WINGS OF DESIRE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE WAY UP. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 WIDDICOMBE. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 A MAN OF GENIUS. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 THE WINGLESS VICTORY. Cloth, $1.50.
 
 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 BY 
 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 MCMXII
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 THE VAIL COMPANY. COSHOCTON, OHIO
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I ULYSSES; IN THIS THE READER is INTRODUCED TO A 
 
 MAN WITH SEA-WEARY EYES 1 
 
 II CHRYSOSTOM: IN THIS THE READER is PRESENTED 
 
 WITH THE KEY OP THE HOUSE 21 
 
 III RUTH AMID THE ALIEN CORN: IN THIS is ACCOM- 
 
 PLISHED A RESURRECTION 39 
 
 IV AN ESSAY IN HEROICS: IN THIS BILLY PUTS ON 
 
 WlNGS AND SEVERAL PEOPLE EAT DUCK . . . .51 
 
 V A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS: CONTAINING THE LEGEND OP 
 
 A TOBY JAR AND A DIVINING CRYSTAL . ... 70 
 VI SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS: IN THIS A MAX off 
 
 BELIAL COMES HOME 94 
 
 VII CAP AND BELLS : IN THIS MOLLY WOODRUFFE TANGLES 
 
 A SKEIN AND ANNE HEREFORD PLAITS A THREAD . 114 
 VIII THK WAY OF A MAN IN Two MODES: IN THIS 
 STEPHEN ANERLEY USES A CUDGEL AND ARCHER 
 
 BELLEW, A RAPIER 135 
 
 IX THE UNDYING PAST: BEING VARIATIONS ON THE 
 
 THEME OF MOTHERHOOD 170 
 
 X THE FLY ON THE WHEEL: IN THIS CASE THE FISHER- 
 MAN SETS HIS NET, AND MRS. KNYVETT PLAYS A 
 
 GAME OF CELESTIAL PATIENCE 189 
 
 XI ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE: IN THIS SIMON 
 BODINAR SINGES HIS WlNGS AND THE REST OF THE 
 
 COMPANY SUFFER A SEA-CHANGE 218 
 
 XII DUKERIPPEN: IN THIS MRS. KNYVETT PLAYS THE 
 
 SIBYL, AND STEPHEN ANERLEY THE MAN . . . 254 
 
 XIII THE SLEEPING LADY: IN THIS BELLEW SENDS ROUND 
 THE FIERY CROSS AND THE READER MAKES THE 
 ACQUAINTANCE OP A SELECT COMPANY OF ELE- 
 
 MENTALS . . . . 279 
 
 2138963
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIV THE FOOL OF QUALITY: IN THIS BILLY PIPES AND 
 
 SABA DANCES 300 
 
 XV PACTOLUS: "WHOSE FOAM is AMBEB AND WHOSE 
 GEAVEL, GOLD": IN THIS is SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF 
 SIMON BODINAB'S ENCHANTED CIGARETTES . . . 321 
 
 XVI MfiTiEB DE FEMME, THE OLD AND THE NEW: IN THIS 
 VIN HEREFORD SHUFFLES OFF THE DOMESTIC COIL, 
 MRS. KNYVETT RETRIEVES A SITUATION, AND SIGNOR 
 
 GUARINI DOES A LITTLE DIGGING 334 
 
 XVII LA SALLE DBS PAS PERDUS: IN THIS ANNE SEES A 
 VISION, GUARINI PAYS A DEBT, AND BELLEW VIEWS 
 
 A LOST LAND 352 
 
 XVIII EPITHALAMIUM : IN THIS HEAVEN LIGHTS THE 
 
 TORCHES OF THE SKY . 360
 
 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ULYSSES: IN THIS THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO A MAN 
 WITH SEA- WEARY EYES 
 
 TTE opened the door with a crash, lurched about on 
 -*-*- the broken brick flooring of the place and finally 
 came to anchor on a cane-bottom chair. A monstrous 
 hairy man was he, to judge by his tattooed wrist and 
 the wiry fingers he bent round the bowl of his pipe; 
 short and squat, in the land-going togs of the sailor- 
 man, with deep-set eyes and pinched cheeks covered 
 with reddish stubble. 
 
 "Mission Hall!" growled he in an undertone, "more 
 like a wagon load of monkeys." 
 
 The room was long and narrow, with walls of spotty 
 stucco, its side lamps protected by wire casings and its 
 lanceolate windows blurred with the muddy deposit of 
 rain-drops. Over their dull surfaces trickled misty 
 tears, born of human breath. The green baize that cov- 
 ered the platform had been kicked aside to make room 
 for the performers and the canvas back of the piano 
 sagged like a bellying sail. Tobacco smoke rose in all 
 directions in curling spirals that merged in haze over- 
 head. At the piano sat Peter Westlake vamping out 
 a tune that set the heads of the longshoremen swaying 
 to and fro like snakes in sunlight. 
 
 And to judge by his own feelings Peter had been 
 strumming that tune ever since the Ancient of Days 
 first made man: for him the firmament had been re- 
 
 1
 
 2 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 duced to a yellow fog out of which emerged the refrain 
 of "Willie, waltz me round again; waltz me round again, 
 Willie." With one eye pecked on the dull-faced clock 
 at the bottom of the room, w T ith the cushiony end of his 
 long chin a-waggle and his little finger curling like a 
 lambkin's tail, he was holding the fort against the 
 forces of the "Valiant Sailor," licensed to sell wine, 
 spirits and beer to be drunk on the premises. And 
 since the armies of that hostelry were withdrawn at ten 
 o'clock, at ten-five every night he thankfully struck his 
 last chord and banged down the cover of the piano : one 
 more evening to the good on this side of Eternity. 
 
 So he usually thought. Yet to-night he had his 
 doubts, for secretly, while Willie waltzed, Peter was 
 wrestling with the great problem of whether it is wise 
 to cry peace where there is no peace; whether to hide, 
 to cover up evil, leads a man any way on the road to 
 cure ; whether, in fact, it isn 't better to drag things out 
 of their hiding-places and look at 'em. 
 
 Thus Peter Westlake had ceased for a time to be an 
 Englishman, while his round pink cheeks grew redder 
 and the one front lock which had escaped the brilliantine 
 waved over his forehead like a pennon. He was a 
 cherub with a brow and the grey on his temples was 
 spreading, but all the time he was longing to testify 
 to the folly of a lawyer's clerk who had tried to "do 
 good." He recognised to-night that all he had ever 
 done was to cheat the clock a bit, by keeping these 
 fellows sober for an hour at a time, not knowing that 
 whatever you've got a thirst for you had better go 
 drink, so as to learn the taste of the cup. 
 
 "They're men. I'm not," said Peter to himself, as 
 he watched the longshoremen. "Go jim-bang through 
 with it. That's what you've got to do if you're ever 
 to be a man. I've been like a good child in a sweet 
 shop, laying a finger here and there on a lollipop, but 
 never swallowing it down. ' '
 
 ULYSSES 3 
 
 But still Willie waltzed on to the fat little squab, 
 George Lavers, with his merry blue eyes and ten chil- 
 dren, to big Will Bowden, old Strong-i-th'arm, to John 
 Holman, brave heart of seventy-one with the undimmed 
 eye of a boy. 
 
 "Men all, my lords," said Peter, ''and I but a tub- 
 thumping jackass whose piety is nothing but an asset 
 to the smug propriety of the firm that employs me. ' ' 
 
 That was the worst part of the coil; the whole thing 
 made him so sick that he felt like a whiting in a trammel 
 net with the crabs feeding on him. 
 
 It was a relief when the hairy seaman, after a pre- 
 liminary shifting on his beam-ends and a furtive spit- 
 ting on his palm, began to roll up the aisle between the 
 rows of lounging men. In a flash of half-effective 
 memory Peter recalled the man's face; a Bodinar, of 
 Brixham, with a dim background of brain and daring 
 to his family name. Then the piano player bobbed his 
 head, nodded emphatically three times, flashed his eyes 
 cunningly and announced an extra : 
 
 "Mr. Simon Bodinar in the favourite Devonshire 
 song 'Billy boy, Billy.' " 
 
 Swinging his body as though he were heaving at the 
 windlass, the singer began to roar in a hoarse voice that 
 suggested some hawser grown weed-hung and barnacle- 
 coated in deep-sea waters that only the lead-line knows. 
 The chorus "Billy, beuoy, Billy," was bellowed by the 
 audience with the rolling undertone of a ground-swell 
 on a pebble-ridge. 
 
 "WhurVee bin to all the day, Billy, beuoy, Billy? 
 Whur'v'ee bin to all the day, Billy, beuoy, Billy? 
 I've bin yur, I've bin thur, I've bin ivery other whur, 
 A-luking for a young thing to taake 'er from 'er Mam-my. 
 
 "Can 'er baake and can 'er brew, Billy, beuoy, Billy? 
 Can 'er maake a Hirish stew, Billy, beuoy, Billy? 
 'Er can baake, 'er can brew, 'er can maake a Hirish stew, 
 But 'er be a young thing to taake 'er from 'er Mam-my.
 
 4 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "How awld be 'er then, Billy, beuoy, Billy? 
 How awld be 'er then, Billy, beuoy, Billy? 
 Twaice six, twaice zebben, twaice twenty and eleben, 
 Yet 'er be a young thing to taake 'er from 'er Mam-my." 
 
 Mr. Bodinar snuffed up the incense of admiration at 
 the close of the song with his sensitive, pock-marked nose, 
 like any wide-nostrilled Chinese idol. Then there came 
 a sailors' hornpipe, danced solemnly, deftly, pat to the 
 echo of its rub-a-dub-dub, with an upper body stiff 
 like a mainmast and lower limbs that seemed but mere 
 ligaments. It was a picture in dumb show of the zest 
 of the sailor's craft, a picture dating from the time 
 when seamanship meant waiting on the pleasure of wind 
 and tide, dancing to the tune they played, not, as to-day, 
 forging ahead in the teeth of their defiance. 
 
 When at ten o'clock, the company stampeded out of 
 the door like a herd of steers, Peter made a sign to the 
 man to stay behind. Yet, as they stood watching the 
 attendant extinguish the lights in the cavernous place, 
 he seemed to find a difficulty in opening the conversa- 
 tion, till Bodinar passed the back of his hand so sug- 
 gestively over his mouth that it almost seemed to hide 
 a smile. And this smile was something quite different 
 from the grin with which he had hailed the roars of 
 applause. At sight of it Peter Westlake remembered 
 another fact about the Bodinars; a singular bit of sea- 
 daring by which one of the brothers had saved a vessel 
 by opening casks of oil round a foundering craft. In 
 short, there was an atmosphere of brain about the chap 
 that made even his silence impressive. The sensation 
 emboldened the little man and he plunged : 
 
 "That was a queer yarn you were spinning on the 
 quay this afternoon," he began. "I suppose you don't 
 mind telling it over again? I've got a friend upstairs 
 I should like to hear what you have to say. And I 
 rather fancy you've stuck pretty close to me the whole 
 day."
 
 ''Closer than a barnacle, when there's aught to gain," 
 said the seaman in a voice that seemed rusty from dis- 
 use. 
 
 "Come upstairs," said Peter, briskly leading the way 
 down the passage to his private rooms which adjoined 
 the mission hall. As he opened the door of his study 
 another recollection of the Bodinars came to him; one 
 not so savoury, but more mysterious. For there are 
 queer customs, dating back many centuries in all old 
 fishing centres. Yet, after all, this Bodinar might have 
 no connection with this particular superstition. 
 
 The room they entered looked out on the river, with 
 windows that faced seawards down the Narrows of the 
 Dart. The lights in the houses across the river joined 
 the twinkling stars in one unbroken wall of bright 
 points. Through the room the lapping of the tide in 
 the reaches of the estuary sounded like a confidential 
 voice. 
 
 Bodinar sleeked his hair down with both hands in 
 deference to the tall man who leant against the mantel- 
 piece watching Westlake and his prize with a quizzical 
 smile. Then the seaman sat down at the green-covered 
 table with his peaked cap carefully stowed beneath him. 
 There was a strange quality in his eyes, for whole vistas 
 opened downwards into them, as though one were peer- 
 ing into the jade depths of some ocean world. 
 
 It was almost a relief when he glanced down and drew 
 a dirty chamois bag from his trouser pocket. 
 
 "Anybody outside?" asked he, listening with his head 
 on one side. 
 
 Getting up, he opened the door and walked down the 
 passage and back, as though to reconnoitre. He had a 
 footstep that one couldn't forget, for one foot, appar- 
 ently the left, halted and dragged with the sucking un- 
 dertone of a wave receding on pebbles, while the other 
 swung clear to a steady purpose: slow sheep and swift 
 panther yoked in unequal fellowship.
 
 6 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Rum thing?" asked Peter, raising his eyebrows at 
 the tall man who stood, match in hand, in act to light 
 his pipe. The latter had the knowing air of a man who 
 can read a woman or a horse thief. 
 
 Down the passage on the return journey came the 
 queer footstep; dot, drawl; dot, drawl; and then two 
 lines of a doggerel catch : 
 
 "OS Diego Ramirez, where the Ildefonsos roar, "' 
 
 There's gold, there's gold, there's gold galore." 
 
 His voice had a break in it, being guttural in the 
 lower notes, and squawking, parrot-like, in the upper, 
 with nothing to link the two. 
 
 "Sang it all the afternoon at intervals," said Peter 
 Westlake. "Come over, I should say, on the look-out 
 for a wealthy yacht owner. Cunning devils, all the 
 Bodinars. ' ' 
 
 He was about to finish the sentence with more precise 
 information, but desisted. For somehow he wanted to 
 let the fellow make a good impression on Captain 
 Knyvett. He wouldn't spoil his market by mentioning 
 the shady side of the Bodinar talents. Meanwhile 
 Knyvett pulled at his pipe till the light burnt fire red 
 at the breath from his leathery lips. 
 
 "You know, sir," said the seaman to Peter, "what 
 I told you about this morning. Well, there 'tis. ' ' 
 
 Between his fingers, hairy like a spider's legs, some- 
 thing glinted. No glow of sovereign or doubloon had it, 
 only a glittering point here and there that caught the 
 light from the hanging lamp. Over and over again he 
 rolled the pieces, like a man trying to wipe up a stain, 
 while the other two watched him, eyes a-gog. For it 
 was gold dust that Bodinar handled thus amorously. 
 
 "There's tanks of it, where that come from, gents," 
 said he. "I'm the only man that knows of it, but I 
 can put my finger on it like that."
 
 ULYSSES 7 
 
 He dashed a spatulate black-rimmed thumb on the 
 table and puffed noisily at his pipe. 
 
 " It 's a dead cert, gents, a dead cert. ' ' 
 
 He leant back in his chair with the wearied air of a 
 man who is labouring an obvious point. Then he lifted 
 up his head like a dog that howls and began : 
 
 "Off Diego Ramirez, where the Ildefonsos roar, 
 There's gold, there's gold, there's gold galore. 
 
 That's it, gents. And it's poetry, too. Made it my- 
 self. Runs in a family like warts, poetry does. For 
 my father was the same before me and made rhymes as 
 clear as a bell." 
 
 He had drunk just enough to turn the footlights on, 
 so to speak. Nor was Simon Bodinar cut off from one 
 of the most abiding sources of joy, a sense of the great- 
 ness of his own powers. 
 
 Then, inspiration welling within, he tried a new tune : 
 
 "Down, down, down, at the bottom of the sea, 
 Where the dead men crawl upon hand and knee." 
 
 Across the heaving surface of the river outside lay a 
 streak of light that showed the rise and fall of its un- 
 quiet breast. Beyond the light could be distinguished 
 the blackness of hills girdling the Basin where the riding 
 lights of the anchored vessels hung like fireflies caught 
 in the meshes of an unseen net. 
 
 Suddenly the steam-ferry bustled across the tideway 
 with the hiss of a saw and the men roused themselves 
 from the half -dream into which they had fallen. 
 
 "Diego Ramirez," said Captain Knyvett; "that's the 
 Horn district. ' ' 
 
 "Aye, it's the Horn, the" 
 
 "Yes," said Captain Knyvett, twinkling, "the English 
 language does stand in need of trochees. But," he 
 added, changing his tone, "you'll have to prove your
 
 8 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 credentials, Bodinar, up to the hilt, if you expect us to 
 act on what you 're telling us. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Sir, I ask for nothing better. And as for going out 
 to look for the place where this come from, that's your 
 own look-out. Only, if you don't, you'll be making a 
 big mistake, the biggest of your lives. ' ' 
 
 "If there's going to be any going after gold," said 
 Peter, rising and going to the window, ''I'm out of it. 
 It 's not my affair. ' ' 
 
 "You're not in with this at all, then, Peter?" asked 
 Captain Knyvett, raising his eyebrows banteringly. He 
 had noticed that the hand which the small man lifted to 
 his pipe was shaking and knew that one of the strongest 
 forces in the world was working in the room that night. 
 ' ' Yet 'twas you who first cottoned to the yarn. ' ' 
 
 "I can't be in with it," said Mr. Westlake curtly. 
 "I'm a poor man. You'll want money for a mad-cap 
 scheme like that." 
 
 He lost himself in long, long dreams as he fixed his 
 gaze firmly on an anchor ring clamped to the paving 
 of the quay outside. The voices in the room seemed to 
 come to him from a far distance, but insistently. 
 
 "Let's get it all plain and square," said Captain 
 Knyvett, getting up and taking down one of the many 
 blue back charts that hung on the wall. It was a chart 
 of the Cape Horn district that he flung on the table. 
 
 Peter Westlake drew nearer, irresistibly fascinated, 
 while the seaman began to hum once more : 
 
 "Off Diego Ramirez, where the Ildefonsos roar, 
 There's gold, there's gold, there's gold galore. 
 
 "There she is, there she is, the old b ," he shouted, 
 running his fingers along to the south of that hell of 
 seamen, the terrible Diego Ramirez islands. 
 
 "Do you know, mate," said Peter, "that chanty of 
 yours gets on my nerves ? Hang the thing ! Jiggety-jig, 
 jiggety-jig, I shall have it in my head all night."
 
 ULYSSES 9 
 
 "Morn and night, pit-mirk and bright noon," said 
 Bodinar solemnly. "It runs in my head, too. For it's 
 true." 
 
 "Sailor's yarn!" 
 
 "That's right, mister. Sailor's yarn it is. But 
 sometimes they'm true. And who are you, a sky-pilot, 
 a devil-dodger, to be a judge of sailors' yarns?" 
 
 "You say," said Peter sharply, "that the Anaconda, 
 a coasting vessel, was built for a firm of traders in 
 Coronel by Hamblen Brothers of this town. ' ' 
 
 He nodded towards the quay. 
 
 "That you took her out as skipper, to the west coast 
 of South America through the Magellan Straits and that 
 being driven by stress of weather up Smyth's Channel, 
 you there came across a certain cove which you can find 
 again. ' ' 
 
 "That's so. Straight on the knocker," said Bodinar 
 cheerfully, reaching over to the grate and knocking out 
 the ashes from his pipe on the hob of it. "That's so. 
 See here," he said, stretching out a great hand towards 
 Captain Knyvett as the latter rested his hands on the 
 table watching both chart and man, his bushy eyebrows 
 drawn close together in cogitation. "You think I'm 
 lying. Well, if I am, you can go and find out. Hamblen 
 Brothers o ' Dartmouth have got their ship-building shop 
 about a hundred yards from this very window. You 
 can go and ask 'em whether they built the Anaconda 
 and I took her out through the Straits. ' ' 
 
 "Let's have the full story," said Mr. Westlake, com- 
 ing out of his day-dream. 
 
 "Ah, Peter, Peter, you've singed your wings," cried 
 Captain Knyvett, subsiding into his chair with a shrug 
 of the shoulders. 
 
 ' ' Look ye here, gents. I took that there cock-boat, the 
 Anaconda, a twelve-ton steamship, right out to the 
 Canaries, past the Line, down the Roaring Forties, past 
 Cape Virgin, up the Straits to Punta Arenas. Now,
 
 10 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 you're seaman enough to know what that means. Talk 
 o' Franky Drake ! Faugh ! there wasn't another chap in 
 Dartmouth, no, nor yet in Devon, no, nor yet in England, 
 but me that would have crossed the Pond in that cock- 
 boat. 'Twas taking a man's life in his hands to do it. 
 And Hamblen Brothers, what built her, knowed it. 
 Says they to me: 'Bodinar, there's not another man 
 we'd ask to do it, but you.' Lord, 'twas the maddest 
 sort of a voyage. To cross the Pond in a twelve-tonner. 
 D 'you know how we did it ? " he shouted. 
 
 "She was an accommodation vessel, fitted with sails 
 to her and we sailed, thirteen days, to the Canaries. 
 Then we caught up the Trades, sailing, man, sailing, 
 steamed the doldrums and right away down, saving coal 
 with sails when the wind was fair. That was seaman- 
 ship, that was, if you like. ' ' 
 
 "It was," said Captain Billy. 
 
 "Thank ye, mister," said Bodinar, holding out a paw. 
 "Shake." 
 
 "They may talk," he went on, "o' Franky Drake. 
 And he must ha' been a seaman, too, for the man as 
 could and they say he did sail up the Magellan Straits, 
 must ha' been a great man. But he didn't cross the 
 Pond in a twelve-ton steamer. No, nor he didn't use 
 sails on a steamboat. ' ' The ex-skipper of the Anaconda 
 loomed, titanic, before their eyes. 
 
 "And the crew!" he exclaimed. "Look at the engi- 
 neer. 'Man,' says he to me, afore ever we slipped the 
 Narrows out there, 'Man,' says he to me, 'am I a slave 
 or not?' 'No,' said I, 'but you'd better go below and 
 bank the fires all the same.' 'Oh,' says he, haughty 
 like, ' as long as you know I 'm not a slave ! ' And goes 
 below with that. And that's the sort o' seaman he 
 was. And the crew ! Naught but Brixham trawlers out 
 of work. Did they know what they were in for? No: 
 not one. What did they know about South America and 
 the Horn? Never heard of it, not one of 'em. Going
 
 ULYSSES 11 
 
 off for a longish sort of a voyage, that's the way o' it 
 to them. And one shipped for cook. Couldn't make 
 three-decker, no, nor duff. Hadn't fried naught but 
 fish before. And with that sort of tool, I crossed the 
 Atlantic." 
 
 From the estuary outside had sailed Norseman and 
 pirate, Crusader and Elizabethan sea-dog ; Drake, Davis 
 and Gilbert knew the Narrows well. Drummed down the 
 reaches to the noise of sackbut and psaltery they had 
 sailed many a time. Bodinar had weighed anchor to the 
 noise of a steam-hooter or two and the grumbling of an 
 engineer half seas over, yet the rapture of mastery was 
 his. He lay back, hands crossed, and basked in his own 
 sunshine. 
 
 "And the gold, man?" said Captain Billy, quietly. 
 "The gold?" 
 
 "Ay, the gold. That's knocking on the knocker, that 
 is. There you go for it, lickety-split. That's it, 
 lickety-split. ' ' 
 
 He paused, tasting the syllables of his ridiculous 
 rhyme. Then, with an entire change of front, turned 
 from truculence to solemnity. 
 
 Somehow or another Mr. Westlake 's cupboard had been 
 made to yield spirituous liquor. Captain Knyvett shoved 
 a glass of it towards him. 
 
 "Thank 'ee, mister, thank 'ee," said Simon, his hand 
 clasping the stem of the rummer. Then his full lips 
 clung passionately to the brim of it for a second. 
 
 "See us creeping along, creeping along, day after 
 day," he continued, "up the narrow channels of a land- 
 locked sea, cropeying round corners, for you couldn't 
 tell where you'd fetch up upon t'other side. Steep cliffs 
 everywhere, with trees to the water's edge, evergreen, 
 kind o ' fir trees, overhanging so you could steam beneath 
 the branches of 'em. That's Smyth's Channel, and up 
 above the trees, bare screes, and up above that, snow in 
 the hollows, thin scattered snow showing the bare rock
 
 12 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 between the seutter of it. And a grey cloud that never 
 lifted overhead and the grey sea beneath. And rain and 
 hail and sleet and snow. Snow on the fir-trees like white 
 on an old man's beard." 
 
 He had fallen into the voice of a dreamer fathoms 
 deep in sleep. 
 
 "And anchoring night by night, and by day columns 
 of smoke in one cove or t'other. Long columns, like 
 hawse pipes in the air. Natives ' fires, the Alaculof s, and 
 then the poles of a wigwam, maybe. And steamer-ducks 
 upon the water with a noise of scores upon scores of 
 paddle-wheels a-going. To hit 'em, you must shoot with 
 rifles. Feathers so thick against the cold that nothing 
 but rifle shot will bring 'em down. Same, they tell me, 
 all along there, with bird or beast. ' ' 
 
 He was jotting down impressions now, throwing them 
 out like a man spitting out fragments of bone from a 
 mouth over-full. 
 
 "And then 'Twas a dead dull hour with a bit o' 
 the brighter dulness that comes at the close of day. 
 Like a looking-glass the sea and deep water under the 
 very cliffs. Lord-a-Lord, there must ha' been wild 
 doings there back hundreds upon hundreds of years 
 agone, for the cliffs be mountain tops and the bottoms 
 of 'em go down, down, fathoms down. Sixty fathoms 
 down is nothing thereabouts. 
 
 "And then Tall cliffs, black, up to the snow line, 
 straight up. ' ' 
 
 He held up his hands like a Moslem in the pose of 
 prayer. 
 
 ' ' A narrow neck it was between 'em and so close across 
 that you could have held a pole across the waist of the 
 ship and the pole would ha' touched a rock on each side. 
 Pinched through, we did, though, a biscuit 's throw from 
 they bare, black rocks, a-seeking good anchorage. Dark 
 it was there and bitter chill between them, and beyond
 
 ULYSSES 13 
 
 a land-locked cove. Smooth, clear water, lead-line going 
 all the time. And trees, the pitch-pine sort that burns 
 better than bunkers, to the edge and through the woods 
 run a stream, two hundred yards or so wide." He sat 
 resting arms on knees gazing into a picture. 
 
 "And half a mile inland a waterfall between the trees, 
 like a white line, the thin streak of it. And round the 
 outfall of the river sand. ' ' 
 
 He drew a long breath. 
 
 "Stepped into it from the boat, foot going slush into 
 it. Low tide, sands all bare and shining. Up against 
 the lead of the clouds and the looking-glass water, the 
 yellow of it. Foot went in deep; squelch, I can mind 
 the feel of it against my sea-boots. 
 
 " 'Hullo,' says the mate. Great hulking chap, Primi- 
 tive Methody at that and a teetotaller, 'Hullo, rum 
 stuff!' 
 
 "But I'd seen enough. He hadn't the brain to know. 
 7 had. Up I went under the trees to the side ; foot sunk 
 into moss deep down, rotten trees like touchwood and 
 pulling up the moss by the roots, points of gold. 
 
 "That's it gold. And as the tide went out the rocks 
 stood up out of yellow sands. And the queer light over 
 it all. Then the mate, the hulking Methody, bathes his 
 face and neck in the cold stream. Face swelled up, so's 
 his own mother wouldn't ha' knowed 'en. That's the 
 way in those parts. The water strikes home and to wash 
 all over in the ice-cold of it would be death. Ice-cold 
 from the beginning of the world. But that son of a gun 
 was too big a fool to know it. ' ' 
 
 He sank into quiet while Knyvett's mind had gone in 
 quest of all he could remember of that strange land, 
 where man is held up by the forces of nature, a pigmy 
 in the hand of a giant. Spaniard, Englishman and 
 Dutchman, sealers or prospectors they had sailed these 
 waters of the Horn century after century, leaving little
 
 14 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 trace save grazing sheep and a dying race of natives. 
 And Knyvett felt hungry for these virgin seas, untama- 
 ble by man. 
 
 The skipper's manner had changed again. He was 
 business-like, as brisk as a sharp-faced landlady totting 
 up the items of a bill. 
 
 "Had a kerosene tin filled with the stuff," he said. 
 "Fourteen pounds to a kerosene tin. Kept it knocking 
 about on the wheelhouse a day or two, so's the hulking 
 fools I'd got aboard shouldn't get wind of it. Then I 
 sneaked it down to my cabin. Kicked overboard, thought 
 they, if they thought at all. Ah, yes ! kicked overboard ! ' ' 
 
 He grinned, wriggled his legs ecstatically and beat with 
 his heels on the ground. Then he was suddenly quiet 
 again. 
 
 "That tin, gents, went on to Coronel, for the 
 Anaconda fetched up there at last. Then I nosed about 
 at the ship-chandler's and found they'd got a chemist 
 sort of a chap there. Pycroft, by the name of Reuben, 
 he was Reuben Pycroft. He'd got a mercury washer 
 for testing gold. And to him I handed over that tin o' 
 sand. ' ' 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 The listeners bent forward. 
 
 "Two and a half ounces of gold was what he brought 
 me, besides what he'd sneaked. There's some of it. 
 Over 12 yield. 'Richest pay-dirt in the world,' says he 
 to me." 
 
 Mr. Bodinar leant back, sighed, crossed his hands as 
 one who turns his face to the wall, having done with 
 earthly things. 
 
 Then he blinked an eyelid lazily at the two men. 
 
 "And I," continued he, "saw the very spot on the 
 chart over there just now." He nodded towards the 
 blue back on the table. "I've got the latitude and 
 longitude. 'Tisn't in the log, though. Not in the log 
 of the Anaconda."
 
 ULYSSES 15 
 
 He hurled his sentences like an imp throwing stones 
 at a grazing sheep. 
 
 ' ' And you aren 't going to point it out 1 ' ' asked Peter 
 Westlake foolishly. 
 
 "Not for Joe!" said he gaily. "But set me aboard 
 a tug and I'll put there. Take you to the spot. 
 And to show there's no jiggery-pokery with me 
 I'll plank down the latitude and longitude and name 
 of inner and outer cove and send 'em in a sealed en- 
 velope to any bank you like to name." 
 
 "And the profits for you? What share?" asked 
 Knyvett. 
 
 "One-half the net yield." 
 
 "One-third to you," said Knyvett curtly, "and 
 the rest to the adventurers whom you guide. That's 
 fair. We find the capital for ship, wages and equip- 
 ment. ' ' 
 
 "But" began Mr. Westlake. 
 
 "All right, Peter," snapped Captain Knyvett. 
 "This is my deal." 
 
 "Excuse me, gents both, it's mine," said Bodinar. 
 "You can't move without me. You might prospect in 
 that channel for twenty years without me and not 
 hit on that cove. I come over here to-day and lights 
 upon you, Captain Knyvett, the owner of the yacht 
 Pendragon, now anchored in the Basin out yonder. 
 That's what I come for. Thinks I, here's a lot of 
 yachtsmen and that, moneyed gents, about the harbour 
 now. Let's see what they say to this. And I say one- 
 half to me and my cousin Sam Hicks, that'll go with 
 me. Him and me can work together. I know 'en 
 well." 
 
 "Who is he?" asked Knyvett. 
 
 "A good steady chap. Ship's carpenter by trade 
 and handy. He'll come." 
 
 "One-third to you and Hicks, if we find he's suita- 
 ble," repeated Knyvett.
 
 16 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "So long, gents," said Bodinar, rising. "This deal's 
 off." 
 
 He picked up his hat, brushed it elaborately with 
 the sleeve of his coat and tied the neck of the chamois 
 leather bag. This he did slowly and yet more slowly, 
 tying a sailor's knot, untying it and then repeating 
 the operation. 
 
 "I say, Billy," protested Peter. 
 
 "Wait a bit, Peter," said the captain in a low voice. 
 
 Bodinar had already reached the door, when he 
 paused, hesitated, and came back. He had concluded 
 to throw his cousin overboard. 
 
 "One-third to me, and what share to Hicks that you 
 find conformable," he said at last. 
 
 "Eight," said Knyvett, "see you to-morrow, skip- 
 per." 
 
 The sea was making now and from where they stood 
 on the steps of the house they could hear the soft hiss 
 of its on-flow filling the air as with the rush of a 
 creature myriad-winged. Overhead a gibbous moon, 
 swollen in the face by reason of the mist wreaths, cast 
 aureoles of burnished copper across the flocks of racing 
 clouds. Along the pavement of the quay sounded 
 Bodinar 's step, growing fainter in the distance; dot, 
 crawl; dot, crawl. Then silence. 
 
 Round the corner, beneath the overhanging houses of 
 the ancient Butter-walk, Bodinar stopped, rubbed the 
 back of his head, pressed his hand over the reddish 
 stubble of his chin. 
 
 "Ho!" grunted he, "Ho! Ha!" Plainly he de- 
 rived much satisfaction from the repetition of these 
 syllables. "And now," said he to himself, "for a bit 
 of roast duck and a glass of rum and water. Wonder 
 if she's got any cold potatoes, for roast duck cries for 
 potatoes most so much as it does for onions, and eating 
 roast duck without onion's like kissing a man without
 
 ULYSSES 17 
 
 a beard, as the maid said when she hugged the wrong 
 chap." 
 
 Before the red-curtained windows of the lodging 
 house he whistled shrilly. There were three steps 
 below the level of the street leading into the matted 
 passage of it and a richly nutritious air ascended into 
 the street from the adjacent atmosphere. Bodinar 
 snuffed zestfully and disappeared. His footstep was 
 more peculiar than ever on a stairway. 
 
 "What d'you make of it?" said Peter Westlake as 
 they returned to the fire. 
 
 "Three facts I've got out of him unbeknownst to 
 himself," said Captain Knyvett, holding up one finger 
 after another. "Fact one, he sees visions and dreams 
 dreams; an imaginative devil. Fact two, he likes a 
 drop. Fact three, he caves in when he's hard pressed. 
 But all the same, there may be something in it. There 's 
 a thousand miles of gold-bearing strata in the Horn 
 district and the out-crop is at sea level in places, or 
 below it. That's why I first listened to the man. But 
 they haven't washed for it in the "West and especially 
 in the Northwest. Know anything about this Bodinar 
 chap?" 
 
 "Well, yes. Or rather about the Bodinars." 
 
 "What then? Out with it, man." 
 
 "They're West Cornish, I believe. At least the name 
 is. And there was a Bodinar that married a Crowte. 
 And the Crowtes go back three or four generations as 
 don't laugh, Knyvett witches, fortune-tellers, what 
 you will. One of these women was the seventh daughter 
 of a seventh daughter and able to overlook or cure over- 
 looking, I don't know which." 
 
 "An atmosphere of trickery and deceit, anyway," 
 said Captain Knyvett, knitting his brow. "Who goes 
 to 'em?" 
 
 "Everybody on the sly. Women, ship captains,
 
 18 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 smack owners. Anyone with a bigger venture on hand 
 than ordinary. And only a few generations, remem- 
 ber, would take you back to the witches who sold a wind. ' ' 
 
 "So that's Bodinar's source." 
 
 "May not be. For there are several brothers. But 
 one married a Crowte." 
 
 "Who has a devil or a familiar," said Knyvett, 
 laughing. ".Well, courage, mon ami, le diable est mort. 
 But what's the matter with you? For something's up, 
 or I'm a Dutchman." 
 
 Peter Westlake answered by another question. 
 
 "Knyvett," said he, "you must once or twice have 
 come down to the bed-rock of things ? ' ' 
 
 "Once or twice," answered Knyvett quietly. "And 
 so that's happened to you, has it? Well, I'm glad of 
 it. But, how does it take you?" 
 
 "I can't stand any more of this poll-parroting about, 
 painting mere manners on real flesh and blood. What's 
 the odds of a cuss-word or two, or a drinking bout now 
 and again, if the root of the matter's in you?" 
 
 "I wondered how long you'd stick it," said Knyvett. 
 "For after all, it's cheek, doing what you've been 
 doing. ' ' 
 
 "So it is, Knyvett, so it is. Dead sick of it I am. 
 I must let out or bust, I tell you. Faith, I've got a 
 regular hunger upon me, I have. Red meat's what 
 I must have. All my days I 've fed upon mush. ' ' 
 
 ' ' What, Peter, you ? Old ' Hold the Fort ' ? " 
 
 "Don't chaff, Billy. I can't stand it. Good Lord, 
 you ought to understand. You cut everything not so 
 long ago and became a wandering Jew. Why shouldn't 
 I? Tell me that, Billy?" 
 
 "And yet you're getting up in the firm. You're 
 through your articles and on your way to a double- 
 belled front door. And this place, this mission hall, 
 is always packed."
 
 ULYSSES 19 
 
 "Do you think I'd have stayed so long if it wasn't? 
 But I don't believe in any of it. That's a fact. I've 
 got to quit. I tell you I'm like a man that's sat by 
 a beastly gas-fire all his life. I want to go away and 
 light up a big bonfire; to smell the blessed smoke of 
 it. Lord, I can't explain " 
 
 "You needn't," said Captain Knyvett quietly. "It's 
 just growing pains, Peter." 
 
 "All right. I've got to grow then," puffed Peter 
 angrily. "And I've sent in my checks anyway. I've 
 only three more weeks of bondage to folios. But there 's 
 another reason why I must go. ' ' 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "Anne Hereford's coming back to stay with her 
 sister. ' ' 
 
 The little man was pacing up and down; he had 
 gone to pieces everywhere, as Knyvett observed, for 
 even the heels of his shoes were trodden down. Heart 
 gone, pluck gone; that was Knyvett 's verdict. The lat- 
 ter began to feel that if Bodinar's gold was but the 
 glitter of a phantom Pactolus, it had come in the nick 
 of time. 
 
 "But," said he quietly, "if Anne Hereford's com- 
 ing, that appears all the more reason why you should 
 stay." 
 
 "That shows how little you know," said Peter testily. 
 He was an unimportant cog in the legal machinery of 
 Dartmouth, and Knyvett was a man of wealth and posi- 
 tion, but Peter Westlake simply lacked "the social 
 sense." It was one of his greatest charms. 
 
 "Very likely," acquiesced Captain Knyvett. "But 
 how are the Herefords? It was to see them that I put 
 in to-day." 
 
 "Sara," said Peter, "is quieter than ever. Her 
 husband's new book is out and nobody wants to men- 
 tion it to her. And her father looks well-fed."
 
 20 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "The old situation then," said Captain Knyvett. 
 
 "And did you expect a new one, then?" snarled 
 Peter. 
 
 "When it comes I want to be ready for it, Peter. 
 That's all," said Knyvett. 
 
 And being ready for a new situation in the Hereford 
 family, was, for the present, the epitome of Captain 
 Billy 's life. Being a sailorman he understood to the full 
 the duty of standing-by. 
 
 "Meanwnile," said he, "what do you say to going 
 with Bodinar and me up Smyth's Channel prospecting 
 for gold?"
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CHRYSOSTOM: IN THIS THE READER IS PRESENTED WITH 
 THE KEY OF THE HOUSE 
 
 CAPTAIN KNYYETT stood on the terrace at 
 ^-^ Craneham, gazing into the Herefords' dining- 
 room. 
 
 At this height the sea sounded like the wind playing 
 through ruined walls, now thin and clear like the hum- 
 ming of an unseen harp ; now close and luring like 
 the note of some old-world pavan. For the house rose 
 like a white cliff out of a belt of pines and cedars. 
 And beyond it, still higher up the hillside, wound 
 the white road, topped at the summit by telegraph 
 poles that stood out against the greyness of the heav- 
 ing sea. High over the front of the house, against 
 the blue-grey storm clouds that scudded before the 
 west wind, circled a solitary gull, the last rays of 
 daylight shining on its strong wings. 
 
 Through the long, green-toned room into which Cap- 
 tain Knyvett was staring, light poured from the frilled 
 edges of a silk-shaded lamp in a network of yellow 
 rays; it was a sort of luminous spider's web. In the 
 heart of it sat an old man. Tall, wiry, with his skin 
 fretted to the worn beauty of an ancient ivory, with 
 his flowing white beard and silver mane, he only needed 
 a trident to look like a figure of Neptune. 
 
 The open case of antiques over which he was bending 
 contained heavy rings of mossy iron and bronze^ 
 mediasval charms against demons, lamps from Rome, 
 scarabs from Egypt and finally a crystal ball for scry- 
 ing which he held in his hand for some time in order 
 
 21
 
 22 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 to enjoy the sensation of cumulative cold that such 
 a globe can impart. He held it now until a distinct 
 sensation of chill crept up his two middle fingers. Then 
 his face expressed satisfaction, for Mr. Hereford was 
 a connoisseur in sensation. He had, besides, at this 
 moment other sources of satisfaction, for the lamp be- 
 neath which he sat was shaded to the precise tone of 
 yellow which he held to be the true saffron loved of 
 old in Isles of Greece. He had, in fact, babbled much 
 of Hymen to the astonished shop-girl from whom he 
 bought it. 
 
 But, alas, in this world no state of satisfaction is 
 abiding; in fingering the next treasure in the case a 
 trifling contretemps occurred, as the watcher on the 
 terrace perceived. The ring the old man was handling 
 slipped from his fingers, bounded across the carpet 
 and clicked along the polished edge of the floor. Then 
 followed a grovelling search for it which entailed 
 much snuffing up of carpet fluff and dust which again 
 induced philosophic musing. As thus: how much of 
 human progress would be lost were man but to return 
 to his primitive method of progression, all-fours. 
 
 Vin Hereford rubbed the tip of his nose irritably, 
 to get rid of the fluff and philosophy. The conditions 
 of the house were restless this afternoon. Doors had 
 banged, maids had scurried, worst of all, his daughter 
 Sara, the anchor of his peace, had been exhibiting 
 signs of restlessness. In short, Mr. Hereford felt like 
 a cat who smells valerian; as he himself would have 
 put it, his vibrations were perturbed. The whole of 
 Craneham was full of means whereby he might vibrate 
 aright, from the housemaid to the tint of his bed cur- 
 tains, for when his vibrations were wrong, everyone had 
 what may be plainly called and without euphemism, a 
 devil of a time. 
 
 He was understood to be collecting materials for a 
 work on Charms and Amulets; in reality he was just
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 23 
 
 an old child playing with toys. As he had been all his 
 life, from the time that, a painter of sorts in the 
 Academic Delecluze in Paris, he haunted the Quarter 
 in long-haired garb, through the intermediate stage 
 of a lecturer on Esthetics in England, up to the 
 present competence whereby he enjoyed, like the lilies 
 of the field, a modicum of prosperity without toiling or 
 spinning. 
 
 This competence had been gained, not by any exer- 
 tions of his own, for he had never been a good enough 
 workman to earn a pound a week, but by the human 
 accretions he had managed to gather round him. For 
 his life had been a process of rolling and, contrary to 
 the proverb, of moss gathering. Round him like an 
 old tree he had gathered warm covering and every 
 stage in his career was marked by some human being 
 drawn into his sphere for the purpose of contributing 
 to his comfort. 
 
 First came his wife. "Without her he would have 
 starved, for she scribbled magazine tales, patched, 
 cooked, fought the duns, paid for the lodgings, and 
 never let him know that she was his first line of de- 
 fence against poverty. Then came his two daughters. 
 One of these, Sara, the elder, had proved a very profita- 
 ble investment, for her he had married to Archer Bel- 
 lew, a son-in-law of his own choosing, and when she be- 
 came an heiress in a small way by inheriting Craneham 
 from her mother's sister, he practically acquired the 
 place, as he had always annexed everything desirable. 
 He had even, as a final corner stone to the edifice of 
 his comfort, abducted a cook from Paris, for Elizabeth, 
 busy at this moment in the back regions of Craneham, 
 had, for the love of little Madame Hereford, followed 
 the family to England from the Pension in the Rue de 
 Milan where the Herefords had lived through their 
 worst times. A very lucky parasite, in fact, was old 
 Vin Hereford, one whose human relationships had
 
 24 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 been, materially speaking, his salvation. And about his 
 salvation in another sense, who knows? 
 
 Anyway he had one plea; that through him many 
 human creatures had been afforded a priceless oppor- 
 tunity of practising the virtues, both major and minor. 
 
 Reflecting that he had played the eavesdropper long 
 enough, Mr. Knyvett crunched across the gravel and 
 up the steps. On the square turn of the oak stairs 
 stood Sara Bellew, prinking her face sideways at the 
 sound of the visitor's footsteps. He wondered what it 
 was in her greeting that struck a sudden chill in him, 
 for it was as full of pleasure as a welcome could possi- 
 bly be. 
 
 "Why, Billy, dear old Billy-Doux," she cried, hur- 
 rying down with both hands outstretched, "is that you? 
 We never knew that the Pendragon was in." 
 
 "It wasn't till yesterday," he said. 
 
 Of Knyvett people often thought, "What a queer- 
 looking chap," till he spoke and then they found that 
 he possessed a most insidious charm, a mellow voice 
 that was power and tenderness combined. His wide 
 forehead showed up the fluted appearance of the bony 
 structure of the temples where the wrinkles had 
 weathered into the dry furrows that come from ex- 
 posure to sea and sun. He wore his beard goatee, and 
 more folks than one had wondered what would happen 
 to Captain Billy's notions if that beard were to be 
 clipped. For when its wearer was in a tight place 
 a tug at it had often brought a shower of inspiration. 
 And he had been in so many tight places that his 
 face was like a palimpsest scrawled over with many 
 things. Over its hollow-cheeked, Don Quixote lines 
 the sun had placed a bloom of tan; in his muddy grey 
 eyes the sea had put just a glint of blue. And that 
 gleam of blue had been well earned, for he was familiar 
 with the note made by breakers on a cliff, with the 
 hiss of surf on a lee shore.
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 25 
 
 Sara was a tall woman with a square head crowned 
 by the black parted hair above a low broad forehead 
 that one sees more often in Southern than in English 
 women. Her type is found constantly in Provence. 
 Dark eyes, deep wells of brooding, were set in a dusky 
 face that had already something of the mellow tone of 
 a sun-baked wall. Her hair, buoyant and crisp, en- 
 circled her head with the curves first caught by a 
 Roman chisel. A still woman, she moved gracefully, 
 dressed to-night in a rather sumptuous dress of old 
 gold. The material of which it was made seemed 
 brocade in the evening light, but its richness was, in 
 fact, merely due to braid. And in any case, it was at 
 least five years old, which facts are here writ parable- 
 wise, for Sara Bellew had learnt the whole duty of 
 womanhood, which is to make the best of things. And 
 since she could not afford brocade, she took braid and 
 therewith tried to be content. 
 
 "Well, Sara, how goes it?" he asked, eyeing her as 
 jealously as a man may after a long absence. 
 
 "Just a little older, Billy," she laughed, nervously 
 putting a hand to her cheek under his scrutiny. 
 
 "And just a little dearer," he said. But that, of 
 course, was to himself. 
 
 "But especially well to-day," she continued. "For 
 we are expecting Anne at any moment." 
 
 She walked out of the front door, a certain nervous- 
 ness still continuing. And at Craneham the house was 
 at all times but an annex to the open air. Mr. Knyvett 
 followed her to the garden seat that faced the great 
 cedars. 
 
 "Anne coming back?" he said, "but surely she isn't 
 through with her course yet?" 
 
 Mr. Hereford's unmarried daughter was on the way 
 to a doctor's degree. 
 
 "No," hesitated Sara, "but she had to come back f.or 
 a time all the same."
 
 26 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 ' ' Well, she has to wait till we can get together enough 
 money for her to go on. When Aunt Priscilla died and 
 left me Craneham, we all thought how rich we were, 
 but there was very little ready money and the place is 
 expensive to keep up." 
 
 Mr. Knyvett nodded. He knew how to give due 
 weight to Mr. Hereford's expensive mania for collect- 
 ing antiques. He remembered with a grin how in the 
 old days Anne used to tamper with the mail by drop- 
 ping catalogues into the waste paper basket. And 
 Archer Bellew, that rising novelist, might not care to 
 spend on his wife's sister. But here he caught himself 
 up short. 
 
 It was singular how little Sara's husband appeared to 
 count in her life. He was constantly absent from Crane- 
 ham, for which there was doubtless excuse in the fact 
 that the old Hedonist, her father, chose what tune should 
 be played there. He was also apparently often absent 
 from his wife's mind. For which there might also be 
 excuses, only Billy Knyvett had no desire to know them, 
 for there are always some trains of thought that one 
 shies at. Just now his mind was beating up and down, 
 seeking a way for itself. 
 
 "Will you let me help with Anne?" he said bluntly. 
 
 "With Anne?" 
 
 "Let me find the money. Wait a bit! It's a simple 
 enough matter really. I've got plenty to play ducks 
 and drakes with, if I like. In fact, I'm just going to 
 chuck some away in a gold-prospecting scheme, and 
 Anne will be a good investment." 
 
 "Oh, Billy, we couldn't." 
 
 "Yes, you could. If she were a young man you 
 Wouldn't refuse." 
 
 "But you can't treat her as if she were." 
 
 "Why not? Look here, Sara, just listen to me. I 
 don't ask it for Anne's sake. I want to do it for my
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 27 
 
 own. We've known each other for years. And I've 
 been able to do nothing for you. I want to put what 
 I feel into action. I've stood- by and only felt. There 
 was nothing I could do but feel. Give me my chance, 
 Sara," he pleaded. 
 
 - He got up, half choked by his inability to catch the 
 gossamer web of his deepest emotions. 
 
 But Sara understood. She was and to it she owed 
 half her charm one of those people who live vividly in 
 the world of unspoken things, of things unheard, but 
 yet audible. 
 
 "I know, Billy, I know," she cried. "But it's the 
 thing that one only feels, that never finds expression, 
 that is dearest. Do you know that often when I sit 
 over the piano, I hear a sort of dream-music, a song 
 I shall never play in actual notes? I don't think I 
 would if I could. I want to keep my dream-song un- 
 spoilt. Once brought down to earth and played, it would 
 never be so beautiful again. And I feel like that to- 
 wards you." 
 
 "I'm only a man," he said humbly. 
 
 But his thought followed hers, quick- winged ; how 
 wonderful love might be to many had they never gone 
 through the process of love-making and marriage. That 
 explained a good deal of Sara's married life. Then 
 he returned to his point with a bludgeon. 
 
 "Let Anne judge for herself about this," he said. 
 "That's only fair." 
 
 * ' She would feel just as I do about it. ' ' 
 
 "Then let her say so. If you are sure about that you 
 needn't hesitate." 
 
 "You don't think she would agree with me?" 
 
 "No. She has too much sense." 
 
 "Billy, how rude you are," she laughed. 
 
 Just then from the lane below the house came a shrill 
 cry of "Coo-ee" three times repeated and followed by 
 the gamin whistle that is made by three fingers placed
 
 28 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 between the teeth, a whistle regardless of Mr. Here- 
 ford's nerves. 
 
 "That must be Anne," exclaimed Sara and promptly 
 vanished down the green tunnel through the pines, while 
 Mr. Knyvett hurried into the house to soothe the father 
 of the family. 
 
 Mr. Hereford's idea of the perfect friend was one 
 who would make himself a mere receptacle for ideas. 
 He therefore received his visitor with affability, for 
 Billy Knyvett perfectly understood that his function 
 was to be a conduit pipe. 
 
 "Ah," exclaimed the old man joyously, "that's the 
 way to do it. To come in upon one without fuss. "We 
 never knew you were near the place. So very different 
 from Anne. We expected her yesterday, but instead 
 come nothing but wires. In the meanwhile, of course, 
 the house is in an uproar. ' ' 
 
 There was a silence that could be felt, as a matter of 
 fact, but Mr. Knyvett acquiesced in this observation. 
 
 "But what can you expect," said Mr. Hereford, "of 
 a young woman who is learning to inspect meat?" 
 
 "Eh?" said Mr. Knyvett, his faculties on the strain 
 from the fact that his ears were listening for the rustle 
 of two petticoats. 
 
 "To inspect meat," said Mr. Hereford, raising his 
 voice, "for that is the latest craze of this amazing fe- 
 male. Public health work, they call it, and that means 
 haunting the abattoirs of Liverpool. Faugh!" 
 
 "Seems queer," said Knyvett. "But I suppose it's 
 all right. If meat has to be eaten, meat must be in- 
 spected. ' ' 
 
 "But not by a woman," said Mr. Hereford firmly. 
 "I was always against a medical course for Anne, but 
 Sara would not be deterred from allowing it by any- 
 thing I could say. I always find that when it's a ques- 
 tion of herself, Sara yields to me, but when it concerns 
 Anne, she's a nether millstone of obstinacy. She goes
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 29 
 
 her own way then and Anne leads her by the nose. I 
 have known Sara positively violent about letting Anne 
 have her way and implacable to a degree scarcely credi- 
 ble in a gentlewoman." 
 
 Old age is loose-mouthed, a revealer of hidden 
 thoughts. 
 
 ' ' The only person Sara loves is Anne, ' ' continued Mr. 
 Hereford, "and she is doing her best to ruin the girl's 
 life. It is just an instance of what I have always main- 
 tained, that a woman should never love. She can't 
 stand so strong a passion. Sara has no particular af- 
 fection for me and after ten years of marriage she isn't 
 likely to have much left for her husband, yet to both of 
 us she acts ideally. As daughter and wife she is all 
 that a father and husband could desire. She is only 
 unwise where she loves. Never, my dear Knyvett, com- 
 mit the indiscretion of marrying a woman that loves 
 you. You might as well put your head in a hangman's 
 noose. ' ' 
 
 "But how," said the practical captain, "are you to 
 get a woman to marry you when she doesn 't love you ? ' ' 
 
 "She'll think she does. That's enough. That's Na- 
 ture's way. Love-making is a process of hypnotism, of 
 snake-charming. Once swallowed, the woman recovers 
 a healthy normality. I have often thought of writing 
 a book on the subject. I might have been a second Nor- 
 dau had I given my mind to science. But I was always 
 too versatile." 
 
 Knyvett groaned and in order to cover the noise got 
 up to poke the fire. Here he was shut up with an old 
 man who seemed bent on unlocking all the skeleton cup- 
 boards in the Hereford household. It was intolerable to 
 him, this vivisection of his lady's life. But there was 
 no escape. 
 
 "Anne was a charming girl," continued old Vin, 
 "the very virginal type of a Botticelli. Tiny neck, 
 delicate head, bird-like ways. Irresistible ! Never went
 
 30 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 anywhere without creeping insidiously into every man's 
 heart. The pathetic little look was enough." 
 
 "Wholesome for the men, d'you think?" queried 
 Knyvett. He was not sensitive on the subject of 
 Anne. 
 
 "Wholesome is a word that ought to be banished from 
 the vocabulary of a civilised people. It is 'wholesome- 
 ness' that has ruined Anglo-Saxon art. Woman is a 
 delicate condiment, a spice, the gift of the High Gods." 
 
 He lifted his hand to his skull-cap, while Mr. Knyvett 
 watched the two sisters approaching the house and won- 
 dered how Sara stood this sort of thing day after day. 
 For Vin Hereford was one of those terrors who regard 
 the domestic hearthstone as a lecture platform framed 
 for man's convenience by the connivance of the cen- 
 turies. 
 
 "There is Anne!" exclaimed Mr. Hereford, at last 
 becoming aware of his surroundings. "Terrible!" 
 
 He shuddered slightly as a hearty voice called ' ' Hullo, 
 dad," through the window. Yet there was nothing ter- 
 rible in the small, trim figure in dark green travelling 
 suit with stout, well-cut shoes that tapped briskly along 
 to the tune of their wearer's sense of happy fitness. 
 With her keen, deep-set grey eyes beneath a forehead 
 crossed with long lines, few but significant, Anne Here- 
 ford looked things in the face, both men, women, and 
 facts. She quite obviously weighed, balanced, judged; 
 it was that fact of appraisement, indeed, that removed 
 her very far from the type to which her sister belonged. 
 But the charm of it lay in her fearlessness; if things 
 were not, on the whole, good, they were at any rate 
 capable of being made better. She was, therefore, not 
 reckless, but calm and wise. Billy Knyvett preferred it 
 to the Botticelli virgin. 
 
 With a pleasant wind of bustle Anne got herself and 
 her boxes upstairs. 
 
 "Now, then," said she, framing her sister's face in
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 31 
 
 her hands as soon as they were alone. "Himm! So 
 that's you, is it? Don't think much of you, then. 
 Peaky, decidedly peaky. And where 's Archer?" she 
 asked, turning away to the glass and shaking her head 
 to loosen the hairpins. 
 
 Anne was a person not yet starched to buckram; she 
 twitched her toes and raised her eyebrows. 
 
 "Archer?" said Sara vaguely. "Oh, Archer's get- 
 ting local colour, I believe." 
 
 Anne looked round at her with mouth slightly open. 
 Her tip-tilted nose rather made for impertinence. 
 
 "His last book was rot," said she. "The tone de- 
 plorable. ' ' 
 
 "So the critics said," agreed Sara. 
 
 "You didn't like it, surely?" asked Anne. 
 
 "Not at all," answered Sara, opening the wardrobe 
 door placidly. She was an excellent housekeeper and 
 the shelves were tissue-papered and lavendered. In the 
 matter of her husband's book she might have been talk- 
 ing of Chaucer, for all the warmth of her manner. 
 
 Suddenly something gave way in her, something cold 
 and congealing. 
 
 "Oh," she exclaimed, putting an arm round Anne's 
 camisoled shoulder, "it is good to have you back." 
 
 "But you weren't sure of it when you came down to 
 the gate to meet me, ' ' said Anne, narrowing eyes at her 
 sister's reflection in the glass. 
 
 ' ' I thought you would think it mean of me that I had 
 to bring you back," said Sara slowly, painfully. "I 
 tried hard, Anne, not to have to do it. ' ' 
 
 "I was a selfish beast to have gone on taking the 
 money. ' ' 
 
 "Dear, there was plenty till lately." 
 
 "Dad," said Anne plainly, "is a costly old ornament. 
 Z know. But I'm glad in a way to be back. Won't it 
 be fine to kick up my heels in my own pastures. ' ' 
 
 Sara hesitated. Should she mention Mr. Knyvett's
 
 32 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 wish to advance the money ? But no, it was unthinkable, 
 the mere offer, still less the acceptance of it. 
 
 On the landing Anne paused, bright-eyed and mis- 
 chievous. Leaning over the rail, she contemplated the 
 hall below. It was as silent as the ancestors on the 
 walls. Only the clattering of plates came from behind 
 the baize-covered door that led to the older part of the 
 house. 
 
 "Dare I?" said Anne to her sister, putting her head 
 on one side like a bird when he raises a song to the god 
 of raspberries. 
 
 The next moment there came a slithering noise of 
 skirts followed by a thud ; Anne had slid down the ban- 
 isters. Demurely Sara followed, wondering why Anne 
 retained the jolly ways of a child or a man. But she 
 knew, for Anne had been out in the world where one does 
 things. She had not stayed at home listening to the 
 wind in the trees, to the noise made by the footsteps of 
 the future. It was the best thing that Sara had ever 
 done, that sending of Anne into action. Very warm 
 at heart, she followed the girl into the drawing-room, 
 where Mr. Knyvett was still acting as a conduit. 
 
 ' ' Harmony, ' ' Mr. Hereford was saying with his fingers 
 neatly fitted in the shape of a pointed arch, "harmony 
 is the thing we neglect in modern life. We must not 
 jar, we must vibrate in unison." 
 
 He had closed his eyes and was gently swaying to and 
 fro to his own eloquence. Sara, turning James, the fox- 
 terrier, over on his back, rubbed his stomach with her 
 foot, while Anne winked a ribald wink at Mr. Knyvett. 
 Mr. Hereford always spoke in clear, silvery tones, with 
 measured precision, even if he were only discussing the 
 varying richness of his eleven o'clock bowl of broth. 
 
 "Let us all be frankly hedonistic. Then the problem 
 of the universe is solved. For if I 'm looking after your 
 happiness, while nobody is looking after mine, then one 
 of us is left out in the cold. Whereas if I look after
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 33 
 
 mine, and you look after yours, things are kept in equi- 
 librium. ' ' 
 
 "Just so," said Anne drily, "that's why I couldn't 
 make out why you didn't want me to go in for medi- 
 cine. ' ' 
 
 Mr. Hereford opened his eyes and gazed at her wist- 
 fully. "You had," said he, "the wrong idea of your 
 own happiness." 
 
 "Then that's where your theory of economics breaks 
 down, Dad. For if everybody is going to interfere with 
 everybody else's theories of happiness, then we shall be 
 all running round after each other 's tails, in exactly the 
 same uneconomical way you hate." 
 
 "A woman's brain should never concern itself with 
 theories," said he, shifting his ground. "Her life 
 should be like that of a flower. Remember always the 
 line, 'the heart of Being is celestial rest.' And woman 
 is at the heart of Being, her sole duty to give us beauti- 
 ful children." 
 
 ' ' Brainless ? ' ' queried Anne, with raised eyebrows. 
 
 * ' I beg your pardon ? ' ' 
 
 "I said, did you want beautiful, but brainless, chil- 
 dren, Dad," said Anne, speaking louder. "For that's 
 the sort of babies you get from that kind of woman, 
 the sort that can't think. And the funny thing is that 
 some of us women quite like thinking. It doesn't hurt 
 a bit. And you see, we do feel just a little responsible 
 for things, things in general, you know babies among 
 other things." 
 
 "Ah," said he sorrowfully, "the responsibility for 
 the universe was not invented in my days. It is a dis- 
 tressing thing. It has destroyed home comfort, it has 
 turned Woman into a Medusa, a Fury, a Megsera, a 
 Gorgon. ' ' 
 
 A flush appeared on his cheeks. Both daughters re- 
 garded it with alarm, for a fit of rage might be fatal. 
 But it was Billy who intervened.
 
 34 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ' ' I 've no quarrel with the age, ' ' said he ; "to me it 's a 
 jolly good age. And life can't be a bad thing, if seventy 
 years of it produce a "William de Morgan." 
 
 "It's all hollow, Knyvett, everything's hollow," said 
 the old man, to whom d'Annunzio was the last word in 
 novelists. 
 
 "Then I like hollowness," said Knyvett obstinately. 
 
 "And that's a lie, you know, old Heart of Oak," 
 whispered Anne as she opened the piano, ran her hands 
 over the keys and presently burst into one of Liza Leh- 
 mann's songs. In the light of the room, with Anne's 
 low, caressing voice in his ears, Mr. Hereford was 
 soothed. He had a grudge against life because there 
 were fogs, frosts, darkness and trouble that could 
 not always be avoided. The song ended, he returned to 
 serious matters. 
 
 "I hope," said he, "that you will do over the furnish- 
 ing of your room, Anne. It is barbarous at present. 
 Our rooms, our houses, should be all in one tone. Let 
 there be no mixture of styles, such as we see to-day, of 
 classic and Georgian." 
 
 Sara's humour bubbled up; here was she with less 
 than a five-pound note in her pocket till her husband 
 got home. And her own banking account overdrawn, 
 while the old man babbled of art periods. 
 
 Anne followed the thought and sitting on the tiger- 
 skin rug, gurgled blissfully. 
 
 "Or Edwardian, Dad," said she gently. 
 
 He shuddered. ' ' Is there such a style, my dear ? But 
 if there were, I am sure Sara would have introduced 
 it here. It is bound to be cheap, and to listen to Sara, 
 one would suppose that cheapness is the one desideratum 
 in life." 
 
 "The kitchen pots and pans, Father," said Sara, "are 
 Edwardian, else, I'm afraid you wouldn't like your 
 dinner,"
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 35 
 
 Just at that moment the gong sounded from across 
 the hall. 
 
 ' ' Good biz, ' ' cried Anne, scrambling to her feet. 
 
 "Ah," said he, as they crossed the hall, the heels of 
 the women tapping up into the stillness ; it was a house 
 of exceedingly lofty rooms. "If only I could induce 
 you to bring back the spit and the joint slowly turned 
 on a jack in front of the fire. The delicate flavour is 
 preserved, the juices are retained. That would make the 
 culinary regions beautiful, a delight to the mind. And 
 Dutch crockery, too, so fitting." 
 
 And Sara stands this every night of her life, thought 
 Anne. Then she looked across the table and what she 
 saw on the other's quiet face made her blink. It was 
 not impatience, not boredom, but a wish, a very dis- 
 tinctly expressed wish of something cold and full of hate, 
 something so naked in its intensity that Anne looked at 
 her plate and shivered. Becoming aware that there was 
 something very seriously amiss in this house, she began 
 in the bright light of the well-lit room with its great oil 
 paintings revealing here a limb and there a head out of 
 an expanse of dirty ochre, to feel as if she were in one 
 of those inns which horrify young students of German 
 with their secret staircases and lurking trap-doors. 
 
 Then the absurdity struck her and she laughed. 
 
 "Sara," said Mr. Hereford, "these stuffed tomatoes 
 have eggs in them again. It should be forced meat. I 
 distinctly said so last Thursday." 
 
 "I will tell Elizabeth, father." 
 
 Anne rushed to fill the breach. 
 
 "Have you tried the new idea, dad, of unfired food?" 
 she said. ' ' Carrots and nuts shredded and pressed into 
 a paste, you know. It is said to supply the body with 
 the vitality that it wants, that would otherwise be lost in 
 cooking. ' ' 
 
 "Very interesting indeed. I have heard something 
 of it. You must tell me more. ' '
 
 36 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "For goodness' sake, Anne," said Sara in a low voice; 
 as he turned to help himself to another dish, ''don't go 
 upsetting his digestion with raw turnips. I 've only just 
 fixed up his proper puddings and soups." 
 
 She thought ruefully of the various megrims that her 
 treasure, Elizabeth, had already to satisfy, for when 
 Archer was at home his writing powers had to be stimu- 
 lated by a suitable diet which varied from caviare to 
 milk puddings, according to the work that was on the 
 stocks. 
 
 "But," said Mr. Hereford, "to return to the decora- 
 tions of your room. I always feel that this wall paper 
 is a mistake. Red is too blatant for a dining-room. It 
 has, I believe, a harmful effect on the digestion. Red 
 dining-rooms have more to do with appendicitis than 
 people suppose. But such a topic to raise! What can 
 I be thinking of?" 
 
 And with the air of one who has fallen from grace, he 
 returned to his dinner. 
 
 "Oh, oh, oh," said Anne, standing on the terrace out- 
 side when the meal was over. "Let me fill my lungs. 
 Billy, do you know there are three hundred and sixty- 
 five evenings in the year and on every one of them Sara 
 talks parlour-talk?" 
 
 It was always impossible to mention anything but Mr. 
 Hereford's chosen topics in his presence; his will was 
 a mighty force. 
 
 ' ' Ye gods ! tell me about the roaring seas of the Horn 
 and what was it 
 
 " 'Down, down, down, at the bottom of the sea, 
 Where the dead men crawl upon hand and knee.' 
 
 I want to man the yard-arm, to con the ship, to to 
 swarm the mizzenmast." 
 
 "So do I," said Knyvett, "but I must bring up my 
 queer fish, Bodinar, to see you."
 
 CHRYSOSTOM 37 
 
 "And Peter, don't forget him. I'm just craving for 
 Peter." 
 
 "And so he is for you. Yet you laugh. You're a 
 fiend, Anne." 
 
 "Well, Peter always seems to me like a character in 
 a weak novel that the author couldn't get the hang of 
 nohow. ' ' 
 
 "That is merely because his poverty puts him in a 
 false position with you. He has stood aloof on pur- 
 pose. ' ' 
 
 "And that just shows that he is only looking at my 
 outside and knows nothing about me at all. For if I 
 marry I stand on my own feet. I don't marry for a liv- 
 ing. Ring or no ring will make no difference to me in 
 that respect. Shocked, Billy?" 
 
 "Not from you, Anne," replied Knyvett, placidly 
 exhaling smoke. "But I want you to oblige me by tak- 
 ing a weight off your sister's shoulders." 
 
 "Off Sara's? How?" 
 
 "By letting me advance the money needed to enable 
 you to complete your professional training." 
 
 "Sara told you?" 
 
 He nodded, while she mused, lips pursed. 
 
 "It'll be a kindness to me." 
 
 ' ' To give you a chance of doing something for Sara, ' ' 
 she said bluntly. ' ' Yes, I know. Well, I accept, if you 
 let me pay five per cent. I say five, not four, because I 
 might die before you get your money back." 
 
 "Sara," cried Knyvett triumphantly, as she passed 
 the open window of the drawing-room, "I've won. 
 Anne 's the business woman of the family. ' ' 
 
 "You mean she will take money from you?" Her 
 tone was icy. 
 
 "Why shouldn't I take it?" exclaimed Anne. "Just 
 because it's a man giving a leg up to a woman. Silly, 
 highfalutin, old-fashioned humbug. Wait until you
 
 38 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 yourself are put in such a fix that you must take help. 
 See what you'll do then. Why, to refuse is to deny 
 Billy one of the greatest pleasures he'll ever have." 
 
 The two dark figures on the terrace, the bright point 
 of Knyvett's cigar, the tall figure inside against the 
 lighted background of the room, Anne's words: of such 
 materials was made the moment that memory registered 
 indelibly in three brains.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 RUTH AMID .THE ALIEN CORN: IN THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED 
 A RESURRECTION 
 
 IT was nearly midnight when Anne Hereford opened 
 her bedroom door that night. The wind was whis- 
 tling through every keyhole and the walls of the house 
 were straining like the timbers of a labouring ship. 
 While the flame of her candle flickered in the draught 
 of the passage, she hesitated outside her sister's closed 
 room. The door was so massive, so forbidding in its 
 firm fitting, that she dared not tap at its winking sur- 
 face. 
 
 For Anne knew that she was up against something 
 like a wall in Sara's nature, some strong bar hiding fire 
 and pain. Fresh as she was from the struggle with 
 material facts, the facts of germ and atom, of organ and 
 function, the intangible interactions of character that 
 she felt in this house seemed like furtive footsteps pass- 
 ing to and fro with a whistle of the air as the sound of 
 their going. In the open battle against ignorance and 
 darkness the note was elation, but here one fought in the 
 mist, one knew not what. 
 
 As she stood close to his door in a lull of the wind 
 she could hear the steady breathing of the old man's 
 sleep ; from her sister 's room not a sound. 
 
 Then Anne slipped noiselessly down the stairs, her 
 unstockinged feet rising white from the furry tops of 
 her soft slippers. Gently opening the green baize door 
 she peeped into the rear of the house. This action took 
 her back two or three centuries, for at Craneham a late 
 
 39
 
 40 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Georgian front had been built on to a Jacobean house 
 that had once been a farm. Here was a second stair- 
 case, with plain oak banisters, white-washed walls, and a 
 wide low window half-way up the stairs. Above were 
 white, plastered bedrooms with doors of oak made before 
 the days of the plane. Beneath, the stone-flagged pas- 
 sages led to a raftered kitchen with window seats on each 
 side of the great range where once had stood an open 
 fireplace. 
 
 In front of the grate crouched the bent form of an 
 old woman with a high, fluted French cap on her head 
 and a black and white checkered shawl over her curving 
 shoulder-blades. She creaked ominously as she turned, 
 for on the withered frame the buckramed armour of a 
 thick pair of corsets held up the lax yielding of the 
 muscles. The light of a candle cast the hooked nose and 
 nut-cracker jaws in shadow like a wavering interroga- 
 tion mark on the white side-wall. Gazing into the fire 
 sat Boulou and Baby, the ancient wizened black cat and 
 her elegant seal-brown Persian daughter, both with pro- 
 files as contemptuous as the head of Osiris. Neither 
 the cats nor the old woman moved at Anne 's entrance, for 
 the cats were filled with meat and Elizabeth had a rage 
 at heart because Anne, her nursling, had not come to 
 her before. 
 
 "So," said she, raising her eyebrows, "so, it is thou. 
 I was on my way to bed. ' ' 
 
 She yawned ostentatiously. Her mouth was cavern- 
 ous from the lack of teeth, for she was in deshabille. 
 Then Anne seized her by the shoulders and planted a 
 smacking kiss in the middle of the forehead that was 
 wrinkled like the skin round a parrot's eye. 
 
 "Crabs, Elizabeth, crabs! You knew I'd come. But 
 I felt all shivered up the back. That's why I didn't 
 come before." 
 
 Her heart smote her for unkindness, for le ton Dieu 
 alone knows how long the old woman would have stayed
 
 RUTH AMID THE ALIEN CORN 41 
 
 up watching and waiting. Meanwhile Anne was search- 
 ing for a certain square biscuit tin kept at the back of 
 the corner cupboard by the window. It was so high 
 up on the wall that she had to stand on the sofa to 
 reach it, while Elizabeth watched her with the bright 
 blue eyes that supplied the one unfaded bit of colour 
 in the old face. 
 
 ' ' Good, ' ' said Anne, dragging off the cover. ' ' So thou 
 didst not omit the preparations, though thou art as sour 
 to-night as Seine water after a flood." 
 
 She had fallen into the tutoyer familiar to her child- 
 hood, for Elizabeth was a Frenchwoman. Then, taking 
 a handful of chestnuts from the tin, she began to place 
 them delicately between the bars of the grate. These 
 chestnuts were always in the tin against her return, for 
 Elizabeth would as soon have thought of taking a bath 
 as of omitting the chestnut rite. 
 
 These arrangements made, Anne turned to the parcel 
 she had left on the table and cast about for a knife to 
 cut the string, but Elizabeth forestalled her and fell on 
 the packet tooth and nail. 
 
 "Careless!" exclaimed she, "a string is a string and 
 is it not good for another day ? Thou wilt come to want 
 through such ways." 
 
 Anne was inwardly trembling at the thought of the 
 gift she had brought the old woman. For they were 
 bifurcated garments, these offerings of hers, fleecy, 
 warm, comforting, but with a note of male impropriety 
 about them. 
 
 "Oh, so soothing, so comforting," pleaded Anne. 
 ' ' They will be so good for thy rheumatism. Think, try 
 them, see, they fit marvellously well. ' ' 
 
 She stretched them out against Elizabeth's gaunt fig- 
 ure. 
 
 "Bah! little beast," twinkled Elizabeth, who was as 
 pagan a soul as ever crawled. "And what will my 
 guardian angel say? Me, me a virgin of nearly eighty
 
 42 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 years in these these ! Shameless one, thou wilt come 
 to a bad end. Shall Elizabeth wear a forked garment ? ' ' 
 
 But her hand was sinking lovingly in the lamblike al- 
 lure of them. It was irresistible; the corners of her 
 toothless jaws began to mow with pleasure. 
 
 "Elizabeth," said Anne, as she gently prodded the 
 chestnuts with a toasting-fork from the stool where she 
 sat between the cats, "don't, I beseech you, stuff to- 
 matoes with eggs again. Dad doesn't like them so." 
 
 "Ah, ce Monsieur! All the day he think, think, think 
 of himself. And change! Mon Dieu, how he does 
 change. You never can tell. It will be eggs with toma- 
 toes next time. And Madame so tired of it all. ' ' 
 
 "Elizabeth, are things worse than they used to be? 
 Dad was always more or less so." 
 
 "Sacre nom, and don't I know it? Have I not served 
 Monsieur's whims for years upon years?" 
 
 She outstretched her palms fanwise. 
 
 "But what about my sister?" 
 
 "It is this way with Madame. She hath nothing, 
 nothing at all for her own heart. Voyez, cherie, you do 
 put away fruit conserves and leave them month by 
 month, year by year. Then you look and the fruits are 
 all dried dust. Fit for nozzing but to sweep away. 
 So it is with Madame. Everything dry, dead, withered, 
 fit to sweep away. No child, no love, no business. Noz- 
 zing. And to think the old Monsieur's thoughts all the 
 day! Chut! over and over again, day by day, week by 
 week, month by month. ' ' 
 
 "But" 
 
 "Voyez done/' exclaimed Elizabeth, catching up the 
 candle and crossing the kitchen. She touched the corner 
 of the table to steady herself. In the passage she opened 
 a side door and held up her candle. 
 
 The two looked into a long room lined with laden 
 book shelves of fumed deal. Gobelin curtains drawn 
 across the windows kept out the night wind. There were
 
 RUTH AMID THE ALIEN CORN 43 
 
 white narcissi from France in long glasses on the mantel- 
 piece over which was an oval Bartalozzi print. And on 
 the great writing-table lay the paraphernalia of a writer, 
 ready, waiting, polished and dustless. 
 
 ''Monsieur Bellew's work room. Always like that for 
 him. Madame puts fresh flowers whether he is away or 
 not. She fails in nozzing. It is always pairfect for 
 him." 
 
 Anne's eyes suddenly grew bright as though tears 
 were coming, yet she knew that she had only partially 
 caught the old woman's meaning. 
 
 "Yes, Madame leaves nozzing undone. But it is all 
 dead. It is Dutee. Bah ! I do loathe Dutee ! Give me 
 love." 
 
 "With these remarkable sentiments for an ancient vir- 
 gin, she returned to the kitchen fire. 
 
 "For you," she continued, "Madame did not buy 
 market flowers. She go out and pick the little violet for 
 your room, and the primrose just three inches high, for 
 Madame has one thing to love and that is you, the 
 babee. Her homme a elle, he is the Dutee, he has the 
 market flowers. But she will never neglect, never waste. 
 Madame Sara rise from the bed of death to do her Dutee. 
 Bah! I spit." 
 
 She was fierce, but of a marvellous comprehension. 
 Her eyes were as gimlets, for her heart was passionately 
 Madam e's. She had the understanding of perfect love. 
 And if perfect love does not cast out fear, it has at 
 any rate not even a nodding acquaintance with stu- 
 pidity. 
 
 "Elizabeth," asked Anne, "is there anything worse 
 than estrangement and loneliness ? ' ' 
 
 For answer the old woman seized her hand and pulled 
 her towards the door. Opening it, she stood on the 
 threshold. A flagged path lost in the darkness stretched 
 out in front of them. Tiny, mossy crevices filled the in- 
 terspaces.
 
 44 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Ecoutez," said Elizabeth, holding up the withered 
 forefinger of an ancient beldame, "Ecoutex done." 
 
 Anne listened; from over the hills came the sound of 
 the sea, a myriad-voiced thing that tore at the gates of 
 silence. It went over the house like a great voice. 
 
 They shut the door, struggling with the storm to get 
 it fastened with the massive iron bar that rested on 
 sockets in the wall on each side. 
 
 "It cries like that nowadays," said Elizabeth. "I 
 cannot sleep when it calls like that." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Troubles like that, they come to Madame." She 
 was trembling very much. "You will stay home a while, 
 won't you, ma petite? Just to cheer Madame? The 
 house stirs with you in it. And the voices, one does not 
 hear so loud." 
 
 Anne was afraid to question further lest she hap 
 on something worse than her fears. She shook her- 
 self. 
 
 "It's all nonsense. Besides, there's always Billy for 
 a strong tower." 
 
 "Ce cher Monsieur Knyvett. Ah, yes, he come here, 
 once, twice, thrice a year. He watch ; he wait, and he 
 hunger. And when he was here last time he come to 
 me and says he: 'Elizabeth, if ever I'm wanted here. 
 If ever there's the littlest thing I can do for Madame, 
 send for me. Promise me you will.' And I did. He 
 give me the place in London where I could always write. 
 For he wander up and down everywhere. And behind 
 Madame, wherever she is, is Monsieur Billee. But 
 Madame, she know it not." 
 
 "But why should she go on like this? If Archer 
 doesn't care for his home, I'd let out and go. Dad 
 wouldn 't really mind, as long as someone gave him money 
 and kept his rooms and meals right. I'd not bear it. 
 Why should she?" 
 
 "Tiens," said Elizabeth, "you do not think. The mis-
 
 EUTH AMID THE ALIEN CORN 45 
 
 tress, your mother, was like that. There was not any- 
 thing for her in the world but him. ' ' 
 
 Her voice was indescribably mixed in tenderness and 
 scorn. "She lived for him. And he never knew. He 
 was, the old Monsieur, said she, 'a song bird that must 
 sing in peace.' Never, never, did I see such a thing. I 
 would have turned him up, had he been my man, and 
 made him sing what tunes the gamins sing, when they get 
 their whips. But no ! he come to Paris to paint. She 
 ill with two children. But he care not. 
 
 ' ' But there was worse to follow. Ah, mon Dieu, when 
 he took to the life of the fields, to the peasant life, he, the 
 white-handed. We all he, your mother, you two chil- 
 dren and I we drive up to a great barn place in the 
 land of savages, Cornwall, far, far "West. And oh, the 
 grey, grey sea. And there in great cold rooms in mid- 
 winter we live. No meat ; bloodless food for us, said he. 
 And you, pauvres enfants, to be fed on oats, the food of 
 the donkeys. And not a word did she say. Only smug- 
 gled in the food for the delicate bellies of the little 
 ones. Then he went off speaking, lecturing, on what? 
 Who knows? And she would say, 'Ah, Elizabeth, he 
 will come back with money for us all.' " 
 
 "And did he?" 
 
