- So
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN PALMER 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE KING'S MEN,' 
 "PETEH PARAGON," 
 
 ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
 
 To 
 ALFRED SUTRO 
 
 THIS NOVEL is 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 
 2137699
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 i 
 
 GUY REVAL and his brother were half-way 
 through breakfast when the letters arrived. 
 Guy sat in a beam of spring sunshine. His hair 
 was abundant, with a tendency to resist the comb. 
 It was not gold, but the sun revealed in it unexpected 
 lights, between red and yellow, which were normally 
 extinguished in a sober brown. His eyes were 
 bright blue. He looked younger than his brother ; 
 but that may only have been because his brother 
 was reading the Times. 
 
 Theodore Reval was really not more than 
 sixteen months older than Guy, and so far they 
 had kept together. They were contemporaries at 
 Balliol, as they had been contemporaries at school 
 and in the nursery. They had rooms side by side 
 in the Garden Quadrangle. Guy's sitting-room 
 was for meals and pastimes. Theodore's room, on 
 the opposite side of the turret stair, was for reading 
 and writing. 
 
 Theodore was of the same middle height as his 
 brother ; he had the same deep-set blue eyes, the 
 same straight brows and wide forehead, the same 
 firm chin and capable mouth. But Theodore was 
 severely moulded. The noses were different. Guy's 
 nose was distinctly a feature that had gone wrong. 
 It just failed of being a snub. Theodore's nose, on
 
 2 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the other hand, was correct, with nothing retro- 
 gressive about it. The eyes of the two brothers, 
 though of the same shape and colour, were different 
 in their expression and effect. There was calcula- 
 tion and a steady appreciation of men and things 
 in Theodore's eyes. His brother's eyes hovered and 
 rambled, and kindled upon the least provocation. 
 
 The letters arrived and Theodore opened an 
 envelope. A cheque fluttered to the table. 
 
 " Aunt Helen," he announced, " sends me a 
 cheque for 25. To-day, of course, is her birthday. 
 We ought to have remembered." 
 
 " Do I come into this ? " Guy asked. 
 
 He picked out his letters from among the break- 
 fast, threw some bills into a basin, and lit upon an 
 envelope addressed in a neat Victorian hand. He 
 broke it open, discovered a cheque, and read : 
 
 Fern Cottage, 
 
 Hampstead, 
 
 July isth, 19 
 Dearest Guy, 
 
 You have doubtless forgotten that to-morrow is 
 my birthday, but I am sure you will like to celebrate it. 
 I am sending you a cheque for 25. Do not get into 
 more mischief than you can help. 
 
 Yours affectionately, 
 AUNT HELEN. 
 
 Guy put the letter into one pocket and the 
 cheque into another.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 3 
 
 " Theodore," he said, " why didn't you remind 
 me about Aunt Helen's birthday ? You always 
 remember birthdays." 
 
 " I remembered it two days ago," said Theodore, 
 pettishly. " Then I began to think about my 
 speech at the Union." 
 
 " I wonder why you think about your speeches 
 at the Union ? " said Guy. 
 
 " What are we going to do about it ? " he added. 
 
 " I," said Theodore, " shall buy Max Muller's 
 edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason." 
 
 " There's rosemary," said Guy. " That's for 
 remembrance." 
 
 " Also," Theodore pursued, " I shall pay my 
 tailor. I owe him 18 IDS. nd. The balance will 
 pay for a small celebration. That will be to- 
 morrow, because to-night I am speaking at the 
 Union." 
 
 " I don't think I shall pay my tailor," said Guy. 
 " 25 would not be enough. Nor shall I buy Max 
 Muller's edition of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. 
 I shall be able to borrow yours. On the other 
 hand, I shall celebrate Aunt Helen's birthday. 
 No aunt was ever so celebrated." 
 
 " You are not going to ' blue ' 25 ? " Theodore 
 protested. 
 
 " Stokes," said Guy, " will out-dare Nokes in 
 azure feats. I suggest that you drop the Union. 
 I don't think Aunt Helen will like to have her 
 birthday celebrated the day after." 
 
 " I can't drop the Union," said Theodore 
 decisively. " The Junior Conservative Whip will 
 be there. I must make an impression."
 
 4 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 2 
 
 It was eleven o'clock when Theodore returned 
 that night to Balliol. His speech at the Union 
 had been a great success, and he had added some 
 effective impromptus. The Junior Whip had 
 congratulated him upon his performance, and had 
 enquired into his plans for the future. 
 
 Public speaking was for Theodore a characteristic 
 dissipation. His ideas never flowed so freely, he 
 never so nearly attained the felicity of creation, 
 as when he was communicating his thoughts and 
 sentiments to an audience. The sense that his 
 public was with him carried him further than he 
 ever dared to go in moments that were private 
 and cool. 
 
 He entered Balliol still warm with the applause 
 and laughter of his partisans, and enjoying that 
 complete sense of well-being which comes from 
 exercising congenial powers to their full capacity 
 and perhaps a little beyond. 
 
 Theodore's thoughts in success turned naturally 
 to Guy. He was always anxious to win his 
 brother's approval. Guy had little respect for the 
 successes which were young ambition's ladder. 
 
 Theodore, on the other hand, was proud of his 
 ability to meet the world as a practical man, to 
 hold his own upon committees, and to make a 
 good impression on men of a notable influence. 
 He wanted to be confirmed in his pride. 
 
 His thoughts were deflected as he picked his way 
 under the trees towards his turret in the Garden 
 Quadrangle by a sudden uproar in his brother's
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 5 
 
 room. There was a tinkling of broken glass and 
 a fierce scuffling as he walked across the landing. 
 
 On opening the door he experienced all the 
 melancholy of a newcomer into an orgy for which 
 he is unprepared. He noted with the pitiless 
 accuracy of a sober man that Guy and his friends 
 were in various and characteristic stages of in- 
 toxication. There had apparently been an inci- 
 dent. Arthur Powicke, Guy's principal companion 
 on such occasions, was forcibly restraining a friend 
 from trying to hit another friend with the poker. 
 The man with the poker was pleading hard in a 
 numerous grasp. 
 
 " Just one li'l tap, there's a good fellow. Just 
 one li'l tap," he begged. 
 
 Guy's voice now became audible. His hair was 
 ruffled ; his blue eyes were bright ; and his coun- 
 tenance ensanguined. 
 
 " I'll tell you what," he said with conviction, 
 " this is a most unfort'nate occurrence. This is 
 r-really-and-truly an affair of honour. That's 
 what it is, r-really-and-truly." 
 
 Theodore stood for awhile unnoticed on the thresh- 
 old of his brother's room. After a few moments he 
 closed the door and slipped away into his own room 
 on the opposite side of the landing. He had returned 
 to Balliol too late for the occasion. He disliked 
 the smell of alcohol ; the waste products of a 
 varied dessert scattered upon the chairs, the 
 tables and the floor of his brother's room dis- 
 pleased him ; the sideboard with its empty bottles 
 offended his sense of thrift. He shut his door on 
 the noise of Guy's party, switched on the light,
 
 6 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 and opened his new edition of Kant's Critique of 
 Pure Reason. 
 
 The noise in his brother's room culminated in a 
 typhoon upon the landing. A horde of ruffians 
 clattered down the turret stairs and affronted the 
 serenity of the garden quadrangle. Theodore 
 gathered from sounds which came from the open 
 window that the affair of honour was being settled 
 by means of a mock encounter between the pro- 
 tagonists under the maple tree. 
 
 When these proceedings were terminated, Guy 
 and his friends continued the evening's work 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Some hours later a hush fell upon Balliol, and 
 Guy walked back to his rooms convinced that he 
 had spent the evening well. The birds were already 
 stirring, and the sky pallidly apprehended the dawn. 
 
 Guy performed a florid roulade which landed 
 him at his bedroom. He paused a moment in the 
 corridor. Something told him that Theodore was 
 still awake. He walked along the passage and 
 flung open his brother's door. Theodore looked up 
 quietly from his armchair, removed a tranquil pipe 
 from his mouth and closed his book. 
 
 " Well, Guy," he inquired, " is it finished? " 
 
 " It is finished," said Guy. 
 
 " And you found it really amusing ? " stated his 
 brother, in the voice of one suggesting a doubt. 
 
 A frown, as of a child whose best ideas have been 
 received without respect, clouded Guy's face for a 
 moment. Then he brightened, and said hopefully : 
 
 " At least Aunt Helen will be pleased. Thor- 
 oughly adequate celebration."
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 7 
 
 He turned to leave the room, but stopped a 
 moment at the door : 
 
 " How did you get on to-night at the Union ? " 
 
 " It was a great success," said Theodore. 
 
 " Good news," said Guy. 
 
 He hovered a moment at the door as though the 
 occasion called for further comment. He wanted 
 to be cordial. Theodore waited eagerly for the 
 appreciation which he felt was due, disguising his 
 need for warm words under a smiling contemplation 
 of Guy's embarrassment ; but Guy, who only saw 
 the smile, turned abruptly away and went into his 
 bedroom.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 i 
 
 GUY'S bedroom looked out of Balliol Tower on 
 to a broad Oxford thoroughfare where there 
 was a cab rank. At this hour of the morning there 
 was only one cab. It was a hansom. The horse 
 stood droopingly, his head in an empty nosebag and 
 his loins covered with a blanket. The cabman was 
 asleep in the shelter. 
 
 Guy crossed the room, looked into the street and 
 stretched himself. He had no disposition to go to 
 bed. It seemed a pity to collapse in slumber. 
 His brain was pleasantly alert and clear. 
 
 " This," he said, in a sudden burst of intuition, 
 " was how the Romans felt when they carried off 
 the Sabines. Unfortunately," he added with a 
 slight decline of spirits, " no Sabines." 
 
 " No Sabines," he repeated with an air of 
 finality. 
 
 His gaze rested a moment on the solitary horse 
 outside. He was struck with the dejected aspect 
 of the creature. 
 
 " Animal seems depressed," he remarked. The 
 horse lifted a forefoot and stamped. His harness 
 jingled and subsided into silence. 
 
 " Wants to go for a walk," said Guy. 
 
 The horse lifted his forefoot and stamped again. 
 
 " He's getting emphatic," said Guy. 
 
 8
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 9 
 
 At this point his face gradually illumined with 
 an idea. He examined the window carefully, 
 removed the iron bar, concerning which confidences 
 had been exchanged between several successive 
 tenants of these particular rooms, and meas- 
 ured the distance to the ground with his eye. 
 Two sheets knotted sufficed for the purpose, 
 and in a few moments Guy stood on the 
 pavement. 
 
 He looked into the cab shelter and ascertained 
 that the cabman was still asleep. Then, after the 
 necessary preparations had been made, he sur- 
 mounted the cab and drove off into the town. 
 
 2 
 
 Several hours later, in a lonely country road 
 some miles from Oxford, a girl from one of the 
 outlying farms was brought to a standstill by the 
 incongruous spectacle of a hansom cab reaching 
 across the highway at an angle of 45 degrees. The 
 horse was tranquilly cropping the wayside grass ; 
 the driver, who seemed to the girl marvellously 
 above his occupation, was asleep with his head 
 comfortably pillowed on the roof of the cab. The 
 whole equipage had an absurdly derelict appear- 
 ance, more especially as the driver was without 
 a hat. 
 
 The girl considered the matter for a moment. 
 She did not like to leave things as they were. 
 Cabs should not sprawl unhampered across the 
 King's highway. She decided to wake the driver. 
 She put down her basket and diffidently ap- 
 proached the side of the cab. The gentleman was
 
 10 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 very soundly asleep. She pushed him gently in 
 the leg and told him to wake up. As he gave no 
 sign of life, she raised her voice and pushed him a 
 little harder. Still he did not move. Then she 
 put her foot on the step of the cab and raised 
 herself to the level of the roof. She could now 
 shake the gentleman by the arm. He muttered 
 and turned his face a little so that she would be 
 looking straight into his eyes if they had been 
 open. 
 
 She had never studied a face so closely before. 
 Her first impression was one of amusement. What 
 a funny thing a face was, with all its dents and 
 creases and holes and corners and little hairs. She 
 drew away a little in order to see this face as a 
 whole which was so funny in detail. Henceforth 
 the gentleman, so far as she was conerned, was 
 the handsome gentleman. She liked his mouth, 
 which was kind, and would probably smile at her 
 when he woke. She liked his clear warm skin and 
 the way in which he slept with his mouth shut. 
 Her father slept with his mouth open, and the 
 young man who was taking her for walks on 
 Sunday snored when he rested in her lap. 
 
 She was beginning to wonder what his eyes were 
 like, when he started muttering quite distinctly, 
 but without opening his eyes : 
 
 " Unfort'n'tely no Sabines." 
 
 The gentleman was talking in his sleep. Her 
 embarrassment increased. He might say some- 
 thing which she ought not to hear. 
 
 She shook him roughly by the arm. 
 ' Wake up, sir," she called.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 11 
 
 3 
 
 Guy opened his eyes. He found he was looking 
 straight into the face of a girl. She had on a 
 shapeless straw hat, a cotton blouse and a frayed 
 skirt of blue serge, but Guy saw only her face. 
 She was a dark girl with hazel eyes and brown- 
 black hair. Her complexion was pale, but radi- 
 antly clear. Her mouth was full and nicely 
 moulded ; but it opened easily and had been partly 
 re-shaped by a constant habit of biting the upper lip. 
 
 Guy remained still for a moment. By all the 
 laws of life this should be a vision. 
 
 He put out his hand and touched her. She did 
 not move, and Guy removed his hand. He put 
 his elbows on the roof of the cab and contemplated 
 her for a moment. Then suddenly his face broke 
 into a vivid smile. (Had she not divined that he 
 would smile ?) 
 
 " Sabina," he said, and his eyes lit. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir." 
 
 There was something in his amusement which 
 she did not like. 
 
 " Sabina," he repeated, accusing her with his 
 forefinger. 
 
 " No, sir, that isn't my name." 
 
 " Do you mind if I call you Sabina ? " 
 
 " Why should you ? " 
 
 " It means," Guy explained, " that this cab is a 
 chariot, and that I am going to carry you off to 
 the City of the Seven Hills." 
 
 The girl began to think that the gentleman was 
 mad. She moved uneasily on the step of the cab. 
 Her position was not very secure. She lost her
 
 12 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 balance, and before Guy could recover her, slipped 
 and fell to the ground. 
 
 Guy scrambled quickly down from his seat. 
 
 " Are you hurt," he enquired anxiously. "I'm 
 most tremendously sorry." 
 
 The girl was not hurt ; but she had sprawled 
 rather ungracefully in the road, which was still 
 wet with dew. 
 
 " Leave me alone," she snapped, "I'm quite 
 all right, thank you." 
 
 Guy exhibited concern. 
 
 " Please let me help," he begged. " It was all my 
 fault. I'm afraid I was trying to be humorous." 
 
 He tried to help her, but she shook him away, 
 and, scrambling angrily to her feet, walked towards 
 her basket. 
 
 Temper had made havoc of her prettiness. 
 
 Guy was disposed to let her go when he recovered 
 his first impression of her as he had opened his 
 eyes and seen the sun slanting upon her over the 
 roof of the cab He decided that he could not 
 part with her so easily. 
 
 " Sabina," he called. 
 
 The strange name hardened her. She had 
 nearly reached the basket. Guy walked rapidly 
 across to her and stood in the way. 
 
 " It was kind of you to wake me," he said, " and 
 I'm sorry I frightened you." 
 
 He was so anxious to make amends that the 
 girl now wanted to surrender. 
 
 " I thought you were mad," she hazarded by 
 way of conciliation. 
 
 " Let me dust you," said Guy.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 13 
 
 He produced a handkerchief too fine for the 
 purpose and diligently dusted. The girl looked 
 down at him, not without kindness. She had never 
 been treated so gallantly. She was inclined to 
 think that the gentleman ought not to be attending 
 upon her in this way. She had a further 
 opportunity for observing her new acquaintance 
 as he stooped. She admired the set of his head. 
 Guy looked up suddenly and their eyes met. 
 His look was so direct that he seemed almost to 
 know what was in in her mind, and she flushed a 
 little. 
 
 " Mayn't I call you Sabina ? " he asked. 
 
 He asked this question as though he had not 
 asked it before, and as though the request was 
 entirely right and proper. 
 
 " Do as you please about it," said the girl. 
 
 Guy finished his brushing, and there was a short 
 silence. Guy did not wish to appear victorious, 
 and the girl did not want to say anything 
 to emphasise her submission. There was an 
 absurd sense between them that something of 
 importance had occurred. It was Guy who spoke 
 first. 
 
 " What is in the basket ? " he asked. 
 
 " Butter and eggs. We keep cows now, and the 
 butter goes to Oxford every Thursday." 
 
 " I will drive you in," said Guy. " That is the 
 least I can do." 
 
 " Oh, sir, but I couldn't." 
 
 " And you mustn't call me sir." 
 
 " I cannot very well call you anything else, 
 can I ? "
 
 14 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " Guy is my name, if you would really like to 
 know." 
 
 She opened her eyes at him in a way which in 
 another might have been coquetry. It was really 
 bewilderment. 
 
 " How can I call you by your Christian name ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 " It's quite easy," said Guy. " Don't they 
 teach you these things at school ? " 
 
 Sabina's rejoinder was indirect, but sufficient. 
 
 " You're a funny one," she remarked. 
 
 " I am glad you like my humour," said Guy. 
 " Usually the only person it amuses is myself." 
 
 " I don't think I do like it, really and truly," 
 
 said Sabina. " At least, I shouldn't like it if ." 
 
 She stopped in some confusion. 
 
 " Well," said Guy. 
 
 " You see, a person would not know whether 
 you really meant what you said. A person likes 
 to know whether you mean what you say to her, 
 doesn't she ? I mean you don't want to be made 
 fun of when you don't know a person is rmiking 
 fun." 
 
 Guy was struck by this. 
 
 " Sabina, I believe that explains why I am not 
 half so popular as I might be. Shall I promise 
 you something ? " 
 
 ' You are still making fun," said Sabina, doubt- 
 fully. 
 
 " Not now," Guy assured her. " Really, I'm 
 not. I promise not to do it." 
 
 Guy held out his hand. Mechanically she put 
 out hers, and he held it a moment ; time enough
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 15 
 
 to feel that, though it was rough with labour, the 
 fingers lay softly upon his palm. 
 
 She withdrew awkwardly, and Guy breezily 
 covered their confusion. 
 
 " About this basket," he said. " You must let 
 me drive you into Oxford. We have been talking 
 here for years, and you'll be late for market. I 
 shall have to carry you off in the chariot after all." 
 
 " You promised not to make fun," said Sabina. 
 
 " I am not making fun, Sabina." 
 
 " Then why do you talk about carrying me off, 
 and why do you call me Sabina ? " 
 
 " Sabina is not a joke," said Guy. 
 
 He reflected a moment and had slight misgivings. 
 
 " At least," he added, " it is not altogether a 
 joke." 
 
 He began to explain. He realised, as soon as 
 he had begun, that it would not be easy. He sat 
 down on the bank beside the road, and invited 
 Sabina to sit beside him. She sat a little distantly, 
 and fidgeted with the grasses. 
 
 ' There were some people called Romans," Guy 
 ventured. 
 
 " I know, like Julius Caesar." 
 ' Yes," said Guy, " like Julius Caesar." 
 
 " One day they realised that there were not 
 enough wives to go round." 
 
 Sabina now looked at him with interest. 
 
 " And so," Guy continued (he was now somewhat 
 alarmed by the approaching climax), " one day 
 they started in chariots." 
 
 " I once saw a picture of a chariot," interrupted 
 Sabina. " It was not a bit like a hansom cab."
 
 16 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " Not altogether," Guy admitted. " Well the 
 Romans started in chariots, and carried off the 
 women of the next parish." 
 
 " Was one of them called Sabina," she asked. 
 
 " They were all of them called Sabina." 
 
 The girl was plucking at the grass on the bank. 
 She coloured slightly. 
 
 " I see," she said at last. 
 
 There was a slight pause. 
 
 She looked at him nervously, and then away 
 again. " Did the women in your story want to be 
 carried off ? " she asked. 
 
 Guy hesitated, and turned upon her with a 
 sudden smile. 
 
 " You promised to tell me the truth," she 
 reminded him. 
 
 " Well, then," said Guy, " I am afraid that, at 
 the time, they had objections. In fact," he 
 admitted, in a burst of confidence, " they were 
 taken by force. But they afterwards settled down 
 quite comfortably with their husbands, and they 
 all had families which conquered the whole world. 
 Your friend Julius Caesar, for instance." 
 
 Sabina rose from the bank with some dignity. 
 
 " I think your story is perfectly horrid," she 
 said, " and I shall walk to Oxford." 
 ' You will be very late," said Guy. 
 
 Sabina, half way to the basket, stopped. " What 
 time is it now,?" she asked." 
 
 " It is nearly 7 o'clock." 
 
 He was surprised to see a look of considerable 
 larm come over her face. She seemed undecideda 
 what to do.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 17 
 
 " My father will be angry," she said at last. 
 
 " Are you afraid of your father ? " Guy asked. 
 
 Sabina again found in his voice the concern 
 which had before prevailed with her. 
 
 " Father is awfully strict," she said. 
 
 " You must let me drive you," said Guy, 
 peremptorily. 
 
 " How far is it ?" he asked. 
 
 " About six miles." 
 
 " Then I can get you there by 8 o'clock." 
 
 Sabina gave way. She allowed Guy to help her 
 into the cab. He handed her the basket and shut 
 the doors. She leaned over the edge of the sill. 
 
 ' You mustn't drive me right into Oxford," she 
 protested. " Someone might see us. You will 
 please put me down by the railway bridge. I'll 
 walk the rest." 
 
 Guy climbed into his seat ; whipped up the 
 horse ; and, in a few minutes, they were trotting 
 pleasantly along. The sun was beginning to warm 
 the air. The dew sparkled in the road. The 
 horse's hoofs rang crisply on the ground, and the 
 harness jingled merrily. Guy felt an extraordinary 
 exhilaration in thinking of the girl who had thus 
 strangely become his fare. He opened the trap in 
 the roof and looked down on her. She was lying 
 back, happily enjoying her drive. She was keeping 
 close watch upon the road to see whether there was 
 anybody who might observe her, but apprehension 
 gave rather a zest to her pleasure. After a while 
 she seemed to feel that Guy was looking at her. 
 She glanced up and saw his face smiling at her 
 through the trap.
 
 18 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " Well, Sabina," he said, " how do you like it ? " 
 
 " I love riding," she answered. 
 
 He shut the trap, but in a moment or so opened 
 it again. 
 
 " I say," he called, " this old hansom cab is 
 rather like a chariot after all, what ? " 
 
 He shut the trap with a snap before she could 
 reply, but he had time to see that he had not 
 vexed her. 
 
 4 
 
 At the railway bridge, about a mile out of 
 Oxford, Guy helped Sabina out of the cab and 
 set her on the road. 
 
 She said good-bye, and waited for him to climb 
 to his seat again ; but Guy lingered. 
 
 " I don't know where you live," he said at last. 
 
 " I live at Manygates Farm, not far from where 
 you met me. But you mustn't come to look for 
 me." 
 
 Guy smiled in a way that committed him to 
 nothing. 
 
 " Please, you mustn't come," she repeated. 
 
 She seemed terrified at the idea of his coming, 
 and Guy wondered whether she had her father in 
 mind. 
 
 " I won't come," he said, " if you'll meet me 
 where you found me to-day. I'll be there on 
 Thursday evening next at half-past eight." 
 
 " Oh, but I mustn't," she said. But she said 
 it without conviction. 
 
 " I shall be there, in any case," said Guy. 
 
 He wanted to touch her in some way as he said
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 19 
 
 good-bye, but he could not bring himself to do so. 
 He climbed into the cab and took the reins. As he 
 was starting off she smiled up at him unexpectedly. 
 
 " Those women were carried off by force, weren't 
 they," she said. " That wasn't quite like you and 
 me, was it ? " 
 
 " Not a bit like you and me," responded Guy ; 
 " but I shall call you Sabina, all the same." 
 
 He whipped up the horse and drove towards 
 Oxford. 
 
 Once or twice he looked back and saw Sabina 
 trudging after the cab with her basket. She was 
 very slight, fragile and appealing. The last time 
 he looked he raised the whip and waved to her 
 She waved her hand back at him in answer.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IT took Guy some time to persuade the cabman 
 that he had not been grievously wronged. Guy 
 explained that he had wanted the cab to visit a 
 sick relative in the night, and that it had seemed 
 a shame to wake the cabman when he was obviously 
 enjoying his rest. The cabman enquired what 
 price his feelings when he woke and found the cab 
 was gone. The cabman's vocabulary was limited, 
 but he had no objection to repeating certain words 
 continually. Guy reflected that thus Aaron might 
 have spoken when he desired to turn the waters 
 into blood. Fortunately, Guy was at last able to 
 discover a neglected sovereign in one of his pockets. 
 
 The cabman accepted the sovereign as though 
 in absence of mind, and was gradually brought to 
 believe that Guy had acted for the best. He even 
 began to see humour in the affair when, looking 
 into the cab to assure himself that the fittings were 
 intact, he found a comb such as ladies use for 
 fastening their back hair. Then he smiled. It 
 was the touch of nature. 
 
 He handed the comb to Guy quite pleasantly. 
 
 " I'd make it two sovereigns if I could." said 
 Guy. " Unfortunately I'm broke." 
 
 The cabman put a finger to his lip. 
 ' You may rely on me, sir," he said. 
 
 " No harm in it," Guy assured him.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 21 
 
 " I ain't the man to see harm in it," said the 
 cabman. " You can rely on me, sir. Any time 
 and every time. All I ask is that, next time your 
 relative is took sick, you will kindly leave a note 
 to that effect in the shelter. Otherwise I keep 
 wonderin'." 
 
 Guy's absence from Balliol had not been noted 
 by the authorities. Powicke had seen the knotted 
 sheets depending from Guy's window as he leaned 
 out of the room above, cooling his fevers in the 
 morning air. He had retrieved the evidence, thus 
 saving his friend from inconvenient enquiries. The 
 college porter remarked as Guy passed into college 
 that he had not seen him pass out that morning. 
 Guy condoled with him on the gradual decay of 
 his faculties. 
 
 2 
 
 As the week advanced Guy found himself 
 thinking a good deal of Sabina and of her apparition 
 in the sunlight. He did not, however, realise how 
 greatly he was looking forward to seeing her again 
 until two days later a letter arrived from Marian. 
 
 Marian was his distant cousin and an adopted 
 niece of Aunt Helen. Her letter to Guy was as 
 follows : 
 
 Fern Cottage, 
 
 Hampstead, 
 Dear Guy, 
 
 The Duke has surprised us all. He proposes to come 
 to Oxford, presumably to see his two sons. He will be 
 at our disposal on Thursday next. The Duke is going
 
 22 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 to disburse. So please see that Theodore engages some 
 co stly rooms. What is the name of that jolly old hotel 
 where we had lunch last summer ? (It had something 
 to do with a bishop, but it was not the crozier.) 
 
 I'm most excited at the prospect of seeing you so 
 soon. It seems an age since you went up on Friday, 
 three weeks ago. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 " A little more than kin, and less than kind," 
 
 MART AN. 
 
 P.S. What on earth does Hamlet mean by that ? 
 
 Guy was at first delighted that Marian was coming 
 to Oxford. Then he remembered that on Thursday 
 evening he was to meet Sabina. He began to 
 wonder which was the more pressing engagement. 
 
 He began to be angry with himself, because he 
 feared in advance that he was going to neglect 
 Marian. He was angry also with Marian for 
 writing so nicely about their meeting (she even 
 quoted Hamlet to please him, knowing that he 
 always rose to Shakespeare like a fish to a fly). He 
 was most of all angry with the Duke for choosing 
 Thursday. 
 
 Guy and Theodore had agreed with Marian that 
 their father should be called the Duke, one evening 
 when they had been reading Browning's Last 
 Duchess. The Duke was a mystery to the children 
 of his first marriage, not because he was at all 
 subtle or difficult to understand, but because they 
 could not even now believe that he was as selfish 
 as he seemed, or that he really disliked them. And
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 23 
 
 yet his dislike was natural enough. His sons had 
 for some years been a source of expense to him and 
 a domestic embarrassment. Moreover, they re- 
 minded him of his first wife, who had died when 
 she had found him out. 
 
 Guy and Theodore had provided for themselves. 
 
 It was not owing to the Duke, and it was in spite 
 of his second Duchess, that they were now at 
 Balliol. It was due partly to Aunt Helen, who 
 was their mother's sister and had provided some 
 of the means, and to their habit of acquiring 
 scholarships and exhibitions. Theodore worked 
 for them and Guy picked them up. 
 
 3 
 
 Guy was pacing his room in considerable disturb- 
 ance of mind when Theodore came to him, waving 
 a letter in the air, with an excitement more usual 
 in his brother than in himself. He too had received 
 news from Marian. 
 
 " Guy," he exclaimed, " they are coming to 
 Oxford on Thursday Aunt Helen, the Duke and 
 Marian." 
 
 " I know," said Guy, without elation. He 
 thrust his hands into his pockets and looked 
 moodily out of the window. 
 
 Theodore was too excited to notice his brother's 
 manner. 
 
 " We must get ready, Guy," he said. " I 
 suppose it will have to be the Mitre. Marian likes 
 the Mitre." 
 
 " I wonder," said Guy, " whether we could put 
 them off."
 
 24 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Theodore stared at his brother in astonishment. 
 
 " Thursday is Union night," said Guy evasively. 
 
 " I would drop the Union for Marian any night 
 in the year," said Theodore. 
 
 Guy looked at his brother. 
 
 " You must be unusually fond of Marian," he 
 said, after a pause. 
 
 Theodore coloured slightly. 
 
 " Aren't we all unusually fond of Marian ? " he 
 responded. 
 
 Theodore engaged rooms at the Mitre and even 
 rose to special instructions for the dinner. He 
 returned to Balliol suffering from the uneasy ex- 
 citement of a careful man who for once in a way 
 has been lavish. To justify himself he took 
 Marian's letter from his pocket and read it again. 
 It was not at all the kind of letter Guy had re- 
 received. They would arrive by the 10.30 from 
 Paddington, and she hoped the weather would be 
 nice. It was the sort of letter a girl writes when 
 she desires to be kind to someone without feeling 
 greatly excited about it. 
 
 4 
 
 Theodore was emphatic in praise of a flawless 
 occasion as he paced the platform of Oxford station 
 with his brother, waiting for the down express. 
 
 Nor could Guy for long concern himself with his 
 dilemma. His spirits rose like a bubble in the sun. 
 After all, both Sabina and Marian were a part of 
 this agreeable world of warm air and blue sky. 
 Why should he greatly worry concerning a choice 
 between two pleasures ?
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 25 
 
 Theodore joyously indicated the approaching 
 train, and, when the passengers had sorted them- 
 selves out, Aunt Helen was descried bearing down 
 upon them with Marian and the Duke in attendance. 
 
 " Theodore," said Aunt Helen, as she came 
 within reach of him, " aren't you going to kiss 
 your Aunt ? " 
 
 " It isn't done," said Theodore, gaily, " not on 
 this platform." 
 
 But by this time Guy had already saluted her. 
 
 Marian came into the circle. She was tall, with 
 light brown hair, a warm complexion and steady 
 grey eyes. 
 
 Guy received her as a man receives his best 
 friend. Theodore was less familiar, but you did 
 not gather that he was less intimately concerned. 
 
 They drove in cabs from the station to the Mitre. 
 Guy and Marian somehow got into the same 
 hansom and the rest followed in a four-wheeler. 
 
 In the hansom Marian turned to Guy, her eyes 
 shining with pleasure. 
 
 " Well," she asked, " what are you going to do 
 with us ? " 
 
 " River," said Guy, who never wasted words 
 with Marian. 
 
 " Of course," Marian responded, " but please 
 fill in the picture." 
 
 " Luncheon-baskets from Buol's," said Guy. 
 " Don't look out of the cab, or you might see 
 Oxford. From the Mitre we proceed to the river. 
 You will admire the Broad- walk and identify the 
 barges. Up the Char to Mesopotamia and beyond. 
 Cosy corner. ' Places of nestling green for poets
 
 26 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 made.' Champagne, lobster, mayonnaise, rook- 
 pie and salad. Cold cherry tart and cream. 
 Duke greatly impressed, and wondering what it is 
 going to cost ; also whether we do this sort of 
 thing every day." 
 
 "The Duke is going to pay for everything," said 
 Marian, with a twinkle. 
 
 " He shall do nothing of the kind," said Guy. 
 He added, with a broad smile, " We're going to 
 pay for the Duke in consideration of all he's done 
 for us." 
 
 Guy spoke of his father without bitterness. His 
 father was odd, penurious and hard, but Guy was 
 quite disposed to be dutiful. He supposed vaguely 
 that he did not very well suit his father, but, after 
 all, why shouldn't the Duke save his money or 
 spend it on the wife of his indian summer? 
 
 " High Street," said Guy as the cab swung round 
 at Carfax. " Possibly the best street in all the 
 world," he added complacently. 
 
 5 
 
 Marian, on the river, was conscious of nothing 
 except that the boys were good to her, and that 
 Guy was there. She ate and drank indifferently 
 of what was offered, spilling over with laughter 
 and with the fugitive, allusive fun which runs in 
 families and is mysterious to outsiders. It seemed 
 as though they had been on the water for not 
 quite an hour when Guy announced that it was 
 almost time for tea. 
 
 They left the punt and walked across Mesopo- 
 tamia towards Balliol. Keble was indicated and
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 27 
 
 the Duke was observed to prick up a rationalistic 
 ear. He associated Keble with incense and 
 certain cardinals. 
 
 " So that's Keble ? " he said. " It looks much 
 less mediaeval than I expected." 
 
 " I don't know much about Keble," said Guy. 
 " I believe it has been a good deal restored." 
 
 " Ought to have been pulled down at the 
 Reformation," said the Duke with conviction. 
 
 It was not till they were having tea that Guy 
 again began to feel uneasy about his appointment 
 with Sabina. The moment was approaching when 
 he must either stay beside Marian in the theatre 
 or desert her on a motor-bicyle for Manygates 
 Farm. Why hadn't he written to Sabina and 
 fixed another day ? Why did he always drift into 
 painful problems ? 
 
 " Everything is perfect to-day," said Marian 
 suddenly. " I hope nothing will happen to spoil 
 it all." " 
 
 " Why should anything happen ? " asked 
 Theodore. 
 
 " I am always afraid of something happening 
 when I am enjoying myself," said Marian. 
 
 " That's what comes of a classical education," 
 grumbled Guy. " Call no man happy till he's 
 dead, and then he doesn't know he's well off. 
 Greek cheerfulness has been overrated." 
 
 Inwardly he was saying : " I must certainly stay 
 with Marian." 
 
 Aunt Helen and Marian were taken to the Mitre 
 after tea. They were to dine at 7 o'clock and 
 afterwards to go on to the theatre.
 
 28 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 6 
 
 Guy was still dressing when Theodore came into 
 his room. Under his quiet manner there was an 
 unusual intensity. 
 
 " Well, Guy," he said, lighting a cigarette and 
 watching Guy's efforts with a black tie, " I think 
 she's enjoying herself immensely." 
 
 " You seem to be taking this small expedition 
 very seriously," said Guy. " You're like a Master 
 of the Revels arranging a suitable presentation. 
 Confound this beastly tie ! " he concluded suddenly. 
 
 " The colour's wrong," said Theodore, who was 
 in full dress with a champagne-coloured waistcoat. 
 He took up the whitest of a bundle of white ties 
 from the table and tied it round his brother's neck. 
 
 " Why this sudden passion for dressing-up ? " 
 Guy asked. " We shall look like the Royal Box." 
 
 As he spoke he suddenly saw himself, presumably 
 on his motor-bicycle, in tails and a white tie. 
 
 " But not a white waistcoat," he suddenly 
 reflected, " because, as usual, they're all deficient." 
 
 " And now," said Theodore, surveying his work 
 with interest, " we must fit you up with a vest." 
 
 He inspected Guy's wardrobe and produced 
 three or four white waistcoats. They had none of 
 them been worn ; they had simply mouldered. 
 
 " I've got you there," Guy grinned. 
 
 " Not so fast," said Theodore, with a grin almost 
 as broad as his brother's (to-day he was almost a 
 boy). " I also have a wardrobe." 
 
 " Which is doubtless immaculate," said Guy. 
 
 Theodore clad his brother in light mauve, and 
 put coral studs into his shirt-front.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 29 
 
 " And now for the fancy-dress ball," said Guy, 
 with a bitter feeling that he had somehow been 
 prepared for sacrifice. 
 
 " Come along," said Theodore briefly. " Marian 
 will be down before we arrive if you're not careful." 
 
 They passed a friend in the porch. 
 
 " I don't know how you feel about it," said Guy, 
 as they walked arm-in-arm down Turl Street ; 
 " but when that fellow looked at me just now I 
 felt as if I were naked." 
 
 " But not ashamed," said Theodore gaily. Guy 
 looked at his brother, surprised into a sudden 
 affection, and squeezed his arm. 
 
 " What's happened to you? " he said. " You're 
 behaving as though it were April." 
 
 7 
 
 Guy was surprised on seeing Marian. Since she 
 had been to Newnham the brothers had not seen 
 very much of her They had walked together and 
 played family hockey together. They had spent 
 a wild holiday in Scotland together, with Aunt 
 Helen in the background. But they had not seen 
 her on any social occasion since her hair had gone 
 up and her dresses had come down. To-night she 
 was in pale-blue silk, a present from Aunt Helen. 
 
 Aunt Helen had dressed her for Guy. But 
 Theodore was the victim. Theodore stood like 
 a man who had seen the heavens open 
 
 Guy said : 
 
 " What's the matter with Marian ? " 
 
 ' We haven't seen her really grown-up before," 
 said Theodore.
 
 30 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " Throws quite a new light on the subject," 
 said Guy, admiring her as a critic might admire 
 an Old Master. 
 
 " Inclines to Rubens rather than Burne Jones," 
 he continued. " Marian, as the poet Ibsen would 
 say, you're filling out." 
 
 Theodore looked rather like a snail whose horns 
 have been touched, and a shadow fell upon Marian. 
 
 " Guy," said Aunt Helen, rather like a great 
 lady, " it's time you gave up talking to Marian like 
 a schoolboy." 
 
 During dinner Guy was alternately boisterous 
 and pre-occupied. He had opportunities to tell 
 Marian that he had an appointment, but it had 
 somehow become very difficult to do so. 
 
 Too soon, as it seemed, they were at the theatre, 
 watching the first act of an entertaining comedy. 
 Though his intention wavered under arguments 
 alternately suggested by conscience and inclination, 
 there was something curiously inevitable in the 
 way his intention to find Sabina survived. 
 
 He looked at his watch as the curtain fell on 
 the first act. It was already half-past eight. 
 vSabina might even now be waiting. It became 
 impossible for him to sit. He muttered some- 
 thing about a cigarette, and went out into the 
 street. 
 
 The town band was playing at the corner. 
 Young men and girls were standing about or 
 promenading in all stages of familiarity. He was 
 vividly aware of the passing of the time, and had 
 a sudden dismay as he realised that he would, in 
 any case, be late.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 31 
 
 But it would be mean to leave the theatre without 
 a word to Marian. He must return simply to say 
 at once that he was going. 
 
 Marian turned brightly to him as he entered. 
 
 " Marian," he said, " this is a dismal show." 
 
 Marian looked at him in astonishment. 
 
 " It isn't Shakespeare, of course, but it's good 
 enough," she protested. 
 
 Her tone implied that anything to-night was 
 good enough. Guy looked away. 
 
 " I've got an appointment," he said. 
 
 Marian's eyes wandered over him in surprise. 
 
 " Isn't this rather sudden ? " she asked. 
 
 " The fact is," said Guy, " I'm rather tied up. 
 I'm asking you to let me off for an hour or so, that 
 is all. I had half a mind to cut it out my appoint- 
 ment, I mean " He broke lamely off, and 
 
 there was a painful silence. 
 
 Marian's pleasure was destroyed, but she showed 
 no sign. 
 
 " You'd better go," she said. 
 
 Theodore perceived that something was wrong. 
 
 " What's all this about ? " he said, leaning 
 towards them. 
 
 " Nothing," said Marian. " Guy's taken a 
 sudden dislike to the play. He's leaving us for 
 an hour." 
 
 " I've seen worse," said Theodore, cheerfully. 
 " What does the fellow mean ? " 
 
 He challenged his brother with a false cheerful- 
 ness. 
 
 Theodore's antagonism only made it easier for
 
 32 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Guy to go. It enabled him to think that he was 
 quarrelling with his brother. 
 
 " See you at supper, Theo," he said. 
 
 " You're really going? " 
 
 " It seems Guy has a previous engagement," put 
 in Marian. 
 
 Guy's last look was at Theodore. 
 
 8 
 
 He ran for his bicycle and in a few moments was 
 racing along the road towards Abingdon. The 
 clock in Tom Tower struck a quarter to nine as 
 he passed. 
 
 The striking of the clock and his rapid motion 
 towards Sabina quickly obliterated the scene in 
 the theatre. He was soon wondering whether he 
 should be in time, and shortly the whole of his 
 mind was set upon that question. He pictured 
 Sabina coming to the bend of the road, waiting a 
 few moments, and then turning to go away, with 
 that settled look of offence which had set him so 
 sharply towards her at their first meeting. Why 
 hadn't he started before ? What had possessed 
 him to make so much of leaving the theatre party ? 
 Marian had had dozens of theatre parties before, 
 or, at any rate, she should have dozens of theatre- 
 parties henceforth. He decided he would take her 
 out to something really good in the summer 
 vacation. They would dine somewhere amusing, 
 and they would have supper afterwards, too, and 
 a hansom-cab all the way to Hampstead. 
 
 A hansom-cab ! He had met Sabina in a han- 
 som-cab. How pretty she had looked, with her
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 33 
 
 head back among the faded upholstery of the 
 interior. 
 
 " I couldn't help it, could I ? " he asked himself, 
 as he joyously realised that his bicycle would take 
 the intervening hill at top speed. " I had to see 
 her again." 
 
 " Marian should have come on some other day," 
 he added, a moment later. 
 
 At this point he swung round a bend of the road 
 which seemed familiar to him. Sabina was sitting 
 on the bank, apparently looking in his direction.
 
 CHAPTER IT 
 
 i 
 
 SABINA had wavered a good deal on the subject 
 of keeping her appointment. Often she could 
 hardly believe that her adventure with the hansom 
 cab had really happened. It seemed, on looking 
 back, in no case to be taken seriously. Most likely 
 the gentleman had already forgotten her. Yet he 
 had seemed really anxious to please her and to 
 win her confidence. She liked to recall how he 
 had dusted her with his handkerchief. 
 
 He had also told her that story about the women 
 who had been carried off a story which excited her 
 pleasantly. And he had carried her off himself. 
 
 He must be rather a wild young man. She had 
 heard stories of the wild young men who lived in 
 the colleges. Her father had warned her that of 
 all young men they were the least to be trusted. 
 
 Sabina was irretrievably afraid of her father. 
 His views of life were determined by a Methodist 
 upbringing and the elopement of his wife with a 
 friendly neighbour some years ago. Sabina had 
 to'account to him for all her time. He read terrible 
 passages from the Old Testament every evening to 
 her and to her younger sister. 
 ^ But, though she feared her father, and partly 
 because she feared him, Sabina's mind naturally 
 turned to the things he so insistently forbade. 
 
 34
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 35 
 
 The boys who addressed her as she went about 
 her business on the farm had for her a special 
 interest as being accursed in her father's book. 
 She was filled with urgent curiosities about life 
 before she had really passed out of childhood. 
 She was now in her nineteenth year. She had 
 walked hand in hand with youths on the neighbour- 
 ing farms in a condition of excitement, but her 
 excitement was mainly fear that she might be 
 caught by her father. The youths counted for 
 little in her emotions, and she evaded their 
 familiarity. Their clumsy love-making annoyed 
 her. And now there came a wild young gentleman 
 into her life (almost certainly from one of the 
 colleges) who had the ways of another world a 
 wild young gentleman who had apologised to her, 
 dusted her with his pocket handkerchief, driven 
 her to market and yet entirely abstained from the 
 familiarities to which she was accustomed. He 
 had merely talked to her in an oddly exciting way. 
 
 Hitherto the life of Sabina, apart from her 
 laborious days on a small poor farm, had been one 
 long effort to escape. 
 
 She had been accustomed to escape to her room, 
 where, with the door locked, she would put on 
 finery secretly purchased in the town. One day 
 her father surprised her, and, when he saw what 
 she was about, scattered the contents of her box 
 on the floor and burnt them. 
 
 For a time she had sought an escape in com- 
 panionship with her younger sister, and for a while 
 they were inseparable. But Sabina's sister was 
 her father's child, meek and cool and demure, and
 
 36 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 easily frightened by any suspicion of revolt against 
 the strict discipline of their existence. Her elder 
 sister's speculations about life, her fugitive in- 
 dulgence in meaningless gallantries, and her bold 
 mockeries of their father's faith, alarmed and 
 distressed the younger girl, who one day was 
 discovered by her father in tears. Sabina had to 
 endure another terrible scene in which she was 
 accused of trying to corrupt her sister. She was 
 told that it would be better that a millstone should 
 be tied about her neck. 
 
 Sabina was even denied an escape into religion. 
 For some time she had attended chapel, and had 
 enjoyed herself passionately in the chanting of 
 hymns and the declaiming of psalms. The psalms 
 especially pleased her with their oriental savagery 
 and pictorial wealth. Her father began to be pleased 
 with her. They read the Bible together, and it 
 seemed that her original fear of him was at last 
 to pass into an understanding. They came emotion- 
 ally into touch for the first time. The old man 
 began to feel a tenderness for his daughter apart 
 from his tenderness of the elder for a lost sheep on 
 the mountains. Then one fatal day Sabina 
 wandered into a strange place of worship where a 
 wonderful pageant was in progress. The church 
 was full of sweet vapour. There was a tinkle of 
 bells, and a congregation with bowed heads who 
 curtsied to a dim Presence throned amid lights half 
 extinguished in a blue haze, and signed themselves 
 mysteriously upon the breast. After this experi- 
 ence her father's chapel seemed cold and mean, 
 and she visited again this other place which seemed
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 37 
 
 a temple fit for God. Then her father came to 
 hear of it, and added the wrath of a flouted 
 sectary to the chastisement of a parent who must, 
 if possible, save his child from the Devil. 
 
 " Ye'd make a luxury even of your religion," he 
 had said. 
 
 And now she was seeking an escape in the 
 admiration of village boys. She had allowed one 
 of them, George Dudesney, a young labourer at 
 Manygates, to'give her a ring which she wore round 
 her neck under her blouse. She rarely associated 
 the ring with the tolerated youth who had bestowed 
 it; but she liked to finger it in secret defiance of 
 her father in the dreary farm kitchen. 
 
 2 
 
 On the day of her appointment with Guy, 
 though she had not yet consciously decided to meet 
 him, she hurried through her work in an excitement 
 which caused her breath to come suddenly in little 
 sighs. If she were really to go after all, she would 
 have somehow to explain her absence. Unex- 
 pectedly, however, her father played into her 
 hands. The two cows were to be taken, after 
 milking, beyond the road to the water-meadow. 
 She would pass the bend in the road where she 
 had found Guy. She would be early for the 
 appointment, but she could wait. 
 
 It was after eight when she took the cows across, 
 but she was back again sitting in the bend of the 
 road by eight-thirty. For nearly half-an-hour she 
 leaned back on the grass, inertly resting. When 
 her thoughts at last began to move they reverted
 
 38 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 to the story of the women who had been carried 
 off. The story haunted her, and pleased her, 
 and seemed somehow to be aimed at a secret 
 wish. 
 
