GOVENDE 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 KRS. BEATRICE 
 
 SAWDAY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/brokeofcovendenOOsnaiiala 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
BROKE of COVENDEN 
 
 BY 
 
 J. C. SNAITH 
 
 Author of ^'- Mistress Dorothy Marvin" *-*- Jraminta,' 
 '-^Fortune" ^^Mrs. Fitz" etc. 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 

 TO 
 
 s. c 
 
 691321 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Presents an English Gentleman in the Bosom op his 
 Family ........ 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 A Matrimonial Martyr on the Tragic Themb . • 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Which the Judicious are exhorted to Skip . , 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Lord Chesterfield to his Son . . . , 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 A Private View of the Feudal Spirit , . 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Foreshadows the Need for a Hero and a Heroine 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Le NoUVEAU REGIME 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Enter the True Prince in the Guise of a Dustman 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Startling Development of the Heroine. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Tact : with Sidelights on the Sovereign Quality 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 In the Temple of Diana .... 
 
 5 
 
 26 
 40 
 
 Sa 
 63 
 
 75 
 
 88 
 
 103 
 
 "5 
 
 127 
 
 139 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XII PAGB 
 
 Maud Waylino , , 146 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 Affords the Spectacle of a Woman of the World coping 
 
 WITH Difficulties ..... 165 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 In which a Bomb is deposited right in the Middle of our 
 
 Harmonious Narrative ...... 178 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 L'Egoisme k Deux ........ i8j 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 The Nobleman out of the Novelette . . . . 199 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 An Excursion into Sentiment ..... 212 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 A Short Excursus ; and a Conversation apropos of 
 
 Nothing ......... 224 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 Two ON A Tower . . .... 239 
 
 CHAPTER XX . 
 Preparations for Comedy ....... 255 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 In which our First Comedian makes his Bow before an 
 
 appreciative Audience .... 262 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 The Jumping of the Lesser Wits .... 277 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 A Descent into the Avernus of Broad Farcb . , , 287 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 In which Mr. Burchell cries " Fudge I '' . . . 303 
 
 6 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXV page 
 
 Iphigenia . ... . . . . 318 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 In which Two Matrimonial Richmonds take the Field . 326 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Opportunities for a little Moral Teaching . . . 344 
 
 CHAPTER XXViil 
 Pariah in the Name of Love . .... 353 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 Two Women . .... 366 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 In the Maelstrom 
 
 373 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 In which our Hero takes down his Battle-axb . . 381 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 Rencounter between a Dogcart and an Omnibus . 394 
 
 CHAPTER XXXITI 
 Tribulations of a middle-aged Peer at the Hands of 
 
 Woman . . ... 398 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 Providential Behaviour of old Pearcb .... 412 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 In which we find oub First Comedian once more in a 
 
 Happy Vein .... 427 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 Enter a Messenger from the Courts of Hymem . . 435 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 The Lady Bosket at Home ..... 446 
 
 7 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII pagh 
 
 In which Mr. Breffit thb Younger puts a Hyphen to his 
 
 Name ... 462 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 The Last Night . .... 477 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 In which Mr. Breffit the Elder writes off another Little 
 
 Item of his Account . . . . ^83 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 RiEN n'est Sacr£ pour UN Sapeur 
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 Barbed Wire. 
 
 494 
 
 Soa 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 Ad gloriam Dei et in Memoriam Brokeae. . . . S22 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 Mother and Daughter .... 527 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 A Short Essay in Anticlimax .... 54* 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI 
 The Last Battle .... 549 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 At the Cottage on the Hill ...... 562 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 The Two Voices ........ 571 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 The Survival of the Fittest : the Curtain falls . . 575 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Presents an English Gentleman in the Bosom 
 of his Family 
 
 MR. BROKE of Covenden had for the enlightenment 
 of his middle life one son and six daughters. The 
 son had learned already to live beyond his income like a 
 gentleman : he had been in the ;Blues nearly a year.- 
 He was one of those seductive fellows whose frank laugh 
 re-echoes among the hollows of his understanding. His 
 tailor was the most expensive in London ; his clubs the 
 most exclusive ; his friends the most numerous ; and 
 although he was much too patrician to pay his bills, all the 
 world deemed it an honour to serve him. Nature had 
 deemed it an honour as well. She had formed his hands 
 and feet, polished his skin, and turned his features with 
 such fastidious care that could Reason have been induced 
 to take one of these external parts to be her seat, he 
 would have had his pedestal in any gallery of the Sculptor's 
 art. Connoisseurs were agreed, however, and among 
 them you would count his mother, that the upper storey 
 had been somewhat primitively modelled for the work to 
 be a masterpiece. This, however, was not a disability, 
 because Perfection has a habit of acquiring caste at the 
 expense of the higher graces. 
 
 The daughters had been educated in a Spartan manner. 
 In the technical metaphor of their uncle Charles, "The 
 little chestnut fillies had been broken to harness before 
 they had their teeth." This was one of the many privileges 
 they owed to the foresight of their mamma, that austere 
 lady, whose wisdom taught her that girls without money 
 could not afford to keep minds of their own — ^until they 
 
 9 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 were married, that was. A glance at their noses, one and 
 all of the uncompromising design of their race, at their 
 clear and candid eyes, at the honest blood mantling in 
 their cheeks, and you would have seen that here was a team 
 to be trusted. Indeed, they never failed to respond to the 
 hand, and would have trotted prettily, without blinkers, 
 over the face of a precipice had that course been deemed 
 expedient by the president of their destinies. For the 
 lady who stood towards them in that relation had been a 
 blind and arbitrary Providence since they could crawl in 
 the nursery. Had it ever been necessary to make them 
 quail, she was the one person in the world who had the 
 requisite knowledge and power. 
 
 Their father was their friend and slave. In all that 
 pertained to his name his pride was invincible. And 
 these lusty creatures, wearing the stamp of Broke without 
 embellishment, were as priceless in his eyes as the acres 
 that had bred them, and the pedigree that had evoked 
 their being. They were inalienable blood-stock; their 
 names were in the book. Their mother, whose busi- 
 ness it was to represent their qualities to the world, 
 might smile in her suave manner to confess that they had 
 not a penny apiece to their dot ; that their looks had all 
 foregathered in their ridiculous noses ; that the sum and 
 assemblance of their minds was paltry ; that their accom- 
 plishments ended and began in a knowledge of horse, 
 certainly the friend of man but hardly the encyclopaedia ; 
 and how she was to find the right people for them she did 
 not know, seeing that their horoscopes had been cast in 
 the days of extreme competition, when every girl was 
 equipped with beauty, wit, a nasal accent, or a million 
 sterling. And there were phenomena, as the newspapers 
 were never tired of telling her, who had all these gifts in 
 one. 
 
 Their father would hear no complaints of them, however. 
 If any house in any country could boast purer symbols of 
 the soil, he was a Dutchman ! With his great guffaw 
 would he vow ; and if there was a suspicion of vainglory in 
 it, you must never forget he was a signal member of his 
 nation, that he would not have them otherwise by so much 
 as a hair. They were Brokes, every clean inch of them, out* 
 
 10 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 side and inside, top to toe ; he would ask what they wanted 
 with good looks and accomplishments and the fal-lals of 
 the middle-classes ? No, they were straight ash-sticks, 
 not over graceful if you liked, not particularly supple, but 
 tough, hardy, full of fibre — tenacious saplings from a tree 
 that had withstood the ravages of time since time had 
 had a name. 
 
 At eight o'clock on the morning of the seventeenth 
 birthday of his youngest daughter, under whose inauspicious 
 star we begin our story, Broke having fortified his household 
 with prayer, an act he undertook every day at that hour 
 with a sacred punctuality born of the occasion, sat at the 
 breakfast table in the society of his wife. They were alone. 
 A slight heightening of Mrs. Broke's suavity told the atten- 
 dant ministers that the world this morning was amiss. 
 The mellifluous accents in which she asked the butler 
 to hand some buttered toast made the fact too clear. 
 The redoubtable six daughters of the house had missed 
 family prayers, were late for breakfast. The offence was 
 grave. Whatever the cause, an account would have to be 
 rendered. Antiquity could furnish.no instance of the ways 
 of that establishment being ignored. The laws of the 
 excellent Medes and Persians might alter ; the Greek 
 Kalends might arrive ; the earth might run against the 
 sun, but eight o'clock was the hour at which they sounded 
 the gong at Covenden Hall. 
 
 Mrs. Broke was a superb disciplinarian, and born to 
 organize. She ordered her household like a camp. Von 
 Moltke himself, that pattern of a scientist, could not have 
 handled his armies with a sterner precision than she her 
 domestics and her daughters. Chance did not enter. She 
 put her faith in God and kept her powder dry in the true 
 sense of that prime military axiom. She recommended 
 herself to Providence by a vigilance of the most perfect 
 kind. Waste there was not ; neglect was unknown. In 
 the course of a year she reclaimed the pittance of a younger 
 son by force of management. Indeed, if Broke had not 
 rejoiced in the possession of one of this salutary spirit to 
 trim his affairs, foreign and domestic, the ever-impending 
 crash must have fallen on his ears long before the period 
 at which we find him. 
 
 II 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 She was a notable person even in the day of the emanci- 
 pation of her sex, an outstanding example of the " whole- 
 some mind in the wholesome body," a very culmination 
 of the qualities that make for virtue, a beau ideal of British 
 motherhood among a people so divinely practical. But she 
 was something more. Wherever we find a mellow laughter 
 at the world we must seek for disillusion. Her accents 
 would have taught you that she had known how to 
 look at life. She had achieved, for her sex, the some- 
 what gross feat of viewing it with the naked eye. The 
 audacious operation had not unsexed her, incredible as it 
 may appear. Her mind had hardly surrendered a feather 
 of its femininity in a behaviour so unladylike. There 
 was no affectation in her of standing in horror before 
 her own hardihood ; no parade of the fact that her daring 
 was ineffably shocking. That her fibres had coarsened a 
 little she would have been the first to confess, but was 
 not that the penalty for looking at the ugly thing ? The 
 gazers on the Gorgon did not get off so easily. 
 
 It was a privilege to see her at table in a morning gown 
 without any decoration whatever. There was capability 
 stamped on every line of that placid exterior. There was 
 also dignity ; those urbane reserves ; that unembarrassed 
 candour ; that invincible suavity of voice and mien so 
 indispensable to a woman of the world. This animated 
 serenity was always there. It was extended to her family 
 as unfailingly and with the same liberality as to members 
 of the Cabinet and persons accredited to the Court of 
 St. James when they took her in to dinner in town. 
 Secretly her daughters dreaded it. In the obscurity of 
 their childlike hearts they could never mistrust it too much 
 or fear it adequately. A cold twinkle in her blue eyes, 
 like a star in a frosty January evening, made them shiver 
 whenever they saw it. Their literal minds had long per- 
 ceived steel beneath the velvet, a gauntlet of iron under 
 the glove. Suchimmobility was a curtain, a mask : if only 
 they could have counted on finding something real behind 
 it, they might have learned to take their courage in their 
 hanoa and tear it down. Writhing in their beds at night, 
 the surface underneath the mask assumed so hard a polish 
 that it shone in a pennanent smile of deferential con- 
 
 13 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 des.:ension. They saw themselves as Fatima, who pushed 
 back the door of Blue Beard's secret room to find the 
 reality worse than the surmise. But they paid for their 
 cowardice by having to rest content with half the truth. 
 The half they hungered for they had to go without. 
 
 A look of amused indulgence lurked in the comers of 
 her mouth as she regarded the vacant places at the table. 
 
 " How busy the girls must be this morning ! It is so 
 unlike them to forget a meal ! " 
 
 " They were not dancing last night ? " Broke asked. 
 
 " Oh, no ! They went to bed at half-past nine. I heard 
 their voices on the lawn at six." 
 
 " Porson had better keep the bacon and coffee hotj 
 anyhow." 
 
 " Pray do not trouble, Porson," said Mrs. Broke, as the 
 hand of the august old gentleman, the butler, began to 
 hover about the side-table. 
 
 She rose herself, removed the cover of the bacon dish 
 and lifted the lid of the coffee-pot to afford their contents 
 every facility for getting cold. 
 
 " Pity they are so late," she remarked, pouring milk 
 into a saucer and placing it at the disposal of a cat that 
 was rubbing itself about her ankles. 
 
 They ate their toast in silence. Broke was soon en- 
 trenched behind the Standard newspaper, an operation he 
 conducted patiently every morning in the year. His 
 fidelity to our national organ was so unswerving that 
 when Svmday came he read the advertisements con- 
 tained in the issue of the day before. The outlook of 
 man and wife towards things and men could not 
 have been more excellently poised than in their attitude 
 towards this prop of the Constitution. In the eyes of 
 Broke it was a virgin British newspaper, composed exclu- 
 sively by gentlemen for the exclusive use of gentlemen ; 
 in the eyes of Mrs. Broke it took the place of Punch, the 
 official and no less portentous engine of the national 
 humour. 
 
 By the time our hero was immersed in entrancing details 
 of the immemorial bonhomie of the members of the 
 regnant family, as manifested in various places to all 
 sorts and conditions of men the previous day, Mrs. Brdce 
 
 13 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 had opened the more enticing of her letters. She conld 
 detect by instinct a bill or an advertisement whatever its 
 blandishment of wrapper. The first she opened chanced to 
 be a piece of cardboard in these terms : "The Lady Salmon 
 at Home — Toplands — 22nd February. Dancing 9 to 3." 
 In the top corner it was endorsed, " The Honble. Mrs. 
 Broke and party." 
 
 With her imperturbable meekness she contrived to get 
 this document across the table and past the barrier of 
 the Standard newspaper. Our hero lowered it for a moment 
 and was seen to read. In the act he might also have been 
 seen to be frowning heavily. 
 
 " Impertinence ! " he said. 
 
 " A Uttle uncompromising, are you not, my dear ? " 
 
 " Not at all. Impertinence." 
 
 A whimsical little sigh escaped Mrs. Broke. It was also 
 fond, Uke that of a mother who opens the nursery door 
 and has her ears assailed with a tin trumpet blown by a 
 petticoated son and heir who is making a furious circuit 
 of the room with a tin sword, a paper helmet, and a wooden 
 charger. 
 
 " You were not going to know those people, I under- 
 stood." 
 
 " Will nothing induce you to surrender a little to the age, 
 my love ? " 
 
 She purred like the cat who had already lapped its milk. 
 
 " I — ah, don't see what the age has got to do with it. It 
 makes those people no better. It makes them worse." 
 
 Mrs. Broke pursed her mouth wooingly. She was an 
 oppressively plain woman, yet with all the phN,-sical wiles 
 of a professional beauty. 
 
 " If this were the age of idealism there might be an 
 objection even to a Jewish financier. But since it is that 
 of Mammon, the sons of Benjamin are our deities." 
 
 " I— ah, deny that it is the age of Mammon as you call 
 it." 
 
 " Then you become Don Quixote at once. You remem- 
 ber how the Knight of La Mancha insisted on chivalry in 
 an age that had become prosaic. He remained a knightly 
 figure against the advice of his friends, at a great deaJ 
 of personal inconvenience. And we must not forget that 
 
 14 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 because he ran a-tilt at his time and got nothing more 
 profitable than a broken head for his pains, the world has 
 not yet done laughing at him. My dear, your environ- 
 ment appears to be exciting the same heroical frenzy in 
 you ; yet if you butt at it, however thick your dear old 
 John Bull poll may be, you will find that a poultice made 
 out of vinegar and perhaps the Standard newspaper is the 
 only laurel that will crown it. That would be grotesque." 
 
 " Humbug, radical humbug ! " 
 
 " Seek, my love, to develop your sense of the absurd." 
 
 " I have too much. I wonder what those people take us 
 for ! " 
 
 " It is not what they take us for, it is what we are. When 
 we have ceased to deceive others, is it not time we gave 
 up striving to deceive ourselves ? " 
 
 " I — ah, don't quite follow." 
 
 " We must come off the high horse, my love. The noble 
 quadruped is a little obsolete. Besides, have we not lost 
 something of the art of sitting it ? The people laugh." 
 
 " Why, I don't know." 
 
 " There are a thousand resisons. Many of them humili- 
 ating, sordid, vulgar." 
 
 " Money I — ah, suppose." 
 
 Our hero spoke with the reluctance of intellectual effort; 
 
 " You are wise to make that admission." 
 
 " I — ah, make no admission. We may be rather hard 
 up, but we have managed to rub along without Tom, Dick 
 and Harry until now, and I — ah, don't see why we should 
 not continue." 
 
 Mrs. Broke shook her head at him archly. There was 
 something indulgent too. Here was the whetstone on which 
 every morning she sharpened her gift. 
 
 Before either side might advance farther towards a 
 pleasant controversy that generally arose between them 
 twice a week, our hero's heavy face lightened to a look of 
 interest. Voices sounded across the lawn. Raised in 
 laughter and execitement, they were clear and ringing, of 
 a bell-like timbre, to be heard a long way off. Within a 
 minute the girls poured in through the French window 
 of the room in which their father and mother sat. 
 
 There M'as a singular uniformity in one and all. Six 
 
 15 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 peas in the same pod could not have had a quainter resem- 
 blance to one another. Their alikeness made them ab- 
 surdly difficult to tell apart. They had an air of being 
 made according to regulation. Every small detail of them 
 seemed to be fashioned strictly after some arbitrary pattern 
 which had been sanctioned by expert authority, like service 
 tunics or policemen's boots or helmets. This could not be 
 said to make for beauty, any more than do the points in 
 dogs and horses, except in the eyes of those educated to the 
 technicalities. The verdict of the world, that scrupulous 
 embodiment of the obvious, was that they were decidedly 
 plain, not to say ugly. Connoisseurs in curves, in cap- 
 tivating hues, in titillating undulations had no hesitation 
 whatever in making a little humorous shrug of protest in 
 turning away their eyes. 
 
 The only compliment you could pay them positively was 
 that they were beautifully clean. It was a quality that 
 had a pathos in it, for it is negative, in women painfully ; 
 and here it was accentuated with a cruel sharpness by their 
 old and rude and shabby and misshapen clothes. Their 
 old straw hats encircled by weather-stained black ribbons, 
 were eloquent in testimony that more than one summer 
 and winter had beaten over them ; their boots were thick 
 and clumsy ; their short skirts flopped about gaunt ankles. 
 Physically they had nothing to overcome and carry off their 
 clothes. They drooped dankly on their lean flanks. 
 Small and thin, with a greyhound's spareness of limb, 
 finely suggestive of an outdoor life and animal condition, 
 they were much too wiry and fine-drawn for feminine 
 enchantments. " Hard-bitten beggars," their father called 
 them. 
 
 In colour they were as the doe; and healthy as the wind. 
 In their faces was the keen wistfulness of the foxhound, 
 but this did nothing to mitigate their piainness. The 
 austere features of their mother, unredeemed by tact and 
 animation, would not have been so hopeless, for raised in 
 the midst of each countenance was an obstacle hers had 
 not to contend against. Their keenly chiselled faces, 
 thrown into bas-relief by the remarkable arch of an heredi- 
 tary nose, they were only saved from the grotesque by a 
 sheer miracle of historical association. This object was 
 
 i6 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 doubtless a famous talisman ; but a woman who was sen- 
 sitive would not have had to look much beyond it to find 
 tragedy. It was the boast of him who cherished them most 
 fondly that there was not a trace of self-consciousness about 
 them, but there was one at least, whom fate had called on 
 to support this feature, to whom Cyrano de Bergerac was a 
 Cgure about whose devoted head a heart-moving pathos 
 played. 
 
 Still, however, there were those who were not afraid to 
 praise. For if in women there is health added to vivid 
 youth, to which is superadded that saving quality that 
 goes by the name of breeding, the mysterious aroma 
 savouring of nature and the soil, like the bouquet in wine, 
 a Httle nmiination on the sex will sometimes evolve merit 
 where you would look to find it least. Much depends upon 
 the courtesy of the beholder, but tolerably lenient verdicts 
 have been given by kindly persons upon a grotesquerie no 
 less than theirs. Many a half-protesting and half-apolo- 
 getic portrait was furnished of them by the indulgent people 
 with whom they were brought in contact. They were 
 likened now to clean-bred horses, now to Belvoir entry ; 
 but, as usual, their uncle Charles transcended all in profusion 
 of alliteration and boldness of imagery. His dictum to his 
 sister was : " Those little fillies are like that bow-legged 
 bull-bitch o' mine — a dam' sight too full of breed. You'll 
 never mairy 'em, Jane, any more than my little bitch will 
 ever get a prize at the show. They don't know what's 
 what nowadays. They've lost the knack of judgin'." 
 
 As they streamed in through the open window, bearing 
 the February hoar on their shoes and coats and in their hair, 
 they looked six of the straightest, cleanliest animals that 
 ever exulted in liberty. There was a scuffle for their 
 father's greeting. They clustered around him the six as 
 one, and all took part in vigorous manoeuvres about his 
 chair, for this was an open competition permitted even by 
 their remarkable decorum. It would have been a fault in 
 honour to submit without protest to the second place. 
 Their mother was spared this ordeal. With one of her 
 dignity, whatever the condescension with which it was girt 
 about, such a behaviour would have landed them in the 
 incongruous at once. One by one they approached her 
 
 17 B 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 modestly, and took a sparrow-like peck at her cheek, 
 short and quick and nervous, in spite of the graceful aii: 
 with which it was proffered. While this feat was being 
 performed their fears were denoted in fawn-like glances 
 at her. 
 
 They were at a fine pitch of excitement. Adventures 
 rare and strange had befallen them ; but as all their tongues 
 were going at once and tuned to an epic fervour befitting 
 their deeds, the effect in the ear of their father was not 
 unlike the poetry of the late Mr. Browning. 
 
 " Yes, yes," he said, with a high guffaw, " fine story — 
 graphic, spirited and so on, and very exciting ; but suppose 
 you tell us what it is all about. Suppose we have one at 
 a time. Joan, we will hear you." 
 
 " We've caught a badger, father," said his eldest. 
 daughter, hastening to give the official version with a 
 blush of pride. 
 
 " No, father, we dug it out," sang the other five. 
 
 " No, old Joe dug it out," said Joan. 
 
 " But we helped him," said Margaret. 
 
 " It is a dog badger, father," said PhiHppa importantly. 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " 
 
 " It is a very big badger, father, for its size," said Harriet, 
 overborne by her earnestness. 
 
 " You would lead me to suppose so," said her amiable 
 sire. 
 
 " It is very ugly, father," said Janej 
 
 " And very fierce, father." 
 
 " And it does look wicked, father." 
 
 " And it is ever so shaggy, father." 
 
 " And it has got such teeth, father ! " they chimed in one 
 after another, each declining to forfeit her prescriptive 
 right to supply a personal description to the interested 
 gentleman. It was reserved for his youngest daughter, 
 however, to add the touch of verisimilitude to this mass of 
 flat and unprofitable detail. 
 
 " And, oh, father, it can bite ! " said Delia proudly. 
 With equal pride she displayed a hand enclosed in a hand- 
 kerchief, freely spotted with blood. 
 
 " Silly little beggar ! " said her sire, indulgently seizing her 
 to regard the rather pronounced evidence of the badger's 
 
 i8 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 ability in that line of effort. " Silly little beggar! " He 
 tapped a cheek ruddier than the cherry. 
 
 Joe had been brought to show the badger. That 
 wizened retainer stood on the lawn in his moleskin waist 
 coat with his captive in a bag. Their father was haled into 
 the winter morning to inspect the creature. Nothing short 
 of his personal approbation could appease the pride of its 
 captors. A word of sanction from him was the crown of 
 any high emprise, the consummation of any glorious 
 undertaking. Their mother also followed to do it honour. 
 She was uninvited, and was not interested in it in the least, 
 but it was significant of her that she never failed in any 
 little act, however trivial or perfunctory, if there was a 
 superficial grace in the performance of it. She opened 
 more bazaars than any lady in the county. Where another 
 would not have taken the trouble to leave her chair, she 
 sallied out with an alert smile to bestow her patronage. 
 
 The comments of man and wife on the wild-looking beast 
 were characteristic. 
 
 " Ugly devil ! " said Broke. 
 
 " How very quaint and delightful ! " said Mrs. Broke. 
 " Oh, you dear thing ! It is so clever of you girls to have 
 caught it, I'm sure. You must be so pleased. You will 
 keep it for a pet of course. You must ask Joe to build it 
 a hutch. You can take it away now, Joe ; and thank you 
 so much." 
 
 The badger being dismissed in this delicate manner, its 
 captors, still exultant, sat down to their belated meal. 
 
 " We found it half way up the hill, father, just against 
 the spinney," he was informed. Like his own, it was 
 difficult to start their minds on any subject; but once the 
 feat was accomplished it was no less difficult to stop them. 
 " It was near the old elm tree where we saw the white owl 
 in the summer." 
 
 " If you catch that, there will be a shilling apiece for 
 you." 
 
 Under the spell cast by this shining lure they began upon 
 their breakfast. It was a feast from which only youthful 
 vigour might hope to rise victorious. Its ingredients were 
 a huge dish heaped with bacon, long ago frozen in its 
 grease ; substantial slabs of bread and large cups of weak 
 
 19 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 lukewarm coffee made with water. Their appetites were 
 of that supreme quality, however, to which all fare 
 comes as meat and drink. They flinched from nothing, 
 nor did they pause to discriminate. An ox roasted 
 whole and truffles in aspic were to them identical. Their 
 simimary methods with a meal that was enough to make 
 a civilized digestion shudder, drew a smile from their 
 mother, a somewhat weary one, it must be confessed, for 
 a woman so redoubtable. The charge had been hurled at 
 them by their celebrated aunt Emma of " unfeminine 
 robustness." " One thinks of pigs at a trough, my dear 
 Jane," she had said in a moment of inspired delicacy. 
 
 " The meet's at half-past eleven," said their father, " up 
 at the Grove." 
 
 " Of course, father." 
 
 They nodded sagely across the coffee-cups with their 
 mouths full. 
 
 " Whose turn to-day ? " 
 
 This question gave a new lease to excitement, verging 
 on uproar. Their tongues were unloosed again, and ran 
 riot for a moment in something approaching internecine 
 strife. Their father cried, " Chair ! Chair ! " and tapped 
 the bowl of his pipe on the table. Their obedience was so 
 sudden as to be a little ludicrous. The loudest voice was 
 quelled by the word of authority. Such discipline was the 
 fruit of centuries, no doubt. They were descended on both 
 sides from generations of warriors accustomed to obey and 
 to be obeyed. 
 
 " Now then, Joan, who rides ? " 
 
 " We don't know, father," said his eldest daughter, 
 with a countenance of much perplexity. " The Doctor 
 put his foot in a rabbit hole last week and strained his off 
 fore-leg. Simkin says we can't have him out for a fort- 
 night. And Whitenose has got a hot hough, and Robin 
 has been coughing in the night." 
 
 " H'm — unfortunate. Still, settle it somehow." 
 
 These sportswomen, to have recourse again to the 
 technicality of their uncle Charles, the master of the pack, 
 " Six days a-weekers every one," had to have their 
 privileges regulated on a fixed principle. There was a 
 limit to their stable. In the height of the season, if stress 
 
 20 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 of weather did not intervene to give their hunters a rest, 
 they either had to set particular fixtures apart for this 
 purpose, or submit to be mounted four at a time, while the 
 two remaining did what they could with their bicycles. 
 The accident to The Doctor, and the precarious condition 
 of Whitenose and Robin had made it imperative that a 
 third should forego her claims to the appropriate mode. 
 One and all were much too keen, however, to waive them 
 lightly, Jane and Harriet retired by rotation, but none 
 of the more fortunate four could be brought to see that 
 perfect equity was consistent with self-sacrifice. Besides, 
 is it not pre-eminently English to insist on your rights as 
 an individual if you ever happen to possess any ? 
 
 It was precisely here, for the first time in the history oi 
 the house, that anarchy, the modem canker, showed a dis- 
 position to rear its horrid head in an ancient virgin govern- 
 ment. 
 
 " Perhaps we might have one of the bays for to-day," 
 said Delia in a tentatively timid manner. She blushed to 
 hear her own voice in public. Alone in that august 
 assembly the hardihood seemed too immense. But it is 
 only timidity that can acquire a particular kind of boldness. 
 The next instant she was blushing still more. 
 
 Her sisters had turned five faces as one of an amazed 
 disapproval towards her. They put down their coffee cups 
 and stared at her with round eyes of resolute wonder. On 
 three counts at least her guilt was enormous. In the first 
 place she had no right to an opinion on a subject of any 
 kind, much less to have the effrontery to utter it before 
 their father. Again, if she had had a right, the privilege 
 of uttering it in that august assembly was wholly precluded 
 by her extreme youth — she was a year younger than Jane 
 and Margaret, and four years younger than Joan, a pair of 
 twins intervening. And, most heinous offence of ^1, she 
 had been guilty of an idea ! How such a silly, inoffensive 
 little kid had come by such a dangerous implement they 
 could not guess. And she dared to show it off before her 
 father ! 
 
 In a painful silence they waited while Joan, the one having 
 authority, and always their natural leader by an inimitable 
 force of character, proceeded to clear her mouth of bacon 
 
 21 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 before proceeding to clear the mind of the childish Delia of 
 cant. 
 
 " It does not seem right," said that formidable young 
 person in a tone as exquisitely detached as that of aunt 
 Emma herself, " to ride to hounds on a carriage horse. It 
 seems Hke making a pretence of doing what you cannot. 
 If one is not to be with hounds, I think one ought to go on 
 a bicycle. Besides, we have not been used to it." 
 
 The others chimed in solemnly to crush their youngest 
 sister with their grave accord. It was a terrible disgrace 
 for her, before their father too, poor little kid ! but your 
 truly Spartan nature does not flinch from the administra- 
 tion of punishment, even when it is likely to recoil on those 
 who wield the rod. But it was left to their father himself 
 to lay on the severest stroke. 
 
 " I think you are right, Joan," he said with a gravity 
 as magisterial as their own. "It is a fine point, but I 
 endorse your view. Not that it matters, of course, but 
 personally I — ah, think it can be considered. It has not 
 struck me in that light before, but now it is pointed out the 
 spirit is sound. Of course you can go on anything with 
 four legs to it, if you have not anything better, or are not 
 used to — ah, anything better ; but I think you are right 
 if you don't. It may be drawing it a bit fine, but personally 
 I — ah, think one cannot be too jealous for the — ^ah, dignity 
 of covert." 
 
 This piece of dialectics, given in the judicial syllables 
 of an admired Chairman of Quarter Sessions, thrilled 
 five excited bosoms of those present in that court. There 
 was a sixth — a sixth who had opened her mischievous 
 blue eyes and was laughing softly, an incendiary whom 
 fortunately neither the judge nor the jury, terribly in earnest 
 as they were, could spare a thought to take notice of. Had 
 they done so, she might have been ordered to retire. 
 But the culprit herself was covered in confusion. Women 
 are sensitive ; and if they are not to tingle, it be- 
 hoves the objects of their worship to acquire the art of 
 dissenting from them delicately. That she had com- 
 mitted an awful solecism had been made clear to her, 
 but she had no means of telling what it was. There was a 
 subtle twist in her callow mind that forbade it to dis- 
 
 22 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 cern the banality in riding a carriage horse to hounds ; 
 and worse, the affront conceived to custom! Otheis 
 rode any sort of horse, why not they ? Probably it was 
 a new idea to them ; but to others it was not. Even her 
 forehead was such a tawny scarlet that her father observed 
 it. The next instant she was trembling under his great 
 guffaw. 
 
 " My dear child," he said, with a grim chuckle, " you are 
 not going to be a woman of ideas, are you ? Not going to 
 be a second Aunt Emma, eh, little girl ? Must be careful, 
 must be careful." 
 
 Delia nearly wept. That stroke cut very deep. Such 
 an odious reference had never been made by their 
 father before, although their mother had long known how 
 to employ it. No more striking proof of the serious 
 nature of the misdemeanour could have been adduced. 
 The culprit redoubled her efforts to find wherein she 
 had offended so signally. Like a captive bird she beat 
 against the bars of the narrow cage of her intelligence ; 
 but she could not reach to the secret of her enormity. 
 Yet whatever it might be, cunningly she tried to wipe out 
 the stain by an act of public virtue. 
 
 " I will cycle to-day, Joan," she said. The scarlet was 
 still burning at the roots of her hair. 
 
 " Indeed, no," said Joan. " That would not be fair. 
 We would not ask it of you." There was an imperial snub 
 in the impartial voice that made Delia too frightened to say 
 another word. 
 
 In the end the question of who should ride horses and 
 who should ride bicycles was submitted to him most fitted 
 to decide it. As no method of escaping the impasse was 
 vouchsafed to the feminine intelligence it was clearly a case 
 for the higher court. Their faith in their father was 
 most catholic. On the lightest or most abstruse point his 
 word was law. He chose on this occasion, in the fashion 
 of Solomon, to expound his wisdom by a mechanical means. 
 
 " Better draw lots." 
 
 It was Delia who was called upon to forfeit her claim. 
 No less was to be expected of that inexorable Destiny 
 which never forgets to punish, although not so con- 
 scientious in the matter of reward. Surely it was just that 
 
 23 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 she who had dared to suggest a carriage-horse should be 
 condemned by Circumstance masquerading in the livery of 
 Chance to an even ruder form of locomotion. Poor Uttle 
 kid, on her birthday too ! Still it was no part of the duties 
 of Destiny to recognize incongruities of that sort. 
 
 However, no sooner had all been contrived to their 
 pleasure, and they had fallen to discussing the behaviour 
 of the frost and the prospect of its going in time for hounds 
 to do their work, than their mother interposed in that mild 
 voice they had cause to know so well. 
 
 " I was rather hoping, children, that you would not hunt 
 to-day. Do you think I could persuade you to do two or 
 three hours' reading with me before luncheon ? It might 
 be of service to your minds, and I am sure your first wish 
 is to improve them." 
 
 The faces of our six Dianas were poignant. Their con- 
 sternation was complete. Their mother's smile grew in its 
 expanse until the gold stopping was seen to glitter round 
 a tooth in her upper jaw. 
 
 " As you were not present this morning at prayers, I 
 feel sure that two or three hours' solid reading would help 
 you to regain a little of that which you have unwittingly 
 lost. I am sure we all agree with dear Aunt Emma when 
 she says with an inimitable insight all her own, in one of 
 the many pure and bloodless passages with which she has 
 chastened the English language, " that a portion of the 
 higher literature, German, Scandinavian or Chinese for 
 preference, read aloud in the home morning or evening, or 
 even in the middle of the daj', or at any hour when one is 
 not in bed, is to the animal spirit as a sedative, and to the 
 understanding as is an iron tonic." Now, as your absence 
 from prayers this morning seemed to imply that English 
 literature had for the time being lost its savour for you, I 
 shall be curious to see if the German philosophers — let us 
 say Hegel — as I cannot implicitly trust you not to under- 
 stand a word of him, Nietsche is out of the question — let 
 us say Hegt^l's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, cannot 
 stimulate your minds to acquire a renewed interest in the 
 prose poetry of your native tongue." 
 
 Each stroke was dealt delicately by a past mistress in her 
 art. The high mild voice, so caressing as to seem obsequious, 
 
 24 
 
PRESENTS AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
 
 the air of deep maternal solicitude that put them back into 
 the nursery at once, her winning grace, and, above all, the 
 reference to the author of Pvses in the Opaque, that recherche 
 collection of essays whose publication was claimed by its 
 admirers as marking an epoch in the world of taste, brought 
 such a flush on their cheeks as nothing else could have 
 done. 
 
 They had not a word to say in mitigation of sentence. 
 To be sure they were no longer in the nursery, but their 
 discipline remained a wonderful, a surpassing thing. They 
 were physically incapable of questioning authority, even 
 in its most arbitrary form. In silence they bowed their 
 proud heads, and re-applied themselves to bacon. If there 
 was a slightly moist softness in the eyes of Delia — and we 
 must urge upon you respectfully that we are by no means 
 certain even of that — you must remember that she was a 
 full year the youngest of them all, and precisely by that 
 length of time was less of a Broke than her sisters. 
 
 " I think you are a bit hard on them," said their father. 
 " Anyhow they shall go to-morrow. But I don't think 
 they will miss much ; we never have much luck at the 
 Grove. In '59, in '79, in '92 we drew it blank, and in '83 
 we found a mangy fox in it. Besides, I don't think this 
 frost will clear oft after all ; and even if it does, the going 
 will be beastly." 
 
 Such consolation, elaborate as it was, did not soften 
 their pangs ; but it was this sort of tenderness for them 
 that made their father the finest comrade in the world. 
 Not only was he a god and a hero, but a personal friend : 
 a happy conjunction of qualities that argues a nature of an 
 almost paradoxical scope. Reverence seldom goes with 
 familiarity, as you know. The deities are said to be 
 austere. 
 
 However, at this painful moment, when there was no more 
 bacon left on the dish and only grains in the coffee-pot, when 
 therefore the only alleviation that was possible was put 
 away, a diversion was created by the opening of the door, 
 and the announcement — 
 
 " Lord Bosket," 
 
 25 
 
CHAPTER II 
 A Matrimonial Martyr on the Tragic Theme 
 
 AN odd little man waddled in. His legs were so crooked 
 with addiction to the saddle that he looked as pain- 
 fully out of his element in a pedestrian mode as a mariner 
 on dry land. His face and head were as bald as a toad's 
 — theSieurde Montaigne's, if the Sieur had not had a little 
 moustache. The colour of his skin, empurpled by the 
 wind and rain, was that of an overripe tomato ; not only 
 brave in good living and the open air, but with also a shine 
 of wassail in it, a puffy lustre that enhanced the bloom of 
 his complexion while it blurred the ferret-like sharpness of 
 his face. His somewhat debased features were suffused 
 with melancholy, partly querulous and partly humorous. 
 It lent him a slightly whimsical air, which seemed to imply 
 that he had the habit of looking at life with his own peculiar 
 eyes. He was as one who acquiesces in his lot against his 
 judgment, yet shrinks to seek another lest, so poor is his 
 opinion of himself and the world in general, he should find 
 a worse. In his teeth was a straw ; in his hunting scarf 
 an enormous pin cast in the device of a fox ; a fur-lined 
 greatcoat was thrown back to display his pink, and as he 
 waddled in twirling his velvet cap on the end of his whip 
 it was not easy for any save the specialist in the fine shades 
 of gentility to discern where the groom ended and the 
 gentleman began. 
 
 " Mornin'," he said, with a large gesture that embraced 
 one and all in a manner that was at once the perfection of 
 the aflectionate and the casual. " How are my little 
 cockyoly birds this mornin' ? Pert as robins, and as sharp 
 
 26 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 as hawks ! Peckin' are they ; noses in the manger ? 
 Toppin' up with porridge and bacon and a bit o' marma- 
 lade ? What, no marmalade ! Here, my boy, the mar- 
 malade at once." 
 
 While this commodity was being procured, he wagged 
 his head and muttered, " Must have marmalade," in 
 various keys. On its appearance he examined it as critically 
 as a bushel of oats he was about to give a favourite mare, 
 and set out on a tour of the table, dabbing a huge spoonful 
 on the plate of each of his nieces, ending with Delia, upon 
 whom he bestowed " one extry for little Miss Mufiit." 
 
 " And what's the matter with her finger ? " 
 
 " A badger has bitten it, Uncle Charles," said Dehd with 
 great pride. 
 
 " A badger has bitten it. Lord-love-a-duck ! Dig 
 badgers and ichthyo-what-do-you-call-ems out o' the back 
 garden, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Out of the spinney, Uncle Charles," they chimed 
 together. 
 
 An equally animated and incoherent account of the great 
 event was furnished for this indulgent person. 
 
 " We'll be diggin' out foxes in about two-twos," said he, 
 when at last he could get in a word. " We shall have the 
 sun before you can say ' Knife ! ' The goin' is on the 
 hard side at present, but wait a bit and it will be all right." 
 
 Somehow this announcement fell fiat. His nieces failed 
 to beacon in response, which they did invariably, no less 
 being demanded of them by him and that particular topic. 
 A reaction to his optimism was provoked at once. He was 
 only half sensible of it, to be sure, but it was sufficient to 
 urge him to fly to the specific for his temperament. 
 
 " Porson," he said, glancing about querulously. 
 " Where's Porson, confounded old man ! Why don't you 
 bring me that whisky and soda, you stoopid ole feller ? " 
 
 " I beg your lordship's pardon." 
 
 Already the butler was toddling towards him with a 
 tray of spirits and syphons. The specific had not been 
 ordered ; but as at the moment of entry of Lord Bosket 
 into the house of his brother-in-law it was usually his first 
 act to call for it, experience had taught Porson to take time 
 by the forelock. 
 
 27 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Measuring out one half- pennyworth of soda water to an 
 intolerable deal of whisky, Lord Bosket dispatched the 
 mixture in a consummate manner with one jerk of the 
 hand. He shut his eyes, and then re-opened them slowly 
 in an exercise of the critical faculty. 
 
 " Good water," he said earnestly. " Very good water, 
 but the whisky's rotten. Funny thing, I never come into 
 this house but what I have to lodge an objection. It 
 ought to be brought before the Stewards. Sort of thing 
 that gets the house a bad name. The whisky's raw ; get 
 me some turpentine to cool my tongue. Have this in the 
 keg ? " 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " Keep it in the wood ? " 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " 'Straordinary thing ! Do you buy it or do they pay 
 you to take it away ? " 
 
 " I beg your lordship's pardon, but this came from 
 Hipsley with your lordship's compliments as a Christmas 
 gift." 
 
 " What — what — what — what — what ? " 
 
 Lord Bosket querulously placed his hand behind his ear. 
 The patient manner in which Person repeated his statement 
 was no mean piece of elocution. 
 
 " You must be wrong my boy, you must be wrong." 
 
 " I have the label, my lord." 
 
 " Then send that whisky back and tell Paling you are 
 to have a keg of the ' special,' with the green ticket, and 
 mind you look at the bung. Ask Paling what he means 
 by it. God bless my soul, what are things coming to ? " 
 
 This urgent matter being at last adjusted to Lord 
 Bosket's satisfaction he turned an eye of petulant inquiry 
 upon his nieces. 
 
 " Which of you little fillies has got a birthday this 
 mornin' ? " 
 
 Delia lifted shy e\'es up to him. 
 
 "Oh, it's the young one is it ! May I ask what's your 
 fancy, miss ? " 
 
 " if you please, Uncle Charles, I should like a horse," 
 said Delia with an air that was very timid but also very 
 decisive. 
 
 2Z 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 *' You would like a hoss. 'Straordinary how great minds 
 think alike. It happens, miss, that a hoss is just what I've 
 brought you." 
 
 " Oh, Uncle Charles ! " said Delia, with a sudden height- 
 ening of colour. 
 
 " A pretty little hoss for a pretty Uttle lady. And 
 manners — ^well, I wish your Aunt Emma would take a 
 pattern. Pretty bit o' stuff." 
 
 " You ought not to do it, Charles," said Broke. " How 
 many more are you going to give them ? " 
 
 " What do you know about it, my boy ? If now and 
 then I can't find a mount for my own fillies it's a pity. 
 What have you got to do with it ? They are the only ones 
 I've got and all with a weakness for good cattle same as me. 
 Going to hunt the fox this mornin' — eh, gells? We shall 
 have you larking over those fences. Hallo, there comes 
 Mr. Sun ! What did I say ! Nobody'U know there's been 
 a frost in another hour. Saw Padgett as I came up. He 
 says the varmints are as thick in the spinney as eels in 
 a mill dam. We'll have 'em out o' that. They shall put 
 their best pads first this mornin', curse their little 
 eyes ! " 
 
 But for once his nieces failed to respond to his 
 enthusiasm. As a rule eager faces greeted the lightest 
 allusion of this kind, but to-day even their interest seemed 
 perfunctory. He looked at them, and then at their mother 
 with his eye of whimsical inquiry. 
 
 " They are coming, Jane ? " 
 
 " Not to-day, Charles," said his sister in her mild accents. 
 
 " Wh-a-a-at ? " 
 
 Lord Bosket removed the straw from his mouth with 
 extraordinary resolution. 
 
 " I am sincerely sorry, Charles," said his sister, with a 
 demure mischief in her eyes. 
 
 " Sorry be damned. Are they goin' to do five-finger 
 exercises, or are they goin' to play hockey ? " 
 
 " They hope to read a little German philosophy with me 
 this morning." 
 
 Lord Bosket returned the straw to his mouth with a 
 resolution even more extraordinary than that with which 
 he had taken it out. 
 
 29 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Well, that's a good 'un. That's won it. Jane, you've 
 taken the bun." 
 
 " Charles, you grow too technical." 
 
 " Here, kennel, kennel ! Don't you Emma it with me. 
 I won't stand it from you, my gell. You shall not begin 
 Emma-ing it, clever as you are, because I won't have it. 
 If I say you have taken the bun I mean it. The six cleverest 
 customers in the county readin' German philosophy. 
 That's a pretty tale to pitch, upon my Sam ! I shall send 
 it to the Pink ' Un. I shall tell Master to put it in the front 
 page. Why, my good woman, it is the meet o' the year. 
 They are runnin' a special from London." 
 
 " You were kind enough to inform me of it on Monday." 
 
 " Oh, go hon ! " said Lord Bosket, imitating his favourite 
 music-hall comedian. 
 
 His sister did not relax a muscle to this rather primitive 
 form of irony. 
 
 " What ha' you got to say, my boy ? " he said to 
 Broke, feeling baffled, as he generally did in a contest with 
 his sister, " You've got a mind of your own, haven't 
 you ? " 
 
 " I — ah, think she is a bit hard on them," said our hero 
 with a dignified hesitation. 
 
 " Oh, do you? Well, I think it's a damned shame." 
 
 He was aware, however, that there could be no redress 
 in this quarter. 
 
 " It out-missises the missis," he went on, rising to elo- 
 quence, for here was a grievance indeed. "Here's the sun in 
 \)\Tik and the frost gone to ground, and everything as right as 
 rain, and you are goin' to keep the headstall on those little 
 gells and cram 'em with German. Lord-love-a-duck ! 
 I'm not much of a hand at religion, Jane, I'm not, but if 
 ^'ou've been studyin' how to discourage the Almighty, I 
 reckon you've about brought it off this time. If you are 
 not makin' a mockery of one of His blessed huntin' mornin's, 
 and He don't send many, I'll never cock my leg over a 
 saddle any more. It's monstrous. Why, do you know 
 what I said last night to old Paimche, ' Hell-fire Harry ' 
 as they call him ? I said, ' General, we're not swells, we're 
 not ; we're not the Belvoir and we're not the Quorn ; but 
 if we can't show these Cockney sports a thing or two I'll 
 
 30 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 hand in my portfolio. General,' I said,' we'll have out the 
 ladies, and we'll have out those little chestnut fillies o' mine, 
 every damned Broke of 'em ' — those were my very words 
 — 'and they shall show 'em the sort we are in the Parkshire. 
 They shall show 'em whether we are in the provinces or not. 
 No pace, haven't we ! We'll give 'em twenty minutes on 
 the grass, and if one of 'em can live with old Vanity 
 and those little Miss Mufhts o' mine, I'll die a blue- 
 ribboner. General,' I said, ' those little fillies o' mine 
 are not fashion-platers they're not, no new-fangledness and 
 general damned impudence in that stable ; they're not 
 Hyde Parkers neither, none o' your waltzin* on the tan, 
 and they are cut nearly as pretty about the muzzle as their 
 Uncle Charles, but when they mean business they'll have 
 those door-handles o' theirs in front of the devil or they'll 
 know the reason." 
 
 Lord Bosket paused to reinforce his eloquence by the 
 second application of a whisky and soda. While he was 
 thus engaged his six young nieces bent round eyes of 
 entreaty upon their mother to discover a sign in her of 
 yielding to their uncle's rhetoric. They could no longer 
 keep a cloak over their feelings, and were compelled to 
 lower their pride a point. Their faces were brilliant now 
 with the excitements of hope and fear alternating in their 
 hearts ; and the wistful lustre of their eyes, which no stoicism 
 could now repress, came near to lending them that glamour 
 of physical beauty of which nature had thought fit to 
 deprive them. Their mother, observing it, wished a little 
 sorrowfully that she held the secret of making them look 
 like that at all times and seasons. But there was not a 
 spark of pity in that inexorable bosom. They had failed 
 that morning in a point of their Spartan discipline ; the 
 consequences were not to be shirked. 
 
 Lord Bosket, stimulated to new valour, returned to the 
 attack. He was nonplussed, however, by an exterior 
 which, mellifluous and deferential as it was, remained 
 impervious to anything so gross as the invective of a male 
 relation. Broke was with him entirely, as he was usually 
 where his girls were concerned; but had not his ideal 
 demanded that he should remain neutral, experience could 
 have told him that woman was a creature over whom 
 
 31 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 human reason, even when dispensed by man, the fount of 
 it, was not likely to prevail. Besides, you do not look to 
 Hannibal to usurp the functions of the drill-sergeant. 
 Therefore he was content to restrict his championship of 
 the cause so gallantly espoused by Lord Bosket to grim 
 laughter, enunciated in occasional guffaws, at the points 
 made by that intrepid sportsman. 
 
 " German philosophy," he said, thrusting his hands in 
 his pockets and growing quite querulous in his earnestness. 
 " I thought you were a woman o' sense, Jane, but you are 
 a stable companion to Emma. Part of the ' Movement,' 
 what ? Haven't heard o' the ' Movement' ? Don't know 
 what the ' Movement ' is ? It's the very latest. As it's 
 German you'll go to a sausage shop to study it of course, 
 now that the missis has proved Shakespeare to be Bacon, 
 and reads Olhello in a pigstye to preserve the tradition 
 of environment. That's the ticket, ' the tradition of 
 environment.' She walks into my snuggery to study 
 Paradise Lost. That's a nice way to treat a feller ; I've 
 always been a good husband to her. I told her to go to 
 the devO and she would be able to read Dante. If you 
 are in the ' Movement ' and you happen to have got a cold 
 in the head, you read aloud Nietsche to your pals. You 
 pronounce his name every time you sneeze. There's no 
 savin' what we're comin' to. But it's a one-sided life. I 
 can't even have a second-hand motor car, but, bless you, 
 the missis has ordered a bran-new air-ship ' to converse 
 alone with lofty thoughts.' " 
 
 " Noblesse ohiige, my dear Charles. A soaring intellect 
 may occasionally be allowed to pay a flying visit to its 
 native ether." 
 
 " Soarin' intellect be damned. I've got a soarin' intel- 
 lect, only it ain't allowed to soar. I've got my feelin's the 
 snme as any other worm. Writin' men are bad enough, 
 but writin' women are a curse. Now they've made her 
 the president of the ' Lady Lionesses,' sort of inner circle 
 of the 'Movement,' don't you know; she believes she's 
 Doctor Johnson, and her head's so big that Spink has had 
 to build her a new tiara, because the old 'un has got so 
 small it ain't fit to go to Court." 
 
 32 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 *' Poor Emma ! But I always understood, my dear 
 Chai'les, that she desired no earthly crown." 
 
 " So she says, but she's got one all the same, as there 
 don't seem to be one vacant in heaven. But that makes 
 no odds ; it wasn't paid for by me ; it was in advance of 
 royalties. But I'm leadin' a very hard life. Nobody 
 knows what I have to put up with. One of her latest fakes 
 is a ' Salon.' Don't you know what a ' Salon ' is ? Haven't 
 you heard of a ' Salon ' ? Fellers who don't cut their hair, 
 and fellers who have no hair to cut are always spendin' 
 Saturday to Monday with us now. What would you do, 
 Edmund, if you found fat poets with curly hair, and thin 
 poets with dank locks sprawlin' all over the place writin' 
 sonnets to the eyebrow of your missis ? I don't like it ; 
 it's a rotten system. And why they can't write them at 
 home if they have a home, or in a public house, or in a 
 private asylum, or why they need trouble to write 'em at 
 all, I don't know. ' Charles, you are deficient in soul,' 
 says the missis ' You've got no aesthetic perception, 
 Charles. Charles, you are given over to the brute,' 
 et cetera; and all the time these sportsmen in their willow 
 pattern waistcoats are lowering their eyelids at you and 
 sticking out their chins, and making you feel that you are 
 takin' an unpardonable liberty to be on the earth at aJl." 
 
 " My poor Charles ! Our withers are unwrung." 
 
 " Their necks are at present, but they mustn't drive a 
 feller too far. I shall not stand much more, I'll give you 
 my word. I'll let 'em see whether I am master in my 
 own house, or whether I am not. I know I am a pretty 
 low down sort o' man, I am ; but when the missis writes 
 on parchment and calls herself a Greek, and when she 
 jumps out of bed in the middle of the night to hunt for 
 ' the right word,' I tell you. Edmund, I give in. Person- 
 ally, 1 am not what you call a gifted feller, but I don't have 
 to hunt for it, my boy. Between you and me, life's a game 
 that's not worth playin' nowadays. You get laughed at 
 if 3'ou put an aitch in Homer now ; and when you were 
 at school you got smacked if you left it out. Emma says 
 that Homer didn't write his own works. She says a feller 
 of the name of Fitzsimmons wrote 'em. I asked her the 
 other day, just to make a bit of high-class conversation for 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 her don't you know, whether this Fitzsimmons was any 
 relation to the cove who fought Jim Corbett, because he 
 must have come of a damned smart stock to have written 
 Homer and books of that class. But, bless you, the old 
 dutch was at me before you could say ' knife ! ' I was not 
 to expose my Philistinism ; and I was interpenetrated with 
 the lust of athleticism, like the immoral age in which I 
 lived. Fine talker that woman. And the poets said 
 ' hee-haw.' " 
 
 " Alas, poor Yorick. If you will let me write the Sor- 
 rows of a M. F. H. I believe I can keep the pot boiling 
 for a year." 
 
 "The mornin' I married that woman there might well be 
 a change in the weather. Edmund, there's been a mistake. 
 Jane and I ought to have been born the other way about. 
 You and I would ha' got on together like a house on fire. 
 We'd be huntin' the fox all day and playing double-dummy 
 bridge all night ; while Jane and Emma could be sittin' in a 
 Methodist chapel all the year round readin' the Spectator. 
 There's been a mistake, old son. It would ha' been such a 
 simple thing for that damned fool Nature to handicap us ac- 
 cordin' to the code at the beginnin'. Weight for age and a 
 five-pound penalty. But no, she must try something fancy, 
 and as a consequence there is no race. She ought to know 
 better with all her experience. There are poor old knackers 
 that can't push one leg before the other and have never 
 won a plate, that have got their ten pounds extry ; and 
 there are smart young iive-year-olds that haven't got an 
 ounce. I never saw such handicapping in my life. Why 
 can't she be simple and straightforvi'ard and cut her clothes 
 accordin' to her cloth ? As for makin' a thing perfect, she 
 can't. She hasn't got sense enough. She can't even make 
 a hoss, damn her ! It's either all action and no heart ; 
 or if it happens to be good at timber it's a thousand to five 
 it's touched in the wind. She's taken too many contracts, 
 has that old fool. Porson — where's Porson ? Come, my 
 boy, don't you see the jug's empty ? " 
 
 This is no extreme specimen of the conversational style of 
 the Right Honourable Charles Chevenix, Thirteenth Baron 
 Bosket of Hipsle\' in the kingdom of Great Britain. With 
 incorrigible naivete it was his custom to meander amid his 
 
 34 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 woes, baring his most private thought, withholding nothing 
 from the mass of self- disclosure that enabled him to stand 
 as an eternal prototype : the victim of the amenities of 
 conj ugal life, who yet appeared to derive a maudlin pleasure 
 from his lot. Never was a creature ground so small in the 
 mills of domesticity ; yet so graceful were his protests 
 against his sad condition that a bloom of martyrdom might 
 be discerned to shine about him. A more vivid tint was 
 contributed thereby to the perfect flower of pathos. In 
 all his complaints he never achieved the note of acrimony. 
 He pitied himself profoundly, but the sentiment of pity 
 was a chief foible of his nature. The moment he discovered 
 a case as grievous as his own. a:nd let it be laid to his door 
 that he often did, he was quite as ready to decorate it with 
 a chastened tear. 
 
 Wherever sportsmen congregated his name was a house- 
 hold word. On the racecourse and at the covert-side in 
 personal popularity he stood next to the Heir Apparent. 
 Of every form of manly exercise he was the patron and 
 arch-priest. No stony " ped " or drunken " pug " ever 
 sought his aid in vain. He met the acute pecuniary need 
 of many a fallen angel and light of other days. Himself 
 no anchorite, he dispensed largesse among all sorts and 
 conditions of men. He never asked who they were, or 
 why they were what they were, but accepted them exactly 
 as they were represented to him. The mere existence of 
 such a one was an evil in a decently conducted state. He 
 was an offence to morals and political economy ; a fosterer 
 of the idle, the worthless and the corrupt ; a patron of all 
 forms of vagabondage on which the sun had ever seen fit 
 to shine. His generosity was as bountiful as that of 
 Nature herself. It had been said of him that he would 
 give the last half-crown he had in the world to a blind 
 beggar in the Strand, casting at the same time his last crust 
 to the blind man's dog ; and would then proceed humbly 
 to borrow one and sixpence of the mendicant, that he 
 might take a cab to his " doss " on the Thames Embank- 
 ment, the odd sixpence for the cabman, for it was argued 
 that even in his last extremity he would have chosen to 
 walk rather than so far forget himself as to discharge a 
 son of Nimshi with no more than a legal fare. 
 
 35 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Having now delivered his customary short excursus on his 
 own hard case, a permanent injustice that required to be 
 ventilated every day, he returned with new valour to that 
 special tyranny under which he had discovered his nieces 
 suffered. By hook or by crook it had to be redressed. 
 When he took a charitable idea into his head he could be 
 very tenacious ; and again, such olive branches being 
 denied to his own domestic hearth. Broke himself hardly 
 cherished the "little chestnut fillies " more tenderly than he. 
 
 " Jane," he said with a sudden inspiration, and smiled 
 a little roguishly to find himself so cunning, " I suppose 
 you know it's likely that Wimbledon's home, and he may 
 be comin' over to-day from Hazelby ? " 
 
 " Ah, our poor Harry," said Mrs. Broke in her most 
 motherly voice. " Charles, you surprise me. He is so 
 seldom anywhere since he lost poor dear Mary. Besides, I 
 thought he was at Davos." 
 
 Lord Bosket thought so too, but, like Brer Rabbit " he 
 lay low and said nuffin'." For it was easj' to deduce by a 
 new animation in the manner of his sister that the case 
 had acquired a fresh aspect. The Duke of Wimbledon's 
 appearances in public had of late been so rare that when 
 one was in the unhappy predicament of having six penniless 
 girls to settle in life it was almost an affront to Providence 
 to ignore them. Therefore in something under three 
 minutes the inexorable lady had made a concession — a par- 
 ticularly graceful one to be sure. Her breeding was much 
 too perfect to allow cause and effect to obtrude themselves 
 in her tactics ; but it was a concession nevertheless. After 
 all, it was a fine morning for hunting ; the girls miist be 
 encouraged to preserve their sovereign health ; Hegel's 
 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion could wait until 
 they returned. But they must promise to be home early. 
 
 " Yes, mother," said Joan demurely. 
 
 Still there was a fine spirit in her eager face as she rose 
 from the table. 
 
 " Come," she said. " Delia, please go and tell Simkin 
 to have Popsie, the Colonel and Pat ready as soon as he can." 
 
 " Come here, little gell," said Lord Bosket, grabbing 
 Delia as she was hastening to obey orders. " Give your 
 Uncle Charles a kiss. Nice, shy little filly, is it ? I told 
 
 36 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 'em to put a saddle on your new quad Twopence out o' 
 Threepence. Pretty bit o' stuff. Have a look at him when 
 you go down and see if he comes up to your big ideas. You 
 people are so almighty particular, you know, that you can 
 hardly humble yourselves to sit anything under a National 
 winner." 
 
 " Dear Uncle Charles ! " cried the other five, circling 
 about him on their way to the door. Next to their father 
 and their brother he ranked as their boon companion. It 
 delighted them to pay the toll he exacted of one and all. 
 
 By what mysterious agent their mother's iron resolve 
 had been softened so suddenly they did not know ; nor did 
 they try to learn. It was enough that they were going out 
 hunting after all ; and that their Uncle Charles, notwith- 
 standing that he swore so, and was always calling to Porson 
 to replenish the whisky jar, and that he had the funniest 
 way of talking that ever was heard, was just about the 
 dearest and kindest man and uncle in all the world. Of 
 course their father was excluded from this generalization. 
 The deities are ver}^ properly barred in a comparison of 
 mortals. Whatever were the shining attributes of their 
 Uncle Charles, his flesh being subject to decay he could 
 wear no nimbus ; his place was a little this side the mytho- 
 logical. Their father was one apart, a fabled character, a 
 myth, a hero, a figure of romance, a god on a pedestal. 
 
 " Those are what I call gells," said their uncle as soon as 
 they had gone ; " keen as the wind, and fresh as a March 
 mornin' ! I like the colour of 'em. They're my sort. 
 I'm not much of a feller, I'm not, but I've got a very high 
 opinion of those little gells. Jane, if you go spoilin' those 
 nice little fillies by makin' 'em clever, you'll be sorry. 
 You've got to marry 'em, remember. And a man if he is 
 worth his salt won't look at women of genius even if they 
 are twice as smart as the deuce, and four times as ugly. 
 Mind you, Jane, I don't think you will. I give you the 
 credit of knowin' what's what. You are fly, my gell, you 
 are. You've got the brains of this family, although it's a 
 back-handed compliment that is. But let's have no more 
 cussedness, if you please. Nice little fillies are not to be 
 had for the askin' ; and when they are yours you've got 
 to mind your ' p's ' and ' q's.' And if you are wise you'll 
 
 37 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 keep clear of Emma. That missis of mine would give 
 Mr. Plato his gruel in about a quarter of an hour. She is 
 worse than her Collected Works." 
 
 A demure smile was his recompense for this sage advice. 
 Presently he changed his manner. Lowering his voice, 
 his confidentialness which was that of wisdom unalloyed, 
 acquired an insinuation that was not unworthy of a lawyer's 
 clerk. 
 
 " Talkin' of marriage," he said, " somebody told me the 
 other day that things had been fixed up between our young 
 Billy and that Wayling gell. You had better give me 
 the office, because I've got a pony on it." 
 
 " I think Charles at least the announcement is a little 
 premature." 
 
 Mrs. Broke's smile was as placid as her eyes, but she 
 had brought to perfection the art of affirming a fact with 
 a denial of it. Her brother at least knew what construction 
 to place upon her demeanour. He laughed. 
 
 " I've lost my pony all right. Jane, you are fly. So 
 you've hooked the heiress ! It's what you've been wanting 
 this many a day. How you've kept body and soul to- 
 gether all these years I'm damned if I know, as I said to 
 Salmon the other night. Hooked the heiress have you ? 
 You are just as fly as they make 'em. You've missed your 
 vocation, my gell. If you had taken those brains on the 
 Turf, you would have made a bit. Suppose I had better 
 congratulate you ; you too, old son." 
 
 Husband and wife laughed without resentment. They 
 were accustomed to a frankness for which their relation 
 was famed from one end of England to the other. Besides 
 they could afford to be good-humoured. A much-coveted 
 prize had recently come within the grasp of a bitterly 
 impoverished family. 
 
 Lord Bosket seemed to grow thoughtful. 
 
 " I am sorry for Bill," he exclaimed suddenly. *' It's no 
 good savin' I ain't. I can't stand that Wayling gell. 
 She's a righteous one, I'm certain. Belongs to the missis' 
 gang. In fact, if it comes to that, I'm not at all sure that 
 I wouldn't prefer the old dutch. Poor young BiUy ; 
 you've my sympathy, my lad. Many a time will you wish 
 yourself a countei -jumper at twenty bob a week and your 
 
 38 
 
A MATRIMONIAL MARTYR 
 
 grub before you are through with her. You'll be your 
 Uncle Charles, my boy. I wonder how many times that 
 damned old fool has wished the same. Led me to church 
 in blinkers and a halter, and, my boy, I'll lay a monkey that 
 that's their game with you. Pore feller ! Pore feller ! 
 What's the good of tr5dn' to be a cock angel if you can't 
 grow wings ! " 
 
 The nature of the subject made a further recital of Lord 
 Bosket's sorrows imminent, but it was mercifully arrested 
 by the return of his nieces. They were equipped with habits 
 of a style somewhat antediluvian, and with bowler hats 
 battered into all shapes save that of the original, which no 
 doubt was antediluvian too. Fashion, however, did not 
 count in their case. From head to heel they had the 
 indefinable look of the " workman." It was a saying of 
 their uncle's that must be allowed a certain truth : " Shove 
 any one of 'em into a sack, tie her in with a bit o' string, 
 stick a saucepan over her nose, and set her on a boss, 
 and for style I shall back that little gell against anything 
 on two legs that ever went on four. Out of the saddle 
 they're not beauties none of 'em, but in it they are as 
 handsome as paint." And allowing for a certain affec- 
 tionate partiality, they might well appeal to that inveterate 
 sportsman who furnished of them many a lofty description, 
 of which he himself, in the opinion of good judges, was not 
 unworthy. As well as being bred to the saddle they had 
 been bred to the fields. They were as natural and vigorous 
 as any creatures there to be found. 
 
 Lord Bosket took them round to the yard to expound 
 the points of Delia's " boss," " Twopence out of Three- 
 pence " ; also those of a new " quad " of his own, " Apol- 
 linaris out of Biography," which he proceeded to do with a 
 child-like gravity that endeared him more than ever to his 
 audience. Subsequently they bore off their Uncle Charles 
 to see the badger, entertaining him by the way with another 
 elaborate and highly coloured account of its capture. 
 Afterwards were submitted to his inspection a ferret, a 
 stoat, fox, a weasel, a cheetah, a mongoose and innumer 
 able dogs, doves and horses, not to mention a stable-cat 
 blind of one eye : a formidable family of pets that were 
 called on to receive his sanction about three times a week. 
 
 39 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Which the Judicious are exhorted to Skip 
 
 WHILE our hero and his attendant Dianas are nego- 
 tiating hedges and ditclies in the February thaw, it 
 is our duty to take a shrewder look into his material state. 
 In person fine and lusty, he was in his mind the true 
 embodiment of feudalism, as was to be expected of one 
 whose passion for the land had congealed the temper of 
 his understanding into the clogging thickness of his native 
 loam. Had you dug over his mind with a spade, nothing 
 would have been turned up in it save the immemorial lust 
 of possession, the pride of race, the abasement of spirit 
 before the soil, which even at this day rendered him as 
 foremost an Englishman as any, although, a little para- 
 doxically, considering how our enlightenment has been 
 vaunted before an envious Europe for at least a hundred 
 years, he still remained the essential type and mirror of 
 the Briton of the days before Froissart and Chaucer in the 
 twelfth century after Christ. 
 
 To reconcile such a one to the peculiar pinch of his da}' 
 and generation was impossible. Nothing ; not his wife, 
 not his friends, not his circumstances, not experience itself, 
 that over-rated monitor, conspire as they might, could 
 reconcile him to the heresy that at the dawn of the twentieth 
 century of the Christian era, pounds, shillings and pence 
 had superseded more picturesque considerations in point 
 of virtue. He could not bring himself to believe that a 
 martial ancestry, unsullied thews and a strong right arm 
 went for less than the arithmetical rectitude of your greasy 
 dealers in food-stuffs and cotton fabrics. He could not 
 bring himself to believe that pre-eminence before the 
 world was the fruit of a sufficient sum in the three per 
 
 40 
 
THE JUDICIOUS EXHORTED TO SKIP 
 
 cents, wrung out of the sweat of the weak and had no con- 
 nexion whatever with a two-handed sword and a suit of 
 armour. That money was the end and the beginning, the 
 beginning and the end, was to his mediaeval mind as 
 fantastic as to suppose that a tradesman could be a gentle- 
 man. It hurt him to think that among a splendidly 
 practical people the only gauge of your merit was the 
 amount of your income. What was the good of tracing 
 your descent in an unbroken line from a Norman robber 
 or a Saxon one if upon the consideration of a few guineas 
 persons who had no particular insight into the ni} steries of 
 the letter aitch, and other arcana devised by Caste for its 
 own protection, could trace theirs from Charlemagne him- 
 self, or good King Arthur, or an immortal husbandman 
 and landowner of the name of Adam ? Why have a handle 
 to your name if it was open to all the world to buy its 
 nobihty like it bought its mutton, and every greengrocer 
 pushed a seat in the House of Lords before him on his 
 barrow ? In vain was his voice uplifted with the ducal 
 bard — 
 
 Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die. 
 But leave us still our old nobility. 
 
 Alas ! tha<" lyrical cry wrought no consolation in his tor- 
 mented spirit. 
 
 On the other hand, to do him no injustice, our hero's 
 conception of his own figure in the world was no unworthy 
 one. His acres, his accidental status, his hereditary merit 
 he found impossible to reverence too much. He safe- 
 guarded them as jealously as his foxes, his blood -stock, his 
 turnips and his daughters. Like the ancestral ivy they 
 gave colour to an edifice otherwise substantially plain, 
 yet unlike it they were possessions which his creditors had 
 not the power to touch. 
 
 Pride, says the moralist, is a weed that flourishes in 
 a barren soil ; therefore the leaner our hero's condition 
 the higher it waxed. A very stalwart of a man, fed upon 
 our honest English beef and ale, he had a curious impreg- 
 nability to the time of day. His constitutional misfortunes 
 were a little overwhelming. For granting his pride, 
 torpidity, and self-esteem, the first of all was to be found 
 
 41 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 in the hour the gods had chosen to impose his personality 
 upon a slightly amused and slightly irreverent world. As a 
 feudal baron he would have been a complete success, but 
 in his capacity of plain country squire in the late days of 
 Victoria, with the habits of his forefathers at the mercy 
 of a pecuniary need they had never been schooled to suffer, 
 the figure that he cut was hardly so heroic as his bearing. 
 A king does not appear at his best with holes in his coat. 
 Poor Broke with his timber down and a mortgage on his 
 manor house was so thinly clad that he could be seen to 
 shiver every time the wind blew. Those of his neighbours 
 who challenged his pretensions with a few of their own, 
 acquired in several instances with the painful and recent 
 suddenness of their millions, were already looking forward 
 to his extinction. The nearest of these, the wealthiest, and 
 incomparably the most audacious, was one Lord Salmon, 
 the latest thing in peers, whose views were couched in 
 terms of a licentious nature. " We never cease to cherish 
 the name of Edmund Broke, the last of the elect — perfect 
 father and husband, domestic laurel crowns his visionary 
 brow, and all that sort of thing. But there are no joints 
 in his backbone. He can't bend. He'll be worth looking 
 at when the crash comes." 
 
 Broke's judgment on the adventurous Salmon contained 
 more clinching expressions. A man who in his own words 
 " began life with a barrel-organ and three white mice," 
 who dared to put a price on Covenden, the sacred earth 
 of the family of Broke, who dared to put a price on it 
 ten per cent, above its market value, " because when a 
 place fits my fancy, money's no obstacle," was a person 
 too irresponsible to incur the censure of the self-respecting. 
 Rather he should be laughed at temperately. But Salmon 
 was too successful to be laughed at. Broke, therefore, 
 had recourse to the weapons of the weaker party. He 
 damned his eyes. 
 
 Salmon repHed by an affront to civilization. He built 
 a mansion in the Victorian style. The lord of the manor 
 could no longer pace his bare demesne oblivious to the 
 House of Salmon. For the seat of that noble family had 
 been raised upon an adjacent hill, part of which was appro- 
 priated turbary. The place was a paradise of sanitation. 
 
 42 
 
THE JUDICIOUS EXHORTED TO SKIP 
 
 It was equipped with every modern inconvenience, at once 
 amazing and American, lighted with electricity and heated 
 by steam, a really high achievement in discomfort, blushing 
 in red brick. Lord Salmon, however, retained his self- 
 possession through all this relentless grandeur. It hardly 
 excited him at all. His candour still remained as great 
 as his insouciance. He still remained the unassuming 
 humourist he had always been. He acknowledged as 
 freely that Toplands owed its being to the Semitic origin 
 of Saul first Baron Salmon as that the patent of nobility 
 of Saul first Baron Salmon aforesaid was the interest on 
 fifty thousand pounds invested discreetly in the funds of 
 the Party that most required it. In apologising for the 
 unavoidable absence of his ancestors he took a simple- 
 minded pleasure. " One can't have everything, you 
 know," he was wont to say with quiet resignation. " Life 
 has not been ungenerous on the whole. We keep a few 
 horses in training and a yacht at Cowes. We dine at the 
 Carlton and hunt with the Quorn. We have a moor in 
 Scotland and a river in Norway. We don't lack for friends ; 
 and Lady Salmon says she has quite a horror of paste. As 
 for my ancestors, I am a man with a Tribe." 
 
 Lord Salmon was the antithesis of his neighbour. He 
 was beginning ; Broke was ceasing to be. He had intel- 
 ligence, ideas, boundless energy ; Broke was mercifully 
 delivered from inconveniences of this nature. Broke's was 
 the sturdy limitation of mind, the admirable bovine absence 
 of temperament of your true John Bull. The one embittered 
 the life of his head-keeper ; the other was a country 
 gentleman. The one endowed hospitals and homes for 
 working men ; the other contracted debts he knew not 
 how to pay. Lord Salmon was a promoter of public com- 
 panies, a radiant person, bland, and splendid in insouciance, 
 peerless in audacity ; whilst Broke was inveterate in pedi- 
 gree, uncompromising in his gait, unmatched in dignity, 
 azure of blood and very thick, consequently sluggish ; a 
 caricature of a type, but not without some of the saving 
 graces of his order. 
 
 It was an open secret in the county that Broke was on 
 his last legs. You had only to put two and two together. 
 The depreciation of land-values was a heavy factor ; and 
 
 43 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 again, the aristocratic instinct is not to be gratified through- 
 out a term of expensive centuries without sooner or later 
 Threadneedle Street asking for better security. If only 
 we live long enough, the most austere of us have to submit 
 to the discovery of coal under the virgin soil. The Brokes, 
 a good freebooting family, had contrived in feudal days to 
 live in purple and fine linen. They took what they wanted. 
 But other times, other manners. Under Victorian statutes 
 the strong hand was liable to be interpreted as a felony. 
 The strong brain had superseded it. Persons of an ingenious 
 turn, the Salmons for example, arranged their " booms " 
 and their " slumps," " rigged " their " markets," " floated " 
 their " companies," knew how to be a " bear " and when 
 to be a " bull," rented Park Lane, had their little places in 
 the country, a convenient distance from town : and were 
 able with their indomitable wealth to menace and to oust 
 the county families or, what they liked better, to force 
 them to compromise. 
 
 The fusion of blood and brains was the first condition. 
 The Brokes lifted up their voices without avail. The 
 Salmons held the power and did not hesitate to wield it. 
 The Brokes must perish or submit. The philosophers 
 among the ancien regime clenched their teeth and inter- 
 married with the bloated plutocrat ; the astute among 
 them made a Gilbertian attempt to beg the question of their 
 dignity by taking in matrimony the daughters of the pork- 
 packers of Chicago on the plea that every American woman 
 is a queen in her own right — a doubtful compliment to a 
 democratic country which yet seemed to please it very 
 well. The Brokes of Covenden, those stubborn Die-Hards, 
 endeavoured in the meantime to pursue the even tenour 
 of their way, entering into alliances only with those whom 
 they were pleased to call " the right sort," a term of an 
 admirable vagueness suited to the character of their ideals. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Broke, with her penniless and uninteresting 
 girls in the market, was at the end of her wits. She was 
 too keenly alive to the exigencies of the age to have 
 scruples as to what direction they married in, provided 
 that money had been found there. But our hero, whose 
 exclusiveness grew more inordinate as the occasion for it 
 grew less apparent to the world, had set down his foot. 
 
 44 
 
THE JUDICIOUS EXHORTED TO SKIP 
 
 They should marry " the right sort " or remain in single 
 blessedness. In the matter of her son, however, the daunt- 
 less lady had already achieved a success, notwithstanding 
 the restrictions under which she laboured. The beautiful, 
 accomplished and absurdly rich Miss Wayling of Calow, 
 the last of a line celebrated in song and story, mistress of 
 Calow Court and Crag's Foot Priory, Long Shafton Hall, 
 and still better, one-fifth of a northern coal county, was 
 a young woman whose eligibility was fabulous. She was 
 indeed a match ; and if report was faithful, her heart was 
 thrown in with her shekels as a sort of make-weight. A 
 young woman of character, report said also. Was ever 
 such luck as this young man's ? 
 
 When her family had at last gone to hunt the fox, Mrs. 
 Broke was able to devote her attention to the remainder 
 of the morning's post. Of three letters that addressed 
 themselves particularly to her notice one was in the hand- 
 writing of her son, whilst the two others, directed to Edmund 
 Broke, Esq., were of a commercial nature and came there- 
 fore within the cognizance of his wife, who conducted all 
 the business of his household by virtue of her gift for 
 affairs. 
 
 Her son's letter, thrown off in the casual style so charac- 
 teristic of its writer, was to let his mother know that a 
 brother officer, one Dicky Sykes, having had the mis- 
 fortune " to take a tremendous toss and smash his 
 showlder to blazes," was compelled to give up polo for 
 a time. He was selling his ponies in consequence, and in a 
 disinterested and courteous manner was prepared, purely 
 as an act of friendship, to offer a pair, " the pick of the 
 basket" for "a monkey," anglice five hundred pounds, 
 " on the nail." He, the writer, was almost ashamed to 
 accept them ; it was almost like getting them for nothing ; 
 but notwithstanding the modesty of this sum his " screw," 
 as he had pointed out so often to " his dear old mummy," 
 could only cope with difficulty with the bare necessities of 
 life, and as a pair of polo ponies, however necessary to his 
 well-being, hardly came within this category, he hoped 
 " his good old mummy " would let him have a cheque by 
 return. In a postscript not very legible occurred these 
 phrases : "I don't want you to get fussing about me and 
 
 45 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Maud Wayling. I'm not her sort. I'm a plane sort of 
 chap, and don't want anything so clarsy as Maud." 
 
 Mrs. Broke read and re-read this letter. She laughed a 
 little and she sighed a little. There was a softness in her 
 eyes that might have surprised her daughters very much 
 had they been able to see it. 
 
 She found the other letters of a more prosaic kind. The 
 first was in these terms : — 
 
 " Edmund Broke, Esq. — Dear Sir, I beg again to call 
 your attention to the fact that your account is over- 
 drawn considerably in excess of the securities we hold. 
 I am instructed by my Directors to inform you that it 
 is impossible to permit this deficit to be augmented. I 
 am further instructed by my Directors respectfully to 
 urge you to reduce it without delay. The undersigned 
 would be glad to arrange a personal interview at your 
 early convenience. I am, dear Sir, yours very faithfully, 
 per pro Marr's Banking Co., Ltd., Jas. B. Chayney." 
 
 The second was a little more to the point : — 
 
 " Edmund Broke, Esq. — Sir, We were much surprised to 
 have this morning the enclosed cheque on Marr's Bank- 
 ing Company, Ltd., returned to us endorsed R.D. 
 Unless we receive a remittance for the full amount (£103 
 16s. $d.) per return of post we shall be compelled to take 
 steps for its immediate recovery. We are, Sir, your 
 obedient servants, Denise et Cie." 
 
 Mrs. Broke was neither surprised nor embarrassed by 
 such manifestations of the difficulties that threatened from 
 hour to hour to destroy them. She knew they were on the 
 verge ; a mortgage on every stick that was not entailed ; 
 and creditors knocking at the gate. For many a weary year 
 this indomitable woman had been economizing to the last 
 desperate tarthing, and here at the end of that long period 
 ruin still grinned at them through the holes in his mask. 
 He had ear-marked this family as his own. Sooner or later 
 he meant to have it. 
 
 When Broke returned late in the afternoon with his 
 tired and muddy charges, she engaged his attention in 
 the library, even before he had time to take a bath and 
 change his clothes. She sought his opinion of the letters, 
 and the steps he proposed to take. 
 
 46 
 
THE JUDICIOUS EXHORTED TO SKIP 
 
 The dispirited man sank into a chair. 
 
 " I don't know," he said feebly. " I am always trying 
 for better mortgages, but land goes for nothing now. 
 Denise et Cie ? Who are they ? " 
 
 " Court dresses for Joan and Philippa. It ought to have 
 been paid long ago. Harriet, Jane and Margaret have worn 
 them too." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I suppose it ought. How dx) people live on 
 nothing ? " 
 
 " We have been doing it, Edmund, for nearly thirty years. 
 We shall be obliged to let No. 3 this season, or, if we can 
 find somebody to take it, I think it would be better to do 
 things thoroughly and sell the lease," 
 
 " I was fearing that." 
 
 " I am sure not more than I. It is so necessary for the 
 girls." 
 
 " Poor beggars ! " said their father with a peculiar tender- 
 ness. " Not much of a show for them. They have a poor 
 time as it is. And now they will not be able to have their 
 bit of a season." 
 
 " I think I may be able to induce Emma to have Delia 
 with her at Grosvenor Street for May. They will all be out 
 then. She may have one of the others also : Emma has a 
 very good heart." 
 
 "Poor beggars!" he repeated, with emphasis. "But 
 even if we give up No. 3, 1 am afraid it will not help very 
 much. However, I will see Brefht to-morrow. And, by 
 the bye, the sooner Billy is married the better." 
 
 " I quite agree with you." 
 
 "He is not like the girls. I have not too much confi- 
 dence in that fellow somehow. It would not surprise me 
 to find him with his heels over the traces some fine morn- 
 ing. He is careless and extravagant." 
 
 Mrs. Broke demurred with a Httle smile. Maternal 
 tenderness had not the heart to subscribe to such a strong 
 opinion. 
 
 " Obstinate, headstrong ; you have to watch that sort. 
 It would be nice for us if he came the same sort of cropper 
 that Charles did. I think you remember Charles ? " 
 
 " Well, yes," said the sister of Charles with a slightly 
 forced laugh. 
 
 47 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 The allusion was to the Right Honourable Charles 
 Chevenix, thirteenth Baron Bosket, who at the present 
 tender age of his nephew William had regaled his private 
 friends and shocked the democracy of his protesting country 
 by pledging his name with that of Miss Maisie Malone, a 
 star of the Light Comedy Theatre. How Mr. Charles — it 
 was in the time of his father, the late peer — started on a tour 
 of the globe on the very morning that the twelfth baron 
 arrived at the lady's villa residence in St. John's Wood 
 attended by his lawyer and a blank cheque, a tendency to 
 apoplexy, and a perfectly natural flow of English unre- 
 strained, and how the sum of ten thousand pounds became 
 the amount of the indemnity, was a page of the family 
 history to which Mrs. Broke was still unable to turn 
 without a shudder, although it had been written years 
 and years ago. 
 
 " I would lose no time in getting him fixed up," said 
 Broke. " We shall not be safe with that fellow until there 
 is a halter on him." 
 
 Mrs. Broke here drew his attention to the young man's 
 letter. 
 
 " I fancy he won't get his ponies," he said, and upon 
 reaching the postscript added, " Why, the fellow's a fool. 
 He doesn't know what's good for him. I can't understand 
 a man in his senses shyinsij at a girl like Maud. Her mother 
 was a Fitzurse ; the Waylings were on the Roll of the 
 Visiting Justices ; she's an heiress to boot and a catch for 
 anybody. The fellow's a fool." 
 
 " Yes, but a nice fool." 
 
 " A reckless fool. A fool who doesn't care. Had you 
 knocked the nonsense out of him regularly as you have 
 done with the girls, we should not have him parading his 
 tastes like this." 
 
 His son's letter had touched our autocrat smartly. 
 
 " I think, my dear, you overstate the case. I am sure 
 neither Billy nor the girls would think of acting contrary 
 to their own interests. But Billy, manlike, insists upon his 
 grumble." 
 
 "If you take my advice, you will waste no time. In 
 some things I don't trust that fellow." 
 
 With this final expression of his wisdom our hero rose 
 to remove his muddy presence from the library. 
 
 48 
 
THE JUDICIOUS EXHORTED TO SKIP 
 
 " If the girls have come down, will you please send them 
 here. And please tell them to bring their German dic- 
 tionaries." 
 
 " Poor beggars ! " said their father yet again as he went 
 out. 
 
 He had a deep-seated pity for his girls. He could never 
 divest himself of the idea that they were particularly in 
 need of it. He felt the sharpest pinch of his circumstances 
 when he reflected that they had to suffer a poverty to which, 
 could his own feelings have been consulted, he would have 
 been the last man in the world to condemn them. Then 
 their mother ruled them with a rod of iron. It was doubt- 
 less for their good, since every act of hers was so just and 
 wise ; but all the same he did think she was a bit hard on 
 them sometimes. 
 
 They filed into the library with deep apprehension. In 
 the field fear had hardly a meaning ; but this room flanked 
 with shelf upon shelf of old grim tomes in which the stem 
 spirit of their mother seemed to be invested, was the abode 
 of terror. However, this afternoon there was a respite to 
 their real sufferings, a somewhat painful encounter with 
 the German language, while their mother read aloud that 
 portion of their brother's letter that she felt concerned 
 them. 
 
 " Your father tells me that he cannot find him a penny 
 more than he receives at present. Have you a suggestion ? " 
 
 Had Billy desired the moon, the female members of his 
 house would have endeavoured humbly to procure it for 
 him with their pocket-money. Even his mother could 
 relent where he was concerned. As for his sisters, no 
 sacrifice was too severe could it gratify his lightest 
 whim. In their adoring eyes he was the lineal descendant 
 of their father. The shining qualities of that god and hero 
 among mankind had been transmitted to his son, the heir 
 of his name and fortune, and also of his immortality. 
 Their loyalty was of the unflinching quality that generations 
 of their race had rendered to the king. Billy could do no 
 wrong ; and if a thought strayed into his mind, or a deed 
 was recorded of him. it was enough. The ungenerous might 
 have suggested that this was a delicate acknowledgment 
 on the part of his sisters of the infrequency with which the 
 
 49 . D 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 young man was moved to surrender himself to the incon- 
 veniences of thought or action. But they would have been 
 refuted fie^cel5^ Billy was perfect : the kindest, bravest, 
 cleverest, best-looking brother in the world. Than to 
 merge their own desires in his they asked no more. 
 
 " We could sell some of the hunters," said Joan. " Two 
 or three of the thoroughbreds, Pat, Whitenose and The 
 Doctor might be worth five hundred pounds." 
 
 She spoke without hesitation. Her sisters regarded her 
 with a wistful admiration. She was of the uncompromising 
 type of which history is pregnant with examples. She 
 would have struck off her right hand with her left had it 
 ever chanced to occur to her that such a course was essen- 
 tial. Her sisters admired hugely this fibre in her, and 
 would have followed her lead anywhere, since they had all 
 been cast in the same heroic mould. 
 
 If to prove the rule you insist on an exception, it must be 
 the youngest, Delia. To be sure she was but a child. But 
 again and again the other five, whose mature years ranged 
 from eighteen to one and twenty, had been forced to con- 
 fess, tacitly, in their inmost hearts, that they had no 
 confidence in Delia. They were afraid she was not quite 
 one of them. They had to be very strict with her. There 
 was something delicate, impressionable, something that you 
 might even call poetic and uncanny about her. She had 
 longer eyelashes than any of them, and they curled up at 
 the ends in the oddest manner. Her eyes too were bluer 
 than anybody's, bluer even than Joan's, with a queer 
 filmy sort of thing hovering above them, that made them 
 very strange and unfathomable. When a thing like that 
 hovers about your eyes it is hard to tell what you will be at 
 next. She had been convicted of several misdemeanours 
 alread\^ although she was such a baby in point of years. 
 You will remember how that morning she had contrived to 
 disgrace herself on her birthday. Nor could you ascribe 
 such an incident wholly to her age. At no time of life 
 could Joan, Philippa, Harriet, Jane and Margaret have 
 been capable of misconducting themselves in that way. 
 
 Once they had found her in tears over a fair}' tale ; and 
 several times she had shown a tendency to read books of 
 her own accord. Once she had missed her tea because she 
 
 50 
 
THE JUDICIOUS EXHORTED TO SKIP 
 
 was reading in the library. What sort of book it was that 
 she read they did not know, but that it exercised a per- 
 nicious influence upon her tender mind there could be no 
 doubt. Solecisms she had committed already ; but she 
 would have committed others and worse perhaps had they 
 not sat on her constantly and snubbed her dutifully from 
 her earliest youth. For seek as she might to conceal her 
 guilt there was no glossing over the fact thaCt she kept 
 opinions of her own. White mice and black rabbits and 
 the thousand and one delectable things the law allowed 
 them to keep did not suffice for her. She must hanker after 
 the illicit and differ from other people. Indeed the severest 
 thing that lenient man their father had said of any one of 
 them had been said of Delia. He said that had she been 
 a boy she might have grown up to be a Radical. 
 
 61 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Lord Chesterfield to his Son 
 
 THE next morning Broke rode to Cuttisham to see 
 his agent. He was in a despondent mood. As he 
 drove through the February mists, and the rain trickled 
 into his skin, and his horse ploughed through mire that 
 had borne his name for a longer period than history had 
 kept a record, his thoughts were bitter. Look which 
 way he might, there was no light to shine upon the gloom 
 of his affairs. Like the sombre weepings of heaven, it 
 was all-pervading. His lands were rotting under his 
 feet ; his house was tumbling about his ears. Gates were 
 unhinged, hedges broken, farms tenantless, fields lying 
 sterile for lack of the manure he could not afford to buy. 
 All things were s}Tnbolical of the decay of him and his. 
 
 Never did a man feel so powerless before the cruel 
 might of circumstance. He was not cast in the mould 
 that can grapple with two strong hands at the throat of 
 destiny. He had been born with a silver spoon in his 
 mouth. If he were hungry, he opened his hps, and lo ! 
 he was fed. He was accustomed to discharge all his 
 obligations to the outside world by the simple and ex- 
 cellent expedient of a cheque on his bankers. His people 
 had been accustomed to doing it before him, ever since 
 banks came into use. It was their way, therefore it 
 was his. It was unreasonable to ask him to devise 
 another when theirs was altogether to be commended. 
 Look at the matter in what aspect he might, he did not 
 see what he could do to retrieve his position. If he farmed 
 his own land, lie lost his money ; and to induce others to 
 farm it for him was not easy in the present state of agri- 
 culture. But a man must live, and a Broke must Uve 
 
 52 
 
LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON 
 
 like a gentleman. In this age of the plutocrat and the 
 parvenu it behoved one of his lineage to keep a hght 
 burning. 
 
 His mood was ' no lighter when at last he came into 
 Cuttisham, the county town of the shire. Two out of 
 three of the passers-by touched their hats to him, and 
 tradesmen kow-towed from their doors, but this deference 
 brought no balm to his spirit. If an57thing, it made his 
 depression the more severe. He cantered solemnly along 
 the cobbles of the narrow streets, until having turned 
 two corners, and having passed a Baptist Chapel, a Wes- 
 leyan Chapel, a Methodist New Connexion, a Bethel, 
 and a Congregational Church, he found himself in a 
 thoroughfare a little narrower, a Httle cleaner, and a 
 little faster asleep than those he had traversed already. 
 It bore the name of High Street. It was encumbered 
 with that air of last-century respectability which Mr. 
 Addison would have called " vastly genteel." It was 
 the locale of the post office and the bank ; of the lawyer 
 and the doctor ; of the Society for the Resuscitation of 
 Decayed Gentlewomen, and the Home for Indigent Peers ; 
 and, above all, it contained the office and abode of 
 Mr. Joseph Breffit. 
 
 As the sun is to our solar system, in that relation did 
 Mr. Brefifit stand to the social and economic life of his 
 native place. He was the luminary around which all 
 things revolved. He was the fixed star in the local firma- 
 ment, without whose sanction it was supposed the world 
 could not be carried on. There was nothing too great 
 or too trivial to be outside the sphere of Mr. Breffit's 
 interest. If a subscription was opened for a charitable 
 object, his was the first name upon the Ust. If the Lord 
 Lieutenant of the county gave five pounds, Mr. Brefifit 
 gave ten ; if the Lord Lieutenant gave fiftj' pounds, Mr. 
 Brefiit gave a hundred. If a drunkard was sent to prison 
 for a week, Mr. Brefiit was on the bench to send him 
 there. Afterwards if he expressed a wish to reform, 
 Mr. Brefiit got him admitted into a Retreat for Inebriates ; 
 if subsequently he grew more licentious in his habits, 
 Mr. Breffit distrained upon his goods for rent ; if less 
 licentious, Mr. Brefiit took him into his employ. If he 
 
 53 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 died, Mr. Brefiit furnished the money for his burial out 
 of the Insurance Policy he had taken out in the company 
 Mr. Brefiit represented. If he absconded, Mr. Breffit 
 signed the order for the committal of his wife and family 
 to the workhouse. 
 
 When a distinguished person came to Cuttisham it 
 was as the guest of Mr. Brefiit. A lecture could not be 
 given in the Town Hall unless Mr. Brefiit occupied the 
 chair. If the Rev. Mr. Rubbidge, the popular author 
 of Round the Ruddy Rhododendron Roots, that beautiful 
 and tear-compelling book, discoursed on " Vulgarity Con- 
 sidered as a Paying Concern," Mr. Brefiit introduced 
 him to his audience in a few homely but well-chosen 
 words. During those seasons when the local members 
 were constrained to loose the arrows of their oratory, 
 Mr. Brefiit sat at their right hand on the platform, 
 taking precedence even of the Mayor and the county 
 magnates. It was his inalienable privilege to say " Hear, 
 hear " in the forensic pauses of these masters of political 
 ineptitude three times as often and twice as loudly as 
 anybody else. 
 
 Cuttisham was proud of Mr. Brefiit, and Mr. Brefiit 
 was proud of Cuttisham. He knew everybody, and he 
 knew everything ; pre-eminently he knew how many 
 beans made five. He was a land agent primarily ; he 
 was also a lawyer, an insurance agent, a stockbroker, a 
 dabbler in public companies, a breeder of cattle and horses, 
 a banker, a brewer, a landed proprietor, a buyer of any- 
 thing, a seller of anybody. He was a philanthropist and 
 a publicist, a justice of the peace, a guardian of the poor, 
 a churchwarden, a county councillor, a colonel in the 
 volunteers. In all weathers, in all seasons, a tall silk 
 hat, a white waistcoat, and a pair of highly polished brown 
 boots, were three articles indispensable to his attire. 
 
 Not only did Mr. Brefiit know the business of every- 
 body in Cuttisham almost as well as his own, but he knew 
 that of the favoured persons who dwelt in the county. 
 Further, he conducted it. Nor was it their business 
 alone with which he was acquainted. He knew their 
 estate, their revenue, the personnel and Christian names 
 of their respective families, their balance at the bank, 
 
 54 
 
LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON 
 
 their armorial bearings, and when the first cuttings 
 were planted of their genealogical trees. It was his boast 
 that he was brought into perpetual contact with the 
 nobihty and gentry. And as even the most hard-headed 
 and successful men are prone to undervalue the things 
 they enjoy and unduly to enhance the things they do 
 not, so Mr. Breffit, who had wealth and a keen intelU- 
 gence, set these as nought in comparison with what it 
 rejoiced him to speak of as blue blood and aristocratic 
 lineage. 
 
 Now the one among his cUents to whom the past had 
 been most liberal in this matter, without a doubt, was 
 Mr. Broke. Persons there were better endowed with 
 mere things of the world ; persons of a more generous 
 culture ; persons of title ; persons more distinguished 
 in the public service ; persons of a %vider intellectual 
 range ; persons whom pecuniarily it was a greater privilege 
 to know ; but there was not one among them all whose 
 acquaintance Mr. Breffit valued so highly as that of Mr. 
 Broke of Covenden. He felt that in according to Mr. 
 Broke, a plain country squire, the first place in his esteem, 
 he did honour to himself. It would have been so easy 
 to reserve this particular niche for the master of Hazelby, 
 or the Earl of Croxton, or one among the crop of baronets 
 that flourished in the shire, Mr. Brelht flattered himself 
 that where a man of less perception, a man of a coarser 
 fibre, would have been captivated by mere vulgar gawds, 
 he could remain unbiassed and impervious. Compared 
 with the Brokes, their friends and neighbours were only 
 people of yesterday. That dotard on their mystic excel- 
 lence did himself the greatest credit who enshrined these 
 symbols of the best and highest as the gods of his idolatry. 
 
 When our hero arrived at the plain brass plate that 
 kept the entrance to Mr. Breffit's office, that astute gentle- 
 man was seated in his private room in the company 
 of his son. The father, small, grey, wiry, without a 
 superfluous ounce of flesh upon his bones, had an almost 
 juvenile eagerness of demeanour, which sprang frc»m a 
 mercurial temperament. It was to the peculiar quality 
 of this temperament that he owed his success in life. A 
 many-sided man of affairs, a man of numberless interests, 
 
 55 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 it was the feverish energy with which he threw him« 
 sell into them that enabled him to push them to a suc- 
 cessful issue. He pursued the art of turning an honest 
 penny with the ardour that belongs to the baser sort of 
 genius. His was the invaluable secret of producing blood 
 from a stone. 
 
 The son did not present the pregnant points of the 
 father. Doubtless they were not there to start with ; 
 but granting that they were, they had been slurred over 
 and defaced to the verge of the invisible by the media 
 of the university and the public school. A clean-limbed, 
 broad-shouldered, well -set-up, clear-eyed young man, 
 he looked the embodiment of good humour and perfect 
 health. His countenance was hardly so significant as 
 that of a well-groomed horse, but emphatically it belonged 
 to his nation, his age, his class, and his education. Slightly 
 self-conscious in his simplest pose and the smallest action 
 that he undertook, extraordinarily " afraid of giving 
 himself away " — the phrase is his own — his perpetual and 
 visible ambition seemed to be to attain an austere vacancy 
 of feature, and a demeanour the perfect affectation of 
 phlegm. 
 
 He was an average specimen of a vast but not exhilara- 
 ting type. One might spend a year in his company, and 
 bear away no more significant impression of him than 
 tliat his hair was parted in the middle with tremendous 
 precision, that his tie was of many colours, that his waist- 
 coat was embellished with gilt buttons and braid, that 
 the last button was left undone, that his collar was in- 
 ordinately tall, that he carried his handkerchief up 
 his sleeve, and that he turned up the ends of his 
 trousers. 
 
 Father and son were engaged in an important con- 
 versation. The son was at the threshold of a career. 
 Since completing his third year at Cambridge in the 
 previous June the young man had spent a month in the 
 cricket field, a fortnight with the grouse, a fortnight with 
 the partridge, a fortnight with the pheasant, and several 
 fortnights in town doing the music halls and the theatres, 
 in visiting his friends and the friends of his friends. He 
 was now about to settle down under his father's eye. In 
 
 56 
 
LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON 
 
 his immaculate person and the exalted sphere into which 
 his attainments were to lead him, the father hoped confi- 
 dently that much honour would accrue to them both. 
 
 " I've money, my boy, and I've money to spare," Mr. 
 Brefiit the elder was saying. " You'll never want for 
 that, my boy ; you'll never need to make a farthing for 
 yourself. So I don't see, my boy, really, why you should 
 go into business at all. Speaking frankly, I am about 
 to speak to you, my boy, very frankly, I think it better 
 that you should not. Not that there is any disgrace 
 attaching to it nowadays, of course. The old-fashioned 
 prejudice against ' being in trade ' and that sort of non- 
 sense is dead. To-day really high -class people are bring- 
 ing their sons up to it, aye, and are going into it them- 
 selves, where a generation ago they would have scorned 
 the idea. But I don't intend that you shall touch it, 
 my boy. Safer not to, depend upon it, safer not to. 
 You see, at present you are just the son of old Joe Breffit ; 
 until you have made your way, and are launched as a 
 country gentleman, it will be better to run no risks." 
 
 Brefht fils nodded his head complacently. The sug- 
 gestion would " suit him down to the ground." Kis 
 talents qualified him eminently to do justice to the scheme. 
 Breffit pere drew closer, lowered his voice, and imparted 
 his next phrase in a whisper of unction and mystery. 
 
 " You see, I want you to be just the gentleman, my 
 boy. That's the trade for you. Just the gentleman. 
 You ought to be able to be that to a nicety, considering 
 that I've done all I can to make you one. You will not 
 lack for money, as I've said ; and you've had the educa- 
 tion of a lord. You've got some friends .of the right sort 
 already, and you'll have more, my boy, and better, if 
 you will only learn to play your cards. Always remember 
 the golden rule that success is the art of selection. There 
 are the people you must cultivate, and the people you 
 must cut. But, after all, tact, my boy — tact is the secret, 
 tact and a little money. Take a piece of string, my boy, 
 and tie a purse to the end of it to keep it taut, and you 
 have only to know how and when to jerk it for all the 
 world to be dancing on it like the marionettes you see 
 in the puppet show. Stand over there by the window, 
 
 57 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 my boy, where the light's a bit clearer, so that your old 
 father can have a look at you." 
 
 A Uttle sheepishly Mr. Breffit the younger yielded to 
 his sire's enthusiasm. No artist in his studio held his 
 glasses to his nose with a tenderer discretion, nor cocked 
 his head more lovingly to one side, nor manoeuvred his 
 distance with a cunninger skill to survey a chef d'ceuvre 
 to advantage than did Mr. Breffit the elder before this 
 masterpiece he had himself created. The old man rubbed 
 his hands. 
 
 " Capital," he said, " capital ! " 
 
 " Dash it all ! " said the young man, reddening awk- 
 wardly. 
 
 " You look real A i, my boy, you do indeed. If 1 
 didn't know better, I should take you to be the son of a 
 gentleman." 
 
 The son looked at the father, and laughed with a slight 
 air of constraint. What a funny old father it was, to be 
 sure ! There seemed something strange, almost uncanny, 
 about a father hke that. 
 
 " I mean what I say, my boy. If I met you walking 
 in Piccadilly, and I didn't know who you were, I should 
 take you to be the real right thing, I should indeed. I 
 suppose you get that trick of holding your head from 
 your mother. She had a drop of good blood in her, only 
 a drop, poor soul ! but blood will out, won't it ? " 
 
 Mr. Breffit the younger grew a Uttle redder than he 
 was before. 
 
 " I only hope, my boy, that you will not neglect your 
 opportunities. Nature has been good to you, things in 
 general have been good to you, and I've been good to 
 you, as I think you will admit. I've spent a lot of money 
 on your upbringing ; a man cannot send his son to Harrow 
 and Cambridge without having to part. And I've paid 
 for you to get into the best sets ; not that I grudge 
 a penny. It has been my aim, as I hope it will be yours, 
 that you should make the right sort of friends — the sort 
 of friends that will get you on in the world. Now all 
 I ask, my boy, is that you make the most of your oppor- 
 tunities. Do that, and I am prepared to pay a lot more. 
 I have got my eye on a place in the county that is just 
 
 5« 
 
LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON 
 
 coming into the market, a regular fine place, Tufton Hall; 
 Poor Lord Algernon Raynes, brother to the Duke of 
 Wimbledon, you know, is having to sell it lock, stock, and 
 barrel People say it's speculation on the Stock Exchange, 
 but I Know better, and so does Mrs. Dingley. Now, my 
 boy, I am thinking of taking that place, or buying it pos- 
 sibly, with the cellar, the pictures, the furniture, the stud, 
 the shooting, and all the bag o' tricks. You see, I want you 
 not only to be the gentleman, but I want you to live accord- 
 ing to the part. It will be useful for you to have a place 
 where you can entertain your friends. Besides, it will 
 give you a sort of territorial title : young Mr. BrefEt 
 of Tufton Hall, eh, what ? Now, what do you say to it, 
 my boy ? Sound idea, don't you think ? " 
 
 Mr. Breffit paused with his hands on his knees, a volume 
 of eager interrogation in his face. The son smiled with 
 a serenity that had a touch of indulgence in it. He seemed 
 to think it was a sound idea. 
 
 " You see, my boy, I want to keep you clear of 
 Cuttisham. It is well enough for old Joe Brefht, but 
 it will hardly do for young Mr. Breffit of Tufton Hall. 
 I want you to avoid the townspeople as much as you 
 can. You will find that the people among whom you 
 are going to live will ignore them. You must ignore them 
 too. When in Rome you must do as the Romans do. 
 For you will be on sufferance among them until you 
 have married one of them and lived down the prejudice 
 against you. There will be a great deal of prejudice, 
 my boy, at first ; you will find it uphill work, with all 
 your fine college friends, to make good your footing, and 
 be received among them as their equal. For uppishness, 
 for stiff-necked arrogance, there is nothing in the world 
 to beat your old county family, my boy, especially when 
 it is encumbered with a short purse and a long pedigree. 
 ' The poorer the prouder ' is its motto. 
 
 " There are the Brokes of Covendenj Of course they 
 were a great family once : important people at the time 
 of the Conquest, friends of William the Conqueror, and 
 that sort of thing. But they are no more than a name 
 now. They don't count a snap of the fingers as things 
 go nowadays, and they are as poor as the mice under the 
 
 59 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 wainscol of a Methodist chapel. But for pride, my boy, 
 for cold-drawn, cobwebbed, crystallized pride, I should 
 say Lucifer's as humble as Uriah Heep in comparison 
 with Mr. Broke. I know him, and he knows me, but only 
 in the way of business. He looks on me as being no better 
 than a tradesman ; and although I have been the best 
 friend he and his have had for thirty 3'ears, he would as 
 soon think of asking me to dine with him as he would his 
 butler. Mind, my boy, I am not saying a word against 
 him. I admire him for it. But that is the sort of thing 
 you will have to contend against, my boy. It is no use 
 people making money in Cuttisham, and then setting up 
 to be gentlefolk in his neighbourhood. Firkin the brewer 
 did that, and Lohmann the pork butcher, and Yardley 
 the linen-draper ; but the Brokes take no more notice 
 of them than if they were not there at all. Mind you, 
 my boy, I don't blame them a bit. If I was a Broke, and 
 had been in the landed gentry for a little matter of a 
 thousand j-ears, I would not either. I could afford to 
 keep my pride then, even if I could not afford to keep 
 my timber. Therefore, my boy, you will understand 
 why I want you to dissociate yourself from Cuttisham 
 as much as you can. Your old father will be the greatest 
 enemy you will have to face." 
 
 " Not at all," said Mr. BrefBt the younger with a well- 
 bred politeness. 
 
 "It is very good of you, my boy, to say he will not, 
 but we must agree to differ. Your neighbours will find 
 it harder to forgive you for being the son of old Joe Brelht 
 than if you had crucified your mother. I cannot caution 
 j-ou too sharply to keep clear of the townspeople. Only 
 this morning I saw you talking with young Porter, the 
 son of Porter the bookseller." 
 
 " Oh, him," said Mr. Brefht the younger, with an in- 
 inflection in his voice that delighted the parent. " A 
 bounder." 
 
 " How can he be anything else ? His father is a book- 
 seller." 
 
 " Well, you see, I happened to run across him at Cam 
 bridge. He bad the infernal cheek to claim my acquaint 
 ance on the strength of our both coming from the same place.' 
 
 60 
 
LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON 
 
 Breffit fere stood aghast. 
 
 " You don't mean to say that that fellow, the son of 
 Porter the bookseller, was at Cambridge too." 
 
 " He was," said Breffit fils mournfnlly. " Went up 
 to Trinity on a scholarship, or whatever they call it." 
 
 Breffit pere rubbed his face earnestly as if to wipe away 
 the traces of his incredulity. 
 
 " I never heard such a thing in my life. It is 
 monstrous. What can the fellow's father be thinking 
 of ? You can depend upon it, my boy, that trouble will - 
 come of it. I never yet saw people set up above their 
 station in life but what they learnt to repent it. I cannot 
 tell you how often I have watched it come to pass. The 
 next time I am in Porter's shop I shall tell Porter what 
 I think of him. But really, my boy, I should not have 
 thought that a place with the standing of Cambridge 
 would have admitted that sort of fellow." 
 
 " Oh, there's all sorts, you know," said Breffit fils, 
 trying to be stoical. " Some extraordinary people you 
 find up at Cambridge I can tell you. Why, lots of them 
 haven't been to a public school." 
 
 " Ha ! " said Breffit pere, breathing heavily. " What 
 a pity ! I should have thought an ancient seat of learn- 
 ing of that kind, with its traditions and its history, would 
 have been as exclusive as possible. It is sad to think 
 that it throws its doors open to Tom, Dick, and Harry, 
 It is no wonder that mere learning is not thought so mucu 
 of as it was. Why, had I known as much as that, my boy, 
 I would have sent you to Oxford." 
 
 " It is just as bad there," said Breffit fils. 
 
 " You astonish me. I was always led to understand 
 that our universities were solely for the education of the 
 sons of gentlemen." 
 
 There was a considerable pathos in the voice of Breffit 
 pere, as became one overwhelmed by disillusion. And 
 in his face there was astonishment ; but in the very flood- 
 tide of his distress there came a knock on the door of his 
 room. A junior clerk entered. 
 
 " A gentleman to see you, sir." 
 
 " Name ? " 
 
 " Mr. Books, sir." 
 
 PI 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 *' Mr. Who ? " 
 
 " Mr. Books, sir." 
 
 " Never heard of the man. Tell him I can't see him 
 now. He has not an appointment. Tell him I am en- 
 gaged, but if he cares to wait I will see him presently." 
 
 As the boy closed the door, and retired to convey the 
 information to our hero, Mr. Breffit muttered, " One of 
 those pestilential touts for dictionaries and encyclopaedias 
 I daresay. Not safe from anybody nowadays." 
 
 "^'2 
 
CHAPTER V 
 A Private View of the Feudal Spirit 
 
 WHILE our modern Lord Chesterfield continued to 
 indicate those elements of behaviour which are 
 the seat of success in life, the grand exemplar of his teach- 
 ing, flower of the English squirearchy, sans peur et sans 
 reproche, the mirror and the consummation of what he 
 wished to see his pupil, waited in the anteroom in his wet 
 aquascutum, twirling his hat in his impatient hands. The 
 temper of the paragon was hardly at its best. It had been 
 sorely tried of late. When he left home that morning it 
 had been a little out of its normal plane ; and now, as he 
 sat with a pool of water forming round his feet on its de- 
 scent from his clothes, he felt his vexation swell about him 
 drop by drop, in the slow proportion of the lake upon the 
 floor. It was an experience for one of his pontifical 
 spirit to be kept at the door by his agent. Such a 
 thing had not happened before. It was a trifle , yet it 
 svent against his grain like a tradesman's incivility or 
 the familiarity of a servant. It was too impalpable to 
 resent, yet it fretted his sensitive machinery like a speck 
 of dust in the eye. 
 
 Our hero was well known to the clerks who thumbed 
 their ledgers behind their lattice-work of glaiss. With 
 nobody was the Guv' nor so replete with flummery, not 
 even with the Duke, the Clergy, and Lord Croxton, as he 
 was with this red-faced man with the big nose and the 
 great voice who looked like a farmer. The Guv'nor gav*». 
 you pins and needles all over, he fairly made you squirm, 
 he did, when he put on his special air and buttered it 
 
 63 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 thick with this Mr. Broke of Covenden. They began to 
 note with trepidation that a cloud was darkening the 
 brows of the august gentleman, and that he beat his knee 
 with his riding-crop in a manner not to be misinterpreted. 
 At last his impatience grew so visible that one of the 
 clerks whispered to the boy who had taken in his name — 
 
 " Porter, you told the Guv'nor it was Mr. Broke ? " 
 
 " I thought he said his name was Mr. Books," said 
 Porter nervously. 
 
 " Then the Guv'nor don't know he's 'ere ! Go and tell 
 him it's Mr. Broke, you young fool. My eye, I wouldn't be 
 you ! " 
 
 The unlucky junior, a younger son of Porter the book- 
 seller, who had been in his present situation a fortnight, 
 took this information to Mr. Brefht with a degree of con- 
 fusion that drew broad grins from his peers. In almost 
 the same instant that the news was communicated Mr. 
 Breffit bounced out of his room. 
 
 "Oh, my dear Mr. Broke, how very distressing! A 
 thousand pardons — a thousand pardons ! Pray, sir, come 
 in. I had no idea that you were waiting. That stupid 
 boy misunderstood your name. Terribly provoking — 
 terribly provoking ! But upon my word it shall not 
 happen again." 
 
 " Don't mention it, Breffit." 
 
 Our hero paid no particular attention to these apologies, 
 but preferred to look steadily past the gesticulations of 
 his agent towards Mr. Breffit the younger, who stood at 
 the end of the room with his back to the window. He had 
 never seen this young man before ; therefore he regarded 
 him with the full, the critically inquiring scrutiny, persons 
 of his type feel they have a right to employ. 
 
 " My son, sir — pray allow me to do myself the honour 
 of presenting my son." 
 
 There was a note of inexorable pride in the voice of the 
 father. However, so fully occupied was Broke in taking 
 the measure of the young man that this somewhat florid 
 introduction had to be repeated twice before he grew aware 
 of It. 
 
 "Your son, Breffit ? " he said at last, "ah, yes, to be 
 sure ! I was not aware you had a boy so old. A likely 
 
 64 
 
PRIVATE VIEW OF THE FEUDAL SPIRIT 
 
 looking lad ; let us hope he will make as good a man as 
 his lather." 
 
 " He will make a good deal better, sir, I hope and trust," 
 said Mr. Brefht hastily. " My father didn't send me to 
 Harrow and Cambridge ! " 
 
 " Harrow and Cambridge ; the deuce ! I don't know, 
 Breffit, that you are altogether wise there. There is always 
 the — ah, danger that an education of — ah, that kind 
 may give a young fellow notions above his station in 
 hfe." 
 
 " In what way, sir ? " asked Mr. Breffit strenuously. 
 
 " Well — ah, it may give a young fellow a distaste for 
 the desk, don't you know ? " 
 
 " I hope it may, sir. With all my heart I hope it may. 
 He shall have nothing to do with ' shop,' if I know it. 
 I have given him the education of a gentleman because 
 I miean him to be a gentleman. I have more money than 
 I know what to do with, and I mean to invest it, sir, in 
 this boy of mine, so that he shall hold his head up with 
 the best, and be a credit to me." 
 
 " Well, there is something in that," said our hero re- 
 luctantly. 
 
 As he spoke, however, a shade of annoyance passed 
 across his face. Talk of this kind was painfully out of 
 harmony with his ideas. Let the cobbler stick to his last, 
 was one of his firmly rooted tenets. Whatever would 
 become of that sharp but inevitable demarcation of the 
 classes and the masses if this sort of thing went on in 
 England, of all places in the world ! It was not enough 
 that wealthy Jews should job for a peerage and found 
 a family upon it ; but the butcher, the baker, and the 
 candlestick-maker must bring up their sons deliberately 
 to spurn the stool behind the parental counter, that thej' 
 too migrit acquire this precious trick of parodying their 
 superiors. The pious thought haunted him that it was 
 enough to make his poor dear father turn in his grave ! 
 
 Mr. Breffit, as keenly he scanned the face of this mirror 
 of gentility to decipher the effect of his audaciousness 
 (alas, that his instincts proclaimed it so to be !), was only 
 too quick to detect the grim glint that flitted about it. 
 He hastened to allay what he divined to be its cause. 
 
 65 E 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 *' I trust you won't consider, Mr. Broke," he said, " that 
 I have been guilty of rashness. I thought out the matter 
 years ago, and 1 should certainly not have given him an 
 education of this kind had I not intended to keep him in 
 affluence — in affluence, sir, afterwards. You see, Mr. 
 Broke, he is the only son I've got ; he is very near and 
 dear to me. He's my all, do you see, sir ; and I want to 
 be able to look up to him and say, in the words of Shake- 
 speare, the immortal Bard, ' This is a Man ! ' And. Mr. 
 Broke, I may tell you in confidence, between ourselves^ 
 sir, that my boy will be one of the first men in this county. 
 It won't be up like a rocket and down hke a stick with 
 him. He will be a very rich man." 
 
 Pride and enthusiasm had seized the father. A rare 
 scheme had been cloistered in his heart these many years. 
 And now for the first time, as it burst into the articulate, 
 he was overwhelmed. Yet even as the vaunts were started 
 on his lips he was conscious that had he been in the enjoy- 
 ment of that sober control, that unimpeachable sanity he had 
 the right to look for in himself and the habit of exacting, 
 he would never have infxicted his personal affairs on one 
 whose condition rendered him unsympathetic. Nature, how- 
 ever, cannot always be the slave of policy. For once she 
 had taken the liberty of asserting herself vehemently in 
 Mr. Brefht. He was slightly bewildered ; he was even 
 a little frightened ; he had a remote sense of humihation. 
 He could not escape the incongruity of Broke confronting 
 him with compressed lips and sombre eyes. However, 
 the power to reflect was no longer his. Nothing could 
 stay the torrent. Vaunt came after vaunt ; indiscretion 
 succeeded indiscretion ; he half-apologized, yet he half- 
 defied as he exposed this singular ambition. 
 
 Our hero gave him an eye of oxlike solemnity. He was 
 not accustomed to enjoy an insight into the aspirations of 
 those who served him. He had not come there to attend a 
 recital of old Brefflt's curious ideas. Odd ideas they were 
 too — on the verge of moonshine. Really, it was not at 
 all like him. Rather pointedly he indicated that he was 
 there to talk business, not to discuss the private affairs 
 of his agent. For once, however, Mr. Brefiit, the man 
 of tact, the man with the supple back, the courtier, was 
 
 66 
 
PRIVATE VIEW OF THE FEUDAL SPIRIT 
 
 obtuse. Now that he had opened that secret door in his 
 soul it was not easy to close it. The long-imprisoned 
 torrent behind, once it had burst its walls, must pour out 
 until it had run dry. 
 
 " You said just now, sir, that you didn't consider me 
 altogether wise in putting such notions in my boy's head. 
 But I don't think you know all the facts of the case, sir. 
 You see, I am going to buy Tufton Hall, poor Lord 
 Algernon's place, for my boy ; and I'm going to set him 
 up in it with ten thousand a year, ten thousand a year, 
 Mr. Broke, of his own. And if that's not enough, he can 
 have more, sir. I don't intend that there shall be any 
 doubt about his position. And although he is the son of 
 a self-made man — I know what / am, Mr. Broke, as well 
 as you do — I fail to see that that should be anything to 
 his detriment. He will have his stake in the county just 
 the same as anybody else, although he may not, like some, 
 be adorned with blue blood, or have a handle to his name. 
 And I hope, sir, and trust that presently, in the fulness 
 of time, he may marry in a direction that his means will 
 justify, and stand for Parliament, and all that sort of 
 thing." 
 
 The face of our hero was a study. Had his mood been 
 lighter, he might have been content to be amused. There 
 really was something to laugh at in an ebullition of this 
 nature from a man whom he had known for twenty years 
 as a sane, discreet, quiet, shrewd, modest, responsible 
 fellow, who never once had shown a tendency to presume 
 upon his worth. But he had no mind to be tickled by 
 anything this morning. He was annoyed. He was 
 annoyed in much the same way he would have been had 
 Porson bent over his chair during dinner and whispered, 
 " I can recommend the brown sherry, sir ! " Could it be 
 that Old Breffit's mind was giving way a Uttle ? He was 
 not so young as he was. Or again, this amazing behaviour 
 of old Breffit's was the result, probably, of this money- 
 curse, this itch for lucre that was turning everything topsy- 
 turvy nowadays. And as soon as a man did get money, 
 no matter how he got it, he gave himself airs, and seemed 
 to expect that the mere possession of the demoralizing 
 stufi would exalt him out of his class. As though money 
 
 67 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 made any difference. What these absurd people could 
 not see was that a man was what he was ; once a bagman, 
 always a bagman ; you could not make a silk purse out of 
 the ear of a sow. 
 
 " Breffit," he said tartly, " I have very little time to 
 spare, and there is something of importance I wish to talk 
 to you about. I am afraid we must discuss it alone." 
 
 The son flushed angrily and withdrew. He was stung 
 by the tone. He went the more hurriedly because his 
 father, instead of resenting it, began to cringe before it, 
 and was actually breaking forth into apologies. It shocked 
 and hurt the son to hear him. This pompous overbearing 
 old bird was a bit of a duke apparently. But fancy the 
 guv'nor taking it Hke that ! Why didn't he tell his royal 
 highness to go to the devil ? A matter of business he 
 supposed. How fortunate he was not going into business ! 
 At that moment it came upon him with crushing force that 
 he would have made a mighty poor hand at it. Insulting 
 old bounder ! 
 
 When the door had closed upon Mr. Breffit the younger, 
 and Mr. Brefftt the elder had been somewhat rudely sum- 
 moned out of his day-dreams by the rasp in the voice of 
 his client. Broke plunged without further preface into 
 the matter that had carried him there. 
 
 " I am in a tight place," he said. " No, 3, Broke Street, 
 will have to go. I should prefer to sell it." 
 
 " A great pity," said Mr. Breffit, " a great pity." 
 
 " I agree with you, but I am afraid there is no alter- 
 native. I understand that further mortgages are im- 
 possible, and by hook or by crook I must have some ready 
 money. The only thing is to let No. 3 go the way of the 
 rest of the street. Fifty years ago the whole was ours ; 
 yet now, as you know, this is the only house in it still 
 remaining in our hands." 
 
 " Purchaser preferred, I believe, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes ; do 3-ou want to buy a town house for your son ? *' 
 Our hero was guilty of a rude attempt at the ironical. 
 
 " Not at present, sir, not at present," said Mr. Breffit, 
 flattered by the reference. " But that will come all in 
 good time, I hope and trust. And in the meantime, sir, 
 I think I can find a purchaser." 
 
 6S 
 
PRIVATE VIEW OF THE FEUDAL SPIRIT 
 
 " You are a wonderful man, Breffit. Who, pray, is the 
 god out of the machine ? " 
 
 "Well, — er, Lord Salmon," said Mr. Breffit, with a 
 becoming measure of hesitation. " I am sure Broke 
 Street would suit his lordship. He is looking for a house 
 a little more commodious and in a neighbourhood a little 
 less doubtful than his present one in Berkeley Square. 
 And he would prefer to buy. I happen to know he 
 does not care to rent anything except a box at the 
 Opera." 
 
 " Why doesn't the fellow buy Buckingham Palace ? " 
 
 " Indeed, sir, why not ? But perhaps the Queen wishes 
 to retain it during her lifetime for the sake of its associa- 
 tions." 
 
 This absence of mental guile had been a valuable asset 
 in Mr. Breffit 's career. It was an aid and a stimulus to 
 men of Broke's mould, who joked with difficulty, whose 
 excursions into a ponderous humour were generalh' accom- 
 panied bj' a hammer, a box of nails, and similar instru- 
 ments of a surgical nature. In the company of Mr. Breffit 
 he was in the fortunate position of being able to rejoice 
 at the effect of his own wit without being under the painful 
 obligation of having to explain it. 
 
 The name of Lord Salmon was the proverbial red rag 
 to our tvpical John Bull. Nothing was so distasteful to 
 him as the mention of that peer. Even the word Radical 
 was not such a frank offence. The fellow was always 
 obtruding himself one way and another, and there was 
 no end to his presumption. The effrontery that could 
 dare to put a price on Covenden was capable of anything. 
 
 " He shall not have it." 
 
 Mr. Breffit shrugged a deprecatory shoulder in reply. 
 
 " I am afraid," he said humbly, " we are hardly in a 
 position to be nice. We are fortunate, sir, — highly for- 
 tunate — to have even one purchaser in prospect who is 
 at all likely to buy it on our own terms. To Lord Salmon 
 money is no obstacle." 
 
 "So he has been good enough to say, provided a place 
 fits his fancy," said Broke, with a grim face. 
 
 There could be no doubt that the draught was bitter. 
 But the shrewd Mr. Breffit, old and trusted financial 
 
 69 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 family physician, was convinced that the sick man must 
 swallow it, in spite of the faces that he made. 
 
 " Believe me, Mr. Broke," said he, " if you really must 
 part with the house it would be suicidal — quite suicidal — 
 to throw away a chance that is not hkely to recur. Had 
 Lord Salmon dropped from heaven, he could not have 
 appeared at a moment more opportune." 
 
 " Devilish good of him." 
 
 The despair upon Broke's face was an acknowledgment 
 of his own ineptitude. Circumstance had him bound hand 
 and foot. He was as helpless as an infant whimpering in 
 the arms of its nurse. And about as dignified. He was 
 accustomed to consult his will alone when his self-love was 
 touched in the least degree. He had neither the wisdom 
 nor the humility that can jdeld without a groan to the 
 inevitable. Fate might ultimately break his buckram 
 soul in two, but it could not make it bend. By nature 
 he was the grand seigneur who knew no law beyond his 
 turbulent desires. He yearned to deal with Salmon as his 
 fathers would have done in feudal days ; he yearned to 
 blow a shrill blast, and ride forth with his knights armed 
 cap-a-pie, to pluck the head off the body of this audacious 
 Hebrew rogue, and nail it to the gates of Covenden, a 
 warning to mankind and the winds of heaven. 
 
 It fretted him to the soul to be at the mercy of this 
 Jew. The nationality made the humiliation greater. He 
 had the same fierce contempt of the Chosen People as had 
 his ancestors of the twelfth century. Nevertheless, he 
 must have money. It was a crude fact and a bald with 
 which to confront an institution that had been accustomed 
 to ignore the need for it even before the freebooters came 
 in their galleys from France. On the face of things did it 
 not seem ludicrous that the edifice which the accretions 
 of time had raised about his name should dissolve on a 
 question so sordid ? \Miat was money ? It was only a 
 s\Tnbol : the beads of the savage, the little pieces of tin of 
 the heathen Chinee. Was ever reasonable mind beset with 
 issue so preposterous ! 
 
 " I — ah — suppose you — ah — must use your own dis- 
 cretion, Brefht," he said with a reluctance that made 
 no attempt to put a gloss upon his feelings. " You — ^ah 
 
 70 
 
PRIVATE VIEW OF THE FEUDAL SPIRIT 
 
 — ^must dispose of the house to the best advantage ; I — 
 ah — leave the matter entirely to you." 
 
 The agitated gentleman mopped his head. 
 
 Now Mr. Breffit had observed the conflict in the face 
 of his patron ; and his tenderness for him was very real. 
 Our hero's status alone made a powerful appeal to his 
 English mind, while the fact that it was his patronage 
 to which he owed his start in life, and the foundation 
 upon which he had built a fortune, consolidated the senti- 
 ment he entertained for him. In a curious impersonal way 
 he had a great reverence for Broke, and he did not esteem 
 him less because he had such an intimate knowledge of his 
 character. Obtuse, and somewhat limited in his mental 
 range, Mr. Breffit was not a fool. There were certain kinds 
 of walls through which he could see a considerable distance. 
 He was by no means superficial in some things. He could 
 read Broke's prejudices like a page of a newspaper. 
 
 He saw the man was bleeding internally. Never before 
 liad he seen that arbitrary pride so distressed. He could 
 not bear to witness it. 
 
 " Mr. Broke," he said, " will you — er — permit me to 
 make a suggestion. I daresay we can adjust this little 
 matter without — er — having recourse to Lord Salmon. 
 I think I see my way to taking over the house as an invest- 
 ment against the time when my son marries and enters 
 Parliament." 
 
 He was prompted by one of those odd bursts of dis- 
 interestedness that may sometimes seize even your keen- 
 spirited business man. The idea uppermost in his mind 
 was to spare his poor client. And he would have been 
 able so to do but for that unlucky clause in regard to his 
 son, which was inserted as an afterthought as a sop to 
 his own protesting instincts. Therefore the suggestion 
 jarred upon Broke in much the same manner as that of 
 a thrifty footman had he come forward with an offer of 
 hard cash. It was not easy to play the philanthropist with 
 a man of this kidney. 
 
 " My good Breffit," he said, " I leave the matter to 
 you. It — ah — ceases to interest me." 
 
 Suddenly he laughed discordantly and turned abruptly 
 upon his heel. 
 
 71 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Good morning, Breffit. I^t me know the price. And 
 remember that time means a great deal." 
 
 In this lofty fashion do the gods condescend to trade ! 
 However, as he moved to the door, Mr. Breffit detained 
 him. 
 
 " I have been asked, sir, whether you would accept a 
 seat on the board of a company. If you will pardon the 
 liberty, sir, I may say it is an easy way of earning five 
 hundred pounds per annimi. You give your name to the 
 undertaking, and you attend so many meetings of directors, 
 and nothing more is required. I should not have men- 
 tioned it, sir, only nowadays numljers — numbers of the 
 best people — the very best people — do it constantly. In- 
 deed, I can assure you, sir, it is quite the thing." 
 " What does your precious company call itself ? " 
 " The Thames Valley Goldfields Syndicate, capital 
 three millions sterling. I may say that your brother-in- 
 law, Lord Bosket, has signified his intention of joining the 
 board after allotment." 
 
 " Indeed ; who has prevailed on him ? " 
 " \\ell — er — I rather think the promoter. 
 " Who, pray, is the promoter ? " 
 " — Er — Lord Salmon." 
 
 " I — ah — absolutely decline to have anything to do 
 with it." 
 
 Our hero took a sharp step to the rain. 
 When Mr. Breffit had bowed the great man out of the 
 door with effusive deference, and watched him swing into 
 the saddle and canter away into the mists' of the steaming 
 street, he returned to his room with an air of conscious 
 dignity, and rang the bell. It was answered by the youth- 
 ful clerk who had made the egregious blunder in his pro- 
 nunciation of the great man's name. Mr. Breffit put his 
 hand in his pocket and pulled out a fistful of silver. He 
 selected two half-crowns with elaborate gravity. 
 
 " Porter, here are a week's wages, and you are dismissed. ' 
 I am sorry to say it, Porter, but you are not a youth who 
 is at all likely to suit me. You can go. Such a thing has 
 happened through your gross, your abominable careless- 
 ness, that has never occurred in all the time I have had 
 up my plate. And rather than it should have occurred, 
 
 72 
 
PRIVATE VIEW OF THE FEUDAL SPIRIT 
 
 Porter, now, I would have paid you ten shillings a week 
 for the term of your natural life. Your ways are not my 
 ways, Porter. Porter, you and I must part. My oldest 
 and most respected client ! Mr. Broke of Covenden, of 
 all people in the world ! Go at once, Porter — go before 
 I say something harsh." 
 
 The boy, looking very white and frightened, opened his 
 lips to make some desperate sort of a reply. Before he 
 could frame it, however, Mr. Breffit stopped him with a 
 majestic finger. 
 
 " Not a word, Porter, not a word. Do not aggravate 
 your offence by seeking to palliate it. There is nothing 
 to be said ; I would that there were. I repeat. Porter, 
 you and I must part." 
 
 Tears were in the eyes of the boy. He murmured some- 
 thing, but the only words that were audible seemed to 
 relate to his father and the disgrace. 
 
 " It IS a disgrace," said Mr. Breffit with gusto. " That 
 I grant you, Porter. As for your father, I have no idea 
 what he will say, but he ought to feel it. It will not be 
 to his credit if he does not. Ha ! by the way, that re- 
 minds me. You can tell your father from me. Porter, 
 that he is making a rod for his own back ; he is storing 
 up repentance for his old age. I understand he has sent 
 your elder brother to Cambridge. It was brought to my 
 notice this morning for the first time, or he could have 
 depended on it he would have heard from me sooner. 
 I deplore your father's conduct, Porter, I deplore it. Tell 
 him. Porter, I deplore it. I call it effrontery, Porter, I 
 call it effrontery. Tell your father I said that. I don't 
 know whose son we shall see at Cambridge next. Has 
 Gage the greengrocer sent his boy to Cambridge too, or 
 is he wanted at the shop to take round the potatoes and 
 the cabbages ? When I was a boy Cambridge was re- 
 served exclusively for the sons of gentlemen. This may 
 well be called a democratic age. Impertinence, pre- 
 sumption ; I am very much shocked. Tell your father. 
 Porter, that I am very much shocked. But he will live to 
 repent it ; do you mark my words and see if he does not. 
 I never yet saw a man give false ideas to his children, and 
 seek to exalt them above their condition, who did not live 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to rue the day. And tell your father. Porter, that he will 
 receive no pity from me when that has come to pass. Now 
 go ; and mind you do not apply to me for a character." 
 
 Very pale and bewildered, the boy placed the five shil- 
 lings in his pocket and withdrew. He put on his out-of- 
 doors coat and his mackintosh, tucked his office coat under 
 his arm, and went forth mechanically in the direction of 
 his father's bookshop. He was as stunned as though he 
 had received a blow on the head; he could think of 
 nothing ; and although it was pouring with rain, and every 
 now and then the wind dashed it against his eyes, he stood 
 gazing a full quarter of an hour into a window that was 
 formerly a pastrycook's, which being now to let, had not 
 even a stale pie to relieve its desolation. 
 
 74 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Foreshadows the Need for a Hero and a 
 Heroine 
 
 WHEN Broke rode home care still sat behind the 
 horseman. A closed carriage, drawn by a fine pair 
 of horses, surmounted by a coachman and footman in 
 cockades and white mackintoshes, rolled up and down in 
 the rain before bis door. He did not need to look at the 
 coronet stamped upon the lozenge of this vehicle to learn 
 to whom it belonged. It was more familiar to him than 
 consisted with his peace of mind. It belonged as un- 
 mistakabl}^ to his sister-in-law as the pair of serious 
 gentlemen upon the box-seat proclaimed by the angle at 
 which they carried their noses that they were part and 
 parcel of the Upper Ten. 
 
 He entered the dining-room to discover his family 
 at luncheon. To-day there was no meet of the Parkshire 
 hounds ; therefore the solace was accorded him of his wife, 
 his six daughters and Lord and Lady Bosket. 
 
 " We are taking luncheon a little earlier to-day, Edmund," 
 said his wife. " There is a meeting of the Cuttisham Tem- 
 perance Society at the Town Hall at a quarter to three. 
 Emma is going to preside." 
 
 " Supported by me," said Lord Bosket in a somewhat 
 low-spirited manner. " Lucky me ; doosid nice to be me, 
 what ? " 
 
 " Charles," said Lady Bosket, sticking out her chin and 
 focussing her glasses six inches from her nose, " I do not 
 think your sense of propriety is quite so keen as it should 
 be." 
 
 75 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 "Hear,- hear," said Lord Bosket dismally, as he poured 
 a little soda water into his whisky. 
 
 Lady Bosket was a tall, gaunt woman with craggy fea- 
 tures and high cheek-bones. Her mien, colouring and 
 contour curiously recalled the wasp ; and at least many 
 a poor fly scuttled at her approach. Her countenance, 
 however, the dial of her noble mind, might be com- 
 pared to that of a hen. Not one of your plebeian barn- 
 door species be it known, but rather a variety of game- 
 fowl, a very superior, high-stepping hen. Superiority 
 indeed was her prevailing note, the key in which she had 
 been conceived. Everything about her proclaimed it. 
 Whether it was the way in which she wore her back hair, 
 or the prose with which she enriched our literature ; her 
 opinions or her petticoats ; the carriage of her carnal body 
 or the conduct of her immortal soul ; her table manners 
 or her attitude towards religion, she was invariably une 
 freciciise who did not cease in her endeavour to convey 
 the impression that although for the time being she might 
 be in, she certainly was not of, the particular company 
 in which she had the misfortune to find herself. Neither 
 talents nor integrity were secure against her patronage ; 
 and so great was her passion to be other than her peers 
 that in hell she would have been an angel, while in heaven 
 she would have been a devil. 
 