 "Did he? He comes back, not like others by day, but 
 in the darkness of a winter night. It seemed always 
 winter then. I can see her now with a petticoat over 
 her head in her red gown and me with the teeth chatter- 
 ing to get that accursed door open." 
 
 "But the money?" 
 
 "He had brought one piece of gold and two unpaid 
 bills. One piece of gold after six months' work! And 
 thy mother she put an arm round him and said, 'Ah, 
 dearest, but thou hast struggled for us. ' And then put 
 him to bed with a hot brick that I had to heat. ' ' 
 
 "But how strange to think of dad even trying to 
 earn."
 
 46 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "He grows old," said Elizabeth cynically, "and to 
 grow old is to grow wicked. And her mother left him, 
 her biggest child, to Madame, thy sister. That is the 
 way of it. And Madame will never turn back from the 
 task. But she sees clear and that makes it hard. Her 
 mother never did and that made it easy. Or perhaps 
 he did love her. They had memories of the time when 
 he adored. That is the way of it with married folks. 
 They have memories of the good time. ' ' 
 
 Anne was lost in a dream ; in every house the tone is 
 set by one character, the strongest, or at any rate, the 
 most rapacious. Old Hereford's claims were incessant, 
 on youth, on vitality, on gaiety. He had laughed joy- 
 ously at the prospect of having another younger life 
 to yield its warmth and zest to him. That was the rea- 
 son of his jealousy of her career. Anne's temper rose 
 in revolt, for herself and her sister. 
 
 "But Sara has her memories, too, the memories of 
 married folk that thou hast just mentioned, Elizabeth." 
 
 There was silence for a minute, then the old woman 
 said, as though groping for a meaning : 
 
 "Monsieur Belle w, he grow like the old Monsieur. 
 They read the books together. Monsieur Bellew was not 
 like it when he come here. And now they do grind 
 Madame between them like the millstones. It is all self, 
 self. And Madame is alone between them." 
 
 Elizabeth was in deep waters; Anne refused to try 
 even to follow her. Besides, the old woman had always 
 been prejudiced against Archer. Even now she was 
 trying to express her dislike of him. 
 
 "His eyes," grumbled she, "were always as hard as 
 the little stones in the brook." 
 
 "Oh, hang," said Anne, "why can't people live with- 
 out tying themselves into knots ? ' ' 
 
 Elizabeth raised her hand and pointed off the ill- 
 omened words with the sign against the evil eye. It 
 was her one religious dogma, a belief in the evil eye. She
 
 RUTH AMID THE ALIEN CORN 47 
 
 lay awake that night fulminating curses on Anne 's chest- 
 nuts that lay in hard lumps in her interior. 
 
 It was a strange chance, nay, two strange chances that 
 had brought Elizabeth to share the fortunes of the Here- 
 ford family. The connection had begun twenty-three 
 years ago by the smashing of the glass door at the top 
 of the stone staircase leading into the concierge's court- 
 yard in the pension of the Rue de Milan in Paris, whither 
 Mr. Hereford had brought his wife and children to live. 
 In the tinkling fall of the shining discs brought about 
 by her broom handle Elizabeth heard the crash of a uni- 
 verse, for after thirty years of incessant service in the 
 Pension she knew naught of all the wonders beneath the 
 stars save the steam-heated rooms, the faded bravery 
 of the lofty, gilded walls, the shifts and tempers of the 
 poverty-stricken place. A railway time-table was a mys- 
 tery to her and she had never seen the Opera House. 
 
 "Never have I seen such doings," shouted Madame of 
 the Pension to Elizabeth, ''never. Last night you told a 
 pensionnaire who wanted hot water that here one washes 
 only at night. And to-day this " 
 
 The fracas brought Mrs. Hereford into the hall. She 
 stood watching Madame, the powdered surface of whose 
 puffy face was heaving like the sea in a ground-swell. 
 "You shall go," shrieked she, "and out of your wages 
 you shall pay for the pane. Insolent, ungrateful beast, 
 you who make ten centimes on every candle, besides the 
 profits on matches." 
 
 Elizabeth's head shook as though with palsy. But 
 she understood; it was difficult to grind enough labour 
 out of creaking bones like hers, especially in a house 
 built centuries ago by a Scottish nobleman when water 
 and gas were nothing accounted of. Besides, Elizabeth 
 snapped sometimes, and wore a wool tippet on a cold 
 morning. The pensionnaires laughed at her. 
 
 Once outside the Pension walls, the roar of Paris 
 seemed to Elizabeth like the tide of a human sea. On
 
 48 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 the table after she had gone Madame found a ten franc 
 piece, saved from vile sulphur matches and swift burn- 
 ing candles. No one but Anna, the concierge, saw her 
 go, as she scuttled into the open like a mouse from the 
 wainscot. 
 
 At last when she came to the sullen flow of the Seine, 
 something caught at her throat. Yet she bought hot 
 chestnuts and warmed her hands with them gallantly 
 enough. The boulevards were wind-swept, but the 
 gendarmes were kindly directing posts when she had 
 got used to their sex, for the Pension was chiefly in- 
 habited by women. At last she found in the Boulevard 
 Montparnasse the cheap warren that an art student had 
 once mentioned and, for one franc fifty centimes, a bed- 
 room. Never in her life had Elizabeth encountered so 
 many men, and when the valet de chambre next morning 
 stood outside her door as he polished the boots she gave 
 up the struggle and resigned herself to the world of 
 males that surged outside the Rue de Milan. 
 
 Later the grey north light shone full on the row of 
 models, drawn up on the platform of the Academie 
 Delecluse. Elizabeth had not lived for nothing in the 
 air of Paris, where every work-girl knows that art is a 
 metier and quite distinct from sign-painting. 
 
 At the quilled cap above the fierce old face, storm- 
 stressed, the master paused a moment. For a quick 
 sketch of a costume model, admirable. He whistled 
 through his teeth as he rattled a pencil against them, lit- 
 tle knowing that the force and fire in the face before 
 him sprang from horror at his own innocent scrutiny on 
 the one side and the flash of the Seine on the other. On 
 the knife-edge between Elizabeth. 
 
 Then she drew in her breath sharply. "Let me see 
 the neck and head bare, ' ' said he blandly. Praying piti- 
 fully within, Elizabeth lifted her hands to the cap that 
 covered the wisps of hair on her shrunken scalp. No,
 
 RUTH AMID THE ALIEN CORN 49 
 
 she could not do it. It was ugly. And the fibrous neck, 
 that was ugly, too. 
 
 In that moment the Seine flashed, and the candle- 
 lighted Rue de Milan faded, for its doors were closed. 
 The bare, aged head next moment bowed humbly before 
 the eyes of Monsieur, who had not the faintest idea that 
 he was slaughtering an innocent. 
 
 "A fine head," said he, ''chiselled, chiselled. The 
 lines leap to the eyes. I have it a good idea. ' ' 
 
 Then he turned to Vin Hereford, who had been watch- 
 ing the scene with a smile on his lips. He recognized 
 the bonne a tout faire of the Pension and was storing up 
 the tale as a good one to tell his wife. 
 
 "But," said the master to him, "can you lend me the 
 daughter, the little Anne, to-day, Monsieur Hereford, 
 and then you will see? It will be a good study of old 
 age and childhood." 
 
 Then they had lifted into Elizabeth's arms the fair- 
 haired child and made her stoop above it, touching with 
 her lips the rosy softness of its face. The two hailed 
 each other as old friends, for it was not by any means 
 the first time that Elizabeth had held the small Anne 
 Hereford. 
 
 Sitting so, while the babe fell asleep, Elizabeth forgot 
 her horror, forgot her loneliness. Queer thoughts came 
 instead; thoughts of the life she had missed in the Rue 
 de Milan in her thirty years of chamber serving. Then 
 the child stirred and they let her get down from the 
 estrade. 
 
 Somehow Vin Hereford did a kind thing, by one of 
 those quick, impulsive instincts that every now and then 
 sent his wife into the truly conjugal heaven of the af- 
 fectionate spouse. He walked out of the studio by the 
 side of Elizabeth, the child holding hands between them. 
 It was noon, and as they passed a restaurant, ' ' Come in 
 here and let us eat together," said he. "It shall be a
 
 50 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 feast, for Anne hath earned her first silver-piece as 
 model." 
 
 That night the child fell asleep in Elizabeth's arms, 
 tightly clasping Rene, the bear. For Elizabeth had been 
 taken home by Mr. Hereford and once there, his wife in- 
 sisted on taking pity on the piece of human flotsam, on 
 leaving the Pension and taking her with them. 
 
 They found refuge, the five of them, in the cheap 
 hotel that Elizabeth had discovered. The air from the 
 half -open window at the head of her bed brought rheuma- 
 tism to her shoulders, and Elizabeth had all a French- 
 woman's hatred of that courant d'air, but without the 
 open window the bambino would have stifled in the rank 
 smoke from next door, the smoke from the cigar of the 
 Monsieur who apparently never slept. Between cigar- 
 smoke and open window, Elizabeth was happy as she 
 had never been in the Rue de Milan. In the blue ichor 
 of her sunken veins the red blood tingled with life as the 
 smooth baby limbs stretched against hers. 
 
 That was twenty-three years ago. There w r as no hor- 
 ror anywhere, neither in the cruel north light of the 
 studio, nor in the Seine gleam, for Elizabeth had en- 
 tered into a rich human heritage. There was Madame, 
 the kindly, to be loved ; there was Mademoiselle Sara to 
 be revered for possessing youth, beauty, grace; there 
 was, above all, la petite Anne, aged four, to be slapped, 
 washed, fed and idolised. Monsieur was a cross, but the 
 cross, too, is human. 
 
 Such was the resurrection of Elizabeth from the tomb 
 of servitude in the Rue de Milan.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS: IN THIS BILLY KNYVETT PUTS ON 
 WINGS AND SEVERAL PEOPLE EAT DUCK 
 
 D 
 
 AWN on the river and a tenor voice singing Field- 
 ing's catch: 
 
 "The dusky Night rides down the Sky, 
 And ushers in the Morn; 
 The Hounds all join in glorious Cry, 
 The Huntsman winds his Horn." 
 
 So sang Philip Hawkins, uncle on the mother's side 
 to the Hereford sisters. And if it was the hairy sea- 
 man who laid the match to Mr. Knyvett's resolve to go 
 a-gold-hunting, it was Uncle Pip who stoked up the fire 
 thereof. 
 
 Just now he was leaning back with a magnificent air 
 in the stern sheets of a waterman's boat as it shot out 
 from the quay. Tucking his short legs away beneath 
 his magnificent paunch, he snuffed the morning freshness 
 with wide nostrils, the while his merry green eyes 
 watched the bustle of the opening day. 
 
 Behind the hills stretched a slowly widening belt of 
 light. Smoke wreaths left behind by a train in the still 
 air of the valley were tinged a faint rose-pink, but rising 
 into higher levels, shone in golden splendour. On the 
 hills the light broadened till it moved, a luminous pres- 
 ence, above the smoke-fog of the low lands. Engines 
 clanged to and fro in the station ; bells jangled from the 
 anchored vessels ; the clanging arms of a derrick waved 
 above the coaler Obsidian. Then began the assault of 
 the shipwright 's hammers on a bare-ribbed vessel. From 
 
 51
 
 52 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 inland came the lowing of cows, the clattering of milk- 
 pails, from the river mouth the rattle of gear aboard a 
 trawler that was making the Narrows. 
 
 "For all the blessings of this life, good Lord, we thank 
 Thee," said Uncle Pip, as he snuffed vigorously of the 
 sea wind and smacked his chest to get rid of the smell 
 of the feather-beds. Never was there a truer thanksgiv- 
 ing than his, for pleasure was the breath of Uncle Pip 's 
 nostrils and the only thing to which he objected was the 
 present age of "tea-twaddle." A vast Falstaffian man, 
 he had been born to put his teeth in a venison pasty, to 
 bury his nose in a black-jack. He delighted in the sea 
 noises, in the sunshine on the roses or the cawing of the 
 rooks in the home fields, in the yeo-heave-ho of a chanty 
 or the smell of the earth after rain. And as for meat and 
 drink ! his portentous belly and wide mouth were made 
 for the savouring of both. 
 
 A delicate fancy had he, too, which he carefully cher- 
 ished for the joy it gave him. His "When I went 
 a-pirating long, long ago," had the haunting beauty of 
 the blue distance about it. For nothing gave him greater 
 pleasure than to trace along the cliffs some smugglers' 
 route where old lace and French brandy had passed. 
 Tender, too, was he and would stand outside the houses 
 at Christmas time, listening to the braying of tin trum- 
 pets and the shouts of the children behind the curtained 
 windows. The zest of things burnt in his heart like a 
 sea-coal fire in some tale of a wind-swept inn. 
 
 So he approached the Pendragon with the bait of 
 romance bobbing in front of his nose and for sole regret 
 in his heart a sorrow that the yacht was not called 
 Espiritu Santu and fitted with a figurehead painted 
 in blue and gold. For consolation, in fancy, he cov- 
 ered her with gold-dust. 
 
 In the suck of the ebb she was swaying slightly, her 
 hull inky black in the shadows, her masts and varnished 
 yards glittering in the sun. Sharp in the bow like a
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 53 
 
 perfect wedge, bulky aft like a timber vessel, with two 
 whale boats amidships, she was more a sealer than a 
 yacht. In the past she had been, in fact, a ' ' Holy Joe, ' ' 
 or mission boat, constructed for rough use. No stranger 
 to the green shimmer of breaking seas, she had known 
 the steep slopes of a Cape Horn swell. In spite of paint 
 and brass-rubbing, the battering of waves and winds 
 was eloquent on timbers, spars and running tackle. For 
 she had attained that point in the career of a ship when 
 she is no longer the mere offspring of a man's brain, 
 writ over with his strength and weakness, but is instead 
 a personality on which the days and nights have left 
 their impress, the combers of the Pacific, the greybeards 
 of the Atlantic, the glassy stare of the doldrums, no less 
 than the swift hurtling of the terrible pampero. She 
 was a curious mixture of old and new, a thirty-ton yacht 
 that had once been fitted with a windlass. Even now 
 the old cooks' galley remained, a boxlike erection to lar- 
 board of the fo'c'sle hatch. Gemmed with the night 
 dew, her yard-arms glittered like steel for a while. 
 
 ' ' Clack-clacka, clack-clacka, " came fainter and more 
 faint the creak of a pair of oars in the rowlocks down- 
 stream. On the gunwale of the boat sat a man, mother- 
 naked, with the sun gleaming on the bare limbs, on the 
 broad arms folded across the hairy chest. At one mo- 
 ment bathed in sunlight, the next in shadow, in the daz- 
 zle of light and darkness, he might have been carved in 
 bronze, were it not for the ripple of muscle under the 
 skin. 
 
 "That'll do," said he. The next moment there was 
 the creaming foam of cleft water, the gurgling up-rush of 
 waves against the lightened boat. In its wake rippled 
 a line of white. Now with breast-stroke, now side- 
 stroke, the swimmer made for the sea, his head shining 
 in the water like a seal's. Then he turned and the boat 
 followed, the man standing up to paddle with one oar, 
 till he was obliged to scull against the ebb.
 
 54 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Nearing the yacht, Uncle Pip put hand to lips and 
 shouted : 
 
 "Pendragon! Ahoy! ahoy! ahoy!" 
 
 The echo laughed among the hills, and the mate leant 
 over the bulwarks, his Newgate fringe shining like a 
 nimbus. 
 
 ''The skipper a-board, Mr. Cole?" shouted Mr. Haw- 
 kins. 
 
 "There's the skipper," grinned Cole, pointing to the 
 swimmer, while a blue-behinded ape chattered in the 
 scuppers and then clawed its way up the mainmast, its 
 tail lashing behind it. 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Hawkins," shouted Knyvett, ap- 
 proaching the companion-ladder with a rapid side-stroke. 
 Then, with much heaving, Uncle Pip got himself aboard, 
 accompanied by the padding of bare feet and the surge 
 of water as the swimmer followed. 
 
 A nautical bustle like this had a classic flavour about 
 it to Uncle Pip, for had not his idol, Henry Fielding, 
 gone on a voyage to Lisbon and painted the rough and 
 tumble of sea-faring days? On Fielding Mr. Hawkins 
 had pastured all his life, so that from him he could quote 
 long passages full of the Virtues in big letters and the 
 masculine frailties in small ones. It was even now to 
 Uncle Pip a point of some literary importance to belittle 
 the achievements of the amorous bookseller as compared 
 with the blusterous, derring-do of that queer epitome of 
 man's lowest weakness and most divine strength, Henry 
 Fielding. 
 
 "I want you," said he, "to come over to Foxholt for 
 dinner. We've got two pair of ducks killed and the 
 girls coming." 
 
 "Chick, chick, chick," hissed the ape, making for his 
 bow-legs as he waddled across the deck, swaying like a 
 goose. 
 
 "A rare lot of live stock you've got here," said Mr. 
 Hawkins.
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 55 
 
 Two huge Angora cats sunned themselves on the fore 
 hatch and a marmoset fraternised with a goat. 
 
 "This here vessel," said the mate, "is a menagerie of 
 all the things that crawl the earth and swim upon the 
 sea. Here we be a-rehearsing for the garden of Eden. 
 The last we had was a pair of land-crabs till, they squat- 
 ting upon a board, the cats give it a tilt and over they 
 went. Neatest thing as ever I see." 
 
 The great panther-like creatures filled the air with 
 a mighty purring as they leapt upon the mate 's shoulder 
 and crawled along his outstretched arm. 
 
 Below a mighty bustle was toward as the black steward 
 cast about him to find provender for the vast appetite at 
 that moment descending the companion stairs. 
 
 "Ah, Mistah Hawkins, he come," said he in his soft, 
 mouthy talk, "de York ham, de rasheres, de raised pie, 
 de rolls, de cream, jam, honey . . . lah, lah, lah." 
 In his haste he fairly capered while Mr. Hawkins sink- 
 ing into a swivel-chair, poised himself above the victuals, 
 taking an inventory. 
 
 "Caw-fee," ejaculated the darky, and presently from 
 the caboose came a mighty stoking and then the rum- 
 bling of coal followed by the sputtering of water on 
 burning metal. Cornelius was one of the order of cooks 
 who burn down a house to fricassee a fowl leg. 
 
 Meanwhile, napkin under chin, Mr. Hawkins, not wait- 
 ing for his host, laid about him lustily. 
 
 "I say," shouted he, "look alive, Knyvett. I've got 
 scores of things I want to talk to you about." 
 
 He rapped with the handle of his knife to attract at- 
 tention. Overhead the wind was beginning to hum 
 through the spars. 
 
 "Good," grunted he, swishing down a pint or so of 
 hot coffee, the darky watching benevolently. "Never go 
 about to borrow trouble, my son," said Mr. Hawkins to 
 him. "Trouble's the one thing you can't prepare for, 
 for ten to one it never comes, and if it does, it's sure to
 
 56 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 be quite different from what you expected it would be." 
 
 "And what called forth that remark," asked Mr. 
 Knyvett, entering the saloon, his hands full of letters. 
 
 "Something my wife said to me this morning. But 
 that's the way with women, always worrying. Too many 
 women by half over there," said he, jerking his thumb 
 shorewards. "Place swarms with the nervous little 
 cusses. Can't put your foot down for 'em anywhere." 
 
 Mr. Knyvett being engaged for the moment in turning 
 over the mail, the mate chipped in with the air of an 
 expert on the subject. 
 
 "With women," said he, "you must take 'em as you 
 find 'em, same as with wind and tide clap on all sail 
 when they'm fair and slip along, close-reefed, when 
 they'm foul." 
 
 "A word above rubies, Mr. Cole," said Uncle Pip, 
 reaching for the butter. "After thirty years of experi- 
 ence with my first, which was also my last, I've learnt 
 no more than that." 
 
 "Sounds like a public, the First and the Last," said 
 the mate, finding himself unexpectedly brilliant. 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Hawkins, "what I want to know is 
 about this gold-hunting business of yours. Gold by the 
 ton, my nieces tell me. Never heard of such a thing in 
 my life. What wouldn't I give to be going with you." 
 
 4 ' Huh ! ' ' said the mate from the depths of his stomach. 
 
 "Mr. Cole hasn't that faith in Bodinar that could be 
 wished," smiled Knyvett. 
 
 "Shifty-eyed, ferrety-faced," agreed the mate. "But 
 that's no business of mine. Say you: ' Sail the Pendra- 
 gon to hell, ' I 'd sail it. That 's the way I am. ' ' 
 
 "A buccaneer. No less," quoth Mr. Hawkins, rejoic- 
 ing. "But this Bodinar now?" 
 
 "I've been to see his former employers. They sub- 
 stantiate his story. It made, I find, something of a sen- 
 sation, that voyage. There was a kind of broadsheet cir- 
 culated hereabouts of the cruise."
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 57 
 
 Knyvett tossed across the table a sheet of print, which 
 Mr. Hawkins read, holding the page close to his eyes with 
 his glasses pushed up over his forehead. 
 
 "Hah!" he said. "Good. 'On one occasion some 
 Patagonians approached them in a fierce, threatening at- 
 titude, clothed with skins and armed with bows and ar- 
 rows ! ' Fine ! Fine ! ' ' 
 
 ' ' That, ' ' laughed Knyvett, ' ' was, I think, one of those 
 fancy touches that are characteristic of the man. ' ' 
 
 "But the treasure?" 
 
 "Somewhere in the neighborhood of latitude 51 43' 
 south and longitude 73 59' west in a land-locked cove. 
 Alluvial sand, probably. My plan is to take the 
 Pendragon out to Punta Arenas. To send by sailing 
 vessel from Glasgow camping stores, tents, gold-washing 
 apparatus and a steam-tug slung on deck. To pick up 
 the tug at Sandy Point from the Pendragon and steam 
 up Smyth's Channel." 
 
 "That'll mean a good 'thou.' You'll let me have a 
 share in the venture, Knyvett. Stand me in for half 
 of the costs and a third of the profits that go to the 
 adventurers. ' ' 
 
 "The adventurers are, so far, Peter Westlake and 
 myself. ' ' 
 
 "And Mr. Cole?" 
 
 "Mr. Cole will have nothing to do with it, but wages 
 for his part of the work. ' ' 
 
 "Hasn't got the guts for it, you may say," interposed 
 the gentleman in question. 
 
 "Bodinar gets a third of the net profits and what's 
 left after prize money has been paid to Mr. Cole and 
 the crew is to be shared between the prospectors." 
 
 "Let's see, let's see," exclaimed Uncle Pip, spreading 
 himself over the table, as Knyvett began to clear a space 
 for a chart. A slight refreshing dew burst out on Mr. 
 Hawkins' temples, for the blood of his ancestors ramped 
 in his veins.
 
 58 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Hist!" said the mate, suddenly laying a hand on 
 Mr. Hawkins' arm. "There's Bodinar. And what the 
 devil's the matter with him?" 
 
 The three bent down over the table, staring through 
 the left port-hole across the river, swelling now in long, 
 glassy rolls. 
 
 Bodinar 's movements were certainly peculiar. He 
 was crouching, huddled-up, in the stern of a rowboat, 
 wrapped in a heavy cloak, with head turning constantly 
 over his shoulder as though pursued. The boat seemed 
 seaward bound till he leant forward and said something 
 to the rower, who with a heavy rush of surging water 
 brought the boat round to the stern of the Pendragon 
 and so into the shadow where the saloon watchers could 
 not follow him. But the mate was at the right port-hole 
 in a second. And when the curtain came sagging 
 against the closed glass from the open port-hole on the 
 other side, with one hand he held it quiet, while he lis- 
 tened to the sound of a boat grazing against the yacht 
 side and to the quick licking of a rope against the bul- 
 warks. Mr. Bodinar was coming aboard in a hurry. 
 
 "Look out, sir," said the mate, "t'other side. Is he 
 followed?" 
 
 But there was nothing to be seen except a steamer 
 being towed from its moorings by a tug. 
 
 "Queer go," said the mate. 
 
 The trampling overhead was followed by the dragging 
 of a sack. 
 
 ' ' Mr. Bodinar 's brought his furniture, ' ' said Mr. Cole. 
 1 ' That was a badly frightened man, sir ? " 
 
 At the top of the companion, when Knyvett reached 
 it with his mate, stood Bodinar. In the daylight the 
 sweat-drops gleamed on his face. Getting him down to 
 the saloon they left him there with Mr. Hawkins. 
 
 "What d'you make of it?" asked Knyvett of his mate, 
 as they watched the boat that had brought Bodinar zig- 
 zagging among the vessels.
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 59 
 
 "Cutting off his tracks, so that whatever 's behind 
 shan't know which boat he's on," said Mr. Cole. 
 ' ' Somebody wants Mr. B. rather pressing, I should say. ' ' 
 
 ' ' So should I, ' ' answered Knyvett. ' ' Who is it, d 'you 
 think?" 
 
 "Might be a ghost, might be a 'tec and might be just 
 a bad conscience. But it looks like a pier-head jump 
 with the police behind." 
 
 Not a sail, not an oar nor the shadow of one was to 
 be seen on the river. 
 
 ' ' To-morrow I '11 take him through the town. And do 
 you keep a sharp eye on him to-day," said Captain 
 Knyvett. 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir," responded the mate, all agog for a 
 bit of detective work. 
 
 It was rather a surprise to Knyvett to find how thor- 
 oughly he was being committed by other people's zeal 
 to a wild-goose chase after these sands of gold. Yet in 
 it he acquiesced, recognising clearly that it would pro- 
 vide a healthy bit of rough experience for Peter West- 
 lake, as well as a means of escape for himself from the 
 cloud of worry that hung over Craneham. For one 
 thing only had terrors for Knyvett a fear of being en- 
 gulfed by the octopus of human complication. The mere 
 thought of it would often set him knocking head against 
 the wall of circumstance. With Sara in the clutches of 
 the serpents, he would venture a dashing cut at the clasp- 
 ing coils, but would never risk the hungry grip of them 
 for himself. Hence he seldom stayed long in the vicinity 
 of the Heref ords, but would appear, stay for a few weeks, 
 and then vanish with the same flip of decision with which 
 he turned on his heel up a new road. For Knyvett 
 always left a railway station without a parting glance 
 at a friend. 
 
 Once at Foxholt with Uncle Pip he plunged into a 
 past age. There, noon was the dining-hour and, the 
 board cleared, one paced the terrace in spacious leisure,
 
 60 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 with the river winding through the champaign below 
 like a streak of pewter. Beyond the serenity of wide 
 distances lay the streak of the channel, a bar of shifting 
 opal. 
 
 It was a clear day of early spring when the hills on 
 the horizon are almost as blue as the edges of the cloud 
 sweeps that merge in unveiled azure. The tiny valleys 
 were filled with leafless trees or patched with the purple 
 of plough-land and the grey-green of grass. Over all 
 poured the clear light, making the hedges almost indigo 
 and the woodlands of a clouded, satiny sheen that bil- 
 lowed round the black tracery of straggling pines and 
 cedars. A Japanese painter would have found himself 
 at home with the clear light, the black shadows, the for- 
 mal contours of trees and breast-like hills patched to 
 the semblance of a cottage counterpane. 
 
 The house was a lofty grey building with lattice-paned 
 Elizabethan windows and wide gables where the yellow 
 stonecrop grew. In the bow of the great mullioned win- 
 dow they sat at table, with the sunshine playing hide 
 and seek on water bottles and wine jugs, while Mrs. Haw- 
 kins prattled to the tune of veni, vidi, vici, as she carved 
 the ducks, tenderly laying portions of them on each 
 plate in embalmment of sage and onions. 
 
 Mellow was she as October sunlight, sweet-fleshed as 
 quarrender or pippin, and her delight in the fact that 
 they could produce peas in winter was an intellectual 
 triumph, for the bottling of them had been attended 
 with so many fears. 
 
 She was an ample woman, bulging out in unexpected 
 directions, like a swelling Spanish galleon, marvellous 
 beamy in the build, with bright brown eyes, a yellowish 
 skin, a hairy mole on her left cheek, and a dimple, as 
 fascinating as that of a four-year-old, on her right. She 
 had but one trouble in the world, now that Pip had got 
 over his ' ' flightiness, " and that was the inability of her 
 stomach to keep pace with her palate.
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 61 
 
 The talk turning on Bodinar, she kept an inscrutable 
 smile while the story of the morning was told. 
 
 "There's one thing none of you ever thought of," 
 said she at last. 
 
 Sara leant forward, one arm on the polished mahog- 
 any, for they were come to the dessert stage by now. 
 
 ' ' I know, ' ' she said, her lips pouting delicately towards 
 the grape she held up to them. Quite regal she looked in 
 the Charles II chair with a carved back and arms that 
 held her. "I know what Aunt Hatty means. It might 
 be" 
 
 She laughed, holding out her hands like a sibyl as 
 they bent towards her Billy, Uncle Pip and Anne. 
 
 "It wasn't a ghost, nor a man in blue that was after 
 him, I believe. But it might have been a woman. ' ' 
 
 "That's so," nodded Mrs. Hawkins. "And when 
 you've got out of his wife all she knows, then perhaps 
 you'll be a bit wiser than you are now." 
 
 "His wife!" exclaimed Knyvett. "Why I forgot to 
 find out about that. And after all, he may not have 
 one." 
 
 "Fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Hawkins, "a sailorman of 
 fifty and no wife! Don't tell me." 
 
 "More likely fifty of 'em," shouted Uncle Pip. 
 "Nay, nay," continued he to Sara, "don't shake your 
 dear little hands at me." 
 
 "Have I dear little hands Billy?" asked Sara, turn- 
 ing from Uncle Pip 's amorousness to Billy 's solemn face. 
 He was indeed un homme serieux, as Elizabeth would 
 have said. And watching Sara's coquetry, the pretty 
 airs that a woman only shows when she is happy and 
 well-liked, Captain Knyvett wondered at the sad-faced 
 constraint of her demeanour in the stagnant air of her 
 own home. This bright-eyed, laughing woman scarcely 
 seemed the same creature as the mistress of Craneham. 
 
 After dinner they gathered round the log fire, Billy 
 and Sara settling to chess in the corner with beside them
 
 62 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 the blue Devon sheep-dog sighing blissfully in the heat. 
 Anne followed Mrs. Hawkins to the window-seat, out of 
 ear-shot of the players. 
 
 "Sara's happy to-day," said Mrs. Hawkins. 
 
 "As she would be if " answered Anne. 
 
 "Don't say it, my dear," protested Mrs. Hawkins, 
 "I've a superstition about saying things. To think a 
 thing is bad enough, but you bring it much nearer if 
 you say it. You're all very silly about Sara. Every- 
 body sits glumping and glooming about that marriage 
 and then you're all surprised that Sara isn't happy! 
 Fool talk, I call it." 
 
 " I 've been staying with his mother on my way down, ' ' 
 said Anne, nodding at Mr. Knyvett's back. 
 
 "Ah, and what's she like?" 
 
 "Everything in turn. A fine lady with a heart as 
 simple as a tramp woman's. She told me how it was 
 that he lost Sara. You remember? "When everyone 
 thought it was going to happen. He was the active part- 
 ner in an engineering business and had work all over the 
 world then from silver mines in Peru to main drains in 
 Kimberley. Pulling strings everywhere, he was. To 
 use her words: the world was his back garden. In one 
 hand he held Power. He used to talk to her some- 
 times how he could make and mar men. He was lost 
 in it. He loved it." 
 
 Mrs. Hawkins dropped her wool work Berlin wool 
 slippers in a design of roses for Uncle Pip. In her well- 
 padded life she was not used to looking into burning 
 cauldrons and Anne's manner was scorching. 
 
 "He used to talk," she continued, "like the man in 
 'John Gabriel Borkman' of the spirits of the mine and 
 of the earth that he let out." 
 
 "Don't," said Mrs. Hawkins, kicking her in the way 
 in which she roused the dog when he snored in his sleep. 
 
 "That was in one hand Power," said Anne. "In 
 the other was Sara. He didn't know then which he
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 63 
 
 valued most. And anyway, Sara could wait, for she 
 was always there, you see." 
 
 Knyvett laughed at the moment, holding up a pawn 
 between finger and thumb. It sounded grisly to Aunt 
 Hatty, as she drew her shawl nearer to her ears. 
 
 "Then father married Sara to Archer. And Billy 
 found, when he'd lost her, that after all the thing 
 he could never have now was the thing he really 
 wanted." 
 
 "That's a man all over," said Mrs. Hawkins. 
 
 "And that taught him another thing; that Sara had 
 never been his the least little bit in the world. Not a 
 bit of her mind, of her soul, of what to Billy is really 
 Sara, had ever been his. He had never even understood 
 her, for if he had, he would have known she was going 
 to marry Archer. It came as a thunderbolt because she 
 had always been a stranger to him." 
 
 "Glad am I," said Mrs. Hawkins, "that I hadn't got 
 to marry my Pip when all this stuff about 'understand- 
 ing' and 'being strangers' was about. The constitution 
 won't stand it. That's why Sara and Billy both look 
 so thin." 
 
 ' ' It broke him anyway, ' ' said Anne. ' ' He kicked over 
 everything. Gave up his work and went to live on his 
 yacht." 
 
 "Sulks!" commented Mrs. Hawkins. She was a 
 woman whose simple philosophy was to keep smiling. 
 Of Sara and of Billy she was much in awe, for Sara was 
 a little de haut en bas, and Mr. Knyvett had a certain 
 afflatus of wealth and position. Of Anne and Peter 
 Westlake, being humble folk in stature and in manner, 
 she felt no awe. 
 
 "Don't you make a mess of things, either, with Pe- 
 ter." 
 
 "Oh! Flibbertigibbet!" said Anne. "Billy tells me 
 he's giving up his missioning here, to escape my charms. 
 Fun, isn't it?"
 
 64 
 
 "Anne Hereford, you're turning out a heartless girl. 
 I shall wash my hands of you." 
 
 "No, you won't, because if you're good, I'll tell you 
 a secret. And you know that an eclair and a secret are 
 two things you can never resist." 
 
 "Well?" asked Mrs. Hawkins, smiling till she flushed 
 in expectation. 
 
 "I like Peter in a way, now that he isn't so 'pi.' 
 But he's stupid, of the last century, because he's going 
 off to try and sweep up gold-dust to keep ME ME 
 ME; as if I was going to be a kept woman. I'm 
 going to pay my own way, ring or no ring. Am I, 
 Mistress Hawkins, born to be a toy to any man? And 
 just fancy Peter, dear old pious Peter, with a woman 
 toy!" 
 
 ' ' How dare you use such language ? And as for stu- 
 pid, well, men are that. I've never had but one child 
 and that's my old man, Pip, and many's the time he's 
 put his head on my shoulder and told me how wicked 
 he's been. For women can find the way in the dark, 
 by the feel of the road in front of them, when they 
 love. But a man always wants a lanthorn in front of 
 him." 
 
 "When they love, yes. But Sara's never known what 
 that is," said Anne sadly. 
 
 "How can you talk so wicked, with those two sitting 
 right in front of your very eyes, Anne Hereford?" 
 
 She nodded towards the chess players, who were 
 pursuing a curious game in which Billy read Sara's 
 thoughts, nimbly running just ahead of her every time. 
 
 These two always talked better when there was a third 
 person present. For then the unspoken things got more 
 chance of being said. At other times their pedestrian 
 chatter would stump prosaically along the highway of 
 common talk the while their real thoughts hovered over- 
 head, butterflies whose white wings flashed but seldom. 
 Then every sentence spoken had its shadow unexpressed.
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 65 
 
 They would spar, and sight an idyll; jibe, and look 
 down a glade of the pays du tendre. 
 
 "Yes," said Anne slowly, "but Sara doesn't know. 
 She never will know, I think, till she misses it, what 
 Billy feels for her. She has a deal of the old man in 
 her, after all. She'll take and never return; be waited 
 on and never give it a thought. That's Sara a Basil 
 plant, like dad, for all her sweetness. And Billy is the 
 man she feeds on. But she doesn 't know it, nor does he. ' ' 
 
 "You're as cheerful as a churchyard," grumbled Mrs. 
 Hawkins, secretly nodding agreement. Of her two 
 nieces, Sara was not the one she loved. 
 
 The matter was not so simple as Anne supposed, for, 
 apart from Sara altogether, it was characteristic of Billy 
 to start off on new tacks at a moment's notice. Un- 
 bound by any fetters, human or otherwise, he refused to 
 travel in a straight line for long. In this he was by 
 no means unique for, granted a sufficiency of means, few 
 versatile persons would consent to remain in one pro- 
 fession. It is poverty of brains, no less than poverty 
 of purse, that keeps a man in a rut. Scientific in habit 
 of thought, Knyvett was bound for a time to apply him- 
 self to earth-tunnelling or water-conducting, and to 
 work with fiery zeal. But one morning he awoke to find 
 virtue gone out of him; then for an interval there was 
 nothing for it but the toil of some primitive life, prefer- 
 ably the perpetually changing horizons of the sea. 
 After that might come, perhaps, another dive into civi- 
 lised pursuits, with the balance oscillating to politics. 
 
 First and last this was no man to be bound by chains. 
 Tie him down to restrictions, domestic or otherwise, 
 and he would make the welkin echo with shouts of revolt, 
 for here we have a pig that could never be ringed. 
 Never, in fact, had he wanted Sara so much as now 
 when she was out of reach, for it was the absence of all 
 claim that kept him bound to her. And scientific in his 
 love-making, her case had a fascination for him apart
 
 66 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 from romance ; it might become an interesting experiment 
 in sociology, now that the very elements of social life are 
 being flung into the crucible of change. Through Sara 
 he saw a chance of giving one feature of the bad old 
 days a shove into the limbo kept for historic customs. 
 
 But all this was beyond the simple thought of Anne, 
 who was neither psychologist nor cynic. 
 
 "Is it going to be all right for Peter?" asked Mr. 
 Knyvett suddenly over the chess play. 
 
 "I think so," answered Sara; "I hope so. He's just 
 the sort for her. She wouldn't appreciate a beauty or 
 a sage, but she'll just love furbishing up a lame dog 
 all her days. For Anne is an unselfish egoist. She 
 knows herself to be a charming person who always car- 
 ries her own sunshine with her. And through that veil 
 she feels that nothing can get at her to hurt. ' ' 
 
 Knyvett thought it none too kindly an analysis of a 
 sister, but Sara loved her friends wisely, so that no dis- 
 illusion ever awaited her. 
 
 "Anne is the daintiest creature imaginable," contin- 
 ued she, "but all the same she really enjoyed the fleas 
 that the Irish servant used to catch in her bed when 
 she was working in the Liverpool slums. For they gave 
 her such a priceless opportunity of rising above untoward 
 circumstances. ' ' 
 
 ' ' So poor old Peter is to go down in the same list with 
 the fleas!" 
 
 ' ' He 's just the man for her, for she could never stand 
 having to crick her neck with looking up to her mate. 
 Do you remember how in the old days when dad's flat 
 was a centre for artists and men " 
 
 He smiled at her classification. 
 
 "How she never could abide a bashaw? Only you 
 must take him away while I coach her up in the idea 
 that it's her bounden duty to prove to the world that 
 the married woman doctor is a success. Then it'll be 
 all right."
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 67 
 
 Finally came Uncle Pip and stirred them up from 
 their drowsy talk, for there was one memory, the glory 
 of Foxholt, which he never spared anybody, a memory 
 connected with the barn where a strolling player had 
 once performed, with another Philip Hawkins, a blind 
 organist and the great uncle of the present bearer of 
 that name, playing Beethoven between the acts to gain 
 a paying audience for the starving troupe. 
 
 And not long afterwards, going down to play Shy- 
 lock at Drury Lane the limping fiddler whom old Haw- 
 kins had befriended remarked to his wife: "It's suc- 
 cess or death for me to-night." And it was success, 
 since the strolling player had been Edmund Kean. No 
 wonder that the barn which had been so honoured was 
 to Uncle Hawkins a shrine to which he led all pilgrims 
 who would be likely to appreciate the honour. 
 
 They all stood in the doorway gazing into the mellow 
 darkness where the farm carts stood in rows on the floor 
 of trodden earth in which the hens had made rough 
 circles in the dust. The air was full of a smell of hay 
 and roots and high up in the walls two deep square 
 window slits let in clear glimpses of the sky. At the 
 far end of the yard the setting sun shone behind a clump 
 of trees, outlining the wintry nakedness of their deli- 
 cate arms against the glow. It was very still; not a 
 twig moved, not a feathery head of dried stonecrop 
 shivered on any roof. 
 
 Then from the darkened end of the barn Anne sang: 
 
 "Love in my bosom like a bee, 
 Doth suck his sweet; 
 Now with his wings he plays with me, 
 Now with his feet. 
 Within mine eyes he makes his nest, 
 His bed amidst my tender breast, 
 My kisses are his daily feast; 
 And yet he robs me of my rest, 
 Ah, wanton, will ye?"
 
 68 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 The motes in the candle rays danced; slowly the red 
 of the sky faded ; the green grew colder till it was steel- 
 blue. Sara's face was but a white shadow and every 
 moment to Knyvett she seemed to be growing further 
 away from him. For he was trying to follow her 
 thoughts, to leap across the barrier that separates man 
 from woman. Her face was unutterably sad. Was it 
 from regret? What was it like, to live in that mind of 
 hers? He willed her to look at him, for he wanted to 
 tear down the bar between them, the gossamer web of 
 iron that two temperaments build. 
 
 Then as her eyes met his in a long gaze, he swore that 
 never should there fall over her, through him, the faint- 
 est shadow of any baseness. He would not even suffer 
 the smallness of covetous pain to invade his lightest 
 thought of her. She seemed to be asking, not what he 
 longed to give, the hourly care that should read the 
 flicker of an eyelid and leap to her thought like the 
 shadow that follows substance, but that courage, that 
 high contempt of circumstance that only those can give 
 who wear the wings of great desire. 
 
 Spoilt was she by another man's owning? 
 
 At the very word he jibbed, for it was not "owning" 
 that he craved. Had he not, even now, the better thing ? 
 For he could follow her, it seemed, into the spiritual 
 world that music opens; he could speak with her, bodi- 
 less, in a voice that needed no sound. 
 
 Then she looked away and sighed, while Knyvett 
 smiled, almost pitying the pair that would never know 
 that other desire which beats against the walls of sense, 
 that from the pain of a wound learns the ecstasy of 
 deathlessness. 
 
 But he was alone all the time, since Sara had merely 
 been considering her own fingers, wondering, in fact, 
 why they were so powerless to grasp what she wanted. 
 It was the strolling player who had suggested the 
 thought, for he had known how to grip success, to lay
 
 AN ESSAY IN HEROICS 69 
 
 hands on power, to escape from poverty and squalor. 
 Every fibre of his nature had struggled for it. 
 
 As hers did not, for deep below all desire of escape, 
 she knew that her self-pride kept her in her place. She 
 could not bear to think that she had ever failed in any 
 demand made on her; her querulous father, her neg- 
 lectful husband, were powerless to alter her own deter- 
 mined uprightness. 
 
 But Captain Billy? For after all his eyes had drawn 
 hers. Only, compelled by his gaze, she saw how he could 
 be made to serve her. Since his money, his influence, 
 his obedience, were hers for the asking; she had only 
 to lift a finger. 
 
 That was how it looked to Sara. For Billy Knyvett 
 had only been smoking an enchanted cigarette.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A SIBYL OP THE SLUMS : CONTAINING THE LEGEND OF A TOBY 
 JAR AND A DIVINING CRYSTAL 
 
 AT Dartmouth quay that night Mr. Knyvett found 
 the yacht's dinghy moored at the landing-slip, the 
 ship's boy in attendance. From within the bar of the 
 "Valiant Sailor" came the hum of voices. 
 
 ' ' What 's the meaning of this, Bennett ? ' ' asked Billy. 
 
 "Mr. Cole's in there with Mr. Bodinar; meller he is, 
 too, and talking fine," answered the boy. 
 
 "Go in and say quietly, without attracting attention, 
 that Mr. Cole is wanted outside." 
 
 In went the boy and presently out came Cole, "up 
 the pole," but not excessively so. 
 
 "We've got Bodinar in there," remarked he trium- 
 phantly, "and we'd the devil's own time to do it, I can 
 tell you." 
 
 "Why?" demanded Knyvett curtly. "I never heard 
 there was usually much difficulty in getting a sailor into 
 a public house." 
 
 "There was with him, sir. I'll tell 'ee how 'twas. 
 First, this morning I talked over the ship a bit with 
 'en. Told 'en 'twas a place where the steward aired 
 your nightshirt and that. Then, when he 'd liquored up, 
 said I: 'There's a pretty brew at the "Valiant Sailor." 
 Let's ashore and try it. It's my leave.' 
 
 " 'No,' says he, 'not me. I don't go ashore till 'tis 
 dark and the last train 's left for Brixham. ' 
 
 ' ' ' Got a friend on her then ? ' asked I. 
 
 " 'Hope so,' says he. And that's all he would say. 
 
 70
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 71 
 
 But I got 'en here at last. And that Hicks he wanted 
 to go is no cop. A drunken, lazy good-for-nort. That's 
 what they all say. Ain't no class at all. But Bodinar 
 swears he won't go without 'en. His right hand man 
 he is, says B. It's my opinion he and Hicks have put 
 their heads together to get us out there and then do for 
 us, bringing the gold home for then-selves. " 
 
 ' ' Cole, ' ' said Mr. Kny vett, ' ' you 've been going in for 
 reading that's far too lurid. Lead the way in and let's 
 have a look at Bodinar." 
 
 The air of the sanded bar parlour was clammy and 
 wondrous beery, but in the neighbourhood of the great 
 tree-root burning in the grate, quite bearable. The ta- 
 bles and chairs showed the woody fibres of the gram of 
 their wood as a post-impressionist study shows the lines 
 of a face. Mr. Bodinar was shouting to the landlord 
 who, in shirt-sleeves and broadcloth trousers, exuded 
 sleek moisture from every pore, and creaks from every 
 inch of his brightly polished shoes. His hair was plas- 
 tered with grease and the waistcoat button in the small 
 of his back had a rakish air. 
 
 11 Women!" cried Bodinar. "I've knowed women for 
 forty year and more. But never did I see such women 
 as we've got now. Why, here's women tackling bur- 
 glars single-handed and standing 'pon deck with the ship 
 going down under 'em, and never so much as a scritch. 
 It's against all nature, for 'tis the make of the women 
 to fear and the make of the men to comfort 'em. But, 
 when a woman don't want comforting, what's a man 
 to do?" 
 
 His voice rose to a bellow, but he was too overcome 
 by his grievances to stop for any newcomers. His nose 
 was the colour of copper and the firelight turned his 
 matted hair to the hue of lichen as he leant over the 
 table. 
 
 "You'll get the ins and outs of it to-night, sir," said 
 Cole in a low voice.
 
 72 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "By Jove, he's a tarry breeks," exclaimed Mr. 
 Knyvett. 
 
 Bodinar was by this time in that state when a man 
 pays no heed to anything said below a certain level of 
 voice. 
 
 "I didn't know you were so well up in the subject," 
 said Knyvett, nodding to the landlord to bring spirits 
 and glasses. 
 
 "Women! I know 'em better 'n I know my own face. 
 I like 'em clinging and tender myself," said he, giving 
 a hitch to his garments, "always did. And I suppose 
 that's why I got married to a strammocking, upstanding 
 woman that didn't know what fear was. No, nor you 
 couldn't teach it to her, neither, though I tried most 
 ways. ' ' 
 
 "So," thought Knyvett, "Sara was right. "It's an 
 affair of cherchez la femme after all." 
 
 "I don't see why you married her then," said he. 
 
 "Don't you?" snorted he. "Why, that's the way 
 with the women down here. As maids, they're ripe and 
 melting; tender little doves that'll barely coo when 
 you stroke 'em. That's Devon maids. But Devon 
 wives ! Good Lor' ! Do 'ee know why two-thirds of the 
 able-seamen in the English navy be Devon men?" he 
 exclaimed, turning fiercely on Knyvett. 
 
 "No, but I know it's a point much debated by naval 
 experts. ' ' 
 
 "Experts here, experts there! 'Tis to get away from 
 the Devon women that so many Devon men take to sea. 
 'Tis the women that keep up the supply of men for 
 King George's ships. They may tell up old trade about 
 the call of the sea, but 'tis the call of the Devon women 
 as they lads cannot bear morning, noon and night. For 
 proper terrors they be, when you get to know them. 
 The bos'un's whistle's naught to 'em. And upon a 
 man-o'-war you be as free of 'em as you can be any- 
 where in this earth. ' '
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 73 
 
 "But you're not a navy man?" 
 
 "Not me ! I knowed a trick worth two of that. First 
 'long I worked on a coaster that got wrecked off Ushant. 
 All hands given out for lost. I wasn't, though, for I 
 come ashore all right. But I didn't tell up any old yarns 
 about sole survivor. I just took my hook and went off 
 and knocked about a bit. Lost, dead, drownded and 
 Bessie a widow. You twig? I thought I'd take a holi- 
 day for a bit. ' ' 
 
 He winked portentously. 
 
 "But," he resumed, "I didn't go off like that till I'd 
 tried to break Bessie's spirit every way I could think 
 of. And, my word, what a spirit there was to her, too. ' ' 
 
 He spat, joyously exact. 
 
 "I can mind it all, same as if 'twas yesterday. Us 
 hadn't been married a year when there was a crane 
 working just alongside the quay, clearing out a ship's 
 hold. Somehow 'twas out of order, and in another 
 minute would ha' let down a ton of concrete upon the 
 men below. Bessie noted it, and out and thrust in her 
 arm instead of the bar that was missing. Snap went 
 the arm, but it saved the men's lives. And her never 
 said a word when they set it, only went a bit white-like 
 about the gills, and called me a fule for looking at her so 
 sheep-like. 
 
 "And that was the same woman that used to give a 
 bit of a shy laugh to show where her was, when her 
 waited for me down street-end back along in the court- 
 ing days. 
 
 "For you can tell what the cider '11 be from the apples 
 you use, and what the beer '11 be from the hops, but you 
 can't tell the woman by the maid." 
 
 "Did her ever knuckle under?" enquired the mate. 
 
 "Not her. Being short-handed one day, I took her 
 out to help with the boat. I did it purposely, for I saw 
 with the tail of my eye, 'twas blowing up for a thunder- 
 storm. Ever seen a thunderstorm at sea from an open
 
 74 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 boat?" he enquired, turning towards the innkeeper, in- 
 stinctively knowing him to be no seaman. 
 
 "Never," said he. 
 
 "Then you don't know what 'tis to look in the face 
 of Fear," said he, his voice changing to the long 
 cadence with which sailors speak of the awe of the sea. 
 
 "It gathered in round us darker and darker and far 
 off, pretty nigh from t'other side of the world, there 
 come a low roaring. But I wouldn't put back, for I'd 
 sworn I'd see her shiver, make her turn to me for com- 
 fort. 
 
 ' ' Then a little wind stirred across the sea. I can feel 
 the puff of it now in my face. Her was steering when 
 it come. I seed her head bend down all still and quiet, 
 and then against the black sky in a roar like hell-mouth 
 opening, the jag, jag, jag of the lightning. 
 
 " 'Bessie,' said I 'Bessie, are you there?' when the 
 roar drew off for a minute and I could hear the suck 
 of the water against the gunwales, afore the rain come 
 down. 
 
 " 'Yes, I be,' says she, 'but no thanks to the fule 
 that brought me out, when a blind puppy could have 
 smelt a storm. But you'm not fit to be in charge of a 
 cat, leave alone a boat.' 
 
 "After that I give it up. I'd seen strong men cower 
 in bottom of boat afore a storm of lightning at sea. 
 And not a mite of feeling did her show, but temper. 
 But, all the same, when us moored up safe along quay- 
 side at last, I just heard her give a little sigh, sort of 
 half a sob like. I often thought of that bit of a sigh 
 while I stayed away in Ameriky. ' ' 
 
 ' ' So you did come back to her ? ' ' asked Knyvett. 
 
 "Well, yes," said he shamefacedly. "You see, her 
 fried tetties capital, and her'd a little bit of money, 
 too. And Ameriky 's all very well in its way, but some- 
 how they'm more homely, the old scolds at home. 
 
 "But when I come back, I put up at the old 'Ship'
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 75 
 
 a day or two, and didn't say who I was. I thought I'd 
 just see how my lady had been behaving, for there 
 might have been another chap come in and hung up 
 his hat in my house. But I found there hadn't, though 
 several had tried, some of 'em telling up tales about 
 being me, only so changed by beating on the rocks 
 that my own mother wouldn't know me. But to one 
 and all that made out to be her long-lost husband her 
 said but one thing : 
 
 " 'Let 'en come in and fetch a whistle out of the 
 old Toby jar, and I'll believe 'en.' 
 
 "They say there was as many of 'em as half a dozen 
 at a tim$ outside, waiting to blow away at that old jar. 
 
 "At that, I togs myself up and round to the house. 
 And when I got there, I didn't so much as scrape my 
 boots, for I wanted to show I was master. 
 
 " In I walked and says I, ' Bessie, I Ve come back. ' 
 
 " 'Oh,' says she, 'hev'ee? I've heard something like 
 that before, I fancy. ' 
 
 "But her knowed me, I could see that. Yet I said 
 not a word. I just picked up a cup from the kitchen 
 dresser and out to the tap and filled it. I poured the 
 water from it into the mouthpiece of the old jar and 
 then I lifted 'en to my mouth. The sound come beau- 
 tiful, as clear as the bo 'sun's whistle when he pipes 
 the watch. For the drop of water in the jug was the 
 secret they other chaps couldn't fathom." 
 
 "And did the whistle fetch her?" asked the landlord, 
 listening open-mouthed. 
 
 "It did," he answered grimly, "for her said: 
 * Simon, go out this minute and scrape your boots. ' 
 
 "And then I knowed I'd come home. And never did 
 I taste aught to equal the fried tetties and ham of that 
 night's tea. For they've some points, the Devon 
 women, if 'tis only a slick hand with the frying-pan. ' ' 
 
 "And where's the Toby jar now?" asked Cole cun- 
 ningly.
 
 76 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Why, wherever Bessie is, of course." 
 
 "And where's her?" 
 
 "Not forty mile from here, young man. No, nor yet 
 ten. I han't seed her for six months or more, though. 
 But I'll warn if I was to go up not far off the old ' Three 
 Elms' I'd find Bessie and the Toby." 
 
 "That's Higher Brixham, of course," whispered Cole 
 to Mr. Knyvett, who nodded and remarked aloud : 
 
 "And to-day 'twas her ghost you saw then?" 
 
 "Ghosts! ghosts! don't 'ee talk upon ghosts! What 
 I have suffered from that old trade, no tongue can tell. 
 But ghosts don't yell, leastwise the ones I know, don't, 
 nor call out: 'Simon, why there's Simon, the gal- 
 lows-bird!' No, nor they don't run round corners, nor 
 dog ye!" 
 
 "So it's all out," said Cole. 
 
 "Not all," answered Mr. Knyvett, as he suddenly re- 
 called Peter Westlake's tales of the witch women of 
 Brixham. Leaning forward suddenly he asked in a 
 low voice: 
 
 "What trade was it then, Bodinar, that you suf- 
 fered from? Trade in ghosts?" 
 
 Bodinar eyed him curiously for a second. 
 
 "Well," said he, love of the lurid overcoming his 
 caution, "how's this, mister? What do you say when 
 a great door-key half turns in the lock with no human 
 hand touching it? That's happened not once nor 
 twice in my house, when Bessie's had a bad case on. 
 I brought her up to look at it once; turned all but 
 round in the lock it was. The leastest little touch and 
 the door would have opened. 'Bessie,' said I, 'how 
 did that come about?' And her laughed and said: 
 'You girt innocent, I know all about that. That's my 
 business; you leave it to me.' And I did leave it to 
 her. For 'twasn't human hands as turned that key.' ' 
 
 Mr. Cole 's hair fairly stirred like quills. 
 
 "A bad case?" stammered he.
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 77 
 
 ''Ay," said Bodinar, "when there 'd been overlook- 
 ing of man or woman or cheeld and her was fighting 
 it. But there, 'tis old gab. Her's all right in other 
 ways. Bears chillern, and that, I mean. But still 
 I quit. No, nor fried tetties wouldn't keep me 
 nuther. Just you go and look at her eyes, mister, and see 
 if you could bide 'em any more 'n I can. ' ' 
 
 "I will," said Mr. Knyvett to himself. "It strikes 
 me there's a good deal to be known about Mr. Bodinar 
 and his household that might come in useful. ' ' 
 
 Then he threw down the money for the drinks. 
 
 "Get him away as quickly as you can," said he to 
 the mate. "He'll probably deny it all to-morrow, but 
 we've got what we wanted anyway. And don't bother 
 him about Hicks. I'll see to that blackguard all 
 right." 
 
 "And t'other blackguard," cogitated Cole, eyeing 
 Mr. Bodinar with disgust, "is going to lead us all on 
 a mad cruise round the Horn. Well, well, you never 
 can tell where the maggot '11 bite the Old Man next. 
 Come on, you swine;" this to Simon Bodinar. For 
 Mr. Cole, having no taste for psychology, hated a rascal 
 he couldn't see through. And Bodinar was very far 
 from being transparent. 
 
 A sudden storm-cloud gathered over the channel and 
 whirling before the northeaster swept up the valley 
 above the houses of Brixham, whitening the grey roof- 
 slates and cutting the faces of those who were abroad 
 with tiny points of steel. The chimney smoke made 
 dirty blurs against the filmy veil that swept across the 
 rows of bare stark houses which fill the rock-hewn place 
 from top to bottom. Then, as the storm rushed inland, 
 a sudden glint of sunlight reddened snowy roofs. 
 
 It was the following night when Mr. Knyvett found 
 himself on the winding road of Higher Brixham, pass- 
 ing up and up between houses of every date from the 
 fourteenth century to the twentieth. There were huge
 
 78 WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 white chimneys of mediseval cottages with stone benches 
 built in their walls next to the black and red brick 
 houses of the folk who were making a step in life 
 and had started a piano in the parlour. From the 
 forge came the clanking of welded iron and the smell 
 of singeing hair. Beyond the street, against the 
 masses of cloud, a golden-green light, the essential 
 spirit of the burgeoning time of the year, hovered 
 above meadow and hedgerow. The screaming of the 
 gulls, as they swooped over the purple of newly- 
 ploughed land, shrilled with a note of storm; light and 
 air, earth and sky rioted with life. 
 
 Then Knyvett plunged down two steps into a dark 
 stone entrance place below the level of the street. As 
 he knocked he could hear the wind whistle against low, 
 deep, solid walls. From the crannies of the closely 
 shuttered window light poured. At last the door was 
 opened and a girl ushered him in, with a: " Mother, 
 you're wanted." He heard the key turn quickly in 
 the lock of the door at his back. There was a sense as 
 of one being quickly swallowed up in the manner of 
 his reception and in the gust of warm, sickly air that 
 moved towards the draught of the closing door. 
 
 The low room where he found himself was divided 
 into two by a partition, the upper half of which was 
 formed by a long pane of glass covered with dingy 
 brown curtains. It was the sort of place where every 
 surface, including that of the skin, seems to gather a 
 scummy deposit of heat and dirt. From the tables 
 slipped greasy table-cloths; from the chairs, patched 
 cushions. In the middle of the room stood a wicker 
 cradle on big rockers. When the girl opened the door 
 in the partition he caught a glimpse of a big fire that 
 roared half up the chimney. From lines close to the 
 ceiling hung garments of flannelette and a chirping of 
 many children made an undertone to the sound of chat- 
 tering women's voices.
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 79 
 
 At the noise of the door one of these looked up; a 
 curious head it v. r as to see here, with black bands of 
 hair bound fillet-like, round the fine, haughtily-carried 
 head. Under lip met upper with a square determina- 
 tion that was Cromwellian, but never pinched. The 
 features were chiselled, not moulded, and the chin had 
 a habit of growing portentously huge at a mood. The 
 rounded eyelids like ancient chimney-cowls shrouded 
 the eyes from the merest glimpse of a naughty world. 
 
 Billy Knyvett recognized the face in an instant as he 
 pursed his lips for a noiseless whistle. It was the girl 
 called Molly Woodruffe. 
 
 ' ' Cut, my dear, and wish, ' ' said a hoarse voice, as the 
 partition door banged. 
 
 Then followed the slither of pluffy cards and the 
 babble of monotonous patter. One of the panes of the 
 partition was partially opened; it refused to budge 
 under Knyvett 's hand and after vainly clattering about 
 to attract attention, he resigned himself to the inevita- 
 ble. 
 
 "You've had a letter lately? And been a bit wor- 
 ried about it ? A letter from a foreign port ? And you 
 don't know what to do? You've been in two minds 
 about it?" 
 
 Walking gingerly, like Agag, the woman went on : 
 
 "But he's coming home. So much is plain. Shuffle 
 again, my dear, and cut. And then let's see." 
 
 "Silly little fool," ejaculated Knyvett, wondering 
 whether he had better break in on the tete-a-tete and 
 put the girl to mortification or burst open the locked 
 door at the back of him. 
 
 "Queer: he's a married man, too. But there's a 
 ring for you; after a time. And as regards your own 
 self, all will be to your satisfaction. It's a good for- 
 tune. It will be decided this year to your satisfaction. 
 If you wish it. Yes, a dark woman and a heart man. 
 And you between."
 
 80 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Then came a skirl of laughter and a sudden screech : 
 
 "Maria, come here. Come here when I tell you." 
 Then in a monotone: "You never would believe the 
 trouble I have with that child. I beat her, beat the life 
 nearly out of her. But she's that wilful. Maria, come 
 here and read the crystal for the lady. Yes, my eyes 
 give out. But she's been trained. She'll see what 
 there is to see. 
 
 "No, my dear, hold it in the left hand. There's a 
 vein to the left hand straight from the heart, with the 
 glass ball against the velvet. That's it. Now, Maria, 
 speak up plain and tell the lady exactly." 
 
 There followed the hiss of an upturned gas jet and 
 then a girl's voice chaunting: 
 
 "I see a dark face, a man's face. He stares a great 
 deal. He wears eyeglasses and a fair moustache. He's 
 got funny eyebrows, they run up into points. ' ' 
 
 "That's right, isn't it?" asked the woman. And 
 from her tone of satisfaction Knyvett knew she was 
 reading the girl's face. 
 
 "I can't see any more," said the child's voice. It 
 sounded bored and tired. 
 
 Knyvett stood stockstill, searching for a clue. The 
 pointed eyebrows were unusual. 
 
 "By the Lord!" cried Knyvett at last, for he had 
 got his clue. It was by no means difficult to grasp, for 
 the Woodruffes were well known in the district. So, 
 too, was the man described in the crystal. The only 
 inexplicable thing was why the girl should be here. 
 Yet her voice sounded hot, eager, faltering with anxiety. 
 
 Knyvett stood, hands in pockets, searching his mind 
 for what it knew of Molly Woodruffe. 
 
 Sara had always been sorry for her, yet half envious 
 of her nerve and spirit. For the "Woodruffes had 
 climbed from depths of poverty and helplessness in a 
 manner only possible to indomitable will. It had been 
 a splendid fight, waged by the mother with the old
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 81 
 
 feminine weapons of wheedling and cajolery, by the 
 daughter with brain and determination. 
 
 All Molly's life had consisted of excursions and 
 alarms with her mother, since never was the devil's 
 wedlock of parenthood more viciously interlocked than 
 in the case of these two. It began with looks, for 
 florid, fair-haired Mrs. Woodruffe found her daughter 
 developing into an olive-complexioned girl of the wing- 
 necked, big-eyed type. Molly's eyes, in fact, went 
 with the potted meats on which her father had tried to 
 found a fortune and failed and both were the crosses 
 of Mrs. Woodruffe 's existence. Mr. Woodruffe, being 
 responsible for them, had departed early in life for a 
 sphere where potted meats cannot penetrate and where 
 the angelic wings go not ill with ivory skins. But 
 worst of all was the fact that Molly defied the atmos- 
 phere of sham which her mother regarded as invigora- 
 ting ozone. And Mrs. Woodruffe, who considered any 
 sign of power in a woman's face unseemly, found that 
 the quality her child's face expressed was also present 
 in her character. "Mother is such a liar," Molly would 
 say, ostentatiously displaying jars of potted meat. 
 
 That had been the beginning: the end was a blank 
 refusal to accept a genteel and silly boarding-school 
 education. Instead, she had forced her mother to pay 
 for class fees in hard-headed subjects, had pinched and 
 pared, had worn an old sailor hat three seasons and had 
 finally taken a good degree in Honours. 
 
 Now she spent half her year rushing up and down 
 England, getting up facts and speeches for the Member 
 of Parliament to whom she was secretary. She could 
 pack a bag in ten minutes, grasp the true inwards of 
 a strike in a day, and write the synopsis of a speech 
 in half an hour. In effect, she was known as the quick- 
 est worker in her profession, that of devilling. Her 
 salary should have beeen 500, but she only got 120, 
 for M. P.'s like cheap and efficient woman's work
 
 82 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 as well as do other employers of labour. She could 
 travel and work and play with no signs of fatigue ex- 
 cept the blue rims under her eyes. Once only had she 
 enjoyed a rest cure and that was in Hollo way, when she 
 went to gaol for a month after an affray at West- 
 minster, since, having no money to pay for her return 
 ticket, Holloway had presented itself as a safe asylum. 
 Therefore she had grappled with a policeman and after- 
 wards boasted that she put on three pounds in weight 
 during her residence in that squalid spot. 
 
 Now the woman who can put on three pounds on 
 prison diet is a thing worth something. 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe had, in fact, hatched an eaglet and 
 not being by any means such a fool as she looked, knew 
 it. She could not, of course, alter the fact, so she spent 
 her time in wondering why she had not given birth 
 to a ''womanly" woman. Vaguely reminiscent of scrip- 
 ture, she used to wail: "Looks will fade, and styles 
 change, but womanliness never faileth." 
 
 Then she tried something more effective by taking 
 a house in Devonshire and contriving to hoist herself 
 into society mainly by the help of the Herefords, who 
 were distinguished and yet Bohemian. This suited 
 Molly exactly for it gave her an opportunity during 
 holiday times of breathing good air, drinking milk and 
 going to bed early. She had, in fact, being a wise 
 virgin, counted every card in her hand and knew that 
 the trump was physical health. If not beautiful, a 
 woman may always appear distinguished ; Molly had no 
 intention whatever of fading before sixty and after that 
 she had already decided how she would pile up her hair 
 and look like a duchess. 
 
 It was not for nothing that they were known as the 
 Fighting Family. 
 
 "Hard, hard, hard," sighed Mrs. Woodruffe, who 
 always relied on folly as her weapon and never read 
 a novel written in a style more subtle than sign-painting.
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 83 
 
 And it was this hard woman who went to Bessie 
 Bodinar to know the future! Meanwhile Mr. Knyvett 
 prickled all over his skin at the idea that he was 
 prying in secret places; he felt as mean as a man who 
 has read a locked diary. 
 
 But to the Bodinar house there was evidently a back 
 door, for after the clink of coin there followed a silence, 
 the partition door opened and Mrs. Bodinar came in. 
 
 "My goodness gracious!" cried she, "and the good 
 gent here all the time! You must please excuse us 
 being all of a caddie, but what with my work and my 
 children, I do say I never have so much as time to 
 put my clothes on." 
 
 Her eyes fell on the cradle and she giggled as she 
 lifted it and leaning it against her protuberant body, 
 carried it into the other room. 
 
 "A poverty basket this," she said. "Don't you never 
 have nort to do with it. And here I am with my 
 last, last of six living and four buried, born when I 
 was forty-five, in my forty-sixth year. But there, you 
 never know your luck." 
 
 Black, protruding eyes, half cunning and half mad, 
 stared from a square head on a short squat neck that 
 projected above a shapeless bosom ill-covered by a pin- 
 fastened bodice. A gilt belt cut her body into two 
 halves. 
 
 "Sleep!" said she, "I never sleep scarcely. For 'tis 
 always working all round me." 
 
 She grasped at the air. 
 
 "And sleep's queer, too, for a body seems to wander 
 here and there. And then they come to me, they that 
 are in need of me. I saw one of my ladies t'other 
 night as plain as I see you, standing by my bed with 
 her furs on. 'Bodinar,' says she, 'I'm in trouble.' 
 And the next day her was here in the flesh sure 'miff. ' ' 
 
 The elder girl, a white-faced creature with a flat, 
 wide-spreading nose and close-set, sinister eyes, stood
 
 84 WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 behind her mother. A tiny girl sat pressing pins into 
 a cushion with fierce dents; another child cried from 
 the cradle. Hastily rushing in, Mrs. Bodinar began 
 to rock it to and fro with hard jolts that flung the 
 baby from side to side. The wails never ceasing, she 
 lifted it out and began to unfasten her bodice. The 
 child was at least two years old. 
 
 "It's a save," said she, excusing herself. 
 
 And Knyvett sat and wondered how a theologian 
 would justify the fate to which this woman's children 
 were born, shut in to superstition, to fear and trickery 
 and lies. The white-faced reader of the crystal might 
 be fourteen. She wore a lace-trimmed blouse and short 
 sleeves and plainly longed to be off up street with the 
 lads, but dared not move. Large and fat and white, 
 all the children were ; the foetid air got on his nerves. 
 
 "But you wanted a touch of my art," said the 
 woman, and crawling to a table with the child cling- 
 ing to her she pushed a pack of filthy cards towards him. 
 
 "Have you done this sort of thing for long?" asked 
 Knyvett, mechanically shuffling and cutting. 
 
 ' ' Ten year, perhaps. My mother did it afore me and 
 her mother afore that. I've heard that never a trawler 
 sailed out in they days, but the skipper 'ud come up 
 for a bit of Gran's art. But times is changed now. 
 'Tjs the bettermost folks that come to me. From all 
 over the country they come, in motor-cars and carriages. 
 And I'm not the only one. One hussy goes up from 
 here to London for six months of the year and has a 
 flat there. But not me ! My blackguard of a husband 's 
 left me again and I can't traipse about free." 
 
 "Mrs. Bodinar," asked Knyvett, "what's your hus- 
 band like? I met a Bodinar not so long ago." 
 
 "And if you said you'd seen 'en this very week to 
 Dartmouth, you'd maybe be telling the truth. But he 
 give me the go-by, the dirty hound." 
 
 ' ' And if I can help you to lay hands on him, will you
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 85 
 
 do what I want you to do? No, damn the cards. I 
 didn't come for that." 
 
 "Then you're the police?" 
 
 "No, I'm not. And I don't mean to do you any 
 harm. But I do mean to stop your working more mis- 
 chief. By some carelessness I was left in the other 
 room " 
 
 ' ' That 's Maria 's doing. Her '11 pay for it. ' ' 
 
 "I know the young lady you had here. And so do 
 you. And I know the man your child described. And 
 so do you. No, no names, please " 
 
 He raised his hand to secure silence. 
 
 "Now what did you mean by coupling their names in 
 the way you did? What has the girl to do with that 
 man?" 
 
 "Why, they was- together every day this autumn, 
 boating, in the woods and that." 
 
 Knyvett lit a cigarette, conscious of her shrewd eyes 
 on him. 
 
 ' ' That so ? " he smiled. ' ' You saw them in the crystal, 
 I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, I saw them in the crystal," answered she 
 sullenly. 
 
 Suddenly her manner changed completely as, turning 
 to her eldest daughter, she bade her leave the house. 
 Mr. Knyvett began to perceive that there might be sev- 
 eral women under Bessie Bodinar 's skin. 
 
 "You think you've seen my husband?" she asked, 
 when they were alone but for the younger children. 
 
 "I believe so," said Knyvett, "a thin-faced man with 
 a reddish beard and a chamois leather bag. He coughs 
 behind the back of his hands and talks of 'mineral 
 wealth'; has a precise way of speaking when he begins; 
 talks of enjoying good health, and that, but when he's 
 up the pole " 
 
 ' ' Talks like a book, ' ' interposed Mrs. Bodinar. 
 
 "Well, like some books."
 
 86 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "That's Simon, then," sighed she. 
 
 "And out of the chamois bag," said Knyvett slowly, 
 "he pours a blackish dust " 
 
 "Iss, fay, but 'twas gravel, not dust, as I turned out 
 of his breeches pockets. ' ' 
 
 A droll notion struck Knyvett and he began to laugh, 
 while Mrs. Bodinar watched him, red-eyed and sus- 
 picious. 
 
 "Mrs. Bodinar," asked he, "shall we do a deal? 
 You tell me what I want to know and I'll " 
 
 "Find me Simon that I may get my nails into 'en 
 and I'll do anything you want." 
 
 "I'll better that. For I'll take you off in the same 
 ship with him. You shall meet on the high seas and 
 go round the world together, if it suits your book. ' ' 
 
 For all the time his thought was boring like a mole 
 into the matter of Molly "Woodruffe ; he had it in mind, 
 in fact, to clear the board of all extra pieces. And it 
 struck him that Mrs. Bodinar was dangerously engaged 
 in stoking up too many fires. 
 
 "And what do you want?" 
 
 "I want to know all you can tell me of the matter 
 of the chamois bag." 
 
 But she was paying no attention, for he had appar- 
 ently struck down on yet another Mrs. Bodinar, the 
 mother woman this time. 
 
 "Simon's been my husband for twenty year off and 
 on," she added grimly. "For he's a wandering cove 
 and one roof and one woman don't suit 'en for long. 
 Once he give out he was wrecked and then he come 
 back after years and " 
 
 "Whistled down the old Toby jug," said Knyvett. 
 
 ' ' Then you know that, too ? " 
 
 ' ' Told it in the ' Valiant Sailor ' on Dartmouth quay. ' ' 
 
 "Ah, Simon, Simon," cried Mrs. Bodinar, suddenly 
 doting like a mother over a dear, but naughty child, 
 "in how many bars hath a' told that, I wonder?"
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 87 
 
 "What do you know about that chamois bag?" 
 
 "Chamois bag," said she, "why, you've got that on 
 the brain, sir. I know he told up a lot of old trade 
 about the gold-dust he'd found. Used to go round 
 bragging that he could make any man's fortune that 
 he liked. But his breeches pockets were full of gravel 
 and he'd a bit of paper with lines on it in his sea- 
 chest. That I burnt, for 'twas mucksy old trade. ' ' 
 
 "Do you believe that by any chance there might be 
 some truth in his story?" 
 
 "Well, Simon's a liar, but he isn't a liar all through, 
 as you mid say." 
 
 "I'm no nearer," said Knyvett, pacing up and down. 
 "For I knew that before. But you've done your best. 
 I'll be frank. We're getting ready to send out an ex- 
 pedition to look for the gold your husband talks of. 
 Apparently we're the first people he's found, after 
 years of gab, to take him seriously." 
 
 "You'll promise you'll put me so's Bodinar can't get 
 away if I tell all I know?" 
 
 "I promise." 
 
 "Sir, sir," her face worked, "you don't know what 
 I've gone through. I've been nigh mad over it all, 
 for it always seemed to me I'd done it. It's Simon. 
 Down and down he's been going all these years. Not 
 so many years ago he w T as cox of a lifeboat, trusted, up 
 in the world. There wasn't a finer seaman anywhere. 
 Glad to get 'en they was, for a hard bit of work. 
 Then he come down, step by step, till he's thankful 
 to get fifteen shilling a week. 'Twas my queer trade 
 partly. He hated it, but I'd been used to it all my 
 life. Couldn't do without the fortune-telling, but it 
 turned 'en sickish, he used to say. And yet I can 
 manage 'en better 'n anybody, when I've got 'en by 
 me. And many the time, when I've heard some other 
 woman's man go wambling down the street, all drinky, 
 I 've wondered what my poor Sim was doing. ' '
 
 88 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "But your trade?" 
 
 "I'll give it up though 'tis in my blood. I will, if 
 you'll put me so's I can get to Simon. You can't man- 
 age 'en without me. And though it brings heaving in 
 my innerds so much as to look at the sea, I'll put away 
 the chillern to my sister's and go." 
 
 "But the gold-dust?" 
 
 "I'll worm it out of 'en. I'd gie my soul to the 
 old black man to get Sim back, I would. ' ' 
 
 She laid a hand on his arm, her face fiery red and the 
 sweat shining on her forehead. 
 
 ' ' Can 'ee bring it to pass, sir ? " 
 
 Her attitude was full of a certain truthfulness, due 
 in part to her reliance on his manhood and his wealth; 
 he belonged, she knew, to those who get things done. 
 
 "Yes," said Knyvett. Then he laughed, for there 
 are fools who consider working folks simple. 
 
 He wandered down to the road that winds above the 
 quay. In the midst of the dense mass of vessels in 
 harbour one trawler was puffing out clouds of steam. 
 From the forest of masts and shaggy trawls came the 
 hoarse cries of men and the clank of moving gear. 
 Then, like a huge bat's wing, a dark sail was jerked 
 aloft. 
 
 Pencils of quivering light stretched across the water 
 of the outer harbour, reflections from the houses on the 
 cliff. Around the great bay the shore lights faded into 
 dim channel distances whence came the multitudinous 
 voice of the sea. A siren hooted three times from the 
 coal-hulks that bristled with black derrick arms. A 
 hissing tug bustled across the stillness. Like a yellow 
 shutter the traceried window of St. Peter the Fisher- 
 man glowed from the dull fronts of the mass of houses 
 above him ; across it he could see the shadow of a beam 
 in the ceiling. It was the outward sign of the inward 
 fear of the Unknown. 
 
 For one need not go to a savage African tribe to learn
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 89 
 
 how men may dread the forces of nature. Even here 
 they are perfectly aware that it won't do to defy the 
 Something back of the veil, which is all that the wisest 
 of us can affirm as yet; hence the piety that is two- 
 thirds superstition. Many a boat of the Brixham fleet 
 will draw up a trawl of a Saturday night in mid-ocean 
 and not let it down till midnight Sunday night. Yet 
 they never pull the unknown dead aboard, even though 
 it has been in the water but an hour or so, lest the 
 legal expenses of burial should fall on the boat's crew, 
 since it is the devil, not the ghost, that is feared in this 
 town. Every sea-faring place has its special cult, as 
 well as its own fishing-grounds and peculiar brand of 
 morality. 
 
 The narrow courts and wynds are full of terrors ; up 
 that steep stairway by the Coffin House no one must 
 walk on a New Year's Eve, for an unseen spirit hurls 
 one back, leaving the body black and blue from con- 
 flict. Up above the raised stone stairway called the 
 Overgang is a house where a doorway opened three 
 times without human touch on the night when four 
 boats of the fleet went down in a hurricane. When 
 Christmas Eve was over the wives gave up hope of ever 
 seeing their men again, but the only certain tidings that 
 came was the thrice-opened door of one man 's home. 
 
 Molly Woodruffe in her life of constant bustle was so 
 used to unexpected meetings that she showed no sur- 
 prise when Knyvett appeared at her elbow as she leant 
 over the low wall above the harbour. As she used to 
 put it forcibly: the Archangel Gabriel in the hall of 
 Hades would scarcely have caused her a start. But 
 when Billy saw how white and dispirited the girl 
 looked, he marvelled at the strange things women carry 
 under their silence, that silence of the centuries which 
 is so profound that when it is broken their voice sounds 
 like a cry. 
 
 But he was practical, too, and insisted on finding a
 
 90 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 tea-shop. On the quay-front, therefore, with the pro- 
 tuberant corporation of William of Orange like a fly- 
 ing buttress outside, they sat in the window over a meal, 
 while the cat crept into her arms. A weird black 
 creature, with yellow eyes, he clung to the girl's breast, 
 with cold hind toes curled up on her palms and damp 
 nose against her cheek. A low-spirited, cringing thing 
 he was, who might have been a man imprisoned for 
 his sins in the form of a beast that crawls on his belly. 
 It was ugly ; Billy tore it away from her, for he remem- 
 bered Mrs. Bodinar. 
 