 She had an agreeable feeling, such as she had 
 not experienced before, that the success of her 
 effort to escape no longer rested with herself. She 
 had tried again and again, and she had failed. 
 Almost she had ceased to struggle. The ring 
 about her neck was the secret rebellion of a 
 defeated child. But where she had failed by 
 herself she might with help succeed. She did 
 not actually put it thus, but half the thought was 
 there. 
 
 The clock of the Convent Church, some 200 yards 
 away, broke into her thoughts. The time fixed 
 for the appointment had come, but Perseus had 
 not arrived. 
 
 Of course he had not remembered. He had 
 come with his cab on a drunken frolic. He had 
 been kind to her, and he had forgotten all about it. 
 She felt as though a hand held out had suddenly 
 been withdrawn. She would wait a little longer 
 and go back to the farm, and everything would 
 go on as before. 
 
 At that moment Sabina came near to realising 
 the significance of her tragedy. She saw herself 
 pitifully as from the outside. Usually she met her 
 disappointments with angry impatience or she im- 
 potently acquiesced. But to-night she had risen 
 beyond a momentary vexation. She looked at 
 her life, and was sorry for it. She lay back 
 quietly, her face sideways to the road by which
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 39 
 
 Perseus should have come, and big tears rolled at 
 intervals down her face. 
 
 3 
 
 A motor cyclist rushed round the bend of the 
 road, passed her, and then, apparently having some 
 trouble with his engine, stopped. She did not turn 
 to see what he was doing, until suddenly she 
 realised he had left his bicycle in the road and was 
 walking back towards her. 
 
 She knew now who it was, but she did not move. 
 She was in the mood not to care how she looked 
 or what anyone might think of her. 
 
 Guy could not see her face, but he recognised 
 her at a glance. He called her name, but she took 
 not the slightest notice. He took her by the 
 shoulder and bent over to see why she was so quiet. 
 He found she was crying. 
 
 " Sabina," he asked, " what is the matter ? " 
 
 Still she did not move. 
 
 " What is it, Sabina ? " he asked again. ' Tell 
 me what it is." 
 
 She turned to him slowly. 
 
 Guy hesitated to think that he was the cause of 
 her tears. Yet, after all, she was here waiting for 
 him, and he was late, and he himself would have 
 been greatly disappointed if he had not seen 
 her. 
 
 "Is it," he asked, " because you thought I 
 wasn't coming ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Partly, perhaps," he ventured, "but not 
 altogether ? "
 
 40 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 He thought she assented to this, but the sound 
 which came from her might have been anything. 
 
 Then with that absurd want of grace which so 
 often characterises the gestures of affliction, she 
 crumpled towards him. 
 
 " It's everything," she wailed. 
 
 Her head missed his chin by a nail's breadth, 
 and fell upon his overalls. The ends of her hair 
 brushed his face. He was tremendously concerned, 
 but he didn't know in the least what to say. 
 
 After a while she recovered and drew away from 
 him. She found a handkerchief for her tears. 
 
 At last she spoke. 
 
 " I'm sorry, sir," she said. 
 
 From being one of the afflicted of the earth she 
 had suddenly become a young person apologising 
 for a misdemeanour. 
 
 Guy took her by the arm almost angrily. 
 
 ' You mustn't talk to me like that," he said. 
 
 Sabina looked at him a little scared ; but offence 
 was also lurking, and Guy's manner softened 
 immediately. 
 
 ' You mustn't call me ' Sir/ " he hastened to 
 elucidate, " and you mustn't apologise. Hang it 
 all," he exclaimed in a reckless resolve to put the 
 position clearly, " you can't call a fellow ' Sir ' 
 when you've just been crying on his chest. My 
 name's Guy," he concluded briefly. 
 
 " I can't call you that," protested Sabina. 
 
 " Then you can't call me anything. You will 
 have to say ' Hie ' to me, or ' You there,' or some- 
 thing like that." 
 
 " Now you're making fun."
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 41 
 
 " Does this look like fun ? " he asked. He 
 displayed his patent leather shoes, and, throwing 
 open his overalls, disclosed a blazer covering a 
 mauve waistcoat and a white shirt. 
 
 " Fact is," he said, " I've bolted from a party. 
 You expected me to-night ? " he asked. 
 
 " I was here, wasn't I ? " Sabina pointed out. 
 
 They were silent a moment. Guy was not happy 
 in the tension of these sudden silences. 
 
 " What was really wrong just now? " he asked. 
 " Aren't you happy at home ? " 
 
 "I'm not exactly enjoying myself," she replied. 
 " Father doesn't like people to enjoy themselves. 
 Once, when I had been out with a fellow " 
 
 She paused in some confusion, and there was a 
 silence. 
 
 " Were you keen on this ' fellow ' ? " Guy asked. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Why did you go out with him ? " 
 
 " I don't know. It was something to do." 
 
 Guy began to see a little more clearly into 
 Sabina's life at the farm. They were sitting side 
 by side on the bank. He put his hand on her 
 shoulder, and his finger rested a moment on a 
 ribbon round her neck. 
 
 " Have you," he asked, " ever been really keen ? " 
 
 " Never, not really, as you might say keen." 
 
 Guy was abstractedly playing with the ribbon. 
 He hesitated a moment. 
 
 " Concerning these fellows " he began. 
 
 ' They come round," said Sabina. " Usually 
 they're only silly, But there was one who wouldn't 
 take ' no ' for an answer."
 
 42 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " The beast ! " she added with a sudden violence. 
 
 " Sudden light upon the decorums of English 
 rustic life," commented a familiar imp in Guy, 
 which, even at this solemn moment, was not entirely 
 suppressed. 
 
 " I suppose," he said aloud, softly rubbing 
 Sabina's cheek with his finger, " that I'm not 
 behaving particularly well myself at the present 
 moment ? " 
 
 Sabina leaned her cheek towards his hand. 
 
 " You're different," she said. 
 
 He was again playing with the piece of ribbon, 
 and Sabina felt the ring she wore round her neck 
 moving under her dress. She felt a sudden wish 
 to tell Guy things about herself. 
 
 " That ribbon you're pulling," she began. 
 
 " Well," said Guy. 
 
 " There's something tied to it," she said. " Pull 
 it and you'll see." 
 
 Guy pulled it gently. 
 
 " Pull it hard," she instructed. 
 
 He gave it a sharp tug, and the ring came up 
 warm from where it had lain. 
 
 He held it a moment and then put his cheek 
 to it. 
 
 " No," cried Sabina vehemently, " you mustn't 
 do that." 
 
 She took the ring away from him, tore it from 
 the ribbon and flung it into the road. It rolled 
 towards the bicycle and lay. 
 
 Guy looked at her rather foolishly. 
 
 " I wanted to tell you about it," said Sabina. 
 
 That ring was given to me by a fellow. I don't
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 43 
 
 know why I wore it. It was nothing to me at 
 all, really." 
 
 " Let me give you a ring," said Guy. " I should 
 like you to wear it as you were wearing that 
 one." 
 
 " That would be nice," said Sabina. 
 
 " The ring was warm, Sabina," said Guy, flushing 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 She laughed nervously, and Guy wondered 
 whether he ought to kiss her. 
 
 The sun had gone down and the road was in 
 shadow between its high banks. The Convent 
 clock struck ten. 
 
 " I must go now," said Sabina at last. 
 
 " How far is it to your home ? " 
 
 " Just over the fields." 
 
 " Let me come some of the way ? " 
 
 " You can come to the hedge." 
 
 They walked to a stile on the opposite side of the 
 road and passed over the field in silence. They 
 stood a moment under the tall hedge which 
 separated them from the farm windows. 
 
 " Good night," said Sabina. 
 
 She held out her hand awkwardly. 
 
 " Good night," said Guy. 
 
 It seemed as if they could neither part nor stay. 
 They waited for one another. Then Sabina 
 impatiently turned to go. 
 
 The impatience in her manner loosened Guy's 
 constraint. He stepped towards her. 
 
 To a person observing them from the road they 
 were two separate shadows which were suddenly 
 blended into one in the deeper shade of the hedge,
 
 44 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 two shadows which remained indistinguishable for 
 nearly a minute. 
 
 Guy was saying : " When can I be with you 
 again ? " 
 
 " I will try to be free on Sunday. Wait for me 
 in the road after dinner in the afternoon." 
 
 " I will take you somewhere on my bicycle." 
 
 " Let me go now." 
 
 " Say good-night again." 
 
 After they had separated, a person who was 
 observing them from the road walked' to Guy's 
 bicycle and surveyed it for a moment. Then he 
 stooped, picked up Sabina's discarded ring, and 
 put it in his pocket.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 i 
 
 GUY, in his dreams of fair women, had hitherto 
 felt only their universal attractiveness. He 
 had now conceived a particular infatuation, and the 
 consequences were not unusual. He desired, as 
 soon as possible, to deepen the experience. 
 
 On arriving at Oxford he put up his bicycle, 
 discarded his overalls, and walked to the Mitre 
 to see whether the theatre party had returned. 
 Finding they were not yet due for half an hour, 
 he ordered supper with some idea of making 
 amends for his desertion. The fact that he had 
 been with Sabina did not make him any the less 
 eager to please Marian. On the contrary, he felt 
 an increased capacity for all that life might offer. 
 He was aware of only one drawback, which at one 
 time he would have counted serious. He had no 
 desire whatever for good food. 
 
 The party from the theatre arrived, obviously 
 under a cloud. Guy felt the atmosphere, but 
 ignored it. 
 
 " Come along, people," he said, " and see what 
 I have done for you. A little soup, sole frite 
 chicken and salad, sparkling Saumur." 
 
 " So that's why you left us," said Theodore. 
 
 Theodore was indecently ready to conspire with 
 his brother to save the situation for Marian. 
 
 45
 
 46 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Marian took up the bill of fare and looked at Guy. 
 The brightness of her manner was metallic. 
 
 " Is this the reason, Guy ? " she asked, waving 
 the bill. 
 
 They stood a little apart from the others. Guy 
 stepped to her and touched her lightly on the arm. 
 " Marian," he said, " it was rude of me. I'm sorry 
 if you minded." 
 
 His experience at Manygates had sensitised him 
 in quite a novel way. His awakened feeling for 
 one woman warmed him to the merits of another. 
 This is nature's own paradox, and only life gives it 
 proof. 
 
 The supper, when it arrived, was superficially 
 a success. Marian glittered. Guy, with a des- 
 perate sense of being in disgrace, was almost 
 boisterous. He had been snubbed by Marian for 
 the first time in his life, just at the moment, too, 
 when he was feeling unaccountably affectionate. 
 
 2 
 
 The unconfessed emotions of the supper table 
 were afterwards loosened in two scenes. Aunt 
 Helen, going to Marian's room an hour after her 
 retirement, found her lying on the bed with her 
 clothes on. She lay back reading Diana of the 
 Crossways. She took Meredith as another girl 
 might take aspirin. 
 
 Aunt Helen removed the book. 
 
 " What I like about Meredith," said Marian, 
 unabashed, " is that he makes you understand how 
 men can be perfectly beastly and yet be not half 
 so bad after all."
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 47 
 
 " Don't go round about with me," said Aunt 
 Helen. " You've been very miserable this evening." 
 
 " Am I going round about ? " said Marian. " I 
 was speaking of men. I suppose the best of them 
 have appointments." She paused a moment. 
 " I wonder whether he kissed her," she added. 
 
 " How do you know it was that ? " 
 
 " What else could it be ? I almost hope it was. 
 I shouldn't like Guy to desert me on a day like this 
 to buy a billiard cue. Besides you could see that 
 he was full of it when he came back." 
 
 " Full of what ? " 
 
 " It Her Nature if we must give it a name." 
 
 She broke off and shivered a little, looking very 
 bright in the eye. 
 
 " And he touched me, Auntie, down there, 
 because he was full of somebody else." 
 
 3 
 
 The other scene took place earlier somewhere 
 between the Mitre and Balliol porch. 
 
 Theodore gripped Guy by the arm, as they 
 rounded the corner into Turl Street. 
 
 " You spoiled the day for Marian," he said 
 Why on earth did you do it ? " 
 
 Guy shook off his brother and walked on. 
 
 " Was it anything to do with your celebration 
 last week? " Theodore persisted. 
 
 " Partly." 
 
 They passed into Balliol and crossed to their 
 rooms in silence. 
 
 At the door of Guy's bedroom they stopped, and 
 Theodore said :
 
 48 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " Are you making a fool of yourself with some 
 girl?" 
 
 " Put it that way if you like," said Guy. 
 
 Then he added in exasperation : 
 
 " What's all this fuss about ? I cut two acts of 
 a bad play, and I was away just over an hour." 
 
 Theodore looked at his brother quietly in the 
 dim light of the passage. 
 
 " You spoiled Marian's evening," he said. 
 
 "You were there, weren't you?" said Guy. 
 " Surely one of us was enough." 
 
 Without another look at his brother, Theodore 
 turned down the passage and went into his bedroom. 
 
 4 
 
 The Sunday dinner hour at Manygates was at one 
 o'clock, and Sabina had escaped to her room by 
 1.30. Sabina's room was a limbo entirely vacuous 
 as an expression of the occupier. There was texts 
 upon the wall, the picture of a large dog playing 
 with a little dog, and various relicts of Sabina's 
 kindergarten activities in beads and coloured wool. 
 Her dressing table was a chest of drawers with a 
 small looking glass and the usual china receptacles 
 containing odd buttons, hooks and eyes and hair- 
 pins. The glass was tarnished, and, as the window 
 was heavily draped with lace curtains, originally 
 white but now grey with yellow patches, there was 
 little light. She had to put her head close to the 
 glass when she wanted to see whether her face 
 was really clean or the parting in her hair as 
 straight as it should be. 
 
 Sabina had never realised the inadequacy of her 
 looking-glass so keenly as this afternoon. But she
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 49 
 
 was less troubled about her looking-glass appear- 
 ance than about the state of her hands. Her face, 
 she knew, could be left to take care of itself, but 
 her hands were a torment. She scrubbed them 
 with pumice and dipped into various bottles, but 
 still they showed the wrinkles of hard labour. 
 
 Sabina had lived in a happy dream since the 
 evening of her meeting with Guy. At last she 
 had really escaped. Her father and the daily 
 round were phantasmal, and the one reality of 
 her world was that she would see Guy again almost 
 before she had exhausted the sweetness in retro- 
 spect of their last meeting. Her father commented 
 harshly upon her absence of mind. 
 
 Sabina, now and then, found herself narrowly 
 eyed by the young labourer who was living on the 
 farm. She hardly noted this, however. She was 
 too much accustomed to the hard staring of youths. 
 Perhaps she would have paid him more serious 
 attention had she known that, as he watched her 
 at work, he was fingering a ring which she had 
 lately thrown into the road. 
 
 5 
 
 Guy was first at the meeting place, a Jacob who 
 at last had worked sufficiently for Rachel. On the 
 day which followed his last meeting with Sabina, 
 he had breakfasted with Marian at Balliol, lunched 
 with her again on the river, and begged her and 
 the Duke and Aunt Helen to stay another evening. 
 He had been obliged to supply all the cheerfulness 
 and most of the conversation, and the nicer he was 
 to Marian the more she seemed to resent it. He
 
 50 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 could not understand why she failed to respond to 
 his affectionate advances, more especially as he 
 was thinking all the while of Sabina in delicious 
 snatches of unbidden ecstasy, and was thus unable 
 to give more than half his attention to the problem. 
 Incidentally he had also to endure his brother's 
 unspoken criticism. He came to Sabina for his 
 reward. 
 
 They met a little awkwardly, less on account of 
 their being in the broad sunlight and subject to 
 the sudden intrusion of wayfarers, than on account 
 of that unavoidable shyness which attends the 
 continuation in cold blood of an ardent relationship. 
 
 " It's a fine day for our ride," said Guy. 
 
 ' Yes," said Sabina, " I thought it was going to 
 rain this morning." 
 
 There was a slight pause. 
 
 " Hadn't you better climb the bicycle ? " Guy 
 suggested. 
 
 ' You'll have to show me how to sit," said Sabina. 
 
 The bicycle started, and soon she was clinging 
 fast. When the novelty of the sensation had 
 subsided she had leisure to be astonishingly happy. 
 Sabina was pleasantly aware of the hold she had 
 upon her furious rider. There is no such intimacy 
 to be had in broad daylight and full in the eye of 
 a censorious world as can be enjoyed upon a motor 
 bicycle. Guy could have ridden for ever thus 
 encircled. He rode as far as Hungerford. 
 
 At Hungerford they put up the bicycle and 
 walked at a venture into the country, finding tea 
 at a farmhouse on the way. It was a substantial 
 tea at six o'clock in the evening with eggs and
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 51 
 
 frizzled ham, which was Guy's idea of a novel 
 experience for a country girl. 
 
 Sabina, behind the teapot, was nervous. She 
 wondered continually whether she was sufficiently 
 correct. Guy at the tea-table found conversation 
 difficult. He spent most of the time asking 
 questions about Sabina's way of life and her 
 preferences. Her answers were disconcerting. She 
 was evidently not very fond of life at Manygates, 
 and her preferences were limited. 
 
 " I hate the country," said Sabina. " I seem 
 to be shut up and can hardly breathe. Most of all, 
 I hate the trees. I am terrified by trees. I 
 should die if I found myself among trees after 
 dark." 
 
 " But up on the hill to-day," protested Guy, 
 alluding to a moment when they had stood watch- 
 ing the cloud shadows as they swam over the 
 floor of the Oxford Plain. 
 
 " It was nice up there," said Sabina. 
 
 Guy found nothing wrong with the sentiment, 
 and after all the word was not altogether misplaced. 
 It had been " nice " indeed. 
 
 At teatime, in a sudden access of frankness 
 brought on by Guy's constant friendliness and 
 understanding, Sabina, after hesitating and flush- 
 ing a little, called him by his name for the first 
 time. 
 
 " Guy," she began. 
 
 Guy put his hand on hers, which lay on the table. 
 
 Sabina made an effort. 
 ' Tell me when I do things wrong, won't you ? " 
 
 " What do you mean by that ? "
 
 52 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " I've been brought up different. I shan't 
 always do things right. You will tell me, won't 
 you ? " 
 
 " Stuff," said Guy. 
 
 He was content to ignore Sabina's blemishes, 
 and it annoyed him that she would not allow him 
 to do so. 
 
 Sabina had an ambition to be polite. Her action 
 in taking tea was characteristic. Lifting the cup 
 between her forefinger and thumb, she removed all 
 her other fingers as far as possible out of harm's 
 way. Her little finger aspired to heaven in a final 
 curve. 
 
 Guy suddenly realised that he did not like it. 
 
 She had asked him hardly a moment ago to tell 
 her. He bent over the table and straightened her 
 fingers on the handle of the cup. Sabina, thinking 
 that a playful caress was intended, smiled. 
 
 " Guy," she said, " don't be silly ; you'll make 
 me spill my tea." 
 
 Then, to show that she really knew how to take 
 tea, she lifted the finger again. 
 
 " Put it down," said Guy, in a brotherly way. 
 
 Sabina put down her cup. 
 
 "No," said Guy ; "the finger." 
 
 He imitated her grasp of the cup, demonstrating 
 the offence. 
 
 Too late he realised his mistake. To admit that 
 you may have social deficiencies is one thing ; to 
 be told of them is another. Sabina slowly flushed. 
 
 " Thank you," she added. " I think I know my 
 manners." 
 
 Guy was immediately abject.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 53 
 
 " Sabina, dear. Really it doesn't matter. I 
 don't care a straw either way ; but you told me to 
 tell you." 
 
 " I know all about it," said Sabina, in a dry 
 anger. " I don't know how to behave, and there's 
 an end of it." 
 
 " Sabina," Guy protested helplessly, " please be 
 sensible." 
 
 " Why did you come if you didn't think I was 
 good enough ? " she wailed. She covered her eyes 
 with her hands and began to cry. 
 
 " Hang it all," said Guy, now thoroughly ex- 
 asperated, " I didn't " 
 
 Sabina's grief now threatened to become audible. 
 
 Guy rose from his chair and looked out of the 
 window. He was repelled by the injustice of her 
 conduct, but this somehow made him all the more 
 anxious to win her back. He came over to her, and 
 she, loudly self-pitying, buried herself in his coat. 
 
 " Don't let it make any difference," she sobbed. 
 
 Guy gave up any point he might have desired 
 to make. 
 
 Peace followed, but it was not till after the ride 
 home that Sabina would forget the incident. She 
 took no more tea at the cottage. She couldn't 
 face the dilemma presented by her little finger. 
 To lift it might after all be wrong ; to lower it would 
 be a capitulation. 
 
 6 
 
 The day at Hungerford was the first of a series 
 of meetings ; hurried meetings near Manygates ; 
 short walks in the country, and two blissful expedi-
 
 54 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 tions, one on the bicycle and one on foot to villages 
 in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Sabina wholly surrendered herself to a passion 
 which had nothing to impede it but a rankling sense 
 of inferiority which often made her fancy a slight 
 where none was intended. 
 
 The summer term drew to an end, and soon it 
 was Guy's last week at Oxford. On the last even- 
 ing before going down he walked with Sabina far 
 into the country. They rested long and arrived 
 back at Manygates late in the evening. Guy, 
 being thirsty, called at a public house for beer and 
 pressed Sabina, who also was thirsty, to have some, 
 too. She said she would have some cyder. 
 
 She would not enter the inn, so he brought her a 
 tumbler outside. On leaving the inn, Guy, for 
 something to say, sang the praises of English beer. 
 To his surprise, Sabina cut short his rhapsodies. 
 
 " I hate beer," she said. 
 
 " Have you ever tasted it ? " Guy asked. 
 
 " No," said Sabina. 
 
 ' Then how do you know you hate it ? " Guy 
 asked chaffingly. 
 
 " I hope you wouldn't ask me to drink beer," 
 said Sabina. 
 
 " Not if you don't like it," responded Guy, sur- 
 prised at her vehemence. 
 
 " Beer," said Sabina decisively, " is a vulgar 
 drink." 
 
 " Tastes differ," said Guy. 
 
 " I'd rather you didn't drink it yourself," said 
 Sabina. " At least not when you're with me." 
 
 " But that's unreasonable," Guy expostulated.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 55 
 
 He was feeling within him the stir of the just man 
 confronted with an irrational prejudice. 
 
 " I'd rather you didn't," Sabina repeated ob- 
 stinately. 
 
 " But why ? " 
 
 " Because I object to it." 
 
 They had arrived not far from Manygates. Guy 
 saw his last day with Sabina ending in eclipse. It 
 hurt him more for being so obviously absurd. At 
 the same time he was furiously angry. They 
 walked on in silence for a while. 
 
 " I suppose," said Guy, who, because the subject 
 irritated him, somehow couldn't leave it alone, 
 " You'd like me to apologise for having beer at 
 the inn ? " 
 
 " You didn't know I objected," said Sabina, 
 with a maddening air of making excuses for a 
 breach of taste. 
 
 Guy lost his temper outright. Their silly argu- 
 ment brought to snapping-point the strain of their 
 social encounters outside the circle of their fatal 
 attraction for one another. He stopped inthe road. 
 
 "Sabina," he said, 'You're being perfectly 
 absurd." 
 
 She gave him a poisonous look and walked off, 
 leaving him in the road. She expected him to 
 follow her as he had done before on a similar 
 occasion, but Guy stood fast. 
 
 " This is a crisis," he thought. 
 
 Her footsteps became fainter and then ceased. 
 He thought she had stopped, but, on looking round, 
 he saw that she had taken to the grass and was 
 crossing to the stile which gave upon the path to
 
 56 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Manygates farm. That she should go off like this 
 for nothing at all after their long day together 
 (and their last day too) amazed him. 
 
 " I give it up," he concluded hopelessly. 
 
 He walked irresolutely after her for a moment. 
 He reached the stile and looked over. She had 
 arrived at the hedge where they had parted on the 
 night of the theatre party. There she stopped a 
 moment and looked back. Guy signed to her to 
 return. She shook her head, but invited him to 
 come to her. As usual she demanded uncon- 
 ditional surrender. Guy firmly remained where 
 he was. Suddenly she turned away past the high 
 hedge and was lost. For the next hour Guy walked 
 about for some time trying to fathom her perversity. 
 As he allowed nothing for that exasperation of the 
 blood inseparable from their condition, his re- 
 flections did not carry him far. 
 
 " We get on one another's nerves, I suppose," 
 he told himself at last. 
 
 7 
 
 He had a light supper at an inn near by. He 
 wanted beer, but he ordered claret instead. This 
 was a symptom. Another symptom was his inability 
 to leave the neighbourhood. It was n o'clock when 
 he left the inn and began to walk back to Oxford. 
 
 He had never seen Manygates farm. Sabina 
 was always thoroughly alarmed at the idea of his 
 coming past the high hedge. Light claret and 
 reckless despair brought him to a halt at the stile. 
 He was leaving Oxford the next day, and he had 
 parted from Sabina in anger. At least he would look
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 57 
 
 upon the house in which she lay. It was now too late 
 for anyone to be abroad, and the night was dark. 
 
 Soon the high hedge was behind him, and the 
 confused dark mass of Manygates was below. A 
 steep hill led down to the back of the farm. He 
 could almost have stepped on to the outbuildings 
 from the hillside, and the windows of the upper 
 storey were on a level with Guy's head as he crept 
 towards them. Soon by putting out his hand be 
 felt a wall. He remained still for a moment, and 
 his eyes, now used to the dark, told him that he 
 was beside a shed which leaned towards the house. 
 Above the roof of the shed was a window of the 
 farm itself. As he stood in the dark, excited by the 
 thought of being so near to Sabina, he heard a rust- 
 ling overhead. Then a whisper came down to him. 
 
 " Is that you, Guy ? " 
 
 " Sabina? " 
 
 " I knew it was you coming down the hill. 
 Guy, you must go at once. I'm frightened." 
 
 " But you're glad, Sabina ? " 
 
 The voice from above whispered : " I don't know 
 what made me so horrible this evening. I don't 
 seem to know what I'm saying sometimes." 
 
 The voice ceased for a moment. 
 
 " Go now, Guy. You oughtn't to have come," 
 it continued. 
 
 " Can you reach me, Sabina ? " 
 
 " No, you're too far down." 
 
 " Try." 
 
 " I can't. I'm leaning right out of the window." 
 
 " Sabina, let me touch you before I go." 
 
 " I can't reach."
 
 58 
 
 He saw her now as a white wraith in the black 
 frame of the window, and began to pull himself up 
 towards her. He heard her catch her breath as he 
 did so. Then she whispered urgently : 
 
 " Don't, Guy ! I'm terrified someone will see you." 
 
 " It's too dark for that," said Guy. 
 
 She waited silently. Every sound he made in 
 scrambling up the inclined roof of the shed seemed 
 as though it must wake the whole world. She 
 seemed unable to act. He appeared at the window 
 only as a shadow, a little darker than the night 
 outside, and he could see nothing in the room 
 except her white figure vaguely to the side of the 
 window. He hesitated. 
 
 " Give me your hand," he whispered. She did 
 not answer or move. He hesitated no longer, but 
 entered the room and found her breathing beside 
 him. She slipped into his arms. 
 
 " You're shivering, Sabina," he said. 
 
 " I'm not cold," she assured him. Her teeth 
 chattered as she spoke. 
 
 ' You're frightened," he said, with a sudden 
 remorse. " I'll go away now at once. I hate to 
 terrify you like this." 
 
 Her grip tightened, and he could feel that her 
 heart was beating fast. 
 
 " I'm not really frightened not now," she said. 
 " I don't want you to go, not yet." 
 
 Time passed unnoticed in the little room till at 
 last the window appeared as a pale patch in the wall, 
 and Guy could see Sabina's face on the pillow thrown 
 into relief by her hair. They perceived that the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 59 
 
 darkness was not so dark, and Sabina felt that they 
 were being slowly discovered. She communicated 
 to Guy the fear that sharpened in her, and he made 
 ready to go. 
 
 All was quiet as he cautiously descended from 
 the window, except that a dog began to bark on the 
 further side of Manygates.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 i 
 
 GUY came down to London from Oxford with 
 introductions in his pocket to one or two 
 London editors. He took rooms with Powicke in 
 Well Walk, Hampstead. 
 
 Things went well with his literary career. One 
 of his introductions was to Mr. Robert Henderson 
 of the Moderator. Henderson needed a musical 
 critic. He had heard of Guy from Oxford as a 
 leader of the musical set in the University, a lively 
 practitioner upon various instruments, and a man 
 who had spent his vacations at Leipzig. Guy 
 could, moreover, write about music in compre- 
 hensible English, and he was a human being. In 
 short, he was the musical critic for whom most 
 editors in London are looking. 
 
 As musical critic of a distinguished weekly 
 Review, Guy received the freedom of no mean 
 literary city. Avenues were opened upon every 
 side, and he shortly began to know many of 
 the young men in London whose names had 
 hitherto been familiar to him only from print or 
 hearsay. 
 
 There was a strange duplicity in Guy's life at 
 this time. In London he lived upon ideas, on 
 music, on the gratifying progress of his reputation, 
 on the delight of earning money in the open 
 
 CO
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 61 
 
 market, upon the interest aroused by new ac- 
 quaintances. 
 
 Out of this London life he would slip away to 
 Sabina. They met in the open country, and their 
 meetings were prolonged into the late evening. As 
 he passed to and fro on his bicycle, the new 
 green of summer darkened in the ageing leaves of 
 the hazel ; the wheat ripened beside him, stood for 
 a while in sheaves, and was gathered away ; the 
 country was gradually lit with the colours of 
 autumn ; and soon he was running through the 
 eddying dry leaves of late October. 
 
 They never spoke of marriage. They in- 
 stinctively avoided a question which threatened 
 their felicity. The question of marriage was bound 
 up with all those disconcerting differences in out- 
 look and intellect, in manner and habit of speech, 
 which made ordinary friendly intercourse so 
 difficult. These differences waited inexorably in 
 the background ; and, when rapture failed, they 
 intruded. But they were ordinarily allowed to 
 lie, except when Sabina occasionally drew attention 
 to her shortcomings with a desperate obscure wish 
 that Guy would reassure her. Guy invariably 
 protested on these occasions that such things did 
 not greatly matter. This failed to pacify Sabina, 
 for it implied that there was something to be 
 overlooked. 
 
 2 
 
 The meetings with Sabina ceased abruptly 
 towards the end of November. One evening, when 
 Guy returned late from a concert, he saw propped
 
 62 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 against the clock a letter with the Abingdon post- 
 mark. 
 
 He sat for a while fingering the envelope. For 
 the first time he really faced the question of 
 marriage. He tried to think of Sabina as sharing 
 his life in London. Undoubtedly he loved her, and 
 he felt for her an immense gratitude. There were 
 meetings he could never forget, times when she 
 had given him not herself alone, but the joy of 
 being chosen and admitted to nature's heart. 
 
 He opened the letter and read. There was 
 neither heading nor signature, and it ended 
 abruptly as it began : 
 
 Guy, I can't go on any longer. There is a man here 
 on the Farm who gave me the ring that was round my 
 neck on the night the first time you met me. He has 
 seen you, and I am too frightened to have you come 
 again. Besides, what is the use ? How can we go on 
 like this ? I am wishing for you now, but I have been 
 made to see what dreadful things might happen. I 
 couldn't face them, Guy. I'm not brave enough to go 
 on. I should only be frightened and miserable if you 
 came again. What will you do when you get this letter ? 
 I don't care what you do. I won't marry you, because 
 we should quarrel horribly. I have thought it all out 
 and I am sure it wouldn't do. I know quite well it 
 wouldn't. I want you not to come to me any more ; 
 that will be best, you will only make me miserable. 
 
 Guy realised almost at once that he would take 
 Sabina at her word. Remorse and bereavement 
 conflicted strangely with a sense of relief and 
 restoration.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 63 
 
 His letter of farewell to Sabina troubled him 
 greatly. No clear note could come of his con- 
 tradictory emotions. After several attempts he 
 sent a message which seemed to him curiously 
 stilted. He ended by asking her to let him know, 
 without fail, if ever he could help her in any way. 
 
 During the next few weeks Guy experienced a 
 sense of bitter deprivation, but he did not ask to 
 see Sabina again. More and more the new life in 
 London claimed and captivated him. 
 
 3 
 
 It seemed natural that, as a part of his London 
 life, Guy should try to renew his intimacy with 
 Marian ; and he was not a little hurt that his 
 advances in this direction should be rather coolly 
 received. Marian never came to the rooms in 
 Hampstead with Aunt Helen, or showed any 
 apparent interest in Guy's activities. Aunt Helen 
 at last became almost severe with her ; and, when 
 Guy asked them both to a Christmas party in 
 Well Walk, she insisted that Marian should 
 accompany her. 
 
 Marian was finally persuaded. She came with 
 Aunt Helen and a girl from Newnham. Powicke, 
 sharing the Hampstead rooms, was naturally of 
 the party, and Theodore came from the Temple 
 where he had taken chambers and was reading for 
 the bar. 
 
 It became a musical evening. Guy asked Marian 
 to play with him an arrangement for two pianos 
 of a concerto by Bach. Marian pleaded that she 
 was not in the vein, but was overruled by the
 
 64 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 company on the principle that two pianos were 
 better than one. Powicke's piano was wheeled in 
 from the neighbouring room. 
 
 Marian at first wilfully disregarded Guy's 
 attempts at enthusiasm. Gradually, however, as 
 she became impersonally absorbed into the music, 
 her estrangement from Guy seemed almost con- 
 temptible so long as they could meet upon heights 
 such as here were offered. There was a silence as 
 they lingered upon the conclusion of one of Bach's 
 most tragic utterances ; and, poised in sadness for 
 an instant, dipped suddenly into the vivace. 
 Marian finished with eyes that sparkled for Guy 
 alone, and Guy reached his hand to her over the 
 piano as they met the applause. 
 
 When the party broke up, Powicke took charge of 
 the Newnham girl, and Theodore left for the Temple. 
 
 Aunt Helen remained a while with Marian. She 
 perceived that somehow the coolness between Guy 
 and Marian had been removed, though they had 
 not spoken a word. She supposed it was the 
 music. It had somehow gone to their heads. 
 She was satisfied to observe that music after all 
 had its uses. 
 
 Guy accompanied them to Fern Cottage, and, 
 at the gate, Aunt Helen, anxious to efface herself, 
 left them with a brief good night. Guy felt extra- 
 ordinarily reluctant to part with Marian. He had 
 recovered something which immensely mattered, 
 and he wanted to prolong the sensation. 
 
 " We must play together more often," he said 
 as they came to a stand." 
 
 " The music was good," said Marian.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 65 
 
 During their performance she had felt enor- 
 mously glad that they could be thus secretly 
 intimate in a crowded room, that they could meet 
 in an enthusiasm devoutly shared. 
 
 " I have the best of him," she had thought, as 
 again and again their feeling had met implicitly in 
 a perfect phrase. 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " Why not one of our ancient rambles ? " said 
 Guy at last. 
 
 " Give me five minutes," said Marian. " I will 
 put on some sensible shoes." 
 
 She walked with Guy in silence to the Heath, 
 climbed up to Jack Straw, and dropped again to 
 the foot of a little hill covered with gorse and 
 brambles and topped with pines. There they 
 stood awhile, looking over wide stretches of country, 
 silken and cold with mist. After their executive 
 fevers they enjoyed the silence and freshness of 
 the clear December night. Cold airs from the open 
 spaces at their feet rustled up the hill and died 
 away on the further side. 
 
 " Marian," said Guy suddenly, " I have missed 
 you badly." 
 
 Marian didn't answer. 
 
 " Say something," said Guy. " Why was the 
 cold shoulder ? " 
 
 " Was she very pretty ? " she asked suddenly. 
 " Or was it her conversation ? " 
 
 Guy looked at Marian in some astonishment. 
 Then he said quite naturally, 
 
 " I couldn't help myself." 
 
 " You cared for her very much ? "
 
 66 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " I suppose so," said Guy. 
 
 " And now it's finished ? " Marian insisted. 
 
 " I don't suppose I shall ever see her again." 
 
 He paused and added : " How different we can 
 be at different times." 
 
 Marian's pride shrank from any further angling 
 in these waters, but the impulse was strong for a 
 moment. She resisted it, and soon Guy turned to 
 her unprompted. 
 
 " It's jolly to be friends again," he said. 
 
 He looked at her, cool and companionly, and 
 lightly pressed her fingers as they turned to go 
 down.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 i 
 
 EVERY other Friday Henderson gave a dinner 
 to his contributors, which often included dis- 
 tinguished politicians. Guy began to attend these 
 fortnightly gatherings, and Theodore, who had 
 lately joined the staff of the Moderator as a leader- 
 writer, also appeared. On these occasions Theo- 
 dore gravitated at once towards the men of affairs ; 
 Guy was as certainly to be found among the rogues 
 and vagabonds. 
 
 But the rogues and vagabonds who wrote for the 
 Moderator had steady balances at the bank ; they 
 belonged to the Travellers' Club, the Beefsteak, or 
 the Savile. They had been born wise, and Balliol 
 had only made them a very little wiser. They 
 prophesied eminence for Guy, when his oats had 
 been sown. Some were a little dubious of the 
 propriety of his sowing them in the Moderator, 
 but musical critics, they reflected, were hard to 
 find. 
 
 There were times when Guy felt uncomfortably 
 detached from the " Moderators." The shade of 
 Meredith hovered palpably over the discreetly 
 lighted table, and there were times when one half 
 expected Diana of the Crossways to enter upon 
 the arm of Mr. Tonans. Guy would suddenly 
 pine for the louder values of the Cafe Royal, or 
 
 67
 
 8 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 for the cheerful uproar of home parties in Well 
 Walk. He had not yet learned that in the interests 
 of conversation it is often necessary to ignore what 
 cannot be easily and lightly said, and he often re- 
 sented the orderly complacencies of the dinner 
 table. 
 
 2 
 
 One night in early spring Guy, after one of these 
 parties, decided to walk home to his rooms in Hamp- 
 stead. It was a warm evening. He carried his hat 
 and allowed the wind to play with his light over- 
 coat. The dead silence of the blind houses pleased 
 him with its suggestion of shuttered mystery. 
 So far as he thought at all he thought only in 
 pictures. He saw again the table at Henderson's 
 house in Portland Square, choice with flowers and 
 silver and glass. He heard the decent laughter, 
 the low individual conversations suddenly inter- 
 rupted by a general appeal for attention to a 
 common topic, or to something specially worth 
 while ; intellect and humour kept well in re- 
 straint ; a general air of experience and discipline. 
 
 Admirably in harmony with all this, Guy sud- 
 denly saw Marian dressed for one of their excursions 
 together. It was an impression of clear eyes, an 
 upright carriage, and a voice with intimate tones 
 and a way of uttering his name unlike any other. 
 
 These pictures pleasantly suffused his memory. 
 He had seen a good deal of Marian during the 
 winter. They had played the piano together, 
 visited concerts and recitals together, walked 
 together in the country about Harrow and 
 Edgtware.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL C9 
 
 Pictures, in which Marian came increasingly to 
 predominate, alternated with a bleaker panorama, 
 in which an historic Ishmaelite, becoming daily 
 more remote from Mr. Guy Reval, of the Moderator 
 how long ago it seemed ! rode through obscure 
 lanes, chilly and dark in retrospect, to meet a girl 
 now incredibly estranged. He only infrequently 
 remembered Sabina. He had a picture of her now 
 in his mind, as he had seen her upon a cold autumn 
 night of fine rain in late October. In the ray of 
 his bicycle lamp, her hair, glistening with tiny drops 
 of moisture, had given her the aspect of a wraith. 
 
 He passed Fern Cottage just before one o'clock 
 in the morning, despatching a warm thought to 
 where Marian lay behind the drawn blinds. He 
 noted that all her windows were wide open, and 
 that the spring air played fantastically with her 
 curtains. It pleased him to think that her room 
 was fresh with the breeze which pulled at his coat. 
 
 On reaching his rooms in Well Walk he switched 
 on the electric light and dropped into a chair. He 
 was pleasantly tired, but still disposed to linger 
 the night. He thought of coffee, weighing the 
 energy required to collect the necessary implements 
 against the satisfaction of a pleasant draught. 
 He looked indolently from the sideboard to the 
 coffee pot on the mantelpiece. 
 
 On the mantelpiece was a letter. There was 
 something familiar about the shape and colour ; 
 something which aroused in him a settled uneasi- 
 ness which fought unsuccessfully against con- 
 viction. 
 
 H rose abruptly from the chair and took down
 
 70 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the letter. He was looking at the handwriting of 
 Sabina. 
 
 He tore open the letter and his heart sickened 
 as he read : 
 
 King's Head. 
 
 Abingdon, 
 Guy, 
 
 I am in the most dreadful trouble, and I want you 
 to come to me here. You told me to tell you if any- 
 thing happened. I cannot explain, but you must really 
 try to help. Don't fail me, Guy, or I shall do some- 
 thing desperate. 
 
 SABINA. 
 
 3 
 
 So urgent a cry left him no choice ; he must find 
 out at once what it meant. Clearly something had 
 been discovered. He realised at once what dis- 
 covery would mean for a girl who had started at 
 every footstep when they were together, who had 
 always walked with her eyes wide open for the 
 people who passed, and who had often infected 
 him with her own sharp terror. 
 
 He changed rapidly into a country suit and put 
 on his overalls. In half an hour he was passing 
 along Watling Street on the way to Oxford. Action 
 was necessary to his peace of mind. He could not 
 see Sabina till the morning, but he could not sleep 
 upon the news of her distress.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 i 
 
 FOR several weeks after her night with Guy at 
 Manygates, Sabina had enjoyed the adventure 
 in retrospect. It took the place of the ring round 
 her neck which she had used to finger stealthily as 
 she sat with her father and her sister in the kitchen. 
 She glistened over her secret. Her fear, in think- 
 ing of the risk she had run, only added to her 
 private glee. But she dared not again encounter 
 that enormous peril. Dread of discovery was 
 perpetually upon her nerves. Her fear was hardly 
 a reasoned emotion. It was a condition of being. 
 She had a vision of herself standing as sinners 
 were sometimes required to stand in her father's 
 chapel, notoriously a scarlet woman, the text of a 
 loud discourse and subject to the prayers of the 
 faithful. She felt that at any moment a finger 
 might be pointed at her in dreadful accusation. 
 It became, in her dream one night, the finger of a 
 whole congregation, and it was dreadfully like her 
 father's finger, bent at the nail, deformed with 
 labour, but conscientiously scrubbed. Only it was 
 a hundred times larger. 
 
 In the open country, more especially when 
 twilight had dulled her sense of being defenceless 
 to observation, she was able, with Guy, to forget 
 her terrors ; but she always wanted to be sure 
 
 71
 
 72 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 that the people she had met when she was out 
 with Guy were not people that she knew, and when 
 they entered an inn for food she would look rapidly 
 round the room for a possible friend, though the 
 spot were never so unlikely. 
 
 Her condition of mind was the product of her 
 early fear of her father, followed by years in which 
 she had been required to live with a heightened 
 consciousness of sin. The inflamed virtue of those 
 among whom she lived infected her with a kind of 
 moral fever. She suffered no real remorse ; but 
 she couldn't help seeing herself with the eyes of 
 her neighbours. 
 
 2 
 
 In November befell an incident which prompted 
 her to write the farewell letter which Guy had 
 accepted as the end of their relationship. One 
 evening, as she was returning from taking her 
 cattle to the water-meadow, she met George 
 Dudesney, the young labourer to whom reference 
 has already been made. She had thought little 
 enough about George, even when she was wearing 
 round her neck the ring he had given her, and was 
 permitting him the minor privileges of a rustic 
 courtship. Of late she had thought even less. 
 She assumed that the affair between them in the 
 early summer was as little to him as to her. That she 
 should discontinue meeting him, and that he should 
 no longer ask her to do so, seemed entirely natural. 
 
 She encountered him in the bend of the road 
 as she was crossing to the stile. To her surprise 
 he put himself in her way. He indicated rustically
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 78 
 
 that her neglect was beginning to annoy him. She 
 was his girl, he said, and he expected her henceforth 
 to behave as such. The harshness of his voice 
 frightened her, and he used a word which, by its 
 implications, alarmed her still further. He signi- 
 fied that in his opinion she had jilted him. 
 
 Sabina was appalled by this unexpected develop- 
 ment. Hitherto George had been her humble 
 servant ; she could think of nothing to say, and 
 stood silent in the road. 
 
 Her alarm turned to anger when at this point 
 he attempted to be familiar. She had always been 
 somewhat distant with him, and she was furious 
 that he should dare to affront her. There was a 
 scuffle. 
 
 Even during the scuffle Sabina's mind was 
 obscurely at work on the word " jilted." What 
 exactly did he mean by it ? She was not long in 
 doubt, for George, suddenly drawing away from 
 her, informed her with emphasis that, if he were 
 not accepted, no one else should stand in his place. 
 He declared that either she should take back his 
 ring, for her finger this time, or her father should 
 receive some information of interest to all con- 
 cerned. He produced the ring from his pocket, 
 and informed Sabina that he had picked it up 
 where they were standing, and that on the occasion 
 of his finding it there had also been a motor- 
 bicycle. 
 
 Sabina saw the pointing finger of her dream. 
 
 She allowed the ring to be returned to her, and 
 went home from that interview to write Guy her 
 letter of farewell.
 
 74 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Sabina's father readily accepted George's pro- 
 posal. George was a religious man, and Sabina 
 required such a husband. He was a good hand, and 
 shrewd at a bargain. True he was a labourer, 
 but henceforth he could be associated with the 
 management of the farm. Immediate preparations 
 were made for the wedding. 
 
 Sabina shrank from the approaching marriage 
 with a nervous repulsion. George divined her 
 feeling, and for the moment respected it. He 
 promised himself to overcome it in due and lawful 
 time. 
 
 3 
 
 A week or so before the wedding Sabina noticed 
 a curious change in the attitude of the women 
 of the chapel. Conversations, which she divined 
 to be about herself, would suddenly cease on her 
 arrival, and looks were bent upon her which some- 
 how were hardly to be explained as mere interest 
 in a prospective bride. She resented these furtive 
 silences, which filled her with uneasiness. Though 
 she had not heard a single definite word of accusa- 
 tion, she instinctively knew that there was scandal 
 in the air. 
 
 After chapel it was the custom of the women to 
 gather in a group on one side of the door and the 
 men upon the other side. 
 
 On the Sunday before her wedding, as Sabina 
 was leaving the chapel, and walking towards the 
 women's group, she distinctly heard her name. 
 The whole group instantly became silent when they 
 saw her, and they all looked significantly in her 
 direction. Sabina, hysterical with the stress of
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 75 
 
 the last weeks, completely lost control of herself. 
 She walked into the group and challenged them, 
 demanding to know what they were saying about 
 her. 
 
 They eyed her with a sullen astonishment. 
 One elderly woman called out that nobody had 
 accused her, and another with devout thankfulness 
 declared that conscience was a power. At this 
 point a girl who worked on the farm at Many- 
 gates whispered something to her companions, 
 and they all tittered. Sabina pushed towards 
 the girl and confronted her, hotly bidding her to 
 be civil. 
 
 Some of the bystanders attempted to restrain 
 them, but it was too late, and the altercation began 
 to attract the attention of the male group upon the 
 other side of the door. George, coming over to 
 them, wanted to know what the disturbance 
 signified. 
 
 The girl who had provoked Sabina said that if 
 George was content no one else had any right to 
 interfere. Incidentally she advised him not to 
 ask too many questions. 
 
 George and Sabina walked away under the con- 
 centrated observation of the congregation. 
 
 George inferred that his neighbours had come to 
 know something about Sabina's recent proceedings. 
 They evidently thought he was being deceived. 
 He would let them know that they exaggerated the 
 importance of the affair. So far as he knew, there 
 had been nothing serious enough to gossip about. 
 He made a point later in the day of seeking out 
 the girl who had laughed, in order to inform her
 
 76 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 that the topic was not for discussion, and that he 
 knew all that there was to be known. 
 