 It was reserved, however, for her voice to be her crown- 
 ing glory. As a peal of bells may enhance the nobihty 
 of a cathedral, whatever the splendours of its architecture 
 or the venerable aggregation of its years, so that remarkable 
 mechanism gave the last touch to the personality of this 
 lady. And to pursue the sacred figure to which we have 
 ventured to compare her, which after all is the one de- 
 signed to please her most, her voice, like that of your 
 cathedral, was right up at the top. There never was a 
 voice in the world that was poised on such a dizzy altitude. 
 Ghent, Bruges, Milan, Cologne. York Minster, S. Peter's 
 at Rome muftle their ineffectual music before this surpris- 
 ing organ. True its owner carried her head very high, 
 but how she kept up her voice in that latitude was a secret 
 known only to nature. It was an instrument peculiar to 
 itself ; ransack earth and licaven and it would yet remain 
 
 7b 
 
THE NEED FOR A HERO AND HEROINE 
 
 unmatched. It is fitting, perhaps, that Lord Bosket 
 should bear his testimony. No one has acquired the right 
 to speak concerning it so fully as the gentleman, her hus- 
 band ; and certainly no one employed his right with a more 
 graphic fervour. The law of his country had ordained 
 that he should dwell with it apart for many years. 
 
 " The first time you hear the voice of the missis," says 
 our epigrammatist, " a sudden sort of feeling comes 
 over you, don't you know, that your money's on the 
 wrong boss. The second time you hear it you want to 
 commit a murder. The third time you understand why 
 a dog howls. The fourth time the referee counts you out, 
 up goes the sponge, and you ask to go home." 
 
 Happily the theme of conversation at the luncheon 
 table was of the first importance, and less likely to incur 
 those checks which more trivial ones were apt to provoke. 
 
 " Edmund," said Lady Bosket, " I congratulate 
 you upon this affair of Billy and Miss Wayling. It is so 
 clever of Jane. It is a coup, Edmund, it is a coup. I am 
 sure I personally am much relieved ; it takes quite a load 
 of responsibility off the shoulders of us all." 
 
 " You will understand, Emma, of course that nothing is 
 settled yet," said Mrs. Broke placidly. " At present it 
 would be premature to take it as an accomplished fact." 
 
 " People are talking of nothing else," said Lady Bosket. 
 " Everybody agrees that it is such a providential thing. 
 One smiles to think how many times one has been 
 congratulated personally on one's freedom now from 
 anxiety. People are unanimous, Jane, in saying that your 
 cleverness is inordinate. One may well be lost in admira- 
 ation of your finesse, particularly as it is known that Wim- 
 bledon had decided to marry her." 
 
 " It was good luck mostly," said Mrs. Broke. " I be- 
 Ueve the child has a genuine liking for Billy. Of course she 
 has known him for years, and Colonel Rouse, her guardian, 
 has been a true iriend." 
 
 " It would be too much to hope that Billy has a liking 
 for her," said Lady Bosket. " That would be too much 
 like a novel, would it not ? " 
 
 " Has it never struck you, Emma," said Mrs. Broke 
 demurely, " that mutual affection comes after marriage 
 
 77 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 as a rule. All the most perfectly harmonious unions 1 
 know have begun in that way. Surely it is better that 
 marriage should be entered into on the ground of common 
 tolerance rather than that of passion. It is so much safer, so 
 very much safer. Do you know, Emma, I am inclined to 
 consider it not the smallest part of our good fortune that 
 Billy is at present so lukewarm. The warmth of Maud's 
 attachment almost alarms me. Before marriage an exhi- 
 bition of affection afflicts one with a slight sense of its 
 incongruity. One feels it to be a slight forcing of the note." 
 
 " How does it strike you afterwards?" Lord Bosket 
 asked, 
 
 " You are a cynic, Charles," said Mrs. Broke playfully. 
 " You should be like Diogenes and live in a tub." 
 
 " Wish I could," said her brother with a sigh. " Pretty 
 good judge of the game, that chap. No room for two in 
 his little box." 
 
 " I am immensely satisfied with girls of the Miss Wayling 
 type," said Lady Bosket in her most detached voice. " She 
 is such a beautiful intellectual creature, and very finely 
 chiselled. She has that statuesque marble purity which isreally 
 quite impregnated with Greek feeling. It refreshes one's 
 aching senses to gaze on a creature so coldly, so chastely 
 classical after they have been wearied by a surfeit of the 
 animal, " horsey," fin de Steele women that one is con- 
 fronted with everywhere at the present day." 
 
 Lady Bosket paused to put up her glasses, and ingeni- 
 ously manipulated them in such a manner that she could 
 stare at all her six nieces at once. Five of them quailed 
 and lowered their scarlet faces to their plates before the 
 extraordinary resolution of her gaze, but Joan the 
 eldest, the one with the Roman spirit, happened to be 
 drinking a glass of water. She suspended that operation 
 for a moment and met her aunt's insolent scrutiny with a 
 fearless one of her own. 
 
 " Aunty means that for you Httle gells," said their tender- 
 hearted but very tactless uncle Charles, who was so sensi- 
 tive that anything that gave pain to objects for which 
 he had an affection, hurt him also. " That's a dig at you ; 
 but don't you mind it ; I don't ; it's only her fun. I'll 
 bring you some chocolate creams to-morrow ; you know — 
 
THE NEED FOR A HERO AND HEROINE 
 
 the sort in the pink boxes tied with bhae string. And 
 I'll lend you Bobtail when she gets her leg all right." 
 
 He sighed, and reflectively helped himself to whisky. 
 
 ■* Charles," said Lady Bosket, " you have already par- 
 taken of four glasses of whisky during luncheon. I must 
 ask you in the name of decency to keep, in my presence 
 at least, not to mention the presence of Jane and the 
 girls, a check upon your diseased appetite." 
 
 This fiat was accompanied with much preening of plu- 
 mage. The stately lady then sat up more rigidly in her 
 chair with an air of satisfaction that had something in 
 common with that of an owl in a ruin who has just eaten a 
 bat. 
 
 " Damn it," said Lord Bosket pensively. 
 
 He proceeded to pour out soda-water into a clean glass. 
 But presently having drunk that unsatisfactory beverage, 
 in a fit of absence of mind he raised the first tumbler con- 
 taining the forbidden whisky to his lips, and drank it neat. 
 Fortunately Lady Bosket was too much occupied with the 
 part she was sustaining in the conversation to observe 
 this lapse. 
 
 It was Mrs. Broke's constant aim when these near rela- 
 tions sat at her table to remain a neutral and to steer the 
 talk into channels unvexed by the waters of controversy. 
 
 " What is going to be done with Tuf ton ? have you heard, 
 Mun ? " she asked, assuming a sudden air of animation. 
 
 " Breffit told me this morning that he was going to buy 
 it," said Broke. 
 
 " For whom ? " 
 
 " For his son." 
 
 " For his son ! * 
 
 Mrs. Broke's face was frankly incredulous: 
 
 " Who. pray, is Breffit ? " asked Lady Bosket; 
 
 " Surely you know Breffit, the land agent," said Broke. 
 " I thought everybody knew old Breffit. He is a cha- 
 racter." 
 
 Lady Bosket reflected with the aid of her glasses. 
 
 " The weird old gentleman who embellishes his person 
 with a tall hat, a white waistcoat, brown boats and a frock 
 coat, and is said to wear a wig," said Mrs. Broke. " In 
 his way he is a celebrity." 
 
 79 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 ** Oh — ^h," said Lady Bosket drawing a deep breath; 
 
 " The old gentleman who always peers very hard into 
 one's face and seems as though he is about to burst into 
 tears when he talks to one," said Mrs. Broke with a smile. 
 " The old gentleman who has ideas of his own on the use 
 and abuse of the letter ' h.' " 
 
 " That man," said Lady Bosket. " Do you mean to 
 tell me he has bought Tufton, that poor Algernon's people 
 have had since the time of Charles the Second, and that 
 he proposes to put his son in it ? " 
 
 " I do," said Broke grimly. " He was good enough to 
 tell me this morning that he was going to set his son up 
 in the ah — county in such a manner that he — ah could hold 
 his head up with the best " 
 
 " Don't, my dear Edmund, don't ! " implored Lady 
 Bosket piteously as with a grimace she elevated her high 
 shoulders and pressed her fingers to her sensitive ears. 
 " Spare us the cant terms of the snobocracy." 
 
 " I am only repeating his words," said Broke with a cold 
 chuckle. " I had the honour of an introduction to the 
 young man this morning." 
 
 " My dear Edmund ! " said Lady Bosket. 
 
 " I daresay Mr, Breffit intends that you shall be his 
 sponsor in his progress through the purlieus of the social 
 world," said Mrs. Broke, expanding her smile. " When 
 the worst comes to the worst and we are cast penniless upon 
 the streets, as I suppose we must be in the end, we shall 
 be able to keep body and soul together by pla5dng Mentor 
 to these youthful Telemachuses. You, my dear Edmund, 
 will be allotted the department for the Social Advancement 
 of the sons of Local Tradespeople, while I can open a Bureau 
 for the Presentation at Court of the American Miss, with 
 Huxihary branches for the Polishing of Popper and Mommer. 
 And I can fill up the rest of my time with the introduction 
 into Good Society of All and Sundry ; and you, my dear 
 Edmund, can fill up yours by being a director of Limited 
 Liability Companies under the aegis of our friend 
 Lord Salmon, which reminds me, Edmund, that I have 
 already made a promise to him that you will accept a seat 
 on the Board of the Thames Valley Goldfields Syndicate, in 
 consideration of which charming piece of condescension 
 
 80 
 
THE NEED FOR A HERO AND HEROINE 
 
 your means are to be augmented to the extent of five 
 hundred pounds a year. From which, Emma, you will 
 gather that, desperately reduced as we are, we are not 
 wholly without resources." 
 
 " I protest, Jane, you are growing quite debased," said 
 her sister-in-law. 
 
 " Mrs. Chapone informs us it is vulgar to make use of 
 a proverbial expression, but needs must when the devil 
 drives," said Mrs. Broke meekly. 
 
 " What is that, Jane ? " Broke interposed gruffly. " You 
 have made a promise to — ah, that fellow Salmon ? Why 
 Breffit approached me this morning on — ah, that very 
 subject, and I refused point blank. Do you expect me 
 to engage my name with that of a Jew ? What are you 
 thinking of, woman ? " 
 
 " The butcher and the baker, the rates and the taxes. 
 You must come off the high horse, my dear, you must 
 indeed. As I have been pointing out to you so often 
 lately, you can no longer afford to ride the noble quadruped. 
 Five hundred a year is five hundred a year to paupers like 
 ourselves. Lord Salmon has very kindly promised to come 
 this afternoon to discuss the subject with you." 
 
 " I decline to see him," 
 
 " Don't be more impracticable, my love, than you can 
 help." 
 
 " Shorten rein a bit, Edmund," interposed Lord Bosket. 
 " Salmon is not such a bad feller. People can say what they 
 like, but you can take it from me that Salmon's all right. 
 He preserves his foxes and lays down his pheasants, and he 
 doesn't play a bad hand at bridge. The feller's all right, 
 I tell you ; it's not fair to ask more of any man. He don't 
 pretend to be an Assheton Smith in the saddle ; and when 
 he does bag a keeper he always does the handsome thing. 
 Nobod}' can deny that he drives good cattle, aye, and 
 owns it too, and he pays his footin' to the Hunt like a 
 sportsman." 
 
 " He paid his footing to the peerage too. No — ah, 
 Salmons for me, thank you." 
 
 " Woa, easy, easy ! " said Lord Bosket in the caressing 
 voice he used to his alarmed young horses when they 
 pricked up their ears and pranced before the motor car. 
 
 8i F 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Easy, my boy. Everybody's got to have a beginning J 
 even you and Emma had to have a beginning. If a boss 
 is a tidy fencer, I'm not the one to look at the stud-book 
 I'm not. Take my word for it, Sahnon's all right. I'm 
 goin' on the board myself." 
 
 " Charles, I forbid you absolutely to do anything of the 
 kind," said Lady Bosket. 
 
 " Jane," said Broke, " that man must not caU here; 
 Better not know him." 
 
 Our hero's tone was so oddly, yet unconsciously Uke that 
 of his sister-in-law that his wife could not repress a laugh. 
 
 " Really " said she " I think Charles and I are both old 
 enough to take care of ourselves. After all we are not so 
 very new. Even our patent dates from James the First." 
 
 " Edmund, I am told you are giving up Broke Street," 
 said Lady Bosket. 
 
 " That is so. I placed it in the hands of BrefFit this 
 morning. It will presently pass into those of his son or 
 this fellow Salmon. It is a nice thing to come to after all 
 these years. I — ah, wonder what my poor dear father would 
 have said had he lived to see it. Thank God he did not ! " 
 
 " So you have made your minds up to it at last," said 
 Lady Bosket without a spark of pity, notwithstanding 
 that Broke's tone of contempt was too plainly intended 
 to hide his distress. " I have said many times that you 
 ought to have given it up years ago. It was incredible 
 to me that persons in your circumstances should have 
 kept it on so long. Some people might have ventured to 
 call such folly by a harsh name." 
 
 " You forget the girls, Emma," said Mrs. Broke mildl}'. 
 She was too well accustomed to her sister-in-law's love of 
 hectoring her poor relations, her love of kicking you when 
 you were down, to resent speeches of this kind. " The girls 
 had to come out you know." 
 
 " I fail to see that their coming out has been of service 
 to them. They would have done better to stay in the 
 country along with the horseflesh, and save the much- 
 wanted pence of their parents. Pecuniarily they would 
 have been better off, and matrimonially no worse. It 
 always appears to me a criminal waste of money for 
 country girls to have a season in London unless they are 
 
 S2 
 
THE NEED FOR A HERO AND HEROINE 
 
 good-looking, rich, or endowed with brains beyond the 
 common." 
 
 " Dash it all, you would have them presented wouldn't 
 you ! " Broke cried with an incomprehensible vehemence. 
 Nothing could have been less like him, for he was always 
 content that the great lady should ride the high horse 
 over him as much as she pleased, now that he was so down 
 on his luck. But she must not deliver a breath of disparage- 
 ment against his girls. 
 
 " I do not think it necessary for the daughters of people 
 as poor as you are to be presented. It would be more 
 becoming, I am sure, if they learnt plain needlework, 
 knitting and cookery, that they might be of use in the 
 world, and help to eke out the means of their parents." 
 
 " And so they do, poor beggars ! They are good girls all 
 of them, and hardly cost a penny. But not be presented, 
 Emma ? I never heard such a thing in my life ! I'm 
 rather down on my luck I know, but would you have it 
 said that my girls are the only Broke women who have 
 never been to Court ? " 
 
 " The disgrace would not be indelible." 
 
 " That is a matter of opinion, Emma, if — ah, you will 
 allow me to say so." 
 
 There was an odd Ught in the eye of our hero that the 
 resolute lady had not observed there before. His face too 
 was remarkably red. 
 
 " Are they all out now ? " she asked, deeming it expe- 
 dient to waive the controversy. 
 
 " DeHa is not," said Mrs. Broke. " I am sure I don't 
 know what is to be done with her, poor child. Probably 
 the Gaddesden-Gaddesdens will have her with them at 
 ]\Iount Street just for May and the Drawing-room. Their 
 youngest girl is coming out too. '' 
 
 " Those people ! " cried Lady Bosket. " Jane, you 
 amaze me. Don't you know that they are mixed up with 
 the grocers and brewers and people of that kind who put 
 advertisements of their doings in the newspapers under the 
 heading of ' The Smart Set ' ? " 
 
 " Beggars cannot choose, my dear," said Mrs. Broke 
 with admirable meekness. 
 
 " Well, rather than the child should fall into such hands 
 
 83 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 you had better send her to me at Grosvenor Street, and I 
 will put her through myself." 
 
 " How good of you, my dear ! " 
 
 " Hold up your head, child." 
 
 Lady Bosket raised her glasses into position and stared 
 at her youngest niece with a concentrated directness that 
 Delia found to be embarrassing. She was much more deli- 
 cately fibred, far timider than her sisters. 
 
 " Rather nice eyes," said her aunt. " The child blushes 
 too much, although in a young girl that may sometimes be 
 reckoned an asset. The Broke nose is not quite so much 
 in evidence as in the others, but still there is more than 
 enough of it. Edmund, I always say that the Broke nose is 
 incomparably the ugliest thing that was ever borne about 
 by a human being. I rather like the child's mouth. That 
 long upper lip is sometimes effective. I do not Uke her 
 chin. But take her in the lump I should be inclined to say 
 that she is less strikingly ugly than any of them. Probably 
 a little deficient in character. And she is shockingly- 
 dressed. The cut of that coat is horrible. Why will you 
 not send them to Redfern. Jane ? It is unfit for a house- 
 maid, and it is atrociously put on. The child is a bad 
 shape. Those shoulders — those ridiculous shoulders ! 
 See that she wears a backboard, Jane, and lies on her back 
 four hours a day. Her hair is done in the most slovenly 
 manner. You must dismiss her maid. I hope the child 
 has clean finger-nails." 
 
 At this point Lady Bosket lowered her glasses. 
 
 " Have you attended to her manner, Jane ? I hope 
 it is not gauche nor triste, nor ingenue. I positively forbid 
 it to be ingenue. A good manner is worth something 
 in these days. Most people do not know there is such 
 a thing. They consider they have only to talk at the 
 top of their voices and to stare as hard as they can to 
 supply the deficiency. I will say this for the girls, their 
 manner is generally above criticism. A manner grows 
 rarer every year among the young. I suppose the girls 
 inherit it from you, Jane. Yours was always excellent ; 
 so different from Charles'." 
 
 " Ttsh a lie, my dears. Don't you believe her," Lord 
 Bosket mumbled. 
 
 84 
 
THE NEED FOR A HERO AND HEROINE 
 
 " If I betray this interest in the child," Lady Bosket 
 continued, " I make one condition, Jane. I shall have 
 her educated. The child must not remain a cross between 
 a dunce and an idiot. I shall insist on her having ideas 
 above horseflesh." 
 
 " You can do as you like, my dear, if only you are disposed 
 to pay the piper. With Billy in the Blues it is impossible 
 for us to spend another farthing on the girls." 
 
 " Very well, as I have not a girl of my own the child shall 
 be my concern. But I make it a condition that I have an 
 absolutely free hand. It will be a luxury to have one 
 niece endowed with a culture a little more liberal than that 
 of her sisters ; a niece who in time may hope to distinguish 
 between the differential calculus and the tail of a horse. 
 I will enter her at Newnham College." 
 
 " The wretched child would never be able to pass the 
 preliminary examination," said her mother, laughing. 
 " Her mind at present is about equal to that of a well- 
 developed mouse." 
 
 " That can be remedied. She must have a coach. 
 Fortunately I know of a man ; quite a deserving person I 
 believe, who by his industry has raised himself from 
 behind the counter of his father's bookshop in Cuttisham 
 to taking a course at the university. I am told he has 
 acquitted himself with distinction, and that presently he 
 may look for election to a fellowship of his college. In 
 a sense I regard him as a protege of my own, for when he 
 served behind the counter of his father's shop I was 
 pleased by his honest face and unassuming manners. 
 He also appeared to possess a knowledge, so rare in a 
 bookseller, of the wares he sold. It was on my advice I 
 believe that his father consented to his going to Cambridge. 
 Results have justified my interest, and they redound to 
 the young man's credit." 
 
 " Will not his youth be in the nature of a draw- 
 back ? " 
 
 " Not at all ; it will be more than compensated for by 
 his station in life. Of course one has heard of horrible 
 cases where unscrupulous adventurers have played havoc 
 in the best regulated families. But surely one can assume 
 that a person of this kind will be quite safe." 
 
 8:. 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " This optimism is unlike you, Emma," said Mrs. 
 Broke, with a stealthy pleasure. 
 
 " I am not so hide-bound with prejudice as most people 
 who Hve in the country. My outlook is a little wider in 
 these things. I hold that the masses should be trusted up 
 to a certain point, and in chosen instances opportunities 
 should be granted to them. My dear friend, the late Mr. 
 Gladstone, was always a firm believer in that. The case of 
 this worthy fellow is one for encouragement ; besides the 
 danger does not exist. From the merely physical stand- 
 point he is not alluring." 
 
 " I would not be too sure about danger not existing, 
 Emma, if I were you," said our hero, chuckling grimly at 
 the conceit. " There's no saying what things are coming 
 to nowadays. You can't make them out. In fact it is 
 my opinion the old sharply defined distinctions are dis- 
 appearing." 
 
 With this brief but wonderfully penetrating expression 
 of his wisdom our hero again relapsed upon silence. 
 
 " My dear Edmund, how extravagantly clever of you," 
 said Mrs. Broke, looking from her husband to her sister- 
 in-law with pensive amusement. She was still regarding 
 the unconscious pair in this manner when the butler came 
 into the room. He bent over her chair. 
 
 " Lord Salmon to see you, ma'am." 
 
 Broke pricked his ears. 
 
 " You are not at home, Jane," he said shortly; 
 
 She lifted to him her baffiing smile. 
 
 " On the contrary, I particularly want to see him ; 
 and I want you, my dear, particularly to see him too. 
 Bring his lordship in here, Person, if you please." And 
 as the butler went forth on his mission, " It is rather un- 
 necessary of our friend to call at this hour. But as he 
 is worth six millions one must ascribe it to his force of 
 character. He is capable of calling at three o'clock in the 
 morning if he felt inclined. Still one cannot have too 
 much indulgence for six millions ; and after all he may 
 not have read Manners for Millionaires or Croesus and 
 Courtesy." 
 
 Although this prattle was designed to fill the arid 
 pause that heralded Lord Salmon's announcement j Broke 
 
 86 
 
THE NEED FOR A HERO AND HEROINE 
 
 glared stonily, and Lady Bosket was able to say before 
 he came in — 
 
 " Jane, I wish you to understand that I stay under 
 protest, and out of curiosity. This is not a prece,dent. I 
 am seriously offended that you should think fit to receive 
 a person of this sort while I am at your table. I do not 
 know when I have been so hurt. It is only because I 
 have heard so much about the man that I choose to 
 remain and see for myself. He enjoys a most unenviable 
 notoriety. But on no account, Jane, are you to introduce 
 him unless I ask you to do so." 
 
 Mrs. Broke sat as grave as a church, but suddenly her 
 amused eyes began to dance in the oddest manner. 
 
 The door opened again. 
 
 " Lord Salmon," said the butler. 
 
 87 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 Le Nouveau Regime 
 
 SAUI> SALMON, first baron of the name, had a type 
 of countenance likely to excite racial prejudice. 
 His nose was a sufficient guarantee of his nationality. He 
 was fat to the verge of the obscene. His picture in the 
 newspapers inferred a composite photograph of M. Dumas 
 the Elder, and the Tichborne Claimant. His hair was 
 black, curly, and abundant, his lips like a negro's, his eyes 
 a bilious yelUnv ; while his coarse but powerful mouth was 
 stamped with a double-chin of ponderous dimension. His 
 olive tawny skin shone with addiction to the pleasures of 
 the table. 
 
 A creature more fantastically unHke your gentleman of 
 England of whom an English peer is allowed to be the 
 mirror, would not be easy to conceive. There was not 
 a trace about him of that Red Indian, reticence which is 
 said to stamp our caste. Tliere was effusiveness in the 
 tawny hue of him, in his greasy smiles, in his movements, 
 his looks, his manner of speaking ; effusiveness hand in 
 hand with affability ; effusiveness cheek by jowl with an 
 impregnable belief in Saul Salmon, that fair work of God. 
 
 He seemed hardly to know whom to admire most — him- 
 self or the radiant persons he saw around him. He seemed 
 to exude an air of patronage, so pleased he was with 
 all the charming people it was his happiness to meet. 
 What you thought of him did not matter ; it was not to the 
 point ; it was enough that he was perfectly satisfied with 
 you : a man of a Homeric kidney, if ever there was one in 
 the world. In his large redundant self-sufficiency the 
 little winged barbs which in the terminology of our civili- 
 se 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 zation are called " snubs " sank and were lost, like stones 
 in a morass. He was born to conquer, to overcome ; even 
 the organized disapproval of the Pharisees was powerless 
 before such a self-esteem. 
 
 When this ponderous gentleman entered the room 
 grunting in his progress, and bowing to left and to right in 
 the fashion of majesty walking in the midst of the popu- 
 lace, Mrs. Broke gave him a hand of a quite peculiar grace. 
 However, such a reception was a little discounted by the 
 coldness of her husband's nod. Lady Bosket raised her 
 glasses, lowered her eyelashes, and favoured him with a 
 stare of extraordinary resolution ; while Lord Bosket, who 
 by now was sinking rapidly into the condition which from 
 time immemorial has been the source of our national 
 humour, jerked his head in a salute in the fraternal fashion 
 of the red-nosed comedian, sacred to the music-hall stage. 
 
 " How do. Bos. ! " said Lord Salmon. 
 
 " How do, Fishy ! " said Lord Bosket, reciprocally 
 waving his glass. " Chin, chin ! " 
 
 The true inwardness, the real significance of this mystic 
 utterance being denied to Lady Bosket, a shudder might 
 have been seen to invest the form of the stately woman. 
 However, as one who has had an awkward fall feels 
 compelled, on being assisted to her feet, to utter some 
 common-place for the reassurance of the lookers-on and 
 the vindication of her shattered self, so Lady Bosket 
 at this moment felt called upon to demonstrate that she 
 was undaunted still, and that, although very much 
 shaken, she was far from dead. She turned to the niece 
 who had the fearful honour to sit beside her, and said in a 
 voice not quite so loud as usual — 
 
 " I sometimes think if your Uncle Charles was not the 
 head of one of the best families in England he would be 
 the commonest man in the world." 
 
 In the meantime Mrs. Broke, with that almost cynical 
 supineness she could display when she had a purpose to 
 serve by it, had prevailed in unctuous accents on Lord 
 Salmon to exchange his hat for a seat at the luncheon 
 "table. 
 
 " You must please forgive us, my dear Lord Salmon," 
 she said with a solicitude that encroached upon flattery, 
 
 89 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " if we should seem a little peremptory. The fact is, Lady 
 Bosket and myself are pledged to be at Cuttisham Town 
 Hall at a quarter to three, to attend a meeting of the 
 Temperance Society." 
 
 " I'm goin' too," said Lord Bosket. " Drink is the 
 curshe of this country. We musht put it down." 
 
 Lord Bosket winked at nobody in particular with great 
 solemnity, as a concession to this piece of humour, which, 
 for some occult reason, had not met with the acclamation 
 he felt it merited. 
 
 " Don't mention it, ma'am," said Lord Salmon. " Tem- 
 perance —excellent work — like a cheque ? " 
 
 " My ^^ar Lord Salmon," said Mrs. Broke, "indeed T can 
 say of my own knowledge it is a very well administered 
 and deserving charity. Really, my dear Lord Salmon, 
 you really are " 
 
 " Don't mention it, ma'am," said Lord Salmon. " Fix 
 the figure." 
 
 " How does a hundred guineas strike you ? " said Mrs. 
 Broke, beaming upon the eminent financier. 
 
 " Make it two, ma'am, make it two; it's all the same to 
 me. I spend fifty thousand a year on advertisement." 
 
 " Well, my dear Lord Salmon, if you positively insist upon 
 it," said the gracious lady. 
 
 Without more ado Lord Salm.on took a cheque-book and 
 a fountain-pen from the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew 
 upon himself to the extent of two hundred and ten pounds 
 in i\Irs. Broke's favour. While this operation v/as being 
 performed Broke and Lady Bosket gazed piteously at one 
 another across the white expanse of tablecloth, somewhat 
 after the fashion of two belated missionaries who, by stress 
 of circumstances, are compelled to sit down among canni- 
 bals and take a little something to eat. 
 
 When Lord Salmon had written the cheque he looked up 
 to encounter the arctic glance of Lady Bosket. Her 
 glasses stuck out perfectly rigid in front of her. She was 
 engaged in staring at him, through him, above him, past 
 him, and round about him generally — a remarkable 
 feat she accomplished with the aid of a complete vacancy of 
 expression which implied that he was not there at all. 
 But your Titan of commerce, your brilliant and audacious 
 
 90 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 business man, your millionaire with his patent of nobility 
 already snug in his pocket, is not a person to be over- 
 come by a look. There was not a hole in his armour. 
 Cheque-book in hand he did not flinch from anything. 
 Cheque-book in hand he was ready to meet a god, a devil, 
 or even a woman. 
 
 " Ha, Lady B.," he said with an affability that 
 almost made her whine, " delighted ! Knew we were 
 bound to meet. Know you by name of course ; see 
 your picture in the papers every week. Beautiful work 
 that last book of yours — what's the name of it ? — I 
 forget. Can't say I've read it myself, no time for read- 
 ing you know, but Lady Salmon's read it. Charmed with 
 it, delighted with it, and declares it is quite equal to 
 anything by Marie Corelli. That's not mere flattery, I 
 assure you ; very sincere woman my wife, and if she likes 
 a thing she doesn't hesitate to say so. She is very anxious 
 to know you ; very disappointed you don't call on her, for 
 she has quite made up her mind to like you, in spite of 
 your reputation. You've a friend in Lady S. I can tell 
 you ; she believes in you. Thinks you are misrepresented, 
 thinks you are misunderstood. Prophet without honour 
 don't you know. Why don't you come and see us ? only 
 too delighted to see you at Toplands any time. Bring Bos. 
 Know Bos. very well of course ; old friends, aren't we, old 
 son ? Had one or two amusing nights together in town, 
 hadn't we old boy ? If Bos. hadn't been on very good terms 
 with the pohce, we might have been unable to keep our 
 names out of the newspapers once or twice. Golden rule 
 always to stand well with the police. Fact I assure you, 
 ha, ha, ha ! Not but what Bos. and I were all right person- 
 ally. It was those rowdy young uns, ha, ha, ha ! Mind 
 you come over to Toplands, Lady B. ; come and dine with 
 us, or come and stay a fortnight." 
 
 Lady Bosket turned to the butler at this point, and said 
 in a very loud voice — 
 " Porson, my carriage." 
 
 " Yes, my lady," said Porson in an awe-stricken whisper. 
 
 The majestic woman rose, and without vouchsafing a 
 
 word to anybody, or a single look to tlie right or to the left, 
 
 marched straight out of the room. She carried her glasses 
 
 91 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 rigidly in front of her, as a sacred emblem is borne before 
 a deity. A silence that could be felt prevailed round the 
 luncheon table, while carriage wheels were heard to 
 approach on the gravel of the drive, and presently were 
 heard dramatically to die away. 
 
 As the noise of wheels receded slowly up the avenue, 
 Lord Bosket lifted his head to listen earnestly. He drew 
 a deep breath. 
 
 " That's all right," he said with a sombre joy. " No 
 foolin' in the paddock this time. She's off. I will say 
 this for the old gell : when she breaks the tape, and gets 
 right away, you feel a happier and better feller. You feel 
 stronger ; sort of Richard-is-himself-again feelin' don't you 
 know. Porson, put some more poison into this jar. And 
 mind which ; you must ha' got the other from a chemist." 
 
 He then turned to Lord Salmon. As usual, he was pre- 
 pared to apologise humbly for the misdemeanours of his 
 wife, lest anybody's feelings should be hurt. 
 
 " You mustn't mind the Missis, Fishy. It's only her 
 fun. You'll get used to it, same as I have, when you 
 know her. This mornin' she is a bit uppish even for her. 
 It's all that new book. Whenever she brings one out she 
 cackles over it, like a hen when it lays an egg. The 
 Spectator's given her a leadin' article this week, and backs 
 her for the Immortal Stakes. I wish she would run 'em 
 now. There might be a bit of a chance then for a poor 
 old blighter like me. But don't you mind her, Fishy, there's 
 a good feller, don't you mind her ; and I'll give you an abso- 
 lute certainty for the March Handicap. Swinburne II, 
 Fishy ; have a bit on both ways. I had it from the owner. 
 I've got a monkey on myself." 
 
 Out came Lord Salmon's pocket-book, and he wrote 
 dow n the information laboriously, after inquiring how to 
 spell the name of the horse. 
 
 " Right you are, Bos.," said he, " and you shall have 
 a ' pinch ' too, my boy. Bull California Canned Pears, 
 Iridescent Soap Bubbles, and M;irs and Jupiter Rails." 
 
 It was now the turn of Lord Bosket's pocket-book to 
 appear ; and it is to be observed that Mrs, Broke produced 
 memoranda of her own. Her brother's " absoliite cer- 
 tainties " had now and then an unfortunate habit of 
 
 92 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 culminating in a non-starter ; but direct information from 
 a prince among company promoters was a horse of another 
 colour. 
 
 All this time Broke had not favoured his guest with a 
 word, and had merely ignored him. Long ago he had made 
 up his mind with the deliberation that is the first attribute 
 of justice. His verdict was given once and for all ; even 
 to soften or modify it was not possible to that arbitrary 
 spirit. Salmon struck to the roots of its deepest con- 
 victions. Salmon was reactionary, a throwing-back into 
 the barbarous ages when Jack was as good as his neigh- 
 bour. Where was our vaunted civilization when one 
 of this kidney stepped impudently into our nice society, 
 fraternized with us and claimed equality ? Radical 
 Governments might have no sense of decency, but they 
 should see, confound them ! that there were people in the 
 world who had. That infernal fellow Gladstone, with his 
 Franchises and Universal Suffrages, had something to answer 
 for. Here in the person of this man Salmon was the plain 
 answer to the fanatics who put the key in the hands of the 
 masses with which to open the door of the House of 
 Commons. The sight of this fat Jew ruffling it in a Radical 
 coronet made his gorge rise. They could not even respect 
 the sanctity of the peerage, curse them ! Thank God, 
 his old father was not in that room now. He would have 
 been inclined to lift him out of doors on the top of his boot, 
 lord or no lord. Such persons had to be shown that money 
 was not everything. You could see by the way the fellow 
 flaunted his cheque-book that he felt that money was the 
 master of the world. He would have to be taught better. 
 He would have to be taught that there were things money 
 was powerless to buy. 
 
 Mrs. Broke, however, was as bold as she was shrewd. 
 Therefore, however egregious our hero's attitude towards 
 Lord Salmon, she did not deviate an inch from the course 
 she had marked out as compatible with their interests. 
 She informed that benevolent peer that Broke had accepted 
 a seat on the Board of the Thames Valley Goldfields Syndi- 
 cate. 
 
 He rubbed his hands. 
 
 " Excellent ! " he said. " Felt sure you would, my 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 dear Broke, felt sure you would. Fact is, you get some- 
 thing for nothing, and even the British aristocracy don't 
 object to that — what ? Wonderful magnetic qualities 
 in money — ^what ? They say time is the great alchemist, 
 but personally I place my trust in money. I could have 
 put lots of my friends in, of course ; but now I've my 
 stake in the country and a seat in the Lords, I must look 
 after my order. It seems a pity that people like you, 
 blue-blooded, stiff-necked old county bigwigs, who have 
 taken such pains to make the old island what it is, 
 should have to go to the wall now it begins to pay its 
 way. It seems hard. Besides, the country wants you 
 Broke my boy. You give her tone ; you keep her straight ; 
 you put on the brake and steer her into a convenient ditch 
 when her rider's feet are off the pedals, and she is com- 
 ing downhill a purler. I can afford to have whims, 
 and one among them is to keep your breed upon the land. 
 You are good for the soil, nearly as good as manure. 
 
 "Now I've staked out a pretty big claim in this island, I 
 don't mind confessing ; and in giving you a leg up I am 
 lending a hand to myself. People call me a philanthropist. 
 Don't you believe them. I don't part with a penny unless 
 I see a chance of making twopence. You'll own I'm frank. 
 It pays to be ; else I should carry my tongue in my cheek 
 with the rest of my synagogue. There are too many 
 simpering fools tip-toeing about the globe at the present 
 time, aping humility and pretending to be what they are 
 not, for your charlatan to get a very fat living nowadays. 
 Competition has killed that game. Pharisaism is played 
 out. If it were not, I should have stuck a new Exeter Hall 
 in the middle of Piccadilly before now, and changed the 
 Empire into a tabernacle, and added tambourines and 
 skirts to the ballet, and made a Hallelujah Chorus of it, 
 and incorporated the Pink 'Un with the Meihodisi Recorder. 
 Make people a present of your measure, and they respect 
 you ; but let them take it for themselves, and they are too 
 flushed with their own cleverness to think of yours. But 
 this is talk ; I must be going ; I have to catch the three- 
 twenty to town. You don't fancy me much at present, 
 my dear Broke, but give me a fair chance, and you'll take 
 to me better in time. A fair chance is all I ask, and I'll 
 
 94 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 lay the odds you'll be the first to own up that there is some- 
 thing after all in brains and money. For I Uke you, you 
 blue-blooded old Roman ; we must keep your breed alive 
 in the island. And I'm going to make it my business to 
 see that we do. Good-day everybody. I hope, ma'am, 
 you will call on Lady S. She'll be charmed." 
 
 At the conclusion of this somewhat singular harangue, 
 which was very rapidly deUvered, Lord Salmon rose at once 
 and with an exquisitely frank and cordial wave of the hand, 
 grunted, and waddled his way out of the room. 
 
 " Rum beggar," reflected Lord Bosket upon his retire- 
 ment. " But he's a sportsman from his head to his 
 houghs. He's not such a bad sort, neither. He talks 
 sense. Don't be so damned uppish Edmund, but give 
 the feller a chance. It's all he asks for ; he means well. 
 He's no fool ; he says what he means and means what he 
 says. I've seen worse than that fat feller — lots ! What's 
 your opinion, Jane ? Give us your opinion ; you've a 
 doosid sight more brains than I have or Edmund either 
 for that matter. Dam sight too clever you are, my gell." 
 
 Mrs. Broke laughingly declined to be drawn. 
 
 Luncheon over, she announced her intention of setting 
 forth to Cuttisham Town Hall, in the wake of the out- 
 raged Emma. 
 
 " Charles, you are coming, of course," she said to her 
 brother slyly. " You have promised to support Emma on 
 the platform." 
 
 " Go hon ! " said Lord Bosket, leering at the glass in his 
 hand. " I should look well, I should, stuck up on a pedestal 
 among sky-pilots and people. It's a thousand to five 
 Emma would give 'em the tip, and they'd point at me as 
 an awful example, and ask me to be saved." 
 
 " Bui you promised to support her." 
 
 " She'll be able to support herself all right. She's in good 
 talkin' fettle to-day ; and she's got a bit of steam to work 
 off over this Salmon job. Splendid that was. Did you 
 see her old beak go up, and her top-knot begin to nod ? I 
 thought she'd burst. I was really sorry for her, dear old 
 thing ! But I wish Fishy could have had about five 
 minutes of her at her best, bless her ! Lord-love-a-duck ! 
 won't she give it tongue this afternoon ! Talk about her 
 
 95 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Mend the late Mr. G. — the old man would not be in it with 
 the old dutch. After all. I'm not sure that I wouldn't like 
 a nice safe reserved seat in the stalls. What price the 
 bishop in his mutton-chop whiskers, and his eyeglass, 
 and his rabbit-skin overcoat ? You'll be impressed, cockie, 
 won't you ! Pronounce the benediction in a deep bass 
 voice — what ? " 
 
 " Charles, Charles ! " cried his sister waving an admoni- 
 tory finger. His condition had proved to be rather more 
 imminent than she had guessed. 
 
 " She's got her speech type-written very nicely," said 
 Lord Bosket, declining to be suppressed. " 'Fragrant and 
 pellucid English ' is what she calls it. Not a bad name that. 
 She's already opened two bazaars with it, and laid a founda- 
 tion stone, to say nothing of bun-worries and Sunday 
 School treats. Funny idea some people have of a treat. 
 Not but what she's not clever you know in her way — devilish 
 clever. You can't help but admire the old gell. It all 
 reads as right as rain, with lots of quotations, and so on. 
 Give the old dutch her due, she's clever in her way. 
 They tell me this new book is as good as Shakespeare. 
 The newspapers write leadin' articles about her, and send 
 sportsmen in frock coats and top-hats to interview her 
 in her home. Good old home ! She don't neglect the 
 main chance either. She makes a lot more at her game 
 than I do out of racin' I can tell you. Only last week 
 she bought herself a new tiara out of her tract to the 
 Submerged Tenth." 
 
 Mrs. Broke deemed it expedient to set out without her 
 brother, and resigned him to the care of her husband. 
 After smoking their cigars they went forth to walk round the 
 farm. 
 
 The day being wet, the girls spent the afternoon in the 
 room dedicated to their use. They called it their den. 
 The name was appropriate, for had it been in the occupation 
 of the brute creation its disorder could hardly have been 
 more complete. This temple of Diana was decorated with 
 emblems of the chase in many shapes and forms. Boots, 
 coats and hats ; sticks, whips and spurs ; gloves, fragments 
 of stirrup-leathers and bridles ; saddles and odd pieces of 
 harness ; bits, chains and horseshoes ; wash-leather, 
 
 96 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 brown polish and varnish, odds and ends of every conceiv- 
 able sort were tumbled in heaps all over the room. Mingled 
 with these delectable things were implements for the pump- 
 ing of pneumatic tyres ; bolts, screws and handle-bars ; 
 skates, hockey sticks and leg-guards ; guns, cartridges and 
 cart-grease ; poles and fishing-rods, reels, flies and tackle ; 
 cricket-balls, bats and wickets ; in fact, almost every 
 weapon that becomes the hand of woman. 
 
 The walls were furnished with prints of a pronounced 
 sporting character, and with the heads and brushes of 
 defunct foxes. These were very numerous and very dusty ; 
 and they clustered so thickly all over the place, that the 
 first impression it conveyed was of a furrier's shop. A 
 moment for reflection, and it would probably be amended 
 to that of a marine-store dealer. 
 
 Under each of these trophies a label was affixed, bearing 
 in a carefully' executed juvenile handwriting the date, 
 where found, the place of the kill, and the precise length of 
 time in which the run was accomplished. Over the fire- 
 place were pictures of their father in pink, seated on Merry- 
 leg ; of the meet of the Parkshire on the lawn of their 
 residence, with Joan quite a grown up young lady on a 
 cob, and Harriet and Philippa looking quite silly on ponies, 
 with their hair down their backs ; while a third was a 
 framed list of the subscribers to the testimonial to E. W. 
 A. C. B. Broke, Esq., M.P., J.P., D.L., M.F.H., which 
 took the form of a service of plate, and a salad-bowl for 
 Mrs. Broke, on the occasion of his relinquishing the master- 
 ship of the East Parkshire Hounds. 
 
 There were also various portraits of their Uncle Charles. 
 One was a picture in colours from a newspaper called 
 Vanity Fair, with the name of " Spy" in the corner, in 
 which their Uncle Charles appeared in full fig with a horn 
 and a very long whip under his arm, and a distinctly red 
 nose, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and just 
 that kind-hearted melancholy look about him that they 
 knew, and loved so well. And although the artist had 
 drawn him such a funny shape, and painted his nose very 
 much redder than it really was, somehow it was for all the 
 world like him, surrounded by dogs, with his legs straddled 
 apart very wide, and dogs in between them, one of which 
 
 97 G 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 they were certain was meant for " Pitcher," and another 
 for " Ballyhoolly." This cherished picture was entitled 
 " Bos." Then there was another, a more faithful and 
 formal sort of likeness. It was hardly so amusing and not 
 so true to life as the coloured one, which could almost 
 make you laugh and cry. In fact this was not a bit like him 
 really, for all he looked so fine. It was from the Country 
 Gentleman, and was called the " Master of the Parkshire." 
 Immediately below these pictures of their Uncle Charles 
 a piece of newspaper was affixed, a whole page torn from 
 a weekly journal. It was of a recent date ; a vigorously 
 written article, called " The Trick Exposed." It began : 
 " We have never been asked to dinner by Lady Bosket." 
 It proceeded to criticise their Aunt Emma and her 
 wTitings in a very frank and contemptuous spirit. It 
 called her the Apostle of Dulness without Indecency. It 
 called her the Apostle of the Ultra-Respectable, the 
 apostle of that mediocrity with a touch of pomp in it that 
 was so highly valued in England. It said there was not 
 a single thought embodied in all the writings of her lady- 
 ship which did not come of a very old family. It further 
 said there was not a single thought in her writings that had 
 not been better expressed by people nearly as well connected. 
 It said the so-called severe reiinement of her style might 
 have incurred the danger of being mistaken for a colourless 
 nakedness had it not worn a coronet to cover its poverty. 
 That was only one of the clever witty things it said. There 
 were places where it was flippant to their aunt ; places 
 where it chaffed her ; places where it said for all her pose, 
 her pretension, and her coronet, they could not save her 
 from belonging to the category of Mrs. This, and Miss 
 That, and the army of matrons and spinsters of mature 
 life, who, instead of writing with the vulgar pen and ink 
 of common people, wrote with singleness of aim and lofti- 
 ness of purpose. Like those good ladies, said this wicked 
 delightful newspaper, she would be doing more for the 
 amelioration of mankind if she would lay down her pen 
 and take to darning her husband's socks. Fancy Aunt 
 Emma darning Uncle Charles' socks ! They had drawn a 
 double line in red ink under that. They were sure the 
 writer must have known Aunt Emma personally to have 
 
 98 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 got in such a splendid stroke. And the notice concluded 
 in these words. "So long as to be dull is to be respectable, 
 so long as a solemn decorum in art and life passes for 
 wisdom and mastery, so long as fatuity passes for strength, 
 sterility of soul for refinement of emotion, vacancy of mind 
 for a hyper-culture, so long as we as a nation take Medio- 
 crity, however flat, stale and unprofitable it be, for our 
 fetish, so long must we endure the standards the Lady 
 Boskets of the world set up ; and not only in the realms of 
 art but in every walk of life we must suffer an ideal, which 
 has always proved acceptable to the national temper, 
 however it debases taste, warps the judgment, and causes 
 even our worthiest traditions to become the prey of all 
 who have not forgotten the honest usages of laughter." 
 
 And although our young ladies one and all were much 
 too honest to pretend to understand a word of what this 
 peroration really meant they had wit enough to know it 
 must be fine, because when Joan read it out aloud it 
 sounded beautiful ; also they knew it must be true because 
 every word was strongly against Aunt Emma. 
 
 There was no name attached to this impassioned piece 
 of newspaper English, strangely enough. 
 
 Again and again had Lady Bosket's nieces read that 
 reviewj They would turn to it for solace when newly 
 come from under the lash of her tongue. When it had 
 coiled round them and left them bleeding, they would turn 
 to it and with a keener zest go over every familiar line once 
 more. It healed them a little to hear the whip crack 
 about her too. Or if their Uncle Charles, the dearest, 
 kindest-hearted uncle in the world, was more depressed, 
 and drank a little more whisky than usual, they would 
 read it to avenge his wrongs. Joan, Roman-hearted Joan, 
 Joan of Arc was the special name they had given her, so 
 hugely was she admired by the other five because of her high 
 and inflexible spirit — ^Joan made it her boast that she 
 knew every word of it by heart, and at a moment's notice 
 could repeat it all, right from the beginning. 
 
 This afternoon they had a painful duty to perform. 
 Whenever Aunt Emma published a new book, it was her 
 custom to carry a copy to Covenden for the improvement 
 of the minds of her nieces. It is true a doubt always ac- 
 
 99 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 companied the Grecian gift — a doubt whether the pious 
 object she had in view would be fulfilled. " I don't sup- 
 pose you will read it, and if you do I don't suppose you 
 will understand it," she was wont to say in her lofty 
 manner, " but at least it shall not be urged against me 
 that I have made no effort to rescue your understandings 
 from the peculiar squalor of their environment." The 
 meaning of the word environment they were not very clear 
 about, but they felt sure it was not at all nice, else it 
 would not have been used by Aunt Emma. 
 
 With the same solemnity as the gift was made to them, 
 her nieces, without a glance at the latest offspring of their 
 gifted relation's genius, invariably took steps to be rid of 
 it. It had become their custom to burn the offending 
 tome in the conscientious but uncompromising manner 
 that heretics were burnt of old. No victim of the Inqui- 
 sition, no Smithfield martyr ever received his doom with 
 a more ruthless gusto on the part of his executioners. 
 
 That morning Lady Bosket had presented them with 
 the latest volume of her precious imaginings, humbly 
 entitled Weeds in the Grass. She did not mean it of 
 course. But did it not savour of a delicate piquancy that 
 the world-famous authoress of Poses in the Opaque should 
 choose a name as meek as this for any child of her intellect ? 
 The daily journals remarked upon it with an eager unani- 
 mity, and chided her tenderly for such a delightfully 
 obvious deception. A footman, a real live one, born and 
 bred to the wig and powder, retained by a morning news- 
 paper with great expense and enterprise, because of his 
 intimate knowledge of the aristocracy, was sure her lady- 
 ship must have her tongue in her cheek ! The weekly 
 journals, the organs of literary culture ind critical opinion, 
 very shrewdly saw a wider-reaching significance in such 
 an elaborate humility. Great critics wrote scholarly 
 and closely reasoned articles to prove that Genius Was 
 No Longer Arrogant. And they based their argument 
 upon the case of the authoress of the immortal Poses, a 
 great lady, a daughter of a peer, the wife of another, and 
 the niece, the cousin, and the granddaughter of several. 
 
 It was printed on parchment, and bound in white 
 vellum. It was dedicated "To my Husband." Critical 
 
 100 
 
LE NOUVEAU REGIME 
 
 journals remarked upon the essential simplicity of this lady, 
 whose distinguished fate had not divorced her from a sense 
 of the sacred nature of motherhood and wifeliness. She 
 was devoutly domestic before the world. Critical journals 
 remarked on that also, and pointed the moral of it to the 
 more emancipated members of her sisterhood who went 
 about with shrieks and battle-cries, brandishing their 
 pens, and flinging ink. If she, a person of unfaltering ideals 
 and impeccable distinction, was content to be simple and 
 natural, and did not hold the first and highest duties of 
 her sex to scorn, was it too much to ask an alike humility of 
 them ? 
 
 On the title-page there was a quotation from Bishop 
 Butler, several from the classic authors in their original 
 Greek and Latin, and one from Amiel's Journal. On the 
 next there was an open letter to the aathoress from the 
 late Mr. Gladstone, her ver}' dear friend. In the first 
 chapter the late Mr. Matthew Arnold was quoted at 
 length ; in the second, the Poet Laureate and the Right 
 Honourable Lord Byron were crowried with bay. Critical 
 journals gathered from a close perusal of her work that 
 romantically afraid lest she should be thought parvenue 
 — surely it was of the marrow of romance that one 
 throned in Debrett far above the breath of detraction 
 should suffer these sentimental notions — she traced her 
 literary parentage back as far as Dr. Richard Hooker ; 
 although very properly she liked it to be understood that 
 the first place in her esteem was reserved for the band of 
 contributors to the New Testament. 
 
 Such w^as the fair flower of the mind that was called on 
 to undergo the last indignity a book can suffer. No 
 mischievous print, no volume of sedition, however 
 ribald, licentious, or heretical, was committed to the 
 flames of yore by the common hangman with an unction 
 more impressive. In a group around it stood five of the 
 executioners, whilst Joan the sixth suspended the offensive 
 work in a pair of tongs by one of its virgin boards of white 
 vellum. Candour and our respect for the character of the 
 authoress forces us to confess that the tone of the martyr- 
 volume was so blameless that it was fit to be read any 
 Sunday, by any clergyman in the bosom of his family. 
 
 loi 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 But the most spotless virtue never had a pennjnvorth of 
 weight with fanaticism. That which could not avail 
 La Pucelle and Dame Alice Lisle was powerless to defend 
 even the pure and modest muse of Lady Bosket. One by 
 one, in regular rotation and perfect order, the executioners 
 circled, each in her turn plucking out a leaf and committing 
 it incontinently to the fire ; and in the act they pro- 
 nounced the incantation : " There, Aunt Emma, this is 
 what we are doing with your horrid book I " 
 
 102 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Enter the True Prince in the Guise of a 
 Dustman 
 
 A FEW days later our hero was riding to the meet of 
 the Parkshire Hounds about ten o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. He was accompanied by his retinue of daughters, 
 Joan, Harriet, and Margaret, whose privilege it was that 
 day to be mounted in a becoming manner, with Philippa 
 and Jane bringing up the rear, as became their humbler 
 state, on bicycles. The gallant company had come to the 
 porter's lodge that kept the gates of their ancestral resi- 
 dence, when they were accosted by an insignificant-looking 
 young man in a blue melton overcoat. 
 
 The first fact pertaining to this young man's appearance 
 that struck their somewhat distressingly acute feminine 
 observation, was that the overcoat was old, and that the 
 velvet collar that had formerly been an ornament to it had 
 now ceased to behave in that capacity. It was frayed and 
 embrowned with decay. He was a pale young man, 
 decidedly under the middle height, with a head inclined 
 to droop, and rather a misfit for his body. It looked 
 several sizes too large for it ; and he wore an air of earnest 
 perplexity, as though even as he walked he was grappling 
 with the problem of how to bear about such a very big 
 thing on such an inadequate vehicle. His shoulders too 
 seemed to be preoccupied with the same responsibility. 
 They had a bunched, a rounded look, as though the young 
 man had a pair of corsets beneath his coat that did not 
 fit him. He was wearing a bowler hat that was rather 
 battered, worn to a fictitious polish around the brim, 
 almost green with age in places, and so liberally encased 
 
 103 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 with dust that a kind of outer shell had been formed upon 
 it. In its relations with the young man's head this article 
 seemed to share the disabiUties of his person. It coped no 
 better with that egregious skull. It had the look of a 
 cockle-shell jauntily poised on his thick brown patch, and 
 at the first sight lent him an appearance of a latent 
 sauciness which if you happened to catch it at an appro- 
 priate angle was irresistibly diverting in such a serious 
 demeanour. 
 
 He wore a low collar ; his tie was broad and vague and 
 unimpressive ; his boots were distinguished members of 
 the noble order of the " knubbly " ; his trousers bagged at 
 the knees, and were turned down demurely, and the only 
 creases of which they could boast were one round each 
 ankle, where on wet days it was their wont to turn up. In 
 a word, the appearance of the young man was ineffectual. 
 There was an almost pathetic lack of distinction about his 
 clothes and the unobtrusive way he wore them which 
 would not have seduced our hero and his attendant 
 Dianas to bestow a glance upon him had he not stopped 
 as they came through the gate, raised his hat with a 
 difhdence the reverse of the fashionable, and ventured to 
 address them. 
 
 " Mr. Broke ? " 
 
 " That is my name," said their father, looking him over 
 keenly. 
 
 " My name is Porter. I am engaged to coach one of 
 your daughters. Mrs. Broke wrote to say that this morning 
 at ten o'clock would be a convenient hour for my duties to 
 begin." 
 
 " That is so, I believe. My youngest daughter is at 
 home with that object in view." 
 
 The cavalcade passed on. The young man saluted 
 them again, but their father did not acknowledge the 
 courtesy. 
 
 Poor Delia ! Well might she fail to hide the tears 
 that sparkled in her eyes when she watched them ride 
 away. Poor little kid ! It was become almost a proverb 
 with them that she was born to be unlucky. All the dis- 
 agreeable things seemed to fall to her. But of all the unto- 
 ward events that had ever occurred, all paled into insigni- 
 
 104 
 
ENTER THE TRUE PRINCE 
 
 ficaiK e before this, the crowning one. To become a proiegS 
 of Aunt Emma ! The humiliation was only equalled by 
 the inconvenience. So this was their aunt's emissary. 
 He coincided in every way with the picture already painted 
 of him in their imaginations. He was just the person you 
 would expect her to send. If looks counted for anything, 
 he was a worthy minion. It was hard enough for her, poor 
 little kid, that she should be compelled to forego the delights 
 of this perfect hunting-day at the dictation of the Ogress, 
 a nam.e that Joan had invented for her, without having to 
 suffer the additional indignity of spending it in such society. 
 Their mother knew what was good for them of course, but 
 it did seem hard on their sister. The reason of it and the 
 justice had to be taken for granted, for they were quite at 
 a loss to evolve them out of their own private code of wisdom 
 and probity. He was a very terrible young man ! 
 
 The subject of these reflections had in the meantime 
 passed on towards the house. Presently he was face to 
 face with the imposing doors of their dwelling. He pulled 
 at the bell. An august old gentleman attended his sum- 
 mons at a majestic leisure. The august old gentleman 
 looked him up and down, from his green hat to 
 his misshapen boots, in a perfectly liberal spirit of 
 criticism. Subtle and indefinite signs seemed to indicate 
 that his appearance hardly recommended itself to the 
 austere custodian of the family dignity. 
 
 " Mr. Porter," said the visitor, entering the hall with an 
 air that somehow hardly went with his clothes. 
 
 Mr. Porson's manner of conducting Mr. Porter to the 
 drawing-room had an excellent touch of condescension in 
 it, yet it was hardly so pronounced as a moment ago the 
 circumstances seemed to warrant. 
 
 During the five minutes in which the visitor was left 
 alone, in this cold and draughty apartment, he picked up 
 a copy of the Rubaiyai of Omar Khayyam in the version 
 of Edward Fitzgerald, which was lying on a table, and 
 proceeded to read. He was startled by a creak of skirts. 
 He Hfted his eyes to discover that a woman had entered 
 the room, and was looking keenly at him. She was a red- 
 faced, hard-featured, rather countrified-looking woman, 
 who might not have appeared out of place had she been 
 
 105 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 keeping a stall in Cuttisham market. The instant the 
 young man lifted his eyes and beheld her, her face melted 
 in a dazzling smile. 
 
 " Even you, Mr. Porter," she said with an easy prompti- 
 tude, as though they were very old friends, "in an idle 
 moment can allow yourself to be diverted with these 
 elegant trifles. I confess I shall not be quite so much 
 afraid of you now. I was trembling lest one of your attain- 
 ments and an unlearned woman like myself would have 
 no common ground on which to meet. You see my sis- 
 ter-in-law has frightened me with your reputation." 
 
 The young man returned the smile frankly. Already 
 he was trying to detect a certain note his instincts assured 
 him were lurking in this flattering address. But listen as he 
 might he could not trace it ; so cunningly was it hidden that 
 it might not be there after all. The delicate concealment 
 of it was due perhaps to the quality of the voice. The voice 
 of this red-faced, hard-featured, perpetually smiling woman 
 was very beautiful indeed. The first sensation it gave him 
 was that he asked no better than to stand there on that 
 rather threadbare carpet in that decidedly draughty 
 drawing-room, and hear her talk for ever. 
 
 " You have come from Cuttisham," she said. " I fear 
 it is a very long journey. But probably you have a bicycle, 
 or you ride ? " 
 
 " I prefer to walk," said the young man. " It is not more 
 than four miles." 
 
 " That is eight, here and home again. It seems a very 
 long walk." 
 
 " I try to get exercise. A man of sedentary occupation 
 takes it if he's wise." 
 
 " Without a doubt you are right, but I must prevail upon 
 you to have some little refreshment after such exertion. A 
 biscuit and a whisky and soda ? A glass of sherry and a 
 piece of cake ? " 
 
 The young man was proof against these alluring things ; 
 but when he was conducted, presently, by Mrs. Broke to 
 the library to make the acquaintance of his pupil, he was in 
 danger of becoming her friend for life. The quarter of an 
 hour he had s]-»ent with this singularly amiable woman 
 was a memorable experience. She was so simple, so 
 
 1 06 
 
ENTER THE TRUE PRINCE 
 
 melodious, so very solicitous for one's welfare, although 
 she was hardly conscious of one's existence and had never 
 set eyes on one before ! It was as though this gracious 
 matron, with her dazzling smile and her beautiful voice, 
 was making love to one all the time. 
 
 There was a brave fire on the wide hearth of the library, 
 and a small brown, rather plaintive little figure was seated 
 at a table before it. A sad little figure. There were 
 several ominous blots drying on a page of Euclid's Second 
 Book, which was open in front of her. Haloes of faint red 
 shone round her eyes in the glow of the firelight. When the 
 door opened, and her mother appeared with a man behind 
 her, at whom Delia hardly dared to look, she flushed and 
 rose timidly. 
 
 " This is the child, Mr. Porter," said her mother in that 
 tone of ultra-graciousness that could always leave a weal 
 upon them when it chose. " But let me confess that I do 
 not envy you your task — a very labour of Hercules ! " 
 Her laughter rippled like a flute. " The name of Broke 
 is a synonym for a splendid intellectual nullity. In 
 all the hundreds of years it has been borne about by the 
 thousands of human entities it has adorned, I defy you to 
 find one wearer of it who has been distinguished for learn- 
 ing, for wit, for intellectual fineness, or subtlety of any 
 sort. They have all been on the same dead level ; the 
 maximum of animal vigour, and the minimum of divine 
 understanding. One cannot claim that the present genera- 
 tion is an exception to the universal rule. The sun of 
 its knowledge is confined to dogs and horses ; it makes its 
 friendships and holds its intercourse with the beasts of the 
 field. It has a healthy contempt for culture in any form, 
 a fine intolerance of the aesthetic, and, as I am afraid you 
 will discover, an inordinate distrust of any who would pre- 
 sume to tamper with this Arcadian simplicity. I hope, Mr. 
 Porter, I have not daunted you ; but if you fail, I do not 
 want you to blame yourself." 
 
 This speech of introduction, taken on its naked merits, 
 phrase by phrase, was decidedly not kind. But the suave 
 mellow accents in which it was embodied made it impossible 
 to dwell upon that aspect of it. It was so pointed that it must 
 have stung and bitten had not the delicate use of the voice 
 
 107 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 conveyed the latent sense of caress, like the fur about the 
 claw of the tiger. All the same the flush in the face of the 
 little creature deepened slowly during her mother's speech. 
 
 The young man bowed to his pupil when at last the chance 
 was allowed him to do so. Delia returned the bow with 
 a feeling of bewilderment. Almost in the act, the thought 
 flashed through her that he was the ugliest and oddest 
 man she had ever seen. 
 
 When presently her mother withdrew, poor Delia made 
 xio effort to dissemble her sense of persecution. 
 
 " I have made up my mind to hate you, Mr. Porter," 
 she said with a dehberation, under which was her timidity. 
 
 " Honesty ! " said the young man, with half a smile. 
 
 In his eyes she was only a little chit of a thing with a nisset 
 coloured face nearly as plain and countrified as her mother's. 
 But it had much greater naturalness. It had none of 
 those ingratiating tricks that played so skilfully upon the 
 judgment. This was a pathetically plain little face which, 
 apart from a slight shyness induced by the circumstances 
 and her sex, in itself rather pretty because so infinitely well 
 bred, had an air of candour, of unfearing innocence that 
 was appealing. But there was a memorable nose stuck 
 in the middle. It fascinated the young man ; never had he 
 seen an organ so remarkable on the face of a woman. It 
 might have made him laugh if somehow, out of proportion 
 as it was, it did not seem after all, in an absurd whimsical 
 manner, to be appropriate to her quaintness, and to hold 
 quite rightly and properly its niche in nature. At a second 
 glance it seemed as much a part of her countenance as 
 was the smile of Mrs. Broke a part of hers. Insensibly it 
 lured his picturesque fancy to revert to the Crusaders and 
 the days of Chivalry, so that when he looked at it again, the 
 glamour of a poetic age was shining on it. All the same 
 it was a little odd, a little unexpected on a young girl. 
 
 He liked the way in which she made her uncompromising 
 statement. It was a curious, imperious little way, which 
 yet seemed to be hers quite prettily and properly for all her 
 shyness ; it was almost something you might associate 
 with a small princess or a fairy. 
 
 "Alas ! you have made up your mind to hate me," he said. 
 " Ruthless feminine justice, but very proper. I am to be 
 punished, not that I am the real cause of your not going 
 
 108 
 
ENTER THE TRUE PRINCE 
 
 gaily a-h inting with your father and sisters this delightful 
 morning, but as the servile minion of Destiny — inexorable 
 Destiny, that pays me to keep you in prison at the rate of 
 two shillings and sixpence an hour." 
 
 The young man's laugh was by no means so unpleasant 
 as you would expect, but the little creature met it with 
 resolute eyes. 
 
 " I don't think I blame you," she said with a pretty 
 little air of rectitude. 
 
 " You hate me, which is harder to bear." 
 
 Again she refused to relax to his laugh, although it did 
 not jar upon her at all. In fact it was rather nice to hear 
 him laugh. 
 
 "I cannot help hating you," she said. 
 
 " Well, Miss Broke, I respect your candour." 
 
 " It is horrid of me, but I cannot help speaking as — as I 
 feel." 
 
 " Alas ! " he said, " that I have not the spirit to defend 
 myself. Do you know that when I met your sisters at 
 the gate laughing and chattering at the top of their voices, 
 I felt that I should not be forgiven ? My fancy formed 
 a picture of you as a sort of captive fairy princess immured 
 in a moated grange, with myself, my wicked and unworthy 
 self, in the part of the ruthless ogre who persecutes her ; or 
 again, and a little more prosaically, as Cinderella, with 
 myself as the ugly and malevolent sister who kept her 
 from the ball. Believe me, I deplore my ignoble role. In 
 fact if you relent, you will hardly be a true princess." 
 
 " I will certainly not relent." 
 
 The decision seemed to ple'ase him. 
 
 " Do you think my humility makes you more resolute ? ** 
 
 " I— I do not think it could ! " 
 
 Delia clutched her book of Euclid, and tried to squeeze 
 the sudden tears back into her eyes. A fat one, however, 
 insisted on pushing itself forward on to her apple-coloured 
 cheek. 
 
 " Alas, poor princess ! " 
 
 The young man's sigh was as whimsical as his face. 
 
 *' I am not a princess. I hope you will not call me 
 princess." 
 
 " Alas, poor C'.nderella ! " 
 
 109 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " My name is not Cinderella, if you don't mind." 
 
 " Cinderella is your real name, I am sure, although, quite 
 ignorantly and mistakenly, they call you Miss Delia. My 
 own is Merlin, although somewhat perversely I sign my 
 letters in the name of Alfred." 
 
 " I — I think you laugh at me. Please do not." 
 
 " On the contrary, I am trying to be sympathetic." 
 
 " Please do not — please do not be sympathetic." 
 
 " I exceed my duties ? " 
 
 " Indeed, yes." 
 
 " Then what, pray, is to become of my high mission ? 
 Without perfect intercourse I am afraid this doleful clerk 
 will never lead his charge to the Mecca of the faithful fair, 
 the portals of Newnham College." 
 
 " I am sure, Mr. Porter, that if my aunt should find you 
 to have sympathy for me in any way, you will not be 
 allowed to see me again." 
 
 " You are solicitous for my two and sixpence an hour ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am," said Delia promptly. 
 
 The young man laughed. He opened a pair of very large 
 and deep-set eyes at her, and regarded the stain drying on 
 the russet surface of the cheek with a grave amusement. 
 Delia suddenly felt herself to be blushing horribly. In 
 about the same instant she felt they were going to be friends. 
 She had already been a little astonished to find herself 
 talking to him so easily. Ever since her aunt had conceived 
 the fatal resolve she had been sure she would be com- 
 mitted to the tender mercies of some hopelessly dull, not 
 to say vulgar young pedant. Her sisters had declared it 
 must be so with dreary unanimity ; but mother had hinted 
 at it ; Aunt Emma herself on the terrible occasion had even 
 drawn the portrait of that kind of person. Her horrid 
 ])recautions she was sure must inevitably take that form. 
 If only to " safeguard her " — a phrase she could only under- 
 stand faintly, and none of the others knew precisely what 
 Aunt Emma intended to convey by it either — she was sure 
 she would be crushed fiat under a very Juggernaut of 
 learning. But this young man did not seem formidable 
 at all. To be sure he was not very prepossessing to look at. 
 The first glimpse indeed that she had had of him had 
 almost caused her to shiver ; he seemed such an odd mis- 
 
 IIO 
 
ENTER THE TRUE PRINCE 
 
 shapen clumsy, ugly creature. However, now she had 
 got more used to the sight of him he had lost something 
 of this look of the grotesque. And when he talked he 
 was almost nice. 
 
 Still the only thing you might say of him positively was 
 that he had a cleaTi collar. To be quite fair to Aunt Emma, 
 her emissary had clean finger-nails also ; probably her aunt 
 intended that his should do honour to hers. She didn't 
 know what to make of his face. Somehow it was an odd, 
 queer kind of face, quite the frontispiece you would expect 
 to such an odd, queer kind of head. The more she looked 
 at it the more it puzzled her. And when he opened his 
 eyes at her and gave her that whimsical grave smile she 
 felt nonplussed utterly. His face was no longer ugly 
 when he smiled, yet even then it was not retrieved of that 
 suggestion of the sombre, which was perhaps, when all was 
 said, the predominant factor in it. His face was very 
 pale and worn and thin ; there were lines on the forehead ; 
 and the prominence of the cheek-bones and the attenuation 
 of the flesh that covered them gave a kind of mountain- 
 and-valley effect to the upper part of his countenance in 
 conjunction with the lower. The abrupt walls of his lean 
 jaws curved into the shape of a hatchet. His eyes were 
 large and melancholy, of a grey brooding colour, set very 
 deep, and with a rather disconcerting but not iinpleasant 
 habit, as she had already discovered, of coming wide open 
 at you suddenly. When they did this their dimension 
 was a little astonishing. His forehead came forth boldly, 
 an uncompromising dome, his brows were strongly 
 marked, and when he was silent the thin curves of his Ups 
 sealed his mouth so tightly that it seeemed hard to know 
 how ever they were going to spring apart. His natural 
 expression you could not very well describe, yet it needed 
 but a httle to become morose and even slightly frightening. 
 That was singular because his voice was so different. It 
 was a low, mild, beguiling voice, not in the least harsh or 
 displeasing, as you would think it must be. It had already 
 done something to reconcile her to her hard lot that she 
 could actually sit and listen to it without the smallest 
 sensation of antagonism. 
 
 •" Would you say that a book was worse than a poacher ? " 
 
 III 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 "There are books that I love," said Delia, with a 
 measure of hesitation and a bright colour. 
 
 " But not in the way you love hunting ? " 
 
 " Yes, the books I mean. I love them quite as much, 
 or — or more." 
 
 " That is excellent ; I am glad." 
 
 " Why are you glad, Mr. Porter ? " 
 
 " I think I may hope. You see, if you had no love for 
 books you would find my presence intolerable." 
 
 " Yes, I should." 
 
 The young man could not repress another smile at the 
 deliberate syllables of her candour. It was only a furtive 
 one, but in an instant crimson flowed across her face. 
 
 " I beg your pardon ; I have been rude." 
 
 " ' La franchise provoquani la franchise.' I assail you with 
 Stendhal to show that I am hurt." 
 
 " Oh, I am sure I beg your pardon." 
 
 " Your sensitiveness makes me more hopeful than ever." 
 
 " I will try to deserve your kindness," said Delia with a 
 graciousness born of his own demeanour. He was not con- 
 sciously the courtier, but his tones were conciliatory, and 
 as a rule her sex are not slow to grant them recognition. 
 
 " You do not need to assure me of that." 
 
 " I will try to be worthy of your patience. But please 
 do not expect too much of me ; you do not know how 
 stupid I am at learning things." 
 
 " Tell me what are these books you love." 
 
 She showed no eagerness to answer the question. Inde- 
 cision took her, and it made her dumb when he looked at 
 her in the particular way she had already found so discon- 
 certing. 
 
 " There is nothing to withhold," he said persuasively. 
 
 " They are not at all what I ought to read, I know," 
 she said at last with an effort. " They are poetry and 
 novels, I am afraid." 
 
 " Aha ! why is the illicit ever so delectable? You owe 
 allegiance to the reigning monarchs, I presume ; Miss 
 Jones, Mrs. Smith, and Mr. Alfred So-and-So ? " 
 
 " I have only one favourite among the writers of the 
 present day," said Deiici. 
 
 The animation of her companion's manner and the keen 
 
 112 
 
ENTER THE TRUE PRINCE 
 
 way in which he put his questions were infectious. There 
 is no freemasonry like the passion for books, unless it be 
 that of love. The arcana of the order are magically com- 
 municated. There was an eagerness in the young man's 
 eyes when he spoke about books that stripped him, as far 
 as Delia was concerned, of at least half the terrifying 
 reports of his scholarship. Even his strange face lost a 
 part of its grimness. 
 
 " I must have the name of the author." 
 
 " Meredith," said Delia, nervously. 
 
 " Alas ! the incorrigible old man. I trust you do not 
 respect him the most because you can understand him the 
 least." 
 
 " I can understaixd all the parts I want to understand, I 
 think." 
 
 " And skip those that you can't ? " 
 
 " I am not in the habit of skipping." 
 
 " Of course, of course ! The suggestion was unworthy.- 
 But tell me, do you prefer his poetry or his novels ? " 
 
 " There are heaps and heaps of poetry I love more than 
 his ; but when I read his novels my pleasure almost frightens 
 me. 
 
 " Hyperbole." 
 
 " I am sure, Mr. Porter, you know what I mean. I can 
 see it in your face." 
 
 " Well, well ! Which of his heroines would you choose 
 to be ? Clara Middleton ? If I were a woman, I would 
 choose to be her, just as being a man I want to be her hero." 
 
 " If I could be the heroine out of a story, I think I would 
 choose to be Diana Vernon." 
 
 " Yes, I daresay she was rather better to hounds, but I 
 doubt whether she could run like Clara. And I am sure 
 her complexion was not so fine, although there was more 
 of it possibly ; and Clara's wit was more polished, and I 
 believe she was just a lee-tle bit more the lady. Not that 
 these are qualities to count in a lady in a tale, or in real 
 life perhaps, in the incredibly fair creature with whom we 
 chance to fall in love. But it sticks in my mind that Clara 
 was slightly the more beautiful." 
 
 " But I am sure, Mr. Porter, that Diana had the grander 
 character. She always puts me in mind of my sister 
 
 113 H 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Joan. She has a grand character. You will be sure to 
 meet her, and I hope you will, for I am sure you are just 
 two people who would like one another. I think my sister 
 will impress you." 
 
 " I gather that the great Sir Walter is another of your 
 friends ? " 
 
 " I am afraid I worship him." 
 
 " And the poets ? " 
 
 " Keats is my favourite of them all." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 " And then there is the Faerie Queene." 
 
 " And then ? " 
 
 " And then there is Shakespeare, and those lovely short 
 pieces in Milton, and Adonais, and some little pieces of 
 Dryden, and some of the translations I have read of Homer; 
 Chapman I love best because he rolls out so grandly ; 
 and then there's Swinburne and Rossetti, and Tennyson, 
 and some of those beautiful dusty old poets in the 
 brown volumes on the shelves there right at the top — 
 Herrick, and Marlowe, and Webster, and Fletcher, and 
 Drummond of Hawthornden. Oh ! and I love Mr. Henley, 
 and Michael Drayton." 
 
 " What about Chaucer ? " 
 
 " I think I love Chaucer best of all." 
 
 " And to return to the poor prose-men ? " 
 
 " I think poor dear old Don Quixote is the one I worship 
 most. He sometimes makes me think of my father." 
 
 " Your father did not appear to be mounted on Rozinante 
 when we met this morning. There was rather a Ber- 
 trand du Guesclin look about him. But it is my duty to 
 insist that you worship Robinson Crusoe." 
 
 " I do indeed, and Treasure Island too, and the Three 
 Musketeers." 
 
 " And Pilgrim's Progress and one Sir Thomas Mallory ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, and Ruskin and Charles Lamb; and I believe 
 the wicked To7n Jones if I dare, only Aunt Emma caught 
 me reading him one day, and she was so shocked that she 
 had him burnt — four volumes of him, and if took me weeks 
 and weeks to live down the disgrace." 
 
 " That is an anecdote that will have to be retold in the 
 biography of the author of Poses in the Opaque" 
 
 114 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 Startling Development of the Heroine 
 
 TUTOR and pupil caught themselves smiling at the 
 mention of the magic name. 
 
 " Is it my duty to admire her ? " said Delia gravely. 
 
 " Your critical judgment fits you to answer the question 
 for yourself." 
 
 " I am so relieved," said Delia. 
 
 Her sigh of satisfaction was fetched so deep that he 
 turned his laugh upon the little lady. 
 
 " Splendid ! " he said. " I recognize the spirit of 
 No-compromise — the spirit that enabled those ancestors 
 of yours to bleed for their opinions." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said Delia; " I suppose it is 
 all very wrong and very wicked, but that is how I feel. 
 My sisters are the same. If people are our friends, 
 we love them ; but if they are not our friends. I — I am 
 afraid ! " 
 
 Something flashed so vividly out of the child's eyes, 
 that his attention was called for the first time to their 
 quality. Rather extraordinary eyes he thought they 
 were ; not arresting perhaps to a cursory look, but once 
 you had seen them you required to see them again. Blue 
 was their colour : blue as ocean and sky ; blue demanding 
 a Meredithian simile if you chanced to catch them in a 
 moment when you might surprise what slept beneath the 
 veil that kept their mysteries. The flash had revealed her. 
 Looking through it at her, with the piercing gaze of the 
 artist and the connoisseur he saw she was an exquisite little 
 creature in her way. Although even as he was travelling 
 to this fact he paid to himself the compliment that it was 
 
 115 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 not a perfunctory vision that so interpreted her. The 
 requisite amount of deUcate alertness was demanded to 
 evolve so rare a kernel out of a shell. 
 
 " You love poetry, Mr. Porter. I know you do ! " 
 
 " How do you know ? " 
 
 " It is in your voice and your eyes when you speak about 
 it. It is delicious to be able to talk of it just as one feels. 
 That is if I may ; you will allow me, will you not ? " 
 
 " Why not ? I would rather talk of poetry to the right 
 person than do anything else in the world." 
 
 " Alas ! the right person." 
 
 " You must allow me to choose her." 
 
 Delia felt herself flushing nervously under the whimsical 
 assurance of his eyes. She feared him already ; and yet 
 in the most singular way he was easier to talk to than any 
 one she had ever known. With her father, her sisters, her 
 Uncle Charles, all of whom in a sense were her boon com- 
 panions, and of whom she was no more afraid than they 
 were of her, she had never found herself conversing so 
 swiftly, so pleasantly, never with so little difficulty in 
 expressing her thoughts, and with so many thoughts 
 surging to be expressed. She was really far more afraid, 
 absurd as such a thing might seem, of this new strange 
 friend of hers than she was of her mother and her Aunt 
 Emma. He gave her, even when he appeared to try to 
 minimize it, a far keener sense of her own littleness than 
 did they, although so often it had seemed to her that 
 they strove might and main to inflict her with that 
 effect. But this inscrutable man was quite apart in her 
 experience. A baffling, a fascinating, an elusive some- 
 thing lurked behind that beguiling voice. Ten men's 
 natures merged in one might have employed his laugh 
 to express their single complex entity. Again, his 
 simplicity was very baffling too. She actually found him 
 easier to talk to than Jane, or Harriet, or Margaret; 
 he seemed such a wonderfully human being ; yet all the 
 time she conversed with him there was a chance that he 
 might be some inordinately cunning thing who was only 
 pretending to be human after all. He might be amusing 
 himself by deceiving her. There was just a fear that it 
 might be a case of little Red Riding Hood. He might 
 
 ii6 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEROINE 
 
 be a wolf or a dragon who of a sudden would throw off 
 his cloak of a lover of poetry, put out a paw and gobble 
 her up. Because whatever pains he was at to show her 
 he was as perfectly elementary as she was herself, she was 
 sure he was nothing of the kind. In mental stature he 
 was superhuman, he was a giant, and it was not a bit 
 of good his trying to disguise the fact. There was nothing 
 of the Jane or Harriet quality about this slightly weird 
 simplicity of his. 
 
 " I know I shall bore you very much, Mr. Porter," she 
 said eagerly but fearfully, " but you do not know how I 
 long to talk to you. You see all my sisters despise books ; 
 and even my mother is not a lover of poetry." 
 
 " That is surprising ! " The young man permitted 
 himself an arch smile. 
 
 " She says a fondness for poetry ought to be prescribed 
 for like a disease." 
 
 " She insists on the scientific and the useful ? " 
 
 " Not altogether. She is, oh, so dreadfully clever." 
 
 " Ah, my prophetic soul ! Suppose we say her idea 
 of literature is something that will get examination marks 
 or put meat in the pot or coals on the fire ? Well, it hap- 
 pens that the terms of my mission render it necessary 
 that I shall regard it in that light myself, at the rate of 
 two shillings and sixpence an hour." 
 
 " Yes, but as we know what it is we shall only be 
 playing a game, shall we not ? When we study philosophy 
 we can pretend it's Keats. And we shall be able to 
 make believe when we are toiling with Aristotle and Plato 
 that they are dear Sir Walter Scott." 
 
 " So we shall ! " 
 
 " You are going to give me the keVs to those great 
 things I cannot read. You will unlock the doors that 
 hold their meaning that I may understand the wonderful 
 prose which is so grand and so bewildering, the poetry 
 that haunts you all night and every night like the voices in 
 the trees." 
 
 The child bent forward eagerly with her hands locked 
 round her little knees, and as she did so the tears sprang 
 suddenly into her eyes. 
 
 " Hullo ■ a spark of the sacred flame I " 
 
 117 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 *' Please you will not laugh at me ! " 
 
 " It would be a sacrilege. It is the stuff of which once 
 upon a time this poetry was made. In the day of the 
 common danger, or the common wrong it was exaltations 
 such as these that emitted the native woodnotes wild of 
 which we of the tepid, ultra-civilized, over-secure twentieth 
 century are the inheritors. Has your race ever had a 
 poet, Miss Broke ? I cannot recall one." 
 
 " There is a Lady Margaret Broke, who composed a 
 Book of Hours in the reign of Edward the Third. I do 
 not think you will call it very fine poetry." 
 
 " May I ask if Miss Delia Broke has made the attempt 
 to remove this stigma of poetical sterility from her 
 family ? " 
 
 " No — yes — that is, at least ! " 
 
 Her friend regarded the tokens of her too vivid em- 
 barrassment with a pretence of gravity. Even as she 
 struggled with her tormenting blushes she felt how im- 
 possible it was to keep a secret from those unsparing 
 eyes. Her fear of him was suddenly reasserted. But 
 she was powerless to confess her guilt even while her 
 silence published it. 
 
 " Since when have you been a poet ? " 
 
 Never before had she made the confession ; and with that 
 morbid dread of criticism that may possess the most 
 sensitive of her kind she had felt it would be impossible 
 to reveal her secret. But the murder was out now ; she 
 stood convicted before this inexorable judge, who seemed 
 to have the power to pierce through every fibre that com- 
 posed her. 
 
 " Let me see your poetry." 
 
 " No — no, I cannot I " said Delia, a little wildly " It — 
 it is not meant to be seen." 
 
 " Are you quite sure about that ? " 
 
 " I am quite sure ! " 
 
 " Reflect a little. Think out exactly how you feel about 
 it. I know a little myself of the inmost feelings of 
 authors." 
 
 " I am quite sure." 
 
 " Reflect a little longer. The inmost feelings of authors 
 are vvoefull}' comple:i:." 
 
 Ii8 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEROINE 
 
 '* Indeed I am quite sure my wTetched writings were 
 never intended for you to read." 
 
 " Reflect a minute longer. The whole truth is worth 
 a struggle." 
 
 " They would make you despise me dreadfully." 
 
 " Tn your heart you are not so sure." 
 
 " Oh, how can you know that ! " 
 
 " I know it only too well. I too am cursed with the 
 same itch. And we are all alike, we authors. Nature is 
 careful of the type. We, you and I, Miss Delia Broke 
 and Mr. Alfred Porter, write to be read as much as ever 
 Virgil and Milton did." 
 
 Delia began to grow irresolute. There was something 
 very uncompromising under his laugh. 
 
 " Suppose 3^ou fetch them for me to see ? " His in- 
 flection of persuasiveness somehow left no margin for refusal. 
 
 " Oh, I could not, indeed I could not ! " cried poor Delia. 
 
 " A poet must be prepared to face his responsibilities. 
 These things of ours are wrought for the embellishment 
 of truth, the embodiment of beautj'. They can achieve 
 neither the one nor the other if they are immured. We 
 poets must purchase the courage of our endeavours, and 
 learn to endure the carpings of fools, and the censure of 
 those wiser and more righteous than ourselves." 
 
 " But I am not a poet ; indeed I do not pretend to 
 be a poet," said Delia, taking fright at his pretence of 
 austerity. 
 
 " Nothing can save you from the charge. You have 
 committed your thoughts to paper in the choicest form 
 at your command. I hope you do not wish a fellow* 
 craftsman to understand that you have not wrought the 
 best that is in you." 
 
 " I was very much in earnest when I wrote them. But 
 I feel how poor they must be." 
 
 " You would hardly have preserved them had you felt 
 that." 
 
 " Indeed I do feel it ; I do indeed ! " 
 
 " You think like that towards them in your moments of 
 reaction, but in those of your impulse you have a sharp 
 sense of their beatitude. They stand out then in the 
 radiant colours in which you wrought them originally, 
 
 119 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and even seem worthy of the mood in which they were con- 
 ceived." 
 
 DeHa was beginning to learn already how impotent she 
 was before him. She had denied the existence of her 
 writings when he had surprised the secret in her ; he had 
 made her confess that they were composed for a public, 
 had she only had the courage to commit them to it ; 
 and now he was about to compel her to vdeld them to the 
 light when her reticence shuddered at the act. It was as 
 though a new force had caught her. There was not a 
 loophole by which he allowed her to escape the conse- 
 quences of her deeds. The thoughts she had ventured to 
 embody were summoned to pay a toll for their existence. 
 His pertinacity caused her to see a kind of justice in it, and 
 presently with many aches and misgivings she rose to do 
 his will. 
 
 While Delia went to procure these first-fruits of her 
 young imagination, her tutor turned his attention to the 
 library shelves. There were few new books, but some 
 delightful old ones. It was a collection that owed little 
 to the present generation of its owners, but was rather 
 an accretion of centuries. His eyes glowed at a sight so 
 delectable. When Delia returned, bearing her treasures 
 like babes in her arms before her, he was preoccupied with 
 a sense of pleasures to come. He saw the promise of many 
 Arcadian hours. 
 
 Delia's writings were well calculated to exhiV)it the scope 
 and calibre of her mind. They comprised poems, plays, 
 essays, hymns, short stones, and fragments of several 
 novels. They were carefully rolled into some twenty little 
 tubes of white paper, sedulously clean, and tied with blue 
 ribbon. They represented the activities of a prolific pen 
 and a lively imagination since the age of twelve. With 
 Mr. Porter's aid they were laid reverently side by side 
 upon the table before the fire. 
 
 " Do your worst, Mr. Critic," she said, outwardly calm, 
 but with a beating heart. " They are arranged like the 
 woiks of Shakespeare, in the order of time. The date 
 of their birth is written outside. Please do not look 
 at the early ones. They will make you laugh." 
 
 The child affected a note of gaiety that hardly rang 
 
 1 20 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEROINE 
 
 true. The tumult within was very high. With a 'Short 
 little laugh and a rather high colour, she selected the first 
 roll to pass in judgment before her critic. Not improperly' 
 it was a poem on a tragic theme. It was inspired by the 
 death of Cutlass, a gallant but too intrepid hound, who 
 took a somewhat informal departure from this life, because 
 he chose to cross the railway when hounds were in full 
 cry at the moment the express from London had chosen 
 to cross it also. 
 
 Tlie critic glanced at it with an immobility of counten- 
 ance that could not be read, rolled it up and replaced it 
 without a word of comment. He then turned his attention 
 to prose and the drama. These did not elicit a word from 
 him either. He then took up an essay ; it was called 
 " An Appreciation of Lord Tennyson." This also he read 
 in a silence as complete as that in which he had read the 
 others. 
 
 Delia watched every phase of his impassiveness while 
 she tried not to do so. She strove very hard to attain that 
 stoical indifference which she was sure her sister Joan 
 M'ould have been able to exhibit in these circumstances. 
 But she felt ruefully that nature had not fashioned her 
 on a principle so heroic. Her fibres were too pliant, too 
 flaccid ; her self-command almost failed her. The silence 
 of the critic was a relief in a sense, but also it was bitterly 
 disappointing. 
 
 " Are they — are they quite hopeless? " she ventured to 
 ask at last, faintly. 
 
 "Suppose we bum them." 
 
 She recoiled, aghast. It was like a hit in the face. A 
 course so extreme had never entered her mind. The 
 criticism she dreaded she had been steeling her heart to 
 bear ; but total annihilation struck too fiercely at the 
 roots of sentiment. The twenty little rolls were dear 
 and faithful friends who had nourished her lonely spirit 
 secretly when all the world had been unkind. 
 
 " N — no, I could not burn them," she said in a thin little 
 voice. 
 
 Her tone caused the critic to look at her keenly. " It 
 may seem a little drastic," he said, " but that is the only 
 way for the pjrtist." 
 
 121 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 '* I — I do not think of myself as an artist at all." 
 
 " I pay you the compliment of looking at you in thai 
 light." 
 
 " But I am sure I would prefer not to be an artist and 
 be allowed to keep my treasures, than be an artist and have 
 them cruelly destroyed." 
 
 " Think," said the critic, enfolding her with a melcincholy 
 smile, " achievement means blood and tears and the 
 fire." 
 
 " Oh, I am sure I could never consent to have them 
 burned. My mother found them once in their hiding- 
 place and said she would burn them, and I passed a 
 dreadful week in consequence. My sister Joan might be 
 able to bear it if they were hers ; yes, she would, for her 
 courage is so great ; but I am a wretched coward." 
 
 " You must have courage too," said the young man 
 with the pertinacity that had defeated her before. " The 
 title of artist is not lightly to be renounced. The laurels 
 are a crown of thorns ; but the blood and tears they draw 
 out of us are replaced by certain ecstasies of the spirit. 
 Courage, courage, always courage ! " 
 
 His face was quite bewildering in its complexity. 
 
 " You almost frighten me," said Delia, quailing. " I — 
 I — I feel so mean." 
 
 " Try not to judge yourself harshly." 
 
 " But ought not one to be honest in one's judgment of 
 oneself ? " 
 
 " Ah, but what of the natures whose owners have not the 
 power to judge ? Perhaps this nature of yours may prove 
 stronger than you know." 
 
 The child shivered. 
 
 " I am sure I could not, I am sure I could not ! " she 
 cried, training a sidelong look upon her precious posses- 
 sions. " Besides, Mr. Porter, was not Shakespeare an artist ? 
 yet he never blotted a line." 
 
 " I would he had blotted a thousand. Even genius 
 must not fear the sword and the fire." 
 
 " Oh, how hard, how very hard ! " 
 
 " Yes, but Art is the most arduous thing in the world. 
 The artist must not know the meaning of fear. He has 
 to laboiu early and late with sinews of steel and an in* 
 
 122 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEROINE 
 
 flexible courage in his heart to fight the two-fold battle 
 of truth and beauty against every form of error. There 
 must be no vacillation, no hanging back on the part of 
 those who enter that service. The wounds are many and 
 grievous, the toils severe, the pleasures vague, the rewards 
 transitory and too often a mockery, but the humblest foot- 
 soldier in its ranks has no time to spare to thoughts like 
 these. He suffers great penalties and renounces the flesh 
 simply to say, This is Me, This is my Soul." 
 
 Delia regarded her tutor with a grave bewilderment. 
 He had spoken with something of the fanaticism of the 
 high priest, yet there was a reserve of control over all he 
 said. There was neither morbid passion in his voice nor 
 hectic madness in his face. In her youthful chivalry she 
 recognized that it was the strong calling on the weak to 
 gird itself in resolve. Her fear of him, at first an instinct, 
 was mounting to a pitch that made her shrink. 
 
 " You mean we must be true to ourselves," she said, 
 with a startled look. 
 
 " Yes, let us do the best that is in us. Let it be said 
 that we wrought as good as we knew. What man or 
 woman of us all can seek more ? " 
 
 " You make me feel how great your ideals are." 
 
 " And yours ? " 
 
 " I do try to have my Ideal." 
 
 " Well, if you can, give me an outline of its nature." 
 
 " I should like to have a splendid character like my 
 sister Joan." 
 
 " That is an answer for which I was prepared. Now 
 I want you to take up the best of these performances of 
 yours and read it again. When you have read it, I 
 shall ask you to answer a few questions about it." 
 
 Obediently Delia took up her most recent performance, 
 " A Ballad in Imitation of Master Francis Villon." 
 
 " Now," said he, when she had read it, " do you think 
 if you wrote it again you could make it better ? " 
 
 "No, not myself personally. It seems much nearer 
 what I meant than anything I have tried to do before. 
 Of course a real poet would be ashamed of it, but I do 
 not feel I could make it better myself." 
 
 " You are convinced ? " 
 
 123 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Yes. T think T am," said Delia nervously. 
 
 " Well, now," said the young man in a peculiarly kind 
 voice, " I learn from the manner of your ballad that 
 you did not go to the real Villon, but to Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti. May I ask why ? " 
 
 " I cannot read Villon as well as I can Rossetti." 
 
 " Yes, the mediaeval French has to be grappled with. 
 But now I ask you, do you think you could improve your 
 ballad if you found the original to be as clear as the trans- 
 lation of Rossetti ? " 
 
 Delia did not answer until she had thought the matter 
 out. 
 
 " Perhaps I could just a little in some ways," she con- 
 fessed reluctanth'. 
 
 " But the old French is very hard to get on with ? " 
 
 " Yes, I — I am afraid it is." 
 
 " Well, now, I ask you what would your sister Joan do 
 in such circumstances ? " 
 
 " She would not have ^^Titten it," said Delia, quickly. 
 " Her tastes are not at all in the direction of poetry." 
 
 " Ha ! there must be no scope for feminine incon- 
 sequence," he said, laughing at her eagerness. " You are 
 to assume that you yourself are your sister Joan. Now 
 tell me the course you would be likely to adopt, according 
 to your conception of her character." 
 
 " Perhaps I might learn to read old French," said the 
 child, blushing vividly. She saw suddenly, with a tinge oi 
 shame, where the ambush lay. 
 
 " And afterwards do you not think you might remodel 
 your ballad by the light of your fuller knowledge ? And do 
 you not feel that your imitation would be more faithful ? " 
 
 Delia replied by placing her ballad into the fire. 
 
 " And now the others. H -you apply the same standard 
 to them, the\^ cannot hope to fare better." 
 
 For a moment she stood in the throes of her irresolution. 
 The conflict soon passed, however. Now the first step 
 was taken she was too tliorousrh-going to be content with 
 half measures. One by one stoically she began to commit 
 her cherished manuscripts to the fire. To be sure it was 
 an act of Spartan resolution ; but she held her mouth tight, 
 and kept the tears out of her eyes somehow, and tried to 
 
 124' 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HEROINE 
 
 fix her mind firmly on her sister Joan. Nor did she 
 gather consolation from the attitude of him who was the 
 instigator of this inhuman hardihood. He wasted no 
 sympathy upon the signal deed, but superintended its 
 performance almost as a matter of course. However, 
 when he took two roll? in his hands with the object of com- 
 mitting them personally to perdition, it was a straw too 
 much. 
 
 " Put them down, please," she said fiercely. " I cannot 
 have you touch them ; I cannot have anybody touch them 
 but myself. They are mine : I made them, and I will 
 make an end of them. I must burn them myself, please." 
 
 Tears were very imminent. It is not easy, even for 
 your truly Spartan character, consciously to perform a 
 deed of the first grade of heroism and not have it re- 
 cognized as such by pubhc opinion. 
 
 " You must not think I underrate your heroism. I am 
 not sure that I could have done it myself." 
 
 " You — you do not know how dear they are to me," 
 said poor Doha. 
 
 " I might not have asked you to destroy them had that 
 been the case. I, too, know what the fire is, and must 
 keep acquainted with it for full many a long and weary 
 year." 
 
 " I feel crupl ; I feel wicked !" wailed poor Delia. " I 
 do not know why I am destroying them ; I am sure I did 
 not mean to." 
 
 " Nay, do not look on them as dead. They are the seeds 
 that one day will raise the flower. Who can tell what 
 shall spring from these balls of white fluff. One wonders 
 how much Milton burnt when he was young. Now suppose 
 you do not put pen to paper again for a whole year in the 
 way of composition. You shall read what you choose in 
 the meantime, for your taste is too pure to lead you 
 astray. You have no voice at present, it would be astonish- 
 ing if you had ; but give yourself up to those who have 
 spoken greatly to the ages, and perhaps in the course of 
 time you may be numbered among them. What thoughts 
 they induce do not trouble to write down, but let them lie 
 fallow. And I think we youthful seekers after Truth: — yes, 
 since you have shown yourself capable of this degree of 
 
 125 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 devotion to a principle, as a fellow cadet of our service 1 
 presume to offer you half of my badge — I think we ought, 
 in the first place, to aim at that sovereign humility which 
 nature imposes upon all before they are allowed to see her 
 face. 
 
 The young man concluded his exordium with a strange 
 light shining in his face. But poor Delia continued her 
 painful task, heeding not the prophet. By now, in the 
 effort to arrest them, tears had come at last into her eyes. 
 And there they remained in the most persistent and 
 ridiculous fashion until all the little w^hite rolls tied vnth 
 blue ribbon had been committed tenderly, unrelentingly 
 to the flames. 
 
 126 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Tact : with Sidelights on the Sovereign 
 Quality 
 
 DELIA was on her knees pressing the last of these 
 sacred packets between the bars, with tears still 
 glistening in her eyes, at the moment Mrs. Broke chose 
 to enter the library. 
 
 " Deep in the mysteries of ipsilon and upsilon I do not 
 doubt," said the fluent lady. 
 
 However, the attitude in which her daughter was dis- 
 covered gave pause even to her indomitable readiness. 
 
 "Oh, mother ! " cried Delia, " I am burning my manu- 
 scripts." Her words were accompanied by an audible 
 evidence of grief. 
 
 " Do you mean those absurd things I once found in your 
 room ? " 
 
 Mrs. Broke gave a smile to the tutor. 
 
 " A most remarkable morning's work," she said. " I 
 must make j'ou my compliments, Mr. Porter, upon your 
 firmness of character, I must indeed. How you have 
 contrived it I do not know, but I am sure I personally am 
 very grateful. So they are actually destroyed ! And 
 may I venture to hope that the folly is forsworn ? " 
 
 " For a year at least," said the young man. 
 
 " Excellent. I see your tact. You do not wish to 
 provoke a fresh outburst by too harsh a prohibition. She 
 is to be cured by degrees. Again, Mr. Porter, I must con- 
 gratulate you upon such a beginning. I hope you will 
 stay to lunch." 
 
 The young man having signified his willingness, Mrs. 
 
 127 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Broke led the way to the dining room. The repast was 
 of a singularly fmgal nature ; but the conversation of the 
 hostess was very gracious, charming, and incessant. Delia, 
 on the other hand, was kept within the limits of a silence 
 that became a small child out of the schoolroom. The 
 conversation, or, more properly, the monologue, for at first 
 the young man's share of it was extremely slight, hovered 
 about the topic of literature. He was entertained by the 
 melodious chatter of this agile woman. The attitude she 
 took was delerential : it repeatedly canvassed his opinion 
 and insisted on her own humility. Still, her humility 
 hardly amoimted to awe. For not only was she very pat 
 with opinions of her own, but also she seemed to be 
 acquainted with a little of everything that had been 
 embalmed between two covers, and that little generally 
 coincided with the \'erdict of the world. 
 
 " You are an earnest admirer of Lady Bosket of 
 course ? " 
 
 " On the contrarj^ I cannot count myself as one of the 
 elect." 
 
 "I beg your pardon." 
 
 " On the contrary, I cannot count myself as one of the 
 elect." 
 
 The 5'oung man repeated his answer without the faintest 
 display of trei^dation. His amused coolness, and his 
 complete freedom from apologetic vacillation, took the 
 fluent lady aback. It was so unlooked for. Yet, after all, 
 such a frankness had its piquancy. 
 
 " Surely you admire her ' Poses ' ? " 
 
 " I confess they amuse me a little." 
 
 " May I confess that on my own part this is the first 
 time I have heard them accused of being amusing." 
 
 " I gatlier that you did not find them so." 
 
 The redoubtable woman acknowledged a certain deftness 
 in tlie touch by asking the young man to pass the claret. 
 
 " But surely," she urged while he helped her to it, 
 " 3'ou are not insensible to the delicate tracery of her style, 
 the dey)th of her culture, the width of her outlook ? " 
 
 " Whollv," said tlie young man. 
 
 " Can it be a blind intolerance ? You have reasons of 
 course ? " 
 
 128 
 
TACT: THE SOVEREIGN QUALITY 
 
 " I hope I have not developed the fatal habit of making 
 up my mind without them." 
 
 " How I long to have the privilege of hearing what they 
 are!" 
 
 " I fear you may not find them entertaining. I fear 
 they might seem technical." 
 
 " Caviare to the general in other words. Alas, Mr. 
 Porter, that our sex should alwa^'s be handicapped out 
 of the game. I am a mere woman without pretensions to 
 culture in any form, but if you wish to pay me the most 
 delicate compliment in your power, you will afford me the 
 chance to forget that I am so limited. And, if I may say 
 it, to neglect an opportimity of complimenting a woman 
 on the score of her intellect is a little inhumane. Flattery 
 is very precious in our eyes." 
 
 The young m.an wds aJert enough to see that he was in 
 im.mlnent danger of crossing swords. Rut his was a nature 
 that could not shirk a contest. Delia, on the other side 
 of the table, trembled for him. She had a M'holesome 
 dread of her mother's powers purchased by many a 
 cutting stroke. Had she been able to save her friend 
 from his danger she would have done so, but tied by 
 her subordinate position she knew not how. Suddenly, 
 however, her desire grew uncontrollable. She must save 
 him at any cost. She bent across the table full under the 
 astonished eyes of her mother, and said, " Please, please 
 do not argue the point ! You and my mother do not — 
 do not see things with the same eyes." 
 
 Immediately he understood the chivalrous solicitude for 
 himself that had nerved her to this audacity. While, 
 however, he was smiling his gratitude to the little lady, 
 her mother had turned her cold with a smile of her 
 own. 
 
 " 1 beg, Mr. Porter, that you will not humiliate me by 
 withholding 3'our criticism of Lady Bosket. I beg you 
 to overlook my disabilities. I can assure you such a con- 
 cession will be remembered with ineffable gratitude. And 
 if one who has moved in the world might dare to dispense 
 her wisdom, believe me a man succeeds in proportion to 
 the compliments he pays to women. I never see a field 
 marshal or a cabinet minister but I think, ' Ah, my dear 
 
 129 I 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 friend, what adorable compliments you must have paid 
 us ! '" 
 
 " Lady Bosket and hei school," said the young man with 
 an air of deprecation as became one striving to forget the 
 maxim, ' Language was given us to conceal our thoughts,' 
 " are trying to set up a rule of thumb, to which all 
 writing is expected to conform. As in the day of Pope 
 it was the heroic couplet of five feet, so in ours no less is 
 demanded of a writer by Lady Bosket and her school than 
 that he shall have the conscience of a nonconformist. 
 The ideal Lady Bosket has before her is to be respectable 
 in the Victorian sense. She has a mission ; she is the 
 guardian of the public decency. You ma}' write like an 
 angel, but says she, beware of your moral tone." 
 
 " Surely that is a precept that can never lose its signifi- 
 cance." 
 
 " In art it has no significance. Art is non-moral." 
 
 " Is not that a little cryptic ? Surely art overflows with 
 moral teaching ? " 
 
 " Only inasmuch that it is human endeavour in its 
 highest and most disinterested form. But your true 
 craftsman does not preoccupy himself with shaking his 
 fist in the faces of the wicked ; neither does he preoccupy 
 himself with his own integrity. He does not weave his 
 visions and his meditations into patterns that dazzle us 
 into a blindness of dogma. He has no desire to become a 
 shibboleth of the meeting house or the parish council. 
 He is neither better nor worse than ourselves ; he is one of 
 us ; he is our brother. He holds the mirror up to nature 
 for no conscious advancement of our immortal souls, 
 except in so far as the reflection in it of truth and beauty 
 may react upon them. He paints his Madonna, or carves 
 his Mercury, or writes his epic with fasting and with 
 j)rayer, but if you are to look for the moral teaching in 
 these works do not seek it in the severity of their line, but 
 in the austerity of the life of him who wrought them." 
 
 " I can say with the deepest conviction that the life of 
 Lady Bosket will bear inspection. It is one of continued 
 sainthness." 
 
 " One fears tlie loveUness of her private character is 
 powerless to redceir the unseemliness of her works." 
 
TACT: THE SOVEREIGN QUALITY 
 
 " I beg your pardon." 
 
 " The paradox is inevitable. Lady Bosket, in her rSU 
 of self-elected guardian of the public morals, is an offence 
 to the sanctity of the art she pretends to serve. Bad 
 art is the only form of immmorality known to aestheticismj 
 Lady Bosket is our old friend Mrs. Grundy, in an edition de 
 luxe, carefully revised and brought up to date, with an 
 appendix of the latest laws of literary decorum and deport- 
 ment." 
 
 " You will admit, I hope, that there should be at least 
 some standard of good form ? " 
 
 " I cannot admit an arbitrary one. It ought not to be 
 compulsory even in England to drape the legs of one's 
 piano. This Mrs. Grundy of ours, this national fetish, is 
 as essentially vicious a person as any to be found in the 
 world. Hers is the doctrine of clothes with a vengeance ; 
 God, nature, and art are so obscene in themselves that not 
 for a moment must they be viewed without them. In her 
 visit to the picture gallery the sight of a marble upon 
 which Michael-Angelo has forgotten to place a pair of 
 trousers quite spoils her day. One cannot help feeling 
 how ironical it is that persons who do nothing but abuse 
 it should exploit this sacred gift of vision." 
 
 Mrs. Broke had already begun to recognize that she was 
 no match for her antagonist. He did not play the game 
 as it was understood in the drawing room. He did not 
 mince matters once he began ; he was not a picker of 
 phrases. He was a slogger, a swashbuckler, a peripatetic 
 bravo, evidently without experience in the drawing room 
 style of combat. 
 
 Our redoubtable lady was piqued. She was not accus- 
 tomed to being worsted, at her own table particularly, the 
 place of all others where she reigned supreme. Some 
 people might have called it courage on the part of this 
 underbred young upstart to permit himself such directness 
 in argument, but her name for it was less complimentar5^ 
 Poor Delia, who had followed every phase of the con- 
 troversy with a painful solicitude for the welfare of her 
 too-intrepid friend, now saw certain subtle evidences, 
 unmistakable none the less to those skilled in the signs, of 
 her mother's pique. The sudden appearance of an odd 
 
 131 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 sparkle in those cold ej^es made her tremble for the young 
 man, as often enough it had made her tremble for her un- 
 fortunate sisters and her unfortunate self. 
 
 " You astonish me," said Mrs. Broke, lifting her mild 
 voice a little. " Your criticism is terribly scathing, but 
 at least it has the rare merit of candoiur. Poor Lady 
 Bosket ! " 
 
 " I did not give my opinion willingly. You will re- 
 member I was urged. I fear I do not select if I happen 
 to feel strongly." 
 
 " Indeed, no. You are very fearless." 
 
 " Foolhardy would be perhaps the more appropriate 
 name at this time of day. Only too fully does one re- 
 cognize a certain unfortunate cast of temper." 
 
 " I agree, Mr. Porter, that your outspokenness may not 
 be without its inconvenient side," said Mrs. Broke, hoist- 
 ing herself smoothly on the amende he had offered. " May 
 it not at times become a little embarrassing to poor Lady 
 Bosket ?" 
 
 " She has not suffered at present under my unfortunate 
 controversial method, 1 am haj)py to say." 
 
 " After all that is not unnatural. But I would ask, 
 does it strike you as quite politic that one should dissemi- 
 nate these opinions of Lady Bosket and her work ? " 
 
 " Politic ? Forgive me if I appear dense." 
 
 " Would it not, do you not think, be somewhat wounding 
 to poor Lady Bosket if it came to her knowledge that one 
 in whom she happens to take a peculiar interest held such 
 heretical opinions concerning her ? " 
 
 " Forgive me if I venture to ask on my own part whether 
 the word ' politic ' does not call for a stronger qualifica- 
 tion ? " 
 
 " Perhaps it might not be altogether pohtic for you to 
 insist upon a stronger one." 
 
 " I am prepared to take the risk." 
 
 To Delia's dismay, the cold brilliant hardness was ever 
 growing in her mother's eyes. 
 
 " Have you not in a sense been taken up by her ? " 
 
 " Forgive me if I crave for a little more explicitness." 
 
 " Is she not in a sense your patron ; I mean, of course, 
 somewhat after the iashion that in happier days persons 
 
 1:^2 
 
TACT: THE SOVEREIGN QUALITY 
 
 of a pre-eminently fortunate position stood in that relation 
 to art and those who practise it ? " 
 
 The young man laughed imperturbably. The time- 
 honoured feminine method of retaliation below the belt 
 did not distress him. He saw that our redoubtable lady 
 had lost her temper. 
 
 " I confess I had not thought of it," he said cheerfully. 
 " But I think the idea is not without its whimsicahty." 
 
 He laughed again. 
 
 Mrs. Broke had no particular reason to be solicitous for 
 the reputation of her sister-in-law, but superb as was the 
 control she habitually kept upon herself for the moment 
 it was gone. She was genuinely angry. Her red face had 
 grown a shade redder ; the expanse of her smile had grown 
 a fraction more expansive ; and the grim light the 
 frightened Delia had observed in her eyes was now burning 
 more coldly and oddly than ever. 
 
 " I gather that you do not find the idea wholly devoid 
 of amusement ? " she said, following up her mellowest 
 accents. 
 
 " I will not deny that it has a flavour, although it may 
 suggest the Elizabethan." 
 
 " Have not the Elizabethans ever been the theme of 
 our admiration ? " 
 
 " I grant it ; but would you not say that their methods 
 at this time of day are apt to seem a little remote ? " 
 
 " Still, Mr. Porter, I must admit that I have heard of a 
 number of even literary persons who esteem it an honour 
 to have incurred the notice of Lady Bosket." 
 
 " I hope you will pardon my amusement if it is at all 
 likely to become offensive. To myself the idea seems so 
 new. It had never occurred to me that our few and very 
 formal relations were in danger of being construed in that 
 light." 
 
 " You appear to repudiate them." 
 
 " Not at all ; on the contrary I am anxious that an 
 exaggerated notion of my status should not get abroad." 
 
 The simplicity of his way of saying this somewhat 
 baffled his fair antagonist. The demure assumption of 
 his mildness was in nowise behind her own. And she was 
 intelligent enough to feel that his was vastly the more 
 
 133 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 delicate. She was hitting below the belt, which she knew ; 
 but it seemed she was not to have it all her own way. 
 Where a fighter of the other sex would have admired his 
 skill and tenacity in the face of a great disadvantage and 
 a peculiar, his fair antagonist deplored his effrontery in 
 venturing to defend himself. 
 
 " I observe that your amusement is unconquerable," 
 she said. " You force me to concede the occasion for it. 
 But please allow me to say that in the first instance I was 
 not conscious of having provided it." 
 
 " Nor, if you wall allow me to say so, do I think you are 
 conscious new. One can see that it might not be apparent 
 to some ; to me I confess it is strikingly so. Not to put 
 too fine a point upon it, I was not aware that I was in the 
 enjoyment of the avowed, the authentic patronage of 
 Lady Bosket. It gives one rather the same influential 
 status that the legend * Appointment by Royal Warrant ' 
 he hangs over his door does to the royal grocer. It is a 
 novel feeling, but a happy one, doubtless, when one be- 
 comes accustomed to the glamour." 
 
 Again the young man's laugh was heard, but the total 
 absence of mirth in it implied that he had yet to arrive 
 at this equable condition of mind. 
 
 Mrs. Broke was now ready to dechne the contest. She 
 was growing tired ; and without being willing to admit that 
 she had been actually defeated, she did not think she had 
 shone. She hastened, therefore, to scramble back to the safe 
 ground of the influence of Beowulf on the early Augustine 
 Fathers. 
 
 She could not rid herself of a dim feeling that for once, 
 with all her stupendous social experience, she had been 
 led into error. The tact upon which so rightly she plumed 
 herself had been at fault. She was not sure of the direction 
 in which the error lay, or exactly how it had been made, 
 but the uneasy consciousness remained to her that the 
 latter part of the conversation had not been quite a suc- 
 cess. She was driven to solace herself with the reflection 
 that at those uncomfortable moments when one rubbed 
 shoulders with the members of the lower orders, it was 
 incumbent upon one to remember that these little clashes 
 must arise. Tliere could be no doubt he was a very un- 
 
 134 
 
TACT: THE SOVEREIGN QUALITY 
 
 couth fellow. He was a healthy specimen probably of that 
 strange product of our modern system of universal educa- 
 tion, the social democrat. He was a sort of Labour 
 leader in embryo? doubtless. Not only was his conceit 
 insufferable, but he was totally lacking in refinement. 
 He seemed to think that everything he said became him. 
 One would have supposed he would have gained a certain 
 sort of social nous at the university. She hoped piously 
 that poor dear Edmund would not stumble across him. 
 If he did the poor dear fellow would have a fit ! 
 
 When the young man had taken his departure, the 
 ruffled lady spent some time in meditating on her course. 
 Should she write and tell Emma or should she not of the 
 kind of person her choice had proved to be ? Had 
 she consulted her private feelings she would have sat 
 down there and then, and have given him his conge. But 
 after all there was Emma to be grappled with. Emma 
 held an eminent position in the category of those whom 
 we designate as " touchy." There was no saying how she 
 might take it. After the encomiums she had lavished on 
 the man, she might make it a personal matter if this par- 
 ticular gift horse were looked in the mouth. And they 
 could by no means afford to quarrel with Emma. Apart 
 from the sensation of personal pique, which the redoubtable 
 lady was too thoroughly the woman of affairs not to be able 
 to swallow, it really did not matter who instructed Delia 
 in Latin and mathematics. It would have been more 
 agreeable for the child, certainly, could she have had 
 one less uncouth to direct her studies, but it was not as 
 though he was going to be her model of deportment and 
 manners. Besides, it would do her no harm to suffer a 
 little hardship ; would it not be in keeping with the Spartan 
 t'-adition on which all her girls had been brought up ? 
 And again, as Emma had said, with surprising penetra- 
 tion, " With a man of that kind there cannot be danger! " 
 
 Our redoubtable lady having entered into the matter, 
 not without a certain zest that a knotty question will 
 excite in an energetic intelligence, presently enlisted the 
 assistance of Delia, who was in a position to throw addi- 
 tional light on the young man's heiises. 
 
 " I am afraid, child, you found your tutor something 
 135 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 of a trial. Still, it is not wholly wise to increase your pre- 
 judice against him. For your Aunt Emma's sake you 
 must try to have patience ; although, to be sure, I have a 
 great mind to acquaint her of the terms in which he refers 
 to her work, and the manner in which he regards her kind- 
 nesses towards him." 
 
 " What kindnesses, mother ? " Delia's curiosity en- 
 abled her to ask. 
 
 " I am surprised, child, that you should ask the 
 question. You miist know that when a person in your 
 Aunt Emma's station in life confers her notice on a person 
 in his, it is a great favour. It is wholly through her interest 
 that he comes out here to teach you." 
 
 Delia shivered. She seemed to grow chill and a little 
 faint ; the blood ran out of her face suddenly. 
 
 " I don't think he looks at it in that light at all, mother," 
 she found the courage to say. As she spoke the blood ran 
 as suddenly back into her face, and seemed to burn with 
 a heat intenser for its banishment. 
 
 " I am afraid he does not. It is what I complain of in 
 him." 
 
 For the life of her, Delia could not see precisely what it 
 was that her mother complained of in her friend. She 
 was aware, in a vague fashion, that she was very inex- 
 perienced, but look at the matter in what aspect she 
 mie;ht, she could not tell wherein he had offended. It 
 might be his frank criticism of the writings of Aunt Emma. 
 Yet it could hardly have been that, because her mother 
 had insisted that he should make it ; and he had spoken 
 with a conviction that was very honest. Surely she was 
 not going to blame him for his integrity. Did he not 
 mean every word he said, and was he not so brave as to 
 utter just his own private thoughts ? No, she was sure 
 there must be some deeper-seated reason. But whatever 
 the nature of his fault, she was never so firmly convinced 
 of anything as that it would be unfair to visit him with 
 blame. She was sure he had not consciously incurred a 
 reproach. 
 
 Prior to to-day she had only been brought into intimate 
 relation with three men in all her young life ; and they 
 were her father, her brother, and her uncle Charles She 
 
 136 
 
TACT: THE SOVEREIGN QUALITY 
 
 had been able dimly to recognize the fine mascuhne 
 attributes in each of these heroes, but the hours she had 
 passed in the Hbrary with her tutor that morning had far 
 more powerfully affected her with the significance of the 
 masculine character. 
 
 Now that they were no long^ face to face, and she was 
 able to look back impartially upon their meeting, an extra- 
 ordinary power seemed to have resided in him. Without 
 making any particular effort, without insisting in any way 
 upon his great reserve force, his will had dominated hers 
 in the completest manner. He had wrung her secrets out 
 of her, and he had made her obey his wishes, when nothing 
 was firmer in her than the determination not to obey them. 
 The episode of the destruction of her manuscripts continu^ 
 to bewilder, to disconcert her. 
 
 The dominion of your men of power may prove un- 
 fortunate. It is well they are not always cognisant of the 
 potency they wield ; were it otherwise existence would be 
 in danger of becoming a more tragic thing. Nor is it 
 exclusively from among the weak and the lowly they 
 would draw their victims ; it too often argues a subtle 
 kinship between their own masterful magnetic force and 
 those natures it is their fate to overpower. In many 
 respects poor Delia had the callowness of mind and heart 
 of the most unsophisticated child of them all. The accents 
 of the nursery were as yet hardly out of her voice ; but that 
 strange film floating above the hidden depths of her ej^es, 
 the heartily despised of her sisters, had a meaning. The 
 old eternal mysteries lurked below the curtain. Nebulous 
 and fragile it might be, tenderly vague and at present so 
 indefinite that only one pair of eyes was cunning enough 
 to suspect the existence of it at all, it was yet no light and 
 vapid spirit that brooded in that abyss. There was there 
 a soul to surrender; a nature to wrench; a heart to be 
 made to bleed. In a sense nothing could have been 
 more inimical to her development, as a member of the 
 community in which she made a unit, than that at a 
 season so susceptible she should be thrown into the toils 
 of a nature so powerful that it might crush her into dust 
 without being conscious that it touched her. 
 
 Later in the afternoon her sisters returned from hunting 
 137 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to find Delia curled up in the recesses of the cosiest chair 
 of their common room. A brisk fire was before her, and 
 she was reading the mustiest old book imaginable : the 
 Works of Jeremy Taylor, D.D., volume iv. 
 
 138 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 In the Temple of Diana 
 
 IT was their custom on their return from the field to 
 come there in their muddy attire, and revive the 
 events of the glorious day, while they refreshed their 
 weariness with weak tea and bread and butter cut in very 
 thick slices. They were in a fine state of excited satisfac- 
 tion this afternoon. The runs had been so entirely delight- 
 ful, that after some little argument, whereby they hoped 
 their temerity would grow less, they resolved to commemo- 
 rate the occasion and make it a festival by asking for 
 preserve for tea. 
 
 The resolve itself was easy, but it involved a special 
 degree of hardihood to put it into execution. Had it been 
 possible to prefer the request directly to the cook, it would 
 not have been at all difficult ; but it might mean summary 
 dismissal for that tender-hearted functionary if she inclined 
 her ear. As cook had been known to declare, it was more 
 than her place to send them up so much as a jug of cream 
 on Sundays. The matter was even outside the jurisdiction 
 of the housekeeper. No ; demands of that kind had to 
 be preferred to their mother in her own proper person. 
 She it was who regulated their menu on a fixed principle 
 of the most resolute economy. And such a trepidation 
 had these Dianas whenever they confronted her that in 
 the absence of volunteers for the heroic duty they resorted 
 to conscription by the ballot-box. In other words they 
 wrote their six names on six small pieces of paper, rolled 
 them up, and shook them together in an old boot. Joan 
 then drew out one with great solemnity. 
 
 It bore the name of Delia. They were almost certain 
 
 139 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 it would bear the name of Delia, because it had become 
 a proverb among them that Delia was very unlucky. Exact 
 science had been able to establish the fact that she had been 
 born on a Friday. Everything disagreeable seemed to befall 
 her as if by the agency of an evil magic. Had they been 
 in the least imaginative, they must have felt that some 
 malevolent fairy had presided at her birth. They would 
 have asked no more salutary proof of it than that she should 
 be taken in hand by Aunt Emma. That was the crowning 
 instance of her wretched luck. Poor little kid ! All the 
 same, when she was haled out of her comfortable chair 
 in front of the fire and bidden to resign the Works of 
 Jeremy Taylor, D.D., volume iv., to go forth on her diplo- 
 matic errand, she was instructed to remind her mother that 
 it was precisely two months and three days — the occasion 
 was marked on the calendar in sedulous red ink — since 
 they had been allotted their previous pot of preserve, 
 and although it had been only a small pot they had made 
 it last nearly a week. 
 
 Delia, however, was very soon back again. Her inter- 
 view with the presiding deity had been brief and to the 
 point. 
 
 " Mother says certainly not." 
 
 Accepting this fiat with a readiness that went to show 
 they had expected it, they fell upon the ungarnished 
 slices of thick bread and butter, and the butter was not by 
 any means in proportion to the bread, with no absence of 
 resolution. They had had a splendid day. Four times 
 had they found ; three times had they killed, and the other 
 fox had gone to ground. They had run from Bobbet's 
 Gorse to the Dog Holes in twenty minutes, and Uncle 
 Charles had said he would defy the Quorn to do it in less. 
 They had been in the same field as hounds most of the 
 time ; all except Margaret, who was obliged to be careful 
 of the Doctor's off foreleg, and therefore dared not put 
 him at the bullfinch at the bottom of Coplaw Hill, the 
 particularly beastly one with the very bad take-off, and 
 had therefore to go round by the gate. But everybody 
 else had brought it off all right, although Jane, as usual, 
 had picked the wrong place — Jane blushing vividly — and 
 if Pat had not been so clever, she must have had him down. 
 
 140 
 
IN THE TEMPLE OF DIANA 
 
 Uncle Charles said that, take it altogether, it was one of the 
 best days he had had since he had hunted the pack ; and 
 he had promised Joan, Philippa and Harriet a brush apiece, 
 although Hat might easily have spoilt everything when 
 she nearly let Whitenose put his foot on Madrigal. 
 
 " I am sure I did not," said the indignant Harriet. 
 
 " Oh, Hat, how can you ? " cried the other four. " Why, 
 Uncle Charles looked at you himself and said, * Woa there, 
 back pedal ! ' " 
 
 " Oh, you mean then," said Harriet with an air of relief 
 that was very marked indeed. " That was only because 
 I was going out of my turn through the gate. I only 
 squeezed in front of that red-headed young farmer on the 
 rawboned grey with the long tail, and he twice made a 
 noise when hounds were casting." 
 
 This explanation being deemed satisfactory to the Court, 
 the narrative resumed its harmonious flow. Their father, 
 although riding Porlock up to fifteen stone, led the whole 
 field at Mounsey's Brook, and covered himself with honour 
 by making a successful cast when hounds were at fault in 
 the Spinney, Uncle Charles being left behind for the 
 moment in the Triangle. Lord Croxton had been tossed 
 rather badly when his mare, the most beautiful chestnut 
 they had ever seen, with perfect thoroughbred shoulders, 
 had refused a fence in the last field but one on the left 
 going into Caisby from High Moreton. Uncle Charles 
 said it would have served the beggar right if he had broken 
 his neck, because he ought to have known bett<^r than to 
 put her at it when she was done, although Uncle Charles 
 said you could not expect to find old heads on young 
 shoulders all the same. 
 
 " It was his second horse, too, so you will see the sort 
 of day it has been," said Margaret. 
 
 " It was the last field but two coming into Caisby," 
 mterposed PhiUppa at this point, doggedly. She had an 
 air of reflection that showed she had been thinking the 
 matter over carefully. 
 
 " One," sang the other four. 
 
 "Two," said Philippa, more doggedly than ever. "It 
 is the one with the cow hovel in one corner, and the row 
 of pollard elms at the top end just as you get in." 
 
 141 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 *' Flip's right," said Joan with decisive gravity. " What 
 a stupid mistake to make ! Of course it is the second ; 
 the one that had the half-bred two-year-old in it that Uncle 
 Charles never liked." 
 
 " So it was," the rest chimed in. " How stupid we 
 are ! And how funny it is that Flip never says anything 
 unless she's sure." 
 
 The edge being worn at last off their own exploits, they 
 were able to extend a little commiseration to Delia. They 
 gave of their sympathy with refreshing frankness. 
 
 " Poor old Del," they said. " What a shame to be left 
 out of it like this. You have missed a glorious day, and 
 all because it is a fad of Aunt Emma's to send that awful 
 young man to teach you Greek and Latin." 
 
 Delia blushed deeply at this reference, but they were too 
 pre-occupied with bread and butter to notice it. 
 
 "He is not awful," said Delia. 
 
 " Oh, Del," they said, " how can you ? We rather 
 admire you, of course, for making the best of your bad 
 luck ; it is right to make light of a thing when you cannot 
 help it. But he is awful, you know he is." 
 
 " I don't," said Delia, " and I am sure you do not 
 either." 
 
 " That's just what we do know," they sang triumphantly. 
 " We've seen him." 
 
 " He is not awful," said Delia. 
 
 " Yes, he is, Del, you know he is ! You are a brick to 
 stick up for him, of course ; we'll own it is rather nice of 
 you — shows nice feeling and all that ; but how you can 
 stick up for a man like that we don't know. We are sure 
 we covild not." 
 
 " He does not want any sticking up for." 
 
 " No, we should not say he does. He is the sort of man 
 who would only be too ready to stick up for himself." 
 
 " No, he would not," said DeHa with a fierceness they 
 had never suspected in her. " He is very modest ; if 
 mother likes to say he is not, it is not just of her. He has 
 a right to respect himself. H- I were as wise and clever 
 as he is. T should respect m5'self too." 
 
 " \\ hat has his cleverness got to do with it, if a man is 
 wlKit I'llly calls a ' bounder ' ? " 
 
 l.}2 
 
IN THE TEMPLE OF DIANa 
 
 " He is a gentleman," said Delia. 
 
 " Why doesn't he brush his hat, then ? " said Philippa. 
 
 " Why does he wear such a silly collar ? " said Jane. 
 
 " Why does he wear such a wretched old slovenly tie ? " 
 said Harriet. 
 
 " Why are his clothes so old and his boots so ugly ? " 
 said Margaret. 
 
 " Because he may be as poor as we are," said Delia 
 desperately. 
 
 " Why is he the son of a bookseller ? " said Joan. 
 
 " Yes, why is he the son of a bookseller ? " demanded 
 one and all in breathless chorus. 
 
 Delia summoned every spark of her courage. 
 
 " Why should he not he ? " she said, fighting against 
 the sickness that was stealing along her veins. "It is 
 not a wicked thing to be the son of a bookseller as far as 
 I can see. He is good, and he is brave, and he is clever, 
 and he is a gentleman by nature. I do not see how a 
 man like that can be despised. I am sure that those who 
 do despise him are themselves despicable." 
 
 " Delia ! " they cried aghast. 
 
 " I do not care. You drove me to it." 
 
 " Delia I " they shouted. " What would mother say if 
 she heard you talk like this ? W^hat would father say ? " 
 
 "I do not care," said Delia. "It is as I feel ; I cannot 
 help my feelings ; it is not my fault. Mother was very 
 rude to him at luncheon ; and when he had gone she spoke 
 of him cruelly." 
 
 " Delia," they shouted, " what are you saying ? " 
 
 " You are just the same," Deha went on in a dreary 
 voice ; and just then in a vague fashion her manner 
 recalled that of their Uncle Charles when he had a glass 
 of whiskey in his hand. " You are just as cruel, and I 
 know that father will be still more cruel. How did Aunt 
 Emma speak of him the other day ? Now that I know 
 the kind of man he is I can see how horrid it was of her to 
 talk of him like that." 
 
 " And now that we have seen the kind of man he is," 
 said Joan in the voice of their father, " we can see that 
 for once justice was on Aunt Emma's side." 
 
 " I shall hate you, Joan, if you talk of him like that," 
 M3 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 said Delia wildly ; she was losing the hold she had kept 
 on herself all through. " I shall hate everybody ; I shall 
 even hate father if he talks like that about him. I shall, I 
 shall ! It is cruel, it is unjust ! " 
 
 She got up, cast down her book, threw herself upon the 
 sofa, buried her head in its dilapidated cushions, and burst 
 into a flood of tears. Her sisters were amazed. None 
 of them were given to manifestations of that kind. They 
 formed no part of their Spartan tenets. And the cause 
 of it was as inexplicable as such a behaviour was unpre- 
 cedented. There was not a word in all they had said they 
 did not mean, which was not perfectly true. They could 
 not possibly have offended her. True, she miglit choose 
 to consider they had done so. On thinking it over they 
 could only arrive at the conclusion that she suffered from 
 a sense of injury, which it was impossible to wreak on 
 the person who was responsible for it ; but now having 
 found a pretext in an imagined grievance, she was able 
 by proxy to visit her wrongs on them. 
 
 1 his was the only view of her unheard-of conduct to 
 which they could subscribe. They were really sorry for 
 her. Truly it was hard, poor little kid ! that she should 
 be condemned to spend her mornings in that miserable 
 way when she would so dearly love to be out hunting like 
 themselves with their father and their Uncle Charles. 
 But, after all, things were not so black as they seemed. 
 They had had it from their mother that this horrid man 
 was only coming out three times a week. Might it not 
 be arranged that he should come on those days when the 
 hounds did not meet ? They gave their terribly distressed 
 youngest sister the comfort of this suggestion. 
 
 "It might even be arranged that one of the days should 
 be Sunday," suggested Philippa, the weighty and the 
 practical. 
 
 Strangely enough, however, their earnest attempts at 
 consolation had no effect on Delia's passionate grief. 
 Never in their hves had they seen any one weep so bitterly. 
 From the manner of her distress they might have inflicted 
 an injury upon her that hurt her cruelly, instead of one 
 which, if it had an existence at all, could only be in her 
 yoimg imagination. But they were simple creatures, who 
 
 I 1 t 
 
IN THE TEMPLE OF DIANA 
 
 were soon moved to remorse. After all, they should have 
 been more careful. Some of the things they had said of 
 the tutor had perhaps been intended to tease her a little ; 
 and they ought not to have been guilty of a suspicion of 
 that sort of thing, when the poor little kid was only too 
 likely to have an accumulation of trouble in her heart. 
 
 Joan, the eldest, the spokeswoman on every public 
 occasion for them all, begged her pardon gravely. Had 
 they only known, they would certainly not have breathed 
 a word against her tutor in badinage or otherwise. Not 
 for a moment had they thought it likely that she would 
 resent it. Joan was good enough to add that she thought 
 it rather chivalrous of her to stick up for him like that, 
 notwithstanding what her real private feelings must be ; 
 that it was plucky of her, and that she was a brick. Such 
 a fine amende from Joan, who was ever foremost in snubbing 
 her — she it was who first propounded the brilliant and 
 original conundrum : " Why is Delia like a chair ? — 
 Because it is her nature to be sat upon " — they felt was 
 a lordly compensation for her fancied wrongs. 
 
 Nothing they could say or do, however, had the power 
 to console her. She still buried her face in the sofa- 
 cushions while the sobs were shaken out of her. The 
 distress they had innocentl}' provoked distressed them too. 
 But they could find no remedy for it ; they spoke kind 
 words to her, spoke kind words about her, and blamed 
 themselves in vain. More and more were they puzzled, 
 for they could gain no clue to this extraordinary exhibition 
 of her grief. And when at last reluctantly they left her 
 still surrendered to her woe, and went to doff their riding- 
 habits and to dress for dinner, their minds were exercised 
 dreadfully over this painful problem. And well they 
 might be, since Delia was as greatly puzzled to account 
 for her own irrational behaviour as were her sisters them- 
 selves. 
 
 U3 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 Maud Wayling 
 
 DURING dinner that evening their mother made an 
 annoimcement. Miss Wa^'ling was coming to stay with 
 them during the time that Billy was home on leave. She 
 was expected to arrive on the following morning, and Billy 
 was to come from Windsor in the evening. That was a 
 more generally cheerful meal than they had known for 
 a long time. Everybody seemed happy, with the ex- 
 ception of Delia. She, it was true, was pre-occupied and 
 looked rather sad, and her eyes were red. But she could 
 scarcely be said to be a chief factor of their dinner-table 
 intercourse. Her unhapjiiness hardly counted, when 
 against it could be set the shining looks of their father. 
 To-night the weight of care they had begun to discern 
 upon him lately was no longer to be seen. They had his 
 frank jovial laugh in their ears, — to his daughters there was 
 no music like it ; he took a new interest in the things 
 around him ; he discussed the doings of the day, compared 
 notes with them thereupon, and twice he made a joke. 
 Their mother, too, was wonderfully smiling and serene. 
 True, she invariably was, but to-night it did seem as if her 
 demeanour was not an effort of the will ; it was as though 
 her heart co-operated with her mind in the determination 
 to be cheerful. Even she, the most restrained and self- 
 controlled of women, seemed a little flushed by the pros- 
 pective coming of Miss Wavling. 
 
 The girls themselves were inclined to be a little excited 
 by it. In a vague way they had come to understand 
 that Miss V. ayling was a sort of fairy godmother at the 
 touch of whose magic wand the precarious fortunes of 
 them all might in a sense be resuscitated. It was settled 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 that she was to marry Billy very soon ; and somehow it 
 was expected of her that she would make their father and 
 mother happier, and thereby indirectly make them happier 
 too. All the same they were not sure they would be able 
 to love her just at first. At present they were disposed 
 to be a little in awe of one in whom such splendid super- 
 human attributes were invested. 
 
 Joan was the only one of them who had seen her. That 
 was at a dance in London during the season in which Joan 
 came out. There, looking from a distance at the superb 
 Miss Wayling, she appeared to be dazzling in her beauty, 
 but it was of a cold proud kind, Joan thought, and she 
 seemed to hold herself aloof. But all present considered 
 she was easily the most beautiful woman in the room. 
 " Miss Wayling makes everybody else look second-rate," 
 she had overheard one old woman saying. All the men 
 seemed to think so too, for wherever she went they followed. 
 A throng of them were constantly coming up to ask to be 
 allowed to dance with her, or to sit out with her, or to 
 get an ice for her, or to take her to supper — men of all 
 ages, ranging from little Mr. Tommy De Lacey-Smith, 
 the wisest of subalterns with nicely brushed hair, 
 to Lord Saint Ives, the patient young man with the 
 weary expression ; men of every size and hue, of every 
 grade of the peerage, with a goodly sprinkling of bald, and 
 in many cases obese, but singularly upright and well 
 preserved majors and colonels on retired pay. And it 
 was a strange fact that perhaps the only man in the room 
 on whom this magnetic influence appeared to be exerted 
 in vain was Billy himself. He scarcely went near her 
 all night ; and he confided to Joan on one occasion : " I 
 see Maud's en fete again as usual. I can't understand what 
 all these chaps see in her. I suppose she is good-looking in 
 her way ; but it is not my wa}^ anyhow. Too stand-off 
 is our Miss Maud." Joan had remembered that speech 
 word for word, because she had an excellent memory. 
 And was it not strange that things should now have come 
 round hke that after Billy had spoken of her so cavalierly ? 
 