 "I've been trying to touch the feet of the rainbow 
 to-night," said Molly at last when the "drunkard's 
 tea" he made her drink had turned the world to a more 
 bearable place. "Don't you know how children always 
 want to get to the place where the blues and greens 
 strike the earth? It is so hard to wait for nice things. 
 You want to hurry up and get to them quick." 
 
 He remembered what he heard someone say of her: 
 was any girl ever as innocent as that girl looks? It 
 was because of that memory that he dared to be sin- 
 cere: 
 
 "Ah," he said slowly, "one doesn't get there till 
 another person's life is as dear to one as one's own. 
 And that doesn't come about in a year or a day. I 
 fancy many a fat grocer and his wife know more about 
 it than your young lover." 
 
 ' ' Always man and woman, of course ? ' ' she sneered. 
 
 "Not always. But most often. Which is perhaps 
 why man and woman are. Then it stretches to children 
 and so outwards. From the small tie to the large. ' ' 
 
 "Yes, always a tie, always chains. That's true, any- 
 way, if nothing else is." 
 
 "No; not chains. Welding together. Fusion." 
 
 "Worse than ever!" she laughed. Then suddenly 
 cooed. 
 
 "What a nice man you are!"
 
 91 
 
 He laughed, started and blushed, looking at her 
 kindly, the more so for the trap-door through which he 
 had gazed unwillingly into her private thought-world, 
 the world we hide so jealously and reveal so clearly. 
 
 Then the great English instinct, the passion for duty, 
 bit him fiercely. For she wanted help so badly; yet 
 how could he give it, without hurting her cruelly? No 
 man is so quixotically keen on doing his duty as the 
 free lance who refuses to acknowledge any claims. 
 Since he has a way of finding duties where the man of 
 law and order with a suburban villa and five children 
 to maintain would comfortably pass by on the other 
 side. For Quixotes therefore, thank Heaven; provided 
 of course that they give the man-trap of priggishness a 
 wide berth. 
 
 " Any way," said Knyvett to himself, "I can kidnap 
 Mrs. Bodinar. Confound her ! ' ' 
 
 Yet his face softened, even to Mrs. Bodinar, although 
 he could scarcely forgive her the fat white children, 
 like anaemic toads. 
 
 Then Molly herself gave him a lead, for she was, after 
 all, a transparent person who could not keep her tongue 
 off the person most in her thoughts. 
 
 "I've been to a fortune teller," she cried, "who de- 
 scribed Archer Bellew to me exactly. I wonder how 
 far it's true that things which are going to happen 
 already are, so it's only an accident that one can't see 
 them in front of one." 
 
 Then her face flushed scarlet, for in the flash of his 
 eyes and the quick veiling of them, she saw how she 
 had revealed herself. Archer Bellew was in the things 
 that were prepared for her. Yet Archer Bellew was 
 Sara's husband. 
 
 He covered her lapse by remarking quietly : 
 
 "Of course the woman knows all the gossip. And 
 Bellew bulks large in people's fancies down here, no 
 doubt."
 
 92 WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 "And everywhere," she answered curtly. "There 
 are some people everyone talks about. But of course 
 you take his wife 's side. ' ' 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Gracious! Mr. Knyvett, you don't want me to ex- 
 plain?" 
 
 It was the first time he had thought her vulgar. 
 
 "Of course," she continued, "that marriage was all 
 wrong. He was engaged to Margaret Rossiter, you 
 know, when Mr. Hereford put his spoke in the wheel 
 and carried him off for Sara. ' ' 
 
 "Margaret Rossiter, the artist?" 
 
 "Yes, of course. No one seems to know exactly why 
 it was broken off. But, anyway, it's made Margaret 
 famous. Queer, wasn't it, that the Herefords, who are 
 so incurably dilettante in general and who never get 
 anything done because nothing's quite exquisite enough 
 to satisfy them, should have pulled off a marriage with 
 such a man? But old Mr. Hereford evidently used up 
 all the will in that family. They 've run short of it ever 
 since. ' ' 
 
 She was her cheerful, mocking self once more. 
 
 "So that's how the Herefords strike you?" said he. 
 
 "Of course. So they do everybody. I call it the 
 Amazing Marriage. But if I'd Sara Bellew's talent for 
 music, I'd never stay down here to be neglected by my 
 husband. And look at Anne! Of course she has 
 knocked off her medical work and come home. She 
 wouldn't be a Hereford if she persevered." 
 
 Infinite scorn rang in her voice. Every tone said: 
 "Look at me for a contrast." 
 
 "But the Bellew menage is bound to go smash," she 
 concluded, as they turned up the street to the station. 
 
 "You think so?" he asked, his thoughts running 
 hither and thither like the wood lice when their stone 
 is overturned. 
 
 "Don't you?" she snapped. "Oh, what an atmos-
 
 A SIBYL OF THE SLUMS 93 
 
 phere of lies and hypocrisy we live in! Why should 
 marriage in England be the one thing in which you 
 may not confess you've made a mistake and begin over 
 again? They all talk as if it was divorce, open break, 
 that mattered, when it's the thing that brought about 
 the divorce which is all that matters. But it's all 
 right so long as you don't put things as right as they 
 can be put, fair and square and open, all right as long 
 as you don't get in the papers. Don't you agree?" 
 
 "Absolutely. Divorce doesn't take place when the 
 decree is made absolute, but when two people look dif- 
 ferent ways. But it's all wrong to let passion settle the 
 thing. It should be deliberate, reasoned choice that does 
 it, choice that looks all ways, that judges when the tie 
 is slavery." 
 
 "That's impossible." 
 
 "It shouldn't be. "We reason when we build bridges, 
 we reason when we build states. We must reason ever 
 so much more carefully when we wreck old homes to 
 build new ones." 
 
 The girl was startled at his hard tones which bespoke 
 in all their special pleading so deep an emotion. Then 
 the man's hatred of the explicit overcame him and he 
 shied from what he meant to say, which was: "Don't 
 burn your fingers for a piece of folly. ' ' 
 
 What he actually said, was : 
 
 "But all this can be nothing to you." 
 
 Then the train carried her away.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS : IN THIS A MAN OF BELIAL 
 COMES HOME 
 
 66T ONLY want to see my little girl with someone 
 
 -- to look after her," wailed Mrs. Woodruffe, 
 thinking with horror of the ruffled turkey-cock she 
 would presently be ushering into the drawing-room at 
 Craneham. 
 
 Her bright colour seemed to have been laid on in 
 streaks that had run; her clothes always shone with 
 newness and bristled with stiffness, while her opinions 
 changed with the seasons and her toupets. A tightly- 
 corseted woman in general, she was proportionately re- 
 laxed in moments of abandon. 
 
 "Looked after! You know I don't want to be looked 
 after. You make me sick," snapped Molly. "No, they 
 didn't talk like that when you were young, because they 
 were such liars then." 
 
 "You've not an atom of proper respect rfor your 
 mother," shrilled Mrs. Woodruffe. 
 
 "No, I've not. Why should I? A good many years 
 ago you found yourself obliged to put up with some 
 discomfort in bringing me into the world, but I don't 
 see why that should make me endure treatment from you 
 that I wouldn't take from anybody else." 
 
 "Molly! will you overthrow all the ten command- 
 ments?" 
 
 "Every blessed one of them if they teach rot. All you 
 want to do is to use me to boost yourself up in the world 
 by marrying me well. And then you turn round and 
 ask me to be grateful for it. Well, I 'm not. ' ' 
 
 94
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 95 
 
 For these two time and space had contracted to the in- 
 cessant repetition of water-dropping. Yet, although the 
 mother's face was flushed and her hands were trembling, 
 her anger was peevish rather than murderous, for she 
 belonged to a generation that seems to regard domestic 
 brawls as in the order of nature. 
 
 "You really are," cried she, "the most irritating girl 
 ever born. Here am I, straining every nerve for you, 
 and you do nothing but set your face like a flint and 
 your feet like a mule. ' ' 
 
 "But I don't want you to strain every nerve for me. 
 I wouldn't have you do anything so indecent," drawled 
 Molly. 
 
 "Now I suppose you think you've said something 
 clever. But it's quite thrown away upon me." 
 
 " I 'm perfectly aware of that, mother. ' ' 
 
 "White-capped and foam-flecked, the bay gleamed 
 blue beyond the hedges between which they walked, 
 heated and furious, on the way up to pay a call on 
 the Herefords. Mrs. "Woodruffe's anger had a ser- 
 pentine expression about it; she placed hand on hip 
 and darted her head forward with each venomous 
 sentence. 
 
 "And," continued the girl, "if ever I'm driven to 
 something desperate, it'll be your doing and nobody 
 else's." 
 
 "And it's all for your sake that I'm toiling up the 
 hill in the afternoon sun, ' ' wailed the poor lady. ' ' But 
 it's so ostentatious to bring out the carriage for such a 
 little way. And I do so detest ostentation. But I posi- 
 tively must have the Craneham people for the party. 
 Archer Bellew is such a draw, for everybody talks about 
 him and her music helps the people to talk. Though 
 really the last time Sara Bellew played, I almost made 
 up my mind never to ask her again. It was positively 
 just like a professional, from the way she walked up to 
 the piano to the way she ran her hand over the keys.
 
 96 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 She might actually have been on a public platform. 
 Nothing could possibly have been more vulgar. ' ' 
 
 "Mrs. Bellew is practically a professional, of course. 
 And it's great cheek in us to ask her to play for nothing. 
 If she were a man she'd send in a thumping cheque for 
 'professional services.' " 
 
 "You really do make me quite faint, Molly," said 
 Mrs. Woodruffe, purple with aggravation, fear and ex- 
 ercise. "You do say such absolutely preposterous 
 things. We are not the people to know professionals. ' ' 
 
 ' ' "We 're not. You 're right. But Archer Bellew won 't 
 come. You surely don't imagine that he would. He's 
 much too big a gun to prop such a one-horse-shay sort of 
 affair." 
 
 "Then you must get him to. You owe it to me to 
 make my social efforts a success. They're all for you." 
 
 "Stop that, mother. It's damnable." 
 
 "Well, it's the truth. And you're always making a 
 great to-do about telling that, so why shouldn't I tell 
 the truth sometimes. And let me tell you this, that in 
 my days the girls were not the raging, tearing terma- 
 gants they are nowadays, nor did they even think the 
 horrors you do." 
 
 ' ' No, of course not. They didn 't think at all. ' ' 
 
 "But you must talk to Mr. Bellew and get him to 
 come. It'll make all the difference if he does. A man 
 will do a great deal to please a girl and you can be very 
 persuasive when you like. That is what is so annoying 
 about you, Molly, with a little care and trouble you 
 might be quite a persona grata in the circles " 
 
 "For goodness' sake, be quiet, Mother. You know 
 perfectly well that I will never worm, nor wriggle, nor 
 wheedle " 
 
 "Nor do anything your mother asks. There's none 
 but One above who could say what a trial you've been 
 to me." 
 
 Then she heard a man's footsteps coming up behind
 
 SPHINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 97 
 
 and turning, found Billy Knyvett at her elbow. A 
 transformation followed and she cried: 
 
 "Dear me, Mr. Knyvett, how perfectly charming to 
 find you bound for the same place. We have been hop- 
 ing you would find time to look in on us, but you are a 
 bad man. You haven't been near us and not a sign of 
 you anywhere. And we heard such lurid stories about 
 your plans. Something about buried treasure and a 
 weird person who has a secret hoard and is going to 
 guide you to it. Do, do, I beg you, be careful that he 
 doesn't murder you. What in the world would Mrs. Bel- 
 lew do without you? or, indeed, for the matter of that, 
 any of us? And I hear that Mr. Westlake is posi- 
 tively giving up his mission work to bucaneer. I never 
 heard of anything so romantic and wicked in my life. 
 We've never been able to go down on a Sunday to hear 
 him preach to his quaint crew of fishermen, though I've 
 often said to Molly, 'Positively, love, I must borrow the 
 housekeeper's dress and go down to hear poor dear Mr. 
 Westlake, or we ought to have him up to dinner.' But 
 somehow time slipped by and we did neither the one 
 nor the other. Perhaps it was that I am so foolishly 
 fastidious about wearing other people 's clothes. I never 
 feel it's quite a clean thing, do you know, to wear furs, 
 for after all, whatever cleaning process they may have 
 gone through, they were once worn by an animal, prob- 
 ably one of most unpleasant habits. But then I am so 
 silly about things, Molly laughs at me. She is such a 
 strong-minded girl, never minds at hotels whether her 
 room is near mine or not, though I always insist on see- 
 ing that she locks her door. I wonder how many times, 
 Molly dear, your old mother has pattered down the pas- 
 sage and they do have such long passages in hotels now, 
 don't they? and called to you: 'Molly, Molly, is your 
 door locked, my darling?' A mother's anxiety, you 
 know, just a silly old hen fluttering over her one 
 chick."
 
 98 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 She ran down, with just the suspicion of a tear in her 
 eye. 
 
 ' ' Huh ! ' ' snorted Molly ; Mr. Kny vett gave her a warm 
 glance of fellowship which delighted Mrs. "Woodruffe's 
 unconscious heart. It was so charming to see Molly 
 sweet to the right person. 
 
 It was with her customary sensation of anger and hu- 
 miliation that Molly followed her mother into the Here- 
 ford drawing-room. As a counterfoil to Mrs. Wood- 
 ruffe's patter, she was in the habit of adopting a languid 
 manner accompanied by half -shut eyes and a gaze down 
 her nose. 
 
 The object of this visit was immediately apparent ; at 
 the Woodruff e party Sara's music, her husband's fame, 
 "and what a brilliant man he is," Mr. Hereford's ur- 
 banity, and Mr. Kny vett 's nimbus of position were to 
 burn like sacred lamps before the shrine of the Wood- 
 ruffe gentility. 
 
 "I can't answer for my husband," said Sara, "for 
 he is still away, but I shall be very glad to come. ' ' 
 
 "And to play! Dear Mrs. Bellew, we cannot possi- 
 bly let you off. Such a cachet! It will be like having 
 Paderewski or Madame Schumann within our portals. 
 Do, do, let me entreat you. And if I might suggest be- 
 fore the lovely Brahms you play so exquisitely, just some 
 Beethoven perhaps the Kreutzer Sonata." 
 
 She was catching wildly at the tail of culture. 
 
 "Or some little trifle of that sort," laughed Molly. 
 "I may remark in passing that mother doesn't really 
 want you to exhaust yourself in going through Beethoven. 
 She is just throwing out suggestions. The Kreutzer and 
 perhaps the Moonlight and of course the Eroica Sym- 
 phony. ' ' 
 
 There was a bitterness in her manner that everyone 
 felt, save old Vin Hereford, who purred delightedly. 
 
 "Ah," he exclaimed, "how delightful it is to go back 
 to someone who appreciates the fine old intellectual
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 99 
 
 tradition of the great German age. But the Kreut- 
 zer is perhaps just a little eh? It has almost as 
 many literary associations now as Tannhauser itself. 
 I should suggest something without that aroma, that 
 savour. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe's prominent eyes gleamed. She re- 
 membered now that there was something quite improper 
 connected with the Kreutzer Sonata. 
 
 "No, no, of course not," she cried. "Of course one 
 wouldn't wish dear Mrs. Bellew to play it. It was only 
 the first name that came into my head. I have really 
 such a bad memory for names nowadays that I almost 
 fear I must be suffering from Anno Domini. Funny, 
 isn't it, with not a grey hair yet showing?" 
 
 Paralysed, everyone watched her, save old Vin, who 
 was dozing. 
 
 "The Kreutzer," said Knyvett, delivering himself of 
 a ghastly platitude, " is a fine sonata. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, but I quite understand. But really, one has 
 to think so much nowadays before one opens one's lips 
 that a long conversation brings one in danger of nervous 
 prostration. ' ' 
 
 Anne laughed. It was such a painful cachinnation 
 that it attracted Mrs. Woodruffe's special notice. She 
 felt vicious. 
 
 ' ' And you, Miss Hereford, with your medical studies ! 
 What dreadful secrets you must know." 
 
 "Not anything nearly so dreadful as the things some 
 people imagine," said Anne grimly, feeling very much 
 as though she wanted to stamp on a beetle. 
 
 Molly glanced at her fiercely. She, too, shared the 
 sentiment. Only, after all, the beetle was her mother. 
 Nobody but herself must be allowed to attack. 
 
 "But you seem to be able to follow their imagining 
 easily," she snapped. 
 
 ' ' Brain disease, ' ' said Anne, " is a part of our course. ' ' 
 
 Sara interposed hastily with a question as to date.
 
 100 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "But for my husband, I can't say. He isn't at home 
 now. ' ' 
 
 "There he is," said Molly, bowing to someone who 
 passed the window. She flushed and glared defiantly at 
 Anne. They waited, but no Archer appeared, though 
 they heard his step in the hall. 
 
 ' ' The rude man ! ' ' lilted Mrs. Woodruffe. ' ' He 's not 
 coming in, though he saw you in the window, Molly. 
 And last autumn we saw a great deal of him. ' ' 
 
 "He's gone to his study," remarked Anne maliciously. 
 
 "Ah, Molly, go down and rout him out. Make him 
 say he'll come to us. I'll put 'To meet the famous au- 
 thor, Mr. Archer Bellew,' on the cards, if only he'll 
 come. So many people want to meet him. Do let her 
 go, Mrs. Bellew. He'll jump on her, but he'll forgive. 
 He's really quite fond of Molly." 
 
 "Don't be absurd, mother." 
 
 "But you know I'm always absurd. It's my metier. 
 Come, Molly, run away; there's a good child. Say 
 ' Tally-ho ' when you run him to earth. ' ' 
 
 "I'll show you the way," said Anne maliciously. 
 
 Outside the door, the two girls stood with pulses 
 beating and feet tapping. Molly plunged her hands 
 deep in her flat muff with a mocking moue under her 
 bell-shaped hat of shining black satin. 
 
 "You need not show me," she said haughtily; "I know 
 Mr. Bellew 's study quite well. I've no need whatever 
 of a chaperone. And you're making a great mistake in 
 being rude to Us." 
 
 Anne recognised the greatness of the sacrifice implied 
 in that "Us," in that identification of the girl with her 
 mother. She felt heartily ashamed of herself. 
 
 " I 'm sorry, ' ' she said humbly ; " I Ve been a beast. ' ' 
 
 "Oh," cried Molly, beginning to tremble, "I feel 
 wild, desperate. I don't mind what I do with myself. 
 I always say I never will come home again. It all gets 
 on my nerves so and I behave badly and feel so mean,
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 101 
 
 so dirty, to think of what I've said. And yet you can't 
 cut yourself quite adrift from where you started, can 
 you?" 
 
 "No," said Anne, "and somehow or other I suppose 
 we 've earned our parents. ' ' 
 
 ''Why can't we humans be like that?" cried Molly, 
 as they stood in the window watching the sunlight that 
 flashed on the sheen of budding trees. "We're just 
 the only ugly things in the world. And I do so long for 
 something different. You know how you feel when 
 you've read a wonderful story or some splendid line of 
 verse. You want it to be all like that. And then you 
 come back to your everyday self. And it's all gone. It 
 was only a dream." 
 
 "Beauty is like joy," said Anne, "a thing just tucked 
 away, a secret you look at every now and then when 
 you're busiest. Ten days hence you're going to see 
 someone; or you've just done a good stroke of work. 
 Then your heart sings. That's how it is." 
 
 "Just a gleam," said Molly. 
 
 "Just a gleam, something come over the border from 
 a wonderful world where we really belong perhaps. 
 Who knows?" 
 
 Like a child Molly put up her face. 
 
 "We'll be friends," asked she, "whatever I do?" 
 
 "Whatever you do," laughed Anne in her bustling 
 way. "I don't give up my friends for any sort of bad- 
 ness. That's not me. It's for better, for worse, that I 
 take 'em. But I 'm truly sorry I was so rude just now. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, never mind. It's the way decent people must 
 feel about us. But I won't go in and see Mr. Bellew. 
 You go and I'll wait here for you." 
 
 "There's no harm in your going, my dear. It would 
 please your mother so much to have him and there's no 
 reason whatever why he shouldn't, for once in his life, 
 do a kindness for somebody. ' ' 
 
 Molly smiled wanly and then went undulating down
 
 102 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 the passage to the study, to emerge ten minutes later, 
 bright-eyed, revivified. Precisely the effect had been 
 wrought on her that is worked on a man by dinner and 
 wine. Between her and the fret of existence had 
 come a pleasant illusion of well-being. And Archer 
 Bellew would be at the party; that at any rate was 
 assured. 
 
 Meanwhile in the drawing-room, Mrs. Woodruffe had 
 been trying to bring off a coup on her own account. 
 Heaven knows what visions crowded her mind of great 
 ladies with negro slaves behind them bearing prayer- 
 books, but she craved a favour of Mr. Knyvett the serv- 
 ices of Cornelius to assist, at any rate by his presence, 
 at her supper. Mrs. Woodruffe was one of the women 
 who cannot have a neighbour of any sort without bor- 
 rowing teacups or clothes-brushes. 
 
 ' ' So chic ! ' ' exclaimed she, ' ' a gigantic African by the 
 sideboard. It will create quite a sensation and he has 
 such a pleasant smile. Somehow or other, I'm sure I 
 don't know why, but it always reminds me of what the 
 whiting said to the snail. You will be good, Mr. Kny- 
 vett, and lend me Cornelius ? ' ' 
 
 She leant forward, hands outstretched. 
 
 Mr. Hereford had caught the name. Rousing him- 
 self from his half doze, he began to preach : 
 
 "Cornelius, my dear lady," said he, "has a great task 
 to perform. Our racial efficiency greatly needs the as- 
 sistance of the full-blooded African strain. To say noth- 
 ing of any other matter, it would be most beneficial to 
 English literature to infuse into it something more exotic. 
 I trust," he purred, turning to Billy, "that he's doing 
 his duty manfully while he's in port. I should let him 
 ashore as often as possible." 
 
 Horror stalked among the company as a pestilence that 
 walketh at noonday. Mrs. Woodruffe, her face rigid, 
 sat wondering w T hat barbaric horror she was going to 
 introduce into her fashionable sheepfold. Anne laughed
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 103 
 
 outright. Only Sara had presence of mind enough to 
 murmur : 
 
 "Cornelius' offspring aren't likely to be literary." 
 
 Mr. Hereford felt contradicted. 
 
 "You talk like a fool, Sara," snapped he. "Into what 
 strange channels does not race flow? And I've always 
 noticed that a full-blooded strain means literary genius 
 in a nation. Look, for instance, at the Tartar nose of 
 the Russians and the Tartar strength in their books. 
 And why is it that the Frenchman is the only Western 
 that can paint the East? Don't tell me it's Latin. 
 It 's the memory of hot sands, of hotter lusts. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe with a rattling of muff chains and 
 bangles protested and prepared to create a bustle. But 
 everybody else sat spellbound. 
 
 "For nobody has yet realised," he continued, "the in- 
 fluence of the negro strain in French blood. So let Cor- 
 nelius go ashore. Ages hence some romance may owe 
 its power to him." 
 
 For once the rustling newness of Mrs. Woodruff e's 
 garments was more comforting than felt slippers to an 
 invalid's ear. In the bustle of her departure was ef- 
 faced the phantom of old Hereford's eugenic specula- 
 tions. When at last the door closed behind her : 
 
 "Oh, Lord," cried Anne, sitting on the window-seat 
 preparatory to a vault over it on to the terrace, "if we 
 weren't up in the world, would she ever put her nose 
 inside this house again ? Dear old Cornelius, I positively 
 love him. And his meringues are worth all the 'Voy- 
 ages en Orient' of his potential offspring over and over 
 again. ' ' 
 
 Then she vanished into the garden and Sara went 
 down the hall to her husband's study. 
 
 He was standing with his back to her, tapping medi- 
 tatively on the book shelves. His were the nervous, long- 
 fingered hands that play incessantly with something, from 
 bread-pills on the dinner-table to cigarettes and watch-
 
 104 WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 chain. A set of small brown books faced him, and taking 
 one down he began to turn over the pages. Like all read- 
 ers he knew instinctively on which side of the page was 
 the quotation he wanted : 
 
 ' ' But only that is strong within us which remains even 
 for ourselves but a half -suspected secret." 
 
 And it is precisely that half-suspected secret which 
 the novelist reveals to the world. For when it comes to 
 revelation, the light that beats upon a throne is nothing 
 compared to the light that radiates from a printed page. 
 Of this Archer Bellew had become aware as he turned 
 over the press-cuttings that awaited him. His cigarette 
 puffed its life away like grass withering in a hot oven. 
 
 Then he turned and saw his wife ; his pointed Mephis- 
 tophelian eyebrows had a way of running upwards to- 
 wards his temples in a habit that had driven deep hori- 
 zontal wrinkles into his forehead. It gave him a scared 
 expression that suggested a startled woodland thing ; nor 
 was the impression contradicted by the sideways poise of 
 an oval head on a long neck. 
 
 "And so there you are," he exclaimed. "What do 
 you think of these ? ' ' He nodded towards the little pile 
 of cuttings on the writing-desk. "Damned impudence, 
 I call it." 
 
 ' ' Did you expect anything else ? " In the shrug of her 
 shoulders there was a haughtiness that she reserved for 
 her husband. 
 
 "Well, now, that's a nice wifely thing to say!" 
 
 "But if you will fly in the face of all the conventions, 
 of all the prejudices." 
 
 "I painted the picture of a woman, a real woman, 
 that's all. A woman full of revolt, of the intention to 
 kick herself free of every idea that keeps women patient 
 and humble. ' ' 
 
 "Just so. But you see the reviewers, like most other 
 people, prefer women to be humble and patient. So of 
 course they rage and call it wicked."
 
 SPHINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 105 
 
 "It's studied from life," he said maliciously, "from 
 a close, intimate study, in fact." 
 
 "So I thought," she answered quietly. If she felt 
 angry, she showed no faintest sign of it. But, as always 
 when these two were together, the mental temperature 
 of the room was distinctly warm. 
 
 "From Anne, perhaps?" he sneered. "She's rather 
 of that type, the revolting. ' ' 
 
 "Not in the least." 
 
 In attacking Anne he had approached a subject on 
 which she could not keep calm. 
 
 "Anne is revolting from the very thing your heroine 
 delights in. Anne wants to work, to be recognised as 
 valuable for something else than merely to please men. 
 Your woman wants to live openly, instead of secretly, 
 just for nothing else: to please herself first by pleas- 
 ing men. Anne wants to put all that into the back- 
 ground. There are thousands like Anne and a mere 
 handful like your woman, a handful who will try to 
 creep in under Anne's banner. Anne is austere; 
 your woman is a wanton, aping the freedom of aus- 
 terity. That's why your book is such a lie, for it's 
 taken as typical. ' ' 
 
 "You say it's drawn from life. From whom?" he 
 asked angrily. 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "Do you want to?" 
 
 She hesitated, gazing straight at him, for she was an 
 extremely truthful woman, truthful to a hair. And all 
 the while he was irritably pressing on the nerve that 
 hurt him, for he was very sensitive to blame, very much 
 led by his pleasure in other people 's approbation of him. 
 Moreover, he resented strongly any attitude of criticism 
 in the women that belonged to him. It was that which 
 had always put him wrong with Sara, who unconsciously 
 judged and weighed as carefully as an analytical chemist. 
 
 "One part of you wants to know and the other fears;
 
 106 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 that's about it, isn't it?" he said, impatiently rolling a 
 cigarette with fingers that spilt the tobacco. 
 
 "Yes," he added deliberately, "it was drawn from 
 life." 
 
 She quivered as though he had struck her, not at the 
 words so much as at the implication involved in them. 
 He was satisfied for a second, and then repentant. Ris- 
 ing, he put a hand gently on her shoulder. 
 
 "I'm sorry, Sara, I'm sorry. But you're not very 
 human, are you ? ' ' 
 
 She looked up at him, her lips trembling. 
 
 "I don't know, Archer, but I seem to be like someone 
 passing his hand over a wall to find a hidden spring. ' ' 
 
 "To let yourself out by?" 
 
 "I don't understand myself one bit," she cried. 
 
 "Look at me, Sara," he said, dropping his hands 
 heavily on her shoulders. 
 
 He had bright, compelling eyes. She felt as though 
 they read her through and through and longed to ask 
 him what he found there, but dared not. 
 
 "The sleeping beauty," he remarked, laughing quite 
 kindly. ' ' How long have we been married, child ? ' ' 
 
 "Ten years next May," she answered promptly. 
 
 "Is it so long? I didn't realise that." 
 
 Then they sat on in a silence that grew oppressive. 
 It was always the same. Talk seemed to dry up, ideas 
 to wither when they were together. Sara was longing 
 to get herself out of the room and Archer to see her go, 
 but neither knew how to achieve the move. At last she 
 stirred restlessly and Archer yawned. 
 
 "Well, I must get to my letters." 
 
 "And that's the sort of reception I come home to every 
 time, ' ' he said aloud, as he swung himself into his swivel 
 writing-chair. "No wonder the old saints and monks 
 lived to a ripe old age with no women to plague 'em. 
 The Lords of Misrule, that's what women are sirens,
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 107 
 
 termagants, shrews or schemers, the whole boiling of 
 'em." 
 
 A strong lover of order, his household annoyed him, 
 for he knew himself to be a mismated man and he hated 
 mismating as cordially as ever old Vin Hereford hated 
 two colours that swore. And it was not only his per- 
 sonal relationship with Sara; it was the attitude of the 
 house towards him that stimulated every nerve of irri- 
 tation in him whenever he crossed the threshold of it. 
 Craneham was to him the hall of Rhadamanthus, where 
 everybody sat in judgment, from Elizabeth upwards. 
 
 Born in the Far West, in that Penwith of the Cornish- 
 men that breeds a stock peculiarly racial and vivid, his 
 earliest memories were of the land of the moving mists 
 that, sea-born, blot out cornland and moor even in the 
 height of summer as though under the smeary fingers of 
 a giant. At the age when nature is plastic to all impres- 
 sions he had lived in the back rooms of a small grocer's 
 shop where trade names of soaps and candles, of marma- 
 lades and blackings, took the place of the sines and co- 
 shies, the Greek verbs and Latin verse of better-born 
 boys. Yet he had found his ecstasy in the hymn-singing 
 of white-faced, stunted miners whose faith poised itself 
 on a tight-rope over the fires of the Pit. 
 
 In a wayside chapel, like a mighty wind, there had 
 come upon him a sense of his own powers as he rose and 
 bore testimony, preaching the message "repent ye." 
 For his power was emotional more than mental, calling 
 for the stimulus of the quickened nerve that wakes best 
 under the magnetic appeal of the crowd; in a word, he 
 was speaker, rather than writer. He awoke on a lark- 
 singing sunny morning amid the smell of varnish and 
 broadcloth, and the most joyful thought that came to 
 him was the idea of that cleansing hell of remorse which 
 awaits the sinner. 
 
 Other powers awoke rapidly; the swing of a verse
 
 108 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 came with the roar of the waves on the cliff; a curious 
 ancestral story memory, one had almost called it was 
 recalled in simple, primitive words. Finally, his de- 
 scriptive articles attracted notice and he walked the 
 streets of St. Just with, as he fancied, the neighbours' 
 eyes glued to his back. The first book was full, as first 
 books often are, of all the joys that ever he had known ; 
 no wonder it was a success. 
 
 Then he met Vin Hereford at a public literary din- 
 ner. It was a time when the star of simplicity was in 
 the ascendant in Hereford's horoscope, when a dinner 
 of herbs was to be preferred to the richest slice of Stras- 
 bourg pate. He therefore invited Bellew to his house, 
 rejoicing in the memory of the back shop and finding a 
 subtle attraction in the memory of Cheddar and ' ' Rising 
 Sun," of "Nugget" blacking and "England's Glory" 
 matches. Sara was even carried off on a pilgrimage to 
 the shrine of genius, wherein, in fact, father and daugh- 
 ter joyfully bought mixed biscuits. 
 
 Flattered, intoxicated, dazzled by the notice of a man 
 whose house in those days was haunted by well-known 
 people, Bellew only saw Sara's eyes through a haze of 
 wonder and delight. Old landmarks disappeared be- 
 neath the fog ; all obligations were forgotten, thrust away 
 down beneath the surface along with other Bohemian 
 memories. Marriage with Sara appeared like an acco- 
 lade given to a knight, an accolade that not only made 
 him free of the world of gentlehood, but that turned the 
 key on the baser side of his fire-hot nature. 
 
 In one kind of power the thoughts, the very bodily 
 organs, glow with a stormy life that often seems demoniac 
 to calmer natures. And when life raged in Archer Bel- 
 lew he wavered in its grip like a flame in the wind. But 
 when the fit was over, there was always the same deep 
 horror of the sin, a horror that went down to join other 
 bitter memories. For to Archer Bellew it was sin, this 
 incessant waxing and waning of the moon of his de-
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 109 
 
 sires; he compounded with no flaws by talking modern 
 sophistry. At bottom he always remained the Cornish- 
 man who had preached hell in a wayside chapel. Yet no 
 sense of sin could throw salt on the flame of his craving, 
 whether for woman or ideas. 
 
 Only Vin Hereford had succeeded in choking both de- 
 sire and repentance with damp ash. For Chrysostom, 
 with his specious pleasure-loving talk, had wrapped his 
 son-in-law in literary languor, imbuing him, where his 
 own actions were concerned, with philosophic irony. The 
 moral probe of northern morality was a thing to scorn, 
 said the old Hedonist, for in an artist lawlessness was 
 salt and savour to the blood. It was d'Annunzio, and 
 not B jornson or Tolstoi, who presided in Vin Hereford 's 
 literary hierarchy. 
 
 The instinct of Elizabeth was right; the books of the 
 old Monsieur had much to answer for. 
 
 Yet Bellew could not entirely escape either from his 
 up-bringing or from that passionate craving for a better 
 way of life that dances like an ignis fatuus before the 
 modern world. Full as he was of the contrast between 
 what life is and what it might be, he studied each human 
 tangle as minutely as though it were a section in a 
 microscope. Whereby, of course, he dealt in false val- 
 ues, since all real stories are like figures in a tapestry, 
 half-meaningless without their background. 
 
 Notwithstanding his irregularities, in his own life he 
 remained a Puritan by instinct. For just as he always 
 found it impossible to work in a dusty, untidy room, 
 with one side of his nature he hated the moral dust that 
 had gathered over his days. To-night, as he had done 
 hundreds of times before, he went upstairs, bathed from 
 head to foot, and put on entirely fresh garments in the 
 attempt to feel clean. 
 
 His ideal was straight, four-square action ; clean living 
 and intense personal probity. Never an hour wasted, 
 never a thought astray.
 
 110 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 But after dinner the front door banged behind him. 
 He had gone out, since a pleasant sense of an idyll to be 
 continued was dancing in front of his nose. 
 
 Late that night Mrs. Woodruffe knocked smartly at her 
 daughter's door; being a woman who economised behind 
 the scenes, she was in a maize-coloured dressing-gown that 
 stood distinctly in need of soap and water. 
 
 "Your waist is positively huge," grumbled she, sink- 
 ing into a rocking chair and covering her eyes to shield 
 them from the overhead electric light that shone like a 
 beacon across the garden. "You might draw your cor- 
 sets in a good two inches more without hurting yourself 
 in the least. Why, when I was your age a man could 
 have spanned my waist with his two hands." 
 
 When specially moved, Mrs. Woodruffe always went 
 for her opponent's waist; it was her method of hitting 
 below the belt. 
 
 "I don't invite gymnastic feats of that kind, mother. 
 Nowadays we leave that kind of thing to barmaids. ' ' 
 
 "You're a bad girl, Molly. You should ask God to 
 change your heart. But Stephen Anerley's coming 
 down. He '11 be here in time for the party. ' ' 
 
 "And I specially didn't want him," exclaimed Molly, 
 tapping the floor angrily. 
 
 "And I specially did," retorted her mother. "But 
 mind you have a clear idea in your head what you're 
 going to do. There '11 be Knyvett and Anerley, and that 
 writing fellow will do for a decoy. And if you don't 
 catch one or other of the two, you must be an absolute 
 fool. Only, for goodness' sake, whatever you do, don't 
 overdo your part." 
 
 Much the same horror turned the girl dumb as when 
 one sees some travesty of the human in a mouthing idiot. 
 Then she opened the door and, standing with her fingers 
 on the handle, said quietly: 
 
 "Please go, Mother. Else I shall say something that 
 had better not be said."
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 111 
 
 And obeying the look in the girl's face, her mother 
 went. She always yielded the field at a look of white- 
 hot anger. 
 
 "And that's the sort of thing I've had to bear all my 
 life," cried Molly, flinging herself across the writing- 
 table by the window. 
 
 Yet there was a kind of comfort in this sordid atmos- 
 phere, for after all it offered some excuse. Seen in this 
 light it seemed very much like the faintness which au- 
 thorises dram-drinking. From excuse-finding the next 
 step was self-glorification; Molly took it, until she had 
 persuaded herself that to coquette with Bellew was a 
 fine thing, since so to mock the proprieties was to defy the 
 smug respectability, the innate rottenness of her mother 's 
 code. A small person, ill-armed and weak, she, Molly 
 Woodruffe, went forth to meet a dragon belching flame, 
 the Apollyon, to wit, of hypocrisy. 
 
 Then she was ashamed, owning a more honest impulse, 
 for was she not after all one of the great army of women 
 who are pledged to the day of better things for their 
 sex? The little doctor, Anne Hereford, had quaint mo- 
 ments of exaltation; in one she had said, almost shame- 
 faced, yet persisting : "Liberty is coming for us women, 
 but we Ve got to prove we 're worthy of it. We 're going 
 everywhere, free women after centuries of servitude. 
 But we're going into such dark places that we must be 
 sure always to take our own light with us." 
 
 Conscience-stricken, Molly shrank back on herself, for 
 she always acknowledged the spell of the wind as it blew 
 from every quarter. 
 
 The stupidity of her mother's ideas had bred in her 
 an immense admiration for great men, meaning by that 
 men of paragraphs, gossip, and photographs. Authors, 
 actors, publishers, these breathed, for her, the air of the 
 heights. Politicians, however, were nothing accounted 
 of, for she had seen the strings that pulled them. Had 
 she been a servant girl she would have devoured novel-
 
 112 WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 ettes ; being of another class, she fell a victim to the curi- 
 ous subterranean underflow of sentimentality which in 
 these days reveals itself in the romantic biographies that 
 flood the book market. For our novelists may reduce life 
 and love to the bare bones, picking every shred of ro- 
 mance from the carcase, but our memoir writers only pad 
 it the more thickly with succulence of sentiment. Vive 
 I 'amour, cry the chroniclers of the past, while the his- 
 torians of the present are declaring it to be dead and 
 buried save as a device of nature. Hence the bones of 
 de Musset, of Chateaubriand filled the airy chambers 
 of Molly's head, till she saw herself as a grande 
 amoureuse, a daughter of man visited by some Son of 
 the Morning. 
 
 Now the only Son of the Morning with whom she had 
 any personal acquaintance was Archer Bellew. And that 
 would mean a short bliss, a quick extinction, and for 
 afterwards, a memory. She was quite clear as to this, 
 for though she might don the cap and bells of a fool, she 
 would wear it but as livery. 
 
 Stephen Anerley meant something quite different. It 
 would be Stephen all through, pink-faced Stephen, rosy 
 in the gills, with a tall hat on Sunday and a perfectly 
 implacable intention of arranging his life to his liking 
 and not to hers. After five years of treading the nar- 
 row path with him she would only be " Anerley 's wife," 
 with for object, his elevation up the rungs of the ladder 
 that led to an income in four figures; with for joy, his 
 children ; with for duties, his Saturday dinners to fellow- 
 journalists, his digestion, his clothes, even his blue pots. 
 All the world of struggle and zest, of fighting for her 
 own hand would be gone ; it would be all ' ' Stephenised ' ' 
 and she a secondary figure. 
 
 Now she was not at all sure that she had a genius for 
 the secondary. Yet after all, that way came the sound 
 of children's voices. She could hear them in the fire- 
 light, while they all waited for the sound of Stephen's
 
 SPRINGES TO CATCH WOODCOCKS 113 
 
 key in the lock to set things moving again. For to that 
 she would have come by then. 
 
 But there was another alternative to go on preparing 
 speeches for which others gained the kudos. Still sec- 
 ondary, it seemed and not quite so sweet. The lusty 
 patter of bare fat feet, feet that curled in the palm of 
 the hand ; was a pleasant undertone to one 's thoughts in 
 comparison. And Stephen Anerley would be here in 
 time for the party. 
 
 Just at that moment there came from below three notes 
 whistled softly in a minor cadence. Pressing her face 
 closer on her arms, Molly waited and lay still. The notes 
 were repeated, but she never moved. Then she heard 
 the sound of receding footsteps and the whistle died 
 away. 
 
 For after all, to burn in the quick flame, to serve by 
 waiting, to drive a flying pen, were all secondary. Nor 
 did any of them appear particularly sweet at the present 
 moment. To lie -still was easier.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CAP AND BELLS: IN THIS MOLLY WOODRUPFE TANGLES A 
 SKEIN AND ANNE HEREFORD PLAITS A THREAD 
 
 SARA began to play, at first automatically, and then, 
 like a rocky pool that is filled when the high tide 
 comes in, struck at last on the springs of passion hidden 
 within. By this time the rooms were entirely silent, for 
 most of the folks had gone off into that far country where 
 each man meets his heart's desire, and those who could 
 not go sat silent, for the look they saw on the travellers ' 
 faces. 
 
 The player could look from room to room across the 
 bungalow at her audience who sat behind looped-back 
 curtains at different distances from the grand piano. 
 Through the open windows sounded the swaying of the 
 trees and the hiss of the waves at the base of the cliffs 
 on which the Woodruffes' house was built. Against the 
 black dome of night the whole house blazed with lights 
 and echoed with voices. 
 
 On the terrace outside paced Molly Woodruffe, the 
 long, wing-like drapery of her sleeves stirring slightly as 
 she moved. Sara noticed with a half smile the two men 
 who walked on each side of the girl and when the three 
 paused by the window she could plainly distinguish the 
 long narrow face and aquiline nose of Stephen Anerley. 
 There was something almost sinister in the close-set, pro- 
 jecting eyes that was contradicted by the upward curving 
 corners of the lips where, although he was not yet five- 
 and-twenty, the lines were already tightening around the 
 mouth. His air was extremely self-confident, for he had 
 never been beaten yet, nor did he even anticipate the 
 
 114
 
 CAP AND BELLS 115 
 
 possibility of catching a fall; a characteristic that, al- 
 though engaging enough in youth, is not calculated to 
 make a man popular in age. From the crispy blackness 
 of his hair, his swarthy skin and masterful, yet shifty 
 glance, one would have guessed him to be of southern 
 extraction. He was, in fact, a "Welshman, though not 
 in the least of the same type of Celt as Archer Bellew, 
 who walked on Molly 's other side. 
 
 With the first bars of the Moonlight Sonata, Sara began 
 to realise that she was awaking, for exactly the same 
 sense was upon her as when a sleeper realises that over 
 on the other side he has learnt something intuitively and 
 beyond all possibility of doubt. As yet, she could not 
 say exactly to what she had awakened, but that the knowl- 
 edge was even now within her she felt absolutely certain. 
 All these years she had seen things without understand- 
 ing; now at last she was to see through them. She felt 
 herself at the centre of a web of folly, mostly, it is true, 
 of other people's weaving. By a leap of memory, her 
 mind flew to Archer 's old mother ; she could see her now, 
 a homely aproned figure like a fat tun, standing in the 
 doorway of her shop as she sheltered her eyes with 
 her hands, for she was somewhat of a cave-dweller in 
 habit. 
 
 "Ginger's hot in the mouth with 'en," she had said 
 of her son. "Every now and then there's something 
 seems to shake 'en like a terrier with a rat, be it maid 
 or be it hell-fire and brimstone. And 'tis a toss-up which 
 'twill be for the moment. Then a forgets, the fire dies 
 down and he's sleepy. No need for herby tea to make 
 'en quiet then." 
 
 His method of work was like that, too ; no regular three 
 hours a day for him, but months of mooning, of absolute 
 blankness, and then a fever till, with finger nails bitten 
 to the quick and eyes deep-sunk with fatigue, he emerged, 
 wrote Finis, and could scarcely be prevailed upon to cor- 
 rect his proofs. So it was in his relations with women ;
 
 116 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 each one was an instrument on which he played a tune, 
 played it once and then had done with the instrument, 
 the testing of whose timbre had been the main interest 
 of his effort. Ultimately each served but the purposes 
 of his art by adding another portrait to his gallery of 
 women. 
 
 Now his wife was, for the first time, to watch the 
 actual process, which made all the difference in the world. 
 Yet for the moment, under the influence of her music, 
 she seemed to have risen above the web of entangling cir- 
 cumstance; only inward laughter seized her at the stu- 
 pidity of it all. Here was Anne getting thin-faced and 
 worried, here was Billy Knyvett half on the Pendragon 
 and half off it, here was Molly of the winged drapery 
 rushing towards a mockery of love. Soon probably 
 Archer himself would creep back once again, with an- 
 other shred of his manliness gone and with another vol- 
 ume with his name on its cover to add to the books she 
 hated so. It was strange to think that this coil should 
 have arisen from the fact that Vin Hereford regarded the 
 child he had begotten as intended by Providence to act 
 as the corner stone of his comfort. 
 
 Meanwhile on the terrace outside Molly was unhappy 
 and dissatisfied, for Archer Bellew and Stephen Anerley 
 appeared not ill friends and she had been secretly antici- 
 pating the joy of watching their rivalry. Yet, although 
 she was unaware of the fact, they were approaching cer- 
 tain conversational rapids in which Bellew 's contempt 
 would assuredly appear. For Anerley was a journalist 
 by profession and to Bellew this was the same as though 
 one had said : ' ' Now Barabbas was a robber. ' ' To him 
 all journalists and teachers lived on the spoil of other 
 men's brains and in a world wherein men are divided 
 most rationally into voices and echoes, they were but 
 echoes. Gradually, therefore, the older man began to 
 emerge as the judge, the appraiser, of the younger one, 
 carrying Molly with him into the seat of the scornful,
 
 CAP AND BELLS 117 
 
 for she instinctively ranged herself on the side of the 
 stronger. 
 
 Bellew had just quoted with delight from an Arabian 
 manuscript he had been reading: "Night was drawing 
 apace and had already half-wrapped the earth with her 
 dark, star-studded mantle. ' ' 
 
 "There," continued he, "you have it in a phrase, the 
 solemn majesty of the on-coming of night, not described, 
 but suggested. The English have lost the art of writing 
 like that because they're afraid of anything more emo- 
 tional than a tea-party. "We shall soon have no feelings 
 at all, we 're so afraid of showing those we have. ' ' 
 
 "Under our quiet exterior we feel more deeply than 
 mercurial nations," said Stephen, who always agreed 
 fully with that body of opinion which forms the national 
 standing-dish in the matter of brain stuff. 
 
 "I question that," said Bellew, "the Englishman's 
 hide is as thick as a shell. He never feels anything but 
 his own internal disorders, for he draws a solid rim round 
 himself that cuts him off from the rest of the universe. 
 "Myself and the moving show," that's his reading of 
 the situation. He never feels himself one with the pro- 
 cession. ' ' 
 
 Bellew, as Molly began to recognise, was covertly de- 
 scribing Anerley, for that young man was as compactly 
 built into his shell as a sea-urchin and as little aware 
 as any mollusk of the vastness of the ocean in which he 
 sported. 
 
 "No, Mr. Anerley," he continued, "we're a much 
 over-rated nation." 
 
 Stephen instantly began to feel it his business to take 
 up the cudgels on behalf of the national honour. 
 
 ""We've sense enough, anyway," said he angrily, "to 
 make ourselves bulk rather large in the eyes of the world. 
 We do get things done, at least." 
 
 ' ' Yes. Generally the wrong things. ' ' 
 
 "Nobody could answer a sweeping charge like that.
 
 118 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 It's a mere pose to despise everything English. "We're 
 getting so humble now that we're perfect worms. To 
 hear an Englishman talk of himself makes one sick. If 
 he's such a fool as he makes out, he simply hasn't the 
 right to exist." 
 
 ' ' Not when he 's young, ' ' said Bellew slyly. ' ' In youth 
 he crows loudly enough. ' ' 
 
 Molly interposed. 
 
 "After all," she said, "it isn't fair to complain be- 
 cause an Arab describes the sky better than an English- 
 man, for they don't see the sky in at all the same way." 
 
 "Exactly. They don't; that's what I complain of," 
 said Bellew. 
 
 " It 's more useful to see the earth than the sky. ' ' 
 
 "Not to a navigator," laughed Molly. 
 
 "Two men look through prison bars. One sees the 
 mud and t'other the stars," hummed Bellew contemptu- 
 ously. 
 
 Stephen was merely aware of the other's exhibition 
 of temper and laughed; the talk was so entirely trivial 
 and the man so irritable that he really enjoyed the sen- 
 sation of rising temperature. But to Molly it was an 
 occasion of considerable perturbation, for the thoughts in 
 her that weighed the great and small out here on the ter- 
 race were embittered by a scorching recollection of 
 Stephen's foolish exhibition of himself in the drawing- 
 room half an hour before. There he had sung Stille 
 Naclit, making the last word rhyme with ' ' gnashed ' ' and 
 pronouncing the rest of the song in similar style. Molly's 
 nerves had so often quivered at solecisms on her mother 's 
 part that her brain quickly sent the message of alarm 
 to her cheeks. Stinging pity fought in her heart with 
 anger that anyone belonging to herself should thus lay 
 himself open to ridicule. 
 
 Stephen was a man who, whenever he talked science to 
 a musician or law to an engineer, would be regarded as 
 a Daniel come to judgment; it was only when his evil
 
 CAP AND BELLS 119 
 
 genius prompted him to venture on science with a scien- 
 tist or law with a lawyer, that the eyes of these learned 
 men were opened to the real character of his knowledge. 
 Naturally endowed with a good conceit of himself, he 
 had unfortunately always lived in a provincial town 
 where he had never met any man of higher ability than 
 himself, for it was not the mind, but the furniture of it 
 that was in his case deficient. His profession, too, had 
 encouraged him to assume the appearance of omniscience 
 as he fluttered with the changing of the popular fancy 
 from one watchword of progress to another. He had, 
 in fact, never risen above the disadvantages of his early 
 training and expected to be allowed to lay down the 
 law on everything, from Greek accents to the principles 
 of ventilation, to all and sundry. But in these days the 
 privilege of talking nonsense is not even accorded to a 
 pretty woman, still less to any man, however young and 
 handsome. 
 
 "Don't you think," said Molly, trying to avert a 
 storm, "that even Englishmen are ceasing to draw such 
 thick rims round themselves? Every now and then one 
 comes across a man who seems a part of the show. I 
 always- have that feeling with Mr. Knyvett, for in- 
 stance." 
 
 She nodded towards the corner where Knyvett stood 
 leaning against the window embrasure. 
 
 Such talk annoyed Anerley more than anything that 
 had gone before, since he had a very distinct notion 
 that women were not intended to meddle with ideas. 
 His theory of the place of each human being in the so- 
 cial scheme was entirely rigid; everyone was a cog in 
 a big machine born for one precise and definite duty. 
 Some men were made to sweep the heavens, either as 
 astronomers or aviators, others to make paths for the 
 footsteps of the people, either as explorers or statesmen, 
 but the functions of women were not so differentiated; 
 racial service was all that could be expected of them.
 
 120 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Yet he imagined himself in love with Molly Woodruffe, 
 for there is nothing so inconsistent in all this world as 
 the man of cast-iron opinions. 
 
 "A very characteristic attitude," laughed Bellew, 
 following the direction of Molly's gaze, "for he's watch- 
 ing my wife as usual! But I know what you mean 
 about him, of course. I remember his once saying that 
 he never could imagine himself bothering about immor- 
 tality, for he felt himself so much a part of it all that 
 he never could conceive the possibility of dropping out 
 of it. I wonder what I'd give out of my own gifts to 
 feel like that," he said meditatively, stopping to light 
 a cigarette. 
 
 Molly glanced at him adoringly, for she knew he dis- 
 liked Knyvett cordially. She considered it most noble 
 of him to speak so generously. Yet the next minute he 
 was outdone by Stephen. The scene was, in Molly 's view 
 of it, rapidly becoming one in which each man outbid the 
 other for her favour. 
 
 "You know," said Anerley, "I owe everything to 
 Knyvett. My father is bailiff on his Welsh estate and 
 it was he who insisted on the old man spending money 
 to get me educated. Then he used his influence to push 
 me on in my work; and finally he introduced me 
 down here, ' ' he concluded with a glance at Molly 's shin- 
 ing head. 
 
 "A crowning mercy, of course," said Bellew. "He's 
 a good chap, but rather apt to get upon stilts, though 
 that's a habit he owes to his friendship with that cun- 
 ning little hypocrite, Peter Westlake." 
 
 "Oh, that fellow!" said Molly. "Mother refused to 
 invite him to-day. She said that in a small place like 
 this one could not possibly drag in such people. ' ' 
 
 But Bellew pursued his own train of thought: 
 
 "Knyvett's not very English," he said, "for no Eng- 
 lishman ever stuck so long to an idealised woman as he 
 has to my wife. Look," he cried. "She's now going
 
 CAP AND BELLS 121 
 
 to play again, that woman of mine. Une vie manquee, 
 hers, if ever there was one." 
 
 Anerley glanced at him quickly, and then away, as 
 one does at a sight that makes one's gorge rise, but 
 Molly knew that Bellew was at all times a man whose 
 whim it was to say to comparative strangers what most 
 men don't say to their closest associates. 
 
 "It's the Hereford breed, of course, partly," he con- 
 tinued, ' ' but by good rights she should have had a man 's 
 body to give full scope to her musical powers. As it 
 is, she's a childless woman, with a song-bird in her heart 
 that cannot sing and so fettered both ways." 
 
 His face worked and Molly drew him down beside 
 her on a garden seat where Anerley could not see the 
 expression on his face. In the half-darkness she laid 
 her hand on Bellew 's arm, all her being thrilling to the 
 spirit within him. 
 
 "Mr. Knyvett," said she, covering the episode de- 
 fiantly, ' ' has the power of being impressed by everything 
 he sees. His nights at sea have made him different from 
 us, less easy to hold, but more changeless. ' ' 
 
 She talked on, refusing to acknowledge the strange- 
 ness of Bellew 's mood, but he would not be diverted, 
 nor calmed. Stephen Anerley was entirely forgotten. 
 
 "Molly, Molly," whispered Bellew, "I believe you're 
 the only one that knows me for something better than a 
 brute. Little girl, don't let me hurt you. Never let 
 me hurt you. ' ' 
 
 "No," said Molly, in trembling tones, nor thought 
 of the absurdity of her confident assurance. 
 
 Then, as the first notes stole out into the garden, a 
 gust of wind drove a shower of leaf-boles over their 
 heads. Molly shivered and Anerley slipped away into 
 the house to get her cloak. Bellew noticed nothing, but 
 sat leaning forward to watch his wife as she played, 
 while Molly clenched her hand in a passion of jealous 
 pain. She drew a shade nearer, but he never moved.
 
 122 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Both of them had forgotten Anerley, for always, when 
 other folks put out to sea, he would be left behind pick- 
 ing up shells. 
 
 Presently he crunched across the gravel and dropped 
 a cloak on Molly 's shoulders. With a muttered ' ' hush, ' ' 
 she drew it round her, while Bellew leant still further 
 forward, staring into the room with neck muscles taut 
 and head projecting. His eyes were set and Molly knew 
 that he had forgotten her; at the thought she stormed 
 in protest and so learnt the power of this man's hold 
 over her. Passages, sometimes cynical, sometimes high- 
 flown, occurred to her from his books. She marvelled 
 that he should know all that, yet hoped that from her 
 he would learn something unlike anything he had learnt 
 from the other women he had studied. It was the 
 thought of these other women, somehow, that especially 
 drew her to him. What they had enjoyed, why 
 should not she? To be left out was the one unendura- 
 ble fate. 
 
 She figured to herself her future and Bellew 's as that 
 of two winged creatures soaring in a dream ; they would 
 soon fall to earth, of course, but they would have had 
 the good time once at least. It was not passion, nor 
 love, that moved her ; it was mere desire for that height- 
 ening of the colour of things which we call romance. 
 To the weariness of the after days she would give no 
 thought. The features of her small, sharp face grew 
 rigid as she told her will that life should not be wasted. 
 Then the wind that played on her lips and face awoke 
 the thing that had been a-tiptoe in her all this time, for 
 her father had sprung originally from an Italian stock. 
 She leant forward, all the cold, calculating spirit of 
 her mother driven from her. 
 
 But she called on deaf ears, since Bellew heeded her 
 no more than does the eagle a beetle that winds his way 
 up a grass blade. 
 
 On a summer day the clouds often form a film over
 
 CAP AND BELLS 123 
 
 the blue, till gradually there gathers over the sky a uni- 
 form canopy of grey that turns the moors to scarred ex- 
 panses of desolation, as though out of the unseen a wizard 
 had woven a garment. So comes the first inception of 
 a new world to the teller of stories. A mere flutter of 
 vapour at first, it gradually grows to cloud-shapes as 
 mysteriously as the cumulus masses itself before the 
 winds of heaven. In Bellew's brain, under the stimu- 
 lus of the music, scenes flitted by half-seen and were 
 quickly withdrawn by the master of the peep-show. 
 When the last chords were struck he got up with a grunt 
 and walked away, Molly's very existence forgotten. 
 
 It was as though the girl's nature had gathered itself 
 for a spring and on the verge of the plunge had been 
 driven back by a sudden blow. She sat breathless, try- 
 ing to realise what had happened. The thing she had 
 rejected so proudly was the thing she would have 
 crawled for now. The laughter and voices that burst 
 out in the room seemed a mockery of her pain. Then 
 quiet followed as the people streamed away to supper; 
 only the murmur of the sea swayed up and down, as the 
 noise of water does by night. 
 
 She moved to its note, half rocking herself in the 
 stress of her desire. Instinct, too, was alive in Anerley 
 and he took a quick step forward, for some fraction of 
 what was passing in the girl's mind he could follow. 
 "With a glance over her shoulder, she smiled wanly at 
 him. 
 
 So he waited, stupidly treddling to and fro on his 
 feet, for he understood that he was nothing but a sub- 
 stitute. All the training of his early years rose in 
 revolt; let him go now at a woman's call and he would 
 despise himself, for he had divined in her a sympathy 
 with Bellew's contempt of him. 
 
 He would not go and so stood, watching her as she 
 turned away through the thick natural plantation that 
 sheltered the house from the sea winds. But as she
 
 124 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 went, he heard her give a long, sighing breath. That he 
 could not bear, and so followed. 
 
 In the stillness she waited for him, a white figure with 
 both hands clasped beneath her chin. By now he had 
 forgotten Archer Bellew's very existence, for with the 
 long sleeves hanging from her shoulders, she seemed 
 a winged thing hiding the secret of life. He hurried 
 down between the trees, his nerves quivering into 
 flame as the fallen twigs broke beneath his feet. Now 
 he knew that she could not be owned; as well talk of 
 owning the night- wind as try to own a woman; as well 
 try to force her as attempt to plough the furrows of the 
 sea. Her loveliness that had been created by the 
 caresses of thousands of lovers, her body and soul that 
 had been made the means whereby from age to age was 
 accomplished the miracle of birth; these could only be 
 given. 
 
 They stood in silence for a moment while the purring 
 note of the night-jar trilled through the air. He could 
 hear the soft shiver of the girl's breathing and almost 
 cried with the pain of it. But she smiled and whis- 
 pered: "Make me forget." 
 
 And he understood, but was not ashamed of his weak- 
 ness in yielding, only proud of his manhood that could 
 work this miracle for her. 
 
 The spring night was paling to dawn and soon the 
 cheeping note of that first bird who wakes the woods 
 would sound overhead.. Then came the noise of wheels 
 and voices ; the guests were evidently departing. 
 
 "I shall be looked for," she whispered, disengaging 
 herself, for by now she was ashamed, knowing herself 
 to have given false coin for true. "You must forget 
 me, ' ' she cried, ' ' for I have done wrong. I don 't know 
 what possessed me. Indeed, I am not what you think. ' ' 
 
 "I think!" he exclaimed, holding her at arm's 
 length. "I have followed every thought in your head
 
 CAP AND BELLS 125 
 
 to-night. Women often think that men don't under- 
 stand what they refuse to know openly, as it were. ' ' 
 
 "And you don't mind?" 
 
 * ' Mind ! I like it all the better. For I Ve won. ' ' 
 
 So the masterful instinct in him juggled him into 
 peace. And for the time Molly believed in it too. 
 
 "Closer, closer," she whispered, her lips on his. 
 "This is what I wanted." 
 
 "And that dangling, fantastic Jackanapes is forgot- 
 ten?" he asked, as he brought her back to the house 
 door. Nor did he wait for the reply, so sure was he of 
 what it would be. 
 
 Within the house a nerve-storm had begun to brew 
 between the mistress and her maids, for Mrs. Woodruffe 
 had succumbed to the petty furies that tore her heart 
 whenever a period of inactivity came into her life. 
 After every great effort, such as the giving of this party, 
 she would "run down" like an eight-day clock, with a 
 great whirring of the pendulum. Her house was the 
 field over which like a general she ranged her com- 
 manding eye, enjoying the prospect of battle, but prov- 
 ing ill to encounter when once it was over. Every part 
 of the domestic apparatus, even to the dusters which 
 matched the colour-scheme, was as point device as in- 
 genuity could make it. For of the three stages of re- 
 finement which are, first, house; second, clothes; third, 
 person, she had attained the first. 
 
 "And every single plate and glass that you break," 
 shouted she, ' ' will have to be paid for out of your wages. ' ' 
 
 Tired out as they were, the women were piling up 
 dishes with a clatter that threatened chipped edges in 
 every direction. 
 
 "Surely," asked Molly in haughty tones, "we might 
 go to bed now, mother ? This fuss and hurry is all quite 
 unnecessary. ' ' 
 
 "That's not the way things are done in my house, I
 
 126 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 can tell you. And who's to know what '11 be missing, 
 if I don't go through the inventory at once?" 
 
 ''Don't, mother," exclaimed Molly with a glance at 
 the sullen women; "they can hear what you say." 
 
 "Hear! Of course they can. I meant them to. 
 Well," she exclaimed, sinking into a chair and stretch- 
 ing her legs out in front of her, "how do you think it 
 went off? Maitland," she shouted, while Molly 
 clapped her hands angrily over her ears at the sound, 
 "Maitland, I'll be out in ten minutes to go through 
 the list with you. The champagne," she resumed, 
 "lasted out all right, but the meringues were as hard 
 as boot-leather. However, I meant to give cook a 
 month's warning, for we shan't want anyone so ex- 
 travagant now we haven't a party coming on. And the 
 expenses I have been put to are really beyond all telling. 
 First, there was your father's death at a time when we 
 could ill afford it" 
 
 Molly burst out into grim laughter. Though she had 
 heard it so often, the joke of Mr. Woodruffe's ill-con- 
 trived departure always struck her afresh. 
 
 "And I saw you to-night," continued Mrs. Wood- 
 ruffe, answering the laughter, the red spots burning on 
 her cheeks, "you never cut the least bit of a dash with 
 either of your two chaps, though you knew perfectly 
 well that I was running up bills solely on your account. 
 You've no womanly feeling, that's what's the matter 
 with you. You'll be paid out for the way you flout 
 your mother. See if you aren't. I'm sick of it all, I 
 am, and I wish I was dead." 
 
 "You're tired out, mother, that's all. Do, for good- 
 ness' sake, go up to bed." 
 
 "And now you're treating me like a child," sobbed 
 Mrs. Woodruffe. "But I suppose you haven't any news 
 for me ? " she wheedled, as though trying to coax a smile 
 from the forbidding face of truth. 
 
 "No," said Molly curtly, "I haven't." She told
 
 CAP AND BELLS 127 
 
 herself that nothing in the world should induce her to 
 cast pearls before swine and then was seized with inward 
 wonder at the way the episode in the plantation, when 
 compared with this sordid scene, had enshrined itself in 
 her memory. 
 
 "And Stephen?" shouted Mrs. Woodruff e. "What's 
 become of him? Why didn't he come back with you?" 
 
 "I knew better than to bring him here," said Molly 
 coldly. "I knew what you'd be like when all this was 
 over. We really need not invite unnecessary spectators 
 to see us quarrel. The maids are quite enough." 
 
 "Anything, even a lie," she said to herself as she 
 went upstairs, "to escape from a life- like this. Pity 
 I can't put mother to the needless expense of a costly 
 funeral. ' ' 
 
 Ultimately the servants gave notice in a body that 
 night and left Mrs. Woodruffe raging over the plate- 
 basket in search of two spoons and a fork that had 
 been mislaid. But the next morning Molly was awak- 
 ened by a maid who brought, as olive branch from her 
 mistress, a pot of the best China tea with hopes that 
 "Miss Molly had slept well." 
 
 Unfortunately Molly, being cursed with the gift of 
 sardonic humour, saw in the tea a hereditary tendency, 
 for Molly's grandfather had been an innkeeper whose 
 habit it was to gauge happiness by the quality of meats 
 and drinks consumed. The China tea so irritated her, 
 therefore, that she instantly wrote a line to Stephen 
 earnestly begging him not to suggest to her mother in 
 any way that they were engaged. Nor was she aware 
 that deep down in her mind there lurked a consciousness 
 of having been embraced by the wrong man. 
 
 That night the mood of exaltation produced in Sara 
 by her own playing had ended in a vicious desire to 
 fling herself savagely on the pricks that walled her 
 round. How far the fact that she found herself walk- 
 ing home from the Woodruffes' with Billy contributed
 
 128 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 to her recklessness it would be hard to estimate. He 
 was, at any rate, the one man with whom she stood most 
 readily ' ' at ease. ' ' 
 
 "I've never heard you play better than you did to- 
 night, Sara, ' ' said he. 
 
 "What's the good?" she exclaimed, shrugging her 
 shoulders; "I never can do anything with it, tied as I 
 am down here. I feel like a rat caught in a trap. And 
 fools wonder why women don't do first class work, when 
 they haven't yet escaped from household bondage. And 
 if they did, there 'd be one thing for them always to be 
 tied to." 
 
 "And what's that?" 
 
 Instead of answering directly, she turned away and 
 looked up the river. She was down in the depths of her 
 own bitterness and reckless of Billy. 
 
 "You know it would have made all the difference if 
 I'd had a child. But he wouldn't let me. He said he 
 came of too bad a stock for that. Once I thought he 
 was going to change his mind. But he didn't. I've a 
 drawer of little woolly toys at home that date from that 
 time." 
 
 She flashed a glance at him, not being entirely without 
 a secret desire to wake him from his stolidity. For his 
 part he wondered to see how lightly women speak of 
 sacred things. Nor did he actually realise that here the 
 sacredness was so steeped in gall that it had lost its 
 original savour. 
 
 "I believe I've hated him ever since," she continued. 
 "You wonder to hear me talk like this, but I've no one 
 else, you know. I don't want to cast more of a shadow 
 over Anne than I can help. You see a woman can bear 
 being childless if she can fill her life with something else. 
 I might have had my music, if there had not been my 
 father." 
 
 "Then you think a childless marriage can be none 
 in reality?"
 
 CAP AND BELLS 129 
 
 "Oh, no, I would not say that. The best marriage 
 I ever knew was that of two old country people who 
 worked together always, planted their garden, cared for 
 their bees and chickens together. It was childless, 'tis 
 true, but she'd drop in the potatoes when he'd hoed the 
 ground ready. He called her the ganger. That made 
 all the difference, you see. I always think of those 
 potatoes, when I se.e married people drifting apart. 
 With people in our position everything is wrong when 
 either husband or wife goes on the longest journey alone. 
 Cryptic, isn't it?" she asked with a laugh, for she was 
 gradually talking herself into placidity. 
 
 ' ' Tell me what you mean ? ' ' 
 
 "Archer's longest journey away from himself is in 
 the people he creates; mine is when I make music. 
 We're both of us highest when we are far away in our 
 work. If we could travel together everything would 
 have been different. But when he wanders away with 
 his thought people, he puts me outside. He doesn 't sup- 
 pose I should care. I never went with him, you see. 
 I never got to know his characters gradually as he gets 
 to know them. I can read the books when they're 
 written, of course. That's all. I never know any- 
 thing of the conception, of the pain of birth. We never 
 think together, never have. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Could it ever be possible ? ' ' 
 
 She looked at him and he understood, for everything 
 was the sweeter to them both when they shared it. Only 
 a few minutes together were needed to make the world 
 seem entirely homely to them both. From such kin- 
 ship followed exhilaration. 
 
 "And that," asked he, "would take the place of 
 what you spoke of before ? ' ' 
 
 She hesitated, but the very condition of their com- 
 radeship was truth. 
 
 "Not quite," she said slowly, "for you know I've got 
 my feet very firmly fixed on the common earth. And
 
 130 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 thought, the mimic world that Archer lives in, is like 
 something horrible that feeds on the reality of things. 
 It is like the ivy that sucks the vital juices from the tree. 
 I hate it. Everything is gauged now as it yields copy. 
 That explains many things which people think I ought 
 to worry over." 
 
 Did she really care or not? With all Knyvett's 
 knowledge of her, he could not answer that. 
 
 "You see the new danger?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes," she answered, "I'm sorry for the girl. But 
 Anne will help, I think, to prevent much mischief. She 
 has a great genius for friendship. Oh," she cried, 
 seeing his face, "I went through that and came out on 
 the other side long ago. No girl will ever hold him. 
 Only a woman could do that, and Molly, poor child, 
 for all her politics, would be only a gossamer web tying 
 up a bull. Yet the tragedy is that only girls appear to 
 attract him nowadays. ' ' 
 
 He forced himself to remember how she had suffered, 
 lest a feeling of repulsion at her plain speaking should 
 gain on him. But he felt that for his own satisfaction, 
 one thing must be put right. 
 
 "There is only one person who can really tackle this 
 job," said he, curtly. "Is there any possible contin- 
 gency that would make you face the world's disap- 
 proval?" 
 
 ' ' Yes, one, ' ' said she, as bluntly as he. 
 
 He did not ask what it was, for his courage failed him 
 there. Instead he began to talk of Mrs. Bodinar and 
 her maternal care for that graceless son of a gun, Simon 
 the treasure-seeker. 
 
 " 'Wambling home, all drinky-like, ' " laughed Sara, 
 glad of a change to something less emotional than their 
 previous conversation. 
 
 "Sara," asked Mr. Knyvett, feeling the quick spur 
 of a curiosity that drives us to learn a secret we fear to
 
 CAP AND BELLS 131 
 
 know, "are you like Mrs. Bodinar, would you i'eel you 
 must help Bellew if he wanted it ? " 
 
 "Yes, if I felt I were dragging him down, I'd even 
 rush to sea and risk the trouble to my ' innerds. ' : 
 
 ' ' Or what is more likely to be needed release him ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Facing everything for him?" He could not keep 
 the note of pain away. Hearing it, she voiced a bitter- 
 ness in herself that neither of them had suspected. 
 
 "After all," she said, "he took me and you did not. 
 No, no, Billy, I didn't mean that !" 
 
 "But it's so true that it's a truism," he answered with 
 a wry smile at her. 
 
 Her thoughts had flown to the weeks she had spent 
 in Florence with Bellew after their marriage; it was 
 little more now to her than the memory of a fine thing 
 spoiled. For everything was theirs that ought to have 
 been, save one. They were alone together, man and 
 woman, spending the first hours of intimacy amid the 
 beauty of early Italian spring. They were, moreover, 
 finely gifted with power to appreciate what the south 
 could offer. It was not that which had failed. 
 
 During the first days she had experienced for the only 
 time in her life that blissful aloofness from the tiny 
 sordid trifles that in the everyday flow of things made 
 existence a succession of petty anxieties. The sensation 
 was doubly grateful to her on whom the well-being of her 
 father had depended for so long. Between herself and 
 discomfort there was now a wall that made a night 
 spent in an insect-ridden hut among the mountains 
 merely an amusing experience. She felt, in short, as 
 free of care as the lilies of the field. 
 
 Then she found her mistake; there was nothing in 
 Bellew of the rocklike stolidity which even the average 
 man of blunt nerves can supply for his wife's com- 
 fort. There was nothing in him for her to fall back
 
 132 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 upon. It was she who would have to think and plan for 
 him. 
 
 It was in a mountain village that she made the dis- 
 covery which taught her that he meant her to go hungry 
 of her deepest need. The knowledge came in somewhat 
 cruel fashion, too, for seeing a woman going about the 
 village, listless, squalid, with signs of a blow on her face, 
 she made enquiries and learnt that the husband had 
 struck the poor creature for her childless condition. 
 
 With the murmur of the mountain stream in her ears, 
 she told Archer what she had heard and asked him a ques- 
 tion. He sat with a rigid face and then told her quietly 
 that she, too, must be childless. He told her why and 
 she had argued the point, she remembered, like a scientist, 
 quoting Brieux and instancing many cases of incalcula- 
 ble freaks of heredity. He had jested, she remembered, 
 calling her a sweet-lipped Ibsen, a biologist more acute 
 than Weissinann. 
 
 It was the jest that had broken something in her, 
 although she was silent at the time. Slowly the days 
 grew heavier, till at last she repulsed him with a shudder. 
 He spent that night on the hills and returned in the 
 morning with a nocturne in his head, but the chain 
 had snapped at its thinnest link. No one but herself 
 knew the bitterness of the succeeding months; she only 
 felt that the spirits of the unborn were clamouring to 
 her for life. 
 
 Billy's thoughts had gone on an even more bitter pil- 
 grimage than hers to his own awakening and the pur- 
 chase of the Pendragon. 
 
 "Why are things so damnable?" he burst out, stand- 
 ing with shoulders hunched up as though it were raining. 
 
 "Just because they trap us before we realise the mean- 
 ing of them," said she. "We do things at twenty, not. 
 guessing how they look at thirty. ' ' 
 
 "Anyway," said he abruptly, "I want you to be quite 
 sure of one thing. That whenever if ever you should
 
 CAP AND BELLS 133 
 
 be driven to cut the painter, whenever the situation be- 
 tween you and Archer grows really intolerable 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "I shall be ready. Nor could anything be too hard 
 for me to do." 
 
 "I think I had counted on that. But, Billy, it's all 
 so lonely." 
 
 She put a hand on his arm and he covered it with one 
 of his. Like men who know the strength of their own 
 passions, he kept a tight rein on himself. Only the flash 
 that brings green lights into the eyes showed inner fires. 
 
 "And, after all," she said, answering that, "we still 
 have the best, the understanding, the sympathy." 
 
 "You don't really believe that, Sara. Don't cover 
 things up, ' ' he cried harshly. The next moment he was 
 striding down the road without so much as a backward 
 glance. 
 
 "He'll sail in a few days after this," she said with a 
 tender smile, remembering his quick exits after a crisis. 
 She hummed Bodinar 's song : 
 
 "Down, down, down, at the bottom of the sea, 
 Where the dead men crawl upon hand and knee." 
 
 "Thank God," said she piously, "for the open air, for 
 sun and wind and men's blustering heartiness. For 
 these things keep the world sweet." 
 
 Then, falling on the matter of blustering heartiness 
 she suddenly remembered that she had seen nothing of 
 her sister all the evening. 
 
 "No, I didn't intend to go," said Anne, as she sat up 
 in bed with hands clasped round her knees; "I never 
 could put up with that woman and if Peter's too low 
 down for her, so am I. That's why I went over and 
 proposed to him to-night. Yes, I've been with him all 
 the evening, administering shocks. But really I 've been 
 so worked up with the atmosphere in this house, the 
 tender moaning over what can 't be helped, that I thought
 
 134 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 I'd fix up one thing right away. Peter and I won't 
 make another kettle of spoilt fish. ' ' 
 
 In most things Anne was like a steam-engine, but this 
 took away even Sara's breath. She sat down at the end 
 of the bed while Anne faced her with cheeks a-flame. 
 
 "Are you by any chance at all feverish?" asked Sara. 
 
 "Not in the least. But I should have a quotidian- 
 tertian ague in a couple of shakes if I didn't contrive to 
 make something happen in this malarial swamp. Well, 
 the Pendragon sails a-bucaneering in a few days. 
 Billy '11 be glad to go, I should opine. But as I myself 
 can't let out by creeping along close-reefed in a Cape 
 Horn gale, I've taken up with Peter instead. But I 
 shan't get spliced till I've got my M. D., for like all 
 pious people he's as lazy as they make 'em. Oh, of 
 course he plods along doing routine work, but intellectu- 
 ally he's comatose. I shall be unto him like a per- 
 petually exploding squib fastened to his tail. ' ' 
 
 "Are you really serious, Anne?" 
 
 "Certainly. Never more so," answered she, covering 
 herself with the bedclothes till only one eye was visible. 
 "Dad was beginning to talk of reading ^Esthetics with 
 me, you see. Now there couldn't be a finer corrective 
 to Esthetics than Peter. Oh, dear," she cried, fancying 
 some reproach in Sara's look, "I suppose I'm hideously 
 selfish. But there really is no sense in both of us being 
 sacrificed on the family altar. Now is there ? ' ' 
 
 Sara assured her confidently that there was none, but 
 Anne, in direct defiance of her principles, kept awake 
 half the night, wondering whether her remaining un- 
 settled in life could make any possible difference to Sara. 
 In the morning she wrote to Peter telling him not to 
 make the mistake of imagining they were engaged. 
 
 But since her courage failed at the posting point and 
 the letter was never sent, Peter Westlake was left in 
 tranquil possession of the field.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN IN TWO MODES: IN THIS STEPHEN 
 
 ANERLEY USES A CUDGEL, AND ARCHER BELLEW A 
 
 RAPIER 
 
 TO Stephen Anerley there was but one conceivable 
 way of wise living and that was to push on, never 
 to look back, never to turn aside. The precise nature 
 of the goal was not clearly defined, though in general 
 it assumed the form of an income increasing by arith- 
 metical if not by geometrical progression, accompanied 
 by a warm sense of general beneficence. To do him 
 justice, it must be confessed that the latter item was 
 quite as essential to his happiness as the former. Thus 
 he always desired to forward any "reforms" that were 
 much in the air at the moment and an article embodying 
 certain scientific facts on the prevention of consumption, 
 for instance, when written by himself, would suffuse 
 through his frame a pleasant glow that was far more 
 due to the notion of another item to his credit account 
 in the book of life than to the cheque the article earned 
 him. In short, he walked by the gleam he saw in the 
 far distance, confidently believing it to issue from the 
 windows of the celestial mansions; at the worst it may 
 be said that though the light by which he walked might 
 be due to the celestial bonfire, yet he certainly enjoyed 
 the primroses on the path. 
 
 It was Molly's capacity for pushing her way, com- 
 bined with her emotional dependence, that had first at- 
 tracted him. He had no intention, of course, of allow- 
 ing his wife to provide for herself, but he would have 
 felt her to be too feeble in calibre to make a satisfactory 
 
 135
 
 136 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 mother for his children, had she not been capable of 
 earning an income of course a smaller one than his 
 own, since its size would always serve, even in moments 
 of self-exaltation, to remind her that the position of 
 wage-earning woman is secondary to that of man. Yet, 
 since he was an honest man, he acknowledged to himself 
 that Molly's waywardness was not without its attrac- 
 tion for him. Even this, he persuaded himself, was en- 
 tirely logical, for did not waywardness mean vitality, and 
 vitality, health and power? All eminently desirable in 
 a wife and mother. Besides, his virility was not un- 
 flattered by the sense that it was in him to tame a danger- 
 ous domestic animal. But the culminating point of his 
 delight came in the fact that he, the great Stephen, 
 should have netted this animal in the face of formidable 
 rivals. 
 
 Altogether he was in a superbly happy frame of mind 
 next morning as he discoursed of Molly to Mrs. Wood- 
 ruffe ; it was characteristic of the man that Molly 's note 
 asking for secrecy had been quietly dropped into the 
 waste-paper basket of his mind. 
 
 Far otherwise was it with Mrs. Woodruffe who, with 
 the intense dislike of mental exertion that often goes with 
 fussy bodily activity, was now with pain and effort en- 
 gaged in forcing herself to realise the exact position of 
 affairs. Rather late in the day for this it certainly was, 
 but Molly's mother w r as the sort of woman who, after 
 getting up at dawn to catch a train, will find herself not 
 exactly sure whether it is marked A. M. or P. M. And 
 now that she had nearly caught this particular train for 
 her daughter she was beginning to feel that it was out 
 of all question, the wrong one. 
 