 4 
 
 He came from that interview straight to Sabina, 
 where she was milking. Her face was turned side- 
 ways towards the door on the flank of the cow, 
 and she knew at once that something had hap- 
 pened. He simply stood at the door and looked 
 at her. Under his hard eyes she stopped her 
 milking and stared back at him. 
 
 He informed Sabina coarsely of a fact which 
 had thrown a new light on her relations with the 
 man from Oxford. Guy had been seen leaving her 
 room at Manygates. Sabina rose from her stool, 
 twisting one of her hands upon the other. She 
 could not find a word to say. George shook with 
 rage before her immobility and challenged her to 
 deny what he had said. When she still said nothing 
 he enquired without delicacy if he might soon 
 expect to be a father. 
 
 Sabina pitifully caught at the one shred of 
 justification in sight. " No, George," she said, 
 " I'm not going to have a baby really I'm not." 
 
 She protested that George had always known 
 her story. 
 
 George said there was one thing he had not 
 known. 
 
 " Does this make any difference, George ? I 
 mean," she stammered, " you're going to marry 
 me, aren't you ? " 
 
 George intimated with a savage irony that it 
 made no difference at all. He would marry her, of
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 77 
 
 course, to save her character. He was that kind 
 of fool. 
 
 At this he left her, swearing that all was over 
 between them. 
 
 Sabina had only one thought. She couldn't 
 face her father. She must escape at once from 
 Manygates. She went to an inn in Abingdon, 
 where she had on several occasions had tea with 
 Guy ; and, that same night, she wrote to him her 
 letter of appeal.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 GUY was delayed on the road to Abingdon by a 
 temporary breakdown, and it was nearly seven 
 o'clock in the morning when he reached the inn. 
 Sabina heard him arrive. She was already dressed, 
 and, on hearing the bicycle, she went down to the 
 inn parlour. She heard Guy enquire for her down- 
 stairs and gathered that the chambermaid was 
 coming to inform her. She stood awkwardly by 
 the parlour door till the maid, catching sight of 
 her, retreated and told Guy to go up. Sabina went 
 into the room and waited. 
 
 Guy came straight towards her. In the brief 
 moment of his advance across the room Guy 
 realised the fulness of her misery. Sabina's pretti- 
 ness depended much upon her mood and colour ; 
 she could only show him to-day a piteous wreck 
 of her good looks. The effect of her appearance 
 was enhanced by the place in which he found her. 
 The inn parlour was shabby and cold, and the 
 ashes of yesterday's fire were in the grate. 
 
 " Sabina, dear, what has happened ? " 
 
 He paused beside her, taking only her hand. 
 The position seemed beyond the reach of endear- 
 ments. She sat down abruptly in a chair, gripping 
 him. 
 
 " I have been alone here for two nights, Guy." 
 78
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 79 
 
 She was crying, and could not recover her 
 breath. Guy stood beside her, unable to say any- 
 thing. 
 
 " Please, Sabina/' he entreated at last, " tell me 
 what has happened." 
 
 It was some time before Guy could master her 
 position. She told him, with many pauses, of her 
 engagement with George and its sudden breach. 
 Guy felt, as she proceeded, that he was becoming 
 gradually enmeshed in the net of her story, and 
 for a moment he desired to escape. Then, in 
 reaction against an impulse purely of self-preserva- 
 tion, he had remorseful visions of Sabina, lonely 
 and afraid, yielding to hateful necessities, while 
 he had obliviously sought fresh pleasures and 
 interests. 
 
 2 
 
 She told her story in the manner of one who 
 only desired to be relieved of a burden. He knew 
 that when she had finished the responsibility would 
 be his, and that he would have to do something. 
 And yet she seemed almost a stranger. Could the 
 girl who sat thus, awkwardly picking her words 
 and avoiding his looks, be the girl who a few 
 months before had moved him to the heart ? 
 
 When she had finished her tale, she withdrew 
 her hand, and they remained silent awhile. Guy 
 found his attention wandering irrelevantly from 
 detail to detail of the room. The carpet under his 
 eyes was frayed. He counted the threads and tried 
 to reconstruct the pattern. He had no impulse 
 either to act or speak ; his feelings were too con- 
 fused.
 
 80 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Sabina suddenly looked up, meeting his puzzled 
 eyes. Their dubiety awakened in her at once a 
 sense of her insecurity. She caught at his coat, 
 and almost clung to him. 
 
 " You're going to help me, Guy ? " she asked, 
 her voice sharp with alarm. 
 
 Guy gently released himself and walked to the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 " Of course I'm going to help you," he assured her. 
 
 " I can never go back to father," said Sabina. 
 
 " You must come to London," Guy decided. 
 " I will find you something to do." 
 
 Sabina's heart sank curiously. She had not 
 deliberately thought of marriage ; but, now that 
 he indicated a solution which flung her upon the 
 world, she realised that she had expected more. 
 She had turned to Guy instinctively for protection. 
 He was her absolute security against the pointing 
 finger. She felt that she could not again bear to 
 lose sight of him. 
 
 " Don't send me away, Guy," she pleaded. 
 
 " But, Sabina," said Guy, " you will be quite 
 all right in London." 
 
 " Don't send me away." 
 
 " But what am I to do ? " 
 
 " Couldn't we be married, Guy? " she asked. 
 
 She did not look at him. He measured her need 
 of him by the extent to which she had humbled 
 herself. He saw in her face no longer the physical 
 mask through which feeling peeps now and then. 
 It expressed her in every lineament, and its ex- 
 pressiveness gave it a beauty beyond mere good 
 looks.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 81 
 
 Guy saw only her pain, and he saw it with the 
 knowledge that he alone was her physician. 
 
 " Ought we to marry, Sabina ? " It was all he 
 could say for the moment. 
 
 " Don't you care for me any more ? " she asked. 
 
 " I have never cared for anyone as I care for 
 you." 
 
 He could not say less. He had never before 
 touched a human life so closely. No one had ever 
 been so real to him as Sabina, or had moved him 
 so deeply. And yet he would never have sought 
 her again if she had not called him. 
 
 He walked restlessly from side to side of the 
 room. There was a silence, which lasted until 
 Sabina could bear no longer the uncertain issue. 
 She caught at him as he passed. The action 
 lifted her from her chair, and almost brought her 
 to her knees. 
 
 She clung to him in a panic. 
 
 " Guy, I don't care how it is, but let me stay 
 with you." 
 
 She continued to plead intolerably, as though 
 nothing could stop her, asking Guy to remain with 
 her, even though he didn't marry her. 
 
 Guy broke from her again. 
 
 " Let me think, Sabina/ he said 
 
 He went to the window and stared out into the 
 road He never once thought of taking Sabina 
 upon any terms but marriage. She could not really 
 face the alternative she had suggested. In the 
 closed room with its problem wh.ch could not be 
 denied or postponed he again felt the sensation of 
 being trapped 
 
 He turned away from the window, Sabina was
 
 82 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 looking towards him. Her face was stained with 
 weeping. She had lost the flush of her entreaty, 
 and sat forlorn as if for judgment. Her eyes 
 enquired of him whether he would be merciful. 
 
 Guy could no longer endure it. 
 
 He lost all sense of his predicament and went 
 towards her. A tenderness beyond pity overcame 
 every other emotion in him. He took her face 
 between his hands and kissed her, and Sabina 
 knew that he had consented. She collapsed awk- 
 wardly beside him, and lay there stifling the com- 
 punction which at once rebuked a security she 
 had so hardly won. 
 
 3 
 
 They arranged to be married within the lawful 
 period by special licence at Abingdon. Sabina 
 purchased all that was necessary for herself out of 
 her savings. Guy paid a hasty visit to London to 
 bring away some of his personal effects and to 
 raise some money. 
 
 On the night before their wedding they dined 
 together in the rooms which Guy had taken at 
 Abingdon and discussed the arrangements for the 
 next day. They tacitly avoided all reference to 
 the deeper implications of the step they were 
 taking. They discussed clothes and trains, and 
 petty cash. But behind all this was a persistent 
 questioning each of the other and of the mind 
 within. The breach of their old relationship had 
 left much that was unexpressed and unfinished 
 between them, and the new relationship was not 
 yet warm.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 83 
 
 At last Sabina rose to go. As Guy made ready 
 to accompany her she stood by the open window. 
 The warm spring air blew a fine spray of hair 
 across her eyes. The street was quick with light 
 and desultory voices. Guy turned out the lamp, 
 and called to her that he was ready ; she turned 
 towards him and his eye was caught by the line of 
 her throat and lifted chin in the light of the window. 
 
 He went impulsively to her and stood near. It 
 was his first instinctive movement towards her. 
 
 She began to speak, hesitated, and then said : 
 ' Try not to feel strange with me, Guy." 
 
 " I suppose everybody feels strange," Guy 
 answered. 
 
 They stood together, almost content, by the 
 window. A couple walked beneath them, and, 
 unaware that they were overlooked, paused in the 
 street a moment and kissed. Guy and Sabina 
 looked at one another and smiled, each remember- 
 ing how they had often kissed in just that passing 
 way. The incident coloured their thoughts as 
 they walked home, and that night Guy, for the 
 first moment since he had decided to marry Sabina, 
 had only half an eye for the life in London out of 
 which he had been called to this other world of 
 cheap lodgings and registrars and luggage labels. 
 The future was kinder now and less mysterious. 
 
 4 
 
 The next morning Guy and Sabina were lost in 
 the formalities of their official marriage, the paying 
 of bills, and the fluster of a late dash for the train. 
 They were going to Lynmouth in Devonshire.
 
 84 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 During the long hours of the journey, Guy, who 
 was a bad traveller, and Sabina, who had never 
 travelled at all, were largely taken up with the 
 mere adventure of proceeding from one place to 
 another. They were not alone in their carriage, 
 and had no chance for conversation. Guy looked 
 at the girl who had become his wife almost with a 
 kind of astonishment. He was married. That 
 girl with the pale face and brilliant eyes, who lay 
 back in the opposite corner of the carriage, was 
 now intimately his before the whole world. Aunt 
 Helen and Theodore and Marian would know about 
 it. They who had loved in the quiet lanes and 
 woods, and had been so grateful for the darkness 
 which had made them safe, were on their way to 
 a hotel where they would go openly to the same 
 room and remain together. The contrast brought 
 back to Guy, more vividly than the incident of 
 the night before, their love of the previous year ; 
 and more and more often as he looked towards 
 Sabina he became involved in the old emotions. 
 His sense of her beauty returned and became the 
 intense preception of the lover confronted with a 
 baffling perfection. 
 
 Recovering the sense of her beauty he began to 
 realise more intimately what she must have 
 suffered. She turned to him occasionally with a 
 questioning look, almost intolerable, as of someone 
 utterly dependent and wondering whether she was 
 really secure at last. He remembered portions of 
 her story. She had contemplated marriage with 
 a fellow whose conduct sufficiently declared his 
 grossness. This grossness was accentuated in
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 85 
 
 Guy's mind by contrast with the fragility of the 
 intended victim, and by his memory, now thor- 
 oughly restored, of her abnormal sensibility. Had 
 they been alone he must, on interrupting one of 
 her questioning looks, have taken her in his arms, 
 obeying an impulse in which many different 
 feelings met and reinforced one another. 
 
 5 
 
 They arrived at Lynmouth late in the evening. 
 Guy took only one brief glance at their room and 
 came downstairs to order dinner. 
 
 After dinner they rambled for a while up the 
 valley and sat where the river broke into rapids, 
 and the wooded hills narrowed upon the water. 
 It was the first time they had been alone since the 
 previous evening, and for a long while they were 
 silent. 
 
 " It's beautiful here, Guy," said Sabina at 
 last. 
 
 Guy, who had been looking at her face, slightly 
 upraised, so that she could see the sharp line of 
 the trees against the sky, turned to inspect the 
 landscape. It was rather like a stage setting. 
 There were rocks and a cascade and an absurdly 
 round moon coming up over the opposite hill. 
 There was even a nightingale, and the last house 
 in the valley was thatched and displayed a garden 
 of hollyhocks and roses. 
 
 He did not answer Sabina, but took her hand, 
 drawn to her rather than estranged by her simple 
 delight. For something to say, and because he 
 was so sensitive now to the least impression she
 
 86 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 made on him, he remarked upon the smoothness 
 of her hand. 
 
 " I haven't done any work for a fortnight," she 
 said. 
 
 Shortly after they walked back to the hotel and 
 Sabina went upstairs. 
 
 Guy played awhile on the hotel piano. The 
 drawing room was empty, and the piano was good. 
 He played because he was unable to be idle. At 
 one moment he felt as though he had challenged 
 the world ; then he felt rather like a schoolboy 
 doing something of which he knew the authorities 
 would disapprove. The authorities, however, were 
 all in London, and this was Devonshire. It was 
 odd to think of Aunt Helen and Marian sitting 
 now in the drawing room at Fern Cottage. He 
 was playing a gavotte by Bach, a favourite with 
 Marian. He got up restlessly and shut the piano. 
 Somehow this all seemed unreal, and he could not 
 quite believe it. He would not have been surprised 
 if Aunt Helen had suddenly walked into the room 
 and wanted to know what on earth he was doing, 
 standing there alone as though he were waiting 
 for something. 
 
 6 
 
 Sabina was sitting by the window of their room 
 when he went upstairs. The moon, less absurd 
 now that it had fully risen, was shining hard, and 
 there was no other light. Guy went and sat near 
 her. By the side of the hotel a stream fell noisily 
 from the hill to meet the river. 
 
 Guy felt Sabina 's hand upon his sleeve, and 
 turned to her.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 87 
 
 " Guy, dear, what are you thinking of ? " 
 
 Her eyes had the questioning look which he 
 hated to see, and the impulse to take her into his 
 arms, which he had previously been compelled to 
 check, overpowered him. For a while they clung 
 together. 
 
 She pressed close to him, hurting herself against 
 the roughness of his coat ; then he felt her tension 
 relax and she allowed herself simply to be held. 
 
 " I feel so safe," she said at last. " It's like 
 going to sleep in the morning when you've had a 
 nightmare, and you daren't shut your eyes in the 
 dark. The light begins to come into the room, 
 and you needn't watch any more." 
 
 She went on again after a while : " I'm an awful 
 coward, Guy. Do you remember how frightened 
 I was when we used to be together. I could never 
 love you properly ; I could never forget that some- 
 thing dreadful might happen at any moment. 
 You used to be quite angry with me sometimes." 
 
 She was silent a while, and then added suddenly : 
 " I wish we were together to-night for the first 
 time." 
 
 "Why, dear? " 
 
 " It would mean so much more to you if it were 
 the first time." 
 
 Hours later Guy was awake and looking at 
 Sabina. She had about her the warm charm of 
 a happy sleeper whose senses are drawing deeply 
 upon nature for refreshment and renewal. She 
 had revealed herself to him as never before. For
 
 88 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the first time, without one thought aside, she had 
 lived only in the moment, and she had loved him 
 with a kind of desperation. There was in her love 
 a jealousy of the past and of the future ; of all 
 that had been, or might be again.
 
 BOOK II.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 i 
 
 ABOUT a fortnight after their arrival in Lyn- 
 mouth Guy sat with Sabina upon a narrow 
 beach under Exmoor. It was a favourite spot. 
 It could be reached only by a long path which 
 angled interminably down the side of the cliff. 
 Here they could bathe and lie in the sun, secure 
 in the knowledge that the only possible intruders 
 could be seen at least a quarter of an hour before 
 they arrived. To people on the moors they were 
 invisible. 
 
 Sabina, who had never seen the sea before she 
 came to this beach, could never be drawn away 
 until she became too hungry to stay any longer. 
 Guy was undoing a basket in which their lunch 
 was packed. Sabina sat beside him hugging her 
 bare knees, looking out to sea where a steamer was 
 disappearing over the edge of the water. She was 
 finishing an apple. " Give me another, Guy," she 
 said, when her mouth was empty. 
 
 " The fourth," said Guy, throwing her one. 
 
 " I love apples, especially after a bathe. I 
 could eat pounds." 
 
 " How many pounds ? " 
 
 " Three pounds. I wonder where that steamer 
 is going ? I should love to go in a steamer." 
 
 " Where would you go ? " 
 
 91 a
 
 92 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " I should go everywhere, just once, to see what 
 it was like. And then I should come home and 
 have a house up on the cliff with large bay windows. 
 We would bathe every morning, and in the evening 
 we would go to Lynmouth, and you should take 
 me to the pictures or to have dinner at a table 
 d'hote. I love table d'hote. Shall I tell you some- 
 thing, Guy ? " 
 
 " You're always telling me something." 
 
 " I was awfully afraid of table d'hote at first. 
 It's really a bit awkward, having to dig into a dish 
 which a person is holding in one hand. And when 
 the lobster came I didn't know what to do. So I 
 didn't have any. I was most annoyed when I 
 saw you take a claw in your fingers. I love 
 lobster." 
 
 Guy was unwrapping various parcels and spread- 
 ing their contents upon a flat rock half submerged 
 in the sand. " Go on talking," he said. 
 
 " Now you're sarcastic," protested Sabina. 
 
 "I'm not sarcastic," said Guy. " I like you to 
 go on talking. You never talked before we were 
 married." 
 
 " I feel different now. I want you to know 
 everything about me." 
 
 " I'm glad you don't really dislike lobster," said 
 Guy. " It would worry me if you did." 
 
 " Do you remember how we used to quarrel 
 before we were married ? " asked Sabina. 
 
 " Sometimes." 
 
 " We quarrelled about nothing at all. Do 
 you remember how we quarrelled once about 
 beer ? "
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 98 
 
 Guy remembered it very well, and for a while 
 Sabina was silent. 
 
 " I hope they've put some beer in the basket," 
 she added suddenly. 
 
 " Here it is," said Guy. 
 
 " We shall never quarrel again," said Sabina. 
 " Never. Do you think we shall, Guy ? " 
 
 " Sometimes, perhaps," said Guy. " Just for 
 fun." 
 
 " We nearly quarrelled yesterday, didn't we, 
 Guy ? Do you remember ? " 
 
 "I'm not going to remember." 
 
 " I've come to the conclusion that you were 
 right," Sabina continued rather more seriously. 
 " I don't think evening dress is really immodest, 
 not when you come to consider. It depends on 
 how you've been brought up, I suppose. Do you 
 know what I was doing this morning while you were 
 waiting for me ? " 
 
 " Haven't the faintest idea." 
 
 " Well, you know the pink silk ? " 
 
 " I do. It's the one with the hooks and eyes." 
 
 " Well, I've turned the pink silk into an evening 
 blouse, Guy. Short sleeves and quite low-neck." 
 
 " Good," said Guy, pouring himself out a glass 
 of beer. " Here's to the pink silk." 
 
 Sabina drank a glass of beer at a single draught, 
 and Guy kissed her as she gasped for breath. Her 
 cheek was salt with the sea. 
 
 After lunch they sat in the sunlight, till Sabina 
 said she would bathe again. Guy protested that 
 nothing would induce him to move from his hollow 
 in the sand ; but, later, when she came to him
 
 94 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 out of the water, dripping and breathless, and 
 glistened beside him on the warm beach, he changed 
 his mind. 
 
 They remained on the beach till after tea, which 
 they made for themselves. After tea they 
 clambered up the side of the cliff and walked 
 slowly to Lynmouth, with frequent pauses to look 
 down at the sea or away to the coloured crests and 
 hollows of the moor. 
 
 " I love the sea," said Sabina ; "I shall always 
 want it after this." They were in the act of turning 
 for the last time to go down into the valley. " The 
 sea makes a person feel able to breathe," she 
 continued. " I feel now as if all the other time 
 I'd been living in a box. I shan't want to leave 
 this place." 
 
 " Why talk about leaving ? " Guy asked 
 " We've got lots of things to do before we leave.' 
 
 " What shall we do to-night, Guy ? " 
 
 " We're going to wear the pink silk." 
 
 " Is that all ? Let's do something extravagant." 
 
 " Champagne ? " Guy suggested. 
 
 " What is champagne like, Guy ? " 
 
 " My darling, it's impossible to say. You've 
 either had champagne or you haven't." 
 
 2 
 
 Guy, having fastened Sabina into the pink silk, 
 came down to the dining room a little in advance, 
 and looked for the wine waiter. The wine waiter 
 was busily engaged with a man in the far corner. 
 The man in question was long in choosing his 
 wine, but the waiter was not impatient, for this
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 95 
 
 was a gentleman who knew his business, and was 
 not merely fumbling with a wine-list. Guy looked 
 more particularly at the man who thus demon- 
 strated his superiority to the common run of eaters 
 and drinkers. 
 
 He realised with a shock that the man in question 
 was Powicke. 
 
 He decided at once to escape and warn Sabina, 
 who would be nervous upon a first meeting with 
 one of his friends. He rose to slip from the room, but 
 at this moment Powicke looked up and saw him. 
 
 Powicke was clearly only less astonished than 
 disgusted. 
 
 " I didn't expect to find you here," said Guy at 
 last. 
 
 " You may continue to stay at this hotel," Powicke 
 unexpectedly answered. " But you mustn't know 
 me. It's uncomfortable. But the cat is already 
 out and about. Everybody in London knows, 
 except Dad and the family lawyer. And Dolly 
 will probably tell them herself. She tells every- 
 body. Go back to your solitary dinner, Guy, and 
 ignore your friend for th'e rest of the evening. 
 And please turn your chair to the wall. I hate her 
 to be looking at another man when she's talking 
 to me." 
 
 Guy was too full of his own affairs to see much 
 significance in all this. As usual Powicke was 
 talking nonsense. 
 
 " Arthur," he said, " stop talking like an idiot 
 and listen. I'm not alone." 
 
 Powicke stared a moment, and was then ir- 
 radiated with smiles. Before, however, he could
 
 96 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 answer, a woman entered the room. Guy thought 
 he had never seen anybody so expensive. 
 
 " Hullo," she said at once, " Arthur's found a 
 friend." 
 
 " Dolly," said Powicke, " it's a foursome. Tell 
 me what to do." 
 
 " Well here we are, I suppose," said Dolly. 
 
 " Why not just be sociable ? " she added after a 
 pause, during which she had carefully inspected Guy. 
 
 At this moment Sabina entered the room, and 
 they all turned to look at her. Guy had not yet 
 recovered his presence of mind, or formed any 
 clear idea of his friend's position. Powicke had 
 said something about Dad and the family lawyer, 
 and here he was with a sumptuous young woman 
 honeymooning in a West Country hotel. Ap- 
 parently Powicke had caught the social epidemic 
 which had reached its height just at that time 
 he had married somebody rather bright. 
 
 Sabina bravely advanced to meet them. She 
 had never seen anyone to compare with the 
 resplendent lady in front of her. This was one of 
 Guy's superior friends. She called up her courage. 
 
 "Won't you introduce us, Guy?" she said 
 timidly, as she arrived in the circle. 
 
 " What's in a name ? " said Dolly, cheerfully. 
 " Bad habit to throw names about." 
 
 Here the waiter intervened. 
 
 " Table for four? " he suggested. 
 
 " Why not ? " said Dolly. 
 
 Guy was heard introducing his wife to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Arthur Powicke. Dolly looked at Sabina 
 with some disdain. She had decided that Sabina
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 07 
 
 was pretty. But where on earth had she bought 
 her clothes ? Dolly did not like a woman who 
 wore less than fifty guineas. Besides, this was 
 obviously one of those country mice who affected 
 a demure habit in order to make themselves per- 
 versely attractive. She thought it was bad taste 
 to play the wife on these occasions. 
 
 Powicke disliked the look of Guy's affair alto- 
 gether. Sabina seemed rather a nice girl, and 
 there was something forlorn about her. Somehow 
 it seemed a shame. And in any case it was rough 
 on Marian, to whom Guy was virtually engaged. 
 Anyhow there they all were. It was six of one 
 and six of the other, and it was no use thinking 
 about it. 
 
 There was a slight hesitation as they all four 
 stood beside the table, which the waiter was now 
 arranging for four. 
 
 "Do we cut for partners or what ? " said 
 Dolly, who somehow felt bound to lighten the 
 atmosphere. She called them impatiently to the 
 oysters, and they sat down. Guy was inwardly 
 blaming his friend for having married a chorus 
 girl. Powicke was secretly wondering how an 
 engaged bachelor came to be spending the week- 
 end with a girl who was not at all his idea of that 
 sort of a girl. Sabina was hoping that table d'hote 
 would not be too much for her this evening, and 
 that she would make a favourable impression on 
 the great lady who did not approve of introductions. 
 Dolly had decided that the only salvation of the 
 evening lay in large quantities of champagne. 
 
 Sabina had never eaten oysters before, and,
 
 98 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 having put one into her mouth, was confronted 
 with a painful situation. She swallowed it with 
 difficulty, and knew there would be yet more 
 difficulty about swallowing another. And there 
 were five confronting her. She looked across 
 towards the great lady. The great lady had eaten 
 six, and was beckoning imperiously for a further 
 supply. Sabina felt that it was somehow dis- 
 graceful to dislike oysters. She was sure that none 
 of the best people disliked them. She supposed 
 that oysters were an acquired taste, and that not 
 to have acquired it was a mark of social inferiority. 
 
 She put another oyster into her mouth. For 
 several miserable moments she struggled to deal 
 with it. Finally, with a tremendous effort, she 
 induced it to join its predecessor. In that moment 
 she knew that not to save her life would she be 
 able to swallow another. She ate brown bread 
 and butter with an air of enjoying it so well that 
 the oysters would have to wait. 
 
 " We must have lots of oysters," said Powicke 
 suddenly. 
 
 " By general request ? " he enquired, looking 
 round the flowers at Sabina's plate. 
 
 Sabina flushed and stammered : " Not for me. 
 Thank you very much." 
 
 " Don't you like them ? " Powicke asked. 
 
 " I don't think I do," said Sabina. " At least, 
 not to-night," she added hastily. 
 
 "How funny!" said Dolly, who had already 
 eaten a dozen. " To like oysters on Monday and 
 not to like them on Tuesday." 
 
 Guy came hastily to the rescue.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 99 
 
 " Varium et mutabile semper femina," he quoted. 
 
 " What's that mean ? " said Dolly. "Is it 
 something nice about your young friend, or some- 
 thing nasty about me ? " 
 
 The arrival of the champagne deflected her train 
 of thought. 
 
 Sabina was a little afraid of the champagne. 
 Would it be as difficult as the oysters ? To her 
 great joy the waiter had quietly removed her four 
 remaining ones. Her heart misgave her as she 
 raised her glass. 
 
 " Here's luck," said Dolly cheerfully. She 
 touched glasses with Arthur, and Sabina realised 
 that she also was expected to touch glasses. With 
 an excited feeling that she was acquiring the 
 etiquette of the great world, she touched with 
 Dolly and with Guy, and, feeling even more 
 privileged, touched also with Mr. Powicke. The 
 next moment she became sweetly aware that 
 champagne was not difficult to swallow. 
 
 " Seems rather a quiet place," said Dolly, 
 looking out of the window. 
 
 A few people were standing on a little bridge 
 over the rapids. There were not more than a dozen 
 persons in the dining room, and the sound of their 
 voices was covered by the noise of the water. 
 
 " The country here is beautiful," said Sabina. 
 
 Arthur looked at this increasingly enigmatic 
 girl who thought the country was beautiful. 
 
 3 
 
 An alarming idea had begun to intrude. Guy 
 had introduced the girl as his wife. Suppose it
 
 100 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 were true. Suppose he had really been introduced 
 to Mrs. Guy Reval ? 
 
 " Scenery's no good to me at all," said Dolly. 
 " But Arthur insisted upon coming here. Arthur 
 first saw me when I was a Diving Belle, and he 
 can't forget it. He's going to take me to a wonder- 
 ful beach to-morrow where I can be a Diving Belle 
 all the morning." 
 
 " That must be our beach," said Sabina. 
 
 She was wondering on what kind of social 
 occasion a great lady might appear as a Diving 
 Belle. 
 
 " I shan't mind a crowd in the least," said Dolly. 
 " I'm used to it." 
 
 By this time Guy also had begun to feel uneasy. 
 His ideas progressed with difficulty. He was 
 asking himself whether Powicke had or had not 
 said he was a married man. He could not re- 
 member. Dolly was fast becoming incredible as 
 Mrs. Powicke. She had looked at him once or 
 twice in quite a special way. He collected 
 himself. 
 
 " It's my beach, Arthur," he said. " We can't 
 share it with anybody, can we ? " he continued, 
 turning to Sabina. 
 
 " It's a nice beach," said Sabina. The cham- 
 pagne was already having some effect on her, and 
 she felt a strange need to be confidential. 
 
 " I think the sea is lovely," she added. 
 
 At this moment she intercepted one of those 
 special glances which Dolly from time to time was 
 directing towards her husband. The look raised 
 in her a slight uneasiness. Hitherto she had
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 101 
 
 attributed the great lady's way of speaking to a 
 carelessness, or possibly even a corruption, natural 
 in the higher levels of society. Sabina now began 
 to feel unaccountably hostile. At this moment, 
 however, she was distracted by the arrival of the 
 waiter, who was at her elbow handing vegetables. 
 There was a short silence. 
 
 " Been here long ? " said Arthur, whose wits 
 were now thoroughly about him. 
 
 Sabina turned to him all the more readily, owing 
 to an unmistakable chill which had come into the 
 air. 
 
 " Only a few days," she said. 
 
 " And you really like the place ? " 
 
 " I love it," said Sabina. " But I suppose any 
 place would do. You see it's our first holiday 
 together, and I've never had a holiday like this 
 before." 
 
 This speech strangely excited Dolly, who had 
 just emptied her fourth glass of champagne. 
 
 " The little white lamb ! " she exclaimed. 
 " She'll be telling us next that her father was an 
 archdeacon." 
 
 Sabina turned to her in amazement. 
 
 " Why should I say that ? " she asked. 
 
 " It's a joke," said Powicke, intervening hastily. 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Sabina, flushing. " I suppose 
 I'm stupid." 
 
 She paused, a little confused with the wine and 
 the strange feeling that something was wrong. 
 Powicke thought she might be going to cry, not 
 knowing how easily the small quiver came to hr 
 lips.
 
 102 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " It's a sort of family joke which you needn't 
 trouble to understand," he explained. 
 
 He exchanged glances with Guy. The two men 
 now realised the position. It was one without pre- 
 cedent, and neither of them knew what to do. 
 For Sabina it would be clearly disconcerting to 
 discover that she had been so grossly mistaken, 
 and they both instinctively desired to protect her. 
 Meanwhile Dolly was still drinking champagne, and 
 it was becoming more and more impossible to live 
 up to Sabina's conception of her social position. 
 Powicke, who remembered that Dolly in her cups 
 was quarrelsome, saw himself very shortly explain- 
 ing things to Mrs. Reval. 
 
 " You see, I thought we were all in the same 
 boat," he imagined himself saying. " I hadn't 
 the least idea you were really married to your 
 husband." 
 
 It did not seem a very happy explanation. 
 
 The waiter again came to the rescue. 
 
 "Asparagus ! " Powicke exclaimed, with immense 
 heartiness. " They are doing us particularly well 
 here." 
 
 " I love table d'hote," said Sabina over the brim 
 of her glass. " You never know what's coming 
 next." 
 
 " The asparagus is just right," said Guy. 
 
 " I can't fiddle with that stuff," said Dolly. 
 " It's like trying to pick a ham bone hanging at 
 the end of a string with your hands tied." 
 
 1 What a funny thing to do," laughed Sabina. 
 
 " It's not done in the best circles, I understand," 
 said Dolly, falsetto.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 108 
 
 Sabina flushed under a sense that offence was 
 intended, though she did not know how or why 
 it should be. 
 
 " I once tried to eat an apple that way," said 
 Powicke, breezily. 
 
 " And what happened ? " Guy asked, casting 
 about for an excuse to break up the party. 
 
 " I lost the bet," said Powicke. 
 
 "That was very wrong of you," said Dolly, with 
 a horrible gravity. ' What would the archdeacon 
 say? " 
 
 Dolly, having passed the asparagus, was playing 
 with a rose, which she had taken from her waist. 
 After coquettishly nibbling the stalk, she leaned 
 across the table and began to draw imaginary lines 
 with the bitten end of it upon either side of Guy's 
 nose. She paused for a moment in this pastime, 
 and looked pointedly at Sabina. 
 
 Sabina, still in the grip of her original miscon- 
 ception, looked speechlessly towards her inter- 
 locutor, and answered with a quiver : 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
 Dolly looked resentfully at Powicke, whose 
 evident wish to protect Sabina annoyed her. 
 
 " Arthur," she said, " explain to the lady? " 
 
 " Same old family joke," said Powicke miserably. 
 
 " But not in my family," said Dolly, now a 
 little uncertain of her utterance. " There's never 
 been an archdeacon in my family." 
 
 4 
 
 Her own glass being empty, she reached across 
 and took the glass belonging to Guy. On drinking
 
 104 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 she looked at him over the rim in a way that Sabina 
 could no longer mistake. It illumined the whole 
 situation. Her instinct leaped at the relationship 
 between Powicke and the woman confronting her, 
 and in a moment she perceived the absurdity of 
 her former delusion. 
 
 The room swayed for a moment about her. 
 
 There seemed to be nothing at which to catch 
 for safety. She rose from her chair. 
 
 It appeared as though she had been the object 
 of an intentional humiliation ; but jealousy came 
 first. She had never felt it before. It was like 
 a physical pain. 
 
 " How dare you look at my husband like that ? " 
 she said in a low voice. 
 
 " Sabina, dear," said Guy, rising at once. 
 " There has been a mistake. We mustn't make a 
 scene." 
 
 " Scene ? " said Dolly contemptuously. " Do 
 you call this a scene ? " 
 
 Sabina's jealousy had flared itself out. She saw 
 now only that she had been allowed to associate 
 on equal terms with a light woman. Without a 
 word she turned to go. Guy moved towards her ; 
 but she went blindly out of the room. It all 
 happened so quickly that none of the people at the 
 other tables noticed anything unusual. 
 
 Dolly, who was about to demonstrate what a 
 scene was really like, looked in amazement after 
 Sabina as she went out. Turning to Powicke she 
 saw that he was looking at Guy, and that both 
 of them were really upset. 
 
 " Sorry, Guy," Powicke was saying. " You'd
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 105 
 
 better go and clean up the mess. I shan't be 
 here to-morrow." 
 
 " What's all this about ? " said Dolly. 
 
 Powicke explained it to her, while Guy was on 
 his way upstairs, but Dolly was not impressed. 
 Her view, put with some asperity, was that the girl 
 ought not to have married the young man, and that 
 worse things would happen to them than dinner 
 with a Diving Belle. Arthur thought anxiously 
 about his friend for quite five minutes. Then he 
 ordered some more champagne and decided that 
 it was a man's first duty, in this complicated world, 
 to manage his own affairs. 
 
 5 
 
 Guy found Sabina stretched on the bed, wildly 
 lamenting. She rejected all his attempts to com- 
 fort her, and he was at last reduced to sitting 
 foolishly beside her while she afflicted herself by 
 dwelling on all the implications. She talked 
 between fits of sobbing and then relapsed, only to 
 take up the burden again when she was sufficiently 
 recovered. She saw the incident from the outside, 
 and her own share in it as something dramatically 
 pitiful. She was sometimes strangely clear in her 
 perception of the significance of the things which 
 happened to her. This clarity (as of a spectator 
 seeing things at a distance) added poignantly to her 
 capacity for self -distress. 
 
 " Why didn't you warn me, Guy ? You must 
 have known." 
 
 " It was quite a natural mistake, dear. I 
 didn't know myself till the end."
 
 106 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " What must your friend have thought ? " she 
 burst out afresh. " He must have thought I was 
 the same as her. You oughtn't to have allowed 
 it, Guy letting me sit down with a person like 
 that." 
 
 Her wounded gentility smarted under the lash. 
 
 " I'll never forgive you, Guy. You ought to 
 have told me at once. It was cruel." 
 
 There was another pause. 
 
 " I can never face any of your friends after this," 
 she cried. 
 
 " Nonsense," said Guy. " Sabina, darling, do be 
 reasonable." 
 
 " How can I possibly meet them ? The story 
 will be everywhere." 
 
 " Sabina, dear, Arthur won't say a word." 
 
 " It's too good a story to lose." 
 
 " Sabina," said Guy almost angrily, " don't 
 torment yourself in this way. Nothing at all has 
 happened really." 
 
 But Sabina in her heart knew better ; and, of 
 the two, she was perhaps the wiser. For the first 
 time the problem of their misalliance had intruded. 
 It had intruded suddenly and absurdly, but it 
 could not be laughed away. 
 
 Guy, as he argued against his wife's distress, felt 
 the presence of something intricately disconcerting. 
 Meanwhile he praised and comforted her. He 
 reminded her how his friend had liked her, and 
 evidently wished to protect her when the position 
 had become clear. He pointed out that he, too, 
 had been mistaken. 
 
 Finally, Sabina allowed herself, exhausted with
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 107 
 
 weeping, to be soothed, though she could not be 
 convinced. 
 
 She slept at last ; but Guy could feel that, now 
 and then, she was shaken unconsciously with a 
 sob, which broke from her heavily, as a wave breaks 
 long after the storm has spent itself.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 i 
 
 GUY did not send word of his marriage to Aunt 
 Helen until within three days of his return to 
 London. He wrote quite briefly that he had 
 married a country girl. He had married her in 
 some haste, because she was unhappy at home, 
 and had run away from her father. They had 
 gone to Devonshire for a short holiday, and he 
 would bring his wife to Hampstead as soon as they 
 returned to London. In a postscript he asked 
 Aunt Helen to tell Marian. 
 
 " Now I know why he borrowed fifty pounds," 
 said Aunt Helen, as she read the letter. 
 
 She wondered what Guy might mean by a 
 country girl. She tried to hope it was not 
 quite as bad as it seemed. At the best, it 
 was bad enough. He had put Marian into a 
 postscript. 
 
 At that moment Marian was finishing a set of 
 tennis with Theodore. Aunt Helen could see them 
 playing through her window. She so hated to tell 
 her niece what had happened that she almost 
 decided to say nothing until the married pair had 
 actually arrived in London. A moment's reflection 
 caused her to realise that this might involve too 
 painful a surprise. Marian ought to have time to 
 prepare herself. 
 
 108
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 109 
 
 The game was soon finished, and the players 
 came into the room. 
 
 "Any post? " asked Marian, looking at the letter 
 in Aunt Helen's hand. 
 
 " There's nothing for you, dear," said Aunt 
 Helen. 
 
 Marian went away to change for dinner. Aunt 
 Helen knew why she had asked for letters. Nothing 
 had come from Guy since he had suddenly gone 
 away, over three weeks ago. 
 
 " Can you dine with us to-night, Theo ? " Aunt 
 Helen inquired. 
 
 " I was hoping to do so," said Theodore. 
 
 " Haven't you heard from Guy yet ? " he said 
 a moment later. 
 
 "Why do you ask? " 
 
 " Well, for one thing, Guy said nothing to 
 Henderson about going away, and there have been 
 some important concerts. He ought to have asked 
 for leave." 
 
 He meditated a moment, and added cheerfully : 
 " He can't stay away much longer. He hadn't a 
 penny when he left. I had to lend him ten 
 pounds." 
 
 " Unfortunately," said Aunt Helen, " I lent him 
 fifty." 
 
 " Good gracious," said Theodore, " that may 
 last him a couple of months, with care." 
 
 Aunt Helen smiled grimly. 
 
 " It won't last nearly as long as that, my dear 
 boy. There are two of them." 
 
 " What do you mean by two of them ? " 
 
 " What does it usually mean ? "
 
 110 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Theodore thought of Marian, and flushed angrily. 
 
 " But he's as good as engaged." 
 
 " He's more than engaged," said Aunt Helen. 
 " He's married." 
 
 Aunt Helen handed him Guy's letter. 
 
 Theodore read it with an increasing indignation. 
 When he came to the postscript he threw the letter 
 violently on the table. 
 
 " Does Marian know ? " he inquired. 
 
 " Not yet," Aunt Helen replied. 
 
 2 
 
 Half way through dinner the mail brought in a 
 later post. As a family they were remarkably 
 fond of letters, and the posts were always handed 
 round as soon as they arrived. There was a 
 picture postcard for Marian with a view of the 
 waterfall at Lynmouth. 
 
 " From Guy," she announced, as though it were 
 of little consequence. " He's coming home almost 
 at once." She looked at it again for a moment. 
 
 " What does he mean by this ? " she asked. 
 " He says : ' Coming home in a day or so. This 
 is a lovely place. Wish you could have been here 
 to see it in this glorious weather. Aunt Helen 
 will have told you my news.' Have you had 
 any news, Auntie ? " 
 
 There was a short silence. 
 
 " I had some news just before tea," said Aunt 
 Helen at last. " But I thought it could wait." 
 
 Marian had spent several weeks anxiously 
 wondering why Guy should suddenly have left her 
 at a moment when their friendship seemed about
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 111 
 
 to ripen into something closer. Enough had passed 
 between them to make his conduct appear both 
 inconsequent and unkind. It almost amounted to 
 downright infidelity, especially when he did not 
 write. She now feared the worst without being 
 able to conceive what the worst might be. She 
 looked steadily at Aunt Helen. 
 
 "This means, I suppose, that your news is bad? " 
 
 " I still think it can wait until after dinner," 
 said Aunt Helen. 
 
 Marian was both too proud and too frightened 
 to press for further information. Dinner was 
 quickly finished. Conversation turned for refuge 
 to the impertinence of Aunt Helen's parlour-maid, 
 who had given notice. 
 
 Marian had put an advertisement in the Morning 
 Post for a new one. 
 
 After dinner Theodore remained with his coffee 
 in the dining room. Aunt Helen took Marian into 
 the drawing room, where they had coffee outside 
 the open window. 
 
 When the maid had withdrawn, Aunt Helen 
 handed Marian her letter from Guy. Marian read 
 it, and, without making any comment, sat looking 
 into the garden. Aunt Helen wondered exactly 
 how much it was costing her niece to sit so stedfastly 
 and look so long at the flowers which she did not see. 
 
 " I wonder what she is like ? " said Marian at last 
 
 Aunt Helen realised that Marian desired the 
 affair to be treated without reference to its more 
 sensitive implications. 
 
 " We must be prepared for the worst," she said. 
 ' Something stout and strapping, with a burr."
 
 112 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Marian was recalling what Guy had said to her 
 on the hill at Hampstead. There had been a girl 
 at Oxford, but he had assured her that this affair 
 was at an end. He certainly had not intended to 
 get married when last they had talked together. 
 
 Aunt Helen, somewhat staggered by Marian's 
 quiet reception of the news, broke into her re- 
 flections. 
 
 " Did you know anything at all about this ? " 
 
 " No, Auntie. At least " Marian paused. 
 
 " Then you did know something? " 
 
 " I knew there had once been a girl, but Guy 
 told me that it was all over. He no longer cared 
 for her. I'm sure he was telling me the truth." 
 
 " How long ago was this ? " 
 
 " I think he was still seeing her quite recently." 
 
 " And suddenly he has married her," said Aunt 
 Helen. 
 
 The two women looked at one another. There 
 is only one superlatively good reason why a man 
 marries a woman for whom he has ceased to care. 
 Marian suddenly felt the need to be alone, where 
 the sickness at her heart would be beyond reach of 
 betrayal. 
 
 " I'm going to my room, Auntie," she said with 
 a kind of cold defiance. " You are not to come 
 to me. I want to be alone." 
 
 She kissed her Aunt good night and went away. 
 
 Her thoughts during the night wandered from 
 one bitter alternative to another. At one moment 
 she hoped that Guy had been forced into this 
 marriage. That at least left her reason to suppose 
 that his last impulse towards herself was not wholly
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 an illusion. But the squalor of such an episode 
 revolted her ; she hated to think of Guy as miser- 
 ably entrapped. She even preferred the other 
 alternative of a marriage by inclination. He must 
 have yielded to that old attraction which once 
 before had carried him away from her. 
 
 Marian would admit no jealousy. She hid from 
 herself its bitter presence, and her mind darted for 
 escape to any other aspect of the problem than that 
 of her own bereavement. She dwelt most hope- 
 fully on the passage in Guy's letter in which he 
 briefly stated that his wife had been unhappy at 
 home. This gave a touch of Quixotry to the enter- 
 prise, something she could understand and applaud 
 in Guy without being required to forfeit to the 
 girl he had rescued all claim to his heart. 
 
 3 
 
 Two days later, in the afternoon, Guy arrived 
 with Sabina at Waterloo. Since the catastrophic 
 evening at Lynmouth they had wandered from 
 place to place, finally entraining for London at 
 Seaton in East Devon. No further mention had 
 been made of the meeting with Powicke, but the 
 memory of it lay between them. Guy had thought 
 once or twice of making humourous allusions to the 
 incident ; but he was beginning to be aware that 
 he did not know Sabina well enough to take any 
 liberties with her pride. 
 
 From Waterloo Guy took Sabina to his rooms in 
 Hampstead. He had ascertained that his landlady 
 would accommodate them both until he could find 
 other quarters.
 
 114 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Sabina was excited by her first arrival in London 
 and the drive home. Nevertheless she could not 
 avoid a sinking of the heart. She would have to 
 meet Guy's people, including that cousin of whom 
 she was already prepared to be jealously appre- 
 hensive. 
 
 They had tea in Guy's rooms. It seemed very 
 quiet and domestic after their hotel life. This was 
 where they would have to settle down. They 
 talked at random to cover the fact that they were 
 thinking of the introductions which lay before 
 them. 
 
 At Fern Cottage, as the parlour-maid had just 
 departed, and the new parlour-maid engaged by 
 post had not yet arrived, Guy rang the bell in vain. 
 He decided to take Sabina round by the garden 
 door. The drawing-room windows were open, but 
 no one was to be seen. He told Sabina to sit down, 
 and said he would run upstairs to find somebody. 
 
 "Aren't we expected?" Sabina asked, a little 
 fearfully. 
 
 " Not at any particular time," Guy answered. 
 " I said we should come along in a few days." 
 
 " Let's wait here," said Sabina. " Somebody's 
 sure to come soon." 
 
 " Stuff," said Guy. " We'll get it over." 
 
 4 
 
 He left her sitting on the edge of the chester- 
 field looking strangely small and prim. She had 
 put on the coat and skirt she had bought especially 
 for London. She wanted to call Guy back. She 
 looked round on the flowers and picture* and
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 115 
 
 chintzes, and thought how unattainably nice they 
 all were. 
 
 Suddenly she heard a key in the lock of the front 
 door. The front door was opened and closed, and 
 steps approached the room where she sat. She 
 looked at the open door with a kind of scared and 
 respectful attention. 
 
 She divined it was Marian as soon as she saw 
 her enter. She rose from the chesterfield in a 
 sudden agony of deference, longing to hear Guy 
 upon the stairs. She perceived that Marian was 
 surprised to see her there. Then she realised that 
 Marian was welcoming her in a curiously impassive 
 way, and inquiring whether she had come straight 
 from the station. Would she like to have some 
 tea, or be shown at once to her room ? 
 
 ' We were expecting you yesterday," Marian 
 was saying. " Our other maid has already 
 gone." 
 
 When Guy came into the room a moment later 
 he noticed that Sabina was very pale, and that her 
 eyes were painfully bright. 
 
 ' You'd better tell your cousin who I am," 
 Sabina said. " She takes me for a servant." 
 
 " What's all this," said Guy, sensing a cata- 
 strophe. 
 
 Marian had flushed with a hideous vexation. 
 The whole position was so cruelly absurd. She 
 went straight to Sabina. 
 
 " How idiotic ! " she exclaimed. " The sun 
 was in my eyes and I couldn't see a thing. We 
 were expecting a maid from the country." 
 
 " You needn't think I mind," said Sabina.
 
 116 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " It's for me to mind," said Marian. " It makes 
 me look so silly. And I wanted to make a good 
 impression." 
 
 Sabina hated Marian all the more for trying to 
 be nice. That lie about the sun in her eyes enraged 
 her, because it was so obviously designed to spare 
 her feelings. She had felt Marian deliberately 
 surveying her as she came into the room, as though 
 she were making up her mind whether she would 
 " do." 
 