 Considering all things, our six critical ladies began with 
 a prejudice against Miss Wayling. No matter how pleased 
 their father and mother might be at the prospect of her 
 
 147 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 coming — and it was delightful to see them both for once 
 so unaffectedly happy — no matter what glowing accounts 
 they gave of her loveliness of mind, of person, of disposition, 
 they felt instinctively that they were not going to like 
 her just at first. Try as they might — and to do them 
 justice, they tried very hard indeed, for the sake of their 
 parents and their brother — they found it impossible to 
 eradicate the unfavourable impression she had alread)' 
 made upon Joan, and through Joan upon them all. Then 
 again she had the entire approval of Aunt Emma. No more 
 damning fact could have been urged against her. It was 
 enough in itself in their eyes to condemn an angel from 
 heaven. 
 
 The next morning, about twelve o'clock, dear old 
 Reynolds the coachman — dear old Reynolds, whose face 
 was like a pudding, just as dear old Person's was like a 
 frog's ! — brought the hideous fat ramshackle old omnibus 
 up to the front door in his most stately manner. He had 
 on his best blue livery, carefully preserved through many 
 summers and winters, with the silver buttons on it shining 
 in the February sun like veritable Koh-i-noors ; and the 
 old cockade to his hat, perfectly solemn and majestic it 
 was so upright and full of self-esteem. Wilkins the foot- 
 man, who shared the box, was a worthy companion for 
 him, so completely did he appear to be possessed by a sense 
 of the occasion. The splendid high-bred airs they wore 
 so easily, without seeming for a moment to be aware that 
 they had them on, had been the envy for at least two 
 generations of the servants of all the other aristocratic 
 families of the county. The mien of these two elderly 
 custodians of the dignity of the house of Broke was 
 perfection if anything human ever was. It was to the 
 manner born. If aught could have embellished the 
 wretched old vehicle of which they had the charge surely 
 their demeanour would have done it. Weak the flesh of 
 this ancient family might be, but the spirit was still in- 
 ordinately willing. Elderly, gout-ridden Wilkins per- 
 formed something of the nature of an acrobatic feat by 
 the agility with which he got down from the box-seat to 
 the door of the omnibus. 
 
 Our critical ladies were the witnesses of these proceedings 
 148 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 from the window of their common-room, which by a signal 
 good fortune overlooked them. Six slender bodies were 
 wedged before the casement like so many puppies peeping 
 out of the door of a kennel. They were too excited to 
 speak, but gazed intensely. There were six pairs of eager 
 feminine eyes for everything. Piles of luggage were on 
 the roof of the 'bus ; great black dress-baskets ; and 
 most alluring-looking cases made of leather of every 
 conceivable shape and size. Such a display of personal 
 belongings struck the first note of awe. There seemed to 
 be two occupants of the 'bus. The one that first emerged 
 from it was not at all distinguished in appearance ; the 
 sight of her filled them with a keen sense of disappointment. 
 Of course ; how stupid ! it was her maid. They ought to 
 have known that such a princess of a creature could not 
 possibly come without her maid. 
 
 The next moment they obtained a glimpse of some very 
 remarkable feathers stuck in a very remarkable hat. They 
 were then privileged to see a long travelling-cloak, which 
 was lined and trimmed with expensive-looking fur. They 
 could see nothing of the person in it, except that she was 
 exceptionally tall, and somewhat inclined to be pale. 
 She carried her head in the air, loftily they thought, quite 
 as you would expect a veritable princess to carry it. Her 
 carriage and manner of walking were splendid also. They 
 could only see the back of her cloak to be sure, but they 
 felt they had never observed motions quite so graceful 
 and beautiful before. 
 
 It thrilled them to see their mother, least demonstrative 
 of women, come down the steps to greet the august visitor, 
 and kiss her affectionately on both cheeks. Their mother 
 looked radiant, and then as Miss Wayling gathered her skirts 
 and cloak in her hand as she made to enter the house — for 
 it had been raining recently and the gravel was wet — they 
 saw she had real lace on her petticoats ! 
 
 In the hall there seemed to be a commotion of welcome. 
 Their mother's high tones mingled with the sounds of 
 the unlading and entry of the numerous boxes. And 
 through the open door of their own roomi they could hear 
 the deeper tones of their father too. Within the next 
 minute he was there to summon them. 
 
 149 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Come along, girls," he said, entering their domain. 
 " No hanging back ; come and give Miss Wayling a 
 welcome." 
 
 He ushered the six of them into the hall proudly and 
 gravely. Whenever he presented them to a stranger he 
 could never dissemble the pride of possession they provoked 
 in him. It was unspoken ; but it was always so unmis- 
 takable in his manner that people were sometimes apt to 
 be amused by it. If they had been six of the greatest 
 beauties, his sense of ownership could not have been keener. 
 
 Joan was first presented to Miss Wayling, and then 
 Philippa, and then the others in the order of their first 
 appearance in the world. Precedence was a point on which 
 they were very nice. It would have been unpardonable 
 had one of them ventured to stand forward out of the turn 
 ordained by the date of her birth. Miss Wayling and our 
 six ladies of the house of Broke eyed one another and shook 
 hands gravely. In a moment Billy's sisters had all agreed 
 that never had they seen any one quite so beautiful as 
 Miss Wayling. And in the same instant of time they had 
 all learned to be a little afraid of her. 
 
 There is an air of reticence, of mystery, about great 
 beauty, as though the possessor of it dwells on a plane 
 remote from the common earth, and inhales with her 
 divinely sensitive nostrils an ether rarer and purer than 
 our own. No sooner had she turned her great grey eyes 
 on her new friends with a steady penetrating gaze, which 
 in another might have amounted to no more than a certain 
 candour of contemplation, than they shrank a Uttle from 
 them, and felt themselves to be justified already of their 
 prepossession. 
 
 When presently they sat down together at the luncheon- 
 table, and Miss Wayling had removed her travelling-cloak, 
 they recognized with the perfect candour of their honest 
 characters that her loveliness was even greater than they 
 had suspected it to be at first. She was built as nobly as 
 a goddess ; divinely tall of person, her chest and shoulders 
 had the magnificent amplitude of some Grecian deity ; 
 her shape was a miracle of curve ; the poise of her head 
 was splendid and patrician ; her complexion shone with 
 a pallid brilliancy which gave her the cold marble look of 
 
 150 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 a piece of sculpture that their Aunt Emma had insisted 
 oil ; and her wonderful grey eyes were like immeasurable 
 lakes brooding in the heart of a dark forest haunted with 
 mystery. 
 
 The resplendent creature had not much to saJ^ Their 
 mother indicated many topics of conversation with her 
 usual unflagging tact of intercourse. But beyond admitting 
 that it had turned out a nice day after all, although it was 
 raining when she left London, and that she was glad Billy 
 was to arrive that evening in time for dinner, she uttered 
 scarcely a word. No subject seemed to interest her very 
 much, and before luncheon was over she wore a look 
 which they took to mean that she was being bored a little 
 by the proceedings. It was with peculiar relief that they 
 watched her accompany their mother to the drav»dng- 
 room. Her way of doing it was really the poetry of motion, 
 and the lofty manner in which she carried that perfectly 
 exquisite head struck them as one of the most dignified 
 and patrician things in human nature. 
 
 Not one of them had addressed a word to this regal 
 creature. They felt it might be construed into an act of 
 presumption ; the queen must first speak to humbler 
 persons before etiquette permits them to speak to her. 
 For precisely the same reason they had carefully refrained 
 from anything that could be interpreted as overtures or 
 advances. It might be taken as an act of forvs'ardness or 
 impertinence ; whatever they did they must guard against 
 the risk of a snub ; never before in their lives had they 
 found themselves to be so sensitive. That cold, immaculate, 
 exquisite face would have made any one sensitive. They 
 felt that if in any way, however slight, she were to reject" 
 or fail to reciprocate the least of their attempts at friendli- 
 ness, they would not be able to recover of the humiliation 
 it would cause. Let her only make one small show of 
 indifference towards them, let her only give herself the 
 faintest suspicion of an air in her most perfunctory dealings 
 with them, and they felt they would be obliged to dislike 
 her at once. 
 
 Assembled in their den that afternoon, Delia astonished 
 her five sisters immensely by bursting into a rhapsody on 
 the subject of her looks. 
 
 151 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " She is like a beautiful picture," said their youngest 
 sister in a hushed voice. " I think I should have to break 
 into tears if I looked very long at her face. I did not know 
 that there were any real live women of flesh and blood 
 who are as beautiful as that. I have often wondered 
 why great poets fell in love with women, but I think I 
 know now. She is just like some beautiful picture that 
 has come out of its canvas and learned how to breathe. 
 But the colours in her face and hair and the lights in the 
 curves of her neck make you feel that the artist was 
 divine who painted her. Oh, how beautiful, how very 
 beautiful she is ! " 
 
 Tacitly, they all agreed with Delia. She was almost too 
 beautiful ; and her clothes were very beautiful too. No 
 wonder that the world vied with itself in flattering and 
 courting her. But they did wonder that one so supremely 
 fortunate in her circumstances was not more gay. You 
 would have thought that such a favourite of nature would 
 be always laughing and singing for very joy and lightness 
 of heart ; but no, she seemed not happy at all, and barely 
 content with her lot. Not once had they seen her smile, 
 whilst she did not seem to extend an interest to anything. 
 
 A little later in the afternoon Uncle Charles and Aunt 
 Emma called and took a cup of tea. It was highly unusual 
 that they should arrive together, but their common interest 
 in the momentous event was doubtless the reason. There 
 could be no more em.phatic sign of its sif^nificance than that 
 the lion and the domestic lamb should be lying down to- 
 gether. Their Ur.cle Charles generalh' went to other places 
 on compulsion, but he came over nearly every dav from 
 Hipsley, when he was at home, to have a few words with 
 their father and mother, and to see his nieces. He said 
 they were such plain, sensible people that they suited him, 
 although, to be sure, he said their father's whisky was the 
 worst he had ever tasted in his life, and that his soda water 
 was worthy of it. He could unfold his sorrows to them, 
 however, and be quite sure of their sympathy, even if it 
 was not expressed. Besides, he took an interest in thfun 
 for themselves, the more particularly now that their 
 affairs were reaching such an acute stage. Uncle Charles 
 came willingly to " see the filly." 
 
 Ij2 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 Aunt Emma was in great feather. She was extraor- 
 dinarily kind and gracious to Miss Wayling, and it was 
 wonderful how kind and gracious she could be vvhen she 
 chose ; stared at her very hard indeed ; made flattering 
 comments upon and about her; and all the time she 
 talked with her voice at its highest pitch about books and 
 travel and London Society ; did dear Maud know this 
 person and that, and had she heard about so-and-so ? — all 
 with a condescending familiarity that they had never 
 observed in that paragon of austerity before. She was 
 even kind enough to say that when dear Maud became 
 bored to distraction in her present environment, a contin- 
 gency that was inevitable and a work of time only, she 
 must come over to Hipsley and spend a day or two with 
 her. 
 
 " I pity you, my dear Maud," said the kind lady. " My 
 nieces are six of the dullest and most unprepossessing 
 creatures in England. No intellect, my dear, no intellect ! 
 They are horsey, and I daresay, my dear, you have 
 noticed in a woman that the term ' horsey ' is a polite 
 euphemism for the commonplace. No wonder their 
 unfortunate mother has found such insuperable difficulties 
 in procuring husbands for them. They cannot talk about 
 anything except stables and kennels, and they cannot do 
 anything but sit in a saddle and walk puppies. I would 
 not advise you to talk to them much, my dear Maud ; 
 they will give you a distaste for your sex, I am sure. But, 
 of course, I had forgotten that my nephew is coming this 
 evening. His presence should make amends for theirs, 
 although I must confess to my mind he, too, is a very 
 commonplace young man." 
 
 When Aunt Emma made this kindly reference to their 
 brother, Maud Wayling betrayed an interest in the pro- 
 ceedings almost for the first time. She opened her eyes 
 at Aunt Emma, and a faint tinge of colour mottled the 
 pallor of her cheeks. 
 
 Their brother was expected to arrive at Cuttisham by 
 the seven o'clock train. About the hour of six a telegram 
 was dehvered to their mother with the information in it 
 that he could not come that night as he was unavoidably 
 detained. Maud Wayling was then observed to flush for 
 
 153 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 the second time, perhaps a httle more palpably than the 
 first. She asked permission to read the telegram herself. 
 
 " Why," she said, " it was handed in in Piccadilly. He 
 is not detained at Windsor then." 
 
 The flush deepened. 
 
 Dinner was a very dull affair. A reaction from his late 
 good spirits seemed to have come upon their father, and 
 even their mother had not her former gaiety. Maud 
 Wayling scarcely spoke a word. It was a relief to the girls 
 when the rather miserable function was at an end. They 
 had looked forward to that evening's meal with feelings 
 so different. It was to have been hallowed by the presence 
 of the joyous brother whom they loved so well. They 
 could have wept for disappointment ; the weary entertain- 
 ment fell the flatter for anticipations that were unfulfilled. 
 For once even their appetites seemed to feel it, and did 
 not crave for a second helping of their favourite cabinet 
 pudding. And more than ever were they convinced that 
 the}' did not like Maud Wayling. Her silence made them 
 uncomfortable and apt to be self-conscious ; they thought 
 she held them aloof ; hers seemed a proud and self-con- 
 tained sort of nature. 
 
 The next morning hounds met as usual. Courtesy 
 required that they should ask Miss Wayling if she hunted, 
 and as she had brought no horses of her own they must 
 be prepared to mount her with their own scanty stable. 
 They fervently hoped that she did not hunt, not for that 
 rather sordid reason alone, but because they would have to 
 look after her, and pilot her across a strange country. It 
 was with relief that they heard her make the statement 
 that she did not care for hunting. They quite expected 
 she would choose not to go with them, but it was comforting 
 to have the official confirmation of that prophecy. 
 
 Billy did not come that day, nor the day after, nor yet 
 for many days. His absence was inexpHcable. His mother 
 wrote to him twice ; once to his quarters at Windsor, and • 
 once to his club in London. She did not receive an answer 
 to either of her letters. It was the strangest thing ! No 
 one could conceive what had happened to him. A fortnight 
 had passed since his leave had begun ; he knew that Miss 
 Wa}]ing was staying at Covenden, and he had certainly 
 
 154 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 made his mother a promise that he would pay one of his 
 infrequent visits to his home to meet her. His absence 
 was a mystery. 
 
 Maud Wayling made no comment on the matter, one 
 way or another, but to the relentless feminine observers 
 by whom she was surrounded it was plain that she felt 
 it in her impercipient fashion. She spoke less and less if 
 that were possible ; but the flush they had managed once 
 or twice to surprise in her face seemed lo grow deeper 
 every time it appeared, and these last few days it had 
 appeared so often that they thought it was becoming 
 permanent. 
 
 In the meantime public attention had been called to 
 the affair. A paragraph had been circulated in the London 
 society newspapers, the Cuttisham Advertiser and the 
 Parkshire Reporter, in which a rumour was contained that 
 Miss Wayling, heiress and only child of the late Charles 
 Wayling, Esq., of Calow, co. Salop, was to marry Mr. 
 W. E. Broke, of the Royal Horse Guards. The rumour 
 was the more interesting, said these newspapers, because 
 Miss Wayling was reputed to be one of the wealthiest 
 and was incontestably one of the most beautiful heiresses 
 of many seasons, while Mr. Broke belonged to one of the 
 first county families in England, and was a well known 
 and highly popular figure in society. 
 
 The young man's absence began to be talked about by 
 those who had grown aware of it. Lady Bosket had 
 remarked upon it to her neighbours and acquaintances ; 
 they in turn diligently remarked upon it to theirs. Lord 
 Bosket commented on it freely. He was such a simple man, 
 so forthright and ingenuous, that not for an instant did 
 it occur to him that his frankness might be doing harm. 
 He felt that the case of Maud Wayling and his nephew 
 was so precise a parallel of a certain one upon which he 
 was never weary of expatiating, that to deny himself the 
 pleasure of pointing the moral of it was too much to ask 
 of the victim of that eternal tragedy. 
 
 " I tell you what it is," he said with his irresolute fingers 
 trembling on the buttonhole of anybody and everybody, 
 " the colt's shyin'. Knows a thing or two, what ? Educa- 
 tion's spread a bit since my time. These young fellers 
 
 155 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 know nearly as much as their grandmothers now ; com« 
 pulsory School Boards and so on are doin' a lot. And if I 
 had known as much twenty years ago as does that boy, 
 do you think I would not ha' shied too ? I'd ha' played 
 old Harry before they'd ha' popped the halter on me. 
 There's no gettin' your head once they've got that on. 
 But bless you, I was ignorant then ; I went to church as 
 dumb as a dog because I knew no better. But Master 
 William does, I give you my word. He knows better. 
 These young 'uns are so fly nowadays, God bless you ! that 
 they won't even put their monickers to a money-lender's 
 bill without they've got their lawyers with 'em. But I'm 
 not goin' to blame the feller. I should ha' done the same 
 if at his age I'd known as much." 
 
 The matter was becoming awkward indeed. Miss Way- 
 ling still preserved her unfailing reticence even to Mrs. 
 Broke, but the persons around her were inclined to suspect 
 that she felt it painfully. But even the Misses Broke, 
 those inexorable critics, were fain to admit that she bore 
 it well. Their dignity almost allowed them to be sorry for 
 her privately, She had been a fortnight in their house 
 already, but there was no likelihood of their becoming her 
 friends. She could not be said to enjoy a whit more of 
 their confidence or companionship than on the day of 
 her arrival. All the same these aloof young people could 
 discern that in her cold proud way she thought a lot of 
 their brother. That fact, at least, had to be counted to 
 her for righteousness. And they even went the length, 
 such an instinct they had for justice, of half-admitting 
 that if by any chance it was possible for that hero not to 
 act with absolute credit to himself, here was the occasion 
 on which he was engaged in so doing. Those were sore 
 days for their mother, but they could not refrain from 
 admiring the resolution that was hers. To everybody she 
 wore tlic same indomitable smiling exterior. Their father, 
 jioor man, had no such arts as these for his protection. 
 He was angry and astonished and hurt ; and anybody 
 who wished to know how much so had only to look into 
 his face to see for themselves. 
 
 At last, when his friends had been made so thoroughly 
 uriconifortable that his father had vowed that it must be 
 
 156 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 enduied no more, and declared his intention of running up 
 to London to rout the fellow out of his club — his father 
 was certain that he was to be found in Piccadilly playing 
 bridge — he had the grace to write a few bald lines to his 
 mother. They conveyed the information that he proposed 
 to arrive at Covenden on the evening of the following day. 
 He would reach Cuttisham by the seven o'clock train, the 
 one he had been prevented from coming by before ; but 
 he regretted that he would not be able to solace them 
 with his company for more than a night and a day, for by 
 now he had made such a hole in his leave that it did not 
 extend beyond that rather limited period. 
 
 His father fulminated when this letter was shown to 
 him, and protested that he would have it out with the 
 fellow. What did he mean by it ? Behaviour like that 
 was monstrous, and would no more have been tolerated 
 by his parents in him than he would have thought of inflict- 
 ing it upon them. Then it was in the face of this so very 
 unusual outburst of their father's that Maud Wayling first 
 showed a disposition to confess an interest in the dehcate 
 subject. 
 
 "It may not be his fault," she said. " I am convinced 
 there is a good reason for his absence." 
 
 " Why did he not write before then ? " said their father, 
 unpacified. 
 
 " I am sure there must be some excellent reason," quietly 
 persisted Maud Wayling. 
 
 " I agree with you, my dear Maud," said their mother. 
 " I am sure you are right ; and, Edmund, I hope you will 
 not mention the subject to him until he has taken the 
 opportunity of giving me an explanation privately." 
 
 As usual, their father bowed to the ruling of their mother. 
 It was his invariable habit in all matters of a pohtical kind. 
 
 That was the first moment in which Maud Wayling 
 betrayed any signs whatever of rising in the esteem of her 
 critics. They were not sure that it was not rather nice 
 of her to stick up for their brother publicly when he was 
 out of favour. And on the face of it they could not refrain 
 from thinking, terribly painful as it was, that he might not 
 deserve to be stuck up for, and that it was actually generous 
 of her to defend him. At any rate, they had not expected 
 
 157 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 her to do it. So susceptible were they to anything that 
 could be construed into a display of what they regarded as 
 good sportsmanship, that for the moment they felt inclined 
 to inquire a little more closely into the rather harsh 
 judgment they had allowed themselves to form of her. 
 After all, if at a time when she must be hurt by Billy's 
 behaviour she could stick up for him, whether he deserved 
 to be stuck up for or not, she might have her own private 
 code of the rules of the game as well as they had. It was 
 not outside the bounds of possibility that in her own peculiar 
 way she might be capable of being a bit of a brick, just like 
 anybody else. 
 
 The following day, upon which this prince among man- 
 kind was to arrive at last, actually and irrevocably, and 
 in his own radiant person, could not help dedicating itself 
 to a little flutter and excitement. That was a superbly 
 regulated household, ordered with vigilant care and a fine 
 tradition of propriety in all things, but even it could not 
 remain impervious to the coming of the young prince. 
 There must always be the red carpet for royalty ; and 
 although you need not take the trouble to walk as far as 
 the haberdasher's to purchase a few yards of it, because 
 there are rolls upon rolls in the garret which were used in 
 old days for your old friend Queen Anne, still you cannot 
 fail to hear the sounds of the hammers at the moment 
 they are laying it down before your door. And although 
 you c'annot help thinking it is inconsiderate to make such 
 a noise just as you are in the throes of composing a 
 mandate to the local station-master not on any account 
 to forget the awning and the mounted police, yet you 
 are not quite sure, lover of repose as you are, that on an 
 occasion of this kind you do not actually welcome a certain 
 amount of fuss. Even the under-servants were aware that 
 the young prince was coming at last ; and by the aid of 
 that secret service, all-powerful below stairs, they knew 
 that his coming was fraught with destiny. International 
 issues were at stake. They went almost to the foundations 
 of that decaying empire, whom it had so long been their 
 privilege to serve. Miss Wayling, great heiress and incom- 
 ]iarably lovcl}^ woman as she was, had not been waiting 
 for Mr. William a whole fortnight for nothing. 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 They waited dinner for the young man that evening. 
 The girls had never beheld anybody one quarter so beautiful 
 as Maud Wayling as she sat in the drawing-room pretending 
 to read while their mother was knitting and while they, 
 one and all, awaited the arrival of Billy with an anxiety 
 that was almost breathless. This evening she went beyond 
 even herself. There was no disguising the flush of ex- 
 pectancy in her cheeks ; nor did she try. Perhaps she 
 knew it would have been an effort made in vain, for there 
 was that in her eyes that gave her away just as effectually 
 and completely. The new glamour residing there and the 
 colour in her face lent her a touch of human warmth and 
 spirit, far more appealing than her more natural marble 
 pallor. She was clothed exquisitely but simply ; yet it 
 was the simplicity which came from Paris. It was among 
 their earliest discoveries that all her evening gowns had 
 come from Paris. Her hair was done in such a manner that 
 her maid was certified to be an artist. She came from 
 Paris also. They were too spellbound by her appearance 
 to be sensitive about their own. In the presence of this 
 majestic splendour, overawed and yet delighted by it as 
 they were, they could spare no thoughts for their own 
 wretched, tawdry old frocks of several seasons, and their 
 lank hair twisted and coiled into unwilling order by no 
 fingers cunninger than their own. 
 
 This time Billy came. He came with the grace and 
 assurance of the young prince that he was, the young 
 prince who knows no law beyond his own inclination. He 
 placed his hands on his mother's shoulders with arrogant 
 affection. 
 
 " Here I am, old Mums ! " he said, patting her fearlessly. 
 " Rather rotten of me to keep dinner like this. The rotten 
 train was twenty minutes late out of Paddington. But 
 you don't mind, Mummy ? I don't come to see you often." 
 
 He then saluted his father cheerfully, Maud Wayling 
 unconcernedly, and his sisters with a laugh, a nod, and a 
 wave of the hand that embraced them all in a manner 
 that was the perfection of the casual and the friendly. 
 
 Without further preface or apology from the young 
 man, they went in to dinner. Never was there such a 
 cheery soul. He overflowed with good blood and high 
 
 1J9 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 spirits ; a perfectly frank, jovial, honest wholesome young 
 gentleman, with the merriest laugh and the sunniest temper 
 to be found in the world. From the moment he came into a 
 room you could not help falling in love with him, He was 
 the ideal type of the Englishman, a superb, graceful, agile 
 animal six feet high, with every muscle in play ; a fair- 
 haired, fair-skinned Saxon Adonis, with a great heart swell- 
 ing with courage, and a head not over-burdened with brains. 
 The very striking features of his family, which could hardly 
 be said to adorn the countenances of his sisters, were to him 
 a decided embellishment. The admirable large equipoise 
 and symmetry of his magnificent physique were able to 
 carry off their obtrusive characteristics. He had a com- 
 plexion that any woman might have envied. The pink 
 bloom about it was suffused with health, expensive living, 
 and exercise in the open air. His blond moustache could 
 compete with any in the service. He had a pair of very 
 deep blue eyes, large, bold, wide-set, merry and fearless. 
 It was not to be wondered at that their possessor's great 
 claim to distinction rested on the fact that he was one of 
 the most intrepid " No. 3's " that ever rode on to a polo 
 ground. 
 
 To this amiable tyrant every member of his family 
 bowed down. He had his foot on the necks of them all. 
 His mother relented to him ; it was no secret that he could 
 twist her round his little finger when he chose. His father 
 might fulminate against him in his absence, even as he 
 had done on this occasion, but at heart, as everybody knew, 
 he could withstand the blandishments of Billy no better 
 than anybody else. Who could withstand his free, merry, 
 affectionate, light-hearted casual way ? Certainly not 
 his sisters, least of all. They vied with one another in a 
 proper adoration of this godlike brother. To them he 
 was always the one legitimate young prince who set the 
 fashion of youthful manhood. He had no peer in those 
 reverent eyes. 
 
 Ever3body tried to spoil him ; yet it has to be confessed 
 that he emerged perfectly fresh and unspoilt through all 
 the adulation he received. A close observer, a diver below 
 the surface, a cynic, a person with a prejudice against 
 human nature, might have made an attempt to lay a 
 
 160 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 sacrilegious finger on a defect in the fabric of this hero- 
 character. They might have suggested that he was a 
 little unthoughtful of others. If that charge can be sus- 
 tained against a young prince who receives the adulation 
 that is poured upon him from every quarter as his natural 
 right, who accepts the flatteries not only of word but of 
 deed that are lavished upon him by a dazzled universe 
 as so many acknowledgments of the hereditary excellence 
 of one born to the purple, who takes the cream of every- 
 thing unquestioningly in the simple faith that it is so much 
 tribute paid by vassals to their liege, who, did he refuse 
 their offerings, would be humbled indeed, if that charge 
 can be sustained, it may be urged against Billy with equal 
 justice. He skimmed the cream wherever he went, with 
 sovereign impartiality. He demanded money ; it was 
 paid to him ; he expended it as lavishly as he could, and 
 demanded more. It is surely not expected of the young 
 prince that he shall stoop to inquire by what means his 
 faithful subjects have replenished the royal coffers. Every 
 golden piece may have been wrung out of their sweating 
 souls in molten drops of blood and tears, but your young 
 prince is not to be troubled, offended possibly, by details 
 of that sordid nature. Never mind the pinching, the 
 scraping, the bhnd devotion, the strenuous self-denial of 
 these his faithful subjects. They have only to pay their 
 slow-drawn cheques over to his bankers, and they can take 
 it from him that they shall hear no more about it. 
 
 On the other hand, his faithful subjects must be wary of 
 demanding anything in return. There were a few privi- 
 leged things they might crave without impropriety, but 
 it was well they took care to acquaint themselves before- 
 hand that they were not likely to be in any sense distasteful 
 to the royal nature. Your young prince is accustomed 
 to a free hand in everything. It is his right. And this 
 one, nurtured in a becoming fashion, had enjoyed that consi- 
 deration all his life. Even at Eton he had been the most 
 popular boy in Sixpenny. His winning ways had defeated 
 his masters and playfellows with ridiculous ease. It had 
 been the simplest thin? in the world for him to steal what 
 horse his fancy turned to, while his companions, without 
 his charm of manner, were not permitted to look over the 
 
 l6l T 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 hedge of the field in which that particular quadruped 
 waggled its tail. Whatever he desired did his highness 
 enjoy. It was his right. And by a similar process of 
 reasoning if a particular act, however necessary to the 
 commonweal, was not acceptable to the royal nature, not 
 men, not heaven, not expedience could make it so. 
 
 His mother had half suspected this trait long ago. It 
 had yet to be exhibited to the light of day, because, however 
 eagerly his family had contributed its all for his well- 
 being, it had never had the temerity to ask anything in 
 return. He was now about to be called on for the first 
 time. 
 
 More than once had the young man, in speech and in 
 letters, avowed his prejudice against Miss Wayling. He 
 had reiterated that " she was not his sort." The plain 
 statement was enough. It is not necessary for your young 
 prince to give reasons. It is enough that the Miss Way- 
 lings of the world are not his sort. 
 
 They had been thrown together at Windsor. Her 
 guardian, Colonel Rouse, who commanded the regiment of 
 which Billy was an ornament, was an old friend of his 
 people ; and as Billy was as high in the favour of his 
 commanding officer as he was in that of all the world else, 
 he was offered every facility for seeing a good deal of Miss 
 Wayling, who, notwithstanding her rounds of country- 
 house visits, and her hosts of acquaintance, yet contrived 
 to pass much of her time under the roof of her guardian. 
 The good colonel was one of Mrs. Broke's oldest friends, 
 one of her sincerest sympathisers, for too well did he know 
 the difficulties with which she was beset ; also he was not 
 the least warm among the admirers of her qualities. He 
 was fond of Billy in quite a paternal fashion, and with 
 the connivance of the young gentleman's mother, if not 
 at her instigation, as common friends of both parties were 
 not slow to aver, he foresaw the ultimate welfare of all 
 concerned. His ward had more than would suffice for two. 
 It was not money she wanted, nor a title ; she required 
 a man with whom she could be happy. Any woman could 
 be happy with young Broke. 
 
 During dinner the young man did not condescend to 
 offer a word in explanation of his strange absence of the 
 
 162 
 
MAUD WAYLING 
 
 fortnight past. Certainly he referred to his bad luck at 
 the bridge table. In that period he said he had lost one 
 hundred and ninety pounds ; an admission which gave 
 colour to his father's theory that his club in Piccadilly 
 had been his hiding-place. The avowal of the loss excited 
 no visible emotion in those who by perpetual pinching 
 and contriving would have to make it good. 
 
 " Bad luck, y' know," he said cheerfully. " I wonder 
 why these things make it a rule to happen when it's in- 
 convenient. Last year it wouldn't have mattered, but 
 it's a bit awkward just now. Mess-bills have a knack of 
 going up month by month like the deuce, and I've been 
 having pretty average rotten luck with my ponies latei_y. 
 By the way. Mummy, I got your cheque all right. Besides, 
 my wretched ruffian of a tailor is getting a bit restive ; 
 and these new mess-kit regulations have run things up a 
 trifle, I can tell you. I'd go to some other authorized 
 robber ; but it is only the fact that I continue to order 
 new kit, whether I want it or not, that keeps 'em civil. 
 Unreasonable set of people — tailors." 
 
 The unreasonableness of tailors formed perhaps the one 
 pregnant fact in the existence of the young prince. The 
 conviction was so firmly rooted in his mind that he looked 
 round the table for the concurrence of all present. A 
 little whimsically he looked round the table for their 
 condolence. His mother smiled humorously, although, 
 to be sure, she took in her breath rather sharp ; his father 
 gave a weary guffaw ; his sisters spoke as one that tailors 
 were abominable ; while Maud Wayhng, as usual, did not 
 choose to say anything, but contented herself with looking 
 at Billy steadily with an odd droop in the corners of her 
 mouth. 
 
 After dinner Billy, who was the incarnation of animal 
 energy, initiated his sisters into the mysteries of a new 
 parlour game rejoicing in the euphonious name of " ping- 
 pong." For that purpose he produced from a small 
 wooden box an apparatus purchased in Regent Street 
 that afternoon ; so that presently the dining-room re- 
 sounded with the joust of ball and battledore. Billy, of 
 course, was easily first in this martial exercise, although 
 his sisters were fain to admit that Maud WayUng played 
 
 163 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 a far better game than was expected of her. But she had 
 played before, as Joan made her confess when the eldest 
 daughter of the house of Broke was ignominiously defeated 
 by her in " a love set." The proceedings became really 
 interesting when Joan, whose haughty spirit could not 
 brook defeat, least of all from such hands as these, challenged 
 Miss Wayling to another encounter. But even on this 
 occasion she fared but little better, despite the strenuous 
 efforts she put forth. Again she had to bow the knee to 
 the victorious Miss Wayling, this time biting her lip as 
 she performed that act, and with a special colour in her face. 
 There was one circumstance that struck Billy's sisters 
 that evening with a degree of surprise. He seemed wholly 
 insensible to the presence of his fiancee. He hardly spoke 
 a word to her. In fact, he might be said to avoid her 
 very much in the manner they had learnt to do them- 
 selves. Considering the particular relation they had 
 come to stand one towards another, it could not be with 
 him as with them : surely he could not be a little afraid 
 of her, and dislike her a little too. AH the same, there was 
 something in his manner towards her which afforded them 
 food for their so-keen individual observation. Collectively, 
 however, their reticence was much too great to allow them 
 to embody their speculations and conjectures in formulas 
 that were capable of circulation even among themselves. 
 
 I6. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Affords the Spectacle of a Woman of the 
 World coping with Difficulties 
 
 DIRECTLY he had eaten his breakfast on the fDllo\\dng 
 morning Billy linked his arm through his mother's 
 in his affectionate familiar manner, as she was on her way 
 to her sitting-room, with the words : 
 
 " I say. Mummy, my leave's up to-day ; I shall have to 
 get back to quarters, y'know, to-night ; and before I go I 
 want to have a word with you privately about something 
 that's — well — er — that's annoyed me." 
 
 " That's annoyed you, my lamb," said his mother ten- 
 derly, letting her hand lie on his arm. " What can it be, I 
 wonder ! I am sure I must hear. To think that anything 
 should have annoyed you, my precious ! " 
 
 Billy, by the time he had closed the door of the room and 
 secured privacy to their conference, had concluded that 
 he must be careful. He knew his mother's little ways. 
 Therefore he entered into his subject with as little preface 
 as possible. 
 
 " You see, it's like this, you wily old woman. They've 
 been sticking their rotten paragraphs into their rotten 
 newspapers about Maud and me. Scores of people have — 
 er — congratulated me during the last fortnight. They've 
 written to me ; they've stopped me in the street ; they've 
 patted me on the back in theatres and restaurants and at 
 the club ; when was the happy day and so on ! I've been 
 having a cheery time, I can tell you. If I could only get to 
 know the name of the journalist man who started the game 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 I would bring an action for libel. Now, I want your advice. 
 Mummy. You are such a wise old bird ; you are so awfully 
 clever. Ought I to get it contradicted, or would it be 
 better to ignore it ? But then, you see, even if I ignore it 
 other people won't." 
 
 His mother composed her features into an appearance oi 
 preternatural pleasantness. In her suavest, most melli- 
 fluous accents she said : 
 
 " What an absurd boy it is ! " 
 
 " Absurd ! " said Billy. " Why who Hkes it to be 
 spread about, printed in the newspapers and so on, that he 
 is going to marry a girl when he has no intention ? It is 
 awkward, Mummy, I can tell you." 
 
 " I don't quite understand, my pet." 
 
 " Why it says in these newspapers that a marriage has 
 been arranged between Maud and myself." 
 
 " Well, my precious ? " 
 
 His mother placed a note of interrogation in her voice in 
 truly beatific fashion. 
 
 " Well, Mummy ? " said Billy blankly. 
 
 For the moment mother and son stood looking at one 
 another in a manner that a third person might have found 
 diverting. There was a humorous twist lurking in the 
 corner of Mrs. Broke's countenance, and an amused smile 
 glittered indomitably in her eyes ; while on the other hand 
 the countenance of Billy was rather ludicrously surrendered 
 to amazement. 
 
 " Oh ! you know it won't do at all ! " said Billy, breaking 
 somewhat awkwardly a silence that he felt to be more awk- 
 ward still. " You are playing a game, you know you are ; 
 but it won't do, you know, it won't at all. I can't stand 
 Maud ; never could." 
 
 His mother very righteously but very tenderly rebuked 
 so cavalier a reference. 
 
 " I speak as I feel," said Billy ruefully. " Always did, 
 you know ; always shall. Maud's not my sort. She's a 
 bit above my form. I'm a plain sort of chap ; don't want 
 anything classy. Maud wants a duke and strawberry 
 leaves and that sort of rot." 
 
 " You are talking noysense, my pet, aren't you ? I am 
 sure dear Maud is very fond of you." 
 
 1 66 
 
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 " Can't help her good taste. The point is, Mummy, I am 
 not fond of her." 
 
 " Prejudice, my pet, prejudice ! You do not disHke her ; 
 no one could dislike such a dear beautiful girl as Maud. 
 Perhaps you are like the girls ; you are just the least little 
 bit in the world alarmed by her. She is rather thoughtful 
 and reserved, poor child. However, I am sure that is a 
 feeling that will pass ; you must beheve me, my dear one, 
 when I assure you that you are all somewhat inclined at 
 present to underrate her nature. You will find it a very 
 sweet and affectionate nature when you grow to appreciate 
 it more." 
 
 " I don't appreciate it," said Billy, " and I never shall." 
 
 " My angel ! " said his mother in tones that sang. "And 
 do you thmk one of your years has had the experience 
 to form a trustworthy estimate ? One must have arrived 
 at a period of complete intellectual and moral develop- 
 ment to be a competent judge in a matter of this kind. I 
 will concede that now, at this moment, you may hold your- 
 self more capable of making a selection of a suitable partner 
 for life than your mother could for you, but you must 
 remember that a person who at twenty-five may be ac- 
 ceptable will at fifty, say, be possibly distasteful. Beheve 
 me, my precious, there is a certain sagacity, a certain ma- 
 tured knowledge of the world required for the choosing 
 of a wife. You cannot have a new one every year. You 
 cannot order a new one for every phase of mood or change 
 of fashion. One has to choose the qualities that will wear 
 well, as dear old Doctor Primrose said ! " 
 
 " Suppose I don't want a wife ? How do you know I 
 want a wife, Mummy ? " 
 
 " There again, my precious, I am sure the wise course 
 would be to put yourself in the hands of those who have 
 had a longer, a more comprehensive experience. Surely, 
 my dear one, if your own mother does not know what your 
 requirements are, may I ask who does ? " 
 
 Billy had no talent for argument, as he would have been 
 the first to admit. He felt keenly the sense of his own 
 impotence in this sort of thing. He felt that the most 
 specious, the most facile, the most superficial of reasoners 
 would have routed him utterly and put him to shame. On 
 
 167 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 this final point she had urged he had no reply to make 
 to his mother. As soon as it came to argument he knew 
 he could not stand up before her. All the same he was cast 
 in the mould that is tenacious of its ideas. Their paucity 
 rendered them choice. And whatever they might be they 
 were his own, and therefore were sacred in his estimation. 
 Once let one stray into his head, and it became a piece of 
 himself. He was like his father in that. The fact was there 
 to confront all who had to grapple with either father or 
 son, that although they were subscribers to very few ideas 
 indeed, for each had an extreme reluctance to allow such 
 mischievous innovations to establish a footing in their 
 minds, once let them be planted in the virgin territory, 
 and they must be torn from their context of flesh and blood 
 before they could be uprooted. His mother, who had data 
 concerning our young gentleman more efficient than any- 
 body's, could not help feeling that there was a certain 
 inherent perverseness in the fact that one whose mental 
 habit hardly permitted him to keep two notions of his own 
 under his hat was yet found to be in possession at this 
 moment of the one of all others it was least to be desired 
 he should harbour. 
 
 The tenacity this one unfortunate little idea imbued in 
 the stubborn rogue enabled him to keep his head up and 
 his flag flying. He might be at a loss to furnish a reply 
 in words to his mother's reasoning, but never fear he had 
 one in his heart. Therefore he continued to confront her 
 doggedly, and not a sign of yielding could be traced in 
 him. To be sure he was rather red and a little agitated by 
 the consciousness he had that he might be claiming kinship 
 with that mysterious zoological specimen, the consummate 
 ass ; he hummed and hawed ; shifted the weight of his body 
 now on to his left leg, now on to his right ; stuck his hands 
 in his pockets ; whistled ; looked out of window ; per- 
 formed all the manoeuvres known to our acute masculine 
 confusion, but that defiant unreason still remained in him 
 that nothing could defeat. Mrs. Broke had had occasion 
 more than once to deplore it in his father. She had her 
 experiences in handling that John Bull Englishman to 
 guide her in this case of his son. In trifles father and son 
 were aUke, inasmuch that therein both would submit cheer- 
 
 l68 
 
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 fully to dictation. On matters they could regard as of no 
 particular importance it was comparatively easy to induce 
 them to listen to reason as dispensed by herself the never 
 failing well-spring, the fountain-head. They were perfectly 
 amenable then. But in the things that mattered they had 
 to be handled with the gloves. 
 
 Billy's scruples, or rather his prejudices, would call for 
 some delicacy. The fooUsh boy would have to be coaxed. 
 His mother saw too plainly that argument, mellifluous as 
 it was when it flowed from her lips, would not have a 
 straw's weight with him. In the fulness of her wisdom, 
 therefore, she decided to waive the matter. With his 
 father's character to guide her, by the light of it, and 
 recalling the mistakes of her early married life, she closed 
 the discussion peremptorily. When the time came she 
 would have to be prepared to force our young gentleman's 
 hand. 
 
 Not another word passed between mother and son on 
 this topic. Billy went back to his regiment that afternoon. 
 He went as lightly and cheerily as he came, with a frank 
 adieu to everj^body, a smile on his face, a music-hall air 
 on his lips, and a cheque in his pocket-book for a little 
 matter of two hundred and fifty pounds. He returned the 
 same perfectly gallant, heai'ty, intrepid, delightful fellow. 
 He seemed to have not a care in the world beyond the 
 set of his tie and the spotless state of his boots. His sisters 
 in a body accompanied him on bicycles to Cuttisham 
 Station. All the -way up the avenue their voices were 
 uplifted in laughter and merriment, but Billy's was the 
 loudest of any. It was impossible not to be gay, not to 
 be overwhelmingly happy when this most delightful of 
 brothers was of the company. He was as hail-fellow 
 well-met with them as he was with the rest of the world. 
 He chaffed them and teased them ; slapped them on the 
 back ; called them " old chap " ; made them his comrades 
 in everything ; and charmed them with his so-charming 
 ways as no one else could ever do. Well might they 
 worship the ground on which he trod ! 
 
 Maud Wayling was not of this merry party. Billy had 
 taken his leave of her in the drawing-room ; a perfectly 
 pleasant and friendly good-bye. A highly-sensitive person 
 
 169 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 might possibly have discerned a far-away sense of relief in 
 the manner of it. But certainly nothing was expressed in 
 his demeanour of which any one had a right to complain. 
 Still no sooner had the gay voices of Billy and his com- 
 panions died away down the drive than Miss Wayling 
 ascended to her bedroom, turned out her maid who was 
 inserting lace in an evening bodice, and locked the door. 
 She sat looking into the fire for several hours in a peculiar 
 mechanical way. Some burden had apparently come 
 upon her thoughts. She did not appear again in public 
 until dinner, and then it was remarked by her critics that 
 she was even duller and more listless than before Billy 
 came. Perhaps she was upset by his going away so soon, 
 for certainly they had never seen anybody look so sad as 
 she that evening. 
 
 Mrs. Broke spoke to her privately afterwards. 
 
 " You must not pay any attention to Billy's offhand 
 ways, my dear child," she said in her caressing voice. 
 " Men are like that. They strive to hide their real feelings 
 under a mask of indifference. They are so afraid of giving 
 themselves away, poor dears. And I grieve to say that 
 our poor Billy is as self-conscious as the rest of his sex. 
 I quite understand, my dear child, that it is not unnatural 
 that you should be affected by it ; it is very creditable at 
 least to your inexperience and to the warmth of your 
 affection. I recall with some little amusement how 
 miserable I was when the inscrutable self-control of 
 Mr. Broke filled me with similar misgivings. Still one 
 must suppose this romantic attitude to life to be insepar- 
 able from girlhood. It was the more remarkable in my 
 case, because I am by nature so determinedly prosaic. 
 Ah me ! the tortures of doubt and fear and wounded self- 
 love I endured, and all the time my dear Edmund was 
 morbidly afraid of giving himself away ! But beheve me, 
 my dear child, you could not wish for a more hopeful 
 augury of the prosperity of your married life. When you 
 have lived a little longer and have come to know men 
 better, I am sure you will understand that the fondest 
 and truest of their sex are those who perpetually strive to 
 conceal in our presence the warmth of the feelings with 
 which they regard us." 
 
 170 
 
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 Miss Wayling had no reply to offer to these words of 
 solace. They did not seem to remove the gloom from 
 her heart. At Mrs. Broke's earnest solicitation she con- 
 tinued to stay on at Covenden. The kind woman w^s 
 never tired of protesting that dear Maud was like a seventh 
 daughter to her, and a great comfort to have in the house. 
 She declared that the other six were of a somewhat un- 
 satisfactory sort, who brought no consolation to her 
 maternal spirit. " We have so little in common, my dear 
 Maud. They are so unfeminine ; they ought to have been 
 men. I really don't know what I should have done had 
 you been like them." 
 
 It was being constantly and clearly indicated to Miss 
 Wayling that the world looked upon her as Billy's fiancee. 
 Even his mother acknowledged it in a hundred delicate 
 ways. The girl became puzzled and a little distressed by it, 
 yet in a dim way she supposed it was all right. Her 
 guardian wrote her the kindest letters. He hoped she 
 would stay with her future family as long as she chose. 
 He congratulated her heartily on her good fortune. It 
 was a high privilege for any one to be received among such 
 people as the Brokes. The kind old colonel was very 
 pleased that everything had been arranged so satisfac- 
 torily. 
 
 Maud, accustomed to depend so much on others — no 
 princess of a reigning house was more carefully hedged 
 about and screened and shielded in every conceivable 
 manner — was compelled to believe that the whole thing 
 was regular. True, Billy had not extended any more of 
 his attention to her of late than was his wont formerly. 
 Ever since the far-off days of their first coming together, 
 nobody had seemed so indifferent to her presence as was he. 
 And now when she had the temerity to hope that he might 
 use a little less austerity in his treatment of her, he neither 
 looked at her, nor spoke to her, nor did he go near her when 
 he could avoid so doing. And he did not favour her with 
 his correspondence. Yet plainly he must have spoken of 
 her to others ; how else could the impression of their 
 engagement have been circulated so widely, and affairs 
 have reached their present stage ? It was all very mys- 
 terious, but she supposed there could only be one ending, 
 
 171 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and that the right one, since persons of the widest experi- 
 ence and the deepest wisdom, a cabinet of her chosen 
 ministers, had the matter in hand and were pledged to see 
 it through. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was not in the least like what she could 
 have wished it to be. Surely every man could not affect 
 the aloofness of Billy, and observe such a lordly disregard 
 for the conventional object of his affections. There was 
 too much of maiden fancy in her to permit her to think for 
 a moment that it was the custom for marriage to be drifted 
 into in this almost heathen manner. Still in many cases 
 it must be so, or people would have been alive to the 
 phenomenon. Somebody must have advised her of it, 
 were it otherwise. Every day brought letters of con- 
 gratulation from her wide circle of acquaintance. The 
 announcement in the newspapers had been seen by all. 
 One or two of her girl friends wrote to say how delightful 
 it must be to be in love, and how delightful also to be 
 beloved by such a dear handsome fellow as Billy Broke. 
 One tender young lady of seventeen wanted to know, 
 was it a case of love at first sight ? And everybody agreed 
 that she must be quite the happiest girl in the world. 
 
 In none of the letters she wrote in reply, not even in 
 that to her guardian, from whom she had never kept a 
 secret before, did she allow herself to make the confession 
 that she could have wished her engagement to be a more 
 romantic affair. She was too proud to confess to anybody, 
 almost too proud to confess to herself that she felt her 
 position keenly. Her nature was too powerfully self- 
 centred not to brood upon a private wrong ; but it was too 
 arrogantly sensitive to allow her to open her heart to others 
 and let them see how and why she suffered. The one 
 crumb of solace she could bestow upon herself was that 
 Billy and she had known one another for many years 
 They had been hoy and girl together. He was always 
 at her guardian's in his school days. She was compelled 
 to admit for her own justification that familiarity did breed 
 contempt in a sense, even in two persons engaged to be 
 married. 
 
 In the meantime, if Billy wrote no letters to Maud, he 
 sent more than one to his mother. They were conceived 
 
 172 
 
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 in various keys of unrest. He complained that so far 
 from people allowing the distasteful subject to drop, they 
 continued to insist on it in a manner that annoyed him. 
 It was becoming really offensive : they did not hesitate to 
 take it for granted that he was actually engaged. Even 
 Maud's guardian, who of all men should have known better, 
 treated it as an accomplished fact. The young gentleman 
 did not know when he had been so disturbed. He vowed 
 he would not put up with it. Several times he had been on 
 the point of telling the old man that he went altogether 
 beyond the mark. He exhorted his mother to write at 
 once to that effect. He would have done it himself 
 personally, only it was a thing that no fellow liked to have 
 to tackle. It made you feel such an ass. 
 
 In several of these ingenuous documents he urged upon 
 his mother the necessity of allaying this monstrously false 
 impression in a public manner. She must contradict it in 
 the newspapers, where the mischief had begun. In others 
 he continued to assure her that he did not care a bit about 
 Maud, and never had. 
 
 As letter succeeded letter to this disconcerting tenour, 
 Mrs. Broke began to feel that the thing was assuming an 
 air of difficulty. She had been so much in the habit of 
 wielding an absolutely free hand in the management of 
 her family, and everything pertaining to its domestic 
 and foreign affairs, that it was not easy for one of such an 
 autocratic disposition to realize that her beautifully con- 
 ceived plans for the welfare of her house were in danger 
 of being thwarted by the insubordination of a member 
 of it. From the moment our young gentleman had first 
 delighted and flattered the world by appearing in it he had 
 been humoured in all things. It had not been thought 
 necessary to rear the godhke youth in the Spartan fashion 
 of his sisters. The young prince is the young prince. He 
 must be allowed to work out his splendid destiny, un- 
 trammelled by the laws and regulations, the checks and 
 precepts, the vigilant guardians of the young rightly 
 impose on common mortals. But now the possibility was 
 beginning to take shape in the mind of the hero's mother 
 that the latitude conceded to him was likely to prove a 
 mistake. Conceive his sisters behaving in this way I 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 They would have put their hands in the fire at her behest. 
 
 His expressions of distaste had merely amused her at 
 first. She had only allowed them to be part of a boy's 
 bravado and inconsequent assertion of himself. As the 
 bride was not of his own choosing, he must enjoy the 
 pleasure of making it a favour to marry her. That was 
 eminently boyhke and natural. But she was hardly pre- 
 pared to encounter this degree of insubordination in him. 
 He must be aware by now that she had quite made up her 
 mind that he should marry Maud. And in that case his 
 attitude was a little wanton, a little indefensible. She 
 was chary of applying harsh terms to the apple of her 
 eye, the darling of her heart, but his present behaviour 
 was an open flout to her authority. No one knew how it 
 hurt her to make that charge against her ewe lamb ; but 
 there was no help for it, an austere bosom must not flinch 
 from making it. And now she was beginning to grow a 
 little afraid. Dating from her last interview with him she 
 had been haunted with the father's capacity for unreason, 
 which at that moment she had so clearly traced in the son. 
 Here was the one dread factor to spoil the whole thing. 
 The scheme might be worked out with mathematical 
 precision and nicety, but the intervention of an hereditary 
 despotism was capable of shattering it to pieces. There 
 are no rules that can guard against that. From the instant 
 that fatal tendency had declared itself in the young hero, 
 the wise lady had not slept quite so peacefully at night. 
 
 Her own letters to him had been couched in terms of 
 very great tact. She had been careful to exhibit no spark 
 of resentment for an attitude which she hinted delicately 
 he must know to be egregious. She had soothed him, 
 humoured him, caressed the boyish vanity in him, and 
 neglected no means known to a pen of a pre-eminent 
 suavity of reconciling him to the inevitable. Now and 
 again she appealed tenderly to the maternal relation to 
 which Fate had appointed her, and with beautiful humility 
 besought her offspring to trust to her judgment implicitly, 
 because she was acting for the best, not only as far as he 
 himself was concerned, but as regarded every member of 
 his family. If it were possible, she desired to spare him 
 the excoriation of his pride, incident upon showing him 
 
 174 
 
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 that what the whole thing really amounted to was a 
 mariage de convenance. She had a considerable sense 
 of delicacy. Even if he were too obtuse to see what 
 was so manifestly his duty in this matter, she yet had no 
 wish to wound him by pointing out the slightly coarse 
 nature of it. But even that last resort, a httle degrading 
 as it was perhaps, must be adopted if " her precious " did 
 not soon stand forward in a more reasonable light. 
 
 To this end she wrote several letters, in which the finan- 
 cial position of his family was clearly indicated, and one at 
 least that bore a veiled reference to Maud's. It was the 
 first time that so crude a course had been taken with the 
 young prince ; and his mother felt it keenly. She had a 
 slight sense of shame. It hurt her very much to embarrass 
 her dear one with these sordid details. But it has to be 
 confessed that it hurt her more when her dear one showed 
 no disposition to be embarrassed by them. The letters she 
 received in return betrayed a studiously well-bred avoidance 
 of the unpleasant topic ; his passing over of the coarse 
 allusion to the amount of Maud's income was equally 
 studiously well-bred. His mother grew a little piqued by 
 what in another might have incurred the danger of being 
 construed as callous indifference. So acutely did it touch 
 her, that she even permitted herself to go the length of 
 insinuating veiled charges against the hero of the misuse 
 of the hard- wrung money with which he had been furnished 
 constantly, and of extravagance in his way of life. It 
 was a charge that no one had dared to prefer against the 
 young Apollo until that dark hour. He replied that when 
 one was in the Blues one had to do as the Blues did; 
 His brevity vvas significant. 
 
 Such indications of policy underlying the affair were not, 
 however, without their effect. His highness's letters of 
 protest, of complaint, grew less frequent, less disconcert- 
 ingly frank. Thereupon his august mamma, only too eager 
 to place on this modification of attitude the construction 
 she wished to see upon it, composed a very prettily-worded 
 epistle for his benefit. In it she sought the opportunity of 
 sounding " her precious " as to what he felt to be the 
 most convenient season for the celebration of the nuptial 
 rites — rites monstrous indeed, but were we not all slaves of 
 
 175 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 the monstPf Convention ! Had her " precious '' any feeling 
 in the matter ? If so he had but to make it known and she 
 would be only too eager to respect it. But it was becoming 
 essential in the best interests of dear Maud and himself 
 that the matter should be settled without further delay. 
 And as particularly she wished " her precious " to enjoy 
 a perfectly free hand, and as she would be shocked beyond 
 expression if for a moment her angel were to feel that she 
 was unduly exercising the prerogatives peculiar to the 
 material relation, she desired nothing more ardently 
 than that he should consult his own taste in every detail. 
 
 To this pleasant document there came no reply. Billy's 
 epistolary powers abruptly gave out. He may have 
 become overpowered suddenly by the sense of his own 
 impotence. His was not the most facile pen that ever 
 ran upon paper. It was paralyzed probably by the art 
 revealed in that last letter of his mother's. It may have 
 brought home to him that he was too inadequately mounted 
 on his Pegasus to compete with credit in such a high-class 
 tournament. 
 
 After a week of silence Mrs. Broke wrote again in similar 
 terms. Another week went by, but still no answer arrived 
 to either of these communications. She grew a little more 
 uneasy. This was a form of opposition that she did not 
 like. It was not Billy's habit to be silent. He was such 
 a frank, outspoken creature as a rule. With increasing 
 uneasiness she reflected on the significance of this fact. 
 When in the ardour of controversy his father grew suddenly 
 silent, it was then the real difficulties arose in the handling 
 of him. She was moved to hope that the parallel was not 
 about to be applied to the son. 
 
 By the time three weeks had gone by she had grown 
 more than a little afraid. So abrupt a cessation of their 
 intercourse was, to say the least, a trifle ominous. Not 
 for a moment did she think that Billy would prove impos- 
 sibly obdurate. From a lifelong experience of a character 
 which she had had exceptional facilities for studying, she 
 did not think he had it in him. But, after all, one never 
 knew. Heredity could never be quite left out of the 
 question. In the background was the shadow of the 
 wretched sire, of the sire who was a baffling mixture of 
 
 176 
 
A WOMAN OF THE WORLD 
 
 easy tolerance and frank despotism. There were points 
 on which the father could be the most arbitrary man alive. 
 He belonged to a race that were ridiculously simple to deal 
 with up to a certain point ; but beyond that point they 
 were liable suddenly to take the bit in their teeth and race 
 away headlong until their so-few wits were dashed out on 
 the rocks of their own folly and arrogance. History had 
 recorded instances. 
 
 In the midst of these rather rueful speculations there 
 came a letter from Billy which somewhat sharply resolved 
 her doubts. 
 
 177 M 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 In which a Bomb is deposited right in the 
 Middle of our Harmonious Narrative 
 
 IT was a characteristic production, dated " Windsor, 
 Wednesday," and was to inform his mother that the 
 previous day he was married in London. 
 
 His good old Mummy was not to be very down on him, 
 as he had made the promise to his new wife some time ago, 
 and she was " the prettiest, the dearest httle donah in the 
 world." She was to break the news to his father when he 
 was in a propitious mood : " when he had four aces in his 
 hand, and it was his turn to make the trumps." He hoped 
 his good old Mummy would not judge either of them 
 hastily. She must first see his " dear little kid " before 
 she made up her mind about her. He was quite cheerful 
 personally ; she was such a jolly little sort with blue eyes, 
 " a little bit of all right."' He was confident that his dear 
 old Mummy had only to see her to fall in love with her. 
 Why, " Cock " Pearson, the most cynical " sub " in the 
 service, who stood groomsman for him, said when he saw 
 her that he would have married her himself, if he, Billy, 
 had not cut in first. 
 
 It was well perhaps for our wise and august lady that 
 she could claim to be a hard-bitten woman of the world. 
 An indomitable clearness of head, a certain stoicism of 
 spirit, and a resolute looking of things in the face had 
 grown to be a kind of second nature with her. It was well 
 indeed that she was a strong woman, and a fearless, not 
 accustomed to flinch at trifles. If in lieu of making that 
 communication, Billy had doubled his fist -and hit out with 
 
 178 
 
A BOMB 
 
 all his force, he could not have dealt his mother a fiercer 
 blow. 
 
 It was at the breakfast table that this painful operation 
 had occurred. Maud Way ling was drinking tea in the 
 silence that was her habit, and pecking at the most delicate 
 morsels of bread and butter. The girls were laughing and 
 talking at the top of their voices, and were discussing 
 eagerly the proposed incursions of the field that were 
 shortly to be made ; they were also eating bacon and 
 drinking coffee in a very fearless manner. Their father 
 was reading a leading article in the Standard newspaper ; 
 and was in the act of enunciating, " that one of these days 
 we shall be driven to take decisive action in the Transvaal." 
 
 This preoccupation of the members of her household 
 served Mrs. Broke. Any agitation that might have been 
 visible in her passed without remark. Presently, however. 
 Broke, casting the Standard aside, inquired if Billy had 
 written again, as some time had passed since his previous 
 letter. 
 
 " Not yet," said Mrs. Broke placidly. 
 
 At the earliest moment she made good her escape to her 
 morning room. In that security she re-read her son's 
 extraordinary communication with clenched teeth. She 
 re-read it syllable by syllable, until every word was burnt 
 in her brain. 
 
 Even then it took some little time before she could convey 
 with any sense of adequacy to her seared intelligence all 
 the facts as there set forth. They had to be insinuated 
 one by one, and pieced together with patient elaboration, 
 before their meaning could be rendered. 
 
 If words meant anything her son was married. The 
 significance of such a fact was too wide-reaching to be at 
 once assimilated. But in the first place, and most obviously, 
 it very plainly put an end to this affair of Maud Wayling. 
 In other words, it meant their financial ruin. They had 
 held on tenaciously for several years with no other prospect 
 than Billy's ultimate union with her. Only Mr. Breffit 
 and their bankers knew how compromised they were. 
 Here was an end to that fury, that madness of pinching, 
 scraping, and contriving ; of that perpetual seeking of 
 ways and means and putting off of the evil day ; of those 
 
 179 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 attempts to keep up appearances, that their position might 
 appear less hopeless than it really was. None knew but 
 she what they had had to go through. Even her husband 
 and his agent did not know all ; but it was over now. It 
 was over ; it only remained for the curtain to be rung 
 down on their trivial affair. People would smile when 
 they heard about it, for the space of a week perhaps, at 
 dinner tables and in drawing-rooms ; and their signifi- 
 cance in their little scheme of things would no longer be. 
 
 This was but a fragmentary, an inconsecutive survey of 
 what her aching wits were first able to translate. After 
 a while more data floated up to the surface to be reclaimed 
 out of the vast mass that went to the making of a chaos 
 far down in that bewildered brain. The aspect in which 
 they represented the matter might not be so poignant, so 
 final in one sense, but in another and the one an English- 
 woman is rather prone to adopt, equally embarrassing, 
 equally pregnant with disaster. Billy had refrained from 
 a declaration of the social position of the person he had 
 married. It was true that he allowed her to be " the 
 dearest little donah in the world " ; that his idyllic fancy 
 had painted her as " a jolly little sort with blue eyes, and 
 tricky little ways," and as a person whom " the most 
 cynical ' sub ' in the service " was prepared to marry 
 himself ; but even in the midst of these revels of description 
 a cold feeling came over our unfortunate lady that the 
 " little donah " might turn out to be a housemaid. 
 
 Of course on the face of things that did not seem possible. 
 After all, the wretched boy was her son, and the son of his 
 father. He might turn obstreperous, and choose to ruin 
 his family rather than submit his will to that of another, 
 but it was scarcely hkely that he would wantonly degrade 
 himself and those he held dear. But when she pondered 
 the ways of young men with a tendency to wildness in them ; 
 when her thoughts reverted twenty years back to the 
 tragi-comedy of her brother Charles and the actress of the 
 Gaiety Theatre, she was fain to admit that youth would 
 occasionally insist on the indulgence of its foibles. 
 
 There was really no saying to whom Billy was married. 
 But at least the chance was remote that his wife was a 
 person of the right sort. It was quite as remote that she 
 
 iSo 
 
A BOxMB 
 
 was presentable. Young men about town were only too 
 likely to have an immature taste in these things. Besides, 
 a person of proper instincts and right surroundings would 
 hardly consent to be whirled into matrimony in this sur- 
 reptitious fashion Her people would insist on knowing 
 something of his. 
 
 More probably she had no people. The chances were 
 that she was something outside the pale : a barmaid, or a 
 ballet dancer, or an adventuress of one kind or another, 
 who had deliberately. entrapped him. 
 
 After an hour spent in dehberation of this bitter kind, 
 Mrs. Broke sent a telegram to her son : " Meet me at Aunt 
 Mary's at Hill Street this afternoon or evening. Shall 
 wait until you come." She also sent a telegram to her 
 sister to say that she had to visit town that morning on 
 important business, and would be in need of luncheon and 
 possibly of a bed. She was essentially a woman of action. 
 By making the effort she could catch the 10.15 train from 
 Cuttisham. Telling Broke briefly that her sister Mary 
 wished to consult her on a matter of importance, and that 
 she might have to stay the night at Hill Street, our redoubt- 
 able lady presently set forth on her pilgrimage, and got to 
 the railway station in time. 
 
 In the train she had leisure to review the matter that 
 was harrowing her thoughts. Recurring for the tenth 
 time to the fatal letter she became convinced that Billy 
 in his headlong folly and wilfulness had fallen the victim 
 of one who, with a vagueness that was wholly admirable, 
 she termed an adventuress. And assuming that to be the 
 case all was not yet lost. A person of that kind was sup- 
 posed in the popular imagination to keep in the back- 
 ground a previous husband, who had the trick of issuing 
 from his obscurity at a convenient hour. When this 
 happy possibility came into her mind a lurid picture was 
 thrown before her eyes of a drunken villain springing 
 forward to levy blackmail. The distressed lady had too 
 keen a sense of the ludicrous not to laugh at herself a 
 little ; but when we are suffering pain of an acute kind are 
 we not apt to seek relief in the contemplation of weird and 
 drastic remedies ? 
 
 iSi 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 L'Egoisme a Deux 
 
 HER sister Mary was the wife of a Cabinet Minister, 
 and a leader of society. She was a cheerful world- 
 ling, an amiable savage whose odd reputation for philan- 
 thropy entitled her to a place in a museum, as would that 
 of a devil fish endowed with the domestic affections. Her 
 mission in life, in the primary sense, seemed to be to open 
 bazaars for charitable purposes ; in the secondary, to 
 misrepresent her face and person by the aid of science, and 
 afterwards even more sedulously to misrepresent them by 
 the aid of the illustrated press. Notoriety was her passion ; 
 and she went about doing good, attended by footmen and 
 reporters, and the applause of her claque. Her appear- 
 ance, which owed considerably more to art than to nature, 
 was as familiar as that of royalty itself in the shops 
 of Regent Street ; and almost every day she published 
 a new scheme in the newspapers, her sworn and bosom 
 friends, for the amelioration of the human race and the 
 animal creation. Now it was a Cottage Hospital for Blind 
 Mice ; now a Society for the Cultivation in the Agricultural 
 Labourer of a Distaste for Work and a Fondness for Home- 
 Brewed Ale. She was the perpetual president of that 
 famous and old-established Society for Providing Little 
 Black Children with White Pocket-handkerchiefs. She 
 was the best advertised thing in England with the exception 
 of Mr. Beecham's Soap ; and the most hard-worked with 
 the exception of Mr. Pears' Pills. 
 
 The strain of keeping in the centre of the public eye had 
 made her prematurely old. It was an open secret that she 
 
 182 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 used belladonna to brighten her eyes, and cocaine to 
 brighten her intellect. She kept the best table and the 
 worst company in London. Her claim to distinction in 
 her own set was that she was the only woman in it who 
 had been able to retain the husband with whom fate had 
 decorated her. She was known to fame as the Honourable 
 Mrs. Twysden-Cockshott, and her husband the Right 
 Honourable Reginald, the President of the Board of 
 Supererogation, had not put his foot over the threshold of 
 his wife's residence in Hill Street for thirteen years. He 
 divided his time between the House of Commons and his 
 Club. In the popular magazines the satisfaction was his, 
 however, of seeing his name included among those of the 
 fortunate many who owed their success in life to their 
 wives. He could also have added, which he was much too 
 chivalrous to do, that he was qualif3ing to have his name 
 added to the list of those who owed to their wives their 
 appearance in the Court of Bankruptcy. However, he 
 was no longer responsible for her debts. To the pedestrian 
 world that walked on the pavement, the clientele of the 
 halfpenny morning journal, he owed his own distinction to 
 the fact that he bore the same name as the Honourable 
 Mrs. Twysden-Cockshott. In himself he was an inoffensive 
 man with a considerable effacement of character, and a 
 complete set of ideals bequeathed to him by a maiden aunt 
 of old-fashioned notions, which had proved rather too high 
 for the present state of our progress. 
 
 To them at Hill Street came Mrs. Broke in her distress. 
 She only went to poor dear Mary's when it was not con- 
 venient that houses sweeter in repute should find her 
 sanctuary. The name of Aunt Mary was never mentioned 
 in the family of Covenden. She belonged to the category 
 of those unfortunates who had " gone under " ; and, though 
 she appeared to be particularly alive, not to say kicking, 
 in the subterranean region whither she had gone, she had 
 no existence for her relations in the country, except on 
 the rare occasions that it happened to be convenient she 
 should have. To-day it chanced that she stood in this 
 fortunate position in the eyes of her sister Jane. Mary's 
 was a sort of " pot house," whither she could go when she 
 liked for as long a time as she cared to stay. She could 
 
 183 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 take whom she Hked with her, or make an appointment 
 to meet whom she Hked when she got there. 
 
 When our redoubtable lady arrived at Hill Street on 
 the stroke of twelve, she was relieved to find that her 
 sister was abroad in the world already and was not ex- 
 pected home to luncheon. She was in no humour to cope 
 with her just then. All the afternoon she sat in the draw- 
 ing-room waiting for the coming of her son, with an 
 impatience she strove to allay with attempts at reading. 
 A few minutes before five o'clock he was shown in to her. 
 
 " Ha, old Mums ! " he said with his habitual arrogant 
 cheeriness, " so here we are ! " 
 
 " Will you have a cup of tea, my precious ? " 
 
 Her accents were as prodigiously sweet as when he 
 interviewed her last. 
 
 " Thanks aw'fly." 
 
 Our redoubtable lady watched him a little curiously 
 while he put cream and sugar in his tea, stirred it, and drank 
 it| and noted that his self-possession was as perfect as her 
 own. Then she said — 
 
 " What did you mean by that rather stupid letter you 
 sent me this morning ? Do you know you rather alarmed 
 me, my pet ? " 
 
 " Oh, you must buck up, you know," said our young 
 gentleman cheerily. " It was a bit sudden, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " What was a bit sudden, my precious ? " 
 
 " That letter." 
 
 " Really one can hardly say that. It was three whole 
 weeks since you wrote before." 
 
 " Was it so long as that ? I didn't think it was so long ; 
 how the time does get on, doesn't it ? " 
 
 " It does, my love," said his mother, opening her blue 
 eyes as wide as she could get them, apd beaming upon him 
 steadily. 
 
 Billy met them with an imperturbability hardly inferior 
 to her own. He rubbed one hand carefully round his 
 silk hat. 
 
 " I think, Mummy, I'll have another cup of tea. The 
 tea is very good." 
 
 " Yes, my love, quite good." 
 
 Our redoubtable lady continued to look at her son 
 184 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 steadily. The smile was still in her eyes ; her voice was 
 calm and beautifully controlled. 
 
 " What did you mean, my darling, by that ridiculous 
 assertion that you were married yesterday morning ? " 
 
 " Ridiculous ! " said Billy. " Why ridiculous. Mummy ? 
 I don't quite see how the truth can be ridiculous." 
 
 " Then it is true, my dear one ? " 
 
 " Of course. I wouldn't rag you, you know." 
 
 " And who, pray, is the favoured person ? " 
 
 There was the half-smile still lurking in her cool blue 
 eyes. There was the same suggestion of a slightly amused 
 suavity with which she had begun the conversation. 
 
 " She's a peach," said Billy. 
 
 " Who, my love ? " 
 
 " A peach ! " 
 
 " I don't think I know the family. I believe there 
 are some people called Mowbray Peach in Warwick- 
 shire. But I cannot say that I enjoy the pleasure of their 
 acquaintance." 
 
 " I don't mean people at all, you dear old silly," said Billy, 
 laughing heartily. " A peach — a regular picture, y'know. 
 Something sweet and tempting and good to look at." 
 
 " And who is this person, my lovcs, who is sweet and 
 tempting and good to look at ? " 
 
 " My wife," said Billy, taking his hat off one knee and 
 placing it on the other. 
 
 " Of course, my love. But who was she before she was 
 your wife ? " 
 
 Our young gentleman paused. He carefully placed back 
 his hat upon his other knee. 
 
 " You must promise, my dear old Mums," he said after 
 reflection, " that if I tell you, you will not be prejudiced 
 and so on. You must promise me that you will not despise 
 her for what she has been." 
 
 " I am afraid I cannot enter into any promises of that 
 kind." 
 
 " Then I am afraid I cannot tell you." 
 
 Mother and son found themselves looking steadily into 
 one another's eyes. It was the first time in their lives 
 that they had been afflicted with a sense of antagonism in 
 their personal relations. It was as sudden as it was un- 
 
 185 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 expected. In spite of her mantle of stoicism our redoubt- 
 able lady could not repress the shudder that went creeping 
 through her veins. She was face to face with a lifelong 
 error. From the day of his birth she had thought she 
 knew all there was to know about Billy. Here now she 
 was confronted with the knowledge of how completely she 
 had deceived herself. 
 
 " I promise, my darling," she said meekly. 
 
 " Bible oath, you know, old Mums," said Billy with a 
 short laugh. " May-I-cut-my-throat-before-I-die sort of 
 business, don't you know." 
 
 " Don't be silly, my pet. I am not in the habit of 
 making promises unless I intend to keep them." 
 
 " I would not be too sure of that if I were you, you dear 
 wily old thing. You see, she is my wife now, and — er I 
 may be a little bit sensitive for her, you know. She's 
 mine, don't you know ; and if I thought anybody was 
 going to look down on her, or annoy her, or make her feel 
 that she was not as good as they were, they should not 
 see her, Mummy, do you see ? " 
 
 " You are lucidity itself, my pet. But why, may I ask, 
 should I of all people, your own fond foolish old mother, 
 who has doted on you all your life, be likely to act like this 
 towards the — the — er person you have chosen to marry ? " 
 
 " I certainly don't know why you should. But there is 
 no saying when one has got you, you wily old woman ; and if 
 you don't mind my saying it, you dear old Mummy, you 
 can be very down on people when you like. I've seen you 
 give those poor kid sisters of mine ' gyp,' I can tell you. 
 Oh, I know you ! Now this dear little kid of mine is the 
 sweetest little girl in the world and the best ; and if even 
 I allowed my dear old Mummy to come along and make 
 her pretty eyes red for her, I should never forgive myself." 
 
 " You speak in riddles, my dear one. Why or how I 
 should make the pretty eyes of the — the — er person red, 
 I fail to understand. May I ask, she is not one of those 
 fashionable persons who have a past ? " 
 
 " Lord no ! " said Billy with vehemence. He placed 
 his hat on the carpet out of the way of danger. " What a 
 rotten thing to say, Mummy ! " 
 
 " It was, my pet," said his mother with beautiful 
 lS6 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 humility. " I am sure I beg j^our pardon. But, really, you 
 alarm me so with your hums and haws, that I hardly know 
 how to place her. Come now, my dear one, please reveal to 
 me in just two plain words who this person is I understand 
 you to have married." 
 
 " Well, if you must know, she is a little girl out of 
 Perkin & Warbeck's shop in Bond Street, the right-hand 
 side, you know, going out of Piccadilly." 
 
 " Thank you, my darling, that is all I wished to 
 know." 
 
 There was not a flicker in the placid countenance. Her 
 lips were a little tighter together than was their wont ; 
 they were drawn in until her mouth was set in a sharp, 
 straight line. Billy thought he had never seen the hard 
 lights dance quite so quickly and so luminously in her eyes. 
 As he looked at her he could not help thinking that his 
 mother was magnificent. 
 
 " Mummy, you are an old brick." The admiration in 
 his face was a part of the frankness which he always 
 allowed himself. 
 
 " Thank you, my dear one ; you compliment me." 
 Will you take another cup of tea ? There is just one left 
 in the pot, if it is not too cold." 
 
 " Thank you very much," said Billy ; " I think I will." 
 
 He picked up his hat again and placed it a little farther 
 out of the way of danger. Mrs. Broke poured out his 
 third cup of tea and presented it to him with a hand that 
 did not shake. 
 
 " I suppose, my angel," she said in a low matter-of-fact 
 voice, " you know that you have ruined us all ? " 
 
 " Oh rot. Mummy ! " said our young" gentleman cheerily. 
 " You mustn't talk like that, you know. You are not 
 going to take on about it ; you are much too censibie an 
 old bird." 
 
 " You have ruined us completely and effectually." 
 
 *' You mustn't talk like that, you know. I took a bold 
 step, but it doesn't mean that, I am sure. She is such a 
 jolly Httle beast." 
 
 " Our very existence depended on your marriage with 
 Maud. We are hopelessly compromised in a financial 
 sense, and now in a social one — — " 
 
 187 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Suppose you don't say it ? " said Billy with a wheed- 
 ling air. 
 
 " Very well, my precious, I will not, as you wish it. But 
 I think it necessary that you should be brought face to 
 face with the state of affairs in which your somewhat 
 unfortunate, not to say hasty, act has involved us." 
 
 " Whether it is unfortunate or not. Mummy, remains to 
 be seen, but in any case it was not hasty. I had been 
 thinking of it for some time, although I will admit that 
 when this Maud business came along it may have forced 
 my hand a bit. But now I've taken the plunge, I have 
 sort of made my bed, don't you know, and I've got to lie 
 in it. It may be a bit awkward at first for everybody. 
 I daresay it will, but the dear little kid's mine now, my 
 very own, and I am hers, and — and there you are ! She's 
 a little bit of all right. Suits me down to the ground." 
 
 " I do not doubt, my love, that all you say is perfectly 
 true ; but may I ask why you did not take me at any rate 
 into your confidence before you embarked on a step of such 
 a final nature ? " 
 
 " I hope, you dear old thing, you did not expect me to 
 be such a jay. Everybody would have made such a fuss. 
 I hate a fuss. Besides, I was obliged to keep it from our 
 crowd. I can breathe easier now I have brought it off. It 
 was a rather ticklish thing, I don't mind telling you." 
 
 Our redoubtable lady took in her breath in several 
 sharp little spasms that cut like knives. 
 
 " Do you quite think you ought to congratulate yourself, 
 my darling ? " she asked a little wearily. 
 
 " It is the best day's work I've done. I would not part 
 with my httle girl for money." 
 
 " Then you are quite insensible, my angel, to the dis- 
 grace and ruin of your family ? " 
 
 " There you go, Mummy," said Billy with pathos, 
 " making a fuss ! I wish .now I had not told you." 
 
 " You must please forgive me, my dear one," said his 
 mother with winning humility. 
 
 All the same at that moment, had she held a lethal weapon 
 in her hand she might conceivably have slain her son. 
 Not only was she nearly crushed to earth by the realization 
 of her worst fears — a shop-girl out of Perkin & Warbeck's 
 
 i88 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 shop in Bond Street belonged emphatically to the category 
 of the impossible without even the saving clause of an 
 adventuress with a husband to levy blackmail — but at the 
 same time she was bitterly angry. Our young gentleman's 
 promptings she understood, but his folly was incredible. 
 Trained woman of the world as she was, she recognized that 
 such a detachment of mind was almost inevitable in one 
 bom and bred in his class. Even in the present hour 
 of her humiliation and despair, our accomplished lady had 
 not lost her power, said to be somewhat rare in her sex, 
 of impartial reflection. She was aware that Billy, as herself, 
 her husband, her kindred, and the great majority of the 
 members of the privileged and monied classes from whom 
 she had derived her education, were only too apt to play 
 for their own hands entirely. Full many an instance of 
 an almost wolfish self-centredness had she found in her 
 gilded seminary. At times she had been amused by these 
 earnest self-seekers, these naif worshippers at the shrine of 
 self-interest with whom it had been her lot to go to school. 
 There seemed to be some subtle taint in the atmosphere 
 they breathed. It was only to be expected of Billy, who 
 was blood of their blood, who had been imbued with their 
 instincts, nourished on their religion, reared in their 
 milieu, that he should be too obsessed by his own imme- 
 diate point of view to spare a thought to that of persons 
 who had a right to look for some Httle consideration at his 
 hands. She had the strength to admit, even in that dark 
 hour, that it would have been remarkable had it been 
 otherwise. She v/ould not blame him on that score. The 
 onus lay upon the class into which he had been bom. It 
 was his mad infatuation, his desperate folly, for which 
 cheerfully she could have slain him. The wretched fellow 
 did not even make the excuse that he had acted in a 
 moment of impulse or pique. In cold blood, in his right 
 mind, he married a shop-girl, and he boasted of it. 
 
 " May I ask, my precious, what you propose to do 
 with your wife, now you have married her ? " she said in 
 the voice of modulated calm she had used from the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 " T don't quite know, y' know. I suppose we shall 
 rub along." 
 
 l8o 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " I confess, my darling, that I foresee obstacles rising 
 in your path." 
 
 " I was afraid there might be one or two. Have you 
 told my father yet ? " 
 
 " I have not told him. And to be perfectly candid 1 
 hardly dare to tell him. Unless I misjudge your father 
 completely he will make a tragedy of it," 
 
 " Yes, he has the reputation of being an eccentric in 
 some things. I think. Mummy, it may be wise to break 
 the news to him a bit." 
 
 " I agree with you, my darling. But I must beg you 
 to leave the matter entirely to me. We must not act 
 hastily. Your marriage must not be avowed before the 
 chosen season. We have to think of poor Maud as well 
 as ourselves. I hardly dare to contemplate all the con- 
 sequences. They are terrible, my pet. I must have time 
 to think the matter out at my leisure. Do not speak of 
 it to any one. Our social credit is at stake. Something 
 is due to us as a family. Your poor sisters may be pre- 
 judiced. We may have to submit to derision. I must charge 
 you to absclnte caution, to absolute silence, my precious ; 
 you must place yourself in my hands unreservedl}'." 
 
 Our young gentleman assented with a slight feeling of 
 relief. He was not so far gone in his infatuation as to 
 have lost entirely his sense of proportion. He foresaw 
 that it would be a bitter pill for his world to swallow. He 
 was prompt to acquiesce therefore in his mother's request. 
 It took the burden of a somewhat irksome duty from his 
 shoulders. 
 
 He could not help admiring his mother. She might 
 smile forever and talk in dulcet tones, but she could not 
 wholly deceive him. The mask of a winning stoicism she 
 wore habitually could not avail her. He knew she was 
 badly hit. He had never seen a better piece of acting than 
 he had been treated to in his interview with her that 
 afternoon. It was no mean exhibition of the art, because he 
 guessed that she had been knocked about rather severely 
 by the blow he had dealt her, and now, however com- 
 posed she might appear, she was really shattered and 
 trembling from the consequences of it, and was bleeding 
 fiercely underneath her laugh. 
 
 190 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 " 1 must write to your wife or call upon her^ my dear 
 one. Where is she Uving at present ? " 
 
 Billy hesitated. He looked at his mother searchingly. 
 
 " Honest Injun, Mummy ! You can be trusted with 
 her ? She's a timid Uttle soul, easily upset.'* 
 
 " Yes, my darling, you can trust me." 
 
 " Well — er if you must know the address — er is 17, 
 Cromwell Villas, Hampden Road, London, N." 
 
 " Write it down, my love." 
 
 " Here is a business card with it printed on it. She 
 lives with an aunt who is a dressmaker or something of 
 that sort." 
 
 Billy took out his cigarette-case, and selecting from it 
 a square piece of cardboard, not particularly clean, with 
 some inferior printing in a large type upon it, gave it to 
 his mother. .She accepted it with the same outward com- 
 posure, although it revolted her a little as her fingers 
 touched it. 
 
 Sworn to perfect secrecy, Billy presently left his mother 
 to catch his train to Windsor. Mrs. Broke having decided 
 to remain in town that night, sent a telegram to Covenden 
 and surrendered herself to her aching thoughts. She 
 was a woman of courage, but as she sat alone in that huge 
 drawing-room lit with dim lamps, with the loneliness and 
 the silence emphasizing the frightened beatings of her 
 heart, she had that dull sense of calamity which afflicts 
 the railway passenger, who having gone to sleep in the 
 night mail, awakes with a shock to find himself buried in 
 a void of debris and darkness and the cold wind freezing 
 the sweat upon his face. She had now passed from the 
 first stage of semi-consciousness of this poor traveller to 
 one of a slowly-maturing sensibility : when the questions, 
 " Where am I ? What has happened to me ? " have given 
 place to " I wonder if I am mortally hurt ; I hope there is 
 nothing internal ; I suppose this wet stuff trickling into 
 my eyes must be blood ! " Mrs. Broke now knew the 
 nature of her accident ; she was occupied in trying to 
 find out just what her injuries were. 
 
 This she could not do. She knew positively that she 
 was severely mauled ; she felt as though she were going 
 to die ; but her predicament was so strange, so terrible 
 
 191 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 that shp could not say what the immediate future had in 
 store. Her fine scheme for the restoration of their for- 
 tunes had been shattered to pieces in the very moment 
 of its culmination. She had been congratulated ; her 
 wisdom and hei cleverness had been extolled ; she had 
 been the object of envy ; but as she had raised the cup 
 of success to her lips it had been wantonly dashed to the 
 ground by the one the nearest, the dearest to her in the 
 world. 
 
 Even that act she might have forgiven had it been one 
 of impulse ; there is apparently no act too gross or too 
 insane to be unable to incur the pardon of the human 
 mother. But it had proved to be a calculated blow in 
 which her son exulted. This woman he had married, 
 this nameless person whose vocation it was to serve behind 
 the counter of a shop, he proposed to support unrelent- 
 ingly, and vindicated his behaviour by assuring her that 
 this creature alone had the power to make an appeal to 
 his nature. 
 
 It was singular that young' men should be subject to 
 hallucinations such as these. Bitterly she recalled the 
 parallel case of her brother Charles. On that occasion 
 his friends became acquainted in time of his infatuation, 
 and were able to rescue him from the hands of the vulgar 
 and unscrupulous woman who had hypnotized him with 
 her animal beauty. The poor mother was convinced that 
 precisely the same thing had happened to her boy, only in 
 his case there was the important reservation that the 
 gods had not thought fit to intervene. As usual they 
 were on the side of the big battalions. Charles's family 
 was strong enough even to withstand the social ruin of its 
 eldest son. Billy's was not. Be sure the malicious gods 
 had taken those facts into their consideration ! 
 
 She had made up her mind already that the young 
 person whose dwelling-place was Cromwell Villas, Hamp- 
 den Road, London, N., was an underbred designing little 
 minx, in the same way that Miss Maisie Malone had proved 
 to be a flashy and rather fat vulgarian. Howbeit she 
 would go and see for herself. Maimed as she was she had 
 still enough spirit left to be faintly amused at Billy's 
 solicitude for such an artful little wretch. But the scales 
 
 192 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 had njt yet dropped from the eyes of the unhappy fellow. 
 His anxiety for the fine feelings of " the dearest Uttle 
 donah in the world " would have been perfect comedy, 
 however, from the stalls of the theatre. Real life, it 
 seemed, was still our only dramatist. She laughed a 
 sorry note in honour of the mot. Still she would go and 
 see for herself. For she still clung with a rather frantic 
 tenacity to her last straw, an impalpable vague ridiculous 
 straw, but still a straw. The hope was still faint in her 
 that the creature might turn out to be the adventuress 
 with the husband in the background, although that be- 
 longed rather to the transpontine stage. Real life, how- 
 ever, had been known on occasion to turn its hand to 
 melodrama. But her hopes in that direction had been 
 weakened already. A shop girl out of Bond Street is 
 hardly the material out of which to cut your true ad- 
 venturess. Doubtless she would prove to be a creature 
 of a hopeless propriety. Doubtless she was ; even your 
 very young men are content with a liaison with the other 
 kind ; after all it is the virtue of the lower classes that 
 provokes the unsophisticated to admit them into the 
 holy temple of matrimony. Without their virtue they had 
 to be content with less. Hence their proverb, Honesty 
 is the Best Policy. 
 
 Still she would go and see her. She was under a pro- 
 mise not to be harsh with her, not to make her pretty 
 eyes red. Yes, she supposed she had made some kind 
 of a promise ; she supposed, therefore, that she would 
 have to keep some kind of a curb upon herself — although 
 it was not easy to hurt the feelings of that class. She was 
 led to believe there was only one word in the range of the 
 language that could touch them, and that was never heard 
 on the lips of a virtuous woman. Still she was not sure 
 that she might not know how to make her wince a little. 
 She had given her somewhat loose and indefinite promise 
 to Billy ; but that young man was not to suppose in his 
 strange ignorance of human nature that if one woman 
 inflicts an injury upon another woman, the victim is lightly 
 to be dissuaded from retaliation. 
 
 Fortunately the musings of the galled and suffering 
 lady were interrupted at this point. Her sister Mary 
 
 T93 N 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 flounced into the room, an emanation of rustles and odours. 
 She came in marvellously spick and span, and quite un- 
 daunted in energy, although during the day she had opened 
 three bazaars in outlying parts of the vast metropolis, 
 presided at the half-yearly administration of the Fund 
 for Providing Distressed Society Women with Tiaras, 
 and had presently to go out to' dine with a duke at the 
 Carlton Hotel. Her appearance suggested that of an 
 actress of an inferior rank, who covers the retreat of 
 her pristine freshness with enamel and rose pink. 
 
 " Hullo, my sister," she shouted at the top of a voice 
 that was not altogether pleasant. " You here ! Two 
 cups. Aha, a man to tea ! Fie upon you, you skittish 
 matron. Glad I was out. Sorry I came back. Hope I did 
 not disturb you. Are these the legs of a man I see before 
 me protruding from under the sofa ? No ; only my 
 romantic fancy. I wonder, sister, if I ever shall get rid 
 of my eternal youth ! " 
 
 " I think, my dear, you may hope in time sufficiently 
 to conceal it," said Mrs. Broke, purring with placidity. 
 
 " Ha ! you darling old cat, you keep your claws as 
 sharp as ever. What's your game now ? Money, sordid 
 humiliating pelf ; or has Juno come to ask Minerva, 
 ' What Shall We Do With Our Daughters ? ' Were you 
 the ' Materf amilias ' who started the correspondence in the 
 Daily Telegraph ? " 
 
 " No, my dear, but I think if I chose I could furnish 
 the name of the ' Constant Reader ' who started the one 
 before, ' What Shall We Do With Our Husbands ? ' " 
 
 " It is no good, sister, I shall not compete. You are too 
 quick. When is Billy going to be spliced ? " 
 
 " Nothing is settled yet." 
 
 " High time isn't it ? The thing has been lagging 
 superfluous for at least a month. I saw the hero at the 
 Troc. the other night after the play. He was not aggres- 
 sively sober. A gilt mug laid me five to four in ponies 
 that he would be another Charles. I took him on the 
 nail ; they don't know the mamma of ce preux chevalier, 
 do they ? How much is the Fair Persian worth — three 
 millions or two ? A nice domesticated creature with no 
 expensive tastes, I understand. Our hero, straight out of 
 
 194 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 Ouida though he be, will never be able to spend all that 
 on polo ponies. How will he be able to dispose of it ? 
 Can you tell me, my sister ? I suppose numerous charities 
 will benefit." 
 
 " I refer you to Reginald, my dear. He sits at the feet 
 of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not pretend to 
 a knowledge of finance." 
 
 " Ha, there you go again ! I don't know when I have 
 known your claws so sharp, you funny old thing. Still 
 it was a bit below the belt. But really, darling, I must 
 hit somebody. I am in a frightful temper." 
 
 " Quarter day ? " 
 
 " Not at all." 
 
 " The horrid Mr. Samuel Moses refuses to defer his bill 
 of sale ? " 
 
 " How did you guess ? " 
 
 " Intuition, my dear — the feminine prerogative." 
 
 " Well, you are right off it. No, the fact is I have 
 been having a lot of bad luck lately." 
 
 " Baccarat ? " 
 
 " Bookies. I have forsaken the sport of princes for 
 the sport of kings. I don't know when I have been so 
 angry. I had the dead straight from Harry to back 
 Parable for the Nash at lOO to 8. I wired to my bookie, 
 but got a bit mixed in the code. Parable rolled home 
 allright in the commonest, but Bookie repudiates, and 
 refuses point blank to tip up the spondulicks. What would 
 you do, darling ? You have a reputation for wisdom." 
 
 " I confess, my dear, that your conversation is too 
 technical to be followed except by the expert. You out- 
 Charles our poor dear Charles. Do I understand you to 
 refer to the Turf ? " 
 
 " Alas, my sister, I see you are in no mood to humour 
 my frailties. And I am so cross. I mentioned it to old 
 Justice Sharp last night. He said that if I went to law, 
 and the judge happened to be unusually young or un- 
 usually senile, and I wore my new thing of Raquin's, 
 a pork pie shape, trimmed with green mousseline de soie, 
 out of which issue a pair of crushed-strawberry-coloured 
 turtle doves rampant, from a pale yellow ground slightly 
 erased, which he had already had occasion to admire, I 
 
 195 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 might get my case, always providing that the judge was 
 not a naturalist. In that event, he said, I should be 
 committed for contempt and get six months." 
 
 " When does Reginald introduce his bill, my dear, for 
 the Suppression of Judicial Humour ? " 
 
 " How I wish, my sister, that you would keep King 
 Charles's head out of your conversation ! But I don't 
 want to drag Bookie to a court of law ; you are acquainted, 
 darUng, with my horror of publicity. Besides, if I did, 
 it's a thousand to five, to lay Charles's favoufite odds, 
 that the Religious Rumtefoozleum and the Noncon- 
 formist What-you-call-it would not let me open any 
 more bazaars. Really lonely women in the vast metropolis 
 cannot be too careful. Oh, by the way, I must thank 
 you so much for your tip about Mars and Jupiter Railways 
 that you had from that Salmon man, your neighbour. 
 So thoughtful of you. That fish is quite an original. I 
 hear he is absolutely straight. Oh, and tell me, my sister, 
 what is this about our dear old Mun, our dear stiff-backed, 
 blue-blooded, simple-minded, penny-noveletteish feudal 
 baron about to become a guinea pig ! When I saw his 
 name in the prosjjcctus in the Times this morning, with 
 only two of his initials wrong, I thought I should have 
 perished. A sordid age, my dear. E. W. A. C. B. Broke, 
 Esq., J. P., D.L., Covenden, Parkshire, gentleman. A 
 sordid age. I suppose all his ancestors have turned in 
 their tombs in Covenden church already. I suppose the 
 Broke ghost is walking in the east wing, a la that 
 friend of my youth, dear Mrs. Henry Wood. It makes one 
 sliudder, yet I protest there is a touch of the sublime. 
 Poor dear old I\Iun ; and they say this is not ah age of 
 heroes ! King Romance has come again indeed. I 
 have sent that prospectus to be framed. It marks an 
 epoch. The old order not only changes, it wipes itself 
 out. And so fell Broke of Covenden and with him the race 
 of England's gentlemen ! 
 
 " How is our dear old Charley one ? I haven't seen 
 him for an age. Please give him my love, and tell him 
 that the last keg of whisky he sent poisoned the house- 
 keeper's cat. Tell him Mountain Mist's the tipple. Ask 
 him to mention my name, and to give an order to Johnson, 
 
 196 
 
L'EGOISME A DEUX 
 
 Boswell an.l Scott, Carlyle Yard, Bermondsey. You had 
 better not tell him, though my sister, that I have a 
 twenty-five per cent, commission on every order that I 
 place, or he will be demanding discount. And how are 
 the ' little chestnut fillies ' ? Are they as fond of bacon, 
 and as lean and as leggy, and as nosey and as elbowy, and 
 as haughty and as inane, and as bucolic and as aristocratic, 
 and as utterly impossible as ever ? And how is our 
 dear authoress ? I haven't read her latest work as yet, but 
 I bought one at the Stores and presented it to my latest 
 royal pal. His Serene Highness the Hereditary Grand 
 Duke of Hochanseltzer. I gave it to him for its moral 
 teaching. He is a wonderfully susceptible young man. 
 He is tickled to death by the moral tone. He has quite 
 given up his old habit of making sans atout on the jack of 
 diamonds and the queen of hearts. He says it is superb ; 
 it is magnificent ; it is ze expression of a spirit. I told 
 him that there was not much moral tone to speak of in our 
 family, but what there was we liked the world to know 
 about. When you see the dear authoress give her, in my 
 name, a kiss of sisterly affection upon the white enamel of 
 her intellectual brows. But I chatter, darling, and I 
 must really go and dress. I fear you will have to dine 
 alone. Reginald, of course, is much too busy propping 
 up the Empire to come away as far as Hill Street. You see 
 if he once removed his shoulders from beneath the British 
 Constitution down would fall the whole massive structure 
 and plunge millions into death and ruin, vide his speech 
 in the House on Tuesday. It is rather a responsibility 
 for the poor dear, isn't it ? I do hope his dear health will 
 not break down beneath the strain. Fancy having to 
 support it alone and unaided on his own dear shoulders, 
 day after day, 3'ear after year. It is like the solar system ; 
 the imagination reels. Samson, Hercules and Reginald 
 will be the three strong men of history, with long odds on 
 Reginald. The dear devoted fellow, to think that this 
 pillar of the Government has not left the post of duty for 
 thirteen 3'ears even to come and see his wife ! But so long, 
 my sister. I must go really. I mustn't keep Harry 
 waiting. He is too expensive. I pay him so much an 
 hour to take me about, like my cook pays her guardsman." 
 
 f97 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 The volatile lady, who had not ceased in her monologue 
 from the time she arrived to the time she departed, ulti- 
 mately did so after a sojourn of half an hour, to the great 
 relief of poor Mrs. Broke. 
 
 " Cocaine," murmured our unfortunate lady, as the 
 door closed upon her. " If poor Mary is not soon im- 
 mured in an asylum I fear she will lower the standard of the 
 national sanity. Poor dear Charles is bad enough ; but 
 cocaine is much more deadly than whiskey." 
 
 198 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 The Nobleman out of the Novelette 
 
 NO. 17, Cromwell Villas, Hampden Road, N., had one 
 of those exteriors that brings home to the passer-by 
 the bleak mockery of life. There was nothing to recom- 
 mend it from without. There was nothing to suggest 
 why any human creature should inhabit it, unless by force 
 of need. It was common, it was ugly, it was unclean ; 
 it was situated in the heart of a neighbourhood that had 
 not even the spirit to make an attempt at pretending to 
 be what it was not. There was nothing in or about it to 
 relieve its repulsiveness. Nothing could put a gloss on 
 the squalor by which it was surrounded, the hopelessness 
 by which it was debased ; soap and water and the parish 
 vestry had given up the attempt. It is a sardonic fancy 
 in the architect of these dwellings to enclose a piece of 
 earth a few square inches in diameter in the front of each. 
 What purpose such an enclosure serves it is hard to tell, un- 
 less it is to enable each house to stand in its own grounds. 
 Or it may be a concession to our deep-rooted English 
 passion for possession. The tenant may feel that the 
 grimy patch is his own piece of arable, a square yard of 
 territory off which he can order the policeman himself, 
 should he presume to trespass. May he not even erect 
 a notice to that tenour ? The indulgence may be his of 
 " Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted," so dear to the British 
 landowner. 
 
 Again, the architect may be one of a sombre imagination, 
 a symboHst who seeks to strike the analogy between these 
 patches of sterility and the neighbourhood in which they 
 are laid. Never are they green or fruitful. Choked with 
 
 190 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 grime and refuse, they stand congealed and foul and peren- 
 nially bare. Nothing fresh, nothing beautiful, nothing 
 reasonably fair can hope there to raise its head. The dog 
 leaves his bone there ; the slatternly servant-girl, the 
 " slavey " of the true genus, bestrews it with ashes and 
 herring bones, and the leaves of decomposing cabbages. 
 
 The sun, a compassionate agent in other districts, 
 refuses to extend its beneficence to Hampden Road, 
 London, N. The less light by which there is to view its 
 details, the less unhappy does it appear. Look where 
 you chose, and poverty, squalor, sullenness and mean 
 misery would confront you. If by a remote chance the 
 eye was arrested by a faint attempt to achieve something 
 a little worthier in the shape of a whitened doorstep, an 
 unbroken knocker, an uncracked window, a pair of curtains 
 without a remarkable number of holes, or a pair bearing 
 the suggestion of having been washed within the memory 
 of a man, it was revolted by the nude relief in which it 
 threw adjacent objects. It was not for individual effort to 
 enhance or alleviate ; it was overwhelmed by the spirit of 
 environment. Where is the hope for those who dwell in 
 these vast unexplored areas, dark and quick with every 
 form of life and every form of foulness where every second 
 house is a brothel, and every third a gin shop, where disease 
 and want herd like flies in dung, and seek by their sombre 
 orgies to evoke forgetfulness ? 
 
 No. 17, Cromwell Villas, was in the middle of a row of 
 twenty similar tenements. Conceivably it might have 
 bewildered the observing passer-by with its claims to 
 distinction. It bore upon the face of it quite a melancholy 
 number of attempts to achieve the respectable. Its door- 
 step, its front parlour window, and its curtains came as 
 near to cleanliness as the exigencies of a street permitted 
 in which the sun itself was a ball of grime. There was also 
 a bundle of flowers in a china cup standing in the window. 
 In that locality they looked as phenomenal as a chip of 
 blue sky protruding through a London fog. There was 
 the inevitable card in the window, to be sure, but instead 
 of bearing the legend " Apartments," it said, " Miss 
 Sparrow, dressmaker." 
 
 Two women were seated behind this card on a bitterly 
 200 
 
THE NOBLEMAN OF THE NOVELETTE 
 
 cold morning in the middle of April. One was old, wdth 
 grey hair almost white and very sparse. By careful 
 arrangement it was made the most of. She herself was 
 very meagre ; she also had a far-away air of being made 
 the most of. She was thin, flat, and narrow, with something 
 a little formal in her demeanour, as one whose self-con- 
 sciousness is not even yet merged in her years. Her black 
 dress was old and primitive, but evidences were not wanting 
 in it of a desire for propriety. Her face was peaked and 
 shrivelled like a piece of yellow parchment. It was a 
 commonplace, a wholly commonplace face, transfigured 
 with a certain harshness, the outward and visible sign of 
 a lifelong struggle with its destiny. 
 
 If the wearer of the face had ever been able to hold it up 
 in the grim battle, it might have been less unsatisfactory 
 to look upon. If a breath of honest sunshine, of pure air, 
 had been allowed to touch it now and then ; had the dress 
 been reasonably new, or even had it had a reasonable 
 number of threads in it ; had there been some slight 
 feminine accessories to soften the bareness of the throat ; 
 if the hourly struggle for a loaf of bread and two ounces 
 of tea, a roof and a bag of coals could have been put by 
 for a single week ; if the wearer of the face could have been 
 made to understand that life itself did not wholly depend 
 on those half-blind and hopeless eyes, on those coarse and 
 weary fingers, on those stiff and attenuated limbs, on 
 the eternal plying of needles and scissors from the first 
 thread of light in the morning to the last gutter of the 
 candle at night, her portrait, debased and unprepossessing 
 as it is, yet might not have looked quite so egregious in our 
 gallery of the fair, the exalted, the wise, the kindly, the " 
 witty, and the well bred. 
 
 The other woman was much younger : a girl. Like the 
 flowers in the cracked cup in the window, she had the air 
 of being a phenomenon in Hampden Road. Even in the 
 grim purlieus of mid-London it seems that the supernatural 
 occurs more frequently than you would think. She also 
 was thin and slight ; it might have been the thinness that 
 does not get enough to eat ; she also was dressed in severe 
 black raiment, but distinctly less primitive in style and 
 texture than that of the elder woman, for about every inch 
 
 201 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 of her was the ineffable neatness of the London shop- 
 girl. 
 
 She may have been beautiful or she may not, but her 
 face was of a very delicate, poignant, arresting kind. And 
 in any case she was sufficiently picturesque. It was the 
 glamour of youth that depends on vivid colouring, the 
 sheen of the hair, the pursed cherry-ripe look of the lips, 
 the fresh clean look of the skin, the extreme candour of the 
 eyes, that may even grow up in Cromwell Villas, but does 
 not stay there long. She could have sat for the picture of 
 Youth ; and all who were not insensible to perfect simplicity 
 and perfect innocence would have said she was as good to 
 look at as a Greuze. A year hence might prove another 
 matter ; but as yet she was absolutely fair. The canker 
 of toil, endless and unremitting, had yet to defile her. 
 The hourly struggle against starvation, that haunting 
 monster, had yet to sully her radiance with the degrada- 
 tion of its claws. 
 
 The two women were talking excitedly, but at the 
 same time both unceasingly plied needle, scissors, and 
 thread. They were conversing this morning with something 
 of the feverish energy with which they toiled. For a week 
 past they had been Uving in the realm of faery. A touch 
 of very strange but very real romance had been insinuated 
 into the lives of aunt and niece — lives which since each had 
 been endowed therewith had never varied in monotony. 
 They were trying now to trace clearly the course of recent 
 events, and to realize exactly what they impHed. At 
 present, however, excited, incredulous, astonished as they 
 were, they were too bewildered by them to be able so to do. 
 Ko matter how hard they rubbed their eyes they could not 
 convince themselves that they were really awake. Three 
 tangible evidences had they to go upon, however. Alice 
 had a wedding ring on her finger, a five pound note in her 
 purse, and she had given up her situation. 
 
 Aunt and niece were in a condition of deliciously vague 
 excitement, like that of a child when it hears a knock upon 
 the nursery door, and is informed that it is a bear. They 
 were rather too frightened to be wholly happy, yet they 
 were much too happy to be really frightened. The thing 
 itself was most exquisite matter of fact, yet it out-Family^ 
 
 202 
 
THE NOBLEMAN OF THE NOVELETTE 
 
 Heralded the Family Herald. To them of all people, to 
 them in their mundane sphere, to them in the unvarying 
 monotony of their daily Uves, when the only adventures 
 they had in the course of a year were the weekly ones with 
 the landlord, King Romance had stepped directly out of 
 his novelette, and had come ruffling it with a carol on his 
 lips and a most beautiful insolent swagger, to No. 17, Croiji- 
 well Villas, Hampden Road. 
 
 How he had chosen to hit on that exact number was 
 altogether beyond them. Why had he not gone to No. 15 
 or No. 19, both very nice and worthy people ; whatever 
 had put it into his head to come there ? If he had not been 
 the real King Romance of which they had read, if he had 
 been some plausible impostor masquerading in a court 
 uniform for base and ulterior purposes, they could have 
 understood it. Their anxiety and incredulity would not 
 have been so extreme. Impostors are supposed to be 
 common ; but there is only one real King. And why that 
 one authentic dazzling young monarch should have hit on 
 No. 17 exactly, no more nor no less, but just that number, 
 must remain a mystery and one of the most wonderful 
 things ever known. 
 
 " You see, my dear," said the aunt, picking the stitches 
 out of a bodice while her dim eyes bent lower and lower to 
 her work ; "you see, my dear, it would not put me about 
 so if he was not a perfect gentleman. Do what you will 
 you can't help noticing that." 
 
 " No, auntie, you can't," said her niece with a beating 
 heart. 
 
 She was heating an iron at the fire. 
 
 " It is just that which has upset me so," said the aunt. 
 " WTien he knocked at the door, and I went to open it 
 just as I am now, with all these bits on my dress ; and 
 there he was standing on the doorstep that I hadn't had 
 time to clean, and he says ' Miss Sparrow,' you could have 
 knocked me down with a feather. Of course, my dear, 
 you had said all along he was a perfect gentleman ; and 
 you will remember that I said that if that was so you must 
 be all the more careful, because the more perfect the 
 gentleman the less a young girl ought to put her trust 
 in him. The likes of them are not in the habit of con- 
 
 203 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 descending to the likes of us unless they are going to get 
 something by it. Those were my very words. And those 
 are my words still." 
 
 " But I am married, auntie, now," said the girl. 
 
 " You are, my dear, and that is just what makes every- 
 thing so unreal. If he were not just what he is, it would 
 be more natural. Even when you came home and spoke 
 about him first I never thought he was one of that sort. 
 Why he might have been a young earl the way he stood 
 there with his hat off and talked so grand and simple and 
 so mannerly. I never saw any one look the part so much 
 as he does ; and besides if you never saw him at all, you 
 would know what he was if only you heard his beautiful 
 voice. He can't help being a gentleman. It is born in 
 him just as it is born in that cat to walk stately. It is 
 not a diamond pin and a gold watch chain with him. You 
 can't even bring your mind to such things when he is 
 talking to you. You don't know whether he wears them 
 or not, and, my dear, you don't care. I could not tell you 
 now he was dressed, although I am sure his shirt and his 
 collar must have been got up at one of those patent steam 
 laundries. You could not possibly get them up at home 
 as well as that." 
 
 " No, auntie, dear, I don't suppose you could," said her 
 niece, smiling gravely. 
 
 " Do you know, my dear," continued the older woman 
 a little ecstatically, " he made me think of the Duke of 
 Grandchester that the Lady Gwendolen married in that 
 beautiful story in the Family Herald Supplement. Do you 
 remember that it said, ' the Duke had the grand manner 
 peculiar to dukes ' ? Well, my dear, that is what Mr. 
 Broke made me think of. I am sure the author must have 
 rnpied him when he wrote that. I have never known 
 before just what the ' grand manner ' meant ; but I think 
 I do now. And that is why I am so afraid. I never 
 slept at all last night for thinking of you. Everything 
 seems so unnatural when you come to think about it as 
 you lie in bed. It seems too much like a story ; but I 
 have read it somewhere that truth is stranger than fiction. 
 And so it is, my dear, so it is. if all that has happened to 
 us is actually true ! But nobody can deny that it was a 
 
 204 
 
THE NOBLEMAN OF THE NOVELETTE 
 
 real church at which you were married ; I am sure it 
 was a real clergyman of the Church of England, and 
 he had such a kind face ; and with my own eyes I saw 
 you and Mr. Broke sign your names in the marriage 
 register." 
 
 " Yes, yes, auntie, you did," said her niece eagerly. 
 " It must all be perfectly real, although you can't get over 
 the feeling that it is just like a fairy tale. Perhaps I am 
 Cinderella with a fairy godmother that I do not know about. 
 Fairy godmothers always make these things happen, don't 
 they ? In any case here is the wedding ring, auntie, and 
 if you hold the five pound note up to the light, you can see 
 the watermark in it." 
 
 The girl laughed nervously, but joyfully. She, too, was 
 afraid ; but her fear was of a kind that gave a keener 
 savour to her delirious happiness. After all it was no more 
 than a touch of sharpness that made it linger on the tongue. 
 Come what might, no one could gainsay that tbey belonged 
 to one another, that they were man and wife. No one could 
 deny the sacred, the inviolable tie that bound them 
 together ; nothing could rob her of the exquisite emotion 
 of pride, of gratitude, of joy, that the contemplation of the 
 fact had given. 
 
 " He says he will introduce you to what he calls ' his 
 people ' as soon as he can," said the aunt. " And I am not 
 sure, dearie, that I shall not be a little easier in my mind 
 when he has done that. He did not say much about them, 
 but I could tell that they were very grand folks, and proud 
 too. But, of course, they must be, or he would not belong 
 to them. How I should hke to see his mother ! What a 
 beautiful and kind and grand lady she must be ! I am 
 sure his people, whoever they are, must be just like him. 
 They must all be perfect ladies and gentlemen, and all very 
 handsome and mannerly. He must have had a wonderful 
 mother ; a real countess or a duchess, or perhaps, even a 
 marchioness. For there is nothing shoddy or imitation 
 about him, is there ? You can see what in others you might 
 think to be airs come quite natural to him. And so simple 
 as he is with it all. He must know all those grand people 
 in the West End, but do you know, my dear, I never heard 
 him mention them once. I wish that Mrs. West at No. 23 
 
 20 n 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 could see him ; she never opens her mouth but out comes 
 
 her uncle the vestryman. He does not make the least 
 parade of his M^ealth or his gentility. When you get over 
 the first shock of finding that you are talking to him, it is 
 just as easy as it is to speak to the milkman. Why, he sat 
 down at this very table and took a cup of tea. And would 
 you believe, my dear, that when it came to putting sugar 
 in it, he put in two lumps with his fingers quite simply 
 and naturally. I do wish that Mrs. West could have seen 
 him." 
 
 Billy's wife laughed joyfully again. Her simple old 
 aunt had been singing his praises in this childlike manner 
 for two days. There was no keeping her from the delicious 
 topic, nor did she seek, for it was poetry and music to 
 them both. To every word uttered by her aunt she could 
 subscribe. She was too much at the mercy, however, of 
 the wild riot of happiness that was in her blood, that every 
 now and then sent it racing and tingling to her temples, 
 and singing in her excited brain, to be able to translate her 
 own feelings into language. Also perchance she deferred 
 to the instinct of reticence, for it hardly became one 
 who was officially his wife to lay bare her thoughts in 
 these unguarded terms. All the same no praise of him was 
 too extravagant for her to hear ; no eulogium could be 
 passed upon him that he did not merit. His voice, his air, 
 his noble person were things all equally radiant, all equally 
 lovely and fair. She had seen a good deal more of the 
 exterior life than her aunt, that childlike old creature 
 who had passed her years of unremitting toil in a world 
 of her own, a world peopled with the phantom figures of 
 her fancy, coloured with her own ideals of conduct, and the 
 glamour that haunts the fastnesses of faery, yet, at the 
 same time, subject to the peculiar conventions of her own 
 trite point of view. Even a child cannot spend eighteen 
 months in a shop in Bond Street without being brought to 
 view the life by which she is oppressed with slightly less 
 distorted eves. 
 
 She had been bred in that exotic atmosphere of the fancy 
 in wiiich all her life her aunt had Hved. But even she 
 could not touch shoulders with reality in a West End 
 shop without having some of the sense of wonder rubbed 
 
 206 
 
THE NOBLEMAN OF THE NOVELETTE 
 
 off her that the rich people of those parts inspired in the 
 elder woman. Her worsliip of Billy therefore was a trifle 
 more educated. She had not quite the same grotesque 
 awe for the signs manual of gentility as had that doting 
 old creature who, condemned from her birth to squalor, 
 privation, and toil, had yet all the instincts, the little 
 ineffable refinements of a nature's gentlewoman lurking 
 in the stagnant recesses of her heart. However, for the 
 girl to find in a lover such rare, such surprising attributes, 
 was enough to provoke her reverence and her gratitude. 
 The superficial polish of her husband dazzled her as com- 
 pletely as the shining qualities of his mind and heart as 
 depicted in the glowing tones of her maiden fancy. Those 
 who prostrate themselves before the gods may worship 
 their immortality, but it is not to be supposed that they are 
 not also held in thrall by their splendid bearing and 
 demeanour. 
 
 The older woman, deep down in her heart, might tremble 
 for the permanence of this wonderful palace of faery that 
 had been raised in a night. It was too much like a dream 
 of a transcendent loveliness which, even while we sleep, 
 we know must vanish as if it had never been. But transient 
 as she felt it must be — surely it was much too beautiful 
 to endure — she was yet able in a measure to yield to its 
 delights. 
 
 She had reared her orphan niece in the teeth of circum- 
 stance. She had watched her grow into a flower in whose 
 beaut\' she had learned to take an inordinate pride. And 
 of late when at the end of her day's labour she had turned 
 for an hour to her story papers that, before she went to 
 bed, she might banish the too-insistent present, and replace 
 it with the realm of faery, she had been led to meditate 
 a little wildly, a httle wistfully, upon the beauty of the 
 child. If only some rich man, some gentleman in real life 
 could be brought to see her, might he not fall in love with 
 her ! In her weekly story paper the thing was occurring 
 constantly. Oh, if it could occur to Alice ! Surely no 
 heroine in the novelette? was more beautiful than she. 
 The old woman believed tnere was not her equal in loveli- 
 ness in all the world. Besides, it was coming to seem so 
 necessary that she should be rescued from the daily 
 
 207 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 found of her arduous toil. It had begun to grow more 
 and more apparent to Miss Sparrow that the hfe of a girl 
 in a London shop was too severe for her fragile niece. 
 The long hours, the close confinement, and the strain of 
 having to stand behind a counter from eight o'clock in the 
 morning till eight o'clock at night was begmning to tell 
 upon her. You had only to glance at her to feel that 
 nature had not planned her for hardship. Her parents 
 before her had been fragile too. Neither of them from the 
 first had been destined for long days, but it was certain 
 that labour and poverty had curtailed their lives. 
 
 Therefore when the prince out of the fairy book, the 
 nobleman out of the novelette, came and slipped a wedding 
 ring on the finger of her niece, the imaginative old lady, 
 fearful as she was of what the future might have in store, 
 yet had a heart as overflowing as that of Alice herself. 
 Even now she paused an instant in her work, and raised 
 her half-blind eyes to peer into the exquisite face. 
 
 " I will say this, my lamb," she said, and she did not try 
 to dissemble the far-away echo of triumph in her voice, 
 " Mr. Broke may be the perfect gentleman, as of course he 
 is, but he is not a bit too good for you. He is not an inch 
 better than you deserve. And you will not disgrace him. 
 He may have good friends, but you will be able to take your 
 place amongst them. They may be duchesses and earls, 
 but that will make no difference. Your private character 
 will be fit to stand at the side of theirs. I have brought 
 you up carefully ; I was able to let you attend half days 
 at school until you had turned fourteen ; you have formed 
 no low companionships ; you have never stayed out late 
 in the evening ; you have gone to chapel once every Sun- 
 day ; you have always been a good and obedient girl in 
 everything ; and although I am your auntie and say it, 
 who ought not, when I compare your looks with those of 
 the ladies with handles to their names, whose pictures 
 are in the illustrated paper the grocer wraps the tea in, 
 I will defy anybody to deny that you are more beautiful, 
 a hundred times more beautiful, than they are." 
 
 " Hush, auntie, dear," said the child with a soft laugh. 
 " Whatever would [icople say if the}' heard you ! " 
 
 " I don't care," said the old woman vain- gloriously, " it 
 208 
 
THE NOBLEMAN OF THE NOVELETTE 
 
 is the truth. Nobody ought to be ashamed of the truth. 
 I will say again that I think Mr. Broke is a very lucky 
 young gentleman. I know I am your auntie ; but if you 
 were not my niece at all, and I had had nothing to do with 
 your up-bringing, I should say the same. If you were the 
 niece of that Mrs. West it would not make me say 
 different." 
 
 It was at this moment that the quiet street was invaded 
 by alien sounds. There was a remarkable rattle of horses' 
 feet, but unaccompanied by the noise of wheels. The place 
 enjoyed an immunity from traffic as a rule ; and there was 
 something that appeared to sound special and peculiar 
 about this oncoming vehicle, if vehicle it was, that put it 
 out of the category of a tradesman's cart. Curiosity, 
 which in that sex no labour is too earnest to overcome, 
 urged the girl to peer out of the window. 
 
 " Oh, look, look, auntie ! " she cried. " A carriage and 
 pair." 
 
 Perchance it was an apparition that marked an epoch 
 in the history of Hampden Road. Miss Sparrow could not 
 recall an instance of such an equipage being seen in it 
 before. Had the Queen been in the act of passing her 
 window, the old woman could not have discarded her work 
 more vehemently or more swiftly have adjusted her spec- 
 tacles. 
 
 " How splendid ! " she said. " And the wheels don't 
 make a bit of noise ; and how pretty those bells sound when 
 they tinkle. And what stately men those two are sitting 
 in the front, although they do look funny with those fur 
 capes on, and those ornaments in their hats. They must 
 be servants, I suppose, but I am sure they are very high 
 class. I wonder where they can be going. Oh, my dearie, 
 what if they should stop at Mrs. West's ! " 
 
 " It is only passing through auntie, dear," said the niece, 
 smiling a little at the old woman's enthusiasm. She was 
 quite familiar with these vehicles ; although before she went 
 to the shop in Bond Street they would have cast the same 
 sort of spell upon her. 
 
 " Why, it is stopping," cried the old lady excitedly. 
 " Oh, Alice, it is going to stop at Mrs. West's ! " 
 
 Suddenly the child at her elbow began to tremble 
 209 o 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 violently. An idea had gone through her that was making 
 her gasp. n 
 
 " It — it is — going to stop here ! " 
 
 The old woman began to tremble also at th,e horror of 
 the suggestion. 
 
 " Never ! " she gasped, with a scared face. 
 
 But outside in the street the awful fact confronted them. 
 After a little irresolution on the part of the coachman, 
 during which period the footman scanned the dingy 
 numbers of the doors on both sides of the street, the superb 
 equipage drew up exactly in front of the magic number 17. 
 That unassuming number had, indeed, come of late to have 
 a particular significance in the world of faery. 
 
 " Oh, my dear," said the aunt in a flash of terrified 
 inspiration, " it is one of Mr. Broke's grand friends come 
 to call upon you. Whatever shall we do ! " 
 
 The mind of the unhappy young wife had travelled to 
 that conclusion a full half minute ago. For an instant the 
 old woman and the young looked in an agony of anxiousness 
 into the white faces of one another. That wretched little 
 room was no place in which to receive grand people. Too 
 acutely were they conscious of the mean figures it and its 
 occupants must present to the merciless eyes of grand people 
 who came in a carriage and pair. But the thought upper- 
 most in their minds, the most numbing and paralysing 
 thought, was the fear that possessed them of disgracing 
 Mr. Broke. It did not much matter what grand folks 
 thought about people as poor and insignificant as they 
 were ; but now that Alice was actually the wife of Mr. 
 Broke it might do him a grievous injury with his grand 
 friends if she were to be discovered in such circum- 
 stances. 
 
 " Oh, auntie ! " said the girl, " will you go to the door, 
 and — and please say I am not at home." 
 
 " No, child," said the aunt, with a suspicion of primness 
 striking through her agitation, " I cannot say that. It 
 wouki be an untruth." 
 
 " Oh, but, auntie, you must, please. It is for the sake 
 of — of my husband ! His friends must not come into a 
 room like this." 
 
 " No, no, child, I will not tell a falsehood." 
 210 
 
THE NOBLEMAN OF THE NOVELETTE 
 
 " Oh, but auntie, it is — it is not really a falsehood at all. 
 It only means that — that I cannot see them." 
 
 During this rather wild dialogue between the two 
 distressed creatures, a lady with a very red face and a very 
 fine hat and a wonderful fur cloak, had been seen to descend 
 from the carriage with a little aid from the footman and a 
 good deal from her dignity. With an electrical thrill in 
 their pulses they had heard her come up the steps and 
 thump commandingly upon the broken knocker. 
 
 " Please, auntie, you must." 
 
 " No, child." 
 
 A second commanding thump upon the decrepit knocker. 
 
 " Oh, what can I do ? She must not see me. But 
 perhaps it is his mother. Perhaps she will not mind. I 
 will go, auntie," she added with the swiftness of resolution. 
 
 " No, no, child." said her aunt. " It is more proper that 
 I should answer the door. Stay here, dearie, and brush 
 the bits of cloth off your dress, and take the needle out of 
 your sleeve, and find the Family Herald, and try to look 
 as if you have been reading." 
 
 In the middle of these hoarsely spoken injunctions the 
 door received a third thump from the knocker, more com- 
 manding than any. Miss Sparrow ran in great trepidation 
 to reply to it. 
 
 311 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 An Excursion into Sentiment 
 
 IN less than a minute the small and mean room had 
 been invaded by a Presence. The lady who had 
 come in the carriage and pair was, in the eyes of Miss 
 Sparrow, fitted in every way to be a friend of Mr. Broke's. 
 Indeed the voice of this wonderful person was as remark- 
 able as his. If she had come on foot, and without a fur 
 coat, as soon as she began to speak you would have known 
 her to be a lady, born and bred. And she too had the 
 particular magic that belonged to Mr. Broke, for no sooner 
 did she begin to talk to you than the overwhelming sense 
 of her grandeur left you. By some occult means the fear 
 of her went out of you ; and you discovered yourself to be 
 talking to her with far less trepidation than seemed possible 
 before you had spoken to her. 
 
 " You have a niece," the lady had said, before Miss 
 Sparrow had been able to make an attempt to say 
 anything. " May I see her ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," Miss Sparrow had murmured in reply 
 in a perfectly inaudible tone, and making a deep curtsey 
 that seemed to have dropped straight out of the Georgian 
 period. 
 
 When the great lady came into the little room, four 
 yards by five, she said : " Your room is delightfully snug 
 and cosy. May I take off my coat ? " 
 
 To herself she said : " One wonders why the lower classes 
 have such a deep-rooted horror of ventilation. One 
 wonders how they can exist at all in such an atmosphere.'* 
 
 212 
 
AN EXCURSION INTO SENTIMENT 
 
 Miss Sparrow begged to be allowed to help the lady to 
 take off her coat ; and while she was engaged in so doing, 
 her fingers, which had passed a lifetime in the handling 
 of inferior materials, were thrilled by the feel of the soft 
 fur and the finest cloth that money could buy. A dress- 
 maker as well as a poet may have a sense of artistry. 
 
 The old woman then made haste to provide the great 
 lady with the best chair the room could boast : a chair 
 covered with horse-hair. Seated upon this Billy's mother 
 was able, at her leisure, but not without some little personal 
 inconvenience, to survey the person whom Billy had 
 married. She regarded her with a frank scrutiny, a little 
 softened by her smile. 
 
 " I think you know my son," she said. " My name is 
 Broke." 
 
 The child Hfted her eyes to her nervously, and blushed 
 a bright red colour. 
 
 " I understood my son to say that you were married 
 to him on Tuesday." 
 
 " Yes," said Alice, timidly. 
 
 Mrs. Broke paused to recontinue her scrutiny. Her 
 first sensation was one of displeasure. The person was 
 not clad in the colours in which her fancy had chosen to 
 depict her. You could not call her vulgar. And she 
 could hardly be designing with a countenance of such 
 babelike candour, of such unmitigated innocence. -The 
 phantasm of the adventuress with the previous husband 
 had already faded as completely as though it had never 
 been. Indeed as she continued to look upon the child, she 
 could begin to understand in a sense Billy's immense 
 anxiety. Our redoubtable lady had decided in her own 
 mind that his attitude was a little farcical, which bald facts 
 would presently expose, but now she had set eyes on the 
 object of his solicitude she began reluctantly enough to 
 discern a reason for it. 
 
 The creature was, indeed, a delicate fragile thing. 
 To wound her would be like pulling a wing off a butterfly. 
 Our redoubtable lady sighed. The faint odour of romance 
 that her matter-of-fact nostrils scented, annoyed her. 
 It seemed as though there was nothing to be done. She 
 had come into meanness to look for vulgarity, and instead 
 
 213 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 she half- feared that she had found something else. Look- 
 ing in the face of that child, it was impossible by any 
 association of ideas to attribute motive. She could not 
 even attribute design. This strange old person, the aunt, 
 was in her own way also evidently without blemish. 
 Billy's mother could read in those toil-worn eyes an 
 extraordinary solicitude for her niece. In a grotesque and 
 impalpable way it reminded her of the look there was in 
 Billy's when he made her promise not to hurt her. There 
 was a similar quixotic tenderness in the face of this old 
 woman. 
 
 Insensibly, our redoubtable lady modified her tones 
 when she spoke next ; and the question she asked was by 
 no means the one she had come there to put. The mode 
 of it and the inflection would doubtless have increased the 
 sense of annoyance under which she laboured had she 
 been listening to the sound of her own voice. 
 
 " Are you very deeply in love with my son ? " 
 
 The child looked across to her without speaking : a soft 
 light as of tears trembled round her eyelashes. 
 
 " You love him, child ? " 
 
 " I could not make you understand how much I love 
 him, ma'am." 
 
 " Yes, child, I think you could. I suppose if you learnt 
 that you had done him an injury — unwittingly, of course 
 — you would be very much distressed." 
 
 " I could not do him an injury." 
 
 " I said unwittingly." 
 
 " I do not think it would be possible for me to do him 
 an injury. I could not have a thought that would 
 do him harm. I do not see how I could do him 
 an injury." 
 
 For once Mrs. Broke was at a loss to know how to press 
 her point strictly in accordance with the rules of the game. 
 She was under a pledge to Billy not to hurt the child ; 
 although to be sure when she made that promise her own 
 private interpretation of it was not to " hurt the fine feelings 
 of this person." But she was fain to confess now she had 
 seen her, that promise or no promise, it was hardly in her 
 })owcr wantonly to cause her pain. In a sense she was 
 almost like a piece of gossamer, the stuff of which dreams 
 
 214 
 
AN EXCURSION INTO SENTIMENT 
 
 are fashioned. A rude breath upon that fragility, and it 
 might dissolve, and the creature evanish in the thin air. 
 
 Indeed our redoubtable lady, so cool, so unemotional, 
 so instinct with restraint, was afraid that she had caught 
 herself in the act of making a sort of excursion into senti- 
 ment. Her attitude towards this pitiful little piece of life 
 who had ruined her son, and had ruined her and her family 
 also, was growing to be as indefensible as was his. She, 
 too, hostile as she was and must be, was becoming pos- 
 sessed with a ludicrous sense of the immunity conferred 
 upon the child by her sacred innocence. The wretched 
 little creature had ruined them all with no more effectual 
 weapon than that. The affair was too consciously ironical. 
 The President of those mocking Immortals who sate in 
 heaven had a true eye for the incongruous when he selected 
 the innocence of a babe as the instrument to level to 
 its native dust an Inordinate Pride which had towered 
 above the centuries. The galled woman saw all this too 
 clearly, but yet she stayed the hand that was poised to 
 strike. It was as though she held a small bird captive in 
 her gripe. The slightest pressure of those powerful fingers 
 and the last wild fiutterings in the tremulous breast would 
 be for ever quiet. For the first time in her hfe the 
 admirable lady, whose exterior was of the consistency of , 
 polished steel, who had disciplined her own daughters 
 ruthlessly, and had known how to make them suffer for 
 the common good, found herself picking words and phrases 
 with a peculiar discretion, a peculiar nicety. She must 
 take care not so much as to brush that ilowerlike sensi- 
 tiveness. If a rose-petal is touched it is bruised. 
 
 " I think, child," she said, still gazing at the wife of her 
 son, " that you look a little thin. You look rather 
 delicate." 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, she does," interposed the aunt, with some 
 eagerness. " It was a long way for her to go to Bond 
 Street to the shop. It was not convenient for her to live 
 in, you see, ma'am, because Perkin and Warbeck's were 
 so short of room. Besides, Alice liked the liberty of walking 
 to and fro. Shop life is very hard, ma'am. It is almost 
 like being in a prison from morning till night, only in a 
 prison I suppose you are sometimes allowed to sit down. 
 
 215 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 She could not have stood it much longer ; it was wearing 
 her out. But she had to go out to work to keep a roof 
 over both our. heads, because my dressmaking business is 
 not large enough to provide work for two. But I thank 
 God, ma'am, that that is all over now. Mr. Broke has 
 been so kind, you don't know. She is not to go to work 
 any more. On Tuesday — the day they were married, you 
 know, ma'am — he gave her a five-pound note ; and when 
 he can make the proper arrangements he says he will get 
 her away into the country. He says she wants the country 
 air. And so she does, ma'am. If her parents before her 
 could have had it, they might have been spared many 
 years longer than they were." 
 
 " They are both dead, I presume ? " 
 
 " Her father died of a rapid consumption before she was 
 born, and her mother did not survive her birth." 
 
 " You adopted your niece, Miss Sparrow ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. It has been a struggle, but God has 
 seen fit to help us. And I will say this, ma'am, from the 
 day I buried her mother Alice has never been anything but 
 a joy tome. She has never given me a moment of trouble 
 or anxiety. She has been a perfectly good and obedient 
 girl, and now, ma'am, she has her reward." 
 
 " I gather that the union of your niece and my son meets 
 with your approval, Miss Sparrow ? " 
 
 " Oh, ma'am, it is just like a dream ! I can't tell you 
 how many times since she grew up to be so beautiful I 
 have dreamt that Alice would marry a gentleman. It was 
 what a lady like you would call a great presumption, I 
 know, ma'am, but you cannot think how necessary it had 
 come to seem. The only thing that could save her from 
 the shop was for her to become a wife. But you see, 
 ma'am, a common-natured man would not have done for 
 her. She is made too delicate for that. Even a fine 
 clothes gentleman, a merely rich gentleman would not 
 have done for her. He had to be a gentleman by nature 
 as well, ma'am, a gentleman born and bred. She puts me 
 in mind of a flower, ma'am, that has to be planted on the 
 south side of a wall so that it may get the sun, and be 
 screened from the cold wind. I have been able to do that 
 myself, ma'am, in a way ; not altogether in the way I 
 
 21b 
 
AN EXCURSION INTO SENTIMENT 
 
 should like, you know, ma'am ; but I am certain that 
 things have not been quite so hard for her as they would 
 have been without me. It would have been so lonely for 
 her if I had not been here ; and when she got home every 
 night from the shop at a quarter to nine, there would have 
 been no fresh cup of tea waiting for her. But she has been 
 very much to me, ma'am, too. Without her I think I 
 should have given in long ago. I could not have kept on 
 so long without some object to work for. I am seventy- 
 two, ma'am, and I am about worn out. But it doesn't 
 matter now, you know, ma'am. I am perfectly content. 
 And I am very grateful. It is very kind of God to re- 
 member an old woman, and make her dreams come true 
 just as she is giving in." 
 
 Mrs. Broke thought of that familiar saying of Goethe's 
 
 Was man in der Jugend wiinscht, hat man im Alter die Fiille. 
 
 " You make me think of the words of a great German 
 poet," she said to the old woman. " In j'outh what one 
 wishes, in age one shall have as much as one will." 
 
 " It is more than true in my case, ma'am. When your 
 son, the noblest-looking gentleman I have ever seen — I 
 hope you won't mind my saying it, ma'am — came and sat 
 in that very chair you are sitting in now, and he said, ' Miss 
 Sparrow, do you mind if I marry your niece ? ' do you 
 know, ma'am, I nearly broke down. Your son might have 
 come from heaven, for if I had had my pick of all the gen- 
 tlemen in the world for Alice, I think I should have chosen 
 him. From the way he spoke I could tell how he loved 
 her. And as for Alice, morning, noon, and night, all day 
 and every day she has no thoughts in her mind but what 
 are caused by him." 
 
 " I suppose, Miss Sparrow, you have had to work very 
 hard at your dressmaking," said Billy's mother. The strain 
 the old woman had entered upon was rather more than 
 even that stoical person cared to support. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. I have," said the old woman with hesitation. 
 " I know that rich people who wear splendid clothes and ride 
 in carriages and pairs are supposed to despise poor people 
 who have to work for their bread ; but I think I can own it 
 
 217 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to you, ma'am, because you are Mr. Broke's mother, and 
 have his kind ways. Yes, ma'am, I have been a worker ; 
 ' an old stniggler,' as the old woman said to the great 
 Doctor Johnson. I daresay, ma'am, you read that beauti- 
 ful anecdote last week in the Family Herald — I always 
 think that those stories of great men on the last page are 
 alone worth a penny. Not, you know, ma'am, that it is 
 the actual work that grinds you down. It is the fear. It 
 makes the blood run cold in your body when you think 
 what must happen if you cannot find the three and six- 
 pence for the landlord every Friday. It may sound like 
 boasting, ma'am, to you, but all the forty-two years I 
 have lived in this house I have never had to ask for a day 
 longer in which to pay the rent. I don't think there are 
 many who can say that. But the rent is only one thing, 
 although the most important. There is the gas and the 
 water, and you can't do without tea and bread and butter, 
 and coals in winter. Then sometimes you want clothes too ; 
 and there are all manner of little odds and ends of expense 
 when you least expect them. Of course I know, ma'am, 
 that you rich ladies despise all this. Some of you would 
 call it low, I dare say, although, ma'am, I am sure you 
 would not. You are the mother of Mr. Broke ; and I 
 could not have opened my heart to you like this if I could 
 not trust you, you being his mother. You see, ma'am, 
 strive as you may at dressmaking you can hardly ever put 
 more than a penny or twopence by in a week for a rainy 
 day. And for the last few years I have had great fears. 
 My eyesight has been failing. I have not been able to sit 
 so long as I used to. And then you always have the fear 
 that as you grow old you may lose your custom, or you may 
 be paralysed. But those are the thoughts that you hardly 
 dare to speak about." 
 
