time. I can make that." 
 
 "And if I made it, too?" 
 
 "Would that be wise, my dear?" 
 
 "How prudent you are for for me. You 
 didn t use to be like that. Have I done anything 
 to make you angry?" 
 
 "The Lord give me patience." Gaunt spoke 
 under his breath. 
 
 "Of course not. But I have to think for you." 
 
 "I don t want you to think I want you 
 
 to" 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop went up to Gaunt and put her 
 arms about his neck. Through the window she had 
 seen Mrs. Godwin, upon whom Kairpur depended 
 for information of its fellow creatures. Mrs. 
 Godwin had on a huge hat, and had come into the 
 compound to give Gaunt s Syce a jar of Cross & 
 Blackwell s for his master. But the hat was not 
 so large that Mrs. Godwin had not had a clear look 
 into Gaunt s sitting room, and Mrs. Lathrop s 
 face, before she turned and almost ran from the 
 place, taking the Cross & Blackwell with her. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop dropped her arms. "She saw us, 
 Harold." 
 
 [112] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Who saw us?" Gaunt whirled around on his 
 heel. 
 
 "Mrs. Godwin. She has gone now. It will be 
 all over before the dance this evening." 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop drew away from Gaunt and sat 
 down on one of the hard, straight-backed chairs. 
 Her figure drooped. She looked small and 
 wretched. And the damage was practically done. 
 It was beastly lonesome for the poor little thing in 
 her bungalow it wasn t exactly gay for Gaunt in 
 his. She must have taken him seriously, always, 
 even about a kiss or two that had seemed natural, 
 but not important. She liked him she wasn t 
 afraid of showing her feelings and she wanted 
 him. After all this was India. 
 
 Gaunt went to Mrs. Lathrop, and put his arms 
 about her. 
 
 Later that night, Mrs. Godwin, unknowingly, 
 spoke truth. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Lady Adela and Pamela were sitting in the 
 morning room at Thorley. Pamela had a large 
 basket piled with small but heavy garments 
 within reach, that she was systematically reducing 
 by taking up, examining, repairing, and putting 
 aside. Her large, capable hands moved with 
 decision about their task. She touched the little 
 jackets that had been molded on tiny forms, in a 
 professional, almost an institutional way there 
 was nothing maternal, or even sympathetic, in her 
 care for them. 
 
 Lady Adela, her keys to the store-room depend 
 ing with a rakish air from her substantial waist 
 line, where she had thrust them, was frankly idle. 
 Her kind face held lines of disappointment, almost 
 of sadness, and her attitude was that of one to 
 whom time is a burden. 
 
 "Well, Mother?" Pamela emphasized her own 
 industry by speaking in a crisp tone her mother s 
 presence, with its aimless and rather dependent 
 air, irritated her. Her fingers flew with well 
 directed energy. 
 
 "Yes, Pam?" Lady Adela brightened at being 
 spoken to. She had been afraid to interrupt 
 Pamela s concentration. 
 
 "You re going up to write letters?" 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "No, dear at least I hardly feel like writing, 
 though of course, I must to Mrs. Wimbish." 
 Lady Adela s face grew crimson. 
 
 "She only did what was right in telling us about 
 Harold" 
 
 "You mean what was said about him! spread 
 about by those disgusting Anglo-Indians!" 
 
 "It was not easy for her to write that to me, my 
 dear. Both she and the Bishop talked it over 
 carefully, before she did so they wanted to do 
 what was right, what would be the kindest thing 
 to us. Personally, I m glad she did." 
 
 "Personally, I know she enjoyed it I can t 
 bear that woman. Of course, you will tell her there 
 isn t a word of truth in it and that Harold is 
 coming to us?" 
 
 "I m so glad he is, dear boy. Yes, I ll go up and 
 write, if you want me to." Lady Mordaunt got up 
 slowly, but succeeded in sweeping Pamela s 
 basket to the floor. 
 
 "Oh, I m sorry! Let me put them back." 
 
 "No, Mother, please!" 
 
 "But I will!" 
 
 Bending to the task, the housekeeping keys flew 
 from her belt, secreted themselves in a trouser 
 leg of Jim Wattles little boy, and thus accom 
 plished a miraculous disappearance. Lady Adela, 
 being often confronted by such mysteries, searched 
 blindly. Pamela endured it as long as she could, 
 and then firmly sent her mother upstairs. Lady 
 Mordaunt went quite meekly, knowing that the 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 curse of untidiness that she suffered from was 
 especially trying to Pam. But she was worried 
 about her eldest and dearest the child did not 
 look at all well. 
 
 Pausing at the door. Lady Adela made a timid 
 suggestion. 
 
 "Pam, are you sure you re quite well? I know 
 an excellent tonic. If you d only take it for a few 
 weeks, I m sure you d feel better." 
 
 "Better! I m not in the least ill." Pamela 
 flushed slowly, and apparently over her entire 
 body. Mme. du Guenic s observation to Viola, 
 that Pam looked thick, had perhaps some justifi 
 cation. Her face was a deep red now, and even her 
 hands looked congested. 
 
 Lady Adela did not say any more to her, but 
 went up to Viola s old room, where she used the 
 writing desk for her own correspondence. Many 
 letters were written from here to Trevwithin, and 
 Viola knew it, and loved having it so. 
 
 This morning Lady Adela found it very hard 
 indeed to settle to her task. She wandered about 
 the little room that was still pretty and fresh, but 
 looked mysteriously deserted, and as if a light that 
 had once burned brightly in it had gone out. The 
 dependence of inanimate things on the hands that 
 arrange them the life that is lived with them 
 occurred to Lady Adela this morning as poignantly 
 sad. She stroked an ample chintz-covered pillow 
 tenderly, as though she would make up to it for a 
 loss it had suffered, and that she understood. And 
 
 f n61 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 then the absurdity of her action came to her, and 
 she thrust it away, and went to the small chair by 
 the fireplace. A fire was laid, but not neatly, odd 
 scraps of paper protruded. Lady Adela removed 
 them and put her hand up to her face, and pres 
 ently the painful tears of age crept through her 
 fingers, mingled with the soot that was on her 
 hands, and streaked her face with black. 
 
 When Lady Mordaunt left the room, Pamela 
 found the store-room keys that had apparently 
 ceased to exist, without difficulty, and at once put 
 her work away. It had served as an outlet for 
 some of the nervous energy that tormented her. 
 
 In the drawing room was a large and very 
 beautiful Florentine mirror. Cupids supported it, 
 and from its position on the wall it reflected the 
 color and movement of the rose garden. 
 
 Pamela, leaving the morning room and crossing 
 the hall, went into the drawing room. Several min 
 iatures hung on either side of the mantelpiece the 
 most interesting was one of Viola s father as a very 
 young man. There was, perhaps, on the artist s part 
 an almost conscious imitation of Lord Byron, in the 
 rendering of the poise of the fine head, ardent eyes, 
 and too sensitive mouth. The other miniatures 
 were of estimable, if slightly faded, ladies of the 
 Mordaunt family, in varying epochs, and with 
 varying features, but of unvarying gentility. 
 
 Pamela, however, did not look at her ancestors. 
 She went at once to the Florentine mirror, 
 fashioned to hold beauty in its heart. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 She stood a long time before the reflection it 
 gave back. As she looked indignation, bitterness, 
 and self-pity flooded her mind, but underneath the 
 waves of rebellion, something, that would not be 
 stifled, pleaded, and struggled, and wept. The 
 eyes of ugly women have many secrets. Some 
 times they hold a Royal Guest, and nearly always 
 they betray him. But the tears that come after 
 are one of the secrets that they keep. 
 
 Pamela moved away from the mirror and began 
 walking rapidly up and down the decorous, richly 
 colored room. Words rushed to her lips in place 
 of the mere painful sensations she had been suffer 
 ing, and she was conscious of making an effort of 
 the will, as she let the words escape, as though 
 they could be rendered potent by her strong 
 assertion. 
 
 "// j not impossible it s not impossible it 
 would be right to have it happen, it must happen." 
 
 Pamela longed to seize on a possible event that 
 it is true she had only glimpsed, to shape it to 
 her own needs, and then to urge it to a swift and 
 tangible completion. She did not feel that she was 
 ridiculous in her heavy, but fiery determination, to 
 make Harold Gaunt her lover. Nor did she con 
 demn herself for the cruel jealousy she had 
 suffered, when on Gaunt s last visit he had so 
 obviously adored Viola. That Viola had married 
 Mclvor and thus removed herself from the field in 
 which she had the unfair advantage of her beauty, 
 seemed to Pamela a tardy but hopeful sign from 
 
 ["8] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the Powers that Be that she herself was to be at 
 last considered. Under all the ugly facts of her 
 mental and moral turmoil, like the swirl of dis 
 turbed waters concealing the reflection of a star, 
 was one beautiful truth, and it shone with the pure 
 fixed purpose of a star. It allied itself with the 
 forces of nature, with the enduring things. It 
 was the truth of love, seeking through egotism, 
 envy, and error not freedom for itself, but unity 
 with another. 
 
 The soul that can envisage the eternal, through 
 love, can become eternal. But there are many 
 ways, and it is a long journey to perfection. As 
 Pamela made her assertions, aloud, she was busy 
 with plans. 
 
 Lady Adela had received, at the same time with 
 Mrs. Wimbish s lurid, if reluctant, account of 
 Harold and Mrs. Lathrop, word from her nephew 
 that he would be very glad to come to Thorley. 
 Around this fact Pamela built her hopes. Because 
 of his coming she was glad of the bright sky, the 
 opulent English autumn. She was glad of the 
 dignity of her home, and the quiet beauty of the 
 room she walked in. 
 
 Going to the piano, Pamela sat down and began 
 to play accurately from the music that was open 
 before her. It was a song of Viola s, and had 
 suited the peculiar quality and delicacy of her 
 voice. Pamela s voice was larger, more resonant, 
 but lacked the color of Viola s. The song was 
 Leconte de Lisle s "Les Roses d Ispahan." 
 
 ["9] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Pamela did not imitate Viola s phrasing of the 
 exquisite words, but rendered them without self- 
 consciousness, and with real joy in their beauty. 
 As she sang the turmoil in her mind ceased. She 
 no longer thought of herself. She thought of 
 Gaunt and how she might help him with her belief 
 in his honor. And she was conscious for the first 
 time of the star shining through the troubled 
 waters. 
 
 Lady Adela, who had finished her letters and 
 come down for the keys, came to the drawing room 
 to listen, and subsided on a chair from which she 
 could see Pamela s face. When the song was 
 finished. Lady Adela smiled happily. 
 
 "How nicely you sing, dear! I do like that little 
 song. It always made me think of odd things 
 hot climates, and strange people. Now, of 
 
 course " 
 
 "Yes, Mother?" 
 
 Pamela looked at her mother, and tried to 
 account for the streaks of soot on her face. 
 
 "Well, of course, now, it makes me think of cold 
 climates it is cold in Wales and of Viola. It 
 seemed so much her song. I wish we could visit 
 her don t you, Pam?" 
 
 "Perhaps sometime we may. But not just now. 
 We must let Harold have his visit. We must go up 
 to town, and show people there is nothing in all 
 all that talk." 
 
 "But, Pamela dear, Harold, you know, has not 
 denied it. And he must know what is being said. 
 
 [120] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 I don t mean to speak unkindly, but Robert 
 says " 
 
 "Oh, Robert, if he s your criterion!" 
 
 "He s a young man, dear, and we women have 
 to accept things without judging too harshly." 
 
 Lady Adela sighed and her kind face took on 
 lines of pity that contended grotesquely with the 
 soot. 
 
 "Mother, how can you take that attitude? 
 How can you think a man like Harold " 
 
 "I don t think, dear. I don t know. I should 
 love him anyway. But Robert was urging us to 
 accept lan s invitation. He thinks that Harold 
 would be very glad to go with us, to leave 
 London at present, and as Viola is so anxious 
 to have us 
 
 "When did you hear from her?" 
 
 "Yesterday poor child. They are having 
 trouble with the workers in the quarry " 
 
 "Ah, that s what interests you! I hope Mclvor 
 holds out he s quite right." 
 
 "Viola writes that there is a good deal of ill 
 feeling. Of course, Ian is away nearly every day 
 doing what he can to help them with the farming. 
 Oh, dear, it is all very trying, but I think we really 
 should go to Viola." 
 
 Pamela got up, and closed the piano. She did 
 not feel like singing any more. But she went over 
 to Lady Adela, and very gently with her own 
 handkerchief removed the soot. 
 
 "Let s leave it, Mater may we to Harold?" 
 
 [121] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Lady Mordaunt, astonished by the evidence of 
 Pamela s handkerchief, smiled gratefully. 
 
 "Of course, dear, naturally, it shall be as he 
 wishes. He s not to think us inhospitable. But I 
 can t help hoping " 
 
 Pamela laughed. 
 
 "No, Mother, of course you can t. And, some 
 how, I can t help hoping myself." 
 
 122] 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Evelyn Malloring was distinctly bored. The 
 world in which she was obliged to go on living 
 seemed to offer no adequate reason for her exist 
 ence. The thought of a winter in Cairo was 
 briefly entertained, to be dispelled by the names of 
 her acquaintances that were to seek change in the 
 land of the Moslem. A mental picture of Lady 
 Mainwarring shrouded in purple veils and mounted 
 on a camel, attacked Lady Evelyn with the vigor 
 of nightmare, in which the voices of the Drum- 
 monds and her own John, droned to satiety. 
 Italy, the Lakes, Rome, were also rejected. There, 
 too, varied by an occasional and astonishing person 
 who was "seeing things," would be the same faces 
 that looked at her across London dinner tables, 
 gossiped in drawing rooms, and yawned at the 
 theaters. 
 
 As an exponent of the new faith, Lady Malloring 
 felt alarm at the depth of her ennui and depression. 
 She could settle to nothing, and had been for the 
 last ten days unable to inhale through her left 
 nostril and exhale through the right, according to 
 the instructions of the Brahmin who had been her 
 guide. 
 
 Now, in her sitting room, done over from a 
 charming, if frivolous, copy of Madame de 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Pompadour s, into a melancholy yellow apart 
 ment, that color corresponding to the hue of her 
 soul, Lady Evelyn, enveloped in a hideous one- 
 piece garment of the same tone, awaited events. 
 And she was rewarded. A pale footman, who 
 looked as though he had been grown under glass, 
 knocked softly, and presented Mme. du Guenic s 
 card. At once new life seemed to flow in Lady 
 Malloring s veins. 
 
 "Ask her to come up, Dodson." 
 
 "Yes, my Lady." 
 
 "Or no." 
 
 Lady Evelyn looked at her odd and depressing 
 surroundings. 
 
 "I ll go down, and you may bring tea." 
 
 Removing the one-piece garment, Lady Mallor- 
 ing selected and was soon enclosed in an elaborate 
 product of the Rue de L Opera. It had been very 
 expensive, and the shop was a smart one so its 
 owner wore it with touching confidence. 
 