 " You needn't be nice about it, thank you," 
 Sabina flashed. She turned to Guy in a burst of 
 miserable temper. 
 
 " For heaven's sake don't stand there like a post. 
 Can't you see I want to go away ? " 
 
 Marian almost flung herself between them. 
 
 " You mustn't leave us like that," she said. 
 " Please let me put right this silly mistake." 
 
 Sabina turned from them, and looked for a 
 moment out of the window. She saw herself 
 again from the outside, as when she had waited 
 for Guy in the road at Oxford, and as when she 
 had realised all the implications of the disastrous 
 incident at Lynmouth. She turned to Marian. 
 
 " You can never put this right," she said, with 
 an awful deliberation. " You have told me the 
 truth about myself. You know it is the truth, and 
 so do I." 
 
 That peculiarly uncomfortable silence fell upon 
 the room which occurs when somebody says some- 
 thing which everybody would like to contradict, 
 but which everybody knows to be true. It lasted 
 only a second, but it was fatal.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 117 
 
 " Come to my room," said Marian, ''and take 
 off your hat. I'm sure we can make friends by 
 ourselves." 
 
 Sabina turned to Guy with a questioning look. 
 Guy put his arm round her shoulder. 
 
 " Yes, dear," he said. " Go with Marian." 
 
 5 
 
 Upstairs Marian did all in her power to repair 
 her error, and she almost succeeded. Sabina 
 accepted her advances with a kind of sullen 
 curiosity. 
 
 " This," she thought, " is how ladies behave 
 when they are sorry." 
 
 Marian did not allude again to the incident in 
 the drawing room. She praised the hat Sabina 
 was wearing, and frankly admired her prettiness. 
 She talked of Guy as women talk of a man whom 
 they like, and have a right to discuss with domestic 
 familiarity, and in talking of Guy she delicately 
 assumed that Sabina must really know more about 
 him than anyone else. 
 
 " I feel almost jealous," said Marian with the 
 audacity which conceals a secret by exposing one 
 half of it. "Guy used to be rather fond of me. 
 But he wrote a letter from Devonshire about you, 
 and put me into a postscript." 
 
 A bitter little smile flickered on Sabina's 
 mouth. 
 
 She had seen a postcard on Marian's dressing 
 table with a picture of the fall at Lynmouth where 
 she had often rested with Guy ; and in Guy's 
 enormous hand she had read : " Wish you could
 
 118 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 have been here to see it in this glorious weather." 
 
 Guy and Sabina spent the evening at Fern 
 Cottage with Aunt Helen, who came in later, and 
 with Marian. They encouraged Sabina to talk of 
 her holiday, and laid plans for finding a little house 
 somewhere in Hampstead. But Sabina hardly 
 talked at all. She was divided between admiration 
 and distrust. She was so obviously the object of 
 a beautiful deceit. 
 
 She thought Aunt Helen was the kindest person 
 she had ever met, but she must surely have heard 
 about the parlour-maid, and her apparent un- 
 consciousness of anything amiss savoured of con- 
 spiracy. It did not improve the position for 
 Sabina that the real parlour-maid had by this time 
 appeared. Sabina noted that the real parlour-maid 
 was infinitely " ladylike." The real parlour-maid 
 even corrected her table manners ; for, as she was 
 in the act of putting salad among her peas and 
 potatoes, the adjacent salad plate was gently 
 insinuated upon her notice. 
 
 After Guy and Sabina had gone home, Aunt 
 Helen and Marian stayed up late discussing what 
 had happened. 
 
 " In a way," said Marian, " it was a tragedy, 
 my coming in like that, but at least I know why 
 he married her. I felt for her as one feels for a 
 pretty child or animal that has been hurt. I felt 
 it all the more as I knew it was almost impossible 
 to stroke her without being scratched." 
 
 " If I were a man," said Aunt Helen, " I should 
 love her for three weeks and then I should want 
 to put her out of her misery. Meanwhile it is oui
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 119 
 
 duty to civilise her. It will be a difficult business, 
 and I really don't know what to do." 
 
 " We must ask Theodore about it," said Marian. 
 
 6 
 
 That evening Guy, sitting with Sabina in their 
 room, feared a repetition of the scene at Lyn- 
 mouth. But Sabina was strangely quiet. She 
 was, indeed, absent and thoughtful to such a de- 
 gree that Guy was moved to bring her into touch 
 with him. 
 
 " Tell me," he said, after a long silence, " what 
 do you think of them ? " 
 
 " They did their best," said Sabina. 
 
 " And that stupid affair doesn't matter ? " 
 
 "I'm trying to forget it," said Sabina, " if 
 you'll only let me." 
 
 Guy did not feel encouraged to continue. After 
 a while Sabina said suddenly : " I suppose you're 
 very fond of your cousin." 
 
 " We're great friends." 
 
 " You wrote to her while we were at the sea." 
 
 " A postcard," said Guy. 
 
 " You said you wished she were there." 
 
 " Did I say that ? " 
 
 " You know you did." 
 
 " I wished she could have seen th place." 
 
 " I didn't want anybody else," said Sabina. 
 
 " Nor did I really," said Guy. 
 
 " You wanted her to see the place, and yet you 
 didn't want her to be there," said Sabina. 
 
 " I thought of Marian, and wished she could be 
 as happy as I was."
 
 120 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " That was very nice of you," said Sabina. 
 
 He went quickly to her side. 
 
 " Darling," he said, " you know I only wanted 
 you." 
 
 She looked up at him, and something in her look 
 caused him to lose all control of himself. Love 
 and fear and resentment and a pain which affected 
 him almost like a physical wound were in her eyes. 
 He kissed her and his speech became mere endear- 
 ment incoherent, absurd, ungoverned. 
 
 It was the best consolation he could bring. She 
 lay a while in his arms, and then, gripping him 
 fast, said that as long as he loved her nothing else 
 could matter.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 i 
 
 A FEW days after his arrival in London Guy went 
 to the Temple to find his brother. He had 
 waited for Theodore to make a sign, but Theodore 
 had hardened his heart. 
 
 Without any preface or previous allusion to his 
 marriage, Guy said suddenly : 
 
 " You must come and see her, Theo." 
 
 " Was this the girl you met at Oxford ? " 
 Theodore briefly inquired. 
 
 " Yes," Guy admitted. 
 
 " Why have you married her ? " 
 
 " She was unhappy." 
 
 " Anything else ? " 
 
 " I care for her tremendously." 
 
 Theodore got up and walked about the room. 
 He wanted to make his brother see the position 
 as he saw it. But he could say nothing to the 
 point without involving Marian. He pulled up 
 suddenly opposite Guy and said : 
 
 " Where are you going to live ? " 
 
 " Why not Hampstead ? " 
 
 " Can you afford it ? " 
 
 " 200 from the Moderator," said Guy ; " 200 
 of my own, and pickings. I should think we might 
 run to it." 
 
 " The Moderator is uncertain," said Theodore. 
 
 121
 
 122 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " You won't keep any job long, if you go off 
 suddenly in the middle of a busy time and say 
 nothing about it." 
 
 " I never thought of that," said Guy. 
 
 2 
 
 They went out to Hampstead, where they found 
 Sabina struggling with modern books. They 
 talked for a while about the holiday in Devonshire. 
 Sabina felt more at her ease with Theodore than 
 with anyone she had so far met in the new life. 
 His serious eyes and quiet deliberate manner 
 seemed to assure her that here was a man on whom 
 she would be able to rely. She felt she could, if 
 necessary, tell him things. He had the same 
 fundamental kindness in his nature as Guy ; but 
 he seemed to suffer from none of those elfin in- 
 trusions which mocked at the heels of Guy's most 
 serious moods. 
 
 Meanwhile Theodore was assessing this tragic 
 partnership. He felt the eagerness and simplicity 
 of her nature through the preliminary awkward- 
 ness of their meeting ; and, as he answered and 
 asked questions of no consequence, he was telling 
 himself how cruelly she would suffer. 
 
 And yet he could not be angry with Guy. Guy, 
 eager that he should be favourably impressed, 
 anxiously watched the effect of all she said, and 
 was clearly delighted to see that she liked Theodore 
 from the start. Theodore thought of them down 
 by the sea, and for a moment suffered that small 
 twist of envy which the quiet people sometimes 
 feel when they realise there are heights and depths
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 123 
 
 beyond the middle levels of experience. Now and 
 then he intercepted looks between the two of them 
 speaking a celestial language. He realised that 
 they had achieved an intimacy beyond his reach. 
 And all the while he felt afraid for them. It was 
 not merely that this strange idyll did not fit in with 
 the work his brother had to do and the position he 
 hoped his brother would achieve. The relation- 
 ship itself seemed perilous. It had an intensity 
 which put it out of touch with the normal. It 
 seemed somehow to be threatened. Even the 
 maid, who announced that dinner was served in 
 the adjoining room, seemed in a way their enemy. 
 She represented the life of everyday, which for 
 them was something hostile and prohibitive. 
 
 3 
 
 Later in the evening Marian arrived. She was 
 anxious to repair her error of the day before, and 
 did all she could to start topics which for Sabina 
 were familiar and accessible. But there was 
 almost immediately apparent in Sabina's manner 
 an involuntary stiffening. She became awkward 
 and nervous ; and, when Marian steered the con- 
 versation towards country matters, Sabina was so 
 far from seizing her opportunity, that, thinking a 
 deliberate allusion to her origin was intended, she 
 said that she hated the country and wished never 
 to see it again. 
 
 Later still Powicke came to be introduced. 
 Sabina flushed when Powicke was announced, and 
 wondered at his assurance when he accepted Guy's 
 introduction as though they had never met before
 
 124 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 She felt a bitter resentment against the whole 
 company. The gentleman who had seen her at 
 Lynmouth, and had so grossly mistaken her, could 
 only be behaving nicely to her now out of kindness, 
 and, if he was acting a part, then so were the 
 others. They probably all knew about that incident 
 in Devonshire and about the parlour-maid at Fern 
 Cottage. 
 
 " They are all wondering why Guy married me," 
 she told herself. 
 
 Her share in the conversation soon became mono- 
 syllabic, and to avoid the awkwardness of long 
 silences the others were forced to talk of books, 
 and people and current affairs. 
 
 Sabina listened to this conversation with dismay ; 
 there was so much for her to learn. She felt she 
 would never be able to take part. These people 
 were all too clever for her. 
 
 She was relieved when someone proposed that 
 Guy should play. 
 
 " What shall it be," said Guy to the company 
 at large. 
 
 " Debussy," said Powicke. 
 
 Guy played the " Children's Corner." 
 
 Then somebody asked Marian to play. 
 
 " Oh she, too, can play," said Sabina to herself. 
 
 She saw that Guy warmly approved of her 
 playing ; and, when somebody suggested that they 
 should play together, a pain like the pain she had 
 felt when the woman at Lynmouth had looked at 
 Guy over the rim of her glass, suddenly surprised 
 her. 
 
 Instinctively, as they played, she divined the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 125 
 
 intimacy of feeling expressed in their performance. 
 She watched in a fascinated way the four hands 
 moving rhythmically upon the keys ; and once, 
 when their hands touched and parted on the notes, 
 she felt a curious hot flush of anger. She waited 
 for it to happen again, watching the near approach 
 of the two middle hands with a pang of physical 
 jealousy which wavered like hot iron under a 
 bellows. 
 
 She expected, when the music was finished, that 
 they would say something, or look at one another 
 in a way declaring an intimacy from which she 
 was excluded. To her surprise, however, Marian 
 rose abruptly, shut the piano with a snap, and 
 said she must be going. 
 
 Marian remembered a previous occasion when 
 Guy and she had played together in that room. 
 Guy remembered it too, and, after looking at 
 Marian for a moment rather like a child unex- 
 pectedly rebuked, turned away from her in a cloud. 
 This was not lost upon Sabina. 
 
 4 
 
 Marian's signal for departure broke up the 
 evening. 
 
 Sabina would say nothing about what had passed 
 except that she liked Guy's brother very much. 
 But, when the light was out and they lay together 
 in their room, she began to talk. She would often 
 do this. It was easier to say things just in that 
 way. Guy heard her voice coming as though from 
 nowhere, with just that suspicion of a dialect 
 (fainter now than when first he had met her) which
 
 126 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 he had almost come to love in their close times, 
 but which had begun to torment him, because it 
 tormented her, when there were other people 
 present. 
 
 " Why do you love me, Guy ? " he heard her say. 
 
 " How can I tell you that ? " he responded. 
 
 " I'm sometimes the most hateful creature," she 
 said. 
 
 " Those people to-night," she went on, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " They were trying to be kind and I detested 
 them, and when you were playing with your 
 cousin " 
 
 " Say Marian, dear." 
 
 " I will never say Marian," said Sabina. 
 
 " When you were playing with her," she con- 
 tinued, " I was jealous. It hurts horribly to be 
 jealous, but I can't help it." 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 " I hoped you would be happy to-night," said 
 Guy later on. " Theodore likes you tremendously, 
 and you are going to be great friends." 
 
 They talked of Theodore for a while. Guy told 
 her all he could about his brother ; and, when they 
 at last went to sleep, both were a little reassured 
 by the thought of him. 
 
 5 
 
 Meanwhile Theodore was smoking a pipe in his 
 rooms at the Temple. Haunted by the sensitive 
 prettiness of his brother's wife, he wondered 
 what he would do with her if she belonged to him. 
 Theodore naturally thought of people as belonging
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 127 
 
 to other people. The girl could not be much more 
 than nineteen. 
 
 He decided that he would probably have sent 
 her to school. Her inflamed sensitiveness could 
 only be overcome by allowing her gradually to 
 discover that the clever people were not half so 
 clever as they seemed. In about two years she 
 would learn that what most people know can be 
 very easily mastered. Theodore decided that he 
 would put the idea to Sabina himself. Guy would 
 certainly make a mess of it. 
 
 Theodore turned from thinking of his brother to 
 look a little sardonically at himself. He sometimes 
 felt savage with himself for being a careful man. 
 
 " I shall not marry till I'm thirty-five," he 
 reflected. " Unless I can marry with advantage," 
 he added with a sidelong smile, half whimsical and 
 half serious. " Or unless " 
 
 He paused upon a thought which had struck 
 him. Marian was free now, and there was no 
 reason why he should not try for her. Half Marian 
 was better than no Marian at all. 
 
 But why with him should it be always half, 
 whereas with Guy it was usually more than the 
 whole. And again, in thinking of Guy by the sea 
 with the girl whose face was so like a flower, and 
 who seemed alive to things in a way which shadowed 
 even Marian, he felt once more that twinge of envy 
 which was sometimes part of his affection, and 
 always a part of his anger, when faced with a crisii 
 in his brother's destiny.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 i 
 
 GUY was unable to find a house in Hampstead 
 immediately. Meanwhile he stayed with 
 Sabina in his old rooms. These were unhappy 
 weeks for them both, but especially for Sabina. No 
 worse arrangement could have been made than one 
 which left her for long hours, while Guy was about 
 his business, with nothing to do but to struggle 
 with books which at every turn convicted her of 
 a deeper ignorance ; to wait and brood over her 
 shortcomings ; or to sit apprehensive and resentful 
 with Aunt Helen or Marian and their friends, vainly 
 trying to find a common ground on which to meet. 
 The position was all the worse owing to a pretence 
 which both maintained that their love was sufficient 
 in itself. Guy came home assuming that he would 
 find her gloriously happy, and Sabina greeted him 
 as though she were happy too. They told them- 
 selves in long walks during the evening, during 
 their intimate little suppers together, and in their 
 whispered conversations at night, that they were 
 the happiest creatures alive. Sometimes they 
 believed it. At all times they tried to believe it. 
 It was a relief for Sabina sometimes to attend 
 concerts or the Opera with Guy, though the music 
 wearied her and often she could hardly endure the 
 endless succession of sounds which for her had no 
 
 12*
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 129 
 
 reason or rhyme. But she liked to dine at some 
 little restaurant in Soho, and to walk on Guy's arm 
 through the streets in the spring air, when the 
 buildings of the city glimmered as though with 
 their own light, and the lamps shone under a sky 
 still as luminous as they. At these times she was 
 gay ; and, looking with fresh eyes upon the people 
 and incidents of the street, would amuse Guy with 
 quaint comments and unexpected analogies. At 
 these moments Guy had an intimate pride in her. 
 
 " Why can't she be like this with Marian and 
 the others ? " he would think. 
 
 After the music she rarely recovered her gaiety 
 until they had got home, and she could forget that 
 the performance which had meant so much to 
 Guy had for her been incomprehensible and 
 wearisome. They had supper, with hot coffee ; 
 and, all the world being gone to bed, they would 
 sometimes scramble about the Heath together. 
 They usually passed Fern Cottage on these occa- 
 sions. Sabina felt strangely exultant as they 
 did so. She was so much alive, and the blank house 
 seemed so obviously extinguished. She liked to 
 walk under Marian's window with the restraint of 
 Guy's arm about her. She even gloried in what she 
 conceived to be the vulgarity of walking like this 
 in the street. 
 
 " She would never do anything so common," 
 Sabina thought as they passed. " But how she 
 would miss it, if she only knew." 
 
 This was her revenge for the Hampstead parties, 
 in which she experienced again, more poignantly, 
 the miseries of the evening when first she had met
 
 180 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Theodore, and Marian had joined them. These 
 parties were becoming a nightmare. The talk 
 confused her mind and even shocked her by its 
 impious freedoms. On one of these occasions 
 Theodore had rescued her from a Newnham girl 
 in a state of horror and amazement. More often 
 she felt simply stupid, and thought that nobody 
 else had ever been so stupid in the world before. 
 She would sit silently pretending to be interested 
 in her food, smiling an occasional fixed smile, 
 unable to contribute a word, and dreading to be 
 drawn into the conversation. 
 
 It was while walking home from one of these 
 Hampstead parties that Theodore first referred to 
 his plan for alleviating an impossible position which 
 was rapidly growing worse. Sabina that evening, 
 after a few shy endeavours to participate, had 
 remained sullenly silent, and had rejected every 
 effort to include her. She had made up her mind 
 that she would never come out to dinner again. 
 
 Guy was walking a little in advance, vivaciously 
 attended by a bevy of which the Newnham girl 
 was the most conspicuous member. Theodore was 
 walking behind with Sabina. He watched her face 
 as she stared at the party ahead of them. Sud- 
 denly he took her by the arm. 
 
 " In the dumps ? " he enquired, looking absurdly 
 like a father. 
 
 " I'm no good," said Sabina tragically. " I 
 sometimes wish I was dead," she added, with a 
 wicked vehemence. 
 
 ,' Stuff," said Theodore. 
 
 ,' Stuff is one of Guy's words," said Sabina, with
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 131 
 
 a hysterical laugh. " But you're not a bit like 
 Guy," she added after a pause. " Not really." 
 
 " How old are you ? " said Theodore, with ap- 
 parent irrelevance. 
 
 " Twenty next July," said Sabina. " Why do 
 you ask ? " 
 
 " I was wondering what I should do with you 
 if^I were your father," said Theodore. 
 
 Sabina looked at him in faint surprise. " What 
 would you do ? " she inquired. 
 
 " Well, to begin with," said Theodore, " I should 
 send you to school." 
 
 " But I'm grown up." 
 
 " So am I," said Theodore. " But I'm still at 
 school." 
 
 " Now you are like Guy," said Sabina. " You're 
 making fun." 
 
 " I'm not making fun," said Theodore, seriously. 
 " I'm at school learning to be a lawyer. Guy and 
 I were both of us at school less than a year ago. 
 That girl in front," he said, indicating the Newnham 
 girl, " is still at school." 
 
 " Thank you," said Sabina. " I'm not in love 
 with her. Besides, I'm married." 
 
 " No need to tell the other girls," said Theodore. 
 
 They walked on a few steps. At last Sabina 
 said, " Is this a notion you've got, or are you just 
 trying it on." 
 
 " It's a notion," said Theodore. 
 
 " I see," said Sabina, darkly. " I'm not good 
 enough." 
 
 Theodore pressed her arm as they walked. 
 
 " You left school long before you ought to have
 
 182 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 done," he said. " We must make it up to you 
 somehow. In two years you could know as much 
 as any of us, and you would discover how easy it 
 is to talk to people and be just yourself." 
 
 Sabina turned to him curiously. 
 
 Suddenly she asked, in sharp suspicion : 
 " Has Guy been putting you up to this ? " 
 
 " It's my own idea entirely," said Theodore. 
 
 At this point the others called them up for a 
 general exchange of valedictions. 
 
 2 
 
 That night Sabina spoke of Theodore's plan 
 while she was combing her hair. Her face was 
 turned from Guy, who was in bed reading a music 
 score. He was out of spirits owing to Sabina's 
 unhappiness at the party, which had been her 
 worst failure. 
 
 He had expected their day would end as it often 
 ended now. They frequently had to face such 
 evenings as this. They would pretend that nothing 
 had happened to trouble them ; but each would 
 be conscious that the other had thoughts and feel- 
 ings unconfessed and even denied. Each would lie 
 awhile, finding comfort superficial and imperfect 
 in the near presence of the other ; and then, with 
 an obscure resentment against the trouble which 
 came between them, they would sleep upon a 
 problem evaded and a disappointment unadmitted. 
 
 With these occasions, when all was ignored, there 
 alternated crises of emotion. To-night, when 
 Sabina called to Guy from where she sat at the 
 dressing table, he put down his score with a sinking
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 133 
 
 heart. He saw the old scene re-enacted. He 
 would plead and argue with Sabina, and gradually 
 he would prevail. Then she would be reconciled, 
 and they would invoke passion to cover and to 
 heal them. He saw all this in advance, and 'his 
 prevision gave it an air absurdly and monotonously 
 automatic. 
 
 He was surprised when she simply told him of 
 Theodore's suggestion that she should go to school. 
 
 " At first," she said, " I thought he was making 
 fun ; but he really meant it." 
 
 Guy thought a moment. 
 
 " It's an idea," he said at last. " But it wants 
 thinking about." 
 
 " Theodore thought about it," said Sabina. 
 
 " Good for Theodore," said Guy. 
 
 The idea was already taking root in him. He 
 wondered at what sort of school she could possibly 
 get what she wanted without being subjected to 
 exactly the same difficulties she encountered at tht 
 Hampstead parties. 
 
 " It depends on the school," he said guardedly. 
 
 " Theodore will find a school," said Sabina. 
 
 She said it like a child who has found the kind 
 of uncle who is a wonder because he only comes to 
 the house occasionally. 
 
 Guy had an absurd picture of her sitting on a 
 form, learning the dates of the kings of England 
 as a preparation for encounters with the Newnham 
 girl. The imp in him looked at the picture, and 
 smiled ; but the imp was not all. He saw the girl 
 who was his wife, happy and yet unhappy, twisting 
 her hair in little knots of blue tissue paper. She
 
 134 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 turned to him with the knots lying above her ears 
 and the two long plaits falling across her breast. 
 The imp was silenced, and the pity of it gripped 
 him viciously. The sudden meeting of the two 
 impulses was too much for his self-control. He 
 held out his hand to her. She came to him, 
 wondering at the sudden brightening in his eyes 
 and the hard clasp of his fingers ; and, when he 
 suddenly dipped his face to her knees and avoided 
 her looks, she felt his cheeks and found they were 
 wet. It was the first time Sabina had ever really 
 conceived that Guy might be as much in need of 
 comfort as she. She looked down at him with a 
 strange pleasure. She could say nothing, but 
 simply let him lie, till, without looking at her, 
 he said : " Sabina, dear, if only I could make 
 you really happy." 
 
 "I'm often a beast to you," said Sabina, with a 
 deeper relevance than was apparent. 
 
 They declared their love in the dearest words 
 they could find ; and, when the moment had passed, 
 Guy reverted almost breezily to Theodore's plan. 
 They talked about it for a long while, and for the 
 first time during many weeks they slept with a 
 quiet relief in their hearts. In one moment of 
 direct and declared feeling they had relaxed the 
 strain of emotions long ignored or denied expression.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 i 
 
 THEODORE shortly announced that he had 
 found a school. It was in Cheltenham, and 
 it was decided that Sabina should go there after the 
 summer holidays. Meanwhile they remained in the 
 Hampstead rooms, and Sabina prepared her trunk 
 for departure. Theodore overruled Guy's fears that 
 she would be lonely or out of countenance. He 
 had carefully chosen the school, and had arranged 
 for a special treatment of Sabina' s case. The 
 girls'were of a class which would not be at all formid- 
 able^for Sabina after her experience at Hampstead, 
 and the Principal had undertaken to look after her 
 personally. 
 
 The life at Hampstead remained much the same, 
 except that Sabina went to no more parties and 
 saw as little as possible of Marian and Aunt Helen. 
 Guy began a book on contemporary composers 
 which kept him busy at home. On the whole this 
 was a happy interval. The threat of separation 
 softened their relationship, and the hopeful ad- 
 venture in preparation lightened their hearts. 
 Theodore was a frequent visitor, and often brought 
 odd things for^the trunk. The trunk became an 
 institution. Guy and Sabina and Theodore would 
 stand outside Peter Robinson's or Selfridge's, and 
 one of them would say : " That would be rather a 
 
 135
 
 136 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 nice thing for the trunk, don't you think? " Then 
 they would go in. Guy would choose something, 
 and Theodore, when Guy had run short of small 
 change, which frequently happened, would pay 
 for it. 
 
 In due time the trunk was packed and Sabina 
 went from Paddington, on a sunny day in 
 September. Guy and Theodore were both in 
 attendance. They went away with a memory of 
 her sitting back in a corner seat (the trunk was 
 safely in the van), smiling wistfully as they stood 
 by the door, and for the tenth time told her of the 
 trap that was to meet her and the amount of 
 money she was to give the porter at the other end. 
 
 2 
 
 As soon as Sabina had left London, Guy moved 
 into a cottage on the borders of Sussex. Powicke 
 had told him of the cottage, which was on the 
 estate of his father, Lord Melsham, not far from 
 Tunbridge Wells. Guy could have it for nothing 
 as long as he liked, and the woodcutter's wife 
 further up the lane would look after him. The 
 quiet of the place was just what he needed. London 
 could be reached in two hours. The cottage, which 
 was called Brambletye, was not far from Old 
 Place, Lord Melsham's country seat. 
 
 Theodore, in the intervals of reading for the Bar, 
 had accepted the post of secretary to Lord Melsham, 
 and in this capacity began to frequent Old Place 
 soon after Guy had taken up his quarters at Bram- 
 bletye. It was four miles to Old Place by 
 road ; but there was an alternative path which
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 1ST 
 
 ran through the woods, and divided the journey by 
 three. 
 
 Brambletye was a pleasant cottage, timbered 
 and built in the old Kentish fashion with a high 
 tiled roof. But it was dark, and, as the nights 
 became chilly, it was cold. It lay with a stretch 
 of garden separating it from the road. The road 
 ran along the side of a hill, and was higher than the 
 cottage, so that a person standing by the road gate 
 could look in at the attic windows. The trees 
 further up the hill cut off the light. Looking from 
 the front of the cottage towards the rise of the hill 
 one could imagine that the big trees were marching 
 down, and might kick the cottage over the treetops 
 which spread from the back of it still further down 
 the slope. 
 
 The road above the cottage was the road by 
 which Theodore arrived in Lord Melsham's car 
 when he came to Old Place. Theodore often 
 passed in the late evening and saw the light in his 
 brother's window. Always he would stop and talk, 
 and often he would take Guy along with him to 
 dinner. 
 
 Guy was now deeply engaged in the book, which 
 he hoped would make some stir among the music- 
 ians ; and he was doing continually more work 
 for Henderson, though there were many things of 
 which Henderson did not approve. 
 
 One thing, especially, Henderson did not like. 
 He understood from his cashier that Guy was 
 inclined to press for his salary before the long 
 delays incident to the payment of remuneration 
 for literary services had altogether run their
 
 138 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 n.*^N8^S&** .'* 
 course. This was incompatible with the dignity 
 
 of a member of the staff. 
 
 Guy could never understand how he contrived 
 to spend his money. He could not see that he 
 spent anything at all. He lived by himself fru- 
 gally in a cottage for which he paid no rent. 
 Sabina's school fees had been paid in advance by 
 Theodore, because Theodore happened to be 
 arranging the affair. Guy had made a note of the 
 amount on the back of an envelope, which he had 
 lost. He had also made a similar note of a debt 
 to Aunt Helen. These obligations would be quite 
 easily met when he got the next big lump sum. 
 Meanwhile incidental expenses actively carried off 
 all the little lump sums which he received from day 
 to day, and the big lump sums had a way of 
 delaying their appearance until they had become 
 heavily embarrassed with charges each of which 
 claimed priority over all the others. 
 
 Among the incidental expenses was Mrs. Basing, 
 of the "Three Foresters." In the chill nights^of 
 November Guy would put dow r n his pen, and go to 
 the cheerful public-house half a mile away at the 
 cross roads. There he would drink ale ; and 
 Mrs. Basing, having drawn the ale with her own 
 jewelled hands, would take a glass of port or a 
 whisky and soda at Guy's expense. Mrs. Basing 
 had a broad vein of pleasantry which appealed to 
 Guy. Ten years ago she was beautiful. To-day 
 she was as handsome as the dentist would allow, 
 and she had a presence the aspect of which upon 
 chilly nights was comforting. When the farmers 
 of the district went to London they brought her
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 139 
 
 chocolates and cigarettes. She amused them up 
 to a point, and then she reminded them that they 
 were married men. And everybody liked her. 
 
 3 
 
 Guy was not unhappy in the temporary recovery 
 of his singleness. He liked to kick about in the 
 large tester bed of the attic ; to read books by 
 guttering candle light far into the night ; to rise 
 now and then and put his head out of the window 
 and smell the damp earth, or see what beast it 
 was crunching bones under the wall. He liked the 
 evenings at the "Three Foresters." He liked Mrs. 
 Basing with her finger rings and her broad jests, 
 her astonishing capacity for whiskies and sodas, 
 and her unfailing readiness amid the give-and-take 
 of the bar parlour. He liked his occasional visits 
 to Old Place, where he could enjoy a civilised dinner 
 all the better for its contrast with his own frugal 
 and rustic life. He liked his visits to London and 
 his occasional nights of tobacco and talk with 
 Powicke in the Hampstead rooms. He liked his 
 long hours of writing or meditation in the cottage, 
 so quiet that he could hear every creature that 
 passed in the woods. He liked to be up in the 
 dark mornings, kindling a wood fire, pottering 
 with the breakfast and frying rashers of ham. He 
 liked his occasional rides on Lord Melsham's 
 horses, and the night calls of his brother in the 
 large motor-car. 
 
 He missed Sabina, but Sabina would return. 
 He wrote to her almost every day, describing his 
 life, and he looked eagerly for her letters.
 
 140 THE HAPPY FOOL- 
 
 Her first letter was the longest she ever wrote : 
 
 My dearest, 
 
 I arrived here safely and am quite comfortable. 
 My room is very small but it is a nice room. The girls 
 are nice, but, Guy, dear, I don't think they are really 
 the sort you want me to be like. Miss Pimbury says 
 I shall not be with the girls for long. She is going to 
 make me a kind of companion. 
 
 Really, I'm not much with the girls. Miss Pimbury 
 looks after me quite a lot. I think the girls are so funny 
 when they talk about boys. They often talk about 
 boys, and I feel such a fraud being married. I feel I 
 could tell them such lots, but I only listen. They 
 think I'm very green sometimes. 
 
 It sometimes seems too funny being here after what 
 we have done. I do miss you so much. I cried a little 
 last night. 
 
 I suppose you're surprised I haven't written before. 
 But, Guy, I can't write letters. I never seem to have 
 a word to say except that I want you all the time. I 
 don't think I should like the cottage very much. 
 I hate the country, really, unless it is by the sea ; and 
 with all those trees I am sure I should feel pokey. 
 You know how I hate the trees. Fancy you cooking 
 your own breakfast. 
 
 I am learning quite a lot, though Miss Pimbury 
 doesn't bother me much about that. She says the 
 best way to learn is to talk to people, and she talks to 
 me quite a lot. She came and sat on my bed last night. 
 She looked very funny. She had on a bright pink 
 dressing gown and a night cap with lace edging. She 
 talked about a man called Ruskin. Do you know 
 anything about him, Guy ? I like Miss Pimbury 
 awfully. I've told her how ignorant I am. She says
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 141 
 
 it doesn't matter if only I can forget it. She tucked 
 me up last night and said it was a shame. I can't 
 make her out sometimes. 
 
 I wish I could kiss you good night, Guy, but then it 
 wouldn't be good night, would it ? I hope you won't 
 be angry because I haven't written before, but writing 
 seems no good when you've nothing to saj'. But you 
 must write to me even if I don't write to you. I am so 
 excited when I have a letter, that I can hardly wait to 
 read it, even when I'm with the girls. They want to 
 know who my young man is, and think I'm close be- 
 cause I wont tell. Isn't it funny, Guy ? 
 
 Now I must stop, Give my love to Theodore, and 
 tell him that Miss Pimbury liked him very much when 
 he came to see her. 
 
 Your own, 
 
 SABINA. 
 
 In December the cottage was dark in the late 
 afternoon, and the long evenings were apt to be over- 
 long. Often, when the cottage became oppressive, 
 he would walk through the wet woods to Old Place, 
 where at the door he would be greeted with light 
 and warmth, and immediate assurances of bright 
 company and good food. Henderson was some- 
 times there, and once he encountered Marian, 
 whom Theodore had introduced to Lord Melsham 
 with the happiest results. Marian was at Old 
 Place for only one week-end. She played the 
 piano with Guy by request, and they kept each 
 other well in countenance at the dinner-table. 
 But Marian avoided all intimacy with Guy, who 
 felt that the life had gone out of their friendship. 
 He resented it, and obscurely pressed her for signs 
 that nothing had altered for the worse ; but she
 
 142 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 baffled him by her very friendliness. She asked 
 continually after his work, and met him 
 halfway on all the topics that he raised. 
 
 4 
 
 One evening Guy was playing on the piano in 
 the cottage by the light of two candles in the piano 
 brackets (he had hired the piano in Tunbridge) 
 when he heard Lord Melsham's car outside. The 
 car stopped, and Guy went to the gate. The night 
 was dark, and the bare trees were only a little 
 blacker than the sky in the small open space 
 between the cottage and the road. Shading his 
 eyes from the glare of the car headlights, Guy 
 walked up the path. Theodore called to know if 
 he were there. He called back in the affirmative, 
 and hoped loudly and cheerfully that Theodore 
 would take him on to dancing and delight. He 
 reached the gate and leant over. 
 
 " Guy," said Theodore from the car, " I've 
 brought somebody to see you." 
 
 " It's dark for seeing," said Guy. 
 
 Theodore swung himself out of the car and 
 turned to help someone to alight. 
 
 A moment later Sabina stood upon the road 
 between them. 
 
 On his way to the gate Guy had savoured all the 
 pleasant associations of the big car and had enjoyed 
 in advance the quick dash to the warmth and light 
 of the house. The sudden sight of Sabina struck 
 out these comfortable visions. In their place he felt 
 a sharp anxiety and a sense that his responsibilities 
 had returned.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 148 
 
 " Sabina, dear, what on earth has happened? " 
 
 She put out her hand to him and it touched his 
 sleeve in the dark. 
 
 " Aren't you glad to see me, Guy ? " she asked. 
 
 " Give him time," said Theodore cheerfully. 
 " You've surprised him out of his life. I picked her 
 up at the station," he added for Guy's information. 
 
 Theodore's speech gave Guy time to feel the 
 effect of a little tremor in her voice when she asked 
 him if he were glad. 
 
 " Am I glad indeed ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 ' We've got a bag in the car," said Theodore, 
 diving back into the limousine. He deposited the 
 bag in the road. 
 
 " How are you off for stores, Guy ? " he enquired. 
 " Have you any sort of fatted calf ? Or shall I 
 send you some stuff down from the house ? " 
 
 " I've got enough," said Guy. 
 
 Sabina was hanging on Guy's arm with one hand. 
 Theodore squeezed the other briefly and got into 
 the car. The chauffeur drove rapidly off, and the 
 the lamps, suddenly swinging round the bend of 
 the road, left them in darkness, lit only by two 
 twinkling points of light in the cottage room. 
 
 Guy, turning away from visions of an excellent 
 dinner and much cheerful conversation over the 
 port, and (for usually now he stayed the night) 
 a comfortable retirement to bed cheered by a 
 crackling fire upon the bedroom hearth, looked at 
 the glimmering figure by his side. 
 
 " I hope I haven't frightened you, coming like 
 this, said Sabina. 
 
 " What is it, dear ? " Guy asked. " What has 
 happened ? "
 
 144 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 She did not answer him, but shivered slightly. 
 
 "Come into the cottage," said Guy, "and I will 
 light a fire ; I hadn't lit one for myself this evening ; 
 but I'll soon get it going." 
 
 He took up the bag and they went down the 
 path into the cottage. Guy shut and barred the 
 door and lit the lamp. Then he came to Sabina. 
 
 " Let's have a look at you," he said. 
 
 She looked pale and tired. He kissed her, and 
 she clung to him a moment. Then he put her into 
 a chair and took off her hat for her. He wrapped 
 her up in a rug and told her to sit still while he lit 
 the fire. She sat silently watching him as he 
 kindled the wood and piled on the coals. In a few 
 moments the room looked more cheerful. 
 
 " Are you really glad to have me back ? " she 
 asked, as he returned from the scullery wiping his 
 hands. 
 
 " Of course I'm glad," said Guy. " I'm just 
 getting used to it." 
 
 He sat on the edge of her chair, finishing himself 
 off with the towel. 
 
 " You're looking tired," he said. " Don't talk, 
 but just let me get the supper. I'm very good at 
 housework." 
 
 She watched him as he produced a cloth and laid 
 the table. Her eyes followed him to and fro as 
 he boiled milk and eggs and fetched honey and 
 butter from the pantry. How kind he was ! And 
 yet her welcome was not exactly what she had 
 desired. She had hoped for a sudden outburst of 
 delighted astonishment, but perhaps that was 
 unreasonable. He was naturally anxious to know
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 145 
 
 what had happened, and yet he gave her all the 
 time she needed in which to tell him. At one time 
 she had feared he might be angry. 
 
 He came to her at last, and, putting his arm 
 round her shoulders, invited her to supper. The 
 fire was blazing, and Guy lit some extra candles. 
 The small room looked comfortable now, and 
 Sabina, who was really hungry, removed her coat 
 and came to the table. 
 
 Guy described his life in the cottage, and talked 
 generally at random, stifling the question which 
 arose continually. Why had Sabina returned ? 
 He divined that she wanted to choose her time in 
 which to speak. 
 
 When supper was finished, Guy drew an old 
 horse-hair sofa before the fire, and they sat together 
 warming themselves. 
 
 At last Guy said : " Won't you tell me now why 
 you've come home ? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 " Homesick ? " Guy enquired. 
 
 " A little," said Sabina. " But it's not that/' 
 she added almost at once. 
 
 ' Tell me," Guy insisted. 
 
 She looked at him as though she were pleading 
 to be spared the need to say something. 
 
 " Can't you guess, Guy ? " she asked. 
 
 There was something unusual in her eyes which 
 startled him for a moment. " Are you ill ? " he 
 enquired. 
 
 " No, Guy, I'm not ill, not really." Then, after 
 a silence, she added without looking at him : 
 " Guy, I'm going to have a baby."
 
 146 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 5 
 
 Both realised that this should have been a great 
 moment in their lives. Sabina looked up, and their 
 eyes met in a mutual enquiry. The enquiry was 
 answered almost before it was read. The great 
 moment had passed them by. It had come too 
 soon, and they were both too young and unprepared. 
 It came almost as a misadventure. They had not 
 allowed for it. It destroyed a plan carefully laid 
 and only just beginning to mature. There was 
 even an absurd side to it. Sabina, who had pre- 
 tended to be a schoolgirl, was about to be a mother. 
 There was further, for Guy, involuntarily the sense 
 of an immense addition to his responsibilities. 
 The conspiracy had thickened which seemed deter- 
 mined to make him old before he had been young. 
 For Sabina it had already meant a flight precipitate 
 and unexplained from her school, and a secret fear 
 that Guy would not be pleased. For a while they 
 were silent. Then in Guy there prevailed a feeling 
 that more than ever was Sabina to be helped and 
 cherished. After her quick glance of enquiry 
 towards him she looked away and remained with 
 her eyes downcast. Guy had even more vividly 
 than ever a sense of her girlishness. She was too 
 young to be a mother. The compassion, which 
 had hurried him into his marriage, sprang alive 
 in him once more. He lost his feeling of bewilder- 
 ment and revolt ; and, when next she looked at 
 him, she saw in him all the tenderness she desired. 
 
 They sat together for a long while talking of the 
 time they had spent apart, and a little, now and 
 then, of the event to come. But of this they were 
 as yet shy. They came to it unwillingly and after
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 147 
 
 long diversions. Sabina could say little about it, 
 except that she desired to be cared for more than 
 ever before, and Guy could only assure her that 
 he had never more dearly loved her.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 i 
 
 SOME six weeks after Sabina returned from 
 school she sat with Guy in the living room of 
 the cottage discussing a note which had come that 
 morning from Old Place. They had finished their 
 tea, and were enjoying the last of the fire. 
 
 Guy had by this time got used to the idea that 
 he was shortly to be a father. They had often 
 talked of it, often with curiosity, sometimes with 
 excitement, and occasionally with a quaint sense 
 of the fun it would be to have a baby of their own. 
 Sabina listened mostly, and it was Guy who talked. 
 So far she had failed to feel the event very deeply 
 except as it affected her relationship with Guy. 
 When she thought of it as a link between them, 
 she rejoiced ; but there were times when she 
 regarded it as an intrusion for which they were 
 not yet ripe, and which might further complicate 
 their problem. She could not put this feeling into 
 words, but, more than ever, she craved for Guy 
 continually to express his affection. 
 
 Guy was trying to persuade her to come with 
 him that evening to Old Place. The note they 
 were discussing was an invitation to dinner from 
 Lady Melsham ; and, for the third time that day, 
 Sabina said she would not go. She had stubbornly 
 refused to go to Old Place in spite of frequent 
 
 148
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 149 
 
 invitations and a personal call from Lady Melsham. 
 ' You must go, Guy," she said, " but I should 
 be frightened to death. Besides, I've got nothing 
 to wear," she added. 
 
 She tried not to feel bitter about it. Guy had 
 been very kind to her during the last few weeks. 
 He had made unfailing fun of their country hard- 
 ships ; he had waited on her continually ; his 
 absences in town had been short and few. No one 
 had come between them. They had lived happily 
 by themselves, seeing only the woman who came 
 to work for them, and Theodore as he passed 
 occasionally in the car. 
 
 When the evening came, and Guy was putting 
 on the clothes which somehow always made him 
 something of a stranger, Sabina watched him with 
 an occasional bitter sense of neglect. She didn't 
 want to go, but she wished he had not so easily 
 agreed that she should remain at home. She tied 
 his white bow for him, and buttoned his cheerful 
 waistcoat by the light of a flickering candle, and 
 pitied herself because she had to send him away 
 to the warmth and jollity which she had refused 
 to share with him. 
 
 " Have a good time, dear," she said, from the 
 gate, as Guy prepared to walk off along the frosty 
 road. 
 
 " No doubt about the good time ! " Guy gaily 
 answered. 
 
 Already he tasted the delights of civilised inter- 
 course after his prolonged hibernation. 
 
 He need not have been so awfully pleased about 
 it, thought Sabina, as she turned away.
 
 150 THE HAPPY FOOT, 
 
 Then she saw him coming back to her. Some- 
 thing forlorn in the figure at the gate had struck 
 across his joyous anticipation. 
 
 " I wish you were coming, too," he said. 
 
 " It's my own fault, Guy." 
 
 " Don't be lonely," he helpfully advised her. 
 
 " I shan't have time to be lonely," she said. 
 " There's the washing up, and my skirt which has 
 to be altered." 
 
 "Altered? " 
 
 " Yes," said Sabina resentfully, " it's getting 
 tighter every day." 
 
 Guy assured her that he would not be late. 
 
 " Don't bother about me," said Sabina. 
 
 He kissed her good-night, and told her to go 
 early to bed. 
 
 2 
 
 About half an hour later, Sabina, surprised by 
 an unexpected illumination, saw that Lord Mel- 
 sham's car was at the gate. As she went up the 
 path Theodore put his head out and asked whether 
 she and Guy were ready. She said briefly that 
 Guy was walking to Old Place, and that she was 
 not feeling well enough to come. Theodore ex- 
 pressed concern, and argued with her for a while ; 
 and someone else, whom she could not see, added 
 some further kind inquiries. Sabina, with a pang, 
 recognised the voice of Marian. Theodore switched 
 on the light inside the car. Sabina saw Marian 
 leaning forward, wonderfully elegant, and found 
 herself ungraciously responding to friendly ad- 
 vances. She knew that Marian was trying to 
 discover whether Guy had left her quite alone at
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 151 
 
 the cottage. She was moved to pretend that she 
 was accompanied that night by the woodcutter's 
 wife. Marian's anxiety seemed somehow to reflect 
 upon Guy. Such impertinence could not be 
 tolerated. 
 
 During the next hour Sabina brooded continually 
 upon Guy among his distinguished friends. " I'd 
 like to see him among them all," she thought. 
 
 The idea grew upon her as she ate her supper. 
 The notion came to her first as a spasm of curiosity, 
 touched with the jealousy to which she was so 
 easily moved. But, as the evening wore on, and 
 she finished the small tasks she had set herself, 
 there grew upon her an unusual nervousness, and 
 a desire, different from anything she had felt before, 
 for Guy's company. She had a fear of something 
 which seemed about to happen : a need of pro- 
 tection and human companionship. She did not 
 want to be surprised by this lurking fate in the 
 lonely cottage. The thought of the big house, and 
 the warmth and company in which she would find 
 Guy, became an obsession. She didn't want to 
 be there, full in the light, but to be near at hand. 
 
 A little later she began almost mechanically to 
 put on a warm coat and some wraps. She left the 
 cottage and took the path which led to Old Place 
 by way of the woods. Soon she almost repented 
 of her vague design. It was bright moonlight, and, 
 though the path was distinct, the shapes of the 
 trees were terrifying and the darker spaces were 
 caverns of fear. But she was urged forward by 
 curious hysterical visions in which Guy appeared 
 surrounded by companies of fair women, oblivious
 
 152 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 of her and of all the sickness and anxiety with 
 which she had been struggling during the last 
 months ; and he was far away from her very far 
 away, and at all costs to be reached. With this 
 urgent impulse towards Guy was mingled a sharper 
 uneasiness than she had ever felt before concerning 
 the unborn child she carried. 
 
 In one of the open glades to be crossed stood a 
 large beech whose smooth trunk stood white in 
 the moon. There was something ghostly in its 
 attitude. As she passed beside it, Sabina shud- 
 dered, for, with its stretched arms, it seemed alive, 
 and she half expected it to step across her path 
 and embrace her with its shining and smooth limbs. 
 She gave a cry as a bramble tugged at her dress 
 and brought her to her knees. It seemed as 
 though the tree had caught her. 
 
 Her heart was beating violently as she came out 
 into the full moonlight and stood looking at the 
 house. 
 
 From where she stood she could see that certain 
 windows which gave upon the terrace were lighted. 
 
 The curtains were drawn, but at one of the 
 windows they did not meet, and she could see 
 figures passing to and fro behind them. All was 
 quiet in the garden and on the terrace itself. 
 