 " Exactly. May I ask how my son first became ac- 
 quainted with your niece ? " 
 
 Again had Billy's mother felt the need for a change of 
 theme. 
 
 " He first saw her at Perkin and Warbeck's shop, ma'am. 
 I think he got friendly with her by coming in to buy things. 
 But it was not until he bought a pair of lady's gloves of 
 her, and then asked her to accept them, that she spoke 
 
 218 
 
AN EXCURSION INTO SENTIMENT 
 
 of him to me. Of course, ma'am, I had alwkys told her 
 never to take a present from any gentleman, not even a 
 bunch of violets. You may have daughters of your own, 
 ma'am, but even if you have you must forgive me for saying, 
 ma'am, that I don't suppose you have any idea how careful 
 poor girls working in public for their living have to be. 
 It is almost a curse, ma'am, if they are born good-looking. 
 There are two kinds of gentlemen, ma'am, just as there are 
 two kinds of most things. There's the good and the bad ; 
 and to young girls, ma'am, either kind is so much more 
 dangerous than those gentlemen who are not gentle- 
 men. 
 
 " From that time, ma'am, he was always paying her 
 little attentions, so that no matter what warnings I gave 
 her she began to think of nothing else but Mr. Broke. I 
 nearly went down on my knees to her, ma'am, to beg her 
 to be careful. She was a very good girl ; and I could see 
 how hard she tried to heed my warnings not to think about 
 him. But oh, ma'am, no matter what she did, Mr. Broke 
 had her in his power. If he had not been the good sort of 
 gentleman, I dare not think of what might have happened. 
 You may have daughters of your own, as I say, ma'am ; 
 and you may have seen a girl in love against her own 
 judgment. It is very terrible. We both used to cry 
 together about it in the evenings when she got home, and 
 we used to pray together ; but Mr. Broke got at last so 
 that he could twist Alice round his little finger. She could 
 not help herself ; Mr. Broke was too strong for her ; it was 
 almost like what you might call fate. Then he took to 
 writing to her ; and she used to go almost wild. She 
 would hardly allow his letters to go out of her hands ; and 
 she always carried them in her pocket, backwards and 
 forwards to the shop. 
 
 " And I will confess it to you now, ma'am, it was a 
 torment, a torture to me all the time. I had never seen 
 this Mr. Broke ; and you must forgive me for saying it, 
 ma'am, but I did not believe in him. Gentlemen who 
 write their letters on that sort of notepaper, real officers 
 of the Queen at Windsor Castle, don't mean any good as 
 a rule to the likes of us. But I misjudged him, you see, 
 ma'am, I misjudged him ; and if the gratitude of an old 
 
 219 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and poor woman who has never had a daughter of her own 
 is worth anything, and I don't suppose that it is, from my 
 heart I give it to your son, Mr. Broke. I honour him, 
 ma'am ; I think of him with reverence, because for a 
 gentleman of his position it comes so easy to be dis- 
 honourable. I say what I know, ma'am, because when I 
 was about Alice's age, or a little older, I too — I — only in 
 my case — only ! " 
 
 The old woman stopped abruptly. A faint tinge of 
 colour crept into her yellow face, and she trembled vio- 
 lently. A moment afterwards her eyes filled with tears. 
 A somewhat disconcerting silence ensued, during which 
 the harsh and furrowed features melted and relaxed. It 
 was for an instant only, however. Her face almost im- 
 mediately resumed the expression which time and labour 
 had given to it. 
 
 " I — I am talking to you, ma'am, as I don't think I have 
 ever talked to any one before," the old woman continued 
 hastily. " You are, as I say, Mr. Broke's mother. You 
 are just like him in many ways. When I talk to you I 
 almost feel as if I am talking to him. I know that I can 
 can trust you and respect you. And perhaps nobody ever' 
 will know but God and my own mind, what the reason is 
 that I honour and respect your son so much." 
 
 Mrs. Broke rose and took up her coat. Her interview 
 had proved a more painful business than she had antici- 
 pated. Every topic of this old woman imbued her with 
 the same feeling of discomfort. Her simplicity struck 
 unerringly home. Her extreme candour, and innocence 
 of spirit became barbs to fret the susceptibilities of this 
 wise and experienced lady. 
 
 As Mrs. Broke rose to go the young girl came from her 
 station behind the table where she had been standing as 
 far from her mother-in-law as she could get, and made a 
 timid offer to help her to put on her coat. As she did so Mrs. 
 Broke gazed somewhat abstractedly at the feats of colour 
 embodied in her hair and her soft skin, which the slightly 
 flushed appearance of her cheeks seemed to enhance. She 
 tried to peer through the mysterious dark lights of her 
 eyes, where still brooded the ineffable secrets of her child- 
 hood. She looked upon the fragile grace of the so slender 
 
 220 
 
AN EXCURSION INTO SENTIMENT 
 
 limbs ; the quick little movements by which they ex- 
 pressed a fawnlike fear, and the startled half-appealing 
 air as of childhood throwing itself upon the mercy of 
 maturity, with which she came forward to confront the 
 mother of her husband. 
 
 Mrs. Broke accepted in silence her service of holding the 
 fur coat, and of deftly aiding the insinuation of her matronly 
 form within it. Without speaking, our august lady con- 
 tinued to regard her for some time after she was ready to 
 go. This wretched slip of a child had ruined Billy ; had 
 probably ruined them all ; and her real motive in pene- 
 trating that morning into the heart of that squalid district 
 was to inform her of those facts in just so many words. 
 Curiosity had been the pretext she had given, even to 
 herself ; but deep down in the feminine heart of her she 
 knew all the time there had been concealed a cold spirit of 
 revenge. If the creature really did love Billy, of course 
 after the fashion of her kind, as the boy in his infatuation 
 insisted that she did, she would know how to punish her 
 for that act of presumption. But as the galled woman 
 continued to look upon that strange radiance, no thought 
 of retaliation, of revenge, was there to sully her. Perhaps 
 she had never been so completely quelled in her life. The 
 wistful appealing air of this babe among womenkind would 
 have struck the venom out of the heart of King" Herod. 
 The fair child was a creature of mist, besprinkled with gold 
 dust from the wings of a butterfly. She was a fairy 
 made out of a piece of gossamer. To look upon her 
 was to be disarmed ; to approach her was to think of 
 love. 
 
 At last our redoubtable lady took away her eyes and 
 moved to the door of the little room. Suddenly, however, 
 she returned and taking the child by the shoulders, kissed 
 her gravely. 
 
 " I think," she said, "it is necessary that you should 
 get away from this horrid London, away into the country 
 as soon as you can. I have been thinking out a 
 small scheme. There is a little cottage near where I live, 
 quite a pretty little cottage on the top of a hill, a very 
 healthy and breezy cottage. I think I can find a few small 
 articles of furniture to put in it ; but you must give me, 
 
 221 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 say a fortnight, to have it painted and whitewashed, and 
 then you must come at once ; and your aunt must come too. 
 There must be no more dressmaking ; no more payments 
 of three and sixpence every Friday to the landlord. If it 
 is possible I think you will be wise to sell your furniture. 
 The carriage of it to your new home will probably exceed 
 its value. But of course I do not mean that if there are 
 any things particularly dear to you that you are not to 
 bring them. Do so by all means. Now, here is another 
 note for five pounds to banish that horrid dressmaking. 
 You must both of you promise never to do another stitch. 
 And if you want some more money to help you to move, 
 you will please write to me, will you not ? Here is a card 
 with my address upon it. 
 
 " Good-bye now. I will write to tell you the day upon 
 which your cottage will be ready. It has honeysuckle 
 and clematis running all over it, and a little garden in front 
 full of flowers and apple trees; and there is a wood on the 
 side of the hill behind, in which in the spring and summer 
 the birds sing all day, and half the night as well. I feel 
 sure it will enchant you. Good-bye ; and do not fail to 
 let me know the day upon which I may expect you. You 
 must take a ticket for Cuttisham at Paddington station, 
 and you shall be met on arrival." 
 
 Kissing her daughter-in-law for the second time, and 
 shaking hands with Miss Sparrow rather less perfunctorily 
 than was her wont, Lady Bountiful escaped the scene of 
 gratitude she saw to be brewing, by moving swiftly through 
 the dark evil-smelling passage to the street. 
 
 Her appearance there was a great relief to her sister's 
 horses, who had been pacing up and down the dirty thor- 
 oughfare, to keep themselves warm, for more than an hour. 
 The relief to her sister's coachman and footman was even 
 greater. Those serious gentlemen had come to the con- 
 clusion, by slow degrees, that Mrs. Broke had been murdered 
 in that most evil-looking house. And they were inclined 
 to think by that time her mutilated body had been made 
 away with. When their mistress, the Honourable Mrs. 
 Reginald Twysden-Cockshott, went slumming, never by 
 any chance did she stay longer than two minutes in any 
 particular house. And even then she did not go alone, 
 
 222 
 
AN EXCURSION INTO SENTIMENT 
 
 and it was alwa}^ arranged that the police should be in 
 the neighbourhood. 
 
 As the carriage containing Mr. Broke's mother glided 
 and tinkled out of the squalid street, aunt and niece were 
 locked in one another's arms, faint with tears. 
 
 223 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 A Short Excursus ; and a Conversation 
 apropos of Nothing 
 
 MRS. BROKE had been shaken to the foundations of 
 her beUef . For the first time her Hnes had been 
 cast among the Poor; the Poor to whom the struggle for 
 existence is a birthright ; the Poor whose sole heritage is 
 an unwholesome mind in an unwholesome body, the 
 memorial of generation after generation bred to humilia- 
 tion and despair. She was in the habit of playing the part 
 of Lady Bountiful to the labouring class in her terri- 
 torial hamlet, and she found the occupation pastoral. 
 But Hampden Road was vastly different. The glimpse it 
 had afforded of poverty by acreage, of want, degradation, 
 and disease, massed and in the aggregate, had a little 
 amazed, a little overwhelmed her. 
 
 Emphatically she was a person belonging to her own 
 class. She saw with their eyes, heard with their ears, 
 understood with their understanding. She had taken it 
 for granted, in a bland and not too definite manner, that 
 the denizens of Hampden Road, who were written down 
 as so many millions in the statistics of the population, 
 enjoyed an existence of a kind in some remote and alien 
 latitude. They were certainly known to exist, because 
 there was a column of police intelligence in the Standard 
 newspaper every morning, and anthropologists wrote of 
 them in books. One assumed they were akin to the 
 Fijians. One heard of them in a precisely similar fashion, 
 without having any more arresting testimony of their 
 existence. They were both equally remote. The Fijians 
 were a coloured people living in the Tropics ; the Poor 
 
 224 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 were a dirty people living in Unpleasantness. The Fijians 
 owed their savagery to their nakedness, and their colour 
 to the heat of the sun. The Poor owed their poverty to 
 their viciousness, and their squalor to natural inclination. 
 
 On going forth into those unexplored regions she did 
 not expect to be confronted with a pair of intensely, 
 exaggeratedly human persons struggling against a grim 
 monster that was pressing out their lives. The thing had 
 been so vivid, so actual, that she could not deny its authen- 
 ticity. It must be allowed to rank as a page of experience. 
 
 More than once on her way back to her own impover- 
 ished family in the country Mrs. Broke shuddered when 
 she recalled the significance of three and sixpence every 
 Friday for the landlord ; and the aching toil involved in 
 its acquisition. They were poor themselves. Of late 
 they had come to consider their own poverty as too positive, 
 too palpable and bitter. But now she had seen the aunt 
 and niece in Hampden Road her views were slightly tinged 
 with horror. It was as though she and her class belonged 
 to a superhuman caste of person, a something excelling 
 human, whose tenement was in the rarefied ether of a 
 jDlanet other than our common earth. The very things 
 "they had come to regard as pregnant with life and death 
 did not exist at all for the denizens of Hampden Road. 
 It was a little bewildering that two races of human beings 
 should grow up side by side, sprung from a common Maker 
 and a common soil, and yet have these elemental differences. 
 It was a little incredible that there should be a race of 
 lonely women, living cheek by jowl with her, differing 
 from her in not one essential of flesh and blood — women 
 derived of women, breathing the same air, stuffed with the 
 same aspirations and emotions as herself, whose only 
 luxury was Death. 
 
 Mrs. Broke went back to her husband and children in 
 the country with her thoughts diverted in a measure from 
 the wreck of the fortunes of her house. It seemed almost 
 to savour of cynicism to view at that moment Billy's 
 marriage in such a light, when so recently she had -been 
 face to face with an ampler suffering. When she drove 
 out of Cuttisham into the bare wind-bitten lanes leading 
 to Covenden it was good to breathe again the pure and 
 
 225 P 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 shrewd airs of the countryside after the foul vapours of 
 London. At that instant the wish foremost -in her was 
 never to set foot again in the nauseating place. She wanted 
 to shut Hampden Road out of her consciousness for ever. 
 She must forget it. It was a nightmare to hold her soul 
 in thrall. 
 
 An uneasy sense had entered into her for the first time 
 that she and her kind, the moneyed and privileged classes 
 of which she was an insignificant unit, had directly to 
 answer for such a state of things. It seemed to give the 
 verdict against them at once as unworthy of their responsi- 
 bilities. Several times already she had caught herself in 
 the act of thinking aloud to a somewhat extravagant 
 tenour : " We may burke it, we may shirk it, we may run 
 from it, we may shut it out from our lives by building stone 
 walls around them, but we shall not always be able to 
 keep our park gates between it and our guilt. One day it 
 will come home to us. We shall be called on to pay in 
 kind for the obligations we have disregarded. Dear God ! 
 how patient they are ! One would suppose that they have 
 their pride too. They must be a tenacious terrier-like 
 breed of people ; they fight in silence, and hold on to the 
 last. But it cannot be so always. They have their 
 periodical revolutions in France ; by what miracle do we 
 not have ours ! " 
 
 It was about the luncheon hour that Mrs. Broke turned 
 in at the gates of her demesne. On her way to the house 
 she encountered a solitary individual walking towards her. 
 It was Delia's tutor. Since the unfortunate day on which 
 he had taken up his duties the young man had received 
 no invitation to take another meal at her table. On the 
 only occasion of his being thus honoured he had not been 
 a success. 
 
 However, the sight of his lonely figure touched a chord 
 in her now. To-day for the first time she was troubled 
 with misgiving as to the infallibility of her judgment. 
 Three days ago she would not have been able to support 
 the suggestion that her beautifully-balanced reason could 
 lead her astray. Her experience was too wide, her insight 
 too searching. Did they not render her invulnerable to 
 error ? This morning, however, she was not so sure. 
 
 226 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 There came into her mind a faint analogy between the 
 man walking towards her with his eyes on the earth and 
 the two women she had lately seen in Hampden Road, 
 London, N. His slightness, his paleness, his shabbiness, 
 the self-effacing air of his exterior all contributed to the 
 comparison. Thoughts of an uncomfortable intimacy 
 sprang loose in her ; ludicrous thoughts, grotesque, farcical 
 thoughts, which had never dared to obtrude before in 
 that complacent inteUigence. They began insolently, 
 obstreperously to compare her own private lot with his. 
 
 She had had a comfortable carriage and a fleet pair 
 of horses to bear her the four miles from Cuttisham. This 
 young man, the denizen of an inferior orbit, would have 
 to be borne the same four miles on the soles of his feet. 
 In ten minutes she would be sitting down to a solid meal ; 
 this young man, if he pursued a dihgent career, might 
 hope to do the same in something under an hour and a 
 quarter. In his case, however, the nature of the meal 
 might prove a little problematical. He had already 
 walked four miles that morning, and had spent several 
 hours thereafter in toiling with his brain, an exhausting 
 form of labour. She, on the other hand, began the duties 
 of her day when she drank a cup of tea in bed at a quarter 
 to eight. She had submitted to be dressed by somebody 
 else about an hour later ; had taken breakfast at half-past 
 nine ; had spent the remainder of the morning in a little 
 gossip, in a little shopping, in driving to the railway station, 
 in sitting on the cushions of a first-class compartment, 
 and in driving from it. 
 
 It is true that this picture of their divergent lots was 
 a trifle over-coloured. But that was essential ; a trick 
 of the impertinent person, the artist. Without a measure 
 of incisive exaggeration no picture can count on its appeal. 
 A less graphic parallel, and our humane lady would not 
 now have been in the act of demanding of herself the 
 reason why the hard-working fellow could not have received 
 the common piece of courtesy at her hands of being allowed 
 to eat at her table every time he came. 
 
 When the young man came near, and took his eyes 
 from the earth and looked at her vaguely, with a faintly 
 perceptible doubt as to whether she would choose to see 
 
 227 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 him, Mrs. Broke stopped her carriage. She beckoned to 
 Porter to come to her. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Porter. Will you not return to 
 luncheon ? " 
 
 " Thank you very much," said the young man rather 
 abstractedly, " but I am in no immediate need. I have 
 an irrepressible habit of providing for myself. I enjoy 
 the sensation of doing three things at once. I eat, walk, 
 and think." 
 
 He exhibited a small packet of white tissue paper. 
 
 Mrs. Broke made a gesture. 
 
 " You are indeed a man of resources," she said archly. 
 " But if you do not return with me to-day, I shall think 
 you are angry with me. You have been coming out here 
 for more than a month, and yet my unpardonable stupidity 
 has driven you to these expedients. But, really, I must 
 blame you a little also. You ought to have stayed to 
 luncheon every day as a matter of course. Promise me 
 you will never, never wait for an invitation again. Get 
 in, please, and say you forgive me." 
 
 In the face of such a charming humble insistence, Mr. 
 Porter was fain to get in and say he did forgive the melli- 
 fiuous lady. She gave him the place of honour beside her, 
 and prattled to him dulcetly upon the subject of litera- 
 ture. 
 
 At the luncheon table the family were found to be in 
 full assembly. Mrs. Broke piloted Mr. Porter to a seat, 
 and with a gracious bow that embraced her husband, Miss 
 Wayling, and her girls, she took a place by his side. And 
 there was at least one fortunate aspect to her hardly 
 agreeable preoccupation with him. His presence there, 
 under her wing, freed her for the time being from embar- 
 rassing questions as to the nature of the business that had 
 summoned her to London so suddenly. 
 
 " Now tell me about your work, Mr. Porter," she said, 
 while the young man was fishing for a pickled onion with 
 a long-handled fork. 
 
 " I am afraid," said Mr. Porter, with a puckered coun- 
 tenance, after twice failing to spear a fat one on which 
 he had set his mind, " I am afraid my work is not easy to 
 describe. Unless one happens to have complete sym- 
 
 22S 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 pathy with my point of view, it were best perhaps that I 
 did not attempt the task." 
 
 The sUghtest possible dart of anger replaced the bland 
 affability in the face of his questioner. There he went 
 again ! His matter-of-fact tone might do something to 
 blunt the edge of his too-palpable rudeness, but it could 
 not obliterate the snub. Plainly the egregious fellow 
 had meant to convey that his opinion of her understanding 
 was so poor that he could find a more profitable means of 
 using his time than by treating her seriously. 
 
 She hardly knew when she had been so annoyed. It 
 was a wholly new experience for a hostess of her felicity 
 and finesse to be patronized by a mere boy at her own 
 table. However, as she had a craving for the present to 
 play the part of Lady Bountiful in her dealings with all 
 and sundry, she set herself steadily to look past his lack 
 of manners, and determined to push forward the good work 
 of moral and intellectual enlightenment. He was a bear, 
 a boor, but that should not deter her. The crown of mar- 
 tyrdom she would be called on to wear in the endeavour 
 would be in the nature of a penance for many years of 
 blind intolerance towards his class and those still lower. 
 
 " I do not wonder," she said, with so perfect an inflection 
 of humility that it could only have sounded another note 
 in the most delicately educated ear, " that you should 
 think so meanly of me. My futile attempts to rise to 
 your level must strike you as impertinent. But women, 
 you know, are intrepid. Ignorant, I fear, is the masculine 
 name. As a sex we are apt to overrate our strength." 
 
 " This is a question of temperament rather than of 
 capacity," said the young man, with a slight air of pre- 
 occupation that his patroness was only too quick to resent. 
 " It has no reference whatever to the power of your intel- 
 lect, but simply to its emotional character. It has no 
 sentiment for literature." 
 
 " I confess myself mystified," said Mrs. Broke. " I 
 read a great deal, and I pride myself in very good books, 
 in books that have outlived criticism." 
 
 " So I have perceived. Upon that I base my calcula- 
 tion." 
 
 " My mystification increases." 
 229 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " I would wish to imply that you do not approach the 
 greatest among books in the highest spirit of the devotee." 
 
 " I read Greek tragedy in the original tongue." 
 
 " Forgive me if I suggest that you read it in the spirit 
 in which you read the daily newspaper." 
 
 " You do me less than justice if you hold me insensible 
 to its matchless qualities." 
 
 " You study it as a text-book, but the unique nature 
 of its art is a dead letter to you. If I may say so, you 
 approach literature from a purely practical, dare I say 
 mercantile, standpoint. You read books for what you 
 can take from them ; you do not read them for what 
 you can take to them." 
 
 " Surely a paradoxical saying." 
 
 " Paradox is only truth walking backwards. But I 
 have not expressed myself very clearly. I wanted to 
 imply that for a person with my outlook there is no hope 
 for those who only go to literature in quest of the hard 
 fact — and yet that does not half express what I mean." 
 
 " But surely we acquire from books ? If I understand 
 you aright, you would have them acquire from us." 
 
 " Do not let us be too literal. Literature assists our 
 mental development in much the same manner that a 
 plate of cold beef and pickled onions assists our physical. 
 But in the mere acquisition of knowledge it can hardly 
 be said to count. Books are no more than so many bundles 
 of soiled paper. We do not learn any more from them 
 than from a dead cow and a spiced vegetable. One living 
 human mind, yours or mine, counts for more than all the 
 wisdom collected and inscribed upon the sheepskins of 
 antiquity." 
 
 " A question of terms, is it not ? That particular 
 generalization is obvious to everybody. Let us come 
 down to the particular. You would not say that my 
 mind or yours could do anything for Shakespeare ? " 
 
 " You must forgive me if I do not agree. Books like 
 Shakespeare's are written in cypher ; they cannot be 
 read at aU without a key. And the key is — your heart 
 and mine. Even he in the most perfect expression of 
 his spirit, the amplest expression the world has known, 
 can only hope to indicate a few fresh courses that the 
 
 200 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 emotional, the reflective, the imaginative parts of us are 
 to go upon. Lear teaches us nothing with which we 
 were not perfectly acquainted long before he made his 
 kingdom over to his daughters. But when the sufferings 
 of the enfeebled and insane old man melt our blood into 
 tears, we have added a fresh fact to the aggregate of the 
 world's experience. When I see the old man, my father, 
 holding that heart-moving history in his hand, and the 
 tears are shining on his cheeks, I know that many infinite 
 moments such as these have gone to the making of the 
 bewilderingly complex mechanism that he calls his son. 
 Forgive the egotism. It is the curse of persons born 
 under my unlucky star." 
 
 " I am very sensible of the honour of these confidences. 
 But I accuse you of basing your calculation on the as- 
 sumption that the mind of every reader has this special 
 endowment. Surely every mind cannot have it ; my 
 own, for instance." 
 
 " There is my point. Nature has not given you the 
 key to the cypher. It is the root of our argument. You 
 will remember it arose when I said I could not tell you 
 of my work." 
 
 " May I not still have a sympathetic interest in it ? 
 Only genius may love, but surely the most pedestrian 
 of earth-walkers may admire." 
 
 " Yes ; perhaps I am too arbitrary. But even your 
 person of taste is but a second-hand admirer. Would 
 Shakespeare occupy his present place in the national 
 esteem unless Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith and several 
 thousands of other persons of similar renown and credit 
 had dinned his pre-eminence into our ears ? " 
 
 " He would not, and I hope you identify yourself with 
 the national obtuseness ? " 
 
 " That is true courage ; but it indicates the divergence 
 of our ways. And you force me to concede that the time 
 we devote to him in the stalls of the Lyceum Theatre is 
 not wasted. Irving is as near the real Shakespeare as 
 Pope is near the real Homer, but their rule of thumb 
 interpretations have their uses." 
 
 " Arrogance; surely ? Is it the arrogance of genius 
 one hears so much about ? " 
 
 231 
 
BROKE OF COVEN DEN 
 
 " I begin to fear it. Of late I have grown so impatient , 
 Every battle a man wins for his art reacts upon hisi 
 suavity." 
 
 " You practise the art of literature ? " 
 
 " Perhaps, yes. I strive and strive, but generally have 
 to hurl the pen out of my clumsy fingers with tears of 
 chagrin." 
 
 " You interest me. Tell me what great end you have 
 in view ? " 
 
 " The end will seem trivial, yet I assure you I find it 
 vastly difficult. I seek to gain the power to express in 
 a simple formula, but in a formula that is sufficiently 
 adequate, a few of those adventures of the spirit that make 
 the Dream, the Phantasm, the Chimera, the What-you- 
 will I call Existence at once a heaven and a hell. Please 
 forgive a little turgidity." 
 
 " You are a poet ? " 
 
 " I have no wings, alas ! I cannot soar. Therefore m}" 
 ideas, that no doubt have been the common propert} 
 of man since he first scratched his thoughts on stone, have 
 to be content with a humbler vehicle. But this is vain 
 and foolish. My reticence is cast aside before the cruel 
 eyes of the irreverent. I stand revealed a coxcomb ; but 
 rather would I beg you to take it, that flushed a little with 
 my first victory I do not feel quite the same harsh neces- 
 sity for silence. 
 
 " Why this diffidence, my friend ? You overwhelm 
 me with interest. What is this maiden victory to which 
 you allude ? " 
 
 " There was something, perhaps quite trivial in itself, 
 on which I sought to lay my finger in the work of this very 
 Shakespeare, this Chinese puzzle we are never tired of 
 trying to solve. The thing was not new ; it must have 
 been in the minds of all men of perception since Heming 
 and Condell printed their folio. Still, I had never seen it 
 set forth in plain terms. Even Goethe had not expressed 
 it exactl}'. It could be traced in the minds of them all, 
 floating disembodied and impalpable, a will o' the wisp 
 that eluded all efforts to capture and embalm it in sentient 
 speech. Charles Lamb came the nearest ; but he 
 approached half unconsciously in the casual way that was 
 
 232 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 his habit, and withdrew his hands ahnost at the moment 
 his strong but so whimsical fingers seemed but to need 
 to stretch out to take it in their grasp. Now I felt in my 
 own mind that our English tongue was a fine enough 
 medium by which to express it. The thesis was simple 
 enough. What had to be said was cut in the mind like 
 a cameo, yet it defied a reduction to terms. However, 
 in the intrepidity of his youth, one Alfred Porter rose up 
 and grappled with it. At first it seemed in danger of 
 becoming the ' Figure in the Carpet,' that little story by 
 Henry James. Thirty-three times he wrestled with it ; 
 thirtj^-three times he was overthrown. On each occasion 
 he burnt his failure with a grimmer determination in his 
 heart. Sometimes it was with utter weariness and sick- 
 ness of the spirit, but never with despair. At the thirty- 
 fourth attempt he rang the bell. He could hear it tinkle 
 faintly but distinctly. His victory, however, has had 
 the unhappy consequence of giving him an even stauncher 
 belief in himself than he had before." 
 
 " May I ask had your victory any fruits other than your 
 own personal satisfaction ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed. That is the strange part ; otherwise 
 the whole matter would have been a perfect episode, fit 
 for Flaubert. I sent it, it was but a small thing, ten 
 thousand words or so, to the editor of the International 
 Review, that great journal for the upholding of the honour 
 of literature, which never yet has been found unworthy 
 of its mission. That act of itself was presumptuous, for 
 I had no credential other than my determination to succeed. 
 And here is the prosaic part. The editor has offered to 
 appoint me to his review at a salary of £800 a year." 
 
 " Of course you repudiated his offer with scorn ? " 
 
 " Alas ! I am afraid I am not sufficiently Philistine. 
 I was not in the least insulted, I confess. I accepted his 
 offer with gratitude. And one could read the generosity 
 of the man's nature. He had never seen me ; to him I 
 was meaningless, apart from the fact that I had a pair 
 of eyes to look at hie, and a spirit that was determined to 
 express what they saw. And that was enough. I might 
 have leapt at a hundred pounds a year for all he knew, 
 as indeed I should." 
 
 233 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " This is very singular, is it not ? One understood that 
 you lions of literature despised the sordid pounds and 
 shillings." 
 
 " In a sense perhaps ; but I think we make a point of 
 accepting them when they come our way. They don't 
 come too often. We generally have ' to go through the 
 mill.' " 
 
 " Have you had ' to go through the mill,' Mr. Porter, 
 if the question is a fair one ? " 
 
 " I have had to fight, and have to do so still, but I do 
 not forget that it is a confhct in which others have lost 
 more blood." 
 
 " Pray tell me of it, if I may hope so to be honoured 
 with your confidence. You interest me painfully. I 
 understood that your father was in fairly easy circum- 
 stances." 
 
 " On the contrary, his circumstances have never been 
 even fairly easy. He exists, and that is all. He exists 
 with a few first editions, a few rare books in his back 
 sitting-room. When stress of financial weather forces 
 him to part with one of these it is like the severing of his 
 right hand. He is a dear, queer, impracticable old man, 
 with just a saving touch of the heroic. When the idea 
 came into his mind that his son must go to the university, 
 he proposed to send him there by parting with his 
 treasures. He declined to go, however, at that great 
 price. I knew that the development of the powers with 
 which he credited me was the only undertaking that 
 could have led him to the extreme step." 
 
 " He felt you were marked out for great things ? " 
 
 " In a way he did. My father is a singular man. He 
 belongs to the company of the ' mute, inglorious Miltons.' 
 He has the emotional and intellectual equipment of a 
 poet, but has no more power of utterance than a tin trumpet 
 or a penny whistle. He has the truest instinct for all 
 that has been finely uttered, but the power of utterance 
 itself is denied to him." 
 
 " And he makes a tragedy of it ? " 
 
 " No ; he is too sane. Perhaps, as he grew old, he might 
 have allowed it to embitter him had not the recognition 
 of what he supposed to be my budding powers done so 
 
 234 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 much to reconcile him to his fate. He told me this morning 
 that since I received that letter from the editor of the 
 Review, nearly a week ago, his life has grown larger. 
 But with all this wonderful solicitude he is a more jealous 
 critic of my work than I am myself. His taste is 
 exquisite, and his spirit seems to burn purer, intenser 
 because of its suppression." 
 
 " Do I gather that he grants this power of utterance 
 to his son ? " 
 
 " I think I may say yes, although it argues much 
 courage and insight for one of my father's austerity 
 to detect the true note in the child's first performances 
 upon a comb and a piece of tissue paper," 
 
 " His reward is assured to him already. But tell me 
 a little of yourself, your uphill struggle. May I ask how 
 you contrived to maintain yourself at the university ? " 
 
 The young man laughed. There was no joy in him, 
 however. 
 
 He hesitated. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, but may I assume that it was neces- 
 sary that you should undergo a course at the university to 
 prepare yourself for the end you had in view ? " 
 
 " Both my father and I thought so at the time. There 
 was the glamour of the name, and I am afraid we had both 
 idealized its functions whilst remaining in perfect ignorance 
 of its methods. It had been a kind of ambition of my 
 father's to see a son of his at the university, and in my 
 case he thought this aspiration to be essential. We knew 
 no one who had been there, no one who could disabuse 
 our minds of our heresies. " 
 
 " And you regretted it ? " 
 
 " Not altogether. But the game was not worth the 
 candle. It may have increased any little grit there was 
 in me, but I think I can say with justice that at the present 
 moment I owe less than nothing to my academic training. 
 It retarded my development. I had to lose the habit 
 of looking at life with an eye-glass. I had to unlearn 
 much that I was taught before I could recapture my 
 power of vision. It is preserved intact, I hope and be- 
 lieve ; but it is because my honest natural eyesight has 
 been able to reassert itself." 
 
 235 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 ** You fill me with surprise. It is not usual for so young 
 a man to have such a definite outlook. You appear to 
 understand clearly what you are about to accomplish, 
 and the best mesns to take of accompUshing it. I sup- 
 pose now you have accepted this suggestion of the editor's, 
 you will turn your face to the east and make for the Mecca 
 of the literary man." 
 
 " I have promised to take up my duties there in a month's 
 time. I am glad to have had this opportunity of talking 
 to you, since after then I fear it will no longer be possible 
 for me to coach Miss Broke. I have written to Lady 
 Bosket to say so." 
 
 " I am sure it will be a misfortune for the child, although 
 she has had the privilege of receiving a certain amount of 
 your instruction. Did you find her hopeless R" 
 
 " On the contrary, I could not have wished for an apter 
 pupil." 
 
 " This is praise indeed. One feels, Mr. Porter, that it 
 is not easy for you to bestow praise." 
 
 " Perhaps you are right. But in this case, if it may 
 be any sort of satisfaction to you to know it, I will confess 
 I have found Miss Broke peculiarly interesting. She is 
 the first of her sex with whom I have been brought into 
 intimate contact, and it has been an experience. Besides, 
 I have a feeling, you must please forgive it, that you do 
 not extend quite the same justice to her as, for example, 
 you do to myself. One feels it to be a pity, for she does 
 not deserve to be underrated. Her sympathies are so 
 quick, so remarkable." 
 
 " You relieve me. I had nearly made up my mind 
 that the child was wholly destitute of intelligence." 
 
 "It is painful to hear you say that. Such an opinion 
 is, under your pardon, unwarrantable. The graces of her 
 mind may not be set forth to the public view, so that every 
 passer-b}' may become acquainted with them ; but per- 
 chance on that account they are the more exquisite, the 
 more permanent. In judicious hands — in hands of a 
 requisite tenderness, of a wise and patient encouragement, 
 hers might prove a particularly full and complete and 
 satisfactory life. But I am sure that if this is not her 
 fate, if the hands she should happen to fall into should 
 
 236 
 
A SHORT EXCURSUS 
 
 be ruder and coarser, her life will not be a success. I 
 confess that I tremble for her. It seems almost inevit- 
 able that she should be sacrificed on the altar of the average 
 man, that blundering, well-meaning ruffian whose mind 
 is merged in his dinner. For a creature of sensibility 
 all compact to be the victim of some such rough and honest 
 rogue would be a dire thing. Such fragile creatures must 
 be nurtured carefully. Perfect co-operative sympathy 
 must be their daily food. One foresees that the honest 
 rogue with whom she may mate will act on that excellent 
 matrimonial principle of giving her clothes in exchange 
 for her cookery. One fears that in her case it will not do. 
 He will have to feed as well as clothe her. He will have 
 to feed her out of his own hands, with the choicest blood 
 of his spirit." 
 
 " You astonish me ! I had not thought that the child's 
 nature would make demands of this kind. I tremble 
 for her myself." 
 
 So absorbed had these two alien persons been in their 
 conversation that they had already long outstayed every- 
 body at the luncheon table. Mrs. Broke had basked in 
 the sensation of a slightly malicious triumph. The some- 
 what aggressive young man might frankly despise her 
 intellectual equipment, but she knew how to make him 
 lay bare his own. Her art masquerading in the livery 
 of a ready sympathy had completely broken down the 
 barrier of his reticence. She had made him talk to her. 
 He had tacitly confessed that he had revealed more of 
 himself to her already than he had to any other person. 
 At the same time he had interested her keenly. He was 
 a man with a personality. 
 
 When they rose and repaired to the drawing-room our 
 redoubtable lady was in better conceit with herself than 
 she had been all that day. In a measure her talk with 
 the young man had restored something of her complacence. 
 She had enjoyed a success, almost a triumph. Insensibly, 
 on the top of the proud thought, the young man was 
 hoisted in her estimation. Whoever he was and what- 
 ever he was he was emphatically a person to be reckoned 
 with. He was no fool, no weakling. Nay, he was a 
 fighter. He was a born wTestler with adversity. She 
 
 237 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 was conscious of a feeling of exhilaration in having passed 
 an hour in talking with him, He had a vigour that lifted 
 up the heart like a mountain breeze. 
 
 As a manifestation of her agreeable disposition towards 
 him, his patroness asked the young man presently whether 
 he had seen a fragment of the remains of the old hall, in 
 an outlying comer of the park. They were said to have 
 an antiquarian interest. On his replying that he had 
 not, but that it would dehght him to have the privilege, 
 Delia was summoned, and it was suggested to her that 
 she should conduct her tutor across the ravine to the hill 
 on which it stood. Neither being reluctant to accede to 
 this plan, it was not long before they were on their way 
 to the ruin. 
 
 " An incendiary," was Mrs. Broke's sudden comment 
 to herself as she watched him retire from the room. " I 
 cannot remember when I have been so arrested by a 
 personality. His force and vigour are a little discon- 
 certing, and that sense of the indomitable he manages 
 to instil into one might some day prove inconvenient. 
 It might prove a serious thing for some of us if he turned 
 his attention to politics. It is not a little singular that 
 these children of the people so often possess the secret 
 of this masterful force which ours so often lack." 
 
 Suddenly she laughed. A whimsical idea had insinuated 
 itself in the mind of the contemplative lady. 
 
 " Is it not foolhardy ? " she thought. " Is it not almost 
 like the courting of a second disaster to go out of one's 
 way to throw the wretched child into the company of such 
 a firebrand ? " 
 
 The idea amused her ; but all the same, so inveterate 
 was her habit of wisdom, that she was by no means siire 
 that she would have lent her countenance to the expedition 
 had this grotesque thought occurred to her sooner. 
 
 238 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 Two on a Tower 
 
 FOOTING it over the young and green grass of spring, 
 Delia and her tutor were not long in crossing the 
 ravine and in pressing up the steep hill on which was set 
 all that remained of the former stronghold of this ancient 
 race of Broke. It was noteworthy that this old hall or 
 castle had this in common with the great houses of anti- 
 quity : its architect had chosen one of the fair spots of 
 earth on which to set it. 
 
 It stood on a grass-grown eminence, commanding a 
 vaew of the rich vales and pasture land that stretched 
 beneath. The lush meadows, fat with increase, drowsed 
 below ; a clear stream shining in the afternoon sun mean- 
 dered from little copse to little copse, in which the spring 
 birds sang ; the steeples of churches in neighbouring villages 
 were remotely visible, " bosomed high in tufted trees " ; 
 while every natural object seemed to point towards and 
 to emphasize the uncommon wisdom which had chosen for 
 a hermitage this fair place. 
 
 " Ah, those old builders, what a cunning they had ! " 
 said the young man as he toiled up to a piece of crumbling 
 masonry, surrounded by ferns. " They only chose the 
 places fit to receive of their best. It is not easy to get 
 here, but once on these heights one is more than repaid. 
 You come of a favoured race, Miss Broke. Who can con- 
 ceive anything more delightful than to have an enchanted 
 castle, as I am sure this must have been, to dwell in for 
 a thousand years or so ? " 
 
 " I do not think we have been any happier because of it," 
 
 239 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 said Delia. " It has made no difference to us as far as I 
 
 can see." 
 
 " One would have expected it to breed a whole race of 
 poets and seers, grave worshippers of nature, and those 
 who never slept in their endeavours to surprise her secrets." 
 
 " Instead of which," said Delia, who long ago had learnt 
 to speak to him in terms of an ampler equality than when 
 she had known him first, " it seems to have bred a race 
 whose first pleasure has been to destroy her handiwork. 
 If as a race we have been foremost in anything it has been 
 as hunters and soldiers — savage men who have had a passion 
 for destroying or maiming their fellows, and the birds of 
 the air, and the animals that run in the fields." 
 
 " A severe indictment, but not an unfair one, I am 
 afraid." 
 
 He caught himself musing on her strange air of vehemence. 
 
 " I should not have found myself making it a month 
 ago," said Delia, half to herself and hardly intending that 
 he should hear. 
 
 Looking back at the moment on that short period which 
 yet seemed so long a time, and in a measure so fraught with 
 destiny, she guessed how great was the_ change in herself. 
 She had developed b}' inordinate strides. She was a child 
 then, a little timid thing peeping out of the door of the 
 nursery ; she was now a woman feeling the first few pre- 
 monitory stiflings of the world upon her heart. It was not 
 quite so easy to breathe God's air as it had been a month 
 ago. 
 
 To-day there could be no doubt she was unhappy. She 
 was too simple to be able to disguise the fact that her 
 friend's announcement of his going away to London filled 
 her with a sense of loss. From the first morning of his 
 coming she had never been qviite the same. There was in 
 him that touch of mystery that was so haunting, that 
 personal glamour which provokes an unrest in the pulses, 
 which seems to hypnotise, to cast a spell. It was not 
 attraction, not fascination altogether ; but a stranger, 
 more magical quality which evoked an emotion in his 
 absence which even his presence seemed hardly to disperse. 
 
 Never had she wept again because she could not go hunt- 
 ing smce that first memorable morning of his coming, when 
 
 240 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 he had wrung her small secrets out of her, and caused her 
 to burn her treasures. She knew that long ago she had 
 learned to recognize his footfall above all others on the 
 tiles of the hall. She also knew that if she caught the notes 
 of his voice when she did not expect to hear them she was 
 startled in a manner she had never been conscious of 
 before. These were slight things, very trivial phenomena, 
 but taken in conjunction with the present unquietness 
 of her heart, they had the power to make her tremble. 
 She had taken them for signs that she was journeying 
 perilously into that mysterious country from whose bourn 
 no traveller returns unscarred. 
 
 Unconsciously the days of his coming had grown to be 
 underlined in her heart. Those days on which he did not 
 come were ineffectual, incomplete. On those days there 
 seemed no reason why she should ever get out of bed in the 
 morning and undertake the ordeal of putting on her clothes. 
 Even hunting, that intoxicating sport, had begun to lose its 
 hold upon her. It took on the same drab hues as the rest 
 of life's diurnal affairs when her friend did not walk out 
 from Cuttisham to bewilder and enchant her. He seemed 
 to carry a special atmosphere of his own about him. He 
 was so assured, so definite in all he said and did ; he was so 
 certain of himself. He did not appear to know what 
 faltering or stumbling meant ; and it was impossible to 
 deny any secret to those grave kind candid humorous eyes. 
 Tender eyes they were too. There were things that could 
 soften them and give them a look she had learnt to watch 
 for. They were not given to passion. They were too 
 patient, too mild, to have an addiction to violence. Some- 
 times when he had been surprised into sudden enthusiasms 
 about certain things, a light had been kindled in them which 
 she, this childish worshipper of heroes, liked to think of as 
 a something splendid and imperishable. And once or 
 twice at some tale of man's inhumanity to man, told in the 
 daily newspaper, they had grown so hard as to frighten 
 her more than a little. 
 
 Again and again had she been obliged to make the state- 
 ment to herself that he was a much more complex kind of 
 being than the only other men with whom she was familiar, 
 her father, her brother, and her Uncle Charles. He seemed 
 
 241 Q 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to have more component parts ; there seemed to be finer 
 shades of meaning in him. There was a constant occupation 
 for her in seeking to fathom what was imphed by his strange 
 odd face, which grew stranger and more odd the more you 
 looked at it. It was, indeed, a perpetual puzzle and mystery. 
 When she investigated her father's at the breakfast table 
 there it was as plain as print, as open as the morning. If 
 she looked at those of her mother and her sisters it was 
 easy to read exactly what they were. It was only since she 
 had come to know her friend, and had been baffled by him^ 
 that she had taken to doing this sort of thing. Dimly she 
 felt that such behaviour was vain and weak and unworthy, 
 but no matter how she tried not to do so she was thinking 
 perpetually of her friend's mysterious face. 
 
 Her companion sat down on a convenient piece of the 
 ruin, and took off his hat. Beads of sweat speckled his 
 brow. He made no secret of the fact that the ascent had 
 distressed him. His breathing was ridiculously assertive. 
 He laughed at his plight, particularly as Delia did not con- 
 ceal her surprise at it. She was far from exhibiting similar 
 evidences. She looked as cool, as serene as a young fawn 
 that has merely leapt over a brook. 
 
 " This is where you athletes take advantage of a book- 
 worm," he said with a whimsical air. " It is preposterous 
 of my heart to beat in this manner because we happen 
 to have climbed this steep hill rather smartly. You 
 do not seem to breathe at all. Your feet skim like a 
 bird's." 
 
 " I did not think that such a little exertion would dis- 
 tress you," said Delia. " We ought not to have walked so 
 fast. I am so sorry." 
 
 " Odd," said he, " how any inferiority arising from a 
 physical cause provokes a feeling of humiliation in us. It 
 annoys me that I should be sitting in this plight while you 
 do not appear to suffer the least inconvenience. I think 
 I must go into training, as you athletes would say, although 
 walking out here from Cuttisham three times a week has 
 done me a lot of good. But I am afraid I have a rooted 
 objection to physical exercise." 
 
 " How strange ! " said Delia, " when perfect fitness is 
 such a source of pleasure. It is nicer than anything I know 
 
 242 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 to feel one's body to be equal to the most arduou's task. I 
 hope you do not despise the athlete." 
 
 " On the contrary, he or she provokes my admiration. I 
 love to witness feats that involve resolution and agility. . It 
 gives me quite a fearful pleasure, although I will not say 
 that now and then they have not a habit of ruffling me a 
 little also. I do not like to have to confess myself defeated 
 in anything." 
 
 " Arrogance," said Delia, with a wise little smile and shake 
 of the head. 
 
 " I agree, I agree." 
 
 " I don't think I would ever accuse you of arrogance 
 really," said Delia, determined to wipe this speck of dust 
 off her idol. 
 
 " You would be wrong," said her friend, enjo5nng her 
 sudden descent into the serious. " It is the besetting sin 
 of the genus. We self-centred people never hesitate to 
 pit ourselves in a comparison with others, and when we 
 draw it, it is not to their advantage, I can assure you. If 
 Such-a-one can do a certain thing I can do it, is what we 
 say. It is wrong, it is deplorable in us, but — but ce soni 
 les defaiUs de nos qualites." 
 
 The young man was in higher spirits this afternoon than 
 he had been in lately. 
 
 " You could," said Delia wistfully. " I believe you could 
 do anything if you made up your mind." 
 
 " You are quite right," he said, a good deal amused by 
 her earnestness. " But please I must ask you not to make 
 me vainer than I am already." 
 
 During the next moment Deha became the victim of an 
 idea. There was a hazardous feat connected with this 
 ruin which she and her five sisters, those perfectly intrepid 
 open-air creatures, were never weary of attempting. The 
 ruin consisted of a single tall wall some twenty feet high. 
 A narrow and precarious parapet formed the top of it ; 
 and at the extreme southern end the crazy remains of 
 what had once been a hunting tower rose sheer to the sky, 
 eighty feet from the top of the wall and a hundred feet 
 from the bank on which they were standing now. Seen 
 from this spot, it looked an incredibly insecure and dizzy 
 height. Only the ivy with which it was clad seemed to 
 
 243 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 hold it together. The tower itself was so bat-ridden and 
 far gone in decay that its mere retention of the power to 
 keep itself upright seemed a direct defiance of the laws of 
 gravitation. 
 
 However, so often had Delia and her sisters made the 
 not very difficult ascent of the lower wall itself, and so 
 often had they walked the precarious coping that ran along 
 the top as far as the base of the tower, that they could now 
 perform the feat with the ease, the certainty of an acrobat 
 crossing a tight-rope with a man in a wheelbarrow. To 
 the uninitiated it had a delicious appearance of daring, but 
 they had practised it so often that it had become as simple 
 as the trick of springing into a saddle out of the hand of 
 their father. 
 
 The hunting tower itself, however, was much more diffi- 
 cult to overcome. Times without number had they set 
 out to reach the weird emblem in the form of a cross that 
 stood at the top, on a quaint httle platform. Not one of 
 them, however, had ever succeeded in making her foothold 
 sufficiently secure in that decrepit masonry covered with 
 ivy and moss which was its only staircase, to scale the full 
 eighty feet of this crazy and wind-shaken altitude. She 
 who accomplished that hazardous task would be the 
 recipient of everlasting honour from her five sisters. At 
 present the record was held by the indomitable Joan, who 
 probably no more fitted by physical development than any- 
 body else to enjoy the honour, yet did so by sheer force of 
 character. The point she had touched was several feet 
 higher than that of the no less indomitable Philippa. 
 
 It hardly admitted of question that the plight in which 
 her friend was displayed gave Delia the idea. In mind she 
 felt herself to be his inferior to a cruel degree. But in 
 phj'Sique there could be no doubt she was immensely his 
 superior. There was one point at least on which she would 
 not have to bow the knee. The desire to make the most 
 of that advantage was eminently feminine, nor was it less 
 so that she should be possessed by an aspiration to shine in 
 the eyes of one who in his own person united all the other 
 Christian virtues. She had had it from his own lips that 
 feats of an athletic prowess excited his pleasure and his envy. 
 Surely it would be sweet for the despised she to arouse his 
 
 244 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 wonder by the exhibition of a personal skill which he could 
 never hope to acquire. 
 
 With creatures of impulse thought is action. The idea 
 once flashed across her mind, it would not allow her a 
 moment to reflect. In a second, with a joyous, defiant, 
 carolling little laugh she ran to the wall, and before 
 the unsuspecting young man had time to observe, her 
 birdlike feet were scrambling up stone by stone through the 
 moss and crannies. By the time her companion could 
 rise from his seat on the bank to look at what she was about 
 she was already on the parapet of the wall above his head. 
 
 " I say, I say ! What are you doing ! " 
 
 Her wild feet were already moving along that narrow 
 and precarious coping which formed the top. Jauntily, 
 joyously, she glided across with exquisite and elastic poise 
 as one exultingly unconscious of peril. It was superb ; 
 but the startled witness felt already a shock of nervous 
 bewilderment. 
 
 " I sa3'. 1 say, Miss Broke, what are you doing ! " 
 
 Miss Broke turned an apple-blossom cheek over her 
 shoulder towards him, and proceeded to look down upon her 
 friend with an arch laugh lurking in the corners of her lips. 
 The notes of his self-evident alarm floating up from below 
 were as wine and music to her. 
 
 " You must come down, you know. It isn't safe, I am 
 sure it isn't safe." 
 
 She paid him no heed. There was that kind of madness 
 in her pulses which his startled solicitude increased. 
 Pouting with mfectious little trills of joy, her winged feet 
 trip]ied on and on across the wall. Her petticoats twinkled 
 about lier ankles like the motions of a bird with a white 
 breast, falling and rocketting. Her fair curves swayed 
 in the sunlii,dit. Once she made a roguish pretence of 
 missine her footing, and as the heart of the beholder leapt 
 in sudden agitation, she swung round on her audacious 
 heels, and confronted him with a face as frankly fearless, as 
 franklv mischievous as ever embla, zoned tlie vaunting 
 spirit of woninn. Slie looked as tantalising as a squirrel, as 
 bold as a robin, and as sure-footed as a chamois leaping 
 along the face of the Alps. 
 
 Before he could guess whither her course was pointed, 
 
 245 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 she had reached the base of the hunting tower at the far end 
 
 of the wall. Immediately her deft feet began to climb that 
 dizzy pinnacle. In vain did he call to her, now in tones of 
 horror. She did not stop nor hesitate, nor once glance 
 back. The madness that had taken her had intensified its 
 grip. 
 
 It was wonderful that she should be able to find so many 
 holds for her toes along the sheer front of the masonr3^ 
 The ivy crumpled, and now and then gave way under her 
 hands, the dust was shaken off it and out of its accompany- 
 ing moss ; bats flapped their wings in the upper air ; the 
 very crazy old tower itself seemed to grow giddy and ap- 
 peared to sway. Up and up went the mad thing, not 
 hearing now the entreaties and commands issued to her 
 from below. The amazed, the horrified eye-witness 
 began to lose his self-control. 
 
 " Stop for God's sake ! " he shouted. 
 
 Nothing, however, could check Delia in her extraordinary 
 course. Grasping the tenacious wild growths immedi- 
 ately over her head, and tucking her toes in the invisible 
 niches where the mortar had crumbled from between the 
 stones, she went hand over hand, up and up. 
 
 So furious had been her onslaught on that sheer surface, 
 and such had been the quickness with which she had over- 
 come it, that now she swung a truly dangerous height 
 above him, more than two- thirds of the way towards the 
 platform at the top. And it may have been that the 
 terror-stricken tones of the young man's entreaties pene- 
 trated to her, for here suddenly she paused for the first 
 time. She turned an instant to look back. In that instant 
 she was lost. 
 
 Swinging in mid-air between earth and sky, the impulse 
 that had carried her so far went from her as suddenly as it 
 came. The power to move in one direction or the other 
 ran out of her in that brief but fatal moment of her looking 
 back. She had no longer the self-possession or the courage 
 to pursue her upward course ; and the sense she now had 
 of an abyss yawning underneath completely bereft her of 
 the power to descend. She fluttered impotent as a leaf 
 of autumn, some seventy feet in mid air. 
 
 It needed not the cry of her desj)air nor her face of snow 
 246 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 for the horrified spectator to comprehend that a paralysis 
 had overtaken her. As she swung and swayed outwards into 
 space it looked that any moment she would grow too faint 
 to retain her hold, and that she would be cast dead at his 
 feet. The dreadful imminence of her danger had the effect 
 of restoring his presence of mind. Porter was no athlete, 
 but he had an all-powerful intelligence. He cried out 
 to her in great confident tones of reassurance — 
 
 " Hold on a minute, and I will come to you." 
 
 That was the beginning of a struggle between life and 
 death. The first fact that penetrated the consciousness 
 of the young man was that to climb up the tower directly 
 from the mound of earth on which he stood was impossible. 
 He must go to the farther end of the wall, where the ascent 
 to the coping was comparatively easy to an active person. 
 Porter could not call himself that, but under the goad of 
 fear he clambered up to the top of the wall as quickly as 
 another. Once there he had to proceed along the narrow 
 and, to him, unnerving parapet that led to the base of the 
 tower. He could not trust himself to walk across it, there- 
 fore he went down on all- fours, and made his precarious 
 way upon his hands and knees. This mode was much the 
 surer, although it cut the palms of his hands and pierced 
 the knees of his trousers. 
 
 The wretched girl was still clinging half senseless to the 
 side of the tower by the time Porter found himself beneath 
 it. She hung now some fifty feet above him ; he had the 
 peculiar physical awkwardness that nature inflicts upon 
 the thinker ; the innate phj^sical cowardice which is the 
 penalty of the imaginative gift ; his heart beat cruelly ; 
 his breast rose and fell in the painful effort to procure 
 breath ; the sweat leapt out of every pore ; his limbs were 
 as paper ; and yet if the child was not incontinently to be 
 dashed in pieces without his lifting a finger for her deliver- 
 ance, he would be compelled to swing his leaden bulk into 
 space, and ascend the sheer face of the tower. 
 
 He did not hesitate. In an obscure fashion he realized 
 the grim significance of the adage, " He who hesitates is 
 lost." An instant for reflection ; an instant for reason to 
 approve, for commonsense to sanction, and his effort would 
 not be made. A moment's tarrying while he reviewed his 
 
 247 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 so grievous physical limitations and the appalling magnitude 
 of the task and the creature would be dead upon the green 
 ground. He was content with a single idea: If she, a 
 child, can climb up there, I, Alfred Porter, can climb 
 there too. 
 
 It came over the young man even in the moment he 
 took his resolve that his flesh, his brain, his nerves had 
 the consistency of pap ; but the indomitable will was 
 stronger in him than the clay. He forced himself to rise 
 from his bleeding hands and knees, attacked the crevices 
 before him with his feet and made a convulsive clutch at 
 the moss and ivy above his head. He raised himself up 
 with his one idea. Mechanically he began to draw his 
 body up the cliff-like surface, precisely in the fashion which 
 five minutes before had been revealed to him while the 
 blood ran cold in his veins. He would have had no idea 
 as to the manner in which he should attempt the climb had 
 the means been left to his own invention. But he had seen 
 Delia gripping with her fingers and thrusting at the ivy 
 with her feet. He found himself doing the same, by 
 the mechanical force of imitation. Immediately he 
 found his toes running into nooks capable of affording foot- 
 hold, and his hands cleaving to roots sufficientl}' tenacious 
 to support his weight. It was then borne in upon 
 him that he was ascending into space with surprising 
 rapidity and miraculous ease. It seemed no more diffi- 
 cult, no more precarious than ascending a ladder. Like 
 many another act of hardihood, it was the inception that 
 made the supreme demand. Resolution is the talisman. 
 It is the gathering of the reluctant forces, the making up of 
 the mind in the face of the protest of reason, the determina- 
 tion to flout Failure's mocking assurances that taxes the 
 Trojan energies. Once launched upon the grim enterprise, 
 and the sensibility to risk is merged in the overmastering 
 physical effort, in the sudden splendid lust to achieve. 
 
 Porter's first steps had been involuntary. But finding 
 himself borne onwards and upwards so lightl}', so easily, 
 a rare sense of exhilaration was kindled in him. The 
 sporting instinct asserted itself in his pulses for the first 
 time in his life. And with it came that intrepid insouciance 
 which is the hallmark and the birthright of the born sports- 
 
 248 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 man, which he exhibits in the crises of the games he happens 
 to be plaj'ing : the leader of cavalry recovering the guns ; 
 the foxhunter taking his own line across a blind country ; 
 the three-quarter getting over on the stroke of the 
 clock. His limbs performed their motions instinctively ; 
 his whole being was surrendered to an idea. A pair of 
 unstable feet faltered in a niche high above his head. If 
 he burst his heart he would not be able to breathe again 
 until he felt them in his hands. 
 
 Moving upwards through space he was conscious of 
 nothing but that. Danger and insecurity did not exist. 
 Flesh and blood, sunlight and green fields did not exist. 
 Time there was not, nor place. At last he was up to her ; 
 he was touching the hem of her skirt. Releasing one hand 
 from the ivy, he encircled her tightly with his unencum- 
 bered arm. He became superhuman as he did so. At 
 that instant he was suddenly endowed with the strength of 
 Samson and the heroes of fable. Hoarsely he told her to 
 fold her arms round his throat. She obeyed with two 
 little throbbing wrists, as cold as stone. 
 
 How they got down alive neither of them could ever 
 say. Afterwards they could only point to the fact that 
 they lived to tell the tale. The descent was a marvellous 
 business, but that was a moment when our young man 
 wielded marvellous qualities. He carried the talisman in 
 his spirit that performs the miracles of which we read. 
 Your one idea men ; your men who have the capacity to 
 resolve their souls in their desires seldom fail. Porter was 
 surrendered wholly to the gods of his enormous resolution, 
 and step by step they brought him and the shivering cower- 
 ing burden that he carried in complete safety to the 
 coping of the wall. 
 
 " I am all right now, I can walk now," said Deha faintly, 
 the moment her feet touched solid bricks and mortar. 
 
 " You are sure ? " he said, allowing her to slide off his 
 shoulders on to it. 
 
 Finding herself on familiar territory, she made an effort 
 to regain her self-possession and was able to do so. Almost 
 directly the clear tone of her voice advised her deliverer of 
 the fact, and he allowed her to make her own practised way 
 along the parapet to the far end of the wall where the 
 
 249 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 descent to mother earth was easiest. He laboured after her 
 in the decidedly less dignified and less comfortable fashion 
 in which he had crossed it before. 
 
 When the green earth at last received them again, 
 Porter's first act was to prostrate himself at full length and 
 bury his face in the grass. For about a minute he lay mute 
 and panting like a dog, and then began to sob hysterically. 
 Directly afterwards the agitated creature bending over 
 him was terrified to find that he was become insensible. 
 She pulled him by the shoulder but he gave no sign. She 
 called his name, but he made no answer. She knelt down 
 at his side, and tried to raise him up, but putting forth all 
 her little strength she found he did not yield. Great was 
 her alarm, but she managed to retain her presence of mind. 
 She remembered that a clear stream of water babbled 
 over stones at the bottom of the hill. Running down 
 to it as fast as she could, she took off her straw hat, and 
 filled the crown of it with water. To return with this 
 specific up the steep incline was not easy, but so quick and 
 delicate was she of foot, that, without spilling a drop of it, 
 she was back at the side of her friend in quite a short 
 time. 
 
 To her immense relief she discovered him to be sitting up 
 with his head resting against the ruin. He was very pale. 
 
 " Water," he gasped at the sight of her bearing it 
 gravely in front of her. 
 
 She gave the hat to him with a still greater gravity. He 
 drank greedily. 
 
 "Ha ! " he said, drawing a deep breath, "how good!" 
 
 " Can you ever forgive me ? " said Delia, very white and 
 frightened. 
 
 He looked unflinchingly upon her distress. 
 
 " I don't know that you deserve to be forgiven," he said^ 
 with a deliberation that made her wince. 
 
 " You will forgive me," she said, very near to tears. 
 
 " It was incredibly foolish. Tell me what devil it was 
 that possessed you." 
 
 She burst into tears. 
 
 " You might have been killed," she said. 
 
 " And you ? " 
 
 " I wish I had been," she said bitterly. 
 250 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 Her distress was rather painful in its realness, but he 
 kept his pity under control. 
 
 " You must tell me what made you do it." 
 
 Delia's face burnt with shame. 
 
 " I am waiting," he said. 
 
 Finding him as implacable as ever, and herself as com- 
 pletely under his dominion here as in all things since she had 
 known him, she prepared to submit. She would have bitten 
 off her tongue rather than make the confession he was 
 forcing out of her. But there was no help for it. As he 
 sat there with his deadly pale fare, the knees of his trousers 
 cut, and blood visible on the palms of his hands, he was as 
 inexorable as the piece of stone against which he leant. 
 Trembling violently, she stifled her tears, and gathered 
 every crumb of her resolution. After all, like her sisters', 
 hers was a sufficiently Spartan character. 
 
 " I knew myself to be despicable," she said, not flinching 
 from her punishment now she was called on to undergo it, 
 nor sparing herself a single stroke of humiliation, " in 
 almost all things compared with you. But when you were 
 so much out of breath coming up the hill, it made me glad 
 to think there was just one thing, however silly and small 
 it was, in which I should not have to acknowledge myself 
 beaten. I thought it would be delightful to let you see 
 I was not altogether good for nothing, and that there were 
 some things I could do. This is the consequence." 
 
 But his compassion was still withheld. His attitude 
 was not what she had been led to look for in one so kind. 
 
 " I deserve my fate," she said humbly. " I deserve 
 it all." 
 
 " It may be salutary." 
 
 " I shall never be vainglorious again," said the child. 
 
 " Suppose we try to forget ? " 
 
 " You will forgive me." 
 
 " There is nothing to forgive, as far as I am concerned 
 personally, although you did juggle with two lives I esteem. 
 The real offence was committed against yourself." 
 
 " But you are angry with me." 
 
 " No. It may hurt me a little to find you acting un- 
 worthily. I have not passed it over Hghtly, even at the 
 risk of being a prig who ought to be kicked, because you 
 
 251 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 have a character that is worth taking a few risks over. 
 Had you been of another sex, I am not sure that it would 
 not have been my painful duty to emphasize what I mean 
 in the robust English fashion." 
 
 By now amusement had softened his eyes. 
 
 DeUa struggled against a renewal of her tears. 
 
 " How stupid and foolish I must seem ! " she said 
 bitterly. " How weak you must think me ! I do try so 
 hard not to be, and yet the more I try the more hopeless do 
 I become. You seem so strong and sure. - Everything 
 you do seems to be wise and right, while I do nothing but 
 expose my folly. I wish you had not come up to me at 
 all. I wish you had let me stay there and kill myself ! " 
 
 Delia stamped her foot, and again the tears appeared. 
 She was a woman who saw herself degraded in the eyes of 
 one whose poor opinion was unendurable. 
 
 " I suppose when the truth comes out," she went on, 
 " you can ride better than I, although you told me you 
 had never mounted a horse in your life." 
 
 " Or stand on my head better, or play cricket better," 
 said he, laughing. 
 
 "No, I don't mean it Uke that," said poor Delia. "It 
 is because everything you do inflicts me so much with 
 my own weakness. You know I began by hating 
 you ; and I am afraid I shall end by hating you. It does 
 make me so miserable." 
 
 " We must learn not to underrate ourselves," said her 
 friend with great simplicity. He could see now how over- 
 come she was by what had happened, and felt the necessity 
 of being more gentle. "We creatures of moods suffer in- 
 tensely ; none but ourselves know what we suffer ; but 
 we must learn to be strong, we must learn not to yield. 
 In time we may think of ourselves much less meanly." 
 
 " But others will not." 
 
 " If we strive ever to be brave we shall cease to care what 
 others think of us. The opinion of others about ourselves 
 ought not to count. Our own minds are the highest tri- 
 bunals before which we can be brought. Those are the 
 only courts that can weigh the mass of evidence." 
 
 "It is easy for you to disregard the opinion of others, 
 you who are so powerful, so self-reliant, but you do not 
 
 25^ 
 
TWO ON A TOWER 
 
 know how difficult it is for me. I have no confidence in 
 myself at all. I — I am not like you and my sister Joan. 
 You have strong characters that never falter, and go right 
 always. I — I don't know which way to turn or what to 
 do!" 
 
 Sobs broke out of the distressed little creature, and in 
 her despair she covered her eyes. No words from her 
 friend, however wise, however solicitous, were able to 
 soften the sense of inferiority by which she was over- 
 powered. Why she should be suffering so acutely at that 
 moment he did not know. Far was he from suspecting 
 that his own too-potent personality was the cause. The 
 knowledge that she was humiliated in his eyes had over- 
 borne her. She felt it would not be possible to hold up 
 her head any more. She was disgraced forever in the eyes 
 of him whose fair opinion she valued above that of all the 
 world. 
 
 Recognizing at last how hopeless was the task of healing 
 her wounded self-esteem, her companion rose from his tus- 
 sock of earth, and suggested that they should retrace their 
 steps to the house. Little passed between them as they 
 went. It was too plain that Delia had surrendered herself 
 to the luxury of being miserable. Mis-reading the main 
 cause of her unhappiness, he was inclined to believe that 
 her present mood would be medicinal. The cast of his 
 mind was naturally not lenient. He could not help feeling 
 that her recent conduct merited severe retribution. She 
 was engaged now in meting it out to herself, and he could 
 hardly bring himself to deplore that she suffered under it so 
 intensely. 
 
 Her distress gave him an even finer sense of her delicacy 
 than he had had before. Such a fragility could easily 
 bruise. Evidently women were fearfully and wonderfully 
 made, although to be sure this frail little thing could hardly 
 be called a woman yet. He found himself speculating 
 on her fate as he walked beside her. The spectre of the 
 average man rose again before his eyes. Too palpably 
 was she the pre-destined victim of some rough and ready, 
 eminently well-meaning savage. He pitied her profoundly. 
 Poor little devil, some honest rogue would see to it that she 
 bled ! 
 
 253 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 He left her in the drive. She stood wistfully to watch 
 his insignificant figure recede out of sight among the trees. 
 She then turned her steps towards a thicket which lay 
 beyond a lawn behind the house. Penetrating to the 
 heart of it, she flung herself upon her face beneath a great 
 tree, and wept the bitterest tears she had ever shed. 
 
 254 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 Preparations for Comedy 
 
 ALL this time our leading comic female personage 
 was gathering her forces for what lay before her. 
 She rejoiced, as you know, in the dual endowment of courage 
 and wisdom. The nature of the calamity that had fallen 
 upon her was a tax upon them both. It is a pity that the 
 conjunction of these qualities is not a purer source of 
 gratification. The presence of the one too often implies the 
 necessity for the other. Wisdom involves a full measure 
 of clear sight ; a capacity to look around and ahead. 
 Courage, on the other hand, is required to support such a 
 bold proceeding. Under the glare of the cold light of 
 reason, or the spell of a sage anticipation, it does not get 
 a fair chance. A martyr would hardly consent to walk 
 to the stake if he were not convinced of the immortality of 
 the soul. 
 
 Mrs. Broke recognized acutely the fatal nature of her 
 son's act. She believed that as a family they lived in a 
 moment when every ounce of social prestige they could 
 scrape together must be utilized to keep their heads above 
 the stream. They had enemies. There would be no lack 
 of volunteers for the agreeable duty of performing the happy 
 dispatch. There were persons only too anxious, too 
 willing, to undertake the humane office of inserting a 
 piece of lead in their shoes, so that once in the water they 
 might " go down to Davy Jones " in the most effectual 
 manner. You cannot be powerful and exclusive, and have 
 a reputation for arrogance without being encumbered with 
 friends of this kind. Wherever there is a dying lion the 
 jackals gather. 
 
 255 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 However, in the stoicism of her spirit she did not flinch 
 from the coup de grace of the outside world so much as 
 another might have done. She valued power not so much 
 as a mere possession, but rather for what it could do. 
 The grave difficulties, when all was said, rose in her domestic 
 circle. Turning the matter over in her mind during the 
 watches of the night, she had to make the confession that, 
 allowing for all the inestimable advantages her courage 
 and wisdom conferred upon her, there was one point in 
 which she went in terror of that simple hearty mediaevalist, 
 her husband. 
 
 She had made a comprehensive and exhaustive study of 
 that immaculate gentleman. In any given situation she 
 was tolerably sure of how he would act. She had made an 
 inventory of his character and ideas. But there were just 
 two clauses in it that foreshadowed the gravity of the issue at 
 present besetting him. Sense of humour, nil ; Pride, the 
 algebraic figure, x. This eternal unknown quantity baffled 
 her. That apart he stood forth a lusty beef-eating, beer- 
 drinking British farmer ; a consummately amenable animal, 
 provided you did not keep him waiting for his meals. Up 
 to that point he was as simple, as honest as a horse ; up 
 to that point his emotional system had been tabulated 
 with a highly sagacious nicety. But this pride of his, this 
 survival of other ages in him, was different. Its depths had 
 not been plumbed. They were a little terrible, a little 
 legendary. And they derived an additional reputation for 
 profundity owing to their limpidity of surface. 
 
 Sleeping and awake, the problem gave her no peace. 
 The longer she put off the evil hour, the more difficult it 
 grew. It was imperative that all should be confessed 
 without delay, lest he find out by other means. It was 
 unlike her to shirk an ordeal, but in this matter again 
 and again was she confronted by her vacillation. She 
 would go to bed with the determination hot upon her 
 to tell him the first thing in the morning. She would rise 
 with the resolution to tell him immediately after luncheon. 
 She would dress for dinner, and vow to tell him the last 
 thing before retiring. She began to grow a little 
 despicable in her own eyes. Such weakness was no part of 
 her character. 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR COMEDY 
 
 Miss Wayling also was a person whom it was vital tc 
 consider. Common equity forbade delay. In this case 
 the task did not daunt her, although she was keenly 
 desiroiis to spare her all avoidable pain. To this end she 
 waited unHl Billy's wife and her aunt, Miss Sparrow, had 
 been installed quietly in the small cottage on the hill. She 
 made no secret of their coming. She took an early oppor- 
 tunity of saying — 
 
 " Two very dear people in whom I am interested are 
 coming to live in the old empty cottage on the hill. You 
 have had no one for it, Edmund, since old Duffin the 
 gardener died. It might as well be occupied as he idle 
 and rot." 
 
 On a gracious morning of spring when the rapturously 
 happy women from the purlieus of Hampden Road had 
 been housed in their new abode, Mrs. Broke made a journey 
 up the hill to see them. She had Miss Wayling to accom- 
 pany her. The discreet woman felt that if the girl was 
 allowed the opportunity of viewing aunt and niece with 
 perfectly disinterested eyes, the impression she was likely 
 to bear away would stand her in good stead when she 
 received the blow that unwittingly they were condemned 
 to deal her. 
 
 Upon their return, consciously refreshed in spirit by a 
 walk bathed in sweet airs and the scent of the young spring 
 flowers, they talked without reserve. It was not the least 
 of Mrs. Broke's gifts that no one could long inhabit the 
 zone of her energetic gaze without revealing much that 
 a less strenuous intelligence would have been content to 
 overlook. She had become one of the few, the singularly 
 few, who could be said to have an insight into the nature 
 of Miss Wayling. To the adulating mob which formed her 
 world she passed as cold, proud, formal, and exclusive, 
 a person with whom it was neither a light task nor a 
 pleasant to have to do. Mrs. Broke went deeper. Her 
 habit of minute observation had enabled her to form a 
 humaner estimate. In her dealings with the world she 
 might not be particularly scrupulous, but she loved her son 
 too tenderly to sacrifice wantonly his happiness for a mess 
 of pottage. She now felt that having taken the precaution 
 to mitigate the blow as far as lay in her power, she could 
 
 257 " - R 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 deal it with a moderately definite knowledge of the manner 
 in which it would be accepted. 
 
 " What did you think of my pensioners, my dear Maud ? " 
 she said, in the privacy of her own room. " Are they 
 not charming ? Are they not wholly delightiul, single- 
 minded, and fresh ? " 
 
 " They are, indeed," said Miss Wayling, with a little more 
 animation in her eyes than was usual. " Oh, if one could 
 only be like them ! It nearly overcame me to see them so 
 happy. I think Alice is the fairest, sweetest creature I 
 have ever seen." 
 
 " And the old aunt ? " 
 
 " The old aunt is a dear. That sweet, old-fashioned 
 curtsey ! And the way her voice shook when she so 
 timidly gave you the handful of flowers she had picked 
 out of the garden. I would like to steal half of them if I 
 may. And that beautiful haunted old face that seems 
 almost frightened to find itself so happy." 
 
 " They are very moving and beautiful. There is hardly 
 a name for such a surpassing simplicity. I should say it is 
 even more difficult for people like ourselves to achieve such 
 a simplicity as that than it is for the rich man to achieve 
 the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 " Not forgetting the rich woman," said Miss Wayling, 
 with a wan laugh. 
 
 " True, my poor child ! " 
 
 " But these dear people do seem to have achieved it." 
 
 " Yes ; I think they have after long intolerable years of 
 misery. But I took you to see them because there is a 
 story, a rather remarkable story, I want to tell you. It 
 involves us both ; but however and in what manner we 
 may be disposed to resent the outrage of our own personal 
 feelings, I can only pray that we spare one another. What 
 you will suffer, I shall suffer too. We shall be a pair of 
 lacerated women. I only pray that in our torment we do 
 not turn and rend each other." 
 
 The dramatic change in the voice of the elder woman 
 startled the girl. Every word was charged with meaning. 
 Yet she could not conceive how the two poor women at the 
 cottage could have a tragic bearing on her life. Mrs. Broke 
 did not allow her perplexity to remain unresolved. Briefly 
 
 258 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR COMEDY 
 
 she outlined the lamentable history. She took the girl's 
 shrinking hands in her own. 
 
 " I do not ask you to forgive him," she said, " but in the 
 name of that wretched innocent whom we have seen this 
 morning, I ask you to pardon him." 
 
 " There is nothing for me to forgive ; there is nothing 
 for me to pardon," said Miss Wayling, in a voice that was 
 devoid of a trace of passion. " From the first he did not 
 care for me. I was conscious of that. And if he ever 
 showed me any favour — and I cannot recall that he ever 
 did — it was never more than a formal and tardy concession 
 to circumstances. I had come to see all that lately." 
 
 " Ah, but you, my dear, poor, brave child ! " 
 
 Mrs. Broke held the cold shrinking fingers firmer. With 
 a sudden effort the girl drew them away, and turned them 
 desolately against her heart. Her white face had become 
 pinched ; her cheeks had fallen in. 
 
 " I wanted but this," she said, in a voice that had grown 
 metallic in its hardness. " I, the despised, the rejected of 
 women, have my mockery complete ! I knew from the 
 first I could not hold him ; I knew I could not draw him 
 to me ; I felt myself to be repelling him, as I repel all the 
 people that I care for. Never was a fate more bitter and 
 perverse. Either I am fawned upon by a host of parasites, 
 or I am shunned because of the distaste I breed in those 
 whom I long to call my friends. I knew I should lose 
 him ! The last time I saw him there was something here 
 in my heart that told me he could never be mine." 
 
 In the first overwhelming anguish of the girl's position 
 Mrs. Broke made no attempt to console. She had judged 
 shrewdly as to the manner in which it would be received. 
 The pangs of wounded self-love were stinging her beyond 
 endurance. There are no half-courses with such natures. 
 Perhaps it is only once or twice in a lifetime that their pride 
 will allow them to utter a complaint. And when bleeding 
 and excoriated past all suffering it does, no voice crying 
 in the wilderness can sound more wailfully to human ears ! 
 Mrs. Broke, hearing it, was harrowed by it. She under- 
 stood its meaning. There were fibres in that sensitive 
 organism being wrenched out by the roots. 
 
 " The last time we met," she went on, " I could see he 
 
 259 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 meant to get free. And if I had not been so selfish I should 
 have made it easier for him. If I had not been so absorbed 
 in myself he would have been helped to a release. But 
 I could not do it ; I am not of the clay that is capable of 
 self-sacrifice. The effect I have had on his sisters has only 
 been the reflection of that I have had on him. From the 
 first they have shunned me and distrusted me, as all really 
 nice people do. There are so many people who are not 
 nice at all who court me because of my unfortunate posi- 
 tion, that it makes indifference from people I would like 
 to be my friends so much harder to bear. Perhaps it is 
 because I am so weary of everything, so weary of my gilded 
 cage, that I am thrown back upon the contemplation of 
 myself. I know I devote too much thought to myself. 
 I am doing so now, I know I am, when, dear Mrs. Broke, I 
 ought to be thinking of you. After all, it falls so very much 
 harder on you. How do you bear it ! I do feel for you, 
 dear Mrs. Broke. How good and brave you are ! " 
 
 The elder woman received her in her arms, and kissed 
 her like a mother. 
 
 " 1 at least understand you, my poor, poor child," she 
 said. " And if you were stung to make these confidences 
 oftener you would be more happy. It does not pay for 
 us women to be too reserved. It is not always wise to 
 wait until a supreme moment compels us to expose the 
 thoughts that have gathered in our hearts. They may 
 congeal so easily if we do not relieve them now and then. 
 It is noble of you to accept this blow so stedfastly ; I am 
 sure it makes my task so much less full of pain." 
 
 They remained a long time together, offering to each 
 other a consolation that helped them to forget their private 
 torment. It is said their sex can be supremely tender 
 when their suffering is on a common ground ; when eye 
 to eye they look upon the gashes the same beloved object 
 has dealt with his impartial steel. In such cases, they 
 have nothing to fear from one another when they show 
 their wounds. 
 
 From that hour Mrs. Broke nerved herself anew for the 
 greater task. It grew each day ; each day increased the 
 guilt of her connivance. 
 
 " It is imperative that I should tell Mr. Broke," she con- 
 260 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR COMEDY 
 
 fessed to Maud Wayling ; " but you do not know how 
 fearful I am, how afraid ! " 
 
 '* Surely, dear Mrs. Broke, delay is dangerous. To- 
 morrow the task will be still harder ; and if he made the 
 discovery himself he might not find it so easy to forgive," 
 
 " If he made the discovery himself he would not forgive. 
 I know him only too well. And as it is, I fear he will never 
 forgive our poor boy. There are points on which I have 
 known men to be implacable." 
 
 The unhappy women were seen to shiver before one 
 another's eyes. 
 
 261 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 In which our First Comedian makes his Bow 
 before an appreciative Audience 
 
 IN the course of that afternoon Mrs. Broke took the 
 plunge under the spur of necessity. She could no 
 longer afford to run the risk of the secret leaking out. She 
 was too familiar with her husband's Draconian cast to 
 continue to incur so great v? danger. She must away with 
 all cowardice, lest she should be implicated in her son's act 
 
 Broke, as usual, entered the library wearily, under 
 protest, to engage as he believed in a futile discussion of 
 their financial state. 
 
 " Money, money, money ! " he said, sinking, as was 
 his wont during these periods of boredom, into his customary 
 chair at the side of the lire. 
 
 " Something new," said Mrs. Broke, " and something 
 worse." 
 
 Her brevity was electrical. Broke sat up suddenly, 
 galvanised by her tone. 
 
 " I — ah, can hardly conceive anything worse than our 
 need of money, our attempts to make bricks without 
 straw." 
 
 " Try," said the laconic woman. 
 
 " That fellow has not been playing tricks ? " 
 
 " Your guess is excellent." 
 
 " They have not — ah, fallen out ? " 
 
 " No ; but Billy has married another." 
 
 Broke's shout rang through the room like the firing of 
 a shot. 
 
 262 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 Her brevity was calculated. She had carefully thought 
 out beforehand the most fitting manner in which to tell 
 him. Expedience was hardly ever divorced from that 
 inexorably sagacious mind, even in moments of severe 
 affliction. She had come to see that in this case, all 
 attempts at breaking the news, all verbiage, all the sugar 
 to coat the bitter pill, would not only fail of its effect, 
 but would have a tendency to aggravate. Your bluntly- 
 honest characters demand a perpetual exhibition of that 
 quality in others. Flummery is not for them. 
 
 To Broke's shout of amazement his wife responded with 
 the perfectly calm lustre of her eyes. 
 
 " D — do you know what you are saying, woman ? " 
 
 " Edmund," she said, " you may find it the least bit 
 premature to trumpet your astonishment in this tre- 
 mendous key. It may result in anti-climax. Because 
 you have yet to hear the worst. Billy is not only married, 
 but he is married to a person who has not a penny ; a 
 person he was good enough to take out of Perkin and 
 Warbeck's shop in Bond Street. He took her from the 
 counter." 
 
 Our hero rose out of his chair. He proceeded to stagger 
 up and down the large room with both hands pressed tightly 
 against the sides of his head. He was as one suffering 
 the pangs of a splitting neuralgia or an excruciating 
 toothache. 
 
 " Impossible, impossible ! " he said at intervals. 
 
 His wife did not utter a syllable until this paroxysm 
 was over. It is useless to ask a man to be calm the moment 
 a nerve has been torn out by the roots. She stood per- 
 fectly still, and waited for the first dire pinches of his 
 agony to pass. She stood with ^he inscrutable, the 
 impartial countenance with which Juno may look on at 
 the frenzies of Jupiter. 
 
 " Can you bear the details, Edmund ? " she said at last. 
 
 " I don't know," he said in an impotent voice. 
 
 In a few succinct phrases, unsoftened to that wounded 
 understanding, untuned to those devastated ears, she gave 
 the salient facts, in so far as she was acquainted with 
 them. She concluded her recital in these words — 
 
 " Edmund, here is the outline of the affair as it exists, 
 263 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 We are ruined and mocked ; do not let us conceal those 
 facts from ourselves ; but, acting on a true conception of 
 our position, I would ask you to display wisdom as well 
 as fortitude. You will, Edmund. I am sure, do the right 
 thing." 
 
 He stopped a moment in his peregrination of the room, 
 but his reply was inarticulate. 
 
 " I ask you, Edmund, to give me your shoulder. I 
 suffer as intensely as you. We cannot piece together 
 that which is broken ; we cannot undo that which is done ; 
 but mitigate the consequences of this disaster we can and 
 must. I have already taken them into my consideration, 
 and stand persuaded that we shall serve our interests 
 privately and as a family by being just. Suffer as we may, 
 we must not fail in our first dut}'. We must give this 
 wretched tool of Providence the sanction of our recog- 
 nition." 
 
 She breathed heavily as she spoke these words. They 
 were not easy to utter. Stoical she might be, but they 
 galled her cruelly. Broke lifted his chin in perplexity. 
 
 " I can't understand," he said dully. 
 
 Our sagacious ladv, in the midst of the anguish that was 
 shaking her, showed him a half-humorous gleam of teeth. 
 
 " I appreciate your difficulty. But I see the duty 
 which lies before you, and I cannot too earnestly entreat 
 yon to perform it. You may agree with me, Edmund, or 
 y^ou may not, but I am persuaded that in all circum- 
 stances our duty, however irksome, indicates the path 
 along which is to be found our highest personal welfare. 
 However you may be moved to visit your resentment 
 upon Billy— and as his mother and with my heart bleeding 
 I am the first to admit that he has incurred it — I ask you 
 to use perfect equity in your dealings with his wife. I 
 am looking ahead." 
 
 " You are talking, woman, as though you were in- 
 sane ! " 
 
 In her husband's present state of mental anarchy she 
 saw it would be futile to proceed. She fell back upon 
 silence, therefore. But she continued to regard him with 
 a self-possession that had a considerable degree of pity in 
 it. He was still walking up and down in his rather sorry 
 
 264 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 manner. He was bewildered. He kept clutching at his 
 head, as if he desired to pluck out with his two hands 
 the jagged thoughts that were ploughing it in furrows. 
 In their present shape he could not endure them. It was 
 as though he wished to lift them bodily from that setting 
 which had overthrown his brain, denude them of their 
 flesh and blood, and hold them up before his eyes as cold 
 and sober documents printed in large type. 
 
 " I am only — ah — just making myself — ah — begin to 
 realize the meaning of all that you say," he said at last, 
 with a change of tone which his wife found very welcome, 
 for it implied that a measure of reason had returned. 
 " It sounds so unnatural at first that it rather knocks 
 you down. Do you think the fellow is mad ? " 
 
 " In a sense I do ; but it is not the sort of madness you 
 could prove before a jury." 
 
 "It is such a cruel cold-blooded, selfish thing to do as 
 far as we are concerned. He has not thought of us at all." 
 
 " We must not blame him for that altogether," said the 
 mother of his son. " We ourselves are also a little to blame 
 there. I am afraid from the first we got into a habit of 
 giving him too free a hand." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps you are right. And so in the end it 
 brings him to this ! " 
 
 " I have quite lately come to see that men of his type 
 need to b: trained with unfaltering care if they are to 
 prove the equal of their responsibilities. It has been our 
 poor boy's misfortune to be born into a class which has 
 found it perfectly easy to pander to its lusts for many 
 hundreds of years. And it has an hereditary appetite 
 also, because as a consequence it has become the most 
 self-indulgent class in the world." 
 
 " I deny that," said the hardened aristocrat vehemently. 
 
 His wife expected that he would, and indeed had spoken 
 with intention. After the first shock of the wound she 
 saw the need of administering an anaesthetic to lull the 
 subsequent agony. Any sm.all diversion from the imme- 
 diate matter that was racking him to pieces would be a 
 charity. 
 
 " You may deny it, Edmund, but I do not think you 
 will be able to disprove it. One shudders to recall the 
 
 265 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 host of impartial witnesses one could put in evidence 
 against us." 
 
 " There are no impartial witnesses in our case. Those 
 who are not on our level would always pull us down." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because — ah — they do not like us." 
 
 " My dear Edmund, has it not struck you that they 
 may have reasons, very excellent reasons, for not liking 
 us ? There is not a lust, not a whim, which place and 
 power have enabled us to gratify, that we have scrupled 
 to gratify at their expense. Are we not one and all 
 brought up on the dogma that the world is to ourselves 
 and our kindred ? Do not we in turn imbue our children 
 with it ? Do we ever hesitate, I ask you, Edmund, to 
 abuse our privileges to gain our ends ? Come what may, 
 everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, 
 so long as we dine off silver plate. All is well, provided 
 we do not defile the sources whence we obtain our purple 
 and fine linen ! They may well not like our idleness, our 
 arrogance, our laissez faire, our complete insensibility to 
 any interests outside our own." 
 
 " I have not the patience to listen. You — ah — annoy 
 me. You might be one of those orators in Hyde Park. 
 I will not believe we are so bad as that. If we are, how 
 have we got our position and how have we kept it for so 
 long ? " 
 
 " We have never found it very easy to keep, Edmund ; 
 and perhaps you will admit we are not finding it easy 
 now. And I suspect in the first place we did not 
 find it very easy to come by ; and the means by which we 
 did come by it might not strike us as particularly nice if 
 revealed at the present time." 
 
 " Why— ah— this Radical Socialist talk ? " 
 
 " My eyes have been unsealed a little of late. If you, 
 Edmund, could have come with me to the noisome place 
 in the north of London in which these poor women have 
 lived their lives ; if you could have heard them talk with 
 perfect candour of the squalor, hardship and disease to 
 which tlie}' have been bred, to which generations of their 
 forbears have been bred before them ; if, Edmund, you 
 could have seen the expression on their faces, it might 
 
 266 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 have unsealed your eyes too. Not again am I going to 
 permit myself a judgment of people of this sort. It is a 
 convenient and a natural thing for us to lay their mis- 
 fortunes to their own doors ; but when we do so, Edmund, 
 we are guilty of injustice, and we ought to be made to pay 
 for it. Their privations are no more the fruit of their 
 essential viciousness than our luxuries and privileges are 
 tie fruits of our essential excellence. I say it might have 
 unsealed your eyes, Edmund ; and, pondering over it 
 a.Kl meditating on it, I have almost come to believe that 
 i: is a tardy act of justice on the part of the god, Circum- 
 stance, ironical rufftan that he is ! which has caused our 
 ruin to be identified with these unhappy creatures who 
 have suffered at the hands of us and our like these many 
 hundreds of years." 
 
 " You — ah — mean to say he ruined his people because 
 of — ah — such fantastical notions as these ? " 
 
 Broke flung up his head and snuffed the air. 
 
 " I repeat, Edmund, that I am not sure that we do not 
 deserve to be ruined. I am not sure that it is not just 
 that all persons such as we have proved ourselves to be 
 should not ultimately go to the wall. As a body we have 
 done less than nothing to justify our existence. We may 
 on occasion have strenuously opposed projects of ameliora- 
 tion and enlightenment for our weaker brethren, but, as far 
 as I can observe, I do not think we have gone beyond that." 
 
 " Good God, woman, this is cant, Radical cant ! If we 
 have not been the backbone of this country, if we have 
 not kept it together, and shall do again, I would ask, 
 who has done and will ? " 
 
 " The classes below us, whom it generally suits our 
 purpose to ignore — the workers, the thinkers, the traders 
 the people who must eat their bread in the sweat of theii 
 brows." 
 
 " You — ah — should go into Parliament as the — ah — 
 representative of Labour." 
 
 He had man's contempt for the polemical faculty of 
 woman. He could allow her a free hand to deal with the 
 minutiae of daily life. He could even admit that nature 
 had fitted her sex to cope with small things, for were they 
 not in keeping with the feminine order of mind ? But on 
 
 207 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 really large affairs, on political questions, on questions of 
 precedent and tradition, she must not be permitted to 
 hold an opinion. No woman, however wise in her way, 
 could be trusted there. If any better illustration of that 
 incontrovertible truth could be furnished than his wife's 
 attitude towards the marriage of her son, and her advocacy 
 of socialism and democracy in order to justify it, he should 
 be grateful to be shown it. 
 
 " This is what you women do," he said. " You find 
 a grain of something that you — ah — persuade yourselves 
 is truth, and you make a peck of nonsense out of it. Let 
 us have no more of it, please ! " 
 
 Mrs. Broke gave him no more for the time being. She 
 was not sure that she had spoken with any depth of con- 
 viction. There had been an ulterior motive underlying 
 her argument, which at least in a measure it might be 
 said to have fulfilled. Mercifully it had diverted his 
 mind from the calamity assailing it. And if the tempest 
 of his anger could be divorced for the time being from the 
 subject that had called it forth, there was the hope, per- 
 haps too slender to be named, that the first furious force 
 of it might pass. 
 
 By nature, however, he was a man with a great power 
 of resentment. In the metaphor of his brother-in-law, 
 " he was a stayer." He could brood upon a private 
 wrong. And by taking thought his sense of outrage was 
 not likely to grow less. When one of his few primary 
 ideas was touched he was indeed formidable. Reason 
 could not reach him then. The tenderest or most burning 
 appeal would leave him as stone. And if it seemed neces- 
 sary to arm his heart against the first object of its affec- 
 tion, he was the man for the deed. He could be very 
 hard, very pitiless at the dictation of justice. 
 
 At dinner that evening the first evidence occurred of 
 his drastic temper. The girls were talking across the 
 table among themselves, and the name of their brother, 
 which was oftener on their lips perhaps than any other, 
 was being freely interchanged. 
 
 "Joan," said their father, in a tone that was to dwell in 
 their ears for evermore, " oblige me by never mentioning 
 that name again when I am present." 
 
 2b8 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 The startled creatures shot bewildered glances at one 
 another, and then at their mother. There was the 
 blankest stupefaction in their faces ; but their mother 
 replied to them with the peculiar inscrutability that was 
 hers always. As usual she was a closed book, of which 
 not a line could be read. But the blow had fallen from 
 the hand of one who was a friend, a comrade ; from the 
 hand of one whose natural accessibility rendered it tragic. 
 He had never used such a tone to them before. It was 
 terrible. It probably distressed them more than he was 
 aware ; a single word from him had the power to lacerate 
 Even as it was he saw their startled scarlet faces, and his 
 over%veening tenderness for them came to their aid. 
 
 " Something has happened," he said less harshly. 
 " You — ah — must get your mother to explain it to you." 
 
 Again they turned their covert glances to their mother, 
 but her face was masked with a meek smile. 
 
 Afterwards, in privacy, husband and wife sat late into 
 the night. Broke, with a premeditation unusual in him, 
 waited until he had dined, with the aid of a bottle of 
 sound claret, before he put forth the attempt to enter 
 into definite dealings with the matter. He wished to 
 gird himself in the security of a right and reasonable 
 mind. He wanted to grapple v^dth the thing, to look all 
 round it before he acted ; and when act he did he felt it 
 must not be said that he was moved to do so in a moment 
 of passion or imperfect sanity. 
 
 Upon taking thought he sat down after dinner and 
 composed a letter with compressed lips. He composed it 
 with a slowness and a deliberation of spirit that sealed the 
 doom of himself as well as that of his son. The sounding 
 of the last trump could not have been more final. It was 
 a bitter and unworthy production, but mercifully short. 
 There was not a word in it that a father is not entitled to 
 employ to his offspring ; not a word, not a phrase, en- 
 croached beyond the bald truth and the dictates of polite- 
 ness ; but the tone was vigour without warmth, brutality 
 without vehemence. It was absolutely frigid and un- 
 emotional ; in it the furiously outraged pride of the writer 
 was cloaked less effectually than he thought. 
 
 In effect he informed him that, in consideration of his 
 269 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 recent act, he was his son no more except in name. He 
 regretted it was not in his power to denude him of that 
 sole identification of what he had been formerly. Had it 
 been possible he would have done so, since he had been 
 at such pains to prove his unfitness for the custody of so 
 high and fair a thing. He proceeded to pass a sentence 
 of banishment. His act had put him outside the pale of 
 his friends ; irrevocably it had cut him off from his kind. 
 Not again was he to set foot in that house ; his name was 
 not to be spoken in it ; and on the understanding that 
 he was not to attempt the contamination of his sisters, 
 and that he did not prejudice his family by appearances in 
 the neighbourhood, he was to be in receipt of two hundred 
 pounds a year. It was suggested that he should obtain an 
 exchange from his present regiment of the Household 
 Cavalry to a less expensive branch of the service at the 
 earliest opportunity, as under no circumstances would 
 the sum in question be augmented. Sacrifices had for- 
 merly been made to maintain him in a state of decency. 
 Since he had now ceased to have a regard for decency, 
 they would be discontinued. He was also to understand 
 that even the sum of two hundred pounds a year was 
 provisional. It was in the power of his future conduct 
 to forfeit it. The writer went the length of conveying a 
 not very obscure hint to the effect that this allowance, 
 meagre as it was, would not have been made had there 
 been another bearer of his name in the male line to per- 
 petuate it. 
 
 Mrs. Broke read this unfortunate production with a 
 flushed face and a very odd expression. When she had 
 finished she stood a moment irresolutely looking at her 
 Ausband. ^ 
 
 " Fortunately, you cannot send it to-night. It is well 
 that you will be able to sleep upon it." 
 
 " I do not give another thought to it." 
 
 " Not to do so will be very injudicious." 
 
 " I cannot agree with you. No amount of reflection 
 would lead me to alter a word. It quite expresses what 
 I wish to say." 
 
 " But it is irrevocable." 
 
 " It is intended to be." 
 
 270 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 The mother laid her hand on his arm. 
 
 " You cannot mean that," she said, with a frightened 
 look in her eyes. " I do not think you realize what it 
 means." 
 
 " He will," said the father coldly. 
 
 " You cannot realize how wrong, how inhuman it is ! " 
 
 "It may or it may not be as you say, but I fancy as 
 far as our peace of mind is concerned, we shall do well to 
 consider the matter closed once and for all. We close it 
 now with your permission. " 
 
 " I do not give it, I cannot give it ! " said the mother 
 a Uttle \vildly. 
 
 Broke sealed the letter carefully without offering a 
 reply. His wife took him by the arm. 
 
 " I feel sure you do not appreciate all that is involved," 
 she said, turning her scared face up to him. "He is all 
 you have left. " 
 
 " Had I another I would not contribute a farthing to 
 his maintenance." 
 
 The mother flushed. 
 
 " You speak like a savage," she said, strangling a 
 groan. 
 
 The mask of inscrutability she wore habitually was in 
 danger of falling from her. 
 
 " You cannot do it, Edmund," she said in a rather thin 
 voice. " It will cost too much. There is no other. Think 
 what it means." 
 
 Broke presented a stony disregard. His gesture, or 
 rather his absence of gesture, was outlined to suggest 
 that he was already a little weary. Exhibitions of emotion 
 and that kind of neurotic display were apt soon to become 
 tiresome. But give Jane her due, she was not in the habit 
 of indulging in them. 
 
 " Edmund. I beseech you to listen " — there was a note 
 of terror in her voice — " when all is said, he is comparatively 
 a boy, a child. He did not know what he did." 
 
 " That is not true," said Broke, with leisurely directness. 
 " He knew what he did, but he did not care. If he did 
 not know what he did, why did he not take dayHght to 
 it, like an honest man ? " 
 
 The mother permitted herself a palpable lie. 
 271 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " He was thinking of poor Maud," she said, flushing 
 again and turning away her face. " He would have done 
 it openly had not her name been associated with his so 
 publicly. I blame myself for that. He wanted to spare 
 her as much as he could. It is to his credit." 
 
 Broke having suppressed a yawn, forced himself to take 
 a renewed interest in the discussion at this original twist 
 to it. He opened his eyes very wide, and his somewhat 
 cruel smile sank into her. 
 
 " I — ah — don't believe you," he said. " 1 — ah— don't 
 believe any of you women. You stick at nothing at a pinch. 
 You have a brief to patch up the best peace you can, and 
 this is how you do it." 
 
 " And if I do," said his wife, a little stung. 
 
 " Ha, there you go ! Now suppose I give you a word of 
 advice. Do not interfere. You cannot understand. You 
 will be wise to close the matter here and now." 
 
 It could not be said of Mrs. Broke that she was deficient 
 in spirit. A grim light burnt in her eyes. It generally 
 portended mischief, as her daughters were so well aware. 
 
 " When will you understand, Edmund," she said with 
 a calmness that was memorable, " that you are not a 
 mediaeval baron hving in the eleventh century. You 
 must please forget your lance and your poleaxe, and re- 
 member this is a civilised age." 
 
 She was beginning to feel that she was in imminent 
 danger of losing her temper. The tactician was already 
 merged in the woman and the mother. But she knew 
 that the moment she did so she might at once renounce 
 her cause. To lead Broke was possible under some con- 
 ditions, but any attempt at force must mean disaster. 
 The instant she set up her own indomitable will against 
 his she must be overthrown, for granting that they were 
 of an equal calibre, the man's inalienable prerogative still 
 remained to him of knocking her down. 
 
 Once again she had to make the admission that he was 
 a terrible creature when his blood was up. The survival 
 of the savage in him made it no woman's work to tackle 
 him. Moral suasion and the mysterious attribute of sex, 
 her chief weapons in our elder civilisation for her dealings 
 with the monster, had little sway with these brute natures. 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 She might make tacit appeals to his sense of chivalry ; 
 but they are likely to be disregarded by your savage 
 animal when his blood is up. She might be incomparable 
 in finesse ; accomplished in thrust and parry work ; but 
 these mediaevalists had a tendency to ride into battle 
 swinging heavier weapons. The rapier of the wittiest 
 woman that ever lived is of no avail in the cap d pie 
 style of fighting, 
 
 She was conscious of a great anguish rising like a flood 
 in her heart. To her whose life had been a long victory 
 over emotion, such a sense of its power filled her with horror. 
 If she lost her self-mastery now, her son was doomed; 
 yet never had it been so hard to retain. 
 
 " You don't understand," was his reply to the 
 most piercing of her appeals. " You can't be made to 
 understand. I — ah — daresay it is because you are his 
 mother. I — ah — presume there must be something wrong- 
 headed and irrational in being a mother. Take my advice 
 and say no more." 
 
 " I cannot ; beUeve me, Edmund, I cannot." 
 
 Her voice failed suddenly. For the first time Broke 
 saw a tear. It was not easy for her to weep. Tears of 
 hers had to be distilled drop by drop out of her unyielding 
 spirit. Broke was shocked. He had a reverential tender- 
 ness for her, deep down. She was very dear to him ; she 
 was a part of himself. He took her cold hand. 
 
 " You must bear up, old girl," he said. " I know it is 
 a facer for you, but you — ah — must try to keep a stiff 
 upper lip. You don't understand, and it is no good my 
 trying to make you. But it is a facer for me too — a devil 
 of a facer. I hope — ah — you will do me that justice ?" 
 
 Our hero fetched a groan. 
 
 " I do, I do," said his wife. " If I did not I would not 
 urge you to reflect. But when you prepare to strike off 
 your left hand to avenge the misdeeds of your right, I 
 cannot stand by and see you do it." 
 
 " It is the sign of our decadence. We only half meet 
 things now. There should be no half measures with 
 those who offend against their race. I would cut off 
 every mother's son." 
 
 Despdr was beginning slowly to overspread the dogged 
 273 s 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 spirit. Appeals to his humanity, his paternal instinct, his 
 sense of justice were vain. There was nothing she could do. 
 The indomitable woman made the admission to herself in 
 a sudden grinding spasm of agony. He had got his back 
 against the wall of his unreason, and nothing — nothing 
 could induce him to budge. It made him bleed to see 
 his wife suffer, for at heart there was none more chivalrous^ 
 however little it was to be suspected of him. But he was 
 of an unfortunate constitution that enabled him to trace 
 in his own distress a justification for the indulgence of his 
 prejudice. Had he loved his son less and his wife less 
 there would have been a better chance for all. His ovoi 
 personal pain removed the last doubt as to whether he w*s 
 acting worthily. 
 
 " I suffer too," he said ; and in that statement he felt 
 the guarantee of a lofty disinterestedness. 
 
 Mrs. Broke had one quality, however, that we like to 
 think the first Napoleon attributed to her countrymen. 
 She did not know when to give in. Strand by strand she 
 felt the rope of unreason coiling around her. Hand and 
 foot it was fettering her. It was like a great snake pressing 
 out her life. She could no longer raise a finger to help 
 her son. Broke had sealed the letter, and the Hght of 
 reason was not in him. A desperation came upon her. 
 The pole-star of her life had been her reticence. In all 
 crises, all dilemmas, that honest guide had lifted her 
 upwards and on. It had been an illimitable source of 
 strength in her combats with the world. It would be 
 so again. But in this, the sharpest pass in which she had 
 ever found herself, it did not count. 
 
 That being the case she would do without it. She would 
 cast off its fetters, and see if untrammelled nature could 
 avail. 
 
 " Edmund," she said, " it sounds a little theatrical for 
 you and me to refer to the number of years we have pulled 
 tooether, but you force me to remind you that long as we 
 have, this is the first occasion I have begged a favour. 
 On those grounds I ask you not to send that letter." 
 
 Such words, jiroceeding from those chaste lips, drove a 
 tremor through Broke's unexpressive features. She 
 clutched at it hungrily. 
 
 274 
 
OUR FIRST COMEDIAN 
 
 " I have fought your battles, Edmund, for I almost shudder 
 to think how long ; I have wrestled with your bitter poverty; 
 I have pared cheese for you that you might still hold on, 
 in the hope of better times ; and — and never before to- 
 night have I asked anything in return. And it is a httle 
 thing enough, now that I have asked it. Do not tell me^ 
 Edmund, that I am asking too much." 
 
 " You don't understand, you don't understand," Broke 
 muttered, turning away his face. 
 
 " Yes I do, perfectly. Do you suppose you have a 
 monopoly of even a common degree of intelligence ? 
 It is your pride, your ungovernable pride, and that 
 only, intervening between us." 
 
 Her sudden flare into vehemence seemed to strengthen 
 his hand. 
 
 " Put what name you like to it, but the matter is closed," 
 he said, coming back to his air of finality. " And as you 
 choose to call it pride, a man worth his salt has a right to 
 it. A man, if he hasn't it, is not worth the coat to his 
 shoulders." 
 
 "Its intrinsic value does not justify one in pandering 
 to it until it becomes a lust." 
 
 " That is unjust," said Broke, feeling the barb. " I am 
 as much knocked about as you are — probably more. Do 
 you think it gives me pleasure ? He is mine as much as he 
 is yours. He has my name to him. And yet you talk 
 about my pride being a lust. It is the most unfair thing 
 I have ever heard you say. It is not like 3'ou." 
 
 She had the satisfaction of seeing that she had drawn 
 blood. But she reined herself in tightly. She held her 
 hand although the opportunity was open to her of hitting 
 very hard. Nor was it policy that dictated the act of 
 self-denial. Judge the man as she might, he was her lord, 
 the person for wham she was pledged to entertain the most 
 unequivocal respect, the most unflinching fidelity. 
 Than she, at that moment, her sex could exhibit nothing 
 worthier. 
 
 " We will not throw stones at one another," she rejoined 
 in a lower voice. " We are too well acquainted for that. 
 But you must not wonder that I complain when I find 
 myself denied the smallest thing I have a right to look for." 
 
 275 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Broke carried her hand to his Ups reverently. 
 
 " My dear girl," he said huskily, " anything — an5^hing 
 but that. I will give you anything but that. If you feel 
 I am ungrateful ask me for something else. Do you think 
 I don't recognize what you have done for us all — what you 
 have done all these years for me and mine. Do you think 
 I don't know ! There is not your like anywhere ; and if 
 it could give you pleasure I would go out and shout it in 
 the street. You have been the pilot that has kept us off 
 the rocks all these years. You have been the best, the 
 truest friend man ever had. If you consider me ungrateful, 
 you — ah — wrong me deeply. Come, we will say no more. 
 We are not the people to throw hard names at one another. 
 My God, they hurt ! " 
 
 " For the first time in our married life, Edmund, I crave a 
 boon of you." 
 
 Our first comedian covered his face with his hands for an 
 instant, and when he removed them it had seemed to 
 turn gray. 
 
 " I will go down on my knees, Edmund, and crave it." 
 
 Our first comedian took away his haggard eyes. 
 
 " It is a quarter-past three," he said. " Time we were 
 in bed." 
 
 She was trembling violently. 
 
 " You deny it, to me, Edmund." 
 
 " If you will go first," he said, opening the door of the 
 room, " I will turn out the lights." 
 
 276 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 The Jumping of the Lesser Wits 
 
 FOR several days after the news had been communicated 
 to those whom it most immediately concerned, Mrs. 
 Broke hesitated as to the course she should pursue in regard 
 to others. Her husband and Maud Wayling were the only 
 people who knew at present. So clearly did she foresee 
 the complications that must attend on secrecy that she 
 was keenly desirous that the child at the cottage should be 
 established on the footing which belonged to her position. 
 Of course it would be easy to repudiate her altogether, 
 and in the eyes of many it would be hailed as the only 
 possible course. But nature fitted her to take her place 
 among the strong. Emphatically, she belonged to the 
 category of those who dictate public opinion, not to the 
 larger category of the humble subscribers to it. It would 
 be supremely easy to relegate the wretched child to the 
 limbo from whence she had been so recently evolved. But 
 she saw that as soon as this was done the only hope re- 
 maining of a reconciliation between father and son was 
 forfeited. 
 
 At the same time if the child's identity was published 
 at once, very little good would be done to her or to Billy, 
 and it would certainly be out of all proportion to the harm 
 that must accrue to them as a family. Not only would it 
 provide a nine days' wonder for the neighbourhood ; but 
 tradesmen, the most importunate and easily alarmed race 
 under heaven, might see in it a pretext for pressing their 
 demands. And again, even a resolution that declined to be 
 daunted and a sapience that never slept yet had a tincture 
 
 277 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 of delicacy. The desire to stave off the dread hour of bank- 
 ruptcy as long as possible was very real. The innuendo of 
 cause and effect would be too sharp, too indelible, to be 
 borne, even by a woman of the world. 
 
 After much taking of thought, Mrs. Broke came to the 
 conclusion that for a time it would be expedient to keep 
 the catastrophe from the public knowledge. She deemed 
 it right, however, or rather politic — and with her pohcy was 
 the higher form of righteousness — that the girls should 
 know. Their training had been so stern that she felt they 
 could be trusted with a secret which it was vitally necessary 
 to the well-being of all should so remain. Their precep- 
 tress saw a terrible object lesson for the dutiful creatures 
 in the gruesome story she had to unfold. 
 
 Fright froze their white lips when they heard that brief 
 but fantastic history. To these sophisticated children, 
 raised in a very hot-house of class prejudice, with full many 
 a generation of the spirit it induces wantoning in their 
 veins, the thing was as dreadful, as garish, as ghoul-like as 
 the most inordinate nightmare out of Poe. At first they 
 could accord no more credence to it than if it had been the 
 wildest of all the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. But 
 it hardly called for a moment's reflection to teach them 
 that for once the inconceivable had come to pass. Their 
 mother was the la.st person in the world likely to regale 
 their minds in such a deplorable manner. Besides, their 
 father's speech at the dinner table at which they had not 
 yet ceased to shiver, still rang in their ears. And for the 
 last three days a strange pinched look had been observed 
 in the white marble face of Miss Wayling. 
 
 In their own ^omain they foregathered to talk with 
 gloomy excitement. Also they would have wept ; only, 
 with the exception of Delia, they all had their mother's 
 constitutional frugality in the matter of tears. Compared 
 with the rest Delia was allowed to be a great adept with 
 the waterworks ; but this black afternoon, strangely 
 enough, she was the only one who betrayed no disposition 
 to utilize her undoubted abilities in this kind. They even 
 grew a little angry with her indifference on the present 
 occasion to the value of her gift. They would have shed 
 fountains had not nature been so austere. But Delia, who 
 
THE LESSER WITS 
 
 could have done so, was seen to refrain. She had the power 
 to weep co]^ious tears over the commonest circumstance ; 
 but now, when they were expected of her, and in a sense 
 demanded, as an acknowledgment of the poignant dis- 
 tress, the desperate sorrow, of one and all, she sat looking 
 frightened indeed, like the rest, but without so much as one 
 in her eye. It was inconsistent ; and in one who could weep 
 it was unfeehng, not to say an exhibition of bad form. 
 
 " Deha," said Joan, " I don't think you quite appre- 
 ciate what has happened. I am sure you would take it 
 more to heart if you did." 
 
 " I don't see why we should be so gloomy," said Delia, 
 " if they were really in love." 
 
 " If you talk like that," said Joan, " you must go out 
 of the room." 
 
 Delia looked bewildered. 
 
 " If they were really in love," she persisted, with a shake 
 of the head, and a half-smile to herself. 
 
 At once they fell upon Delia. With enormous gusto they 
 fell upon her. They rent her in pieces. They proved to 
 their own sombre satisfaction that her point of view was 
 outrageous. Delia, however, seemed quite incapable of 
 apprehending the nature of the position she had taken up. 
 That subtle twist in her youthful mind to which their 
 attention had been directed several times had never been so 
 painfully in evidence. 
 
 " You know what father once said of you," they reminded 
 her with the mournful triumph of despair. " You have not 
 forgotten, Delia, that father said once that had you been a 
 boy you might have grown up to be a Radical." 
 
 " I don't quite know what a Radical is, but perhaps it is 
 something that is rather nice," said their youngest sister, 
 with a perfectly horrid impenitence. 
 
 " Delia ! " they sang together. 
 
 " I know I don't see things as you see them, and I sup- 
 pose I am ver}' wicked because I don't ; but it would not be 
 honest to say I do if I do not, would it ? " 
 
 " \Ve are all very much ashamed of you," said Joan, 
 with a sternness that made Delia feel very frightened. 
 " You talk just like a person out of a common family." 
 
 " I feel like one," said Delia. 
 279 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Delia ! " they gasped. 
 
 " I know I ought to feel myself to be above others, but I 
 don't at all. I feel just the meanest and weakest, the most 
 small and most wretched person you can find anywhere. 
 I don't feel a bit better than anybody else, although my 
 name is Broke. In fact I would rather be anybody than 
 who I am." 
 
 " Deha ! " they shouted. 
 
 Here was anarchy. 
 
 " I can't help it. I know I am very wicked and low- 
 spirited, but that is how I feel. There is no pleasure in 
 trying to persuade yourself that you are important, if you 
 know you are not. I never could make-believe. I daresay 
 that is why kings and queens are so miserable. Everybody 
 bows down to them, and says nice things to them, and 
 pretends that they are different from others ; but the kings 
 and queens know all the time that they are not. That is 
 what makes them so unhappy." 
 
 " Do you mean to tell us that Billy is no better than — 
 than this person out of a shop that he has married ? " Joan 
 demanded with a fierceness that made Delia quail. 
 
 " Yes, Joan, I do," said Delia, trembling at a piece of 
 effrontery she knew to be without a parallel. 
 
 " I shall tell your father what you say," said Joan, wither- 
 ing her younger sister with her eyes. 
 
 " No, you must not do that," interposed Philippa. " You 
 remember what father said, you know, Joan ? " 
 
 " Then I shall tell her mother," said the Roman- hearted 
 one. 
 
 " I don't care," said Delia drearily. She clasped her 
 hands round her knees and fixed her eyes on the celebrated 
 picture of her uncle Charles. " I cannot help it. It is 
 wrong and wicked of me, but I cannot help it. When you 
 are unhappy your long descent does not comfort you." 
 
 I,arge tears filled her eyes suddenly. They completely 
 obliterated the coloured outline of her uncle Charles on the 
 wall before them. 
 
 " You don't deserve to have any descent whatever," 
 said Joan with a snort. 
 
 " I wish I had not," said Delia through her sobs, 
 
 " You are what father calls a — a " Joan paused 
 
 280 
 
THE LESSER WITS 
 
 with a deliberate integrity of selection to hunt the one word 
 to wipe her out. " You are what father would call a Glad- 
 stonian Liberal. You bring us into disgrace. It is selfish 
 and debasing and weak-minded to talk as you talk. You 
 are unworthy to be one of us. Do you think father would 
 have forbidden us to speak of Billy in his presence, if Billy 
 had not been guilty of an act of terrible wickedness ? " 
 
 " Don't, please don't," said her youngest sister piteously. 
 " I cannot bear any more — indeed I can't." 
 
 " You shall not be spared," said Joan in a voice that was 
 merciless. 
 
 If haughty looks had the power to slay it is to be feared 
 that Delia would not have survived her present ignominy. 
 Her five sisters were too quaintly the children of their 
 father : the old Adam that animated him animated them. 
 They also were subscribers to very few ideas, but those 
 that had once received their sanction were supported with a 
 firmness, an absence of compromise, that became a religion. 
 Such heresy as this of their youngest sister's they felt in 
 the bitterness of the hour to be a stain upon the fair, the 
 unsullied escutcheon of their fidelity. It impeached their 
 sacred loyalty. What would their father say if he could 
 hear her ? was the thought that harrowed their minds. 
 Officially and by accident of birth Delia was one of them. 
 The tie of blood was too inviolable to be broken. The slur 
 was on themselves. It was one of the disadvantages arising 
 from the grand hereditary principle. 
 
 " This is the doing of that horrid man, th^+ horrid book- 
 seller," said Joan, who had been taking thought where to 
 have the offender for the last two minutes. 
 
 Delia winced, as though she had been burnt. Her face 
 became enveloped in a sheet of flame. 
 
 No sooner was the indelible signal hoisted in her than the 
 unmerciful beholders knew that the wretched offender bound 
 hand and foot, was delivered to their tender mercies. Never 
 was a condign punishment merited more signally. Not only 
 was it in itself a crime of the deepest dye to be guilty of 
 betraying an emotion for a man such as he, but they saw 
 in it an additional act of disloyalty to themselves. It 
 struck to the roots of their ascetic principles. A misde- 
 meanour of this magnitude must be stamped out. It 
 
 28 1 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 threatened to poison the well spring whence gushed their 
 few but wholly sacred tenets in all their virgin purity. Joan, 
 and Joan only, the high and inflexible, the one having 
 authority, their father's deputj^ must take up this matter 
 alone and in person. She must administer the extreme 
 rigour of the law, because if such an intolerable spirit was 
 allowed to manifest itself without check in one so young 
 there was no saying to what it might lead. One and all 
 fell back in silence before this august instrument of justice. 
 
 " Delia," said Joan very slowly. " Your words and 
 conduct are disgraceful. We are so ashamed of you that 
 we wish you were not our sister." 
 
 The other four huddled together with awe-stricken looks, 
 but there was a full measure of approval in their fierce eyes. 
 
 An Uncle Charles kind of look came over Delia. When 
 it appeared in him it never failed to arouse their pity; but 
 now in their young sister it seemed merely contemptible. 
 It was a look of despair which j^ou sometimes saw in the 
 eyes of a hound when it was going to be beaten. But Joan 
 was not the person to spare her. 
 
 " You disgrace us all," said Joan. " You are everything 
 that is horrid, wicked, and imjiossible." 
 
 " I am not," soid Delia, with a sudden but totally inde- 
 fensible flutter of spirit. 
 
 " Yes you are ! " they shouted in chorus. 
 
 Women are like the baser animals : they grow mad with 
 valour when opposed to those who cannot defend them- 
 selves. These were high-hearted and fearless creatures, 
 but as soon as they had their young sister delivered without 
 weapons into their hands, their sex urged them to fall 
 upon her claw and fang. 
 
 " You are friends with that bookseller, you know you 
 are," they shouted. " We believe 3'ou have hardly left 
 off crying since he went away to London. You are dis- 
 gracing us all. It is quite true what Joan says : you are 
 everything that is horrid, wicked, and impossible. You ' 
 are a Radical, a Socialist, and a Democrat. You know you 
 are, and you cannot deny it. Your father has known it 
 for a long time, only he is too kind to say so. We don't 
 know how you dare to cry about that low and shabby book- 
 seller. If you must cry over something you might at least 
 
 2S2 
 
THE LESSER WITS 
 
 have the decency to reserve your tears for a gentle- 
 man." 
 
 " Or why not a dog or a tame pheasant," said Phihppa 
 the ever-practical, " if you feel you must cry over some- 
 thing." 
 
 Delia had been crushed to silence as long as their taunts 
 were levelled at her alone. Her private opinion of herself 
 was so mean that she felt she must deserve them. But now 
 they were hurled at one whose personal character she was 
 convinced was unassailable, she felt her feet on ground 
 sufficiently firm to take a stand upon it. 
 
 " You shall not talk of him like that," she whimpered, 
 with her blue eyes flashing, and a tear running along her 
 nose. " He is as much a gentleman as father, or Billy, or 
 Uncle Charles is. He could not be guilty of a mean action 
 if he tried ; I don't think he could be capable of a mean 
 thought ; and if you think it is a disgrace for him to be 
 poor, the disgrace is yours for having such ideas. It 
 would be impossible for him to have such opinions 
 and to speak as horridly as you are speaking now. His 
 mind is too high to find room for such cruel and vulgar 
 thoughts. He would not know what you meant. He did 
 not know what mother meant when she once talked to him 
 as you are talking now." 
 
 " A little horror of a bookseller ! A shabby and under- 
 sized httle man ! " they snorted. 
 
 Their youngest sister was not quite so defenceless as they 
 had supposed. She was getting in one or two shrewd 
 knocks of her own, and feeling them when they least ex- 
 pected, they began in a fury of retaliation to hit out wildly, 
 with poor and uncertain aim. 
 
 Delia was exulting in new courage because desperation 
 had found weapons for her. And she knew they were far 
 more formidable than any in their possession. She had 
 greater resources of vocabulary than had they, a livelier 
 imagination, and a much finer array of ancient and modern 
 parallels with which to assault them. They had always 
 boasted of their tremendous contempt for books ; they 
 should now see how nice it was to have them for yoiur friends 
 when it came to fighting. 
 
 " You do not deserve to be argued with," said Delia, 
 
 283 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 valiant in this thought. " Your minds are so poor and 
 wretched that they are not worthy of notice. But I will 
 just say this. I was reading the other day a book by a great 
 author that you have not even heard of, so it is no use to 
 tell you his name. The book was called The Book of Snobs, 
 and the people in it were so cruel and horrid and low- 
 minded that I felt sure they did not exist out of the writer's ' 
 imagination. But I now find that they do. You are 
 those people. The author meant you, I am certain, and 1 
 am quite ashamed to be connected with you. I don't sup- 
 pose you know what a snob is. I will tell you : a snob is 
 a mean admirer of mean things. Say that over to your- 
 selves ; and I wish you would read the book. Then you 
 would see just what you look like." 
 
 They were quite taken aback for the moment. This was 
 not the Delia they knew ; the Delia they could snub and 
 bully with impunity. This was an armed and courageous 
 Delia ; an Amazonian Delia who would engage and pum- 
 mel the whole five of them singlehanded at once. They 
 had never been so astonished, so confounded in all their 
 young lives. Fancy a silly little kid with filmy blue eyes 
 with lashes to them that curled up at the ends in a most 
 foolish manner, a silly little kid who wept when she pored 
 with her legs crossed over a fairy story, to be capable of 
 giving such a display as that. For the moment their 
 several breaths were completely taken away by it ; and 
 one and all were smarting in various places. 
 
 As usual in moments of crisis they paused and waited 
 for their natural leader. The intrepid and redoubtable 
 gathered herself for the greatest intellectual effort she had 
 ever felt it needful to achieve. 
 
 " Books, always books now," said Joan at a magnifi- 
 cently forensic leisure. " What do books matter ? They 
 are wTitten by vulgar people, as a rule, and it is generally 
 vulgar people who take notice of what is written in them. 
 They are no use after leaving school, and they are not much 
 use before one leaves. I never learnt anything from a single 
 one m\self, except from the Badminton hunting book 
 that father has got in the library. They make nice pieces 
 of furniture in pretty bindings in mother's room ; and one 
 or two on the tables in the drawing room look all right, 
 
 28 4 
 
THE LESSER WITS 
 
 but what good are they ? I always did despise them, 
 and now I have seen a real author, an author who writes 
 for his hving, I shall despise them more. We knew that 
 professional authors — aunt Emma is not a professional 
 author — were generally poor and dirty and low, and did 
 not cut their hair ; but until I had seen your friend the book- 
 seller, a real live- one, I didn't know what really wTetched 
 things they were. By comparison Wilkins looks respect- 
 able and Person a perfect gentleman. Why, Shakespeare, 
 the leading author of them all, was a common poacher, 
 and if he had come before father at the Sessions he would 
 have had to go to prison." 
 
 " You are beneath contempt," said Delia. 
 
 " So Aunt Emma says," chimed the other four eagerly. 
 Joan's passing allusion to that lady had given them an inspi- 
 ration. " Now that her young man has taught you to be 
 bookish you begin to give yourself airs like she does. You 
 are learning the same trick of talking at us, although you 
 have not got your voice quite so high up at present. But 
 you must not think we shall stand it from you, you silly 
 cheeky little kid, because we shall not, Joan, shall we ? " 
 
 " No, indeed," said Joan. 
 
 " I hate Aunt Emma, too. She is beneath contempt 
 also." 
 
 " But you try to talk like her." 
 
 " I don't ! " 
 
 " Yes, you do." 
 
 Their unlucky reference to Aunt Emma had taken the 
 wind out of Delia's sails suddenly. The tables were turned 
 at once. There are few moments harder to support than 
 that when the noble cause we have so gallantly espoused 
 before the mob provokes a revulsion of feeling within our 
 own hearts by the citation of the charlatan. Could it be 
 possible that her conduct at all resembled Aunt Emma's ? 
 She had come to see that her aunt had no truer feeling for 
 the art she patronized than she had for anything else in 
 earth or heaven. But to make her sisters see that was 
 hopeless. To be a lover of books was to be an Aunt Emma : 
 a synonym for all that was pretentious, small-minded, 
 insincere. 
 
 In the end they routed Delia utterly and completely. 
 283 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 She struck her colours altogether before this unlucky men- 
 tion of the author of Poses in the Opaque. The fervour of 
 the prophet preaching a strange splendid gospel to Israel 
 ran out of her as suddenly as it had come. She was beaten 
 out of the field ; and put to flight to her bedroom, that 
 sanctuary whither she could take refuge in tears. 
 
 286 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 A Descent into the Avernus of Broad Farce 
 
 MANY hours of late had Deha spent coiled up on her 
 counterpane. In the very moment of her friend's 
 departure she had been overcome by her sense of loss. She 
 would look on him no more. The fact seemed too harsh, 
 too inexorable. Was it not terrible that a spectre should 
 glide across her life, only to vanish after she had 
 gazed on it for one brief but fatal instant, and that she 
 should be left haunted for ever in the manner of the 
 unhappy knight of La Belle Dame Sans Merci ? He had 
 cast a fell disease upon her which he alone had the power 
 to assuage ; and without even a recognition of her pass he 
 rode away into those immeasurable mountain fastnesses 
 in which he would be lost completely. He was gone from 
 her, leaving only a memory. He could never return. An 
 unpitjang introspection had taught her that she was too 
 poor a specimen of her kind to arouse an emotion in 
 that splendid austere spirit. The knowledge did but render 
 the craving to do so more consuming, more over -mastering. 
 To have no existence in the bosom of the gods is not 
 humiliation so much as torment. If only she could have 
 given him a faint sense of what her great devotion to him 
 was ; if only she could have kindled just one little spark 
 in him of recognition of her entity ; if only her nature 
 had possessed the requisite scope, the requisite power, to 
 have imposed itself on his in the meanest way, she would 
 have asked no more ! It was the knowledge that she 
 had been unable to project even a shadow upon that 
 unsullied consciousness that made her lot so forlorn, so 
 hopeless beyond expression. 
 
 287 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 He could not know now, and would not ever. He had 
 gone from her without a sign, leaving her to mourn 
 the day on which he had come into her life. She 
 would read his name in the London newspapers, but 
 of her existence he would have no record. In a year or 
 perhaps less he would not remember that she had been. 
 Even now he might be wiping all trace of her out of the 
 tablets of his mind, as a page of his early and chequered 
 history which he was eager to erase. In the sharp pangs of 
 bereavement she foresaw that from year to year she must 
 continue to bear her devout adoration to the grave, without 
 hope of honour, without hope ot recompense. He would 
 never guess what she endured for him. The candles she 
 would keep burning before the altar of his splendid memory 
 would have not even the sanction of his pity. 
 
 Against the instinct that pleaded with her ; against 
 reason, modesty, reticence, decency, and all the fetishes 
 of the feminine heart she had clung to the hope that he 
 would not leave her desolate. Right up to that last day 
 had she clung with a frantic fearing spirit to the thought 
 that was hardly more than a wish, to the hope that was 
 hardly more than a desire, that he would permit her just 
 one evidence by which she might recognize that she actually 
 counted in the sum of things. But not a crumb did he 
 vouchsafe. He bade her good-bye with the slightly tender 
 ironical simplicity that was his cloak, his external mode. 
 There was no more than that between them. There was 
 nothing that the most hungry nature could accept in the 
 dreary years that had to come. 
 
 A thousand times did she recall the chords of his voice ; 
 a thousand times did she review his chance phrases and 
 words ; a thousand times did she re-paint the least pre- 
 meditated expressions on his face^ It was in vain : they 
 did not offer a crumb. " I am not so much to him now 
 as the cover of a book, nor have been ever ! " was the in- 
 tolerable reflection that changed the bruning tears of her 
 heart into ice. 
 
 The child had hardly the stoical pride of her race. She 
 could not cover the ravages in her callow breast, and wear 
 an outward smile before her little world. She could not 
 conceal the keenest bites of the serpent proudly. Her 
 
 288 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 lieaviness of look, her listlessness, the black rings round her 
 <'yes were there for all to read who were curious. Her 
 sisters read fiercely, and requited her with their 
 contempt. Every day she met with a fuller measure 
 of their scorn. They threatened to bar the door of 
 their common room against her. Her mother was too 
 much occupied with graver matters to notice her un- 
 happiness. Besides, their ailments were so few that 
 they hardly ever troubled her ; and when they did were 
 always so little complex that the most primitive and homely 
 prescriptions could set them right. Her father was too 
 little addicted to the habit of observing anything to 
 penetrate to the subtle nature of her malady. Besides, 
 it was so elusive, so hypothetical, that in any case it would 
 liave defeated him. If they broke a limb it was well and 
 good ; it could be set in splints ; but you do not ask a 
 Jiorse doctor to diagnose a disease of the mind. 
 
 Strangely, it was her uncle Charles, a person entirely 
 {jiven over body and soul to the drinking of whisky and 
 water, who first engaged the public attention to the Child's 
 distress. One rainy afternoon, when they were drinking 
 lea in the drawing-room with their mother and father, and 
 t heir Aunt Emma, who had come on a mission of a chari- 
 table nature, their Uncle Charles, who also had hap- 
 pened to look in, not knowing that aunt Emma was there, 
 •;ook Delia's chin between his finger and thumb, and 
 oeered at her for a long time with his head cocked funnily 
 to 6ne side. 
 
 " I tell you what," he said, " the little filly's off her feed. 
 Has been for more than a week. At first I thought I might 
 not be seein' straight, but now I'm dead sure I am. Wants 
 a bran mash." 
 
 This solicitude drew down a great deal more of the public 
 regard upon Delia than she felt able to support. 
 
 " She's right enough," said her father. 
 
 " The child has probably been over-eating herself," 
 said her Aunt Emma, after a steady examination through 
 her glasses. 
 
 Her mother gave her the benefit of a patient scrutiny. 
 She concluded it by smiling faintly. There was little that 
 was hidden from those ruthless eyes. 
 
 2S9 T 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " I tell 3'ou I don't like the looks of the tit," said her 
 Uncle Charles, having waited in vain for a confirmation of 
 his opinion. " I should let her see the vet," 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear Charles," said her mother amiably. 
 " He would only give her a ball. There is really nothing 
 the matter. Her studies have perhaps excited her a little. 
 But they are over now for a time. Her tutor has very 
 inconsiderately run away and left her." 
 
 Instead of looking at her brother when she gave this 
 piece of information, she placidly scrutinized the mobile 
 face of her youngest daughter. 
 
 " It is an act of inconsideration, not to say incivility, 
 not to say impertinence," said Lady Bosket, winding her- 
 self up, word by word, into a state of indignation, " and in 
 the letter I wrote to him on the subject I took the oppor- 
 tunity of expressing my displeasure. If a person under- 
 takes a particular task one expects him not to relinquish 
 that task until it has been fulfilled." 
 
 " But the circumstances were somewhat exceptional, 
 were they not ? " said Mrs. Broke, with an instinct for 
 justice it occasionally amused her to betray. " Had he not 
 to take up a more important post ? I understood so, at 
 least. In the circumstances one can hardly expect a man 
 of ability to waste his time over a dull and backward 
 girl." 
 
 " He did not hold it to be a waste of time before he obtained 
 this post of which you speak, when he had hardly a coat 
 to his back. And I would venture to ask by whose agency 
 he has obtained this appointment ? " 
 
 " By yours ? " suggested Mrs. Broke modestly. 
 
 " In so many words, perhaps, I do not choose to say. 
 But you rather force one to admit that the importance 
 that is now attached to one's name in the literary world 
 has reacted to his advantage. If one may say it without 
 appearing presumptuous, one's personal sanction is the 
 higliest credential he can seek with editors and that sort of 
 people." 
 
 " That is to say, Emma, in plain terms, that you were 
 indirectly responsible for his promotion ? " 
 
 " Indirectly or directly, whichever you choose." 
 
 " Truly an interesting, one might say an informing, side- 
 290 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 light on the way in which things are managed in the world 
 of letters. Singular, is it not, how the floodtide of one great 
 reputation carries smaller ones irresistibly forward upon 
 its wave ? " 
 
 " It is always so, my dear ; always has been ; always 
 will be," purred the authoress, whose formidable absence 
 of humour made her the predestined victim of her sister- 
 in-law, who enjoyed the pleasure of " drawing " her when- 
 ever she chose without having to pay for her entertainment. 
 " Believe me, my dear, one never obtains an overtopping 
 reputation in letters but what one's imitators and hangers- 
 on reap the benefit. There are writing people nowadays 
 of both sexes, they can be counted by the dozen, who by 
 an imitation of my style and manner, who by vulgarizing 
 and cheapening it, make it more acceptable to the market 
 place, and thereby are in the habit of obtaining larger 
 sums for their debased copies than I am in the habit of 
 obtaining for the original. The fact is a painful and sordid 
 one, but oh ! so true. In the last conversation I had with 
 my old and dear friend the late Mr. Gladstone, just before 
 his decease, the dear man, he commiserated with me upon 
 this point. Although, of course, as I told him, mere money 
 is always the last thing one cares to consider in a matter of 
 this nature." 
 
 " So the poor devils the publishers think when you hawk 
 your prose round to every house in London to squeeze the 
 last ha'penny,"said Lord Bosket, taking a sip of his favourite 
 beverage. 
 
 " Charles, what do you mean ? " said the authoress, 
 raising her glasses, and preening her plumage in the manner 
 of an extremely aggressive cockatoo. 
 
 " Beg pardon, my mistake," said the culprit humbly. 
 
 " As usual, a prophet is without honour in one's own 
 country," said the authoress, seeking to pass over this 
 trying incident with a thin smile, and a laboured attempt 
 to be jocular. 
 
 " You may be a profit in your own country, but you 
 ain't a bare livin' in theirs," said Lord Bosket. " You 
 haven't forgotten that last letter Newton & Faraday 
 wrote you to say that if 3'ou would insist on a royalty 
 of three bob on a volume four and six net they might as 
 
 291 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 well draw down the blinds, and look about for an honest 
 hvin'." 
 
 " Charles, I forbid you to discuss these disgusting com- 
 mercial details in my presence." 
 
 " Wrong again," murmured Lord Bosket sotto voce to his 
 nieces. " Crushed again. Never open my mouth but 
 what I put my foot in it." 
 
 " Has your last beautiful and ennobling volume been a 
 success ? " asked Mrs. Broke, pouring out fresh cups of 
 tea. 
 
 " Not half," said Lord Bosket. " I read in the Sportin' 
 Times that it has stirred the great heart of the American 
 Continent to its profoundest depths. The missis and 
 Matthew Arnold are going to divide the cake. Or I may 
 have seen it in the Times — same thing. Anyhow, they 
 want her to cross the Pond and give 'em a series of lectures. 
 So do I. If she takes out the same series as she has given 
 me at home she'll be a success. I don't mind layin' even 
 money that the great heart of the American Continent 
 is stirred a bit more. They don't know what they are 
 askin'." 
 