 As her maid gave a few skilful touches to her 
 blond and wavy hair, Lady Evelyn mused over 
 her visitor s coming with interest and delight. It 
 seemed Mme. du Guenic s fate, in England at 
 least, to be regarded as a sensation, when she 
 desired to make a call. But there is a curious 
 psychology that accounts for the effect some 
 personalities produce and the reactions they cause 
 in others. 
 
 Perhaps Evelyn Malloring was in a particularly 
 sensitive and receptive state of mind, for as she 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 greeted her friend warmly, almost effusively, and 
 urged tea and some really delicious and intimate 
 little cakes upon her, Lady Evelyn knew that 
 Mme. du Guenic was no longer formidable. She 
 had been that always, to people of less brain than 
 herself, and had shown very little tolerance to 
 those of her own sex who persisted in trying to 
 force gossip upon her, or secrets from her. 
 
 But to-day she was different. Evelyn Malloring 
 knew it, and curiosity that had been denied 
 during her breathing achievements became alive 
 in her. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic was, as always, handsomely 
 dressed. Perhaps there was even a little more care 
 in her selection of the exact shade of brown, to 
 bring out the color in her remarkable eyes an 
 over-emphasis of youth in her very erect carriage. 
 
 Evelyn Malloring, looking into her face at some 
 new and delicate lines near the mouth, was not 
 afraid to make inquiries, or to proffer any informa 
 tion that she herself might have. 
 
 "One lump?" 
 
 "Oh, please, none! How nice of you to ask me, 
 though, and not to recognize at once a martyr to 
 the" 
 
 Mme. du Guenic paused a moment, closing her 
 lips decisively, then she opened them and finished 
 her sentence, "the flesh." 
 
 "As one prays on Sunday to be delivered 
 
 "Tante mieux, for your charity. But I mean it 
 quite personally. I might almost say in person 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 that is why I must forego, with tears, that delicious 
 cake." 
 
 Lady Evelyn, feeling refreshed, and conscious of 
 her own slimness, took a pink cake. 
 
 "How nice of you to cheer me up, to-day. You 
 can t think how dull I ve been " 
 
 "Dull! But why? We French women hear so 
 much of the English woman s interest and influ 
 ence your life here, with your husband, must be 
 full of interest and activity." 
 
 "I think that s exaggerated. At any rate, I m 
 sure I ve very little influence 
 
 Lady Evelyn thought of Lord Henry Drummond 
 and her John, and was able to smile. 
 
 "It s people my friends that make my life for 
 me." (Already was the Brahmin forgotten.) 
 "And I ve seen very little of some of them lately. 
 Perhaps, you can tell me something of Viola Mor- 
 daunt or rather, Mclvor? No one has seen them 
 they were married 
 
 "They were married at my home, very 
 quietly." 
 
 "Oh, so they were! How delightful for you! 
 But since then, I hear they ve gone to some extra 
 ordinary place." Lady Malloring s eyes grew 
 round. 
 
 "I heard it was almost savage and that Viola 
 was really in danger from the natives." 
 
 Mme. du Guenic put her cup down. "I ve just 
 come from there," she said briefly. She had to 
 fight her distaste of Lady Malloring s curiosity. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Viola is very well. The life is naturally not 
 like that of fashionable London, and she is alone a 
 good deal. But the country itself " she shrugged. 
 "I could only look and marvel and exclaim, 
 Colossal! 1 
 
 "Rough and wild, you mean?" 
 
 Mme. du Guenic permitted her eyes to become 
 romantic. 
 
 "It s like a castle in dreams!" 
 
 "Let us hope, not in bad dreams!" 
 
 "Speaking of Viola, did that cousin of hers 
 marry in India? Gaunt, his name was. I thought 
 at one time there was an understanding between 
 Pamela Mordaunt and him. But nothing came of 
 it?" 
 
 Lady Evelyn brightened. "Harold Gaunt 
 is, I m afraid, not a very proper young man. 
 There are more than rumors about him, and a 
 dejected-looking, married person, from somewhere 
 in India. She s actually followed him out here. 
 He is very good looking," Lady Evelyn added 
 irrelevantly. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic listened composedly, as she 
 drew on her gloves. 
 
 "How absurd! that s your Mrs. Grundy for 
 give me, but she is so quaint in making a nine days 
 wonder out of a young man! At any rate, your 
 wicked town talk has not reached the country, for 
 Viola told me, before I left, that she was expecting 
 Mr. Gaunt, with Lady Mordaunt and Pamela, at 
 Trevwithin." 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Of course, if his family ignores it " 
 
 "Let us by all means do likewise." 
 
 When her guest had gone Evelyn Malloring had 
 an inspiration. She looked out Gaunt s address at 
 his club, and then wrote and sent him a very 
 cordial invitation to dine and go to the Opera. 
 Having abandoned her faith, Lady Evelyn gave no 
 thought to Sir John s dislike of music, and thus 
 unconsciously demonstrated the power of free 
 will, but she did bestow thought on her guest, and 
 wished that there was a more cheerful production. 
 Mclvor had been bored, she was sure, but it was 
 not her fault. Perhaps this young man would not 
 be so difficult. 
 
 "Besides," Lady Evelyn added aloud, "if I 
 should see him, I could tell if there were any truth 
 in all that talk." 
 
 Going up to dress, Lady Evelyn walked with a 
 light and cheerful step. She paused at her sitting 
 room, where the thought of Lady Mainwarring and 
 the camel had oppressed her summoned a foot 
 man, and gave orders for a decorator to be sent to 
 her the next day. 
 
 "I m going to try something Italian this time, 
 Celeste," she confided to her maid. 
 
 "An interesting period something mysterious 
 and weird. I wonder about a Borgia room?" 
 
 Tapping, and coming in at the same time, as was 
 his habit, Sir John heard the question. He looked 
 at his wife admiringly, and gave her a solid marital 
 kiss. It did not thrill Lady Evelyn. 
 
 [1281 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "What s that, pettie, that you want, that you re 
 going to have, I mean? Another Ba-Hah?" 
 
 "No, John, I m tired of that. I want the room 
 done over." Lady Evelyn, though a trifle vague 
 about her choice, felt confidence before her hus 
 band. She gave him a glance full of intelligence 
 and erudition. 
 
 "It s to be a Borgia, John." 
 
 And Sir John, not to be outdone, responded 
 warmly: 
 
 "Naturally, my dear, just the thing for you." 
 
 [129 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 On a windy evening, the following week after 
 Mme. du Guenic s call in Half Moon Street, Viola 
 and Mclvor were without guests in Trevwithin. 
 They had dined early, and in the large drawing 
 room that had been restored and was hung with 
 Pompeian red curtains, in the immense fireplace 
 of which great pieces of beech wood burned, they 
 had the opportunity for talk. 
 
 Mclvor was tired and despondent. Affairs in the 
 village were very bad. The quarries were closed, 
 and the men in a sullen spirit that refused to recog 
 nize any attempt on the owner s part to assist them 
 with instruction in the cultivation of their land, 
 spent their days in idle talk, and steady drinking. 
 
 There was distress in the homes, and the hearts 
 of the women ached with anxiety for their hus 
 bands and children, and burned with resentment 
 against Mclvor. 
 
 Viola had made one visit to Glas Ogven, to 
 please her husband. She had been charmed with 
 the cottages, that, seen on a bright day, showed 
 walls of pink and yellow plaster under thatched 
 roofs, and bloomed like delightfully colored 
 flowers behind honeysuckle hedges, in gardens full 
 of foxgloves, small sweet roses, and the drone of 
 appreciative and useful bees. 
 
 [130] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 She had entered one of the cottages to leave 
 presents of jam and sweets for the children. A 
 dark, shy, and exquisitely clean woman had 
 admitted her to her home. Viola had crossed the 
 shining brass thresholds and sat in the place of 
 honor to be served with tea, brown bread, and 
 honey. As she accepted this generous hospitality, 
 Viola had been conscious of hot anger against her 
 husband. 
 
 The interior of the cottage spoke even more 
 eloquently of the loving care that kept the row of 
 brass and pewter mugs shining, the floor clean, the 
 quaint latticed windows spotless, and that cher 
 ished a bright geranium in a pot, in the kitchen 
 window. 
 
 Her hostess had been mending a tear in a rough 
 coat, and, at Viola s coming, had put it aside. 
 But while Viola took her tea, the mending 
 went on. 
 
 "If you ll excuse me, ma am, I would like this 
 done before my man comes in." 
 
 She had held the garment up to show the extent 
 of the injury done to it. 
 
 "My man is a big fellow," she had added, in a 
 voice full of pride. 
 
 Presently, two children had come to the door and 
 halted, waiting to catch their mother s eye and, 
 devoured with curiosity, to see the strange and 
 alarming new lady. 
 
 Viola held up a package of sweets to show them, 
 and they walked in slowly, the smaller boy hiding 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 behind his sister. Their eyes, which were blue 
 and round, looked out over two pairs of fat red 
 cheeks, with expressions of longing and desire that 
 struggled with distrust. 
 
 To reassure them, Viola had smiled and put the 
 package down beside her. There had been a soft 
 rush, a frantic scampering, and a maternal admoni 
 tion but the sweets had disappeared. As the 
 mother looked up from her husband s coat, Viola 
 saw something shining in her eyes, and knew that 
 the little cottage was a home. 
 
 In the great drawing room in Trevwithin Mclvor 
 seated himself, with a sigh, by the fire. His face 
 looked tired and strained, even in the soft light 
 of the wax candles. Viola went slowly to the 
 piano and began to sing "Les Berceaux." 
 
 "Le long du Quai, les grands vaisseaux, 
 Que la houle incline en silence, 
 Ne prennent pas garde aux berceaux, 
 Que la main des femmes balance. 
 Mais viendra le jour des adieux, 
 Car il faut que les femmes pleurent, 
 Et que les hommes curieux 
 Ten tent les horizons qui leurrent!" 
 As she sang the song of the sea in this room 
 where its sound was always audible, Viola brought 
 before Mclvor the sight of swaying waters, of 
 receding ships the sense of death that is in every 
 parting but also, as her voice, warm and pure, 
 sang of the mother rocking her child, Viola brought 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 life, and love before him the very heart of life 
 to which all wanderers for whom it burns, must 
 return from any port. The song helped Mclvor. 
 It braced him to go on with his work, to stick to 
 the difficult task. 
 
 When Viola finished "Les Berceaux" she left the 
 piano and went to Mclvor. She was determined to 
 speak to him about the village, and she had sung 
 to give herself courage. She had been planning to 
 do so all day, but now that the moment had come, 
 it was very difficult. 
 
 As she came near him, Mclvor looked up at her. 
 
 "What is it, Viola?" 
 
 As he looked at his wife, the realization of her 
 very great beauty surprised him. He saw also that 
 she was embarrassed, and hoped that she was going 
 to ask a favor of him. So he waited very patiently 
 for her to speak. 
 
 Mclvor s direct question had taken Viola s 
 small courage from her. She had no idea of what 
 her husband was thinking for, though he thought 
 her lovely, he never said so and she knew that he 
 liked to be quiet, to read, in the long evenings. 
 
 "Is it something about our visitors?" he asked, 
 quite kindly. 
 
 "Oh no Ian you are very good to have 
 them and I am looking forward so much to seeing 
 them counting the days, in fact." 
 
 Mclvor winced, but said nothing. 
 
 "You are so good, Ian to me," Viola 
 struggled on. "Perhaps you will be angry at what 
 
 [133] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 I am going to say but I can t help it. I must 
 say it. It s about the quarries about the men out 
 of work. Do please, please take them on again. 
 We could do with much less and they are going 
 to suffer they have such ducky little houses, Ian 
 and you have always been so good to them 
 they can t understand this." 
 
 The feeling of warmth and bien etre that Viola s 
 song had given him left Mclvor. He longed to 
 ask, "Don t you understand me? Don t you know 
 why I do this?" But she must know, and he could 
 not ask. 
 
 "That s just it, Viola. They must understand. 
 I can t pay them for something that has no market 
 value. The whole situation has been false. I have 
 to clear it up and I mean to." 
 
 At that moment Mclvor looked more like the 
 picture of his dissenting ancestor than Viola had 
 ever seen him. Even then she did not quite give 
 up. But Mclvor definitely settled it. He picked 
 up, and immediately became immersed in, his book. 
 
 Several days later, the village was in ferment. 
 The carriage that brought Lady Adela, Pamela and 
 Harold Gaunt from the station was surrounded by 
 sullen looking men, but there was no actual demon 
 stration, and they reached Trevwithin without 
 incident. 
 
 Lady Adela had been numb with fear and 
 clasped Viola on arriving, as one might who had 
 been rescued from almost certain death. Pamela 
 went at once to Mclvor, and expressed her admira- 
 
 [134] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 tion of his behavior. Harold Gaunt said very 
 little. 
 
 The day after their arrival, Mclvor took them 
 about the castle. Lady Adela was reassured, in 
 daylight, by the walls and gate that guarded them. 
 
 "Unless they could climb over," she added 
 anxiously. Pamela permitted herself a look of 
 scorn, which she was immediately ashamed of. 
 
 "Mother, what are you thinking of? They 
 wouldn t dream of coming up here. Ian has only 
 to sit tight, and they ll soon give up." 
 
 In spite of her championing him, Mclvor was 
 conscious of irritation at Pamela s assertion. He 
 longed to be alone with Viola, but he longed more 
 for her to understand him. 
 
 "You are quite safe here, Lady Mordaunt. But 
 I m going to ask that you don t venture from the 
 grounds. There might be trouble, and there is no 
 need to take any risk." 
 
 "Indeed not," Lady Adela had responded 
 promptly. 
 
 "I m sure it s very interesting here there would 
 be nothing to go out for." 
 
 Mclvor turned to her and smiled. She gave him 
 the feeling that she was a firm ally that did not, 
 however, know his real situation. Mme. du 
 Guenic in her very short visit had made, he was 
 sure, terrible observations. 
 
 But Lady Adela seemed to move in an atmos 
 phere of trust and warm affection, in which the 
 most sensitive might be at ease. And Mclvor was 
 
 [135] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 sensitive was suffering in his life with Viola. 
 Behind his reserve, fortified by pride, the real man 
 yearned for what was denied him. 
 
 As they walked in the courtyard, the morning 
 met them delicately, filtering its sunshine through 
 vaporous white clouds, and subduing the sea 
 breezes to a nuance, a caress. 
 
 Mclvor turned to look for Viola, but neither she 
 nor Gaunt was in sight. 
 
 "Shall we wait for them?" 
 
 Lady Adela glanced at Pamela and hesitated. 
 
 Pamela spoke quickly. "Let s go on that is, if 
 you re not tired showing us?" 
 