 As in all natures which are slow in acquiring im- 
 pressions, those few ideas that had been driven home 
 in Mrs. Woodruffe were very deep-rooted. They dated, 
 of course, from the days of her youth, for such women 
 acquire no fresh notions after twenty, and were ac-
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 137 
 
 cordingly endowed with the tenacity of the idee fixe. 
 Everything in her system of thought was reduced to 
 two conceptions; men were made to earn money, but 
 the woman who required to work for her living was not 
 only a failure, but a degraded failure. Her affection 
 for her daughter was not high-toned, of course, but it 
 was genuine as far as it went and it would have broken 
 her heart to think that her only child had been driven 
 to the last desperate resource of the derelicts of femi- 
 ninity, that hateful work, the hall-mark of failure. She 
 had been forced by Molly's will to acquiesce in the 
 training that had fitted her for a secretaryship, she had 
 even welcomed the several situations as so many matri- 
 monial chances for the girl. But that such a state of 
 things should last was inconceivable, since every woman 
 of ordinary good looks had one unfailing weapon against 
 defeat, the power of arousing desire. If she was fool 
 enough not to use it, then let her fall into the hell of 
 womanhood. Let her toil for her living and be stamped 
 as a pariah. 
 
 Entirely without capacity for passion herself, she be- 
 lieved her daughter to be quite well able to take care of 
 herself, able in fact to suggest intrigue for the purpose 
 of further allurement. Hence the idea that Molly's 
 flirtation with Bellew was anything more than the setting 
 of a man-trap never occurred to her for a second. All 
 that side of things was just man's weakness, the weak- 
 ness by which woman lived. 
 
 For a short period during her early married life she 
 had herself been obliged to make her hands sodden by 
 taking in the washing of fine linen ; the memory of that 
 brief period of poverty and work seemed a greater stain 
 on her past than an illicit love affair. For she had in 
 extreme form the docility that accepts men's estimate 
 of women's position, combined with the unswerving 
 relentless logic that forces that estimate to its complete 
 fulfilment. For in Mrs. Woodruffe's idea if a woman
 
 138 WINGS OF DESIKE 
 
 ought to live by sex, for her to live by anything else is 
 manifest failure. 
 
 But there are higher and lower prices to be paid ; she 
 was minded to get a high price for her daughter and 
 was at last awaking to the fact that Anerley's price was 
 not as high as it ought to be, especially when there were 
 other potential bidders. 
 
 The daughter of an innkeeper in a naval port, she had 
 picked life to its bare bones. Her earliest memories were 
 of the rushing mornings when the incessant rattle of the 
 till resulted from a ship 's being paid off, the furtive even- 
 ings when men and women who had reached the lowest 
 stage of the drink craze had to be hustled out of the 
 way of inspectors. Her father was a shrewd, hard man, 
 pitiless and hungry, who kept his end well up. The 
 memory of it all and of its maxims of wisdom, was bitten 
 deep, even to the constant child-bearing illnesses of her 
 mother who was a fool, for she should, in her department 
 of life, have cheated a bit. She would not then have 
 died, prematurely worn out. Still, an honest woman 
 who did her duty to the man who supported her. 
 
 From it all one ruling idea emerged, the notion that 
 to be "a master man," one free of tied houses, was the 
 only really superior position. For everything in the 
 new station of life to which marriage had removed her 
 was now translated by her into the terms which she had 
 learnt in her childhood. Thus to her, the true ' ' master- 
 man" was an employer, not an employe, and when she 
 found that Anerley's family was in a position of de- 
 pendence on Mr. Kny vett, she felt that marriage with him 
 would be humiliating for Molly. Worse than all, when 
 Stephen, with the straightforward honesty that was 
 largely due to his own self-confidence, went on to speak of 
 the inherent riskiness of all journalism, she instantly re- 
 garded him as a man employed in casual labour. Being 
 inherently incapable, however, of letting go a single 
 string to her bow, she began to temporise.
 
 139 
 
 "Dear Mr. Anerley," said she, "we must not force 
 the child's feelings. I have always thought that a 
 young girl's affection is a sort of delicate bloom which 
 a rough touch may brush off. ' ' 
 
 Stephen, being unable to compare speech and thought 
 in Mrs. Woodruffe, entirely acquiesced in the suita- 
 bility of her sentiments, though of course he put 
 no more faith in them than she did herself. They were 
 only comme-il-faut, like the d'oyleys, the drawn-thread 
 tea-cloths, the single flowers in "specimen glasses" 
 without which Mrs. Woodruffe found it impossible to 
 exist. She was now a housekeeper of the type who lays 
 traps to prove whether the housemaid turns the mat- 
 tresses every day, having travelled many a mile since 
 the days when Mr. Woodruffe had been forced to marry 
 the innkeeper's daughter who heartily despised him for 
 allowing himself to be entrapped. 
 
 "But," said Stephen with the air of one taking off 
 his shoes on holy ground, "I have every reason to be- 
 lieve that her affection is mine. ' ' 
 
 He smiled inwardly at his elegant euphemism for her 
 ' ' closer, closer, make me forget. ' ' Then he felt ashamed 
 of his smile, for Molly, apart from her mother, was en- 
 tirely dear to him. 
 
 "The child would not willingly mislead you I am 
 sure, but she is impulsive. I was just the same at her 
 age. So I know; I made my mistakes, too," she sighed 
 with her head on one side, her little eyes shining with 
 the enjoyment of playing a fish. She already saw her- 
 self arranging alliances for Molly's children. But she 
 had a shrewd suspicion that they would not also be 
 Stephen's. 
 
 Then the fish took the bait between his teeth and 
 bolted up stream. 
 
 "Mrs. Woodruffe, I know that Molly cares for me. 
 I learnt that last night without any possibility of doubt. 
 What do you want me to do ?"
 
 140 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Let her have six months more of freedom," said 
 Mrs. Woodruffe, giving him his head; "that will allow 
 the child time to make sure. She has heard of a new 
 post and will soon leave here. ' ' 
 
 It was untrue, but threw an illusive air of comfort 
 over the arrangement for Stephen 's benefit. 
 
 He walked to the window and looked out. There the 
 sickly scent of a pink hawthorn got inextricably mixed 
 with the distaste for Molly's mother that was rising in 
 him. Meanwhile Mrs. Woodruffe patted her fringe-net 
 and congratulated herself on her diplomacy. But Ste- 
 phen was beginning to understand. 
 
 He came back, sat down heavily in a low bamboo chair, 
 crossed one leg over the other and began examining the 
 lacing of his boot. Then he looked up : 
 
 "Mrs. Woodruffe," said he, "you don't exactly wel- 
 come me as a son-in-law. That I see plainly. We've 
 got to have this fair and square. I'm a business man 
 and I begin to think you are a business woman. Now 
 either you mean that your daughter is to go. on as she 
 is doing at present, or else you've a more eligible match 
 for her. One or the other of those two alternatives it 
 must be. I want to know which. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Dear me, Mr. Anerley, ' ' said Mrs. Woodruffe, trying 
 to laugh, "you are forgetting that the poor child has no 
 father, only a poor weak woman who isn't used really 
 she isn't to such plain speaking. For I am only a 
 woman, you know." 
 
 She showed the surprise she might have felt had he 
 called her a griffin. But Stephen was getting angry. 
 
 "And what your being a woman has to do with it, 
 I don't know," he said. "I guess you haven't fought 
 your way up to where you now are without a little 
 horse sense. Anyway, here it is. She'll earn a misera- 
 ble pittance for herself compared to what I can give 
 her. For, thank God, we still have the power to get 
 for our women the ease and comfort they can't get for
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 141 
 
 themselves, try how they will. That's the sheet anchor 
 in all this sea of turmoil round us. And when that 
 goes there'll come the end of all things. But it won't 
 be in my time, nor in yours. Now, even now, women 
 like comfort, and we can give it to 'em. Everything else 
 is all bunkum. ' ' 
 
 Even while he spoke he was surprised to compare him- 
 self with the Stephen of last night ; just a little ashamed 
 perhaps, too, but the truth was that deep answered to 
 deep in these two natures; and both began to feel the 
 fact. Mrs. Woodruffe was silent, for his bolt had gone 
 home. His success gave him courage for a second shot. 
 
 "And you'd better let me take her away," he said, 
 "though, by Heaven, I believe she loves me, yet there's 
 another man hanging about who has got what every man 
 who is a man himself can recognise a sort of gipsy 
 power of making the silly things hop down to him. 
 Every woman seems to get him on the brain," he 
 grumbled. 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe 's heart beat high at this unsolicited 
 testimonial to Molly's attractiveness; yet to her fancy 
 there was a contemptuous tone about his words. This, 
 however, she ascribed to the mere jealousy of a rival. 
 
 "Oh, that's nothing," she purred. 
 
 ' ' Nothing, is it ? " he cried. ' ' You take it very easily 
 that a married man should dangle about after your 
 daughter. Some mothers " 
 
 "Gracious! that wasn't what I meant at all. I can 
 trust Molly entirely." 
 
 "Then what did you mean?" he asked. "For some- 
 thing you did mean, I'll go bail. Oh, oh, I see," he 
 roared, "there's another lady-killer about, is there? 
 They seem to swarm down here like bees. But you're 
 out, Madam, entirely out. He's only got eyes for one 
 woman in all the world." 
 
 "Oh, but that's off," she exclaimed quickly, and then 
 paused, dismayed at the admission she had made.
 
 142 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "So that," he said quietly, "is the meaning of the 
 six months you want. Six months in which to catch a 
 bigger fish. The patriarch of the pond, as you may 
 call it, in fact, since I owe everything I have to him. 
 Well, you shall have your six months. I wouldn't have 
 Molly come to me with any hankerings after anybody 
 else for anything you could pay me. I'll not have 
 her at all, or else I'll have her freely. I'd rather she 
 didn't come quite of the family she does, but " 
 
 "That's enough," snapped Mrs. Woodruffe, "since 
 you force me to plain speaking by your insults, let me 
 tell you that it is to your family no less than to your 
 poor prospects that I object. My daughter might look 
 much higher than to a marriage with a mere bailiff's 
 son, a struggling provincial journalist ' 
 
 Her scorn of the woman who works was only equalled 
 by her contempt of the man who follows such a lazy 
 trade as sitting in a chair letting his pen run on. 
 She would have applied this criterion equally to 
 Shakespeare as to Stephen. 
 
 "Say penny-a-liner, while you are about it," an- 
 swered Stephen, his eyes flashing. "Old Nietsche says 
 we spit bile and call it newspapers. Now we've both 
 lost our temper, which is a damned silly thing to do, 
 but natural under the circumstances. I want you to 
 know, anyhow, that there's no inferiority on my side. 
 Potted meats aren't Buckingham Palace, you know, 
 and my father has more than a tincture of humane 
 letters, while I " 
 
 He swelled, an Alexander of the world of the in- 
 tellect. 
 
 "And Molly loves me, God bless her," he said, his 
 harshness melting. To his thought, how like a jewel 
 she shone in the head of this toad of a mother. 
 
 "Now," he continued, "we've had a good old mother- 
 in-law and son-in-law wrangle and we've begun well. 
 That's all as it should be. So shake hands, Molly's
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 143 
 
 mother, for, by heaven, that covers a multitude of sins 
 You won't? "Well, never mind. Better luck for me 
 next time." 
 
 And so he flung himself out of the room with a 
 laugh. His self-esteem was even flattered by her 
 angry demeanour, for a man's good conceit of himself 
 is a plant capable of sucking sustenance out of the 
 arid surface of a prison wall. 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe breathed a sigh of relief when he 
 had gone. She was not as much overcome by his vio- 
 lence as he imagined, for she flourished on bluster and 
 only grew timorous when people finessed. Now that 
 she knew, indeed, that Stephen was a man whose moods 
 she could follow, she even derived a pleasing sense of 
 power from the fact. Nor did she bear malice for his 
 plain speaking, since in his place she would have acted 
 in precisely the same way. 
 
 As to the substance of his talk, since she possessed 
 one of the great secrets of happiness a capacity for 
 ignoring the warnings of evil that did not accord with 
 her own prepossessions she simply snatched at his 
 prognostications as so many pegs on which to hang 
 her calculations for the future. From the interview 
 with Anerley she derived, therefore, the idea that, as 
 regards her daughter, he might always be reckoned on 
 as something to fall back upon in the event of failure 
 in other directions. In her view he was a sort of cut- 
 and-come-again dish, for evidently his attachment was 
 likely to be a lasting one. From this fact she even 
 derived the kind of vicarious enjoyment that comes 
 from the contemplation of a persistent wooer. 
 
 Should he again ever succeed in his courtship, Molly 
 would assuredly sink into no squalor, for Stephen 
 would always demand and obtain that keeping up of 
 appearances which was Mrs. Woodruffe 's highest ideal 
 of well-being. His drawing-room would always be 
 well upholstered, his sideboard silver of the brightest
 
 144 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 polish, his sons would enter the professions and his 
 daughters be in a position to demand satisfactory set- 
 tlements. Though she regarded him with scorn as a 
 man who got his living by a pretence of work, she yet 
 respected his cunning since he was able, by the smallest 
 possible expenditure of effort, to carry out all his pur- 
 poses. His directness appealed to her as business-like, 
 his roughness she mistook for power, and his air of 
 omniscience she took for wisdom. In a word, he ap- 
 peared to be of good grain because she found him highly 
 polished. There would be no terrifying splendour of 
 brilliancy about this match, no marble halls, but one 
 could comfortably take one's ease in it. 
 
 To the warning with respect to Bellew, she was con- 
 stitutionally incapable of attending. She had a con- 
 siderable admiration for the full-fleshed, red-lipped, 
 mustachioed type of manhood, but, since Bellew was as 
 far as possible removed from this, he appeared to her 
 to be negligible. That the virile force of muscle and 
 blood-flow may by mental characteristics be trans- 
 formed into an attraction a thousand times more pow- 
 erful, because a hundred times more subtle, she had 
 not the remotest conception. 
 
 Molly, in effect, belonged to another class than that 
 of her mother; her education, while it made her able 
 to earn a living, had also subtilised instincts that Mrs. 
 "VVoodruffe only knew in crudest form. The mere posi- 
 tion that Bellew held in the world of letters, the repu- 
 tation he enjoyed as one whose whole gamut of joys 
 and pains was world-wide, constituted a call in Molly's 
 eyes to zests more poignant than any the ordinary 
 life can give. The little handful of people who sit 
 perpetually drinking at the tap of the publishing world 
 considered that Bellew was not only giving them ever 
 deeper and deeper conceptions of human character, but 
 was actually helping to evolve a new type. 
 
 To Mrs. Woodruffe all this was unknown; the dif-
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 145 
 
 fering shades of literary values were to her as incom- 
 prehensible as would be the difference between red 
 and pink to the colour-blind. Nor did she imagine 
 for a moment that, to Molly, the happiness of being 
 regarded with favour by Bellew was in no way compara- 
 ble to the bliss it would give her could she but be recog- 
 nised as the original from whom a picture of girlhood 
 had been painted. Where Mrs. Woodruffe had fixed 
 her ideas on an establishment, Molly was longing 
 neither for an intrigue nor for a love affair, but for 
 an episode that should exalt her for a space to that 
 superworld where the women of fiction are created. 
 As yet the girl was not so much in love with Bellew, 
 or even with love itself, as longing to play her part in 
 that literary pantheon where to have reached the great- 
 ness of a collected edition is to be recognised as a torch- 
 bearer, but to have been loved by the author thus 
 enskied is to have been singed by the flame of the altar 
 itself. Nor did she recognise as yet, that it is a world 
 of mock-heroics where shadows pursue yet more shad- 
 owy visions and where all things end in the dream of a 
 dream. 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe was far wiser; she knew that Molly 
 and Stephen would soon weld their ambitions into one. 
 Molly's dresses, her parties, even the style of her table 
 decorations and the quality of her brains would all be 
 used to hoist Stephen up the rungs of provincial great- 
 ness. She could see him town councillor, sheriff, 
 mayor; she felt, too, the comfortable assurance that 
 Molly would bear the insignia of office with the air of 
 an empress. 
 
 Compared with the cold dignities of a grande dame's 
 existence, how warm and fire-lit was this future! Yet 
 the far height beckoned to Mrs. Woodruffe as it does to 
 all striving souls and she could not entirely relinquish 
 the scheme of a Knyvett alliance. Nor did her calcula- 
 tions belie her intelligence as much as may appear, for
 
 146 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 the great interplay of the world between intellect and 
 instinct had been reduced by her to two factors only 
 man's instinct for woman, quickly sated, yet ever 
 burning, and woman's intellect as definitely taking 
 advantage of this instinct to win for herself wealth, 
 position, honour all that men win by effort and brain. 
 To these twin powers she could put no limit. 
 
 Far back, too, in the centuries Mrs. Woodruffe's fam- 
 ily had risen from a farm-labourer's cottage by pre- 
 cisely the quality she was exhibiting now, an entire in- 
 ability to recognise the impossible or to calculate the op- 
 posing forces. 
 
 Meanwhile Molly struggled as one who is torn between 
 conflicting forces, for she was amazed, not only at the 
 duplicity of her own actions, but at the doubleness of 
 her own nature. For even in the soreness of being re- 
 jected by Belle w she had found sweetness in yielding 
 to Stephen. Yet all the time she told herself that she 
 hated him, that he was a mere usurper. 
 
 On the morning after the party she had gone up to 
 her mirror, but fully as she had intended to tell him the 
 plain, bare truth, she was deterred by the spectacle she 
 saw in the glass. Wan-faced, big-eyed, no power on 
 earth could induce her to risk letting her lover see her 
 like this. 
 
 And by the evening the impulse itself had died down 
 in her, for in woman it is not wine that discloseth the 
 truth, but the sour temper of the dawn. Aurora, not 
 Bacchus, is the truth-bringer. 
 
 It was late in the evening of the next day when 
 Stephen and Molly walked towards the river mouth. 
 Between the branches of the trees, across the glitter of 
 the river, they watched the shadow creeping higher up 
 the opposite bank where the tracery of the bare pine 
 trunks wrote strange hieroglyphics on the sunbaked red- 
 ness of the cliffs. From a trawler in the estuary be- 
 tween the two castles at the mouth came the creaking of
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 147 
 
 gear and the hoarse shouts of the men. The shipwrights' 
 hammers in the building yards were silent now; the 
 anchored vessels swayed at their moorings, for the tide 
 was going out. 
 
 It was queer, thought Molly, to see all around her 
 such complete absorption in shipping, coal-lifting, 
 freight-carrying, in all the banal details of the work 
 of the world, in fact. Hardly half-a-dozen people in the 
 town could form any conception of the world of thought 
 wherein she lived. Even in the midst of her own per- 
 plexities she enjoyed the elation of imagining herself to 
 be part of the rare and strange, of feeling herself signed 
 with the seal of a very rarefied spiritual world. 
 
 Suddenly her mind leapt very much to earth; she 
 wondered, as women will, what Stephen would do if he 
 saw her insulted. Would he look on, emasculate as 
 men are now from too many centuries of "law and 
 order"? She asked him the question point-blank. 
 
 "Knock him down if he wasn't the better man," an- 
 swered Stephen promptly; "get knocked down myself 
 if he was." 
 
 Even to one of her spiritual vision this rang true. 
 
 "You may kiss me," she cooed. 
 
 Stephen saw the connection between her remark and 
 his; he laughed delightedly and further showed his 
 strength by lifting her high up on an ivy-grown rock. 
 Nor did Molly feel that the clip of his muscles was any- 
 thing but a joy to her, for she was not by any means 
 as far removed as she imagined from the everyday world 
 where men and women will to live. 
 
 "We'll shake down together well enough, Moll, old 
 girl," said he, tucking her hand comfortably under his 
 arm, "only you must not unsettle yourself with too 
 many fancies. Why not draw up a solid course of good 
 reading? I doubt now whether you're well up in peo- 
 ple like Macaulay, or Mill or 
 
 ' ' Hallam and Grote, ' ' cried she. ' ' Oh, you dear boy,
 
 148 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 and Mill wrote 'The Subjection of Women!' And how 
 many of the hundred best books have you read ? ' ' 
 
 "You have me there," laughed he, "but really now, 
 I do think a woman with a serious future before her 
 ought to read up well. For her place is most important, 
 you know " 
 
 "Wife and mother and all that?" she enquired de- 
 murely. 
 
 "Well, yes," confessed he, shocked at hearing her 
 mention it. For in provincial circles bed-rock realities, 
 even those of money, are handled secretively. 
 
 "Ought to do what?" enquired Molly, enjoying her- 
 self hugely. 
 
 "Frame her mind on solid foundations." 
 
 "For her duties?" she asked. 
 
 Then a Rabelaisian sprite possessed her, for Stephen, 
 brutal-tongued with men and mothers-in-law, walked 
 velvet-shod where women were concerned. 
 
 "The other day," said she, "a father remarked to his 
 little girl by way of teaching her natural history : ' Now 
 the birds are going about all very busy propagating 
 their kind.' And she answered: 'One doesn't see you, 
 daddy, go about propagating your kind.' Laugh, 
 Stephen, it's funny," she said, regarding his o'erclouded 
 face. 
 
 "Not on your lips, my dear," answered he. "There 
 is nothing less charming in a woman than a misplaced 
 sense of humour." 
 
 "From which I suffer?" 
 
 "From which you do undoubtedly occasionally suf- 
 fer." 
 
 "But what if a woman doesn't want to be charming?" 
 she asked, pursuing her enquiries still further. 
 
 "I am unable to conceive of such a monster," said 
 he sententiously. 
 
 So, too, was she, as a matter of fact, though she had 
 met plenty of women who verbally disdained the ambi-
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 149 
 
 tion. But his tone rankled none the less, as her mind 
 darted to a sense of their relative positions ; she at home 
 in the London world, clutching at the coat-tails of vari- 
 ous M. P.'s; he a provincial, who chronicled from afar 
 the doings of those to whose groans of vexation she lis- 
 tened in private life. 
 
 Nor was the falseness of the position to be overcome 
 by the fact that he had a sweet style in kissing, for 
 when the first warmth of love-making was over she re- 
 alised that she would be perpetually breaking her teeth 
 on the hard rock of incompatibility. Under this stimu- 
 lus her craving for honesty again awoke; he ought to 
 be told that he was a mere interloper. He certainly 
 would be told if he went on much longer in this tu- 
 torial style. 
 
 Blindly he rushed on, being totally unaware of the 
 offence he was giving. 
 
 "I wish you'd let me draw up a list of books," he 
 said. "I would take care to make it sufficiently varied 
 to be interesting, to include some lighter stuff. People 
 talk constantly of physical training, but they exercise 
 no discretion whatever in the books they read. And 
 only too many of the works of the day, if not actually 
 poisonous, are at any rate full of new notions. But the 
 old tried and tested ideas ought to be good enough for 
 anyone. Women are especially likely to be carried 
 away by any new folly. Of course, we must move with 
 the times, like opening windows for consumption, in- 
 stead of shutting them, but men must prove everything 
 first." 
 
 ' 'Before handing it on to the women?" asked Molly 
 suavely. "But after all," she said, changing her tone, 
 "the new thoughts are what really matter to the peo- 
 ple of to-day, for they are their own thoughts. We 
 must always be changing, be pressing on." 
 
 "We?" 
 
 "Yes, we, men and women. Why should we bury
 
 150 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ourselves in what other people thought long ago? 
 They're dead. Soon we shall be. They had their time 
 to think and it's only fair that we should have ours. 
 We, who were born in the end of the 19th century, don 't 
 think as they did in the 18th. Why should we? It 
 isn't reasonable to expect us to." 
 
 "Dangerous doctrine," said he. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well, none of these opinions are tested. They may 
 cut you." 
 
 Molly shrugged her shoulders angrily. "Of course 
 not; it's our business to test them. And if one's cut, 
 well, there's all the more fun in that." 
 
 They were poles apart, though only Molly could have 
 put her finger on the exact difference between them. 
 She had, in fact, the instinct of the path-finder; it was 
 this instinct which made her cling so closely to those 
 who, as she fancied, soared above her. Stephen be- 
 longed as instinctively to those who take what is found 
 for them. 
 
 "Why," said she eagerly, "don't you see how splen- 
 did it is to feel yourself part of a big host and some- 
 times actually to come with them to a jumping-off place 
 where the race actually begins a new advance?" 
 
 "These things are better left to men, Molly. Woman 
 belongs to the dear old unchanged instinctive things, to 
 love and home." 
 
 "The blood-stained Moloch of the English people," 
 cried Molly in Cassandra-like tones. 
 
 "What?" exclaimed he, startled. 
 
 "The British home. Woman's health, woman's 
 brains, woman's powers have been sacrificed to it. Four 
 walls of a house, says the man ; there you are, don 't you 
 ask any more, for that's your kingdom. There's power, 
 adventure, enterprise outside, but you mayn't so much 
 as touch it all." 
 
 "Who taught you that nonsense?"
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 151 
 
 "Taught me!" exclaimed she. "Why, if everyone 
 were like you, man would be arboreal still. It was peo- 
 ple who thought everything dangerous that I expect at 
 first refused to live in caves. And when the women 
 told you to walk upright, I've no doubt you and your 
 sort called it a most improper innovation. And I guess 
 you didn't walk upright, till the women twisted your 
 tails and made you. Oh, my dear Stephen, what a 
 number of whippings all you men will have to bear to 
 make you take the fences women mean to make you 
 jump." 
 
 "My dear," said he shrewdly, "don't forget that 
 there's one thing the women will have to accept for 
 themselves if they get the new conditions. And a lot 
 of those who call loudest now won't like it at all." 
 
 "And what's that?" 
 
 "The day's work. Look at all your leisured women 
 who'll have to put in their eight, nine, ten hours of 
 routine work. They won't like it, will want to turn 
 back." 
 
 "Perhaps so. But they'll have to march with the 
 rest." 
 
 "Just so. That's what we all have to do to march 
 with the rest, you know. So many things about you 
 surprise me, Molly. I always wonder why you admire 
 Hardy, for instance, for he has said worse things of 
 your sex than any man, living or dead. Why is 
 it?" 
 
 "Because," said Molly, after a moment's reflection, 
 "he always puts us where we like to be in the centre 
 of the stage." 
 
 "But he shows you in such a pet about nothing but 
 love and marriage. Just what one would expect you 
 to hate." 
 
 "Not at all! He shows the truth, that we are not 
 half so anxious about money and getting on as about 
 what we care for most."
 
 152 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 "Just to feel alive all over and thrilling. And if a 
 lover can give us that sensation quicker than anything 
 else, then it's a lover we want of course. That's only 
 common sense." 
 
 Stephen groaned, for Molly made him feel as though 
 he were at the centre of a tornado; his nerves were on 
 edge, his skin tingled. He had always believed that 
 women were passive, that only the bad ones were afire. 
 He began to ask himself the question she had previously 
 asked herself; how were they to bear their difference in 
 make, in ideal? 
 
 It was she who spoke first. 
 
 "Stephen," she said, driven more by the desire for 
 mental clearness than by that moral craving for hon- 
 esty which she had tried to awake in herself, "I did 
 not realise what I was doing last night. I did not, in- 
 deed. I was overstrained, excited. I want you to for- 
 get it, to let things be as they were before." 
 
 "You mean that it was all a lie, when you let me hold 
 you ? ' ' 
 
 "No, no, not all a lie. But you said you understood 
 and I thought it couldn 't be wrong if you really did. ' ' 
 
 He turned away with an impatient exclamation to 
 lean over the fence that guarded the edge of the cliff. 
 The line of red rocks sheeny with the glow of sunset, 
 unconsciously impressed themselves on his mind as, 
 bird encircled, tree-clad, they faded away into the dim- 
 ness. 
 
 "Yes, I understood," he said with a man's hatred of 
 explicit speech, "but the point won't bear being ham- 
 mered at. You must have cared, for your heart beat 
 under my hand. Molly, dearest, it's a bad dream. And 
 I have to go away and leave you," he added, childishly 
 inconsequent. 
 
 He had by now entirely forgotten his sense of mental 
 incompatibility; another compatibility w r as by far the
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 153 
 
 more important thing at the present moment. She, too, 
 waa nearer loving him, now that she saw him suffering, 
 than she ever had been before. 
 
 If she married him, he should be transformed by her 
 powers ; she would teach him to woo other goddesses than 
 those of money and position. Besides, the other man 
 was forbidden fruit, and worst of all, indifferent. There 
 were indeed no arguments stronger than these. 
 
 She put a hand on Stephen's arm: "We will try to 
 understand each other better," she exclaimed. 
 
 And although it was exactly the thing he wanted to 
 avoid, yet he slipped an arm about her waist and so 
 parted, not very unhappily after all. Yet, as the train 
 bore him away, he sat in his corner, arms folded and 
 forehead frowning, trying to make out his bearings in 
 this very tempestuous sea. 
 
 But he had, unfortunately, no compass by which to 
 steer since the complexity of the situation was immensely 
 increased by the fact that Molly, belonging to one rank 
 by birth, was straining herself to breathe the air of 
 another that was not hers by training and habit. 
 
 In the end, it was Billy Knyvett who brought mat- 
 ters to a crisis. He alone had been informed by Stephen 
 of the understanding with Miss Woodruffe and was full 
 of congratulatory sentiments when he met her returning 
 from the station. To Molly, poised as she was between 
 what she desired and what was attainable, his tone was 
 unbearable. He spoke of Anerley's prospects, of his 
 work: "provincial journalism," commented Molly to 
 herself with an angry compression of her lips. Next 
 he went on to the great assistance she would be to a 
 man who might even hope, with luck, for a political 
 career. That he regarded this marriage which Molly 
 herself despised as pre-eminently suitable was clear. 
 She felt lowered in her own estimation by his valuation 
 of her. 
 
 To find her mother in possession of the facts, con-
 
 154 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 trary to her request to Stephen, was the last blow to 
 the girl's off ended dignity. 
 
 "You're not only ungrateful, you're deceitful," 
 stormed Mrs. Woodruff e; "you distinctly told me there 
 was no engagement." 
 
 ' ' Nor is there. I refused to be bound, and I am not. ' ' 
 
 "Let me tell you, miss, that being more honest than 
 you, he told me everything." 
 
 "That's likely," snapped Molly. 
 
 "Likely or not, it's the truth. I should have thought 
 you would have looked higher than a beggarly chap like 
 that. But you never had any sense of what is due to 
 me. Neither had your father, for he chose just the oc- 
 casion to die when his affairs were in absolutely irre- 
 trievable confusion." 
 
 "Do be quiet, Mother," cried Molly. "All the ancient 
 grievances of years and years ago are raked up over and 
 over again every time you have a headache. I'm dead 
 tired of this parrot talk." 
 
 "I shall go away to Australia and you'll never see me 
 again," sobbed Mrs. Woodruff e; "then you'll be sorry 
 you treated me so shameful." 
 
 In moments of rage she recurred to the speech of her 
 youth. 
 
 The next morning, Molly, whose temperament was as 
 quick as lightning, and who either galloped through her 
 work or left it undone, announced her intention of 
 going up to the moor for a day. 
 
 There was, in fact, one valley which, whenever possi- 
 ble, she had made a practice of visiting each year ever 
 since the most delightful holiday of her childhood had 
 been spent there. It was called in her own private lan- 
 guage The Enchanted Valley, and although she was un- 
 aware of the fact, was actually the corner of earth from 
 which her mother's family had originally sprung. 
 
 One of the healthiest instincts in her life was to go 
 back to the country at all moments of stress and there
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 155 
 
 to wait till the quietude had cooled the hurrying pulses. 
 It is a sort of natural fatalism, the fine heritage of those 
 in whose veins there flows the well of country blood. 
 
 But yesterday's bitter blows rankled still and gave 
 something of desperation to the mood with which she 
 encountered Archer Bellew at the corner of the road 
 above the station. There he stood, bareheaded at her 
 approach and smiling, as though whole storm-tossed ages 
 had not passed between the last time she saw him and 
 the present moment. 
 
 ' ' Whither away ? ' ' cried he, his eyes twitching as they 
 had a habit of doing when his nerves were especially 
 alive. 
 
 But at his merry tones Molly wondered at herself, 
 for in what strange, self -created world of misery had she' 
 not been living? With eyes bedazzled and spirits gone 
 up to bounding point, she walked along by his side and 
 listened, while he proposed to accompany her on her 
 day's excursion. 
 
 ''Glory be!" he said, "I've got the vision on me! 
 Two thousand words a day and the mind running clear 
 on its tracks. Don't you think I've earned a holiday? 
 Besides, it'll clear my brain. What! you surely haven't 
 any scruples, have you? Molly, don't be a goose." 
 
 She knew perfectly well that the strength had gone 
 from her to refuse him anything ; this one day, she said 
 to herself, putting off the moment of repentance to the 
 Greek Kalends. 
 
 In wildly hilarious spirits he took the tickets and hur- 
 ried her into the train. Once alone in the carriage, he 
 slowed down, passed his hand across his forehead and 
 exclaimed : ' ' Well, I 'm tired ! ' ' 
 
 He was evidently paying now for the strained condi- 
 tions under which he had been living for the last few 
 days. With a thousand inward reproaches at her own 
 weakness, Molly compared his strenuous days of labour 
 with her feverish ones. Seeing the shadow on her face,
 
 156 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 he leant forward and took her hands in his; his quick- 
 ness in noting moods was, indeed, his readiest passport 
 to a woman's heart. 
 
 ''"What is it?" he asked, looking in her eyes that were 
 not far off from tears. 
 
 Desire to see herself once again the subject of his 
 thoughts took on the guise of penitence. 
 
 "I ought not to have come," she whispered, "for 
 since I saw you last " 
 
 "Yes? Tell me. You know you can say what you 
 like to me and I shall understand." 
 
 It was her bitterest thought to know this true, for it 
 suggested so many comparisons. Here was a man who 
 would not lay a bundle of dried hay before her and call 
 it sweet; with him she might confidently pick her way 
 amid succulent herbage. 
 
 "When you left me and took no notice of me, I hated 
 you and I let him kiss me. Yes, Stephen, I mean. He 
 thinks he is engaged to me." 
 
 For answer Bellew lay back and laughed aloud. 
 
 "You're cruel," she cried; "you hurt me very much. 
 I did not think you would be like that. ' ' 
 
 He crossed to her side, slipped an arm behind her 
 head, his hand beneath her chin and so turning her face 
 up to his, cried: "Forgive me." 
 
 Cup-like she held her lips while he drank from them, 
 at first sipping daintily and then more fiercely till her 
 head fell back against his arm. His touch flamed 
 through her till she knew the difference between the false 
 dawn and the true. 
 
 "Don't you mind what I did?" she asked. 
 
 ' ' They 're but the sweeter, ' ' he said with a smile, look- 
 ing at her lips. 
 
 Nor did Molly care to trace the thought, for it was 
 the essence of Bellew 's attraction for her that when they 
 were together their life seemed one, without hint of un- 
 derlying antagonism of any sort.
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 157 
 
 Sun warmed and sweet, over granite boulders where 
 hang tufts of gorse that send golden lights across the 
 deep brown pools, the river slips down the Enchanted 
 Valley. Hills, grassy, patched with young bracken and 
 scarred with grey stones, enfold it ; only its swaying mur- 
 mur, rising and falling like a pulse, can be heard to the 
 summits w T here the sun beats down in dizzying splen- 
 dour. The cry of the mountain lambs, thin and sweet 
 and infinitely mournful, is a fitting expression for the 
 moorland solitude at the end of the pass where the tors 
 lie outstretched, prone monsters clad in stretches of 
 heather. Here in wider valley flows the main stream, 
 joined by a rushing torrent from a narrow ravine where 
 a spring rises from the hillside, its path between craggy 
 boulders marked by the bright green of young trees. 
 In this hoar, grim place of changelessness the call of 
 the cuckoo sounds strangely out of place, recalling as 
 it does the spirit of woodlands brooding deep in sleep, 
 of easy dalliance and summer ease. 
 
 It had been a marvellous spring; day after day the 
 sun rose unclouded and the west wind, rainless and soft, 
 blew steadily. And such clouds as it had brought were 
 swept away at night by the broom from the cool north. 
 The long sunny hours were marked but by bird calls or 
 silences, by drone of bees, or sheep cries. And at night 
 the sky was clear as though above a desert. Old 
 folks spoke of summers forty years agone, and in mid- 
 June the country folk were burnt as though by August 
 suns. 
 
 Into this radiance stepped Molly and Bellew; here 
 they sat on the rocks while the brown waters sparkled 
 over patches of sand or gloomed across the weedy boul- 
 ders. One strand of her hair had fallen across her 
 flushed cheek. She might have been an ancestress of 
 her own from the little hut, one room up and one down, 
 with open fireplace and oven built in the wall, where 
 in ancient days her mother's forbears had been reared
 
 158 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 by the dozen, a healthy, rosy race, though born in a hu- 
 man sty. 
 
 When the shadow fell across them from the hillside, 
 Bellew bestirred himself. A roaring fire having been 
 made of stubs gathered from the hillside with careful 
 treading for fear of snakes, the viper or the rarer adder, 
 he went up to the village for kettle and tea materials 
 and soon returned laden. Tea over, they lay to wind- 
 ward of the fire, its blue smoke trailing up the valley like 
 a mist. 
 
 Then, by a stretch of intimacy more delightful than 
 any mere caress, he took her into the sanctuary of his 
 mind where he had gathered up the sweetness of sensa- 
 tion by which he lived. 
 
 "Do you know," said he, "that at the corner of the 
 lane just now I had a wonderful moment. I was wait- 
 ing opposite the old cottage for the pitcher to fill. The 
 heavy trees swayed overhead, and underneath their 
 branches the light shone. Beyond I could see the blue 
 of the hills. At the scent of hawthorns I was back in 
 the past of how many ancestors, I wonder! All that 
 I, too, had ever lived, I seemed to live again; all the 
 women I have ever loved, they seemed a part of me. 
 All the joy and pain that ever my nerves had known 
 came back." 
 
 Then he noticed her face. 
 
 "Does it hurt you, dear, to hear of those women?" 
 he asked. "It needn't, for I could not love you so 
 well had they not left their sweet thoughts with me. 
 We weave strands of dark or light into the web of our 
 life ; they come back years afterwards as they did at the 
 lane end just now, and we see what we have done. ' ' 
 
 He talked on of the things he had seen, of the men 
 and women he had known, of the endless procession of 
 sensations that is the artist's life, till Molly found her- 
 self receding into the distance. She could never be 
 the centre of the stage here, or only for so short a while
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 159 
 
 that it seemed a mere moment. An intense loneliness 
 began to close round her ; his life, with its big sweep of 
 the past, seemed nearly as foreign to her own as did the 
 hills and rocks all round them. He was like an ancient 
 house of memories ; she seemed but a jerry-built villa. 
 
 Then she felt a physical chill fall on her and follow- 
 ing her glance, Bellew looked up and exclaimed. Over 
 the shoulder of the Longstone Hill, gathering across 
 the wastes deeper in on the moor, was coming a proces- 
 sion of clouds, inky black at the edges. The wind was 
 shaking the trees. Low growls of thunder came from 
 the left; it was of ill omen, thunder from the left, 
 thought Molly, as following Archer, she leapt to her 
 feet. 
 
 "Come," said he, "we must hurry." Hastily grasp- 
 ing the scattered tea things, nor stopping to stamp out 
 the fire, he led the way down the valley. At the cross- 
 ing-stones the first big drops fell and the darkness gath- 
 ered. He made her slip on his coat and run. The 
 quarry pool by the viaduct was leaden now; there the 
 great clumps of trees round the brink shone like masses 
 of green curd in the half-light. Near by stood a square 
 hut, shuttered and bolted. 
 
 "I'm going to burgle," cried Bellew; "we shall get 
 drenched if we stay here out of cover." 
 
 The long rusty screws that held the wooden shutters 
 across the window yielded at last and smashing a pane 
 of the little leaded window, he opened it and crept in, 
 pulling Molly after him. With the roar of the rain on 
 the corrugated iron roof and the rattle of thunder over- 
 head they stood deafened, while the wet lay sleek and 
 shining on clothes and dripping hats. 
 
 The place was fitted with three tiers of sleeping berths, 
 one above the other. Over the open fireplace, blackened 
 with smoke, hung a crook, and a pile of gorse and brush- 
 wood lay in a wood-box by the side. From the cracked 
 walls cobwebs hung and rough pencil sketches had been
 
 160 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 scrawled on the boards above the mantel. It was evi- 
 dently a camping place ; even now a store of rugs and 
 blankets lay piled up on the great bags of straw that 
 formed the bedding. Matches, their boxes overcrusted 
 with mould, lay on the grocery shelf by the door and 
 presently Bellew had managed to set a light to the fire, 
 while Molly tried to see her flushed face and rain- 
 drenched hair in the round, gilt-edged looking-glass over 
 the fireplace. 
 
 Through the window they had smashed came the sweet 
 scent of the rain-drenched moor that mingled with the 
 pungency of the wood-smoke which puffed across the 
 room. It seemed now, in the silence that was following 
 the storm, a place cut off from the world, a place where 
 one could forget the jarring wheels of life. It was al- 
 most still enough to hear the spiders spin their webs 
 upon the walls. 
 
 Then over the bridge that spanned the gorge, a freight 
 train passed with a rush and a roar ; she could hear the 
 lowing of the prisoned beasts as the trucks rattled 
 across the gulf, for the vortex of the city had sucked 
 in even these. 
 
 The sound stirred thought, since all the day she had 
 been asking an unspoken question. For herself she had 
 made the irrevocable leap that means decision, but Bel- 
 lew's mind was unfathomable to all her probing. Al- 
 most for the first time she beat herself against the bars 
 of his nature, questioning, asking to be admitted to his 
 thoughts; weary, angry, at last she started up and de- 
 clared that, storm or no storm, they must go. But he 
 took out his watch and showed her that they need not 
 start for another hour. By that time the storm would 
 have passed over. 
 
 Then he flung a straw pillow on the ground by the 
 fire for her and pulled her down beside him. Laying 
 her hand across his knee, he stretched the fingers apart ; 
 he knew now that he had a meaning to convey to her,
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 161 
 
 a subtlety that roughly handled would give pain, but 
 too delicately touched upon, must remain ambiguous. 
 For Molly, hot to rush upon the fulfilment of her na- 
 ture, had scarcely an inkling of the pitiful slenderness 
 of the thread on which Bellew's happiness was poised. 
 He laughed inwardly at the whimsical situation she was 
 creating, for while she expected the caresses of passion 
 he was going to dose her with philosophy, himself mak- 
 ing a wry face at the mixture he yet expected her to 
 swallow. 
 
 Archer Bellew distrusted, not only his own instincts, 
 but the very power of life itself to give satisfaction. 
 He had always, in fact, recoiled from the face of achieve- 
 ment and even as a boy, had wept over the prizes he had 
 gained and built glorious fancies round the prizes he 
 had lost. The habit of dreading accomplishment had 
 grown with his growth. Even his career, wonderful as 
 it seemed to others, had a core of bitterness which he 
 would have escaped had he never succeeded. For it was 
 built and he knew it to be not on the solid honesty 
 of ascertained fact but on the shifting sands of a freak- 
 ish personality. His writing was highly coloured, hec- 
 tic, even when most realistic, tinged with the glitter of 
 the footlights, not steeped in the quiet noonday. Falsely 
 true, it rang a note that deafened contemporary ears, 
 but would not be taken as history in time to come. 
 
 Here again achievement was far less satisfactory than 
 vision ; he even envied the great unprinted, one of whom 
 had told him of the joy derived from a typewritten 
 manuscript that reposed in a drawer. All the fame in 
 the world, or so it seemed to him, would never yield the 
 solid satisfaction of a virgin creation unsullied by the 
 coarse hands of the world. So he talked of common 
 joys, but held aloof from the procession; envied the 
 sweetness of the wild rock-honey, but never gathered it. 
 
 " Molly," he said tenderly, stooping down and looking 
 in her eyes, "don't let us play at cross purposes."
 
 162 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Her voice shaking, she said "Yes," and waited for 
 the rest. 
 
 He got up restlessly, and leant his shoulder against 
 the mantelpiece, while he asked himself angrily why in 
 the world were human beings trained to be so matter- 
 of-fact in their views. For he himself at the present 
 moment seemed vainly grasping at gossamer curtains 
 that blinded him. 
 
 He dreaded failure so much that he kept silence, 
 while Molly began wildly to throw out her hands, not 
 knowing whom she fought, nor what precipice she was 
 approaching. 
 
 "I do not think we shall see very much of one an- 
 other after this," she said, trying to speak coldly. "I 
 shall be going away shortly. And then I suppose you 
 will be starting for Egypt. By the time you come back 
 I shall be married." 
 
 "Molly," he asked, "do you really care for Aner- 
 ley?" 
 
 At the point-blank question, she hesitated. But with 
 the woman's instinct against burning her boats, shirked 
 the answer. Nor, of course, did she really know it. 
 
 "Oh," she cried furiously, "he schools me and you 
 torture me. I wish I had never seen either of you. ' ' 
 
 "Then you do care for me? Molly, do you care 
 very, very much?" he cried, irresistibly carried away 
 with the desire to feed his own vanity. 
 
 "How dare you?" exclaimed she. "You are playing 
 a mean, unmanly part, trying to make me show myself 
 as weak as you think me. I'll have no more of it. 
 Foolish, wicked, I may have been, but I'll not go on 
 with it. You don't care. This day even has been noth- 
 ing to you, nothing but something more to add to your 
 memories. A collector of Turkish delight, that's what 
 you have become. But it's somewhat stale, after all." 
 And blindly she began to look for her hat and its pins.
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 163 
 
 "It is," said he quietly, "that I don't want to spoil 
 things." 
 
 "To spoil things? What do you mean?" she asked, 
 quieted by his tone. 
 
 "We human creatures are always doing that. We 
 are like children that with a dainty ineal before them, 
 cram their mouths greedily full, swallow gluttonously 
 and miss all the delicate savours." 
 
 "Why don't you say plainly what you mean?" she 
 asked contemptuously. 
 
 "Don't you see that I am trying to say something 
 very difficult?" 
 
 "Then say it. You only frighten me by all this beat- 
 ing about the bush." 
 
 "I want," said he slowly, "to keep the preciousness 
 of our friendship, of our love, unspoilt. That is what 
 I have been trying to say all this time. Everyone trans- 
 forms love and friendship into something crude, even 
 ugly. They think that love means possession, and 
 friendship, eternal companionship. It is not so. Love 
 and friendship are delicate, lovely things that must not 
 be coarsely swallowed. If so they lose their beauty 
 become even hideous. That is why weariness, hatred 
 even, follow on marriage. You know how beautiful an 
 untouched stretch of bracken looks, how hideous when 
 beaten down." 
 
 "Yes," said she faintly, "but wounded, it gives out a 
 sweet smell." 
 
 To what far distances he was driving her, she could 
 not tell, but into her brain was stealing a perception of 
 his meaning. 
 
 "I wouldn't ruin a beautiful thing by laying rough 
 hands on it," he went on. "Once I did that. I was 
 young then. We both were mere tyros at life. The 
 misery, the shame, of the after-fruits, I shall never for- 
 get. Love turned in me at any rate to something
 
 164 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 more like hatred than anything else. But I have for- 
 gotten, it was so long ago." 
 
 He spoke dreamily, passing his hand over his eyes. 
 
 "Molly, can't you understand?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, turning cold and white. "Yes, I un- 
 derstand. At least I think so. But I don't know. It 
 is all so bewildering." 
 
 She was becoming faint and he helped her to sit down. 
 Leaning her head on her hand, she stared at the fire, 
 dying now into hot ash. 
 
 "I would not hurt you for the world," he said mis- 
 erably. ' ' But ask yourself, have we not as it is the best 
 of it all? Love, friendship, tenderness? Think what 
 intrigues, what subterfuges, what sordid details we 
 should have to live through? Do you not shrink from 
 it all?" 
 
 She had never thought of them, did not now, even 
 while he spoke. She had imagined the joy of life shared 
 in common, of wakings and sleepings, of interests ever 
 growing, of that garnering up of homely memories that 
 transforms the trivial by the divine alchemy of love. 
 Now only a flood of loneliness, the sense of being outcast, 
 poured over her. 
 
 Her instinct of honesty, such as it was, revolted from 
 the unreality of it all. He talked of subterfuges, but 
 what worse subterfuge could be than to shirk the open 
 deed that ought to follow on the thought by that close 
 linking of the law of life which we disregard at our peril ? 
 
 Stephen, matter-of-fact, conceited, hide-bound in con- 
 vention, was better than this. His ladder, mayhap, led 
 nowhere near the stars, but at any rate there were no 
 broken stairways on it. 
 
 Bellew went away to the village without a word; he 
 had to arrange for the refastening of the hut and to 
 return the things he had borrowed. 
 
 When he returned, she met him with outstretched 
 hands; she had wrestled through her first moment of
 
 THE WAY OF A MAM 165 
 
 anger, had accepted the situation, yet with untold scorn 
 of him. 
 
 "We must not meet again," she cried, "for I am only 
 of very coarse clay. I must get used to understanding 
 this. I have to forget." 
 
 Unknown to herself, she was making a last wild ap- 
 peal to the fibres of manliness in him. But in vain ; in 
 one sense he was miserable, yet somewhere at the back 
 of him, the imp he carried in his brain enjoyed the 
 drama of it all. He could even see the scene on the 
 stage. 
 
 Then her sweetness overcame him and he took her in 
 his arms. One lock of her hair fell across his eyes and 
 blinded him. He felt the softness of her breast against 
 his. 
 
 At that the real torment began, since he knew that for 
 a cast of the dice, she was his, a cast, indeed, of the dice 
 cogged by nature. Like a drowning man, he saw all his 
 past and knew himself one who, being given a thing, 
 straightway wished for another. One woman had con- 
 tributed one thing to his life; another woman, some- 
 thing different; he loved the poppy-red woman for her 
 fire of life ; the wit, for her salt of satire ; the child for 
 her naive delight in the dawn of her powers. 
 
 He was a butterfly in a garden; no honey-bee. Nor 
 could he sink to the last level of meanness. 
 
 He put her gently away and helped her out of the 
 hut. Between the dripping trees that shed the sweet- 
 ness of minute drops all round them, they walked al- 
 most in silence. White-faced and strained, they said 
 good-bye at the other end with scarcely any feeling save 
 that of utter weariness. They were, indeed, like men 
 whose hearing has been destroyed by the incessant firing 
 f shot. 
 
 But, unknown to themselves, their parting was no- 
 ticed by the last two persons in the whole world whom 
 they would have chosen to view it.
 
 166 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Did you see that, Peter?" asked Mr. Knyvett after 
 a pause, during which they had listened to the receding 
 footsteps tracing separate paths. 
 
 Peter Westlake nodded. 
 
 "Something wrong there," he said. 
 
 "Something very wrong," answered the other. 
 
 They plodded on in silence, each man's mind follow- 
 ing the same line of thought, for they were reflecting 
 on the helplessness of even the best will in the world in 
 face of the interactions of character. 
 
 "You see," said Billy at last, "I can't bear to think 
 that Sara is somehow, though remotely and uncon- 
 sciously, involved in any harm that may come to that 
 girl. Of course, she isn't really implicated, but still " 
 
 Peter nodded, wondering rather to see that even Billy, 
 apart from Sara, scarcely realised the bitterness of the 
 girl's fate. Though he checked the thought as disloyal, 
 it persisted. 
 
 "This is a matter in which you can't appear," said 
 he. "Nor, of course, can any man. Besides, we shall 
 be away out of it soon." 
 
 "Thank God for that," said Knyvett piously. "I 
 really feel inclined to carry somebody off and go." 
 
 "Sort of 'Once aboard the lugger and the maid is 
 mine,' " smiled Peter. "Well, I don't mind confessing 
 that I feel just the same. But I don't really see how 
 you can make up your mind to leave things in such a 
 mess. ' ' 
 
 "I must," said Knyvett shortly, beginning to walk at 
 a prodigious rate, so that the little man by his side 
 could scarcely keep pace with him. "What good can 
 I do by staying here? As you say, I can do nothing. 
 The whole damned thing's like a ghastly tumour that's 
 got to go on growing till it 's ripe, so to speak. ' ' 
 
 "But you can't sit down and watch it ripen. No, I 
 see," said Peter. 
 
 When close-pressed by circumstance and without the
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 167 
 
 chance of action, Knyvett always felt that curious re- 
 striction of the brain which is a foreshadowing of the 
 shadow of insanity. It was the passivity of endurance 
 through days and nights that goaded him to incessant 
 wandering, now that by his own folly he had cast aside 
 his profession. 
 
 "It wants a woman, does this job," continued Peter, 
 "a woman who's not directly involved in the affair. 
 Anne's too close to Sara to be any real good. Why not 
 get Mrs. Knyvett to come down and lend a hand?" 
 
 Secretly he lived in dread lest the cruise of the Pen- 
 dragon should be postponed. Peter had never been out 
 of harness before and at the prospect of unlimited free- 
 dom no bean-fed horse could have rioted in more ob- 
 streperous spirits internally, of course. Having lived 
 all his life in gardenless brick streets, having warmed 
 himself at a smug gas fire most of his days, he was pos- 
 sessed by a wander-lust that was strong in proportion to 
 the straitness of the bars which had confined him. Born 
 in a Midland manufacturing town, he had always kept 
 at the back of his mind a sick, but apparently hopeless, 
 craving "for to admire and for to see." Every penny 
 of spare cash went in travel books and latterly in far 
 unholier literary ways. He longed for stronger meat 
 than jog-trot wander books ; he wanted to tear the heart 
 out of strange forms of existence. It was for the exotic, 
 the bizarre, that he craved, for any contrast to the grey- 
 blues of English clouds, to the long oval of English faces. 
 He wanted the dry light, the unwinking gaze of southern 
 suns. He even hated the yellowy lichened branches of 
 English lanes and flung himself hungrily into "Le 
 Roman d r un Spahi" and the "Voyage en Orient." 
 Often he would stand gazing into the window of a pic- 
 ture shop while, instead of the smell of fog-smoke, there 
 came to his nostrils the scent of the bazaar, to his ears, 
 in place of the street racket, the call of the muezzin. 
 It was, this call of the unknown, to his Nonconformist
 
 168 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 conscience, like some unholy lust arising in the blood of 
 a virgin. 
 
 "I'll do it," exclaimed Billy at last. "Tve thought 
 of it several times. It will break up her plans hope- 
 lessly, of course. But I think she '11 do it. ' ' 
 
 He wrote, therefore, the same night, suggesting that 
 during his voyage to the Magellan Straits, Mrs. Kny- 
 vett should take a furnished house in Dartmouth. 
 
 "You know me well enough," he wrote, "to be sure 
 that I shouldn't ask you, did I not feel that you could 
 put in a good piece of work here, a bit of work you '11 be 
 glad to have done, too ; one that only a woman with your 
 knowledge of the world could possibly put through. 
 
 "No, old lady, 'tisn't flattery or flummery, but just 
 the bare truth. Things down here that involve one very 
 dear to me are bound up in the most hopeless tangle 
 God ever knew. You're wanted to unloose the Gordian 
 knot with the sword of your uprightness. To change 
 the figure, you may break a few eggs, for I know your 
 methods, mater, but I do truly believe you'll make the 
 omelet. Come, come, come. I shouldn't ask you if it 
 wasn't serious, or if I could do it myself." 
 
 He sat smiling, pen in hand, while he pictured his 
 mother insidiously planning the removal of an obnoxious 
 tenant by cunning devices and when they succeeded, 
 joyfully exclaiming: 
 
 "Ain't I an old devil?" 
 
 The answer came next day by wire ; it was character- 
 istic and apparently final, but Billy by no means gave 
 up hope. It ran: 
 
 "Quite impossible. Up to eyes in engagements in 
 town. Slay someone ; human knots cannot be cut with- 
 out slaughter. Killing no murder in this case." 
 
 Evidently written on the spur of the moment, con- 
 cluded Billy, as he read a communication which must 
 surely have struck the operator as a cipher message. 
 
 The second telegram arrived a few hours later, as Mr.
 
 THE WAY OF A MAN 169 
 
 Knyvett had indeed expected. "Will put hand to 
 plough, ' ' said this one, and her son drew a breath of re- 
 lief as he read it. For Mrs. Knyvett was not one of 
 those who readily turn back, even when the going is 
 very heavy.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE UNDYING PAST: BEING VARIATIONS ON THE THEME 
 OP MOTHERHOOD 
 
 picture standing on an easel in Margaret Ros- 
 -*- siter's studio at Chelsea was in strange contrast 
 to the rest of the room, with its tapestry -covered divan 
 running round three sides, its carved oak writing bu- 
 reau and polished floor. For in all these there was that 
 perfect fitting of satisfaction to requirement which civ- 
 ilisation demands, whereas the subject of the picture 
 went back to instincts so primitive that the origin of 
 them is lost in the mists of the ages. 
 
 A flock of ewes fought for entrance at the closed doors 
 of a great barn built of rough-cast and thatch; as they 
 slipped in the mire of the yard in their struggle with 
 each other, their fleecy backs were as expressive of the 
 lust of battle as the swelling muscles of a prize-fighter. 
 The surrounding scenery was that of the salt marshes 
 and they fought for admission to their lambs, now shut 
 within the barn ; in their eagerness they were even push- 
 ing the shepherd away from the door, since one instinct 
 had conquered another. Over the whole shone the 
 luminous glow of an evening in spring; in the manage- 
 ment of the light and of the bodily expression of the flock 
 lay the strength of the painting. 
 
 Cross-legged on the divan, under the high north light, 
 sat the painter of it, furiously puffing out cigarette 
 smoke as she always did when her work was submitted 
 to a new visitor. The two fingers between which pro- 
 jected the cigarette were deeply stained with nicotine, 
 a mark due to the fact that Margaret Rossiter generally 
 
 170
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 1.71 
 
 smoked while she painted and frequently held the ciga- 
 rette till it smouldered down to the hot end and thus 
 aroused her from her absorption. 
 
 In front of the picture, lorgnette in hand, stood Mrs. 
 Knyvett. She was a tall, massively-built woman whose 
 pale blond hair was scarcely touched with visible grey, 
 though she was long past fifty. Arranged chignon- 
 fashion and parted in front under a small hat placed well 
 forward on the forehead, this hair irresistibly recalled 
 certain illustrations by Leech. In her pose, too, there 
 was an air of conscious capability reminiscent of the 
 "managing bodies" of that generation. Her eyes of 
 vivid blue were fringed with long pale lashes which 
 matched the tufted eyebrows. It was noticeable that the 
 wrinkles of the neck were as deeply marked as though 
 she were a field-worker, instead of a woman of wealth 
 and leisure. 
 
 "Good, isn't it?" said the painter, frankly jubilant. 
 "I've got the light I wanted, and the fighting grip of the 
 legs. You see," she said, springing up and sweeping 
 an explanatory forefinger over the picture, "I had to 
 get all the expression into those back legs and to do that 
 meant sweat, sweat, sweat. But I've got it and when 
 you feel you've done that, the whole world might crum- 
 ble into atoms and you wouldn 't so much as want to say 
 a swear word. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett laughed delightedly, for nobody in the 
 world, except the painter herself, was happier than she 
 when success followed hard on effort and joy on both. 
 And truth to tell, when things went ill with Margaret 
 Rossiter she was quite the Grossest, gloomiest person in 
 the world. 
 
 Round her wild mop of hair, which she wore piled up 
 in coils, she had wound a scarlet handkerchief. Much 
 meditation had given her three chins and she had a 
 habit of looking out of the corners of her grey eyes 
 under their arched eyebrows. The two deep vertical
 
 172 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 lines between the eyes and the network of radiating 
 wrinkles round their corners had been produced by 
 much painting out of doors. The ruddy tan of her 
 face was well in keeping with the flying locks that al- 
 ways contrived to look wind-swept. "Anemone," the 
 wind-flower, was her private peculiar name; some peo- 
 ple added the epithet "elderly," but no one, save her- 
 self, ever wanted her younger, for time and chance had 
 made her a woman instead of a Dresden china figure. 
 
 "But," cried Mrs. Knyvett, suddenly catching sight 
 of the word "Mothers!" painted on the frame, "I don't 
 like that title 'Mothers!' We don't want any more 
 sentiment about that kind of thing. There's too much 
 by half already. For there isn't any fate in the world 
 less to be envied than that of a mother." 
 
 "That wasn't sentiment," answered Margaret, nod- 
 ding towards the picture. ' ' I only wanted to register a 
 fact, for they are mothers you see. And as for mother- 
 hood, what on earth can I know about it?" 
 
 "Well, anyway," said Mrs. Knyvett, "the little orig- 
 inals of that picture are already mutton and their moth- 
 erhood is at an end. Yes, Margaret," she continued, 
 answering a look of enquiry, "I'm werried nearly to 
 death." 
 
 The painter stooped to set a match to the spirit kettle. 
 She said nothing for a moment, because she had all the 
 time been longing to get at the cause of the trouble she 
 divined. 
 
 Nearly all her year was spent out of London in far- 
 away fishing villages, or Breton farms, or amid the 
 greyness of the sand dunes, which she had learnt to know 
 in all their moods. Quite alone in the world, she lived 
 for her work, trying to paint the joys and sorrows of 
 poor folk, but learning to understand them first. For 
 that last reason she usually avoided artist colonies where 
 between themselves and the life around them the clan- 
 nishness of the artists sets a wall. Nor, indeed, was
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 173 
 
 Margaret Rossiter ever really at home in towns ; always 
 to her, town life had a certain vulgarity which nothing 
 in the world, no amusements, no ease, no friendships, 
 could entirely conceal. 
 
 Like Molly Woodruffe, she felt the country in her 
 blood, but with Margaret it was a conscious inheritance, 
 for her cradle had been set under a row of beech trees 
 that sheltered the garden of a hill farm; her first per- 
 ception of the fulness of joyous life had come among the 
 meadow grasses ; her first sense of happy peace from the 
 hot, sunny hum of the flies in a great farm kitchen. 
 One of her earliest recollections was of a cowshed at 
 milking time, herself a small figure on a three-legged 
 stool, with the old cowman encouraging her first ef- 
 forts: "You 'in barely tickling of her, my dear. Her's 
 looking round to see what flea's jumping. Rare big 
 fingers, bain't 'em?" It was subjects such as these that 
 she painted best, for the feel of them was in her blood. 
 
 "I haven't," continued Mrs. Knyvett, "so much as 
 closed my eyes for the night. Just read that," she ex- 
 claimed, throwing her son's letter across the tea-table. 
 
 Margaret read it carefully, once turning back to com- 
 pare the last paragraph with an earlier one. 
 
 "You see what it all means, don't you?" said Mrs. 
 Knyvett. "The whole thing is as plain as possible, 
 though Billy always does write like a Greek oracle. 
 There's some fresh trouble brewing close at home, per- 
 haps even a scandal, where Sara Hereford I always call 
 her Hereford still because nobody could look upon her 
 as really married to that fellow will be in the thick of 
 it. Billy himself never can stand looking on to see 
 other people suffer, so I'm to rush down and bear his 
 suffering vicariously, or perhaps pluck his beloved as 
 a brand from the burning. Now can't you see me doing 
 it?" 
 
 She flung up her hands towards her hat and began im- 
 patiently fumbling for the pins. Margaret's manner
 
 174 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 had changed from gay and light-hearted to very still and 
 constrained. 
 
 "Why not?" she asked curtly. 
 
 "Why not? Because I should be a regular bull in a 
 china shop. My first impulse would be to take them 
 all by the scruff of the neck and knock their silly heads 
 together. And I suppose you don't imagine that that 
 would do any good?" 
 
 ' ' I think, ' ' said Margaret slowly, with eyes that were 
 fixed and dreamy, "that if you gave your mind to it 
 you might help to set things on a better footing. If it 
 can be done," she added, looking significantly into Mrs. 
 Knyvett's face. 
 
 "Fact is," said the elder woman frankly, "I'm just 
 funking it. I've wired to Billy to say that nothing on 
 earth would induce me to give up my season in town, but 
 of course if Billy really wanted me to go to the North 
 Pole, I should do it, if it would be any help to him. ' ' 
 
 Margaret could not fail to see the reasonableness of 
 Mrs. Knyvett's doubts as to her own fitness to deal 
 with this matter. For although a woman of great abil- 
 ity, she was but little accustomed to the handling of 
 difficult human situations. The daughter of a comman- 
 der in the Navy, who, since he had no son, had brought 
 her up boy-fashion, she had learnt in childhood to ride, 
 to shoot straight, and to speak the truth. From this 
 training she had acquired a sort of quarter-deck hearti- 
 ness and scorn of finesse. All her life, too, had been 
 spent in the straightforward management of business 
 affairs, for when left a widow with one son, during his 
 minority she had administered, in his name, the two 
 large estates in England and Wales that had descended 
 to him, and when he came of age he had firmly refused 
 to take the management from her. His own work was 
 more than enough for him and he knew that to take her 
 business from his mother would be to strike away half 
 her life.
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 175 
 
 In this way she had for years been accustomed to say : 
 Do this, and instantly to see it done. Every fence, every 
 barn, every house on her estates was in first-class work- 
 ing condition and on her pilgrimages of inspection she 
 passed over the land like an invigorating wind, for she 
 knew the localities better than her bailiffs and judged 
 the characters of her tenants with a feminine shrewd- 
 ness that left the men of affairs far in the rear. Nor 
 when changes were required by changing conditions did 
 she shrink from them and one reason why the Knyvett 
 lands prospered was that, when modern times called for 
 small holdings, she refused to cling to large ones. Al- 
 though very far from being hard-hearted, she was never 
 one of those who, as she put it, "tried to freeze 
 jellies with last year's ice," so that when an old retainer 
 was obviously too old for his work, she passed sen- 
 tence quickly, but saw that he was well pensioned and 
 supplied with every comfort. "Short, sharp, and 
 up to the knocker," such was the verdict of her own 
 people. 
 
 In the same style had she dealt with her son, from the 
 time that the most important matter in his life was the 
 quality of the milk he drank up to the period when he 
 had to choose his profession. Here, with her entire 
 good will, he had flown in the face of all the prejudices 
 of his father's family and hers, for Mrs. Knyvett was 
 one of the rare people who never- seem to suffer from 
 that arrested brain-development which is one of the 
 most fruitful sources of friction in the world. The pity 
 of it all was that Fate should have restricted her to such 
 a small area of effort as one son and two estates, for she 
 was made of the stuff from which great men are born, 
 or still more truly, perhaps, of the calibre that finds its 
 true development in bridge-building. 
 
 The upheaval in her son's life that followed on his 
 disappointment over Sara Hereford's marriage was in- 
 explicable on any theory known to her. She simply
 
 176 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 bore with it, as one does with some cataclysm of nature 
 against which it is entirely useless to struggle. Since 
 marriage in her case had been merely an episode that 
 gave her a son, she was inclined to underestimate the 
 importance of affairs of the heart in the business of life. 
 It was, of course, conceivable that a man's more impor- 
 tant undertakings might be disorganised for a few 
 months by the necessity for choosing a mate. With care- 
 less management and bad luck such disorder might con- 
 ceivably last even a few years. But to allow this boule- 
 versement de sexe to continue for a longer period was 
 to write oneself down as an insane neurotic. In her 
 opinion, indeed, the oversexualisation of the world was 
 one of the greatest hindrances to wise living. 
 
 For such a woman as this to see her son cast away 
 his chances of fine work and spend years in dancing at- 
 tendance on a woman whom he could neither help nor 
 win was nothing short of a tragedy. For, as with so 
 many women, her eggs were all in one basket. Yet prac- 
 tically no one, except Margaret Rossiter, saw it in that 
 light, for she took no one into her confidence and kept 
 a stoical front to the world. 
 
 "You see," said Margaret, "if you don't go, you'll be 
 worrying yourself all the time. And if anything goes 
 very wrong you'll never forgive yourself." 
 
 "And if I do go, he'll never forgive me for the mud- 
 dle I shall make of things. What's come over me, I 
 can't tell, but I've got a horror of the whole thing. But 
 if I should make matters worse he would never forgive 
 me," she repeated. 
 
 She got up and, in a quite systematic way, began to 
 clear a path between the spindle-legged tables and chairs 
 where she could pace up and down. As a girl she had 
 travelled with her father in the East and there had 
 learnt the comfort of barefoot walking. Even now her 
 shoes were of the softest material and made to fit like 
 gloves, so that there was something suggestive of the
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 177 
 
 gait of a large, comfortable panther in the way she 
 padded up and down the studio. 
 
 "I believe it's the second-rate people mixed up in 
 this affair who annoy me most," she exclaimed, "but 
 I needn't tell you that I'm not referring merely to 
 rank when I say that. ' ' 
 
 Margaret nodded, waiting patiently till this fever- 
 fit should wear itself out, for she knew that Mrs. 
 Knyvett was, just now, very much in the mood of a man 
 who is fitting on an irksome suit of armour. By the 
 time this was done, she felt sure that a second telegram 
 would be sent. Should her expectation, however, be 
 unfulfilled she yet had an arrow that she might find 
 courage to shoot on her own account, for she cared for 
 Mrs. Knyvett well enough to wish to spare her the self- 
 reproach of one who has failed in a duty. 
 
 "What sort of a woman is Sara Hereford?" she asked 
 abruptly ; " do you like her ? ' ' 
 
 "She's very hard to describe," said Mrs. Knyvett, 
 perceptibly brightening when something, however trivial, 
 was given her on which she could exercise her mind. 
 "She doesn't say much and I don't know that she does 
 much. But you always feel she's there. People re- 
 volve round her, don't you know, and consider how 
 things will effect her. They get into the habit of won- 
 dering whether her life is as happy as it ought to be. 
 That's the Hereford gift, in fact. Old Vin's just the 
 same, though he's carelessly selfish and expects to be 
 made the centre. I don't know that Sara does, but 
 the result is much the same, anyway. And there's 
 another thing; you know we're all of us entirely dif- 
 ferent according to the people we happen to be with at 
 the time. You might call Sara dull, perhaps, but with 
 Billy present she's a different being. She lights up, 
 she's alive. I can even understand his longing for 
 her when I see them together, for she would round his 
 life and he hers. Of course only because they each
 
 178 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 think that of the other. But they do think so and 
 then it's true for them. But what I can't bear to think 
 of is that Billy should dangle. My son dangle! Just 
 think of it, Margaret." 
 
 "Do you know, Esther," said the other quietly, 
 ''that when I feel sickened at men's ways, and want 
 to think of a man as he ought to be, I always think of 
 Billy." 
 
 "Oh, yes," exclaimed Mrs. Knyvett, "inside him, 
 of course, that is so. But one judges of a man by 
 what he does, not by what he is." 
 
 "And not always wisely, perhaps," said Margaret 
 musingly. 
 
 "Billy will never force her, you know," went on Mrs. 
 Knyvett, following her own train of thought ; ' ' what she 
 does, she'll have to do of her own initiative. I trained 
 him to think like that," she said, her voice breaking a 
 little over the last words; "I always taught him that a 
 woman isn't a thing to be captured, to be bought or 
 sold. She is responsible for herself, she must stand on 
 her own feet. But, oh, Margaret, how long will he 
 wait? It's spoiling his whole life. And, anyway, if 
 It should happen, if she should cut the traces, that'll 
 be the end of any chance of a public career for him. 
 God ! as if there weren 't enough women in the world that 
 would do for him ! ' ' 
 
 Worst of all, perhaps, as her listener knew, was the 
 fear that perhaps out of such training as she had given 
 was Billy born quixotic, patient, faithful, but unstable 
 and incapable of beating down a private sorrow by the 
 hard iron flail of work and enterprise. Yet against 
 such a conviction Mrs. Knyvett fought tooth and nail. 
 
 "Billy's his father over again," she said; "you know 
 we only had a year of married life together and then 
 he died, but not before I had learnt one thing about 
 him that he had that sort of legal mind which sees 
 both sides of a question so clearly that it always
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 179 
 
 weighs tilings equally, which always sees so much good 
 in things as they are, so much possible evil in re- 
 forms that it never does anything at all. That's Billy 
 all over, except when you set him down with some 
 big job which just has to be done, some gulf that 
 must be spanned, some country opened up. There 
 isn 't any room for doubt in work like that. That 's why 
 he's ready to fly half round the world and look for 
 fairy gold to make Peter Westlake happy ! ' ' 
 
 She laughed bitterly at her own fierce jibes, while 
 Margaret crossed the room and stood leaning on the 
 mantelpiece with her head on her crossed hands. 
 
 "And what about Archer Bellew?" asked she at 
 last in curiously cold, indifferent tones. "He's very 
 much like the thirteenth guest, isn't he, in every story 
 where he intervenes?" 
 
 "The man is a thing to shrink from," exclaimed Mrs. 
 Knyvett vigorously. "If there were no other reason 
 in the world against my meddling in this business, there 
 would be one in this that I could scarcely keep myself 
 from joining in any plan that would rid a decent woman 
 of that ghoul. Sara Hereford's no particular favour- 
 ite of mine, but she doesn't deserve that fate, any- 
 way. ' ' 
 
 Margaret laughed outright at her vehemence. 
 
 "He's only a thing that results from the theory of 
 Art for Art's sake, Esther. And the girls he studies 
 are only martyrs on that altar after all. I myself am 
 perhaps the one person in the world who knows the 
 very worst that can be said against Archer Bellew. ' ' 
 
 "Fiddlesticks! Altar of art, indeed, altar of his own 
 selfish unmanliness! He turns them inside out for his 
 own benefit, if that's what you mean by Art for Art's 
 sake and then goes away and tells what he knows. Fifty 
 times better if he played Tom Jones or Don Juan, or 
 whatever you call it, with them. There, it's out! I'm 
 no prude, as you know, Margaret, but I suppose that's
 
 180 WINGS OF DESIKE 
 
 the most immoral thing I've ever said in my life. But 
 this is the age for saying what everybody thinks but 
 nobody dares to say. Which is an Irish bull and no 
 mistake," she added, with her loud laugh learnt in the 
 open air. "He's no man, for he's ashamed to risk 
 the consequences of manliness. Tell you what, Mar- 
 garet, if I were to go down there I should just try to 
 saddle him with one of the biggest scandals ever heard 
 of. I never could bear to see a child play with fire 
 but what I wanted him to get burnt a bit, so as to 
 teach him. Master Archer would be the better for the 
 lesson Fidgety Phil wanted. ' ' 
 
 If ever an elderly Puck in a chignon waxed merry 
 over a mortal's mishap, it was Mrs. Knyvett then. 
 
 "And, oh, Margaret," she added, "a good scandal 
 would save Billy by freeing Sara. ' ' 
 
 "Not in the present state of the law," said Margaret 
 gravely; "you must remember that, as yet, mere infi- 
 delity on the husband's side is part of the added burden 
 which the English law lays on the shoulders of woman 
 by way of strengthening what it is pleased to call the 
 weaker vessel. Only desertion by Archer and refusal 
 of conjugal rights, as well as unfaithfulness by him, 
 would free her. ' ' 
 
 "Crawl at his feet and be refused perhaps! Why, 
 even I wouldn't ask that of Sara, not even for Billy's 
 sake. No, it 's no use my going down. ' ' 
 
 "You," cried Margaret, "to talk like this! Why, 
 you're like a horse that shies at a fence. I've never 
 known you shirk a disagreeable duty before." 
 
 "This is beyond nature, Margaret, and I can't do 
 it; I don't feel it incumbent on me to sacrifice anybody 
 needlessly, uselessly, and least of all myself," 
 
 Margaret sat in a kind of dream, knowing instinc- 
 tively that she was nearing her own fence, knowing also 
 that she would certainly take it. For Mrs. Knyvett 
 was moving in the dark, unaware of the problems
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 181 
 
 actually facing her. It seemed a crime, therefore, for 
 a friend to keep silence, however hard speech might 
 be, however harmful in its consequences. That last 
 thought gave pause, however, for surely speech would 
 be wrong were the consequences inevitably disastrous? 
 But of consequences she could really say nothing defi- 
 nite, for her everything must be flung into the melting- 
 pot of character and no one could tell with absolute 
 certainty what metal would emerge from that cauldron. 
 The hardest thing to contemplate was the knowledge 
 that in all probability the relationship between herself 
 and Mrs. Knyvett would be completely altered by what 
 she had to say, deepened, perhaps, but never quite the 
 same again. 
 
 In matters such as this one refers instinctively to liter- 
 ary tastes; in Mrs. Knyvett 's opinion Anthony Trollope, 
 with his motive springs of money and position, gave 
 for outside purposes a true enough picture of life; for 
 heights and depths she went to George Meredith, though 
 even such a flame-like passion as his, in her eyes, clouded 
 the perfect noonday of his genius. 
 
 To a woman like this it was peculiarly difficult to 
 say what must be said. Yet Margaret knew, as we all 
 know the unspoken truth, that for the sake of friend- 
 ship Mrs. Knyvett had already pardoned in her that 
 kinship with things primitive and vital which to some 
 minds merely signifies power and to others is the 
 one thing anathema to their trained and civilised in- 
 stincts. So, trusting herself to that fact like one sway- 
 ing down a cliff by a rope, she began to free her con- 
 science of the perilous stuff it bore. 
 
 "Esther," said she, "you know people often wonder 
 why I am alone. I don't know why they should when 
 there are so many unmarried women nowadays, but they 
 do. Yet I suppose we all know things, though We pre- 
 tend we don't. Perhaps everybody guesses that once 
 I had a bad break."
 
 182 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett kept silence, for she had guessed it cer- 
 tainly. 
 
 "Why," asked she at length, "are you talking like 
 this now? Has it anything to do with this matter of 
 mine?" 
 
 "Yes," said Margaret quietly, "it has everything 
 to do with it and I think you ought to know. Else 
 you will be working in the dark. It explains many 
 things." 
 
 She began restlessly to move about the room. 
 
 "Must you tell me, Margaret?" 
 
 * ' Yes, I must, ' ' answered she quite decidedly. 
 
 "I'd rather you didn't. I don't want to know. I'd 
 rather not know," exclaimed Mrs. Knyvett. 
 
 "Because you think it would spoil your feeling for 
 me?" 
 
 "No, nothing could possibly do that. If you'd com- 
 mitted a murder, I'd " 
 
 "Come and stay with me the night before my exe- 
 cution. Yes, I know. But then I can quite imagine 
 your approving of a murder, but this is different. 
 But I must, Esther, I must tell you. I don't feel that 
 it can possibly be right for me to keep quiet any longer. ' ' 
 
 "Well?" asked Mrs. Knyvett. She guessed, of 
 course, by now what Margaret had to tell, but not pre- 
 cisely the manner of its telling. 
 
 The room was dark and quiet. Margaret moved from 
 her seat, set a match to the fire and watched the flame 
 creep along the newspaper behind the lower bar. Even 
 now she was not quite sure that she was going to take 
 the plunge. She wanted something outside herself to 
 decide, and so made up her mind that if the flame 
 caught the wood, it should be kismet; she would speak. 
 Yet, even while she watched, her mind was perfectly 
 certain that the lever she held in her hand would move 
 Mrs. Knyvett to act, and act decidedly. It would alter 
 the whole complexion of things in her eyes. She could
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 183 
 
 not have told why in so many words; it was only in- 
 stinct that guided her, the same primeval thing which 
 teaches a dog to swim that has never before seen a river. 
 
 The wood caught, gave out a hiss and burnt on. 
 Margaret sat down and placed her hands on her crossed 
 knees. She would not have minded telling this story 
 to a man half so much, since it would merely have 
 brought him over to her side. For hers was a weakness 
 that men pardon by instinct, though by reason they 
 condemn. It is the other way round with a woman. 
 