 The valour that was in Lord Bosket this afternoon was 
 unusual. As meek as a mouse as a rule in the presence of 
 his lady wife he seldom went out of his way to court her 
 displeasure. But when the last spark of a masculine spirit 
 did happen to reassert itself in him it was generally in the 
 presence of others. He knew that he was then compara- 
 tively safe for the time being, for the last thing his lady wife 
 cared to do was to make a public display of her prowess. 
 A scene was vulgar ; it was therefore reserved for the domes- 
 tic hearth. On those occasions when her degraded lord had 
 partaken of just the right quantity of whisky to enable 
 him to merge a proper discretion and decency in a natural 
 love of chaff, she waited, in the phrase of ladies in a 
 less exalted station in life, " she waited until she got him 
 home." 
 
 Probably the true reason for Lord Bosket's intrepidity 
 on this occasion was that he suffered an acute agitation of 
 mmd. Knowledge recently come into his possession had 
 done not a little to disquiet him. He was distressed not so 
 much on his own account, because he was too obhvious of 
 
 292 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 the world to have a shadow of trepidation for the figure he 
 might cut before it ; but rather because he suspected how 
 irksome it must prove to his brother-in-law, whose character 
 could brook no public ignominy. With his customary 
 solicitude for others, he felt himself already to be in a 
 measure responsible for the galling of that proud spirit. 
 He could not forget that he had been a prime instrument 
 in urging Broke to accept a seat on the Board of Directorate 
 of the Thames Valley Goldfields Syndicate. With his own 
 advice and example and with powerful aid from his sister 
 he had induced Broke to pledge himself to that concern. 
 He had seen in it a golden opportunity for a beautiful in- 
 effectual angel of commerce to profit in a financial sense, 
 without risking one of the pennies he could so ill afford 
 to gamble with. He was there that afternoon, however, 
 to inform his brother-in-law that the great scheme had 
 fallen to the ground ; and not only so, but it was his dis- 
 agreeable duty to have to prepare the nice mind of this 
 dilettante in trade for something that could be trusted to 
 shock it terribly. Developments were expected that might 
 totally discredit the Board of Directors. 
 
 " I saw Salmon this morning, Edmund, and he tells me 
 we have got to face the music." 
 
 Broke's bewilderment was so frank that Lord Bosket 
 felt it necessary to be a little more lucid. 
 
 " Salmon says you know that there is no gold in the 
 Thames Valley after all, and that those experts were all 
 wrong. And he says the shareholders are kickin' up a dust 
 and are askin' for their money to be returned. Salmon 
 says they won't get it. All the newspapers are against us 
 dead, and the Daily Telegraph says that when the matter 
 is sifted it will be found to be about the biggest take-in 
 of the century. Nice for us directors, what ? A public 
 inquiry has been ordered, and they are sayin' in town that 
 if we directors get our deserts we shall find ourselves toeing 
 the line in the dock on a charge of conspiracy." 
 
 If Lord Bosket had planted a bomb on the carpet he 
 could not have had a more electrical effect upon Broke. 
 Our hero sat up in his chair with a painfully startled face, 
 with much the same wild look in it that his wife had observed 
 when she broke the news to him of his son's marriage. But 
 
 293 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 on this occasion he did not vent his feelings in words, 
 beyond the monosyllable — 
 
 " Oh ! " 
 
 Lord Bosket at once put forth an effort to soften the 
 rather tragic impression he had made. He felt a pang ; 
 indeed, Broke's distress was so great that it would have 
 made its appeal to a harder heart. 
 
 " I would not think too much about it, Edmund, if I were 
 you. Salmon is a tricky fish and knows his way about 
 under the water. He'll find a way out, don't you worry. 
 He says if anybody is to blame it is the experts ; and it is 
 not likely that we directors would be holding shares if we 
 had not been taken in." 
 
 " But I don't hold any," said Broke in a hollow voice. 
 
 " Fishy transferred some of his to you in case of accident." 
 
 Suddenly Lord Bosket's jaw dropped. 
 
 " Yes ; and that reminds me he's parted with 'em too ! 
 He unloaded three weeks ago and gave us all the office to do 
 likewise. He sold above par — lord knows how much ! — 
 and now you can have Thames Valley Goldfields at one 
 and fourpence a hundred if you want 'em. But Salmon is 
 as clever as the deuce ; although it does look a bit ' off,' 
 what ? I don't wonder that we have got to face the 
 music." 
 
 Poor Broke sat in a huddle. The startled look that still 
 haunted his face made it appear that he had just had an 
 encounter with a ghost. 
 
 " Surely here is a sequel that was to be foreseen," said 
 Lady Bosket. " I confess that I predicted it from the 
 first. People who associate themselves with such atrocious 
 persons as this Lord Salmon should be prepared to take 
 the consequences. You might at least have had the decency 
 to respect my feelings, Charles. Not only do you bring your 
 own name into disrepute, but, what is far graver, you bring 
 mine. Why should / strive to enhance it and keep it 
 fragrant among our fellow creatures if your one idea is to 
 debase it and to cause it to stink in their nostrils. I only 
 ask, Charles, that you should have a little respect for my 
 feelings, but this, apparently, is asking too much. As for 
 Edmund, I am sure he is the last man in the world to be 
 able to afford to bring his name lower than it is already." 
 
 294 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 " Here, kennel missis ! " said Lord Bosket. " You let 
 Edmund alone. Don't you mind her, my boy. It's all 
 my fault. But Salmon will find out a way all right. It 
 may be a bit awkward for us at first, now that these share- 
 holders and people are showing their teeth, but we shall 
 come out top dog in the end I'll lay a monkey. Fishy is 
 no fool ; take my tip and have a bit on Saul." 
 
 " We — ah — must refund every farthing of their money," 
 said Broke. 
 
 He had been sunk in thought, and this was the result 
 of his abstraction. 
 
 " A little item of four millions sterling," said Lord 
 Bosket. " I should like to see Fishy refunding mere 
 bagatelles of that sort." 
 
 " It must be done," said Broke firmly. " Every penny." 
 
 " Well, my boy, sell 3'our house and furniture and throw 
 in the mortgages on your land and see how much that 
 makes towards it. The affair has a rum look, I'll admit ; 
 but, as Salmon says, these shareholders and people had the 
 opinion of the experts to work by the same as we had. 
 And now the experts have proved to be wrong they are going 
 to turn round on us because we had the good sense to let 
 go before we burnt our fingers. Salmon says there is 
 no law in the world that can touch us." 
 
 " There is one in heaven," said Lady Bosket. " It is 
 the most impudent piece of scoundrelism I ever heard." 
 
 " It didn't prevent you clearing a cool three thousand, 
 missis, by selling at the proper time. Hullo, here's Salmon 
 himself." 
 
 The announcement at this moment of the promoter was 
 sufficiently dramatic. His entrance was no less so. He 
 marched in with his habitual air of victory. Signs of 
 dejection, of hesitancy, of self-distrust which the circum- 
 stances might have been expected to induce, were far to 
 seek. 
 
 He took a chair magnificently. " They have arranged 
 a fete and gala for the meeting on Monday," he began, " but 
 I think there are one or two things we shall be able to put 
 before them. If we can't manage that parcel of calves and 
 crows it's a pity. Country parsons mostly and widows in 
 rusty black. I wonder if they think we are going to take 
 
 295 
 
' BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 any of their sauce. They had the prospectus to go by th<s 
 same as we had ; there were the reports of the experts : 
 Goodhffe's analysis of the mud taken from under Batter- 
 sea Bridge ; Thomson's Theory of the Precious Metal 
 Deposits found on the foreshore at the Welsh Harp ; 
 Wilson's article on Bimetalism, and God knows what ; 
 and now they've put their money down they ask calmly 
 to take it up again. I wonder what they think we are — 
 philanthropists ? Do they think we play at this game 
 merely for the pleasure of seeing our names in print ? If 
 they had had the common sense to clear out when we did, 
 I wonder if they would be wanting now to repudiate their 
 shares. Their game is, heads I win, tails you lose ; but 
 that's not good enough for Salmon, thank you." 
 
 " Hear, hear, and applause," said Lord Bosket. " 1 
 must say as a member of the Board, the Promoter of th(j 
 Company talks hke a cock-angel with wings and a whit<} 
 nightshirt. I'm not what you call a bettin' man, Fishy, 
 as you know, but if I were I should place a monkey on you, 
 my son, and back you both ways." 
 
 " You would not be wrong, my boy, if you did," said Lord 
 Salmon warmly. " You would not be wrong. I'll let 
 them see on Monday. I wonder if a jury of matrons think 
 they are going to heckle me." 
 
 " Yes, I think they are on the wrong boss," said Lord 
 Bosket, with a quaintly reflective glance at his glass. 
 
 It was at this moment that Broke was seen to draw him- 
 self up stonily to regard his unwelcome visitor. 
 
 " Lord Salmon, I should like to say a word. I wish in 
 the — ah — fullest manner to — ah — repudiate the whole of 
 this transaction." 
 
 " So do several other people," said Lord Salmon drily. 
 
 " In the most unconditional way I wash my hands of 
 what I do not hesitate to call a — ah — a shady business." 
 
 " Don't hesitate to call it what you like, my boy; but 
 we are all in the same boat. You are one of the crew, the 
 same as we are." 
 
 Broke's face turned a deep tawny. There was a power- 
 ful gleam of anger burning in him which he tried hard to 
 restrain. 
 
 " I never intended to go on this Board of Directors. 
 296 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 I was led and — and — ah — cajoled into so doing against 
 my better judgment. I don't — ah — hesitate — ah — to — 
 ah — ah — say that my hand was forced by — ah — circum- 
 stances. At the time I did not know precisely — ah — what ' 
 I was — ah — undertaking. I can only regret my ignorance 
 and— and my — ah — carelessness." 
 
 By the time our powerfully agitated gentleman had 
 finished this impassioned confession his face was even 
 darker than when he began it. 
 
 " Woa — easy, Edmund," said Lord Bosket, in accents 
 of pity. " Don't think about it, there's a good feller, and 
 it will all come right by-and-bye. It will, Fishy, won't 
 it?" 
 
 " Not much doubt about that, my boy," said Lord 
 Salmon, accepting a cup of tea from the excessively gra- 
 cious hands of Mrs. Broke. 
 
 " Sugar, Lord Salmon ? " 
 
 The inordinate sweetness of the smile she lifted up to 
 him was such that the delighted financier said — 
 
 " Look into the cup, ma'am, and it won't be needed." 
 
 Lady Bosket took up her glasses and stared at the 
 epigrammatist, while her eldest niece seated opposite to 
 her counted mentally as far as one hundred and seven. 
 
 " Lord Salmon," said Broke, whose agitation was in- 
 creasing at every word he uttered, while his face grew so 
 black that it looked convulsed. " Lord Salmon, to be — ah 
 — ah — perfectly plain with you, I cannot — ah — -I cannot 
 help thinking that I have been hoodwinked, and — ah — 
 that I have been made your tool. I am a plain man 
 and speak on — ah — these occasions what is in — ah — my 
 mind." 
 
 " Quite right, my boy, quite right," said Lord Salmon, 
 nodding his head in approval. " Have the habit myself. 
 Admire you for it." 
 
 " I don't ask for your — ah — your admiration. Lord 
 Salmon. In fact — ah — I would — ah — rather be without 
 it. I see clearly that — ah — my criminal — ah — ^folly has 
 placed me in your power. I — ah — can never sufficiently 
 deplore it. But I may say. Lord Salmon — ah — I may say 
 in one word, that — ah — I shall conceive it my duty to — 
 ah — attend this meeting on Monday, when — ah — I — ah — 
 
 297 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 shall make a statement to the unfortunate shareholders to 
 —ah— that effect." 
 
 Our hero concluded the longest and quite the most 
 impassioned address he had delivered extempore in the 
 whole of his life by pulling a huge handkerchief out of his 
 pocket and wiping his head with tremendous vigour. 
 
 Lord Salmon could not forbear to laugh lustily, and by 
 so doing chose to ignore the signals of Lord Bosket, 
 who wagged his head at him in a series of energetic 
 warnings. 
 
 " You ought to go on the stage, my dear Broke," said 
 Lord Salmon. " You are too funny for words. A humorist 
 you are and no mistake ! Here am I, out of sheer respect 
 for you, doing all I can to put you in for a good thing, and 
 here are you turning round to bite the hand of friendship. 
 Why, my boy, do you know what I did ? Said I to myself, 
 there is going to be a bit of picking here ; old Broke, who 
 has not enough about him to see these things for himself, 
 must have a finger in this pie. He must be in at this ; it 
 will do him good. And what do I do ? I daresay our 
 friend Bosket has told you. No ? Well, I transfer five 
 hundred pounds worth of script from my name to yours ; 
 partly, my boy, because I want to do you a good turn, 
 and partly because it looks well for the directors to pledge 
 themselves to the concern. And when the psychological 
 moment turned up a week or two ago I converted that five 
 hundred pounds worth of shares into a little matter of four 
 thousand pounds odd. There is a cheque for that amount 
 in my pocket-book. And yet, my dear fellow, on the top 
 of all this you sit there and give me the rough side of your 
 tongue. Still I don't bear malice ; others might, don't 
 you know, but personally I understand you, and I hke you. 
 You old-fashioned country big-wigs are a funny-tempered 
 lot. But I want you to understand, my boy, that, as a 
 mere matter of principle, I wish you well." 
 
 " I — ah — dissociate mx-self entirely from your schemes," 
 said Broke. " I — ah — decline to — ah — discuss the matter 
 with you further. I — ah — repudiate the — ah — whole trans- 
 action, and — ah — on Monday at — ah — the meeting I — ah 
 — shall say so to the shareholders. I — ah — shall make 
 —ah — a statement to them in regard to my position. In 
 
 293 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 — ah — the meantime — ah — Lord Salmon — the — ah— 
 matter is closed. I — ah — wash — my — ah — hands of it." 
 
 " You -wash your hands of this ? " said Lord Salmon, 
 with an air of keen enjoyment. 
 
 He took out his pocket book, and produced a cheque 
 for four thousand three hundred and thirty-five pounds 
 made out in Broke's favour. He rose from his chair and 
 carried it over to our hero. With a quizzical smile he 
 dropped it into his astonished hands. 
 
 " This — ah — for me," said Broke. 
 
 His bewilderment seemed extreme. 
 
 " Of course, my boy, of course," said Lord Salmon 
 indulgently. " Ton my soul you are funny ! You are 
 better than one of those comic operas at the Savoy." He 
 burst again into uncontrollable laughter. 
 
 In the meantime Broke had looked at the document^, 
 and was able to divine, by a superhuman effort, its nature. 
 With great deliberation he began to tear the paper into 
 very small pieces, and in that act his fingers trembled so 
 violently that many of the fragments fluttered on to the 
 carpet. 
 
 A silence intervened that could be felt. It was broken 
 by the protesting voice of Lord Bosket. 
 
 " Edmund, you are a fool. I should ha' thought you 
 had more sense than to throw good money down the gutter. 
 It's an expensive luxiury ; not many fellers can afford 
 it." 
 
 " It's as good as Charley's Aunt," roared Lord Salmon, 
 who had never been so diverted in his life. 
 
 Without trusting himself to utter a word, Broke flung 
 the last of the fragments of the cheque on to the carpet, 
 slowly raised himself out of his chair, and stalked from the 
 room. As the door slammed behind him, Lord Salmon's 
 laughter grew more boisterous. 
 
 " Splendid fellow ! " he shouted. 
 
 " Lord Salmon, please let me give you another cup of 
 tea," said Mrs. Broke melodiously. Again she beamed 
 upon the financier in a dazzling manner. 
 
 " Certainly, ma'am, certainly." 
 
 " Joan," said Lady Bosket to the niece who sat opposite, 
 and who had not once taken her eyes from her face during 
 
 299 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 the last quarter of an hour, " I will trouble you to ring 
 the beU." 
 
 Joan did so promptly, and with almost the same prompti- 
 tude the butler appeared. 
 
 " Person, my carriage." 
 
 Without taking leave of anybody, Lady Bosket marched 
 out of the room with a stateliness that verged upon carica- 
 ture. 
 
 Lord Salmon turned to Lord Bosket with his laugh 
 subsiding to a loud chuckle. 
 
 " I've read Lady B.'s books, Bos, and admired them, 
 but I don't think I should call her a great hand at con- 
 versation. She seems to have a habit of repeating herself. 
 Does she ever say anything else than ' Porson, my car- 
 riage ' ? " 
 
 Lord Salmon again ascended to a roar, 
 
 " That's your luck," said the husband of the authoress. 
 " They say you are the luckiest feller in England, and they 
 are not far wrong. I wish I was as fortunate myself. But 
 you must take no notice of the old dutch, Fishy, you mustn't 
 mind her. It's only her playful little way. She is not 
 such a bad old thing when you get to know her." 
 
 Lord Bosket having made the necessary amende to the 
 feehngs of his friend, our brace of peers conversed apart in 
 earnest undertones. They were fain to agree that they 
 would find it easier to take the Thames out of its valley 
 than to divorce our hero from a conviction at which he had 
 once arrived. 
 
 " He'll do it, 3^ou know," said Lord Bosket. " He's as 
 stubborn as a colt if he gets an idea into his great fat head. 
 He don't get many, but when they come they take a 
 lease." 
 
 " If he talks at the meeting as he's talked to me," said 
 Lord Salmon, " he will be the laughing-stock of England. 
 He must be stopped. I don't like to see a man like that 
 making a fool of himself." 
 
 " I'd like to see the man who could stop him. Obstinate 
 feller ! " 
 
 " A thousand pities," said Lord Salmon. " I don't 
 wonder that he's coming to want and beggary. If a man 
 won't move with the times, even if he is the descendant 
 
 300 
 
THE AVERNUS OF BROAD FARCE 
 
 of kings and vikings, there is only the workhouse for him. 
 We are no respecters of persons at this time of day. That's 
 what these blue-blooded old swells have got to learn. Most 
 of them have learnt it, I will do them that credit. They 
 know now that they can't stand before the cad with the 
 moneybags. Sooner or later they have to get on to their 
 damned old knees. Old Broke is having a longer run than 
 most, but you and I will live to see him brought to it. 
 He's as good as down now, although he doesn't know." 
 
 " He wouldn't own it if he did." 
 
 " You are right, my boy ; but mark me, sooner or later 
 he'll be made. When Saul Salmon, as a very young man, 
 first came out of the east and put up his plate in the Lane 
 the nobocracy would not turn their heads to look at him. 
 But now, my boy, now he holds them like this in his two 
 hands — so ! they lick his boots when he wants them clean- 
 ing. How do you think I got the handle I wear to my 
 name for advertising purposes ? Simply, my boy, by 
 taking them so, in my two rough and grimy paws, and half 
 choking the life out of their nice white throats. I make 
 them writhe and grovel now just when it pleases me, just 
 for my own amusement. Without my purse I am a Cad, 
 with it I am a God. And don't you forget it, Bosket." 
 
 There was lust, there was arrogance in the face of the 
 millionaire, and his companion was not too obtuse to 
 notice it. 
 
 " You must be kind to poor Edmund, Fishy," he said 
 humbly. 
 
 " I will, my boy. For some reason I took to him from 
 the start, I like the bulldog in him ; he doesn't know 
 when he's beat ; he's a man after my own heart. I began 
 life without a rag to my back ; he's finishing without one. 
 But we are both of us sand. It made me, and it might 
 save him. Edmund Broke cares for nothing and nobody ; 
 neither do I. Give me that sort, and instead of licking my 
 boots they shall feed at my table." 
 
 " You are right. Fishy ; the poor devil is broke, stoney, 
 done for, but he's sand. I love the feller myself." 
 
 " All the same. Bos, he will have to come to it, mind you. 
 He tears up my cheque and throws it in my face, just as 
 people who are as good as he have done before him. Now 
 
 301 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 they pick the crumbs out of my hand like sparrows. 
 Edmund Broke will have to do the same one of these line 
 mornings. If you saw the letters I get from the Aristocracy 
 — with a capital ' A ' — from peeresses on the look out for 
 pin-money, and peers wanting pipelights, it would make 
 you laugh. Take this morning: five direct applications 
 for company tips from women with titles — not all in the 
 beerage either. Six invitations for dinner ; three for a 
 Saturday-to-Monday in the country ; and as for at-homes, 
 parties, God knows what, if Phoebus Apollo came driving 
 down Piccadilly in a golden automobile he could not be 
 more deuced popular. And why is it, do you think ? 
 Would you say it is for my beaux yeux, my boy ? Tchah ! 
 Catch them kissing the hem of the garment of a fat and 
 greasy and rather elderly Jew who does not disguise his 
 hereditary weakness for garlic, if there was not to be a few 
 shekels at the end. They want something. Bosket, but 
 between you and me. Bosket, they don't always get it. 
 I pick and I choose, and as a rule I give to the deserving 
 poor. And now and again, if it amuses me, I employ the 
 prerogative of my race and exact my pound of flesh. I 
 have one or two anecdotes of my dealings with these fools 
 and harpies that would make you stare. And sometimes 
 when I find myself overworked and craving for relaxation, 
 I grind some wretched devil with my heel." 
 
 " But not poor Edmund, Fishy." 
 
 " No, my boy, you've got my word. And I sometimes 
 keep it. I deplore his stand-off ways for his own sake ; but 
 I like them. He's a non-squealer. I like your man who is 
 such devilish good form that he chooses to be knocked 
 down and killed rather than turn his stiff neck to see which 
 way the traffic's running. But there is no hope for that 
 man in these days. He might as well give up the game if 
 he doesn't know how to play it." 
 
 " So I tell him. I tell him that every day of his life. 
 But, bless you, what does he care ? Tell me, Fishy, what 
 can a feller do with a feller who is born eight hundred years 
 out of his time ? " 
 
 " You can watch him rot," said Lord Salmon, with 
 gusto. 
 
 302 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 In which Mr. Burchell cries " Fudge ! ** 
 
 BROKE, in the stress of this new turn to his affairs, 
 had recourse to that sage counsellor, brilliant man 
 of business, and great master of the theory of commercial 
 first principles, Mr. Joseph Brefiit, So rapidly was that 
 eminent person approaching the term of existence allotted 
 to man, and in such a remarkable degree had fortune 
 smiled upon his labours in the many vineyards of the world 
 to which his surprising talents had been directed, that to 
 aU intents and purposes he had passed into an elegant 
 and well-merited retirement wherein his declining years 
 could seek asylum. He was now living what euphemisti- 
 cally he liked to call " the life of a gentleman " in the great 
 house in the county he had purchased for and placed at 
 the disposal of his son. 
 
 The business he carried on now was not so exacting, not 
 so all-absorbing, as that of his days at Cuttisham. He still 
 permitted himself to supervise the estates and in a general 
 way to overlook the affairs of certain among his clients. 
 But he had contrived to let these favoured persons know 
 that there was a measure of condescension in his continued 
 interest in them, and that they would do well to lay the 
 unction to their souls that it was a delicate tribute to their 
 social standing. By these favourites of fortune, among 
 whom was our hero, needless to say, the great man could 
 still be consulted at those seasons when it became impera- 
 tive that they should arm themselves with the accumulated 
 stores of his knowledge and sagacity. But he liked even 
 these of the elect, of the inner circle, to feel that he was 
 something of a potentate now ; that no longer did he 
 
 303 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 scurry hither and thither over the shire at the beck of this 
 landowner and that ; and that they could not depend on 
 finding him at his office at Cuttisham so many days in 
 the week, year in, year out, between the hours of ten and 
 four. 
 
 Those who now desired to confer with Mr. Joseph Breffit 
 must seek audience in all humility at his seat in the county, 
 Tufton Hall, lately in the occupation of Lord Algernon 
 Raynes. It was become the theme of conversation among 
 his cUents that old Joe Breffit was a great man now he had 
 taken it into his head to live at poor Algernon's place. 
 But however they might laugh and look at one another 
 meaningly, and shrug their shoulders, and shake their 
 heads archly, it was not always possible to do without old 
 Joe. A time seemed to come to them all when they must 
 have his services at any cost, " Old Joe is the knowingest 
 fellow in England, I dan't care where you look for the 
 others," was the verdict of one blunt old squire ; and with 
 rather mournful unanimity that was allowed to be about 
 the truth. 
 
 To this paragon of wisdom and rectitude came Broke 
 on the morning following the revelations in the matter 
 of the Thames Valley Goldfields Syndicate. Grim and 
 bitter were the pangs of the feudal gentleman to reflect 
 that he should live to see old Breffit, of all people in the 
 world, installed here in poor Algernon's place, in the house 
 a former duke of poor Algernon's hne had built, on a day 
 scarcely legible in the dim scroll of antiquity. Our hero 
 had something of the feelings of a man of the stone age 
 could he have awoke to find himself in the age of iron. 
 All the old landmarks and fingerposts by which one was 
 wont to gauge men and things seemed to have disappeared. 
 A succession of Gladstonian ministries too surely had told 
 their tale ! 
 
 There was no end to Trade's ruthless ravages. Nothing 
 was sacred from it. The fair spots of earth dedicated 
 from immemorial time by usage and custom to unimpeach- 
 able gentlemen of feudal tastes were being filched away by 
 this race of cunning capitalists and greedy manufacturers. 
 \Miat would his father have thought, the staunch and 
 foursquare old Tory who twice refused a peerage because 
 
 304 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 that one-time worthy institution had fallen into the hands 
 of the middle-classes, what would this fine old Englishman 
 have thought to find motor cars superseding horseflesh, 
 and a man of business, a tradesma,.i, taking up his residence 
 at Tufton Hall ! 
 
 When our hero found himself on the terrace under the 
 shadows of a gloomy fagade that had obtained for the 
 place its reputation as one of the show houses of England, 
 he felt himself shiver in the involuntary manner which in 
 the popular mind is held to portend that someone is 
 engaged in walking across your grave. The fate of this 
 sombre pile struck home. His own decay was projected 
 across his imagination in the form of a sinister parallel. 
 Vividly it foreshadowed the day when Covenden itself, 
 the home of an elder race than even that of Raynes, should 
 fall a victim to Commerce, that insatiate monster with the 
 all-devouring maw. " Upon my word ! " mused our hero, 
 " it is sacrilege for old Breffit to set his foot here. We have 
 'Arrys in the hunting field ; tradesmen at the covert-side ; 
 now we have come to this." 
 
 A splendid gentleman, faultless in pose and appointment, 
 conducted our hero across the tiled hall, embellished above 
 with a gallery and a priceless ceiling ; and below with 
 rescued tapestries from Spain, Louis Quinze furniture, 
 every piece of which was believed to have enjoyed the 
 sanction of La Pompadour ; while round the walls were 
 a particularly comprehensive set of ancestral portraits 
 from Holbein to W^atts, with Vandycks and an occasional 
 Lely, KneUer, Rejmolds, Gainsborough and Raebum by 
 the way. 
 
 The proprietor of these objects was discovered in a 
 spacious apartment on the ground floor. His nether man 
 was clothed in a bran-new pair of riding breeches by a 
 specialist of Savile Row, but being discovered in a moment 
 of elegant undress or neglige, other details of his attire 
 were pitched hardly in the same key. For the sake of 
 ease he had not donned either boots or leggings at this 
 early hour. Therefore, the parts they conceal were exposed 
 to view in three sections, consisting in v/hite pants, red 
 socks, and carpet slippers with cunning beaded work upon 
 the top. The white choker tie was virgin in its purity, but 
 
 305 u 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 not so the shirt and collar ; the Tattersall waistcoat was 
 a thing of beauty, but a spot of grease in the centre hardly 
 came within its wonderful and fearful scheme of colour, 
 although, Uke a middle tint in an impressionist landscape, 
 the higher criticism might have pronounced it to be an 
 embelhshment. As a set-off to all these superlative things 
 was a chin that had not very recently known the razor, 
 while a ragged smoking jacket stained and discoloured 
 all hues save the original of twenty years before, gave the 
 predominant note to an appearance which struck our hero 
 as a little bizarre. 
 
 On a table, at which Mr. Brefiit was seated, lay a sheet of 
 notepaper with a row of names in pencil thereupon ; and 
 beside it an open book, over which, eye-glasses on nose, he 
 had been poring assiduously. It was a volume of Sir 
 Horatio Hare's fascinating if slightly cumbersome work, 
 The Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Landed Gentry. 
 
 " Ha, Mr. Broke," he said, holding out his hand without 
 rising from his chair, " delighted to see you. Will you take 
 something to drink ? Say a glass of wine now, say a glass 
 of wine." 
 
 Our hero accepted the hand and declined the wine 
 without any display of effusion. Mr. Breffit was frankly 
 disappointed. 
 
 " Say a drop of port now. WTiat do you say to a drop 
 of port ? I've got some I can recommend. Forty-seven. 
 That ought to be good enough even for you, Mr. Broke, eh ? 
 The old Duke, Lord Algernon's father, laid it down, but 
 I take it up, ha ! ha ! Come now, just one glass for the 
 sake of old times, sir." 
 
 Our hero declined this offer also with the same absence 
 of effusion. 
 
 " Well, well," said Mr. Brefht with a sigh, " I suppose 
 you know best, Mr. Broke. It doesn't agree with every- 
 body in the morning before dinner — I mean lunch. It 
 doesn't with me. But if you will you have only to say, 
 you know. Or do you prefer champagne, sir ? Speak, 
 if you do ; there is plenty in the same place as the port. 
 I've got a nice dry wine you need not be afraid of. In 
 fact, Mr. Broke, if it comes to that, I have got about the 
 best cellar in the county. His lordship and his father 
 
 006 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 before him knew a few things about wine, I can tell you. 
 Come, now, Mr. Broke, just a leetle drop of ' boy ' for old 
 
 sake's sake." 
 
 Our hero remained equally impervious to the blandish- 
 ments of champagne. Pointedly, briefly, he stated the 
 business that was responsible for his presence. But this 
 morning it seemed a really difhcult matter to keep old 
 Brefht down to the prosaic. It almost seemed as if the 
 old fellow was a little flushed by the position in which he 
 found himself, as if he had been knocked off his balance 
 a bit by his new surroundings. For the first time in our 
 hero's long experience of his ways he discerned a retrograde 
 tendency, a tendency to insist on his own immediate per- 
 sonal affairs. There was even a disposition in him to forget 
 the subtle degree of homage that was wont to oil the 
 wheels, as it were, of their intercourse. It was not always 
 so subtle either for that matter ; there had been times when 
 old Breffit's flummery had got on our hero's nerves a little. 
 He had overlooked that, however. Old Brefiit had always 
 been a well-meaning man, eminently well meaning. But 
 the suggestion of familiarity, of off-handedness that was in 
 him this morning, jarred on his pontifical nerves even 
 more. Your devoutly religious nature may occasionally 
 deplore the presence of too much incense, but too little 
 cuts it to the heart. 
 
 " What do you think of my little place ? " said Mr. 
 Brefht, as soon as Broke had furnished his succinct account 
 of the Thames Valley Goldfields Syndicate disaster. " Not 
 a bad place is it, sir ? " 
 
 Our hero was not able to exhibit any particular enthu- 
 siasm for the little place. The pride of ownership which 
 swelled the voice of Mr. Brefiit merely caused him to cock 
 his eye at that gentleman, and to stroke his chin in deep 
 thought. 
 
 " There is everything here, you know," said the new 
 owner, waxing on his theme. " It would surprise you, it 
 would indeed, to see the number of people who come 'ere 
 from all parts of the world, and from America especially, 
 to look at what we've got. We set certain days apart you 
 know, on which to throw the 'ouse and grounds open to the 
 public. It is very inconvenient, you know, sir, sometimes 
 
 307 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 1o be mistaken for the butler, and now and then to get a 
 tip ; or when you are sitting at dinner — I mean lunch — to 
 see them pressing their noses against the windows: it 
 gives you a kind of feeling that they 'ave come to watch 
 the lions feed. But, after all, these are a part of our responsi- 
 bilities. Noblesse oblige — I daresay you 'ave felt the same 
 thing yourself." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " I suppose it is only right. We ought not to be selfish 
 in these matters. We ought to do what we can to elevate 
 the masses. If it educates them and gives them 'igher 
 thoughts to look at old oil paintings, I am not the one to 
 say them nay, ' Let them all come ' is my motto. But I 
 feel a great responsibility, Mr. Broke, all the same. You 
 see, Lord Algernon was — you will, ahem ! pardon my frank- 
 ness, but it has always been my rule to speak out — Lord 
 Algernon was not at all particular. He 'ung up pictures 
 of nude figures of both sexes." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " They tell me one of the ceilings is by Marie Corelli — 
 the one with the little flying angels on it. Very pure and 
 *igh-minded I call it, considering the subject — ' Beauty 
 in Distress ' — and ' Beauty ' is so nicely dressed that it 
 ought to be a fine moral lesson to some other artists I 
 could name. I call that ceiling 'armless, sir. Very moral 
 and elevating. But, personally, the landscapes appeal to 
 me most. There's a genuine Claude Duval. And that 
 little thing in a gilt frame on the right hand as you 
 come in is supposed to be a genuine Theodore Watts 
 Dunton. Said to be very convincing and of rare distinc- 
 tion." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " Then, sir, the furniture is worthy of your attention. 
 There is a Chippendale cabinet, and a Sheridan sideboard 
 with poker work inlaid ; the chairs are mostly Paul 
 Very-uneasy and Lewis Carroll. The piano in the blue 
 drawing-room is an upright Stradivarius on which 
 Ole Bull had the honour of playing ' 'Ome, Sweet 'Ome ' 
 before her Majesty at Cowes." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " The grounds are worthy of attention, too. There are 
 308 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 several trees planted by the late Prince Consort, also 
 one or two cut down by the late Mr. Gladstone." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " There are all things and everything. In the cabinet 
 in the yellow room among the curios there is the 
 air-cushion that was kept for the Prince Regent to 
 sit on when he had the gout. There is the identical 
 penny doll the Prince of Wales wore in his hat when he 
 went to the Derby in '67. There is Queen Anne's favourite 
 snuffbox ; and a strip of the shift that Mother Brownrigg 
 was executed in. There are the shoes of a Derby winner 
 bred and owned by Lord Algernon's father ; and the 
 pantaloons worn by old Q. and Lord George Bentinck on 
 the memorable day. In fact, Mr. Broke, there are a 
 thousand and one things too numerous to refer to. I 
 shall be very happy, sir, personally to take you on a tour 
 of the house and grounds like I do parties of excursionists.". 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " But, you know, Mr. Broke" — Mr. Breffit's excited voice 
 suddenly grew pregnant with mystery — " I have always 
 maintained it is not manners that maketh man so much 
 as his surroundings. To-morrow we start our entertaining. 
 There is a lot of real swells coming here, friends of my son's. 
 They would never have thought of coming to my pokey 
 hole and corner little house at Cuttisham, but here, sir, 
 you see it's different. They are all real slap-up people, 
 every one, sir. You would not be ashamed to meet them 
 yourself. I wish you would name a day on which you could 
 come over and dine with us. And we could find you a 
 bed ; no end of room, you know. I have just been looking 
 out who these friends of his are. All their names are 
 in Hare right enough, so they are perfectly safe." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " Every one of their fathers is in Hare. And there is 
 not one lower in rank than a baronet, and he is all right. 
 because he is a second cousin to the author. But, of 
 course, you and I, Mr. Broke, understand the real value 
 of having a handle to one's name. It is not worth anything, 
 strictly speaking, but the world has yet to find that out ; 
 and when all is said, it does give you a feeling of security 
 that whatever they may say or whatever they may do 
 
 309 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 has tlie sanction, as it were, of their social position. I 
 think it is good for my son to choose his acquaintances 
 from among the 'ighest in the land. A man is known by 
 the company he keeps. I am thankful to say, my son has 
 early found out for himself the great, the inmiense value 
 of that adage." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " You might say that we have got coming to-morrow 
 the creme de la creme, the real Vere de Vere as it were. 
 There is young Woole-Sacke, the eldest son of the Earl of 
 Tre, Pol, and Pen, who was ennobled for the humane 
 consideration he extended to all wrong-doers, no matter 
 how well-connected they might be, that were brought 
 before 'im. That is a fine example of pecuniary reward 
 overtaking a humane and high-minded judge, who never 
 allowed wealth and station to interfere with his unfailing 
 courtesy. That is a great thing about England : politeness 
 costs nothing, but it may mean a great deal. There is 
 also the eldest son of the Earl of Beeston. His father was 
 ennobled for building a coffee 'ouse in which a royal 
 princess drank the first mug. He moves in the selectest 
 society in London. Member of the Royal Yacht Squadron 
 and the Jockey Club, and all that, you know, and his name 
 has appeared in all the most important card scandals of 
 the last ten years. There is no doubt about 'im. Then 
 there is young Lord Treadwell, son of the Marquis of 
 Kidderminster — carpets, you know. His father is a true 
 philanthropist, and a great friend of royalty. It is not 
 often his name is out of the papers. There is no doubt 
 about him either. In fact, there is no doubt about any 
 of them. Their social position, sir, is unassailable. Don't 
 you think, Mr. Broke, that my son 'as made the most of 
 his time to collect and bring together such a very desirable 
 set of young men ? " 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 At this point the proud father stopped. His volubility, 
 touched with an intense excitement which had provoked 
 a few liberties with our common tongue, came suddenly 
 to an end just as our hero had been driven by despair to 
 the conclusion that it was never going to end at all. Mr. 
 Breffit was seen to pull himself up by a violent effort. He 
 
 qio 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 coughed in an uneasy fashion, and began to wriggle in his 
 chair without any visible cause for such a proceeding. Our 
 hero regarded him with a stolid gravity. Now he was 
 here he would hear the fellow out to the bitter end ! After 
 all, it threw an illuminating flashlight on the purlieus of 
 human nature. One hardly realized into what fantastic 
 shapes the aspirations and emotions that almost might 
 be said to be common to us all could be twisted by un- 
 educated minds. Breffit's rather astounding revelation 
 of himself was not without value. It would be instructive 
 to hear the fellow out. 
 
 " You must pardon me, Mr. Broke," said the old man, 
 beginning again in a voice that had now dropped to a hoarse 
 whisper, " but I think the time is now come when, without 
 impropriety, I can speak on a subject that has been in 
 my mind for some little time past. Of course, sir, speaking 
 as one man of the world to another, you will understand 
 almost without my calling attention to the fact, that in 
 these days every tub is allowed to stand on its own bottom, 
 as it were, and that it is every man for himself." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 He did not try to elucidate this piece of pregnant reason- 
 ing. 
 
 " I don't think I have quite shown you what I mean, 
 sir. What I want you to understand, Mr. Broke, is this : 
 when a man gets to my time of life, and that life has been 
 as successful as mine has been — I think I may make that 
 admission to you, sir, without being considered boastful — 
 he may begin to see things in a different light to that in 
 which he was inclined to look at them when he was younger 
 and not quite so well to do. You will understand that, sir, 
 will you not ? " 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " You see, there is that son of mine, sir. He has had 
 the best upbringing that a young man can 'ave ; he mixes 
 with the best people ; he enjoys all the advantages of 
 wealth ; not to mention the minor blessings of 'ealth and 
 a sound constitution. And it has become a pet scheme 
 of mine, Mr. Broke, my one remaining ambition, you might 
 say, that before I die I shall see this boy of mine settled 
 in life with a wife whose antecedents are unimpeachable 
 
 311 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and — er — to be quite frank with you, sir, who is capable 
 of giving him a hft in a social sense. It may seem a wild 
 scheme to you, Mr. Broke, but before I go I should like 
 to see my son in — er — a fair way to — er — found a family." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 The old man was exceeding all expectation, 
 
 " It may sound a bit inflated and presumptuous to you, 
 Mr. Broke, I know ; but you must not forget that every- 
 body 'as to 'ave a beginning. If I may say it without 
 giving offence, sir, even the family of Broke 'ad to 'ave 
 a beginning. And what I ask myself is this : why should 
 not I, old Joe Brefiit, now that I 'ave the ways and the 
 means, all come by honestly, mind you, and in the sweat 
 of my brow as it were, why should not I begin like anybody 
 else ? When some of the fathers and the grandfathers 
 of the young men who are coming to-morrow began life, 
 sir, they were 'ardly better than I am myself. But look 
 at them now. They are the creme de la crime, the real 
 Vere de Vere. And I 'ave lately come to ask myself why, 
 in the course of time and the fulness, the name of Breffit 
 should not rank as 'igh as does theirs to-day ? " 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 " Those are my feelings on the subject, Mr. Broke. And 
 I 'ope you will be patient with me, and not think I am 
 trespassing — trespassing unduly upon your valuable time, 
 because upon consideration I have come to the conclusion 
 that you, sir, are the man before all others who is in a 
 position to 'elp me." 
 
 " Humph ! " said our hero. 
 
 Our surprised but not flattered gentleman knitted his 
 brows into a pattern of fierce perplexity. 
 
 " I beg jour pardon, Brefiit, but I am afraid I don't 
 understand what you are driving at." 
 
 " No, sir, I thought you might not. I will try to make 
 myself a Httle more clear. You see, it is like this, Mr. 
 Broke — I hope you will not think I am exceeding the 
 bounds of good taste to mention a small matter of this 
 kind — but, speaking as one business man to another, are 
 you aware that a few months ago Mrs. Broke did me the 
 honour to accept a loan of me to the extent of some two 
 thousand pounds ? The matter is almost too trivial to 
 
 312 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 mention. It was just in the ordinary way of business, 
 you know ; she wanted it, I beheve, for some Httle private 
 speculation, which I am sorry to say did not come off. 
 In any case, she borrowed it, sir ; and as she has since 
 told me that there is no immediate prospect of her being 
 able to repay it, I feel, with great diffidence, you will under- 
 stand, sir,- that I may be pardoned if I turn to you for a 
 helping hand in this little matter that is so near my heart. 
 Wheels within wheels, you know, sir, as the saying is." 
 
 Our hero said "humph" no more. His eyes dilated, 
 his face assumed the startled expression which several 
 times had appeared on it of late ; every Une in his figure 
 denoted alarm. 
 
 " Impossible. She would not be such a fool. She — ah 
 — would not dare." 
 
 Mr. Breffit smiled a far-off smile within himself. 
 
 " There is my cheque book. I can easily produce it; 
 sir, if you wish to see it." 
 
 Our hero waved his hand petulantly. But half a groan 
 escaped him. His unbelief was not so much a matter of 
 incredulity as of disinclination. 
 
 " What — ah — do you — ah — propose to do ? " 
 
 " I propose to do nothing, sir, of course. But if I may, 
 I would hke to make a suggestion. The scheme I would 
 like to be allowed to propound would, I am sure, be to 
 our common advantage. But first, sir, I must have your 
 permission to speak out just what is in my mind." 
 
 " You have it," said our hero shortly. 
 
 " You will undertake not to be — er — offended by it, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 Our hero gave a grim eye to his agent. For the first 
 time the idea dawned upon him, in all its completeness, 
 as to' what a cunning fellow this old Breffit really was. 
 The supple and servile adviser of twenty years, in many 
 ways the friend, was now about to issue forth in his native 
 character of the Jew-like usurer. He could afford to snap 
 his fingers in his face now, he the man of wealth, to the 
 client brought to beggary. He was about to grind him, 
 no doubt. 
 
 " Well, sir, what I 'ave in my mind is this," said the old 
 
 313 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 man with the same circumlocution, the same odd nervous- 
 ness of manner that our hero had remarked in him from 
 the beginning of the interview. " Blood without money 
 don't count for much nowadays, does it, sir ? And money 
 Mkes to 'ave blood to back it when it can get it, does it 
 not, sir ? Now, why should not you and I, who I might 
 say are typical of the two sides, if you will pardon the 
 freedom, enter into a little arrangement for our mutual 
 benefit ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " said Broke the obtuse. 
 
 " I am glad to 'ear you say that, sir, I am indeed ! " 
 said Mr. Brefht, with a fervent air of relief and thankful- 
 ness. " I felt sure, sir, you would see it in that light." 
 
 " What is your little arrangement, Brefl&t ? " 
 
 " Well — er — you see, sir, I — er — want a wife for my 
 son. 
 
 " In the circumstances that does not strike one as 
 unnatural." 
 
 " I want you to 'elp me, Mr. Broke." 
 
 " I — ah — have no qualifications as far as I am aware to 
 be a matrimonial agent." 
 
 " You have daughters, sir." 
 
 "Six." 
 
 They looked at one another. Broke looked at Breffit 
 with the candour and self-possession of perfect innocence. 
 For the life of him he could not see what the fellow was 
 driving at ! Breffit looked at Broke with a weary, anxious 
 expression. Delicate suggestion could no farther go. 
 The hint was as broad, as direct as any hint could be, yet 
 the great man either would not or could not see it. 
 
 For once even Mr. Breffit was at a disadvantage. He 
 had an uneasy consciousness that this matter was a little 
 outside his milieu. He did not know quite what to say 
 next. A transaction in shares, the recovery of a debt, 
 the terms of a tenancy, and he was prepared to revel in 
 the facilit}' and the felicity of his language. But those gifts 
 of expression did not lielp him here. He must be delicate; 
 yet the man was as dense as a wall. 
 
 " Don't you take me, sir ? " he said at last in despera- 
 tion, shutting one eye like a character in Dickens. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Breffit," said our hero gravely. 
 3M 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 " Don't you understand me, sir ? " 
 
 " I beg your pardon," our hero repeated more gravely 
 than before. 
 
 Mr. Brefiit was mortified. Had the man no intelligence 
 at all ! Surely it was not necessary to say in so many 
 words just what was in one's mind. Between cultivafed 
 people it was hardly usual to resort to such an extreme 
 verbal precision in affairs of this peculiarly delicate kind. 
 It was his first experience of them, it was true, but his 
 instincts assured him that a margin for insinuation, for 
 suggestion, ought to be allowed. 
 
 " You have daughters, sir." 
 
 " Six." 
 
 " And I have a son, sir." 
 
 " So I understand." 
 
 " Well, now, sir, do you not — er — exactly see — er — 
 what I mean ? " 
 
 Mr. Breffit in his anxiety leaned forward with his hands 
 on his knees. 
 
 " Just now you spoke of a scheme," said our hero 
 patiently. 
 
 " That is my scheme, sir," said Mr. Breffit in a burst of 
 confidence. 
 
 " You speak in riddles. I — ah — cannot make you out. 
 I do not see what your son has got to do with it. Do 
 you — ah — wish me to understand that Mrs. Broke bor- 
 rowed this money of him. If that is the case, why — ah — 
 not say so in as many words ? " 
 
 Mr, Breffit ran his fingers through his sparse hair. How 
 was it possible to be delicate with a man of this kidney ! 
 
 " It is not a question of the money, sir, altogether." 
 
 " If it is not a question of the money, I hardly know 
 what you are talking about, Breffit," said Broke, becoming 
 so bewildered that he was getting a httle angry also. " Of 
 course, you may depend upon it that I shall take the 
 first opportunity of — ah — discharging the — ah — obhgation 
 Mrs. Broke is under to you. I hope there will be enough 
 left over from the lease of No. 3, Broke Street, to clear off 
 that. In the course of a week or two, Breffit, I — ah — trust 
 you will be repaid." 
 
 " Of course, sir — yes, yes, of course. But — er — that is 
 
 315 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 not exactly what I mean. Really — er — that has little or 
 nothing to do with it." 
 
 " Breffit, I cannot understand you. What else have 
 we been talking about ? I certainly understood you to 
 be propounding a scheme by which I — ah — could pay off 
 the debt in a manner convenient to us both. You have 
 not made it very clear, but — ah — I don't doubt it is 
 excellent. Your schemes in the way of business are 
 generally excellent." 
 
 " They are, I hope and trust, sir. But if you will pardon 
 my sa5nng it, sir, I think you have got hold of the wrong 
 end of the stick. It is not a paltry little matter of a few 
 hundreds of pounds that I am talking of, in the first place. 
 We will leave that out of the question altogether. You 
 have six daughters, and — er — I have one son, sir ; and my 
 son, sir, speaking plainly, is pretty well off at the present 
 moment, and has this place in which to Uve. In confi- 
 dence, Mr. Broke, I think it is only right to tell you that I 
 have made over this house to him in my own lifetime, and 
 fastened rather more than a quarter of a million upon him 
 for the upkeep of it. And I may say that at my decease 
 there will be another quarter of a million for him in 
 addition, or even more ; but what he has already should 
 be more than enough for him to marry on and lead the Hfe 
 of a gentleman. According to its present investments 
 it means something like thirty thousand a year, sir; 
 and should his wife object to my presence in this house, 
 I being a simple and homely man, sir, and always have 
 been, like my father before me, I am quite prepared to go 
 back to the little hole at Cuttisham above my office, where 
 I have lived for forty years." 
 
 In an impatience of spirit that was no longer to be 
 restrained Broke rose from his chair. Old Breffit was so 
 persistently mysterious, so persistently unintelligible, that 
 one would almost think his mind was giving way. He 
 was certainly bcj^inning to evince many signs of age. 
 This was not the Breffit of Cuttisham he was wont to look 
 to. This was not the far-seeing and acute man of business 
 who, confining himself wholly to the affairs of his chents; 
 had the knack of setting forth his thoughts in the most 
 explicit manner. This was a new kind of Breffit alto- 
 
 316 
 
MR. BURCHELL CRIES "FUDGE" 
 
 gether : a halting, faltering, fumbling, prosing, nervously- 
 autobiographical Breffit ; an uneasy, aspiring, great- deal- 
 too-familiar Brefi&t who gave himself airs. There, could 
 be no doubt that the acquisition of wealth was a curse to 
 people who had not been bred to its enjoyment. 
 
 He could endure this farce no longer. He took up his 
 hat and tapped his riding crop against his gaiters. 
 
 " Good morning, Breffit." 
 
 Mr. Breffit lifted his sweating face up to him in the 
 stress of a last appeal. 
 
 " Surely, sir, you do understand me ? " 
 
 " Confound it all, my dear fellow, what is there to 
 understand ? " 
 
 " That I want my son to marry one of your daughters 
 — I don't care which," Mr. Breffit blurted out with the 
 sudden and dramatic brevity of his great desperation. 
 
 Our hero stood a minute in deep silence, but with his 
 mouth open wide and a face as purple as Mr. Breffit's own. 
 Suddenly, and still without uttering a word, he crammed 
 his hat on his head, swung upon his heel, and stalked out 
 of the house at such a pace that he ran the imminent risk 
 of knocking down a serious and splendid gentleman in the 
 shape of a footman and trampling him beneath his feet. 
 
 317 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 Iphigenia 
 
 BROKE rode two miles at a brisk canter. He th*?!! 
 for no visible reason reined up his horse, and burst 
 out in a guffaw of laughter. The quahty of this mirth 
 was as singular as its manner. It had the hoUowness 
 of that a ghost might shake out of its thin sides, if con- 
 fronted with its own reflection in a mirror in the middle 
 of the night. There was no precise reason why at such a 
 moment he should pause for amusement's sake, let alone 
 to make it vocal ; and the absence of motive lent a slightly 
 irrelevant, a slightly ridiculous air to the proceeding. When 
 he rode on again he appeared to be laughing at his own 
 incongruous behaviour. 
 
 It was not until the evening of that day that he could 
 screw up his resolution to the point of talking with his wife 
 on the painful topic of her borrowing two thousand 
 pounds from Mr. Breffit. The other consequences — the 
 outcome, he supposed, of that rash act — he could not put 
 before himself. Events had been moving too fast for him 
 lately. His powerfully balanced and beautifully unemo- 
 tional mental system was in danger of being shaken to its 
 base if this sort of thing continued to go on. There was 
 only a numb ache in that sensitive portion of him which 
 rejoiced a fortnight ago in the possession of a living breath- 
 ing actual son; Then a great green discoloration, a very 
 bruise, was spreading over the no less sensitive part that was 
 dedicated to his sovereign honesty. That Salmon business 
 was a facer ; but worse a hundred times, because of the hint 
 of treachery implied in it, was this business of his wife 
 
 3i« 
 
IPHIGENIA 
 
 stooping to borrow money behind his back, with but a faint 
 possibility of repaying it. As for the use old Breffit had pro- 
 posed to himself to put it to, that was not a theme for 
 serious minds. It belonged too palpably to the region of 
 broad farce. 
 
 He was shocked by a suspicion of hghtness in his wife's 
 tone when with many hums and haws he confronted her 
 with her misdemeanour. The borrowing of the two 
 thousand pounds she admitted in as many words. She 
 had seen what she thought to be a chance of snapping 
 up an unconsidered trifle by means of speculation with a 
 few shares. It had not come off ; and there the thing was — 
 such was her habit of philosophy. She was perfectly 
 placid over it ; not at all inclined to mingle her tears 
 with the milk she had spilt. 
 
 " With a bit of luck it would have doubled itself, then I 
 could have returned the money with two thousand pounds 
 in hand, and no one would have been any the wiser. I 
 have done it before. But we are dead out of luck this 
 year." 
 
 " I — ah — don't like to hear you talk like that, Jane. It 
 is as though you — ah — hardly understand the principle 
 involved. You should have first consulted me." 
 
 " You ! " 
 
 Her inveterate susceptibility to humour only half enabled 
 her to check the ring of amusement in her tone. 
 
 " Yes, Jane, me. I am afraid you — ah — treat it too 
 lightly. You should never have done a thing like that 
 without my sanction." 
 
 " Wherefore, Sapient ? " 
 
 " In the first place I am a stickler for ever5^hing being 
 straight and above board." 
 
 " I hardly concede your right, my dear Edmund, to inter- 
 vene in my purely personal affairs." 
 
 " I — ah — think you will find that the law does." 
 
 Again she made the unsuccessful effort to conceal the 
 pleasure she derived from his delicious pomposity. 
 
 " Has it never struck you, my dear Edmund, that to 
 be perfectly literal with the Law of England is to be 
 obsolete." 
 
 " I — ah — don't go into fine points. The fact, Jane, should 
 
 319 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 suffice that as long as you use my name I am responsible 
 for the uses to which you may put it." 
 
 " Very well, my Edmund, for the sake of the argument 
 I grant it ; but I still reserve my right to forget it when- 
 ever I choose. Does the virtuous Mr. Breffit propose to 
 adopt the role of Shylock ? " 
 
 " He does." 
 
 " He proposes to sell us up ? " 
 
 " No, he — ah — wants his pound of flesh more literally." 
 
 Our hero again suddenly broke forth into the guffaw 
 he had checked his horse to employ. It burst out of him 
 in just the same irrational fashion as in the country lane. 
 
 His wife was startled by it. She then noted that his 
 eyes were slightly bloodshot. In his face she saw the ex- 
 pression of gray weariness that had been first observed 
 there so recently. She had a pain ; and for the moment 
 all the fight went out of her. 
 
 It was Broke who made an end of the brief interval of 
 silence that followed. 
 
 " We put ourselves in the power," he said, "of men like 
 these and they do not hesitate to push their advantages 
 home. I have had such an instance of the man's effrontery 
 as you will hardly believe. I hardly believe it myself." 
 
 Mrs. Broke waited with a calm foreknowledge of what 
 was coming. For accuracy of guessing she was famous. 
 
 " I — ah — don't know that it is worth while tc tell 
 you." 
 
 " You will be wise if you do." 
 
 " Very well. You may know that this fellow Breffit has 
 put his son in Algernon's place with thirty thousand a 
 year. Well, this morning he was kind enough to suggest — 
 he says he — ah — doesn't mind which — that one of our girls 
 should marry him." 
 
 Again the ghost laugh rang hollow in our hero. His 
 wife looked at him patiently with a tender quizzical ex- 
 pression. 
 
 " I never guessed what an old ruffian he was until I 
 saw him this morning in poor Algernon's place. He is 
 completely changed. He is like the rest of his tribe : 
 money has poisoned him. He was — ah — good enough to 
 put me on an equality with himself. Noblesse oblige, you 
 
 320 
 
IPHIGENIA 
 
 know, Mr. Broke. I could hardly stand it ; I — ah — nearly 
 laughed in his face." 
 
 He passed his hands through his hair wearily. 
 
 " And how did you answer him, Edmund ? " 
 
 " What could I ? I — ah — took up my hat and 
 bolted." 
 
 " I gather you did not err on the side of civility, my 
 Edmund." 
 
 " The fellow got as much as he deserved — more ! " 
 
 " Thirty thousand a year," she repeated wistfully. 
 
 " It makes it no better — worse if anything. It's a 
 bribe." 
 
 " There is one phase of this matter, Edmund, of which 
 you force me to remind you. A recent event has ruined 
 
 U.S." 
 
 " In a sense I — ah — suppose it has." 
 
 " And .that the primary. We must leave Covenden, or 
 consent to be sold up." 
 
 " Surely we cannot be so far gone as that." 
 
 His voice had changed dramatically. 
 
 " You will find that to be the case. And I want you to 
 bear in mind that Mr. Brefht is our largest creditor." 
 
 " But you forget No. 3. We are selling it on lease. 
 Surely the money will help us to hold on for a bit." 
 
 " Edmund, do not deceive yourself. We are com- 
 promised far more deeply than I think you realise. Mr. 
 Breffit's purse and his goodwill have been propping us up 
 for several years. You are not so closely in touch with 
 our affairs as I am. We are much farther gone than you 
 think. For the last two years Mr. Brefht has only had 
 to say the word for Covenden and all it contains to be sold 
 over our heads." 
 
 " Why has the fellow not said it, then ? " 
 
 " I will give you no more than two reasons. The first 
 is I have put him off continually with appeals to his 
 friendship and our hopes of Billy. The second I will leave 
 you to guess for yourself." 
 
 " Impossible ; I — ah — refuse to believe it. The fellow 
 may be cunning, but he cannot have had the — ah — folly, 
 the — ah — effrontery to play such a game as that. The man 
 must be mad." 
 
 321 X 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 *' Not mad, my Edmund. If madness there is in the 
 matter it lies in us. The man merely moves with his age. 
 This is the age of the democracy." 
 
 " Faugh ! You disgust me." 
 
 " Again, my Edmund, for the hundred thousandth time 
 it is my disagreeable duty to remind you that this is not 
 the time of the Plantagenets. Persons like you are as obsolete 
 as the feudal baron. The last of you had his head 
 cut off by GUver Cromwell. We are democrats all living 
 in the golden age of the people. We must be prepared to 
 offer up our Iphigenia on their altars." 
 
 " I don't know how you can talk so," said our hero, 
 hoarsely. " It's blasphemous." 
 
 " We are confronted with the bitter truth. When Mr. 
 Brefht made that suggestion this morning, he showed 
 his hand. He could have added, and probably would 
 have done had you waited to hear, ' Refuse me this and I 
 sell vou up ! ' " 
 
 "My God! you think that?" 
 
 " I am perfectly convinced of it." 
 
 Broke's chest sank ; speech seemed to fail him. He 
 was compelled to take what his wife said for granted. 
 It was her duty to navigate the wretched vessel through 
 these vast and deep seas of an infinite complexity. The 
 requisite patience and subtlety were beyond him. Thus 
 when the cold assurance fell from her lips he accepted it, 
 fantastic, weird, awful as it was, with a faith that was un- 
 questioning. The blow shook him to the roots. 
 
 " I should suggest Delia." 
 
 His wife's brevity was so pregnant in its abrupt 
 intrusion on his thoughts that the unhappy gentleman 
 was startled rather painfully out of the slough in which he 
 was all but lost. 
 
 He shaped a word with his lips. So shaken was he that 
 for the moment the power of articulation was not in him. 
 
 Mrs. Broke could interpret the word if she could not 
 hear it. 
 
 " The matter is one of life and death," she said. " Shy- 
 lock insists on his pound of flesh. He has only to speak 
 and we are houseless and homeless. Covenden will pro- 
 bably become a shooting box for his son." 
 
IPHIGENIA 
 
 Implacably she watched the barb sink. The capacity 
 he had so long admired in her of being able to act purely 
 from considerations of expedience was standing her in good 
 stead at this moment. She had made up her mind to be 
 ruthless. Half measures would be fatal. The wretched 
 victim must be pierced and mutilated if ultimately he was 
 to issue forth to his salvation. His pride must be nailed 
 to the tree. 
 
 " I suggest Deha." 
 
 " You don't know what you are saying, woman." 
 
 " You have six girls, but only one Covenden." 
 
 " Ugh ! Brefht, shocking young cad." 
 
 " So I believe. The heathen deities are not nice." 
 
 " I cannot do it, I will not do it. The idea revolts me." 
 
 " You have considered fully the unhappy alternative ? " 
 
 In his distress our hero rose from his chair to stride 
 about the room. She watched his grotesque figure as it 
 lurched up and down the carpet. There was a wan smile- 
 on her lips. A pair of wild horses had been hitched 
 to the unyielding thing he called his pride, and she was 
 looking on at the savage spectacle of it being rent asunder. 
 Something of the sensation was hers of an ancient Roman 
 witnessing a massacre of Christians in the amphi- 
 theatre. 
 
 The victim had to choose between the ancestral home 
 of his race and one of the sacred emblems of it. He must 
 sacrifice Covenden. or he must sacrifice a daughter. The 
 horrid bloody Moloch when he makes his demand will not 
 be fobbed off ; he insists on the letter. The demand 
 must be met with a strip of our flesh or the hot tears of our 
 hearts. 
 
 " Why Delia ? " he stopped suddenly to ask in the 
 fierce height of his torment. " Why she more than 
 another ? " 
 
 " She is the youngest." 
 
 "That is no reason. Or if it is a reason it points the 
 other way." 
 
 " She is not quite so dependable as the others." 
 
 " How ? What do jou mean ? " 
 
 A fortnight ago he could not have brought himself to 
 put such a question. But the phenomenal has only to 
 
 323 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 happen to us once to change us. The act of his son 
 had smeared over and defaced for ever the beautifully ruled 
 chart of human behaviour it had been his invariable habit 
 to consult. Dating from that he had no bearings by which 
 to go. 
 
 " Her tutor has done her no good, I regret to say." 
 
 " Tutor, tutor ! What tutor ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I refer to the man Emma sent to coach her. The 
 wretched child has fallen violently in love." 
 
 A fortnight ago he would probably have informed his 
 wife she was a fool in just so many words, for permitting 
 herself to evolve such a theory in regard to a daughter of 
 his house. Now he could only resume his peregrination 
 of the room with another nerve laid bare. The world in 
 which he had lived for sixty peaceful years was falling 
 in upon him. The dust of it was running up his nostrils 
 and down his throat ; it seemed to thick his blood. The 
 debris was falling upon him too ; mighty blocks of it had 
 pinned him already. They were breaking his ribs against 
 the very walls of his heart. If this sort of thing went on, 
 his veins must snap and he would have to die. 
 
 With our hero continuing to stagger up and down the 
 room and shaking it heavily with every fall of his foot, his 
 wife withdrew her attention from his strange figure and wrote 
 a letter. It was a brief note of invitation to Mr. Breffit 
 the younger ; it craved the pleasure of his company at 
 luncheon at two o'clock on the following Saturday. On 
 signing it she summoned him to read, while she addressed 
 an envelope. 
 
 She finished her task a full two minutes before Broke 
 had finished his, brief as it was. When he returned the 
 note she was oppressed by the coldness of his hands. 
 
 " Give me a bit of time," he said in a voice she could 
 hardly hear. " Time to think it over. Mustn't decide 
 it to-night. No need to decide it to-night." 
 
 " Yes, Edmund, to-night. We must make up our 
 minds here and now. We can then put it away from 
 us once and for all. It is like having a tooth drawn, you 
 know ; have it pulled at the first twinge to save much 
 pain." 
 
 " Yes, it's right I daresay. Always right, Jane, in these 
 
 324 
 
IPHIGENIA 
 
 things. But I am in no mood to-night. It's late. Save 
 it until to-morrow. Our heads will be clearer." 
 
 " No, Edmund, to-night. Let us have done with it. It 
 is the only way. We spare ourselves if we do." 
 
 Suddenly the tormented gentleman broke out in his 
 more strident self. 
 
 " You shall not do it ; upon my soul you shall not ! " 
 He made a grab at the letter now in his wife's possession, 
 tore it from her fingers, crushed it, and flung it among the 
 ashes long since cold in the grate. 
 
 His wife met him with a straight figure and staunch 
 eyes. 
 
 " You seal your doom, Edmund." 
 " Let them do their worst, and curse them." 
 He walked out of the room. The door slammed behind 
 him. A little afterwards a second door slammed far away 
 in the house. By the dull and heavy clang Mrs. Broke 
 divined it to be the great door of the hall. She looked 
 at the clock. It was five minutes to two of the May 
 morning. 
 
 Deliberately she took up the pen for the second time, 
 and rewrote word for word her invitation to Mr. Breffit. 
 She then quitted the room, dropped the letter in the post- 
 bag in the hall ; and, proceeding to the housekeeper's room, 
 deserted hours ago, struck a hght, lit a spirit lamp, and 
 made herself a cup of tea. 
 
 325 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 In which Two Matrimonial Richmonds take 
 the Field 
 
 THREE days later the crowning glory of England, 
 its press, and the most radiant section of that 
 emblem, the halfpenny journal, was selling like hot cakes 
 with the aid of a spicy bill of fare. With pregnant Roman 
 capitals as black as thunder, every sooty traveller of the 
 Underground, every struggler for the omnibus, every 
 patron of the Tube, every habitue of the Aerated Bread 
 shop and chop house of the City was bidden to the ban- 
 quet. There could be no doubt as to the stimulating 
 nature of the feast. "A Thames Bubble — Collapse of 
 the Thames Valley Goldfields Syndicate — Meeting of 
 Shareholders — Stormy Scenes — Remarkable Speech of a 
 Director." 
 
 Here was meat for the halfpenny clientele to gloat upon ! 
 
 Our hero's excursion into eloquence was reported entire. 
 His periods were rounded and his coherence embellished 
 by the arts of journalism, but nothing could bereave his 
 utterances of their innate and peculiar quality and of the 
 naivete of him who gave them forth. As one organ took 
 occasion to declare in a leading article, "The quaint 
 spectacle of a guinea pig waving aloft the banner of purity, 
 and calling down fire from heaven upon the heads of its 
 kind, was enough to make the British public sit up and 
 purr." The inciter of this feline feat awoke to find him- 
 self more notorious than he had ever been in his life before. 
 The illustrated press came out with pictures of him in 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 varying forms and stages of the libellous ; Society 
 Snapshots had a short biography by A Fag whom He 
 Had Kicked at Eton ; and Classy Cuttings revealed 
 to its readers the kind of shaving soap he used, and settled 
 for ever the vexed question whether he wore his hair parted 
 in the middle or at the side. 
 
 It was May now, and the deepest gloom seemed to have 
 settled on the family of Covenden. There was to be no 
 London season for them this year, with the exception of 
 DeUa, who had been condemned to spend a fortnight at 
 Grosvenor Street with Aunt Emma that she might be 
 presented, and who would, as she vowed with inexpres- 
 sibly bitter tears, have preferred to stay at home. Not 
 that she was any happier at home. Her loss of colour 
 and animation had been commented upon by other people 
 as well as her Uncle Charles. There appeared to be nothing 
 in which she took an interest. Indeed, as the days passed 
 her pinched and listless look grew too obvious to be dis- 
 regarded. 
 
 Too well did her sisters know the cause of her unhappi- 
 ness. But they withheld their pity ; indeed, they were 
 filled with scorn. The reflection upon themselves was 
 by far the most grievous they had ever had to bear. They 
 could hardly believe it of one who in external things re- 
 sembled them one and all so exactly ; in one whom nature 
 must have designed to be one of their clan. They could 
 only ascribe it to her having those films to her eyes, and 
 those lashes that curled up at the ends. They were humbly 
 grateful that they were without them, now that they saw 
 what the possession of them meant. If, as they shrewdly 
 supposed, such things as films and curling eyelashes were 
 allowed hy judges to be marks of beauty, as were pricked 
 ears in a bull terrier or bowed legs in a bull-pup, they 
 began to see the force of that adage with which they 
 were wont to console themselves : that if you were 
 beautiful, it was very difficult to be good. Not that in 
 their owti opinion their youngest sister was any less ugly 
 than anybody else. 
 
 In any case they remained inflexible. She was sent 
 to Coventry for an indefinite period, and it was only after 
 Joan had taken a whole day to think the matter over that 
 
 327 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 she was allowed to retain her privileges in regard to their 
 common room. 
 
 " It is only because of her youth," said that justiciary, 
 delivering judgment before the court. "If it were not 
 this room should be forbidden her." 
 
 A slight sigh of rehef was heard to pass round the earnest 
 assembly, and Harriet rose hurriedly to quit it lest any- 
 body should see there were tears in her eyes. 
 
 The same Spartan resolution was extended to Billy, 
 the hero with the godlike attributes, whose radiance had 
 dazzled them from the time they first crawled on the 
 nursery floor. It tore their very hearts, but anything 
 in the nature of a command from their father was their 
 highest conception of law. So obedient were they to 
 his mandate on the cruel subject, that not only did they 
 refrain from breathing the name of their brother in his 
 presence, but by a tacit consent it was banished in their 
 private intercourse. Delia, it is true, had so far forgotten 
 herself as to mention it once, but such terrible freezing 
 glances had she received for her pains that they did not 
 think she would venture to do so again. Their mother 
 also had certainly spoken of him several times in their 
 hearing. But their perfect loyalty to their father forbade 
 their taking pleasure in these occasions. They could 
 not even hale them with relief. Their brother's name 
 in the mouth of their mother was lacking in authenticity. 
 It had never been possible for them to exalt her to the 
 side of their father in the shrine of their idolatry. In her 
 way she was perhaps more dignified, more unapproach- 
 able, and less easy to get on with; but wdth all these 
 gifts she had not that natural, impregnable, lofty splendour 
 as had he. The truth was that no human being had. 
 Their father had that innate and native something that 
 rendered him supreme. The king could do no wrong. 
 He was all justice, all wisdom, all charity, all tenderness 
 and watchful love. If he had asked one of them to place 
 her right hand between the glowing bars of the fire, she 
 would have done so at once, and have kept it there un- 
 flinchingly until told to take it out. They hardly knew 
 in what degree they were mortifying their instincts by 
 banishing the fair imige of their brother. But their 
 deity demanded it ; they as'^ecl no more. 
 
 328 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 Their mother's conduct in the matter was far otherwise. 
 She spoke of him openly, and had even suggested that it 
 would give her pleasure if they made a pilgrimage to the 
 cottage on the hill to see his wife. It would have given 
 them pleasure, too, because whatever their father's behests; 
 the vital fact could not be strangled in their hearts that 
 Billy was Billy still. Even the mightiest law-giver cannot 
 induce in us oblivion of what once has been. And again 
 they had a natural curiosity to gaze upon the creature 
 who had wrought their brother's ruin. Extravagant 
 pictures of her were in their minds. They would have 
 paid their shillings to behold her with even greater eager- 
 ness than those they paid to behold the blue-nosed ape 
 in the menagerie that came every year to Cuttisham Fair. 
 The pictures in their minds coincided exactly with that 
 variety of monster. Less uncompromising types of con- 
 science might have found it easy to provide an excuse 
 to look upon her, but the mandate of the one authentic 
 oracle must be obeyed not in the letter merely, but 
 in the spirit. 
 
 Delia returned from London less happy if possible than 
 when she went away. To every reasonable and right- 
 thinking girl the experiences crowded into that fortnight 
 would at least have been exciting. But the child, as her 
 aunt wrote to her mother immediately on her return, in 
 a lettei not overburdened by delicacy, had been wholly 
 dull, uninterested, and uninspired by dances and parties, 
 and even the Drawing-room itself. Although Joan's 
 dress, altered the season before last to fit Jane, had been 
 altered again so cunningly — she was nearer in size to Jane 
 than any of the rest — that it fitted her to perfection, and 
 a court hair-dresser had come specially out of Bond Street 
 and had done her hair in a beautiful manner, and her aunt 
 had lent her a string of pearls to put round her throat, as 
 the child had none of her own, the maid who had dressed 
 her was prepared to swear that she could not be induced 
 to look in the cheval glass at the figure she presented. 
 As her aunt said, such an unnatural child never was known. 
 Again it was averred that she went through the ceremony 
 without asking a question or betraying the least curiosity, 
 without getting flurried or exhibiting any perturbation 
 
 3-9 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 at all. Even when she made her curtsey to the Presence, 
 and touched the rather fat hand of Royalty with her lips, 
 she displayed no symptom of nervousness, nor blushed, 
 nor hesitated, nor showed the slightest disposition to trip 
 over her train. As her aunt said, her conduct all through 
 the day was unbelievable, unchristian, and quite un- 
 worthy of human nature. She could only explain it on 
 the assumption that she wanted iron. 
 
 All the same it was hardly likely that iron, invaluable 
 as that commodity was known to be, could prevail against 
 inherent weakness of mind. Unmistakable evidences of 
 the fell symptom had been discovered by her lynx-eyed 
 patroness. There could be little doubt it was the result 
 of that pernicious system of inter-marriage which so long 
 had been the bane of old families. Even now the gifted 
 but eminently practical lady had been moved to write 
 a brochure on the painful subject ; it would hit the House 
 of Lords harder than it had ever been hit before. Also 
 it would hit it in its tenderest spot. In the melancholy 
 circumstances her aunt had come to the conclusion, re- 
 luctantly to the conclusion, that it would be futile, a waste 
 of time and money, to seek to ameliorate her mental state 
 by sending her to a seat of female learning. At the con- 
 clusion of a long and energetically worded letter, Lady 
 Bosket said that never before had it been brought home 
 to her with such overwhelming force what the disadvan- 
 tages were under which her sister-in-law laboured in the 
 acquisition of men to marry her girls. If men would put 
 up with that kind they would put up with anj^. Even 
 the least hopeless, the least impossible of them all, pre- 
 sumably the flower, had proved on a closer inspection to 
 be weak of mind. 
 
 Delia, although she returned duly fortified with the 
 possession of a box of iron tablets, and a certificate testi- 
 f}'ing to the weakness of her mental character, seemed 
 nowise the better for either. Nor had her glimpse of 
 the London season done anything to redeem her personal 
 appearance. The rings round her eyes, the only tolerable 
 features about her, were more marked than ever. Her 
 cheeks were paler ; she was more lackadaisical, and she 
 could hardly be got to utter a word. Her conversation 
 
 330 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 alternated between the limits of yes and no, a rather 
 abrupt mental range that lent colour to the uncompro- 
 mising theory of her aunt. She went off to walk all day 
 by herself, only reappearing at the hours set apart for 
 meals, and when she did so it was only a formal act in her, 
 for she made no pretences of eating them. Not only did 
 she shun the society of her sisters, but also that of every 
 human being. 
 
 There was one slight alteration in her, however, which 
 her sisters allowed to be for the better. She no longer 
 permitted herself that undue, that licentious indulgence 
 in tears. They did not lie so near the surface ; quite 
 a chance allusion would no longer call them forth ; while 
 it was to be deduced from the absence of a red inflamma- 
 tion about her eyelids that she did not spend so many 
 hours in her bedroom in private weepings. It could at 
 least be said of her that she had brought back a keener 
 sense of decency from the London season. 
 
 One day a strange man sat down to luncheon with 
 them, a man whom they could not remember to have seen 
 before. He was a rather good-looking person, young, 
 handsome in a florid style ; he was very carefully 
 dressed, his €very hair was in place. Mr. Breffit 
 was his name, and their father, as so often of late 
 was his wont, hardly said a word throughout the meal. 
 Their mother, as was usual with her when there was a 
 stranger present, was in great conversational feather, 
 and singularly enough she made one or two quite flatter- 
 ing references to Delia, who had the strange man for her 
 neighbour, and seemed to insist in her delicate way that 
 Delia should converse with him. Their surprise and 
 consternation were complete. Never before had one of 
 them, not even Joan herself, been singled out for public 
 notice by the august president of their destinies. And 
 Delia of all people ! 
 
 "The child is so shy," said her mother to Mr. Breffit 
 with a delightful ringing laugh, and it had that note of 
 archness in it which showed she was at her best ; " a. man 
 always overawes her. He has the effect the mouse had 
 on little Miss Muffet. Was it a mouse or a spider, I am 
 sure I forget ? Now, Mr. Breffit, I look to you not to 
 
 331 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 frighten her away, Speak to her nicely, and then she 
 will understand that you are not going to bite her." 
 
 Almost immediately Mr. Breffit made an impassioned 
 allusion to the weather. 
 
 It was their mother, however, who had to sustain the 
 chief share in the talk. Without her aid there would 
 have been hardly any conversation at all. Delia, in spite 
 of her new honours, never allowed herself to go beyond 
 the limits prescribed by her habitual " yes " and " no." 
 Mr. Breffit also did not seem to be gifted with powers of 
 any remarkable range. He confined himself to one topic 
 mainly, and that a rather abstruse one, on which, to, do 
 him justice, he really talked very well. Did they know 
 So-and-So of Such-and-Such ? He was a very old and 
 cherished friend of his. He had just been spending a 
 fortnight at Such-and-Such. The number of people who 
 hankered for him as a guest was wonderful ; his comments 
 upon them and their houses were very flattering indeed, 
 so that his conversation was not unlike and just as enter- 
 taining as a society newspaper read aloud. And when 
 he was not effusive he could be patronizing. His amiable 
 vein of patronage was placed at the service of those persons 
 who scarcely could be said to ht fixed stars in the shining 
 circle of which he himself was a planet. When he men- 
 tioned them, a,s by the gentle but unseen arts of his hostess 
 he was led to do presently, he revealed a not unpleasing 
 little gift of satire. 
 
 " But, after all, one doesn't know them, you know, 
 although one runs up against them sometimes," was a 
 phrase he enunciated with a gusto that charmed her. 
 
 " You were at Cambridge ? " 
 
 " Oh yes ; three years at Trinity, mostly wasted I am 
 afraid." 
 
 " Forgive me if I differ. Did you meet a young man 
 of the name of Porter, may I ask ? He was of your 
 college, and, I believe, contemporary." 
 
 " Porter — Porter." Mr. Breffit knitted his brows in 
 deep meditation. " Porter — let me see. I seem to know 
 the name ; but Trinity, of course, is not a small college. 
 I believe there was a man of that name who rowed bow 
 in one of the boats." 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 Mr. Breffit pondered profoundly. 
 
 " He comes from Cuttisham. His father is a book* 
 seller there. No, I suppose you would not." 
 
 " No, of course," said Mr. Breffit with alacrity. " It 
 is hardly likely." 
 
 " Still, as he came from this neighbourhood, and he 
 went to the same college about the same time, I thought 
 you might perhaps. I am interested in him because he 
 is a sort of protege of my sister-in-law. She predicts 
 great things of him. I refer, of course, to Lady Bosket, 
 the author of Poses in the Opaque. I think I betray no 
 secret when I say that he owes it to her that he found 
 his way to Cambridge." 
 
 " Porter, Porter — ah, yes, of course I remember. There 
 was a man of the name of Porter, now you mention him ; 
 a very harmless, quiet, reading man, although I can hardly 
 recall him." 
 
 " I should think he would be. But I gather that you 
 did not know him very intimately." 
 
 " Not very." 
 
 Mr. Breffit added to the significance of his tone a gesture 
 of polite deprecation. 
 
 " A recluse probably ? " 
 
 " I really don't know, but I should say he was." 
 
 " Was he well thought of in the University ? " 
 
 " I really don't know, but I should say not." 
 
 " You surprise me. My sister-in-law will be disappointed 
 if he does not do well." 
 
 " It is quite probable he was clever. Outsiders mostly 
 are. 
 
 Her object achieved, Mrs. Broke changed the topic. 
 
 " How is your father ? " 
 
 In spite of the armour of his self-esteem, the young man 
 was disconcerted by the suddenness of the question. He 
 relapsed upon a slight uneasiness, which in one of his 
 splendid self-possession was not expected. Under her 
 perfectly frank and demure gaze a shade of tawny deepened 
 in him. 
 
 " I have not had the pleasure of seeing him for quite 
 a long time," she said, to soften a certain awkwardness 
 in the pause. 
 
 333 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " I was not aware that you knew him," said Mr. Breffit 
 languidly. 
 
 " He has been a particular friend of Mr. Broke's for 
 
 twenty years." 
 
 " Oh yes, I daresay." 
 
 There was a faint but firm implication in the air of Mr 
 Breffit that he would thank her to dismiss the subject. 
 
 Our hypercritical young gentleman had already made 
 up his mind that he had never been so bored in his life. 
 He supposed that old county families were all very well 
 in their way, but if this menage was a fair average specimen 
 of what they were in general, long might he be spared 
 from contact with them ! To begin with, the place itself 
 seemed to smell of about three centuries behind the present. 
 The musty old-world atmosphere was excellent doubtless, 
 but he was not sure whether he would not prefer to dis- 
 pense with a few links in his pedigree, and rub along 
 without it. There was the pompous overbearing old bird 
 of a father at the far end of the massive mahogany, who 
 never by any chance spoke a word to anybody, but 
 swilled ale and gobbled away at beef with a very wide 
 mouth, a kind of combination of a butcher and a farmer, 
 with a face the colour of a piece of raw liver, and a nose 
 on him like the handle of a door. Then there were half 
 a dozen girls, whom he took to be his daughters, without 
 exception the ugliest set of women he had ever seen. They 
 were all nose and elbow. They, too, never by any chance 
 opened their mouths except for purposes of eating, which, 
 to do them justice, they did with marked effect. One 
 of them sat beside him, and when he tried to talk to her 
 she said " yes " and " no." However, to give credit 
 where credit was due, the mother was a bit better. You 
 would not exactly call her a beauty, but she did not seem 
 to be such a bad old sort. She was rather pleasant to talk 
 to, althoutih she had a foolish habit of asking questions. 
 
 Still all these disabilities paled their significance before 
 the luncheon. He could truthfully say, speaking out 
 of a long and varied experience, it was the very worst 
 lunch to which he had ever sat down. The one they 
 chucked at you at Lord's for half-a-crown was a repast 
 by comparison. No table napkins, no knives for the fish, 
 
 334 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 no vegetables, hardly a decent salad, tough mutton, and 
 underdone beef, ale only fit for harvesters, and claret only 
 fit for the pigs. There was nothing else. If there was 
 anything else you wanted you had to go without. The 
 servants, too, seemed as uppish as the devil, and as slow 
 as a funeral. It was a lunch you would have thought 
 anybody would have been ashamed to put on, and how 
 people in the position they were supposed to occupy had 
 the face to do it he did not know. If this was what being 
 before the Conquest meant, thank God his poor, dear old 
 father was such a shocking old bounder ! 
 
 Our hypercritical young friend was thus far gone in 
 personal discomfort, when the invasion of the room, by 
 two men he had never seen before, served to distract his 
 attention from his immediate needs. One was an oldish, 
 misshapen, funny - looking little cove, in shabby tweeds 
 and cloth gaiters, with a straw in his mouth. Your first 
 impression of him was that he was a groom down on his 
 luck who was looking for a job. Your impression was 
 confirmed when you noticed how bleared his eyes were, 
 and how fat was his nose. Drink had been his downfall ; 
 there could be no doubt about that. 
 
 The man who came with him was also a rum-looking 
 fellow. He was a meek and mild young old man of thirty- 
 five or so, with an earnest and perplexed expression. He 
 was very pale, and thin and high in the shoulders. His 
 peaked face had a very anxious look upon it, and was 
 subject occasionally to a grotesque nervous contortion. 
 His narrow flat-chested appearance suggested that he 
 had only one lung. He followed on the heels of the 
 drunken groom with the straw, and Mrs. Broke beckoning 
 to him, he was good enough to come and sit next to our 
 observant young friend, who, with the swift insight into 
 men and things that had long been a source of pride to 
 its possessor, had diagnosed him already as the local 
 curate. 
 
 " I have brought Harry," said the man with the straw 
 in a hoarse loud voice. " We should ha' stayed over at 
 the Court only their whisky is so poisonous. Last 
 time I said never again ; besides, Harry wanted to come 
 and see you. And how's my little cockyoly birds ? All 
 
 335 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 quite well thank you, Uncle Charles, and hope you are the 
 same — what ? " 
 
 The funny old bounder took a seat in the midst of the 
 girls some distance away, rather to the relief of young Mr. 
 Brefi&t, who, however, noted with envy that the old swell 
 of a butler came forward with far more alacrity than 
 he had yet exhibited, with a jar of whisky and a syphon 
 of soda water. Groom or no groom, the man with the straw 
 was devilish lucky to be able to escape that ale and claret 
 in this manner. 
 
 In the meantime the young-old man was beaming with 
 anxious gravity upon his hostess. It was a stereotyped 
 and conventional gesture, and he performed it with a dogged 
 solemnity as of one doing his duty. 
 
 " Charmed to see you about again, Harry," said Mrs. 
 Broke, with an affectionate smile accompanied by a most 
 motherly tone. " How is the poor dear chest ? Is it two 
 lungs still, or do you now pin your faith on one ? " 
 
 " One and a bit," said Harry, in a wheezy whisper. 
 
 " I congratulate you on the bit. How tenacious of you. 
 To my knowledge you have held on to that bit for the last 
 ten years." 
 
 " I want to do the right thing," said the young-old man 
 in a whisper wheezier than ever. "They tell me it will be 
 inconvenient if I give up, so I am doing what I can to stay 
 on." 
 
 " Then that is why you wintered at Davos ? What a 
 devotion to duty ! " 
 
 " His rector must think a lot of him if he sent him to 
 Davos," his neighbour made the comment to himself. 
 
 " Do you think so ? " said the young-old man. " I 
 always try to do the right thing." 
 
 " My dear Harry, why assure one of that ? Everybody 
 knows it. One never thinks of you without recalling to 
 one's mind poor dear Nelson. He copyrighted that phrase 
 about ' England expects,' but one feels all the time that 
 it is a plagiarism from your life with its singleness of aim 
 and integrity of purpose." 
 
 Mrs. Broke opened her blue eyes to their widest and 
 beamed upon him. A tinge of colour came into the young- 
 old man's wan cheeks, and he smiled faintly. 
 
 3?fi 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 " I think duty is so beautiful," Mrs. Broke went on. 
 " After all, the unfaltering performance of it is the only thing 
 that reconciles us to our lot. Without it existence would 
 indeed be hollow. One wonders, Harry, that more people 
 have not dedicated their hves to it, as you have done. We 
 should be a happier, a healthier, a more stable race." 
 
 " Harry is the happiest, healthiest, and most stable devil 
 I ever saw," said Lord Bosket, at the other end of the table, 
 in an aside to Broke. 
 
 " Surely he can't last long," 
 
 " I don't know, he's a queer bird. Everybody has said 
 for the last ten years that he can't last long, but here he is 
 still drinkin' draught stout and pla5dn' patience. He 
 wheezes a bit more than he did in Mary's time, poor soul, 
 but he still hangs on. And I think he will as long as he 
 makes his mind up to it. I never saw such a feller for makin' 
 up his mind." 
 
 " I should want to give in, if I was like that." 
 
 '* Oh, I daresay he does. But his people think he ought 
 to hang on as long as he can to shut Algernon out. They 
 want him to marry again as Mary didn't come off. I'm 
 not sure that that's not what has brought him here now. 
 I know one of our little fillies was suggested, and it struck 
 me it would do you no harm, Edmund, eh ? She won't have 
 to wait long to be a dowager, because I'll lay a thousand 
 to five that as soon as the poor devil gets what he wants he 
 will hand in his checks. It is a miracle how he keeps on. 
 It wouldn't take many of those bad coughings and hemor- 
 rhages to settle me. Personally, I think it is rotten of his 
 people to trouble the poor devil. Why can't they give 
 him leave to go and be at peace ? But they are all dead 
 set against Algernon now. They won't have him at any 
 price ; and they tell me this Mrs. Dingley is a beauty." 
 
 Broke was lost in deep thought for a minute, and then 
 he said: "I — ah — don't fancy a fellow like that for one of 
 our girls. It seems a bit unnatural to me. Does Jane 
 know ? " 
 
 " She guesses all right. Catch Jane missin' a chance. 
 She's spoken to me once or twice about Algernon's business, 
 and the Raynes' affairs generally. Real fly is the name 
 for her ; if I was as fly as our Jane I should turn my talents 
 
 337 Y 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to the Turf and make a bit. Look at her making love to 
 him now, Edmund." 
 
 Mrs, Broke was even yet dilating to the Duke of Wim- 
 bledon on the sacred character of duty. That hollow- 
 cheeked and weary-eyed knight of the Garter nodded his 
 head slowly in response, at automatic intervals. Plainly 
 he took the responsibilities, the enjoyment of our mundane 
 existence cast upon him with a becoming seriousness. 
 They appeared to begin and end in a doing of the right 
 thing. Every act he performed was marked out according 
 to that convention. The hypercritical young gentleman 
 who sat beside him, in whose case there was the excuse of 
 the hard necessity, could not have been more pedantically 
 correct in every detail of his demeanour. His anxiety to 
 do the right thing was stamped on every line, and they were 
 many, of his earnest countenance. His nervous hands 
 hovered about the table-cloth perpetually lest anybody 
 should be in need of salt. When- Philippa asked him to 
 pass the butter he quite overwhelmed her with apologies 
 because he had failed to observe she was in need of it. His 
 manner was a scrupulous compliment to everybody present. 
 His desire to give satisfaction was so immense. His counte- 
 nance might be stamped with every sign of affliction, but 
 it was far from being reflected in his animated courtesy. 
 He was hat in hand to all. He bent his narrow back to 
 everybody, as though his mission in life was to propitiate 
 each individual person with whom he came into contact. 
 
 After having discussed with his hostess for ten minutes 
 the sacred character of duty, it was in the pursuit of this 
 scheme of conduct that he turned to the young man by 
 his side, with whom he had not as yet exchanged a word. 
 
 " Awfully nice day," he said, in his wheeziest whisper. 
 
 " U — u — m — m ? " 
 
 Our young friend made a buzz like a bee humming. He 
 had heard what his neighbour had said perfectly well, but 
 he was not in the mood to engage in a discussion of the 
 weather with the local curate. 
 
 " Awfully nice day," his neighbour repeated gently. 
 
 " Nice day. Very." 
 
 *' Do you plav golf ? " 
 
 " Do 1 play goh' ? No. Why should I ? Do you ? " 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 " No, I do not." 
 
 " Hunt ? " 
 
 " No, I do not." 
 
 " Shoot ? " 
 
 "No, I do not." 
 
 " Yacht ? " 
 
 •• No, I do not." 
 
 " Cricket ? " 
 
 *' No, I do not." 
 
 " Anything you do do ? Ping-pong, barred of course." 
 
 " I like a game of patience." 
 
 " You like a game of patience. Yes, I daresay you would. 
 Here ! " 
 
 Our j'oung friend turned his back abruptly on his neigh- 
 bour, and beckoned to the butler, who approached at a 
 majestic leisure. 
 
 " Get me another glass of beer, will you." 
 
 The young-old man turned his anxious face to the butler. 
 
 " Do you happen," he said, ingratiatingly, " to have 
 brown stout on draught ? " 
 
 ' ' We have brown stout, your grace, on draught, or we have 
 it bottled," said the butler with solemn courtliness. 
 
 " Do you mind getting me a pint of draught ? " 
 
 The butler bowed. 
 
 " And do you mind bringing it in a jug, with a bit of 
 froth. I like a bit of froth." 
 
 " Thank you, your grace." 
 
 Your grace ! What did the old fool mean ? our friend 
 asked of himself. This was no duke, and he was too young 
 to be an archbishop. But, your grace ! If this was a duke, 
 he was the rummest duke he had ever seen, or heard of, 
 or read of. What price a duke who played patience and 
 drank draught stout ? However, he was among rum people. 
 They had the reputation of being swells in their way. There 
 was just an outside sporting chance that he might not be 
 the local curate after all. It would be wise to make sure. 
 For that purpose he turned to the daughter of the house, 
 who sat at his right hand. 
 
 " I say," he said, in a whisper, " who is the sportsman 
 on my left ? " 
 
 " The Duke of Wimbledon," said Delia. 
 
 339 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Well, he was damned ! A pretty low down trick to play 
 on a fellow, to dump a real live duke down at his side, and 
 never to let him know. Here was a pretty go ; he must 
 make a dash for it while there was still a chance. Lunch 
 was getting on. He gave the noble valetudinarian a nudge. 
 
 " I say duke, I suppose you would know my great friend 
 Lord Alfred Shovehalfpenny, eldest son, you know, of the 
 Earl of Coddam." 
 
 Yes, the duke had the felicity of knowing Shovehalf- 
 penny, also his father. Lord Coddam. That was luck. 
 He had got off the mark with a flying start. He would 
 now proceed to make the pace a cracker. Did he know 
 Lord Huffey ? Yes, the duke knew Huffey. With that 
 further success our friend grew a little uplifted. He settled 
 down to serious work, squared his elbows, and cornered his 
 man. And to think they had never told him ! 
 
 Huffey, Huffey's place, and Huffey's people were passed 
 under review for the delectation of the weary young-old 
 man, who listened with rapt attention and nodded his head, 
 and said " yes ! " and " oh, yes ! " at all the right and 
 reasonable intervals, although he hardly knew Huffey 
 from Adam, had not the least interest in Huffey, and had 
 seen Huffey only once in his life. 
 
 Our young gentleman gave him no quarter however. 
 From Huffey he passed to Puffey, another common friend, 
 and then to Duffey and then to Snuffey, and then to Tuffey, 
 and so on, and so on, quite a considerable distance into the 
 devious branches of Toffeedom, that mighty order. The 
 meek and inoffensive victim, who had never so much as 
 harmed a fly in all the thirty-five years of his life, bore the 
 remorseless Mr. Breffit the younger with the stoicism bred 
 of constant affliction. He listened with his ears bent slightly 
 forward that he might not miss a word, and his thin chest 
 and pale blue chin protruded in polite earnestness towards 
 his pitiless tormentor. It was an angelic patience. 
 Balzac, when he fashioned his pathetic phrase about genius, 
 might with equal force have rendered it, " La patience 
 anijelique des dues." 
 
 Secure in the impression he was creating — it was plain 
 for all to see that his auditor was ravished by the brilliancy 
 of his talk — Mr. Breffit rose in the intoxication of success 
 
 340 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 to higher flights. Presently, to the immense satisfaction 
 of himself, he had claimed an intimate acquaintance with 
 half the peerage. It was as good as reading the celebrated 
 work of Sir Horatio Hare. He drew the line, however, at 
 the brewing department, and the Jewish department, 
 leaving out the family of Rothschild, in whose favour he 
 was able to make an exception, as they were the friends 
 of Royalty. Nearly all the rest were his closest friends. 
 Would that he could have said they were his second cousins 
 in the words of the immortal Sir Horatio ! But at least they 
 could never do enough for him, and their houses were always 
 at his disposal. When the time came to leave the table, 
 oblivious of everything, and most of all of the particular 
 mission that had brought him there, our young friend linked 
 his arm through his companion's, for all the world as though 
 he had known the dear delicate fellow all his life, indeed, 
 as though they had been boj^s together. 
 
 His success was complete. It was the mightiest con- 
 quest he had ever made ; it was the biggest fish he had ever 
 landed. And to think they had not had the common de- 
 cency to tell him at the start ! If he had not had marvellous 
 tact he might never have recovered from that bad begin- 
 ning. But what a magic, what a glamour there was in 
 Lord Alfred Shovehalfpenny and his father, the Earl of 
 Coddam ! They had never failed to pull him through. 
 Drunk with what he had done already, he felt he must go 
 on and on, ever on and on. He would play for all he was 
 worth. With a thrill of satisfaction he bethought him 
 of his little place. His old father, shocking old bounder as 
 he was, was a wise old bird. He knew a thing or two. He 
 showed a true instinct when he piurchased Tufton. This 
 was where his little place came in. 
 
 " You must come and see me at Tufton you know, duke. 
 You must really. I can't take a refusal." 
 
 The nervous lath of veins and bones he still retained in 
 his hand quivered and seemed almost to struggle a weak 
 instant in the grasp of our young friend. 
 
 " Tufton," he murmured, dreamily. " You live at 
 Tufton ? " 
 
 " Don't you know ' " said Mr. Breffit, in a tone of delicate 
 expostulation. " It is mine now. I took it off the hands 
 
 341 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 of one of my oldest friends, Lord Algernon Raynes. You 
 know poor old Algy, of course. Everybody knows poor old 
 Algy. You must have heard, everybody's heard, of what a 
 frightful mucker the poor old fellow came over that dashing 
 little widow at Monte Carlo. His people are quite cut up, 
 poor devils. It is awfully rough for them of course, as 
 they are not overburdened with the goods of this world in 
 that family, as I daresay you know. There is no saying 
 what they would have done had not a friend of the family 
 come forward in the nick of time to take Tufton oft their 
 hands." 
 
 His companion turned half round to take a better look 
 at our young friend. 
 
 " You have bought Tufton," he said. " Is your name 
 Breffit may I ask ? " 
 
 There was a degree of embarrassment visible in the man- 
 ner of the head of the Raynes family when he put this 
 question, but at least it was no greater than that with 
 which Mr. Breffit answered it. 
 
 " Ye — es," he said irresolutely. " Hamilton Breffit is 
 my name." 
 
 A strange weary smile flickered an instant in the pale 
 face of his victim. 
 
 "It was good of you to come to our aid," he said earn- 
 estly. " I am sure we are deeply sensible of your father's 
 kindness. We might have had it on our hands a long time 
 if he had not made his offer. I daresay, if we could have 
 afforded to wait we might have got three times as much 
 for it as we sold it for, but nevertheless I am sure we are 
 grateful to 3'our father for his promptness." 
 
 A tremendous pang had already taken our young friend 
 somewhere behind at the back of his brain. Ye gods, 
 what a purler ! He was completel}' knocked out. To 
 think when he made his grab at the bait, to think when he 
 made his effort and went in to win, that he had not had the 
 sense to pause and remember that the Duke of Wimbledon 
 was a Raynes ! Why, oh, why had he not left him at the 
 local curate ? 
 
 The feeling, the one most dreaded, the one most avoided, 
 by elegant Englishmen of the type of our young friend, 
 the feeling that he " had completely given himself away," 
 
 342 
 
TWO MATRIMONIAL RICHMONDS 
 
 had taken him by the throat. While he was writhing in 
 its clutch the noble valetudinarian gathered enough of 
 initiative very gently to disengage his arm. Before our 
 young friend had recovered a sufficient measure of his self- 
 possession he made good his escape into the tenderer hands 
 of the awaiting Mrs. Broke which were outstretched to 
 receive him. 
 
 By the time our somewhat crestfallen young friend had 
 been able to pull himself a little together, he made straight 
 for his hostess. 
 
 " I must be going," he said. " Thank you very much 
 for a charming lunch." 
 
 " Must you go ? Can't you stay ? " 
 
 Mrs. Broke gave our young friend her hand with no 
 absence of alacrity. It was not convenient to pay the 
 requisite amount of attention to him just then. Higher 
 game had appeared upon the scene. 
 
 As our young friend swung down the drive at a furious 
 pace, he swore a great oath that all the king's horses and 
 aii the king's men should not induce him to set foot in that 
 house again. 
 
 343 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 Opportunities for a little Moral Teaching 
 
 ONE morning Mrs. Broke summoned Delia to her 
 room. A large basket laden with flowers was on 
 the table. 
 
 " I want you to take this to the cottage on the hill. 
 Be careful. There are eggs underneath." 
 
 An implicit obedience being as much an instinct with 
 Delia as with her sisters, she did not pause to allow questions 
 to surge on her lips. She took the basket and set forth. 
 
 " That child looks wretchedly worn and ill " was her 
 mother's comment as she closed the door. " It seems as 
 though this little hothouse of a world of ours is getting too 
 high a temperature." 
 
 To Delia this command of her mother's seemed directly 
 to break down the barrier that had been erected between 
 them and the dwellers in that sinister httle cottage. But 
 she would have been much easier in her mind had the 
 command been her father's ; although the sensation para- 
 mount in her at first was that of her mighty curiosity. She 
 was craving to look upon the creature who had wrought 
 the ruin of her brother, as does a child to look upon some 
 fearsome animal in a zoological garden. And there was 
 a similar idea of the peril. If she approached too closely 
 it might turn and rend her, for no doubt it was very fierce. 
 
 Still the dim sense she had that in obeying her mother 
 she was disobeying her father rendered her unhappy as 
 she took her way. She could penetrate far enough into 
 the minds of her parents dimly to apprehend that they 
 did not always see eye to eye ; and that in the present 
 
 344 
 
A LITTLE MOI^L TEACHING 
 
 diverseness of their points of view to serve one might be 
 to be disloyal to the other. For that reason she devoutly 
 hoped she would not meet her father now. She did not 
 take the short way, therefore, across the home farm, so 
 great was the danger of meeting him in that vicinity, but 
 went the longer road, a difference of half a mile. 
 
 She had feelings of guilt when she found herself in sight 
 of the cottage with no longer the acute fear of detection. 
 Indeed, she felt in her heart she had been disloyal to her 
 father, and was not sure as she lifted the latch of the cottage 
 gate that she would not have preferred to be found out. 
 She was bitterly angry with herself for having walked the' 
 longest way to avoid him. However, hardly had she set 
 foot on the small path, skirted with flowers on either side, 
 which led to the abode of Billy's wife, when she was startled 
 by the tones of a man coming through the open door. 
 Before she could guess to whom they might belong a 
 familiar and beloved form filled the doorway. It was 
 Billy. 
 
 At the mere sight of him, with the bright sun formmg a 
 halo round his fair head, all nicely-calculated forms of 
 conduct vanished. 
 
 " Hallo, it is little Del ! " he cried with the great shout 
 of a boy. ' Little Del has come to see us. You dear kid : 
 how ripping of you ! " 
 
 He made the same rude proprietary grab at her as when 
 he used to romp with them of old. With the same vigor- 
 ous dexterity he caught her with one hand, and with the 
 other tore the basket from her. 
 
 " They are eggs," she had the presence of mind to gasp. 
 
 " You dear kid ! " 
 
 He slapped her cheek in a proud manner of ownership, 
 and planted a lusty kiss upon it. 
 
 Delia had to make the effort to keep the tears from 
 showing in her eyes. He had not changed in the least. 
 Billy was Billy still : the same free-hearted, laughing, 
 fearless, careless, insolently tender brother who loved them 
 every one and whom every one of them loved too ; the 
 brother who had only to walk in moist earth for his sisters 
 to fall upon their knees in adoration of his footprints. He 
 was the same brother who had rolled them in hay a thou- 
 
 345 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 sand times ; who had chased them round the buildings of 
 the farm ; who had made them hide from him in barns and 
 corn cribs, lofts and mangers, and the strangest places ; 
 who had shown them a lead over the stiffest fences, and 
 whose line they were prepared to follow to the end of the 
 world, and through eternity. The old magic was in him 
 still of making them laugh from their very hearts, of kind- 
 ling a new light in their eyes. 
 
 " Come on in," he said, squeezing her small figure, and 
 half carrying, half dragging her through the door of the 
 cottage, exactly in the manner that he used to convey 
 them as his prisoners two at a time in those strong arms 
 of old. " My old little girl must see mv new little girl, 
 eh ? " 
 
 In this uncompromising fashion the rather frightened, 
 if joyously excited, Delia was conducted to view the fierce 
 creature. 
 
 " Here she is," cried Billy. " Isn't she a little beauty ? 
 Kiss her, Del. and tell her that she is." 
 
 The two young creatures met one another irresolutely 
 with their eyes. They were both afraid, both filled with 
 wonder and bewilderment. They were as shy and dis- 
 trustful as two strange kittens on the same hearthrug. 
 But Alice gave back first. She was even timider than 
 Delia ; and she was soon shrinking from the honest search- 
 ing gaze of Bill3''s sister, who was looking for a trace of the 
 horrid monster she had expected to discover. The creature 
 before her was nothing more formidable than a child, 
 pecuharly fragile, peculiarly fair. A blush spread over 
 AHce ; suddenly her eyes fell, and at that moment she 
 could not have held them up again to save her life. But 
 almost directly an emotion conquered Delia. She ran 
 forward and clutched the shrinking Alice to her arms with 
 a little cry. A kiss mingled with tears she yielded to the 
 delicate scarlet face. 
 
 The old woman, the aunt, stood in the background of 
 the wall to watch in the extremity of awe. There was 
 a measure of reticence in Billy too. But there was also 
 gratitude. Delia's act, the more spontaneous because 
 half reluctant, made its appeal. And the sight of his 
 5"oung wife and his young sister in one another's arms 
 
 346 
 
A LITTLE MORAL TEACHING 
 
 seemed to emphasise the debt he owed his mother. He 
 guessed it was by her agency that Deha was there. 
 
 Without his mother he saw that things might have gone 
 much harder with Alice. It was she who had installed 
 her in that place. Also she had visited her once or twice, 
 he gathered ; had furnished the cottage ; had given her a 
 little money, and had made her sundry small gifts. Also 
 she had brought Maud Wayling there, and, afterwards, 
 little as such a thing was to have been expected of her, 
 Maud had come there once or twice of her own accord. 
 From the eager inquiries that he made he learned that his 
 mother and Miss Wayling had been more than kind. But 
 with all his wish to do so, he could not learn that one of 
 his sisters had taken the least interest in his wife. He felt 
 that more keenly than he cared to own. Not once had 
 they been to the cottage. The only solace that fact could 
 afford was that they were acting unmistakably under the 
 orders of their father. 
 
 The letter he had received from his father he had half 
 expected. His instincts told him the sort of man his 
 father was should it be your misfortune to cross him on a 
 point of that sort. For all practical purposes it was all up 
 with him. He was about done for as far as England was 
 concerned. At any rate his father had done for him in the 
 Blues. He had already resigned his commission, and 
 there was just that bit of perverse pride about him that 
 prevented his trying to get an exchange into a less expen- 
 sive branch of the Service. Besides, his means would not 
 permit him to follow a military calling and to keep a wife 
 as well. Two hundred pounds a year ! A dinner or two 
 at the Carlton, and a supper or two at the Savoy, and 
 where was that ? No man in the world could exist decently 
 on two hundred a year, let alone keep a wife on it. It 
 was plain that his father knew there was no meat on that 
 bone when he threw it at him. 
 
 Now he had a little scheme. He had already made up 
 his mind that the best thing he could do was to go out to 
 the colonies and try and earn an honest penny. He 
 could not stand beggary in England, probably with all his 
 former friends pointing a finger at him, and giving him the 
 cold shoulder. No ; South Africa was the place, so he had 
 
 347 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 heard. There was a big future for that country. You 
 had only to look at the crop of millionaires it raised annu- 
 ally. You did hear wonderful stories of what men as 
 poor as himself had done out there. Look at that chap 
 Rhodes. If only he could have a bit of luck at the start 
 like those other chaps had had ! 
 
 If only he could return in a year or two and dispense 
 with his father's bounty altogether ! That was where 
 the shoe pinched at present. If he had had anything at 
 all on which to keep his wife he would have gone barefoot 
 rather than accept a penny ! His polo ponies and 
 his kit had gone to cover what he owed, and you could 
 hardly say that they had fulfilled their mission. There 
 was still his tailor, wretched ruffian. It made him groan 
 to think he had to take his father's bounty for his little 
 girl. 
 
 However, it would not be for long. He Wcis going to 
 sail for South Africa to-morrow. His poor little girl had 
 been dreadfully cut up over his plan. She could hardly 
 be got to see things in the same light that he saw them 
 himself ; she was sure they could exist without her husband 
 having to go away to foreign parts to seek money. To 
 her, poor little kid ! two hundred pounds a year was 
 princely, especially with a cottage to live in rent free. 
 But she was brave. And her docility and her devotion 
 were very great. His absence would try her bitterly ; 
 but she was prepared to suffer if only he who knew so much 
 more about everything held it wise and right. He had 
 sought to comfort her with the promise that if he had the 
 least bit of luck his first act would be to return for her and 
 her aunt. 
 
 To-morrow he must leave her. He was sure it would 
 not be for long. Like his mother, he had a vein of cheery 
 optimism, a resolute looking at the right side of a subject 
 tliat had always carried him through. And when it was 
 necessary he too could exhibit a certain stoicism of spirit, 
 after the fashion of his race. 
 
 That Delia should have come there that morning and 
 have taken Alice in her arms gave him immense satis- 
 faction. He had been almost afraid that aunt and niece 
 would be left in an alien country. Of course there was 
 
 348 
 
A L7TTLE MORAL TEACHING 
 
 his mother. But he shared the feeUng of his sisters in 
 regard to her. Whatever she might say or do you were 
 never quite sure of the dear old mummy. You never 
 quite knew when you had her, what she was up to, or what 
 she would be at next. She always gave you a feeling that 
 she was playing a little game of her own, and that you 
 were not allowed to know precisely what it was. 
 
 " You could not have come at a better time Del," he 
 said to his young sister in his old frank way. " I am going 
 away to-morrow ; and I want you to look after my little 
 girl a bit. Promise me you will, little kid. You see she 
 might get rather lonely if nobody comes to see her while I 
 am away." 
 
 Delia made the promise. It was impossible to refuse; 
 Even as she made it she knew it to be an act of disloyalty 
 to her father, and that wild horses would not drag her 
 sisters to that cottage door. But the child was powerless. 
 As heretofore, she was completely the slave of Billy. And 
 his young wife was very sweet and beautiful. 
 
 When she heard that her brother was going to leave 
 England the next day for no purpose other than to seek 
 money, in spite of all her newly-acquired self-control the 
 tears welled up. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, with a pang of indescribable over- 
 mastering bitterness. 
 
 The delicate-looking wife had hers under a better com- 
 mand. Not a tear escaped her, but it seemed to Delia 
 that in her eyes was something worse. The dumb desola- 
 tion in them was to haunt her for many a day. 
 
 " Oh Billy ! How can you go away from her ? How 
 can you leave her ? If she were mine I am sure I could not. 
 I should want her to stay with me always and always." 
 
 " Don't talk like that, little kid." In all her recollection 
 of him she never remembered to have heard that tone. 
 " You musn't talk like that, you know." 
 
 " I feel I must," said Delia, with valiant simplicity. 
 " Oh how can you, Billy ! " 
 
 " Drop it httle kid ! " It was almost as if her simple 
 words had struck him. " I hardly know how I can myself. 
 But when you've got to do a thing you've jolly weU got 
 to do it, whether you can or you can't." 
 
 349 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 By an effort which afflicted his sister as soon as she 
 detected it, he suddenly re-assumed his laughing, careless 
 ease. 
 
 " You young beggar. What do you mean by catechising 
 me like this ? What do you mean by it, eh ? I shall have 
 to box your jolly young ears, you know, if you get so coxey. 
 But we are getting quite a woman now, aren't we ? We 
 shall be falhng in love next," 
 
 Billy was no observer, therefore the swift change his 
 light words provoked in the face of his young sister passed 
 without a challenge. 
 
 " Why, hang it all ! " cried Billy, in the stress of sudden 
 recollection, " you haven't spoken to Auntie yet." 
 
 With his cheery laugh he brought the old woman forward 
 from her hiding-place in the background of the wall. 
 Although it was to be supposed that Delia would hardly 
 have scared a butterfly, Miss Sparrow was very much 
 afraid of her, and when dragged out of her obscurity her 
 nervousness scarcely permitted her to speak a word, 
 although she was able to drop a curtesy the Uke of which 
 Delia had never seen before. 
 
 Delia found herself regarding the shrinking face so pale 
 and unhappy and debased with privation, with the 
 same wonder and irresolution as she had regarded Alice. 
 And in spite of their great disparity in years, she became 
 as suddenly the prey of that impulse which had caused 
 her to enfold the frail child to her bosom. In the case of 
 this old woman she awoke to find that she had done the 
 same thing. 
 
 " Will you tell my mother and the girls that I am going 
 back to town to-night?" said Billy, as DeHa prepared to 
 take her leave \vith the empty basket in her hand. " Tell 
 them to come up here this afternoon. I should like to 
 see them before I go ; there is no saying when we shall 
 meet again. And I had better say good-bye to you, little 
 kid, here now. I always knew you were a good little sort. 
 Not much of you, eh ? but what there is, is solid gold, 
 eh, little Miss Muffet ? And now for the very bestest 
 kiss 3'ou have got. What a cold face you have got, little 
 kid. And not so ros}^ as it was bv Jove. You must buck 
 up, little kid. Mustn' t sit so hard at those books, eh ? One 
 
A LITTLE MORAL TEACHING 
 
 more for luck ; and then off with you — Lord knows when 
 we shall see one another again ! " 
 
 He gripped Delia's hands in his own, and looked upon 
 her with all the beguiling fondness of his eyes. 
 
 With his last kiss upon her hps Delia hastened from him 
 into the open air. The fear was upon her that she would 
 break down before his beautiful fragile wife, who was so 
 brave. She ran into the sensuous air of May heavy and 
 languorous with the sun, and the almost intolerable music 
 of birds ; and never dared to stay her headlong flight until 
 the wood and the hill and the little cottage nestling under 
 them were far away. 
 
 There was a pitiful commotion in the child, but the 
 dread of tears was past. They would have been a relief 
 now, but the power to shed them had gone from her. A 
 cruel rigour had fastened on her throat ; her brain was 
 resolved into a compact and definite substance in her skull. 
 It was like a ball of fire. And yet its matter was so heavy 
 that it was like a piece of clay. She even made an effort 
 to cry now for the sake of relief ; but the attempt to do so 
 was hke inducing the blood of her veins to distil itself 
 through the glands of her eyes. Something of the hysterica 
 fassio had come upon her. 
 
 She went straight to her mother with the empty basket 
 and the tragedy of her face, and gave Billy's message. 
 The barrier of awe and distrust of her mother fell 
 down an instant in the pitch of desperation while she said — 
 
 " He is going away from England to-morrow. He is 
 going to leave his wife ; and it is because of his father. 
 He did not tell me so, but I know it is — oh ! I know it is." 
 
 Mrs. Broke regarded her youngest daughter with a per- 
 fectly serene expression. She scanned the horror and 
 the sorrow rendered so poignantly in the child's face ; 
 she listened with an extraordinary patience to her wild- 
 ness, and replied to it at a carefully-deliberated leisure 
 with the impartial melancholy of a judge pronouncing 
 sentence. 
 
 " Yes, Delia, it is because of his father. It must be a 
 lesson to you all." 
 
 As she spoke these words, her blue eyes were seen to 
 dilate in a blaze of meaning, something in the manner of 
 
 351 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 that fabulous jewel which turned the hearts of all who 
 looked upon its lustre into a block of stone. But by now 
 the child was in no condition to heed, and the analogy 
 between her brother's case and her own, which her mother 
 intended to strike home, had not the power to pierce her. 
 
 " It is cruel, it is unjust ! " she cried, transfigured by 
 her grief. " Alice is so sweet and beautiful and good ! 
 It is cruel, it is wicked to make her suffer ! And Billy 
 is so brave and noble ! It is wicked, it is unjust ! " 
 
 Her mother regarded this outburst with a tinge of 
 curiosity not unmingled with astonishment. Delia was 
 positively the last creature in the world in whom such an 
 ebullition was to be looked for. It made an unwelcome 
 precedent in the history of her daughters' lives that 
 one of them should appear before her thus. And this 
 child too, the one among them with the least initiative, 
 the least force of character, to appear before her in this 
 state. 
 
 " Delia, I must ask you to be silent." 
 
 " Billy has resigned his commission," the child wenton^ 
 with a dreary wildness. " He is giving up everything ; 
 he is leaving his wife. He is " 
 
 " Delia, you can go." 
 
 The child could not escape the dominating glance, and 
 the old terror of that implacable will re-asserted itself. 
 It strangled the quick words on her lips. With a Uttle 
 cry of horror she ran from the room. 
 
 352 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 Pariah in the name of Love 
 
 IT was not until the afternoon that Delia was able to 
 find her five sisters. They had taken luncheon at an 
 agricultural show. Ultimately she found them assembled 
 in full conclave over the tea-cups in their common room, 
 talking cattle and horses. As soon as she entered she 
 cried — 
 
 " Billy is at the cottage, and he wants to see you all 
 to say good-bye. He is going to leave England to-morrow." 
 
 The first glances her sisters directed to her were of the 
 nature of bewilderment : her voice was so wild, her words 
 so unsteady. It was Joan who was the first to recover her 
 self-possession ; or, overcome perhaps by so momentous a 
 crisis, they did not, after their kind, trust themselves to 
 have thoughts of their own until she, the one having 
 authority, their natural leader, had indicated the direc- 
 tion in which they must go. 
 
 Even Joan was seen to shiver a little, but her mouth was 
 very stern, and her face reminded them irresistibly of their 
 father's at the moment he had issued his mandate. 
 
 " You must leave this room, Delia, until we have taken 
 tea. We cannot submit to disobedience from you." 
 
 " Mother sent me," said Delia defiantly. 
 
 " You know that father had forbidden us to mention his 
 name." 
 
 " In his presence," said Delia wildly. 
 
 " We should act when he is absent just as though he 
 were present. If you have not enough self-respect to do 
 that, we cannot have you here. Leave us, Delia." 
 
 " I will speak first ; I must speak first ! Billy goes 
 away from England to-morrow. He asks to see you, and 
 
 353 z 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 if you do not go to him now,you may never see him again." 
 
 Joan rose, put down her cup, opened the door, and stood 
 beside it. 
 
 " Delia," she said in a low voice, " I insist on your 
 leaving this room ; and you are not to enter it again until 
 I give you permission." 
 
 Delia withdrew. She went up to her bedroom, but soon 
 the confinement of four walls became intolerable. The 
 feeling was upon her that the world was pressing her to 
 death. She must have a freer, more spacious place in 
 which to breathe, in which to think. Therefore, bare- 
 headed as she was, she went downstairs and out of doors 
 into the exquisite freshness and peace of the evening. 
 Bareheaded, she crossed the lawn into the meadows 
 beyond cooling slowly from the heat of noon, their green 
 faces already dipt in dew. Cattle lowed from the streams, 
 hedge-crickets made their little noises, birds formed 
 their evening notes ; there was the sound of a thou- 
 sand insects ; and over and above the mild voices of nature 
 the peace of a hundred thousand years. 
 
 To the child in her unquietness this eternal serenity 
 was touched with healing. The great peace of God was 
 like an opiate ; but not even the majestic calm of a sunset 
 falling on green fields could wholly assuage the tumultuous 
 sorrow that had overborne her. Grief had rendered her 
 mute, but it needed all her power to prevent it from 
 welling up into frenzy. Not once, but many times, 
 had she to conquer the desire to fling her burning face 
 into the long swathes of meadow grass clad icily with dew. 
 
 What had her brother done, and the tender child he 
 loved, that all the world, including those who formerly 
 had adored him, should treat him as a leper ? What 
 taint lurked in the sacred nature of their love, that they 
 sliould be punished thus ? She framed the question to 
 herself — Was it a crime, the violation of some secret 
 arbitrary law, that one human being should love another ? 
 
 There was the example of her own case. She, in the 
 desire of her spirit, had dared to love, and how bitterly, 
 now relentlessly had the act been visited upon her ! Now 
 was she condemned to a perpetual hungering torment that 
 nothing could appease, a perpetual deprecation of self that 
 
 354 
 
PARIAH IN THE NAME OF LOVE 
 
 nothing could mitigate. And even could she, like her 
 brother, have brought her cravings to their consummation, 
 she sa.w the price at which it would have been obtained. 
 His fate would have been hers. The scorn, the reproaches 
 of those whom she held dear would have fallen with the 
 same heaviness upon her. 
 
 A httle wistfully she remembered the bravery and the 
 strength of this beloved brother. What a great heart he 
 had in adversity ! Why was she incapable of that un- 
 daunted fortitude ? Ah ! but then the requital of love was 
 his. He had the exquisite co-operation and stimulus of 
 passion to bear him onwards, the entrancing sense of two* 
 made one and walking in the perfect way. Well 
 might he hold up his head and splendidly endure 1 
 She, pitiful, insignificant as she was, had not the 
 force to evoke the immortal welding flame in the nature of 
 another. She could never be fortified with the supreme 
 exaltation of completeness. Her pangs had no resources to 
 assuage them, no sanctified bread on which to grow 
 appeased. Her love must be fed, must be kept alive 
 wholly upon the blood of her own spirit. This love of 
 hers was a monster that waxed upon the precious fluid of 
 her veins, and with its inordinate demands starved her 
 young nature into shadow and paleness. 
 
 Her wandering feet strajed far across the fields in 
 the direction in which the cottage lay. The moment she 
 awoke to its nearness she turned and went back. In- 
 tensely she longed to look upon that beloved brother again ; 
 intensely she longed to derive an instant's sustenance from 
 one final pressure of those arms. But she did not dare. 
 Only a miracle had saved her from humiliation in their 
 parting of that morning. It would shatter her to look 
 upon him again. They were a pair of outcasts. The 
 hands of those they revered, the hands that had nurtured 
 them, were uplifted against them now. They were pariah 
 in the name of love. 
 
 Thus she turned from the cottage, and, in utter self- 
 abandonment, bent her steps the other way. Chance took 
 her in the direction of that ruin, from whose crazy heights 
 she had been plucked by the arms of one when the jaws 
 of death yearned to take her in. 
 
 355 
 
BROKE OF COVEN DEN 
 
 Hour after hour since that April afternoon had she put 
 this question to herself : Why, if she had no existence for 
 him ; why, if she was no more to him than a stone, or a 
 bit of earth, or a chip of a tree — why had he risked, wan- 
 tonly, his so-precious life for hers ? Surely he, whose life 
 was developed with such a marvellous rarity, would have 
 had too high a sense of the duty of custodianship of a thing 
 so exquisite imposed upon him, to endanger it for a whim. 
 And yet how much more merciful it would have been to 
 let her fall stark upon the earth and perish. Could he but 
 have known to what he was condemning her, he would 
 surely have allowed her to die. 
 
 Perhaps it was not chance, after all, that was leading 
 her to that hallowed but intolerable scene. Or chance 
 may be only a name for a subtle concatenation of agencies 
 all working in secret to one end. She was going to the 
 ruin in an instinctive, involuntary manner ; and yet who 
 shall say she was not aware of what she did ? The dizzy 
 heights that rose there gauntly in the dusk were the only 
 objects to which life now attached a meaning. They filled her 
 eyes, and through the mists of the evening beckoned her to go 
 and receive the consolation they alone could bestow. And 
 in the weary spirit there was a yearning," vague, irrational, 
 almost too impalpable to be expressed. It was a desire to 
 lay her throbbing temples on cold stone. There may have 
 been a suggestion of the eternal quietness, of the ultimate 
 elixir for every living thing when it lays down the burden 
 at last that long ago has grown too heavy to carry, in those 
 impassive upright walls cov^ered with ivy and peace and 
 years, on which poor old Time himself is allowed to rest 
 like one who is tired. And again, were they not too inex- 
 pressibly the sepulchre of the unfulfilled ? They were the 
 cloisters of recollection. Wlien we feel we can look forward no 
 more, our eyes turn inward to confront the spectres of our 
 hopes. When the future, the fairer, the more radiant part 
 of us becomes a tomb, the only beatitude that is left to us 
 is in the limbo of the never-was. 
 
 The sun had vanished ; the wonderful evening of the 
 early summer was rapidly deepening to dusk. The dew 
 had come npon the fields : it hung before her as she walked 
 a pale faint curtain, cnfoldinc: hedge and pasture, or a cold 
 
 356 
 
PARIAH IN THE NAME OF LOVE 
 
 white pall. A far-off star or two had Ut their candles in 
 the sky. The little chili noon was come already into 
 heaven. The distant winds of night were already to be 
 heard walking in the valleys like unquiet spirits. There 
 was hardly an ember of daylight left when she climbed up 
 the familiar hill into the shadow of the ruin. The deep 
 reflection that it cast rendered it all but invisible ; while 
 too much was she wounded with intolerable memories 
 to discern a vague mass, a something dark outlined in 
 mirk against a wall of ivy. ' 
 
 In her obsession she approached within a few yards of 
 it, and, bareheaded as she was, pressed her aching hair 
 against the ruin. The first touch of the cold stone brought 
 relief. The tears burst out of her heart. In the first 
 ecstasy of feehng them flow once again she surrendered 
 herself to a strange orgy of passion, and craved that she 
 might weep to death. Presently her sense of oblivion was 
 invaded by a voice at her side. It was as though experience 
 was repeating itself. It was as if some pregnant incident 
 of an existence in some far-off aeon, too remote for the 
 senses to accept, was seeking for recognition. It was too 
 distant even to have significance. To DeHa the voice at 
 her side was the faint voice of a phantom floating among 
 the winds of the glebe. 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! " said the voice. 
 
 By now there was some eerie quality in it that seemed 
 to arrest the motions of her heart. She peered round 
 wildly, and was able to discern the dim, yet luminous, 
 outlines of a face she had never looked to see again. She 
 uttered a cry like a little hunted animal. The next instant 
 ' she was encompassed strongly, with the tip of her nose, the 
 firm line of her lips, and the point of her chin all huddled 
 together against something breathing and respon- 
 sive. 
 
 She was content to close her eyes and lie there captive. 
 Her heart had resumed its motions, but now it pattered 
 quick and little, like a bird's when, after being driven hard 
 about a gre?nhouse, it is taken and imprisoned in the 
 grasp. Only, in the wild fiutterings of her spirit there was 
 no desire for escape. She had no wish other than never to 
 emerge from the arms that kept her. She craved to close 
 
 357 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 her eyes in the ecstasy of feeling them about her, never to 
 open them again. 
 
 Minutes passed without speech. 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! " the voice repeated. 
 
 She still hung in his arms, heeding nothing. 
 
 " Alas, poor wild little bird ! " he said, sensible of the 
 motions of her heart as it beat through her print dress. 
 
 He pressed his Ups against her wet cold hair. 
 
 " You have no hat. Oh ! why have you come Uke this, 
 ^nd in such a season ? You are overborne, you poor wild 
 oird beaten against stone by stress of weather. Or, no, 
 your pulses flutter like those of a small lamb that has 
 been driven till it dies." 
 
 The child still clung to him with all her strength, fearing, 
 in some desperate manner, that when she released him he 
 would go. 
 
 " You went away," she said ; " you left me, and I — I 
 felt I could not live." 
 
 " But I come back to you now." 
 
 " You will not go from me again ? " 
 
 " Never, never ! " 
 
 " But why, oh why ! did you not tell me you were com- 
 ing back ? Why did you go without giving me a word — 
 just one small little word, that I might live ? I thought 
 you had gone from me for always. I thought you had gone 
 from me, and that you would never come back. Oh ! I 
 could not bear it ! If you are to leave me again, promise 
 that you will cast me from that height above us before you 
 
 go." 
 
 " You have suffered," he said, with grave pity ; " yet I 
 acted as well as I knew." 
 
 " Why, oh why did you leave me so ? " 
 
 " I did not know myself. I had to put myself to the 
 test ; I had to be worthy of you. But oh, my poor Uttle 
 bird, how you have suffered ! " 
 
 " Why did you not give me just one small Uttle word ? 
 Only one— one to keep me from despair." 
 
 " Do not upbraid me." 
 
 Her lips were yielded to his. 
 
 " I have been wrong," he said, settling her upon his 
 breast. " You make me begin to see that I did not know 
 
PARIAH IN THE NAME OF LOVE 
 
 you, even as I did not know myself. But I must tell you 
 my story, in the hope that it may help you to forgive." 
 
 Deha strained to him closer, and tucked the point of 
 her chin deeper into his coat. 
 
 " Almost from the first day of our coming together I 
 saw how careful I must be ; and when I saw you 5neld 
 more and more as the weeks went on I grew afraid. I did 
 not know myself. You see I am speaking out all that is 
 in my mind, for there can be no secret between us now." 
 
 She dug her chin deeper. 
 
 " At first, you see, you had no real meaning for me. You 
 were the first specimen of womanhood of a rare variety I 
 had seen ; and I suppose I was Professor Dryasdust look- 
 ing at your wonderful mysterious mechanism under a 
 double magnifying glass. At least, that was how I felt at 
 first. You were an intensely interesting pathognomical 
 specimen, but you did not fill my nights and days. But 
 then, after a while, this apathetic mind began to concede 
 you something else." 
 
 Half swooning on his coat, she knitted her arms to him 
 so tightly that she felt they were like to crush him to death. 
 She almost longed for the power. It was as though 
 having a rare jewel miraculously delivered to her after it 
 had been given up for lost, she yearned to embody it as a 
 piece of her own actual self. 
 
 " After that I began to see you as you were, and pre- 
 sently preferred to come to you rather than stay at home to 
 do the work that kept my heart at peace. If I did not see 
 you, I got to feel that I had passed a day without living. 
 Your presence began to mean more and more. I began to 
 carry away the sound of your voice in my ears, your pretty 
 little childish accents. They grew like music ; such music 
 that one day, as I was reading " Lycidas," they pronounced 
 the magic numbers word by word. That put me in fear, 
 my httle one. And I remember that one calm midnight, 
 writing in my attic on white foolscap, the page became a 
 transparency by which I could look through the films of 
 mysterious darkness which kept your eyes. There and 
 then I threw the pen down, and for a whole week knew not 
 how to take it up again. But with all this I felt you were 
 going faster and farther than could I. It had begun to 
 
 359 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 dawn upon me that you had the greater nature, or, at least, 
 a greater one in love. You see, we wretched people have 
 only about a fifth part of a soul to call our own, a poor gift, 
 alas ! to bestow upon a very woman who has brought to 
 us the whole of hers. Art is the inexorable, jealous mis- 
 tress that we serve. Far too great a tyrant is she to let us 
 render an adequate service to a mistress of our native 
 species, endowed with flesh and blood and delicious human 
 caprices. She will brook no rival near her haughty arro- 
 gant celestial throne. 
 
 " That was the reason why by now I was afraid. I 
 knew that art had me in her bonds. Hence the need for 
 vigilance. Beyond everything I saw how essential it was 
 that you should not be misled. Even a chance word 
 might WTeak an injury. I must be wary to protect you ; 
 for you see, I was still underrating Nature and overrating 
 Art. How could you, a child, hope to overthrow the most 
 mighty, the most ruthless, the most passionate tyrant who 
 ever placed her yoke on the neck of man ? How in the 
 end could such a little thing as you hope to prevail against 
 her ? 
 
 " Therefore, when I went to London I was sorely beset. My 
 heart had become the battle-ground of two terrible powers 
 in the strange inner world. Nature, the Mighty Mother, had 
 already made her call upon me ; but with Art, the Mighty 
 Mistress, looming in the background, I felt I dare not hft 
 a finger in response. If ever you read the biographies of 
 such as me, you will understand what I mean, my poor 
 little fairy ; there are very few of us who are not guilty of 
 a crime when we dare to marry. And so I deemed the only 
 honest course was to leave you without a hint of the bloody 
 conflict in my spirit. It would have been too grievous if, 
 after I had bidden you have faith, my flaccid fibres in 
 the absorption of the exotic life they are condemned to 
 lead had allowed Art to spurn Nature after all I think, 
 had that happened after I had once surrendered to you, I 
 could never have regained my self-respect. 
 
 " That, however, is far behind us now. Once in Lon- 
 don, I awrke to the trite fact that in the end Nature 
 nutsi coiiquer. Whatever I had been to you at the 
 time of my going away, within one short month you 
 
 ?>6o 
 
PARIAH IN THE NAME OF LOVE 
 
 had become that to me, and more. You had entered into 
 absolute possession. The scheme of things no longer had 
 a significance apart from you. Day and night, I was 
 dominated by you ; you were in my dreams, you were in 
 my work. You were recaUed to me in a thousand shapes 
 that made your absence mock me. There were a hundred 
 meanings in your face that held me up to scorn ; the lights 
 in your eyes grew more unfathomable and mysterious ; 
 the carriage of your Httle head, the patter of your little 
 feet, the sound of your voice haunted me — oh, my little 
 fairy, I cannot tell you how they haunted me ! 
 
 "And so at last I awoke to find myself your equal. I 
 had passed through the ordeal of absence, and instead of 
 becoming less to me you had become more, a thousand 
 times more. I knew where I was ; at last I was empowered 
 to act. Thus when I left London this morning to spend a 
 few days with my father at Cuttisham, I resolved that I 
 would seek you and make my confession. But I did not 
 look to find you here. I cannot tell what mysterious 
 agent it is that brought you, because in the letter I sent to 
 you this morning I did not mention time or place. Above 
 all, I made no reference to this ruin ; indeed, it was not until 
 half an hour ago that I thought of coming here. Then, 
 observing whither my walk had unconsciously led, I 
 turned to look upon a scene that will be ever hallowed by 
 strange memories." 
 
 " It is a mysterious Providence," cried Delia. " Let us 
 kneel here on this bank of earth and ask God to continue 
 to keep us in His care." 
 
 " We are strong enough to make our own destiny," said 
 her companion in the arrogance of his power. He gripped 
 her so tightly that she could have cried out in a very glad- 
 ness of pain. 
 
 But the return of a perfect sanity to the child was 
 bringing in its train a reaction of great fear. She began to 
 shiver in the arms of her lover. 
 
 " Ah, you do not know, you do not know ! " she said 
 mournfully. 
 
 " Are we not of the mettle that grips the giant Difficulty 
 by the throat ? " he vaunted. " You would hardly beUeve 
 how many times I have thrown him to the ground " 
 
 361 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 ** I have seen you do it once," she said with the exaltation 
 of his tone stirring in her pulses. " I have seen you do it 
 when no other in all the world could do it." 
 
 "It can be done again." 
 
 " I am thinking of my father. You do not know my 
 father." 
 
 The voice of the child was like a wail. 
 
 " The name of that giant is Convention. Together, in 
 our might, I think we can do battle with him too." 
 
 She clung to his coat convulsively. 
 
 " You do not fear, my little one ? " 
 
 "In the heart of me there is a wretched cowardice." 
 
 " And I beside you ? " 
 
 " You cannot know what my father is. Men like you 
 cannot understand." 
 
 " Will the ogre kill me and eat me for his supper ? " 
 
 The child shuddered and nestled into his coat once more. 
 
 " We will put on our invisible coat and our shoes of 
 swiftness, and borrow the sword Excalibur, or get friend 
 Merlin to steal it for us. Be of good courage, my little 
 fairy princess. I can fight any giant in the world in any 
 enchanted castle, in any impenetrable fastness, with any 
 liery dragons before the mouth of it, or I were unworthy 
 to hold you in my arms. Grip tighter, little princess, and 
 fear not." 
 
 " If only I had courage ! " said poor Delia. 
 
 She was still shivering at the recollection of her brother's 
 fate. 
 
 " You shall not fear while you lie against my heart. I 
 would there were a light by which you could see my face. 
 It would be a very talisman to bear you through those 
 noisome gloomy caverns — Doubt and Difficulty. It never 
 yet turned back from the work before it. Nor ever shall, 
 poor little fairy, nor ever shall ! " 
 
 By virtue of these arrogant speeches her cheeks began 
 suddenly to glow. She saw him as he swooned upon 
 the bank of earth with the blood flowing from his wounded 
 hands. Such heroic words as these were his splendid 
 birthright. In another they were boastfulness, but in 
 him, the valiant warrior, they were proper to his quality. 
 
 " I do not fear ; I am not afraid," she cried. 
 362 
 
PARIAH IN THE NAME OF LOVE 
 
 ** You were not mine, poor little fairy, were it otherwise." 
 
 " Must you, must you see my father ? " 
 
 " Yes, indeed. I must beard that ogre and carry my 
 good sword in my hand." 
 