 There was an enclosed garden at Trevwithin, 
 with radiating red brick walks, clipped yew 
 hedges, a sun dial, and borders of box around 
 irregular beds of roses. Every morning that was 
 fine, Viola, in a shady garden hat, and with a 
 basket and some dangerous-looking scissors in her 
 hand, went there to choose for herself from the 
 small, deep crimson, and very sweet blossoms. 
 
 As she cut the flowers, Viola sang a gay little 
 song. Her clear voice reached Gaunt and guided 
 him, and he waited in the shadow of the hedge and 
 watched her. 
 
 But almost at once, Viola stopped singing, 
 turned, saw him and dropped her roses. They 
 made a crimson stain against her white frock. 
 
 "You couldn t have heard me?" 
 
 Gaunt went forward and began picking up the 
 flowers. 
 
 [136] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "You must have felt me looking at you." 
 
 Gaunt stood upright and took her hand and 
 again the flowers fell. 
 
 "It s years, little Viola, years since I ve seen you." 
 
 Viola tried to speak. But the sight of his eyes, 
 the sound of his voice the touch of his hand, were 
 answered. In the depths of her heart something 
 stirred from a sleep that had been like death. 
 Stirred with a glorious life, tears rushed to her 
 eyes, overflowed. 
 
 "What is it, child? Did I frighten you?" 
 
 "Yes," said Viola, "yes." 
 
 "Forgive me for it how beastly." 
 
 The winds of morning touched Harold s thick 
 hair and dried Viola s wet cheeks. 
 
 "What a place to find you in! You re like an 
 enchanted princess in her castle " 
 
 Viola laughed. "I remember playing as a child 
 that my poor cat was one, under a baleful charm, 
 and waiting to be released." 
 
 "And the charm that could do that was what ?" 
 
 "It was very long ago I don t remember." 
 
 "Viola, does anything seem long ago to you? 
 Don t you realize your youth your beautiful 
 youth?" 
 
 Viola turned away from him. 
 
 "Perhaps I seem young to you, Harold, because 
 you knew me when I was a tomboy. But I feel 
 quite grown up and sedate." 
 
 Gaunt looked at her differently. He was trying 
 to see something beside her beauty, for in her eyes, 
 
 [137] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 larger and darker than he remembered them to be, 
 was a look that went to his heart. A child that 
 had been thrust into life without preparation 
 into knowledge loneliness fear could have 
 looked as Viola did. And she had cried when he 
 first spoke to her! 
 
 Very gently Gaunt felt for Viola s hand, took it 
 raised it to his lips. 
 
 The sound of a church bell, faint, but very clear, 
 floated in the air. It recalled a day set apart by 
 man for worship. In some mysterious way it 
 transformed the delicate shining of the morning 
 into a pleasant day to go to church. 
 
 Pamela and Mclvor, ready for service, came 
 into the garden. 
 
 "Macready expects us, Viola especially to-day. 
 I think we should go." 
 
 "Yes, Harold, come along. He s a perfectly 
 ripping parson. Has lived here for fifteen years 
 isn t it, Ian?" 
 
 "Quite that." 
 
 Mclvor looked at Viola a little impatiently. 
 She knew what a point he made of going to the 
 chapel and how he disliked being late. Only the 
 family from Trevwithin and the servants attended, 
 since the troubles in the village had begun, and 
 Mclvor felt it a very decided duty to be there. 
 
 "Will you go in first? I shall wait for you, my 
 dear." 
 
 "Perhaps you know Macready? He was a 
 fellow of Magdalen." 
 
 [138] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Mclvor turned to Gaunt, who was picking up 
 Viola s roses. 
 
 "No sorry! I don t think I do. I knew his 
 v/ife years ago. I am anxious to see her. It will be 
 a surprise to her won t it, Cousin Ian? Fancy 
 living here 
 
 "Pamela," Viola s voice broke in hurriedly, 
 "Won t you come with me?" 
 
 Gaunt having at last collected and secured the 
 roses gave them into Viola s arms. As he did so 
 he saw her face go white to the lips. Pamela, 
 watching him, saw it, too, and exclaimed: 
 
 "Why, Viola, what is it? You look as if you d 
 seen a ghost!" 
 
 Mclvor, who had looked distressed when Mrs. 
 Macready was mentioned, frowned. The slight 
 dislike that he had for Pamela deepened. He 
 turned to her. "Let s go on Viola and Gaunt 
 can follow, if they like, but we won t disappoint 
 old Mac." 
 
 Though he felt her resistance, Mclvor took 
 Pamela with him. He could not bear to have Viola 
 speak without reserve to this girl of what she had 
 never spoken to him. In some strange way the 
 name of Dora Macready seemed to him to accuse, 
 to cry out, almost like murder that had been done 
 in secret but that would not remain secret. 
 
 After they had gone, Gaunt went to Viola. The 
 look of terror he had seen come to her moved him 
 indescribably. The love he had felt for her seemed 
 almost overwhelmed by a tremendous pity, until 
 
 [139] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 he touched her then the two feelings became 
 one and mastered him. 
 
 "What is it, Viola tell me you must tell me 
 what has he done to you?" 
 
 With all her force Viola struggled to leave his 
 arms. 
 
 "Nothing Harold nothing." 
 
 "It s about that Macready woman. What about 
 her what has she done?" 
 
 "Don t ah, if you knew." 
 
 A picture that Viola often saw floated again 
 before her eyes. A young face, pallid, agonized 
 overwhelmed by death. A figure in clerical black, 
 shrinking away in nervous fear, walking safely and 
 strongly out of doors. 
 
 "I know you have seen something horrible. 
 Tell me, little Viola, tell me!" 
 
 His hands pressed heavily on her shoulders, and 
 their touch, their pressure, banished the vision of 
 Dora. In its place a feeling of tremendous melan 
 choly, of a terrible sorrow that was like the 
 realization of love lost out of life, filled Viola. 
 Tears came to her eyes again rolled down her 
 face. Her body shook. It was agony to weep, so 
 the tears felt as though they were oozing as blood 
 would from some fearful wound. 
 
 "I ll tell you, Harold she s dead she s dead. 
 But that s not all I m not crying only for her 
 it s for myself I m afraid I m afraid." 
 
 Gaunt s arms were about her her face buried in 
 his rough coat. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Leone, who was looking for her mistress, 
 stopped at the yew hedge for a moment, and then 
 went on quickly. There was a smile of peculiar 
 satisfaction about her mouth that tilted her little 
 mustache amusingly. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Gaunt waited for Viola in the courtyard of Trev- 
 within. The great pile of the castle reared itself into 
 a sky of faint blue, in which clouds like white birds 
 were floating. On the walls that enclosed the yard, 
 brown lichen had fastened its curious life, and on 
 the green lawn the sun threw lances of light. 
 
 Presently, a figure armed with an umbrella and 
 a small book appeared. It was Lady Adela, and 
 she signaled to Gaunt. 
 
 "Do walk with me, Harold. I ve lost my 
 glasses only temporarily, I hope, but I m quite 
 blind without them. Please, if you don t mind, 
 read this to me." 
 
 Gaunt took the book from her. It was a copy of 
 Wordsworth, turned to the "Ruins of a Castle in 
 North Wales." He read slowly, in his pleasant 
 voice, giving the words their value. 
 Through shattered galleries, mid roofless halls, 
 Wandering with timid footsteps oft betrayed, 
 The stranger sighs, nor scruples to upbraid 
 Old time, though he, gentlest among the thralls 
 Of destiny, upon these wounds hath laid 
 His lenient touches, soft as light that falls 
 From the wan moon, upon the towers and walls, 
 Light deepening the profoundest sleep of 
 shade.... 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Ah!" Lady Adela put up her hand. Her voice 
 was quiet, content. 
 
 "That makes me feel that even old ruins of 
 women are needed." 
 
 Gaunt closed the book abruptly. It was not 
 possible for him to think of age ruin and decay 
 even with their gentlest compensations. He 
 longed to tell his aunt of youth and of something 
 else that was the essence of youth and was hot in 
 his veins. He looked at his aunt s gentle old face, 
 and the desire to speak left him. 
 
 Lady Adela, glad of companionship, took 
 Gaunt s arm to walk with him. As she did so the 
 umbrella freed itself with a jerk, executed a 
 marvelous pas seul and disappeared triumphantly 
 over the wall. 
 
 Lady Adela, with an indignant cry, started in 
 pursuit. Gaunt overtook her, and turning, saw 
 Viola, looking at them in astonishment. But Lady 
 Adela wanted her umbrella. She waved her arms 
 excitedly. 
 
 "Go on, Harold, before it s lost. Is there a gate 
 or something ?" 
 
 "Yes, there is a gate," Viola called. Gaunt ran 
 after her flying figure. At the gate Viola paused, 
 confused by the apparent simplicity of the lock. 
 Gaunt tried to help her. His hand touched hers 
 and he drew back. With astonishingly little 
 effort, Viola was able by a slight pressure on the 
 door that was set into the wall, to open it, and she 
 and Gaunt stepped out of the castle grounds. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 They saw a tremendous prospect. In the west, 
 the aspiring outlines of the Snowdon mountains 
 were veiled in the purple mists of morning, 
 through which the sun drew color that was like a 
 wonderful harmony. In the east the murmuring 
 ocean mirrored the blue sky that it gazed on. 
 Below them, a mountain torrent flashed white 
 spray against gray rocks made brown pools 
 where slim white birches waded, made banks of 
 bright green moss, to shelter bluebells and brown 
 snails. Gaunt and Viola were standing on a hill 
 top wild grasses blew in the wind, and delicate 
 white harebells hid amongst them. 
 
 A short way down the slope was an avenue of 
 yew trees that led to an ancient wall. 
 
 Viola turned to Gaunt. "Now I know what an 
 Irishman means when he says the top of the 
 morning! 
 
 "I wish it to you, Viola/ 
 
 "Shall we see what s behind that wall, Harold?" 
 
 "Don t you like it here, in the sun?" There was 
 a note of reluctance in his voice. 
 
 "Of course. We ll wait here if you prefer." 
 
 With a motion as lithe as a boy s, Viola sat down 
 on a flat rock. She put her hands up to her hair. 
 The tiny action, without meaning in itself, had the 
 almost terrible power of things that are the 
 repetition of a past act. It had the power to bring 
 to Gaunt s mind the day he had been able to tell 
 Viola, after he had stolen a kiss, that he loved her. 
 
 "What is it, Harold?" 
 
 [H4] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 She smiled at him. Evidently it had recalled 
 nothing to Viola. 
 
 Gaunt flung himself at her feet. 
 
 "It s you, Viola I don t understand and and 
 I want to, for your sake you re unhappy. There s 
 something wrong. If you don t want to tell me, 
 can t you tell Aunt Adela?" 
 
 As he spoke Gaunt was conscious of making an 
 effort very unusual to him. He was deliberately 
 forcing a confidence that he shrank from 
 hearing. 
 
 A vivid flush stained Viola s cheeks. She looked 
 away from him. 
 
 "No," she said in a low voice. "No. It s 
 nothing. I m very silly. Perhaps, I m nervous 
 like Evelyn Malloring, and had better take up 
 her cult." 
 
 Gaunt frowned. "Don t, Viola, I thought you 
 trusted me don t laugh at me." 
 
 "But I wasn t! It s so long since I ve seen you. 
 Do tell me what you ve been doing. I was in Nice 
 when we heard you d gone back to India. 
 
 "I remember about that native how splendid 
 it was you killing him." 
 
 "My dear child, that s a flattering but un 
 christian remark." 
 
 "But really, do tell me. The mere thought of 
 the East fires my imagination!" 
 
 "I should like to show you my district in the 
 proper season, of course." 
 
 "Tell me about the people that are with you " 
 
 [145] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Gaunt stirred. He looked suddenly uncomfort 
 able, as though he had on the moment remembered 
 something unpleasant. 
 
 "If you are determined to let me make a bore of 
 myself, I do solemnly promise to tell you at the 
 right time of an Indian mystery and in the 
 meanwhile, let us not waste our opportunities, but 
 examine what is before us?" 
 
 With a quick movement, Viola got to her feet, 
 and they picked their way through the wild grass, 
 to the densely growing yew trees. Walking 
 beneath them, they were in a twilight of green 
 shade. Over the entrance of the old wall was a 
 quaint bell cot. Viola and Gaunt passed into an 
 open enclosure. Before them was a tiny church, 
 and clustered about it crowded and forgotten 
 graves. 
 
 Reverently they looked into the sacred building. 
 At first they could see nothing distinctly. But 
 gradually by a golden light that was diffused from 
 a glass window over the chancel, and that repre 
 sented in yellow stains the Holy Family, they saw 
 the interior of the church. 
 
 Over the chancel was an oaken canopy painted 
 in red, yellow and blue. A rood screen of beautiful 
 carved wood protected the chancel space. The east 
 window was choked with ivy, the floor was of 
 slate unevenly laid; through apertures in the roof, 
 the sky showed in living blue, and the sound of the 
 sea pervaded the House of God with a voice like a 
 tremendous organ. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 As their eyes became accustomed to the subdued 
 light, they saw that there was a worshipper in the 
 church. It was an old woman. Above her thin 
 brown neck that looked like a withered stalk, her 
 white hair was gathered into a small knot. Her 
 shoulders, underneath a black shawl, bent earth 
 ward. Through the flesh of her face might be 
 traced the salient lines of her skull. Her dim eyes, 
 as she lifted them to the altar, were bright with 
 hope. As Viola looked at the old figure, she 
 dropped to her knees, and Gaunt knelt beside her. 
 
 And it seemed to Viola that a great burden was 
 lifted from her. All the doubt, melancholy, and 
 sadness, all the despair of a loving woman con 
 demned to do without love, left her. For the first 
 time since her marriage she was able to pray, with 
 the feeling that her prayer would be heard. Now 
 that feeling sustained her. Hope filled her heart 
 joy flooded her. 
 
 The old woman, her devotions done, went 
 slowly out, threaded her way between the graves, 
 and disappeared. 
 
 It was nearly noon when Viola and Gaunt came 
 back to Trevwithin. Luncheon was to be at one, 
 and Viola went at once to her room. 
 
 Leone, looking unusually affable, showed 
 pleasure in the practise of her skill. She dressed 
 Viola s hair high, and put on her a gown of clinging 
 white material that was very simply and beauti 
 fully cut. When she had quite finished, Leone 
 drew back with vociferous admiration. Viola 
 
 [147] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 looked at her in surprise, but spoke kindly. She 
 was glad to see the girl becoming human once 
 more and glanced at her own reflection, with 
 surprised pleasure. She had color, and her eyes 
 were smiling. 
 
 Luncheon was served in a tower room. The 
 walls were hung with Gobelin tapestries woven for 
 Mclvor s father, and representing figures from the 
 "Mabinognion." 
 
 "A maid, whose head was more yellow than 
 the flower of the broom, her skin whiter than the 
 foam of the wave, and fairer her hands and ringers 
 than the blossoms of the wood anemones amidst 
 the spray of the meadow fountain . . . four white 
 trefoils sprung up wherever she trod. And there 
 fore was she called Olwen." 
 