 Half to escape the wood, which lay cold and 
 threatening behind her, and half to satisfy her 
 growing curiosity, she slipped over the lawn and 
 mounted the terrace. She went to the window 
 and looked in, supporting herself as she leant 
 forward by holding on to the rim of a large stone 
 vase containing evergreens. From a gap in the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 1S3 
 
 curtains she saw that the guests were taking 
 dessert. Her eyes were held for a moment by the 
 small details which to her were novel and un- 
 expected, the little silver lamp beside Lord 
 Melsham for lighting cigarettes, the rose petals 
 floating in the finger-bowls, the lace mats on the 
 polished table in which the glass and silver mir- 
 rored themselves. She noted that the table was 
 lit with real candles, and that the rest of the room 
 was in shadow except where a hidden frieze of 
 lights threw soft gleams upon the ceiling, or where 
 the surface of one or two old pictures was especially 
 illuminated from small brackets which flung their 
 rays on to the canvas. 
 
 And then she saw Guy. He was talking vivaci- 
 ously to a girl in white. Sabina noted with resent- 
 ment that the girl could talk, and that Guy was 
 amused. She noticed with satisfaction that the 
 girl was plain. Theodore she perceived at the end 
 of the table on the right of a stately lady in 
 black silk with a string of pearls round her neck. 
 That must be Lady Melsham. Marian was 
 at the opposite end on the right of Lord 
 Melsham. 
 
 A gust of wind came up from the wood a 
 whimper which grew and spread as it neared the 
 terrace. Sabina turned defensively towards the 
 sound. It seemed to have in it something of the 
 malevolent life of the naked beech which, she 
 imagined, had caught at her as she passed. She 
 had a poignant sense of insecurity, standing between 
 the hostility of the blind trees and of the house from 
 which she was excluded. She waited for the sound
 
 154 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 to die away, and then turned again to the window. 
 She saw that the ladies had risen and were about 
 to withdraw from the room ; but she barely had 
 time to see what was happening when again a 
 sound was formed in the wood. As it grew louder 
 she bade herself be firm and disregard it. The 
 feeling grew almost to anguish that something was 
 stealing up from the wood behind her. She felt 
 its breath on the nape of her neck. Trembling 
 violently, she turned at last, and seemed to see the 
 whole of the wood move under her eyes. At the 
 same time, she felt under her heart a stir and 
 flutter as of something alive. The wood swayed a 
 moment and hesitated, and then suddenly it was 
 marching towards her, growing bigger and blacker 
 as it came. At last it blotted out the view and 
 closed upon her. She had a sense of falling and of 
 being engulfed, the smell of earth and green leaves 
 testifying to the fact that the trees had got her at 
 last. 
 
 3 
 
 Within the house, Marian was passing a window 
 on her way to the dining room door, when she 
 heard a crash outside. She caught up the curtain 
 and saw that a woman had fainted, pulling down 
 upon herself a large stone vase which had been 
 shattered and had thrown its contents all about her. 
 She hurried after Lady Melsham. Her quick mind 
 leapt at the identity of the woman, and her first 
 impulse was to save the position for Guy. Sabina 
 had been left alone, and the poor girl had come to 
 see what he was doing. Guy would be made 
 ridiculous. Something might even be said of the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 155 
 
 callousness of leaving a young wife alone and 
 without help at a time when she needed special care. 
 
 She caught Lady Melsham, and whispered 
 urgently what she had seen and what she expected. 
 
 Issuing orders as she passed, Lady Melsham 
 hurried with Marian from the dining room. 
 
 4 
 
 Sabina recovered under Marian's eyes and in 
 Marian's room at Old Place. People were busy 
 about her. Her dress had been loosened and she 
 felt deathly cold. On seeing Marian, she in- 
 stinctively closed her eyes, and, realising what had 
 happened, groped for an explanation of her presence 
 on the terrace where they must have found her. 
 This explanation, however, could wait. She must 
 lie still for a little while, till her body was warm 
 again and she had been a little restored by the 
 comfort and security of this pleasant room. Soon 
 she would tell them that she had been for a walk 
 in the wood and had lost her way. She had come 
 upon the house by chance, and was about to call. 
 That was the right story. Of course, she was 
 coming to call. Why shouldn't she call at Old 
 Place ? It was, she seemed to remember, rather 
 late for a call. She remembered how, when some- 
 one had come to Fern Cottage at six o'clock in the 
 afternoon, Aunt Helen had said that six o'clock 
 was late. 
 
 She wondered if Marian had been part of her 
 hallucination when she had fainted. She opened 
 her eyes again. 
 
 Someone with a kind voice was talking about her.
 
 156 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " This fainting," said the voice, " is not at all 
 unusual." 
 
 " I suppose she ought not to have been left 
 alone ? " 
 
 She recognised Marian's voice. 
 
 " How was the boy to know ? They are both 
 of them too young to know anything at all. Has 
 she any married women friends ? " 
 
 " She has no friends," said Marian. " I did my 
 best." 
 
 Sabina's lids fluttered, and she knew, though she 
 did not see, that the woman with the kind voice 
 was cautioning Marian to be silent. She opened her 
 eyes wide and asked where she was, because she 
 thought that that was the usual thing to say on 
 recovering from a faint. 
 
 Marian bent over her. 
 
 ' You're in my room, Sabina, in Lady Melsham's 
 house. Did you lose your way in the wood ? " 
 
 Sabina stared at her, and under her dark eyes 
 Marian flinched. 
 
 ' Yes," said Sabina at last. " I lost my way in 
 the wood." 
 
 Instinctively they understood one another. 
 Marian had desired to offer an excuse for Sabina's 
 presence which would save Guy any unnecessary 
 humiliation. Sabina was willingly her accomplice, 
 even as she wondered at the revelation here offered 
 of Marian's solicitude. Sabina accepted the excuse. 
 Guy should not be exposed to ridicule or reproach 
 as a man whose wife came to spy at him through 
 a crack in the curtains. But what right had 
 Marian to concern herself in this ? Sabina re-
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 157 
 
 membered a look she had stolen at Guy over the 
 dinner table as she had watched her through the 
 window : and there, facing her on the little table 
 beside Marian's bed, was Guy's photograph. 
 
 All this passed in a moment, and, in the moment 
 that followed, Marian was indicating Lady Mel- 
 sham. 
 
 " Don't try to talk to us, child," said Lady 
 Melsham. " You must stay here for the night. 
 I am having a room made ready, and Guy shall 
 come to you." 
 
 " Can't I go home ? " said Sabina. 
 
 " Out of the question to-night," said Lady 
 Melsham. " My maid shall put you to bed." 
 
 Sabina's eyes widened with apprehension. How 
 is one put to bed by a maid ? She would die of 
 confusion. 
 
 "I'd rather go home," she said. 
 
 " I couldn't possibly allow that," said Lady 
 Melsham firmly. 
 
 A trim young person in a lace apron came into 
 the room. 
 
 " I think we might move her now." 
 
 Sabina submitted without another word. Marian 
 and Lady Melsham watched the transfer, asked her 
 how she felt, and were busily kind. On leaving, 
 Lady Melsham told her to send word if she desired 
 anything. 
 
 Sabina, alone with the maid, lost no time in 
 demonstrating that she was well enough to attend 
 to herself ; and the maid, who was a person of 
 discretion, suggested that madam would perhaps 
 ring if she required any assistance, and that, in the
 
 158 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 meantime, some hot arrowroot would be prepared 
 in the kitchen. Sabina, left to herself, undressed 
 and went rapidly to bed. 
 
 Guy, on coming into the drawing-room after a 
 long session over the port, was quietly informed by 
 Lady Melsham that his wife was upstairs. Lady 
 Melsham conducted him to the room, telling him 
 on the way that Sabina, walking in the wood, had 
 fainted, fortunately near enough to the house to 
 be immediately discovered. She told him not to 
 worry too much about it. It was an entirely 
 natural thing for his wife to faint in the circum- 
 stances. 
 
 5 
 
 Guy found Sabina propped on pillows, eating a 
 basin of arrow-root. The mild light of the room 
 spared the gauntness of her face ; her plaits hung 
 down in the familiar way ; and her prettiness, to 
 which Guy was not even yet accustomed, was 
 accentuated by the daintiness in which she was 
 embosomed. 
 
 Guy was not deceived by Sabina's casual 
 promenade in the wood. As soon as he heard of 
 her presence in the house, he knew what had 
 happened. In his anxiety and compunction he 
 spared only a fleeting thought for the way in which 
 appearances had been saved. 
 
 He came straight towards her, and sat beside 
 her on the bed. Sabina began to explain, but he 
 checked her at once, and she saw that no explana- 
 tion was needed. He had come to know her 
 capacity for self-torment and to anticipate the 
 impulses to which it occasionally drove her. To-
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 159 
 
 night he only felt that he had been cruel to leave 
 her alone. He forbade her to talk, and sat with 
 her, telling her things about the house and the 
 people. Sabina submitted, and, overcome by a 
 great weariness, lay among the pillows watching 
 the fire, allowing herself to sink back, enjoying the 
 comfort so abundantly found for her. 
 
 When Lady Melsham came to bring him down 
 from the room, she found Guy watching his wife 
 as one watches a child who has been put to sleep.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 i 
 
 SOME four months later, in the late spring, 
 Sabina's baby was born. Guy was beginning 
 to realise that childbirth must be rather painful and 
 to feel sick at heart as he sat in the room below, 
 or wandered out of the cottage, when the doctor 
 came down and announced that he had a son. 
 Called to Sabina a little later, his revolt against 
 the savage processes of nature was further stimu- 
 lated by the sight of his young wife lying exanimate 
 on the bed with haunted eyes, and lips which smiled 
 only because there was at last a respite. He re- 
 sented the anxiety of the nurse to put the baby 
 into his arms, and her obvious expectation that he 
 would be deeply stirred by the queer bundle she 
 offered. It was Sabina he wanted to see, and he 
 was not yet ready to respond to this other appeal. 
 The nurse praised the baby, as an expert, while 
 Sabina and Guy exchanged looks. Apparently it 
 was a beautiful baby. But how was Guy to know 
 that ? He had never seen a new-born baby, and 
 had no standard whereby to measure the perfection 
 of his own. He could only feel at this moment 
 that Sabina had suffered ; see only that she had 
 come back to him from some underworld of anguish 
 and terror ; and be struck to the heart with the 
 air she had of being herself but a child, with her 
 
 160
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 161 
 
 hair plaited and her nerveless arms lying straight 
 beside her. He wanted to tell the nurse to take 
 the baby away and look after it till Sabina was 
 really old enough to be a mother. 
 
 Then he noted that Sabina's eyes were on the 
 baby, and he suddenly realised that somehow she 
 had already begun to love this small creature which 
 up to twenty-four hours ago she had thought about 
 as an unexpected and disconcerting intruder into 
 their lives. He looked at the baby himself. 
 
 " It's very pink," he said to the nurse. 
 
 " He's a beautiful colour," replied the nurse. 
 She slightly stressed the personal pronoun. 
 
 " When will it open its eyes ? " he asked ner- 
 vously. 
 
 " Puppies take nine days," he added, un- 
 expectedly. 
 
 He disliked the abominable woman who ap- 
 parently expected him to forget that he had heard 
 Sabina crying out in torment not an hour ago. 
 
 The nurse shut her lips and took back the child 
 into her appreciative arms. Guy, released from 
 his responsibilities as a father, turned to the bed 
 and floated a moment in the dark eyes of the girl 
 who lay there so quietly. She did not move when 
 he bent to kiss her, but her eyes deepened and her 
 smile widened under his lips. On leaving her he 
 lifted her hand, heavy as a dead limb, to his cheek, 
 and laid it back gently on the quilt. 
 
 Those few moments in the room with Sabina 
 were a foretaste of the period of Sabina's recovery 
 and restoration to normal life. For Guy, during 
 these weeks, the birth of Raymond (as the baby
 
 162 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 was named) was an event which derived im- 
 portance from the fact that it had made Sabina 
 suffer and had added to her care. He did not 
 realise how quickly she herself forgot the suffering. 
 On the other hand he soon perceived that she 
 loved the baby, and was happy to observe that 
 she found in it a distraction which relieved the 
 strain of the first days of their marriage. 
 
 This distraction even enabled her for a few 
 weeks to accept the advances of Marian, who 
 visited her from Old Place and worshipped at the 
 feet of a child so incredibly beautiful. Guy was 
 strangely gratified by the uncommon praise be- 
 stowed upon his son, but his time had not yet 
 come to feel like a father. He was mainly anxious 
 that Sabina should not unduly sacrifice herself. 
 He became expert in minor ministrations to the 
 child in order that she might as far as possible be 
 spared. 
 
 2 
 
 Marian was often at Old Place, and, often when 
 she was there, she came through the wood to 
 Brambletye. Sometimes Theodore was with her, 
 and on these occasions Sabina watched them 
 curiously. She was abnormally sensitive to the 
 slightest impressions where her love for Guy was 
 involved, and she noted in Marian, when Theodore 
 was present, the attitude of unconscious defence to 
 be observed in women who begin to suspect they 
 are loved, but have not yet faced the possibility 
 of a declaration. Sabina, who had long perceived 
 that Theodore loved Marian, felt that he would 
 shortly declare himself, and she waited for the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 168 
 
 event with an ungovernable desire that Marian 
 would take him. 
 
 " But she won't," she told herself bitterly, " not 
 while there's a chance of Guy." 
 
 Sabina felt obscurely that, as long as Guy lived, 
 there was a chance for Marian, and that, if Marian 
 refused Theodore, it would be because she was 
 instinctively keeping herself free. Her refusal 
 would be, as it were, a proclamation that she would 
 wait all her life for Guy ; and, who knows ? 
 perhaps destiny was in this case on the side of the 
 woman who waited. 
 
 Sabina's uneasiness in regard to Marian was 
 more than a personal jealousy. It arose from her 
 deep distrust of all the memories and influences 
 that divided her from Guy. Because she could not 
 hold him quietly and continually, she feared to 
 lose him as soon as he ceased to surround her with 
 proofs of his affection. If he were absent, she was 
 losing him, and if he were present, she was losing 
 him, unless she was actively troubling his peace. 
 She did not really believe that he was in love 
 with Marian. But Marian was part of that 
 world outside, to which he escaped when the circle 
 of her arms was broken. 
 
 Frequently, when summer had begun to thicken 
 the shadows of the wood, Guy accompanied 
 Marian back to Old Place. Sabina would on these 
 occasions wait for him at the window of her room, 
 wondering why each time was longer than the last. 
 There were nights when he failed to return for 
 several hours. His time to linger came when, after 
 bidding Marian good-night, he found himself
 
 164 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 drawing near to the cottage on his return. He 
 could see Sabina's lighted window as he drew near. 
 His steps fell more slowly, and soon he would come 
 to a stand under the trees. 
 
 Instinctively he postponed a renewal of that 
 sense of strain which he never ceased, in a greater 
 or less degree, to feel in Sabina's company. He 
 hesitated to resume a life which was too intense. 
 His nerves sought rest out of her company, and 
 the mild walks with Marian to Old Place gave just 
 sufficient respite to make him crave for a further 
 tranquillity. Entering Sabina's room, after these 
 delays, he would at once be conscious of a strain 
 renewed as she turned to him her eyes big with 
 inquiry. 
 
 Guy's work in London during this period was 
 intermittent. He went to town usually about 
 twice a week. Often, when his work was done, 
 and he could be of no help to Sabina in the cottage, 
 he went to the Three Foresters ; and on more than 
 one occasion he returned from the care of Mrs. 
 Basing in abnormally good spirits. Sabina accom- 
 panied him once to the inn and was introduced. 
 She promptly added Mrs. Basing to the number of 
 persons she disliked ; and, when Guy came home in 
 a cheerful mood, she was quick to suspect the bright 
 lady with the finger-rings and the draughts which 
 she so liberally dispensed. 
 
 .3 
 
 Upon a warm blue day towards the end of 
 September Sabina was preparing tea in the cottage 
 when Theodore appeared in the doorway. Sabina
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 165 
 
 asked in a whisper (for Raymond was asleep in 
 a sheltered corner of the room) whether he were 
 alone. He said he had come suddenly down from 
 London. He had inquired for Marian at Old Place ; 
 but he had been informed that she had left for the 
 cottage. 
 
 " She isn't here," said Sabina. 
 
 " He's come to propose," she added to herself. 
 
 " She started over an hour ago," said Theodore. 
 " Perhaps she has missed her way in the wood." 
 
 " She ought to know it well enough," said 
 Sabina. 
 
 She said this in the tone of one who makes an 
 accusation, and Theodore looked at her a little 
 curiously. 
 
 He entered the cottage and admired the sleeping 
 Raymond. At the end of a quarter of an hour he 
 pulled out his watch, and wondered again what 
 had become of Marian. Sabina, with a hard 
 smile, said she also was beginning to wonder 
 where Marian could be and what had become of 
 Guy. 
 
 " Perhaps they are under the great beech," she 
 said, slanting a steady look at Theodore. 
 
 " Why under the great beech ? " Theodore 
 inquired. 
 
 " They're rather fond of it," said Sabina. 
 
 Sabina had jumped to the conclusion that 
 Marian was with Guy in the wood. She saw them 
 clairvoyantly sitting under the great beech, talking 
 at ease, oblivious of the passing time. There was 
 no reason why she should think of the great beech, 
 except that she hated it, and that she had heard
 
 166 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 them both praise it and the glade in which it stood. 
 Theodore's appearance at the cottage, alone and 
 looking for Marian, who, Sabina was sure, must 
 even now be with Guy in the wood, was, to her 
 sense of things, sufficiently dramatic to give edge 
 to her sense that something was wrong. She 
 seized her hat from a peg on the wall. Theodore 
 saw that she was abnormally excited. 
 
 " We'll go and find them," she said, stabbing in 
 a hat-pin. " Unless you'd rather not," she added 
 cryptically. 
 
 Theodore followed her with misgivings. He felt 
 that there was evil in her words. Her cryptic 
 mood, in an intensely prevailing way, hung in the 
 still dark spaces of the glade, till Theodore began 
 to realise that even in sunlight it was possible to 
 be haunted. 
 
 Suddenly she stopped in front of him and 
 gripped his arm. With her other hand she pointed 
 aside. Marian was sitting with Guy under the 
 great beech. He was lying well back talking into 
 the air. Sabina noted the comfort of his pose, 
 and received a sharp impression of intimacy in the 
 easy way he was addressing his companion. 
 Theodore looked only at Marian. She was sitting 
 quite still, her hat in her hand and her head 
 against the smooth trunk of the tree. She was 
 looking at Guy in a way that declared her secret 
 to both the onlookers. Of the four who stood thus 
 near to one another, only Guy was unconscious of 
 the look. 
 
 Theodore's attention was called from Marian by 
 a violent movement from Sabina.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 167 
 
 Her fists were tight-clenched, and her whole 
 body stiffened with the effort to control herself. 
 
 At this moment Guy, turning to suggest that it 
 was time for tea, saw his brother on the path with 
 Sabina. 
 
 He waved a cheerful greeting, and, pulling Marian 
 to her feet, came unconcernedly to meet them.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 i 
 
 DURING the walk back to the cottage, and the 
 tea which followed, Guy wondered why his 
 brother was so thoughtful. In Sabina he merely 
 recognised one of her moods, without distinctly 
 locating the source. He supposed it was because 
 he was late for tea. The general constraint of the 
 party was, fortunately, dispelled at an early stage 
 by the awakening of Raymond 
 
 After tea Theodore and Marian walked back to 
 Old Place. It was not altogether by chance that 
 their conversation took a deeper turn as they came 
 to the great beech. As Theodore's eye rested on the 
 tree he recalled Marian's devoted contemplation 
 of his brother, and noted the light imprint in the 
 turf where they had rested. 
 
 Theodore had many times recurred in thought 
 to the idea that, Guy being married, the way was 
 now open for him to try for Marian. He was 
 ready, if a great passion were denied him, to fall 
 back upon the very real affection which she had 
 for him, and a loyalty which would find practical 
 happiness in the fulfilment of obligations volun- 
 tarily incurred. This afternoon he had come to 
 Brambletye in the heat of a resolve to put every- 
 thing to the touch. For a moment, when he saw 
 his brother with Marian under the tree, he had 
 
 1 68
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 169 
 
 wavered, but afterwards his resolution was fortified. 
 The incident stung him in retrospect. That 
 Marian should love so forlornly a man who was 
 stupidly unconscious, raised in him a strong im- 
 patience composed partly of the thought that this 
 was an unfair stroke of destiny at the expense of 
 his own devotion, and partly a jealousy for Marian 
 herself, that she should be, as it were, one 
 of fortune's suppliants. The position thus view- 
 ed was intolerable. He felt bound to challenge 
 it. 
 
 Marian, as they stood level with the big tree, 
 knew that the moment had come which she had 
 begun to anticipate without quite knowing what 
 she would do when it came. She had tried to 
 imagine herself accepting Theodore's proposal. 
 Would it not be wise to accept ? That afternoon 
 it seemed especially wise. She had been thoroughly 
 aware of all that had passed in Sabina's mind, and, 
 though Sabina had no cause for jealousy, Marian 
 had asked herself whether, by her visits to the 
 cottage, she was not making things worse for Guy 
 and spoiling the chance these two yet had of 
 coming completely together. She realised that 
 she must abandon Guy entirely, unless Sabina 
 could somehow be assured that there was no 
 cause for jealousy. Guy would not understand 
 her withdrawal, and he would hurt her abomin- 
 ably by his obtuseness. But she could not risk 
 being a motive of discord between him and his 
 wife. 
 
 By accepting Theodore she would reassure 
 Sabina and definitely escape from the false position
 
 170 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 in which she was becoming involved. Theodore 
 could not have chosen a better hour. 
 
 Held by a common thought, they stopped beside 
 the big tree and stood there for a moment silent. 
 Marian did not move when Theodore took her 
 hand. She had as yet no impulse either towards 
 him or away. Theodore hardly dared to speak 
 lest the hand should be suddenly reclaimed. He 
 had taken it as a lover, and she allowed it to 
 remain. 
 
 Then by the sweetness of what he had won he 
 measured the value of the rest. She stood there 
 adorable and not averse. The thought of all he 
 desired struck him speechless, but Marian saw in 
 his face all that he could not say. 
 
 She allowed herself to be drawn to him, and 
 turned to him with an effort. He thrilled to the 
 movement in which she was thus surrendered, but 
 an instant later, feeling her rebellion, he abruptly 
 released her, with the bitterness of defeat in his heart. 
 
 Her movement was a refusal which needed no 
 further expression. 
 
 They stood silent for a moment. Marian silently 
 invoked her affection for him and the common 
 sense which bade her seek happiness and security. 
 She had an impulse to cling, though she could 
 not embrace a momentary panic of her for- 
 lorn position, the result of the long effort it 
 had cost her to hold herself erect under dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 " Perhaps it has come too quickly," she said 
 at last. " Perhaps if we waited " 
 
 She paused, and added a moment later :
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 171 
 
 " Or, perhaps, I am just incapable." 
 " No, Marian," said Theodore quietly. " You 
 are not incapable." 
 
 His eyes went involuntarily to the spot where 
 she had been sitting with Guy hardly an hour ago. 
 She followed his look, and Theodore, seeing that 
 his thought was read, turned decisively away from 
 the place, and, to cover his unintended allusion, 
 moved to continue their walk. 
 
 2 
 
 The short interview between Theodore and 
 Marian had not passed without witnesses. Theo- 
 dore had left his pipe behind him at the cottage, 
 and Guy, perceiving this, hurried after him down 
 the path towards the open glade. Sabina, who 
 watched him run after his brother from the cottage 
 window, suddenly saw him come abruptly to a 
 stand upon the edge of the clearing, whence he 
 could see the great beech. Then he turned back 
 slowly with an expression almost of bewilderment 
 on his face, like one who had seen something he 
 did not understand. She left the cottage and ran 
 to meet him. She almost guessed what he had 
 seen, but she so eagerly wanted to know how the 
 event was shaping, that she took him almost 
 roughly by the arm. 
 
 "Well? " she asked breathlessly. "What did 
 you see ? 
 
 Guy stared at her in amazement. She was not 
 slow to observe that he seemed shaken. 
 
 " I don't exactly know," he said slowly He 
 was still holding the pipe in his hand.
 
 1T2 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " You look as if you'd seen a ghost," said Sabina 
 with a nervous laugh. 
 
 " It was nothing," said Guy. 
 
 Angered by an evasiveness which was clearly 
 the result of a wish to shield Marian from her 
 curiosity, Sabina dropped his arm and stood away 
 from him. 
 
 " Hadn't you better take Theodore his pipe ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 He looked at her with a faint surprise. Suddenly 
 she snatched the pipe from his hands. 
 
 " I'll give it him myself," she said. 
 
 She was already on her way. Guy called to 
 her peremptorily to stop, but she disregarded 
 him and in a moment stood at the edge of the 
 clearing. 
 
 Guy from that spot had seen his brother standing 
 silently with Marian at the moment when he had 
 taken her hand. Sabina, who arrived only a few brief 
 moments later, saw Theodore draw Marian towards 
 him. After one swift glance and a feeling in which 
 shame and satisfaction were blended, she returned 
 to Guy, who was waiting for her in the path. He 
 looked at her with a stern displeasure such as she 
 had never before seen in him. 
 
 " Please, Guy," she said, " I didn't really mean 
 to look at them." 
 
 He turned without a word and walked away 
 from her into the wood. 
 
 She stood a moment torn between an impulse to 
 run after him and beg forgiveness, and the pride 
 which held her, so often, blind and dumb in his 
 presence.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 173 
 
 She then went back to the cottage and busied 
 herself with her work. 
 
 3 
 
 As the evening wore on, the feeling which came 
 more and more to prevail with Sabina was satis- 
 faction with what she had seen. Theodore had 
 taken Marian in his arms, and Marian had allowed 
 it. Marian, it seemed, was to marry Theodore. 
 This fact had discounted her jealousy, and it soft- 
 ened her pride by accusing her of in] ustice towards 
 Guy. She began to long for his return. She 
 desired to humble herself, to be pardoned, and 
 to rest with Guy in a security greater than she 
 had yet known. 
 
 Nevertheless, when Guy appeared at the door, 
 her impulse to run to him died in her, as so often 
 before. The evening passed with hardly a word 
 between them. Guy was preoccupied with that 
 startling vision of his brother silently holding the 
 hand of Marian. The incident obscurely troubled 
 him. It shook equally his idea of Marian and of 
 Theodore, and filled him with a sense of extrusion. 
 
 Sabina attributed his preoccupation to the anger 
 he had shown at her conduct in the wood. But 
 that anger had been as short as it had been sudden 
 a flash of irritation at her headstrong invasion 
 of a privacy which should have been respected. 
 
 He was still sunk in contemplation of the idea 
 of Theodore incredibly in love, and, even more 
 incredibly, Marian's accepted lover, when Sabina 
 announced that she was going to bed. She stood 
 at the door with a candle in her hand. Guv looked
 
 174 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 at her, coming suddenly out of his thoughts. He 
 had been vaguely aware during the evening of her 
 diffident and incomplete movements of propitiation. 
 He suddenly realised, as he saw her mute and 
 fragile by the door, that she wanted to say something. 
 
 She put down the candle and came to him. She 
 stood as though groping for words. All th Jie 
 wished to say tumbled about her mind in disorder. 
 She wanted to ask whether he was really angry. 
 She wanted to confess that she had been jealously 
 curious, and to humble herself for the offence. She 
 wanted to bring forth all her dark ideas and 
 fancies in order that he might put them to rest. 
 She desired to say something which might lead 
 them both to a perfect understanding, and make 
 all future discord impossible. Such words came 
 easily to her mind in solitude. But now, when 
 most she needed them, they escaped her. 
 
 She felt only a horrible confusion of the brain 
 and an ungovernable impulse to break through the 
 silence which was closing about her. And she 
 heard herself speak at last, not because she felt 
 able to say what she wanted, but because she must 
 say something, however inadequate. 
 
 ' You're not angry with me ? " she pleaded. 
 
 " Why should I be angry," said Guy. 
 
 11 Don't put me off, Guy. I want to say so 
 much." 
 
 He was struck by her urgency. 
 ' There seems nothing to keep us together," she 
 suddenly exclaimed. " Do you still love me as 
 much as ever, Guy ? " 
 
 " I love you too much ! "
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 175 
 
 The exclamation was involuntary. Sabina had 
 become part of him, so that her pain was almost 
 physically his and all her moods actively troubled 
 his peace. He had begun to dread this power she 
 had to afflict him, and to resent a love which was 
 beyond reason and bej'ond mere congruities of 
 temper and taste. Sabina went unerringly to the 
 source of his thought. 
 
 ' You would like to love me less," she said. 
 Then she added, with her terrible capacity for 
 uniting a deep truth with a common-place and 
 apparently irrelevant corollary : 
 
 " I shan't always be pretty." 
 
 The saying which brought her so crudely to earth 
 made her the more forlorn. 
 
 Guy took her by the shoulders and looked long 
 at the prettiness which would not last. He was 
 feeling for a mystery which eluded him, which had 
 never succeeded in expressing itself in plain terms, 
 perhaps because it was too deep for the words he 
 could not find. She felt him searching for this 
 invisible reality behind the mask, and said to him, 
 a little in awe of his penetrating eyes : 
 
 " I could almost think you would love me if I 
 weren't pretty at all." 
 
 " And a moment ago you doubted altogether," 
 said Guy. 
 
 " Oh, Guy. Everything's so mixed up. I 
 don't rightly know sometimes what I think." 
 
 " Try to be sure." 
 
 " Sometimes," she responded after a while, " it 
 seems wicked to doubt. Then something hap- 
 pens "
 
 176 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 She continued hurriedly, looking down and 
 nervously fingering the buttons of his coat : 
 
 " I am afraid of your cousin. She and you have 
 so much in common. I wanted to see her settled." 
 
 Guy stiffened. 
 
 " I thought you had got over that stupid feeling 
 about Marian," he said. 
 
 " It's all right now," said Sabina. " She's going 
 to marry Theodore." 
 
 She saw she had awakened in Guy an obscure 
 resentment. She tightened her grasp of his hand. 
 
 " I'll try not to be so silly in future," she said. 
 
 Guy smiled, in sudden tenderness, as over a child 
 promising in good faith, and with boundless 
 confidence, never again to be troublesome. 
 
 Her contrition softened him and dispelled their 
 estrangement. 
 
 They sat into the late evening, and then, stumb- 
 ling close together about the dark garden, among 
 the heavy scent of flowers and earth and the sur- 
 rounding woodland, they discussed new schemes of 
 horticulture for the fall of the year.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 i 
 
 NEXT morning Guy put aside his writing and 
 worked in the garden. His happy hour with 
 Sabina on the previous evening had driven from 
 his mind the vague disquiet which had followed 
 his sight of Theodore and Marian in the wood. He 
 was already well content with the idea that these 
 two should marry. 
 
 Juno and Jupiter were to keep house together, 
 and into that house it would be rather fun to 
 intrude occasionally. There he would find rest 
 and dignity, a place untroubled by the ardours 
 and perplexities of life. Moreover, this should 
 definitely put an end to the absurd jealousy of 
 Sabina. Turning over with his spade the fragrant 
 brown earth of the garden, Guy smiled to himself 
 in anticipation of the confession which Theodore 
 would in due time have to make. 
 
 Sabina came out into the garden at intervals 
 and stood pleasantly in the sun. She chaffed him 
 for his digging, which was clearly that of a novice. 
 She was light-hearted and could joke this morning, 
 even concerning her rustic education. 
 
 She brought her work out into the garden, and 
 sat on a small stool where he could see her and talk 
 to her in the pauses of his labour. He liked to see 
 her there ; and, when at last she went into the 
 
 177
 
 178 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 house, he felt that the solitude of the garden was 
 less satisfying than before. 
 
 Sabina was for a moment tranquil. She had 
 brought her misgivings into the light, and Guy 
 had made them seem of small account. Moreover 
 she had seen Marian in the arms of Theodore. 
 That spectacle was her guarantee, above all others, 
 for the future. 
 
 In the afternoon Guy said he would walk to Old 
 Place to see if there was any news of the event, 
 which presumably was by this time for publication. 
 On arriving he was told by Lady Melsham that 
 Marian had gone to the cottage. He asked for 
 tidings in a tone of expectancy that a little mysti- 
 fied Lady Melsham. 
 
 She informed him, in answer to his inquiry 
 whether his brother were still there, that Theodore 
 had left for London. Guy declined an invitation 
 to remain and returned to the cottage. 
 
 2 
 
 Sabina met him at the door. The evil mood 
 had again touched her. She gave him the shut 
 evasive look of those who brood on a secret resent- 
 ment, and his spirits fell darkly. For a moment 
 he thought of asking what it was that had again 
 clouded her, to force this hidden trouble into the 
 open where it could be met. 
 
 But he knew she would deny that anything had 
 happened. 
 
 " Well ? " he said with a forced cheerfulness. 
 It was as near as he could come to a direct question. 
 
 " She's upstairs," said Sabina.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 179 
 
 Guy gathered from this that Marian had arrived 
 at the cottage, and that her arrival had in some \vay 
 disconcerted his wife. He wondered what could 
 possibly have happened. 
 
 But Sabina's mood was not due to anything 
 which had actually occurred, She had merely 
 leaped to the conclusion, on seeing Marian at the 
 cottage door, that there was to be no engagement. 
 
 3 
 
 Nothing in the manner of Marian, when she 
 joined them a moment later, indicated that any- 
 thing had or had not happened on the previous 
 day. 
 
 Guy, expecting that she would say something, 
 was puzzled by her silence. There was no reason 
 for her to make any mystery of an event of domestic 
 interest to them all. She made no allusion to it, 
 however, in spite of several opportunities. 
 
 " I dropped in at Old Place this afternoon," said 
 Guy. " Theodore has gone back to town, ap- 
 parently." 
 
 " Yes," said Marian. 
 
 There was a short silence. 
 
 "Isn't that rather strange?" said Sabina 
 suddenly. 
 
 She had been sitting quietly under an excitement 
 that increased each time Marian refused to speak. 
 She began to suffer an hysterical craving to force 
 Marian to say what had happened. Guy turned 
 to her in alarm. He heard the note in her voice 
 which meant trouble for them all. 
 
 " Why should it be strange ? " he said hastily.
 
 180 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " He came for a holiday," said Sabina. " And 
 suddenly he goes back. Isn't that rather strange ?" 
 
 There was an awkward silence. Guy looked at 
 Marian. She had gone a little pale, but she clearly 
 intended to say nothing. 
 
 " It seems very strange to me," said Sabina, 
 harping remorselesly on the word. " Especially 
 after what happened yesterday," she added ab- 
 ruptly. 
 
 Marian involuntarily froze into an attitude 
 almost of disdain. She resented this intrusion, 
 which somehow had become possible, into her 
 privacy. Sabina saw in her attitude the recoil of 
 a fine lady from an impertinence. 
 
 " I don't understand," said Marian stiffly. 
 
 She did not intend it, but she spoke as to an 
 interloper. The affront had for the moment shaken 
 her presence of mind. 
 
 " We thought you would have something to tell 
 us," said Sabina, who now desired only to strike 
 an insolent rival. 
 
 Marian's whole attention was concentrated on 
 the " We." She looked swiftly at Guy, who 
 already realised that she desired whatever had 
 happened between her and Theodore to be ex- 
 clusively her personal concern. He tried to save 
 her the knowledge that they had seen anything of 
 consequence. 
 
 " I suppose we jumped at conclusions," he said. 
 " Nothing really to go upon." 
 
 His clumsy attempt to spare Marian had the 
 worst possible effect on Sabina.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 181 
 
 " What's all this mystery ? " she exclaimed 
 impatiently. 
 
 And, facing Guy, she said : 
 
 " Either she's engaged to Theodore or she 
 isn't. It certainly looked as if she was engaged 
 to him yesterday." 
 
 Marian rose from her chair. She was now com- 
 pletely mistress of herself. 
 
 " You seem somehow to know what has 
 happened. I'm sorry, because it was something 
 which concerned only Theodore and myself." 
 
 " I'm not sure of that," said Sabina darkly. 
 
 "Really," said Marian, "you must allow me to 
 judge." 
 
 " Of course," said Guy. " That's more than 
 enough about it." 
 
 Guy reached over the table and laid his hand on 
 Marian's arm. In the heart of Sabina, seeing this, 
 a snake was rearing to strike. 
 
 " I won't be put in the wrong," she cried. 
 " Why can't she say whether she's engaged or 
 not ? " 
 
 " I'm not engaged to Theodore," said Marian 
 quietly, " if you insist." 
 
 " It really isn't our affair," said Guy. 
 
 He looked at Marian, conveying with an almost 
 imperceptible gesture that she would do well to 
 leave them. Sabina was standing now, with a 
 white blind face, wringing her apron between her 
 hands. 
 
 She addressed herself directly to Guy. 
 
 " Of course it's none of your business, Guy,"
 
 182 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 she said excitedly. " It doesn't affect you at all ? 
 You're not even glad to hear it." 
 
 Guy was accustomed to follow the queer twisting 
 of her mind, its sudden jump from some chance 
 word or look to monstrous conclusions. But even 
 Guy was staggered. Before he could say a word 
 she was saying things from which only gradually 
 they could gather whence she had leaped into that 
 small hell she perpetually made for herself. Marian, 
 she seemed to say, had refused to marry Theodore 
 (after what they had seen, too, in the wood yester- 
 day) because she was waiting for somebody else. 
 So be it. Guy could go his own way as soon as he 
 liked, and with whom he liked (this with a venomous 
 glance at Marian). Marriages were not really more 
 sacred than engagements. An engagement had 
 been broken. That, perhaps, made it easier for 
 all parties to be happy and comfortable. Thus 
 Sabina raved. 
 
 At this point Raymond called for her, and she 
 left them abruptly to an appalled contemplation 
 of the abyss into which they had looked. Marian 
 wondered whether Guy realised her secret. She 
 dreaded the awakening in him of a self-conscious- 
 ness which might destroy their friendship. She 
 was almost relieved when she found that his 
 thoughts were far from that aspect of the question. 
 
 " Marian," he said. " I would give anything in 
 the world to make Sabina happy." 
 
 He spoke with short pauses between his sentences. 
 
 " She torments herself perpetually," he said. 
 " She is like a child, and I can seldom find the real 
 reason of her trouble."
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 183 
 
 ' You saw her just now," he went on. " That 
 kind of thing often happens. A chance phrase, 
 clumsy perhaps, but clearly not intended to hurt, 
 touches some secret nerve." 
 
 He rose and went to the window. 
 
 " It seems hopeless at times," he said. 
 
 Marian for a while could say nothing. 
 
 " I can't help you, Guy," she said at last. " I 
 can do no good between you." 
 
 She made ready to go, and Guy prepared to 
 accompany her. Marian looked at him with a sad 
 smile, indulgently wondering how in some things 
 he could be so blind. 
 
 " Not this afternoon," she said quietly. " It 
 won't improve matters for you to come with me." 
 
 4 
 
 After Marian had left, Guy remained by the 
 window till Sabina, having quieted Raymond, 
 came back into the room. He watched her clearing 
 away the tea things with the settled look of offence 
 on her face which was now so familiar. He 
 saw no hope of amendment from anything he 
 could say. He took his hat and stick and left the 
 cottage. 
 
 It was dusk when he returned, and Sabina was 
 waiting for him with the supper prepared. She 
 ignored his efforts to get into touch, answering him 
 with the intolerable patience of those who suffer 
 their wrongs meekly. 
 
 At last he could bear it no longer. Pushing away 
 his plate, he went round the table and took her by 
 the shoulders.
 
 184 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " Sabina," he urged. " \Vhat is the matter 
 with you ? " 
 
 Sabina stubbornly shut her lips. 
 
 " Why did you make a scene just now with 
 Marian? " Guy continued. 
 
 " I'm not in the habit of making scenes," said 
 Sabina. 
 
 Guy doggedly pursued her. " I can't for the life 
 of me see what Marian's engagement has to do with 
 us," he said. 
 
 " It has nothing to do with me," said Sabina ; 
 " and, of course, it has nothing to do with you 
 that it is broken off." 
 
 Her tone was big with implications which refused 
 to be ignored. Guy felt that the position would 
 not be improved by yielding to anger, and he put 
 a strong constraint upon himself. 
 
 " You've something on your mind, Sabina. 
 Tell me what it is. You know perfectly well that 
 this business does not affect us in the least." 
 
 " Then there's no more to be said," Sabina 
 rejoined. 
 
 She had not once looked at Guy during the con- 
 versation, and the fixed look of estrangement had 
 not left her face for an instant. 
 
 Guy turned away. Involuntarily he clenched 
 his hands. 
 
 " We can't go on like this," he exclaimed. 
 
 In the silence that followed all the slight sounds 
 of the wood and garden intruded irrelevantly into 
 the room. A moth entered, and, after an uncertain 
 flight hither and thither, fell scorched beside the 
 lamp. Guy absently put the creature out of its
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 185 
 
 misery. Sabina rose to clear away the supper. 
 Her movement implied that the night would end 
 with nothing bettered or explained. They would 
 lie beside one another, vaguely but tensely hostile, 
 until, exhausted with fancied recriminations, the 
 more bitter for remaining undelivered, they would 
 sleep, and pretend to-morrow that nothing had 
 happened. 
 
 Guy resolved that to-night should end differently 
 from that, and Sabina, in the act of collecting the 
 the supper things, heard herself ordered to put 
 them down. 
 
 " We've got to get clear on this," said Guy. 
 
 Sabina was frightened by his vehemence. 
 
 " I'm willing to be friends, if you are," she said. 
 
 " And then it will happen again to-morrow and 
 again, and again, and again," said Guy. " We 
 want something better than that." 
 
 " People who make mistakes must stand by the 
 consequences," said Sabina. ' You're sorry you 
 married me, and that's the truth," she concluded. 
 
 " That's a wicked thing to say." 
 
 " You can't deny that you're sorry. And some- 
 body else is sorry too." 
 
 " You mean Marian ? " 
 
 " Who else should I mean ? " 
 
 " Marian's done her best to be friends." 
 
 " Marian's perfect," said Sabina. "It's a pity 
 I came between you." 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous," said Guy angrily. 
 " You're being utterly absurd." 
 
 Sabina, pushed into the open, looked him boldly 
 in the face. " Marian would give anything to get
 
 186 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 you," she said; " and she'd have you fast enough 
 if it were not for me." 
 
 Guy lost patience altogether at this. He shook 
 her roughly by the arm. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! " he said with a violence 
 which surprised them both. 
 
 They were smitten with dismay at the width of 
 the breach which had opened between them. 
 There was a short unhappy silence, broken at last 
 by Guy. 
 
 "I have never regretted our marriage," he said, 
 trembling with indignation. " But you are doing 
 your best to make me regret it now." 
 
 5 
 
 He hastily left the cottage, and wandered down 
 the road. There was a cheerful gleam from the 
 ' Three Foresters," and Mrs. Basing smiled a 
 welcome from behind the bar But he passed on 
 moodily, and decided that never again would life 
 hold for him anything of good cheer. Sabina's 
 fancies about Marian he dismissed as wholly un- 
 founded. They simply indicated the hopelessness 
 of trying to deal with her as a rational being. 
 
 He returned to the cottage after midnight. 
 Sabina was already in bed. She had passed the 
 intervening hour in activities partly inspired by a 
 letter which she had recently received from her 
 sister, who was now married and living in a house 
 of her own near Steyning. Guy was surprised to 
 find that Sabina was not only in bed but sleeping. 
 Usually on these occasions she would be lying alert 
 for his arrival. He undressed without disturbing
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 1ST 
 
 her, and lay beside her with his thoughts still 
 turning upon their recent interview. 
 
 Once he was faintly aware that Sabina had risen, 
 and was attending to Raymond, and later he was 
 aroused to the fact that her arms were about him. 
 But reconciliation had too often come in that way, 
 and he lay still and unresponsive. 
 
 He slept soundly at last, and awoke to find the 
 dawn at their window. Again without disturbing 
 her he rose and made himself ready for the day. 
 Raymond was still sleeping in his cradle. Guy 
 could not endure the cottage, where the air seemed 
 to be burdened with echoes of yesterday. He 
 scrawled a note saying that he was going to town 
 by an early train, and would not be back till the 
 evening. Before leaving the cottage he looked at 
 his wife, who lay with her face to the growing light. 
 Sleep had smoothed the hard hostility of yesterday 
 to a childlike petulance. There had been tears on 
 her face. He bent to her, and only just resisted 
 an impulse to take her in his arms and let her 
 awaken there to an assurance that another estrange- 
 ment had passed like the rest. But he feared to 
 see her face harden under his eyes. He preferred 
 to bear away with him a picture which moved in 
 him the old tenderness. 
 
 When he returned that night the cottage was 
 silent and dark. A message awaited him on the 
 mantelpiece to the effect that she had taken 
 Raymond to stay with her sister for a while. She 
 would return when Guy was sufficiently eager to 
 receive her.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 GUY did not immediately pursue Sabina to her 
 place of retreat. He wrote her a letter saj'ing 
 he would be glad when she was ready to come to 
 him. Meanwhile she must let him know regularly 
 how she was, and he would send her the money she 
 required. It was a letter without life or character, 
 the result of feelings which cancelled one another 
 and left him uncertain what to say or do. Sabina 
 replied that she was well in health, and repeated 
 that she would return when Guy was sufficiently 
 eager to receive her. 
 
 Meanwhile Guy saw his book through the press 
 and lived increasingly the life of a hermit. Winter 
 drifted towards him, and still Sabina remained 
 away. Occasionally she wrote, briefly intimating 
 that she and Raymond were as well as could be 
 expected, and acknowledged his cheques. She 
 said she was quite comfortable with her sister, 
 who just then was in need of help and was glad to 
 have her in the house. 
 
 It was some time before it was realised abroad 
 that Guy and Sabina were not living together. 
 Marian did not again come to the cottage, and 
 Theodore had gone to nurse a constituency in the 
 North of England to which he had been nominated 
 as official Unionist candidate. In London Guy 
 
 188
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 18 
 
 avoided Aunt Helen ; and, when he saw her, aid 
 nothing about the scene at the cottage. 
 
 Guy, during these solitary weeks, measured the 
 extent to which Sabina prevailed in his life by the 
 desolation which he felt in her absence. He was 
 urged continually towards the girl who was ir- 
 remediably associated with the most exquisite 
 moments as well as the most urgent distresses of 
 his life. But he was restrained by an intelligence 
 that was not to be hoodwinked. He had within 
 him a spectator who saw clearly that, if Sabina 
 returned immediately, there would at once arise 
 the same perverse misunderstandings. 
 
 He could nevertheless hardly have refrained 
 from bringing back Sabina, had he not found an 
 unprecedented outlet for his charged emotions. 
 In long solitary walks at all hours over the country- 
 side, fighting with his bitter deprivation, sensitised 
 by loneliness and desire, he found himself haunted, 
 as never before, by an intense necessity for ex- 
 pression. He was a musician from birth ; he had 
 mixed from boyhood with musicians ; he was 
 sufficiently acquainted with musical science to 
 disdain it. Already he had written songs which 
 a friend had introduced, not without success, into 
 his recitals. He began now for the first time to 
 feel an overwhelming desire to test himself as a 
 composer. 
 
 One night, in the silent room at Brambletye, he 
 took his pen in hand, and, almost with a sense of 
 predestination to that end, he began to set down 
 in haste themes on which his mind had been tenta- 
 tively at work for several days.
 
 190 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 One morning, a little later, in a moment of 
 audacity, he wrote " Ballade Symphonique " upon 
 the first sheet of his score, and soon he was striving 
 against odds to express the musical ideas which 
 had taken root. He based his symphony on 
 passages of Arnold's " Forsaken Merman," but 
 soon discovered in himself an impatience with 
 literary ideas, and used his music to express 
 his personal sense of desolation and frustrated love. 
 
 2 
 
 It was Theodore who first learned that Guy was 
 living as a bachelor. He returned to Old Place in 
 December, after a political defeat in which he had 
 conducted himself to the satisfaction of the Whips, 
 and he dropped suddenly upon his brother at 
 Brambletye. 
 