 " You will find him truly terrible !" 
 
 She was trembling painfully. 
 
 " How cold you are ! And your poor heart is beating 
 so. Come, small princess, you shall not be afraid." 
 
 " Ah, but he is so terrible ! 
 
 " And we ? Are we not terrible also ? " 
 
 She closed h^ eyes again, and lay back shuddering and 
 buried her head in his bosom. YLe imprinted another kiss 
 with extreme delicacy upon her wet cold hair. He then 
 put off his tone of romantic lightness for one a little more 
 matter-of-fact, as became one in whose veins the Saxon 
 was mingled with the Celt. 
 
 " And now," he said, " suppose we are material ? That 
 is a point of view that must never be absent from the mind 
 of the honest Briton. I think we can safely say that 
 the world has not ear-marked us to come together. Still, 
 if the happy chance that called us into being also pre- 
 destined us for one another, perhaps for once the world will 
 be put to shame. Accidents of birth and fortune have no 
 hen upon our immortal souls. I am afraid even poor 
 Mr. Debrett will not be able to do more than write a 
 letter to the Standard. Now I shall be able to build a 
 small doU's-house of a palace for you, my little fairy 
 princess, if your aristocratic spirit can stoop to the region 
 of South Kensington. You see I get eight hundred pounds 
 a year from the Review ; I am to enjoy a subsidy from 
 the University of Cambridge, which may mean a little 
 more ; and publishers have already deigned to take such a 
 friendly interest in me because of the little book I pre- 
 sented to an astonished world a month ago, that I think I 
 can add still a little more from that direction too. There- 
 fore, still continuing to degrade ourselves with the material, 
 there should be enough to provide for the little princess 
 who lives in the doU's-house curds and whey and an occa- 
 sional bunch of flowers newly from the country, which I 
 am led to understand is all that fairy princesses choose to 
 live upon. And now, my little one, the evening is late. I 
 
 3^3 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 can feel your hands are ice ; you have no hat and coat ; you 
 
 are very thinly clad." 
 
 At the mention of the hour Delia leapt up in horror. 
 
 " Oh ! what is the time ? I had quite forgotten it. And 
 I have not been home to dinner. I shall be scolded dread- 
 fully." 
 
 He struck a match and read his watch. 
 
 " Five minutes to eleven." 
 
 " I must fly." 
 
 " Alas, poor Cinderella ! " 
 
 Long ago it had become wholly dark. They picked their 
 path through the bracken on the steep hillside, and under- 
 neath the shyest, faintest shred of moon made their way 
 across the dew-soaked meadows to the near neighbourhood 
 of the house. A clock from an adjacent hamlet chimed the 
 hour of eleven. Delia's heart sank as it counted the re- 
 lentless strokes. 
 
 " Oh ! whatever will happen ? " she cried as she stood 
 a moment in despair. 
 
 " There is no longer a place for fear in us. Should we 
 walk now into the ogre's parlour hand in hand ? " 
 
 "Oh, no, no, no! To-night I am sure I could not bear 
 what would follow. I think you will never be able to 
 understand what my father is, and my mother also, and 
 my sisters worst of all ! " 
 
 " You are right," he said ; and his calmness seemed to 
 add density to her despair. " We must be wise and choose 
 the hour." 
 
 " It makes me unhappy to hear you speak so lightly. 
 When the full weight of their unkindness falls upon you, 
 I almost seem to fear that you will renounce me." 
 
 " You shall not have such a thought. From this night, 
 come what may, doubt cannot invade us. Never, never 
 shall there arise a cloud between us now." 
 
 " You are greater than I," said Delia, peering up into 
 his face by the aid of the insufficient light of the moon, 
 while her eyes glowed and dilated until they were far 
 superior to the paltry pair of stars that hung about heaven, 
 " always greater than I. Even in love you are greater, 
 and yet my love drove me to the verge of despair. Who 
 am I that should have such as you for a lover ? God is too 
 
 3H 
 
PARIAH IN THE NAME OF LOVE 
 
 gentle with me ; He rewards me out of all proportion to my 
 desert." 
 
 " You will never doubt again, poor little falterer ? " 
 
 " Never, never while I live ! " 
 
 " And I have never doubted nor will. Good-bye, 
 small fairy. A kiss and then good-night — here by this 
 noble tree on this fair spot of earth. To-morrow or the 
 next day I will beard the ogre in his lair ; but come what 
 may : come shine, come hail, we pledge ourselves for ever ! " 
 
 " For ever ! " 
 
 She was locked to him one wild instant more. 
 
 They parted underneath the young moon, and went their 
 ways. Delia was bareheaded and thinly clad. The 
 damp of the night had penetrated her stockings and shoes, 
 and her petticoats were a sop where their edges had swept 
 the dew from the fields of meadow-grass through which 
 they had trailed. The clock from the village steeple 
 struck the half-hour after eleven ; she had had no food 
 since the middle of the day, and that very scanty ; she had 
 been exposed to the open for many hours, but she was 
 neither cold nor hungry, nor thirsty, nor afflicted with 
 weariness. She was not even heavy of heart. There was 
 an exotic exaltation in her spirit that for the present placed 
 her beyond the reach of all calamities of the flesh. 
 
 When at last the dark form of her lover had been 
 swallowed in the gloom of an immense wall of trees and lost 
 to view, Delia turned to go indoors. She might have had 
 fear in her heart, as hunger, and in her limbs weariness, 
 and other infirmities of a corporeal character residing 
 somewhere in her flesh. But in nowise was she sensible of 
 these things. There was that magical secret in her that had 
 resolved her young blood into ether, so that she seemed no 
 longer to have feet of clay rooted in the mire of the world. 
 
 365 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 Two Women 
 
 TO Delia's relief she discovered the great hall door 
 to be ajar. So late was the hour for such an early 
 retiring household that she was afraid she would have to 
 arouse it if she were to be admitted. 
 
 The fact that the hall door was undone was a phenomenon, 
 and very properly of a piece with the transcending events 
 of that evening. But looking a little farther she found 
 the explanation of it, even as we may find the explanation 
 of all phenomena if only we look far enough. The old 
 butler trod softly forward from out of the dark interior in 
 a pair of carpet slippers with a candle in his hand. He 
 placed a finger to his lips. 
 
 " Be very quiet, miss. They all thought you were in 
 your bedroom at dinner. They thought you were unwell. 
 They have not found you out. And they won't if you 
 go up very quietly. 
 
 " You are very good to me, Porson. How did you 
 know I was out ? " 
 
 " I had an instinct, miss. I saw you were not at the 
 dinner-table ; I always carry you all in my eye, you know. 
 And I learned from Walters you were not in your room. 
 You will find a fire there, and a plate of bread and cold 
 meat and a basin of warm milk. If I may take the liberty 
 of saying it, miss, I have noticed you have not been well 
 for some little time." 
 
 366 
 
TWO WOMEN 
 
 " You are too good to me, dear Person. How did you 
 find out that ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I know more about all of you, miss, than you 
 do yourselves. If you will forgive the liberty, I don't 
 think if you were my own daughters you could be more 
 to me than you are. You see, miss, I have known your 
 father all his life. I can remember quite well the day 
 he was born. Man and boy I have been in this house sixty- 
 two years come Christmas. Now if you go very quiet, 
 especially past your mother's door, no one will know of 
 this. Even Mrs. Smith doesn't know." 
 
 The august old gentleman lighted her to her bedroom 
 by bearing the candle cautiously and solemnly before 
 her. 
 
 It was true that at the dinner-table her absence had 
 excited no comment, after Joan had hazarded the remark 
 that she might be unwell. Mrs. Broke, who was late for the 
 meal herself, as, unknown to her husband and daughters, 
 she had been to the cottage to say farewell to her son, 
 was hardly in a state of mind to exert her customary 
 vigilance. Besides she also, by the light of what had 
 transpired at her strange interview with the child that 
 morning, thought she might be indisposed. Broke 
 himself, who of late had become the most apathetic of men, 
 hardly spoke a word throughout the meal, and betrayed 
 an interest in nothing beyond the strip of tablecloth 
 immediately before him. 
 
 Delia, therefore, was spared the ordeal which she 
 dreaded. She drank the basin of warm milk gratefully, 
 and slipped into bed, and then, for the first time for full 
 many an unhappy night, she slept the sleep of perfect youth, 
 of perfect health, and of perfect weariness. It was deep, 
 dreamless, reconstructing. 
 
 She awoke with a clear heart to the twitterings of birds 
 about her window, as in the unintrospective days of old. 
 She sprang from her bed refreshed in mind and body. 
 There was a little carol upon her lips. The night of 
 darkness and despair was past. She had awakened to a 
 fresh and joyous day. Her spirit was no longer racked 
 by doubt. She was beloved. 
 
 In the sanity, the clearness, the calm of morning, fear 
 
 367 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 could exist no more. An exquisite self-reliance thrilled 
 within her. There was no room for baser doubts now 
 that the crowning one of all had been for ever laid at rest. 
 The Uttle world in which she had been reared, the little 
 world which a few short months ago had been so dear> 
 so sacred to her, might now conspire to spit its venom at 
 her and hers, but nothing, as it seemed in the splendour 
 of this sovereign day, could poison the clear fountain 
 from whence sprang their common faith. No human 
 obloquy could percolate to their impregnable love. 
 
 She had awakened to find herself in the toils of a 
 supreme exultation. For the first time she tasted the 
 pleasure that has its source in the requital of love. The 
 passion in its craving, in its insatiable madness of desire, 
 is a fever ; but the consummation of it, the sanctity of 
 faith answering to faith, may be compared to a strange 
 beatitude serenely rising like an aerial vapour above the 
 hissing cauldron of chaos. Delia dressed blithely. Sing- 
 ing, she sallied out to feed her pets. Presently she 
 returned to procure a crust of bread to gnaw herself, for 
 she had suddenly made the discovery that she was 
 desperately hungry. 
 
 It was hardly more than five o'clock. The cold and 
 pure airs of the morning that swept her temples now 
 recalled vaguely to her mind the feverish longing that had 
 possessed her the previous evening to lay her burning 
 forehead on cold stone. But the transactions of that 
 insane period had become little more than a dream already. 
 She was far too reasonable now to be able to look back 
 upon them with any sense of detail. Clothed in our right 
 minds we cannot enter intimately into the high delirium 
 of fever and unreason. 
 
 She sang to herself softly as she tripped over the wet 
 lawns, and she did not fear. Fate and her world should 
 put their heads together and contrive their worst, bu( 
 the necessary resolution was now hers to stand steadfast. 
 She was like her brother now. Yesterday her complaint 
 had been that her love had its foundations in the sand. 
 But now, like his, it was raised upon the imperishable _ 
 rock. Yesterday she felt that she could never be as 
 resolute as he. Now she had awakened to learn that 
 
 368 
 
TWO WOMEN 
 
 she had misjudged the forces of her heart. This morning 
 she felt her strength to be as great as that of any creature 
 
 in the world. 
 
 Her happy way led her down a remote path, in which 
 was a small summer-hutch without a door. Coming upon 
 it suddenly she was transfixed by an apparition seated in 
 it shrouded in grey light. It was Maud Wayhng, bare- 
 headed and clad in a dress of white muslin. She was 
 reading a book. She hf ted her wonderful grey eyes to DeUa, 
 and smiled wanly. 
 
 " Come and sit by me," she said, " and take my hand 
 and speak to me. Are we not both waj^arers in the same 
 dark valley ? Are we not both stricken of the same 
 mortal complaint ? " 
 
 Delia was no longer timid. Ever since Maud WayUng 
 had been among them in that house she, in common with 
 her sisters, had been in fear of her; but this morning 
 that feeling and the self-conscious reserve induced by it 
 had passed away. Without hesitation she approached. 
 The vivid pallor of Miss Wayhng's face afflicted her. It 
 was peculiarly cold and placid ; as transparent as marble ; 
 and the rings that had lately come about her eyes were 
 the only tints upon it that had any value as colour. As 
 Delia came to her now, her own experience enabled her 
 only too clearly to understand the true nature of her 
 malady. The proud and unapproachable creature was 
 suddenly represented in a new light. 
 
 " You loved him ; you loved Billy ; and he has gone from 
 you," cried Delia. " I know what it is to bear that, 
 because I have had to bear it too." 
 
 "There is no hope for women like us," said Maud Wayling. 
 " When we are bereft we can only wither. I say this 
 to you because we both suffer the same inexpressibly 
 bitter degradation. There is no rest for us, no peace ; 
 we can only perish. Our mouths are stopped with dust 
 and ashes, but they cannot always stifle the words that 
 surge upon our lips. It only remains for us to hide our 
 heads." 
 
 " Yesterday I felt so," said Delia, and she could not 
 wholly repress the thrill of exaltation in her voice strive 
 as she might to do so out of pity for the wretchedness 
 
 3'59 A A 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 of this other sufferer. " But I am not so now. It has 
 pleased God to have mercy upon me ; I am very happy 
 now. But perhaps I ought not to tell you this ; it may 
 give you pain. Perhaps I am cruel and unkind. I 
 have no right to speak of happiness when you are so 
 unhappy. Please forgive me ; but this morning I feel 
 it is impossible to conceal from any one the terrible joy 
 that is making me so happy." 
 
 " I am glad to see you happy. I have measured your 
 affliction by my own, although I dared not speak to you 
 about it." 
 
 " And yours, and yours ! It has been base of me not to 
 see what your affliction was. Oh, but I see now ! Every 
 inch of these dark ways have we walked together. I have 
 not been alone in rny despair. And yet so lately as last 
 evening it nearly overcame me. I have not known how 
 to pass my days. There has been no solace anywhere. 
 At least, poor Maud, if others do not mourn for you, I 
 shall always. I do not know why my happiness has 
 been restored to me in tenfold measure when you, who are 
 so much wiser, so much better, so much more beautiful, 
 have had your happiness taken from you, never to be 
 given back. It does not seem just." 
 
 " I am trying to acquire the habit of not complaining 
 of Fate," said the beautiful unhappy woman ; " but the 
 task is heavy. It calls for more tenacity of purpose, a 
 greater strength of nature than I possess. As you say, it 
 does not seem just. But I think I am coming slowly to 
 see in what way I have offended. There is surely a reason 
 for a punishment so unmitigated. I am coming slowly 
 to see that it is because I have surrendered myself to a 
 heartless and selfish mode of life. My interests have 
 been too much centred in myself. My thoughts have 
 run too much upon my private ease ; they have poisoned 
 my very spirit, sapped my resolution. My inhuman 
 selfishness has cloj^ed the springs of my heart. It has no 
 recoil. This is why I am punished." 
 
 " But why should not I be punished too ? " said Deha. 
 " It does not seem just that I should be condemned to 
 suffer only for a term when you must suffer always. I 
 am sure my crime has not been less than yours ; at least 
 
 370 
 
TWO WOMEN 
 
 no one could have thought more about oneself than I 
 have lately." 
 
 "Yes; but your nature is wholesomer, honester, purer, 
 stronger, than is mine. It has not been subjected, and has 
 not fallen a prey to the temptations of money. You do 
 not know what a curse money is. You can scarcely be 
 made to understand what a crop of foul diseases it breeds. 
 The idle can never be happy ; the creatures of surfeit can 
 never rejoice. And for one like me to be bred in the 
 manner that I have been, and not to languish, not to 
 swoon on the cushions of prosperity, seems to be 
 impossible." 
 
 " Is there not a cure ? " 
 
 " I seem to fear that my nature is not great enough to 
 effect a cure. But I am sure that if I do not soon find 
 something to lessen the pressure of my thoughts I shall 
 not be able to bear my affliction. It is more than we 
 nurselings of wealth can endure to be thwarted in our 
 smallest desires, let alone in our greatest. We cannot 
 escape from ourselves. The monotonj', the heart-jwearing 
 wretchedness of being ever face to face with our own 
 imperious desires has no alleviation. I begin to envy the 
 lives of the women in the London shops. They have not 
 forgotten the taste of happiness. When they can snatch 
 an instant from the battle of existence to give to themselves, 
 they enjoy a truer luxury than we creatures of surfeit have 
 ever known. Think of the child at the cottage whom 
 your brother has married. She has known more of 
 happiness in her squalid little life than have I in all my 
 acclaimed and feted one. The very simphcity of nature 
 that is in her is an alluring thing ; whereas the stagnating, 
 foetid complexity of an extreme civilisation that is in me 
 is a rank offence that smells to Heaven. I suppose my 
 unhealthy life, reacting on my weak nature, has made me 
 what they call an egoist— an unhappy victim of the god 
 of Self." 
 
 The beautiful unhappy woman covered her face with 
 her hands. 
 
 Delia, in spite of the ecstasy of her own situation, was 
 filled with pain by such a distress. In regarding it she 
 beheld a state of mind from which she had miraculously 
 
 371 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 escaped. This austere, this aloof creature, wto was so 
 fair, was being seared by a suffering that too intimately 
 she understood. Humein nature, it seemed, was much 
 the same all the world over. One of her complete humility 
 was privileged to share the pangs of the proudest bosom. 
 
 372 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 In the Maelstrom 
 
 WHEN Delia came in to breakfast her mother looked 
 at her with a keenness that was disconcerting. 
 She did not speak, but to the child her glance seemed preg- 
 nant with meaning. The recollection suddenly swept over 
 her that her lover had posted a letter to her the previous 
 day, and that as yet it had not come into her hands. A 
 pang sank into her. It was born of the conviction that it 
 had been intercepted. 
 
 From that moment a steady reaction came upon her. 
 The buoyant fearlessness of the early morning began slowly 
 to decline. The habit of reflection reasserted itself in her, 
 and it brought foreboding in its train. What would happen 
 when her lover came to see her father ? She hardly dared 
 to frame the sinister question. Her mother, in the earliest 
 days of his appearance in that house, had shown herself 
 capable of making cruel speeches to his face, and behind 
 his back of even more cruel references. As for her father, 
 him to whom all ber life her instincts had led her to look as 
 her natural protector and friend, after his harsh dealing 
 with the brother beloved by them all, who should say in 
 what manner he would be moved to deal with her ! 
 
 The consequences that might ensue upon her lover's 
 coming to that house grew intolerable to consider. The 
 condition of intense restlessness the subject induced led 
 her to seek a preoccupation. In this suspense of the im- 
 pending, silence and solitude grew too ominous to support. 
 She must do something, go somewhere. Accordingly she 
 went to the cottage to see her brother's young wife. 
 
 373 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Had she not promised Billy to go and see her frequently ? 
 There was the consciousness that by so doing she was 
 fulfilling a duty that had been imposed upon her ; besides, 
 she had to confess that there was a longing within her to 
 acquire the first-hand experiences of those in the vortex 
 of this passion of love. 
 
 At the cottage, although the sun still bathed the clean 
 walls, and in the wood behind the birds still piped their 
 spring notes, the spirit that yesterday presided there had 
 gone away. All things were unchanged, yet the presiding 
 genius was not there. To-day they were flat and tame, 
 and palled upon the heart, where yesterday they were 
 quick and significant and filled with a memorable fra- 
 grance. At the moment Delia entered the trim and 
 spotless kitchen she was afflicted with this sense of loss. 
 The absence of a laughing voice, a frank presence, a pair 
 of tormenting impudent arms haunted her. It seemed 
 to pollute the light of the sun and render all things grey. 
 And her own feeling of bereavement was reflected 
 poignantly in the face of the old woman and the young. 
 
 Alice came to greet her with a hungry eagerness, and 
 a faint cry upon her slightly parted lips. She had already 
 learned to overcome her timidity in regard to Delia. She 
 was Billy's sister ; and her love for him was a complement 
 to, not a rival of, her own. But this morning the young 
 wife was wan with terror. 
 
 " I have ruined him," she said in a hard voice, without 
 emotion. 
 
 Delia received her tenderly in her arms. 
 
 " No, oh, no ! " she found the courage to say. " A love 
 like yours could never do that." 
 
 " It is because of me he is driven away," said the young 
 wife. " I was wicked and unheeding, and thought only 
 of myself, or I should have known that so it must be. It 
 was not possible for me to be the fit companion of my 
 husband. 1 ought to have recognized that, and have 
 saved him from the ruin he could not foresee." 
 
 "It is not ruin," said Delia. " He will return to you 
 soon, rich and full of love. His love for you will be more, 
 if it were pos-ible for it to be more, and he will no longer 
 be dependent on others." 
 
 374 
 
IN THE MAELSTROM 
 
 " There is something in my heart that tells me he will 
 not return. I have been base and wicked, and God will 
 know how to punish me. I have thought only of myself. 
 I did not think of those who were near and dear to him ; 
 of you and your sisters, of the beautiful lady who loved 
 him, of the mother who has been so good to me, and the 
 poor father I have made so unhappy. It has been wanton 
 of me. In the gratification of my own wishes I had no 
 thought of the misery I might bring upon others who were 
 very close to him ; others very full of love for him ; others 
 who were so much better, so much nobler than myself. I 
 do not know how any of you can forgive me ; I do not 
 deserve to be forgiven. God will not." 
 
 The hard tones of her despair were cis so many blows 
 delivered on Delia's breast. The words of consolation 
 welling out of it were ruthlessly forced back. 
 
 " When your brother gave me his love," the young wife 
 went on, " my thoughts were of him and of myself and of 
 what we were to one another. And when he asked me to 
 be his wife, although I was so much frightened, I could 
 only see the bearing it would have on my own Hfe, and on 
 my aunt's. I saw no farther then. I could not see his 
 mother and father, and his sisters in the background all 
 as full of sorrow as I was full of joy. Poverty and toil made 
 me very cruel and self-seeking. I have ruined him who 
 loved me, because I would not deny myself his love. But 
 God will punish me." 
 
 The fragile creature quivered hke a leaf in the wind. 
 
 " He will come back soon," said the valiant Delia, apply- 
 ing the comfort of one child to another. " He will come 
 back very rich, and my father and mother and sisters 
 will be so happy that they will be very grateful to 
 you." 
 
 " He will never come back," said the young wife. " I 
 have been so wicked that God will never allow him to 
 return. I shall not be allowed another moment of happi- 
 ness. I have had my hour, and it was more than I 
 deserved! " 
 
 " You have not been wicked," said Delia. " Only heartless 
 and cruel and unworthy people could say that. Love is not 
 wickedness. It is all nobility and purity ; and if we are 
 
 375 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 punished because we love worthily and righteously, those 
 who punish us are unjust." 
 
 A prophetic fire broke forth so suddenly from the lips of 
 Billy's sister, that the youthful wife recoiled from her, and 
 looked wonderingly into her vivid eyes. The brooding 
 blue depths she beheld were the haunts of mysteries that 
 her own brief but highly wrought experience dimly enabled 
 her to apprehend. 
 
 " Those were my thoughts but a few weeks ago," said 
 Alice, " but I was bUnd then and could not see. Believe 
 me, dear Miss Broke, such a bUndness is wrong and 
 wicked. If we purchase this love that is so pure and noble 
 at the price of the happiness of others surely our selfishness 
 cannot be forgiven. My love for your brother and my 
 poverty caused me to be blind and callous. I could not see 
 the truth, and did not wish. I was beloved, and I asked 
 no more. But now the scales are taken from my eyes by 
 the God who knew all the time what I was doing, and 
 hated me for my wickedness. Yes, Miss Broke, He knew 
 what I was doing. And now He has taken away the 
 happiness I gained so wrongfully, and because of that He 
 will never give it back. He knows I am unworthy." 
 
 The hard poignancy that underlay the soft accents 
 seemed to bruise Delia. Her mother, in the first interview 
 with the old aunt, had had an experience much the 
 same. 
 
 No words of consolation, however tenderly and valiantly 
 conveyed, could avail against the conviction of Alice that 
 an offended deity was dealing in person with her affairs. 
 And worse, such were the clear eyes that anguish had given 
 her, she could trace in the eager attempts made by the 
 sister of her husband to bring her comfort something of 
 the source from which they sprang. Delia's passionate 
 speeches of consolation could hardly arise from a purel} 
 impersonal desire to mitigate the pain she suffered. Hei 
 hot words leaped forth too palpably under the goad of a 
 fierce impulse. Such flaming cheeks, such flashing anima- 
 tion of her limpid eyes, such hectic utterance could hardly 
 be aroused by a wholly disinterested seeking after the 
 welfare of her brother's wife, dearly as she might be known 
 to love him. Alice, by the light of her experience, could 
 
 376 
 
IN THE MAELSTROM 
 
 too truly read the cause. Her wise eyes saw that Delia 
 was scorched already by the sacred flame. 
 
 " Forgive me, dear Miss Broke, but I pray you, I be- 
 seech you to take heed of that which has fallen upon me. 
 Do not act in wantonness as I have done, lest an injury 
 you do to others be avenged upon you." 
 
 Delia turned cold. A feeMng of nausea was over- 
 spreading her. 
 
 " But, oh, Alice, how can we injure others if our love 
 is pure and worthy ? " 
 
 The young wife pressed her palms tightly together and 
 closed her eyes like one in the act of suffering an, unen- 
 durable pain. 
 
 " Ah, dear Miss Broke, those were my words only a 
 month ago ! " 
 
 " I will repeat them, I will repeat them," said Delia 
 wildly, seizing the hands of Alice. 
 
 " The thought is too hard for us to bear," said Alice. 
 " We dare not think that a love like ours should injure 
 others. But it does, Miss Broke, and as surely as it does 
 will God avenge it in us." 
 
 " Oh, I will not, I cannot believe it ! " 
 
 " Have I not ruined your brother ? " 
 
 " No," said Delia fiercely, "it is not true. It was my 
 father that banished my brother from you, not your perfect 
 love." 
 
 " Has he not always been a kind and generous father ? 
 If it were not that there was clear cause of offence in me, 
 surely so just a man would not have turned against him. 
 It is because he knows I am base and unworthy. And 
 that is what I am, else never in the selfishness of my heart 
 would I have taken away from him I loved more than it 
 were possible for the love I bore him to repay." 
 
 Against such a desolation nothing could avail. All 
 predictions that Delia made of her brother's speedy and 
 prosperous return were as the droppings of water upon 
 stone. Nothing could change that arid despair. Delia 
 could not endure to stay and witness it. A grief that lay 
 too deep for tears, that nothing could make less, or for 
 which a term could be defined, so oppressed the beholder 
 that she became as oue with it. Thoughts of the position 
 
 377 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 in which she herself stood at that moment were in- 
 duced. Promising to return the next day and the next, 
 and for full many a one to come, as though in such a 
 childlike willingness to heal some measure of surcease 
 might reside, Delia left the cottage faint of spirit and 
 cold of heart. 
 
 New doubts rose up like mountains in her so impres- 
 sionable mind. In the face of a grief so barren love itself 
 lost something of its radiant significance. Could it, after 
 all, be an act of guilt to cast one's thoughts in a direction 
 that those in authority over one had forbidden them to 
 go ? By the light of that morning's intercourse her own 
 case was picked out with hideous plainness. It was surely 
 parallel and counterpart. There were those who were 
 near and dear it behoved her to consider. There were the 
 father and the mother and the sisters who would be 
 stricken by her conduct. Was not the distraught Alice 
 right ? Did she not speak with the prophetic instinct 
 born of a terrible experience ? The pain inflicted upon 
 others could not be justified by a corresponding gratifica- 
 tion bestowed upon oneself. The duty she owed to the 
 friends who had nurtured her was very great. She must 
 yield her lover. Oh God, she must yield him to the 
 jjrejudices of those who held her dear ! 
 
 The thought was too inexpressible to contemplate. 
 She walked faster down the hill to the green fields, faster 
 and faster she walked to the birds and the insects and the 
 sweet-breathing earth. She must outstrip that thought, 
 outpace it, run from it, lose it wholly and for ever in the 
 mazes of the over-grown hedgerows tangled with nettles 
 and briars. It must never find her again. Kind God in 
 heaven, it must never find her again ! 
 
 It is not given to the strongest of us, however, to bar 
 out thought by the door of mere resolution. The cruel 
 suggestion, the intolerable suggestion, continued again and 
 again to recur. No matter whether she walked or ran it 
 was a spectre gliding noiselessly by her side. If such an 
 anguish as that of the young wife at the cottage was the 
 consummation of a passion so pure, so perfect in itself, so 
 all-sufficing, must there not be some subtle, some 
 ineradicable taint- residing there unrevealed to those who 
 
 378 
 
IN THE MAELSTROM 
 
 harboured it, else she who slaked her so great thirst at the, 
 immortal spring could never awake to discover that the 
 draught had poisoned her sweet blood. 
 
 Could it be that her duty to her friends was more sacred 
 than that to her lover and her own nature ? Inquiries 
 of this kind are not hkely to have much authority with 
 passion, but to inexperience striving to go right they may 
 present themselves in the reaction from that first strange 
 ravishment of the spirit. The self-accusing misery of her 
 brother's wife haunted Delia as a premonition of her own 
 doom. She and her love would soon stand before the 
 world in precisely that guise. Must a similar tyrannical 
 Providence intervene to blast their lives if their unUcensed 
 inclination dared to set the world at nought ? 
 
 That afternoon was to be dedicated to a garden party at 
 a great house in the neighbourhood. The six daughters 
 of the house of Broke put on their best white summer- 
 afternoon frocks, which for several years past had done 
 duty on state occasions, and set out in the ramshackle 
 omnibus with their mamma. Dark forebodings clouded 
 the heart of Delia even as she went. In it there was a 
 reasonable presumption amounting to certainty thslt her 
 lover would appear before her father during her absence. 
 High tension is apt to breed a strain of fatalism in the 
 best-balanced of us ; surely was it not in the nature of 
 things that her lover should' come to her father's house 
 when there would be no friendly presence to protect him ? 
 Within the last few days she had conceived a genuine 
 horror of her father. In the reaction from a lifetime 
 passed in blind adoration of him, he stood out now in her 
 imagination a ver3'' ogre in his treatment of the tender and 
 the helpless. Intensely she could have wished to be at 
 home when her knight came to confront the giant in his 
 lair. A sight of her might strengthen him still more, al- 
 though his courage was the noblest thing she had ever 
 known. The sense that she was near him might do some- 
 thing to soften the nature of the ordeal. She might 
 break a rebuff, or avert high words arising between them. 
 For she was possessed with a fear that the untoward 
 must ensue. They both had implacable natures. She 
 knew that if they once set up their wills one against the 
 
 379 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 other, like a pair of mastiffs they might go for one another's 
 throats, and contend for the ascendency until one or both 
 lay dying on the floor. That was the clay in which they 
 were fashioned. In her chivalrous childish heart she 
 yearned to buckle on the armour or to bear the spear of 
 the so gallant knight who was to contend for their joint 
 cause before the dragon. If only he had not to go alone I 
 If only she could be at his elbow to cheer him on his way ! 
 If only it could be her fortune to intercept any chance 
 buffet hurled at the sacred form of him who dared every- 
 thing for her ! 
 
 So luridly was the image of impending calamity before 
 her eyes that she almost allowed herself to plead a head- 
 ache as an excuse to avoid the garden party. By the 
 time the afternoon came round there was a conviction in 
 her that there would arise during the next few hours a 
 crying need for her presence in that house. To such an 
 extent was she worked on by this idea that tentatively 
 she complained to her mother of being unwell, and ex- 
 pressed a preference for staying at home. Her mother, 
 however, was emphatic in her insistence that she should 
 accompany the rest. And to Delia, in the throes of her 
 prepossession, the vigorous nature of that insistence 
 allied to the fact that her mother had already suppressed 
 her lover's letter, and had studiously avoided any reference 
 to his name, gave colour to her fears. 
 
 380 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 In which our Hero takes down his Battle-Axe 
 
 THERE are times when a man may feel himself to 
 be the victim of a conspiracy on the part of Destiny. 
 Circumstance treads on the heels of circumstance, mis- 
 fortune succeeds misfortune, horror accumulates on the 
 head of horror, until the most trivial incidents are invested 
 by a tragic shape, and the commonest accidents of life 
 become part of the design against us. 
 
 Broke sat in his library that afternoon re-reading for 
 the tenth time a letter that lately had come into his hands. 
 It was not addressed to him in the first place, but that was 
 not a fact to lessen its significance in his eyes. At the 
 outset it has to be confessed that to a man of sober brain, 
 whose life was a fabric of dull and reasonable events, there 
 was hardl}' a line in it which could be construed into 
 offence. But Broke's mind no longer moved upon the 
 patient path of sanity. It ran ahead of itself and climbed 
 perilous altitudes to view the motives of others. Awful 
 shapes were residing in his fancy. Other persons, in their 
 commonest dealings with him, were sinisterly clad. A grim 
 suspicion enhanced the tritest facts. He had ceased to 
 tolerate ; in peace he could neither live nor let live. There 
 was a conspiracy against him ; there was an anarchist ready 
 to cast a bomb inside every cloak that fluttered. 
 
 The world had laid a plot to pull down to its own ignoble 
 level the sovereign thing he called his pride. North, south, 
 east, and west it was springing its base emissaries on him 
 with that object in view. Now they tripped him up, now 
 threw dust into his eyes, now stabbed him in the back, 
 now hit him in the face. The bloody rogues were driving 
 
 381 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 him mad. He would have to show them that he could 
 strike out as well as they. Only it would not be done 
 from behind in his case. There would be no springing out 
 of corners and curtains with him, no stalking on tip-toe to 
 get in a blow when the victim was off his guard. If he 
 struck, the miscreant should have fair warning of what 
 was in store, and the blow should be straight in the 
 teeth. Indeed, so far gone was our hero that even at 
 this moment he was pre])ared to take up arms. 
 
 He could bear his indignities no more. First was he 
 smitten with a bitter poverty, a fell disease loathed as 
 much as small-pox or black plague by every right-thinking 
 Christian Englishman. Was it not a blackguard act on 
 the part of Destiny ! Then, upon the pretext of curing 
 that distemper, a crew of wretched persons, hired ruffians 
 of the baser sort in the service of the arch-schemer, who in 
 the times of his prosperity would never have gained 
 admittance to his threshold, offered him gibes and insults 
 in the guise of patent medicines. Then his son, his most 
 cherished possession, for whom he had made great sacrifices, 
 was seduced into the plot against him. The wretched 
 fellow had been entrapped without knowing that such a 
 thing as a plot was in existence. Then again, his wife, 
 whom these thirty years he had trusted implicitly, seemed 
 to be in danger of falling a victim to these diabolical 
 agencies. Had not she, foohsh, deluded woman, already 
 offered insults to his intelligence by attempting to defend 
 the indefensible, and by claiming forgiveness for offences 
 that were unpardonable ? Was it not a coward's trick that 
 in this pass to which they had brought him they should 
 alienate his natural ally, and by their tricks and base 
 hypnotic devices rob him of the sympathies of the one 
 person in the world to whom he might look for whole- 
 hearted allegiance ? 
 
 And now, finally, as if these things were not enough to 
 undermine the sane spirit of a man and cause its overthrow, 
 they had arranged, these blackguard conspirators in their 
 cloaks and their sombreros, to strike a blow at him through 
 the medium of one of his daughters. A man and a father 
 may bear up his head in the midst of much. He may, for 
 example, support with the expenditure of a few groans the 
 
 ?.82 
 
OUR HERO TAKES HIS BATTLE-AXE 
 
 black ingratitude of an only son. But a daughter is too 
 tender, too sacred. The infidelity of such a one, as in the 
 case of Lear, goes straight to the heart of him, and strikes 
 him down. One of the veiled emblems round whom he had 
 swathed the Yashmak of an overweening pride, that the 
 gross eyes of the world should not sully them with so much 
 as a glance, had been corrupted too, and was become an 
 instrument for his humiliation. 
 
 The letter he had in his hand had been placed there by 
 his wife. It was addressed to his youngest daughter, 
 presumably with the child's connivance. It bore the 
 signature of a Cuttisham bookseller. Such incidents were 
 of almost daily occurrence now. They were part of the 
 scheme. The indignities that had been recentl}^ put upon 
 him were incredible ; he began to marvel at his own 
 patience. But they were telling upon him. These 
 malicious machinations of an Unknown Hand were doing 
 a work, although not the one perhaps they had in view. 
 Every time he was baited his fibres stiffened, his nature 
 grew more implacable. He would prove the mettle that 
 was in him ; he fancied that his endurance would not be 
 the first to give out. 
 
 Still that trite proverb is ours that those whom the 
 gods would destroy they first deprive of reason. Broke 
 began to feci that they were seeking to pluck reason out of 
 him by the hand of humiliation. They were not content 
 with his son, the}^ must take his daughter. The patronage 
 of Salmon was not enough ; he must suffer the equality 
 of Breffit. Really, the whole business was becoming too 
 extravagant. It would have been farce, of a somewhat 
 dubious quahty certainly, if the pinch of his circumstances 
 had not for ever banished mirth from his lips. He felt that 
 laughter was demanded of him ; in his former state he 
 must have laughed cheerfully and heartily ; but a ruined 
 man loses the knack. 
 
 It was while our first or principal comedian was sur- 
 rendered to all manner of these reflections, that the butler 
 entered to say that a Mr. Porter wished to see him. 
 
 " Bring kim here." 
 
 Mr. Porter was brought there immediately. He came 
 in with a slight air of self-possession, a part of his natural 
 
 383 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 simplicity or part of his obtuseness, whichever construction 
 the beholder preferred to place upon it. Instinctively 
 Broke noticed it against him as part of his effrontery. He 
 neither offered the young man the privilege of shaking his 
 hand nor did he invite him to accept a seat. 
 
 Our hero waited with a grim and rather grey face, some- 
 what the colour of cold ashes, for the visitor to state his 
 errand. He waited with a certain curiosity as to what 
 mode he would adopt. To aid him by speaking a word 
 would be to rob the thing of some of its scientific interest. 
 Therefore our hero stood looking at him steadily with a 
 slightly unnatural calm. A man entirely devoid of 
 emotion does not usually hold his hands pressed to his 
 sides, while the veins stand out in knots and bunches on 
 his forehead. And all the time the Olympian audience 
 sitting in heaven, those earnest followers of time-honoured 
 and legitimate farce, had their necks craned upon this 
 born comedian, not missing a syllable that fell ifrom his 
 mouth nor a single facial gesture. Indeed, they doted on 
 the situation itself, and on the perfectly natural develop- 
 ments it might be expected to produce. Even the God of 
 Irony himself, that perfectly blase old dramatist, might 
 have been seen to throw himself back contentedly in his 
 fauteuil in the author's box, with a simper of satisfaction 
 for his own work. If his leading comic man, who was work- 
 ing so famousl 5% proved equal to this scene which had been 
 specially written for him, the thing was bound to be a 
 success. There are worse things than being an author 
 when the stalls are craning eagerly towards a choice moment 
 in a little thing of your own, which is being played so 
 beautifully by your friend the manager and his gifted 
 company. 
 
 " I don't suppose, Mr. Broke, you know why I am here," 
 his visitor began in the clear-cut tone of perfect self- 
 possession. " I hope you will not find my explanation 
 tedious. One there must be, I fear, but I hope you will 
 be patient with me." 
 
 Our hero cut him short. Now that the fellow was 
 speaking it was more than ilesh and blood could endure 
 to stand there and listen. 
 
 ' f^re you the writer of that letter ? " 
 
 384 
 
OUR HERO TAKES HIS BATTLE-AXE 
 
 The open document he held in his hand he gave to his 
 
 visitor. 
 
 " I am ; although I would like to say it was not intended 
 for any eyes save those to whom it was addressed." 
 
 ■' No need to tell me that," said our hero with a sour 
 smile. " Perhaps — ah — you will have the goodness to — 
 ah — tell me what you mean by it." 
 
 " I am here for that purpose, sir. The facts are these " 
 
 " Stop ! " said our hero. " I will not trouble you. If 
 you — ah — want to explain your effrontery I may say at 
 once that — ah — nothing you may — ah — say will explain 
 it in the least." 
 
 " Effrontery?" said the young man with a demure smile. 
 " I must ask you to forgive me, Mr. Broke, if I do not view 
 my conduct in that somewhat arbitrary light. I have the 
 sanction of your daughter ; the sanction of myself ; and 
 I am not entirely without means. I do hope you will be 
 a little patient, sir, and allow me to make a statement of 
 the case." 
 
 " The case calls for no statement. An apology may not 
 be out of place, although it is — ah — my duty to warn you 
 beforehand that I am not at all Hkely to accept it." 
 
 The young man recorded a certain bewilderment in the 
 quick play of his features. 
 
 "Apology?" he said. "I do not quite understand. 
 Forgive me, sir, if I do not quite see the necessity for an 
 apology. Indeed, I confess that in this connexion the 
 word strikes me as singular." 
 
 The impatience of the first comedian was manifest. 
 
 " An ample and unreserved apology can be — ah — the only 
 excuse for bringing you here to-day. I — ah — decline to 
 hear any defence of your conduct." 
 
 " I cannot allow, sir, that my conduct has been of a 
 kind to call for a defence." 
 
 A sudden grip came into the young man's voice ; there 
 was a round of pleased hand-claps in the Olympian Theatre. 
 
 " I — ah — decline to discuss it in any form. It is inde- 
 fensible." 
 
 Our hero delivered the line with admirable point. But 
 the powerful efforts he was putting forward to retain a 
 hold upon himself were only partially successful. His face 
 grew tawnier, and his voire shook. 
 
 3^3 B B 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN . 
 
 The younger man also was forfeiting something of his 
 former Sf.renity. By an earnest self-mastery he had 
 acquired the habit of tolerance. . But his nature was other- 
 wise. Men of his type are only too morbidly susceptible. 
 He was already beginning to feel that Mr. Broke must not 
 trespass too far. There were limits. Beyond them one's 
 duty to one's self entered into the question. Delia's father 
 was becoming intolerably arrogant and overbearing in his 
 manner. 
 
 " I hope, sir," he said, forcing himself to be calm, " you 
 will let me speak of this matter. I may say at once it 
 involves your daughter's happiness." 
 
 " Stop ! " our hero commanded him. " You have no 
 right, no authority, to mention my daughter. It is — ah — 
 gross impertinence, sir, on your part. I — ah — shall feel 
 obliged if you will please understand that our interview 
 is at an end." 
 
 Crackles of laughter and salvoes of applause ran round 
 the Olympian Theatre at this brilliant sally by the first 
 comedian. 
 
 His visitor gave back a step ; there was not a trace of 
 colour in his face. 
 
 " Mr. Broke," he said, " even allowing for the fact that 
 the relations we have stood in hitherto have been those of 
 employer and employed, it does not seem to me that this 
 is the tone one man is privileged to use to another." 
 
 " Do you propose to teach me manners, sir ? " 
 
 His grim sneer drew a cheer of approval from the stalls. 
 
 " No ; I only ask for common courtesy." 
 
 Our hero recognized a cant phrase of the fellow's kind. 
 His gorge rose at it. Persons such as these insulted one 
 grossly in one's tenderest, most vulnerable point, and then, 
 by way of justification, they put in a plea for common 
 courtesy. Did they think that these low tricks were going 
 to be played off on him ? At the sound of the cant phrase 
 the mediaeval devil that all this time had been snugly 
 coiled up in his heart, suddenly rattled its chain to infer 
 that it was ready when wanted. Upon his honour, if the 
 insolent young cad did not take himself off at once, it 
 would hardly be fair to liold him guilty of the conse- 
 quences ! 
 
 :.S6 
 
OUR HERO TAKES HIS BATTLE-AXE 
 
 " I advise you to go," he said hoarsely. 
 
 His facial play was much admired by the diverted 
 audience in heaven. 
 
 His visitor remained immovable and erect, with a rather 
 fine-drawn smile on his white face. His lips were tight, 
 but his eyes were stretched wide to their full limits. A 
 challenge glittered in them. It was cold and hard, of the 
 lustre of steel. 
 
 Our hero's blood was up ; and when it was in that 
 interesting condition he was the last man in the world to 
 have consideration for others. Besides, in Etiquette for the 
 Elect, the invaluable little manual of behaviour by which 
 he regulated his life and conduct, it laid it down in the form 
 of a rough maxim that the persons who in the first place 
 were entitled to his consideration were surprisingly few. 
 A Cuttisham bookseller, for example, was not included in 
 that category. 
 
 They continued to confront each other unflinchingly. 
 Broke had indicated the necessity for Porter's withdrawal. 
 He was not in the habit of repeating his phrases. In silence 
 he waited for him to comply. But his visitor did not 
 move a step. 
 
 It was conceded at this point by the critics among the 
 Distinguished Audience that although it was not to be 
 expected of a junior that he should play with the finish 
 and aplomb of the first comedian, who was perhaps the 
 chief of his enchanting profession, the young one was doing 
 very well for a beginner. 
 
 " I am here to speak," he said, " and speak, sir, I must. 
 It is of the first importance. The opportunity cannot 
 recur." 
 
 Broke raised his chin warningly. Porter still betrayed 
 no disposition to quit his ground. And to the obstinate 
 nothing is more intolerable than the exhibition of that 
 quality in another. Our hero was confronted by the sudden 
 limit to his patience. It yawned a very precipice under 
 his feet. The small devil in his heart was wriggling fero- 
 ciously to slip its gaunt little neck out of its collar. Its 
 chain had rattled unceasingly for five minutes past. 
 
 " I speak with the sanction of your daughter," said the 
 young man. 
 
 " You lie," said our hero trembling with fury. " How 
 
 387 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 dare you — ah — ah — affront me to my face ? If you do 
 not get out now — at once, I shall — ah — ah — be under 
 the — ah — ah — necessity of kicking you out. You 
 cad ! " 
 
 Applause was breaking in inconsequent hand-claps 
 from the cheaper parts of the Olympian Theatre, and was 
 being hushed down by the stalls. The first comedian 
 was surpassing himself, and the true devotees, scenting 
 an incursion of legitimate drama, were determined not to 
 miss a word. 
 
 Porter heard dully. His senses were numbed and 
 faint, but in his head the blood was cool. Not a hne re- 
 laxed in his tense bearing. In him had been aroused the 
 desperate tenacity, the concentrated determination that 
 was the keystone of his nature. He did not move an inch, 
 but, livid as he was, he met the unbridled eyes of our 
 hero with a contemplative gaze, which slowly acquired 
 a tinge of pity. 
 
 When your confirmed hereditary despot encounters 
 a frank and rather condescending challenge to the un- 
 licensed will which is his sovereign law, there is only one 
 course open, only one means left to him by which he can 
 vindicate it. Our hero took down his battle-axe. 
 
 " My God ! " he cried, " you defy me in my own house, 
 you — you counter-jumper. You've had a fair warning. 
 You won't take it ? Suppose you take this ! " 
 
 " This " consisted of a heavy blow with his clenched 
 fist full on the mouth of his visitor. He followed it up 
 with a tremendous clinch. In an instant he had got one 
 hand as tight as a vice on the lean throat, and while the 
 weaker man, half-stunned and shattered to pieces by the 
 blow, made semi-conscious and ineffectual wriggles like 
 a dying rat, Broke hustled and dragged him to the door 
 of the room. Without much difficulty he got him over 
 the threshold into the hall, but, arrived there, his task 
 became rather more laborious. 
 
 They could not have been more unequally matched. 
 Broke was a full-blooded son of the soil, lusty of thew, 
 close knit, with a great arching chest ; in form a splen- 
 did animal, and rejoicing like one in a life of activity 
 and hardihood in the open air. 
 
 388 
 
OUR HERO TAKES HIS BATTLE-AXE 
 
 Porter, on the other hand, was of the type that is bred 
 in towns. He seemed to present an appearance of arrested 
 development and general physical incompetence. He 
 was small-boned, short-limbed, muscleless and puny ; 
 his whole frame was under-sized, and there was a sugges- 
 tion about him of anaemia. But cis soon as he found 
 himself hustled into the hall, and he was able to gain, by 
 the aid of that sense which had not already been knocked 
 out of him, a clearer conception of what had befallen him, 
 and what was likely further to befall him, his ineffectual 
 rat-like wrigglings, hitherto merely instinctive, became 
 endowed with purpose. His puny hands rose in the air, 
 and the fingers of them clawed about at large like the 
 tentacles of an octopus, until they found a grip on Broke. 
 His thin legs writhed and coiled themselves around the 
 solid oak-like calves of his adversary. He entered into 
 a struggle to free his neck from the grasp of iron that was 
 choking out his life, and in the effort his collar and the 
 band of his shirt came away together, and allowed him 
 something of freedom. 
 
 It was a rather ludicrous scene that was enacted in the 
 hall in the view of Lord Bosket, who had that moment 
 entered it, and also in that of one or two astonished persons 
 of the establishment. Not a word passed between the 
 combatants. Their silence was ominous. The only 
 sound that issued from their strife was the continuous 
 scuffling of their feet as they slid upon the highly polished 
 floor, while now and then a grunt was wrung out of their 
 tense machinery. 
 
 The younger and weaker man had not a chance, and 
 the highest evidence to be adduced of his resolution was 
 that he was able to prolong the uncompromising course 
 of his exit. He was prepared to yield his life rather than 
 submit to be run out at that distant door, but the blood 
 in his arteries was as water, and his unaccustomed muscles 
 seemed to crumble like bread. His struggles might be 
 superhuman, but they were of no more avail against the 
 contained fury that encompassed him than is the falHng 
 earth against the energy of Cyclops. Their clenched forms 
 swayed this way and that, but their progress was ever 
 in one direction. 
 
 389 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 The process was sinister in its quietude, its complete 
 freedom from audible sound. In the anguish of contest 
 their eyeballs might be breaking from their sockets, but 
 it was a fact that passed unheeded in the silence and the 
 fury with which they grappled to one another. The 
 nearer Broke got his man to the door, the more powerful 
 grew his victim's efforts to disengage his fists from the 
 embrace that rendered them impotent. If his very life 
 snapped in the act he felt he must get one blow home, 
 that it might vindicate him in some kind. There was 
 the fury in him of the savage beast. The trained intellect 
 was less than nothing to him now. Reason, veneered 
 over with the civilized arts, forgot to exercise its functions. 
 The primeval fiend that kirks in the hearts of all of us, and 
 has lurked there from the time that man first swung upon 
 branches and curled his tail round a tree, the lust of hitting 
 back, possessed him ; overthrew the kid glove precepts 
 of the civilization by which he was encompassed ; ren- 
 dered him hopelessly drunken, hopelessly mad. The 
 scholar, the recluse, the philosopher, the maker of maxims 
 for the guidance of his less disciplined brethren, the 
 burner of the midnight oil, the scorner of pleasure, the 
 liver of laborious days was become a wild beast. 
 
 This s{)irit of the incarnate fiend in him, however, was 
 of no avail. Escape from the concentrated grip that was 
 crushing him to powder, body and soul, he could not. 
 He was almost demented, and snapping with his red teeth 
 like a dog by the time he approached the threshold of the 
 hall door ; but no matter what he did he could not avoid 
 the crowning ignominy that awaited him. He would 
 be spurned out of doors with a kick like a bag of shavings. 
 The blow in the face that had knocked down the citadel 
 of his intelligence,, that siow work of years, as easily and 
 completely as a house of cards, must be swallowed, must 
 be submitted to. It had changed his blood into fire, but 
 the Deviser of his clay had ruthlessly withheld from him 
 the strength, the common ph^^sical strength, to requite 
 his foe for that indignity. As he swayed that moment 
 close-knit to his adversary towards the farther door, life 
 itself would ha\'e been but a little price at which to buy 
 the satisfaction of feeling his raw knuckles beating out 
 
 390 
 
OUR HERO TAKES HIS BATTLE-AXE 
 
 the teeth of this murderous monster in the guise of a man 
 
 who had beaten out his. 
 
 He had spent his hfe in the conquest of the flesh. He 
 had supposed he had achieved something of philosophy. 
 He was not a participator, an actor in the human drama. 
 It was his place to sit in the stalls, in the manner of those 
 Olympians who now witnessed his present performances, 
 and look on at life with critical, searching, but impartial 
 eyes. Was he not a seer, an inquirer ? Did he not 
 believe that the hope of man, the solution, the vindica- 
 tion of this amazing ironical chimera, for which we havt 
 so many names, lay by the arduous road of knowledge ? 
 But here, in this crisis, at which we and the gods who 
 planned his destiny observe him, he would have given the 
 Old Testament and the New, Homer and Shakespeare, 
 Plato and Sophocles, to possess the gross physical force to 
 beat his enemy to earth, and, lying prone, to have 
 ground his heel into his face. 
 
 Nature may have her compensations, but her exactions 
 can be incredibly bitter. Has she not a habit of choos- 
 ing the pound of flesh we can least afford to dispense 
 with, or worse, of levying a distress for it at the season 
 when it is least convenient (or us to meet a demand 
 that ought never to be made ? The sedentary life of 
 the cabinet, girt about by those fair and wonderful things 
 which the rude defi.ements of the world have not the 
 power to sully, is an exquisite thing, but it precludes 
 physical efficiency. The unstable limbs, the peering eyes 
 the flaccid muscles, the weak nerves are the price that is 
 extorted. It is not given to the reckise to become the 
 man of action. He was called on now to pay for that 
 inner paradise of the spirit in which his existence had 
 been passed, with a most ignoble bitterness. At the last 
 a snarl of rage was wrung out of him to find himself 
 inept. It was the snarl of a ferocious cur as, wnth tongue 
 protruding, it rolls over to die. He was mad and drunk 
 and blind by now. The groaning engines of his heart 
 vibrated until he could not breathe. He nuzzled to his 
 enemy, and tried to tear him with his teeth, since his 
 feeble hands could not help him. His inarticulate fury 
 was distilled through his throat in httle sobs, but nothing 
 
 391 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 could save him. The stronger man had both hands now 
 upon his neck. He shook him Hke a rat. He shook him 
 until his bones seemed to rattle against his nerves, and 
 his eyes and tongue protruded. Afterwards he cast him 
 from him. He spurned him in contained fury out of doors, 
 bleeding, to the earth. 
 
 Our hero then turned his back upon the figure sprawling 
 on the gravel outside his residence. His dilated face was 
 confronted by those of the excited servants and Lord 
 Bosket ; and as with chest hugely heaving and jowl in- 
 flamed he took from his pocket his bandana hand- 
 kerchief and gravely mopped away the signs of his dis- 
 composure, a perfect roar of applause greeted him in 
 the Olympian Theatre, though he heard it not, and the 
 God of Iron}' in the author's box, allowing his grim visage 
 to relax, grinned upon him in grateful admiration. The 
 behaviour of his leading comic man in this scene had made 
 the play. He feared nothing now ; success was assured ; 
 and impervious in that contentment, he permitted two 
 of his friends to link their arms in his and lead him 
 out of the box to celebrate his good fortune in a bottle of 
 Perrier Jouet '87 at the refreshment bar adjoining. 
 
 " My God! Edmund, you've about done for the feller." 
 
 Our hero, having mopped a face and neck on which the 
 veins were still swollen a good deal, his habitual heavy- 
 footed serenity seemed to be restored to him. At least 
 he greeted his brother-in-law with excellent compo- 
 sure. 
 
 "Hullo, Charles, how do ? Porson, you had better 
 help the fellow to get up, and — ah — see to it that he goes 
 about his business." 
 
 Lord Bosket, however, was inclined to see a more sinister 
 side to the affair. 
 
 "He don't move," hp said. "We had better go and 
 give him a leg up. I don't know who he is or what he's 
 done, but I call him sand. Took his gruel well. He's 
 only a featherweight, but he was game right up to the 
 finish. I like to see that. Give me the feller or the boss 
 that don't know when he's beat. It struck me, Edmund, 
 that you were a bit severe, considerin' he is not more than 
 eight stone nothing. He is not in your class, you know, 
 
 392 
 
OUR HERO TAKES HIS BATTLE-AXE 
 
 at all. You are fifteen, if you are a pound. What's he 
 been doin' ? Poachin' ? Poisonin' foxes ? " 
 
 While Lord Bosket was making these remarks and 
 putting forward these inquiries, the butler, a footman 
 his lordship's coachman who had driven the dogcart 
 that had carried him thither, a gardener or two, and 
 several odd men from the stables, formed a group 
 round the man lying motionless with his face staining the 
 gravel. White-cheeked housemaids peered out of the 
 upper windows. Broke, however, heedless as to the 
 fate of his victim, had betaken himself back to the 
 library. 
 
 Lord Bosket now came bustling through the group, 
 and seeing that the form they surrounded was apparently 
 insensible, and that blood was issuing out of it, he knelt 
 down on the gravel with an air of professional assurance 
 bred of experience in many glove fights. He addressed 
 the unconscious man, and tried to raise him in his arms. 
 Not being able to do so, he looked up at the onlookers in 
 an agitated manner, and said — 
 
 " We want a doctor. Somebody go and get a doctor, 
 can't you ? I don't Hke it at all." 
 
 393 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 Rencounter between a Dogcart and an 
 Omnibus 
 
 THEY picked up the young man and propped his head 
 against a corner of the stone balustrade that ran 
 at right angles to the door. The appearance he made was 
 so unfortunate that Lord Bosket became more agitated than 
 he was before. 
 
 "Get a doctor, can't you, somebody ? Of course there's 
 not one about. They are the same as the police — never 
 there when you want 'em." 
 
 There was no need to loosen the young man's collar, 
 because in the struggle it had been torn free. Water was 
 sent for ; but before that primitive remedy had arrived, 
 to the immense relief of Lord Bosket and that of the by- 
 standers, consciousness showed signs of returning. Presently 
 Porter opened his eyes. In addition to the distressing 
 condition of his mouth, blood was flowing freely frcm a 
 deep cut in the forehead upon which he had pitched in his 
 exit. He certainly made a sorry figure with the blood 
 dripping rapidly into his eyes, and smearing the vivid pallor 
 of his cheeks. 
 
 The first thing of which he was conscious was that he 
 was being enveloped in something warm and wet. The 
 innate repugnance to blood to be found in men of 
 his type was so strong that he nearly became insen- 
 sible again. It was only when he awoke to the fact that 
 he was the centre of a group, and that anxious and startled 
 fac< 5 were directed upon him, that he showed signs of 
 regaining self-control. In tlie shock of this second dis- 
 
 394 
 
A DOGCART AND AN OMNIBUS 
 
 covery he stumbled to his feet. In the act, however, he 
 nearly fell, and Lord Bosket took it on himself to support 
 him. 
 
 " It is no use, my lad," said Delia's uncle, taking hold of 
 him. " You'll have to have that head and mouth seen to, 
 and thank God it's no worse. Get him a chair somebody, 
 can't you ? and get him a drop o' brandy. Sit down there 
 my lad ; and don't try standin' until we've fixed you up 
 a bit. As damned nasty a cut as ever I saw. Sit down, 
 my lad, and I'll tie this handkerchief round it temporarily; 
 and then I'll drive you into Cuttisham and let a vet put 
 a few stitches in it for you. Of course there isn't one in 
 this God- forsaken hole ! " 
 
 The sufferer, however, did not show a disposition to 
 accept services of any one. Several times he made inef- 
 fectual efforts to escape from the group, and several times 
 assured them feebly that " he was all right." 
 
 " Yes, my lad, you look all right, you do. But this will 
 put the fear of the Lord into you, what ? " 
 
 The awe-inspiring agent in question proved to be brandy, 
 which had now arrived, and Lord Bosket measured it out 
 with paternal gravity, and, with a firmness that was quite 
 unusual, insisted on his drinking it. He then drank the 
 remainder himself with a far greater aplomb than the 
 patient had exhibited, announcing to the onlookers, as he 
 did so, that " these things always upset him." 
 
 Nature was having her turn now with Porter. Fortu- 
 nately, Lord Bosket's tone was so solicitous, and his 
 concern so evident, that in the end the shaken and 
 demoralized man surrendered to him entirely. In any 
 case, he knew it was not in his power to make an 
 effectual protest. 
 
 Our friend having bandaged personally the deep cut 
 near the temple with several large handkerchiefs and the 
 moderate skill at his command, called to his man to bring 
 the dogcart forward. While this vehicle was forthcoming 
 he took out his pocket-book and selected from it two crisp 
 pieces of paper. 
 
 " Here's a tenner, my boy. That'll help to put your 
 head all right, eh ? I respect you." 
 
 As the yotmg man was in no condition to accept this 
 
 395 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 specific for a broken mouth and a lacerated forehead, our 
 friend crushed them into one of the pockets of his coat. 
 The cart having now been drawn up in a convenient 
 manner, he said — 
 
 " Hold him up while I get in. Then give him a hand, 
 and mind how you do it. The poor devil's not quite 
 himself. Anybody know who he is ? I shall look well 
 drivin'a poacher or a feller of that kidney into Cuttisham, 
 I shall, but I expect that's about the ticket. Never 
 mind, Edmund should not be so rough. Besides, I don't 
 care who the feller is, or what he is, he's grit." 
 
 At this point the butler moved forward to his lordship 
 with an air of great mystery. 
 
 "It is the young man, my lord, who used to come to 
 teach Miss Delia," he said in a diplomatic undertone. 
 
 " Didn't know there was a young man who used to come 
 to teach Miss Deha." 
 
 " Oh, yes, my lord. Her ladyship used to send a young 
 college gentleman to teach her Greek and Latin." 
 
 " Nonsense, Person. This can't be the feller." 
 
 " I beg your lordship's pardon, but it is impossible for 
 me to be mistaken." 
 
 " Nonsense, my boy. Mr. Broke would not be such a 
 damned fool." 
 
 The august old gentleman pressed closer to his lord- 
 ship's ear to impart an even more pregnant item of infor- 
 mation. 
 
 " What — what ! " cried Delia's uncle, trying to baffle his 
 own credulity. 
 
 He gave vent to his astonishment by straddling his legs 
 apart, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his 
 breeches, looking steadily down his nose, and pursing his 
 lips. He occupied this attitude for the best part of a 
 minute before he recorded his bewilderment in his favourite 
 formula. 
 
 " Well, I'm damned." 
 
 The immediate business in hand having then recurred 
 to him, he jumped into the dogcart and superintended 
 the entrance into that high and awkward vehicle of the 
 still only half-sensible Porter. As he took the reins he 
 called out to his man — 
 
 396 
 
A DOGCART AND AN OMNIBUS 
 
 *' I shan't be back here, to-day, Thompson. Borrow a 
 mount and ride home." 
 
 The dogcart started briskly on its way. It had not 
 left the park gates of Covenden far behind when an old 
 and familiar vehicle hove in sight. It was the ramshackle 
 omnibus returning from the garden-party. A sly but 
 inveterate! y humorous leer appeared in the face of Lord 
 Bosket when this equipage waddled into the middle dis- 
 tance. He touched up his horse, and determined to waste 
 no time in getting past it. But the interior of the quaint 
 chariot was furnished with seven pairs of feminine eyes. 
 Therefore his chance of escaping notice was about as remote 
 as it could be. 
 
 " Why, it is Uncle Charles!" exclaimed the occupants 
 excitedly one to another. " And, oh, there has been an 
 accident ! There is a man with him who is bleeding and 
 smothered in bandages." 
 
 Delia was next but one to the door. In a moment she 
 was up and clutching at the handle. But quick as she 
 was her mother was quicker. She rose in almost the same 
 instant and caught her by the wrist. 
 
 " Sit down, child," she said quietly. 
 
 Delia swayed a moment irresolute with the lumbering 
 motions of the vehicle. She looked at her mother with 
 something rather remarkable in her face. 
 
 " Sit down, child." 
 
 The tone was even quieter than before. 
 
 Deha obeyed. By this the dogcart had passed out of 
 sight. 
 
 397 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 Tribulations of a middle-aged Peer at the 
 Hands of Woman 
 
 BY the time Delia reached home things had resumed 
 their normal shape. Visible evidences there were 
 none to testify to the occurrence of the extraordinary. 
 In the demoralized condition of her mind she was 
 almost impelled to make secret inquiries of the servants ; 
 but reflection showed her the impossibility of this 
 course. Indeed it was a solace to think that this might 
 be a matter of which they had no cognisance. But 
 whether they had or not, and whatever the agonizing 
 curiosity that was devouring her, she could not admit them 
 to her confidence on such a subject. 
 
 By evening she was persuaded — such was the ominous 
 silence that was maintained — that she must await 
 the next visit of her Uncle Charles. Never a week 
 went by without his putting in an appearance at Covenden 
 if he happened to be at home. Whatever it cost 
 her to withstand those pangs that seemed to be biting 
 her heart into pieces, he was the only person she could 
 consult legitimately. She might take the extreme course 
 of putting a question point blank to her father, but he 
 would hardly be likely to answer it ; and if he did answer 
 it in the terms she foresaw he must, would not a grave, a 
 terrible ordeal be j)resented to them both ? Her curiosity 
 liacl mounted to a passion, it was gnawing her to death ; 
 Init with a young girl delicacy is inveterate. 
 
 Tlie bleeding man covered with bandages she had seen 
 in the dogcart had confirmed her darkest forebodings. 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 Also of late she had come to know the almost awful ferocity 
 of her father's nature when the savage in him was aroused. 
 In her heart she felt it was not necessary to inquire what 
 had taken place in the interval between her lover's coming 
 to that house and his going from it. But the case was 
 too grave for circumstantial evidence. She was as sure 
 as that there was a God in heaven that her father was 
 guilty; but there was a sheer physical repugnance in her to 
 convict until the positive evidence of his crime was laid 
 before her eyes. Natural reverence for her father, which, 
 when all was said, was still paramount in her, demanded 
 that he should be given the benefit of every doubt. That 
 is not the way of her sex as a rule. Instinct prompting, 
 it will take inordinately short cuts to the most inaccessible 
 of conclusions. But in the case of her father, so long as 
 no eyewitness could be brought forward who was prepared 
 to attest to what had taken place, she must not dare to 
 judge him. And let it be urged that this unfeminine 
 forbearance on the part of his youngest daughter was one 
 of the amplest compliments the character of our hero ever 
 received. 
 
 Nearly a week went by before Lord Bosket came to 
 Covenden again. 
 
 During that period his unhappy young niece hardly 
 laid her head on her pillow. Neither day nor night could 
 bring ease to her thoughts. Nothing could appease 
 the morbid curiosity that corrupted her heart. As the 
 days passed she felt she must hear the truth or she 
 must die. There was no source open to her from which 
 to acquire information. It was not impossible to write 
 to her lover. In these black days she hardly dared to 
 think of him. Her first wish was to shut that bleeding 
 bandaged image of him out of her mind. It was a 
 hideous nightmare to which her imagination must 
 not revert. 
 
 In the meantime the inquiries she could not bring herself to 
 prosecute had probably been made by others. For at least, 
 dating from that tragic afternoon, life among her sisters 
 would have been intolerable had she not been possessed by 
 one all-dominating thought. She suffered a completer 
 ostracism than ever. They neither spoke to her, nor looked 
 
 399 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 at her ; they shut the door of their common-room against 
 her ; they avoided her sedulously at meals. She was 
 wholly debarred their pastimes and intercourse ; and so 
 thorough-going they could be when they chose, that like 
 the name of their brother, that of their youngest sister 
 was banished from their lips. Their behaviour was formu- 
 lated on the admirable principle that they had not an 
 existence at all. If they met Delia descending the stairs 
 as they were ascending them they refrained from looking 
 at her. 
 
 Her mother remained the same as usual. Her perpetual 
 smile had as little meaning as ever, and her epigrammatic 
 silences as much. In her daily demeanour, a miracle 
 indeed of candour and suavity, there was not the 
 twitching of an eyelid to suggest that there had been 
 an incident. It was just as if their relations had remained 
 exactly as they had been always. She might have been 
 quite unversed in the art of suppressing letters ; and 
 intellectually incapable of reading the expression on the 
 face of her daughter when she held her by the wrist to 
 prevent her from jumping from the omnibus. 
 
 The manner of her father was not much more eloquent. 
 Maybe he was grimmer than of yore, and sufficed more to 
 himself. His great laugh was hardly ever heard now from 
 the head of the table ; something seemed to be lacking in 
 the old spirit of camaraderie between himself and his girls. 
 His frank delight in them was hardly so articulate ; the 
 same boyish admiration did not beacon out of his eyes 
 when he referred to them in the presence of others ; he 
 no longer seemed, to Delia at least, all tenderness and aU 
 simplicity. To her remorseless eyes it was as though he 
 sat with a wolf gnawing at his vitals. The greyness of 
 his hair had become much more palpable of late ; his 
 cheeks were not so ruddy, and had lines in them where 
 they hung loose and flabby ; he was ageing rapidly. Nor 
 did he carry his massive head quite as of yore. It had 
 lost a little of its military trimness. His daughters were 
 wont to regale their imaginations by tracing a slightly 
 imperial hauteur in him. They could not have done it 
 now. Everything about him was become creased and re- 
 laxed, where formerly it was so alert, so finely braced, so 
 
 400 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 full of self-esteem. Delia would have been shocked by this 
 change in her father, wrought in a few weeks, had it now 
 been possible for her to be shocked by anything. 
 
 At last the morning came when the child could entertain 
 the hope of setting all doubts at rest. Her Uncle Charles 
 waddled in among them just as they were finishing break- 
 fast. His comings and goings were as casual as anything 
 could be. He was there at all times and seasons, the first 
 thing in the morning, the last thing at night, so that in the 
 process of time a bedroom had become dedicated to his 
 service, where the sheets were kept always aired for cases 
 of emergency. He held a latch-key of the hall-door of 
 Covenden against those occasions when he had no desire 
 "to go home and face the music " ; and it was no infre- 
 quent thing for his feet to be heard stumbling up the stairs 
 of his brother-in-law's residence in the small hours of the 
 morning. 
 
 " Top o' the mornin'," he said, as he took a seat at 
 the table in their midst, and summoned the assiduous 
 Porson by the simple expedient of holding up a finger. 
 
 " You can get me a mornin' prayer, Porson." 
 
 As Porson retired on this ecclesiastical mission he was 
 peremptorily/ recalled. 
 
 " Did I say a devilled kidney as well, Porson ? ** 
 
 " No, my lord." 
 
 " Well, I meant to. A mornin' prayer and a devilled 
 kidney." 
 
 Porson had proceeded but a little farther on his pious 
 errand when he was recalled even more peremptorily. 
 
 " I'll have the prayer, Porson, but never mind the 
 kidney. I've got a tongue this mornin' hke the back of a 
 hedgehog." 
 
 Porson bowed. 
 
 He got away all right on this occasion as far as that 
 temple of religion, the side-board, where he was adjured 
 to " Look sharp, there's a good feller ! " 
 
 A " mornin' prayer " proved to be a polite euphemism 
 for a large tumbler, a decanter of whisky, and a bottle of 
 Apollinaris water. Lord Eosket proceeded to mix these 
 ingredients in the nice proportions amenable to a palate 
 that was " like the back of a hedgehog." After imbibing 
 
 401 cc 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 them with the solemn gusto that an earnest nature 
 takes in a religious rite, he went on to register his 
 customary formal complaint against the quality of the 
 whisky. 
 
 " I only lodge the objection, you know, as a mere matter 
 o' form, although they do say that constant droppin's will 
 wear away the Guildhall. But we get no forrarder on 
 this subject. I never take a drink in this house but 
 what I've had to complain to the Stewards. It is such a 
 little matter I should ha' thought something could be done. 
 Is it red-tape or what ? " 
 
 It was to be gathered from Lord Bosket's particularly 
 querulous air that his domestic intercourse had suffered yet 
 another check to its harmony. 
 
 " The missis is back from town on the rampage. 
 And all about nothin', mark you. There'd be an excuse 
 for her if I was a dead wrong 'un, which I'm not. She 
 can't say that I haven't always been a good husband to 
 her. And what do you suppose it's all about this 
 time ? Why, simply because while she was away I 
 arranged a little glove fight in the home close, a 
 snug little mill and nothin' more. Quite an informal 
 little affair, don't you know, between two middle- 
 weights of the district for a small purse subscribed by 
 myself and a pal or two. We were goin' to have no press, 
 no publicity, no nothin'. It was goin' to be quite private, 
 tickets by invitation, and everything kept very select, and 
 all as right as rain. But, God bless my soul, you should 
 ha' seen the missis when she got wind of it. It was a 
 degradation to the highest and purest instincts of the 
 lord-knows-what ! One-sided I call it. I stand her poets 
 without a word, absolutely without a word, mark you. 
 We've even had anarchists and labour-leaders and Fenians 
 in the house before now, but I can't even go rattin' in a 
 ditch with a terrier pup on a Sunday mornin' but what she 
 calls down fire from heaven. And that's not all ; she's 
 got another grievance now,- dear old thing. Somebody 
 has told her a cock-and-bull story about Billy havin' 
 resigned his commission in the Blues, and she throws it 
 at me, funny old thing, that I have kept it from her. It 
 was no use my sayin' that it was all my eye. She says it 
 
 402 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 is a conspiracy to keep her in the dark. You had better 
 let her know, Jane, she's found a mare's nest. But her 
 common-sense ought to tell her." 
 
 " On the contrary, Charles, I am afraid Emma is very 
 well informed," said his sister. " We could not afford 
 to keep him in the Blues any longer. Too expensive, 
 vou know." 
 
 " What, my gell ? " 
 
 Upon a repetition of the news his jaw was seen to drop. 
 
 " That's a nice how d'ye do. Rough on a feller that is, 
 especially a young feller. He oughtn't to ha' done that. 
 Why didn't you speak to me about it ? I daresay I could 
 ha' done something in an important matter like that." 
 
 "You are very good, Charles, but we really felt we could 
 not hold ourselves indebted to you to any further extent. 
 You have been too generous already." 
 
 " If I can't give my own nephew a leg up now and 
 then it's a pity. He's the only lad I've got ; and for 
 him to do a thing like that touches me a lot more than a 
 few pounds a year towards his keep would ha' done." 
 
 " That only covers part of the motive. His general 
 conduct of late has left much to be desired." 
 
 " The feller's young. He's only a bo3^ Let every 
 colt have its head a bit at the start, I say, especially 
 if there's blood in him. He'll only take it if you don't. 
 Such talk is not hke you and Edmund ; I've always given 
 you the credit for bein' plain sensible people who know 
 what's what. My ideas aren't worth much beside those 
 of a clever beggar like you, Jane, of course; but if you 
 aren't right off it this time I'm no judge of a boss. I 
 should ha' thought Edmund would ha' known better. It 
 is a very serious ihing for a young feller at his tim.e of life, 
 let me tell you. And what's he goin' into now — the 
 police force ? " 
 
 " He has left the service for good." 
 
 " WTia-a-a-t ! " 
 
 " He sailed for South Africa, I believe, last Wednesday 
 week. He is going to farm or to prospect for gold, or 
 something of that sort." 
 
 Lord Bosket sat bolt upright in his chair, with his glass 
 suspended mid-way to his lips. 
 
 403 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " That's won it ' " was all he could say. 
 The silence around the breakfast table was rather pain* 
 ful. 
 
 " A fine lad like that ! I don't know how you could. 
 You had no right to let him go. That lad's mine as much 
 as he is yours, by God he is ! I can't get over it." 
 
 The face of Billy's uncle was an abject blank. The 
 silence of all around him remained a Httle pitiful. 
 
 " I feel as though I want to blub," he said. " You have 
 no idea how it touches me, or you wouldn't ha' done it. 
 And this Maud Wayling scheme ; all off — what ? " 
 " It is," said Mrs. Broke impassively. 
 For a time her brother rocked himself to and fro in his 
 chair, repeating at intervals in an undertone all sorts of 
 odd phrases, and punctuated them by aimlessly nodding 
 his head. The number of times he did this gloomily and 
 dispassionately it would be hard to say, but he appeared 
 to derive a certain solace from this incantation. 
 
 "It is the rottenest thing I ever heard in my life," he 
 broke out at last with vehemence. " What I want to 
 know is, why did not somebody tell me? I would ha' 
 played old Harry rather than it should have happened. 
 I may be UTong, Jane, but this business looks to me as 
 though you and Edmund have been cutting off your noses 
 to spite your faces. That's how it strikes me, and let me 
 tell you that's how it will strike others. It's not Uke you." 
 Lord Bosket's distress was very real and unbridled. 
 That of his hearers must have been quite as acute as his 
 own, probably more ; but tact, that thrice-blessed quality, 
 had no existence in his forth-right and ingenuous soul. 
 Broke might sit grim and grey in an inaccessible silence ; 
 his wife might fence and parry, and make obvious attempts 
 to turn the conversation ; the girls might all be staring 
 straight in front of them with faces that grew white and 
 scarlet by turns ; but signals such as these were not for 
 Lord Bosket. As was usual with him, when he was in 
 pain he demanded that it should be shared by others, in 
 the same liberal manner that he was prepared to take the 
 sufferings of other jieople on the shoulders of himself. 
 
 " I can't get over it. I tell you it is the rottenest thing 
 I ever heard. I wonder if it was of his own free will. I 
 
 404 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 wonder if he shied at Maud Wayling. I'd lay a thousand 
 to five he did. Did he shy at her, Jane, and run away ? " 
 
 " I can hardly go into details now, Charles, but you can 
 rest assured that you shall hear them all in due season." 
 
 " I'm not goin' to be put off, so you needn't think it. I 
 want to hear them now. This is a personal matter. It 
 touches me. I feel it ; how I feel it you don't know. I 
 liked that lad ; and one way and another I looked to him 
 to do you a power of good. You may have your reasons, 
 but I tell you beforehand that they have got to be good 
 'uns to satisfy me." 
 
 At this point Mrs. Broke rose from the table and left the 
 room. The girls, in great distress as they were, seized 
 eagerly upon this act to make good their own escape. 
 Broke also followed out gloomily upon their heels, so that 
 in less than a minute the aggrieved Lord Bosket was 
 conducting his soliloquy to the glass of whisky in front 
 of him. 
 
 " Well, I am damned ! " he continued to repeat, with 
 his legs sprawling under the table, his chin on his breast, 
 and his hands thrust up to the wristbands of his flannel 
 shirt into the pockets of his breeches. 
 
 To him in the midst of his soliloquy came the youngest 
 of his nieces with a rather white face. The butler and an 
 assistant were clearing up portions of the breakfast debris. 
 
 " Porson, you can leave us for a few minutes," said 
 Delia. " I will ring the bell when I have spoken with his 
 lordship. We are not to be interrupted, please." 
 
 She waited for them to go, and observing a key in the 
 door, took the precaution of turning it. 
 
 Her Uncle Charles had sat with his back to her while 
 these manoeuvres were going forward. She now came and 
 took a seat opposite to him, rested her elbows on the table, 
 and looked at him in a concentrated manner with her chin 
 on her hands. 
 
 " Hullo, young 'un," said her uncle with a start. " I 
 didn't notice you there. I thought 3'ou had all gone. 
 What do you think of this Billy business ? Don't you 
 think it is very wrong and monstrous ? I suppose I ought 
 not to say so to you young tiUies ; but I can't help speaking 
 as I feel, and never could. Wrong and monstrous I call it." 
 
 405 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Delia made no reply. 
 
 " They won't tell me all, young 'un ; but I mean to know. 
 I have a right to know. I am the feller's uncle, do you 
 see ; he's the only nephew I've got ; and I was very proud 
 of that feller. He was the apple of my eye. Good- 
 looking, honest, straightforward, cheery, manly feller. I 
 expect it's that Maud WayUng. I predicted trouble 
 at the time. I've said to your mother all along it 
 would be a mistake if they tried to force his hand. The 
 right sort won't stand it. I did, I know ; but I'm of the 
 weak sort, young 'un, that's me. But I'll give you my 
 word that had I known as much then as I do now no parson 
 livin' would ha' pushed my neck into the halter of holy 
 matrimony." 
 
 There was a keen pity in the face of Delia, which was 
 generally there when her Uncle Charles " was in one of his 
 moods." She waited for him to cease speaking ; and when 
 he had done so, she said in a perfectly quiet and contained 
 voice — 
 
 " Uncle Charles, did you see that accident the other day ? " 
 
 " Accident ? What accident ? " . 
 
 " The accident to the man who was covered in blood. 
 Do you not remember he was in your dogcart when you 
 drove past us in the lane the other day ? " 
 
 " Oh, that ! Who told you it was an accident ? " 
 
 Lord Bosket's face had become suffused suddenly \yith 
 a quaint meaning. 
 
 A chill spread slowly over Delia's veins. 
 
 " It was not an accident, Uncle Charles ? " 
 
 " I did not say so, young 'un." 
 
 " Please tell me, Uncle Charles, how it happened." 
 
 Lord Bosket grew war3^ He was not the type of man 
 who is likely to be overborne by his superfluity of wisdom, 
 but that concentrated look upon his niece's face would 
 have been startling to the most obtuse uncle in the world. 
 Besides, in a dim fashion he recalled to his mind that old 
 Person, or somebody, had made a rather odd comment on 
 the affair at the time of its occurrence. He was not a 
 Solomon, not a Sherlock Holmes, but for once he must 
 trv to put two and two together. He did not like to see 
 the Uttle filly look like that. 
 
 406 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 " Oh yes, young 'un," he said, attempting a lightness 
 of tone that had not even the merit of deceiving his own 
 ears, " it may have been an accident." 
 
 " It was mot an accident, Uncle Charles." 
 
 Delia made this announcement in a tone that had a 
 rather uncomfortable amount of decision in it. Somehow 
 her face was not altogether nice to look at. 
 
 " Wasn't it ? " said her uncle, with an admirable caution. 
 
 " Did you see it, Uncle Charles ? " 
 
 " A bit of it. I may have seen a bit of it." 
 
 " Please tell me what you saw." 
 
 " I — I don't think I ought, young 'un. Little gells 
 should not be so curious, what ? " 
 
 " It was not an accident at all. Uncle Charles." 
 
 " Wasn't it ? " 
 
 " You are trying to deceive me, Uncle Charles." 
 
 " Why should I try to deceive you, you silly little 
 gell ? " 
 
 " Because it was not an accident." 
 
 " Well, I never said it was, did I ? But whatever it was, 
 little Miss Muffet, be ruled by me and think no more about 
 it." 
 
 " You must please tell me what happened, Uncle Charles." 
 
 " You must please forget all about it, little Miss Poppet. 
 I daresay it gave you all a bit of a shock to come on a 
 bleeding man suddenly like that ; but what's the odds, it 
 IS no business of anybody's. Your father " 
 
 " My father ? " said Delia. 
 
 Our tactful gentleman saw his mistake almost before he 
 had made it. But his niece had pounced upon it like a 
 hawk already. 
 
 " My father ? " 
 
 "Never mind your father; we will drop the subject, 
 eh ? Little gells should not worry their little heads about 
 things they can't understand, eh ? Now be a good and 
 sensible little gell, and the very next time I come I will 
 bring you a four-pound box of chocolate creams from 
 Crossby's, the biggest they keep and the best quality." 
 
 " What did my father do ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Lord Bosket, with a lame and 
 somewhat hurried recourse to his tumbler. 
 
 407 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " You do know. Uncle Charles, and I insist that you tell 
 me. 
 
 On DeUa's side was a close-breathing quietude that was 
 extraordinary. The tones were firm and even ; the eyes 
 were wide open ; not a muscle faltered. The demand, made 
 without emotion of any kind, admitted of no compromise. 
 
 " Damn it all ! " said Lord Bosket, beginning to wriggle 
 in his chair. He was growing mightily uncomfortable. 
 " You ought not to ask me, you know, and I ought not to 
 tell you." 
 
 " I insist, Uncle Charles." 
 
 The cold and stern face, still propped on the stiff hands, 
 was so calm and hard that it began to have a kind of 
 baleful attraction for the uneasy gentleman, whose whisky 
 glass shook in his liands. It was the rummest face he 
 had ever seen on anybody, man or woman ! 
 
 " You mustn't ask me, you know. It is not good for 
 little gells to know everything." 
 
 " My father insulted him and afterwards struck him." 
 
 " I did not say so, young 'un, and you can't say I did." 
 
 " You shall not deny it, Uncle Charles." 
 
 " Who said I wanted to deny it, you silly little beggar? 
 Why should I ? What's the odds one way or the other ? 
 Even if your father did cut up rough he wouldn't without 
 the best of reasons, would he ? Come now, let it go at that, 
 and don't trouble your silly little head about it any more ; 
 and be a good little gell." 
 
 " You admit it, Uncle Charles ? " 
 
 Lord Bosket looked at his niece with whimsical and 
 rather bleared eyes. It had come to something when a 
 little niece not much bigger than a pussy cat, and in 
 years not much above a two-year-old was able to bully and 
 browbeat a man of his age. But yet he felt he had not a 
 thousand-to-one chance against her. It was the solidest 
 chip of determination ever formed out of a human soul. 
 He felt that the little devil had got a will that was worth 
 that of ten such men as himself. He had never seen a 
 woman with a face like that ; he was damned if he would 
 not rather have had to face the missis at her worst ! 
 
 " You admit it, Uncle Charles ? " said the unrelenting 
 voice. 
 
 408 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 " Well, and suppose I do, what's the odds, you funny 
 little fool ? You can take it from me that your father had 
 good reasons for anything he did." 
 
 " He attacked a defenceless man ; a man weaker than 
 himself and smaUer." 
 
 The tone continued to be perfectly quiet and unemo- 
 tional. 
 
 " Rubbish," said Lord Bosket. " Don't think about 
 it like that, you Uttle silly. It is not a thing to make a 
 song about. It is a mere nothing ; take it from me. I 
 daresay the feller was insolent." 
 
 " You do not know that, Uncle Charles ; and one ought 
 not to say what one does not know to be the truth." 
 
 " No, I suppose one ought not." 
 
 He was completely taken aback for the moment by the 
 extraordinary manner of his youthful niece. Suddenly 
 it made him laugh. 
 
 " But you are gettin' to be a rum little devil, aren't 
 you ? Damned if I know what to make of you ! This is 
 not the little Miss Muffet I used to know, quiet as a mouse, 
 and as simple as a baby. If you go on like this, miss, you 
 will be a terror, you will. You haven't been taking lessons 
 from 5'our Aunt Emma for nothing, you've not ; when you 
 run your match with her you won't run second, you won't. 
 You are a little devil. Still, give me a kiss and we won't 
 worry our heads any more about it, will we ? As I say, 
 what's the odds ? Your father should be a judge of his 
 own affairs. Little gells must not bother their heads about 
 'em. Now, Miss Poppet, not another word ; and you shall 
 have those chocolates the very next time I come." 
 
 In this deUcately wise and paternal fashion the subject 
 was dismissed. Delia unlocked the door and went out of 
 the room. Lord Bosket continued to confront his glass 
 for some little time afterwards. Somehow his thoughts 
 would continue to revert to the singular interview he had 
 just had with the youngest of all his nieces ; and for the 
 time being they overlaid those in regard to his nephew so 
 recently in his mind. To find such a particularly mys- 
 terious manner in one of his " little chestnut fillies " was 
 something quite new. Their hearts were whole and 
 unclouded, as frank and simple as the day. The young 
 
 409 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 un defeated him altogether. He could not remember to 
 have seen a woman look like that before, and he did not 
 want to see one look like it again. It had got home on him 
 in a way that had rather upset him, damn it all ! 
 
 This sense of discomfort continued to linger in his mind 
 when, after breakfast, he went his way. He did not com- 
 municate any of the doubts that invaded it to his sister or 
 to Broke, because, after all, the interview might be nothing 
 more significant than the outcome of a childish curiosity ; 
 and her manner might have owed its strangeness to the 
 way in which the sight of a bleeding man had wrought on 
 her girlish mind. Women were supposed to be a bit 
 squeamish in these things ; and the fact that her father 
 had hit another man might have outraged her sense of 
 delicacy a little. Indeed, the only terms in which he per- 
 mitted himself to refer to the subject at all was when he 
 said into Broke's ear privately as he was on the point of 
 quitting the house — 
 
 " Have you had a police-court summons yet, Edmund ? 
 If I am on the bench, my boy, I shall be dead against you." 
 
 Broke smiled a grim acknowledgment of the joke. 
 
 At the luncheon table Mrs. Broke made a comment on 
 the absence of Delia. Did any one know why she was not 
 present ? Was she unwell ? Nobody knew. She had 
 not been seen since breakfast. The matter was pursued 
 no farther at that time. Most probably she was sulking 
 in her bedroom. They believed her to be capable of almost 
 any enormity. 
 
 Her absence from that pious rite, afternoon tea, was 
 not remarked, because she was still forbidden their common- 
 room. But when dinner came and her absence was again 
 remarked; Mrs. Broke's inquiries grew more insistent. A 
 maid was despatched to her room, only to return with the 
 information that she was not there. 
 
 As the hours passed that evening, and the child did not 
 return, a feeling of uneasiness grew abroad. It became a 
 matter of comment that she had been rather strange in 
 her manner of late ; instances of it were recalled ; reminis- 
 cences came unliidden to their minds of the singular attitude 
 she liad adopted on many questions that did not admit of 
 two points of view. But not for a moment, however, did 
 
 410 
 
TRIBULATIONS AT HANDS OF WOMAN 
 
 they condescend to follow their speculations to their 
 logical, their natural, their inevitable conclusion. They 
 were face to face with her absence. It could only be 
 reconciled on one assumption ; and that was precisely 
 the one their dignity would not allow them to make. 
 The hideous idea was in the minds of them all ; but without 
 communicating it to one another her five sisters were as 
 one in the feeling that it was too monstrous, too gross, 
 too far-fetched. To admit for a moment that her strange 
 unhappiness had induced her to run away from home, was 
 impossible. It would be a treason against her clan. 
 
 When Mrs. Broke had put more strenuous inquiries 
 afoot among the servants, the butler was able to recall a 
 fact that was invested now with a deep significance. He 
 mentioned Miss Delia's bidding himself and Capper leave 
 the room when they were clearing away breakfast, in order 
 that shie might have a private interview with his lordship, 
 who was still seated at the table. 
 
 " And if I am not mistaken, ma'am, she locked the door 
 when we left the room." 
 
 " You have no idea, Porson, of what she said to his lord- 
 ship ? " 
 
 Porson had not. Thereon Mrs. Broke, true to her 
 instinct for action in times of crisis, despatched a mounted 
 messenger to Hipsley for the purpose of summoning her 
 brother to Covenden at once. The man returned in some- 
 thing under an hour with the news that Lord Bosket was 
 from home and that nothing had been seen or heard of 
 him all day. In the meantime inquiries at the porter's 
 lodge had elicited the fact that Delia had been seen to pass 
 through the gates at about a quarter past ten that morning. 
 No attention had been paid to the direction she had taken, 
 and she had not been seen to return. 
 
 On the stroke of midnight, however, their more immedi- 
 ate anxieties were allayed by the arrival of a telegram. 
 It ran : " Filly all right. Letter in the morning. Charles." 
 It bore the stamp of Charing Cross. 
 
 411 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 Providential Behaviour of old Pearce 
 
 LORD BOSKET'S wanderings in the quest of an allevia- 
 tion to his lot took him in the course of that afternoon 
 to a cricket match some dozen miles away. His taste 
 had the all-embracing catholicity of the true sportsman. 
 Wherever two sides contended, or one living thing was 
 pitted against another, the contest ensuing was sure of 
 his patronage. Two spiders on a hot plate, or a pair of 
 mongrels in an entry, provided one was matched against the 
 other, were enough to allure his imagination, and to excite 
 his lust for finding the winner. Therefore three o'clock 
 this summer afternoon found him mingling with the 
 throng in Bushmills Park that was witnessing the first 
 innings of the Free Foresters in their game with I Zingari. 
 
 His arrival on the grovmd was a signal for mild com- 
 motion. Acquaintances of his own sex slapped him on the 
 back, punched him in the ribs, waved their hands to him, 
 and acclaimed him from every possible quarter. Long- 
 field-on, in his after-luncheon nap against the corner of the 
 bowling screen, awoke sufficiently to murmur, " Hullo, 
 Bos ! ' ' Acquaintances of the opposite sex sat up and purred, 
 lifted their eyes to him, confided to him their gloved paws, 
 made very pretty moues indeed, and by delicately percep- 
 tible fluctuations of their drapery gave graceful indications 
 that there was room for dear Lord Bosket to come and sit 
 beside them. Everybody feted him. He was buttonholed 
 b\' this person and that. They were three deep around 
 him in the luncheon tent to take turns to engage in con- 
 versation with him, whither he had been escorted by another 
 body of his friends to have a drink. 
 
 There is no man who enjoys the popularity of him 
 412 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 with a reputation for good nature. It lands him high and 
 dry on a pinnacle it is given to few to attain. It makes its 
 appeal to all sorts and conditions of men. For does not 
 such a guarantee of single-mindedness grow rarer and rarer 
 under the stress of our progress ? The wear-and-tear 
 becomes too great. The skyey influences are averse. Our 
 friend's querulous melancholy was like an oasis in the 
 desert of a self-satisfied austerity. Old Bos was not so 
 confoundedly superior. A reputation of this kind stood 
 him in far better stead than the most brilliant intellectual 
 gifts or a life of virgin purity. Where the amiable weak- 
 nesses of others could not have been condoned, no cause of 
 offence was to be discerned in such an idol of the populace. 
 
 In the course of an hour our friend had disengaged him- 
 self from several groups of these clamorous persons, 
 ultimately to fall into the clutches of a celebrated sporting 
 baronet who hved in the neighbourhood. Our old friend, 
 Sir Horatio, and other experts in this recondite lore, inform 
 us that there are always two peculiarities by which a 
 baronet may be identified. He is invariably "celebrated " 
 and as invariably " sporting." This one was of the 
 unimpeachable variety, the true genus that keeps more 
 " gees " in its stable than it does in its vocabulary. He 
 was of the most familiar type of celebrated sporting baronet 
 that tradition has made dear to us, which affects a high- 
 crowned square felt hat, snuff-coloured clothes, a horse- 
 shoe pin, and brown gaiters. He had the ruddy bluff look 
 of the farmer, with brusquerie and absence of manners to 
 match. 
 
 " How are you, Bos ? " he said heartily. " Fine day 
 for the race." 
 
 " Devilish," said Lord Bosket. " Come and have a 
 drink." 
 
 " Don't mind. I've got something to tell you, only I 
 can't think what." 
 
 " Fancy anything for the July meetin' ? " 
 
 " The Dwarf ; and Gub Gub for a place. Now, what is 
 it I want to tell you ? Something — something funny." 
 
 " Seen the weights for Newmarket ? " 
 
 " Not I. Now I've got it. A sing'lar thing I saw tliis 
 mornin'. One of those nieces of yours." 
 
 413 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " What, what, Pearce," said Lord Bosket with a sudden 
 eagerness. Something had given a great leap under his 
 waistcoat. 
 
 " I think it must have been the youngest of 'em, if I 
 remember 'em right." 
 
 " Well, well, Pearce," said Lord Bosket impatiently ; 
 the athletic performance under his waistcoat had been 
 repeated. 
 
 " I met her walkin' along the high road covered up to 
 the neck in dust." 
 
 " When — this mornin' ? Nothing very funny in that." 
 
 " You hold on a bit, old son. I'm comin' to the funny 
 part. She stopped me and said, ' If you please, is this 
 the road to London ? ' I told her if she walked another 
 forty miles or so along it she would find herself about 
 there. If she had started from her place she must have 
 walked more than ten already, and a broilin' hot day. I 
 couldn't understand it at all. It seemed a sing'lar 
 thing for one of your little chestnuts to ask a question 
 like that, and to ask it as though she meant to do every 
 yard of the distance on her flat feet. I wanted to tell you, 
 Bos ; in my opinion, it's a thing you ought to know." 
 
 " It couldn't ha' been one o' my fillies." 
 
 Conviction was grievously lacking in the tone of Delia's 
 uncle. 
 
 " Don't you bother your head about that, my boy. 
 Do you think I don't know one of that kennel when I see 
 one ? She'd got a nose on her like a knocker on a door. 
 One of the old pattern, or my eyesight's failin' ; Edmund 
 himself doesn't carry a better." 
 
 " Go on, Pearce, nose isn't everything." 
 
 " It is with that kennel, my boy. I'll own, when I first 
 saw her I thought she was a dam sight too handsome to 
 be one of j-our litter. She'd got two eyes to her like a pair 
 of stars, and that blue that the sky was a fool to 'em. I 
 wondered how the dooce that sort came into your kennel, 
 Bos. Against the regulations, ain't it ? But I alwaye 
 sav a woman is the same as a good bitch. The breed 
 makes all the difference. She may strike you as ugly at 
 first, but just wait till you've gone over her points, and 
 then you find out she's about as handsome as paint. 
 
 4M 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 That one was a nailer, my boy, and no error. And I don't 
 mind telling you, Bos, that when I saw that thoroughbred 
 tit of yours marching down the road with her little chin 
 in the air, and as proud and dainty on her feet as a three- 
 year-old, I thought her a stepper." 
 
 Lord Bosket gave vent to his feelings in a whistle very 
 deep and long. 
 
 " Well, I am damned ! Come and have a drink, Pearce. 
 This is a nice how-d'ye-do ! " 
 
 Another libation in the tent brought no comfort to 
 Delia's uncle. Her behaviour at the breakfast table had 
 been bitten too sharply in his mind. He began to blame 
 himself bitterly, as his habit was when things went amiss, 
 on the score of his own folly. He ought to have known 
 she was up to something. He ought to have known that 
 no little filly had a right to look as she had looked that 
 morning. She might well have a rum manner, if she had 
 made up her mind to run away from home. But he 
 could not believe one of his nieces to be capable of such 
 an act. They were the last people in the world to do 
 such a thing. What would Edmund say ? Whatever had 
 possessed her ? 
 
 In the course of the next quarter of an hour his mind, 
 heavily shackled in whisky as it was, had brought him 
 to the conclusion that there was only one thing to do. 
 He must go after her at once. The road to London ran 
 by the gates of Bushmills Park, and London was clearly 
 her destination. As he climbed into his trap and took 
 the reins from his man, and trotted away on his absurd 
 errand, the incredible folly of the Httle fool recurred to 
 him. To walk forty miles to London in the blazing heat 
 of a midsummer day was the maddest thing he had ever 
 heard. If she wanted to get there why did she not have 
 the ordinary common-sense to go by train ? The little fool 
 must be mad ! 
 
 He would like to ask also what did she propose to do 
 when she got there ? She would not be likely to go to her 
 friends, mad as she was, for that would only be to be 
 packed straight back home again. But that was the only 
 project she could have in her mind. It was almost certain 
 that a mere whim had possessed her ; that the heat of her 
 
 415 
 
BROKE OF COVExNDEN 
 
 folly would soon cool ; and that she would hail a restora- 
 tion to the fold. But she would catch it pretty hot when 
 she did go home, if he knew anything of her father ! And 
 there was no doubt whatever in his mind that women were 
 rum beggars when they liked. She had wormed a secret 
 out of him that she had no right to hear ; and to express 
 her opinion of it, in an absurdly literal sense , she calmly 
 ran away from home. He could see now more clearly 
 than ever that he ought not to have told her. He felt 
 at the time he was making a great mistake. 
 
 As he passed the milestones on the dusty road, the face 
 and manner of his niece recurred to him vividly and 
 perpetually. Of course he ought to have known, besotted 
 fool that he was, that mischief was brewing. The little 
 tit had no right to that sort of look. At the breakfast 
 table it had disconcerted him ; and it came out at him now 
 through the sunlight, through the dust-coated hedges and the 
 abundant foliage in a fashion that made him as thoroughly 
 uncomfortable as it did when he first saw it that morning. 
 
 As the raking stride of the horse took him up hill and 
 down dale, and devoured the endless undulating ribbon 
 of white road, doubt invaded him. He might, after all, be 
 on a wild-goose chase. When you looked at it reasonably 
 the thing seemed impossible. What a great " score " off 
 him it would be for old Pearce, if it was a mere first-of- 
 April fake. How everybody would chuckle and tell it 
 against him ! But still, old Pearce was not that sort of 
 feller. He had been very circumstantial about it too, and 
 he was the last man in the world to put a child's trick upon 
 you. All the same, by the time his good horse's stride had 
 devoured a dozen miles or so of the dusty road, the 
 grotesqueness of his mission assumed a higher significance, 
 and its sanity a less. With deeper conviction he began 
 to affirm that the whole business was too preposterous. 
 
 Nevertheless he continued to go on. The phantom of a 
 so-calm and frigid little face lured him forward mile by 
 mile, where cold reason demanded that he should right- 
 about-face and return. But no, he would see it through. 
 They might have the laugh at him afterwards, they would 
 have very likely, but the sportsman in him was enough of 
 itself to take him all the way. He pulled up at wayside 
 
 4t6 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 inns on two occasions, ostensibly to obtain information of a 
 young gell asking the road to London, but also to obtain 
 a little light refreshment in a liquid form. Of the one 
 they were able to give cheerfully, but of the other they 
 could not an they would. 
 
 By the time the dogcart had covered twenty miles the 
 sun had taken a very decided dip. It was a perfect evening 
 of early summer. Mellow lights suffused the clover ; not 
 a leaf stirred by the roadside, so absolutely still was the 
 air ; while the trees stood motionless to trail their long 
 shadows in the dust. Now and then a bird hovered over 
 hedges, an occasional hare ran along the road, and rabbits 
 darted in all directions, hoisting their little white scuts. 
 It began to grow dusk. The dubious tints of the twilight 
 were refl^^ted powerfully in Lord Bosket. A milestone told 
 him that twelve miles farther on he would be in London. 
 The odds were enormous against his finding his quarry; 
 Still he was going all the way. He would never hear the 
 last of the story they would tell against him — that he drove 
 into town on a summer's evening from Bushmills Park, 
 because old Pearce had told him a cock-and-bull tale about 
 one of his nieces asking her way to London. But whether 
 he found the little gell or not he was going all the way ; 
 let 'em say what they liked when they heard about it. 
 
 To that end he eased the paces of his horse. He looked 
 at his watch ; it wanted five-and-twenty minutes to nine 
 o'clock. He had now come twenty-five miles from Bush- 
 mills Park as nearly as he could calculate ; about thirty- 
 five from Hipsley ; and thirty-seven from Covenden. It 
 was hardly likely that she had walked so far through all 
 this infernal dust, in such a broiling day of midsummer. 
 The odds were a thousand to five that he had missed her, 
 or that she had never come. 
 
 His optimism was not increased by the fact that im- 
 mistakable evidences were beginning to assert themselves 
 in him. It was already an hour past the time at which 
 he preferred to dine ; and it would be a good nine miles 
 yet before he touched the suburbs of London. Hereabouts 
 he came to a hill ; and in walking his horse up it encountered 
 a farmer in a covered cart coming down. 
 
 " I say," he called out, " have you met a little gell 
 
 417 DD 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 walkin' towards London ? Don't happen to have seen 
 one, do you ? " 
 
 " Aye," said the farmer, " so I have. I passed one 
 about a quarter of a mile back, covered in dust about as 
 white as a miller. Looks as though she's been tramping 
 it all day. And she's that lame she can hardly put one 
 foot afore t'other. Better give her a lift, guv'nor, if you 
 are going her way. Her goose is about cooked, I reckon." 
 
 " Well, I am damned," said Lord Bosket, pressing on. 
 
 The sun was much lower now. The patch of crimson- 
 yellow with which it had painted the sky behind him had 
 deepened to tints more complex and mysterious. The 
 moon had assumed a faint outline, and the evening was 
 growing chill. Confronted by a hill stiffer than usual, he 
 took his tired horse carefully to the top. On tke crest a 
 heap of flints for road -mending purposes had Deen shot 
 beside a hedge, and seated on them was the little figure of 
 a woman. From head to foot was she clothed in a mantle 
 of dust, about as white as a miller, as the farmer had said. 
 She was breathing hard ; there was not a speck of colour in 
 her face ; she had taken off her straw hat, but her hair, 
 a lightish chestnut colour, had not lost its orderliness of 
 arrangement and serenity of form. The distress of her 
 condition was cruelly apparent, and the limp lines into 
 which her small figure fell caused Lord Bosket to give a 
 grunt of dismay. 
 
 Delia did not see her uncle at first. Her eyes were 
 turned towards the long and deep valley into which this 
 hill ran down. They were fixed with a concentrated 
 intensity on the stretch of white road, ankle deep in dust 
 on which the shadows were beginning to creep darker and 
 darker : the road to London. Her hands were clasped 
 round her knees. Hearing the sound of wheels hard by, 
 she turned her head so sliglitly that it seemed to imply that 
 the power was not in her to turn it farther ; and asked 
 without looking at vehicle or driver — 
 
 " How far to London, please ? " 
 
 " You damned young fool ! " was the answer she 
 received. 
 
 Already it had struck Lord Bosket with a sensation of 
 horror that the tone in which she asked the question was 
 
 418 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 that of their interview at the breakfast table. She did 
 not appear to recognize the voice of her uncle, but at his 
 words she turned her head towards him with a bewildered 
 expression. The grey hue of her face had something of 
 the intolerable weariness of death. 
 
 Lord Bosket was already out of his dogcart. 
 
 " You damned young fool ! " he said again roughly, 
 
 Delia did not reply. Her hps were pressed very tight, 
 so tight that she did not seem to possess the energy to force 
 them apart. 
 
 Her uncle, meeting with no reply, stood in front of her in 
 his time-honoured attitude, with his hands in the pockets 
 of his breeches. He looked her over keenly. She was 
 dead beat. 
 
 " Poor Uttle gell," he grunted. 
 
 He then began to emit his peculiar long-drawn whistle. 
 The virtue of it at that moment was not very clear, unless 
 it was a natural tonic to his wits. At least it served to 
 summon his practical nature to his aid, for his next act 
 was to take from an inside pocket of his covert coat a 
 flask containing his favourite stimulant. 
 
 " Down with it," he said gruffly, 
 
 Delia seized the cup with something akin to ferocity, 
 and without giving the slightest heed to the contents, 
 drank eagerly. 
 
 " Poor little gell," said Lord Bosket, speaking in the 
 manner of one who suffers from a sore throat. 
 
 There was that In her act which suddenly bleared his 
 eyes more effectually than ever. He wiped out the im- 
 pedimenta sedulously with his handlverchief, and blew his 
 nose with tremendous vehemence, 
 
 " I am old enough to know better," he muttered to his 
 man as he turned away his face from the cause of all this 
 inconvenience. Presently, having resumed a sufficient 
 command of his demeanour to venture to address his 
 young niece, who still sat motionless on the heap of stones, 
 he did so in a voice of hoarse expostulation — 
 
 " You have walked forty miles as near as damn it, 
 in all that broiling sun, and if you have not about done for 
 yourself, it's God's mercy, that's all I've got to say about it, 
 I will drive you into London, and we shall have to go home 
 
 419 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 by train in the morning. You are in no state to go back 
 to-night. We must have you between the blankets as 
 soon as we can. It is the maddest business I ever heard of 
 in my life. However, this is not the tinie for talk. Into 
 the trap with you." 
 
 He made to take the small figure in his arms, for the 
 purpose of hoisting it into the vehicle, as it showed no 
 signs of moving of its own accord. 
 
 " Please, Uncle Charles, you are not to touch me." 
 
 Her tone and manner were as extraordinarily uncom- 
 promising as they were at nine o'clock that morning. 
 
 " What, what ? " said her uncle, taken aback. 
 
 Delia did not move an inch. Lord Bosket approached 
 indecisively. 
 
 " Please, do not touch me. Uncle Charles." 
 
 " Not touch you, young fool," he said querulously and 
 hoarsely. " I ought to be takin' the skin off your back, 
 miss, if I was doin' the right thing by you. Not touch you, 
 indeed ! " 
 
 As her uncle stretched out his hand to seize her, in the 
 tentative manner that he might seize a kitten, she made 
 a little motion by which she gathered her dust-laden skirts 
 away from him. 
 
 " You must leave me. Uncle Charles. I must not, I can- 
 not go with you." 
 
 Her tone was absolutely final. Lord Bosket was fully 
 conscious already of his own impotence before it. 
 
 " Nonsense ; tut, tut ! " he said persuasively. " Never 
 heard such a thing in my life. Where do you think you 
 are goin' to, and what do you think is goin' to become of 
 you ? You can't stop here all night, that's a moral." 
 
 " You will take me to Covenden." 
 
 " Of course, to-morrow." 
 
 " I can never go to Covenden again." 
 
 Once more Lord Bosket recorded his stupefaction with 
 a whistle. He did not know how to handle such an un- 
 conipromising determination. He was not fitted to do 
 so by nature. Here, in this overdriven, overborne bit 
 of a tiling, was a prol:)lem that he had neither the wit to 
 understand nor the strength to grapple with. 
 
 " You've damn well got to," he said. 
 420 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 Delia, however, stuck quietly to the other view. 
 
 " Come, don't be a little silly. Let me put you into 
 the trap." 
 
 " I will not be put into the trap, Uncle Charles." 
 
 "Rot. Rubbish. You don't know what you are 
 sayin'. Come, now, be a sensible little gell, and when you 
 get home I will give you a nice new hoss with four white 
 stockings." 
 
 Our friend held out his hand with a gesture half 
 of testiness, half of cajolery. Delia closed her eyes and ' 
 hugged her knees tighter. 
 
 " Come on, there's a good Uttle gell." 
 
 He approached her in the wary manner of a cat 
 catching a bird, and suddenly put his arms round her. He 
 found her to be very cold and trembling violently. 
 
 " I forbid you to touch me, Uncle Charles." 
 
 She began to struggle fitfully in her uncle's irresolute 
 grasp. Her heart was beating wildly through her dress. 
 
 " I will jump out of the trap," she said. 
 
 With all this decision of language and behaviour in one 
 ordinarily so docile, there was a complete absence of 
 emotion in the voice and gesture by which it was embodied. 
 They were both so hard that Lord Bosket was baffled by 
 it, and perhaps a little frightened also. He had never seen 
 anything so uncanny. He did not know whether the 
 poor httle devil had become slightly insane, a bit touched 
 by the sun, or what, but this was certainly not the timid 
 tender petted little filly he had always known. There was a 
 dreary piteousness underlying it all too, that at times 
 made him take in his breath rather sharply. He would 
 be perfectly justified in resorting to compulsion in a case 
 of this sort ; but even as he gathered himself to employ it, 
 a sudden nausea inflicted him. No, he was damned if he 
 could be rough with her. He had never laid his finger on 
 a woman yet, and even if her parents blamed him bitterly 
 afterwards, it was asking too much of a man at his time of 
 life to begin that sort of thing now. 
 
 " You must tell me all about it then," he said, in tones 
 which, in spite of himself, were conciliatory. Then realising, 
 somewhat to his dismay, that they were of that nature 
 when they were certainly not intended to be so, he gave 
 
 421 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 himself up to luxury. He drew her cold face to his coat, 
 and gave it a hug. " Tell your damned old fool of an 
 uncle all about it, you poor Uttle soul. No harm shall come 
 to you, I'll give you my word." 
 
 " Promise, Uncle Charles, you will not take me to 
 Covenden." She permitted her wan cheek to he an instant 
 against him and closed her eyes. 
 
 " I can't do that, you know. I would if I could, but I 
 mustn't, you know. I'm bound to see you home all 
 right." 
 
 Delia, half fainting in his arms from hunger, thirst and 
 weariness, remnined perfectly inexorable on that point. 
 More and more fully did her uncle realise that his clay 
 was not stem enough, not anything like stern enough, to 
 cope with such a stony resolution. He saw clearly that 
 unless he gave his promise no progress was possible. 
 Things would remain at a deadlock, and already it was 
 nearly pitch dark. " She ought to have a damned good 
 hidin', but I'm hanged if I can give it her," he recorded 
 for his own private information and that of his man, as 
 he hugged her tighter to his coat. 
 
 " Come, come, miss, no damn nonsense." 
 
 Gently he tried to lift her. At once she began to struggle 
 convulsively. 
 
 " Promise, Uncle Charles." 
 
 " I can't, you know. I mustn't, you know." 
 
 " Leave me then, Uncle Charles. I must go on alone." 
 
 With a sudden movement of an amazing quickness she 
 had slipped his grasp. 
 
 Lord Bosket knew already that he was defeated. Good 
 nature is an asset from the social point of view, but it 
 would appear that it has its drawbacks in the occasional 
 stress of the unartificial affairs of life. 
 
 " Very well, then," he said gruffly, " I give in ; I promise ; 
 I chuck up the sponge." 
 
 " You promise also not to take me to Grosvenor Street, 
 Uncle Charles ? " 
 
 " 1 may be a fool, but I am not a damned fool, I hope," 
 said Lord Bosket with some alacrity. In his opinion, the 
 undesirability of his own house as a place of refuge did 
 not require to be stated. 
 
 422 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 ** Where do you mean to take me. Uncle Charles ? " 
 
 " God knows ! " 
 
 On the strength of this assurance Delia climbed up into 
 the dogcart. It caused her uncle to shed more curses 
 to observe, as she did so, that she was dead lame ; also that 
 twice she nearly missed her footing on the awkward step 
 and reeled against the cushion when she entered the 
 vehicle at last. It was still a soft-breathing summer 
 evening, but faintly chill, yet her uncle was surprised to 
 find how cold she was as she nestled in the small space 
 between him and the man. He took off his covert coat, 
 wrapped her in it, placed one arm tenderly round her, 
 and drew her cold cheeks against his jacket. 
 
 " If you must go to London why did you walk, you little 
 fool ? " 
 
 That absurd but palpable fact stuck in his practical 
 throat. 
 
 " I had no money," said Delia simply. 
 
 " As rotten a reason as ever I heard. Why didn't you 
 borrow a bit ? " 
 
 It seemed to Lord Bosket that such a reason was indeed 
 very odd and inadequate. But there could be no doubt 
 that, as far as it went, it was a sufficient one. Suddenly a 
 new thought started up in him, and harrowed his well- 
 fed feelings. 
 
 " You are not goin' to tell me that you have been walkin' 
 in the hot sun since ten o'clock this morning without a 
 crumb to peck or a drop to drink ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Delia. 
 
 " Well, that's won it ! " 
 
 Lord Bosket was heard to swear with hoarse vehemence. 
 " No money ; nothing to eat ! " he repeated several times 
 under his breath, apparently to impress the incredible fact 
 on his mind. 
 
 " Shove along, Thompson," he said to the man im- 
 patiently. 
 
 " Where, your lordship ? " 
 
 " Better ask me another. I give it up. I can't take 
 her to the club, and I can't take her to Grosvenor 
 Street. I suppose we had better point for one of those 
 barracks in Northumberland Avenue. Shove on, my 
 
 423 ■ 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 boy ; poor old Bendy looks like havin' his bell57{iil this 
 time, if he never had it full before." 
 
 " And where were you goin' to even if you got as far as 
 London ? if I might make so bold as to inquire," our 
 bewildered friend demanded of his niece. 
 
 Delia did not reply. 
 
 " Come on, out with it. You've got my word, haven't 
 you ? I shall not give you away, you poor little devil." 
 
 Probably as a token of her confidence in him, Delia 
 answered: " I was going to No. 403, Charing Cross Road." 
 
 " And who the devil lives at 403, Charing Cross Road r* " 
 
 " It is the office of the International Review." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! very interesting to be sure. But I don't 
 quite see what that was goin' to do for you." 
 
 " Mr. Porter is on the staff of the International Review." 
 
 " Oh, is he ! Very nice for the International Review. 
 But who the deuce is Mr. Porter ? " 
 
 Now that Delia was committed to her statement she 
 did not flinch from making it. 
 
 " Mr. Porter loves me, Uncle Charles." 
 
 "Oh, does he!" said her Uncle Charles. "Very good 
 of Mr. Porter, I'm sure. But I don't quite follow. What 
 the devil has all this got to do with yom: runnin' away 
 from home ? " 
 
 " I love him," said Delia with her singular precision of 
 voice and phrase. 
 
 " Oh, do you ! Nice for Mr. Porter." 
 
 Lord Bosket could not repress a rather weary guffaw, 
 which he proceeded to impart to the air of the night. 
 
 " These are all very excellent reasons, miss, I don't 
 doubt ; and I daresay it is because I am such a fuddle- 
 headed sort of a feller that I don't see what they have got 
 to do with it at all. You walk forty miles on the hottest 
 day of the year, with not a crumb to eat or a drop to 
 drink, and not a sou in your pocket, in order that if you 
 are lucky you will be able to drop down dead on the door- 
 step of a locked-up newspaper office in the Charing Cross 
 Road about midnight. I daresay now and again I do 
 drink a glass or two more than I ought, but I am damned 
 if I can quite see " 
 
 Lord Bosket finished his somewhat impassioned summing 
 424 
 
BEHAVIOUR OF OLD PEARCE 
 
 up oi the case as it presented itself to his judicial mind, 
 with a deep but wholly irrelevant malediction. Hour by 
 hour his liberties with our chaste common tongue had 
 become more egregious and unpardonable. We feel that 
 this chapter has already alienated every right-minded 
 human being who has had the temerity to follow his fortunes 
 as far ; and are assured that the dear evangelical old 
 maiden lady, whose unhappy task it has been to review 
 our pages for the Spectator has renounced them long ago, 
 sent out her maid to call in the cat, and retired to bed 
 with a sick headache ; therefore we hesitate to pile Pelion 
 on Ossa by revealing the immediate terms in which our 
 profligate friend saw fit to clothe his thoughts ! For a 
 ray of light had burst upon him at last. There was the 
 whole thing. Porter was the young man that Edmund 
 had come such a cropper over. Everything was embraced 
 in that flash of inspiration. He issued once more his 
 peculiar long-drawn whistle to the night air in honour 
 of his re-awakened intelligence. 
 
 Yes, there was the whole matter as plain as the back of 
 your hand. And a pretty how-d'ye-do it was ! There 
 would be the devil to pay. He had let himself in for a 
 nice thing, hanged if he had not ! The sense of his position 
 oppressed him dreadfully. If ever he had had any tact, 
 any delicacy, any worldly wisdom — and very grievously 
 did he doubt whether he had ever had any of these 
 delectable things — he must prepare to utilize them now. 
 Edmund could be an ugly brute when you once got his 
 blood up. And it seemed that this fragile slip of a thing, 
 not much bigger than your hat, was no unworthy daughter 
 of such a sire. She would have died on that heap of fhnts 
 by the side of the road rather than go back home. 
 
 However, this was not the time to dwell on the dilemma 
 in which he had so suddenly come to find himself. The 
 lamp-posts of suburban London were already flitting 
 past ; it had become perfectly dark ; and the cold burden 
 in his arms had grown a good deal heavier. His immediate 
 thoughts must be for that worn-out and famished little 
 slip of womanhood nestling to his coat for warmth, who, 
 dead lame and starving as she was, was prepared to die 
 rather than give in. 
 
 425 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " It's God's mercy I met old Pearce ! Poor little 
 devil — poor little devil ! Rum beggars women, when 
 they like ! " 
 
 Hardly had he enunciated this pearl of wisdom for his 
 own consolation, when a new discovery obtruded itself 
 upon him. His small niece was become insensible in 
 his arms. 
 
 426 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 In which we find our First Comedian once 
 more in a Happy Vein 
 
 THE letter Lord Bosket addressed at a late hour that 
 evening to Covenden from a hotel in Northumberland 
 Avenue, was the longest and most singular he ever felt 
 called upon to pen in the whole course of his unliterary 
 life. With a sure instinct that was worth more than a 
 superficial observation of men and things, he addressed 
 this lucubration to his sister, rather than to Delia's father. 
 A mere observer would have said without hesitation that 
 the child was far less likely to meet with tender handling 
 from her mother than from him, whose affection for his 
 girls, one and all, was so unbridled ; but her uncle's 
 instinct taught him better. And instinct is a strange 
 matter, as the eminent Sir John Falstaff once had occasion 
 to remark. 
 
 When on the following morning Mrs. Broke found an 
 envelope in her brother's crude and uncertain hand, at 
 the side of her plate, she smiled faintly to observe its 
 thickness. As a rule, Charles's correspondence was 
 conducted by the medium of the telegraph. History 
 was indeed getting itself written at a fiirious pace when 
 in a single day he had recourse to eight pages of notepaper 
 to keep up with the march of events. 
 
 He began his letter with the assurance that he, and he 
 alone, was to blame for what had happened. Had he only 
 had the sense to keep quiet things might have been other- 
 wise. He had inadvertently let drop at the breakfast table 
 that morning the details of a certain incident with which 
 
 427 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Edmund was very well acquainted. He then proceeded 
 to give a resumi of the providential behaviour of old 
 Pearce at the cricket match ; the subsequent pursuit and 
 capture of the runaway ; and went on to convey a some- 
 what forcible idea of the state Delia was in physically and 
 mentally, and laid stress on the fact, with the aid of double 
 lines, under the words, that she had walked forty miles, " as 
 near as damn it," without a penny in her pocket with 
 which to obtain anything to eat or drink ; without 
 protection from the sun ; and that, dead lame as she was, 
 had it not been God's mercy that he should have been 
 allowed to overtake her, there was that within her that 
 would have carried her on and on, until she dropped down 
 dead upon the road. 
 
 Her uncle concluded with an appeal. He was sure 
 that she (Jane) would see the thing in a proper light, and 
 make things as easy for the poor little devil as she could ; 
 but somehow he had not the same confidence in Edmund. 
 Edmund had a heart of gold, provided you did not get 
 his back up, but if once that operation was performed he 
 was about the most unreasonable fellow in the world. 
 She must do what she could to get him not to be too hard 
 on the little filly. He supposed, strickly speaking, justice 
 required she should have a good hiding, or something of 
 that sort, but he was sure that to adopt such a course 
 would be a great mistake. If anything was to be done, 
 it would have to be done by kindness. Further, he stated 
 that his own position in the matter was one of difficulty. 
 They would expect him, of course, to bring her home again 
 at once ; but he could hardly do that, because he had 
 already given his word not to do so. In extenuation of 
 his owTi conduct on this point, he said, strange as it 
 might seem, he was obliged to make a promise to the 
 little fool to remain neutral in the matter, or he could 
 have done absolutely nothing with her without resorting 
 to brute force ; and he hoped they did not expect him to do 
 that. He felt himself rather to be in the position of a 
 judge, who had to look after the interests of both parties ; 
 of a judge, who had to be impartial and see that justice 
 was pro})erly administered, without committing himself 
 to either side. 
 
 428 
 
FIRST COMEDIAN IN A HAPPY VEIN 
 
 The tone of his long letter, however, and particularly 
 this latter part, was hard to reconcile with this judicial 
 attitude. It was special pleading, all compact. There 
 seemed no attempt in it, as far as his sister could see, to 
 observe the neutrality of which he made a profession. 
 Finally he said : "Of course, her behaviour has been 
 that of the damnedest little fool ; but you can tell Edmund 
 from me that if he had seen her dead beat on that heap 
 of flints by the side of the road, and night coming on, a 
 few things might have been driven into him. They were 
 into me, I can tell you ! And you can tell Edmund from 
 me that whatever she's done she is not far off the finest 
 little filly I have seen in my life, and that is saying a lot, 
 because I flatter myself I know one when I see one. There 
 are points about the poor little devil that make you pause 
 and wonder. She is asleep now ; and although she has 
 been through a great deal, I do not think you need be 
 anxious about her, I let a " vet " see her as soon as we 
 got here, and we were careful about her feed and put 
 her to bed \vdth hot-water bottles. Her feet are in a 
 shocking bad state ; the little fool came away in a pair 
 of racing shoes ; and I am not sure that the sun has not 
 caught her head a bit. But the " vet " says a night's 
 rest will do wonders. I am going to stay with her here 
 until you decide on what is to be done. Do not blame me 
 for not bringing her back. Can't very well go back on 
 my promise. P.S. — Mum's the word with the missis." 
 
 Mrs. Broke took the first opportunity of discussing 
 the contents of this letter with Broke. They had both 
 passed a peculiarly unhappy night, but this communication 
 did not bring them peace of mind. Broke read every line 
 with care and solemnity. When he returned it to her 
 after so doing, his face was the colour of the grey-tinted 
 paper on which it was written. He did not speak. 
 
 " We are dead out of luck," said his wife, looking at 
 him nervously. Of late she had learned to hold him in 
 fear. 
 
 Broke still did not speak. 
 
 " I think Charles has acted very well," she said, with 
 no attempt to conceal the anxiety of her tone. " And lor 
 once, Edmund, I do hope you will allow Charles to be a 
 
 429 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 judge. I am perfectly convinced that his attitude is the 
 right one. We have alienated the child, and if we are to 
 win her back again we can only hope to do so by exhibiting 
 the greatest care, the greatest tact, the greatest delicacy." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Broke in a husky voice. 
 
 " There is hardly a need to explain. It is easy to see 
 from the way in which Charles has worded his letter that 
 the child has refused to return." 
 
 Broke turned his grim eyes on his wife. 
 
 " You talk as though you want her to return." 
 
 " Of course — of course," she said, with a slight air of 
 bewilderment. " Of course, Edmund, we want her to 
 return." 
 
 Broke was seen to lift his head and take the limp lines 
 out of his bearing. 
 
 " You must set your mind at rest on that point. She 
 will never come oack here." 
 
 His deliberately chosen syllables arrested the blood in 
 her artenes. 
 
 " I — 1 don't understand," she said, with her hands going 
 up to her lace. 
 
 The dismal weariness in her voice was a little piteous. 
 
 Man and wife stood to confront one another like a pair 
 of phantoms who afflict each other with their presence. 
 Broke saw the look on her face, and heard the tones of her 
 voice. He laid his hand on her shoulder firmly, but with 
 a certain kindness. 
 
 " Steady, old girl," he said. 
 
 " It is a little inhuman," said the mother. There was a 
 chord in her that he heard then for the first time. 
 
 Broke waved away the accusation with his hands. 
 
 " I must decline to discuss it," he said, " in any aspect. 
 It does not admit of discussion." 
 
 But it was impossible for Mrs. Broke to deliver up this 
 second child without a struggle, a last convulsive struggle 
 of despair. The loss of her son had told on her redoubtable 
 fibres more heavily than anybody could have guessed. 
 She had to the full the female share of reverence for the 
 dictates of the male, in the things that were material, for 
 she was too wise to hold herself in any way above her 
 sex. Her intelligence was too keen to allow her to inter* 
 
 430 
 
FIRST COMEDIAN IN A HAPPY VEIN 
 
 pose it against one who had an immemorial right to use his 
 own ; but for all her Minerva-like attributes she was pre- 
 eminently a woman. She could not stand by while a 
 second child of her flesh perished before her eyes, without 
 stretching forth a hand to snatch it from the abyss. 
 
 " Edmund," said the bowed woman, clutching at a 
 table for support, "it is impossible that you can know 
 what you say. It is inhuman to punish an act of girlish 
 folly so inexorably. She is but a child. She did not know 
 what she did." 
 
 Broke made an imperious wave of the arm, as though to 
 put her off. His head was aloof, but she could discern 
 dimly that the awful clenched ashen look was in him still. 
 
 " You cannot do it, Edmund. You shall not do it. 
 Your son was of your own stuff, and it was your right to 
 deal with him as you thought proper. But you shall not 
 treat a woman in that manner ; you shall not, indeed." 
 
 Broke was like a statue. 
 
 " I claim my prescriptive right as a woman to deal with 
 my children of my own sex." 
 
 " You have no jurisdiction in a matter of this kind," 
 said Broke in a dry voice. 
 
 " Then I claim that consideration my sex is accustomed 
 to receive in civilized communities. It is an act of barbar- 
 ism to apply the same code to women as to men." 
 
 " They can be equally guilty." 
 
 " The first precept of our civilization should teach us to 
 condone their faults." 
 
 " I shall not make phrases with yon. It is enough that 
 in any circumstances I decline to condone disloyalty in 
 man or woman of my name." 
 
 " You cannot mean it, Edmund. You cannot know 
 what it involves. Whatever is to become of her ! " 
 
 Buffeted by this brutality, her strength was failing. 
 Her voice was growing high and weak. 
 
 " I have thought about that," said Broke ; " I am about 
 to write to Charles to place her in her old school at Chiswick 
 until she is of age. Until then I will maintain her there, 
 because the law requires it." 
 
 " And afterwards ? " said the wretched woman, with an 
 eagerness that sprang from an intolerable anguish. 
 
 431 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " As fax as I am concerned personally there is no after- 
 wards." 
 
 " You cannot mean that ! Surely you will then con- 
 sent to receive her again. After she has expiated her 
 offence you will take her back." 
 
 " There are offences that nothing can expiate, that 
 nothing can condone. Disloyalty is the first of them. 
 And as you force me to say it, Jane, let me tell you that, 
 if it were possible, the sex makes it the more abomin- 
 able." 
 
 " It is the savage speaking again," said the wretched 
 woman drearily. 
 
 " I can bear your taunts," said her husband. " Cowards 
 are often as quick with their tongues as they are with 
 their heels." 
 
 Mrs. Broke quivered. His dreadful unreason was un- 
 nerving her. 
 
 " It is possible even to drive a woman too far, Edmund. 
 I must warn you." 
 
 " Ha, poor fool, you threaten me ! " 
 
 His sneer turned her faithful blood into ice. 
 
 " I suppose you are aware, "he said, with a brutal absence 
 of vehemence, " that the abettors of the guilty run the 
 danger of being arraigned. You will not be wise to trespass 
 too far on your privileges. I am not a very patient man 
 when I find the very foundations of my house worm-eaten 
 and dry-rotted with treason and disloyalty. I am slow 
 to take up the knife to start cutting, but once having done 
 so you will not find me hkely to hesitate. Two pillars 
 I have removed already ; do not force me to cut away the 
 centrepiece also." 
 
 The wife of thirty years blushed a vivid colour, and re- 
 coiled from his words with horror taking her by the heart. 
 A full minute of silence passed, in which the woman of 
 ineffable wisdom and mastery fought passionately for her 
 self-control. After a frantic struggle she recovered it. 
 
 " You must please forgive me, Edmund," she said with 
 an utter humility of voice and manner, " if the words I 
 have used have been other than— than you think they 
 ought to have been. Women have not the hardihood of 
 men if you deal them blows over the heart. We are some- 
 
 432 
 
FIRST COMEDIAN IN A HAPPY VEIN 
 
 times compelled by nature to cry out a little wildly then, 
 and if you hear us you must not heed what we say." 
 
 " I — ah, forgive you," said our hero with an expansive 
 magnanimity. 
 
 That was a line generally admired by the critics in the 
 stalls of the Olympian Theatre. 
 
 " Will you not consent to receive her again ?" said the 
 unhappy woman, immediately relapsing out of the self- 
 control she had with so much difficulty imposed upon her- 
 self, now that the voice of her lord sounded once more in 
 her ears as that of the human being in whose bosom she 
 was wont to lie. 
 
 Broke had no desire to be harsh with one whom a long 
 and great experience had taught him was as faithful a 
 soul as any in the world. He summoned his habitual ten- 
 derness for her. 
 
 " My poor, old girl," he said, " why harrow your feelings 
 in this way ? You remind me of a person who has a horror 
 of death walking into the Morgue to look at it." 
 
 " Are you wholly without bowels, Edmund ? Do you 
 never forgive ? " Unrestrained nature had expelled ex- 
 pedience, and was driving her furiously again. 
 
 " You have lived with me long enough to answer that 
 question for yourself," said Broke, without resentment. 
 She was a woman and a mother after all, poor old girl ! 
 
 " It begins to seem almost," the unhappy woman went 
 on with a haggard feebleness that perfect sanity would 
 not have allowed her, " that I have been yoked all these 
 years with an ogre, a sort of inhuman monster, and I have 
 not known it. The first I could hardly bear ; the second 
 may be too much." 
 
 Broke did not look at his wife's face. Also he tried not to 
 listen to her words. It was hardly fair to her to hear 
 them ; he had a verj' chivalrous disposition. For she spoke 
 no longer as the cool and temperate woman of affairs. In 
 such a speech as this there was not a vestige to be recog- 
 nized of the suavely ordered diction, the mellow candour, 
 the amiable cynicism, the slightly inhuman wisdom of her 
 who so long had preached the world's doctrine of expedi- 
 ence. Indeed, had he been in a mood for laughter, such a 
 melodramatic change in her must have caused him to 
 
 4']?> EE 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 indulge in it. Jane in a histrionic vein was somewhat like 
 Machiavelli in a burst of confidence. 
 
 However, let others laugh at that spectacle. As a. 
 woman and a mother something was her due. And as a 
 man and a father something was as indubitably his. He 
 bled as well as she. It was his fate to be denied a recog- 
 nition of that fact, but such was the supposed austerity of 
 his sex, that he must suffer that unfairness. Women are 
 known to be unjust. The pangs of maternity may be great, 
 but are there no nerves and blood-vessels in husbands and 
 fathers by which they also can be taught to feel ? Had 
 there been no raw wounds gaping in him there might have 
 been a better hope for them both. The same guarantee of 
 a lofty disinterestedness was with him here in the case of 
 his daughter as in that of his son. As it was, his own 
 desperate pangs furnished him with the strength to bear 
 him on his course. From them he derived the vital 
 nervous force to sit down then and there and write a letter 
 of instruction to his brother-in-law. It embodied, with 
 cruel effectualness, the decree he had issued to his wife. 
 If his right hand offended, he struck it off. 
 
 He did not show this letter to the child's mother, and 
 she did not ask to see it. Concealing it in the pocket of 
 his coat, he went straight to the stables, procured a horse, 
 rode to Cuttisham, where the nearest post-office was, and 
 posted it with his own hands. 
 
 434 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 Enter a Messenger from the Courts of. 
 Hymen 
 
 IF Broke's ideal was loyalty, his instinct at the period 
 he went to wive must have been very sure and 
 remarkable. The writing and posting of this letter taxed 
 to the utmost the sovereign quality in Mrs. Broke. It 
 was a chief glory of her character, and an instance of the 
 divine patience of her sex, that, broken and shattered as 
 she was already by the incident of her son, she did not in 
 the end allow this second manifestation of her husband's 
 disposition to wrench them asunder. 
 
 It was a rather heroic devotion. From whatever 
 standpoint a woman may take her outlook on life, she 
 cannot suffer the children of her heart to be cast away 
 without nursing a bitter resentment against the instru- 
 ment of her distress, even if it happen to be Almighty 
 God. It would have been fatally easy for a smaller 
 nature, with its weakened mental forces, to break away 
 from Broke, and for its own solace repudiate those drastic 
 acts of which as husband and father he had shown 
 himself to be capable. Her instincts cried out to her to 
 denounce and put off the inhuman monster who had 
 trampled under foot her sacred maternity : her character 
 kept her staunch. The same attributes that had enabled 
 her to keep the sinking ship so long afloat came now to 
 her aid in this, the most instant crisis of her life. That 
 indomitable resolution, thrice welded in the harsh furnace 
 of necessity, rendered her strong, when every nerve cried 
 
 435 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 out that loyalty could no longer be expected, no longer 
 demanded of her. 
 
 In abiding passively by this second decree Mrs. Broke 
 saw, as in the case of the first, just one remote gleam of 
 hope. That favourite doctrine, laissez-faire, must be 
 invoked, in the hope that as time went on things might 
 follow a less inexorable trend. If Delia re-entered her 
 old school for a year or perhaps two, and atoned for her 
 misconduct by a subsequent exemplary behaviour that 
 had formerly been hers, there was still a hope, however 
 faint, that time, the healer of all wounds, might also 
 assuage the affront to her father's implacable spirit. It 
 was not yet the hour to despair of ever getting her back 
 into the fold. Her knowledge of Broke told her how 
 remote this hope was ; but at least the decree against her 
 youngest daughter could not be quite as irrevocable as 
 that against her only son. Delia had rebelled, it was 
 true, but as yet she could not be said to have done any- 
 thing that put her for ever outside the pale. 
 