 The figure of a youth "upon a steed of dappled 
 gray. . . .in his hand two spears of silver. . . .a gold 
 hiked sword upon his thigh .... And there was 
 precious gold of the value of three hundred kine 
 upon his shoes, and upon his stirrups. And the 
 blades of grass bent not beneath him, so light was 
 his courser s tread, as he journeyed towards the 
 gate of Arthur s palace." 
 
 They were figures of legend and romance 
 enchanted castles and knights of tourney woven 
 in a maze of delicate color. 
 
 Massive silver candelabra holding wax candles 
 were fastened to the walls. A great oak serving 
 table extended across one side of the room, and 
 gleamed with silver. In the center of the room 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 was a long dining table. On it was a silver dish 
 holding Viola s red roses, silver serving plates, and 
 glasses of uncut crystal. 
 
 Before sitting down, Mclvor drew Lady Adela 
 to the window. 
 
 "You love poetry look out, and admit that 
 Keats has been here in imagination, at least." 
 Speaking slowly, in his rather deep voice, Mclvor 
 repeated: 
 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 Viola, as she listened, heard in her husband s 
 voice a note of deep appreciation. She remem 
 bered how, in a garden spot of southern France, 
 she had tried to share with him that beauty of the 
 southern country. 
 
 Lady Adela was delighted with Mclvor. He 
 had seemed alarmingly formidable, at first, but in 
 his love of his native and wonderful home, she 
 thought he showed a natural pride that was frank 
 and charming. 
 
 And Pamela had told her of what Mclvor was 
 doing for the village. 
 
 The Reverend Macready lunched with them. 
 He dwelt somewhat gloomily on the shortcomings 
 of the poor. They offended him by a determined 
 preference for beer over church attendance. 
 
 "They re too comfortable they won t take the 
 trouble to come." 
 
 [HP] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Gaunt, who was sitting opposite Viola, looked 
 up, caught her eye. 
 
 Mclvor answered, They re not comfortable 
 now Macready. They re staying home because 
 of the trouble." 
 
 "It s a thankless task, trying to help them." 
 The clergyman sighed. 
 
 Mclvor turned to Viola. "By the way, what 
 became of you and Gaunt? Where did you 
 go?" 
 
 He tried to make his question casual to keep out 
 of it the hurt he had felt at Viola s disregard of his 
 wish. In doing so, he sounded coldly indifferent. 
 
 Lady Adela turned to Viola. "Did you capture 
 the wretched thing, after all? They went after my 
 umbrella, Ian." 
 
 Viola reddened. She had forgotten the um 
 brella and she had forgotten the Reverend 
 Macready. It had not seemed long that she and 
 Gaunt had been upon the hilltop and in the little 
 church. As she hesitated, to her relief Pamela 
 spoke. 
 
 "It s in your room, Mother dear 
 
 "As it s Sunday, Mr. Macready, Ian has decided 
 that we may venture out of the grounds, and visit 
 the quarries. They re quite a way from the 
 village and I think it will be very interesting." 
 
 The conversation became general. Viola, out of 
 gratitude, relieved Pamela of Mr. Macready, and 
 by her unusual cordiality modified that gentle 
 man s gloomy opinion of humanity. 
 
 [150] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 He had been unable to find receptive relatives 
 for his motherless children, and perhaps it was not 
 strange that his domestic troubles colored his 
 outlook. 
 
 After coffee, Pamela and Viola went up to 
 change for the walk. Lady Adela, in temporary 
 possession of her glasses, decided to stop at home 
 and enjoy her Wordsworth. She watched the 
 party start off, and waved what she thought was 
 her handkerchief, but discovered to be Pamela s 
 embroidery. 
 
 Viola and Gaunt were walking ahead Pamela 
 and Mclvor following. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 As they left Trevwithin behind them, Pamela 
 and Mclvor followed the others. Macready led 
 the way over what seemed a trackless expanse of 
 rock, yellow gorse, purple heather, and bracken. 
 As they descended they could see Glas Ogven in 
 the distance, a faint smoke rising from the 
 cottages. 
 
 Pamela walked well, but to-day she seemed 
 absent-minded, and stumbled once or twice, and 
 Mclvor had to steady her. When he did so the 
 second time he noticed that her eyes were fixed on 
 Viola and Gaunt, who had fallen behind Macready. 
 
 So Mclvor watched them. They walked per 
 fectly together, and occasionally he saw Viola s 
 profile as she turned to smile or answer her com 
 panion. As he watched, the longing to be with 
 Viola as he never had been to be one in spirit as 
 well as in body almost mastered him. He felt 
 that the force of his love could compel answer 
 and understanding from her, if he could only give it 
 rein and he cursed his temperament, that doomed 
 him to feel, but to be dumb. 
 
 Viola slipped and Mclvor saw Gaunt put his 
 arm about her for a moment and in that moment 
 he felt positive hatred of Gaunt. He himself could 
 not go on walking until the arm was withdrawn. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 He was grateful for one thing. Pamela did not 
 talk to him. 
 
 Presently Macready shouted, and held up his 
 hand. They were approaching the quarry. At 
 intervals heaps of slate and refuse had been thrown 
 on the ground. In front of them was the amphi 
 theater the pits and the idle cars. In the mourn 
 ful light of late afternoon, it looked like a livid 
 scar. 
 
 "Shall I go ahead and reconnoiter? We had 
 better see the condition of things before the ladies 
 come down." 
 
 Viola was conscious of a feeling of irony when 
 Macready spoke. His consideration for "the 
 ladies" provoked it. 
 
 "I ll come with you." 
 
 Mclvor joined him, and the two disappeared 
 slowly into the pit. Pamela, who seemed restless, 
 wandered after them. 
 
 A cool breeze sprang up. Viola, who was not 
 very warmly clad, shivered in it. Instantly Gaunt 
 took off his coat and put it about her shoulders. 
 The touch of his hands as he did so told her 
 something. 
 
 Fog began to drift in from the sea, and lie in 
 long wreaths along the moors. 
 
 "Shan t we find the others, Harold? I m super 
 stitious I m afraid of the Gurach Y Rhybin, the 
 hag of the mists." 
 
 "You re afraid, with me?" His voice sounded 
 almost angry. 
 
 [153] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Not really, of course, but let s move up a little 
 further. Perhaps we can find the sun." 
 
 "Yet it was you, this morning, who wanted to 
 leave the sun!" 
 
 Viola stood up, and moved away from the shelter 
 of a rock that she had been sitting in. As she did 
 so, the report of a pistol rang out. At the same 
 moment, it seemed to her, Gaunt flung himself in 
 front of her covered her with his body. 
 
 Mclvor called frantically, "Are you hurt are 
 you Kurt?" 
 
 Gaunt answered him, "No! but your man has 
 gone into the quarry go after him!" 
 
 "Right!" Mclvor called back. 
 
 "But, Harold, they re not armed! Isn t it 
 dangerous for them to attempt to find him in this 
 mist? That shot was intended for us for for 
 
 me." 
 
 Gaunt had not moved from where he had 
 thrown himself, nor spoken since he answered 
 Mclvor. Viola tried gently to disengage herself. 
 As she did so, Gaunt put one hand up with an odd 
 groping gesture. Instinctively Viola took his hand 
 and immediately hers was covered with something 
 warm and sticky his arm dropped to his side, .and 
 his face, in which his eyes closed, faded into a 
 strange pallor, as though it were seen through 
 water. 
 
 Terror filled Viola. She was afraid to touch 
 him afraid to leave him. She took out a tiny and 
 absurd handkerchief and dabbed helplessly at the 
 
 [154] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 blood on her own hand. A peculiar salt smell 
 filled her nostrils. It sickened her. She struggled 
 to her feet to call for help, but the thought of what 
 her voice might attract, silenced her. Even in the 
 growing darkness she could see a widening stain 
 on Gaunt s sleeve. 
 
 He was utterly helpless, dependent on her. 
 With hesitating, trembling fingers, Viola lifted his 
 head and put his coat that had been about her own 
 shoulders under it. Then, awkwardly, she un 
 fastened his collar, unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it 
 back on the shoulder, until a small black hole, 
 from which blood was flowing, was exposed. 
 
 She was wearing a blouse of soft white silk. 
 Hurriedly she took it off, tore the sleeves out, and 
 into strips. The collar of the blouse she folded into 
 a soft pad, and placed over the wound. Then, 
 half supporting him, she adjusted the strips of silk 
 as a bandage, through each layer of which the 
 blood seeped as she bound it. 
 
 The mist was all about them now, damp and 
 clinging, and obliterating every path. Gaunt s 
 hands were cold. Taking the unhurt one between 
 hers, Viola began to chafe it, rubbing towards the 
 heart. Some forgotten memory seemed to say to 
 her, "rub towards the heart, not from it." The 
 moor seemed full of whispering voices of unseen 
 eyes, to which she and Gaunt were visible. The 
 night was malignant a cold wind that blew from 
 the sea seemed to carry with the cry of the 
 Cyhyraith that portends death. 
 
 [155] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 As Viola bent over Gaunt to cover him with her 
 own jacket, he opened his eyes, looked full into 
 hers. She could see the motion of his lashes. An 
 immense relief came to her. He kept his eyes on 
 hers with a steady gaze. 
 
 "Viola!" 
 
 "Yes, Harold. Are you in pain?" 
 
 "No. But I want you to do something for me." 
 
 "Just tell me. I m so stupid but I will try to 
 do anything you tell me." 
 
 "Bend down your head." 
 
 Viola leaned near him. 
 
 "I want you to do this more than I have ever 
 wanted anything in the world." His voice 
 stopped. 
 
 "If I can 
 
 "You can, if you will. And after you have done 
 it I want God to let me die." 
 
 "Harold dear " Viola strained to hear him. 
 She did not hear anything else. 
 
 "It s this, Viola I love you I need you " 
 His voice broke then he whispered, "Kiss me, 
 Viola once just once." 
 
 His poor voice went to Viola s heart she knew 
 that it spoke the truth that her kiss would mean 
 much to him, that her love was longed for, that he 
 felt need of her; and she contrasted this need with 
 what she thought was lan s independence and she 
 knew what it was to be hungry for love. But she 
 was thinking of her husband when she bent down 
 to Harold and kissed him, tenderly, on the lips. 
 
 [156] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 A beam of light from a lantern penetrated the 
 fog, and advancing, revealed Mclvor, Macready 
 and Pamela. The men stooped at once to Gaunt. 
 
 Mclvor took charge, directing the clergyman 
 how to help him lift the injured man, giving the 
 light to Viola, and telling Pamela to hold Gaunt s 
 arm. Mclvor took his head and shoulders and 
 Macready his feet. In the confusion Viola 
 hurriedly slipped into her jacket. As she did 
 so, she saw Mclvor looking at her, but he did 
 not speak. 
 
 Very slowly and painfully, they made their way 
 up to Trevwithin. Gaunt was heavy and the two 
 men labored under his weight. Once Viola 
 stumbled and nearly fell over a bit of slate, but 
 Pamela walked steadily, holding Gaunt s arm. 
 No one spoke. They seemed "like shadows moving 
 in a world of shadow." 
 
 But they were shadows with flame at their 
 hearts, flame of love of longing, and of jealousy. 
 
 The kiss given in pity and taken by love had 
 been seen. 
 
 Mclvor strove with the fury that had possessed 
 him, when under cover of darkness he saw Viola s 
 white arms bend to Gaunt her lips touch his. 
 He had come upon them, had been able to speak 
 normally to direct, when he saw that Gaunt was 
 wounded. But he had seen every action of Viola s 
 as though she had moved in light. A power of 
 terrible observation sprang up, and controlled his 
 first impulse of destruction. Under that scrutiny 
 
 [157] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Viola put on her jacket, rearranged her disheveled 
 hair, guided them with the light, and stumbled 
 over the rough way. 
 
 Mclvor s hands that supported Gaunt s head 
 longed, with an almost separate life of their own, 
 to cast down their burden to leave it to die on the 
 moor. 
 
 When his hands seemed about to assert them 
 selves, to perform what was surely his wish, 
 Mclvor looked at the stains on Gaunt s breast. 
 In some strange way, the sight of his blood made 
 it possible for Mclvor to go on, and stay his hand, 
 for the time. And Pamela had seen. 
 
 When Gaunt had at once accepted Lady Adela s 
 suggestion that they come to Trevwithin, instead 
 of staying on at Thorley, Pamela had felt dis 
 appointed, had been made miserable for a day. 
 But they had traveled together, she had been with 
 Harold under the spell of his biue eyes and careless 
 voice; she had felt in some way perhaps absurd 
 for a woman that she was acting chivalrously, 
 protecting his name from the rumours of London, 
 by going with him. She had felt that Gaunt knew 
 that, and perhaps valued it. So she had not given 
 up hope. For the time Pamela did not think of 
 Viola did not think of herself thought only of 
 Gaunt and her love for him. But to-day she had 
 been forced to think of something else, had 
 watched Viola and Gaunt leave the courtyard 
 together, had waited for them to return, and she 
 had seen that Viola s eyes were smiling. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 In the afternoon, Pamela had walked behind 
 them had seen how Gaunt watched and pro 
 tected Viola from every inequality in the path, how 
 he bent to catch her words, how he was intent upon 
 her. And Pamela had gone away alone, so that 
 she would not see this intention, to return to see it 
 confirmed made fact, as a sword that has been 
 concealed in its sheath is seized by a strong hand, 
 leaps out and thrusts. 
 
 But her hands, as she held his wounded one, 
 were tender. They guarded, they sheltered they 
 were instinct with love. 
 
 At the gates of Trevwithin were lights and men 
 and a waiting motor. Viola and Pamela were put 
 into it, with Gaunt between them. He was 
 unconscious, and his body leaned heavily against 
 Pamela s. At the castle two footmen rushed out, 
 and Gaunt was taken to his room. 
 
 In the great drawing room Lady Adela was 
 unconcernedly reading. She was often alone and 
 had very little idea of time, so that she had not 
 become anxious as the afternoon slipped away. 
 She was happy in the thought that Pamela and 
 Harold were together. 
 
 Viola wanted to find her aunt, and knowing that 
 she often sat in the red drawing room, crossed the 
 hall to enter it. But Mclvor was before her. He 
 did not look at Viola, but spoke hurriedly, in a dry, 
 low voice. 
 
 "Go to your room, Viola. I shall tell Lady 
 Mordaunt. The doctor has been sent for, and 
 
 [159] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 after I have seen him, I am going into the 
 village." 
 
 "But, Ian, I think that shot was meant for you 
 it would be folly for you to go to-night 
 
 "If it was meant for me, how did " he hesi 
 tated at Gaunt s name. "How did your cousin 
 stop it?" 
 
 "Because he was with me he protected me " 
 
 Mclvor s hand clenched. He interrupted Viola. 
 