 "Just twelve years ago," she began, "there was in 
 a "West country fishing town a young man beginning to 
 get his foot on the ladder as a sketch writer, a novel- 
 ist of sorts. There he made the acquaintance of a 
 painter, a woman of thirty-two who was a few years 
 older than he. Then it so happened that their work 
 sent them both to a midland town, she to sketch, he to 
 write a series of articles for a London daily. He hated 
 all that hack work, oh, how he hated it. He always 
 wanted to do exactly the thing that nobody would take. 
 She knew, for they were engaged. He hated it so much 
 that for a whole twelve months he worked as a clerk in 
 a bank. But he hated that worse than ever, for he 
 wanted to be free as the birds of the air. And every- 
 body knew how he felt; he made no secret of it what- 
 ever. They remembered this when money was missing 
 that could not be traced. It was thought that he had 
 taken it, mainly perhaps because he was a stranger and 
 had been taken on rather carelessly, it seemed. And 
 there were other reasons why they should think it. 
 They did not arrest, for they had no actual proof. Be- 
 sides, he was a favourite with the manager. But they 
 waited and the cloud of suspicion gathered. The only 
 strange thing was that he did not bolt. That was 
 strange, of course, if he were guilty." 
 
 "This was Archer Bellew?" 
 
 "Yes, Archer Bellew, before he struck ile with a
 
 184 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 book that caught the fancy of the public. It was in 
 a midland town that it happened. There were great 
 trees on the old arrow-slit walls of it. They used to 
 send showers of yellow leaves across the river. That 
 was glassy, like a mirror. You could scarcely tell which 
 way it was flowing. His descriptions of rivers mirror- 
 ing trees are wonderful. He learnt to write them in 
 that town, from that river. It always seemed autumn 
 there." 
 
 She was like a sleep-walker. Mrs. Knyvett leant her 
 head on her hand and watched her curiously. 
 
 "Then the woman. His sitting-room was on the 
 ground floor of the house where he lodged. One night, 
 when all the town was talking and she could bear it no 
 longer, she hid and waited till it was late. There was 
 a green-latticed door with laurels at the side of the 
 house. A little, suburban, semi-detached place. The 
 long French windows of his room were ajar. And there 
 he sat staring straight in front of him. Not moving 
 at all. 
 
 "It was his face. Not human. Hopeless. To wipe 
 that look off his face, that was all. A clock struck. She 
 counted the strokes, but could not finish. I don't know 
 what the hour was, but late, very late, and silent. The 
 world seemed to be dead still. Then she pushed open 
 the door. He did not help her. 
 
 ' ' He was her man and she had to wipe that look from 
 his face. She knew how to do it, for Nature taught 
 her. Hundreds and hundreds of mothers were behind 
 her, you see. They had bred her, had made her what 
 she was. She knew what she had to do. She did it 
 played the courtesan with the heart of a mother. Only 
 just to wipe that look away ! To do that she would have 
 cut herself in bits, to give herself was nothing. That 
 was the way of it. 
 
 ' ' He was asleep when she left, asleep like a child. He 
 had not slept for nights. All the rest were like baying
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 185 
 
 hounds, but she put herself between him and them. 
 Night after night she kept the heart in him. Nobody 
 knew, nobody has ever known. Then they found that 
 he was innocent." 
 
 "And the woman? She cared?" 
 
 "Not much. She had thought him guilty all the 
 time. That didn't make any difference to her, you see," 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "And then she waited. She had done her part. 
 But he avoided her, pretended not to see her, would 
 turn down side streets. At last it was weeks later 
 in the same room. Only winter clear and moonlight. 
 Icy, the air tingling with frost. The garden light as 
 day. The panes glittering. Then she asked him, asked 
 him point-blank, what he was going to do, and waited, 
 stifled. 'Plenty of time for that, my dear,' he said. 
 'We'll talk about that later. Besides, a man doesn't 
 care to marry a spoilt thing.' 
 
 "That was all. But he must have been nervous, for 
 his hand slipped. He had been standing with his hat 
 on the back of his head, waving a stick. It slipped 
 somehow and broke the glass in a thousand atoms. I 
 heard its tinkling fall. 'A man doesn't care to marry 
 a spoilt thing.' I never hear glass fall now without 
 hearing that, too." 
 
 She sat quite still, her face working, her eyes down- 
 cast, while Mrs. Knyvett watched her. Then she lifted 
 her eyes for the first time during the whole story and 
 smiled. She was just a child now. 
 
 "You know," said Mrs. Knyvett quietly, "it wasn't 
 really true that she was spoilt. You don't think so 
 now, do you?" 
 
 Margaret's eyes leapt, for her friend had answered to 
 the call. 
 
 "No," she said. "No. Afterwards I was glad that 
 when the summons came I had had it in me to answer 
 it." She laughed tremulously. "It sounds like an
 
 186 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 episcopal acceptance of a benefice, doesn't it? But it 
 altered everything." 
 
 "Ah, yes." 
 
 "There seemed an unseen bar between herself and 
 men. She knew why. They didn't, but she felt it 
 always. That was the way of it. Then she went away 
 to Paris and worked. She felt glad then that she had 
 some money, held the whip hand of him in one way. 
 She felt cruel in those days. But he triumphed in the 
 end, for, though you won't recognise him, he is a great 
 constructive force." 
 
 But Mrs. Knyvett cared not a straw for the plaudits 
 of the critics. 
 
 "And so that was Archer Bellew as a young man ? ' ' she 
 said. 
 
 "That was Archer Bellew as a young man. He was 
 twenty-eight then and I thirty-two." 
 
 "Margaret," exclaimed Mrs. Knyvett with convic- 
 tion, "you love the man still." 
 
 "I don't know, Esther. I've never seen him since. 
 But when I am by myself I simply cannot bear to be 
 in the same room with a humming bluebottle, for the 
 sound brings back the summer when I was so happy with 
 him. I can see the long white dusty roads with the 
 wild tangle of hedge on either side. I can hear how the 
 wind blew through the trees when he was there. I 
 always dread the open days of spring, the wide light, 
 and the wild growth. They are such a contrast to our 
 grey weariness." 
 
 "Margaret, Margaret, after all these years," whis- 
 pered Mrs. Knyvett. Her hand looked brown as a nut 
 amid the white tangle of hair that now lay against her 
 knee. "Sara Hereford! Sara Hereford!" she ex- 
 claimed contemptuously, "when in the world did she 
 feel he was her man? And if she did, there isn't blood 
 enough in her veins to give what you gave." 
 
 Suddenly Margaret Rossiter looked up.
 
 THE UNDYING PAST 187 
 
 "Do you know," she said, "that I'm not really sorry 
 it happened. Or rather, I 've often wondered whether 
 I am. For you see, if I'd married him in the ordinary 
 way I don't suppose I should have been a real painter 
 at all. I couldn't possibly then have given all my 
 strength and all my thoughts to my work as I can now. 
 It's husband and child to me. I've never had anything 
 else. And it's taught me all I know." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett acknowledged the truth of this, as she 
 thought of the gallery of homely, truthful pictures of 
 the school of Josef Israels that bore Margaret Rossiter's 
 name. 
 
 "And," said Margaret again, "I don't really misun- 
 derstand how now, though I did then. He is one who 
 hates above all things to be bound, so that he was driven 
 to repudiate even Nature's tie. It was quite natural, 
 of course, that he should hate me. I had shown him 
 his own weakness. I had, as it were, shamed his man- 
 hood. A woman ought never to do that to a man. Oh, 
 yes, I understand him now. Nor, strange as it may 
 seem, do I care a fig for all the other women about 
 whom one hears gossip. They don't seem to matter. 
 They 're only shadows, even Sara Hereford! ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, Sara ! ' ' exclaimed Mrs. Knyvett contemptuously, 
 nor paused to explain her tone. "But," she con- 
 tinued, "what I'm trying to get at is why you told me 
 just now. Oh, I understand the immediate reason. You 
 wouldn't keep anything in the background that I didn't 
 know. Also you want me to go down to Devonshire; 
 that I saw from the first. But there's a deeper reason 
 than all that. "What was it, I wonder. ' ' 
 
 "Not," said Margaret, "what you're thinking now. 
 I'm looking forward to no re-shuffle of the cards. It's 
 too late for that. True, I count myself his wife, and 
 not Sara Hereford, because I've done all for him a 
 woman could, more than she ever has. But we can't 
 get back the years the locust has eaten. I'm changed.
 
 188 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Thought, you know, is just like a disease that preys on 
 the looks, though in some eyes it makes one more at- 
 tractive. But not in Archer's. He always liked 
 youth, rosebud lips and soft hair. He was that sort of 
 man. I thought when I saw Sara Hereford once that 
 she was always too mature for him." 
 
 Before Mrs. Knyvett left, Margaret bethought herself 
 of the one good that comes out of trouble ; she had learnt 
 the worth of a friend. And Mrs. Knyvett gave forth 
 no uncertain sound, for she knew the difference between 
 truth and falsehood, nor had the world's conventions 
 any power to bind her sympathies. For once, literary 
 tastes had been misleading, or rather, as is the case 
 with many people, Mrs. Knyvett 's instincts ran far 
 ahead of her intelligence. 
 
 Alone once more, Margaret Rossiter sat on in the dark- 
 ening studio, now only lit by the fireglow and the light 
 Mrs. Knyvett had insisted on switching on above the 
 new picture. She knew why that had been done and 
 even smiled a little through the tears that spotted the 
 front of her silver-grey dress with the ruffles on the 
 close-fitting sleeves. It was for her comfort, since 
 the picture was a beautiful thing and she the maker of it. 
 
 Yet she wanted the thing she had not. Pictures were 
 good ; it was a pleasant thing to know she had something 
 to say and could say it. Yet what changeless things are 
 works of art! They cannot grow, develop, alter and 
 unfold. 
 
 She was very glad Sara Hereford had no children; 
 nothing pleased her better than that, not even the 
 sheepfold bathed in luminous glow, as she slipped a 
 hand inside her dress beneath the warm white chalice of 
 her breast.
 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL: IN THIS CASE THE FISHERMAN 
 SETS HIS NET AND MRS. KNYVETT PLAYS A GAME OF 
 CELESTIAL PATIENCE 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Knyvett had once come to a decision 
 she never allowed the grass to grow under her 
 feet. Besides, in this case, there was upon her the 
 haste with which one rushes into a job one would fain 
 put behind one. 
 
 Her first move was to drive to Mudie's, where she 
 electrified the attendant by an order such as he had 
 never in his life before received from an elderly lady 
 whose library lists had always hitherto been compiled 
 with extreme propriety. Nor did she diminish his 
 amazement when she explained that her purpose was to 
 "read up" erotic morbidity, speaking in exactly the 
 same tones that a Civil Service student might use in 
 referring to Tamil or a branch of the craft of forestry. 
 Ultimately she departed, bearing a packet of books 
 which should have raised the blush of shame to her 
 elderly brows. This they did not do, however, for hav- 
 ing glanced through them cursorily, she came to the 
 conclusion that their authors had not even a bowing 
 acquaintance with life and besides, "she knew much 
 worse things than that" from reality. 
 
 Once on board the Pendragon, there was not much 
 likelihood that she would continue her erotic studies 
 for, as Margaret Rossiter had expected, she began to 
 be intrigued by the situation. With the quickness of a 
 woman of the world she grasped her cue, which was 
 to act as a freshening wind of change. For the sea on 
 
 189
 
 190 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 which these people were now afloat was little better than 
 the doldrums where day by day the weary sun looks 
 down on a glassy sea. 
 
 "Billy's ill," she said curtly to Peter Westlake, "and 
 something's got to be done." 
 
 The two were alone in the yacht saloon. 
 
 "Why in the world aren't you away long before 
 this ? Here you hang on month after month in a place 
 that for Billy is no better than a pest-house. Why 
 aren't you bucaneering, or mining, or whatever it is 
 you think you are going to get out of that Bodinar, 
 who's no better than a knave that prefers to idle 
 about on a yacht to doing an honest day's work on a 
 collier?" 
 
 She spoke angrily, for she always regarded Peter as 
 a sort of satellite whose business in life it was to circle 
 round Billy carrying attendant comforts, just as Billy, 
 in his turn, circled round Sara. 
 
 "We're waiting for the worst of the Cape Horn winter 
 to be over. We can't possibly be there till the end of 
 September at earliest." 
 
 Just then Billy put his head in and announced his in- 
 tention of going ashore. The state cabin was already 
 littered with Mrs. Knyvett's luggage, chiefly kit-bag 
 affairs, for she was an old campaigner, and had already 
 given orders to Cornelius never to approach her with 
 any tea save China and never to serve that without dry 
 toast. When the thresh of the oars had receded into 
 the distance, Mrs. Knyvett relaxed and gave a sigh of 
 relief. 
 
 "I've never seen him like this before," she said, "for 
 he's strained almost to breaking-point. What about 
 the nights now, for you ought to know since you sleep 
 aboard?" 
 
 Then Peter told her, for he had been acting as Mr. 
 Knyvett's secretary for the last few weeks. There was 
 talk, indeed, of finding him work on the Knyvett es-
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 191 
 
 tates, should the cruise of the Pendragon fail to make 
 him a rich man. 
 
 "Yes," nodded Mrs. Knyvett, as she listened; "yes. 
 Just as I thought. Now, what the devil, Peter, have 
 you been about to let things come to this pass ? ' ' 
 
 "I assure you, Mrs. Knyvett, I have done my best, 
 my very best. In fact, I wrote you " 
 
 "Yes, I know," she answered, tapping her foot 
 angrily, "and wrote about as effectively as though you 
 had been hammering in coffin nails with a hair brush. 
 Now tell me the exact position, as far as you know it. ' ' 
 
 Peter wiped his forehead and told what he knew, 
 which was not much, though what he guessed was a great 
 deal. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett sat in silence for a long while when he 
 had done. She was thinking out probabilities and read- 
 ing what he was able to tell her in the light of her own 
 knowledge. She remembered that she had proved to 
 her son as a lad, how false is the so-called manliness 
 that satisfies its basest appetites at the cost of the weak, 
 how to call a thing gold when it is really nothing but 
 smut is one of the most foolish things in the world. 
 
 It was, in its way, a dreadful moment of reckoning 
 through which she went while Peter sat opposite her, 
 his perplexed eyes screwed up, his affectionate heart 
 full of self-blame. For her son was in part, especially 
 in the way in which he looked at women, what she had 
 made him. With a squaring of her broad shoulders she 
 adjusted the burden of responsibility. And her knowl- 
 edge of what she had made taught her the exact manner 
 in which he approached this crisis. 
 
 The one thing he had determined on was that, on no 
 pretext whatever, would he force Sara, or carry her off 
 her feet. She should not feel, in after years, that what 
 she had done had been by outer compulsion, or fierce 
 betrayal through another's passion. The one thing, as 
 Mrs. Knyvett knew well, that her son could not bear
 
 192 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 was to feel he had smirched by any urgency of his 
 own impatience the blamelessness of the woman he 
 loved. If ever Sara came to him, it must be by her own 
 volition, because she thought it right and wise to come 
 and not through any weak surrender to passion's claim. 
 So he held himself with an iron hand. 
 
 And Billy's mother, who had taught her son that a 
 woman was an individuality that must choose her own 
 way, was perforce obliged to bow to the justice of his 
 decision. 
 
 "Peter," said she at last, "you and I care very much 
 for Billy, don't we?" 
 
 Peter nodded; he was a man of few words and very 
 simple thoughts, but Mrs. Knyvett, being a simple per- 
 son herself, understood him very well. 
 
 "I want you to answer me a question," she con- 
 tinued. "You used to run a sort of mission hall for 
 seamen and are by way of being a religious man. You 
 know how my son is situated and how Mrs. Bellew has 
 her troubles, though you don't quite know all the com- 
 plexities of that affair. Now what in your opinion 
 ought to be done? The people in question are tied up 
 all wrong. Anybody can see that with half an eye. 
 Are they tied for ever? And is it by the moral law 
 or only by what happens to be the law of England ? ' ' 
 
 Peter was silent because he had been beating his 
 head against the wall of this problem over and over 
 again. But the inexorable questioner persisted, mainly 
 because she regarded Mr. Westlake as representing the 
 conventional religious mind. 
 
 "And if this prohibition is based on the moral law, 
 Peter, where does that come from? Does it rest on 
 what is good for man and woman, on utility, or is it 
 merely a stone tablet tumbling down out of the blue 
 from some sphere where things are judged by a standard 
 we cannot understand ? ' ' 
 
 Peter was not as conventional as he seemed. Few
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 193 
 
 people are, in fact, when once you prick below the skin 
 of what they imagine other people regard as fitting, but 
 there was one thing that was sacrosanct to him and that 
 was the letter of the Scriptures. 
 
 "I don't think we ought to use sacred phrases 
 lightly," said he, "for one never knows what things 
 they stand for. Only the other day I was reading about 
 all the beautiful ideas that are meant by such a verse 
 as that which tells how the sun stood still over Ajalon." 
 
 Peter had approached Christianity from the point of 
 view of the wordless yet instinctive poet. Something, 
 too, of the scholar's instinct was his. Before Mr. 
 Knyvett had helped him to breathe the air of a wider 
 world, his religion had been the one power that had suf- 
 ficed to release him from the straight bonds of his daily 
 round of folios and ledgers. His sense of beauty had 
 fed for years on Hebrew imagery, his imagination on 
 the idyllic sweetness of the cloudless Syrian blue. From 
 childhood, ever since the days when he had pored over 
 the old wood-cuts in a family Bible, he had been steeped 
 in the biblical atmosphere. He would quote a sonorous 
 phrase from the Authorised Version with the same ap- 
 preciation of its cadence as a classic scholar might bring 
 to the chased metal work of a passage from Virgil. In 
 the stern old-fashioned nonconformist household where 
 he had been bred the only piece of great literature to be 
 found was the Bible. And could his father have known 
 that the boy was sucking honeyed wine of loveliness 
 from the very altar vessels themselves, he would only 
 have adjudged it to be one more proof of the malig- 
 nancy of the ever-present evil which surrounds us here 
 below. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett stared in amazement. She recognised 
 his devotion to Billy with all the clear sight which 
 we are in the habit of shewing when we recognise 
 a fact that is useful. But she had no more supposed 
 that he had deep hidden inner processes than if he had
 
 194 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 been a rabbit. Then she seized instinctively on the 
 weakness of his answer. 
 
 ' ' That 's shirking the question, ' ' she exclaimed. ' ' The 
 exact words I used don 't matter in the least. The point 
 is just what I asked you a minute ago. Ought these 
 two people to free themselves or not? When it's quite 
 clear that everyone involved is deteriorating? Now, 
 Peter, answer, and don't attempt to draw either the 
 sun or the moon like a red herring across the trail." 
 
 Peter wriggled uneasily, pained once more at the 
 freedom with which she handled tropes so hallowed. 
 Yet he hedged again : 
 
 "But are they deteriorating really? Can anyone be 
 sure of that ? And when you say ' for the good of every- 
 body concerned,' how can we be sure of what is really 
 good for them?" 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett gazed at him with an ironical smile. 
 
 "You haven't been a preacher for nothing," she 
 remarked; "you've breathed the miasma of sophistry 
 that hangs about a pulpit. But I tell you and you 
 know it's true that Billy isn't doing anything to jus- 
 tify all the milk he drank when he was a baby, nor 
 all the energy that's been spent in educating him, nor all 
 the wealth that has been poured out to make him what 
 he is. I look at everything from the economic stand- 
 point. The money that's been spent on making Billy 
 a superfine article was taken from some other youth. 
 Oh, yes, deny it as we may, it's true; so much poured 
 out on the rich child means so much less for the poor 
 one. And by the dreadfulness of that sum, so much 
 the more stern is the call to pay back in service. And 
 he isn't paying back. That's what cuts me to the 
 heart." 
 
 Her lips tightened till she looked the image of one 
 of her stern old forefathers who had hanged men from 
 their ships' yard-arms for neglect of duty. 
 
 "Isn't he deteriorating?" she asked bitterly. "And
 
 THE FLY QN THE WHEEL 195 
 
 Bellew? Well, I loathe the fellow, but he's going from 
 bad to worse. And what about the girls he philanders 
 after? Poor, paltry little things, of course, but isn't 
 he robbing them every time of a bit of their womanli- 
 ness? And it so happens that I've had put into my 
 hands another thread. It leads, Peter, straight to the 
 woman who really loves him, who might have made a 
 man of him. Heavens ! when I think of it all, I want to 
 see the decree made absolute." 
 
 Mr. Westlake was silent; so, too, did he in that inner 
 heart where, once in a way, we do occasionally look at 
 things in their naked reality. 
 
 "But," said Mrs. Knyvett frankly, "I don't know 
 that it will make much difference to Bellew. He started 
 as a cur, and if he were the only person concerned, I 
 shouldn't distress myself. But it's Billy it's Billy." 
 
 She was walking up and down with hands loosely 
 clasped behind her back. 
 
 "Don't you think," asked Peter gently, "that we're 
 not looking at it rightly? After all, there are lots of 
 men who can build the bridges he might be building, 
 but perhaps out of these trials, these testing fires, is 
 being made a finer man than we could ever make if we 
 smoothed things for him ? " 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett did not attempt to answer, for she was 
 too wise not to know that he had laid his finger on the 
 doubt which waits on all attempts to lighten the burden 
 laid on the backs of men either by their own deeds, or 
 by that "act of God" of which lawyers speak. She was 
 aware, too, of her own weakness ; knew that she liked to 
 see tangible results of labour, preferred bridges to fresh 
 ideas and good drains to great men. 
 
 With the cowardice of one who, weighing all things, 
 yet cannot decide, she fell back on Sara. For what it 
 looks like to her, she said shrewdly, is what will settle 
 it all. Billy leaves it at that and there it must be left. 
 But Mrs. Knyvett would have given a good deal to know
 
 196 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 whose fate would weigh the more heavily in Sara's 
 reckoning Archer's or her son's. She had a shrewd 
 suspicion that Sara regarded Billy as candlestick rather 
 than candle, as existing more for her own benefit than his 
 own. 
 
 Then she dimissed Peter Westlake and sat down, as 
 though at a game, to place out on the table all the actors 
 in the puzzle. She actually used a set of ivory counters 
 for the purpose and planned them out before her, as 
 though she were an Ibsen visualising the scene of a play. 
 By the time they had been arranged in a whimsical pat- 
 tern she had soothed herself into the light and easy mood 
 that was hers habitually, for the counters took the place 
 of patience cards and the human problem became a 
 diabolical "Miss Milligan." 
 
 Here, in the centre, she placed, not Sara, but Vin 
 Hereford. He assumed in Mrs. Kny vett 's inner eye the 
 guise of an Eastern god with offspring issuing, by 
 hermaphrodite birth, from his fruitful loins. Aloft he 
 sat, a bronze creator making a world for his comfort. 
 Then, like a ball swinging round him by a cord attached 
 to his middle, flew Sara and Anne. Round Sara cir- 
 cled Billy and Bellew; round Anne, Peter Westlake. 
 Like a Saturn's ring again round Bellew spun a cloud 
 of girl witnesses, a milky way of waving hair and bright 
 eyes. Minor bodies, cometary in nature, such as old 
 Elizabeth, Pip Hawkins and his wife, with the Bodi- 
 nars, came whirling from the stellar depths, drawn for 
 a brief space within the attraction of this new Copernican 
 system. Herself she had not placed, the omission struck 
 her suddenly, and holding a forefinger above the coun- 
 ters, she plumped it quickly down and traced a circle 
 with it round her son. She was a satellite; Billy, a 
 planet; Sara, a sun.- 
 
 For a second the throe of a pain she had imagined to 
 be dead long ago darted through her; all the love and 
 care she had poured out had only worked to this end.
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 197 
 
 Suddenly, disgusted with her foolish occupation, she 
 swept her hand across the counters till they lay on the 
 table like the dead on a battle-field. But none the less 
 the image they had created remained in her mind. 
 
 "Now," said she to herself, "I shall go and call on 
 the primum-mobile of the system, old Vin. For what 
 I have to do is simply to get these people really into my 
 head, to know their weak points and their strong. ' ' 
 
 Then it occurred to her that, with the fullest intention 
 of keeping an open mind, she, too, was being sucked 
 into the whirlpool that centred round those dilettante 
 folk, the Herefords. More than that, like everyone else 
 except humble Peter Westlake, she was, although a mere 
 fly on the wheel, imagining herself to be the decisive 
 element in the story. 
 
 She found Mr. Hereford in a great state of delight, 
 for there had just reached him a piece of Japanese 
 landscape after the school of Hokusai. Not only was 
 he charmed with the picture itself but it had suggested 
 to him an idea which he proceeded to develop to Mrs. 
 Knyvett at great length. He was convinced that one 
 of the reasons for the present unhealthy condition of 
 the national nerves was that everyone neglected the 
 macrocosm for the microcosm; people nowadays pored 
 so intently over the internal world of their own minds 
 that the outside world of lands and seas remained to 
 them a terra incognita. Of course he assumed, without 
 mentioning the fact, that people of his own sort made 
 up the civilised world; sailors, travellers and the great 
 mass of common workers were, in his eyes, of no more 
 account than so many flies. 
 
 Except in the pages of Lafcadio Hearn, Mr. Hereford 
 had never made the acquaintance of the Japanese, but 
 now, with the phrase "the soul of a people" constantly 
 on his lips, he discoursed in the style of a professor on 
 the Art of the East. He belonged to that ever increas- 
 ing class of people whose mental joys spring from the
 
 198 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 fluid, soporific influences of some vaguely apprehended 
 place or time with which they can have no personal 
 acquaintance. He would shiver like a fretful child at 
 the hoar frost of an English winter, but revel in imag- 
 inative delight over the bleakness of the Polar ice; to 
 him the burgesses of Dartmouth were mere vulgar cits, 
 but the petty quarrels of some mediaeval city caused 
 him a thrill of genuine delight. Literally, Mr. Here- 
 ford's pleasure ''never was at home"; what is to the 
 ordinary man a mere relief from the apprehended 
 monotony of his actual days had become to old Vin the 
 regular occupation of his thoughts, for out of a mere 
 luxury he had created a necessity. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett wondered, as she sat listening to his 
 rhapsodies on the sensations produced in him by this 
 print, what would be the effect were she suddenly to 
 show to him the curious web of circumstances at the 
 heart of which he sat, the unconscious first cause of so 
 many results. To Mrs. Knyvett, who rather over- 
 stated things in her love of picturesque speech, this 
 old Sybarite appeared in the guise of a vulture feeding 
 perpetually on a maiden, like that Caucasian bird who 
 tore the liver of the rock-bound Prometheus. 
 
 She began to be afraid that none of the rest of the 
 family were going to put in an appearance. Archer, 
 it seemed, was in London, Anne had returned to her 
 medical work and Sara was out. But Mrs. Knyvett was 
 luckier that she had hoped, for in the midst of her 
 preparations for leaving, Mrs. Bellew appeared, walk- 
 ing up the avenue with Mrs. Woodruffe and Molly. 
 
 The two dowagers received one another graciously and 
 presently Mrs. Woodruffe settled down by Mrs. Knyvett, 
 displaying as she did so a liberal allowance of openwork 
 stocking and a highly-fluttered mind. She was taking 
 in every detail of the newcomer's dress with the skill 
 inherited from a family who for generations had used
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 199 
 
 their finest powers of observation on that exercise of the 
 brain. 
 
 "Very charmed to meet you," she exclaimed. "We 
 know your son, you see, so very well that, really, Molly 
 and I feel almost a part of the family. ' ' 
 
 "Indeed," riposted Mrs. Knyvett, "I was not aware 
 that the acquaintance was so close as that. But I believe 
 we have another link in young Anerley who is, my son 
 tells me, a great friend of your daughter's." 
 
 ' ' Oh, yes, he 's quite a nice fellow. We were very glad 
 to be kind to him, for I always think it does so much 
 good to men of that class for them to meet refined women. 
 You may not know it, perhaps, because she hasn't in 
 the least the air of a blue-stocking, but my Molly took 
 a first class degree. But I always tell her not to give 
 herself airs on that account, for not even a degree can 
 prevent a woman making a fool of herself. Study is very 
 little trouble to her, or of course I should never have 
 allowed her to go on with it. I always think there's 
 nothing spoils the eyes so much as constant muzzing over 
 books. And a young girl's looks, even in these days 
 when they are all trying to ape the men, are the first 
 consideration after all. 'Molly, my child,' I've said a 
 hundred times if I've said it once, 'your mother started 
 only with looks and see what she's done for herself.' 
 Though of course I was always bright and versatile. 
 Versatility has in fact been the curse of our family. 
 Not but what Mr. Woodruffe was always a sad trial to 
 me with his early death and constant chills. I don't 
 think, Mrs. Knyvett, if you'll believe me, that I ever 
 knew him without a cold in his head. It amounted in 
 fact to chronic catarrh." 
 
 "Very sad," said Mrs. Knyvett, abstractedly watch- 
 ing Molly, who was looking tired and worn. 
 
 "And then he left me a widow so young. I remem- 
 ber that when I first appeared in weeds, they all said
 
 200 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 with one accord : 'Ah, a widow, indeed.' But it wasn't 
 the width of the crape they referred to, it was the 
 widow's heart. And you, too, Mrs. Knyvett, were early 
 left, I understand?" 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett stared, for her mind had been wander- 
 ing from the tepid flow of soothing contemplation which 
 was Mrs. Woodruffe's idea of conversation. She re- 
 peated vaguely "Early left?" Then with an effort 
 threw her mind back into the remote past. 
 
 "Oh, dear, yes," she said briskly, "he's dead these 
 forty years. And, anyway, when he was alive he was 
 almost always at sea, though not in the literal sense of 
 course, since he was a barrister, so that he hardly seemed 
 to count. If it wasn't for Billy's existence, I should 
 hardly realise that I had ever been married. But I sup- 
 pose I must have been, because I've always been quite 
 respectable. Else I should "call myself a sort of Virgin 
 Martyr." 
 
 She sat up in her chair, as astringent as tannin and 
 as stiff as buckram. Impishness lurked in the corner 
 of her eye, for this babbling woman with the rat's teeth 
 made her feel intensely irritable. 
 
 While Mrs. Woodruffe was trying to recover from 
 this broadside of homeliness, Mrs. Knyvett was contriv- 
 ing to approach Molly. Insensibly the older woman's 
 voice softened as she spoke to the girl, for she was al- 
 ways much influenced by the charm of youth and deep 
 down, though she was unaware of the fact, one of her 
 most instinctive objections to Sara was that she had 
 the poise of a matured woman, was too self-sufficient to 
 need mothering. 
 
 ' ' Comes of a bad breed from that mincing little fifth- 
 rate fool," she thought, "but she's a nice girl. And so 
 she's to be sacrificed on the altar of British art, with 
 Bellew for high priest, is she? Nous verrons." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett was getting into the spirit of the thing, 
 but insensibly her anger was rising against Sara as she
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 201 
 
 watched her cold self-possession while she dispensed 
 hospitality to her guests and helped to keep her father 
 pleased and in good humour. The self-possession was 
 ostentatious, Mrs. Knyvett considered, in the midst of 
 all this tohu-bohu that was going on round her. But 
 whether hysterics would have pleased Mrs. Knyvett bet- 
 ter is a moot point. 
 
 Meanwhile she had drawn Molly into the garden, for 
 a quick liking had sprung up between these two, the 
 girl divining the incipient motherliness of this lady of 
 quality, and the woman feeling the instant response to 
 her own on-coming disposition. 
 
 "You'll forgive me, my dear," said Mrs. Knyvett, 
 gently touching the roses that the girl wore at her 
 breast, "for speaking of your private affairs at so short 
 an acquaintance. But I've heard all about it from 
 Billy. We both like young Anerley very much indeed. 
 He's just a bit young, perhaps," she added, covering 
 many failings with the word, "but he will make a 
 straightforward, honest man, to whom I would gladly 
 give any girl I cared for. I suppose you two are about 
 of an age in years, but a woman is always older than 
 a man in many things. So I may speak frankly. 
 Faults there are in him of manner, but there's a good 
 heart underneath. You may do a great deal for him, 
 my dear." 
 
 Nor, as Molly knew, did Mrs. Knyvett refer, as her 
 son had done, to the mere matters of a successful career. 
 Strange, too, that what she resented in Billy Knyvett, 
 she liked when it came from his mother. But woman 
 deals with woman on the homely every-day plane; with 
 man she prefers to queen it. The noise of voices from 
 the tea-table behind them, the circling of the gnats in 
 the soft air, the lazy lap of the waves in the distance 
 all combined to lure the girl into response to this quiet 
 friendliness. She yielded to it as she might have to a 
 warm, enveloping sea.
 
 202 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ' ' Oh, ' ' she cried, ' ' it isn 't as easy as you think. Peo- 
 ple watch and say nothing and think the more. I feel 
 like Mary Kingsley when she had a bath in West Africa, 
 as though at every crevice there was glued an eye. 
 Mother always makes things harder and my one friend 
 down here has gone back to her work. Besides, I can't 
 talk freely to Anne Hereford. For one thing, she's so 
 straight, so down on the nail." 
 
 "Will you come to-night and dine with me on the 
 yacht?" said Mrs. Knyvett. "I shall be quite alone, 
 for Billy and Peter have to go up to town to see about 
 stores for the expedition. They go by the night mail. 
 And I have come down to see if I can be of any help. 
 Let me begin with you. Not," said she, as she saw a 
 shiver of withdrawal pass across the girl's face, ''not 
 that I want to press a confidence. I'm quite straight, 
 I think, but I've seen many more things than Anne 
 Hereford. Nor is it possible to shock me. Will you 
 come ? Cornelius is an admirable cook and Billy 's Ben- 
 edictine is quite the nicest I know. I always see to it 
 that there's the genuine brand of it aboard the yacht, 
 for Benedictine is a woman's liqueur, you know." 
 
 The girl closed her eyes and smiled. Already she 
 felt around her a something to which in her hard life of 
 struggle she had always been a stranger. It had seemed 
 to her that every woman's hand was instinctively against 
 her, every man's outstretched to snatch greedily at all 
 she had to give. Through the whole of her home life 
 this feeling ran; her fight for a living had only con- 
 firmed it; nor had her love affairs contradicted the no- 
 tion, for Stephen cared for her as an adjunct to his 
 career, Bellew because she could contribute to his pleas- 
 ures. She paused a moment, startled at the idea of 
 trusting an entire stranger who perhaps had her own 
 ends to serve. 
 
 But Molly was a child before this woman at whom 
 she looked so shyly. Then at last, like a field-mouse
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 203 
 
 that greatly dares for a crumb, she put out a hand. 
 It was firmly grasped and Mrs. Knyvett said: 
 
 "I know all about friendship, Molly. One of the 
 best things in my life is my friendship with a woman 
 whom you must know some day." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett felt almost ashamed, with the gener- 
 osity of a fine nature when it recognises how free from 
 temptation it has always lived. She even envied for a 
 moment those who, like Margaret Rossiter, like this girl, 
 have waded through deep waters and so wading, have 
 earned the firm ground on which they stand. 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Woodruff e, as she walked home 
 with her daughter, "of all the vulgar, ill-bred women 
 I've ever had the misfortune to meet, commend me to 
 this one. I actually blushed to hear the outrageously 
 low things she said. She really is a perfect degradation 
 to womanhood. But she seems to have taken a mighty 
 fancy to you. I always notice that the people who take 
 you up are the sort I really can't stand at any price. 
 But it's all the same to me, of course. I'm nothing to 
 them and they're nothing to me and I wouldn't say a 
 word against your sticking to the nobs on any account, 
 but how you can put up with the likes of that, really 
 beats me." 
 
 Molly was for once entirely silent, since, as a matter 
 of fact, she was herself regretting her expansive mood. 
 
 There was always one person at Craneham whom 
 Mrs. Knyvett insisted on seeing and that was Eliza- 
 beth, formerly of the Latin Quarter. Mrs. Knyvett 
 was, next to la petite Anne, the one person with whom 
 Elizabeth put off her official manner. Bidding good- 
 bye to Mr. Hereford, who was already nodding in his 
 chair after the fatigue of his lecture on Eastern Art, 
 Mrs. Knyvett made for the back regions of the house. 
 
 Weird sounds came from the kitchen; the lashing of 
 tails -was followed by hard thumps on the flags of the 
 floor and the noise of laughter. Mrs. Knyvett opened
 
 204 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 the door and there found the immaculate Sara unbend- 
 ing for once. She was sitting on the floor, in fact, hold- 
 ing her knees with her hands while the two cats prac- 
 tised jiujutsu with one another. Boulou and Baby, 
 standing rampant on hind legs, gripped each other, were 
 thrown, and lay kicking stomachs with a volley of 
 thumps. Tails lashed, and Sara spurred them on. 
 Watching in her corner sat Elizabeth. 
 
 Then the cats withdrew, ears back, staring at one 
 another with wild green eyes. Lack of wind called 
 Time. Attracted by Elizabeth's glance, Sara turned 
 round and found Mrs. Knyvett watching her. 
 
 "Isn't it lovely?" she cried. "Do come and look at 
 them." 
 
 Then, holding the seal-coloured beast up to her face 
 till its furry cheeks were close to hers: 
 
 "Ingie pingie wingie," she chuckled, raining 
 kisses on the creature's flat head, while it kicked her 
 with lively be-stockinged hind legs. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett sank into a chair with a sigh of pleas- 
 ure, for the place was warm and homely and although 
 she disapproved of Sara at a distance, she yet found her 
 not ill at close quarters. Elizabeth was gazing at the 
 scene like a sphinx. Every now and then her lips 
 worked; she might, to all appearance, have been telling 
 her beads, had it been possible to conceive the old 
 Parisian doing anything so mediaeval. 
 
 Then, suddenly tiring of the cats, Sara pushed them 
 aside. 
 
 "What do you think of Archer's last book?" she asked 
 abruptly, as she sat on her heels looking up at Mrs. 
 Knyvett. "For of course you've read 'Between Two 
 Servitudes'?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," answered Mrs. Knyvett, for the first time 
 wondering whether she had ever really come in contact 
 with the true Sara. This was a woman, keen-eyed, with 
 brain evidently working. The episode of the cats, too,
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 205 
 
 had been proof of a childish unbending that she had 
 never associated with this cold, self-contained woman. 
 Then, catching a glimpse of Elizabeth's smiling eyes, 
 she understood ; this old kitchen was Sara 's home. 
 
 "It appears to me," remarked Mrs. Belle w, "that 
 it's the most sincere thing he's yet done. Oh, yes," 
 she smiled, noticing Mrs. Knyvett's look of surprise, 
 "I can be fair, I think, even to my own husband's 
 work. It's full, of course, of the clatter of broken 
 commandments, but then the old decalogue nowa- 
 days is just like an old chart no use in unexplored 
 seas." 
 
 "And the seas of to-day are all unexplored." 
 
 "Yes, yes, yes," exclaimed Sara eagerly, "that's it; 
 that's just it. Archer is helping to work at the great 
 task of the time, the recognition that all sorts of new 
 social groupings are required to suit the people of to- 
 day. We've never been so bent on being ourselves, you 
 know, as we are nowadays." 
 
 "Yet," said Mrs. Knyvett, "at the same time, look- 
 ing at us in one way you would say that we were all 
 being drilled into a set of well-behaved, under-vitalised 
 nonentities, all turned out after the same pattern, all 
 worshipping the same gods. It seems sometimes as if 
 civilisation were a hydra, coiling round and stifling the 
 power out of us." 
 
 She bent forward eagerly, as keen for the encounter 
 of wits as though she had not been already talking for 
 hours on end. A day's silence would have brought 
 Mrs. Knyvett to lockjaw. 
 
 "That's true, that's true," cried Sara, "but we're 
 trying to escape. We must escape if we're to live. 
 That's why Archer and his like are useful." 
 
 "Ay," said Mrs. Knyvett grimly, "they show you 
 how to break the commandments gracefully." 
 
 "And why not? Some people have got to smash 
 commandments. It's the only way they can help. For
 
 206 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 we are 'Between two Servitudes,' that of the past and 
 the future. "We must serve one or the other." 
 
 "Then I put my money on the future," said Mrs. 
 Knyvett. 
 
 "And so do I," answered Sara, rising. 
 
 They both stood in silence by the stove in whose red- 
 hot belly glowed the fire that was presently to cook Mr. 
 Hereford a dainty dinner. The stove became in the 
 eyes of these women a sort of symbol of that past which 
 worked in the lives of all three. 
 
 "You see," said Sara dreamily, "we're only now 
 beginning to know the truth about women. All down 
 the centuries men have told us what they wanted us to 
 be. And so we pretended to be it, to please them. 
 They've never seen us as we are. We've been like 
 slaves, disguising ourselves to please our masters, hiding 
 our ideas under folly, like Mrs. Woodruffe when she's 
 on the war path. We're strong enough now to let the 
 truth be known. That's where Archer comes in; he 
 is a specialist in women. But, you know," she laughed, 
 "he really is a very conventional person in actual life. 
 Talks all sorts of stuff that comes down from duelling 
 days about not doing this, that, or the other when he's 
 a guest, or a host, or something of that sort. There's a 
 kind of Byronism about him, too, that attracts girls like 
 Molly Woodruffe." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett felt as though she were watching a 
 dainty lady in kid gloves suddenly start dissecting a 
 corpse. 
 
 "While Archer was talking, Billy would take a con- 
 vention in his hands and smash it to atoms, if he thought 
 the time was come to do it," said Sara. 
 
 "He waits, sits quiet, and then " said Mrs. Kny- 
 vett. 
 
 "Ups," exclaimed Elizabeth, breaking in on the con- 
 versation at the point where she could follo\v it. 
 
 The three women understood one another very well
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 207 
 
 when it came to the comprehension of the heart. Then 
 swift duty fell upon Sara and she fled from the room 
 to see how her father was faring. 
 
 "Ah, oui, Madame," said Elizabeth, coming over to 
 Mrs. Knyvett and leaning with one hand on the spot- 
 less white deal table, "I am glad you have come. For 
 to ce cher M. Knyvett one cannot speak freely as to 
 one of one's own sex. And Madame is of those who un- 
 derstand. ' ' 
 
 None but Elizabeth's hands were ever supposed to 
 touch so much as a bain-Marie in the preparation of 
 dinner and when the hour of meal-time approached no 
 maid dared to come near Elizabeth's kitchen. Hence 
 they need fear no interruption ; yet the old woman took 
 at least three minutes in carefully turning Boulou and 
 Baby out of doors and in investigating the passages 
 beyond which, in their own quarters, the two maids 
 could be heard laughing and talking. 
 
 Although Elizabeth knew everything that went on 
 in Craneham, she used her knowledge so shrewdly that 
 none suspected it. Partly on account of her nationality 
 and partly because of her personal attachment to Sara, 
 she stood as a link between maids and mistress. Her 
 knowledge of English, too, was far greater than she al- 
 lowed anyone to imagine, therefore everyone talked 
 freely before her, even going s6 far as to regard her, to 
 Elizabeth's own secret joy, as a cross between an in- 
 spired idiot and a deaf mute. Nor did she ever make 
 mischief, but even at times showed a sort of Gascon 
 jollity, acid and sharp, as befitted her age, but real and 
 hearty enough to induce confidence in most women. 
 See her stand in the middle of the kitchen and strip her 
 withered arm to show its muscle or boldly draw her 
 skirts round her legs to indicate the brave Belgian stout- 
 ness thereof and you would understand in a twinkling 
 why no one bottled himself up before Elizabeth. By 
 these means she knew everything, much as the old broad
 
 208 - WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 earth knows the little peccadilloes of the beasts that 
 crawl on her. 
 
 Although she loved Sara, she none the less enjoyed 
 the drama of the story she had to tell. Nor were her 
 preparations yet complete, for, jumping to her feet with 
 such alacrity as her eighty odd years allowed her, she 
 opened the clock face over the mantelpiece and tran- 
 quilly put the hands back half an hour. 
 
 'Twill take as much as that," she observed, 
 "and if there's trouble about the time of the dinner! 
 Bah! the clock cannot lie, can it? I have my witness, 
 I." 
 
 She winked and seated herself. 
 
 "I know not," said she, placidly resting her hands 
 on her lap, "what Madame, who hath endured it, may 
 think of marriage, but for my part, who am but a 
 maiden yet, I think there should be a certain decency 
 about it." 
 
 To so evident a proposition Mrs. Knyvett assented 
 fully. 
 
 "Eh bien," continued Elizabeth, "I say not, since 
 the messieurs are what they are, that there might not 
 be one, two, perhaps three, little establishments for each 
 monsieur, given the means, of course. One perhaps a 
 little milliner, another a lady of the coulisses, a yellow- 
 haired one, vous saves. These things are so in my coun- 
 try, as in yours. N 'import e! It is so. The messieurs 
 have their ways and, bon Dieu, it is after all a great 
 saving of harassment to a wife. Many a wise woman 
 thinks like that. I have known those who do, women 
 who sat not down to say, like les petits, I will have 
 things all to my mind. They know that cannot be, so 
 they say: 'Voila! here is this man of mine. Au fond, 
 he is a beast. But it is better not to think of it. It is 
 better to turn the back on it.' And, in his way, that 
 husband, he gives a woman what she wants, because she 
 .wants not the things she cannot get."
 
 209 
 
 "True philosophy, indeed, Elizabeth. But how much 
 better not to have anything to do with him." 
 
 "Eh, but woman is woman, too. And it is the only 
 way, for the hand of le bon Dieu shook badly when he 
 took the clay in hand to make the messieurs. He had 
 more what you call practice when he come to Us. 
 We are more pairfect. But it is not managed as I have 
 said in this house. For M. Bellew he pack not away 
 his petit es dames in this corner, that corner, like the 
 little mice in their holes. No, down here he comes, par 
 id, and he make the town talk, ay, the canaille jabber. 
 And the little Mademoiselle they talk of come here, 
 here, to Madame Sara's own house. She was here to- 
 day with that" here Elizabeth recurred to an ancient 
 Southern sign "her mother. It is not comme-il-faut." 
 
 "Elizabeth!" exclaimed Mrs. Knyvett sharply, 
 "surely they are not talked of so. You are romancing. 
 Your fears make you see bogies." 
 
 "Ecoutez! Madame. This is how it start. They have 
 over in that town where, phew! it stinks of fish, they 
 have many devils, it seems, and ways of dealing with 
 them that tell what is coming, that tell the future? 
 How? Eh, by the cards, by looking in the well. Who 
 knows ? The peasants in my country do the same. Now 
 to one of these devil-owners goeth the little Mademoi- 
 selle. Ay, a cunning one is that devil-owner. She 
 know everything, all the gossip, and so she talk of noz- 
 zing but M. Bellew. And she note that the Mademoiselle 
 she hath ears for nothing but for ce M. Bellew. Not 
 once, but twice, hath la petite gone there, to the house 
 of this Madame Bo-de-na, the devil-owner. And now 
 that same Madame Bo-de-na hath gold. She shut up 
 her house and go; she send her children away. She 
 hath gold; she go; presently Mademoiselle go, too, they 
 say. 
 
 "Now, Madame, they put, what you call it? two by 
 two-"
 
 210 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Lying jades," cried Mrs. Knyvett. 
 
 "Eh! what will you? They stand hands on waist, 
 I know them, these Englishwomen, and talk! talk! talk! 
 And look at the mad locks of these brutes of Anglaises. 
 Ah! but they want the beautiful coiffures of my coun- 
 trywomen ! ' ' 
 
 "Do, for heaven's sake, go on with your story. And 
 so these fools, seeing that Mrs. Bodinar has money, 
 say" 
 
 "That M. Bellew has paid her; that at her house he 
 hath assignations with Mademoiselle. That Madame 
 Bodena is " 
 
 "No need to name it, Elizabeth! Thank goodness 
 I came down. But it is all Billy's fault. Now, listen, 
 Elizabeth. All this is a great farrago of lies. I know 
 all about the Bodinars and her having money has noth- 
 ing at all to do with Mr. Bellew. Bodinar, the man, ran 
 away from his wife and my son is arranging to bring 
 them together again. For that purpose he gave Mrs. 
 Bodinar a little money to settle up her affairs." 
 
 "Voild! but the tongues of the women over here are 
 worse than the devils of the place. Now in my country 
 they love good things. They sing gailment: Vive le 
 vin, vive I' amour. But they sit not in dark holes, like 
 these Anglaises, recounting to one another monstrous 
 fables." 
 
 "Six to one and half a dozen to the other," snapped 
 Mrs. Knyvett. "But really this is preposterous. And 
 do they say anything about my son?" 
 
 "Eh! they say," shrugged Elizabeth, "that he is 
 epris with Madame Sara and it is time that Madame 
 gave herself a little comfort." 
 
 "Perhaps they say that Madame has done so?" en- 
 quired Mrs. Knyvett, eyeing the old woman keenly. 
 
 "Ah, no! he is cold, M. Knyvett. He would not lift 
 his eyes to so great a height."
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 211 
 
 "And that isn't true, Elizabeth. You needn't tell 
 any lies to me. I suppose they do say so." 
 
 "En effet," said Elizabeth calmly, "Madame Sara 
 and M. Billee were made for one another. When le bon 
 Dieu framed them both, he held them up, one in each 
 hand, and said: 'Vottd! mes enfants, two halves of a 
 pairfect whole. And don't you forget it.' But they 
 mislaid one another. That's where the mischief began. 
 N'est-ce pas, Madame." 
 
 But Madame was too harassed to reply. Nor did she 
 recover her equanimity till, with a well-blended little 
 dinner in her interior, she sat in the Pendragon's saloon 
 tete-a-tete with Molly Woodruff e. Elizabeth's story had 
 done harm, for Mrs. Knyvett's feeling towards the girl 
 had changed; she no longer felt in the same mood of 
 beneficent kindness towards her. For, although she 
 knew that the story bruited abroad by Rumour was 
 nothing but a lie, she could not acquit Molly of a folly 
 so careless that it amounted to criminality. Nor did the 
 fact that her son was indirectly concerned, through the 
 money he had advanced to Mrs. Bodinar, tend to make 
 Mrs. Knyvett any the more generous towards the girl. 
 
 Then, as she watched the oily flow of the Benedictine 
 which Cornelius was pouring for them, the devil entered 
 into Mrs. Knyvett. It suddenly struck her how easily 
 solved this problem would be were she just to give Molly 
 a little push onwards, over the abyss that is called the 
 irrevocable. There was the way out of it all, a way 
 that left Billy with untarnished honour, that set Sara 
 free only at the cost of some vexation. Bellew would 
 marry the girl most certainly; she herself, the fly on 
 the wheel, as she called herself, would see to that. The 
 suit for restitution that Margaret Rossiter had talked of, 
 would end all and send Billy back, free from all these 
 ludicrous, degrading entanglements, to do his work in 
 the world. At whose cost?
 
 212 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett looked across the table at the delicate 
 bare head and shoulders in the light of the bulkhead 
 lamps, as Molly blew smoke rings from her round but- 
 ton of a mouth; a very dainty thing, even to the ear- 
 rings clasped to her ears, the harem-toys that Mrs. Kny- 
 vett hated. There was a diamond in each and they 
 winked at the masterful person who watched them. Mrs. 
 Knyvett began to feel like a divine artificer who holds 
 on the palm of his hand the tiny mortals that revolve 
 in their figure dance beneath his brooding eyes. A 
 breath, just a sudden sigh from above, and this little 
 figure before her might be puffed right over into the 
 abyss. 
 
 Or so it seemed. 
 
 "I used to think," said Molly, ''that it didn't mat- 
 ter what became of me. For you see I've always felt 
 as a pig would feel, if it knew it was being fed for pork. 
 Mother's run me like a race-horse for the matrimonial 
 stakes ever since I was so high. I've been dragged 
 round to hydros and boarding-houses and she's given 
 parties for me, always telling me the cost afterwards. 
 Oh, I needn't mind telling you, for everybody else 
 would, if I didn't. And after every outburst we have 
 to live as meanly as church mice. Of course we starve 
 our servants and they hardly ever stay outside their 
 month. I've escaped, in a way, but the fact is I drop 
 back and get tired of the everlasting grind. Then I 
 read things like 'The Odd Women,' and 'The Old Wives' 
 Tale, ' and I saw 'Justice.' The people there were trivial 
 and weak, worse than I am, in fact, but they seemed to 
 matter, all the same. For they felt, suffered, lived in 
 their own world, just as I do. They wanted to be 
 happy, just as I do, and they had even worse times than 
 I had. Then I knew that I was one of a big number 
 and we all of us mattered. That's how it was. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett was answered; not entirely convinced 
 by the logic of Molly's deduction, she yet recognised
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 213 
 
 its premises. For she was old enough to be able to re- 
 mark the change that has passed over English life dur- 
 ing the last half century while the alchemists of litera- 
 ture, its realistic novelists and playwrights, have been 
 at work. In this age both mean streets, respectable 
 stucco-villas and brick-built rows of artisans' dwellings 
 have been made to yield right human stuff, just as the 
 slag heaps of the mines have had to give up their treas- 
 ures to the chemist. No one nowadays, as Mrs. Knyvett 
 began to see, is a great artificer, where all are wonder- 
 ful in as much as they suffer. Of the suffering, indeed, 
 too much has been made. Yet this was inevitable since 
 the painters of it are themselves of the most sensitive 
 class that nature makes. They heighten the pains, 
 therefore, and often suppress the secret place of hidden 
 pleasure which most human beings conceal within them- 
 selves, visiting it daily as a boy his hoard of ripening 
 apples. 
 
 Of the realities of their life most people can say 
 nothing, but the dumb have found a voice to-day in the 
 teller of stories. Not unwisely, then, did old Philip 
 Hawkins pay homage to the father of the English novel, 
 that Bow Street magistrate with his scheme for the 
 reformation of the still unreformed English Poor Law, 
 and both, more precious still, his imaginative sympathy 
 that went down into the stews of London with seeing 
 eye and recording hand. 
 
 "And then," continued Molly, "there was Anne 
 Hereford and, oh, dozens of women like her that I've 
 known. They made me feel how hateful it was to do 
 anything to make women despised more than they are 
 already. They say women betray secrets, that they 
 aren't to be trusted. Well! the other day a woman 
 secretary that I know sold some political information 
 because she wanted, just for once, a five-guinea hat 
 from Bond Street. She'd always been badly paid 
 we nearly all are, you know. And every man who
 
 214 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 knew of it said: 'Oh, a woman again, you see. Can't 
 trust 'em.' So she pushed all women back a little 
 more, just so far as her influence reached. I should 
 hate myself if I'd done a thing like that!" she ex- 
 claimed, pleating the fringe of the table-cloth. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett was modern enough to understand the 
 spirit of sex loyalty that flows like a river through the 
 woman's life to-day, a subterranean river that only 
 flashes in the daylight here and there. 
 
 "But yet," said. Molly, with thorough enjoyment of 
 this outpouring of her inner world, "I don't want to 
 settle, as people call it. It's so horribly final." 
 
 She wriggled, as though an earwig had slipped down 
 her back. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett smiled, for she, too, was thoroughly 
 enjoying her excursion into the girl's mind. 
 
 "And Stephen Anerley," she said, "would build you 
 so firmly into his life, wouldn't he? Master Stephen 
 is a man who always knows his own mind. Faith, and 
 he ought to, for he sweeps out the corners of it as re- 
 ligiously as he takes a bath. Do you know, the other 
 day I was reading a discourse on what the author was 
 pleased to call 'morals.' He took as his text some 
 Japanese rules about washing and eating and talked as 
 if they constituted a moral code. He really didn 't seem 
 to see that there are deeper things in morality than baths 
 and flesh-eating. As to sex morality, he summed it up 
 by 'Marry early and marry often.' Stephen's just like 
 that man. He doesn't bother about any thunder from 
 Sinai or the Pit directing where he's to walk. He 
 just hears the doctor saying: 'Now, Mr. Anerley, three 
 square meals a day, eight hours' sleep and a hot bath. 
 Blood-hot, you understand.' ' 
 
 "And the 'marry early and often'?" asked Molly, 
 showing her dimples. 
 
 "Yes, that too. Marriage is to him just a healthy
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 215 
 
 practice, as it is with the Japanese, not a thing that 
 concerns soul and spirit," said Mrs. Knyvett. 
 
 The next moment she suddenly bethought herself of 
 the impropriety of such talk about a man to his own 
 fiancee. 
 
 "Ye gods!" ejaculated she mentally. "Why ever do 
 I attempt to talk to anybody under forty? I'm not 
 virginibus puerisque, and that's a fact." 
 
 Molly covered her confusion by lighting a fresh ciga- 
 rette; the ease with which men keep silence over the 
 mysteries is, it would seem, not temperamental, but a 
 mere result of the tobacco habit. Had Mrs. Knyvett 's 
 mouth but held a pipe, her tongue, mayhap, would have 
 kept holy silence. Instead, being irritated with herself, 
 she plunged recklessly. 
 
 "And 'marry early and often' is right enough, too, 
 for a man. One wife's not enough for any man. And 
 when a woman's got her children, she doesn't want to 
 be bothered with him. It's bad for the children, possi- 
 ble and actual, and it's bad for her. Monogamy's one 
 of the causes why we 're generating so many nervous chil- 
 dren, of course." 
 
 One of the methods practised in medicine is that of 
 arousing an organ to the performance of its function 
 by means of irritation. On this principle Molly's puri- 
 tanism was aroused. She sat up and glared, awake at 
 last to her own maidenliness. 
 
 "Mrs. Knyvett," she exclaimed, "how can you talk 
 like that? There isn't anything in the world so won- 
 derful as the love between one man and one woman, 
 just those two, with all the world outside as nothing to 
 them. Why, all the best, the finest things in life come 
 from that. And if it means pain and struggle to live up 
 to such a high ideal, aren't we all the better for the 
 fight?" 
 
 "Then, my dear, if that's what you think," said
 
 216 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett quietly, ' ' why in the world are you philan- 
 dering about with Archer Bellew, and losing your good 
 name into the bargain?" 
 
 She proceeded to tell Elizabeth's story in very plain 
 words, while Molly sat and shivered as though she had 
 been whipped. 
 
 "Do you care for Anerley?" asked Mrs. Knyvett, 
 when she had finished. 
 
 "Yes, but" 
 
 "But you like the sort of Byronism that Bellew ef- 
 fects. I shouldn't wonder if he'd given you that ring," 
 she said, pointing to a bloodstone on the girl's finger. 
 "And you're to send to him with it, if you want his 
 help?" 
 
 A second flush across the girl's white face showed 
 that the shot had gone home. 
 
 ' ' I know two other women with whom he has a similar 
 arrangement," said Mrs. Knyvett drily. "Forbye, he's 
 got a wife. Now, if you're shocked at my physiology, 
 good, plain, honest fact as it is, I'm shocked at your 
 falseness to your own principles. I 've heard that you 've 
 a good head when you like to use it, that you can speak 
 and organise. Go away and do it, then. Send back 
 Bellew his ring with the message that you've no more 
 use for it. And go off to your work. If at the end of 
 a year or so, you and Anerley are of the same mind, and 
 you care for the prospect of writing his speeches and 
 bearing his children, then marry him. If not, don't. 
 Plenty of other fish in the sea. But don't try to catch 
 'em with hook and line, for that spoils the fish, my dear. 
 There, now, there," she cried, seeing that Molly was 
 gasping from this douche of words, "I'm not as hard 
 or as wicked as I seem. You don't really care for this 
 Bellew, do you?" 
 
 Molly was silent for a moment. Then she said : 
 
 "He played with me, led me on. Then pushed me
 
 THE FLY ON THE WHEEL 217 
 
 away. He said nothing was so good as anticipation." 
 Then lower still, ' ' He shamed me. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett drew the girl's head down on her 
 shoulder; she had got the truth at last. 
 
 "Little girl," she said; "poor little girl. But never 
 mind what other people say, or think. It isn't what 
 they think that matters to you. If it seems right to 
 you to go on with this man, then do it. But does it 
 seem honest to you yourself?" 
 
 "No," said Molly, "it doesn't. It never would, 
 really. I've always known that. I suppose it was he 
 who was honest." 
 
 "The cur!" said Mrs. Knyvett heartily. "But don't 
 forget the proverb, for your own comfort : ' Sins of the 
 flesh are not sins.' Sins of the spirit are much worse, 
 I think. But you'll go back to a good healthy job now, 
 won't you, that means eight hours a day of hard labour 
 and as much political excitement as you can get in?" 
 
 "Yes," said Molly, as lifting her head from its rest- 
 ing place, she contemplated Mrs. Knyvett 's powerful 
 face. "You're not hard, really," she remarked at last. 
 
 After her visitor had gone, Mrs. Knyvett sat on till 
 Cornelius began to wonder if he would ever see his 
 bunk again. She was thinking with joy of the good, 
 healthy wind, snow, rain, sleet, and ice of the Horn. 
 The greybeards thereof delighted her, nor did its inky 
 cap of sullen cloud strike terror to her heart. For 
 there Billy would be far removed from this fluttering of 
 cage-birds. 
 
 She was, besides, very pleased with herself, since she 
 had attempted no diabolic meddling with Molly Wood- 
 ruffe's fate, but had rather played the part of light- 
 bringer. Altogether she had earned the sleep of the 
 just; so, too, had Cornelius by the time she called him 
 to put out the lights.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ARGONAUTS OP A PHANTOM FLEECE: IN THIS SIMON BO- 
 DINAR SINGES HIS WINGS AND THE REST OF THE COM- 
 PANY SUFFER A SEA CHANGE 
 
 r ' C le alld P r PP ed 
 
 himself on his elbow the better to listen. With 
 a long glide downwards into the trough of the sea, a 
 shiver and an upward rebound to the crest, the floor 
 of the Pendragon slanted nimbly, alive to the cradling 
 of the blue water. It was not the ship's motion that 
 had roused the mate nor was it the clattering of the 
 gimbal that fastened the lamp to the cabin bulkhead. 
 To these things Mr. Cole was accustomed. 
 
 "Era Rra Era," sounded the horn overhead; then 
 came a patter of feet, an order in Knyvett's tones and 
 the answer from the man at the wheel. 
 
 "Fog," said the first mate, "and the Old Man on 
 deck." 
 
 Nor was it that which had penetrated to his brain 
 through the mists of sleep ; it was a sound in the cabin 
 itself, a sound which annoyed Mr. Cole even at the mo- 
 ment when he was rejoicing in the second mate's in- 
 feriority as a seaman. Of course the skipper had to 
 sleep "all standing" since Lethbridge was at the port 
 watch and a fog going on at the edge of soundings. 
 
 Then the noise came again: a rattling of top teeth 
 against bottom from the opposite bunk where slept the 
 carefully cherished object of everyone's attention aboard 
 Simon Bodinar, the gold-finder. He was talking in his 
 sleep with the noise a cat makes when she sees a bird in 
 the blue. Every ounce of sleep gone from him, Cole lis- 
 
 218
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 219 
 
 tened, his hairy ears a-quiver and his steel blue eyes 
 as keen as a ferret's. For, as though he were a toad 
 who may, perchance, bear a jewel in his head, the crew 
 watched the red-haired seaman ; to them the working of 
 his brain was a thing to bet about, and the care of his 
 person a charge precious as that of royalty. Cole, as 
 the first in authority, had been entrusted with the duty 
 of bear-leader; hence the two were roommates, for the 
 gold thirst, like poverty, makes strange bedfellows. 
 
 "The wages of sin is death," said Bodinar, lisping 
 like an old man who has forgotten his false teeth. 
 
 " 'Hast thou eyes of flesh? or seest thou as man 
 seeth ? 
 
 ' ' ' Are thy days as the days of man ? Are thy years as 
 man's days? 
 
 " 'That thou enquirest after mine iniquity- 
 See Book of Job, chapter ten, verse " 
 
 His last words came with the sucking sound of a 
 pump that is running dry. 
 
 "Ah," said Cole, "I knowed we was looking for 
 trouble with thiccy aboard." 
 
 He saw how, in the darkness, the man's lips were 
 groping after words. Then, irritated at the loss of his 
 sleep, he felt for a light, his eyelids swollen, his chin 
 sprouting with hair as grey as a badger 's. Though first 
 mate on a gentleman 's yacht, he was a fierce man of the 
 people and never said "Sir" to anybody without a trucu- 
 lent wink of his eye the next minute. Bodinar he de- 
 tested, as he detested everything he could not fathom. 
 
 "Asleep, or seems so," he said, flashing a light gently 
 across the sleeper's eyes. Then sitting on the edge 
 of his own bunk, he began to yawn in cavernous noisy 
 spells. 
 
 "The soul that sinneth it shall die," said Bodinar 
 so loudly that the mate jumped. 
 
 "Oh, dry up," returned Cole, all agog, however, for 
 more explicit information.
 
 220 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Is he?" he exclaimed, "is he?" and crossed the 
 cabin once more to stare at Bodinar. The glow of the 
 match made an arc of flame in the darkness and sputtered 
 out. The air of the cabin was heavy and stifling. 
 
 Whenever anything queer happened in connection 
 with Bodinar, Mr. Cole rejoiced that he had wasted no 
 money on the venture up Smyth's Channel. He felt 
 more certain than ever of his wisdom when he saw Mrs. 
 Bodinar come aboard, since, in his opinion, she was 
 "no cop." Mrs. Cole knew the woman and Mrs. Cole 
 could be trusted to know what was what, for not even 
 the birth of twins could distract her from her life-work, 
 that of cleaning her house from top to bottom and 
 again from bottom to top. At present the Coles paid 
 25 a year in rent, nor grudged it, though their prom- 
 ised land was a house on the cliff with a flag-staff and a 
 front garden, the style of residence that is built by a 
 merchant skipper retiring on the profits of the slop 
 chest. A pair who had such ambitions alternately en- 
 vied the ill-gotten gains and despised the slovenly home 
 of a woman like Bessie Bodinar. To have her aboard 
 was like carrying a fire in the hold. Ladies on a yacht 
 were, like weevils or rats, in the order of the day, but 
 women ' ' Good Lord ! ' ' 
 
 When the muttering began again, Cole flung a sea 
 boot across the cabin, lay down once more and closed 
 his ears to all interruptions, for it was the fifth bell 
 in the first watch and the second watch was his. 
 
 "Tipping her rubbish into the hold, that's what the 
 Old Man's mamma was about when she sent that woman 
 aboard," thought the mate. 
 
 Nor w r as he far wrong, for it was Mrs. Knyvett who 
 had insisted on the shipment of Bodinar 's wife. In 
 her opinion the kettle of fish which she called I' affaire 
 Hereford was quite needlessly complicated by the pres- 
 ence of such an unsavoury ingredient as Bessie Bodi- 
 nar. Like a housewife on the eve of a spring clean,
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 221 
 
 Billy's mother had not only banished all lumbering 
 furniture, but had pushed on the preparations that 
 were to sweep as many men as possible from the scene 
 of action. 
 
 She it was who lined the saloon bulkheads with 
 charts, who talked perpetually of Yahgans, of Alacu- 
 lofs, of the navigation of the First Narrows, and the 
 tides off Cape Virgins, blowing Southward Ho! with 
 the persistence of a trade wind. She fired Peter, she 
 caused Uncle Pip Hawkins to glow like a furnace, she 
 even relaxed the lines on Billy's face, for he saw 
 through her motives and grinned. Yet she won, for it 
 was owing to her exertions that on the last day of June 
 the Pendragon hoisteS the Blue Peter and slipped down 
 the fairway of the Dart like a merchant adventurer of 
 long ago. 
 
 The stores were dispatched by cargo boat from Glas- 
 gow in charge of an assay er who would join them at 
 Punta Arenas. Slung between the masts of the liner 
 was the ten-ton steam tug that was to convey them up 
 the winding reaches of Smyth's Channel. It was Uncle 
 Pip who dispatched this convoy; to his mind, the Fort- 
 num and Mason's stores should have been salt junk and 
 rum, but he bore with these piping times of armchair 
 comforts and regarded with a kindling eye and a mouth 
 that whistled free the tents, the Marine glue, the timber 
 balks, the mercury washer and spades. It was the 
 spades that attracted the curiosity of the second mate 
 of the liner: 
 
 ' ' Shooting expedition, ' ' said Uncle Pip to him blandly. 
 
 "Ay," said the mate with a twinkle, "ye '11 do well, 
 shooting wi' spades. It's the newest fashion by what 
 they tell me." 
 
 Then he began marvellous yarns of "Sloggett Bay 
 gold," where the prospectors threw away more money 
 than they took out, for he knew the Magellan Straits 
 well. But he also told of a Punta Arenas man who reg-
 
 222 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ularly disappeared every year up the Straits and 
 returned with enough gold to keep him for twelve 
 months. 
 
 The air round Uncle Pip was already ringing with 
 the noise of "Pieces of eight" when in the yellow dawn 
 of a dirty morning he watched the liner slip her moor- 
 ings for the leagues of sea beyond. Snuffing the wind, 
 which smelt of chimney reek, he savoured the sea-tang 
 and went home to set up a chart-room where daily he 
 traced the red line that followed the supposed route 
 of the Pendragon past the Canaries, across the Line, 
 along the Brazil coast, to the west of the Falklands, 
 and so on to the kelp of the Magellan Straits, those 
 straits which Pedro Sarmiento entered by Cape Pillar, 
 vowing as he did so a present of wax to the holy house 
 of Our Lady of Guadalupe and christening them "the 
 Straits of the Mother of God" with fine old heroic faith, 
 ' ' in the name of the most Holy Truth, Father, Son, and 
 Holy Ghost, three Persons and one only true God Al- 
 mighty who created heaven and earth out of nothing, in 
 whom I believe, and in whom all true Christians ought 
 to believe firmly; and of the most holy, ever Virgin 
 Mary, Mother of God, our advocate, and more espe- 
 cially the advocate of this fleet. ' ' 
 
 At the noise made by the changing of the watch, 
 Peter Westlake awoke and going to the door of his cabin, 
 stood looking out; he was uneasy, restless, dissatisfied, 
 for he knew that steadily and imperceptibly, a web of 
 suspicion and distrust was being woven round this com- 
 pany of adventurers. For the "who is on my side, 
 who?" that challenge which each man sends out when 
 he finds himself in strange company, had been answered 
 by the formation of a ring of watchers round Bodinar. 
 Only Billy remained unchanged; his judgment in sus- 
 pension, he kept the man as far as possible in the saloon, 
 often playing cards with him, for Bodinar played euchre 
 as well as though he hailed from California. But this
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 223 
 
 line of Knyvett's only produced a fresh combination 
 of elements, for the ring of watchers began to adopt an 
 attitude of armed neutrality towards the skipper him- 
 self. 
 
 Then a green sea broke on deck and Cole, turning 
 back from the companion-stair, came down to Peter. 
 His oilskins were a comfort in the foggy place. 
 
 "He's been a-talking in his sleep, or making out to," 
 whispered he. 
 
 Neither needed more than the pronoun to indicate 
 their man. Peter had the queer idea that they were 
 both like the gulls that tear a wounded mate to bits, 
 rather for hatred of the strange, the unusual, than from 
 mere lust of meat. 
 
 "And he's got brandy, I'll swear. If Cornelius has 
 been got at, I'll wring his neck for him." With that 
 he turned on his heel. 
 
 Westlake stayed where he was, for he was afraid to 
 move; he had gone back countless ages, to a time when 
 behind the noises of the dark lay the unknown Dread. 
 Big shapeless things were around him in the rustling, 
 the sucking, the baffling of the wind and tide. He stood 
 with head bent and shoulders humped. This vessel 
 once a "Holy Joe" had got the memory of the ice- 
 blink, of the muffled beatings of the milky sea in it. 
 He had in his cabin certain sheets of an ancient note- 
 book kept by the former chaplain. It made queer read- 
 ing with its mixture of Puritan precision and wild sea 
 days. 
 
 All the while Westlake was furiously angry with him- 
 self ; for years he had looked forward to this voyage that 
 was to have been the time of his life. And he was wast- 
 ing it in foolery like this ! He was like a man who, em- 
 bracing a fair soft mistress, found her turned into a 
 gorgon. 
 
 Cheeks flaming, heart thumping, with an effort he 
 moved and flung open the door of Cole's cabin.
 
 224 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Bodinar was rummaging in his sea-chest, his arms 
 plunged to the armpits in a welter of clothes. With a 
 start he withdrew them and sat on his heels looking up. 
 Both men were startled at each other, but both men 
 were a thousand times more comfortable than they had 
 been when alone. On a table stood a half empty glass 
 and the place smelt of brandy. 
 
 He was only pretending to be asleep, thought Peter, 
 and registered another point to be communicated to Cole. 
 
 "Bodinar," said Peter, suddenly resolute, as he 
 watched the rise and fall of the shaggy fell of hair on 
 the man's half -bare breast, "what the deuce is the mat- 
 ter with you? Here's Cole says you've been talking in 
 your sleep, and " 
 
 He glanced at the glass on the table. 
 
 "And," said Bodinar as, recovering himself and his 
 temper, he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it to 
 the last drop, "here's to all the spying, chattering, key- 
 hole watching crew of this here durned rat-trap." 
 
 Laughing at the change in the man, Peter drew back ; 
 he felt as cheery now as the man who has lit a crackling 
 fire. 
 
 "So the mate heard me, did he?" went on Bodinar. 
 "Well, let 'en and if they never sight the gold, they'll 
 have but themselves to thank for it. For I tell you 
 plainly, sir, all this spying fairly sets my head in a 
 maze. And I see things, things I don't like." 
 
 He put a hand to his forehead and swayed to a seat, 
 his brain whirling with drink and some interior vision. 
 
 "Bodinar," persisted Peter, "do you believe in this 
 gold yourself? or are you terrified at finding that you 
 bit off more than you could chew that night when you 
 told us the yarn ? For if it was a lie, then you 're in the 
 wrong box, my friend." 
 
 "Lie? Who says it was a lie? There I showed you 
 the pay-dirt. Hadn't I got it? And I showed you 
 where it come from. What more do you want than
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 225 
 
 that? Gold, beyond the dreams of avarice," said he 
 sleepily. " Mineral wealth, all up the Straits." 
 
 He produced a screw of paper and unrolling it, tossed 
 out on the table a little heap of copper ore. A book 
 slipped off the man's bunk and Peter Westlake, picking 
 it up, held it in his hands for a moment. It was a 
 sixpenny translation of " La Dame aux Camelias. ' ' See- 
 ing it in his hand, Bodinar changed his tone, for he had 
 begun life as a Methodist. 
 
 "It's a queer book that," said he. "I didn't know 
 what sort of a thing it was when I got it. There's rum 
 things in that book;" he blinked at Peter with a libidi- 
 nous eye. "I'm all for Miss Braddon," added he pi- 
 ously. 
 
 Peter nodded, for he knew the South Sea Bible. 
 
 "You mustn't judge me by the books I read," said 
 the man, no longer complacent. He was quickly dis- 
 solving into self-pity, his eyelids quivered, his arms 
 dropped at his sides. Peter went out hastily and closed 
 the door behind him, for he had no wish to see any more. 
 He was again vexed at the way the human element was 
 getting between him and that gift on which he had 
 counted, the fine freedom of the sea. 
 
 The phrase seemed a mockery as he stood on the deck 
 next morning watching the Pendragon in the fog that 
 cut the tops of the masts off waist high and shrouded 
 everything above it in a blanket of dirty dun colour. 
 The voice was stifled as in cotton wool and the decks 
 were wet with the mists that crept across the face. The 
 eye in vain tried to pierce the dark wall of the unknown 
 that hemmed it in on every side ; in the effort to plumb 
 the mist the fancy created cavernous yawning depths 
 that opened, to show the fog breaking on towering 
 steamer sides. Only the sickly yellow of the binnacle 
 lamp became more luminous as the daylight broadened. 
 Only the eyes found rest in watching the fibrous grip 
 of the helmsman, an old seaman, scarred and twisted
 
 226 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 like a gnarled tree, with ingrowing finger nails black- 
 ened with grime. The deft agility of these crippled 
 hands made the mind feel less helpless against this 
 strange power of nature that binds and holds, that blinds 
 and deafens. Old Maintop's trick at the wheel was a 
 comfort, for the stillness was as oppressive as are long 
 days of solitude. The mind was forced back on itself; 
 it fed on its own substance and the hours of the watch 
 seemed endless, for the silence of the stars is less lone- 
 some than a fog-encircled world where the mind dreads 
 what the eye cannot see. 
 
 Then Knyvett stepped up to the steering gear and 
 "Westlake watched him as he stood gulping down the 
 coffee Cornelius had brought. He had been on deck 
 all night, conning the ship like a goal-keeper who 
 watches the whole game for the sake of a minute 's quick 
 resourcefulness. Plainly, too, he had enjoyed himself; 
 his movements were quick, alert; his eyes bright and 
 keen, for all the strain round them. Peter heard after- 
 wards of the steamer that had for an instant split the 
 curtain of fog, of the quick orders, of the churning of 
 the waters as the yacht parted company with her. 
 
 The two men looked aloft; faintly one yard-arm 
 peeped and then another; monstrous far above they 
 seemed. Then a canvas showed for a second and they 
 could perceive currents in the fog that the next moment 
 closed overhead like a huge bat. 
 
 "Wind's freshening," said Knyvett; "we shall be out 
 of it in an hour." 
 
 In less than ten minutes there was the ripple of a 
 catspaw on the water ahead, the first sight of sea for 
 all that morning. Then catspaws every way and finally 
 the gleam of sun that makes the eyes smart. It was as 
 good as a fair landfall. 
 
 With a yawn and a stretch Knyvett went below. 
 
 "Yes, it's been a bit thick," said Cole to Peter, later 
 on, "but about that Bodinar now?"
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 227 
 
 The decks were a-wash, for the ship's toilet was to- 
 ward. 
 
 "Damn the man," said Peter. 
 
 They kept Mrs. Bodinar under hatches, so to say, in 
 those days, for fear her husband should catch sight of 
 a flirt of skirts round a doorway. Every man- jack 
 aboard, in fact, was occupying his spare moments with 
 Rabelaisian visions of the first meeting between this 
 red-bearded Ulysses and his Penelope. Billy Knyvett 
 was much exercised to end this game of hide and seek, 
 but Mrs. Bodinar dreaded, like most women, the de- 
 cisive cast of the dice. To live in a bliss dini-descried 
 she much preferred to a feverish plunge into possible 
 misery. 
 
 Bodinar was close on her tracks half a score of times 
 at least. Once, for instance, when she was engaged in 
 tidying the first mate's cabin only a call from deck pre- 
 vented Bodinar from coming on the scandalous sight of 
 a woman turning out his bunk and looking like a vine- 
 gar bottle at his novels of high, not to say rank, ad- 
 venture. For in those days Bodinar took nips of cay- 
 enne, swallowed chillies whole and spiced his mental food 
 to match. 
 
 The introduction came at length over a dinner which 
 the man began, as usual, by sitting on the edge of his 
 chair and coughing gently at intervals behind the back 
 of his hand. His conversation at such moments verged 
 on the precious in style, till by food and drink he mel- 
 lowed. At last came to him, by the hands of Cornelius, 
 a fateful plate of beef-steak pie. 
 
 "Never," said he, craning his neck to look at the 
 contents of the other plates, "never have I seen any- 
 body but the ONE that rolled meat for a pie with the 
 fat in the middle of each roll. ' ' 
 
 The company glanced guiltily at Cornelius, who 
 coughed in gingerly but significant fashion. The meat 
 rolls were the rolls of Bessie Bodinar, but the pastry
 
 228 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 was the pastry of Cornelius, fairy light, not stodgy. 
 In Simon's mind there were certain lines of suspicion 
 like the tracks across the moor that are kept marked 
 by the passing of stray footsteps. In these days his 
 thoughts incessantly turned Bessie-wards, for she was 
 about him in his uprising as in his lying down. Thus, 
 for instance, when he saw the boy being dosed with 
 poppy wine for stomach ache, he could not but ask 
 himself how the deuce could poppy wine get aboard 
 the Pendragon, for it was Bessie's remedy for every- 
 thing, from chills to heart complaint. Long before he 
 actually clapped eyes on her, he had been living in 
 her atmosphere. To-night, at the style of cutting, at 
 the succulence of the onions in the duck, he sat and 
 gazed, and when the carver's spoon fetched out a 
 sodden lemon pulp, he fairly started. 
 
 "It's the very spit of Bessie's cooking," he ex- 
 claimed. "How it brings her back! A man may be 
 thankful when he hasn't got to handle a woman that 
 blows like a trade-wind, steady, steady, and always 
 with a gentle pull agin ye. It's worriting. Tidn't 
 natural when ye find a woman going to bed and 
 getting up next morning, day after day, in the same 
 mind." 
 
 "Did you ever know one like that?" asked Billy, 
 leaning forward with a fellow feeling for the man. 
 