 During the long week of blood and tears that followed 
 tne sending of the letter the unhappy woman was in the 
 thick of conflict. Morning, afternoon, and evening, and 
 in the long watches of the night, it was a perpetual 
 struggle of tooth and nail, yet in the end she emerged 
 victorious, but very spent and breathless and faint. 
 During that period she saw at least two letters lying 
 unopened in the handwriting of her brother addressed to 
 her husband. Broke did not show them to her, nor 
 subsequently did he allude to their contents. Valiantly 
 she strove to defeat all conjectures concerning them, 
 and by sheer force of will nearly succeeded in so doing. 
 
 It was not until nearly a fortnight had passed that the 
 matter entered a new phase. Her brother presented 
 himself in person one afternoon. She noted immediately 
 that his manner was rather more hangdog and querulous 
 than usual. Something appeared to be weighing on his 
 mind. He had the air of one who, having been com- 
 missioned to break bad news, is so oppressed with the 
 sense of his responsibility that forthwith he adopts a 
 demeanour calculated to raise extravagant fears. Pre- 
 sently, after drinking two whiskies and sodas, much 
 
 43^ 
 
A HYMENEAL MESSENGER 
 
 chewing of the straw in his mouth, much coarse lan- 
 guage, much shiftiness and irresolution, he made a pro- 
 posal that they should go into another room, as he had 
 something important to tell her. 
 
 Mrs. Broke led the way to her sitting-room. 
 
 " I'm glad Edmund ain't about," said Lord Bosket, 
 with the air of a criminal, " for I'm not quite sure 
 how he will take it, do you see ? I think it will be better 
 for you to break it to him, Jane. You understand his 
 ways more, and know him better than I do." 
 
 " What has happened ? " said his sister, already oppressed 
 by his circumlocution. 
 
 " The little filly was married this mornin'." 
 
 Mrs. Broke shuddered a little and laughed a little in 
 the same instant of time. 
 
 " What do you mean, Charles ? Explain, please." 
 
 " She was married this mornin' by special licence to 
 that writing feller ; and I've just seen 'em off to Paris 
 for the honeymoon. From Paris they are goin' to the 
 Mediterranean, and then on to Algiers." 
 
 The weary bewilderment in the face of Mrs. Broke 
 increased rather than grew less. 
 
 " The world moves a little too fast for me just now. I 
 am out of breath with trying to keep pace with it. I — I 
 confess I don't quite know where I am." 
 
 " Of course you will say it is all my doing," said Lord 
 Bosket gloomily. " But I couldn't hold that little filly. 
 She took her head right away from the start. Twice I 
 wrote to Edmund after that pretty letter he sent me to 
 tell him that there was not much chance of my bein' 
 able to carry it out, but he didn't trouble to reply. 
 Besides, I don't mind tellin' you, Jane, that I didn't 
 mean to carry it out. I thought that letter was the 
 rottenest ever written. I had not the heart to show 
 it to the poor little gell." 
 
 Mrs. Broke looked at her brother with a faint tinge of 
 horror in her scarlet face. 
 
 " Did you see that letter, Jane ? " 
 
 " No, Charles, I did not ; but I was aware of the 
 contents." 
 
 " Oh ! Well, my gell, I don't think I should be proud 
 
 437 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 of knowin* 'em if I were you. You ought to be ashamed 
 of yourselves, both of you, for sendin' a letter like that to 
 a poor little gell at her time of life.'^ 
 
 Lord Bosket concluded his observations with a sudden 
 heat. 
 
 " I don't mind tellin' you, Jane," he added, " that that 
 letter got me on the raw. I wonder if I would have 
 written a letter like that if I had had nice little fillies of 
 my own." 
 
 " Don't, Charles, please," said the unhappy woman, 
 with bowed head. " We suffered great provocation." 
 
 " Provocation be damned. Tell her to come back, 
 and promise her a good hidin' when she does come ; or 
 fetch her yourself, and see that she gets one ; but there 
 is no need to tell the poor little gell that she has ceased 
 to be your daughter. But mind you, Jane, that wasn't 
 you. I'll lay a thousand to five that that was Edmund. 
 I've always said that Edmund can' be an awful swine 
 when he likes." 
 
 " We were very much upset, Charles, when that letter 
 was written," said his sister weakly. She endeavoured to 
 associate herself with the offending document for her 
 husband's credit. She did not succeed. 
 
 " Upset ! " said Lord Bosket contemptuously. 
 " Upset ! But don't tell me that you had a hand in 
 it. You had not, my gell. You could not ha' written 
 that letter, any more than I could myself. It ain't 
 in you. It was Edmund, the ugly brute. I expect 
 he'll be a tearin' lunatic when he hears about this 
 mornin's performance. It's lucky I've not got to tell him. 
 But mind you, Jane, I believe it is for the best. The 
 thing was done accordin' to Cocker, mind you. I gave 
 the little filly away myself, and saw 'em off from Victoria 
 afterwards. And they are not goin' to starve. I saw 
 that Porter feller once or twice in the paddock before 
 the event, and everything was settled accordin' to the 
 card." 
 
 " Am I to take it from you, Charles, that you aided 
 and abetted them ? " said Mrs. Broke in a bewildered 
 tone. 
 
 " You can take it from me, my gell, just as you damn 
 438 
 
A HYMENEAL MESSENGER 
 
 please. 1 suppose there will be another " Scene in the 
 House " now I've dens it, but if I was to say I was sorry 
 I should be lying. It wasn't impulse, mind you ; I 
 looked at the matter all ways on, and came to see that 
 the best thing I could do was to give 'em a leg up. Edmund 
 would not have the poor little gell back, and in all my born 
 days I have not seen a pair cut out so pretty for double, 
 harness. Nice pair — very. And if I know anything, 
 those two young devils were not goin' to stand any of 
 our nonsense. Talk about fire. I never saw anything 
 to touch 'em ! I'll lay a thousand to five they would 
 ha' started bucking if I had tried coercion. Once they 
 were together I don't see what was goin' to hold 'em. 
 
 " There was the law," said Mrs. Broke. 
 
 " So there was. Funny I didn't think of that. But 
 it makes no odds. You and Edmund and me and all the 
 judges on the bench would not ha' held 'em at the 
 finish. If I know anything of bosses, they are a pair of 
 customers, those two. They would ha' been at home on 
 any course you liked to put 'em. They'd ha' gone 
 over timber and taken the water, they would. From the 
 time I first saw our little tit on that heap of stones, it 
 was a moral that once she had started there would be 
 no gettin' her back again to the post. She would ha' 
 died first. I've seen some rum women in my time, Jane, 
 but never one to touch her. And for that matter I might as 
 well tell you that Edmund could ha' saved himself the 
 trouble of writin' that letter. It was a thousand to five that 
 his little gell would never trouble him again. I thought 
 at first, don't you know, that she was so obstinate because 
 she was done up ; but the next mornin', when she had 
 put in a sound night's rest and she got up in her right 
 mind, do j^ou know what she said ? I suppose I had 
 better not tell you." 
 
 " I should prefer to know, Charles." 
 
 " Well, says our little Miss Broke, ' God may forgive 
 him, but I never will ! ' meanin' her father. It was said 
 in cold blood, mind you. Pretty good, that, for a bit 
 of a thing not out of her teens, and not much bigger than 
 a brown mouse. She was as quiet and soft about it as 
 you please : no tears, no fuss, no no thin'. Somehow, 
 
 439 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Jane, that got home on me. A damned rotten thing to 
 say, what ? There's a bit of Edmund himself in her." 
 
 A look of wan terror had come into the face of Mrs. 
 Broke. There was no need for her brother to strike that 
 analogy ; the wife and mother had already struck it 
 for herself. 
 
 " Queen Elizabeth," she said, trying a laugh. 
 
 Her attempt, however, was such a ghastly performance 
 that it merely served to emphasize the poignant horror in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " I'm not sure, Jane," said her brother, " that I would 
 not rather have had that old hag to deal with than little 
 Miss Delia Broke. She's a record. If she made a row 
 and howled a bit, you would know better where you were. 
 But, bless you, she is as demure as a harlot at a christen- 
 ing all the holy time ; and the moment you take a look 
 at those eyes of hers, somehow you know you are done. 
 Blood's a rum thing. That Httle gell puts you in mind 
 of Roman martyrs, and that class of people. Sort of 
 reminds you, don't you know, of Boadicea, Godiva, 
 Joan of Arc, and that crowd. I call her as pretty 
 a bit o' stuff as ever I saw, but I don't crave to have the 
 handlin' of her, thank you. All the same, runaway or 
 no runaway, I shouldn't disown her if I was her papa." 
 
 " I suppose, Charles, we ought to be very much in- 
 debted to you for the time you have bestowed upon her 
 affairs, and the trouble to which you have been put," 
 said Mrs. Broke, striving to re-assume her armour of suave 
 practical matter-of-fact. It was a difficult process, but 
 the valiant woman got it on somehow. " I am sure, 
 Charles, you have acted for the best. If you had not 
 gone after her so promptly I shudder to think what might 
 have happened to a penniless and distraught creature 
 like that, alone in London." 
 
 " I can tell you," said her brother, with grim brevity. 
 " There would ha' been the body of a little gell to identify — ■ 
 found dead on a doorstep in the Charing Cross Road 
 at one in the mornin'." 
 
 " I must ask you to spare my feelings, Charles," said 
 his sister, shuddering at this realism. 
 
 " You didn't spare that poor little gell's, none of you," 
 
 440 
 
A HYMENEAL MESSENGER 
 
 said Lord Bosket, with a gloomy indignation again appear- 
 ing in him. 
 
 " I should have come to relieve you of the charge of 
 the child immediately," said Mrs. Broke, " had not Edmund 
 proved so unreasonable. And had I come I am afraid 
 I could have done no good. But tell me, Charles, this 
 man. Porter, what opinion did you form of him ? " 
 
 " I have already given you my opinion of him, my 
 gell." • 
 
 " Do you not think you might be a little more explicit 
 in — in the Hght of what has happened ? " 
 
 " Well, I went to see him at the office of his paper. I 
 daresay you will be interested to know, my gell, that he 
 had still got a tidy-sized mark on his forehead, but that 
 he had had his front teeth put in again. And it didn't 
 take long for me to grant him a licence. A very straight- 
 forward, honest, unassuming feller he seemed to be to 
 me, and anxious to run straight. He didn't allude to 
 that little occurrence, naturally ; but somehow he had 
 not the air of a man who carries a grievance, and as soon 
 as I saw that, I chalked him up a mark. Give me the 
 feller who can take a good hidin', whether he's deserved 
 it or not." 
 
 Mrs. Broke winced. 
 
 " And it struck me, Jane, that he had got a mind of his 
 own, had that feller. He said he should stand by her 
 whatever happened now that she had come to him. I 
 gave him another mark for that. Grit, my gell. He 
 said he had no wish to put himself in the wrong in the 
 eyes of the law, but law or no law, he was goin' to stand 
 by her. I must say I liked the style of the feller alto- 
 gether. Nothin* fussy, nothin' high-falutin', but straight 
 as daylight, and as smart as blazes. I came away with 
 the feelin' that things were pannin' out better than we 
 could have hoped." 
 
 " Did he strike you as a gentleman, Charles ? " 
 
 " Wish I was as good a one," said our friend gloomily. 
 
 " I mean, Charles, in a conventional sense." 
 
 " He's not one of the haw-haw brigade, if that's 
 "what you mean. And I've seen bosses cut prettier in 
 the jib. But he's one to be reckoned with in any com- 
 
 441 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 pany. I don't remember to have met one so thorough. 
 I'd ha' trusted him with one of my own. And, mind you, 
 I went to him right up to the muzzle in prejudice." 
 
 " I suppose you know he is the son of a bookseller at 
 Cuttisham ? " 
 
 " Very creditable to the booksellers of Cuttisham if 
 that is so. If they can produce that sort they are a fine 
 body." 
 
 " But, my dear Charles ! " 
 
 " There's no * my dear Charles ! ' about it. Let every 
 tub stand on its own bottom, I say. When you meet a 
 dam fool, give him the order of the boot ; when you meet 
 a wise man, you can kindly remove your hat. And 
 I'll lay a monkey to nothing you'll want a new toe- 
 cap before you've worn out the brim of your Lincoln 
 and Bennett. If I felt myself to be the equal of that 
 feEer, I should hold up my head a bit higher than I do 
 at present, I don't mind tellin' you." 
 
 " I am a little astonished by the idealist picture you 
 paint of him, my dear Charles." 
 
 " No need to be, my gell. I've seen him not once or 
 twice, mind you, but a dozen times. I think I'm a bit 
 of a judge of a boss, but I never ran over the points of 
 one that had got to carry my racin' colours like I did his. 
 One of your solid sort, who are all hone and brain and guts. 
 You don't think, Jane, do you, that I should ha' handed 
 our little gell to a feller that I wouldn't back to my last 
 ' lord o' the manor ' ? " 
 
 " I do not, Charles. I do you that justice." 
 
 " Very good of you, I'm sure. But, in my opinion, 
 they will be about the best mated pair in England. They 
 are made for one another, you might say, like a cup and 
 saucer. In my judgment, that little filly of ours wants 
 a man of that sort, or none. A common feller, with no 
 mind and no character, would not do for her." 
 
 " And he can afford to maintain her, Charles ? " 
 
 " He has fourteen hundred a j-ear of his own, roughly 
 speaking, and I hear he is a risin' man. His chief tells 
 me that before long the world is goin' to hear from him. 
 In the meantime I have fixed another five hundred a year' 
 on the little filly m}self, just to keep 'em from starvin'. 
 
 442 
 
A HYMENEAL MESSENGER 
 
 I knew Edmund couldn't, and if he could he wouldn't." 
 
 Mrs. Broke was touched by this concrete example of 
 her brother's goodness of heart. 
 
 " I don't know how we can thank you, Charles, for all 
 you have done," she said humbly. " You have always 
 been the truest friend we have had. There seems no 
 end to your kindnesses." 
 
 " Tut, tut," said her brother, with a shght display of 
 uneasiness, " no need to go into trifles. It is no more 
 than anybody else would ha' done in the circumstances. 
 They might ha' stopped short of the ceremony, I daresay 
 they would ; but let folks say what they like, I am con- 
 vinced it will turn out sound." 
 
 Lord Bosket rose to go. As he was taking his depar- 
 ture he encountered Broke, who was coming across the 
 hall. Their usual informal greetings were exchanged. 
 It then struck Lord Bosket with surprise that his brother- 
 in-law refrained from alluding to the subject which had 
 dominated his own thoughts for a fortnight past. So 
 great was his rehef at thus providentially finding himself 
 in a position to avoid this topic, that, on his own part, he 
 studiously refrained from making a reference to it. All 
 the same, it was very singular that Edmund should omit 
 to speak of it in any way. However, as Lord Bosket 
 proceeded to pass out at the door, he turned back to say 
 over his shoulder — 
 
 " By the way, Edmund, you had better go and have a 
 word with Jane. She has got something to tell you." 
 
 Delia's cunning uncle then disappeared through the 
 door hastily, lest her father should recall him to explain 
 what the something was. 
 
 Broke did not go to his wife there and then. He had 
 no doubt the matter could wait until he had laid his mind 
 at rest on a point in turnips which he had pledged himself 
 to look up in a back number of the Field. Having con- 
 vinced himself after researches lasting nearly an hour 
 that the Field of the year before last said just what he 
 thought it did say, although he had not been absolutely 
 sure, he went to ask his wife what she wanted. 
 
 When he confronted her he was rather surprised by the 
 amount of emotion that wns for once reflected in her 
 
 443 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 impassive face. It would have been hard to find an 
 obtuser person than he, but the change that had been 
 taking place in her recently could not escape even his 
 perfunctory eyes. 
 
 " Charles said you had something to tell me." 
 
 " I wanted to tell you that Delia married that man 
 this morning." 
 
 She made her announcement without an instant of 
 preface. 
 
 He received it with the blankest indifference. The 
 news elicited no spark of recognition. 
 
 His wife could hardly dissemble her astonishment. She 
 had looked for a repetition of some kind at least of the some- 
 what distressing scene that followed a similar announce- 
 ment in the case of Billy. But Broke stood stohd and 
 impregnable. He paid no more heed than if he had not 
 heard a word she said. Her immediate feeling was that 
 of relief, although even as it regaled her there was the 
 consciousness that his attitude was uncanny. 
 
 "I hope, Edmund," she said 'anxiously, nervously, 
 " that you view it in the same light I do myself. I believe 
 it to be rather providential. The child has made a hope- 
 less mess of her life, but I am not sure that when all is 
 said she has not patched it up as well as could be expected. 
 Charles quite thinks so. Indeed, he has helped rather 
 activelv to bring it about. The man has earned his entire 
 confidence, and I think, Edmund, we must allow that 
 Charles, with all his foibles, is quite a shrewd judge of 
 character. Charles has behaved most handsomely. He 
 has given the child five hundred a year for herself ; and 
 the man, I understand, has fourteen hundred a year of 
 his own, and excellent prospects." 
 
 Broke stood immovable as granite. Deliberately he 
 was not hearing a word she was uttering. He suppressed 
 a yawn with his hand. Mrs. Broke having lost her initial 
 sense of relief, was now afflicted severely with this attitude. 
 She would almost have preferred a scene. 
 
 " I hope you recognize, Edmund," she said, with a 
 stranqe solicitude, " how essential all this is to the welfare 
 of the child." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Broke. " I recognize nothing 
 444 
 
A HYMENEAL MESSENGER 
 
 of the matter. It does not interest me. It was closed 
 a fortnight ago, and in any circumstances it cannot be 
 re-opened." 
 
 ' ' But, Edmund " 
 
 Broke cut her down with his hand. 
 
 " I shall be glad, Jane, when you bring yourself to 
 feel that that is the case. It is futile, a waste of our time, 
 for you to attempt to re-open a subject that is closed 
 once and for all." 
 
 " But, Edmund ! " 
 
 "Is this all you wish to speak to me about ? " 
 
 " It is," said his wife. She was cut to the heart. 
 
 Broke sauntered out of the room in the leisurely manner 
 in which he had entered it. 
 
 445 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 The Lady Bosket at Home 
 
 ON quitting his sister, Lord Bosket went to his country 
 seat, some five miles from Covenden. He had been 
 absent a fortnight ; and leaving London that morning 
 he had gone direct to the distressed family of Covenden. 
 The man and the clothes he had telegraphed for after his 
 unpremeditated excursion to town had been sent on in 
 advance. No sooner did he arrive at Hipsley in his own 
 person that afternoon, than the butler greeted him. 
 
 " Her ladyship told me to say, my lord, that she wished 
 to see 5^ou the moment you returned. She is in her study, 
 my lord." 
 
 In the impassive person who made this announcement. 
 Lord Bosket's grunt did not cause an inch of eyebrow to 
 be displaced. Nor did his long-drawn whistle produce a 
 visible emotion in that implicit breast. 
 
 " How's her plumage, Paling ? " 
 
 " Standing up, my lord." 
 
 "What ho! You had better get me a whisky-and-soda, 
 then, before I go and face the music." 
 
 A little afterwards, reinforced by this elixir. Lord Bosket 
 betook himself to the study of the gifted lady. She was 
 discovered seated in a revolving chair before a desk, writing 
 copiously on blue foolscap with a feathered quill. At a 
 side table, a sort of annexe to the Mount Parnassus where 
 sat the child of the gods, the daughter of the Muses, was 
 seated a second lady severe of years, of aspect also, a 
 spinster by force of circumstances, and a typewriter by 
 inclination tempered with necessity. She was in the 
 pursuit of her calling even now. A Remington machine 
 
 446 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 was clucking oat into a fair copy the pellucid lines of 
 Love Eclectic : a Sonnet Cycle, immediately antecedent to 
 its being given to the slow-breathing peoples of the earth 
 in nine monthly magazines at once, by special arrangement, 
 and countless baser newspapers ; afterwards to be bom 
 again, like a second Peleus, in the buckram and large paper of 
 the higher grove of the birds of song. 
 
 The utterer of these winged words, whose destiny it was 
 to cleave the airs of our time with fragrance, having con- 
 cluded this important contribution to the heritage of man, 
 was now engaged in writing a short essay, ycleped An In- 
 quiry into the Decay of Feeling. Its avowed purpose was 
 to keep a light burning in these dark days of Brutality and 
 Mammon. The literary ideal it set before itself was to 
 mingle the culture of Old Greece with the human sim- 
 plicity of the New Testament. It had already achieved 
 the feat of exciting a substantial cheque on account from 
 the syndicate which had purchased the serial rights beiore a 
 line had been written. 
 
 Beside the elbow of the gifted lady was a feminine peri- 
 odical written exclusively by Peeresses for the perusal of 
 Ladies who had been presented at Court, and Gentlewomen 
 of the Upper Middle Classes. On the cover was the picture 
 of a Crowned Head in colours. The Crown had been re- 
 produced with a fidelity never attempted before. By a 
 triumph of lithography, every stone in it received its value, 
 and shone with the greatest authenticity. A free copy of 
 the magazine had been graciously accepted by the Crowned 
 Head in question. And so lavish were its proprietors in 
 the lures with which they ravished the eyes of the public, 
 that, as if this fact was not enough in itself to exhaust the 
 first edition on the day of publication, there was displayed 
 on the top of the cover, in a type sufficiently bold to cause 
 the hesitating purchaser instantly to resolve her doubts, 
 the legend : " The Lady Bosket at Home, by One who 
 Knows Her, page 340." 
 
 A reference to the page in question set forth, under the 
 general title of " Illustrated Interview No 12," many sur- 
 prising and memorable details of the home life of the writer 
 of Poses in the Opaque. Not only was she the first poetess 
 and authoress of her time from the point of view of an 
 
 447 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 unimpeachable distinction, but it was also her pri\41e.cfe 
 to sit in the peeresses' Gallery of the House of Lords. To 
 be sure, there had been others, but, incredible as it might 
 appear, even wearers of the strawberry leaf were not en- 
 dowed so unmistakably with the authentic thrill as the 
 Lady Bosket. The husband of the gifted lady, said our 
 enthusiastic periodical, was also a gentleman of exemplary 
 life and the highest culture, widely known and deeply 
 respected, even by Royalty Itself, a generous patron of the 
 Turf, a member of the Jockey Club, and a popular and ac- 
 comphshed Master of Hounds. 
 
 It appeared that in the singularly beautiful home-life 
 of this great and good lady her humility was in a nice pro- 
 portion to her gifts. Her tastes were as simple as they were 
 refined. She had a predilection for blue china and black 
 letter, white muslin and green tea. It was a popular fallacy 
 to suppose that that exquisite utterance, " Home is the 
 woman's sphere," was out of the Poses, in the same way 
 that it was to suppose that " God tempers the wind to the 
 shorn lamb " was out of the Bible ; but it belonged to her 
 in a higher and more special sense, because of the serene 
 and unfailing manner in which she sustained the domestic 
 character. She had made it her own. The sacredness 
 of the home was so immune in her keeping, that in the time 
 to come the beautiful phrase quoted above must become 
 irrevocably identified with her name. It was the very 
 marrow of her writings, the true inwardness of her teach- 
 ing. It was the sacred fount, the well-spring, whence 
 gushed the pure solace of many a humble hearth. 
 
 As befitted the transcendent genius of one " who had 
 become a classic in her own life-time" — the phrase is that 
 of one of the weekly journals of critical and literary opinion 
 whose privilege it was to extol her works — the definitive 
 edition of the collected writings of Emma, Lady Bosket, 
 the Hipsley edition of the publishers' announcements, 
 stood on the side table in twelve majestic tomes. On the 
 virgin front of each was stamped a monogram and crest. 
 Withm was a full-length photogravure of the gifted lady, 
 in the coronet and ermine robe worn by peeresses on the 
 occasions of an organized display. Each volume was further 
 equipped with an introduction from the pen of a purveyor 
 
 448 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 of prefaces to the new editions of the classic authors. There 
 was also an additional volume uniform with the above. 
 An Appreciation, by a foremost person of the other sex. 
 This edition in large paper was limited to two hundred 
 and fifty copies, each of which bore the autograph of the 
 authoress ; and it was understood that when that number 
 had been subscribed, the type would be distributed. Beside 
 them was laid reverently the Standard newspaper of that 
 day. 
 
 Lady Bosket had exchanged the glasses of public life, 
 for the gold pince-nez of the study. Upon the appearance 
 of our friend she resolutely rounded the period on which 
 she was engaged, and then swung round audibly in her 
 revolving chair to confront him. 
 
 " Be so good as to leave us, Mottrom," she said in her 
 most imperious key. 
 
 The thirteenth daughter of a country clergyman who had 
 been manipulating the typewriter carried the machine and 
 Love Eclectic : a Sonnet Cycle into an adjoining room. She 
 was paid by the hour ; and neither her loft^' ideal of dih- 
 gence, nor that of her employer permitted her to waste a 
 moment of her time. When our friend had closed the door 
 upon her, Lady Bosket glared upon him stonily through her 
 pince-nez. Less accustomed to their use on active service, 
 she then discarded them in favour of the more familiar 
 weapon. 
 
 " So you have condescended to come." 
 
 " Oh yes," said our friend, affecting a meek and uneasy 
 lightness of tone. 
 
 " Have you any objection to informing me where you 
 have been during the past fortnight ? " 
 
 " Town." 
 
 " That is a lie, Charles." 
 
 The delicately cut nostril quivered. The whirr of in- 
 tellectual feathers could be faintly heard. 
 
 " Beg pardon," said our friend humbly. 
 
 The uncompromising statement was repeated incisively. 
 
 " I knew you'd say that," he said, more humbly than 
 ever. " But it is God's truth." 
 
 " I must ask you, Charles, not to indulge in a profane 
 vehemence. For the third time I say it is a lie. You 
 
 449 FF 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 have not slept once at Grosvenor Street during the last 
 fortnight." 
 
 " No, I have been sta5dn* at an hotel." 
 
 " Wha-a-a-t ! " The voice of Lady Bosket ascended 
 to a scream. " You have the effrontery to tell me that 
 to my face. What do you mean by staying at an hotel 
 when there is your own house to go to ? There is only one 
 construction to be placed on such an act ; and, Charles, 
 knowing you as I do, I do not hesitate to place it upon 
 it." 
 
 Our friend was dumb before her splendid scorn of him. 
 The silver hair shook about the intellectual temples. The 
 high voice rose higher, to a wail " like the winds of March 
 among the forest trees " {Love Eclectic XIX). 
 
 " Thoroughly debased and abandoned as you are," said 
 Lady Bosket, stimulated to superior flights by the inoffen- 
 siveness of this wretched groveller, " such a behaviour 
 cannot have an iota of effect upon your reputation or your 
 character. But with me, I thank Heaven, it is not so. It 
 matters very grievously to me. In justice to many thou- 
 sands of my fellow-countrymen and fellow-countrywomen, 
 it behoves me to be jealous of the name I bear. I must 
 be watchful, Charles, that it shall not be tarnished by the 
 breath of suspicion. Do you suppose that the work to 
 which I have dedicated my life : the leavening of the lives 
 of the people of this land, and several others, the conduct 
 of them through the slough of gross and sensual darkness 
 along the paths of culture into the blaze and the ultimate 
 glory of light — do you suppose, Charles, that such aims as 
 these are to be prejudiced and retarded, and even rendered 
 impotent, by the irresponsible acts of the coarse ruffian who 
 bears my name ? " 
 
 Lord Bosket kept his hands in his pockets throughout 
 this oration, and might have been heard to be whistling 
 softly to himself in those intervals which punctuated each 
 surpassing period, wherein the speaker paused to take a 
 little breath to enter upon the next. 
 
 " You are wrong for once," he said dismally, when she 
 had rounded the last one successfully- 
 
 The cringing posture adopted by this worm among nan- 
 kind imbued the poetess with a more heroic fury. 
 
 4;"0 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 " I am wrong, ?m I ! Well, let me remind you that, when 
 you were last from home, the private detective it is my 
 custom to employ reported, Charles, that on three occasions 
 you were traced to the house of an actress in St. John's 
 Wood." 
 
 " I only went to take her a bunch of roses, and drink a 
 cup of tea. No harm in that." 
 
 " Man, do not have the effrontery to defend yourself. 
 Your very existence is an offence. The only excuse that I 
 have allowed myself for tolerating it so long has been the 
 hope, the slender hope, that force of example would bring 
 about your reform. But now I see more clearly than ever 
 that you are a lost soul. I lose heart, Charles, I lose heart. 
 A very little more, Charles, and, cost what it may to wash 
 our soiled linen in public, I shall obtain peace of mind at 
 the price of self-respect and proceed to do so." 
 
 " How much more ? " Our friend's eagerness was 
 pathetic. 
 
 " I do not choose to tell you," said his lady, nipping in 
 the bud the tender, pious hope. " I am aware that in the 
 extreme condition into which your courses have led you, 
 the withdrawal of any higher influence would be hailed as a 
 relief. But do not flatter yourself unduly. I do not 
 propose as yet to abandon you to the mire. You are an 
 offence, Charles, you nauseate ; but I will continue to 
 suffer even physical repulsion for the sake of your eternal 
 soul." 
 
 To-day the gifted lady felt herself to be in fine form. 
 She had at least two pretexts on which she could exercise 
 the highest functions of her talent. It was not always she 
 had one. But to-day there was no need to make bricks 
 without straw ; the prodigality of her grievances was a 
 little intoxicating. 
 
 In the meantime, our friend sighed. He had ceased to 
 marvel at his own patience long ago. He had come to 
 acquiesce in it as the hypochondriac acquiesces in his 
 incurable disease. 
 
 " This, however, is not the matter I wished to discuss," 
 said our agreeable woman of genius, gathering her forces 
 for a still happier excursion. For, after all, that particular 
 theme was too stale, too outworn to afford any pleasure, 
 
 451 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 beyond the opportunity it provided to display her technique, 
 rather in the fashion that your poet submits to the 
 cumbersome restrictions of rhyme. But the one she was 
 now approaching was so novel that it had been purposely 
 withheld that she might indulge in an anticipation of the 
 delights it would afford. 
 
 " Charles, I must ask you to be good enough to read this. 
 Had I not been so busy with my important work I should 
 have felt it my duty to see Jane and Edmund personally. 
 Indeed, before luncheon I sent for Jane, but at present 
 she has not thought fit to come. Still, I am inclined to 
 believe the whole thing is a horrible mistake. A painful 
 experience teaches one that compositors are so careless ; 
 although, to be sure, the Standard is usually so very 
 correct." 
 
 As she spoke, Lady Bosket picked up that pillar of the 
 Constitution reclining cheek by jowl with the Hipsley 
 edition of her works. She placed her finger on an announce- 
 ment of marriage on the front page, and ordered her 
 husband to peruse it. He read : " Porter — Broke. On 
 the i6th inst., at St. Remigius', South Kensington, by the 
 Rev. Canon J. G. Pryse-Johnson, M.A., Vicar, Alfred, eldest 
 son of Joseph Porter, Cuttisham, Parks, to Delia Mary, 
 youngest daughter of E. W. A. C. B. Broke, Esq., J. P., D.L., 
 3 Broke Street, St. James's, S.W. ; and Covenden, Cuttis- 
 ham, Parks. 
 
 Lady Bosket scrutinised eagerly the face of our friend 
 while he read this literary achievement with something 
 of the indescribable feelings of an author who for the first 
 time sees himself in the fierce glamour of print. 
 
 " It is impossible," she said, " It cannot be true, and 
 yet it is alarmingly circumstantial. And the Standard is 
 so correct as a rule. I must write to the editor, and make 
 him apologise. If any one has put a vulgar hoax upon the 
 Standard, I am sure it will do its utmost to bring the 
 perpetrator to justice." 
 
 " It don't look so bad in print after all," said the author 
 with a fine oblivion of everything but the vanity insepar- 
 able from his condition. " The Vicar and I fixed up 
 that little account ourselves, and it will be in all the London 
 papers this mornin'. The Vicar wanted to put in niece of 
 
 452 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 me and you — these parson fellers are tremendous sticklers 
 for handles and that sort of rot — but I said no. It would 
 not be fair to the little gell to have her saddled with an 
 uncle like me in a public newspaper. Might go against 
 her future. And I happen to know, missis, that neither 
 of em' was very keen on you. But still, that account looks 
 very well. And I see that they have spelt the " Pryse " 
 right ; the poor Vicar was fairly tremblin' that they would 
 spell it " p-r-i-c-e." 
 
 At this point the joint-author was stopped imperiously, 
 by the high priestess of his craft. 
 
 " Stop, Charles ! What talk is this ? What do you mean ? 
 I do not believe you are sober, Charles ? " 
 
 " Sober as a judge," said Lord Bosket earnestly. " I 
 know what I'm sayin'. I thought it best to do the thing 
 accordin' to Cocker or not at all. Now, honour bright, 
 missis, as a judge of literature, don't you think that that 
 little account looks very well in print ? " 
 
 " If you are not drunk, Charles, you must be mad. What 
 does it all mean ? Will you have the goodness to explain ? " 
 
 Our friend was not permitted to proceed very far in his 
 remarkable, but not particularly lucid statement, before 
 he was stopped again. 
 
 " Will you have the goodness to speak slowly and dis- 
 tinctly, Charles ? And have the goodness to employ as 
 little licence in your speech as possible. A little more 
 chastity and purity of expression one would welcome as an 
 aid to one's intelligence. As 1 have before had occasion to 
 remind you, the word ' filly ' is intended to signify a young 
 female horse, not a young female human being. Your 
 low stable phraseology is not only disagreeable, it is offen- 
 sive." 
 
 Lord Bosket continued his narration as best he could 
 under these hampering restrictions. Long before the end 
 of it Lady Bosket was taken aback too completely to be 
 able to impose any further checks upon his mode of ex- 
 pression. 
 
 "It is too much," she cried. " One's reason staggers. 
 What was everybody about ? WTiat were her parents 
 about ? And you, Charles ? And the child herself ? And 
 what were the police doing ? Besides, no man in his senses 
 
 453 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 would ever dare. The man must be mad. You all must 
 be mad ! No ; I will not, I cannot believe it." 
 
 She ended on a sob of angry pain, which gave her so much 
 pleasure that it might have been real. Our friend, who 
 was perhaps the tenderest-hearted man in the world — at 
 least those who knew him best were firm in that belief — 
 was touched by such a poignant distress. He had the 
 intrepidity to seek to lessen it. 
 
 " No need to take on about it, missis. It's all for the 
 best, I'm certain. Edmund said he wouldn't have her 
 back ; and she said she wouldn't go back, and meant it too. 
 She might ha' gone much farther and fared a damn sight 
 worse. Lucky little filly to get a feller like that ; though, 
 mind you, he's lucky too. She's a fine little gell." 
 
 "Charles, how dare you! Have you the effrontery to 
 stand there and tell me you are proud of your work ? " 
 
 " I ain't ashamed of it, missis," said our friend in a 
 meek voice. " I am damned if I am. If the same thing 
 happened to-morrow I should do it again. If ever two 
 beggars were made for one another in this world those 
 were the two." 
 
 " Fob ! you disgust me. Your habits have utterly 
 destroyed any little sense of decency you may have once 
 possessed. Can you be aware that this man — I will not 
 soil my lips with his name — is from behind the counter of 
 a bookseller's shop in Cuttisham." 
 
 " Devilish lucky counter to keep a man like that behind 
 it, as I said to Jane." For the first time in this interview 
 our friend evinced a spark of spirit. Attacks on his personal 
 character he had acquired the habit of accepting as a 
 matter of course, as in accordance with his merit ; but in 
 the cause of a second person, of one who had won his confi- 
 dence, he could be valiant. " Missis, what I say is this, 
 if they have got any more of that sort hidin' behind the 
 counters in the Cuttisham shops, the sooner they come from 
 behind em' the better. The country will be none the 
 worse for that sort. I'd back that feller to any amount. 
 If I'd got a little filly of my own, which I haven't and 
 never shall have, I'd trust that feller with her." 
 
 " Man, you forget yourself ! " 
 
 " Wish I could," said the man drearily. 
 
 454 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 The voice of our heroic lady had risen higher and higher 
 at these audacious speeches. Whenever her poor worm of 
 a husband showed a tendency to stand up for others, he was 
 acting on a principle that she did not understand. For 
 him to exhibit it at this of all seasons was maddening. 
 Again and again could her plumage be heard to whirr like 
 that of a covey of startled partridges. The patrician 
 features quivered, and were seen to grow distorted into 
 shapes that almost as by a miracle remained outside the 
 border-line of the plebeian. The forehead, that citadel of 
 intellectual nobility, lost its serene appearance, but yet 
 it was not sufficiently twisted to crack the enamel that 
 covered it. The regal nose was uptossed and snuffed the air, 
 but not in sufficient quantities to provoke an undignified 
 desire to sneeze. Her glasses almost forgot to be self- 
 conscious, and shook in her hand in a sublime agitation, 
 which yet contrived to enable her to round her periods 
 with strenuous magniloquence as became the author of the 
 " Poses." 
 
 "He is out of a bookseller's shop in Cuttisham," she 
 shrieked. " And you not only countenance this immoral 
 marriage, but you aid, you abet, you defend it. Have you 
 no sense of propriety, of decency, of the fitness of things ? 
 Have you no fragment left of your self-respect. Answer 
 me, man. Were you drunk when you did it ? " 
 
 " No," said the man quietly. 
 
 " I suppose there is a law in the land by which it can be 
 set aside, and the man can be imprisoned with hard labour. 
 \^Tiat are Jane and Edmund doing ? Answer me that. 
 Have they communicated with the police ? " 
 
 " No ; but they damn near had to. H I hadn't happened 
 to meet old Pearce that afternoon, they'd ha' been wanted 
 at the mortuary to identify the body of a little gell." 
 
 " Would that they had been, rather than she should have 
 cast this indelible disgrace upon her name." 
 
 " If I were you, missis, I wouldn't let anybody hear me 
 say that." 
 
 " Don't dare to talk to me, man. What is Edmund 
 doing ? " 
 
 " If you read the letter he wrote to me when she went 
 away, you wouldn't ask. He washed his hands of her at 
 
 455 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 the start. He behaved hke the swine that he can be, did 
 
 Edmund, 1 don't mind tellin' you." 
 
 " A very right and proper course for Edmund to take. 
 He at least appears not quite to have lost his head. I shall 
 make it my duty to find a law in the land to punish them 
 both. The incredible effrontery of a man I chose myself, 
 a man who owed nearly everything to my interest, that he 
 should turn round and bite the hand that fostered him ! 
 I know not whether the more to deplore his wickedness or 
 his black ingratitude." 
 
 Lord Bosket gave his shoulders a whimsical shrug. 
 
 " The man must be lost to all sense of shame. And-as. 
 for that child, she is so abandoned that I have no words in 
 which to express what I think of her. It is intolerable, 
 it is a gross outrage against our higher human instincts 
 that one of her years should wantonly bring degradation 
 on herself and worse than degradation on her family." 
 
 At this point Lord Bosket actually had the temerity to 
 shake his head, as though he ventured to dissent from the 
 views set forth with so much power and finish. He took 
 confidence from the fact that these great guns were no 
 longer trained against himself. 
 
 " Here, steady on," he suddenly interjected into the 
 middle of a particularly choice tirade. In a flash was he 
 turned upon and rent. 
 
 " You deny me the right to express my opinion, Charles," 
 she cried, " like the wind in the gables groaning " {Love 
 Eclectic XXXV). " But I will express it. Do you expect 
 me to be browbeaten by such a coarse bully as you ? I 
 despise you for what you are. The child is my niece, 
 would that she were not, and whatever I choose to think 
 of her I will say. If the inadequacy of your sense of shame 
 permits you deliberately to help her on her downward path, 
 do you suppose I will condone her or you ? I might have 
 been aware that the moment she fell into your clutches she 
 would be ruined." 
 
 " Steady on," said Lord Bosket. 
 
 An odd look had come in him suddenly. 
 
 "Do you suppose, Charles, that so coarse a ruffian as 
 yourself shall make me insensible to the conduct of one 
 so shameless and abandoned ? " 
 
 456 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 "Steady on, missis," said our friend. "Stick to me; 
 my back's broad ; and I daresay I deserve all I get. But 
 leave that little gell alone, d'ye hear, JNobody's goin' to 
 say a word against that little filly before me." 
 
 "Oh, indeed, Charles. I shall say exactly what I choose 
 of the little filly, as you term her so elegantly." The 
 sagacious lady saw where the shoe pinched. She wanted 
 to inflict pain ; and in the pleasure of the discovery of the 
 vulnerable heel of this besotted Achilles, against whom her 
 shafts were directed in vain as a rule, she was inclined to 
 exult. She had found a sure means at last of gratifying 
 her appetite. 
 
 In the meantime the uneasiness of our friend's air and 
 manner was become more visible. His customary stolid, 
 dogged, querulous look was giving way to something else. 
 His face approximated a shade nearer to the colour of the 
 tomato, if such a feat in aestheticism were possible. Some- 
 thing remarkable was showing in his furtive and uneasy 
 eye. He began to waddle up and down the carpet in his 
 agitation, a course that the very keenest of his lady's 
 barbs had failed to incite him to adopt before. Nor was 
 she slow to observe this salutary effect upon her brutalised 
 and dull-witted sot of a husband. It induced her to 
 spread her pinions wider in the rapt empyrean. She went 
 to higher flights. 
 
 Suddenly our friend stopped in his eccentric waddle, 
 and bent his head towards her with a humble, perplexed 
 attention. 
 
 " What was that you said, missis ? I didn't quite 
 catch it." 
 
 The authoress repeated the phrase syllable by syllable 
 with blistering unction. 
 
 There was a pause while our friend strove to instil its 
 meaning into his torpid understanding. He was then 
 seen to make a great effort to pull himself together. Still 
 exhibiting many tokens of an intense mental struggle, 
 our friend made a careful selection of his words, and pro- 
 ceeded to utter them with a precision that one would 
 hardly have given him the credit of being able to em- 
 ploy. 
 
 " Look you here, my good woman," he said, and his 
 457 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 fingers and face were twitching violently. " Neither you 
 nor anybody else is goin' to speak of that little gell like 
 that before me. You mark it, my good woman ; I'm 
 not goin' to stand it, d'ye see ? " 
 
 " So you choose to be impertinent, Charles," said the 
 intrepid lady, not scenting the danger that she ran. " This 
 is a new development. You coarse bully and ruffian, I 
 shall speak of her in what terms I choose." 
 
 " Oh, you will ! " said our friend, in a gloomy and pensive 
 manner, which yet left no margin for misconstruction. 
 " Now, missis, look you here, if you ain't civil I shall have 
 to smack you." 
 
 Lady Bosket paused with open mouth to gasp for breath. 
 And well she might. Such a blasphemous speech had 
 frozen the blood in those intellectual veins. The new 
 darts on her tongue refused to be shot forth. The 
 degraded worm she called husband was here in a new role 
 indeed. Never before had she seen him look thus. And 
 as for hearing him speak in that way, never, never had 
 those chaste ears been so defiled. The man must be drink- 
 ing himself mad. The flaccid, meek thing, whose name 
 she had borne all these years, on whose devoted person 
 she had been able to wreak her talents to her heart's con- 
 tent, because of the immunity conferred by his sheeplike 
 character, had, for the first time, given place to the more 
 hideous guise in which her romantic fancy had delighted 
 to clothe him that her heroic assaults might have a reason 
 to be. 
 
 Often enough she had called him a wolf, when in her 
 heart she had known him to be only a lamb. If for a 
 moment she had thought he really might be a wolf, she 
 would have known better than to make so free with the 
 opprobrious name. Had there seemed a remote chance 
 of being torn by such a terrible animal nothing would have 
 induced her to incur the risk. Physical courage and a 
 high intellectual development do not always run in double 
 harness. No sooner was it borne in upon this lady of a 
 hyper-eminent culture that the brute and the ruffian 
 meant what he said than her flag went down. 
 
 It was only for an instant, however, in the first shock 
 of disillusion. Habit is as powerful as nature. So long 
 
 458 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 had she been accustomed to wield the rod of an unquestioned 
 ascendancy over him, that at once to acquiesce in this 
 new order of things was impossible. The beast might 
 bluster ; but it was not reasonable to suppose that such a 
 sheep could stand revealed after all these years as anything 
 more fierce. He was no wolf however, he might bark and 
 growl and masquerade in grey fur. She would soon tear 
 that inane garment off him and expose the childish 
 deception. It was only Charles. 
 
 With the accession of this second and more comfortable 
 thought, our gifted lady raised her glasses slowly and 
 majestically and went with a splendid deliberation to 
 a doom that was invested with something of pathos by 
 the complete unconsciousness in which she was clad as she 
 embraced it. 
 
 " Charles, I regret to find that you are under the influ- 
 ence of drink. But you are not to suppose that your 
 Hooliganism wUl divorce me from a sense of my duty in 
 this case. Every word I have uttered in regard to that 
 abandoned creature I am prepared to re-affirm. She is 
 as great a disgrace to her sex as you are to yours." 
 
 " Very good," said our friend, " now you get a damned 
 good hidin'." 
 
 Before the astounded lady could realise what was taking 
 place, the sheep under the wolfskin had made a grab at 
 her desk, and seized the manuscript of the Inquiry into 
 the Decay of Feeling, had torn it into a hundred pieces 
 and distributed them all over the carpet. His next act 
 was to turn to the side table, and at one fell swoop to 
 knock off the entire Hipsley Edition of her Collected Works. 
 For quite a minute he played football with these chaste 
 volumes about a room that was overburdened with rare 
 articles of furniture. The volume containing the imperish- 
 able " Poses " themselves he kicked through the very 
 centre of a magnificent mirror in occupation of the mantel- 
 piece, whereon it fell from its full height and was dashed 
 in a thousand fragments on the tiles of the hearth. Many 
 articles of priceless old china, Sevres vases, and wonderful 
 cameos came to destruction on those same relentless tiles. 
 He then turned his attention to an old cabinet, beautiful 
 and rare, that stood in a corner, overturned it completely, 
 
 459 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and in the process innumerable knick-knacks, souvenirs 
 from admirers in all quarters of the world, and many ob- 
 jects of vertu suffered damage of an irreparable nature. 
 Not here, however, did the debacle end. The sheep under 
 the wolfskin was further inflamed by the sight of a full- 
 length oil-painting by a Royal Academician of the authoress 
 of the " Poses " in a coronet and robe, which hung in a 
 massive gilt frame on the wall opposite that noble ruined 
 mirror, wherein the subject of this free adaptation of her 
 patrician features was wont to gaze, to enjoy the pleasure 
 of contemplating herself from the several points of view 
 of the ideal and the real at one and at the same time. This 
 rococo performance was plucked from its place of honour 
 and hurled with a reverberating crash through the middle 
 of a stained glass window, designed by a second alumnus 
 of Burlington House, into the conservatory behind. 
 
 The sheep under the wolfskin then turned his attention 
 to the authoress of Poses in the Opaque. She was dis- 
 covered to be cowering in a corner of the room, trembling 
 with terror. She was too frightened to cry out. So little 
 was she fitted by nature to cope with crises of *his kind, 
 that at this moment she could neither think, act, nor utter 
 any sort of vocal protest whatever. Her glasses had 
 fallen to the ground, and had already been trampled out of 
 recognition under the hoofs of the monster. 
 
 " Now then, missis," said our friend, still in the 
 gloomy and pensive manner in which he had wrecked the 
 room, " You've got to have it. Come out o' that." 
 
 He took our gifted lady by the hair and proceeded to 
 drag her out of her refuge. In the act the major portion 
 of it, in the form of a toupee, came away in his hand. He 
 then administered a smack with his open palm, not on the 
 authentic part, but on one side of the head, and then one 
 on the other, not very hard, but rather in the pensive and 
 disinterested manner that he would have bestowed a 
 similar correction on a puppy who had been guilt}' of a 
 misdemeanour. 
 
 " Damn it, missis, you deserve a lot more than that," 
 he said, thoughtfully, after this discipline had been 
 administered. 
 
 Hut as the humane reader will not need to be told, the 
 460 
 
THE LADY BOSKET AT HOME 
 
 cultivated creature suffered intensely. The first of these 
 rather formal and perfunctory strokes shook her to the 
 centre of her intellectual being ; at the second she 
 sank to her knees among the debris, and proceeded 
 in abject terror to swoon at the feet of her lord. 
 
 By the time the horrified clergyman's daughter in the 
 next room had summoned the necessary degree of courage 
 to invade the riot, it was an extraordinary scene that re 
 warded her hardihood. The temple of the Muses had 
 suffered earthquake and eclipse : but that was not the most 
 memorable part of the spectacle provided for her. The 
 husband of " the most distinguished woman of our time" 
 was seen to be supporting his fainting lady on his knee. 
 He was fondling her hands and addressing terms of en- 
 dearment to her, while she, poor soul, lay in his arms 
 panting, and sobbing, and clinging to them, with a face 
 dissolved in tears. 
 
 " Dry your eyes, missis," he was saying in tender accents. 
 " Be a good old missis in the future, and it sha'n't happen 
 to you any miore. You are not hurt, you know ; I hardly 
 touched you. If you had had your rights, you know, you 
 would ha' got a lot more than that. But a kiss now, missis, 
 and we will call the account square. Dry your eyes, poor old 
 thing. Miss Mottrom, ring the bell, and we will get the 
 poor old gell a cup of tea. She's a bit upset." 
 
 " N-n-no," moaned the tearful lady. " D-do not ring 
 Mottrom. I — I am not fit to be seen in this state. N- 
 nobody must know of what has happened. It would 
 be too scandalous. I — I shall be recovered presently." 
 
 We must leave the tearful lady to recover by degrees in 
 the tender and affectionate arms of her lord, who in the 
 meantime is diligently bathing her temples in eau de 
 cologne. 
 
 461 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 In which Mr. Breffit the Younger puts a 
 Hyphen to his Name 
 
 IT was in the middle of August that the arrangement 
 was made by which Harriet was to be given in marriage 
 to John Henry Clapham Raynes, tenth Duke of Wimbledon. 
 Broke' s opposition was instinctive rather than reasonable, 
 tacit rather than expressed. There were points where 
 expedience merged itself into duty. The match could 
 never have the sanction of his heart, but in the present 
 state of his affairs it might contribute in a substantial sense 
 to their well-being as a family. And it was the first doc- 
 trine he held, the one to which he clung with a tenacity 
 that made it sacred, the one to which the long line of his 
 name had clung before him, that each individual member 
 of the clan to which they had the honour to belong must 
 sink their personal interests, their private desires in the 
 common weal of that splendid institution. 
 
 In a sense this proposed marriage also went against 
 the humane judgment of Mrs. Broke. But necessity 
 did much to soften her scruples. The child would 
 be provided for for life, in a sufficiently handsome 
 manner ; and at whatever cost to the child herself, 
 here was a consideration that must be allowed to stand 
 foremost. They were all going to beggary together. It 
 would be little less than a crime to cast away any 
 additional chance of keej^ng a roof over their heads. In 
 the matter of young Breffit this austere practical wisdom 
 
 462 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 made her almost equally insistent. In that case, however, 
 Broke's prejudices were not to be overborne. Even 
 Expedience was powerless before them. 
 
 Harriet was selected after the arrangement itself had been 
 made. The duke was given carte blanche. He had only 
 five to choose from, it was true, now that Delia was no longer 
 included in the fold. But the noble suitor evinced no bias 
 in favour of any particular one. One was as good as 
 another in his impartial view. It savoured of an act of 
 supererogation invidiously to select. One and all were 
 equally healthy, equally homely. Was it not almost too 
 much to ask that from among such a wealth of material 
 he should make up his mind and choose for himself ? In 
 the end, finding the task of selection to be beyond his 
 powers, he invoked the aid of the president of their des- 
 tinies. 
 
 " My dear friend," he asked huskily, " which would you 
 recommend ? They all appear so worthy, but I cannot 
 take five, can I ? " 
 
 " Not in civilized England, my dear Harry. Have you 
 not, may I ask, a slight predilection in favour of any par- 
 ticular one ? " 
 
 " No, alas ! " 
 
 " Surely one among them is able to impose her person- 
 ality upon you in some slight peculiar way." 
 
 " No, indeed." 
 
 " How extravagantly unimpressionable, my poor dear 
 boy I Cannot you concede something to the feelings of 
 a mother ? " 
 
 " They are all so much alike," he said plaintively. 
 
 " Can you not distinguish between their hair, or their 
 eyes, or their height, my dear Harry ? Surely the contour 
 of one amongst so many must have established some 
 slight sense of urecedence in your mind. Shut your eyes, 
 my dear boy, and try to summon one." 
 
 " If I shut my eyes they do not come at all. My dear 
 friend, I implore you to make a suggestion. The first 
 name you give I will accept." 
 
 Mrs. Broke laughed smoothly. 
 
 " But surely, surely the suggestion should come from 
 you. We women, you know, are so sentimental in these 
 
 4651 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 matters. We are ever seeking to pluck the dragon's tooth 
 of sentiment out of our garden, but it seems hopeless to 
 destroy the horrid crop of fetishes that has been borne 
 upon it. Sex is a strange thing ; ours, my dear Harry, will 
 insist even at this time of day upon investing the institution 
 of matrimony with a certain amount of emotion. You are 
 acquainted with their names. Observe the propriet cs by 
 uttering one yourself, as haphazard as you please, and she 
 is yours." 
 
 It was the duke's turn to laugh now. He did, with a 
 wheeziness that robbed the act of its spontaneity. But 
 the baffling nature of the matter was expressed by a mild 
 light of humour in his face. Still, there was also his grand 
 hereditary anxiety to observe the proprieties. 
 
 " One wants to do the right thing, you know ; one must 
 always do the right thing, musn't one ? I would wish to 
 avoid the conviction that the selection is arbitrary. Surely, 
 my dear friend, as their mother, you can establish a claim 
 for one of them, by suggesting some little point of priority." 
 
 " In the matter of good looks, my dear Harry, I do not 
 think there is a pin to choose between them. They are 
 all equally distinguished by their absence. If we were at 
 the trouble to survey the area of their noses I am sure they 
 would all be found to be cf equal dimension. In the colour 
 of their eyes, their height, the hue of their skins they do 
 not differ. If we were at the trouble to count the number 
 of hairs that adorn their heads, I do not doubt that they 
 would be found to tally to a unit. There are their ages, 
 of course. Fortunately they were not all born on the 
 same day." 
 
 " But I confess it does not seem quite the right thing to 
 make that distinction. I might take the eldest, or I 
 might take the youngest, but is not that just the con- 
 tingency that a sensitive person like myself would wish to 
 avoid ? I would like to find a more adequate reason for 
 imposing captivity upon the eldest beyond the fact chat 
 she was the first to enter the world. I should take comfort 
 from such a reason if it could be found. I should not like 
 to feel that the disabilities of the first-born, under which 
 I labour myself, had been invested at my hands with an 
 additional gravity." 
 
 464 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 " Your scruples do you honour, my dear Harry, but in 
 this case I confess they are uncomfortable." 
 
 " I feel that I must do the right thing. Ha ! I have an 
 expedient. Suppose we place the names of the sacred five 
 in a hat, and draw out one ? Their chances of escape will 
 then be equal ; and our choice will also be dignified, as it 
 were, with the official sanction of Providence." 
 
 " Is not your ingenuity a little grotesque ? I am sure 
 it is calculated to strike a death-blow to the sentiment 
 of the feminine heart ; but I am afraid I can suggest no 
 more poetic remedy." 
 
 It was by this process of selection that Harriet became 
 the favoured njmiph. 
 
 " Ah — Harriet is her name I see," said the noble vale- 
 tudinarian, unfolding the slip of paper he had picked out 
 wearily — the young-old man was quite worn out by the 
 mental strain involved by these anxieties. " I like her 
 name. I once had an old nurse whose name was Harriet, 
 the kindest old soul I ever knew. Why did I not think of 
 her? She would have resolved at once our sentimental 
 difficulty." 
 
 " Fortunately the inspiration does not come too late," 
 said Mrs. Broke with her mild laugh. " Chance having 
 decreed in Harriet's favour, the choice can still have the 
 cachet of your tender regard for your old nurse. The 
 dear, devoted old thing ! I declare I have fallen in 
 love myself with her fragrant memory. The associa- 
 tions clinging about her name must be ever incomparably 
 tender. If you will kindly ring the bell, Harry, you 
 shall see the bride-elect." 
 
 " Not to-day, I think, if you please," said Harry. " I 
 fear I have gone through too much already. I cannot 
 stand excitement now." 
 
 "I would like the child to make your acquaintance 
 under these conditions, my dear Harry, if you do not mind. 
 I cannot help thinking it would be wise for her to see you 
 at your worst, my poor dear boy. • So wonderfully and 
 fearfully are we women put together, that I believe she 
 would be the more sensible of your apj^eal. The more 
 fragile the flower the more we cherish it. I confess, Harry, 
 that it is against my preconceived opinions for matrimony 
 
 4^5 GG 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to be graced at the altar by the sacred flame of love ; but in 
 the case of your nuptials, my poor dear boy, I am prepared 
 cheerfully to waive them. Indeed, in the special circum- 
 stances I am woman enough to hanker after something of 
 the kind. It would indeed be a piquant termination to a 
 romantic episode. You pull the name of your duchess 
 out of a hat, and forthwith she prostrates herself to worship 
 you for yourself alone. And again it is the way of our sex. 
 The probabilities are that had you laid your heart and for- 
 tune at her feet in the time-honoured manner of Mr. Mudie, 
 she would probably have trampled upon both. Really, 
 my poor dear boy, as you sit here now you fulfil my ideas 
 exactly of the manner in which you ought to make your 
 debut before the bride-elect. You are so interesting, 
 that surely one is warranted in the anticipation of charming 
 developments of one kind or another." 
 
 Upon this excursus the bell was rung and Harriet sent 
 for. She presently appeared, perfectly simple and child- 
 ishly youthful of aspect, with a glow of health in her 
 cheeks. 
 
 " This is the child, Harry. An honest, dutiful creature, 
 with a sympathetic nature." 
 
 " Ha! how d'ye do?" said her prospective husband, 
 springing to his feet, and offering her his thin, nervous lath 
 of a hand. 
 
 Harriet accepted it with perfect gravity. In a few bold 
 and pleasantly incisive strokes Mrs. Broke outlined the 
 relation in which so recently she had come to stand towards 
 the gentleman before her. She accepted this information 
 also with a gravity that was unabated. Probably a faint 
 blush may have shown itself in her, because the thing was 
 so sudden ; she may even have been a little startled ; and 
 the large eyes she directed upon the noble valetudinarian 
 may even have had a tinge of wonder in them. But such 
 is training, and such the value of this particular disciplinary 
 system, that Harriet, observing the matter to be under 
 the aegis of her mother, the all-powerful and all-wise, she 
 accepted the fiat as though it were a law of nature. 
 
 Daring the period interv^ening between the selection of 
 a bride for the noble valetudinarian to lead to the altar, 
 and the transaction of the thousand and one matters 
 
 466 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 necessary to enable him to do so, Broke was in Cuttisham 
 several times. On one of these occasions he observed a 
 bowed and grey-headed figure shuffling along the High 
 Street immediately in front of him. There was something 
 strikingly familiar in the back view of this object, yet at 
 that moment, with his preoccupied eyes resting only casu- 
 ally upon it, he was at a loss to know of whom it might 
 consist. The force of his recognition was almost ridiculous, 
 and yet it baffled him. When, however, it stopped and 
 turned in at the familiar doorway of Mr. Breffit's estate 
 office, the remarkable yet strangely remote likeness to his 
 old agent rushed upon him. 
 
 He desired to consult his man of business on several 
 matters. But since old Breffit had gone to live at Tufton 
 Hall he had been by no means so easy to catch as of yore. 
 It was hardly likely that he would be at his office now, for 
 Broke could not bring himself to admit that the bent 
 figure which had passed in front of him was the person he 
 wished to see. He decided, however, to go in and inquire. 
 
 He was informed that Mr. Breffit was there and would 
 see him. And the moment Broke entered the inner 
 room he was aware of the fact that the old man he 
 had failed to recognize a few minutes ago in the street was 
 he who stood before him now. 
 
 Our hero's powers of observation were pecuharly limited, 
 but he was shocked by the change in old Breffit. He had 
 last seen him at Tufton a few months ago, a hale and hearty 
 old man, with an almost boyish alertness of demeanour, 
 and a keen zest in life. There was no indication then that 
 anything ailed him. He was one whom you might point 
 to as likely to live to a hundred years old. Now, however, 
 all was changed. The old fire, the old vigour, had passed 
 out of him entirely. In lieu of the vivacious countenance 
 he was wont to present at the appearance of the first of his 
 patrons, there was only a mask that had the coldness of 
 death. In every line was the evidence of a singular 
 deterioration. The erect form, the conscious uplift of the 
 head were no more. The so-shrewd and piercing eyes were 
 bloodshot and vacillating. The hands, once so stable and 
 full of sinew, were nerveless and flabby and shook as though 
 a palsy was upon them. Every feature was weaker and 
 
 407 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 grosser, a little more lacking in intelligence and self-esteem. 
 
 Upon the entrance of Broke this travesty of a once 
 great man lurched forward to greet him, and in so doing 
 lost his balance and nearly measured his length on the 
 carpet. The table saved him. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Broke," he said in a mechanical voice, so little 
 like his habitual eager tones that his old client was shocked 
 by it. " I see it's you. Pleased to see you, sir, pleased to 
 see you. Sit down, sir, won't you ? " 
 
 The change in the old man's voice and manner was even 
 more remarkable than in his appearance. The supple, 
 ingratiating airs of former days had yielded place to a 
 thick husky indecision of speech and gesture. It occurred 
 to Broke as he looked at him that had it not been old 
 Breffit's boast that he had been a teetotaler all his life he 
 would have supposed he had been drinking heavily. 
 
 " 'Souse me, sir," said the old man, reeling before him 
 even now, " but I'm not very well. Not been at all well 
 lately, you know, sir." 
 
 " Indeed ; I am sorry to hear that. May I ask what is 
 wrong ? ' 
 
 The old man put his hand to his head with a haggard 
 expression as one who suffers an overpowering pain in his 
 brain. 
 
 " I — I don't think I quite know myself, sir," he said 
 huskily. " I — I suppose I must be breaking up." 
 
 " Surely not, my dear Breffit. Not at your time of life. 
 Why, do you know I thought when I saw you earlier in 
 the summer, that you were just the sort of man to make 
 ninety or even more. Remarkably hale and hearty you 
 were. A country life seemed the — ah — very thing for you." 
 
 " I gave up the country more than a month ago. I 
 found it did not agree with me, so I returned to Cuttisham, 
 where I was born, where I have lived all my life, and 
 where, Mr. Broke, I mean to die." 
 
 " You — ah — astonish me," said Broke, distressed by 
 that dreary tone in one of such a natural robustness. 
 " I — ah — could not have suspected that a country life 
 would disagree with anybody." 
 
 A degree of hesitation appeared in Mr. Brefiit that 
 Broke found painful to look upon. 
 
 46S 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 " Ah, sir, it is not altogether a country life that has 
 upset me. You must not think it is altogether that." 
 
 The old man seemed to be gathering his resolution to 
 add something to these words to make them plain ; but 
 as he came to the point of doing so, he stopped and 
 abruptly turned away his face. 
 
 " I am really sorry to see you so run down, Breffit," said 
 his client, with grave kindliness. 
 
 When all was said, the old fellow was one of the best and 
 truest friends and servants man ever had. That sight of 
 him installed at Tufton a few months ago, giving himself 
 all manner of airs which nature had never intended should 
 belong to him, had caused his gorge to rise against him, it 
 was true. But, after all, that was but a minor incident in a 
 harmonious and profitable intercourse of many years. He 
 was not the one lightly to forget services faithfully rendered, 
 nor those who had rendered them, whoever they might be. 
 Now to find poor old Brelht broken down utterly in mind 
 and body was to think only of the benefactions he had 
 received at his hands. 
 
 " Have you seen a doctor, Breffit ? I — ah — suppose 
 you have. I hope it will not prove so serious as you think. 
 I feel sure that a man of your fine constitution, a constitu- 
 tion that has always been envied by all who have known 
 you, cannot be suffering from old age yet awhile. You are 
 not much the wrong side of sixty ? " 
 
 " Seventy-one, sir. Although people do say I have 
 never looked my age. You see, sir, I have led such a busy 
 and active life that I have had no time to grow old. I 
 have been a worker all my life, Mr. Broke, but suddenly 
 it has come upon me that I can work no more. It has 
 come upon me all at once during the last week or two. I 
 am about done, sir, I am about done." 
 
 " No, no, my dear Brefht." 
 
 " I have about had my innings, sir. There is nothing 
 to carry me on now. There is nothing to work for, nothing 
 to look forward to. Oh, my God, I wish to-night I could 
 go to bed and never wake any more ! " 
 
 With an outburst of querulous passion which, to one of 
 Broke' s self-contained spirit, was ineffably shocking, the old 
 man suddenly covered his face with his hands and burst 
 
 469 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 into tears. The next instant, however, he had recovered 
 sufficiently to proceed with his rather piteous monotone. 
 
 " At my time of hfe, you see, sir, a man cannot get new 
 hopes and ideas and begin all over again. He has not the 
 strength and spirit of a younger man to begin building 
 anew when his fine castles that it has taken him the best 
 part of a lifetime to set up have tumbled about his ears. 
 There is a limit to human endurance, sir, and I have 
 reached it. Only one thing do I ask now, and it is the 
 thing your doctors would deny me if they could. But 
 they will not be able to, sir, they will not be able." 
 
 " You must not talk like that, my dear Brcflit, you must 
 not indeed. Such men as you cannot be spared." 
 
 Again the tears began to trickle down the face of his 
 agent. 
 
 " You speak very kindly, Mr. Broke, and it gives me 
 pleasure to hear you say that. It comforts me to know 
 I am not despised by everybody." 
 
 " I — ah — assure you, my dear Breffit, that so far from 
 being despised you have long had the admiration of many 
 besides myself." 
 
 " Ah, sir, you do not know, you do not know ! You 
 cannot understand, sir. With all your kindness towards 
 one who is old and unhappy you cannot understand. The 
 fact is, I am heart-broken, sir. You cannot know what it is 
 for the children you have cherished all these long years 
 of anxiety and toil to turn against you, to turn their 
 ungrateful backs upon you." 
 
 Broke recoiled from the old man involuntarily, as 
 though a bullet had embedded itself in his flesh, without 
 knowing exactly how it had got in or where. It was like 
 a red-hot wire being drawn across a nerve. 
 
 " You don't know, sir, what it is to suffer that from an 
 only son in whom all your hopes have been centred," the 
 old man went on while Broke stood harrowed by this 
 spasm of unexpected agony. " You don't know, sir, and 
 never will know what it is to have your latter days made 
 intolerable by one you have spent the best part of your 
 life in fostering ; for whom you would have parted with 
 the coat off your back ; to whom you would have given 
 your last penny." 
 
 470 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 A haggard sweat had begun to creep out of Broke. He 
 strove to close his ears against all the old man said. But 
 it seemed as though there was a devil in his heart that took 
 a foul pleasure in repeating to his protesting senses every 
 
 syllable his agent uttered. 
 
 " I cannot tell you, sir," the horrid voice inside him 
 re-echoed, " what high hopes I had for my boy. Every 
 aspiration I had was centred in him. I procured him the 
 best education, school, sir, and college too, and the finest 
 friends that money could purchase. I filled his mind with 
 lofty thoughts. I purchased a noble mansion and gave 
 it to him ; and in my own lifetime, sir, I gave him half my 
 fortune also, that he might be able to hold up his head 
 before the world. And now, sir, having done all this, in 
 what manner do you think he rewards me ? I will tell 
 you, Mr. Broke. He laughs at me behind my back, and 
 he shuts the door of his house in my face." 
 
 A succession of hard sobs barred the old man's voice, 
 and he was compelled to wait until they had passed. 
 
 " Yes, sir, he shuts the door of his house in my face, the 
 house I had purchased for him and paid for in the sweat 
 of my brow ! Ah, Mr. Broke, you may well not under- 
 stand. I wonder if those dear children of yours, sir, could 
 cause their poor father that sort of pain. I think not, sir, 
 I think not. It had always been a dream of mine, sir, that 
 my boy should grow up to be like yours. I know I am a 
 rough diamond myself, ' an impossible person,' as you 
 county people call me. My father had not the means to 
 send me to the public school and the university ; I am a 
 self-made man, as all the world knows. I sprang from 
 nothing ; I am the architect of my own fortunes, as they 
 say. But I wanted my son to be like that fine lad of 
 yours, Mr. Broke ; I wanted him to be the gentleman. 
 And I did by my boy as you did by yours, sir ; I lavished 
 money on his education, and afterwards placed him in a 
 position to do justice to it. And now — and now ! " 
 
 The old man was unable to conclude the sentence, for 
 again the hard sobs had barred his throat. A no-less measure 
 of anguish had been communicated to the listener. 
 The man before him was merged from the machine of 
 business into the human father. The same complaint 
 
 471 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 re-echoed in both empty hearts. They were drawn 
 together by the common theme of a son's ingratitude. 
 Broke had endeavoured to banish his own son from his 
 thoughts by an effort of the will ; but he had been taught 
 already that, do what he would, the pale spectre of him 
 must be for ever lurking in their outskirts and rendering 
 them horrible. A too-pregnant fact or a moment's relaxa- 
 tion of his vigilance and the spectre glided back into the 
 empty halls where of yore he was wont to reign. The 
 analogy between his agent's case and his own was intoler- 
 able. Even in his despair, however, there was the spark 
 of comfort, offered to him by his pride, perhaps in mock- 
 ery, that his own son had not shown himself capable of 
 the same degree of sordid meanness. There was left that 
 shred of consolation. Thus, when the winter falls about 
 our numb souls do we stretch the threadbare mantles of 
 our pride to cover them ! 
 
 " I have not the spirit to get over it now," said the 
 maudlin old man. " I am heart-broken. Everything 
 that boy had I gave him and now he turns me from his 
 door. I am not good enough for him and the fine friends 
 that he bought with the money I fought so hard to win 
 for him. He carries his head so high that it overlooks his 
 old father. He and his fine friends laugh at the old man 
 behind his back, and when one or another of them happens 
 to mistake him for the butler they think it is the finest 
 joke in the world. It is Mr. Hamilton-Breffit with him 
 now, Mr. George Hamilton-Breffit with a hyphen. Such 
 a common name as his father's by itself is not good enough 
 for the likes of him. The only thing about me that is 
 good enough for him, sir, is my money. He is still good 
 enough to accept that and make use of it, just as he was 
 good enough to accept and make use of me so long as I 
 could be useful to him. But I cannot be useful to him 
 any more, do you see, sir ? I have given him all that he 
 desires, and now he turns round and casts me off like an 
 old coat. He is to marry the daughter of an carl, and 
 then it will be Mr. George and Lady Augusta Hamilton- 
 Breffit. Of course he could not have such ' a shocking 
 old bounder ' as me about the place — I am quoting his own 
 words, sir — could he ? while that was being arranged. 
 
 472 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 But for one thing, Mr. Broke, I rejoice. It was wise and 
 right of you to have none of him. You could guess what 
 he was, sir, all the time, you could guess what he was before 
 my eyes were opened. ^* would hav^ fjrieved me to see 
 such a one as that polluting a fine old family such as yours. 
 I must ask pardon of you, Mr. Broke, for ever making the 
 suggestion. But you see, sir, he had not come out in his 
 true colours then." 
 
 Overborne by his recital of his sorrows, the old man 
 paused, lurched to a cupboard and produced a tumbler 
 and a bottle of brandy. 
 
 " I have to take a little sorjiething now to keep me 
 going," he said apologetically. " I do not think I could 
 bear up under it at all if I did not." 
 
 Broke laid his hand on his shoulder, not without 
 emotion. 
 
 " Don't you — ah — think, my dear Breffit.that if you — ah — 
 went away to fresh scenes for a bit it might do you some 
 good ? Why not go to the sea or travel on the Continent ? 
 I feel sure a doctor would advise it. There is — ah — ah — 
 nothing hke a complete change to put a man right." 
 
 Mr. Breffit made a hollow laugh. 
 
 " It is kindly meant, Mr. Broke, and I thank you, but 
 you do not understand what it means to me. How can 
 you, sir, when you have never had to pass through it 
 yourself, and never will ? All the change of scene in the 
 world cannot do me any good. Nothing will ever put me 
 right again. I don't want to be put right, I am old and 
 lonely and tired of life. There is no purpose in it now. 
 1 want to die now and leave the remainder of my money 
 to a deserving charity. A quarter of a million is the sum. 
 It seems a lot, does it not, sir ? Every penny of it have 
 I earned myself, yet it has brought me no pleasure. I was 
 a much happier man when I was poor ; and had I remained 
 poor I do not think I should have had to suffer the ingrati- 
 tude of an only son. It seems a heavy price to pay for 
 wealth, does it not ? A few months ago I was worth half 
 a million, but half of that I gave away to him I can never 
 mention more. I don't know what to do with the rest, 
 sir. But I will write off that little item of Mrs. Broke's ; 
 and there are several other trifling little items that the 
 
 47-3 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 estate has owed me at various times that I shall write off 
 too. What are a few pounds like that to me ? I have 
 neither kith nor kin in the world but that one, the one I 
 worked for late and early, the one I was always planning 
 and devising for. I don't know to what use I can put my 
 money. I should have liked it to have done a little good 
 to somebody, to somebody in whom I took an interest. 
 It has done no good to me and mine. I should like to feel 
 that my life has not been spent quite in vain," 
 
 " No one can — ah — say that, my dear Breffit," said Broke, 
 touched more keenly by the old man's despair than he 
 was prepared to admit even to himself. " I — ah — am not 
 in the habit of speaking without reflection, my dear Breffit, 
 but — ah — I can say it from my heart that not in our time 
 at any rate shall we — ah — landowners look on your hke 
 again," 
 
 The tottering and enfeebled old man drank off the stiff 
 glass of brandy he had mixed for himself. He then peered 
 up rather timidly to the first among his clients with a 
 wistful brightness suddenly running in his dull eyes. 
 
 " It gives me pleasure to hear you say that, sir ; it is just 
 what I should like to have said of me. I — I thank you, 
 sir." 
 
 Suddenl}^ the old man bent forward to his oldest client 
 with something of his former ner\'ous vivacity. 
 
 " I wish, Mr. Broke, you were not so proud," he said, 
 with an eager furtiveness that was also slightly wistful. 
 
 Our hero did not reply to a charge that he was prepared 
 to sustain against himself. And he was far too obtuse to 
 apprehend the particular train of thought that was under- 
 lying it in the present instance. In his mind there was 
 not the faintest connection between this speech and what 
 had passed immediately before. Drink and misfortune 
 had doubtless undermined the poor old fellow a good deal. 
 It was useless to trouble oneself by trying to find out 
 what he meant. The old man, meeting with no response 
 whatever, had not the courage to pursue a subject upon 
 which he had been bracing up all his faculties to enter. 
 
 " You hear people say," he continued, with a relapse 
 into his dreary strain, " that wealth means happiness. 
 But from my heart, sir, I can say it is a curse. It is the 
 
 474 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE YOUNGER 
 
 possession of money alone that has brought me to this. 
 It is money that has made my only son a better man than 
 his father ; had I remained poor and he had been poor also, 
 he would never have broken my heart by despising me in 
 my old age. Wealth is responsible for evils far beyond 
 those of poverty. I began poor enough, as indeed God 
 knows ! but when, fifty years ago, I had only bread and 
 cheese to my dinner, and not always that, life was a very 
 different thing." 
 
 For a long time the old man went on in this maudlin 
 way. With weary iteration he continued to harp upon 
 that which had overborne him. Broke remained deeply 
 affected by the change in that sane and alert spirit ; and 
 he was oppressed also by a sense of analogy to the too- 
 poignant emotions that lately had taxed the whole strength 
 of his nature. Thus at the first opportunity he made a 
 pretext for effecting his escape. 
 
 It was well to breathe again the outer air after being 
 confined in that intolerable room reeking with the fumes 
 of brandy. But every step of his way back to Covenden 
 he could not rid his mind of the shadow of a once-great man 
 he had left there. He had never had the least tenderness 
 for his agent in his capacity as a human being. He stood 
 to him in the relation of a machine for the conduct of 
 business, pure and simple ; and more than once the thought 
 had occurred to him that, even considered as a machine, 
 he was neither pure nor simple. He had always looked 
 on him as one who, over and above his indisputable business 
 gifts, was sordid, grasping, and unscrupulous : a rather 
 vulgar charlatan whom it was good to have at your elbow 
 when you were compelled by the remorseless conditions 
 imposed upon those who happened to be landowners, land- 
 lords and agriculturists to have dealings with other vulgar 
 charlatans. He had the useful knack of looking after your 
 interests at the same moment he looked after his own. 
 To-day, for the first time, the old man took his place in 
 human nature. The total wreck of a mind so strong, under 
 the stress of anguish, was one of the most painful things 
 Broke had ever witnessed. 
 
 For an hour it gripped him by the heart. He could 
 think of nothing else. The drunken, tottering, blurred 
 
 475 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and broken figure rode by his side all the way home. It 
 may have been that he had snatched as from a mirror a 
 ghmpse of his own image. He had been shaken to a far 
 greater extent than he cared to acknowledge by the re- 
 minders he had received of his own personal afflictions. 
 And it seemed strange indeed that he should suddenly 
 find himself with so much in common with a man like old 
 Breffit. Yet, was it not a little tragic too ? In the bosom 
 of our feudalist, however, the thought uppermost was 
 that such a state of things suggested one of those fantastic 
 theories formulated by those bodies of pseudo- scientific 
 persons who went about calling themselves by various 
 names. It almost seemed as if he was about to run the 
 danger of being forced to admit that all the world over 
 human nature was much the same. To this representative 
 of an elder period, a period of rather more primitive ideas 
 than those obtaining in that into which, rather malevolently, 
 he had been projected, the people who belonged to 
 the diverse sections of the social scheme not only had a 
 distinguishing set of manners and customs, other modes 
 of speech and dress and wholly different points of view, 
 but their fundamental emotions were widely different too. 
 It was peculiarly irksome to be in danger of having to 
 admit that such a person as Joseph Breffit could have so 
 much as a heart-beat in common with a person such as 
 Edmund Broke. 
 
 476 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 The Last Night 
 
 DUST-TARNISHED summer passed to autumn of the 
 mellow tints and afterwards to the later season of 
 nature's desolation, but it was no more than that of the 
 family of Covenden. The young voices of laughter and 
 merriment seemed to have died with the leaves of those 
 summer days. From the shock of Delia's flight they 
 could not recover. Coming almost immediately upon the 
 episode of their brother, it was a crowning blow. It 
 knocked their world askew ; and in their dazed and 
 wondering fashion they felt that nothing ever would set 
 it right. 
 
 They entered into the sudden marriage of Harriet with- 
 out enthusiasm. They kissed her with trembling lips when 
 she went away ; but her smiles were as wan as theirs. All 
 things that had the sanction of their parents they knew 
 how to accept without question, in the same manner that 
 all things that had it not they could not tolerate. But 
 when they thought of the dying man their sister was to 
 marry it was with a shudder ; and the flowers in her hair 
 looked like cypress leaves. 
 
 The night before she was to be married, they sat up far 
 beyond their usual hour. They clustered very close to- 
 gether in their common room, all unutterably sad and 
 somewhat frightened. To have been able to indulge in 
 tears would have been a relief, but that had never been 
 their habit. 
 
 " We shall miss you, old Hat," they said. " How we shall 
 miss you ! " 
 
 477 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 The tight-lipped Harriet clung first in the arms of one and 
 then in those of another. She was very cold and pale and 
 her heart was beating violently. 
 
 " I wish you were not going to leave us, Hat," said 
 Philippa mournfully. 
 
 Harriet clung to her more convulsively, and buried her 
 cold face against her. There was the harsh, repressed 
 sound of a sob. 
 
 As they sat in a half circle round the fireplace, which 
 had no more than a few dying embers in it, their chins 
 were resting on their hands and their heavy eyes could see 
 nothing but darkness. Out of their so slender pocket 
 money they had contrived to subscribe for a wedding 
 present to make to their sister : a riding whip mounted 
 in silver, with the letter "H" engraved upon the handle. 
 J oan placed it in her hand with a low- voiced apology for 
 its humble character. 
 
 " We would have bought you a tiara, old Hat," she 
 said, " with real diamonds in it if only we had had the 
 money. We cannot tell you what we would have bought 
 you if only we had had the money. Oh, how we shall 
 miss you ! How lonely we shall be without you ! " 
 
 She pressed her frozen lips against her sister's cold, 
 white face. 
 
 " The old jolly times will never come back," said Mar- 
 garet. " What dear jolly days they have been, but they 
 are over now. They will never come back." 
 
 There came a dead hush. They all gazed straight before 
 them, with their eyes growing dimmer and dimmer. The 
 same thought was common to them all. 
 
 " I wish Del was here," said Jane suddenly and softly. 
 
 " Poor little Del !" said Margaret, with an equal sudden- 
 ness and softness. 
 
 " Hush," said Joan. 
 
 " Delia is happy," said Harriet, softly putting her arm 
 round the trembling form of Joan. 
 
 " Hush," said Joan again. 
 
 " We shall never all ride to the Meet again with father 
 and Billy and Uncle Charles," said Philippa. 
 
 " Hush, hush," said Joan, trembling more violently in 
 the arms of Harriet. 
 
 47S 
 
THE LAST NIGHT 
 
 " We lid not know what dear, sweet times they were," 
 said Phihppa. " Only now do we begin to reahze it, now 
 that they are gone. To think how happy we all were 
 together a year ago, and to see us now ! It does not seem 
 possible that so much can have changed in one short 
 little year. Still, in those that are to come we shcdl 
 be able to remember those dear, dear old days, and 
 think that we were happy once." 
 
 " Don't ! " they implored her. 
 
 " I cannot help.it," said Philippa, who was shivering in 
 the arms of Margaret. 
 
 " But there is perhaps a silver lining to a cloud like this," 
 said Harriet with a valour that was desperate when 
 accompanied by that white face and cruelly beating 
 heart. " There will be no more cycling to hounds for you 
 four, will there ? The dear, dear old horses will go round 
 now all the season through with the one that Uncle Charles 
 is going to give you. I said good-bye to all of them this 
 morning. And I do believe they knew. It nearly made 
 me cry to kiss their dear old velvet noses. I am 
 sure they knew I was leaving them. Dear old things ! It 
 will not seem like living at all to be without the Doctor, 
 and Crusader, and the Colonel, and Pat, and Persephone, 
 and Whitenose, and Juliet, and Robin, and poor lame old 
 Prettyface. I am sure they knew ! " 
 
 " Which will you choose to take, old Hat ? " said 
 Joan. " Persephone was always your special friend, 
 wasn't she ? It was you who gave her a grand sounding 
 name to make it up to her a bit, because she was not so well 
 bred as some of the others. But you shall have one of the 
 thoroughbreds, too. There is the Doctor and Pat and 
 Juliet." 
 
 " No, Joan," said Harriet, with a choking firmness. " I 
 have no right. I would dearly love one of them just for 
 the sake of the dear old days that will never come back. 
 But it would not be fair. I shall have ever so many 
 horses, although they can never, never be the same." 
 
 No amount of insistence on the part of her self-sacri- 
 ficing sisters would induce her to alter her resolve. Like 
 them, she had learned to subdue her private instincts for 
 the common good. 
 
 ■ 479 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 There was present at this last gathering so mournful, 
 so exquisite, so tender beyond expression, a sense of the 
 impending that they could not explain. Billy and Delia 
 were lost to them, for ever ; their father was ageing 
 visibly every day; to-morrow Harriet was to be 
 plucked out of their arms to undergo a life of great un- 
 happiness ; but over and above all these accumulated 
 sorrows, there was a sense of those more dreadful, because 
 unnamed, that were to come. Shadows out of the future 
 were thrown before their eyes. These, forebodings may 
 have been the fruit of that sore mutilation of their in- 
 stincts which had of late infected them in so cruel a degree 
 with the sense of tears in mortal things. 
 
 Mrs. Broke visited Harriet that night as she lay in her 
 bed sleepless and wide-eyed. She bent over the white face 
 and touched the cold forehead with her lips. 
 
 " It is for us all, my dear one," she said in a low voice. 
 " I thank you for being so sweet and patient and obedient. 
 It may seem a little hard to you, my dear one ; but for 
 your father and myself and your sisters it is also hard. But 
 I am sure 1 have no need to say it ; you are all good, brave 
 girls ; and you would not hesitate to help your father and 
 myself in any way that was asked of you. You have always 
 been perfectly right-minded, perfectly amenable, always a 
 great comfort to us both." 
 
 Harriet, in common with her sisters, had passed her life 
 in abject fear of the awful being she called mother. She was 
 afraid of her at this moment, although the awful being was 
 talking to her in a manner of tenderness that was entirely 
 new. The prepossessions of a lifetime are not to be up- 
 rooted in a minute. Yet, in fear of her mother as she was 
 the dread of her was not so great as of the new life that 
 lay before her. There would be no affectionate bond of 
 sisterhood, no boon companionships, no proud yet tender 
 father, no dear, querulous, kind-hearted uncle to alleviate 
 her sense of loneliness, or enlighten that black abyss 
 that was called the Future. Convulsively as she had 
 clung to her sisters an hour ago, she clung to her mother 
 now. 
 
 Mrs. Broke was deeplv affected by the passionate silence 
 of the child. The grip of the cold hands, the pressure of the 
 
 480 
 
THE LAST NIGHT 
 
 cold check against her own, the frozen sobs, the roving, 
 frightened eyes told too poignantly of all that was passing 
 in her. Increasingly difficult as it had become of late, it 
 had never been harder than at this moment to keep the 
 mask of inscrutability upon her face. Her very soul had 
 fallen faint of late. Life was growing to demand too much. 
 Less and less were the gains becoming worth the price. To 
 what end was all this pinching and scraping and con- 
 triving, this frenzy of expedience ? Two children of 
 her flesh had been torn out of her arms by Circumstance, 
 that ruthless bully, and now she was yielding up a third 
 wantonl y and of her own free will. She pressed a last caress, 
 a brief final memento of hungry love, on the cold face, and 
 quitted the room with unsteady haste. She went down to 
 her husband, who sat reading the Field in the enfolding 
 gloom and silence of the library. At the sound of her 
 entrance he put down his newspaper, and looked at his 
 wife earnestly. 
 
 " Well, old girl." 
 
 Of late he had exhibited a tenderness for her which she 
 was inclined to feel as slightly exaggerated in one of such a 
 self-contained and frugal spirit. 
 
 " You look tired," he said, peering at her through the 
 shadows cast by the reading-lamp. " You work that 
 brain of yours too hard. I wish you did not overdrive it 
 quite so much. You want a rest." 
 
 Mrs. Broke forced a laugh. It jangled a discord among 
 our hero's nerves. 
 
 " Suppose you go to the sea for a fortnight, and take the 
 girls ? They want a change, too." 
 
 " Yes, Edmund, if you come also." 
 
 Broke repudiated the suggestion with scorn. 
 
 " What do I want with a change ? I am as strong as an 
 oak tree. Besides, what about the shooting ? " 
 
 His wife looked only at the thin hair upon his temples 
 and his sunken cheeks. The appearance of the robust, 
 ruddy farmer of the early summer was with him no more. 
 In an incredibly short time it had given place to some- 
 thing far otherwise. In a few brief months he had become 
 a travesty of what he had been once. As they peered at 
 one another a profound silence intervened suddenly. It 
 
 481 HH 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 was acute in its completeness. They were both thinking 
 of the same thing. 
 
 " I wish there was not that wedding coming off," said 
 Broke, terminating it with the same abruptness that it had 
 begun. " I wish we had not to go to it. We shall miss 
 poor little Hat very much." 
 
 " The child is very brave and good. But it is another 
 vacant place. One hardly understands what they mean to 
 one until they go. Three in a few brief months ! Do you not 
 think, Edmund, you could make it only two ? " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Broke, with a harsh change 
 in his voice. 
 
 " Will you not go to the cottage and accept that poor 
 lonely child ? It might make things easier for her ; and I 
 am sure, Edmund, it would for us." 
 
 " When, my poor girl, will you learn to understand that 
 when certain books are closed they cannot be opened 
 again ? " 
 
 " Never, Edmund." 
 
 " Why this — ah — morbid craving to reopen old 
 wounds ? " 
 
 "It is by that means, Edmund, and that means only, 
 that we shall be brought to recognize the blindness and 
 futility of our acts." 
 
 " Good night. I am going to bed." 
 
 Our hero rose from his chair as abruptly as he spoke, and 
 walked out of the room. 
 
 482 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 In which Mr. Breffit the Elder writes off 
 another Little Item of his Account 
 
 A FEW days afterwards there came a painful piece of 
 news. Old Mr. Breffit had fallen downstairs and 
 broken his neck. Broke and his wife were greatly shocked. 
 
 " Poor, poor old man," said Mrs. Broke. " And on the 
 eve, too, of his son's marriage." 
 
 " Ah, a tale hangs thereby," said Broke darkly. " I 
 think I had better tell it ; the moral is not to be despised." 
 
 Thereupon he gave a few salient particulars of his last 
 singular interview with the old man at Cuttisham. 
 
 " I remember it made a rather horrible impression upon 
 me at the time. I believe he was drinking himself to death 
 then. The change in the poor old fellow was appalling. 
 I call the whole business as pitiable as anything I have ever 
 known." 
 
 " I call it tragedy," said Mrs. Broke. " That the unfor- 
 tunate man should spend his life in the pursuit of a thing 
 which was so bitterly to recoil upon him ! It seems very 
 ruthless, very cruel. The poor old man must be enormously 
 wealthy." 
 
 " He told me the exact figures, but I forget them. By 
 the way, I can recall a rather strange expression he made 
 use of. He said he was at a loss to know what to do with 
 the quarter of a million or so he had not already given to his 
 son. He assumed that he would have to bestow it on 
 deserving charities, as he had no other kith or kin. And 
 then I remember the poor old felfow said suddenly, in a 
 
 4B3 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 very odd, queer way, ' I wish you were not so proud, Mr. 
 Broke.' At the time I did not follow his meaning, but it 
 struck me afterwards that he may have looked on me as a 
 deserving charity also." 
 
 " Perhaps he did, Edmund." 
 
 " He may. Even at that time he was very far gone in 
 drink." 
 
 " Had this hj^othesis occurred to you at the time 
 how would you have answered him ? " 
 
 " Well, I suppose I should have been obliged to laugh 
 at the poor maudlin old fool, although I am sure it woiild 
 have given me pain. I never saw a man change so much 
 in so short a time." 
 
 This chance phrase of the late Mr. Brefiit's, and the hebe- 
 tude of her husband in regard to it was a source of grave 
 unhappiness to Mrs. Broke. In her imagination she 
 heightened its significance until it shone forth as a deliberate 
 renunciation of a sum of money that would have set them 
 on their legs again. Strictly speaking, it was nothing of the 
 kind ; but so prone are our minds to magnify the might- 
 have-been that a fact not momentous in itself assumed 
 inordinate proportions. 
 
 There was another aspect to the affair that had better- 
 grounded reasons for causing her distress. The sum of 
 two thousand pounds she had borrowed from Mr. Breffit 
 for purposes of private speculation would be demanded 
 more peremptorily by the executors of his will than it would 
 have been by the old man himself. 
 
 " I don't know what we shall do when they come down 
 upon us for it," she said. " If they were to distrain upon 
 our personal goods I do not think at the present time they 
 would make two thousand pounds. In any case, we shall 
 be obliged to give up Covenden almost at once." 
 
 " I — ah — thmk you take an extreme view," said Broke, 
 but his face had a fluttered look of alarm. " I — ah — ah — 
 believe Breffit said he would not press for the money ; 
 although, when we get it, it shall certainly be repaid. But 
 I — ah — think we had better not bother our heads about it 
 just now. Things have always sorted themselves out for 
 us a bit in one way or another. Let us hope they aJways 
 will." 
 
 4S4 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE ELDER 
 
 " You remind me, my poor Edmund, of the man who 
 stated the other day in regard to this hideous mess in South 
 Africa, that he supposed we should manage ' to muddle 
 through,' as so often we had muddled through before. It 
 is reassuring to find two such representative Englishmen 
 as yourself and the First Lord of the Treasury taking such 
 a statesmanlike view of the predicament in which you 
 happen to find yourselves. Clearly it is a case of two highly 
 practical and pre-eminently reasonable minds jumping 
 together. The doctrine of ' what has been will be ' may be 
 comfortable enough as far as it goes ; but I must confess to a 
 merely mundane and unenlightened intelligence such as 
 mine its limitations are apt to appear a little grievous." 
 
 " We must keep pegging away, anyhow," said Broke, 
 making no attempt, as was his custom, to follow his wife 
 through the course of her dialectics. "And you — ah — will 
 find things will come out all right in the end." 
 
 "Now that Mr. Brefht is no more, we shall have to cast 
 about for a new agent. It is hardly likely that his son will 
 carry on the business. I shudder to think how serious 
 a matter it may prove. Our affairs are so hopelessly com- 
 promised that it may be impossible to get a new man to 
 undertake the responsibility of dealing with them. It is 
 only now that Mr. Breffit is gone that we shall fully realize 
 what we have owed to his fidelity and sagacity. And to 
 his generosity we have owed even more. I am convinced — 
 although in the case of a man with such a reputation for 
 hard business qualities, the statement on the face of it 
 may appear absurd — that he has lost rather than gained by 
 the transaction of our affairs." 
 
 " I cannot believe that," said Broke doughtily, 
 
 " I am convinced it is so, Edmund, of late years at least. 
 We owe that old man a debt of gratitude ; and we shall 
 only begin to realize how great it is when we are confronted 
 with the unwillingness of others to let us incur another. It 
 seems a ridiculous thing to say, but I believe of late years, 
 since he came to be so prosperous, that all the old man has 
 done for us has been a labour of love. I believe he had a 
 whim that caused him to take a pride in serving us for our- 
 selves alone. You may smile, Edmund, but of late I have 
 had that conclusion forced upon me. Without his dis- 
 
 485 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 interested services we could not possibly have weathered 
 the storm until this hour. I believe, Edmund, that you 
 personally stood in the relation of a sort of hero to him. 
 You were his beau ideal of the landed proprietor, the perfect 
 mirror and pattern of what he could have wished to be him- 
 self, had his lot at the beginning been cast in other and 
 easier places. And I am sure that you and yours stood for 
 the model on which he endeavoured to fashion his son. 
 Indeed, more than once did he confess it." 
 
 " I — ah — hope the likeness he has contrived to produce 
 is not flattering." 
 
 " Let us hope not ; but to me, I admit, the whole thing 
 seems ineffably touching. We may despise the old man, 
 but I wonder where we should have been without him all 
 these years. And now, Edmund, I am convinced that the 
 only course left for us is to submit to the inevitable. Coven- 
 den must be given up. To keep it on another year is im- 
 possible. Here, now, must we make the confession to our- 
 selves that our ruin is complete. There is no quarter to 
 which we can look now for succour to tide over our affairs. 
 And if there were, there would still be no hope of better 
 times ahead. Edmund, let us yield before we are compelled 
 to do so by the court of bankruptcy." 
 
 These were grievous and bitter words to Broke. To give 
 up Covenden, the home from time immemorial of him and 
 his and all that he held dear, struck right at his heart. He 
 would sooner have given up life itself. But he knew that 
 his wife was not guilty of exaggeration. Circumstances 
 had forced him to recognize that the stage their affairs had 
 reached was very dire. But he was only just beginning to 
 realize how hard they had been hit by the death of Breffit. ' 
 Here again his wife was to be trusted implicitly." She was 
 far better acquainted with their complex dealings with 
 Brefht than was he. But the plain facts she had unfolded 
 of the benevolence of that strange old man galled him 
 bitterly. He was the last person in the world consciously 
 to submit to deliberate benefactions. But it seemed that 
 the whirlpool of events in whose vortex he had long been 
 caught was stronger, subtler, more inexorable than even 
 his most cherished prejudices. 
 
 Presently there came a day when the tragic death of old 
 486 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE ELDER 
 
 BrelBt acquired a new phase for the family of Covenden. 
 The particulars of it were embodied in a small packet ad- 
 dressed to our hero from a firm of solicitors. It consisted 
 of two letters : one, in a familiar spidery handwriting ad- 
 dressed to Broke himself ; the other in a more clerkly and 
 official one to his only son. The former communication 
 was of this nature — 
 
 *' Dear Mr. Broke, — I have been thinking a good deal 
 during the last few days of the use to which I shall devote 
 the remainder of my fortune, hoping and trusting as I do 
 that my end is now very near. And it has seemed to me 
 better to place it at the disposal of one in whom I have taken 
 a deep interest for such a long time, rather than at the dis- 
 posal of a charitable institution of which I should know 
 little. To that end I have caused my will to be altered 
 in the favour of your son Mr. William. He may, of course, 
 not choose to take my money ; but if the assurance is likely 
 to carry any weight, I would like it to be made to him that 
 his acceptance of the remainder of my considerable fortune 
 will confer an obligation on one who is old and unhappy. 
 The testator will be able to feel after all that his money is 
 doing some real good to somebody in the world, to some- 
 body in whom he hopes it is not presumptuous to say he has 
 long taken a deep interest ; and by that means that all 
 his lifetime of labour has not been wholly in vain. If Mr. 
 William confers this favour upon one who is old and un- 
 happy, he will incur his deep gratitude, although he will 
 not be here to bestow his thanks upon him. I may say that 
 the gross value of the estate which I wish to place in the 
 hands of your son is some two hundred and seventy thou- 
 sand pounds, as nearly as I can approximate, less death 
 duties and various small legacies to servants, and fees and 
 expenses of executors. I remain, dear Mr. Broke, always 
 yours truly, 
 
 " Joseph Breffit." 
 
 Broke's meditations on this remarkable document were 
 long and deep. At last he was able so far to detach him- 
 self from them as to take his wife into his confidence. He 
 gave her the let ter. She read it with a reeling brain. 
 
 487 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " It is impossible to understand at first all that it means," 
 she said in a feeble voice. " One has to read it a hundred 
 times over before one can gain a sense of what is implied." 
 
 " I — ah — do not see that it means anything." 
 
 " It assures the future of Billy." 
 
 The muscles of Broke' s face were under such control that 
 it remained a mask. 
 
 " It therefore assures the future of us all." 
 
 In the rush of feeling the letter provoked she was dis- 
 playing some excitement. 
 
 " It does nothing of the kind," said Broke, intensely 
 calm. 
 
 " Surely, Edmund, a stroke of providence of this bewil- 
 dering nature will cause you to reconsider the position you 
 have taken up. Surely in the face of an event fraught 
 with so much significance for us all, you will learn to con- 
 done and even to forget." 
 
 " I — ah — fail to see that the case has been altered in a 
 single aspect that is material. I cannot discuss it." 
 
 " Are there no limits to your unreason, Edmund ? Is it 
 possible you are still blind to the fate that threatens to 
 overtake us ? Is it possible you do not understand what 
 this bequest means to you personally ? If you continue 
 in this attitude you will be guilty not only of a crime 
 against yourself, but against that you value more." 
 
 The only reply our hero made to these words was to walk 
 out of the room abruptly. 
 
 All the same, worked upon in a high degree by this un- 
 paralleled stroke of fortune, Mrs. Broke could not forbear 
 to exult. Her old detached habit of mind had been a good 
 deal mitigated of late by a vital succession of circumstances. 
 For the moment she declined resolutely to look at the dark 
 side of the picture as represented by Broke's attitude. It 
 was enough that the immediate sordid exigencies cast upon 
 them by the crying need of mere pounds and shillings was 
 allayed for ever. And what a door was opened ! Recon- 
 ciliation was bound to follow inevitably, if Broke continued 
 to be a human being. In the first flush of her enthusiastic 
 gratitude it seemed to this woman and mother that a 
 beneficent providence had deliberately and dramatically 
 selected the most effectual means of saving them all from 
 
 4S8 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE ELDER 
 
 ruin, and at the same time of restoring to her two of the so* 
 
 cherished children of her heart. For, enthusiasm still 
 taking its head in her, she allowed herself to foresee tha t the 
 Tioment Broke was obliged to extend his sanction to the 
 one child, he would also be obliged to extend it to the 
 other. 
 
 under the spur of her excitement, Mrs. Broke lost no time 
 in going to the little cottage on the hill to communicate 
 the wonderful news. But even as she entered it she was 
 conscious that the atmosphere in which the small place 
 was enveloped was in strange contrast to the great joy in 
 her own heart. For there was ever the pall of desolation 
 on that place now. The light had gone out of the lives 
 of the two lonely women. Their brief dream of happiness 
 had vanished all too soon. For all the pure and free airs of 
 the countryside the young wife seemed to grow frailer 
 every day. The fount of all inspiration in her life was dry ; 
 and in her spirit was the knowledge that it would not be 
 allowed to flow again. 
 
 Night and day was she haunted with the conviction that 
 she, and she only, had wrought the ruin of him who was 
 more to her than life. All unwittingly had she done this 
 for no nicer reason than the gratification of herself. 
 Whenever that thought recurred to her — and not a day, 
 not a night passed, but what it did — she was overborne with 
 self-loathing. It was by this unconsidered act of hers 
 that her lover had become a social leper, outcast for ever 
 from his friends. He had called down upon his head the 
 implacable displeasure of a father whose pride in him for- 
 merly had been so great, wounded his kind mother to the 
 heart, alienated the love of the fondest sisters in the world, 
 all — all to gratify a wretched ajid impotent being who 
 in the sum of things was of no account. Introspections 
 of this kind grew too indescribably bitter. The impress 
 of the cruel claws they bore could be coimted daily on the 
 delicate flesh. 
 
 When Mrs. Broke came to the cottage that memorable 
 morning of the late November, and opened the door, 
 aunt and niece were seated at a table before a neat bright 
 fire. They were reading a letter that had recently arrived 
 from South Africa^ although both could have rspeated every 
 
 4S9 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 word of it by heart already. Upon the entrance of their 
 benefactress they rose immediately. Mrs. Broke went over 
 to the fireside and kissed her daughter-in-law in a fashion 
 of strange tenderness. 
 
 " I have brought great news for you, my dear child — oh, 
 so great ! " 
 
 " I — I think we know it, ma'am, already," said Miss 
 Sparrow, with a certain triumph in her timidity. 
 
 " Surely not, my dear Miss Sparrow. The lawyers could 
 hardly have written to you, as they do not know your 
 address. Still, they may have found it out ; lawyers are 
 very clever." 
 
 " Oh, no, ma'am, not the lawyers. Mr. William wrote 
 to us himself." 
 
 " But surely, my dear Miss Sparrow, he can hardly know 
 of it yet." 
 
 " Oh yes, ma'am, here it is written in his own hand- 
 writing. Is not this the great news that you mean, 
 ma'am ? Promotion has come to him very quickly, has it 
 not ? considering it is only about a month since he rejoined 
 the army as a private soldier. But they are very quick in 
 the army. They soon find out what a man is worth, as I 
 have heard my Uncle Edward say." 
 
 The old woman placed Billy's letter into the hands of his 
 mother in proud confirmation of this fact. She indicated 
 a pregnant passage with her finger. It ran : " I am now a 
 full-blown sergeant in the Rhodesian Light Horse. It is 
 not so bad, is it ? seeing that I was a trooper for only about 
 nine days. If I go on at this rate I shall be commanding a 
 division of cavalry in a year ! " 
 
 Mrs. Broke successfully repressed her pity. 
 
 " The news I have brought you is better even than 
 that." 
 
 Aunt and niece looked at her in meek bewilderment. She 
 allowed them time to enjoy their delicious thrills of expecta- 
 tion. 
 
 " You don't mean to say, ma'am, they have made him 
 a troop sergeant-major already," said the excited Miss 
 Sparrow. '' Because, if they have, ma'am, I call it wonder- 
 ful. My Uncle Edward came to be a troop sergeant-major 
 in the Dragoon Guards, but it took him years and years. 
 
 490 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE ELDER 
 
 It is very wonderful if they have, for all, ma'am, that Mr, 
 
 William is such a wonderful gentleman." 
 
 " No, my dear Miss Sparrow, it is something even better. 
 A letter arrived this morning to tell us that he had come into 
 a great fortune, quite unexpectedly. There is no reason 
 for him now to stay away from you another day. What 
 do you say to that ? Is it not glorious news ? " 
 
 Aunt and niece folded their hands upon their bosoms 
 simultaneously, and in the same manner. The old aunt 
 began to weep softly, which is still, perhaps, the only true 
 method of expressing female joy. In the bright eyes of 
 the niece was a hungry radiance. But her lips were com- 
 pressed. 
 
 " Come, my dear child," said Mrs. Broke, " I am sure 
 you will rejoice. But I wish I could see you looking a little 
 happy. For I am sure he will come back at once ; and it 
 will not be necessary for you ever to be parted from one 
 another again." 
 
 " He will never come back," said the young wife, with a 
 desolate quietude. 
 
 " That is very wrong, my dear child. We must not have 
 you talk so. You are a little depressed ; you must keep 
 up your strength as much as you can. I hope you have drunk 
 all the port I sent you. Some more is coming to-day." 
 
 The frail child shook her head. 
 
 " What can have put these morbid thoughts into your 
 poor head, I wonder ? You must banish these dark fancies, 
 especially at a time like this, when you require all the 
 courage you can summon." 
 
 Again the young wife shook her head. She pressed a 
 thin hand on her side. 
 
 " I have something here in my heart," she said, " that 
 tells me he will never return. As soon as this terrible war 
 broke out, I saw clearly in what way God intended to 
 punish me." 
 
 " But why should He punish you, my poor child ? " 
 
 " Because I have been so wicked ; because in trying to 
 gain my own happiness I have marred that of others — of 
 others who are so much better and nobler in every way 
 than I am myself." 
 
 " Who has put these foolish and cruel fancies into youi 
 491 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 mind, my dear one ? What mischievous nonsense is 
 this ? " 
 
 "They have all come there secretly out of my own 
 thoughts. I was blind at first, blind with love ; but my 
 eyes are open now, and I can see. I have ruined my 
 husband ; and just to gratify my own wishes I have 
 brought a horrid sorrow on him and his. Only too well 
 do I know what will be the end." 
 
 " Your husband is anything but ruined. He is now a 
 very rich man indeed ; and I am going to write to him here 
 now, from his own house, to tell him of his singular good 
 fortune, to tell him of the condition of his wife, and that his 
 affairs require his immediate presence in England. Can 
 you find me a pen and ink and writing-paper and an en- 
 velope, Miss Sparrow ? You can then see exactly what 
 I write." 
 
 With a finely feminine disregard for the circumstances 
 in which Billy was at that moment placed, Mrs. Broke wrote 
 her letter. Her commands were very peremptory. His 
 absence was breaking the heart of his wife, who had 
 the sorest need of him. She informed him that a sum 
 of two hundred and seventy thousand pounds had 'been 
 left to him from a wholly unexpected quarter. She omitted, 
 however, to put a name to the source whence it came. 
 When she had composed this production she read it aloud 
 to the two white- faced women. She was desirous firmly 
 to impress their minds with the fact that this rare piece 
 of good fortune had actually come to pass, and that their 
 days of repining would soon be at an end. 
 
 " There, my dear child, you can read it for yourself. 
 You shall stamp the envelope. And for his sake and that 
 of another you must try to be happy and of good faith 
 until he comes again into this little room. It means but a 
 short week or two of waiting. Think of that — only one 
 short week or two ; and put away your morbid fancies." 
 
 Alice shook her head in despair. 
 
 " God will know how to punish me," was her reply. 
 
 In spite of herself Mrs. Broke was oppressed. The pre- 
 possession in the child's mind haunted her notwithstanding 
 the powerful revival of her optimism by that day's news. 
 It had seemed as though at last their luck had begun to 
 
 492 
 
MR. BREFFIT THE ELDER 
 
 turn. But the mood in which she had found Alice had 
 done much to dispel the illusion. There was an air of 
 finality with which she predicted the event she foresaw as 
 though it had already come to be. 
 
 Indeed, with Alice the happy and significant circum- 
 stance that had summoned Mrs. Broke to her did not weigh, 
 however Billy's mother might magnify it and insist upon 
 it. The outbreak of war in South Africa, coming at such 
 a period in her life, dominated her completely with the 
 sense of its inexorable purpose. Her obsession was such 
 that to her it seemed that millions of persons had been 
 plunged into anguish that one erring, obscure soul in a 
 remote country cottage might be visited with the im- 
 placable justice that was her merit. 
 
 493 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 Rien n*est sacre pour un sapeur 
 
 WE come now to a week in December when not only 
 Covenden and its family, but every citizen in that 
 consummate kingdom of Great Britain and Birmingham 
 was precipitated into the vortex of panic. 
 
 It was at its height when Mrs. Broke and Lady Bosket 
 chanced to foregather and discussed the only possible topic. 
 
 " I do not know whether you have heard, Jane," said 
 Lady Bosket, with a rather complacent air, " that Charles 
 is trying to get out to South Africa." 
 
 Mrs. Broke smiled. 
 
 " I have heard of it. But I daresay, Emma, you are not 
 aware that the ambition is common to our staid and sober 
 Edmund." 
 
 " I am sure it does Edmund great credit, although one 
 would hardly have suspected it. One would have said he 
 would have been quite the last man in the world to be 
 capable of self-sacrifice." 
 
 " Colenso finished him. He has told the War Ofhce and 
 the depot that he will go out in any capacity if only they 
 will take him. But I am reposing the fullest confidence in 
 his age. What ridiculous creatures men are ! You see, 
 Emma, I am not afraid to quote you. That is an original 
 aphorism of yours, I believe." 
 
 The authoress purred. 
 
 " I am afraid it is too much to hope that Charles' chance 
 is brighter," she said wistfully. " One would be so thank- 
 ful if he contrived to dedicate the smallest portion of his 
 long and useless life to the service of his country. But 
 
 494 
 
RIEN N'EST SACRE POUR UN SAPEUR 
 
 only too keenly does one apprehend that even if the doctors 
 pass him on the score of age, he will be disqualified by a 
 constitution undermined by drink. But I must say, Jane, 
 that your tone wounds one a little. Do you wish one to 
 infer that you are anxious that Edmund should not fulfil 
 his obligation to his coimtry ? " 
 
 " Of course one does not pretend to your gifts of 
 expression, my dear, but one could sometimes wish you 
 adopted a less controversial method of emplo5nng them." 
 
 " What do you mean, Jane ? " said the authoress, 
 bridling. 
 
 Mrs. Broke' s smile assumed an inscrutable quality, but 
 she did not reply. Lady Bosket, feeling that it was impos- 
 sible for her sister-in-law to make one, warmed to the 
 theme. She said — 
 
 "It behoves every man and woman in this country to 
 contribute something to the new and beautiful idea we 
 call Imperialism. I understood you to say, Jane, that you 
 trusted Edmund was too old to go to the Front. How can 
 any Englishwoman talk in that way ? I hope, Jane, you 
 are not a Little Englander." 
 
 " Likewise, Emma, you hope piously that I am not a 
 pro-Boer," said her demure sister-in-law. 
 
 " I do, indeed, Jane, but I have my fears." 
 
 " I am afraid, my dear, it is inevitable that I should 
 embody at least one of the cant terms which are going 
 about. But I ask you, Emma, in your capacity as an 
 arch-moulder of public opinion, do you not think it some- 
 thing of a pity that as a nation we are so conspicuously 
 lacking in a sense of proportion ? It seems to me, I confess, 
 that that is where the national absence of humour is to be 
 deplored. It safeguards us from many things, but it has 
 always seemed to me that we lose a little too." 
 
 " Jane, I must say that this tone of flippancy at such a 
 crisis in our national life is out of place, is indeed a little 
 shocking." 
 
 " From your impregnable standpoint, Emma, I am bound 
 to concede that you are perfectly right ; from my own 
 somewhat more speculative one the side of the question I 
 venture to put before you is not wholly indefensible." 
 
 " WhoUy, Jane, wholly, I can assure you." 
 49:> 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " I bow, my dear, of course, to your impregnability ; 
 but I would that some blessed gift of heaven could be 
 vouchsafed to us by which we could be saved occasionally 
 from ourselves. One hardly likes to see the entire king- 
 dom of Great Britain and Birmingham surrendering itself 
 cheerfully to the ridiculous." 
 
 Mrs. Broke's smile broadened steadily, to the frank dis- 
 may of her gifted relation. Broke and Lord Bosket entered 
 the room at this critical moment, however, and averted 
 any further amenities that were likely to ensue between 
 them. It seemed that both these gentlemen had been that 
 day to place their services at the disposed of their country. 
 A little ruefully they had to confess that their country had 
 shown no disposition to accept them. 
 
 " They are letting callow and puny understrappers go 
 out," Broke complained, " but they will have none of a 
 pair of grown and seasoned men like Charles and myself." 
 
 Mrs. Broke made no secret of her somewhat whimsical 
 relief. Lady Bosket, on the contrary, proceeded immedi- 
 ately to launch a crushing diatribe against the unreasonable 
 and arbitrary behaviour of the War Office. 
 
 " I certainly cannot pretend to be surprised about Charles. 
 It would be affectation to say that I am. I quite expected 
 it, but I can assure him that he has only himself to blame. 
 But you, Edmund, are so different. It strikes one as the 
 very height of the absurd that they should decline the ser- 
 vices of a temperate, healthy, and wholesome person such 
 as you are." 
 
 "So it does," said Broke bitterly. " They say we are 
 too old." 
 
 " As though a man can ever be too old to place his ser- 
 vices at the disposal of his country ! How much longer, 
 I would ask, are we going to tolerate this monstrous War 
 Office ? It is as incompetent as our so-called generals." 
 
 " I — ah — beg your pardon." 
 
 " I said, Edmund, that the War Office is as incompetent 
 as our so-called generals." 
 
 " I — ah — must beg to differ, Emma." 
 
 This concise statement took our autocratic lady by 
 surjinse. In this house, whatever her opinions, they went 
 unquestioned. But Broke's opposition was explicit. The 
 
 4q6 
 
RIEN N'EST SACRfi POUR UN SAPEUR 
 
 measure of his resentment was expressed by the oddest 
 
 sternness in his tone. 
 
 " You must pardon my bluntness, Emma. I know I — 
 ah — am a blunt man — it is — ah — natural to me — but state- 
 ments of this kind cannot pass unchallenged. At a time 
 like this we ought to recognize that the generals at the — ah 
 — ^Front are doing their best. They are serving the coun- 
 try to the best of their ability." 
 
 " Hear, hear," said Lord Bosket. " My sentiments 
 too." 
 
 " A very poor best ; a very small ability ! " interjected 
 Lady Bosket venomously. It was coming to something 
 for Edmund to undertake to break a lance with her. 
 
 " Their best none the less," said Broke with an increasing 
 sternness. " A debt of gratitude is due from each one of 
 us personally for their efforts on our behalf." 
 
 " So it is, damn it, so it is ! " said Lord Bosket earnestly. 
 
 " They are not above criticism, I should hope," said his 
 lady. 
 
 " It is to our eternal dishonour if they are not, allow me 
 to say," said Broke, with an approach to vehemence. 
 
 " I do not choose to have my intelligence impeached by 
 yours, Edmund," said our patriotic lady, suddenly becom- 
 ing very angry indeed. 
 
 Broke, however, for once in a way, was ruffled. The very 
 depths of disloyalty had been touched. To call in question 
 the conduct of the war in a single detail was impermissible. 
 He was the thorough-going tj^e of person by whom the 
 lions of the British Army werie led to death and glory. 
 
 In the meantime Lord Bosket and Mrs. Broke were 
 enjoying keenly this pretty little difference between our 
 two ardent patriots. 
 
 " Let 'em fight it out," said Lord Bosket impartially to 
 his sister. " The missis will claw him a bit, but my money's 
 on Edmund. He's as tough as a nail. He don't speak 
 often, but when he does he gets a bull's eye. The missis 
 is the prettier sparrer, lighter and smarter, and can shift 
 her feet quicker, but Edmund's got more stamina and can 
 punish better. It's a thousand to five on Edmund." 
 
 " The generals are a disgrace. They have not the 
 intelligence of Charles and the girls. They are making us 
 
 497 II 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 the laughing-stock of Europe. Already they have tar- 
 nished our glorious traditions, and if they are allowed to 
 go on they will ruin the empire." 
 
 "It is a scandal that people should be allowed to say 
 this kind of thing openly. They — ah — would not stand it in 
 Germany." 
 
 Lady Bosket's voice went higher as Broke's grew deeper. 
 One was a scream, the other a growl. Long ago had our 
 intrepid lady recovered from the nervous breakdown 
 which had followed a certain encounter with her spouse, 
 although, to be sure, she had never been quite the same 
 woman since. But having no physical arguments to appre- 
 hend in this instance — a contingency rightly to be dreaded 
 by the most redoubtable professors of the intellectual — she 
 was able to be quite sufficiently valiant. She stood her 
 ground with the consciousness of a sublime purpose. The 
 occasion was too grave for the mouths of true-born English- 
 women to be stopped with dust. She hoped Edmund had 
 seen her letter to the Spectaior. 
 
 Our hero was retilly angry. He felt he was to blame for 
 allowing himself to be drawn into argument on a sacred 
 topic by irresponsible and illiterate women. He could not 
 think what the Government was about to permit the circu- 
 lation of this sort of blasphemy. Our fine constitutional 
 edifice was endangered by such an immoral freedom of 
 speech. That was the worst of an absolutely free country. 
 It had no control over the most vicious forms of ignorance. 
 There were numbers of persons dwelling in the island at this 
 hour whose opinions were so repugnant that he keenly 
 regretted he did not enjoy the privilege of being able to 
 commit them to prison with hard labour. 
 
 " Emma," said our heated gentleman, " you talk like a 
 pro-Boer." 
 
 ■' You are one, Edmund," said our no less heated lady. 
 
 Their argument having been conducted to this successful 
 phase, Mrs. Broke deemed it time to intervene. She parted 
 the combatants with her customary smiling gallantry. 
 
 " Excellent ! Excellent ! Charles, I think you will 
 concur with me in the decision that honours are easy. A 
 drawn battle. At the present moment the comprehensive 
 term ' pro-Boer ' clearly defines the limits of our contro- 
 
 498 
 
RIEN N'EST SACRE POUR UN SAPEUR 
 
 versial boundary. One recognizes it as the inevitable con- 
 clusion to which all argument tends. The most speculative 
 intellect cannot conceive of any more drastic or hnal termi- 
 nation. I was called a pro- Boer this morning by Edmund ; 
 Edmund is called a pro-Boer this afternoon by Emma ; and 
 this evening I have a presentiment that all the upper ser- 
 vants.at least in the Hipsley household.will resign in a body 
 because of Emma's decided pro-Boer tendencies. The 
 universal trend is in the direction of the pro- Boer. One 
 foresees the time is at hand when the only people remaining ' 
 in the world who are not pro- Boer are the Boers themselves. 
 No etymologist seems able to grasp what the term implies 
 in all its comprehensiveness, unless it is merely a con- 
 venient epithet, a /upon de parler, as was the term Radical 
 of old, or Papist, or Jesuit, or Heretic, or Prick-eared 
 Knave, whose sole purpose it was to enable every self- 
 respecting English citizen to thank God he was not quite 
 so bad as his neighbour. From the beginning we were a 
 nation of Pharisees ; the Saxons, the Danes and the Nor- 
 mans who have gone to form it were animated with this 
 same desireto impress their moral and intellectual superiority 
 upon their contemporaries." 
 
 Mrs. Broke was able to separate the combatants ; and 
 had to endure the lot which befalls those who undertake 
 such philanthropic offices. Their forces were promptly 
 united against her. With considerable fierceness and gusto 
 was she fallen upon. Broke himself opined that she would 
 do better to keep silent if she could not speak without 
 levity. Lady Bosket considered that her sentiments were 
 an outrage upon human nature. 
 
 " So they are, damn it, so they are ! " said Lord Bosket 
 with marked earnestness. 
 
 It is to be observed that this was the first and only 
 occasion that our friend was ever known to confirm an 
 opinion expressed by his wife. Misfortune makes strange 
 bedfellows. During that harrowing week in December 
 when elaborate precautions were taken to avert the burn- 
 ing of Buckingham Palace by a Boer commando which our 
 press assured us was about to land at Dover, the lion of the 
 desert and the domestic lamb lay down together. 
 
 Mrs. Broke was much too adroit to permit a state oi 
 499 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 things that had welded all sects and classes of the com- 
 munity into a common bond of feeling to pass without 
 making an attempt to utilize it for her private ends. A 
 little later, when Lord and Lady Bosket had left, this emi- 
 nent tactician turned to her husband. 
 
 " There is one circumstance, Edmund, that I feel you 
 ought to know. Billy is at the Front." 
 
 Broke had the lethargic blood of many generations in 
 him, but he checked his breath in the shock of the dramatic 
 announcement. In a momentary spasm of bewildered 
 pain, he held up his hand to stay the words of his wife. 
 
 "It is useless, Edmund. He is our boy, and you shall 
 hear." 
 
 She moved between our hero and the door. 
 
 " You must not," he said in a hollow tone. 
 
 The weary impotence implied in it was a little piteous. 
 Mrs. Broke, so far from being arrested by it, grew more 
 inexorable. There was a latent sense of triumph in her. 
 He had made an admission that her shafts were going 
 home ; her succfess put her in better courage. 
 
 " He enlisted as a trooper in the Rhodesian Light Horse. 
 He has been promoted already to the rank of sergeant." 
 
 " Well ? " gasped our hero involuntarily, in spite of 
 himself. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 They found themselves standing face to face, looking into 
 the unrelenting eyes of one another. Both had refused to 
 give back an inch. The close lips of the one, and the hard, 
 short breathing and the convulsive breast of the other, who 
 was the woman, told a tale. 
 
 " He is our boy," she said defiantly. 
 
 Our hero turned his back on her suddenly and com- 
 pletely : he had managed to recover possession of him- 
 self. 
 
 " Our boy, Edmund." 
 
 He walked away from her to the farthest end of the 
 large room. She followed him up and took him by the 
 sleeve of his coat. The courage she had received from his 
 momentary confession of weakness was still in her. 
 
 " I will not be put off, Edmund. I insist that you hear, 
 and mark what I have to say. Your boy, your son, is 
 
 500 
 
RIEN N'EST SACRfi POUR UN SAPEUR 
 
 serving his country in the manner that his fathers have 
 done before him these many a hundred years. You shall 
 not overlook that as long as I have a tongue." 
 
 She had surrendered her time-honoured role of austere 
 woman of the world to the four winds of heaven long ago. 
 In a speech of this tenour the urbane reserves of one who 
 had posed so long as a high priestess of her distinguished 
 order were far to seek. There was still, however, enough 
 of the old habit of self-scrutiny left in her to cause her to 
 wince at the thought that she was grovelling before a 
 Juggernaut whose wheels were passing and repassing over 
 her heart. 
 
 " He is expiating his offence, Edmund, in the service of his 
 country ! " 
 
 Our hero continued not to look at her, nor did he speak. 
 The satisfaction was hers of noting, however, that if there 
 was an arid vacancy in his face, there was a haggard weaii- 
 ness in his eyes. 
 
 501 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 Barbed Wire 
 
 'nr'^HAT was not a fortunate Christmas for the family 
 JL of Covenden. On the eve of the annual festival 
 there occurred one of those incidents that do so much to 
 irreconcile us to the conditions of tenure of our mortal 
 lot. Wanton accidents intervene occasionally in the well- 
 ordered scheme of life, for no better purpose, as far as our 
 so-limited vision will allow us to judge, than the knocking 
 down of our preconceived ideas concerning it. We cannot 
 see what end they serve, what office they fulfil. We are 
 made to bleed, yet know not the reason why. 
 
 The previous night and the early morning of the hallowed 
 twenty-fourth of December had had a fog and a white 
 frost. About ten o'clock, however, the fog lifted, and the 
 sun made a gracious appearance. With it came Lord 
 Bosket in very cheerful countenance, fully equipped for 
 the hunting-field. 
 
 " Marvellous climate ; two hours ago I would ha' laid 
 a thousand to five there would ha' been no meet this 
 mornin'. But you never know your luck, do you ? The 
 frost is givin' everywhere, and we shall be as right as rain 
 by the time we are ready for a move. But I see you little 
 fillies had more faith than I had. You've got 'em on 
 already, and Edmund too." 
 
 " Father predicted it last night, Uncle Charles," said 
 Joan, whose ])ride in that omniscient person was as in- 
 veterate as that of her sisters. " About nine o'clock he 
 looked out and just caught a glimpse of the moon up the 
 valley, and he said it would be all right for this morning." 
 
 502 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 Lord Bosket drank his whisky with an additional 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " Wonderful eye you've got for the weather, Edmund. 
 It's a gift. I can never read the signs like that, although 
 I have lived in the country all my life, the same as you 
 have. I believe these little gells have got it too. It's a 
 gift, j ust the same as an eye for the work of hounds. You've 
 all got that. I beheve any one of you little gells would 
 hunt the pack better than I could myself." 
 
 " Oh no, Uncle Charles," they cried in a flattered and 
 delighted chorus. " That would be impossible." 
 
 " But you'd hunt it as well, what ? " 
 
 " Oh, no. Uncle Charles, we are sure we could not." 
 
 " I am damned if I am," said their uncle proudly. 
 " There is not a hound in the pack whose note you don't 
 know three fields off ; and that you don't know what he 
 can do better than I can. Why, if they were mute and you 
 were in blinkers, I'd lay a thousand to five you'd tell 
 every one of 'em by the patter of their feet." 
 
 " I believe they would, Charles," said their father, with 
 an approach to his old fond and indulgent laugh. 
 
 Their father and their uncle were fulsome sometimes 
 when they got upon this topic. They were just the 
 type to appeal to such a pair of sportsmen. Their 
 knowledge, judgment, and total subordination to the 
 spirit of the all-absorbing business had conquered even 
 the higher criticism, which is no more lenient to their 
 sex in the hunting-field than it is in literature. They 
 rode to hunt ; they did not hunt to ride. Their appre- 
 ciation of the abstruse points of the longest and most 
 trying run would have done credit to the intelligence of 
 the keenest and cleverest huntsman who ever carried the 
 horn. They did not ride to hounds for the purpose of 
 exhibiting the weaknesses of human nature. They were 
 as full of tradition as the name they carried. They had 
 the hereditary knack, improved to perfection — and in the 
 hunting-field there is such a thing as perfection — by care, 
 loving, ever- vigilant tutelage, and an infinite capacity for 
 taking pains. 
 
 The result was the grand manner. Just as the prosaic 
 art of writing conceived under certain skyey influences 
 
 503 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and reared under special conditions may achieve a noble 
 simplicity of style, the conduct of these sportswomen at 
 the covert side had a similar significance. It was a case 
 of art concealing art. There, as always in their daily 
 lives, they were perfectly quiet and self-effacing, but the 
 qualities that lay beneath that unemotional exterior came 
 out to a degree that you would not have thought had an 
 existence in such commonplace creatures. They obtained 
 their successes so simply that less effective members of 
 the hunt were prone to attribute their knack of living 
 with hounds to luck as much as to judgment. Many 
 persons could be cited in support of this theory who had 
 more style, more dash, more horses and better, more 
 ambition, in fact more everything, including a more visible 
 determination to shine, who had served their apprenticeship 
 to this particular country — and a mighty difficult country 
 too — before these children were born, nay, who had even 
 been in the shires. But at the same time they knew 
 it was useless to pretend that they took anything like 
 the rank in the eyes of the critics as that taken by these 
 unprepossessing ladies. 
 
 " Broke, they are classics, and that's all you can 
 say," was the verdict of General Paunche, familiarly 
 known as " Hell-fire Harry," a purple-faced old ruffian, 
 who, in the service of his country, had once commanded 
 a brigade on Salisbury Plain, but who, in the service of 
 Diana, had broken most of the bones in his body, including 
 at least one in his neck. 
 
 What wonder was it that they provoked the enchant- 
 ment and envy of their guardians ? Their method was 
 the perpetual theme of their father and their Uncle Charles. 
 And to our hero, at least, it provided a mighty argument 
 in support of his theory of the value of blood. " I should 
 like to see the daughters of your mushroom people with 
 their judgment of country," was a speech known to have 
 fallen from his lips. And often enough, when riding home 
 in the company of his brother-in-law, in the sore but 
 ecstatic satisfaction of a punishing day, had he said: 
 " Charles, what hands, what hands ! They make a man 
 feel like a bear performing on horseback in a circus. They 
 can make horses talk. Genius, I call it." 
 
 504 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 " Damn it, they'd take a donkey over Leicestershire," 
 their uncle would reply. 
 
 It may have been the approach of the Christmas season, 
 that time of glad tidings and good cheer, which rendered 
 them once again, forgone brief hour, so buoyant of spirit 
 and full of anticipation of the pleasures to follow. As they 
 prepared that morning to set forth it was almost hke old 
 times. Thus far the winter months had been shorn of 
 many of their compensations by the pangs of bereavement ; 
 and by the too-evident change that was taking place in their 
 father, that first of comrades and friends, who, ever since 
 they could recall his familiar and beloved figure, had been 
 the most cherished possession they had had in the world. 
 But this cold raw morning, mellowed a little by the tardy 
 appearance of the sun, the total subsidence of the frost, 
 and the consequent optimism of their Uncle Charles, the 
 gloom was lifted from their hearts for the time being, and 
 even their father seem infected in a measure by the prospect 
 conjured up before them. Their fresh laughter was heard 
 again for this one brief instant, their eyes were seen to 
 sparkle to their uncle's praises ; and presently they sallied 
 forth, the four of them who now remained, in the company 
 of their proud and indulgent guardians to meet Trotman 
 with the hounds. Even their mother, who, as a rule, took 
 an interest so perfunctory in their exits and their entrances, 
 observed this manner of their setting out, perhaps a httle 
 thankfully, so greatly did it contrast with the gloomy 
 quietude that had accompanied them all that winter. 
 
 Their mother noted it with a gleam of hope ; with a 
 gleam of hope that this was the beginning of a reversion 
 to something in the nature of the old order of things, when 
 their spirits were invariably high and their laughter infec- 
 tious. It might be that, in the elastic fashion of youth, they 
 were recovering from the tragic loss of Billy and Delia 
 and the marriage of Harriet, which all that season had 
 weighed upon them so heavily. 
 
 Strengthened by this thought, she went to her sitting 
 room and surrendered herself to a stern conflict with 
 Christmas bills. The unequal battle she had waged so 
 long with importunate tradesmen still went on ; and grew 
 more unequal as it proceeded. Whatever the devices of 
 
 505 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 her wit or the suavity of her accents, they now declined 
 longer to be put off. For years had she met them with 
 an indomitable tact ; but now she was forced to acknow- 
 ledge that there was not another shot left in her locker. 
 There had even been occasions wh^ her wiles had been 
 employed with effect upon the epistolary style of lawyers ; 
 but the accumulation of threats, fulminations, and stolid 
 renderings of account that this morning she was called 
 upon to survey filled her with a sense of the impotence of 
 her struggles. They would have to be paid at once or 
 they must submit to be sold up. 
 
 There was still, however, one asset remaining. It was 
 the great fortune that had come in such a providential 
 fashion to Billy. She felt she could count on his co- 
 operation in keeping them afloat. At the last interview 
 she had had with him at the cottage, immediately prior to 
 his sailing for South Africa, he had expressed his deep 
 gratitude to her for the services she had rendered to his 
 wife. Even as she recalled this fact she was stung by the 
 sordid nature of her thoughts, which in turn shaped them- 
 selves into the reflection that poverty is a most sordid 
 and debasing thing. But, after all, she could hardly be 
 said to be acting for herself. Were not all her efforts in 
 the interest of her small community, and therefore on 
 behalf of Billy himself ? Thus at that moment, under the 
 spur of a humiliating need, she supplemented the letter 
 she had recently written to her son in the name of his wife, 
 with a personal appeal for his permission to place some 
 of the securities that now belonged to him to the use of 
 the family of Covenden. That was assuming he was not 
 already, in obedience to her summons, on his way home. 
 They might be able to hold out if he returned at once ; 
 but if he did not, and if he failed promptly to transmit 
 his authority, they would be compelled to sell the old 
 place themselves, or submit to its being sold over their 
 heads. 
 
 The composition of this letter gave her great pain. As 
 she wrote it, not only was she possessed with the remorseless 
 nature of Broke's resentment against his son, but also of 
 his resentment of the miraculous source whence his new* 
 found wealth had sprung. She felt the whole matter to 
 
 506 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 be humiliating and ironical. Therefore she wrote with a 
 hurried copiousness that sprang first-hand from her nervous 
 shame ; and hastily enclosed her appeal without venturing 
 to read a line of it. 
 
 In the afternoon she again addressed herself to the dis- 
 entanglement of their affairs. She scrutinised accounts, 
 examined bankbooks, and summed up in the expUcit 
 value of pounds, shillings, and pence all their sources of 
 revenue. Unlet farms and the depreciation of agricultural 
 values told too sad a tale. Without the assistance of poor, 
 despised old Mr. Breffit, the very queerest god that ever 
 came out of any machine, the tottering edifice that had 
 braved time for so long must already have fallen down. 
 She was indomitable, but even she was compelled to give 
 in before such a marshalled army of facts. 
 
 She was still poring over these documents in the last 
 hour that remained of the grey winter daylight, when she 
 was startled by the sounds of a horse galloping along the 
 carriage drive. Almost immediately she caught a glimpse 
 of a horseman flying past the window of the room in which 
 she sat. A little bewildered, a little disconcerted by an 
 incident which struck her as decidedly unusual, she waited 
 rather uneasily for its development. In her eminently 
 practical mind there was no effect, however odd, that had 
 not an intimate relation to cause. Therefore she had 
 already anticipated the appearance of the butler when he 
 came to her a minute later, somewhat in a hurry, it would 
 seem, for one of his majestic leisure. 
 
 " What is it, Porson ? " 
 
 There was a kedn anxiety in her tone. 
 
 " One of the second whips is here and wishes to see you^ 
 ma'am. I — I think something has happened." 
 
 " I will see him. Will you please bring a light ? " 
 
 By the time Porson had re-appeared with a lamp and 
 the room had been invaded by a breathless, overheated and 
 muddy presence, Mrs. Broke had a clear prevision of the 
 worst, and was prepared to support a recital of it. 
 
 " I hope it is not a fatal accident." 
 
 Her decisive air frightened the bearer of the news. 
 That distressed rustic had ridden in a fever of anxiety, 
 and all the way had he laboured under the stress of his 
 
 507 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 instructions. He was to go as fast as he could, yet at 
 the same time he was to break, as far as possible, the tidings 
 of misfortune to Mrs. Broke. He had not revealed a word 
 of his errand as yet, but it would seem that already she 
 knew what it was. 
 
 " No, ma'am, not fatal as yet." 
 
 " Which ? " she asked, numbed as by a blow. 
 
 " Can't say, ma'am ; they're all ahke as peas ; can't 
 tell t'other from which. But it is one of the Miss Brokes, 
 ma'am ; although Dr. Walker says you was not to be 
 alarmed. But you was to have a bed made up for her in 
 the libr'y at once, although you was to be sure and not be 
 alarmed. They'll be here in a bit." 
 
 Without waiting to hear further details, Mrs. Broke rang 
 for the housekeeper. 
 