 "I m going at any rate. But you, Viola, go to 
 your room and rest." 
 
 The effort that Mclvor made to control himself 
 seemed to send the blood racing to his heart, 
 seemed to turn him, for the moment, into an 
 automaton. But as he went in to Lady Adela, he 
 felt that it would be possible to speak to her. 
 
 The man that had shot at Viola, but had 
 wounded Harold, was the son of the old woman 
 they had seen in the little church. He had earned, 
 when the quarries were operating, twenty-five 
 shillings a week, working in a gang of four two of 
 the men quarrying the slate, the other two 
 splitting and dressing it. 
 
 His name was David Griffiths, and he lived in a 
 pink circular hut built in the Roman period, that 
 Viola had thought so charming. He lived with his 
 wife, old mother, and two children. There was 
 something strange about the children. They were 
 never seen in the garden, but sometimes when their 
 mother had gone out to see to the bees, and their 
 grandmother slept over the peat fire, their white, 
 
 [160] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 unchildish faces might be seen pressed against the 
 double-framed windows, and looking out of the 
 woven diamond lattice. The faces would sometimes 
 weep and sometimes laugh, and sometimes stare, 
 with the eyes dull and their lips flaccid and drooling. 
 These strange children of his wrung David 
 Griffiths heart. But he was doing well, and he and 
 his wife planned to save money that they might 
 take the children to a great doctor in London. 
 
 As he worked in Mclvor s quarry, classing the 
 red, blue and green slate into its different sizes of 
 queens, duchesses, countesses, and ladies, he would 
 say over and over to himself the speech he was 
 going to make the doctor tell him how the little 
 ones had been as bright and pretty as you please 
 when they were tiny, but how they hadn t seemed 
 to come along. He would tell the doctor every 
 thing about them, and then, surely- 
 One day, when he was making these plans 
 and cutting a queen that didn t come up to 
 standard down to be a duchess something very 
 strange happened to David. On looking at his 
 hand, instead of finding the slate in it, he saw a 
 pick. Also, instead of being where he had been, he 
 was on one of the steps. He was surrounded by 
 four quarrymen one of whom was looking at him 
 with fear and rage. When David looked at him 
 and dropped the pick, the man thrust his face 
 forward, swore at him, and then moved off. The 
 other men looked at David curiously, and one of 
 them asked him: 
 
 f 161! 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Why did you want to do for him, mate?" and 
 then they moved away. 
 
 David, who could not understand it, and was 
 conscious of a pain in his head, went back to work 
 and his plans for the children. t 
 
 When word came that the quarries were to close, 
 despair came upon him. There was no fear of 
 actual suffering but where was the money coming 
 from to add to their hoard for the doctor? 
 
 David could think of nothing else, until he began 
 to think of who was taking his money away. Then 
 he began to hate Mclvor, though he was very care 
 ful not to say so. But he got a pistol from Port 
 Madoc, and carried it. And he began to haunt the 
 quarry and to walk on the moor. Very often he 
 would sit down to rest and find himself trans 
 ported as if by magic to another place. Always 
 after such an occurrence, he would feel headache, 
 malaise, terrible fatigue. But he never spoke of it 
 to anyone. 
 
 After he had shot at Viola, Griffiths, still holding 
 the pistol, had wandered across the moor into the 
 quarry, and in the dense fog, traversed in safety 
 each terrace. Then he had taken his familiar way 
 to "Ye Labor in Vain Inn," and reaching his hand 
 for a mug of beer, became conscious of the pistol he 
 held, and of the oppression of physical discomfort 
 that he had begun to dread. 
 
 "Ye Labor in Vain" was crowded. Men in rough 
 clothes were sitting at small tables, and all of them 
 were drinking. Occasionally, a fragment of song 
 
 [162] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 would be heard, or a loud laugh, but on the whole, 
 they were glum. 
 
 David Griffiths had been always looked askance 
 at. The peculiar tragedy of his domestic life, as 
 well as his obsession of saving, put Griffiths away 
 from his fellows, who were imaginative and shy 
 before unusual conditions. 
 
 To-night as David lurched into the small, dark 
 room, sat down at a table and took his beer, Alan 
 Jones, a splendid young man who had attended the 
 Eisteddfod the year before, and had ever since 
 sung parts of the Goredd Prayer aloud in inspira 
 tional moments, checked the familiar words on his 
 lips. He stared through the blue smoke from the 
 men s pipes at Griffiths face and then at the 
 pistol in his hand. Then he nudged his com 
 panion. 
 
 "Look" 
 
 The other men at the table turned stared. 
 
 Griffiths seemed sunk in stupor his figure was 
 inert, and fallen a little forward he breathed 
 heavily. As the men watched him, his hands drew 
 up, knocking the mug of beer to the floor. His 
 features were distorted a short and piercing cry 
 broke from his lips, and he fell to the floor, froth 
 gathering at his mouth. 
 
 The men nearest him got up, gave him one look, 
 and taking their mugs with them, went outside. 
 No one made any attempt to aid or relieve 
 Griffiths. They objected to his presence, and so 
 left it. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Mclvor had found it possible to speak to Lady 
 Adela. As Gaunt had been conscious of her 
 uncritical mind and kind heart, so was Mclvor 
 aware of it. To anyone observant of the moods of 
 others, he would have betrayed himself, for the 
 mastery he had forced upon his nature, the iron 
 control that it had endured while he was with 
 Viola, was leaving him. Curtly he told Lady 
 Adela of the accident, and made her remain with 
 him, until word should come from the doctor. 
 
 Lady Adela, whose face had been rosy and 
 placid in the light from the great candelabra, grew 
 quite white. She started to her feet to go up 
 stairs, to fly to her boy. Mclvor stopped her. 
 His voice was like a detaining hand. 
 
 "Don t. Wait with me." 
 
 Not knowing why she did it, Lady Adela obeyed 
 him. She longed to be away. But Mclvor did 
 not talk to her. 
 
 He got up suddenly and extinguished some of the 
 candles, then strode to one of the great embrasures. 
 As he put back the curtain, there was a wild dash 
 of rain on the window. Mclvor stared out. In the 
 darkness he saw Viola leaning, nearer nearer to 
 Gaunt lifting his head meeting his lips. 
 
 The storm that had sprung up suddenly, and 
 without warning, was born at once into fury. A 
 wind that had swept across leagues of ocean gave 
 out a great diapason. Mclvor longed to be out in 
 the storm, for there was that in him that writhed 
 in restraint that cried aloud for freedom. 
 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Lady Adela, looking at his tall and motionless 
 figure in the quiet room, felt reassured. Surely, he 
 would not be so composed if there was much 
 danger. 
 
 After what seemed hours to her, a footman came 
 in softly and announced the doctor. 
 
 Mclvor turned on his heel. 
 
 The doctor was old and tired, and accustomed to 
 terrible things, that made the wound Gaunt had 
 received, seem a mere scratch. Of course the 
 young man must be careful rest in bed proper 
 bandaging and diet. The serious thing, in the 
 doctor s opinion, was that an attempt had been 
 made on a life. As he spoke to Mclvor, he had a 
 feeling of keen anxiety to know how this land 
 owner would act, in this case. 
 
 "Did you see anything of the fellow?" he 
 questioned. 
 
 "No." Mclvor moved towards the hall. 
 
 "But I mean to see him. I m going into the 
 village now 
 
 "Let me urge you not to. It would be quite 
 unsafe, under the circumstances and there is a 
 big fellow of a storm on its way to us " 
 
 Mclvor cut him short. He flung himself into a 
 heavy coat, pulled a cap down over his eyes, and 
 plunged into the darkness. It seemed to open 
 arms to receive him; the wind that buffeted, the 
 rain that drenched him, the rocks over which he 
 stumbled, and the black night into which he 
 plunged, were a refuge. In it he was still tor- 
 
 [165] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 merited, but he was capable of thought that urged 
 him to decision. His pride, like something fatally 
 wounded that yet has strength to hide itself that it 
 may die alone, demanded that he should keep this 
 suffering secret. 
 
 But some one must pay. Some one from the 
 village that he had worked and hoped for that he 
 had trusted to understand him, and that had 
 struck at him. There he could strike back. 
 
 The proprietor of "Ye Labor in Vain" had 
 thrown a dishpan of water over Alan Jones, who, 
 after a little, sat up and tried in a dazed way 
 to dry himself. The proprietor had then taken 
 him by the elbows, and with an admonition to "go 
 home," put him outside, and signaled to his other 
 guests to come back, which they did, with height 
 ened spirits. 
 
 Perhaps the diversion of poor Griffiths fit, or the 
 happy comparison of their healthy lives with his 
 diseased one, made them gay. At any rate, new 
 beer was called for, and young Jones was demanded 
 to sing what he could remember of the music he had 
 heard at the Eisteddfod. 
 
 Alan Jones, stirred temperamentally, was willing 
 to oblige. Throwing back his dark head and 
 closing his eyes, the better to aid his memory, he 
 sent these words out, in a powerful and sweet, if 
 untrained tenor: 
 " Grant, Oh God, thy Protection 
 
 And in Protection, Strength; 
 
 And in Strength, Understanding; 
 
 [166] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 And in Understanding, Knowledge; 
 
 And in Knowledge, the Knowledge of Justice; 
 
 And in the Knowledge of Justice, the love of it; 
 
 And in that love, the love of all Existence; 
 
 And in the love of all Existence, the love of God, 
 and all Goodness. * 
 
 Mclvor strode in while the Goredd Prayer was 
 being sung. But he waited in shadow, until it 
 was finished. 
 
 Jones, evidently proud of his powers, repeated 
 the last line: 
 
 " And in the love of all Existence, the love of 
 God, and all Goodness/ 
 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 When Gaunt woke in the morning, his room was 
 full of sunshine. His first sensation was that 
 electric lights were burning very near his face, and 
 that only by withdrawing his head under the 
 covers could he escape their glare. Which act he 
 tried to perform, but as he moved such sharp 
 pain flashed through his shoulder and died throb 
 bing in his hand, that he lay very still. 
 
 When he did that, events came back to him 
 not in orderly sequence, but turning as round 
 abouts do on which sit flying figures of youth that 
 revolve about a central and musical support. 
 Viola was the central figure in his thought. He 
 had made an ass of himself but she had kissed 
 him. A smile drew up the corners of his mouth. 
 He murmured her name to the pillow. 
 
 "Little Viola little Viola!" 
 
 Leone, who had been sitting by Gaunt s bed, 
 slipped out of the room, when she saw that he was 
 awake, to tell Viola but her mistress was not in 
 the tower room nor in any of the drawing rooms. 
 
 Still searching Leone found Mclvor s man Tay, 
 and from him received the information that Mrs. 
 Mclvor had waited in her husband s dressing room 
 all night, and that the "master" had not yet 
 returned from the village. Men had been sent to 
 
 M681 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Glas Ogven only this morning, to relieve Mrs. 
 Mclvor s anxiety. 
 
 As Leone listened, she looked puzzled her step 
 slackened, but a recollection of Gaunt s beaux 
 yeux prodded her on. And she found Viola, in a 
 dark morning gown, walking up and down in 
 Mclvor s study. 
 
 "Madame! M sieur is awake!" 
 
 Viola turned swiftly. A look of intense relief 
 passed over her face. 
 
 "He has come back, Leone? Where is he?" 
 
 "But M sieur Gaunt, Madame! He is asking 
 for you." 
 
 Viola s expression of joy faded. Leone, watching 
 her, murmured, with a baffled accent: 
 
 "C est Anglais!" and departed. 
 
 And Viola continued her pacing back and forth 
 of the little room, and her thoughts their weary 
 repetition of uncertainty. 
 
 Last night Ian had been different. Viola had 
 felt intuitively that Mclvor, in his apparent dis 
 regard, was in reality more intent upon her than 
 he had ever been. And the hope that she was for 
 once first in his thoughts made Viola rejoice. 
 
 But he had been very strange and he had gone, 
 in spite of and as though he had not heard her 
 entreaties, into the village into danger and he 
 had not come back. 
 
 It seemed to Viola as though she were in some 
 nightmare land, enfolded in such fog as had 
 encompassed them last night, and through which 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 she now vainly tried to see. Leone s interruption, 
 with word from Gaunt, made her think of him for a 
 moment, with warm pity and gratitude, but she 
 turned from the remembrance of his face, to 
 pursue, in thought, the mysterious aloofness of 
 Mclvor s, that seemed for a moment to look at her 
 with understanding, only to evade, to leave her 
 in ignorance. 
 
 There was a soft tap at the door, and Lady 
 Adela, dressed in "something warm" in tone, as 
 well as in texture, answered Viola s "Come in." 
 
 Lady Adela s hair seemed in some remarkable 
 way to express the state of her being. To-day, its 
 gray locks, though gathered in a small knot on the 
 top of her head, defied restraint, and stood up 
 around her face in quivering strands. She was 
 full of soft emotion and thankfulness that her boy 
 was safe. 
 
 "Dear Viola, do come now, and see 
 Harold." 
 
 At sight of her aunt s evident agitation of happi 
 ness, Viola was ashamed that she herself had taken 
 so slight a part in the general rejoicing that Harold 
 had come off so easily. As she remembered how he 
 got his hurt, her pale cheeks flushed. She took 
 her aunt s hand eagerly. 
 
 "Of course! I m so anxious to see him he 
 really saved my life, you know, Aunt Adela." 
 
 Harold was raised a little in the bed, but his 
 bandaged arm and shoulder were covered. The 
 sheet was drawn up to his chin; over it and against 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the white pillow, his face and bright brown hair 
 looked full of vitality. The bistre circles of pain 
 under his eyes only made their blue gaze, as they 
 sought Viola s face, more ardent. 
 
 Moving quietly, Viola drew a chair near the 
 bed and sat down. A curious constraint came upon 
 her. All the sympathy and real gratitude she felt 
 for Gaunt were checked arrested by the way he 
 looked at her. As he did that she could only think 
 of one thing. She had kissed him. He had not 
 forced her done it against her will. She had bent 
 down put her lips to his. 
 
 It had meant so little to her that she had not 
 thought of it until now. She remembered her 
 impulse of tenderness towards him that had 
 surely something of the maternal in it, and that 
 some women feel for man when he is shorn of his 
 powers and made dependent upon them. 
 
 As she looked at this young and strong man, 
 whose eyes summoned her, Viola felt that she had 
 betrayed herself to an enemy. 
 
 But the enemy was smiling. He put out his 
 uninjured hand and took hers took it with a 
 strong clasp. 
 
 "How good of you to come but you are all 
 goodness to me." 
 
 Viola tried to free her hand. Gaunt put it to his 
 lips kissed it, and let it go. His voice sounded 
 warm with happiness. 
 