 "Ay, Bessie," said Bodinar. "When us first mar- 
 ried her kept a lodging house with lace curtains to 
 every window. I dunno when I was more comfortable 
 than the first few months of our wedded life. And a 
 piano in the drawing-room. Many a time have I 
 vamped out a tune upon it. Her could do a steak-and- 
 kidney pudding for a prince, and after sea-pie and 
 lobscouse and hard tack, you can do with a steak and 
 kidney. 
 
 "But it didn't last. Her got too near with the 
 mpney. Said I spent too much upon grog, and cut my
 
 baccy down to eighteen-pence a week. Shameful, I call 
 it, with me cox of the Brixham life-boat. Said I must 
 turn to and work, and the house filled with lodgers and 
 her up washing dishes till midnight every day of the 
 week. Such ingratitude as her was showing to me, for 
 I used to hang about the doorstep, pipe in mouth, so's 
 to give an air of the briny to the house. Worth scores 
 of pounds in advertisement I was, with my jersey and 
 high sea boots. I never begrudged the wearing of 'em, 
 for they used to say that to see me was nearly as good 
 as to go to sea for a week. And without the seasick- 
 ness, too. 
 
 "Then it come. Thunderclap it was, too. Says she: 
 'I've filled up every corner of the house and 'tis ill- 
 convenient for you to stay here. In fact, you must go. 
 For I've no more use for 'ee. If this is having a 
 husband, I'd rather be without one. So you can clear 
 for good.' 
 
 " 'Bessie,' said I, 'isn't there a cranny, not a fold-up 
 bed in the kitchen what I could have?' 
 
 " 'Not a sugar-box,' says she, sneering. 
 
 " 'If I quit, I quit for good.' 
 
 " 'That's what I meant,' said she. 
 
 "And I went, for I thought she'd soon call me back. 
 But her didn't, being a woman blind of understanding 
 and like a mule. 
 
 "A whole year passed; I'd been knocking about, 
 coaling and that, when one dirty November night I got 
 round to her doorstep. Thinks I, 'tis the dull season, 
 and there'll be room for a homeless cat or a sailor 
 man. That's what I felt like when I seed they windows 
 with the Nottingham lace curtains and the polish on 
 the door-handle. Done with 'Bluebell,' it was every 
 day. Up the steps I went and rings. And there I 
 stood, a great galumph, with my hat in my hands and 
 the rain running off my oilskins. Then an idee struck 
 me. 'Can I have rooms, ma'am?' said I. 'Drawing-
 
 230 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 room floor I should prefer. Expense no object, but a 
 fire constant, me being from sunny climes.' 
 
 " 'A single man?' said she, staring and sizing me up. 
 
 " 'Single and blessed,' said I. 
 
 "Well, I took they rooms and stayed there a week. 
 Stayed three. And but for a sort of a curl at the 
 corner of her lips Bessie never gave a sign her knowed 
 rue. But her cookery! Oh, scrumptious! Cauli- 
 flower with sauce; boiled mutton and turnips; rabbits 
 and onions, a tender dish like sucking-pig. You see I 
 was the only lodger. 
 
 "But I warn't happy. For her'd sing about the 
 house and go out evenings. And I couldn't tell what 
 was up. I was pretty dashed, I can tell you about 
 what to do. Then Joe Craddick lent me a book, one 
 by a chap called Jacobs, that by the look of it knows 
 all there is to know about sailormen. And there 'twas 
 all in black and white how a fellow come back, same as 
 me, lodged with his wife, and got another chap to break 
 into the house, so that her should be made to scritch 
 to her lawful husband for protection against the burglar, 
 and so make it up with him. Says Joe Craddick to me, 
 'Can you work it, Sim?' 
 
 "And us did. One night he broke a pane of glass 
 in the pantry window, and got into the house. He'd 
 blacked his eyebrows and put on a beard. And up he 
 comes, stump, stump, up the stairs. I'd got my room 
 door ajar, ready to rush out and knock 'en down, the 
 very minute Bessie should cry, 'Save me, save me, 
 Sim!'" 
 
 ' ' And did she ? ' ' asked Billy breathlessly. 
 
 "Did she?" said he witheringly. "Not she. Out her 
 comes on the landing and gets a good look at Craddick. 
 His beard was all awry, and then her says soft and 
 quiet to me behind the door, 'Mr. Pascoe, if any of 
 your other friends should want to see you, kindly ask 
 them to call a little earlier in the evening than two
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 231 
 
 o'clock in the night. And there's a pane of glass that'll 
 have to be paid for.' 
 
 "Craddick, holding the jemmy he'd brought like a 
 poker, stood for a minute and stared. Then he quit. 
 Bessie had to open the front door to him. 
 
 "An awful woman," continued he, "but clever. 
 Her'd seen the book open, and marked where that chap 
 Jacobs had planked it down about the sham burglar. 
 I 'd been fool enough to leave it about, and me not being 
 a reading man, her wondered what I was up to with it. 
 
 "I pretty nigh lost all hope then, till it come to 
 Christmas. 'Twas dinner-time, Christmas Day, and 
 there upon my table in that dull old drawing-room up- 
 stairs it stood my Christmas dinner; a helping of 
 fowl, all white with crackling skin, bread sauce, brussels 
 sprouts and brown, rich gravy. Lord, it brought the 
 tears to my eyes ! 'Twas a blow-out fit for an admiral. 
 And then there was a slice of plum-pudding and a 
 mince pie. I sot down and thought. 
 
 "Me up here all lonely and cold with that fowl, and 
 her down there in that warm old kitchen. And when 
 I saw her'd given me the wishing-bone of the chicken, 
 I sat there and blubbered. Real tears come, I give you 
 my word." 
 
 "Well?" said Peter. 
 
 "Well, I down to the kitchen with that helping of 
 fowl. Her told me next day that I'd splashed the 
 gravy on every step. 
 
 " 'Bessie,' said I from the doorway, 'I can't bear it 
 no more. Take me back, will 'ee? This here wishing- 
 bone's broke down all my pride. There's to be carols 
 to-night. Us '11 go to 'em, arm-in-crook, and to-morrow 
 I '11 clean the boots. 
 
 ' ' Sim, ' says she, and makes a dash at me. 
 
 " 'Bessie,' said I, all comfortable with her at last, 
 'why for goodness, did'ee stand out so long? You must 
 have known what I was after all this time.'
 
 232 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 " 'Sim,' says she, 'I reckoned I'd bring you to your 
 marrow-bones. I wasn't going to have any high and 
 mighty ways with My husband.' 
 
 "I sometimes wish I'd got her back," continued he, 
 "for her wasn't a bad old bit of all right till her took 
 to her mother's ways. But that wasn't till I'd gone 
 down under, gone down under for good, I reckon. ' ' 
 
 Slowly the door behind him was pushed further ajar. 
 Knyvett rose to his feet and stood with one hand 
 pressed on the table, his left eye twitching as it did 
 when he was excited. His long, brown, lantern-jawed 
 face, apart from that, was almost red Indian in its 
 taciturn expression. 
 
 "Journeys end in lovers' meetings," said he, with 
 a smile curling round his lips. "Come in, Mrs. Bodi- 
 nar. I guess you're wanted after all." 
 
 Bodinar rose, chap-fallen, to his feet. 
 
 "Then," said he to his wife, "the poppy wine was 
 yours and I'm not so mad as I thought. Good Lord! 
 What I felt when I saw they steak rolls! Bessie, did 
 you make that pie?" 
 
 "Not the crust, Sim, not the crust," sobbed she. 
 
 "Well, I'm gallied," clucked Mr. Cole. 
 
 "But I never said you splashed the gravy on the 
 stairs, Sim, I never did. I was as glad as glad to 
 hear 'ee come clop, clop, down the stairs. Do'ee mind 
 how steep they was ? ' ' 
 
 "Ay," said he, eyeing her. "It is you, Bessie, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 "It is, it is. I've give up the bad trade, too, though 
 there's a mort o' money in it. I've give it all the slip, 
 all what you hate." 
 
 "Andthechillern?" 
 
 "With Maria. 'Twas the chillern that began it, 
 Sim." 
 
 "It was so, Bessie." 
 
 "Say you're glad to see me, Sim, say it."
 
 ARGONAUTS OP A PHANTOM FLEECE 233 
 
 "Well, you're aboard, there's no gainsaying that, 
 and I suppose you '11 have to stay. But how many more 
 petticoats be in hiding?" 
 
 ''Ne'er a one. But, oh, Sim, the first few days and 
 the rolling of my innerds! 'Twas as if I was being 
 creamed up and down." 
 
 But he was serious, now that the impropriety of the 
 whole proceedings struck him between the eyes. Mrs. 
 Bodinar divined it, for he had always been "strict with 
 her." 
 
 "'Twas Mrs. Knyvett that settled it, and she ought 
 to know, a lady like that. And, oh, Sim, I was sick 
 for 'ee, I was. Strike me dead, if I wasn't. Said I 
 to the chillern, 'I'm going away to dad.' : 
 
 "Poor old gel," said he, "a bit filled out, but not 
 so bad, after all, considering your years." There de- 
 scended upon him the instinct of possession, of which is 
 made up nine-tenths of the bliss of the long-wedded 
 man. 
 
 At this juncture the company thought fit to retire, 
 only the boy put his head in from the pantry : 
 
 "You bain't half a man," said he encouragingly to 
 Bodinar. "Why don't 'ee take her round the waist?" 
 
 "Ay, why don't I?" asked he. "There's no just 
 cause or impediment, is there, Bessie?" 
 
 "None," said she. 
 
 So Sim and Bessie were united en secondes noces, 
 so to say. 
 
 But Mrs. Bodinar would never have made such a good 
 landfall as this had there not been strange affinities 
 between herself and Mrs. Knyvett. For the poorer 
 woman had failed exactly where the richer one could 
 feel the sting of failure, namely, in ruling her world 
 her man and her bairns and the strange entities that 
 do squeak and gibber at the seances of modern witch- 
 craft. In Mrs. Knyvett, lying like a hidden rock in a 
 river, there was embedded a vein of mysticism which
 
 234 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 caused her to hanker after the secrets of other planes 
 than the grossly material. And, like the small per- 
 sonal habits that link or divide more distinctly than 
 creeds, one's attitude towards the occult marks the cali- 
 bre of the personality more inevitably than either rank 
 or education. 
 
 Partly, too, it was Mrs. Knyvett's love of the definite 
 that attracted her to that Eastern philosophy which 
 maps out the planes of the supersensual in colours as 
 simple as a Mereator's projection in a modern atlas. 
 Alternately repelled by the chicanery and folly of the 
 mediums and attracted by the apparent simplicity of 
 Theosophic explanations, she hovered, an uneasy ghost 
 between Haeckel and the Bhagavad Gita. It was a 
 matter of unfeigned rejoicing to her to hear that the 
 Royal Society talked of a land arising in the Pacific, 
 thus unconsciously verifying the Eastern prediction that 
 a new continent is in course of preparation for a new 
 race. The name of Nietzsche was to her a red rag to 
 a bull : yet no one believed more firmly than she that 
 man is a bridge, not a goal. 
 
 To a woman of these views Mrs. Bodinar seemed like 
 a sort of unholy temple of the obscene gods ; she would 
 not attempt to deny the possibility of witchcraft, she 
 would only hate it as a pandering to the baser instincts. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett had been able to reconstruct the tale 
 Bessie told her. She could grasp, too, the character of 
 the. man in it, the quickly fired imagination, the long- 
 ing to get a leverage by which he could make things 
 move, the straining against the bonds of circumstance 
 in him. Most working men accept the fact of their 
 individual powerlessness. This was what Simon could 
 not do; he even hated the rich man's use of electricity 
 and steam. 
 
 Like his wife, Bodinar was Brixham born, though 
 originally his forebears had been moor-folk of the West 
 Cornwall district. It was from a Bodinar offshoot that
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 235 
 
 he had inherited an ancient cottage on the outskirts of 
 the tors that cluster at the base of Great Kneeset. To 
 that homestead the pair removed a few years after mar- 
 riage with the intention of wresting a living from the 
 moors instead of the sea. From the stubs and the 
 turves they made their fire, just as their ancestors had 
 used the moorland granite to build the walls of the 
 two-storied dwelling with its huge chimneys that in 
 every bedroom jutted out like squatting figures of 
 Buddha in whitewashed masonry. They milked the 
 moor like a great cow; it gave them whortleberries for 
 their jam and bracken bedding for their pig. 
 
 Brown and lusty, eating huge meals after their 
 tramps, they watched the hoarded sixpences grow. He 
 "tealed" the garden and she nursed the chickens and 
 helped the bees to their labours. Both found their 
 labour good. Broad-backed and brown as October ale, 
 they would play horse-tricks on one another like wild 
 Indians. 
 
 Then the shadow fell, the prelude to the coming of 
 a child. She would not believe it at first and went off 
 to a wise woman in Exeter. That night Simon found 
 her in a chair before the fire with her apron over her 
 head, rocking herself to and fro. It was not pain that 
 she feared, but change, for Simon had left her once or 
 twice already. And would he stand the muck and 
 muddle of a child-rearing house? She fought, how- 
 ever, and went "stubbing" on the moors to the last 
 minute. It was a wonder the child was born under a 
 roof. 
 
 Everything dropped from her hands then, for the 
 fieldwoman was no neat housewife, no mother. Squalor 
 came upon her, and drink upon him, for it was her 
 constant companionship, in neck and neck running side 
 by side, that had kept him straight. Now she had to 
 stay at home and rock the cradle. The cottage grew 
 hateful, so they let it with the old Windsor chairs and
 
 236 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 China dogs to an artist and came back to Brixham. 
 One thing he had not lost, his animal courage, so he 
 took to the sea as of old and she stayed at home to feed 
 the children by her ancestral trade, the trade that 
 seemed the last nail in the coffin of Simon's self-re- 
 spect. 
 
 The only pride he felt now and pride was necessary 
 to him was his sense of his skill as a seaman, his belief 
 in his own stores of secret knowledge. Amid the sickly 
 miasma that gathered round them both from her for- 
 tune telling, he would withdraw his mind to these 
 hidden delights. As a boy he had kept a treasure-box, 
 stored with wych-hazel divining rods and such like; 
 as a man he collected sailors' yarns of treasure trove in 
 Pacific Islands or on the riven cliffs of Trinidad. "When 
 he drew charts and made calculations he felt himself 
 in possession of secret power. 
 
 " Hungry, that's what he was," said Bessie. 
 
 "You want to go with him?" asked Mrs. Knyvett. 
 "You know it'll be a fearful tossing for you." 
 
 Secret fear leapt in Mrs. Bodinar. 
 
 "I want," said she, "to be there when they learn 
 the outs of the voyage." 
 
 "When," said Mrs. Knyvett quickly, "they find 
 they 've been cheated, you mean ? ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Bodinar 's eyes flashed, then filled with tears. 
 
 "Ma'am," said she, "I know no more than the dead. 
 Gold-dust he had, but 'twas gravel as I turned out of 
 his breeches, not black dust at all. I dunno. My 
 head's all addled to think upon it." 
 
 "Mrs. Bodinar, if I induce my son to keep his word 
 and take you, will you do what I ask you ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes," said Bessie. "For I shall go mad if I stay 
 here, not knowing what's going on t'other side of the 
 world. And I want to get away from what's following 
 me. You know, ma'am. Oh, let me go, make it so that 
 I can go ! "
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 237 
 
 "Then tell me where you think the weak spot in this 
 story lies." 
 
 "I misdoubt," said Mrs. Bodinar slowly, "what hap- 
 pened between Simon and the chemist that give 'en 
 back the gold-dust. The name, they say, was Pycroft. 
 Well, it's Pycroft I want to see." 
 
 "Ah," said Mrs. Knyvett; to her mind the woman's 
 answer revealed more knowledge than she was willing 
 to confess. Bodinar must have had rascally dealings 
 ere this and Bessie knew it. No doubt Coronel, like 
 most outland towns of South America, was full of men 
 who were wanted. Over there, with her knowledge of 
 her husband's past, Mrs. Bodinar would be invaluable 
 in unearthing the secrets of this pesky puzzle which was 
 beginning to irritate Mrs. Knyvett intensely. For to 
 see her Billy busy over it, he who had managed works 
 that were national affairs, was to this proud woman a 
 festering pin-prick. 
 
 ' ' You see, ma 'am, ' ' said Bessie, following up her own 
 affairs, "I've got to get rid of something, too. You 
 catch spirits in the air, you do. They get all round 
 you, nasty evil things. Ugh! I can see 'em. They 
 cling round like a smell. But they say you can shake 
 'em off if you go down, down, down, with the world 
 slipping by underneath you. You'm changed. You 
 slip by the seasons, quick, as if a year had gone over 
 your head like a flash." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett 's heart leapt, for she, too, was count- 
 ing much on the sea magic. She wanted the tang of 
 the salt winds for her son ; the smell would be antiseptic. 
 She remembered how, as a child, she had loved to open 
 the old book in which her father had pasted his collec- 
 tion of seaweeds! Acrid, clean it was, like the smell 
 of pitch, yet with a wildness of flavour that knew 
 nothing of building yards. 
 
 "You shall go," said she firmly. But it was with 
 Uncle Pip that she had had her fiercest battle.
 
 238 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Women aboard!" cried he, "cluttering up the 
 scuppers like broody hens. Fool-talk ! What ! does the 
 man want a wet-nurse then?" 
 
 "If," said Mrs. Knyvett firmly, "there is ever going 
 to be any unravelling of this mystery, this hen has 
 to go on the cruise." 
 
 "Mystery!" snorted he, "who said there was any 
 mystery ? ' ' 
 
 "And if there wasn't," snapped Mrs. Knyvett, 
 "wouldn't a certain gentleman adventurer not three 
 feet from me feel rather flat? And, by the way, I'm 
 not deaf, you needn't use a fog-horn." 
 
 In her anxiety to get Billy away, her temper was 
 wearing thin. 
 
 "God! Madam, don't lose your temper. / don't 
 care whether the poor cuss goes or not." 
 
 "And the poor cuss will be practically useful," said 
 Mrs. Knyvett drily, "for she's the only person who is 
 personally interested in making Bodinar walk in a 
 straight line." 
 
 The wisdom of Uncle Pip could not deny this. So, 
 in dead of night, Mrs. Bodinar had been smuggled 
 aboard, accompanied by a great number of corded boxes 
 which she lashed round the bunk on which she slept 
 like a Bedouin encamped in the desert. 
 
 In those days, ere she made that beef-steak pie, she 
 dwelt much in memories, always of her time among the 
 moors, for the steadfastness of the hills was a comfort 
 in a tossing universe where the swaying lamp filled her 
 with a sickly horror. She remembered how on the 
 moors lost lamb and wandering ewe would bleat afar, 
 then rush together, with much joy of tail-wagging. 
 Would she meet Bodinar like that apart of course from 
 the matter of the tail ? 
 
 Deliberately between herself and the chaos of this 
 hurtling world of wind and sea she set the image of the 
 Great Earth; the wash of waves, she called the lash
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 239 
 
 of rain on the roof ; the wind in the shrouds, the whistle 
 of zephyrs through the trees. Every hook on which it 
 was possible for the imagination to hang fair broidery 
 of phantasy she used. The yellow milk from the ship's 
 goat was rich pasture-fed ooze of clover or violet ; 
 the crowing from the deck-coops was sweet to her 
 ears as morning note of barnyard ecstasy. A litter 
 of black Berkshires would have effaced from her mind 
 the horror of the hell-deep chasms, the green mountains 
 of the Atlantic ; in lieu thereof, she betook herself to 
 the galley and made marmalade. 
 
 For always, Nature had been personified to her as 
 a vast mouth ; the most interesting part of mountain 
 scenery was the sight of sheep fattening, of birds wheel- 
 ing through the air in search of flies. Cornelius's fish- 
 ing contraptions fascinated her soul, but she regretted 
 that the Atlantic does not yield blackberries, mush- 
 rooms, or whorts. Meanwhile she kept herself close- 
 packed as a cocoon and slept ''all standing"; forced 
 occasionally to undress for ablutions, she shuffled on 
 her clothes in hot haste as a knight his armour when 
 the darts are already hurtling on the castle walls. She 
 was a woman in an iron mask. 
 
 Bird-like the Pendragon flew south for, leaving the 
 long mountain chains of Madeira behind, the next day 
 they caught the trades in the latitude of the Canaries. 
 The tropics were at hand, heralded by the appearance 
 of the first flying-fish. Nerves lost their edge in the 
 soft freedom of the steady blowing canvas, nerves that 
 in the baffling winds had crackled with electric storm. 
 The crowded earth, the narrow sea straits were forgot- 
 ten. Steering in the starlight at night, Peter "Westlake 
 savoured the sweetness of the constellations with a text 
 from Job on his lips; the Angora cats leapt from yard 
 to yard or basked on the sunny deck; Cornelius danced 
 a cake-walk and the concertina in the fo'c'sle kept time 
 to the clucking of such hens as w r ere not in the stomachs
 
 240 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 of the saloon passengers. It was the Barefoot Days, 
 ere there fell upon them the weariness of the Belt of 
 Calms. Each reverted; Billy bared his soul and Cor- 
 nelius his sides. Each man filled out to the globular 
 shape that would have been his, had not the attrition 
 of human intercourse fretted him down to a spindle- 
 legged pair of compasses. Only, like a fly in amber, 
 Bodinar remained unchanged, steeping himself in the 
 comfort of his Bessie's petis soins. 
 
 Then each day the clouds on the horizon piled them- 
 selves to hurricane height, but no rain fell. Towards 
 night-fall the sky cleared. Only so, or in deserts, does 
 one see the full glory of the star-strewn sky, Venus 
 throwing silver furrows across the sea, Orion glowing 
 red and green as over Arabian desert. The shadows 
 were growing shorter day by day and soon the Magellan 
 clouds would be showing near the Southern Cross. 
 
 It was when pacing the deck o' nights in the second 
 watch that Billy talked most freely, for the changing 
 heavens o'erhead seemed shaking him loose into new 
 latitudes of resolution and endeavour. The stars they 
 had seen so often over the misty hollows of English 
 meadows were changing now to something new; for 
 cow-parsley and the wind among the clapping hands of 
 the beeches, they had the ceaseless rustle of the 
 shrouds, the never ending swirl of waters. 
 
 It was of the Pendr agon's days as a "Holy Joe" that 
 they talked one night. For Peter would have it that 
 his cabin was haunted by a shadowy spirit with ice- 
 nipped nose and watery eyes, whose unofficial log Billy 
 had been lucky enough to come upon in a second-hand 
 shop in Portsmouth. True it was that more than once 
 the fell of seamen's hair had risen at a breath in the 
 dusk of a ship's gangway. Noises there were, too, 
 rustlings from upper berths, when men lay still in terror 
 to listen to queer turnings and heavings overhead. Yet 
 how was it possible that a man who had posted lists
 
 all over the ship for the captain to remember could pos- 
 sibly have mislaid himself on t'other side of Jordan? 
 Perhaps he missed his glazed bag that accompanied him 
 everywhere. Its contents were duly noted in the log: 
 "trinkets, beads, toys for natives; needles and thread; 
 a few biscuits and concentrated essence of meat ; matches, 
 paper and pencils, sketch-book, church service, thickly 
 printed book of some sort to read," and so on. He had 
 much trouble with his mates, men who "came aboard 
 with heaven on their lips but not in their heart"; yet 
 this was not to be wondered at since he read ' ' The Daily 
 Service in the Cottage" to the sailors at the breakfast 
 hour and worst of all, a missionary work called "Hope 
 Deferred" that sapped the courage of the crew. 
 
 "He hadn't any guts," said Billy, plainly Saxon 
 this time. 
 
 Then he went on, from the sky pilot's work with 
 glazed bags and cottage sermons, to talk of his own; of 
 the long desert days he had spent in building a dam 
 in Egypt. Peter could see him now, a keen-eyed, hard- 
 bitten man sitting over his plans in the light of his 
 tent lamp with the African moonlight outside. He 
 spoke of the trouble with Arab laisser-f aire, born of gen- 
 erations of sun-warmed, date-fed ease in a land where 
 the lash of an overseer has always been the means of 
 driving muscle to its work. With such a tool, and with 
 no lash but the will, had Billy done his job, worn to a 
 shadow, but buoyant to his very heart. It was the 
 best time of his life, for it had ousted everything from 
 his mind but the narrow gangway of accomplishment 
 along which he had to walk. Then there was that 
 bridge in the Punjab; it was the English gangers and 
 the spirit of the river he had fought there. For this 
 man who sought his peace in wild places, who hated 
 Pall Mall like a pest-house and felt the air of St. James 's 
 to be a charnel blast, had learnt to feel the spirits of 
 the earth; river-spirits that sing in the vast in-breath-
 
 242 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ing and out-breathing of noise that they make; the 
 spirit of storm that flies in the spindrift; the spirit of 
 strength that speaks in the sheep-cry among the hills. 
 
 Looking at him, Peter wished him back in the struggle 
 with the earth's stubbornness. Billy answered his 
 thought. 
 
 "I'm going back to my job," he said, " when this 
 cruise is over." 
 
 Leaning over the bulwarks, swaying to the cradling 
 he loved, he looked over the foam-flecked blackness on 
 which they moved. His eyes had the far gaze of the 
 sailor that is satisfied with nothing short of the horizon. 
 Out here he, like the sea over which they moved, began 
 to assume his true size. On over-crowded soil he 
 shrank to the size of the men about him. Blue water, 
 desert, or hills: these were his backgrounds; trim-built 
 villas with aspidestria plants in the windows were but 
 cells to a sea-gull. That was why he was so silent there. 
 
 "I was in an earthquake in 'Frisco once," he said, 
 "the queerest thing was the feeling that the solid globe 
 was melting under me. A rocking steeple took away 
 the sense of the eternal hills. One learnt then how much 
 one reckons on the steadfastness of the universe. The 
 mind goes mad in sight of chaos. 
 
 "That was how it was with me when Sara married. 
 It was not the marriage itself. She had instincts to 
 satisfy, she was a woman. It was that I should have 
 been so blind. I made her a goddess and after all she 
 was a woman, waiting, ready to be wooed. Oh, I cannot 
 say it" 
 
 With wide flung hand he gesticulated. 
 
 "But the steeples tottered, the eternal hills were 
 moved. In all the plumbless heart of woman's nature 
 and man's there seemed no foothold even for an eagle's 
 rest. God ! those days ! ' ' 
 
 Peter held his breath, for the heavens were opened 
 and the deep spoke.
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 243 
 
 "I thought she knew what she was to me," said Billy, 
 on a lower level now. "Then I learnt after a time 
 that what she was to me didn't so much matter, after 
 all. It was what I was to her that mattered. And so 
 I stood by, to help if need be. Well, she knows now. 
 And after all the pinnacles may totter, but the eagle 
 has his wings. They are his resting-place. That is 
 Love. What I could be to her; that was it. All that 
 had gone before was just instinct, the man seeking his 
 mate. And that had been snatched from me by Vin 
 Hereford's contrivance and Bellew's acquiescence." 
 
 "I'm sorry for Belle w," said Peter quietly. 
 
 "That fellow!" flashed Billy, "a scabby simulacrum 
 of a man, spoiling the daylight with his ghastly carcase. 
 To think of him near her! But," in lower tones, "he 
 doesn't touch her now." 
 
 Both men were silent, Peter dared not question here, 
 for he had long ago taken off his shoes. 
 
 "Through it, after all, the woman remained un- 
 touched, the essential woman, the thing that looks out 
 of her eyes. I know it now. I didn't then. That was 
 hell number two for me. Not the hell of the rocking 
 universe, but the hell of the creeping worm. ' ' 
 
 "Yes," said Peter, returning to Bellew, "he is, I 
 suppose, a poor tool, but a poor tool in skilful hands 
 may serve to plane a board. He's never had skilful 
 handling yet." 
 
 Then he flushed, knowing that he blamed Sara. But 
 Billy never saw it. 
 
 "That's where it comes in," said he, "my mother 
 swears there's a woman who could do it, who gave all 
 once and who would give all again to save him from 
 himself. I don't know that he's worth it. But it's 
 give, give, give, with every woman; every man's to 
 her like the child she feeds at her breast. Only to the 
 man she gives her life-blood. God ! what does the race 
 want divine beings for when there are women ? ' '
 
 244 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "To compare them unfavourably," said Peter slyly, 
 "with the angels in petticoats, of course." 
 
 Billy laughed. 
 
 "If Sara knew what your mother thinks?" asked 
 Peter in a whisper. 
 
 But Knyvett was silent, for he knew the answer deep 
 within him, since her duty to the weak ones was the one 
 o'ermastering claim that Sara acknowledged. She 
 would never stand in the way of another woman's good 
 w r ork. "If she knew?" to Billy the question did not 
 assume that form at all; it was "Will she ever 
 know?" 
 
 Not from him certainly; that was as clear as the 
 shining of an arc-light in the darkness. 
 
 "Yet," said he, "Bellew gets it all down. In his 
 books, I mean. Have you ever felt something grinding 
 down, down, down into you against a raw tendon ? For 
 that's the way life itches against our sensitive nerves 
 nowadays. Bellew gets that impression into his books 
 every time, you know. The way women goad and tor- 
 ture and madden and tempt and hold aloof. Or once 
 given, fight for their own hand and show that they've 
 just sold themselves for a competence, huckstering like 
 pigs in the market that which is the precious jewel of 
 their lives." 
 
 "I didn't know you understood that," said Peter. 
 "But it's like that, I suppose." 
 
 "Ay," answered Billy, absent-mindedly. "But it's a 
 tie like Sara's and mine that yields the best of all. If 
 I went away for twenty years I should find her the 
 same to me." 
 
 "And perhaps find her as you did when the pinna- 
 cles tottered." 
 
 "Yes, perhaps. Given to another man. But al- 
 though he might know her sweet nearness, she could 
 never be to him what she is to me. I never see anything 
 beautiful but what she speaks to me in it. She is always
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 245 
 
 present in my thoughts my woman, whose undraped 
 loveliness I have never known." 
 
 Peter moved uneasily: Jew as he was by instinct for 
 imagery, he had a certain fear of the largeness of the 
 Greek vision of woman. The Paphian goddess seemed, in 
 faith, both to him and Anne, a being overlavish of her 
 charms. Then the fallacy of the reasoning struck him : 
 
 "There's nothing exclusive in that. She might come 
 to forty men in the beauty of the world. What's to 
 prevent a crowd seeing her where they will ? ' ' 
 
 Billy laughed again. 
 
 "And why not?" said he. "Who am I to expect her 
 to waste her sweetness on me alone. You talk like a 
 fashionable milliner, Peter, of exclusive designs." 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me then that you're content to 
 go shares with all the world? Don't tell me, Billy, such 
 nonsense as that. For if you do I only know it's a 
 lie," exclaimed Peter, coming to the ground with a 
 crash and dragging the other with him. The man beside 
 him burnt from within, his lips tightening, his face 
 twitching. 
 
 "Got home there," said Peter to himself and the next 
 moment was sorry; 'twas too much the act of a cold- 
 blooded demonstrator. 
 
 Truth to tell, Sara was to Peter but a handsome, dark- 
 eyed, queenly woman who sometimes when she played 
 had a trick of recalling to him a chapter from Isaiah or 
 the Book of Job. At other times he disapproved of her 
 music. That was the nearest point he could reach to 
 the lyrics of this star-gazing rhapsodist. 
 
 To Peter, also, Bellew was very decidedly, no scaly 
 varmint, but a big man, a much paragraphed publicist. 
 Never would the little man have dreamt of sharing in 
 such distinguished company. Nor, indeed, had he truly 
 shared, for Bellew was barely awake to his existence. 
 
 "Yes," said he tentatively, "it's like Dante and 
 Beatrice, I suppose, but " he shrugged his shoulders
 
 246 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 about his ears "there's something deathlike about it, 
 too. It's big and draughty." 
 
 "'The windy ways of death,'" quoted Knyvett 
 softly. "Yes, it's like that. That's why I am going 
 back to my work. I can do nothing for her, I who 
 would coin my heart's blood into drachmas for her. I 
 have gone through it all and come out on the other 
 side. I must go away not to forget, but to remember 
 what she was, what she might have been to the world, 
 what she still is to me. ' ' 
 
 There was in his tone a vast regret that made Peter 
 stand more at gaze than at anything which had gone 
 before. He was coming now to the heart of things. 
 
 "An unfulfilled life. No, not mine, hers. And that's 
 the worst of all to bear. I'm no poet like a Senhouse, 
 who can find comfort in the reflection that his lady is 
 above all the powers of hell. That isn't so in Sara's 
 case. His Sanchia was different. She was a goddess 
 with a gift for mathematics. She found opportunity 
 for both playing the divine and adding up sums. She 
 had ledgers and men to handle. But Sara has neither. 
 She is injuring her man by standing in his light, the 
 light that comes from love. She is only driving him 
 to the pursuit of a phantom lust. And she has no 
 ledgers. She ought to have drunk deep at the fountain 
 of experience, to have known all, so that she could 
 speak it in her music. Instead, she is starving, strained 
 on a leash." 
 
 "Then tell her. Make her see," cried Peter, fling- 
 ing the weighty Tables of the Law with a split across 
 their middle right in the path, "it must be hell to feel 
 like that." 
 
 "It is." 
 
 ' ' And her ruin, it would seem. ' ' 
 
 "Don't you understand," cried Billy impatiently, 
 "that she's above me. We men have played the potter 
 with the pot too long in women's lives. We have
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 247 
 
 wanted to cut them all to our idea. Now we must 
 leave them alone. We cannot be their salvation, we 
 can only damn, not save. ' ' 
 
 "That's a lie," said Peter hardily. " Don't you see 
 that she might rise to what you say is in her, if it 
 weren't for your infernal squeamishness about dirtying 
 your little finger? Isn't her fulfilment more to you 
 than your own noble-mindedness? Damn such puling, 
 whining morality, that I should say so. A goddess, 
 say you! But what's the good of that to her, if she 
 doesn't know it? A damned sight better make her a 
 woman. Billy, 'tis you, not Bellew, who's the egotist. 
 You're like the prude, too holy to risk her precious 
 purity by contact with the fallen. ' ' 
 
 "Am I God, then, Peter, that I should decide the 
 issues of life for this woman ? ' ' 
 
 "Are you," parried Westlake, "by any chance just 
 juggling with yourself? Are you afraid of social dam- 
 nation for her, of course? Do cuts and slights and 
 lifted eyebrows and significant silences worry you at 
 all, for her ? Are you, in fact, afraid to face the music ? 
 Do you care?" 
 
 Billy laughed. "Not a straw," said he gaily. "And 
 if I did, the gossip that follows Bellew is worse than 
 anything. But do you reckon that the flying skirts of 
 a winged Victory can be damaged by the spittle of a 
 snail? Lord! Peter, she'd be above all that. The 
 people who can do things are, you know. The man 
 or woman who can create, can interpret, doesn't care 
 a tinker's cuss whether he gets At Home cards." 
 
 So the talk closed on a lower level, but Billy was as 
 determined as ever. Sara's right to her own life was 
 as inviolable as the sanctity of her body would have 
 been to knight of old. The demands change, but the 
 spirit remains. 
 
 With the crossing of the Line, when Knyvett began 
 to utilise Simon Bodinar's knowledge of these South
 
 248 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 American waters, the seaman's pride was reborn. He 
 walked with a new light in his eyes; rejoiced in the 
 spring of the vessel beneath his hand when he took his 
 trick at the wheel. The crew mocked his attitude behind 
 his back. 
 
 Yet the plan he sketched was good; it was to strike 
 for Fernando de Noronha and falling in with the local 
 monsoons, if luck served, run down the Brazil coast 
 with the northeast or north wind. Then, crossing the 
 mouth of the Plata inside of soundings, make the land 
 along the Patagonian shores to the region of the Cape 
 Horn drift. Five times he had sailed southward by 
 this route and Knyvett never regretted taking his ad- 
 vice. That was something to remember in the days that 
 were to come. 
 
 Before the nor 'east trades they drifted to the tropics 
 under a haze as thick as November in northern lati- 
 tudes; they grew to hate the smell of pitchy seams, the 
 aimless breaths that, when the trades fail, nutter over 
 the calm of a sea of glass disturbed by naught but 
 the flying fish and the bonita. At night the gates of 
 the west were brazen, till somewhere about latitude 7 
 south, they first sighted the dark patches of the Magellan 
 clouds. Day after day the eyes scanned the sea-line 
 for the fleecy trade clouds. 
 
 One night Cole rapped at Westlake's door and called 
 him up; it was dock-calm, no ripple, no cat's-paw, only 
 an oily swell across which the vessel cast a black shadow 
 along the edge of which played the silver foam of 
 phosphorescence. Then they saw the strange sight 
 noted not once nor twice by Spanish and Portuguese 
 navigators the ringed moon, its broad gold face en- 
 circled with a red haze, its redness paling to the dark 
 green of the night sky. Over the bulwarks the men 
 gazed ; then came a redness in the east, while the moon 's 
 ring began to fade to dull pewter, to recede it seemed 
 into distance as the daylight conquered. The silvered
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 249 
 
 tracks faded to sea-dimness as the sun rose. It was a 
 vaster world than they had known before, this world 
 where the constellations played their age-long game. 
 
 Then three bells sounded and the cry of the watch. 
 They were cradled in a big hand, these men who watched 
 or slept. Human calculations of space and time 
 shrivelled to nothingness before the contemplation of 
 the celestial clock-work. Across these waters the older 
 navigators stole half furtively, offering here an anchor 
 and there a prayer to the Star of the Sea, and flinging 
 overboard at times a balk of timber to the appeasement 
 of the tides. So they crept between the domed vault 
 and the shifting sea-floor. One must not tempt a mood 
 of anger from powers so great as these. 
 
 Two days after the ringed moon it came the mood of 
 rage that gathers in the inky thunder-clouds. For 
 hours the barometer had played queer tricks, till at 
 last it provoked a whistle from the skipper who called 
 Bodinar quickly; neither had ever seen it lower. Then 
 Mrs. Bodinar learnt what "dead-lights" mean on the 
 portholes; with every stitch of canvas stowed save the 
 foretopsail they waited. And the blackness gathered 
 over the noonday stillness, with ugly flaws of wind like 
 smiles on the face of an idiot. Each man to the other 
 was by now but a dim shape. The nerves shrieked for 
 a break to the stillness, but Mrs. Bodinar in the galley 
 boxed the ears of the nigger when he dropped a pile of 
 plates. Then she cried, in both instances doing just 
 what every man wanted to do. 
 
 Peter refused to go below; so lashed in the waist he 
 waited. Two days before they had spoken an English 
 vessel, twenty-one days out from Rio. That was, he 
 supposed, perhaps the last English voice they would 
 hear. An extraordinary loneliness had come upon him, 
 with a sinking at the pit of the stomach and an alertness 
 to note both sight and sound like that of the savage. All 
 the higher centres of thought seemed dead.
 
 250 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Inky-black with a sulphur edge to them the clouds 
 assumed weird bird-shapes. Peter began to read them 
 as he might have read the shapes in a fire. Then he 
 loathed them, tried to escape seeing them, but failed. 
 
 "Sou 'west, half south," said a voice. 
 
 "Sou 'west, half south," came the answer from Bodi- 
 nar at the wheel. The man was on his mettle; he had 
 no fear here. Yet there had been a row with him only 
 last night. He had charged Cole with stealing a sov- 
 ereign from his sea-chest, then he had finished by being 
 beastly sick. 
 
 The watch was turned now to figures cut in ebony 
 against the first flow of molten sheet lightning. 
 
 "It's coming," cried Billy; "hold on, Peter." 
 
 Just for a moment Westlake found time to wonder 
 what it felt like to wait for a hurricane with your own 
 ship under you. Rum feeling, surely? 
 
 Then the heavens opened and it seemed that the sea 
 was gone; something was shaking him, Peter, beating 
 the wind out of him as maliciously as a terrier teases 
 a rat. He hated it, wanted to hit back. Then the sea 
 made a clean breach of the vessel and stove Peter's 
 chest in. He felt it go; as a matter of fact, he discov- 
 ered afterwards that it was the weather-side of the gal- 
 ley that had gone. There came a cry from the dark- 
 ness to the men holding by the life-lines in the waist 
 and Peter heard their oilskins slither in the extraor- 
 dinary sense of hearing that was his between blind deaf- 
 ness and insensibility. 
 
 The mercury must by now be going down, down to 
 Davy Jones's locker. Where they were all going, in 
 fact. How would Anne take it? Would she marry 
 someone else? She ought not, for he had waited so 
 long for her; sick of self-pity, his heart, which for all 
 practical purposes was located in his stomach, yearned 
 over himself. 
 
 The next moment the deck was standing upright and
 
 ARGONAUTS OF A PHANTOM FLEECE 251 
 
 he clinging to it by toe and nail like a big land-crab. 
 There must surely be a crevice in it that would give 
 a foothold ; it stank of oozing pitch. Then came a huge 
 crack, amidships it seemed, and the shuddering sense 
 of an endless fall, with the shriek and howl of caged 
 winds overhead. He had an instant's glimpse of black 
 depths, and then, quiet. Quiet ! he had always heard of 
 the silence at the sea-bed. 
 
 He was clutched by an arm round his body and found 
 his lips against a dripping cheek. Blood on it, too, he 
 could tell by the taste. Then the man stepped across 
 him on all fours and he thought nothing more of him. 
 
 Hours after a wave curled across a bulwark. Peter 
 lay and sobbed, for the crest of it was white and the 
 trough of it green; the light was coming back. It was 
 the darkness he had dreaded most, but now the blessed 
 light was coming, he could even begin to feel it on his 
 eyelids. Then he saw Billy at the helm relieving Bodi- 
 nar for a spell and steering so that the waves struck 
 dead aft. They were all death-cold from the water that 
 had gone over them and Lethbridge with a broken arm. 
 Peter could not tell how he knew it, but he did. 
 
 Battened down below, Mrs. Bodinar listened to Cor- 
 nelius moaning and retching. She wanted to get at 
 him to kick him, but the fact that the place was knee- 
 deep in slop-water seemed to deter her, for she could 
 not move to lay her hand on a floor-cloth. Then her 
 thoughts flew to her husband; how dared he leave her 
 down here to die like a rat in a trap ? Still, she would 
 let no shriek escape her, lest the darky hear. A filthy 
 black tool. He should know her a white woman, any- 
 way, to the last. 
 
 But Bodinar 's bones would fly off God knows where 
 into the ocean-bed, and she would be alone shut in here. 
 She kicked the door and stormed. Yet that was all 
 wrong, for she would surely be flying in the air, like the 
 queer things she saw when the fit was on her? Then
 
 252 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 she knew she was more afraid of them than of the 
 crawling beasts down below; far more afraid. And 
 Bodinar, where would he be that read bad books and 
 drank ? Nor would she have taken her davy that he was 
 all straight with women. 
 
 At that moment sense failed and the brain reeled 
 from the hammering it had suffered. She was vaguely 
 now repeating sea-phrases over and over again: "flog- 
 ging the clock;" "a damned Shinnanikin, " "a damned 
 Shinnanikin" At last it was quieter; she could feel 
 the soreness of the lips she had been wetting with her 
 tongue, could make out the straining of the burdened 
 masts, the creaking of the blocks. 'Twas like the 
 agony of giving birth. 
 
 That woke her, for they might live after all. If so, 
 they would want her fire, her cooking. She paused for 
 each slant and began to crawl cannily on all fours to- 
 wards the bogie-stove. 
 
 It was her moment of triumph, the sweetest in her 
 life, when she handed the steaming pannikins of coffee 
 up the companion. It was good to be a woman as she 
 watched the numbed red hands clutch the hot stuff. 
 With a sob on her lips she turned to goad Cornelius to 
 frenzy by her taunts. 
 
 So, with foretopsail in shreds, with broken bulwarks 
 and salt encrusted deck, the gale left them. And forty- 
 eight hours later by the blessing of God the trade clouds 
 mustered on the sea-line. 
 
 Leaving the white pinnacles of Fernando de Noronha 
 on the port bow, they struck for the yellow lines of 
 beach, palm-fringed, of the Brazil coast and so on into 
 the vast pear-shaped harbour of Rio glittering white in 
 its tracery of tropic green and hiding in a land of 
 eternal spring the filthiest sores of human disease. 
 There were no letters; only the eternal "Como no," 
 the "Why not?" of South America began to ring in 
 Knyvett's ears. A rage possessed him to come to grips
 
 with something tangible. To him the weather change 
 that met them at the edge of the Roaring Forties was 
 a real joy. 
 
 Now at dawn the decks were clammy wet, the nights 
 cold, and instead of albacore and flying fish they met 
 "the Falkland island pilots," the penguins flying by 
 in dazzling lines of light. Then came southwesterly 
 winds bringing with them miles of crested waves winged 
 with the storm they fled from. 
 
 Behind their flying spindrift lay the shadow of the 
 Horn.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DUKERIPPEN: IN THIS MRS. KNYVETT PLAYS THE SIBYL, 
 AND STEPHEN ANERLEY THE MAN 
 
 IT was a wonderful day of stir and movement ; snowy 
 domes and pinnacles of cloud showed the vast 
 depths of the blue dome and the tree-tops swayed be- 
 neath a southwest wind. The better to see and hear, 
 Archer Bellew threw up the window of his study. With 
 the opening of it came the sound of a tarantelle from 
 the low granite doorway of his wife's music-room. 
 
 The back of the house at Craneham still retained the 
 quadrangular shape made by the buildings of the for- 
 mer farm; only the central space had been filled with 
 grass and the barn transformed. It was dedicated now, 
 as Uncle Pip used to say, to Orpheus, not the Georgics. 
 For by removing the flooring which had made the place 
 two-storeyed, they had exposed the ancient blackened 
 timbers of the barrel roof and with newly plastered 
 walls, fresh flooring and a platform at the far end, it 
 w T as found to possess fine acoustic qualities. Here Sara 
 had placed her grand piano and was free to practise at 
 any hour without disturbing the house. 
 
 Bellew returned to his work, for he was at that mo- 
 ment undergoing the Chinese torture which consists in 
 squeezing a body into a basket and then paring off the 
 extruding flesh. In less cryptic language he was paring 
 down the flesh of his new book to the bones of it, for 
 he was a creator who also wanted to be an artist after 
 the fashion of to-day, which consists in never using two 
 lines where one will do. The thing that stood in his 
 way was his gift of national consciousness; he was con- 
 
 254
 
 DUKER1FFEN 255 
 
 stautly caught in the eddies and whirled in the tides of 
 popular instinct. Hence, he often lost sight of the 
 rounded totality of the individuals he visualised. Would 
 he paint a city clerk, there came to him instead, the 
 rows of suburban streets, the aura of clerkdom. Be- 
 tween the historian and novelist, his work was that of 
 neither. He knew it and suffered in his artistic con- 
 science ; he felt like a domestic Muse with her hair wind- 
 blown, Maenad-like. Hence his pencil whistled across 
 the paper in savage lines of erasure. 
 
 He envied the doers, people with something tangible 
 to their credit. Even the plump white hands of his 
 banker appealed to him, his transactions were so neat. 
 If only someone would just give him a stone to hew in 
 the foundations of the temple of England's righteous- 
 ness ! Yet he had a letter from Molly Woodruffe in his 
 pocket. 
 
 At last he saw Anne Hereford cross the garden-plat 
 and threw down his pencil-stump with a sudden admi- 
 ration -for these sisters who refused to be stifled by 
 the provincial feather-bed. Had things been otherwise, 
 would Sara, he wondered, have merged the artist in the 
 mother? At any rate, he had nothing to regret there. 
 Supremely pleased with himself, he felt his pulses begin 
 to sway to the music that had now changed to a dance 
 metre. Obeying a sudden impulse he followed Anne's 
 white-clad figure into the cool gloom of the music-room, 
 caught her round the waist with a laugh and began to 
 dance. 
 
 Laughing, swinging to her music, in the glimmer of 
 the candles on her piano, Sara played on. The scent 
 of beans, of honeysuckle and tall \vhite lilies came with 
 the wind that swayed the candle-flame in streams of yel- 
 low light towards her. And all the while Archer en- 
 joyed the gaiety of the moment; why by now he might 
 have been a heavy paterfamilias and Sara have boasted 
 a double chin. This lightness of heart engendered a
 
 256 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 certain looseness of fibre; he ended by pelting Anne 
 with yellow plums and going out to look for Molly Wood- 
 ruffe, who, with a "dear Mr. Bellew" had announced 
 her return to Dartmouth for a ten days' holiday. She 
 had been ill, wanted a rest and so ended "with kindest 
 remembrances. ' ' 
 
 Left alone, Sara bent to her work, hot on the master- 
 ing of difficulties. She played on, stopped to analyse, 
 to repeat, rejoicing in her own powers. The darkness 
 gathered outside, till circling jackdaws were replaced 
 by wheeling bats, but she took no notice, now that the 
 work was going. For the artist has to plough the fur- 
 row wearily just to train his Pegasus for the winged 
 moment that comes but now and then. 
 
 She had hurried across the dew-wet garden to her 
 work at six, then had followed the day's routine till 
 now. At length, tired out, she threw herself for a mo- 
 ment on the chintz-covered couch and fell at once asleep. 
 When she awoke the place was in darkness, for the can- 
 dles had guttered to their sockets. She started to her 
 feet in dismay ; for all these hours her father must have 
 been alone, since Elizabeth was ill and Anne probably 
 shut in upstairs, at work on her M.D. reading. 
 
 Over the fire in the dining-room, now a mass of ashes, 
 crouched her father, his foot beating an angry tattoo. 
 The room was scattered with specimens and on the mid- 
 dle of the table stood a plate w r ith a large piece of bread 
 on it. She put her hand on the bell. 
 
 "It's useless ringing," snapped he. "If the mistress 
 neglects her work, the maids follow suit. I rang an 
 hour ago, but no one answered." 
 
 "I'm sorry, father." 
 
 "I've long known, Sara, that I'm nothing. But this 
 sort of thing brings it home to me. I've caught a seri- 
 ous chill. But no one minds that, of course." 
 
 Hugging the fire, he turned to her the dull vacuity 
 of his back. She flung a shawl over it, which he
 
 DUKERIPPEN 257 
 
 shrugged away with the wriggle of a naughty child. A 
 frightened maid appeared and presently the room began 
 to assume a more habitable appearance. Sara's heart 
 fell, as she turned up the lights and noticed among the 
 papers a long envelope addressed to a firm of curio- 
 dealers evidently an order. Then arrived the coffee. 
 
 "Now, father," said Sara, pouring out the hot stuff. 
 
 "And after all these years," he exclaimed, "you don't 
 know that coffee gives me heartburn ! It is rank poison 
 to me. This sort of thing it is that proves to me how 
 neglected I am." 
 
 His nose worked furiously. 
 
 "I thought that as you were so cold " 
 
 "And whose fault is it, if I am cold?" 
 
 "Come, father. Risk it to-night. I don't want you 
 to catch a cold." 
 
 "The chill is upon me, Sara. It is too late for your 
 repentance now." 
 
 But the flavour worked in his nostrils; he supped 
 eagerly and noisily, bending his nose over the bowl and 
 warming his hands on it. The homely gestures, the 
 noise he made, moved her to weariness as did his snores 
 in the long evenings. She was impatient to see her life 
 waste like this. The night cometh when no man can 
 work and here she had to wait, tied hand and foot, to 
 watch the slow wasting of the candle. Dark things 
 moved in her, thoughts that no one expresses in words. 
 
 Solemnly he placed the plate of bread before her. 
 
 "Look at that," he cried; "it is not fit for human 
 food. It is sour! Taste it. The fermentation which 
 that bread will engender in the human frame is is 
 explosive. And that is the bread w r hich this family has 
 been feeding on for weeks and months ! I am not strong 
 enough to go round, or I would order in samples of 
 every kind of loaf in the neighbourhood and if neces- 
 sary get bread from town. But there is no one to at- 
 tend to anything in this house."
 
 258 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Much refreshed, he shuffled across the room to the 
 bookshelves and reaching down a Bible, turned up the 
 Psalmist's praise of the virtuous woman. Mouthing the 
 syllables he read it aloud, while the cat played with the 
 tassels of his dressing-gown, and finally closing the book 
 with a bang said solemnly: 
 
 "Let this be the ideal. Not sour bread, neglectful 
 servants and hours of loneliness for an old man. But I 
 say nothing." 
 
 Sara sat leaning her cheek on her hand. She was 
 back in the past when she had fought death on his be- 
 half. The very feel of her head as she bent wearily 
 over the food-warmer came back, the racked nerves, the 
 sinking heart at the thought of his death. She remem- 
 bered her long grateful sleep when the turn came. 
 
 But now, she wanted to be free. Yet if he were gone, 
 she would only long to bring him back. So poised be- 
 tween crime and devotion she listened to his meander- 
 ing. 
 
 "Must this go to-night?" she said, holding up the 
 long envelope she had noted. 
 
 "And now I am not even to get my letters posted!" 
 he exclaimed. "But I will go out myself." 
 
 He bundled his grey skirts round him and prepared 
 to face the night as a man plunges from a diving-board. 
 He had a dread now of trusting the commonest task to 
 anyone; forty times a day he would ask if a letter had 
 been posted. Then he caught Sara's eye. 
 
 "It is an order," he said defiantly. 
 
 "Then," she answered with a flash of fury, "the 
 things cannot be paid for. Please understand that." 
 
 "You can always get money from Archer. One of 
 our biggest names " 
 
 "Understand, once and for all, that I will not ask 
 money from Archer." 
 
 Again she saw the miserable old figure crouching 
 over the letter, afraid even to trust it to anyone to post,
 
 DUKERIPPEN 259 
 
 longing for a few baubles denied and for such sordid 
 reasons. She held out her hand for the envelope. 
 
 "All right, father," she said; "give it to me to post 
 and I will find the money somehow." 
 
 Meanwhile out of doors Belle w had caught sight of 
 a white figure making its way up the hill out of the 
 town. He followed it till, under the last gas lamp that 
 flickers yellow on dark green leafage, he saw that it 
 was Molly. Beyond was the open country, bleached now 
 to its very bones, with its cornfields lying grey in tawny 
 stubble. Molly walked on, great grass-hat on the back 
 of her head, little thumb cocked up against the tall stick 
 she carried. At the first stile she leant, till at last a 
 field-mouse flitted by on its unseen wires of legs. The 
 girl turned and saw Bellew. He stood bareheaded for 
 a second and she thought how much greyer he had gone. 
 For all these months they had not met. 
 
 Now she laughed as he caught her right hand in his 
 left and drew her up to him. He watched the blush 
 rise, well content. Then dropped her hand and laughed 
 in his turn. 
 
 "So you wanted me," he said. "Forgiven? Am I 
 not?" 
 
 "Um, yes," she said, dropping eyelids, but amazed at 
 his confident tone. She had written that letter in dis- 
 tant terms of friendship and yet he met her like this. 
 But it was always so ; she in heroics at absence, and he, 
 ready for the day's pleasure when they met. Tremu- 
 lous, yet angry, she walked by his side. 
 
 "Wasn't I wise?" asked he. "Could we have met 
 so radiantly you and I, had I not been wise?" 
 
 Bitterly she thought of her summer, of her sense of 
 her own lightness, her lonely ache, her disgust at the 
 dulness of her work, and of her own inability to keep 
 her mind on the simplest task. Anger was rising iu 
 her like the night wind whose moan means a gale before 
 morning.
 
 260 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "And the great Stephen? How is he?" 
 
 He looked at her and laughed. 
 
 "I don't think, Mr. Bellew, that I'll go any further," 
 she exclaimed pettishly. 
 
 "Why, Molly, we haven't met for ages! And look! 
 Surely you don't want to go in yet?" 
 
 He pointed to the pale fields, to the shadowy wood- 
 lands under the pearly sky. The night-moths began to 
 thrill and at the sound, he saw her bosom rise and fall. 
 Putting an arm round her, he drew her nearer to the 
 shadow of the trees. 
 
 "No, no, no," she cried. All the past and the pres- 
 ent seemed rolled together in a great globe to confound 
 her. "Let me go back." 
 
 "Likely, isn't it?" he exclaimed. 
 
 They stood so for a moment. He was trying to 
 awaken the sweetness of the past with touches, with pas- 
 sionate words. But she grew colder and he knew it. 
 Lying, eyes wide opened, against his shoulder, she 
 watched the swaying of the trees. The wood murmurs, 
 while they thrilled his blood, cooled hers. The hour 
 fought for the man, but something more powerful than 
 hour or man was within her. 
 
 "Don't. I hate it," she said at last. He let her go 
 and began to argue, but she scarcely heard him. She 
 had called him back and she was glad she had, for now 
 she had fathomed herself at last. But he misunderstood 
 and in a torrent of words offered her flight. With 
 fingers interlaced and head bent she walked down the 
 field. When he had done, she wondered why so many 
 myriads of women had yielded at pleading such as this. 
 
 "And those things you dreaded before?" she asked, 
 "the secrecy, the lies, the ugliness of the hotels?" 
 
 She was even then picturing to herself the stuffed fox 
 in the hall of some old country inn, the ancient mouldy 
 furniture, the chambermaid, farm-wench, or golden- 
 curled miax. Just the things that a few months ago
 
 DUKERIPPEN 261 
 
 would have been simply stones on the path to fairy- 
 land. 
 
 "You don't mind them now?" she persisted. 
 
 "Molly, dearest, not with you. Dsn't you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 "Only too well." 
 
 "Don't you care for me any longer?" 
 
 He put a hand on her breast and pressing a mo- 
 mentary advantage, "Love me," said he. "Dearest, 'tis 
 just the secrecy that will make it sweeter." 
 
 So he was lost. 
 
 "And what about the man I am to marry?" 
 
 And looking up at him, she read his thoughts; it 
 would be safer so, with Stephen as a blind. More than 
 that, she could already feel the parting it would mean 
 every time, her own sick dread and misery, the man's 
 light-hearted good-bye. And shuddering cried : " Never, 
 I never will." 
 
 She saw him just as he was; willing to go as far as 
 was necessary for his own gratification and calling the 
 excursion by all sorts of fine names. She probed his 
 eyes with her look; his took on a brutality that a man 
 may well assume, once exposed. She compared him with 
 Anerley and found herself unworthy of an honest man. 
 
 He made no attempt to follow her when she turned 
 resolutely away, but plunged into the wood where she 
 could hear him forcing a way through the undergrowth. 
 She remembered the short story of his she had read in a 
 review, a piece of cynicism in which the several women 
 who had loved a man were brought together into a room, 
 there to tell their secret history to each other. Molly 
 understood the humour of it now. 
 
 At the entrance to the town she hesitated, feeling it 
 impossible to go back to-night to her mother's house. 
 For self-reproach fought now in her with longing for 
 the thing she had refused. 
 
 Soon after, sitting alone in her great drawing-room
 
 262 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 on the temporarily rented cliff house which was always 
 filled with the sea murmur, Mrs. Knyvett heard the 
 knocker on her front door gently lift and fall. Instinct 
 told her to answer the summons herself. 
 
 She was a ready woman and made no outcry as she 
 drew the girl into the house. With dishevelled hair 
 and skirts bedraggled from the dusty roads, Molly 
 needed but a few faltered sentences to tell her story. 
 For a moment Mrs. Knyvett stood frowning, lost in 
 thought. Molly misunderstood her attitude. 
 
 "I'll go," said she, with a catch in her breath; "I 
 oughtn't to have come." 
 
 "You'll do nothing of the sort," interrupted Mrs. 
 Knyvett. "I'm only thinking how we can cover up 
 your tracks. No, you shan't go back to your mother. 
 Better not, for every reason. But I'll send a note to 
 say I 'm keeping you. ' ' 
 
 Half an hour later, warmed and fed, Molly told it 
 all in the pleasant upstair sitting-room, where only the 
 sea and Mrs. Knyvett 's ears could hear it. Softly for a 
 moment, when it was over, she laid a hand on the girl's 
 head and then went out of the room. 
 
 ' ' Molly, ' ' she said when she came back, ' ' do you know 
 what I've just done? I've wired to Stephen Anerley, 
 telling him to come at once. ' ' 
 
 The girl got up and Mrs. Knyvett watched her in- 
 tently. 
 
 "Did I do wrong?" she asked at length. 
 
 "I don't know. I'm not fit." 
 
 "No, perhaps not. That's for him to judge. But he 
 mustn't be played with any longer." 
 
 Molly flushed angrily, for this hard judicial tone was 
 the worse to bear, following as it did on sympathy and 
 pity. 
 
 "Good night, little girl," said Mrs. Knyvett, rising 
 and striking a match for the candles. There was a half 
 smile hovering round the corner of her lips that car-
 
 DUKERIPPEN 265? 
 
 ried Molly in stately fashion out of the room and into 
 the one that had been assigned to her. There she flung 
 herself down and abandoned herself to a wild fit of sob- 
 bing. 
 
 At midnight, when she still lay awake, shaken every 
 now and then by a long hard shiver, she heard a soft 
 knock at her door as her hostess entered, shading a can- 
 dle with her hand. 
 
 "Ah, I thought so," she exclaimed, as Molly turned 
 her face away. And the mother-fire alight within her 
 big, masterful body, she lay down and drew the girl 
 into her arms, warming the cold frame against hers and 
 stilling the aching sobs against her breast. 
 
 "Little girl," said she, "didn't I lay out a beautiful 
 nighty for you?" 
 
 It was a billowy garment of softest white silk, laven- 
 der-scented, like the beautiful white room in which she 
 lay. Molly felt homey and suddenly yielded herself 
 to the comfort beside her. In the darkness Mrs. Kny- 
 vett smiled and then began to talk as no one on earth 
 had ever heard her talk before. When Molly thought 
 of a night that might have been and shivered, Mrs. Kny- 
 vett drew her closer still, for now she understood every 
 flutter of this storm-bird's heart. The nightdress, with 
 its soft beauty, was intended to minister to the self-re- 
 spect she wanted to bring back to the girl. 
 
 She began by taking her listener straight away into 
 the core of her own life. She spoke of her ambitions 
 for her son, of how every step of the way had been 
 planned out. Concealing nothing, she told of her mis- 
 ery at seeing this waste of his best years, of her desire 
 to see it ended. Nor did she leave any doubt of the end 
 for which she still hoped. 
 
 "But she's married," cried Molly, knowing no differ- 
 ence between the legal and the moral bond. 
 
 "Pouf! Not to Archer Bellew! Not in any real 
 sense!" cried Mrs. Knyvett. And Molly wondered the
 
 264 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 more, for this was a new world to her, this, where every- 
 one was taught to pay his debts back to the uttermost 
 farthing. She had always lived in the market place, 
 where one gets as much as possible for as little an outlay 
 as can be safely accomplished. But here, the very joy 
 one felt was a gift to be paid back to the race that had 
 made it possible. 
 
 Then she shrivelled, appalled at herself. 
 
 ' ' What you must think of me ! " she gasped. 
 
 But Mrs. Knyvett only waded deeper into the stream, 
 for she knew her world well. Molly burnt, as her words 
 flowed on, for you would have sworn, to hear her, that 
 Mrs. Knyvett had the ears of a Delphic oracle whom 
 nothing escaped. She told it all, calling it "the philan- 
 derings of Bellew"; this woman for her skin; that for 
 her wit and devilry; t'other for the goodness of her 
 dinners. 
 
 "Oh, no! he never went over the border. You, my 
 dear, might have had a proud position the only one he 
 seduced. 'Twas the country atmosphere, of course, to- 
 night a clownish, bumpkin habit goes with cottages 
 and woods and cornfields, you know. Archer Bellew 's 
 always in the picture. That's it. You were a milk- 
 maid and he the bold bad squire. Had he met you in 
 a dancing room, 'twould have been played in the foot- 
 lights instead; in a studio, all attitudes; on a platform, 
 midnight talks a la Russe. I know the man. His rooms 
 are in St. James's; or the Albany, now, I believe. And 
 his wife making both ends meet at home." 
 
 Molly shrank ; wounded pride stung and rankled. She 
 shared the contempt, for Mrs. Knyvett used the probe, 
 nor spared. 
 
 "He'd have forgotten you the sooner. That's all. 
 Also part of the routine of a villeggiatura." 
 
 Then, changing her tone, she told, without a name, 
 the story Margaret Rossiter had lived down. 
 
 "She'd wish me to tell you. I know that," said Mrs.
 
 DUKEEIPPEN 265 
 
 Knyvett. ' ' To save him from doing any more harm. I 
 never hesitated over that to-night. I know I am break- 
 ing no confidence. For she cared, cares. That was 
 love. Not giving herself. Oh, no. In fact, I think she 
 loved least then. She learnt it afterwards. And if you 
 ask me what love is, I must confess I don't know. I 
 don't. But it's God's own smile. Margaret Rossiter 
 has it. And Archer Bellew has never come within ten 
 thousand leagues of it, though he's written about it all 
 his life. Oh, it's all plain now. Scores of things are. 
 I remember her going suddenly away from a picture 
 show and now, years later, I recall that Bellew held back 
 a curtain at that moment. And how often I must have 
 pained her with my tongue ! When I think of how I 've 
 laughed at their menage, his and Sara's, at his goddesses. 
 Oh, my dear, I feel scorched." 
 
 Molly had joined her at the fire -long ago and lay 
 ashamed. 
 
 "What does your love look like beside hers? For 
 she's cared all these years," asked Mrs. Knyvett. 
 
 "I never loved him." 
 
 "No, you only obeyed an instinct. And if you'd actu- 
 ally given in well, child, there's been tons of sickly 
 rubbish talked about that. Of course, you could have 
 got back. That's the plain truth. But you'd have had 
 to suffer damnably. And then again you might not 
 have got back. It's the acted lie that's the worst and 
 if lies become the habit of the soul well, I can hardly 
 bear to think what that soul has to bear to get used to 
 the truth again. It's like pulling the scales of corrup- 
 tion, like so many skins going in pain and agony. And 
 from that God save you! Do you know the other day 
 I sat in the Queen's Hall listening to a wonderful 
 speaker who was rolling out the ages like a scroll, run- 
 ning over races and peoples back into the abyss of time. 
 And one saw the puny folks, oneself a pin-point among 
 them, slipping down into darkness. I thought of my
 
 266 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 own little problems and of Billy's. What did it mat- 
 ter? Hindus, Chaldeans, Persians, Celts, Teutons we 
 were all just slipping over and away. And a race 
 scarcely seemed bigger than a unit." 
 
 She suddenly put her hand on the girl's bosom. 
 
 "Little matter enough, it seems, whose son lies there, 
 or whether any son at all," she said softly, and the 
 girl's eyes smarted with tears. "And little matter 
 enough whether that son's mother be a pure woman, or 
 rotten through and through. For she's just a solitary 
 wheat grain in a field of millions uncountable. So 
 much pother about a thing so small." 
 
 The girl kept quiet, unable to speak ; this older woman 
 came so close, with such truculent reverence, to the 
 heart's core. 
 
 "My dear," said she, after a silence, "to reframe an 
 old saying if there were no God, it would be necessary, 
 not to invent, but to make one. I'm not always sure of 
 the shaping hands that create us from outside, but I'm 
 always sure of one thing, and that's the God in germ 
 within each pigmy of all the millions. He must be there, 
 for I feel Him so surely in myself, in everyone I 've ever 
 met. If there be no God, then we are making one, we, 
 the undistinguished ones who fade and leave no visible 
 trace, we that make up the races that pass like the 
 shadow of a cloud. That's why you matter, you and 
 your son that may be." 
 
 In an awe too deep for words, they lay in silence. 
 But Mrs. Knyvett knew that she had carried the child 
 into a large room. She laid her hand on the girl 's heart 
 and Molly knew why. She was calling to the deeps 
 within. 
 
 And presently the younger woman fell asleep, while 
 Mrs. Knyvett watched the dawn whiten on the blind. 
 There were none but Greek pictures on these walls, 
 stern gods of the loveliness that uplifts, save here and 
 there a Madonna with the face of a Demeter. This was
 
 DUKERIPPEN 2(17 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett's room for girl guests and several whom 
 Society regarded with uplifted eyebrows had slept there. 
 Many worse, in fact, than storm-tossed Molly who ate 
 her fruit and drank her tea there next morning. Under 
 the roses on the tray was a letter in her mother 's writing. 
 
 "You will not return to this roof," it ran, as though 
 Molly were a homing pigeon, "until I receive a full ac- 
 count of why you failed to return to the shelter of your 
 home last night. For the reputation of the lady whom 
 you have chosen as chaperone instead of the mother 
 whose whole life has been devoted to your interests is 
 scarcely high enough to cover such wild escapades as 
 you indulge in. Such is the new woman, I suppose. 
 I am sending, as impertinently requested by her, a por- 
 tion of your wardrobe. "When you wish for my pro- 
 tection, you will comply with my conditions. Until then 
 I remain your sorrowful, broken-hearted mother, 
 
 "FLORENCE MARY WOODRUFFS." 
 
 Contemptuously the girl tossed it aside, calling it 
 naught, yet feeling the gall of it all day. Below in the 
 garden she found her hostess, in stout gardening gloves, 
 tying up the trailing branches of clematis and wistaria 
 that rioted in all the flower beds. Both felt it a relief 
 to meet with the scent of earth in the air and the filip 
 of the wind in their faces. Night and morning nerves 
 are two different things. 
 
 Neither mentioned Stephen, yet both felt him in the 
 air like a vast overshadowing. Before lunch came a 
 wire; he would be with Mrs. Knyvett that evening. 
 Some hours later from the door of her bedroom Molly 
 heard a ring and his voice in the hall. Then the down- 
 stair sitting-room door banged. She could fancy the 
 two sitting there in a grey green gloom discussing her 
 fate. Through the summer overgrowth of the creepers 
 over the windows one could catch glimpses of the sea.
 
 268 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Stephen Anerley sat perfectly quiet while Mrs. Kny- 
 vett told plainly what she knew of last night. He 
 seemed unable to break the silence even when she had 
 finished. From his downcast glance she could tell noth- 
 ing. 
 
 "Did you guess why I sent for you?" she asked point- 
 blank at last. 
 
 He nodded, then rose and stood with his back to her, 
 looking out of the window. 
 
 "How much of this," he asked at last, turning 
 sharply, "did she wish told to me?" 
 
 "All of it, Stephen," she answered, calling him by 
 the name she had often used as a boy. Instinctively she 
 wanted to soften a hard core in him. 
 
 ' ' She tells you ; you tell me ; there you have two chan- 
 nels of possible misunderstanding." 
 
 "Perhaps you mean misrepresentation?" she asked 
 curtly, her temper rising. 
 
 He lifted an admonitory hand ; she could have slapped 
 him, remembering certain passages in his youth when, 
 as he stood between his father's knees, she had talked 
 baby-talk to him. Then she stopped her foolish ir- 
 relevance, for she loved Molly in proportion to the help 
 she had been able to bring her. And Mrs. Knyvett 
 loathed the mendicant whose sores she could not heal. 
 
 "Not conscious, of course, unconscious," he agreed, 
 in the tone of a professor who defines subjective and ob- 
 jective. 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett felt that a bit of a breeze was wanted 
 here. Then she was sorry for him since plainly he suf- 
 fered. 
 
 "Stephen," said she, and wondered whimsically how 
 many times of late she had asked this question, "do you 
 really love this girl?" 
 
 "Well enough to wonder whether I love her enough 
 to make her happy," he answered.
 
 DUKER1PPEN 269 
 
 "And that's the first sensible thing you've said to- 
 day," she cried. 
 
 "Where is she?" he asked. 
 
 "Upstairs, trembling at the sound of your voice in 
 the hall," said she, woman all over, and marched to the 
 bell. He thought it was to send a maid for Molly, but 
 drew breath of relief when she merely said, "Whisky 
 and soda." 
 
 They waited till the servant had come and gone. 
 
 "You're an honest woman, Mrs. Knyvett," began he, 
 when the whisky had put some mettle into him. 
 
 "Call no woman honest till she's been tempted," re- 
 turned she, amazed at the pluck of the young cockerel. 
 
 But he persisted, not to be turned aside. 
 
 "I ask you," said he, "as an honest woman whether 
 you think we've a chance of making a success of it, she 
 and I. Here you are sending to tell me well, that she 
 was within a fraction of an inch of bolting with an- 
 other chap. Now, you wouldn't call that a happy pre- 
 nuptial omen, would you ? I love her, it 's true, but too 
 much not to shrink from making her miserable for my 
 own pleasure, shall we call it ? " he finished grimly. 
 
 "Mrs. Knyvett," he began again, "I want her to be 
 happy. And all this summer she's been writing letters 
 well, never mind you know. Letters a man cares 
 for. And then you say she whistled him back like 
 that." 
 
 Whining out into silence, his voice trailed away like a 
 chance-struck violin string. 
 
 "I know," she said, "but remember her home. She 
 was so wretched there." 
 
 "No, that's not enough. For, once married to me, 
 she will often have dull hours, cannot fail to. Heavy 
 times are bound to come, you know. Bound to. And 
 every time it's collar- work, is she going to kick over the 
 traces? Won't do, you know. And if she feels like
 
 270 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 this before marriage, what the deuce will it be after? 
 No, it won't do. It's no go, no go." 
 
 "Sit down, Stephen Anerley, and listen to me, for I 
 knew the world before you were breeched. I'll tell you 
 the fact. I was tempted to give her a push and let 
 the thing run. With Bellew, I mean. I had my own 
 reasons. It would have been a way out." 
 
 Stephen's eyes flashed. 
 
 "But the child was too good to be offered up even 
 by a mother. She was a brave little fighter. I couldn't 
 give her a kick. And neither can you." 
 
 "But it's for life." 
 
 "Of course it is, or it looks so, now. But it doesn't 
 do to say 'World without end,' too freely." 
 
 "Mrs. Knyvett," he laughed, "you really are a des- 
 perate neck-or-nothing woman." 
 
 "I am. I always liked a diving-board that kicked 
 you off before you had time to realise your nakedness. 
 Now, Molly's got two natures like most women, only 
 we know less about women than about any other of 
 God's creatures because we've told each other such lies 
 about them. With one hand she reaches to the light, 
 and with t'other down. Well, for practical purposes 
 and unlikely as it may seem, you're the light. You 
 can't go from that. If you love her, you won't fail 
 her. That's all there is to it. Take her away, put 
 yourself between her and temptation." 
 
 "You're asking me a big thing." 
 
 "I am. I'm asking you to be a big man." 
 
 "Or a fool." 
 
 "Or a fool. It's very seldom you can tell t'other 
 from which." 
 
 "Let me see her," he cried. "I won't be sold, nor 
 buy a pig in a poke." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett went away and presently Molly opened 
 the door and closed it behind her softly. She would 
 not advance a step to him, but stood, face twitching and
 
 DUKERIPPEN 271 
 
 eyes downcast, her fingers pleated together in front of 
 her. 
 
 "Molly," he cried, "Molly, oh, how could you?" 
 
 They stood like chidden children side by side. 
 
 "You knew, that night, how it was," she said, her 
 bosom heaving, "you knew it. But you went on." 
 
 "But that was different. I won you. And after- 
 wards you were mine. I trusted you." 
 
 "I know. But I'm not ... in one piece. And 
 he understood." 
 
 "And I don't?" 
 
 "Not always. For you put me right and I want to 
 be thought adorable." 
 
 She smiled and he wondered how she dared. 
 
 "At any rate," he exclaimed bitterly, "he didn't 
 waste any self-respect on you. Oh, yes, he understood 
 you very well. And I didn't. That's all there is to 
 it." 
 
 "Yes," she said, so low that he could scarcely hear. 
 But it was a matter she could not discuss. 
 
 "Oh, why, for God's sake, couldn't you act straight?" 
 he burst out. "I loved you, hadn't a thought that 
 wasn't yours, was looking at houses, planning for next 
 year." 
 
 "Dearest!" 
 
 "Don't say that. Don't dare to. For I don't know 
 but what you 'd be the better for a good beating. ' ' 
 
 He turned away. Then he heard a click on the polish 
 of the table. It was her ring. 
 
 "I've tried to act straight. Another woman might 
 have deceived you. I didn't do that. But I'll not be 
 schooled any more. You treat me like a naughty child. 
 And if I've done wrong, you know it. I've told it. I 
 didn't lie." 
 
 "But it's what it shows " he murmured. 
 
 "And that's no matter to you now. And if there's 
 nothing in your life you don't want me to know, well,
 
 272 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 be very thankful. It'll save you from this wretched- 
 ness. But you're a hideous Pharisee." 
 
 Not beyond reach of her darts, he stood frowning. 
 She had tried, it was true. Nor was he one who could 
 cast a stone, for he had not even tried, had gone the 
 easy way before he met her. 
 
 She held out her hand. 
 
 "No, no, I can't let you go. You love me?" 
 
 "I don't know. I don't care now. But I'll not be 
 browbeaten any more. If you can't understand, then 
 you can't. But if you're a prig you needn't try to 
 whitewash everybody you come near." 
 
 Furious, she raged, while he lifted her off her feet 
 and kissed her cheek, exclaiming : ' ' Forgive me. ' ' And 
 she, nature crying within, did so. 
 
 But Mrs. Knyvett was not satisfied by this redinte- 
 gratio amoris. She planned, in fact, a hand-book for 
 the use of the newly wedded, so fast in those days did 
 wisdom bubble from the springs within. 
 
 And first she tackled Master Stephen: "You've 
 come," cried she, "across one snag in the river. Let it 
 be a warning to you to avoid the rest. I always want 
 to act the devil's part and take everybody up at least 
 once in their lives to see all the kingdoms of the earth in 
 a moment of time." 
 
 "Yes," said he with a twinkle. 
 
 "Yes, says he," she mocked, "and I might be talking 
 Choctaw for all his understanding of it. Don't you 
 make the mistake of shutting up your wife within four 
 walls, young man. Take her up every now and then 
 and yourself, too, where you can get a panoramic view 
 of the varsal world. Let her feel the globe spin beneath 
 her feet. My lad, the women of this generation can't 
 be cramped into a kitchen or a nursery and least of 
 all into one of those front rooms in the second story of 
 a suburban villa, where there's a double bed with an 
 eiderdown and bored satiety and mental vacuity there-
 
 DUKERIPPEN 273 
 
 with. Let her go out and live and feel herself part of 
 the big procession. Don't starve her in brain. Let her 
 speak; she can. Go and hear her. And be thankful 
 you've got a mate, not a plaything. She's got brains 
 at least as good as yours and instincts five times as 
 strong. You've burnt your fingers once with them. 
 But don't let her brains atrophy. They're the biggest 
 inheritance she brings you. And just a baby or two, 
 of course. Not many, for we really don't want, you 
 know, so many as we did when war and pestilence killed 
 us like flies. ' ' 
 
 To Molly her words were few but pithy. ''It's only," 
 said she, "a woman who is enough of a woman that can 
 help a man to -his manhood. ' ' 
 
 But the girl knew next morning that she had been 
 only too much of a woman in the low sense when she 
 saw on her plate a letter in Archer Bellew's handwrit- 
 ing. With two pairs of eyes burning on her face, she 
 opened it, read, and then handed it to Stephen. Now 
 she understood the saying of the man who excused him- 
 self for getting drunk by pleading he wanted to get off 
 the eternal wheel. One could never stop the whirling 
 of the infernal thing. 
 
 The letter was a mere request, earnestly worded, for 
 the favour of a last interview with the writer. 
 
 "Say that you will meet him, but must bring a friend 
 with you," said Anerley. 
 
 "And the friend?" asked Molly. 
 
 "Myself." 
 
 Mrs. Knyvett flashed a glance at him, for she would 
 gladly have had him different. Yet she understood, for, 
 after all, he was risking his all on this cast of the dice 
 and naturally wanted to see his wife with the man who 
 might have them cogged in his favour. 
 
 Molly frankly hated Anerley. He could do a gen- 
 erous thing, but not in generous spirit. He wanted to 
 know exactly how true her story had been. Yet she
 
 274 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 forgave him, too, for she was learning that where one 
 loves, one must ignore the spots on one's sun. All the 
 same she scarcely opened her lips during the hours that 
 elapsed ere the two stood together at the place she had 
 appointed to meet Bellew. It was a point on the cliffs 
 well known to all three. 
 
 At last they saw a man approaching, his head just a 
 black speck against the sea as he walked along by the 
 stone hedge that protected the cliff. Molly moved for- 
 ward to the strip of grass that led by a cliff path down 
 to the cove beneath. Then she saw from his face that 
 Bellew had caught sight of Stephen standing behind her 
 . . . . like a pillar of salt. She grasped wildly for 
 self-control, but the melodrama of it all struck her 
 so overwhelmingly that she laughed aloud. To her 
 nerves her own laughter sounded ear-splitting in its 
 ribaldry. 
 