 " If you have any of those small hospital beds in the 
 house, Mrs. Smith," she said, " let one be brought down. 
 If you have not, please improvise one with mattresses near 
 the fire." 
 
 " How far have they to come ? " she then asked the 
 bearer of the news. " Do you think they will be 
 long ? " 
 
 " Well, ma'am, they've got a good three mile. It 
 happened yon side Raisby. And they'll be slow, I reckon, 
 as they are having to carry her." 
 
 " Is she unconscious ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, ma'am." 
 
 " Broken back ? " 
 
 " No, it's her 'ead, ma'am, her pore 'ead." 
 
 The bearer of the tidings burst into tears. The com- 
 posure of Mrs. Broke seemed slightly inhuman by com- 
 parison with his agitation. 
 
 " Do you know how it happened ? " 
 
 " Barbed wire, ma'am, that there barbed wire. Dr. 
 Walker says it's murder. The pore boss come down and 
 broke 'is back, and they do say, ma'am, the pore young 
 lady pitched on 'er 'ead, and the pore boss afterwards 
 rolled ov-ver 'er. I didn't see it myself, and I'm thankful 
 I didn't, but that's how it happened, so they says. It 
 was the end of a hard day, you see, ma'am, and I daresay 
 the pore boss would be weakening a bit, and was not able 
 
 508 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 to allow enough. But Dr. Walker says it's murder, ma'am, 
 and beggin' pardon, so it is. His lordship's about out of 
 his mind." 
 
 The grim anticipations in the heart of the mother had 
 been borne out by this grisly narrative. The pleasure 
 the inadequately educated derive from the recital of mis- 
 fortune is very great. Accidents to them, particularly if 
 they seem to have a chance of being reckoned as fatal, are 
 as the flower of the mind. So do they cherish them, so 
 do they take them to their hearts, so radiantly are they 
 invested in their charmed imaginations that even the most 
 irrevelant details — and in such cases there are only too many 
 — are consecrated by the dark shadow of death. The 
 tendency of the second-whip to pile horror upon horror, 
 most of which he had acquired second-hand from equally 
 fervent raconteurs, had to be checked. 
 
 Presently Mrs. Broke went to superintend the arrange- 
 ments in the library, if only to escape further unnerving 
 commentary. In her heart, however, there was no hope. 
 The resolution still remained to her of setting her face 
 steadfastly against all species of self-deception, even at 
 those times when the spirit seems no longer capable of 
 sustaining its burden. A sure instinct, as powerful, as 
 irrefragable as the tide of events that was crushing her and 
 hers to the dust, led her to apprehend the worst. There 
 was no reason to assume that the malevolence which 
 had presided over their affairs during the last twelve months 
 would seize an occasion of this kind to relent. Cruel as 
 she judged the nature of the accident to be, the strain of 
 fatalism that misfortune upon misfortune's head had 
 recently induced in a mind formerly so wholesome, formerly 
 so sane, convinced her that the reality would prove equally, 
 doubly, trebly as cruel. It was too plainly identified 
 with that which had been pursuing them. Only too well 
 did she recognize the Hand whose frequent pleasure it 
 had been of late to strike out from the shoulder with the 
 fist of a butcher for the purpose of knocking a defenceless 
 woman to pieces. 
 
 The library was soon set in readiness against the time 
 of the arrival, and afterwards there was nothing for the 
 shattered woman but to await. 
 
 509 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Do you know which it is, ma'am ? " said the house- 
 keeper. 
 
 " I do not." 
 
 " I expect it will be Miss Joan." 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Smith, do you think that ? " 
 
 "If you happen to cherish one or think the least little 
 bit more of one than you do of another, that is the one 
 that is taken." 
 
 " Have you not uncomfortable theories, Mrs. Smith ? " 
 
 Mrs. Broke smiled wearily. 
 
 " Very, ma'am. I suppose I have picked them up in 
 an uncomfortable school — a school where you get your 
 knuckles rapped while you are acquiring them. I could 
 never see why the moment a thing takes root in your heart, 
 you should have it plucked out again. I suppose it is the 
 self-indulgence." 
 
 " An uncomfortable philosophy, Mrs. Smith." 
 
 " Very, ma'am ; but it is part and parcel of the uncom- 
 fortable life we lead in this uncomfortable place." 
 
 " Do we not aggravate it by our complaints of it ? " 
 
 " You are right, ma'am, I daresay. But your en- 
 durance is not for everybody. We are not all so strong and 
 wise. I hope the day will never come, ma'am, when your 
 endurance will be broken down. It will be taxed though." 
 
 Mrs. Smith, a discreet and sensible person as a rule, 
 shook her head in the manner of those hard-eyed seers 
 who peer into the future by the light of the past. 
 
 The period of waiting was sore. By an exercise of the 
 will, Mrs. Broke returned to her accounts, and tried to 
 grapple again with those daunting documents that also 
 told so hard a tale. The more closely they were examined 
 the more clearly did disaster reveal itself. Ruin was made 
 the more visible, the more actual. But even that had 
 little power over her mind now. Her labours had become 
 perfunctory. Every time the fire creaked in the grate, 
 or the cold wind swung the branch of a tree against the 
 window, she lifted her head to listen. The suspense made 
 her ache. 
 
 At last her alert nervous ears caught a confusion of 
 noises up the drive. She could hear the slow and muffled 
 sound of many feet tramping through the crisp air of the 
 
 510 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 evening, which had already begun to freeze again. She 
 could also detect a murmur of low voices. She went back 
 to the library to bestow a final glance upon the preparations 
 that had been made, and then went out again into the hall, 
 where the upper servants, several of whom were bearing 
 Ughts, had been already marshalled near the entrance doors. 
 The old butler had had both thrown back wide, and was 
 standing pale and white-haired out in the portico. The 
 rays from the lamp he held in his hand made the tears look 
 like quicksilver as they hopped down his face. 
 
 Broke, Lord Bosket, Dr. Walker, and three of the 
 girls were the first of the mournful procession to come into 
 view round the ivy that covered the angle of the outer 
 wall. One of them, Jane, was bearing an old and battered 
 bowler hat, with a broken brim. Mrs. Broke went out 
 to meet them. Her brother was the first to pass her. 
 
 " Which, Charles ? " 
 
 Lord Bosket, hung his head limply, and got through 
 swiftly into the spacious dimness of the house. As old 
 Porson's lamp fell on his puffy red face, his sister saw that 
 it was in the same condition of visible emotion as the 
 butler's. She touched her husband on the shoulder. 
 
 " Which, Edmund ? " 
 
 Broke, without glancing at her, strode quickly into that 
 spacious dimness too. 
 
 "It is Joan, mother," said Philippa in a calm voice. 
 " She is not dead." 
 
 " Dead ? Oh, dear no, nor anything like it ! " said 
 Dr. Walker in a tone of rough re-assurance. 
 
 The red-faced old family practitioner, who would have 
 been the first to allow that he knew far more about the 
 art of riding to hounds than he did of the profession of 
 medicine, turned to Mrs. Broke in his abrupt, gruff way 
 that yet had an odd tincture of kindness in it which seemed 
 to have no right whatever to be there, and amalgamated 
 no tetter with his general demeanour than does a lump 
 of sugar in an iron tonic. 
 
 '' Dead ! Of course not. An unlucky Christmas for you, 
 though. I hope I shall not come across the man who put 
 up that wire. Ought to be hanged." 
 
 By this time a number of the members of the hunt and one 
 511 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 or two of the hunt servants had arrived at the portico with 
 a strange burden in their midst. It was a farm gate, to 
 which had been added a mattress taken from a labourer's 
 cottage, and on the top of it was a scarcely visible something 
 covered by coats and blankets. The doctor superintended 
 the introduction of this odd form of litter into the hall. 
 It called for the very nicest care to get it through the various 
 doorways and past the many awkward angles, which too 
 palpably had not been designed for the reception of such 
 clumsy and unwieldy things. Nor was it easy to get it 
 across the tiles and rugs of the interior itself, or to avoid 
 contact with many articles of furniture. The doorway of 
 the library proved peculiarly difficult to negotiate, and 
 at first it was feared that the task of entering would have 
 to be abandoned. In the end, however, it was overcome, 
 and it said much for the skill and devotion of those 
 who conducted the operation that not once was their 
 burden allowed to jar against the all- too- narrow wood- 
 work. 
 
 Once inside, the mattress was lifted bodily on to the 
 improvised couch in front of the blazing log fire, the hurdle 
 was removed, and the wearisome labours of these friends 
 were at an end. They retired to the hall to await events. 
 Mrs. Broke left the doctor alone in the library to make 
 a fuller examination than he had been able to do in the 
 field. In the most ample manner did she retain her self- 
 possession ; saw to it that the considerable muster of 
 anxious people who had flocked into the house to obtain 
 more definite news had tea and other light refreshments 
 served to them ; and personally thanked the bearers with 
 her customary grace. 
 
 Soon afterwards she returned to the doctor in the 
 library. He had concluded his fuller examination, and 
 was now seated at a table writing out a telegram. 
 
 " Will you tell me precisely what you think ? " 
 
 Dr. Walker took a huge handkerchief out of his scarlet 
 coat, and moi)ped his red face with emphatic deliberation. 
 
 " Got a dog's chance," he said gruffly ; " and when 
 you've said that you've said all. I should like MacLach- 
 lan." 
 
 " By all means." 
 
 512 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 " I am wiring. Better send somebody with it to Cuttis- 
 ham — no office nearer — and tell them to put the best leg 
 first. Better take a bicycle. Every minute counts." 
 
 Mrs. Broke went immediately to execute these commands. 
 When she returned the doctor was standing by the side 
 of the couch looking intently at the form "stretched upon it. 
 By a supreme effort she was able to go to his side. The 
 coat by which Joan had been covered was withdrawn ; 
 and she lay extended full length on the mattress, with her 
 hunting tops protruding below her habit. The grey 
 pallor of her face was in deadly contrast to the appearance 
 of ruddy health that was ever to be seen upon it. It 
 was relieved a little by a dark splotch of dry blood beside 
 one of her ears. Her eyes were closed, she was quite 
 still, and the only evidence of life remaining in her was 
 a sound of loud, hard breathing that could be distinctly 
 heard. Her mother did not flinch, although in her veins 
 was a strange, numb nausea, as if she had suffered that 
 instant the heavy stab of a knife. Standing before that 
 perverted image of what once had been her eldest daughter, 
 she cowered in an extreme anguish of the spirit. It was 
 a moment that tears fibres out of the heart, and leaves 
 a wound in that centre of emotion which not even time, 
 the assuager and replenisher, not years, not forgetfulness, 
 can allow to heal again. 
 
 " Just struggled back into what you might call con- 
 sciousness," said the doctor. 
 
 " We must have patience, I suppose ; I suppose we can 
 only wait." 
 
 At the sound of those mellow, familiar tones, it almost 
 seemed as if the closed eyelids lifted a little, as though 
 sudden light had fallen upon them. 
 
 " Can't move without MacLachlan." 
 
 " How long must we wait ? " 
 
 "If everything goes right he might catch the 7.20 from 
 Paddington. He should he here in four hours." 
 
 " Four hours ! " 
 
 The indomitable woman gave a dismal shiver. 
 
 " If we are lucky. If we are not lucky he may not be 
 here before midnight or nine o'clock to-morrow mom- 
 ing." 
 
 513 KK 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " Surely there is some one else, some one more certain, 
 some one nearer at hand ! " 
 
 " No, not for this. It is MacLachlan, or nobody." 
 
 " You told him of the urgency ? " 
 
 For the first time that evening the sorely tried woman 
 was showing signs of pressure. They were slight enough, 
 but she had to put forth the effort to correct them. 
 
 " Ha ! here's Harris," said the doctor. " I sent to 
 Cuttisham for Harris. He cannot do more than I have 
 done already, but I thought I'd have him." 
 
 The door of the library had opened to admit a benevolentji 
 white-headed, double-chinned, heavy-watch-chained, hand- 
 rubbing old gentleman, who bore on every fold of his ample 
 black-coated person the unimpeachable evidences of the 
 family physician of the highest possible standing. Every 
 step that he took was accompanied by a purr and a creak. 
 He is said to be peculiar to a bygone generation, and only 
 to exist now in the remote country places, and the recondite 
 pages of fiction. He owed his eminence in the local 
 estimation not so much to the nature of his intellectual 
 gifts as to the perfection of manner he bore to the bedside. 
 It was based partly on a facile sympathy, and partly on 
 a sound working knowledge of human nature. The number 
 of occasions on which his name had made its appearance 
 in the wills of deceased old ladies of the neighbourhood 
 was supposed to have long precluded his practising his 
 calling as a means of livelihood. For years the illusion had 
 been cherished that he followed it for human pleasure. 
 
 He tip- toed across the carpet and bowed to Mrs. Broke 
 with the deferential grace of a high priest among courtiers. 
 
 " Cchk, cchk," he said, clicking his tongue against the 
 roof of his mouth. " Cchk, cchk, Walker, what have we 
 here ? " 
 
 " Fractured base," said Walker, in a gruff undertone. 
 
 " Very sad. Walker, very sad." 
 
 Dr. Harris glanced for a moment at the face of the loud- 
 breathing sufferer, and then, placing his hands behind him, 
 marched with his colleague to the extreme end of the room. 
 They were seen to stand there together for some time with 
 great solemnity. Their demeanour was very grave, digni- 
 fied, and impressive. It was of a character to indicate that 
 
 514 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 they were engaged in conversation of a highly erudite and 
 technical kind. What passed between them was this — 
 
 Dr. Walker : " Wired for MacLachlan." 
 
 Dr. Harris : " Just so." 
 
 It seemed to Mrs. Broke, however, that all the resources 
 of their infinite learning, wisdom, and experience were 
 being brought to bear upon the matter, when in two words 
 they had concurred with one another. All there was left 
 for them to do was to await the arrival of the great surgeon 
 from Portland Place. If she hved until that time some- 
 thing might be attempted, and there was still that hope 
 for her. But, one way or the other, they had perfectly 
 open minds, and were by no means prepared to speculate 
 upon the chance. 
 
 For about an hour Joan hngered in a condition that 
 might be called by the name of consciousness, and then 
 came another relapse into complete oblivion. Her mother 
 alone remained in the room with the two doctors. She felt 
 the suspense to be eating into her like an acid ; while 
 impatience seemed to be cutting her mind into shreds. 
 Everything depended on the arrival of the London surgeon ; 
 but the tardiness of telegraph wires and railway trains 
 could not summon him to that room under four hours at 
 the earliest. The slow ticking out of the minutes on the 
 clock soon became intolerable. She turned to Bradshaw, 
 the guide, the solace, and the despair of so many that 
 Christmas Eve, to look out, for her own satisfaction, the 
 trains from London. But no mitigation was provided of 
 that terrible term of four interminable, heart-teasing hours 
 at the earliest. 
 
 She began to chafe at the inaction of the two doctors. 
 Were they not at the bedside already ? It was as much 
 as she could endure to reflect that Joan lay within an arm's 
 length of them wrestling for very life in the clutch of her 
 extremity, while they did not lift a finger to yield her aid. 
 Probably it was going hard with her, because of some 
 slight succour that was withheld. The torment of such a 
 thought was more than she could suffer. The four hours 
 seemed as far off as four years. The conviction began to 
 press like a dull load on her heart that to hve through that 
 unending period would be impossible for her, herself, let 
 
 515 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 alone for Joan. She seemed to have passed through a 
 hfetime already since the telegram was sent, but it made 
 rather less than forty minutes on the clock. More than 
 three h^urs had yet to go ; and then it might be that after 
 all he would miss his train. Was it too much to 
 ask that some outward, some visible effort should be 
 put forth to detain her dying eldest daughter against the 
 time of the surgeon's coming ? 
 
 " Can you do nothing ? " she said at last, with a sus- 
 picion of a groan. " Surely the time is so long that she 
 may die before the surgeon comes." 
 
 " We can hope," said Dr. Walker gruffly. 
 
 " For the best," chimed Dr. Harris with a creak and a 
 purr. 
 
 The one blew his noise vehemently at this point, and 
 the other folded his hands on his stomach. 
 
 " Freezing again," said Dr. Harris presently, stretching 
 his hands towards the blazing hearth. 
 
 " I don't know about that," said Dr. Walker. " I think 
 it means snow." 
 
 As he spoke he walked to a window, drew aside the heavy 
 crimson curtains, and looked out upon the night. 
 
 " Snowing hard," he said. " Coming down in a sheet. 
 I thought the tail of that wind meant mischief. I have 
 tasted it before at Christmas time. I suppose they call 
 it seasonable weather." 
 
 " Will it delay the trains ? " said the mother, breathing 
 close. 
 
 " Possibly," said the gruff Dr. Walker. 
 
 " Possibly not," said the suave Dr. Harris. " Possibly 
 not we will hope and trust." 
 
 Dr. Walker replaced the curtains and made his way back 
 to the fire to warm his hands. 
 
 Mrs. Broke was no longer able to stay in the room. As 
 she went out into the hall, and was in the act of shutting 
 the library door cautiously behind her, she was met by 
 the drawn face of the old butler. 
 
 " Any change, ma'am ? " he said in a scarcely articulate 
 voice. 
 
 " Practically none." 
 
 Broke was sitting in the darkest part of the hall. Some 
 516 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 distance from him, in the middle of a lounge before the 
 wide hearth, Lord Bosket was seated too. A profound 
 silence enwrapped them. Broke was supporting his chin 
 with his hands, and was staring into vacancy with a 
 perplexed look on his face. Lord Bosket had his hands 
 stuck in his pockets and his head lying back on the cushions, 
 while his muddy breeches and boots were toasting before 
 the huge wood fire. Alternately he seemed to be shedding 
 tears and to be imbibing whisky and water. The rest of 
 the people had gone away. 
 
 Broke did not speak, nor did he Uft his face from his 
 hands at the approach of his wife. 
 
 " A damn nice Christmas for us," said Lord Bosket with 
 half a grunt and half a groan. 
 
 Mrs. Broke made an effort to speak reassuringly. There 
 were no visible evidences permitted to her, however, of 
 her success. 
 
 " I knew they were both done as soon as I saw 'em go," 
 said her brother. 
 
 " They have sent for a surgeon from London. If she 
 lives till he comes they think something may be done." 
 
 " No need, my gell, no need." Lord Bosket began again 
 to shed tears softly. 
 
 All this time Broke had not moved, and he did not appear 
 to have listened to a word that had been spoken. 
 
 The girls were hanging about in a corridor in the manner 
 of their kind. They were still hatted and booted and in 
 their habits. Their faces were scared, but unemotional, 
 and one and all preserved the intense silence of their 
 father. Jane still held the hat with the broken brim. 
 They seemed to suggest so many sheep huddling in 
 a furrow, and waiting for the black storm to burst 
 upon their heads that the winds have gathered. They 
 were hardly enlightened enough by life to be aware of the 
 precise nature of the mysterious thing that was about to 
 befall them. They had been pushed to the extreme verge 
 of their intelligence ; beyond, into that immense and awful 
 void of the unknown, they did not seek to peer. 
 
 Once out of the room, Mrs. Broke found she could not 
 rest until she was back in it. She returned to find that 
 things had suffered no change. The doctors were still 
 
 5T7 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 seated in front of the fire conversing in under tones exactly 
 as when she had left them. The slow minutes continued 
 to pass without incident, and with all the power of her 
 nature she strove to resign herself to their tardiness. The 
 only respite to the inaction and monotony was when first 
 one doctor, and then, perhaps half an hour afterwards, the 
 other, rose from his chair to take a glance at Joan. Once 
 or twice Mrs. Broke drew aside the curtains to look at the 
 falling snow. It was still being shaken out of a dense 
 heaven in silent, persistent flakes. The ground was covered 
 as far as the lights from the bright room struck out across 
 the lawn. The thickness of the fall, already considerable, 
 could be gauged by the layer that was poised on the 
 branches of a tree which pressed against the window. 
 
 Thus the slow-drawn hours passed. Life remained in 
 Joan, but not once could she be said to flicker back into 
 an interval of consciousness. After some three hours had 
 followed the sending of the telegram, Dr. Walker lingered 
 in one of his excursions to the side of the bed, and by a 
 slight movement of the head was observed to summon 
 Dr. Harris. For some time they stood together looking 
 down intently, and making slight inaudible comments to 
 one another. Afterwards they resumed their places by 
 the fire. 
 
 Although Mrs. Broke could understand nothing of what 
 was passing between them she hung upon the inscrutable 
 expression of their faces. Feverishly as her eyes traversed 
 them, she could not learn. 
 
 " No change ? " 
 
 " No change," they said. 
 
 " Do you think now she will live until the surgeon 
 comes ? " 
 
 " The chances favour her as she has held out so long." 
 
 She then went out to make arrangements for the surgeon 
 to be met at Cuttisham station. Lord Bosket rose imme- 
 diately to go himself. 
 
 Aftei that half an hour passed in silence, only broken by 
 the stertorous breathing of Joan. One of the doctors took 
 out his watch. 
 
 " He should be here in twenty-five minutes if he caught 
 the 7.20, and the snow and Christmas traffic have not de- 
 
 5i« 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 layed the train. I trust a carriage has been sent to meet 
 it." 
 
 " Lord Bosket went half an hour ago." 
 
 A muffled knock came to the hbrary door, and the old 
 butler entered on tip-toe with a telegram addressed to 
 Dr. Walker. 
 
 " It is not to tell us he cannot come ! " said the mother, 
 breaking once again the fine-drawn thread of her self- 
 control. The next instant she had it pieced. 
 
 " Arrive Cuttisham 8.31. — MacLachlan," the telegram 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, if he could not have come ! " was wrung out of her. 
 
 She who for four mortal hours had suffered the torments 
 of suspense was now afflicted with an excitement that was 
 Hke a vertigo. 
 
 " If the train is punctual they must be almost here." 
 
 She turned to watch the movements of the clock on the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 She began to count the seconds as they passed. But 
 the hands moved round so tardily that she soon found it 
 impossible to keep her attention riveted upon them. If 
 only to forget them for a space, she left the room again. 
 She went out to the man who still cowered mute in the 
 darkest part of the hall, and who for four hours had not 
 taken his chin off his hands. 
 
 " The surgeon will be here in a few minutes, Edmund. 
 Here is his telegram." 
 
 Abruptly, but without speaking. Broke rose to his feet 
 in a rather aimless manner, almost as if galvanised into 
 life by the slip of pink paper in her hand ; and then as his 
 wife returned to the library he followed at her heels. The 
 way in which he accompanied her implied that his con- 
 sciousness of the act was no greater than that of a som- 
 nambulist. 
 
 When they entered together Mrs. Broke saw that both 
 doctors were standing side by side and bending over the 
 couch. One was holding Joan's wrist, and the other, 
 stooping over her, was watching her face with minute 
 intensity. 
 
 " Mrs. Broke " — she heard her name. 
 
 In much the same manner that the prisoner at the bar 
 
 519 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 hears the foreman of the jury utter the sinister word 
 " Guilty " did the mother hear her name pronounced. 
 Her soul fell into stupefaction, but its paralysis was not 
 extended to her limbs. She moved to the couch, with 
 Broke following her mechanically, instinctively, like a dog. 
 She did not dare to look at the pair of impassive men before 
 her, but forced herself to pin her eyes on the face of her 
 eldest daughter. A scarcely perceptible fhcker was 
 emanating from it, hardly so much as that of a match that 
 falters in a draught for the fragment of a second to flutter 
 out. To know whether the sealed eyelids twitched or 
 whether they were still was not possible, for she saw every- 
 thing through a dancing red haze like harsh midsummer 
 heat trembling above arid country. The cold face, the 
 colour of putty, seemed to be a little convulsed ; the chest 
 sank. The fact slowly spread over her inadequate senses 
 that the loud stertorous breathing was no longer to be- 
 heard. 
 
 " Joan ! " and then a little eagerly : " Joan, speak to 
 me!" 
 
 There was not a muscle living to respond. She continued 
 to look at the face with a far-off comprehension of the 
 incomprehensible. Presently she drew her eyes away dully 
 to confront the doctors. They had turned away. Broke 
 was standing by her side. His face was grey. In the 
 crude lights of the lamps and those of the ever-blazing 
 hearth, his pale hair stood forth the colour of snow. She 
 placed her hand on his sleeve authoritatively, and led him 
 away a few paces in the manner that a mother leads a 
 child. 
 
 At the far end of the room the door was seen to open. 
 The old butler's small hoarse voice could be heard to sound 
 through the silence like the croak of a frog across a swamp. 
 
 " Sir Peter MacLachlan." 
 
 A very tall, thin, sandy-haired man, with a pale red 
 complexion peaked with the cold and empurpled round 
 the nose, lips, and ears, emerged briskly out of the dark- 
 ness beyond the lamps. For his reputation he looked 
 remarkably young. He was accompanied by an older, 
 better dressed, more prepossessing man, who carried a 
 small hand bag. 
 
 520 
 
BARBED WIRE 
 
 Dr. Walker came forward into the middle of the room 
 to meat them. 
 
 " We are much obliged to you for coming, Sir Peter," 
 he said, heartily shaking the hand of the youngish man 
 with the sandy hair, " but you are just a minute too late." 
 
 " Hum," said the great surgeon with a pronounced 
 Highland intonation, " then I suppose we'll be off again. 
 We can catch the 9.40 if we hurry." 
 
 521 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 Ad gloriam Dei et in memoriam Brokeae 
 
 ON Christmas morning a pilgrimage was made to the 
 churchyard of Covenden to choose the last rest- 
 ing-place of Joan. It was in keeping with the new 
 order of things, an indication of the spirit of the age, that 
 Joan was not to repose in the company of her forebears in 
 the church itself. It was believed that she was the first 
 Broke of Covenden dying at home in all that long tally 
 of a thousand years who was not committed to the enor- 
 mous vaults of the sacred edifice. She was to lie in humbler 
 fashion in the God's Acre under the common sky. It was 
 in deference to the wish of her mother that her eldest 
 daughter should open a new era in the history of her name. 
 It was a concession partly to science, partly to con- 
 venience, to common-sense, and modern notions. 
 
 The little church could not go on for ever with fresh 
 tablets added generation after generation to its walls. 
 Every available inch had been crammed with these memo- 
 rials many a year ago. The tombs beneath had long been 
 groaning. Warriors and statesmen Brokes were there 
 from the time of the Plantagents. Simple rural Brokes 
 were there as well, obscure and pious countryfolk, whose 
 claim upon their race was embodied in the fact that with 
 an unostentatious excellence they supplied the links of its 
 transmission. But Brokes illustrious and Brokes unknov/n 
 to song and story, whose highest flights of conduct did not 
 soar beyond the amiable Christian virtues — every wearer 
 of that talismanic name was secure when he returned 
 whence he came of his niche in the sacred building that, 
 as a signal mark of condescension in a great and noble 
 
 522 
 
IN MEMORIAM BROKEAE 
 
 family, was dedicated equally to the glory of God and the 
 house of Broke. Ad gloriam Dei ef in memoriam Brokeae. 
 
 Joan was to lie in the open air she loved so well. It was 
 not hers to have the privilege of reposing cheek by jowl 
 with her mediaeval forefather who lay with his lady by his 
 side, clad in complete mail save for the lifted vizor that 
 showed his face, with his sword clasped to his breast in his 
 iron fists, and his crossed feet resting on his faithful hound, 
 the emblem of loyalty — effigy of a Crusader returned from 
 the wars in Palestine, image of a Paladin. It was not hers 
 to lie with her less jnartial ancestor of the age of Elizabeth 
 who knelt to face his spouse in an attitude of prayer, with 
 his sixteenth-century jerkin cut to simulate the hauberk 
 of the distinguished knight his neighbour, although he 
 had no more warlike accomplishment than a bible on a 
 pedestal. Nor was it hers to lie with her more fanciful 
 kinsmen of the Georgian period who allowed a poetic 
 licence to dictate the panoply of death ; who endeavoured 
 therein to combine the Augustan age with that of the 
 Second Stuart by placing periwigs upon their heads, 
 buskins on their legs, and as a last embellishment laid over 
 all the toga of the ancient Senate House beside the Tiber. 
 
 Could our hero have consulted his own wishes, his eldest 
 daughter would have lain with these. To his mediaeval 
 spirit the laws of sanitation had no appeal. In a matter 
 of this sacred magnitude common-sense was for the service 
 of the common people. He would have been the last 
 person in the world to let it come between tradition and 
 pride of kindred. He would have had science and the 
 public welfare yield with humble and thankful hearts to 
 the honours the illustrious dead were able to bestow, by 
 their proximity, upon him and his. But that morning 
 the bruised and broken father was in no condition physi- 
 cally to carry his point. Mrs. Broke, in the name of the 
 Twentieth Century, prevailed over the Eleventh. Our 
 hero, even with all the contained passion of his mediaevcd- 
 ism, had not the tenacity of purpose to resist. 
 
 Therefore Broke, his wife, and the three children still 
 left to them, set out on Christmas morning in the company 
 of the head gardener to the little church3'ard to choose 
 six feet of sepulture. Walking up the steep slopes, their 
 
 523 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 road took them past the cottage inhabited by Billy's wife 
 and her aunt. Already that morning Mrs. Broke had had 
 the consideration to have them informed of the tragedy 
 of the previous evening, in the hope that the stroke would 
 be less severe if design and not chance made it known. 
 The door of the cottage was shut, the blinds were pulled 
 down, and there were no signs of either the old woman or 
 the young. 
 
 The churchyard, hanging on the face of the hill, sloped 
 at an angle of thirty degrees. The small church itself 
 seemed to rise sheer behind the gates. This, however, 
 was an optical illusion, as it was separated from them by 
 a moss-grown path of considerable length. As the little 
 procession slowly ascended it there could be heard people 
 at worship within the sacred precincts, uplifting their 
 voices to the strains of " Hark, the herald angels sing ! " 
 in recognition of the joyful character of the occasion. 
 
 Their way to the piece of ground they were seeking led 
 them past the entrance porch. As they came near, the 
 worm-eaten oak doors slowly opened to emit the louder 
 notes of the organ, and the fervent rustic voices in a 
 lustier strain. Two women were passing out of the church. 
 
 They came full upon the sombre pilgrims, who 
 by this had reached the level of the church door. One 
 of these women was very young ; the other very old. 
 Both were clothed heavily in mourning. They were 
 clinging to the arms of one another, and one at least 
 appeared to be overcome. But the sounds of distress, if 
 sounds there were, were wholly lost in the joyful clamour 
 proceeding from the sacred house. The elder woman 
 appeared to be receiving succour of the younger, who was 
 leading her away. Their faces struck out with the vivid 
 ]mllor of the snow that pervaded the grass, the trees and 
 the graves. Mrs. Broke stopped to detain them. And 
 at the same moment she laid her hand on Broke's coat in a 
 decisive manner, with a quick, unmistakable determination 
 to detain him also. 
 
 " This is Billy's wife, Edmund," she said, making the 
 ph^-sical attempt to draw him towards the child who, with 
 horror in her eyes, was clasping the arm of her aunt. But 
 the peremptorji solicitude of her tone went for nothing. 
 
 524 
 
IN MEMORIAM BROKEAE 
 
 Broke, without irresolution, without casting a glance at 
 the two frightened women, firmly disengaged himself from 
 the grasp of his wife, and passed on round the angle of the 
 porch. With the same absence of hesitation his daughters 
 followed. They had heard the words of their mother, but 
 their gaze was riveted on the form and bearing of their 
 father. His way was theirs. 
 
 When Broke and his daughters had passed out of sight, 
 Miss Sparrow was able to suppress the overwhelming 
 emotion the music had called forth. She bobbed hei 
 eternal curtsey and found the courage to speak. 
 
 " The music was too dreadful, ma'am ; I could not help 
 thinking of you, ma'am, and what you must suffer this 
 Christmas morning. The season makes it so much the 
 harder. It is a cruel, cruel Christmas for you ! " 
 
 " I hope my message did not shock you too much." 
 
 " It was very kind and considerate of you, ma'am." 
 
 All this time the pale child had been looking at Mrs. 
 Broke dumbly. 
 
 " How are you, child, this beautiful wintry morning ? 
 You are wise to get as much of the pure out-of-doors air 
 as you can." 
 
 Alice continued to look at her with unfaltering eyes. 
 
 " I have been thinking," she said in a deliberate voice, 
 " that perhaps it is better that some one shall be there to 
 meet him in case I am not." 
 
 " Who, child ? And where ? " 
 
 Mrs. Broke was disconcerted by the matter-of-fact tone, 
 and all the more because for the moment she was at a loss 
 to apprehend the meaning of the words. 
 
 " I mean my husband," said Alice, with a deliberation 
 that gave Mrs. Broke a sensation of faintness. " His sister 
 is there now, and he is on the way, as also am I." 
 
 Mrs. Broke recoiled from the calm voice. She turned to 
 the aunt. 
 
 " You must really see that she takes more fresh air. 
 Miss Sparrow." 
 
 " I would like to be buried in this old churchyard if I 
 may," said Ahce, " so that I can be near the place in which 
 he was born, and lived in longer than any other. I may, 
 please, may I not ? " 
 
 525 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 The mother was not strong enough this morning to be 
 able to endure these morbid fancies. Rather precipitately 
 she left them and went round the church to rejoin Broke 
 and her daughters. Tbey were discovered in a secluded 
 comer of the churchyard where, in a space hedged about 
 by bushy firs, a spot had been chosen by her husband and 
 the gardener as Joan's last resting-place. 
 
 526 
 
CHAPTER XLIV 
 Mother and Daughter 
 
 FROM that Christmas morning Mrs. Broke went every 
 day to the cottage on the hill. As the time of her 
 son's wife drew near she seemed instinctively to recognize, 
 rather than by the processes of reason, how the prospect 
 of a new generation of their name was fraught with a 
 strangely vital meaning. She had not told Broke as yet. 
 Indeed, she hardly dared to do so in the face of his 
 present bearing. The tragic death of Joan had appeared 
 to tighten rather than to relax his heart. It seemed to 
 have become congealed ; it was as though the blood in it 
 was changed to ice. He was of the type that adversity 
 embitters and renders wanton. 
 
 In the midst of this new concern she did not seek to 
 dissemble the fears that came into her mind when it reverted 
 to the frail young wife. Alice's prepossession that something 
 was about to overtake or had overtaken her husband grew 
 more intense as the days passed. So powerful did it become 
 that the nearer her ordeal approached so did the desire to 
 survive it seem to diminish. 
 
 One morning, in the early days of the New Year, Mrs. 
 Broke was hastily scanning the newspaper after breakfast, 
 and, as usual with them of late, her eyes turned first to the 
 grimmest of all the grim columns in it : that which set 
 forth the fresh list of casualties to hand from the seat of 
 war. Many aching and dim and sick eyes were to look 
 upon it that morning, as every morning, but few more 
 shudderingly than those of this bereaved woman in the 
 awful desolation of her heart. In a few incredibly short 
 
 527 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 months three children had become lost to her. And such 
 was the state of despair in which she was sunk now, that 
 she, too, was haunted with the prepossession that the sum 
 of her misfortunes would not be complete until her only 
 son was taken from her for ever, definitely and effectually. 
 She had the con^action — such was the nadir of the spirit in 
 which she found herself now — that Circumstance would 
 leave no means by which she might escape the consumma- 
 tion of her sorrows. As long as her son was aUve the hope 
 remained, however faint it must seem, that one day he 
 might be given back to her. Circumstance, however, had 
 merely to write his name in that Hst in the Standard news- 
 paper to rob her of that remote hope of consolation, of 
 mitigation, and put it out of her reach once and for all. 
 It was hardly likely that Circumstance would deny itself 
 in this small particular, when so easily it could gratify 
 its lust. 
 
 It was hardly likely that having contrived so much, it 
 would hold its hand now and refrain from making a har- 
 monious whole of its recent handiwork. Every morning 
 did she turn to that grisly column with the same convic- 
 tion in her heart. Her religion was founded on a certain 
 practical sagacity, and it informed her how insulting to 
 the conditions under which we enjoy our mortal tenure 
 was such a prepossession. But philosophy fails to touch 
 us when we feel the knife. Besides, when we are bleeding 
 to death we may grow too faint to apply the remedies our 
 minds prescribe. Far down in her heart the heavy and 
 repeated blows upon that centre of emotion had told their 
 tale. There was there a gangrene, the outward and visible 
 sign of these ghastly bruises. Her fancies were growing as 
 morbid as those of the child at the cottage. She could 
 not see a gleam of hope. Circumstance had her bound 
 to its rack, and such was its humour that it would seem 
 every bone in her body must split. 
 
 This morning of mid January she turned as usual to 
 the death roll with shuddering eyes. It was a refinement 
 of torture that although she was denied the solace of hope 
 the intolerable pangs of suspense were not on that account 
 allayed. Circumstance had the ingenuity of a Grand 
 Inquisitor in the bestowal of pain. Yet its inevitability 
 
 528 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 did not soften the morbid horror of receiving it. And this 
 morning she had not read far down the page when her eyes 
 were arrested by an item which at first seemed to wear an 
 air of distant significance. It said, " Rhodesian Light 
 Horse, No. 3013, Sergeant W. Broek (?), Killed in action 
 near Schnadhorst's Spruit, January 2." 
 
 The number was the first thing which challenged Mrs. 
 Broke's attention. It corresponded precisely with the 
 one she carried in her brain. From that she went on to 
 the other particulars as set forth, and all too soon her last 
 doubt had passed. Even the ill-spelt and queried name 
 became a part of a harmonious whole. 
 
 Perhaps the fact that struck her most forcibly at first 
 »i^as a certain irony underlying the announcement. The 
 capacity of the individual for physical suffering was already 
 past its highest. The repeated blows under which she had 
 staggered had somewhat numbed her. As one stricken 
 with a mortal disease may not have the same suscepti- 
 bility to pain as a perfectly normal and healthy frame, 
 so Mrs. Broke had already gone beyond the stage of her 
 keenest anguish. Her son was dead ; but it was a 
 calamity she had foreseen. It was only another link 
 strictly essential to the chain of events that was winding 
 about them. The last of an imposing line, enshrouded in 
 many centuries of tradition, had perished as an obscure 
 common soldier in a skirmish in a remote land. With 
 Sergeant W. Broek of the [Rhodesian Light Horse their 
 name was at an end. 
 
 She had not the courage to go to her husband and 
 tell him then. There was the probability that he had 
 been tried already to such a degree that, as was the case 
 with herself, the power of realisation had been rendered 
 blunt, but at this moment it seemed to verge on the 
 inhuman to thrust upon him that which at present had been 
 withheld. 
 
 A little afterwards, when the nature of these tidings 
 assumed a sharper outline in her mind, the four walls of 
 the room in which she sat began to contract. It was as 
 though they were crushing her body until she could no 
 longer fetch a breath. Her senses were still sufficiently 
 normal to be aware that it was the merest illusion ; that 
 
 529 LL 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 fact notwithstanding, however, she rose and went to 
 another room. In a httle while the effect was repeated 
 there. A craving came upon her to go out of doors. There 
 was something in her that demanded a freer, more spacious 
 air. 
 
 Once out-of-doors she was invaded by the necessity of 
 making her way to the cottage at once. The future might 
 depend entirely upon that. It was absolutely essential 
 that the news contained in that morning's newspaper 
 should not come to the notice of the wife. It called for 
 no common hardihood for her to go to that place there 
 and then, but once again a bitter need had made her 
 strong. 
 
 When she came to the cottage door, Dr. Walker was 
 departing. 
 
 " Ha ! Mrs. Broke, I wanted to see you. I have ordered 
 her to keep her bed. I think it wise ; and I must be sent 
 for at the first moment." 
 
 " Have you an idea when ? " 
 
 " This evening most probably." 
 
 Mrs. Broke then put a tentative question to the doctor 
 as to whether he had seen anything of a special interest in 
 that morning's newspaper. When he said he had not she 
 drew the sheet containing the announcement out of her 
 cloak, and asked him to read the line on which her finger 
 was placed. 
 
 " You don't mean to tell me that is our poor boy ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said in a firm voice. 
 
 There was a moment in which the doctor betrayed some 
 agitation. He then peered hard at her. Her fortitude 
 struck him as very remarkable. 
 
 " I feel for you very much," he said in a quavering tone. 
 " You have had a lot of bad luck lately. And the poor 
 father ? He must be dreadfully cut up." 
 
 " He does not know yet." 
 
 " I think you will be wise not to go out of your way to 
 let him know. And, of course, the child upstairs must be 
 kept in ignorance." 
 
 " Indeed, yes." 
 
 " Of course it goes without saying as far as you are con- 
 cerned. But the question arises whether we shall be able 
 
 53^ 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 to keep her mind quiet. She appears in a sense already to 
 know." 
 
 " Is it advisable to tell Miss Sparrow ? " 
 
 " She seems a sensible old woman. As for the nurse 
 she is a veritable dragon of prudence, in whom you will 
 find a great ally." 
 
 Mrs. Broke passed into the cottage to find this veritable 
 dragon of prudence replenishing an india-rubber hot water 
 bottle from a kettle on the hob. She was an apple-cheeked 
 creature of the countryside, sufficiently severe of years and 
 mien, an autocrat of the bed-chamber, accustomed in the 
 pursuit of her calling to exact the obedience and even the 
 homage of all sorts and conditions of men and women. 
 
 " Good morning, ma'am," she said without pausing in 
 the operation she was conducting. 
 
 " Good morning. May I go upstairs ? " 
 
 " No, ma'am, not this morning. She is too excited. I 
 would not have let her aunt go up, only she is so used to 
 having her about her, that it might have unsettled her 
 more, ma'am, if she had not been able to see her." 
 
 " How is she this morning ? " 
 
 " I am not pleased with her, ma'am. She is feverish. 
 And she has taken the notion that her husband is dead, 
 and that she is going to die too ; although, for that matter, 
 they are all alike in that respect. But this notion she has 
 taken of her husband's death looks like making it very 
 awkward for us. She seems firmly to beheve in it, although 
 it is all a flam, no more than a fancy." 
 
 " On the contrary, it happens to be perfectly true." 
 
 The nurse nearly allowed the hot- water bottle to drop 
 from her hand. 
 
 " You don't mean to say, ma'am, as how our poor 
 Mr. William is dead ? " 
 
 " The news is in this morning's paper." 
 
 " I am sure, ma'am, I feel for you very much. It is 
 terrible hard for you and Mr. Broke, and so soon after 
 poor Miss Joan. I am sure, ma'am, I sympathise. And 
 poor young lady, say I, she is right after all. We might 
 well not be able to get it out of her head. But how could 
 she have known that ? It is strange, ma'am, the things 
 they do know sometimes. It is just hke poor Mrs. Pearson, 
 
 531 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 who knew her husband was drowned hours before they 
 brought home the body. And here's her auntie and I been 
 a-teUing her it was all stuff and nonsense ; and it actually 
 turns out to be true. I don't remember anything more 
 wonderful than that." 
 
 At this moment Miss Sparrow was seen descending the 
 stairs, bearing an untasted cup of milk in her hand. At 
 the sight of Mrs. Broke sitting below, she stopped half-way 
 in her descent to drop her invariable curtsey to her. Custom 
 had rendered it so precise that she was able to perform it 
 without spilling a drop of the milk she carried. 
 
 Mrs. Broke greeted the old woman with the marked 
 kindness of tone she never failed to employ to her. 
 
 " I have bad news for you, Miss Sparrow," she said a 
 little- while after.wards, " but I know you have great 
 courage.'' 
 
 " I will try to have, ma'am," said the old woman 
 nervously. 
 
 " Our fears are realised. My son has been killed in 
 South Africa." 
 
 The old woman stood perfectly rigid, perfectly upright, 
 with her bony arms folded on her flat bosom. 
 
 " Two in a fortnight, ma'am. I don't know, ma'am, how 
 you have the mind to bear it. My heart bleeds for 
 you." 
 
 Tliere was an extraordinary pity in the tone that touched 
 the mother. Such a solicitude directed to herself she found 
 to be infinitely more unnerving than an outburst of woe. 
 
 " It is hard to say 'Thy will be done,'" said the old 
 woman in a contained voice. 
 
 For some little time she seemed either unwilling or 
 unable to apply the bearing the news must have on her 
 own affairs. But at last she broke forth quite suddenly, 
 in a voice that was like the squeal of a hare that has been 
 hit— 
 
 " My Alice ! My Alice ! " . • 
 
 The idea appeared to have struck her in all its astonish- 
 ing force for the first time. 
 
 " The news must be kept from her at all costs," said 
 Mrs. Broke, shaken with pity. 
 
 " Not for long, ma'am, not for long. Not for more 
 
 532 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 that! a day or two at the most. Already she knows in hei 
 heart." 
 
 " I fear she does, poor child." 
 
 Silence came between them again until the old woman 
 spoke once more, this time with a brevity that transfixed 
 the listener. 
 
 " Sentence of death, ma'am, for Alice ! " 
 
 Mrs. Broke's conviction of the truth of this statement 
 was so clear that she was not able to make an attempt to 
 console her. 
 
 " She is my all, ma'am," said the old woman, without 
 passion and without tears. " She is all I have got in the 
 world. I shall not be able to bear the loneliness when she 
 is taken. She is my everything ; I have nothing else. It 
 would have been a great kindness for God not to have 
 left an old woman in the world entirely alone. Still, I 
 must not complain ; it will not be for long. He knows 
 best, I suppose ; but, all the same, it would have been a 
 great kindness to an old and lonely woman had He taken 
 her first." 
 
 The old woman pressed her skinny fingers, coarsened 
 and blackened with a Hfetime of toil, against her flat chest. 
 Her shrivelled frame remained erect, and as gaunt in its 
 rigidness as the arm of a windmill. But the furrows of her 
 face, the colour and consistency of parchment, did not 
 reveal a single tear. She was like a dry stick in which 
 a drop of sap could not be expected to exist. 
 
 " It seems hard," she went on with the same absence of 
 passion, " that the poor young gentleman should have 
 been killed just when that great fortune had come to him. 
 If it had come to him a month or two sooner Alice would 
 have been saved. He would not have needed to leave her 
 then, and she would not have died. But ' God moves in 
 a mysterious way,' as the beautiful hj'mn tells us. I am 
 an old woman, ma'am, but all through my life I have 
 noticed that things are always falling out in a way that you 
 cannot understand. A little bit here and a little bit there, 
 and all v/ould have been changed. I suppose it is that 
 God does not always go the straight way to work, lest we 
 should get to understand His ways too well, and presume 
 upon the knowledge. Ir the end it is best for us, I sup- 
 
 533 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 poie, human nature being weak and what it is, but, at the 
 time, it is apt to seem hard. If that money had come just 
 one short month or two sooner two beautiful hves would not 
 have been sacrificed ; and you and me, ma'am, and the 
 poor father and those poor dear sisters would not be feeling 
 that the light of their lives had gone out." 
 
 " It is to teach us poor women the gospel of patience." 
 
 " There are times, ma'am, when it almost seems that 
 you cannot be patient any more." 
 
 "If ever women cease to be patient there will perish 
 the only hope remaining to the world," said the bruised 
 and broken lady, speaking for her sex with the mournful 
 conviction of a seer. 
 
 Thereafter a merciful silence came between them once 
 more. Speech lost its adequacy. They were traversing 
 uttermost abysses that could bear no spoken record. In 
 their ways of life they diverged as widely as two persons 
 could ; their lots had not been cast in the same plane ; 
 but here habits and conventions had no meaning. They 
 were a pair of women who felt the pinch of life in a per- 
 fectly similar fashion. As one individual they moved 
 through the same noisome darknesses to look at death. 
 Every yard they went, the one holding on to the other, 
 with the same eyes they saw the same things. 
 
 In this nadir of the spirit in which they were lost the 
 cottage door was opened, and a small female figure came 
 upon the threshold. It entered the little room with a 
 quiet, assured step. Suddenly it stopped, and a harrowing 
 irresolution might have been seen to possess it. At the 
 sight of one seated in the room, the visitor a woman, a 
 young and very small, in deep black draperies, not only 
 stopped abruptly, but so great was the hesitation that had 
 come upon her so suddenly, that a visible reaction was 
 produced. Step by step she retreated backwards to the 
 cottage door. 
 
 Mrs. Broke, who was seated with her face towards it, 
 had not taken her eyes from those of the old woman when 
 the first sound of the lifted latch had crept upon her ears. 
 It was not at first that the indecision of the person who had 
 entered was rendered to her absent senses, which were 
 so far away from the trite facts that were being evolved 
 
 534 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 out of the mundane. No sooner was she conscious, how- 
 ever, of an additional presence in that httle room, than she 
 looked up to learn to whom it might belong. It belonged 
 to Delia. 
 
 The first shock of mutual recognition past, mother and 
 daughter grew sensible to find themselves peering towards 
 the haggard faces of one another, as through the mists of 
 that immense gulf that had opened between their lives. 
 In a manner they had the wonderful sense of illusion that 
 befalls the climbers of the Brocken when confronted with 
 the spectre of themselves upon the opposite mountain. 
 Mother and daughter were of one flesh, but as, slightly 
 stricken with horror, they peered towards one another, an 
 immutable law of time, space, and physical being appeared 
 to hold them apart. Their likeness one to the other was 
 almost weird, their flesh and blood was identical, but the 
 sensation afflicted them that they could never come to 
 stand nearer to one another than they stood now. 
 
 This feeling, however, was only paramount in Mrs. 
 Broke in the first excitement of recognition. It seemed to 
 make less than an instant in her brain, although in point 
 of actual time it must have made many. No sooner had 
 the pale proud image of her youngest-born been cut into 
 her senses by the unerring chisel of kindred, than she rose 
 to her feet with a cry. 
 
 " Delia ! " 
 
 There was no room in her already submerged heart for 
 the question of a loyal attitude to Broke to enter it, while 
 so much as one thought of private animus was impossible. 
 All things were merged in the cry of her maternity. 
 
 " Delia ! " she cried, and ran to her daughter with arms 
 outstretched, and her face racked and precipitated into 
 the veriest unreason of emotion. Running to her daughter, 
 she gathered the un\aelding form against her bosom and 
 pressed her lips fiercely upon her cheek. They found it dead. 
 Not a nerve in Delia responded to the call. The horror of 
 the discovery was like a douche of cold water suddenly 
 flung at the face of the WTetched woman. She recoiled 
 with a shudder ; her teeth seemed to clap in her jaws. 
 
 " Delia ! " she cried for the third time, and now under 
 the dominion of terror. 
 
 535 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Delia did not jdeld a breath to her mother's cry. Her 
 chin was raised, and her vivid eyes were looking steadily 
 past her to the wall beyond, on which was nothing more 
 human, more significant than a grocer's almanac. 
 
 " Delia," said her mother, feeling her knees beginning 
 to give way. " Have you nothing to say to me ? Have 
 you no mercy to give me ? If you have not, I — I do not 
 think I can endure it." 
 
 Far away in her consciousness there was the echo of 
 the speech her brother had reported as having fallen from 
 the child's lips in relation to the conduct of her father. 
 " God may forgive him, but I never will ! " These Brokes 
 were not light of utterance. It had come upon her at the 
 time, and now the fact returned upon her with a grinding 
 pang, that for one of their women to permit herself a 
 speech of that nature implied not only the ample concep- 
 tion of all that it meant, but also the implacable power of 
 will to vindicate the words. As the bereaved woman re- 
 coiled from her daughter with that freshly-recalled phrase 
 in her heart, the conviction was driven through 
 every artery of her being that she was lost. The fact that 
 she was about to be spurned like a dog by a child she 
 had borne would in her present condQtion prove too 
 much. 
 
 " You cannot mean it," she said, without her senses 
 recognising one of the words she used. " You cannot 
 mean it. You do not know what you do. You do not 
 know what you do." 
 
 The voice and face of the mother touched no chord in 
 the daughter. She still regarded the picture of Father 
 Christmas printed in five colours of naif garishness on 
 the wall before her eyes. And the eyes were as wide, as con- 
 centrated, and the wonderfully drawn line of her mouth 
 was as firm as on those occasions which had struck so much 
 disconsolation into her Uncle Charles during the period 
 of her flight to London. 
 
 " I am not guilty," said the mother. " I had neither 
 art nor part in your father's act." 
 
 Again the beaten woman hardly knew the words she 
 used. And in any case the admission was wrung out of 
 the very depths of her faithful spirit. It was the only 
 
 536 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 occasion in her life that openly, by word of mouth, she 
 repudiated an action of her husband's. It tore her in 
 pieces as it was, but that statement had to be made here 
 and now, if she were not miserably to perish. 
 
 " You suppressed a letter." 
 
 Delia answered her mother in the melancholy voice of 
 a judge. 
 
 " I confess it. But that action was taken in the con- 
 ception of your interests. It may have been mistaken, 
 it may have been wrong, but I say it before God that my 
 motive was worthy. I cannot bear that you should visit 
 my errors upon me in this manner. I cannot bear it ; 
 whether I acted rightly or wrongly, that you should judge 
 me is more than I can endure. Have you no pity for the 
 mother who has never had a thought apart from the wel- 
 fare of you all ? Have I served you from your first hour 
 with the brightest blood of my heart, that you should spurn 
 me now and cast me off like a dog ? " 
 
 Delia stood as tense as death and as cold. In her face 
 there was not a spark of compassion for the woman she 
 was crucifying with her silence. 
 
 " God forgive you your hard heart," cried the felon upon 
 the tree. " God forgive you your stubborn pride ! " 
 
 " You had no pity for another," said Delia, in a voice 
 capable of the utmost deliberation of selection. " He 
 was poor and he was defenceless. I do not think you 
 deserve to be forgiven." 
 
 The mercilessness of such words helped the mother to 
 regain her self control. With it returned her power of 
 will. An inflexible determination to prevail was born 
 in her. She must prevail, or in the attempt perish. She 
 pinned her daughter by the arm in a firm grip. Suddenly 
 the furrows of her face were moulded in stern lines. 
 
 " I am innocent. Delia, I will compel you to pay that 
 justice to me. I am innocent ; and I summon God to be 
 my witness. You shall not cast me away. My acts may 
 have been mistaken, but they were not criminal. Here 
 and now you must, you shall receive back into your heart 
 the mother that bore you ! " 
 
 Rag by rag every stitch of the clothing of convention 
 that our civilization demands shall be the garb in which a 
 
 537 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 finished woman of the world shall inhabit her decency, was 
 being torn off the poor lady. The woman of ineffable 
 wisdom and mastery would be naked all too soon. Even 
 now there was scarcely a clout left to cover her shaking 
 limbs. Dignity, reticence were gone, fortitude was going. 
 Naked and bleeding, she was prostrating herself before the 
 feet of her daughter, who, so far from being revolted by the 
 spectacle, continued to gaze upon it with unflinching and 
 perfectly remorseless eyes. 
 
 " You had no mercy. Do not ask it of me." 
 
 " I do, I do ! I demand it ! You shall extend mercy 
 to — to your mother." 
 
 She gripped the unresisting wrists so tightly that the 
 print of her fingers was marked on the tender network of 
 veins and white flesh. A slow and cruel smile began to 
 creep out of Delia, the peculiar weapon of one woman 
 when she seeks to slay another. It seemed to open a 
 vital artery in the victim. 
 
 " You force me to my knees," she gasped. 
 
 The last rag was torn away. She was entirely naked 
 now. But not for an instant did her judge avert the gaze 
 that was devouring her with its scorn. 
 
 " Gentle God, this is a Broke — this is not a human 
 being ! " cried the mother. 
 
 An intolerable pang took Delia in the breast. Without 
 a groan she strangled it and continued to confront her 
 victim. 
 
 " I hold your guilt to be the equal of my father's," said 
 the melancholy voice of justice. 
 
 " You shall not. O, m}^ God, you shall not ! " 
 
 The implacable eyes of the two women suddenly clashed 
 together. The shock of their meeting was produced by 
 a contained but vivid fury. As when two blades of a steel 
 of an equally choice temper are crossed in a duel to the 
 death, it is left to the mightier, the more righteous cause 
 to gain the mastery, it was with a knowledge of the exis- 
 ence of such special conditions that this unhappy pair 
 contended now. Both the wretched women had this con- 
 sciousness when their implacable eyes recoiled from the 
 ^aces of each other. Right must turn the scale ; truth, 
 justice be the arbiter. 
 
 538 
 
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 
 
 " Delia, I challenge you to prove the truth of that wliich 
 you assert." 
 
 " You suppressed a letter." 
 
 " My motive seemed entirely worthy to myself." 
 
 " You took me away that afternoon." 
 
 " I had no cognisance of what was about to happen." 
 
 " None whatever, mother ? You had no foreknowledge 
 of any kind of what was about to occur ? " 
 
 " None." 
 
 " You swear it before God ? " 
 
 " Before God I swear it ! " 
 
 The bleeding and naked woman, the woman of in- 
 effable wisdom and mastery, of unconquerable will, 
 covered her face with her hands in a spasm of very 
 shame. It was too much to undergo this literal inquisition 
 at the hands of one she called daughter. But all their lives 
 these children had never learned to trust her. It is im- 
 possible to certain natures to have implicit confidence in 
 that which they cannot apprehend. And she had never 
 taken the trouble to interpret herself in lucid terms to these 
 women that were her daughters, in terms that could place 
 all their doubts concerning her at rest. Now she was being 
 punished ruthlessly for that omission. Her assurance that 
 throughout their lives her one thought had been for their 
 welfare was not enough. Delia demanded the proofs. 
 
 " You will believe me, Delia," said her mother in a voice 
 that had long ceased to be her own. 
 
 The barrier of a lifelong reserve, of an unremitting 
 reticence was broken down. 
 
 " You shall believe me, Delia." 
 
 Again she gripped the limp wrists with all the strength 
 of which she was capable, a strength that to herself seemed 
 great enough to break them. She raked wildly the dismal 
 but unresponsive eyes to find a trace of that mercy of 
 which the denial could only be interpreted as death. She 
 bent her face towards the mouth that could not pity. 
 
 " You will believe me," she repeated again and yet 
 again, and forced yet nearer to her daughter's a face which 
 also had long ceased to be a part of her identity. 
 
 Delia met it with a look of impotence. Suddenly on 
 her side she began to rake it with the awful candour of 
 
 539 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 her gaze. Not a comer in which deception might cower 
 did she leave untraversed. Her dismal but mute eyes 
 explored abysses in that wonderful face which never before 
 had had a meaning for them. The unplumbed depths 
 they found in it were marvellous indeed. Even in the act 
 Delia grew conscious that this was a wonderful face into 
 which she was looking. But her work must be carried 
 through. The grey hairs of her mother, the hollow cheeks, 
 the sunken eyes, the wildly trembling lips were alike 
 traversed by an inquisition dreadful, inexorable in its 
 candour. Not once, however, did the victim quail. Her 
 will enabled her to stand there to support the vivisecting 
 eyes of her daughter without so much as a contraction or 
 dilation of the pupils of her own, notwithstanding that 
 the tribunal of her spirit had announced that she must 
 share the guilt of Broke. And by sheer resolve she 
 forced her daughter to concede that she had spoken the 
 truth. 
 
 The breath of both issued from their dry throats in 
 the hard and audible manner of Joan when she lay dying. 
 Delia then proceeded to press her lips slowly and gravely 
 against her mother's forehead. 
 
 " I believe you, mother," she said, gathering the broken 
 woman in her arms. 
 
 540 
 
CHAPTER XLV 
 A Short Essay in Anticlimax 
 
 1"^ HEREAFTER Mrs.Broke and her recovered daughter 
 sat a long hour together in the intimacy of a common 
 sorrow. Deha was spending a few days at Cuttisham 
 with her husband at the house of his father. That morning 
 she had seen the announcement in the newspaper of her 
 brother's death, and in the same way as her mother had 
 been able more clearly to identify him by the number 
 attached to his misspelt name. Before he went to South 
 Africa she had given him her promise that she would keep 
 in touch with his wife. She had been as good as her word, 
 inasmuch that she had corresponded with her regularly. 
 And now, under the stress of this tragic event, she had been 
 able, not without a struggle, to overcome the repugnance 
 she had to setting foot once more on her father's land. 
 The impulse to make a pilgrimage to the one for whom 
 her brother had forfeited everything, even to the laying 
 down of life itself, was too great. Her promise became 
 a sacred duty now that he was dead. It was demanded 
 of her that for once she should waive the bitterness of her 
 personal thoughts. At whatever cost, she must go to his 
 wife and offer her the consolation of one who had been 
 very near to him and very dear. 
 
 She had heard of Joan's death also through the news- 
 paper, that harsh and crude medium. To her intense 
 desire to be present at her burial she did not yield. She 
 felt that her presence at the graveside might cause inex- 
 pressible bitterness to every member of her family. And 
 
 541 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 as far as she herself was concerned she was aware that 
 the adoption of such a course must mitigate her resent- 
 ment in some degree. That final insinuation of her pride 
 fortified her sufficiently to enable her to stay quietly in 
 London. 
 
 The barrier once broken down between mother and 
 daughter, their re-established intercourse was peculiarly 
 frank. Now that Delia had been persuaded of her mother's 
 guiltlessness, she did not hesitate to establish her for the 
 first time in her life in her confidence. For the first time 
 in her life she had dared to pluck the mask from off her 
 face. The surface beneath was a revelation. The awful 
 being was flesh and blood, a woman and a mother. And 
 in any case there cotild be no half measures with Delia now. 
 It was the signal honesty of her nature either to reject or 
 to accept. With her there could be no wish father to the 
 thought, no slurring over of hard facts, no pretences, no 
 lip service, no attempts at deception of herself. She 
 had taken inordinate precautions to satisfy herself that her 
 mother was innocent. Once that fact was rendered clear 
 she admitted the broken woman to her arms, and talked 
 to her as a daughter to a parent fainting under the relent- 
 less strokes of fate. 
 
 " Do my sisters know about Billy ? " she asked, after 
 this re-established intercourse had gone on some time. 
 
 " No, alas ! nor does your poor father." 
 
 " They must be almost crushed, poor children. How 
 lonely, how inexpressibly lonely and lost they must feel 
 without Joan ; and then Hat too is gone away. What dear 
 happy da^'s we all had together once. One short year 
 ago we had yet to taste the flavour of life. I think, mother, 
 we have all tasted too much of it since. I at least am 
 not the shy little timid girl I was in those days, that now 
 seem ages and ages away. I am very greatly changed, 
 and you, too, mother seem very much changed. Perhaps 
 it is that my eyes are not the same. But what dear, dear 
 da\'s they were ! Oh, those sweet winter mornings when 
 we all used to go hunting with poor dear Uncle Charles ! " 
 
 " And your poor dear father," her mother interposed 
 with sunken eagerness. 
 
 " I remember Joan was always our leader — dear, high- 
 542 . 
 
A SHORT ESSAY IN ANTICLIMAX 
 
 hearted, fearless Joan. What a great soldier she would 
 have been had she been a man ! " 
 
 "It has made your poor father very aged," said the mother 
 with a wistfulness that was almost timid. " Perhaps you 
 will hardly guess how tenderly he has loved you all. Per- 
 haps you will hardly guess what an inveterate pride he 
 has had in you. You have meant more to him than life 
 itself. I believe he would have laid it down cheerfully 
 rather than a hair of your heads should meet with injury. 
 He will never be the same man again. I think it would 
 shock you to see how white he is." 
 
 Delia did not respond. 
 
 " It is hard," said the mother, with a gentleness that 
 was still timid, " for us women sometimes to understand 
 how men look at life. I think, my dear one, we ought 
 never to judge them, because of the difference in our 
 natures." 
 
 " They judge us." 
 
 There was something in the quality of the words that 
 started the blood running cold in the veins of the mother. 
 
 " I do not think they judge us harshly," she said. 
 
 " They have been known to commit crimes against us 
 in the name of justice." 
 
 "If that is so, my dear one, are they not the more in need 
 of our forgiveness ? " 
 
 Delia's eyes were like stone. 
 
 " Alas, alas, my dear one ! " 
 
 " Should they not first seek a true conception of the 
 quality of justice, before they dare to inflict it upon us ? " 
 
 " But, never, never let us forget our prerogative of seeking 
 the true conception of forgiveness, that even more sovereign 
 quality." 
 
 " Let them gain it for themselves, mother, before they 
 turn to look for it in us." 
 
 " It is a terrible attitude," said the broken woman. " I 
 do not see what hope there can be for us wretched humans 
 as long as such ideas obtain. Is this all the civilization of 
 which we boast amounts to ? I wince to hear such words 
 from the lips of a woman." 
 
 " Are we not as man begets us ? " said her daughter, 
 with pain and despair in her eyes. " Are we not his clay ? 
 
 543 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 If the sire is a wolf must he look to have issue of the turtle- 
 dove ? If there is that within the spirit of man, which, 
 unchecked and even sanctioned by his heart, mounts up in 
 him until he is become a beast, shall not such a crime 
 against our human nature recoil upon him ? " 
 
 " Alas, there spoke a Broke." 
 
 The reproach was wrung out of the unhappy woman. 
 Too clearly did she recognize the seed whence sprang that 
 speech. The mediaevalist of the twelfth century must 
 not expect to have issue endowed with the higher tenets of 
 society. The wanton nature of his daughter's words 
 again caused the chill to spread over the mother's veins. 
 
 " How can there be a hope for the world, my dear one, 
 so long as we perpetuate in our own hearts the evil inherent 
 in the hearts of those who have gone before ? " 
 
 '' Is not man the all-powerful instrument ? Does he 
 not fashion us according to his will ? Does not his nature 
 enable him to mould us in his own image ? Is it not, mother, 
 through him and only him that progress and enlightenment 
 can come ? " 
 
 " No, no," said the older woman, taking the hand of her 
 daughter in her own, and caressing it with a softness which 
 ^•et had such an anxiety in it that, even as she spoke, she 
 seemed to be peering up, word by word, into the young face, 
 pale with its anguish, to remark their effect. " No, no; is 
 it not worthier to believe that the regeneration of the world 
 is with us ? Is not the idea more endurable that by our 
 courage, by our patience, we redeem the grosser clay. I feel 
 sure that nothing can be done for Man except by VVoman. 
 Must we not lead him before he can walk ? And if nature 
 has not designed us to purify and to replenish, why does 
 she make us bleed ? " 
 
 "Is it not what we have been saying to ourselves for 
 our own comfort, our own vindication, from the beginning 
 of things ? But man does not seem to grow less brutal. 
 He continues to strike us to earth, and we continue to 
 grovel and fondle the hand that makes us bleed. I cannot 
 feel that any humane end is served, unless it is to enable 
 hiiii to })ractise his lusts in security." 
 
 " Oh, my poor child ! My poor child ! " 
 
 The eyes of the mother filled with tears. 
 
 .'S44 
 
A SHORT ESSAY IN ANTICLIMAX 
 
 " Oh, I know, I know ! There is a poison in my veins.'* 
 
 In her anguish Deha rocked her body to and fro. 
 
 " Is there no such thing as strength within you, my dear 
 one ? " 
 
 " What strength I have cannot cleanse my blood. The 
 stealthy poison taints me ; how you do not know." 
 
 " Perhaps I do, my lamb." 
 
 " No, you do not. You cannot ; your blood is too sweet, 
 too pure. I am powerless. The terrible forces at work 
 within me are too great." 
 
 " Much may be done by prayer." 
 
 " Alas, I have no faith ! " 
 
 " You must never forget that we women, we wives and 
 mothers, are chained to the oar of the galley. That fact 
 must supply our faith, must teach us how to pray." 
 
 " Oh, I know you are right ! " 
 
 " Yes, I am right. We are brought into this world in a 
 state of subjection and captivity. We cannot put off our 
 fetters, we cannot call ourselves free. Be sure Nature 
 understands that. Be sure she is never tired of making 
 us understand it." 
 
 " If I am chained to the galley the fetters are of silk 
 that bind me." 
 
 " They are fetters, child, none the less. And if they be 
 silk you will find them so much the harder to break. 
 Fetters of silk can only be tied by honest and brave men 
 round the wrists of true and good women. But once they 
 are on they are far more inviolable than those of the 
 clumsier, more arbitrary steel. There is no evading that 
 kind ; they are the most tenacious of all." 
 
 For the first time the load of pain seemed to lift slightly 
 in Delia's eyes. Her mother was looking at her all the 
 time with a weary furtive anxiousness. In an instant she 
 seized her opportimity. 
 
 " Think of your husband," she said, " and then tell me 
 that you will forgive your poor father." 
 
 " No, no, I cannot." 
 
 But there was a new vibration in the voice that was 
 unmistakable. 
 
 " You would l)e shocked to know how broken he is and 
 aged" 
 
 545 M M 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " You make your appeal to the wrong part of me, mother. 
 There would be a better hope of succeeding with my mind 
 than my corrupted heart. It cannot act otherwise. A 
 thousand times has it made the effort, but, alas ! it is 
 defiled." 
 
 " At least it will make it again ? " 
 
 " It will be worse than futile," said Delia, with a shudder. 
 
 " Do you think it would be futile if it were made at the 
 command of your husband ? " 
 
 " The hypothesis is not possible." 
 
 " Let us assume that it were. If he made the personal 
 request to you to go to your father and extend your mercy 
 to that broken, aged man, could you do it ? " 
 
 This question, framed with slowly matured precision, 
 sank into the daughter. There was an instant of time in 
 which a livid terror passed over her face. She then answered 
 hastily, with a painful blush — 
 
 " There is nothing I could not do at his command." 
 
 " The hour will soon be at hand when I shall hold you 
 to that," said the indomitable woman, with almost a note 
 of triumph. 
 
 Delia smiled wanly. 
 
 "If you ask that of him, mother, you will ask what I 
 dare not." 
 
 " Then, my dear one, I have formed a greater estimate 
 of your husband's nature than has his wife." 
 
 Delia shuddered. 
 
 " If I were to suffer a repulse from him, I think I should 
 die," she said, mournfully. 
 
 " Do not fear. I have come to see he is one who walks 
 upon the mountains. Had I not, I would not dare to take 
 the risk. If on my knees, humbly, in the name of my white 
 hairs, in the name of my kind, I crave this boon of 
 luni, he will grant it. He will grant it, because he will see 
 that in the soul of one old and poor woman hes the recogni- 
 tion of his quality." 
 
 Beads shone hke dew in the grey furrows of the mother's 
 face. Her daughter closed her eyes. 
 
 " If I do not dissuade you, my poor darling mother," she 
 said, in accents of despair, " your blood will be on my head. 
 You cannot know with whom you have to deal. I beseech 
 
 546 
 
A SHORT ESSAY IN ANTICLIMAX 
 
 you not to incur so great a danger : a repulse would kill 
 us both." 
 
 " There will be no repulse. I shall not supplicate in 
 vain. They who walk upon the mountains are too strong, 
 and therefore too gentle, to spurn the weak when Fate 
 prostrates them before their knees, Man can be ruthless, 
 but also he can be magnanimous. He is the first work of 
 God. This man will not deny a poor old woman. And, 
 Delia, do not forget it is easier to nobility to forgive an 
 injury wrought against itself, than one wrought against 
 the outcast and impotent." 
 
 " It was a crime that was committed against him," said 
 her daughter, with a relapse into her former tone. 
 
 " Crime or injury, they are as one." 
 
 " The man does not live who could forgive a crime of that 
 kind." 
 
 The look of pain in the eyes of the j^ounger woman had 
 given place to one of pity. It was for her mother. It 
 seemed to that grim vision that the extremity of anguish 
 had rendered her a little insane. The only standard by 
 which she could gauge what a humane clemency could 
 achieve was her own heart. Had she stood in the place 
 of her husband, and that appeal had been preferred, 
 she was conscious that she would have repulsed it, 
 perhaps with contumely. And it seemed to her that 
 one whom she knew to be so much greater than her- 
 self must yet, by reason of his almost morbid self-centred- 
 ness, adopt a like course. Nature would compel him so to 
 act, whatever his impersonal yearnings to achieve the 
 magnanimous. Her own were also of that sort, but again 
 and again had it been revealed to her how ineffectual they 
 were when confronted with those superhuman forces that 
 make for destiny. 
 
 " I beseech you, mother, I implore you to be forewarned. 
 Your request, should 3'ou dare to make it, must fail, and, 
 failing, must recoil upon you. Be forewarned by one who 
 knows so well with whom and what you will have to con- 
 tend." 
 
 Delia spoke with the sombre fervour of the prophet. 
 But the wildness of her solicitude was met with the ghost 
 of that old indomitable smile. 
 
 547 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " I do not fear, my dear one," said her mother ; and now 
 something of the old calm sauvity of voice seemed to be 
 returning, as in the very throes of death a certain placidity 
 of the spirit may arise. " I do not fear. And when my 
 request has been made and has been granted to me I shall 
 turn to you to fulfil your part as truly as your husband will 
 have fulfilled his." 
 
 Delia was seen to clasp her bosom, while her eyes were 
 darkening. The beads still continued to shine in the Uvid 
 furrows of the mother's face, but there could be no misin- 
 terpretation of the expression that was come upon it. 
 
 " I do not fear," it said, as staunchly as could her lips. 
 
 54« 
 
CHAPTER XLVI 
 The Last Battle 
 
 MRS. BROKE left the cottage a short time afterwards 
 to attend the family luncheon. Delia, apprised of 
 what was shortly to occur, had expressed her intention of 
 remaining in that place until the more immediate crisis 
 at least was passed. She promised her mother that she 
 should be at once informed when the nurse sent for the 
 doctor. 
 
 Mrs. Broke's first act on reaching home was to despatch 
 two maids to the cottage to augment the forces already 
 gathered there. In these high and grave periods the re- 
 sources of any establishment are apt to be taxed. 
 
 At the luncheon table were seated Broke and the three 
 daughters remaining to him. As yet none of them was 
 cognisant of Billy's death. The problem immediately 
 before Mrs. Broke was the most fitting manner of acquaint- 
 ing them. The task must prove exceedingly painful ; 
 and nothing but the inexorable demand made by events so 
 rapidly precipitating would have induced her to undertake it 
 in her present state. Even as she sat in the midst of them 
 at the table, and in lieu of partaking of food, meditated 
 upon the subject, she came to the conclusion that the 
 actual necessity only applied to Broke himself, and that 
 for the time being her daughters could be left in a merciful 
 oblivion. 
 
 No sooner was the meal at an end than she asked Broke 
 to grant her a brief private interview. 
 
 " I will hardly detain you, Edmund, more than a 
 minute or two." 
 
 549 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Her tone was intended to imply that she wished to speak 
 with him on a plain matter of business. Accordingly they 
 entered the library together. Their feet once again on that 
 old battle-ground, where so much of their blood had been 
 left already, she did not fence. She had no longer the 
 nerve. She must speak at once, else the power would 
 desert her. No longer was she the perfectly balanced, the 
 beautifully strung woman of affairs whose emotional 
 nature was in entire subordination to the will. To look at 
 Broke as he stood before her now, and to recall what he was 
 a few brief months ago, was to be conscious that she was 
 gazing upon the ghost that was herself. His hair might be 
 white, but hers was white also. For every line in his 
 face, the parallel was to be found graven in her own. 
 
 " I will be brief, Edmund. Billy is dead." 
 
 The white-headed man remained upright and serene, 
 except for the hardly perceptible stoop that had insinu- 
 ated itself so recently in his nobly spreading shoulders. 
 There was not a faint sign of perception visible in his 
 seared face. 
 
 " He died serving his country. He was killed in action 
 on the second of January." 
 
 Broke made no reply. Not a fibre twitched. 
 
 " His end, as I conceive it, is a fitting termination to 
 your name. He is the last of you. Your name dies with 
 him ; and I do not think there is a Broke of you all who 
 could have devised that it should perish more fittingly. 
 The last of you gave his life for his country. That is an 
 ample requiem, even for such a race as yours. Edmund, 
 even you will admit it." 
 
 He remained before her upright and unspeaking. She 
 gazed upon the piece of stone before her with something 
 approaching a return to her old baffling, ironical smile. 
 
 " He was your son ; also the last of your name. How- 
 ever you may seek to dissociate those two facts, those two 
 crude facts, they must remain linked permanently. It 
 may seem to you a little grievous that they should be so, 
 but such is the case. He was your son ; also he was the 
 last of your name." 
 
 Each word was charged with a relentless precision. 
 They might have had bitterness had they been less im- 
 
 550 
 
THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 partial, they might have had passion had they been less 
 coldly wrought. 
 
 Broke still remained before her mute. 
 
 " Have you not a word to say, Edmund ? Have you 
 not a word in which you can answer me ? " 
 
 His answer to her was a walk of a mechanical weariness 
 out of the room. 
 
 The remainder of the wintry afternoon had for her that 
 strange concentration, that indescribable material density, 
 as though time itself had become embodied in every pulsa- 
 tion of the heart, of the last four hours of Joan's life on 
 Christmas Eve. She could neither sit nor lie ; she 
 could hardly stand still ; and to be perpetually walking 
 about did not satisfy her long. She could not write nor 
 could she read. She went up to her bedroom to attempt 
 sleep. It was withheld sternly. Thereafter she buried her 
 ej'es in the pillows, and in her extremity tried to pray. 
 The action seemed to have lost its virtue. 
 
 Throughout these intolerable hours, the need haunted 
 her of preserving her sovereign intelligence unsullied 
 and intact. If once it faltered, or fell short of one iota 
 of the whole force of its mature strength, she knew 
 that she was destroyed. Now that, after all Ihese long 
 years, the time was at hand when the very highest 
 demands were to be made upon the endurance of one 
 old and poor woman, she was possessed with harrowing 
 doubts of its adequacy. At other periods in her life it had 
 been found more than equal to all emergencies. In every 
 trial it had stood triumphant and foursquare. It had pre- 
 vailed even in those seasons when momentarily the spirit 
 had seemed to be unseated. Never until now had she 
 been afflicted with a doubt of its quality. 
 
 Now, however, she was invaded by an unnerving dis- 
 trust. That morning at the cottage she had an evidence 
 that the first safeguards of the inmost citadel and 
 sanctuary, the barrier of her reticence, had been unhinged, 
 had been thrown down. A breach was left gaping in 
 her defences, and it must be repaired. All that after- 
 noon she bent her energies upon the task. Not a hole 
 must be left unfortified in the ramparts of the beleaguered 
 city. Not a joint or a fissure must be in her armoiir through 
 
 551 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 which a stray arrow might pierce to the consecrated thing 
 that lay beyond. For, in spite of all that had gone before, 
 she knew that the really decisive contest had yet to 
 come. And if she entered into that ordeal with one weak 
 spot in her suit of mail, some pitiless shaft would seek it 
 out, and she, weak woman, would be overthrown and 
 slain. Hour by hour she laboured to repair that breach 
 in the outscarp occasioned by the breakdown of her reti- 
 cence. Like one possessed, she laboured. With a 
 strenuousness but a very little this side dementia, she 
 wrestled to recover what she had so recently lost. Without 
 her reticence there could be no battle. It was the 
 weapon which all her life she had been accustomed to 
 employ. It was the talisman that hitherto had enabled 
 her to conquer every time she had been engaged. The 
 mere possession of it was a source of strength. Divest 
 the poor woman of her reticence, and you cut ofl Samson's 
 hair. 
 
 The encounter with her j'oungest daughter had stripped 
 her entirely naked. A fear was now growing up in her 
 that the gods, not content with stripping off the clothes 
 of her civilization, might dare to palter with her reason. 
 Pray Heaven they would leave her that ! If, in the stress 
 of her su]:ierhuman task, a moment of weakness or faintness 
 overtook it, all was lost. There was the work of a Titan 
 before her. Let a nerve, let a muscle, let a vein in her 
 overdriven brain fail to respond to the call, and the 
 Giant with whom she had to grapple would fling her to 
 the dust, and press her life out with his heels. 
 
 The task that confronted her must have daunted all 
 save the indomitable. The irreconcilable had to be 
 reconciled. If she yielded her Hfe up in the attempt, 
 this Amazon among women had made the pledge to her 
 maternal spirit that Broke should admit his son and 
 daughter back into his heart. It would seem that 
 she must meet that grim feudal Titan in the arena and 
 wrestle with his prejudices until they or she had yielded 
 up their clay. The woman and the brute, the indomit- 
 able and the savagely implacable, would have to interlock 
 their gnarled limbs, and the woman, by her natural might, 
 must cast the brute to earth. It had come at last in 
 
 552 
 
 I 
 
THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 the end, as all along it had threatened to do, to a question 
 of fibre. It would be a struggle of sheer physical power. 
 The broken woman might well have fears for the too great 
 strain imposed upon her by such conditions. But the 
 contest was not to be shirked : the idea of defeat not to be 
 borne. Failure must result in death, or for that so-faithful 
 spirit something worse. 
 
 Hers was an eminently practical nature ; exquisitely 
 matter-of-fact. In her anxiety to maintain her strength 
 unimpaired for the work before it, she turned to the medi- 
 cine chest, where a nature more emotional would have had 
 recourse to religion. Afterwards, she endeavoured to 
 surrender herself to the period of inaction that was now 
 intervening, the time of a comparative peace antecedent 
 to the great and final conflict, with a patience more in 
 keeping with the original majesty of her character. She 
 changed her morning dress, and went down to afternoon 
 tea in the drawing-room. Mercifully the privilege was 
 vouchsafed to her of being allowed to take it alone. 
 There were no callers ; the girls were not about ; and 
 Broke's scorn of the effeminate beverage was monstrously, 
 proverbially masculine. 
 
 She drank three cups, and failed in the essay to eat 
 half a slice of wafer-like bread-and-butter in spite of the 
 fact that not a crumb had crossed her lips since eight 
 o'clock that morning. She took up a novel of Tolstoy's 
 in French and tried to re-read portions of it chosen at 
 random. She found she could not. She opened volumes 
 of Balzac and Schopenhauer taken haphazard, but one and 
 all bearing an acute relation to human life and illumin- 
 ating sidelights on the stress of it. Their success was no 
 greater. Literature was become a poor, an ineffectual 
 thing, when called upon so imperiously to mitigate her 
 vital agonies. 
 
 Between six o'clock and seven, her own maid, who had 
 spent the afternoon in doing duty at the cottage, appeared 
 in the drawing-room in her cloak and hat. 
 
 " Miss Delia sent me to tell you, ma'am, that the doctor 
 has been sent for." 
 
 " Thank you," said Mrs. Broke, rising and laying down 
 her book. " Will you please fetch me some things ; and 
 
 553 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 will you also inquire whether Mr. Broke is in the 
 library ? " 
 
 " Mr. Broke is in the library, ma' am," said the maid, 
 returning a little afterwards. 
 
 As the maid helped her into her cloak Mrs. Broke said : 
 '■ You must eat some food, and go back to the cottage as 
 soon as you can." 
 
 She then went forth to her last battle. Broke was dis- 
 covered seated at a table writing letters. As she entered 
 the room he looked up at her and was then seen to 
 pause in his occupation to bite his pen vaguely, as 
 though something had suddenly passed out of his mind 
 which was very important should remain in it. He was 
 about to resume without speaking a word, when she 
 said — 
 
 " I am sorry to interrupt you, Edmund, but I would 
 ask for a minute or two of your attention." 
 
 He laid down his pen and rose from his chair in a fashion 
 of mechanical weariness. As he did so she took care that 
 the road to the door was barred effectually by her sombrely 
 spreading presence. 
 
 " I give you my promise, Edmund, that this is the last 
 occasion on which I shall make a reference to a distressing 
 subject. On that ground I ask you to give a patient 
 hearing to what I have to say. You will ? " 
 
 He stood without one evidence of life in his face. His 
 silence was complete. 
 
 " Answer me, Edmund. You will ? " 
 
 The tired expression in his face seemed to deepen, but 
 he did not reply. 
 
 " You must, Edmund, and you shall. There is one 
 essential thing you should hear, and hear it you shall. It 
 is this " 
 
 He made a sudden attempt to get past her to the door. 
 She stepped quickly in front of him, and held him with 
 two cold but firm hands on the breast of his coat. 
 
 "It is not for you and me to descend into the merely 
 futile, Edmund," she said in a voice that had a far-off 
 suggestion of a superhuman laughter in it. " What I 
 have to say is this : they have just sent to tell me that the 
 wife of your son lies at the cottage on the hill with child. 
 
 554 
 
THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 And I hasten to inform you of this fact, because I conceive 
 it to be my duty. You are the one person whom it more 
 immediately concerns. Your only son is dead, but you 
 will recognize that, after all, your name may not be ex- 
 tinct. I now ask of you that you accompany me to the 
 cottage to ascertain for yourself the fate that is reserved 
 for that which is more to you than anything else in the 
 world." 
 
 These inflexible words were rendered in something of 
 the conscious manner of a peroration, but all the while 
 she was speaking she never took her haggard eyes 
 from those of the man before her. But he did what he 
 could to avert his own. He still stood motionless and 
 perfectly erect, except where the massive shoulders were 
 a little bowed as by a succession of loads that had proved 
 too heavy for them to bear. But there was not a sign of 
 comprehension to be detected in him. 
 
 " For you to remain insensible to all that fact means 
 cannot be. A son may be born to your house this evening, 
 and in that event the very loyalty to the name you bear 
 will compel you to acknowledge it. The very pride of 
 kindred that will not allow you to relent will in that case 
 force you to do so." 
 
 Again she strove to peer into the hidden eyes. 
 
 " Setting personal bias apart," she went on in a voice 
 in which the note of emotion had been suppressed rigor- 
 ously, " let us put the matter on the higher plane of an 
 impersonal practical wisdom. Do you not see that if that 
 one event happens you will be compelled to submit ? 
 Would it not be more politic, do you not think, to recognize 
 that fact before it comes to pass ? Is it not due to yourself 
 that you yield of your own free will rather than at the 
 dictation of Circumstance ? Consider it, Edmund, in 
 that light. Consider how essential it is to make that 
 concession here and now. It is to save yourself." 
 
 Broke continued dumb. No sound interrupted the 
 long minute of silence that fell between them. His wife 
 then altered her tone. It acquired a note of pity, it 
 assumed a tinge of irony. 
 
 " My poor, dear man," she said gently, " can you not see 
 how futile your own puny efforts are when you oppose them 
 
 555 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 to Fate ? To persevere one hour longer in the attitude 
 you have taken up is to go headlong to your own doom. 
 You forget that you are not a mythical character, able to 
 mould your destiny according to j'our will. To the trades- 
 people of Cuttisham you are the squire of Covenden ; to your 
 friends and neighbours you are a person of an unimpeach- 
 able respectabihty ; you are a symbol of Aristocracy in the 
 conventional sense ; but to the God of Heaven or the Pagan 
 Deities or the General Force you are no more than any mortal 
 of them all. What can the devices of our wretched so- 
 limited flesh avail when they are face to face with their 
 consummate powers ? One stroke from the paw of Circum- 
 stance and you are prone. Do you suppose, my poor, dear 
 man, they do not mock at you ? Do you think They do 
 not deride you to death when you set up your miserable, 
 ineffectual will against '^heirs ? If there is still a sense of 
 proportion remaining to you, I implore you to exercise it. 
 Exercise it while there is yet time. Before this night is 
 over I believe that the power of volition may no longer be 
 yours." 
 
 Broke remained a statue. Not even words of mockery 
 such as these could break through the wall of his im- 
 passive muteness. From first to last he did not move. 
 The unhappy woman, knowing it to be the last interview 
 they could ever hold together on this subject, continued to 
 press this final opportunity. She was losing her last 
 momentous battle, nay, her sick spirit told her she had lost 
 it already, but she must go on. From mockery and 
 derision of him she passed to all the arts and devices 
 of perfervid appeal, mounting presently to the weird 
 violences of passion, afterwards to return to a cool, 
 defiant, superhuman self-control. She spoke with a 
 serenity of selection, a concentrated discretion of phrase 
 which proved that in this, its last extremity, her mind 
 retained its powers undaunted and to the full. Argument, 
 solicitation, menace, cajolery, appeals to his dignity, his 
 intelligence, the welfare of his race, her own long and 
 faithful services on his behalf, suggestions of policy and 
 ex]iedience, indeed, every weapon her overdriven wits 
 had in their armourv she dared to employ and did employ 
 with a directness that was unsparing. But from first to 
 
 556 
 
THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 last he stood a veritable rock. Not a word crept out of his 
 locked lips. The hue of death was upon his face, the 
 inanimation of it was upon his heart. 
 
 However, she supported this passiveness with absolute 
 fortitude. Her qualities were not tested in vain. In her 
 hour of supreme need they did not desert her. Like 
 those of the truest of her countrymen, they would not 
 allow her to admit that she was beaten, defeated, over- 
 thrown, long after that fact had appalled her spirit. 
 On and on she struggled breathlessly, sickly, blindly, 
 with a dogged valour, long after her aim had lost its concen- 
 tration and certainty. The inevitable loomed ahead, 
 a dark and grisly bulk, but to submit to it was impossible 
 as long as there was a drunken stagger left in her limbs. 
 And when weak, when sobbing for breath, when despised 
 and broken at last, she foresaw that the mere limitations 
 of the flesh were about to conquer her, she said finally, 
 with hardly the same degree of control in her voice, 
 and with something perhaps a little overwrought in her 
 demeanour — 
 
 " Edmund, there is one word more. If a son is born 
 to your house this evening I would have you remember 
 that he inherits a fortune of some two hundred and 
 seventy thousand pounds. Do not forget that the 
 will of old Mr. Brefitt is made in his favour. 
 And I ask, are you so blinded by your own arrogance 
 that you do not distinguish by the light of that 
 circumstance that a sardonic agent is presiding over your 
 affairs ? I ask you, Edmund, do you not detect a certain 
 irony in the fact that you, the arch-despiser of the vulgar 
 and the sordid, you, the high priest of the cult of blue 
 blood and virgin aristocracy, should be condemned to have 
 the very existence of your house depend on the contempt- 
 uous benevolence of such a one as the late Mr. Brefht ? 
 That two hundred and seventy thousand pounds will 
 intervene to save us all from ruin, and in the event of a 
 manchild being given to you to-night, will secure to your 
 heirs throughout generations yet to come something of 
 the former affluence of your race. Edmund, I implore 
 you to yield. Do you not see that Circumstance is gibing 
 at you ? Do you not see that you are become a sport 
 
 557 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 and a plaything of High Heaven ? Have you yet to learn, 
 my poor Edmund, that whenever these Immortals spy 
 out an inherent baseness flourishing in the rank soil of 
 our human souls, they gloat upon the sight and smack 
 their chops ? Give in, poor Edmund ; renounce the damned 
 thing lest they mock you to death. 
 
 "For the last time I beseech you to come with me to 
 the cottage now. Accept the unhappy creature you have 
 despised before you are made to do so by that inex- 
 orable Force that is deriding you. Put away your blind- 
 ness, Edmund, and forgive your son who has lain this 
 fortnight dead — before you are made to do so miserably 
 upon your knees. AncC'-there is another child, an outcast 
 from your heart, whom "you will be compelled to reinstate. 
 Can you not see that it will be more consistent with 
 the native dignity of your nature if you do these things 
 of your own choice ? Do not tarry until a manchild 
 is given to your house. If you do, it will become a 
 weapon to compel you to obey. I speak for the last 
 time, Edmund ; I can speak no more." 
 
 She ended with flushed cheeks and many signs of 
 purely physical distress. She trembled violently ; there 
 was a tightening of her throat and chest ; the breath 
 issued out of her in hard and thick sobs ; the very tissues 
 of her overwrought being seemed to stagger. Again and 
 again she tried to snatch a glimpse of our hero's averted 
 eyes. She raked the mask that was his face for the relax- 
 ation of a muscle ; she searched every inch of his clenched 
 stolidity for one faint evidence of a produced effect. For 
 all that she could read, she would have done as well to have 
 searched the face of a wall. 
 
 She withdrew her sick eyes, and went out of the room 
 without saying anything further. She set out for the 
 cottage with her insurgent thoughts cooling from a white 
 heat, and clotting into a nightmare that made a horror 
 in her brain. It was a very dark night. There was a 
 wet wind in it that now and then carried a thin spatter 
 of rain. It was very mild for the time of year. She 
 walked fast and felt a sensation of ]:)hysical relief when an 
 occasional spray of rain was dashed in her face. Her 
 cheeks were burning with such an intensity that when 
 
 558 
 
THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 these tears out of heaven were flung upon them, an effect 
 was made in her imagination of water hissing on the red 
 heated surface of a cauldron. 
 
 In her heart was the clear conviction of failure, and 
 something worse. She had staked her all ; it had been 
 swept away ; and she was totally bankrupt. She had 
 matched all she had of resolution, of mother- wit, of capacity 
 for suffering against the unreason of this man, and he 
 had treated them as nought. All hope of his salvation 
 was gone — and of her own. As she took her way through 
 the slimy purlieus of that dark evening it was an after- 
 thought to overwhelm her. There was not a hope remain- 
 ing for him, not one remaining for herself. He had 
 rejected her most sacred entreaties ; he had stood insen- 
 sible to her most passionate prayers. All elementary 
 considerations of justice, righteousness, humane policy 
 had been swallowed in the maw of that inordinate demon 
 that had eaten away his nature. His implacability had 
 become inhuman. That man was perverted who 
 cherished a resentment so monstrous at such a season in 
 the life of himself and in the life of that he valued more. 
 
 As she walked at a furious pace to the cottage, wth 
 the gushes of rain bringing to her the only kind of relief 
 that was possible now, a relief that was for the flesh 
 purely, the horrified woman beheld receding backwards 
 in front of her, step by step, into the black wall of the night 
 simultaneously with her action of striding forward into 
 it, a huge ungainly shape. Once before, and for an instant 
 only, she had caught a sight of such a hideous phantom. It 
 was in the night following her confrontation with her 
 husband's attitude towards his daughter after her flight. 
 This evening, however, the horror was more vivid, much 
 more embodied. With jaunty and spasmodic gjo-ations 
 it backed before her into the darkness, receding step by 
 step, a grotesque dancing monster performing unheard-of 
 antics, a great nameless something flapping and waving 
 its paws. But odd and misshapen as this moving 
 and mocking shape might be, the stoop it had in the 
 shoulders made her think only of one. And once or 
 twice as it emerged for a moment visible out of a wrack 
 of fast-flying clouds and wind-shaken trees, she saw its 
 
 559 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 face. It was grinning at her in the guise of a beast's, but it 
 was the face of Broke. 
 
 Her flesh reeled when she saw it first. She shut her 
 eyes, and reopened them to find that this inhuman face 
 was again blotted out by the clouds and the trees. But 
 at the end of the avenue, in a brief interval of pasture, 
 it was there again. It was merged almost immediately 
 in the wall of a farm building. All the time, however, 
 the grotesque bulk continued to mow and flop as it receded 
 before her. Suddenly, turning a corner, the illuminated 
 white blind of a farm-labourer's cottage flashed into 
 view. With a piercing sense of relief she knocked at 
 1 he door and was able to borrow a lantern. 
 
 With that bright talisman to bear her through the night 
 the monstrosity before her was reduced, but notldng 
 could make it vanish. For she had waked to a dis- 
 covery. Her mate, her yokefellow, had had the mask 
 torn off his countenance. After all these years his secret 
 was known. He stood forth a brute in a man's shape, 
 an ogre, a beast, a cleanly Englishman's clay inhabited by 
 a spirit out of the Pit. 
 
 This new knowledge made her reel and moan aloud to 
 the wind in an agony. It was driving her mad. She felt 
 a physical loathing to spawn in her flesh. It was poison- 
 ing her nice blood. Her very arteries were growing 
 foul and thick, and her heart could not perform its 
 functions. She had lain on the bosom of a wild beast 
 these many years, a wild beast formed ironically in the 
 image of a Christian Englishman. She had been strained 
 to its breast, and she had suckled its young. One of the 
 breed of the monster had only that morning stripped 
 every rag off her until her gentle body was bare, and had 
 then fleshed its maiden claws in her. And in this first 
 insatiate indulgence in its savageness, it could not be 
 induced to take them forth again until the woman that 
 had borne it promised imminently to bleed to death. 
 Of such were the things she had nurtured with all the 
 lavish measure of a mother's care, under the pitiable gross 
 delusion that they were human as herself. Where was 
 that vaunted, that inveterate wisdom that could be 
 ctieated so ? Poor deluded sheep that she was, was she 
 
 560 
 
THE LAST BATTLE 
 
 not paying forfeit of her wits because the offspring which 
 she had cherished as ewe lambs since the accursed day 
 she brought them forth had developed the fangs and the 
 claws, the foul nature, the inordinate bloody appetite of 
 the damned thing that was their sire. 
 
 The horror in her brain had already caused one fact 
 to assume an outstanding dimension. It was one that 
 she had foreseen when she entered upon that last inter- 
 view. But now the realization of it was creeping through 
 her veins with the deadly stealth of a drug. It was 
 convulsing her heart. They could be man and wife no 
 more. In all that long term of their conjugal intercourse 
 this was the first breach that had come between them. 
 Such a pair of temperate and eminently sane persons 
 had known how to exalt the business of living together 
 into a symphony of companionship. Their good breed- 
 ing had enabled them to draw the nicest distinctions 
 in the art of give-and-take. As far as it is allowed for 
 one human being to interpret another human being in 
 terms apprehended of their common instincts. Broke and 
 his wife had known how to do it. They had been 
 very much to one another. They had lived in the inner 
 paradise of a very perfect harmony. As she walked 
 however, in this gross darkness the thirty-years wife of 
 his bosom saw all that was past. This exquisite com- 
 munion had been wrenched asunder. The same perfect 
 loyalty of intercourse could never be again. It would be 
 out of the question to yield that peculiar fidelity to one 
 who had become so peremptorily embodied in her fancy 
 as a devil. A grisly accident had pulled aside the veli. 
 For thirty years, incredible as the fact might seem, she 
 had been deceived by that fair, that palpable device. She 
 would be deceived no more. And yet she might have 
 gone to her grave in this deception had not a sardonic 
 impulse overcome High Heaven. 
 
 501 NN 
 
CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 At the Cottage on the Hill 
 
 IT was a relief to the afflicted woman to reach the cottage. 
 Here for the time being was a surcease from the pangs 
 her outraged instincts were wreaking upon her. The 
 comfort afforded by it was scanty indeed, but anything 
 was to be welcomed rather than she should be cast 
 solitary upon the mercy of the night. There was human 
 companionship at least in the little place. There 
 were new excitements to apply their sedatives to her 
 unendurable aches. What was about to occur presently 
 might prove unendurable also, but any diversion of her 
 immediate sufferings brought with it relief of a kind. 
 
 Dr. Walker had arrived already. He was as grul^ as 
 usual and as grimly cheerful. He received Mrs. Broke 
 with something of the nature of a rough humour in his 
 eye. 
 
 " You are a wonderful sex," he said, " for the climac- 
 terics. You will no more be denied your births, marriages 
 and funerals than will a brood mare her feed of oats. 
 The place is infested with women." 
 
 " We are indeed great sticklers for our emotional per- 
 quisites," said Mrs. Broke. " Emotion is our food and 
 drink. Men have no relish for it, of course. I believe 
 they have a positive distaste for the precious stui^ upon 
 which we wax and grow so fat." 
 
 She spoke with a chastened laugh that somehow went 
 against the doctor's grain. 
 
 " I shall look to see the grandfather here before the 
 night is over," said the doctor in his blunt fashion. " What 
 a rare stroke of luck if it be a boy ! " 
 
 562 
 
AT THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL 
 
 " I think a little good fortune one way or another is 
 
 about due to us." 
 
 " Yes, I think it is." 
 
 He looked into the face of the woman before him with 
 great keenness. That laugh of hers jarred more than 
 ever upon his ear. Also he saw there other things that 
 jarred upon him. 
 
 " I should like you to go away for a bit," he said in a 
 kind manner. " Go away to-morrow to the Mediter- 
 ranean for a month or two. Take Mr. Broke. You are 
 both a bit run down. You want change and a rest. You 
 have been going through a bit too much, both of you." 
 
 " We shall see," she said, gently putting him off with 
 a return of her placidity. " What do you think of the 
 poor thing upstairs ? " 
 
 The doctor was seen to compress his lips. 
 
 " She is a very frail bit of a thing," he said. 
 
 " Is she not just the wick of a farthing candle that 
 might easily go out ? " 
 
 " I did not say so. Fortunately they so seldom do. 
 However faint the spark in them may seem, Dame 
 Nature is, after all, a trusty soul and a prudent housewife. 
 I have seen her keep many a candle burning in such hours 
 as these, when the slightest breath would have quenched 
 it. When the pinch comes we can look to her to make 
 a great effort for her children." 
 
 " But I think that child is the most fragile thing I 
 have ever seen." 
 
 " Perhaps it may relieve you to know that I have only lost 
 one case of this kind in all my professional experience. 
 Such cases are astonishingly few, especially when one 
 considers the morbid dread that so often overtakes the 
 patient. It is wonderful how nature contrives to put her 
 best leg first, even when you would think she could not 
 possibly." 
 
 " I fear for her on account of her husband. She hcis a 
 terrible prepossession." 
 
 " There lies our difficulty, of course. Nothing could 
 have been more unfortunate. But it does not debar us 
 from being of good hope." 
 
 With this final expression of the doctor's faith in the 
 
 563 
 
BROKE OF COVEN DEN 
 
 mighty mother, the sacred rites began upstairs and down. 
 Soft-footed women flitted hither and thither with flushed 
 and grave faces. Many were the mysterious whispers 
 that were interchanged, and many the mysterious orders 
 given. The nurse took on the dignity of an Eastern poten- 
 tate or a Teutonic king. Her nod and beck became the 
 law of the land. The bedroom, the sitting-room and the 
 back kitchen trembled at her eagle glance. When she 
 lifted up her autocratic mien and snuffed the air and 
 informed the world at large with a perfect trumpet-note 
 of conviction " that she was sure something was scorch- 
 ing " her demeanour verged upon the sublime. It was 
 not so much that a reference was conveyed to the array of 
 shawls, blankets, long clothes, and paraphernalia of one 
 sort and another which had been set forth on the backs 
 of chairs in front of the fire in the little sitting-room, as the 
 detachment of mind that was argued in one whose austere 
 bosom could evince a perception of a mundane detail in 
 the vortex of an event that made an epoch in the 
 life of the species. It was as much an evidence 
 of a vast experience, and as effectively betrayed 
 the " Old Parliamentary Hand," as the incredible 
 sang-froid of the late Mr. Gladstone, who was wont to 
 startle the neophytes of the British Parliament by pro- 
 ducing a volume of Horace from the crown of his hat at 
 the moment an occupant of the Front Bench was apostro- 
 phising Russia and those other uttermost peoples of the 
 world. 
 
 The female orgies continued to go on, and were carried 
 to great lengths. Queer foods and invalid concoctions 
 appeared on the table in the little sitting-room, and strange 
 emblems of science as applied to medicine came on it too. 
 The cenacle of women flitting round them grew even more 
 rapt in its responsiveness to the exigencies of the moment, 
 when first the doctor and then the nurse was seen to go 
 upstairs with silent tread and solemn. 
 
 It happened at a time when Mrs. Broke and Delia stood 
 a little apart in an angle formed by the wall and the 
 chimney-piece, helping one another in the manipulation 
 of linen, and Miss Sparrow was a few paces from them 
 holding a saucepan of milk over the fire, that the outer 
 
 564 
 
AT THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL 
 
 door was seen to revolve on its hinges in a manner so 
 soundless that it looked like mystery. In the next instant 
 the wind swept a gush of rain into the cosy room, and with 
 it were heard obscure sounds of shuffling feet. The door 
 was pushed open wider, and the dank figure of a man was 
 outlined in the gloom of the threshold. The startled 
 eyes of the witnesses peering at this strange apparition 
 through the hardly adequate glare of the lamp and the 
 firelight saw it to be that of a large man and burly. There 
 was an odd stoop in his shoulders. His hair was almost 
 white, and his face was grey. 
 
 He lurched into the room with his hands thrust out in 
 front of him in the manner of one blinded so recently that 
 as yet he was not grown accustomed to his affliction, or of 
 one groping forward into a dark room to find a box of 
 matches. But his eyes seemed to have no spark of con- 
 sciousness residing therein. It was as though he neither 
 knew where he was nor what he was about. He groped 
 his way past the table to the most distant corner of the 
 room, which an empty chair chanced to keep. As he 
 shuffled towards it he looked neither to the right nor to 
 the left. There was something eerie in the manner of his 
 progress, its total oblivion to light and surroundings, that 
 suggested a person walking in his sleep. There appeared 
 not the faintest recognition in him of time and place. 
 
 The three witnesses of the apparition were separated 
 from it by the table. Spellbound they stood to watch. 
 They were fascinated, unable to speak or move, by the 
 intrusion of this weird, uncanny presence. It was not 
 until it sat down with an audible heaviness on the chair in 
 the corner, plucked from its head the square-crowned felt 
 hat from which the wet was running in a stream, and laid 
 it on the floor with a purely mechanical gesture by the 
 side of its gaiters, and proceeded then to rest its chin on a 
 knuckle which in turn rested upon the knob of an ash 
 stick which was borne in its hands, that the power of move- 
 ment returned to the three who saw. 
 
 The old aunt was the first to recover it. She left the 
 saucepan of milk, which was already beginning to bubble 
 on the fire, and crept with a stealtliy terror to the side of 
 Mrs. Broke, and timidly took hold of her dress. It was 
 
 565 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 the act of a child in the nursery when it has been deluded 
 into thinking that a bear or a giant has walked into the 
 room. The old woman, shuddering in every vein, pressed 
 her trembling face against the ample person of Mrs. Broke ; 
 and when of a sudden the neglected milk surged up in the 
 saucepan and boiled over with a mighty hiss into the fire, 
 she fastened a more convulsive clutch upon the gown of 
 her protectress, as though the fierce sound of the milk 
 among the cinders was the dread roaring of a beast. 
 
 Delia's act was of a different character. When by force 
 of gazing the fact was imbrued in her numbly that the man 
 who had groped his way into the little room was her father, 
 she tore her eyes from his huddled shape in the very instant 
 her senses permitted her to know that it was he, and made, 
 with a hurry which yet had a sort of deliberation in it, 
 past the array of shawls and blankets and infant clothing 
 arranged still before the fire, into an even smaller apart- 
 ment than this in which her father was seated, where the 
 two maids her mother had sent from the house were ful- 
 filling various duties. 
 
 It was a full minute before the frightened old aunt was 
 sufficiently recovered to loosen her convulsive grip of Mrs. 
 Broke. Even then, when ruefully she proceeded to pick 
 the burning saucepan off the fire, she was still trembhng 
 violentlv. Not once as she refilled the saucepan with 
 milk from a bowl that stood on the table did she dare to 
 let her eyes stray in the direction of the ogre seated oppo- 
 site, with his chin resting on his stick. 
 
 Nor did Mrs. Broke venture to allow her eyes to stray 
 towards that dreadful presence. Her blood had seemed 
 to have burst out of its vessels already. Waxing to a 
 flood, it seemed to be flowing over and submerging her five 
 wits. 
 
 As it roared through her ears and darkened her eyes 
 she grew blind and deaf. She continued to stand, although 
 bereft completely of the capacity to hear or to see. Nor 
 could she feel anything except the phenomenon happening 
 in herself. The five senses were whelmed in a scalding red 
 vapour. What had happened she did not know. Involun- 
 tarily she shuttered her ineffectual eyes. Something had 
 happened, something had occurred, but more than one 
 
 566 
 
AT THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL 
 
 minute had to make a circuit of seconds, and be ticked out 
 of her pulses before so much as two consecutive, two 
 reasonably cogent thoughts could convey the dimmest 
 sense of its nature. 
 
 Physically she was in the condition of the felon who, cut 
 down from the gallows as dead, is in the act of being restored 
 to life by his devoted friends. He has been cut down as 
 dead, but with their remedies and restoratives they are 
 forcing back the tardy blood, blackening already, along one 
 artery at a time. The agony of resuscitation is said to be 
 unendurable. It is said that even life itself, the most 
 sovereign boon of any, is too dearly purchased at the price 
 of that ineffable anguish. To be so far gone in death, and 
 yet not to be allowed to die, is resented by nature as an 
 interference with her first prerogative. The hapless 
 sufferer, the instant the first black droppings begin to flow, 
 cries aloud for death as the one solace to be rendered to his 
 mortal throes. This wretched woman had been cut down 
 from the tree, to all intents and purposes dead, and here 
 was the man come to reclaim that still warm body, and 
 in the act starts the congealed life in her afresh. 
 
 She was not to be allowed to perish, although she wished 
 so to do, having tasted already of the ultimate sweetness 
 of death. The very act of her passing was arrested. By 
 the time she had acquired this first illusive, evasive instinct 
 which made for knowledge, her shuddering form had been 
 forced into a chair at the table littered with crockery. 
 She rested her elbows upon it, and held the sides of her 
 breaking head between her hands. One of her elbows 
 rested in a bowl half full of milk, the other on a tray con- 
 taining bread. The monster was there in that room, 
 seated. How he had found his way there that night of all 
 nights, through the rain and the darkness, was a secret in 
 the keeping of the mocking deity who had fashioned him 
 in the shape of a human father and husband. Doubtless 
 it was the same deity who would not allow her now to die. 
 
 He was come to the cottage of his dead son. He was 
 there in that room, with his guilty hands holding his chin. 
 Would it not be in keeping with the fact to say that the 
 pride of kindred and the passion for the land, with the aroma 
 of a thousand years upon it, had drugged his spirit as with 
 
 567 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 a great and aged wine, and had led him, drunken and blind 
 and staggering, through the black winter's, evening, to the 
 wind-shaken, rain-beaten threshold of that cottage door ? 
 He might well reel, well might there be no shade of compre- 
 hension in those glazed eyes, in that obscene face. The 
 monster was drugged into a helplessness, an inanity that 
 was even more unseemly than his native beastliness. He 
 had come there to that little room in spite of himself, 
 knowing nothing of his deed. He knew as much of what 
 he was about as a caterpillar chmbing a tree. Millions of 
 generations of caterpillars had gone through that irrelevant 
 performance in the stress of some vague instinct, and to 
 the end of time they would continue to obey it. For no 
 more sufficient reason was the monster sitting in that room 
 now, with his chin upon his stick. He, no more than the 
 caterpillar, could divorce himself from his species whether 
 he would or no. The individual must perform the special 
 functions of the genus. 
 
 In the midst of these contortions of her mind on that 
 perilous and so insecure, because so indefinitely defined, 
 border-line between sanity and chaos, the light of reason 
 flickered now this way, now that, as though buffeted about 
 by arid breaths out of her spirit, presently to flare up a 
 little brighter, a httle more securely, for it was suddenly 
 nourished with the fuel of a concrete, a thoroughly com- 
 prehensible fact. Delia had quitted the room. That 
 was a simple, lucid, definite fragment of knowledge. 
 There was refreshment for her bewildered senses in its 
 freedom from complexity. It was a plain fact they could 
 understand. Delia had quitted the room ; and in that 
 act was a point-blank refusal to inhabit the same place 
 as her father. It cost her brain no expenditure of blood 
 and tears to acquire the key to its meaning. Such a preg- 
 nant simplicity braced her weak wits. Here at least 
 was a matter which her reason could apprehend without 
 incurring the danger of being overthrown in the endeavour. 
 
 She rose, and tottered into the next room, where Delia 
 was. It caused a nerve to jump in her, as if bared suddenly 
 to the air, to find that the face of her daughter had relapsed 
 into that hardness which transcended even the coldness 
 of passion which that morning had struck her to hei 
 
 568 
 
AT THE COTTAGE ON THE HILL 
 
 knees. Now, however, she had passed beyond those 
 stages of an individual emotion, of which fear may be a 
 phaso. By now the woman and the creature were merged 
 in the type. The labours she was called on now to under- 
 take were as remote from the personal as those of Nature 
 Herself. All that she felt, all that she saw, all that she 
 did, had lost the sanction of personahty, the impetus of 
 entity. Action had been induced in her by a kind of 
 hypnotic process, although the august power that dictated 
 it enabled her to know what she did, even if it 
 withheld from her the precise motive for her deeds. Very 
 dimly, if at all, did she apprehend what ends were about to 
 be served, or in the name of what universal principle they 
 were undertaken. It might be said in a comparison of a 
 thing so infinitely little with the immense, that she acted 
 with the unreasoning rectitude of the earth in its yearly 
 peregrination round the sun. She was one with the stars 
 in their courses. She took her place with the miracles of 
 the firmament in their obeisance to the awe of the universe. 
 With space and time she was one ; with Instinct she 
 marched hand in hand to obey the dictates of Natural 
 Law. 
 
 " Delia, I hold you to your promise." 
 
 " You must 'fulfil the condition under which it is to be 
 entered upon," said Delia coldly. 
 
 " Yes, I will." 
 
 The tone had laid bare a second nerve. 
 
 She asked one of the maids to procure writing materials 
 for her use, and while these were seeking she said to the 
 other — 
 
 " I want you to go back to the house as quickly as you 
 can, tell Reynolds personally to see that a good horse is put 
 in the cart, and you are to return with him here at once." 
 
 By the time the messenger had gone on this errand 
 writing materials had been provided for her use. There- 
 upon she took a seat at the table and wrote these words — 
 " In the name of your wife I implore you to return here 
 immediately in the company of the bearer. — Jane Sophia 
 Broke. 
 
 As she was in the act of addressing and sealing the 
 envelope there was a frank and almost pitying 
 
 569 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 incredulity to be seen in the face of Delia. In the 
 interval of rather more than half an hour which elapsed 
 before the man came with the cart, the intense silence 
 was like a tomb. In that period not a word passed be- 
 tween any of the persons assembled in the two small 
 rooms on the ground floor. That strange arrival had 
 oppressed the atmosphere with a choking density. The 
 knowledge that a man with a grey face was sitting in that 
 dark corner with his chin ever resting upon his stick, 
 arrested their voices, seemed to enfeeble their limbs. At 
 last there was a sound of wheels without in the rain, and 
 a little afterwards the maid, and Reynolds the coachman, 
 came in dripping with water and blinking into the yellow 
 glare of the room. 
 
 Mrs. Broke gave the letter to Reynolds. 
 
 " I want you to take this to the shop of Mr. Porter, the 
 bookseller, at Cuttisham. You will find it easily — it is a 
 small shop in North Street, a few doors out of the High 
 Street. You are to ask for Mr. Alfred Porter, and you will 
 give this letter personally into his hands. He will return 
 with you here to this cottage ; and, Reynolds, let me 
 urge upon you that the matter is of grave importance." 
 
 Reynolds, bowing to these instructions, went to execute 
 them. As he did so, the look of pity, of incredulity, 
 was seen upon the face of Delia for the second time. 
 
 Silence descended again. Delia remained in the inner 
 room out of the sight of her father, whose own posture 
 had not changed. Presently Mrs. Broke ascended the 
 stairs to the doctor and the nurse in the chamber above ; 
 and when she did so. Miss .Sparrow, not daring to be left 
 alone, deserted the utensils and the baby-linen and fled 
 to Delia for the solace and the safety of companionship, A 
 little afterwards Mrs. Broke came downstairs again and 
 beckoned to the old woman, but did not speak. She then 
 gathered the articles in front of the sitting-room fire into 
 an armful, and carried them upstairs. The old woman 
 followed meekly and whitely in her wake. 
 
 570 
 
CHAPTER XLVIII 
 The Two Voices 
 
 IN the little sitting-room there succeeded another 
 interval devoid of sound, devoid of incident. Our 
 hero remained in the corner huddled into a grey mass, 
 with his chin still propped on his stick. He remained 
 motionless and alone. Not once had he changed his 
 posture. His eyes were wide, but appeared to be glazed 
 a faded violet colour, like those of a dog that is blind. 
 They stared like eyes of glass out of a marble ; and so in- 
 tensely that a total darkness encompassed them. The sounds 
 of a small clock ticking on the mantel-piece might have 
 been heard distinctly, but to Broke they were not audible. 
 They were merged in the great pulsations of his heart. 
 Everything was very still and vague. There were occa- 
 sional fierce gushes of rain driven by the wind against 
 the window panes of the cottage. He mistook them for 
 waves of blood breaking over the walls of his mind. 
 Outside, in the abyss of the winter evening, there was not 
 a star. There was nothing, not so much as a dark pool 
 of water or the shadow of a gaunt tree, by which time and 
 place could be identified. The night was a void, but one 
 hardly so great as that of the spirit of the man who sat in 
 the corner of the bright and small room with his chin on 
 his stick. Time and place had even less of embodiment 
 in him. He might be on earth, a withered oak tree, a 
 fallen leaf, a blade of grass bruised to death by the hand 
 of winter ; or he might be in space, a disembodied spirit 
 wafted to Elysium along the clouds of eternity. There 
 
 571 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 was not a sliade of recognition remaining to him that he 
 could surrender to his own sense of entity. He had no 
 famihar evidence of hfe, hardly of being. He was a nebu- 
 lous mechanism, whose brain was a sea, whose clay was 
 a fire ; an impotent mechanism compounded mysteriously, 
 irrelevantly, of the two prime elements, wrought with 
 mystery equal and irrelevance no less, into a crude symbol 
 or body whose end and beginning was darkness and 
 matter. Beyond that elemental knowledge there Wcis 
 nothing to know. 
 
 Suddenly a far-off noise was heard to tintinnabulate 
 faintly in some remote purlieu of his spirit. It sur- 
 mounted the ticking of the clock, it surmounted the great 
 pulsations of his heart, it surmounted the spatter of the 
 rain against the windows and the sounds of the blood 
 breaking over the walls of his mind. It was a wail, as 
 of a wind drawn painfully fine, a wind crooning away 
 from the very outer verge of eternity. It was as faint 
 as if it had crept many thousands of miles across the 
 sterile wastes of space. It rose and fell, but repetition 
 did not make it more intimate. It was unreal, eerie, 
 and monotonous ; it made an effect of unreason in a 
 condition of exquisite sanity. As this faint voice con- 
 tinued to issue from the back of the infinite, yet came no 
 nearer into human ken, it acquired a certain quality. 
 Its reason to be grew no more determinate, yet it con- 
 ferred supernatural powers. Some grotesque idea of 
 being, of self-recognition sprang directly out of the 
 weirdness of it. Time and space became possible ; a 
 little afterwards external things were shadowed forth. 
 A dull disc of yellow appeared in front of his eyes. At 
 first he thought it was the moon, but it seemed too bright ; 
 and then the sun, but it did not seem bright enough. 
 He then awoke with a start to the fact that it was a lamp 
 on a table. He grasped the knowledge that he was 
 sitting in a room. Soon it became apparent that 
 the illusion he had experienced of a disembodied spirit 
 reclining upon a cloud had been produced by his chin 
 resting upon his stick. 
 
 It was now that an element of frank and broad farce 
 was introduced into his frantic endeavour to wrest out 
 
 572 
 
THE TWO VOICES 
 
 of the inner tribunal a re-recognition of his own entity. 
 The thin voice that had at first rendered it possible had 
 been weird and eerie, and not unsolemn i such was its 
 suggestion of having journeyed long through time and 
 travelled far. But here there started up a competing 
 voice that was neither weird nor solemn. It was ridicu- 
 lous. It would not be tolerated in a harlequinade. It 
 was the lusty crying of a child. 
 
 At such a moment a voice of that kind was indescrib- 
 ably ludicrous. That perfectly robust, that absolutely 
 common and lucid sound in conjunction with the thin 
 voice right away from the outer verge of eternity was 
 really too incongruous for human reason to accept. 
 It was altogether beyond bathos, it was mockery. It 
 was a damnable paradox invented by a devil to affront 
 a logical and delicate human ear. It was like some topsy- 
 turvy conceit in a nightmare. Reason shied at it with 
 a positive sense of affront. However, no protest from 
 that source could allay the incongruous duet. The wail 
 still rose and fell, and crooned in mid-air over the fields 
 of eternity. The infant still cried lustily from some station 
 more adjacent to his outraged ears. Under this dis- 
 tressing sense of the ridiculous, our hero made a more 
 frantic effort to re-capture his wits. He was conscious 
 of their effort to pass the yellow disc of the lamplight, 
 as is a sleeper who struggles to awake in the midst of 
 foul dreams. Presently he could make out his wife 
 beyond it, seated in shadow. She had a bundle in her 
 arms. 
 
 The sight of her, however, did nothing to assuage his 
 torment. The desperate duet went on. It grew more 
 intolerable as it proceeded. One noise, certainly the 
 more human, the more natural, proceeded from the 
 bundle his wife held in her arms. It was shrill, lusty, 
 disconcerting, but at least it was of a reasonable and 
 consecutive character. But why it should pit itself 
 against the other sound he did not know. The effect 
 of them in chorus was not to be borne. He must stuff 
 his ears. The endurance of no human person could 
 sanction such an incongruity. If that menace to nature 
 went on much longer he felt he must go mad. 
 
 573 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 One without the other was monstrous ; blended and in 
 chorus they made an effect horrible beyond belief. 
 
 Do what he would, however, the two voices continued 
 to make his reason totter. There was something dis- 
 gusting in that high and thin wail that had struck the 
 first effect of unreason in him, which yet so paradoxi- 
 cally had summoned him back to sanity. It was not to 
 be compared to anything in earth or heaven. It had 
 an analogy to winds far off, rippling the branches of the 
 eerie forests of the moon. It was like a mild Uttle voice 
 hanging in mid air, a dryad mourning. Now and then 
 the note had something in common with the cry of an 
 animal. And yet in reality it could not have been iden- 
 tified by any of these too definite descriptions. For the 
 prevailing quality in it was something metallic, some- 
 thing mechanical, that invested the very centre of these 
 cadences : an ordered recurrence, a regulated coming 
 and going, a rising and falling, an incredibly even 
 repetition of its timbre that had nothing in common 
 with the human, the divine, the natural, nor the super- 
 natural, so far as the senses of man had been evolved 
 to apprehend them. 
 
 Broke's bleeding nerves recoiled from it in horror again 
 and again. 
 
 " It is like a damned machine ! " they seemed to com- 
 plain to one another. " It is like a damned machine 1 " 
 
 574 
 
CHAPTER XLIX 
 The Survival of the Fittest : the Curtain falls 
 
 THAT indeed was the only thing it could be said 
 to resemble. It was a piece of diabolical clock- 
 work. The winds of the night escaping out of chaos 
 to complain among willows was not more eerie. It 
 was an elaborate yet brutal sequence of discords, a sym- 
 phony of music as they might understand it in hell. All 
 the time it continued to come and go, to occur and recur 
 with a precision and an equal volume of sound that was 
 frightful in its regularity. But remote as it Wcis it could 
 compete with the most adjacent, the most insistent of 
 noises. The bundle in his wife's arms emitted high 
 and natural infant cries ; but near and clear as they 
 were they could not drown those weaker sounds that 
 were so far away. 
 
 The duet between the two voices went on and on. 
 Broke had again ceased to be conscious of anything, save 
 the diabolical fashion of their blending. It grew higher 
 and higher ; it rose more imperious ; but the thinner 
 note was ever dominant. After a time the nearer one 
 grew less. The human cries from the bundle subsided 
 into a troubled exhaustion. Languorous sobs were 
 shaken among and dispersed in the strident outcry ; 
 gradually it grew intermittent ; presently it ceased. 
 The unholy wail suspended in the firmament had nothing 
 then to dispute its ascendency. Again he had the 
 desire to crush his hands into his quaking ears. His 
 nerves were bleeding to death. The trick that the 
 arch-fiend had put upon him was sending him out of his 
 
 575 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 mind. He could hardly sit in his chair. At last he could 
 endure it no more. He jerked up his head in the startled 
 manner of a stag drinking at a pool when it first hears 
 the sound of dogs. 
 
 " What is that noise ? " he demanded imperiously^ 
 
 " That is the mother." 
 
 The reply caused a faint streak of knowledge to break 
 over his face. His hands froze tighter to the knob of 
 his stick, and on it he settled his chin more firmly. The 
 haggard sweat poured down his cheeks in a stream. 
 
 The nurse came down the stairs softly. Mrs. Broke 
 gave the stupefied bundle of life into her arms. As she 
 did so the nurse pulled down the comer of her lips dole- 
 fully. 
 
 " Poor young lady ! " she whispered hoarsely. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Mrs. Broke. 
 
 Tears gathered one at a time in the hardened eyes of 
 the nurse. 
 
 At this moment the sounds of wheels were again heard 
 outside in the rain. Mrs. Broke raised her head and 
 stood erect. Her form was strung as tense as an arrow 
 taut on the string. Her hstening ears could detect, 
 even through the tumult of the night, the creakings of a 
 vehicle as it drew up at the gate of the little garden. She 
 strained to catch a footfall on the gravel path. The old 
 faintly ironical smile flitted round her tight lips for an 
 instant, but in the next her face had become resolved 
 into much the same condition as that of Broke's. Under 
 the lamp the sweat shone livid. She moved to the door 
 and opened it. A spatter of rain simmered upon her 
 face suddenly as in the case of a few hours before, but the 
 engines of her heart no longer required it for refreshment. 
 There was a supreme exaltation in her. She stood bare- 
 headed to shade with her hand the rain and the gross 
 darkness from her eyes and peered out into the storm to 
 discern the outlines of the form she had come to seek. 
 
 She called the man's name softly, but there came no 
 response. It was too dark to make out what was at the 
 bottom of the garden. There was not a sound except the pat- 
 ter of the rain and the mournful noise of the wind sobbing 
 in the upper branches of the wood behind and above tlie 
 
 576 
 
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
 
 cottage. She continued to stand in a posture of expect- 
 ancy, but no form appeared before her on the garden path. 
 She called the man's name, but she stood alone. Unques- 
 tionably she had heard the sound of wheels. That blunt 
 fact dominated her like a passion as she stood looking out 
 upon the void. Her being could admit no other. She 
 continued to stand with the rain beating upon her piti- 
 lessly. She did not quail before it, nor when the wind 
 cast it more fiercely in her teeth, or struck her bosom, 
 did she recoil or gasp for breath. Her eyes began to 
 ache with the darkness. And yet she Wcis as sure she 
 had heard the sound of wheels as that the man she had 
 sent for would appear. 
 
 At last the wind carried towards her the sound of the 
 gravel crunching. A foot had fallen on it. Almost 
 directly a vague mass was evolved out of the night and 
 the flood. It climbed up the path to confront the woman 
 on the threshold. It was a man with his great coat 
 turned up to his ears, and the peak of his cap pulled 
 dowTi over his face until only the tips of his chin and nose 
 were to be seen. He was as gaunt as a drenched sparrow, 
 the water dripping from his shoulders. 
 
 " I knew you would come," the woman breathed softly. 
 
 *' I couldn't find the gate in the darkness. And the 
 rain and wind are horrible." 
 
 She hastened to lead him in and close the door, for 
 every moment the wind was threatening to extinguish 
 the lamp on the table. As the man moved into the light, 
 and stood blinking and wiping his feet on the mat, he 
 said — 
 
 " I am afraid I am bringing mud and wet into this 
 cosy room." 
 
 He took off his cap, and his eyes fell on the nurse, who 
 was rocking the infant in her arms, with an occasional 
 tear dripping from her eyes on to the blanket that con- 
 tained it. 
 
 Mrs. Broke conducted him past her to where Delia 
 was seated in the room adjoining. In his progress he 
 did not appear to notice that a grey huddle of a man 
 was in the farthest corner of the room through which 
 he passed. 
 
 577 00 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 Upon his entrance Delia rose. 
 
 The man did not look at her. 
 
 Mrs. Broke closed the door that conimunicated with 
 the other room. 
 
 " You must take off your wet overcoat," she said. 
 
 " Thank you, I will." 
 
 DeUa helped him to remove it. She was very cold, 
 her face was the colour of snow. During the moment in 
 which she tendered her aid it changed to scarlet, and then 
 to snow again. An intense bewilderment was making 
 her eyes grow dark. The man did not look at her once, 
 although there was an instant in which he took her 
 arm in a grip that had a slightly authoritative caress in it. 
 
 " Won't you sit down ? " said Mrs. Broke. 
 
 " No, thank you ; I think not." 
 
 She found that his voice and the measure of his self- 
 effacement were making her strong. They had seemed to 
 banish any suggestion of abnormality in their meeting. 
 
 " I must first make the purpose clear for which I sent 
 for you this evening. But before I do so, I render you 
 my thanks for obeying the summons. I content myself 
 with saying that had I not come to form the highest 
 estimate of your nature that one person can form of an- 
 other's, I could not have issued it. I could not have 
 dared." 
 
 The man bent his face a Httle. A slight look of pain 
 showed upon it. 
 
 " My object in summoning you to-night is that you may 
 undertake the task of reconciling a father and daughter. 
 It is b}^ you alone that it can be done. The grave crime 
 that was committed against you, your wife finds impos- 
 sible to forgive. But at the entreaty of her mother, 
 made upon her knees, she has consented to make your 
 perfect magnanimity the sole condition of her forgive- 
 ness of the author of it. You have only to withhold it ; 
 you have only to insert one reservation in its absolute 
 fulness and they can never be reconciled. There is no 
 power in the world that can reconcile them if you elect 
 to nurse for an instant one spark of your resentment. 
 If you are incapable of this act of fortitude I shall not 
 respect you less ; if the triumph is yours of achieving 
 
 57^ 
 
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
 
 it, I can only marvel at you more. Perhaps I have no 
 right to ask it ; perhaps it is more than one person should 
 ask of another. But as a wife and a mother I ask it, 
 and venture to do so because all requests preferred from 
 those sources are privileged. I ask it in the name of 
 the children that may one day be yours. As an old and 
 poor woman who has borne many, I ask it on my knees." 
 
 In this appeal there was a singular simpleness, an abase- 
 ment which was so complete that it encroached on the 
 primitive dignity of nature. Without venturing to look 
 at the countenance of him to whom it was made, the un- 
 happy woman covered her face with her hands. There 
 was an instant of silence, in which she seemed to shrink 
 into herself, in which her heaving sides seemed to contract. 
 
 In the next the man had laid his hand on her shoulder 
 with a gentleness that was extraordinary. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I think I see." 
 
 " You will lead her to her father literally, in your own 
 person." 
 
 " As you wish." 
 
 A sUghtly bleal^ smile twisted his face. 
 
 The woman was heard to breathe heavily. 
 
 " A man. I hear the voice of a man. A man speaks ! ** 
 
 As she uttered these irrelevant words she raised his 
 hand in both her own, and it felt the strange fervour of 
 her lips. A single tear out of her eyes fell upon it. 
 
 In the next moment she had gone back to the other 
 room. Broke still kept the attitude [he had occupied 
 ever since he had come there. The sweat was still running 
 down his face in a stream. To the grey of his cheeks 
 had succeeded the pallor of death. The nurse sat at 
 the side of the fire rocking the quiescent child in her arms. 
 The wail upstairs had ceased. The doctor was seen 
 descending the stairs. When he reached the room his 
 rough face was observed to be very grave and com* 
 posed. He came softly to the side of Mrs. Broke. 
 
 " All is over," he said in her ear. 
 
 Mrs. Broke held her heart. 
 
 The doctor turned to the infant sleeping in the arms 
 of the nurse. He pulled the blanket aside and favoured 
 it with a cursory professional glance. 
 
 579 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 " A fine boy," he said. 
 
 His comment awoke no echo of response in the stony 
 woman shivering by his side. His eyes went across the 
 table to where Broke huddled with his chin resting on 
 his stick. 
 
 " Ha ! there is the grandfather ! Does he know ? ** 
 
 " Tell him," said the unhappy woman. 
 
 The doctor turned towards our hero. 
 
 " A fine boy, Mr. Broke," he said with a native hearti- 
 ness in his voice. 
 
 The direct manner of this address did something to hft 
 our hero from his stupor. For the first time he took 
 his head out of his hands, and in the act the stick fell 
 with a clatter to the ground. 
 
 " A fine boy," repeated the doctor in his bluff voice. 
 
 " Eh ? " said Broke. 
 
 He spoke in hoarse bewilderment. There seemed to be 
 some kind of significance in the words of the doctor, but 
 he knew not what. 
 
 " A fine boy," said the doctor yet again, and a little 
 proudly. " It is a strange providence that watches 
 over you old families, don't you think ? " 
 
 No glimmer of comprehension appeared in the stark 
 eyes of the grandfather. They were stretched dully 
 upon the lamp. The sweat still poured down his face. 
 
 " The noise," he was heard to mutter. " The noise. 
 Why has it stopped ? " 
 
 " We couldn't save her." 
 
 " Hey ! " said Broke. He was seen to place a hand 
 behind his ear and to bend it forward in the feebly 
 querulous manner of a very aged man who is deaf. 
 
 The doctor repeated his phrase. 
 
 " I don't understand," said Broke feebly. *' Why — 
 what ? I — I want to know about that noise." 
 
 " I cannot recall a more painful or difficult case in 
 my experience. The premonition she had taken of her 
 husband's death proved too much for us. It gave us no 
 chance." 
 
 A vague comprehension was seen to creep into the grey 
 face of the grandfather. His trunk was suddenly shaken 
 and convulsed. His wife lifted the bundle out of the 
 
 580 
 
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
 
 arms of the nurse. She bore it to his side. Mutely he 
 put up his piteous face to hers. 
 
 " Edmund," she said, calling him by his name. 
 
 The sound of the familiar calm voice was a never-failing 
 source of strength and consolation to him. It was so 
 now. Something of the stupor was banished from his 
 spirit, something of the palsy was taken from his blood. 
 He extended both arms towards his wife with the 
 eagerness of one who thirsts. She tucked the sleeping 
 fragment of life firmly within them. He gathered it 
 slowly on to his irresolute knees. 
 
 She then withdrew with great swiftness to the room 
 adjoining. 
 
 " Now ! " she breathed from the threshold. 
 
 They were both sitting side by side at the table, but 
 at the summons the man rose to his feet immediately. 
 Deha followed his action with dumb, terrified, disbeUeving 
 eyes. 
 
 " Come, child." 
 
 He was seen to raise her softly by the arm. Taking 
 her then by the hand he led the way into the other room. 
 She yielded to him meekly but with terror and incre- 
 dulity ever increasing in her face. They discovered Broke 
 in the corner with a shapeless mass of blanket on his 
 knee. His face was hardly recognisable, it was so wet 
 and grey. He hfted it at the approach of his daughter 
 and her husband. He had expected to see his wife. A 
 look of bewilderment, similar to that in the eyes of his 
 daughter, came upon him for an instant, but it passed 
 almost at once. It was succeeded by an expression that 
 was incomprehensible, that had no meaning. His 
 mouth grew loose and weak. His right arm tightened 
 about the precious burden it encompassed. Suddenly 
 his left was seen to be extended. At the same instant 
 a harrowing agony seemed to spread over and shatter his 
 limbs. 
 
 Without hesitation the man led Delia by the hand 
 directly to the place where our hero's were outstretched 
 to accept her. But even when conducted there, and she 
 was released from his grasp, the power was not in her to 
 yield forth her hand to receive that other. She stood 
 
BROKE OF COVENDEN 
 
 before it mute. Her companion seized her hand again, 
 and placed the limp thing in that which was yet out- 
 stretched to take it. A curious weakness of its pressure 
 caused her to submit. Her companion stepped back 
 quickly into the room from which he had come and 
 closed the door, leaving Mrs. Broke alone to stand and 
 gaze from her station at the opposite side of the table 
 with eyes that were going blind. 
 
 Upstairs sat the old woman by the side of the bed, 
 desolate and without tears, nursing the dead hand of 
 her niece. Downstairs sat our hero clasping his man- 
 child with one arm, with the other his daughter. The 
 haggard sweat poured down his face unceasingly. 
 
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