 It seemed to Viola that he was in the warmth, 
 in some glorious country of the south, where 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "the sun with a golden mouth can blow 
 Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard 
 
 row." 
 
 while she dwelt alone, in this bitter north. Viola 
 did not know how to answer him. She felt that 
 she did not know anything that life was too much 
 for her. With a great effort she conquered her 
 dumb devil. 
 
 "You re not badly hurt, Harold?" 
 "No, Viola it s the merest scratch " 
 "Do you remember ?" Viola paused. 
 "I remember last night and always will 
 that and the first time I saw you. Don t ask me 
 to forget, Viola don t ask it 
 
 As Viola listened to his voice that was full of 
 ardour sprung from his love of her, she felt utter 
 astonishment at her action on the moor. 
 
 Gaunt went on speaking. His voice, hurried, 
 husky, would not have been recognized by Mrs. 
 Lathrop, but the language that he spoke she would 
 have quite understood. To Viola, it was a strange 
 tongue. She felt his emotion, his distress, sym 
 pathetically, and would have been glad, if she 
 could, to have soothed it. From his halting but 
 oddly violent words, she glimpsed as through a 
 murky atmosphere the debatable lands of love that 
 he longed to explore with her as his companion. 
 That Gaunt hoped to do so did not occur to her 
 any more than did a feeling of offense at his out 
 burst. She was as oddly unconscious of evil in 
 Harold as she was of purity in herself. 
 
 [172] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Gaunt saw that, and his manhood almost 
 worshipped Viola and the fiery, shamed hope 
 that he had felt, died. 
 
 "You look sorry for me " he almost faltered. 
 
 Viola stood up and moved away to the 
 window. 
 
 "I am sorry, Harold and for myself, too. I m 
 selfish. Perhaps that s why I ve missed the only 
 thing that matters, the only thing that can make 
 life real, or beautiful. It s not enough to love- 
 that may be like a gift to one that has too much; 
 and it s not enough to be loved that may be like 
 stealing it must come to both, alike, and I think, 
 dear Harold, it hardly ever does." 
 
 "I know one thing, Viola, I d rather give my 
 gift my love to you than have any made to 
 me. I m going away but you ll remember that, 
 won t you ? You ll promise me that, if there s ever 
 a chance you ll let me do something, anything 
 for you?" 
 
 There was nothing in Harold s words now that 
 Mrs. Lathrop had ever heard or could even 
 imagine. Viola did not realize the change she 
 only knew that she felt terribly lonely again, and 
 very sad. And sad not only for herself. 
 
 "If there s ever anything, Harold, that you can 
 do, I promise." 
 
 But surely there never would be. Desires of 
 high romance, Viola thought of Harold s with her 
 own, might hang their splendid colors in the dim 
 halls of imagination, but at the touch of reality 
 
 [173] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 they would vanish away into the "stuff that 
 dreams are made of." 
 
 When Viola stepped into the corridor and long 
 hall that led to Mclvor s rooms, she was conscious 
 at once of movement excitement, in the house. 
 But she did not make any effort to discover what 
 it was, or whether Mclvor had come home. 
 Instead, she sought the little tower room whose 
 windows, after the storm, showed a delicately blue 
 and veiled expanse of sea and sky. Viola slipped 
 on a white dressing gown, and moved a chair as 
 near as she could to the windows, and let her gaze 
 wander out from her eyrie into the far horizon, 
 deliberately withdrawing herself from the activities 
 she had been aware of in the house. 
 
 An emphatic knock and the hurried entrance, 
 after Viola s rather languid "Come in," of Pamela, 
 brought another atmosphere into the room. Pam 
 was neatly, almost severely, dressed in dark blue 
 serge. Her hair was drawn back from her forehead 
 and fastened in a resentful-looking knot at the 
 back of her head. Her eyes, with their thin lids 
 traced by tiny veins, looked hot and dry, as though 
 they burned and her ruddy cheeks were 
 heightened oddly in color. 
 
 She cleared her throat, making a queer little 
 sound before she spoke. 
 
 "I ve looked everywhere, Vi!" 
 
 Viola withdrew her eyes from the cloudy 
 spaces. 
 
 "For what, Pam?" 
 
 [174] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "For you, of course. I only wondered that you 
 didn t hear us, and come down into the hall." 
 
 "Us?" 
 
 Viola rose, stepped nearer her cousin. A tiny 
 pulse began to beat in her throat. 
 
 "Ian is here has come home?" 
 
 Pam, whose eyes did not meet Viola s shook her 
 head. 
 
 "No. It was a man from the village, with news 
 for you for all of us. There s war." 
 
 She spoke as though it were not of real im 
 portance as though she mentioned it to gain time 
 for something else. Her voice was almost dull. 
 
 "It s nothing much, I think. But the villagers 
 will be settled out of hand, and that s as well, 
 too." 
 
 Viola steadied herself by taking Pamela s arm. 
 The arm was yielded to her as a crutch might have 
 been to give physical support. It did not com 
 promise Pamela with any human attributes of 
 sympathy. 
 
 "What do you mean, Pam? War with whom? 
 and how will it settle the villagers and where is 
 is Ian?" 
 
 Pamela looked away. 
 
 "He s gone his things are to be sent on. I was 
 to tell you he sent me this note." Pamela 
 fumbled with a single sheet of paper that she had 
 thrust into her gown. But she did not refer to it. 
 
 "Ian belongs, you know, to the Royal Engineers 
 and he wanted to go at once, naturally, it was 
 
 [175] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY* 
 
 right for him. They heard the news in the village 
 last night and so, of course, he s gone." 
 
 "Of course he s gone." 
 
 Viola repeated the little words with her lips; 
 and Pamela, feeling as though she had struck 
 at a guilty person only to find them innocent, 
 went out. 
 
 Viola had loved thoughts, visions, ideals of 
 beauty and romance. She had applied them 
 unconsciously to every act of her life she had 
 followed them, blindly, but only in their flower. 
 From the roots of fact that must be tended and 
 watered with tears from the stalks of daily life, 
 that must push up through earth before they may 
 bear a perfect bloom, she had looked away. 
 
 She had disliked common things, ordinary 
 people. The knowledge of her parents tragedy 
 had crowned them for her, with the triumph of life. 
 
 And how was it now with her own marriage? 
 Always, she had seen love as a star- and Ian 
 had he not seen the star first as a world teeming 
 with human lives? 
 
 Perhaps, he had the nearer vision, but it shut 
 Viola away. The villagers, their needs and hopes, 
 and the voice of the poor, Ian had heard. It had 
 followed him into the south it had been with him 
 in the north it led him now into a strange 
 country. And always the voice of the many was 
 stronger than the voice of one the cry of the 
 wretched more poignant than the love whisper of 
 one woman. 
 
 [176] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Ian need not have searched far, Viola thought; 
 he could have found at home a poverty to enrich 
 a life to lift up a heart to make glad. 
 
 177] 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Lady Mordaunt and Pamela made Harold s 
 departure the next week the excuse for their own. 
 And Viola saw them go with relief. From London 
 they sent her news, in its then incipiency, of the 
 Great War, and Viola, alone in her walled retreat, 
 read it as something only vaguely sinister. 
 
 The lamentations of Leone at their isolation, the 
 depressing society of the Reverend Macready who 
 had adopted as an idee fixe the outrage of dis- 
 endowment, were far more real to Viola than any 
 anxiety about England s action and Mclvor and 
 Harold Gaunt s part in it. 
 
 A short note had come from Ian, after six weeks, 
 from a "Military Works" bungalow in Chakrata, 
 India. It was a very curious note, indeed. When 
 Viola took the square blue envelope, with her name 
 on it in a firm and abrupt handwriting, the 
 emotion that she felt angered, astonished her, and 
 she slipped the letter unopened into a book of 
 Mrs. Browning s poems, and forced herself to 
 wait until the next day before reading it. 
 
 The few lines contained a curt apology, but no 
 explanation, for leaving Trevwithin without seeing 
 her. He urged Viola to feel perfectly free to go or 
 come as she chose inclosed a generous check, and 
 concluded briefly, after a sentence appreciative of 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the Himalayas, with the remark, that the war 
 would probably be over, and he at home, in three 
 months at most. 
 
 Viola, searching through the non-committal 
 words for a trace of feeling, put the letter back, 
 between the pages of "Sonnets from the 
 Portuguese." 
 
 Mclvor s name, signed "Yours Ian," touched 
 the words, 
 "My letters all dead paper mute and white! 
 
 And yet they seem alive and quivering 
 
 Against my tremulous hands which loose the 
 
 string 
 And Viola s hands had trembled. 
 
 In London, Evelyn Malloring, in an access of 
 energy, looked up and investigated the "de 
 jected married person" that had pursued Harold 
 Gaunt with such extraordinary if unfortunate 
 ardour. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop was installed in somewhat sultry 
 grandeur at the Ritz, and there Lady Malloring s 
 always acquisitive interest had fastened upon her. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop s blond head, crowned with a 
 flamboyant hat, was turned with deference to a 
 very young man that Sir John and Lady Malloring 
 knew quite well. The young man first looked 
 devilish, then conscious, and at Sir John s reluctant 
 approach, miserable. He and Malloring exchanged 
 a few words, when Lady Evelyn bore down upon 
 the group, put a proprietary hand on Sir John s 
 sleeve, and made a complete if somewhat hurried 
 
 [179] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 inventory of Mrs. Lathrop, under which that 
 lady became red and restive and Sir John, 
 acutely uncomfortable, drew his wife away. 
 
 "I knew it," said Lady Evelyn. "That gossip 
 is every word of it true. The creature s got no 
 looksno pride no anything She s soft, soft 
 and sticky she s like mush poor young man. 
 Fancy a diet of mush old mush!" 
 "My dear!" 
 
 Sir John, seeing Mme. du Guenic, approached 
 her with relief, cast Lady Evelyn upon her hands, 
 and made a discreet retreat. His wife s remarks 
 sometimes made a disturbing commotion in the 
 little shrine he had set up in his heart for her 
 worship. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic, suppressing her boredom, 
 smiled kindly at Lady Evelyn. 
 "I like your husband," she said. 
 "What, Johnny?" 
 
 Lady Evelyn s eyebrows performed half circles 
 of astonishment. 
 
 The elder woman smiled. 
 
 "Are you astonished at my perception of the 
 grande passion?" 
 
 Lady Malloring gasped, "you don t mean " 
 "I do mean that it is refreshing to see a man 
 that loves his wife as Sir John does you. Forgive 
 my eccentric speech. I am alone you know " 
 Her companion broke in hurriedly. She was 
 always uncomfortable out of the shallows. 
 "Why don t you take a trip?" 
 
 [180] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 Mme. du Guenic started gave a half laugh. 
 
 "I believe you are really divinatory! I m going 
 to, if I can persuade my niece, Viola, to go with 
 me." 
 
 "How fascinating! Of course she ll go. She 
 can t stay alone on that rock in Wales and Mr. 
 Mclvor s gone to India, I heard." A look of 
 malice crossed her pretty face. 
 
 "Perhaps you, Mrs. Mclvor, and Mrs. Lathrop 
 will go out on the same steamer poor Gaunt is 
 back in Kairpur and I believe the creature, 
 balked of her prey, will pursue it 
 
 Madame du Guenic laughed. "We are all God s 
 creatures," she said, and added without profanity, 
 "and His works are indeed wonderful." 
 
 Lady Adela and Pam, who were stopping for a 
 few weeks at the Ritz, had a letter from Viola that 
 told of her acceptance of Mme. du Guenic s invita 
 tion. Viola did not give her real reason for this 
 journey. In fact, she denied it to herself, pretend 
 ing that indifference to her husband would allow 
 her to go near, without seeing him. And Trev- 
 within was impossible. The loneliness of the sea- 
 haunted rooms, the silent sky, the eerie beauty of 
 the strange and almost violent mountain country, 
 was terrible to Viola. And once again, from love, 
 she turned to her mother s sister. 
 
 Pamela, when she finished the note that she had 
 read aloud to her mother, stood up, extracted a 
 handkerchief that she had purchased at a benefit 
 bazar, and that was extremely stiff, from her dress 
 
 fiSil 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 and blew her nose. The action, accomplished with 
 force and thoroughness, rendered her principle 
 feature more prominent than usual. It caught 
 Lady Adela s sad and wandering eye, and fixed her 
 gaze. 
 
 Pamela, watching her mother was seized by a 
 longing foreign surely to her Britannic nature, to 
 astonish Lady Adela with words like these: 
 
 "If I didn t have such a nose, such a face, I 
 would be going to India to Harold! It s not worth, 
 it s not love, that counts for men it s looks, 
 faces, noses!" 
 
 But she did not do that. She remarked some 
 what at length upon the pleasure Viola would 
 undoubtedly enjoy on this trip. But Lady Adela 
 did not at once agree with her. 
 
 "I ve a queer guilty feeling about Viola, Pam. 
 You know, she left us before with her aunt, and 
 of course her marriage would naturally change her, 
 but she s never seemed the same child to me. She 
 used to be a happy thing; do you remember how 
 Harold " Lady Adela checked herself, but 
 Pamela said, in an even voice: 
 
 "How Harold and she used to ride together that 
 summer before she went away! And how she used 
 to sing to him! Yes, I do remember it." 
 
 But Lady Adela still looked troubled. 
 "I ve always felt guilty about her being married 
 away from us it s as though I had shirked my 
 responsibility and somehow, this going away 
 again 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 She broke off to continue curiously, "But she 
 may join Ian, and I think that they are happy, 
 don t you, Pam?" 
 
 Her voice begged for an affirmative. But 
 Pamela did not give it, exactly. 
 
 "I think Ian is deeply in love with Viola, as all 
 the men she ever knew, are." 
 
 Lady Adela s sense of the proprieties revolted. 
 
 "Pam! were." 
 
 Pamela went close to her mother and looked 
 into her eyes. 
 
 "No," she said, "are are in love with her." 
 
 "Well, she is happy with Ian, Pam?" 
 
 But this time Pamela did not answer her mother 
 at all, but went to her own room and closed the 
 door. Walking to the bed with furtive steps, 
 Pamela flung herself face down upon it, caught 
 with her hands at the pink and blue roses carved 
 on the head of the bed, bit her pale lips through 
 which sobs forced their way, hid her eyes in a 
 pillow, and drenched it with bitter tears. 
 
 While her body shook in a storm of emotion, 
 Pamela s mind struggled with a foe. Curiously 
 enough, it was not her love for Harold that she 
 longed most to be rid of, but a feeling toward 
 Viola, of such power that it frightened her. It was 
 so intense at times, that if she could not be alone, 
 could not give way physically to the anguish 
 of jealousy and hurt love that racked her, Pamela 
 felt that she might do any mad thing that would 
 hurt, even wrong Viola, that would make her 
 
 [183] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 suffer a little perhaps as she herself suffered. But 
 Pamela did not want to give way, did not want to 
 be mastered by the force of her passion. She 
 fought with anguish to subdue it. 
 