 A few days previously Henderson had complained 
 to Theodore of Guy's recent behaviour. It seemed 
 that Guy did not keep sufficiently in touch with 
 his editor. For the last weeks he had even been 
 late with his article, and it had been written with 
 more than his usual neglect of current musical 
 events. Henderson, moreover, had detected some- 
 thing perfunctory in Guy's more recent perform- 
 ances, as though the writer's mind was away upon 
 other matters. Theodore wondered what could 
 be more particularly occupying his brother at this 
 time, more especially as he knew that the book, 
 " Contemporary Composers," was finished. 
 
 Theodore let himself into the cottage, finding the 
 door on the latch. He found Guy deeply engaged. 
 The table was littered with music paper, and Guy,
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 191 
 
 ruffled and unshaven, was scratching vigorously 
 with a fountain pen. He sat in an armchair by 
 the fire, which gave almost more light than the 
 candles on the mantelpiece. One half of the table 
 was encumbered with the remains of a meal 
 recently consumed. The other half was covered 
 with books, papers and minor implements. 
 
 When Guy heard the click of the latch his first 
 thought was that Sabina had come home. The 
 effect of his thought was strange. It was not 
 exactly hope or joy that he felt, but all his faculties 
 leaped to eager attention and his starved emotions 
 clamoured suddenly for satisfaction. Then, when 
 he saw his brother, the room went suddenly dead. 
 It was as though a light had been blown out. 
 
 They greeted casually. Theodore picked his way 
 to a chair between the sheets that littered the floor, 
 and added his hat to the accumulation of objects 
 which covered the table. He pointed to the 
 sheets. 
 
 " What's all this ? " he asked. 
 
 " I'm hoping it's the divine fire," said Guy. 
 
 " There seems to be rather a lot of it," said 
 Theodore. 
 
 " It's perhaps a symphony," said Guy. 
 
 He was shy of talking about his new work, and 
 hastened to change the subject. 
 
 " Why didn't they elect you to Parliament ? " 
 he enquired. " Seems such an obvious thing to 
 do," he added. 
 
 " The other fellow was more obvious," said 
 Theodore. 
 
 Theodore began to fill a pipe. He wanted to
 
 19* THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 hear what had become of his brother's wife. Guy 
 did not spontaneously enlighten him. 
 
 " Somebody seems to be missing," said Theodore 
 at last. 
 
 " For the time being," said Guy. 
 
 " Anything wrong ? " Theodore enquired. 
 
 Guy sat up in his armchair, and some symphony 
 slipped from his knees to the floor. 
 
 " Sometimes I think everything's wrong, and 
 then it seems like nothing at all." 
 
 " What has happened ? " 
 
 " We had a scene one of our usual scenes, only 
 a bit worse. She's with her sister." 
 
 " Why don't you bring her back ? " 
 
 " If I bring her back, it will happen all over 
 again. Besides this last time she was perfectly 
 outrageous. She had got something into her head 
 about Marian." 
 
 Theodore quickly changed the subject. 
 
 " You're neglecting the Moderator." 
 
 " Is anybody grumbling ? " 
 
 " You're paid to visit certain concerts, and you 
 can't afford to be dismissed. That's the point to 
 consider." He paused a moment. " How are 
 funds at the present moment ? " he added. 
 
 " I could borrow some with advantage," said 
 Guy, with his broad smile. 
 
 Theodore rose in some impatience. He had 
 come from a busy world of affairs. He was 
 exasperated by the contrast offered here by a 
 brother whom he regarded as superior rather than 
 inferior to himself in native gifts. He looked round 
 the littered room and down at Guy, dark under the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL It* 
 
 eyes from days and nights of feverish endeavour. 
 Theodore did not believe in the symphony. It was 
 one of Guy's impetuous enthusiasms which would 
 break down for lack of technical training and 
 industry. Meanwhile Guy was neglecting his 
 livelihood ; he had made a failure of his marriage ; 
 and he behaved in money matters like a cheerfully 
 insolvent undergraduate. 
 
 " I'm glad you're hard up," said Theodore 
 shortly. " It may bring you to your senses." 
 
 Guy's blue eyes kindled. 
 
 " It won't bring me on my knees to Henderson." 
 
 ., 
 
 The momentary dispute had ended in the 
 familiar way. Guy had apparently paid no regard 
 to his brother, but Theodore knew that for a few 
 weeks at least he would behave himself rather 
 better. Theodore knew he was in the right, and, 
 as always before, derived no satisfaction from the 
 fact. There were times, especially when he was 
 quarrelling with his brother, when Theodore 
 almost resented his incapacity to be wrong. Even 
 now, as he walked away through the dark wood, 
 he thought enviously rather than compassionately 
 of Guy, ascetically alone, working with the fever 
 of aspiration in his veins and the hot gleam of the 
 enthusiast in his eyes. Theodore, returning to the 
 praise and comfort which attend success, and to 
 the large equable life of Old Place, felt that in some 
 indefinite way Guy had stolen his birthright. 
 
 That evening Guy, thinking of his brother at 
 Old Place, without envy, hugged closely to his
 
 194 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 heart the compensations of an outlaw. He had 
 scrawled in haste a theme which branched like the 
 heavenly mustard seed. To-morrow he might find 
 the music vanishing between the lines of his MS. 
 To-night he felt the creator's joy who believes that 
 his work is good. His momentary happiness as an 
 artist filled him with tenderness for all the world ; 
 and, on a background of bewilderment and pain, 
 he saw glimmering the face of his absent wife as 
 she had slept under his eyes on the morning of her 
 departure. He decided that, as soon as his 
 symphony was finished, he would bring her home. 
 He would not go for her until he had finished. Her 
 return might break his inspiration. 
 
 4 
 
 For several weeks Guy's execution of his duty 
 as musical critic of the Moderator left nothing to 
 be desired. Then the symphony again gripped 
 him hard, and he omitted one week to note that 
 his article was overdue. 
 
 Severely reprimanded by Henderson, he called 
 at the office to justify himself. The pain of his 
 wife's absence and the effort, always intense and 
 only seldom happy, to govern his musical ideas, 
 made him impatient of all discipline and resentful 
 of details. On the day of his visit to Henderson, 
 it did not improve matters that, having had 
 nothing to eat that morning, he first visited a bar 
 which stood adjacent. He came to his interview 
 primed for a hearty dispute, and he did not fail 
 to impart to it an alcoholic bluster which Henderson 
 deprecated to the extent of pointedly retreating to
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 195 
 
 a far corner of the room and throwing up the 
 window. Then and there Henderson determined 
 to look sidelong for a successor. 
 
 The end came suddenly and soon. A member 
 of Henderson's staff had been recently returned to 
 Parliament, and Henderson decided to give a 
 dinner at the Savoy in celebration of the occasion. 
 Henderson was doubtful of the propriety of in- 
 cluding his musical critic, who was at the best of 
 times a possible discord. He accordingly postponed 
 the delivery of the card inviting Guy to the 
 party. 
 
 On the day appointed for the dinner Guy was 
 sitting in the office writing his weekly article when 
 Henderson passed through to his private room. 
 Guy turned to greet him and Henderson at once 
 decided to withhold the invitation. Guy had that 
 day the fanatical look of a man who wrestles with 
 tasks to which he is divinely urged. His eyes were 
 haggard. The unkempt look of the hermit was 
 about him ; and he was vacant in his rejoinders. 
 His coat was burned and soiled with the ashes of 
 his pipe. His hair, which should have been cut 
 several weeks ago, almost flamed above the cold 
 bright blue of his brooding eyes. He had scarcely 
 broken his fast that day, and he had been com- 
 pelled to obtain energy for his hateful labour of 
 the unwilling penman in a fashion which produced 
 in the apprehensive nostrils of Henderson an 
 imperceptible twitching. 
 
 Guy would have left the office in happy ignorance 
 of the festivity from which he was debarred, had 
 it not been for Theodore's unexpected arrival on
 
 106 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the scene. Theodore came to enquire the time of 
 the dinner, and, seeing Guy, applied to him for 
 information. Guy said he had heard nothing at all 
 about it. Theodore said that all the staff was to 
 be there, and that he himself had seen a card made 
 out in Guy's name on the Editor's desk. 
 
 Theodore went upstairs to Henderson. 
 
 He returned with the news that the dinner was 
 mainly political, and that Guy, being notoriously 
 indifferent to politics, was not asked to attend. 
 He looked closely at his brother, and then with 
 a slight shrug left the office. 
 
 Guy thought little of this incident at the time, 
 but half an hour later, as he sat on a tall stool in 
 an adjacent bar, the circumstances vividly re- 
 curred. He had by that time the keenness of 
 vision, almost amounting to clairvoyance, some- 
 times attained by those who drink unwisely upon 
 an empty stomach. He remembered the twitching 
 of Henderson's nose. 
 
 He put his glass down emphatically on the 
 counter. 
 
 " I could almost believe," he muttered, " that 
 the fellow was smelling me." 
 
 " This requires to be investigated," he told 
 himself a moment later. 
 
 He ordered another whiskey and soda. A 
 number of incidents, unnoticed at the time, danced 
 into his head and out again, all seeming to push 
 him to a conclusion as yet distant and unidentified. 
 There had been an invitation for him on the 
 Editor's table. What was going to happen ? 
 Something festive. Oh, yes, he remembered it
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 19T 
 
 now. It was a feast. Theodore had said it was a 
 political feast. Nevertheless that fellow who wrote 
 about pictures had come into the office while he 
 was writing his article, and now he remembered 
 distinctly that the chief clerk had said something 
 about 8.15 in the Pinafore Rooms. Why was 
 that silly aesthete going to a political dinner ? 
 
 " I know," said Guy aloud, to the surprise of 
 the gentleman on the next stool. " It isn't a 
 political dinner." 
 
 And then that other incriminating fact re- 
 curred. 
 
 Henderson's nostrils had indubitably twitched. In 
 a moment he saw the whole affair. All the staff, 
 including Theodore, were going to a big dinner at 
 the Savoy, but he, it seems, was to be kept out 
 of it, because Henderson had an abnormally 
 sensitive nose. 
 
 He saw himself encircled with sly conspiracy. 
 He remembered an incident in his childhood when 
 there had been a plan to exclude him from a party 
 because he had notably misbehaved himself. On 
 that occasion he had proved one too many for his 
 oppressors by hiding under the tea table. The 
 incident had ended in marzipan and jam tarts, 
 which tasted all the better for being the pledge of 
 his victory. He particularly remembered how, 
 under the table, he had tickled the legs, faultlessly 
 ending in white socks and shiny black shoes, of 
 dear little Theodore, who hadn't misbehaved 
 himself at all. 
 
 " Yes," said Guy, with a grave smile at the lady 
 behind the counter. " I tickled his legs."
 
 198 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 5 
 
 The moderators assembled at eight o'clock and 
 walked into dinner at 8.15. The principal guest, 
 a junior cabinet minister, was uncertain whether 
 he would be present. A cover was laid for him 
 on the right of Henderson. Everything, so far, 
 was according to plan, and Henderson smiled upon 
 a distinguished company. Over the soup someone 
 commented on the absence of Guy, who, to the 
 satisfaction of the younger members, often suc- 
 ceeded in stemming the Carltonese of the older 
 political contingent. 
 
 " Our musical critic will not be here to-night," 
 said Henderson. 
 
 To the older men, near at hand, and well out of 
 hearing of Theodore, he added that he had taken 
 measures for the exclusion of their young friend 
 in view of his unfortunate condition not two 
 hours ago. 
 
 " It was rather a problem," he said, " but I 
 fancy we handled it successfully." 
 
 Henderson spoke too soon. At the double doors 
 in the centre of the longer side of the room there 
 was suddenly an apparition. The light shimmered 
 upon a mass of gleaming hair, desperately brushed 
 but defying all restraint. Eyes, which were two 
 blue points of light, glittered from under this 
 shining thatch and from the midst of a countenance 
 ruddy with excitement and burnished from the 
 towel. A tie, more or less white, protruded out- 
 rageously from under one ear. The vest and tail 
 coat were in order ; but in the dim light of a 
 Hampstead room the intruder had mistakenly
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 199 
 
 put on a pair of blue serge trousers a little baggy at 
 the knees. 
 
 Guy advanced into the room with the delicate 
 deliberation of a man who knows that he is in 
 complete possession of his faculties, but rather 
 fears that his friends may have a doubt of it. 
 Henderson, seeing his most important function for 
 many months threatened with eclipse, gazed sternly 
 upon the intruder. Guy wore the look of a small 
 boy who has outwitted his enemies, and can with 
 difficulty restrain himself from putting his tongue 
 out. 
 
 He walked skilfully towards the vacant chair on 
 Henderson's right hand, and sat down with extreme 
 accuracy. He bent confidentially towards his 
 host, and carefully inquired whether he might 
 borrow a five shilling piece. He said something 
 about having a cab outside. 
 
 With strategical promptitude Henderson pressed 
 half a sovereign into his hand, accompanied him 
 to the double door, and with severe satisfaction 
 watched him safely into the corridor. The head 
 waiter was instructed not to re-admit the 
 gentleman. The door, if necessary, must be 
 guarded. 
 
 The head waiter placed sentries in position, and 
 Theodore quietly left the room to intercept his 
 brother and take charge of him. Theodore could 
 find Guy in none of the adjacent passages, and, 
 returning, answered Henderson's unspoken query 
 with a re-assuring nod. The incident, briefly de- 
 plored by the older men and briefly enjoyed by 
 the younger ones, appeared to be terminated. 
 Henderson, resuming his soup, smiled grimly at the 
 waiters by the double door.
 
 200 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Suddenly, on the opposite side of the room, a 
 smaller door was seen abruptly to open. From 
 this undefended breach in the citadel Guy, looking 
 from Henderson to the three waiters guarding the 
 opposite side, broke into a broad sly smile and for 
 a sign of triumph lifted his forefinger playfully. 
 
 Clearly it was a victory. The three waiters, 
 moving dutifully towards the intruder, were 
 checked by a glance from the head of the table, 
 and the younger men, with creditable presence of 
 mind, ostentatiously made room for him below 
 the salt. 
 
 Guy devoted his evening almost solely to 
 Henderson. He did not once look at his brother, 
 and he said hardly a word to his immediate com- 
 panions. He was bent upon proving to the fellow 
 who had almost seemed to smell him that in the 
 first place he had never in his life been recognisably 
 under the influence of drink, and that in the second 
 place when it came to a really personal encounter 
 between them, Guy Reval was the better man. 
 To prove that he began the evening sober, he 
 insisted that the waiters, who had a tendency to 
 omit the replenishing of his glass, should do their 
 duty by him. He waited for the man to come 
 round, met him with a stony stare, and indicated 
 with a gesture that a certain glass was notoriously 
 empty. Otherwise he looked continually at Hen- 
 derson and waited smilingly for his speech. 
 
 Against all reason and very much against his 
 will, Henderson became increasingly uncomfortable 
 under the relentlessly smiling contemplation to 
 which he was thus submitted. He felt the presence
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL J01 
 
 of an active impropriety, of something that mocked 
 at the urbanities he represented and that discounted 
 in advance the sober periods in which he shortly 
 intended to celebrate the dignity and influence of 
 the higher journalism. Henderson had the habit 
 of an orator before oratory had been submitted to 
 the influence of a democratic platform. He had a 
 sympathetic audience in the older men, and he 
 expected to charm and impress the cabinet 
 minister who had by this time arrived. 
 
 It was with the utmost difficulty that he con- 
 trived to speak at all. What chance of success 
 has the orator who looks round for sympathy, and 
 meets an implacable Mephistophelian blue eye in 
 which he is relentlessly mocked ; who cannot 
 forget that, beneath his sacred table, there rests a 
 pair of legs indecently clad in blue serge ; whose 
 fingers twitch to set right a discursive white tie, 
 partially eclipsed by an ear bent to listen with 
 exaggerated respect to the voice of wisdom ; who, 
 amid the murmured assent and corroboration of 
 his guests, infallibly waits for an over emphatic 
 and too distinct " hear, hear," which somehow 
 pricks the rhetorical bubble before it can soar to 
 the height of the occasion ? 
 
 Henderson sat down knowing that, by no fault 
 of his own, he had failed to do himself justice. 
 
 The speech of the cabinet minister was per- 
 functory and brief. The minister was not aware 
 that anything was really wrong, but he was tired, 
 and still had work to do that evening. Henderson, 
 who thought that everyone at the table was as 
 painfully aware of Guy as he himself, attributed
 
 202 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the flatness of the minister's speech to the circum- 
 stance which had spoiled his own. His only con- 
 solation was mentally to phrase the letter of dis- 
 missal he would write to-morrow. 
 
 Towards the end of the proceedings, when the 
 cabinet minister had gone, Guy himself was ob- 
 served to rise suddenly to his feet. Apparently 
 he, too, had a speech to make. He was heard to 
 utter the word " moderators " distinctly. But the 
 effort to articulate required so much concentration 
 of the faculties that he had no attention to spare 
 for his legs. The accumulating weakness of several 
 months seemed suddenly to find a seat in them. 
 
 When they carried him to the window they found 
 he had actually fainted. His brother accompanied 
 him home to Hampstead and put him to bed. 
 The indignation which Theodore had steadily en- 
 couraged in himself through the evening was 
 checked by his discovery that his brother was 
 suffering as much from too little food as from too 
 much alcohol. 
 
 Guy, sobered by his sudden illness, sat with his 
 brother in the cab feeling rather like a child in 
 disgrace ; but the sole effect of a comment from 
 Theodore on the evening's work was to spur him 
 to a blustering defiance of the consequences. 
 Theodore had a great deal to say, but he had also 
 a clear perception that this was hardly the time 
 to say it. 
 
 On the following day Guy received a message 
 through the post to the effect that he might cease 
 to regard himself as a member of the staff.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 i 
 
 GUY'S career as a respectable journalist was for 
 the moment ended. Shortly after his dis- 
 missal from the Moderator, he accepted a post as 
 musical critic on a weekly organ which underpaid 
 its contributors (or did not pay them at all) for 
 reviling its more reputable contemporaries. Theo- 
 dore in vain dissuaded him from thus proscribing 
 himself. 
 
 He equally failed to influence his brother in 
 another matter. Theodore's work at the bar and 
 his interests as a prospective candidate for a 
 doubtful seat in the House left him no further time 
 for his work as Lord Melsham's secretary. Guy 
 was, at Theodore's suggestion, invited to fill the 
 post. Lord Melsham thought that responsibility 
 and regular work might steady him. Guy, how- 
 ever, could not be persuaded. He was still ab- 
 sorbed by his music, and had just sufficient con- 
 fidence and pleasure in it to support him in the 
 belief that he had a right to stand against the 
 world, to play the outcast, and nourish a contempt 
 of worldliness in all its forms. 
 
 He took long solitary walks, in course of which 
 he liked to pass the warm houses where safe and 
 comfortable people sat down to regular meals, or 
 slept upon the best bedding, while he, a lonely 
 
 203 
 
 o
 
 204 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 zealot, his head humming with the music which 
 moved him so mightily till he had actually set it 
 down, passed them by, his breath lying mistily 
 upon the cold air, a sense of outlawry and adventure 
 wanning his blood, proud to feel that he had now 
 no need of the ease and security desired by timid 
 souls, but that he was living his own secluded life, 
 frugal and unencumbered, in order that genius 
 might have its way. In such a mood as this Guy 
 scornfully dismissed Lord Melsham's offer. It was 
 the world's way to have ready a pinch of salt for 
 the tail of a free spirit. He buried himself wilfully 
 away from all corruptors of genius ; and, as the 
 days lengthened over the cottage, and spring began 
 to be busy in the wood, he grew daily more solitary, 
 haggard and self-consumed. 
 
 Nevertheless his desire for Sabina's return was 
 never quite in abeyance, and often he was on the 
 point of yielding. First, however, he must finish 
 his symphony. 
 
 More than once he decided overnight to start 
 for Steyning on the following morning, a decision 
 which was only broken when the time came by a 
 sudden renewal of his musical inspiration. One 
 day he had taken his ticket for Steyning at the 
 local station, when it suddenly became clear to 
 him how he might successfully deal with a passage 
 which hitherto had baffled him. He returned to 
 the cottage, and worked till nightfall. 
 
 2 
 
 The day, however, came at last, a warm day in 
 April, when the decision taken overnight, though
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 205 
 
 the symphony was not yet finished, was actually 
 carried out. He took the train in the morning, 
 and arrived at the cottage where Sabina was 
 staying early in the afternoon. It was a small and 
 isolated dwelling under the shoulder of the Downs. 
 Guy was amazed, now that he was so near to 
 Sabina, that he had remained wilfully away so 
 long. Had she been living thirty yards from him 
 instead of thirty miles, he would have brought her 
 back again within a few days. Was thirty miles, 
 then, so effective a barrier thirty miles and the 
 rankling of a few angry phrases ? 
 
 Now that he saw before him the house where 
 she was living, he could not have left it upon the 
 strictest summons. Would he be able to win her 
 back ? Months of cold neglect and brief con- 
 strained messages stood between them. She had 
 allowed all that time to pass without a gesture of 
 reconciliaton. Perhaps she had found peace in 
 that place and desired to keep it. 
 
 He walked to the door and paused a moment 
 listening for a sign of occupation. No sound came 
 to him there. The only sign of life was the smoke 
 from the chimney and the windows opened wide 
 to the air. He shrank from breaking the silence, 
 and, stepping softly aside to one of the windows, 
 looked into the room. 
 
 Sabina was sitting at the table reading a maga- 
 zine. She had on her face the expression for which 
 he had often teased her, an expression of con- 
 centration as of a child intent upon a story book. 
 A half emptied cup of tea stood beside her. On a 
 horse-hair sofa on the further side of the room a
 
 206 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 woman lay sleeping. It was obviously Sabina's 
 sister. She had Sabina's features, but not Sabina's 
 face. 
 
 Sabina turned a page and took up her tea-cup 
 without removing her eyes from the page. Guy, 
 as he looked, felt the tenderness of one who watches 
 someone dear doing immaterial things, unconscious 
 of being observed. That he wag a spectator of 
 these small actions, with the power at once to 
 break in and change the picture, rilled him with a 
 queer pleasure, in which compassion was somehow 
 mingled. What he saw was aloof and yet familiar, 
 remote and yet very dear. And the simplest act 
 thus viewed had an exaggerated significance, as 
 though it had been staged for his enlightenment. 
 It was like a crisis of destiny when she took up 
 her cup. 
 
 To set it down, Sabina looked from the book to 
 her saucer. In so doing she caught sight of Guy 
 at the window 7 . For a moment she stared at him 
 in amazement. Then she rose quickly, put her 
 finger to her lips, and left the room. In another 
 moment she was beside him in the garden. 
 
 Her rapid movement had broken the wistful 
 spell set upon Guy by his sight of her in the quiet 
 room. In the brief moment before her appearance 
 in the garden he had time to wonder how 
 she would greet him and what he would say to 
 her. 
 
 She came to him like a child, and they neither 
 of them said a word. All the speeches Guy had 
 thought to make became impossible. She clung 
 so fast, that when at last he gently tried to put
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 207 
 
 her away in order to see and read her looks she 
 seemed unaware of the effort. He realised in that 
 moment the extent of her desolation during the 
 last months. 
 
 " Sabina," he whispered over her bent head, 
 " I wanted to come before." 
 
 She answered, sobbing for her breath : 
 
 " Oh, Guy, I thought you had given me up 
 altogether. You mustn't be angry with me again. 
 I can't bear it." 
 
 Slowly the first flush of their meeting subsided, 
 and they dropped to a discussion of what they 
 would do. 
 
 " Come home to me," Guy urged. 
 
 " I can't," said Sabina. " I'll tell you why 
 later." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " When Jim (that's my sister's husband) comes 
 home. I'll meet you somewhere." 
 
 " Why not tell me now ? " 
 
 " My sister might wake up." 
 
 " Why are you so mysterious ? Don't you want 
 her to see me ? " 
 
 " I don't want her to wake up." 
 
 " Aren't you going to let me come into the 
 cottage ? I must see Raymond, you know." 
 
 " You can see Raymond, but don't make a 
 noise." 
 
 He followed her into the cottage, and they passed 
 on tiptoe through the room where Sabina's sister 
 was sleeping, to the stairs which ran up from a door 
 in the corner. Raymond was sleeping in a huge 
 bed barricaded with bolsters.
 
 208 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " He's more like you than he was," said Guy. 
 " He has your mouth." 
 
 " Sh sh," said Sabina. 
 
 Guy touched the child's lips lightly with his finger. 
 
 " Now you must come away," whispered Sabina. 
 " I shall bring him back to you soon." 
 
 Outside the cottage he protested once more. 
 
 " Why shouldn't I stay ? " 
 
 " In half an hour Jim will be back. You will see 
 me coming up the side of the hill. It's lovely up 
 there on the Downs." 
 
 He kissed her and held her a moment, and then 
 went into the road. A broad grass track zigzagged 
 from the road up the side of the Down whose back 
 lay parallel. Always as he turned, Guy saw Sabina 
 still standing at the door of the cottage, a figure 
 which each time grew smaller, till at last he could 
 not see her face distinctly. 
 
 Sitting on the top of the Down, whence he 
 commanded the road below, Guy was divided 
 between the happy promise of Sabina's coming and 
 a faint resentment at her refusal to let him stay 
 at the cottage. Instinctively he feared some per- 
 verse reason for her anxiety to keep him away. 
 The matter worried him at intervals, till at last, 
 pulling himself angrily together, and reminding 
 himself that no such perversities as he feared must 
 ever again be permitted to come between them, he 
 surrendered wholly to the hour. 
 
 3 
 
 Sabina's unwillingness to allow Guy to remain 
 at the cottage was natural enough.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 209 
 
 It was Sabina's tragedy that the sense of class, 
 normally grounded upon mean or indifferent 
 motives, was in her case fostered by the great 
 passion of her life. Her love for Guy caused her 
 to brood upon her social inferiority, and made her 
 abnormally sensitive to all that divides people 
 according to externals. On returning to her 
 sister's house she had found that she had left her 
 sister's life behind her. Hitherto she had only 
 been conscious of her inferiority to Guy's friends 
 and relatives. Now she became aware of her 
 superiority to the environment of her girlhood, 
 which insensibly she had outgrown. She noticed 
 her sister's speech, her ways of eating and standing, 
 all the incorrect gentilities or positive offences 
 whose existence Sabina had herself almost for- 
 gotten. Her sister had on her the effect of an 
 uncouth version of herself, and she often thought 
 to herself in horror that thus she must seem to 
 Guy and his friends. This was the life from which 
 Guy had rescued her ; she had left it already 
 behind ; she wanted to stand clear from it in his 
 thoughts. Obscurely she felt :" I do not belong 
 to this place, and he must never see me again as 
 a part of it." She had really gone some part of the 
 way towards him. She prized those few steps in 
 his direction, and would never let him think for a 
 moment that she could retrace them. It was not 
 that she was ashamed of her people. There was 
 nothing base in her passion for gentlehood. It had 
 become involved in her love, so that anything which 
 threatened to recall or to expose her humble begin- 
 ning threatened also to endanger her hold upon Guy.
 
 210 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 4 
 
 It was not long before Guy, from the summit 
 of the Down, saw a working man coming along the 
 road from Steyning. He followed his progress 
 with excitement. Most likely it was Jim, coming 
 to release Sabina. How slow seemed the progress 
 of the man along the distant road. Now he was 
 almost abreast of the cottage ; and, as he turned 
 at the gate and entered, Guy banged the turf 
 joyfully with his stick. 
 
 The man disappeared into the cottage, and Guy 
 waited eagerly for something to happen. In about 
 ten minutes, when Guy had begun to suffer agonies 
 of impatience, Sabina suddenly came from the 
 cottage door. She had no hat, but was coming 
 just as he had seen her first. She crossed the road 
 with quick steps and began to climb the hillside. 
 
 Guy jumped to his feet and went to meet her. 
 
 He brought her to the top of the Down, and for 
 a long while they rested there in deep tranquility. 
 Sabina looked down over the wide country, her 
 spirit filled with its spaciousness, her face a little 
 advanced to meet the air which rustled up to them 
 over the gray-green turf. Guy saw her in profile 
 against the gracious line of the Downs which 
 dipped and rose softly against the blue of the sky. 
 He saw her as part of the fragrance and colour of 
 the afternoon, of the soft green, the tender blue 
 and the golden light upon the fields below. 
 
 They asked one another many questions, each 
 desiring to fill the vacancy in their lives of the 
 months of absence. Sabina spoke little of her time 
 with her sister. She helped her sister with the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 211 
 
 house and garden and poultry. She rarely left 
 the cottage except to shop in Steyning. Of Guy 
 she wanted a full tale. He told her of the music 
 he was writing and of his dismissal from the 
 Moderator. At first she was scared by this un- 
 expected news, and Guy, for the first time, felt 
 guilty in thinking of his recent escapade at the 
 Savoy. 
 
 " This music you're doing," she said. " Will it 
 be done in a theatre ? " 
 
 " Perhaps it won't be done at all," said Guy 
 cheerfully. 
 
 " Shall we get any money for it ? " 
 
 " I'm doing it for fun," said Guy. 
 
 " What's it about ? " 
 
 " It was going to be about a merman who lived 
 under the sea and married a woman from the land 
 who went away and left him. But the merman 
 turned into me living alone in the cottage and 
 thinking of you." 
 
 " Then it's really about me," said Sabina in an 
 awed voice. " And I shan't be able to understand 
 it," she added a moment later. 
 
 She looked sadly at the man who expressed his 
 love for her in a language she could not read. 
 
 " I wish we lived on a hill," said Sabina, after 
 one of their long silences. 
 
 " This kind of hill ? " said Guy. 
 
 " A hill without any trees, with the sky all round 
 it. I love the Downs." 
 
 She lifted a harebell blown flat by the light 
 breeze and supported it against the wind with her 
 finger.
 
 212 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " They are so soft and big," she said, talking 
 still of the Downs. " They seem to be kind. 
 Don't laugh at me, Guy." 
 
 "Why shouldn't we live here?" said Guy. 
 " We could have a cottage in Steyning, and you 
 could come up here as often as you liked." 
 
 " Not in Steyning," said Sabina quickly, thinking 
 of her sister. 
 
 " Why not in Steyning ? " Guy asked. 
 
 " The Downs go on for miles," she answered 
 evasively. 
 
 Guy felt a return of the resentment he had felt 
 before, when she had refused to let him wait at the 
 cottage. 
 
 " Did you see Jim ? " she went on suddenly, 
 with seeming inconsequence. 
 
 " I did," said Guy ; " if it was Jim that came 
 home just now." 
 
 " Jim is a bricklayer," said Sabina, looking at 
 Guy and flushing imperceptibly. 
 
 " I once wanted to be a bricklayer," said 
 Guy. 
 
 " You needn't be funny about it," said Sabina. 
 
 " Jim be hanged," said Guy. " Why aren't 
 you coming home with me to-night ? " 
 
 " My sister has no one to stay with her." 
 
 " Must she have someone ? " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 " Why, is anything the matter with her ? " 
 
 " Didn't you notice ? She's going to have a 
 baby seven weeks from now." 
 
 " It will be seven ages." 
 
 " I believe you do love me, Guy."
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 213 
 
 5 
 
 Sabina stayed till sunset. They passsd the time 
 sitting or rambling, as the mood took them. It 
 was getting dark when they at last descended the 
 hill. Their hearts were full of the time they had 
 had together, almost unshadowed. Sabina lingered 
 as they approached the road, and at last brought 
 Guy to a stand. 
 
 " It's been beautiful," she said. " Say good-bye 
 here. I will come, and sit here in the evenings 
 and think of it." 
 
 " It seems silly for me to go away like this," 
 said Guy. 
 
 Sabina fidgeted nervously with her foot. 
 
 " Don't spoil it, Guy. I don't want you to come 
 to the cottage." 
 
 " But why not ? " 
 
 " Please, dear, allow me to know what's best." 
 
 " Because Jim's a bricklayer ? " said Guy, bitter 
 at heart. 
 
 Sabina's face began to have the look he feared. 
 
 " Sabina, say it isn't that." 
 
 " I don't want you to come," she repeated. She 
 caught at him with a little gesture of desperation. 
 " Don't let's quarrel about it, Guy. It's just 
 something I ask you." 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears to enforce her appeal, 
 and Guy felt how poor a thing it would be to deny 
 the whim which possessed her.- 
 
 " Very well," he said. 
 
 " This is good-bye, then," he added, with dis- 
 content in his voice. 
 
 " No, Guy, not like that. Be patient with me."
 
 214 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Suddenly overwhelmed with shame for his 
 childishness, he took her in his arms, and for a 
 moment they stood deeply embraced. 
 
 " There, darling," said Guy at last. " Go now, 
 if you must." 
 
 At the foot of the hill she paused and waved to 
 him. As he waved back at the frail dim figure 
 below, he realised that this unreasonable parting 
 left him restless and unsatisfied. He had yielded 
 to a whim for which he had no respect. They had 
 kept the peace, but only by avoiding the issue 
 which lay between them.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 i 
 
 GUY pushed on rapidly with his composition, 
 and it was soon almost finished. 
 The time with Sabina, which had seemed so 
 perfect, had left him strangely dejected. He came 
 to realise clearly that they had only avoided another 
 wretched quarrel owing to. his forbearance. He 
 divined exactly the motive which had prompted 
 Sabina to keep him away from her sister. That 
 sudden sentence flung out with the irrelevance that 
 so often reveals coherence in the inward thought 
 had given him the key. Jim was a bricklayer. 
 Guy was secretly revolted by the sensitiveness of 
 Sabina to such things. He saw the baseness of the 
 motive without seeing the deeper sources from 
 which it sprang. He wished sometimes he had 
 dragged her reasons into the open and denounced 
 them. He had acquiesced only because he loved 
 her ; but what sort of love, he asked himself, 
 would they be able to base upon such a lack 
 of candour in their dealings as was here im- 
 plied ? 
 
 Thinking of Sabina in this way, he no longer 
 felt his bereavement as an inspiration. He was 
 divided between a feverish desire for her return 
 and an uneasiness regarding it which distracted 
 him in a way hopelessly barren. He realised that, 
 
 21ft
 
 216 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 though there may be inspiration in suffering, 
 worry is merely a nuisance. 
 
 Guy was at the most discouraging of all moments 
 for the immature artist. The hot fit of creation 
 had passed and he was now assessing the results. 
 The perfection he had hoped to grasp had eluded 
 him, and, judging what he had done by what he 
 had hoped to do, he was easily inclined to despair. 
 He began to wonder whether what he had actually 
 composed would mean anything at all to a stranger. 
 He longed for judgment, for someone to destroy 
 for ever his dream of creation, or to assure him 
 that he was not wholly uninspired. The positive 
 impulse had for the moment died in him ; he was 
 now a merciless critic, \vho read or played a score 
 and saw only its technical insufficiency. 
 
 2 
 
 It was in such a mood of misbelief and dejection 
 that some six weeks after his visit to Steyning he 
 unexpectedly met Marian by the great beech. 
 Marian was now staying at Old Place. The post 
 of secretary to Lord Melsham which Guy had 
 rejected had at Theodore's further suggestion been 
 offered to Marian. Lord Melsham was a little 
 singular at that time in his decision to take a lady 
 secretary, but he was soon able to congratulate 
 himself upon the result. Marian liked the work. 
 That it made of her a constant neighbour for Guy 
 did not seem greatly to matter, for Guy now avoided 
 Old Place, and Marian had already been some 
 months in residence before they met. 
 
 It was their first meeting since Theodore's
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 217 
 
 proposal and Sabina's flight. Marian, who at first was 
 self-conscious, and disposed to think that Guy had 
 deliberately held aloof in deference to Sabina, soon 
 discovered that he was still unaware that there 
 was any need for reserve in their relationship. 
 She was shocked by the change in him. He had 
 grown careless of his personal appearance, and was 
 grossly neglecting his health. Further, he had the 
 air of a man living in solitude. He was like a person 
 who, having lived for some time in a badly-lighted 
 room, comes blinking into the sun. He walked 
 back with her to the edge of the park, gradually 
 warming to her friendliness. She once or twice 
 endeavoured to enquire after Sabina, but Guy 
 would talk only of his symphony. 
 
 At parting he yielded to a sudden impulse, and 
 asked whether she would come to the cottage on 
 the following day in order to hear it. It seemed as 
 though she had been sent to him that day by a 
 special providence. He had desired above all 
 things the judgment of a friend. Here was a friend 
 who would be honest with him and a friend whose 
 verdict might set his doubts at rest. 
 
 On the following day, during the meal which 
 preceded the audition, Marian could only with 
 difficulty prevent herself from yielding to an 
 inward panic. It was the kind of meal which was 
 only too usual at the cottage, consisting mainly of 
 food extracted from tins and moistened with strong 
 tea. The room, in its customary confusion, 
 abundantly testified to the fact that Guy had long 
 ago dismissed the woman who used to help with 
 the cottage work. He was by turns irrelevantly
 
 218 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 gay and needlessly intense. Marian felt that she 
 was assisting at a crisis. The fact that he wanted 
 her to tell him what she thought of his music, and 
 that he had delivered his invitation in queer 
 accents of deprecation, allowed her to see the state 
 of his mind. He had fanatically aspired, but he 
 already doubted. 
 
 It was Guy's birthday, and, when they turned 
 to the piano he played first some French music 
 which Marian had brought him as a gift. He 
 realised enviously how precisely the Frenchman 
 had expressed exactly what he desired. How 
 pleasant it must be to have so little to say and to 
 be able to turn it so neatly. He shut the book, 
 and they talked uneasily about the music he had 
 played. Then abruptly he seized his score. It 
 was blotted and thumbed and written in a short- 
 hand which few but the composer could read in 
 its present state. It was stained with food and 
 blotched with grease from the candles. 
 
 He played for half an hour, but he felt, almost 
 at once, that he had failed. He compared, as he 
 played, with increasing dismay, the music of which 
 he had dreamed with the music he had achieved. 
 
 Marian was frankly puzzled. Here and there 
 she caught a hint of the beauty that had evaded 
 him. But for the most part she could only feel 
 that Guy, who had been living in a paradise of 
 disembodied ideas, had been unable to give them 
 a local habitation. Thus might a throng of spirits, 
 called suddenly to earth, catch up such garments 
 as fell in their way and walk the earth demeaned 
 and commonplace.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 219 
 
 Convinced at last of the futility of his per- 
 formance, Guy ceased playing. For a moment 
 there was silence in the room. They heard the 
 wind stirring the trees outside, and the fire rustling 
 in the grate. Then Guy abruptly lifted his 
 eyes and resentfully confronted his sentence. 
 In Marian's looks he surprised compassion and 
 the desire to encourage him afresh. 
 
 " Why don't you tell me it's no good," he said 
 at last. 
 
 " There are parts of it," she began. 
 
 But she could not continue under his steady look. 
 
 " You think I've been wasting my time," he 
 said. 
 
 Marian laid a hand upon his sleeve. 
 
 " Why not come back to us, Guy ? You have 
 shut yourself up too long. You are losing touch 
 with life." 
 
 Guy pressed the hand which rested on his sleeve. 
 
 They remained for a moment without speaking. 
 Their attitude declared an old intimacy renewed 
 under the pressure of a strong emotion. 
 
 4 
 
 A shadow fell across the threshold of the open 
 door. Neither of them perceived it, or looked up 
 to see what it was that came between them and the 
 waning light. It might have been just one of the 
 many shadows of nightfall. The shadow remained 
 a moment, and then light and rapid steps were 
 heard in the garden. Guy rose and went to the 
 window. Yet another shadow seemed to glide 
 away into the wood.
 
 220 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " I could have sworn somebody was in the 
 garden," he said, returning to the fire. 
 
 A few minutes later Guy accompanied Marian 
 back to Old Place. A storm was threatened from 
 where the sun had left low clouds topped with 
 vivid light, and a damp chill was in the air. Marian 
 was home well before these premonitions were 
 really alarming, but Guy thought it wise to lose 
 no time in getting back to the cottage. 
 
 For some time he busied himself with household 
 duties, and afterwards sat brooding before a 
 replenished fire. He looked at himself that evening 
 with an unusual steadiness. He had renounced 
 the respectable world. He possessed in return a 
 wife who was absent and a symphony which he 
 would never wish to hear performed. 
 
 On the whole he was not getting much from life. 
 There w r ere also minor worries. Finance was one 
 of them. Last time he had gone to town he had 
 not even been able to buy Mrs. Basing the usual 
 box of cigarettes, in spite of the fact that he had 
 paid none of his debts, public or private. 
 
 Marian was right. As a practitioner of inde- 
 pendence and the solitary life he was a failure. 
 
 He must reconstruct himself. So far he had 
 yielded too easily to the passion of the moment. 
 He had to achieve a broader vision of things, to 
 live wisely in the world and to obtain inward peace 
 for the work he wished to do. He would begin 
 with the beloved girl who would soon be ready to 
 rejoin him. They must somehow achieve an 
 understanding which would leave no room for the 
 rankling imperfection of their last encounter. He
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 221 
 
 must prevail with her to leave behind all that was 
 sullen and incommunicable in their life. 
 
 He drew a sheet of paper towards him and began 
 to write to her. He said first that he needed her. 
 He asked whether she was not yet ready to come 
 back. He went on to explain as well as he could 
 his present state of mind. 
 
 He was diverted by the fall of the first heavy 
 drops of the storm. He went to the window and 
 looked out. The last light was leaving the sky. 
 The wood on the further side of the road tossed 
 under a squall which in another moment smote the 
 cottage and brought with it the premonitory wet 
 chill of rain. He gave thought to Marian in the 
 house with double windows. She would be dres- 
 sing for dinner in a warm room. She would hardly 
 hear the rain which shortly would lash the frail 
 walls of the cottage or the wind which would shake 
 his walls. She would be hardly conscious of 
 the deep gloom which was falling from the sky, of 
 the helplessness with which those sombre trees 
 and the quiet creatures of the wood awaited the 
 inevitable rage which would be loosened upon them 
 from the further side of the hill. 
 
 The squall passed and the rain followed. Guy- 
 remained by the open window, listening to the 
 noise it made as it passed down the hill. The 
 thunder hung off distantly a moment ; but, led 
 by a flash of lightning, arrived close upon the track 
 of the rain. 
 
 For five minutes there was an uproar in the wood. 
 Then a silence fell owing to a sudden and transitory 
 lull. Guy was about to close the window when
 
 222 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 this silence was broken by a cry. It came from the 
 wood, shrill and with terror in it. Guy remembered 
 the shadow which had glided into the wood that 
 afternoon. He caught up his hat and hurried in 
 the direction of the cry. 
 
 Before he had got thirty yards from the door 
 the rain returned, and with it a wind which lashed 
 the bracken and shook water from the trees. The 
 cry was repeated as he ran at a venture down the 
 path which led towards the open glade. He arrived 
 upon the edge of the clearing just as a vivid flash 
 of lightning brought its thunder immediately in 
 train. Blinded by the darkness which followed, he 
 ran towards the great beech in the centre. By the 
 light of the flash he had seen a figure running. 
 There was another cry which caused him to shiver 
 as he ran.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 i 
 
 MANY times, before Guy had come to Steyning, 
 Sabina had been on the point of returning to 
 Brambletye, but always at the last she was with- 
 held, partly by pride and partly by the memory 
 of his fatal saying. 
 
 " We cannot go on like this." 
 
 The words recurred continually. They had 
 made her realise how much she was making him 
 suffer. Thus she had drawn equally upon the 
 bitterness and sweetness of her nature in fortifying 
 her decision to leave him free for a while. 
 
 After his visit, however, she had decided to 
 return at the earliest possible moment. Her 
 sister's baby was born about six weeks afterwards, 
 and Sabina made arrangements to go to Brambletye 
 and to surprise Guy upon his birthday (which was 
 due in a few days), leaving Raymond for the 
 moment with her sister. 
 
 Having made up her mind to visit him on that 
 day, she could not be turned aside, though she was 
 forced to admit to her sister before starting that 
 she was feeling far from well. She shivered even in 
 the sun. Her sister had urged her not to go. 
 But Sabina's mind troubled her more than her 
 body, and the cure for her mind lay in this journey 
 she had decided to take. 
 
 223
 
 224 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 The day came without a word from Guy. She 
 arrived by train and walked to the cottage from 
 the local station. It was high afternoon when she 
 reached the wood. She walked to the cottage 
 dcor with a dry mouth and a beating heart. She 
 saw that smoke rose from the chimney, and that 
 the door was open. Something prompted her to 
 make no noise as she came. She wanted, if 
 possible, to see Guy as he lived when unconscious 
 of her presence. 
 
 When she looked through the door Guy had his 
 hand upon the hand of Marian. There had clearly 
 been between them something which had left them 
 deeply moved. 
 
 2 
 
 Sick with resentment Sabina turned and walked 
 rapidly into the wood. 
 
 Scarcely a day had passed in which she had not 
 brooded upon her separation from Guy. Alter- 
 nately she had suffered contrition for the loneliness 
 in which she had left him and resentment at the 
 way in which he had accepted her desertion. She 
 returned to find him engrossed by the intimacy 
 she had always feared. She assumed that the 
 scene she now saw was part of his normal life. 
 
 She left the path and hid herself in the under- 
 growth. She wanted to be quiet, to discover 
 exactly how hard this discovery was to bear. She 
 sat still with her face buried in her hands, tearlessly 
 probing into her consciousness as a sufferer will 
 probe an aching tooth. 
 
 She did not stir, even when she heard steps in
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 225 
 
 the wood and knew that Guy and Marian were 
 passing through on their way to Old Place. 
 
 A gust of wind heavy with raindrops struck her 
 at last, and she recovered sufficiently to note with 
 a tremor that it was almost dark and that a storm 
 was threatened. She rose to her feet stiff with 
 cold. In spite of the unhappiness, which seemed 
 beyond anything she would ever feel again, she was 
 already menaced with an emotion sharper and 
 more compelling. Beside the new terror, which 
 began to possess her, of being benighted among 
 the trees, her previous condition seemed almost 
 blessed. She hastily brushed her dress, and, 
 darting a nervous look round, she began to walk 
 rapidly in the direction of the path. 
 
 In a growing panic she found it increasingly 
 difficult to advance. The undergrowth thickened 
 where she expected it to give way to the open glade. 
 She turned about and realised that she had lost 
 her sense of direction. She heard thunder, and 
 the dull sound added to her sense of the darkness 
 which was closing upon her. She pushed her way 
 desperately through the likeliest gap of the circle 
 in which she stood. 
 
 Before the storm broke she was baffled and 
 fighting hard to retain some little presence of mind. 
 It was a losing battle, and soon she was moving 
 wildly about the wood, resisting only with difficulty 
 the temptation to scream. She was restrained by 
 the dread she had of hearing her own voice in that 
 place. She had a feeling that, if she screamed, she 
 would lose all control of herself, and that the wood 
 would be immediately alive with presences.
 
 226 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Then suddenly the rain charged down from the 
 sky. For a moment she cowered under the storm, 
 and then, sobbing with fright, she dashed wildly 
 at a run through the streaming bracken. 
 
 Her skirt was wet through in a moment, and, 
 clinging about her legs, brought her down heavily 
 from time to time. Struggling frantically forward 
 she was at last unable to withhold her cry, and 
 almost simultaneously she burst from the under- 
 growth into the beech glade. 
 
 It was as though her cry had brought her there, 
 and she stood on the edge of the clearing, staring 
 into the dusk as though some act of magic had 
 been performed. She ran into the open, and cried 
 out again as she ran. A flash of lightning showed 
 her that she was running towards the great beech. 
 The dazzling light revealed the tree as though 
 waiting to receive her, its smooth limbs spread to 
 embrace her as she came, and, when darkness 
 returned, she felt that the trees about her were 
 malignant with a life inexorably hostile. She tried 
 to check herself. In the act she stumbled and fell, 
 and, endeavouring to rise, found that she grasped 
 a root of the tree itself. She screamed again, with 
 a note of fear in her voice more urgent than any 
 she had yet emitted. 
 