 Bellew was the first to recover himself ; he was wildly 
 enraged and therein Stephen not only scored the first 
 point, but got a good grip on his own coolness. 
 
 ''Might I ask," enquired Bellew, "whether this is a 
 comedy or a tragedy that we are rehearsing? For the 
 lady seems in doubt. That it is the fifth act is, of 
 course, evident." 
 
 "Miss "Woodruffe, " said Stephen, "wanted me to be 
 here, for she has done me the honour to say she will 
 marry me." 
 
 "And has, as I happen to know, a taste for histri- 
 onics. For she is, of course, the protagonist in the 
 drama. ' ' 
 
 Molly noted his inability to use simple words. Weird 
 concatenations of barbarous Latinisms whirled in her 
 own brain. The whole genius of the Saxon tongue be- 
 gan to shriek at her for reality. 
 
 Then Stephen walked away, not without a certain 
 Pharisaic consciousness of the fine part he was playing. 
 As he did so he heard Bellew exclaim in stifled tones :
 
 DUKEEIPPEN 275 
 
 ' ' What the devil do you mean by making a laughing- 
 stock of me like this?" 
 
 Half hesitating, Anerley wondered for a second 
 whether he ought to leave her alone with a man in such 
 a mood as this. Yet Molly's coolness reassured him. 
 
 "You know," said she, "that I did not mean that. 
 No one meant it. But I wanted to do the straight thing 
 by you both. There have been lies enough." 
 
 They walked side by side down the path to the beach. 
 Round a tiny headland to the left they could look down 
 on a black chasm. At the base the wave broke on piled up 
 rocks, seething beneath the nesting places of the puffins 
 that starred the ledges with the whiteness of their wings. 
 The grasses at the edge of the cliff waved in the wind 
 that eddied round the bay. Below, the line of surf 
 broke on the red-brown sand. Across on the far side 
 of the wide bay the sun made a pathway across the sea. 
 Inland a garden party was in progress and the faint 
 sound of the band wound itself into that sentiment 
 which, in a girl's heart, is the prelude to passion. It 
 laid hands upon her while Bellew pleaded, with the dark 
 figure of Anerley seated on the cliff edge giving point to 
 his eagerness. 
 
 Archer was proud of his own eloquence, but Molly 
 scarcely heard his words as she swayed to and fro in the 
 mingled music of the sea, the band, and his voice. Still 
 she struggled. She had forgotten the man up above, 
 but Bellew had not; the consciousness only fired his 
 tongue. 
 
 "No, no, no," she cried at last. 
 
 They were both by now up against That Which De- 
 nies. In the girl it was something within her own na- 
 ture; in the man it was something without, the baffling 
 power of a will that is other than one's own. Molly's 
 mind was a citadel that repels the foe by flinging back 
 the siege ladders. In her, thoughts crowded after the 
 first silence before the onrush of attack. She remem-
 
 276 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 bered everything; scenes of childhood, previous yield- 
 ings, former battles. 
 
 To Bellew it was a blow in the face that stuns till, 
 maddened, the mind flings itself like a bull on the as- 
 sailant. He fell upon the plainly querulous complaint 
 of a child at last. 
 
 "But I want you," he cried; "don't you understand 
 that I want you ? ' ' 
 
 "I'm brain, and heart, and body," said she, also sim- 
 ple now. "You haven't any use for all three." 
 
 "I want you for your sweetness, want you as I've 
 never wanted any woman yet." 
 
 "But not for keeps," said she, smiling at the child- 
 ishness of her phrase. "Not for keeps." 
 
 Before the bare truth he stood in silence. It seemed 
 as hard to argue with this child as to grasp a cloud. 
 
 ' ' I want you. ' ' 
 
 "I'm sorry, but I can't." 
 
 "Then, damn you, go." 
 
 She stumbled up the path, dislodging pebbles on her 
 way. Panting, every now and then she passed her 
 tongue over her lips. She could feel the saltness of the 
 sweat on her skin. All her brain was alert now, for 
 had it not struck its blow for freedom? She was going 
 to Stephen, because, on the whole, he meant what her 
 mind chose as best, honourable right doing in the sight 
 of day. It mattered, indeed, what she did to herself. 
 For she was a little universe, the only one of which she 
 had any sure and certain knowledge. Mrs. Knyvett had 
 builded better than she knew. 
 
 Yet the girl could see Bellew 's figure on the sands; it 
 turned a corner and was out of sight. And with it her 
 heart seemed torn from her body. Then she was 
 ashamed. She had chosen the lower levels, the com- 
 fortable smugness of easy life. 
 
 It was no conquest she had won, for it left her with 
 this pain that turned and turned like a sword in her
 
 DUKERIPPEN 277 
 
 heart. She tried to remember that Bellew had held her 
 lightly, would not have minded making her an object 
 of suspicion to chambermaids and porters who would 
 read her story in her face. Yet all that was nothing 
 now, for she could only see a black dot on the sands. 
 
 Hands clenched in his coat pockets, Anerley came up 
 to her. "Without a word they sat down side by side, 
 staring out to sea like two huge birds. So still were 
 they that the dry rustle of a grass snake was quite audi- 
 ble and the drip of watery ooze from the cliff sounded 
 like a perpetual spray of falling water. 
 
 The darkness throbbed into the bay beneath, till the 
 surf was a thin white edge against a heaving blackness. 
 
 Molly sat with her arms across her knees, staring out 
 to sea. Every now and then she sobbed convulsively, 
 while Stephen's eyes followed aimlessly the circling 
 flight of the homing gulls. Great lashing blows seemed 
 to have been laid across his nature, so that the weals 
 striped his back. For he was ashamed, but of what he 
 could not tell ; perhaps only of the human plight. 
 
 Then internal laughter caught him, for next week he 
 would very likely be writing a paragraph of journalese 
 about Bellew. 
 
 The girl shivered and he took off his coat to put it 
 round her. When their hands touched, he found them 
 clammy-cold and so chafed them, holding them against 
 his waistcoat. Till that he had thought of going away, 
 of giving her up. Then he knew he should not. 
 
 "Molly," he said, "you care for him so much? But 
 you know it won't do?" 
 
 And that was about the truth of it after all. 
 
 Then, very slowly and sadly, they went back to Mrs. 
 Knyvett, who put Molly to bed with a hot water bottle 
 at her feet and three pillules of aconite inside her 
 against chill. For it's no use adding catarrh to the 
 troubles of the heart. But Stephen sat up half the night, 
 wondering at Mrs. Knyvett's audacity. In the morning
 
 278 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 he put it to her straight : "Was she doing right ? ' ' For 
 he had a simple-minded way of needing reassurance in 
 big things, though he was a very confident man in small 
 ones. 
 
 "My dear Stephen," cried she, fiercely alert, "I know 
 I am. And if you could only tell how hard I've been 
 praying ' Lead us not into temptation, ' these days, you 'd 
 have mercy on my nerves and not go over your tracks 
 forty times in the day." 
 
 So Mrs. Knyvett married them from her house in 
 town. The bride's mother was present in dark green 
 and a complacent demeanour, for things might have 
 been far worse, though of how far she remained ignorant 
 to her dying day.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY: IN THIS BELLEW SENDS ROUND THE 
 FIERY CROSS AND THE READER MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE 
 OF A SELECT COMPANY OF ELEMENTALS. 
 
 LEATHER BACH died away into silence as Sara 
 -- looked up from her piano keys to find her husband 
 standing just within the lighted circle that revealed the 
 heavy timbered roof of her music room. 
 
 "What is it, Archer?" she exclaimed sharply. 
 
 This was exactly the question he could not answer, 
 for no man will openly acknowledge that he does not 
 belong to those elect ones who can lose the game without 
 slamming the door. 
 
 Yet Bellew had just come from Molly Woodruff e with 
 a pitiful rage of impotence in his heart. Deeper yet 
 an instinct of cleanliness stirred in him, a desire to wash 
 and be clean of lies. And below that, lurked cruelty; 
 he wanted to wring his wife's heart, to force from her 
 some sign of weakness. For she stood to him to-night 
 as a symbol of self-control. 
 
 Unknown to himself, Bellew 's attitude towards Sara 
 was one of fear not of her individuality, but of the 
 superimposed reticence that came of her breeding. 
 Her forebears had been scholars to whom self-control was 
 second nature ; his ancestors had bellowed out their rage 
 in devil-hunts, had sobbed their contrition on penitent 
 forms. Fineness of self-command he despised as brain- 
 less, but revered as something he could not achieve. 
 Mentally he was unpruned; he told all, yet shivered at 
 the solecism he had committed. 
 
 279
 
 280 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 He settled himself in a creaking basket chair, while 
 she longed to escape. 
 
 "Won't to-morrow do?" she asked wearily. 
 
 "No," answered he curtly. 
 
 And she acquiesced. Yet of late she had gone to bed 
 night after night only longing to awake and find her 
 burden gone. Somehow to childlike souls, it is always 
 a surprise to discover yesterday still waiting for them 
 round the corner of the bed-curtains. 
 
 "Sara! Sara!" he exclaimed, letting his hand clash 
 on the keys. The dissonance was a relief to his nerves. 
 He was struck afresh by her beauty; its oval calm had 
 the aloofness of a Greek woman's without the mindless- 
 ness. 
 
 With a quick catch of her breath she listened and 
 where a man would have marvelled at the second-rate 
 nature he showed, the woman felt but pity. 
 
 It was, at first, a chronicle of the hard facts that lead 
 to ruin. His sales were diminishing, he was deep in 
 debt, had given promissory notes right and left. Worst 
 of all, on his hands was an unfinished novel that would 
 be a despair to everyone but his enemies. And he had 
 several of these, for he was that fearful wild fowl in 
 English literature, a naturalist in style and a pessimist 
 in philosophy. For slapping the face of English ideal- 
 ism is like the pastime called riding at the popinjay; 
 time and again the popinjay smites a careless rider on the 
 jowl. 
 
 Sara was glad at the story; glad, not for his misery, 
 but for her own power. Thrilling from head to foot, 
 she bent down to him and sketched a plan of campaign 
 against the approaching bankruptcy. Never had she 
 been happier than now. Those shares, said she, must be 
 sold ; on that bit of her land a mortgage raised. With 
 two lines on her smooth brows she planned how she 
 would go up to her lawyer; fortunately Anne was at 
 home to keep her hand on the helm. Flushed, even
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 281 
 
 laughing, she recounted the profits of her poultry, of her 
 small forcing houses. 
 
 "No! damn it, no!" said he, rising and pushing back 
 his chair with a scraping jar. "I can't stand this." 
 
 He could not tell which of them he hated most, him- 
 self or her. He began to realise the mastery of detail 
 she had always shown in her household management ; 
 there shone before his eyes a vista of spotless, shining 
 surfaces, of perfection in such trifles as toilet appoint- 
 ments and careful account books. Even her well-cor- 
 seted figure was a grievance and her immaculate pro- 
 priety little short of an insult. 
 
 "I asked a girl to bolt with me to-night," he snarled, 
 "and she wouldn't, because she is like you thinks more 
 of her own clean skirts than of anything else in the 
 world. ' ' 
 
 Then, as Sara would have risen, he laid a hand on her 
 and held her down. 
 
 "Sit there! Sit there!" he cried. "You shall hear 
 the truth for once." 
 
 White and silent she sat without moving a muscle. 
 The next moment his mood changed suddenly and with 
 a laugh, he leant back in his chair. 
 
 "I wonder what you really think of me, Sara, behind 
 those quiet eyes. You've done a very generous thing 
 and I've only replied by insults. Gad! What a cur I 
 am all round ! Ain 't I, Sara, ain 't I ? " 
 
 Before her quietness he felt like a ghost who cannot 
 attract the attention of the living. He recognised this 
 now as his attitude towards her during their whole mar- 
 ried life. 
 
 ' ' I wonder what possessed you to be so generous when 
 I told you how I was going to pieces. Just the same 
 feeling, I suppose, that would make you try to mend a 
 smashed mug. Tell me, Sara, try to tell me." 
 
 She drew her brows together. Then he heard a shud- 
 dering sigh.
 
 282 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "I cannot," she said, ''you hurt me so." 
 
 The childish phrase cut across his nerves like a whip. 
 But the pain he felt only spurred him to his cruel self- 
 imposed task. He recognised the weakness of his words, 
 yet persisted for the self -relief it gave, for the cleansing 
 power he felt in her cold nature. 
 
 There was nothing in the story she had not known all 
 along. But painted now in simile and sounding phrase, 
 it started from low relief to high. He described how a 
 face seen in a drawing-room or at a street corner would 
 incarnate the idea that floated in his brain. Sight was 
 followed by pursuit, by the hunting of the face till the 
 nature behind had yielded its secret. So he had chiselled 
 lives, women's especially, out of the marble of conven- 
 tionality in which they were hidden. The process once 
 completed, he tired. But not till he had stripped each 
 spirit of its rags of concealment. 
 
 But behind it all, Sara knew that he felt like a Greek 
 who had desecrated the secret of beauty, had dissected, 
 not carved. The sense of sin he acknowledged was to 
 her strange, unknown, extraordinary. She had never 
 realised a feeling of guilt; it was as foreign to her 
 nature as was the Hebrew God which stood for its sym- 
 bol. She could feel dirty ; she could never feel sinful. 
 
 But Archer was in pain. She put a pitiful hand on 
 his arm. 
 
 "I'm sorry," she said gently. 
 
 His eyes sought hers gropingly. For a second time 
 he had aimed a blow at her tranquillity and a second 
 time had missed the mark. It was incomprehensible to 
 him. She was not a woman, she was a statue, yet an 
 atmosphere of serene sincerity reached down to him. 
 
 "I've never felt my feet on the ground," he said. 
 
 This time she understood what he meant by intuitions 
 finer than are moved by spoken words. He had not 
 been born of a class that can with impunity spend a 
 lifetime in spinning cobwebs. His fathers had begotten
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 283 
 
 children, had spent a lifetime in toil and had at the same 
 time secured, by proper religious investment, a desirable 
 nook in the heavenly mansions. They were "fitty 
 men"; he was none. His talent had smeared a line of 
 fog across his manhood. 
 
 "I'd never anyone who just wanted me. You never 
 did, you know." 
 
 She tightened her lips, judging him. 
 
 "But I wished you to know about the girl, about 
 everything. It seemed your right. But perhaps you 
 did know? And put it all aside?" 
 
 "Yes," said she gravely. 
 
 "My life's been a lie. Old Vin began it. Then we 
 awoke and found ourselves in the wrong Paradise. 
 That was it. I deserved it, for what had gone before. 
 You did not." 
 
 He wiped his forehead, for this process, which he had 
 compared to a bathing in Jordan for health, was proving 
 rather a muddy business. Still, he would stick to it. 
 
 "Before I wrote 'The Master Law,' I was under a 
 cloud. That's a good thing sometimes. Shows who are 
 your real friends. They said I 'd stolen. But the girl I 
 was engaged to didn't believe it. I was near suicide, 
 for everyone turned against me, all but the girl. She 
 came to me by night." 
 
 Dead silence. 
 
 "That saved my reason. She came again and again. 
 It's the best light in which I've ever seen a woman. 
 And it's the only one in which I've never painted one. 
 Couldn't, you know, couldn't. But I didn't marry her. 
 I've always hated what I'd got and wanted what I 
 hadn't. That's me." 
 
 "Why have you told me this, Archer?" 
 
 "I don't know. Perhaps that you might look at me. 
 You always give me the impression that I'm invisible to 
 you. And I don't like the feeling. Don't like it at all. 
 No, I don't."
 
 284 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 He seemed to be answering an unseen questioner. 
 Sara passed her hand wearily over her forehead, con- 
 scious more of being stunned by fatigue than by any- 
 thing else. She got up, closed the piano and walked 
 down the long room to the door of the house. 
 
 In the quadrangle, guarded by tall elms, everything 
 was still. Thin as any dream the moon hung like a 
 shadow behind a tree. In the blink of light from the 
 doorway pale moths fluttered towards the white, up- 
 turned faces of the flowers in the herbaceous border. 
 The sky was star-fretted, for the moon was but young 
 in the month as yet. Like a great outspread cross the 
 milky way lay above the house and over the velvet 
 shadows of the trees. Country sounds filtered through 
 the green branches, the cry of a mousing owl, the bark- 
 ing of a dog. A sighing breath came laden with the 
 scent of sun-dried fields and behind it was the eternal 
 sighing of the sea. Earth was held in the hollow of a 
 great hand. 
 
 "Is she alive?" said Sara. "Your wife, I mean." 
 
 "My wife?" 
 
 "Your real wife." 
 
 "So that's how you take it. Yes, she's alive and 
 famous. She didn't go under. Why should she in- 
 deed? She was one of the best. 'Twas I that went 
 down, contrary to the usual rot of the moralists. 
 Funny how the thing rankles and stings in me yet. So 
 long ago, too." 
 
 ' ' And you a man ! ' ' exclaimed Sara contemptuously. 
 
 "Ah, but it's different now for us," he cried eagerly. 
 For the interest of intellectual argument obscured the 
 pain of the situation. "There's a queer thing happen- 
 ing to men, to some of them at least, nowadays. For 
 the standard of honour we've set up for women for so 
 many generations is avenging itself on us nowadays. 
 Things in a man's background that a century ago he 
 wouldn't even have remembered well, they gall and
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 285 
 
 irritate us unbearably now. We have set up a Statue 
 of Holiness and said to women: 'This be your God.' 
 When, lo, the thing turns on us and strikes us dumb. 
 Half modern literature is based on that. ' ' 
 
 Sara laughed and the sound of it electrified them 
 both. But it was neither sardonic nor cynical, for with 
 a vital energy within that none had guessed, she was 
 alert with desperate courage. 
 
 "I'm glad to know all," she said. Nor was there 
 the shadow of resentment in her tones. As a matter of 
 fact, having dreaded knowledge, she was relieved to find 
 how little it could touch her. 
 
 "But this girl you spoke of?" she went on, and to 
 his amazement seemed merely anxious for his honour 
 and the child's good name. 
 
 "She's safe. She's chosen a better man," he said 
 curtly. Nor would he hold himself up to Sara's sense 
 of humour, for he still wanted to feel himself no figure 
 of fun. Quickly he skated from the topic. 
 
 "It's spoilt my work. That's all pinchbeck. I've 
 been afraid to tackle a plain story. And the plain 
 stories, after all, are the big things." 
 
 Sara smiled in the dimness to see how instinctively he 
 felt himself the protagonist of the drama. Round him 
 and his work centred all these perturbations. Yet she, 
 too, had her work; nor was she without a capacity for 
 pain. Then she switched off the lights and went into 
 the house. 
 
 Bellew watched her go with a sense upon him as of 
 one who is steering through a fog-bank. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, he prided himself on his 
 aristocratic virtues. Humility he hated. Pity, as shown 
 to himself, was a wound to his pride; as shown to an- 
 other, a contemptuous insult. Thus, in his dealings 
 with men. With women it was otherwise. For he held 
 that the face a man should turn to a woman was the 
 face of his weakness. In craving pity from her, he
 
 286 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 showed himself virile, for thus he conveyed to her that 
 most subtle compliment, the perception of her own 
 power. 
 
 A strange, cold woman Sara seemed to him. But 
 probably he had killed something in her; according to 
 the moralists, that was quite right, for all religion, espe- 
 cially the women's brand of it, is mere purity by 
 atrophy. Good women are as scarred trees, tempest- 
 riven, wind-burnt. 
 
 In himself to-night many things had died, mostly 
 illusions. For as flint striking flint produces a spark, 
 so denial meeting demand had struck a flame in him that 
 burnt up his dross. And thrown into the melting-pot, 
 he yielded a tiny core of good metal. It was with 
 pleasure that he recognised the fact that to-night he 
 had at least engaged in the big contest. Most of us hide 
 from it by rubbing against our fellows, by shutting out 
 the stars with a flapping newspaper or a Bill that shall 
 antedate the millennium. Bellew had performed the 
 miracle with a figure draped in hues of dawn, videlicet, 
 a dream woman. When she vanished he had a fleeting 
 vision of the truth. 
 
 So long had Sara been in the habit of warding off 
 sensation by petty duties that from sheer habit she took 
 extra pains with her undressing that night. But at last 
 the fine dark hair was plaited, the dressing-gown slipped 
 on. She sank into a lounge chair by the window and 
 with hands folded on her lap waited for what the night 
 would bring, for even now her volition seemed to come 
 from something outside herself. A light flitted from 
 the staircase window on to the garden. Then its disap- 
 pearance was followed by the clan^ of her husband's 
 door. 
 
 With the massive sensation of relief from pain she 
 relaxed all her nature. It had not been entirely her 
 fault, this failure of her marriage. Something un- 
 known, something behind her, had spoilt it. Then, lean-
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 287 
 
 ing forward suddenly, she thought fiercely. For in a 
 quick intuitive flash she had caught sight of the road in 
 front of her. Now she was forcing her mind painfully 
 to travel along the way that instinct had traversed in a 
 second. We see solutions, but only a few of us care to 
 think them out step by step. Sara was one of the few, 
 not because she distrusted instinct, but because she knew 
 the comfort of the mind's justification. 
 
 Archer must be released from a marriage that was but 
 a lie, a living piece of hypocrisy. This release he would 
 never seek himself; nay, could not by any means that 
 were possible to a sensitive man. She alone could do 
 it for him, she, the woman who had all her life just 
 floated with the stream of circumstance. 
 
 For the man of daring speculation was the last man 
 in the world to act. Thought and deed were always 
 fatally divorced in him; even now on his desk was an 
 article on the modern Brahmin class, written to prove 
 that the artist ought to be above pecuniary rewards. 
 Yet nobody would fight more fiercely than Bellew for 
 royalties. In short, he desired to be a hermit, but had 
 no love of roots. 
 
 Leaning forward still further she let the air play 
 across her face. With it came the cry of a field-mouse. 
 She held her breath till it ceased, feeling herself caught 
 by the breath of Reality that all her life she had sought 
 to avoid. 
 
 Then suddenly she heard it working all around her, 
 the stir of the living will to surpass itself through strife 
 and pain and upward longing. In the sighing wind, in 
 the swaying tree, in her own beating heart as in the 
 death-cry of the vole it sounded. And the whistle of its 
 going was like a thin licking flame in sunny air. 
 
 It was unbearable, this realisation of internal up- 
 heaval. 
 
 She lit a candle and opened the door of her room. 
 Passing on bare feet along the thick carpet of the cor-
 
 288 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ridor, she paused outside her husband's door. She felt 
 like the captain of a ship when the barometers register 
 change. Turning the handle of the door, she waited and 
 then from his breathing she knew he was asleep. She 
 slipped behind the screen, shading the light with her 
 hand. He lay with the breath whistling from half-open 
 lips. The long room was in shadow; only the gold 
 filling of a front tooth faintly caught the light. 
 
 With the sight of him asleep, head on arm, she felt a 
 wanton. For the first time she realised that release of 
 Archer from the chains that bound him meant going 
 to her own joy. Memories worked; the sweetness of 
 Italian nights. She had never in her life sought her 
 own. To leave him, to go to a lover ! that she could not 
 do. Pain, sorrow, these she would gladly have paid, 
 but not joy, not even to cut away the gangrene that was 
 corrupting his life and hers. 
 
 For now she knew what Billy Knyvett had been to 
 her a quiet resting place where her heart always had 
 its home. Here, or on the other side of death, she could 
 never be lost while in any shape or form he survived. 
 Such trust as this is far above all winds of change. 
 
 It struck her, that phrase, "all winds of change." 
 Yet it seemed that this change, from pure woman to 
 wanton, even such love as hers could not survive. Pas- 
 sion was the one coin she could not pay down to buy her 
 husband's release. 
 
 And at that, the second sleuth-hound caught her, the 
 hound of Pain. Like two borzoi on the steppes they 
 raced on each side of her, Pain and Reality. She could 
 not desecrate the nest of trust and honour that her feel- 
 ing for Knyvett had created round her not even to 
 help her husband. 
 
 Yet the Reality tore at her heart. She opened the 
 door in haste to escape down the corridor once more. 
 And the hound went with her:
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 289 
 
 "I fled him, down the nights and down the days; 
 I fled him down the arches of the years; 
 I fled him down the labyrinthine ways 
 Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears 
 I hid from him, and under running laughter." 
 
 She stood still outside Bellew's room, leaning on the 
 sill. Inadvertently, with a sudden movement, her sleeve 
 swept the candle to the ground and with a clatter it fell 
 on the polished margin of the floor. Holding her 
 breath to hear if it had awakened anyone, she waited 
 and presently a door opened on the landing above. 
 Over the banisters peered a white head with four white 
 rolls of silver on the forehead. It was Elizabeth. 
 
 "Mon dieu, Madame," she whispered, coming down, 
 her skirts a-trail, her bare skinny legs like birds' claws, 
 ' ' 'tis thou. I hear a noise. I say to myself, ' a robber 
 at last,' and tearing off the curl papers, I arise." 
 
 Sara shook with silent laughter. "Elizabeth, thy 
 coquetry is never-dying. The vanity of the thing ! To 
 try to charm a burglar with curled locks." 
 
 ' ' It was instinctive courtesy. I would not shock, even 
 a robber, with the sight of my bare brow. But Madame 
 is white, ill, sick." 
 
 They had reached Sara's door by now and Elizabeth 
 deftly unfastened her mistress's robe and turning back 
 the sheet made her lie down. Now that the excitement 
 was over, long hot shivers shook her between the cool 
 sheets. Elizabeth bent down and began smoothing her 
 forehead with long sweeping strokes. 
 
 "Elizabeth," said she at last, "what must it feel like 
 to be a not-respectable woman?" 
 
 "Je m'en fiche," said Elizabeth, "one eats and drinks 
 and sleeps just the same. And the state is, doubtless, 
 not without its compensations. Bah ! what does it mat- 
 ter, that comme-il-fautf It is the creation of the 
 messieurs. They like it in the thing they own. It is 
 like a polished skin, a bright eye. But a woman cares
 
 290 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 for what she is, not for what she is not. To be this, 
 that, or the other, a good manager, a clever mother, a 
 skilled flower-maker, that pleases her. But that she is 
 no free lover; pah! N'importe. We all hold something 
 in our hands to fling away; some fling fortune, some 
 good name, some wits. And those who keep all and 
 fling nothing away ! Ah, well, le bon Dieu weighs them 
 down with their own stupidity." 
 
 Elizabeth was right; woman, like man, cannot really 
 be satisfied with the passive virtue of not being. To 
 give, to work, to share ; this is her instinct. Eeputation, 
 in the sex meaning, is a mere chattel quality and a 
 woman's purity a thing to be questioned only in the 
 slave market. The individual places a higher value on 
 herself than that. 
 
 "But Madame is in pain," said Elizabeth, coming 
 back into the room with hot milk. ' ' Tell the old woman, 
 dearie," she pleaded, slipping a hand under Sara's 
 shoulders and coaxing her to drink. 
 
 "If I went away, Elizabeth, went away from here, 
 from my husband what then?" 
 
 Elizabeth blinked in the candle-light. Her eyebrows 
 and eyelids were white like those of a mouse, her lined 
 face trembled in its baggy pouches. 
 
 "Ah, Madame Sara, Madame Sara," she cried. 
 
 "What then?" persisted Sara, 
 
 "Eh, but Monsieur Billee he would be happy. It is 
 for this he have waited. ' ' 
 
 "No, no, no." 
 
 "Ah, oui. For Monsieur Billee is a man. Madame 
 forgets perhaps." 
 
 Sara turned away. It was true, that was what she 
 had forgotten all the time. Her joy was his and noth- 
 ing in the world could alter that. For that was the true 
 Reality. 
 
 "Why has he never said anything, Elizabeth?" said 
 she at last.
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 291 
 
 ' ' He would have Madame Sara choose. He say : ' Let 
 her come and lay her hand in mine.' That is what he 
 wait for. When something has moved Madame." 
 
 "Something has, Elizabeth. He is going down," she 
 nodded on her pillow towards the door. Elizabeth 
 understood and grimaced. 
 
 "Eh, le mari!" she exclaimed, "who cares?" 
 
 "But I do, Elizabeth." 
 
 The old woman was silent, but when at last her 
 mistress had fallen asleep, she rose, stretched, reached 
 for her candle and went out of the room, softly closing 
 the door behind her. Outside her master 's bedroom, she 
 paused : 
 
 "G-r-r-r-h," said she, showing her teeth like a savage 
 old dog. 
 
 Up under the thatch at Foxholt next day the wind was 
 whistling through keyhole and window cranny; ivy 
 sprays were lashing themselves with shaggy arms against 
 the mullions and the valley below was blotted out in 
 rain. Everywhere in the garret was the hot smell of 
 apples lying stored in straw along the worm-eaten floor. 
 Bags of seeds, huge marrows hung from the rafters 
 where the rats swung their tails o' nights. Dim with 
 the ivy that tangled the windows, grey and vast and 
 echoing, the place fermented with the mellow scents of 
 autumnal earth. Husked ears of corn tickled the nose 
 of one who bent above the layers of pippins, quarrenders 
 and Blenheim oranges. 
 
 Uncle Pip Hawkins placed a hand in the small of his 
 back and stretched himself with a grunt. Opposite him 
 was an altar-like mantelpiece of drab-stone with a deli- 
 cate wall tracery of plaster wreaths above it. He sat 
 down on a packing-case and began to nod. There was a 
 real pleasure in the sense of being shut off, as in a 
 fortress, high above the world in this hill house, with 
 curtains of rain between it and the nearest dwelling. 
 
 Then it seemed that the wind fell, dying away in
 
 292 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 great booming echoes up the valley; a stillness began, 
 and out of the stillness strange whistling sounds arose. 
 Even the tapping of the ivy had ceased. But the 
 whistling was more insistent with the darkening of the 
 garret ; sometimes it was hot and buzzing like the sound 
 of summer flies, sometimes piercing like the shrilling of 
 a sandpiper. In Uncle Pip the terror of sound awoke 
 another sense and he saw that through the closed win- 
 dows there were floating long, grey, snouted shadows, 
 formless, changing incessantly and yet whistling with 
 the swiftness of their passage through the air. 
 
 Small as the withered kernel that rattles in a shell, 
 the soul of the sleeper tried to crouch behind barriers. 
 But in vain. The shapes swept on till they filled him 
 as the mist-wreaths hide the river in a valley. With 
 them came the vision of a wheel, turning backward into 
 the abysm of the past and carrying the dreamer with it. 
 Through flashing torchlights, shadowy forests showed, 
 in whose vague vistas moved things that he desired to 
 feed the evil in him. 
 
 For now he knew himself to be free of that sense of 
 the trouble of the world which makes the conscience of 
 our age. The Man of Sorrows that we all carry within 
 was gone; instead of Him there reigned the Ancient 
 Darkness of primeval lust. Vaguely felt, this back- 
 ground of sorrow had often held him back from word 
 or act that would have added to the sum of evil in the 
 world. Now it was gone and rioting in the joy of his 
 freedom, he visited the empty place in his mind. Yet, 
 after all, there was a little grain of wistfulness, such 
 as one may feel at the deadness which follows old, 
 familiar pain. 
 
 But the cruel fancies glanced from brain to limbs, 
 crisping the finger-tips and curling the toes, till he 
 shuffled in his stockinged feet. He was looking over the 
 edge of things. It lasted an age or a second ; no matter 
 which.
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 293 
 
 Then everything merged in the common day. Mr. 
 Hawkins sat up, passing his hand over his eyes and 
 breathing heavily. Feeling old and shaken, he moved 
 towards the head of the staircase that by square landings 
 plunged into the well of the house beneath. He sat 
 down again on the topmost step, holding his head in his 
 hands, for he had suffered a dream change. He had 
 looked in his dream at the Jacob's ladder which might 
 appropriately be the symbol to express the thought of 
 this century, since all its courage to go forward is 
 gathered from the sight of the road already travelled. 
 So that reptilean vestiges may well be taken as a promise 
 of the angelic wings. 
 
 Yet, as usual, when we realise the little speck of 
 lighted time in which we stand amid the Ancient Dark- 
 ness, it was fear that spurred him. His thoughts flew 
 from his wife to Craneham and back again. He took 
 extra precautions against fire that night and sniffed at 
 his ricks suspiciously. 
 
 At Craneham next morning he found Mr. Hereford 
 breakfasting with James, the terrier, in attendance. 
 Holding a tangerine orange delicately between finger 
 and thumb, the old man champed his jaws till the 
 pouches of his bearded cheeks wrinkled his eye-sockets. 
 With the motto, "There is no religion higher than 
 truth," carved across the back of his chair, he was dis- 
 coursing to Anne on cruciform insignia. The cross was 
 a secret masonic mark and every age had been banned 
 or blessed by its taste in holy roods. Thus the present 
 age was paltry, because we are all nailed to such tawdry 
 crosses. 
 
 Anne agreed heartily; with feminine taste for detail 
 she applied this to herself, since Sara had gone to Lon- 
 don and left her to drive this chariot of senility. Other- 
 wise she was non-committal; politely jesting of course, 
 she replied to Uncle Pip 's questions with the self-evident 
 truth that "Those who live longest will see most."
 
 294 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Thereupon he sought out Elizabeth, much as the an- 
 cients turned from the processes of reasoning to the 
 decree of the oracle. He found her with elbows in a 
 basin of suds, washing lace. Plunging her arms in 
 soapy water to the elbow she leant on her wrists. 
 
 "What will you?" said she at last. "Voila, Mon- 
 sieur, Madame is a woman ; Monsieur did not know that, 
 perhaps?" asked she ironically. 
 
 "What do you mean, Elizabeth?" 
 
 "Mean! mean! mean!" she shrilled, putting her face 
 closer to his with every word. "Hath not a woman a 
 heart to be filled, hands to be held ? See her two nights 
 ago. I hold up the lamp over her, she in her robe de 
 cliambre. Eyes bright, breast heaving, heart aching. / 
 know. And t'other side of the world a man that cares. " 
 
 "And if that is all she is a light woman," said he 
 sadly. "Ah, Sara, my dear, my dear." 
 
 L 'Esprit Gaulois leapt, eyes flashed, fingers snapped. 
 
 "And thou, thou, thou, art the first hell-hound to bay 
 at her heels. Bah! So, Monsieur. Take the truth." 
 She held up a sodden finger and thumb and drew them 
 together in a circle. ' ' That is Madame 's life, caught in 
 a trap between young man and old. But Madame slip 
 away at last, run, fly skedaddle. What will you ? ' ' 
 
 ' ' Good God ! ' ' exclaimed Uncle Pip and hurried away 
 to call on Mrs. Knyvett. 
 
 But she was in town and so, praying that Sara might 
 be with her, he followed in pursuit. The snouted hor- 
 rors of his dream, the primeval horrors born of apple- 
 fumes, were the jungle beasts of scandal in his fancy 
 now. To Anne, before he went, he raged like a bear that 
 stands in need of hanging. But all she did was to look 
 straight in his eyes, saying simply : 
 
 * ' Don 't weigh Sara 's acts with false balances and old- 
 world scales, Uncle Pip. I trust her. Do you do the 
 same. ' ' 
 
 But he could not. Torn to his depths by love of her
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 295 
 
 and reverence for her womanhood, he failed there. For 
 he would have had her bear physical degradation rather 
 than tarnish her soul's purity. And of that there was 
 no question with Archer. 
 
 In Mrs. Knyvett 's drawing-room at Hampstead with 
 its white walls dappled with lights and shades from the 
 old trees that looked in at the rounded Georgian win- 
 dows, he paced up and down. Overhead the ceiling 
 shook with hurried footsteps and presently they fetched 
 him upstairs. There, with the French windows wide 
 open on to the balcony he found Mrs. Knyvett on 
 her couch, with a strap hanging from the ceiling above 
 it. 
 
 "Lumbago!" she explained. "I've been ironed and 
 I've been massaged, but I'm held by the hip all the 
 same. ' ' 
 
 Had she been a Catholic, she would have set up a 
 votive offering to that lumbago in every church in the 
 diocese, so opportune had it proved. And now, though 
 the agony was less, she still lay and blinked at the ceil- 
 ing, the cornices of which, by the way, were decorated 
 with cupids. Uncle Pip, as he looked at the pink quilt, 
 thought of a biblical personage of the Seven Hills. 
 The Nation and the Spectator fell off her knees as she 
 held out her hand. 
 
 "Never the dock without the nettle, you see," she 
 smiled as he picked them up. 
 
 "Yes," she cried, "yes, I've news." 
 
 She held out a flimsy paper to him and he took it with 
 hands that shook. It was a cipher cable with the read- 
 ing by its side. Billy Knyvett had been carried ashore 
 at Punta Arenas, ill. There was a later one: he was 
 slightly better, but ill of fever following chill. Both 
 were signed Westlake. 
 
 "Sara sailed by the mail to-day to join him," said 
 Mrs. Knyvett gently. 
 
 Trembling like a very old man he sat down. Some-
 
 296 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 how it was going home to tell his wife that seemed th 
 worst thing to face. 
 
 "Not Sara," he said. "Surely not my niece, Sara?" 
 
 "Yes, Sara." 
 
 He treddled with his feet on the floor. He saw her as 
 a little child playing with the collies in the yard. 
 
 ' ' You might have stopped it. You might have gone. ' ' 
 
 "I wanted her to go. I wanted my son's life to be 
 fulfilled. I swore they shouldn't skulk any longer. 
 Neither of them." 
 
 "To sacrifice her like that! To ask her but there's 
 no use in talking." 
 
 "And haven't I flung away something for Billy? Is 
 he the sort of man to be co-respondent in a divorce 
 suit?" 
 
 "No, no. An honourable man." 
 
 "And she's an honourable woman. Do you think she 
 can 't carry her purity through the fire of a court of law 
 as they say the friars carried the Sacred Host in the 
 days when there was faith on the earth ? Look you ; the 
 law comes from us, from men and women. It didn't 
 tumble down out of heaven. When a marriage bond is 
 a living lie, a lie that degrades both man and woman, 
 then it must be torn asunder. I tell you, she would have 
 borne her starvation all her life if it hadn't been for 
 Archer. Yes, for her husband. He was becoming more 
 degraded, more futile, every day." 
 
 She paused, out of breath. "That was the way of 
 it," she said, coughing. 
 
 "How will it better Archer?" 
 
 "He'll divorce her. She forces him to it. He'll find 
 a mate, a true one. He's made all in one piece like a 
 woman. One lie in his life and he feels spoilt, ruined, 
 dirty. Oh, I had it all out with her. She sat there 
 where you are, struggling, beating her wings like a but- 
 terfly in a net. She thought of everyone but herself; 
 of Archer's house built on sand; of Billy's chance of
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 297 
 
 public life gone. I tell you she'd have gone more will- 
 ingly to gaol than to my son's arms, the sweet Puritan. 
 Suffering she could understand, could bear, but the suf- 
 fering that came with passion was a stain." 
 
 "You think so? You're not telling me this to com- 
 fort me, stuffing me with lies ? ' ' 
 
 "I'm telling you the simple truth, Philip Hawkins. 
 And all the while my boy 's perhaps dying over there. ' ' 
 
 Her face worked and Uncle Pip's brain was reeling. 
 
 "Oh, Lord," said he at last, "thank heaven I had my 
 romance before this century. To run away with another 
 man because you love your husband!" 
 
 "Love!" snapped Mrs. Knyvett. "What does that 
 mean ? As many different things as there are men and 
 women. And marriage! Good lack, the best marriage 
 is the one that promises the best births. And I don't 
 use the word in the physical sense only. But I put my 
 money on what your niece and my son will give the 
 world. Though I don't mean babies only." 
 
 "Madame," said he sadly, "what you mean is quite 
 beyond me. I feel as though I had been standing for 
 twenty-four hours on a steam thresher. ' ' 
 
 When he was gone she lay back and wept. 
 
 "Oh, Billy, Billy, have I done right? or have I in- 
 jured you? My dear son, my dear, dear son." 
 
 All her life she had been of the company of free souls, 
 jpf those who go on long voyages seeking fresh horizons. 
 Onward into uncharted seas, she pushed with the 
 younger generations pressing on her heels. Hard 
 enough is this task for scientist or thinker; but far 
 harder is it to fling into the crucible of change the 
 tables of the law, to recognise them, not as made of 
 stone, but of metal that can be recast. All her fifty- 
 eight years rose to crush her courage that night while 
 Uncle Pip was travelling westward once more. 
 
 In the morning Aunt Hatty received him with tea and 
 comfort. She would have added a footstool but he
 
 298 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 damned it furiously and told her not to fuss. Then the 
 story came out. 
 
 ' ' Well, my dear, ' ' said she, " I 'd not fret my gizzard, 
 if I were you. Just think what we should have felt if 
 anybody had come between us fifty year agone. And if 
 you can't rest nor sleep till you've got the particular 
 thing you're set on, I reckon it's a sign the Lord meant 
 you to have it." 
 
 ' ' But her good name ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 "She'll value it the more when she gets it back. 
 That's the only way for a woman to learn the vally of 
 anything. I'm sure I never knew what a treasure that 
 new wringer was till that silly maid we had last year 
 went and broke it." 
 
 ' ' Good God, Hatty ! Isn 't there a sense of great and 
 small in women's minds? 'Wringers and reputations/ 
 saith she." 
 
 "Now, my dear, if you were up against this that 
 you'd either got to set folks talking by doing what 
 seemed the right thing, or keep 'em quiet by sticking to 
 the wrong, what would you choose ? ' ' 
 
 "Doing the right thing! But it's the whole moral 
 code for women, the Decalogue, that you're calling in 
 question, Hatty." 
 
 ' ' Naught but a malkin set up by the men folk to scare 
 the crows off women, Pip. 'Tis but a thing of sticks 
 and rags. And we're beginning to know it. T'other 
 day I saw a scarecrow where a bird had built its nest in 
 the arm. 'Tis but a sham, after all. And that's a fact. 
 Birds and women have got a wonderful taste for the 
 real thing, Pip." 
 
 "When I hear you talk like this, Hatty, I'm thankful 
 you never had a daughter. Thankful." 
 
 "And I might as well have had one, if you're going 
 on worrying about Sara as if she was your own," re- 
 torted she. "But there's no sense nor reason in men.
 
 THE SLEEPING LADY 299 
 
 If the Almighty had meant you to have the worrit of a 
 daughter, he'd have given you one, wouldn't he?" 
 
 He was out of earshot. But weeks elapsed before he 
 turned the apples in the garret. His experience there 
 had fully convinced him of what he had suspected be- 
 fore the indecency of poring beneath the surface.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE POOL OP QUALITY; IN THIS BILLY PIPES AND SABA 
 
 DANCES 
 
 MEANWHILE time and space, factors overlooked 
 in Mrs. Knyvett's calculations, were placing Sara 
 in a distinctly humorous situation. For, as proved by 
 Peter's cables, Billy was rapidly on the way to recovery 
 and standing in no need whatever of the ministrations of 
 any lady with the lamp. 
 
 Yet Sara did not care, for she was learning the taste 
 of freedom; always before she had seen the world 
 through a fog of relatives. Now the width of it, as she 
 walked the deck of the mail-boat unfettered at last, was 
 sufficient consolation for that terror of a lost reputation 
 which apparently places the heart in the pit of the stom- 
 ach. A handful of folk in tradition-ridden England 
 might condemn her, but were there not Scotch settlers 
 in the Falkland Isles making a living out of sheep pas- 
 tured on tussock-grass ? Even the sight of her husband 's 
 books in the ship 's library brought a smile, for she had 
 been in contact with an interesting personality; at this 
 distance the peccadilloes of 'the knave of hearts' were 
 amusing. It was her father's selfishness that left the 
 deepest mark; she recalled it with a stinging blush as 
 one may a personal solecism, for our relatives are near 
 enough to us to insult our self-love by the exhibition they 
 make of themselves before the world, but not near enough 
 to glorify us by their achievements ; thorns in the flesh, 
 not feathers in the cap, they may curse but not bless. 
 
 But the sea had its way with her ; she was the better 
 
 300
 
 301 
 
 able to read between the lines of Peter's letter which, 
 awaited her at Bio: 
 
 "Before we sighted Cape Virgins Billy fell ill. I 
 knew it, Cole knew it, but he wouldn't give in. For, 
 except Bodinar, there wasn't a man aboard to take the 
 vessel up the Straits but him. And Bodinar was 
 mostly drunk. Of course he ought to have been in irons, 
 would have been anywhere but on the Pendragon. But 
 that's just Billy, you know. He'll never force an easy 
 way for himself. If it comes, well and good, but if it 
 doesn't, it may stay away and be damned to it. Put 
 him up slick against a wall that he's got to get through 
 and he'll never loosen a brick of it. He'll only ram 
 with his head and either break it or his own skull. ' ' 
 
 Sara laughed, remembering a Knyvett ancestor who 
 had died in the Inquisition rather than confess himself 
 what he was a Catholic, preferring to go to the stake 
 rather than be forced to tell the truth. 
 
 "Off the Virgins," continued Peter, "whitish grey 
 cliffs and seals playing in the surf, all as peaceful as a 
 Sunday School. Anchored there. And then the wind 
 shifted and drove us southwards. That's my notion of 
 hell now tacking, always tacking, while you wait for 
 the slant that's to carry you up the neck of a bottle. 
 We saw the ice-blink and got pretty near the ice in 
 field. Those are times when you can feel danger. Day 
 after day it went on and Billy getting more and more 
 like a death's head. And never so much as a cat's-paw 
 to show a flaw in the wind. 
 
 "My God! 
 
 " Billy 'd locked his clinical thermometer in his cabin 
 drawer, I found. Better not know where you are, I 
 suppose. And always between him and the green seas 
 aft a great rolling globe. Talked of it, he did, after- 
 wards in delirium. 
 
 "At last it came : 'all hands stand by to wear ship, ' and 
 we rode her in on the flood and at change of the moon.
 
 302 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Kelp at Cape Possession, ruffling the sea like a shoal of 
 under-water porpoises. Tide like a race in the First Nar- 
 rows. See us pully-hauling yards at the daybreak. Ho 
 io io ! Billy crowded on the canvas till Cole damned 
 his eyes. Anchored in Gregory Bay. Out again, but 
 driven back to our moorings. Then the Second Narrows, 
 sighted Cape Negro and dropped anchor in Laredo Bay. 
 Sealers there. Got a pilot, a lean, hungry chap. 
 
 " 'Chilianos?' " said I to him, when he boarded us 
 from the Mary Rose. 
 
 " 'No damn fear!' says he, and I found he was a 
 Norwegian. By that time we 'd to hold Billy in his berth 
 and we came into Sandy Point as they'd seen many a 
 vessel before, Irish pennants everywhere, fore tops'le in 
 ribbons and Bodinar dazed been on the bend for a week. 
 Billy doesn't know, but the tug from Glasgow's a dere- 
 lict. Bodinar let her stave her side in and left her leak- 
 ing like a sieve, for he 'd never caulked her seams, though 
 he'd got enough marine glue to stop the leaks of an 
 old three-decker. Done purposely, of course. Bodinar 
 doesn't want to go up Smyth's Channel or to put his 
 nose into Coronel. We've got to watch him day and 
 night, or he'd give us the slip, or put a knife into us in 
 the good old way. 
 
 "Billy's betwixt and between now as to health. 
 Therefore we've not told him yet that you're coming. 
 He mustn 't be jolted. ' ' 
 
 Sara laid down the letter; she was, it appeared, com- 
 ing at the wrong time. Yet she could not turn back now. 
 And two days later the mail-boat entered the roadstead 
 of Punta Arenas. 
 
 Catboats and schooners strained at their moorings 
 against the tug of a sou 'westerly gale. The furrows in 
 the wake of moving vessels, the sun-dappled waves and 
 ruffling winds were quivering incessantly behind the 
 black derrick-arms of the liners loading wool from the
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 303 
 
 hulksi in the offing. Faint, clear, and infinitely remote, 
 hung in air the blue peaks of the Cordilleras. 
 
 The street of cobblestones by the landing-stage, the 
 wood and iron of the two-storeyed Kosmos Hotel, the 
 long passage piled with luggage, the courtyard at 
 the side, black in mud and dotted with ducks, poultry 
 and horses: these things seemed to Sara an interminable 
 nightmare, like the winding labyrinths of a dream. She 
 stopped before the parrot's cage in the passage and stood 
 holding up her fingers to allure the sidling bird, as 
 though she had crossed the Atlantic to play with a par- 
 rot. Peter humoured her pretence. 
 
 "He swears in German, Spanish and English," said he. 
 
 But Sara was only listening to the blood in her veins ; 
 her pulses thudded now like race-horse hoofs on the sand. 
 
 "He knows I'm here?" she asked, nodding towards 
 Billy's door. 
 
 "We told him yesterday," said Peter. 
 
 The air was growing dark and presently across the 
 sky of the courtyard a few flakes of snow fluttered slowly. 
 But still Sara stood nursing her finger where the bird 
 had nipped her. At last Peter moved, opened the door 
 to the left and with his hand under her elbow, half 
 lifted her across the threshold. 
 
 Films of dreams, instead of the hotel furniture, seemed 
 to crowd the room. Like the distant tolling of a bell- 
 buoy across the water she heard the blood ringing in 
 her ears. His voice awoke her. 
 
 "Sara, Sara, it is you?" he cried, holding out his 
 hands. 
 
 They sat down side by side, but in an instant's flash 
 she knew that this was not the man she had come to meet. 
 
 "Billy!" she exclaimed wonderingly. 
 
 He smiled and then her words came tumbling out like 
 pebbles from a shaken bag. "You were ill. Mrs. 
 Knyvett could not come. So she sent me."
 
 304 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 ' ' ' A providential attack, ' she calls it, ' ' he smiled, ' ' in 
 her letter which I've only just seen, by the way." 
 
 "Let's pretend," she said suddenly, "let's pretend it's 
 just a tea-party and not a life and death thing." 
 
 "Put your head in a bag and say you can't be seen? 
 No, Sara, I can't do that." 
 
 Then, with a flash of the eyes, he took it all in; the 
 grey shimmer of the trailing gown she had insisted on 
 staying to put on, much to Peter 's surprise, the new cur- 
 rent of life she brought with her. Her spirits, answer- 
 ing his, went up with a bound. 
 
 ' ' You dear, ' ' she cried suddenly and embarrassed him 
 terribly, for the waiter had entered the room with a tea- 
 tray. 
 
 After tea she sat leaning back in her chair watching 
 the snowflakes that fluttered white for a second across 
 the wdndow and vanished on the other side. Over what 
 leagues of sea and tempest-torn hills had they not passed 
 to reach this lighted space? On an errand that seemed 
 as fruitless as her own, for she was vainly trying to 
 force her way into the innermost recesses of his mind. 
 And all the time there sang in her ears, the rhyme : 
 
 "There was a fleet that went to Spain, 
 When it got there, it came back again." 
 
 Still the wordless battle went on, she praying for en-, 
 trance, he as constantly refusing. At last, noisily draw- 
 ing back the window curtains on their rings, he tore one 
 and swore. Sara turned, but he avoided her glance and 
 sat watching the smoke rise from his cigarette. He was 
 wishing he knew her as well as, say, Diana of the Cross- 
 ways or Sue Bridehead. But one never knows a living 
 woman like that. For women are like the earth; they 
 only yield their secrets to the masters. 
 
 Suddenly she sighed; the sound broke something hard 
 in him and his arms closed round her. So they held each 
 other, passing away together into the depths where two
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 305 
 
 seek to become one. When lie placed a hand on her 
 breast, she held it there, and when she sank back in her 
 chair, he knelt beside her. She laughed and set a seal 
 of kisses on his bent neck. Billy listened to the sound 
 as one awaking from a nightmare may revel in the 
 homely tinkling of the breakfast cups. 
 
 "Billy, Billy," she exclaimed, "let me into your 
 mind, ' ' and thus unconsciously made the great confession 
 that passion is but the striving of two imprisoned souls. 
 "Oh, Billy, don't be so hard to me." 
 
 She all but shook him in her energy. 
 
 "It does hurt you so to speak, doesn't it?" said she. 
 "What is it now? Is it a new version of 'I could not 
 love thee, dear, so much'? Is it Lovelace come to life 
 again ? ' ' 
 
 So she pelted him with words, hating herself the while 
 and despising him for parochial morality. How extraor- 
 dinary it was that an intelligent man should be so con- 
 ventional as to be bound by a merely national code of 
 morality. Why, if he had been an American anger 
 blazed in her suddenly, for her emotional temperature 
 was going up. She felt like a total abstainer with a 
 thimbleful inside him. She had set out to lose the world 
 for him and he treated her like a Magdalen. The 
 harsh word pleased her immensely. She felt like a fakir 
 throwing the lash across his own shoulders. 
 
 "Is it the shadowy third?" she asked. It was aston- 
 ishing how under his silence the spirit of the catechist 
 arose in her. 
 
 "The shadowy third?" he repeated. 
 
 "Yes; the people you're thinking of who might follow 
 our example. For no Englishman is ever moral for his 
 own sake. It's always for somebody else. He wouldn't 
 do as he liked, not even on a desert island. For the 
 sake of the birds and the fishes, you know. That's what 
 Archer always says." 
 
 At the mention of Bellew his face changed.
 
 306 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "Oh, Archer isn't the shadowy third," she exclaimed. 
 ' ' Couldn 't be, because it was for his sake I bolted. ' ' 
 
 She held her head up. "No, don't imagine that you 
 have a monopoly of conscience. For I can assure you I 
 shouldn 't be here if I saw the faintest bit of wrong in it. 
 But you your manner is detestable." 
 
 "I knew you had a temper, but " 
 
 "Billy, how can you? When I've come and it cost me 
 so much " 
 
 "But just now you said it didn't cost you " 
 
 "You are perfectly insufferable. I don't know you, 
 I've never seen you before," she cried. 
 
 "Come here, Sara," he said, catching her hands and 
 pulling her up to him, while her eyelids fluttered, tears 
 fell and lips worked, ' ' don 't be a damn fool. ' ' 
 
 He bent forward and stopped her lips with his own. 
 
 "That's better," he said, when she snuffled, sobbed 
 and finally hid her face. He congratulated himself on 
 his skill in surgery as he contemplated the back of her 
 head. 
 
 "Comfy?" he asked. 
 
 A nod answered him. She looked up suddenly. 
 
 ' ' There ! ' ' she exclaimed, ' ' I knew it. I knew you 
 were smiling in a highly superior manner. I saw a vi- 
 sion of the corners of your lips. Don 't ! don 't. ' ' 
 
 His smile broadened. 
 
 "It's so deadly serious," she cried. 
 
 "By Jove, it is," said he. "You know you oughtn't 
 to be here at all, Sara. ' ' 
 
 Anger darted again. "Then let me go," she cried, 
 struggling. 
 
 ' ' Stop it, ' ' he said. ' ' You know I want you, want you, 
 want you. ' ' 
 
 Much comforted, she relapsed with a sigh; after all, 
 he had, as a divine would have put it, the roots of the 
 matter in him. 
 
 "Why were you so queer when I came?" she asked at
 
 307 
 
 length. With his pipe alit, he sat, teeth gripping it, 
 gazing over her head into space. 
 
 "Because," he said gravely, "I wanted you to come 
 to a man worth coming to. I'm not, at present. I've 
 been a slacker, a hopeless slacker. Oh, yes, I know what 
 was at the back of my mother 's brain. She thought that 
 if I got this job of ours over I'd settle down to the real 
 business of life. ' ' 
 
 "I don't understand," she said, sitting up. 
 
 "See here, it's like this," he answered, "a man who 
 loves a woman, Sara, wants her to have the best he can 
 give. Wants her to come to him without a shadow. ' ' 
 
 ' ' There is no shadow not in my mind. ' ' 
 
 "But there is in mine. There is more than a shadow 
 over it all. Would you have acted as you have if you 
 had not been rushed into it ? First there was my illness 
 and your fear of what might be happening to me. Ever 
 since I knew you were coming I've thought of nothing 
 else." 
 
 She freed herself and, pacing up and down the room, 
 tried to face the facts. At first only his egotism struck 
 her. How could she 1 go back? What construction would 
 her world put on it all? Of that apparently he never 
 thought, nor would she remind him of it, for if a man 
 will only take a woman on the highest terms conceivable 
 to him, why, then she must crane her neck to look up at 
 him. Yet she almost longed for the days when a man's 
 relationship with a woman was not so much stuff o' the 
 conscience with him, when she was just the part of his 
 life he put outside when the work began. She regretted, 
 for a second, the gay lovers among the great men who 
 carved out the future, men who loved and forgot their 
 women as easily as they flung aside their coats. It is 
 still the Latin way to-day, where love is pleasure and 
 marriage as much a concession to custom as cards on the 
 jour de Van.
 
 308 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Yet he must be made to see her view. 
 
 "Long ago," she said, threading her fingers together 
 and looking down on them, ' ' I knew a woman whose hus- 
 band was unfaithful to her. Again and again she for- 
 gave him and took him back. And she did right, for 
 she shared his thoughts, all the best of him. It was only 
 the lowest that he gave to those others. ' ' 
 
 "But what about 'those others'? How did it affect 
 them?" 
 
 "I don't know. Nobody does, you see." 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 "When soul and spirit are one, body doesn't matter. 
 I've never been Archer's like that. Never. So I've 
 never been his wife at all. Ceremony! What's cere- 
 mony got to do with it? What ceremony can fuse two 
 metals that no chemical power can join? No. It's the 
 burning together that does it. I've never been his wife. 
 I'm free. Before ever he what they call, married me, 
 he'd shared his best with another woman. She loved 
 him. She cared, she has watched him, her thoughts have 
 been busy with him all these years. And he? What 
 were his words? 'I've never seen another woman as I 
 saw her'?" 
 
 It was a queer confession, but to the martyr in his 
 ecstasy even cross-making seems a branch of celestial 
 carpentry. 
 
 "But to you this is all wrong. And every touch just 
 now was wicked. Yet all these years I've trusted you, 
 felt I only had to come and you would be ready for me. 
 But all the time I 've been mistaken, it seems. ' ' 
 
 "That isn't true, Sara, and you know it. But what 
 you have told me only makes it the more impossible. 
 You acted out of hatred, repulsion perhaps momen- 
 tary." 
 
 "You're making it hard for me to forgive you," she 
 said in a low voice.
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 309 
 
 Beaten, thrown back on herself, she wondered if she 
 could face England. Hatred seized her for the man 
 who put her to this test of strength. 
 
 "I'm very tired," she said, "I think I'll go to my 
 room. ' ' 
 
 "But you understand me?" 
 
 ' ' Thoroughly, ' ' she said, ' ' though you 've set me rather 
 a hard problem." 
 
 She laughed and he looked doubtful as well he might. 
 She felt, indeed, that in his day he must have eaten 
 husks with the Gadarenes and paid his worship to the 
 god of the earth that dwells in dark places; he was so 
 afraid of shadows. It was the queer kinship of high 
 passion and low hunger that made him scent a weakness. 
 
 Or so she read him. But at any rate his standard of 
 honour should be kept up, though she had to nail it to 
 her own good name, for this refusal of the easy way 
 was as inbred in him as a pointer's method of earning a 
 livelihood. 
 
 In her own room the title of her husband's last book 
 flashed into her mind; was she not "between two servi- 
 tudes ' ' ? Never in all her life had she been independent. 
 Before marriage she had been her father's tool and now 
 think as she would of Billy's scruples, judge them 
 noble as she did, was he not treating her as a thing for 
 whom decisions must be made? And was he not right, 
 for had she not shown her inability to stand alone ? 
 
 The question answered itself; Billy had judged like a 
 free man. But she had not. Flying from one man to 
 the other, she was tossed like a shuttlecock. His ideal- 
 ism was the fruit of freedom. Her idealism had never 
 been born, for she had never been free. 
 
 Softly she widened the space between the doors. Neat, 
 fresh, intent, he came out of his room and glanced in 
 her direction, though he could not tell that she was 
 watching him. So they stood with a barrier of austerity 
 between them; she caught her breath in a sob and the
 
 310 WINGS OP DESIRE 
 
 hungry years fed on her heart. Then his eyes shifted 
 downwards to the writing-table and half absently sitting 
 down, he took up a flimsy sheet of paper, cable or tele- 
 gram evidently. Presently he unfolded a map and bend- 
 ing over it, traced a line with a pencil. She could only 
 see the top of his head. What was it that engrossed 
 him? 
 
 The rustle of her dress betrayed her. He held out his 
 hand to draw her towards him. 
 
 1 ' Do you know what this is ? " he asked. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "One of the most wonderful things in the world a 
 plan of the great West Coast railway, the zigzag line 
 that carries trains right across the Andes up into the line 
 of eternal snows. ' ' 
 
 Then in a torrent of eager words he spoke of in- 
 clines, gradients, of mountainous peaks of debris piled 
 by the Incas in their irrigation works, of the line that 
 was to open up the mines of Peru, the nitrates of Chili. 
 "A man's fallen ill, one of the engineers," he said with 
 a jerk. * ' They 've asked me to slip into his place. ' ' 
 
 There was an implied question in his tone. 
 
 "You will accept," she said confidently. For she was 
 minded not always to remain between two servitudes. 
 
 "Dearest, dearest," he cried, looking up at her. The 
 words sounded like thanks and that hurt her more than 
 anything. Their two minds had gone out into the dark- 
 ness, had questioned one another and brought back the 
 answer. She would not hinder his work. 
 
 Then Peter came in to dinner. Sara watched him 
 curiously ; brown and lean as he was, even the loose grey 
 shirt, the easy gestures of his body made him seem 
 another man. He had kicked himself free, as she must 
 do. But after all he had only been fettered by civilisa- 
 tion ; she was in thrall to a deeper bondage. 
 
 He began to talk of Anne. 
 
 "We'll not go into a church," said he with a twinkle,
 
 311 
 
 "where she'll have to tell a lie. Anne! Fancy Anne 
 obeying me ! Why should she ? You know in this mat- 
 ter of mating we've gone further on the wrong road than 
 in any other single human venture. And it's bed- 
 rock, mating is. But what we've got to learn is that 
 marriage was made for man and woman, not woman 
 and man for marriage. That's about the size of it, I 
 opine. And any church that goes about saying, as a 
 bishop did t'other day, that a woman mustn't be re- 
 leased from marriage though her husband drive her to 
 the streets " 
 
 "Had better put its shutters up," chimed in Billy. 
 "But the English are afraid to think. They've been so 
 long in blind, unquestioning obedience to a Book. It'll 
 take 'em a long time to recover from the injury they've 
 done to their brain." 
 
 "Yes," said Peter, "an Englishman with the Bible 
 inbred in him or rather what he imagines is the Bible 
 always looks at a new idea as though it were a demon 
 come hot from hell." 
 
 "For," added Billy, "the strongest things in a man 
 are the instincts that come down to him from his an- 
 cestors' graves." 
 
 Suddenly Sara was afraid, since from the graves of 
 her ancestors had sprung an instinct. Neither man, she 
 fancied, would have talked thus freely before her had 
 she remained a conventional woman. She was afraid of 
 freedom. Even the way in which Peter moved, threw 
 his limbs about, puffed smoke through his nose offended 
 her; she felt inadequately clothed for hill air. 
 
 It was absurd ; but no beliefs are stronger than those 
 for which there is not a jot of proof from faith in the 
 divine right of kings to the efficacy of an upright poker 
 against the grate. Again for a second Sara regretted 
 the swash-buckling days when lovely woman was toasted 
 and forgotten almost as quickly as the glasses that were 
 smashed in her honour. Then she recoiled from her own
 
 312 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 thoughts, for Archer Bellew was a throwback to those 
 days before the flood. Was he not nicknamed "the 
 knave of hearts"? 
 
 When she returned to her room after dinner, she found 
 a woman kneeling before the fire to replenish it. The 
 sight of Mrs. Bodinar was a fresh irritation, since Bessie 
 stood for the web of circumstance which had entangled 
 them all. A mood of voluble explanation fell upon Sara ; 
 she began eagerly to say that Mr. Knyvett's mother, be- 
 ing too ill to come, had sent her as deputy. Mrs. Bodi- 
 nar preserved a silence that sounded accusatory. 
 
 "But Mr. Knyvett doesn't need me now. You've 
 nursed him so splendidly," said Sara. 
 
 "And so I ought to," cried the woman, "with my man 
 playing the fool, same as he did. And him a seaman, 
 one of the best. 'Twas all he had, his seamanship. And 
 now that's gone, too." 
 
 "But you did your best." 
 
 "My best! What's a woman's best? If I'd worked 
 my fingers to the bone to get us out of the mess Sim's 
 brought -to us, I couldn't have done it." 
 
 "But you were not responsible," began Sara. 
 
 The woman cut her short savagely. 
 
 "When a woman's man does ill, it stings worse 'n if 
 she 'd done it herself. And when he does well, she feels 
 'tis his doing, not hers. All sting and no comfort. 
 That 's marriage for a woman. ' ' 
 
 Sara sat down and, leaning her head on her hand, 
 gazed at the fire. The peering eyes watched her closely. 
 Then she began to unpack, laying linen in the drawers 
 from the cabin trunk. 
 
 "Don't take out much," said Sara, "I'm going back 
 by the next boat." 
 
 This speech was meant as a challenge; Mrs. Bodinar 
 took it as such. 
 
 "Don't you do anything of the sort," cried she. "My 
 Lord! what a mort o' things I've seen going wrong this
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 313 
 
 last year or two. And here am I talking, that ought to 
 keep my mouth shut. ' ' 
 
 "What is it, Mrs. Bodinar? Say what you want to 
 say." Sara laughed and, crossing the room, laid a hand 
 on the woman's shoulder. "And what's he done, after 
 all? Your husband, I mean," she cried. "Only 
 brought Mr. Knyvett across the Atlantic by telling a 
 few lies perhaps " 
 
 "And showed hisself a coward. And Sim hasn't any- 
 thing but his seamanship, he that was so looked up to. 
 That once saw himself so big, too." 
 
 ' ' But your children ? ' ' asked Sara, ' ' Don 't they make 
 up to you ? ' ' 
 
 "Chillern! That's the worst of all. I try to forget 
 I've got 'em. They're no great shakes. And they're 
 my doing, for I bore them with the bad thing over me. ' ' 
 
 The old furtive glance began and Sara wondered if 
 the woman were sane. 
 
 "Yes, I'm right enough," said Mrs. Bodinar, answer- 
 ing her glance. " 'Tis only that I've got the sight. My 
 mother and my mother's mother had it afore me. Just 
 a change in your eyesight and you can see what's all 
 around us, what others don't see. And then there's 
 sleep and dreams." 
 
 "Fortune-telling, you mean?" 
 
 The woman's pride flashed. "Ay, they all knowed 
 Bessie Bodinar. Come from miles round, they would. 
 I've had so many as three motor-cars come to my door 
 in one week. I'm a Crowte and the Crowtes all have it. 
 And there's my chillern born with that going on all 
 round 'em. I've lived so much on the other side that 
 some days I'd be glad to see a butcher's shop again or 
 Mr. Beavis cutting bacon. Fancy chillern coming in the 
 midst of all that. They've a deal to do with birth, they 
 on the other side always. And I didn't keep good 
 company there. So my chillern 's poor trade. They're 
 my work, and it's bad."
 
 314 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 The strange ideas arrested Sara in the bewilderment 
 of her own choice. 
 
 "Most folks," continued Mrs. Bodinar, "be wound 
 about and about with their own doings by the time 
 they'm middle-aged. 'Tis like silkworms, all tied up 
 with what's come out of their own inside." 
 
 ' ' I suppose one can escape ? ' ' 
 
 "You can bite your way out. That's all you can do." 
 
 1 ' Children must be the worst cocoon. ' ' 
 
 "So they be. 'Twas through them I lost my hold 
 on Simon. We'd worked together more like friend and 
 friend than man and wife till I'd got to stay home to 
 mind the chillern. That spoilt it all. A man grows 
 away from his wife that way. A man didn't ought to 
 be left to hisself." 
 
 Mrs. Bodinar reminded Sara of a parson explaining 
 that without churches all the world is devoid of "the 
 means of grace. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Ought I to bite my way out ? ' ' she asked suddenly. 
 
 "I reckon that's what you've done, haven't 'ee?" 
 
 The rough words shook Sara into anger. Bessie un- 
 derstood. 
 
 ' ' You 're doing naught but harm to your man. That 's 
 all there is to it. I 've seen 'en a chap that wants some- 
 body to think for 'en, eat for 'en, breathe for 'en and 
 put herself all round 'en. He'd better get one that can. 
 You can't." 
 
 Sara was silent. She resented short ways applied to 
 herself. 
 
 "Go and tell Mr. Westlake," she said curtly, "that I 
 want to go out and see the town." 
 
 Mrs. Bodinar smiled slyly and went on her errand. 
 In a few minutes Sara was out of the hotel and on the 
 quay where Peter joined her. 
 
 "I say," he cried, "it's lateish, you know." 
 
 She stamped her foot. "Peter," she cried, "do be
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 315 
 
 quiet. If you don't want to come, I can go alone. It's 
 still nearly daylight." 
 
 "Of course, if you want " he said, and followed 
 meekly between the rows of flat, snow-covered roofs. 
 Four roads led through the town up from the water- 
 side to the plaza deep in black mud. The lighted doors 
 of the Teatro Municipal attracted Sara. She felt the 
 need of something that might make her forget the nerves 
 fretted now to the fragility of thin, rust-eaten wires, the 
 brain behind the forehead that had grown empty it 
 seemed, and bloodless. The two went in. 
 
 The room was coffin-shaped and from the sides the 
 evening half-light filtered between the dull red pilasters, 
 mingling grey, silvery tones with the orange of the foot- 
 lights. Above the heads of the audience, Chilians, Nor- 
 wegians, Germans and English, wide-mouthed angels 
 blew trumpets towards the apex of the roof. 
 
 Outside the sleet-laden wind from Terra del Fuego 
 churned the waters of the Straits to fury. And only a 
 few years ago a price was set upon the heads of natives 
 in Punta Arenas, those same natives who have been made 
 by missionary zeal the victims of one of the silliest 
 crimes ever committed by civilisation. Peter had been 
 talking of it, as they walked up the street, of the pious 
 fools who taught the Yahgans the wickedness of self- 
 defence and so handed their women over to the bestial 
 ways of whaling crews, besides shutting their children 
 up to die of consumption by scores. Rage burnt in Sara 
 as she thought of all the helpless made to suffer in order 
 that meddlers may feel themselves virtuous. Was she 
 not like a canoe Indian, tied to the stake of the world's 
 opinion in order that none might be harrowed by the 
 sight of a creature living its own life ? 
 
 She was glad to watch the stage. The scene might 
 have been taken from an ancient German woodcut, with 
 its gnarled and twisted trees half hiding among their
 
 316 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 branches a Tmge stork's nest. Every reed, every twig 
 stood out boldly. 
 
 The audience chattered like a perching flock of gulls, 
 then they craned forward. Among the trees was a 
 dancer, a woman. Lithe, lean and swarthy, her slant- 
 ing eyes seemed more Eastern than Western, yet the 
 whites of them flashed ; she was no Japanese, but Chilian 
 probably. So close she kept to the tree branches that 
 it seemed a nature dance, as true to its surroundings as 
 the protective mimicry of birds and insects. Then they 
 saw she had a companion, a lad whose thin flanks ap- 
 peared half stiff with fear for all the wiriness of his 
 young limbs. The two danced noiselessly, the boy seek- 
 ing vainly to elude his shadow, the woman. Now wheel- 
 ing close to the ground like a bird on the seashore, now 
 gliding like a moonbeam between the trees, she fore- 
 stalled every movement. Faint lights flickered through 
 the wood and went out; pale beams flamed along the 
 floor like the streaks of rosy colour when the shallow tide 
 creeps over sandstone; dull greens flashed, the green of 
 weed-clogged estuaries; the blue faded into the grey 
 flecked with purple that marks the distant hills. The 
 wood seemed to be contracting to bring the woman 
 nearer to her prey. 
 
 The tide to the moon, the flower to the wind, the lean- 
 ing palm tree to her mate, the fish in the sea, the wheel- 
 ing birds in air, the call of that which is strength in 
 weakness, source of the world's beauty and cruelty 
 they had all gone back, Bradford wool-buyers, Chilians, 
 swarthy greyhounds with native blood in them, pure 
 blooded Norsemen and Teutons, back into the gulf of 
 half-forgotten things, each one a living sepulchre of the 
 past. Old things stirred in atom and fibre. 
 
 In the midst of the roar of applause Sara rose and 
 slipped away, Peter following. Outside, the noise of the 
 surf came over the roofs ; the cobbles gleamed wet in the 
 streets against the planks of wood that cut off the muddy
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 317 
 
 sidewalks from the streets. The edge of the sea was 
 outlined by a white line of foam. Lights swayed from 
 the mastheads of the anchored vessels. Far away, un- 
 seen, were the desolate hills of Fire Land. 
 
 "What does it all mean?" asked Sara. 
 
 ' ' Nobody knows, ' ' said Peter, ' ' but ' ' 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 "We're going on," said he, "we're not going back." 
 
 Sara was silent. She wanted a more confident answer 
 than that. 
 
 "Do you want to fall out," asked he, "out of the 
 procession ? ' ' 
 
 "No," she said, and then again, more confidently, 
 "no." 
 
 The next instant she laughed at herself for. the im- 
 pression the incident had made on her. For what was 
 it, after all? An ugly woman fooling in a dancing 
 booth before a crowd of seamen and commercial travel- 
 lers, and following that, a glimpse of the sea. Yet it 
 was very much a part of the procession all the same. 
 
 Lying wakeful in her bed that night, Sara heard a 
 footstep pacing up and down in the sitting-room. She 
 got up, and slipping on a gown, waited for a moment 
 shivering. It was unbearable, that sense of patient en- 
 durance. Softly turning the key in the lock, she pushed 
 the door ajar. 
 
 "Ah," said Billy, "I was wondering whether you 
 were lying there awake. Come." 
 
 He threw another log on the fire and pulled forward 
 a chair for her. Leaning an arm along the mantelpiece, 
 he looked down on her. 
 
 "Child," he asked tenderly, "have I hurt you? You 
 feel I have failed you? Is it not so?" 
 
 She roused herself. 
 
 ' ' It felt like that at first, ' ' she said, " but I was wrong. ' ' 
 
 "I love you, Sara, never better than now." 
 
 "I know."
 
 318 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "But the other way is the easier," he smiled. 
 
 "Yes the other way." 
 
 Then she spoke of the visit to the Teatro Municipal. 
 
 "That and this," she cried, holding out her hands, 
 ' ' this feeling of ours that makes us dread even the faint- 
 est shadow of wrong on what ties us ! Oh, Billy, what 
 does it all mean?" It was the question she had asked 
 of Peter. 
 
 ' ' You understand then what I feel ? " he asked. 
 
 ' ' I see it through your eyes, ' ' she answered. ' ' I could 
 not bear it else. But that in the theatre and this ? ' ' 
 
 "We know both," he said, holding her hands on his 
 shoulders. "But we have come to the ultimate outpost, 
 have we not ? ' ' 
 
 "Love?" she whispered. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "And shall my sense pierce love, 
 The last relay and ultimate outpost of eternity?" 
 
 Then ashamed of self -revelation, he grew embarrassed. 
 
 She could not fully understand, for indeed she was 
 in pain, but she dreaded the worse suffering she might 
 have had to bear. And shining like a clear star was her 
 trust in his honour. 
 
 "But what will you do, dear heart?" he asked at 
 length. 
 
 So she tried to tell him how she must feel the earth 
 firm beneath her feet, must work and earn a place for 
 herself. 
 
 "I'll be something worth while, even yet," she cried. 
 "I have my music. I've a leverage, something to sell 
 that people want. At the worst I can teach." 
 
 Yet the man in him rebelled for an instant at the 
 idea of her making a niche for herself. He wanted to 
 make one for her. 
 
 "But," said she briskly, "I don't in the least give in
 
 THE FOOL OF QUALITY 319 
 
 from my main position. I did right to leave Archer. 
 I'll not acquiesce in a marriage that ought not to have 
 been. The only thing to do in this world if you 've made 
 a mistake is to try and put it right. And perhaps we 
 can use that ridiculous back door into common sense 
 allowed by the English law restitution of conjugal 
 rights. Would your recognition of me as a possible Mrs. 
 Billy Knyvett be satisfied by that ? ' ' she laughed. 
 
 Then he surprised her, showing that behind Jacob 
 there still lurked Ishmael. 
 
 "If," he said quietly, "at the end of a year you still 
 feel as you do now, I shall come and take you. ' ' 
 
 "Billy!" she gasped. 
 
 "Sara!" he exclaimed angrily, "will you never under- 
 stand? What is mine I will take. But I must be sure 
 it is mine. I will have no forcing of your hand. My 
 mother carried you off your feet. So did Bellew. So 
 did my illness. Come to me with all your soul your own, 
 and" 
 
 There was no need to end the sentence. 
 
 ' ' I shall go away at once, ' ' she whispered. " I 'm going 
 back by the next boat." 
 
 "No, no," he cried, "not so soon as that." 
 
 "Yes," she persisted. "We will not fail each other, 
 Billy." 
 
 So they entered on theip comradeship. 
 
 As they clasped hands across the writing-table, the 
 sketch-plan of the Andean railway lay between them. 
 In Sara's eyes it stood for all that linked, yet separated 
 them. For it is not only the red-gold dawn nor Sirius in 
 his glory that keeps us from the gutter now ; it is the high 
 tradition of our race. Shall a man still go untouched 
 by the fact that one of his blood once saw the spring as 
 Botticelli saw it, or looked at a woman and found the 
 Mona Lisa ? 
 
 Something of this Sara said. 
 
 ' ' Culture ! ' ' sneered Billy. ' ' What 's Hecuba to me ? "
 
 320 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Then they both forgot, for he had crossed the room 
 and caught her up. The year's separation outbulked 
 for them the dog-star and all the galaxy of pictures in 
 the Louvre. 
 
 Yet he understood the principle of bridge-building 
 very well. Only he hated words.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 PACTOLUS, "WHOSE FOAM is AMBER AND WHOSE GRAVEL, 
 
 GOLD"; IN THIS IS SOLVED THE MYSTERY OF SIMON BO- 
 DIN AR'S ENCHANTED CIGARETTES. 
 
 A FORTNIGHT later the steamship Coloso, hired in 
 Punta Arenas to go up Smyth's Channel, was well 
 on her way to Bodinar's Cove. 
 
 "Let her rip," said Billy, keen to get the job done, 
 and the Norwegian skipper had no objection. Then, at 
 Port Famine, the sudden slowing down of the engines 
 made everybody's head buzz; a motor-boat from Punta 
 Arenas was overhauling the tug. 
 
 "The British consul's launch," exclaimed Knyvett, 
 handing the glass to Peter. 
 
 To the south stretched the curving channels of Mag- 
 dalen Sound, running like a thread into the heart of 
 the Fuegian hills. The shifting wind blew alternate 
 cloud and sunlight across the snowy summits that jut 
 from the blackness of deep, tree-covered valleys. Above 
 Mount Sarmiento, its snow-covered rock ridges a daz- 
 zling mass of streaky gold, hung a ragged curtain of 
 mist. 
 
 The motor-boat came alongside the Coloso ; Billy's 
 brows puckered as he read the dispatch: 
 
 ' ' The man Pycrof t about whom you were enquiring is 
 now reported as wanted by the Chilian government and 
 is supposed to be in hiding at Sandy Point. Has cer- 
 tainly left Coronel where he was last employed at ex- 
 pert work in the glass factory. I enclose an official 
 copy of the photograph which is being circulated. ' ' 
 
 " Wanted," said Billy. "Gun-running, perhaps, but 
 321
 
 322 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 it narrows the net round him. Anyway, it saves us 
 Coronel." 
 
 The photograph showed a man whose low forehead 
 and set-back ears gave him a "bullish" look. His cheeks 
 hung in folds that curtained the framework of the face 
 rather than moulded it a fibrous, hairy fellow with a 
 mouth like a trap. 
 
 "You think you'll have to trace him, then," asked 
 Peter. 
 