 To have an infinite capacity of devotion to 
 another to smother, deny, refute it to have that 
 capacity change by a hideous alchemy into a power 
 of hatred, loathing, jealousy of another, a woman 
 like herself Pam denied that, not in the least like 
 herself, but a woman caught in the waste and 
 cruelty of life, no less if differently than she was 
 to know oneself outraged. 
 
 As she lay on the bed, exhausted but calm again, 
 Pam heard her mother moving about and speaking 
 in the sitting-room. Presently Lady Adela tapped 
 on Pam s door, and urged her in a voice that 
 sounded happy to come out at once that there 
 was a surprise waiting for her. 
 
 Pam got up slowly. She felt a little faint; her 
 head throbbed, and her clothes were bunched up, 
 disordered, and her face was swollen. 
 
 When she came into the sitting-room ten minutes 
 later Viola, who was the surprise, thought Pamela 
 looked sleepy, as though she had been suddenly 
 wakened. 
 
 "What a shame to get you up I m sure 
 you were in the midst of some delightful dream. 
 One is always waked from the nice ones, 
 though 
 
 Viola gave an apologetic little laugh. Pamela 
 did seem dazed and cross. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "I came almost with my letter, Aunt Adela. 
 Poor Leone how she worked like a Fury packing 
 all our things in one night! Tante Hortense has 
 our passage on a good boat, and I really think we 
 will have a pleasant trip. But tell me about your 
 selves. You re well and happy, dear?" 
 
 "Oh, we!" Lady Adela threw up her hands. 
 "We re comfortable and well situated here for our 
 shopping, which Melon told me we had to do, but 
 we are not exciting, my dear, as you are, so tell us 
 your plans." 
 
 Since Pamela had come into the room, Viola had 
 felt a restraint. She loved to talk with her aunt 
 to go into descriptions of her frocks that Lady 
 Adela doted on, and to dwell on all the details of 
 her life. To do so before Pam, however, cost her 
 an effort. 
 
 Viola was dressed in a close-fitting tan walking 
 costume, a small velvet hat covered with violets, 
 and some very beautiful Russian sables. The rich 
 ness of the fur about her face emphasized its deli 
 cate contour, the ivory white of the cheeks, the 
 red droop of the lips, and her large eyes that had 
 always held a look of sadness, of melancholy, 
 seemed to Lady Mordaunt to hold an added wist- 
 fulness today. Perhaps the knowledge that Viola 
 was going on what seemed to Lady Adela a long 
 and perilous journey influenced her; at any rate, 
 Lady Mordaunt felt her love and tenderness for 
 Viola increased, as some one who has been always 
 
 [185] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 dear to us, becomes infinitely more so when they 
 are going from us. 
 
 At any rate, Lady Adela insisted on making a 
 fuss over her niece. Tea, and very special cakes 
 were sent up, the fire was lit, and the curtains 
 drawn to shut out the dreary autumn afternoon. 
 
 "Just where will you be, my dear? Near Ian?" 
 
 "Oh dear, no, Aunt Ian is up in what they call 
 The Snows ; it s two days journey from Kairpur, 
 where we will be." 
 
 Pamela put her hand over her eyes. Lady 
 Adela saw the motion and looked about for a fire 
 screen. 
 
 "Don t bother, Mater. Kairpur is where Harold 
 is stationed, isn t it, Viola?" 
 
 Viola turned eagerly toward Pam. It was the 
 first question her cousin had asked. 
 
 "Yes; that s what makes it so pleasant. We 
 won t feel so lone and strayed with Harold. And 
 now, dear Aunt, if you will give me messages for 
 your boy, and a kiss for myself, I must really say 
 goodby. You must not think of docks Tante 
 Hortense can t bear to be seen off, and they sadden 
 me farewells snatched at the waters brink!" 
 
 Lady Adela took Viola tenderly in her arms, 
 pressed a copy of "Blackwoods" into her hand for 
 Dr. Wimbish, wept a little, but waved a gallant 
 farewell. 
 
 Pamela, seeing that the fire needed attention, 
 gave it hers, and blacked herself so she could not 
 take her cousin s hand, or even kiss her. 
 
 [186] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 When Viola had gone, and Lady Mordaunt was 
 sitting rather sadly and looking at the castles for 
 old age that the obliging fire made, Pamela went 
 into her own room, locked the door, seated herself 
 at the writing-desk and began a letter to Ian 
 Mclvor. 
 
 [is?] 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 It was on a very still day that Viola and Mme. 
 du Guenic, Mrs. Lathrop and a disgruntled Globe 
 trotting man who traveled to write, and wrote to 
 live, arrived in Kairpur. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop, who had through the facilities of 
 travel and the coincidence of destination, estab 
 lished a certain acquaintance with Mme. du Guenic 
 and Viola, insisted hospitably on opening her bung 
 alow to them, while they looked about at leisure 
 for themselves. Mrs. Lathrop had not given the 
 invitation to Mme. du Guenic, but chose Viola as 
 the medium. And Viola, seeing how the poor thing 
 flushed, looked eager and sensitive too, consented 
 for one night at least, and asked her aunt about it 
 later. 
 
 Mme. du Guenic was amused, and though she 
 had barely seemed aware of Mrs. Lathrop s exist 
 ence, she made no protest beyond a shrugged 
 shoulder and a murmur, "Qu esf ce que c est?" 
 
 The rains are due about the middle of June. It 
 was the sixteenth day of that month that Mrs. 
 Lathrop opened the door of her bungalow that 
 was like the inside of a limekiln to her guests. 
 After they had refreshed themselves slightly with 
 cool drinks and the punkah wallah, which Mrs. 
 Lathrop had wired to a friend to secure for her, 
 
 [188] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 had been set to work, she took them gasping, up to 
 the roof. 
 
 They looked out over a mass of trees of curious 
 and beautiful foliage, amongst whose green, bril 
 liant parrots flashed, and bougainvillea twined 
 its purple flowers. The winding of the jungle 
 lane could be seen where it skirted the garden 
 wall that was painted a dull yellow. An old mal- 
 lic Brahmin by the sign of the sacred string over 
 his right shoulder and under his left arm, sat in 
 the shelter of the wall and the fern fronds that 
 grew out of it, and smoked his peaceful hubble- 
 bubble. 
 
 Beyond Mrs. Lathrop s compound was the white 
 gleam of a marble temple, carved with strange gods 
 and given over to bats and desolation. In the 
 west that seemed so near that you could put your 
 hand on it, flamed a sky like a conflagration. 
 
 The trees of the jungle spread their distorted 
 branches, that looked like creatures writhing in 
 distress, against this background that was the 
 color of flame, of passion, of war, and blood. In 
 coming to the East Viola had hoped to find peace, 
 calm, a suspense of her uncertainties. The place 
 seemed teeming with violence from the parched 
 earth to the crimson sky. 
 
 "It will be better when the rains come," Mrs. 
 Lathrop put in anxiously. "At least, it will be 
 different. Everything will be mouldy the plaster 
 will come off the walls the pictures will curl up 
 and drop out of their frames, and when we go out 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 we will pay for a boat, but be content with 
 brollies* and goloshes/ However, we will be 
 cooler and can have parties." 
 
 Mme. du Guenic moved away from her hostess. 
 "We ll not be here long, you know as soon as we 
 have seen our cousin 
 
 "Mr. Gaunt?" 
 
 The tone held a little asperity and something 
 else. Mme. du Guenic ignored it. Very soon she 
 left the extraordinary sunset and went down to her 
 cot on the matting. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop detained Viola, when she would 
 have followed her aunt. 
 
 "You will let Harold know you are with me, 
 won t you?" 
 
 Viola turned in surprise, as much at the tone 
 as the words. Mrs. Lathrop s voice sounded as 
 though it were taking off its clothes. She hurried 
 on, "Oh, I dare say you don t know what to think 
 of my calling him by his first name. But I want 
 to tell you. I heard something in London that 
 made me very unhappy, but that I was bound to 
 find out about. It was about You and Harold." 
 Her rather small blue eyes set in a maze of fine 
 lines sought Viola s face. 
 
 "When your husband went off that way there 
 was talk, you know. Hadn t you a French maid?" 
 
 Viola, her face burning, tried to enter the house. 
 Mrs. Lathrop put two hands on her shoulders. 
 
 "No ! hear me out. Oh, I know what I am 
 and I don t care if I do give myself away to you. 
 
 [190] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 I d rather do that than not know the truth and 
 he ll never tell it to me." 
 
 Her lips trembled. The whole face looked 
 suddenly years older, yet animated with a force of 
 determination, of will. 
 
 "Do you care about him? Oh, tell me tell me 
 I d have no chance against you if you did: but 
 please I must know." 
 
 Viola. was singularly lacking in British "pudeur." 
 There was much in Mrs. Lathrop that she shrank 
 from that her delicacy perceived as base metal 
 but aside from that, and the fact that her own 
 reserves were being outrageously attacked, a wave 
 of sympathy for the wretched little woman kept 
 her where she was, helped her to say "No," 
 emphatically clearly, in a way that carried con 
 viction. And Mrs. Lathrop took advantage of 
 Viola s sympathy. She drew her down into a 
 rattan chair, pulled another up beside it, and gave 
 Viola the story of her intrigue with Gaunt. And 
 she naturally gave her own version. 
 
 The hot breath of India stirred faintly in the 
 deodars the red light faded in the west, and a 
 velvet black sky, pierced with brilliant stars, was 
 over them before Mrs. Lathrop had finished her 
 story. Night comes swiftly in the East there 
 is only a moment s pause between the flaming 
 day and the ardent night. 
 
 Viola felt, as she listened to the hurrying voice, 
 shamed and yet in a way, triumphant, as though 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 she must have, in some way, lost her own identity, 
 to have become the confidante of such secrets. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop caught Viola s hand. 
 
 "Feel !" she said. "It s over my heart. You can 
 feel how my heart beats just to speak of him 
 Don t you see, I can t stand it? He must come to 
 me he must!" 
 
 Viola withdrew her hand. She felt as though she 
 had touched fire. 
 
 "Have you told him you are here?" 
 
 "I wrote from London " Mrs. Lathrop wailed, 
 "weeks before I left, when I would be here. He 
 won t answer he wants it to end." 
 
 Viola stood up. "I m afraid I can t help 
 you." 
 
 "Oh, but you can! He s stationed, you know, 
 only a few miles from here in the plains. He s 
 doing special work there are only a few men with 
 him, I think. If I should send the bearer with a 
 note he would tear it up and I don t dare go 
 myself her hand tightened on Viola s arm. 
 "But you are his cousin he would listen to you!" 
 
 "Tome!" 
 
 "Yes I know he would. He cares for you 
 
 Gaunt s face rose up before Viola she almost 
 heard him saying, "If I can ever do anything for 
 you, anything But this! How could she do 
 such a thing. Gaunt did not love this woman. 
 
 "He owes it to me to see me once more. I ve 
 no money my husband s left me Ah, you will 
 
 go won t you? 
 
 [192 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Yes," breathed Viola. Then she went quickly 
 into the house. 
 
 The next morning, Mme. du Guenic, who main 
 tained she had not closed an eye all night, insisted 
 on moving herself and her niece from Mrs. 
 Lathrop s roof. 
 
 It is a very simple thing to find accommodation 
 sheter, servants and food in India if one is 
 attached in even the most remote way to the Army. 
 
 Mmle. du Guenic, attired in white linen, hailed a 
 ticca gharry, and set forth, with Viola masterfully, 
 to choose a home. She found a particularly un 
 healthy if exotic-looking house, with its back to 
 the road, and chose it at once, probably because it 
 was painted pink and was in every way a decided 
 contrast to Mrs. Lathrop s yellow one. She also 
 secured an excellent bearer who was charmed 
 with her generous and incurious manner of attend 
 ing to business. 
 
 After a very fair dinner of roasted "moorghy," 
 which Mrs. Lathrop had not been invited to share 
 to Viola s embarrassment Madame du Guenic 
 made a casual remark. She was in evening dress 
 and looked as coijfe, as composed, as she ever had 
 in the most luxurious setting. 
 
 "Ian is coming to us soon, isn t he, Viola? This 
 is all very well as a curiosity, but the heat, cherie! 
 and that astonishing person! By the way, Ian 
 went very unexpectedly " 
 
 "Yes, Tante Hortense." Viola s breath came 
 quickly. 
 
 [193] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Jalouse^ ma cherie?" 
 
 With one of her rare, but very winning smiles, 
 Mme. du Guenic swept Viola into her arms. Her 
 brown eyes, which were usually mocking, looked 
 suddenly tender. 
 
 "Write to him, child, tell him to come. He loves 
 you and he thinks you played with him." 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 "Le beau cousin! Think. Did nothing occur?" 
 
 Viola blushed scarlet. 
 
 "Ah you see! Set him right. 
 
 "Did you think I undertook this pilgrimage for 
 a whim? Any more than you thought your hus 
 band was obliged to leave without a word to you? 
 I had it from the excellent, the foolish Aunt Adela. 
 I have waited for you to speak, but you did not. 
 Ma cherie , I know men. The cousin is bon enfant 
 he is melodious simpatica! but he is ephemeral! 
 
 "Get your husband back,my child he is a man." 
 
 "But Tante Hortense, you don t understand. 
 Ian doesn t love me at all. He was always thinking 
 of the villagers and yet he made them perfectly 
 miserable by cutting down their wages when he 
 need not have done so. He thought it was morally 
 good for them." 
 
 "Ah I see." 
 
 "And as for me when I was not interested in 
 reforms when I was afraid to have to have a 
 child- 
 
 "My dear, he cared for the villagers and 
 showed it by making himself hateful to them. 
 
 [194] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "He loved his wife and showed it by making 
 her life unhappy. In short, he thought more of the 
 life of your souls, than of anything else. He seems 
 neither to have been successful, nor understood." 
 
 Viola sprang up. "But he never talked to me! 
 He chilled me! I was so lonely, so frightened in 
 that great gloomy place. And I had seen a woman 
 die so horribly." 
 
 "And you, did you ever talk to him? Did you 
 never chill him? Listen, Viola. I m a worldly 
 woman. I ve cared for very little in my life 
 I ve got very little from it. But all that I have had 
 that matters to me now when I must look back 
 upon life is what I ve had from love. Not from 
 some one s loving me but from my loving them. 
 And I mean more than that I mean loving and 
 being loved, completely, in every sense, by my 
 husband. It s what matters most though when 
 I had it I did not realize it and I did not think of 
 it for you. It s in your reach, little Viola write to 
 him." 
 
 When she went to her room, Viola sat a long 
 time over a note she directed to Ian. She felt quite 
 shy quite timid about it, but she was happier 
 than she had been since her marriage. 
 
 The letter did not reach Mclvor as he received 
 Pamela s on the evening that Viola wrote to him. 
 