 3 
 
 When Guy reached her she lay apparently sense- 
 less on the ground. He had nothing with him that 
 could shield her from the rain, and he was himself 
 wet to the skin. He called her urgently and 
 pressed her in his arms
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 227 
 
 Another flash of lightning, which flickered for an 
 appreciable time, showed him that there was a 
 film upon her eyes. Her teeth chattered, and, as 
 she tried to speak, her breath came in gasps from 
 the cold water which drenched her clothes. Guy 
 could well guess the wretchedness of her physical 
 condition from the effect upon himself of less than 
 two minutes in that icy deluge. He lifted her, 
 and carried her to the cottage with all the speed he 
 could make. 
 
 He put her in his chair before the fire and ran 
 upstairs for blankets and brandy. When he re- 
 turned she was on her knees before the blaze 
 shivering and moaning with cold. He began at 
 once to remove her things. She could only sob, 
 as he tore at her saturated clothing, saying she 
 wished she was dead, and wanted only to be left 
 alone. 
 
 He made her drink brandy in hot water. He 
 rubbed her dry, and put her into a cocoon of 
 blankets, and piled logs on the fire. But she grew 
 continually more inert. He feared she was about 
 to die. He felt her slipping away from him and 
 implored her to come back. Then he realised that 
 she had fainted. He chafed her hands and laid 
 her flat on the floor. She came to herself very soon 
 with a drawing of the breath that frightened him. 
 
 Once more he made her comfortable in the chair, 
 and told her he must get a doctor. He would run 
 to the neighbouring cottage and ask if someone 
 could go to Old Place. She clung to him and 
 begged him not to leave her. He realised with 
 horror that she did not seem altogether to know
 
 228 THE HAPPY FOOT, 
 
 who he was, and that her eyes, when she looked at 
 him, were strange. She glanced continually 
 towards the door. 
 
 " Keep it out," she whispered. " Keep it out." 
 
 She almost infected him with her fear of the evil 
 tree. The way she spoke of it invested it with 
 such life that he half expected to hear it come up 
 out of the wood, and to see one of its smooth limbs 
 push through the window. 
 
 Guy waited by her side, his wet clothes hanging 
 heavy on him until, at the end of about an hour, 
 she fell into a stupor. Then, praying that she 
 would not notice his absence, he stole from the 
 cottage and ran rapidly to call his neighbour. 
 The storm had passed and the man said he would 
 go at once to Old Place. 
 
 When Guy returned Sabina was still lying as he 
 left her. He changed his clothes and waited in 
 an agony of impatience for the doctor. Soon she 
 began again to talk not now of the terror in the 
 wood, but of their life together. Her talk was 
 incoherent ; but now and then a phrase, in which 
 her love, darkened with misgivings but divine 
 beyond reach of ridicule, thrust him to the heart. 
 
 The doctor arrived before midnight. He found 
 her not only in high fever, but threatened with 
 pneumonia. A fire was lighted in the bedroom, 
 and she was carried up. The doctor promised that 
 a nurse should be sent as soon as possible. 
 
 4 
 
 Three days later, without once having regained 
 consciousness, she died. It was midnight, and
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 229 
 
 Guy was sleeping for the first time since he had 
 found her, when the nurse came to him with the 
 news. He saw it at once in the nurse's face, and 
 went upstairs. 
 
 He had never before been confronted with death, 
 nor could he think of this as death now that he 
 beheld it. There was nothing here mysterious or 
 terrible. Tnere was no majesty or anything that 
 inspired him with awe or any kind of fear. This 
 was not death, but a girl who would never speak 
 to him or know him again, who had made him 
 suffer, in whom he had delighted, to whom he had 
 been compassionate and cruel. And all the things 
 he might have said to her if their hearts had been 
 as close as he now desired, and all the care he 
 might have added to the care he had actually 
 bestowed upon her, reproached him. Everything 
 he had not done for her, or failed to give her of all 
 the things which now seemed to have been her due, 
 up to that last moment in which he had lain 
 unresponsively beside her on the night before she 
 left him, came to accuse him. And he could only 
 feel the pity of it. 
 
 Instinctively he feared to touch her, lest he 
 should realise that this was not Sabina who had 
 just escaped him, but an empty shell, in which 
 death alone resided. At dawn he was still gazing 
 at the frail face of the girl he loved, from which 
 all petulance had been smoothed away, whose lips 
 seemed about to break into the faint smile he had 
 often himself evoked within that very room and 
 had often divined to be there as she lay beside him 
 in the darkness. At dawn, however, the candles
 
 280 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 faded, and a whiter light showed grey upon the 
 still figure he had watched so long. It seemed as 
 though she were really dying now, who had hitherto 
 been absent only. He bent in sudden anguish and 
 kissed her. Raising his head from the awful 
 strangeness of her cold cheek, he looked again. 
 Sabina was no longer there. He was looking only 
 in the face of death.
 
 BOOK III. 

 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 i 
 
 GUY broke down immediately after the funeral, 
 partly from the effects of careless living, 
 and partly from nervous exhaustion. 
 
 He had returned to his work, and was staying 
 in his rooms at Hampstead. One morning he 
 awoke with an illusion that he had become un- 
 usually light-hearted. His landlady found him 
 alarmingly incoherent and went to Fern Cottage 
 to warn Aunt Helen of his condition. When she 
 returned, however, Guy was not to be found. 
 After breakfast, which he had been unable to eat, 
 he had started for Charing Cross. 
 
 It was a fine morning, but he shivered continu- 
 ally. He visited a bar and called for brandy. He 
 felt better after that, and leaving the bar, walked 
 towards the river and along the Embankment to 
 Westminster. The sun was warm, and the river 
 swept giddily round the piers of the bridge. He 
 watched the shining eddies of water till suddenly 
 he had to turn round to avoid the sensation that 
 the bridge itself was revolving on the sliding 
 surface of the tide. 
 
 His eye fell upon a familiar stretch of painted 
 flagstones. He had often stood on that same spot 
 looking up and down the river while changing 
 lights played upon a picture which was rarely the 
 
 288
 
 284 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 same. He knew well those painted flagstones, 
 and the man who sat on guard beside them with 
 his hat upturned for pennies. There was a picture 
 of Nelson, a schooner correct in all its details, a 
 study of surf and seagulls. They were nearly all 
 of them sea pieces. The artist was an old sailor, 
 to whom Guy had often thrown a contributory 
 sixpence. 
 
 The old man had left his place for a moment, 
 refreshment being necessary. The hat remained 
 expectantly upturned, but the little square of 
 sacking, where the man usually sat beside his 
 handiwork, was vacant. 
 
 Guy looked vaguely at the little square of sacking. 
 He felt it was wrong that no one should be sitting 
 there at the receipt of custom, and he felt that 
 somehow he must, for a while at any rate, sit down, 
 if only to still a trembling at the knees which had 
 begun to worry him. He decided that he must 
 look after the business of his ancient friend during 
 his absence. 
 
 2 
 
 Sitting upon the little square of sacking was not 
 unpleasant. The sun was now so warm that a fine 
 moisture broke out upon Guy's forehead from the 
 mere effort of adjusting himself correctly. It was 
 fun to watch the people as they went by. He 
 began to wonder, as they came, how they would 
 behave. Some, he noted, passed on as though they 
 did not see the pictures on the pavement, because 
 they did not want to throw a penny into the hat. 
 He wondered whether it was because they thought
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 235 
 
 they ought not to look at the pictures without 
 paying, or whether they pretended not to notice 
 the pictures because they did not want people to 
 think they were mean to pass the old man by 
 without offering a penny. That was a funny idea, 
 because the old man was not there. He tried to 
 be sure that he really was Guy Reval and not the 
 old man he was impersonating, and he suddenly 
 became horribly afraid that he was losing himself. 
 
 At this moment a group of men came from 
 Palace Yard and stood for a while at the end of 
 the bridge. Three of them, having some point to 
 discuss, began to walk to and fro upon the bridge 
 before separating. 
 
 Guy watched the three men with vague curiosity 
 as they passed. They were unlike the other 
 passers-by, being so engrossed in their conversa- 
 tion that they really did not see him. Besides, at 
 least two of them were personally known to him. 
 One of them was Theodore. Guy was not as- 
 tonished. Why should he be ? Theodore was 
 always going into the House of Commons. The 
 other one was familiar too. It was Henderson. 
 
 They passed twice without noticing him. He 
 wondered what they would do if their attention 
 were called to the upturned cap. Would they take 
 pity on an old man who chalked on the flagstones 
 for a livelihood ? Seeing they were about to pass 
 for a third time, he pushed the old man's cap well 
 out into the middle of the pavement where they 
 would be bound to see it. 
 
 Theodore, in earnest conversation with a junior 
 member of the cabinet, suddenly saw that he was
 
 236 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 about to tread upon a soiled and greasy cap con- 
 taining some pennies. He looked aside to see 
 what this might mean, and saw Guy sitting on the 
 little square of sacking. Guy looked like a sage 
 awaiting the result of a test which should search 
 humanity to the marrow. Theodore observed 
 that his brother was unshaven and flushed ; that 
 he was without a hat ; that his eyes were bright 
 and vague with fever. He turned a moment and 
 pressed Henderson's arm. Henderson looked at 
 Guy and hurried on with his companion. 
 
 A cab happened to be passing and Theodore 
 summoned it. 
 
 " Guy," he asked peremptorily. " How on earth 
 did you get here ? " 
 
 Guy did not know. He wanted to say that he 
 had come by water, but he could not put it into 
 very good English. On the other hand he was 
 immensely attracted by the cab. By a rare chance 
 it happened to be one of the few surviving hansoms. 
 
 " Rather like a chariot," he said vaguely, as his 
 brother helped him to rise. 
 
 He was driven to a nursing home, where he was 
 carefully watched and nursed for seven or eight 
 weeks. Thereafter he was transferred to Old 
 Place, in order that he might have the benefit of 
 country air and pleasant surroundings. 
 
 3 
 
 When at last Guy returned, convalescent, to the 
 cottage at Brambletye, his first thoughts were for 
 Raymond. He recalled that, just before Sabina 
 had taken Raymond away, he had begun to see in
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 237 
 
 the eyes of his child a look of recognition, and on 
 his child's face a smile that was unmistakably 
 for him. The stir of his heart under those looks 
 and smiles had hitherto been smothered by emotions 
 more urgent. He had so far thought of his child 
 mainly as belonging to Sabina, and, when Sabina 
 went, it had seemed natural that the child should 
 go too. Often during his illness, however, those 
 looks and smiles recurred to him. He wondered 
 why he had not missed them before, and why he 
 had been content to leave his boy even for a few 
 weeks with the sister of his dead wife. 
 
 He went to Steyning himself to bring Raymond 
 away, and upon an evening some three months 
 after the death of Sabina, as he sat with his brother 
 at the cottage, he was happy to think that the boy 
 was sleeping just above their heads in a cot, which 
 he had borrowed from Lady Melsham. He had 
 carried it down to the cottage on his own shoulders 
 that very day, manifestly scandalising two nurse- 
 maids and the under-gardener, who saw him waving 
 their mistress a casual adieu, grinning broadly 
 through the framework of the cot as through a 
 horse-collar. 
 
 4 
 
 It was some time, that evening, before he would 
 speak of anything but Raymond. He insisted 
 that the boy had recognised him in a moment, in 
 spite of over a year's absence from his father. He 
 gave Theodore a complete version of all that the 
 child had said on his way to the cottage, and 
 demanded generally of heaven what he had done 
 to have such a beautiful boy.
 
 238 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " I'm really beginning to feel like a father," he 
 concluded. 
 
 The brothers were smoking, and Guy puffed for 
 a moment in silence. 
 
 " It's a fine thing to be a father," he added 
 suddenly. 
 
 " It's a responsibility," said Theodore. 
 
 " That means earning more money, I suppose," 
 said Guy. 
 
 " You can easily do it," said Theodore. " The 
 job is waiting." 
 
 Theodore was referring to the affair which had 
 brought him that day to the cottage. One of his 
 political friends had a substantial interest in a firm 
 of musical publishers. The firm required a young 
 man who might ultimately be admitted as a junior 
 partner, and could in time be trusted to act in the 
 absence of his chief. Theodore had secured the 
 first refusal of this opening for his brother. 
 
 He pointed out that here, at his brother's feet, 
 was a bridge whereby he could return from his 
 solitude to activities reasonably lucrative and 
 sociable. Would he or would he not come back to 
 his friends ? 
 
 Guy received the offer calmly, with no very 
 strong feeling for or against it. He said that he 
 was rather inclined to accept it. Perhaps it would 
 be better to listen to those who had taken such 
 good care of him during the last few months, to 
 turn away from disastrous memories and start 
 afresh. In acting for himself he had so con- 
 spicuously failed. He could not think of Sabina 
 without wincing as at the memory of a physical
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 239 
 
 pain. They had suffered so abominably ; and, 
 since he had seen her dead, he had felt her share 
 of the suffering as never before. Just before his 
 breakdown he had sat for hours under the great 
 beech, wishing that he could get some message to 
 her of tenderness and understanding. He now 
 felt for her in a way that transcended anything 
 they had said or done in the effort to express it. 
 
 The silence between the brothers was broken at 
 last by Guy rising from his chair and knocking 
 the ashes from his pipe. He put his hand on his 
 brother's shoulder. 
 
 " Theo," he said, " you're a dear chap. I've 
 often wanted to say it. But I don't suppose I 
 shall ever say it again." 
 
 Theodore was glowing inwardly, but he merely 
 smiled and said : " I'm glad you mentioned it." 
 
 Then he saw that his brother was looking at him 
 with an unusual intensity, and he felt the grip 
 tighten on his shoulder. 
 
 " I want you to know,'.' said Guy, "that I really 
 loved Sabina. I can't bear to think how it ended. 
 I can never be sorry that we met, though neither 
 of us was really happy. We never seemed to say 
 or do what we intended. She never expressed 
 herself. Something came between and made it 
 impossible. Yet I should know her spirit if I saw 
 it among millions. I know that, though she was 
 unable to reveal herself to me, she was the simplest 
 and sweetest being I shall ever meet. I shall 
 always adore her memory. I want you to know 
 that, Theo. It seems only fair to her that some- 
 body should know."
 
 240 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Theodore looked almost with awe at the haggard, 
 exalted face of his brother. Guy spoke as though, 
 at the end of much brooding, he must find some 
 relief for his emotion. It was the first time he had 
 ever spoken seriously to his brother without leaving 
 in view a possible retreat into mockery. But 
 to-night there was no mischief in his eyes. 
 
 Theodore met him without embarrassment. 
 
 " You need hardly have told me, Guy," he said. 
 " She was the dearest child." 
 
 5 
 
 After his brother had gone, Guy sat smoking in 
 the garden thinking of the offer he had received. 
 At the far end of the plot, the woodcutter's wife, 
 who was now installed at Brambletye as a house- 
 keeper, was turning the hard earth and breaking 
 it tirelessly with her spade. Months ago Guy had 
 himself begun to dig up that bed under the eyes of 
 Sabina, who had sat on the garden stool beside 
 him. There was the stool, itself. It had not been 
 moved, but had stood through the rains and under 
 the sun which had warped and blanched it. At 
 every turn he saw something which recalled a 
 memory equally vivid. There was nothing here 
 she had not touched or handled ; no place where 
 he could not see her suddenly about some intimate 
 business of their daily life. The tree against which 
 he leaned stood upon the edge of the wood. In a 
 hollow of the trunk wasps had nested during the 
 previous year. He had one night tried, with 
 Sabina, to destroy them with brimstone. He could 
 see her face now in the light of the lantern, her hair
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 241 
 
 making a yellow haze where it was blown like spray 
 over her forehead, her lips parted with excitement 
 as they crouched and listened to the angry humming 
 inside the hole. They had been happy that even- 
 ing, and had talked late into the night, while 
 Raymond had kicked and stirred and sighed, 
 dreaming like a young dog in his sleep. So long 
 as he stayed at Brambletye he would be met with 
 such memories at every turn. 
 
 He rose and walked into the wood. Beside the 
 great beech he paused a moment. Then he walked 
 on, and before reaching Old Place, turned aside 
 and took a less worn path which led him down into 
 a valley and up again to the church tower which 
 could be seen from the higher windows of Old 
 Place. Under this tower Sabina was buried. It 
 was a picturesque tower of grey stone with a short 
 timber spire, warped and weather-tiled. Hating 
 to see fresh flowers withering in churchyards, he 
 had planted her grave himself with some of her 
 favourite roses from the garden. They grew low 
 and bushy and bloomed late into the season. Here 
 for a long while he remained, till night had fallen 
 and the white blossoms were pale in the darkness. 
 
 Two decisions gradually formed in his mind. 
 He would not at once leave Brambletye. He 
 wanted time to measure what he had lost and to 
 find a meaning in it. He could not treat his life 
 with Sabina there and her tragic death as an acci- 
 dental chapter in his existence from which to escape 
 hastily to something different. He felt that some- 
 how he owed it to her memory to stay with her 
 awhile in that place and to begin his life anew
 
 242 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 with a full understanding of the bitter story in 
 which he had borne so helpless a part. 
 
 His second decision was more of the brain than 
 of the heart. He would accept Theodore's offer 
 of a business appointment. Theodore had shown 
 him an easy way to secure prosperity and an 
 assured position, a way which led him from sorrow- 
 ful memories back to his friends. Above all, it 
 would lead him back to Marian, the friend under 
 whose eyes he had lately come back to the normal 
 world after his illness, whom he felt to be part of 
 the order and comfort towards which he was 
 listlessly drawn. He perceived the advantages of 
 this course, and realised the point of view of those 
 who would unite in urging it upon him. Neverthe- 
 less, in the obscurity of his heart, where all that is 
 irrational and unconfessed takes refuge, he had 
 the same feeling about it as he had about leaving 
 Brambletye. He had failed, but ought he so easily 
 to run away from his failure ? Ought he not to 
 make a resolute and wise effort to succeed where 
 he had casually blundered ? Should he surrender 
 so easily his aspiration towards independence ? 
 Might he not remain isolated and free, not in the 
 old arrogant spirit, but in a growing conviction of 
 his dedication to something impersonal and ex- 
 alted ? He had a gift of expression which he had 
 never really tested. He felt within himself, inter- 
 mittently and darkly, the will to create something 
 which might endure. Should these aspirations not 
 be put to a further and a more searching test 
 than he had hitherto made of them ? 
 
 These motives were, for the moment, latent
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 243 
 
 rather than declared. He decided to take the 
 broad and obvious way which led him back to the 
 sane and comfortable world.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 i 
 
 SOME weeks after his conversation with Theodore 
 Guy walked into the private room of Hender- 
 son at the office of the Moderator. 
 
 Henderson beheld a very different apparition 
 from that which had affronted his eyes when last 
 he had seen Guy. Illness had imparted to Guy's 
 face a fugitive pallor and an emaciation from which 
 he had not yet recovered. By the doctor's orders 
 his hair had been cut close and was not yet grown 
 to its ordinary length. The big head, which had 
 seemed merely exuberant, now conveyed a sugges- 
 tion of intellectual power. 
 
 " There should be something considerable in 
 that fellow's skull," thought Henderson, as he 
 waited for his former contributor to explain him- 
 self. The blue eyes kindled in the old way as they 
 lit on Henderson, but shining from under that pale 
 and rather serious brow their light appeared almost 
 celestial. Guy had in his hand a bowler hat of 
 the latest shape, purchased that morning on his 
 way to the office. It had suddenly occurred to 
 him that Henderson would like to see him with a 
 bowler hat. 
 
 " I have come," said Guy, " to offer you my 
 services as musical critic." 
 
 " Indeed," said Henderson 
 
 244
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 245 
 
 ' There is a great deal requiring to be publicly 
 said about modern music," said Guy. " And the 
 Moderator is the review to say it. 
 
 Henderson was expecting an impertinent peti- 
 tion from Guy to be re-instated, and he had 
 intended inexorably to refuse. But he hardly 
 knew how to deal with a serene offer of service 
 which ignored the past. 
 
 " Let me remind you," said Henderson at last, 
 " that you were once a contributor to this Review." 
 
 " For that, sir, I owe you an apology and some 
 amends." 
 
 Henderson hesitated a moment. Guy spoke 
 firmly and quietly. He was neither abject in his 
 apology nor insolent in his aspiration. There were 
 at least two aspiring rivals of Henderson in weekly 
 journalism who would jump at the chance of such 
 a man. 
 
 " Very well," said Henderson. " I will expect 
 your first article next week." 
 
 Guy rose tranquilly and shook hands. 
 
 2 
 
 Thus did Guy resume his place among the serious 
 writers of the day. 
 
 The next two years of his life passed almost 
 without event. He consolidated his position as a 
 critic, and he mastered his business as a musical 
 publisher. During the whole of this period he 
 remained at Brambletye, whither he returned al- 
 most daily to Raymond. The two were insepar- 
 able when Guy was at home. 
 
 Guy would often sit under the great beech
 
 246 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 watching Raymond as he peered after the birds 
 and rabbits, or came to chatter of his discoveries, 
 delighting in the boy's clear tones, his sudden use 
 of an unexpected word, his tiny figure fronting so 
 many novelties erect and nimble and unafraid. 
 At these times his life in town seemed unsubstantial. 
 The reality was in these woods, where he had carried 
 his wife home through the storm, and where his 
 boy, bringing him nuts or berries or quaint 
 descriptions of something seen for the first time, 
 looked up at him with a face in which she lived 
 again. Raymond had his mother's dark eyes, 
 and, what was more moving to see, he had her 
 quiver of the lips when he was hurt. To Guy, as 
 he sat under the big tree, the boy, rustling among 
 the leaves and bracken, or suddenly intent upon 
 some absorbing discovery, seemed an expression 
 of the union which he and Sabina had never them- 
 selves in clear terms achieved. The child, with 
 his great physical beauty, his serious intensity of 
 emotion, his bright humour, his fundamental 
 sweetness and unfailing courage, expressed what 
 each of them would have shown the other, had it 
 lain within their ability. 
 
 Guy remained profoundly susceptible to the in- 
 fluence of the place. Under the firm hand of his 
 housekeeper, Brambletye had again the neatness 
 which belonged to it when Sabina had been there. 
 Every object he saw or handled started a memory, 
 and often he would once more grieve to think that, 
 by just a little more understanding, they might 
 have grown wise and happy together. The diffi- 
 culties which had estranged them seemed now un-
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 247 
 
 real, and he believed that if she could now return, 
 their love would resolve the old disharmonies. He 
 exaggerated his obtuseness to the appeal of his 
 dead darling ; the appeal which she had thwarted 
 rather than expressed in their life together, but 
 which, nevertheless had constantly lived in his 
 spirit's ear. 
 
 Gradually, however, present life intruded upon 
 his memories, and he began to measure what 
 remained with him after his great disaster. 
 
 There was Raymond. There was his work in 
 London. There was Marian at Old Place. 
 
 3 
 
 For Guy, Marian was a friend to whom he might 
 talk with a full heart and a free tongue. Except 
 for his declaration to Theodore he never mentioned 
 his wife's name to anyone but Marian. Marian 
 found a sad security in these conversations. Guy 
 spoke as a man married to his memories. So long 
 as he spoke of Sabina he was beyond reach of her 
 most secret wish, a man dedicated elsewhere who 
 might be safely loved. 
 
 Guy had come back to the normal world under the 
 eyes of Marian. She was a part of the order and 
 comfort to which he seemed bound, after the 
 failure of his marriage, to return. As an invalid he 
 had felt secure when she was near, and this feeling 
 had not entirely passed with his recovery. She 
 produced in him a disposition to purr. Lady 
 Melsham noted that, on calling at Old Place, his 
 eyes naturally wandered in search of her husband's 
 secretary. She was not displeased ; and said to
 
 248 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 some of her friends, jumping to far conclusions, that 
 " it was the best thing that could happen." 
 
 Not long after Lady Melsham had thus de- 
 livered herself, Guy fell into a panic about Ray- 
 mond. Raymond had begun to wake up in the 
 night with a troublesome cough, and other symp- 
 toms of a severe cold. Guy had a fire lit in the 
 bedroom, and left the strictest orders about keeping 
 the boy warm and well covered. On the third 
 night Raymond gravely informed him that during 
 the day he had been making noises like a chicken, 
 and proceeded at once to illustrate his new accom- 
 plishment. Guy hurried him between the blankets, 
 wondering whether babies ever died of whooping 
 cough. The housekeeper assured him that whoop- 
 ing cough never killed a child who was really strong. 
 
 Some days later, at about ten o'clock in the 
 evening, Guy thought he had good reason to dis- 
 trust his housekeeper, as he held Raymond in his 
 arms, struggling for breath, and almost black in 
 the face. He demanded a doctor ; and when the 
 housekeeper said she could not possibly get one 
 at that time of night, and that a bath of mustard 
 and water would be more to the point, Guy, as 
 soon as Raymond seemed a little better, decided to 
 run to Old Place and give the alarm. 
 
 He arrived breathless, and a telephone message 
 was sent at once to the local man. 
 
 On starting back, he asked Marian to come with 
 him. It was a sudden impulse, obeyed without 
 reflection. Marian seized a scarf and came. When 
 they reached the cottage Raymond was attacked 
 by a fresh paroxysm, and Marian took him up and
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 249 
 
 wiped the foam from his lips. The fit passed and 
 the boy went almost immediately to sleep in her 
 arms. 
 
 The sight of Marian holding Raymond so securely, 
 coming after the fright he had suffered, disposed 
 Guy to be extravagantly grateful. 
 
 " It was dear of you to come ; " he suddenly 
 exclaimed. 
 
 She looked up from the boy, and said evasively. 
 
 " I think he's got over the worst of it." 
 
 Guy felt that he had embarrassed her by his 
 sudden declaration ; and he, too, was moved. 
 
 The doctor's car was in the road, and Guy 
 went downstairs to meet him. The doctor, having 
 looked at the child, was inclined to resent having 
 been called so urgently for so little reason. He 
 prescribed and left the cottage without ceremony, 
 curtly informing Guy that whooping cough had 
 often frightened people unduly. 
 
 " The good leech was distinctly short with me," 
 said Guy, on returning to the room. "I'm under 
 the impression that we've disgraced ourselves." 
 
 " The doctor," Marian retorted, " was a 
 wretch." 
 
 She smiled to see Guy tucking up his precious 
 child with a practised hand. 
 
 Again there came a shyness between them, and 
 Guy felt that he must say something. 
 
 " Ray might have had the decency to cough 
 horribly when the doctor was here," he said. " But 
 he never looked better in his life." 
 
 They stood a moment beside the cot. There did 
 not seem to be need for further anxiety.
 
 250 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 " I must be getting back to Old Place," said 
 Marian. 
 
 " I suppose so," said Guy. 
 
 She turned to pick up her scarf. Guy had an 
 impulse to retain her, similar to the impulse which 
 had prompted him to bring her with him to the 
 cottage. He watched her twisting the scarf round 
 her head. 
 
 " I wish you hadn't got to go, Marian," he said 
 abruptly. 
 
 She turned to him with a faint colour. 
 
 " I can't very well stay, can I ? " she said. 
 There was a touch of resentment in her voice. His 
 inveterate blindness to the fact that she was a 
 woman (not only a woman but a woman who loved 
 him) always hurt her, and more than usually to- 
 night. 
 
 " Why not ? " said Guy. 
 
 " Think it over," said Marian. 
 
 Guy saw that she was offended. 
 
 He put his hand on her arm. She drew it 
 quickly away and took up her coat from the bed. 
 
 " What's the matter, Marian ? " he said. 
 
 He looked hard for a light on the situation. At 
 last he broke into a smile. 
 
 " You're not thinking," he protested, " that it 
 wouldn't be correct for you to stay." 
 
 " Marian was re-arranging her scarf and had a 
 brooch in her mouth, which gave to her next 
 remark a quality oddly incisive. 
 
 " The idea may possibly have occurred to me," 
 she said. 
 
 " But how absurd," said Guy.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL ai 
 
 Marian did not smile. She had finished her 
 preparations and asked in her coolest tones, in 
 sharp contrast with her heightened colour and 
 quick breath, whether he would warn the house- 
 keeper that he was seeing her home. 
 
 4 
 
 On the way to Old Place Guy had time to 
 meditate. It was not like Marian to raise the 
 question of propriety. 
 
 As he walked silently beside her through the 
 wood, scores of inconvenient possibilities took shape. 
 The inconveniences were, in fact, likely to become 
 intolerable. He wanted to be intimate with 
 Marian, and she had made it difficult. It was not 
 only what people might infer. It went deeper 
 than that. Guy felt that what had just happened 
 in the cottage, slight and undeclared as it was, 
 had put a real barrier between them. He did not 
 feel at ease walking by her side in the wood, es- 
 tranged from her by his thoughts and yet suscept- 
 ible to her presence. He watched her arm as it 
 swung to her step and the faint gleam of her 
 ungloved hand. 
 
 There was, it appeared, even a point of view 
 from which it had not been right for Marian to 
 come that summer afternoon to the cottage to 
 hear him play. On that afternoon Sabina had 
 seen them together, and had gone away to die. 
 It had hitherto seemed absurd that Sabina should 
 not have walked into the cottage and greeted them 
 both as though it were the most natural thing in 
 the world to see them thus together. But Marian,
 
 252 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 in her present mood, hinted a justification of 
 Sabina's conduct. 
 
 His mind slipped fast into confusion and he 
 impulsively stopped. 
 
 " Marian," he began. 
 
 She did not slacken her pace, and he caught 
 clumsily at her swinging arm. 
 
 "Look here, Marian," he said, in a man-to-man 
 sort of voice, " Why have you suddenly begun to 
 stand off. It's too ridiculous." 
 
 " I haven't the faintest notion what you're 
 talking about," said Marian. 
 
 She already blamed herself for allowing a 
 momentary resentment to look through the mask 
 which for years she had successfully worn. 
 
 ' You know very well what I'm talking about," 
 said Guy. ' You were offended by something I 
 said at the cottage." 
 
 Marian tried to walk on, but could not bring 
 herself actually to leave him. She turned back, 
 wondering how she could ever have been so foolish 
 as to provoke a scene. 
 
 " Really, Guy," she said, " there's nothing to be 
 intense about. You apparently wanted to keep 
 me up all night and I didn't think it necessary. 
 Meanwhile you're not improving matters by stand- 
 ing still in the middle of this wood." 
 
 Guy moved forward in rather a worse mind than 
 before. Marian was fencing with him, and the 
 constraint between them had increased rather than 
 diminished. They did not exchange another word 
 till they reached the terrace at Old Place. 
 
 Marian made to dismiss him at the door as briefly
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 253 
 
 as possible ; but Guy was not yet ready to be 
 dismissed. He arrested Marian's hand as she 
 attempted to pull the house bell. 
 
 ' You're not going to leave me like this," he said. 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous, Guy." 
 
 " If it's really necessary for us to be more 
 conventional," said Guy, going straight to what he 
 considered the point, " I'll try to realise it in 
 future. It will be a great nuisance." 
 
 ' You're exaggerating the whole affair," she said 
 in a low voice. 
 
 " I'm exaggerating nothing," said Guy stub- 
 bornly. " We were both wretchedly uncomfortable 
 in the wood just now. We can't go on like that." 
 
 " It won't happen again," said Marian. 
 
 " It's happening here and now," said Guy. 
 " You've got me at arm's length." 
 
 Her answer was to raise her hand suddenly and 
 pull the bell. It was an act of cowardice, but she 
 felt that at all costs she must escape. She saw on 
 Guy's face the look of a friend suddenly confronted 
 with an unexpected treachery, and this goaded her 
 to an honest declaration. 
 
 " At arm's length, Guy, it must be. Nothing 
 else is possible." 
 
 Before Guy could grasp the significance of what 
 she said, the door was opened. She entered the 
 house, and the door closed again between them, 
 without a word of good-night on either side. 
 
 5 
 
 For a full minute Guy stood staring blankly at 
 the closed door. He had an absurd impulse to
 
 254 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 ring the bell in order that he might ask Marian to 
 repeat her last remark. It hardly seemed possible 
 that he could have rightly heard her. Why was 
 it necessary for her henceforth to hold him at a 
 distance ? His mind, groping here and there, at 
 last touched uncertainly upon the truth. 
 
 He began to walk back to the cottage. On 
 reaching it he first looked at Raymond, and dis- 
 missed the housekeeper to her rest. Then, for a 
 while, he sat in his bedroom, but at last, finding 
 it almost impossible to sit still, he went downstairs 
 and walked up and down the flagged path of the 
 garden. It was a quiet night, and he could hear 
 every sound in the cottage, even to the crackling 
 of the fire in the room above. 
 
 Everything conspired, after that strange scene 
 on the terrace, to convince him that Marian loved 
 him. He looked back into the past, and found 
 evidence that reached back to the Oxford days. 
 For a moment he yielded to the inveterate coxcomb 
 which appears in most men unexpectedly chosen. 
 Then he dwelt upon the sentence of exclusion 
 she had pronounced against him. He was too 
 fond of her to be held perpetually at a distance. 
 He had known that as he walked with her in the 
 wood. There was an alternative which caused his 
 step to fall more rapidly upon the flags. 
 
 He recalled the scene of the terrace. Virtually 
 at the last she had confessed. She had incurred 
 for truth's sake every hard name that can be 
 levelled against a woman who gives herself away. 
 She had done this in the fixed belief that what she 
 had said had finally severed their friendship. She
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 255 
 
 would never, he knew, have said those words if 
 she had expected him to offer courtship over the 
 grave of the wife he had so recently lost. Nor 
 did he yet desire to offer courtship. The thing 
 had suddenly become not impossible, but, in the 
 way of any immediate action or of any urgent 
 feeling, stood emotions and memories with a prior 
 right. Sabina had said that, if he were unmarried, 
 Marian would have him. To walk from Sabina's 
 grave in order to fulfil her prophecy was impossible. 
 
 Guy thought much, too, of Theodore's part in 
 this. Theodore must have loved Marian from the 
 first. He must have known her secret, which he 
 had kept inviolate under continual provocation. 
 
 Thus Guy rose from an ignoble vanity, which 
 whispered that Marian loved him, to a discerning 
 humility which convicted him of having blundered 
 blindly among those who had seen. He had 
 imagined that the loss of Sabina had revealed to 
 him the full extent of his folly. Now that he 
 saw himself with the eyes of those who had been 
 spectators of the tragi-comedy in which he had 
 borne so naive a part, he wondered why he had 
 not long ago been laughed from the world.
 
 AFTER III 
 
 THE firm of which Guy had now become an 
 important member was noted for the catho- 
 licity of its endeavour. It was at present in that 
 stage of its career, when, having developed com- 
 mercially beyond its expectations, it began to feel 
 that for the sake of further advertisement and in 
 order to elevate the social status of its directors, it 
 was advisable to progress also on the asethetic side. 
 For this purpose it began to need the assistance of 
 musicians. The scheme with which Guy was 
 primarily concerned was the publication of con- 
 temporary music, which had or had not received 
 a public hearing, and was likely to increase the 
 credit of the house. The discovery and selection 
 of this music was his first pre-occupation. 
 
 To qualify technically for success in this business 
 (as he told himself), Guy began to study systemati- 
 cally the art which he had hitherto approached 
 casually and as an amateur. His new work brought 
 him into touch with most of the practising or 
 aspiring musicians in London, and he had the 
 best advice at his disposal. 
 
 He had as yet no idea of resuming the effort 
 towards self-expression he had made at Brambletye, 
 and during the first two years of service with his firm 
 he published nothing of his own composition except 
 
 256
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 257 
 
 a slender volume which was the result of accident 
 rather than design. 
 
 Among the MSS. which came before him as 
 publisher's reader he was struck one day by a piece 
 of music, hardly more than a fragment, composed 
 for the piano and inscribed " Christine Thome." 
 The music had little merit, but there was a hint of 
 mystery, and Guy never omitted to see anyone 
 who achieved anything at all distinctive. 
 
 He sent a note to the composer, who was hi due 
 occasion shown into the room where Guy sat daily 
 among his files. 
 
 The composer proved to be a girl who could 
 hardly be more than nineteen years of age. She 
 did not come sensibly into the room, but stood 
 awkwardly at the door with her back to the panels. 
 
 Her hair was of a massive gold, and was pushed 
 transversely in a broad sweep from left to right 
 across her forehead. The mystery which Guy had 
 found in her music was in her eyes, which were at 
 the same time secret and inquiring. 
 
 " You wrote this ? " said Guy, after a moment's 
 inspection of this unexpected figure, holding up 
 the MS. which was on his desk. 
 
 " Yes," said the apparition. 
 
 There was a sullen finality in her utterance 
 which somehow made it difficult for Guy to pursue 
 his investigation. 
 
 " I am going to recommend its publication," he 
 said. 
 
 The girl made no comment on this announce- 
 ment, but Guy was obscurely aware of an emotional 
 disturbance. The only visible sign was a hardly
 
 258 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 perceptible flush, and lips that parted but failed to 
 utter the words that nearly came. 
 
 " You do not play the piano," said Guy. 
 
 " No," said the girl. 
 
 She seemed, after a pause, to realise that his 
 remark called for some astonishment ; for she 
 added : 
 
 " How do you know that I do not play the 
 piano ? " 
 
 " You do not compose for the piano like a 
 pianist." 
 
 She made no comment on this, but looked at 
 him in a kind of heavy wonder. 
 
 There was something familiar in the look. 
 
 " Haven't I seen you somewhere before ? " Guy 
 asked. 
 
 " You have passed me dozens of times," said the 
 girl. " I belong to the firm." 
 
 " What do you do for us ? " Guy asked. 
 
 " I sell music," said the girl. 
 
 " You are fond of Debussy," he said, accusing 
 her. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " There is a passage here which is due entirely 
 to him." 
 
 He crossed to the big piano, which almost filled 
 his small office. 
 
 " It is a clever passage," Guy continued ; " but 
 it is derived. You must forget all about Debussy." 
 
 He played the passage, and then, to show how 
 easy it was to imitate a master, he began to 
 extemporise inventions in the manner of the com- 
 poser.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 259 
 
 ' You mustn't write like Debussy," he ad- 
 monished her, as he played. 
 
 He came slowly to a stop, however, becoming 
 aware in his companion of a dark humiliation. She 
 stood still, with her eyes on the floor, deeply de- 
 jected by the ease with which he demonstrated 
 that her music was a plagiary. 
 
 " Where did you learn your music ? " he asked 
 abruptly. 
 
 Guy, after diligent inquisition, ascertained that 
 her father played in an orchestra, that she had 
 heard and read a great deal of music, that she 
 was studying the violin and paying for her lessons 
 with money earned hi the shop. 
 
 He began to speak of the publication of her 
 MS. 
 
 She asked to see it ; and, when he handed it to 
 her, tore it across with an abrupt and awkward 
 gesture, and laid it on the table. Her act was 
 characterised by an uncouth energy, the more 
 striking as it broke for an instant the almost 
 oppressive inertia of her manner. 
 
 " Thank you for my lesson," she said, turning to 
 leave the room without looking at him. 
 
 " That's not the way to go," Guy expostulated. 
 
 She looked at him in black defiance. 
 
 " Why don't you compose music yourself ? " 
 she challenged him. " You have shown me how 
 easy it is." 
 
 She went from the room abruptly, leaving her 
 MS. on the table. 
 
 This strange challenge was the origin of the only 
 musical work published by Guy during his service 
 with the firm. It consisted of a series of sketches
 
 260 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 loosely strung together, in which the manner and 
 sometimes the matter of the more prominent com- 
 posers of the day was ingeniously imitated. The 
 small volume had a success of a kind wholly un- 
 expected by its author. Written in a spirit of 
 irony, and accepted in this spirit by the con- 
 noisseurs, it was also successful with a public 
 which received it seriously and, with cheek on hand, 
 were ready to be moved almost to tears by some 
 of its drollest passages. 
 
 2 
 
 Guy at last left Brambletye and found permanent 
 quarters in London. It was late October when he 
 moved away. As he sat with Raymond in the 
 garden, waiting for the carrier to take them 
 and their luggage to the station, the leaves were 
 skimming down from the trees and eddying 
 upon the flagstones. He had shut the door 
 of the cottage and no smoke came from the 
 chimney. Already it looked lifeless and abandoned. 
 It reminded him of the moment in which he had 
 felt the outer coldness of death on Sabina's cheek. 
 He shivered, and told himself that he was morbid. 
 It was absurd for him to cling to a place where he 
 had loved and aspired impossibly beyond his 
 powers. He had finished with Brambletye, and 
 was a publisher. He was dining again with 
 Henderson. He belonged now to the sensible 
 world where money was made and marriages 
 arranged. How could all this be reconciled with 
 a further sojourn in this haunted place ? 
 
 And yet, when the cart came and he had climbed
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 261 
 
 into it with Raymond, he felt that the moment 
 was decisive, and he could not feel that it was 
 decisively right. The empty cottage reproached 
 him as though for an act of treachery. It accused 
 him of being false to his past, and to himself ; 
 and, as he moved away and rounded the bend of 
 the road which cut it finally from view, he remained 
 conscious of it sentiently brooding upon his 
 departure. 
 
 He took a small flat in Hampstead where he 
 intended to live with Raymond. His establish- 
 ment consisted of a working housekeeper and a 
 nursemaid. 
 
 3 
 
 Since the night with Marian at Old Place he had 
 evaded Theodore, and he had not seen Aunt 
 Helen. Theodore did not notice that Guy and 
 Marian had ceased to meet ; but Aunt Helen was 
 both wiser and more aware. 
 
 She had long made up her mind that Guy and 
 Marian should be married as soon as decency per- 
 mitted. She firmly believed that Marian would 
 make of him a happy and a prudent man. She 
 heard with satisfaction of his decision to leave 
 Brambletye, and, soon after he had moved into his 
 flat, summoned him curtly to dinner, asking what 
 she had done to be neglected for three complete 
 months of the year. Guy said he would come, in 
 the belief that Marian was still at Old Place. 
 
 He arrived early at Fern Cottage and the 
 drawing-room was empty. For a while he sat 
 silent beside the fire. The place brought Marian 
 very near. Reason persuaded him towards Marian,
 
 262 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 and behind reason was an unconscious instinct 
 which urged him to turn from past memories to 
 present experience. Life was at his elbow, in- 
 sinuating happiness and presenting him with a 
 radiant image of her who had that happiness to 
 bestow. So delectable became this image, seen 
 through a mist of thoughts not without a tinct of 
 the rosy goddess, that the room in which he had 
 so often had Marian for a companion took on an 
 appreciable desolation from her absence. 
 
 He went to the piano. Marian's music lay there 
 in a disorder which almost suggested her presence. 
 Schumann fell open at his great Toccata. There, 
 indeed, was the positive note the throb of that 
 life renewed in him which had already turned his 
 thoughts towards her. He sat down to the piano 
 and shattered the silence with the opening phrase 
 in which the outward splendour of life is abruptly 
 declared as a prelude to the obstinate rhythm of 
 its deeper purpose. 
 
 4 
 
 Marian was in her room. The crash of the music 
 below was her first warning that Guy was in the 
 house. Aunt Helen had been careful not to 
 enlighten her. 
 
 For a moment she thought of escape. Then 
 she reflected that the time for meeting him must 
 come sooner or later. At the worst, it was simply 
 a question of maintaining the distance she had put 
 between them. Clearly she must go to him ; and 
 she must go before Aunt Helen was there to make 
 things worse.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 368 
 
 She went downstairs, assuming an outward calm, 
 but aware of a throbbing confusion within. Her 
 decision had been briefly taken, and, when she 
 entered the drawing-room, Guy was still in the 
 middle of the toccata. He turned and saw her. 
 Immediately he stopped playing, and, upon an 
 eager impulse, went to her. Her coming gave 
 reality to the thoughts which during the last weeks 
 had prompted him continually to a closer fellow- 
 ship. There was assuredly more than a tinct of 
 the rosy goddess about her as she stood defensively 
 in a flushed recoil. He found himself talking to 
 her almost at random. 
 
 " Not at arm's length, Marian," he pleaded. "I 
 never realised that I cared so much. I want you al- 
 ways, Marian. Will you, Marian, in a little while, 
 marry me ? " 
 
 Marian could not immediately realise that she 
 was being wooed. She told herself almost in- 
 credulously that Guy was asking her to be his 
 wife, and saying in effect that he loved her. 
 
 " Marian," he said, " I am asking you again. 
 Will you be my wife ? " 
 
 " Do you really care enough for that ? " 
 
 For answer he took her by the hands and drew 
 her close. She yielded doubtfully, until he had 
 kissed her ; but, for her, the kiss was decisive. 
 She knew nothing of the pranks the blood of a 
 young man facing towards life can play when the 
 disposition is apt. She was assured by his kiss 
 that he loved her as much as she desired ; and, to 
 his urgent question, repeated again as he held her 
 she said, " Yes " without misgiving.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 i 
 
 IN the spring of the following year, Guy and 
 Marian were married at Christ Church, Hamp- 
 stead. 
 
 Perversely enough, the memories he successfully 
 held at bay during the period of his betrothal 
 victoriously possessed him during the wedding 
 ceremony. As he sat with Theodore waiting for 
 his bride, and later, as they stood together facing 
 the altar, he must needs remember that other rite 
 performed in a registrar's office at Abingdon. At 
 Abingdon it had been a simpler and speedier affair 
 altogether. He had stood before a table, and the 
 girl beside him had worn a dark blue coat and 
 skirt. Even as he listened to the officiating clergy- 
 man, who was making such terribly intimate and 
 inexorable speeches out of the prayer book, and 
 though he was acutely aware of Marian standing 
 beside him, splendid in white satin, he could see 
 the three parallel rows of black braid upon the 
 dark blue coat and the small square pleats in the 
 dark blue skirt. The moment surprised him with 
 a double disloyalty, equally to the dead and to the 
 living. 
 
 The moment passed, and soon he was walking 
 to the church door with Mendelssohn brightly 
 
 24
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 265 
 
 insisting that this was the most obviously cheerful 
 of all occasions in life. 
 
 The shadow of the dead woman which had fallen 
 between them at the altar was with him again that 
 night, and against his will he loved his bride as a 
 changeling. Dismayed, he threw a veil over the 
 cruel pranks of memory as Marian lay in his arms ; 
 and over her, as she slept, he prayed that he might 
 keep himself true in blood and spirit to the living 
 woman and that even his memories might do her 
 no further wrong. 
 
 And so began the paradox of their married love. 
 Invocations to a relationship indissoluble and 
 eternal were impossible without raising a dead 
 rival to the living wife. He shunned an ecstacy 
 which found him haunted by a pale intruder. 
 Instinctively he kept his love for Marian away 
 from the passionate levels where personal identity 
 is lost and a perfect union achieved. Marian, on 
 the other hand, prayed for the perfect union which 
 alone could justify the triumph of her awakened 
 senses. But she was too wise to ask for what was 
 impossible. For the most part she practised 
 philosophy and was content, though there were 
 times when she felt the shame of a chaste woman, 
 who, though her blood is sweet and her spirit pure, 
 passionately surrenders herself in the knowledge 
 that she is more loving than beloved. 
 
 They spent their honeymoon in a lonely house 
 upon the south coast of England. The house was 
 built upon a spit of shingle that lay between the 
 sea and the waters of an estuary, which ran under 
 their windows to form a circular haven surrounded
 
 266 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 by marsh and cliff. There was no practicable 
 approach to the house by road. Visitors crossed 
 to it from the East by boat or scrambled for miles 
 over heather cliffs and sandy dunes from the West. 
 The house belonged to fishermen, who were among 
 the last of their craft in these ancient waters. Guy 
 and Marian were deliciously remote and idle ; and 
 there, though they walked the earth only, it was 
 possible to walk enchanted. In the mornings there 
 were beaches of blown sand under the dunes, from 
 which they could bathe and swim in a solitude 
 made by sun and sea, and rimmed with little green 
 hills or tiny purple alps of grass and heather. In 
 the long warm afternoons there was the small boat 
 with its red sail, in which they could pass from the 
 haven to the open sea over a miniature bar of 
 foam or fret a passage inland to a quiet English 
 town, busy with river-craft. In the evening there 
 were walks upon the cliff, or a new book from 
 London ; and usually there was a last look from 
 the lonely dark edge of the shingle spit to where 
 distant lights guided the ships forth and back on 
 the remoter waters. 
 