 "I haven't got to the bottom of Bodinar yet," an- 
 swered Billy. "And if Bodinar doesn't pan out well, 
 Pycrof t must. ' ' 
 
 Once aboard the Coloso the seaman had given them 
 another surprise. Alert, keen, ready, he showed his 
 knowledge of ports and harbours to be greater than that 
 of the skipper who had spent ten years steaming up 
 and down these Straits. He was facing the very same 
 game that he had funked all across the Pond. Only now 
 he was playing it. 
 
 It was iBessie 'who failed this time, for the desolation 
 of grey, immemorial ages was fretting her nerves to 
 thin wire. It was not many hours later that the storm 
 burst. 
 
 She sat up in her bunk, for the cabin was suddenly 
 filled with darkness as though the Coloso were passing 
 through a tunnel. Looking out of the port-hole she 
 saw that they were just beneath the shadow of over- 
 hanging cliffs. The lead line was going and the siren 
 whistling, for the tug was seeking anchorage for the 
 night. The grey evening light threw a pallid gleam 
 over the sea. Mrs. Bodinar wiped her face, for the air 
 of the cabin was close. 
 
 ' ' How '11 it all end ? " she cried. ' ' And what the devil 's 
 afore us?" 
 
 The old human weariness overcame her, the longing 
 to push open the door of the future and peep in. She 
 eyed her big, corded tin box and sidled, tortoise-like,
 
 PACTOLUS 323 
 
 away from it. To Mrs. Bodinar that box was the bottle 
 which the toper places on the shelf to remind him of 
 his strength. 
 
 She opened the door softly and peeped up the gang- 
 way; just outside stood the companion stairs and the 
 cabin doors swung slightly ; from the engine room came 
 the sound of hissing steam. She went back, knelt down 
 and opened the box. Burrowing, she flung out layers 
 of clothes; then came a square inlaid work-box, a pic- 
 ture under glass of the Monument, a pile of photographs 
 in plush frames and finally, a bit of wax all ridged by 
 her thread, a reminder of the time when she used to 
 make Bodinar 's small-clothes. She sat back on her 
 heels and saw in fancy the sunlight glisten on the two 
 brass buttons at the back of the trousers; homesickness 
 rose in her like a bitter wave. 
 
 Then she looked up ; her husband was watching her 
 from the doorway of the cabin which he shared with 
 Scantlebury, the assayer they had taken on at Sandy 
 Point. 
 
 "You devil," she cried, "you lazy, loafing devil to 
 bring me out here here where I 've got the horrors day 
 and night. And I know I'll never see a Devon short- 
 horn again nor eat a bit of home-cured bacon. I shall 
 die out here. I know I shall. And 'twill be you that 
 done it. They'll heave me overboard, here where 'tis 
 death-cold and never give me Christian burial. ' ' 
 
 Hysteria raged. 
 
 "I never asked 'ee to come. 'Twas but your own 
 cussed curiosity, the thing you got from the old lady, 
 back along, my dear." 
 
 "The ungrateful toad," cried she, "and to me, me, 
 that followed 'en to the ends of the earth, saying where 
 thou goest, I will go." 
 
 "A man don't want it said to 'en. Where 'd be the 
 British Navy, where 'd be the Mercantile Marine if every 
 man wanted that said to 'en? Dry up, Bessie."
 
 324 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "I'll not. You miserable, lying cheat that have been 
 the ruin of me for forty year, that have lived on me 
 and taken the food out of your children 's mouths. And 
 you with your waistcoat pocket full of gravel, and your 
 bag full of sand! You'll come to the scaffold, if you 
 don't mind what you're about." 
 
 "Scaffold! saith-a," quoth Simon truculently; "they 
 don't hang for sheep-stealing now. And do I look like 
 an Oliver Grumble to perish on the scaffold?" he added, 
 going over to look at his hirsute countenance in the 
 hanging glass. 
 
 "I did go it a bit in Sandy Point women, wine and 
 the rest of it. But when I want a thing, 'tis away to 
 go for it, straight, with me. Can't bear to wait." He 
 was sparring vigorously with clenched fists at an unseen 
 foe. 
 
 "But when I see things spin, I'm like a daisy." He 
 was rotating now in clumsy imitation of a ballroom 
 couple. 
 
 "Give us a kiss, old girl. Know the song, 'My 
 Old Dutch'? Lord! what a pretty little figure you used 
 to be." 
 
 She sent him staggering across the cabin. 
 
 "That's a dear, little loving wife, that is! a damned 
 sight more like a gaoler, I call it. Gaol! Yes, that's 
 what marriage is. 'Snap,' says the parson, and there 
 you be caged for life." He contemplated her up and 
 down. 
 
 "Well, I'm gormed . . . and I can't say fairer 
 than that." 
 
 His eyes falling suddenly on the pile of rubbish on 
 the floor he became quite silent, all his buffoonery dead. 
 Mrs. Bodinar watched him like a lynx and saw that he 
 pecked his eye on the top photograph of the pile, that 
 of a group of men. Whistling, he stooped, stared, 
 nosed about, then got himself out of the cabin. 
 
 Like a lapwing Mrs. Bodinar swooped to the photo-
 
 PACTOLUS 325 
 
 graph ; it showed a set of workmen, some in blouses and 
 overalls. Bessie's eyes passed slowly from man to man. 
 Then she knew the joy of a Newton. She held out a 
 big bare arm across the table and kept it fast pressed, 
 for she could almost feel the power sparkle and flash up 
 and down her body in electric waves. Brain messages 
 flew, the something godlike called intuition worked. 
 The same instinct was flashing in Mrs. Bodinar that 
 helps men to fling the gossamers of thought over the 
 yawning chasms of the unknown, for the curiosity that 
 dogs the stars in their courses, the spirit in its secrets, 
 was one with her craving to know. It was the point at 
 which she met her husband's mind. 
 
 Then at last she remembered her work and bundling 
 the things helter-skelter into her box, flung down the 
 cover and left the cabin. Never were the birds and 
 fishes of the day's sport more artistically prepared for 
 dinner than on that evening. 
 
 When she returned to her cabin there was no hesita- 
 tion in her movements, for the zest of one piece of knowl- 
 edge had given her a lust for more. Hauling a glass 
 globe from the bottom of her box, she held it against a 
 square of old, cotton-backed velveteen that, cracked and 
 thinned by years of folding, bent to familiar shapes be- 
 hind the round ball. Placing it on the table with the 
 bulkhead lamp behind it, she fixed her eyes on the 
 thing. 
 
 It was very quiet; only from time to time there came 
 a dull, booming sound from a far distance; it was the 
 glacier edge breaking into the water. The footsteps of the 
 anchor-watch paced up and down. Then a wind moaned 
 and passed. Between the staring woman and her home 
 lay leagues of sea; her vitals were thrilling with an 
 ache to smell the meadow-sweet, to see the shadows of 
 the elms across the Devon grass. Where would the freed 
 spirit take her ? 
 
 The milky cloudiness that precedes vision gathered
 
 326 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 over the globe; a tremor passed up the spinal cord; the 
 skin prickled as though threatening goose-flesh. There 
 seemed a loosening of the ties of the body and she passed 
 into lethargy. 
 
 She awoke, stirred, had seen nothing. Blowing out 
 the light, too exhausted for thought, she threw herself 
 on the bunk. In sleep, overhead through the cabin ceil- 
 ing there opened a shaft of cold air, but the constella- 
 tions above were not the home stars; she saw that who 
 knew no name of planet or fixed star. The dreamer 
 stirred, moaned and fell asleep again; this time two 
 butterflies circled in sunlight. There was a click, as 
 though a plate had been changed and she knew that 
 behind her lay an eyeless body on which the sea things 
 had fed. The face of the man in life had been perfectly 
 familiar to herself and her husband. 
 
 The straggling grey locks on her forehead fell for- 
 ward as she struggled to sit up. In the light of the 
 night candle she laid her arms around her knees and 
 rocked herself to and fro, the sweat damp on her skin. 
 "Dear Lord," she moaned and shifting her arms gripped 
 her waist, for she was racked with pain. Then, swing- 
 ing her feet over the side of her berth, she got down 
 and drained the tooth-glass in great gulps. The thing 
 she had seen was as vivid as the glare of a shop window. 
 She turned to her box and presently every single thing 
 it had contained was on the floor. But the photograph 
 that had attracted Bodinar was gone. 
 
 "I thought so," she said. 
 
 Rounding Tamar Island next day, they caught for a 
 second a glimpse of Cape Pillar at the far western end 
 of the Straits, a solitary steeple point in a whirling 
 curtain of rain and mist. Then with incessant whistling 
 they threaded day by day the inland waterway that 
 curves in one long stretch of three hundred and sixty 
 miles inland up to the Gulf of Peiias and the open 
 waters of the Pacific, sending offshoots of inland seas
 
 PACTOLUS 327 
 
 right up into the foot-hills of the Cordilleras. Piled 
 cloud masses, tossed by the wind into monstrous shapes, 
 hung above the solemn twilight of the steel-grey waters 
 that were girt about with lofty cliffs, clad in ever- 
 greens up two thousand feet from the water 's edge, with 
 stunted bushes beyond and beyond that again with snow- 
 scarred steeples and pinnacles of bare ancient rock of 
 gneiss or granite. After passing Mount Burney with 
 its glacier of beryl-blue pouring down out of a roof of 
 clouds and mist, almost utter blackness fell on them as 
 the Coloso steamed between the rocky walls that guard 
 the bay called Occasion Cove. 
 
 ''Latitude 51 42' 40" S.," said the skipper as they 
 let go the anchor. He felt he had done the job ship- 
 shape and Bristol fashion. 
 
 Scarcely anyone aboard slept much that night. From 
 the deck they could discern the long grey outline of an 
 islet. Slowly at last the dawn came ; at first the shores 
 of the bay were but shadowy visions of dream. Then 
 they showed themselves to be tree-clad right up to the 
 sands. Inland fell the thin thread of a waterfall where 
 the river leapt a precipice. Near the beach stood the 
 bent branches that mark a deserted native hut. 
 Through the fog everything seemed exaggerated in size 
 along the shore. 
 
 As they rowed in, it became clear that the stream was 
 far narrower than in Bodinar's first report and flowed 
 through marsh, not sand, heavy, weed-grown marsh 
 covered with scurvy grass. Bodinar rowed with the 
 boat's crew, but Scantlebury, the assayer, a long, tac- 
 iturn, thin-faced lad, was over the gunwale in a second 
 as they grounded. 
 
 Over the side of the anchored Coloso the crew leant, 
 with a thin column of smoke rising from the galley fire 
 where Cornelius, the only calm man aboard, was frying 
 fish-cakes. Loping across the deck the Pendragon's cats 
 played jiujutsu. Billy had stopped to watch them for
 
 328 WINGS OF DESIEE 
 
 a second, for they made him think of Boulou and Baby 
 at home in Craneham. 
 
 The assayer flung himself flat on his belly across the 
 sand. Clearly, while they waited, they could discern 
 the drip of water from the heavy, sagging branches of 
 the trees, the hissing rise and fall of the waterfall on 
 the breeze. Peter moistened his dry lips and thought 
 of Anne. Queer, somehow, how the women's shadows 
 stood behind the men. 
 
 At last the assayer got up and brushed the sand from 
 his trousers. They glared at him as though they were 
 a primeval tribe watching a medicine man. 
 
 "Mica," he said curtly, "nothing but mica. No 
 chance of gold. Never found in the neighbourhood of 
 granitic rock." 
 
 "Certain?" asked Billy. 
 
 "Absolutely." 
 
 The tide was at half; they waited till it fell, even 
 setting up tents in impatient expectation of pay-dirt 
 at the tide line. Peter and the assayer forced a way 
 up the river. For it might be that auriferous sand was 
 brought down at certain times of the year from inland 
 cliffs. Great fallen trees, heart-rotten, barred their 
 way ; their feet sank deep into layer after layer of moss. 
 More impenetrable than tropic forests, this wood re- 
 pelled them; reeking, rain-drenched from immemorial 
 ages, it yielded but the enormous globes of yellow fungus 
 which the Alaculof eats. A curious twittering bird fol- 
 lowed them, flying close against their faces. Otherwise 
 death. 
 
 Yellow against a livid sky they left the shore behind 
 them next day. Bodinar appeared unruffled, but Billy 
 watched him with a certain doubt; was this the place 
 he had described ? There was nothing for it but to turn 
 the boat's head for Punta Arenas, there to search for 
 that remarkable chemist who had found two and a half 
 ounces of gold in a kerosene tin of mica.
 
 PACTOLUS 329 
 
 ' ' How does he strike you, Peter ? ' ' asked Billy as they 
 sat at coffee after dinner. 
 
 "Uncommon jaunty," answered Peter. 
 
 "So he does me. Like a man that's carried out a 
 scheme successfully. Did he take us to the wrong place 
 purposely, feeling that he'd a whole company against 
 him." 
 
 "The discrepancies are easily accounted for. He'd 
 been drinking. Also, he's an imaginative devil, yet, of 
 course a seaman estimates distances better than most 
 men. ' ' 
 
 They sat smoking in silence. Then Billy went on 
 deck. The ship was at anchor in Collingwood Strait, in 
 sight of the snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera of 
 Sarmiento. The thin, clear moonlight shone on floating 
 ice "calves"; black as Erebus the velvety texture of the 
 tree-clad cliffs. 
 
 At the top of the companion steps angry voices caught 
 his ear, one certainly was Bodinar's and the other, ap- 
 parently, the assayer's. 
 
 ' ' I take your sovereign ! What the hell do you mean 
 by it?" 
 
 "And there's more gone. You've been routling 
 among my papers, ' ' said Bodinar. 
 
 "Take it back, or" 
 
 This was certainly Scantlebury 'a voice; cat-like in 
 his soft deck shoes, Billy dropped below. But quicker 
 than himself, he saw Mrs. Bodinar slip like a shadow 
 down the gangway and into the cabin. 
 
 "Hold your noise, you fool," she cried. 
 
 The fear in her tones arrested Knyvett's attention 
 more than the rough burr of the men 's voices. He stood 
 still for a moment, half against his will. 
 
 "I've got the picture you took from my box of that 
 murdering villain," she cried. "And what's more the 
 Captain 's got the spit of it on his table. ' ' 
 
 "And there's your sovereign," said Scantlebury.
 
 330 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "But I'll not berth with you, you lying scoundrel." 
 
 "What's the meaning of this?" asked Billy, advancing 
 from the shadows. Mrs. Bodinar gasped and flung up 
 her hands. Red-eyed and foxy, Bodinar watched them 
 all. 
 
 "The Captain's got the spit of it on the table;" it 
 was Mrs. Bodinar who set the match to the tow of 
 Billy's suspicions. "And," said he, with a look at 
 Scantlebury, "I think we'll clear it up privately, since 
 it seems rather a domestic matter. ' ' 
 
 The assayer vanished and Mrs. Bodinar flattened her 
 bulbous body against the bulkhead. 
 
 "Now," said Knyvett, "I don't want to put anybody 
 to an inconvenience, but . . . since Mrs. Bodinar 
 has been good enough to take an interest in the contents 
 of my desk 
 
 "You'll not get anything out of me, sir," she said 
 quietly. 
 
 "No? Then your husband and I'll settle it. The 
 photograph on my desk is that of a man whose ac- 
 quaintance I've long wished to make. So do several 
 other people, it seems. And you evidently know him 
 well. What we want is an introduction." 
 
 He fixed his glance on Mrs. Bodinar who stood with 
 her mouth primmed up, like a cat at a polite tea-party, 
 but he watched Simon out of the tail of his eye. 
 
 "Was this man by any chance Reuben Py croft whom 
 you met at Coronel ? ' ' 
 
 A slight quiver of Mr. Bodinar 's eyelids warned 
 him. 
 
 "Well, not Reuben Py croft always. No doubt he has 
 plenty of aliases. Now," he asked, suddenly turning, 
 "what did he give you that gold-dust for? 
 
 "Payment! that's what the twelve pounds' worth 
 of gold meant. You'd evidently been useful to him. 
 It looks fishy combined with what the Consul writes 
 me.
 
 PACTOLUS 331 
 
 "Mrs. Bodinar knows, I see. But I think we'll keep 
 her out of it." 
 
 ' ' I '11 not go, so there ! ' ' panted Bessie. ' ' Simon, thee 
 a't a fule. Why don't 'ee speak out and say you've 
 naught to do with it ? " 
 
 Suddenly Bodinar went down with a run, like an 
 eight-day clock when the weights collapse. 
 
 "Ho! Ho! Ho!" he chortled in his beard. "You 
 can't clap me in chokey, Captain Billy Knyvett. And 
 what a mare's nest you've run your head into, too. 
 Lord! it's as good as a play. Don't 'ee see yourself 
 a-leading me along a victim to the slaughter, with gar- 
 lands on my forehead and bells on my toes? Did you 
 think you'd see me swing for this? Didn't I know 
 there 'd be rigs o' Dover when one o' the gentry found 
 he 'd been had ? ' ' He snapped his fingers every moment 
 nearer to Knyvett 's face. 
 
 "Simon! Simon! you fule-head," shouted Bessie in 
 agony. "Why Keuben Py croft's nobody but Harry 
 Marks." 
 
 "Harry Marks?" said Billy struggling with a mem- 
 ory. 
 
 "Ay," said Bodinar, "what was wanted for the mur- 
 der o' Tom Rendle, the manager of the Plymouth print- 
 ings works whose books he'd been playing Old Harry 
 with. Cashier he was. And Rendle found with a bul- 
 let in his head in the counting house after he'd been 
 having a go at the books the night before. But he got 
 away ? ' ' 
 
 "And you found him in Coronel?" 
 . Bodinar nodded. "He was doing well there, too. 
 Funky sort of a chap. Didn't want to move on." 
 
 "And Mrs. Bodinar knew him?" 
 
 " He 's her cousin. ' ' 
 
 "Well," said Billy, "you've done me. But what did 
 you get by it, after all? For you've had your bad times, 
 that I'll swear."
 
 332 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "This," answered Bodinar, "that I've got the laugh- 
 ing side of one of the damned gentry. Drawed 'em 
 along, I did, like rats after a bit o' bacon, they that 
 lay down the law and treat us poor devils same as 
 they might the mud beneath their feet, the dirty snobs. 
 They that take the education for theirselves and look 
 down on us, cos us got none. But what sort o' stuff 
 do they cram our chillern with? Something that's 
 good enough for the damned workingmen. Shut up," 
 he shouted to his wife, "I'll speak out for once. And 
 you, haven't you toted 'em along in your way, too? 
 
 "Off Diego Ramirez, where the Ildefonsos roar, 
 There's gold, there's gold, there's gold galore." 
 
 He swung himself out of the room, his own man for 
 once. 
 
 Later on Mrs. Bodinar came to the saloon. 
 
 "Well," asked Billy with a smile, "is he covered up 
 yet? For I was just looking into a brain with the lid off, 
 Bessie. There now, don't you worry, who am I that I 
 should grudge a fellow creature a bit of heaven at my 
 expense. ' ' 
 
 Mrs. Bodinar went out to make Simon a particularly 
 fine squab pie, out of Billy 's onions, and cold-storage mut- 
 ton, for she, too, approved of a decent spoiling of the 
 Egyptians. 
 
 "Peter," said Billy, as they went on deck together, 
 "have you ever done anything when you were up in 
 the bough and then regretted it when you came to 
 earth?" 
 
 Peter kept silence, trying to get the meaning of this 
 cryptic speech. 
 
 "Sara will be by now about where the sea-fire begins 
 to follow in the wake of the ship," Billy went on, leaning 
 over the taffrail. "It must seem to her like a bad 
 dream this . . . this Antarctic twilight. So it does 
 to me."
 
 PACTOLWS 333 
 
 By his voice Peter knew that he was very far from 
 the arboreal stage just then. From the port-hole below 
 came the sound of a man snoring in the knots and un- 
 tyings of his first sleep. 
 
 "Bodinar?" twinkled Billy. "Well, there's one 
 happy man aboard. Shall we ever lay salt on the tail of 
 Keuben Pycroft, alias Harry Marks?" 
 
 But they never did; nor did Mrs. Bodinar ever know 
 the "outs" of her dream. But she always maintains 
 that Pycroft got his quietus that night. 
 
 For over on the moors by Great Kneeset, the pair live 
 on the glorious memory of the fairy gold in the region 
 of the Ildefonsos. Moreover, Bodinar still has the 
 Pendragon's chronometer, though Billy can't imagine 
 what became of it. Mrs. Bodinar, however, regards it 
 as an heirloom,
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 METIER DE PEMME, THE OLD AND THE NEW; IN THIS VIN 
 HEREFORD SHUFFLES OFF THE DOMESTIC COIL, MRS. 
 KNYVETT RETRIEVES A SITUATION AND SIGNOR GUARINI 
 DOES A LITTLE DIGGING. 
 
 r |^HEY sat at Craneham holding a court of enquiry 
 -* into the crime of Sara Bellew, nee Hereford. It 
 was the tender time of the blossoming of the pear tree, 
 and the scented snow of spring blew in gusts across the 
 lawn before the southwest wind. The apple-green of 
 the evening sky delighted old Vin's eyes, even as his 
 daughter's deeds satisfied his soul, for the clear shining 
 of the west was on his reverend white head, the clear 
 lucidity of intellectual delight in his heart, since Sara 
 had run away from her husband, thereby proving what 
 he had always upheld, her fitness for wifehood. Mrs. 
 "Woodruff e listened, as one shares in another's misfor- 
 tunes with joy at the zest of them and yet as one who 
 watches a triumphant display of casuistry, marvellous 
 proof of the mental mastery of the race. Anne sim- 
 mered in ironic delight; only Uncle Pip was, being a 
 plain man and slow, most unfeignedly miserable. 
 
 All four heads, the torso of Neptune, the bebugled, 
 dew-lapped frontage of the matron, the coy, sleek comeli- 
 ness of the maid, the rugged massivity of the farmer, 
 were bent forward into a circle in the attitude of the 
 quoit-thrower while as into a witches' brew old Vin 
 threw his daughter's life. There is always a suggestion 
 of the obscene at such a sight, as when the Almighty 
 claws the spider, man, for more adequate frying over 
 the Pit. 
 
 334
 
 METIER DE FBMMB 335 
 
 "Yes," purred Vin, "Sara was a pupil of Guarini, 
 yes, the Guarini, the Italian pianist, of humble extrac- 
 tion, but a master. He thought highly of her playing, 
 wanted her to wither, a barren stalk . . . " 
 
 "Eh," said Mrs. Woodruffe, laying back her ears at 
 the biblical flavour, "but I thought she never had any 
 children. ' ' 
 
 "A barren stalk," flowed he mellifluously, like a 
 moorland stream that refuses to be dammed. "I speak, 
 of course, of her potential barrenness. In point of fact, 
 he wanted her unmarried. But I was firm. He actu- 
 ally asked me to hand her over to him to train. ' Train, ' 
 said I, ' does very well as a word to apply to dirty little 
 urchins. It is not for a demoiselle.' 'Rachel?' said he, 
 'Sarah Siddons?' He used to spit out his words like 
 an infuriated grimalkin. 
 
 " 'One,' said I, 'the daughter of a Jew peddler, and 
 the other of a strolling player. ' But he was equal to it. 
 'Gentility,' said he 'feeds like a Minotaur on the brains 
 of fair virgins.' Then Archer came, swam into our 
 horizon like a sun. The child was dazzled. She was 
 a woman, only fitted for wifehood. My intuitions are 
 always trustworthy. She was and is a true woman." 
 He closed his eyes and Uncle Pip groaned, like one con- 
 victed of sin at a conventicle. 
 
 "Because she's bolted?" snapped Anne. 
 
 "Because she felt the need of support, of that tender 
 solicitude which is her life, every lovely woman's life. 
 One man fails her, she seeks another. It is as beautiful 
 an instance in its way of Nature's great plan, this esca- 
 pade of our dear Sara, as the leaves with their oxygen, 
 the animals with their carbonic acid gas. Need answers 
 need in both cases. One on the psychic, the other on 
 the physical plane. One sees in it all woman clinging 
 to man; man so ready for support the work of the 
 Great Artificer. I know of no more lovely instance than 
 this of divine brain work."
 
 336 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "What a beautiful thought!" cried Mrs. Woodruff e, 
 with the far-seeing gaze that accompanies cosmic vision. 
 ' ' It shows how differently the higher mind regards these 
 things. The facts in themselves so crude, so painfully 
 crude. A woman elopes; so it seems to the vulgar. 
 And to your mind this." 
 
 She made play with hands delicately gloved, thus 
 proving herself of the Thrice-Born in Eastern imagery. 
 
 "Good Lord!" cried Uncle Pip, under the peine forte 
 et dure, "and the child's future unknown; her name 
 dragged in the mud. And no chance of whitewashing. 
 I'm a hog, but I'm damned if I ain't glad to be." 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe raised pained eyebrows; she saw in 
 her inward eye his hayricks, pigsties, et cetera; she was 
 in fact quite visibly declining the noun agricola. 
 
 "Good old boy," beamed Anne, and pinched his 
 arm. 
 
 Mrs. Woodruffe heard the whisper; it aroused her 
 malice. "And," she said, "I came away all in a twitter 
 at the idea of the thing happening to a family I know ; 
 the courts, the cross-examining dreadful! I thought 
 of my daughter, so intimate as she has been with Mrs. 
 Bellew. I really don't mind confessing now that I 
 thought I should have to give Molly just a word about 
 being careful. A young wife, you see! Of course I 
 should never have minded for myself." 
 
 "I hope," said Anne demurely, "that father has 
 shown how satisfactory to everyone this is. To prove 
 a law of Nature! What could be lovelier? I'll make 
 a note of it to tell Sara. ' ' 
 
 "If every parent had acted," continued Vin, "as 
 firmly as I, we should never have seen the appalling de- 
 velopments of these later days. Up till now the one 
 creature that has sunk all things before the call of race 
 has been woman. She has held nothing back not even 
 personality, in order to hand on the torch of life. 
 Woman," he boomed, "has been the saviour of the race,
 
 METIER DE FEMME 337 
 
 Claiming nothing, she has given all. Up till to-day, this 
 fatal day. But the Eastern woman is still faithful ; the 
 most beautiful custom of which I have ever heard is that 
 of the youngest and loveliest Japanese maidens who 
 offer themselves for a few years on the altar of those 
 passions that replenish the race." 
 
 "Or that don't in the form you mean," interposed 
 Anne. 
 
 ' ' Thank Heaven, ' ' said he, ' ' I have one daughter who 
 is still a woman." 
 
 ''I'm not so sure of that," said Anne, unable any 
 longer to keep her secret, " there have been some sur- 
 prises. Sara is coming back from her Antarctic ex- 
 ploration. I heard this morning." 
 
 "Rather strange if she didn't," snapped he, "the 
 South Pole is scarcely the place in which one would 
 choose to reside." 
 
 "But she's coming back alone." 
 
 Uncle Pip rose, slowly lengthening out like an uncoil- 
 ing boa-constrictor. 
 
 "Then Knyvett's dead?" 
 
 "Not in the least. He's joined the staff of engineers 
 on the Andean railway." 
 
 ' ' You mean she did not get out in time to catch him ! 
 Now that's just a woman's management, of course. Tut, 
 tut, tut. That's Mrs. Knyvett, without a doubt," said 
 Vin. 
 
 "On the contrary, they met, she stayed a few days, 
 but they have parted." 
 
 "And she comes back alone! Goodness gracious!" 
 shrieked Mrs. Woodruffe. "Oh, my dear child, my 
 heartfelt sympathy is with you. But how abominably 
 that man has behaved. His mother is the person I pity 
 most. What a reflection on her upbringing. I never 
 can be too thankful that left alone as I was, with but 
 one fatherless child, it turned out to be a girl." 
 
 "You don't understand," explained Anne, patiently
 
 338 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 lecturing, "Sara went out to nurse Mr. Knyvett and 
 finding him recovered she is returning to take up her 
 profession, where father made her lay it down. She 
 has lost twelve years of her life, of course, but that, I 
 suppose, must happen while our parents experiment 
 with us." 
 
 "And you expect people to take it like that! Well, 
 all I can say 
 
 "Before you say all you can, I should like to remind 
 you, Mrs. Woodruffe, that an affair like this is one in 
 which each person reflects his own nature. Don't give 
 yourself away, that's all." 
 
 "Anne," said Uncle Pip, "you're a brick. This is 
 what I've been waiting for. If I've said it to Hatty 
 once, I've said it a hundred times our Sara's as clear 
 as the day." 
 
 ' ' I don 't think I was so far wrong, ' ' said Anne, catch- 
 ing Mrs. Woodruff e's eye. 
 
 That lady, fearing a woman adversary, fell on the 
 man. 
 
 "And let me tell you," she said, turning to Mr. Haw- 
 kins, "that from your very position you are, of course, 
 ignorant of the world. But you should really have the 
 sense to leave this kind of thing to the people who under- 
 stand it. ' ' 
 
 "Well, I'm" 
 
 "No, no, don't let us have any of these rough quarter- 
 deck expressions. It used to be allowed before ladies, 
 but it's quite gone out now, Mr. Hawkins." 
 
 But Mr. Hereford was not to be caught out ; his mind 
 was as pliable to new forms as an astral body. 
 
 "Ah," he said, "I am far from being a laudator tem- 
 poris acti, but now this proves what I have always said, 
 that with genius goes moral irregularity. Sara is a 
 genius ; she cannot, therefore, bow to the Ten Command- 
 ments. Art flourished in times like Cellini's, when mo- 
 rality was a topic no man took lightly on his lips which,
 
 MJ3TIER DE FEMME 339 
 
 in fact, the majority never took on their lips at all. To 
 that age belongs Sara, that sacred age." 
 
 In the full flood of his eloquence, they thought he 
 scarcely noted that Sara had been generous to him; 
 having no intention of returning to bondage, she had 
 made over to him before she left England a deed of gift 
 bestowing Craneham on him for his lifetime. He was 
 happier than he had been for a long time in the prospect 
 of release from those gaolers, his daughters. 
 
 "Anne," said he that night, "you will be wanting to 
 get back to your work; we will write out an advertise- 
 ment for a cultivated housekeeper with a musical voice. 
 We have capital servants who are very attentive to me. 
 It is only Elizabeth who presumes. These old retainers 
 are more trouble than they are worth." 
 
 So Elizabeth found herself adrift and happy. For 
 could she not go straight to Madame Sara? 
 
 "Mon Dieu," cried she, when Anne parrotted, "ought 
 we to leave him? Mon Dieu, and if the Blessed One 
 opens the cell door by a crack, is not that a sign that 
 He means a thin one to get through ? And neither thou 
 nor I, petite Anne, is a gross cabbage. Besides, nothing 
 suits the messieurs better than a change of women. ' ' 
 
 "When will he want us back, think you?" asked 
 Anne. 
 
 ' ' When he hath his winter pains, ' ' answered Elizabeth. 
 "Meanwhile there is the summer before us." 
 
 So they took, both of them, that sunny road to liberty 
 which so often begins with the purchase of a railway- 
 ticket. They met Sara when she landed, Elizabeth cur- 
 vetting, in spirit at any rate, like a ram in mountain 
 pastures. The green mist of trees against the London 
 smoke was a promise of new life to Sara. Also with 
 these two there was no need of explanations ; they made 
 holiday, therefore, that queer trio, for twenty-four hours, 
 till Anne went to her work and Sara to Mrs. Knyvett ; it 
 was, somehow, a shuddery thing to do.
 
 340 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Then, in the softly lighted drawing-room, with the rose 
 of the sunset shining through the tree branches outside, 
 she waited, the room wavering before her eyes, as though 
 it were a cabin. For, in the capacity of a new Sara, she 
 was afraid of Billy's mother. She had played too deep 
 a part in the older woman's life to be sure of her re- 
 ception. 
 
 But when Mrs. Knyvett held her in an all-comprehen- 
 sive embrace as though the world were reeling beneath 
 their feet she felt as though that fair ship, the Sara, 
 had flung out grappling irons on solid earth. They 
 sat down in silence till the great homely tabby leapt on 
 the visitor 's lap and with its soft purr and discreetly in- 
 quisitive nose awoke her from dream to a perception of 
 the lonely road before her. Tabby was so safely an- 
 chored. Mrs. Knyvett understood. 
 
 "My dear," she cried, "I wouldn't have had it happen 
 to you for forty thousand pounds. ' ' 
 
 "It was quite the best thing possible," said Sara, 
 "there are so many who never find themselves. Billy 
 and I have done that, anyway. And you've got your 
 wish. Billy's out of the wood; he's gone back to his 
 work.' 1 
 
 "But in what a fashion! That a son of mine should 
 act like this! With every obligation " 
 
 It was the one note she should not have struck ; too late 
 she saw it. 
 
 "Love," said Sara, "has nothing to do with obliga- 
 tion. And the fool-talk about honour has trapped us all 
 too long. Too many crimes have been committed in that 
 name. ' ' 
 
 "At any rate," said Mrs. Knyvett, "I've written a 
 letter to him. ' ' 
 
 "And sent it?" asked Sara, rising, very white and 
 still. 
 
 "No, it's not sent. You can read it, if you like."
 
 METIER DE FEMME 341 
 
 Sara took the paper, glanced through it, and laid it 
 down. Then, head held back, till the breadth of its 
 strong oval became apparent, she said quietly : 
 
 "You'll not send it. For if you do he'll come back as 
 a man might to marry his mistress." 
 
 They were both silent, yet they understood; Mrs. 
 Knyvett's courage rose. 
 
 "But he was pledged tacitly all these years," she 
 said, knowing all the time that the battle was lost. 
 "And," she asked, "don't you realise what a difference 
 all this has made ? ' ' 
 
 Sara laughed ; there was something so fresh and young 
 in the sound that Mrs. Knyvett positively jumped. 
 "Oh, perfectly," she said, "they'll wave all the silly 
 fripperies that are supposed to make up a woman's life 
 at me. But Billy lives outside all that. Haven't you 
 ever realised what damnable tyranny it is that free 
 things can't live out their freedom? Respectability ! 
 who 'd care for it if it wasn 't a part of the stock in trade 
 by which one gets one's living. And at best it merely 
 means keeping sin furtive. For folks like Uncle Pip 
 I'm sorry. That's all." 
 
 "I suffer, too, Sara." 
 
 "Not so much as you imagine. And you wouldn't at 
 all if you just went down into your own mind and 
 acknowledged what you saw there. May I tear this 
 up?" 
 
 ' ' Yes, ' ' said Mrs. Knyvett, for, torn between the world 
 of show and the world of fact, she had come over to the 
 world of fact, confessing that all the solid fruits of vic- 
 tory were hers. Then she lifted up her heart and 
 planned a campaign in which dinners, receptions, and 
 theatre parties formed the siege-work. 
 
 "By all the fools in Christendom," cried she, "we'll 
 knock their nasty notions all to bits. Mrs. Archer Bellew 
 shall drop her flag to no impish satyr."
 
 342 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "But Mr. Archer Bellew, where is he?" asked Sara. 
 ''I've searched the papers since I got back and found 
 not a word. ' ' 
 
 "Riding a camel in the Sahara, they say. Anyway 
 he's lost in African wilds and there'll be no dramatic 
 curtain a I' Americaine. You can enjoy your nutter 
 safely." 
 
 "Umm," meditated Sara, "I suppose I can take a 
 month to bury my dead. Then I ? m off to Guarini. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Oh, my dear, won 't it be gorgeous ? Cards to meet 
 my daughter-in-law that should be, returned from an 
 unofficial honeymoon in the South Pole. ' ' 
 
 "But" 
 
 "My love, there's no better way in the world than a 
 scandal for separating the sheep from the goats, your 
 true friends from your false ones. The day of judg- 
 ment's a fool to it. And this has been positively the 
 dullest season on record." 
 
 So they settled to the fray; there were some lively 
 engagements, more especially cuts direct from small 
 people, small usually in both senses of the word. It was 
 discovered that the morality of persons "on the make" 
 was particularly sensitive, though a few there were that 
 oscillated. Among these was that fair provincial, Mrs. 
 Stephen Anerley, whose glacial coldness in the afternoon 
 was atoned for by a tropic warmth at night, a warmth 
 in which it was difficult to discover whether self-interest 
 or simple friendliness was the motive spring. 
 
 At last Margaret Rossiter returned to town and Mrs. 
 Knyvett took Sara to call. The small woman in the 
 white furs seemed strangely familiar to Mrs. Bellew; 
 they talked at once as those who can plumb the deep 
 waters together. Mrs. Knyvett, seeing this, went on to 
 another function. 
 
 "You know," said Sara, "that I've left Archer, that 
 I 'm not going back to him. ' ' 
 
 "So I've heard."
 
 METIER DE FEMME 343 
 
 "It was for his sake at first," said Sara. 
 
 "But not now?" asked Margaret, lifting her eyebrows. 
 She had acquired a quite abysmal calm that was strange 
 in a being so mercurial. 
 
 " No ; it 's for my own now. ' ' 
 
 "I'm glad," commented Margaret. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because I think you may have acted under a mis- 
 apprehension. Didn 't you ? ' ' she asked, suddenly bend- 
 ing forward and laying a hand on Sara's knee. 
 
 "You thought I could go back," said Margaret, "per- 
 haps you think so still ? ' ' 
 
 "I'm not so sure now," hesitated Sara. 
 
 "No?" asked Margaret. "Well, you're right. It 
 isn't that all this" she pointed to the pictures "is 
 worth more to me than he is. It is that 
 
 She broke off and nodded towards the table where a 
 new novel lay open. 
 
 "You've read that?" she asked. 
 
 Sara shook her head. 
 
 "Well, it's Archer's new book. And it's a failure. 
 He's tried to put down the commonplace, every-day 
 things that make up our days. It takes a great man to 
 do that to show the commonplace and the beauty under 
 it, for when he can't show the beauty, he just shows his 
 own vulgarity." 
 
 Suddenly something in Sara broke, some pride, some 
 pity ; it has no name. 
 
 "Margaret," she cried, "think of what he was to you, 
 the man you are dissecting." 
 
 The other flushed, trembled ; she heard the tinkling fall 
 of shattered glass. All the woman in her swayed, rose 
 to her lips. Sara held out her arms. 
 
 "My dear, you do still." 
 
 "Yes, I do. But that never prevents one from see- 
 ing, you know. Not really, though one may pretend. 
 Take the plain truth ; he wasn't made to love women like
 
 344 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 you and me. He'd never find the best of life with us. 
 A little toy with tinkling jewels, a gazelle-eyed Zoraida, 
 she would give the best he could get from a woman. But 
 you and I? No. It takes a bigger man than the poor 
 knave of hearts to love you or me. ' ' 
 
 ' ' But to help ? ' ' asked Sara. ' ' Ought we not ? " 
 
 Then Margaret flashed into laughter. "My dear," 
 she said, "the Lord may have made us women prigs, 
 but He generally also makes us discover our humour on 
 the threshold of the nuptial chamber. ' ' 
 
 "No, no, no," cried Sara, "only when we approach 
 our meridian and have known many men." 
 
 "Perhaps you're right," said Margaret, rubbing the 
 tip of her nose. Then she added: "That's the devil of 
 it." 
 
 And they both laughed, being well able to, since 
 neither was a straw blown by the gale nor an ^Eolian 
 harp touched by the winds of passion. 
 
 Two days later Giovanni Guarini sat in his pleasant 
 seaward-looking room in the Breton fishing town he 
 visited every year. Plentifully bedewed with snuff, his 
 deep-wrinkled face shone with good humour. Overhead 
 hung the wonderful portrait that went everywhere with 
 him, from Russia to the States ; it was a Rembrandtesque 
 study of an old peasant woman, his mother in fact. 
 
 "She," as he would say, pointing to it, "that made me 
 what I am." 
 
 The toil-worn hands planted firmly on the knees, the 
 withered face expressed a force, a gripping power that 
 was repeated in her son; the shapeless bedgown drawn 
 across the hanging breasts hid a strength and fibre that 
 had something in it of the tenuous, yet wiry resistance 
 of the taut string. And in the eyes was the tenderness, 
 the unflinching power to face dark things that only 
 mother-eyes can show. She had known the grinding 
 poverty of a lifetime of toil, had looked on dead sons, 
 had smiled upon the living. They called the portrait
 
 METIER DE FEMME 345 
 
 Guarini's mascot. And every year he found time to 
 slip away from grand cities to live like a village crony, 
 renewing his youth in memory. 
 
 Just now the musician in him was merged in the 
 archaeologist. The parlour reeked of pipes, the air 
 hurtled with furious terms, only at the far end of the 
 stivy room the polished surface of the grand piano shone 
 like a mirror. It had, indeed, been dusted by Giovanni's 
 own big silk handkerchief ; for on it no man but his sec- 
 retary dared to lay sacrilegious hand. 
 
 "Phut! my dear Abbe," cried the great Guarini, "but 
 thou art a jester of the first rank!" He crossed his 
 hands in cosy appreciation of the other 's humour. 
 
 "I am not joking, Signor," said the Abbe Porchere. 
 ' ' I asserted it as a fact, on my faith as a genealogist and 
 historian. The line of descent of the Porcheres from 
 Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, who fought by the side of Wil- 
 liam the Norman, and was rewarded by him with a grant 
 of broad lands, is crystal clear. I," said he haughtily, 
 "am the last of the line of Bras-de-Fer." 
 
 "Thou," shrieked Guarini, snapping his fingers furi- 
 ously, "thou to give ear to a legend so palpably false. 
 Why, then, the change of name? Why Bras-de-Fer 
 to Porchere? On what dost thou found this state- 
 ment?" 
 
 "On genealogy, on documents. I am a man who be- 
 lieves in the written word, Signor. And as for the 
 change of name, bah, it is a mere bagatelle. Look at 
 the estate of my family, the estate of Ferrebras." 
 
 "Ferrebras!" cried the musician, "Ferrebras, in the 
 valley of St. Ouen! A miserable little starveling of a 
 place with nothing in it but sheep. Does a great baron 
 retire to St. Ouen?" 
 
 He snapped his fingers close to Porchere 's nose. 
 
 "The heart of the richest land in Normandy," said 
 the Abbe Porchere unmoved. "Compare the arms of 
 Bras-de-Fer and of the Porcheres. It is almost the
 
 346 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 same in both a cubit-arm erect holding in the hand a 
 sword all proper." 
 
 There hurtled through the air shouts of gules, chevron- 
 els, martlets, passant, guardant, till the household out- 
 side told its beads furiously in horror at the devils whom 
 the master was invoking. 
 
 "From canting heraldry thou canst deduce anything," 
 cried Guarini. "Besides, there is a hiatus in the line 
 of descent, and as for Porchere, 'tis naught but a female 
 swineherd. The connection is none too creditable to 
 Bras-de-Fer. " 
 
 "He trumpeteth still," cried Guarini 's man to the 
 assembled Bretons. "But," he whispered after a time, 
 "there is a lull." 
 
 And so there was for a time, till the two struck on 
 an even worse subject the question of the date of a 
 prehistoric barrow on the hill farm. Signor Guarini 
 would have it to be pre-Christian, cyst or urn-burial, 
 therefore, while Mr. Porchere was of the opposite 
 opinion. 
 
 "Pre-Christian!" shouted Guarini. 
 
 "Extended burial!" cried Mr. Porchere. 
 
 That night there was a bright moon. In the silvery 
 radiance of it two dark figures crept up the hill, one 
 with a pickaxe, the other with a spade, for the mystery 
 of Bras-de-Fer was insoluble; but a barrow can be 
 opened. 
 
 The same idea had struck them both, but the sight of 
 each other was startling. They fell back and trembled. 
 
 "You!" cried M. Porchere. 
 
 ' ' You ! ' ' cried Guarini. Then he roused himself. ' ' It 
 is well," said he, "we will work together." 
 
 They felt like ghouls when they first fell on that 
 barrow, for the noise of the pickaxe was unseemly. 
 
 "Hist!" exclaimed M. 1'Abbe at last. There was a 
 suffocating moment as a gigantic shadow approached 
 the shade, no doubt, of neolithic man. The Abbe was
 
 METIER DE FEMME 347 
 
 bald, as well as tonsured, but his fringe of hair rose. 
 
 "Ho! Ho!" shouted lungs of brass. "It's Monsieur 
 1'Abbe digging up the grave of my grandfather's old 
 mare. She'd been too fine a brood mare for aught but 
 honourable burial, so he opened the old barrow." 
 
 At these words Signor Guarini picked up his wits. 
 ' ' The old barrow, ' ' he asked, ' ' and what did thy grand- 
 father find therein when he laid in it the animal?" 
 
 "Why, an old urn with a lot of ashes." 
 
 "Then," cried the savants together, "it was pre- 
 Christian. ' ' 
 
 "You were right," cried the Abbe, "your instinct, 
 like your music, is masterly. And," he confessed gen- 
 erously, "there is a hiatus in the line of Bras-de-Fer, 
 and I have found a cubit-arm erect in no less than five 
 fields." 
 
 "Embrace me, mon ami/' said Monsieur Guarini, 
 much moved. "That madness of thine hath passed." 
 
 "But who," asked the farmer, "is to tidy up the mess 
 you've made?" 
 
 " I '11 send up a man to-morrow, ' ' said Guarini, taking 
 snuff and joyously seizing the Abbe by the arm. They 
 returned to the town in love and good fellowship. 
 Hence it befell that the Italian received the news in 
 all good humour when they told him that an English 
 madame was waiting for him and would take no refusal. 
 He bent his shaggy brows over the card. 
 
 "As sure," said he, "as the Lord made little apples, 
 this is Sara Hereford, la petite Sara, come back from 
 the tomb of wedlock. Send in champagne and cakelets 
 and go, all of ye, to bed. ' ' 
 
 "So, so," he cried, clasping his visitor's hands and 
 leading her over to the light, "it is. And the husband* 
 He is dead?" 
 
 Sara laughed gaily at his joy in Bellew 's demise. 
 
 "Not quite that," she said, and told her story. 
 
 "Ha!" cried he, "you want to come back?" Then,
 
 348 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 suddenly darting forth a claw, he shook a forefinger at 
 her. 
 
 "And what has done it, this?" 
 
 She tried to tell him. 
 
 "So," said he, "the lover remains. Ho! Hum! the 
 lover remains." 
 
 He was twisting his mouth into wry shapes like an 
 india-rubber baby in the fingers of an urchin. 
 
 "Now, play," he commanded, "play what pleases 
 you." 
 
 When she had finished he leant forward and tapped 
 her on the knee three times. 
 
 "So," he said, "you come here, you who have lost 
 the good time of your life, and you say, teach me 
 to make music. You haf been disappointed in lof. 
 Heinf Isn't it so? Now would you have come to me 
 if this second man had what you call opened his 
 arms?" He turned himself into a spread-eagle. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "No, say you. Then if he comes back, you give up 
 this, your pis aller and leave poor Guarini in the lurch. 
 No, Madame Sara, not on these terms. ' ' 
 
 "Wait," she said, "listen. Year by year, we are 
 taught, we women, to live by love that it is our 
 highest word. I believed it till I was shaken out of the 
 belief. He, my lover, had his work, the thing he was 
 made to do. He put it first, before me. Oh, I know ; he 
 said it was that 7 had not made up my mind. But I had 
 and he knew it. He was not willing to be distracted 
 from the thing there was before him to do, by me. I 
 was a bird in hand. He would not take me. There 
 would have been fuss, lawyers, letter-writing. He 
 would not have been left with a mind free to his task. 
 I saw for the first time my place in the scheme of 
 things. But it was the right place. I am only a light 
 woman till I can do my work. I ask you to help me to 
 it. If you won't, I go to another."
 
 METIER DE FEMME 349 
 
 He was silent, for he was not of those who dare to 
 quench the smoking flax. 
 
 "But he will come back," he said at last. 
 
 "And if so," she said, "it will be but a secret place 
 of joy for us, a little more of life for me to play into my 
 music. Do you not know how love lives? By those 
 who love remaining lovers. It is not the menage a deux 
 I live for. I should still do my work." 
 
 "But, per Bacco, there may be bambini." 
 
 "Will they be the worse for a mother who works?" 
 
 "And that same is what nobody knows," answered 
 he grimly. " It 's for you and your like to prove it. ' ' 
 
 "Then help me. Give me the chance. Ah, Master, 
 forget it is a woman. ' ' 
 
 "I'm not likely to do that," he said, lifting the light 
 so that it fell on the old woman's face. "She worked," 
 he said softly; "I've seen her carrying home the fire- 
 wood, a fagot twice her size, lips tight-pressed, thin 
 strong arms like bands of iron. Ah, Madre mia!" he 
 cried. "I was born with a black eye from his kick, 
 my father." 
 
 "Help me, Master," said Sara, as they stood gazing 
 up at the old peasant mother. 
 
 "And you'll be looking to do something to show what 
 women can do, thinking of all the others whom custom 
 binds, enslaves, makes toys of? Hey, Madonna?" 
 
 "Yes, yes, yes," she answered with shining eyes. 
 
 Suddenly he altered his tone. "But," he said, "the 
 thing you want to serve is above all these things. Art 
 is no luxury, least of all is music; it is the thing by 
 which man learns to conquer life. High, hard service, 
 it demands. I play the buffoon to forget for an hour. 
 Only for an hour, though. Look you; civilisation gives 
 power, wealth, ease, leisure to the few. And what does 
 all this make them? Beasts, hogs, swine. The things 
 they have created conquer them. The one man who 
 puts them all beneath his feet is the artist and only
 
 350 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 too often he succumbs. Poets, artists, writers, down 
 they go before the riot of life. Then they are no longer 
 artists. For four-square above ease and luxury and 
 passion the artist must stand. 
 
 "Can you do this? True, you would only be an in- 
 terpreter, but you would want it all, all the power, none 
 the less. And you, a woman, have, above all other 
 causes of weakness, to breast the waves of centuries of 
 inbred indolence. Can you? Can you?" 
 
 He was speaking in Italian ; she answered in the same 
 tongue. 
 
 "I can. I will." 
 
 "Then three years of study, alone. In Germany 
 and in mine own land. I will o'erwatch, will send you 
 where you can find what you want. But no folly, no 
 weakness of the woman, no lover! And no starvation; 
 the artist must be ascetic in the midst of luxury; must 
 breathe Sicilian air and still be of the mountain tops. 
 'And I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me'; 
 that is true of the artist, but he must first be lifted up. 
 Can you follow this high path ? ' ' 
 
 She thought an instant; walked to the window and 
 flung up the sash. The sound of the sea filled the 
 room. 
 
 "And if I fail?" she asked, turning round, "if you 
 cannot make me what you think you may?" 
 
 "Madonna," he answered gently, "if I believed that 
 any effort is ever lost, I should not be able to live. I 
 do not know how they do live who believe we cease to be 
 of the Great Breath when the little breath we borrowed 
 passes no more through our nostrils. I have seen so 
 many fail here." 
 
 "But I have no money now." 
 
 "It shall be found. You will pay it back some time. 
 And if not, not. ' ' 
 
 Sara remembered the night at Craneham when Anne
 
 METIER DE FEMME 351 
 
 had borrowed a loan of Billy; she was ending where 
 Anne had begun. 
 
 She put out her hand to the old man : ' ' It is yes ? ' ' 
 asked he. 
 
 And it was yes.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LA SALLE DES PAS PERDUS ; IN THIS ANNE SEES A VISION, 
 GUARINI PAYS A DEBT AND BELLEW VIEWS A LOST LAND. 
 
 IT was four years later. As the hansom scraped the 
 kerbstone Bellew's glance fell full on a woman who 
 was standing on the bottom step of the hall ; he saw that 
 it was Margaret Rossiter. With a bound and a bow he 
 was by her side ; she held out her hand cordially. Grey 
 fog, shot with sunshine, hid the street vistas ; in the clop- 
 clop of the horses' feet, the scent of violets and the 
 iridescence of the air there was a sense of ease and 
 pleasure. It carried the man and woman away with it 
 on a wave of joy. Bellew handed his fare to the cabby 
 and took tickets for himself and Margaret. 
 
 It was Sara's first performance in London after her 
 three years' training and would be the last for a time, 
 since in the autumn she was billed for the States. For 
 the old fox, Guarini, had not sported in the sea of suc- 
 cess for forty years without knowing the lie of quick- 
 sands, shoals and vigias. For a year he had piloted 
 Sara from capital to capital; there now remained but 
 London, the centre of a country that still every first 
 day of the week makes ghastly noises on harmoniums 
 because it is the Sabbath. England, as he knew, still 
 bows to nothing but a reputation. Nor can even a great 
 master draw the same crowd twice, since he is regarded 
 much as a freak show. In London, then, Guarini had 
 starred the boards with his own name, thus securing an 
 audience for Madame Sara. 
 
 From window to window across the heads of the 
 audience stretched shafts of silver fog, the dancing 
 
 352
 
 , LA SALLE DES PAS PERDUS 353 
 
 place for motes. Margaret sank down in her seat with 
 a sigh of pleasure. 
 
 "Looks well," said Bellew, nodding at the serried 
 rows. 
 
 "Guarini, that means," answered she. 
 
 "It is Sara's show, though," said he, after a glance 
 at his programme. 
 
 " Guarini 's cunning, I mean," she laughed. "They 
 come to see him, but it is Sara they will really hear. 
 And billed together! Just think of what that means 
 to her." 
 
 Out of the corners of her eyes she noted him; lean, 
 lithe, tanned, with the quality of control in his glance. 
 Sara had been right; to a man of his calibre outward 
 conformity coupled with inward revolt had been the 
 source of nothing but degradation. Also his life in the 
 East was evidently more to his taste ; his work had been 
 better, more finished, with a command of irony he had 
 not shown before. Most men, in fact, write better of 
 English life away from England, in lands where one 
 may draw breath without taking lessons on the scientific 
 and moral aspect of the breathing apparatus. 
 
 Yet they were not free, he and Sara, since the law 
 could offer nothing but judicial separation, a thing 
 which a woman of power can perfectly well obtain, for 
 all practical purposes, for herself. 
 
 "Look, Peter," said Anne, touching her husband's 
 arm as she caught sight of Margaret. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Westlake had only just managed to catch a noon train 
 from the midlands, for Anne's practice was a large 
 one. Now, with nerves thrilling like the strings of a 
 violin, she waited for Sara's appearance. The sisters 
 had not met for four years. 
 
 "Oh," she cried, "how wild it makes me to think 
 that they should force a woman like Sara to go through 
 the divorce court as the guilty one to carve out an 
 honest life for them all. Why in the world didn't
 
 354 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 Bellew create a scandal? Then there 'd have been de- 
 sertion and unfaithfulness on his side." 
 
 "That," said Peter, nodding towards Margaret and 
 Archer, "will never be." 
 
 "And what does that matter? Is Sara herself never 
 to be free?" 
 
 "She will be soon," said he; "Billy lands in a few 
 days. ' ' 
 
 "And Sara Sara to be the one to have to go 
 through the mud for all their sakes. I tell you, I see 
 red." 
 
 "Never mind. She's above it all now," said Peter. 
 
 "Nobody is above, in the sense you mean," snapped 
 Anne. 
 
 But from the shadows at the back of the platform, 
 a figure had emerged into the light. It was Guarini, 
 standing with one hand on the Bechstein. As the house 
 rose at him, Anne's eyes filled with sudden tears. She 
 had caught, as one may when the cloud-cap of routine 
 lifts for a second, a glimpse of the awful contrast be- 
 tween the top and bottom of the ladder that we call the 
 human. Her last night had been spent in the chamber 
 of birth; between the squalid, pain-haunted gateway of 
 life and the power in that punchinello figure, what a 
 distance to be traversed! 
 
 Soon Sara was playing the Kreutzer Sonata; since 
 Mrs. Woodruffe's party much water had flowed under 
 the bridge. Old Vin had not lived to see his daughter's 
 genius proved by aught but a moral lapse, and Eliza- 
 beth had soon followed him. 
 
 Anne leant forward and looked at the rows of women ; 
 there were delicate faces flushed and alive; older, 
 stronger faces set and almost hard. And here Sara 
 played the Kreutzer, leading them all into the cloudy 
 overworld; there gleamed Margaret Rossiter's white 
 hair ; last week the nation had bought a picture of hers. 
 The power of women like these two only cast the darker
 
 LA SALLE DES PAS PERDUS 355 
 
 shadow on those others women sold by millions to base 
 marriage because no other trade is open to them, women 
 kept behind locked doors in this very city to feed the 
 vilest lusts, women sold as slaves to the hells of far-off 
 continents, a trade that no civilised nation ever lifts 
 effective hands to stop. Women everywhere exploited. 
 
 These and those. 
 
 Anne threw herself in prayer right up the stairway to 
 the feet of God for those women bound by the tyranny 
 of bygone centuries to the vile service of sex. And to 
 her thought came answer : ' ' Lo, I make all things new. ' ' 
 For love, the furtive thing that drags its slime through 
 gutter and church alike, shall one day be but the in- 
 spiration to new life. 
 
 She quivered and trembled, till Peter slipped a hand 
 in hers and her mind flew to her own hard-working days, 
 to her boy at home. It was good to fight, to feel the 
 courage to live in every vein. 
 
 Margaret Rossiter was better able to appreciate what 
 Guarini had done, to realise the inexplicable blending 
 of all the human tones in Sara's playing, as unlike as 
 possible from Guarini's aerial, half -unearthly music. 
 He was for the gnomes and sprites of the overwork!; 
 she was blood-fast, racial. In her playing the old went 
 back to memories; the young, forward into the future. 
 For Sara's playing dealt with the song the race sings to 
 the soul; old, half -forgotten things, the glory that 
 touches us in the taste of apples, in the dripping of the 
 wine-press, in the smell of earth. 
 
 "He has helped her to find herself," said Bellew, as 
 Guarini led her forward at the end. 
 
 To the old musician, as Sara knew, the work he had 
 done was but paying back to her, the woman, the debt 
 he owed to another woman, the bent, grey-haired mother, 
 with the scarred and knotted hands who, bruised and 
 beaten, had yet given him life. 
 
 "Madonna," said he, "it went well."
 
 356 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 That was better than all the plaudits of the crowd. 
 
 "And now," he continued, "for Monsieur 1'Abbe Por- 
 chere, the old rascal. Such things he's been saying!" 
 
 For Guarini wanted a holiday badly. 
 
 In the artists' room Bellew sought Sara. He found 
 her in the midst of a crowd that instinctively made way 
 for him. They had not met since the night at Crane- 
 ham that was still so vivid in their memories. In the 
 green flash of his eyes, Sara read his passion; it was 
 hatred that swayed him. momentarily, the hatred of find- 
 ing himself thrust aside. For this woman, all sufficient 
 in mail of power, was his wife, yet not his wife. 
 
 He murmured words of congratulation to which 
 neither listened. Then she led the way to the embrasure 
 of a window where they could talk unheard. 
 
 "You understood why I left?" she asked. 
 
 "Quite," said he curtly. 
 
 "Are you sure?" she asked. 
 
 And when he was silent, she went on: 
 
 "I wanted to put wrong, right. I tried. I failed. 
 Then I knew that I must make my own place." 
 
 His eyes darkened curiously, for his instincts were 
 those of an honest man. He had never doubted Sara's 
 intentions in any one way. To him she was never a light 
 woman. 
 
 He told her so. 
 
 "But I must be free for your sake, for all our sakes," 
 she cried; "there is but one way. We will none of us 
 live with maimed lives that we can make whole." 
 
 Forcing back the words that would have sounded like 
 a taunt, he said: 
 
 "But he?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, "he is ready. And you will release 
 us." 
 
 Anger flashed again in his eyes. "You see," he said 
 cruelly, "after all, whatever you may dare, you must 
 fall back on me in the end. 7 have the casting vote."
 
 LA SALLE DBS PAS PEBDUS 357 
 
 He felt as though he had whipped her, as she stood, 
 shivering like a thoroughbred, yet quiet. But it was 
 true, so damnably true. 
 
 "Forgive me," he cried. "Of course you ought to 
 be free. Believe me, iny dear, if there were any possible 
 way left me that I could take to free you without your 
 going through the courts, I would. But you must. 
 Oh, Sara, I'm sorry." 
 
 They shook hands, wide-eyed, like two children. 
 Then it struck him that there was another way out. 
 He hurried away to Margaret and found her in her 
 flat, drinking tea and gazing at the cosy little fire she 
 had lit for companionship. They were very silent for 
 a long while, till Margaret roused herself to tell him 
 that the logs on the fire-dogs were just wreckage. She 
 had, by luck, heard of a ship-load for sale. 
 
 " Margaret," asked he at last, "have you forgiven 
 me?" 
 
 "Of course. Long ago," she answered, "I was taken 
 up by a big wave and tossed ashore. But I made shift 
 to crawl to safety. That's where those came from " 
 she nodded at her paintings. "In every woman's life 
 that's worth while there's a secret niche where stands 
 an angel, called Pain." 
 
 He moved uneasily. 
 
 "It's worse for the man," said he, "for he cannot 
 repair. ' ' 
 
 She laughed, understanding him thoroughly. 
 
 "No, thank God," she said, "for if a woman's got to 
 be skinned, she needn 't be boiled as well. Take the plain 
 truth. You and I were no more suitable than oil and 
 water. You showed more wisdom then than in all your 
 life before and after." 
 
 "Then you wouldn't marry me now if I asked you?" 
 he blurted out. 
 
 "Gracious, no," said she. 
 
 Her answer was so genuinely frank that he laughed.
 
 358 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 "And, really," she said, "I believe I get the best of it 
 as it is. I work with men, live with them en bon cama- 
 rade. And what good fellows they are, that way. But 
 most women never know them so. That's why they de- 
 spise them. For, believe me, my dear, the face men 
 turn to the women they love is mostly a satyr's. And 
 that's the truth." 
 
 Margaret came back from seeing him off with a smile 
 on her lips. She threw herself into a chair and blew 
 smoke wreaths from her mouth, her eye-corner folds 
 a-twinkle like the spokes of a celestial, but diminutive, 
 cart-wheel. 
 
 At last there came a bang at the door and a lugubrious 
 man's voice, saying: 
 
 "Do come and tell me what you think. The damned 
 thing won't come right no how." 
 
 It was the bearded, ruffianly-looking painter upstairs, 
 and at the end of an evening spent in comforting a pal, 
 Margaret tumbled, too tired to think, into bed. The 
 caretaker's baby was wailing below. 
 
 "Ah, the blessed bambino," cried she, screwing up 
 her face at the night-light. "That's the worst of it. 
 But I'll have one. Why not? As sure as the Lord 
 sends the women, and the devil, the men, I will. For, 
 in the words of Genefer Eosdew, if the tree doesn't 
 drop its apples, you must shake it. I will." 
 
 And she did. Quite respectably, too, for she found 
 a verminous little beast whom the good Breton fisher- 
 folk had taught to sing "Vive I' amour: Vive le vin," at 
 the age of three. So la petite Amourette (Heaven save 
 us!) became the bebe of the English mademoiselle. 
 
 But by the time he reached the bottom of Mademoi- 
 selle's stairs, Archer Bellew was laughing and congratu- 
 lating himself on his luck. For these Englishwomen 
 were terrible, so self-sufficient, so egotistic, so damnably 
 up and down in their straightforward desire to make 
 the most of their lives.
 
 359 
 
 An'd far away over in Biskra there was the shadow 
 of palm trees, the call of the muezzin, the midday rest ; 
 it lured him, that land, as home calls the wanderer. 
 There, too, were beautiful, simple women, with adora- 
 tion in their eyes. Were he but free, he would settle 
 there. 
 
 And soon he was free.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 EPITHALAMIUM : IN THIS HEAVEN LIGHTS THE TORCHES 
 OF THE SKY 
 
 T3ETWEEN huge slabs of granite overgrown with 
 -*-* moss and fern grew stunted oaks, their gnarled 
 and knotted trunks half hidden with carpeting of whort- 
 bushes. In the warm, scented wind the tree branches 
 waved above the woodland gloom that was dappled with 
 points of gold. Everywhere was light and movement, 
 thrilling upwards from the breast of earth towards the 
 sun's caress. A single robin's note floated through the 
 heat and light, its sweet loneliness the very spirit of 
 the waste. 
 
 For the oak wood is at the foot of Black Tor, looking 
 towards the valley where the West Okement slips by 
 sand-edged pools and rushing falls between a gorge 
 buried deep in mountain-ash and purple heather. At 
 the head is the wild moor towards Great Kneeset with 
 its dun stretches of ling, a mantle of brown fur, broken 
 here and there by solitary thorn bushes white with 
 bloom and odorous with heavy scent. Lonely points 
 that catch the eye and offer harbourage for the grey 
 cuckoos of this June time, they speak, even now, of 
 winds and suns, of beating rains and the scurry of 
 the snow in the long winter nights. 
 
 Sara sat outside the wood; at her feet was a moor- 
 land pool, brown with peat and yellow with the glinting 
 gold of a reflected gorse bush. Behind her, in the tent 
 doorway, lay a long blue-grey boar-hound, its sharp 
 pointed snout resting on delicate, arching feet. 
 
 The day advanced; over Amicombe the sun spread a 
 360
 
 EPITHALAMIUM 361 
 
 delicate golden green, turning the hill into a dark 
 shadow along which the creeping clouds passed like a 
 breath. Between a mass of boulders, a ewe sheltered 
 with her lambs. On the sky-line a cropping horse 
 seemed cut in bronze. Against the sheltering bastion 
 of the hill the wind broke and rebounded like the sea 
 tearing at a cliff. 
 
 Soon the noises of the night began ; the river rose and 
 fell like a vast in-breathing and out-breathing. Day- 
 light and starlight met. A hawk, flying over the moor, 
 passed so close that the oarage of its wings was plainly 
 audible. From side to side of the valley the night- jars 
 answered one another, while the purple darkness of the 
 valley rose higher and higher, up past the hillside, to 
 the star-strewn dome above. 
 
 Then there came an unwonted sound ; the dog growled, 
 pricked his ears. It was the noise made by a steel-point 
 that strikes a rock. Sara, rising, stood with her hand 
 on the dog's collar. It was sweet in that solitude to 
 feel the bristling muscles of his neck. Her keen sight, 
 used to the dimness, discerned a moving point among 
 the boulders. It was a man climbing over the hill by 
 the help of an alp en-stock. She turned back to the 
 tent and lit the lamp that its rays might guide the 
 leaping, goat-like figure to the wood. Outside in 
 the stillness she could hear the wind along the moor and 
 the stealthy rustle of snake or stoat gliding through the 
 bracken. But deeper than all was the sound of her 
 racing blood that not even the wind could cool. Bare- 
 footed, she clung to the ground, as though the whirling 
 ball beneath her feet claimed a surer clasp. 
 
 For a moment he stood in the zone of light from 
 the tent door. Sparkles of fire seemed to pass from 
 his eyes to hers. He must have gone to Mrs. Bodinar 
 for direction; her cottage deep in black dust and "all 
 of a caddie" came back to Sara. She smiled at the 
 recollection with sudden gaiety.
 
 362 WINGS OF DESIRE 
 
 She was astonished at the homely feeling brought by 
 the touch of his arms, for all the tender memories of a 
 lifetime seemed gathered there: the sudden sight of a 
 little rag doll that Anne and she had played with as 
 children had brought the same sensation. 
 
 "My dear, my dear,'* she cried, and laughing, re- 
 joiced in his strength as he lifted her face to his. The 
 dog sniffed cautiously, licked their hands and gravely 
 followed them up the pathway of light to the tent door. 
 
 Every sound was very distant now; mouse and bird 
 were silent, only the rising and falling of the river 
 seemed like the breathing of the earth. Low and white 
 against the darkness of the wood shone the little tent. 
 
 "Are you sure?" asked she, turning back to him. 
 
 "Sure," answered he and lifted her over the thresh- 
 old. Then, seeing a trouble in her eyes, he asked: 
 
 "Sara, what is it, tell me?" 
 
 "We must pay, you know," she answered. "Shall 
 you mind? For what they may say to our children 
 of their mother?" 
 
 "Should I be here, if I minded?" he asked. 
 
 And she bowed her head, for like a wonderful tree 
 of life, their mutual trust in each other's honour bore 
 but their love and passion as a flower. 
 
 "He will free us, will he not?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes," she said quietly. 
 
 Then Anne's thought came for, after all, this road 
 they had to tread was in the eyes of most but a muddy 
 track. 
 
 "This," she said brokenly, "that to us is glorious 
 and to so many, but a shame. ' ' 
 
 He was silent. Then he said at last : 
 
 "But, we have not failed them, those others." 
 
 "They will say so," she answered. 
 
 "But," he held her hands and looking down on her, 
 asked: "Cannot we two, at any rate, look below the 
 shows?"
 
 EPITHALAMIUM 363 
 
 It is to be hoped that they could; for to look below 
 was, as they very well knew, their sole justification. 
 
 All the while the dog lay across the doorway, clasp- 
 ing in his delicate, long-nailed forefeet a bone he had 
 stored in the bracken. He held it upright and sucked 
 it at intervals as one may take pulls at an empty pipe. 
 Then he leapt to his feet, for Sara had come to the door. 
 There held by Billy's encircling arm, she stood looking 
 out; the Milky Way, a cross of starry gauze, lay low 
 across their home. It had lain across Craneham that 
 night when Archer spoke. The moor-wind sighed along 
 the waste. 
 
 Boris also sighed, for supper in those days was noth- 
 ing accounted of. Surely the Signer Guarini, in hand- 
 ing him over to a woman, had never contemplated this 
 weary endurance of an empty belly? Then, at last, the 
 humans remembered, the joyful clatter of plates began 
 and the hound recovered his spirits. 
 
 Hours later, he got up, stretched, lay down again and 
 watched the night fade. It was the time when sleeping 
 beast and bird turn in their rest, the one hour in the 
 twenty-four when the onward rush of the earth through 
 space may be felt. In the pale primrose of the sky the 
 stars were fading; from the horizon pulsing waves of 
 colour poured into the valleys. The black shadows 
 which had crouched beneath the sky all night were, 
 after all, but marking the presence of the Eternal Hills. 
 
 For the dawn was at hand. 
 
 THE END
 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
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 "A splendid book." Tribune. 
 
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 " Far above the general level of contemporary fiction. A work of 
 unusual power." Professor William Lyon Phelps. 
 
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 A Romance of the Devonshire Moors
 
 THE RED LANTERN 
 
 BY 
 
 EDITH WHERRY 
 
 Cloth 12mo $1.30 net Po*toe, 12 cents 
 
 "The author displays such a measure of familiarity with the Chinese 
 capital and the mental processes of the people that the book carries con- 
 siderable psychological and historical value." Springfield Republican. 
 
 "A lively and quick story of the Boxer uprising and the struggles 
 of a Eurasian woman." Neiv York Sun. 
 
 "The story has a mysterious flavor that grows upon the reader; 
 the end is dramatically fitting." Detroit Free Press. 
 
 "The story is well handled in plot, characterization and atmos- 
 phere, and adds one more important book to those dealing with modern 
 Eastern life. " New Orleans Picayune. 
 
 "Something new and entertaining." Louisville Post. 
 
 "The customs, passions and superstitions of the mystic Orient are 
 here brought into strong relief in a romantic tale of aspiration and 
 adventure." Philadelphia North American. 
 
 "With great skill a love romance is interwoven. As a picture of 
 the life and times, this book has no peer." 
 
 Rochester Union and Advertiser. 
 
 "A book that takes us into a life apart from anything that we have 
 known and gives us a sense of the chasm that opens between the yellow 
 race and the white. Shows a rather uncommon power of visualisation 
 and justifies us in placing it on the list of those that are distinctly worth 
 while. " The Bookman. 
 
 "There is a remarkable power in the description of scenes con- 
 nected with the Boxer uprising, and the novel is noteworthy, too, for 
 character delineation. The story takes rank for excellence of style as 
 well as for interest of subject matter." Newark Evening News. 
 
 John Lane Company 
 
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 NEW YORK
 
 PERPETUA 
 
 BY 
 
 DION CLAYTON CALTHROP 
 
 12mo. Cloth. $1.30 net Postage, 12 cents 
 
 "A fantastic tale of studio and travel life in Europe with 
 a diminutive model as the heroine. Perpetua is a charming 
 personality and distinctly worth reading about. " 
 
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 ment and gentle humor and quiet pathos as to afford genuine 
 refreshment to the world-weary spirit; and, withal, endowed 
 with a good plot, well handled." Chicago Record-Herald 
 
 That indefinable, elusive quality called style, atmosphere 
 what you will holds your heart strings in an unrelaxing 
 grip. One does not often hit upon a book like 'Perpetua,' 
 and when one does one should treasure it." 
 
 New York Herald 
 
 "The whole is finely woven, making a compact, beauti- 
 ful story, with a wonderful girl as the central character. 
 ' Perpetua' is a romance that will allow no reader to relax his 
 attention until the final words are scanned." 
 
 Philadelphia Record 
 
 "A genial humor permeates this likeable little story." 
 
 Detroit Free Press 
 
 "The story is written in beautiful, poetic language, and 
 is replete with exquisite, fanciful ideas and descriptions. As 
 sweet and charming as its own piquant heroine full of a 
 tender humor and a happy irresponsibility that are irresistible. ' ' 
 
 Pittsburg Dispatch 
 
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 NOVELS BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS 
 
 Demeter's Daughter 
 
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 "Man or woman's soul contains little that is not explored by Mr. 
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 little short of marvellous. Not to have read 'Demeter's Daughter' 
 is not to know Eden Phillpotts." Boston Evening Transcript. 
 
 The Thief of Virtue Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 
 
 "A veritable page from the history of humanity. Marvellously 
 real are his people. " Newark Evening News. 
 
 "The Balzac of Dartmoor. "New York World. 
 
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 of canvas and absolute truth to life are the primary qualities of great 
 realistic fiction, Mr. Phillpotts is one of the greatest novelists of our 
 day." Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
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 of the thoughts of men, and, best of all, his skill in the telling of a 
 story, are at the highest." Boston Transcript. 
 
 Tales of the Tenements Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 
 
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 background." The Argonaut. 
 
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 "Mr. Phillpotts is an accomplished poet, who in his new volume, 
 'Wild Fruit,' carries forward the torch dropped by Swinburne and 
 Meredith. In verse as in prose Mr. Phillpotts is an artist. " 
 
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 John Lane Company 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 NEW YORK
 
 DOLF WYLLARDE 
 
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 of Kipling in the good old days of Plain Tales from the Hills." 
 
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 A Romance of Jamaica 
 
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 subject matter is like 'The Helpmate.* " Springfield Republican. 
 
 As Ye Have Sown 
 
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 Captain Amyas 
 
 ' ' Masterly. ' * San Francisco Examiner. 
 
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 The Rat Trap 
 
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 Rose- White Youth 
 
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 The Pathway of the Pioneer 
 
 %* The story of seven girls who have banded themselves together 
 for mutual help and cheer under the name of "Nous Autres." 
 They represent, collectively, the professions open to women of no 
 deliberate training, though well-educated. They are introduced to 
 the reader at one of their weekly gatherings and then the author 
 proceeds to depict the home and business life of each one individ- 
 ually. 
 
 Tropical Tales 
 
 *** A collection of short stories dealing with "all sorts and con- 
 ditions" of men and women in all classes of life ; some of the 
 tales sounding the note of joy and happiness; others portraying the 
 pathetic, and even the shady side of life ; all written in the interest- 
 ing manner characteristic of the author. 
 
 The Riding Master. Cloth. 12mo. $1.50
 
 MAUD DIVER 
 
 A TRILOGY OF ANGLO-INDIAN 
 ARMY LIFE 
 
 New York Times: "Above the multitude of novels (erotic and 
 neurotic) hers shine like stars. She has produced a comprehensive 
 and full drama of life, rich in humanity; noble, satisfying it is not too 
 much to say great. " 
 
 (New Editions) 
 
 CANDLES IN THE WIND 
 
 CAPTAIN DESMOND, V. C. 
 
 THE GREAT AMULET 
 
 Cloth, tamo. $1.30 each 
 
 The Argonaut (San Francisco): " We doubt if any other writer 
 gives us so composite and convincing a picture of that curious mixture 
 of soldier and civilian that makes up Indian society. She shows us the 
 life of the country from many standpoints, giving us the idea of a store- 
 house of experience so well stocked that incidents can be selected with 
 a fastidious and dainty care." 
 
 London Morning Post: " Vigor of characterization accompanied by 
 an admirable terseness and simplicity of expression." 
 
 Literary World: "Undoubtedly some of the finest novels that 
 Indian life has produced." 
 
 London Telegraph: " Some sincere pictures of Indian life which are 
 as real and convincing as any which have entered into the pages of 
 fiction." 
 
 The Chicago Tribune: " The characterization is excellent and her 
 presentation of frontier life and of social conditions produces a strong 
 impression of truth." 
 
 Boston Evening Transcript: " Knows absolutely the life that she 
 depicts. Her characters are excellently portrayed." 
 
 Chicago Record Herald: " Well told; the humanizaticn good and 
 the Indian atmosphere, always dramatic, is effectively depicted. Holds 
 the attention without a break." 
 
 Toronto Mail: Real imagination, force, and power. Rudyard 
 Kipling and imitators have shown us the sordid side of this social life. 
 It remains for Mrs. Diver to depict tender-hearted men and brave, true 
 women. Her work is illuminated by flashes of spiritual insight that 
 one longs to hold in memory."
 
 THE COMPLETE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM J. LOCKE 
 
 "LIFE IS A GLORIOUS THING." W. J. Locke 
 
 "If you wish to be lifted out of the petty cares of to-day, read one 
 of Locke's novels. You may select any from the following titles 
 and be certain of meeting some new and delightful friends. His 
 characters are worth knowing. " Baltimore Sun. 
 
 The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne The Demagogue and Lady Phayre 
 
 At the Gate of Samaria The Beloved Vagabond 
 
 A Study in Shadows The White Dove 
 
 Simon the Jester The Usurper 
 
 Where Love Is Septimus 
 
 Derelicts Idols 
 
 The Glory of Clementina 
 
 12mo. Cloth. $1.50 each 
 
 Thirteen volumes bound in green cloth. Uniform edition in box. 
 $19.00 per set. Half Morocco $50.00 net. Expreis prepaid. 
 
 Simon the Jester 
 
 (Profusely illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg) 
 "It has all the charm and surprise of his famous ' Simple Septimus.' 
 It is a novel full of wit and action and life. The characters are all 
 out-of-the-ordinary and splendidly depicted; and the end is an 
 artistic triumph a fitting climax for a story that's full of charm 
 and surprise." American Magazine. 
 
 The Beloved Vagabond 
 
 " *The Beloved Vagabond* is a gently-written, fascinating tale. 
 Make his acquaintance some dreary, rain-soaked evening and find 
 the vagabond nerve-thrilling in your own heart. " 
 
 Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 SeptimtlS (Illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg) 
 
 "Septimus is the joy of the year. " American Magazine. 
 
 The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne 
 
 " One of those rare and much-to-be-desired stories which keep one 
 divided between an interested impatience to get on and an irresis- 
 tible temptation to linger for full enjoyment by the way." Life. 
 
 Where Love Is 
 
 " One of those unusual novels of which the end is as good as the 
 beginning. " Ne t w York Globe.
 
 GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 
 
 " Always entertaining. " Neiv York Evening Sun. 
 "Always original. "Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Heretics 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 12 cent: 
 
 "His thinking is as sane as his language is brilliant." 
 
 Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 Orthodoxy. Uniform with " Heretics." 
 
 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 12 cents 
 "A work of genius.** Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 All Things Considered 
 
 Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 12 cents 
 
 " Full of the author's abundant vitality, wit and unflinching opti- 
 mism." Book News. 
 
 George Bernard Shaw. A Biography 
 
 Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 net. Postage 12 cents 
 
 "It is a facinating portrait study and I am proud to have been the 
 painter's model." George Bernard Shaw in The Nation (London). 
 
 The Napoleon of Netting Hill. A Romance. With 
 Illustrations by GRAHAM ROBERTSON 
 
 Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 
 
 "A brilliant piece of satire, gemmed with ingenious paradox. 
 Every page is pregnant with vitality." Boston Herald. 
 
 The Ball and the Cross Cloth. 12mo. $1.50 
 
 "The most strikingly original novel of the present season. It is 
 studded with intellectual brilliants. Its satire is keener than that of 
 Bernard Shaw. Behind all this foolery there shines the light of 
 Truth. A brilliant piece of satire a gem that sparkles from any 
 point of view the reader may choose to regard it. ' ' 
 
 San Francisco Bulletin.
 
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