 [195] 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 To Chamkrata is four days* journey from 
 Calcutta. By train through the rice country of 
 Behares, where miles of delicate green plants seem 
 like the flowers of the water they stand in, beyond 
 Mogulserai with its flat red roofs, its Eastern 
 mosques, across the bridge of the Ganges, and 
 beyond Benares, with her minarets piercing the 
 blue, past Lucknow and her memory of blood, to 
 Sahranpore. From there by dak-gharry, ascending, 
 gradually, through silvery green bamboo and wild 
 white balsam that grows on the rocks, to Dehra, 
 in the valley, where the breath of the great snows 
 falls as softly on her roses as the ring dove s note 
 on the ears of those who love. 
 
 Mclvor had taken that journey, but he had not 
 seen its beauties. From Dehra the ascent was 
 made on muleback, over rocks skirting precipices, 
 clinging to a ragged spur of the great brown 
 mountain, down whose side roared foaming 
 torrents, twisting and curving, he had come at last 
 into a great white silence. 
 
 In the midst of it, on a pinnacle of rock, built 
 over a sheer depth, was the isolated Military 
 Station, the bungalow of which he was to take 
 possession. 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 When Mclvor had heard the news of the war at 
 "Ye Labor in Vain/ he had seized upon it as the 
 means of a personal escape. It had come between 
 him and violence. The rage he had felt against 
 Harold Gaunt he had hoped to vent, for Viola s 
 sake and his own, against the man who had shot 
 at him on the moor. But that punishment had 
 been taken from him David was chastened by 
 a heavier Hand than his. 
 
 Without speaking to the astonished inn-keeper, 
 Mclvor had written a few lines to Pamela and his 
 man Tay, and had then flung out again into the 
 storm. All night he walked in it, and in the 
 morning started for London. Every mile of the 
 journey had struck at him, with memories of 
 Viola. 
 
 In the solitude of the Himalayas in the awful 
 isolation he had sought, Mclvor felt himself a spot 
 of corruption in the purity of the snow. But he 
 felt also that all mankind was that, a blot, a sin 
 upon the beauty of the world. 
 
 His duties were not many, but they had to be 
 attended to regularly, and a small garden that held 
 dahlias, ox-eye daisies, and curious blood red, 
 single-petaled flowers, had been cared for by 
 Mclvor s predecessor, so that Ian felt it an obliga 
 tion to see to them. And when he was busy with 
 his strong, skillful hands, he did not think. 
 
 There were days when he would wake in the 
 morning with astonishment at the stillness about 
 him, with amazement at himself, as he realized 
 
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THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 where he was. He would be able to feel that what 
 he had seen on the moor had, perhaps, been a trick 
 of his own vision had no real meaning in it was 
 the creature of his own mind. Then he would recall 
 bit by bit the action of the picture that had never 
 left him since he saw it. He would see Gaunt s 
 face; then his own hands would clench in a 
 separate life of their own, and long to press hard, 
 cruelly, until the breath should be caught, stifled, 
 driven, from Gaunt s body. 
 
 All thought of Glas Ogven, of his duties towards 
 the villagers that had been for years the subject of 
 his earnest and beneficent intentions and activities, 
 had gone from him, as though his brain had never 
 held it. All the ideality that had been in his love 
 for Viola all images of her as his spiritual com 
 panion, as the mother of his children, the mistress 
 of his home had gone, as though they had been 
 drawn upon a slate and a hand had been passed 
 over them. 
 
 He remembered his past actions his attitude of 
 mind, as one sane would regard the posturings of a 
 mad man. He had let his wife, his wife be won 
 from him in his own home by a man she had not 
 seen more than twice in her life. And Ian, as he 
 thought of that, as he remembered his preoccupa 
 tion with the morale of the village, felt himself to 
 have been almost idiot less than man. 
 
 The native postmaster, with mail for Chakrata, 
 left his little cart with the gaily tinkling bells far 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 down on the comparatively broad slope of the 
 brown mountain, and progressed once a week, on a 
 lean horse, to Mclvor s bungalow. On the day 
 that Viola wrote her note to Ian, Pamela s, sent 
 from London, reached him. 
 
 It was not a long letter, but it took Mclvor some 
 time to read it. When he had finished, scenes rose 
 up before him. 
 
 Viola and Gaunt were only three days journey 
 from him. 
 
 And they were together. 
 
 There was also an official notice asking him to 
 report to his chief. That night Mclvor descended 
 the mountain. 
 
 199] 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop was not at any time easily dis 
 couraged, and her shrewdness had divined the 
 weakness of pity that was Viola s, and that had 
 been awakened on her behalf. So she played 
 upon it. Her last and most effective appeal was 
 to take Viola into the chintz-hung bedroom of her 
 bungalow and exhibit a wardrobe, marked by the 
 ravages of time. 
 
 "What can I do with it?" she had asked, turning 
 her blond head to one side, and holding up a gown 
 for inspection. The gown was full where it should 
 have been scant marked indubitably as a souve 
 nir of a past decade. 
 
 "It s been done over twice, but surely something 
 can be managed?" Mrs. Lathrop s blue eyes had 
 sought Viola s face anxiously. 
 
 "Since my husband left me because of Harold, I 
 literally haven t a penny, you know so I shall 
 have to be as clever as I can about my clothes. 
 Do you mind if I ask your advice about my 
 things?" 
 
 And Viola had not minded. But the sight of 
 Mrs. Lathrop s painful contriving, in the face of 
 the open hostility of feminine Kairpur, the absence 
 of her lover, and her apparent lack of funds, was 
 too much for Viola. She stood up, abruptly. 
 
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THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "If you like I ll go to Harold. Today if I 
 can find a guide. He must do something for you 
 he can t know." 
 
 In a remarkably short time Kali Bagh who 
 still preserved a beautiful serenity had provided 
 a horse and a slim black boy of the Hindustani, to 
 act as guide. 
 
 Mrs. Lathrop s gratitude had been effusive. 
 Viola had freed herself with difficulty from an 
 almost violent embrace, to make arrangements for 
 her journey. The distance was not great, and by 
 leaving in the heat it would be possible to return 
 by nine at least. 
 
 Viola moved about in her curious little room, 
 while she waited for the guide. It was very still 
 and filled with a peculiar odor that the intense heat 
 drew out into the room. Brilliant and very white 
 sunlight seemed to drip through the closed 
 shutters. 
 
 Viola dressed carefully in a white linen riding 
 costume, took a small purse that was well filled, 
 and then, impatient of waiting, went into the com 
 pound. A cloud of dust very soon announced her 
 escort. All Kairpur was sleeping or in retreat from 
 the sun. No one saw Viola go. She was taken by 
 the road that led through trees whose foliage was 
 gray with dust, to the plains. 
 
 As she followed her guide, Viola was at first 
 almost overpowered by the heat of the sun, and 
 when she closed her eyes, flashes of red passed 
 before them. She felt at first dazed confused 
 
 [201] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 but after an hour s riding, the object of her journey 
 came, sharply, into her mind. Viola thought of 
 Harold, as she had last seen him tried to recall 
 the sound of his voice, as he had begged her to ask 
 "anything of him, anything/ But her thoughts 
 were kaleidoscopic like the colors that passed 
 before her eyes. Images of Mclvor, Harold, Dora, 
 Macready, Pamela, and the incidents that had 
 joined their lives to her own, invaded Viola s 
 mind, with a persistent confusion. She remem 
 bered her childhood sensitized by imaginative and 
 ideal dreams of her mother. 
 
 After three hours going by a devious and winding 
 lane that passed through a tangle of low growing 
 jungle, the green and rank vegetation vanished. 
 Viola and her guide emerged into an open plain 
 that was covered with gray sand. As they had left 
 the jungle behind them, so too had they left the 
 day. It was as though a hand had wiped out the 
 light, and set a great darkness in its place. A wind 
 had sprung up that was cold and keen, that 
 belonged to the night and whispered of the vast 
 spaces it had traversed in its mysterious life. It 
 touched Viola s face almost as living fingers 
 might, and its touch filled her with fear, woke for 
 the first time what was almost terror in her. 
 
 The guide stopped to get his bearings, then 
 turned his horse toward the north. Against the 
 far horizon, an aspiring line of luminous white 
 marked the snows of the Himalayas. They looked 
 unearthly like immense angelic hosts uniting for 
 
 [202] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 a moment the earth and heavens. As Viola 
 watched a crimson moon was born into the sky 
 and the plain was drenched in light. And her fear 
 grew. 
 
 In a few moments the camp of the men came into 
 sight beyond it, and situated by a group of 
 ragged palm trees and a well, was Harold Gaunt s 
 tent. The friend of Kali Bagh dismounted, made 
 certain, and then pointed a slim brown hand. 
 
 "Gaunt Sahib." 
 
 Viola dismounted. She was still assailed by fear 
 of the night and of the power of feeling that was 
 moving in her, but which she did not understand. 
 
 Beneath the tragic light of the moon, the white 
 sands stirred as a leper might when he felt that 
 only the night and the moon could look upon him. 
 And in Viola the elemental, real and terrible 
 yearning that is in the heart of every woman, that 
 puts out hands to be loved and protected and 
 understood by man, stirred with new life. And 
 with it anger against Mclvor, and shame that she 
 had felt shame for her love of him. For love is 
 truth and to deny it is to deny God. 
 
 Moving forward swiftly to the tent, Viola paused 
 a moment under the rustling leaves of the palms 
 that moved with a dry and arid sound like the 
 sound made by the lips of a patient who is parched 
 with fever and thirst. And it seemed to Viola that 
 her own misery, of a woman who was starved for 
 love, but could feel love, was answered and multi 
 plied by the surrounding mysteries of the desert, 
 
 [203] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 the trees, the homeless, wandering wind, which 
 seemed symbols of humanity: hunger, thirst, and 
 starvation of soul. Understanding of herself, of 
 the desolation of life without love, flooded Viola, 
 as the moonlight flooded the sand, making dark 
 ness visible. 
 
 From the pool of bitter water came the thin note 
 of some wild bird, pausing in its flight, for refresh 
 ment, returning perhaps to its nest among the 
 reeds. The tiny sound heard in the great spaces 
 and uttered with the authority of its own indi 
 viduality, seemed to Viola infinitely touching and, 
 in a way, comforting. The bird in the wilderness 
 was sustained on its course by invisible guides; 
 should not the soul of a woman caught in mis 
 understanding and solitude not trust and rely upon 
 the power that made it, to sustain it? 
 
 Looking down into the pool that was deep, 
 unruffled, with a dark, glassy surface, Viola saw 
 the stars reflected and she thought of how, when 
 one looks into the face of a very good person, one 
 seems to see there in their eyes the reflection of the 
 heaven in which they believe. 
 
 With a quick step, Viola went to the tent, 
 opened the flap and entered. 
 
 It was late when Harold Gaunt, leaving the 
 camp of his companions, returned on foot to his 
 own isolated tent. As he walked he sang in his 
 strong, warm voice, "Some talk of Alexander and 
 some of Hercules." He had come for the third 
 
 [204] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 time to "But the ta-ra-ra-ra of the British 
 grenadiers/ and within twenty feet of the tent 
 before he looked up and the song died on his lips. 
 The side of the tent was made, by a lamp lighted 
 within, into a shadow screen upon which two 
 figures moved. When Gaunt saw the figures, 
 which were those of a man and woman, he ceased 
 to be conscious of anything else. With a fascina 
 tion that riveted his attention, a sensation sickly, 
 oppressive, tinged with horror, a sort of waking 
 nightmare through which he seemed to look as in 
 the crystal of a dream, held him powerless to move. 
 
 The shadow shapes upon the wall moved in a 
 curious way; the man advancing, the woman 
 retreating, the distance between them getting 
 shorter and shorter as in some fantastic dance of 
 slow and measured step, the one pursued, the other 
 evaded. Suddenly the man s hand shot out and 
 closed around the woman s throat and the two 
 bodies swayed and writhed, striking the table and 
 extinguishing the lamp. Then from the tent rose 
 a single cry, hopeless, terrible, that pierced the 
 silence as a sword thrusts through flesh. It seemed 
 to shudder out and be lost in the desert beneath 
 the glare of the moon and the white light of the 
 pitiless stars. Then silence, calm, tremendous, 
 vast, took possession of the night. 
 
 Harold Gaunt, running, stumbling, reached the 
 door of the tent. His heart beat thickly in his ears, 
 his mouth was parched. With hands that would 
 hardly obey him, he tore back the door of the tent. 
 
 [205] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 The moon shone in and by its light Gaunt moved 
 to what lay on the floor. With a desperate effort 
 of will he bent down and looked. After a moment, 
 he got up violently. "Come out," he called, in a 
 voice that was shattered by tearing sobs. "Let 
 me get to you!" 
 
 The silence between Gaunt and the other inhabi 
 tant of the tent was long. Presently it was broken 
 by a sound that was faint and yet was like agony 
 made audible. It was a whispering voice as dry as 
 the sound of the palm leaves moving in the wind. 
 
 "How often has she come to you?" 
 
 "She Good God, never!" 
 
 "Don t lie are you a man? Come nearer." 
 
 "But, you brute, you fiend; she cared nothing 
 for me." 
 
 The whispering voice went on. 
 
 "I saw you that time on the moor." 
 
 "But that Oh God! I asked her to, and she 
 was sorry for me because she knew that I cared 
 while she cared for you you and you would not 
 see it. You had her love and you wouldn t take 
 it you didn t know !" 
 
 From the blackness in which he had stood, and 
 that was like the blackness of an abyss, Mclvor 
 stepped forward. The moonlight lit up his face, 
 but it was ghastly, old, the face of a stranger. His 
 eyes held Gaunt s. Harold saw Mclvor s features 
 alter, as his eyes read the truth in Gaunt s face, 
 and unutterable sorrow rushed forth visibly to 
 take possession, but he spoke in a stronger voice. 
 
 [206] 
 
THE GREATER MYSTERY 
 
 "Will you leave us now?" then with a sigh, pro 
 found, terrible, he added, "I never knew what her 
 love was!" 
 
 Blinded by tears, Gaunt rushed from the tent 
 and threw himself down on the sand beside the 
 pool into which Viola had looked. There were 
 sounds in his ears that clamored like voices 
 shouting "Murder." 
 
 He could not think, but his nature seemed to 
 have freed itself and to be the companion for the 
 moment of the dead woman. He seemed to see 
 her standing alone in the twilight that lay over 
 illimitable space. And in this vast space, she was 
 alone, watching, waiting for something she had 
 never known and without which she must always 
 be desolate, abandoned. 
 
 From the tent the report of a pistol rang out. 
 
 Voices of men from the camp were heard as they 
 ran toward the tent. A dog lifted its voice in a 
 shrill and melancholy howl. 
 
 But Harold Gaunt got suddenly to his feet. 
 Upon his face was an expression of supreme 
 happiness that was like a reflection caught from 
 some unearthly vision. In the far distance in 
 which for a moment he glimpsed Viola, Gaunt 
 saw that now she was no longer alone. 
 
 Love had transcended life and death. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [207] 
 
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