 Sometimes when Marian was tired, or engrossed 
 by a book, Guy would slip from the house alone, 
 and stand upon the extreme point of the spit where 
 the confusing currents met. He liked it best 
 when the night was wild and the wind rustled drily 
 over the sand, driving it and sifting it and combing 
 out the coarse rushes. He would sit in a sheltered 
 hollow, at one with a scene in which he saw nothing 
 but the dark shapes of hills which grew darker, 
 seas from which the light was dying, a stray gleam
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 267 
 
 of water from the marshes, or the sky filling 
 with stars. Invariably he faced towards the sea, 
 from which one night Marian had turned with a 
 shudder. 
 
 " A woman wailing for her demon lover," she had 
 quoted. " This would be just the place." 
 
 On one occasion, when, for some time, Guy had 
 remained alone in this place, silent and reflective 
 but unconscious of any definite thought, he sud- 
 denly felt as though something were intrusively 
 demanding an expression of which he was only 
 half aware. He caught himself saying : 
 
 " Here she might have lived. But she hated the 
 trees." 
 
 He was sifting sand through his fingers at the 
 time, and almost in terror he saw himself at a great 
 distance, a tiny figure but distinct, sitting upon 
 another beach, deserted and sun-lit, playing with 
 the sand in just that way, and listening idly to 
 someone who told him that she loved the sea. 
 
 He rose with a shiver, and, as he walked to the 
 house, he turned back once or twice feeling that he 
 was not unaccompanied. 
 
 2 
 
 Guy and Marian, after spending nearly six weeks 
 by the sea, moved thence straight into their new 
 house at Ealing. They had chosen the house for 
 space and comfort. It had an installation for 
 central heating, double windows, and lofty rooms. 
 
 Every morning at half-past eight, Guy issued 
 from the double doors of this pleasant house and
 
 268 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 caught his train to the city. He wore a well-cut 
 suit of a neat pattern, a shapely bowler hat and a 
 dark overcoat. He carried good gloves, an um- 
 brella faultlessly uprolled, and the Daily Telegraph. 
 He had eaten an excellent breakfast, and had taken 
 off the first edge of the day in agreeable interludes 
 with Marian behind the coffee, with letters full of 
 news, and with passages more or less facetious with 
 Raymond, which began in the bath-room and ended 
 at the garden gate. The journey up to town filled 
 him with a pleasant sense of the marvellous solidity 
 of his new position. He sat in his well-appointed 
 first-class smoking carriage among men even more 
 solid than himself, hearing comments on the money- 
 market or the stock-exchange ; and during these 
 early days it was piquant. It was as though 
 fundamentally he knew it for an enormous joke, 
 and it was partly this that caused him to exag- 
 gerate the comfortable philistinism of his new life. 
 Theodore was a frequent visitor at the Ealing 
 house. Sensitive to anything which touched 
 Marian at all closely, he was not wholly at ease. 
 He could not detect anything concretely wrong, 
 except that Guy was almost too obtrusive in his 
 declarations of felicity. The root of Theodore's 
 uneasiness lay in a fear that Guy did not sufficiently 
 value Marian. He was jealous of the enormous 
 trust she had placed in his brother. She had pre- 
 ferred to risk disaster with Guy than to shelter with 
 him. And even now, as he saw them together, 
 outwardly happy, he felt that they were somehow 
 insecure. He could even see or was it his fancy ?
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 269 
 
 the shadow of a question in Marian's eyes, as un- 
 observed she quietly watched Guy with his friends. 
 
 3 
 
 Guy returned from his honeymoon to enjoy the 
 success of his musical parodies. The book had 
 appeared as he was on the point of leaving for the 
 south coast. His enjoyment of its success was 
 a complicated emotion. He was genuinely pleased 
 that the musicians applauded him for the right 
 reason (even some of the victims wrote him cordial 
 letters). He was even more pleased that he should 
 have demonstrated a favourite thesis with him, 
 that imitation is the best and possibly the only 
 satisfactory method of criticism. With the general 
 public he did not know whether to be pleased or 
 angry. As a cynical man of business (the character 
 to which he chose to aspire) he was delighted, more 
 particularly as his -firm treated him with an im- 
 mense respect as one who (though an artist) had 
 actually produced something which for some reason 
 or other the public wished to buy. Nevertheless, 
 on more than one occasion, he was seen to behave 
 almost rudely to people who congratulated him for 
 the wrong reason, and to one fair patron of the 
 arts, who had in her train most of the celebrated 
 musicians of Europe, he replied without respect, 
 when she wrote him a long letter upon the delicacy 
 and depth of feeling he had shown in an amusing 
 imitation of Puccini at his worst. 
 
 It was some time before he spoke again to the 
 girl whose challenge had prompted him to this 
 enterprise. They frequently encountered within
 
 270 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the precincts of the firm, but passed casually about 
 their business. Guy once or twice made a move- 
 ment towards her, but felt strangely embarrassed 
 by a kind of still expectation in her attitude. Her 
 torn MS. remained in his drawer. 
 
 Not long after his return, however, chance, as 
 though pertinaciously bent upon ripening the 
 acquaintance, again brought them together. Guy 
 received a letter from the Principal of the School of 
 Music which she was attending, inquiring whether 
 it would not be possible to arrange in the 
 near future for a preliminary public appearance 
 of Miss Christine Thorne, a promising pupil 
 who had lately made astonishing progress with the 
 violin. 
 
 Guy mentioned the matter to the concert agent 
 of the firm, who asked him to hear Miss Thorne 
 and report upon her capabilities. 
 
 In due course she came to his room by appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 She showed no misgiving, but her silence seemed 
 more than ever overcharged. 
 
 ' You see, I took your advice," said Guy, indi- 
 cating his parodies that lay on a table between 
 them. 
 
 " I ought to congratulate you," said Christine. 
 
 It was impossible to tell whether this was irony 
 or common form. 
 
 She took her violin from the case. 
 
 " You want me to play ? " she abruptly inquired. 
 
 " We want, if possible, to arrange for you to 
 play at one of our recitals." 
 
 With an awkward gesture, as though suddenly
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 271 
 
 prompted to release her suspense, she raised the 
 violin and began to play. 
 
 Guy found himself, not without amazement, 
 listening to the Chaconne of Sebastian Bach. 
 
 It seemed as though she had instinctively chosen 
 something which might illustrate her musicianship 
 without giving herself away. She was sullenly 
 concentrated upon her music, as though it were 
 natural for her to be absorbed into the abstract 
 and the abstruse. Thus, thought Guy, might an 
 oracle pronounce its riddles, understanding them 
 but allowing none of its hearers to spell their 
 human significance.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 i 
 
 ON a fine Spring Sunday morning, in the third 
 year after they had settled down in the Ealing 
 house, Marian awoke at an early hour in one of the 
 pleasant bedrooms at Old Place. She had arrived 
 with Guy on the previous afternoon in response to 
 one of her frequent invitations from Lady Melsham. 
 
 The house reminded her of much that had 
 happened before her marriage, and, last night, they 
 had talked at length of Theodore's rapid progress 
 in the House of Commons (he had now been a 
 member for twelve months) and of his approaching 
 marriage with the daughter of an eminent politician. 
 
 Theodore and his lady were also staying at Old 
 Place for the week-end. 
 
 It was accordingly natural that Marian, as she lay 
 listening to the birds under her window, should 
 review with a steady eye the uneventful years of 
 her married life. 
 
 Guy had attended constantly to his business, 
 and he was now prosperous. Already he was 
 thinking of a flat in town, where they might enter- 
 tain their literary and musical friends. 
 
 And yet, as the sweet morning air came into her 
 room, and the level sun-light slipped through her 
 curtains and lay like a sword between floor and 
 ceiling, Marian realised that she was far from 
 
 272
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 278 
 
 satisfied. It was worse than that. She was afraid. 
 The mood was on her. It came upon her only 
 occasionally. But it had to be reckoned with. 
 
 It was not that she and Guy were, it seemed, to 
 have no children ; though that fact seemed some- 
 how, when the mood was on, maliciously ap- 
 propriate. Still less was it that she feared to lose 
 Guy in the vulgar way. She trusted absolutely in 
 his affection and faith. Her mood was the result 
 of an impression that slowly but inevitably Guy 
 was withdrawing from her for causes unfathomed. 
 He had outlived his forced enthusiasm for a life 
 devoted to business, and she divived that for some 
 impenetrable reason she was disastrously impli- 
 cated in this reaction from the Ealing experiment. 
 It was as though he regarded her as part of that 
 huge joke of being a householder which had ceased 
 to amuse him and was now beginning to conflict 
 with aspirations from which she was cruelly and 
 unjustifiably excluded. 
 
 Nothing decisive had yet happened to reveal the 
 rift. Guy himself knew less than the woman who 
 so jealously watched him to what extent she was 
 excluded. For the moment he was conscious 
 merely of a vague discomfort, a tendency to look 
 for distraction beyond the Ealing circle. For 
 escape he had turned naturally to his music ; but, 
 in his present state of divided allegiance, he could 
 make no real progress in that direction. He 
 started things and left them unfinished. He se- 
 cluded himself for a few days, or even weeks, but 
 invariably he returned dispirited to his ordinary 
 business.
 
 274 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 There was a sense in which Marian felt, now as 
 when first they were married, that she had never 
 really won him. She feared the solitude to which 
 he sometimes retired. She feared his silence. She 
 feared the strange unspoken intimacy in which he 
 walked with Raymond. And the least hint of his 
 withdrawal from the common life, however ten- 
 tative, brought upon her the mood she feared. 
 
 These were straws, but, when the mood was on 
 her, such straws blew thick upon the wind. During 
 ordinary calm days they lay neglected in a corner 
 of her mind. 
 
 Some of the straws had blown from Soho, where 
 Guy had begun to frequent late parties in Bohemian 
 flats. Marian did not disapprove of this Bohemian 
 life or desire to keep Guy perpetually at home. 
 The root of her uneasiness was strangely subtle. 
 It lay rather in the knowledge that he did not 
 greatly care for these distractions than in any fear 
 that he was likely to be absorbed by them. She 
 divined that he went to these parties, not because 
 he really liked them, but because they ministered 
 to the streak of wildness in him which she could 
 neither touch nor tame. They were a kind of 
 spiritual fidgeting. 
 
 2 
 
 A slight movement caused her to turn her eye 
 from the window. Guy was awake. He stretched 
 his hand across to her and she gave him her own. 
 
 " Slept well ? " he asked. 
 
 " Fairly," said Marian. 
 
 " Suppose we let in the sun," said Guy.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 275 
 
 He jumped out of bed and drew the cur- 
 tains, putting his head far out of the window. 
 After a few moments he came and sat beside 
 her. 
 
 " It's glorious out there," he said. " There's 
 frost on the apple bark and drops shining in the 
 blossom. There are swallows just under the roof. 
 One of them flew out and made a draught down my 
 back with his wings. The fields are still white and 
 you could eat the fresh air. I'll tell you what, 
 Marian, we must have a country estate at once. 
 This is the stuff to wake you up every morning. 
 Come and have a look." 
 
 He pulled at her hands and lifted her from the 
 pillow, then reached for her slippers and gown. 
 Together they looked out over the country. They 
 could see Crowborough beacon and the dark line 
 of Ashdown Forest. " We must give them the slip 
 this morning," said Guy. " I vote we go right up 
 to the forest. There is a bit of it not much more 
 than four miles away." 
 
 Marian smiled and pressed his hand. Why was 
 she so full of discontent ? He was always 
 trying to please her, and he would do anything to 
 avoid giving her pain. He had not lost any of his 
 old delight in her company. 
 
 " He would surrender everything to me," she 
 thought ; " everything except himself," she added 
 in a bitter afterthought. 
 
 On their way out to the forest they passed 
 Brambletye. 
 
 Guy had not seen the cottage since he left it 
 with Raymond on the eve of his settling down in
 
 276 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 London. Since then it had remained empty. 
 The windows were cluttered with dust. The 
 creepers had grown disorderly about it. The 
 garden was a wilderness. Overhung with its lofty 
 trees, it had a brooding, haunted look. Marian 
 shivered as she passed. Guy once or twice turned 
 to look at it with a curious wide glance, searching, 
 almost expectant. He did not tell Marian a secret 
 one of the small secrets he had lately begun to 
 have. Some twelve months ago he had bought 
 Brambletye for a small sum, obeying a sudden 
 impulse on seeing that it was being offered for sale 
 as an untidy and unnecessary corner of the Melsham 
 estate. 
 
 On the way home to lunch, Guy and Marian 
 again took the familiar woodland path through the 
 beech glade. Under the great beech they met 
 Theodore and the lady to whom he was engaged. 
 She was admiring the tree as they came up. There 
 was a swift interplay of glances among the other 
 three, in whose minds the past here sprang to life 
 almost of necessity. Here Theodore had seen 
 Marian sitting with his brother on the afternoon of 
 Sabina's last foretelling of what had since occurred. 
 Here Theodore and Marian had failed to become 
 engaged. Here Sabina had run to her death. And 
 now Guy saw his brother standing there with the 
 stately girl who was to be his wife. It was an 
 excellent marriage, a union of young intelligence 
 and fair prospects with wealth and a place always 
 high in the court circular. The girl was beautiful 
 in her cold way. She had an assured manner 
 which marked her out already for a successful
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 277 
 
 political hostess. Yet, as she admired the tree, 
 with epithets which fitted as aptly as the neat fur 
 toque upon her head, Theodore wished that Guy 
 and Marian had not come to remind him that this 
 was historic ground. 
 
 3 
 
 Guy and Theodore came unexpectedly together 
 again in the late afternoon. Both had started for 
 a solitary walk before dinner. Drawn by a common 
 lure, they met under the chimneys of Brambletye. 
 Theodore arrived some time before his brother. 
 Brooding on the fading story of the place, he had 
 an odd feeling that in the old days, when the 
 chimneys of Brambletye were warm, Guy had 
 been more enviable (in the way that Theodore was 
 prone to envy him) than he was at present. He 
 saw again certain scenes in which his brother had 
 figured. He was leading his wife back to her home 
 on the dark night of her flight from school, or sitting 
 alone and dishevelled among his inky MSS. with 
 illusion in his eyes. 
 
 Darkness was falling. The sun had left a red 
 smudge in the West which lay behind the trunks 
 of a group of pines like a dying fire behind bars. 
 Mists were gathering about Brambletye and the 
 chill of nightfall. Theodore shivered as the last 
 gleam of light vanished from one of the cottage 
 windows like a lamp suddenly put out. A moment 
 later he heard footsteps in the wood and saw his 
 brother. Guy came to the gate and stood silently 
 beside him. Together they contemplated the dark 
 outline of the cottage.
 
 278 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 Theodore could not control a desire to look into 
 his brother's mind. 
 
 " Tell me Guy," he said suddenly. " What 
 brought you to Brambletye this evening ? " 
 
 Guy looked at his brother. 
 
 "Aren't we," he said, "rather like the naughty 
 sisters in the play ? Where did you lose this bodkin, 
 sister? And where did you find this bodkin, sister, 
 sister all the time ? We are both at the World's 
 End, if it comes to that ? " 
 
 " Sometimes," he added, contemplating the 
 cottage, " I feel that I am still living between the 
 walls of that cottage, and I find my present life 
 incredible. It seems too good to be true. Perhaps 
 that is really what's wrong with it. Perhaps it 
 isn't true." 
 
 They walked back to Old Place. On the terrace, 
 Theodore, who had been reflecting on the way, 
 suddenly gripped his brother's arm and brought 
 him to a standstill. 
 
 " If you fail Marian in the least degree I will 
 never forgive you." 
 
 " I should never forgive myself," said Guy.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 i 
 
 GUY and Marian prolonged their week-end at 
 Old Place until the following Thursday, and 
 Guy kept himself informed of his business affairs 
 by telephone. On Wednesday his clerk rang him 
 up and said there were a number of urgent but small 
 matters requiring consideration. They could be 
 dealt with in half an hour. Guy told him to send 
 Miss Thorne down to Old Place by the next train 
 with the necessary papers, and in the afternoon 
 he waited for her in the library. 
 
 Christine had lately become the personal assis- 
 lant of Guy, but, though they had been daily in 
 close contact for several months, the acquaintance 
 remained virtually where it had stood at their 
 first interview. 
 
 Already she had appeared publicly with some 
 success, and on the second occasion she had shared 
 the programme with a pianist of distinction. It 
 was felt thereafter incongruous that she should 
 remain in the shop, and Guy had asked that she 
 should be transferred to his department. 
 
 As she came forward into the library at Old Place, 
 she stood a moment in the afternoon sun that lay 
 across the floor. The rays which enlivened the 
 sullen gold of her hair only emphasised the stillness 
 
 270
 
 280 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 of her face. It seemed implacably shut upon a 
 mystery. 
 
 2 
 
 He opened the despatch case and dealt with the 
 business it contained, asking Christine from time 
 to time for the necessary particulars. 
 
 Imperceptibly during the last few months he 
 had begun to be curious about her. He found 
 himself putting side by side the few revealing things 
 she had said, piecing together her preferences, 
 feeling for the soul behind her seclusive eyes. But 
 she remained mysterious. He knew only that she 
 had no mother, that her father was a poor musician 
 who made very little money, that she had a passion 
 for books as well as for music, and instinctively 
 liked the right ones. 
 
 " I'll ring for tea," said Guy, when they had 
 finished. " There isn't a train till half-past five." 
 
 " Is the little boy here ? " she asked suddenly. 
 
 " Raymond is in London." 
 
 " I should like to have seen him," said Christine 
 
 They turned at a sound. Marian stood on the 
 threshold looking towards them. Christine rose 
 from her chair. 
 
 " I'm not interrupting ? " Marian asked. 
 
 " Not in the least," said Guy " We've finished 
 our business." 
 
 Marian held out her hand to Christine, who took 
 it with a perceptible hesitation. 
 
 Marian talked to put Christine at her ease ; but 
 Christine answered only with the briefest mono- 
 syllables. Her reticence was particularly marked 
 when Marian expressed a hope that an invitation
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 281 
 
 to Ealing would be accepted. Christine said that 
 Ealing, from where she lived, was difficult to reach. 
 In a few moments she rose to go. They had left 
 barely sufficient time to catch the train, and at the 
 door Guy, looking at his watch, said that, walking 
 as she had come, by the road, she would probably 
 miss it. He proposed to show her the short way 
 through the wood to Brambletye. 
 
 3 
 
 They reached Brambletye with nearly twenty 
 minutes to spare. Christine, flushed with the 
 exercise and breathing fast, paused with her hand 
 on the cottage gate and looked back a moment 
 at the deserted dwelling. Guy, already in the road, 
 came back to the gate. 
 
 " An empty cottage," she remarked. " It looks 
 as though it were haunted." 
 
 " I lived there for nearly two years," said Guy. 
 
 " By yourself? " she asked. 
 
 " Raymond was born there," said Guy. 
 
 " You left this place to go to Ealing ? " 
 
 Her question sounded like an accusation. She 
 was looking at the cottage. The sun slanted down 
 from the edge of a brilliant cloud and blended her 
 with it. For the moment she was radiant, and the 
 cottage itself, with its dishevelled creepers putting 
 forth new leaves to the spring, suddenly lived 
 again. 
 
 " You like the country? " Guy asked, breaking 
 the silence into which they had fallen. 
 
 " Here," said Christine, " it would be possible 
 to escape."
 
 282 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 She looked long at the cottage before turning 
 away. 
 
 Guy accompanied her to the station, and stayed 
 to bid her good-bye. He reminded her of Marian's 
 renewed invitation to Ealing. Her face clouded. 
 
 " I don't belong there," she said abruptly. 
 
 Guy, on his way home, paused to look at Bram- 
 bletye. Christine had been strangely attracted by 
 the cottage. He remembered her as she had stood 
 at the gate, lit by the sun, and recalled her answer 
 to his renewed wish that she should come to 
 Ealing. " I do not belong there," she had said. 
 There, at last, was some of her mystery explained. 
 She remained outside ; and she had said of 
 Brambletye that there it would be possible to 
 " escape." 
 
 He turned from the gate and continued his walk 
 along the road. Soon he came to a stile, and 
 descended thence to a little valley over fields, 
 fallow or green with the swift grass of spring. On 
 the other side of the valley stood the church tower 
 under which Sabina lay. He climbed the opposite 
 hill, his mind full of the days at Brambletye. 
 
 He had left the grave in the care of the village 
 sexton, who, finding that it was never visited, had 
 grown careless. The roses swarmed upon it un- 
 pruned, and weeds were springing. The cross at the 
 head of it was screened by a group of fox-gloves which 
 had sown themselves there in the previous year. 
 
 Mechanically he began to uproot the weeds and 
 to cut away the sprawling shoots of the roses. The 
 fox-gloves he left untouched. When the work was 
 done he stood awhile with his^thoughts, and then,
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 283 
 
 turned back towards Old Place. His hands were 
 full of thorns from the roses. 
 
 Marian was coming down, dressed for dinner, 
 when he arrived at Old Place. He stood at the 
 foot of the staircase waiting for her to pass. 
 
 " Guy," she said, pausing as she came level with 
 him, " you promised to take me for a walk." 
 
 He looked at her a moment with absent, clouded 
 eyes, which suddenly brightened with contrition. 
 
 " So I did," he acknowledged. 
 
 Marian hesitated a moment. 
 
 " I don't think I like your Christine," she said 
 at last. ' Still waters,' they say. I feel that in 
 this case they are deep." 
 
 Guy was about to protest. He thought better 
 of it and smiled. 
 
 " Finished ? " he asked. 
 
 " That's all," said Marian. " A word in time 
 saves nine." 
 
 " You're bursting with old saws to-night, Marian. 
 And you're looking lovely," he added, kissing her 
 cheek. 
 
 She saw that one of his hands was bleeding and 
 exclaimed about it . He had left a small red smudge 
 upon her arm. 
 
 " What on earth have you been doing to your- 
 self ? " she asked. 
 
 " No rose without a thorn," said Guy. ' There's 
 one of your old saws back again." 
 
 " Your hands are torn to pieces." 
 
 ' 'Just a little amateur gardening, ' ' he said evasively 
 
 He wiped the stain from her arm with his hand- 
 kerchief and ran upstairs.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHEN Guy and Marian returned to Ealing, 
 they looked for the flat in town after which 
 Guy increasingly seemed to aspire, .and in a few 
 days he announced that he had found it. It was a 
 rambling suite of attics, lying amid the rafters of 
 one of the theatres in Soho. He began to use it 
 almost before Marian had remedied its deficiencies. 
 He moved thither all his books and music, his 
 favourite writing table and a piano. 
 
 He proposed to sleep there whenever there were 
 late concerts. Marian consented to this arrange- 
 ment with a growing dread of the change she had 
 felt in him since the evening on which he had 
 returned to Old Place with his hands full of thorns. 
 It was a change so minute as to be hardly per- 
 ceptible, a slight accentuation of the remoteness 
 against which she had so often rebelled. It made 
 her shy of claiming him in any way. 
 
 2 
 
 Some three weeks after her visit to Old Place, 
 Christine stayed at the office on Saturday afternoon 
 to assist Guy in dealing with additional work. 
 
 He waited for her when the work was finished, 
 watching her comb back the hair under her hat, 
 and they went out together. He told her of his 
 
 284
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 285 
 
 brother's wedding, which was to take place early 
 in the week. He was going to try the organ in a 
 church not far away, where he had undertaken to 
 officiate. It would be rather fun, except that the 
 bride had chosen the programme, which was 
 decorous in the extreme. He urged her to come 
 with him to the church. 
 
 In ten minutes he was at the organ playing the 
 programme which had been arranged. Christine 
 watched him as he played, her elbows on the side 
 of the organ. He finished the programme, and 
 found among the music he had brought a score of 
 " Tristan and Isolde." He began diffidently to 
 transcribe and to improvise upon some of the 
 themes. Discovering, as he proceeded, the re- 
 sources of his instrument, he was soon letting 
 heathendom loose among the aisles and arches. 
 He was intensely conscious, as he played, of the 
 brooding face of his companion. 
 
 He finished abruptly and pushed in the stops. 
 
 That's music for a wedding," he said. " But it 
 wouldn't be the marriage that's made in heaven." 
 
 " You play it well," said Christine. 
 
 The observations of Christine invariably had the 
 effect of making any silence which might follow 
 them almost oppressively significant. 
 
 3 
 
 After he had seen Christine to an omnibus, he 
 returned to the flat. 
 
 The clock on the mantel-piece chimed eight 
 o'clock. He was due at Ealing for dinner. The 
 ill-lighted room was already full of shadows. He
 
 286 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 went to the telephone and called up his wife. He 
 heard her voice, with the softness in it which she 
 always had for him. 
 
 " Is that you, Guy ? " 
 
 " Marian, I shan't be home this evening." 
 
 " It's the fourth time this week, Guy." 
 
 " I'm sorry, dear," was all he could say. 
 
 They exchanged good night, and he put up the 
 receiver. He had heard the feeling in Marian's 
 voice, and he had wounded it. 
 
 For a moment he almost changed his mind and 
 decided to go to her. She would spend the evening 
 reading and playing alone, nursing that hardly 
 perceptible estrangement which he himself had 
 lately felt in her. 
 
 But, when it came to the point, he was unable 
 to move. 
 
 4 
 
 Guy returned to Marian in time for lunch on the 
 following day. She made no allusion to his 
 telephone message, and received without comment 
 his announcement that he would probably sleep at 
 the flat during the week until Thursday, which was 
 the day before Theodore's wedding. 
 
 In the afternoon he was summoned to view and 
 to assess the musical library of a country house not 
 far from Southgate. On these occasions he usually 
 took Christine. 
 
 They motored out in the early afternoon. The 
 house lay well beyond Southgate, in the unspoiled 
 country on the Western borders of the wooded 
 country near High Barnet. Guy sat well back in 
 the open car, watching Christine as she turned from
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 287 
 
 right to left, missing no feature of the perfect day, 
 open to the influences of air and sky, the shining 
 trees, and the spray of the wild flowers in the 
 hedges. 
 
 At six o'clock, when their work was done, they 
 stood outside the house faced with the alternatives 
 of walking back to Southgate or taking a bridle- 
 path through the woods to High Barnet. They 
 chose the bridle-path. 
 
 The path was wilder and less frequented than 
 they had imagined from the map. They descended 
 to a brook by a steep decline on which the roots 
 of giant trees served often as a stairway. 
 
 Christine walked a little in front of him. Her 
 still profile, the slow grace of her moving arms, and 
 her dark tranquillity held him as by a spell. He 
 could see her face taciturn as the blank sky and 
 the sullen trees. 
 
 A train came down the cutting which lay across 
 their upward path from the trough of the valley. 
 When it had passed, the place seemed more than 
 ever remote and wild. The train slipped away to 
 its suburban station, a fugitive reference to the life 
 he had been leading for the last few years, and left 
 him there fatally alone with Christine. 
 
 Often in the course of their growing intimacy he 
 had hoped that she might become less remote. 
 The impulse to do something which might induce 
 this event had never been so strong as during 
 their walk down into the valley. He was flogged 
 by a passionate curiosity in which there was an 
 unconfessed desire of possession. 
 
 They climbed out of the valley. Christine, on
 
 288 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 arriving at the summit, stood still in the path, 
 which now ran across open grass, and looked 
 silently at the country. It was as though she 
 desired to refresh her eyes with light and colour, 
 with the broad pastures and dim trees, sweeten 
 her mind with the free air and deepen her thoughts 
 with the nightfall. She stood as though dilated 
 by these influences, comprehending and absorbing 
 the beauty and power with which they were 
 charged. 
 
 Some wild ponies loose on the common wandered 
 up and inspected them cautiously, as though the 
 animals had been struck by something hardly 
 natural in their frozen attitudes. 
 
 From that moment of silence Guy was to date 
 the years of his discretion. The impulse to break 
 down, by some challenge abrupt and inescapable, 
 the reserve which kept Christine inviolate suffered 
 a sovereign prohibition. He rebuked it in the 
 presence of that sybilline figure. She stood 
 beyond the clutch of possession. To molest her 
 under the influence of an emotion which had its 
 sources in vanity and desire became for him in that 
 moment an act of impossible levity. He was sud- 
 denly content to leave whatever there might have 
 been intimately between them among the things 
 unadmitted and unexpressed which live secretty 
 in every heart. 
 
 Silently he renounced discovery of the girl beside 
 him in the conviction that henceforth he would 
 remain alone in conquest or defeat. For a moment 
 he shrank from the bleak solitude of a life dedicated 
 to an object not yet plainly declared. Then it
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 289 
 
 seemed as though a secret energy sprang alive in 
 him to meet a destiny unknown and to keep him 
 faithful to a purpose obscurely formed. 
 
 They started to walk on, as though without a 
 word between them they had simultaneously 
 decided to do so. 
 
 The ponies, which had stood motionless in a 
 semi-circle watching them with necks pushed 
 forward, flung up their heads and trotted away.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 i 
 
 GUY, who was due that night at Ealing, went to 
 the flat instead. 
 
 In the morning he woke to find the sun streaming 
 into his room, and the telephone bell ringing close 
 beside him. He picked up the receiver of the 
 telephone. 
 
 " Is that you, Guy ? " It was Marian's voice. 
 
 " Guy speaking," he announced. 
 
 " Have you everything you need for the wed- 
 ding ? " 
 
 " The wedding ? " 
 
 " Of course. Had you forgotten ? " 
 
 "Er no. Of course not. I'm only just awake, 
 as a matter of fact. I've arranged to be at the 
 church before you all arrive : yes, to play the 
 people in." 
 
 He dismissed his cab at the church door. For a 
 moment he had thought of excusing himself from the 
 office he had assumed. He did not feel equal to it. 
 He had not eaten anything since the light tea he 
 had taken with Christine in the library at Southgate. 
 He pulled out his watch. It still wanted half an 
 hour of the time fixed for the ceremony. He went 
 into a public-house close at hand and hastily 
 refreshed himself. 
 
 On his return to the church he was met by a 
 
 290
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 291 
 
 smiling verger, who inducted him into the organ 
 loft. Under his eyes lay the music as he had left 
 it on the night he had played to Christine. She 
 had put her elbows on the organ so that his left 
 hand, reaching suddenly at a low note, had seemed 
 about to touch them. 
 
 There was a whispering and a rustling in the 
 aisles. The guests were beginning to arrive. He 
 prepared his music on the desk, and began to play. 
 Soon, through the slanted mirror to his right, he 
 saw Theodore come down the aisle with Powicke, 
 who was his best man. Theodore looked the part 
 of a happy and fashionable bridegroom. He was 
 serious, but not solemn ; obviously a master of 
 himself and of his destiny. He talked now and 
 then to Powicke in the manner of a general giving 
 a few last instructions to an aide before the battle. 
 
 Guy became aware that somebody was trying to 
 engage his attention. He had forgotten to look 
 as instructed for the signal which should inform 
 him from the porch that the bride had arrived, 
 and that the moment had come to play the pro- 
 cessional hymn. He modulated harshly from what 
 he was playing into the necessary key, tripping 
 into it rather like a man who stumbles through a 
 door which suddenly gives way under a violent push. 
 
 The procession, which seemed very distant and 
 unreal, was now moving down the aisle, led by the 
 choir in white surplices. First came the shrill 
 boys. Some day he would be an organist and 
 train his boys to sing some of Bach's forgotten 
 cantatas. Then the men came, for whom, as they 
 advanced, he played a majestic passage in counter-
 
 292 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 point on the pedals. In the mirror he saw Marian 
 look up towards the loft with a slight movement of 
 surprise. Powicke smiled, and whispered to Theo- 
 dore, who stood waiting for his bride. Theodore 
 also glanced up at the loft. He looked as though 
 he were annoyed. 
 
 The service seemed interminable. Guy went 
 mechanically through the programme, held between 
 the mirage of decorous figures below and the 
 reality of Christine as she had sat beside him within 
 reach of his hand. Theodore was now repeating 
 the responses, apparently quite unmoved by the 
 awful gravity of his undertakings. His bride re- 
 peated them in the manner of one who would never 
 be moved by anything. Guy wondered why he 
 should take life so much to heart when there were 
 so many people who could deal with it almost with- 
 out any feeling at all. The formal world stood be- 
 neath him, quietly and ceremoniously disposing of 
 its vital business, while he, who had somehow been 
 put there to minister to its occasions, felt that 
 forever he would be an exile. 
 
 The procession was moving again. It passed 
 under his feet into the vestry. There was a hymn 
 to be sung while the register was being signed. He 
 began to play the hymn, and, in the middle of the 
 first verse, saw Marian, who had not yet gone into 
 the vestry, look up at him as on a previous occasion. 
 Apparently he was playing the hymn too fast. In 
 fact it seemed almost a cheerful hymn as he was 
 playing it. Well, why not ? Theodore was pro- 
 bably going to be very happy. 
 
 He remained inactive for a moment after the
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 298 
 
 hymn was finished. The Mendelssohn March lay 
 uppermost on the desk, but that should not, of 
 course, be played till the bride and bridegroom 
 came from the vestry. But silence, against a back- 
 ground of rustling and whispering and the noise of 
 human voices that rose from the vestry between 
 his legs, was disconcerting. He heard Aunt Helen 
 ask where she was to sign, and he saw Marian walk 
 from the pew to join the autographers. He ought, 
 perhaps, to play something. 
 
 His eye fell upon the score of " Tristan and 
 Isolde," left there on the night he had played to 
 Christine. He began preluding softly upon the 
 principal themes. 
 
 He began to think of Christine as he played. 
 He could see her now more plainly than the people 
 in the mirror. He reached for some stops and 
 started to develop the motives. Gradually he was 
 absorbed into his playing. 
 
 Meanwhile the verger was making vain signals 
 to inform him that the moment for Mendelssohn 
 had at last arrived. But Guy was by this time too 
 fully occupied with the organ to notice anything. 
 For him it was now a world of stops and manuals. 
 
 The procession, when it emerged from the vestry, 
 was met full blast. The aisles and pillars rocked 
 with ecstasies which went but ill with the lilied 
 stateliness of the bride ; and Theodore, as he 
 walked into matrimony with a sober brow, inwardly 
 cowered under the fantasia. Matters were not 
 mended by a sudden silence as the bride and bride- 
 groom reached the church door, followed by a 
 quaint plunge at Mendelssohn. Powicke said that
 
 294 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 the Mendelssohn, following suddenly upon raptures 
 clearly unauthorised, sounded for all the world as 
 though a marriage had been arranged the morning 
 after. 
 
 Mrs. Theodore Reval, turning to her husband in 
 the car, said that she would never forgive her 
 brother-in-law. She suspected a deliberate tra- 
 vesty. 
 
 Guy did not move from the loft till the church 
 was empty and the verger's step was upon the stair. 
 He realised his offence with a smile of bitter under- 
 standing. His life in the normal world had been 
 always a tragi-comedy. There had never failed 
 an element of the grotesque in the events which 
 were gradually shaping his destiny. 
 
 2 
 
 That night, at the flat in Soho, Guy, as he sat 
 among the shadows, looked squarely at the im- 
 placable laws of life which required that the con- 
 sequences of every act should be fulfilled. He saw 
 his whole career his helpless and incomplete life 
 with Sabina, and the mistaken marriage with 
 Marian as a succession of blind errors. 
 
 Marian sat alone, aware of an estrangement she 
 could not measure or define, waiting for him to 
 reveal the failure of their marriage. He was con- 
 vinced that they could never resume their effort 
 to come together. Circumstances had revealed the 
 necessary tragedy of their relationship, and Marian 
 would read the tragedy line by line every day of 
 her life so long as they remained together. With 
 Marian must go the comedy he had played with
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 295 
 
 her for heroine. He had no right to his place in 
 the ordinary life he had outraged. It carried 
 responsibilities to which he had proved unequal, 
 and decencies which he had flouted. The wraith 
 of Sabina, which had always stood between them, 
 now beckoned him back to Brambletye and to the 
 purpose he had neglected. 
 
 His marriage with Marian had been always in- 
 complete. There had been compromise and accom- 
 modation, at best it had been a charming comedy 
 which often needed the affectionate and devoted 
 efforts of both of them to sustain. It had left them 
 with a sense of unreality and frustration which had 
 gradually destroyed in them all real hope of 
 perfection. 
 
 3 
 
 He rose at last, and, getting a light, went to a 
 neglected corner of the room where there was a 
 large oak chest into which three years ago, he had 
 thrown the papers which he had brought away from 
 Brambletye. The MSS. he found were clammy 
 between his fingers, and gave to his activities the 
 character of an exhumation. He found at last the 
 score of his " Forsaken Merman," which he had not 
 touched since the afternoon he had played it to 
 Marian at the cottage. He turned the pages with 
 the curiosity of a man who discovers the different 
 individual he was at a period grown remote. 
 Gradually he felt his way back to that time, but he 
 looked upon it now with understanding. He found 
 in his music the emotion, eager and uncontrolled, 
 which had driven him to the effort after expression, 
 and he recovered that emotion as he read.
 
 296 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 He felt it now, however, not as a raw experience, 
 but as something that had passed into his character, 
 something he could comprehend and shape and 
 present in all its significance. He felt in himself 
 the power to create from this material something 
 in which he might perhaps be justified. He was 
 directed to an end that lay somewhere beyond the 
 broken and imperfect phrases of his man cript, an 
 end to which he must henceforth remain ascetically 
 faithful, in failure or success. He began more 
 clearly to realise all that was implied by his in- 
 stinctive renunciation of Christine. 
 
 The morning light was shining upon the page 
 when he had finished reading. He took a pen, and 
 upon the half sheet of paper at the end of his 
 manuscript he planned the work afresh. 
 
 4 
 
 When he met Marian on the following day she 
 was sitting in the drawing room dressed for dinner. 
 They greeted as people who fence discreetly till the 
 inevitable hour. Guy went upstairs and remained 
 with Raymond till dinner was served. Raymond's 
 welcome, so ingenuously unchanged by the collapse 
 of all the old relationships, affected Guy profoundly. 
 He sat with the boy on his knee, thinking that of 
 all those who had mattered to him Raymond alone 
 remained. 
 
 After dinner, which passed almost in silence, he 
 sat with Marian in the drawing room postponing 
 his explanation. Marian waited for him to say 
 something about his studied avoidance. She 
 dreaded to learn what was behind it.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 297 
 
 He looked at her as she glanced through the 
 evening papers, reading hardly a word. She threw 
 them down at last. He knew she was about to 
 speak, and that she made several efforts to begin. 
 He admired the courage with which, splendidly 
 casual, she at last opened with a question in which 
 she disguised her anxiety with a wry smile. 
 
 " Why Tristan and Isolde ? " she asked. " The 
 bride was furious." 
 
 " I failed to remember my instructions," said 
 Guy. 
 
 " Maliciously ? " Marian asked. 
 
 " Absence of mind," said Guy. 
 
 Marian hesitated. Guy could almost feel how 
 she took up her courage for the effort. 
 
 " And everything else," she said. " Is that also 
 absence of mind ? " 
 
 He rose and walked up and down the room a 
 moment. Then he stopped beside her chair. 
 
 " Marian," he said, " I want you to let me go 
 and live with Raymond at Brambletye." 
 
 Marian spoke with difficulty. She had not 
 thought it was as bad as that. 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 " With Raymond." 
 
 She ignored the main question, darting for relief 
 to a side issue. 
 
 But your business, Guy," she objected., " Bram- 
 bletye would be most inconvenient." 
 
 " I've decided to retire from the business." 
 
 The impalpable thing was now definite and 
 declared. She had lost Guy. Or rather (she 
 burned to think of it), she had never really possessed
 
 298 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 him. She took the blow as one takes a thing sus- 
 pected in advance. 
 
 " But why must you go back to Brambletye ? " 
 she urged. " You can live your own life here. 
 Here or at Brambletye you can be equally 
 yourself." 
 
 " Marian, dear, I implore you to let me go. 
 Nothing else is possible. We are neither of us 
 able to compromise." 
 
 There was a silence, broken at last by Marian. 
 She searched for a missing link in the story. 
 
 " There is someone else ? " she inquired. 
 
 She remembered an evening at Old Place when 
 Guy had returned to her late, with his hands full 
 of thorns. On that same afternoon he had walked 
 with Christine to Brambletye. 
 
 " Oh Guy ! " she cried suddenly, " not that girl 
 I saw with you at Old Place ? " 
 
 " I shall be alone at Brambletye," said Guy. 
 
 There was a silence, in which it seemed that the 
 ghostly murmuring of a third presence was audible. 
 Both were thinking of the dead wife who had lived 
 where Guy would henceforth be alone. 
 
 " I think I understand," said Marian at last.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 i 
 
 DURING the days that followed Marian won- 
 dered what precisely people meant by a 
 broken heart ? Her own symptoms were not out- 
 wardly alarming. She still went about her work. 
 She did not show grief in any noticeable way. She 
 had simply mislaid her emotions. It was as though 
 the blow had numbed that part of her conscious- 
 ness where it fell. 
 
 Ostensibly Guy had simply retired into the 
 country to take up his interrupted career as author 
 and musician. 
 
 Marian neither agreed nor disagreed with the 
 arrangements made by Guy for her material 
 comfort and security. She imagined she would at 
 some time or other have to consider these questions. 
 Meanwhile she waited for this anaesthesia to pass. 
 
 Guy's first visit to Brambletye was one of 
 inspection only. He arrived in the early afternoon 
 and let himself into the empty cottage. He had 
 not entered it since the autumn morning three 
 years ago when he had left it with Raymond. It 
 had been periodically overlooked by the wood- 
 cutter's wife, but from long disuse it was airless 
 and dead. He stood motionless in the room below, 
 submitting to the influence of the place. There 
 was hardly an object there which did not start a 
 
 399 u
 
 300 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 memory. The interlude of his life with Marian 
 was almost forgotten. He could hear and see, he 
 could almost touch, the wife who had died. He 
 went upstairs, and memory was further quickened 
 to reprove the falsehood of his second courtship 
 and marriage. At last the silence which hung in 
 the stagnant air became intolerable. He walked 
 to the window and threw it open. The dead atmos- 
 phere of the room stirred, and cheerful summer 
 noises floated in. The cold past into which he had 
 walked was warmed with present life, and, from 
 dwelling upon what had been, he began to think 
 of the life he would live henceforth. 
 
 He looked soberly at the facts, and faced the 
 future hi no forced attitude either of rebellion or 
 humiliation. He had killed Sabina and deserted 
 Marian. He could not undo the past, but he 
 would henceforth test every act of his life with the 
 acid of those bitter memories. 
 
 For a livelihood he would re-enter the world upon 
 his own terms without prejudice to the work he 
 desired to do. In abandoning the profitable 
 activities in which he had recently been engaged, 
 he was moved by no insolence or contempt. But 
 he knew that such activities were for him a negation 
 of everything to which he was bound to aspire ; 
 that for him they were the bread on which no 
 man might live alone. 
 
 In this renunciation Marian was fatally included. 
 Neither for him nor for her was it possible to com- 
 promise with perfection. For Guy such a com- 
 promise would mean a complete frustration of the 
 impulse which had brought him back to Brambletye.
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 801 
 
 For Marian compromise might seem possible for the 
 moment, but that was only because she was still 
 in the mood when to suffer seems better than the 
 peace which puts an end to the story. 
 
 2 
 
 It was in such a mood that Marian made her only 
 effort to induce Guy to return. Its weakness was 
 indicated by the fact that it was made by mes- 
 senger. 
 
 About a fortnight after Guy had definitely 
 settled at Brambletye, he was writing in the sitting 
 room of the cottage, when he heard a footstep on 
 the flags outside. He rose, and was about to see 
 who was his visitor, when Theodore appeared at 
 the doorway. There was no greeting between 
 them. They stood for a moment silently looking 
 at one another. It was Guy who spoke first, and 
 he went straight to the point. 
 
 " You have come from Marian," he said. 
 
 Theodore turned upon Guy in anger, which was 
 like an East wind. 
 
 " I come from Marian," he replied. " She asks 
 you to come back. Why have you committed this 
 damnable cruelty ? " 
 
 Guy looked at him a moment. 
 
 " It's useless, Theodore," he said. 
 
 " You act as though life were a schoolboy's slate. 
 You can't rub out and begin again whenever you 
 make a mistake." 
 
 " Neither Marian nor I can compromise." 
 
 Theodore stifled his anger to plead. 
 
 " Guy," he said, " you have caused Marian the
 
 302 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 most bitter suffering. She asks you to come back. 
 She sends me here to do what I can." 
 
 " You have done what you can. If I were going 
 to return I should have yielded to the look on your 
 face when you came in. My life, beyond change or 
 remedy, is here." 
 
 He indicated the table where lay the manuscript 
 on which he had been working when his brother 
 entered. 
 
 " But why should Marian be excluded ? " 
 
 " The thing is beyond us. It just happens to 
 be so." 
 
 " If you persist, Guy, this is probably the last 
 time we shall meet. I have loved Marian all my life." 
 
 Guy put a hand on his brother's arm. 
 
 " It would only be adding another blunder to 
 the tale if I did what you suggest." 
 
 Theodore, without addressing another word to 
 his brother, turned and left the cottage. Indigna- 
 tion contended in his mind with perplexitj? and 
 with a sense of fatality which ended by dominating 
 his anger. He walked fast and far before he had 
 time to clarify his impressions. 
 
 His brother stood convicted past forgiveness of 
 an outlandish levity which had spoiled Marian's 
 life. He had lived carelessly upon the edge of 
 tragedy. Yet, through all his bitter indignation, 
 Theodore was aware at last of a novel steadiness 
 and sense of responsibility in his brother. He had 
 missed the old wilfulness, defying destiny with 
 blind eyes. He felt that his brother had come to 
 a firm resolution with a clear view of the conse- 
 quences. Guy had met him candidly and seriously,
 
 THE HAPPY FOOL 308 
 
 like a man who had faced every possibility of the 
 situation. 
 
 He wondered what his brother would make of 
 the new life. Was Guy to be permitted to find 
 peace as a postscript to two tragedies ? 
 
 3 
 
 Theodore had left the cottage by the front gate, 
 and he was already far upon his way before he 
 realised that he was taking the longer route to the 
 station by way of the road. On arriving at the 
 station he found that he had just missed a train to 
 London, and that there was not another train for 
 over an hour. It was already half-past six, and 
 he would now be late for dinner. He ordered tea 
 at the local inn, and, after taking it, strolled back 
 to the station by a path which ran through the 
 churchyard. He had last stood in that churchyard 
 when Sabina was buried ; and, moved by a sudden 
 impulse, he walked to the corner where she lay. 
 
 The sun had by now set behind the Church, 
 which cast a deep shadow over the place. He 
 noticed that the grave had been recently tidied. 
 Some shoots pruned from the roses lay still green 
 in a heap beside it, and the soil between the plants 
 had been freshly stirred. This must have been his 
 brother's work. 
 
 Then suddenly he heard someone approaching. 
 He retired into the shadow of the church wall. A 
 figure difficult to distinguish, but in which almost 
 immediately he recognised his brother, came 
 directly towards the grave, and stood motionless 
 beside it.
 
 304 THE HAPPY FOOL 
 
 From where Theodore remained in the shadow 
 every movement of the figure was plain. He saw 
 it bend low over the grave for a moment. It 
 straightened itself and looked at something taken 
 into its hand. 
 
 It came towards the spot where Theodore stood 
 beside the wall and passed without perceiving him. 
 
 Theodore saw that his brother had gathered a 
 rose from the grave of Sabina. He waited for 
 Guy to pass out of sight, and then resumed his 
 walk to the station. The conflicting feelings of the 
 afternoon had given place to another sentiment. 
 He was envying his brother the rose. 
 
 A few hours later Guy Reval, sitting alone before 
 the table in his cottage, wrote the concluding bars 
 of " The Forsaken Merman." And he knew that 
 his work was good.
 
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